Or in finest distillate, the New Atheists make a good case against religious fundamentalism but they take it too far and are too extreme & aggressive in the opposite direction and won’t allow the other side and moderates a fair hearing.

Right, because it isn’t like religion hasn’t had the last few thousand years to make its case.

Or, alternatively, that *you* don’t!

Right, of course, you understand the opinions of atheists better than the atheists themselves. Of course, yes Dawkins is the arrogant one here.

Atheism – the belief that there is NO God.

This is not what most, if any, atheists mean when they use the word. It is certainly not what any prominent “new” atheist says when they use the word.

Yet the way he rails away at religion and religious individuals and groups and that he at thevery leats implies they’re all insane ..

No, it implies this to you. But of course a lot of stuff is implied to you despite the fact that they actually said they meant the exact opposite, so your assessment of their position has a pretty terrible track record.

Dawkin’s may well be aware that he cannot disprove the existence of God.

It isn’t “may well”. He explicitly said this. He said it in the God Delusion. You keep railing against him not properly understanding his opponents, yet you don’t even know the most basic facts about his position. That doesn’t stop you from just making them up.

He does not, however, seem willing to tolerate the idea that God could well be real and is a good thing for many people.

On the first count, you are right. He is not a postmodernist. He, like any scientists, asserts there is a single objective reality for everyone. Something either exists or it doesn’t.

As for it being a good thing for many people, on the contrary he has one again explicitly said that it is a good thing for many people. Once again you don’t even know the most basic facts about his position, so you just make them up.

It seems to me Dawkins is adamant that there is, indeed, NO god but just can’t conclusively prove that beyond any doubt.

Once again, he has stated the exact opposite. Making up arguments for your opponents that directly contradict their real arguments and then bashing them for that is what we mean when we say you are using a strawman.

Non-participation in religious activities is NOT the same thing as atheism or especially Anti-Theism / New Atheism.

Where did Nigel say anything about “religious activities”. He said “any religious component” (emphasis added). This is not about activities.

Atheism is the explicit, admanant rejection of the idea that God exists. (Whether or not the extar stepof trying to disprove God is taken.)

No, that is your definition. That is not the definition that any atheist I have ever heard of has held, certainly not me, and certainly not Dawkins or Harris or other “New” Atheists.

The Divine, the spiritual, the miraculous, the sacred, the sort of knowledge that is non-material and to do with God and the human spirit. The afterlife. Some theories & philosophies of ethics and human nature.

Wait, you are saying that human nature is off-limits to science? The whole point of NOMA is that certain areas are strictly off-limits to science.

What makes you think that science cannot deal with any of these? Science certainly looks at miracles and sacred things all the time. Religious authorities sometimes even request scientific analysis of sacred objects to check whether they could possibly be what they are claimed to be.

Yes, you can see a piece of art or hear a new symphony. But someone who is blind cannot see that same artwork, someone who is deaf cannot hear that same symphony. Yet the artwork and the symphony still exist. Likewise, perhaps if I cannot sense God then fault is in me & NOT God?

We have already been over this repeatedly. Please either address our points or drop this false equivalency. These examples are nothing whatsoever like belief in God, as we have explained in excruciating detail.

Are you simply not reading anything we are writing? Because you keep on bringing up stuff we have already addressed again and again as though it were new, while ignoring all our criticisms.

Yes, and we *do* similarly understand that religion exists.

Religion != god. Homeopathy exists but that doesn’t mean the homeopathic vibrations that are supposed to be behind it exist.

Christianity had nothing going for it after the crucification of Rabbi Jesus. The group leader and source of inspiration had been brutally and humiliatingly executed, his followers had fled dispirited and afraid.

There is no proof that Jesus even existed, not to mention that he was executed in the manner described. No contemporary records support this conclusion.

Nevertheless, lots of religious people and religious leaders in lots of religions have died far more brutal and painful deaths than Jesus was supposed to have. And people have done the same for totally secular reasons as well. This is hardly unique to religion, not to mention one religion.

His corpse was guarded and the eyewitnesses when the extraordinary happened were women – then viewed as unreliable and not held in any regard.

Depends on which gospel you are reading. The four gospels have totally different accounts of what transpired. You are elevating one to the level of proven fact while ignoring the other 3.

Why didn’t Christianity vanish when it had everything going against it early on in its history?

There were dozens, if not hundreds, of similar religions around at the time. They shared a lot of their underlying features, indicating that they appealed to people at the time. So the fact that one happened to survive is far from surprising. The issues with Christianity are only important in hindsight, there was not particularly exceptional about it at the time. It proved to be a convenient tool for controlling the Roman population, so bureaucrats adopted it and eventually convinced the higher-ups to enforce it as the official state religion and ban all others. This essentially made Christianity the only acceptable religion in most of Europe, and this was then pushed through the rest of Europe through a combination of conquest and missionary work. But if Christianity hadn’t existed we would likely be debating Mithraism right now.

