I was struck by something this evening that I haven't thought a great deal about. I was struck by another sneaky lie by the theists (I like Hitchens' term for them). Picture the school child who has done something wrong and knows they've done something wrong. Quite often the guilty party will point a finger at another child and say, "But he did this awful thing..." it takes focus away from the guilty party and focuses it on a child that, perhaps, has done nothing. This is what the theists have been doing for quite some time and have done particularly well this week. This notion hit me as I was watching a video of Christopher Hitchens. He had been on a TV program with a particularly snotty host (Joe Scarborough - MSNBC of all places but he is Republican) who refused to let him answer the questions he'd been asked because Joe is clearly a Deluded-American. This in itself makes him a bad journalist (because journalism is never supposed to be about what the interviewer believes) but I digress. Hitchens was invited and Joe was rude to him. In any event, watching Christopher Hitchens throughout the years gave me a particular respect for him. He never backed down from a fight. He didn't allow anybody to get away with anything. His idea was that just because someone had "faith" didn't automatically entitle them to respect. He also wouldn't allow these people to disrespect him because he was rational (an atheist). He eventually made Joe look like an idiot and rightly so.
My "lightbulb" moment happened. All week (and for years actually) American theists have been falsely claiming a war on Christianity, when, in fact, there is no such war. It's like the school kid above. The war is on atheism! But they are pointing their fingers at us and whoosh... the attention is suddenly on atheists. We are supposedly the bad ones attacking religion when they are the ones attacking our constitutional right to NOT be bombarded with irrational nonsense 24/7.
Richard Dawkins is brilliant but he is soft spoken and is a target for religious bullies for this reason. He reads more before breakfast than the religious idiots, he argued with this week, read in a year. The study that was done by Dawkins was a questionnaire that clearly pointed out that most people who call themselves Christian on the census, know virtually nothing about Christianity. I'm an atheist and I know more about what is in the bible than most Christians. So the archbishop (or whoever the hell the bully was) asked him, totally off guard what the entire (lengthy) title was of Darwin's book. He stumbled with his words because it caught him off guard and after the 13 year old school girl giggles passed from the obviously biased room, some moron claimed Dawkins didn't know the title of his "bible".
Well, first of all, bullies at large, atheists don't have a bible. Educated people read lots of books (not just one that they base EVERYTHING on) and so it's very likely that one might momentarily forget a lengthy book title. One thing I am certain of, is that Dawkins has read the content of 'The Origin of Species' (and I can't remember the full title either) and knows what's in it and has studied plenty of other books on biology and has authored a few himself. I quite often have to look up the title of a book I've read or sometimes even an author's name because I read a lot! And NOTHING I read is my "bible" because I have no bible. The books in the bible have longer titles too but we all call them by their short names.
Then the moronic Janet Daley, author of the Telegraph article claimed Dawkins couldn't answer her about why it's wrong to hurt people. She's lying. Even I know the "evidence" for that "belief" is in ours brains, where there is a "survival of the species" mechanism which causes us to feel empathy for others. We have human emotions that come from the brain which evolved in us to protect our young and protect our tribe members from predators. Dawkins is much smarter than I am and would have given that answer had that actually been the question asked.
Furthermore, as Dailey said in her lame defense of her position, asking "why" is human nature. We're intelligent, curious animals. But just because we are curious and want to know "why" doesn't mean we should believe nonsense made up by other humans. It also doesn't mean there is actually an answer to that question. Why are lilies so beautiful? Because they are a happy accident of nature. I don't know why flowers are so pretty and neither does anyone else. It's been argued repeatedly that the universe is so magnificent and everything functions as if by design. There must be a designer. It can't all be accidental. My answer is "yes it can". There is no reason why it can't. It all just happened. Why is that so hard for humans to accept. It makes more sense than a magic space daddy that was made up by flat Earth desert dwellers.
So back off theists! The war is on those of us who use our brains for thinking and not for "blind faith". There is no war on Christianity. There is a war on atheism - rational thinkers!
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