You May Be A Fundamentalist Atheist If...
This list was originally compiled by GakuesiDon and has been added to and updated by Tekton Apologetics
Ministries.
Existence of God
You became an atheist when you were 10 years old, based
on ideas of God that you learned in Sunday School. Your ideas
about God haven't changed since.
You think that the primary aim of an omnibenevolent God is for
people to have FUN.
You believe that extra drippy ice-cream is a logical
proof against the existence of God, because an omniscient God
would know how to stop the ice-cream from being extra drippy, an
omnipotent God would have the ability to stop the ice-cream from
being extra drippy, and by golly, an omnibenevolent God wouldn't
want your ice-cream to be extra drippy.
Although you've memorized a half a dozen proofs that He
doesn't exist, you still think you're God's gift to the ignorant
masses.
You believe the astronomical size of the universe somehow
disproves God, as if God needed a tiny universe in order to
exist.
You think questions like, "Can God create a rock so big that
He cannot lift it?" and, "Can God will Himself out of existence?"
are perfect examples of how to disprove God's omnipotence and
ultimately how to disprove God. When someone proves to you the
false logic behind the questions (i.e. pitting God's omnipotence
against itself), you desperately try to defend the questions, but
then give up and go to a different Christian site to ask
them.
Related to the above, you spend a great deal of your
spare time writing to Christian websites asking them these very
questions.
You declare on a public forum that you are "furious at God for
not existing."
You spend hours arguing that a-theism actually
means "without a belief in God " and not just " belief that
there is no god" as if this is a meaningful distinction in real
life.
You consistently deny the existence of God because you
personally have never seen him but you reject out of hand
personal testimony from theists who claim to have experienced God
as a reality in their lives.
You can make the existence of pink unicorns the
centre-piece of a philosophical critique.
You insist that "the burden of proof is on he that
alleges/accuses", and "it's impossible to prove a negative",then
state "That's what Christians do. They lie. Their most common lie
is that they were once atheists." When reminded about the burden
of proof bit,you reply with, "Well,prove Christians don't
lie!"
You adamantly believe that the "God of the gaps" idea is
an essential tenet of orthodox Christian faith espoused by all
the great Christian thinkers throughout history.
When you were a child, someone came down with a deadly disease
and prayed and prayed for God to take it away. God did not remove
the disease and your friend died. You ask other Christians why
they had to die when they were such a nice person and never
harmed anyone. Dissatisfied with their answers, you suddenly
decide that there is no God and that all Christians are nothing
but lying, conniving con artists and hypocrites....all that is
except for your friend who died.
You call a view held by less than ten percent of the
American public "common sense".
You're a spoiled fifteen year old boy who lives in the suburbs
and you go into a chat room to declare that, "I know there is no
God because no loving God would allow anyone to suffer as much as
I...hold on. My cell phone's ringing."
You attack your fellow atheists, who hold the "belief
that there is no god", calling them "liars," and state that, "I
do not deny the existence of any god. I just don't believe in
any." Then you tell someone that their God is "made up." When
someone calls you on this,you state, "I never made such a
claim."
Going with the definition of "without a belief in God",you
insist that all people are born atheists, and that dogs, cats,
rocks, and trees are as well. You make statements like, "My dog
is an atheist. Ask him about his lack of belief."
You believe that if something cannot be touched, seen,
heard, or measured in some way, then it must not exist, yet you
fail to see the irony of your calling Christians
"narrow-minded".
You May Be A Fundamentalist Atheist If...
Origins
You believe that planes, computers, calculators, compasses,
etc, were "all obviously designed," yet the human body, being
intricately more complex was "obviously a product of biological
evolution." It seems the more complex the apparatus, the more
obvious the "fact" that it was not designed.
As a member of the Skeptic's Society you pride yourself
on being skeptical of extraordinary claims. You also pride
yourself on silencing everyone who is skeptical of the extraordinary claims of
evolution.
Isaac Newton does not count as an example of a great scientist
who believed in the Bible since he died before the Origin of
Species was published.
When you watch a punt returner run a 93 yard touchdown,
you marvel at what evolution has done for the human race. But
when someone gets cancer, you blame God for it.
