MyT wrote: it is possible to be secular and good.
An example of this perhaps to be found in the foll info?
37 year-old Indian Lenin Raghavarshi, atheist, communist, human rights activist, tells AsiaNews that he is in favour of the moratorium on abortion: “At the basis of all human rights is the right to live”.
“Malthus – Raghavarshi explains - promoted the theory that the main problems of the world like poverty and other such inhuman situations of the marginalized are due to population, but this is completely unscientific idea and false theory.”

goodthief, can you give examples of the kind of fundamentalist empiricism you suggest some atheists engage in? i guess i can see the potential for the type of absolutist thinking you suggest, but i don't see either dawkins or hitchens in this way. for example, dawkins talks a lot about the sort of aetherial concept of "god" - the overall sense of pattern and meaning - as used by einstein and others, and he has no complaint about this.

it seems to me the issue is when religious claims become tangible ("mother teresa performed miracles") or prescriptive ("god doesn't approve of homosexuality"). in such cases, it seems to me that atheists, and everyone, has every right to question the reasoning behind such beliefs.

Without fact, all you have is fiction. Those that beleve in fact, are with out a doubt, are in the here and now. All yous people that still thinks that GOD will save you, keep dreaming! Just sit back and watch and listen. Religion has sered its purpose! Are you that far behind.

Sorry about the spelling! Iam just human! Natures laws are simple, and all evidence you need, is staring you right in the face.

Go and hide under a rock, if that makes you feel better, but human needs, is a question that needs to be answered.

After reading all the responses to this rather gentle article, I felt no compulsion to speak, particularly as the Atheist side is so well represented; Goodthief -and Sells, of course- persuaded me otherwise.
To me, Dawkins' most telling point was that of faith.
Essentially, the three religions mentioned all rely heavily -if not totally- on faith, and faith is quite simply a means by which the Sellicks and Boaz's of this world can say:
"I'm right. I'm indisputably, unquestionably right, and what's more, I don't even have to prove it because, hey! I've got faith!"
These people actually take pride in the fact that no rational argument, no empirical proof (if such a thing could exist) could ever sway them, as that would involve a loss of faith -and that, of course, is as great a crime as blasphemy.
grim@thecomensality.com

Hello Bushbasher. Everyone who calls a theist “irrational” simply because the theist believes in something that cannot be empirically proved is what I would call a pretty hard-line empiricist. You might simply prefer “consistent empiricist”. I would save “fundamentalist” for the rude ones, like the authors under discussion, simply because they’re rude. My point is that, if you’re going to impose empiricism on the debate, you (not you, personally) need to say something to establish its credentials. Dawkins at least doesn’t do this, or even make an attempt to. I think he should.

I agree that Dawkins is happy enough for people to wax lyrical about the cosmos – to use language that sounds religious – so long as they don’t really mean it. Like Einstein. But, this is just lyrical atheism.

Dawkins is also less annoyed with deism, but he still regards this non-interventionist creator-God as unprovable (because it’s supernatural) and the deist as therefore irrational. It’s just that Dawkins sees deism as less dangerous than religious belief. And I suppose he’s right: but, then, I’m not saying religion is safe, I’m saying God exists.

The negative aspects of religion discredit it, but they don’t affect the question of God’s existence. For all I know, God is gnawing on His knuckles with rage as much as any atheistic critic of religion is. Similarly, Dawkins’ rudeness only discredits atheism in the populist sense: logically speaking, he might be right about the God question, but just rude.

I'm very happy for religion, and theism generally, to be critiqued. My fellow Christians do it all the time, from inside. I also know there are too many religious people who don't, and the dangers this leads to. 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.

Pax,