• TYT Takes Down Religion

    tytWhen I talk about the ridiculousness of religion, religious believers whine and cry about how mean I am. After all, I’m an evil atheist mocking their sincerely held beliefs… which just so happen to be completely ridiculous.

    This is why I love it that the number one online news program are filled with rational people who self-identify as “agnostics.” The on-air personalities of The Young Turks aren’t those mean atheists like me; they are open-minded progressives like me. They are also not “preaching” to the “choir” in that their audience isn’t just atheists. I don’t know if I can call them mainstream, but they are certainly more mainstream than the average atheist broadcaster.

    The Young Turks are progressive and so their target audience are people who share most of our humanistic values even if many of them are religious. That is why I love it when they go off on religion. They deliver our message to people who still hold on to their religion despite the fact that they really shouldn’t. People you have tried to explain away the ridiculousness of their beliefs in order to still identify as a believer.

    The following is a great clip from a recent episode of The Young Turks where they take aim at Pat Robertson. Yes, “Old Pat” is an easy target, but he isn’t the only one hit. Take a look:

    Do liberal Christians really want to agree with Pat Robertson on this? Do they really want to claim that Gandhi is being eternally tortured for picking the wrong deity? Ana is right, enjoy your life! Be responsible and enjoy your life because there is no heaven or hell. Cenk however is wrong when he said Zeus was the correct deity because we all know that the correct answer is Oden. After all, Oden said that he defeated all the Frost Giants and you don’t see any Frost Giants around, do you? 😉

    It is important for more and more people to point out the ridiculousness of religious beliefs because religious believers often get trapped in their religious bubbles and sometimes don’t really see just how ridiculous their beliefs are.

    We have to remember that good, intelligent, people believe some of these ridiculous beliefs. It isn’t their fault; they have been indoctrinate from near birth and/or been culturally saturated and conditioned to believe these things. Our entire society tells us that these beliefs are perfectly normal beliefs and that those who point out just how ridiculous they actually are, are the big mean atheists. But it isn’t mean to point out that these beliefs are ridiculous. It is just pointing out the obvious and the more religious believers hear the obvious truth that their beliefs are ridiculous, the less they will be able to hide from that reality.

    It also really helps when they hear it from people like Ana and Cenk. It helps when they hear it from people they like and respect. It helps when they hear it from “agnostics.” While I’m an agnostic too, I also have no problem identifying as an atheist and religious believers have to keep hearing it from atheists, like me, too.

    Jesus didn’t walk on water and he didn’t come back from the dead like a zombie. There were no talking snakes and women didn’t come from a man’s rib. Heaven and Hell are imaginary and guess what? God is almost certainly imaginary too. These are all ridiculous beliefs that don’t have a shred of evidence to support them.

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    Category: AtheismfeaturedProgressive ChristianssecularismThe Media

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    Article by: Staks Rosch

    Staks Rosch is a writer for the Skeptic Ink Network & Huffington Post, and is also a freelance writer for Publishers Weekly. Currently he serves as the head of the Philadelphia Coalition of Reason and is a stay-at-home dad.