Anyone else want to respond to the whole list?
First of all, there are many things in here that most atheists don’t do. I’m pretty sure that’s why the list is directed at “fundy atheists”. Those things are mostly cut out, unless I had something to say about them.
You may be a fundy atheist if....
1. You became an atheist when you were 10 years old, based on ideas of God that you learned in Sunday School. Your ideas about God haven't changed since.
This probably says more about Sunday school than it does about atheists. I arrived at my personal beliefs through much thought about my legitimate problems with religion.
2. You think that the primary aim of an omnibenevolent God is for people to have FUN.
Why the hell not? He’s omnipotent, so why isn’t life one big party if God could do that?
3. You believe that extra drippy ice-cream is a logical proof against the existence of God, because an omniscient God would know how to stop the ice-cream from being extra drippy, an omnipotent God would have the ability to stop the ice-cream from being extra drippy, and by golly, an omnibenevolent God wouldn't want your ice-cream to be extra drippy.
I believe no such thing. First of all, ice cream is man-made, which would make it imperfect. Second of all, if God could create a perfect world (he’s omnipotent, right?), why didn’t he? You might argue that “Well you see the world was perfect until Adam and Eve ate the apples and blah blah blah”, but if a world is capable of being made imperfect, it’s not perfect, is it?
4. Although you've memorized a half a dozen proofs that He doesn't exist, you still think you're God's gift to the ignorant masses.
Someone thinks he’s really clever, doesn’t he?
5. You believe the astronomical size of the universe somehow disproves God, as if God needed a tiny universe in order to exist.
The size of the universe doesn’t disprove God, it just disproves your medieval notion that we are the center of the universe.
6. You think questions like, "Can God create a rock so big that He cannot lift it?" and, "Can God will Himself out of existence?" are perfect examples of how to disprove God's omnipotence and ultimately how to disprove God. When someone proves to you the false logic behind the questions (i.e. pitting God's omnipotence against itself), you desperately try to defend the questions, but then give up and go to a different Christian site to ask them.
If God played God in chess, who would win? (Answer: White might win because of the advantage of moving first, but most likely it would be a draw) Seriously, these questions don’t disprove God, they just raise questions with regards to the omnipotence thing.
7. Related to the above, you spend a great deal of your spare time writing to Christian websites asking them these very questions.
I don’t. I have FSTDT.
8. You spend hours arguing that a-theism actually means "without a belief in God" and not just "belief that there is no god" as if this is a meaningful distinction in real life.
Is it? I really don’t know.
9. You consistently deny the existence of God because you personally have never seen him but you reject out of hand personal testimony from theists who claim to have experienced God as a reality in their lives.
“experienced God as a reality in their lives”? If by that, they mean that He talks to them, they should see a psychologist.
10. You can make the existence of pink unicorns the center-piece of a philosophical critique.
Disprove the IPU, then. See, you can’t. It’s INVISIBLE.
11. You insist that "the burden of proof is on he that alleges/accuses", and "it's impossible to prove a negative", then state "That's what Christians do. They lie. Their most common lie is that they were once atheists." When reminded about the burden of proof bit, you reply with, "Well, prove Christians don't lie!"
Are you trying to pretend that some Christian proselytizers don’t make shit up about their pasts in some kind of attempt to identify with the “unbeliever” they’re trying to convert?
12. When you were a child, someone came down with a deadly disease and prayed and prayed for God to take it away. God did not remove the disease and your friend died. You ask other Christians why they had to die when they were such a nice person and never harmed anyone. Dissatisfied with their answers, you suddenly decide that there is no God and that all Christians are nothing but lying, conniving con artists and hypocrites....all that is except for your friend who died.
Funny, this never happened to me.
13. You call a view held by less than ten percent of the American public "common sense".
Ad populum/Appeal to common practice.
14. You're a spoiled fifteen year old boy who lives in the suburbs and you go into a chat room to declare that, "I know there is no God because no loving God would allow anyone to suffer as much as I...hold on. My cell phone's ringing."
I’m not. I’m older than that, and I do realize that depression can be nasty, but it’s not a disproof of God. And I don’t own a cellphone.
15. You attack your fellow atheists, who hold the "belief that there is no god", calling them "liars," and state that, "I do not deny the existence of any god. I just don't believe in any." Then you tell someone that their God is "made up." When someone calls you on this, you state, "I never made such a claim."
What?
16. Going with the definition of "without a belief in God", you insist that all people are born atheists, and that dogs, cats, rocks, and trees are as well. You make statements like, "My dog is an atheist. Ask him about his lack of belief."
I don’t think a dog can comprehend religion at all, even if they are somewhat smart.
17. You believe that if something cannot be touched, seen, heard, or measured in some way, then it must not exist, yet you fail to see the irony of your calling Christians "narrow-minded".
On the other hand, fundy Christians believe that if something cannot be touched, seen, heard, or measured in some way, then GODDIDIT! GODDIDIT! HALLELUJAH, PRAISE JEEBUS!
18. You say that there is no God and that those who believe in God do so in blind faith, yet your claim that there is no God also rests on blind faith.
Blind faith and overwhelming odds.
19. You complain when Christians appeal to their emotions when justifying their belief in God yet you feel justified on appealing to your emotions for lack of belief in God.
Which side backs up its appeals to emotions with logic better and more often? Atheists.
20. You blame God for the starvation, sickness, pain and suffering in the world...when, indeed, it is MAN's greed, politics, selfishness and apathy that not only causes, but also ignores the sick and the starving masses. We aren't our brothers' keepers....but we should be.
If God is omnibenevolent, I see no reason why He couldn’t clean up our mess, and I see even less reason why He would let us make a mess in the first place.
Origins
You may be a fundy atheist if....
21. You believe that planes, computers, calculators, compasses, etc, were "all obviously designed," yet the human body, being intricately more complex was "obviously a product of biological evolution." It seems the more complex the apparatus, the more obvious the "fact" that it was not designed.
WRONG! We know that planes, computers, etc. are designed because we create them. The human body took many more millions of years to design than the airplane did. You see, there’s this thing called natural selection, and it cuts out a lot of the random chance element of evolution.
