I get email

I don't know what it is, but the kooks who write to me either don't know what paragraphs are, so that I get a dense knot of disconnected sentences, or they use a peculiar pattern of quirky line breaks that makes sense to them, I suppose, but not to anyone else. Arvin is one of the latter. He likes his white space.

Hello Dr. PZ Myers my name is Arvin Sookiassian

I had two questions for you Dr. PZ Myers.

1. How do you justify objective morals without a moral source (GOD)?

2. Why are short human beings deserving of life?

• Taller human beings are smarter then shorter human beings (they make more money and are better respected by their colleagues).

• Tall men are much more wanted by females then short men are (for mating/financial security).

Thus by an evolutionary reasoning we can see that taller

Men/people are much better suited for survival in life.

So if there is no god why shouldn't I go around and kill people and rape women?

If evolution is true then why shouldn't I kill short men? I mean what are they good for?

I am taller then them and thus smarter and much better fit to mate with females. (I can provide them with a better life, thanks to evolution (my height).

So if evolution is a fact and God is not real then why shouldn't I kill short men?

Thank you for your time

I really wish Arvin had bothered to tell me how tall he is; I think that is an essential datum here. If he's less than 5'11" or 180 cm, I should hunt him down and kill him because he is too short, while if he is taller than I am, I should hunt him down and kill him in self-defense.

It's a strange world Arvin thinks we should be living in — one where, if they aren't controlled by a magic slave-owner in the sky, we'd wander about killing and raping. I wonder about people like Arvin. Why don't they ever imagine that, if we abandoned biblical authority, we might wander the earth drinking beer occasionally, watching TV, and working hard at our jobs so we can afford that vacation to Disneyworld? You know, the kind of stuff most people do right now.

The short answer to Arvin's goofy but all-too-common question is this: morality is not obedience. Morality derives from empathy and a sense of communal obligation with our fellow human beings, not with an arbitrary and whimsical supernatural authority. Destroy god, and people still live…so nothing would change for me.

Arvin, on the other hand, would be going on a rampage with a yardstick, losing sight of the fact that other people are something more than meat of a certain height and sex, raping and killing. Arvin really ought to see a psychiatrist. He's an emotionally and intellectually stunted individual.

P.S. Tall people aren't smarter than short people, nor do women entirely judge prospective mates by their height.