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Superheroes vs. the Westboro Baptist Church
sv_libertarian writes "They've faced down humans time and time again, but Fred Phelps and his minions from the Westboro Baptist Church were not ready for the cosplay action that awaited them at Comic-Con. After all, who can win against a counter-protest that includes robots, magical anime girls, Trekkies, Jedi, and... kittens?"
I had to actually RTFA. *angry face*
I think there may be hope for the middle east.
So what? Freedom needs to be continually fought for; if you ignore Phelps and give him no opposition, his viewpoint will gradually become more and more accepted; people will think him "normal" even if they don't agree with him. And good humoured satire seems to me the very best way to deal with him. Amusing, photogenic to spread the word, and non-confrontational. Freedom of speed (correctly) allows him to express his loathsome opinions - it should be used to provide the counterbalance.
I particularly liked "Odin is God - read The Mighty Thor #5". It beautifully encapsulates the curcularity of the bible bashers arguments.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
>>However, we do think you are all delusional.
And you also get upset when theists call you asshats, am I right? (Do you never wonder why?)
Honestly, I think the arguments for the existence of God are more compelling than the opposite, but doing your dickwad atheist bit isn't a good counterargument.
Dawkins has made being-an-asshole-to-theists his raison d'etre, but it neither makes him right, nor even sound particularly smart. His arguments are laughably bad when he strays outside the area he knows (evolutionary biology) and into a region he knows nothing about (theology). To be fair, though - he's still not as stupid as the Westborough fuckers.
Religion or not hate is hate. Religion needs to stop getting treated specially.
I consider myself a Christian in the sense that I've read the Bible and believe Jesus taught the right lessons in ethics.
By that logic I'm a christian. Personally I think this is the worst case of selective doctrine I've ever seen.
How we know is more important than what we know.
As someone's sig says "taxes buy civilisation". Phelps wants it both ways: he wants the Government to let him sue anyone who crosses him, and he doesn't want to pay for it. This, in my book, makes him a leech.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
This is not a religious issue. It's a free speech issue. These morons are no better or worse than neo-Nazi groups.
The best solution in this case can be gleaned from MMORPGs. Just put them on your ignore list.
Take off every Sig. For great justice.
What if there were a single cause for many of the world's ills in both the social and personal spheres, from overpopulation, ecological destruction, ethnic violence and hatred, to addictions, conflicts between the sexes, the breakdown of the family, and even why it feels good to be bad? Sound too simplistic or far-fetched? A core underlying cause of all these problems is hidden authoritarianism.
Buying into, communism, spiritual cults, organized religion, UFO cults, therapy cults, Jim Jones, David Koresh, Hitler or other authority beliefs where there is an unchallengeable book, ideology or leader generates self mistrust. It makes a person feel fundamentally mentally flawed. It causes you to look at evidence, logic, reason and what your mind would say is true, as garbage, you can not trust in, if it doesn't fit, the authority belief you bought into. These authority beliefs are social viruses that, like a computer virus, makes our basic human operating system dysfunctional. Just as a computer operating system controls how the parts work together, they say, moral codes provide the operating system both for self-control and social interaction. When the operating system is faulty, this produces distortions and malfunctions at all levels. As with computers, unmasking and decoding a virus allows one to disempower it. Buying into any religion does away with trust in your own mind and does away with uncorrupted critical thinking. Buying into an authority belief makes you a mental vegetable. The answer is to have courage enough to think for yourself.
http://www.positiveatheism.org/mail/eml9671.htm
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Just imagine how much less national debt we would have if religions had to pay taxes. Why do we continue to give religion special status that they earned when belief was compulsory and religion controlled politics? Oh wait, in the US, religion still does control politics. Any politician who is willing to demonstrate that he is a reasonable thinking person by publicly professing non-belief in the supernatural will likely lose elections.
"And you also get upset when theists call you asshats, am I right? (Do you never wonder why?)"
Nope. Theists are deluded, what can one expect from them?
