The following is a response to a point the Chaplain raised. She felt the Reason Rally was comparable to those old Billy Graham revivals and thus, a religious event with attendees having what looked to her as a religious experience.

Chaplain,

I think you’ve enter the “atheism is a religion” fallacy.

This Saturday you’ll have two crowds descending on Philly, one to see the Flyers and the other to see Bruce Springsteen. Both will get energized by being around similarly minded people. Both will hoot and holler together. Both will likely be wearing paraphernalia associated with who they’re going to see and may be buying more there. Many from both crowds will be bringing their children to expose them to what they’re seeing. Many from both sides will be tailgating before and perhaps after the events. Now I ask, is Bruce Springsteen comparable to the Flyers? Are they the same?

“Atheism” is a convenient catch-all for a variety of topics where ultimately the religious, or some comparably faith-based believers are the antagonists. Anti-vacs, anti-evolution and science, anti-sex education, anti-abortion, anti-equality for gays and women, and so on. Do they really have anything to do with atheism? No. Nothing has anything to do with atheism other than the god question, however all that shit and more is caused by, or justified by the belief that a god exists who hates all that science and butt sex so atheism (I’d prefer critical thinking) becomes the cause or at least the battering ram many people need to get behind to smash the foundation of these dangerous and un-constitutional actions by believers. And yes, I do feel people need to get together to oppose these muddle-headed initiatives and certainly no political party will as both are guilty to at least pandering to the faithers if not supporting and championing faith-based nonsense themselves.

Does passion equate to religion? Does gathering en mass with like minded people make you religious or the group a religion? Is supporting a cause a religious action? I’d have to say no to all of those questions.

Now with that said, I wouldn’t attend a Reason Rally because one, I’m crazy busy and two, I hate crowds and all that’s associated with crowds. However, I do attend industry conventions because it’s an opportunity to hear and perhaps meet top people in my field. I suppose for some who went to the Rally, that was an appealing reason for them to go, but it’s not for me. I did attend a small event a few years ago at Penn where PZ Meyers gave a talk, but if it was going to be held in an auditorium I probably wouldn’t have gone. To each their own which, ultimately, is one of those “atheist” sentiments which has nothing to do with atheism but is generally held by atheists it seems and is a sentiment worth rallying behind.

Any time I mention that atheists are in a better position to protect religious freedom in this country, the religious balk and go into fits of hysteria. How can a group of people opposed to something be its best protectors? The problem the religious have is one of equivocation. I didn’t say atheists were the best one for protecting Christianity, per se. Protecting religious freedom does not mean protecting Christianity, it means protecting a constitutional right. The phrase that sums it up is “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Ultimately, religious freedom is a freedom of conscience, a freedom to think and believe what you will. That means freedom to believe in a 2,000 year old Jewish zombie, an evil alien named Xenu, an “enlightened” fat man, an angel named Moroni, Wakantanka, astrology, that tax breaks for rich people equals jobs, no global warming, Nigerian princes in need, the power of magnetic bracelets, or anything else. It’s that freedom which is worth defending, and what I feel is too difficult for a believer in a particular faith to objectively defend.

Unlike teetotalers whose opposition to alcohol indulgence lead to the infamous Prohibition period, atheist organizations are not seeking bans on the faith indulgence of religion. Now I know the religious claim things like opposing religious displays on government property or opposing public school lead prayers and similar religious activities are attacks, but in actuality they are defensive actions, actions to protect and defend the constitution. Christianity has exceeded its rights, unfairly taking a place of privilege and unduly imposing on others. Such abuses have been largely ignored and exploited by the unscrupulous (most notably politicians), but with an ever changing religious landscape in this country with atheists, agnostics and non-Christian immigrants, these abuses, these impositions are being challenged; however, as seen in this story, only atheists appear capable of objectively defending religious freedom.

