Haha, I love the Colbert-like camera shots. Is that a real set behind him or is it green-screened?

I asked him about the set too, but he hasn’t gotten back to me. Now that I look at it closer I think it might be green-screened. His shadow, especially in the closeups, doesn’t seem to fall right. It looks like it’s falling on a screen rather than objects at various depths.

You didn’t get my reply? Hmmm… Anyway, here’s the info on the set:

I have a room with green-screen paint on the walls, and I used Adobe Ultra for the virtual set.

Thanks for the kind words and the embed!

Most of his arguments are hogwash. Its all the general “christian bashing” stuff reiterated and doesn’t even remotely cover religion in general. A few logical fallacies later and you have the average atheist world view on video. Huzzah. Also fairly poorly written, not very well performed, and horribly produced.

@awakebyjava Would you care to be specific in your criticisms of Vastleft’s words? You accuse Vastleft of arguing generalities but your only criticisms are themselves generalities.

@Vastleft Well, despite awakebyjava’s condemnation of your video production skills I quite liked it. I think the green-screened set actually works quite well.

Sure, lets begin with the first point. Religion is make believe. I will concede that point only if everyone else agrees that everything is make believe. Reality is ultimately mutable by the squishy things in our heads, and understandable only through our senses. Basic Descartes there. We live in a postmodern world, and so everything is a construct. Reality is what we make of it. Objectivity is a farce. We cannot know there is a god, we cannot know there is not a god, we cannot claim to know anything for certain except what our brains tell us, and even then our brains are pretty screwy. Anyone claiming absolute knowledge is simply betraying their own ignorance. That goes for atheists too.

Religious indoctrination is a farce, and most research shows that childhood instruction is not a factor in later life belief. The rewards/punishment dichotomy is very rarely present in religion, especially the christian faith, unless you talk to fundamentalists, and they are crazy anyway.

What taboos? I don’t see any board games around here.

More people are killed over money than were ever killed over religion. More crusades are waged over political power than over holy land. This argument is so tired it deserves a valium and a pillow.

Morals are relative. Meh. Values are relative. Morals are cultural, but have less deviation than values. Religious beliefs inform morals and values, but no one but a crazy fundamentalist would say that you need religion to have them. And when did any christian say people are “perfect?”

I am getting bored saying, “this argument only applies to crazy people,” so I will wrap this up and let you have at it.

This video isn’t about “religion” as much as it is about uninformed christian fundamentalism, which is a small part of protestant christianity. Its like making the assumption that all people who have guns also have arsenals and submachine-guns under their pillow. Logical fallacy to the max.

He does say that the world is grey and complicated. I agree. Us fuzzy headed humans have to work things out as best we can. I think religion is a scapegoat amongst a lot of atheists because they think it is easy to dismiss and the people who ascribe to it are dumb. I think that conclusion is dumb.

awakebyjava,

I think we found the source of the swine flu: you’ve been hoarding all the hogwash.

Your comment is such a mishmash of fractional thoughts, I simply don’t know where to begin taking it apart.

vastleft,

I can understand why. You never really make it clear in your video what you are saying. Are you saying religion is not true? Are you saying people who believe it are wrong? Are you saying that religion is bad? That it causes bad things?

You argument is poorly set up, and when Leo asked me to be less general I tried to hit as many of those points as I could. Unfortunately the line of argument is vague in your script, and doesn’t follow a logical progression.

If you are going to say god doesn’t exist, say it, then say why. If you are going to say religion is bad, say is it bad, then say why. Choose one argument and stick with it all the way through.

Most importantly, if you aren’t saying anything new or in an interesting way, don’t say it. Nothing about this script is funny, clever, or interesting.

My biggest issue isn’t really the subject matter at all as much as it is the ordinary and bland writing. Overly condescending and utterly cliche, it doesn’t strive to truly inform or convince anyone of anything, but rather attempt to bolster the beliefs of a certain demographic. It doesn’t add anything to the conversation, and it is in no way the witty meta-commentary that it was meant to be.

