I like the following from Feuerbach.

It is not as in the Bible, that God created man in his own image. But, on the contrary, man created God in his own image.

Let me see if I've understood the writer's thoughts correctly ...

1. The jury's still out on the existence of god question.
2. Most of humanity is preempting the jury's determination by joining one camp or other: the atheists have occupied the camp which expects the jury to find that god doesn't exist, and the believers have occupied the other.
3. The believers have further organised themselves into religions.
4. The atheists are highly critical of three of these religions. Their criticism is described as viciousness.
5. The atheists' main criticism regarding "the bellicose history of religion" is deflected with the claim that there are other causes of war apart from religion.
6. The atheists are further discredited with the claim that no organisations doing good works are headed by atheists.
7. Religions must be tolerated because they represent the instinctive human "search for meaning", "against the fear of the unknown". Also, they provide comfort. These features outweigh all the negative aspects noted by the atheists.
8. Atheist philosophers are particularly at fault when attacking religion, because they are not searching for meaning. They will have "little success" because they are not searching for meaning.
9. Gentle "agnostic" questioning is OK.

350 words is not enough to address these points. In any event, I think the problems are fairly obvious.

Essentially the article appears to take the view that only people who are involved in "the search for meaning" are qualified to criticise religions. This view needs significantly more grounding than is provided here.

HarryG,

Please see:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=1374&page=30
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=1374&page=31

If armchair behavioural scientists disagreed with Freud and Jung but did not proactively address the fallacies, as did Karl Popper, we would still be treating Little Han's fear/phobia of horses as being frightened the animal's/father's penises,oedipus conflicts, and the horse cart leaving a yard analoguous to passing a bowel motion, instead of using say systematic desentitisation [Wolpe 1958] and pharmacology. Had sitters just said Freud & Jung are wrong, stop. They have to prove their approaches, stop. We will just wait, stop.

Ref:

http://www.holah.karoo.net/freud.htm
http://www.phobialist.com/treat.html

The Book on Hans and case study are more detailed than in the above link. My comments are based om student studies about Hans at the University of Sydney

"...they attack only the three Abrahamic religions, Islam, Judaism and Christianity."

Each author deals with why they only approach the Abrahamic traditions (usually in the Prefaces). That reason is that 99% of religious people in the English-speaking world worship some form of the Abrahamic God. You are implying that writing something that applies to its intended target demographic is unjust. That is absurd. It also reveals something else about your case. Either you didn't read all these books (which makes you wrong to insinuate that you did) or you are setting up a straw man to deliberately mislead the people who may read your editorial and have not read these books. Either way, you're wrong and intellectually dishonest.

"None of them will admit that the cause of war may equally be in the winning of territory, power or resources. Nor in the megalomania of unfettered rulers."

Another strawman for your ignorant readers or did you just not read any of these books? This is a blatant falsehood, and it would dishonest for any person to claim absolutes about war and relgions role in it throughout history. To thinks that religion is the sole cause of war and suffering is just as absurd as you make it out to be... and these authors don't do that. Interesting how you don't have a quote for us here to back up your case... Strawman indeed.

"Hitchens issues a challenge: “Name me an ethical statement made, or an action performed, by a believer that could not been made or performed by a non-believer”. His challenge, of course, is nonsense. Ten minutes walk from where this writer lives is a church that feeds the lost and homeless daily. Scattered over this city are church-run refuges, homes for the elderly, and community assistance programs. In the pubs members of the Salvation Army collect money daily for their charities."

Missed his point, eh? Plenty of secular charities do the same things without your God. Hitchens was saying that it is possible to be secular and good. Religious people don't have a monopoly on kindness.

"Hitchens’ challenge is easily reversed: to identify any atheist run charity, replicated many times over, than gives help to the poor. Fortunate perhaps, that atheists are not into helping others in any organised way, given the evangelical vitriol with which the current atheistic writings condemn the beliefs of the majority of the human race."

Any charity that is secular fits this category. Here in the US, we have many... And atheists don't have to organize. Most of us don't for any other reason that to protect our rights from fools. Just like you wouldn't have a charity made up only of non-Unicorn believers, an "atheist" charity would be just as arbitrary.

"Religion has given meaning to millions, since time immemorial."

This argument is tired. If it isn't true, than the meaning is fiction. If you want to live in a self-delusion, that is your business. But keep it to yourself. I live in the real world. And in the real world, we did evolve from "primordial slime" over billions of years. The meaning of life is to survive and procreate. Anything else I attribute to my life's meaning (like love, children, happiness) is subjective. I have no problem with that, and neither do any of us non-brainwashed types. We're not afraid to face to universe for what it is.

Oliver

It's pretty hard to respond to such elegant and well-reasoned arguments. In fact, I can't. I have not got the knowledge nor the intellectual skills to respond; I am simply unable to confirm or deny, agree or disagree with what you have said.

But still, despite your explanations, I believe that it is impossible to prove the non-existence of something. I am stubborn as well as stupid.

And further more, I do believe I have made a post without a spelling error, so anybody reading this will not be sidetracked from my point. At least, I will have been able to teach you something, even if I have not been able to learn from you.

Kind regards ....