Fascinating and terrifying stuff: “Can Religion Justify Bullying Children?” (a talk by Sean Faircloth.) If you’ve got a spare half hour or so, I highly recommend giving this a watch. Never let it be said that fundamentalist Christianity isn’t a threat to nonbelievers or believers of other stripes.
And now, for a moment of seriousness. For a (hopefully small) number of people, today was supposed to be the day that they’d be instantly whisked away to a place of eternal peace and joy.
Instead, today is the day that they learn the hard truth so may other doomsday cults have learned: Placing your faith in the fantastic (and incredibly dubious) claims made by charismatic preachers who say that they’re going to save the world is a mistake.
But rather than criticize them, this gives us all an opportunity to glimpse the flaws in human thinking and learn important lessons about ourselves.
For those who don’t know, I’m one of the ‘answerers’ over at Ask The Atheists. It’s a nifty little site where people can anonymously ask a bunch of atheists questions about pretty much anything you can imagine. Lots of the questions are the sort of thing you’d expect a theist to ask an atheist (What if you’re wrong? Why don’t you believe in gods? Isn’t the universe proof that God exists?). Today, one popped up that I found particularly grating:
Why do Athiests [sic] HATE so much?
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Thoughts from a Godless Heathen 