1. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. were atheists, and they were terrible! Answer that!

Comment #98345 by Tobbe on December 13, 2007 at 1:48 pm

We are not advocating an atheist state, but a secular state. We don't want to copy the atheist state religion of communist societies, but preserve the secularism of the American Revolution. And today this is under attack, not from militant atheists but from religious fundamentalists who want to turn the United States into a theocracy.

2. You can't be moral without God!

Comment #90484 by Tobbe on November 25, 2007 at 9:40 am

Matthew 12:9.
Departing from there, He went into their synagogue. And a man was there whose hand was withered. And they questioned Jesus, asking, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?"--so that they might accuse Him. And He said to them, "What man is there among you who has a sheep, and if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will he not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable then is a man than a sheep! So then, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath."

What Jesus seems to be saying here is that simple human decency is much more important than divine law.

3. What's the evolutionary advantage of offering your place to an old woman on a bus?

Comment #90251 by Tobbe on November 23, 2007 at 7:20 pm

We offer our seat on the bus because it is the morally right thing to do.

Don't confuse the question of how we came to be who we are with the metaethical question of what the nature of morality is. The first can be understood within the Darwinian framework, while the second is a philosophhical question.

An analogy with mathematics can be helpful. It is certainly plausible that humans have acquired an understanding of mathematics through some Darwinian process. However the truth of any mathematical proposition is not a function of what has most benefited our species. Nor is the truth of any ethical proposition dependent on the evolutionary history of how we came to evolve a capacity for moral reflection.

This is easy to understand when we consider rape. Research has shown that rapists have more offspring than non-rapists. This is useful if we want to understand why this behaviour evolved, but it doesn't work as a moral justification for rape.

When a theist asks about the evolutionary advantage of offering your place on the bus, the underlying assuption is that without a divine lawgiver of some sort we are opening the door to moral relativism. This is not a rethorical trick but a real concern. And here I think the evolutionary picture of morality can be very useful and consoling.

The reasoning goes something like this. If it is true that morality has evolved then it's also true that at some point in our history everyone was a moral relativist. Perhaps that was before we were even humans but that's irrelevant. The point is that the first person with a capacity for moral reflection was by definition a minority within the larger group of moral relativists.

Today, by contrast, the numbers are reversed. The overwhelming majority of humans (and many animals to a lesser degree), are capable of moral reasoning. It follows that those who aquired moral insight increased their competitiveness to the point where today. those who lack empathy for other people are so rare that it can be called a pathological state. We don't need a transcendental justification for our actions. It is in our human nature to think and act morally.

4. Allan Gregg interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #87218 by Tobbe on November 11, 2007 at 1:56 pm

I think that what Srenger did was to show that science has come much further in explaining the ultimate questions than what most people, especially theologians are aware of. Like for instance the question: how could anything come out of nothing?

This does not of course disprove the existance of a god in any strict sense, but I think Stengers choice of title is just a small rethoric exaggeration.

5. Christopher Hitchens and Bill Donohue on Mother Teresa

Comment #66436 by Tobbe on August 30, 2007 at 2:12 am

When all arguments for the existence of God fails, and they all do, the last outpost is the claim to have a subjective experience, a personal relationship with Jesus, so strong that it's impossible to doubt. (And have a big happy smile on your face and call atheists angry)

Now if God didn't even speak to Mother Theresa, what's the chance that the voice you hear in your head has divine origin?

6. Mother Teresa's '40-year faith crisis'

Comment #65579 by Tobbe on August 25, 2007 at 12:54 am

You can not legally demand that somebody destroys a letter you have sent them. A will is not a suitable document for the purpose either.

If you have letters or other writings, diaries etc, that you don't want to be public you should destroy them before you die.

7. Texas Leads U.S. in Teen Birth Rate

Comment #59008 by Tobbe on July 26, 2007 at 11:43 pm

Here's a classic, funny piece by Monbiot on the same theme

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/05/11/waging-war-with-the-virgin-soldiers/

8. Red Mosque Fueled Islamic Fire in Young Women

Comment #58322 by Tobbe on July 24, 2007 at 12:53 pm

These people are just like my Viking ancestors. They too believed that if you died in batte you would go strait to heaven where you would sit at Odins table and eat pork and drink beer for eternity.

