"No sympathy for theology" is perhaps not the best phrase here. More to the point would be "lack of curiosity as to what theologians are actually saying." Classical theists do not claim there is any scientific evidence for God--could not be, by definition. The demand for such by the New Atheists is a function of the category error that pervades their arguments.
"sympathy for theology" Interesting choice of words. I would say that these "new" atheists are scientists, so why would a scientist have sympathy for something that refuses to demonstrate any actual evidence in favour of its position? And I don't agree with the idea that Dawkins etc are smug or arrogant, they are coming from a position that is so well sussed there is simply no room for the old ways of believing to be necessary. They're smug and arrogant because they are ignorant of "the old ways of believing" and are not inclined to educate themselves. And they are deliberately starting a fight in the hope of making people think about what they decide is real, it's a post 9/11 thing to try and shake people out of the religious stupor they walk around in without questioning it. Why would they want to do that? This the funny bit, Dawkin's thinks people will be happier with a more accurate description of reality than the superstitious ones that people still get brought up into. Classical theism involves no "superstition." LOL, he obviously didn't read Xeno's security blanket list. If atheism promised a life after death he might have more takers. If you want a scientist to take a theory seriously you have to show that what it explains is a superior explanation to the current one. And here's your problem, the cornerstones of scientific thought are so sussed that trying to lever in a supernatural being or creator (or whatever this brahma does) is really going to take some doing as it's been shown to be unnecessary. We have a couple of good theories as to how the universe got here without any help. We know about stellar evolution and the creation of dense matter from supernovae. Evolution from simple forms to more complex. Not finished but there is an undeniable drift away from biblical explanations for creation. Classical theism is not based on biblical explanations for creation (not literalist ones, at any rate). And classical theism has no argument with scientific theories of creation; they don't conflict at all with the Ground of Being concept. This is where the apparent smugness comes from I think. God has been forced into such a small corner by our understanding that you have to wonder if all that is left over as his domain is actually an insult to the old dude. So you have to get all "god is a manifestation of all things" to still keep the concept alive. A far cry from his glory days. Um, no. First of all, what you mean is "All things are a manifestation of God." That's an idea that goes back to Plato and Aristotle and continued to be the mainstream idea held by theologians until quite recently, when it began to get some competition from "personalist" theologians, among others. Progress happens when someone spots that a theory is contradicted by the evidence. To get any concept of god taken seriously you'll have to show how any current explanation of our experience is inadequate without some sort of supernatural being. "Some sort of supernatural being" is not a concept of classical theism. And there is no evidence against classical theism--could not be, again by definition. Category error. The classical theists' Ground of Being is not a being, it is Beingness Itself. I keep prefacing "theism" with "classical" because if you want to eliminate all belief in God, you have to deal with the God of classical theism, even if your arguments have trumped all other forms of theism. As I've said, there are arguments against classical theism, but the New Atheists--at least the ones who are in the public eye--don't make them because they don't know what classical theism involves (and don't care to learn). Their arguments leave classical theism untouched. Good luck with it but blissful states of consciousness aren't going to do it, I had all of them and it didn't convince me. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <s3raphita@...> wrote: Judy is correct. What Stephen Roberts (who he?) doesn't get is that "God" is not a proper name. The trouble with these new atheist types is that they have no sympathy for theology so completely misunderstand the language that theologians use.
