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by Noah Lugeons
The nature of most religious arguments is doomed from the start. It amazes me how often I’ll theoretically concede a point just to point out that even then, they’ve done nothing to prove their point. I will say, in effect, “You’re not right, but even if you were right, you still wouldn’t be right.”
How many religious debates hinge on things that barely crack the 3rd layer of the diagram above? How often does the would-be apologist fail to even break the surface? Arguing against evolution, the big bang, the secular root for morality, the existence of this or that miracle… none of this would even make it into the red.
It’s a really indicator of just how soundly we’re winning the debate. At one time the best we could hope for was to stand in the yellow and argue with the folks in the orange. Before Darwin, most learned men and women (and how woefully few learned women there were then) had to stand in the red and argue against the yellow.
But as empiricism charges forward, the mental-missionaries find themselves in constant retreat. When they pick away at tiny nuggets of their own ignorance about evolution or abiogenesis, they’re breaking their pick-axes against the blue. It’s gotten so bad for them that if they can convince one poor sap to even momentarily doubt evolution, they consider it a victory. Never mind that this does nothing to prove superstition, theism, religion or their own personal religion. They’re breaking out the party hats if they can simply convince someone to think perhaps something someone else told them might be flawed.
How To Not Believe in God
by Noah Lugeons
It baffles many atheists when religious folks say things like “I just don’t understand how you can believe in a world without God.” They’re baffled because they’re quite certain that the theist is familiar with both of the constituent principles involved; god and not believing in something. How can a person who themselves rejects some beliefs be confounded by the notion of rejecting some beliefs?
The problem, of course, is one of cognitive dissonance. They’ve insulated the god-concept so much in their mind that they can’t apply reason to it in the same way that they can to claims of the paranormal or other religions. It sounds like I’m being dismissive, but how else can you possibly explain a person who thinks god has demanded the tip of their penis as a sacrifice laughing at how silly someone else’s beliefs are?
When I was a younger and less experienced atheist, I used to appeal to all the other religions that they didn’t believe in. I was often thwarted by hand-waving explanations of the various interpretations of the one god. It was only much later that I realized that intelligent people who have decided to ignore logic and be theists anyway have to build a hell of a defense around it. So much so that when they see somebody who has embraced the obvious, they don’t even know how we scaled the wall in the first place.
So I offer the chart above as a quick and easy visual aid for any theists that seem confused by your choice to reject all religious myths instead of all but one. And as it turns out, the Redditors love the charts and graphs, so expect to see more of them.
But I Was Just Debating Evolution!
by Noah Lugeons
I have to admit that on some levels, I like trolls. I appreciate the effort it takes to engage in one losing effort after the next, hoping to chip away at an armor you know you can’t penetrate. It takes endurance and dedication to push your way into a room full of people aligned against you and then antagonize them ceaselessly, knowing the whole time that you’re ultimately going to lose the fight and probably get banned or blocked or whatever. I also like the way they maintain bridges and come up with clever riddles.
But what I don’t like is when they try to paint a veneer of intellectualism over their self-congratulatory, masturbatory hobby obsession. At least have the courage to admit that what you’re engaged in is impotent antagonism. Hell, my entire show is dedicated to the proposition of impotent antagonism and I’m not ashamed to admit it. But you’ll never hear me pretending that my show is an ‘intellectual’ endeavor. It’s a string of frustrated, powerless, antagonistic ramblings that may or may not make you laugh depending on the depravity of your sense of humor. There’s nothing intellectual about that.
Unfortunately, too few trolls are willing to be that honest with themselves. They like to pretend that their mom’s basement is a fortress; a lone citadel in fallen empire and that they are the final guardian of truth that shall persevere against the hordes of minds too broken to agree with what they themselves simply know to be true. Take as an example some sub-dermal infection that showed up here yesterday to point out what a bunch of homophobes atheists are.
In response to my post yesterday about whether or not atheists are “angry at god”, he left a seemingly innocuous comment asking what, precisely, atheists were so angry about.
