Wow. What a thread.
Whatever happened to Valteron going to bed?
If you would like me to rebut all of your points individually, here is how. Take the following passage and shove it after every one of your points in your earlier posting.
Here is the passage:
For every present or past injustice or horror connected with religion and religious belief, whether the crusades or witch burnings, heresy trials or pogroms, Muslim women being stoned to death or the dozens of religious conflicts extant in the world today, the apologists of religion can come up with the excuse that the phenomenon is “not really due to religion” but to some other cause such as greed, politics, etc. Since more or less any human conflict can be shown to have possible side causes, in every case it is possible for the apologists of religion to say that religion is just the innocent bystander being blackened by those vicious atheists.
If you will insert this sentence after every point you made, I think you will see that I have rebutted each of them with the same declaration.
The author I have cited, Èlie Barnavi, author of "Murderous Religions"is not only a former Israeli Ambassador to France, but he is also Director of the Department of History at the University of Tel Aviv and Associate Professor at the Ecole des Haute Etudes et Sciences Sociales in Paris. Not exactly your screaming street demagogue, as far as I can tell.
Here is a short passage I have translated from the French that neatly rebuts the "That’s not really because of religion’ school of thought. It is about Islam, but sums up what I have been saying initially about Ann Coulter.
The translation is my own, from page 114:
“One (of our contradictory attitudes) is to deny that those we disapprove of are ‘good Christians’, ‘good Jews’ or ‘good Muslims’. Thus, Bin Laden’s Islam is allegedly a ‘deformed’ Islam. But deformed in comparison to what? Why, in comparison to the calming and sympathetic image we have or we would like to have about Islam. But would it not be idiotic to pretend to teach ‘real’ Islam to Bin Laden, who probably knows the Koran inside and out?”
What bothers you is that much the same can be said of Ann Coulter. She is showing you a face of religion you would prefer not to look at. And you are enraged at me for saying so. But it does not cease to be real because it displeases you.
I would have a problem with a religion that goes around cutting the tits off boar hogs because they claim God told them to. I care too much about animals OR Jewish babies to see them mutilated for religious reasons. What is to keep a Jew from getting circumcisd when he is an adult and able to make the decision for himself? I have no objection to that!
Actually I am going to bed soon. But I could not go to bed until I had rebutted Lord Ashtar’s ignorant attack on Élie Barnavi, author of (Murderous religions). I sincerely hope it will be translated. For the record, Barnavi has also been director of the Scientific Committee of the European Museum in Brussels. He has written extensively about the wars of religion in France and the persecution of the Huguenots, as well as on modern Israel and Palestine. And he would be very amused by the naive doctrine that “it is never really the fault of religion”.
My qualifications? Why, I have a degree in Bigotology from the Academy of Imaginary Education, of course! You fucking reject. My qualifications are an understanding of the definition of the word “bigot,” and the ability to read your posts.
This is just more of the same nonsense that fundy theists and fundy atheists throw at each other all the time.
In order to claim that some unidentified group of theists is blaming some unidentified group of atheists for bad publicity, you first have to find the actual theists and atheists in this fight.
Does Barnavi cite an example of a serious theist making this claim? Or does he quote a Christian fundy (or did he make up the claim out of whole cloth)?
I have never seen a serious scholar resort to this sort of silly straw men. Pat Robertson vs Christopher Hitchens? Sure. Real historians? Never in my experience.
Fundies (not Fundamentalists) prove the aphorism: No one is completely worthless; they can always serve as a bad example.
Lie down with fundies (theist or atheist), get up with bad logic and straw man arguments.
{snotty, pedantic sniff} Marvin Harris {/sps}
Gets my vote!
Who’s the certified circumcised dick
that’s a sex machine to all the chicks?
Hammer!
Aaaaaa-mennnn!
/aside
“See, I knew you were going to say that!” is a line much trotted out in domestic quarrels, but it’s not really a valid debating technique.
The passage quoted may be valid as it stands. What it doesn’t do, however, is demonstrate the religionists’ claims of alternate causes to be unfounded. It merely articulates them, as though it was enough to say “Res ipsa loquitur”.
The first part of this resumé is a simple Appeal to Authority fallacy, for holding the post cited does not demonstrate a fitness to pronounce on the matter at hand. The remainder merely shows that the bee in his bonnet has not restricted itself only to one book. Ann Coulter may have an extensive bibliography to her credit, for all I know or care: the mere existence of many such books does not show that any of them should be taken seriously.
