Interestlingly enough, I've just run across a useful contribution to this scintillating debate.   It's in the Washington Post, today or yesterday.   The National Cathedral in DC has a new leader, the Right Rev. Hall (can't remember first name).

Turns out he was sitting at dinner with none other than Richard Dawkins.   Listened to what Mr. Dawkins had to say.   His response:   "I don't believe in the God you don't believe in either".

That's what it boils down to.   The new breed of atheist, several of whom grace Mudcat with their presence, specializes in setting up a straw man, calling it belief in God, then attacking it.

They do not admit that the religious are at least as all over the block as non-believers.    Saying as they do that anybody who is religious believes a string of assertions only held by fundamentalists is precisely as accurate as saying that all atheists have the same beliefs as Hitler, Stalin and Mao, all rabidly hostile to religion.

That is to say:    our beloved atheists, in addition to their other charms, are intellectually dishonest.