Arcanus,

My reference to "drive-by trolling" was prompted by your unsubstantiated assertions concerning the "indefensibility" of atheism, but as you've replied to my comment I'm happy to accept that my suspicions (they were no more than that) were wrong.

Nevertheless I'd still be interested to hear you articulate the indefensibility of atheism, in particular that it "cannot withstand intellectual honesty". (If you feel it would be inappropriate to do so here, please post a link to a more appropriate place, perhaps even to somewhere you have already addressed this issue.)

I wondered if the latest campaign was perhaps a little low-key, but thanks to Ruth Gledhill and The Times it's getting plenty of coverage.

Also, it's symptomatic of the absurd sensitivity of religious folks that they are consistently misinterpreting the campaign, reading all sorts of evil subtext into a simple message — that children shouldn't be labelled with the religion of their parents. The ads say nothing about "brainwashing" or "child abuse", but some of the articles covering the campaign are written as if the ads are a vicious attack on people of faith.

What's the difference between an atheist and a "militant" atheist? Answer: a militant atheist is one who actually speaks.

This is good news (if it pans out). I'm assuming this will apply to all the IQ2 debates? Will video be archived (and freely available) — or is that reserved for the DVDs for sale?

First, he is correct that atheism cannot withstand intellectual honesty, but I doubt he could rationally articulate why.

Can you? I'd be interested to hear it articulated because I'm of the opinion that my own atheism is derived with intellectual honesty.

Weak atheism is indefensible too, but that is a much more complicated target to hit.

I note that this statement (as with the other I quoted) is as yet an unsubstantiated assertion. (I hope this will be followed up, otherwise it might appear that the above comment is nothing more than drive-by trolling.)

Robert,

You might start by explaining that atheism and agnosticism are not mutually exclusive. One can be an agnostic atheist, or an agnostic theist, or a gnostic atheist ("I know there are no gods"), or a gnostic theist ("I know my God exists"). Agnosticism is lack of knowledge, while atheism is lack of belief.

As for not knowing everything there is to know, I don't categorically know that leprechauns, fairies and unicorns don't exist somewhere in an area I don't know about. But I have beliefs about the existence or non-existence of these things, based on empirical evidence and logical reasoning.

Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion has a scale of knowledge of the existence of a god or gods, ranging from zero for absolute conviction that God exists, to seven for absolute conviction that God doesn't exist. He rates himself somewhere between six and seven, saying that though he can't categorically attest the non-existence of God, God's existence is extremely unlikely. That's good enough for me.

I'm going to this, so I might see you (in the pub and/or at the debate).

It's likely to be a far gentler affair than the recent rout of the Catholics at Westminster Hall. Dawkins and Harries seem to be best buddies despite occupying opposite sides. I don't know about Charles Moore, but Anthony Grayling is hardly fundamentalist in his atheism. But that could make it a more challenging debate — being "militant" and "strident" in opposition to the motion would simply concede points to the other side.

Looking forward to it.

I knew you were busy (looks like I got you for Skepticule just in time!) but I'm subscribed to your blog, and look forward to your considered posts ;)

Glad you met Ariane Sherine — she was great at TAM London (oops, perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned that...)

UK Channel 4 TV showed a documentary The Virgin Daughters a while back, about purity balls. I found it profoundly disturbing.

Ridicule is often the only way, it seems to me, to perforate the shield that religion has built around it — that it's wrong (or at least in extremely poor taste) to criticise religion in any way.

At the Intelligence Squared debate at Wellington College last year, where the motion was "Atheism is the new fundamentalism", Richard Dawkins was asked if there may be a God. He replied that there may be a leprechaun. Lord Harries, who proposed the motion, took extreme exception to this comment.

To me this illustrates why ridicule can sometimes be the only way of pointing out that religious belief has no foundation in reality.

When I say that atheists have "morals", I am not suggesting that they have accidentally or mystically been imbued with some moral sense beyond all reason. I am merely pointing out that (1) they can frequently live moral lives despite (2) the lack of rational support for those morals. This is not an accident and seems to me to be primarily derived from culture (which in our region of the world was at least recently largely Christian, which helps to account for major similarities), conscience (divine instillation of basic morality), and the initial reasonableness of certain moral principles (no one wants to be killed and killing them for no reason seems unfair) even if closer examination raises significant questions giving a particular world view.

"Primarily derived from culture" works for me, and the fact that it's largely Christian culture is (again, for me) an accident of history. But adding "conscience" seems tautological. I don't see conscience as something divinely instilled, but merely a psychological expression of the morality derived from culture. And if certain moral principles seem reasonable, whether initially or enduring for eons, that's because they too derive from a culture that is similarly enduring. I see no need for any other explanation — no need for a rational basis for such morality, over and above the "accident" of culture, which to me seems a rational explanation in itself.