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a) God gave us free will but not enough brainpower to understand his book?

Texts are only representations of human language, and language is inextricably ambiguous. Instead of focusing on anything in the text itself, which as I mentioned only sets up a strawman version of Chrisitanity most of the time, it might be a better thrust against Christianity or several other religions to ask why God created humans with such a fallibility and then expected them to make use of texts. At that point you would dealing with a fairly basic theism independent of Christianity etc., so you would no longer run the risk of getting your interlocutor's specific Christan beliefs wrong.

Theism is the opposite of atheism and it requires no dogma, no catechism, no holy book, no structure, no leaders, no followers, no morals, no ethics, no laws.

Dogma, in its strictest sense, simply means those beliefs which one must have to belong to a particular position. The dogma of Theism is of course that there exists one or mere beings of enormous supernatural power, but the various theist religions have more specific dogma than that. Thus, modern Christianity has as dogma that God created the universe through some means, that he sent prophets, then his son Jesus, who died and was resurrected, and that some subset of those alive today will live eternally with God after death. If you don't believe that, you're probably not a Christian (although there are some ancient forms of Christianity which still survive which leave out some aspects, but they are not usually counted as "real Christians" by modern churches).

Of course, a Deist is a Theist, but has only one additional point of dogma: that the god(s) are not involved in the workings of the world. However, all other theist positions inevitably have some religion attached, because if you believe in a supremely powerful being which is actively involved in daily workings of the world, you're pretty much obliged to consider his opinions.

Atheism, of course, has dogma too, but it's dogma is a single, negative, point: it is defined by a non-belief in all gods.

You can have an atheist religion - for example, some forms of Buddhism are atheist, and so are some universalists, depending on quite how you define "god". However, usually when talking about atheism in contrast to theism, religious atheism and deism are ignored as they are relatively rare positions and in any case fit better into the "opposite" camp.

But unless a religion specifically prohibits political involvement (and very few do), it is not only true to say that religion is political, but that religion is politics.

FWIW, I agree with you completely (though I disagree with you with some of the details about Constantine).

As I noted elsewhere, the "war on terror" is/was fought on the pretext of "freedom" and "democracy". Not only is religion politics, but politics is also religion. This makes anti-theism seem all the more like tilting and windmills to me.

Atheism never requires those things. Theism is rife with precisely those things, particularly mainstream theist practice. Can one believe in a god or gods without any of these trappings? Certainly. Now, out of a pool of theists representative of the general population, is this likely? Not at all.

In the case of Christians, what do we have that defines their theism? The New and/or Old Testament. In the case of Islam? The Quran. In the case of Mormonism? The Book of Mormon. Judaism? The Tanakh and the Talmud. Likewise with those other metrics: dogma, structure, leaders, followers, morals, ethics, and laws. All of those religions bring all those things to the table. And in those cases, you can indeed ascribe numerous behaviors and practices as consequential to the religion, and therefore the specific theism that underlies them; atheism, however, carries none of them, ever.

The vast majority of religions, and therefore the underlying theisms, present as a spectrum of predefined behaviors and metrics that have a direct relationship with the theist root, the god or gods. The religion is in fact a definition of the person's relationship to that god or gods; in honest comparison, atheism isn't a spectrum, it's a point outside every extent of those spectrums. For the atheist, in not asserting the existence of a god or gods, there's no relationship to be had. It's the empty set.

Nonetheless, I didn't present those things as a definition of atheism; I presented them to make the point that ascribing that kind of thinking to a lack of belief in a god or gods is disingenuous (or clueless.)

The entire definition of atheism is the lack of a belief in a god or gods. The rest of my post deals with misconceptions about atheism.

And I said nothing about "unbelieving truth", or even truth. Atheism isn't a positive assertion of fact; it is the lack of one. The theist is the one making the assertion: "There is a/are several (whatever(s).)" The atheist doesn't make this assertion. It's not a belief, or a belief system; in fact, it's not a system at all. Just something I can answer "no" to if asked whether I am theist, or religious, or superstitious.

I don't claim, or hold a belief in: devils, angels, ghosts, unicorns, santa, god or gods, mermaids, kobolds, banshees, giants, elves, fairies, trolls.... etc. It's all the same: these things are uniformly meaningless, empty concepts of equal weight: none at all.

Dude, you started so strongly, you almost had me convinced you had this this all through.

Theism is the opposite of atheism and it requires no dogma, no catechism, no holy book, no structure, no leaders, no followers, no morals, no ethics, no laws. It sounds suspiciously to me like you are going down the atheism vs religion argument that the rest of the pseudo science cultist are prattling. Apples to oranges.