How sure can we really be that events did NOT happen that we regard as impossible?

The question isn’t whether it is impossible, the question is whether there is any good reason to think that it DID happen. There is a large amount of historical evidence that directly contradicts the accounts in the New Testament, plus massive discrepancies between the accounts given in the 4 gospels.

Do you analyse your love of everything you love and what makes you attracted to someone else or do you just feel it?

No one doubts that people have religious feelings, the question is whether those feelings are directed towards something real or something imaginary. It is fully possible for people to have feelings towards things that don’t exist. Just look at all the fans of fictional characters.

I can see the analogy you are trying to draw here, but I disagree with it.

Well, *you* would wouldn’t you!?

You may not agree with or like this analogy but it may (or okay may not be), nonetheless, be valid.

Even though that person may not experience red and green as different sensations, he or she can at least understand that they exist.

Yes, and we *do* similarly understand that religion exists. Other people tell us that it does. We can detect changes in their behaviour and emotional attitudes and some would even argue physical states based on internal “religious” events.

Past events have been recorded that aren’t always easily explained.

Christianity had nothing going for it after the crucification of Rabbi Jesus. The group leader and source of inspiration had been brutally and humiliatingly executed, his followers had fled dispirited and afraid. His corpse was guarded and the eyewitnesses when the extraordinary happened were women – then viewed as unreliable and not held in any regard.

There was a skeptic would personally placed his hands in the wounds of the risen Christ. Now you can always argue that event didn’t happen – but perhaps it did. Why didn’t Christianity vanish when it had everything going against it early on in its history? How sure can we really be that events did NOT happen that we regard as impossible? We weren’t there. Logic says some things couldn’t happen, science says some things couldn’t happen – but what *if* they did anyhow? Not saying they necesarily did or didn’t just posing the question. How open are we to the possibility that maybe things did happen that cannot be explained?

And, although I can see that religion exists, it appears to me to be an irrational pursuit because the keystone of every religion is to assume the existence of something for which there is no evidence.

No evidence that you will accept is not the same as NO evidence.

To a blind person painting a picture or taking photos would seem irrational as to them colour does NOT exist.

People’s understanding of what is “rational” varies – and humans are in case irrational beings. Reason can be used as sophistry to explain anything. Or nothing. In the end not everything comes down to reason. Emotion and instinct are also parts of how we humans work and sometimes more useful to us.

Do you analyse your love of everything you love and what makes you attracted to someone else or do you just feel it? Do you analyse why you laugh or how the sunlight and sand feels on your skin? Can you rationally explain human sexual orientation or the desire to to help families – and even if you can is that NOT an afterthought to the experiences themselves?

@197. Nigel Depledge :

Atheism is not itself a belief that there is no god, although I’m sure some atheists are convinced that there is no god. Atheism is living life without any religious component. To take the UK as an example, most people are probably atheists without even knowing it, because – whether they believe in some vague idea of god or that there is no god – they do not participate in any religious activities.

Non-participation in religious activities is NOT the same thing as atheism or especially Anti-Theism / New Atheism.

Being secular and indifferent to religion isn’t being atheist.
Being agnostic isn’t the same thing either.
Nor is being opposed to (some or even all) *organised* religion and its various wrong-doings.

In all cases there is the possibility of also accpeting overtlyor implictly the existenceof some sort of God.

Atheism is the explicit, admanant rejection of the idea that God exists. (Whether or not the extar stepof trying to disprove God is taken.)

On this view, agnosticism is a specific subset of atheism, or at least a set that intersects with atheism

See the definitions I’ve provided above.

Agnosticism is admiting the lack of knowledge and certainty about things religion~wise. It is saying we don’t know.

Atheism is more certain & definite that there is NO God and makes the active claim that religion (all and any type of religion or religious belief) is wrong.

(because I daresay that there may be some agnostics who do attend religious activities as a form of hedging their bets).

Or out of respect for others views, or out of searching for more information and knowledge about religion, or as a social-community-cultural-national building activity or as part of participating in charitable activities and helping others. Do none of those alternative possibilities occur to you?

@198. Nigel Depledge :

So, what is the role of religion in relation to NOMA? From what aspects of life or the world do you specifically exclude science? IOW, what is religion’s magesterium, into which science is not permitted?

The Divine, the spiritual, the miraculous, the sacred, the sort of knowledge that is non-material and to do with God and the human spirit. The afterlife. Some theories & philosophies of ethics and human nature.

@199. Nigel Depledge :

MTU (191) said: “Not everyone enjoys the same sports or is affected by and even sees in the same way a particular painting or sculpture or piece of music.”
True, but not a valid analogy, because people who dislike a particular sport, or work of art, or piece of music, are at least able to experience it. I dislike football (soccer to USAians), but I can see that it exists.

Its soccer to us Aussies too, mate!

