Of the many sins stridently denounced by the “divine” words of the New Testament — murder, theft, deceit, lust, envy — there is included among them a trait which is inborn and utterly insulated from free choice. The sin to which I refer is of course homosexuality, the innate sexual orientation of some of my fellow human beings. But if to sin is to disgrace and displease the Father, then by the fact of one’s birth a homosexual has waged a wrong punishable by death. Indeed, if all humanity is sinful by nature, then this goes doubly so for homosexuals, for they are not deciding to be as they are in the way that I, as it happens, freely set on with the “sin” of manual pleasure. The question is, then, why ever would a human who favors his or her own sex capitulate to the grotesque, to the prude, to the barbaric pronouncements of a religion that casts out, shuns and vilifies their very nature?

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In the vast majority of cases, if you talk religion with friends or family, all you will likely accomplish is hurt feelings. Most people don’t want their beliefs challenged on any topic that matters to them. However, every friendship and every set of circumstances is different, so we will assume some set of unusual circumstances. For instance, suppose your friend has an extraordinarily even temperament or initiated the discussion of his or her own volition and seems earnestly to want to understand your position. Alternatively, you might believe that your friend might be suffering as a result of their religious beliefs. Perhaps the cognitive dissonance of believing that their “father” both 1) loves them and 2) is willing to burn their flesh for eternity (if they think bad thoughts) is eating away at their brain. Or perhaps they are a gay Muslim, a black Mormon or a female theist of nearly any kind. Firstly, make sure they know what “agnostic atheist” really means. Also, make sure you do. Secondly, when you begin, you will automatically want to put forward an affirmative position, because that is how one usually argues. But agnostic atheism is an inherently negative position. Embrace that! It recognizes where the burden of proof lies, and demands evidence to back up claims. That’s all. So instead of attacking, acknowledge your negative role and simply answer your friend’s queries, being unafraid to answer, “I don’t know.” If you don’t feel comfortable with citing extensive paleontological evidence, don’t try to argue that dinosaurs existed, even though you know they did. You can’t be expected to explain the whole universe.

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If you ask Rick Santorum he’d say no, because Christianity is the only true way a human should live — there is no “good alternative” to the truth. And if you ask a devout Buddhist which is better, Eastern or Western, he’ll affirm his own faith, because karma is manifest in all our actions, and this life we have is one of many, for our true purpose is to attain enlightenment, a feat accomplished only after many lifetimes—reincarnation, then, is a real phenomenon. But if you were to ask me, an atheist, I would have to answer under the presumption that neither shows us the one true way to live. But if I think neither religion is “true”, on what basis could I say one is “better” than the other?

One way is to point out the sort of practices each endorses, because beliefs and actions have direct consequences for our psychological well-being. In Christianity we are commanded to love, and also to fear, a being who—without justification—may torture us as he pleases. We are told to pray, to worship, to beg for forgiveness, and to imagine ourselves as being constantly watched, judged, and scrutinized. Buddhism, however, seems to stress not much else but mental discipline. It’s a very difficult, particular way of life to be sure—but there’s no coercion, no threat by some eternal Father. Buddhism is a doctrine more of invitation rather than obligation—of choice, rather than compulsion. The Buddha merely offers a way to live; God, however, demands that you live “His” way.

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I am often asked how I can “live with” believing that there is no heaven or hell awaiting me after my death. Similarly, atheists are often asked why they do not simply kill themselves, as they believe that there is no meaning to their lives and no immortal future toward which they can look. These questions have always baffled me. Yes, I am aware that I will die one day. I am also aware that the sun will burn out, that taxes are due soon, and that the Niners lost. No, the thought doesn’t make me happy, but I’m not going to fall into despair or kill myself. How would that solve anything?

Recently, a man with a large wooden cross helpfully reminded me that I would have to “pay for” my sins after I died. I can imagine that if I was religious, I might fear death and the judgment that I believed would follow.

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Just over one week ago, a handsome and allegedly humble Christian unleashed upon YouTube a performance of spoken-word audaciously titled, “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus,” that he wrote “to highlight the difference between Jesus and false religion.” After its seventh day of infecting the Internet, the video’s YouTube page now has over 14 million views. If you have not already smirked at, or at least noticed, just how peculiarly stupid the words quoted above are, I encourage that you YouTube it yourself.

It’s usually quite visible on the surface why a video on the Internet has “gone viral.” For it to garner such wild attention so rapidly it must either be of extreme hilarity, outrageous stupidity or impossible genius. The first two reasons are most common and are usually paired together. And when it comes to religious viral videos, especially this one, their popularity seems invariably due to how funny it is listening to someone speak about the truth of their wacky beliefs.

