I don’t understand the phrase ‘religious sources’. I think the distinction you are trying to draw is between observable evidence and anything else. I am perfectly happy that you privilege the former, but I think the result lacks nuance.

Generally, one believes one’s own senses and credible reports. However, there are plenty of occasions when that leaves a conflict between what is observable and one’s own feelings. The interpretation of evidence is something lawyers deal with every day. I think that the issue here is what is a credible report. If you limit it to what is observable then of course God does not exist.

Nor, of course, did the theory of relativity. Or the fact that the earth was round, or that the earth moved aroudn the sun. All these things required a diffreent perspective - a different way of interpreting the evidence. We now live in a world in which we agree that the physical world is made up of particles we cannot observe, which are themselves made up of particles which no one has yet observed but which must exist.

Why must they exist? Because the laws we postulate dictate their existence and because people we respect tell us that they have laboured mightily over the problem and can be sure that they exist. And that, give or take the identity of the people you respect, is religion. It is a question of perspective - one day God will ask you whether a perfect autumn day didn’t provide you with evidence that She exists and when you say that there was no evidence, She will say that is because you don’t know how to look.

GL: a measure of offence - nice. I think that linking burning and Jews needs just a leettle care. And if that’s why you despise Islam and Christianity then my boy, have I got a religion for you.

Strictly speaking, you are certainly correct about “knowing”. There is no certainty. There is only probability.

The likelihood is that crocodiles do eat people from time to time. This has been observed, and the people you so respect could surely produce appropriate evidence if prompted: indeed, the capability and willingness to provide such evidence is what engenders my respect for them. The likelihood of God existing is infinitesimally small. No credible evidence supporting God or an afterlife has emerged: the people who assert that God does exist are generally both unwilling and unable to produce evidence to support their claims. We cannot formally state that we “know” that God doesn’t exist. In the common parlance, however, “knowing” quite obviously equates with “staggeringly unlikely” and “almost certainly”.

You say it is merely a matter of the weight an individual places on a particular source, which is true enough, but you skim over the problem that religious sources are manifestly unreliable when considering whether propositions are true or false. Though they may have philosophical or historical value, determining the existence or non-existence of things is a task for which they are woefully inadequate.

Like Geeklawyer, I don’t insist that anyone agree with me, but I do get annoyed with people like this fuckwit of a general: brainwashing people with superstitious nonsense, such that they take less care with their lives in the almost certainly mistaken belief that there is eternal life, is vile behaviour.

Unlike Christians and Muslims, Jews do not believe that there is only one route to God. Indeed, according to Jewish belief, a righteous Jew has no more chance of getting into heaven than a righteous gentile.

This debate about ‘knowing’ is silly. I have never seen a crocodile eat a human. I believe they do because people I respect tell me it is so. God is the same - it is simply a question of the weight a particular individual places on a particular source. John’s point precisely makes my case. The prevailing belief for years was that the earth was flat. The prevailing belief in this country used to be that God existed and was English. Now the prevailing belief in this country is that God does not exist. And for each belief, people ‘knew’ it. Which is simply a way of describing a belief which you hold as unchallengeable.

I have no problem with this. Atheists are fine providing they don’t stand too close to me during a thunderstorm I certainly don’t argue that you should believe what I believe - largely because I don’t care and it’s none of my business.

I can however say that in good armies pastoral care comes from the top. Soldiers are willing to die for their mates and good leadership is about extending that definition as widely as possible. I didn’t read Dannatt as promoting Christianity so much as belief in God - the two are not synonymous. He was doing it in the way that he could - as I would expect.

As it strikes a personal note, I would be grateful for your references regarding the Jewish dogmatists of which you speak. I was unaware of that particular strain of Jewish belief and had rather thought that the risk you took in offending a right-wing Jew was that he talked at you a lot and possibly told your mother that you were a bad boy. Moreover, since almost all Jewish dogmatists are entirely disinterested in non-Jews this would not happen unless you yourself were Jewish. Consequently, it has come as a shock to learn that I could have been burning people alive - could I have some further details?

If, as I suspect you might mean right wing Israelis, then that is a political issue and those people have in the past 15 years numbered exactly two. Is that what you were talking about?

This was not some mere moment of religious debate. To the point: what fucking business is it of General Dimwit to administer pastoral care? Is that not the function of the army chaplains? what business is it of some general to engage skewed debate on these issues? Should he not confine himself, Hague-like, to saying “over the top my boys - to death and honour haste ye well”?

The General was clearly - by his own words - saying that there was an eternal life after death; he was not merely positing the comforting safety blanket of a potential afterlife. By extension it was implicit that those “fighting the good fight” and adopting Christian values could reach the afterlife: why else promote Christian dogma?

Like you I do not pretend to know all about everything, I however say merely that I know everything about some things. I know that there is no God or afterlife. You may disagree, you are wrong but I will accept your right to disagree. Unlike the Christian and Jewish dogmatists I will not burn you alive for denying my views and holding to your own. Atheism has no Dogmas and will not kill to compel those beliefs in the reluctant.