Posted on 03/28/2012 12:32:51 AM PDT by Kaslin
What if the atheists declared they were about to throw "the largest atheist event in world history" on a Saturday in Washington and few people showed up? Reason Rally organizer David Silverman estimated that "99 percent of all atheists are closeted." The closet must still be full, because they sure weren't in Washington.
The Washington Post story on Sunday guessed there were "several thousand" people in the intermittent rain. But Paul Fidalgo of the Center for Inquiry told the Post, "We have the numbers to be taken seriously. ... We're not just a tiny fringe group."
It's interesting that our secular, religion-mocking media mostly skipped over this rally as one steps around a ranting homeless person. The networks were missing, as were the Associated Press, The New York Times and others. Perhaps they didn't think an atheist protest this explicit was worth getting behind. Their kind of secular, religion-mocking rally was 2010's Jon Stewart-Stephen Colbert "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear."
The pre-rally publicity was too ridiculous to believe. At National Public Radio -- yes, they are interested -- Barbara Bradley Hagerty explained the rally was "not to tweak the faithful. It's to encourage closeted atheists to take heart." How NPR-thoughtful. Atheist blogger Hemant Mehta complained, "Every time you hear the word atheist in the media, you know, there's always an adjective before it. It's always angry atheist, militant atheist, staunch atheist. It's never happy, smiling atheist." There are also dumb atheists who don't know "happy" is also an adjective.
On Saturday morning, as the rain began to pour on the atheists, NPR weekend anchor Scott Simon added more blather from his DC studio: "Rally organizers say they don't want to mock religion. A lot of nonbelievers I know and hear from are eager for atheists to be seen as more than just scolds who point out absurdities and inconsistencies in religion or the kind of grumps who file lawsuits against shopping-mall Santa Clauses."
This from the man who cued up Christopher Hitchens to denounce Mother Teresa just after she died. Sadly for the atheist publicity team at NPR, reality came barging in. That lonely Post story explained that a Reason Rally attendee was confronting religious counter-protesters with a sign reading "So Many Christians, So Few Lions." This is also a T-shirt that atheists sell each other.
Bill Donohue of the Catholic League noted that hate also came from biologist Richard Dawkins at the podium. Dawkins insisted religious people must be "ridiculed with contempt." Dawkins advised the cheering crowd to ask Catholics, "Do you really believe that when a priest blesses a wafer, it turns into the body of Christ? Are you seriously saying that wine turns into blood? Mock them; ridicule them!"
But they won't "tweak the faithful."
You didn't have to wait for the rally to know it was going to be angry and militant. Their star speaker, Professor Dawkins, wrote for The Washington Post beforehand that people should not come if they weren't wise enough to crawl "from the swamp of primitive superstition and supernatural gullibility."
Or if they were idiotic religious conservatives who'd say, "I don't trust educated intellectuals, elitists who know more than I do. I'd prefer to vote for somebody like me, rather than somebody who is actually qualified to be president." He added, "What other than this mentality accounts for the popularity of Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum -- politicians who flaunt their ignorance as a vote-winning virtue?"
The media don't want the atheists and the Obama Democrats to be too closely aligned in the minds of voters -- even though atheist Congressman Pete Stark and Sen. Tom Harkin sent video messages.
The same media that regularly highlight nasty Tea Party signs and blamed the entire movement for them skipped the signs in the Reason Rally crowd. Donohue spotlighted a few. "Religion is Like a Penis," one sign read, "It's OK to have one ... But it is not OK to whip it out in public, shove it in my face, or tell me what to do because you have one..." A woman held out a sign telling Christians, Jews and Muslims to "Get Out of My Panties." It should not be shocking to report this woman was in no danger of sexual harassment.
Australian songwriter Tim Minchin thrilled the crowd with his jaunty piano ditty called "The Pope Song." The expurgated lyrics included: "I don't give a (F-bomb) if calling the pope a (MF-bomb) means ...You see I don't give a (F-bomb) what any other (MF-bomb) believes about Jesus and his (MF-bomb) mother." The entire song would be silenced by a seven-second delay.
