I believe in objective and thoughtful dialogue as a means to further the understanding of the world, and that is why I wanted to write a post here sending my readers to an entry from Pharyngula for one of the most well-put, thoughtful, and understanding emails that PZ has ever received. Please read this before you continue, although I’m fine if you skip the quotations section in the middle.

Done? Okay, good. I’m sorry I did that to you.

I want to know what it is that makes the faithful (and I am not taking any one faith to task here) so entirely difficult to deal with. I am a patient man. I respect the fact that not everyone sees the world as I do. In the words of the mighty prophet Ice T, if you’re thinking what I’m thinking then only one of us is thinking. I have disagreements with the other Meddling Kids. It is through disagreement that we can discuss alternative viewpoints and hopefully grow in our understanding, either from learning a new perspective or reinforcing our own thoughts.

When my parents send me information warning me about the dangers of vaccinations or how God’s eviction from public schools is responsible for the attack on the World Trade Center, I do my best to reply with reasonable calm and respect. They are possibly open to counter-argument, but they are not open to their son sighing and telling them they are stupid. And I don’t see them as stupid, simply misinformed. The only way to battle misinformation is through education, so I reply good-naturedly with information.

This email, however, does not deserve that respect. If someone sent me this, I would ravage them. I would eviscerate them. I would lash out with all my intellectual muster, and I would even hit Reply All while doing it. And it might looks something like this:

I saw on the OCTOBER 9, 2009 news that NASA has been bombing the moon to see if there is water on it. You can’t find water by bombing!

You can’t? Oh, wait. What you mean to say is that you have not in the vast amount of time that you spent pondering this idea, considered a way that one might find water by bombing. Well, had you read even the most basic description of the mission (like this piece from Scientific American), you would understand exactly what they were looking for, exactly why they think it is a valid means of testing their hypothesis, and why it is important that we ascertain whether or not there is water ice on the moon.

I heard the bomb did not detonate and is lodged inside the moon’s crater. I heard NASA sent another bomb to the moon last week (October 31), but the rocket malfunctioned.

I heard a lot of things too. Unlike you, I fact-checked.

If there is a live, unexploded bomb in the moon’s crater and another bomb is driven into it, this could cause a large nuclear reaction on the moon, perhaps causing a huge chunk of the moon to dislodge and hurtle through space.

This part is true. It’s like the old adage, one grenade is one grenade power (1GP) but two grenades is a nuclear bomb. Now I’m no nuclear physicist, but doesn’t a nuclear bomb require some kind of special material? You know, the Plutonium that Doc stole from the Ay-rab terrorists in Back To The Future? And more importantly, your understanding of what they are doing is wrong.

That’s not a good idea, as the bomb could push the moon out of orbit and cause part or all of it to crash, with a worst case senario, to crash into the sun or the earth!

Wow. Imagine the power of a bomb that could move something so large across so vast a space! I’m just speculating, but wouldn’t you need at least six bombs for that? Real big ones with shiny silver wicks and stripey tape on them? Lady, the orbit is not a fixed thing. And what if we lucked out and the moon crashed into something sucky, like Mars?

A collision of moon rock with the earth could cause such a dust cloud, that it could affect the earth’s atmosphere and destroy our air supply.

So let me understand your logic here. A ridiculously small bomb would have the power to move the moon the nearly 400,000 kilometers to collide with the earth, but the only thing you’re concerned about when a massive rock a tenth the size of the planet crashes into us is the air supply? Moons are heavy. I bet the people it landed on would have bigger concerns than some dust.

NASA has an underground bunker with life support, the human race does not. Don’t euthanize the human race by bombing planets!

Ah, we’re back to a cogent argument. If the moon collides with the earth, a bunker will keep the NASA scientists safe.

NASA, you don’t have the right to destroy the human race by driving pieces of planets into space or into the earth, affecting us all.

But your God has the right to encourage slavery, bestiality, the murder of homosexuals, and all manner of stupidity? How is that fair? At least we know NASA exists. What doesn’t give them the right to blow the bejeebers out of the moon? Nobody owns it, so who’s to say?

The Bible prophesied the moon would not give it’s light at the end time at Matthew 24:27-29:

“For just as the lightening comes from the west, so shall the coming of the son of man be … the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.”

Now I understand. You’re scared that Jesus is about to come back to town and do his little Revelations dance, and you’re worried that we’re done for. Why? You know he died to specifically save your sins, so what’s the concern? Who cares if a bunch of sinners burn in Hell for all eternity, you get to play the harp on a cloud with Jesus and your uncle Lou and mom and dad and Chubbers, that puppy you had back in grade school. If it happens sooner than later, you just get that much more time to sing the I Told You So song.

Jesus said at the ‘end time’, mankind would be separated into the ‘wheat’ and the ‘weeds’. In other words, if we don’t repent of our reckless chicanery, we will be destroyed.

Right. Rather than learning vast amounts about our nearest neighbor, information that will undoubtedly help us take the next timid baby steps off this planet to explore the universe, we should just sit in our caves and tremble at the might and majesty of almighty God. There’s a reason that the tree with the apples on it was the tree of knowledge. Those who wrote the book wanted us to fear knowledge. Those who taught it for years taught it in a language none of the people they taught it to spoke. Then they invented the printing press to mass produce plenary indulgences and unleashed a Pandora’s Box of trouble.

Lady, whoever you are, I weep for you. You are a creature of fear. You fear your loving God. You fear NASA. You fear the unknown, rather than embracing it and trying to make it known. If there’s anything that I have learned in this life, it’s that the unknown is amazing, all you gotta do is look.

And by the way, the image I chose to go with this piece? That’s Bj??rk’s stalker. When I read that lunatic email, I thought to myself, “This woman is as deranged as Ricardo L??pez.” Nobody should love Bj??rk that much, let alone God.

Jim