A new billboard has gone up in South Dakota in reply to Coalition of Reason’s recent sign.
"When I saw the sign I thought of it as a direct attack on my God. I thought that it would be good for people to know that God is alive and that He has something to say," Kreider said to The Christian Post.
So, Mr Kreider, what does your god have to say?
The fool hath said in his heart, there is no god.
Oh. The same damned quote you kooks always drag out. You know the authority of your bible is about the same as the authority of a Pokemon manual to me, so flinging quotes at me does you no good.
I can give you quotes, too — quotes from people who actually existed.
So much blood has been shed by the Church because of an omission from the Gospel: “Ye shall be indifferent as to what your neighbor’s religion is.” Not merely tolerant of it, but indifferent to it. Divinity is claimed for many religions; but no religion is great enough or divine enough to add that new law to its code.
Mark Twain
We despise all reverences and all the objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our own list of sacred things. And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us.
Mark Twain
The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.
Thomas Paine
Religion has convinced people that there’s an invisible man … living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn’t want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs money.
George Carlin
Ask yourself this: if there is a god, why are the atheists so much more creative and witty?
Jen is gonna whoop your arse for that blasphemy.
If you want a quote war, Ambrose Bierce is a good draft pick.
Yeah, Pokemon is actually a good game.
It’s Istanbul, not Constantinople, now it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople, and if you’ve a date in Constantinople she’ll be waiting in Istanbul.
Christians of the type that put up that sign really don’t understand atheists. They truly believe that because THEY are certain that god exists, then everyone else must be equally certain, and therefore atheists are being foolish, stubborn, or outright evil. The idea that atheists genuinely don’t have the “testimony” of god is not easy for them to imagine.
And these aren’t stupid people, mind. A very bright theology student once interviewed me to try to understand the atheist mindset (and to convert me, of course, but then, I can’t complain, I was trying to convert him as well.) His underlying assumptions were fundamentally flawed (e.g., why am I angry at god? I don’t believe in god, I can’t be angry with him!), but once I explained that, he did get it, intellectually at least.
But the Christian faith (and faith in generally) is, by definition, not based on reason, which leads to stupid bulletin boards like this one. Logically, it makes no sense (why would people who don’t believe in god care what the bible says?), but they aren’t using logic in the first place.
The Pokemon manual is consistent. That gives it a big leg up on the bible.
I thought that it would be good for people to know that God is alive and that He has something to say
Wut? God put up that billboard? Did he get a permit?
And a starship.
QFMFT!
Gregory @2:
Infidel, n. In Utah (and anywhere in the morridor, mormon corridor), one who does not believe in the Mormon religion.
OP:
Doug Hudson @ #5:
Ha, this made me laugh at myself a little. When I’m deeply immersed in a really good novel, I sometimes get caught up in the characters’ lives and feelings, and sometimes find myself feeling all sorts of things in sympathy with, or in reaction to, the characters and the story. Of course, I am aware that they are only fictional characters and that the book is just a story — so I can let go of my sympathies when I start my next book. Unlike the people who are worried about the hurt feelings of their god(s), who fail to acknowledge that their book is also a work of fiction.
Anyway, it made me smile.
That book they love to quote from also says snakes can talk.
Talk about a credibility problem…
Bullshit. I actually use the online encyclopedias for pokemon (there’s like, 600 of the fuckers).
Then again, playing pokemon is actually fun. That other book is just tedious.
The fool in their heart, says there is no god.
The wise and brave say it out loud.
This would make a good billboard quote.
So if both billboards are vandalized, which one do you think the police are going to put more effort into investigating? Also how is not believing in his god a “direct attack”?
The Carlin quote was awesome.
Let’s start with actually exists and is something which can communicate. Then maybe we can eventually work up to is alive and has something to say.
Apparently, that he couldn’t (or wouldn’t) do any better than making a bunch of fools. I guess he’s implicitly admitted to writing some crappy fiction too. Maybe it’ll work out better next time, God.
The incoherence of xianity. Again.
