Rude and Uninformed. A reflection on a recent billboard campaign by Atheist Humanists

Archdiocese of Washington ^ | December 20, 2012 | Msgr. Charles Pope

[NYer]

Msgr. Pope, ping!

[ILS21R]

The atheist creed: There is no god and I hate him.

[Bryanw92]

Just put up a counter-ad pointing out that the cartoon finger might be Allah, and the problem is solved. Perhaps some RoP folks can show the Humanists the error of their ways.

[steve86]

The God I know and have personally met

What does THAT mean?

[melsec]

I do turn on all my lights on Earth Day = it’s not really to mock them. It’s more of a protest of not being told what to do.

Mel

[A_perfect_lady]

Well, I'm sorry you think it's rude. But some of us are sick of pretending that religion does no harm. Oh, I've seen good done in the name of religion, sure. But I've seen harm, too, plenty of it. I'm not even talking about Inquisitions or Talibans. I'm talking about the everyday harm of brainwashing people, starting at childhood, to believe that if they don't buy whatever form of nonsense their church is selling, they'll go to Hell.

You terrorize children with that, and many will grow into terrorized adults, frantically pushing the same load of hogwash on all their family. Imagine the anguish of some poor woman convinced her athiest child or husband will be tortured for all eternity simply for refusing to believe stories that came out of the same area of the world that gave us Islam.

Religion is what you get when you mix schizophrenia, psychological totalitarianism, and Amway. It's crazy, you'd better believe it, and you'd better sell it. Or you're gonna burn. And you call US rude? Pfff...

[aMorePerfectUnion]

Atheists: those who worship a very small god, only seen when they look in a mirror.

[kosciusko51]

"The fool says in his heart: There is no God"

Atheism is a fool's errand: You cannot prove the non-existence of God. Agnostics are a more honest group, since they say they don't know OR that there is not enough evidence for them to believe in God.

Also, what if we who believe in God are correct? Suppose you are in a penthouse party, and I come upstairs and say that 5 stories below, there is a fire, and if you don't evacuate now, you will burn. Just because you don't smell the smoke doesn't mean that I am "terrorizing" you. I'm trying to help you. You may feel uncomfortable by what I am saying, but it doesn't change the truth.

[Dacula]

kosciusko51 is support you!

[Dacula]

is = I

[aMorePerfectUnion]

“Imagine the anguish of some poor woman convinced her athiest child or husband will be tortured for all eternity simply for refusing to believe stories that came out of the same area of the world that gave us Islam.”

I could equally make a case that your argument is a stronger argument for the existence of God. Instead, I will therefore fix your sentence to reflect your post more accurately.

“Imagine the sorrowful state of some poor atheist woman, who has decided she is omniscient - therefore she is god. What a very small god she worships.”

[ZirconEncrustedTweezers]

Funny how the antitheists never target their ads at Muslims. Probably that whole “they’ll chop my head off” thing...

[Inyo-Mono]

I do turn on all my lights on Earth Day = it’s not really to mock them. It’s more of a protest of not being told what to do.

Same here.

[NYer]

Religion is what you get when you mix schizophrenia, psychological totalitarianism, and Amway. It's crazy, you'd better believe it, and you'd better sell it. Or you're gonna burn. And you call US rude? Pfff...

God is love ... period. He is the source of life. While some fundamentalists may take God's message to ridiculous extremes, consider the alternative - a world without God. Many have tried to accomplish this goal; let's take a closer look at their legacies.

Here is a tentative list of modern mass murderers and the estimated number of people killed by their orders (excluding enemy armies). In many cases (notably Stalin's and Mao's cases) one has to decide how to consider the millions who died indirectly because of their political decisions. The Chinese cultural revolution caused the death of 30 million people (according to the current Chinese government), but many died of hunger. Stalin is held responsible for the death of millions by Ukrainians, but "only" half a million people were killed by his order. Khomeini sent children to die in the war against Iraq, but it was a war.

