Religulous
by Volker Weber
Comments
"... scary, isn't it ?" - Yes it really is scary, that people with such opinions are running around. :-(
Obviously acted out, but yeah, people are idiots. I think this is one of those times where you hear people saying the words out loud and it brings front and center the ridiculous things people spout off in online forums.
Also, there are two things brought to light here: the standard creationist rhetoric, and then the foolishness of extending athiesm to include moral bankruptcy. I certainly hope that people I know who believe in the former do not also agree with the latter. Put more bluntly, I hope we merely suffer from too many people being irrational, versus too many being insane.
"I know if I didn't have God's judgment to fear, I would have killed many, many times."
I LOL'd... and then cringed.
Yes, there are bigoted Christians out there (and the USA and Australia have their fair share of them) but they I've never met any who argue like that. The discussions about "I'm going to fuck a hooker" and "there's two gay men fucking in the bedroom" and "there's a Christian tied to a big wooden X in the street" don't sound like Christians talking.
I didn't hear one bible reference in there nor any mention of Jesus. Sounds like a bunch of atheists playing "Christian" roles and overacting in an attempt to discredit religion.
Yawn...
Graham, as the description of the video says:
All text taken directly from online Christian fundamentalist forums.
You can take any fundamentalist for any belief, and he will easily discredit the belief. Can be Christians, can be computers or software.
Find more gems at..
Covers a range of fundies.
Voker,
You say the text was taken from Fundamentalist Forums? Possibly it was... I don't use Fundamentalist Forums as a resource so I can't comment on that. I'll check out the link you provided. My question is whether these people speaking were Fundamentalist or just Atheists "quoting" Fundamentalist Forums.
If they were Fundamentalists then I am intrigued by the lack of Biblical references and the lack of reference to Jesus. If they were Atheists "quoting" materials taken (possibly out of context - possibly not) from Fundamentalist Forums then ROTFLMAO at their inane overacting.
I'm a Christian and I love a good debate with a knowledgeable Atheist - best way to review my own beliefs and keep my sense of reality sharp, but these guys are barely out of preschool with their understanding of Christianity and from their appearance I'm not sure they're even old enough to vote. I agree with your point about Fundamentalists discrediting their own belief.
/Graham
Graham, these guys are actors. The text they are speaking can be written by anybody of any age.
These are actors? Those guys came across as condescending know-it-alls but IIRC body language and tone of voice convey over 90% of a message with the actual words containing about 7% of the impact. So why should we watch a bunch of anti-Fundamentalist actors improvise their own interpretation of how to explain Fundamentalist beliefs and then based on that decide whether we agree with the Fundamentalist message?
The Notes community quite rightly gets its knickers in a twist when Microsoft reps tell clients that IBM is killing off Notes this/next year. Our response is that only IBM can speak for IBM. In the same way we should let the Fundies speak for themselves.
IMHO the use of actors meant the whole thing was disqualified as a debating topic and it was pathetic as entertainment. Why did you bother to put it up here? Your blog I guess - you can post what you like - but up till now I always read your posts because I respected your opinions (without always agreeing with you).
You just have me confused with what you were trying to achieve with that post.
Fundamentalists forums may have their fair share of non-fundamentalist trolls posing as over-the-top fundamentalists.
The actors weren't improvising, Graham, they were quoting, as Volker (and the video) indicated. Given the incredibly wide range of opinions expressed on 'teh internets' I find it more surprising that you think anyone had to make these things up. These quotes are an extreme example, but they're certainly not unbelievable.
Speaking as someone who has been an atheist (and also a pagan, an agnostic, a deist, and a Roman Catholic - currently a Unitarian Universalist, mostly because I can be any of the others and still be welcomed as a UU), I can tell you that I've had conversations with fundamentalist Christians where they said very similar things.
I have to say, when they raise the argument that atheists are doomed to moral bankruptcy because of their lack of faith, I usually laugh and move on. There's no point arguing with someone with so nebulous a grasp on reality. But I've absolutely heard that argument on several occasions. The idea that people who don't believe in God can't tell right from wrong is ridiculous, right? If lack of faith == (must equal) lack of morality, the 10% of the US (I don't have the same statistic for the rest of the world - can anyone quantify the percentage of unbelievers worldwide? Or in Europe?) that acknowledges their lack of faith would surely wreak havoc in society. After all, they'd all be sociopaths, wouldn't they? So this is provably laughable. And yet, it's not difficult at all to find Christians claiming exactly that. Why is such a claim acceptable? Saying anything remotely similar about other groups (All blacks are immoral? Jews are evil? Hindus are incapable of making moral judgments?) would be inconceivable. Or at least I certainly hope it would be. So why can people say these things about atheists without being universally condemned?
