Information Kills Religion may they be oppressed unendinglydie in their misery without the pity of anyone Religion poisons everything William A Zingrone The Arrogance of Religious Thought ID: 166996
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THE ARROGANCE of RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
Information Kills Religion“..may they be oppressed unendingly…die in their misery without the pity of anyone” “Religion poisons everything”William A. ZingroneSlide2
The Arrogance of Religious Thought
The thesis of this talk:There exists an invidious, pervasive, destructive, unquestioned and wholly undeserved respect and free pass given to religious thinking and ideas. 2. We should continue to expose the absurdities and cruelties of religious thought and accelerate the loosening of religion’s grip on our daily lives. INFORMATION KILLS RELIGIONSlide3
Religious Arrogance
DivisivenessMisogyny and HomophobiaMoralizingXian PropagandaDenial of ScienceChild IndoctrinationSlide4
Divisiveness
NIU 2006 Atheists, Agnostics, Freethinkers“You’re not a real Xian”Any other discourse, NFW!Islamic and Xian Sectarian violence: Middle East bombings now, No. Ireland:10,000 in 30 yrs. (1969-1998) 330/yr.Slide5
“Get Out….!”
“Reverend” Dennis Terry, LA Baptist churchhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2emBxDOY7gChristianity is the “Religion of Love”???“Nice Shot”Slide6
Back to NIU
CRU: Crusade for Christ, rival to the XA’s on campus down here.Female member: dynamic, committed, intelligent, running for president and they all liked her and wanted her for president BUT1 Timothy 2:11-12 “women not to teach, nor authority over a man, learn and be in silence”Slide7
Misogyny and Your DB of a neighbor
“Hey, I wrote this letter to my cousin Timmy, Wanna read
it?” “ Women cant’ be teachers, or supervisors, its against god’s law, and they shouldn’t talk much at all really, just listen in silence, oh yeah and like no jewelry either and keep their hair in a little 19
th
century bun and only prairie dresses,
gotta
have those sleeves you know, bare arms are really slutty…”
Would you call him a “Saint
”?
But if “Saint” Paul said it
(1Timothy:2)
…Oh, well that’s different, we will revere it for centuries, ponder it’s significance, perform nuanced hermeneutics on it
…best part is, Paul didn’t write it. They have acknowledged that for decades, did anybody amend the Bible?Slide8
What if your neighbor…?
in the midst of conversation: 1. “you know condoms not only don’t prevent AIDS, but actually help spread it..”2. “yeah , so my coworker disagreed with me, whether there were 3 completely separate ways to turn the presses on, or there was just 1 way with 3 variations,… so I had him beheaded…”
3. “ you know those Jews they shouldn’t be allowed to preach, and rabbis oughta be executed if they do and we oughta burn their filthy evil slut synagogues to the ground….”
