Chuck Norris Sheds More Light on the Evil Atheist Conspiracy May 21, 2007

Chuck Norris Sheds More Light on the Evil Atheist Conspiracy

Last week, Chuck Norris wrote about how atheists want to outlaw Christianity. This week, he’s back with the conclusion.

Some quotable phrases:

So what credentials does a man like [Richard] Dawkins have to discuss the presence or absence of God? Answer: He’s “a scientist.”

He actually has multiple PhDs and argues in The God Delusion that the question of God’s existence is a scientific one. So the fact that he’s a scientist helps.

While you think your kids are innocently surfing the Web, secular progressives are intentionally preying on their innocence and naïveté.

What’s preposterous is that atheists are now advertising and soliciting on websites particularly created for teens.

Well, Camp Quest is targeted to children of non-religious parents… but I suppose Norris has a point. It’s not like there are Jesus Camps anywhere. Or churches that target services at children who are too young to be able to make their own decisions about anything.

And what’s with the idea that atheists are preying on the innocence of the youth? Ideas like the Blasphemy Challenge tell people to put to video what they’ve already been feeling for so long but been afraid to say out loud. What innocence are we taking from them?

Atheism requires thought. No one forces you to be an atheist. That’s something you see only in religion. The idea that all it takes to make someone an atheist is some savvy Internet advertising says more about the person who falls for it than it does about atheism. Hopefully, the internet articles get people to think. Which Norris seems to be afraid of… because thinking rationally goes against everything he stands for.

Zachary Moore at Goosing the Antithesis has a terrific summary of Norris’ views of the evil atheists’ plans:

Outlawing Christianity

  1. by causing a goof-up at the mint, resulting in “In God We Trust” being accidentally left off some new dollar coins.
  2. by joining the Freedom From Religion Foundation and ensuring that the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution is correctly applied.
  3. by discovering the existence of a nonbelieving Congressman.
  4. by forcing Congress to pass a hate-crime bill.

Targeting Children

  1. by daring to raise them without religion.
  2. by offering a non-religious summer camp for freethinking kids.
  3. by providing an online forum to allow teenagers to question faith.
  4. by offering unholy Richard Dawkins link buttons for MySpace pages.

Promoting Atheism

  1. by purchasing Richard Dawkins’ “atheist bible.”
  2. by allowing Sam Harris to write letters.
  3. by ignoring the science that proves God.



[tags]atheist, atheism, Chuck Norris, Christianity, Richard Dawkins, God, The God Delusion, Camp Quest, Jesus Camp, Blasphemy Challenge, Zachary Moore, Goosing the Antithesis[/tags]

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  • Nina

    That’s funny! It occurs to me however, that for quite a lot of the religious, thought is a large part of the faith lifestyle. Their blogs have daily meditations, they have bible study groups, they have intense theological discussions, they discuss particular applications of their holy texts to life if not daily, at least regularly. I mention this not to be redundantly repeating myself by telling you what you already know (again), but to raise the possibility that one of the points of miscommunication is that the religious, talking to each other, are accustomed to using a linguistic shorthand that we atheists simply aren’t privy to. We don’t know, quite literally, what their actual words mean. We, on the other hand, are also accustomed to dealing with each other in a non-faith context and we can get fairly boisterous with it. Huge possibilities for misunderstanding.

    Is Chuck Norris serious about the Mint? No, serious, serious?

  • Tommy

    Actually, I was thinking about turning atheistic, but I’m going to stay agnostic. Despite your pot shots, he quotes some notable scientists at the end of the article (Davies, Horgan, Jastrow, etc.) and makes a valid point that science can’t explain everything (and we have our own biases too). I’m not saying he whole article was perfect, but I was surprised at his reasonable logic to be honest.

  • Jedipunk

    “There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of creatures Chuck Norris has allowed to live.”

  • An actor tells a distinguished scientist that he’s not qualified to discuss religion?

