I haven’t read the book or seen the movie yet but from what I understand Edward is a vampire who doesn’t actually consume human blood. Knowing a little bit about Stephanie Meyer’s religious background (she’s a devout Mormon) I can’t help but suspect that having a main character that doesn’t succumb to his baser desires is a thinly veiled metaphor for sexual abstinence (one of Mormonism's favorite preoccupations). I’m not sure if others feel the same way but as far as I’m concerned having a vampire that doesn’t sink his teeth into some juicy warm flesh takes all the bite out of the myth.

I'm a liberal. I’ve been for a long time and unless I somehow get obscenely rich and develop a mean, selfish streak I plan to be one for a long time.

You said: "There's no need to pardon anyone who hasn't been charged with a crime, who committed no crime, and whose only guilt exists in the minds of the fringe wackadoodle left."

That’s right Elephantman, there was no torture, manufacturing evidence to go to war, wiretapping abuse or outing of CIA agents. It’s all just a figment of the left’s “wackadoodle” imagination.

Seriously, what are you smoking and where I can get some!

Georgie boy hasn’t given a hoot about public opinion before so I doubt that he’s going to start worrying about it now. Just take a look at the 11th hour move against endangered species that he and Dickie are shoving through. It’s a piece of legislation that goes completely against both public opinion and the administration’s own science advisors—but they don’t care. The neocon pathology doesn’t take public or expert opinion into consideration when making decisions for the simple reason that to them, democracy, reason and science are completely subordinate to their dogmatic political philosophy. Even sicker, these nabobs think that history will vindicate them.

"We don't need a new word for "god" - art and science will fill the gaps when we let go of religion. Don't worry about finding "meaning" - we do it by making it ourselves with or without religious metaphor."

Right on!

“…I think Richard (Dawkins) is wrong….I think that there's something else. I think the creativity in nature is so stunning and so overwhelming that it's God enough for me…”

How exactly is Dawkins wrong? Since when did he say that nature was not ‘stunning’? I’ve read many of Dawkins’ books and have watched him lecture and I would say that from his writings and lectures he finds nature pretty stunning. Do you really think that scientists have to abandon reductionism to see “awe and wonder” in nature?

“Richard's view, and those of the new atheists, is simply not going to reach out and persuade those who hold to the standard Abrahamic religious views to consider something else. Whereas I hope what I'm saying may help create a new kind of sacred space.”

First of all, what are you, a scientist or a counselor? It’s not the job of the scientist to try to “bridge the gap” between science and superstition with some kind of middle of the road touchy feely claptrap.

Secondly, the tag of ‘new atheist’ is a misnomer. There isn’t anything ‘new’ about it. Atheist comes from ‘a’ (without) and ‘theist’ (deity). Putting ‘new’ in front of it implies that something has somehow changed. Atheists today are exactly the same as atheists from a thousand years ago or atheists a hundred years ago. Some things really do never change!

Steward Kauffman has a problem with reductionism and feels uncomfortable with the messy, unpredictable and seemly meaningless nature of the universe. To deal with this Kauffman wants to reinvent the sacred—-a kind o lower case ‘god’ that can well, um… address the awe and the um… reverence and… blah, blah, blah. At one point when Paulson asks him to explain his work on ‘self organization’ and he responds with; “It's harder than you think. I wrote a whole book, "The Origins of Order," and I very carefully never defined self-organization.” Good for you Stewart, you wrote a whole book on a subject without defining what it is. No wonder you have a problem with reductionism; it requires you to get to the point.

I’ve been critical of this ‘Conversations about Science and Faith’ series for the simple reason that I think that science and faith are mutually exclusive terms. But with that said I also like to give some credit where credit is due. In the last nine questions of this interview (actually seven questions and two statements), Paulson does make a noble attempt to get Kauffman to explain himself. He fails. Kauffman prefers to dance around Paulson’s questions by spouting the kind of vague, mystical claptrap that parades as scientific discourse in pseudo scientific coffee klatches.

It’s always sad to see great minds waste so much time on ethereal hogwash.

Jackie O—and her skinny, flat ass—wasn’t the first woman in the White House! If you take a closer look at the pictures of past first ladies I think you will find that the seats in the White House have felt the weight of many abundant derrieres over the years. Some of the prior posteriors of first ladies make Michelle Obama’s look like something out of a weight watchers ad in comparison.

"Focus on the Family is on the wrong side of history."

Focus on the family is on the wrong side of everthing; including what they choose to focus on as far as the family goes.