I wrote an article called “Apparently, I Was Wrong” in my Oregon Herald column. It was my first post-election article and I was ruminating about how I was wrong about how people would see what a failure George W. Bush was and they’d do the sensible thing and vote him out. I was thrilled to get a response from a reader, Sandi in Oregon, who just had to tell me how wrong I really was:

You were right about one thing….. You were wrong. And, if you ever forget that you were wrong, just take a pair of sharp scissors and shove them up into the base of your skull about an inch – not all the way like you would be willing to do to an innocent baby, but just an inch or so – just far enough to jog your memory.

Just think, if the Democrats had not pushed for the 40 million abortions that have been performed since 1973, half of those babies would have been old enough now to have voted for Kerry. It could have made a huge difference in the outcome of the election. How many of those slaughtered would have become great Democrat leaders; one might have become the best President in our history. Consider this: Each fetus is really a future voter. Maybe the Democrats are killing off their following.

The wages of sin is death, and dead people can’t vote. So, I am thinking you were not only wrong, perhaps you were dead wrong. You can spit in God’s face, but don’t expect him to smile about.

My first pro-life fundie! How exciting! Of course, I couldn’t just let that drop, now, could I? My response:

Sandi, thank you for writing. I can tell that you and I have completely differing opinions on the subject of government control over women’s bodies. Even so, I do appreciate hearing from readers of my column, especially the ones who disagree with me. If I were to listen to only those who agree with me, why, I’d be as ignorant of reality as President Bush!

You can claim that I spit in the face of God, but that will fall on deaf ears over here, as I am an atheist. This fact will probably corroborate your opinion of me as being “dead wrong”. However, I prefer to deal in the world of reality, science, and facts rather than relying on millennia-old mistranslated political texts and faith in ghost stories and modern mythology. Since everybody does not agree with your religion, we should keep our political discussions in the secular realm — unless you think America should become a Christian theocracy. After all, theocracy works so well in the Muslim world; you probably love the way they treat their women there.

You will see my position as causing 40 million babies to be slaughtered, despite the fact that the majority of abortions performed in America take place during the first trimester when an embryo is indistinguishable from a egg yolk and the fetus is completely unviable without the mother. And I will continue to hold that your position is tantamount to government forcing women at gunpoint to bear children. I also cannot figure out why you are so keen on doing God’s job. The Gospel of Matthew teaches you to judge not, lest ye be judged, correct? Don’t you trust God to deliver abortionists to eternal damnation? Isn’t God’s wrath enough for you?

You can suppose that aborted fetuses may have grown up to be Democratic voters; I suppose that they may have just as easily become Republicans. You can suppose that one of them may have become the greatest president ever; I suppose it just as easily could have become a cannibalistic serial killer. So let’s not play the “what if” game as the “what ifs” are just as likely to be negative as positive.

Furthermore, I cannot fathom how you would think I am for the slaughter of innocent babies. I completely reject infanticide. Where we differ is in how we define a baby. I think a baby becomes a human being with full civil rights at the moment of birth when it takes its first breath. But that’s not just my opinion, that’s your God’s opinion.

Let’s go back to your Bible for some guidance, shall we? In Genesis 2:7, God creates man from dust and breathes into his nostrils the breath of life and thus man became a living soul. Apparently your own Bible says that men aren’t living souls until they breathe. Further along we read in Exodus 21:22-23 that if a man hits a pregnant woman and causes her to miscarry, he is subject to a fine, but if he kills the pregnant woman, he is subject to death. Apparently your own Bible defines the abortion of a fetus to be a lesser crime than murder. As an atheist, I could care less what the Bible says, but since it seems so important to you, I figured I could help you out with your misunderstanding.

Even if you could criminalize abortion (and I figure your president will soon stock the Supreme Court in order to render such a decision), do you think the abortions will end? Of course not; you would just rather send them underground and include many young women among the dead and maimed in addition to the fetuses aborted. How very Christian of you.

If you think abortion is a sin, then don’t have an abortion. But your God supposedly gave mankind free will, and like it or not, some women will use their free will to terminate a pregnancy. Let God do the punishing, Sandy. The rest of us believe that a woman’s body is her own to control and her medical decisions are between her and her doctor.