22. You claim that evolution and the big bang are two entirely separate theories that explain different aspects of the universe, yet, in what school of learning can you find any real separation or distinction between the two?
Any school of learning that doesn’t teach biology and astrophysics in the same class.
23. As a member of the Skeptic's Society you pride yourself on being skeptical of extraordinary claims. You also pride yourself on silencing everyone who is skeptical of the extraordinary claims of evolution.
picture of Sue.
You have some explaining to do.
24. Isaac Newton does not count as an example of a great scientist who believed in the Bible since he died before the Origin of Species was published.
And Albert Einstein doesn’t count as an example of a great atheist scientist because “he was raised in a Judeo-Christian environment”, right?
25. When you're discussing the origin of the world, the phrase "uncaused cause(God)" is a stupid, meaningless thing to say. You will, however, settle for "uncaused effect(the world without God)".
26. You descended from apes.(Think about it.)
And you were created by an invisible bearded man in the sky out of dirt.
27. You think that humans are products of chance but when it comes to human reason we can believe in logic! (Think about it !)
Not mutually exclusive.
28. You think you arrived at your position because you are a free-thinker who rationally weighed the evidence, and then freely chose atheism over theism. YET, you also believe that your thinking and actions are nothing more than the FIXED reactions of the atoms in your brain that are governed by the Laws of Chemistry and Physics.
This doesn’t even deserve an answer because it’s so stupid.
29. You love to castigate Christians for being "anti-science" if they deny evolution from goo to you via the zoo, and to preach that they should adapt their thinking to the "science" of our day. But you also castigate the Church of 400 years ago for being anti-science, when it DID adapt its thinking to the science of ITS day, i.e. Ptolemaic cosmology, then joined with the Aristotelian scientists of the universities in rejecting Galileo!
And those Aristotelian scientists couldn’t have been under any pressure from the Catholic Church to reject Galileo’s ideas, could they? I mean, it’s not like the Church could have tortured them or anything, right?
30. You think that some guy named "Dr Dino" with no scientific credentials represents mainstream Evangelical thinking and scholarship about evolution and creation, and thus by spending inordinate amounts of time attacking him you are somehow dismantling the arguments of scholarly dissenters from evolution, creationists with earned Ph. D.s in science, and of advocates of intelligent design.
Hovind is a charlatan, yes, but the other Creationist scientists aren’t any less wrong. And intelligent design my ass. “Intelligent design” is just creationism in different clothes. (“It’s in the Bible, so Goddidit.” vs. “We’re too complex, so Goddidit.”)
31. You claim poker-faced that "social Darwinism" and its spawn of eugenics have absolutely no connection to the biological theories propounded by Charles Darwin in "On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life"
I don’t. I do disagree with social Darwinism and eugenics, but whether or not people have misused the idea of evolution has absolutely nothing to do with how life evolved. After all, the fact that antisemitism has endured as long as it has couldn’t have anything to do with the Catholic Church, could it?
32. You have recently stuck a Darwin fish on your car in the hopes the people with the Jesus fish on theirs will be offended.
I haven’t
33. You also claim that not only is there no connection between Darwin's theories and the doctrines of social Darwinism and eugenics (despite the fact that the term eugenics was coined and advocated by Darwin's cousin Francis Galton, who acknowledged his debt to Origin), but that none of these philosophical positions have any connection to the modern fields of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology.
Sociobiology: nope. Evolutionary psychology: nope. Fail.
34. You can claim with as straight face on sites like Talk Origins that "Evolution does not have moral consequences" despite the fact that prominent evolutionary advocates like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett vehemently assert that evolution does transcend biology in a way that has a profound effects upon ethics.
Then I disagree with them.
35. When the Pope says that God may have used evolution, he is an enlightened religious leader whom Christians should listen to. When the Pope preaches on the sanctity of human life from conception, and thus denounces abortion, he's just a senile religious bigot who should keep his opinions to himself.
“enlightened religious leader whom Christians should listen to”? Not really, he’s just on to something.
36. Concerning the origins of life, you feel that though the chances of life forming without an intelligent creator are small it DID indeed happen that way. And yet you don't believe me when a rock, coming from my direction, hits you in the back of the head and I tell you, "I didn't throw it. There was a sudden shift in the earth's gravitational pull and the rock levitated into your head...Sure the chances are small but it DID happen that way."
Given the amount of time that it happened over (a billion years), the chances of life forming without a creator are rather high. And whoops! Sorry, I didn’t mean to throw that knife! I really didn’t! Don’t start bleeding all over the floor like that!
37. When you're shown that your view of origins is silly, you can only respond, "Well...at least it's better than believing in some invisible SKY DADDY!"
Evolution has evidence. Your skydaddy doesn’t.
38. When a Christian points out the impossibility of a biological system (or feature) forming by pure chance you accuse them of invoking a "God of the gaps". YET, when you are asked how a particular feature could come about solely by chance you invoke "Evolution of the gaps" (i.e., we don't know HOW but we do know that Evolution MUST have done it!)
I don’t do this. And evolution doesn’t involve a skydaddy, so it wins via Occam’s Razor.
39. You claim antibiotic-resistant bacteria is proof protozoa evolved into a person.
No, it just demonstrates evolution in action.
40. You insist that science is completely partial to all ideas, is not dogmatic and researches all possibilities -- except creationism and/or intelligent design.
Strawman version of science. Science is completely open to all LOGICAL possibilities with EVIDENCE to back them up. Creationism is not logical, and it has very little evidence.
41. You claim Creationists don't research on evolution websites before debating against it. Luckily you caught this useful weapon against Christians at the evolution site you learned all about creation doctrine from.
No, and no.
42. You think that every scientist who believes in Creationism and doesn't mindlessly accept evolution as a fact is a "kook," but you believe that Francis Crick (Nobel Prize winning co-discoverer of DNA), who reached into his nether regions and pulled out the "theory" of Directed Panspermia (which states with absolutely no support that aliens seeded the earth with life - see the movie "Mission to Mars"), is a great evolutionist scientist.
Yes, and no.
