@Jennifer,

There is a difference between being a fundamentalist and being passionate. Fundamentalists are dogmatic. They won’t change their mind even when shown how wrong they are. People of reason are the complete opposite of this. People simply confuse Dawkins’ tone and passion with that of dogma and fundamentalism. Its fine to disagree with his tone, but people shouldn’t class it as dogma in their disagreement.

That said, while he may be direct and strident, he is simply saying things about religion that we would all say about non-religious but no less ridiculous and delusional issues. If someone believes the holocaust didn’t happen, or that aliens are going to invade earth, or that there is a worldwide secret government conspiracy, or that they hear voices in their head… etcetera, not only are we all as critical of them as Dawkins is of religion (no one calls this fundamentalist or dogmatic), some people even down right ‘belittle’ them. If someone believes the holocaust didn’t happen we don’t just say they are wrong, we say they are delusional. If someone is convinced in a forthcoming alien invasion we simply say they have lost their mind. And we say this without any qualms. And we are not criticised for saying this. Yet apply the same criticism to religion, and suddenly we are regarded as intolerant and disrespectful.

Religion allows people en masse to believe what only delusional lunatics could believe in isolation.

@Jennifer,

There is a difference between being a fundamentalist and being passionate. Fundamentalists are dogmatic. They won’t change their mind even when shown how wrong they are. People of reason are the complete opposite of this. People simply confuse Dawkins’ tone and passion with that of dogma and fundamentalism. Its fine to disagree with his tone, but people shouldn’t class it as dogma in their disagreement.

That said, while he may be direct and strident, he is simply saying things about religion that we would all say about non-religious but no less ridiculous and delusional issues. If someone believes the holocaust didn’t happen, or that aliens are going to invade earth, or that there is a worldwide secret government conspiracy, or that they hear voices in their head… etcetera, not only are we all as critical of them as Dawkins is of religion (no one calls this fundamentalist or dogmatic), some people even down right ‘belittle’ them. If someone believes the holocaust didn’t happen we don’t just say they are wrong, we say they are delusional. If someone is convinced in a forthcoming alien invasion we simply say they have lost their mind. And we say this without any qualms. And we are not criticised for saying this. Yet apply the same criticism to religion, and suddenly we are regarded as intolerant and disrespectful.

Religion allows people en masse what only delusional lunatics people could believe in isolation.

You may be assuming that I am far less read than I actually am TXatheist! I’m glad you can have a sense humor about these things though. I’ve enjoyed the conversation. Thanks.

Don’t be too sure of how many believe in the moon landing. My ex-coworker and I got along great on most political issues(he couldn’t take Texas any longer and moved) was skeptical of the moon landing and so was my brother-in-law when he heard about some program on tv discounting the event.

The point is an overwhelming majority of historians would find it difficult to support a claim that Jesus of Nazareth is a fictional character. Thanks for keeping me honest though.

I spent plenty of time in London and I know a number of clergy and laity in the C of E. It seems that this is a very odd group of people to target as anti-gay bigots, as there are plenty of other sub-groups within Christianity that fit this characterisation better. I don’t doubt that there are some in the Church of England who could be classified in this way, but a number of my clerical friends in England are gay themselves. I would say that the proportion of homosexuals in the clergy dwarfs that in the population as a whole.

At any rate, I am delighted by the prospect of asking Father Mark (who openly lives with his boyfriend) what it’s like to be “a self loathing anti gay bigot!”

If (for example) I built a powerful enough telescope, I would be able to see human footprints on the moon. I could see the moon rovers left behind there.

In the future, we may have the ability to travel to the moon ourselves. In two-thousand years we may be able to go to the moon and see the footprints and handprints in the dust left by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

Jesus left no such proof. I cannot for the life of me figure out what kind of machine we could ever build that could confirm that Jesus preformed miracles, because he didn’t perform any permanent detectable miracles. He seemed very intent on performing miracles for those in attendence, but nothing that would stay.