When you're discussing the origin of the world, the phrase
"uncaused cause(God)" is a stupid, meaningless thing to say. You
will, however, settle for "uncaused effect(the world without
God)".
You descended from apes.(Think about it.)
You think that humans are products of chance but when it comes
to human reason we can believe in logic! Think about
it
You think you arrived at your position because you are a
free-thinker who rationally weighed the evidence, and then freely
chose atheism over theism. YET, you also believe that your
thinking and actions are nothing more than the FIXED reactions of
the atoms in your brain that are governed by the Laws of
Chemistry and Physics.
You love to castigate Christians for being "anti-science" if
they deny evolution from goo to you via the zoo, and to preach
that they should adapt their thinking to the "science" of our
day. But you also castigate the Church of 400 years ago for being
anti-science, when it DID adapt its thinking to the science of
ITS day, i.e. Ptolemaic cosmology, then joined with the
Aristotelian scientists of the universities in rejecting
Galileo!
You think that some guy named "Dr Dino" with no
scientific credentials represents mainstream Evangelical thinking
and scholarship about evolution and creation, and thus by
spending inordinate amounts of time attacking him you are somehow
dismantling the arguments of scholarly dissenters from evolution,
creationists with earned Ph. D.s in science, and of advocates of
intelligent design.
You claim poker-faced that "social Darwinism" and its spawn of
eugenics have absolutely no connection to the biological theories
propounded by Charles Darwin in "On The Origin of Species by
Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races
in the Struggle for Life"
You have recently stuck a Darwin fish on your car in the
hopes the people with the Jesus fish on theirs will be
offended.
You also claim that not only is there no connection between
Darwin's theories and the doctrines of social Darwinism and
eugenics (despite the fact that the term eugenics was coined and
advocated by Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton, who
acknowledged his debt to Origin), but that none of these
philosophical positions have any connection to the modern fields
of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology.
You can claim with as straight face on sites like Talk Origins that "Evolution
does not have moral consequences" despite the fact that prominent
evolutionary advocates like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett
vehemently assert that evolution does transcend biology in a way
that has a profound effects upon ethics.
When the Pope says that God may have used evolution, he is an
enlightened religious leader whom Christians should listen to.
When the Pope preaches on the sanctity of human life from
conception, and thus denounces abortion, he's just a senile
religious bigot who should keep his opinions to himself.
Concerning the origins of
life, you feel that though the chances of life forming
without an intelligent creator are small it DID indeed happen
that way. And yet you don't believe me when a rock, coming from
my direction, hits you in the back of the head and I tell you, "I
didn't throw it. There was a sudden shift in the earth's
gravitational pull and the rock levitated into your head...Sure
the chances are small but it DID happen that way."
When you're shown that your view of origins is silly, you can
only respond, "Well...at least it's better than believing in some
invisible SKY DADDY!"
When a Christian points out the impossibility of a
biological system (or feature) forming by pure chance you
accuse them of invoking a "God of the gaps". YET, when you are
asked how a particular feature could come about solely by chance
you invoke "Evolution of the gaps" (i.e., we don't know HOW but
we do know that Evolution MUST have done it!)
You claim antibiotic-resistant bacteria is proof protozoa
evolved into a person.
You insist that science is completely partial to all
ideas, is not dogmatic and researches all possibilities -- except
creationism and/or intelligent
design.
You claim Creationists don't research on evolution websites
before debating against it. Luckily you caught this useful weapon
against Christians at the evolution site you learned all about
creation doctrine from.
You think that every scientist who believes in
Creationism and doesn't mindlessly accept evolution as a fact is
a "kook," but you believe that Francis Crick (Nobel Prize winning
co-discoverer of DNA), who reached into his nether regions and
pulled out the "theory" of Directed Panspermia (which states with
absolutely no support that aliens seeded the earth with life -
see the movie "Mission to Mars"), is a great evolutionist
scientist.
When a creationist points out problems with the evolutionist
model you claim that the whole point of science is to answer
problems like these. But if you can point out even one problem in
the creationist model it should instantly be abandoned as
absurd.
You are a person who absolutely believes that life
came from nonlife, yet absolutely deny the possibility of
anyone rising from the dead.
