Top two reasons I am an Atheist:

1. I care about all people (though I might not actually like you - I think everyone should get a fair shake). I hate seeing people suffer through war, famine, bigotry, inequity, depression... Religion may never solve any of these problems. It might only be an opiate for the masses.

2. What if theists are wrong and there are no gods? Then we need a backup plan.

Having compassionate gods would be great, but ultimately we still need to learn to work together & love each other, so that we can know how to live happy & full human lives.

We need more faith in each other.

(My top two reasons are empathy-based, because I have yet to hear an acceptable fact-based argument for the existence of gods... and all too often 'gods' are used as justification for vile human behavior. Liberal-Libertarian with 'conservative values' in case you were wondering. Good luck working out the math on that.)

Since I find that religion is typically at the heart of incredulity toward human induced climate change, this channel has become dedicated to addressing religious dogma.

If you followed me from a message I left, you are likely either annoyed by my response or you found it interesting - either of which is cool beans! So read on my curious primate friend...

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WINNING AN ARGUMENT AND BEING RIGHT:

In 1624 Galileo Galilei, after spending decades studying astronomy, challenged the mighty silverback - Pope Urban VIII. Galileo had discovered that Earth was not the center of the universe, nor did anything orbit it besides one relatively massive moon. Pope Urban, who had never studied astronomical phenomena, besides reading one 1,000 year old book, declared that Galileo was wrong.

Because of the Pope's esteemed position in the herd, Galileo was in defiance of 'leadership' & therefore through a few steps of simple logic - EVIL. Galileo was a promising alpha but he defied the means by which previous alphas achieved silverback-dom. He acquired prestige by gaining knowledge of reality. But in doing so he neglected traditional hierarchy politics. This was a clear threat to how shit goes down in the Homo sapiens herd. It was tradition that things not good for silverbacks was clearly bad for EVERYONE because... well because they said so & they had the oomph to back it up.

To his credit Galileo fought well & respectfully. He had lots of data & observations, balanced formulas, the support of others in his niche & he was indeed RIGHT. Unfortunately he LOST the argument on a technicality. Pope Urban was able to trump Galileo by summoning a large influential group of alphas known as the Roman Inquisition. These leaders were able to urinate on much territory, intimidate older males, mate with the females within the territory, carve their names on buildings & lure the young males into risking their lives performing tasks for promise of a later reward ('eternal life'). Homo sapiens refer to their territory behavior as 'ownership'.

Because of vast territory OWNERSHIP, the Inquisition was able to pressure many young males to arrest & convict Galileo. Notably none of the young males were trained in astronomy, but they simply did not want the alphas to kick their ass, take their stuff or mate with their women. The smaller males wanted the big cool silverbacks to like 'em.

Galileo was unable to out-muscle Urban. Urban declared himself the victor & commanded the Sun to orbit the Earth. Galileo spent the rest of his life under arrest & was denied full ownership of his territory. In fact Pope Urban promptly visited Galileo's favorite sleeping area, urinated on it & carved his name in the outer stucco. Pope Urban had a major edifice complex.

The irony to us today is that Galileo was RIGHT eventhough he LOST the argument. We see now that no star orbits a planet; that would be an oxymoron. But these chimpanzee were only beginning to actually LOOK AT their environment. They love to make many assumptions - usually based upon their WANTS. Unfortunately for Galileo his discoveries were in opposition to the WANTS of more powerful males.

After thousands of years of conditioning to these over-simplified memetics most of the Homo sapiens are predisposed to siding with powerful, threatening silverbacks & not into reserving judgment or giving new ideas a chance. Their environment is such, that to hesitate on picking the RIGHT/GOOD side (the side of the most influential silverback) means they will quickly be deemed BAD despite any considerations of actual reality.

This herd of chimpanzee determines RIGHT/GOOD by who can summon enough support to kick the shit out of any opposition. This is scary since silverbacks that support this idea go so far as to kill millions of their own kind to WIN an argument. Not surprising since they have convinced themselves that WINNING an argument is the same as being RIGHT.

For example, Homo sapiens today argue over whether or not they are indeed a species of chimpanzee. As if whoever wins has any bearing on what the truth is. The proud victors feel that along with their other accomplishments they gain OWNERSHIP over the territories including, but not limited to, the orbital patterns of the sun, time, space, and reality.