Atheists "attack" Christianity with new bus ads in Canada
By Brian FairbanksDecember 6th, 2010, 9:47 amComments (84)
The atheists are back at it in Canada, launching a new series of hotly-debated bus ads in Toronto less a year after an equally-controversial series enraged Christians across the country. Although the ads aren't even set to appear until next month, media outlets are jumping into the debate already.
The Vancouver Sun has the full report:
Justin Trottier insists the ads weren't designed to offend religious Canadians.
"I'd love it if everyone saw the ads and knew the point of the campaign is to emphasize not the kind of knee-jerk debunking to anything suspicious but that we're interested in a genuine debate, a conversation about so-called extraordinary claims. We're not here to mock people who believe in these claims."
He said scientists have made extraordinary statements to explain evolution, but their beliefs are backed by evidence.
"Homeopathy, miracles and religious claims — those are at least as extraordinary but where's the evidence? Present the evidence and we'll be happy to come along for the ride and endorse those beliefs," he said. [Vancouver Sun]
His point, in other words, is that these other conspiracies have so many skeptics, why are there so few skeptics questioning the Bible? Actually, I don't think anyone believes in Zeus, except maybe Mike Huckabee. That guy will believe anything you send him in a chain e-mail.
Commentarium (84 Comments)
Praise Je-sus! Can someone give me an A-men!
Ramen!
Noodles!
Yeah?
In the movie Contact, Ellie challenges Palmer to prove the existence of God. He flips it back on her.
Palmer Joss: Did you love your father?
Ellie Arroway: What?
Palmer Joss: Your dad. Did you love him?
Ellie Arroway: Yes, very much.
Palmer Joss: Prove it.
WTF?
Typical religitard reasoning. They. Just. Don't. Get. It.
The contact quote is cute, but Ellie could've proven her father actually existed, with evidence. Palmer would've been left standing with his mouth open had she asked the same for his claims.
Why don't you fucking idiots reply to the post instead of posting a new thread? Fuckwits.
ROFLMFAO!!!! Someone's a little short today.
@G Unit: Theoretically, Ellie could have proven she loved her dad - a scan of her brain and read-out of her vital signs while looking at a picture of her dad and then photos of random strangers should be sufficient (the differences between the two should include her "love" even if neuroscience isn't advanced enough to pick out the individual components of such an emotion).
ROFLMFAO!!! Yer killin' me! Yer gonna incur the wrath of my chum Higgs though!
Attacking Christianity? No. They are attacking religion. Notice ALLAH is the first thing mentioned. Of course, if you are Christiana, Allah is just as imaginary to you as bigfoot.
@Gunit and VoR, useful responses, and relevant to the way most Christians believe. There is, however, a long and honorable tradition in theology of making "theism" irrelevant. What matters, to some, is the *impact* of the rituals and communities of faith, rather than any literal supernaturalism. Sadly, tell any of this to the pope.
Here's a decent expression of these thoughts from William James, but other similar ideas were expressed as early as the first century CE by Gnostic writers (who rejected any literal ascension or miracles).
"... and if you wish to grasp [religion's] essence, you must look to the feelings and the conduct [of believers] as being the more constant elements."
I'm as anti-religious as the next guy, but Trottier's argument is utterly specious. "Belief" by definition means "not subject to proof." Moreover, Godel's Completeness Theorem demonstrates that not everything can be proved. There have to be some postulates. To take simple example, in Euclidean geometry, parallel lines do not intersect -- that's a postulate. In non-Euclidean geometry, they may. But either way, you can't turn to a mathematician and say, "Prove parallel lines do/don't intersect." The only response is, "Well, you can imagine being one way, or you can imagine it being the other, and whichever you pick, different conclusions about other things follow." That's also all you can say about religion.
Then why'd you talk for so fucking long?
Regarding his challenge to "Present the evidence…." Ignoring for the moment that faith precludes fact, there are many Creationists, Ufologists, psychics, and the like who have scores of "evidence" to support their beliefs. So then we open up another argument-- What counts as evidence? This whole campaign seems like a lot of trolling to me--encouraging more conflict when we should be promoting mutual respect and acceptance.
@profrobert - you're correct that there are things which are not empirically provable, and your example of pure mathematics is an apt one. However, as soon as you use something to describe the physical world, it becomes empirically testable. In the case of math, when math describes a feature of our universe, we can perform observation and experiment to verify whether the description (and its predictions) are empirically valid.
