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@Khandro - This of yours "Someone at a bus stop//Albert Einstein' I'm sure you know, is a method of argument known as reductio ad absurdum," Is you being wrong again.
You keep missing the point, and attaching far too much importance to the messenger, and not enough to the message itself - I think we can all agree that a statement from, say a physicist about quantum mechanics deserves a greater consideration ; but the message itself should be what is important.
Otherwise you end up blindly believing in statements from people just because of who they are. Fred Hoyle on the steady state universe, or his assertion that evolution could not explain complexity - the junkyard - tornado-747 hypothesis, better known as Hoyles Fallacy.
And then we start trading reputations. You devalue the Baggini quote because you have never heard of him, and then when you look him up, he becomes, in your sneering estimation, a "second - rate philosopher" - but you attach far more weight to a quote from Dr. Johnson, because you have heard of him - but he is just offering an opinion- nothing more, nothing less.
He made a considerable contribution to the field of literature - but that does not garnish his opinion on the philosophical status of atheism any added weight!
Nice to see that you have finally offered Birdie an apology, even if a back-handed one.....