I think we’re getting to Ken Ham. There’s that twitchy eye, the jittery shifting of his feet, the rising blood pressure, the purplish skin tone…and the fact that he’s writing threats like this:
In recent times, various atheists have been blasting AiG (and myself) on the internet and in books for reaching children with the message of the truth of God’s Word beginning in Genesis through speaking programs and books and DVD’s etc. In fact, as I have documented, they accuse us of ‘child abuse’ because we teach children they are created and that God’s Word is true. You see, they want to reach children with their message–that there is no God–that life is meaningless and purposeless–that the universe and all life is the result of totally naturalistic processes. They want to brainwash children with their anti-God religion of millions of years and evolution.
I’m reminded of a verse of Scripture: “But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea.”
(Mark 9:42)
Man, that Bible of his has a solution for everything: pray a lot, slaughter a few goats or children, curse people, stone sluts to death, and throw atheists into the ocean with a rock tied around their neck.
It’s a wonder he doesn’t understand why we think his brand of dogma is toxic to children — because he staggers about, poisoned to the gills, acting as such an excellent bad example.
“There is no god” – correct.
“The universe and all life is the result of totally naturalistic processes” – correctomundo
“Life is meaningless and purposeless” – bzzzzzzzzzt!
Well, considering the source, two out of three ain’t bad. Ken, I really hope that some day you’ll learn that some of us don’t need fairy tales to make our lives meaningful or purposeful. That said, if I was going to base my life on a fairy tale, I’d choose, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”; better written, much better editing and hey! illustrations!
You see, they want to reach children with their message–that there is only God–that life before death is meaningless and purposeless–that the universe and all life is the result of magic. They want to brainwash children with their religion of six thousand years and poofing into existence.
Oh Hammy, it is abuse. Verbal and emotional abuse of high toxicity. If you hadn’t replaced your brains with the equivalent of raw sewage, you might be able to see that for yourself.
For goobers like Ken Ham, i have a poem, that i send to them.
Here’s a Hudibrastic verse on woo,
for superstitious folk like you.
The Christian’s Jehovah, an Almighty God,
is a capricious and cantankerous clod;
and, so far as I can tell,
the Christian often is as well.
Confused by dogma, the foggy fogey
can’t fathom the nature of that Bible Bogey.
Is it a father, his son, and a g-g-ghost too?
Well, it should be obvious that’s ridiculous woo.
And Christians claim this god, in its Empyrean lair,
is omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent and fair,
but, with the problem of theodicy,
their dogma is Christian idiocy.
The Jew’s Yahweh, the meshugener, the jerk,
set Jews strict rules on when to work,
how to dress, and what to sup or sip,
and giving baby boys the snip.
The myths of Bronze Age, goat-herding nomads,
have them, metaphorically, by the gonads.
The Moslem’s Allah, a fierce desert djinn,
demands under ‘Islam’, literally, ‘Submission’.
Apostasy is treated just like a crime;
they’ll threaten to kill you, to keep you in line,
and if you dare draw Mohammad in a comic cartoon,
there’ll be riots and killings from here to Khartoum.
Hindu, Sikh, Jain, and Buddhist,
Zoroastrian, Baha’i, Mormon, and Scientologist,
Confucianist, Shintoist, and Taoist too,
Spiritualist, Wiccan, and the New Ager into woo.
Yea, verily, those of each and every religion,
are mired in the miasma of superstition.
So, why should yours be the one true faith,
in a magic, phantasmagorical wraith?
Belief, without evidence, is just plain crazy,
ignorant, stupid, or thoughtlessly lazy.
When evolution happens, it’s due to Natural Selection,
and life derives no purpose, at a theistic god’s direction.
The gods from ancient through to modern times,
and from the Arctic down to tropical climes,
have inspired theology that’s unsubstantiated twaddle,
in what an invisible and silent god’ll
demand, decree, or do, or plan,
but, gods all were made in the image of man.
I hope that the mockery makes them think, insofar as they’re capable of rational thought.
You left out: kill everyone who disagrees with you:
Luke 19:27 (King James Version — the other versions are just as bad)
27 “But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.”
This is Jesus speaking in a parable expressing the ordained course of events when he (or a convincing imitator) returns.
People like Ham, well are hams. There is no way to reason with them. When the best response that is often garnered is something similar to the whole millstone around the neck and sea thing. Such BS
Wonder if the humiliation his book received here earlier in the week had anything to do with this.