And just while I'm having a rant, who the the hell actually thinks theism and religion codependent? And at what point can we stop this charade of trying to pretend that atheists are some sort of monks that can separate all their baggage from their rational?. I would dare say that a lot of people express their atheism as a reaction against organised religion, not as some sort of sublime oneness with the unbelieving truth.

I am sure that Mr. Dawkins would consider you getting him some more book-cash by buying his anti-theism book, to be a fully acceptable alternative to the listed activities.

Incidentally, when are we going to stop pretending that this is a question of "anti-evolution"? He doesn't get said book-cash from presenting evolution, he gets it by attacking religion--even with this new tone of playing the victim.

The clever equivocation of using "evolution" to mean not "evolutionary processes occur" (which most theists agree with anyway, including myself and, say, the entire Catholic Church), but rather the untestable, unscientific position of, essentially, "only evolution occurs" as a causal factor in human origins, I do have to give him kudos for, though. Nice way to set up the False Dichotomy of "science versus religion", even if the "science" presented isn't actually science, but rather an untestable inference in the domain of philosophy.

Because people caring whether they offend other beings seems to follow logically and obviously from "survival of the fittest" (making enemies makes you and your offspring less likely to survive).

It could, in certain situations. Alternately, one might take the viewpoint that the two seconds needed to listen to the "that's offensive" objection is two seconds of unneeded inefficiency, and simply wipe out the speaker and his entire culture. The only means you have to differentiate the two proposals of correctness, is which was more successful in DNA propagation (or, at minimum, you have provided and demonstrated validity for no other means). By those standards there is not the least reason to object to the latter if the context is such that it, in fact, worked by that DNA-success criteria. In short, it addresses no normative or ethical question at all--for any given proposal, the exact opposite can be proposed, and if we actually follow up to evaluate the alternatives by that worldview, it rapidly becomes an inane question of projected and assumed "survival success". The fundamental philosophical problem here, though, is that the worldview of Darwinian Naturalism -needs the opposition to reject its standards-, and -needs the opposition to retain its own standards, while simultaneously attacking them-. In the wider cultural conflict between theism and atheism, application of -your- position would be to simply note we are the numerically-dominant subculture, and should feel no constraint, by -your own- standards, in taking yours out entirely, and sooner rather than later. You count on this not happening, and rather for us to continue to behave with Christian behavioral norms as you reject and attack them. This is what makes your position fundamentally unsound as a proposed objective (applicable to all) worldview.

In other words, you can't refute critique of religion just by declaring all critique-worthy people "not really religious".

Do you prefer that I refute your critique on the basis that, regardless of what the worldview is, your evaluation is such that whatever is numerically more prevalent in the population automatically "loses", as a simple matter of generating more statistical opportunities for what you see (though don't formally support) as "negative" occurrences? If you have statistical backing for the notion that -per capita- atheism leads to better outcomes (by some standard) than religion, then present it. Notably, this is assiduously avoided--we have finger-pointing anecdotes as the limit of what advocates of atheism are willing to present that could be of -scientific- value. And, understandably so, as the outcome of such an analysis is already clear simply by our USSR test-case alone.

Evaluate it "sociologically". Do so using valid methods. The outcome is the same.

"Does not mass murder" is not part of the dictionary definition of Christianity or any other religion I know about, so claiming it is is a classic No True Scotsman fallacy.

It's one of the Ten Commandments. There is nothing more definitional as to what Christianity is, and is not. That these are not listed in a dictionary definition is, for any intellectually-honest person, simply a question of the economy of presentation of a dictionary, as "communism" would not include more than a couple lines descriptive of the ideology of Marx and Engels (et al), yet a wider set of principles would be quite unambiguously part of the meaning of "communism". If you want to make such a semantic argument, may I suggest a better one.

You ignore here both that the term agnostic was defined by a foe [wikipedia.org] of organized religion and that the definition serves a useful non-ideological purpose, semantically distinguishing between an active disbelief in theism or the supernatural from one that doesn't have a belief one way or another due to the inherent unknowability of the problem.

I don't have a time machine to verify, but the original agnostics were all church members and believers. And the first atheists were agnostics on the other side. Note, apolitical means someone who isn't vested in politics, as opposed to someone who is against politics. Atheist meant someone who did not affirmatively believe in God. Whether through indifference (unwilling to make a choice), or active faith in the absence of a God (a stance that should have evolved the term anti-theist, not atheist.

So do you "like to think of yourself" as a liar? I find this confusion rather annoying.

