1. What are your qualifications to question religion anyway? Just who are you?

Comment #98307 by Tom Morris on December 13, 2007 at 1:07 pm

A human being. That is all the necessary qualifications one needs to promote, discuss - or indeed question - religion.

I say this as someone who has a degree in philosophy and religion - ideas are simply ideas. If Jerry Falwell said that the sky is blue and Richard Dawkins said that the sky is pink, Falwell would be right and Dawkins would be wrong. This is true at least for all topics which we consider to be scientific.

Now, whether you choose to take someone's work as truthful or not is up to you. Qualifications are only a sometimes useful shorthand for knowledge, not the primary measure of it. My university has determined that I know enough about philosophy to give me a degree in it, they have not conferred infallibility on me.

So, read, think and listen based on truth, not based on letters.

If you do operate on the basis of letters, on what basis should you believe what the Pope says? His qualification is that a group of other human beings decided he was the Pope.