I take offense!

I take offense at everyone taking offense at everything.  Let's not look the other way, 'offense' is put on a pedestal in society.  A pedestal which it does not deserve.  This phenomenon hasn't gone unnoticed either.  There are a few groups who use the word 'offense' to get the societal knee-jerk reaction of prohibition.

Of particular note in this practice is the feminist movement, which at this point has the grand role of being whiny. A lot of people have heard of Rebecca Watson and her elevator encounter, fondly termed 'elevatorgate'.  In elevatorgate, Watson had been having drinks with some people at a hotel bar.  As she was leaving for the night, one of the men she had been drinking with stepped into the elevator with her and told her that he found her interesting and would like to talk more over coffee in his hotel room.  As those of you who are familiar with the incident know, Watson proceeded to berate the man on her YouTube channel, SkepChick.  That case became more famous than it had any reason to.  Why all the fuss?  Watson felt like the man was making a move on her and was offended by it.  Anita Sarkeesian, another YouTuber who operates under the moniker FeministFrequency, has taken offense to the role of women in some video games.  Again, the offense gets a lot more recognition than it deserves.

Also of note in the practice of manipulating the way in which offense is perceived is the religious community.  The religious are offended by homosexual marriage, so instead of not marrying the same gender, they attempt to both lobby and legislate against it.  This serves no functional purpose but to interfere in other people's individual lives with no benefit to society.  The religious are opposed to stem cell research, clinging to the notion that the evil scientists farm babies to harvest stem cells from.  That actual argument is better saved for another post.  Most stem cells are found in discarded umbilical cords and more recently, urine.  Stem cell research has the potential to increase cancer survival rates by increasing the amount of treatment that can be administered.  Stem cell research has been banned essentially since it's advent due mostly to the pressure of influential religious groups.  In this instance, offense impedes a benefit to society.

Only recently, this incident occurred.  Adria Richards effectively destroyed a man's reputation and career on the basis of what may or may not be at least in part a misunderstanding.  In the least generous light to the men making these jokes, the jokes were between two people, not meant to be heard by anyone else.  Unnecessary offense has serious repercussions.

In short, offense should not be such a feared thing.  Sure, it's also in poor taste to go out and be unnecessarily offensive.  I know that if this post is read by the wrong people, it will offend them.  I'm perfectly fine with offending people who don't agree as long as I'm offending their opinions, not their persons.  As long as I'm offending their ideas.  I'll never back down from being honest about a civil opinion just out of fear that someone who disagrees might get their panties in a knot about people disagreeing with them.  It offends me how people are so easily offended and more yet, how everyone else tries to skirt around offense in general.

The persecution of Christians

I went to church and other Christian events.  The idea that Christians are persecuted in America is alive and well.  Look at how right they are too.

It's illegal for a Christian to hold public office in 6 states.
Even where it is legal, declaring one's self a Christian is political suicide.
There are no/extremely few overtly Christian television or radio channels/programs.
Being a Christian can ostracize an individual from the other 90+% of society.
People are calling for all Christians to leave America.
There has never been an overtly Christian president.
Christians regularly get kicked out of their homes for their religion.
Christians get death threats regularly for nothing but their belief.
Christians are the least trusted group in America.
There are people out to blacklist all Christian-owned companies.
"Christians...should not be considered citizens"

See all that persecution?   Actually...replace Christian with secularist/atheist in each of those.

We live in a society where being a theist and more specifically a Christian is the norm and accepted default.  I'm sorry that your end times pity party doesn't really play out, but this is reality.  Religious privilege is alive and well.  A legislation can make it to the house which would revoke the rights of any group on a theistic basis.  This isn't a new thing.  For as long as history can remember, people have been killing, torturing and invading each other based on differences of religion.  If humans are to progress as a race, we must abolish this nonsense.  Not abolish it with the sword, but with science, reason and evidence.  There will always be some people too into their beliefs to let go of them even long enough to take a critical look at them.  These people must be tolerated willingly, but eventually we can hope that their influence will diminish.

