@Jordan/Forrest/Whoever else said something about free will (including what Vincent had to say about it to a lesser extent,

although I'm going to get to what he had to say about morality later): I'm assuming what you're talking about is the concept of "original sin," or humanity's state of sin following the "Fall of Man." If this is indeed the case, then I'm going to have to ask a few questions- If not, then I suppose you can just skip over this next part (if this is the case, then please enlighten me as to what you were actually talking about so I can address it properly- I don't like using straw men to prop up my arguments).

If we accept the following statements to be literally true:

- God created the universe and everything in it. - God specifically created man in his image (we are God's favored). - God is omnipotent (that is, he is all-powerful). - God is omnibenevolent (that is, he is an all-loving God). - God is omniscient (that is, he knows everything).

Then a number of fairly obvious contradictions arise, both internal and external. The internal contradictions are contradictions that are found within the Bible itself, while the external contradictions are contradictions with science, logic, and (in general) everyday life. To me, there is one glaring contradiction:

- Evil exists (both an internal and an external contradiction).

In addressing this problem, I think Epicurus put it best:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing?

Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? - Epicurus

Your argument seems to hinge on the fact that it is not God that is evil, but rather man is- It is man who, on the basis of free will, performs evil and despicable acts. However, this is problematic, chiefly because of the previous statements that must be assumed to be true if you are to call yourself a Christian (elsewise, you're of a different religion altogether, or you reject the contemporary model of God, in which case you're a "cafeteria Christian" who merely chooses the parts of your religion which you agree with/understand instead subscribing to the entire thing). If God is all-powerful, couldn't he have just as easily created humanity without free will and allowed them to live in eternal bliss? Why did he have to bestow upon them free will? Furthermore, if God is all-knowing, then wouldn't he logically have to know what humanity was going to do before they did it? In that case, what's the point of free will? Lastly, if he's all-loving, then why does he allow people to make dumb decisions that he knows will result in their harm/the harm of others/eternal torture? What's the benefit? Is maintaing a charade of free will (which is really all it is, if you accept that God is all-knowing) more important than being all-loving? This all falls back on Epicurus' argument, really. The fact that God did not create humans with the capability to only make good decisions make him (at least in some ways) morally responsible for the evil actions and decisions they make/perform.

"For at least some theists, this difficulty is made even more acute by some of their further beliefs: I mean those who envisage a happier or more perfect state of affairs than now exists, whether they look forward to the kingdom of God on earth, or confine their optimism to the expectation of heaven. In either case they are explicitly recognizing the possibility of a state of affairs in which created beings always freely choose the good. If such a state of affairs is coherent enough to be the object of a reasonable hope or faith, it is hard to explain why it does not obtain already." - J. L. Mackie, Australian philosopher

If you accept that heaven is such an awesome place, and that no foul deed is able to take place (that is, no human is able to commit an evil act), then I guess free will isn't so important- Because it's either gone, or you've blatantly contradicted yourself in trying to justify the free will paradox stated earlier. If free will isn't gone, then you've acknowledged that God has the capability to remove free will at will, making his decision to give humans the capability to damn themselves a poor one that puts him responsible for every act of cruelty ever committed on the planet.

http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Problem_of_evil#Free_will

I could go on, but this website (listed above) lists pretty much every coherent response you could make to such an accusation and systemically destroys them. Read at your leisure and enlighten yourself as to why choosing free will as your platform of choice is completely and wholly ridiculous. The logical conclusion is that God (the god of theism, that is) doesn't exist- He's obviously not omnipotent, because we have apparently inscrutable free will; he's obviously not all-powerful, because he gave us something he himself can't beat (by giving us inscrutable free will, he's effectively created a rock he can not lift, which simply makes him really, really powerful and not all-powerful, an accusation which undermines the very fabric of God's existence); and he's obviously not omnibenevolent, because evil things happen on his watch when he clearly has the power to prevent them (see the logical problem of heaven and what I just said in regards to God's power and how it undermines the majority of claims people have made about God).