43. When a creationist points out problems with the evolutionist model you claim that the whole point of science is to answer problems like these. But if you can point out even one problem in the creationist model it should instantly be abandoned as absurd.
Except that most of the Creationist “problems” with evolution are 1. misinterpretations of evolution (“A monkey can’t give birth to a human! It violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics!”) or 2. morality problems, such as the Social Darwinism thing you brought up above.
44. You are a person who absolutely believes that life came from nonlife, yet absolutely deny the possibility of anyone rising from the dead.
Because a single-celled creature is the same as a human, right?
45. You won't bet $10 on the football game because a 50/50 chance isn't good enough, but you have no problem gambling with your life on the nearly impossible odds of a cell randomly generating from nothing.
From nothing? We’re talking about the entire earth here, genius. Massive amounts of water, swirling around for a billion years. Yeah, a cell could come out of that.
46. Engaging the "slippery slope" fallacy, you think you can invalidate the whole bible by discrediting Genesis, since 'the whole bible either stands together or falls apart'. However, when a Creationist tries to invalidate the whole doctrine of naturalistic evolution by exposing the sheer improbability and lack of evidence of abiogenesis, you note this point as 'irrelevant'.
I don’t do this, and besides, the rest of the Bible is inaccurate history, a few good moral laws, and a whole load of puzzling, nonsensical ritual laws.
47. You ignore "Time Magazine's" poll, which states that only 28% of Americans believe in evolution. But of course, "Time Magazine" must been run by creationists.
That poll scares me.
48. You teach a belief only held by 28% of a nation, as truth beyond any shadow of a doubt because only educated people believe in evolution. Yet of course, you ignore that fully educated scientists in most other nations have proven against Darwinian theory. Like the Chinese paleontologist who reportedly says: "In China we can criticize Darwin but not the government. In America you can criticize the government but not Darwin."
Really? I was under the impression that other countries taught actual science in schools. And evolution happened, no matter what percentage of people in America believe that.
49. You think man evolved from monkeys but get mad when somebody calls you one.
Man did not evolve from monkeys. They came from a common ancestor. Read a motherfucking book.
50. You think that if schools teach the Intelligent Design theory of creation, they should also teach the "stork theory" of where babies come from.
Good point.
51. You demand that Christians study advanced evolutionary biology before making claims about natural selection. You then claim that their theological ideas, which you have never examined before, are pure nonsense.
Actually, I have examined Christian theological ideas. I don’t like them.
52. You claim that the 'God' mentioned by Albert Einstein and Steven Hawking is nature and that they were atheists, then claim that you have no religion, which is defined by the dictionary as "Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe."
Einstein: “I believe in Spinoza’s God.”
Spinoza: “God and Nature are two names for the same thing.”
LOLWUT?
History
You may be a fundy atheist if....
53. You insist that "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", then claim that Jesus never existed.
You really don’t understand this “burden of proof” thing, do you?
54. You contend that no war in history has ever been created by non-belief. Yet, when you are told that 176 million people lost their lives in wars during the last century, created by non-believers like Stalin, Lenin, Mao and Hitler, to name only a few, you reply that those wars fought were fought in the name of ideology and not 'atheism' as atheists "
don't fly planes into buildings or start wars."
Hitler was a Christian. He wasn’t a traditional Christian (his brand of Christianity, called “Positive Christianity”, was basically racist Christianity, with all and any “turn the other cheek” commandments ignored), but he was a Christian nonetheless. Lenin and Mao were atheists. Stalin was a paranoid maniac.
55. You accept (and quote back to Christians) any number of works that say Jesus wasn't the Son of God and call them "honest", "thought-provoking" and 'scholarly" proof, even when they completely contradict each other and come to completely different conclusions.
And the Bible doesn’t contradict itself?
56. You think it's entirely possible for documents dated to the 10th century to have been forged in the 14th. (Used of Tacitus once.)
It’s entirely possible.
57. You believe that when our forefathers are framing the Constitution, they're staunch deists, but when they're beating their slaves, they're Bible-believing Christians.
The southern Christian slave owners of the mid-nineteenth century were the same people as the New Englander deist founding fathers of the late eighteenth century?
58. When you use a historical point to prove Christianity is false (i.e., pagan parallel to Christianity), history is objective truth. When a Christian uses real historical scholarship to prove you false, history was written by subjective men and therefore cannot be trusted.
Examples, please.
59. You reject what Cornelius Tacitus wrote about Jesus, dismissing it as "too late", but you readily accept what he wrote about Tiberius and Augustus.
You mean that there’s no possibility that he got the information about Tiberius and Augustus right, and represented rumors as fact when writing about Jesus?
60. 100+ year old scholarship is good enough for you.
And a 2000+ year old myth is good enough for you.
61. When Christians tell you that The Bible is inerrant you go on and list a bunch of "contradictions"; when the Christian shows to you that those are not contradictions but the result of taking things out of context you list more "contradictions" when the Christian does the same with those you complain that he/she is just making stuff up and/or that the answer the Christian gives you are not "satisfactory" and proceed of course to list more "contradictions".
Rabbits chew their cud?
62. You like to complain about the wars and killings found in the Bible and like to claim that this is some sort of proof to conclude that it is not The Word of God. When the Christian points out that the Bible is about reality and that it exposes humanity and all what comes with it, you complain that it is nonsense and that no good God would allow for that to happen. You would then just claim that it is too perfect and not true.
Atheists don’t complain about wars in the Bible, atheists complain about passages like Deutoronomy 13:12-15 “If you hear it said about one of the towns the LORD your God is giving you to live in 13 that wicked men have arisen among you and have led the people of their town astray, saying, "Let us go and worship other gods" (gods you have not known), 14 then you must inquire, probe and investigate it thoroughly. And if it is true and it has been proved that this detestable thing has been done among you, you must certainly put to the sword all who live in that town. Destroy it completely, both its people and its livestock.”
Please, defend this passage without invoking the “New Testament has replaced the Old” thing. (After all, if there’s a New Testament, why is the old one’s prohibition of homosexuality so important?)
63. You like to list contradictions to Christians like if you some how pretend that Christians are not aware of them or that they are ignorant about their own religion.
