The intellectual entirety of the Tea Party movement in one screencap

Cue the fail at the Teabagger Convention: Here's cover girl Sarah Palin, after banking 100 large to give a speech slamming overspending and greed, answering one of the pre-screened questions by looking at notes written on her hand.

As a number of folks have already remarked, most of us were a little more subtle about this kind of cheating in junior high school, for chrissakes. And 53% of Republicans think she's more qualified to sit in the White House than Obama!? Look, whatever you think of the man's policies, he's definitely not a complete paste-eating chowderhead. I knew this country was into breeding the stupid, but I'm always astounded at how polluted the gene pool has really gotten.

Counter-protesting Phelps in SanFran: doin it rite!

Via Dawkins' site, I come upon this post at Laughing Squid reporting on a recent protest by — oh great, them again — Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church at San Francisco's Twitter offices, and the counter-protest by locals. Note the tone is one of glorious, effusive mockery, as seen in the example below.

More where that came from, kidrocks. Take a moment to note that this is absolutely the right approach to take with idiots like Westboro: "point and laugh" should always be the default response to utter troglodyte stupidity. And yes, we have gotten emails from viewers saying, "ZOMG, I heard Fred Phelps coming to my town, and I want to counter-protest! What should I do?" Well, here you go.

I'd personally go with "GOD HATES HASHTAGS," but that's just me.

Letting people as hopelessly pathetic as Westboro make you angry simply validates their hate, which is what they want. True, there are times when it's perfectly fitting to respond angrily to such stupidity. But that would be times when, say, homophobia takes on the sort of political character that can lead to legislation that harms and discriminates, like Prop. 8. Phelps, on the other hand, is a mere clown. And we laugh at clowns. At least, the ones that aren't frackin' scary.

Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

This Sunday we’ll be examining some hymn lyrics. The background will be orthodox Christian doctrine: That man is faulty and requires salvation. The price chosen and dicated by Yahweh is execution/blood sacrifice of a perfect human. Jesus, sent from god, is that sinless human who represents the “spotless lamb” so often sacrificed by Hebrews in antiquity. His torture and death are intended as compensation to Yahweh, who otherwise would refuse to tolerate a flawed human being in his presence (in Heaven). So, Yahweh appeased himself by having humans offer up the bloody human sacrifice of Jesus to Him. And Yahweh is now willing to allow humans into His presence, so long as the humans believe this doctrine and agree they have failed to the point that only execution would be sufficient justice. The upshot is supposed to be that Jesus was brought back to life a few days later—as a sign that you, too, can come back from the dead and live forever with god, since Jesus did the dying for us all and paid the price for our “sin.”

The selected lyrics that follow represent the relevant parts of hymns that “celebrate” this doctrine and are commonly sung in pews across America. Next time you’re in a church, pick up a hymnal and give it a read if you want to see how Christians view their own beliefs.

“Amazing Grace”
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

“Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed?”
Alas! and did my Savior bleed
And did my Sovereign die?
Would He devote that sacred head
For such a worm as I?

An interesting point about this lyric is that I found a Web site online that changed the final line of that verse to “for sinners such as I?” They expressed the decision as so:

http://www.drurywriting.com/keith/wretch.worm.htm
>Basically we think of ourselves as fairly nice people who became Christians and added meaning to our lives
>There are far more choir members singing songs of self-esteem than Reformers singing songs of total depravity. Since we’ve already rejected their “worm theology” we just ignore their warnings. We continue to preach a happy face doctrine of self esteem.

What I found particularly interesting about this was that they did not change any of the other lyrics in this hymn, which still holds that humans are so unacceptable, in god’s opinion, that only execution could possibly appease Yahweh as compensation for their present sinful state. So, I’m not a worm, I’m actually a basically good person that god will only accept if someone is executed in my stead. Here are more lyrics from the same hymn, that they don’t feel any need to alter, to demonstrate my point:

Was it for crimes that I had done
He groaned upon the tree?
Amazing pity! grace unknown!
And love beyond degree!

