1. Atheism is a religion and you're as bad as the fundamentalists

Comment #84772 by Vardu on November 3, 2007 at 1:57 pm

Religion is about what people believe. Atheism is about what people don't believe.

Can you have a religion based on unbelief?

The Psalmist wrote, "Only a fool believes in his heart that there is no God". The atheist, and for a good number of reasons, believes it in his mind.

2. The Year of Living Biblically

Comment #84767 by Vardu on November 3, 2007 at 1:44 pm

I was going to do the same thing with the Koran but, for one thing, I couldn't lay my hands on a airliner to crash into any buildings in order to take out a few infidels.

3. Science and Religion BOTH make faith claims

Comment #81605 by Vardu on October 25, 2007 at 12:46 am

I think that a distinction must be made between rational and irrational faith.
For instance, I've never been to or laid eyes on New York, but I have faith - based on an abundance and a variety of evidence - that it exists. This, to me, is an example of rational faith.

On the other hand, the faith that people have, say, that Jesus rose from the dead, which is not based on any evidence whatsoever, is irrational.

So, science may, indeed, make faith claims, but the nature of the faith is rational.

I think the same distinctions can be made between rational and irrational belief, rational and irrational authority.

4. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #81558 by Vardu on October 24, 2007 at 10:46 pm

Sorry, didn't think my first post had gone through.

I think D'Souza could now do with a real good thumping from Richard to bring him somewhat back to reality.

5. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #81555 by Vardu on October 24, 2007 at 10:44 pm

I agree, Hitchens made a number of valid points while D'Souza screamed his nullities.

You would think, wouldn't you, that considering religion has had thousands of years to hone its arguments, it would be able to convey something that didn't ring so emptily to the educated ear?

6. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #81552 by Vardu on October 24, 2007 at 10:40 pm

I agree, Hitchens did all right.

What we've got to keep in mind is that the religionists have had thousands of years to hone their arguments. Despite that, their endless nullities ring so emptily.

7. War in Heaven: Hitchens Meets D'Souza on Home Turf

Comment #81037 by Vardu on October 23, 2007 at 11:44 pm

A persons atheism only encompasses what they don't believe. One negation doesn't imply all negation.
One can be an atheist and thereafter live like one of the supposed saints or one of the hypothetical devils.

For instance, while I don't believe in God, I believe in a lot of other things, such as the importance of civic virtues; personal responsibility; compassion for those who are suffering; the facts of science; the beauty of nature, and so forth.

8. War in Heaven: Hitchens Meets D'Souza on Home Turf

Comment #81032 by Vardu on October 23, 2007 at 11:33 pm

Well put, Russell Blackford. If that's what the revolt entails, then it sounds good to me, too.

9. War in Heaven: Hitchens Meets D'Souza on Home Turf

Comment #81028 by Vardu on October 23, 2007 at 11:30 pm

I suspect that the video will paint a very different picture than the one painted by the article above. It will certainly be interesting to see.

But I was amused by D'Sousa's comment that Christ "was one of the mildest men to ever set face on earth".
He was kidding, right?
Was he talking about the same extremely un-mild Christ that labelled his detractors 'serpents', a 'generation of vipers'?
Was it the same supposedly sensitive and sympathetic Christ who, when mocked, became vindictive, envisaging for his enemies an eternity of 'wailing and gnashing of teeth' in 'a furnace of fire', 'everlasting fire', 'fire (that) is not quenched', 'where the worm dieth not'?
Talk about petulance, not to mention vindictiveness!

Seems like believers cherry-pick which Jesus they will believe on just as they cherry-pick the rest of their sacred tome.

10. Downward, Christian soldier

Comment #80737 by Vardu on October 22, 2007 at 9:41 pm

How silly it is for anyone involved in the military - a permanent organization for the destruction of life and property - to have, let alone talk, about their belief in some hypothetical omnibenevolent deity.
Surely it is the ultimate expression of hypocrisy.

11. Christopher Hitchens and Bill Donohue on Mother Teresa

Comment #66372 by Vardu on August 29, 2007 at 8:32 pm

If Donahue is the best the Catholics can put forward to defend the faith, then it's in deeper doodoo than I ever imagined.

And I think the "insipid smile", or chagrined grin, that EvolvedDNA refers to above, masks the intense desperation the faithful are experiencing these days as they begin to recognize just how advanced the death throes of religion really is.

12. Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #63925 by Vardu on August 16, 2007 at 6:24 pm

Darwin2's bottom line is that everything regresses until it comes to a stop with an 'infinite God'. Unfortunately for him, it is a bottom line without a shred of compelling evidence to support it, and Darwin2 certainly hasn't proffered any.
Darwin2 simply has a belief, a belief no different in kind from those which most theists hold.

As John Locke said, it is an unerring mark of the love of truth not to entertain any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant.

13. Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #63920 by Vardu on August 16, 2007 at 6:05 pm

Science's grappling with consciousness has only really gotten off the ground, so it's probably a bit early to draw any but the most tentative conclusions about its nature.
In all likelihood, though, it will eventually, like so much else that was once held out as a mystery, be explained in completely naturalistic ways.
The gaps that still exist in our knowledge that are continually exploited by the credulous are slowly but surely narrowing. It is only a very anorexic God that that the faithful still manage to squeeze into such gaps.

14. Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #63743 by Vardu on August 15, 2007 at 3:44 pm

There is a whole lot of talk here about "proving" this and "disproving" that, but such talk is not scientific. Science doesn't deal in proofs, but in probabilities.
Science can neither prove or disprove the existence of God anymore than it can prove or disprove the claim that there is an angry green unicorn living on a planet somewhere in the Andromeda galaxy.


In respect to an intelligent designer, well, there is just no compelling evidence for the hypotheses and a good deal of solid evidence that mitigates against the notion. The complexity we see in all life forms upon the planet can be successfully explained in naturalistic ways that do not require the invoking of any hypothetical supernatural or infinite entities.

Of course, if one wants to believe that there is some kind of infinite God, then that is the believers affair, but don't let them claim that there is even the slightest evidence for such a belief.

15. Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #63540 by Vardu on August 14, 2007 at 6:14 pm

It seems to me that, in order to accept the ID hypotheses, one would also have to conclude that the designer is incompetent.
Look at the extinction record, for instance, or all the dumb, clunky, and impractical things in nature that reflect an utter lack of intelligent design.
Why do supporters of ID restrict themselves to just the intricate and wondrous things?

And that it all "stops with God" is no argument whatsoever.

16. Science of the Soul? 'I Think, Therefore I Am' Is Losing Force

Comment #52724 by Vardu on June 27, 2007 at 11:54 pm

If anybody thinks that emotions and consciousness are unique to human beings, they haven't been reading Frans de Vaal.

17. 'God Is Not a Moderate'

Comment #51651 by Vardu on June 24, 2007 at 12:28 am

"Reason vs emotion"?

No, reason vs evasiveness and vacuousness.

Harris knocked Sullivan out in the first round with such resounding blows that Sullivan's invisible manager in the corner really ought to throw the towel in.

18. A battler beyond belief: Review of 'God is Not Great'

Comment #50984 by Vardu on June 20, 2007 at 9:19 pm

It's a crap argument, too often and monotonously indulged in by theists, that it was Stalin and Hitler's 'atheism' (if they were, indeed, atheists at all) that lead them to commit or order atrocities.
The fact is, their evils were the direct result of dogmatism, the pernicious notion that one view is entirely correct and can rationalize and exculpate anything in its cause.
It is this very same dogmatism that has lead to all the evils committed in the name of religion.

19. Richard Dawkins: Atheist

Comment #50981 by Vardu on June 20, 2007 at 8:57 pm

I think Sam Harris makes the best case (The End of Faith) in identifying just how moderates in religion pave the way for extremists.

20. Tome truths

Comment #49650 by Vardu on June 12, 2007 at 5:57 pm

I've read most of the books cited above, and they are all excellent in their own ways, but I still think Daniel Harbour's 'An Intelligent Person's Guide To Atheism' is the best that I've come across so far.

And while it is true, as minstrel suggests, that it is probably far too soon to tell what lasting effects all the atheistic books mentioned above will have, one thing is for sure: things are never going to be the same for believers from now on.

21. Interview with Pierre Rehov

Comment #37834 by Vardu on May 6, 2007 at 12:19 am

Religion is a little like that black stuff brought to Earth in a meteorite from the latest Spiderman movie that seems to bring out the very worst in people.