I thought I’d made it clear in the post, but I’d also made it clear how bad theists are at understanding what “I don’t believe in your fairy tale” actually means, so I distilled the essence of the argument to a single sentence for him/her:
The implications of a group asserting social jurisdiction on the perceived authority of an imaginary being.
And while I already suspected something rotten under the bridge, it was not until then that the inquisitor revealed their troll-like nature. The response was to link to a blogpost so stupid it forces spontaneous neuronal suicide. I won’t be linking to it here (that jackass already has one undeserved link on my blog), but I can distill the point that this fucktard was trying to make in a quick syllogism:
- When I argue with atheists, sometimes they get upset and call me names.
- Sometimes these names include anti-gay slurs and implications that I love the cock.
- Ergo, all atheists are homophobes.
It may seem like a strange assertion to say that atheists, a group that is all but universally in favor of gay rights against an opposition that is all but universally religious in origin are somehow “anti-gay”. But don’t worry, this human-shaped pile of nut-butter wouldn’t make such an allegation without rock-solid evidence. Why, he/she presented several cherry-picked, out-of-context, unverifiable comments from a blog. Talk about incontrovertible! As we all know, if a person says something in the comments section of a website, clearly their statement is indicative of the larger feelings of whatever group you have chosen to associate them with.
So I politely pointed out that trolling is a dangerous game and that when you engage in it, you should know that at any point, you might get accused of taking it up the ass. And then this monkey-spunk-gargling scrotum wart offers a defense so stupid I had to blog about it:
I wasn’t trolling, I was debating evolution.
Oh, well in that case…
Look, if you want my intellectual sympathy, don’t start off by admitting that you were engaged in something that is almost criminally stupid. If you start the story with something like, “So I’m debating the theory of gravity…”, “So I’m trying to convince this guy that the moon really is made of green cheese…”, “So I’m arguing with this idiot who thinks water is somehow wet…” or, “I was debating evolution…” you’ve already revealed yourself to be a horribly misguided, intentionally ignorant promoter of wanton stupidity. And you think somehow that will shield you from the accusation of being a troll?
You can pretend that you’re “debating” evolution if you want to, but you’re lying and nobody believes the lie but you. The science is in, the data is conclusive, the proof is in the pudding: evolution is true. There is nothing to ‘debate’. Sure, there’s still plenty to learn and there is a healthy scholarly debate about the mechanisms and specifics of evolution, but if you’re trying to pretend that there’s an intellectually defensible way to debate the very fact that evolution happened, is happening and is responsible for the biodiversity we see on earth, you are not engaged in “debating”, it’s “denying”.
Oh… and trolling.
Are Atheists Angry at God?
by Noah Lugeons
There are plenty of stereotypes about atheists that piss me off, but among my least favorite is this notion that atheists were driven to disbelief by their “anger at god”. Screenwriters and religious bigots would love for you to believe that atheists became atheists because god wasn’t there for them in their time of need. They’d love for you to believe that atheism is the byproduct of trauma that we’re all still working through.
But on this subject and many others, Carlin said it best. I became an atheist right around the age of reason. The same can be said of most atheists. Some of us have great stories about our deconversion, but most of us can’t pinpoint a single time or date or significant precursor. We just slowly came to realize that religion was bullshit.
That’s not to say that nobody becomes an atheist after a traumatic event. I’m sure there are plenty of stories of devoutly religious people abandoning their faith after personal tragedies, but to be fair there are also plenty of stories of nominally religious or non-religious people embracing faith after similar events. Either way, these anecdotes are in the minority. Most atheists are atheists because they correctly employ logic.
But if you cut the sentence short and put the question mark two words sooner, the answer is very different, and I think that’s why theists have such an easy time believing the cliche. Atheists are angry. We’re not angry at god, we’re angry at religion, but I can see how it’s difficult for a theist to draw a distinction there. It has to be hard to step completely outside the religious worldview, but if they did, I think they could see fairly easily why pretending to speak for god would piss off people who don’t believe in god.