Yes, you can see a piece of art or hear a new symphony. But someone who is blind cannot see that same artwork, someone who is deaf cannot hear that same symphony. Yet the artwork and the symphony still exist. Likewise, perhaps if I cannot sense God then fault is in me & NOT God?

Some people lack a sense of humour – does that mean there are no funny jokes?

If enough other people tell you something is real and yet you cannot sense it, does that not at some point indicate that they may be capable of sensing & experiencing something that you cannot? Is there a point at which a blind man has to take the word of the majority that “colour” exists or the deaf women has to acknowledge that a voice can be baritone or contralto even through there is no way they can verify this for themselves?

The majority of humans are religious & feel *something* special from the religious sphere. You may not agree with or like this analogy but it may, nonetheless, be a good approximation of the truth. We know our senses are limited and have blind spots – and some people more so than others. If there is a “God-sense” could this not be true of that also?

@197. Nigel Depledge :

MTU (191) said: “I don’t believe in God, I don’t disbelieve in God, I think the question is open and as yet neither side has fully convinced me. I don’t think you can rule some form of God out as at least a *possibility.*”

This indicates that you do not really understand atheism.

Or, alternatively, that *you* don’t!

My definitions as I understand & view things :

Atheism – the belief that there is NO God.

Agnosticism – the belief that there may or may not be a God.

& I’ll add another one too :

Anti-Theism – The conviction not only that there is no God but that religious people are deluded and harmful and that religion shoudl be abolished. (Also identical in concept to “New Atheism” or dawkin’s worship! )

I am aware of no atheists who claim that god does not exist. A year or two ago, Dawkins himself supported a campaign with a slogan along the lines of “there’s probably no god, now just get on with your life,”. Dawkins is a smart guy; I’m sure he is aware of the futility of any attempt to disprove the existence of an intangible being.

Yet the way he rails away at religion and religious individuals and groups and that he at thevery leats implies they’re all insane ..

Dawkin’s may well be aware that he cannot disprove the existence of God.

He does not, however, seem willing to tolerate the idea that God could well be real and is a good thing for many people.

It seems to me Dawkins is adamant that there is, indeed, NO god but just can’t conclusively prove that beyond any doubt.

MTU (190) said: “*Has* God been rendered unnecessary? Unnecessary for who & what?”
Unnecessary in explaining how and why the universe is the way it is.

Hmm .. Maybe. That answer seems to assume we now *know* “how and why the universe is” and in a way that is other than tentative and incomplete.

I don’t think that’s the case. Science has given us a staggering, mind-blowingly huge amount of knowledge on the hows and whys but this knowledge is still subject to further revision and refinement and there are still major questions that are open. Don’t get me wrong, I love science and am in aqwe of all the benefits it has brought us. I’m not knocking it. But. It isn’t everything and hasn’t answered everything either. Which I think is a good thing too!

Also just because something may be unnecessary doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Appendixes and male nipples are unnecessary but real for example.

@196. Nigel Depledge Says:

MTU (190) said:

Hmm .. [Einstein's quotes are] hardly the words of a militant dawkins style New Atheist are they?

Well, they certainly don’t represent your strawman idea of an outspoken modern atheist. They are also sufficiently vague that they really could mean anything.

Really? Vague?

Let’s see them again & check – emphasis will be added for clarity since some here seem to find even the straightforward confusing :

“Einstein became angry when his views were appropriated by evangelists for atheism since he was offended by their lack of humility.”
- “Einstein Versus God Round II” in ‘The Guardian Weekly’, Page 42, 2008 May 23rd.

So Einstein got angry at “evangelical atheists” claiming his views for support and thought they lacked humility ie. were arrogant.

Dawkins, incidentally is the very icon of an evangelical athiest. And by setting them in opposition it seems clear that Einstein was NOT an athiest – & very certainly NOT an “evangelical” New Atheist

What’s so vague & unclear about that precisely?

II. “Einstein referred to a “cosmic religious feeling” that permeated and sustained his scientific work.”
- “Einstein Versus God Round II” in The Guardian Weekly, P. 42, 2008 May 23rd.

So Einstein experienced and was sustained by religious feelings.

Er .. vague? Really?

III. “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
- Albert Einstein. (Quoted in The Guardian Weekly, P. 42 “Einstein Versus God Round II” 2008 May 23rd.

What’s so hard to understand about that – Einstein’s words are unambigously saying both science *and* religion have significant roles to play and each benefits from the other. Sheesh, you really don’t get that?

At the end of the day, though, using the existence of religious scientists as an argument for the existence of god, or for the necessity and relevance of religion today, is flawed. After all, if – say, 250 years from now – all scientists were eventually to become atheists, would that disprove the existence of god? No, of course not. Would it prove that religion is unnecessary or irrelevant? No, of course not. It is not germane to the point.

It shows science and religion can – and do work together. They are NOT mutually exclusive and it is possible to appreciate & participate in both.

Additionally, if you have answered my earlier questions about what the term “New Atheist” means when you use it, I have not seen it.