So if someone believes in a god that doesn't interact with the physical world in any way, that's not empirically testable. However, if someone makes specific claims -- like that their God answers prayers, or heals them, or was incarnated as a historical human being -- those *claims* can be tested empirically. What skeptics are really after is an empirical examination of testable claims; religions make many such claims.
Religions make many such testable claims, not a single one has yet been proven.
That speaks volumes to anyone with a sense of reason.
I object to the title of this article. Unless there is more to the story than the billboard presented, how does this exactly classify an "attack" on Christianity? All it is saying is that if a claim is made, there should be evidence to support it. I am sure if I claimed that I could cure all disease by touching people on the big toe, everyone, regardless if they were secular or Christian, would demand that I have evidence backing up this claim.
And I am sure that if I did back this claim up with sufficiently extraordinary evidence (Like, say, allowing studies based on the Scientific Method) that I could actually do as I claimed, even the most skeptical atheist would admit that my extraordinary claim was the truth.
Asking someone to provide evidence to support a claim isn't, and should never be consider an 'attack'.
Otherwise; I am the King and Supreme Ruler of Canada. Because I said.
Objection duly noted. Now fuck off.
@Moops
Technically, Allah is just the Arabic word for God, and the Judeo-Christian, Islamic God is the same for all three religions.
I'm sick of this whole childish campaign. I don't care what these people's public "intentions" are, the asymmetrical impact is obvious to the meanest intellect on the slightest reflection. If they want to criticize people who make morally dubious decisions based on religious claims, they should do that, not embarrass themselves with these generalized non-arguments.
@Moops
Technically, Allah is just the Arabic word for God, and the Judeo-Christian, Islamic God is the same for all three religions.
I'm sick of this whole childish campaign. I don't care what these people's public "intentions" are, the asymmetrical impact is obvious to the meanest intellect on the slightest reflection. If they want to criticize people who make morally dubious decisions based on religious claims, they should do that, not embarrass themselves with these generalized non-arguments.
When you realize why you don't believe in Zeus, you will realize why I don't believe in God.
@ G Unit
Fathers exist, love exists, fathers often love daughters, claiming that your father loves you is not an extraordinary claim.
Claiming that Superman is real -- a man who can fly, see through walls, sucker punch freight trains, etc. -- would be an extraordinary claim. Of course, that's a downright pedestrian claim -- like claiming you have toe nails -- compared the Christian claim: that an invisible, anthropomorphic (he create us in his image!), omnipotent, omniscient, omni-benevolent, being rules over everything, yet the only evidence of It's existence is hand transcribed, third hand accounts written in the bronze age, which borrow heavily from the myths that preceded them, and are indistinguishable, in terms of plausibility and supporting evidence, from any other man-made religious myths.
@T It's childish to promote critical thinking? It's childish to want to live in a world that isn't overwhelmingly influenced by barbaric, bronze age ideologies, a relic from our species' infancy?
If you want some idea of what it's like to be an atheist in America, simply imagine that any religion *other than your own* had infected the minds of everyone around you. Let's try Scientology, since it seems to be politically correct to ridicule them:
Imagine your money said "In Xenu we Trust", our kids were being asked to recite a pledge including "One nation, under Xenu" every morning in school, there were huge, expensive Scientology churches on every corner, people who didn't believe in Xenu didn't typically admit it to their friends and family, because they were the most hated minority in America (the President saying "people who don't believe in Xenu shouldn't be considered patriots" with nobody batting an eyelash), public policy was being formed by people who wished to do Xenu's will, live-saving scientific research was banned because the President thought Xenu would disapprove, school boards lead by Scientologists were trying to revise biology textbooks to downplay the germ theory of disease ("it's just a 'theory'!") and promote the Thetan theory of disease (we're infected by space ghosts), so on and so forth.
Yet here are those evil, childish atheists, trying to promote *nothing more than critical thinking*, and you want them to shut up.
allah is listed first but has nothing to do w/ christianity so how is this specifically an attack on christianity?
It seems more like an attack on mindless obedience in all honesty.
Seems to be a rather serious debate going on. Anyways. I don't know how I feel about this as an atheist. I remember on the buses on my college campus last year there were advertisements that said "You can be good without God" which I agreed with. I could see how people could see this more like an attack and make them mad at atheists, which is perhaps needlessly creating conflict among people who should perhaps be finding similarities rather than arguing.