"Dawkins has made being-an-asshole-to-theists his raison d'etre, but it neither makes him right, nor even sound particularly smart. His arguments are laughably bad when he strays outside the area he knows (evolutionary biology) and into a region he knows nothing about (theology). To be fair, though - he's still not as stupid as the Westborough fuckers."
Hm? How do you measure qualifications in theology? So far, I haven't been able to discern 'good' theologists from 'bad' ones.
Just imagine how much less national debt we would have if religions had to pay taxes.
Just imagine how much less national debt we would have if corporations had to pay taxes.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Many Americans are confused and think the Bible is the basis of American law or that we are a Christian nation. Which is amazing, since everyone should learn/have learned in history class in school that we are founded on a secular constitution that specifies that religion must not be used for law making or as a test for holding any office.
However, we do think you are all delusional.
Fellow atheist here. Although, I prefer to say "I don't believe in God." instead. Yeah, I'm an atheist but atheism is developing its own dogmatism and I'm not interested, so I'm trying to distance myself from it.
Anyway, getting in people's faces about their religion is as bad as when religious folks get in ours about our lack of belief. If we show more respect for one another,maybe,just maybe most folks will chill.
Sure, there still will be the Phelps crowd and others who will have a problem, but if you'll notice, even folks of the same faith consider them (Phelps' crowd) to be kooks.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
The problem with religion is this.
Let's say that we accept the theory that something needed to jumpstart the universe, and that thing does not necessarily have to follow the same rules the universe does (and thus doesn't need a creator of it's own).
What reason exactly do we have to believe that thing is the biblical god?
Couldn't it just aswell have been Zeus? Odin?
Are the Muslims right? Jews? Christians? Buddhists? Tao?
The only sane position to take is that they're all wrong, and while there might exist an omnipotent entity, it's insane to think he gives a fuck about you following a religion.
>>You should realize that atheists bring actual arguments and use logic, not a bunch of stupid excuses that have no chance of being considered logical arguments.
There's logic and valid arguments on both sides, as well as a bunch of emotivism and bad arguments. I'd recommend reading Peter Kreeft's list of arguments on both sides. He goes into pretty comprehensive detail breaking down the arguments for and against on both sides.
Islamic thinkers used pure reason to derive the fact that our universe had to have an origin, and thus that the universe tended to show evidence of God, rather than the opposite... back in the middle ages. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalam_cosmological_argument)
Scientists, especially atheist scientists, used their "faith" that God doesn't exist to try to constantly prove that the universe was eternal. Einstein was guilty of this, and the Big Bang got its name from Hoyle, an atheist scientist, derisively mocking the notion the universe had an origin (because he felt it would strongly imply that God existed).
I'm sure these arguments don't fit into the pretty little preconstructed world you've built for yourself, so please feel free to continue deluding yourself that scientists are the shining beacon of logic in an otherwise inhospitable world.
>>Religion has, historically speaking, been the greatest force for good our planet has ever seen.
[citation needed]
>>Hitchens is a frothing moron who doesn't know the first thing about what he's talking about - his sole tactic is to sound British and snotty when talking about religion.
Ad hominem isn't a real argument.
>>I've yet to see him put together a single cogent argument.
What's not cogent about the arguments put forth in the videos linked just now?
Yes, but that wasn't the point. Suppose we accept that this entity exists, what makes Christianity in particular correct?
Better to be considered an asshat by someone who is clearly delusional, than being delusional yourself - or enabling their delusions at the cost to society as a whole. Religion needs put down, hard.
Ideology is the only thing that is able to keep a human society from imploding upon itself. Be happy that you're able to choose your ideology yourself, and be honest about your ideology if you want to be.
And before you dream of putting down mainstream Christianity (for example), think for a while what is most likely to replace it. I'm pretty sure it won't be as pleasant for you.
Religion will disappear on it's own, if it's to disappear at all, when humanity is ready to collectively replace it with something else. Trying to speed the process directly will lead to rise of ideological fundamentalism.
