{"id":7889,"date":"2011-06-16T17:51:24","date_gmt":"2011-06-16T06:51:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/?p=7889"},"modified":"2011-06-18T12:04:14","modified_gmt":"2011-06-18T01:04:14","slug":"atheists-competence-extrapolation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/2011\/06\/16\/atheists-competence-extrapolation\/","title":{"rendered":"Atheists &amp; &#8216;competence extrapolation&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>John Dickson pleads for an informed atheism. He comments on the tendency of atheist commentators in their critique of the Christian faith to stray well beyond their areas of expertise: in Dickson&#8217;s apt words\u00a0<span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">&#8220;competence extrapolation<\/span>&#8220;.<\/p>\n<p>He notes these\u00a0concerns in addressing arguments put against the teaching of religios education in state schools:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Tamas Pataki, a trained philosopher and well-known figure on the atheist  circuit, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/religion\/articles\/2011\/06\/01\/3232609.htm?topic1=&amp;topic2=\">recently  put up four arguments against state schools offering Special Religious  Education<\/a> (SRE). It leads to divisiveness, strengthens group identity (a bad  thing because of the first), is factually untrue and, unlike Graeco-Roman  wisdom, argues from parable and dogma instead of by reasoning. Pataki is wrong  on all four counts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is an article to read and ponder when you have a cuppa and 30 minutes (well for me, anyway!).<\/p>\n<p>Article on yesterday&#8217;s <em>ABC Online Religion and Ethics<\/em>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/religion\/articles\/2011\/06\/15\/3244185.htm?topic1&amp;topic2\">Pitting historical facts against atheist schoolyard delusions<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Dickson pleads for an informed atheism. He comments on the tendency of atheist commentators in their critique of the Christian faith to stray well beyond their areas of expertise: in Dickson&#8217;s apt words\u00a0&#8220;competence extrapolation&#8220;. He notes these\u00a0concerns in addressing &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/2011\/06\/16\/atheists-competence-extrapolation\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7889"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7889"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7906,"href":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7889\/revisions\/7906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}