It is also interesting to note that even the absence of a God requires extraordinary evidence.
Christian groups put similar ads all over the place about evolution, abortion, etc... Athiests should be allowed the same privilege. There are plenty of ads that offend my sensibilities, not just religious ones, but the only ones I think should be taken down are the ones that would cause harm to someone.
But wait, aren't WE supposed to prove "God" *doesn't* exist???
Well said Yellow Phlegm...and for the idiots who are going about this campaign..uh there's extraordinary evidence everywhere...especially in nature and the complexity of dna and cells that couldn't have possibly evolved.
Just the fact that Dani could type that note is enough proof to prove that God Does Exist!
Now, we'll just have to explain why I've rejected Him for being such a fucking psychotic bastard poor manager.
We at Landover Baptist Church are praying for a quick end to these Hell-bound atheist.
Since this is happening in Canada, perhaps God could send a plague of rabid beavers to rip the eyes from these unholy sinners.
Our Landover Baptist internet forum is buzzing with sincere rebuking for those Unsaved Trash.
Praise, the End-times are upon us!!
Are you sure this "attack" is from atheist?
NOTE the evidence. The multi-armed Hindu goddess Devi is not mentioned in the advertisement.
I suspect She is behind this plot to attack the other Gods.
Odin will be pissed he was not invited.
Atheist : they deserve another Spanish Inquisition.
I cant' wait for the Canadian auto de fé .
"profrobert" is quite confused. It is not "Godel's Completeness Theorem" that "demonstrates that not everything can be proved" but rather his *In*completeness theorem. Furthermore, the applicability of this theorem to the real world, where we use typically use probabilistic reasoning from incomplete information, is not clear at all.
I knead some more shallits for my broth. Shad the fuck up Jeffrey.
The athriest are just a bunch of know it all scientist who need to prove everyhting. The bible is what says it all about Jesus and that is it.
Bible is 100% word of the Lord. If the bible says so, that is proof enough for me. End of argument. Why cant' athriest scientist understand the simple truth of His word ans stop asking stupid questions ?
Maybe because we can fucking spell properly, and you can't?
How dare you christian infidels think that this violent attack is about your false religion! What imperialist american arrogance! These atheist have offended those that worship Allah and His followers.How dare they ask for evidence of the One True Faith ....allaiiia ....alaiii ....allaiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
Peace Be with You,
Mujibar
Mujibar
Huh? Your name is Mujibar Mujibar? What kind of retard names his child the same thing twice? What a hack and cliche name.
I am relieved that they are not attacking bacon.
YOU'RE relieved? You ain't got nothing on relief, Andy boy.
Just letting everyone know, I don't really care about this.
I'm back, and still not caring.
I've returned to validate the status quo. kthxbai
You people realize that science is rooted in the same bullshit as religion and for a long time the catholic church was the leader in said scientific bullshit.
Religion was bullshit from the beginning. They just perfected it with "science". There is nothing true about anything three dimensional and to look for proof is to continue the lie and the distraction from Eternal Wisdom of Knowing All and No-thing.
Religion is for dummies.
All the 3 Dimensional Lie is, is a thought form refracted through the Crystal brain of the Human thought form. The universe we experience with our senses is truly a holographic tapestry formed by the Thought (Thoth) Process to slice up and steal the power of our true, whole, state of perfect being.
There is no God, nor are there any gods. There is only an entity or entities that decided the the power of that supreme expression of being should be focused, and theirs alone. They have hypnotized many of the holons that make up this Whole Perfect State into giving them that power. They play both God and Devil. Their only power is the ridiculously convincing lie that all this is real, and that you should spend all your energy in Fear or Hate or Love or any emotion.
I have to go poo now.
All the 3 Dimensional Lie is, is a thought form refracted through the Crystal brain of the Human thought form. The universe we experience with our senses is truly a holographic tapestry formed by the Thought (Thoth) Process to slice up and steal the power of our true, whole, state of perfect being.
There is no God, nor are there any gods. There is only an entity or entities that decided the the power of that supreme expression of being should be focused, and theirs alone. They have hypnotized many of the holons that make up this Whole Perfect State into giving them that power. They play both God and Devil. Their only power is the ridiculously convincing lie that all this is real, and that you should spend all your energy in Fear or Hate or Love or any emotion.