Why do god and jesus constantly need to be defended by humans? Are they sick, dead, or off on another planet 50 million light years away?
Xians claim their gods are all powerful creators of everything. And then act like they don’t exist.
That second Twain quote is getting out of date. We’ve now got a large school of thought who say we must revere, if not other sects’ sacred things, at least their reverence for their sacred things. So we mustn’t abuse communion wafers, deface or burn holy books (anyone’s), print cartoons of anyone’s prophets, criticize anyone’s customs, or — particularly — advance the view that God, that all the gods of all the sects alike together, are at bottom superstitions.
Because that would be mean.
And might I offer this paraphrase of William Hughes Mearns?
It’s Istanbul, not Constantinople, now it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople, and if you’ve a date in Constantinople she’ll be waiting in Istanbul.
Been a long time gone, Constantinople, why did Constantinople get the works? That’s nobody’s business but the Turks’.
Why does the pro-god billboard have a picture of an empty park bench? Is that the metaphor they’re really going for — that there’s no one there?
@David M
Which god wants delivered c/o Crip Dyke, in British Columbia, Canada. Donations for operating expenses are also requested.
@Area Man:
Pfft. you walked right into that one, didn’t you:
Also, the fool hath said in his heart the emperor has no clothes.
Foolish fools and their foolishness!
“Even old New York was once New Amsterdam”
Why they changed it, I can’t say.
I heard people just liked it better that way.
<3 They Might Be Giants
Left-over prop from the GOP convention. Seems GOPers enjoy the intellectual stimulus of talking to empty seating.
@Larry:
What possible evidence could you have that the bench is empty?
Checkmate, atheists!
Not so. Other people make it their business (from wiki):
I know what you’re thinking: a fool hath said in his heart, “there is no Most Divine All-Holiness.” But that would also be mistaken. You say things with your mouth, after thinking it with your brain, while hearts pump blood and stuff like that.
Hey now, PZ! The Pokemon manual gets updated semi-regularly when the rules start to get askew or unfair with the release of new cards. And in official tournaments, you better adhere to the rules!
And “Istanbul not Constantinople” was actually written by Jimmy Kennedy and Nat Simon in the 1950’s, it was only covered by TMBG.
Excellent though PZ’s quotes are, the only one which might work on a billboard is Paine’s, and that’s not athey enough for my tastes. The others have a big tl;dr problem: remember, people are driving past.
Mr Kreider, the people seeing your sign live in a thoroughly God-soaked society. They’ve been hearing about your God all their lives, they were probably raised Christian, are likely to own a bible, live within walking distance of a choice of churches, and your billboard may not even be the first religious one they’ve seen today. You’re not telling them anything they haven’t heard thousands of times before! By contrast, the Coalition of Reason sign is drawing atheists’ attention to a resource of which they may have been unaware, and does so in a way which insults nobody. So, who is the fool here?
:-) *tries to stuff starship into USB 3.0 port*
That’s one of the things I find really annoying about a lot of theists. I wrote a blog post about it. Short version: belief and allegiance are two different things. Even if someone proved to us that their sky monster exists, that wouldn’t mean we’d be on their side.
Naturally, I see nothing absurd about liking or hating fictional entities. We can have discussions about how we feel about characters without even entertaining the notion that any of it is real. We don’t change our position on their fictional status based on how much we like or hate them.
And even if you’re intent on quoting only the Bible, you can always reply to their billboard with Matthew 5:22:
The Pokemon manuals also have colored pictures, which most copies of the Bible don’t.
Now I want a Bible with a centrefold picture. Jeebus in all his deific glory.
Actually, that’d be really funny. Stick a magazine-fold-out picture into the Bible, then “read” it on a bus, turned sideways and flipped open…;D
Shouldn’t that be spelled “Mordor”?
:<
Nope, no persecution complex here.
Thomas Paine’s quote is powerful — especially today on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.
I must admit that Manga Messiah has some decent artwork, but not even Bishounen Jesus can compete with Pikachu when it comes to adorableness.