The Governor of Kentucky attended a Hindu blessing ceremony and his political rival, Sen. David Williams, called him out for it and made some ridiculous remarks about how Hindus need to find Jesus and similarly offensive comments (more here). The reason why I’m pointing to this story is the atheist response has been to call out the senator for deliberate “divisiveness for political gain” and to condemn his actions as disgraceful to “our country and humans in general.” In contrast we have Swami Poojananda Saraswati, a prominent Hindu nun and yoga exponent, saying: “It is out of ignorance and arrogance that a person would criticize the religion of other people”. Seriously? The atheist condemns the comment and rightly points out it’s motivation, political gain through divisiveness, and the Hindu response is, effectively, to take a shot at the atheists.

I know what you’re thinking, that the Swami didn’t mean to take a shot at the atheists, but then the senator didn’t, and still doesn’t find his comments that Hindus need to find Jesus and “salvation” offensive either. Suhag Shukla, managing director of the Hindu American Foundation, replied, “it is difficult to understand how an individual of your education, experience and position would think that calling ‘gods’ of another religion ‘false’ and its practices ‘idolatry, and stating that your hope was that ‘Hindus open their eyes and receive Jesus as their Savior’ would not be taken as offensive.”

The point I’m getting at is these two religions are solely focused on themselves. They lack true objectivity and are effectively blinded by their faith indulgences. The Christian is seemingly incapable of realizing his comments are offensive and the Hindus only see offense in what they perceive as blasphemy. What about the offenses that the senator seems unfit to defend a cornerstone of our constitution and more than willing to sew and exploit divisiveness for political gain? Those points seem unimportant to the point of not even being mentioned by the Hindus, which begs the question of whether they are aware them? I don’t know. Perhaps if the numbers were reversed, we’d have a report of a Hindu senator attacking Christianity for political gain. Who knows?

I can’t help but see the issue as an adult insuring unruly, narcissistic children get along and play nice together. It’s like Lord of the Flies.

Btw, when looking for a title image, I found this and found it so funny that I had to include it:

Mr. Patterson refers to myths, however what he’s using to base his opinions on lack just as much credibility:
• The US constitution is not based on any religious texts and is in fact in direct opposition to many tenets of major religions including Christianity.
• Religious morals historically reflect societal morals and change accordingly over time. No better example than Christianity. Compare the morality it preached 200, 100 or even 50 years ago with that of today. Of course you could go back further, say Inquisition, Crusades, etc.
• The words “separation of church and state” do not literally appear in the constitution, but the concept clearly does. Other things not literally in the original constitution but still addressed by it would include slavery, the Electoral College, Executive Orders, “freedom of expressions”, absolute freedom of speech, and more.
• Stalin’s behavior in general was not motivated by atheism, and his actions specifically against the church were in response to the church fomenting counter-revolution to regain the opulent place of privilege it had under the Czars.
• Likewise, Hitler self-described as a Christian and much of his anti-semetic language echoed Martin Luther’s and Calvin’s.
• The US is a secular nation, not part of “Christendom”.
• The use of “Creator” in the Declaration was in response to the prevailing rationale for monarchies at the time, divine right. As revered a document as it is, it’s no more a founding document of the United States than Paine’s Common Sense.
• In democracies and republics, rights are decided by societies and made into laws. Cases in point would be women’s suffrage and abolition of slavery, both decidedly NOT from the Christian bible.

This was in my Google alert today. There’s nothing more sad than a faith indulger trying to use logic to champion his indulgence. To cut to the chase, the author cites the constitution as well as Jefferson and others in an attempt argue that prohibiting school lead prayer is actually unconstitutional. As is often the case, the mistake lies in faulty presuppositions. I say often because the problem with faith indulgers is they wholeheartedly believe they’re right so they gloss over their presuppositions. To be fair, I see this in thesis papers from students frequently too, but in their case it’s just laziness and being over anxious to cut to the chase. The faith indulger instead glosses over his or her presuppositions because they feel they’re obviously true and therefore don’t see a need to first validate them.

