atheists

What a bunch of fools!

Thanks for sharing such a foolish thing

Does this mean Superman and Charlie Brown's dad are in hell?

And Kevn takes the bait in 4... 3... 2...

Thank you for the most useful link.

Wow, that is pretty cool. It somehow makes me hate atheists and feel ashamed of myself for it all at once.

Which religion taught you to hate someone based on their lack of belief? I do not hate you for your belief. It's really a shame that you hate me even before you meet me.

Footnote: The 0.2% in jail and the 21% that got divorced OBVIOUSLY aren't "true" atheists.

See, this is exactly what I'm talking about. I didn't think anything was wrong with atheists until I saw this about you doofuses getting all defensive and shit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ozwl4SsdCus

Nice find, Eggy. Thanks for the link

Again, which religion are you that raised you to hate someone before even talking to or meeting them? Or are you simply a troll trying to make religious people seem intolerant and full of hate?

This video made some good points, but it was filled with some bad logic in places.

Just because someone wins a Nobel prize doesn't mean they can't also be a fool. Intelligence and wisdom are not the same thing. I have personally known some amazingly intelligent people that were foolish enough to smoke, even knowing that it would kill them. So some of those people might well have been fools. For example, Marie Curie continued to work with radioactive materials even after she knew that it was killing her. Many would say that's a foolish thing to do.

I also don't see how being an actor automatically means that what you do it “good”. (Seth Green rocks though!)

Was Charles Schulz really an atheist? I find that kind of hard to believe considering how all the peanuts cartoons are filled with Christian sentiment. I would be very shocked if it was true.

I liked Zero's video much better http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ozwl4SsdCus although I don't see it as a criticism of atheists. I thought it was a kick in the pants of people in general and made a pretty good point.

Schultz was a self-described secular humanist. As for Christian sentiment in the Peanuts cartoons, I think you should watch The Great Pumpkin a few more times. If it's not a parable about blind faith I don't know what is.

Huh, I never thought about it that way before but I can deff see it now that you mention it. It was just always so strong in his cartoons I simply assumed.

Hehehe, you know what they say about assuming!

But then in the Christmas special Linus focused on what was the "true meaning" of Christmas and even quoted some of the bible in the big Christmas pagent. lol

Just wondering what message that was if the Great Pumpkin was about blind faith.

Hehe. If Charlie Brown had been a cranky atheist I doubt he'd have gotten rich on merchandizing.

Remember the part where Charlie Brown is all embarassed by his sickly Christmas tree and Linus wraps his security blanket around it and it suddenly looks prettier and healthier? Could that be a metaphor perhaps? Does the fact that it's a security blanket have any significance? I think that's a metaphor for religion. It has power when used towards humanist ends like helping the less fortunate (like Charlie Brown's sickly tree), but for a majority of believers it seems to be about personal gain (the afterlife is a sweet prize). Schultz dug Jesus but didn't believe in his divinity (or ability to award prizes).

The Great Pumpkin has a similar message. Linus wants to be the most devout Great Pumpkin worshipper he can be so he can be rewarded with toys. He suckers Sally into spending the night in the pumpkin patch with him and she's mighty pissed when it turns out to be untrue and she realizes she missed out on all the fun she could have had if she hadn't been wasting her time on Linus's myth.

*These are of course only my opinions.

Interesting concepts Chip.

Metaphor in the blanket around the tree vs. a pretty up front message in the bible verses. I dont know what Shulz believed or didnt. It just seems that it was a lot to put in if he was trying to put a hidden message like you interpret. Nobody would have batted an eye if the whole special would have been about Santa Clause and never even had that whole bit.

BTW.. the reason I remember that bit so well is I had to play Linus in a Christmas play in Drama when in High School. We took the play to a battered wives and kids home. I had to learn that whole bit and recite it lol.

You do raise some interesting thoughts though.

What is your take on the little Red Haired girl and Charlie Brown's failure to achieve his goal with her? Surely that has some message. (j/k though I am sure you can come up with one hehe)

atheists == noob idiots == losers == trolls == Lindens == George Bush == republicans == atheists

ITS A NEVER ENDING CHAIN!!!

Whilst it is true that even smart people make mistakes, the important point here is that 'fool' is often used as a general insult to write people off with. It conveys a general feeling of 'this person is no good, they are worthless'. Anyone who says that people like Marie are morally bad people overall is probably going on my ignore list simply because I would have difficulty being civil to anyone who expresses such an opinion, so strong is my moral belief on the matter.


