First, Dawkins was not on Hitler's reading list as I don't believe he had published anything yet. Second, I was listing atheists. Whatever Hitler was, I don't believe he was an atheist. More likely he was an astrotheologist of some kind. A) I think your sarcasm detector is turned off. B) It is inte...

Robert Tulip wrote:Your suggestion, Randall, that atheism needs a mythology, appears to be a paradox, given the antinomy of myth and logic.

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I don't believe I was suggesting that! What I meant was that the world could turn out some actual militant atheists, thereby making the myth into a reality.

I'd be interested to hear from stahrwe what he thinks is right or wrong with this "proof"--other than it doesn't appear to be infallible, as it turns out. The question is, why not? If the Bible is itself infallible, why aren't the proofs we derive from it similarly so? familyradio.com/grap...

But Robert, we NEED foils like stahrwe for contrast! I, for one, don't think his preaching is likely to convince anyone of much of anything, other than the fact that stahrwe isn't very reasonable, thoughtful or original. After all, when was the last time he said anything we haven't all heard a thous...

Therefore, maybe it's time to end the myth of militant atheism? It seems to me that there are two ways to approach this: 1. Reason all those persons who use the term out of their irrational beliefs, or 2. Make the myth a reality. Number one strikes me as impossible. How can you reason with those wh...

If you had to put together a society on a spaceship, say, that had to choose whether to take a volume by Galileo, one by Locke or one by Shakespeare, are you sure you would go by factuality? Being a practical man, I'd have to go with the Principia, or maybe Euclid's Elements. (Unless it's unfair to...

I have a relative who believes in Biblical literalism. In fact, he often says things much like stahrwe. In church this Sunday, he pointed out the "fact" that the story of Eve being created out of Adam's rib holds up because "women have one more rib than men". So I thought about t...

Harry wrote:Jesus famously hung out with drunkards and prostitutes!

Jesus brought the wine!

The first gold-strike on mars will revolutionize the space industry like nothing else ever has. Uhh... Current estimates to return a payload from Mars are around $500,000 per pound. Being that gold only costs $24,000 a pound, I can't see much of a market for gold that costs 20 times as much in &quo...

"Euler's Gem" ~Dave Richeson

"The Lightness of Being" ~Frank Wilczec

"The Algebraist" ~Iain M. Banks