Wednesday, January 12, 2011

An Illustration

"Q: What if Mary had taken Plan B* after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit?

A: You’d have to justify your misogyny with another ancient mythology."



hahaha I think envisioning Mary and Joesph [sic] as the ultimate swingers is awesome. Joe probably liked to watch while God tapped that, he's dirty like that.



It's actually pretty funny when you think about it... God raping Marry [sic].... That's hilarious. Considering how hypocritical so many Christians are.... Really... It's a SIN... and the son of God is born from this SIN... It's fucking hilarious.



If you have read the "About Us" and "About this Blog" tabs above, you know that I have noticed an increase in what I call "proselytising" atheism and an increased anti-theism.  The quotes above are an illustration of the sort of anti-theism I've been encountering.

The first quote is actually quite old.  This "joke" was written by a blogger named Amanda Marcotte, sometime before she was hired on by the John Edwards campaign back in 2007.  (Plan B, by the way, meant ending the pregnancy)

The second two quotes were cut and pasted from facebook comments recently made in response to this article 'God Raped Mary' posters 'Hate Crime.' The person who shared this story condemned the Christians in the story for thinking these posters were a hate crime because, in his view, it was the truth, and went on to promote a facebook group called "God raped Mary, who gave birth to a bastard son."

There are a few reasons why I chose these quotes to illustrate the anti-theism I've been seeing.  One is to show that it's been around a long time (the first quote is 4 or more years old).

Another is because, in so few words, they demonstrate so much about anti-theists.

One of the things demonstrated is the deliberate offensiveness.  They are taking something that Christians view as joyful and loving into something crude, lewd, violent, obscene and even criminal.

I've noted a particular obsession with anti-theists and crude sexuality, deviant sexual behaviour and sexual violence.  No term is too vulgar or vile for them.  In fact, the more offensive, the more vulgar, the more gleeful they are about it. (har har... I just offended a bunch of Christians!  I'm so much smarter than they are! lolz) It denotes a singular immaturity as well as an obsession with sex.  Other examples I won't quote here involve condemning the Catholic church in regards to sexual assaults by priests (which I would normally agree with) by using sexually explicit descriptions of those assaults and blanket statements that condemn all priests as raping pedophiles, implying that these assaults were fully supported by the Catholic church.  It's an interesting thing to note that they automatically associate sexual assault - which can include everything from inappropriate hugging to violent rape - by priests, with gay rape.  That so many do so while explicitly describing gay penetrative sex tells me more about their own minds.  While I would agree with condemning sexual assault by priests, it should be noted that some of these accusations did not involve rape or violence, and some may not actually be true.  In one case I remember reading about, the accuser, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, was visiting a priest and happened to note the priest was looking at images on his computer that the accuser interpreted as child porn.  He then claimed seeing these images on the priest's computer was damaging to him, because of his own history as a sexual abuse victim.  It should be noted that whatever the pictures were the priest was looking at, there were no charges made against the priest in regards to child porn.  In another case that made the news fairly recently, a woman suddenly remembered, during therapy, sexual assaults she's suffered at the hands of a priest 20 years ago. She had apparently blocked these memories from her mind.  There has been no actual evidence of this priest sexually assaulting anyone, nor any other inappropriate behaviour, either 20 years ago or today.  The problem with repressed memories that come out in therapy is that, far too often, they have turned out to be false memories implanted, sometimes subconsciously, by the therapist.  This is not to excuse actual abuse at the hands of priests, but to point out that sexual assault may not actually be true, and of the ones that are, sexual assault does not always equal penetrative rape, but the anti-theists not only jump to that conclusion, but they do so using terms and descriptions that would be more appropriate for a porn magazine than public forums.

This brings up another curious thing I've noted about the anti-theist attacks on religions in general and Christianity in particular.  For a group that denies even the possibility of the existence of an omnipotent deity, they seem to believe themselves to be remarkably omnipotent.  Not only do they know exactly how all those priests sexually assaulted their victims (in lurid detail), not only to they claim to know what "the church" (meaning everyone who is a member of said church) thinks, what the Pope thinks, how all these people feel at any given time, but they claim to know what people thought and felt thousands of years ago.  Even more remarkable for a group that denies the existence of God, they claim to know what this non-existent God thinks and feels. 

Remarkable, indeed!