The worst genocides of the 20th and 21st Centuries

Mao Ze-Dong (China, 1958-61 and 1966-69, Tibet 1949-50)	49-78,000,000
Adolf Hitler (Germany, 1939-1945)	12,000,000 (concentration camps and civilians deliberately killed in WWII plus 3 million Russian POWs left to die)
Leopold II of Belgium (Congo, 1886-1908)	8,000,000
Jozef Stalin (USSR, 1932-39)	6,000,000 (the gulags plus the purges plus Ukraine's famine)
Hideki Tojo (Japan, 1941-44)	5,000,000 (civilians in WWII)
Ismail Enver (Turkey, 1915-20)	1,200,000 Armenians (1915) + 350,000 Greek Pontians and 480,000 Anatolian Greeks (1916-22) + 500,000 Assyrians (1915-20)
Pol Pot (Cambodia, 1975-79)	1,700,000
Kim Il Sung (North Korea, 1948-94)	1.6 million (purges and concentration camps)
Menghistu (Ethiopia, 1975-78)	1,500,000
Yakubu Gowon (Biafra, 1967-1970)	1,000,000
Leonid Brezhnev (Afghanistan, 1979-1982)	900,000
Jean Kambanda (Rwanda, 1994)	800,000
Saddam Hussein (Iran 1980-1990 and Kurdistan 1987-88)	600,000
Tito (Yugoslavia, 1945-1987)	570,000
Suharto (Communists 1965-66)	500,000
Fumimaro Konoe (Japan, 1937-39)	500,000? (Chinese civilians)
Jonas Savimbi (Angola, 1975-2002)	400,000
Mullah Omar - Taliban (Afghanistan, 1986-2001)	400,000
Idi Amin (Uganda, 1969-1979)	300,000
Yahya Khan (Pakistan, 1970-71)	300,000 (Bangladesh)
Ante Pavelic (Croatia, 1941-45)	359,000 (30,000 Jews, 29,000 Gipsies, 300,000 Serbs)
Benito Mussolini (Ethiopia, 1936; Libya, 1934-45; Yugoslavia, WWII)	300,000
Mobutu Sese Seko (Zaire, 1965-97)	?
Charles Taylor (Liberia, 1989-1996)	220,000
Foday Sankoh (Sierra Leone, 1991-2000)	200,000
Suharto (Aceh, East Timor, New Guinea, 1975-98)	200,000
Ho Chi Min (Vietnam, 1953-56)	200,000
Michel Micombero (Burundi, 1972)	150,000
Slobodan Milosevic (Yugoslavia, 1992-99)	100,000
Hassan Turabi (Sudan, 1989-1999)	100,000
Jean-Bedel Bokassa (Centrafrica, 1966-79)	?
Richard Nixon (Vietnam, 1969-1974)	70,000 (Vietnamese and Cambodian civilians)
Efrain Rios Montt (Guatemala, 1982-83)	70,000
Papa Doc Duvalier (Haiti, 1957-71)	60,000
Rafael Trujillo (Dominican Republic, 1930-61)	50,000
Hissene Habre (Chad, 1982-1990)	40,000
Chiang Kai-shek (Taiwan, 1947)	30,000 (popular uprising)
Vladimir Ilich Lenin (USSR, 1917-20)	30,000 (dissidents executed)
Francisco Franco (Spain)	30,000 (dissidents executed after the civil war)
Fidel Castro (Cuba, 1959-1999)	30,000
Lyndon Johnson (Vietnam, 1963-1968)	30,000
Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez (El Salvador, 1932)	30,000
Hafez Al-Assad (Syria, 1980-2000)	25,000
Khomeini (Iran, 1979-89)	20,000
Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe, 1982-87, Ndebele minority)	20,000
Bashir Assad (Syria, 2012)	14,000
Rafael Videla (Argentina, 1976-83)	13,000
Guy Mollet (France, 1956-1957)	10,000 (war in Algeria)
Harold McMillans (Britain, 1952-56, Kenya's Mau-Mau rebellion)	10,000
Paul Koroma (Sierra Leone, 1997)	6,000
Osama Bin Laden (worldwide, 1993-2001)	3,500
Augusto Pinochet (Chile, 1973)	3,000
Al Zarqawi (Iraq, 2004-06)	2,000

The Killing Fields at Choeung Ek.

Cambodia's Pol Pot began a radical experiment to create an agrarian utopia inspired in part by Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution which he had witnessed first-hand during a visit to Communist China. He began by declaring, "This is Year Zero," and that society was about to be "purified." Capitalism, Western culture, city life, religion, and all foreign influences were to be extinguished in favor of an extreme form of peasant Communism. All foreigners were thus expelled, embassies closed, and any foreign economic or medical assistance was refused. The use of foreign languages was banned. Newspapers and television stations were shut down, radios and bicycles confiscated, and mail and telephone usage curtailed. Money was forbidden. All businesses were shuttered, religion banned, education halted, health care eliminated, and parental authority revoked. Thus Cambodia was sealed off from the outside world.

Throughout Cambodia, deadly purges were conducted to eliminate remnants of the "old society" - the educated, the wealthy, Buddhist monks, police, doctors, lawyers, teachers, and former government officials. Ex-soldiers were killed along with their wives and children. Anyone suspected of disloyalty to Pol Pot, including eventually many Khmer Rouge leaders, was shot or bludgeoned with an ax. "What is rotten must be removed," a Khmer Rouge slogan proclaimed.

---

Yes ... as evidenced by the above table, banishing God from society resolves all problems. (/sarc)

[fwdude]

Actually, they're right. Their idea of God is of an imaginary one that they've created in their own small, juvenile minds. That everyone could shake off this demeaning habit and worship the true God in spirit, as revealed in the scriptures and through the new birth.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

“Atheists: No ethics, no morals, no happiness, no hope. Is it any wonder they are so bitter?”

[narses]

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[narses]

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[iowamark]

Don’t worry, we’ll pray for you!