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X Amish Atheist

~ fighting dogma from behind the lines…

X Amish Atheist

Category Archives: My Story

God Exists Because the Alternative Sucks?

14 Thursday Feb 2013

Posted by xamishatheist in My Story, The Questioning

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

God, heaven


The other day I was going through some of my old notes from years ago when I found this gem that I had written back in 2007 (almost 6 years ago):

“The following is the closest that I can come to proving the existence of God. It’s good enough for me.

If there was no God and no heaven, there would be no true purpose or goal in life or the universe. If there was no God and no heaven, whether or not you live, die, or had never been born in the first place, would eventually make no difference to anyone or anything. It would mean that everything that exists isn’t just insignificant, but totally worthless as well.”

That reasoning “proved” to me that God exists. In fact, it satisfied me enough that I was able to put the question of God’s existence from my mind for some months at least.

I don’t remember if it occurred to me or not that I was making an assertion based only on how the alternative would make me feel. If it did occur to me, I guess I never realized how fallacious such reasoning is.

philosophy-professor

Perhaps deep down, I realized that this reasoning never actually proved anything about God, that it just made me feel a little better about unquestioningly accepting his existence. As time went on, I learned more about epistemology and the scientific method and it didn’t take me long to discard this reasoning as an embarrassment.

In the years since I wrote those words, I’ve found P to be false but luckily for me, I found “I will be sad” to be false too.

Just to be clear, there is a lot wrong with this kind of reasoning that I engaged in six years ago. The universe isn’t here just to make us happy and reality doesn’t magically reconfigure itself based on our emotions. The fact that you find a hypothesis to be emotionally inconceivable says nothing about the accuracy of that hypothesis.

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A Letter to my Friends

28 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by xamishatheist in Coming Out, My Story

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

atheism, Christianity, philosophy, science


Some of my Christian friends have recently discovered my true beliefs about God and I will likely be telling more of them over the coming days and weeks that I do not share their faith and love for God. Understandably, some of my friends do or will feel hurt and betrayed by some of the things they read on this blog. This post is intended to be an honest and heartfelt letter to those friends.

I know that I’ve said some harsh and condescending things about you on here. I humbly apologize for that. With this post, I want to give you an honest look at who I am, why I felt the need to keep some things hidden from you, and what my hopes are for the future now that you know my true beliefs.

It was almost a year ago when I realized that I was an atheist. My transition from Christianity to atheism didn’t happen overnight. It took about 12 years–during most of which I still considered myself a Christian. The path from Christianity to atheism was so long that I don’t think of the two as being black and white opposites like most people do. In fact, I sometimes have a hard time understanding why Christians think atheists are so different from themselves. I’m still a moral (or I hope so), person with desires, dreams, and fears.

Toward the last of those 12 years, I began thinking of myself as agnostic. I was comfortable admitting to myself that I don’t know if God exists or not or what his true nature really is. It was less than a year ago that I began self-identifying as an atheist and that was more of a semantic thing than a radical shift in belief. At the time, I didn’t like thinking of myself as an atheist but I realized that my agnosticism was so complete that almost everybody else would define me as an “atheist”.

There were no significant life events that caused me to question the existence of God. I didn’t become an atheist because someone died, or because I was depressed, or because some other traumatic event occurred that made me hate God. I am not an atheist because life was hard on me, or because I’m weak, misguided, ignorant, or in need of help. I am an atheist because I spent 12 years seeking truth. During those many years, I probably spent more time thinking about God and religion than I did thinking about any other subject.

I do not reject all of Christianity. I still believe that there are a lot of good things in the teachings attributed to Jesus. Just to be clear, here are a few ways that my beliefs are different from yours:

  • I do not believe that the God of the Bible exists. I believe that if this universe was “created” it was most likely via some process or event that bears little resemblance to the God of the Bible.
  • I do not believe that Jesus was the son of God or that he will return to save us all.
  • I believe the Bible was written by fallible man. I do not believe that the Bible is as historically accurate as most Christians assume that it is.
  • I do not believe that one must have religion to be a good, moral person.
  • I believe that if the world (as we know it) ends in our lifetime or our children’s lifetimes, it will be because man is a stupid animal and not because an omnipotent being decided it was time for it all to end.
  • I believe in making the most of this life because I believe that death is complete–I do not believe there will be an afterlife.
  • I believe that admitting ignorance is fine and that it is much better than preaching as fact, that which one has no evidence for.
  • I prefer natural, scientific explanations for all things. I find natural explanations far more helpful and meaningful than supernatural ones.