Islam has had a few golden moments, but they have been vastly over-shadowed by its worst excesses. Even the great poems of Sufism rose above a universe of seraglios, castration, impalements, murder, and legalized theft that pious souls disdained to notice.

Religions everywhere entail being small, being forgiven, heaping unending praise on an authority who exempts one from reflection and on an omnipotence who preserves one from the dangers of action, piling up good deeds like an advanced payment and sacrifices like rent money. And then there is all that silly business of pretending to see the salvation of others as a means of realizing one's own salvation, or imagining salvation as happening after death so that one can create a living death for oneself during life.
Such are all religions, and such is the ideology of humility.

22. God Exists. A Formula Proves it.

Comment #37674 by Vardu on May 5, 2007 at 12:52 pm

I don't require any equation to know that there is a God!
I speak to him in prayer every night.
Of course, I'm speaking to myself, and I know that I exist.

23. Your favorite book in the last 25 years?

Comment #37271 by Vardu on May 4, 2007 at 12:24 am

'An Intelligent Person's Guide To Atheism', by Daniel Harbour.

This book puts together the best argument I have ever come across for why one should be an atheist as opposed to a theist.

Let me quote from one of the closing passages of Harbours' epilogue. After quoting King David's line from the Psalms that 'the fool hath said in his heart that there is no God', Harbour goes onto say that, while this indeed may be true, the 'Intelligent person, and for a host of reasons, says it in his mind'.

24. Against All Gods, by A C Grayling

Comment #36937 by Vardu on May 2, 2007 at 9:03 pm

ghostbuster wrote: "Without the eye, light doesn't exist".

This is, as TeapotTheist wrote, nonsense.

Light perception takes place in many single-celled animals, such as the amoebae and Euglena, and neither of these have 'eyes'.

Eye's evolved as a response to light sensitivity.

25. Here Comes the Fourth Musketeer.

Comment #33751 by Vardu on April 21, 2007 at 2:42 pm

A.C.Grayling is most definitely a member of the atheist trinity...

26. A History of Violence

Comment #28948 by Vardu on March 31, 2007 at 7:56 pm

No, religion is not the cause of 'all' wars, but it has been the cause of many of them.

Nor would it be fair to say that religion is the cause of all evil. It is dogma that is at the root of all evil.

Theism involves dogma, so in order to shun evil, one would be obliged to shun theism.

27. Do stop behaving as if you are God, Professor Dawkins

Comment #21046 by Vardu on February 7, 2007 at 12:00 pm

And in the blue corner, Richard Dawkins, the current heavy weight champion of the world.

And in the red corner, Alister McGrath, mister puniverse.

Oh dear, I just can't watch. This is going to be a massacre!

28. The New Atheists

Comment #16268 by Vardu on January 5, 2007 at 6:54 pm

I wonder why Our Lady of Fatima not only didn't guide the bullet to miss the Pope but have it carve out "Jesus is Lord" on the doors of the papal carriage!
Seems to me like a complete lack of imagination and lost opportunity for God to register his presence in a convincing way.
But then, he always has been crap at communicating.

29. Do galaxies follow Darwinian evolution?

Comment #15670 by Vardu on January 1, 2007 at 11:55 pm

It's not silly at all if one thinks of Darwinian evolution as change due to environmental pressures, and it does look like some form of natural selection occurs at the galactic level.

No divine fiat states that Darwinism needs to be restricted to biologic systems only.

I'd take a punt and suggest that RD is not opposed to the possibility. I'm sure, at least, that he'd take a look at the evidence for the hypothesis before dismissing it by calling it silly.

30. Beliefwatch: Blasphemy (Challenge)

Comment #15589 by Vardu on January 1, 2007 at 1:04 pm

God can never be reached for comment.
I tried for years, and as sincerely as a person could be expected to, and not a whisper from the supposedly Almighty.
Considering the fact that I found, so to speak, all my posts returned stamped "Return to Sender", God can't blame me if I conclude that he's moved or doesn't live where he was supposed to live at all.

31. God's Enemies Are More Honest Than His Friends

Comment #15238 by Vardu on December 29, 2006 at 8:22 pm

None of us knows an adult that didn't grow out of his belief in Santa Claus. Unlike the notion of God, though, Santa never could serve as a crutch for the rationally and emotionally unstable.

