Once Again, Atheists Respond to Brother Jed’s Bile with Mockery and Humor November 7, 2011

Once Again, Atheists Respond to Brother Jed’s Bile with Mockery and Humor

By Hemant Mehta
November 7, 2011

The Illini Secular Student Alliance have started a trend.

When fire-and-brimstone preacher Brother Jed visited Indiana on Friday, the Secular Alliance of Indiana University was ready for him with posters of their own. I’d say they effectively countered his message 🙂

Derek Miller at ISSA explains the significance of this response:

This is a wake-up call to Brother Jed and bigots like him that the list of places they are welcome is shrinking fast. Groups like SAIU all over the midwest, and indeed the nation, are growing and getting more organized. People are starting to pay more attention. We will oppose your hate and venom with love and laughter, and we will win.

Damn right we will.

So where are the “moderate” Christians during all this? Why aren’t they joining in on the fun? Or do they support what Jed is saying?

(via ISSA)

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  • Ray Higgins

    On the “… and I was Forced to eat him” poster, it should of had an asterisk saying “funny he tasted like wine and bread”

  • I’m a moderate Christian and I oppose Brother Jed.
    I don’t force my religion on anyone.

    ” Lucy, did you say your prayers tonight?”

  • Re: “Or do they [“moderate” Christians] support what Jed is saying?”

    For at least some of them, yes, they do. They might not be as outspoken about it as Jed is, and if you ask them directly they would deny it, but quietly & secretly, they concur.

  • Sharon I

    I loved ‘Kittens are atheists too’.

  • Anonymous

    Secular felinists dismiss Ceiling Cat as a superstition.

  • edgar ayala

    All of the posters were awesome.

  • Apokalypse

    You can be good with god too… Not taking a loud and outspoken position against stupidity like this does not equal endorsement. Also there are plenty of bigot atheists around as well. First and foremost, people are people regardless of their religion or lack thereof. Being atheist or agnostic doesn’t prevent one from being a mysogynic racist a….le and being christian doesn’t make one.
    Moderate Christians where probably doing what lots of Atheist where doing that day: Something else.

    That being said: I love the signs and I think its a good thing that this kind of mock-protest took place 🙂

  • I’ll bite.

    Given that Brother Jed believes in some iteration of the God that you worship (if you’re a Christian), so if Jed’s preachin’ something that the moderates disagree with, I think it’s just as fair to expect them to be there picketing as well. If he’s making a mockery of your belief system, doing “something else” while he proselytizes, no one else can see that. If moderate believers don’t speak against him, we have to presume that he is speaking FOR them.
    I don’t think that any poster here (although you’ll find oddballs in every nook and cranny on the interwebs) thinks that atheism is a direct line to being a totally moral person (“prevent one from being a mysogynic racist”) because it’s a single answer to a single question: does God exist? There’s no inherent morality in saying either “yes” or “no” to the question, and there’s no guarantee that your answer to that specific question will motivate or change your behaviors.

    So, atheists have their allegedly “seedy” underbelly, too: we’ve got our racists, misogynists, xenophobic jerks, and Republicans. Can’t be helped. When your group of people with a similar belief in one particular thing outnumbers, oh, let’s say exactly two, you no longer have control over the rest of the group, since we can only have limited influence and understanding of people not ourselves.

    There are nut-jobs on both sides. We get it. We know. 

    The difference is that your atheist nut-jobs that believe in all kinds of other crazy woo-woo nonsense aren’t running for Congress and passing laws and bullying high school students literally to death and keeping birth control out of the hands of women and on and on and on. Part of it is sheer numbers, but a bigger part of it is that Christianity insulates communities and galvanizes “in” and “out” crowds. It’s one thing to believe that women shouldn’t have access to birth control; it’s quite another to justify that conclusion with “God said so” or “the Bible said so”.

    Christianity is an invasive and pervasive stumbling block to personal liberty in a myriad of ways – just read several pages worth of blog posts on FA alone! At it’s core, it encourages people to believe things on faith and then demand that others follow suit.

    It’s wrong. It’s dangerous. Pointing out that it is so is not a negative thing. Period.

  • Michael

    I thought they accepted the existence of ceiling cat but rejected claims that he is more than just a cat in the ceiling.

