Attack Of The Humourless Fundies: Episode 3,500

This one’s brand new, by the way. I still have a few more posts to migrate from the old site, but most of what I want to bring with me has been moved now.

It’s amazing what small, provincial and humourless minds many fundies have. I suspect most people who regularly browse atheist blogs will have seen the video of an Australian spoof TV advert advocating the banning of religion. Well it seems some humourless god-botherers actually think it’s a real proposal. I kid ye not!

First off, here’s the video to watch. It’s only a few minutes, and quite amusing.

Now read this brilliant example of faux-persecution.

Well, I couldn’t leave it alone, could I? Turned out though that my reply was somewhat longer than Neil’s post, so I turned it into a good old-fashioned fisk. Which, you’ll be unsurprised to learn, I now present, below. He’s the one in the red gingham frock; I’m wearing the little black off-the-shoulder Audrey Hepburn-ish number…

[Edit: As is only polite, I made a comment on the article under discussion stating that I'd addressed it in this article. Within an hour, my comment had been removed. It seems that rather than debate or discuss the issue, the author would rather pretend that no one had made any attempt to refute his claims. I would refer him to Exodus 20:15; [Another edit: Oops! 20:16] “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbour.” To my mind, ‘false testimony’ would include the act of pretending to allow discussion, by showing a ‘comment on this article’ box, whilst not, in reality, allowing commenters’ free speech. He is, in effect, saying that ‘his neighbour’ hasn’t disagreed with him. Still, his observance of his holy scripture, or lack thereof, and how he squares such behaviour with his espousal of Biblical values, is between him, his conscience, and his putative god.]

What a broad collection of poor-thinking people. It was a logical fallacy-fest, mostly serial question begging.

Nope, it was a mildly humorous play on the old ‘Devil’s Advocate’ debating game, nothing more.

They didn’t bother to explain how they would enforce a ban on religion. Because it wasn’t meant seriously. Do we need to define the word ‘fun’ for you? Did you not notice the bit where the presenter mentioned that a previous challenge was to design a campaign to advocate Australia’s invasion of New Zealand? I’d have thought that might give a clue about the seriousness, or lack thereof, of the piece. Anyway, I know of no atheist who would advocate the actual banning of religion. Sure, we’d all like to see it wither away and die, but thought-policing? Uh uh. That’s the policy of ideologists and theocrats. I’ll fill in the blanks. Their premise is simple, inevitable and stupid: “All violence is caused by religion, so let’s use violence to ban religion.” How else will they ban it? Just ask politely? See my first interjection in this paragraph. Just research Communist countries to see how it is done. Again, I know of few atheists who would try to assert that religion is the basis for all the world’s ills, or even just for wars, and none of the high-profile atheists, for certain. In fact, here’s a quote from well-known ‘angry atheist’ PZ Myers, in his article about this very video:

“I’m not a fan of this idea that religions cause the majority of warfare. I don’t think it’s true, and I don’t think you could even argue that religion has been the pretext for a majority of war. Wars have had too many causes.”

I concur. I would, however, contend that religion has been one of, if not the most commonly used excuse(s) for war, examples being the rapid growth of medieval Islam and the equally land-grabbing expeditions known as the Crusades. And it’s been one of the most effective goads in the encouragement of young men and women to go off and die painfully in a foreign field; think of the Gott mit uns on nazi belt-buckles, or Shakespeare’s:

“Follow your spirit, and upon this charge, Cry ‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George!’ ”

Virtually every single military recruiting campaign ever mounted has placed religion on a par with patriotism. So, sure, religion may not have been the primary cause, but it’s surely been an exacerbating factor; and a major one, at that. Religion’s been an excuse for discrimination and a factor in the removal of discrimination. Slavery; ditto. Medicine and surgery; ditto. The list goes on. Fact is that the major religious texts are generally so full of ambiguities and contradictions that snippets from them can be used to condone almost any activity while other snippets condemn it. It’s not so much a matter of following scripture as it is of finding scripture to support your intended policy.

They ignored the benefits of Christianity. I see very few hospitals and charities founded by atheists and lots done by Bible-believing Christians.

You’re American, yes? Here in the UK we have this thing called the NHS. While it was founded by government-committee (Hmm… proof of miracles? ), so I’d be hard-pressed to say it was ‘founded by atheists’, it was certainly founded by a secular, non-religious body, and, to this day, is run without any need for religious input. And there are plenty of non-religious charities, too. Again, ‘founded by atheists’? I wouldn’t know, and don’t really care. That they manage to do their charity work without bringing gods into it is enough for me. But then, unlike your average fundy, evangelical Christian or the like, I don’t judge people first and foremost on their religious beliefs and affiliations, but on their words and actions. I have Christian friends; I haven’t got any Muslim friends but I’ve worked with several and they seemed okay. Fact is, even most religious people—though they ain’t the ones with the loudest voices, or the most headline-appeal—see biblical literalists and those who go looking for excuses to shout ‘persecution’ as nutters. I suspect our friend Neil is in at least one of those two groups, and the overlap is pretty huge…

People rationalize all sorts of evil with religion, but Bible-believing Christians stopped the slave trade. Yes, people misused the Bible to rationalize slavery, but you don’t judge an ideology by those who violate its tenets.