The inhabitants of the earth are of two sorts:
Those with brains, but no religion,
And those with religion, but no brains.
Abu’l-`Ala’ al-Ma`arri (973–1058)
I’m a sarcastic bar-steward. Which is why my favourite is:
“God helps those who help themselves.”
—Unknown
Then someone else can reply back with John 3:16, which is so well known it hardly needs to be quoted: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” So, it looks like you must believe or burn in hell, and must not tell anyone that or burn in hell. Presumably it’s okay if you happen to be the god who wrote those words in the Bible (or maybe he’s burning hell too — I don’t know), but I can’t tell if it means infinite burnination for someone else quoting the Bible like we’re doing right now.
The fool hath said in his heart there is no god,
Everyone else already knows this is the case.
@19
Last night I saw upon the stair,
a little god was’nt there.
Watching all, there he still sits,
his ankle bracelet’s on the fritz.
So the pastor of a god who claims to love everyone unconditionally chose an insult from a text written 2600 years ago. He certainly put a lot of thought into that one.
In Mormon country ’tis said that Jews can’t recognize Jesus, Protestants can’t recognize the Pope and Mormons can’t recognize each other in the liquor store.
Without their manufactured persecution complex, what would they have to live for?
God exists, he doesn’t like people who don’t grovel before him, Christians casually hate atheists, yeah jeez, that message really needs more air time in SD.
Only the most egomaniacal take people not believing in them as an attack.
Yes, he has insults! Sheesh, as far as retorts are concerned, “The fool in his heart” is on the level of “Your mother!”
Yes, surprisingly we don’t share the unhinged reactionary tendencies of Christian billboarders.
I was having a real dark night of the soul recently, but then I saw a billboard calling me a fool, and I fell to my knees and baptised myself with ditchwater.
I mean, really? The fool? Don’t these folks know that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar?
It really is nice to see the script flipped so beautifully here on this road in SD. The atheists are being kind and welcoming, and the Christians are throwing insults.
Is that a brand of whiskey? Haven’t heard of it.
Hey, don’t compare pokemon to the bible! While I admit calling metamorphosis “evolution” is a bad idea, at least they don’t try to teach that in schools.
@Rey Fox #50
But, as always, God couldn’t be bothered to say it himself.
By Kreider’s standard, Clemens, Paine, and Carlin must be alive, too. At least they wrote their own material.
Doug Hudson @5:
The idea that everyone knows of God’s existence has a pedigree. John Calvin expressed it this way (Institutes of the Christian Religion, Bk. 1, Ch. 3):
BTW, I just quoted John Calvin, which apparently shows that he’s alive and has something to say.
When asked why I am mad at god, I often have something like the following: me “for the same reason I am mad at your pet unicorn.”. Them “I don’t have a pet unicorn.”. Me “So you are telling me your pet unicorn doesn’t exist?”. Them “Yes.”. Me “Then why are you asking me why I am mad at it?”. Them ” “
Relevant quote from a recent post on Stonekettle Station regarding commenting rules at his site: “Oh, yes, one other thing: if your deity doesn’t like how I do things, he’s welcome to tell me himself in person (providing he presents proper identification. Cash in small bills, no checks), I won’t entertain any self-appointed middleman. Try it, and I’ll turn the hose you.”
That ought to be in a novel.
I’ve always liked to paraphrase Gorgias (from On Non-Existance or On Nature) at times like this. If I had a time machine, I’d try to learn enough Greek to try to talk to him.
1. God does not exist.
2. If there is a god, it cannot be known.*
3. Even if there was a god and we could know it, it could not be communicated.**
* Nature of the definition of omnipotence and the limits of human knowledge and ability to conceive thought
**ditto, with the caveat that language is understood to have natural limits, as knowledge does
Why do you/they hate Thor, Odin, Zeus, Marduk, Allah, Ahura Mazda, the Elves, Bigfoot, Tlaloc, Elvis, and Coyote?
They don’t worship, write, call, or even email them anymore.
We atheists aren’t mad at or hate the gods.