Too often, they are ignorant about their own religion.
64. You evidently think that slaughtering 6,000,000 Jews is no different from using sugar in your porridge, since whenever someone points out that Hitler's actions show him to VERY UN-Christian, you exclaim "No true Scotsman uses sugar in his porridge!"
Hitler was a Christian. Period. His actions had nothing to do with it.
65. When a Christian tells you that in order to fully understand The Word of God you need to open up your heart and allow The Bible to speak to you and to read The Bible by placing confidence in God, you say that the Bible is just a book and that why you don't have to do the same with Harry Potter.
“In order to fully understand The Word of God you need to open up your heart and allow The Bible to speak to you and to read The Bible by placing confidence in God”?
In other words, you have to be a Christian to “get” the Bible?.
66. You desperately wish that Stalin and Mao hadn't been atheists.
67. You absolutely insist a Christian recognize your nonscholar as an expert (G. A. Wells) but refuse to recognize his legitimate scholar as expert (Colin Hemer).
68. You not only spell "God" with a lower case "g," but you also add an "E" to "B.C.," and replace the word "Christ" with an "x." Yet, when asked to name the planets you have no problem with spouting out the appropriate list of Roman Gods. Heck, you'll even spell them with capital letters! Not only that, you can even spell and pronounce the name of the 800-mile-diameter Trans-Neptunian Object 'Quaoar', and are delighted that it comes from the creation mythology of the Tongva people (aka the San Gabrielino Native Americans).
I don’t do any of those things besides “BCE”. If they ever name a star or planet God, I’ll capitalize that, too.
69. In addition, you say that terms like "AD", "BC" and "Christmas" (as opposed to "winter holiday season" :D ) are medieval, outdated, bigoted poison and must be eliminated at all costs from the world, yet the fact that our months and days are largely named after Roman, Viking etc. figures (eg. Janus - January, Thor - Thursday) is a glowing testimony to the diverse and wonderful nature of human history
I’d like to meet an atheist who seriously believes this.
70. You think that religious wars have killed more people than any other kind of war, even though the largest wars of the last 200 years (World War I and II, Civil War, etc.) had no discernable religious causes.
OF THE LAST 200 YEARS. That is dishonest, since it disqualifies the the Catholic-Protestant split, the Crusades, many many pogroms, and the genocide of the Native Americans in the name of “God, glory, and gold”.
71. You think that the Spanish Inquisition killed millions (or at least hundreds of thousands), even though the population of all of Spain at the time of the Inquisition was only about five million, and the actual total killed numbers about 2000. When informed of this, you accuse the informer of belittling or being insensitive to the deaths of 2000 individuals.
Your numbers are off. It was actually at least 3,000. And you’re discounting the enormous amount of people who were forced to leave Spain because of their religion, or to convert to Catholicism despite not believing in it.
72. You bring up the alleged 'horrors' of the Spanish Inquisition to show how evil the church is. When shown that the SI was not the horror that it was painted to be, you switch gears and ask if the believer notes this because they think people are justified to feel moral revulsion with the Spanish Inquisition as it is commonly understood.
This sounds like something a fundy Christian would do.
73. You believe that Christians burned down the Great Library of Alexandria. When you learn that this was impossible, you assert that it is obvious that Christians did burn a lot of ancient books. When you are shown that this too is false, you wait a while, then make the same claim again, hoping that the person who corrected you with the facts won't notice.
No, they only burned ancient books that disagreed with their religion, like the Talmud.
74. You desperately confer with other skeptics to try and refute the evidence that Hitler's Holocaust was evolution-inspired, because, darn it, you just GOTTA prove that Hitler was a Christian.
He was a Christian. His actions say more about racists than Christians.
75. You're convinced, despite evidence to the contrary, that Christianity was responsible for the Jewish holocaust because, dang it, that just SEEMS like something Christians would do.
Are you trying to say that Christianity isn’t responsible for the underlying antisemitism that allowed the Holocaust to occur? Because it is.
76. You believe that Hitler claiming to be a Christian is undeniable proof that he was a Christian, while George Washington only claimed to be a Christian in order to win the people's favor.
Actually, both were Christians with deist leanings. You fail.
77. You adamantly refuse to recognise the historical fact that "scientific atheism" was both a foundational philosophical position and an actual policy of the Soviet Union from the time of Lenin on, responsible for untold persecution, torture, suffering, humiliation and death far in excess of the numbers of the "victims" of Christianity.
78. On the other hand you further show your ignorance of history by constantly repeating "whoppers" about the numbers of victims of Christian Inquisitions, crusades and witchhunts dredged up from various unscholarly hate sites and passed off as historical fact.
We don’t need to. I’d suggest you read about the history of antisemitism, and all the terrible inhuman things Christians have done to Jews.
And the growth of the earth’s population.
79. You really believe that the Enlightenment made people more enlightened.
It did. If you think that the US Constitution is based on the Biblical ideas of “equality and justice” (right), you’re talking out your ass.
80. You think that Robert Green Ingersoll and Joseph McCabe are two of the greatest philosophers of religion ever to have lived - certainly far superior to nobodies like Thomas Aquinas or Blaise Pascal.
Pascal’s Wager uses a false dichotomy. OWNED.
81. Indeed you believe that McCabe is "One of the giants of not only English Atheism, but world Atheism". [which could be construed as a slight on the intellectual quality of atheism].
Never heard of him.
82. You adhere to a false and fictionalized version of history gained from watching Hollywood movies such as Inherit the Wind so that you can (for example) conclude: "the controversy over creation and evolution was settled way back in 1925, when Clarence Darrow eviscerated William Jennings Bryan in a country courtroom in Dayton, Tennessee."
Inherit the Wind wasn’t that far off. I mean, besides the love story, it was pretty accurate.
83. You think that Pope Leo X may have really called Christ a fable, because it's "the type of thing he would say," but you deny that God could have said what the Bible attributes to Him because it is recorded by "anonymous" witnesses.
No, and yes.
84. You've never understood why merely uttering the phrase "Christian America" is not considered to be a declaration of treason against the "TRUE" United States of America.
Besides the fact that America has this really nifty thing called the First Amendment, which guarantees religious freedom and separation of church and state.
