Howdy, I believe in a god. Or supreme deity if you like. However, my god isn't the same one preached by any of the known religions. He's neither vindictive like the Christians, hateful like Islam nor wishy-washy like the Jews god.

So, I must be an anomaly because I not only believe in a god but I also enjoy your site.

First. By clicking the "submit" button I affirm nothing except that it is the button required to send you email. lol

Second. I am like you in one respect. I am a free thinker. My beliefs aren't based on the opinions of others because I have a brain and I use it regularly.

In my opinion, to pigeon hole someone into a culture, like atheism, because they think freely (outside of popular opinion) is to be as religiously arrogant as the predatory religions.

Let me quote you: "I believe that any system of thought should at least obey two rules: It should be self consistent, and it should not condemn those who think as I do."

I whole-heartedly agree with the first part of being "self consistent". The second part should be absent of the words "as I do".

To judge someone by their thoughts or how they think is simple minded because thoughts change with every ounce of stimuli presented. And thoughts are nothing but a "drawing board" for actions.

Example: I have friends who are Christian, Jew, Satanist and Atheist. When the five of us are together our thoughts are continually being "altered" by the opinions of the others. Yet our actions are consistent because of our chosen beliefs. If I were to judge any of them by their "thoughts or thinking", I would see them just as insane as they would see me.

However, our friendship isn't based on "how we think". It is based on what we "do" and "how" we act towards each other.

I am going to post this comment on my site which is www.livenfree.com. I also hope you will post a response to this as I really enjoy your responses to others and your site in general. I will also add a link to you for my friends and visitors. I believe a somewhat opposing point of view adds a little spice to life.

In my opinion, it's too bad that most people believe that one can only have friends who "think" like themselves. To be truly FREE, one must allow others the same choice to think freely and to espouse any opinion they choose based on whatever their beliefs may be. Even if it is considered popular error.

You have a good site and very well done. Thank you for your time.

I find your web site informing, and funny. It was a 10 year journey to embrace being atheist, at times it was very difficult, but I feel happier now than I have in years, I am living a moral life and have no regrets about my decision. Thank you for your insight and most of all for the humor, I needed that!

Mea Culpa. I should have phrased that better. :) My mom has several reasons for thinking I'm going to hell. Not only am I a non-believer, but I'm also bisexual, pro-choice and childfree. I support gay marriage, sex ed and gun control. I think the priests who molested children should be charged in a public court and the ones who knew was was going on and protected them by transferring them to other parishes, to continue their depradations should be taken into the barn and whipped. I'm sure most, if not all of this could be forgiven if I was at least searching for a path to god...which I'm not. So, not only am I a non-believer, but I am one that completely denies the need for a supreme deity in my life. My mom's priest, Father Mac is a jolly Irish elf of a man, one of the few religious personages I've met who lives up to the spirit of his vows as well as the letter of his beliefs. He told me once that god never asks more than we can give and is happy with our best efforts. Following the logic of his words, I don't have any issues with a supreme deity, just those who pervert belief to meet their own ends. My mom, bless her heart, is a good woman who accepts I am an intelligent being who can think for myself and live according to my own moral standards.....even if she does worry about my soul. She's my mom, I think it's in her contract or something. :)

First, I appreciate your responsiveness. Please do not mistake my insistent intrusion as a sign of ideaological aggression. I enjoy discussing these subjects with disembodied minds because there is no room for preconceived notions based on visual input.

Now, to the good stuff . . . . Your first sentence sums up the single biggest barrier to the human condition. Just like the Tower of Babel story, our language is often a shadow of our thoughts and intentions and has led to many misunderstandings. Allow me to clarify.

I am by no means a scientific type. I have a passion for knowledge and have given some time to studying a variety of subjects. Physics is one of these.

The first Law of Thermodynamics states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only converted. Energy is the information carrier for the universe, nay, it is the universe. I used to picture the universe as a container but, the more I read in to quantum theory and string theory, the more I realized that the universe is an expression of this thing called Energy. This means that all information for the universe to "Be", is here since all of the energy contained in the universe was released at the time of the big bang. This leads me to believe that all possibilities exist. It has been theorized that matter pops in to and out of existence all of the time. So, even non-existence is a possibility and now it becomes a game of probability.

I believe the underlying spirit of several of your arguments is a question of the eistence of free will (this is a sudden guess, because I guessed it . . . suddenly). In a universe where all "information" exists, free will has no place. However, when probability becomes the governor of information, you can see choices (especially "minor" ones) as the building blocks of our lives.

"Ineffectiveness of information" is a function of our ignorance not a testament to existence. We can not calculate where or when a star will form yet this does not stop a star from forming. The information to complete this process is present and it is only a matter of probability.

In any case, let's get back to that God thing. As a species, we have always tried to explain our "condition." Spirituality was the first attempt and languages were invented to describe these "explanation." Religion was the second, more "organized" attempt. Science is the third, and it also has it's languages. Many, many languages and all disparate. This is why an atheist can not understand the "religious" explanation and ignores the spiritual (typically.) Even among scientists , chasms have existed. Theoreticians used to descibe the luminiferous aether as the substance through which all matter "flowed", which was ridiculed by those coming of age and professing we move through an vaccum, yet they seem to have returned to the notion of a lumineferous aether only now they call it dark matter and dark energy. If we are to pay attention, we would realize they were all describing the same thing (which already exists) only refining their language and enhancing their picture, which is still completely obfuscated.

