The Atheist Influence March 7, 2008

The Atheist Influence

By Guest Contributor
March 7, 2008

It’s easy to argue atheists can’t make a real difference in the world because we’re a relatively small group of people.

But it’s also easy to refute that argument.

The website Christian Cross Talk says we have tremendous influence!

In fact, Edward Gordon says we’re responsible for future genocide, civil war, and mass extinction.

And — even worse — gluttonous behavior!

atheistinfluence.JPG

You’re gonna want to click on that image and see the larger version.

Let’s play a game: How many logical errors can you find?

I spot 329848092342 of them.

(via Atheist Okie)


[tags]atheist, atheism[/tags]

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  • Siamang

    That last step is going to happen no matter what.

    In fact, some believers are counting on it!

  • baniak

    seems that fundies are huge fans of diagrams, flowcharts, etc. This one puts Mr. Gordon’s flowchart to shame.

  • Atheism leads to “Dissolution of Religious Freedom”? This from someone who wants to tell me what to do? Is this guy pulling everybody’s leg? There seems to be this idea in the USA that the only freedom some people are interested in is the freedom to conform.

    “People as Consumers Only” is another interesting one. I recently finished listening to a book on my mp3 player by Randall Balmer called “Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America”. He talks about the partnership between evangelicals and the Republican Party. He says that the Bible says believers should look out for the poor and the outcasts, yet a lot of evangelicals are in lock-step with the Republican Party which pushes policies that favor the rich and the powerful.

    It is a very interesting book. Has anybody else read it?

  • Brent

    The arrows indicate non-sequiturs, right?

  • I like tea

    Strange… the arrows seem to imply some kind of connection, but I can’t see any.

    The arrows indicate non-sequiturs, right?

    Oh, okay. Thanks.

  • Tolga K.

    As you can see, many of these traits are wired in a weird combination of series and parallel.

    Now, we can treat a lot of these factors like resistors, because the factors he mentioned resist the progression of humanity.

    The formula for adding resistors in parallel is 1/R (total) = 1/R(1) + 1/R(2)…

    The later factors are more like capacitors, because those effects are long term and fade away slowly over time (except for the whole extinction bit). Those are added in the same way when in series.

    So… according to the schematic provided, our resistance is much lower than he’s implying, as is the stored potential destruction we are harboring within our beliefs.

    Science prevails again!

  • Hilarious! Unification of governments automatically leads to societal collapse and human extinction! If only we’d seen it coming.

  • slut

    Genocide is LEGAL now?

    Geesh, who knew?

  • Imemine

    Alright, who leaked our secret plans?

  • I was looking forward to the “Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader Orgy” block. Someone needs to make this into a board game.

  • Anyone else notice they missed the link between “Dissolution of Religious Freedom/Secular Authoritarian Governments” and “Legalized Genocide”?

    That whole thing reads like some fundie nutjob’s apocalyptic wet dream.

  • Nancy

    I am stuck at the beginning. How does disbelief in god lead to gluttonous behavior? Are there more fat atheists than fat christians?

  • cautious

    The unification of governments leads to civil war?!

    Buh? This must explain why all those European Union countries are falling apart from the inside.

  • Mriana

    Looks like a bunch of tripe to me. I lost count of the falicies in that diagram. The religious (esp religious extremists) are just as much to blame if not more.

  • Richard

    Check out the http://www.christiancrosstalk.com/ website and click on arguments for god. There aren’t any. Literally. A dead link speaks a thousand words!

  • I like tea

    Someone needs to make this into a board game.

    “Legalized genocide legislation filibustered in Senate, go back three spaces.”

  • Scorpious

    The whole thing is one huge logical error.

    They can’t even connect things right as they don’t have an arrow leading from Dissolution of Religious Freedom & Secular Authoritarian Governments, which just circle around each other, to Legalized Genocide.

    I think they may be trying to reserve that for themselves and they have used it multiple times in the past 3-4 thousand years or so.

  • Richard Wade

    The flowchart seems to be missing a step saying “Mass hysteria, dogs and cats living together!” as in Bill Murray’s great line from Ghost Busters.

  • Old Beezle

    And Richard Wade takes the win in the final round of “Fun With Fundies’ Apocalyptic Wet Dream: The Board Game” with his powerful quotation of scripture!

  • Old Beezle

    Richard–what do you do if someone asks you if you’re a god?

  • Richard Wade

    YOU SAY YES I AM! 😀

  • QrazyQat

    Genocide is LEGAL now?

    Geesh, who knew?

    It was a signing statement.

  • chancelikely

    Reminds me of the joke about the rabbi reading the Nazi propaganda newspaper:

    Rabbi Altmann and his secretary were sitting in a coffeehouse in Berlin in 1935. “Herr Altmann,” said his secretary, “I notice you’re reading Der Stürmer! I can’t understand why. A Nazi libel sheet! Are you some kind of masochist, or, G-d forbid, a self-hating Jew?”
    “On the contrary, Frau Epstein. When I used to read the Jewish papers, all I learned about were pogroms, riots in Palestine, and assimilation in America. But now that I read Der Stürmer, I see so much more: that the Jews control all the banks, that we dominate in the arts, and that we’re on the verge of taking over the entire world. You know – it makes me feel a whole lot better!”

  • False Prophet

    Nancy, the “gluttonous behaviour” link might be the only non-fallacy in that whole affair. Like Robert Ingersoll says in “God in the Constitution”, in the last 300 years of increasing secularization and scientific progress, the average working class person in our society has more education and a better quality of life than royalty did in the Middle Ages.

    So, as a direct result of secularization, we have a society where:

    -obesity is considered a greater concern than starvation
    -extra-marital sex is a greater concern than plague
    -recreational drug use is a greater concern than burglary
    -gambling is a greater concern than slavery
    -consumerism is a greater concern than civil unrest

    And I could go on. Christianity tells you “it’s okay to suffer pain, oppression, and want in this life, because you’ll be rewarded in the next”. Our secular society says “it is not right to suffer pain, oppression and want if there is a rational way to prevent them”.

    Although gluttony and indulgence are harmful when taken to extremes, they represent a lust for life that the depravity of Christian doctrine condemns. I’ll take a steak dinner over the Eucharist any day.

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