85. You believe that "if it weren't for the U.S. Constitution, Christian leaders would be burning women at the stake."
Actually, if you substitute “Enlightenment” for “US Constitution”, that’s an accurate statement.
86. You insist that the historical data is too sparse to know anything about the ancient world, but you then proceed to tell us what 'actually happened' anyway.
And your Bible is an accurate historical document?
Christians
You may be a fundy atheist if....
87. Missionaries who give up their personal comfort to aid starving, impoverished and persecuted third-world people are actually "corrupting ancient tribal cultures with western religious dogma", while you sit at home and complain about the price of KFC.
I’m fine with missionaries, just as long as they don’t start throwing fire and brimstone at me.
88. You believe that any Christian who claims to have once been an atheist is either lying or was never a "true atheist."
Wow, project much?
89. You assert that the crimes and failings of some Christians (acting inconsistently with the teachings of Christ at that!) disproves the whole edifice of Christianity but that the crimes and failings of some atheists (acting consistently with the fact that atheism can provide no basis for objective morality!) should on no account be held against the philosophy of atheism.
I agree with most of this, but “atheism can provide no basis for objective morality”? Wrong.
90. You KNOW that religion causes violence and repeatedly tell this to everyone, hoping to save the world, but you don't believe that TV violence causes any real life violence. In fact, you are offended by this objection, and you have already started to figure out how to refute it. To increase your fundy factor, you have decided not to study social sciences. (Once you heard about Rodney Stark's For the Glory of God - you certainly would not bother reading it - you thought that sociologists were Christian fundamentalists in stealth mode, trying to push religious worldviews.)
TV violence is not the CAUSE of very much real life violence. There is usually already some mental illness, poverty, or other motive.
91. You think that taking the Bible seriously is the obsession of a fanatical fringe group of right-wing, extremist Christians who do not represent the views of the historic Church or of contemporary enlightened, liberal, skeptical "Christians" who according to you supposedly "fill" the mainstream churches and who on close inspection pretty much reflect your own politically correct views and values - and skepticism - about God. [Sort of like former Bishop Spong].
It’s not those people atheists have a problem with. You, on the other hand, seem more like one of those extremist right-wingers.
92. You get angry when Christians tell you you're going to a place that you don't think exists.
And you get angry when I tell you it doesn’t exist.
93. You're convinced that people only believe in God because they're afraid of going to hell...despite the fact that if there is no God, then there's probably no hell either.
Herd mentality. Eat shit.
94. When a group of Sydney University (Australia) academics, including a historian, sign a public statement saying the Jesus Christ is "one of the great figures of history" and that his claims to be Son of God "bear up under closest scrutiny", this is a gross abuse of their position. But when Richard Dawkins uses his position as an Oxford professor to pontificate on his atheistic religion and related philosophical matters outside HIS field (animal behavior), that is a responsible use of academic freedom.
Both Dawkins and the group of Sydney fundies have the right to say whatever nonsense they want to.
95. Further to the above, you're paranoid that these Christian academics will discriminate against you, even though their statement hasn't the remotest hint of that. But you applaud Michael Dini, a professor at Texas Tech, who refuses to recommend students for Medical School, even if they got "A"s in their courses, unless they not only understand but BELIEVE in goo-to-you evolution. And you're disgusted that creationist medical doctors have the gall to think they know more about medicine than Dini (who never practised medicine or even went to medical school), because by definition an evolutionist is more knowledgeable than a creationist on ANY subject!
More knowledgeable, no. Less deluded, yes.
96. You think Christians are narrow-minded for believing in only one religion, but atheists are open-minded for believing in absolutely none.
Way to completely miss the point.
97. You think it is a "slam dunk" proof against God when you ask why He doesn't stop horrible things like, i.e., child rape, but evade the reply that you obviously don't want God stopping your own sins by pointing out that it isn't your problem because you don't believe in God in the first place.
That’s not evading, that’s making a concrete point. If you believe in God, you need to explain why He doesn’t stop people from doing horrible things. If you don’t believe in God, you don’t need to explain this. The person who responded by calling me a sinner in this hypothetical situation was dodging the point.
98. You believe Freud's theory that all religious experiences are delusions, as the most revolutionary and truthful thought of all times. Yet, you overlook his heavy use of cocaine because "it can't be proven."
I’d guess that many religious experiences are hallucinations. Freud’s cocaine use has nothing to do with that.
99. You recommend Michael Shermer's book "How We Believe" to all of your friends who are believers and believe that somehow his opinion will give insight into how we actually think. Yet of course, you ignore that Shermer doesn't have any education in Anthropology. Must be a coincidence.
I’ve read “Why People Believe Weird Things” (which thoroughly debunks creationism, btw), but I haven’t read that book.
100. You're stupid enough to think atheists are treated like second-class citizens. Yet of course, you spend most of your day belittling Christians and other religious people.
And you’re bigoted enough to want to treat non-Christians as second-class citizens.
101. You're proud of being completely free of predjudice, unlike the "typical sociopathic Christian".
I’m not. And spell prejudice right.
102. You refer to Christian leaders as "fuehrer".
Only if I’m referring to Hitler, who was a Christian.
103. You think Focus On The Family is a "white supremacist hate cult".
I don’t. FOTF is sexist, but not racist.
104. You think Satanists are Christians because they "worship a Christian god".
Where did you pull that one from?
Contemporary events
You may be a fundy atheist if....
105. You demand that theists explain news items where bad things have happened to theists, even though no theists on the board have claimed that belief in God is some kind of a lucky charm that wards off bad luck.
What if some of them have?
106. You demand that theists explain news items where theists do bad things, even though no theists on the board have claimed that it is impossible for theists to do bad things.
What if some of them have?
107. You feel that Marilyn Manson is really, really profound.
Marilyn Manson is not profound. Rush (the Canadian band, not the big fat asshole on the radio), now we’re talking profound.
108. You think the song "Dear God" by XTC is really, really, really................really meaningful.
I’ve never heard that song.
109. You believe that emotional response interferes with rational thinking. Yet, you think George Carlin is the greatest comedian of all times, because he makes you laugh.
