California Atheist Group Rips Apart Bible Verses (with Video)

Frankly I think they said they were going to do something and then backed out.
I have no love for that, destroying a book is legal, and that is all the bible is, a book. If others give it reverence for whatever reason that is their hangup, not mine, tear it up, tear out the parts that need to go or that following say no longer apply, see how much is left, it would be hilarious.

Much more tame, but I was banned from Premier UK for posting a video of me moving a PDF from my desktop to the trash:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O08O5qUlibo

Wow. A shouting match.

Didn’t see that one coming. /sarc

I like the way they did it.

I love books, and no matter what the book says I don’t think it should be ripped up for any reason.  I have a collection of religious books and treat them with just as much respect as I do my other fiction books.  Taking verses from the bible, putting them in layman’s terms then reading them aloud is a great way for people that have not read the book in its entirety to realize that there are a lot of things in it that don’t make sense in our modern world.  Ripping it up, to me, wasn’t offensive at all. It was simply punctuation. We are not going to blindly follow the teachings of a text that is not relevant anymore.  Doing that would be like finding an old copy of municipal laws and following them blindly, even though they may have been recinded, or updated.  There is a law on the books in my community that says that african american people have to be inside and off the streets when the streetlights come on. Completely stupid! But no one follows it anymore 🙂 This is the same reason why the bible shouldn’t be followed anymore either.

Oh the tone argument. Will it ever end? The hard truth is that we need people out there on the front lines making lots of noise. These people are the ones who draw media attention and let closeted kids know that, yes, there are people out there like you and here’s where you can find them. Also, while it might not convert too many hard-lined Christians, there will be those that see this and think, “Wow, I didn’t know that was in there, maybe I should do some more digging.” 
While I personally would not attend something like this, because I’m rather mild mannered, I’m glad there are people out there doing it. I was first lured into becoming an out atheist through videos of shenanigans much like this posted on youtube. That led me to find Dawkins’ book “The God Delusion” which led to “God is not Great”, which led to “Letter to a Christian Nation” which led me to “Liars for Jesus” and Pharygula, and Hemant’s site etc.

Public spectacles like this are the “gateway drug” to atheism. (If you’ll allow my crude analogy)

I think it would have been a more accurate article if they had announced to the media their plan to all show up and yell at a street preacher.

Thomas Jefferson beat them to that one.

Or they could have taken a black sharpie to it.

Eh.  I’m all in favor of taking Gideon Bibles and everything Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses will give me to my local recycling center to eat into their bottom lines, but I simply don’t see the point in this.

Cutting the insane bits out of the Bible is a funny concept (see Firefly), but I don’t think it does anything in practice.  Yes, Jefferson did it, so it might be a nice example to demonstrate that he was not the Christian Founding Father some try to cast him as, but this didn’t really work as a “educate about history” either.

More or less wasted effort and a bit of negative press.

Oh gawd damn, I can’t believe how weak and wimpy our movement is. WHEN are we going to figure out that religion deserves zero respect? And that giving it respect anyway is a form of surrender? 

Yes, they eventually ripped up some paper. So now let’s hear all about how wrong they were for making our movement look like such extremists. lol

We could run faster as a movement, if one of our feet would get off the other!

“Somehow, I doubt this will get anywhere close to the coverage Pastor Terry Jones
got for threatening to burn the Koran, but he was a known bigot.
Gleason, on the other hand, actually has a legitimate point to make.”

Huh? 
Bigots don’t have legitimate points?   I guess P Z Myers didn’t have
any legitimate points to make when he desecrated a Qur’an either since
he too is a bigot.

Don’t believe me?  Just read some of his posts
about libertarians.   He does all the typical things one would expect
of any foaming at the mouth bigot.   His posts are full of hateful gross
over-generalizations, complete ignorance of what he is criticizing,
etc.   He is willing to brand them all to a one as sociopaths.  He’s as
dopey as bigoted Christians that think every atheist is a communist.

He’s
as laughable as someone calling all Darwinists selfish, and motivated
by greed, just because Richard Dawkins wrote a book called “The Selfish
Gene”.   In fact the point of that book is that what appears to be
altruistic is in fact selfish when looked at from a different
perspective.  