You won't bet $10 on the football game because a 50/50 chance
isn't good enough, but you have no problem gambling with your
life on the nearly impossible odds of a cell randomly generating
from nothing.
Engaging the "slippery slope" fallacy, you think you can
invalidate the whole bible by discrediting Genesis, since 'the
whole bible either stands together or falls apart'. However, when
a Creationist tries to invalidate the whole doctrine of
naturalistic evolution by exposing the sheer improbability and
lack of evidence of abiogenesis, you note this point as
'irrelevant'.
You think the movie “Inherit the Wind” best
describes the eternal struggle of how an evolutionist is being
treated by creationists in this religious society. And you can
personally relate your life to the Scopes Monkey Trial.
You ignore “Time Magazine’s” poll,
which states that only 28% of Americans believe in evolution. But
of course, “Time Magazine” must been run by
creationists.
You teach a belief only held by 28% of a nation, as truth
beyond any shadow of a doubt because only educated people believe
in evolution. Yet of course, you ignore that fully educated
scientists in most other nations have proven against Darwinian
theory. Like the Chinese paleontologist who reportedly says: "In
China we can criticize Darwin but not the government. In America
you can criticize the government but not Darwin."
You May Be A Fundamentalist Atheist If...
History
Any scholar who believes in a historical Jesus must be a
theist. If they are an atheist, then they must secretly
want to be a theist.
You insist that "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary
evidence", then claim that Jesus never existed.
You contend that no war in history has ever been created
by non-belief. Yet, when you are told that 176 million people
lost their lives in wars during the last century, created by
non-believers like Stalin, Lenin, Mao and Hitler, to name only a
few, you reply that those wars fought were fought in the name of
ideology and not ‘atheism’ as atheists
“…don’t fly planes into buildings or start
wars.”
You accept (and quote back to Christians) any number of works
that say Jesus wasn't the Son of God and call them "honest",
"thought-provoking" and 'scholarly" proof, even when they
completely contradict each other and come to completely different
conclusions.
You believe that when our forefathers are framing the
Constitution, they're staunch deists, but when they're beating
their slaves, they're Bible-believing Christians.
You think that the Declaration of Independence is
unconstitutional because it mentions "the creator".
On that basis, You think that the Declaration is
therefore void and the United States should return to British
rule.
When it is returned to British rule, you plan to go straight
to London and tell those Brits that having the Anglican church as
a state church violates the constitutional separation of church
and state.
When you use a historical point to prove Christianity is
false (i.e., pagan parallel to Christianity), history is
objective truth. When a Christian uses real historical
scholarship to prove you false, history was written by subjective
men and therefore cannot be trusted.
You reject what Cornelius Tacitus wrote about Jesus,dismissing
it as "too late",but you readily accept what he wrote about
Tiberius and Augustus. 100+ year old scholarship is good enough
for you.
You always refer to C.S. Lewis as "that
traitor."
You absolutely insist a Christian recognize your nonscholar as
an expert (G. A. Wells) but refuse to recognize his legimate
scholar as expert (Colin Hemer).
You not only spell "God" with a lower case "g," but you
also add an "E" to "B.C.," and replace the word "Christ" with an
"x." Yet, when asked to name the planets you have no problem with
spouting out the appropriate list of Roman Gods. Heck, you'll
even spell them with capital letters! Not only that, you can even
spell and pronounce the name of the 800-mile-diameter
Trans-Neptunian Object ‘Quaoar’, and are delighted
that it comes from the creation mythology of the Tongva people
(aka the San Gabrielino Native Americans).
You think that religious wars have killed more people than any
other kind of war, even though the largest wars of the last 200
years (World War I and II, Civil War, etc.) had no discernable
religious causes.
You think that the Spanish Inquisition killed millions
(or at least hundreds of thousands), even though the population
of all of Spain at the time of the Inquisition was only about
five million, and the actual total killed numbers about 2000.
When informed of this, you accuse the informer of belittling or
being insensitive to the deaths of 2000 individuals.
You bring up the alleged 'horrors' of the Spanish Inquisition
to show how evil the church is. When shown that the SI was not
the horror that it was painted to be, you switch gears and ask if
the believer notes this because they think people are justified
to feel moral revulsion with the Spanish Inquisition as it is
commonly understood.