The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all species are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference. - Richard Dawkins

If you want me to shut up about my "beliefs," then own up to your own. Religion has been and continues to be responsible for countless of horrors and tragedies throughout human history- And that's without even delving into the pages of your holy book, which attributes countless more morally reprehensible actions to your very own god. Blind faith, like the kind you're exhibiting here (Vincent was the only one who even bothered citing a reference for why he believes what he believes, and at least his source was from a credible Christian apologist), leads to nothing but backwards thinking, stagnation, and decay. Blind faith teaches you to be satisfied with what you're told, not to question the world around you, and furthermore that any kind of abnormal behavior (unless you apologize for it by asking for forgiveness/praying to Jesus/saying a number of Hail Marys/etc) will be punished by eternal torture in hell. People who rely on blind faith to get through their lives benefit no one, because for society to be benefitted as a whole, decisions made should be founded on evidence and reason, not superstition. As it's been said before, faith isn't a virtue- It's just a glorification of voluntary ignorance.

Here's a collection of links for you to chew on (and watch), lest you feel that what I just said (the immediate paragraph above this one) is based wholly on anecdotal evidence:

- http://www.freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Religious_Wars - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_violence - http://www.religioustolerance.org/rel_hate.htm - http://www.religioustolerance.org/relviol.htm - http://www.religioustolerance.org/negative.htm - http://myweb.lmu.edu/tshanahan/Clifford-Ethics_of_Belief.html - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OLPL5p0fMg

I could go one step further and prove to you that not only is blind faith positively harmful to society, but that atheism (and general skepticism and reason) is correlated positively with many things that define a "good" society- And, as a matter of fact, I shall:

1https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=1eh1VW8SKuOk8qw1M4kNe9LK0Ey46mnWS0P9TIdVDNJy7SiSSM8KKrh9-jH-&hl=en 2 - http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file002.html 3 - https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=1BbDjET3jh4j_glevVQXoMDLsCOEq0O0pevF6Xoi65pfJcPlV1FVFTAorsXb&hl=en_US 4 - http://sharecuriosity.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/ReadingLevelByReligion.png 5http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Z1hbaAHsAlUC&oi=fnd&pg=PA19&dq=income+of+athei sts&ots=6hVjIq9I_I&sig=CdX4nkfg0dDWTVjk667cDU1fi9E#v=snippet&q=income&f=false 6 - http://epiphenom.fieldofscience.com/2009/06/atheist-nations-are-more-peaceful.html 7 - http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_dira.htm 8 - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28538524/ns/health-kids_and_parenting/ 9 - http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article571206.ece

10 https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=1D3Qca3DfWF9xzXWVhfhrWU gx4qT0dtGWRsmn3WSHk0I3QzI84e-fl4u5H29r&hl=en

And to help you see how these sort of things correlate around the world, I'll drop off a couple of maps and charts from Wikipedia to give you a hand:

11 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreligion_by_country 12 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index 13 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Index 14 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom_historical_rankings 15 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index

And to help show you that atheism is not only correlated with all of those things (economic freedom, better scientific literacy, lower poverty rates, higher literacy rates, less violence, lower divorce rates, etc) but also with higher intelligence as well, here's a couple of links for me to show you on that end:

16 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:LynnHarveyNyborg-CountryBelieveGod-Intelligence.svg 17 - http://www.homepagedaily.com/Pages/article5460-atheists-more-intelligent-than-believers.aspx 18 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence#Studies_comparing_religious_belief_and_I.Q. 19 - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2111174/Intelligent-people-less-likely-to-believe-inGod.html 20 https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B19xvjWcVKp5NGYwYThlNTY tZTQ4Ni00YmQ3LWJlNzUtN2UwOGViOGI0YjNi&hl=en_US 21 https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=1D3Qca3DfWF9xzXWVhfhrWU gx4qT0dtGWRsmn3WSHk0I3QzI84e-fl4u5H29r&hl=en

22 https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B19xvjWcVKp5N2VjN2IyNzM tMDY5Ny00YzA3LWE3ZTUtZTRmMTNhZGQyZmM5&hl=en_US 23 https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B19xvjWcVKp5Zjg5MWFjMG QtMWJhMS00MDg1LWFjZGItNmEyN2QzM2U0MmI2&hl=en_US 24 - http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-thinkingchristians.htm

