Celsus

Thanks, MrKrinkles. A bit overwhelming though. Are any of those links by theists? I really want the theistic evolutionist's perspective because that's probably the only thing my dad won't dismiss out of hand.

Admiral, not unless I get on a soapbox and start preaching intolerance. They're very against racial and religious speech in public.

Anyway, I just had a nice long talk with my uncle, telling him about the Wellhausen theory of authors of the Pentateuch, Old Testament dating, pagan mystery religions, gnosticism and other things about the Bible he didn't know. Unfortunately, he didn't even know enough to argue with me, so I ended up telling him what the Christian refutations were, and then the sceptic refutations of the refutations. Sigh... It's so difficult finding someone to discuss things with coherently.

Joel

Uzzah

Actually that's one of the things I enjoy. I usually give my little speech about the "Arguement from Evil" until they look like they've been run over by a train. Then I ask them if they'd like to hear the common refutation of "Free Will" to which I get a weak nod. Then I spend a couple of minutes explaining the free will refutation to them until they start looking somewhat normal again, then I refute the free will refutation until I get the train look again.

Ah, what fun.


Uzzah

Melkor

I actually own a copy of "The Science of God".

It's an interesting book, and well-written, though the author makes some pretty HUGE assumptions, and his "logic" is pretty heavily convoluted and in some cases incoherent, and decidedly NON-scientific, to say the least!

It's worth a read, but take it with a shovelful or two of salt if you're not in a scientific field yourself... he lays it on pretty thick in order to sound convincing to the "layperson", if you know what I mean... you know... by using unnecessarily complex means of explaining things as if to say "don't bother trying to understand this, because it's way too complicated for you... just trust me that it's really serious science and is almost beyond reproach."