Yeah, I do. I admit it. I’m biased against ignorant fools like you who constantly shift the goal posts, engage in argumentum ad nauseam, and who can’t admit when they’re wrong.
No, I haven’t. I’m judging it on the title and the moron who is expousing it.
Still you, sorry.
In other words, your own opinion.
If circumcision was really that horrible I believe that Judaism, being patriarchal and legalistic through most of its history, would have figured some way around it. If the rabbis can interpret G-d’s commandment to only eat unleavened bread to mean we can eat pancakes and brownies as long as they’re made from matzo then I’m sure they would have found a way to reinterpret a more onerous rule.
Boy, that was quite a thread! As usual, Lord Ashtar and Miller quickly took it to the level of puerile name-calling. I was of course called a bigot, which according to Ambrose Bierce (The Devil’s Dictionary) is “One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.” Which I guess is pretty close to Ashtar’s “ignorant fools… . . . . who can’t admit when they’re wrong.”
“Argumentum ad nauseam” Wow! Real Latin. I guess that proves something. Like maybe, it proves that LA thinks his childish diatribes will sound more adult if he throws in a dead language. Just saying “Argumentum ad nauseam” does not prove anything. If my arguments and my postings make you sick, M’Lord, turn off the computer or go to another thread. So here’s another bit of Latin for your collection: “Quid quid latine dictum sit, altum videtur”. “Anything you say in Latin sounds profound”.
Oh I see! You do not judge books by their covers but by their titles! Amazing skill! Say, if you ever need to kill a mockingbird, I have a wonderful manual that explains how to do it. 
You also judge the value of the book by the “moron” who is espousing it? So the veracity of a statement (in this case, my saying it is a good book) varies according to the quality of the person making it?
Did you know that Adolph Hitler was against smoking and considered it very unhealthy? Since that is the opinion of one of the most evil and despicable men in history, I guess we should all go out and buy a carton of cigarettes and start smoking.
But why do I waste my time throwing pearls of logic before swine (note the Biblical/New Testament reference)?
If Miller and LA want to lower verything to name calling, let’s take it to the lowest schoolyard tactic. The next time you call me a name, I will respond with: “That’s what you are, but what am I?” and keep repeating it ad infinitum (gee, I can use Latin too!) just like little kids in a schoool yard. 
Since you are such an expert on “Bigotology”, here is an alternate definition of the word “bigot” for you Miller. It is from Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary:
BIGOT, n. One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
BTW, Miller, is it not correct to say that YOU obstinately and zealously remain attached to opinions that I do not entertain? Hmmmmmmm… . . . . . . . .
Reverse the “allegedly”.
I have absolutely no objection to an adult deciding they want to be circumcised. Or having plastic surgery or whatever. For that matter, if members of a religion want to cut off a finger as a sign of their covenant with their imaginary God, they can do so. **If they make the decision as informed adults. **
What makes it child mutilation is the fact that it is imposed on an 8-day old boy without his consent. What’s your freakin’ hurry? As the Mohel at my nephew’s bris explained, “We do it because God commanded us to.” So you are performing unecessary surgery on an infant because of what an imaginary god requested?
I really did not mean to make this thread a debate about circumcision, even if it partially became so. What I am really getting at is the fundamental abuse of children that consists of indoctrinating and initiating them into religious belief before they are of an age to develop critical faculties. Even if infant baptism involes no surgery, I lump it into the same class.
What are religions soooo afraid of that they must begin indoctriating children from their earliest years? Are they afraid that if they leave it until the child is an adult and then tell him that an invisile being wants him to have his foreskin removed or have his forehead doused with water to forgive his sins, he will laugh and walk away?
The tendency of pretty much every religion to indoctrinate and initiate children years before they have any ability to think and reason critically is a tacit admission that they are all peddling nonsense, and deep down they know it.
I would recomend you read the Chapter entitled “Childhood, abuse and religion” in Richard Dawkins’ best-seller, “The God Delusion”.
God, what a stupid book. That explains much about your postings.
Do you realize how silly an argument this is? By this reasoning, EVERYTHING we teach children must be nonsense.
We do not have to wait until a child is an adult to teach him known facts like math, geography, language, etc. But religion is not proven fact.