Nice try Mr. Giberson, and thank you for not stooping to the usual ignorant babble of the evangelicals. As always there are some laughable attempts at Christian apologism, but I think his heart is in a pretty open-minded place – for a Christian.

I’m one of those “rabid” and “intolerant” atheists, however I did find some value in this interview. I will concede that Dawkins or Hitchens can be abrasive at times, but they also happen to be correct about most things.

I don’t have a problem if someone believes in God, but I do have a problem with the idea that somehow Darwin needs to be “saved”, as though the theory of evolution is “received” knowledge in the way that many fundamentalists conceive of the Bible or Koran. There is a fundamental chasm between the epistemologies that I don’t think will ever be bridged. This would be inconsequential if these arrogant, insecure and often ignorant people weren’t so hell-bent on lecturing we non-believers on the errors of our ways.

I believe this attitude is the catalyst for the (justifiable, if not so productive) contempt in which many atheists posting letters here, and on other similar articles in the past, hold them. I’m always amused by the condescending tone of apologists like AnOptimist. Their conception of science and the nature of knowledge is, to put it mildly, colored by their own beliefs and what their Sunday school teachers taught them. To wit:

Why do you, who believe in the rantings of a man who rode in a boat and obverved that things change and isn't in funny how a porpoise has a nose and we have a nose so maybe we're related...

“We” do not “believe” in the “rantings” of Darwin any more than we believe yours. Darwin layed out the framework and exploded thousands of years of superstition with The Origin of Species, but the real proof is in the fossil record and empirical testing has come in the century and a half since. And porpoises have blowholes, not noses – not that that is relevant to whether evolution is valid, nor “belief.” AnOptimist obviously a gross misconception (albeit a widely held one) about the nature of the theory of evolution.

Why would life be precious to you if, in fact, we're just random microbes that somehow met on their way to a forum? Why, if we and life is random, would life matter at all?

To me, this sort of rhetorical question has always said more about the asker than the godless, amoral heathen being asked. AnOptimist sounds rather insecure at the possibility of his/her god not being there, as if for him/her, life would no longer be worth living without his god. That’s his/her perogative, but I think life matters quite a bit with out god, thank you very much.

I think I can speak for a majority of atheists when I say that the fact of life being “random” (which is another glaring misconception about the concept of evolution btw, but I digress) makes life MORE precious to us, not less. I don’t see why that is so hard to understand, unless Jesus told you otherwise. Speaking of whom…

You can say what you want about religion, but I can tell you this. Jesus Christ is the same today, yesterday and forever.

Really? Would this eternal Jesus be the Jesus of the Catholic or the Eastern Orthodox church? Jesus of the Catholics says that you go to hell without accepting the Catholic church, however the Protestants say that Jesus won’t hunt. Evangelicals think Jesus makes them babble a bunch of gobbledygook while many Christian apologists don’t think the Bible should be taken so literally. Then there are the really weird ones like Mormans and Jehovah’s Witnesses, to say nothing of ancient, defunct sects like the Gnostics of the Dark Ages et al. Seems like a lot of Christians disagree about the nature of “eternal” Jesus, to say nothing of non-Christians such as Muslims.

I think you should discuss this issue with them before you come to we secular apostates claiming some special kowledge of “Eternal Jesus”, as you seem to disagree with one or more of them.

, He hasn't changed. Your "science" gets revamped every ten years. What's old is new again and vice versa.

That is because science advances or is disproved and revised in the face of new evidence and observations. It is not unchanging and eternal – but then again, neither is religion. If you know anything about Christianity, then you should know that it has undergone quite an “evolution” over the past two millenia. Christianity has a rich, colorful, violent, murderous and oppressive history of its own.

As much as I love demolishing starry eyed, insecure and fuzzy religious arguments for the existence of god such as this AnOptimist’s, in the end it really goes nowhere because these people’s superstitions and prejudices are mostly impervious to logic and reason. Doesn’t seem to stop them from trying to convert us with their holy logic (pun intended), with a big fat dollop of condescention and a hint of contempt of their own – and they call that “love”. More like arrogance to me – in the best tradition of Christianity mind you.

That is why many atheists get irritated – it’s as if we are the ones who have to prove something in the face of squishy logic and superstition. It’s not rocket science – funny how you don’t hear Christians try to disprove that.