So, they agree that whatever they’re “guilty” of requires someone to be executed, and that’s justice. But they’re “good people”—and were “good people,” even before they “became Christians.” Everyone clear on that?

“Not All The Blood Of Beasts”
Not all the blood of beasts
On Jewish altars slain
Could give the guilty conscience peace
Or wash away the stain.

But Christ, the heav’nly Lamb,
Takes all our sins away;
A sacrifice of nobler name
And richer blood than they.
…

Believing, we rejoice
To see the curse remove;
We bless the Lamb with cheerful voice,
And sing His bleeding love.

“Nothing but the Blood”
Oh! precious is the flow
That makes me white as snow;
No other fount I know,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Nothing can for sin atone,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus;
Naught of good that I have done,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

And just in case you don’t know how happy a human sacrifice and an execution can be, here’s a little reminder:

“Calvary’s Stream Is Flowing”
From that dear cross where Jesus died,
Calv’ry’s stream is flowing;
From bleeding hands and feet and side,
Calv’ry’s stream is flowing.
…

With life and peace upon its tide,
Calv’ry’s stream is flowing;
Sweet blessings down the ages glide,
Calv’ry’s stream is flowing.

What could be more of a cause for exuberance than the image of “sweet blessings” gliding down a streaming tide of blood flowing from a condemned man’s body as he dies in agony?

What could, indeed. Perhaps the image of diving into a pool of blood, fed by a stream of blood flowing from the mountain upon which a man was executed, to wash yourself clean as “snow”?

“It Cleanseth Me”
There is a stream that flows from Calvary,
A crimson tide so deep and wide.
It washes whiter than the purest snow;
It cleanseth me, I know.

No other fountain can for sin atone
But Jesus’ blood, O precious flood!
And whosoever will may plunge therein,
And be made free from sin.

But bear in mind that god only demanded this brutal compensation because of his great love and mercy—but you could never deserve it. After all, what you deserve, again, is death. That’s why you need to be willing to sacrifice anything and everything in your life and in this world, in order to show Yahweh how grateful you are for his loving mercifulness:

“When I Survey The Wondrous Cross”
His dying crimson, like a robe,
Spreads o’er His body on the tree;
Then I am dead to all the globe,
And all the globe is dead to me.

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

“How Can I Look On Calvary’s Cross?”
How can I think of all He bore—
The shame, the thorns, the pain,
And unrepentant go my way
To pierce His heart again?
Forsaken in His darkest hour
By all, except His God,
Shall I deny my blessed Lord,
Who died to lift the rod?

Let me interrupt this one for a moment to clarify that is “the rod” you should be beaten with, instead. And how could we go on without noting Jesus wasn't forsaken by his god--the same god that dreamed up this whole execution/human sacrifice as his best-ever Plan of Salvation.

No, no! I cannot traitor be
To Jesus, King of Love,
Tho’ sinner steeped in guilt I am,
His mercy I will prove;
His blood on Calv’ry’s cross was shed,
To save e’en such as me;
O Jesus, now accept my all,
And draw me close to Thee.

And who could forget this timeless classic?

“The Old Rugged Cross”
On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross,
The emblem of suffering and shame;
And I love that old cross where the dearest and best
For a world of lost sinners was slain.

In that old rugged cross, stained with blood so divine,
A wondrous beauty I see,
For ’twas on that old cross Jesus suffered and died,
To pardon and sanctify me.

Yes, the beauty of an implement of torture and execution. So easy to appreciate.

Believe me, there’s more. Much, much, much more. This is only a small sampling. And on Sunday, even what I offer then will still only be a small sampling. But I will warn you, it’s going to be pretty well “more of the same” of what I’ve posted here. On Sunday, it won’t be so much any new horrors, as just hammering the same horrors over and over and over again. Because that's part of indoctrination: Repeat, repeat, repeat. And the point will be to make it abundantly clear that this is not about selecting a few objectionable hymns out of thousands, but that this is a common theme of hymns. This is orthodox Christian doctrine. And for those unfamiliar with fundamentalism, this is how they describe their beliefs within their church walls. This is how they view these concepts. And I can’t stress enough how “happy” many of these tunes are, as they go on about pain, human sacrifice, death and bathing in the blood of an executed, innocent man, to cleanse souls. And worst of all, they describe this to children as the most magnificent example of love and mercy in all of human history.

