Although a scientist by profession and a Voltaire-style atheist (i.e. I have no need of that hypothesis), I don’t expect science or anything else to be able to give meaning to all minutiae of my existence. I’m not very interested in propagating the species. So that connection is broken. Science is also pretty useless for explaining my musical tastes, mood swings, voting habits, or why I feel happier if I try to make the world a better place than I found it. This, despite the fact that the latter feels MUCH more like a prime source of purpose in life.

I don’t see that some supernatural entity would not provide me with any support, encouragement or direction on ethics beyond what I can generate myself. Others evidently differ.

But beyond that, I fail to understand why anyone would want to confuse ethical direction by a quasi-parental deity with a source of data on the incredibly far-off and almost irrelevant beginnings of the Universe, Solar System, Earth and Life, or with a right to intefere in the day-to-day lives of others. Looking for a single source for all these highly disparate things leads people into very bizarre mindsets.

The Christian churches would retain more credibility if they modelled themselves more on Christ of the Gospels, and abjured both creationism and the tendency to seek influence over temporal law and mores. Planks and motes come to mind. Similar points could be levelled at the other Abrahamic faiths.

How about, we go with science’s marvellous, gradually articulated, self-correcting stories on the scientifically explainable, while at the same time celebrating the inexplicably human as something that is an integral part of mature, responsible, thinking human beings, and accepting that the two don’t mingle well, since nobody ever fell in love with anyone else through solving their Schroedinger equation?

The universe contains very big and very small things, very fast and very slow things, and no single way of looking at it describes all of these at a useful level of detail at the same time. We’ve got the brains, eyes and words to appreciate it multimodally, so that’s what we should do.

And, while we are at it, stomp bigots, promulgators of ignorance, and judgemental hypocrites wherever we find them, whatever grousp they claim to belong to.

seems apt, imho.

As Eagleton said, Christians meet their God in the person of Christ.

And if that was all there was to it no-one would give a rat’s.
But somehow this leads to anti-evolution, anti-education, anti-contraception, anti-prophylaxis, anti-semitism, anti-women and anti-human beliefs.

As Eagleton said, Christians meet their God in the person of Christ.

“The central doctrine of Christianity, then, is not that God is a bastard. It is, in the words of the late Dominican theologian Herbert McCabe, that if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you. Here, then, is your pie in the sky and opium of the people.”

I’d go with Eagleton’s assessment rather than Peter’s reductionism.

But hey, what would I know.

I’d love to see Eagleton get up in front of the vast majority of theist congregations on Earth and explain to them how their conception of an interventionist, personal God is a naive, simplistic strawman.

Exactly.

Dawkin’s argument is mainly that “moderateâ€? theists give a cover to the fundies. That’s why he has adopted the policy of not wanting to “workâ€? with mainstream theism to counteract the fundies.

I’ll come back to the rest of the arguments you make, Peter, but as Kim said, you have to pick your fights. Dawkins pisses off a lot of potential allies in the fight against the fundies. But I don’t think it’s actually a strategic choice. I think he is somehow personally offended that anyone can hold religious beliefs. That’s his problem, not mine.

“These are childish and stupid arguments.”

Absolutely. It’s kindergarten stuff.

I’m with Mark on that point and on the thread.