I received a lot emails from snippy atheists after my column, “Atheists had Better Pray to God They’re Right” ran the week of May 13, 2007. I had many God-deniers tell me, quite self-righteously I might add, that they lived by a high moral code without the aid of any “opiate” or “crutch” like Jesus or Moses, and they didn’t need some archaic holy book giving them the skinny on how they should live.

Hey, arrogant atheists, here’s an aside before I take you to task any further: that self-righteous, “I’m good enough without God” attitude is the very sin that Christ condemned the most. But I wouldn’t worry about that, since Jesus probably never existed anyway. And if He did, He wasn’t “the One” He thought He was and said He was and thus, all He said was a load of hooey. That is, according to your wizards.

Anyway, back to my point. Did I make a point yet? Please forgive me. My coffee is wearing off. Okay, now I’m tracking. . . .

In the volley of hate email hailed down upon me, one particular anti-God guy stated that he lived better than most Christians. He further patted himself on the back by saying that his Christian buddies even gave him big props for his squeaky-cleanness. Well, let me join in your hombres’ praise by saying a big “Good for you, dude. Here’s a brownie button.” I’ll be the first to admit that I’ll take a civil atheist over an irrational and violent al Qaeda op any old day.

The problem I have, however, with the atheists and their goodness and their morality claims is that all your ethical codes of conduct sound strangely similar to the principles inherent to the Judeo-Christian traditions. As a matter of fact, it seems as if you have bellied up to the Bible and are treating it like a buffet . . . passing up on the worship of the person and work of God, while taking second helpings of His moral principles, you duplicitous, little, evolved monkey, you.

One of my old seminary profs used to say that although such muddled atheists would never verbally affirm the existence of God, they would live according to some ethical standard, some moral capital they have milked from us theists.

If I were an atheist and I believed that God didn’t exist, that the Bible was a bunch of weird bunk written by religiously deluded men several thousand years ago, that Jesus was an apocalyptic, sandal-wearing, hippie forerunner of David Koresh who went around spitting out cheeky clichés who needed not to be heeded, but straight-jacketed or at least ignored—I sure as heck wouldn’t be borrowing any tidbits of His wisdom to navigate my life’s glide path. Continued...