Christian Logic: Why I Don't Love My Boys...

Sometimes people wonder why I am so very fucking angry about theism and it's pervasive influence on our culture - and most other cultures for that matter... My very favorite neighbor to the north (you know, one of those Canuckistanians) recently got into a little tangle with someone who is a picture perfect example of where this anger comes from. After that aforementioned tangle with Jason, the cowardly fucking Christian decided to write an offensive piece of garbage about that encounter.

I had a thoughtful discussion with an atheist named Jason about real love. He deemed that it was “hateful” to claim that Atheist are not able to love their children.

Well Denny, that would be because it is a fucking hateful thing to claim. Hateful and strikingly ignorant. But Denny's ignorance doesn't stop there...

If God is love, then it is true that an atheist is incapable of loving their child. Atheist by definition reject God; therefore, an atheist is not capable of loving their children. God’s love never fails; however,an atheist love will fail based on the chemical make up of that person.

I don't reject any god, I also don't accept the conception of gods - Denny and I are operating on separate paradigms. But let's explore this logic for a moment, with the assumption that Denny's god is real and described accurately in the Christian bible...Denny's god demands - or at least used to, before Christ, that parents stone children who don't respect their parent's authority. While it can be argued that said god changed it's mind later on, there is no denying that the god Denny worships used to demand that parents kill their children for misbehaving. On the other hand, when you strike past Denny's stunning ignorance of neurobiology, you would find that there is highly unlikely that an atheist, or anyone else for that matter, is going to go through a neurochemical shift that would suddenly cause them to stop loving their children. It can happen, but when it happens, it happens at the result of a pathological imbalance - what we would call mental illness. And this is not something that Christians are immune to - such neuropathology can happen to anyone with a fucking brain.

Now you can go take a look at the rest, I am not going to keep going through this line, by line. But if you want to comment on it, don't bother doing so there - the comment likely won't get posted, no matter how reasoned and polite you might be. Indeed, I took Denny on his face and made a comment in good faith, which I will post in a moment - a comment that he chose to respond to in email, apparently thinking that posting it to his blog would be a bad idea.

Jason is far from the last line on love and atheists. Not all of us would agree with him, just as not all Christians would come close to agreeing with your assertions, here or there.

I am an atheist, after spending the vast majority of my life trying to reconcile my Faith with reason and reality. I understand very clearly, many different Christian premises about the nature of love. Now you may just decide that because I am now an atheist, I must never have been a real Christian, in which case this is probably a pointless exercise. But I am not going to assume that you are rather bigger than that.

When I was a Christian, I was very caught onto this notion of love and godly love. I have written very extensively over the years, on 1 Cor. 13 and that has been an absolute my entire life. I have believed absolutely in loving everyone, unconditionally. When I was a Christian, I absolutely believed that this was the least I could do – the least I could be, as a living testament to my god. The thing is, now that I am not a Christian, I not only continue to love like I did – I have found a much deeper and meaningful love than I have ever experienced.

Emotions are chemical based, because we are chemical based – everything we think, is based in chemical processes. The difference between you and who I am now, is that you somehow see this as making you less of a person – less miraculous than you actually are. Rather than arguing that this is somehow mundane and degrading, I would ask; Why do you think that this degrades us? We are truly marvelous and beautiful creatures – what makes us who and what we are, is awe inspiring. It is much like the notion of creation, versus evolution – I am far more inspired and awestruck, by the understanding of how we – these significantly flawed, yet wholly remarkable creatures came to be, than by the notion that we and the universe around us, were just magically “poofed” into existence. I am awestruck by the notion of the billions of years and virtually infinite space that spans out universe.

But the thing that I actually really have to disagree with Jason about – rather strenuously even, is this idea that our emotions are fleeting things – they assuredly are not. While some of our emotions are fleeting things, that which is most important to us does not evaporate, it usually just gets buried. We humans have a remarkable capacity for compartmentalizing and do so on an ongoing basis. Were we to stop, we would quickly be completely overwhelmed by the inability to process absolutely everything. So the vast majority of what we see, what is happening around us, goes into tidy little compartments – some of them much like the RECYCLE function of our computers. Certain types of information are harder to reach while they are still there and only stay until we have put so much more in, that it disappears.

But there are a great many things that never leave us – though we may get past the worst of the impact of those events, people and the feelings they inspire. And when we dwell on them, it is easy enough to recall and experience those emotions again – unless we’ve repressed it, which is something that men are especially good at.

I don’t believe in gods anymore, don’t believe in the supernatural at all. That doesn’t mean I have any less capacity for love and emotions than you do. Indeed, believing as I now do, that such beliefs are dangerous and overall bad for us, I not only love you, but much as I am sure you love me and wish that I would come back to God’s grace, I wish you would come to reason and out of the dangers of magical thinking.

And I too, love my children. Ever so very deeply and in a way that to you, a fellow parent, can totally relate to.

You can see how terribly offensive my comment was - no question why he wouldn't fucking let it post out of moderation. I will note here however, that I misunderstood Jason and he did clarify it here. Sorry Jason, your comment makes a whole lot of sense now. And for anyone going over to read that, please ignore my comment below - that was meant for Jason only and frankly, I'm concerned that if you read it, you may decide to kill me. But I digress, because while Denny the Cowardly fucking Christian chose not to let my comment post, he did respond. And out of respect for his notation on the bottom of his email, admonishing that it is indeed intended only for me, I will have to request that you not actually read the following quotes and just read my responses to them - I post them for Denny's reference, so he knows what exact points I am responding to...And if you like, you could take a break and go read Jason's response to Denny the Cowardly fucking Christian's blog-post, which he was blissfully unaware of, until I pointed it out to him....

