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What about ones like, say, Jerry B's above that persistently second guess the moderator's response? Is that a personal attack by stealth, brinkmanship, anticipation of a predestined outcome? How does Jerry B's approach add to the sum total of discussion on a Fortean message board? Or is even...

What, in the context of the Fortean times MB, is a winning argument? Is it the one that most posters agree upon? Is it one the moderators allow to run its course? What PM, is the factor that ultimately wins?

How can you be so sure when all the evidence suggests the contrary?

My question being at what point was the decision made to allow a website dedicated to a man who rejected explanations to become dominated by skepticism and those who promote the ideology to be beyond reproach?

I'll be there again. Perhaps we could all meet up for a drink? Not in a Richard Dawkins approved lift, obviously.

No CSI on the side? You do surprise me.

Against my better judgement I return to the board because my name has been mentioned. You seem to be using your Coaly immunity card with considerable license JerryB. If one didn't know better one might think you had diplomatic immunity.

You find it hard to clarify your thoughts on the matter like Arthur then. Fair enough.

Why did you stop taking the magazine if it represented your viewpoint to well?

I took the FT long enough to recognise the difference between gullibility, playfulness, skepticism and pseudoskepticism. As a student of human nature I consider my bullsh*t detector pretty finely honed, whatever the antennae is pointed at.

Agree on all counts. I have an almost complete set of FTs, only the first few copies in facsimile and a full set of Fortean studies but have recently stopped subscribing. The forum has succumbed to pseudoskepticism or become as you say, a news clipping archive. Like you, my interest in...

The moderation policy resembles a teacher in a rough school walking into a full blown riot and sending the soft kid nearest the door to the headmaster. Nobody cares enough to sort it out because it would require taking a stance. I don't kid myself my presence on the board or subscription fee...

You allowed a known agent provocateur to accuse others of trolling over a long period and suspend the victim of his taunts. Good luck turning your back street boozer into a fancy wine bar.

A parting shot from a quitter who has no intention of shape shifting. The board has ceased to function as a forum to discuss 'The World of Strange Phenomena'. It has become the preferred residence of vested interests who have no intention of letting debate develop in ways they consider...

But most new atheism is profoundly philosophical and cites Wittgenstein, Russell et al to back its case. It's more Heidegger than dig it. I went through a Christian upbringing, found church unspeakably dull, stopped going at adolescence, became agnostic only because I lacked the dedication to be...

Absolutely not. You're trolling.

I have to my complete satisfaction. You're simply trolling by refusing to acknowledge it

Where would you draw the lines? Do your homework and tidy your room? Get a job, work hard and improve your station? All such received wisdoms based on shaky evidence and heavy ideological assumptions. I can't see how telling them religious stories is any worse than folk tales with children being...

Thank you FT, for being the first voice from atheism that says what it's for, not simply what it's against. I'll have a think about faith schools and get back to you. On the broader point I've been pondering what it is that I find hard to grasp about new atheism and it is the absolute...

Quite some years ago I did a little research on Druid Circles, including consulting archaeological pre-historians for the areas concerned. It sounds like anything lumpy was included by the cartographers, barrows, rabbit warrens, you name it. They're still a fine way of including Gothic Script on...

Of course! Otherwise it's just a Sam Harris argument.

My old OS and Bart's maps are full of 'Druid Circles'. Do you mean they ain't? The clack of sticks in a shopping precinct is as quintessential to the British summer as traffic jams and shark scares.

There's an all time classic IHTM by a retired Surrey copper.

I looked for Ghostwatch three times until I realised a row of nubile young women on a pink cushion were this month's fare. Then Yvette Fielding hove into view and normality and blond highlights were resumed. Curiously the advert of her on page 3 has La Fielding with a magenta rinse. YF always...

You don't fancy saying what the master plan is then? Even your master plan?

To repeat, do the large number of self professed atheists align themselves with political aims such as those cited? If they do, there's an interesting debate to be had, if they don't they should say so and we can talk about what they would like to see. At the moment nobody's saying nuffink and...

Indeed. I find his pronouncements, the manner of them, his conduct and his media presence, impossible to separate. I don't believe that's a shortcoming in my forensic capacities, I think it's a carefully cultivated image and one designed to blur his public image with what he says. But we're back...

