"one needs but to disprove the idea that consciousness can exist without a human body to deliver it. Not that it'll be easy, but there is the task before the atheistic scientist"

Um,I don't THINK so.

The task before the atheistic scientist is to focus on things that can be done and to ignore the people who would insist on something as foolhardy as this. With time, this issue will take care of itself. In the same way that evolution is no longer an abomination, in the same way that race is no longer considered a biological indicator of inferiority (well except by racists), this too shall pass. Fifty years ago, sex before marriage was a scandal. Now it's the norm. People change, ways of thinking change, and even this religious zealotry will pass.

Scientists generally understand where the new religious zealotry is coming from. When threatened from the outside, people turn to religion and other diversions to create a sense of bonding and strength: turning against witches in Salem when the threat was starvation, turning against communists in the 50's when the fear was nuclear annihilation, and now turning TO religion when the right has us convinced there are terrorists who want to kill us for our freedom. It's why conservatives work so hard to promote fear and religion: the right uses these things as tools to keep the masses in line, to maintain control. Somehow, I doubt that a scientist able even to scientifically prove that consciousness cannot exist without a body would get much attention in the face of so much irrational thinking.

The thing for scientists to do in the meantime is to forget about burning bushes and disproving the existence of the soul---and to avoid spending too much energy thinking about this.

Like reading better things than THIS Armstrong interview in Salon! Despite congratulations from readers who enjoy contemplating the unknowable, I want to encourage Salon to come up with some topics that will be better than this! Preferably not about religion.

I personally would prefer hearing about Club Feds, ie what do white collar criminals face in prison terms these days? And what about the people who walked away from Enron with millions and millions and who seem to face no criminal charges? Have they gotten away scott free?

I would like to hear about Darfur and the conflicts between Arab and African muslims in that part of the world. How about a piece on the homeless in the US now? No one writes about the very poor anymore, and yet there are more of them than ever.

Speaking of the poor, Lalee's Kin was an excellent HBO documentary about poor people in the mississippi delta, made about 8 years ago. The people who made the film made a fortune and won alot of awards. So did HBO. But the poor black people in Mississippi (Lalee wallace and her family) are worse off than ever before. Why? what happens when HBO does a documentary about you? Why don't the film-makers feel any sense of obligation to help? Why doesn't HBO?

There are SOOOO many great things you could be giving us, and instead, we get religion.

Salon! What is up with your editors?!?!?!?

So first there was all the religious crap we have been getting lately (A former nun talking about atheism?) and now we get an overdose of the totally incredible Farhad Manjoo rejecting yet additional evidence for Bush's second stolen election (I mean come on, it's not like he's never done this BEFORE!)....

It breaks my feminist heart to say this. Joan Walsh is a TERRIBLE editor and clearly the readers of Salon are not happy with what she's been dishing up.

Time to consider other choices? Please, just don't promote Manjoo or O'Hehir.

Paranoid, compulsive, disordered...

Salon readers comments are evidence of mass liberal hysteria mixed with ignorance and pot smoking paranoid side-effects...

You guys are crazy...Bush is just a wonderful man who takes care of his friends...If you guys/lesbos had friends you wouldn't be quite so obsessive ...but a persistent negative attitude is not the funnest trait for friendship...get out of bed, get a job, work for your government, then, you will learn how much we all love and care about the poor, d lost, heathen, drug abusing criminals and other liberal people of no faith or hope in their future.

This was a joke, right? Yes, of course it was.

Pretty sad, though, isn't it, when you hear this crap so often now as to make you wonder?

The American public is not complicit. It is merely enslaved and no longer able to fight the good fight.

Bush and his ilk promise security and vast fortunes far in the future (hence the need to eliminate the estate tax!) but meanwile they keep the minimum wage now at $5.45/hour for almost ten years, they cut education (keeping voters stupid) and social programs (keeping them overworked and poor), they make it harder and harder for the average american to get by. Working class voters face constant job insecurity, working two jobs, unsupervised children, drugs, dwindling opportunities for their own kids.....

Frankly, drumming up outrage at bush is something most people are too tired to do anymore. AND they feel hopeless! I know that I personally campaigned incessantly for Kerry in the last election, rode busses to other states and campaigned door to door..... and a fat lot of good that did, since they stole the damned election! Manjoo by the way needs to read Kamiya and Suskind and then write another one of his brilliant little gems on how that election wasn't stolen. Idiot.

Americans are outraged, and ashamed, but they feel helpless. Yet another reason why the Bush regime is fascist----the German working class felt exactly the same way several years into the war under Hitler.