Believers seem to have a difficult time distinguishing between Communism and atheism. Of course there are awful, secular, political, movements... the key words being awful and political. But in no way does religion bring a rational component to any solution for it.

Okay, so here's the deal: the video begins with not one, but two consecutive plugs for that awful Shock of God fellow, overlapping with two separate claims that atheism leads to Stalin and Mao and mass murder... you know the drill by now.

The first reason why atheism is incorrect, and I quote, is that "people don't trusts atheists." Yes, one of the reasons atheism is incorrect is that it faces prejudice from ideologically motivated bigots. "If atheism was correct, why would we try so hard to cultivate a culture of fear and misinformation about it?" is literally reason number one.

I'm not willing to go through half an hour of that crap, but I think we can all see what kind of video this is, just from that.

To be fair I have had to intensely meditate to prevent myself setting up an atheist dictatorship and murdering everyone.

I thought this was a battle that every atheist had to go through. What starts with BBQ babies can so easily end in genocide. We have to be careful and not ensure our satan worship gets out of hand.

Out of a kind of horrified fascination I actually went through the rest of the "reasons" why atheism isn't true, skipping around a bit to avoid the nonsense. Some might accuse me of taking this stuff out of context, but when the support the narrator gives for the idea that "people don't trusts atheists" is a freeze-frame of Matt Dillahunty's angry face in the middle of an Atheist Experience clip, along with the accusation that atheists are angry that they can't answer Shock of God's "what proof do you have that atheism is accurate and correct?" nonsense (which actually isn't the subject of the video the guy took his screencap from, even though he asserts that it is, so... dishonest, there... ) then I don't feel much need to take this shit in context either. It's not like the presenter is bothering to.

So, reason number two is "why bother taking atheism seriously? After all, to an atheist, there's no heaven and nothing matters!" which, I mean... come on. "Atheism can't be true because I don't find the conclusions of it comforting!"

After this point the guy abandons his own numbered list format, but his third reason is that atheists "don't use common sense," which I guess means, don't agree with him. Meh.

The fourth reason is a rehash of the "Atheists are Stalins and nihilists!" bullshit he started the video with. It gets no more true the more he repeats it.

Fifth reason: "Ever notice how atheists only bash god, and never satan?"

Number six is the flat assertion that "Science continues to confirm christianity!" followed by the non sequitur ad populum fallacy that christianity has more followers than atheism does, so nyah nyah.

Reason number seven claims that atheism has "no sanity in it," because we spend so much time bashing god, when we don't even think he exists! hock: Why would we do that, guys? Aren't we crazy?

Reason number eight is in all caps for some reason, and the added forcefulness of that just makes it more hilarious when the narrator flatly asserts that the existence of atheism proves that there is a god, because we are opposing god. I'm not kidding, that's literally something that made the list: "Atheism says there's no god, but guess what? There is one!"

Reason number nine actually took me a while to parse, because the way the sentence is structured is completely nonsensical. I had to listen to this idiot gibber away and explain himself: He says that an atheist saying they don't believe in god doesn't automatically mean that they're right, and therefore atheism is incoherent. He's right, the expression of the opinion that we don't believe god exists doesn't automatically entail that this belief is correct, but that fact doesn't therefore invalidate atheism. Nested within this reason is an implicit shifting of the burden of proof, too: he seems to be asserting that we need to disprove god in order for our position to be justified, which... yeah, no.

Reason ten is just reason six again. The guy claims that atheism "has no arguments," because science, history and so on just proves christianity correct, and again hits up the argument from popularity, asking "if atheism is true, why is theism still the dominant social force?"

Reason eleven, I shit you not, is "atheists seem really mean!"

There's still six more minutes of video from that point, which ask such cogent, powerful questions as "there are lots of religious hospitals, but where are all the atheist hospitals?!" coupled with potent observations like "if there was no god, there would be no atheists......." At one point, we are told in all caps that atheists have the highest suicide rate in the world, as though that makes god real. Finally, it is asserted that a survey shows that "over 90% of the population is interested in three things: 1.Life, 2. Truth, 3. Direction." The narrator then observes that he finds that interesting, because Jesus said something like that! And then he quotes John 14:6, and I begin wishing for the sweet comfort of death, ironically demonstrating that the reason atheists have such a high suicide rate (assuming we don't just realize he pulled that statistic out of his ass) is that we're exposed to theistic nonsense like this.

Edit: did I mention that the entire video takes place on a backdrop of Shock of God's stupid website, and that the narrator makes persistent errors in pronunciation the entire way through the video, including his inability to say the word "awe" correctly? Because what this video really needed was terrible aesthetics, too.

So basically it's just a slightly more simplistic version of the arguments usually employed by theists here?

(June 25, 2014 at 4:05 am)Fidel_Castronaut Wrote: So basically it's just a slightly more simplistic version of the arguments usually employed by theists here?

Yep, but it's somehow so much worse when spread out over half an hour and coupled with just one presenter, talking in a vacuum, with no way of responding, who is so sure that his every word- no doubt cribbed entirely from Shock- is the death knell of the atheist movement.

The person who sent this to the OP should be fucking ashamed.

He needs to keep the dialogue and concepts simple for one reason.
It's not us he's trying to sell his message to, it's the masses and the believers ....and he just knows how intelligent and objective "they" can be!

(June 24, 2014 at 11:45 pm)Minimalist Wrote: 34 minutes of jesus freak drivel? If I wanted that I could walk into any church and listen to a professional bullshitter instead of some amateur.

I don't really know how American catholic masses go Min, but here, when I was a kid, I was very happy when they started the lords prayer. It meant that it was almost over and I could get the fuck out of there and do something usefull like playing with other kids. Damn shit would never take less than an hour!

(June 25, 2014 at 4:33 am)LastPoet Wrote: I don't really know how American catholic masses go Min, but here, when I was a kid, I was very happy when they started the lords prayer. It meant that it was almost over and I could get the fuck out of there and do something usefull like playing with other kids. Damn shit would never take less than an hour!

My experience was always right at 45 minutes. Mass started taking a bit longer when Parish's decided revenues were higher with a full band.

In CCD, we kids all made a pact to run interference as much as possible to cut down on the post mass informal meet and greets between the pews and the cars. Pure agony; having to stand politely by while adults droned on about something totally inconsequential when emancipation was so near.