There are reasons for this folks.

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A lot of people are fucking idiots?

JB: When asked how he would "answer" when called before God for final Judgement, Bertrand Russell said he would say "Lord, you gave us insufficient information!"

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See, being the arch-skeptic that I am, my instant response (when faced with something proclaiming itself to be 'God' or similar) would be simple -  "prove it!"






Of course, there's always the Spike Milligan version (taken from 'The Bald Twit Lion', from 'A Book of Milliganimals') - enjoy, folks!

...so God slid down from Heaven on a religious giraffe's neck to the ground. "Who are you, sir?" said Lion. "I am Mr God. If you don't believe me, ask Giraffe!"

Lion did, and Giraffe said, "Oh yes, he's God."

"There," said God. "If you still don't believe me, ask me a difficult question."

"O.K.," said Lion. "How much is 2x2?"

"Four," said God.

"Oh yes," said Lion. "You're God all right."

"Good," said God. "Close your eyes and say `Miggle Moggle Cake'."

Lion did. When he opened his eyes God had gone back home. But Lion now had a lovely lovely mane of beautiful black hair, and he was so happy he married a Roman Catholic giraffe and lived happily ever after until the next day.

See, being the arch-skeptic that I am, my instant response (when faced with something proclaiming itself to be 'God' or similar) would be simple - "prove it!"

••

The Babel fish is small, yellow, leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the universe. It feeds on brain wave energy, absorbing all unconscious frequencies and then excreting telepathically a matrix formed from the conscious frequencies and nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain, the practical upshot of which is that if you stick one in your ear, you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language: the speech you hear decodes the brain wave matrix.

Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful could evolve purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. The argument goes something like this:

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white, and gets killed on the next zebra crossing.

Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys. But this did not stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme for his best selling book, Well That About Wraps It Up for God. Meanwhile the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different cultures and races, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.

---- Douglas Adams, THE HITCHHIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY

atheists and fundamentalists use almost exactly the same arguments

False equivalency. Xians preach family values, prayer in schools, and free market capitalism. Atheists come along and point out the Bible teaches us to hate our parents, pray only in private, and to sell all our material posessions and give the money to the poor.

atheists who are WAY more knowledgeable

Is that desperation I smell?

If organized religion existed on the same level as astrology, ghost hunting, and bigfoot researchers, we wouldn't give a damn. But religion saturates our lives, our politics, our whole culture. When you get infected with a virus, the only way to wipe it out is to learn all you can about it.

There are reasons for this folks.

Arkansas natives are threatened by those who walk erect?

••

Tho, curiously, based on my own experience with such people, the religious folk would be far more knowledgeable about their own "lore" than are most today. One thing about the lunatic fringe, they tend to be right up to date on their fantasies!