I am not searching for God anymore. I am, however, still seeking truth, and I hope that I will always be learning new things. But to say that I am still searching for God, would be like you saying that you’re still searching for Santa Claus–as if you’re still hoping that he exists.

There are many reasons why I haven’t told you about my lack of belief in God, most of them have to do with the fear of losing you as my friend. I was afraid if I told you, your respect for me would plummet. I was afraid that you would begin to think of me as evil. I was afraid you would begin to think of me as stupid. Worst of all, I was afraid that you would consider me in the clutches of Satan and would try to “help” me. I was afraid that you would be fine with it, that you would still call me your friend but that you would find less in common with me and over time I would see less and less of you. I was afraid that every time I said something, you would know that you can’t believe everything I say, because I’m an atheist. I was afraid that I would lose you instantly, but worse yet, I was afraid the process of losing you would occur over months or years.

The Amish and ex-Amish are fairly intolerant of alternative beliefs and practices. Most of them talk condescendingly about gays, atheists, and pretty much any person or group of people that thinks or acts in a manner that does not conform to their specific Christian belief set. I am barraged non-stop by words like “sad”, “pathetic”, “ridiculous”, “evil”, “Satanic”, “stupid”, “ignorant”, etc. Of course they don’t realize that they’re talking about me and they probably wouldn’t say those things if they realized that I was an atheist (at least they wouldn’t say it to my face), but I have to assume that it is what they think of me. If any of you could admit to your friends that you’re something that most of them think is “sad”, “pathetic”, “ridiculous”, “evil”, “Satanic”, “stupid”, “ignorant”, etc., then you’re a truly courageous person.

I am a deeply introverted person, and as a result, it is difficult for me to talk to people that I’m not comfortable with. Obviously, you know that about me, you’re my friend after all and I am more than comfortable talking with you about most things. What I find truly difficult to talk about, even with the very best of my friends, are subjects that I believe will cause confrontation, controversy, or could in some way damage our friendship. That is one reason why I haven’t been open about my religious beliefs with you.

I am also an intellectual–I enjoy thinking about things that most people find boring or of little consequence in real life. I have always found comparatively easy, those subjects that many people find difficult to understand. I have many questions about life and the universe and when after long periods of sustained thought on one of these questions, I reach a new understanding, I experience a most wonderful emotion. It is probably an emotion that most people would experience if they won the lottery. I get all excited and jittery, become absurdly happy and playful, and my heart flutters and skips beats. It is this feeling that drives me to seek more of an understanding of this amazing universe. On my path from Christianity to atheism, I encountered a few of those wonderful feelings.

I am often told by those few that I talk to about my ideas, that my perspective is utterly unique. Sometimes I feel (perhaps wrongly) that there is a large intellectual gap between me and those I’m talking with, and I feel that it would be very difficult to really explain myself–and that’s at least partially because I am simply not good at explaining things. Furthermore, I find it much easier to explain myself in writing than in spoken conversation. For these reasons I will often remain silent during a religious conversation, rather than giving my perspective on the subject.

All that being said, I would like nothing more than to tell the world that I don’t believe in their God. It would be a huge weight off of my shoulders. However, I am not the only person whose life this revelation would complicate. Because of that I will continue to keep my beliefs to myself except on the semi-anonymous world of the internet.

My lack of belief in God is founded upon a greater than average knowledge of philosophical subjects such as logic and epistemology, and scientific subjects such as biology, complexity, chemistry, and cosmology. I have always been a thinker and the nature of and existence of God has been one of the things I’ve focused on. I’ve been thinking this through for 12 years or so and only in the last couple years have I made what I believe to be true breakthroughs in understanding.

