Quite so. I think it depends in part on who the religious person is. If there is almost no chance that you will change their views then there is no reason why you should spend your time and energy on the matter. And I expect this applies to a lot of people. If there is a decent chance that you will change their views, then a good question is: would it benefit them? I expect that the answer will often be 'yes'. If I had once been religious and someone had convinced me that I was wrong, I'd be grateful. Lots of us want to know the truth.

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven" (Ecclesiastes 3:1). There are occasions when it might be appropriate to talk and argue about atheism, or about vegetarianism, or global warming, or liberalism, or the Welsh rugby team, or Portishead's new record, or whatever else grips you, and other occasions when it certainly wouldn't be. Just going around, trying to convince people of your views, willy nilly, out of season, is not to treat others with much respect, nor is it likely to be very productive.

But I take it that isn't what's being suggested! The issue, I imagine, is: if you have come to believe that some widely shared, deeply held, view is wrong (perhaps damagingly wrong), then should you press your contrary arguments on appropriate occasions, even if people are prone to get a bit upset/offended? Should you, for example, when the occasion is suitable, advance your atheistic arguments even if it rocks the boat?

Well, why not? It is only through reasoning things through, back and forth, propounding arguments, listening to counter-arguments, that knowledge advances. And I'm still old-fashioned enough to think that we need all the knowledge we can get ...

To ask a question our illustrious leader, Alexander George, has several times asked here: What's meant by "prove"? If what's meant is what's ordinarily meant by "prove", then it's not clear that a single person on this planet can prove human beings evolved from apes. Nor can anyone prove that the Loch Ness monster does not exist. But that simply doesn't mean that there can't be good reasons to believe that human beings evolved from apes or that the Loch Ness monster does not exist. There can be, and there are.

Now what exactly that has to do with the rest of the question is not yet clear. But have a look here http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/ for some thoughts (not mine).

At the time the questioner mentions, it wasn't just religious claims that philosophers declared "cognitively meaningless". Any metaphysical claim was supposed to suffer the same fate.

Well, part of what's changed is that that's changed. Metaphysics is now a flourishing, and for the most part respectable, branch of philosophy again. So while it may be hard to be sure quite what "God is the Supreme Spirit, Who alone exists of Himself and is infinite in all perfections" means, it's surely not much harder than to be sure what (-- insert quotation from contemporary metaphysician --) means. The idea that some things exist in and of themselves and that some things exist only in virtue of the existence of other things, in particular, is quite metaphysically respectable: For example, pretty much everyone would agree that a set exists only in virtue of the existence of its members.

Of course, it's one thing whether flat-footed interpretations of religious claims would render them meaningless. It's quite another whether the flat-footed interpretation is the correct one, in the case of any particular individual. Surely it's obvoius that some people really do believe (or think they believe) the propositions that are expressed by such claims, flat-footedly interpreted.

It sounds as though you're giving a version of Pascal's Wager. One version of that argument runs along the following lines (whether or not this is exactly what Pascal had in mind): If God exist and I believe, I'll get infinite bliss. If he exists and I don't believe, I'm damned. But if God doesn't exist and I believe, I lose little, if anything and if he doesn't exist and I don't believe, I don't gain that much. Since belief potentially gains me much and loses me little, but since disbelief potentially gains me little and loses me much, I should believe.

One problem, of course, is whether skeptical people can actually get themselves to believe. Pascal thought they could by going to mass, taking holy water and the like. Let's suppose he's right. What's the downside?

One famous difficulty is the "many gods" objection. Which version of God do we believe in? What sorts of actions should we perform? Should we be Christians? What if there's a God who sees that as an unacceptable form of thinly-disguised polytheism? Should we reject Christianity? Millions of Christians see that as a sure path to damnation. And on it goes.

If the argument is that we should back the right horse in order to get a shot at paradise and avoid the fiery pit, then the problem is that we don't know which horse to pick. If we bring in general theological/philosophical considerations to decide which religious hypotheses are most plausible (or least implausible), then we may well end up deciding that a God who wouldnm't damn people for their honest opinions is at least as plausible as some wrath-ridden sort with inscrutable views. But in that case, the Wager loses its force.

