notes old wine in new bottles

Still waiting for someone to burn the flag of the secular Israeli state.
Still waiting for Blubba to take a stand on the Gaza and the occupied territories.

Tension About Religion and Class in Turkey. Which side are you on Bubba? John? Read the link for once before responding. Both of you.

The issue as I said above isn't religion but the metaphysical valuation of inanimate objects as anything other than themselves. Myers is a modernist and a Platonist. "A brick is a brick is a brick." as someone once said. "Whaddaya mean Love is a rose? Love is an emotion. A rose is a goddamn plant!!"
It's no longer an argument over delusions, but over whether its possible for a secularist to be delusional. It is, obviously.

There is no god. God is a McGuffin. [Look that one up. Learn something.] God, and the Host, are synecdoches for community.
Weinberg, a much more important figure in the movement to which Myers belongs, the self-described "Brights," is a self described Platonist and secularist. I have no idea how it's even possible to be both. I linked to his book Facing Up: Science and it's Cultural Adversaries and its Chapter 15. Zionism and Its Adversaries This is the Platonism and reason of a Nobel Prize winner. Racism.
I will not defend the politics of Platonism. That link is to a screed by another "Bight" quite famous in his field. [to McGinn but the post has moved]

We exist as objects in the world of facts. We live as creatures in a world of perceptions. It's a mistake to pretend that as creatures we have unshaded access to the world of facts. Desire for unknown facts is not reason but desire. Falling in love with rocks and insects is not more valuable to our society than the articulation of the ambiguities of perception as they relate to justice and law in a community. The rule of law is not the rule of reason. In the rule of reason there are no laws. The doctrine of Stare Decisis has no place in science but is central to our political order.

It is always a mistake to assume. As I wrote on an old post at Myers' page

Scientists do tend to be optimists. But they also tend to use words like 'truth.' as in 'ultimate truth' but truth is a term of metaphysics, and science is not concerned with truth but FACTS; facts which are mundane until someone has the desire to discover them and then revert to it after the post coital glow of discovery has faded.

You defend assumption and desire. And in doing so you act to defend the crimes of those who share your assumptions.

Colin McGinn "Philosopher" and Bright

I myself see a close link between democracy as a dogma and the idea that everyone's opinion is as good as anyone else's: that is, between equality in respect of voting power and forms of relativism about truth. For if people's opinions do not have equal value, how can we justify giving their votes equal power?

And again

Well, if truth, reason, virtue, etc are not objective qualities that people exemplify to varying degrees, but are rather relative to each person, we have a way out: everyone is as smart and good as anyone else to himself. Then democracy rests on no lie, since everyone really is cognitively and morally equal. Relativism steps in to save democracy from its noble lie. Thus relativism finds a foothold. But relativism is rubbish; so where does that leave democracy?

Myers is small town pedant who doesn't even know what he's defending.

[Some of the quotes from McGiinn were written by him in commments in threads later removed]