Most of you, I believe, know little about and have very little interest in these subjects. Since my beliefs are founded upon my knowledge of these subjects, I hope you understand why I might be skeptical that you would understand what I’m talking about without making a determined and long-term effort to learn about these subjects. I often feel that it is useless for me to begin explaining my beliefs because I don’t think I can explain it to someone that hasn’t been thinking very, very hard about it for many years like I have.

That being said, I am more than willing to discuss my beliefs with you if you’re interested. You may simply want to learn more about my beliefs and that’s fine. On the other hand, if you wish to go into deeper discussion and analyze the validity of my reasoning, I think it would benefit both of us if you developed an interest in learning more about science and philosophy.

I grew up believing that atheists are the most evil people that exist–that they’re worse than murderers–right up there with Satan worshippers. Now that I’m an atheist, I realize that most of the people I’ve ever known will probably rank me a little lower than murderers. They can believe what they want. I may have lost my religion but my morality only grew. Most of you probably think morality and religion are so intertwined that I could not possibly believe that I could be an atheist and still be a good person. I guess I can only hope my actions are those of a moral person and that you will consider only my actions and not my metaphysical beliefs when deciding whether or not my intentions are good.

Some of the things that I write on this blog will be truly offensive to you. I know this because I was once a Christian. It may seem like I am belittling your beliefs and mocking your God but that is not my intention. To remain honest to myself, I must write these things. I cannot continue using this blog as an emotional and intellectual outlet without occasionally writing things that some will think is blasphemous. I just hope that you’ll understand. I hope that you don’t take these things personally, and I hope you know that I still value your friendship.

My goal with this blog is not to convince Christians that they have it all wrong. If you read my posts, please don’t take them as an attempt to convert you. I use this blog as an emotional and intellectual outlet, as a way for me to share my experiences and knowledge, and as a way for me to record and clarify my thoughts. I also hope to help bridge the seemingly tremendous gulf between the atheist and Christian mindset. I hope I can give a few Christians and a few atheists a glimpse into the mindset of the ‘other side’ and help them see that we’re not all that different from each other.

I believe that we can remain friends. I won’t try to convert you and I hope you’ll give me the same respect. I don’t want your “help” or your pity. If your desire is to help me “see the light” then I feel that you are not giving me the respect that an intelligent person with well-reasoned beliefs deserves. In exchange, I won’t try to convince you that your beliefs are wrong.

I hope you can forgive me for betraying and insulting you. I would like nothing more than to remain your friend. If what I’ve done or who I’ve become is unforgivable, I understand. If that’s that case then I’m truly sorry to see you go.

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Despising God

12 Monday Nov 2012

Posted by xamishatheist in My Philosophy, The Conversion, The Questioning

≈ 44 Comments

Tags

atheism, Bible, Christianity, God, Secularism, Worship


As atheists, we are sometimes posed the question; If the positive existence of God was proven to your satisfaction, would you worship him? My answer to that question is; No.

Now, before you assume that my reason for rejecting God is personal, rather than epistemological, let me assure you that I believe wholeheartedly that the God of the Bible does not exist. My reason for believing so is quite simply that I do not find that the evidence warrants a belief in the existence of such a God.

When I first began questioning the existence of God, I was racked with guilt. I believed that my questions were blasphemous and that blasphemy was an unforgivable sin but I could not quell them.

As time went on and the questions became more pronounced, I began to wonder how a being intelligent enough to create this universe, could torture someone like me for all eternity. According to the Bible, I was headed straight for hell. I didn’t feel evil.  All I ever wanted was to know the truth. How could an all-powerful being, torture me for following the truth? Was it really my fault if circumstances conspired to make me question his existence? How could he hide from me and then punish me for not believing in him? If he was God, could he not easily convince me beyond the shadow of a doubt, that he exists?

At the time, I still wanted God to exist. I feared an existence devoid of such a protector. I concluded that if God really did exist, then he must be nothing like he is portrayed in the Bible. I could not believe in a benevolent God and in hell at the same time. I could not believe that an omniscient being would resort to eternal torture.