“New atheism” in my view is the extreme, uncompromising, intolerant atheism espoused by polemicists Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and others who aggressive attack and insult those who are religious and who argue that religion is incompatible with reason and science.

They tend not to be theological or philosophical in background – Dawkins being a biologist and Hitchens a political commenter and tend to be bursting with the opposite of humility. They come across (to me) as thinking they are intellectually superior to everyone else and thus able to tell everyone how to think and unwilling to concede the possibility that others may have equally valid but very different, even entirely opposite perspectives to their own. They are good, powerful writers & debaters who make some good points and argue a good case but who also seem to have an unfortunate tendency to cherry-pick (for example targeting the extremes and always drawing the least favourable conclusions and implicatios out of the religious sphere) and engage in strawmen tactics rather than show any willingness to seriously contemplate or give a fair hearing to the other side.

Plus the “crickets” were because, much as I thought about going back and responding further here, I thought it would’ve been a waste of time because everyone had long since moved on & this thread had gotten wa-aay too old.

Since I find its not .. well maybe we can make that 500 post mark. Although I’m not going to call you folks “nutters!”

You, rather insultingly, call it ‘cognitive dissidence’, I & many others see it people accepting these differing aspects of life in harmony and working and thinking on both.

Are you kidding me? You cite the fact that they can hold the views as proving that science and religion are not in conflict, then when I bring up the inherent flaw in this you change the subject to how mean I am. Either defend your statement or withdraw it, don’t try to change the subject.

I guess it depends on your point of view.

If it depends on someone’s view, then by definition it cannot be used as proof that your view is the correct one.

Perhaps though you check out what these individuals are saying for themselves before effectively dismissing them as mentally impaired or deluded – bearing in mind that these are some of the most intelligent minds around. Smarter than me, perhaps smarter than you also.

What makes you think I haven’t? Although the vast majority of scientists in the U.S., upwards of 80% or so, are non-religious, and the best scientists are more along the lines of 90-95% non-religious. On the other hand the general population in the U.S. is more like 85% religious. So at least I am on the side of the vast majority of scientists.

I specifically said that scientists did not start rejecting religion wholesale until after recent advances in biology and cosmology rendered God unnecessary, and this happened much less than 200 years ago.

*Has* God been rendered unnecessary? Unnecessary for who & what?

There is no process or object in the universe for which god is a better explanation than non-god. This was not the case until less than 100 years ago.

It is NOT at all clear that God has been rendered unnecessary especially given the continuing importance of religion to most of the worlds population.

I specifically was talking about science here, the fact that I was specifically referring to geology, cosmology, and biology should have made that pretty clear but I guess I have to be more explicity.

So why are you bringing up people from hundreds of years before that? It was much more reasonable for people to accept God back before we had science in its modern form, and before we had adequate explanations for formation of the Earth, the diversity of life, and formation of the universe.

Well, gee, could it be because some of those scientists I’ve named were, in part, responsible for us getting science in the form we know it today?

Yeah, so? They lacked the knowledge we have now. You can’t cite scientists 500 years ago to support the validity of religion any more than you can cite them to support the validity of blood-letting or for God being responsible for lightning bolts.

Heh, you offer one Einstein quote – I give you three of them :

None of those quotes contradict mine. Not one supports the idea that he believed in a God of the sort that almost all religious people believe in. His definition of religion was also very different than the commonly-used one, as the the I showed explains.

Hmm .. hardly the words of a militant dawkins style New Atheist are they?

Where did this come from? No one was claiming he was, or made any comparison between him and Dawkins.

Yes, Einstein’s view on religion was mixed and complicated and much debated. No, he wasn’t a believer in a particular fundamentalist style of religion – But saying he wasn’t religious in *some sense* of the word is plain wrong.

But no one, not even Dawkins, has claimed that “religious” beliefs of someone like Einstein are in conflict with science. In fact Dawkins himself has explicitly stated quite the opposite.

I don’t believe in God, I don’t disbelieve in God, I think the question is open and as yet neither side has fully convinced me. I don’t think you can rule some form of God out as at least a *possibility.*

As Nigel said, you don’t understand atheism. You would have a hard time finding any atheist who claims otherwise. Certainly Dawkins has explicitly stated that he can’t disprove some sort of god, which once again you would know if you had actually bothered to read what he wrote. Every leading atheist I have heard say anything on the question has said the same thing.

Firstly, I’m not being purposely evasive thankyou – and attributing malice to your opponent is a logical fallacy. I have tried to answer your question as best I can & that after finally working out what you were actually asking as that wasn’t clear to me before.

After having the same question ignored 4 or 5 times, including responses that selectively excise those question, it becomes hard to draw any other conclusion.

What is religions role?

[snip]

As Nigel said, none of this helps with your case about NOMA, none of these are things that science cannot look at and address, none of these inherently require religion, none support your early statements about religion and morality, and none give even the slightest support for the validity of all the supernatural baggage associated with almost all religions.