If religious believers truly valued the 'greater good', and the sacrifices that individual people, no matter their beliefs, make to achieve this greater good, then they would treat people like Marie Curie with just as much respect as their 'Saints'.
The fact many do not, IMHO, shows they care more about their religion then truly doing good in the world.
A religious believer who makes a great sacrifice for the betterment of humanity is a saint, a martyr, a hero of 'family values'... all these great things.
A secular humanist who knowingly endures a slow, painful death, giving up what she believes is her ONLY life, everything she has... in order to help save the lives of untold numbers of her fellow human beings. She is labelled a 'fool', for not following her narrow self interest and ceasing work when it became dangerous for her health. Not a saint for suffering a slow death to help save all those people, but a fool for ceasing work when she found out that her work to save the lives of others was slowly killing her.

Any value system which fails to recognise people like Marie as good people (not just people who do good acts, but intrinsically good people) is not a value system I will give respect, belief or obedience. Ever.

I apologise for the tone of this post, but the warped, downright evil way that things are represented sometimes by religious believers truly makes my blood boil.
Christian missionaries discouraging condom use in Africa and thus causing untold suffering and death are considered 'moral', yet Marie's giving up everything to help humanity still doesn't lift her out of the 'fools' category.
This is just so wrong that I can't even think about it without getting angry. How can a religious system intended to help humanity be moral and closer to a perfect God permit such horrible, horrible mistakes?
I just can't bring myself to even respect such belief systems as plausible, due to paradoxes like spreading starvation and death in Africa under the name of God being OK, yet people such as Marie being labelled as 'fools'.

I realise that the video at the start of this topic is simply an attempt by one atheist to say

"look, people who claim the Bible is true....... do you really believe some of the greatest people, the heroes of human history.... are fools? Are you really prepared to say the guy who invented the light bulb, many of the most respected intellectuals of our time, people even Marie, people who gave EVERYTHING they had to help humanity, are fools? Are you seriously going to sit here and tell me that they're fools simply because they don't believe in your God, no matter how much they've worked, suffered and died to help people like you?"

but, dammit, that's a legitimate thing to say. The atheist creator of this video is not saying "we're right about the existence of God, because we're all really smart and pretty!".

All they're saying is "you can't get away with labelling us all as fools, because there are so many of us who are acknowledged as heros, leaders, and some of the smartest people on the planet. Saying we're all fools is just not plausible. It only looks bad on the Bible if the Bible truly claims that all these great people are fools.".
That is a reasonable thing to say... to point how how silly it is to label a great many of the leaders of our time as fools and pretend to be morally better than them, even when, like Curie, some of them died slow, painful deaths to try to help humanity.

The movie IS kinda lame. It doesn't really accomplish anything, does it? Only midly entertaining as well. It reminds me of some of the tactics Christians use to be right. It's really just the same underhanded arguement the Christians would use, no?

"Look at all these cool people who believe the same as we do! They must be proof! We are doing the best work!" It just goes the opposite direction while still along the same grain.

I'm not Christian in any way shape or form, but that does not mean that the pediatric surgeon who happens to be catholic shouldn't have his passion for curing sick children applauded too, does it?

Plenty of good actors are Christian. Just because I'm not Christian doesn't mean I think thier work is bad. If they are entertaining, they are doing a fine job. I just take issue with their motivations.

I dont' have to draw a theologic line in the sand to seperate actors into camps and I certainly don't have to waste my time refuting the Bible. That's just as bad as Christians praising and quoting it to us, isn't it? I say continue to write our own Bible, refine it, promote it, rewrite it again, follow its teachings because we write it along the way. If such a divine book ever came into existance, why I'd think this gathering of humans we call society just might be making progress!

Dont' waste so much time rallying the troops... you'll get the war you ask for Instead, try making your own peace. Start by writing it

~Lefty

Angel, I wasn't criticizing the message, I was criticizing the way it was presented.

My point was that we don't know the people in that video on a personal level. So to present them as not being foolish based solely on their intellectual accomplishments is just the same as saying that they are foolish for what they believe (or in this case, for what they don't believe).

Both are errors in logic and neither is a reasonable thing to say.

For a moment, let's look at this from the standpoint of the Psalm writer.

I'm NOT trying to preach, but trying to illustrate the veiewpoint of someone who wrote that Psalm thousands of years ago:

In his mind, the greatest gift that a human can have is his relationship with God. In his mind, this is the single most important thing in all of human history. Everything else, money, power, even health and happiness, are transitory. In the Psalmist's mind, only God is eternal.

So, anyone who rejects this gift is rejecting eternity in favor of transitory rewards. The Psalmist would have said that contributions to charity or humanitarian work are all well and good, but no amount of good deeds or happiness on Earth will affect your eteernal reward. The here and now doesn't matter: what matters is eternity. This lifetime, while it seems so long, is but the blink of an eye in the face of eternity, yet it's in this life that we make the decisions that our eternal fate hinges on.

If this is all true, then wouldn't it be foolish to deny God?