As time went on, my definition of God shrinked until it vanished into nothingness. I no longer believe in the existence of God, benevolent or otherwise. I do not believe that the God of the Bible exists. I do not even believe that anything remotely god-like exists. If something god-like actually does exist, I would find it hard to believe that it would be like the God of the Bible. However, I can look at the hypothetical, ‘What if the God of the Bible really exists’ and develop an opinion of such a God.

The God of the Bible can be blamed for the mass murders of hundreds of thousands of people. He can be blamed for rapes, pillage, plunder, slavery, child abuse, and rampant destruction. He tells us that happiness can be achieved by smashing children against rocks, and he tells us that homosexuality is evil. Since he takes credit for it, we might as well blame God for all the natural disasters, evil, and suffering that humanity and the animal kingdom have ever endured. It doesn’t stop there. God claims that he’s really a nice guy and we have to worship him or else he will torture us for eternity.

After I stopped believing in God and my case of Stockholm Syndrome faded away, I stopped seeing the God of the Bible as a benevolent being, and started seeing the things that are really written therein. Any person or being that engages in the things that are attributed to God, is unimaginably evil in my opinion. As a matter of moral principle, I would never worship such a being. At this point, I believe I would rather be a martyr and be tortured for eternity, than to worship a narcissistic terrorist like God. Oh, and by the way… if I was God, I would be way nicer!

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The Genius Kid in Amish School

02 Sunday Sep 2012

Posted by xamishatheist in Early Life, The Amish

≈ 28 Comments

Tags

amish, astronomy, education, genius, intelligence, IQ, parochial schools


My first eight years of education, and so far, my only “formal” education has been in an Amish parochial school. How quaint to have been educated in a small one-room Amish schoolhouse with about a dozen other students, you might effuse excitedly. Well screw you! Amish parochial school stunted my intellectual growth and that pisses me off.

When I was a young Amish boy, perhaps eight or nine years old, I was fascinated with the night sky. I looked to the stars and I marveled when comet Hale-Bopp appeared in 1997. I dreamed of becoming an astronomer or an astronaut but of course I knew that I would never become either of those–I was Amish. Sometimes I wished my parents were normal so that my dreams would have a fighting chance of becoming reality.

My Dad, who was a great father despite all the religious crap, gave me one of those little rotating star charts one Christmas. With a cheap pair of binoculars and that star chart, I spent many enjoyable evenings outside, identifying constellations and writing notes about individual stars and planets. I read many astronomy books and taught myself ‘stargazing’ until I was able to find most specific visible stars, several of the brighter nebulas, and of course the Andromeda galaxy and the visible planets.

Academically, I did well in the Amish parochial school compared to the other students. I found the work easy and would work ahead on my material because I found it fun. My Amish teacher didn’t find that amusing and warned me several times not to work ahead of the other students. One day she had enough of it and spanked my offending hand with a ruler. That day I learned that it was important not to take initiative and not to do more than is asked of me.

I was always the nerd in school. As soon as I had an individual lesson finished I would go to the small library along one wall and grab several books to read. Often during my schoolwork I would think of some subject (e.g. radio astronomy) that fascinated me and upon completion of my schoolwork, I would go to the bookshelf and select the “R” encyclopedia. After reading the entry I would go back and select several more encyclopedias so I could read related subjects or more in-depth entries. This behavior was of course not normal and the other Amish students, many of whom had nothing but religious books at home and didn’t particularly like reading, would mock me for it. I became used to the word “bookworm” being used like most people would use “child rapist”.

Many of the Amish in our community liked to hunt. The men were quite competitive about it and always bragged about who shot the deer with the biggest antlers. I felt compassion for the helpless animals and told my fellow classmates that I would never harm an animal. I quickly became used to the word “environmentalist” being used like most people would use “child rapist”. Of course I didn’t like being mocked and after many hours of heart-wrenching rumination, I decided that I would show them and would become a better hunter than any of them. Years later, I actually did.

One day while reading through our encyclopedia set at home, I learned that Jupiter had quite a few moons. I was amazed by this knowledge as I had only been aware of one moon up to that point. Some weeks later I mentioned this fact in passing to my fellow classmates. They informed me none too politely that there is only one moon. It didn’t take long for me to get used to “stargazer” being used like most people would use “child rapist”.

