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First I want to say, this isn't an attack on my father. He is really a good guy and although I think his faith is misplaced and many of his views are wrong, I still love him. He was a great dad to me when I was growing up and he is an even better grandfather. It is his religion I have a problem with and it, as well as other religions, are actually harming the world rather than making it a better place. But mostly this is a response to his posts. Some of them need a dash of reality. I'll respond to this 'blog' if I may of my fathers who clings to his beliefs like a drowning man to a board in an ocean of logic and reason. http://www.thoughts.com/journeyman/blog/fairy-tale-for-adult s--34031 First, my father is under the impression that atheism is a religion or a group of like minded people. Statments like 'I wonder what atheists did before Darwin' implies that ALL atheists believe in Evolution. Which is untrue. He really needs to read the dictionary or ask his all knowing buddy for clearer answers. Atheists only have one thing in common, a disbelif in an almighty creator or as Christians call him, God. There is no other belief, way of thinking, way of living and acts done by which can be attributed to atheists. I am different than every other atheists and they are each different than each other. I never have stated my 100% belief in evolution. It wasn't even teaching of evolution that made me think that this whole god thing might be an easy answer for those who need hope or those scared of not having all the answers but rather it was the bible itself that made me doubt. I hope he says my favorite responses to anyone who reads scriptures at face value to him and asks him to explain the twisted logic and cruel acts in it to him. So all I'll say about his old sayings, misleading posts and questions such as the Darwin statement will be about evolution itself. He rails against evolution as if it can prove atheists are wrong. He has obviously not read the hundreds of books and journals done by Christians who beieve in both God and evolution. He even makes comparisons between people like Stalin, Hitler and other murderous thugs (although Hitler used religion to build his army and make several Christian speeches proclaiming his belief) to a simple non-believer. It is obvious he can’t even grasp what the word means. Even though the term ‘atheist’ was originally used as a curse and sentence on a supposed disbeliever of death, atheists no longer have to hide in fear of the religious killing and torturing for their doubt. They have taken other names as well. Freethinkers and Rationalists are two of them. But I guess he will continue to label all atheists as a group, he will continue to insult people who don’t share his beliefs, he will continue to think Atheism is a proclamation of the belief in evolution and he will continue to call other Christians mislead, wrong or far more insulting terms if they believe in a less literal interpretation of his favorite novel. He believes in a unseen, unproven, illogical, supreme being in the sky who made man out of a ball of clay and had to use one of the mans ribs to make a women? Read that again. Do I need to say any more of the opinion of a single man's disbelief of science in favor of us coming from mud and the bone of a man? Secondly, I never said either of those statements. ‘Who created god?’ and the other one are simplistic questions and haven’t even crossed my mind. My questions are far more thought provoking and would make him question his belief if he actually listened to them instead of running away, calling names, had an open mind, insulting a person or saying his favorite lines like “Why doesn’t god think like me?!?!?”. I understand though. If I devoted my entire life to one belief and just the thought of being wrong would shatter my world if doubt entered my mind, he is most likely not to accept anything other than his current beliefs. Sadly he is unable to even listen to others with different views because he has all the answers. If I would only lower myself to his level of calling people retarded or flinging their past against them as if it is somehow proof that their viewpoint is wrong. I could indeed fling his against him. But I won't. He can call me an addict, I am and he has. I've been clean for a while but am still an alcoholic. He can call me a druggie. I have used, not hard stuff just stuff most kids experiement with and he calls me one. But neither being clean nor being a sometime dope smoker in high school are excuses. I am not ashamed of my past. I don't feel guilt like the kind his religion makes him feel. Regret sure, being honest with yourself is hard. I can't change the past. So I'll own up to it. Any bad action I did was my fault. It would be convenient to have devils and demons to blame it on. But I won't. So I'll let his past be his. He is the one who has to decide how to live with it. He is the one who has to live with judging people while believing in a book that tells him otherwise. For me, changing myself and doing the best I can without the crying in shame and praying for help that he needs daily just to live life. His comments about me are to be found here.  http://www.thoughts.com/journeyman/blog/my-son-the-atheist-8 4516/ If anyone else wants to know about my past, feel free to ask. I can live with it without the begging for forgiveness from different gods across different times and places. As one of your 'friends' said on your blog, about the holy spirit kneading 'his' words past my eyes and ears, maybe he'll do a bit of kneading of his own on the pride, anger, arrogance and ill deeds done in past years. It seems you need it more than I. Statements like these "belief in God is based initially not in faith..but simple logic. If you have a watch...it is logical to