I'm a guy on the internet responding to other guys on the internet. The mode of discourse has a particular feel, it's not a court of law, a pub brawl or a sixth form debating society. I believe Dawkins is a media loving big head who stretches the limits of science into any area he chooses and...

To you maybe, not to me. They were the first two links I came across, hardly cherry picking the opinions of swivel-eyed nutcases, to mix a metaphor.

Your statement is worded pejoratively. There is no way of knowing what the limits of politically motivated atheists are. My examples show there are such things and some use terms like 'the mental and moral improvement of the human race' and 'strident atheism' and 'militant atheism'. That...

It doesn't. But then I didn't say atheism was totalitarian. I said imposing the will of disbelievers onto believers, or vice versa, by political means is totalitarian. I'm not arguing for a theocracy, I'm a Western liberal democrat, with small letters and a suspicion of big ideas. I was...

An ornamental?

I've just found this from The Rationalist Association: Stated core aims are 'the mental and moral improvement of the human race by means of the advancement of rationalism and humanism', and 'the advancement of education and in particular the study of rationalism and humanism and the...

Do you know who organised the rally? Google tells me it was the central London Humanist group.

Presumably all the people on the podium were roughly in line with Dawkins views. Who organised it? Was it an anti-paedophile rally, or representing the British tax payer funding visits by overseas dignitaries, or a humanist inspired rally, New Scientist readers? I don't know. edit: I've...

Any idea who the we he's referring to is?

This clip shows the kind of thing I mean: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_0kFU7IfPM Presumably someone must have organised it. BTW, please don't suggest I'm against such rallies, I'm asking what the aims of its organisers are. Dawkins talks of us and we so presumably he must have some idea of...

You're misrepresenting what I've said. It's my belief that atheists are becoming more vocal and politicised. There is evidence for that in newspaper articles, rallies and so on. I'm not suggesting they belong to a single organisation with a particular agenda, many of them are academics and...

Who can say? There's a rise in the profile of people who think the onus of proof for issues of faith should be decided in a similar way to those of science. If sufficient clauses are in place to ensure the rights of worship and belief, places of worship and the education of people within those...

In the past threads here have been tagged onto the Dawkins thread, so they make even less sense than they do already. My personal limit is a response to one or two posts with Dawkins as leitmotif, what other people do is up to them but they shouldn't take my lack of response as lack of opinion...

Speaking personally, my mistrust of politicians runs much deeper than any perceived lack of confidence in atheists. When the two coincide I get a full scale red alert. Atheists have never done me any harm. The politicians I've met OTOH have all been absolute scoundrels. Atheism has no...

FT, from your previous words I assumed you wanted to extend your personal disbelief into political belief. TBM, my position on a catholic or jewish PM was taken from these complexities: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Can_you_have_ ... at_Britain JB, I apologise for any lack of civility. When...

You can propose all the alternatives you choose, I'm arguing against your right to impose them on those who choose otherwise and interfering with any structures which alter the balance of choice. As things stand in this country, there is no impediment to high office in being a believer or...

There is no evidence whatsoever of that. That's a fictional assumption based on polemic and an ad hom in the disguise. You keep repeating these falsehoods and it makes arguing a position almost impossible, which is no doubt its purpose.

You're probably not looking hard enough, or you've convinced yourself they're merely well intentioned people trying free minds of their shackles.

The arguments for an against religion are not new ones. People who believe in, for want of a better term, a supernatural universe won't be convinced by a wholly material view of that universe. Rationalist atheists appear to think there is sufficient evidence that a God is unlikely enough to...

If there is a God, I have no idea how he would manifest himself, nor what mechanisms he/she/it would occlude himself in. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence and presently people in this country are entitled to believe whatever they choose within the law. Every alternative proposal is a...

Windupis Prestonia, a common enough species. Often found in shots of unremarkable brick walls and similar.

We are not robots. What of poor, dull witted, non-scientists like myself who see no means of deciding whether a God does or does not exist? Where do we fit in D****s master plan? BTW there's ample evidence that bringing up RD in the atheism thread seriously pisses off the mods.

I completely support his right to argue a case, and mine to question his motivations. D****s presents himself as an abstraction, pure mind, Babbage's indifference engine tuning out neutral solutions to complex problems. I think he's the same seething mass of ambition, jealousy and ego as the...