I agree with many of those points.

By the way, I watched a programme on one of the religious channels on Sky, because it had Alister McGrath on and the programme was supposed to be a debate about whether god existed. Note of course that the three speakers on it were all practising Christians, McGrath being one of them, so obviously it biased discussion on an already religious channel......

Well, each of the speakers had their turn speaking and I recall the first speaker saying something so ludicrous that I would have expected Professor McGrath to correct him. BUT NOTHING WAS SAID.

Of course I was already frustrated with this biased discussion on a pre-existing religious channel, but what I watched firmly confirms what Greta said:

"When there are no atheists there, what they discuss amongst themselves is even more ridiculous" (my wording).

You see, when sophisticated theists are up debating any of our public intellectual atheists (and I watch them all), the words they say are much more 'sanitised' in the sense that they are not as open to humilation as they would have been had discourse been taken from their own community.

That is what annoys me, and I reiterate what I saw on a Christian channel with Alister McGrath present. I know amongst atheists gatherings, people will still criticise each other in a constructive way - just like in any scientific conference - but what I saw on TV with these three theists simply appalled me!!!!

Maybe this is one of the dangers of believing something without evidence?

Jon