1. This Week's Flea

Comment #100468 by Ben Hope on December 18, 2007 at 4:56 pm

If anyone's interested, there's also an interview with Haught here:

http://meaningoflife.tv/video.php?speaker=haught&topic=complete

It's part of a series of interviews by Robert Wright that includes Dennett, Pinker, E. O. Wilson, Maynard Smith (as well as theists like Polkinghorne).

2. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams criticizes popular atheist writers

Comment #78574 by Ben Hope on October 13, 2007 at 4:21 pm

Comment #78568 by Teratornis

With respect I wouldn't use the "Well, that's not my style of atheism" argument to counter accusations about Stalin et al. No the fallacy with such accusations lies in the implication that their crimes were directly to do with, or followed logically from, atheism (or specifically a-yahwehism) when in fact this is merely a *lack* of some specific belief. Instead one can only blame their positive dogmatic beliefs in communism, fascism etc. After all, these regimes were also aunicornistic, afairyistic, aPoseidonistic, aThoristic, and so on ad infinitum, but one would never dream of blaming Stalin's lack of belief in fairies.

3. Response to the God Delusion

Comment #58200 by Ben Hope on July 24, 2007 at 2:23 am

> Comment #58094 by heatheretic

> Last time I looked David beckham wasn't hiding > in the sky…

> I could go on, but I'll spare you, suffice to
> say that has to be the very worst analogy,
> the most nonsensical attempt at a comparison
> that I have ever seen/heard.

Although I agree it wasn't very funny, in Midgley's defence, it was a perfectly good analogy for the point he was making, namely that the bad actions of followers does not impact on the question of the existence or non-existence of central characters of a religion.

What was wrong with that part of his talk was the insinuation that Richard Dawkins argues that it does impact on the existence claim, which of course he does not (the two points being entirely separate in TGD).

Sorry to be a pedant, but if you give 'em an inch and all that.

4. Response to the God Delusion

Comment #58007 by Ben Hope on July 23, 2007 at 12:58 am

It is particularly amusing how in Part 1 he dismisses the design argument as unimportant and hardly used by theologians anymore, and then proceeds to use it implicitly when talking about order in Part 3!

5. The God disunion: there is a place for faith in science, insists Winston

Comment #34740 by Ben Hope on April 25, 2007 at 3:37 am

In a recent documentary on UK TV, Winston confused being uncertain about something with the Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Mechanics.

The phrase "not a trivial error" springs to mind.