Give it a rest, Frank. Take the rest of the day off.

Hissy fit?

Wow, thanks. Any chance of you coming clean and admitting that you’ve never read Dawkins, and probably never even heard him being interviewed?

Harris, on the other hand, actually IS kind of a prick, though I suspect you’re just pushing received wisdom in both cases.

Unless its dark outside.

The box analogy isn’t worth talking about. It’s boring, and Rex does an excellent job of turning it (as you’ve put it, “Anonymous”, heh) on it’s head. Besides, an analogy is not an argument.

Then you’re giving some of us–well, me anyway–too much credit. I’m stumped.

No, really, no snark here, I’m not getting it.

Two points:

1.) The bible says there are giant warehouses in the sky filled with hailstones. That’s a scientific claim that can be tested. In fact, the bible makes plenty of those and fails in almost all of them.

2.) It is the person who makes the claim that has to prove it. That’s how reality works.

Tommykey: I don’t disagree that religion isn’t up for criticism, but I don’t see the need for the sort of invective filled blasts that are essentially fundamentalist in nature – a declarative fatwa that God doesn’t exist is as baseless as an unequivocal assertion of God’s existence.

One of the things I think you guys may be getting wrong from me is that you think I raise Christianity above the others. I don’t. Frankly, I find all of the religions (and non-religions) equally valid. Some elements get clearly disproven by science (ie the earth is older than 6,000 years) but who can say that we aren’t ruled by Greek or Roman gods? I think in this area, once you decide to go on the path of declarations, nothing good can come of it.

I’m not asserting “balance”, clearly evolution is scientifically proven whereas intelligent design is religious belief and that’s how the issue should be approached, but if someone believes in God/Allah/Yahweh/Jah/etc. more power to them. And the same if they don’t.

If, by ‘God’, you mean love, nature, goodness, the universe, the laws of physics, the spirit of humanity, or Planck’s constant, none of the above applies. An American student asked her professor whether he had a view about me. ‘Sure,’ he replied. ‘He’s positive science is incompatible with religion, but he waxes ecstatic about nature and the universe. To me, that is ¬religion!’ Well, if that’s what you choose to mean by religion, fine, that makes me a religious man.

Dawkins only makes the case against a Biblical, personal God, a Yaweh who listens to prayers and smites the wicked. If you can get past the notion that “God” is separate from the apparent universe and embrace the idea that God and the universe are one and the same, the debate vanishes.

If Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens seem radical in their criticism of religion, they play an important part in at least gaining attention for atheism as a viewpoint and for pointing out the obvious question, why should religious beliefs be exempt from criticism?

If atheism becomes somewhat more popular, it will inevitably highlight those of us atheists who lead decent, law abiding lives, raising our children and so forth who just don’t want their government controlled by people who see themselves as carrying out a Religious Right agenda.

Also, and I understand that this is a thread that has generated a lot of comments, but please note my astrology comparison near the top of the thread.

Or are you saying that since I can’t currently disprove Bigfoot’s existence, that people who believe in Bigfoot are just as reasonable and possibly right as me?

Here’s the thing with the creation museum. I think it’s stupid. The fact that it exists bends my mind. But I also don’t have to go to it.

No I haven’t, Not-Frank-At-All because no such evidence exists. I’m not trying to be pompous, this is seriously the case. I’m certain though that you’re on the verge of trying so eagerly to prove me wrong, but could you do us a favor? After you google for “creationism proof” and find out how, for instance, seashells in mountains proves Noah’s flood or something, would you also consider googling “creationism wrong” to see if any of the evidence actually stands up to any part of the scientific method? (hint about the seashells, vertical tectonic compression)

If then you actually do manage to fi
nd proof, existing in the natural world, of supernatural forces (meaning something natural for which there is no natural explanation, necessitating the supernatural) then I daresay you’ve managed to tear a massive hole through the entirety of evolutionary biology. Good luck with that, friend.

I’ve heard about the idea that the simplest thing to believe is correct. But, is that true?

And then you go on to basically say there could be two different explanations for the same observable evidence. Of course, until you actually go and look into the box both states are effectively, equally true. However, whatever may be in the box, it is almost certainly smaller than the box. To think otherwise is madness (save for bright red police boxes) because such are the physical laws of the universe. To suggest that something bigger than the box is inside the box is to employ, by necessity, a series of explanations for why rules do not apply and evidence is misleading and myriad other quantifiers in order to maintain the ridiculous notion that theres a grown African elephant inside that shoebox. The complicated belief is that, in the special instance of this box and its contents, the rules of the universe do not apply. The simpler (and godsdamn correct) “belief” is that this isnt the case, and whatever is in the box must be smaller than the box itself.
Similarly the complicated belief is that, in the special case of a God, the laws of the physical universe are bent and broken, warped and withheld in order to allow for His existence. The simple “belief” is that this is not the case. And while the fact that such rules would have to be bent to allow for God’s existence doesn’t de facto prove that they weren’t, the simple fact of it being a more complicated answer tels us that, unless anything hinged on the God Hypothesis being true (and since Evolution explains life, Quantum Physics explains the universe, and Sociology explains Moral development, this is certainly the case), the best accurate assumption is that He does not exist.