The good news for Ham is that more and more prisons are gaining resident, 24-7, preachers. Waiting for the day that Kenny gets a posting that he can’t refuse.
Doesn’t Ham, like Kirk Cameron, like to claim that he doesn’t hate atheists?
Seems to me that, also like Kirk, his definition of not hating us doesn’t extend to not fantasising about murdering us…
Hmmm… there are altogether too many negatives in that sentence.
I disagree (with ‘b’) – Life is meaningless. My life, on the other hand has exactly the meaning I choose & work to give it and arguably, whatever meaning other people ascribe to my works. Such as they may be. Your meaningless may vary.
Love thy neighbour as thyself… but also kill them.
Anyway, I think people like Ken Ham flat out refuse to learn anything useful so that they can continue lying for Jesus with a clean conscience. If you don’t KNOW you’re lying, is it really lying? I’m pretty sure Jesus approves of this.
But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea.
So I have a friend who is under 5 foot, and if we go out drinking and she gets drunk and stumbles about, am I damned to hell? I think that is so unfair that tall people get to be drunk, why us vertically changed have to remain on the clear and sober path.
Death on a buffalo
Well, THEY don’t hate atheist. They are full of Christian love and pity us for our blasphemy.
They’re God, on the other hand, is the one who hate us.
Nothing like bigotry by divine proxy.
I’m reminded of this:
Jeebus is coming for you, Ken. At least if your Bible tells the truth.
Glen Davidson
I’m pretty sure that “biblical morality” is an oxymoron…
In other news, how about we don’t try to indoctrinate the children in anything until they are 21 (legal drinking age), then you can try all that xtian propaganda or they can listen to the atheists. Leave it completely up to the young adults.
After all, don’t the xtians claim that their god can pass any test? What’s the hurry to indoctrinate? Show more faith in your god than that…
I always thought the threat of the millstone swimming lesson actually applied to people like Ken Ham, who Lie For Jesus to children.
Edit: Their God….
I just finished a long drive to a gaming con and my brain hasn’t recovered yet.
Pretty sure Ham’s brainwashing is going to cause more than a couple of children to stumble when they reach a class which requires them to learn about evolution.
In both senses–they’ll have to unlearn what they were taught by the religious, and they’ll learn to doubt everything ELSE taught them by the religious.
#13
Hmmm. If she’s not a Christian, then it doesn’t count.
“But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble…” So only go out with inebriated atheists (a wise policy anyway) or convert first, then trip up.
I think you’re safe anyway. Millstones are awfully hard to find these days.
It’s a shame that there is no Hell for Ken Ham to go to. If intellectual murder were a crime Ken would die of old age before the judge finished reading the sentence for each crime.
Bring out the derp!
Life does not have the property of “meaning.” A butterfly that was just hatched on some leaf is alive. Does it have “meaning”? No. Meaning is a characteristic ascribed by people.
Yup – much of what we know about the universe and life are explained by “naturalistic processes.” Being 3D beings travelling through 4D (time) space, it is hard to abstractly comprehend what a timeless and massless existence might look like (see Flatland). Work continues on trying to understand time as lim[τ→0+]. There is currently no definition for τ < 0 (time before the big bang).
If by “brainwash” you mean educate and by “anti-God religion” you mean knowledge, then sure, I guess. I’m not going to say we have millions of years, but I’ll let you slide on that one.
Hamm challenge: since you obviously do not believe in evolution or modern science, you will of course be willing to renounce all health practices and medical treatments that were developed after the bronze age. After all, it is only fair since you do not believe in any of it, and your god will take care of you:
James 5:14-15 Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up.
Considering the alternative: the dumbest fucking deity ever conceived of by allegedly fully cognitive human beings—the god who can’t tell Jewish slaves from their Egyptian masters without the former painting their doorways with actual blood—created an entire universe for the sole Rube Goldbergian purpose of sorting those who brainlessly obey him (as Ken Ham claims to) from those who’re a little more discerning about which voices in their head to follow, I’d go with rational, uncaring every time.
And, as for the millstone bullshit?
Remember Ham, we’re atheists, just like Stalin and Hitler and Mao and Pol Pot and everyone else you scare the kids with.
You want a fucking holy war? We’ll flay your goddamn skin with the sharpened bones of your own fucking children, so don’t even fucking try us, asshole.
Brownian:
We get to roast and eat them before sharpening their bones, right?