In a coffee table conversation you hear religion
represented in a positive light. You immediately start preaching
about the Inquisition and the Crusades to put things back on
track. After all, "we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the
door".
You believe that Christians burned down the Great Library of
Alexandria. When you learn that this was impossible, you assert
that it is obvious that Christians did burn a lot of ancient
books. When you are shown that this too is false, you wait a
while, then make the same claim again, hoping that the person who
corrected you with the facts won't notice.
You desperately confer with other skeptics to try and
refute the evidence that Hitler's Holocaust was
evolution-inspired, because, darn it, you just GOTTA prove that
Hitler was a
Christian.
You're convinced, despite evidence to the contrary, that
Christianity was responsible for the Jewish holocaust because,
dang it, that just SEEMS like something Christians would do.
You believe that Hitler claiming to be a Christian is
undeniable proof that he was a Christian, while George Washington
only claimed to be a Christian in order to win the people's
favor.
You adamantly refuse to recognise the historical fact that
"scientific atheism" was both a foundational philosophical
position and an actual policy of the Soviet Union from the time
of Lenin on, responsible for untold persecution, torture,
suffering, humiliation and death far in excess of the numbers of
the "victims" of Christianity.
On the other hand you further show your ignorance of
history by constantly repeating "whoppers" about the numbers of
victims of Christian Inquisitions, crusades and witchhunts
dredged up from various unscholarly hate sites and passed off as
historical fact.
For example...you can claim with a poker face that 9 MILLION
women were put to death as witches by Christian fanatics in
pre-Enlightenment Europe.
You assert that the 300 Protestants put to death under
the reign of "Bloody Mary" in 16th century England stand as
absolute proof of the inherent evil of Christianity but the tens
upon tens of millions killed by Marxist regimes under Stalin, Mao
and Pol Pot in the 20th century have absolutely NOTHING to do
with the profound atheism inherent in these regimes.
You really believe that the Enlightenment made people more
enlightened.
You think that Robert Green Ingersoll and Joseph McCabe
are two of the greatest philosophers of religion ever to have
lived - certainly far superior to nobodies like Thomas Aquinas or
Blaise Pascal.
Indeed you believe that McCabe is "One of the giants of not
only English Atheism, but world Atheism". [which could be
construed as a slight on the intellectual quality of
atheism].
You adhere to a false and fictionalised version of
history gained from watching Hollywood movies such as Inherit
the Wind so that you can (for example) conclude: "the
controversy over creation and evolution was settled way back in
1925, when Clarence Darrow eviscerated William Jennings Bryan in
a country courtroom in Dayton, Tennessee."
You continually argue that Hitler was a "real Christian" even
when he and his fellow Nazis were slaughtering millions of people
(and you "conveniently" ignore the very obvious distinction
between someone claiming to be a Christian and someone actually
living as a Christian, and the fact that the Nuremberg
prosecutors denounced Nazism as fanatically ANTI-Christian!), but
you deny that the scientists who rejected Galileo's work were
real scientists.
You May Be A Fundamentalist Atheist If...
Christians
You think if a Christian won't address your arguments,
they are too frightened to do so, or know they can't answer them;
but if they do address your arguments, you think it is because
they are "threatened" by them.
Missionaries who give up their personal comfort to aid
starving, impoverished and persecuted third-world people are
actually "corrupting ancient tribal cultures with western
religious dogma", while you sit at home and complain about the
price of KFC.
You believe that any Christian who claims to have once
been an atheist is either lying or was never a "true
atheist."
You think that John Shelby Spong is a reputable theologian but
that Ben Witherington is merely an ignorant biblicist.
You assert that the crimes and failings of some
Christians (acting inconsistently with the teachings of Christ at
that!) disproves the whole edifice of Christianity but that the
crimes and failings of some atheists (acting consistently with
the fact that atheism can provide no basis for objective
morality!) should on no account be held against the philosophy of
atheism.
You assert that there is no absolute categories of good and
evil, that all morals are merely personal, social and
evolutionary constructs but then you can still describe
Christians and Christianity as absolutely immoral, repugnant and
evil and a danger to humanity and not feel even a twinge of
hypocrisy at the monumental illogic of your position.
