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Role reversal. It’s a fantastic way to check if a situation is horribly wrong. A brilliant example of this is found about 3 minutes in on this pretty great video. It follows the point I made in a previous post, but in a new, wonderfully hilarious way. Watch, laugh, be better equipped to deal with anti-choicers.
As with most biblical examinations – Trigger Warning for Rape, Violence, and Profanity.
Isn’t it cute when Christians ask atheists how they can be moral without god, when actually the converse is the correct question? :)
Pulling down the turgid crown of religious obeisance is high on most atheists “to do” lists.
Easier said than done.
Getting into the atheist loop and then bringing your wisdom to the faithful can be a tricky undertaking. One of the foremost requirements of being an atheist is possessing a great deal of patience as listening to people drone on about how wonderful their sky-daddy is and how he coerces them to do “good” becomes fairly boring, not to mention vexing, quickly.
Telling someone that they are full of shit isn’t always the most diplomatic strategy, although it is certainly fun here in internetland, sometimes more tact is required and that is where this nice piece I saw on Alter.net comes into play.
Jeffrey Taylor writing for Salon has some tips that may help in your daily interactions with the credulous religious.
Herewith, some common religious pronouncements and how atheists can respond to them.
1. “Let’s say grace!”
No, let’s not. When you’re seated at the family dinner table and a relative suggests clasping hands, lowering heads and thanking the Lord, say “No thanks. I’m an atheist. So I’ll opt out.” Nonbelievers have every right to object when being asked to take part in superstitious rituals; in fact, if children are present, they are morally obliged to do so. Courteously refusing to pray will set an example of rational behavior for the young, and contribute to furthering the atheist zeitgeist.
I’m thinking of my father-in-law when I see this and rather than just uncomfortably looking around while praise to the almighty ooga-booga is being said I should bust this out. Is the creation of more family tension worth it?
2. “Religion is a personal matter. It’s not polite to bring it up.”
No, religion is fundamentally collective, and since time immemorial has served societies in fostering union, but also in inciting xenophobia and violence (especially against “unchaste” women and “impure” minorities), often on a mass scale. Nonbelievers need to further advance the cause of rationality by discussing it openly; doing so, as uncomfortable as it may be at times, will help puncture the aura of sanctity surrounding faith and expose it for what it is.
No qualms here. Although prepare for the feckless equivocating between Hitler,Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot – and organized religion. For the record, *not* the same.
3. “You’re an atheist? I feel sorry for you.”
No, please rejoice for me. I fear no hell, just as I expect no heaven. Nabokov summed up a nonbeliever’s view of the cosmos, and our place in it, thus: “The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.” The 19th-century Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle put it slightly differently: “One life. A little gleam of Time between two Eternities.” Though I have many memories to cherish, I value the present, my time on earth, those around me now. I miss those who have departed, and recognize, painful as it is, that I will never be reunited with them. There is the here and now – no more. But certainly no less. Being an adult means, as Orwell put it, having the “power of facing unpleasant facts.” True adulthood begins with doing just that, with renouncing comforting fables. There is something liberating in recognizing ourselves as mammals with some fourscore years (if we’re lucky) to make the most of on this earth.
There is also something intrinsically courageous about being an atheist. Atheists confront death without mythology or sugarcoating. That takes courage.
I love the Nabokov quote. Partially the reason why I’m going over Jeffrey’s list here. :)
4. “If you’re an atheist, life has no purpose.”
A purpose derived from a false premise – that a deity has ordained submission to his will – cannot merit respect. The pursuit of Enlightenment-era goals — solving our world’s problems through rational discourse, rather than though religion and tradition – provide ample grounds for a purposive existence. It is not for nothing that the Enlightenment, when atheism truly began to take hold, was also known as the Age of Reason.
Hard medicine to swallow for the strictly religious – hierarchical thinking is tough to shake especially when the Magic Pants McSkyDaddy can have you burn for eternity if get out of line.
5. “If you abolish religion, nothing will stop people from killing, raping and looting.”
No, killing, raping and looting have been common practices in religious societies, and often carried out with clerical sanction. The catalogue of notorious barbarities – wars and massacres, acts of terrorism, the Inquisition, the Crusades, the chopping off of thieves’ hands, the slicing off of clitorises and labia majora, the use of gang rape as punishment, and manifold other savageries committed in the name of one faith or another — attests to religion’s longstanding propensity to induce barbarity, or at the very least to give it free rein. The Bible and the Quran have served to justify these atrocities and more, with women and gay people suffering disproportionately. There is a reason the Middle Ages in Europe were long referred to as the Dark Ages; the millennium of theocratic rule that ended only with the Renaissance (that is, with Europe’s turn away from God toward humankind) was a violent time.