  • bright

    Well, I agree Chuck Norris is being quite overzealous, but let’s look at it from his perspective. He probably sees people Sam Harris who go around saying how atheists need their rights (which I agree with) but then turn around and say ALL religious people are bad no matter what and we should “ban” religion, basically creating a double standard, and isolating liberal religious who would actually agree on with him on some things. I In the Soviet Union they “banned” it too to “educate” people-look what happened. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if you want freedom from religion, you need to tolerate freedom of religion. You can fight for your rights without attacking other peoples’ rights (this applies to religions as well) most of the time. Most atheists do from what I’ve seen, it’s just some of the public figures seem to be getting a little overzealous with the “let’s ban what I don’t think should be around” scenario. So I think that’s where he’s going with that, even though he didn’t say it right. What many people don’t seem to realize is that people like Sam Harris only add to the negative image of atheists. I haven’t heard Dawkins say anything about banning religion, so I guess he is ok. What I don’t like about him is him acting like this is a “science vs. evolution” scenario all the time. Only creationists reject evolution. There are plenty of religions that do accept it. Also, it’s perfectly fine to have your groups on the Internet, but you don’t like it if some religious person comes into one of your chat rooms and starts “preaching” do you? Well, lately I’ve been seeing quite a few “angry atheists” coming into religious chat rooms and saying lots of hateful things, I mean really hateful things, without provocation. It was interesting, a friend of a friend, who is a Deist, heard about one on myspace who was doing just that and wrote to him to tell him to please stop b/c he was being just as bad as fundies and making atheists look bad. He wrote back with such anger and venom, and totally attacked her for having an alternative lifestyle (info he got off her profile)-which was totally irrelevant to the conversation and one of the very things he gets on religions for. It was disgusting. Too often those are the types of people that are seen and heard by people like Chuch Norris. I’ve seen the “Rational Response Squad” come in and do this too. It would be nice if more people were like Hermant. You say no one “forces” you to be an atheist, but what about that, and what about people like Sam Harris who seems to want to force everyone to be an atheist? Some atheists seem to think that b/c they are atheists they are “allowed” to do this. I disagree and think this approach will eventually backfire, for both sides. How is Sam Harris any better than fundie preachers? Please, no double standards. This also goes for people who bud into private conversations in public, both religious and non-religious. Things like Jesus camp are awful. And there is stuff being done to try and stop places like that. But they certainly don’t comprise all of religion by any means. And you also need to realize that the more Sam Harrises come out, the more militant some of these fundie groups are going to get-and it’s going to go back and forth like a bad game of tennis. I’m not saying you should “roll over and play dead”, but you can accomplish a lot of your goals without being as hostile. If you actually think that if you ban religion the world will be a better place, you don’t understand human nature very well. People will just find another kind of dogma, probably an even worse one, to kill each other over. It’s a human problem, and it isn’t going to go away by eliminating one symptom of it. In the Soviet Union, they were going to be an atheist society-and they ended up adopting the dogma of communism, which they used to kill lots of people, most notably Jews and Christians, and people of any other religion. The coin thing was ridiculous for him to get all upset over, I agree. As for the internet, freedom of speech, but I don’t think either side trolling into opposite groups is going to accomplish much. Advertise, and people will know you are there, but do it in neutral places on the web. There are plenty. This website for one is a great idea. As for the children thing, many people accept religion as adults too. But I agree that children should be exposed to all view points.

  • Brendon Lake

    I’m all for making up your own mind and there are people who have very good reasons for being Athiests, but I think a large number of people who don’t believe in God, or a God just dont want to ponder the question because they’re quite comfortable not having to face the possibility of God existing.
    It’s quite amusing because in ancient times, being called “godless” was a huge insult because everyone believed in God.

  • Brendon Lake

    To clarify, at the end of my statement, when I said “every one believed in God.” I meant a god, I didnt mean to imply every one was Christian.

  • Steelman

    Brendon Lake said: To clarify, at the end of my statement, when I said “every one believed in God.” I meant a god, I didnt mean to imply every one was Christian.

    You’re right; that wouldn’t be the ancient world; that would be the modern day U.S. southern states. 😉

  • John

    Chuck Norris doesn’t believe in God. God believes in Chuck Norris.

