1. Atheists Take On Religion

Comment #24429 by sven on March 6, 2007 at 3:54 pm

By the way, when I say most of my family are deists/Catholics, I'm talking about extended family (the kind of people I only see at weddings and funerals), so not much opportunity to "talk them round". Anyway, can you think of anything worse that having religious arguments with family members? (Just don't bother, stick to friends/strangers at parties).

2. Atheists Take On Religion

Comment #24427 by sven on March 6, 2007 at 3:43 pm

deism: Some sort of deity exists.

theism: Some sort of deity exists, I know his name, and he wrote this book I just bought at Barnes & Noble and all of it is true.

I agree with the above (comment 42).

I think it is important, when making statements about different groups of people or types of belief systems (for example deism and theism), which are obviously different by definition, to be more precise.

Intellectual precision and good use of logic are (of course) tools used by intelligent atheists (lets not be smug. Just being an atheist doesn't guarantee high intelligence). It is only by being very sharp and not making sweeping statements that we (atheists) can win arguments. And we do want to win arguments.

Most of my family are deists, and a few are Catholics. I went to a Catholic School, where again I mixed with both deists and Catholics. In the real world (i.e. putting definitions aside) there is a very real difference between the way say Catholics tend to behave, and more vague believers "in some sort of creator" tend to behave. While we (atheists) don't agree with either of them, it is worth noting that I've never heard of a deist flying a plane into a building (on purpose!), or shooting a Protestant (for religious reasons). If I'm wrong, please let me know.

Also, (in my experience) deists are easier to "talk out of it", because (I presume) they are more open to rational argument that proper church-going theists. Again, I have no real evidence for this, nor proper theory other than the general notion that organised religion creates more social networks that are harder to break out of than just having a "vague belief in God". Does anyone know of any data to back this up / trash this?

3. Was there ever dog that praised his fleas?

Comment #24074 by sven on March 4, 2007 at 4:00 pm

For any of you who are curious about McGrath's book, but sensible enough to predict that you'd be wasting your money, you can get the gist of his "arguments" for free here: http://www.citychurchsf.org/openforum.htm

If you have recently read RD's book The God Delusion, as I have, you will notice that McGrath is completely shameless in his misrepresentation of it throughout, which he thinks he can get away with, largely because he knows that his audience (the ministry of City Church of San Francisco, i.e. all church people) probably haven't read RD's book, and won't bother to check up to see what he actually wrote.

During the Q&A section, it is clear that the audience contains no atheists to ask difficult questions, nor anyone to refute McGrath's misrepresentations. So McGrath has an easy time, and I'm sure his ego was massaged as much as his wallet was lined at the book signing afterwards.

If I posted this twice by mistake, I apologise (it didn't seem to work the first time, and I'm new to this).