Atheist Thought Experiments Debunked #5

"Christians only care when it's Christians being persecuted."


THE ANGEL POSSENTI:

Before I get into this topic, let me first explain what brought this on:

Several studies across the world have come out that pretty much prove Christians are indeed the most persecuted group in the world; a recent Pew Center Study further confirms this.  (See study here).

Now, this information was well-distributed in religious circles (so, if you didn't hear this reported in the secular media, that's the reason why) and once atheists got this information, what do you think their response was? If you think they took one look and reconsidered their position…oh, my…you are mistaken.

The atheist reaction came down to one of two responses:
1. This report was used as a scam to perpetuate "religious tyranny."
2. "You Christians had this coming."

That's right: atheists are so hateful and nasty they honestly think if anything bad happens to Christians or Christians are killed for their faith, then "they brought this on themselves."

So in other words….
When Romans killed Christians in the colosseum, we had this coming to us.
When Mexico passed anti-Christian laws that lead to the Christeros War, we had that coming.
When priests were tortured in Romania by dunking their heads in barrels full of feces, then they had that coming.

Do atheists even listen to themselves?

Now, going back to the point at hand…is it true Christians only care when Christians are killed?

If the response from recent disasters are any indication, the answer is a clear NO!!!

People in religious America have given billions to people who not only don't look like us but also don't have the same faith we do. Anything from the tsunami in Japan to earthquake relief in Haiti, to evacuating people in the Middle East hurt by ISIS….we've always given help to people.

"But wait," some simple-minded atheist fool would say. "Other non-religious countries give far more to foreign aid. America hardly gives any. How is that being generous?"

That accusation only looks at what percentage of government spending goes to foreign aid. If it added in private donations (a concept that is almost extinct in non-religious countries) you will find Americans give billions of their own money to people.
In addition, more countries now admit foreign aid does more harm than good and often goes to the very people causing all the problems. Even Bono of all people now admits this.

Now that I think about it…when was the last time atheists ever gave of themselves? Last I checked, atheism is one of the factors PREVENTING people from giving of themselves.

And why should it encourage charity when it makes a false idol out of the state?

And they wonder why we dismiss them all as idiots.



http://cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-boland/pew-study-christians-are-world-s-most-oppressed-religious-group

Now You Can't Sue Anymore

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Indiana gov signs religious objections bill amid protests

Published March 27, 2015

| Associated Press

INDIANAPOLIS –  Indiana Gov. Mike Pence vigorously defended the state religious objections bill that he signed into law Thursday as businesses and organizations including the NCAA pressed concerns that it could open the door to legalizing discrimination against gay people.

The state became the first to enact such a change this year among about a dozen where such proposals have been introduced. Arkansas' governor said Thursday he supported a similar bill that's advancing in that state's Legislature.

Pence, a Republican mulling a possible 2016 presidential campaign, signed the bill privately in his office with at least a couple dozen supporters on hand. He later met with reporters and refuted arguments from opponents that law would threaten civil rights laws by saying that hasn't happened under the federal religious freedom law Congress passed in 1993 and similar laws in 19 other states.

"There has been a lot of misunderstanding about this bill," Pence said. "This bill is not about discrimination, and if I thought it legalized discrimination in any way I would've vetoed it."

Those arguments didn't satisfy opponents who worry the law, which will take effect in July, presents Indiana as unwelcoming and could give legal cover to businesses that don't want to provide services to gays and lesbians.

National gay-rights consider the Indiana bill among the most sweeping of similar state proposals introduced as conservatives brace for a possible U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide.

The Washington-based Human Rights Campaign said Indiana lawmakers "have sent a dangerous and discriminatory message."

"They've basically said, as long as your religion tells you to, it's OK to discriminate against people despite what the law says," said Sarah Warbelow, the group's legal director.

The Indianapolis-based NCAA, which is holding its men's basketball Final Four in the city next weekend, said in a statement it was concerned about the legislation and was examining how it might affect future events and its workforce.

"We will work diligently to assure student-athletes competing in, and visitors attending, next week's Men's Final Four in Indianapolis are not impacted negatively by this bill," NCAA President Mark Emmert said in the statement. "Moving forward, we intend to closely examine the implications of this bill and how it might affect future events as well as our workforce."

Soon after Pence signed the bill, Salesforce.com founder and CEO Marc Benioff announced on Twitter that he was canceling all programs that require its customers or employees "to travel to Indiana to face discrimination."

The San Francisco-based company bought Indianapolis-based marketing software company ExactTarget for $2.5 billion in 2013 and has kept hundreds of employees in the city. A company spokeswoman declined to elaborate on Benioff's statement.