Religion isn’t science, it isn’t as clear-cut and tangible and experimentally testable. It affects people in different ways much as, again, art and sport do.

No one uses art and sports to decide who should live and who should die.

Does that make them deluded and liars or at best mistaken self-deceivers?

Or could it be we’re just different & perceive things slightly differently?

Just as abee perceieves ultraviolet as acolour and my dog smells things i cannot, maybe some folks for whatever reason are lacking in “godsense?” If so, thenm would thatmean “god wasn’t real -or just that some peopel for whatever reason couldn’t sense God?

We can come up with tests to test all of these things scientifically.

Hypothesis: bees see frequencies higher than we can.
Prediction: bees can be fooled by paint or filters in these frequencies
Result: True

Hypothesis: dogs can smell better than we can:
Prediction: dogs can be trained to react to chemicals at lower concentrations than humans
Result: True

Hypothesis: certain humans can have a “supernatural” sense that can detect things other humans cannot
Prediction: there should be some consistency in what they detect.
Result: False

Everything that we normally call a sense has certain properties: it provides largely consistent information (although some details may vary) both across time and across people, it is independent of upbringing, it can be blocked in certain ways, the thing it it sensing can be independently verirified,

Any time you try to actually define what sort of information this sense provides, it always ends up leading to predictions that turn out to be false. A color blind person can tell that everyone else agrees that red and green are two different things, if you take something that one person says is red and the same person says is green, and show them to someone else in the other side of the world they will give the same colors. But if you ask one person how many gods their supernatural sense tells them there are, and ask another person, they will likely give you two different answers. You ask them what their god sense tells them to do, they will give two different answers.

Your color-blindness example is a great one, when combined with your bee one. Compared to bees, and many animals, humans are color blind, we see far fewer colors than many others animals. We can test and show that bees can see more colors than we can, we can study the organs that do the detection, we can run tests that manipulate these frequencies, we can use sensors to detect that the frequencies are present in objects they need to look at, we can compare the responses across bees. There are any numbers of ways to test whether bees have senses we don’t. And many do not rely on being able to detect the ultraviolet light ourselves.

Another example is magnetic sense, a sense humans do not have to any significant degree. But we can detect and study it in other animals.

One day maybe I’ll find the metaphorical beach here – or maybe its just a figment of the imagination. An intellectual abstraction. Right now, I can’t tell but it seems wrong to rule out the mere possibility based on my limited experiences – just as it seems (IMHON) wrong for the “New Atheists” to assert their arguments, their experiences, their way of thinking is the one and only way.

Once again, a strawman. No one claims that they can definitively rule out the existence of any sort of god. But then again no one claims they can definitively rule out that there is an invisible gnome living in my garden, assuming I am careful to make sure it is undetectable. However, if I claim this troll says that I cannot eat turkey, everyone would think I am crazy. But if someone says their god tells them they cannot eat pork, no one has any problem with that.

What in particular do you think I’m NOT understanding about atheist history, current issues and claims?

I’ve pointed out several examples in this comment alone.

You really don’t get how rude and offensive some of the things Dawkins said are?

This isn’t about being rude and offensive. You have made specific claims about things Dawkins has said, things he not only did not say, but where he actually said the exact opposite. After I called you out on this, you suddenly switched to talking about how rude he was. I have never once claimed he was not rude. My problem is with specific positions you attribute to him that he does not hold, specific claims that you have attributed to him that he did not make.

Perhaps, just perhaps, each – or at least many of the religions – has its own kernal of truth or is one of many possible ways of perceiving a certain universal thing that is glimpsed (percived?) differently in what we call religion. Its an idea anyhow.

This sort of claim could only be made by someone who has not studied religions in any detail. When the most fundamental aspect of many different religions is that all other religions are wrong (this is the first commandment of the ten commandments, and automatically earns you a one-way ticket to hell in both Christianity and Islam), then no it is not possible for them all to be right.

Yes & I never said otherwise. Art and religion are different things and different magisteria just as science and religion or science and art are difefrent magisteria. These areas or aspects or ways of seeing things work in different ways and come from different perspectives. Science isn’t art or religion, religion isn’t science or art.

You say religion is like art, but now say they are not alike. In what way is religion like art?

Its fair to judge science from a scientific perspective – it makes little sense to do so from an artistic or religious perspective using the techniques of those magisteria. It is equally nonsensical to try to use science to judge art or religion.

It is fair to judge the claims made by art from a scientific perspective. The issue is that religion makes specific factual claims, so it is well within the prevue of science to check whether those factual claims are true. Whether Jesus actually existed or not makes a huge difference to the validity of Christianity as a religion, while whether there was a war between Greece and Troy makes no difference to the artistic merit of the Illiad.

Think about it this way. Lets say that lots of people are excited about a new painting supposed to be by Leonardo da Vinci. The museum brings in some analysts to check whether it was really by him. Carbon dating shows it is less than 100 years old. Everyone loses interest.