You think that Josh McDowell represents the apex of
Christian scholarly apologetical thinking and you lump all
Christians in with whatever religious fruitcake is the flavour of
the month, while living with the delusion that there are no
atheistic weirdos out there.
You KNOW that religion causes violence and repeatedly tell
this to everyone, hoping to save the world, but you don't believe
that TV violence causes any real life violence. In fact, you are
offended by this objection, and you have already started to
figure out how to refute it. To increase your fundy factor, you
have decided not to study social sciences. (Once you heard about
Rodney Stark's For the Glory of God - you certainly would not
bother reading it - you thought that sociologists were Christian
fundamentalists in stealth mode, trying to push religious
worldviews.
You think that taking the Bible seriously is the
obsession of a fanatical fringe group of right-wing, extremist
Christians who do not represent the views of the historic Church
or of contemporary enlightened, liberal, skeptical "Christians"
who according to you supposedly "fill" the mainstream churches
and who on close inspection pretty much reflect your own
politically correct views and values - and skepticism - about
God. [Sort of like former Bishop Spong].
You claim that the theories and opinions of certain liberal
scholars are absolute facts although you shy away from debating
such issues with someone equally or better informed than you
are.
You get angry when Christians tell you you're going to a
place that you don't think exists.
You're convinced that people only believe in God because
they're afraid of going to hell...despite the fact that if there
is no God, then there's probably no hell either.
You consistently decry Christians for soliciting
financial support yet find no problem in atheistic 'missionaries'
doing the same thing."
You think that 'mission statements' on Christian websites
proves the authors are biased which automatically renders the
material on those sites weak and unscholarly yet you see no
problem with 'mission statements' glorifying naturalism found on
atheistic websites.
When a group of Sydney University (Australia) academics,
including a historian, sign a public statement saying the Jesus
Christ is "one of the great figures of history" and that his
claims to be Son of God "bear up under closest scrutiny", this is
a gross abuse of their position. But when Richard Dawkins uses
his position as an Oxford professor to pontificate on his
atheistic religion and related philosophical matters outside HIS
field (animal behavior), that is a responsible use of academic
freedom.
Further to the above, you're paranoid that these Christian
academics will disciminate against you, even though their
statement hasn't the remotest hint of that. But you applaud
Michael Dini, a professor at Texas Tech, who refuses to recommend
students for Medical School, even if they got "A"s in their
courses, unless they not only understand but BELIEVE in
goo-to-you evolution. And you're disgusted that creationist
medical doctors have the gall to think they know more about
medicine than Dini (who never practised medicine or even went to
medical school), because by definition an evolutionist is more
knowledgeable than a creationist on ANY subject!
You think Christians are narrow-minded for believing in
only one religion, but atheists are open-minded for believing in
absolutely none.
You believe that Christianity discriminates, because you have
to join their religion in order to be a member of their
religion.
You feel that Christians who go into atheist chat rooms
are "shoving their beliefs down people's throats", and that
atheists who go into Christian chat rooms are only trying to
educate.
You think it is a "slam dunk" proof against God when you ask
why He doesn't stop horrible things like, i.e., child rape, but
evade the reply that you obviously don't want God stopping your
own sins by pointing out that it isn't your problem because you
don't believe in God in the first place.
You are disgusted with Doctor Paul Vitz’s book
“Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism”
because an educated person with a degree has linked atheism as a
psychological condition. Yet, you have no remorse when you tell
believers that they are a product of brainwashing, psycho
conditioning and wishful thinking.
You believe Freud’s theory that all religious
experiences are delusions, as the most revolutionary and truthful
thought of all times. Yet, you overlook his heavy use of cocaine
because “it can’t be proven.”
You recommend Michael Shermer’s book “How We
Believe” to all of your friends who are believers and
believe that somehow his opinion will give insight into how we
actually think. Yet of course, you ignore that Shermer
doesn’t have any education in Anthropology. Must be a
coincidence.
You’re stupid enough to think atheists are treated like
second-class citizens. Yet of course, you spend most of your day
belittling Christians and other religious people.
You're convinced that all Christians are idiots. But when
you meet the "rare" Christian who's clearly intelligent, you can
only conclude that he was fooled into believing...by the
idiots.
You May Be A Fundamentalist Atheist If...
