Either you *don't* understand when you call it faith, or you're not using the same definition of 'faith'.

It's all about the evidence, and a framework that allows evidence to be assessed.

I think we're now in the realm where you *need* faith to believe in a theistic universe, because we can see, very easily, how it would work as an atheistic one. We don't need God to be in the universe we observe and predict and model.

No serious theologian or religiously-minded scientist would claim there's anything more than a God of the gaps, now. It's either that or the universe is a Candid Camera stunt. And there are literally fewer and fewer gaps every day. No theist worships the God of the gaps, there wouldn't be any point in it - for one thing, by definition, He can't even hear prayers, let alone do anything about them. If 'religion' just means 'things currently unknown to science', then it's not 'religion' as practiced by every actual theist.

It's not arrogance to hold the position that a observed, tested and refined model of the universe that's consistent and leads to predicted responses is a better model to have to one that isn't any of those things and treats it as a virtue that it isn't any of those things.

A simple way to test science v religion: I'll stand on a mountaintop during a thunderstorm with insulated soles, and you stand nearby holding a giant metal crucifix praying for your soul. I bet your god smites you and leaves me alone. And I bet that before I'm down that mountain some idiot will claim God crispified you for daring to test him and that the vast majority of theists would go 'so what, it proves nothing'.

I will change my mind in the face of evidence. I will change my mind on the basis of an interesting piece of *prediction*. But in the whole history of the human race, with so many smart people and so much money thrown at it, we are literally not one iota nearer answering question one for any sane person: 'why do bad things happen to good men?'. The theist answer to that is as weaselly and pathetic now as it was three thousand years ago.

I absolutely agree with that.

The problem with debates like this is that God's a moving target - I tend to assume that when people say 'God' here without qualifying it, they mean ... well, 'Yahweh'. The Christian God, who's probably the Jewish one who moonlights as Allah.

This may be one of the reasons the atheists like the creationists - we know Who we're dealing with.

The mainstream Christian God has been blurred up and abstracted, so that the catch-all excuse 'oh, you just don't understand' can be wheeled out. A lot of us learned at school that you could look clever by just nodding and saying 'well, you're basically right but it's a little more complicated' whenever someone else said something genuinely smart. And that's what priests do now. There is this bizarre 'six guys try to describe an elephant' analogy for God now that says all religions have got bits of it right, but no-one has the truth that runs completely contrary to what those religions teach and what their followers actually believe. It's deeply hypocritical, and politically expedient.

The god of theistic scientists like Michael Heller is not a god that any human being has ever worshipped. It simply is not the Christian God being described. Not even a little bit.

But, however vaguely thought-through or abstracted, there are still scientific claims being made. 'God hears your prayers'. *However* you interpret that, however metaphorical that statement is meant to be, that's a scientific statement which contains a number of underlying assumptions and premises. If the theists are right, God gave us a big brain that's great at solving problems. Surely He wouldn't want us to go 'oh' when we hear he hears our prayers, He'd want us to go 'exactly how does that work, then?'.

No - the reason I invoked him earlier was to suggest that Dawkins was far more representative of the majority of theists than Haggard. Yet, when mainstream Christians pick sides, they almost invariably pick Haggard, or at the very least label Dawkins as 'an extremist'.

Next time I see Monty Python and Dame Edna dressed as women, I'll know it was all part of the minstrel tradition and a legacy of the oppression of slavery.

Press releases are an art form, and they try to generate buzz. Or, in other words, they 'touted' that so bloggers would publicize their product on their blogs.

So ... job done.

S'right. By contrast, by any definition the Star Wars prequels were indie movies. In fact, they're probably the only true indie movies, as George Lucas wasn't just writer/director he also owned the special effects house and the sound engineers, and his company invented the digital cameras they used and the editing software. Compare that with most movie 'auteurs'.

Like 'literary fiction', 'indie movie' has become a genre to itself. The only difference being that in other genres, the whole point is to diverge from the template, not to conform to it. What's the point of being 'indie', if all you're going to do is another movie about a guy who's wasting his life not writing that novel just waiting for that kooky girl to show him what he's been missing?

The British Colbert is Coogan's pal Chris Morris, who's

played the role in The Day Today and Brass Eye:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=7Bq_dkPkQUU&feature=related

http://youtube.com/watch?v=kFNs2mOkKzc&feature=related

http://youtube.com/watch?v=_nvfQw8UCDE

Before The Daily Show, too.