That evening I told my Dad what had happened when I tried to enlighten my classmates. My Dad told me gently that he believed me that Jupiter had more moons and told me that the other students just didn’t know any better. It wasn’t very consoling, I wanted my friends to like me, not my Dad. To me, the concept of intellectual superiority was alien. I was told that I was “good at school” and “good with numbers”. Nobody told me that I was smart. Nobody helped me understand why I was so different or how my weirdness would help me later in life.

I stopped gazing up at the night sky and I put away my star charts and astronomy books, thinking wrongly that it was something that only weird people do. I stopped reading so much, tried harder to fit in, and withdrew into myself, intellectually. To this day I would rather sit silent than correct, even a friend, a factual error that he or she has made. It is a tactic I learned in Amish school to appear normal.

I can’t help but think that if my parents had been a normal family and had provided me with the education that I needed and desired, I would be doing great things by now. I like the idea of freedom when it comes to the educational system. I fear that if primary education is restricted to only state-run or heavily regulated schools, we could end up with a propaganda problem down the road. But Christ! Being intellectually stunted in a religious school just doesn’t feel fair to me.

Many years after leaving the Amish, I discovered a webpage with an experimental high-range I.Q. test designed by a psychologist and research scientist. I decided to try the test and after working through the number sequence problems, I submitted my answers. A day or so later, I received my score report. According to the associated statistical report for that test my score equates (at least theoretically) to an I.Q. a little higher than 160 (s.d. 16). To the ***holes who mocked me in Amish school–take that! Now if only I could get over it.

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Suicide: Exploring the Afterlife

01 Saturday Sep 2012

Posted by xamishatheist in Metaphysics, My Philosophy, The Conversion

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

adventure, agnosticism, life, pantheism, suicide


There was a short period of time in my life when I was somewhere between pantheism and agnosticism. This was when I no longer held the dogmatic belief that suicide is inherently morally wrong but I had yet to release all hope for an afterlife. It was during this period that I toyed with the idea that suicide would be the ultimate adventure (I never actually seriously considered doing it myself).

Suicide: The Game of Life

Suicide: The Game of Life

I no longer believe in an afterlife but I still hold a small secret admiration for those that take their own lives. Many people call them cowards. I call them courageous. I would never commit suicide while I was physically healthy, but that’s partially because I’m a coward but mostly because evolution selected strongly against such tendencies–in other words, I don’t want to. Also, I’m a bit of a nihilistic fellow so I think suicide would be just as pointless as living. Why bother killing yourself? Even that is ultimately pointless.

If you believe in an afterlife, wouldn’t suicide be the ultimate adventure?

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Why Does God Require our Belief?

08 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by xamishatheist in The Conversion

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

faith, God


For God it is not enough that we are good and moral people. For God, we must be good and moral people and believe in God, in order to escape hell. This fact is one that drove me from Christian to agnostic. I just plain don’t like the type of person that demands you believe in him while he hides from detection. What is he? Some kind of a**hole?

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Pascal’s Wager: Is God the Safe Bet?

07 Monday May 2012

Posted by xamishatheist in The Conversion, The Questioning

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Christianity, God, Pascal's wager


When I was younger and just beginning to question the existence of God, one of the arguments that always seemed to sway me back to Christianity is one that was first developed by Blaise Pascal; a philosopher, mathematician, and physicist that lived in the 17th century. The argument is called “Pascal’s Wager” and it goes something like this;

If you’re not sure that God exists it is still better to believe and live your life as if he exists than to not do those things. If you believe in God and he turns out to be nonexistent, you’ve lost nothing. If you believe in God and he does exist, you get eternal life. On the other hand, if you don’t believe in God and he turns out to be real, you’ll burn in hell forever. Obviously, the rational bet is to believe in God.

When I was talking with my Christian girlfriend about God recently, she brought up this argument and I was reminded of the fact that I have also used it. I started wondering why it no longer seems like a rational bet to me.

Pascal’s wager only makes sense if there is some evidence of God’s existence. It is only convincing to those that believe the odds of God actually existing are about 50/50 or better. As adults, we aren’t “good” simply on the off chance that Santa really exists. In much the same way, an atheist or an agnostic thinks the Christian God is such a ridiculous idea that it doesn’t merit even the slightest change in behavior on the off chance that God exists and that you’ll be rewarded for your behavior.