Sincerely,

“Radical” Russ Belville

Portland, OR

P.S. Been shopping at Wal-Mart lately? You do know that Wal-Mart is a primary contributor to the growth of the Chinese economy, right? And the Chinese economy is kept in check by severely limiting population growth through the Chinese government’s one-child policy. And that policy causes women there to abort non-male fetuses in huge numbers, and even leads to female infanticide in rural areas. Every dollar you spend at Wal-Mart helps support a pro-abortion Chinese government. So keep on protesting against abortion if you must, but if you’re making your sign with Wal-Mart markers and posterboard, you are being unintentionally ironic.

Now, I didn’t really expect to hear back from her, but whaddaya know, she’s read my “A Positive Christian Atheist” article and has decided that I’m just a wayward sheep separated from God’s flock and it’s her Christian duty to shepherd me.

Hi again, Russ,

Thank you for taking the time to read the note I had sent, and especially for being gracious enough to respond. I have never written to a columnist before about anything, and I was pleasantly surprised to hear from you. First of all, I want to assure you that I am not at all an activist; however, you were correct in assuming that I am a Christian, and that kind of makes me feel good. Actually, I came across your article by chance when I was searching for unrelated information on my job. The “How Could I Have Been So Wrong” line caught my eye. Otherwise, I would probably have continued on with my work and not even paid any attention to it. A few days before, for no reason other than curiosity, I had looked up Abortion Statistics. When I saw the numbers, I was astounded to think how many people never get a chance at life. That is the reason I shared my thoughts with you – because I had been thinking on that huge number when I happened across your article.

Thank you for the scriptures you pointed out for me to consider. As far as the “breath of life,” I feel that one puff from God was enough for all of mankind, and that it has been passed on from mother to child ever since, unless it was cut off for some reason. That is just my own personal thought. I don’t expect the whole world to think it. It is just that when I think of God, I think “awesome.” Regarding the scripture about if a man hits a pregnant woman and causes her to miscarry, he is subject to a fine, but if he kills the pregnant woman, he is subject to death, I really don’t see the correlation between that situation and an abortion planned by the mother and having it carried out purposely. I do think the scripture shows that it was not legal and was in fact a crime, by the fact that the man was subject to a fine. That is all I ask, that it not be declared a legal act, but a crime. So, thank you for bringing my attention to that particular verse, as it verifies my position exactly.

Here is a verse I think is beautiful: For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. Psalms 139:13-16 (NIV).

As I read your letter, I wondered why/how a man as intelligent and articulate as you would come to a decision to be an atheist. I was going to write and ask you that very question, but I found the explanation in another of your articles. I don’t know anything about the LDS religion, but I have known a couple of people that had grown up in that, and they seemed to be kind of angry at God too. The church you described visiting and said you liked is the kind I grew up in. And you have made me realize how fortunate I was to be raised in that atmosphere of loving God and knowing the joy that He gives. I guess I have just taken it for granted. You were so right in your description of the difference in a dull, lifeless church service, and one where people are joyful and singing, and the preaching is with conviction and enthusiasm. I wish you had been able to go there again, because the little taste that you got, that little feeling of being drawn, is really how God works. It is not that He is some big unseen taskmaster with a long list of do’s and dont’s. The joy and love that you felt that day, that is God. And the really neat thing is that when you decide to follow Him, no one has to make you do right, your desires change within you and you just want to please God. It is very amazing, and real. Being religious and being a Christian are two completely different things. I know that God loves radicals too, as the Bible is full of them. So, see, you wouldn’t even have to change your personality! I hope the day will come that you might find this out for yourself. I pray that at the end of your life you do not say again, “How could I have been so wrong”?

I know you are busy and I don’t expect you to answer this one. I will be praying that God will touch your life.

Sincerely,

Sandi

See, that’s what’s wrong. I’m just out of touch with God. I’m just angry with God. Well, let no good deed go unpunished, I always say. Here now is the relentlessly detailed response I sent:

The “How Could I Have Been So Wrong” line caught my eye.

