In my opinion if one removes oneself from the filed of rational discourse by declaring oneself to be outside of all categories, as if it were possible to exist in this world without a world view, then one does not deserve to be treated as a serious participant in the intellectual marketplace.

I believe there is probably no God.

What do you call me?

While it is true that the philosophy of religion is not apologetics what does one say of those atheists who spend all their time doing "philosophy of religion" or "apologetics for atheists"? Most of the atheists I've seen on the intertubes know next to nothing about real philosophy or even about science. But they know the Bible better than a street corner evangelist and have their own well developed set of canned arguments against their rival clergy.

The problem arises however when one tries to discover what atheism is as opposed to what it is not. When atheism is defined as a mere lack of belief then atheism as such ceases to exist. It is no long a "thing" but rather an absence. It is not a presence but a ghostly non-presence instead. This allows the atheist to then be free of any consistency or logical coherence. All the atheist need do is to treat moral categories as absolutes when talking about the problem of evil and then treat them as constructs when challenged to provide a ground for morality without god. Or the atheist will take logic as descriptive of only the physical universe when confronted with transcendental arguments and then turn around and take them as absolute when you apply laws of logic to god.

Thus we can see that the only purpose anti-theistic arguments are put to is to counter theistic explanations. It's nothing more than rhetoric in service of an internecine conflict. The goal is to win, not to discover. That is a fundamentally unintellectual stance. It is neither scholarship nor philosophical debate. It's priestly bickering. A modern version of arguing over the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.

Since atheism doesn't propose anything and is defined as a lack then whenever an atheist does say something about God, he isn't speaking as an atheist. Atheism is an empty construct so when an atheist does make a positive claim he is no longer speaking as an atheist because atheism has nothing to say about anything at all.

If you wish to be in this world then let your yea be yea and your nay, nay.

Just thought I would throw that out there. It sort of took me by surprise too.

Of course, given the nature of the website in which you are more than welcome to contribute (and encouraged to do so) continually posting negative comments while contributing nothing just seems rather non-constructive.

You don't do philosophy, you do apologetics.

You are not philosophers, you are priests. Schismatic priests, but priests none-the-less.

My prediction then, is that say… two hundred years from now all the churches will be filled with atheist priests still discussing among themselves all these "very deep issues" and recapitulating all the old hoary arguments. They'll even perform the old rites out of respect for long vanished opponents and their sermons, although openly atheistic, will still touch on the same concerns of mankind's relationship with the world.

If you never actually leave the inner sanctum how can you call yourself a non-believer?