Idiot of the Week: Ray Comfort

Although I discontinued the Idiot of the Week series long ago and deleted most of the posts associated with it, there are a handful I chose to keep around as reminders of a simpler time or...just because I find them especially entertaining. This is one of them.

Each Saturday right here at Atheist Revolution, a new idiot receives the prestigious idiot of the week title. And boy, have we had some deserving winners! It is again time for another installment in the Idiot of the Week series, so let's get to it.

This week's idiot is none other than Ray "the banana man" Comfort. Special thanks to Dispatches From the Culture Wars (update: blog no longer active) for reporting on Comfort's latest bit of insanity from WorldNutDaily so I didn't have to contribute to their traffic. So what did Comfort do now?

At WorldNutDaily under the headline "Finally exposed: The scientific impossibility of evolution," Comfort dropped this gem:

All you have to do is push them into a corner and say, 'So, you're an atheist?' 'Yep.' 'So you believe that nothing created everything, a scientific impossibility?' And they'll say, 'Well, no.' 'So you believe something created everything?' And they say, 'Well, yeah. Something did, obviously.' 'So you're not an atheist?' 'OK, I'm not an atheist.'

'This something you believe created everything, do you think it was intelligent? I mean, could you create a bird or a flower or a tree or a blade of grass from nothing?' And they'll say, 'No, I can't do that.' 'Well, is this something you believe created everything intelligent?' And they'll say, 'Obviously.' And I'll say, 'Congratulations, you've just become an anti-science, knuckle-dragger in the eyes of our learning institutions, because you believe in intelligent design.'

Ladies and gentleman, Ray Comfort has clearly disproved evolution! Then again, maybe he's just distinguished himself as our latest idiot of the week.

Why Atheists Can't Let Go of the Crusades

Image via Wikipedia

Many Christians are puzzled about why atheists cannot seem to let go of the Crusades. Why must we continue to bring up these atrocities from the relatively remote past, they wonder, and use the atrocities of their ancestors against them today? It hardly seems fair. One might even be tempted to use American slavery as an example to illustrate how little sense it makes to blame a people for what their distant relatives did. And yet, I'll be taking a very different position here and arguing that atheists must not let go of the Crusades.

To paraphrase the common maxim, we who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it. We must remember the Crusades, the various periods of the Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, the Satanic ritual abuse scare in the 1980's, and recent revelations about the Family. We must remember these grotesque episodes just as we must never forget the Holocaust, Jonestown, or Heaven's Gate. We remember them because we cannot allow them to be repeated.

And yet, there is more to it than maintaining these memories out of any noble cause. No, we must remember because our very survival depends on it. Atheists remember many of these periods because there are enough of us, at least in the U.S., who go through our daily lives feeling that another such period could be right around the corner.

We lived 8 years under a Christian extremist presidency, and we are too suspect of human nature to conclude with absolute certainty that we'll never see a President Huckabee. It could happen. We have heard again and again how our Christian neighbors feel about us and what some of them would like to do to us to relax completely.

We have seen a Christian extremist presence infiltrate our military, at least one of our modern political parties, and countless wealthy corporations. The consolidation of political power, military strength, and massive wealth into Christian extremist hands is something that should terrify every atheist. We know what can happen because we have seen it again and again throughout history.

Those of us who live in hotbeds of Christian extremism often feel that we are a step closer to the nightmare that others have the luxury of pretending is solely in our past. "Never forget" is our cry, and we are not about to abandon it. Celebrate progress where one finds it, but never forget. Far too much is at stake.

Understanding Atheism and Agnosticism

Image by Loz Flowers via Flickr

Back in 2007, everybody suddenly became curious about agnosticism after Zac Efron, the star of High School Musical 2, revealed that he was raised agnostic in an interview with Rolling Stone and that he remains agnostic as reported by The Jewish Daily Forward. What does being agnostic say about him? What does it mean to be agnostic, and how is this different from being an atheist?

I have found that one of the more frequent points of confusion for those first beginning to explore the subject of atheism is the relationship of atheism to agnosticism. It is often thought that these represent two distinct positions on the question of god(s) and that people who do not believe in gods must be either agnostics or atheists. Among atheists, people who identify themselves as "agnostic" are sometimes even derided as people who don't have the guts to admit that they are atheists. So what is going on here, and what do these terms mean anyway?

Deconstructing the Atheist Movement: Is There an Atheist Movement?

This is the second post in a series on deconstructing the atheist movement. You can find the first post here.

Perhaps it strikes you as silly to start with the question of whether or not there is an atheist movement. After all, we tend to distance ourselves from those who dwell on the deconstruction of non-existent entities, right? I must already be convinced that an atheist movement exists; otherwise I wouldn't bother with this series at all. That is true, but we have to start somewhere. In this brief post, I'd like to explain what I mean by atheist movement.

As I said in the first post, I believe that it makes sense to speak of an atheist movement as long as we acknowledge that it is in the early stages and still taking shape. But what exactly is this atheist movement? It is you and I. It is:

• Atheist bloggers and creators of atheist web sites and Internet-based social networks
• So-called "new atheist" authors
• National atheist organizations
• Local atheist groups
• Those who sponsor, support, and attend atheist conventions
• Atheist activists and their supporters

The atheist movement is a large and poorly organized constellation of atheists who have an interest in learning about atheism, promoting atheism as a sensible alternative to religious belief, working for atheist civil rights, and/or criticizing religious belief for its reliance on faith and superstition. We are the atheist movement.

Deconstructing the Atheist Movement

Back in 2005, I began an initial deconstruction of Christian extremism. It was helpful in figuring out exactly what Christian extremism is, how to identify it, and how it differs from Christian fundamentalism. It was a reasonable starting point.

Now I want to turn the light on the atheist movement itself. Some deny that it exists at all, and others argue that it should not exist or be a desirable goal in any meaningful way. But what exactly is the atheist movement? Does it exist, and if not, should it be created? Let's begin.