my stepfather says that i pursue god and meaning in my life and that makes me happy. he ay he pursues no meaning and that makes him happy. he concludes: he and i are both happy and it does not really matter which of us a person could wake up as.

the elasticity of language allows for these differing states to both be called 'happy'. their ambitions and premises are fundamentally different. as if ontology were as arbitrary a matter as chocolate and vanilla. as if the psychological satisfaction in the moment were all that mattered (and as if these were the same for us both). as if the deer being a random interaction of self-replicating molecules and the deer being an expression of divinity were the same animal.

it is not a matter of who is right. it is a matter of seeing the difference between significance and chance. significance is not just another expression of chance. god is not just another coping mechanism in the void. i would rather god were denied and his believers persecuted than be dismissed as just another option whose wrongness does not matter anymore than its rightness.

if we are a part of a plan, a process, a participation in the things that matter, then the very reason we are here is a part of our identity.

plato said that no ones dies an atheist. i dont know that anyone can live as one, either.