Morality arises out of our innate desire for safety, stability and order, without which no society can function; basic moral precepts (that murder and theft are wrong, for example) antedated religion. Those who abstain from crime solely because they fear divine wrath, and not because they recognize the difference between right and wrong, are not to be lauded, much less trusted. Just which practices are moral at a given time must be a matter of rational debate. The “master-slave” ethos – obligatory obeisance to a deity — pervading the revealed religions is inimical to such debate. We need to chart our moral course as equals, or there can be no justice.
But, but,… How can we be good without Mr.Rage-Slabius Panopticonist looking over our shoulders and convicting us of thought crime? What? Morality a function of social behaviour? Unpossible!
6. “Nothing can equal the majesty of God and His creation.”
No need to inject God into this. “Creation” is majestic enough on its own, as anyone who has gazed into the Grand Canyon or the night sky already knows. While paddling a pirogue down the Congo, at night I often marveled to the point of ecstasy at the brilliance of the stars, the salience of the planets against the Milky Way – just one of the many quasi-transcendental experiences I have had as an atheist globetrotter. The world is a thing of wonder that requires no faith, but only alert senses, to appreciate.
Statements like this are just thrown into the argumentative mix to further the Gish Gallop making it harder to unwind the verbal spoor your favorite religionist spins around a rational analysis of his faulty argumentation.
7. “It is irrational to believe that the world came about without a creator.”
No, it is irrational to infer an invisible omnipotent being from what we see around us. The burden of proof lies on the one making supernatural claims, as the New Atheists have tirelessly pointed out. But here again the New Atheists are really doing nothing novel. Almost 200 years ago, the British poet Shelley, in his essay “The Necessity of Atheism,” noted that “God is an hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof: the onus probandi rests on the theist.” This was clear to him even before we had mapped the human genome, discovered the Higgs boson, or even invented the telegraph.
Yeah, sticking up for the invisible guy seems like a hard position to take, rationally speaking, but then again, so many try – search the abortion tag here at wordpress and wow it is like Invisible Dude for the Win!!
8. “I will pray for you to see the light.”
Not necessary, but do as you like. Abraham Lincoln noted that, “What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.”
Usually a closing missive after your favorite zealot realizes that his bullshite will not baffle your brains and that in your eyes his belief in god is the same as believing in unicorns and dragons.
9. “If you’re wrong about God, you go to hell. It’s safer to believe.”
Pascal’s wager survives even among people who have never heard the name of the 17th-century French philosopher and mathematician. Leaving aside whether blatant self-interest would please a god demanding to be loved unconditionally, which god will save us from hell? The god of Catholicism? Judaism? Islam? Doctrines of all three Abrahamic faiths prohibit entry into paradise for adherents of rival confessions.
Ohhh, mentioning other religions…burn heretic! Seriously though, Pascal’s wager needs to be put to rest already.
10. “Religion is of great comfort to me, especially in times of loss. Too bad it isn’t for you.”
George Bernard Shaw noted that, “The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.” A few shots of vodka will do for me, and are more to the point.
After the passing away of his son, Lincoln, in dire need of solace, nevertheless remarked that, “My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures, have become clearer and stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them.”
“America founded a christian nation… ” Those five words almost always precede a historically inaccurate screed depiction on American history.
10. “As you age and face death, you will come to need religion.”
Perhaps in dotage anything is possible, but this turn of events is unlikely. Aging and the prospect of dying by no means enhance the attractiveness of fictitious comforts to come in paradise, or the veracity of malicious myths about hellfire and damnation. Fear and feeblemindedness cannot be credibly pressed into service to support fantastic claims about the cosmos and our ultimate destiny.
Whether one would even consider turning to religion in advanced years has much to do with upbringing, which makes all the more important standing up to the presumptions of the religious in front of children. One would regard the Biblical events – a spontaneously igniting bush, a sea’s parting, human parthenogenesis, a resurrected prophet and so on – that supposedly heralded God’s intervention in our affairs as the stuff of fairy tales were it not for the credibility we unwittingly lend them by keeping quiet out of mistaken notions of propriety.
You will turn to the Dark Side…muaahahahahaha!!!
11. “You have no right to criticize my religious beliefs.”
