I am more interested in whatever evidence your author used to support his conclusion. The world is crawling with religious crackpots. A mere quote from some author means very little. Just a weak argument from authority.
I realize that quoting from books is the favourite religious mode of...
Nonsense. The evolutionary algorithm is very simple.
Organisms vary as they reporoduce; this is observed and uncontestable. The mechanisms are known and are known to be random.
Environments impose limits on survival and reproduction. This is observed and uncontestable. These limits influence...
Sure you can judge someone by their religion, at least provisionally, and certainly if that is all you have to go on. Otherwise, one would have to think that religions have no tenets.
The hard part may be finding out what particular flavour one is dealing with.
By your account, how does one distinguish knowledge from delusion?
One needs to fact check one's experiences against reality, never mind convincing another person.
Or, given that we are all the same species, it might just mean that we are all subject to the same quirks and misfirings of our psychology. More is needed to establish that these experiences access anything external and real.
So, nothing to do with matters of fact. That's what I have thought for a long time.
However, you seem to be using a different notion of the word "theological" than I have encountered before. Please explain.
Why is militancy against normal theism wrong if the theism is shown to be both mistaken and noxious?
Crimes committed due to militancy are still wrong, of course, regardless of the flavour of the militant.
Most of these boil down to determined gullibility. One can wrench and twist scripture to support any proposition whatever. I suppose that an ingenious person could do as much with a cookbook.
Sure there is biblical scholarship: there is Sherlock Holmes scholarship as well. I am unimpressed.
As...
It produces correct predictions. If it were bogus, the spacecraft would miss their destinations, for example. It makes sense to expect it to continue to work.