Many of the religious apologists out there are not stupid people, they are often brilliant. People working in the field of theology and philosophy smart people everywhere. What they are those religious apologists are smart poeple who can build these amazingly intricate rationalizations for whatever weird practice they favor. Whether it's ritual cannibalism, or praying to spirits, or treating women as chattel. And they always building this on terrible shaky foundation of false premises.
PZ MyersWe godless lack that certainty, and we know the world is a complex place that requires compromise and is not ruled by a moral force - virtue is subject to negotiation, and is found in working together with others to find mutually satisfactory solutions. Good is not absolute, it is an emergent property that arises from successful networks of individuals. It is also something that is measured by evidence: we look at the good that people do, not the promises that they make and never keep, or the lies that dovetail nicely into dogma. Competence is a virtue. Intent is meaningless without action.
PZ MyersReligion is a barbarous obsidian knife poised over our chests put it in a cabinet and admire it as a work of art, but don't ever wield the damned thing ever again.
PZ MyersRational people have better things to do than grant unwarranted credibility to every half-assed delusion.
PZ MyersMost of what happens in the world is just a consequence of natural, universal laws- laws that apply everywhere and to everything, with no special exemptions or amplifications for your benefit- given variety by the input of chance. Everything that you as a human being consider cosmically important is an accident.
PZ Myers