Typing comments back and forth makes tone and a pleasant discussion nearly impossible. You didn’t piss me off and I wasn’t trying to berate you, but if you voice an opinion that I disagree with and believe there are many many facts that should be brought to the table that’s what I did. Explaining why I disagree with you and giving you clear points that are contrary to your opinion is hardly berating.

and you’re totally right about the waves, haha, maybe sometimes you have to fight through the big ones to get to the better surf. And yet another analogy is born.

Meow. Easy tiger.

I apologize, just as you apologized for all of the condescending comments you made about weight and pregnant women a few posts ago…

Though I must admit, it’s quite flattering to know my views piss you off enough to warrant a 7(ish) paragraph response. I don’t think anyone else’s posts are getting that kind of attention!

For someone who claims they’d rather “ride the waves than fight them” you sure do fight a lot. I, on the other hand, don’t have the time nor the energy to be berated for expressing my opinion when it’s clearly invited.

With that being said, Carlin didn’t believe in god, perhaps a higher power, but definitely not a Creator, and saying so I think is an insult to his legacy and what he’s been saying for 40 years. So it wasn’t a belief in a creator or god that got him over his “demons” as you call it, i think it may have been all the work he started doing with comedy and so it looks like he was exercising his demons with intelligent discussion. But this is semantics since I can’t give Carlin a call and get a straight answer on this.

As for your AA meeting insight, I personally have a friend who works in Occupational Therapy and from his Master’s Studies in Mental Health I’ve been told that a lot of AA doesn’t work. And if you did some research you’d find the only reason that religion and the bible is so heavily involved is because AA was started by a Christian institution. At the beginning the only book allowed in the room was the bible. Addiction takes place in the mind and is a complicated process, picking up a bible and saying a prayer isn’t the cure. It may make the process easier for some people but just because believing in god has helped some drug addicts come clean doesn’t magically make him exist. And I’m sure being in a group of like-minded people that are trying to change their lives, as well as having the support of friends like yourself is another large component in the success of recovered addicts.

Your final point is another ridiculous copout line that’s been used by christians for decades, a more popular take is, “there are no atheists in fox holes”, this says that when you are faced with death all people look for a god. Well no shit. Of course atheists or christians, or whatever, if you know you’re about to die the mind will try to protect itself from the unbelievable fear you’re experiencing. You will do anything to try and brace yourself for what’s about to happen and make it more palpable for yourself. Just like we rationalize things in our minds about aspects of our lives we don’t particularly like and learn to live with them. Its a coping mechanism. But if you do ever get a chance to interview an atheist right before he crashes in a 747, let me know what he had to say.

Intelligent Design on the other hand is just a nice piece of marketing by the same christians that brought you Creationism years ago. Creationism was taking a lot of flack so voila, you have intelligent design. Complete order did not simply come from complete chaos. Firstly, look around, the last thing we have in this world is complete order (see: Darfur, any world war, and Greys Anatomy), if you took some time and thought about the way the world and we as humans function, its closer to chaos than order. As for the “design” of humans and animals and plants etc, these designs evolved over billions and billions of years. Life on earth didn’t commence with the flicking of a switch. And the fact that some christians believe earth was created over 7 days is even more unbelievable, not to mention the Adam and Eve tale.

There are a lot of atheists out there that wear their knowledge on their sleeve like a badge, like they’ve solved some secret Da Vinci code the rest of the world is just figuring out. I’m not one of those people. I’m happy I’m self-aware, I do cherish the things I know and have discovered with much labored thought, but its not a choice I made. No one chooses to believe what they believe, nor do they choose to change their opinions. You are who you are. Its how you were raised, your experiences throughout life, and the information we’ve individually been exposed to. If tomorrow I decided I wanted to believe in religion and in god, I could not. You cannot force yourself or anyone else to believe in something that doesn’t resonate somewhere within them. Which is another reason why I find the whole “Love only one god and no other gods” type of rules rather ridiculous. If you, for example, were born into a muslim household you would likely now believe in Allah. Not because there is a right or wrong god, but because those are the beliefs you’ve been exposed to. So to say that there are different gods and whoever is right wins eternity in heaven is a joke in my opinion. Lets say for arguments sake that Buddha is the “real god”, so that means that everyone else in the world born into non-buddhist families will be going to hell for worshipping the wrong god? The logic just doesn’t fit together for me.

So like I said, i have no qualms with people that believe in god or a higher power, or even Santa for that matter. Its just from what I’ve read, from what I’ve thought through and what I’ve been exposed to, its religion that does not make any sense to me whatsoever. (either does god, but like I mentioned in my last comment, its a conversation I try not to participate in). I just see life as being a lot more complicated than anything the bible or any religious text has to offer.

I really do appreciate the time you took to read my post and form your comments. I always enjoy reading your opinions fitzie.