I just wanted to thank Poligazette.com and the people who have been leaving comments here for taking notice of my video. Thanks, and it’s been great reading everyone’s comments.

Thanks to you Al. Feel free to do more videos that save me the effort of actually writing long blog posts of my own

Kidding, thanks for stopping by!

Could you elaborate on "My only point in turning that back on you is that it is YOUR system of thought that requires proof, not mine" because I don’t follow your logic here at all. Physicist have done a remarkable job of explaining how the Universe is the way it is since the time of the big bang, all done by following the empirical evidence, without the need to introduce anything supernatural. So you have the proof already. So what is your point? Are there still outstanding questions? Absolutely, and if the history of science can serve as a guide, most of these questions will eventually be answered and its unlikely that God will be necessary to explain any of them.

With regard to your point "You still may disagree with the theology or find it unnecessary in your personal life, but the fact is that your call for a ‘better system of morality’ will still require someone to be the arbiter of what is better." I don’t see a problem with this, it can be codified in laws by consensual agreement  just as we do today with any set of local, state and federal laws. The difference is that these laws will be based on our knowledge of what is good for individuals and society through rational discourse and not because some God commands it. If you think this is preposterous consider the following two examples.

i) The majority of Budhists, some 350 million people world wide, essentially do not believe in a God at all (certainly not a personal God as in Christianity or Islam) . So, where does their morality come from? It comes from the Buddha, who explicitly stated that he was a man and not divine. He told them specifically how they should behave to live a moral life! I think most people would agree that by and large Budhists are very moral non-violent individuals. And this morality is entirely based on what a man decided is moral, NOT A GOD.

ii) Pyschology, including studies of our closest relatives the chimpanzees, is showing ever more convincingly that our morality is hard wired into us through evolution. From an evolutionary perspective its not hard to understand why a huge majority of people find murder entirely reprehensible. It would likely be impossible to build communal societies if murder was morally acceptable. Hence we have descended from people that long ago were selected through evolution to have a strong repugnance for murder. In essence, what these studies are indicating is that religion arose in part to justify moral behaviors that were already hard wired into human behavior due to evolutionary development. Hence, we as Humans should not have that much problem defining a morality since much of it is already hardwired into our brains. I’m not saying that it will be trivial, but I don’t see any reason why it can’t be done without ever requiring a God for justification.

My only point in turning that back on you is that it is YOUR system of thought that requires proof, not mine. So by pointing out the impossibility of disproving God’s existence, I’m simply reminding you that by your own standard, you can’t falsify my hypothesis. If you think it an extremely unlikely one which isn’t worth your time to consider, that’s your prerogative, but I’ve already stated why I don’t think you should consider it an illogical hypothesis and why I think it’s worthy of consideration (the moral system of theology that derives from it if done properly in conjunction with reason.)

And there are ways of applying reason to religious beliefs to see if they hold up to a standard of reason. Our current pope has written extensively on faith and reason. You still may disagree with the theology or find it unnecessary in your personal life, but the fact is that your call for a ‘better system of morality’ will still require someone to be the arbiter of what is better. Current secular thought in our culture focuses on what is ‘good’ for the individual, without regard to a moral compass that perhaps was instilled by a God who had specific designs for us. That is one view, which stands in conflict at times with the religious view. Because you find it more rational and more likely to be the correct morality doesn’t make it so.
Now, any believer who engages in political discussions by claiminig that their view is right because God told them so is not engaging in a rational manner. Yet there’s no reason that his/her view that is founded on a belief in God’s plan for mankind should abstain from promoting his/her viewpoint- he’s just obviously not going to convince anyone of its merits unless he can describe the rationale in different terms.
In the end though, we’re all trying to get at what we think is morally ‘good’. Religious believers look toward a personified figure who is ‘good’, while secular humanists believe that we can rationally determine morality by focusing on an abstract idea of ‘good’.

"Then deal with the cases which are not benign instead of fighting against religious belief in general."

But this is exactly the point! Religious belief, because it is NOT based on any factual evidence, leaves interpretation up to the practitioner who can then interpret their religious texts any way they wish for both good and bad! You cannot distinguish between moral and immoral solely from a religious text as most contradict themselves many times over. During the civil war both proponents of slavery and abolitionists eagerly quoted the bible to justify their point of view. So, whose interpretation was correct? Today there is a huge schism among Christians regarding gay rights, again both sides eagerly quote the bible to justify their position. So which side is right? Ultimately, you CANNOT rely on religion to get it right because in many important instances it won’t! In other words, religious belief is a complete mixed bag where upon many good things can and have been done, but many terrible things as well. We need a better system to provide morality, one based on sound rational thought unfettered by the bonds of dogma.

