Squeers asks (my parentheses):

"Do you really think all those great thinkers and mystics, whom Ditchkins (...Dawkins/Hitchkins?...) has never read, whose learning you would struggle to fathom (...because of transmission or receiving problems?..), devoted their lives and conceived their absolute convictions based on nothing more than flagrant conceit? An embarrassingly obvious hoax?"

Those great thinkers and mystics of the past did not have any real physical or metaphysical challenge to their convictions. They had not read Ditchkens. They focused, as many still do, on experiential aspects of religion, which agreed is a fine thing if it helps one through life. They wrote or preached on this basis, which was nothing to be embarrassed about given the state of scientific knowledge then. Would they disavow Hitchkin's and Dawkin's logical and scientific notions given their belief in religious experience? Probably, just as do many modern thinkers and mystics.

Mystics can not be helped, I've met enough to know, but thinkers can be brought to consider scientific evidence challenging their beliefs if they are willing to look past "god of the gaps". The god hypothesis is non-falsifiable so there will always be gaps leaving us only with probabistic arguments leading away from the picture of god they envisaged. Even the definition of what "nothing" means in the context of Krauss' Universe from Nothing" has had to be redefined by theists once science started to close the "gaps" too uncomfortably for them.

I can't let your phrase "...intelligible progression from superstition to reason..." slip by. There is no continuum that any atheist would acknowledge. A blend of scientific reasoning and experiental religion is something you countenance, but why are you so irked that most fellow atheists won't follow you down this path? It doesn't help that you denigrate them with the implication they are incapable of establishing proper societal norms unless they countenance religious experience in their lives. I can do that for others, not for me, but I'm not sure that spares me from your fire.

Luciferase,
>>Even the definition of what "nothing" means in the context of Krauss' Universe from Nothing" has had to be redefined by theists<<
Could you please enlighten me about how did theists (who in particular?) redefine Krauss’ definition of “nothing”?

As far as I know, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the author of the (original?) philosophical question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” (The Principles of Nature and Grace, Based on Reason, 1714) did not offer any definition of such basic terms as something or nothing - but would probably not have accepted quantum vacuum as an equivalent of his nothing. I suspect that your theists were referring to this. So the “redefinition of nothing” seems to be going in the opposite direction.

Yabby,
Given the durability and adaptability of living creatures I don't see a huge problem in the possibility of certain fish being able to survive a flood. It's no big deal. But for a slightly more detailed answer concerning the Flood of Noah you can look here:
http://creation.com/images/pdfs/cabook/chapter14.pdf

After google searching Dawkins (as you suggested), the most common page appearing was asking why it is that Dawkins refuses to debate with Creationists. However I did find one formal debate between Dawkins and one of his colleagues at Oxford. This featured  Dr John Lennox, who is a philosopher of science and seemingly a very solid Christian believer. At least it's getting closer to matching like with like.

So thanks for putting me on to that. I'll try and get hold of a copy of that debate. I'm sure it will be more enlightening than the Pell/Dawkins discussion. But I can understand Q&A wanting a big well known name to front up to Dawkins the other night, even if he's not the most lucid, or (as Runner suggests) the most consistent of believers.

Tony,
A theory finds consensus and that's why it is taught in schools, or maybe it's taught in schools and that's why it finds consensus. I wonder about the causal connection. 

*As though the whole human race and all it's generations of geniuses were the dupes of nothing more than a perennial delusion and wishful thinking--and Dawkins, without a clue, sees through all.*

The thing is Squeers, billions are clearly wrong. A billion Christians,
a billion Muslims, a billion Hindus, can't all be right.

Dawkins is about biology and our understanding of biology has
undergone such amazing breakthroughs in the last century or so,
that all the navel gazing by your geniuses, is little more then
that, much as that might offend you.

WmTrevor,

Thank you for the passage from William James. I've always meant to read more of his work. (I'm quite a fan of his brother)

Hi George,

To begin an investigation of the biblical origins of something from nothing I would start here http://www.theopedia.com/Creation_out_of_nothing and links therefrom.

Regarding who, in particular, has redefined nothing I go to Krauss's detractors, not specifically the official Church. For example, please see a precis of David Albert's critique from the New York Times (referred to by Pell) at http://m.blogs.christianpost.com/science-and-faith/columbia-university-professor-challenges-krauss-book-a-universe-from-nothing-reason-rally-rhetoric-9005/

Regarding quantum fields, how they got there, and the definition of "nothing" theists will never accept pre-existence of physical laws. Even if quantum fields were shown to be even more fundamental drilling ever down, the "beginning" is one gap theists will forever fill with god. Each time a scientific step is made, however, to the mind strange people like me, the likelihood of an almighty creator diminishes further. On Dawkin's certainty scale of 1 to 7, I'm at 6 point 9 recurring.

I'd like to correct something in my previous post where I loosely said: "...They wrote or preached on this basis, which was nothing to be embarrassed about given the state of scientific knowledge then..." which sounded unintentionally dismissive. What I simply meant was that biblical accounts of the origins of the cosmos and of life on earth were all they had to go by, so why would they (mystics, great thinkers) be expected to pause for thought about their convictions. Krauss and Darwin changed that, so how people talk of a special relationship with a god, when that god is appearing less and less a sky-god and unknowable as a being leaves me quizzical. If "being at one with god" means being at one with life and the cosmos, I can understand, but an almighty that loves us, guides us, and judges our actions? Sorry, I can't commit myself to a religious experience on that basis.