4. “ oh, I almost forgot, homosexuals really should die for doing each other…
Fersure
, such things are worthy of death” Slide9
Moralizing
“Formulate universal principles and punish those who don’t conform…maintain purity and remove contamination of a divine essence” Slide10
Xian Propaganda: let’s just make stuff up (Theology)
So your neighbor weighs in on some obscure region of the world, some really remote place that he sounds like he knows something about, after expounding about it for some minutes in great detail: terrain, climate, flora and fauna, inhabitants, etc., in a fascinating plausible, coherent narrative, you ask:Have you ever been there? “Nope”… Oh…So you’ve read a great deal about it? “A little”… Oh, from like explorers or anthropologists, biologists who have been there? “Nope”….So, from just someone who has visited there? “No, No-ones ever been there…” What? “Yeah, but a lot of people have thought about it a lot, and so have I, and I read some of their books and some Scripture about it so I wrote a whole book on it.”.Slide11
One Hell of a Story
WTF??? An Amazon search will get you over 30,000 titles on Hell alone!!! which may not include all the multitude of theological works that may also have weighed in on the subject over the centuries….tens of thousands more…ALL as utterly speculative as your neighbor’s musings…THERE IS NO DATA. THERE IS NOTHING TO TALK ABOUTSlide12
Rob Bell and Hell
FB exchange with former Baptist, liberal Xian over Rob Bell’s speculations on HellEvangelicals took him to task for skirting around “universalism” i.e., everybody gets into heaven, nobody really burns cuz Bell’s God is such a nice guy….Bell’s book and 1,000’s on Hell, know no more about Hell than you or I!THERE IS NO DATA, no-ones ever been there and back, pure speculation. Absurd!!Slide13
The Denial of Science
“Science is always changing…”“Science gets it wrong again…”“Science can’t answer ultimate questions…”Slide14
Knowledge that isn’t going away
www.scaleoftheuniverse.comThe amount and complexity of the knowledge we have earned in the last 350 years about the world we find ourselves in is at once staggering and breathtakingly inspiring. And 99.9999999..% of it isn’t “wrong” Tree of Life: http://www.itol.embl.de/index.shtmlSlide15
Two Big Books
The Bible:761 pages: (582 OT, 179 NT) 66 books, 31,000 verses.Whole chapters of useless dietary and ritual laws, incorrect myths, pages upon pages of animal sacrifice rules, fanciful genealogies and histories, conquests, slavery, misogyny, genocides; much that we have already discarded as untrue, cruel or both. vs.
HBCP: 2,287 pages full of verified, replicated true data about the world that’s not going away, billions of facts, no myth, no propaganda. And that’s just 2 domains worth!Slide16
Science is Universal
Sam Harris: “We all generate electricity the same.”No group of chemists claim: “We just don’t believe in electrons, we interpret chemical scripture differently.”No First Free Congregational Reformed Physicists with their own interpretations of Newton and Einstein: No F = mb, E =mc3 Slide17
One Science Fits All
There is no: Muslim ChemistryJewish BiologyHindu PsychologyChristian PhysicsBuddhist MathematicsJerry Coyne: Each religion doing physics comes to the same data and conclusions, doing religion they come to different conclusions.All science works for all humans on the planet.Slide18
Child Indoctrination
Ehrman, Barker, Loftus, DeWitt, countless others…Youth ministryJesuits “Give me the boy, I’ll give you the…”Cognitively immature, emotionally vulnerable“Frontal lobes of a gerbil”Buddhist monk at MSUThe madrass, monastery, VBS, catechismGuilt, the “power of prayer”Until Age 18-21: can’t vote, lease, rent, drink, smoke, contract, medical treatment, drive, tattoos, military recruiting, consent, marry… Slide19
Information Kills Religion!
The dialogue is everywhere, daily!! Newspapers, magazines, the Net, classrooms, secular groups, even religious groups, comedy…..1960’s: Lenny Bruce 1980’s: George Carlin2010’s: Bill Maher, Louis CK, Ricky Gervais, Billy Connolloy, Jim Jeffries…Slide20
Unprecedented Information Access
Rights Revolution of the past 5 decades:Electronics/Information revolution: “…TV, transistor radio, cable, satellite, long-distance telephones, photocopiers, fax machines, cell phones, txt msg., the Internet, Web video.”Add social media, tweet, tumblr, reddit, blogging, etc.Exponential Info transfer increase…and it’s accelerating!Consciousness raising: Civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, Secular rights (FFRF, SCA, SSA, etc.).African Amer. Pres. commemorates the ‘63 March on Wash.
Alan Turing chemically castrated in UK 1952 Atheists? Madelyn Murray O’Hair, Kruschev, Mao….EVIL!Slide21
“Times they are a-changing…”
Look how far we have come in less than a decade:Sam Harris’ End of Faith (2004)19% “Nones”Ridicule of Republican gaffes1958-2012 Gallup Poll 18-54% Atheism OK for public office Weed legalizationGay marriage progressGive us a decade or two, the
religionists had a 2,000 year head start2013 American Atheists Convention-” How can we help you?”… In TEXAS!!!Slide22
The End of Religion, Cant happen?
