1. A Modest Proposal for a Truce on Religion

Comment #11602 by Luke Mavuto on December 5, 2006 at 10:35 pm

It is not necessarily true that atheists are smarter than theist (I actually just about changed "smarter" to "more intelligent" and then got caught in an irony spiral, jeezus) and I am always wary of over inflated egos, including my own. Atheists may be said to be more rational though. Does being rational mean you are intelligent? I don't know that they are necessarily correlative, but being unintelligent may make one more succeptable (which I tried to spell three times) to irrational beliefs. I tend to think of believers as victim in that since; uneducated folk taken advantage of by other smarter folks.

And all people, intelligent or not, atheist or not, reserve the right to make fun of others at any time for any reason, sorry. I can ridicule believers and be an ass all I want. Maybe that's not a useful rhetorical tool for debate, but who says we have to always take the high road and debate intelligently? It might even be healthy for religious people to take more crap from us.

2. A Modest Proposal for a Truce on Religion

Comment #11150 by Luke Mavuto on December 3, 2006 at 11:28 am

Billy Sands: There is great joke from the legendary Bill Hicks (RIP) that goes something like, "If life is a miracle, then I just spilled a million little miracles into a sock next to my bed last night." An inept attempt to quote, but you get the point. All atheists should be familiar with Hicks' work, it makes it all so much less depressing.

The fact that Kristoff's writing passes as thoughtful editorial sure doesn't make the NYT look very good. I am perplexed at why it is so difficult to understand the difference between belief and knowledge based on evidence. This constant insistence that science is a belief as much as religion is infuriating. The sky is not blue because I believe it is blue. I'm looking right at the damn thing, and it's blue! You can believe it is red if you want, but don't tell me your belief is equal to my observation. Religious people seem to stare right into the face of a blue sky and call it red.

I hope you all have heard about the problem with the museum in Kenya. Someone has got to do something about it, fast. Google this article: Scientist Fights Church Effort to Hide Museum's Pre-Human Fossils