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Just dropping you a line to encourage you to keep on keepin' on.

Someone recently texted me that they would be returning a hat to me on which I had sewn a patch showing the circle A anarchy symbol. Their reason was that they believe in god. OK. But after a little research to try to understand why a belief in god makes the anarchy sign bad, I read that Nietzsche argued that Christianity and anarchy were the same thing!

Looking forward to your next post, Pen.

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Another solid letter, Pen.

This message comes from the greatest number of parents:

1. Go to school. Learn science and math. Learn history. Stuff that really happened, hopefully. Analyze all that and then keep on with that education so you can get a good job. The job will need you to apply critical thinking skills that we just invested a bundle in developing - so pay attention, learn well.

2. By the way, there is a Magic Man who created everything in this billions of years old world of ours - and he did it in a few days! There is another book that has been revised frequently over the centuries that will tell you how to believe. It's "God's Word!" Apparently God changes his mind a lot. But trust us, you don't want to piss off GOD!

3. Don't worry if number 1 and number 2 totally contradict each other. "He works in mysterious ways". Just believe because we do. And if you don't, there is a place where you will go after you die that is very painful and you will suffer for all of eternity (whatever that is).

Fortunately, I had parents who embraced number 1 and were gracious enough to say "OK" when I said I wouldn't be attending church again. A few years later, they stopped going as well. Maybe I was a role model for my parents!? Ha Ha.

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Greeting Penfist,

First, I want to say it was so refreshing to see that someone had tackled the subject of lying and how it has undermined so much that holds us together as a high-functioning society. It contributes in a thousand ways toward the Us Against Them paradigm.

Though I agree with much of your comments about lying as it refers to our cultural tolerance of feeding BS to our kids, I have some issues with your lumping lying and "faith" together. There was so much meat to chew on all at once that I started choking and my wife had to do the Heimlich maneuver on me. You may have even nudged me over the fence toward writing a post on the dangers of religion to vulnerable minds and society in general. BYW, that definitely doesn't mean I want to categorically throw any of them away. Good thought-provoking post that certainly challenges our cultural conditioning.

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