The title was actually “Apparently I Was Wrong.” What I was wrong about was believing that voters would vote their own interests. I was wrong in thinking that a majority of the American people would look at the gross negligence and incompetence that brought us the two worst intelligence failures in American history leading to the worst attack on American soil, being lied to in order to mount an unnecessary war to fatten oil company profits, 1200+ dead American soldiers, 3000+ dead New Yorkers, 100000+ dead Iraqi’s, a steady decline in the earning power of the average American, government subsidy of good high-paying benefit-providing manufacturing and high-tech jobs being shipped overseas replaced by low-paying benefit-bereft McJobs, the shifting of the tax burden from wealth to work, the evaporation of a huge budget surplus into the largest deficit in history, 45 million people (8 million children) with no health insurance, the looting of pensions by Enron, Tyco, Global Crossing, Adelphia brought about by lax government oversight, the proposal to put our Social Security funds into the hands of those same greedy, cheating, lawless, fat-cat, classist oligarchist Wall Street bastards, the hatred of nearly the entire globe (including most of our allies), the destruction of thirty years of environmental protections, the rejection of the science behind global warming (which may kill us all) and stem-cell research (which may save many of us) in order to pander to the Luddite reactionary Evangelical Christian mentality that actually *wants* a global showdown between Christianity and Islam, and a leader of the free world who never met a sentence he couldn’t mangle — I was wrong in thinking that most people would see that and think, “naw, I don’t want four more years of *that*.”

I was wrong because I forgot that most people are swayed by stupid sound bites, can’t name their own Congressperson, couldn’t point to Saudi Arabia on a globe, have the attention span of a hyperactive eight-year-old at a video game convention, can’t hear anything wrong when the President says “nu-cu-lar”, and hate gays, non-Christians, and people with brown skin in foreign countries (and most of the people with brown skin in our own country.) I was wrong because most people don’t like intelligent people like John Kerry and could be fooled into believing that volunteering for combat in Vietnam and earning three Purple Hearts, two Bronze Stars, and a Silver Star was a made-up bit of résumé padding.

Otherwise, I would probably have continued on with my work and not even paid any attention to it. A few days before, for no reason other than curiosity, I had looked up Abortion Statistics. When I saw the numbers, I was astounded to think how many people never get a chance at life.

Sandi, Sandi, Sandi. Fetuses are not people. Acorns are not oak trees. Omelets are not chickens. Caterpillars are not butterflies. Maggots are not flies. In biology, there exist many Things and many Not-Yet-Things.

Many actually born people don’t get much of a chance at life. The infant mortality rate in the United States is 13th among industrialized nations. That’s actually born babies that are dying. There are thousands of actually born Iraqis whose lives are terminated by our cluster bombs and mortar rounds. People who have actually breathed air and lived independent of a womb are dying every day and you’re shedding tears for clumps of subdividing cells that have never breathed, walked, talked, or thought, and would expire in minutes independent of a host mother. Your priorities are misplaced, ma’am.

Thank you for the scriptures you pointed out for me to consider. As far as the “breath of life,” I feel that one puff from God was enough for all of mankind, and that it has been passed on from mother to child ever since, unless it was cut off for some reason. That is just my own personal thought.

You do realize that my use of Scripture is intended to be ironic, right? I could give less than two-tenths of a tick’s turd what the Bible says about anything. It’s a laughably self-contradicting mistranslated political text written by men (often in a state of delusion, drunkenness, or drug-induced hysteria) to control other men. I only use Scripture to hoist Christians by their own petard.

Regarding abortion, it is Biblically clear (if you need such guidance) that God does not consider a fetus a human person. I tried to show that with Genesis 2:7, where Adam had a human form and a vibrant new body but he only becomes a fully-alive human person after God makes him breathe, but it can also be seen in a variety of other Bible verses.

In Leviticus 27:6 a monetary value was placed on children, but not until they reached one month old (any younger had no value).

Likewise, in Numbers 3:15 a census was commanded, but the Jews were told only to count those one month old and above – anything less, particularly a fetus, was not counted as a human person.

In Ezekiel 37:8-10 we watch as God re-animates dead bones into living soldiers, but the passage makes the interesting note that they were not alive as persons until their first breath.

In Genesis 38:24, we read about a pregnant woman condemned to death by burning. Though the leaders of Israel knew the woman was carrying a fetus, this was not taken into consideration. If indeed the Jews, and the God who instructed them, believed the fetus to be an equal human person to the mother, then why would they let the fetus die for the mother’s crimes?

Since I assume you believe that the Bible is The Divine Word of God, I’m confident that these verses will convince you that God doesn’t think a person is a person until it breathes. Also, since God’s word is inviolable and absolute, I assume you eat no shellfish or pork. I assume you don’t do any labor or commerce on Sunday. I assume when you are on your period, you stay by yourself, out of contact with any men. I assume you are fine with being beaten by your husband with a rod no thicker than his thumb. (I guess I’m also assuming “Sandi” is a feminine name. Apologies if you’re a he.)