To profess Mr. Darwin's theory as the ultimate explanation for life on this planet is to ignore an important fact. Mr. Darwin only describes "events" in his theory. He does not explain who or what pushed the scales of probability to tip in favor of life on an otherwise lifeless and violent planet. After all, "we live in a perposterous universe" (Sean Carroll, University of Chicago, based on astronomical observations.) He never addresses why species simply "appear" in the fossil record or how they develop their complex behaviors, except to say they "evolve." Why is self awereness needed for survival? We now know of several species besides our own which we consider self aware. How did the first plant figure out that bees like nectar? How did the first leaf cutter ant figure out that by expanding massive amounts of their energy cutting leaves, bringing them back to their nests and cultivating fungus to eat is the best method of survival? How did they know the fungus would grow on the leaves if they peed and puked on them?

I have faith in the inexplicable because I know we don't know "bleep." The phone companies know how to get the phones to work but, that does not mean they know why instant communication is possible. I was taught nothing was faster than light, yet quantum entanglement say that information can and does travel instantly. An "entangled" pair of particles can affect each other's behavior instantly even if they are at opposite ends of the universe!

I guess what I'm saying is there is sooooooo much we don't understand that discounting the existence of a Creator (not deity) based on the shenanigans of some who profess they know god personally is not grounded in logical deduction, only on the speculations of a few visionaries. Theoretically we should never have evolved not only because the universe itself is anomaly, but because we are completely unadapted to physical life on this planet. Even our "closest" relatives are completely independent of their self awareness when it comes to survival. Apes are completely capapble of sustaing their physical life. We are a weak species. The sun gives us skin cancer and the cold gives us frost bite. Why did evolution go that route?

Science is wonderful but, it doesn't explain anything. It only describes what we observe. So, why do we observe? After all, why would small bits of the universe need to study other bits of the universe?

Ouch . . . I think I just got carpal tunnel.

I had asked you where you find your "safe harbor", and based on your response I feel almost compelled to wonder if you are somehow my ethical and moral twin -- perhaps I am schizophrenic? Did I set up an Atheist forum in my sleep, so I might have at least one imaginary contemporary with which to agree?

Hard to say, the universe being what it is. Whatever it is.

I'm lucky enough to be rarely badgered or heckled for my "lack of faith". I read these stories on your site and sometimes wonder if your contributing fans actively seek these confrontations. But then again, I am in a fairly "progressive" area.

One notable non-conversation I did have with a Fundie started with the question of how Christian I was. I answered "not at all", and was then asked for an explanation of what I DO believe in. I say, just be good to each other and seek brotherhood through compassion and support. The response was "that's not what Chritianity is about!" From what I've seen, generally, that is quite an accurate rebuttal.

This person was homeschooling his son, and the current curriculum was all about creationism. All around were the Biblical accounts, various books dealing with specific times and places, even a giant explanatory chart detailing the evolution of man from -- well, from man to man.

I'm an electrician, so I'm in people's homes all the time. I see all kinds of things and meet all kinds of people, typically in the sanctum of their homes. So it's my professional philosophy to notice much, comment on nothing. But this particular Christian was truly expecting me to mock him, perhaps even "correct" him.

I am sorry (almost) to have disappointed him. My concerns are those related to proper wiring in a timely and fairly-priced manner, not debating the origins of everything. Like you, I prefer to leave those explorations to those who specialize -- and learn and discuss the output as fascinating theory and mindplay.

This Christian made it clear to me just how unsatisfying a life of cold theory seemed to him; in fact, how such pursuits can only lead to disillusionment and sin. But I find love and satisfaction in the wonder of it all -- a cold (well, hot) cosmos of seeming simplicity exploding through "time" to become capable of pondering its own existence and nature -- and in my own way I am praising creation itself. Therefore the heresy I commit is in not personifying such intelligence in my own image. There is no comfort, for me, in ascribing all of this wonder to some sort of subservience to an unseen superbeing with all the answers.

In fact, I might say instead that the anthropological principle (or form of) holds quite well for me; nothing can be said to exist without a subject to observe it. Perhaps "God" is the totality of experience, its own proof of self through the duality of seeing and being seen. There's that funky new-age claptrap again!

Well, that's me. I see religion and natural philosophy as being so much the same and yet so divided by method and dogma as to be nearly irreconcilable. And I enjoy that.

By the way, you forgot the first two rules of Fight Club.

Some day Gods' gonna fuck you up the ass

The below correspondent sent me a URL to a Web site on which had been posted a philosophical essay. I do not respond to URLs and asked the writer to send me a note with his beliefs that I could respond to. This is his reply.

Sorry, that would turn my content into your content. Anyway, it's more of an open letter to those who would declare themselves atheists. However, to summarize it, my contention is that to embrace atheism is an exercise in asinine assumtion to rival even the strangest schisms of any religion, and it is my belief that time spent trying to disprove the obtuse ramblings of prophets would be better spent elsewhere. Your website encourages more uselessness. Thanks.

Thanks for the email.

When I first really seriously started to think about belief and god, stuff like that, I used to have some interesting and challenging conversations with a friend - unfortunately we've not kept in touch - and one of the things we talked about (it's also touched on at the end of Sophie's World) was the idea that god exists in the minds of believers, and because of that, is real to them, but we couldn't get our heads round the idea of an external being.

On some level, I find the certainty of faith a bit scary and dangerous. There's nothing worse than someone knowing they're right, with god on their side.

The thing about truth is that it changes - as more is discovered and new theories made - which means that it too, exists in the mind.

As he wittiest woman in Britain, Linda Smith, said, " If god had meant us to believe in him, he would have existed!"