Cultural idiots

I only partly feel comfortable with calling the religious stupid.  That in turn is only partly due to the fact that I was religious.  I prefer not to walk around insulting myself in any sincerity, and I know I didn't get smarter as I became more secular.  Religiosity in America and other parts of the world is cultural.  A lot (I'd be alright with saying a majority) of people believe without properly understanding the foundation of their faith.  That can be demonstrated by most religious individuals one is likely to encounter on a day-to-day basis.  Many of the religious are also properly ignorant of basic science and replace an argument against a scientific principle with a remark based on their personal incredulity.  Philosophy isn't a strong suit with the typical theist or spiritualist, this also can be observed easily when idiotic questions about the evolutionary origin of morality come up.
I do feel comfortable with calling some individual theists idiots if they fit the criteria (and a disproportionate number do), but not simply on account of their religiosity.  I feel comfortable calling the theist ignorant, perhaps willfully so.  As the title implies however, there are many who fall into either of the significant categories I've mentioned.  These are the people who are taught from day one that a belief in some god is the pinnacle of their advancement as a human.  I object strongly to that, as the reader may or may not have discovered.  Frequently in such cases, critical thought is discouraged*.  The individual may be brainwashed all too literally into their belief**.  I hazard anyone who is eager to call the believer an idiot merely for their belief to think about everything that goes into keeping a religion alive.
Here's how it worked for me.  I was born into a predominantly Christian family.  From the time I exited the birth canal (if they waited that long), I was barraged with the baptist and young-earth mantra.  I soon picked up on it and got saved when I was 3 years old at a VBS.  I evidently don't remember much between then and when I was baptized at 5, a mistake which I may undo for personal and statistical reasons.  For some reason my parents saw fit to teach critical thinking along with religion, perhaps in their naivety suspecting that I'd forever hold religion above criticism.  I did the exact opposite, holding the opinion that keeping an idea from criticism is an insult to it's integrity.  Of course I did so with the express preconception that my particular brand of theism would stand where others so reliably fell.  I was ignorant...maybe a bit idiotic.  At any rate, I took on the track of 2 years to dismantle the wall of brainwash-fueled ignorance.  I'm now 17, going on 18 and an anti-theist.  I was very ignorant, but intellect is the capacity rather than the knowledge.

The ten words I often find myself repeating...

     ...an unhealthy number of times per day.  I repeat these words listening to apologists as I flatten my skull with a unique combination of face-other collisions including palm, desk, keyboard and the occasional cat which neither of us appreciate.  I find the phrase disappointingly frequently inaccurate though and the more times this occurs, my faith in the human race diminishes almost exponentially.  The phrase, of course, is "That's gotta be a gag, nobody is that fucking stupid.".  I'll list a few names which will guarantee at least one utterance of this phrase per time they are encountered in any media.

1. Hovind, Eric and Kent
2. Craig, William
3. Ham, Ken
4. Sharpton, Al

     There are obviously more, but listing each and every apologist who insists on dragging the bloodied and mangled corpses of their horrendously outdated, outperformed and generally thrown out arguments out (is the word losing meaning yet?) would take years. Honestly it would tire me out.  You know I had to use it one more time.
     I utter that phrase when I'm reading the ridiculous ICR Science updates which I find myself bombarded with by well-meaning and concerned family members.  When I go to a Christian website of any flag, you can bet bank that these ten words surfaced.

Creation and the fall: Dogmatism at it's finest

The first Bible story is about God speaking the world into existence.  Part of that story is how the world was ruined.  So let us skip the creation itself.  God has put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden.  Why did God put the tree there?  Good question, I have no answer.  Somehow, the devil in the form of a serpent was also in the garden.  Why, with all of the earth and better yet, with all the universe to bind the devil in did he pick this planet in that garden?  Another question without an answer.  

So when we assume all of this, it is then obvious that evil did not come into the world when Adam and Eve ate the fruit, but when the epitome of evil arrived here.  Shouldn't it be then that the world was tainted?

God commanded Adam and Eve, who at this point have no clue about good and evil to follow a command.  This one command, don't eat that fruit...  don't even touch it...  I'd prefer you don't even look at it...  on second thought, don't even think about it.  Adam and Eve, being innocent and curious creatures naturally gravitated toward the fruit.

The only thing which stands between them and the fruit is God's threat.  One which seems unfounded without an innate sense of morality.  God never told them that to eat the fruit is immoral, and if he did they'd need to have a foundational knowledge of morality.  That defeats the purpose.

So with a dogmatic command to heed, the pair were blissfully ignorant of any moral issue.  The serpent presumably knew this and exploited it to it's fullest.  He made a counter-offer to God's threat and Adam and Eve took it.  They ate the fruit, breaking only an unfounded command.  After that all hell (all too literally) broke loose on the earth and the omnescient God who created and planned it all was dismayed.

I do have to jump on this bandwagon

I do certainly want you to listen to the interesting part of this the most...  But if you spend too much time listening to the motorcycle, you won't catch the absurdity here...

1:50 Ok, sounds good.  Seriously though, if my position is invalid I would want to know so I could adapt it.  Anyway let's get to this ownage here, this intellectual rape of atheism.

Yaddah yaddah....

2:58 The atheists were going ballistic because of how atheism contradicts itself?  Let's see...

It is possible that God exists, it's also possible that fairies exist.  Please, make your point shock.

People who assume that no-way-no-how is there a god are perhaps closed-minded, but this isn't a contradiction.

Most rational people will concede that there is the possibility of pretty much anything, however remote.  The term tooth-fairy-agnostic is what most rational atheists know themselves as.  The outright rejection of any idea is irrational, but again, not a contradiction.

It's not an Achilles heel, it's a disagreement.

Not believing in a god and believing there is certainly no god are not mutually exclusive.  I could not believe in god and adamantly believe that there certainly is no god, but I could not think highly of myself for doing so.

4:24 That's a random point.  Christians need to believe in God to be Christians, so?

5:20 Here we go again...

If the atheist states affirmatively and certainly that there is no supernatural, shock at least has arrogance and irrationality to use again him/her.