Below is the extended version of my comment left there (there’s a limit to the length of comments, apparently). Actually, it may be the only version, as at this time it has yet to appear since there’s moderation.

The flaw in your logic is the presupposition that moments of silence are an exercise of atheism. They are not. They are an attempt to accommodate the ever increasing variety of religious beliefs held by Americans by allowing a time to pray, meditate, or what have you. Silent reflection is the only way to guarantee personal religious freedom.

This flaw of yours is born out of a larger flawed presupposition that atheism is a religion, thereby framing all arguments of lost ground for Christianity, Judaism, et al. such as not allowing prayer directed by a school official as gained ground for atheism. That’s a fundamental mistake for atheism is not a religion, and one religion’s lost ground in a place such as public schools is not gained ground for atheism but rather gained ground for religious freedom and our beloved constitution, for that privileged ground was unconstitutionally held in the first place. It was held at the expense of each and every American’s individual right to their personal religious beliefs.

This leads into my last point which is another flawed argument used by the religious, and that is framing such things as the prohibition of school lead prayer as a violation of free exercise of religion. For instance, framing the prohibition to deny equal rights to the LGBT community as a violation of your right to free exercise of religion is a fundamental misunderstanding of human rights. As Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “[t]he right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.” Prohibiting school lead prayer is protecting the noses of all Americans from those who are selfishly swinging with no deference to others.

Since I say that demonstrable evidence is required before a claim can be rationally accepted, it’s only fair that when someone offers what they believe to be evidence, I should take some time to examine it. Well I was given this link to a lecture by one Dr. J.P. Moreland creatively entitled “The Evidence for Christianity” so that’s what I did, I examined it. Right off the bat though, it’s “evidence” for the existence of a god, not for Christianity. Perhaps he has another lecture connecting the dots, but I really don’t care to see it after this.

Like most evidence from believers, it’s just a load of unsubstantiated assertions and logically fallacious arguments, with your standard emotional appeals for good measure, naturally. I should say that some arguments were logical, but unfortunately sprang forth from unsubstantiated or demonstrably false premises like a failure to understand the 2nd law of thermodynamics. That seems to get the best of them, so no shame there, Doc. What is shameful is the bullshit he started off with before even getting to his presentation of evidence. His opening contained these notably false assertions:

1) “[Atheists] have made it a goal to stomp out supernatural religions in the United States”.
No group that I’m aware of, atheist or otherwise, is actively working to eliminate religious freedom in the US. Ironically it’s Christian groups who are doing that by denying religious freedoms for Muslims and instilling a de facto religious test for public offices (some states still have laws barring atheists from being elected despite such laws being blatantly unconstitutional). Now in the US rights can be curbed, especially when they impose on others. Naturally a religion which practices cannibalism would be denied some freedoms to exercise their beliefs. Some States are finally revoking parents’ rights to deny their children life saving medical care because they’d rather pray (which lead to the untimely death of Madeline Neumann).
2) ‘[Atheists] are ridding our schools of god’
First, it’s historically been the religious who’ve objected to religion in public schools because the religion being preached wasn’t THEIR religion, and that’s why we have an Establishment Clause, so that one religion cannot lord itself over others, imposing its will by mandate of the government. Public schools are government facilities and as such cannot appear to endorse any one religion or for that matter religion over non-religion; therefore, you can have private, individual prayer but not school directed prayer.
3) “Don’t think America can’t go secular”
Unclear what he means by America, but if he’s referring to the government, it is and always has been secular. We’re the first nation with a secular constitution.
4) “[God] loves the [American] institutions because they were founded, by and large, on a Christian worldview.”
This is blatantly false. The founding fathers were a mix of beliefs, with a healthy dose of Deists. Furthermore, it was made very clear in the Treaty of Tripoli, 1797, that the US is not a Christian nation.