Furthermore, what you had to say about me being "closed-minded" is absolutely false. Unjustified belief in the supernatural does not automatically make someone open-minded; to take the opposite route, disbelief (pending sufficient evidence, that is), does not make someone closed-minded. Atheists aren't closed-minded- They just don't usually exhibit gullibility or credulity. They maintain a standard of evidence proportional to the extraordinary nature of certain claims (like religion, leprechauns, Bigfoot, or any number of other supernatural phenomena that people believe in). I think your comment really just stems from a lack of understanding of what being "open-minded" actually is, so here's a video for you to watch to (hopefully) rectify that:

25 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T69TOuqaqXI

I apologize in advance for however poorly those links were parsed by Facebook, but in all honesty, I'm amazed if you even got past the first paragraph (if you bothered to read it at all). Now that I've gotten your argument out of the way, I'd like to deal with the meat of this little debate: What Vincent had to say about religion and morality.

@Vincent: Since I've already responded to your comments on free will and on God being the only one able to judge (both in my immediate response then and what I just said now; in essence, if you follow the free will dilemma to its logical conclusion [that is, that God has the capability to make humanity perfect, but does not do so], then you'll immediately realize that God has no business judging anyone with flaws, considering he's the one, either directly or indirectly, who gave them to the person in the first place), I'd like to address your concept of Christian morality and what you had to say about the Bible in general.

Considering the baseline for Christian behavior is apparently established in the Ten Commandments, and people who follow them won't be allowed into heaven (and, indeed, are dogs, sorcerers,

whoremongers, and a number of other things [as espoused by Revelation 22:14-15] that are generally negative in connotation), I'd like to start by stating some problems I have with a couple of them. While surely commandments five through ten are decent things you should do (while eight is a litle iffy, and ten borders on near-impossible as well as contradictory with what I'm about to voice), one through four are essentially contradictions of several the "seven deadly sins:" Wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony.

1 - "You shall have no other gods before Me."

If God is so worried about people worshipping gods other than him (even though he knows them to be false idols, which leads me on to the next one), then he's guilty of envy- He's jealous of the attention the other gods get, and he wants the attention for himself. You could argue that this all goes back to God loving his creations and wanting them to follow the plan he has for them, but as I stated when I discussed free will, this type of thinking is logically incompatible with the basic premesis of any deity, let alone God. In a way, this trangression is a minor form of greed- He wants all of the followers for himself.

2 - "You shall not make for yourself a carved image - Any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sins of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments."

Here God decrees that you aren't allowed to fashion idols, specifically those of false gods, and furthermore that you weren't allowed to worship them or bow down to them- Lest God punish you and your children (up to four generations later) for transgressing one of his sacred laws. This is a clear violation of the sin of pride, as well as wrath and envy- Why does God care so much, and why is he such a complete jerk about people not choosing to follow his rules (a capability, by the way, that he gave them, and likely knew exactly what they were going to do beforehand, lest he drop the tag of "omnipotent" in place of "impotent")? This commandment makes no sense, and interpretations aside, it seems to ban a lot of things like images of Jesus on the cross, the cross itself, etc. This doesn't seem to me like a particularly praise-worthy commandment.

3 - "You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain."

Easy enough, but again, this boils down to pride, and if God is serious about denying anyone into heaven who does not follow these laws, then he seems to have a severe case of wrath on his hands. This commandment is also frequently broken, as the phrase "oh my God" has passed into the common vernacular of all types of people, theist and atheist alike.

4 - "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy."

Again, if God is so self-centered that he imposes a universal day of rest (regardless of whatever critical activities that people have to do on that day), he's guilty of envy- He's envious that anyone should be able to do work on the day that he once felt tired, and thus feels the need to apparently punish people for it by not letting them into heaven. Jesus did later overthrow this bit of superstition (if I recall correctly, he taught and did a lot of productive stuff on the Sabbath), but he also told people to follow the Ten Commandments if they wanted to be a good person (Matthew 19:16-19 KJV).

You might find some of my interpretations of the Ten Commandments to be objectionable, and I'm inclined to agree with you- But I'm merely illustrating them to prove a point easier than quoting dozens of Bible verses: God is not a wholly moral figure. His cosmic laws, given directly to Moses from God himself, are a reflection of God's own morals and values (if you can even assign such a concept to a deity)- An example of the anthropomorphization of God from a cosmic force to a knowable, touchable person (Jesus). On that same note, remember that it was not with the Old Testament God that the concept of eternal torture began.

