It certainly has no place in any reasoned debate or indeed any rational human interaction and its uncontrolled manifestation is totally a dysfunctional reaction and should have no domain on the human psyche.

Having read what I just wrote, I’m unsure if I have completely and accurately described my understanding of this emotion.

What I have personally observed as I allegedly supposed to grow older and wiser (if not sillier)is that my whole range of emotions have waned in terms of scope and intensity apart perhaps from the feelings of deep affection and protective instincts I have towards my grand children, particularly the youngest one.

That said I should mention that over the course of my some 7 decades of self-awareness I have vacillated between weak and strong atheistic beliefs though have witnessed the benefits, values and contributions made by religions which practice positive and humanistic ideals.

As for proving evolution. Well evolution is mutations, or changes that occur between generations. Natural Selection explains how only the mutations that best suit the environment survive to propagate. Our generations last tens of years, so observing changes that occur subtlety over thousands of years is difficult (but not impossible, there are changes between single human generations that can be observed). However, we can observe evolution on much shorter time scale by observing species which experience shorter generations. And we have.

Of course, there’s also the numerous examples of intermediary fossils that have been discovered which show species mid transition. If you’re interested in learning the truth, I’d recommend Reading some peer reviewed journals that discuss speciation.

Also, by saying that evolution is real you’re saying that I’m a human, who happens to be an ape, who happens to be a dog-like creature, who happens to be a fish-like creature, who happens to be a tadpole-like creature, who happens to be a one-cell organism? That’s SICK!

As for your other two questions, it’s something I’ve given thought to but have never really articulated. I think my response would be rather verbose, so I’ll put up a post dedicated to it. I think it’s an important enough point to warrant a dedicated post, look for it shortly!

Atheist, I enjoy your posts because you don’t seem to be angry as most of your fellow atheists are. I find it strange that people who think that we poor theists who just haven’t quite evolved enough to give up our heavenly teddy bear should be the object of anger, even if we do have an influence on some important contemporary issues. It is rather like being angry at fish for not yet evolving into amphibians.

More interestingly yet, I find myself actually agreeing with you on many of the points you raise in this post. In the way that you have explained them, in fact, I agree with all of them.

Could I ask: what would it take for you to accept that there is a God? I hope I am not maligning Richard Dawkins, but I think somewhere he says that even if a statue of Mary waved to him he would attribute it to a freak coincidence that the random motion of molecules happened to occur in the same direction for some short space of time. If anyone has a “faith” in atheism that would surely be it. That is to say, it is hard to see what could count as proof. As Jesus points out: “Not even if a man should rise from the dead would they believe.”

Proof is a something we don’t possess about anything if we don’t want to accept it. Most scientific proof revolves around the fact that there have been no counter examples that invalidate it. eg gravity = two masses attract, seems to ‘work’ in every known example where no other forces are in play. Most people are prepared to accept the overwhelming evidence and take that as proof, but clearly no one could ‘prove’ that there aren’t some masses somewhere that don’t attract at all. Science always works on a ‘best explanation until something better comes along’ basis, and we’re perfectly OK with this. Newton was not foolish to be corrected in some aspects by Einstein, for example.

Now when it comes to God, who can not be subjected to our senses at all, the only way of demonstrating his existence is by his effects (and actually that is the only way that many sub-atomic particles are known). But even these are material and subject to experimenation and observation. God is wholly outside that. The way to come to knowledge of God is not going to be by experiment, therefore. There can be no scientific proofs (or disproofs) of God, but only philosophical and personal ones.

However, there is a bigger difference than just “zilla” between God and Godzilla or any other disputed being. The questions of life and death, meaning, life after death, suffering, evil, existence etc… are fundamentally human questions, and their significance differs dramatically if God exists or if he doesn’t. Godzilla is entirely inconsequential in this. That is the point of “there are no atheists in foxholes”. It is not so much an argument as an observation. In moments of sheer terror these fundamental questions are invariably – even involuntarily – asked, and so the possibility of God becomes once again a real question. I think that if atheists are to be really honest they must admit a “but what if….?” doubt, and I think theists must accept a “but what if not…?” doubt at times. It is an existential question which will never go away, however many graphs of the increasingly silly intelligentia are plotted.

Finally, how about a second question: would you like there to be a God? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to say that that would prove anything. It would just give some idea of your perception of God.