Wrong. Such a declaration aims to suppress free speech and dialogue about a matter influential in almost every aspect of our societies. No one has a right to make unsubstantiated assertions, or vouch for the truthfulness of unsubstantiated assertions on the basis of “sacred” texts, without expecting objections from thinking folk.
Respect my magic! (jumping up and down). LoL forever.
12. “Jesus was merciful.”
If he existed – and there is still, after centuries of searching, no proof that he did – he was at times a heartless prophet of doom for the sinners he supposedly loved, commanding those who failed to give comfort to the poor to “depart . . . ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.”
See previous comment.
13. ”You can’t prove there’s no God.”
Correct, at least epistemologically speaking. Reasonable atheists, “New” and old, would not argue with this. Richard Dawkins, for example, has told audiences that he is nominally an agnostic, since proving that something does not exist is impossible. He claims to be an atheist “only” in the sense that he is an “a-leprechaunist, an a-fairiest, and an a-pink-unicornist.” The evidence for God, fairies and leprechauns, he remarked, “is equally poor.”
Dawkins, when speaking on atheism has his moments. :)
14. “My religion is true for me.”
A soppy, solipsistic and juvenile declaration and cop-out bordering on the delusional and contradicting Christianity and Islam, neither of which recognize the other, and both of which espouse universalist pretensions. You will not find a scientist who will say, “quantum physics is true for me.” No one would have trusted Jonas Salk if he had promoted the efficacy of his polio vaccine as “true for him.”
Religious foundations not based in fact? Shocked I am.
15. “Don’t take everything in the Bible literally.”
Not taking the Bible (or other texts based on “revealed truths”) literally leaves it up to the reader to cherry-pick elements for belief. There exists no guide for such cherry-picking, and zero religious sanction for it.
Applicable almost to every religious argument *ever*.
Hold the phone gentle readers, the persecuted christian majority in the United States is once again in crisis mode. Why? Satanists want to put up a religious monument of their own, just like the pious Christians have done on the capitol grounds. The threat of Satan beckoning to them, on the grounds of the Oklahoma state legislature no less, is causing the usual conniptions among the faithful (you know, the usual conniptions, where they get called on their abject duplicity and refuse to back down while accusing others of persecuting them). Amanda Marcotte from alter.net writes about the christian stupidity and the highlights are quoted here.
“Christian fundamentalists in Oklahoma managed to get a Ten Commandments monument placed on capitol grounds in 2012. Though the supporters of the monument deny it, it’s an obvious attempt by fundamentalists to get the state government to endorse Christianity above all other religious beliefs, in a direct violation of the Constitution’s ban on state establishment of religion.”
This should be no-shit-sherlock material. Narnian American christians tend to shit all over their venerated Constitution when it suits their needs. However, when other groups attempt to get their idols onto the capitol grounds then – dear reader – the problems begin.
“After receiving requests for monuments not just from Satanists, but from Hindus and animal rights activists, the legislature decided to place a moratorium on the building of monuments. The message is crystal-clear: The Oklahoma state legislature is not interested in reflecting the diversity of Americans, but only wants to elevate Christians above everyone else.”
Here is where we can delve into the murky depths of the persecuted majority complex that makes up so much of the mendacious superstructure of the reactionary christian right.
“Which is why prank-minded groups like the Satanists are doing such an important public service: They are able to challenge religious fundamentalists in their attempts to stomp out freedom of religion and religious plurality without having to worry overmuch about enduring the oppression real religious minorities face. When a Muslim or Jewish group objects to the religious right’s attempts to enshrine Christianity as an official or endorsed state religion, they run the risk of provoking the exact fear of religious pluralism that leads conservative Christians to do things like build Ten Commandments monuments in the first place. Ugly prejudice against minority religions is why Christian conservatives want the government to affirm their belief that theirs is the one true religion. When religious minorities push back, many Christians use that pushback as evidence that “they” are out to destroy Christian America.”
Interesting how that works, no?
Chalk this up as reason #239482 illustrating why the separation of church and state is a necessary feature of civilized societies.
In the spirit of the holidays we here at DWR are going to go easy (for one week at least) on the religiously deluded, thus today’s disservice is a gift, only for religious emergencies mind you. :)
Browsing the time sink known as Reddit today I came across a very cool comic showing someone building a chat-bot to debate a theist. I googled the title of the comic and found the original as well a very awesome comic called Bag of Toast. I highly recommend checking it out.
