OK, so someone is wrong on the Internet. At least, my idea of wrong.

A lot of my Facebook “friends” (oh how Facebook has overloaded that word) are Christian. I am very much not. For the most part we live in a sort of standoff, an India-Pakistan kind of thing — each of us posting rarely things that rile up the other, but not engaging in all out Global Thermonuclear War.

And I do not post original content to Facebook, anyway, disagreeing strongly with their terms of service. So, on the occasion I feel the need to rant, it happens other places. Tonight, it’s happening here.

So, this post appears in my stream from an old acquaintance of mine:

For those of you who don’t believe in God please explain the beauty of this day. It is already 70 at 10am and it’s only April 3rd. Global warming you say? How can that be? That was your reasoning for all the snow. You can’t have it both ways. I surely hope when you are sitting in the firey pits of Hell the Lord doesn’t…

Now, I highly doubt she’s aiming this directly at me, but it’s hitting pretty close by. Hard to leave alone.

First of all, the easy, quick, snarky answer: I can’t explain the beauty of this day any more than you can. We actually have the same answer: “something greater than my understanding must be responsible for it.” It’s just that the “something” we speak of are on polar opposites of evidence, logic, and reason. That, and I just don’t know meteorology as well as I’d like.

Bonus snark: fiery* :)

Well and good, but there’s a whole lot more here, isn’t there?

I suspect that even the most informed climate scientists would have trouble explaining the weather here. After a very snowy and downright brutal Winter we are enjoying far above average temperatures this week. It’s an anomaly, for sure, and it’s probably no more than that. I’m ready to write off our several feet of snow as an anomaly, as well. “Goddidit” doesn’t factor in to it, because it doesn’t need to. Something as complicated and chaotic as weather is a bad place to try and stake your claim to your own particular notion of a god. This is known as the argument from ignorance: since we don’t know what causes something, it must come from something inexplicable, in this case, supernatural. It’s just unnecessary, that’s all. Why can’t we just not know something?

This is a slippery slope, a sort of “God of the Gaps” argument, where your particular supernatural being exists to explain the unexplained. “I don’t know, so hallelujah, and pass the collection plate.” Using this reasoning, your god used to be the explanation for many more incidents than it is now. As science closes in on questions, your particular notion of a god is pushed out. Advancement of science and technology leads to a smaller and smaller deity, and, perhaps eventually, the complete shutting out of your god. So perhaps here’s not the best place to take your stand.

No climate change scientist worth his degrees (oh, look, a bad pun. how unusual) would claim that this unseasonably warm few days is due to global warming. That’s a ridiculous claim to make, and I’ve not heard anyone actually making that claim. Neither did climate scientists claim that the particularly snowy Winter was due to climate change.

What scientists did claim, however, is that current climate change models predict more extreme seasonal weather, more and stronger storms. If you like, less Spring and Autumn, more Summer and Winter. Yes, the past few months seem to support that model. But that in no way means that anyone is claiming that the snow and current hot streak are due to global warming. That’s the logical fallacy known as lying. Or, at the very least, if you do find some kook directly claiming that, a faulty generalization. Just because evidence seems to support a claim, does in no way mean the claim is true. All it means is that the evidence supports the claim; nothing more.

And, “can’t have it both ways?” why not? I’ll not argue that that is what climate change scientists are doing here, because that is not what they are doing here, but it’s perfectly reasonable to claim the same set of circumstances can lead to differing, even almost opposite, results. In fact, that’s exactly what the models predict. However, to emphasize, that is not the claim being made by the scientific consensus. It’s the claim that you’re attributing to no one in particular. If you can point to specific people, that’d be fine, but again I do not believe that this claim is supported by consensus.

Global climate change (“global warming” is a poor term, and does not accurately describe the hypothesis) is misunderstood by many because, like the weather itself, it is incredibly complex. While it is easy to chop it up in to black and white, right and wrong, climate change is much more intricate and interesting. As is everything in nature and science, for that matter. Nuance exists where we’d like to see hard lines. It’s just the way our world works. We don’t do well when there are no hard and fast rules, but that’s just tough. I struggle with it myself. The world is not black and white. It is many shades of grey.

As to the last sentence, I’m having a hard time even parsing it. I suppose you’d like your particular notion of a god not to be nuanced when passing some sort of judgement. God is Hate, I guess. As for me, I like my chances. I cannot say your god does not exist anymore than I can say any other god exists. But the opposite is also true: I have no more evidence for the existence of your god than any other. Zeus is just as real as your Christian god to me, and just as imaginary. As Stephen Roberts puts it, “when you understand why you reject all other gods, you will understand why I reject yours.” You should hope that Zeus doesn’t send you to Tartarus. What? Don’t believe in Zeus? Now you know how I feel. There’s just as much evidence for all that nonsense as all your, ahem, nonsense.

I remain “agnostic” however, and not all-out “atheistic.” I don’t completely reject the concept that there could be some being outside of what is supported by evidence, and am quite willing to change my mind should something compelling and testable and falsifiable ever be discovered. I just don’t think it’s an interesting question. All of our species’ work into logic, evidence, and reason has given us science, which to me is the greatest tool we have for coming up with an estimate of what is true. I don’t find the need to believe in a supernatural being, because I see no need to even have a supernatural being. Sure, there are things we don’t know, as there have always been. As humans progress through the ages, that list of things we don’t know gets smaller and smaller, and not once has something been crossed off the list because of a supernatural entity interfering with what we know and learn and experience. That it may, one day, is what keeps me from being completely atheistic, but I just don’t see the question as being all that interesting. I really don’t care if there are any gods or not. And I certainly don’t see any need to worship something that doesn’t seem to meddle in our known universe.

So, to sum up, why are we having such brilliant weather just a few weeks after such horrible weather? I don’t know, and you don’t either. Which is why you’re resorting to some super duper magic man in the sky and his zombie stepchild. Fine by me. “Goddidit” can be your excuse, but I’m not buying it; it’s not necessary.