indignation

why is it that if I talk to a religious person they think its perfectly acceptable to simply say, "well I think your full of shit and that deep down you really do beleive in god" they would be pretty damn offended if I said well deep down I know that you know that there really isnt a god and that you only pretend to believe in something supernatural because it fills a void in you knowledge of the universe, its far easier to say "god" than to learn about all the different sciences, biology and astronomy in particular.

My book club idea i think is going to get interesting, Im pretty sure I mentioned this before but I challenged my uber religous buddy to read the bible with me, we'll do it book club style. the same night we decided on that we went to another friends house, hes pretty much ambivolent (which is a religious idea few mention) and his girlfriend is religious but I never knew before in exactly what way. I think this is going to get more interesting because shes got about as rational a view as one can have about something as irrational as god. shes of the god is everything, jesus was not born of a virgin dont be silly, of course hes the son of god, but then again im the daughter of god were all gods children. This is a view that is far more flexible and can work with science most of the way. Her BF of course probably isnt going to read much of it but he will be in the background cracking jokes and occationally throwing in bits of wisdom. Hes a rational person like most who doesnt hold strong beliefs about much, this lends him to being able to boil down a complex issue into the only bits that matter and say it in away that anyone can understand and is difficult to argue with. Its not that hes a genius, far from it, hes fairly average intelligence but completely doesnt give a fuck about much of anything (other than his kids, hes a great dad and shes and even better mother I gotta show 'em some love on that) which should be a nice counter to the three people whos opinions are pretty well set. I think im going to write up some ground rules to this book club, like how we have to attempt to respect each other, but that we ARE going to offend each other, if an atheist a deist a theist and an asshole (he nicknamed himself Dick, he'd agree) all sit around and talk about the bible, were going to offend each other. The important thing is to some how say that yes we will offend eachother, we are going to be going inside eachothers "safe-zones" this will get confrentational, but at the end we can do this because we are friends. Im very comfortable doing this with my theist friend because as I have said before we've been friends so long that there isnt much of anything left we could do to hurt our friendship. The friends girl friend on the other hand ill need to be a little more careful with, im not all that worried, shes not exactly feeble.

Now the only thing is which version, shes reading a NIV study bible, which is probably a good route to go with for people lacking in biblical knowledge, but my buddy is all about the litteral so he might want the James. Ill try to talk him out of it, of course if we do the james verision then I can get em for free from the mormons...