Christmas Wars: The battle of the fundamentalists

I hate this sign. First off, I don’t understand the need to spew your message over others in the form of advertising. I don’t watch TV mainly because of the advertising, I don’t accept the invitations to have advertising on my YouTube channel. That said, what I don’t like about it is the bold-faced assertion that people who are looking upon this somehow know that Christmas is a myth. This is as close to calling them a liar that you can get without actually saying it. No, they don’t know it’s a myth, they sincerely believe in it.

There is type of person, or maybe a type of thinking that we all go through but maybe grow out of. This mentality leads one to believe a set of things for various reasons and to assume that when someone disagrees with them, then it because that is like they are, and has also come to the same conclusions on life but acts against them due to personal flaws such as greed, envy, etc.

In essence, it is an example of projection. The person thinks that all people must think like they do, that they have identified right and must have taken active measures to move from it to wrong. The projection comes from the projection of the life steps that the projector has gone through onto the person they disagree with. However in reality, we all have had different life experiences that inform the decisions we have made, we also have differing levels of wisdom which is the most important of all. What is important to know, is that we generally all believe the things we say we believe. A person who denies this, or acts like he denies this, is so foolish in his understanding of the human animal that he can almost be written out of serious consideration altogether.

P.Z. Myers is one such person. My favourite smart fool on the entire web. In a post entitled “Get over yourselves, timid atheists”, he castigates an author of a Jezebel post who criticises the advert. So he is in favour of the advert, bowl me over. So when a direct mirror image of the advert appears, an advert which says “You Know It's Real: This Season Celebrate Jesus” appears. Then a consistent person, he has this to say:

The pro-superstition sign says, "You Know It's Real: This Season Celebrate Jesus". Isn't that sweet? It's just like the religious side to proclaim a falsehood. Anyway, they're welcome to buy the ad space. The real winners here are the commercial enterprises marketing billboards and selling, selling, selling…and when you get right down to it, isn't that what Christmas is really all about?

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/12/the_war_on_christmas_escalates.php

Everyone can see a hypocrite except the hypocrite himself. Everyone can see a fundamentalist except the fundamentalist himself. If it is a falsehood to say we know it is real then it is just as much of a falsehood to say we know it is false. Atheists like Myers scoff at the “fundamentalist atheist” claim but they don’t know what it means. It’s in reference to tactics and modes of thinking that one undertakes as a part of a group. As much as Myers may hate Bill Donohue, they are peas in a pod.

Posted under: Religion, Victim Complex
Posted on: Monday, December 06, 2010 12:04 AM
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Comments

  1. Posted by: TDOM on 12/6/2010 10:58 AM
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    I understand why religious folks like to meet and get together to "rejoice" in their religion. It helps to reinforce their faith and it helps their churches to retain members and maintain the income those members provide. I also understand the need to recruit more members. Not only do they believe their God commands it, but it also results in more income for the church. More power to 'em. It's usually quite satisfying to meet and hang out with people who believe in the same things you do.

    What I've never really understood is why athiests need to meet and prosthelytize. Do they need to reinforce their disbelief in god? If they don't share this disbelief will they be susceptible to becoming believers? And why the advertisements? Where does the commandment to recruit new atheists come from?

    Religious types have a lot to share. They have a lot of dogma and doctrine and plenty of activities centered around the worship of the god (or goddess) of their choice. I can't really imagine how athiests inspire each other to more fervent atheism. wouldn't a written doctrine or ritual be rather... well unathiestic?

    I imagine a typical meeting would go something like this:
    Atheist #1: I don't belive in god.
    Atheist #2: I don't either.
    Atheist #3: Neither do I.
    Remaining Atheists: We don't either.
    Atheist leader: Meeting adjourned.
    Atheist #1 to Atheist leader on their way out the door: Thank you. I was truly inspired. I am now much stronger in my disbelief.
    Atheist leader: Don't forget to leave a contribution on the way out.
    Atheist #2: Of course, we must feed those starving African children and give them nothing to believe in.

    I think such a meeting would be infinitely superior to a hellfire and brimstone sermon condemning me to an eternity in hell for not submitting to the authority of the god who loves me. But what do I know?