Or maybe you don’t follow every single Scripture to the letter. I can easily understand why; it’s really hard to trust God’s Word when It keeps giving you contradictions. For an omnipotent, omniscient God, He sure has trouble keeping his Divine Word straight. For example, in Matthew 1:16 we find that Jesus’ paternal step-grandpa was a guy named Jacob, but in Luke 3:23 it’s a guy named Heli. God doesn’t seem to care much about poor Joseph, which is quite cruel when you consider He knocked up Joe’s wife without Joe’s knowledge or permission.

I don’t ask much from a supernatural being, maybe just a little consistency. You want me to believe in your God, but even He can’t get His own story straight. I’d want to pick and choose which verses to follow and which verses to ignore, too!

For example, in Genesis 1:25-26, God makes beasts then makes man, in Genesis 2:18-19 God makes man then makes beasts. In Genesis 7:2, Noah is commanded to take seven of each clean beast into the ark, in Genesis 7:8 he is commanded to take only two of each clean beast. God can’t seem to keep track of the beasts.

God can’t even figure out the basic zoology of His own creations: in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 He refers to bats as birds (they’re mammals), in Leviticus He claims rabbits chew cud (they don’t), again in Leviticus He refers to insects with four feet (they’ve got six).

He can’t figure out evolution: in Genesis 1:20-21 He claims birds originated in the seas, in Genesis 2:19 He claims birds originated from the earth.

Geology and cosmology are muddy too: In Genesis 1, God makes sky, earth, light, water, plants, sun, moon, stars, water critters, land critters, bugs, men and women together, then rested, in that order. However, in the very next chapter of Genesis, God creates earth, sky, man (alone), plants, animals, and then woman. In Genesis 1, He seems deliberate and very pleased with each day’s work, in Genesis 2, He seems to be making mistakes (e.g., no mate or food for Adam) and fixing them as He goes along.

God’s also a bit inconsistent with threats, too. In II Samuel 24:13, God threatens David with seven years of famine, in I Chronicles 21:11 it’s only three years of famine. Samuel and Chronicles have other consistency problems — in II Samuel 24 it’s God who moves David to anger against Israel and Judah, but I Chronicles 21 says it was Satan that riled up ol’ Daniel. In Isaiah 14:21, God says children should pay for the sins of their fathers, Deuteronomy 24:16 says no.

God’s also hard to see… Or not. In Exodus 24:9-10, Amos 9:1, Genesis 26:2, John 14:9, Exodus 33:23, Exodus 33:11, and Genesis 32:30, God can be seen by man. However, in John 1:18, Exodus 33:20, and I Timothy 6:16, no man can see God.

You’d at least think that the reporters of the time (the disciples) could get the facts straight about the acts of Jesus they witnessed with their own eyes. Yet in Matthew 5:1-2, Jesus is giving a sermon on a mountain, but Luke 6:17-20 says Jesus gives a sermon on a plain.

In John 20:1, Mary Magdalene goes alone to Jesus’ empty tomb, but in Matthew 28:1 she brings along another Mary, and in Mark 16:1 someone named Salome tags along. In Matthew 28:2-5 and Mark 16:5 they see one angel in the tomb, in Luke 24:4 and John 20:12 it’s two angels.

In John 10:30, Jesus says he is equal to the Father, in John 14:28 he claims to be less than the Father.

At Jesus’ trial he wore robes of scarlet (Matthew 27:28) or were they purple (John 19:2)? I can compromise; maybe they were burgundy. Speaking of burgundy, was Jesus given wine with myrrh to drink (Mark 15:23) or was it vinegar (Matthew 27:34)?

Matthew 27:46-50 quotes Jesus’ last words as “My God, why hast thou forsaken me?”, but Luke 23:46 quotes “Father, unto thy hands I commend my spirit”, whereas John 19:30 quotes “It is finished.”

Judas died from disembowelment in Acts 1:18, but from hanging in Matthew 27:5.

Jesus predicted that Peter would deny him before the cock crowed once in Matthew 26:34, or was it twice in Mark 14:30. Peter did deny Jesus, before the second cockcrow (Mark 14:72), during the cock’s first crow (Luke 22:60-61), or before the first cockcrow (John 13:38). I can make an allowance here; perhaps the disciples were paying attention to different cocks.