Has science proven yet why sub-atomic particles can communicate instantaneously regardless of the distance between them?
Could it be because the universe is a projection of a series of thoughts and nothing more? And that the science describing it, same as any religion tries, is simply another blind to keep us all apart from our true, wise, powerful selves?
Apparently I missed some good LSD
Certainly, we all can recognize the extraordinary evidence of Scientology. The proof is in the Thetans.
Amen to that, brother!
See, kids, this is why agnosticism is the way to go. We don't care, we don't care if you care, and we're not going to spend millions of dollars on bus ads to prove it.
@ G Unit, emotions can't be proven, but existence can.
Oh scientology...jokestuffs.
Hey man.
As I Rastafarian I am deeply overstanding all dis to the oneness of Jah ...well I know ... ah um ...well, it is time to roll another one. Goodbye. Have good time all. Come visit Jamaica.
Listen up.
I spend most of my time rooting around for insects and berries. Have I bothered any of YOU? No.
Every time some jerk wants to make a quick buck , I get chased out of the woods at the point of a camera. Would you people please leave me alone? Do you have the slightest idea how hard it is for me to get a little privacy on a date (or to even GET a date for that matter)? I just want to be left alone. Stop believing in me. Go away.
BigFoot
All comedy and sarcasm aside, Atheists can no more tolerate a belief in anything that can't be scientifically explained and proven, than Christians, Hindus, Muslims, or Scientologists (etc) can tolerate disbelief in the supernatural.
All have an equal ability to be bigoted and ignorant as well as understanding and tolerant. It is the human condition and nothing anyone can say or do will change that. It has been that way for centuries and will very likely continue to be that way until humans cease to exist.
The main issue, as I see it, isn't whether one or the other is right or wrong, but whether people can look past those differences and accept that everyone thinks and believes differently, and that that is ultimately good for humanity.
Blaming either side's dis/beliefs for the sins visited upon humanity in their name is pointless and stupid. People have always always found reasons to fight and these reasons have often been trivial and easily overcome with a little respect and forethought. All sides commit atrocities.
Religion, or its absence is inconsequential. Respect and acceptance of others is absolutely not.
@yellow phlegm - you cannot prove a negative proposition. the non-existence of god cannot be logically proven, nor can the non-existence of an elephant in your bedroom - you might just be deluded and therefore unable to see it. now that doesn't mean that it's very likely to that you have an elephant in your bedroom, or that god exists.
@dani - no. complexity in and of itself does not imply intentional creation. in an infinitely large (or very large) universe, the probability of complex life *not* appearing approaches zero. consider the infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters - sooner or later one has to write the complete works of william shakespeare.
strictly speaking, one cannot through logic affirm either the existence or non-existence of a god, as the proposition (as defined by believers) is set up so as to be unprovable. the logical position would be agnosticism - that the question can't be answered, therefore isn't worth discussing.
it is quite possible to investigate empirically whether religions have, over the years, made people act in helpful or unhelpful ways. on that point, the evidence is pretty damning. the capacity of 'believers' to cause harm to 'non-believers' because it makes them feel a bit better about themselves is quite remarkable.
and on the advert - i think it's grossly unfair to include bigfoot in that group. true, we don't have particularly good empirical evidence that he/she exists. but it's a lot more likely, given what we know, that something like bigfoot exists than something like the deity described by christianity and islam.
also - it really annoys me that people throw about pseudo-criticisms of science when they clearly haven't grasped high-school physics. get to post-grad level before you start posting about Godel or subatomic particles, please.
Funny how demanding supporting evidence for any of those things in the Bus ad becomes "controversial".
@Al - "Atheists can no more tolerate a belief in anything that can't be scientifically explained and proven," & "Religion, or its absence is inconsequential. Respect and acceptance of others is absolutely not.".
What a passive/aggressive crock of mamby pamby Kum Bay Ya crap.
In a generically passionate attempt to prove your 'wisdom' and 'tolerance' (via preaching), you actually display your own self righteous hypocrisy and a sloppy tendency to stereotype atheist and the religious alike.
Prove your statements. Provide such "extraordinary evidence" of your contentions that "all have an equal ability to be bigoted and ignorant". I want to see this equality and ignorance quantified.
