Learning About Atheist Parasites

I saw this in The Young Turks and I went like: “What is this, I don’t even”

I see this rabbi as using similar techniques that Sam Harris uses to criticize religion. In-your-face, there is nothing good about my adversary. This is the kind of talk that does not promote understanding or tolerance, but feels good to those who agree with him. We atheists have characterized religion as a virus, a disease, a mental illness and a pox on society. Is religion really completely evil? Seriously?

The rabbi is correct in stating that religion has contributed to your culture and society. Besides preaching hatred and delusion, religion also had a regulating force on ethics in a time when most people were illiterate. Despite the hypocrisies of the church itself, we still consider crimes like murder, theft and perjury to be wrong.

What this shows me is that we are finally getting to them (the religious) and they are recoiling in fear. The rabbi is a savvy marketer (citing the auto commercials) and he is fully aware that his hatchet job on atheists will likely persuade at least some of the faithful to remain that way.

In response to the rabbi, I would point out that the real parasites today are the churches and clergy, who sell false hopes, operate tax-exempt businesses, prey on the weak and gullible, spread fear in our children, and pride themselves in obeying a so-called “higher law” than what is standard for the rest of society. For the small about of good that churches do as community service, they require much higher overhead than secular organizations, and they require you to swallow a lot more bullshit in the process.

I can’t wait until the author documents the Bill Maher parasite, which in addition to producing laughter or outrage in its victims, depending on their outlook, is also totally resistant to any known modern vaccine.

@billybobbibb

“Despite the hypocrisies of the church itself, we still consider crimes like murder, theft and perjury to be wrong.”

Are you seriously implying that without religion, society would consider those destructive acts to be acceptable? That would be an absurd implication (and I think I’ve heard people like Ken Ham say the same thing).

The rise in these claims come in spite of evidence to the contrary. I think this means they’re afraid and they don’t think they can afford to ignore the threat, to the point of scapegoating.

This rabbi seems to ignore the fact that most antisemitism came from religious aspects of society. For centuries Christianity viewed Jews as Christ-killers and fomented the seeds of hate to the point that it bore fruit in the form of The Final Solution. In the 30’s and early 40’s, most Americans thought Jews deserved the persecution they got from the Germans. A lot of Islamic adherents views Judiasm as a corruption, some of them willing to kill to purify the world of Judiasm.

billybobbibb, your post gave me whiplash. First you seem to condemn atheists for being just as bad for also using “extremism” as a polarizing tactic….then proceed to pile on even more extreme criticisms of religion.
Is this some ascetic sect of atheism that I am not aware of that indulges in self-flagellation? Where one has to punish oneself by saying good things about religion before one is permitted to say anything bad about it?

Anyone else catch that grin on Beck’s face when the idiot Jew let himself be used and exploited himself to ingratiate himself to the Christian theocracist? It’s almost as if he was laughing at the rabbi’s stupidity and from Beck that’s saying something.

Just confirms this paranoia I have that the Jews who are stupid enough to jump on the horrid Judeo-Christian bullshit wagon are going to find themselves far easier to identify than the nonbelievers when they succeed in aiding the Christian Reich’s take-over? I mean did the moron really just say some of the nicest corners of America are the ones where everyone goes to church on Sunday (overgeneralizing much?) without so much as a nod to the corners of America where almost everyone in the neighborhood goes to the local synagogue on Saturday?

My god! The heck with Atheists. How the fuck can he not recognize what he’s doing to his own people? This guy is going to make a lovely capo in a concentration camp some fine day.

Can’t you use the exact same argument by replacing “religion” with “science” and “atheists” with “fundamentalists”?

“I do believe that atheists are parasites in the sense that they are benefiting from everything that religious culture has built in America, but they’re doing nothing to add energy into the system.”

Shall we make a list of what the “religious culture” of America has built in the last 100 years? No offence but I’d rather not “benefit” from jihadists blowing themselves up or flying planes into buildings. I’d rather not “benefit” from speaking in tongues, “cures” for illnesses through prayer, terrors inflicted on children or child rapist hidden from secular authorities.

I’d rather not “add energy” into a system that tells the weak and desperate to trust in a god who isn’t there rather than seek help from secular sources or even help themselves.

I’d rather not get involved at all with a system that calls us parasites or Nazis and wishes to deny us the label of citizen (as George Bush Snr did). I’d rather not have anything to do with a system that makes women second to men and denies equal rights for gay people. I’d rather avoid entirely a system that demands respect but offers nothing in return, not even a glimmer of evidence that their assertions have any grain of truth in them.

Billybob;

The difference between Sam Harris and Rabbi Lapin is that Harris, et al refer to religion as a virus. They don’t attack believers, just thier stupid beliefs (and goddamn I am sick of pointing out to believers and non-believers alike that dumb ideas are dumb, no matter how “sacred” someone or some group of people consider those dumb ideas.)

The Rabbi has, however, made it personal. He’s gone one step further to label a group of people. And he’s given them a rather dispicable label.

Your analogy is a pretty poor one. And while admittedly religion has made some admirable contributions to culture and society, your claim that we aren’t going around dicing each other up with machettes is most likely in spite of religion, rather than because of it.

“I do believe that atheists are parasites in the sense that they are benefiting from everything that religious culture has built in America, but they’re doing nothing to add energy into the system.”

None of this really has anything to do with whether gods exist, though. If not, then those religions are all just human attempts to make sense of the world, just like what atheists are doing today.

Some of those human attempts to make sense of the world came up with some good ideas, sure, but there’s no reason that secular philosophy can’t do the same. In fact, secular philosophy is likely to do better on the whole because we can base our ethics on the effects of our actions on other people, and not have to take into account the often anti-human whims of some supernatural being or another.

Religion has never provided anything to our culture. People who where religious may have done so, but religion itself has been an impediment to progress with all the wonders of the burning of the Library of Alexandria, the Crusades, the Dark Ages, the Inquisition, the Witch Burnings, the Holocaust, and our latest religious insanity that I call Global Fundamentalist Islamic Jihad. And those are just the highlights. We can also include less well known modern phenomenon such as driving out witch children in Africa (witches are so popular with religion), imprisoning and killing gays in Africa (and any place else religious people can get away with it), attempts at genocide in the former Yugoslavian republics against Muslims, and it goes on and on and on and on….

Just remember, we didn’t start the fire but there’s a good chance that one of us will wind up tied to a stake at the center of it in the name of religious culture and progress.

To all those ultra religious on the internet:

Science says “You’re Welcome”.

That isn’t parasitism; that would be commensalism.