that his book is just badly written trash, and not even worth the time to read it all the way through, regardless of what it supports or defends?

then his claim that atheists are "collectively opposed" to his book is bullshit.

Sounds more like whiny victimhood by another "thank god I'm not like those other atheists" atheist.

Do you respect the harsh versions of God and intolerant believers more than the peace and love versions and liberal believers? If so, is it in part because you want the face of Christianity to be as repellent as possible so it can be defeated more easily?

for not taking his book seriously consider him a shallow, condescending, fence-straddling twit, who kisses up to both sides just to sell books and get on NPR, rather than taking a courageous intellectual position on anything.

I am simply likely to be less critical of the ways some people practice and preach their religion than others. But the "face of Christianity" is what it is, regardless of what I or any other atheist "wants" it to be. And it usually makes an easy target.

I'm surprised it has 8 reviews.

Anyhow he came over the other day to borrow a really expensive tool I happen to have and I spent an hour helping him load it on his truck and strap it down and did the reverse a couple of days later. This is not the first time either. In his favor he scraped my dirt driveway with a tractor recently when he did a lot of work on his own much longer dirt driveway.

I'd say he thinks I'm his neighbor.

* Like pretty much everyone who isn't family and even some family don't know and the ones who do seem to "forget" about it on a fairly regular basis too.

I married into a family of conservative Mormons (my wife left the church years ago). They had no trouble helping with and attending our UU wedding, and we can even discuss religion and politics without it being the end of the world.

In the case of christianity it doesn't matter how watered down and nice you make it. They still point to the bible and still bring up the human sacrifice to appease an angry bloodthirsty warmonger tyrant god. I don't care if you bury it all in nice words and ignore with all your heart the bad parts its all still there. Still being perpetuated. Ready to be brought to the fore by the next powermonger who sees the opportunity. Cut out the automatic respect religion gets. Cut out the automatic assumption that religion makes someone good. Ideas must stand or fall on their own merits or we are just that much more susceptible to uplifting the next tyrant.

But notice what else you've done: the "nice" forms of Christianity are "watered down". Does that not imply that the harsh versions are full strength?

That's not an equal lack of respect. It seems pretty clear which form of Christianity you treat as the real deal, and which you treat as the pale imitation.

a person saying some unnamed atheists say they respect the Calvinist God.

weak indeed.

And there are many reasons not to review a book. Time the most prominent one.

...but that doesn't mean I "respect" that kind of Christianity more, I'm just happier with the results of it. Fundamentalism can (but not always) be more internally self-consistent than liberal theology, but that isn't enough to garner respect either.

I certainly respect a person for being loving and tolerant rather than hateful and bigoted, but that respect is for the person, not for any religion to which they might subscribe.

if an atheist doesn't accept "free will" as a canned answer to theodicy, then they MUST be a hard-and-fast determinist (just like Calvinists, but without the god!).

Never mind that most of the research done into the phenomenon we label "free will" has shown it to be a very complicated internal mechanism employed by our brain to rationalize decisions it makes for us.

The whole notion is way too complex to insist it be thrown into tidy bins of "free will" versus "absolute determinism," but this is too difficult to accept for people like Mr. Rauser, and so we get this electronic spew.

"Free will" is the only response that thousands of years of theological thought has been able to come up with to try and defend against theodicy, so it is understandable that so many professional and armchair theologians get upset when it is questioned. It's their last hope!

Mr. Rauser has a long and fascinating history of having his hat handed to him every time he tries to counter atheist arguments. This incident appears no different. Unable to defend his position, he attacks and insults atheists. Nothing new here.

They assume: A) free will is actually a thing, and B) assume free will is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

I remain unconvinced on both counts.

So when a priest exercises his free will to rape a child, why doesn't that child's free will NOT to get raped enter into the picture?

Just like how dead kids are an unfortunate consequence of the right to bear arms.

I don't buy the former any more than the latter, but it amazes me how so many people who rightly refute the second assertion buy into the first hook, line, and sinker.

I've heard some desperate apologists even try to claim that someone no one would ever be hurt by a natural disaster if people had used their free will to avoid being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

You expect this kind of bullshit from wingnuts, but there's even a left-wing version of this where any and all harm caused to humans by kindly Mother Nature is because people did something "unnatural" to throw nature out of "balance".

Yeah, that's a tough one.