Faith No Maher: Stop Calling Atheism A Religion
From last night’s Real Time with Bill Maher.
New rule: Until someone claims to see Christopher Hitchens’ face in a tree stump, idiots must stop claiming that atheism is a religion.
There’s one little difference. Religion is defined as the belief in and worship of a super-human controlling power, and atheism is precisely not that. Got it? Atheism is a religion like abstinence is a sex position.
Believe it or not, I don’t really enjoy talking about religion all the time. In fact, not only is atheism not a religion, it’s not even my hobby. And that’s the best thing about being an atheist, it requires so little of your time. But there is a growing trend in this country that needs to be called out, and that is to label any evidence-based belief a “religion.”
Many conservatives now saw that belief in man-made climate change is a religion. And Darwinism is a religion. And of course atheism, the total lack of religion, is somehow a religion too, according to the always reliable Encyclopedia Moronica. It’s a dodge, of course, straight out of the grand intellectual tradition of “I know you are but what am I?” It’s a way of saying, “Hey we all believe in some sort of faith-based malarky, so let’s call it a push.”
No. N-n-n-n-no. It’s not fair that people who can’t defend their own nonsense get to create a fake fair and balanced argument, the way they do when asserting that evolution and creationism are equally valid. I’m not saying that atheists are perfect thinkers, everyone has blind spots - I’m sure there are atheists who think pony tails look good on a man, pineapple belongs on a pizza, Ayn Rand was in important thinker - but when it comes to religion, we’re not two sides of the same coin and you don’t get to put your un-reason up on the same shelf with my reason.
Your stuff has to go over there, on the shelf with Zeus, Thor and The Cracken - with the stuff that is not evidence-based, the stuff that religious people never change their mind about, no matter what happens. That’s not atheism.
I’m open to anything for which there is evidence. Show me a god and I will believe in him. If Jesus Christ comes down from the sky during the halftime show of this Sunday’s Super Bowl and turns all the nachos into loaves and fishes, I’ll think two things: first, “How dare he interrupt Madonna, she is going to be pissed.” And two: “Oh look at that, I was wrong. There he is. My bad. Praise the lord!”
But that’s not going to happen. And short of that, if you still insist atheism is a religion, then it’s only fair that we get to do all the looney stuff that you get to do. And I’m going to start tonight by un-baptising Mitt Romney’s dead father-in-law.
In case you didn’t hear, it was discovered last week that Edward Davies, Anne Romney’s father, an enthusiastically anti-religious scientist who called organized faith, “hogwash,” was posthumously baptized in the Mormon tradition 14 months after he died. They tried to do it sooner but he wouldn’t stop spinning in his grave.
So here, then, is history’s first ever un-baptism ceremony, right now, for the late Edward Davies.
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today in the presence of math, gravity, evolution and electricity to honor brother Edward and to send the powers of Seal Team 666 to rescue him from Planet Klolobb so he may spend eternity with the kind of free-thinkers he chose to hang out with on Earth.
So by the power granted to me by the Blair Witch, schlemiel schlimazel, e plurbis mumbo jumbo, expecto patronum, sussussudio, yo momma… I call upon the Mormon spirits to leave your body the fuck alone. Brother Edward, in this world you had to put up with Mitt Romney, you’ve suffered enough!
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