“One for WalesHome.org to pitch for, perhaps?” – I’ll be more than happy to write an article defending theism, and, more specifically, the eschatological claims of the Christian faith.

You are right that intolerance (or a willingness to vigorously challenge) views that one thinks are wrong is a quality to be commended and encouraged. What concerns me – and what I’ve attempted to argue against – is that there is an increasing, and increasingly permissible intolerance towards those who hold these views, and their entitlement to do so.

There’s another point, too; you don’t have to have any truck with the idea of a supernatural entity to realise that the belief systems of those who do often makes them productive and valuable members of secular society. Whether or not our religious leaders are correct in believing in the existence of a God is secondary to the fact that such a belief often impels them to speak and act in ways that benefit us all.

But I like Mike’s idea of a three-way, atheist/agnostic/religious debate. One for WalesHome.org to pitch for, perhaps?

Dawkins suggests seven degrees on a theist-atheist scale, 1 being “strong theist. 100% certainty of a God”. 7 is the opposite, “100% certainty that there is no God”. #7 is indeed silly, which is why Dawkins states plainly that he’s a 6: “very low probability, but short of zero”. This is where I stand, also. So god is considered so unlikely, so remote, that the only reasonable way to live one’s life is to assume that he doesn’t exist. This is all very lucidly stated in the best-selling atheist-advocacy book of all time; it is nothing deep, it’s quite simple. Yet you carry on as if nobody’s ever pointed it out. The polite and honest thing is at the very least to acknowledge it. I don’t doubt that you may have a good response to it: let’s hear it

In response to Adam’s last comment, I would simply suggest that intolerance towards intolerant attitudes is a virtue. Further, that intolerance towards superstitious and flimsy concepts is surely beneficial. A large part of what irritates people like Dawkins, Hitchens and myself (if I could be so cheeky as to include myself in that company) is the artificial respect bestowed upon the religious’ views. That is, if someone shouted from the rooftops in support of a particularly silly political view, for example, then nobody here would hesitate in demolishing their arguments with glee. For some reason, however, religious opinions are deemed more, well, sacred. I humbly suggest that the ideas of a person advocating a god should be treated with no more respect than those of a person advocating, say, unreconstructed Leninism. They are all just concepts; there’s nothing special about religion (despite what their gods insist). That is all that’s going on here. If you separate religious ideas from all the rest, you’re doing it wrong.

What I do, however, see is some atheists attacking religious people for being intolerant, and demonstrating some fairly intolerant attitudes of their own in the process. I find that odd.