An Open Letter to Penn Jillette

Dear Mr. Jillette,

This is in response to your interview with Peirs Morgan seen on CNN and on YouTube.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSJV8mC8GYk)

IMHumble(?)O ~ If you are an atheist, the (or any) concept, the word and/or the reality you disbelieve should not matter a rat's behind to you. Atheists who are concerned with others faith in God ought to ask themselves why the faith of others is of any importance to them at all, and why they as atheists are compelled to protect others from something that does not exist. Atheists presume an awful lot to believe themselves to be the sole and true authorities regarding what is and what isn’t and to then and therefore arbitrate the rightness and wrongness of others faith in what is and is not. But they do so anyway because in my humble opinion, faith offends them. 

Atheists should not be offended by the concept, the word or even the reality they deny. If God the concept, word or reality you deny offends you, your atheism is not something you really truly believe. Why? Because what one really truly believes can not be threatened or assailed in any way by those who believe some other thing. 

Atheism ought to be very easy, and atheists should be so very untroubled by everything they experience in life, for there is no God to blame, and since there is no God to blame, believers in God can only be deceived. We cannot blame the deceived for what they believe, but they may sometimes be blamed for being deceived.  

To blame the faithful is to say your way is better than theirs. To believe yours is better is to see your self as superior to them. By whose standard can you be deemed superior? Your own? Are you that certain of yourself? Do you see yourself as right and the God believer as wrong? Who made you the arbiter of what is right?

If you think/believe yourself right, you have decided that you are able to discern right from wrong. If there is right and wrong who informed you of the difference? When you came into this world, you knew NOTHING except that you were cold and hungry. But by the time you were two you were saying “no.” To say no is to say “that is wrong.” If no one had communicated a word to you, you would still object to those things you found unpleasing. But people did communicate with you. If not you could not even read these words. And from the society of their communications you began the process of learning. We learn by example, by instruction and by trial and error. What do we learn?

Essentially we learn right from wrong. We may not do what is right, but we know the difference. if we do not know what is right and what is wrong, we form from what we have learned and from our own will a code of right and wrong that suits us. From our own will we are still only the interpreters of what really exists. And right and wrong really exist. If not then bitterness will arise in the man or woman. That is often followed by callousness and remorselessness. Bitterness, callousness and remorselessness do also spring from believing what is wrong to be what is right and what is right to be wrong. 

Life has meaning. A man may live at the lowest level of meaning where a full belly and warm body is the only right they know, and hunger and cold the only wrong, but that still means what it means to the man. 

Now you have asked the question: “If god (however you perceive him/her/it) told you to kill your child- would you do it?” This question fails before an answer is given for the following reasons. It may not be God speaking to you. It may be your own voice, audible or in your mind that you are hearing. Or it may be the voice of a fallen angel, or the voice of a demon. 

You may not believe that such voices are heard or heeded. Many did not believe the Titanic could sink. The church did not believe the world was round. Yet your belief about the source of a voice speaking such a demand is of no consequence at all. It will not be of consequence until you yourself hear a voice speaking such a demand. because you have not heard such a voice does not prove others do not, and it doesn’t prove the reality or the source of voices heard by others. When you hear such a voice speaking such a demand then you will know something about what it will mean to make a decision to kill or not kill your child. Until you hear a voice you must remain agnostic about those voices, their sources and what to do abut what they say. 

So it is with God. Because you do not believe in God makes His reality or unreality the last thing you are qualified to instruct others about. We who believe Him and KNOW Him personally have something authoritative to declare about Him. If I do not believe in pink unicorns I am the last person to be consulted on what they are. And what they are is simply stuffed animals and plastic or ceramic figurines. If you believe in nothing, then tell us about nothing. As an atheist one should be an authority on nothing.

Now Abraham heard God say: “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.” Abraham knew God’s voice as well as his wifes, and so He took Isaac and went. When Isaac was bound and placed on the altar, and Abraham had his knife in hand, God spoke yet again. “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”

If there ever were such a thing as an atheist I think he/she would not believe anything at all. They would not believe that the sun will rise tomorrow, or that the moon will wax and wane monthly. They could not believe it. They would have to wait for it to happen again to be exist again. Then they could believe it to exist. Atheists could never believe or expect anything to happen tomorrow. They would be even unable to doubt. They would exist more on the level of an earth worm who eats, defecates and dies.

I am speaking rather rawly, but God's word calls them fools.

Atheists as we know them are a most narcissistic bunch. They have believed and trusted in many things, and accomplished many things on the foundation of their beliefs. College degrees, careers, families, friends... all these things laid on the foundations they believe and built on those foundations. Humankind stands on the shoulders of those, including God, who brought them into the world and cared for them and taught them... except it seems for atheists who stand on their own shoulders having no trust in anyone  at all.

Atheism is simply one more herd which has decided to rename the object of their affections "the one who is nothing." The believe nothing and follow nothing. Many are brilliant and successful, but essentially they are as mortal as any believer in Jesus and simply unconcerned with things not seen or heard by the flesh, blood and bone of humanity.

Mr. or Mrs. or Ms. Atheist, what thing does not exist? Can you name it? Things which do not exist cannot be named let alone known. God is known. He has been known for around 6000 years. If he were not, the 6000 years of human history would never have mentioned Him once. Not even once!

Moses had a very significant encounter and conversation with God. At one point Moses asked God for His Name. God told him His Name. He told Moses "I AM THAT I AM" was (is) His Name. As we say today about the truth: "it is what it is." Jesus is who He is, and calls Himself the Truth.

Jesus has been known for almost 2000 years to have lived and died and to have risen from the dead. That He rose from the dead is why we remember Him. What other reason would we remember Him for? What other man ever rose from the dead? What other man predicted His own death and the manner of it? What other man had 40 different men write His biography, and the first 39 chapters of it before He was born?

Perhaps you might think me brainwashed Mr. Jillette. I am happy to be so, for I have not met anyone yet who has not suffered from a dirty mind.

Sincerely, David Severy

PS: I don't condemn you Mr. Jillette. I don't need to. That is God's job. In fact I love you. I pray that God, who reaches out to all with love, would find you reaching back someday in faith! I pray that He would not allow any harm come to you at all. As God does, so I do, I forgive you for all God forgives you of. I agree with God's blessing of forgiveness. God is simply waiting for you to trust Him enough to receive from Him that which He offers freely with His love. His gifts are not a few but many. We receive them by faith. You may also receive them by faith, unless God forbid that. It is between you and Him. I can pray, and I can encourage you to seek Him until you find Him. But I cannot have faith for you, you must embrace your own faith.

PPS I think heaven would be greatly blessed and happier for you to receive the Messiah Jesus and join us there. You are quite a character as you are. What you could be with God's blessings would be awesome.