9. Fears Grow Over 'Mega Mosque'

Comment #56690 by Tobbe on July 17, 2007 at 12:47 am

Would be interesting to know how many billions of dollars the Saudis use each year to spread their perverted ideology around the world.

10. An Atheist Responds

Comment #56229 by Tobbe on July 14, 2007 at 2:48 pm

What a strange logical mistake by serrano. It´s almost impossible to believe anyone could make such a mistake without years and years of religious indoctrination.

11. Hitchens and Prager Debate

Comment #46053 by Tobbe on May 30, 2007 at 4:49 am

"If you saw ten men walking towards you late at night, would you be relieved to learn that they were coming from a Bible study meeting?"

At first it sounds like a very good argument. The obvious answer seems to be "yes", and why is that? But here's the strange part. Prager knew the answer to that question all along, and so he must have known it was a trivial question and not a profound one, because as he later adds "I would be relieved to learn that they were coming from a physics class".

And as #12 above has shown, the whole argument falls apart. And Prager knew this. But it didn't prevent him from asking the question, and I believe he said he asked all his guests the same question. Intellectual dishonesty.

12. God help us all - The No. 2 book on Amazon right now is a

Comment #44800 by Tobbe on May 25, 2007 at 10:01 am

#8.

Iran will never use a nuclear bomb. It will be wiped off the map by Israel before it gets a nuclear bomb. When that happens there is no way to tell what the consequences will be. That's why it's so important to kill the iranian nuclear program before it get's off the ground.

13. God help us all - The No. 2 book on Amazon right now is a

Comment #44727 by Tobbe on May 25, 2007 at 8:27 am

I don't understand how you can be so relaxed about the threat of a nuclear Iran. I'm not.

14. Atheist offers to send letters post-Rapture

Comment #38804 by Tobbe on May 9, 2007 at 8:12 am

Brilliant. I wish I'd come up with that. I'll bet he's making a lot of money too. The beauty of it all is that you can't prosecute him on fraud charges without offending religious people who believe in this crap.

15. God Exists. A Formula Proves it.

Comment #37655 by Tobbe on May 5, 2007 at 12:27 pm

Micheal Shermer has a whole chapter on Tipler in his "Why people believe weird things". Another piece I read is from the great philosopher of religion Graham Oppy (he should be an icon on this page, at least for those with some background in philosophy). It´s a review of Tiplers "The physics of immortality". It´s long but very readable.

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/graham_oppy/tipler.html

16. The Video: Bill O'Reilly Interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #34787 by Tobbe on April 25, 2007 at 8:39 am

In my country, Sweden, our newly elected priminister is an atheist. He used that word to describe himself in an interview during the election campaign. Interestingly, he is from the Conservative Party and is leading a coalition which incorporates the Christian Democratic Party.

This said as a counterargument against those who say that atheism always leads to genocide.

17. The Video: Bill O'Reilly Interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #34539 by Tobbe on April 24, 2007 at 12:07 pm

Dawkins did well. Another strategy would be to just go out and make fun of Bill O. The following is a hilarious example of how much damage can be done with a little irony:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epBR1vf3iV8&mode=related&search=

18. NEXT MONDAY: Bill O'Reilly interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #33762 by Tobbe on April 21, 2007 at 4:24 pm

As someone said, O'Reilley has a belief in belief, so the following questions should come up:

1. Why take away people's hope in a higher being?
2. Christians do a lot of good work.
3. Morality without religion?
4. What about Stalin and Hitler?

Especially the last question is good in my opinion and Dawkins should think it through. Especially when you consider that many scientists and intellectuals have supported commuism or nazism or both. I don't like the common maneover to treat them as just other religions.

My solution would be to point to the dangers in having a government determining what people should, or shouldn't believe in. That it is just as important to separate church and state as it is to separate atheism and state. That to say "One nation under God", is just as dangerous as to say "One nation without God". A secular state is not an atheist state.