I’d believe then.

I’d go for the church being stomped to dust by Marshmellow Man as proof. Or being devoured by a gigantic radioactive dinosaur. Or sucked into a miniature black hole, suddenly appearing out of nowhere.

Just so. Which is why that particular troll is on the verge of being banned.

“If a religious person argues ‘I believe X is morally wrong and is also condemned by by religion.’ we have a possibility of discourse. If they argue that ‘X is wrong because it is condemned by my religion.’ we are unlikely to get anywhere.”

Just so again. Of course, what that means is that ‘and is also condemned by by religion’ is entirely supererogatory. Is ‘God’ against X because it’s wrong? Fine, then we can talk about why X is wrong. Is X wrong because ‘God’ is against it? Then if ‘God’ says ‘it’s wrong to prevent people from murdering their neighbours with machetes because they are in the wrong ethnic group’ does that mean it is in fact wrong to prevent people from murdering their neighbours with machetes because they are in the wrong ethnic group? If so, life on earth is even more hellish than it already is, and it’s time to join Satan’s party.

Are you saying that skinheads are atheists? If so, what’s your evidence?

snap, Don.

“Who would you rather meet on a dark night? A group of skinheads coming out of a pub or a group of Jehova’s Witnesses coming out of Kingdom Hall?”

Neither! Drather meet a group of atheists coming out of a coffeeshop talking about women’s rights in Iran and Iraq.

Peter, that’s true, however a further thought: if God is indeed Omniscient as per the scriptures, then He would know, prior to their enactment, the wretched of humans’ utelage of free will: lots of people doing completely reprehensible nasty things to eachother like gang rape, torture, child abuse, selling Britney Spears cds, etc. And yet despite knowing this, God still issues the power of free ‘choice’. And even if this doesn’t mean He’s a bit more controlling than His devotees let on, it surely implies he’s a really nasty bastard. I don’t worship nasty bastards, real or imaginary.

I am reminded of WH Auden’s poem Archaelogy with its lines:

“When Norsemen heard thunder,

did they seriously believe

Thor was hammering?

No, I’d say: I’d swear

that men have always lounged in myths

as Tall Stories..”

See http://lib.ru/POEZIQ/AUDEN/poems.txt for the full text

My atheistic viewpoint notwithstanding, I do like to see an argument well made. Cartwright’s isn’t. Apposite to which is his premise “….that religion contains a massive falsehood, namely that there is a God who determines our actions”. In western religious dogma at least, it is man who determines his own actions.

Cartwright’s solution “We must eliminate any suggestion of a religious agenda” throws the baby out with the bathwater. I don’t believe it is sensible in a very broad sense, to allow our attitude towards mainstream religios tradition to be determined by the excesses of a psychopathic minority. Great religions however imperfect, remind us what it is to be human and how a decent society enfranchises its citizens.

“….no reason for the Church of England to be represented in the House of Lords…” ? I disagree.

“Though I should perhaps applaud B&W for dicovering the po-mo skepticism toward metanarratives, inspite of the enduring interaction between conceptual/interpretive schemas and the particularities of narratives, i.e. “experience”, still there is no “massive falsehood” when the purpose of such a declaration is to suppress the questions, whose inconveniencies, just as well as the inadequacies of its answers, are to be addressed. The “religious” problem is not the problem of evil, which is easy enough to explain,- though such explanations do not address the relevant sense,- but rather the problem of unrequited goodness. ”

Could you explain any of this to a bus driver? If not, what does it say about you ?

But not Fufkin. She went straight to hell.