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The new gang of hyper-confident male atheists wants you to laugh at religion
http://nationalpost.com/news/the-new-gang-of-hyper-confident-male-atheists-just-want-you-to-laugh-at-religion ^ | May 25, 2018 | Joseph Brean

Posted on 05/25/2018 11:23:20 AM PDT by rickmichaels

The New Atheists were never a particularly funny bunch.

They were either, like Richard Dawkins, chippy materialists with a quasi-religious faith that science can offer a complete answer to any mystery worth contemplating. Or they were, like Christopher Hitchens, swaggering verbal stylists whose cleverness put a charming gloss on sentiments about believers that would otherwise sound like hate speech.

But there is another gang of hyper-confident male atheists for whom knee-slapping humour is front and centre in their atheist proselytizing, far more than science or intellectual debate.

These are the Comic Atheists, people like TV host Bill Maher, Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, and the standup comics Ricky Gervais and Marc Maron, all of whom are part of a broader movement to “destabilize and eliminate religion from the public sphere,” according to research presented at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences.

In his paper on these comedians, Chris Miller, a PhD student in religious studies at the University of Waterloo, uses the term “boundary maintenance” to describe a sort of social therapy by which human communities reassure themselves about their own beliefs by “describing another group’s world in the language of one’s own.” Thus are religious people painted not as the normal adherents of ancient traditions, but as “laughable and confused at best” and “manipulative or harmful at worst,” Miller said.

He references the sociological theory of Thomas Luckmann and Peter Berger that when human groups are threatened, they engage in either “nihilation” of the other group, by portraying them as barbaric or sub-human, or in softer “therapeutic” strategies to explain why this other group continues to exist.

(Excerpt) Read more at nationalpost.com ...


TOPICS: Religion; Society; TV/Movies
KEYWORDS: atheism; atheists
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1 posted on 05/25/2018 11:23:21 AM PDT by rickmichaels
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To: rickmichaels

Not believing in God is almost understandable.

But this deviant urge to attack believers is inexplicable.


2 posted on 05/25/2018 11:25:36 AM PDT by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either satire or opinion. Or both.)
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To: rickmichaels

Only a blind man denies God. I’d be laughing at THEM, but for the power they wield over feeble minds.


3 posted on 05/25/2018 11:25:41 AM PDT by alstewartfan ("Words with lightness thus endowed Formed melodies, I know not how." Al Stewart from "The Elf")
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To: rickmichaels

“The fool has said in his heart, “there is no God”.”


4 posted on 05/25/2018 11:28:42 AM PDT by beethovenfan (I always try to maximize my carbon footprint.)
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To: rickmichaels

Do you have to mock religion and blaspheme God in order to be “non-religious”? I don’t believe in the Easter Bunny, but I don’t negatively obsess over the idea of it, or viscously ridicule the children who do. There’s something desperate about the way atheists behave, as if they’re trying to convince themselves more than anyone else.


5 posted on 05/25/2018 11:31:37 AM PDT by Telepathic Intruder
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To: BenLurkin

Seems to be targeted at Christians. I dare them to do it to Muslims.


6 posted on 05/25/2018 11:32:40 AM PDT by dhs12345
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To: rickmichaels; All
“From a Marxist viewpoint, an atheistic mind is already three-fourths conquered.”

— The Naked Communist, chapter 12
100 years of this folly still makes it folly. The dog returns to its vomit, and the washed sow to wallowing in the mire; what’s new under the sun?
7 posted on 05/25/2018 11:33:51 AM PDT by Olog-hai ("No Republican, no matter how liberal, is going to woo a Democratic vote." -- Ronald Reagan, 1960)
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To: rickmichaels

Marxists everywhere.


8 posted on 05/25/2018 11:34:36 AM PDT by EagleUSA
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To: rickmichaels

Products of career mothers. No heart.