God thinks we should be boastful about our good deeds (Matthew 5:16) but then says we should do good deeds in secret (Matthew 6:3-4… If there is one verse I wish I could get all Christians to follow, it’s this one. “But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”)

When you get to the real detailed analysis of some of the Bible’s bit players, it is just as bad. Michal, daughter of Saul, had no kids (II Saul 6:23), except for the five sons she had with Adriel (II Saul 21:8).

Jehoiachin became king of Jerusalem at age eighteen and ruled for three months (II Kings 24:8) except that he was eight years old and ruled for three months, ten days (II Chronicles 36:9). Must’ve been a different Jehoiachin; it must be a fairly common name for kings of Jerusalem.

Abijah’s mother and grandma were Maachah and Absalom (II Chronicles 9:20), or were they Michaiah and Uriel (II Chronicles 13:2)?

Baasha died in the 26th year of Asa’s reign (I Kings 16:6-8), or was it the 36th year (II Chronicles 16:1)?

Ahaziah was 22 when he became king (II Kings 8:26) or was it 42 (II Chronicles 22:2)?

After Josiah, Jehoahaz became king (II Chronicles 36:1) or was it Shallum (Jeremiah 22:11)?

And so on and so on. Yes, I’ve culled this information from the Internet, and yes, you can go ahead and cull the explanations from the apologetics that supposedly explain the contradictions. Nevertheless, way back in the pre-Internet 70’s, I was a young kid who actually sat down and read the Bible, cover-to-cover (I also read the dictionary and the encyclopedia; both were much more interesting and useful.) Even as a ten-year-old, I caught the inherent contradiction between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2.

Look, either the Bible is the Infallible Word of God or it’s a bunch of mishmashed stories, legends, and parables. If it’s the former, then it sure ain’t infallible, and by extension, your God ain’t infallible either, which in itself is a contradiction. If it is the latter, then it may be interesting reading and perhaps even some good words to live by, but it carries no authority from which to derive law.

I don’t expect the whole world to think it.

Ah, but you do. Based on your interpretation of what you think a soul is, you want to forcefully restrict any woman from terminating her pregnancy.

Regarding the scripture about if a man hits a pregnant woman and causes her to miscarry, he is subject to a fine, but if he kills the pregnant woman, he is subject to death, I really don’t see the correlation between that situation and an abortion planned by the mother and having it carried out purposely. I do think the scripture shows that it was not legal and was in fact a crime, by the fact that the man was subject to a fine.

That is all I ask, that it not be declared a legal act, but a crime. So, thank you for bringing my attention to that particular verse, as it verifies my position exactly.

Then you misunderstand the point. The point was that killing a pregnant woman is murder, killing a fetus is not murder. However, maybe we should follow the Biblical law here. Abortion is a crime, punishable as a fine against the abortion doctor. I imagine that the doctors will just work that fine into their fee.

You are correct, however, that the situation of a mother planning to terminate her pregnancy is not addressed in the Bible. There are many verses referring to fetuses in the womb, and I’m sure you’re Googling them now to provide counter-point. Like this one:

Here is a verse I think is beautiful: For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. Psalms 139:13-16 (NIV).

Yes, we all came together in a womb. Moreover, chickens came from eggs, oak trees came from acorns, butterflies came from caterpillars, and God had a hand in making them all, right? God makes plenty of living things, like Iraqi civilians, spotted owls, and trees in the rainforest. I hope you are as equally dedicated to preserving all of God’s creations.

Yet again, I and a majority of the world don’t care what the Bible says. Most of us prefer reason, logic, and science as the foundation of law and civilization.

Where can we agree? We both think abortion is awful and there should be fewer abortions, I assume. Is there room for compromise between our positions? You see every abortion, whether it’s an unviable twelve-celled zygote or a viable eight-month fetus, as a murder. I see every pregnancy, whether it’s the result of rape or incest or poor planning or slutty behavior as the inviolate right of the woman to control her own body. Is there a middle ground?

Believe it or not, I am actually more rabidly pro-choice than my own wife is. She does seem to have a compromise in mind. First trimester, all abortions allowed for any reason. Second trimester, abortions allowed for most reasons (rape, incest, financial hardship, mother’s health, but not “whoops!”). Third trimester, abortions only in cases of rape, incest, or danger to mother’s health. Maybe that’s the compromise.

