I said what I wanted to say but did it in an underhanded (deadpan) fashion. (I suspect you wouldn’t do well with Jonathan Swift’s call to eat children.)

Looking for evidence in the Bible for God’s existence (or authorship of the Bible, for that matter) is a fool’s errand because — I’m about to italicize for emphasis — you’d be looking at the Bible for examples. See the problem? It doesn’t matter if the assertion about God’s existence is mentioned once in the Bible or a thousand times. The issue here is the inherent flaw of circular thinking. Once again, there’s the classic example I cited last time that illustrates my point: “The Bible is true because the Bible says it’s true.”

“Atheism is a religion.” A theist is a person who believes in a Creator. An a-theist is a person who does not believe in a Creator. To be an atheist is to disbelieve in something — in this case, God (or Divine Creator, or whatever term you care to use). How is not believing in something a religion? Let’s return to my remark about Sasquatch. If you disbelieve in the existence of Sasquatch, how is that disbelief a religion for you?

I don’t know what “presenting an atheist challenge without form” means. My form was straightforward: I selected ten subjects (I could have selected others) and wrote about them — and then readers can respond with comments on what I said about those subjects, and then I can respond in kind, and so on. That sounds like a pretty good form to me.

I am aware of the issues. In my book, so to speak, there’s only one: Religions (not just Christianity) make claims about the nature of the world and the universe that are not true. My steadfast criticism of all religion always comes back to that (and that our moral capacities have nothing to do with any religion). Any discussion about the meaning of a Biblical passage here or a theological idea over there is beside the point and irrelevant.

I’d rather keep this conversation public.