Holiday Message from Ricky Gervais-Why I'm an Atheist
Offline Funny and enlightening. The comments after the article are good too. He is an HBO comic for those that don't know.
"Science doesn’t hold on to medieval practices because they are tradition. If it did, you wouldn’t get a shot of penicillin, you’d pop a leach down your trousers and pray. Whatever you “believe”, this is not as effective as medicine. Again you can say, “It works for me”, but so do placebos. My point being, I’m saying God doesn’t exist. I’m not saying faith doesn’t exist. I know faith exists. I see it all the time. But believing in something doesn’t make it true. Hoping that something is true doesn’t make it true. The existence of God is not subjective. He either exists or he doesn’t. It’s not a matter of opinion. You can have your own opinions. But you can’t have your own facts.
The dictionary definition of God is “a supernatural creator and overseer of the universe”. Included in this definition are all deities, goddesses and supernatural beings. Since the beginning of recorded history, which is defined by the invention of writing by the Sumerians around 6000 years ago, historians have cataloged over 3700 supernatural beings, of which 2870 can be considered deities.
So next time someone tells me they believe in God, I’ll say “Oh which one? Zeus? Hades? Jupiter? Mars? Odin? Thor? Krishna? Vishnu? Ra?…” If they say “Just God. I only believe in the one God”, I’ll point out that they are nearly as atheistic as me. I don’t believe in 2,870 gods, and they don’t believe in 2,869."
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/12/19/a-holiday-message-from-ricky-gervais-why-im-an-atheist/
Click here to find out why Christianity is the biggest fairy tale ever created!! www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm www.JesusNEVERexisted.com
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Great article, which I'd have otherwise missed.
Thanks for posting it.
Your welcome. I'm surprised there aren't more responses since it is a GREAT, funny, and eye-opening article!
Any more comments my brethren?
Click here to find out why Christianity is the biggest fairy tale ever created!! www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm www.JesusNEVERexisted.com
I love the way he is just so matter-of-fact about it, atheism is just so obviously and clearly the view of things that makes sense.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
LOL..the keyword is SENSE. Christians have NO explanation for WHY they don't believe in all those THOUSANDS of other gods and goddesses or why they are any worse than their Jesus. You really see how it's nothing more than a HATE group because their only explanation is Jesus is better than those others because WE SAY SO!!
Not a shred of evidence or corroboration that their Jesus is any more real that any of the thousands of other gods and goddesses! That is why Christianity was spread by the SWORD because they knew it was all crap to begin with and they had no better explanation than any other religion so they had to threaten to KILL people to make them convert!!
Christians already don't believe in 99.9% of gods so what's one more? LMAO!!
Click here to find out why Christianity is the biggest fairy tale ever created!! www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm www.JesusNEVERexisted.com
I'm always stupid enough to read the comments section of articles like this and then I get to be depressed for a bit.
You know, I don't even care if people are theists, just don't be theists for stupid reasons. My new pet idea is a law against discussing religion until people are, say 16. Maybe 18. Heck, make it 21 and religion would be gone overnight. Like the guy in the article says, if there was only one theists people would think that person was pretty damned crazy but when everyone is a theist no-one blinks.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
I love him as a comic and found his movies extremely funny. Brilliant thinker! Very funny!
I love the "leech" part because it is very similar to what I've asked of my christian friends.
I also loved the:
"Why don’t I believe in God? No, no no, why do YOU believe in God? Surely the burden of proof is on the believer. You started all this. If I came up to you and said, “Why don’t you believe I can fly?” You’d say, “Why would I?” I’d reply, “Because it’s a matter of faith.” If I then said, “Prove I can’t fly. Prove I can’t fly see, see, you can’t prove it can you?” You’d probably either walk away, call security or throw me out of the window and shout, ‘’F—ing fly then you lunatic.”"
Found this Q&A on one of the links. It's a good read and goes in to a bit more detail.
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/12/22/does-god-exist-ricky-gervais-takes-your-questions/
Signature ? How ?
I wasn't sure what you were talking about until now.
Last evening I wanted to respond to several of the more ignorant comments left by readers, but refrained thinking it would be best to sleep first. It appears I made the correct decision because when I woke up this morning I realized that responding to ignorant and hateful people really would be a waste of my time.
Exactly. My instinct is to try to have an honest discussion with these people, but that is a futile proposition...the fact that so many people have doomed themselves to such a small minded world view is profoundly discouraging to me.
Especially on the Internet. I think there *might* by a chance to get through to people if you can sit down with them in a physical, 1 to 1 setting on neutral ground. Sometimes. But this type of person isn't interested in learning anything, to them, they already know everything they need to know.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
This is great too. Sharp guy, nice delivery.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
You mean Graveyardofthegods.com. Lately this site seems to be getting more traffic than that one.
Click here to find out why Christianity is the biggest fairy tale ever created!! www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm www.JesusNEVERexisted.com
Hrm...just checked the site out. It reaffirmed my belief that philosophy isn't very useful. I just read a whole thread about determinism vs. free will and it is all a bunch of mumbo-jumbo and three dollar words. All you need to do when talking about determinism is, "Are actions controlled by physical processes? Yes/No and defend." I don't even see where that came up, which is the first thing a more science minded person would ask.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.