The example of the economic science community at large failing to see the crash coming is an interesting choice, because it doesn't seem to support Hind's ideas. I personally don't have a big problem with the notion that economics' embrace of neo-con ideology is a failure of the system. But does Hind really believe that putting economic science research up to a vote will remedy this? After neo-cons won the most recent elections?

it's probably the other way around I assume you mean that a better working society promotes atheism. Be prepared for people to misread that as if atheism makes societies work worse, despite that this would contradict the rest of the meme.

I like to add that this not only applies to believers, but also to Agnostics - specifically the "we are better than atheists because they are dogmatic and we are neutral"-style Agnostics.

Heck, by now I'd settle for a coherent definition of "supernatural".

@Monado: or all the people who'd have no problems with gays if only they weren't so in your face with all the holding hands and kissing in public and such. It's the exact same thing.

"Pastor Hoffman is arguing that people who have been Christian for a long time tend to remain Christian... and that this therefore proves that Christ is really Lord, and is faithful to those who put their trust in him." Which means that Hoffman has already built in a defense against any example of a person who lost their faith after 70: clearly, they didn't put enough trust in Jesus. I wonder if he did that on purpose.

@Yojimbo: I dunno - can she really trust herself not to sue herself the next time she contradicts herself?

And having faith in something that you can't see, or have physical evidence for is not necessarily such a bad thing.Yes it is, it's called "wishful thinking". Everywhere else in society we frown upon it. The only places that don't are religion and pseudoscience - they have to, because wishful thinking is what they rely on.

Great overview :). One addition though. In the section "The spiritual realm is beyond this physical one -- we shouldn't expect to see evidence of it", you point out nicely why there definitely should be evidence if the supernatural world is affecting the natural world. But you could also attack the claim from the other side: if they are right that the supernatural world is beyond the physical realm, then they'd have no way to describe it and no way of knowing about it. Therefore, their beliefs about it are completely arbitrary, and therefore likely wrong. If they claim that they somehow have received information from the supernatural, then they clearly don't believe that the supernatural is separated from the natural world, and your original argument applies. On a personal note, what bugs me the most is that many believers will effortlessly slide from one defense to the next, despite the fact that they often contradict each other. For example, either there are good arguments for God, or you can't know anything about him, you can't have it both ways. It seems it's all about fending off every single criticism separately, without ever looking at the inconsistencies in their world view as a whole. So the castle you speak of has burning oil that occasionally burns the doors down, trap doors that the guards tend to fall into, and the dogs can only watch one entrance at the time. Sure, they may be able to fence off the occasional attack, and believe their defenses are still sound, but everybody else knows you could walk right in if you wanted to.

To address your question, we aren't punished for the original sin. The Judeo-Christian dogma is that one is punished for not making peace with God /after/ that first offense. So basically we need to apologize and make amends for something we didn't do, or else we'll be punished for eternity? How's that any better?

@Tom Foss: "Perfect" isn't very well defined either. Perfect in what way? In normal usage, "perfect" always refers to some other criterion. A "perfect sphere" refers to a body that is an exact representation of a particular mathematical equation; a "perfect conductor" is a material that conducts electrical current with exactly zero losses; etc etc. It already gets a lot harder to define what a "perfect car" is - what is a car supposed to do, and when can you say it does so perfectly? And whatever a "perfect being" is supposed to be (let alone a "maximally perfect being"), is anyone's guess.

@dsmith77: it's true that sometimes purely logical or mathematical reasoning puts science on the path of a new discovery. However, in all of those cases, the arguments will have empirical elements in the premises and conclusions, tying the argument to the real world. If not, it wouldn't be science, as there would be nothing to test and observe. The ontological argument, and other "purely logical" arguments, don't connect to the empirical world in any way, and therefore can't tell us anything about the empirical world.

AvalonXQ: many of the objections against the ontological argument also apply to Gödel's version: is existence a property? Can an entity have all possible positive traits, or will some of those traits be contradictory? If so, axiom 3 fails. But there are other objections in the wiki article you cite. For instance, it turns out that the the proof is so generic, that you can prove anything is necessarily true. But really, when it comes down to it, Gödel's version also pretty much asserts that God exists by definition: a God-like entity is defined to have all positive traits, and (necessary) existence is defined as a positive trait. You'd almost wonder what the rest of the argument is needed for. Unless it's for obfuscation, of course.

@Tom Foss:What the argument says, as I interpret it, is that God is the greatest thing you can imagine, so if you imagine something that is even greater, then it must be that the greater thing is God, and the previous thing wasn't. But that makes the definition of "greatest thing you can imagine" meaningless, just like the "largest number you can imagine" is meaningless: no matter how big a number you imagine, you can always add one to it and get a larger number. But this doesn't make this larger number the largest number imaginable either, since you can add one to that one as well. So there can be no "largest number imaginable" at all. Similarly, it's quite reasonable to say that there can't be a "greatest being imaginable". Like I said, it's amazing in how many ways the ontological argument can be attacked. It's fun to see more and more of these ways appearing on this thread. And yet, as you say, some still advocate it.

That's an interesting way to take the ontological argument apart, I hadn't seen this one before. Thanks for enlightening me :). What's most interesting about the ontological argument to me is in how many different ways it can fail. Is existence really a property? Is existence really necessarily a positive property? Is there really such a thing as a greatest being, or would this be more like saying there is a greatest prime number? And is it possible for any logically consistent being to have all possible positive properties? For instance, can anything be both absolutely merciful and absolutely just at the same time? Sure, some of those objections have counter-arguments, but they aren't nearly as persuasive as the ontological argument is often presented to be. In a wider perspective, it all looks like trying to fix a house of cards while it's already collapsing. As a whole, the ontological argument is not terribly convincing.

Is she really using the fact that creationists and ID proponents disagree on many points as evidence that they are not related, and don't have shared origins? So the Protestant churches and the Catholic church aren't related either?