Who said that rational thinking has anything to do with comedy?
110. You're saving up to move to some more enlightened place, like Sweden.
Actually, the Jewish neighborhood I live in is enlightened enough for me.
111. You feel that the separation of church and state is a much more important issue than abortion, euthanasia, or infanticide.
I don’t. But since when was murder an issue? It’s bad, if the baby is already born.
112. You were too sophisticated to be afraid of (very real) "Reds under the bed" but you nevertheless see Christians behind every act of "evil" in the western world.
Very real my ass, and I don’t.
113. You think God was cruel for killing all of those innocent babies in the flood, and that Christians are cruel for opposing a woman's right to abort her baby.
Weren’t those innocent babies already born?
114. You think that Reverend Fred Phelps does what he does because of his Christianity, but Reverend Fred Rogers did what he did in spite of his Christianity.
Phelps doesn’t cite the Bible’s prohibition of homosexuality?
115. You quite rightly denounce the methods of those who deny the historicity of the Holocaust, then use the same methods (inventing excuses to ignore evidence) to deny the historicity of Jesus.
The historicity of Jesus, I don’t dispute. I do dispute the idea that he performed any miracles, was born of a virgin, was the son of God, or rose from the dead.
116. You go to a church wedding or funeral, but only to pray ostentatiously to "the woman upstairs".
I am a practicing Jew, and I pray to God, even if I don’t believe He hears me.
117. You have not seen "The Passion of the Christ," and you don’t know anyone who has seen it.
What’s wrong with that? It wasn’t a very good movie.
118. You believe that gender roles are the product of Christian patriarchy, but homosexuals are born that way.
No, and yes.
119. You oppose studying telling schoolkids that the Pilgrim Fathers came to America to practise Christianity free of persecution, that the Declaration of Independence mentions a Creator, and that the first public schools used a Bible as a textbook. But you support using "Heather Has Two Mommies" as wholesome literature.
I don’t, and I didn’t even understand heterosexuality at age 6, never mind homosexuality.
120. You support gay rights when they first pushed for rights’, because what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own bedroom is no one else’s business’. But then you want public approval and want to ban disapproval even in private situations.
Strawman version of gay rights. No one wants to ban homophobia, because that would be unconstitutional. It’s absolutely OK to want gay rights recognized.
121. You think that protestors outside nuclear power plants are dedicated activists, but protestors outside abortion clinics are dangerous zealots interfering with a legal activity.
Abortion doesn’t harm the environment.
122. You think that it's wrong to execute a convicted serial killer, but abortion on demand is a constitutional right.
No, and yes.
123. You start a lawsuit to expunge Christian books from the school libraries in your state because it violates "separation of church and state" that you insist is in the Constitution. Simultaneously you start a lawsuit to defend the right to have books in the same school libraries advocating the religion of Wicca.
It’s one or the other. Books about all religions, or none at all.
124. You object to using mice for scientific experimentation but don't mind when babies are killed for stem cell research.
A frozen embryo is not a baby.
Bible criticism
You may be a fundy atheist if....
125. You become upset when a Christian says that not everything in the Bible should be taken literally.
I don’t
126. You dislike how liberal theists try to interpret the Bible for themselves, while you create your own interpretations of the Bible for yourself: (a) Exodus 34 contains a new set of 10 Commandments; (b) Jesus asked His disciples to slay all His enemies.
I don’t
127. You have actually calculated, for purposes of "argument by outrage," an estimate of the number of people drowned in The Flood.
I haven’t.
128. You can quote from the bible better than most missionaries...at least the parts where someone dies.
I can’t.
129. You label all scholars that actually believe the Bible as "biased fundies" while those who don't believe it are known as "honest" and "accepted scholarship."
I don’t.
130. You insist that the Bible cannot possibly say anything about homosexuality being a sin, because they did not even have a concept of homosexuality at the time the Bible was written...then insist that the Bible says that David and Jonathan were married.
BULLSHIT.
131. ......AND you produce a long list of verses containing the words "children", "touching", and "bowels".
What?
132. You think you have refuted the whole Trilemma because you've added another alternative to it.
133. You dismiss any attempt to harmonize the resurrection accounts by saying "one says A, the other says B, but none say A+B", then go on to offer your own elaborate conspiracy theory of what happened to the Jesus' body, describing A+B+C+D, none of which are said ANYWHERE let alone together.
Well, if all of the Gospels are correct, shouldn’t they all agree with each other?
134. You think that Isaac Asimov was a world-class authority in Biblical Studies.
He was a world-class sci-fi author , but that’s besides the point.
135. You make a point of referring to Jesus as "Yeshua" and to God as "Yahveh" in order to hint that they are no different from Molech or Baal.
Explain how they are.
136. You use one,or more,of the following alternate spellings: GOD-"gawd" JESUS-"jeeezus" "jayzus" "jebus" "jeebers" BIBLE-"bibble" "babble" "wholly babble" "buy-bull"
I think that the “babble” is disrespectful, but I have no problem with “Jeebus”, because it’s funny, and it insults Southerners.
137. You refer to the crucifixion of Jesus as the "cruci-fiction".
They’re pronounced the same, aren’t they
138. When a Christian's interpretation of a passage (based on the social/literary context) solves one of your favorite contradictions, it is only their personal interpretation, and can be dismissed as such. But your interpretation (based on a "plain" reading of the text) to arrive at the contradiction in the first place is entirely objective, and is obviously THE correct interpretation.
There are some four-legged insects at your door right now. They want their extra legs back.
139. Your only knowledge of The Bible comes from searching 'bible contradictions' in Google.
It doesn’t. I read it when I’m bored during services (which is often).
140. Everytime you don't understand a passage in The Bible, instead of trying to figure it out you blame God for not writing it better.
If it’s the Perfect Word of God, as fundy literalists say it is, then it should be understandable by everyone.
141. You think that God would have made things a lot clearer for everyone, ranging from the medieval knight to the Chinese peasant, had He inspired His Word in modern English in words and concepts you could understand. You also ask, when told of the scarceness of paper in the ancient world, why God didn't provide enough paper to write a longer story.
