You are perfectly right, Saltpetre, to take me to task for my overenthusiastic phrasing.

>>Pericles, "... to a religious person, science is not just antithetical, but anathema." How can you say that? Are all to be tarred with the same brush? Where is this hypothetical person, representative of the religious?<<

My only excuse is that when conversing with Dan S de Merengue, I am occasionally led astray by the incongruity of his bizarre religious stance, which I find barely credible in the twentyfirst century. I should have written "...to a certain type of religious person, science may not only be antithetical, but anathema.", with the young-earth creationist firmly in mind.

My apologies. A slip I shall take care not to repeat.

Shadow Minister,
You wonder where it is you you entered into personal attacks.

You called certain Christians morally deficient (18/11). Christians are persons. Calling them morally deficient is attacking them personally.

We enter our views into the public domain and welcome them being critiqued. That's why we put them out there. I just ask that you try to keep your criticisms on a civil level; keep it above the belt.

Saltpetre
Thanks for pointing out the inconsistency in Pericles' comment. I was preparing a response to that phrase (which he has softened but still hasn't much changed) but you beat me to it.

Pericles,
Along with Dawkins, you claim there is no God.

You also claim that “there is no such thing as a 'spokesperson for atheism'”. Then what is Dawkins when he arrives to keynote the World Atheist Congress? What do atheists do when they meet at their conferences anyway? I'm curious. People who get together to champion a belief about nothing. They would have difficulty talking about anything while having no spokespersons, I suppose.

To your suggestion that if presented with factual evidence you might take some notice or even change your view, am I allowed to be sceptical?

You have been presented with fact based evidence from believers on this thread and others. I don't think you're ready to hear it. You're welcome to dispute evidence that is put before you. Or you can choose to turn your head away and ignore it, that's your decision. But don't pretend that others within the debate have never put a case and presented it to you.

In reality, evidence for design in biology is abuntant and difficult not to notice. From Dawkins' own words, “biology is the study of complicated things things that have the appearance of having been designed with a purpose.” Francis Crick wrote, “Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed but rather evolved.”

Dan,

Thanks for the quote from Francis Crick: “Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed but rather evolved.”

This statement, though expressed along evolutionist lines, holds a truth, that the almost infinite diversity of life is perhaps the ultimate source of mystery and wonder. If one seeks, every crack and crevice, every nook and cranny will reveal a profusion of life perfectly adapted to its habitat, its niche. Nature abhorrs a vacuum, and will seek to inhabit every space with activity, with life. But nature is not benign, and the struggle for survival is unrelenting and brutal. Any weakness will be found out, and only the strong will survive. There is no absolute, no perfection, but just an ever-changing intricacy defying absolute prescription. A study of nature will reveal this to be true, and this is evolution, this is nature; never static, never complete, constantly changing.

Just as some would attempt to tie down nature, some would try to place a face on God, or to attribute words and thoughts in an endeavour to reveal God, to comprehend, to understand. It is my belief that such endeavours are misdirected and ultimately futile. My belief is rather that God can only ever remain beyond description, beyond packaging as a commodity, and beyond conscious understanding; remaining only sensory, intuitive, and all-encompassing.

For me, Dawkins is just another spruiker, but what then of the counter-spruikers, the evangelists, are they right, or equally on a wrong track? The maintenance of just and effective social order is a worthy endeavour of the evangelists, but unfortunately this does not necessarily cover all the other 'trappings', and other, less prescriptive, and more open and inclusive means are available for promulgating the social order message. The cry of God is with us or on our side is hollow, arrogant, exclusionist, and quite possibly blasphemous, irrespective of the affiliations of the espouser. God must remain for all; the power behind and beyond the Universe, the alpha and the omega.

Well, there you go, Dan S de Merengue. We differ again. What a surprise.

>>You also claim that “there is no such thing as a 'spokesperson for atheism'”<<

It is clear from your post that you consider anyone who speaks on a platform about atheism that they qualify as a "spokesperson".

>>...what is Dawkins when he arrives to keynote the World Atheist Congress?<<

To me, his role is as a keynote speaker.

I hold a different view of the meaning of "spokesperson".

I use the term to describe someone who speaks on behalf of a constituency, or a faction, and is recognized as reflecting the views of that group. So, to my way of thinking, Dawkins-the-spokesperson is merely reflecting the views of the sort of people who attend conferences with the title "World Atheist Congress".

I am not in that group.

In fact, I consider the very concept of a "World Atheist Conference" to be a nonsense in itself. I have previously held a fairly lengthy conversation to this effect with the poster on this forum describing himself as "Atheist Foundation of Australia Inc".

For the record, that group doesn't speak on my behalf either.

I suspect that your confusion may lie in the fact that you see atheism as just another religion. A mistaken perception that you share with many other religionists, by the way.

Moving on, this has never happened:

>>You have been presented with fact based evidence from believers on this thread and others.<<

The only "fact" that is ever presented is that "it is in the Bible". Which - while patently true - is not the sort of factual evidence that I had in mind.

>>...don't pretend that others within the debate have never put a case and presented it to you.<<

I don't. It is the facts that are missing, not the arguments, which are plentiful.

And as usual, you can't resist changing the subject:

>>In reality, evidence for design in biology...<<

Evidence for God is a prerequisite for attributing to that God the design process. There is none.

That's hardly changing the subject. That is the subject. Evidence of design necessarily implies a designer. So in this case who is the designer?

DSM,

A personal attack is on a particular person, not a group of people.

"personal attack usually involves insulting or belittling one's opponent in order to attack his claim or invalidate his argument."

As I did not attack any one on the thread or any one person, and as I was pointing out a topic in Dawkins' book not making the claim myself, (I happen to agree with it), I by definition did not make a personal attack.

This logical failing shines a poor light on the rest of your arguments.

Atheism does not rely on evolution just on the complete absence of any proof of the existence of god. Similarly evolution was formulated to understand evidence that was accumulating, and at the time that Darwin released his version, other scientists were coming to the same conclusion.

Proof of intelligent design requires a lot more than a few scientists stating that it looks as though there was an intelligence behind the evolutionary process. Christians are free to believe that there was a guiding hand, the immorality comes in when Christians try and impose intelligent design on the education system as fact rather than belief.