  • Anonymous

    They are just a tool of basement cat

  • Erik

    Maybe the moderates are concerned because Jed is upholding the true teachings of the bible.

  • Anonymous

    Really?  Like which?

  • Anonymous

    I can agree with most of what you’re saying and think you raise a few good points–and I’ll add some.   Where are Christians when we go to war?  Where are Christians when kids go to bed hungry, or homeless?  Where are Christians who are advocating for those who don’t have advocates?  The list goes on and on.

    If you look to the college campus to find a doofus like Brother Jed, or a funeral to find a bigot like Fred Phelps then you’re going to find exactly what you are looking for. 

    But, if you look to the inner cities to see Christians helping feed the poor, comforting the lonely, advocating for minorities, and on and on and on, you’re likely to find them too.

    My guess is that as long as you keep your search narrowed to a specific set of attributes of people who call themselves Christians, then you’ll find exactly what you are looking for.  However, if you can stand to look for just one person who claims to follow Christ and has the attributes of someone who is generous, selfless and thoughtful, you’ll most likely find them.

    As far as faith goes, good luck escaping that 🙂   Cheers!

  • randall.morrison90

    Hermant, why do you ask where the moderate Christians are?

    You despise them too! 

    Whats all this “friendly” atheist nonsense.?   We know what you would really do if you had the power!!!

  • TheBlackCat

    Leviticus 18:22
    Leviticus 20:13
    Deutoronomy 23:17-18
    Romans 1:26-28
    Romans 1:31-32
    1 Coronithians 6:9-101 Timothy 1:10

  • What? The President of the Universe elections are coming up and no one told me? And, moreover, SOMEONE NOMINATED HEMANT?

    I smell conspiracy!

    …Humma Kavuuuulaaaaa!!!

  • TheBlackCat

    He wasn’t asking why the moderate christians aren’t here, he was asking why they weren’t there, where it actually mattered.

    “We know what you would really do if you had the power!!!”

    Ooh, ooh, I know this one.  Declare the third tuesday in February to be “National pangolin day”?

  • Anonymous

    I should have guessed :/.  Right out of the sab.  I love eisegetical  proof-texting.

  • Parse

    The Gourd help us all, if Hemant ever gets control.  I can just imagine what life would be like under his iron fist:
     – Better funded schools
     – Mandatory logic and critical-thinking classes
     – Kheer would join apple pie as national, patriotic desserts

    The horror!

  • westley

    Kittens are pissed off, because in ancient Egypt they were WORSHIPPED as gods, but it’s been downhill ever since!

  • “Escaping” faith? What does that mean?

  • Anonymous

    It’s in response to your comment, “At it’s core, it encourages people to believe things on faith and then demand that others follow suit.”  You invoke faith as though it was a pejorative term subject only Christianity. 

  • Brad Terry5

    it may be all laughable today, but one day all will stand before the judgement seat of Christ, and the laughing will be over

  • TheBlackCat

    If you were aware of these, then why did you ask?  I assume if you had some sort of refutation for them you would have posted it.

  • TheBlackCat

    No, I think the consensus here is that it is a problem with pretty much all religions.

  • TheBlackCat

    Jesus, or Odin, or Mithra, or Ahuramazda, or Quetzalcoatl, or Anubis…

  • Thanks for clarifying. I’d second what BlackCat said, with the caveat that whether you call it “religion” or whether you call it “faith”, believing something that you cannot prove is a dangerous foundation for establishing “truth” in the world.

    And, really, that IS exactly what Christianity is about – I memorized Ephesians 2 v 8-9 as a child:

    “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.”

    And then later, a command to evangelize: “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.” Mark 15:16

    You can argue that these verses need context, or that they weren’t intended to be interpreted that way, but the reality of the situation is that many Christians DO believe in taking things on faith and many Christians DO feel the need to proselytize, which can wind up infringing on other’s rights.

  • SallyOlin

    BTW, the plane-crash cannibalism took place in the Andes, not the Alps. As a secularist I try to get the facts, leaving misinformation and distortion to religionists. 😉

  • Anonymous

    A dog looks up to its owner and thinks, “You give me food, water, shelter and everything I need. You must be God.”

