re: #199 Dr Lizardo

Heh. I can respect the man for his pursuit of trying to find a moderate and modernistic brand of Islam; I’ve actually met him in Istanbul. Even though we agreed to disagree on the whole creationism schtick, he is sincere about religious tolerance and mutual respect for all people, even those he disagrees with.

He reminds me of William Albright, who was an amazingly inspirational archaeologist, a creationist and fundamentalist Christian who nonetheless revitalized the entire field of ‘Biblical archaeology’. He was wrong in almost every theory, but he was a great teacher who inspired a whole generation of students to, well, basically disprove him. He took Christian, Jewish, and atheistic students without a qualm, as long as they were genuinely interested in archaeology.