They miss a large part of the picture, but they aren't offensive. I don't find it offensive, just wholly unconvincing. Unfortunately this proves my point. Look at how there' no reasoning or thought behind the denials, just a flat reversal of what I've said. That's the hallmark of this kind of heres...

The Last Supper example is this precise. I had hoped not to have to engage on this topic too much with you; I've really enjoyed your posts and don't want to fall out over it. But the simple fact is that even from a casual glance at the diagrams you showed it's immediately apparent that the fit of t...

Atheism is not a system of any positive beliefs whatsoever, why would you think it should be? Well, the evidence shows that atheists commonly regard and present atheism as an alternative to religion. If it was simply an absence of belief - which I agree that it actually should be - that would be im...

I did ask for clarifying thought (twice) on your claim that without explicit moral guidance people do not behave morally and you finally responded with examples from two works of fiction. I suppose that passes as evidence for you. Yes, when coupled with the fact that we need to have laws, courts an...

I wouldn't look the to bible for wisdom on how to treat a raped thus pregnant 9 year old girl, or a person who believed in a different god, or any of the myriad of situations where absolute morality breaks down. Even our contemporary laws struggle with that one and I don't see any better answers co...

we've actually had lots of discussions about memes here on BT, and to be honest you come across as uninformed. Yeah, because if I haven't read a discussion on here I just don't know anything. :wink: Well done on being able to divine my thinking on a technical and complex subject without asking for ...

I can imagine that an atheist would like to believe that. Unfortunately the evidence is exceptionally strongly against it. There are certainly rules in the bible which have been superceded and in some cases replaced entirely - by other rules in the bible. We have to remember that not all of the bibl...

geo wrote:Reflections on Dawkins' "Selfish gene" theory . . .

Wow, there are still people who believe in memes? What did that guy do, read Dawkins and nothing else ever? I thought even in atheist circles that stuff was regarded as a betamax idea.

Can you give some examples of where people left without explicit moral guidance do not behave morally? Sure. Mob rule. Lord of the Flies. Animal Farm. The fact that people don't natrually behave morally is so universally understood that it's encoded into every part of our society, including our art...

That's a good article, thanks! As I've mentioned before, I think it's perfectly possible to arrive at a workable moral framework with reason alone. However, I don't see any real evidence that anyone does. In fact we don't get our morality from evolution or reason at all, we usually copy it from our ...