A few posts ago, Anonymous left an entertaining comment which he concluded by encouraging me, a former strident atheist, to give up belief in my “invisible sky-man”, a delusion that’s keeping me from complete happiness (I wondered what was doing that).

I like that phrase “invisible sky-man“.  I would have used it myself when I was an atheist, if it had been around in those days.

But the more I thought about that phrase, the more telling it became.

And so I replied to my well-meaning atheist friend …

The term “invisible sky-man” implies that things that are not visible are risible; and that a sky-man is an anthropomorphic projection.

The latter may be the case, but the former?

Are atheists really just materialists these days? Do they really think that the only things that exist are visible things? Did germs not exist before the microscope allowed us to see them? Is love an illusion? It’s certainly not visible.

The answer, at least for the atheists I know, is yes, they are frank materialists.

Atheism has a kind of lonely nobility to it. Materialism is nothing but a dressed-up turd. Which can be proven simply by seeing that if only matter exists, and if invisible things are non-existent, then it’s pointless to argue about anything.

So, Anonymous, man up and chuck your materialism, if that’s what you indeed believe. Then I’ll be convinced you’re really interested in the truth. 

Until then, there is no truth, only matter in motion; consciousness is only an epiphenomenon of chemistry and life is utterly meaningless. Fine. But then stop saying you’re all for truth – for truth, like my sky-man, is invisible.   

… And immaterial, as is your allusion to my “invisible sky man”.