A person can claim to love their children; however, it is impossible for chemicals to love chemicals. I don't doubt that chemicals can affect emotions; however, love is not an emotion. Your statement, "I love my children" while denying the existence of God informs me that your definition of love is based on chemicals and not truth.

Denny, we are not talking about neat little bottles of chemicals in your child's chemistry set. Nor are we talking about stuff that got mixed up in a laboratory. Please take a moment to learn a little bit about the human brain and how all this thinking and feeling stuff works...We'll wait for you...

If you gave up Christ for your emotions, then that explains why you are an atheist. Jason at least was honest about atheism.

I gave up nothing for my emotions - my emotions had nothing to do with my becoming an atheist, except in so far as they actively prevented me from becoming an atheist a great deal sooner. I am an atheist because I finally lost the battle of attrition, wherein my religious brainwashing was fighting to reconcile my Faith, with reason and reality. But I love the implication that I am somehow lying about who and what I am, and why...

In order for atheism to be true, it has to admit to the existence of truth. As soon as an atheist makes a claim on truth, they just established the existence of God. In other words, it is logically impossible for atheism to be true. When you make a claim on truth, you are admitting to an unchanging reality that exists beyond our own. Truth is unchanging; however, everything in our experience is changing. The only basis for truth or for reason is the existence of God.

You know, I love me some elementary, circular logic and this example is truly circular and very elementary. But worse, it's also predicated on the notion that atheism is based on any claim of truth.

First of all Denny, I reject the god paradigm that your abysmally fucking stupid statement was based on. Your premise fails on it's face right then and there. Secondly, I would like to point out that this is a logical fallacy. Even if we were to give that atheism is predicated on some claim of truth, it would not stand to reason that said truth implies anything unchanging, beyond our reality. The only way that this would stand, is if we accept as an absolute, the existence of a supernatural that there simply isn't any evidence for. And finally, I am not an atheist because I believe there isn't a god or any sort of supernatural. I am an atheist, because I have not seen evidence to indicate the existence of either. I don't <i>believe</i> anyfuckingthing...I accept that there may be a supernatural, I just don't see evidence to suggest it. I even accept that there may be a godlike higher power - again, I just don't see evidence for it. Still further, I accept that there may be a interventionist, godlike higher power - just not the evidence. Finally, I even accept the possibility, no matter how slim, that <i>your</i> version of god is real. The thing is, without evidence to suggest that any of these are true, I reject the premises. And in the order I listed them, I go from finding these premises exceedingly unlikely, to being about as likely as the premise that The FSM is coming to save us and guide us into a beautiful reality of peace and piracy.

Mass and Energy that has been informed by information establishes the fact that a mind does exist which is the source of that information. In other words, God does exist and it is undeniable if you hold to truth.

A fucking moron says what? Seriously Denny, you need some help - please do me a favor and spend a little time on elementary logic... You are doing a hell of a job of showing just how fucking bereft our educational system is...

And for the record, logic and this silly notion of <i>evidence</i> based reason are not tools of Satan, created to drive man from god. Least ways, I give that notion less credence, than I give the notion that your version of god is real. We'll skip over the next couple of paragraphs, because once you ground yourself in elementary logic, you will see that it is just more of the same fucking bullshit.

The fact you were trying to be a Christian and now an atheist tells me that you never found the Love of God that can be yours through Jesus Christ. If you would have found it, you would never have left.

Fuck you. Seriously you fucking shit eating little bastard - Fuck You!

Now I am almost inclined to just leave it at that and be done with your sorry fucking ass, but I want to clarify something you asked to clarify, because one, I am honest and two, it will provide you with a short lesson in logic. In your second email you asked...

You stated that your love is now deeper and more meaningful.

If your love is chemically based, everyone's experience should be the same since you are hitting the love chemical; however, it would seem to me that admitting that love is now deeper would imply that you activated a new chemical that is forcing you to believe that it is now deeper....

Do you think that love can really go deeper for an atheist?

For the question you asked, no. I don't think that faith or lack thereof has anyfuckingthing to do with one's capacity for love. I do not think that becoming an atheist made it possible for me to suddenly love that much more deeply. I would suspect that Faith was running some interference before, but the truth is, after becoming an atheist, I also got help for my neurological issues. I also became more focused on metacognition and better understanding myself. It also makes a huge difference, that I have now met a women whom I love quite passionately and with a depth I previously assumed was simply not possible for me to feel.

People, especially men, are perfectly capable of not recognizing. ignoring and even suppressing emotions. Humans have that capacity to compartmentalize that I talked about in my comment that you are afraid to post to your blog. Because of that capacity, we are perfectly capable of never even realizing how we really feel about things, people and ideas. We can repress memories and desires, without ever realizing what we've done. It is mostly just coincidence, that I have broken through some seriously damaging compartmentalization since becoming an atheist.

But I really want to hit on this fucking ridiculous notion you have about neurochemistry and love. It is not some singular chemical that we can just take "hits" of, to feel something more or less. It is a complex interaction of neurotransmitters and the "hardware" of our brains. We're all different, because our brains are all different. Our specific, individual brain chemistry is easily as unique and far more complicated than our fingerprints. This is what prevents us from being singular, automaton like creatures - one indistinguishable from another.

This is all relatively simple to understand, even if the mechanisms are complicated. No gods needed and unlike godbased, lazy fucking assumptions, there is a great deal of evidence to back up every assertion I have made here.