I agree with absolutely everything you say about my ethical system. Our ethical system. Yours and mine. “Independently in multiple cultures across the history and geography of this planet.” Well said.

Quite a fucking coincidence tho, huh?

I like the fact that you use the word evolution, please keep in mind that it’s only the truly zealous idiots that still maintain “My grandaddy weren’t no monkey!” Now please tell me of the social evolutionary successes of all the great and ancient godless civilizations.

Now, I only mention “amoral monster” for the same reason you mention “divine sky king” and “eternal damnation” and so forth. We’re just throwing around whatever bullshit sticks, right?

But you’re putting it our there like it’s supposed to insult me, which belies your own assumptions about my beliefs. I’m only giving back to you in order to demonstrate how worthless the premise for that assumption is.

Difference is that I’m being facetious, because I learned to give people the benefit of the doubt. Maybe I learned it in sunday school, maybe it was at the end of a GI joe cartoon (because knowing is half the battle!) but if so, whoever wrote that script probably learned it from someone who learned it in sunday school.

And yes, eternal damnation is a pretty horrible concept. But if your (completely original, trademarked, proprietary atheist) philosophy of “let’s all try not to be assholes, and forgive each other and try to work together and stuff” wasn’t such a completely radical paradigm shift from the natural order we wouldn’t have needed the concept of Hell to enforce it.

And look at us now, nobody really believes in a literal hell anymore, besides the baptists and other know-nothing fundamentalists. Even the catholics gave it up, pre-Francis, no less.

So which of us is keeping an open mind? You keep telling me what I mean to say, but you don’t take the trouble to actually try to understand what the fuck I’m actually saying.

“Evangelical” is not a brand, it encompasses many people of faith besides mouth-breathers and born-agains. Many moderate and reasonable people are members of a denomination that fits in the evangelical category. Hysterical morons that think they see demons at the walmart have come to exemplify the term. It’s a real fucking tragedy that they’ve given the rest of us such a bad name, but they are NOT the majority. They are just the loudest voices in Christianity right now.

I will concede that the existence of “hell” may still be the official position of the Vatican as last revisited 23 years ago, but in my experience this is a more current attitude of mainstream catholosism (uscatholic.org/blog/2011/03/do-you-believe-hell) emphasis mine:

“Catholic teaching has always and still maintains hell as a radical possibility of human freedom (though we don’t say anyone is actually there). In other words God doesn’t “damn” anyone, but human freedom makes ultimate rejection of God possible, a condition we’d call hell. But Catholic teaching also affirms that explicit faith in Christ is not necessary for salvation, even as it maintains that Christ is “necessary” for human salvation. ….. That position, of course, reflects a change in a previously commonly held and taught position that anyone not in the Catholic Church would be damned.”

So, hell is the absence of god, no more lakes of fire and whatnot. But anyways, I’m not catholic, I’m just happy they’re starting to come around.

And my point about the big coincidence is not that civilization requires a system, but that every civilization has developed more or less the SAME system, often independent of each other. At some point, you have to wonder if they may have been onto something.

After all, pattern recognition is the human trait that ultimately led to superstition, then religion, in the first place. And faith really is the only human trait you can’t otherwise find somewhere else in nature in one form or another. Are you really so sure there’s nothing to it?

As for evidence for my faith, I have TONS. The biggest problem is none of it is very good evidence. Circumstantial, unreliable, most completely unsubstantiated. But there’s just so damned much. And still, more evidence than you have.

What I really can’t get over is the book of Genesis. I know I know, this has been a featured player in this argument for literally centuries now, but hear me out:

If I were to send you back in time 50,000 years with the sole mission to nip this whole ‘organized religion’ thing in the bud before it gets out of hand, to go back and explain the big bang, the formation of the solar system, the earth, evolution, human development to our primitive fore-bearers, then 40,000 years later you’d end up with something that looks a whole hell of a lot like the first 10 chapters of Genesis.

There are no elephants balancing of a stack of turtles, no ravens puking out the sun and shitting out stars.

A time before time? Light, before the existence of the sun? Great firmament? What the fuck even is that? First the oceans, then the plants and animals, and then man?

It’s one of the few creation myths that makes MORE sense as we learn more about the universe.

And consider that it is a story common to a majority of all faithful people on the planet, across multiple faiths. And that these faiths and their philosophies built western civilization. They did not develop coincidentally, in parallel. Judaeo-Christian philosophy led directly to the modern world. All of the moral justification for the American and French Revolutions, the prototypes for modern constitutional democracy, were distilled from concepts of justice and equity that were developed during the Reformation. The broad strokes and imagery may have been Greek and Roman, but the Bill of Rights? Not possible without Martin Luther.

As someone who strongly believes in evolution by means of natural selection, it’s hard to ignore so much success. And as a human that’s hard-wired to notice such things, it’s hard to ignore all the coincidence.

But, fuck it, some people I hate believe some of the same things I do. The answer, obviously, is to reject my entire belief system and find some cooler kids to hang out with. It’s my hair, I can dye it black if I want to and you just try to stop me, Mom!

That’s a neat rhetorical trick, I’mma try now:

Wow. I mean just… Wow….

Wow. You’re just…

wow.

Once again, IF IT WAS PROVABLE THAN IT WOULDN’T REQUIRE FAITH. WE WOULD USE A DIFFERENT FUCKING WORD FOR IT.

I mean, c’mon.

wow

Now, a word on science, which we can all agree is pretty useful and cool, right?

Throughout history, science has often disabused people of their silly notions about the nature of the universe. Scientists would disprove something widely held as truth, and then, after a time, we could all enjoy ridiculing people for still believing in a flat earth, phrenology… whatever.

But it takes evidence before you can start being a dick about it. Ha ha! That’s right! You need evidence too! Not in order to believe that there is no God, that’s perfectly fine.

But in the absence of evidence, you’re just a condescending asshole with an OPINION.

Like I said, I have a bunch of shitty evidence that validates my faith.

Did I say PROOF? Did I? Mister putting-fucking-words-in-my-mouth-because-you’re-only-comfortable-arguing-with-stupid-people?

I mean…

wow.