A Message to Family and Friends

Dear Family and Friends


I know that most of you believe in a god that I do not believe in. While I am in the two thirds majority of the planets’ population of 7 billion that totally reject the notion that Jesus is their “personal savior”, you are in the one third minority that cling to that notion.

Will Rogers said that we are all ignorant….only about different things. I think what this country philosopher failed to take into account is that there are two kinds of ignorance. “Normal” ignorance; those things outside our sphere of knowledge, and willful ignorance; the things we willfully choose to be ignorant about.

Substituting “intelligent design” for evolution is a perfect example of willful ignorance. Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution, accompanied by overwhelming evidence, in his book “On the Origin of Species” 152 years ago. This discovery, after years of painstaking research, demolished what the bible teaches about how we humans came to be. There were no naked humans in a garden. There was no talking snake. Darwin proved without a shadow of doubt that the bible is mistaken. Preachers vehemently oppose evolution because it completely washes away the sand under the notion that we started as two people made from dust. By dismissing observable evidence of evolution, including our own DNA, Christians choose to remain willfully ignorant. Their willful ignorance is spread like the plague, corrupting the minds of young and old alike.

If you cling to the notion that a moral, hard working Jewish doctor who has spent a career in a children’s’ cancer hospital, fighting to save the lives of innocent children, perhaps even one of your own, will spend eternity in hell, because he/she does not accept Jesus as their personal savior, while a child killer goes to heaven after a deathbed conversion, then you are suffering from willful ignorance. You are trapped in a self-made intellectual prison, because of a serious breakdown of your capacity to reason. If you believe otherwise you obviously have not read or paid attention to your own Christian bible. (John 14:6)

If you believe that God is love (John 4:8) then you have not heard of an earthquake on December 26th, 2004 that caused the drowning of 230,000 people, two thirds of them women and children. Because of your willful ignorance, you are unaware that 9 million children die each year under the age of five, most from starvation, when all that it would take to save them is a few inches of rain. You are blind to the agony that the grieving parents are going through; parents who no doubt prayed solemnly to their invisible god for their child to survive. Hiding behind your willful ignorance you claim that your god works in mysterious ways. If you, like most Americans, read at 200 words per minute, 42 children under the age of five died since you started reading this.

Human beings are social animals. Strong social ties are what have allowed us to survive. But we don’t need to cling to bronze age myths in order to be social animals. We can be perfectly social while searching for the truth. And when we find truth we should not cower in fear at what we have discovered. Truth needs no inspiration or revelation. It stands on its own.

There is a reason the bible admonishes us to “become as little children.” (Matt: 18:13 ) Little children can be convinced of anything. When I was about 13 years old I convinced my 4 year old nephew that he could lay eggs if he only he would cackle loud enough. He would lay several at one sitting. We placed them in my hat and set them aside where the next day we would proudly have them served for breakfast.

We should not become as little children. We should all grow up. Our very survival as a species depends on it.



June 28th, 2011