Comments by Tommykey

Comment #81469 by Tommykey on October 24, 2007 at 7:22 pm

If evolution is not true, then why are there some mammals that live exclusively in the water, like dolphins and whales? It is not an advantage for marine life to have to surface for air every few minutes when other marine predators like sharks never need to.

2. You can't be moral without God!

Comment #81468 by Tommykey on October 24, 2007 at 7:19 pm

Basically, it all boils down to this. We have to share this world with other people. That fact alone constrains our actions because our actions have consequences. Some theists claim that "without god, then we can all do whatever we want."

No, we can't! Yeah, we can try, but just see what happens to you if you start intruding on the boundaries of other people. They will resist, and depending on what you try to do, they will resist and retaliate violently.

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

Comment #81466 by Tommykey on October 24, 2007 at 7:15 pm

One point I like to bring up, and Hitchens touched on it in his debate with McGrath is that the regimes like Stalin and Mao occurred in societies that were ruled by oppressive and authoritarian monarchies for centuries, or in China's case, for millennia. Stalin's idol, Ivan the Terrible, considered himself to be a pious Christian in spite of the terrible atrocities he committed.

There was no tradition of a check on the absolutism of the central government. There was no concept of individual rights.

As for Nazi Germany, regardless of whether Hitler considered himself to be a Catholic, an atheist, or a neo-teutonic pagan, the German people who supported him considered themselves to be Christians who felt that Hitler was doing god's work in fighting Bolshevism and the Christ killing Jews. Christians in Germany, by and large, did not try to stop him.

4. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #81462 by Tommykey on October 24, 2007 at 7:04 pm

I only watched the beginning of it so far, but I noticed that D'Souza used his standard joke line when giving his first rebuttal to Hitchens, "I feel like a mosquito at a nudist colony, where to begin."

Since it can be expected that he will use this line again in the future, his next opponent should shoot it down before D'Souza even has a chance to open his mouth.

5. Sam Harris Strikes Back

Comment #45960 by Tommykey on May 29, 2007 at 8:15 pm

I have seen Chris Hedges speak on a couple of C-Span programs. He strikes me as a good man. Though I am an atheist and he is a liberal Christian, I believe that there is much common ground between people like him and people like us, and we need to work together to combat the religious right rather than quarrel with each other.

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