I have always found it amazing that any sane or rational person could actually believe in the God of the Bible, especially in his despotic Old Testament manifestation. Even as a Christian (born and bred but now a born-again atheist), I never felt comfortable reading the Old Testament. All that stuff about the supposedly loving God ordering, commanding, or condoning the genocide of people - especially children - simply because they believed in other gods. Even as a kid the whole thing seemed barbaric nonsense to me. I was dismissed from I don't know how many Sunday school classes for challenging the instructors about Bible nonsense that eventually, despite the pleas and threats of my parents, I utterly refused to go back, finally shucking off the whole business once and for all in my early teens. And I haven't felt one tinge of regret since doing so.
I have not had a debate with a single Bible-believing Christian yet who has been able to come up with any rationale that successfully exonerates the moral depredations of the biblical God.
As I said above, it still amazes me that apparently grown up people can still not only abide that nonsense, but actually and deliberately embrace it?
Under these circumstances, I have no difficulty at all and feel not an iota of embarrassment informing people, if the subject happens to come up, that I am an atheist, a man with no invisible means of support.

32. A Christmas thunderbolt for the arch-enemy of religion

Comment #15102 by Vardu on December 28, 2006 at 11:28 pm

There have been some brilliant posts registered here on just how morality may have evolved...

I was a believer for a number of years but never encountered the kind of intellectual and spiritual stimulation that I have discovered among non-believers.

Thanks guy's for providing such substantially marvelous food for thought.

33. Woman beaten on Jerusalem bus for refusing to move to rear seat

Comment #15100 by Vardu on December 28, 2006 at 11:18 pm

Beagle:

I know that the Bible says somewhere that Moses rode across the desert in his triumph. If he had a car, maybe Aaron had a bus.

34. Woman beaten on Jerusalem bus for refusing to move to rear seat

Comment #15072 by Vardu on December 28, 2006 at 5:43 pm

'Woman Encounters Fourth Century Timewarp On Israeli Bus' may have been an alternative headline for this news story.

Good on Miriam! Pity she didn't get to land a few good kicks in the vitals of these ultra-losers.

35. A Christmas thunderbolt for the arch-enemy of religion

Comment #14982 by Vardu on December 27, 2006 at 7:05 pm

I wonder why God, seeing he had the opportunity, didn't remonstrate with the medical fraternity for not applying his remedy for leprosy: incantations and the blood of birds!?

36. The God of the Bible is No Delusion!

Comment #14980 by Vardu on December 27, 2006 at 6:30 pm

Mark Taunton:

I don't know if Moses knew any of those things you list. In fact, I don't think that you could make a case that Moses existed at all. Most of the Bible was written during the Babylonian captivity with much of its history projected backwards, which gives the impression of fulfilled prophesy.
The Jewish scholar, Jacob Neusner, spent much of his celebrated career studying these things and couldn't see any warrant at all for believing biblical prophesy as authentic.
And we mustn't forget those biblical prophesies that blatantly failed.
I believe Mark Twain summed it all up rather nicely when he wrote that '(The Bible) is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies.'
And, oh, we must not forget the Bible's wonderful God who never gives a second thought to ordering or condoning genocide, even including the unfortunate victims animals!
I wonder why, though, his remedy for leprosy - incantations and the blood of birds - has never been taken up or applied even by believers who work with the poor sufferers of that terrible malady?

37. The God of the Bible is No Delusion!

Comment #14978 by Vardu on December 27, 2006 at 5:30 pm

Can't you atheists understand that God is so astonishingly omnipotent that he didn't, or doesn't, even have to exist in order to have created us!
What could be more obvious?

38. 10 myths - and 10 truths - about atheism

Comment #14962 by Vardu on December 27, 2006 at 12:10 pm

While braincoughlanworldcitizen's response to David A. Robertson pretty much says it all, one would have to draw the conclusion that David is definitely deluded if he believes that Jesus arose from the dead based on the available evidence.
Jesus' resurrection is just another variation of that common Middle Eastern theme - from Egyptian mythology to the Orphic rites - of the dying and reviving god.
Can one imagine anyone saying that they are as sure that Osiris arose from the dead as they are that their wife exists? And is there any less evidence that Osiris did so than there is for Jesus?

