The NFL has no shortage of religious displays by both players and fans, but Tebow has been something different. A QB who can’t even manage to throw a spiral has somehow been at the helm as his team has pulled off seemingly miraculous wins. There are religious players, and then there’s Tebow. His parents are missionaries, his birth was “miraculous”, he has performed missionary work preaching to inmates and in the Philippines mutilating genitals while preaching the “good news”, is still a virgin and is a top selling religious author now so OF COURSE he’s plugged into the Man Upstairs who makes his wins happen. What other explanation could there be? What, you want proof? How about the miracle of last week over the Steelers where he threw for….. wait for it…. 316 yards? 3:16, people! I mean come on!

So it would stand to reason that if the results of his games are due to the Christian god, and that we can also take meaning from the stats of these games, like with the 316 yards, meaning that is EVIDENCE of this divine intervention, then clearly that must apply to all of his games, not just the wins, right? Well let’s pursue that…

First there’s the last week of the regular season, where his QB ineptitude was quite evident in a 7-3 loss to the Chiefs. The 3 points were a miracle, the result of a fumbled punt return by one of the leading NFL returners setting Denver up in FG range, so there’s the stamp of the Christian god already, for every unexplainable bit of fortune for Tebow MUST be evidence of His intervention. With that in mind, let’s crunch the numbers.

John 2:15 talks about driving everyone out of the temple. The Chiefs drove everyone out of Mile High after Tebow (#15) gave up 2 turnovers.

1 Peter 2:15 speaks of how you can silence fools by doing good. On the 1st day of the year, the Chiefs silenced Tebow fans for the day (well at least an hour or so) when their good work caused 15 to give up 2 turnovers.

It’s the Christian bible people, it can’t be wrong! Ok, so let’s get to the more important studies, the numbers from the 45-10 ass whooping:

Proverbs 12:15 Fools think their own way is right, but the wise listen to others.

Brady (#12) put on a clinic showing how the position of QB should be played. Only a fool would think after that display that their way of wobbly, inaccurate passing and gimmick runs are the way to victory. Even a supreme being can’t help you if you keep up with that foolishness against the right way of doing things.

John 12:15 Do not be afraid, Daughter Zion; see, your king is coming, seated on a donkey’s colt.

Scripture is never exact, you know. You have to interpret or massage it for its meaning so if you replace “donkey’s colt” with “bronco”, well there you go. The King, Brady, is sitting pretty over the donkey, er, bronco Tim Tebow. But enough of the Brady v. Tebow stuff, let’s focus on the 136 passing yards since after last week’s 316 yards were so evidently the means through which the Christian god communicates.

Corinthians 13:6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out.

It’s been quite the injustice to football having Tebow hailed as a great QB, and the truth of his play was made evident yesterday, especially compared to the real truth, Tom Brady, but what would a god care about football justice? Let’s dig deeper.

Matthew 13:6 And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away.

Luke 13:6 A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none.

Indeed, Tebow is no real NFL QB and the QB position is the root for any team’s future. Plant Tebow as your QB of the future and he will not bear you any fruit.

Isaiah 13:6 Scream in terror, for the day of the LORD has arrived–the time for the Almighty to destroy.

Uh oh! Well let’s just hope He’s just focusing on the Broncos’ destruction.

Ezekiel 13:6 Their visions are false and their divinations a lie. They say, “The LORD declares,” when the LORD has not sent them; yet they expect their words to be fulfilled.

Mark 13:6 For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.

Acts 13:6 And when they had gone through the isle unto Paphos, they found a certain sorcerer, a false prophet, a Jew, whose name was Barjesus

We’ve got a recurring theme here, which MUST add emphasis to the truth of the message plus it appears THREE TIMES so it must be important. What else can you take from this other than the Big Guy doesn’t care for Tebow (and I”m not talking about Elway when I say the Big Guy, even though it appears Elway doesn’t care for Tebow, either). Afterall, Jesus is credited with saying in Matthew 6:5 “don’t be like a hypocrite that prays in public to make others think better of them” so the Big Guy can’t care much for that damn Tebow pose and the rest of his shtick.

Well, the Christian bible doesn’t lie so there you go. Perhaps Tim should consider the 45-10 score and think on Isaiah 45:10.

