LETTER: Atheists don’t know it all

To the editor:

I’d like to thank Jon Adams for that excellent article where he rebuffs the argument that atheism is not a religion, I haven’t had that good a laugh in a while. I normally don’t write in for this kind of fruitless argument, but you’ve assaulted my scientific sensibilities. First of all, don’t make a list of reasons why it’s not a religion and include reasons it is, it’s really bad for your argument.

Atheism is in fact, a world view that you use to define your purpose or lack thereof. As for a group with shared feelings, every atheist says that the reason god doesn’t exist is because he doesn’t come down and hold their hand, that every pimple and cough is a sign that god doesn’t love them therefore there is no god. And next time an atheist tries to base the existence of god on scientific evidence, they need to ask someone who actually knows something about an actual physical science, I can’t even begin to imagine how it’s possible to think that being a political science major makes you smarter than Einstein, who himself pointed out that the shear improbability of our existence at all points that someone had a hand in things. I don’t care if a religion is attacked based on the actions of their followers, I’d expect such in political science, but please don’t tell me god doesn’t exist because you got a boo-boo on your hand, and in your finite and extremely limited knowledge you’ve proven that the existence of god is illogical.

And don’t tell me that the absence of evidence is evidence of absence, the vast majority of modern thought it based on “I haven’t proven it wrong yet.” Why else do you think we rely on ‘innocent until proven guilty’ when a life hangs in the balance? Where would you rather err, killing the innocent, or sparing the guilty? Killing the innocent is a little to final for me.

Ben Thatcher