    TDOM
  2. Posted by: Ray on 12/7/2010 12:12 AM
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    I have a very strong feeling that if it were a picture of the Qu'ran or Muhammad, these same people would decry it as an attack on Muslim beliefs. Gotta love double standards.
  3. Posted by: Mark on 12/8/2010 12:36 AM
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    I guess what annoys me about intrinsically leftist groups. Which, let's face it, atheists are, is that they try to dominate a term. In the case of feminists it's "women's rights" and the detractors are "mysoginists". These atheists are trying to own the term "reasonable" but to say that people know it's a myth is a very unreasonable thing to do.
  4. Posted by: Mith on 12/8/2010 6:19 PM
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    Wow, how to start.

    This is the sorta thing that's made me wary of atheists of some flavors. I actually have met three atheists personally, both who were very different people. One is a co-worker and she tends to stray to the 'agnostic' or 'I don't want to pick sides' sort of thing. By all reason, she's an atheist. She's also really nice and really smart (which is odd because she comes off as rather naive).

    The other two are a bit different. One was a friend I knew growing up. He refuted belief purely on a logical standpoint. A pity I don't see him much anymore, since I'd be more interested to see how our viewpoints would hold up (at that time, I hadn't really developed much of my intellect--I was just into really nerdy stuff). The third is also a co-worker, whose much more against orginization and some of the absurdities some factions of Christians go through.

    Which is ironic given how often the local churches try and get him to sing with them (he's got a pretty good voice)...

    These are nothing, nothing like the atheists that I've met online (some of them) or Dawkins or Myers. They fact of the matter is, they're kind of assholes. Dawkins I have some sympathy for since I feel like he was drawn into this sorta thing by creationists, but when you're sponsering people to go out and basically troll the faithfull because you don't like some of us...well, I tend to lose my sympathy a bit.

    Reminds me of one group who snuck into a church during Easter and left a DVD of The God Who Wasn't There in the seats. It's bad enough that you went into a church with that, but doing it on one of our, if not the most important holiday of the faith? And their response to crticisim was that they were doing people a "favor".

    Of course, interestingly enough, said DVD is from what I'm told, incredibly inaccurate. It tries to make parallels between paganistic beliefs from the Egyptians and apply them to Christianity. I think one was in reference to the Horus story and Jesus. Ie, that there were parallels between the two stories. Right.

    I don't mind of atheists want to get together. I don't care if they want to have a club. That's their business. But don't put stupid shit on busses, signs, and TV egging someone's faith. It's not some great act of justice akin the Rebel Alliance and the Empire, it's fucking childish.
  5. Posted by: L. Byron on 12/11/2010 5:26 AM
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    Very thoughtfully [& reasonably!] put Mark, heartening to see light shone on the aspect of the New Atheism i find most distasteful - its lazy arrogance & smugness. As i recently posted over at Trigger Alert:

    It has always been clear to me the monotheistic religions [Judaism/Christianity/Islam] & Atheism are actually on the same side of the scales: the present day reductive materialist belief-system of the west - which includes Atheism - came directly out of Christian/monotheistic thought & would not - could not - have existed without it. It takes a breathtakingly limited worldview to define all religious experience as simply the modern wests experience of monotheism. The monotheistic religions go back 2 or 3 thousand years & have bred intolerance, war & fundamentalism. The religious experience of humanity, on the other hand, goes back millions of years, & is perhaps the defining characteristic of our species. There has never been, in all the thousands of tribes, nations & civilizations ever discovered & recorded, been a culture found without it.

    Religions [as they presently stand, anyway] may well be for sheep. That doesn't mean the concerns of religions are for sheep. They are the questions that all human beings eventually have to ask of themselves & the universe.


    Hope the writing's going well, & that you get the urge to get on your youtube soapbox again sometime, it's just not the same without you..
  6. Posted by: Mith on 12/11/2010 9:37 AM
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    Well, that's not to say that all Pagans got along in their faith, but it was much easier for them to work with each other than monotheistic cultures, just by design. It became an absolute pity when the Jeudeism belief changed from "Only worship the one God" to "There is only the one God".

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