goodthief, i'm honestly not sure what the alternative is to empiricism. i'm happy to agree that our senses and our reason can only take us so far in understanding the human condition, that we should be humble about what we claim to understand. but what else is there? in what way is religious belief not still based upon our senses and our reason?

is religious belief irrational? i guess by its nature it's necessarily non-rational. but it seems to me that the belief also has the potential to be irrational in two ways. first the fundamental belief can simply be absurd: i would assume you'd agree that belief in the flying spaghetti monster is irrational. secondly, religious belief can collide with the empirically provable: for anyone to now believe that the earth is 6000 years old is irrational.

religious belief cannot be be spared rational scrutiny, but i admit i'm unclear on the ground rules. except, as i wrote in the previous post, the more tangible or more prescriptive the belief, the greater the burden of rationality. i have no objection to your saying god exists unless you tell me what that means. BUT, depending what you tell me, i may have every right to object to your belief as irrational.

finally, the only real objection i can glean is that dawkins is rude. i'm sorry, but i think that's neither here nor there. dawkins' rudeness does not compare in seriousness to bowden's shallowness.

Danielle, you say "any concept of god would admit that he/she/it is inestimable, unknowable. At best, only aspects of who or what could be “seen’".

I'm not sure what you mean by the second sentence, but the first is a well known mistake. If there is nothing that we can say that is literally true of God, then the word 'God' is empty of all meaning.

In spite of frequent assertions to the contrary, science does play a role in this debate. Not that it proves or disproves the existence of God, for science cannot prove or disprove anything. At best, it gives us good reason to prefer one hypothesis to another. But science gives us reason to prefer naturalistic explanations to claims that God is responsible for many phenomena which were once thought to be God's doing. Science thus substantially weakens the argument from design for God's existence.

It used to be said (in the 60's) that Christians should not treat God as an explanation for what could not otherwise be explained, since inevitably explanations would be found for many of those things. The 'God of the gaps' would be a discredited hypothesis.

But if belief in God explains nothing, then God is totally inactive--not a god at all. Science is constantly a threat to theistic belief.

"But science gives us reason to prefer naturalistic explanations to claims that God is responsible for many phenomena which were once thought to be God's doing."

Can't you then argue that God is responsible for the naturalistic systems that created the phenomena, and therefore responsible for the phenomena itself?

"Science is constantly a threat to theistic belief."

Science is a threat to dogmatic religious belief. But since "god" can be defined as beyond any systems that science can observe, science cannot be a threat to all theistic belief.

Examples:
'We plough the seed and scatter
The good seed on the land.
But it is fed and watered
By God's almighty hand.

He sends the snow in winter,
The warmth to swell the grain,
The seedtime and the harvest,
And soft refreshing rain.'

Well, no, he doesn't. At best you can claim that He set the process up.

'The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at the gate,
He made them high and lowly'
And gave them their estate.'

The verse is no longer sung, because it is now known to be false.

People claim that they have experience of God--that he confronts them in an overwhelming experience--at the communion, say, or Yom Kippur. But if there is a psychological explanation of religious experience, and if (if) there is good reason to prefer it, then the experience is delusional.

The long lines of disappointed people that I saw walking or being wheeled away from the spring at Lourdes are testimony to the interpretation of the suposed miracles that occur there, that they are psychological phenomena. Why would a God be so irrational as to cure only a few of those who drink the water? Why would He prefer people who crawl on their knees, carrying their sick babies, down the long paved slope at Fatima, to those who merely pray for help?

(You have to hand this much to the Catholic Curch, though. In spite of their fostering of belief in miracles, they also staff hospitals at Lourdes, to give sick people proper attention.)

Being PC...

God or Godo? :-)

"[Com. Teut.: OE. god (masc. in sing.; pl. godu, godo neut., godas masc.) corresponds to OFris., OS., Du. god masc., OHG. got, cot (MHG. got, mod.Ger. gott) masc., ON. go, gu neut. and masc., pl. go, gu neut. (later Icel. pl. guir masc.; Sw., Da. gud), Goth. gu (masc. in sing.; pl. gua, guda neut.). The Goth. and ON. words always follow the neuter declension, though when used in the Christian sense they are syntactically masc. The OTeut. type is therefore *guom neut., the adoption of the masculine concord being presumably due to the Christian use of the word." - OED Unabridged.

Hi goodthief

It shouldn't be necessary to point this out to you, but it is.

You said: "This is true of all ideologies, I think, including the more aggressive atheist ones. Dawkins et al do way more than critique: they attack, and it's not going to make things any better."

Atheism is not an ideology, any more than the absence of belief in astrology is an ideology. I am not defined by my non-belief in your deity. You may choose to define me that way but I do not accept it.

Another point, yes you are right, Dawkins, Hitchens et al are quite rude about religion. I think it stems from a deeply felt disgust as they (and I certainly feel this too) look around the world and observe the atrocities committed in the name of religions (especially Islam). It is as simple as that. Theirs is a cry for the primacy of reason, and it has struck and continues to strike, a resounding note with a great many people - check out the bestseller lists.