This is “the story” they defend.

Global Warming Denial and God Belief

I've often wondered why the religious nuts are most often the most vocal against global warming. On the surface, it seems incongruous. When the topic is God, they prop up the flimsiest evidence and put their fingers in their ears, yelling "la la la" when there is solid evidence against supernatural belief. When the topic is global warming, however, these same people ignore the evidence and claim to be highly educated skeptics.

Rush Limbaugh has explained the connection. After identifying himself as a creationist he said, "I simply cannot accept the fact that we would be created to do things that would destroy our environment..." Sadly, such a person would never ponder the possibility that they might be wrong. Or that their own denial is part of the problem.

On both topics of God and global warming, their minds are made up.

The View From the Rear View Mirror

To Senator McCain - want some cheese to go with that whine? You could have gone down in history as the guy who stood up to a bad law that's cost us 13,000 service members in its 17 year history. Instead, you'll just be the cranky old guy we left in the 20th century. That small speck receding in the rear view mirror is you.

Meanwhile, some media outlets have had Peter Sprigg from the Family Research Council on to denounce the impending repeal of DADT and call for criminalization of homosexual behavior. On Hardball, Sprigg invoked the horrors of service members being forced to shower with gays. With his detailed predictions of what gays will do to the military, surely he must be drawing on his own vast military experience. Sadly, no. He has none. Zero. But he has written a couple of poorly sourced books on how awful gays are. Oh, and he's a Baptist minister, which I'm sure has not biased him in any way.

Wait a minute... Sprigg's bio on the FRC website says he spent 10 years as a professional actor. Surely you don't think there were any gay people in the theater...

Odds and ends

Other Work has kept me from posting over the weekend, but I thought I'd just toss a few kernels of corn to all you lovely pigeons!

• The latest entry in the "Dumbass Utterances from Texas SBOE Members" Sweepstakes: An article at the Texas Tribune informs us that not only is the SBOE incompetent at determining curricula and separating their personal political and religious agendas from the educational needs of children, but they're also ineptly managing the Permanent School Fund, a $23 billion endowment that basically pays for the state's schools. Hardly anyone on the SBOE has experience with this level of financial management, and among their idiotic decisions was to hire consultants, against the advice of the Texas Education Agency, who were not only poorly ranked but actually being sued by the town of Fairfield, CT, for losing the town's entire pension fund to Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme! Responding to criticisms that the SBOE didn't know their asses from their elbows, the board's dimwit du jour David Bradley actually tried to argue...well, I'm not sure what the fuck he's arguing. Either he's arguing that it's perfectly okay for unqualified people to do jobs better suited to qualified people, or the exact opposite. Either way, it's Argument Fail By Bad Analogy for $1000, Alex: “If you sit on the mental health commission, do you have to be retarded? If you sit on the [Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission], do you have to be a drunk?” No no, David, the SBOE has a lock on the "drunk retard" quota, don't worry.
• Oh dearie dearie me! Some unscrupulous soul has either planted malware on the computers over at the Christian Worldview Network, or just spoofed their email. You remember them, Brannon Howse's House of Lunacy, where they never met a persecution complex or conspiracy theory they didn't like — especially both in combination. Well, I haven't been getting their newsletters for a while, and I figured they'd learned I was a godless baby-eating hellbound librul socialist communist Marxist whatever who simply subscribed so he'd have all manner of material for blog snarkage, and deleted me. It's a fair cop. But imagine my glee to see an email from them today, only to discover, when I opened it, this:
  Aww, boo! Boring! When I checked the link (out of curiosity, mind you), it was really nothing but the most mundane spam. I mean, it really should have been gay hentai! That would have been the most delicious cosmic justice for old Brannon!
• In the wake of Scott Roeder's murder conviction, news is making the rounds that some people aren't too happy about it. I imagine you can guess who. Thing is, I'm puzzled by the who-cares obviousness of the headline "Roeder conviction angers anti-abortion militants." So basically, a bunch of domestic terrorists are angry that a domestic terrorist is going to prison for an act of domestic terrorism. Yeah, so? I'm quite sure al Qaeda gets a little peeved whenever we blow up one of their top guys too. Does that warrant its own news coverage? How about "Crackheads angry over crack dealer conviction"? Not anyone's problem but their own, you know? I'm just sayin'.