This isn't to say that what some people call "pragmatic reasons" for religous belief have no force. William James's "The Will to Believe" makes a better case, though what James is arguing is often misunderstood. Suffice it to say, however, that it would be very difficult to show that a rational person couldn't be a non-believer; pragmatic arguments simply aren't up to that task.

1. Once upon a time, I guess that quite a few philosophers thought that a one-shot bash with (something like) the verification principle was enough to dispose of various claims of religion. These days, few philosophers think there's such a quick route to declaring some area of discourse "cognitively meaningless".

2. My impression remains however that many philosophers do think that various kinds of religious claims haven't got a clear meaning at least if interpreted flat-footedly, as making metaphysical claims about the contents of the universe. Take the words of the catechism: "God is the Supreme Spirit, Who alone exists of Himself and is infinite in all perfections". What does that mean? The complaint is not the quick one that it is "unverifiable", but the more laborious-to-defend one that trying to work out some metaphysical content to e.g. "infinite in all perfections" leads to confusion and paradox. But there are certainly philosophers who think that a coherent metaphysical story can be told.

3. But it is also the case that many philosophers think that giving a flat-footedly literal interpretation to religious claims is crass and point-missing and religious discourse shouldn't be thought of as being in the business of "cognitive meaningfulness" (and failing or succeeding on this score is not what it is about). The bone-headed literalness of various fundamentalisms, some would say, is in part a philosophical mistake (as well as being historically unfounded, etc.).

"Ok, ok," says Anne, "fair point. But I guess I'm not really hung up about the visual thing. A booming voice from the sky would do. Or even a few more signs like burning bushes in the Moses story. But something in your face and unmissable. Sure, people say they have evidence of God. But why does this 'evidence' all seem so flakey and disputable? If God really exists and is all-powerful and all that, why doesn't he make his own existence just obvious to us?"

Warming to her theme, Anne might continue: "Some people go on and on about the bible being the word of God. But why should I believe that if I don't already believe in God? Some people talk about religious experience. But what people 'experience' seems to depend on what they already believe (after all, Tibetan monks don't have visions of the Virgin Mary do they?). And some people claim to find evidence of God's presence in the everyday world around us. Like in all the disease and suffering? Or like when they make up dodgy creation myths? I'm not impressed! So, as I said, why -- if he really exists and cares and wants us to believe in him -- doesn't he show himself downright indisputably?"

Which I think is a pretty good question, Anne. True, theologians over the centuries have given stories in answer to awkward questions like this -- trying to 'explain' why God allows so much evil the world (despite his goodness and infinite power), and why God mysteriously hides himself, and so on. Frankly, the answers have always seemed pretty weak double-think and special pleading to me. But don't take my word for it. You are more than old enough to start doing some serious reading and thinking for yourself. Try, for example, Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion which is both a fun read and stuffed full of arguments (I'm not saying that they are all good ones!). Get your friendly local believers to recommend some pro-God book which equally aims to give arguments (not just make assertions like "take it on faith"). Try to think it all through and work out which arguments are strong ones, and follow the arguments where they lead.

Well, a philosopher would say that, wouldn't he?

Perhaps he does, but not in the way that ordinary people show themselves to each other. After all, I believe in your existence but all I have as evidence is your message to the group. Does the fact that you are not visually present to me make you mysterious? I don't think so, and believers often claim to find evidence of God's presence in the everyday world around us. I would turn the question around and ask you why you think sight is so significant. Do you only believe things you can directly see? If so, then you surely fail to believe many things that normally are believed by human beings. That does not mean you are wrong, of course, but it does mean that most of the rest of us are, since for most people existence does not depend on visibility.

