Jim Gardner has up a fantastic post up, answering a charge we “militant atheists” are often met with — that we simply do not understand Christianity, or any number of other faiths. Well, Jim does understand; in fact, better than you’d probably suspect. I know some of you are quite faithful, and I would strongly encourage you to read this article and see just exactly the depth of knowledge many atheists have with regard to your faith.

To you who claim I am simply unaware as to the wonder and splendour of God’s domain, I understand your belief system quite well. Though I was not as steeped in it as Jim evidently was, I grew up Catholic. I did not “stray” because I did not have sufficient understanding of the belief system; rather, reality itself is far more compelling and wondrous and mysterious than any imaginary entity could ever be.

Frankly, the concept of a tiny God poofing the Earth into existence and creating in situ every animal we see today, then making enough evidence to fool everyone that he wasn’t involved, then punishing everyone who is fooled by that same evidence — while that’s pretty God-like in scope, it’s also ascribing a terrible lack of depth of vision, disgustingly self-serving deceptiveness, and stupefyingly egocentric character to your preferred deity. If you step back a moment and examine exactly what you’re suggesting God is, and if you were to imagine yourself in God’s shoes momentarily to imagine what it’d be like to have those aspersions cast on you, I’m sure you’d be aghast at your own beliefs.