39. Atheist Chic

Comment #13603 by Vardu on December 18, 2006 at 5:24 pm

Yorker: Enjoyed your little piece above immensely.

Give us more!

40. Day 1: Is God Still Necessary?

Comment #13564 by Vardu on December 18, 2006 at 12:05 pm

A believer friend of mine answered the question as to whether God is still necessary just yesterday when he informed me, "Of course God is still necessary, even if only so that you atheist bastards have someone to pick on".
Fair enough, I thought.

41. Richard Dawkins on The Sunday Edition

Comment #13406 by Vardu on December 17, 2006 at 1:21 pm

Yes, a real dish of ointment,
But what's all this nonsense about "Science doesn't tell me how to live"!?
Why must we be told how to live?
Perhaps it's something we really have to figure out for ourselves without slobbering over some spiritual dole system, especially one that advocates some theoritical haunted-house model of the cosmos.

42. Grandparents linked with church-going

Comment #13149 by Vardu on December 15, 2006 at 10:32 pm

I'm a grandad to eight grandchildren and, as yet, the subject of religion and God has not come up. In the meantime, I share with them the wonders of the natural world around us and how science has proven our best tool for uncovering the nature of Nature.
If I can convey anything to them of lasting value, I hope it will be that the most important thing is to ask questions and never to settle for half-arsed answers based on faith.

43. Atheists' bleak alternative

Comment #12774 by Vardu on December 13, 2006 at 6:52 pm

Jacoby is joking, isn't he!?
He calls atheism bleak?
How bleak and pessimistic is that world view that suggests that without belief in some completely hypothetical God we'd be all running around killing, maiming, and raping one another.
Unlike Jacoby, I believe in human goodness and nobility. I don't mean that we are inherently good, whatever that would mean. Rather, I have seen people behave altruistically and charitably, doing a good turn (Gould's "ten-thousand little kindnesses" that make up a given day on the planet), at times causing themselves considerable bother, and they have no greater goal than to be helpful. The impulse to good exists. Carrots and sticks do not enter into the equation.
Jacoby is altogehter wrong.

44. Scientologists get £270,000 subsidy

Comment #12742 by Vardu on December 13, 2006 at 2:10 pm

Aside from everything else mentioned above, Scientology, and religion generally, is an ever-present reminder of just how bloody stupid we humans can be.
I guess any consoling lie is better than grappling with the notion that we are really only very tiny and unimportant in the cosmic scheme of things.

45. A Free-for-All on Science and Religion

Comment #12534 by Vardu on December 12, 2006 at 12:29 pm

Religion was beautiful when it was simply and purely an emotional response to the awesomeness and wonder of the Cosmos, like that chimpanzee that Jane Goodall observed that would go down to a local waterfall each morning and simply sit there gazing at it in a rapt kind of way; then we started to organize it, give it names, link it to parcels of turf and to personal, but invisible, agencies.
But that was a long, long, long time ago.

46. Richard Dawkins on The Late Late Show with Pat Kenny

Comment #12404 by Vardu on December 11, 2006 at 5:02 pm

Oh, sorry, Logicel, I somehow missed that one.
I'll get right to it and post a comment later.
Thanks.

47. Richard Dawkins on The Late Late Show with Pat Kenny

Comment #12402 by Vardu on December 11, 2006 at 4:58 pm

That's okay, mygodshouldshutup, there's no shame in acknowledging that one is wrong.

48. Richard Dawkins on The Late Late Show with Pat Kenny

Comment #12400 by Vardu on December 11, 2006 at 4:52 pm

Dead right, Logicel, and it is a book that I will return to time and time again, even if, but not only, for its exquisite prose.

49. Richard Dawkins on The Late Late Show with Pat Kenny

Comment #12399 by Vardu on December 11, 2006 at 4:49 pm

The scientific enterprise comprises methodologies that maintain a high degree of objectivity, and I think all you are doing, godisshabby, is confusing the methodologies of science with certain attitudes expressed by individual scientists in the past.

50. Richard Dawkins on The Late Late Show with Pat Kenny

Comment #12397 by Vardu on December 11, 2006 at 4:43 pm

I believe RD's description of Pantheism as sexed-up atheism and deism as watered-down theism is nothing short of brilliant. And I like the way RD dismantled agnosticism (the studied art of fence-sitting), too, in his book.