Have to admit,
I'm not hugely impressed with the way the atheist guy handled that. He fell into the trap that lots of people do with Bill O'Reilly and he was trying to engage with Bill's 'arguments'. The fact is, he needn't bother. So much of what Bill says is just rhetoric, and he knows that, it's just a way of tying people in knots.
Also, if I was him, I would be keen to clarify that organised religion and theism aren't the same thing. Some people are theistic but non-religious (spiritual individualism) and some religions are non-theistic (buddhism, for example). An argument about the merits of organised religion doesn't necessarily have to lead to an argument about the existence of God. If that had been clear from the start, the atheist guy could have completely circumvented the stuff about "how the tides go in and out".
(, Fri 11 Feb 2011, 10:50, Share, Reply)