Discrimination is wrong if it has no basis in a solid ethical reason for treating people differently, so I don't think you are right in saying that "any religion-based discrimination is wrong". A religion is entitled to take a negative view of a particular sort of behaviour and then to discriminate against the actor, and the distinction you draw between religious groups and others is not that relevant here. I work for a secular and public university in America, but could not insist on my right to lecture in German, for instance, if the reasonable expectation is that I would teach in English, nor to invite students for tutorials at 4 am, when the working hours of the institution are different. Nor do I think I could display in my office pornographic images or fly a swastika flag from my window. Why not? Because as you say "this scenario would be contrary to the belief system in place". Here we need to distinguish between minor and major deviations from the norm. The former is alright while the latter does raise serious difficulties.

Of course, someone who works for a church organization and who goes awry might reasonably expect to be forgiven.

One little historical point to begin with: Descartes didn't actually appeal to the Argument from Design at all. But you're certainly right that it has a long and venerable history behind it. It's the fifth of St Thomas Aquinas's 'Five Ways' of proving the existence of God; and, in some form or other, it goes a long way still further back than that.

Regarding the recent controversies (and perhaps explaining the 'oddness' of the trial), there are two issues that need to be distinguished. (i) Is it a good argument? (ii) Is it a scientific argument? The two questions are independent: both scientific debates and debates of other kinds (philosophical, theological, etc.) do get their fair share of both good arguments and bad arguments. We hope that, whatever the debate, the good arguments will win the day: but the bad ones deserve to be given a fair hearing too, so that what is bad about them might be exposed. Now, the recent controversies have centred around the question of whether or not ID is a scientific theory. If it is a scientific theory, then it would seem to merit some discussion within Science classes in public schools: counterposed against alternative theories, perhaps, to facilitate a free and fair debate wherein the superior theory (whichever that might be) might vanquish the inferior. If it's not a scientific theory, then, whatever merits it may or may not have, Science classes are simply not the place for it to be discussed.

I didn't follow the Dover trial in any great detail, but it did have strong echoes of an Arkansas trial in 1981, on an almost identical issue: whether 'Creation Science' (as it was then being called) should be taught in Science classes in public schools. Philosophers of science were invited to testify at the trial, but not directly on the question of whether Creation Science (or ID) was good or bad science. Rather, they were asked whether they felt it qualified as science at all. The witnesses maintained that it failed to live up to the criteria that define genuine scientific research -- it wasn't seeking universal laws of nature, it wasn't yielding explanations of known phenomena or predictions of unknown ones, it wasn't empirically testable, and its practitioners were overly dogmatic -- and the court agreed. As I understand it, this was also the question that the Dover court was asked to decide: not whether ID was a good theory, but whether it was a scientific theory. But the interesting thing about that 1981 trial (and, for all I know, maybe the Dover trial too) was that it launched a debate within the philosophy of science community. The trouble with philosophers of science is that they are decidedly prone to disagreements about what science is, let alone how its practitioners ought to operate. Some philosophers pointed out that many of the most central, paradigmatic cases that everyone would unhesitatingly regard as genuinely scientific theories would nevertheless fall short of the excessively rigid criteria for scientific status just listed above. There is no clear philosophical consensus about what makes a theory qualify as 'scientific'. Consequently, there is no clear philosophical consensus about whether or not the Argument from Design is a scientific argument.

Where philosophers are, I think, closer to consensus (although I'm sure there will still be dissenters here too) is on the question of whether or not the Argument from Design is a good argument. David Hume, in his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (written in the 1750s, published 1779), argued that it was not; and his objections to it (which I'd invite you to follow up in detail, if you're interested in this sort of thing) are really rather powerful, and regarded as decisive by many philosophers nowadays. Hume showed (or purported to show) that little or nothing of religious doctrine can be rationally justified, through any arguments based on empirical evidence (or by a priori arguments either for that matter). Indeed, he argued that, if anything, the evidence would seem to tell directly against such doctrines. Admittedly, even outside this domain, Hume didn't think that very much else could be rationally justified either, and the running theme of his philosophical works was the thesis that our belief-system, right across the board, is not grounded in any philosophical arguments at all, but rather in our passionate impulses and habits. So he still left plenty of room for religious faith, as such, but merely wished to show that the Argument from Design could do nothing to underpin such faith. Most philosophers nowadays would, I think, agree with him on this.