Theres no hell mentioned in the Old Testament. The punishment of the dead is not specified there. Its only with gentle Jesus, meek and mild, that the idea of eternal torture for minor transgressions is introduced. - Christopher Hitchens

When you understand where the Bible come from and its lack of divine inspiration at all (assuming, of course, that there's even anything divine out there to inspire it, but that's the underlying question behind all of this, isn't it?), it becomes much easier to digest all of the factual errors, inconsistencies, and contradictions when you understand that it's simply another holy text written by men thousands of years ago to serve their own purposes (whatever those purposes may have been). Its translations are shoddy at best, and whatever was translated correctly was later heavily altered. This doesn't mean that it's a valid excuse to hide behind the "you can't understand the Bible because you don't know the

original Aramaic/Greek/etc" argument, because not only do we not have the original Biblical manuscripts (the Dead Sea Scrolls are the only things that come close), but also because even with the Dead Sea Scrolls, there's no evidence to suggest divine inspiration at all. Here's some links to prove my point:

1- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_and_history#Challenges_to_historicity 2 - http://www.positiveatheism.org/mail/eml9823.htm 3 - http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/science/long.html 4 - http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/interp/by_book.html 5 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_consistency_of_the_Bible 6 - http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/by_name.html 7 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon 8 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorship_of_the_Bible 9 - http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Guide_to_Bible_translations 10 - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7651105.stm 11 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_inerrancy#Criticism 12 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Bible 13 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_consistency_of_the_Bible

Once you understand how the Bible came to be (and once you have an understanding of rudimentary mythology, the ubiquitous "hero myth," and how gods have developed over the years), it in turn becomes much easier to accept that Jesus was probably a manufactured figure as well. I'm not arguing that there wasn't a Jesus (his name roughly translates to Joshua, and there were probably hundreds of Joshuas around the supposed time of Jesus), but in all likelihood, he wasn't the "Son of God," or anything other than a man arrested for trying to incite a riot within the Jewish community- Something the Romans had just had to deal with years earlier. Sure, some of the things he said were praiseworthy (love your neighbor as you would love yourself, and all of that), but that doesn't make the man himself literally true. The Bible is not self-authenticating any more than Harry Potter is self-authenticating, and while Harry Potter surely has some good things to say about the positive aspects of friendship, the magic of forgiveness, and the connections of love, I don't see anyone building churches to honor the "Holy

Trinity" or Harry, Ron and Hermione anywhere in the world. Again, here's some more links for you to digest (apologies for repeats, but some of them can be used to prove both points):

14 - http://www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm 15 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#Greco-Roman_Pagan_sources 16 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#The_Talmud 17 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#Josephus 18 - http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/paul_carlson/nt_contradictions.html 19 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_consistency_of_the_Bible#New_Testament 20 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorship_of_the_Bible#New_Testament 21 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel#Origin_of_the_canonical_gospels 22 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_reliability_of_the_Gospels#Authorship_and_date 23 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_consistency_of_the_Bible#New_Testament 24 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon 25 - http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/science/nt_list.html 26 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_reliability_of_the_Gospels 27 - http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Evidence_for_the_historical_existence_of_Jesus_Christ 28 - http://atheists.org/Did_Jesus_Exist%3F 29 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMo5R5pLPBE 30 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYaQpRZJl18

In addition to the definite lack of information regarding the life of Jesus (save from the Bible, which [as you can clearly see from the vast numbers of links I just posted] is far from infallible and was written almost completely by people who weren't even there, not to mention heavily modified afterwards), there's also a bit of confusion as to why he even needed to exist at all. Like I stated in the free will portion of my response, God can supposedly do anything and create anything he wishes- He's even destroyed the Earth at least once, and regardless of whatever promises he's made not to flood it again, he's at least capable of doing so (judging by the increasing amounts of apocalyptic claims being thrown about these days). Why bother sending Jesus to espouse his newfound love of tolerance at all? Why

bother sacrificing Jesus to atone for the original sin of man when he could just do away with it at the snap of a finger? If he can't, he isn't God- If he won't, then he's a malevolent deity who cares more about watching people suffer than he does about giving them a fair shot at an afterlife at the end of their existences.