Conservative groups backing the bill have said it merely seeks to prevent the government from compelling people to provide such things as catering or photography for same-sex weddings or other activities they find objectionable on religious grounds.

Indiana Right to Life President and CEO Mike Fichter praised the new law, saying it would give abortion opponents legal recourse if they are pressured to support the procedure. The organization circulated an online petition to thank Pence for signing the bill.

At least two groups — the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and gamers' convention organizer Gen Con — have said they would reconsider plans to events in Indianapolis because of the legislation.

Pence pointed out that President Barack Obama voted in favor of a similar state law while he was an Illinois legislator. But when Pence was asked whether he would support matching Illinois by adding sexual orientation to the state's civil rights law, he responded: "That's not on my agenda. I won't be pursuing that."

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/03/27/indiana-gov-signs-religious-objections-bill-amid-protests/

THE ANGEL POSSENTI:

When I first heard about this bill and looked further into it, I had only one thought in mind:

WONDERFUL!!

I applaud Gov Pence for standing up for the innate right of a business to deny services in any way they deem fit.

Oh yes: that's one notion being lost in the uproar over this: the same Bill of Rights that gives people the right to expression is the exact same ones that grant people the freedom of exclusion.

Now, all these people who whine and moan about this all have the same argument and it all boils down to "it's not fair."

Really? You want to talk to me about something not being fair?

How is it fair that a baker might lose his livelihood because a) he dared to say no to the gay agenda and b) said gays didn't have the sense to go hire a different baker? How is it fair a photographer faces bankruptcy for saying no to a gay couple when..AGAIN…they could have hired a different photographer?

Next, they're going to try the following arguments:

How is this any different than saying they won't service a black couple?

Easy. People don't have a choice in being black.

How is this any different than saying they won't service a Jewish couple?

Easy. Being Jewish doesn't constitute an undue religious burden.

Secularists and atheists are just getting all uppity because we've figured out a way around their tyranny…by using the exact same process they've used to force religion out of the public square and they just can't stand it.

Too bad.

It's your own fault for being such idiots.

Atheist Thought Experiments Debunked #4

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                  "Atheists know more about religion than religious people do"

THE ANGEL POSSENTI:

If you're as sick as I am with atheists claiming they know more about religions than religious people and wish you can nail them with their obvious lie before they expose how ignorant they actually are, then look no further.

I've looked into where exactly this myth came from and the best source I can find is from a Pew Center Poll conducted in 2010. Out of all the various conclusions, the one people ran with for the most part was atheists knew more about religion than religious people.

But what if, as is so often the case, atheists have everything wrong, or at best are missing the point?

The point is overall atheists didn't score that much better than everyone else. It also turns out the study used a flawed methodology.

First off, every religious group used in the study would have failed the test if it were graded on a 100 point scale. Atheists did score 20.9 but that was out of 32, which means overall they do not know that much more about religion.

Second, for some reason, Protestants and Catholics were divided by race but no one else was. This is even more baffling considering Pew later admitted they couldn't find a racial difference in scores in a follow up study on their own data.

Third, the questions used were so obscure and so distant from in-depth spiritual knowledge that you'd have to watch Jeopardy on a frequent basis to get all the answers right.

Don't believe me? Without Googling or using Wikipedia, answer these two questions straight from the quiz:

1. Jonathan Edwards participated in what religious movement in America?
2. True or false: A public school teacher is allowed to read from the Bible as an example of literature.

I picked theses two questions especially because according to the study, these were the ones atheists were most likely to get wrong.

My point is this: if you're going to make the case atheists know more, shouldn't you have made a quiz that has more in-depth knowledge about religion? In fact, I've done that with atheists, and I can attest every single time, atheists have failed to show they know more than I do.

But maybe I'm not being fair, so here's a link to a quiz. If any atheist can score higher than 97 (my score) then we'll talk.

Until then, I will maintain my stand that atheists are idiots.


Sources
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2010/10/flawed_pew_poll_on_religious_k.html

Atheists Try to Re-Write Commandments…and They all SUCK!!!

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THE ANGEL POSSENTI:

In November of 2014, an atheist group held a crowd-sourcing contest to come up with an alternative version of the Ten Commandments. Mythbusters host Adam Savage (an avowed atheist himself, so naturally someone with tons of problems) judged the competition and helped the committee decide on the final ten.

While I have no problems with the concept of crowd-sourcing, the final results can be littered with problems if you start off with flawed assumptions and premises at the start.

