Flann 5 wrote:Hi Interbane,
I feel I'm having to repeat myself a lot and it just gets a bit wearying. As an historian Carrier accepts Josephus on James. I'm just taking Carrier on his own premises. He also acknowledges that these novels are entirely fictional.
I don't mean to be disrespectful and appreciate your taking the trouble to respond. It is never ending it seems, so I have to end somewhere.
I've noticed that the commonality between atheists like Interbane and Tulip is that they seem to be on an imaginary crusade.
Tulip, in his Da Vinci thread, stated the following (emphasis mine)
Christians tend towards bigotry, and I am working to overthrow their whole supernatural paradigm for understanding reality by revealing the hidden purpose of their myths. By and large I find that Christians are too emotional about these topics to enable a sensible conversation.
And It's well established that Interbane's "vested interest in the future" (he knows what I'm talking about here) motivates him to correct theism's delusional worldview (he has explicitly stated here on booktalk that I am delusional) every chance he gets.
If religion is nothing more than an evolutionary meme, there is no questioning its importance to the survival of the species.
Oh sure, it has lots of faults that are tied directly to politics and power, but history tell us it has been more valuable to our survival than "rational godlessness"
To think that religion can be stamped out by declaring some sort of generalized pseudo intellectual war on theism is to suffer from delusions of grandeur.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandiose_delusions
Oddly, there is a religious theme to this psychosis, despite the host claiming not to have any religious delusions to speak of.Grandiose delusions (GD) or delusions of grandeur is principally a subtype of delusional disorder that occurs in patients suffering from a wide range of mental illnesses, including two-thirds of patients in manic state of bipolar disorder, half of those with schizophrenia and a substantial portion of those with substance abuse disorders.[1][2] GDs are characterized by fantastical beliefs that one is famous, omnipotent, wealthy, or otherwise very powerful. The delusions are generally fantastic and typically have a supernatural, science-fictional, or religious theme. There is a relative lack of research into GD, in comparison to persecutory delusions and auditory hallucinations. About 10% of healthy people experience grandiose thoughts but do not meet full criteria for a diagnosis of GD