But which of the two positions violates those tenets? Many passages in the Bible condone slavery, and even give rules on how to treat slaves. Could someone point out to me, please, the passage or passages that condemn it? I seem to have missed ’em…

They are ignorant of the claims of Christianity. We have a lot of evidence for the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Really? Where are the Roman records of this trouble-making rabbi? They were meticulous record keepers, yet seem to have forgotten to record a single event of his life. Apart from circular-argumentation from Bible passages, many of them written many years after his putative life and death; and made even more problematic by the inclusion in canon of forgeries and the like, we have, as far as I know, one obscure footnote from Josephus concerning a Jewish sect’s belief in the resurrection of an obscure rabbi. Hardly overwhelming! My personal opinion (and opinion is all it is) is that there quite likely was a wandering rabbi or teacher by the name of Joshua Ben Joseph. The fact that several Jewish sects appear to have sprung up at around that time, who venerated him, I consider to be fairly decent circumstantial evidence. But the miracles, the ‘son of God’ rubbish etc? Tall tales, myths, advertising; nothing more.

And they ignore a foundational error of their atheistic thinking: While mocking religion for being fairy tales, they assume without evidence that the universe came into being from nothing and that life came from non-life. They have zero evidence for that. And even if Darwinian evolution was true, (It is, though with many aspects that Darwin never thought of.) it would be 100.00% responsible for all religious beliefs. So why are they so mad about religion? And don’t get me started about their multiverse fairy tale.

I’m not going to get into an argument about quantum physics with a moron who clearly doesn’t see that the problem of infinite regression applies as much to his god hypothesis as it does to any talk of possible causes of the universe. Or, for that matter, thinks that ‘100%’ needs to be augmented by taking it to two decimal places. (Hint: It’s impossible to be 100.01% responsible for something.) Suffice to say that ‘stuff is being created from nothing’ all the time. Sceptics, please note: there is no theoretical limit to the size of the particle that might appear, nor to its duration. Though I’m by no means a physicist, I believe that one idea is that, simply put (indeed, that’s the only way I can put it), the entire universe could, essentially, be a quantum fluctuation. Whether I’m right or wrong about the theory there, quantum fluctuation is a perfectly valid example of ‘something from nothing’. As for the various multiverse hypotheses, they are theoretical in more the commonly used definition than the scientific. They’re ideas is all. Ideas which have had a lot of brain-power applied to them, but still ideas until we can find a way to test them. Do you never have ideas, Neil? Oh, and what’s your background in theoretical physics and/or higher mathematics, by virtue of which you feel entitled to call such thinking ‘fairy tales’?

“So why are they so mad about religion?” Well, personally, I’m not. Not about religion, per se, at any rate. What I get mad about is the attempted teaching of bronze and iron age myths as fact in science and history lessons. I get mad about the insertion of religious doctrine into politics, the denial of rights to women, LGBTs and others, based on those books. What you want to believe in the privacy of your own head, or even espouse in blogs, books and speeches as being ‘the right way to live’; that’s fine. But the minute you try to make it mandatory that laws should respect, and even enforce, your beliefs above others, and—most especially—above scientific fact; that’s when I get fucking furious.

They blame religion for everything, as if religion was the cause of abortions, all wars, the Holocaust, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, thefts, child abuse, rape, drug abuse, traffic accidents, adultery, corporate fraud, cancer, hangnails and every other evil known to humanity. Don’t be silly. See paragraph two.

If you follow the biblical guidelines for sex and marriage your odds of getting STDs or out-of-wedlock pregnancies are almost zero. Well yes, abstinence and faithfulness are the best guard against these things. (I’ll even pass on debating whether out-of-wedlock pregnancy is a bad thing or not. Hint: it’s better than a marriage doomed to acrimony and failure.) When you manage to change human nature, we’ll come back to this. Fact is though, just because there happen to be a few lines in the Bible condemning such behaviour, doesn’t mean that the reason they’re in the Bible is right (that reason being that a man’s pride would be hurt if he found that his ‘virgin’  bride, wasn’t). Any fool can see that something transmitted by sex will be prevented if sex is avoided. The Bible gets no applause from me for stating the bleedin’ obvious. Your odds of being poor go down dramatically. Really? Care to cite some studies on this (preferably peer-reviewed, not some agenda-driven Christian website), or do we take your word for it?

It is chilling to see such otherwise average people so excited about crushing religious freedom and free speech.

A: Fun, humour, a laugh, hypothetical, not bloody serious. Sheesh!

B: Freedom of speech works both ways. You get to say stuff, we get to say stuff. We’re even allowed to hold contradictory views. That’s kinda how freedom of speech works, Bubba.

It’s chilling to see someone so devoid of any sense of humour, and so quick to take offence.

Oh, and—hypothetically!—if I were to pick one of the two adverts, it would be the first. It’s factual and actually makes a good point against religion. It even works if it’s tweaked so that it doesn’t advocate banning, but is just used to point out the silliness of basing your ideas of the world on unproven beliefs in impossible (or highly improbable; take yer pick) beings. The second is, no doubt, a technically better advert, in that it appeals directly to emotion, but I don’t like the simplistic and incorrect ‘root of all evil’ spin.
—Daz.