This project is a good example of this.

Below are the final ten atheist commandments and my refutations of them in red. Keep in mind some of my refutations are thoughts that I believe atheists don't want me to have when hearing them yet said thoughts bring up valid counter-points all the same (unlike a certain dead British "horseman" who showed he didn't understand much of anything concerning the Commandments).

So here we go:

-Be open-minded and be willing to alter your beliefs with new evidence.
(What if the new evidence shows religion is in the right? Then what? If past experience has taught me anything, atheists would come up with any excuse--no matter how nonsensical--to dismiss it or claim it's biased, thinking that refutes something, which it doesn't. If you think about it further, this one is quite self-refuting).

-Strive to understand what is most likely to be true, not to believe what you wish to be true.
(Just like you wish that these made any actual sense? :) Again, like the previous one, what's to stop the atheist from dismissing something because they don't feel like listening? Where's the check on this? Are you really expecting us to believe atheists are going to be suddenly more honest given their poor track record?)

-The scientific method is the most reliable way of understanding the natural world.
(This is flawed from the very start because it ignores the assumptions the scientific method operates under, mostly about logic, how we can trust in the predictability of the material word, the de-personalization of nature…not to mention the scientific method was invented by a Christian or how the whole phrase itself is asking us to pass a subjective opinion off as an objective truth.)

-Every person has the right to control over their body.
(This is a common excuse you find in abortion advocates to justify the murder of children. It's flawed because you have instances like pregnancy when your body is not entirely yours. Clearly, the committee didn't think of that. Also, this ignores the fact some choices people make concerning their bodies are superior to other choices.)

-God is not necessary to be a good person or to live a full and meaningful life.
(Clearly, being an atheist doesn't lead to anything meaningful. Besides, the notion is wrong since it has been pointed out over and over in psychological studies and in now post-Christian Europe our lives and nations are much better off with God than without.)

-Be mindful of the consequences of all your actions and recognize that you must take responsibility for them.
(I have looked at several atheist thinkers, and I can assure you few if any encourage people to take personal responsibility, and of those that do, they either treat it as an afterthought or they encourage the government to clean up their mess. No surprise that atheists have an overwhelming support for communism.)

-Treat others as you would want them to treat you, and can reasonably expect them to want to be treated. Think about their perspective.
(Why should I do that if I am of the persuasion that there is no absolute right and wrong? Why should I care how others feel? Are atheists just not aware when you reduce right and wrong to feelings, you trivialize both morals and feelings?)

-We have the responsibility to consider others, including future generations
(Again, why should I care about future generations if there is no such thing as right and wrong? What if considering others gets in the way of what I want? Am I supposed to believe my wants should be subservient to the group? And by the way, how does this explain why atheists have family sizes much smaller than Christians?)

-There is no one right way to live.
(Then what are you doing babbling on about rules on how one should live their lives? For that matter, where and how does should and ought even factor into this? If there is no one right way, how do you know the scientific method is best? Doesn't this sound like it contradicts number 2?)

-Leave the world a better place than you found it.
(Oh, this is rich considering the hell every atheist regime has ever created. Do I need to go any further on this?)

Once again, atheists, you failed to unseat the eternal wisdom of God. Compared to God, all of you are idiots.

Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/1692212/atheists-rewrite-ten-commandments-mythbusters-adam-savage-judged-new-commands/#a3Z3v4Pf21uctwUv.99

Anti-Atheist Meme #24

Full credit goes to the Freedom from Atheism Foundation. For more on that group, click here.

Why Richard Dawkins is Wrong (as Always)

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THE ANGEL POSSENTI:

The following article was written by Michael Brendan Dougherty. For the link, click here. 

The justly celebrated biologist Richard Dawkins has kindly asked that we stop ascribing religious beliefs to children. It would be silly to refer to a four-year-old as a Marxist because his parents are Marxist, so why in the world should we credit to children a belief in the Resurrection or Muhammad riding to heaven on horseback? “Don’t Force Your Religious Opinions on Your Children,” the title of his newest article instructs us.

I used to agree with this, broadly speaking. I thought the fact that my mother left if it up to me to decide whether I wanted to continue to go to Mass — I didn’t — made my later reversion to faith more authentic. I imagined that I would be really cool and liberal about the religion thing when I had kids. In a sense, I would leave it up to God and them.

I was wrong about it all. And so is Dawkins now.

Actually, to be fair to myself, Dawkins is much more wrong. He goes further than pleading for a hands-off approach. “What a child should never be taught is that you are a Catholic or Muslim child, therefore that is what you believe," Dawkins has said. "That’s child abuse.”