And I find your attempts to intrepret everything in the worst possible way, when you are obviously capable of intrepreting things in a different light indicates you are the dishonest one. If there are two ways to take a statement, you take the lest useful one, then complain about your incorrect inferences. I can't fix that. My statements are consistent. But it's more like the distinction between Libertarians and libertarians, but on Slashdot, plenty identify with libertarianism and recognize that Libertarians are no more libertarian than the Green party.

First, IANRD. But I would like to comment. I, like you, am an atheist, and I, like you, am uncomfortable with designating myself that way. Not because I am frightened or ashamed, rather, it seems like that definition makes that attribute (atheism) more important to me than it is. It is only important because I am required to be vigilant against the attempts of believers to insert their beliefs into my life through politics.

I believe that this very discomfort is what led to the invention of the title "Bright" - one that substitutes a positive focus. Unfortunately it has its own negative overtones.

I like the point of view offered by Ricky Gervaise in an article some years back. He points out to believers that through human history people have believed in 3000 gods, godlets, fairies, sprites etc. The believer believes in only one out of these 3000, making me only slightly more atheistic than they are.

If I could add my own question for Dr Dawkins, and anyone else, what do you think would be a good positive title for us which does not define us against the very thing which we don't care about, theism, and does not incur the implicit insult of "Bright"?

I like to think of myself as libertarian

You just equated the libertarian belief system with lying.

In all, that's what I expect from libertarians. They are a bunch of liars.

So do you "like to think of yourself" as a liar? I find this confusion rather annoying. Why not just sort out your ideas first before making unfounded, blanket denunciations?

Much like atheist/agnostic split where nearly all current agnostics fit the original definition of "atheist" but the church poisoned the definitions in an attempt to divide the heathens.

You ignore here both that the term agnostic was defined by a foe of organized religion and that the definition serves a useful non-ideological purpose, semantically distinguishing between an active disbelief in theism or the supernatural from one that doesn't have a belief one way or another due to the inherent unknowability of the problem.

There is absolutely no relation between thermodynamics laws and the need of an external entity. There is no guarantee that the universe is eternal and not even that it had a beginning, but even if any of these concepts could be proved it wouldn't still imply in the existence of any external factor.

Why precisely do you think there is no connection? The low-entropy boundary condition of our universe is enormously unlikely by probabilistic analysis. Why would a universe devoid of God conspire to create such a low-entropy condition? God, on the other hand, would prefer low-entropy universes. That means that low entropy counts as evidence more strongly confirming theism over atheism.

Bolded the first, is gobbledygook. Everything unlikely (ie not belonging to the set of impossible) has a probability P = 1 to happen, if given enough time.

Bolded the second, is nonsense. The universe is not going around doing shit. It just is.

And as for the universe having a beginning not implying the existence of any external factor, the only reason I can think you'd believe that is if you think some things exist without reason. And in this case the theist is doing better, because he is not content with non-answers - he wants to get to the truth of the matter. The atheist, on the other hand, often seems content to sit on no reason, no answer, as the explanation for something. I think that's telling, for those who typically pride themselves as the ones not satisfied with non-answers. As for me, I find Leibniz' Principle of Sufficient Reason quite compelling, and if atheism means discarding it, I'll stick with theism.

Bolded the third indicates the difference between theism and science. When confronted with the unknown, theism insists on an answer, even if logic and reason cannot propose one. Science says "I don't know". Despite what you may think, it's the former that's the non-answer, not the latter.

As to Leibniz, you might think the 'why' in propositions are 'what for' statements. They are not. They are 'how come' statements. It speaks to explanation, not purpose.

I think you misunderstand. I do not claim that values arise from any "religiously constructed ethics frame." I understand your use of the word, "religiously," to correspond with theism. Your own arbitrary definition of the good, and your claim of "relative and interchangeable ethics," is exactly what I mean. The subjectivity of good and evil signifies that all value judgments belong in a class of make-believe and imaginary things that are not universal nor provable; the same sort of things that Mr. Dawkins, paradoxically, thinks are bad.

My point is that the quality of being religious does not necessarily entail theism. What it certainly entails is a dogmatic faith in made-up stuff, such as the insistence that something is good or bad. Mr. Dawkins might prove that religion is irrational, but then he famously marches about telling us that the world would be better off without it. He's preaching his values and envisioning a world predicated upon them. That's what religious people do.

There is absolutely no relation between thermodynamics laws and the need of an external entity. There is no guarantee that the universe is eternal and not even that it had a beginning, but even if any of these concepts could be proved it wouldn't still imply in the existence of any external factor.

