Protestors at Dan Barker Talk

Dan Barker, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, was speaking at California State University – Monterey Bay last month as part of his speaking tour.

Midway through the question and answer period, he was interrupted by a Christian mother and daughter.

Noelle Blair, a staff reporter for the campus newspaper, wrote this:

The two entered the room and asked to address the crowd. After Barker agreed, the mother began to yell that he was a liar and God was the truth.

“That’s exactly the kind of non-religious discrimination we face,” someone in the crowd yelled out.

For about fifteen minutes the two women repeatedly yelled that God is the truth. The audience tried to speak to them about what they were doing, but both persisted in their efforts to sway the crowd. Security eventually was called in after the women were asked several times to leave.

What is it about common courtesy that these kinds of Christians feel they can ignore while evangelizing?

They had every opportunity to ask a question and make their point. No one was stopping them. But instead, they chose to act hysterically — in a way that would just make the atheists want nothing to do with them.

I wonder where they get the notion that this actually works.

Or maybe they just think God will love them more if they talk loudly. Or write in ALL CAPS when they leave comments on various blogs…

(via Secular Student Alliance)

[tags]atheist, atheism[/tags]

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Linda

UMMM.. I DON’T KNOW. THEY DON’T SOUND VERY RATIONAL TO ME. THEY JUST HAVE TO BE SHRUGGED OFF AS NOT WORTHY OF ATTENTION, THAT’S ALL. (WALKS A FEW STEPS…) CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? .. 😉
miller

Luckily, it wasn’t my college! When he came over here we all had a good laugh about that incident.

Usually, “sticking your fingers in your ears and singing loudly” is only used metaphorically…
Secular Planet

Fifteen minutes? Why didn’t security escort them out within a minute or so? At universities here in Florida, rightly or wrongly, we tase people like that.
grazatt

DON”T TAZE EM BRO!
Steven Carr

Some people are like that. It is not a Christian/non-Christian thing.
Maria

ridiculous. I am so getting sick of people like that.
Mriana

I don’t know. I find this behaviour very typical of religious people, esp those of the Evangelical Fundamentalist branch. They invariably get hysterical when you say their god doesn’t exist. IF they were really secure in their beliefs, they would not become so irrational and hysterical when someone said their god didn’t exist- esp at events like this. They would say, “Oh well” and move on- as long as you didn’t attack them about it.

Now if a person were being attacked about their beliefs, then I could see being defensive, but that wasn’t the case here. These two just crashed the party. No one said they had to come. No one said they had to go and listen to Dan, but they did come and crashed the discussion. They did it to force their view on people. That is very rude IMO, yet very typical of the extremely religious, which I see an awful lot of around here.
Vincent

Much of it is the attention grabbing.
I think it’s akin to the grown women Steinbeck describes in Travels With Charlie who gathered to scream obscenities at a little girl for being the first to integrate a school.
vjack

I’m happy to see I’m not the only one who immediately thought of tasers!
Spook

Ah, so the majority is being persecuted again. Poor them, only having 90% of the population on their side.

Remind me, how often do atheists, agnostics, secularists (etc.) wander into churches and scream at the congregation, telling them that they’re a bunch of credulous asses?

I guess that bit about “do unto others” is lost on these loudmouths.
es

They’re very, very frightened people. We atheists are going to destroy their fantasy world and deep in their hearts, they know it.
Mriana

es, I think you hit the nail on the head with that one.
Anatoly

SORRY MY CAPS LOCK IS BROKEN, DARWIN LOVES YOU!
Mriana

😆 Darwin loves you! I love it! 🙂