To me, all science deniers are the same.

To me, there is no difference between someone who thinks God created the Universe in seven days, and someone who think the Great Mother or Mother Nature created it in the Cosmic Womb or such. Neither claim is supported by evidence, neither is even vaguely plausible, and both require a great deal of magical thinking to even entertain.

Both deny the evidence of geology, astrophysics, and orbital mechanics, and that makes both sides the same to me.

To me, there is no difference between someone who doesn’t believe in climate change and someone who doesn’t believe in nuclear energy. Both require a passionate denial not only of the truth of science, but the existence of objective truth itself. If you refuse to believe in something that is demonstrably and reliably true, I don’t care what your politics are.

You are anti-reason, and that makes you all the same to me.

To me, there is no difference between getting your morals from picking and choosing the parts of an ancient text or by picking and choosing from modern New Age gurus. Morality is not a bouquet, it is the truth of what is the best way for humans to express their desire to lead moral lives. Hiding behind any text both denies the reality of natural human ethics and betrays a fatal cowardice in the attempt to win moral arguments without having to even think about it.

Either way, you are trying to get through life without really thinking about anything, and that makes you all the same to me.

To me, there is difference between thinking you are morally superior because of your particular connection to God and thinking you are morally superior because you live in harmony with Mother Earth. They are both mere status games disguised very thinly as morals, and it doesn’t make a difference if your smugness comes from all the crucifixes in your home or the amount of fair trade coffee you drink.

Either way, it’s just middle class status competition in pursuit of feeling like you are better than other people, and that is about as far from morality as you can get.

Meditation retreat or Jesus camp, you’re all the same to me.

To me, there is no difference between claiming you get your beliefs from your close personal relationship with Jesus or from lots of yoga and Chai tea. Either way, as with the texts, you are attempting to claim authority over others in order to both aggrandize yourself and protect your arguments from reasoned criticism.

Both sides are pretending intuition is information, and that makes them the same to me./

To me, there is no difference between believing the crucifix around your neck protects you from the Devil and believing the crystals in your jewelry deflect negative energies. In both cases, you are externalizing your emotions and thus transforming them into belief in the patently absurd and completely undemonstrable.

Both are forms of mistaking metaphors for truth and hence thinking the map is the territory, and that’s all the same to me.

Similarly, to me there is no difference between thinking a priest has the power to turn wafers and wine into the blood and body of Christ and thinking that drawing a circle and sprinkling salt and sandalwood around transforms your living room or back yard into some kind of magical space.

Both require mistaking ritual for reality, and that makes them both the same to me.

To me, there is no difference between thinking homosexuality is wrong because it’s “unnatural” or thinking plastic is wrong because it is “unnatural”. “Natural” is an ethically and scientifically meaningless word. All you are doing is putting a cheap tinsel halo on your unthinking and unexamined sense of disgust.

Both sides mistake an unreasoned twinge in the stomach for actual moral thinking, and it doesn’t matter to me who you vote for. You’re all the same to me.

To me, there’s no difference between thinking a priest can absolve you from your sins and thinking a five day purge can clear your body of toxins. In both cases, you think a ritual can cleanse you of the results of the evils you have done without having to do a thing to actually make things right.

Both represent a cheap moral shortcut to absolution without right action, and that’s all the same to me.

To me, there is no different between thinking only prayer can cure illness and thinking only “natural” or “alternative” medicine can do it. Both are merely a daft rationalization of a child’s superstitious fear of the doctor and the hospital. Anyone capable of figuring out parallel parking should have sufficient reason to understand that scary things can be good for you and that fear is not evidence.

Both cases are depressingly thin rationalizations of irrational and self-destructive fear, and thus, the same to me.

Note that I do not hate either of the sides I have presented. Nor do I necessarily deny the truth of any of the beliefs listed here. I am merely drawing parallels I consider useful.

All I am truly saying is that both sides are roughly the same in terms of rationality. Both sides deny evidence in order to preserve belief, both sides mistake internal emotions for outside reality, and neither side is particularly good at facing unpleasant truths that do not fit their carefully curated world view.

As someone who has never at any time in his life on Earth been religious, all supernatural beliefs are the same to me. To me, something is either true, and thus bound by the rules of logic and science, or false, and therefore does not exist.

There is no third option. Belief in the supernatural supposes that something can exist that doesn’t have to follow logic or science. And that is simply not the case.

I make these comparisons not to attack anyone’s beliefs but to show that true belief in science and reason unifies people.

But most importantly, I want to make it absolutely clear that nobody has a monopoly on reason and sensibility and therefore nobody has the right to poke at the other side’s flavour of irrationality before examining their own’s.

Left and right are dead. Science and superstition remain.

And I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.