A slightly off-topic question: what do you think are McCain’s chances? Does it depend on whether Clinton or Obama is the Dem nominee?

The national polls say otherwise, but I think McCain’s chances are very low. Bush has a 30-odd % approval rating and McCain voted with Bush’s positions 95% and 89% in 2007 and 2006. (In 2007 he had the highest % in the entire Senate.)

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=57

Once the democrates settle on a nominee, I hope they can successfully paint McCain as a continuation of Bush policies. That would also work well with the result that 80% of the U.S. thinks the country is headed in the wrong direction.

I don’t know how much of that is hope and how much is clear-headed analysis. It’s not worth $0.02.

basically, he states that if only such a sophisticated theistic position would be espoused by all Christians, then he would have no problem with religion.

Indeed. So my dream with this site is to try to give people that option. If by raising awareness and education, everyone ends up thinking some more, having a “sophisticated theistic position” or a humanistic position, that’s great.

From comment 25 on Would You Please Reschedule Your Crisis?, de-conversion.com:

the chaplain: My loss of faith also proceeded from conservative through liberal belief to no god-belief. I think it may be a common path to de-conversion.

karen: I agree. Dan Barker describes a similar progression. His famous quote, “When I got to the end of the bathwater, I found out there was no baby!”

Even if people get “stuck” at the McLaren stage of liberal belief, or follow the non-theistic Christianity (!) of Spong, they are much better off – and so are we all – than those who are mired in fundamentalism.

The McLaren stage of “liberal belief” will be encouraged on this blog, as a good place to be, for those that are currently stuck in fundamentalism.

Posts like these and the other ones, are largely trying to hack out the stance of this blog, before I tackle the things that are of much greater concern.

I’m not sure Terry Eagleton is a theist. I think he is rather trying to explain what the “sophisticated theists” believe, and why Dawkins’ book is not responding to that.

Dawkins himself responds to this quite well, in my opinion…basically, he states that if only such a sophisticated theistic position would be espoused by all Christians, then he would have no problem with religion. But the majority of Christians don’t hold this position. They still believe in a real father-figure-in-the-sky, who sends angels and miracles and who fights against Satan and will return to earth in a blaze of glory at some unspecified time in the future.

Anyway, can we then agree that as a concept God most definitely exists? And that belief in this concept has an effect on people’s actions?

Most definitely!

I cannot even begin to parse this statement. Is this simply deferring the name God to the cause of the universe, if indeed it had such a thing? If so, we have no idea what caused it. Why use the name God? This is redefining the definition of God.

I’m not sure Terry Eagleton is a theist. I think he is rather trying to explain what the “sophisticated theists” believe, and why Dawkins’ book is not responding to that. And yes, “sophisticated theology” is something quite abstract and hard to understand. Wikipedia paragraph about the review:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Eagleton#Religion

On the rest of your comments, yes, I’m using “exist” in a sense that you could argue that the FSM also does “exist”. Clearly I’m not talking about the materialistic sense… “Exists as a concept”? Sure. Like zero or a theory. But I’d not want to say “like fairies”, as fairies are defined as existing in the real material sense.

From the Eagleton review again:

Believing in God, whatever Dawkins might think, is not like concluding that aliens or the tooth fairy exist. God is not a celestial super-object or divine UFO, about whose existence we must remain agnostic until all the evidence is in. Theologians do not believe that he is either inside or outside the universe, as Dawkins thinks they do. His transcendence and invisibility are part of what he is, which is not the case with the Loch Ness monster.

Anyway, can we then agree that as a concept God most definitely exists? And that belief in this concept has an effect on people’s actions?

He is, rather, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever, including ourselves. He is the answer to why there is something rather than nothing.

I cannot even begin to parse this statement. Is this simply deferring the name God to the cause of the universe, if indeed it had such a thing? If so, we have no idea what caused it. Why use the name God? This is redefining the definition of God.

Because all three groups, described this way, implicitly believes that God “exists”.

No. Group number two can argue that God is a concept. It exists as much as the concept of the FSM, or fairies, or zero, or phylogenetic theory. Because one can imagine an infinite number of concepts or ideas, only those that can actually be tested against evidence are ideas that exist. The rest are patterns of neurons firing.

In terms of deducing the existence of something based on the empirically testable effects that that thing has, God most definitely does have an effect, therefore does exist. Even if you don’t believe in the supernatural or in divine “intervention”, having a belief in God has a very real impact on the believer and their approach to life.

Again, I disagree. The second sentence (which I agree with) does not logically follow from the first. If you are arguing that the actions of believers are evidence that God exists, then you are unnecessarily imposing an extra assumption on a more basic idea, namely that people act on beliefs. The God assumption is irrelevant. No matter the impact of the belief on the life of a believer, such an impact does not mean the belief is real.

ps. If all theists understood what Terry Eagleton understands about Christianity and such theologically informed doctrines, Dawkins would not have written that book. Or it would have looked very different. According to Eagleton, Dawkins “understands nothing of these traditional doctrines”. I’d point out that most likely, that merely reflects Christian fundamentalism’s lack of understanding of these doctrines, as that is what he is responding to.

I couldn’t agree more. God has different meanings to different people. So long as people believe in meanings that can be evaluated against the real world, most of those meanings can be disproven and discarded. But most people would not recognise the god that would emerge on the other side of such an approach…such a God would be stripped of virtually all recognisable aspects.

Ben Jammin:

Politics are soooo depressing right now. I don’t know what we should do if McCain gets elected. Canada? Europe? Stay put and endure?

Good luck. A slightly off-topic question: what do you think are McCain’s chances? Does it depend on whether Clinton or Obama is the Dem nominee?

How do you feel about Obama’s religion, or views on religion, btw?

Disappointed. But, that’s to be expected. He buys into the pseudo science about vaccines, and his energy ideas are only mediocre. Better than his competition but that’s not saying much.

Politics are soooo depressing right now. I don’t know what we should do if McCain gets elected. Canada? Europe? Stay put and endure?

How do you feel about Obama’s religion, or views on religion, btw? With reference to e.g. this: http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2008/03/obama-bible-and-separation-of-church.html

There’s probably a better post discussing this. Maybe the Friendly Atheist also shared that piece? I originally discovered Obama via his blog. I know he likes Obama… I assume he still does?

(However, isn’t Islamic terrorism more political than religious?)

The separation of religion from politics is not present in Islamic countries. The religion IS politics.

FYI: http://boards.fool.com/Message.asp?mid=26601055

Fundamentalist American Christianity wants to roll back the Enlightenment.