I also stand by my production comment, you need better lighting and the green screen background harkens back to late 90’s public access television.

vastleft sez:

Your comment is such a mishmash of fractional thoughts, I simply don’t know where to begin taking it apart.

I’ll give it a whack; I need a relaxing activity or two during finals week. (Nice video, BTW.)
 

confused person sez:

Reality is ultimately mutable by the squishy things in our heads, and understandable only through our senses. Basic Descartes there.

Descartes FAIL. Sure, we can’t prove decisevely that our experience isn’t illusion. So? If it’s an illusion, it’s a damn consistent one, with repeatable phenomena: the kind that allowed Eratosthenes to correctly measure the circumference of the Earth, for example, and the kind that allow electrons to move with sufficient regularity that you’re seeing text right now that got encoded and sent out of my house on a wire. And the kind that allow inquiry into past events, such as those proposed in religious narratives.
 

We live in a postmodern world, and so everything is a construct. Reality is what we make of it. Objectivity is a farce.

People who state it so starkly are usually satirizing it, or at least its more muddle-headed cultural-studies exponents. I can’t tell if that’s your intent here, so, assuming you’re serious, I invite you to “make of” the world a place where you can walk through walls with high regularity, and then spend the rest of the day playing around in that world. We’ll be here; tell us how it went.

 
We cannot know there is a god, we cannot know there is not a god, we cannot claim to know anything for certain except what our brains tell us, and even then our brains are pretty screwy.

All true, which, of course, is why we have the collaborative field of science: to get as objective as we can—which isn’t absolute objectivity, but it’s enough to weed out the tricks that any one person’s mind may be playing on her or him.

Besides which, absolute certainty isn’t required for confident assertions about the status of gods: see Russell’s Teapot.

 
Anyone claiming absolute knowledge is simply betraying their own ignorance. That goes for atheists too.

If you’re implying that atheists routinely assert absolute knowledge about the nonexistence of gods, you might want to actually meet a few.

 
Religious indoctrination is a farce, and most research shows that childhood instruction is not a factor in later life belief.

[Citation needed] This assertion seems unlikely to be true, since it would seem to imply that religious self-identification in adulthood wouldn’t track with religious exposure in childhood, and persons of various religions would be scattered much more haphazardly around the globe. I will share this news with all my Jainist, Zoroastrian, atheist, Norse, Shintoist, Hindu, Satanist, Raelian, Mormon, Eastern Orthodox, Muslim, Pastafarian, and Jedi neighbors here in suburban Indiana.
 

What taboos? I don’t see any board games around here

Fun party game FAIL. Taboo is played with cards and a scoresheet, but no board, and so can’t be classified as a board game. Sorry, but I take my party games seriously, and I wouldn’t want to see an actual test of verbal communication like Taboo maligned by inclusion with games with chance elements like dice rolls and arbitrary spaces.

**unclenches anus slightly**

 
More people are killed over money than were ever killed over religion. More crusades are waged over political power than over holy land.

[Many frickin' citations needed]

At any rate, the two can’t be so easily disentangled, since often the defining element that separates the groups that political processes operate on is their respective religions, or at least their ethnicities, of which religion may be a primary part.

 
Morals are relative. Meh. Values are relative. Morals are cultural, but have less deviation than values. Religious beliefs inform morals and values, but no one but a crazy fundamentalist would say that you need religion to have them.

Then you’re classifying a large chunk of the U.S. population as “crazy fundamentalists,” seeing as how atheists rank at the bottom of groups people don’t want their kids to marry, and how there’s, what, one? openly atheist elected legislator in the country. (Yes, I can be arsed to dig up links for those, if necessary.)

Moreover, the speaker in the video identifies specific moral failings of particular, widespread religious belief systems. (Bigotry against gays and anti-science agitation, for example.) That’s pretty much the issue.