Contemporary events
You demand that theists explain news items where bad things
have happened to theists, even though no theists on the board
have claimed that belief in God is some kind of a lucky charm
that wards off bad luck.
You demand that theists explain news items where theists
do bad things, even though no theists on the board have claimed
that it is impossible for theists to do bad things.
The only Commandments you know are the ones that are
unconstitutional.
You can't remember if she was Mother or Sister Teresa,
but you can name every pedophile priest listed in the media over
the last seven years.
You feel that Marilyn Manson is really, really profound.
You think the song "Dear God" by XTC is really, really,
really................really meaningful.
You are funding or filming a movie called “Heart of the
Beholder” a Secular Humanist movie telling a true story of
a video store renting out the movie “The Last Temptation of
Christ.” The fundamentalist Christian community is in
protest of this store renting this movie out. Of course, you also
create the image that all Christians were not only opposed to
this movie but the fact that with less then 10% of your nation
who actually believes in secular philosophy, this movie is
actually going to make money. The filmmakers might be suffering
from the same kind of false hope they think believers are.
You believe that emotional response interferes with
rational thinking. Yet, you think George Carlin is the greatest
comedian of all times, because he makes you laugh.
You're saving up to move to some more enlightened place, like
Sweden.
You feel that the separation of church and state is a
much more important issue than abortion, euthanasia, or
infanticide.
You label any change whatsoever in Christian theology or
behavior as 'secularization.'
You were too sophisticated to be afraid of (very real)
"Reds under the bed" but you nevertheless see Christians behind
every act of "evil" in the western world.
You deface money by scribbling God off of dollar
bills.
You think God was cruel for killing all of those innocent
babies in the flood, and that Christians are cruel for opposing a
woman's right to abort her baby.
You think that Reverend Fred Phelps does what he does
because of his Christianity, but Reverend Fred Rogers did
what he did in spite of his Christianity.
You May Be A Fundamentalist Atheist If...
Bible criticism
You become upset when a Christian says that not
everything in the Bible should be taken literally.
You dislike how liberal theists try to interpret the Bible for
themselves, while you create your own interpretations of the
Bible for yourself: (a) Exodus 34 contains a new set of 10
Commandments; (b) Jesus asked His disciples to slay all His
enemies.
You have actually calculated, for purposes of "argument
by outrage," an estimate of the number of people drowned in The
Flood.
You can quote from the bible better than most
missionaries...at least the parts where someone dies.
You label all scholars that actually believe the Bible as
"biased fundies" while those who don't believe it are known as
"honest" and "accepted scholarship."
You insist that the Bible cannot possibly say anything about
homosexuality being a sin,because they did not even have a
concept of homosexuality at the the Bible was written...then
insist that the Bible says that David and Jonathan were married.
AND you produce a long list of verses containing the words
"children","touching",and "bowels".
You think you have refuted the whole Trilemma because
you've added another alternative to it.
You dismiss any attempt to harmonize the resurrection accounts
by saying "one says A, the other says B, but none say A+B", then
go on to offer your own elaborate conspiracy theory of what
happened to the Jesus' body, describing A+B+C+D, none of which
are said ANYWHERE let alone together.
You think that Isaac Asimov was a world-class authority
in Biblical Studies.
You make a point of referring to Jesus as "Yeshua" and to God
as "Yahveh" in order to hint that they are no different from
Molech or Baal.
You use one,or more,of the following alternate spellings:
GOD-"gawd" JESUS-"jeeezus" "jayzus" "jebus" "jeebers"
BIBLE-"bibble" "babble" "wholly babble" "buy-bull"
You refer to the crucifixion of Jesus as the
"cruci-fiction".
When a Christian's interpretation of a passage (based on
the social/literary context) solves one of your favorite
contradictions, it is only their personal interpretation, and can
be dismissed as such. But your interpretation (based on a "plain"
reading of the text) to arrive at the contradiction in the first
place is entirely objective, and is obviously THE correct
interpretation.
You think that God would have made things a lot clearer for
everyone, ranging from the medieval knight to the Chinese
peasant, had He inspired His Word in modern English in words and
concepts you could understand. You also ask, when told of
the scarceness of paper in the ancient world, why God didn't
provide enough paper to write a longer story.