Guilty, asshat!

That's what Scott Roeder, murderer of abortion provider George Tiller, just got from a jury after a scant 37 minutes deliberation. Roeder had, of course, hoped to turn his trial into a media circus and referendum on abortion. By arguing a manslaughter defense and hopefully getting away with a mere five years — the thrust of the defense being that Roeder had an "unreasonable yet sincere conviction" that he had to shoot Tiller in order to save babies, because guys like him care so much about the babies — he and his ideological brethren at Operation Rescue hoped to make his trial the first shot across the bow in the war to eventually overturn Roe v. Wade.

The jury, comprised of the sensible Kansans, wasn't having any. Instead of seeing a valiant superhero of the Lord courageously protecting the unborn, they saw a cowardly, first-class douche canoe who willingly popped a man in the back of the head in public, and handed him a first-degree murder conviction. The prosecutor says she will seek a "hard 50" sentence, meaning Roeder will have to serve at least 50 years before eligibility for parole. This is effectively the same as life without parole for a man who's already 51. Once behind bars, if very unlucky, Roeder may have to face an entirely different kind of "hard 50."

Never fear, Scott. Once they're done with you in there, at least you won't need an abortion.

A day without abusing the Texas SBOE is like a day without sunshine

What never ceases to amaze me about the Texas State Board of Education is the dazzling arrogance with which they blindly soldier on in the face of almost total loathing from everyone in the state who isn't a rabid fundagelical teabagger. This is a pretty conservative state, gang, but when you get an editorial like this from the newspaper in Denton — just a short drive north from the DFW Metroplex, so it's not exactly the tree-hugging lefty Sodom that is Austin — you know you've gone so far over the top in your demagoguery that you've literally lapped yourself and gotten jammed up your own ass. The lead to this piece is pure win, and the rest ain't bad at all. All you have to do to show how dire things are at the SBOE is simply to describe what they do.

Being ignorant is nothing to be ashamed of, but it is nothing to be particularly proud of either. A large and disruptive segment of the Texas State Board of Education is not only ignorant — a state that we all share at various times and on various subjects — it is proudly and aggressively ignorant, which goes beyond simple ignorance and ventures into the territory of malignant stupidity.

Gold. Of course, the defining characteristic of the extremist ideologue is to take the fact that everybody hates you as validation of your perfect and utter rightness in all things. After all, as Dan McLeroy has so bravely said, somebody's gotta stand up to alla dem expertses!

We don't make this stuff up, gang

Lately we've been getting a series of barely literate emails from a guy who's following the usual pattern: Asserting his beliefs as facts, backing them up with variants of "Look at the trees!" and "Study the Bible!", then bitterly protesting how rude we are for dismissing him as a dimwit. Here's one excerpt for you to get the general gist.

You see why do you insult me, that shows that your mine is block.
You see finding the truth comes with humility not pride. So i think you should write with respect.
well it looks like you have not really studied the Bible, you call it a book of fairy tales.
While one of the greatest scientist like isaac newton call it the word of God and studied it.
Thats kind of surprising to here those words from a renowned scientist.

And it goes on like that. Amusing, I suppose, the way utter ignoramuses think they're so humble the way they spout ignorance with smug condescension. But that's what religion offers: the confidence of faith in ignorance over actual knowledge.

