Listen Brownwyn your co-religionists’ (I was a member of that audience until recently) are applauded for towing the secularist line. As always the definition of a Christian is someone who is persecuted. The Cross of Christ is God’s judgment on this world, and radical secularism is the rejection of that judgment. Voltaire would be disgusted with you unable to see the lies that characterize the age, the epitome of blind acceptance.

The intellectual fashions, scientism, secularism are glamorous. They got me too. But that spark of divinity in the soul isn’t easy to extinguish.

Its self evident that radical secularism and the decline of religious moral authority has led to an increase in convenient abortion. Your argument should be that humans have every right to control their reproduction in any way they see fit, that a first trimester fetus is a non-person and merely a clump of cells. I can’t see how you can argue that radical secularism and the relativism that goes along with it isn’t responsible for the sexually obsessed culture we inhabit. As Victor Frankl said without meaning libido expands to take up the space. If you can’t see this that’s just blind acceptance.

Except for the last 100 years the entire philosophical history of Western civilization, plus pretty much all of Eastern philosophy has assumed the existence of God/The Tao. Who is really rational? And by the way can you tell me where reason comes from?

If you like we can start talking about Heaven I think that would be great.

While on reason, are you a Da Vinci Code girl too? The Gnostic gospels were written 2nd century AD by groups who in a self serving way wanted a different tradition to orthodox Christianity. If you believe them you’ll believe David Irving’s history of the holocaust. The reason the four gospels are canonical is because the community knew they were true, there were eyewitnesses of the events who could corroborate what the authors wrote.

Like saying Hitler was a Christian its a sign you’re arguments are getting desperate when you appeal to these non-canonical texts.

Martin lbn Warriq

I wasn't appealing to these texts at all. I treat them with the same indifference I do the bible. I only mentioned the Gospel of Judas as an illustration of how contradictory these so-called Word of God accounts can be.

Kalweb, Religion is a type of Mental illness, with all its twist and turns. You say, "
"I have nursed many Nuns who have been profoundly psychotic - using "fs and cs" abundantly"
Stroke victims have similar behaviours, when part of the brain is damaged,people can revert
to profanity, that they never used in their life before.
Bronwin, you say,"
"Religious people have lower rates of mental disease and are happier than non-believers.
It seems to help people cope with life-just what we’d expect from the good God."
Can you define, "mental disease," as the more I read of these comments, I am sure
you are suffering a bit of this affliction also.

Francis, Hitler became 'father god,' to the Germans of that era. Was he not called "Mine Fauer?"

Nazis:It was a Religion on its own, based on the beliefs of Historical mythology and philosophical pantheism.
You have heard of the Ride of the Valkyries?
And the simple answer to the Question: NO most Germans did not view Hitler as a God, he did. And remember drug inducement was common for there followers- followed by intellectual psychobabble (Propaganda).
You are seeing the same ethics and manipulation now day. Ominous parallels , one would say.

[Deleted for inappropriate language.]

You’ll notice Pericles that Kieran thought his correlations very nice, my comment about correlations was ironical - you missed the point, and this happens with you too much.
Here again with Christianity and reason.

Near the end of his book, he [Stark] quotes from a study group of Chinese scholars who have been trying for at least two decades to figure out the success of the West, as compared with China itself and Islamic culture:

"One of the things that we were asked to look into was what accounted for the success, in fact, the pre-eminence of the West all over the world. We studied everything we could from the historical, political, economic, and cultural perspective. At first, we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West is so powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don’t have any doubt about this."

Anything else is Hollywood history of the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ kind.

If God is rational, then we can have faith that the effort we put into studying the world will be rewarded with evidence of this. Physicists find elegance in the physical laws, no wonder, physical laws are God’s habitual mode of communication.

Prof. Stark is assuming the reader understands this.

Michael Behe never intended ID to be taught as a scientific theory, the book was written as a criticism of evolutionism. ID is a metaphysical theory, like evolutionism (which states if you leave that rock in water long enough it will come alive). These are theories about how the empirical facts came to be, not laws that describe physical events.

Reigning dogma evolutionism in science lessons anyone?

Your extreme views about mental illness are best let through to the keeper