Overheard

The proclamations and instructions of this venerated pope could have made the world a better, safer, kinder place but, instead, they condemned countless of his flock to lives of suffering and caused millions of excruciating, needless deaths.
Emily Maguire, author
Taming the Beast
Sydney Morning News, April 12, 2005

The assault on evolution--some Imax theaters, mostly in the South, will not show a film that makes brief references to evolution--is an assault not just on science but on thinking and truth and skepticism.
Columnist Richard Cohen
Washington Post, April 12, 2005

It [refusal by some Imax theaters to show his documentary "Volcanoes of the Deep Sea" because of references to evolution] seems to be a new phenomenon, obviously symptomatic of our shift away from empiricism in science to faith-based science.
Director James Cameron
[London] Observer, March 20, 2005

The country has just witnessed an interlude of religious hysteria, encouraged and exploited by political quackery.
Columnist William Greider
"Pro-Death Politics"
The Nation, April 2, 2005

I don't know about God.
CBS newsman Andy Rooney
Refusing religious oath
White Plains, N.Y. trial testimony
AP, April 11, 2005

. . . dangerous extremists belong to the majority religion and majority ethnic group, and wield great political influence. . .
American isn't yet a place where liberal politicians, and even conservatives who aren't sufficiently hard-line, fear assassination. But unless moderates take a stand against the growing power of domestic extremists, it can happen here.
Columnist Paul Krugman
"What's Going On?"
New York Times, March 29, 2005

It was quickly obvious this [Bush's faith-based initiative] was just a smokescreen to recruit blacks and minorities into the Republican party by bribing them with money and access to power--even while covering up cuts in vital social programs and giving big tax cuts to the wealthy.
Rev. Jim Dickerston, pastor
New Community Church
Kansas City infoZine, March 18, 2005

I'm an atheist and death holds no terrors for me. I've had a full life.
Entertainer George Melly
Belfast Telegraph, March 17, 2005

The problem with religious moderation is that it offers us no bulwark against the spread of religious extremism and religious violation. Moderates do not want to kill anyone in the name of God, but they want us to keep using the word 'God' as though we knew what we were talking about. . . . To speak plainly and truthfully about the state of our world--to say, for instance, that the Bible and the Koran both contain mountains of life-destroying gibbersh--is antithetical to tolerance as moderates conceive it.
Sam Harris
Virus of Religious Moderation
The Times (London), March 19, 2005

Voucher supporters want the choice of taking my tax dollars without offering me the choice of not contributing to their program. That's not choice. That's robbery.
Columnist E.J. Montini
Arizona Republic, March 17, 2005

The cynical use by the US Republican Party of the Terri Schiavo case repeats, whether deliberately or accidentally, the tactics of Muslim fundamentalists and theocrats in places like Egypt and Pakistan. These tactics involve a disturbing tendency to make private, intimate decisions matters of public interest and then to bring the courts and the legislature to bear on them.
Juan Cole
Informed Comment
March 22, 2005

My personal feeling is that people who use their faith to propel them through impossible situations are glorified in our culture, and people who get through with their own wits and rationality, and their belief in the human spirit and the human ability to overcome, don't play as well in the media.
Julia Sweeney
Comic monologuer
"True Unbeliever"
Los Angeles Times, Feb. 27, 2005

I don't mean to say Muslims are our enemy, but using the Quran as a bridge has allowed us to go deep, deep, deep into enemy territory.
Missionary Kevin Greeson
Southern Baptist Conference
The Virginian-Pilot, March 16, 2005

The Talmud says that when God is angry at the nations of the world for not aiding Israel--they want to evacuate, to disengage, to interfere in our affairs, He claps his hands, causing an earthquake [in Indonesia on Dec. 26].
Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu
Former chief rabbi of Israel
The Jerusalem Post, Jan. 27, 2005