assume a watchmaker. A car....a car manufacturer. A home....a home builder. A suit....a tailor. A cake....a baker. I could never come to a point that I would believe that any of these items made themselves...especially without any blueprint, design..and totally by random chance." are the same drivel I have been hearing all my life. The sheer ignorance of statements like that made me question faith in the first place. Besides the unbelievable amount of arrogance that he KNOWS for certain that since we exist, he MUST be right that his god (not the other ones) created us, there is an even greater lack of knowledge of the universe and how it functions. Again, I'll refer to esteemed scientists, astronmers and philosophers to shed light on the subject. He shouldn't need them though, after all he has the creator of all not only whispering in his ear, that's right, he says he has actually heard god himself speak. To him mind you, not skeptics or into any tape recorder (he conviently stopped performing 'miracles' and tricks once we developed technology to test such things or to expose snake oil salesman who sell hope to the hopeless). He also uses statements like “I call it the way I see it, but if I don’t see it…I make it up” referring to what evolutionists believe. Does he not realize that this is not the right choice of words for someone who believes in a unseen, unproven, illogical, supreme being in the sky? For the record, all his theories about how evolution can be proven to be false can almost all be found in pre 1980 books written by pastors and fundamentalists. The burden of proof is not on scientists and other rationalists to prove their beliefs. In fact they themselves TRY to find flaws in things thought to be certain that THEY themselves discovered. It is the man who says his belief is absolute as well as being impossible (as in less than a chance in 10999,). No scientist would ever make that claim. But he will. So the burden of proof is on him, but while he is busy trying prove all the OTHER religions wrong, he might take a look at his own. He can't make a single sentance that won't laughed at by anyone with a basic understanding of the world around him much less an educated man who holds multiple degrees in feilds he is trying to prove wrong by starting out with only the first few sections of a book FILLED with impossible to prove acts and stories much less likely than Jack and the Beanstalk and Santa Claus. Just start a debate with any biologist with the idea that man came from a ball of mud (or holy dirt as I call it) and a rib was removed to be covered with what we know as a woman. Fruit of life or fruit of knowledge indeed. Wonder why the book he believes in says the fruit of knowledge is so evil that it condems all of man forever to live in sin as opposed to the fruit of life. I say go eat your fruit of life and leave the thinking and knowledge to men more equipped for it. Which brings me to my last point. "Something happened in my living room with my wife...and a young couple from a local church. I had a vision of a brilliant light. I felt something touch my abdomen...and it began to burn. Two days later at a local hospital I had a colonoscopy....and they found all the ulcers and scar tissue in my intestines were gone. My Jewish wife said...."Truly Jesus is the Messiah". Neither of us were ever the same again." When my father first told this story, it was different and my mother never said that statement, you can ask her. But that is besides the point. Why would someone who thought eternal life was real and it was so much of a paradise be afraid to die in the first place? Why when you go to a hosipital full of christians is there so much praying to not die? Sure he might say things like when he dies he will be in paradise, but see who cries when faced with death. What is sick and twisted about that logic is that is that god would let maggots breed in the eyes of starving children in Africa, that he would not answer the screams of people dying horrible, painful and prolonged death around the world, that he would not help the child abused in the hands of a monster (he created no less, remember the clockmaker analogy!) and he wouldn't help the millions even billions of people slaughtered, abused and tortured in the cruelest ways. No, instead he lifts his magical hand for a security guard in Fort Worth Texas. A flash of brilliant light indeed. Voices talking to him. The conviction that if God/voices told him to murder his child. All have another name besides faith. Delusional. Pathological. Schizophrenia. Insanity. Taken in perspective, these statements could have easily been made by men like David Koresh, Marshall Applewhite, Jim Jones, etc. Before I ever became an unbeliever. Stories like this made me decide to never believe in Christianity, because if I did and god somehow decided to heal and help me while lettings children be raped and killed, I would not be able to worship much less aknowledge such a monster. Sayings like 'everything has a purpose' and 'who can know the lords plan' made me think the purpose was a twisted and unbalanced one and if he had a plan, it was an inept one. So inept that 6 continents had their own religion and gods before Christianity was ever thought up, much less able to travel across an ocean to spread among other races, all inferior and deserving of eternity of torture I guess. (remember, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." John 14:6). Spreading the ocean for moses must have been a bigger task than we thought if the oceans proved to much for him to cross. To sum up. Atheists are not what he thinks them. Evolution is much more than he thinks. His book is not what he thinks. His god is not nearly the god he thinks him to be. His fables of choice are exactly what they seem to be. And sadly, his son is not who he thinks he is.