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.