Now, these tend to be the extreme end of the extremely right-wing conservative fundamentalist movement, no question. I know many more fundamentalist Christians who find such claims just as silly as I do. And I know vastly more Christians in general who would be baffled by the very idea that anyone thinks that way. But these people exist, and I've personally argued with more than a few of them.
[Aside: I'm perpetually fascinated by the Christian persecution complex, as reflected in the scenario where the atheists all gather to kill the Christians. The mythical 'war on Christmas' is the classic example, but it's a general theme that is repeated often. Given that atheists are much more likely to suffer from persecution in the Christian-dominated western world (example: atheists cannot run for political office in America - in all electoral demographics, atheists are the group LEAST likely to be elected because Christians have convinced everyone that the godless are immoral), it's more than a bit odd, but it is a persistent Christian meme. ]
atheist (and also a pagan, an agnostic, a deist, and a Roman Catholic - currently a Unitarian Universalist
Wow!
I think if you want crazy people, the internet provides. They are quoting actual web sites, but I doubt very much it is a reflective as a whole and shouldn't be taken personally.
@Rob, It's extremely common for people who hold a privileged position to i) not recognize this fact, and ii) feel persecuted when that privilege is taken away. This is the case even when privilege is taken away by granting other rights that they have rather than removing rights from them.
It's like a kid who gets candy getting upset when another kid also gets some.
-Sigh- that should be "...granting others rights that they have..."
Rob said ..."And yet, it's not difficult at all to find Christians claiming exactly that. Why is such a claim acceptable?"
Rob, if a Christian claims something that is at odds with Christianity does that mean that Christianity is automatically redefined to be what that person claims it is? That is faulty logic. If I say... "I am a Muslim" and I also say "It is lawful to eat pork", does that mean that Muslims believe that it is lawful to eat pork? Of course not... it means that I am lying or that my understanding of Islam is wrong. In the same way it is wrong to blame Christianity for the doctrines of those who call themselves Christian but who advocate doctrines which are not Christian.
So you have a bunch of non-Christian actors paraphrasing quotes from people who don't follow Christian doctrines. What those people said was not Christian doctrine and given the way their speech flowed naturally I don't believe they were directly quoting from written material. But even if they were quoting verbatim from some blog posting somewhere all they are doing is showing that the original blog poster does not understand Christian doctrine.
Apart from proving that there is a large loony fringe attached to the edge of every belief system (including athiesm) I don't see the point of it.
@Graham - I thought I was pretty clear, but just to make it explicit - I don't blame Christianity for the behavior of the wackos in question. The irony of the "scary, isn't it?" line in the video is due to the sheer quantity of them, the fact that they are not publicly disowned by most other conservative Christians, and their membership in the dominant religion in the western world.
Saying that they are not reflecting Christian doctrine is a sweeping generalization that is not necessarily accurate, though - Christianity is a very large family of religions (it's confusing that evangelical/fundamentalist Christians have decided to refer to themselves as simply Christian with no qualifiers, because it leads those Christians to speak for Christianity as a whole - or to appear to do so) and *some* of the more conservative denominations are consistently in line with *some* of those statements. They aren't accurately reflecting *your* version of Christian doctrine. They don't reflect my family's version, either. But unless you're a Roman Catholic, the odds are that your version and my family's version aren't identical.
Finally had the time to watch it. Recommended reading
@Graham - there is no Christian doctrine that two Christians can agree upon.
Every believer in this faith (including you and I, who calls himself a Christian as well, but isn't offended by this clip as you appear to be) takes his own set of Christian beliefs and considers them to be "right".
Of course, the wackos take the wacked-out sample of Christian beliefs, which exist and are quite scary.
I have discussed with some of those, so I know their set of thinking. That was before the internet made it easier for weirdos to find a group of pals.
We had a "the Bible's written word is historic record" sect of Christian fundamentals in my home town and some of my friends went there.
They believed (among other things) that Manna exists - you see, it was edible parts of a comet that rained down during a close flyby to earth while the Israelites wandered the desert. And that Abraham and others turned so old in Biblical times because the atmosphere was still filled with the water that would pour down later when Noah was told to build a boat. Of course, they said, evolution is a lie and, they said, their view of Christianity was the correct one and they will go to heaven and others won't, especially not me who dared to snicker at their views.
This was a surprisingly large sect of people.
One can the Bible and Christian faith to justify a broad range of things, including (as we can learn from history) many nasty ones such as burning witches, setting up the inquisition, crusading into Arab countries, expelling Jewish people from the city, looting churches of the other variation of your own faith, or doing fatal things in the hope of becoming a martyr.
All these pasttimes were the things good Christians did in their time.
For some more recent examples, you can also use the same Bible and faith to justify killing an abortion doctor or telling your believers that using a condom is a sin.
