Yes, yes. I’m white. Never mind my Semitic ethnicity.
I wrote about this when I first heard about it (and boy have the whiny, self-righteous, dishonest Christians come out of the woodwork since then!). The first episode has since premiered and, much to my dismay but complete lack of surprise, the ratings have been excellent. This of course means that more religious horseshit will most likely start pouring out of Hollywood. I actually have no real problem with that; H’wood’s a business and so will do what it thinks will make money, but I do have a number of problems with the series itself.
But rather than gripe for too long about that, I’ll let a couple others jump in here first.
First, the update. Sort of two. As you may have noticed, the menu to the right seems to be in a constant state of flux. This is due to the fact that I was at first very enamored with WordPress’ “menu” option. I liked the style of the bold menu name with normal-font items beneath. It had a certain official, “real website” look to it. What I didn’t realize was that on-going and ever-expanding features such as A-News Podcast episodes quickly turn into a very long list that ultimately becomes visually and practically unruly over there. So, within weeks of transferring everything on the right over to the menu option, I’m now in the process of transferring it back to something more manageable for me and your eyes.
Second update. Much of what’s been occupying my atheist-related time has been an on-going stream of comments from AnduinX on the following (non-exhaustive) video I posted a long time ago, but which people keep finding because they hate it when people call NDEs bullshit.
I’ve responded to many of his comments and it’s turned into a pretty thorough conversation on the topic and related topics. Normally, I’d just do a quick copy/paste and post it along with all the other conversations with theists (though I’m actually not sure that this person is one), but the style of YouTube comments is kind of hard to follow without immediate context. So now I’m struggling with how to make it navigable once pasted. No good ideas so far.
And now, without further ado…
I always rejoice when DarkMatter and NonStamp release new videos. And it had felt like a while since they had.
First from DarkMatter:
I’ve always found the doctrine of a “personal relationship” really odd, you know, considering the evidence. I’ve heard people say shit like “God WANTS a relationship with you…” Really? God wants something? Doesn’t that suggest that God has a desire which either has not been fulfilled or may not be fulfilled? And if this is the case, doesn’t this mean that either God is not omnipotent or not omniscient? Because if he’s omnipotent, he can have whatever he wants. And if he’s omniscient, he already knows whether we’ll have a relationship with him, so the unknown bit of the “wanting” isn’t applicable.
But the bigger point of the video is something Hitchens commented on. If all doctrines of monotheistic faiths, specifically Christianity, are true, then the end-result of the implied logic is that God must be present everywhere all the time, which is tantamount to a celestial dictator.
Why this is desirable?
Now from NonStamp:
When I was a kid, I heard the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac, and I thought it was fucking insane then. Over a decade before I lost my faith. Why would a god request his servant to sacrifice his only son to test the servant’s faith? Wouldn’t God already know whether Abraham was faithful? And that God stops Abraham at the last second, doesn’t that mean that God didn’t know whether Abraham would truly go through with it? And why is the killing one’s own child a test of faith? Why not ask him to build something really cool? I guess asking for the ultimate sacrifice proves the ultimate loyalty, but like I said, if the god’s omniscient, then the test renders no new information.
The following conversation happened at Support Atheism in the comments section of my article Keeping Religious Friends. Two highlights were Linda’s insistence on Christian persecution and her appeal to her dislike of the fact of death as her reason for believing. Her text is inbold. Mine is inItalics. Comments are [in brackets].
Hi Linda,
Thanks for your comments. Following are my responses.
“I’m a Christian, don’t shoot me,”
I’m pretty much a pacifist, so wouldn’t dream of it.
“but this article is about the same struggles we have. We have been hated by people if we talk too much about God in our lives, but if we don’t we then deny a big part of us that we absolutely love.”
Except there’s a difference. There is far greater social acceptance in this country to religion in general and Christianity in specific. I’m sure you’ve been in awkward social situations, but politicians live and die by your vote. Not so with mine.