>>Religion has, historically speaking, been the greatest force for good our planet has ever seen.
The one thing religion is good at is getting otherwise good people to do, enable those that do, and believe in, terrible acts. That's it. You don't need to be religious to be charitable, as the existence of secular aid organisations around the world will attest to. But this dick measuring contest between theist vs atheist "good works" is ridiculous and belittles that same work on both sides, so I'll avoid that as much as possible. What I will say to this though is on a different aspect of the same point. You will accept, I hope, that humanity seems naturally predisposed to the belief in a God. And I imagine you will also accept the obvious statement that for a large portion of our history, religion exerted a far greater force on our lives than it does now. So when you say that, historically speaking, religion has been the greatest force of good, you must also accept that historically speaking, religion mandated that it be the only allowable force. The difference between now and then is that now it no longer has the power to enforce that mandate. In the lifetime of human society, it is only last week that you would have to be almost suicidal to admit that you did not believe in a God, when the church of that God had power over the course of your life. It is only last week that Christians were burning the philosophies of ancient Greece in the belief that any morality before Jesus was devoid of value. Religion had a stranglehold as the only acceptable front for morality - so of course, if you look back over history and notice the good things it does, you will see some religious involvement.
Religion does however retard humanity's progress. It does not do it sufficiently that we stall or move backwards, but this is something that the modern world is changing. In history, when religiosity was a problem, it killed people. It burned books. It maybe wiped out a town or village. Started a jihad that ended in the death of a tribe or culture. Maybe even instigated the odd war, leading to the deaths of thousands. Terrible as these things no doubt were, they were not enough to halt human progress. It continued inexorably upwards - I posit, without the need for religion at all. Today, when religion makes a mistake, it can take a mere modern convenience, slam it into another and kill thousands. Imagine for a moment what would happen if religion today got its hands on a real weapon. In the last hour of human history, we gained the capability for mass destruction, the likes of which would only take one more religious mistake, to not just retard human progress - or set it back - but to wipe it out completely. You can of course say, it doesn't have to be a religious mistake that does this. You're right, it doesn't. But having another finger on the trigger is not ideal, and whereas a non religious person will not want to destroy the world - the 3 great monotheisms positively look forward to it.
>>Hitchens is a frothing moron who doesn't know the first thing about what he's talking about - his sole tactic is to sound British and snotty when talking about religion. I've watched several dozens of his debates online, especially with Dinesh D'Souza (who doesn't do an especially good job defending Christianity), and I've yet to see him put together a single cogent argument. Other than, I suppose, the fact that he'll sneer at you if you believe.
Ad homimum.
"Islamic thinkers used pure reason to derive the fact that our universe had to have an origin, and thus that the universe tended to show evidence of God, rather than the opposite... back in the middle ages. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalam_cosmological_argument)"
Kalam's argument is stupid on many levels.
First, it's applicable to God - it also has to be created by something (a meta-God?). Which in turn must be created by something else, ad infinitum.
If you try to apply an argument that God is infinite and thus has no beginning, then this argument can very well be applied to the Universe itself.
And this is only on a level of philosophical arguments (i.e. within the model postulated by the author).
If we look at the real world, we'll see events happening without cause everywhere (virtual particles, radioactive decay, etc.).
And General Relativity also posits that it's possible to have the 'beginning of time'.