If the atheist states that a god is possible, they have lost no ground.  They'd no be arguing against themselves, I return to fairies.  Fairies are possible, yet I'd argue against anyone that they don't exist.  Why?  Lack of evidence.  I do not contradict myself in saying that.

It doesn't embarrass me to say that a god or gods are possible.  Science is always trying to learn, thus we cannot dismiss something out of sheer improbability.  I ask the reader, can you imagine all of the technology we would not currently have were we to have dismissed it as impossible due to lack of knowledge?  Everything!  Everything would have been ignored.  That's the argument I hear from the other side of the argument, ignorance seems key.

7:09-9:58 Maybe this one will be good?

Sure, parts of the Bible are "true"...  Some of the social, geographical observations line up and the like...  I could write a book with true parts too, but in it's whole it could still be crazy.  Oh no!  He's got me now!

"Then you could say"Which parts of it [the Bible] are not true?" and you could expand it." So admitting that Israel is a real country and place and that the other nations in the Bible existed is tantamount to accepting it's entirety?  That's the epitome of logical FAIL.

There's actually no proof that Jesus ever did exist, nor any proof beyond that that he was divine (other than the Bible).  So you got him...how?  Ok, Lord of the Rings time.  Gandalf is real folks!  Because PARTS of the Lord of the Rings are true...  Sword fighting, ranged weaponry, mining industry...  It must all be real!  Thanks, shock for clearing that up.

I couldn't hope to defend that atheists never lie, but that doesn't prove shit about atheism being full of "crapola"(see what I did there).  In the same fashion, Christians lie.  Does that inherently make Christianity full of crap?  Well...no, that specifically doesn't.

10:00-12:18 Objective moral values...  Like the (original) ten commandments, half of which (besides the insecure desert deity ones at the beginning) God either broke or commanded their breaking?  Let's take a look.

Honor thou parents...or be stoned. (Deut 21:18-21)
Well in Luke 12:53 "The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law."

Thou shalt not kill...unless you're god, then genocide is all in a day's work (old testament).

Thou shalt not FUCK unless thou hast the paperwork for it.
Adam and Eve couldn't have been married, but we can let that slide.  How about when God tells the Israelite army that they can rape the virgins of the Midianites. Numbers 31:18 "But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves."

Thou shalt not take shit which is not thine...unless you're God.
Looting villages, stealing their women, livestock and possessions.

Thou shalt nor bear false witness against thy neighbor.
God telling Moses to lie to Pharaoh counts I assume?  Exodus 3:17&18

Thou shalt not WANT shit which is not thine.
So the "promised land" inhabited by several other tribes?  Hmm...

Anyway, back to objective morality.

I personally don't know if there is objective morality.  I'm inclined to say no, the needs of the many (without special circumstances) outweigh the needs of the one/few.  I won't go so far as to say that the ends justify the means, because it's too general.  I think morality is a societal construct and is neither absolute nor entirely fluid.  Some things are just wrong, but I also think that it is possible to do the wrong thing for the right reason.  By saying that I don't mean to contradict myself, more to state an "All is well what ends well" sort of mentality.  And my definition of "ends well" is rather firm.

I like the sneer with which shock says "He's like a socialist I guess."  Not appealing to any particular group there, are we...Oh, wait that's a direct appeal to the Christian right!

The flaw with the starving family argument here is that there would be an impact.  Stealing money would impact the boss and make HIS family starve.  Don't want to go slippery slope all the way here, but there could be an effect.  Theft is normally wrong.  Let's say though that a catastrophe has occurred and there are limited supplies of food for a population.  One person is hoarding those supplies and effectively not letting anyone else have any.  I think it would be morally acceptable to steal enough food to make it by on, assuming the one person also has enough.  I think that socialism (sneer) would be the best way to run that.

12:18 Suffering in the world is a problem for the theist, but it seems in the video tied in with objective morality more than I can think it is in practice.

"Premise 1: If God existed...then we would not see suffering in the world.

Premise 2: There is suffering.

The conclusion they try to make is therefore God doesn't exist."

The way that goes is more like this...

Premise 1: If God were omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and omni-benevolent, there would be no suffering in the world.

Premise 2: There is suffering in the world.

Conclusion: God is not omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and omni-benevolent.

Conclusion 2: Since the Christian God has to be all of these things, we can reasonably rule him out.

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I am starting to think that shockofgod is the best person I've encountered at setting up straw men.  He does it so fast and easily that it's tempting to pass right over them and accept his conclusion.

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You're going to bring Job up, really?  That was a bet.  God and the devil made a bet and Job's stuff was the collateral damage.  That is not a kind or just thing to do.

I'll just drag through this part...  Actually, we look at death as a disease.  One that may eventually be cured or put off anyway.  There's another straw man.

I live a life with purpose, without God.  My purpose is to be intellectual.  I'd rather have a lifespan of knowledge now than an eternity of kissing God's holy ass.  If the first option is unavailable, as shock demonstrates nicely...the second may be worth while anyway.  That's for a later post though.

The purpose of atheism is to tell "you" that "you" have no purpose?  On the contrary!  It's to be truthful and intellectually honest, to discover.  There's yet another straw man.