9 posted on 05/25/2018 11:34:43 AM PDT by donna (The California Sanctuary State is the latest method for trapping and trading slaves.)
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To: rickmichaels

Heh, some very close associates are very religious.
And ALL have degrees that these clowns could only dream of.
Oh, real degrees, not some marshmallow silly little wordplay exercise. You know, degrees that Dorkbama and his but-kissing journalist friends and actors couldn’t even spell.
Guess I choose to listen to the associates, not the marshmallows.
They can believe or not believe whatever they wish.
ISGAS. (I Scarcely Give A ........)


10 posted on 05/25/2018 11:38:03 AM PDT by Da Coyote
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To: Olog-hai

If religion is the source of all civic evil and atheism is the gateway to utopia, the USSR would have been a heaven on earth for no major nation ever made such an effort to eradicate belief as the Soviet Union.


11 posted on 05/25/2018 11:40:35 AM PDT by Colonel Kangaroo
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To: BenLurkin

The writer confuses arrogance for hyper-confidence. The listed comedians make their athiesism a huge part of their being, a material part of their essence. For example, Freddie Mercury didn’t make his sexuality a huge part of his being. Freddie is remembered for being a mammoth frontman with an awesome voice...who happened to be gay. In the case of these third-rate comedians, their popularity hinges on their athiesim. To wit: the South Park guys are also atheists but they aren’t in-your-face about it, and their show i10x funnier and wittier than Family Guy. Over time the hyper-losers will wither and die, about as popular as Paula Poundstone.


12 posted on 05/25/2018 11:42:52 AM PDT by DoodleBob
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To: Colonel Kangaroo

They even beat out France’s 1st Republic.


13 posted on 05/25/2018 11:46:10 AM PDT by Rurudyne (Standup Philosopher)
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To: rickmichaels

“Does quantum mechanics predict the existence of a spiritual “soul”? Testimonials from prominent physics researchers from institutions such as Cambridge University, Princeton University, and the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich claim that quantum mechanics predicts some version of “life after death.” They assert that a person may possess a body-soul duality that is an extension of the wave-particle duality of subatomic particles.”
https://www.outerplaces.com/science/item/4518-physicists-claim-that-consciousness-lives-in-quantum-state-after-death

I accept the following and he who laughs may laugh.
John 3
16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.


14 posted on 05/25/2018 11:50:50 AM PDT by Rock N Jones (1935)
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To: BenLurkin

Everyone has a religion to some degree. Atheists are usually rabid leftists. Liberalism is a religion.


15 posted on 05/25/2018 11:51:44 AM PDT by shanover (...To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.-S.Adams)
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To: rickmichaels

Yeah, those guys are as funny as an industrial accident.


16 posted on 05/25/2018 11:56:48 AM PDT by IronJack (A)
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To: BenLurkin

I’d argue that their hostility to God and subsequent hostility to believers is entirely consistent with their sinful nature. Romans 8:7 “The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so”. Jesus also told believers that the world would hate them because it hated Him first.

Also it’s the spirit of the age and the fruits of the negative side of the enlightenment emboldened further by the universal acceptance of evolution. It could also be the apostacy or great falling away that 2nd Thessalonians says must happen before the second coming and prior to the revealing of the man of sin (the antichrist).


17 posted on 05/25/2018 12:05:47 PM PDT by winslow
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To: Olog-hai

Olog-hai wrote:

“From a Marxist viewpoint, an atheistic mind is already three-fourths conquered.”

— The Naked Communist, chapter 12

I was not familiar with that quote, but it should ‘Go Viral’.


18 posted on 05/25/2018 12:08:02 PM PDT by heterosupremacist (Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God. - (Thomas Jefferson)
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To: rickmichaels

I think they need more field work to test their theories. Can I suggest they be dropped into an Islamic country where Sharia law rules?


19 posted on 05/25/2018 12:08:07 PM PDT by Lent
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To: rickmichaels

Hyper confidence is a sign of weakness. Humility and quietness are strength.


20 posted on 05/25/2018 12:09:16 PM PDT by lurk
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