That said, I think this is probably the longest mostly civil comment thread on this particular topic in the entire history of the Internet, and I want to thank each of you for making it so. You guys rock.

I think the problem with the prominent atheists is that you don’t get there without being radically argumentative. Even a whiff of compromise and social complexity loses you momentum.

I, for example, don’t think the evils of religion are a result of the existence of religion. I think they are the result of the fact that religions are run by people. And people do that kind of thing. any organisation with that much power would have a good chance of ending up the same way, whether or not it includes any sort of imaginary friend.

That is, in fact, my sole objection to religious organisations, and it is not limited to those organisations. It’s something that applies to the whole of humanity: Power Corrupts.

Religion, mostly, gives certain people, ie priests, the kind of power I wouldn’t trust my mother with, let alone some guy whose selection criteria are basically “reads the bible a lot and doesn’t have sex with anyone.”

The taboo against blasphemy extends in almost all religious cases to cover the priests of that religion, who are after all “speaking for god” – that is their role. So questioning them becomes more difficult the higher they are in the hierarchy.

Religion doesn’t start wars. It can’t – religion isn’t an entity. People USE religion to start wars. I’m not a fan of ANYTHING that gives people yet another excuse to kill each other, which is why I’m not a fan of religion, but it’s by no means the only evil available. It’s not, for example, as bad as racism, which has probably started the same amount of wars, or even more if you count the ones where religious leaders played on racism to incite the mob, and has zero redeeming qualities, unlike religion which is by all accounts a comfort to huge quantities of people who might otherwise find a more destructive opiate.

In short, I’m not sure why anyone is advocating the destruction of religion. I don’t TRUST it, sure, but the vast religious spectrum throughout history suggests that people are pretty much inevitably going to reinvent it no matter what. So it is probably more USEFUL to deal with it as a social phenomenon than to summon the mob with flaming torches.

You would certainly have a powerful case if I had been making a general argument rather than writing an email that I knew would be posted on a website read by people I do not anticipate ever meeting. Let’s apply your logic to the actual context to prove Vox Day exists. Here’s the required declaration: “I exist.”

Now, given this demonstration that my mere Internet assertion is sufficient to prove existence, I shall prove God exists: “God exists.”

Do you accept these twin proofs of the existence of both Vox Day and God? Or do you recognize that my previous statement was not ridiculous given the context in which it was made? I submit that the latter is the more rational conclusion.

Well, so far we’ve established that at least one of Vox’s arguments (the fractal) supports rather than refutes Dawkins; at least one of his arguments (the packet sniffers) doesn’t address what Dawkins actually said; and at least one of his arguments (the lack of a strong crane) isn’t central to Dawkins’ point.

The fractal doesn’t support Dawkins. On the basis of his informational metric, the fractal only has to ultimately produce more information to be deemed more complex than either the equation or the equation’s programmer. Since it is infinite, it must be more complex. Also, the imperfection of the natural fractals doesn’t change the fact that they still have several levels of complexity, so you improperly ruled them out of bounds.

Now personally, I don’t think the arguments in the God Delusion are much cop. Having charged through The Irrational Atheist, however, all I can say from my perspective is that nearly all the counter-arguments in it are at best statistical (Harris’ interpretation of limited data; possibly the wars caused by religion) and at worst irrelevant.

I would think that statistical counter-arguments are quite appropriate when statistical and quantifiable arguments have been made. Again, I note that Harris has conceded several points and also provided an insufficient defense of his central thesis. (My attack on his Extinction Equation and proof by his own metric that science is more dangerous than faith cannot possibly be considered a genetic fallacy, according to the definition of genetic fallacy.)

So I’ve tried to engage with the actual arguments, but remain unconvinced.

So, you still buy into the Extinction Equation and the Red State argument? You believe that Dan Dennett has reasonably justified a scientific doxastic division of labor while condemning a moral one? You still believe that religion is a primary cause of war, conflict, and murder, and that the Inquisition is one of the worst tragedies of human history? I doubt it.

