Don't read this post, I'm going megaton.

I'm in a bit of a grumpy mood today, so I'm going to tee off on theism/religion and some of the laughable things that come out of the mouths of their participants. This is going to get bumpy, you've been warned.

“We can agree to disagree.”

It's true, we can agree to not see eye-to-eye on this subject, but don't think for one minute that this puts both of our arguments on equal footing; one argument is clearly not as logical or reasonable as the other. Don't get it twisted, the theist world view is founded on myths that shouldn't survive elementary school, so if we agree to disagree don't mistake it as a nod of respect for your views or argument. The idea of gods is idiotic at best, and destructive to humanity at worst. I'll respect the person, but I steadfastly refuse to respect their cult, or their creepy beliefs. They get only a cold tolerance based on my respect for the freedom of religion, don't count on conversational tolerance if you start yammering about magic men in the sky and how real they are.

“God X is immaterial, and outside space and time.”

I don't have to waste time pointing out how silly this belief is, the theist does all that work for me. But as soon as they assert their god is undetectable, the opposition wins. Removing all the criteria we use to validate a claim doesn't somehow magically make it true, since we now have no way to determine it's existence we have to disregard its possibility of being true. The theist will literally argue their god into non-existence all the while thinking they're pulling a fast one – I don't think so scooter, try again.

“But it's true for me!”

If the god exists only inside your head – only inside your consciousness – then fine, have at it. But when you say it exists outside of your imagination, if you say it's actually true, that becomes a whole new ball game. If you want to say your god is real, that it exists in the outside world, you adopt a burden of proof to demonstrate your claim as being true, just like everyone else. Can't muster the proof? Tough shit, try again when you can. It's arrogant and childish to think the world outside your mind has any obligation to fit your demands – reality has zero responsibility to change itself to fit your idea of what it should be. If the burden of proof is too much for theists to handle, then they need to go stand in the back of the room with the rest of the cultists.

Freedom of Expression

Given the recent climate of political and religious debate, I thought I would dig up an old essay about one of our most important freedoms: the right to speak as we see fit. As a free-thinker I believe the FoS is extremely important to all of us, and I feel incredible gratitude toward anyone who has helped us along our way of instituting and preserving this freedom.

I'm going to try the embed feature on Scribd rather than copy/paste the whole thing, hopefully it works well.

Freedom of Speech

Also, this video absolutely rocks. Thanks again for reading.