MP writes of an amusing run-in with his intellectually superior atheist boss:
I’ve been following your blog for several months now after reading The Irrational Atheist, and have recently come across a particular situation which I feel will not only provide you with quite possibly severe bouts of hysterical laughter, but also, rather worrying food for thought.
My boss falls under the category of what I would like to describe as an Unread Atheist, an Atheist who has not read The God Delusion, God Is Not Great, End of Faith and other select works in ego-fondling, nor has he done further research into the field. He just plain doesn’t believe and feels that everyone that does is a moron. Now, this is not to mean that in contrast, a Read Atheist is one who is a well-read and intelligent person, it would just mean that via High-Pope Dawkins, First-Saint Hitchens and Court-Jester Harris, that this Read Atheist believes that they have some form of misguided ammo to make a convincing case against God’s existence.
While having post-work talks about all sorts of miscellanea, my boss led it into atheism. Generally, I remain quiet, as you can only imagine the general drivel that he could come up with; ‘Religion causes war’, ‘They don’t believe in science’, ‘Big Bang made the Universe’, ‘The Vatican Deathstar opposes gay contraception in Zimbawania, because they think the Earth is 2,000 years old’ and ‘Jesus never created the Big Bang because I read half of Thus Spoke Zarathustra once’. But then, it happened…
“The European Economic Crisis is the Vatican’s fault and it could be fixed if they weren’t so greedy, all they need to do is sell everything that they’re hiding in their treasury and catacombs and Europe would be back to normal”
I’d like to think that this is one of the most idiotic things that either of us have read, but I honestly don’t even know where to begin with tackling the problem. What do you have to say on this matter?
I say do the math. Vatican City’s assets are estimated to be worth between $1 billion and $3 billion in total. Total global debt now over $190 trillion, about one-quarter of which is European debt. So, I would ask him how $3 billion is going to pay off $47.5 trillion in debt. It may be a hard lesson for some to learn, but not believing in God doesn’t magically make you smarter. Or, as we first learned from the example displayed by Richard Dawkins, particularly numerate.