• Sun, 11th May 2008 1:24am - Edited by the author

You're welcome, it's good to have a debate and a welcome escape from Judith Bloody Butler.

• I strongly disagree that "an athiest has no belief but logic, relying on what is proven to them by logic and demonstration".

In which case I admit that I didn't read the article closely enough, an athiest must believe that there is no God. But only, I suppose, in the same way that the debate at the athiest children's camp in the second article in this series requires athiests to belive that there are no invisible unicorns.

I would argue for a revised definition based on the idea of core beliefs where "an athiest has no core beliefs but logic, relying on what is proven to them by logic and demonstration."

The core beliefs of a theist are the existence of god and, for some, the incontrovertible truth of the Bible. These are beilefs based on faith (I don't accept your charge of consistency as proof of divine conference, there is no reason why a group of people over a large number of years couldn't produce something consistent with each other, long running series such as the Marvel Comics universe or the Archers have many writers and achieve consistency. Nor do I accept that just because the Bible bears marks consistent with a work of truth it is truth; it is part of the essence of literature and poetry that it can appear in forms other than its own.)

The core beliefs of an athiest do not concern God, as much as they concern invisible unicorns, instead concerning logic and reason.

That is not to say that a core belief in logic and reason is exclusive to athiests, quite the opposite, but it is the lack of a core belief based on faith that is the mark of the atheist.