I don’t know that this is an understanding that some theists can reach, but I offer the Venn-diagram anyway. It’s not as much for them as it is for all the other atheists that are sick and fucking tired of pretentious religious fuck-munches who, upon hearing that they are atheists, respond with a condescendingly ostentatious display of pity and the words, “what happened?”
Why Do You Believe?
by Noah Lugeons
One of my least favorite questions is, “Why are you an atheist?” and it’s nearly identical but more frequent form, “Why don’t you believe in God?”
It’s very tempting to answer “Because he doesn’t exist” and depending on my mood and the identity of the inquisitor, that’s often exactly how I answer. When somebody accosts me at a subway station to hand me some silly pamphlet I’ll usually say, “No thanks, I’m an atheist.” And if they pursue it any further, I’ll give them the short, testy answer.
But that’s not always appropriate. Like everyone else out there, I have a lot of friends, coworkers, family members and acquaintances that are religious and when they ask me why I’m an atheist, it’s usually out of a genuine curiosity and I feel like they deserve more than, “Because there is no Tooth Fairy.”
That is the honest answer, of course. I can dress it up in the language of politic and say, “Because there is no convincing evidence of the existence of a higher power, nor is there any logical reason to assume one exists in an absence of evidence”, but that doesn’t do much to soften the blow. The fact is, there is no way (that I’m aware of) to explain it without insulting the believer. What I’m saying, regardless of what words I choose, is, “I’m an atheist because I’m better at thinking than you.”
I honestly believe that this is why atheists have earned the stereotype of intellectual arrogance. The reason that one is an atheist is because one properly applied logic to the question of religion. Atheists are atheists because they thought correctly. Now how the hell does one explain that to a person who thought incorrectly without sounding pretentious?
The problem, as we all know, is that the question is facing the wrong way. It’s not for me to explain why I believe the negative proposition. We both claim A-Y, you just add Z. If you’re the one adding something, you’re the one with the burden of proof. But Google-forbid you flip the question on its head and ask them why they believe in God. You’ll get a laundry list of nonsense that goes on for an hour. You’ll hear about their personal relationship with Jesus and you’ll hear about the value of faith and tradition and the meaning that religion gives their lives and you’ll want to take a trowel to your eardrums by the time it’s all over.
So how does one tackle this question without coming off as scornful? More importantly, how does one tackle this question with any persuasive power?
The truth is that I have no idea. Tact is not one of my strong suits (you may have noticed) and usually I respond with something like, “So how ’bout them Yankees, huh?” But if somebody is insistent and I can’t avoid delving into it, I usually find something that we can both disagree with. I’ll ask them if they believe in Bigfoot or Alien abductions or Atlantis or Astrology or the giant diamond in Sam Harris’s backyard until I find something that we can both agree is bullshit. Then I’ll ask them why they don’t believe in it and let them make the argument against god for me.
And then, of course, I’ll play devil’s advocate by trying to convince them with all the arguments that are typically offered for religion; “But hunting sasquatches gives meaning to so many people’s lives”, “But how can you discount all those anecdotal accounts?”, “What about people who feel Bigfoot’s presence?”, “What about all the written accounts of Bigfoot over the many decades?”
Granted, I suppose I come off every bit as arrogant and scornful in this tactic, but it redirects the question and at the same time, it deflates all the worst arguments they can offer. When I then say, “So why do you believe in god?” they have to at least filter their answers through the “would-this-convince-me-there’s-a-bigfoot?” filter. Even things like “How do you explain the ‘order’ and ‘design’ of the universe?” can easily be answered with “Bigfoot makes noises in the night and there are noises in the night.” This is the intellectual equivalent of “God makes universes and there’s a universe” and is every bit as convincing if you strip away the veneer of intellectual honesty.
But in the end, as I said, I don’t spend too much time concerned with tactful answers to questions like that. It’s the question that is pretentious, assuming and arrogant so if I inadvertently insult the person who asks it, perhaps they’ll think twice about asking it next time.