You adamantly believe that "the Bible says pi equals 3" in 1 Kings 7:23 even
though: (1) the verse does not make the slightest reference to
the calculation of pi, (2) there are more measurements of the
bowl from that verse in subsequent verses, (3) the bowl in
question could very likely not have been a "perfect" circle with
"perfect" measurements, (4) it's not unusual for ancient peoples
using ancient tools (or even modern peoples using modern tools)
to use round, easy to remember numbers, (5) asking an online math
forum results in a refutation of your belief but you ignore what
professional mathematicians plainly say (including that the Bible
is not in error in this place) and twist their words to make it
appear as if they are backing your assertion in order to continue
to justify your belief (not that you ever had any intention of
doing otherwise in the first place).
You consistently appear on discussion lists demanding that
Christians accept your literal interpretation of various
scriptural passages just so you can then launch into the usual
"argument by outrage" - despite being told over and over that no
Bible scholar or school of Christianity shares your particular
bizarre literal interpretation.
You pontificate about the Bible as if you are an expert
in theology, textual criticism, ancient languages & cultures and
much more besides, when your knowledge of the Bible is just cut
and paste from atheist discussion lists which cut and paste it
from atheist websites which cut and paste it from embarrassingly
unscholarly rantings by the likes of Messer's Freke & Gandy and
Acharya S., etc.
You can quote Acharya S, Kersey Graves, John Remsburg,and Earl
Doherty more fluently than Laurence Olivier could quote
Shakespeare.
You create a web site:
EvilBible.com,and post an Evil Bible Quote of the Day on
usenet. The quotes always end with: "What kind of person would
get their moral guidance from an ancient book of myths and magic
that says it is OK to murder, rape, pillage, and
plunder?"
You decry Christian missionaries for denying cultural
relativism; denouncing their efforts to reform cannibalism,
slavery and fear of animist spirits as judgmental intolerance.
But your attacks on the Bible merely comprise anguished cries of
"how barbaric" rather than reasoned arguments; and ignore all
considerations of ritual cleanness, the evils of the Canaanites
and the fact that ancient society was always one step from
anarchy.
You think Secular Humanism actually promotes religious
tolerance. Secular Humanism only tolerates religion; it
doesn’t accept it.
You claim to hold no Dogma. Yet, you’re just as rigid
and stubborn with your beliefs as any Dogmatists.
Archaeology continually frustrates your attempts to find
errors and contradictions in the Bible, but you continually use
the same outdated accusations anyway since you're running out of
material.
The only reason you go to hear a concert pianist play
Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata is to complain to him
afterwards about the name. Obviously it was chosen as part of a
conspiracy to hide the fact that the Bible's mentions of the moon
giving light were errors rather than phenomenological
language.
You visit a planetarium, but afterwards complain bitterly
to the director that it uses the Earth as a convenient reference
frame, and portrays the Earth as the center of a celestial sphere
with the heavenly bodies revolving around it. This, and his use
of the words "sunset" and "sunrise", is another part of the
conspiracy to legitimize the Bible's use of such
language.
When you go to bookstores, you move all the Bibles to the
"fiction" section.
You insist on capitalizing "atheist".
You take the lack of evidence for the Jesus story being a hoax
as evidence that Christians got rid of all the evidence.
You claim that there is no way a book thousands of years
old can be relevant today, but refuse to do the necessary
homework to see how it could apply in modern situations,
preferring instead to argue that God should have provided an
updated version.
You respond to arguments about the different points of view in
the society of the ancient world by calling ancient people and
their way of thinking "stupid".
You once heard something about some document in the
Catholic Church which says the resurrection never happened. And
despite your never having seen it or even met anyone who claims
to have seen it (and despite having no idea who wrote it, when
they wrote it, or what exactly it says), you're convinced that
this document is far more reliable than the Gospels and thus
disproves Christianity, and that the church is hiding it so that
they can keep the money rolling in.
You believe that priests are only in it for the money, despite
the fact that they make less than almost anyone else with their
level of education.
You May Be A Fundamentalist Atheist If...
General Atheism vs. Theism
You find you have a grudging respect for fundy theists
for 'sticking to their guns' even while complaining they don't
think for themselves.