  • Richard Wade

    Oh Bruce Lee, where are you in our hour of darkness?

  • Someone should outlaw reruns of Walker, Texas Ranger.

  • Bright…

    I think you’ve wandered far afield….

    Where has Sam Harris advocated the banning of religion?

    I think Harris argues against religion, but that’s not arguing for a BAN on religion.

    If you’ve got a quote, please bring it to my attention. I’ve never read anywhere that Sam Harris advocated the government stepping in to criminalize religion.

    You say Harris “seems to want to force everyone to be an atheist”.

    I think that’s utterly false. Please provide documentation for that outrageous claim.

    Things are bad enough for atheists right now. We don’t need people putting words in other people’s mouths.

  • Why did I think that this guy was cool in again?

  • Things are bad enough for atheists right now. We don’t need people putting words in other people’s mouths.

    I”m all in favor of that. And I’d go a lot farther, not assigning guilt to something because someone else did it. Sam Harris would have to go back to writing his Dissertation if he gave that one up. I’m really interested in how the idea of vicarious guilt, really big in the caste religious-political systems, is gaining vogue among some atheists again.

    Chuch Norris, good grief. Isn’t it bad enough that he pretends to be an actor, now he’s making believe he can think?

  • Things are bad enough for atheists right now. We don’t need people putting words in other people’s mouths.

    I”m all in favor of that. And I’d go a lot farther, not assigning guilt to someone because someone else did it. Sam Harris would have to go back to writing his Dissertation if he gave that one up. I’m really interested in how the idea of vicarious guilt, really big in the caste religious-political systems, is gaining vogue among some atheists again.

    Chuch Norris, good grief. Isn’t it bad enough that he pretends to be an actor, now he’s making believe he can think?

  • William

    While I don’t fully agree with Sam Harris, I’ve never heard him advocate a ban on religion. I did hear him say on a podcast that he doesn’t want religion to have the reverrence that it currently enjoys.

  • We are talking about the same Sam Harris, aren’t we?

    http://www.samharris.org/appearances/London_Times.pdf

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/
    science-must-destroy-reli_b_13153.html

    He practices stereotyping and assigning blame to people who didn’t harm anyone. It makes as much sense to say that since the 9-11 attack was done by men, many of them from the middle and even upper middle class, all of them seem to be heterosexual, some of them had training in technology or the sciences that those groups are to blame for the acts of the hijackers.

    Pretending he hasn’t been writing what he’s been writing for the past several years is not honest.

  • I’m not pretending anything.

    Bright says Harris advocates BANNING religion and seems to advocate FORCING people to become atheists.

    Honesty can begin right here, right now. No evasions, no “tu quoque”. No lists of other things he’s done that you don’t like.

    Did he or did he not say those things?

  • Brian Macker

    “… makes a valid point that science can’t explain everything …”

    Yes, and that’s a valid point for what, believing in leprechauns? You know what religion can’t explain everything either so I guess that means there is no god. Oops, I’ve made a mistake, religion can explain everything. God did it.

  • Brian Macker

    To some people saying “Religion X teaches evil things” is the same as saying “all people who are born into religion X are evil”. I can’t figure out how they come to such conclusions but they do. Perhaps it’s in their upbringing.

  • Brian Macker, you make a very common mistake among atheists. The lack of disproof isn’t a requirement to believe. It’s a requirement to be honest that you don’t know. It is also a fact that frees people to believe, not to believe or to take no position. I think it’s the fact that people are free to believe what they want to and not what the atheist-fundamentalists want them to that drives them nuts. I’ve found that non-fundamentalist-atheists have no problem with this freedom. And they don’t ususally sound like bigots when they’re talking about it.

    You know how many of you guys believe in the “meme” which is pretty much unsupported by science and which many scientists have mocked? I call it Richard Dawkins golden parachute from the possible wreck of his career as a strict adaptationist. His war on religion is just his back up chute if the “meme” turns out to be fairy dust.

  • HappyNat

    Good God, Bright. They are called paragraphs . . .look into it. You make a bunch of claims without any hint of proof. Some atheists are mean and wrote mean e-mails to your friend. I don’t see where anybody wants a govermental ban of religion, but nice tie ins to the soviet union. Are people still scared of “the commies”?