The comic in question:
This made me think that I would love a chat bot to debate the theists, global warming deniers, anti-vaccine advocates, scumbags MRAs, or anyone I disagree with but constantly have to have 101 level discussions with. It would be wonderful. But then the Reddit community came through and proved there is such a thing already!
Christopher Mims at MIT Technology Review writes:
Nigel Leck, a software developer by day, was tired of arguing with anti-science crackpots on Twitter. So, like any good programmer, he wrote a script to do it for him.
The result is the Twitter chatbot @AI_AGW. Its operation is fairly simple: Every five minutes, it searches twitter for several hundred set phrases that tend to correspond to any of the usual tired arguments about how global warming isn’t happening or humans aren’t responsible for it.
Sadly this chat bot has since been suspended, but given how easy it is to create twitter accounts I’m sure it is out there somewhere, debating science deniers so that we don’t have to. Finding out this bot existed has made today a good day.
I know, I know. Belief in magic is not really the best way to run anything, but rather than focusing on the silly nature of believing in the Grand Oooga-Booga, lets look at how those in power keep their ‘base’ ignorant and happy to continue to lap up all mendacity that spews forth from the Party of No. Alter.net author CJ Werleman has a nifty article about biblical illiteracy in America, so lets go over the highlights.
“More than 95 percent of U.S. households own at least one copy of the Bible. So how much do Americans know of the book that one-third of the country believes to be literally true? Apparently, very little, according to data from the Barna Research group. Surveys show that 60 percent can’t name more than five of the Ten Commandments; 12 percent of adults think Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife; and nearly 50 percent of high school seniors think Sodom and Gomorrah were a married couple. A Gallup poll shows 50 percent of Americans can’t name the first book of the Bible, while roughly 82 percent believe “God helps those who help themselves” is a biblical verse.”
So really, the obedient masses can be fed just about any line of bullshite and they won’t bat an eye.
“The truth, whether Republicans like it or not, is not only that Jesus a meek and mild liberal Jew who spoke softly in parables and metaphors, but conservatives were the ones who had him killed. American conservatives, however, have morphed Jesus into a muscular masculine warrior, in much the same way the Nazis did, as a means of combating what they see as the modernization of society.
Author Thom Hartmann writes, “A significant impetus behind the assault on women and modernity was the feeling that women had encroached upon traditional male spheres like the workplace and colleges. Furthermore, women’s leadership in the churches had harmed Christianity by creating an effeminate clergy and a weak sense of self. All of this was associated with liberalism, feminism, women, and modernity.”
Funny how much of a threat Conservatives see women to the established order. I take it as a sign we are moving in the right direction.
“For instance, when Republicans were justifying their cuts to the food stamp program, they quoted 2 Thessalonians: “Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.” One poll showed that more than 90 percent of Christians believe this New Testament quote is attributed to Jesus. It’s not. This was taken from a letter written by Paul to his church in Thessalonica. Paul wrote to this specific congregation to remind them that if they didn’t help build the church in Thessalonica, they wouldn’t be paid. The letter also happens to be a fraud. Surprise! Biblical scholars agree it’s a forgery written by someone pretending to be Paul.”
Being fact averse seems to be the default setting for much of the Republican party and concomitantly most their followers. The stupid leading the blind is not a winning recipe for running a nation.
“The best argument against a historical Jesus is the fact that none of his disciples left us with a single record or document regarding Jesus or his teachings. So, who were the gospel writers? The short answer is we don’t know. What we do know is that not only had none of them met Jesus, but also they never met the people who had allegedly met Jesus. All we have is a bunch of campfire stories from people who were born generations after Jesus’ supposed crucifixion. In other words, numerous unidentified authors, each with his own theological and ideological motives for writing what they wrote. Thus we have not a single independently verifiable eyewitness account of Jesus—but this doesn’t stop Republicans from speaking on his behalf.”
Not that making stuff up is new for politicians.
“The price this country has paid for biblical illiteracy is measured by how far we’ve moved toward Ayn Rand’s utopia. In the past three decades, we’ve slashed taxes on corporations and the wealthy, destroyed labor unions, deregulated financial markets, eroded public safety nets, and committed to one globalist corporate free-trade agreement after another. Rand would be smiling down from the heaven she didn’t believe in.”
Fantastic. Well we should be applaud the republicans for packaging up self-immolation so nicely – all decked out with rainbows and jesus stickers. It would be cute if it wasn’t underpinning the destruction of a nation.
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