“An integral part of culture”“Built into our human nature”“One of man’s unchangeable needs”“We will never get rid of religion”Slide23
NOT SOSlide24
Egyptian
Religion, Egyptian Myth…. as integral a part of daily culture as devout Islamism or Mormonism, ensconced in the Pyramid Texts and Egyptian Book of the Dead Reigned for over 3,000 years!!! Nearly twice as long as Xianity or Islam…!!! AND IT IS GONE!!! (kaput, toast, meat, vapor, history,
disappear-o)Slavery…GONE!Slide25
Unlikely Allies
Even the Evangelicals are on the path!! Rachel Held Evans blog and 8/13 CNN article: “Why Millennials are Leaving the Church” 10,000 comments and counting!!! Francis Collins and his BioLogos website: Adam and Eve vs. modern genetics EVEN
Orthodox Jewish women: Nili Phillip, rocks thrown at her: Eggs, bags of feces at little girls…at least it wasn’t acid…Slide26
D.O.N.E
“Defenders of the New Enlightenment”We need to reframe the discussionThe Xians are geniuses at marketing and have branded us “The New Atheists” "The New Enlightenment is a Movement. Its goal is to change society into a more free and compassionate place. Its method is to empower people to use reason for their own good."Slide27
Unbelieving Scum
What unites us all:Reason and ToleranceAtheists, agnostics, non-theists, pagans, deists, freethinkers: non-believers of all stripes rally ‘round knowledge, verifiable data and theory, and tolerance of others: embracing normal human inquiry and empathy…this we all share and is our starting point! Slide28
We are more united than we think
Thnx! Jerry DeWitt: “Skepticism is my nature, Freethought is my method, Agnosticism is my conclusion, Atheism is my opinion, And Humanism is my motivation” . That’s Us! Slide29
Son of D.O.N.E.!
stridere – “to make a harsh noise” “an insistent and discordant noise” “command attention by loud or obtrusive quality”We should be loud, angry, outraged!!!Make a louder noise and more often, turn up the volume and the heat!!!Defend the New Enlightenment by going on offenseSlide30
Dispatches from the New Enlightenment
wearedone.orga blog dedicated to exposing the daily absurdities of religion worldwide and to the advance of science and secularism to improve the well being of all humans.Defenders of the New Enlightenment strive to live their lives by reason and tolerance informed by data and theory driven knowledge.“there can be no contentment but in proceeding” -Albert CamusSlide31
References
Barker, D. (2008). Godless. Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press.Bell, R. (2011). Love Wins. New York: Harper Collins.Brunsman
, A. (2005, December 5).Retrieved from http://www.secular students.orgDeWitt, J. (2013). Hope after faith. Boston, MA: De Capo Press.
Ehrman
, B (2007).
Misquoting Jesus.
New York, NY: Harper One.
Evans, R.H. (2010).
Evolving in monkey town,
Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
Faircloth, S. (2012).
Attack of the theocrats.
Charlottesville, VA: Pitchstone Publishing.
Ferris, T. (2010).
The science of liberty.
New York, NY: Harper Collins.
Harris
, S. (2004).
The end of
faith.
Luther, M. (1543).
On the Jews and their
lies
Muscato
, D. (2013, 3
rd
quarter). Fifty years of reason: Celebrated in Austin Texas.
American Atheist, 51
(3), 5.
Niose
, D. (2012).
Nonbeliever Nation: The Rise of Secular Americans.
New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan.
rachelheldevans.com
They are Orthodox, hear them roar, New Republic 8/19/2013
Zuckerman, P. (2010).
Society without god.
New York, NY: NYU Press.Slide32
INFORMATION KILLS RELIGION
“One Species, One Tribe” end religion now