He is not exaggerating his view for effect. On the subject of priestly sex abuse, he once told an audience that “as horrible as sexual abuse no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place."

Let’s take his claims one at a time. He says that we cannot call a child a Christian in the same way we might call him French. He writes:

Citizenship of a country, whether we like it or not, has legal implications... But if you know somebody’s nationality that doesn’t tell you their opinions about anything. That French person may be left-wing, right-wing, pacifist or warlike, pro- or anti-abortion, the death penalty, vegetarianism, Windows, Macintosh, or Linux. [Time]

But citizenship is hardly the only aspect of belonging to a nation. Nations pass on a story of their own history, their own languages, civic holidays, and rituals. Nations impress on their members a character that is unchosen, even if it contains all the variety of opinion that Dawkins names. Even if someday I came to hate America, renounced my citizenship, and sought refuge in another country, I would still have thousands of Americanisms imprinted on my experience, expectations, and manners. These would instantly reveal me as an American.

Dawkins approves of cultural things that may be connected to religion, including feasts, art, and music. But he writes, “There really is an important difference between including your children in harmless traditions, and forcing on them un-evidenced opinions about the nature of life or the cosmos.” He tosses off sentences like, “Indoctrinating your opinions into the vulnerable minds of your children is bad enough.” And says that religious education “negates the ideal, held dear by all decent educationists, that children should be taught to think for themselves.”

Notice the language he uses: force, indoctrinate. And the implication that religious kids cannot think for themselves. Of course, I don’t intend toforce religious convictions on my children or indoctrinate them any more than I intend to force on them good manners, or indoctrinate them in the conviction that “might does not make right.” I simply intend to teach, guide, instruct, and correct. Rarely will that even involve formal lessons. Most of it will simply be implied.

Parents can’t help teaching their children lessons. And they are often a little overwhelmed to see their child learning them, acquiring habits of behavior and thought that they never meant to pass on. These can be good or quite damaging. A father that says, “Let’s go help your mother with the dishes,” to his son and accompanies him in doing so is teaching something different about family life, women, parenting, and service than the father who commands, “Go help your mother with the dishes!” while he entertains himself with his iPad.

The little expressions, eye rolls, and groans that parents attach to ideas, people, dress, or even dinner plates pass on good or harmful lessons without ever presenting themselves as “indoctrination.” So, too, do the books on the shelves, and the books that come off the shelves more frequently than others. These are the very things that teach children how to situate themselves in the home, in the world, in their social class — how to value themselves or others.

There are ethical and metaphysical stakes even in watching television. The way a father leers at a beer commercial may inadvertently teach his daughter to see herself as only worthwhile to men as an object of pleasure. People live, imperfectly, according to what they believe and value. And when children are around, these decisions are constantly explained, justified, and weighed within earshot. Parental influence is so obviously powerful that it ought to inspire great respect for those who wield it.

Children will notice their parent spending 20 minutes a day praying the rosary. Or their parents consoling each other with words from the Psalms. Or their parents fasting for Ramadan. They might even hear their parents pleading for mercy from their sins, or see them donating money to a social cause.

A child notices and then does exactly what Richard Dawkins fears indoctrinated kids won’t do: she asks questions. At age four they may be answered simply and even enigmatically. At age 17, a great work of Augustine or Avicenna may be pulled from the shelf. And in the case of my own home, a copy of the Koran and several translations of the Bible are on the shelf near an autographed copy of Christopher Hitchens’ God is not Great. And next to that a copy of Michael Martin’s infinitely more challenging, Atheism: a Philosophical Justification, which I’ve read twice.

And yes, the happy presence of all those books in my home teaches something as well. Namely, that in this house we have nothing to fear from the best arguments of Richard Dawkins.

Dawkins should give children more credit. Children know instantly the sincerity of their parent’s convictions. They know intuitively what is really important to them. Adolescents, because they are unused to decades of bargaining with their own weaknesses of will, are absolute hounds against hypocrisy. Children invariably test their parents' ideas for themselves.

So what would Richard Dawkins expect religious parents to do? The only way to satisfy him, of course, would be to renounce religion entirely, to become an evasive hypocrite, to diminish religion's importance in your life to that of a hobby, like archery or collecting old coins, to make it a thin set of convictions added to the otherwise real and secular. I’m sure that would suit Dawkins just fine. A faith of this sort is practically the established state religion in Dawkins’ England.

Perhaps that’s why he can’t help being fond of it.

Yet more evidence that atheists are idiots. 

Anti-Atheist Meme #23