Thursday, January 19, 2012

Thick atheists


Here's an interesting role reversal story, an atheist in South Africa complained to the advertising standards authority in that country about a Church advert (see above) - he complained that the billboard offended him as he didn't believe he was an accident and the image implies that Atheists are stupid.

My own view is that this particular Atheist is probably stupid! This advert does a brilliant job of illustrating just how ignorant these particular believers are, not only do they clearly misunderstand the facts of evolution they don't understand Atheists either. Ultimately if you believe in freedom of thought and speech then anyone should be free to express their opinion as long as it does not physically threaten others and/or overstep the boundaries of accepted decency.

The main religious dogma's are inherently insulting, they make claims that cannot possibly be substantiated and arrogantly assert that everyone else must therefore be wrong, often under threat of mental or physical harm. Even in moderately secular western countries members of religions frequently use a combination of personal abuse, bogus accusations of racism and threats of violence both veiled and explicit to put down any criticism however well founded. However, I firmly believe that the only effective counter to this is education, education, education, millions of people simply do not question their beliefs, are not aware of the alternatives and do not understand the arguments, if Atheists and secularists can draw attention to these gaps through books, blogs, media debate, science, humour, cartoons or any other peaceful means then there may be hope for us yet.

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