He’s God, why can’t He update His book?
142. You consistently appear on discussion lists demanding that Christians accept your literal interpretation of various scriptural passages just so you can then launch into the usual "argument by outrage" - despite being told over and over that no Bible scholar or school of Christianity shares your particular bizarre literal interpretation.
Except the fundies.
143. You pontificate about the Bible as if you are an expert in theology, textual criticism, ancient languages & cultures and much more besides, when your knowledge of the Bible is just cut and paste from atheist discussion lists which cut and paste it from atheist websites which cut and paste it from embarrassingly unscholarly rantings by the likes of Messer's Freke & Gandy and Acharya S, etc.
I don’t pretend to be an expert. You don’t need to be an expert to figure out that the Bible isn’t God’s Word.
144. You create a web site: http://www.EvilBible.com,and post an Evil Bible Quote of the Day on usenet. The quotes always end with: "What kind of person would get their moral guidance from an ancient book of myths and magic that says it is OK to murder, rape, pillage, and plunder?"
The Bible does say that.
145. You decry Christian missionaries for denying cultural relativism; denouncing their efforts to reform cannibalism, slavery and fear of animist spirits as judgmental intolerance. But your attacks on the Bible merely comprise anguished cries of "how barbaric" rather than reasoned arguments; and ignore all considerations of ritual cleanness, the evils of the Canaanites and the fact that ancient society was always one step from anarchy.
Ritual cleanness? I always wondered why God cared about it. The evils of the Canaanites? Who says the Canaanites were evil? The Bible. The Canaanites certainly didn’t say that. The “fact” that ancient society was always one step from anarchy? Prove it.
146. You think Secular Humanism actually promotes religious tolerance. Secular Humanism only tolerates religion; it doesn't accept it.
No contradictions here.
147. You claim to hold no Dogma. Yet, you're just as rigid and stubborn with your beliefs as any Dogmatists.
Actually, I’ve learned a few things during the course of this list.
148. Archaeology continually frustrates your attempts to find errors and contradictions in the Bible, but you continually use the same outdated accusations anyway since you're running out of material.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
What, like the archeologists who say that Pharaohs didn’t lead their armies into battle personally? The ones who say that that was the job of his first-born son, who most likely died in battle against the Israelites, not by God’s hand? That’s rich.
149. The only reason you go to hear a concert pianist play Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata is to complain to him afterwards about the name. Obviously it was chosen as part of a conspiracy to hide the fact that the Bible's mentions of the moon giving light were errors rather than phenomenological language.
Bullshit. That’s a nice sonata.
150. When you go to bookstores, you move all the Bibles to the "fiction" section.
They’re not already there?
151. You take the lack of evidence for the Jesus story being a hoax as evidence that Christians got rid of all the evidence.
Actually, it’s the utter ridiculousness of the story itself that points to it being a hoax.
152. You claim that there is no way a book thousands of years old can be relevant today, but refuse to do the necessary homework to see how it could apply in modern situations, preferring instead to argue that God should have provided an updated version.
There are parts of the Bible still relevant, just as there are probably parts of Mein Kampf that you could use as a guide to live decently.
153. You once heard something about some document in the Catholic Church which says the resurrection never happened. And despite your never having seen it or even met anyone who claims to have seen it (and despite having no idea who wrote it, when they wrote it, or what exactly it says), you're convinced that this document is far more reliable than the Gospels and thus disproves Christianity, and that the church is hiding it so that they can keep the money rolling in.
I never needed the Catholic Church to tell me that Jesus wasn’t resurrected from the dead. It’s many times more improbable than the chance that a cell formed randomly in the ocean 4 billion years ago.
154. You can't understand why people can't see the logic in your question, "The Lord of the Rings is a book. The Bible is a book. What makes one fiction, and the other true?"
One is historical fiction, the other is fantasy. Both are FICTION.
155. And if they say they don't see the logic in that question, they MUST be lying!
Or brainwashed.
156. You think that "Lord of the Rings" and "Harry Potter" are more believable than the Bible.
Actually, the Bible is more believable, but only by a little bit.
General atheism vs. theism
You may be a fundy atheist if....
157. You find you have a grudging respect for fundy theists for 'sticking to their guns' even while complaining they don't think for themselves.
I don’t have any respect for fundy Christians.
158. 'Thinking for yourself' means adopting an atheist viewpoint.
Really? I thought for myself and adopted a pantheist viewpoint. I guess I’m doing it wrong.
159. When you say "I don't know" you are being brave and honest. When a theist says "I don't know" they are being dishonest and are trying to dodge the question.
If we’re talking about evolution again, when an evolutionist says “I don’t know”, he adds, “but we’re working on it.” When a creationist says “I don’t know”, he adds, “so Goddidit.”
160. When your thoughts on any complex matter are sensible and clear, and a theist's thoughts on any complex matter are mental gymnastics.
Come back when you learn grammar.
161. You leave 'freethought' tracts lying around, like the littering missionaries.
I don’t, but they’re better than Chick tracts.
162. Although you are a 'free-thinker' and 'rational' person, you lose all reason when reading The Bible.
Project much?
163. It is OK for atheists to express their godless opinions but the moment Christians do the same you email the ACLU.
I don’t, unless they use public money.
164. You debate (argue, vilify, etc.) as if every theist was a Jack Chick fan, and as if every Biblical inerrantist was a Ruckmanite who believes that the KJV was specially inspired.
Generally, the people I choose to debate are like this.
165. You start a local Atheists and Agnostics Society, the goal of which is to prove through good deeds that atheists and agnostics can be just as generous and caring as some Christians are. When nobody joins, and the club eventually unfolds, you are flustered. You have no idea why a group of people who by definition do not base their morality on anything greater than their own ideas wouldn't jump at the chance to be self-sacrificing for no logical reason.
Atheism does not imply that there is no morality. Fuck you.
166. You refuse to give your children any name that appears in The Bible.
Who does this?
167. You don't realize that Landover Baptist Church's website is a parody.
I do. You may now kiss the
wait, what?
168. Even when you do realize it is a parody, you think that its implied arguments are suitable for use as a reply rather than Biblical scholarship.
