I am not sure why anyone is even responding to this article which is full of loathing and hate.

I hope other Christians are not offended nor atheists of which there are vast differences within each group. Neither groups are so homogenous as to be generalised in this way.

There have been some pretty poor Sellick offerings, but in my view this is the most shrill and ineffective to date.

How can he, in this his umpteenth essay, fail so abjectly to land a single punch on his arch-enemy?

The positions he adopts in this piece sport only the merest patina of rationality, easily disposed of with a light dusting and a moment's exposure to sunlight.

"...this made God necessary for the existence and order of the world and again God became trapped in mechanism. This was a sure sign that this God was not the God that Christians worshipped because his entrapment in necessity robbed him of his freedom."

The wanton distortion of such a simple idea can only be the work of a saboteur.

Religionists of so many flavours accept - indeed rely upon - the concept that God created the universe. "In the beginning..." and all that. To turn that fundamental credo into a "mechanism" is a clever opening salvo, a prelude to mounting a full attack on the underlying belief structure.

Then there is this utterly preposterous allegation.

"To be a real atheist would be to find that this man Jesus is the enemy of life; to have a character that is pure darkness. To be a real atheist you would have to argue that the disciples of Jesus were bent on human destruction, were entirely self serving, and essentially mean"

Here Sells resorts to accusations that, quite frankly, wouldn't occur to an atheist in the proverbial month of Sundays. Jesus as "pure darkness"? Disciples "bent on human destruction"? Come now, Sells, this is the most transparent nonsense.

So, why such clumsiness?

It can, surely, only be the final stages of a highly effective conspiracy.

Is Sells after all merely a very clever, and highly sophisticated secret agent, operating under cover in the cause of New Atheism?

Could it be that Sells is about to reveal that his task all along has been to undermine and destroy the entire Christian belief system, and is now almost complete?

You read it here first.

I'll come clean straight out and say that I believe in God. I believe in a God who does not have a body; one we cannot see or fully understand. I've moved on from the idea of an old man who sits on a cloud and zaps people with lightning bolts. I am just comfortable with the idea that there is some intelligent body responsible for all I see around me. I can't prove that God does exist, just as science has not yet proven that He doesn't.

Even evolution is not proof that intelligent design never happened. If I was to bake a cake, I would work with the ingredients until I had a sticky, doughy substance. When I put it in the oven, that substance changes. It evolves from my cake mix into a cake. I still created it, and I knew what would happen, but what comes out of the oven is no longer what I put in. How does this link to God? Well, assuming that we evolved from microbial organisms, who can say with certainty that God didn't create those microbes? Something must have happened to bring them to life.

Now I'm happy for people to disagree with me. Life would be boring if we all agreed. What I can't stand is the way many atheists fling insults at religious people, assuming that we are naive and closed-minded. Really, in an age when we understand so much about the world, I think it is quite open-minded to accept that there may well be some intelligent design behind it all.

Likewise, I get a little annoyed when religious people insult atheists. We have no conclusive proof of what we say. All the miracles, all the scriptures and all the mysteries of the world may suggest that God exists, but they don't prove it. I have faith, others don't. It's neither a strength or a weakness. It's just a piece of luck that humans are sophisticated enough to generate their own worldviews and use them to give themselves peace of mind. I say 'live and let live'.

I wasn't going to waste time responding to this ridiculous attempt to defend superstition in the face of contradictory evidence, but since I've got a related, and excellent, article open in another tab, I'll post it: www.tnr.com/story_print.html?id=1e3851a3-bdf7-438a-ac2a-a5e381a70472

Otokonoko might find it interesting, since s/he seems to have a commendably open mind on the topic.

Well, it seems that I have struck a nerve and all I have been doing is affirming the faith of the church since the council of Nicaea in the fourth century. This council affirmed that the Father is God, the Son is God and the Spirit is God and that the three persons are consubstantial. It seems that the atheists hate me because I cut the ground away from their ridiculous posturing and the Christians hate me because I accuse them of paganism. All I can say is that this bears witness to the appalling lack of theological understanding in both the secular community and in the church. But what can you expect from a society that has been trying to distance itself from the Christian proclamation for about 500 years. Despite all of the furor I am unrepentant. I do think that I have given a good understanding of the God that Christians worship and there has been little in these comments to change my mind. When you take out the simply abusive there is not a lot of substance. There have been many criticisms of trinitarian theology down through the centuries, where are they?

Peter Sellick (unbowed)

Peter the Believer, I congratulate you. someone suggested your post was gutter stuff, but that is wrong. your post sank so low, was so degrading to yourself, characterizing it is beyond the power of metaphor. you've become, i think, your own metaphor.

Otokonoko, I don't presume that christians, or other worshippers of gods, are naive and closed-minded. i presume that naive and closed-minded christians are naive and closed-minded. that is, if it quacks like a naive and closed-minded duck, then ...

and yes, there are naive and closed-minded atheists. but look at the article which started this thread. take just one of the quotes that pericles highlighted:

""To be a real atheist would be to find that this man Jesus is the enemy of life"

now tell me, Otokonoko, if you want to instigate a genuine dialogue, do you say something as naive and as closed-minding, and as plain bloody insulting as that? and you're surprised or censorious if people who identify as atheist are in response more than a little pissed?

sellick really oughta look in a mirror and do something about that beam.