And this whole “God in our lives” thing is your choice. You don’t have to live that way. You choose to. Thus, as with any choice, the consequences of your choice are yours to bear. Read more »
I’d enjoyed Santa Maria‘s visits on The Young Turks, but had no idea she was an atheist, let alone an out atheist (and recovering Mormon!). Then to see her do a show with other outspoken atheists and not apologize for it: sweet music.
Two big points that I’m glad they brought up were the notion of atheists talking about atheism and atheism not being a choice. Santa Maria explains that when thinking about doing this episode, some asked her if she were going to include the religious on the panel. She didn’t want to have a debate, but rather share atheist views, so no. This actually struck me. So often, there’s this pretense in the media of needing to get “both sides” of the debate, even if there is no debate or there aren’t two sides. I don’t know whether this is that media outlets don’t want to appear biased or what. But I’m glad that Santa Maria’s feeling was that since she wanted the show to be about atheists and atheism, she was under no obligation to get the religious take on that.
The other great point (among many) was that of atheism being a choice. Often, when we describe our cultural struggle, we’re told that it’s not the same as any other civil rights movement (and it’s not the same, but it is similar in some ways) because African Americans can’t change the color of their skin and women can’t change their gender (for all intents and purposes). We, however, can change what we believe. This has always seemed really odd to me as in my case, it wasn’t a question of choosing to believe something. I had chosen to believe Christianity, almost entirely due to the fact that I’d been raised in a Christian home, but once I compared the claims to the evidence, I no longer saw any reason to believe. So it wasn’t like before I’d liked chocolate and now I preferred peanut butter. It was that chocolate had been demonstrated not to exist so I couldn’t pick it anymore.
And the thing that people don’t get is that once something has been demonstrated false or in the very least highly unlikely, it’s really hard to maintain belief in it. Think about it. If someone told you they had a magic ball that they could hold up, let go, and it’d float rather than fall, that’d be a pretty crazy, but amazing claim, right? Gravity does not apply to this magic ball. But then imagine that upon request of demonstration of this amazing anti-grav ball, either the ball’s owner refuses to drop it or does so and the ball falls. In the first scenario, imagine asking the owner why they didn’t drop the ball and the owner becoming defensive and demanding that you simply have faith. Your not believing in the magic, anti-grav ball wouldn’t be a choice in this case. It’d be based on the lack of evidence for the claim made. Or imagine if the owner dropped the ball and it fell. You inform of them of this fact and they tell you that you’re wrong. It didn’t fall. You inform them that yes, it plainly did fall. They tell you that you weren’t really watching or you didn’t have faith. You ask for them to do it again and, as they let go of the ball, you record the event on your cell phone video camera. You play back the footage of the ball clearly falling. The owner says that the cell phone malfunctioned or that you manipulated the image because the ball DID NOT FALL.
In either scenario, it wouldn’t be a choice like the chocolate/peanut butter quandary. It’d be an inability to do what others wanted you to do, due to the fact that you simply could not. Kind of like skin color change. Kind of like sexual orientation change.
Before you ask, no, Robyn and I are not related. Robyn happened onto a post about Mike Lee.
She made the following comment:
“ha ha, Mike Lee makes athesists look ridiculous in the eyes of anyone who knows a thing about logic. Move away from Ad Hominem arguing Lee.”
I responded with this:
“Hey Robyn,
“Thanks for dropping by. Funny you say that as I’d say the exact same thing about any religious person and logic. What, specifically, makes you say that? I don’t actually remember seeing Mike argue anything. Are you saying he’s used ad hominems? if so, when?”
Then I went to her Facebook page, by the link to which she’d provided, and started a conversation. Here is that conversation. My text in italics. Hers in bold. And a few links, pics, and vids to keep your attention ’cause FUCK is this epic!
(Unrelated side note: from now on, the “on X” dates of those conversations won’t necessarily reflect the literal date on which they occurred or ended, but rather more likely the date on which I get around to posting them. Carry on.)
Anton Hill Hi Robyn,
Thanks for your comment. I just left my reply on AtheistAsshole.com.
Best,
Anton.
Robyn Hill Sorry, but Mike Lee just uses bad tactics to argue his cause. He needs to take a few logic and debate classes. Read more »
