now that i’ve finished reading oscar wilde, i’ve moved onto a book called atheism: the case against god by george h. smith. i’ve known for years i don’t believe in anything “up there”, but i never actually read a book about it, and it seemed like a good idea.

i’m only about 30 pages in so far so i can’t really say much, but it starts off pretty well i think by talking about the “burden of proof”. this is regarding how if you tell someone you don’t believe in god (or actually it turns out with a lot of people being something you have to “admit” to, as if it were a dirty secret), you are asked “why not?” 9 times out of 10. the writer here makes a fun comparison and says that if you believed in something someone else didn’t, for example little magic elves, it would not be up to everyone else to prove to you why they don’t believe in magic little elves, but up to the believer to provide any reasonable (i.e. grounded in reason) argument as to why anyone should believe in magic little elves.

now obviously i understand the first argument most theists would make, and the first one i thought of: that god is outside of reason, which is an age-old argument i realize is always going to be there. it does sort of make the whole thing a moot point though if you take that defense; okay, so he’s outside of reason. i guess we can’t debate his existence then.

i just thought it was really funny–although still valid–that someone compared god to leprechauns in a scholarly essay.