    A cat looks down on its owner and thinks, “You give me food, water, shelter and everything I need. I must be God.”

  • Anonymous

    I’ll avoid TheBlackCat for the moment.  His presence appears a bit more bombastic than I’d like to give time to at the moment.  You on the other hand seem to have at least invested a particular level of thought and energy, not only into your answer, but into your own background and experiences. 

    At this point, unless I’m mistaken, or missed the evening news last night, there is not one, not one single belief for which you’re going to find empirical evidence that is so 100% certain that you’ll have no doubt whatsoever it is true.  Like many others, I wish there was.

    I guess now we are left with a strange vibe– how are we going to determine some very simple things about how we go about this life, especially the part where we establish ‘truths’ in the world as you put it. I don’t think that at the end of the day, you’re going to be able to reconcile a worldview that amounts to much where anything that is to be believed has to be empirically proven–It’s only going to take you so far, there are limits.  I’m ok with that, most are, some just don’t want to admit it.

    As far as your last comment, I do think that proselytizing  can infringe on rights and as far as ‘sharing’ goes, I think it’s best left to conversation, relationships and people who want to talk about the issues.  Street corner blasting and campus yelling is useless and more than likely turns away far more people than it attracts.  How these people reconcile that in their worldview is beyond me.  Now, does that mean I start an anti-street witnessing ministry to combat these folks.  Yes and no.  On a local campus here, we have  of these jerks and there are people I know and support who openly disagree with the person yelling and they do spend time in the same space trying to pick up the pieces from the mess that this wacko makes.

    As far as your exegesis regarding Ephesians and Mark, no need to comment here necessarily.  It sounds like that is another conversation regarding some textual analysis and interpretation.

    I’m afraid I may have strayed into this as a minority here and will wind up on the daily, usual, lunch buffet.  It’s unfortunate though, at least as far as I think because we should allow some room in our lives for some reasoned discourse that many religious and skeptic  blogs/sites don’t tend to offer. It’s usually emotionally charged pseudo-theologians/philosophers who know just enough logic to go out and pick a fight. Alas, we’ll just settle back into our polarized corners where you’re right and I’m wrong (vice versa)–which, strangely enough, is the course you’ve tried to run from but, while not looking, have run straight into. 

  • I’m all for honest dialogue – as an English teacher, it comes with the territory. I enjoy discussions and I’m not opposed to being proved wrong – hell, that happens quite a bit, actually, and it’s a pretty effective teaching method.

    However. 

    However.

    This dialogue ended when you said: “we’ll just settle back into our polarized corners where you’re right and I’m wrong (vice versa)–which, strangely enough, is the course you’ve tried to run from but, while not looking, have run straight into.”

    First off, it is not my prerogative to keep you from “settling back” into your polarized corner. Not my job, not my problem. You, more than anyone else, are responsible for establishing yourself in a place where dialogue is encouraged. 

    Second off, I don’t live in a polarized corner where “I’m right and you’re wrong” – to a certain extent, yes, I am biased and I have occasional silly beliefs, but I don’t “settle back” into a world where nothing challenges me and where my beliefs appear superior to others. 

    If I wanted someone to know next to nothing about my life and then tell me what’s wrong with it, I’d pay a really poor therapist to do it.

    I’ll talk openly and honestly with you, but I won’t be insulted andd I won’t be condescended to.

  • Anonymous

    Touche.

    You’re a rare bird.  Most in these types of threads are here to chew people up and spit them out. 

    You obviously don’t and I certainly don’t intend to offend, insult or condescend. 

    As open and honest as we’d both like to be, too much get’s lost in this particular medium for it to be a huge success.

    I’ve obviously misunderstood the trajectory of your posts and will leave it at that.

  • Here is some video I took of Jed while he was at Kansas State University last month: http://youtu.be/WV4JX1uPfxo
    And here is me and my sign!

  • Petemoss

    I support Bro. Jed and I pray for all of you….not in a mean way, but in a way that is like I am scared for you and am concerned about how much you have to totally oppose Jesus who died for you.

  • Sulris Campbell

    i was with you until you gave a with us or against us thing at the end.  moderate christians who stay quite do not equate themselves with noisy radicals.  you can say they are not doing any good.  but you go to far to say they are doing bad.