Atheist Spot

As if astride chariots of iron, the Kansas City Chiefs’ defense soundly defeated the Broncos in Denver yesterday. They did it by exposing Tebow, aka Jesus or “The Mile High Messiah” for what he is, an under-talented, over-hyped player. The fascination with this clown was prompted by his in your face religiosity coupled with his seemingly inexplicable football successes. The truth is there’s never been anything inexplicable about Tebow’s successes, and the Chiefs’ defense made that clear yesterday.

Tebow was a success in college with the Florida Gators because they were a running team, not a passing team. They required a QB who could run, not necessarily throw and that’s what they got with Tebow. He’s a big guy who can run well (for a QB) but can’t pass for shit. Still, his team would win despite his obvious inabilities as a QB (QBs have needed to pass the football well since some time between the end of leather helmets and the start of the AFL). Now the rational saw him and the Gators for what they were, a gimmick carried by a strong defense, but there’s far too little rationality in sports, as any sports fan knows. Sports are a hotbed for superstitions, from pregame rituals to playoff beards and everything in-between, so when you have a winning team helmed by an obviously flawed player, there must be some magical reason why they’re winning. Tebow provided that for the irrational with his over the top religiosity and let’s face it, when it comes to irrational superstitions, religion takes the cake.

But like I said, the rational saw him for what he was and expected him, if he were drafted at all by an NFL team, to go perhaps in the 5th or 6th round but another miracle happened. The Denver Broncos gave away 3 draft picks to move up and take him in the 1st round. Did the then coach, McDaniels, do it because he was deluded by the magic Jesus hype or his own arrogance in believing he can make even someone with such poor passing skills as Tebow into a passing star? Nobody knows, but of course the faithful saw it as a sign. In fact, it was probably the hand of their god making it happen because to throw away so much for such a player can’t be explained any other way.

So away goes the coach, McDaniels, and the new coach has to deal with him and the manic fans screaming for him to play. What do you do? Well, you attempt to do what Florida did because what else can you do? As Fox said, he can’t function in a conventional NFL offense so you have to ride that gimmick and they did. They won 6 straight games with it, which was even better than the last great gimmick, the Wildcat, but like the Wildcat, savvy coordinators eventually figure out how to deal with gimmicks and shut them down, and that’s what Romeo Crennel and the Chiefs did. After all, this is the one and only defense so far who came up with an answer for Rogers and the Packers.

Now New England and Buffalo certainly showed one way to defeat the Tebow gimmick, and that was put up a lot of early points. That forces your opponent to have to score a lot in a short period of time, made shorter if their defense can’t put an end to you adding more points and/or milking the clock for the rest of the game. Running takes time and Tebow can’t pass so that’s that, but what if you don’t score a lot of points? What then? Many of Tebow’s “miraculous” wins were over such teams, and he somehow would find a way to come back and win at the end. The faithful, of course, saw it as a sign of their god’s intervention, some even going as far as thinking maybe Tebow was the 2nd coming of Jesus. The truth was far less impressive, and it’s called the “prevent defense”.

“All a prevent defense does is prevent you from winning.” – John Madden

The inexplicable way a man who can’t throw a pass for over 50 minutes of a 60 minute game and then miraculously have that ability and lead his team to victory is easily explained by the prevent defense, a ridiculous “play not to lose” approach where you don’t pressure a QB and hang back off of receivers just making sure no one gets behind you to catch a TD pass. Don’t pressure my mother or in any way stop the person she’s throwing to from catching a pass and she’d put up a gaudy QB rating, too. So either by throwing wobbly passes to uncovered receivers or running through a soft middle, Tebow lead his team to victory after victory. No magic, just stupidity, but perhaps that was yet another sign. If the answer to stopping Tebow was so obvious yet no one did it, that must be his god’s work, right?

Well if that’s the case, then the KC Chiefs have become immune to the power of his god, like riders of iron chariots. They never went to a prevent defense, challenging all of his receivers with man-to-man coverage. Furthermore, they contained him in the pocket, not allowing him to run for what he can’t do with his arm. You could almost say the Chiefs went out of their way to put this Tebow magic nonsense to rest by only scoring 7 points of their own, laying it all on the shoulders of the Mile High Messiah to work his magic, if he actually had any. Clearly he doesn’t. But will that stop the Tebow mania? Will people finally stop making him their Jesus substitute? Will broadcasters finally stop talking about him as if he were magical? If they did though, then we’d need a new drinking game.