'Thinking for yourself' means adopting an atheist
viewpoint.
When you say "I don't know" you are being brave and
honest. When a theist says "I don't know" they are being
dishonest and are trying to dodge the question.
When your thoughts on any complex matter are sensible and
clear, and a theist's thoughts on any complex matter are mental
gymnastics.
You leave 'freethought' tracts lying around, like the
littering missionaries.
If someone says 'God Bless' when you sneeze, you make them
'take it back!'
You debate (argue, vilify, etc.) as if every theist was a
Jack Chick fan, and as if every Biblical inerrantist was a
Ruckmanite who believes that the KJV was specially
inspired.
You think that Christianity is a 'virulent memeplex' and that
atheism is the 'cure.'
You're infuriated by the term "village atheist." You
prefer "right-thinking urban humanist."
You can gladly believe any number of conflicting philosophical
positions, as long as they're atheistic!
You start a local Atheists and Agnostics Society, the
goal of which is to prove through good deeds that atheists and
agnostics can be just as generous and caring as some Christians
are. When nobody joins, and the club eventually unfolds, you are
flustered. You have no idea why a group of people who by
definition do not base their morality on anything greater than
their own ideas wouldn't jump at the chance to be
self-sacrificing for no logical reason.
You get a big kick out of either spamming online Christian
forums with offensive material or posing as a grossly
over-the-top parody of a Christian on such websites.
You don't realize that Landmark Baptist Church's website
is a parody. Even when you do realize it is a
parody, you think that it's implied arguments are suitable for
use as a reply rather than Biblical scholarship.
You call God "she" in the presence of Christians simply out of
sheer spite.
You are part of a non-belief organization such as American
Atheists, Church of Freethought, Humanist Association of Canada,
Student Freethought Alliance and/or the Council of Secular
Humanism. You claim these organizations have absolutely no creeds
and that the people involved independently think of different
things from one another. Yet of course, on your organization's
website they define the commonalities that all non-believers
follow. Is that not the definition of creed?
You think that spamming Christian chatgroups and
discussion lists with expletives and insults demonstrates
superior free-thinking, rational, atheistic logic.
You think that it is possible to talk meaningfully about "good
and evil" "right and wrong" when decrying the sins of the Church
while simultaneously subscribing to the notion that neither sin
nor good and evil exist as ultimate categories but only as
personal and social constructs.
You have never pondered the question: why does a smart
guy like Richard Dawkins regularly give atheists a bad name by
putting his foot in his mouth with his inane and ridiculous
pronouncements about God and religion?
You have never pondered the question: why did a really
smart guy like Bertrand Russell write such a pathetically limp,
uninformed and adolescent critique of Christianity in "Why I Am
Not A Christian"?
You assert that "faith is believing things which you know
aren't true". You really "believe" that many human beings
actually believe things they know aren't true.
You believe the movie Dogma gives the most
accurate portrayal of Christian theology.
You feel that prefacing your responses to Christians with the
word bull$#@! somehow makes your argument a little more
valid.
You take a self-righteous pedantic "stand on principle"
against Christian apologists writing under pseudonyms, but always
refer to the "Endarkenment" French infidel writer François
Marie Arouet by HIS pseudonym "Voltaire".
You find the term 'fundy atheist' meaningless, baffling,
illogical and just plain oxymoronic/self-contradictory even
though the two terms are not exclusive of each other (except in
the minds of fundy atheists, of course).
You've ever called a Christian a "Paulian".
You deny that someone can possibly know they know the truth
('It's just belief, not knowledge,") while at the same time
claiming to know the truth.
You write books like Warren Allen Smith’s
“Who’s Who In Hell: A Handbook and International
Directory for Humanists, Freethinkers, Naturalists, Rationalists
and Non-Theists.” You label 10,000 of these famous
non-believers, as good, peaceful people who will be rotting in
hell because they are or were infidels. While of course you also
fail to realize that for every 10,000 of the world’s
peaceful non-believers, anyone can come up with a book that lists
10,000 peaceful, loving and famous historical believers. Of
course, you also fail to realize that you’ve wasted your
time researching 10,000 historical and modern names just because
you want people to think ‘peaceful’ people will be
rotting in an afterlife that you don’t believe
exists.