And if it’s somebody that I really don’t want to offend; my mother, for example; I’ll just throw out this caveat: “You’re asking me why I think one of your most cherished beliefs is misguided and silly. Do you really want me to answer that question?”
Papal Media Cock-Slobber-Fest
by Noah Lugeons
Wow, what a successful first 48 hours Pope Francine has had. He’s already transformed the image of the Catholic church, righted centuries of racial bigotry, cured global poverty, refocused the Catholic religion on the core of Christ’s message and made everyone completely forget about the child rape and torture thing.
What’s that you say? He hasn’t done any of that? Oh, sorry, I was getting all my information from the American television media.
I’m already sick of hearing about what a transformative figure Pope Franky is. It’s not just the fallacious notion that anybody can be considered “transformative” after two days on the job (much of that spent sleeping). We went from a sexist, scandal-plagued, geriatric, mentally-antiquated man of European decent to a sexist, scandal-plagued, geriatric, mentally-antiquated man of different European ancestry and this was a transformation? We went from a backwards thinking jackass to a backward looking jack-off and that was a transformation?
But you’d never doubt it if you were just listening to the mainstream media. They just can’t seem to get a big enough mouthful of papal cock. He’s going to rededicate the church, you see, to dealing with global poverty. The guy that’s moving into the golden palace built on crusade booty, confiscated Jewish fortunes and the tears of tortured children is going to rededicate the church to global poverty.
Well, I suppose the first step in that direction would be to lift the nonsensical, anti-scientific contraception ban that even the vast majority of Catholics think is stupid right? No? Not going to move on that one, huh? Despite the fact that it would be the single most significant thing you could possibly do to combat global poverty and it would be free, easy and instantaneous. Still not going to do it, eh?
Well don’t worry, I’m sure that in the absence of action the hard-hitting media will continue to pretend you’re transforming something despite the fact that you head the most static, moth-eaten, obsolete, perpetually pertinacious institution in the history of the world. After all, we’re all getting bored with the whole “kid fucking” narrative and as long as the media isn’t talking about that, I suppose Pope Francesca is transforming something.
Hey Look! Something Stupid on HuffPo!
by Noah Lugeons
Most of the labor that goes into putting the podcast together every fortnight is a labor of love. I really enjoy writing, recording and editing the skits. I love composing the music for each episode. I get to hang out with fun, like-minded people for interviews and panel discussions. I get to answer emails and feedback from intelligent and often appreciative listeners. I’ve even started to enjoy the sound-processing and all the related crap.
But I don’t enjoy the research. It’s not that I don’t like reading up on the news articles or investing my time in knowing what’s going on in the world. Hell, one of the reasons I started the podcast was in hopes of forcing myself to keep up with all the atheist news. But there’s a downside to it as well. As I’m checking my usual slate of sources, once in a while I see a headline so insanely stupid that I can’t help but click on it. And then I have to read some babbling neuronal flatulence like:
Dawkins, Dennett and Hitchens, The New Theists?
Now I warn you before you click that crap that it’s some “deep down the rabbit hole” nonsense and even though the piece is short, you almost have to reread it to prove to yourself that it actually means nothing whatsoever. To save you the trouble, I’ll break it down paragraph by paragraph below:
- Paragraphs 1-4: A word-salad attempt to redefine the word “sacred” to mean practically everything (as well as nothing).
- Paragraph 5: The revelation that if you simply ignore the actual definition of sacred you can call anything sacred.
- Paragraph 6: A biblical quote to prove that the author knows how to use quotes.
- Paragraph 7: The conclusion that because sacred can mean anything, atheists are really theists because they’re involved in a sacred mission to rid the world of notions like “sacred”.
It really is that stupid. He says things like:
when someone rejects the notion of God because of the wars that have been fought over that name, as well as the abuse, the fundamentalism and the ecological destruction that is bound to so much religion, they are demonstrating a profound concern for both people and the planet.