But you know how it is with irrational beliefs, people who indulge in them will do whatever they can to continue riding that high despite any dose of reality you give them to counteract it, so many will take the team winning the division despite this loss handed to them by Kansas City as yet another sign. I can only hope that the Steelers and everyone else in the NFL takes yesterday’s game as a clear sign as well, of how to dispel this so-called magic and put this gimmick where he belongs, as an interesting footnote in the annals of football history. Naturally I hope Denver keeps drinking the Jesus juice for quite awhile longer. With no viable QB, a gimmick offense, the loss of picks from 2010, and now this division win which moves them down the depth chart for draft picking order, provides them a tough schedule for next year and hopefully a national exposure as a joke next weekend when the Steelers maul them, this Chiefs fan is feeling all warm and bubbly inside. Is this how believers feel? If so, I can see the appeal.

Atheist Spot

In my previous post I addressed the flaw in the religious assertion of objective morality due not by any failing of the tenets of that morality nor the most common objection which is to challenge whether this god (or gods) even exists, but by the very practical problem of demonstrating that the morality alleged to come from this god (or gods) actually did come from that source.

The stated point of the author’s article was to see if atheists could defend against the claim that to be an atheist, you must accept being a nihilist, but the obvious point of the article was to claim moral superiority for theistic morality over any atheistic morality. I say obvious because, assuming the author’s claim of receiving (and refusing to post) angry and rude comments from atheists is true, many atheists saw that point and naturally took issue with it.

You could say I took issue with it as well, only I basically gave him what he wanted upfront, that narrowly speaking atheism does point to nihilism as there isn’t any inherent meaning to life, no objective morality, but what I also said (and he simply dismissed without addressing it) was the theist’s claim that there is inherent meaning, or more specifically that they know what it is, is nothing more than pure, warrantless assertion. Why did he dismiss my comment? To put it simply, his game, his rules. That means he only wants a one-sided game where atheists must provide warrants for any claim to objective morality but theists have no such burden. That simply is not a fair fight, but sadly how many times do we see that from apologists? There’s your ends justify the means in action, folks. Such action seems self defeating if one is making any claim to moral superiority, but I digress…

Atheist Spot

This one came up in my Google search before heading off to bed. Now one of the many reasons I don’t post as often anymore is I feel like I’m just rehashing the same shit, because the arguments rarely ever change when it comes to religion and politics. Hoever, every once in awhile something either has a different spin or you find yourself answering in a slightly better way than you have before and then -BING- you have something worth posting.

So this theology professor is essentially saying that atheism is nihilistic, and therefore any atheistic morality must be inferior for there has to be “an authority transcending man”. No such authority, and you have no “ought” as he puts it.

The argument is that IF an atheist decided to live a life of hatred, a life directed by “might makes right,” oppressing weaker persons for personal gain, no real reason can be given why he or she should not.

Generally, the atheist response is to champion the strength of society’s or humanity’s authority to say what is moral, but let’s face it, how can mortals compare to a god? (Now I know the atheists are ready to pull out a plethora of examples from religious texts showing the flawed morals of these gods or invoke Epicurus, but please stay with me.) The other objection might be to challenge the existence of this “authority transcending man”, but how long has that challenge been evaded by theists? God is different. God is spiritual. You can’t physically demonstrate god. He reveals himself to those who accept him. You just feel him. Etcetera, etcetera. Regardless of whether we think it’s bullshit, they say their god can’t be proven to exist in the same way we prove other things exist because it’s a different kind of thing, so our criteria for evidence then doesn’t apply. Now what?

Well ok, their god may not be “real” in the way we know things to be real, but guess what has to be, what has to be demonstrably evident? The means by which one shows what that god’s wishes are. Ah, NOW they have a problem. You have three major world religions who claim to know what the god of Abraham’s wishes are, and amongst Christianity alone there are over 2,000 different sects each with their own interpretation. Therefore there is no definitive “ought” for the theist, no definitive wishes by “an authority transcending man”. That’s a problem, for although the moral dictates of a supreme being may well be better than those we mere mortals can come up with, if you can’t show what you’re claiming to be this being’s moral dictates are in fact that being’s moral dictates, then they have no authoritative backing.

That means every criticism one can make against a morality absent of “an authority transcending man” can be levied against one with “an authority transcending man” if it can’t be validated what that authority’s wishes are, but that’s just the half of it. Whereas humanity has the means to point to demonstrable reasons for any particular moral dictate and thus argue for its merit, the theist, whose sole reason for any moral dictate is that it comes from god, then has no argument for it can’t be demonstrated that it actually is the moral dictate (or even the correct interpretation of that moral dictate) of that god.

Atheist Spot