A personal AETV loss

Via email today, I learned the sad news of the passing of Ashlea Doty at the age of 34. When I was host from 2002-04, Ashlea was part of the AETV studio crew. She was enormously good humored, and was one of the four of us who visited a Halloween "Hell House" at a local Pentecostal church the first year any of us did that (my report on that night appears to have been scrubbed from the internets following the discontinuation of GeoCities). After I left the show, she had already drifted away from ACA, but I'd still see her on occasion working as a vet tech at the clinic where I took my dog. She'll be missed by those who knew her, and to everyone else, remember that every day above ground is a good day. Make them all count.

Irony meter explosion in 3...2...1...

Okay, so that preposterous, demented d-bag Mike Adams has noticed all the ridicule he's been getting online, and has, like most deluded narcissists, taken it for validation of his awesomeness. In a new post, he offers the following observation, which deserves an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement in Clueless Projection. Now, remember this is the guy who wrote a trillion-word attack on skeptics that led Orac to call him "a pyromaniac in a straw man factory"... Salient hypocrisy boldfaced.

[Skeptics] also tend to jump to false conclusions about what people are really saying. In my previous article, for example, I never stated whether I believed in God, or whether I was an athiest [sic], or whether I followed organized religion and yet people read the article and they leaped to conclusions, assuming I was promoting organized religion, for example, or that I was condemning atheism.

Actually I never stated my position on those matters in the article at all, but the skeptics leaped to the conclusion that I did. This speaks to their tendency to warp all incoming information and restructure it to conform to the beliefs they already carry about the subject at hand.

ROTFL! You silly little bitch.

Fred Edwords: Sailing the Rising Tide of Reason

Since some people may be missing The Atheist Experience this week, I'm posting the video from a recent ACA Lecture Series lecture.

Fred Edwords from the United Coalition of Reason on "Sailing the Rising Tide of Reason".

Over the past few years, with the rise of the “New Atheism,” interest in Freethought and humanism is growing. And the more recent billboard and bus campaigns have stoked the fires of enthusiasm. How can Freethought and humanist groups benefit from this secular "coming out"? How can they capture this interest to help their memberships grow? Fred Edwords, a former executive director of the American Humanist Association, is now the national director of the United Coalition of Reason. Over his thirty-year career as a humanist leader he has lectured, debated, and taught on humanist philosophical issues and effective outreach techniques. He has appeared on national and local television in the United States and Canada, has been interviewed on radio and for newspapers around the world, and has lectured in North America, Europe, and India.

"Sailing the Rising Tide of Reason"

Mp3 audio is available here.

Beatdown! Fractally-wrong altie pulls a Yomin over losing Twitter "award"

This post wins the internet!

A little context: Recently an alt-med wackaloon called Mike Adams — who runs the antiscience site NaturalNews.com and calls himself the "Health Ranger" — was in the lead for something called the Shorty Award. It's the sort of thing where people vote for their favorite person in a certain category, by tweeting. It's not an actual award, just a Twitter popularity contest.

But to Mike, it must have been like the Nobel. Because when he lost the award to DrRachie, an actual cell biologist, he also totally lost his shit!

There are awesome articles by PZ, Orac, and Phil Plait discussing the side-splitting melodrama. (For one thing, it was found that Mike was violating the Shorty rules by getting votes from brand new Twitter accounts created just to tweet a vote for him. However it was done, by Mike himself sockpuppeting or some of his fans doing it too, it was against the rules, and didn't help him in the end anyway.)

Mike has just been "pulling a Yomin" over and over at his site. In addition to threatening to sue people, he's now posted an absolutely hilarious "exposé" of skeptics. Apparently we're "agents of death" who don't even believe we're alive. I won't link to the article, because there's no need. The very first link in this post goes to a magnificent demolition of Mike's endless rant over at Dubito Ergo Sum. It's truly epic in every way. Mike Adams is a person so completely divorced from reality it's a wonder he can tell up from down. He doesn't build a straw man in his lunatic screed. It's a whole straw army. Mike Adams makes Ray Comfort sound sensible. Think about that.