And since we established earlier that being concerned about the planet is “sacred”, that means people who viscerally reject god because of all that crap are on a mission from god. The author doesn’t waste any time explaining what it means when someone viscerally rejects god because he doesn’t exist.
As for connecting the body of the work to the title, well, he makes no attempt at that whatsoever. There’s no attempt to connect the lines between “sacred” (which has been clearly defined as meaning what-ever-the-fuck Peter Rollins is talking about in that particular paragraph) somehow automatically equates with “theist”. Probably by using the same “are-you-still-paying-attention” tactic he uses to bleach “sacred” of any precise meaning.
He also clearly employs the old headline trick where you just pose the most ridiculous claim possible and then toss a question mark on the end. As long as you phrase it as a question you’re never wrong.
Religious Debates on Twitter
by Noah Lugeons
There are two memes that sum up most people’s opinion of a religious argument on Twitter. One is the cartoon where the guy can’t come to bed yet because someone is wrong on the internet. The other one is offensive to the mentally disabled and you already know it anyway.
The basic message is that arguing on the internet is a waste of time. You’re not changing anyone’s mind, you’re not solving any problems and you’re never going to win. But I’d like to challenge that stereotype. I suppose if I wanted I could dig around for some anecdote about somebody being converted through a Twitter debate, but I trust our loyal readers to be too smart to be taken in by an anecdote and besides, I think I can argue for the value of a Twitter debate even if I concede that you’re not changing anyone’s mind, you’re not solving any problems and you’re never going to win.
I justify most religious debate by the audience. The people who watch William Lane Craig debate anyone with enough brain power to keep their saliva inside their head will probably walk away realizing that Craig is a jack-off who talks in circles and hopes his audience doesn’t know the difference between truth and truthiness. But you can’t really invoke that when it comes to Twitter. Sure, there’s an audience, but they’re just as partisan as the participants.
So you can’t win, solve problems, change minds or influence an audience. What does that leave? Well, (here come s the anecdote) you can hone your skills, refine your opinions, learn more about the debate tactics of the apologists, learn the various standard rebuttals, find whole new arguments that you never thought of before and be a counter-apologetic mental-ninja the next time you run into a condescending theist in the real world. I’ve watched my wife do exactly that over the last few days. She’s been locked in a debate with some absurd dingle-berry that is trotting out one tired, easily refuted fallacy after the next. And along the way she’s learning to refute all these stupid arguments in 140 characters or less (minus all the @so-and-so shit).
Think about how handy a skill that is to have in the real world. Once you’ve got it mastered you can shut down any religious assertion in about 5 seconds. And if you never take the time to jump into some of these asinine debates, you may never bother thinking of ways to refute some of the dumber ones.
So all hail the Atheist Twitter Trolls. And next time you hear that Special Olympics line, feel free to send this post to whatever retard said it.
Does FEMA Discriminate Against Churches?
by Noah Lugeons
The temerity of religious leaders never fails to amaze me. As I peruse the various Christian and religious news outlets in search of news items for the next show, I constantly come across the most brazenly illogical fury and anger. Christians stand within their echo chamber so often that they often lose track of just how full of shit they are.
The latest source for Christian Op-Ed ire is FEMA’s policy against giving federal grants to churches to rebuild after natural disasters. I’ve come across a couple of articles where these pulpit-pounders rail against the bigoted, heartless, merciless policy that refuses to give lump sums of tax payer money to organizations that refuse to pay taxes.
Seems simple to me. If you don’t pay into the pool, you don’t get to take from it. How simple is that? If I get sick, I can’t use my brother-in-laws insurance to pay for treatment, can I? If I didn’t throw in on the bag, I don’t get to smoke any of the weed. It’s some pretty simple shit when you apply logic to it.
But Christians and logic don’t get along and that much is obvious from their irate opinions on this matter. In 3 articles I read on the subject, not one single author bothers to even address the issue of churches not paying taxes. It’s as though it doesn’t even occur to them that the rest of us actually pay those taxes. It’s as though they don’t recognize that it is anti-American and anti-intelligence to give my tax dollars to a church to rebuild. It’s as though they don’t even realize that they don’t actually serve a function in the real world.
