Dear Poirot,
Hitch is rather nasty, and a dogmatic defender of Western righteousness. I wish he would turn his critical gaze on his own liberal rational credentials and their pseudo/religious foundations.

Just dropping in to light spot fires for a while :-)

Opi2

You shining light, you breath of oxygen, you SPINEFUL MAN! Be still my beating heart.

Everything is clear; the Church patriarchy have been possessed by satan - should be obvious even to blind Freddy (whoever blind Freddy is).

I'll trade you some fairies for a few bats - love bats, their penchant for sh1tting on those below is so endearing. You'll enjoy the fairies, they love nothing more than scaring off Mormans, JW's and anyone who is dressed far too neatly and is of too earnest a disposition.

Dear Squeers,

Feel free to light a few spot fires - I know you're busy but I'm devising a thread to lure you back....something like "Alienation Under Capitalism" would probably do it.
I'm not as knowledgeable about these things as I'd like to be...my education has been a mere smattering of all sorts of things...but I'm eager to learn from the more enlightened souls on the forum.

Thanks for the hint about Hitchens - I got that impression from the article.

Severin:>> Using your logic, I should not rule out the possibility of Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Fairies.<<

S, be a little focused, I only referred to "anything is possible" in the context of before the big bang, before time, before matter existed. What could we know of the laws that governed void, because before the big bang there must have been void.

>>Think I'll stick to being atheist until evidence proves me wrong. And that, SOG, is all atheism is about - no proof; no belief.<<

S, I am not from Hillsong Church, you thoughts are your own, I am not an evangelist or an advocate for a god. It is purely that there is a start time to existence as we understand it, and before existence I ponder on what was there and what motivated the explosion that created time and matter. Was it random or was it willful.

AJ Philips:>> That’s an oversimplification of one variation of Occam's razor. By “Occam’s razor”, I meant “entities shouldn’t be multiplied without necessity”, or “of two equivalent explanations, all other things being equal, the simpler one is to be preferred”.<<

AJ, I do understand, looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it is a duck but you miss a crucial aspect to the employment of Occam’s in regard to this subject. We are theorising on whether the "cause" of the big bang was random or willful, so we ask what was there before the big bang. There was no time, no matter, just energy. But so compressed as to not exist dimensionally.

There was nothing but it then produced everything, and that everything has this incredible binding imperative called physics. The logic in using Occam’s is apparent, but the logic of the physics we employ with Occam’s is only valid to 13 billion years ago and we are searching before that point. So anything is possible in a considered sense, disregarding Severins fairies but including your multiverses.

SoG,

<<…the logic of the physics we employ with Occam’s is only valid to 13 billion years ago and we are searching before that point.>>

Occam’s razor is just general rule of thumb. It’s not scientific and science doesn’t determine when it can start or stop either.

<<So anything is possible in a considered sense…>>

Well, it’s one thing to say that anything’s possible, but it’s another to suggest the big bang could have been a wilful act as a way of saying “Ya reckon?” in response to my claim that none of the arguments for the existence for god hold. The reason being, because it’s simply a ‘God of the Gaps’ argument - a logical fallacy - further proving my point that there are no arguments for the existence of god that hold.

<<…disregarding Severins fairies but including your multiverses.>>

Yes, but gods are in the same league as Severin’s fairies here and hence her point...

I ask how many women around the World are affected by this ruling by the Catholic and Anglican Churches to not endorce women as Priests? Are there 200?

Obviously the noise has captured the immagination of atheists who just want to Church Bash. I am neither Catholic or Anglican but this thread has merely become a thread for trolls.