Fantastic, Best wishes !
Looking forward to the post.

Good luck Luke,

Plant your feet and tell the truth.

I don’t like the title. No, you almost certainly won’t show how to defeat all religious arguments in one easy step. Sounds like something out of an infomercial or a cheesy ad.

I’ll be there!

GREAT!! we do have a small group out here in SD, and we do meet up infrequently. I’ve sent a message to the facebook group suggesting a meetup. See you there!

I’ve been following your blog for a little while now. Let me wish you luck, as my first post here

Hopefully somebody gets either audio or video of this!

BTW Luke, here is an article you may be interested in since I think you made a remark about Obama and his faith some time back.

http://www.theage.com.au/world/a-colossus-who-bends-presidents-ears-20100409-ryqs.html

It’s about T.D Jakes and Obama’s faith. its short to read but very interesting.

Yeah, but it’s close enough. My hunch is he’ll be presenting something like the material in this post. While it can’t literally take care of every religious argument in 20 minutes, it comes surprisingly close.

That post runs into the challenge of Plantinga’s entire epistemological corpus (especially “Warranted Christian Belief”). I don’t think that challenge is easily met in 20 minutes.

Hey dude,

I’ll def see you there, and hopefully can grab a beer with you. I come from the more New Age/Zen camp, so will be cool to hang out.

–Dan

Hey Luke,

Great to hear you are coming to Diego and I will definitely be looking forward to hearing your presentation!

Oh well. I was just in San Diego on Thursday. Enjoy the Seussian trees.

I don’t like the title. No, you almost certainly won’t show how to defeat all religious arguments in one easy step. Sounds like something out of an infomercial or a cheesy ad.

I like it. If you don’t get people to look and consider what you have to say — even if they’re there only because they are angry — it doesn’t mater what you have to say.

Case in point, I posted a thread on WWGHA titled;

Theology: Innovative, Knowledgeable, or Dead?

Accurate, and a bit antagonistic, but not over the top.

A few people responded, but not many, and after a few days no new people came along. So, I ramped up the title;

Is religion dead? (A question for theists about religious knowledge.)

More people posted, and the topic took off for a while.

THANK YOU for continuing to criticize the new atheists. Sloppy reasoning must be beaten down, whether Christians or atheists are engaging in it.

Hi,
Could you please post the outline? Some of us Can’t make it to SD. Thanks

“I’m more curious to know what he’ll say about the New Atheists–what goal did they fail at?”

Not being total assholes. Oh, and the scientism thing too.

And it probably would have helped if Harris didn’t argue in favor of torture and if Hutch didn’t back a Holocaust denier and if Dawkins dot net hadn’t become an open cesspool of filth.

I mean, other than those all is cool huh.

I wish I could make it Luke, so since I can’t, I really look FWD to the transcript, questions and all.

Not being total assholes.

Actually, I think “being total assholes” was an implicit goal of the New Atheists, so it’s hard to call their success in that area a failure.

Sigh! The so-called “new” atheists have only been around a few years. The religions we’re faced with more often than not have been around for two to six centuries. Already you’re calling us a failure.
Like hell! The only way to stop irrational thought from continuing to destroy the world is to point out the obvious: they are silly and their ideas are silly.

Luke,

Thanks again for coming to San Diego and for providing an insightful presentation. Unfortunately, I did not get the opportunity to hang around for more of the Q & A and introduce myself, but if you have another presentation in the SoCal area, please post it on your site. Keep up the great work.

“New Atheist” is a total misnomer, as Ophelia Benson and PZ Myers have both pointed out several times. If we knew our history better, we, atheists and non-atheists alike would know this.

I just finished re-reading Jennifer Michael Hecht’s Doubt: A History which was published shortly before the books of the so-called “Four Horsemen” who are typically thought of as representative of the “New Atheism.” It’s an excellent resource, and provides a sweeping history of doubt of various forms across the globe, and in great depth.

What I noticed upon re-reading it was how similar many of the doubters of the past were to the “New Atheists.” Whether it be the Carvaka from ancient India, or ancient Greek critiques of religious belief, to medieval Muslim doubters like al-Rawandi and al-Razi, to Rabelais, Baron D’Holbach, or more recent figures like Bertrand Russell and Margaret Knight, everything “New Atheism” is saying has been said before – in content, tone, what have you. And I don’t intend that as a slam against “New Atheists” for lack of originality. Some things need to be said repeatedly until people understand, and sometimes they need to be said harshly, satirically, pointedly. “Rudeness” has been part of the history of doubt for literally thousands of years.

Overall, keith parsons makes an interesting case when he distinguishes between theoretical atheists (people who profess atheism and are fairly certain that organized religion and the idea of God are false) and practical atheists (people who have a religion, but don’t live their lives by faith). Overall, we should be thanking the porno industry and the world’s drug dealers for helping people realize that religion kinda sucks if you’re the fun-loving type. No amount of atheist literature can rival the love men have for blow jobs

So Luke, what was your argument “How to Defeat All Religious Arguments in One Easy Step”, and how did the audience react?