Just one example of why I enjoy the religion/atheism discourse:
VD: “This [move from “error theory” to “compartmental “theory”] hasn’t yet made its way down to the run-of-the-mill internet atheists, whose primary form of “debate” still consists of calling people stupid despite the fact that all of the available evidence demonstrates rather conclusively that the objects of their ridicule are, as a point of fact, rather more intelligent than the atheist himself.”
Skepdude: “Personally from what’ I’ve seen, atheist bloggers mainly go after specific behaviors rather than people.”
Skepdude’s commenter: “Vox Day is a complete idiot. Don’t even waste time or typing on him.”
I suppose this is the point where, if I was an atheist or a left-liberal, I would be expected to make use of that silly, self-aggrandizing, overused, and oft-unjustified metaphor: “the X, it burns”. But it doesn’t, you know, it’s just moderately amusing. Note that I didn’t refer solely to “atheist bloggers”, but rather “internet atheists”, which of course includes both commenters and bloggers.
Anyhow, enough about that. This would probably be as good time as any to inform you that TIA will be published in paperback next year in the USA, the UK, and a number of overseas markets. I don’t know which languages yet, but I’m most interested in seeing an Italian edition published, for obvious reasons. I plan to do a moderate revision of the structure, which, as many of you noted, takes about two chapters too long to get to the heart of the matter. I also hope to fill in some of the bits I feel I’ve missed and shore up any perceived weak spots. So, in order to accomplish the latter, I’d be most appreciative if the Ilk would remind me of any common atheist arguments I happened to miss in Chapter XIV, Occam’s Chainsaw. I already know that “Extraordinary Claims” and “Burden of Proof” need to be added, while the “Argument from Evidence” could use the inclusion of a dictionary definition or two, but if anything else needs to be there – or if any atheist reading this feels he’s got a particularly effective argument even if it doesn’t happen to be one of the common ones – just let me know.
I’ll have other requests as I go along with the revisions, but at this point, I’d just like to make sure that all of the relevant arguments are included. I should probably mention that I’m also writing that other book I’d previously mentioned, which will appear before the TIA paperback, so forgive me if I don’t always readily respond to your suggestions.