Was that wrong? Was it a mistake to judge a piece of art on scientific grounds? No, because a large part of its artistic merit was based on who painted it. The same is true of religion. A large part of its authority rests on its supposed divine source. So checking, to the extent that we can, whether the source really does appear to be who it is claimed to be is certainly a valid approach.

We have in fact verified some Biblical historical events – such as a particular pool that was discovered by arcaheologists matching one scene from the New Testament which was seen on the news ages ago or the existence of the Assyrians before the archaologists found the sites. Plus an amusing case of a tablet recording the Babylonian (IIRC?) seige of the Israelites where the Babylonians and Jewish people alike claim victory for their side.

Of course it includes some historical details, although most of the New Testament is pretty thoroughly refuted by the historical record. But there are more basic claims, like for instance the claims Jesus supposedly made about the answering of prayers, or the Old Testament prophecies that the Messiah was supposed to fulfill but Jesus didn’t, or major contradictions between the 4 gospels.

Mutually exclusive? Not necessarily so. Much of what religions say boils down to the golden rule (“do unto others”) for example.

Christianity says that anyone who does not believe Jesus is God is going to Hell. Islam claims that anyone who does believe Jesus is God is going to Hell. Buddhism says there is no Hell. I can name hundreds of more such contradictions. But there is no religion I have ever heard of that “boils down to the golden rule”. Even in the Bible it was not given particular prominence, it was listed along side many rules, both good and bad. People have focused on that one in modern times because they like it, but it was far from a major component of the bible, certainly not the single biggest component as you claim. I’ve pointed this out before, but you apparently either ignored it or weren’t reading carefully.

I *have* read some of their books – all of The God Delusion and God is Not Great for example. I borrowed these books – the former from a library and the latter from my brother – so I don’t have copies handy to pull exact quotes from, but I assure you I have indeed read them.How many times do I have to note this before it registers for you?

So you read them, but read them so carelessly that you completely missed major points and have not one of the arguments you attribute to them even comes close to an argument they actually made. It would have been better if you hadn’t read them.

Dawkin’s distinctly referred to “blind faith” overlooking the reality that for many religious peopel faith is NOT just blind but is informed by reason and personal experience also. Dawkins consistently cherry-picked examples and verses to suit his purposes ignoring those that didn’t. His approach was totally one-sided and full of derison and lack of nuance or respect for thsoe who disagreed with him.

So you claim, but every time I try to get specifics, you either drop back to talking about how rude he was or you say something Dawkins never said but that his enemies often falsely attribute to him. What he says certainly doesn’t match the positions of some highly-educated theologians, but he has said time and again he is addressing religion as it is actually practiced by mainstream believers, not the radically different religion practiced by the small number of theologians.

Well good for you. Except for the whole assuming I haven’t done likewise and just reached a different conclusion to yours part.

It is not an assumption. You make claims that no one who has studied the issue in any detail could make. You attribute arguments to your opponents that are the exact opposite of the ones they actually made. You lack a basic understanding of the history of religious concepts, lack knowledge of the historical events that surrounded the formation of religions, lack knowledge of the content of religious books, lack knowledge of the claims of religious groups, and lack knowledge of the positions of people on both sides of the debate.

You know what your life experiences have been but you don’t know mine.
I’ll thank you not to tell me what I have and haven’t done in *my* life.

I can’t judge your life experience, but I can certainly judge your level of knowledge of the subject.

You have missed my point and misunderstood what I’m saying there completely.

No, I wasn’t saying religion has no domain or that each person sets religions own domains.

I was saying religion is hard to define – as for example art is – & that religion is a personal thing that people experience for themselves as individuals.

Can you give me one domain, one single domain, that is actually universal to all religious people? Name just one. So far you keep claiming that religion has domains, but when I try to get you to name one, you talk about how “mileage may vary” and refuse to provide any specifics except for examples that you say are not universal to all religious people. When I then take from that there are no universals, suddenly I am reading to much into it and there are universals. You can’t have it both ways. Either there are domains, in which case you should be able to name them (which you have refused to do), or there aren’t, in which case my understanding of your claims are correct.

Either religion has a domain, in which case you should tell us what it is, or it doesn’t have a domain, in which case you should stop claiming it has one.

Now do you see why I am concluding you are evasive? When I ask you a question, you refuse to answer, saying it varies too much between people. When I take this to mean there is no answer, you insist there is one, but still refuse to provide it.

You claim it has a domain, but refuse to tell us which one. You claim it is like art and sports, but refuse to tell us how. You claim it has validity, but refuse to tell us what it is valid for. You claim that Dawkins uses strawmen, but refuse to tell us what they are. Whenever someone asks for specifics, you either say it is impossible to provide any or change the subject. When I take this to mean there are none, you get offended and claim I misunderstood you, insisting they exist, but still refuse to provide them.

