Like Daniel Fincke, I found Nate Phelps’ talk at the Reason Rally to be one of the most moving and inspiring moments of the event. I think he delivered the single best line: “They called me a rebel. For years, I wore that name with shame until I realized that, confronted with the god of my father, rebellion is the only moral option.” Hear, hear.
Mar 29 2012
Nate Phelps at the Reason Rally
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The Lorax
March 29, 2012 at 10:16 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Sometimes I wish the Four Horsemen would appear and bring the Apocalypse, just so I can pick up a baseball bat and defiantly attack them.
You know what they call it when you’re brought to a place against your will and forced all your life to obey an all-powerful master? Slavery.
Live free or die, even if you must kill God himself! Better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven!
Bronze Dog
March 29, 2012 at 10:55 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
For me, it’d be better to have moral integrity in Hell. The only ruling I’m interested in is self-rule.
Of course, Heaven would require that we abandon self-rule and abdicate all moral responsibility. Their “morality” is designed to be incomprehensible to humans so it can allow their god to commit torture, genocide, slavery, rape, and all the worst evils humans are capable of and some we aren’t capable of. This conveniently provides the Heaven-bound with a convenient excuse to do any obvious evil when the mood strikes and not feel responsible for it.
LightningRose
March 29, 2012 at 10:57 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
To add to The Lorax’s comment, it’s better to live on one’s feet than to die on one’s knees!
hybrid
March 29, 2012 at 11:10 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@LightningRose,
Don’t you mean it’s better to die on one’s feet than to live on one’s knees?
jesuslovesbags
March 29, 2012 at 11:20 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
This was my favorite speech of the day.
Here’s the audio
laurentweppe
March 29, 2012 at 11:35 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yet, as I expressed earlier, beginning one’s speech by
in front of a puny crowd of ten thousands people cannot but wake my smug french side: ten thousand people, and he calls this a large secularist gathering? When we gather, a whole Nation stands still, and governments tremble before us.
This recent beginner’s effort is far from it.
LightningRose
March 29, 2012 at 12:53 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Hybrid @#4,
Nope. I got it right. It’s far, far, better to live on one’s feet than to die on one’s knees!
peterh
March 29, 2012 at 2:44 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Phelps epitomizes all that is good in all those who have gone that lonely road and found there is much companionship at its end. His heartfelt simplicity was truly eloquent.
Michael Heath
March 29, 2012 at 7:27 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The Lorax:
If we’re going to concede the whole Christian thing and God being a judging god, than I’ll have to disagree. Eternal punishment by God in the Bible is suffering beyond any other affliction I’ve seen imagined.