  • Mriana

    Atheism requires thought. No one forces you to be an atheist. That’s something you see only in religion. The idea that all it takes to make someone an atheist is some savvy Internet advertising says more about the person who falls for it than it does about atheism.

    This is a good point. I did not come by my ideas/beliefs via the internet, but I did do some research there as well as in various books and talked to people about my thoughts. In the process, I ran into some very good people (mostly Anglicans) who think a lot as I do. We don’t agree on everything obviously, but there is a common factor. Eventually, and for many other reasons besides my own thinking, I gave up going to church. This is one area Price and Spong disagree with me.

  • No one forces you to be an atheist. That’s something you see only in religion.

    It is true that there are lots of times in history and the present when dictatorial systems that mix politics and religion do and some times when individual religions do but to make a blanket assertion is inaccurate. Liberal religion, like what I’m going to start calling liberal atheism, doesn’t insist on homogenous conformity but allows for individuals to have their own ideas on these things. And liberal religion is a lot less rigid than the kind of atheist orthodoxy that is found on most atheist blogs. This one and a few other’s I’ve seen are a marked exception. And there is quite a bit of pressure for people in the sciences to conform to the atheist-fundamentalist code of speech too.

    I’m undecided on the Forrest Mims case, in which Martin Gardener crowed about his being denied a job on the basis of his fundamentalism. He was going to be writing in an area that had nothing to do with any of the pseudo-science aspects of fundamentalism since his expertise is electronics. Mims is certainly qualified to write on that. I don’t like his fundamentalism but I don’t like McCarthyism either. I am also rather attached to the Civil Rights laws protecting equal rights in employment, wishing it covered my minority group as well as race and religion.

  • Okay, so nobody’s going to document their allegation that Sam Harris has advocated a ban on religion? Can we also dismiss as spurious the claim that Sam Harris seems like he would avocate forcing people to become atheists?

    Folks are well within their rights to criticize Sam Harris, as I have done on plenty of occasions. But making up positions he does not advocate, in order to attack him, provides us with zero insight, and does not serve as a proper method in the pursuit of truth.

  • monkeymind

    Well, he says “religion must be destroyed”. I can see how it would be easy to interpret that as “religion must be banned” though he doesn’t exactly say that. In fact, he’s pretty vague about the practical political applications of his positions.

  • Saimang, I don’t believe I charged him with “wanting to ban religion” anywhere, just to keep that straight. I have charged him with sterotyping, bigotry, double standards, presenting himself as a scientist without having publishted (perhaps he has since I first checked that one out) and any number of other things. I could say I think he’s massively dishonest too but why pile on?

  • He says “Religion must be destroyed by science“.

    How does he think this “destruction” would come about? Forcing people into reeducation camps? Using the might of the state to ban religious writings and observances and institutions?

    No.

    Not by force, by finding new ways of talking.

    To win this war of ideas, scientists and other rational people will need to find new ways of talking about ethics and spiritual experience. The distinction between science and religion is not a matter of excluding our ethical intuitions and non-ordinary states of consciousness from our conversation about the world; it is a matter of our being rigorous about what is reasonable to conclude on their basis. We must find ways of meeting our emotional needs that do not require the abject embrace of the preposterous. We must learn to invoke the power of ritual and to mark those transitions in every human life that demand profundity — birth, marriage, death, etc. — without lying to ourselves about the nature of reality.

    I am hopeful that the necessary transformation in our thinking will come about as our scientific understanding of ourselves matures. When we find reliable ways to make human beings more loving, less fearful, and genuinely enraptured by the fact of our appearance in the cosmos, we will have no need for divisive religious myths.

    Monkeymind said

    I can see how it would be easy to interpret that as “religion must be banned” though he doesn’t exactly say that.

    I think it’s easy to interpret anything badly if you make up your mind by reading the title of an article and disregard the lengthy footnote of the article itself. (Thanks to Richard Dawkins for that rather brilliant turn of phrase).

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