This is being evasive</b)i. Whether you are doing it intentionally or not I don't know, but if there is no answer to a question, stop insisting there is one. If someone asks you a question, don't try to change the subject to something complete unrelated. If you make a claim that turns out to be factually incorrect, don't try to deflect criticism by bringing up unrelated issues. Whether you are doing this intentionally or accidentally, it is a consistent pattern of behavior. Anyone used to dealing with evasive people will conclude you are being evasive, since you are hitting all the marks spot-on. You find some way to consistently avoid specific questions, while answering others with no problem.

First of all, by what criteria do you judge a religion?

That line is the signpost leading to the heart of MTU’s point of view.

His take on religion, like most, is one that he has shaped and molded himself, apparently without any “outside” evidence or input, based solely on his own opinions, psychological needs and dependencies. He freely picks and chooses what he wants from traditional religions, modifies according to his own modern sensibilities, then tries to “backdate” his beliefs in order to lend them some sort of ancient authority.

In a nutshell – cheap shot intended – that sums up many, if not most*, modern religions, and emphasizes the fact that all of them…ALL of them…are human inventions, and as such reflect the needs and desires of their human inventors.

*I leave out such obvious frauds as Scientology, the history of which is well documented.

You don’t judge religion by scientific criteria, you don’t judge art by scientific criteria – you judge them on their religious and artistic merits instead.

Leaving art aside for the moment, let’s examine this. Why do you judge science and religion by different standards?

NOMA is a relatively new idea, so it is only fairly recently that the claims made by religious texts about the universe have ceased to be taken literally by most people. (For instance, the age of the Earth: up until about the 17h century, the bible was accepted by all Christians as the authoritative source on this issue. Yet now we know that anyone who sticks with Bishop Ussher’s calculation is in direct contradiction with reality.)

Religious texts were once considered to be authoritative about how and why the universe is the way it is. Now that science has advanced to the point that it has disproven much of what once was claimed, the idea of NOMA is touted.

So, is there really any reason why we should not judge religion by the same standards with which we judge science? After all, a major point of contention in recent years has been religious organisations making claims abouyt reality that are directly at odds with what science has discovered.

Taking the opposite approach, is there any way in which one can take the standards or criteria by which one might judge a religion (and, to be frank, I have no idea what they might be but this is your concept so I’m trying to run with it)? First of all, by what criteria do you judge a religion? Second, is there any reasonable way in which these could be applied to science?

IOW, while it is indeed possible to use scientific standards or criteria to judge religion, I’m really not sure it is possible to use religious criteria or standards to judge science?

If you can’t or choose not to see the merit in art or religion, well, that’s up to you but it doesn’t mean that merit isn’t there for others.

By the same token, it doesn’t mean that any particular artwork or any particular religious component has merit. Perhaps the greatest merit that religion offers is the illusion of comfort?

Would you insult an artist as “deluded”

If the artist believed in something for which there is no evidentiary support, then it would not be an insult to say they are deluded, would it?

Besides, I think that certain aspects of modern art really are a load of nonsense.

and say that, say, Heironymous Bosche’s triptych paintings are scientifically impossible and absurd? No?

I’m not adequately familiar with his work, but is anyone claiming that they are accurate representations of real physical events? If no-one is claiming that they are literally true – i.e. we are all free to interpret them as allegory or metaphor or what have you – then any impossibility or otherwise is not relevant. With religion, many people do claim that something that seems impossible (miracles) is literally true.

I don’t believe any one religious faith is right, I certainly think thereare many things that some religions have got badly wrong – I also, however, concede the *possibility* that there just mightbe something that one or even all of them have got right.

Yes, I might be wrong about this – I conceed that possibility too. But then again, I might not be.

There is, however, one thing of which we can be certain: if any religion has got something exactly right, it will be by chance, not by any reasoned process.

What in particular do you think I’m NOT understanding about atheist history, current issues and claims?

Er … every time you make a claim about what the “new Atheists” do, without backing it up with a citation. I think you have made a fistful of strawman arguments about modern atheists, and you should either justify those with references, or retract them.

The one time you did actually cite Dawkins, you misrepresented the meaning of the text, as TBC and I pointed out. So, perhaps we should start with that one:

In what way is religion different from a clinical delusion?

just as it seems (IMHON) wrong for the “New Atheists” to assert their arguments, their experiences, their way of thinking is the one and only way.

It may not be the only way, but it is the only rational way.

Religion violates the principle of parsimony and is therefore irrational. I suspect that most atheists would leave religion be, if only the religious fundies would leave off trying to either dictate what reality is, or claiming that their views have a rational basis.

I’m not sure if God exists. I haven’t myself experienced God as some of my friends claim to have personally done.

Does that make me blind and insensible to a whole dimension?

Does that make them deluded and liars or at best mistaken self-deceivers?

Or could it be we’re just different & perceive things slightly differently?

There are many people who claim to have experienced some kind of religious or divine sensation. But how can any of them distinguish this sensation from an hallucination?