Blah bah blah ... about "people looking past hose differences."
You sure didn't.
Hey can anyone recommend any documentaries or even proper movies on this topic?
Peace
Just wanted to point out that there are quite a few people who still practice Greek paganism and believe in Zeus. Just like there are Norse pagans who believe in Odin and Thor, as well as Egyptian pagans who believe in Ra and Isis. It's a shame that people assume that these religions are dead, they are still very much alive and just as important to people as Jesus and Allah are to Christians and Muslims.
Discrimination never really goes away does it? Message of the article: Atheists you're defective, shut the hell up. Well... no, actually.
sdgw
@profrobert: " Moreover, Godel's Completeness Theorem demonstrates that not everything can be proved" WRONG.... Godel's theorem has nothing to do with evidence and proof; it relates to decidability of logical propositions. It states that there are certain propositions that cannot be decided (mainly because they are self-referential). It's the old Cretan's paradox.
But the propositions that describe any claim for any phenomenon simply don't classify as non-decidable propositions under Godel's theorem. They are positive statements made about the nature that are in principle decidable (whether or not we have access to the evidence required to reach a reasonable consensus). A proposition like "God Exists" (a pure Deist conception) may be undecidable, but as soon as you add "And he works in the world" (Theism), it becomes a statement of fact about the world and IS decidable. It is precisely what is considered an "Extraodinary Claim", and we are entirely within our rights to demand extraordinary evidence to accept it.
Oh, and Belief does not mean "acceptance of an undemonstrable statement". It simply means "acceptance of an UNDEMONSTRATED (as of yet) statement". Belief carries a certain level of uncertainty, but it certainly does not imply blind acceptance without regard to the evidence supporting the claim.
And Faith, contrary to what most people think, it not simply a belief. It is belief in the face of contrary evidence. If it was belief in the *absence* of evidence, no one would call it Faith. It would be simply belief. It takes a specific, willful denial of evidence challenging one's belief to hide it behind the protective wall called "Faith".
Jesus H. Christ, he made a fool out of you profrobert, didn't he?
profrobert pwned!
Thank you, anonymous defender of science. Also, logic and philosophy- please understand at least the basics before blending up a mishmash of nonsense.
I now believe in the existence of an intelligent community of humans who browse through the Hooksexup News column
I now believe in the existence of a community of intelligent humans who browse the Hooksexup News column.
I was once dangerous enough to ask an intelligent question.
Now I believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.
Conform or be cast out ...
Religion is more than ancient books with highly exaggerated stories.
It is about conforming to fear. Fear of an imaginary place.
If you think about it though, this ad doesnt make sense. Homeopathy exists, the debate is whether it works or not. Jesus, the man was real. The question most people have is: is He the son of God.
@ anon,
And you have shown in your own post how enlightened you are on said topics. Thanks so much for your informative contributions.
Perhaps the more salient distinction isn't that of theists and atheists, but rather, extremists and everybody else.
I know whoever is posting these anti-religious ads thinks they're clever because advertisement is so coercive, surely it's the best way to get any idea across, but if they actually thought this would raise intelligent debate or critical assessment of religion, they're morons.
They discredit their own association with rationalistic sciences by doing this, because we all know what ads like this are and aren't for.
@Dennis Robert
If God is a creator God, he "works in the world" whether it's a continuous interception or not. All statements of God's causal role can be reduced down to his creation of the world and don't require any paranormal activities at all. I doubt that any miracle that's ever been documented couldn't be explained in empirical terms. Mystic visions probably can be explained by drugs or altered mental states, given adequate data. Is this evidence that God doesn't exist or that if he does, he has no causal role in the day-to-day workings of the world? Of course not.
People talk in metaphors and interpretations and yeah, a lot of the time if you take their claims at face value they are ridiculous, but it becomes your responsibility to understand what they mean if you wish to criticize the content of their claims. Look at the logic of what people are saying. Even mystics can be refreshingly consistent about things that can't even be talked about.
What's your excuse?
Creating all our universe is a pretty big job. Maybe god needed some help and the other gods pitched in to lend him a hand.
Maybe all religion and science are, are different forms of sun worship. One small example...the Atom Symbol is a cleverly hidden six-pointed star, which is and has been in turn a very prominent, multi-religious symbol.
Yeah, like in Lost.