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.

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.