Instead I shall define the God Hypothesis more defensibly: there exists a super-human, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us. This book will advocate an alternative view: any creative intelligence, of sufficient complexity to design anything, comes into existence only as the ( Read more... )

In the next section his book The God Delusion, Dawkins writes of the "abnormally thick wall of respect" which he feels is placed around religious discussion. He posits that while it is quite possible to have disagreements over politics, operating systems, or football teams with perfect calm and acceptability, religion is granted a special status ( Read more... )

I'm more or less going to post my comments and observations as I go through the book, ergo, this will look a lot more like notes and commentary than like essays.

Of course, dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads are immune to argument, their resistance built up over years of childhood indoctrination...Dawkins doesn't seem to consider that there are some of ( Read more... )

A Note on the Date: I found this dating convention on the Northvegr Foundation website and think it's a very good idea. I'll be using this date format to denote my daily journal entries.The past couple of days have been hectic, but well worth it. We spent the better part of Friday evening and all of Saturday getting ready for Lana's birthday party ( Read more... )

I had thought to quote Dawkins directly from the God Delusion and respond to specific things, but as I seem to have left my notes at the office, I'm going to wing it with a general look at how a different viewpoint on deity makes some atheist arguments against religion in general specious. I will note that I am particularly looking at this from the ( Read more... )

Lana and I just finished a short Disting blöt, during which I made an oath that has been long in coming ( Read more... )

I'm listening to Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" as an audiobook, and learning a great deal about his arguments against theism generally and monotheism particularly. I've been an admirer of his work for some time, and can honestly say that it was at least in part because of him that I had my brief consideration of atheism ( Read more... )

Actually, now I do, but I had a devil of a time finding it ( Read more... )

There is an interesting conversation starting up over on sca about a new interpretation of Viking era women's dress. While I'm not convinced that what Larsson is proposing is exactly on the mark for Rus clothing of the period (looks a bit drafty to me), it does give pause to think about what the original heathens might have thought about nudity. The ( Read more... )

Yumpin' yiminy, it has been far too long since I've been able to really write here. Ergo, this is the official relaunch of my journal ( Read more... )