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The Arbitrariness of the Amish Ordnung

06 Sunday May 2012

Posted by xamishatheist in The Amish, The Questioning

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

amish, Ordnung


Back when I was still an Amish kid, I was often frustrated with the arbitrariness of the Amish Ordnung (their set of rules). For example, our church banned the smoking of cigarettes because the body is supposedly a temple of God and should be treated that way. On the other hand, eating potato chips was perfectly fine. Shouldn’t obese people be punished if smokers are?

You can’t live life without subjecting your body to harmful substances and situations. Even hard physical labor can be harmful to the body. Where do you draw the line, I wondered. How about leaving it up to the individuals to self-impose arbitrary rules? Anything else just causes discontent due to the restriction of personal freedom.

The Amish focus on the bad possibilities of technology (e.g. Oh no! You can watch porn on computers – computers must be banned!) while completely disregarding the vast good that technology can bring. With technology, the Amish mentality is to blame the gun instead of the person that pulled the trigger.

On the other hand, they are arbitrary even with that mentality – they don’t apply it to everything. When Amish church members are caught having sex with farm animals, no one blames it on the cow. No one says the cows are being too flirtatious – no one advocates banning cows.

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The Intelligence of Atheists

03 Thursday May 2012

Posted by xamishatheist in Early Life, The Questioning

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

atheism, belief, intelligence


When I was a child (maybe 9 or 10 years old) my Dad while reading the newspaper stated matter-of-factly that, “There are no smart criminals.”

His reasoning was simply this; Criminals always go to jail. Nobody (not even criminals) wants to be in jail. Therefore, criminals are stupid.

Me, bright kid that I was, took that logic and applied it to atheists. My reasoning was this; Atheists go to hell, Nobody (not even atheists) wants to be in hell. Therefore, atheists are stupid.

However, it did not take me long to discard this as faulty logic when I discovered the disturbing fact that some very smart people are atheists. Einstein was a hero of mine and when I discovered that he didn’t believe in a personal God, it troubled me. Later, when I really started delving into the forbidden territories (e.g. learning about evolution) I realized that these people were very smart and they knew a lot more than I did.

Later, my Dad again made that same claim about there being no smart criminals. This time I disputed him. My reasoning was that some criminals plan and successfully commit intricate crimes and it would take a very smart person to plan such a thing and pull it off. He admitted that I could be right.

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Thoughts on God by an ex-Amish Heathen

17 Tuesday Apr 2012

Posted by xamishatheist in The Conversion

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

amish, atheism, evil, ex-amish, God, thoughts


The following are some thoughts that I noted in my handheld over the past year or so. It is interesting to wonder what I was going through at the time… The most recent notes are at the top.

March 12, 2012, 7:45 PM

I wish God would stay the f*** out of my life.

November 17, 2011, 1:47 AM

Shouldn’t the Army also have chaplains for all the other religions?

September 10, 2011, 6:46 PM

Amish boy to atheist man: On the one hand, life becomes less meaningful and less serious. On the other hand, there can be no more afterlife goals.

August 3, 2011, 3:34 AM

Which is more important, truth or belief?

July 13, 2011, 12:13 AM

Very few statements make less sense than, “I wasn’t hallucinating!”

(I bet I was thinking about the religious visions that some people claim to experience.)

June 12, 2011, 10:25 PM

Conventional behavior bears no resemblance to rational behavior.

April 19, 2011, 2:53 AM

The difference between the theist and the agnostic: The agnostic accepts the unknown simply as the unknown while the theist anthropomorphizes the unknown for a variety of reasons ranging from 1) a lack of independent thought, 2) a need for companionship, and 3) a fear of the unknown… Even false hope is comforting.

Date and Time Unknown

I do not believe a supreme being would design a universe that operates according to rules of logic… and then hide from logic.

I also do not believe a good supreme being would punish someone for reaching a logically valid conclusion given the available information.

A God that punishes its subjects for a logically valid conclusion… is an evil God that I want no part of!

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