No rational case for God = increasingly desperate attacks on atheists

[ManMachine]

I would challenge your statement that 'scientists' criticism of religion is largely a philosophical debate', I don't agree. I would suggest that intellectual criticism of religion is a largely philosophical debate, not all scientists are intellectual, it doesn't follow that a person good at scientific endeavour is a good philosopher.

It's wrong to claim that it is not a philosophical debate simply because you think some of the participants aren't good philosophers. Testing for the existence of god in and of itself can be a scientific endeavor; however, the dearth of available evidence quickly invokes philosophy even if it's just a discussion regarding justification of belief. If not specifically addressing truth claims, religious discussions boil down to ethical debates. How is this not philosophical?

Are you perhaps narrowly defining doing philosophy as something that only educated academic professional philosophers can engage in? Even they can make mistakes, like your man Gray and his constant equivocation of secularism and religion.

Fair comment. You're right, there are lots of bad philosophers that doesn't make the debate any less about philosophy, just a bad debate, but I think Gray's point is valid regardless of that. He is not saying bad philosophers are not allowed to be philosophers, he is saying it's a bad thing to try to use scientific thinking to counter religion, which is, after all, more philosophy than it is science.

Of course I'm not suggesting educated academics are the only people who engage in philosophy, otherwise for one, this board wouldn't have so many participants. It is healthy and largely constructive (if some of the individual topics are not so) to have people debate their philosophical point of view.

But I think if Dawkins or any other philosopher puts themselves out there then it's fair game for the academic philosophers to make comment, I'd even say it's kind of a validation of Dawkins standing in the public eye in some ways, I'm sure if Gray made public statements about Evolutionary Genetics then Dawkins' opinion on that would be considered a valuable one.

To put all this into context, Gray is building a case and making a specific point about what he calls 'secular fundamentalism' not secularism in general. There is a danger that can be inferred to mean there is a subgroup of secularists who are fundamentalists, I don't think that is what Gray is saying, he is saying we do not recognise fundamentalism, which can occur in any ideology, in secularism and that it is easy to cross the line (as illustrated through his given example of Dawkins' 'meme') without being checked.

Rightly or wrongly I think what Gray is attempting to do is redress the balance of criticism in the overall debate and puncture the bubble of complacency that has led to the misuse of scientific thinking outside its proper context, that can only be healthy, can't it?

MM