Richard P:
I don’t think so, when was the last time an atheist bombed a church?

Don’t know if they were bombed, but the ideologically atheist Soviet Union closed and demolished a huge number.

Intolerance isn’t restricted to theists.

We are suspicious of overtly-religious people, as well we should be.

The average Brit doesn’t think about gods, doesn’t talk about them and really has better things with which to occupy themselves.

Hello?

We’re saying rational opinions are the only viewpoint for rational discussions in the public sphere. We don’t argue things “because there are no gods”.

He effectively admitted that religion was not rational, and yet wants irrationality to have a part of rational discussions?

Polytheistic religions are different, but noncontradictory.

That’s not actually true. Even amongst Hindus there are rival truth claims. For example, there are the Vaishnavas who consider Vishnu to be the main God and the Shaivas who consider Shiva to be the main God. There are also members of ISKCON who believe that Krishna (normally viewed as an incarnation of Vishnu) is the main God. Polytheists are perfectly capable of making conflicting claims.

Samuel Skinner:

You do realize that while the scientific method is recent, logic isn’t and neither is the idea that proof should be provided for claims.

Without the modern scientific mindset there was a very different understanding as to what counted as ‘proof’ for a claim. As I said before, religious texts were not of a lower standard than other written texts of the time.

On the Nature of Things is a good example where there is an attempt to explain how things work with theories instead of just stories, but really, the closest to accurate would be manuals on construction of buildings and machines.

“De rerum natura” by Lucretius is actually a poem describing Epicurean philosophy. It is not scientific theory by any stretch of the imagination. The concept of atoms put forward by the old philosophers is not the same as the idea of atoms we have today and they were being no more scientific than Thales was when he claimed that “everything is water”.

Yes, there was engineering back then. Does this mean that if they’d included a bit of writing concerning engineering in the Bible, you’d be happier with it?

After all, how much more useful would a holy book be if it gave instructions on how to make vaccines, better farming equipment or anything really.

There’s clearly only one explanation. God doesn’t like vaccines or modern farming equipment and these things are an abomination in the eyes of God. Stands to reason, eh? *wink*

Yes, no holy books reveal startling new technology. But what is this really meant to demonstrate?

Also, as I pointed out before, what about the religions which do not have holy texts (or at least do not hold their texts to have exceptional importance within the religion)?

Lovely stuff.

As for the theists…well I just shake my head. I don’t know whether I find it amusing or just bang-head-against-desk frustrating to hear the same old nonsense arguments.

One important thing I always like to point out when religious people accuse atheists of being disrespectful or intolerant of their beliefs is that respect should not be automatically given out to any religious belief, no matter how ridiculous and nonsensical it is. Respect should be earned, and I have yet to encounter any belief systems/religions that have earned my respect.