In fact, we get along really well with them. It couldn’t be better. The gods have been so quiet for centuries that it is almost like….they don’t even exist.
Fundiematic used SCRIPTURE!
It’s not very effective…
The “atheists are fools” contingent do have a point of sorts: given the sheer viciousness of the Christian god, anyone who had a testimony of his existence and deliberately chose not to worship (serve) him would be a fool. Imagine living under the rule of omnipotent Hitler: anything other than obsequious service would be futile and foolish.
Of course, it defies reason that ~5.5 billion people have either 1) no testimony of the Christian god or 2) have a testimony but willingly choose to go to Hell by defying god.
But from the religious standpoint, something that requires believers to deny reason in favor of faith isn’t a bug, it’s a feature.
You know what ? The “Join the club” atheist billboard is short and to the point but I think it would be far more powerfull if it had one of the Mark Twain quotes on it. Especially that first one.
Or how about just “Fuck off Lord”, Bob Geldof.
A book pushing a particular ideology has a bit saying those who don’t accept the ideology are fools. This is supposed to be a compelling argument for the ideology?
“Fire, women, and the sea”
Al Dente @ 65
“Ignore the man behind the curtain!”
I notice a few questionable graphic design choices on the new billboard.
1) The tangent created by the benchtop and the Psalm lettering.
2) The “Like us on Facebook” in larger letters than Psalm…
2.5) The name of the organization to which it is presumably referring is in almost illegibly small dark letters.
This quote is so popular with fundies, but none of them really understand how very damaging it is to their own position. When you have chosen to stand on ground where you must decry following the evidence and adopting the null hypothesis – consistently applying that razor that was (ironically) first conceived of by a monk hailing from Ockham – as foolishness, and thereby holding up blind, toxic and entirely irrational faith in a ludicrous invisible sky fairy as ‘wisdom’, then you really have painted yorself into one heck of an intellectual corner.
It has been around for so long, and for some reason viewed as such a useful ‘gotcha’ against atheists, that it is now trotted out almost like a Pavlovian conditioned response, with no thought given as to how utterly meaningless and ultimately counterproductive to the theist cause it is.
It is rather like watching someone lying on the ground with a bullet hole in their foot, still claiming to be a master marksman while pointing a gun at their other, still currently unmaimed, foot…
FAITH, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.–Ambrose Bierce
I think the bus stop bench symbolizes that life is just a highway, and the soul is just a car – the bible is represented by the white and yellow lines and billboards are things we drive-by and read for a moment…or something.
Yes I’m mad at god and Severus Snape…did you see how he treated Neville in book 1? And I’m still miffed at the Nazgul for killing Frodo.
Looking at both of those billboards it seems clear to me that if there is a “winner”, it’s Facebook.
I can freely admit that I do not know very much and have very little faith. If that makes me a fool I can accept that
What does that make the deluded that are so sure of what they believe without any proof at all.
uncle frogy
That billboard made me chortle. Tehehe. The bible, that passage included, has been minced, trampled, shredded and glued back together again for hundreds of years. I love how oft Christians quote it, acting as though it is infallible!
And real authors often write, yanno like, more than one book, or at least do updated editions with new facts and stuff. Not publishing more books for 2000 years is consistent with being dead and all that. Just thought I’d share that nugget with you christians, might be of use to you in determining what the ol fella’s status is.
I wonder why they always leave off the second part of that: “They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.”
I mean, it is quite clear. Non-believers and adherents of other faiths are purely malevolent and a dire threat to their community. It’s only natural to come to the conclusion that they must be expunged by any means necessary.
But, I guess genocide/mass murder doesn’t fit the whole “God of Love” thing, so they’ll just let their more fanatical followers come up with that conclusion themselves.
Response billboard:
“That book they love to quote from also says snakes can talk.
Talk about a credibility problem…”
The Harry Potter series also talks about talking snakes. That’s more works of fiction backing up their claims! They must be true!