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Always with the New Year’s beginning are there people who view it as a mark for new and better things to come. We see room to move forward, and we allow the old and worn to fade so the new and fresh can redefine and reshape us. Personally and collectively, most of us envision how the year will turn out, where it will take us and who we will be at the end of it. But few of us, if any, have seen the dawn of a new year knowing it likely to be our last.

In late June 2010, Christopher Hitchens, arguably the greatest essayist of our time and one of the most brilliant thinkers, was diagnosed with Stage IV esophageal cancer. He once remarked, explaining the severity of his cancer, that “there is no Stage V.” On Dec. 16, 2011, his cancer won out, sapping his last breaths, leaving us in a world devoid of his staggering wit and intellect and his spectacular humanity.

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This week’s question: What is there not to respect about someone’s opinion about religion?

Whether it’s about that movie you watch that just never gets old or about how you thought the last midterm went, we seem to form opinions frequently and naturally throughout the course of a day. These however are usually not as reflective and deeply thought out as others we may have. That is, depending on the topic of the opinion, the time and thinking we’re willing put forth will vary. I’m not going to spend much time thinking about the taste of my morning Pop-Tart, but about how I did, say, on my last paper, I likely will. Pop-Tarts just aren’t that important, while the GPA I’ll be graduating with is.

At this point I wonder where the topic of religion falls, on the spectrum between what’s important and what’s not. Should religion be like the Pop-Tart, something we spend 10 seconds thinking about? Or should it be far more important, even more important than what may be personally most important to you? I think the topic of religion is at least roughly as important as the concerns we have about politics and legislation. At bottom, they both consist in beliefs about how we should go on living our lives.

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This week’s question: How would you go about introducing fictions like the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus to your children?

It’s entertaining, the gullibility of a child. They’ll believe almost anything you say so long as it seems remotely plausible, and for a child, what counts as remotely plausible is pretty wide open to all sorts of ridiculousness. And rightly so, for if this wasn’t the case — if children, more often than not, were skeptical of everything you said — then they’d most likely get owned by everything around them, like that rock you said isn’t for eating and that fire you said isn’t for touching. Children need their parents to relay accurate information to them so that they don’t get owned by the world around them. Strangely, this doesn’t seem to apply when molding a child’s behavior. Indeed, some parents are liable to tell their child anything just to get them to do what they want.

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This week’s question: Is it better to have love and lost than to have never loved at all?

Perhaps “love” isn’t the right word. In any case, the closing of an intimate relationship is something many of us have faced and put behind us. But, for many of us, the memories still linger. Past girlfriends, past boyfriends, his hair, her eyes — whether or not these memories sit well with you is a complicated matter, but the way you guys broke up is likely a big hint. Was it concluded in a friendly manner with mutual understanding (and break-up sex to follow)? Or was it one ending in hurtful noise and belligerence, or perhaps coldness, indifference and deception? In painful break-ups, the real crime is done not against the lovers themselves, but against the cherished moments held between them. Good memories can become tainted and corrupted. This is serious, for where else do we look to find the value of our lives but the priceless memories life has left us?

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This week’s question: Could you ever date/fall in love with/marry someone of religious faith?

Romantic relationships that cross religious boundaries are a very deep and complicated topic, and one that deserves more than one column. So this will be the first of three columns that will deal these cross-crossed lovers.

The initial question I am often asked is whether I would ever begin dating someone with religious belief. I most certainly would; in fact, most of the women I have dated have had some level of religious belief, and it has never been a source of conflict. A woman being moderately religious or “spiritual” is not a deal-breaker for me, because I understand both the cultural pervasiveness of religion and its ability to appeal to very smart, empathetic individuals.

There is so much misinformation or missing information in the public mind, especially among those from religious backgrounds, about science, religious belief, and morality that I can hardly begrudge a woman her upbringing. If her parents took her to church and pounded the godly truth into her head throughout her entire childhood, telling her that she is flawed and terrible and pathetic and needed saving, then I understand and wouldn’t hold that against her. How could I, when my biggest objection to religion is that it is so very good at manipulating the deepest, most firmly rooted aspects of the animal brain?

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Though the word “more” in this question is vague, I assume that it means, “Which existence is more valuable?” I believe that humans’ lives are much more valuable than any machine’s, even though I do not believe that humans possess an immaterial, immortal presence in the body that may be called a “soul.” Given our system of ethics, destroying a human would be considered different than destroying, say, Cleverbot. The reason for this is because killing a human would be taking away the consciousness from a thinking being, while destroying Cleverbot would just be deleting a computer program.

