Fair enough, guys, it seems you know the man better than I do - maybe I was being a little too lovey-dovey "everybody's OK at heart" without really looking at the facts. Will check out that video when I next have a nice chunk of laptop time, Kamarling. As for my position on ID, I haven't looked into it very closely, but what little I have looked into it has impressed me. I have always found raw, unmodified evolution / natural selection to be... quite a difficult story to swallow - for so long though it had seemed to be the only game in town (Creationism is even harder for me to swallow).
If there's one thing I've learnt from some of the most influential people in my life, including my mother, father, and a close university friend, it's that there's always a way to bridge the gap - to reach out, to form a new friendship... you just have to be open to the novelty of a human being you've not encountered before, but who has something mutually beneficial to share with you.
Thanks for writing this Laird, I think it's an important thing to realise.
I just wanted to comment on the "Everybody's OK at heart" thing that you wrote in your reply to Kamarling. I disagree with your premise, even though you probably didn't mean it literally, or even believe it? The thing is... they're not, but what's important, is being able to recognise that and somehow come to terms and be at peace with it, more importantly, can we learn to do so as tribes?
We all have a sliding scale that we place individuals that we know or sometimes think we know, on, the scale goes from bad on one end to good at the other. For example mine might have my wife & daughter at one end, and maybe Hitler or child killers at the other, with everyone else somewhere in between. Even though I have placed my nearest and dearest at one end, I am fully aware of their weaknesses. I would say that is my bias. I love them. So that changes things.
I have recently written on Facebook, having similar ideas to yours, using the example of Ian Paisley, the N Irish Unionist, and Malcolm McGuinness, the Ira leader turned politician. If those two can overcome such divides to become friends, perhaps good friends, surely anything is possible.
We could meet Laurence Krauss under two very different circumstances, but these differences would exist in our heads only. If I were a millionaire, looking to give him funding for research, as a 'believer in him' - and him in me, we would probably quickly find common ground and relax into friendship. If, on the other hand, I was a spotty youth that his daughter was introducing to him for the first time, or a man known to hold a very different worldview to his own, I'm certain we would see two very different Laurence Krauss's.
It's been an interesting exercise, me trying to find people that I would put at the 'bad' end of my good/bad scale. The thing is, there's no one that I feel strongly should be there. I can find faults with even the 'best' people I know, but they would remain near the good end. But even though they display weaknesses, I don't really dislike them. Even though I suspect that Krauss wouldn't be very nice, I would try to ignore that side of him. No, not ignore, I might even have a rant about him, call him some colourful names, my feelings wouldn't run deep. Even in people that I thought might be 'very good' a few short years ago, I have found have worldly weaknesses. Spiritual seekers among them, I have not met anyone like Wild Bill, or don't think I have. Do they exist here on earth?
"Wild Bill leaned back in the upright chair and sipped at his drink. “We lived in the Jewish section of Warsaw,” he began slowly, the first words I had heard him speak about himself, “my wife, our two daughters, and our three little boys. When the Germans reached our street they lined everyone against a wall and opened up with machine guns. I begged to be allowed to die with my family, but because I spoke German they put me in a work group.” He paused, perhaps seeing again his wife and five children. “I had to decide right then,” he continued, “whether to let myself hate the soldiers who had done this. It was an easy decision, really. I was a lawyer. In my practice I had seen too often what hate could do to people’s minds and bodies. Hate had just killed the six people who mattered most to me in the world. I decided then that I would spend the rest of my life—whether it was a few days or many years—loving every person I came in contact with.” Loving every person . . . this was the power that had kept a man well in the face of every privation. It was the Power I had first met in a hospital room in Texas, and was learning little by little to recognize wherever He chose to shine through—whether the human vehicle was aware of Him or not."
From: Return from Tomorrow. By George Ritchie