If you accept evolution, the need for a Jesus breaks down even further. As stated by Ken Ham:

Now, if the book of Genesis is an allegory, then sin is an allegory, the Fall is an allegory and the need for a Savior is an allegory but if we are all descendants of an allegory, where does that leave us? It destroys the foundation of all Christian doctrineit destroys the foundation of the gospel. - Ken Ham

Evolution soundly disproves the Judeo-Christian creation myth, and refutes any sort of need for a savior or hero, which makes Jesus almost obsolete except as a personified myth, which is exactly what I believe Jesus was. The concept of Jesus isn't even wholly original- It shares striking similarities with other myths, many of which predate the time of Jesus, and the core of Jesus' teachings has been around a lot longer than Jesus has.

31 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Christ_in_comparative_mythology 32 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Rule

Joseph Campbell, one of the foremost mythologists of his time, as well as a brilliant writer and lecturer, did a lot of work on comparative religion and comparitive mythology. What he found was a basic pattern found in many narratives around the world: That of a hero's journey, from the call to adventure to the eventual mastery of the fear of death to transcend typical human limitations. Jesus fits soundly into this myth, and many other monomyths share themes common to that of other Biblical stories, such as Cain and Abel.

33 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth

C. S. Lewis wrote that "the story of Christ is simply a true myth; a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference, that it really happened, and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God's Myth where the others are men's myths," which (if you're a Christian) is a totally valid interpretation of events- But, like I said in regards to the historicity of the Bible and the historicity of Jesus, there's absolutely no evidence to suggest that Lewis' statement is true, and to suggest otherwise is merely to subscribe to the fallacy of the God of the gaps (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps).

But I've deviated from the topic at hand- Really, it doesn't matter if Jesus was real or not, or if there's even a God, because it all boils down to whether there's an afterlife, which is an inherently unfalsifiable claim. Regardless of whether there's an afterlife or not, however, what's important is that we act like good people on Earth (and if your religious dogma is true, then acting like a good person will get you into heaven, although the devil is certainly in the details with this statement [although it leads me to my next assertion]). The basic problem we need to discuss, then, is the Euthyphro dilemma, which is as follows:

"Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?"

Basically, are moral acts loved by God because they are moral, or are they moral acts because they are loved by God? You could argue that this is a false dichotomy and that a third option, that goodness is judged based off of God's character and God can not lie, but this is incompatible with all of the murder, rape, slavery and general mayhem that goes on in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament (where God is most active and present in the everyday lives of the world's inhabitants [at least the faithful ones, because the others he just seems to kill]). Morality isn't solely the domain of religious institutionsMorality has basis in evolutionary psychology and game theory, just to name a few disciplines, and secular humanism soundly stomps out the idea that it's not possible to be "good without God." As Euthyphro and Sophocles both agreed, the answer to the dilemma has to be the first answer- That pious acts are loved by the gods because they are pious, and not the other way around. This answer only encourages people to be good without God, because God is hardly a perfect example off of which to judge morality (as seen above). Religion is merely one of many ways humanity has tried to codify moral concepts, and with the rise of the "moral zeitgeist," as it has been termed by Richard Dawkins, such antique concepts are becoming increasingly obsolete in the face of modern science (see the video I linked you earlier by Sam Harris on how neuroscience can actually define morality). As always, here are some links to read and watch:

34 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_morality

35 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_ethics 36 - http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/game-evolutionary/ 37 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation 38 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism_in_animals 39 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_history 40 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwz6B8BFkb4 41 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCL63d66frs 42 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation 43 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_of_morality

..And some more about God's character (see Deuteronomy for more examples of some things that God decided you should do, including the murder of wives because they aren't virgins and "eye for an eye" punishment):

44 - http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/women/long.html 45 - http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/cruelty/long.html 46 - http://www.evilbible.com/Slavery.htm 47 - http://www.evilbible.com/Rape.htm 48 - http://www.evilbible.com/Murder.htm

I've always been awful at endings, but I think this quote about sums up everything:

I have no need for religion, I have a conscience.