Now with regard to another point raised by C. Stanley

"I understand you and didn’t really mean that you feel that religious believers should ‘prove’ their faith. But I feel it’s an important point where antitheists go wrong, because they won’t accept faith in a Creator as a valid viewpoint because the believers can’t produce physical evidence, when the believers are specifically saying that we know that we can’t prove the existence of God. All we wish for nonbelievers to acknowledge is that they can’t prove His nonexistence either, and there are certain reasons that it’s not illogical to presume a creator (we have no experience of any existence of matter or energy in the universe forming without the hand of a creator, thus this presumption is actually the more intuitive one rather than presuming a spontaneous formation of matter or positing that time and the existence of our universe stretches backward infinitely.)"

Of course we can’t prove the non existence of God, its not logically possible to prove a negative. However, since you assert that such a being exits, the burden of proof lies with you. I can make all kinds of ridiculous assertions that you cannot disprove, e.g. the earth is being monitored by highly intelligent extraterrestrials and depending on our behavior will or won’t be admited to a Galactic Federation. Prove this isn’t true! Or, we are all living inside a huge sophisticated alien computer simulation (as in the Matrix) and our reality is completely virtual. Prove this isn’t true! The point is that if I make any assertions like these, I’d better come up with some evidence to back it up or you will never, justifiably, believe me! I think that every single atheist would accept the existence of God, or gods, if the evidence presented itself. E.g. Jesus materializing out of the blue to tell me how wrong I am would be pretty convincing!

Finally the statement "that it is not illogical to presume a creator" because we don’t know how the Big Bang came about is a complete non-sequitur and a common logical fallacy that believers fall into. Based on the evidence at hand we simply cannot say anything about the time before the Big Bang, but this in and of itself does not at all require the necessity of a creator. Until we know more, we just cannot say. And if you think that there are not scientific hypothesis, devoid of any supernaturalism, that address this question, you’d be wrong. See for example http://archive.sciencewatch.com/jan-feb2004/sw_jan-feb2004_page1.htm, 3rd pargraph down. Now as far as I’m concerned, I’ll pay attention to this idea when, if ever, it can be confirmed by some piece of physical evidence.

I’ll reiterate, that the term ‘militant’ has more than one meaning. Also note that almost all political debates tend to take on the language of fighting- political ‘battles’, ‘clash of ideas’, hell, even the word ‘campaign’ comes from war lexicon. That’s the nature of it because people hold firmly to beliefs and fight for what they believe in; use of fight terms does not, however, necessarily involve violence and in fact it usually does not. 

I don’t know of any of those writers calling for banning of religion either, but what I do object to is that they are waging a propagandistic campaign against religion. Look at the commenters here, including yourself, and ask whether or not ANY of them have taken time to study the belief systems with an open mind to see if there is relative good in them which can benefit mankind. Can you, or any of the other agnostic/atheistic commenters here, honestly say that you’ve given equal time to read about positive views of Christianity (or religious faith in general) to counterbalance the negative views that you read from Dawkins, Dennet, Hitchens, et al?

So no, the greatest crime of these writers isn’t being ‘a bombastic douche’, it’s being propagandists because they constantly beat the drum against religion and ignore the positive side. They and their followers are guilty of a lack of intellectual integrity with that unbalanced view.

I understand you and didn’t really mean that you feel that religious believers should ‘prove’ their faith. But I feel it’s an important point where antitheists go wrong, because they won’t accept faith in a Creator as a valid viewpoint because the believers can’t produce physical evidence, when the believers are specifically saying that we know that we can’t prove the existence of God. All we wish for nonbelievers to acknowledge is that they can’t prove His nonexistence either, and there are certain reasons that it’s not illogical to presume a creator (we have no experience of any existence of matter or energy in the universe forming without the hand of a creator, thus this presumption is actually the more intuitive one rather than presuming a spontaneous formation of matter or positing that time and the existence of our universe stretches backward infinitely.)

And in addition to that basic concept which is not illogical, rational believers can also contemplate some of the more scholarly works of theology and see how our beliefs about God and his relationship to man explain a lot about human nature and inspire us to order our lives toward good. I find that few atheists and agnostics have studied any of the great works of theology (such as Augustine and Aquinas from antiquity, as well as recent writings by Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict.) It’s highly devoid of intellectual integrity to be so dismissive of theology without having taken time to examine it on its merits.

And when writers like the antitheists discussed here talk about the effects of religion on civilization, they take a propagandistic, highly slanted view. They focus on all corrupt adaptations of religion and ignore the fact that the great writings of the ancient Greeks would have been lost to us during the Dark ages had it not been for the Benedictine order of monks; they ignore that even today, the Catholic Church is the world’s foremost healthcare provider and that religiously based charities perform great works to help the poor, infirm, imprisoned, and physically and mentally handicapped.
It’s no wonder that those who haven’t studied theology and haven’t examined the good works of religion would take a negative view when they’ve been exposed to a one sided, negative view promoted by the antitheists. But those who choose to follow those writers and ignore the other side of the issue ought not to be surprised that there is backlash, and they ought not to complain about propaganda from the other side if they’re unwilling to call their heroes on their own propaganda.