Doug Hudson @5:
That billboard is not aimed at people like us. It’s aimed at Christians who might be tempted to explore the possibility of life without belief. The goal is to keep them in line, using words from their own bible (which presumably still has some sway with them) to do it.
I’m almost certain a pokemon manual is in fact accurate, authoritative, and useful with reference to its intended purpose.
@55 and 56/Hercules
Wow, so that’s where van Til and Bahnsen and so on get it from. They sound exactly like him; I am beginning to think Calvinism is a metaphysical coprolith, completely unchanged since whatever constipated spasm Calvin had that caused him to expel it took place.
I also count at least one logical fallacy in there. And I’m no atheist, but my conception of “God” is based on information Calvin could never have had access to (scholarship from 1850 onward, modern archaeology, etc) and leads to a very different view than his. Wonder how he’d answer that? Probably the same way Sye ten bloody Bruggencate does…ironic, that Calvinism is worship of manmade dogma and institutions, eh?
@63/Doug Hudson
Bingo. Wish there had been a copy of The Authoritarians around back then, as this is the religious manifestation of the RWA worldview…
And more to the point, what person with a working moral compass could ever follow such a being? A little thought shows that the absolute best you can expect from that God is a sort of hideous consistency; anyone who isn’t a perfect little bootlicking sycophant gets thrown into the deep fryer…but, wait, what started all this? Was there rebellion in heaven? if it happened once, might it not happen again? Won’t, all else being equal, this all end with everyone not God burning for eternity?
Amazing how they never think this stuff through…any being that would torture ANYONE for eternity is of the character to do it to EVERYONE.
The Kreider guy may just be using the billboard as a marketing ploy in a religious community.
The George Carlin sketch can be found titled, George Carlin on Religion and God on YT.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPOfurmrjxo
“The idea of God is a form of the idea of the Infinite. As long as the mystery of the infinite weighs on human thought, temples will be erected for the worship of the Infinite, whether God is called Brahma, Allah, Jehovah, or Jesus; and on the pavement of these temples, men will be seen kneeling, prostrated, annihilated by the thought of the Infinite.”–Louis Pasteur
@81: Actually, it was Martin Luther who suffered from chronic constipation (no, really).
So true. I found a gem of a book the other day, a 1939 edition of The Marvels & Mysteries of Science, wich is basically an overview of where science was at that time.
There was no idea how the Sun and stars worked beyond ‘pressurised gases’; Pluto was thought to be a Mars-sized planet; the seasonal colour changes on Mars were thought to be due to vegetation (and the canals were still a viable hypothesis; the greatest altitude achieved by a manned craft was 72, 395ft whilst the highest manmade object was a shell from the WWI gun Big Bertha at 34 miles; it was thought impossible to send radio signals out of the Earth’s atmosphere; mountain ranges were believed to have formed as the surface of the early Earth wrinkled as it cooled and shrank, with a few later additions due to earthquakes and volcanoes.
I’m only a short way into the book so that’s just a small sample of the information it contains.
The book is only 74 years old yet is hopelessly outdated. Fortunately, nobody relies on relics such as this for information today (quaintly typed ‘to-day’), no scientist would cite it as current thinking; it is nothing more than an historical curiosity useful only as a guide to how science and knowledge develops, how old ideas are superceded when fresh evidence is discovered.
Yet the religious still cling to the nonsense in their ancient collections of fairy tales as if we have learned nothing new in more than 2000 years.
Huh, I always interpreted that quote as a clever use of this trope. Of course the fool doesn’t believe in god, because the fool can’t understand the convoluted apologetics and rationalizations; instead, ze simply accepts the obvious truth in front of hir.
“He’s all- powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can’t handle money!” – Follow-up on the Carlin quote
“Ils sont fous, ces Chrétiens” – Obelix
“I find your lack of faith disturbing.” – Darth Vader … and every “prosecuted” Christian ever.
“There’s nothing left for luxury, there’s nothing left to pay the heating bill”
…
“I send what I can to the man with the diamond ring”
…
“He sure can sing!”
– MarkKnopfler