I'm reluctant to enter this conversation, given its very low standards for mutual respect, but I can't let this common, but to me incorrect, argument pass. How can we know how things would be without religion? That's just an initial logical fillip. But how about all the pain that religion HAS caused? Europe was at war of Catholicism versus Protestantism for several hundred years. Islam and Christianity have been at war for longer than that. Granted, there were side issues of imperialism. But how about the persecution of Mormons? Mormons persecuting gays? What about the various killing sprees over doctrine in the early days of the Catholic church, when various heresies were eliminating by exterminating their adherents like so many cockroaches? Or (despite the Church's whitewash to the contrary) the tacit support or active participation of Catholic bishops in the German Nazi party of the 1930s-40s? (By the way, I qualify it as "German" and by date because I live in a city that will soon see a Nazi rally--one supported by numerous Christian organizations, such as the World Church of the Creator.) There are a myriad of examples, including persecution of Protestants in France in the 18thC, persecution of certain _types_ of Protestants in the United Kingdom at the same time, persecution of Jews, well, pretty much all the time. Most of my examples are of Christian abuses because that's what I know best. I'm sure the Buddhists and Hindis and Taoists and so on have had their hand in the bloodbath too. Here's where religious apologists will say "But all these people were doing it wrong." They certainly were. But they were doing it. And if you say "They weren't Christian," be happy these folks aren't around to mete out the witch-burning, dunking, impaling, gassing, stoning, or what-have-you they'd think you deserve for not doing it right yourself. This is not to say religion is all bad. But I suspect that the sum total of misery the world has received from the religious may well equal, or even exceed, any benefits of religion. By all means, I'm not saying religious people should go away, shut up, or even keep their sweaty Mormon and/or Baptist butts off my front porch (August is too hot for you to show up suggesting that I'm in for the worst fate you can imagine). But I do think liberal Christians should see to their coreligionists and quit worrying about atheists. And they should sure as hell keep their meddling little fingers out my government and schools.
Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."
-George Washington
I love it when the fanatics quote that. Read it very closely, he's saying religion is good for stupid people who can't be bothered to reason through things on their own. It's one of the most damning comments on religious believers written by any of the founding fathers.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
ou know what? Religion is a good way for people to feel good about themselves as well as band together and help out those less fortunate
Of course it is just as true that religion is a good way for people to feel good about themselves as they band together and harm those less fortunate,
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I fail to see the difference.
Who the f* is going to eliminate religion? Would you recommend the Stalin/Mao approach?
In group behavior: 'because they're evil/morons/sheep/crazy' is not 'insightful' it's 'oversimplified'
Personally I think this is the worst case of selective doctrine I've ever seen.
More like the best case of selective doctrine. A great moral advantage of being atheist is the easy "selective doctrine" of accepting what is right and good from all religions and philosophies.
Once you skip past the invisible-sky-wizard and the magic stuff elsewhere in the Bible, most atheists readily agree that Jesus taught a lot of really good things. In fact Thomas Jefferson published an edition of the Bible doing exactly that. A version of the Bible dedicated solely to Jesus's teachings and deleting deleting all the magical stuff. And as Jefferson put it, a REAL Christian is someone who follows the teachings of Christ. The fake Christians are the people preaching all that other Bible dogma, the stuff which Christ never said nor saw.
A Christian missionary once asked Ghandi "though you quote the words of Christ often, why is that you appear to so adamantly reject becoming his follower?" to which Ghandi replied "Oh, I don't reject your Christ. I love your Christ. It's just that so many of you Christians are so unlike your Christ".
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Your points are just as valid with respect to non-religious causes. For example, Nazi ideology was based on the master race theory, which had nothing to do with any of the major religions, yet killed more people in one year than the inquisition killed in all of history. And lets not forget communism, which killed about 50 million people in Russia alone. While you do have people with insane religious zeal, most religious people have a conscience which keeps them from taking part in mass misery; contrast this with "rational" ideologies which will make arbitrary divisions based on skin color, social class, etc... and disenfranchise a whole class of people.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
one shouldn't assume that WBC are Christian
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I love fundamentalist atheists. They reassure me that hatred and intolerance of others' beliefs are found in all humans, not just those who believe in one or more deities.
Though it doesn't appear that religious people on average are any more moral then the secular. Most of us learn right and wrong from our parents and society in general and those that don't want to be moral seem to have no problem finding justifications for whatever they want by selective readings of their favorite books and religious and secular alike are just as good at saying "Oh, those people aren't like us, they don't deserve to be treated good"
You sound like a job-killing, america-hating liberal.