"Unknowable" basically means "who cares?"

Occasionally we'll hear a believer define his god as an "unknowable" being. Bizarrely, these folks tend to think that's a real gotcha! moment, because obviously, that means we cannot disprove its existence, and so unless we want to be "closed-minded," then we must admit there is at least the tiniest possibility that it might exist, because we don't know everything, now do we.

This is pretty much the most desperate form any apologetics can take. For one thing, it reduces "god" to the smallest and most insignificant thing it could possibly be: a thing that cannot be known or comprehended at all by our "feeble" human minds. (Yes, I know, why would a god waste his time creating us at all if he just wanted to give us "feeble" minds?) God could not be any more useless than to be indistinguishable from something that, for all intents and purposes, doesn't even exist. Moreover, when an apologist starts arguing like this, you'd do well to point out he's pretty much at variance with Christianity and every other major world religion, as they emphatically are run on the premise that their deities can be comprehended just fine, thank you.

Here's part of a recent exchange with a theist emailer I've been having, which illustrates how wrong this line of thinking is.

---

The fellow starts:

I am composing this letter in an attempt to prove god exists. I believe god is an electron orbiting the nucleus of a hydrogen atom in the brain you are using to analyze this letter, as well as every other thing in existence or has existed or will exist in this universe or the others if there are others. According to the Heisenberg uncertainty principal, and because we feeble minded humans could not possibly conceive of how everything was created in the first place, I also believe that god is inherently unknowable.

Have I just described something that does not exist? How did I do that? If you could tell me that my god does not exist how could you do that? Better yet how could you even think that? I understand this is an agnostic theist point of view however I cannot see how it is in error.

My first reply went like this:

All you've done in this argument is come up with a new name for the electron: God. It's like new-age people who call "the Universe" God. All they've done is come up with a new word for universe.

If someone were a sun worshiper, and told me in all seriousness the sun was his god, then yes, I suppose I'd have to concede his "god" exists, though I would disagree that the sun possesses any sort of divine powers. And if he agreed with me the sun had no supernatural powers, he's just happy worshiping it as God, then he's simply come up with another word for "sun." What you're demonstrating by your argument is that theists really do create gods as an exercise in trying to understand things they don't otherwise understand, and making the universe more superficially comprehensible by anthropomorphizing it. Conceptually, "God" is a placeholder for ignorance. (And yes, gods typically are defined in ways that defy direct examination, allowing them to retain their divine mystique because "you can't prove it DOESN'T exist!")

He replied today, and here is his letter with my responses in bold.

Hello Martin,

Thank you very much for responding . I am not sure you understand what I have stated in my letter. I have offered an explanation for and thereby proof god exists in that god is the totality of everything. I believe it fits quite nicely the definition of god.

Well, like the new-ager I described in my previous response, it looks to me like you've simply come up with a new word for "the totality of everything." My question would be, how is this helpful? What is the utility of doing this? Does calling "the totality of everything" a "god" increase your understanding of this totality? Does it help you comprehend plasma physics, dark energy, the way in which the expansion of the universe appears to be accelerating rather than slowing down? What does this label "god" contribute to any of this? What do I gain in insight or knowledge by thinking that the atoms in the lettuce in the salad I'm eating right now are somehow "god"? Or is it a label you like for emotional reasons?

At this point I find myself wondering if your only definition of god is "something that simply does not exist". If this is the case then it seems to me this is a closed minded point of view. Is atheism a closed minded point of view? If so, I find it less likely that it is an intelligent view, thou it still may be the correct point of view.

If you admit it might be a correct view, why would be it be less intelligent? Usually one's intelligence can be measured by how correct one's views are. A person who thinks 2+2=4 is more intelligent, in my estimation, than a person who thinks 2+2 might equal 4, but might also equal, for arcane reasons, 728.