Take this article from the Christian Post. Author Paul de Vries couldn’t be more livid about how unfairly the churches are being treated. After all, he points out that the churches were the first to respond to victims of the storm and now, when they need help, FEMA is nowhere to be found.
The first problem with his point is that it’s complete bullshit. The first responders were police officers, fire fighters, utility workers and paramedics (that’s why we call those people “first responders”). Sure, many churches opened their doors to the suddenly homeless and distributed food and water and medicine in the aftermath of the disaster. But, of course, that is the only function they serve in the world and the only possible justification for making them tax exempt in the first place.
Many secular groups also pitched in and helped in the aftermath of the storm and many secular people volunteered for days and weeks after to assist in the cleanup (myself included). The secular groups were far more effective, of course, as they spent none of their time trying to evangelize and proselytize to the people who were coming to them for help.
But the preachers, pastors and priests would have you believe that if it weren’t for all those Christians, nobody would have been helping at all.
De Vries points out that religious organizations gave tens of millions of dollars to help the storm’s victims, but somehow it doesn’t occur to him that if FEMA started wasting its money rebuilding churches, they would be, in effect, taking back the money they just donated. What kind of slippery logic does one have to employ to argue that the fact that Christians gave money to the disaster somehow means that the disaster owes them money?
He calls the policy bigoted (despite the fact that it treats all houses of worship equally), he calls it “a severe penalty” (despite the fact that it isn’t a penalty no matter how broadly one defines penalty… it’s not like FEMA is billing them) and he even goes so far as to call it “a step down an insane and sinister slope”, arguing that before we know it they’ll be denying churches the use of police officers and firefighters.
I’m all for that, of course. If you don’t pay taxes you shouldn’t get any government services. That being said, I’m not in charge of anything but this blog and a podcast. I’m not making the law. The notion that the government is going to stop sending cops and firefighters to churches is almost too stupid to acknowledge, and it is too stupid to bother to refute. I only bring it up to point out that even when they name the logical fallacy within the logical fallacy, they still don’t see the logical fallacy.
But by far the worst collection of words in his whole self-aggrandizing treatise of nonsense is this one:
blocking FEMA grants to churches is to pretend to be ignorant of the continuing soul care needed by the many and various victims of Superstorm Sandy.
I should point out that those are his italics up there. I didn’t even need to highlight the clause that makes the statement such ravenous horse-shit. One of his arguments is that without these grants, churches can’t take care of the victim’s souls.
Now keep in mind that there’s not just some money-wizard down at FEMA who conjures up wads of cash or anything. They’re actually calling for money to be redirected to churches. They are actually asking that money that would otherwise go toward rebuilding homes and vital businesses go to churches instead. We should actually take money from the “make sure kids have roofs over their heads” fund and the “make sure employees have a place to go to earn a living fund” and give it to a useless vestigial cancer that needs it to take care of the imaginary man that lives in our brains and drives our body.
So go fuck yourself, Paul. If you want disaster relief, pay your fucking taxes.
My Least Favorite Meme
by Noah Lugeons
I find it disheartening the way that Christians (and those affiliated with other brands of idiocy) think that a perfectly acceptable answer to the debate is:
I am ignorant of your side of the argument and refuse to learn.
While the atheists I know tend to me more knowledgeable about religion than the religious, the Jebus-lovers love to flaunt there nescience by making points like:
If we descended from monkeys, how come there are still monkeys?
Not only does this reveal them to be feeble-minded dolts, it also betrays an utter refusal to actually understand what they’re arguing about. And if they haven’t betrayed it yet, they certainly will when you try to explain the notion of a common ancestor.
Which brings us to one of the most ubiquitous and ridiculous of Christian memes, which I have answered in a way that I have to imagine many have answered before:
The Scathing Atheist 