Ayn Rand did a similar thing when discussing
morality.   She wrote a book called the virtue of selfishness.    For
example pointing out that a mother helping her child while appearing to
be altruistic was actually selfish.   In fact, whenever you act on your
own values you are acting selfishly.    She called her philosophy
Objectivism.   

Just as not all Darwinists are Dawkinists.    It
is not necessarily true that all libertarians are objectivists.   In
fact, according to Rand, no libertarians are Objectivists.   Were Myers
not such an ignoramus he’d know that.

It’s worse than this
however.   Not even the Objectivist are against charity.   They just
don’t think a Marxist totalitarian government providing for the poor
counts as charity.   They find Christianity and Marxism both offensive
because they treat the individual as unworthy of their own lives, and as
ants in a colony to be sacrificed to a greater good defined by some
elite class of priest or politician.   A group that claims moral
authority over individual lives to the point where they feel they can
force sacrifice of others.   An additional concern being that it always
turns out that these demands of sacrifice are ever increasing, and ever
diverted to the very people claiming moral authority.

Which is
exactly how Myers views himself.   He is does not consider himself of
equal moral authority.   He not only wants to decide for himself what is
worthy of his charity, but he wants to decide for everyone else too.

That
makes him the monster.   Not only does he not have moral authority over
me.  He can’t have it.  His usurpation of my moral authority cannot
make me moral.  No more than preventatively imprisoning a rapist makes
him moral.  His failure to rape has nothing to do with self control.  

What’s
worse here however is that Myers wishes to control not my trespasses
but how I choose to practice reciprocal altruism, regardless of whether
I’m an Objectivist, libertarian, or of no ideology.    In his eyes
anyone who sees flaws in his methods of achieving charity is a
psychopath.   Like any bigot he can see no charitable interpretation of
the motivations of others.

It can’t be, for instance, that I am
against socialized medicine because I understand the economics, and
politics involved.    That in my judgment such a system will inevitably
be a relative failure in the long term.   I choose not to support it
because I recognize the difference between the short term effects and
the long term ones.

I, for example, opposed Cash for Clunkers
specifically because I am aware that it would cause the following bad
effects:  1) It would pull sales forward. 2) It would raise the cost of
used cars therefore hurting the poor.  3) It would subdize new car
dealers, and harm used car dealers.  4) It would increase the deficit 
5) It would penalize taxpayers. 6) It would make the economy less
efficient and actually increase the consumption of natural resources
like oil.  7) Resources would be wasted in running the program.   8)
Workers would be diverted from productive employment to the busywork of
running the program.  9) It sets a bad precedent for future wasteful
programs.

These are all points that libertarians agree with.   
That’s only because it’s sound economic and political theory.    Some 
conservatives also agree.   Some democrats.

However, uniquely the
libertarians are labeled sociopaths for opposing a program designed to
“help the poor get new cars”.     The idiot in charge is so out of touch
with the poor that he doesn’t even realized that they don’t buy new
cars.   Not if they are sensible.  Used cars are much more
affordable.    

Heck even the Objectivists aren’t motivated by
psychopathy.  They in fact think charity is a good thing
under the correct circumstances.    They just don’t think
handing cash over to winos is something that makes sense.   If they
don’t value what the wino is doing with their life why support their
habit?   This is essentially what many government programs do.   More
sensible to place conditions on your charity.   Give the wino a
sandwich, but not a ten spot.   

I had a beggar come up to me in
NYC when I was in KFC.   I offered to buy him a meal.  He gave me the
look like I cheated him, and stormed off.   I didn’t know him from Adam
just like I don’t know any of the many people parasitizing my tax
payments.  I wasn’t about to give him money to spend on booze or
prostitutes.   I don’t like the government dole because it is not in
fact charity, and is in fact destructive of society in the long term.  
Sure in the short term things look better but good economics teaches you
to be aware of the unseen side effects.    Taxes spend on welfare is
money that cannot be spent on true charity.

In conclusion,  
Jones actually had quite a few legitimate reasons for burning a
Qur’an.   Despite being a bigot.    That’s because people are right and
wrong on individual topics, and being wrong on one doesn’t make them
wrong on all.