Increasingly, or so it seems to me, news stories appear that shock us into questioning anew how it is that humans can willingly allow themselves to be motivated into committing suicide while murdering others, subject their own children to brutal rapes by others, and countless other horrible atrocities.

The purpose of any religion is to offer individuals a way to obtain eternal life. Accepting the reality of death is so abhorrent to some that they often purposefully hurt the feelings of family members and close friends and sometimes ignore, condone, or commit heinous acts against others in a desperate struggle to preserve the pretense they might not have to experience it.The question of why so many otherwise educated, intelligent people are driven to believe, or pretend to believe, and irritatingly promote irrational religious beliefs has been debated ever since man began to think. Could it be that they try to disguise their own weak faith in these beliefs through their persistent public assertions of  them?

Why do many people feel compelled to offer excuses for the actions or inactions of the Good Spirit?  They always claim the Good Spirit lives among us, is all-powerful and loves us.  Is this claim consistent with a Good Spirit’s inaction while witnessing the slaughter of millions during the Holocaust, or its “creation” of the bacterial strain that infected and killed millions during the Bubonic Plague?

Religious opponents of the scientific theory of evolution frequently point to some of its still–hotly debated details as proof that the theory is not a credible explanation for the great diversity of life. The credibility of ideas, opinions, and scientific theories from individuals or groups depends on the accuracy of those they have made in the past.

Biologists classify humans as just another primate. Most people, however, consider human beings as completely separate from the animal kingdom.