I haven’t looked at their website for more than two seconds.
169. You call God "she" in the presence of Christians simply out of sheer spite.
What makes you think God would be of either of our human genders?
170. You create an Atheist Missionary organization and then call it a thinktank, in a small town in Virginia. Then you heap scorn on Christians for "proselytizing" (Just think about if for a minute, hypocrites!).
Christian proselytizers are more numerous, more annoying, and they have a hell they can damn you to if you don’t listen to them.
171. You are part of a non-belief organization such as American Atheists, Church of Freethought, Humanist Association of Canada, Student Freethought Alliance and/or the Council of Secular Humanism. You claim these organizations have absolutely no creeds and that the people involved independently think of different things from one another. Yet of course, on your organization's website they define the commonalities that all non-believers follow. Is that not the definition of creed?
I think for myself. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
172. You think that spamming Christian chatgroups and discussion lists with expletives and insults demonstrates superior free-thinking, rational, atheistic logic.
Someone can’t tell trolls from serious atheists.
173. You have never pondered the question: why does a smart guy like Richard Dawkins regularly give atheists a bad name by putting his foot in his mouth with his inane and ridiculous pronouncements about God and religion?
174. You have never pondered the question: why did a really smart guy like Bertrand Russell write such a pathetically limp, uninformed and adolescent critique of Christianity in "Why I Am Not A Christian"?
I’ve never read either of those authors.
175. You assert that "faith is believing things which you know aren't true".
Mark Twain FTW
176. You really "believe" that many human beings actually believe things they know aren't true.
My irony meter just read “Mommy! Make it stop!”
177. You believe the movie Dogma gives the most accurate portrayal of Christian theology.
Never seen the movie.
178. You feel that prefacing your responses to Christians with the word bull$#@! somehow makes your argument a little more valid.
Bullshit is bullshit, and if calling it bullshit isn’t valid, what is?
179. You take a self-righteous pedantic "stand on principle" against Christian apologists writing under pseudonyms, but always refer to the "Endarkenment" French infidel writer François Marie Arouet by HIS pseudonym "Voltaire".
If someone has a pseudonym, I usually use it, unless their pseudonym is really ridiculous. And “Endarkenment”? What the FUCK?
180. You find the term 'fundy atheist' meaningless, baffling, illogical and just plain oxymoronic/self-contradictory even though the two terms are not exclusive of each other (except in the minds of fundy atheists, of course).
Explain to me the “fundamentals” of atheism, then.
181. You write books like Warren Allen Smith's "Who's Who In Hell: A Handbook and International Directory for Humanists, Freethinkers, Naturalists, Rationalists and Non-Theists." You label 10,000 of these famous non-believers, as good, peaceful people who will be rotting in hell because they are or were infidels. While of course you also fail to realize that for every 10,000 of the world's peaceful non-believers, anyone can come up with a book that lists 10,000 peaceful, loving and famous historical believers. Of course, you also fail to realize that you've wasted your time researching 10,000 historical and modern names just because you want people to think 'peaceful' people will be rotting in an afterlife that you don't believe exists.
That’s called missing the point. Your religion damns good people who don’t believe in it to hell. Please explain why.
182. Your favorite words are "ad hominem", even if you can't spell them.
I won TWO fucking spelling bees in grade school, and Ad Hominem is a good band.
183. You just can't see any difference between Pat Robertson Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, etc, and Osama bin Laden.
Osama killed a lot of Christians, Pat Robertson would like to kill a lot of Muslims.
184. You go to work on Christmas and instead take Halloween off.
Call me lazy, but if someone gives me a day off, I take it.
185. You go to an Atheism versus Christianity debate in which you must vote for whoever you think wins. The Christian side is represented by a highly prestigious historian and theologian, and the atheist side is represented by a dog that's able to bark the theme song to "I Dream of Jeannie" off key. You vote for the dog.
Massive fail.
186. You think eating bread and drinking wine is cannibalism.
According to your religion, it is. After all, isn’t it Jeebus’s body?
187. You say you don't believe in objective morals, but....come on, admit it, you think God did some screwed up things, don't you?
I do believe in objective morals
oops, there goes your point!
188. You consider "Ha, ha, ha" a substantive rebuttal to an argument.
If the argument is anything like this pile of shit, then it’s the only rebuttal needed.
189. You think the fact that God can't make purple burps or squared circles keeps Christians up at night.
If God is truly God, he could do that.
190. You can't believe in a book that was created over two thousand years ago because "we're not sure WHAT happened", but you know for a fact that religion was created tens of thousands of years ago specifically to control the brainwashed public.
I don’t. I’m not a conspiracy theorist.
191. You think the fact that Pauly Shore was allowed to make movies in the early nineties is undeniable proof that there is no God....well actually I'm almost inclined to agree with you on that one.
I’m guessing it’s a good thing I don’t know who Pauly Shore is?
192. You feel guilty whenever you use the word faith and have decided to remove it from your vocabulary.
I couldn’t really do that. I have a cousin named Faith.
193. You have turned into a Jew and say "G-d" for the sole reason of not saying "God".
I was brought up Jewish and I still think that’s stupid.
194. You complain to Christians that "all your music sucks." When asked what kind of music you listen to you give a list of bands including POD. When someone points out that POD is a Christian band you say "They can't be, I hear them on the radio."
POD sucks. I listen to Rush, Black Sabbath, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Dream Theater, and Judas Priest. Some of those bands are Christians (Sabbath on After Forever, ELP on I Believe in Father Christmas, Dream Theater on a few different songs), but they don’t put their faith in their music for the most part.
Modern gospel music sucks ass through a straw.
195. Once someone finds quotes and/or lyrics proving they are, in fact, a Christian band, you immediately respond, "Well, I don't really care what they believe, I just like their music."
True story: I pointed out that Underoath was a Christian band to an Underoath-loving atheist, and he said the same thing. He also didn’t believe me until I showed him that “Innocence Stolen” was about how God sends rapists to hell.
You may be a fundy atheist if....
196. Last of all -- you write this website a letter which includes a rebuttal to the above listing!
What can I say? If you’re wrong, you’re wrong.