They can never know for sure if their experience really was divinely-inspired, or if that is wishful thinking coupled with a certain dogged self-delusion. And – due to the rather conveniently intangible nature of god – neither can anyone else.

Not everyone enjoys the same sports or is affected by and even sees in the same way a particular painting or sculpture or piece of music.

True, but not a valid analogy, because people who dislike a particular sport, or work of art, or piece of music, are at least able to experience it. I dislike football (soccer to USAians), but I can see that it exists.

To a great many people religion is valid and meaningful and useful.

To *you* it may not be but to *them* it is.

Its like someone who is colour blind. Imagine you can’t see green or red.
Most folks see green and red and recognise and appreciate them for what they are. A colour-blind person who can’t see red or green will not and will be left baffled and miss out on soem important things because of that.

A scientist can tell you what the wavelength of green is, what chemicals emit it when burnt and so on – but that’s NOT the same thing as actually seeing *green* as non-colour blind folks see it.

I can see the analogy you are trying to draw here, but I disagree with it. A colourblind person can at least understand that different wavelengths of light interact with different cone receptors in the eye (of a non-colourblind person) and hence generate nerve signals that are distinguishable from one another. Even though that person may not experience red and green as different sensations, he or she can at least understand that they exist.

And, although I can see that religion exists, it appears to me to be an irrational pursuit because the keystone of every religion is to assume the existence of something for which there is no evidence. IOW, I do not accept that there is an analogy between atheism and colourblindness.

What is religions role?

It has many roles to different people – for you it seems to make a good debating topic and tribal identifier!

For many people it has a meaningful role in helping them personally in life, giving them insight, inspiration and a form of knowledge of ethics and personal character and purpose beyond the everyday.

For some it is useful socio-cultural glue and community bond, a way of establishing a sort of positive community of like-minded peopel who help others and seek knowledge ina particular way, for others a way of shaping and identifying and establishing one national & cultural nature.

It is an aspect of life that is like sport, like art, another prism through which people percieve the world and are perceived by others and gain an extra intangible something in life.

Well, OK, but earlier on you played the NOMA card. And subsequently claimed that the purview of religion depnds on a person’s point of view.

So, what is the role of religion in relation to NOMA? From what aspects of life or the world do you specifically exclude science?

IOW, what is religion’s magesterium, into which science is not permitted?

I don’t believe in God, I don’t disbelieve in God, I think the question is open and as yet neither side has fully convinced me. I don’t think you can rule some form of God out as at least a *possibility.*

This indicates that you do not really understand atheism.

I am aware of no atheists who claim that god does not exist. A year or two ago, Dawkins himself supported a campaign with a slogan along the lines of “there’s probably no god, now just get on with your life,”. Dawkins is a smart guy; I’m sure he is aware of the futility of any attempt to disprove the existence of an intangible being.

Atheism is not itself a belief that there is no god, although I’m sure some atheists are convinced that there is no god. Atheism is living life without any religious component. To take the UK as an example, most people are probably atheists without even knowing it, because – whether they believe in some vague idea of god or that there is no god – they do not participate in any religious activities.

On this view, agnosticism is a specific subset of atheism, or at least a set that intersects with atheism (because I daresay that there may be some agnostics who do attend religious activities as a form of hedging their bets).

Hmm .. hardly the words of a militant dawkins style New Atheist are they?

Well, they certainly don’t represent your strawman idea of an outspoken modern atheist. They are also sufficiently vague that they really could mean anything.

At the end of the day, though, using the existence of religious scientists as an argument for the existence of god, or for the necessity and relevance of religion today, is flawed. After all, if – say, 250 years from now – all scientists were eventually to become atheists, would that disprove the existence of god? No, of course not. Would it prove that religion is unnecessary or irrelevant? No, of course not. It is not germane to the point.

Additionally, if you have answered my earlier questions about what the term “New Atheist” means when you use it, I have not seen it.

Well, gee, could it be because some of those scientists I’ve named were, in part, responsible for us getting science in the form we know it today?

This is not relevant.

Galileo, for instance, had no idea how old the Earth is, he had no concept of biological evolution, he was – AFAICT – unaware what fossils are and mean. So, he had no reason to question any of the church’s assertions about such topics. And even if he had questioned them, with what could he challenge those assertions?

Galileo’s greatest contribution was – arguably – the demonstration that only through empirical testing (observation and experiment) can we truly learn about the world.

As far as he was aware, god was indeed necessary to explain the diversity of the biological world. This changes neither the value of Galileo’s contributions, nor the significance of the superfluity of god (in explaining the universe) today.

*Has* God been rendered unnecessary? Unnecessary for who & what?

Unnecessary in explaining how and why the universe is the way it is.

It is NOT at all clear that God has been rendered unnecessary especially given the continuing importance of religion to most of the worlds population.

It doesn’t matter how many people believe in it, it can still be unnecessary.

Your assertion raises many questions.

Only one, I think: why do so many people feel a need that is fulfilled by believing in a god?