Personally, I believe there is only one perfect answer to the question of abortion: artificial wombs and adoption. Someday, technology will create a method for holding a fertilized egg in a big vat and growing the fetus in there for nine months. Women who don’t want to be pregnant or be mothers can anonymously have their fetus removed and put in the vat at taxpayer expense. When the kid is “born”, it is a ward of the state and is available for adoption to anyone that wants it. She’s happy to not be a mother or suffer massive bodily changes, you’re happy that innocent little babies aren’t killed, doctors and scientists are happy to have a new government program to keep them working, and the government is happy to have plenty of unwanted orphans who’ll be desperate to become cannon fodder for the next oil wars.

You’ve been a very good sport about going rounds with me on this issue. I know it gets very emotional and you’ve been very good about keeping the discussion on point. I apologize if I’ve been condescending — I tend to do that; it’s a hazard of always being right 😉 I really am curious where the potential compromise is on this issue. Let me float out some scenarios and see what you think of each one:

• Woman, 32 weeks pregnant, will likely die giving birth. Abortion: OK or not?
• Woman, 28 weeks pregnant, was raped by her father. Abortion: OK or not?
• Woman, 24 weeks pregnant, heroin addict, currently using. Abortion: OK or not?
• Woman, 20 weeks pregnant, fetus will be born anencephalic (no brain), will die in minutes after birth. Abortion: OK or not?
• Woman, 16 weeks pregnant with quintuplets, wants and can only afford one baby. Abortion: OK or not?
• Woman, 8 weeks pregnant, sixteen years old, homeless, HIV+. Abortion: OK or not?
• Woman, 4 weeks pregnant, good job, good marriage, just doesn’t want kids. Abortion: OK or not?
• Woman, 2 days pregnant, messed up on taking her birth control pills. RU-486 Pill: OK or not?

My answer in all of the above cases is “OK”. Anything else is government forcing women to breed against their wishes and government dictating the medical decisions of female citizens.

Again, if you’re so against abortion, why are you not petitioning the government to drop most-favored trading status against China or picketing your local Wal-Mart? The Chinese government actually encourages and sanctions abortion as part of its one-child policy, a policy that, for cultural reasons, leads to the murder (the killing of actually born babies) of female infants! Or are the Chinese pre-born not as worthwhile to your God as the American pre-born? They are a bunch of godless heathens over in China, after all.

Oh, and another thing: since you think fertilized eggs are babies, what’s your opinion of fertility clinics throwing away hundreds of unborn babies every week? Somehow, medical science that destroys hundreds of zygotes to create one baby is OK, but medical science that destroys one zygote to prevent one baby is not?

As I read your letter, I wondered why/how a man as intelligent and articulate as you would come to a decision to be an atheist.

You should be wondering how anyone with any intelligence could believe the silly God stories. I didn’t “decide” to be an atheist any more than you “decided” not to believe in gnomes, trolls, and dragons. You don’t “decide” not to believe in things that don’t exist; you “realize” that those things are fairy tales.

There is no all-seeing, all-knowing man in the clouds who knocks down trailer parks with hurricanes. There is no celestial father who sends billions of Hindi, Muslims, Buddhists, Pagans, Jews, Shintoists, Scientologists, etc. to eternal pain (while claiming to love us all) just because they don’t belong to your Jesus Club. There is no benevolent creator who helps football players catch touchdown passes. There are nature, physics, chemistry, biology, ecology, archaeology, sociology, psychology, economics, astronomy, and a whole bunch of humans trying to make sense of it all. Life and the universe exist, they always have, they always will, nothing created them, they just are.

I actually despise the word “atheist”. It literally means “without God”, which in itself assumes there is a God to be without. However, in practice it means “without theism”, or a lack of theistic philosophy. In a modern age of science and reason, I have no need for such foolishness.

I was going to write and ask you that very question, but I found the explanation in another of your articles. I don’t know anything about the LDS religion, but I have known a couple of people that had grown up in that, and they seemed to be kind of angry at God too.

Angry at God assumes there is something to be angry at. How about angry at being fed a pack of institutionalized lies aimed at making you feel just guilty enough about being human to drop 10% of your paycheck in the collection plate? How about angry at being am unwitting part of a self-righteous group that sanctimoniously judges others and seeks to restrict others’ rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? How about angry at a subculture that promotes the idea that sex is dirty, nudity is shameful, women are inferior, the earth is for pillaging, homosexuality is reprehensible, and war should be waged in God’s name?