Well after that, the evidence round must be good, right? Let’s begin…

1) Citing the Christian bible as evidence not only doesn’t carry weight with a non-believer, but is circular reasoning (ie – the bible is true because it’s the word of god and we know there’s a god because of the bible).
2) Romans asserts that the world is a creation when there’s nothing to suggest such a belief. Of course if you start with the presupposition that the world and the universe were created, then you’ll naturally believe there must be a creator (ie – Watchmaker’s fallacy).
3) “The universe began to exist and something supernatural had to create it.”
Again, no reason to believe the universe was (consciously) created, and there is nothing to suggest if the universe was the result of some action or if it’s always been. Furthermore, there’s nothing to suggest that there is such a thing as “the supernatural” (of course we first need a definitive definition).
4) “We now know we live in an unusual universe.”
That’s simply nonsensical since we only know of one universe, therefore we can’t say it’s unusual. Unusual compared to what? How many universes do we know exist?
5) “We now know that the universe of space, time and matter began at some point in the past.”
No we don’t. That’s simply false. We know that our universe once was very dense before exploding but we don’t know anything about the exact moment of that explosion nor anything that may have come before that.
6) “The 2nd law of thermodynamics…”
Oy vie, if I had $1 for every religious person who cited the 2LoTD without understanding it! Anyway, the universe doesn’t “run out of gas”, it means the energy in the universe will be equally distributed in a state of maximum entropy. Btw, it doesn’t discount evolution either since the Earth is an open system (he didn’t go there, but most religious people use the 2LoTD for that reason so I thought I’d throw that in).
6b) “If the universe has always been here, then it should have used up all its fuel an infinite time ago.”
It’s funny he simultaneously considers the universe a closed system yet speaks of its energy being burned up. Where would it go? Again, misunderstanding the 2LoTD.
7) “Until you get a point where the entire universe of space time and matter sprung into existence.”
The universe is indeed expanding but appears to be dense enough that rather than experiencing heat death (the continued expansion to entropy), it could snap back to a singularity again and such a cycle may have always been repeated; therefore no, it didn’t necessarily spring into existence. To use his balloon analogy, if it stretches, it snaps back, and would continue to do so if the balloon was all there.
8 ) “Since the natural world began to exist, then something supernatural, something outside the natural world had to cause it.”
As already explained, we don’t know if the universe always has been or not but if it wasn’t then on what grounds can we say that anything non-universe is not made of the same matter and energy as the universe? Yes, this cause would be outside of the universe but outside of the “natural world”, in other words not made of matter and energy? Why? This stinks of equivocation, attempting to make natural world and universe synonymous as a way to sneak in the word supernatural. Typical religious shenanigans, I’m afraid.
9) “I don’t have time…”
Yeah, I bet you don’t. Considering everything so far has been false, why not heap on a scoop of personal, conscious cause? I mean, you have like 15 minutes left.
10) “The origin of biological information.”
Oh brother, the complexity argument! Still, kudos for twisting the SETI program. That’s a novel one. Look, he started off by addressing the problem that kids go to college and when they come back, they tend to abandon religion. Using an argument like the complexity argument, one that will take that kid a minute to google and see the refutation of it (if he or she doesn’t already know it) won’t get it done any better than exhibiting ignorance of the 2LoTD. It failed in Dover and it fails the test of logic as it’s essentially an argument from ignorance. Anyway, dna is not a stream of information. It’s yet another thing by which we can categorize and know things. Now maybe if someone found an organism with a dna strand that actually was a stream of information, like an act from Hamlet, then you could begin to make the SETI analogy.
11) “Moral absolutes exist, and are best explained by a moral law giver.”
It’s certainly not clear that moral absolutes exist but even so, a moral law giver, especially a supernatural entity, is most certainly NOT the best explanation. Both parts of that statement are unsubstantiated assertions. As that was his last “evidence”, I stopped watching.

So that’s my response to the believer. I wonder what they’ll say?