Quite childish. How amusing. Since you haven’t contributed much to this discussion, I don’t think we’ll misss you.

And granddaughter, would you kindly find your own thread to muck up? Thanks.

Je ne peux pas travailler avec Peter Abelard, puisqu’il est mort. En plus, je trouve sa théologie trop limitée. Je préfère Aquinas.

That’s because one of my posts is being held in moderation. It addresses your points. The essence is that I, as an intelligent person, recognize that the empirical claims made by religion and the empirical claims made by science are in conflict.

Only an idiot would deny that. Why are you so surprised?

And I am not an Australian professor of religion. Apparently you’re not very adept at internet research.

“They certainly don’t treat all believers in that fashion. Only the ones who insist that their claims based on religion be treated as equal to claims based on science. I suspect you’ve not read much of what the “New Atheists” actually say.”

Interesting. No response to my speculation about how you represent yourself and instead a deliberat misrepresentation of the debate.

A google search reveals an Australian Professor of religion who would never make such a basic error of theology as you did. It seems like such an unlikely name that I think you’re a sock puppet. Bye.

I think you’re going to have to do better than just declaring that “he’s simply wrong”. Do I just take that on authority? Wrong about what? In what way? Which folks? On what grounds? Eagleton makes a lot of arguments. Which ones are “simply wrong”?

I’m not denying that he may be wrong about some things. But “as many folks have pointed out”, the new atheists seem to take the worst caricatures about religion and assume those are the whole thing. And they seem proud of the fact that that they have little knowledge about what they’re attacking. I haven’t seen anything that contradicts those fundamental points that Eagleton made.

Why should they care?

Maybe they need more data. I should think they would want that before making their hypotheses, seeing that they’re scientists and all. Just making assumptions does not make for great science.

And Jon – why should the “New Atheists” talk about what religion “could” be? Why should they care? They feel that religion is simply wrong, and that benefits to the world would accrue from its elimination. I don’t happen to agree, but you’re asking them to support changing something whose fundamental basis they regard as so-much self-delusion. Your position is not intellectually coherent.