Sadly, there are a lot of mouth-breathers who think like that previous sentence.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
So what? Freedom needs to be continually fought for; if you ignore Phelps and give him no opposition
The source of the problem isn't really that there's people like Phelps, and nobody is opposing them. It's that guy and his utterly minuscule congregation get any media attention at all. There's a million people out their that are batshit insane and worry about the orbital mind control lasers that nobody pays attention to. But yet this guy and his handful of followers gets paid attention to. Why?
If we could somehow get the media to drop covering this guy, that'd do a hell of a lot more than these counter-protests ever would. That's likely not possible, as this guy sells a lot of eyeballs. I'd just like to point out that ignoring people is sometimes a very good solution to the "problem".
AccountKiller
That's because you're ignorant (I'm using the word literally here, not as an insult -- there are things you are unaware of.) Muslims worship the same god; they consider Jesus one of their prophets. They just think Christians worship incorrectly (exactly the same complaint many Christians make of each other.)
Calling the Odin / Valhalla stories fiction is really a stretch, especially... Get my point?
Just because there is a story, doesn't mean, or even hint, that it is true. Further, when a story contains magic as we understand it today, rather than science as we understand it today, so far, for all the stories in human history, this has been an excellent indicator that the story is not true. The bible is rife with nonsensical claims. Water into wine. Pillars of salt. Voices from the sky. Parting of the sea. Virgin birth. Resurrection. It's clearly a book whose central truth -- the existence and acts of the son of God -- rests upon many magical claims. Yet no one has demonstrated any magic, anywhere in the world. Ever. That's how I can assign it to the category of myth without any doubt at all. That's without even digging into the straightforward contradictions in it.
Quite aside from this, it's not my job to prove it untrue; it is your job to prove it true. I don't believe it; you do. Jupiter, Odin, Set, Yaweh... a huge long list... they're all the same to me. Imaginary creatures dreamed up to focus power for humans, something they all actually did. Strangely, they're all the same to you as well... except for Yaweh. So I'm sure you can understand my position if you try.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
["Funny"]
I've thought of several funny semi-violent responses...
Get five or ten street-boys to jizz in a squirt gun, use said squirt gun to "anoint" WBC while holding "WBC shows gay spunk as Phred hoped" sign.
Get geek to factor wind biases and then use "Bear Spray" suitably up-wind.
[Serious]
But in truth, if WBC ever showed up in my region I would file a "reckless child endangerment" complaint against them with the department of child and family services. They are clearly trying to incite violence with "fighting words", to the degree that the cops have to show up to protect them. They are also using their children basically as "human shields" by bringing them, and putting them in harm's way, without regard to the safety of the minor children.
If they _don't_ think that the children would be in danger, why do they pre-arrange police protection?
I think WBC needs to be dragged through family court whenever they show up with kids and make them hold signs that inspire people to punch people in the face.
If the adults want to do it, then fine. But not the kids.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Is it just me or does "Fred Phelps" sound like one of the evil old guys on scooby doo that's always wearing a ghost costume?
Many Americans are confused and think the Bible is the basis of American law or that we are a Christian nation.
Why wouldn't they be confused, we have a political party that actively tries to tie the government with Christianity. We had a president for 8 recent years that called a war a crusade. We put 'in god we trust' on our money. We added 'under god' to the pledge of allegiance to show that we are a godly country as apposed to the godless Soviets. We are offended that someone would want to build a mosque near the 9/11 site. We try to make laws governing abortion. We try to make laws banning sex education and evolution from schools. We try to make laws inserting christian doctrine (Intelligent Design) into schools. We label sex and eroticism as porn and try to ban it from public and private life.
We have freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. And Christianity is the predominant religion.
Another day, another update to a Google android app.
I can't believe people still are religious in public.
Not only do I worship in public, I did so today with 200 other like-minded souls. We've even got (hold on to your hat) an entire building dedicated to it. With a sign telling _everyone_ what's going on inside.
I am from Sweden.
Well I'm sorry for that but do you think you should admit that in public?
Display some adaptability.