Why precisely do you think there is no connection? The low-entropy boundary condition of our universe is enormously unlikely by probabilistic analysis. Why would a universe devoid of God conspire to create such a low-entropy condition? God, on the other hand, would prefer low-entropy universes. That means that low entropy counts as evidence more strongly confirming theism over atheism.

And as for the universe having a beginning not implying the existence of any external factor, the only reason I can think you'd believe that is if you think some things exist without reason. And in this case the theist is doing better, because he is not content with non-answers - he wants to get to the truth of the matter. The atheist, on the other hand, often seems content to sit on no reason, no answer, as the explanation for something. I think that's telling, for those who typically pride themselves as the ones not satisfied with non-answers. As for me, I find Leibniz' Principle of Sufficient Reason quite compelling, and if atheism means discarding it, I'll stick with theism.

Would you become a theist if tomorrow you observed the second coming of Christ playing out more or less as Christians generally say it will? It seems to me by your own arguments an invasion by a naturally evolved advanced alien intelligence is far more probable than God. Once their forward agents noticed widespread belief in the Bible, their generals would proclaim "Easiest planetary takeover ever!" Your subsequent experience in heaven/hell is clearly just you being plugged into the Matrix. (My point being I strongly suspect that even in principle there is no possible evidence anyone could present to you that would convince you of theism.)

So do you think God - a Being with a volition, desires, preferences, consciousness, personality, etc - can spring from said void?

The classic special pleading of theism. The way they often get out of this is to claim that God is simple and not complex... this usually involves some hand waving about immaterial substances but avoids information theory and all other principles that undercut their position. Even Plantiga distances himself from Divine Simplicity but then envokes a certain flavor of it to counter Dawkins complexity argument.

With respect to the improbabilities of life in this universe the grandparent has not done his homework and is just retreating to a camoflauged god of the gaps argument.

I feel that there is an irony in one of the core premises of your work. The underlying story of basing one's propensities mainly from external facts as the only true realities necessary for understanding the traditional universe and claiming nonexistence beyond seems on its own based on a belief that is not a matter of fact. Godel's theorem states that any mathematical model will ultimately have at least one free variable. One can chose any arbitrary value; one value is no more a delusion than the other. As the science that you (we) rely on claims, the quantum states of the facts that you based theories on are always and only realized by an observer. At one extreme, the whole universe can be a complex intellectual illusion, at another extreme, there is no difference between a brain or a rock and the concept of wisdom, complexities and entropy are meaningless, and so is Occam's razor, which can be used as an argument to anything. And while the atheist proudly claims that his or her lives are more ordered and intellectually evolved to the theist, if they dig deeper they will ultimately find that the underlying foundation of the true and observable facts that they live by can potentially be nothing more than an illusion that is no less based on a belief than any of our mainstream religions and the poetic efforts therein to find consistency between a story and the observable universe.

Do you have any ideas on how to refute the claim that atheism is no less a belief system then true theism; how is one more of a delusion than the other? How are atheists that believe in some scientific model that is later found to be wrong or is superseded by a different understanding any different from theists in their approach to their belief?

on a subject when you don't have any beliefs in it?

I don't ask a blind person for for knowledge on color, because they don't have any beliefs on color.

What makes you qualified to present knowledge about Theism when you don't even have beliefs in that area?

It seems to be that there are many people who flatly reject the possibility of evolution because they see it as being against religion. I understand that this isn't a logical reason to reject evolution, but one of the reasons people see evolution as being against religion is that both Darwin (maybe unfairly) and yourself have been has been labeled as atheists and known as famous teachers of evolution. If my memory of your work is correct, you offer evolution as part of the argument against theism.

But isn't it harmful to the acceptance of science in general -- and evolution in particular -- to be tied to atheism, even if the connection is unfair or logically unsound? As a practical matter, wouldn't avoiding pitting religion against science help science -- especially in those parts of the world that most need science?

My apologies if anything here distorts what you have said or done.

Recently my brother underwent surgery for a pineal tumor, causing my Christian mother to tearfully question how god could allow such horrible things to happen. I chose not to discuss my thoughts on the issue with her, since I feel that at least some of my relatives would resent me for taking advantage of the crisis to "convert" her to atheism. After the surgery was successful, however, she's certain that her and our family's prayers led to god's intervention allowing a complication-free surgery. Any attempt I've made to bring up the idea that horrible things still happen to other people despite their family praying has led to the normal responses of "you just don't see god because you don't look for him", et al.

Do you feel that using a personal crisis to dissuade someone from theism is appropriate, or is it taking advantage of their fragile emotional state?

How can you be so confident in atheism with such lack of evidence

I'd bet it's roughly the same way you can be so confident of your theism with such lack of evidence.