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In this episode, Trent debunks 10 truly cringe-worthy atheist memes.
Transcription:
Sometimes I can’t tell the difference between a Christian meme mocking atheists and truly awful atheist memes that mock themselves. So let’s jump into the topic of today’s episode and examine nine truly awful online atheist memes.
Number one, only a lie has different versions and shows different version of the Bible.
First, there are different versions of this very meme, does that mean this meme is a lie?
There are only different versions of the Bible because some canons of scripture have different books, such as the Protestant canon missing the seven deuterocanonical books of scripture. What this is probably referring to are different translations of the Bible.
But works written in different languages have different translations. The writings of the Greek historian Thucydides have different translations, or versions, but that doesn’t mean the ancient Peloponnesian War never happened.
Number two, “Religion is legalized madness” a quote from Arthur Janov. This is hilarious because Janov is a psychologist who invented the now discredited method of primal therapy. He basically says you can heal your mental health by screaming about past trauma.
Or by directing anger at a substitute for someone who hurt you like a doll or empty chair.
As demonstrated in this clip from the Simpsons.
But sure, religious people are the mad ones.
Number three, oh this one is sad.
It’s a girl holding a sign that says “According to religion I am broken, flawed, sinful, dumb, weak, nothing. And on the other side, “According to science I am, “full of wonder, smart, a great learner, beautiful, and potential for greatness.” Which do you think is more damaging.
What’s damaging is thinking you can get your value from science because can’t tell us anything is valuable. Science can find patterns in things we know are beautiful but science doesn’t prove beauty, that’s a value judgement just like greatness and full of wonder.
Human beings are full of wonder and beauty and have potential for greatness, but we also have a potential for evil because we are flawed, weak and sinful. We know this every time we do something wrong. But we are not nothing. Science says we are just leftover atoms from the Big Bang, but religions says we have potential for greatness because we are made in God’s image and can live for all eternity with him.
Number four, The greatest threat to mankind are death cults, namely Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Which ignores acts of terror committed among Hindus and Buddhists and of course the biggest perpetrator, state-enforced atheism through communist regimes.
Number five, I want to compare two memes I found on the same atheist account. First one says, listen to your heart, and the woman’s heart says “God is merely a figment of your imagination.” Okay, but what about people, like the majority of people who ever lived whose hearts tell them that God or transcendent is real? And what about people whose hearts tell them to do evil things?
That same account shared this quote, “young men need to be socialized in such a way that rape is an unthinkable to them as cannibalism.”
But wait, I thought people were beautiful and full of wonder and that religion makes them weak, sinful creatures? Oh, so now it turns out we have to teach, i.e. indoctrinate people to act a certain way in contradiction to what they’re instincts might tell them. This shows morality isn’t something that comes from evolution but must come from a universal, transcendent source beyond time, place, and culture. Gee, what might that be?
Number six, Jesus never existed! We have Bart Ehrman the favorite go-to-scholar for skeptics and text saying Jesus isn’t mentioned in archaeology and the Gospels were written later.
But this meme is incredibly stupid because Ehrman wrote an entire book defending the existence of Jesus called Did Jesus Exist: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth.
He does say there is no archaeological evidence for Jesus, like inscriptions. And while we have archaeological evidence for things like civilizations, it’s a lot harder to find this for individuals who weren’t rulers, like Jesus. We didn’t have any archaeological evidence for Pontius Pilate until the Pilate stone was discovered in 1961 bearing his name.
And Ehrman notes that the Gospels do give us historical facts about Jesus even though they were written a few decades after his death. He even has an article called, Gospel evidence that Jesus existed. So trying to use Bart Ehrman to prove Jesus mythicism is as dumb as trying to use Richard Dawkins to prove Young Earth Creationism.
Runner up to this meme would be this comment: How can you tell Jesus existed. Video or it never happened.
By this logic nothing happened before 1888 when Louis Le Prince recorded a friends garden.
Number seven, when you cheat on your husband and accidentally create a whole religion just to keep it a secret.
Of all the low-IQ atheist takes that exist, this is getting into negative numbers. Dude, it’s the first century. If you want to cover up an affair there’s way easier ways to do that because there’s no DNA testing. Instead, you’re saying a bunch of people came to believe Jesus rose from the dead because his mom made up a story? Cool story bro.
Number eight, you have no right to call people mentally ill if you believe in an invisible man in the sky.
First, if you believe in transgender ideology, then my simply claiming that God exists should be proof God exists. If you say God does not exist, and I identify as a child of God, then you are denying my identity. You are literally committing religious genocide against me.
Second, I agree that if I said there is an invisible man in the sky and we fly a plane up to the location where he is supposed to be, and there is just empty space there, then yeah that’s mental illness. Likewise, if you say you are a woman and in the place where female genitalia is there is male genitalia, then yeah you are suffering from a mental illness that should be treated with compassion not celebration.
Number nine, if the person offering you salvation is also the one threatening you with punishment, it’s not really salvation, it’s extortion.
This doesn’t work because extortion involves a punishment a person doesn’t deserve in order to motivate them to accept an offer that’s not good for them. Like when a mobster says, you got a nice store here, would be a shame if something happened to it if you didn’t pay your protection money.
But if the punishment is deserved, if it is just, and the person administering the punishment offers a means to be saved from it then that’s mercy, not extortion.
If a judge who could justly sentence someone to jail says he will void the punishment if the guilty party sincerely apologizes to the victim, then that is merciful salvation. Likewise, if a doctor says that smoking will give you lung cancer but if you take a certain drug you can be saved cancer, that’s not extortion. The doctor isn’t threatening you with lung cancer, he’s warning you that this is the natural consequence of your freely chosen actions.
In the same way, if God says sin will make you miserable because it involves rejecting perfect goodness, this is not God inflicting arbitrary punishment. It’s him telling us about the natural consequence of our actions and, in his perfect mercy, God offers all people a way to be saved from our sinful decisions.
Finally, Number ten, Dog, unconditional love, worships you forever, regardless of what you believe. God, conditional love, worship him forever or he’ll send you to hell.
This doesn’t show what’s wrong with religion, it shows what’s wrong with being a cat lady. Imagine you asked someone, hey why don’t you have friends, or why don’t you want to get married and the person said, “Ugh people are the worst. They expect you to care about them and do things for them and if you are mean to them they don’t want to be around you anymore.”
That’s why I love Mittens. He never leaves me no matter what I do.
This doesn’t show the foolishness of believing in God, it shows the foolishness of thinking you are God and should be the object of other creature’s worship when, as a rational human being, you should be seeking out what is better and more beautiful than you and conforming yourself to that reality.
Alright that will do it for us today, thank you all for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day.