As an atheist, I do not define god. All I can do is respond to the definitions (and there are many) of god that are presented to me by believers. I examine those to see if 1) there is evidence to support them and 2) if they provide anything in the way of practical understanding of the world, that could not be achieved through the time tested means of the scientific method. I have to confess that I've not yet heard a definition of god that passes those tests.

But that hardly means I'm 'closed-minded'. Terms like 'closed-minded' and 'open-minded' are thrown about very loosely by believers who want to rebut skeptics, but I don't think they understand the terms. It is not 'open-minded' to believe claims that lack evidence simply because those claims are emotionally appealing; it is simply gullible. It is not 'closed-minded' to demand strong evidence for claims before choosing to believe them; it is simply rational. Skeptics are indeed open-minded, but note that it's the 'mind' in that term that counts. What we are open to is evidence.

Now, looking at your definition of god, it's problematic for a few reasons, and hardly the "proof" you think. First, you simply slap the label "god" on everything that exists, down to the subatomic level, rendering the word basically meaningless. If every molecule, every atom, every gluon, every cigarette butt on the pavement is "god," then it means nothing to be god, and every religion in the world might as well pack it in.

Then you make your big mistake: after offering that definition, you promptly do an about face and declare god "inherently unknowable," something "we feeble minded humans could not possibly conceive of." Setting aside my disagreement with your low opinion of human intellect, if god were really "inherently unknowable," then nothing whatsoever can be said about god. You haven't even got any justification to say god is "an electron orbiting the nucleus of a hydrogen atom in the brain you are using to analyze this letter, as well as every other thing in existence or has existed or will exist in this universe or the others if there are others." Because to say that means you're claiming to know something about god, which you could NOT do if god were unknowable. "Inherently unknowable" means exactly that. There is nothing at all that can be said about an inherently unknowable concept, because it is inherently unknowable.

And this brings us to yet another problem: what exactly is the difference between an "inherently unknowable" thing, and something that does not exist at all? Practically there is none. Now, that isn't proof that something unknowable couldn't ever exist. But as we could not study it, evaluate it, observe it, or say anything about it whatsoever, then for all intents and purposes, it's as good as nonexistent anyway. So why care?

"God" is either something, or it is nothing. If it is something, either it is something we can know (and all the world's religions pretty much run on that premise) or cannot know. If the latter, its existence is of no relevance, as it cannot be distinguished from a nonexistent thing in the first place.

You state that "god is a placeholder for ignorance". Is there something wrong with that? We have finite minds and therefore could not possibly understand completely this concept that humans have called god.

Read what you wrote here again and see if you cannot answer your own question. What exactly is the sense in embracing a concept that you admit "we cannot possibly understand" as if it were some kind of valid explanation for things? (I think you've seen, to a small degree, the problem with your position, which is why you've slipped the qualifier "completely" into the sentence above.)

You're basically saying this: "There are things about the universe I am ignorant of, and so to explain them, I will conceive of a thing called 'god' that itself cannot be explained, let alone understood."

How is that a better way of grasping reality than A) finding out the real answers to those questions, and B) if there are no answers yet, simply accepting that. If you don't know the answer to a question, the honest thing to say is "I don't know," and then making that a springboard for continuing to study. It is not honest simply to place your ignorance on an altar and call it "god."

I believe that we can however take some comfort in the fact that so long as our mind are open that we can live better lives through the small amount of understanding that we have of god.

We're still talking about this "god" you say is "inherently unknowable," right? Sorry, but you've singly failed to explain how we can "live better lives" by choosing belief in some "unknowable" concept in lieu of increasing our actual store of knowledge. I think history will show that we humans are much better off with the greater knowledge of the world we have today through science than otherwise. People in medieval Europe didn't exactly take much "comfort" in their unknowable god while they were dying in their millions from plague and famine. How does ignorance and reliance on belief in the "unknowable" offer a "better" life than one where your worldview actually conforms to reality?