Let's remember: atheists don't want to be seen as angry, militant scolds who can't be civil. Only NPR is foolish enough to bite.
Organized atheists are moonbats.
I hear the Westboro Baptist Church was going to make a counterdemonstration appearance. Any news on that?
The South Park guys nailed Richard Dawkins. “It’s not enough to be an atheist! You also have to be a d*ck about it!”
As an atheist. I can not understand others concern about religion and Christianty in general. A photo or wall hanging of the Ten commandments in a school or city hall does me no harm.
It’s not my business what people teach their children. This country has a deep Christian heratige that as far as I’m concerned has done far more good than harm.
Despite the fact I consider their faith nothing more than silly superstition. It has never harmed me. And I won’t worry about it till it does. Islam on the other hand needs to be erased, just as a public safety issue.
They should be thankfull....Revelation 16:21 - "And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent..."
I read somewhere that was roughly equivalent to a bowling ball.Millions of bowling ball sized hailstones falling out of the sky sounds like fun.
"Religion is Like a Penis," one sign read, "It's OK to have one ... But it is not OK to whip it out in public, shove it in my face, or tell me what to do because you have one..."
Unless you have some gangsta-rap playing in the background then it's just fine.
Sounds like religion-envy.
You were doing so well at defeating the atheist stereotype until this:
“I consider their faith nothing more than silly superstition.”
I consider your lack of faith and belief that we came into existence out of a pile of goo to be silly superstition. Insulting isn’t it? You really shouldn’t claim to be friendly to religion and in the same breath insult every believer you’re speaking about. Typical atheist.
Stupid idea. As if any politician is ever going to antagonize that many people this close to an election. Militant atheists are very strange people.
But that is what I personally beleive. Why should I hide it any more than you hide your faith? As far as it being “insulting” that is the problem of the reader. If what I wrote upsets someone so much. Then I would question their dedication to their faith.
Perhaps it is those Christions that can’t abide a challenge to their beliefs. That draw the anger of so many atheists.
A talent was about the weight a man could carry a long distance. So somewhere around 50 to 70 pounds.
Worse than bowling balls, even.
I stand corrected,cheers!
To be fair, it’s not just atheists.
Some Christians and Jews get their panties all twisted because Mormons hold proxy baptism ceremonies in their temples for dead people, including dead Christians and Jews.
I don’t get it. If the Mormons are right, maybe they’re doing something to help these people in the afterlife. If what they believe is not the truth, these ceremonies still aren’t hurting anyone, dead or alive. They’re remarkably silly rituals, IMO, but becoming upset about them seems even more silly.
As you say, the Christian roots of Western and modern civilization are a fact of history. You are welcome to believe we have moved above and beyond that primitive beginning, but don’t pretend the roots aren’t there.
That’s because everybody thinks their beleive is. Right! The problem comes when they start trying to force their views on others. Be they Christians, Jews Moonies or Athiests.
Quite agree.
Or when their beliefs lead them to commit acts against others. Such as jihadi attacks.
But the beliefs themselves or even their communication is not the problem. First Amendment and all that.
The talent may have varied in weight over time and by what it weighed (which makes all kinds of sense).
But it apparently may have sometimes referred to a weight as great as 200 pounds.
I consider all religions except Islam to be harmless fun. The exception being those offshoots that practice dangerous rites. But even then they are dangerous only to those stupid enough to become involved with them in the first place.
As they used to say in the Deep South, "That's mighty white of you, massa."
Nice to see the finely-honed intellect of the atheists is up to spelling the word "heratige". Are you saying the U.S. was founded on Zeus's wife? Or did she move on to the FSM?
See. Saying stupid things to anger others is just silly.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by with certain unalienable Rights,"
or
"and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of entitle them,"
don't quite have the same ring to them.
The Fwench tried a revolution without God.
See also A Tale of Two Cities or The Scarlet Pimpernel.
And the Communists of renown liked to model their revolutionary methodology on the Fwench.
Guess why?
Cheers!
Cheers!
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