No rational case for God = increasingly desperate attacks on atheists

[Mudhammam]

With moons and cheese we pretty much know what's being talked about. With gods, not so much.

That largely supports my argument. I can perhaps more easily say I KNOW there is no god either because 1) the definition given is incoherent and more or less meaningless, or 2) the proposition is as absurd as the something you'd see in the Matrix films or a moon composed of cheddar. If you look at any religious doctrine, it's about as likely as the ancient belief that the earth was carried by four elephants who stood on the back of a giant tortoise. Remember that even the most vague, meaningless combination of anthropomorphic terms used to define god, even the ones that seem possible,are borne from myths as ill-informed as the one I mentioned. There is no evidence for God and any being worthy of such a title appears incompatible with the Universe that actually exists, one which seems to suppress any capacity (he/she) it should have to intervene. Is the moon's cheesy crust really less believable?

So the two situations are light years apart. The possibility that something as large as the moon might actually consist of a processed dairy product is ridiculous on the face of it. To suggest that every theist believes something equally ridiculous is too black and white. You're tossing out the more worthy forms of belief by painting them with the same brush.

What are these "worthy" forms?

Rejecting fundy gods is easy. So choosing the example of a rapturing Jesus is hyperbole. It is choosing a version of god that is over the top and thus easily dismissed. Not every theist is going to have such easily dismissed beliefs.

What other gods matter or deserve the title? Why not call a quantum soup in a vacuum "god"? It's not really worthy.

How do you determine improvements made as a result of the liberalisation of religious doctrine as distinct from secularism? You can't, neither can anyone else.

MM

As Cato pointed out, you just revealed the fatal error in Gray's argument. All atheists/free thinkers/secularists leading up to the Enlightenment or who lived during that period were products of religion. The calls for liberalism in the Muslim world today, if they're reflective of the changes produced by the Church during the Middle Ages and later on, would also result in their own Spinozoas, Humes, Kants, Darwins, Marxs, Nietzsches, etc. etc. These were all religious adherents by heritage at one time or another, and they and others like them who stood up against the church are the ones who can be truly said to have liberalized religion.