Best Argument Against Biblical Fundamentalism

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From the "Atheist Experience" TV show. Even just the first video is enough.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hiw-ogmzeIM[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpkJT1p59To[/youtube]

Matt Dillahunty was a Christian for more than 20 years. He was studying to enter the Clergy. His studies led him to this conclusion. I think he is the most eloquent spokesman available to fill the shoes of Christopher Hitchens. What do you think?

He's pretty good. I would love to see him debate some televangelist some Sunday morning.

I haven't seen them yet, but he has had some formal debates to be found on YouTube. I think that the only reason he is not as well known as Mr. Dawkins, Harris, and Dennett is that he hasn't written any books. He has a regular job and (like everyone else on the show) does this in his spare time to encourage people to use reason and evidence to form their beliefs.

Well, it must be hard to be taken seriously if you haven't written any books and have a regular job.

Even if the books are complete jokes, like Glen Beck or Bill O'Reilly.

Often publishers will be more willing to publish a book if the "author" (not the ghost writer) is already well known. I don't know how many people have watched "The Atheist Experience" but it has a devoted cult following after hundreds of episodes over many years. The archived episodes (on YouTube etc.) and podcasts have also helped. If Dillahunty wrote a book, I suspect he could get it published. After that, the publishing company would help publicize it (via interviews, etc.) and fame would then snowball.

I would be interested to read of any other candidates to fill the shoes of Hitch.

Hmm. That's quite a claim.

I guess we'll see how good he is at cheerleading the upcoming war with Iran.

I was referring to his role as one of the "Four Horsemen" of Atheism.

Two of those people are deep thinkers whose atheism forms part of a more nuanced worldview. Two of them are demagogues who unquestioningly support US foreign policy while using a shallow version of atheism as a selling point.

I don't think that atheism could justify going to war, either in general, or a specific one. It only involves a lack of belief in a god.

The fact that Hitchens and from what you are saying another of them (Harris?) have a particular political view is a separate issue. I know Harris has spoken out against extremist Muslims who justify their terrorism with their particular religion. I am sure you agree with him about that. You apparently differ about going to war. Can you give me a link or a search phrase for more information about Harris' use of atheism to justify this political opinion?

Personally, I agreed with using the military in Afghanistan, but not Iraq.

Biblical fundamentalism (or rather Sola Scriptura as such, but especially fundamentalism) commits the same error as hard empiricism. The fundie says (theological) knowledge is to come from Scripture alone, but this isn't said in Scripture. Hence, he/she has already assumed a non-Scriptural idea as true.

Hard empiricism says (any) knowledge is to come from empiric research alone, but there's no way to prove that empirically. Hence, the hard empiricist has already assumed a non-empirically proved idea as true. Same error, different result. Interestingly, the hard empiricist also tends to be just as fanatic and hostile to other mindsets as the fundie. I find people in both groups difficult to befriend. The ones I know and actually became friends with, tend to be "soft fundies" and "soft hard empiricists"...

I removed your bolding of sections and bolded a section to highlight my point. There is no doubt that Sam Harris is an anti-theist. In other words, he is critical of religions. Showing deference to one religion by not criticizing it would serve no purpose except to appear to be politically correct. His point is that some religions are more objectionable than others. He has said so directly. I tried a Google search to find any direct quotes by him saying directly that he favors any war, and found no examples. Hitchens, on the other hand, did so.

Read between the lines. When something terrible is happening, all you need to do to support it is to constantly claim that people who oppose it are naive. Anyone who could describe the toppling of Saddam Hussein's secular Ba'ath party as a "religious war" has lost his mind. Anyone who would blame the victims of an illegal and bloody invasion for being religious, instead of blaming the invaders for the invasion, is just a useful idiot.

I am sure that you will acknowledge that in Iraq, a certain percentage of the perpetrators of I.E.D.'s are motivated by the desire to kill, or impose sharia law on the "infidels." If we hadn't invaded Iraq, we would be fighting those particular Jihadists in Afghanistan. Not all of the combatants are motivated by their religion, but some are.

Fascinating. You mean the jihadis who were hated and repressed by Saddam Hussein? Yes, I can see why you would want to topple the Hussein regime to kill those guys.

The Bible is a collection of documents concocted by Semitic peoples for Semitic needs. Most of us are not Semites. We non-Semites need to find spiritual vessels which are competent to hold our unique spiritual concerns. To most of us, most of the Bible is the rant of New Stone Age barbarians out to murder the peaceful peoples of the Canaanit plateau.

Later, there is Apocalypse, or Revelations, and read it! It is the jottings of a madman. Can you imagine what the learned Greeks thought when they came across this nonsense? After the light shed by Homer, the tragic playwrights, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and others?

The Middle East and its spinoffs are a poison to western minds.