Thursday, March 12, 2009

Let me summarize a few of the major fallacies and frauds the New Atheists and New Age Movement seem to be competing to put forth as fast as they possibly can. These are just some of the common ones, so don't fear the end of the fallacy record. It will go on a long time.
Fallacies:
Straw man
a. "The Bible didn't fall from the sky."
b. "Science shouldn't be forbidden."
c. "Didn't you know there are other belief systems?"
d. "Priests/ministers/pastors aren't perfect."
e. "Sex isn't a bad thing."
f. "Why have you decided against reason/thinking for yourself?"
g. "Why do you base your life on hatred and bitterness against non-believers?"
h. "Do you really think you're the good people and we're all bad people?"
i. "Why do you want everyone else to go to Hell so badly?"
False dichotomy
a. "What this comes down to is blind faith versus clear independent thinking."
b. "Do you believe in acceptance of everything anyone wants to do or are you a hatemonger who wants to control everyone's life?"
c. "So you admit there are different beliefs, and now you're abandoning yours at last? Make up your mind; either your beliefs are the only ones to exist or someone else is right and you are wrong."
d. "There are two kinds of people in the world. There are people who think for themselves and believe in freedom of thought and there are people who join cults to escape from the pain of thinking. The first are atheists and the second are religious people. Which are you going to be?"
e. "So you would side with people who torture and kill for inquisitions and crusades and conquests, not with peaceful indigenous peoples who just want to worship nature and be let be? Why?"
Lying
a. "Over ten million/ 40 million/ 330 million/ a billion women were killed by the Church in the witch hunts, which targeted intelligent independent women, Gnostics, nature lovers, surviving Wiccan herbalists, healers, midwives…all to solidify the Church's male-dominant control over the whole world."
b. "Didn't you know that the pagans were the ones being killed for saying the earth is round into the early Renaissance? And the Church has never officially retracted. To be a Christian is to side with people who think the earth is flat and the sky is a bowl and the sun and moon fly overhead every day. How can you be so ignorant?"
c. "Over ten million/ 40 million/330 million/ a billion people were killed in the Inquisition for disagreeing on trivial theological issues."
d. "The Crusades and Inquisitions were frenzies of anti-semitism."
e. "The Church persecuted and murdered Copernicus and Galileo for saying the earth wasn't at the center of the universe, because they were threatened by the challenge to the what the Bible says about man being the only intelligent being."
f. "Why do you support the Church when it breeds more child abuse and domestic violence than any institution in any culture on earth?"
g. "You don't see child molesters working for Buddhist/ pagan/ New Age/ Hindu/ skeptic/ atheist groups, only for Christians."
h. "Atheists don't start wars or kill those who disagree with them."
i. "If religion is so great, how come atheists give more to charity?"
j. "Islam and Christianity are the same religion, and look at the record of Islam in human rights"
k. "The Bible was written in the Fourth Century to preserve the political power of a tiny secretive group of men who wrote it in a highly secret council. They killed all the witnesses to the previous belief systems and took over the world by brutal bloodshed. A remnant of Gnostic/ Manichean/ pagan/ other people hid in the woods and passed on their secret knowledge. All the religious wars in history have been an attempt to wipe that fragile remnant off the planet, but NOW the truth can be told at last."
l. "Why doesn't God heal amputees?"
m. "How come no one has claimed any of the prize money for proven miracles? It shows there are no miracles, doesn't it?"
n. "Atheists have higher IQs."
o. "Religion put Europe into the Dark Ages and it is now what keeps the Third World poor."
p. "Without religion, the Middle East would be at peace."
q. "Religion promotes unhappiness."
r. "No reputable scientist is a Christian and few are religious in any way."

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