But why are we conscious, while Cleverbot isn’t? I believe it is not due to us having a soul, but because we have a brain, and a fine one at that. As science progresses, we are finding that what humans used to attribute to the soul is all caused by what happens in the brain. The human brain is basically a biological machine, but it is the most complex and intricate machine that we know of — in the entire universe.

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This Week’s Question: If not Adam and Eve, who were the first humans to conceive?

This question doesn’t really seem relevant to our readership, as I doubt most of the people interested are bible-literalists, so for that, I apologize. Additionally, I do not feel qualified to give a true answer to this question, as I do not know enough about history or biology to give a real response. Further, there isn’t a very solid answer that CAN be given, because in the course of evolution, the line between “human” and whatever preceded it is extremely blurred; virtually non-existent. So in lieu of that, I’ll at least comment on the story itself.

I personally love the story of Adam and Eve, for its relevance today and the irony of how oft-quoted it is by Christians and the like. I see a parallel to modern dogma, in that the garden offered eternal paradise and perfection — a slice of heaven for man. Man could only not partake in one thing, the tree of knowledge. Knowledge and understanding were forbidden. Man was to be kept ignorant. Man could not live without it though — even a perfect world was incomplete without knowledge. He learned too much and was no longer able to live in a garden, entertaining the notion of centrality. Mankind became lost wanderers of the world, mentally fending for ourselves in a harsh and unforgiving world without the watchful eye of a father figure. An uncomfortable position perhaps, but preferable to ignorance.

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For all of you Nexus readers, Ask an Atheist is a safe haven. An opportunity to ask what it really means to be an atheist, a rationalist, or a skeptic. We listen to everyone, no matter your beliefs, and offer the chance to pose moral, scientific, or even deeply personal questions (and watch us squirm).

For me, Ask an Atheist is an unsafe haven. This column is the most intellectually unsafe place I have ever inhabited. Between the constant challenges to my opinions from my fellow writers and the e-mails I receive as a result of unraveling my thoughts in public, I have been under constant intellectual siege since this column began. But I love it when someone pokes a hole in what I have written or said, because it offers me the chance to defend my mind and, when defeated, to learn something new.

I have written whole columns in 20 minutes with a big stupid smile plastered on my face, and I have also faced questions that have kept me up nights wondering whether I did the Nexus and its readers justice. And we live off of those readers. So the next time you’re ruminating on the meaning of life, the universe and everything as you stretch drunkenly out on a roof, staring up at the stars and listening to the shrieks of Del Playa Drive rising from the street below, put pen to paper and send it our way. I would love to hear what you have to say.

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“Ask an Atheist” is built on a dialogue with the community, and its greatest strength is the back-and-forth dialogue that the Nexus so generously facilitates. As a part of that process, in a recent article, the atheist stated, “the church system [has] hindered the progress of human rights and scientific advancement.” This is more than simply an atheistic position, but an anti-theistic one. Some among the community of readers have responded to this claim and others from that article.

The primary argument is that many of the greatest proponents of human rights have been Christian or even directly affiliated with the church system. This has little to do with the atheist’s claim, which is criticizing the system and the church, not individual members. If I claimed that the DMV is inefficiently designed, and someone responded by saying that many efficient people work there, they would not have refuted my claim.

It could absolutely be true that there are good Christians and that the Church is still bad. This is a variation on the “beautiful lie” argument. The deep commitment of moral people to something does not confer credibility to that thing, and regardless of the fact that many deeply moral people believe something, that does not make that thing moral.

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This week’s question: “How do you feel about the ‘Rapture’ this Saturday, May 21?”

There is a group of people who believe that this Saturday is the Rapture and that October will be the end of the world. You’ve probably been offered a pamphlet from one of these folks. If you care to stop and listen, they will begin telling you how numbers in the Bible are a secret Rapture code.

The number 17 represents heaven because Jeremiah was instructed to purchase a field for 17 shekels, which totally represented heaven. Also, the number five represents atonement, because of a story in Exodus that describes how one can atone for sin by paying a half shekel, and one half is sometimes represented as 0.5, which is kinda like five even though it’s not at all. And if you multiply redemption (5) by heaven (17) enough times in the right amounts, (5x5x5x5x17x17), you get 722,500, which is the number of days between Jesus’ death and May 21, 2011.

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