Before you rag on the LDS church, though, let me say that as far as Christians go, they are probably the least hypocritical, most genuinely Christian people of the earth. They rank among the best in characteristics of health because their religion espouses solid nutrition and abstention from harmful substances. Their members rarely have to get any government assistance because their church has its own welfare system. They do more to value families than most religions, with a dedicated evening of family bonding, a reverence for genealogy, and preparation for the unknown by storing a year’s worth of food and water for themselves.

On the other hand, their Bible is even sillier than yours is, they have to wear holy underwear, and they are annoyingly good at “Jeopardy!”

The church you described visiting and said you liked is the kind I grew up in…. The joy and love that you felt that day, that is God.

No, the joy and love I felt that day was a group of joyful people expressing love for one another. I have experienced similar joy and love at a Grateful Dead concert, the Oregon Country Fair, and an orgy. Humans are social animals, we crave togetherness and acceptance, we follow strong leaders, and we respond positively to good music. There’s nothing magical or mystical about it.

However, there is something to be said about our shared humanity and our place in the universe. Have you read a book by Robert A. Heinlein called “Stranger in a Strange Land”? In it, the protagonist explains how we are all God (“thou art God,” he says). All things are created of the same material and all lives are interdependent. There is no “Him” and “us”, there is only “We”. The total existence of the universe itself is indivisibly God. I’m closer to believing that than the Father-Son-Holy-Ghost fairy tale.

That’s why I call myself a Christian Atheist. Christ was right about loving thy neighbor, turning the other cheek, treating others how we’d like to be treated, not because some ethereal creator being says so, but because it’s the only rational way to create long-lasting happiness for people inextricably dependent on one another. It seems to me that only primitive amoral civilizations would need the carrot-and-stick of heaven and hell to get you to play nice with the other humans.

And the really neat thing is that when you decide to follow Him, no one has to make you do right, your desires change within you and you just want to please God. It is very amazing, and real.

This is the other major problem I have with religion: the idea that we are all born sinful and are destined to be amoral, selfish, and evil if we don’t accept the god story that everyone else believes. Why do you think that people can’t be good without “following Him”?

I hope the day will come that you might find this out for yourself. I pray that at the end of your life you do not say again, “How could I have been so wrong”?

Why? Because your God, who loves me so much, is going to send me to Hell? I’ll be so busy shaking hands with Gandhi, Buddha, Krishna, Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Thomas Jefferson, Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, and so many of the other trillions of people, some saintly, some just decent, who never said “I accept Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior”, that I’ll probably not notice.

Furthermore, why pray? God has a plan, right? If God is perfect, then His plan is perfect. If His plan is for me to die an unrepentant atheist, who are you to ask that He change his plan? If He does change His plan, then the plan wasn’t perfect, and then neither is He.

If God was going to answer your prayer, then He was already planning to do it anyway. You’re wasting your time. If God isn’t going to answer your prayer, you’re wasting your time. I’ll tell you right now, the only thing that will ever change my mind about anything is evidence and proof. If Jesus suddenly materializes next to me, I’ll take it into consideration, but even then I’ll sooner believe that the Starship Enterprise has gone back in time and used its transporter to beam some long haired guy in robes into my office just to mess with my head.

I know you are busy and I don’t expect you to answer this one. I will be praying that God will touch your life.

“Radical” Russ — Oh, I’m never to busy for this. I live for this. And God has touched my life, Sandi; He sent me you, didn’t He?

P.S. As a man going slightly bald, I was happy to find in my research that your God does not tolerate teasing bald people: “…as he was going up by the way, young lads came out from the city and mocked him and said to him, ‘Go up, you baldhead; go up you baldhead!’ When he looked behind him and saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. Then two female bears came out of the woods and tore up forty-two lads of their number.” — II Kings 2:22-24.

P.P.S. As a man who enjoys looking at naked women, I was happy to find that your God approves of pornography as well: “How beautiful are your feet in sandals, O prince’s daughter! The curves of your hips are like jewels, the work of the hands of an artist. Your navel is like a round goblet which never lacks for mixed wine; your belly is like a heap of wheat fenced about with lilies. Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle. Your stature is like a palm tree, and your breasts are like its clusters. I said ‘I will climb the palm tree, I will take hold of its fruit stalks.’ Oh, may your breasts be like clusters of the vine, and the fragrance of your breath like apples, and your mouth like the best wine.” — Song of Solomon 7:1-3,7-9

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