Also, it seems that this thread has attracted a number of commentators from Vox’ blog – but it looks like they didn’t get the memo that his arguments have nothing to do with religion. Ironic.

They were arguing about things that are tangential to the book’s subject in direct response to many of the comments made here. If you read the related thread on my blog, some of those very commenters were marveling at the determination of many Whatever commenters to focus on topics that are explicitly outside the book’s scope. So, while I disagree with several of your statements, I have to say that your ability to focus on the topic at hand and not go chasing after red herrings is commendable.

I note that the blog Evangelical Realism is doing a chapter-by-chapter look at TIA, as of today they have 21 posts on this book. Vox Day will not respond to these posts until all of TIA is done, according to the March 19 post.

No, I won’t, since I’m already in the middle of a chapter-by-chapter debate with Kelly of the Rational Response Squad. I don’t think the chapter-by-chapter thing is very useful unless you’ve read the whole book first, as both ER’s and Kelly’s attacks on things that are dealt with in later chapters tend to demonstrate.

I have never seen a convincing proof on god, or even any evidence of the god talked about by most religions. I have never seen a convincing way of calculating probabilities, either — that’s not as quantitative as most people expect, given a dearth of repeatable evidence.

A bit shallow. You can do better.

Anyhow, since you appear to be incapable of understanding basic logic I’m just going to write you off as an uneducated fool and stop wasting my time on you.

Nietzsche, really? I saw it on an episode of Babylon 5. Impressive, them quoting Nietzsche like that.

Btw when you say I can’t understand basic logic I take it you’re referring to that whole you can’t prove a negative thing. One tiny problem is that’s not actually true. That’s an example of “folk logic” (also called bullshit). One actual law of real logic (as opposed to that stuff you make up to suit your own purposes) is a negative. It’s the law of non-contradiction. This law states that a proposition can’t be both true and untrue. This law can be proven using rules of inference.

Since any claim can be expressed as a negative because of double negation (proposition a is logically equivalent to not-not proposition a)you could go around proving negatives all day. At the beginning Vox said something truly ridiculous, he said he couldn’t prove he existed. This is obviously wrong. All he’d need to do is find the person he wanted to prove his existence to and walk up and slap him in the face (granted just saying he existed would do the same, but it doesn’t have quite the same dramatic touch). To prove a negative all he’d have to do is say Vox Day doesn’t not exist (which is horrible grammar, but fine as a logical proposition) then smack the person. He then would’ve proven a negative.

Don’t take my word for it. Tomorrow call a university in your area, ask for someone who teaches logic. Then ask him if it’s actually true you can’t prove a negative. After he has a nice chuckle about this urban myth he’ll explain it for you.

Well don’t wanna waste anymore of you’re valuable time.

in any existance with God we are nothing but the mental play toys of the largest posible “brain in empty space dreaming forever” so again does life have any meaning?

in an existance without God life and experiance has meaning because it actualy exists outside a mind and will continue after that mind is gone.

that’s just me, and I could be wrong but life is what you make it and spending time on invisible sky daddies is not my idea of fun

Now personally, I don’t think the arguments in the God Delusion are much cop. Having charged through The Irrational Atheist, however, all I can say from my perspective is that nearly all the counter-arguments in it are at best statistical (Harris’ interpretation of limited data; possibly the wars caused by religion) and at worst irrelevant.

So I’ve tried to engage with the actual arguments, but remain unconvinced. Also, it seems that this thread has attracted a number of commentators from Vox’ blog – but it looks like they didn’t get the memo that his arguments have nothing to do with religion. Ironic.

(“As I mentioned previously, I’m going to let Evangelical Realism finish his review of TIA before responding to it in its entirety, but since I had a request to respond to one of his more amusing attempts, I shall do so here.”)

That vox-response-having post, along with relevant links, provides a useful summary of the style and method of both ER and Vox Day.

And other scientists that struck gun butts into Jewish children’s skulls to test…oh, BS,

Spoken like a complete nutbag bible-whomping imbecile.