Intelligent Atheism, Not Stupid Atheism

As to atheism, I am an intelligent atheist, not a stupid atheist as most left wing atheists are. I do not bash religion in any way. I even respectfully accept the prayers of others for my soul. Religious people like me for my respect.

1) Religion is in all cultures, no exception. That means, brain based, with some evolutionary advantage.

2) I am with Weber, religious societies are richer societies. He studied Calvinism. I generalize his findings to Ancient Egypt. The Pharaoh had all the assets and powers. 100,000 men were idled by the yearly flooding of agricultural lands by the Nile for 6 months. That means drinking, fighting and trouble. Probably some Sephardic Jew persuaded him that if you pile rocks and correctly point the hole at the top, for your soul to be pointed at a star, you can achieve immortality. Bam, 100,000 guys have jobs the rest of the year, and the wealth is redistributed in the first government make work project. That project is still bringing in $5 billion to Egypt after 7000 years. What atheist project can claim that kind of value? Religious tourism. Weber is what you studied in 12th Grade Am History class, whether you ever heard his name. Wealth is a sign of God's grace, so work hard to get rich.

3) It does comfort people. It explains to the average person why they should do good, and not live the Roman orgy lifestyle, "You are being watched." It does a much better job of reducing crimes and abuses than the legal profession.

4) A fat kid is holding a magnifying glass between the sun and an anthill, and burning the ants. Realistically, an ant is more likely to grasp the mathematical formulas of Newtonian optics explaining the concentration of light and heat by the lens than we are to understanding the entity that produced a universe now 15 billion light years across, its laws of physics, and its growing at an accelerating pace, let alone the reasons for doing so. The intellectual distance is far shorter for the ant, even with CRISPR technology producing Einstein ants, and robot ants 1000 times smarter than they are. I prefer to be humble.

A babified explanation of a thin lens.