 
This video isn’t about “religion” as much as it is about uninformed christian fundamentalism, which is a small part of protestant christianity.

So? That’s bad enough, and the mainline Protestants still have these prettily bound books in their pews that, if you bother to read the damn thing, prescribe stoning queers and unruly children, and devoting yourself with slavish and cultish devotion to this fellow who abused pigs and fig trees for didactic purposes. And the Protestants rarely have the fortitude to condemn the bad bits.

I can inject the things that are bad about religion per se, like making a virtue of believing without evidence or those unnecessary and arbitrary in-group–out-group divisions I mentioned before, into consideration if necessary.

 
He does say that the world is grey and complicated. I agree. Us fuzzy headed humans have to work things out as best we can. I think religion is a scapegoat amongst a lot of atheists because they think it is easy to dismiss and the people who ascribe to it are dumb. I think that conclusion is dumb.

Maybe it is, but you’ve given us no reason to think so. I repeat my observation that you seem to be attacking straw-atheists you’ve read about instead of any that you actually know or have asked what they believe or why. Here, watch an episode of The Atheist Experience to pick up a clue.

@awakebyjava: Butter is right. Your comment is nothing but the tearing down of strawmen and unevidenced assertions of fact. Although, to be honest, I’m amazed that you felt the need to argue with facts at all since, according to you, we all make our own reality thus obviating the need for facts.

Butler and Leo,

Strange how a site dedicated to free thinking is so locked into a particular worldview. Its kind of like how people call themselves pro-life or pro-choice instead of using the word abortion.

See how much easier this would be if the video was about one topic instead of fracking 20?

Let’s take care of the easiest of my claims to back up. The one about religion killing people.

The crusades were about holy land. Yah, right. And the civil war was about slavery, the second world war was about fascism, the cold war, vietnam war, and korean war were all about communism. And the current wars are about terrorism.

The slightest foray into any of those issues shows that they were always about money. Money and political power to make people more money. The same goes for most of the “religious” wars that are cited as people killing in the name of god. Everything is more complicated than that, and if you try to talk about a war in terms of the propaganda about it you will fail, hard.

Also, ethnicity and religion are independent of each other. Ugh, seriously this argument makes me despair at what people who claim it is “fact” learned in history class.

Also, because I have a life I can’t deal with all of this at once. But I will make one more point. If this is a site dedicated to atheist beliefs, if should be called fundamentalist atheism fort wayne, not free thought fort wayne. Free thought implies you are free of assumption, and that is a dubious claim for anyone.

Wow, you know what? I just realized how really utterly lame posting comments is. Haha! Okay, I’m going to go do the living thing. Good luck with the whole video thing vastleft, and I suggest you go get some sun. Butter, good luck on finals! And Leo, you link way too much stuff man. Peace.

Strange how a site dedicated to free thinking is so locked into a particular worldview.

Evidence for such closed-mindedness? Claiming the mantle of freethought doesn’t entail giving respect or credence to any poorly argued, poorly evidenced opinion that comes along. The freedom to call dumb ideas dumb, without being compromised by the pressures of social structures or power relationships, is in fact integral to the whole shebang.

Further, since this point seems to have sailed over your head: Remember “[Citation needed]“? That was an actual invitation for you to present information (not rhetorical flourishes) to change my mind.

 
The crusades were about holy land. Yah, right.

Urban, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to all the faithful, both princes and subjects, waiting in Flanders; greeting, apostolic grace, and blessing.

Your brotherhood, we believe, has long since learned from many accounts that a barbaric fury has deplorably afflicted an laid waste the churches of God in the regions of the Orient. More than this, blasphemous to say, it has even grasped in intolerable servitude its churches and the Holy City of Christ, glorified b His passion and resurrection. Grieving with pious concern at this calamity, we visited the regions of Gaul and devoted ourselves largely to urging the princes of the land and their subjects to free the churches of the East. We solemnly enjoined upon them at the council of Auvergne (the accomplishment of) such an undertaking, as a preparation for the remission of all their sins. And we have constituted our most beloved son, Adhemar, Bishop of Puy, leader of this expedition and undertaking in our stead, so that those who, perchance, may wish to undertake this journey should comply With his commands, as if they were our own, and submit fully to his loosings or bindings, as far as shall seem to belong to such an office. If, moreover, there are any of your people whom God has inspired to this vow, let them know that he (Adhemar) will set out with the aid of God on the day of the Assumption of the Blessed Mary, and that they can then attach themselves to his following.

–Pope Urban II, December 1095.

Sure, Urban had ulterior motives: he probably wanted to reunite the Eastern and Western Churches, with him in charge, for one thing. So? He still claimed to have the authority of a supernatural being, and used that authority to claim moral legitimacy for his conquests—going so far as to say that participation in the crusade would absolve you from previous sins. And people believed him. Remove the superstition and religious subservience from the equation and there’s still the drive for wealth and conquest, but there’s one fewer propagandistic justification available to abet it, and one fewer cause of tribal hatred to make such calls fall on willing ears.

Keep in mind that in the spring of the following year, overeager and newly emboldened Christians left early and made a side jaunt up the Rhine, massacring the Jewish men, women, and children of various German cities (before getting shipped off to be killed in Asia Minor).

 
The slightest foray into any of those issues shows that they were always about money. Money and political power to make people more money. The same goes for most of the “religious” wars that are cited as people killing in the name of god. Everything is more complicated than that, and if you try to talk about a war in terms of the propaganda about it you will fail, hard.

One would fail hard if one took propagandistic explanations at face vale and used them as complete justifications for the conflicts they purport to justify. But who does that? Instead, we look for all sorts of causes for political and cultural conflicts, but we don’t ignore religious explanations when they’re given, just on the presupposition that “Oh, that’s just storytelling for the proles, who love them some Jaysus, don’t you know. Surely no one actually believed it; they were just greedy cynical bastards.” That would be to apply our current mindset on the psyches of persons in previous cultures and times, which is not a good way to seek truth.

And again, the fact that magic is even available as a non-ridiculous justification for anything is a problem.

 
Also, ethnicity and religion are independent of each other.

Ethnicity FAIL. Statistics Canada, a branch of the Canadian federal government, regards the term this way:

Ethnicity is somewhat multidimensional as it includes aspects such as race, origin or ancestry, identity, language and religion.

Religion is not the most important factor, but it ain’t nothing, either. And again, ancestry and religion aren’t entirely independent.

 
Also, because I have a life I can’t deal with all of this at once.

Snotty attempt at condescension FAIL.

 
But I will make one more point. If this is a site dedicated to atheist beliefs,

False premise, containing an oxymoron.

 
if should be called fundamentalist atheism fort wayne, not free thought fort wayne. Free thought implies you are free of assumption, and that is a dubious claim for anyone.

Depends what level of assumption you’re talking about. The assumption that nature displays regularities, for example, and that inquiry and truth-seeking can therefore be fruitful endeavors, is fairly hard to shed if we want to still have conversations at all.

Overall, you seem to exhibit sort of a discontinuous mind: one in which the world, or an explanation of part of it, is all one thing or all the other, with no allowance for multiple causes. Wars are either totally about religion, or totally about ulterior motives. Atheists are either totally sure there’s no god, or else they’re not really atheists. Ethnicity is totally about religion, or religion is totally separate from it. Scientific conclusions are either totally objective, or else everything is a construct and there’s no reason not to go all the way down the relativistic rabbit hole.

My prescription, to actually meet an atheist and listen to what they’re actually saying, stands.

awakebyjava,

My [Butter's] prescription, to actually meet an atheist and listen to what they’re actually saying, stands.

The Free Thought Fort Wayne group occasionally organizes a ‘coffee klatch’ event. You’d be welcome to attend. Discussion and arguments over ideas are welcome; proseltyzing is not. If interested, watch this site for a date and time.

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