Um, what part of “atheists don’t want to believe in god because we just want to do whatever we want with no repercussions” is so hard to understand?
But yes, as long as you do it right in front of the parents so they can fear our depravity.
Bonus points for anyone who uses their godless scientific knowledge to clone Kirk Cameron, weaponise his clones, and use them as projectiles that can penetrate an evangelical at five kilometres.
Sadly, he admonishes children with a threat, but atheists are the evil doers. He’s oblivious to the harm he does by teaching children that it’s OK to despise atheists. Of course, he completely mischaracterizes atheists…I don’t find life to be meaningless or purposeless.
Where the hell do you find a millstone these days? I tried Home Depot. Nada.
Being penetrated by Kirk Cameron isn’t something I would wish on even evengelicals.
Oh, wait… you meant in a killing sense. Carry on, then.
It is.
I’ve noticed that people who escape from the fundie swamp frequently refer to themselves as “survivors”.
Congratulations and more power to those escapees.
littlejohn:
From Maine, of course.
Littlejohn, what the hell do you think Google is for?
http://www.millstones.com/store/shop/category.aspx?catid=8
I agree life is inherently meaningless, but – and this is very important – that means I am free to live my life and enjoy it in whatever way I think is best. I may have come into being by accident, but my life has meaning because I give it meaning. I don’t ever lie awake in bed wondering if I’m reaching my full potential or doing all the things I should do, and when the lights finally go out for me I will dissolve into oblivion knowing that I lived the very best life I possibly could.
Yahweh is also pretty insecure.
1. He tossed humans out of Eden because he was afraid they would find the other tree, the tree of life and become gods themselves*.
2. He destroyed the tower of Babel because he was afraid of humans cooperating and acomplishing things**.
* There is that dumbness again. Why did god put the trees of knowledge and life in the Garden anyway? He could have put them on Jupiter.
** More dumbness. The tower destruction didn’t do much. We now can do a lot more than just pile mud bricks on top of each other.
However, he did get one thing right. The gods are right to fear humans. When we stop believing in them, then they die. The graveyards of the gods are almost full now.
My life has many purposes. One of them is opposing evil lying morons like Ken Ham.
FWIW, it may be that things aren’t going so well for Kenny these days. His Ark Park scam has had a lot of trouble raising money to build a fake Ark to scam more money from his sheeple.
“In fact, as I have documented, they accuse us of ‘child abuse’ because we teach children they are created and that God’s Word is true.”
Ken, you and your fellow godbots say that children can listen to you about this god fellow, or they can BURN FOREVER IN A HORRIBLE LAKE OF FIRE! You pretend as if those are reasonable options too. Yeah, that’s psychological abuse of children, or put another way child abuse.
“You see, they want to reach children with their message–that there is no God–that life is meaningless and purposeless…”
I work with children with exceptional needs. I help them learn and grow academically, socially, and emotionally. I help them gain confidence in themselves and skills they can use for the rest of their lives. I see the most genuine smiles and signs of happiness I could’ve ever imagined. I’d say my life is pretty fucking meaningful. I’m also an atheist. Work that one out, Hambone.
“They want to brainwash children with their anti-God religion of millions of years and evolution.”
Projecting much? If I had a child who chose to become religious, I would let them. I would explain to them why I wasn’t, but I wouldn’t stop them or coerce them into following my lead. Would you let your child become an atheist, Ken? Would you? Keep in mind, you’re the one threatening kids with A LAKE OF FUCKINGFIRE!
“I’m reminded of a verse of Scripture: ‘But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea.'”
You’re losing the argument so you literally resort to threats. Here we go again with that threatening business. You and your godbots can’t actually hurt, torture, and burn atheists at the stake anymore, so you’re left with attempting to make us piss our collective pants with a nasty little bible verse. It weakens your case dude. Your god wants to kill those who don’t believe in him, even though he’s made his existence particularly difficult to notice. Think about this Hambone… Your god is essentially a bully with a murderous streak. And you’re defending this assbasket? Wow…
@ Tim #11 – Yes, you are correct and what you wrote was closer to what I meant. I was taking “life” in the sense of, “If all life on Earth were wiped out….” rather than “life = the state of being”. A state can’t have a purpose, whereas a living thing can. My house-rabbit’s purpose, for example, would’ve been to run around creating more little rabbits had he not been neutered. It also seems to be eating, getting petted and attempting to try and wipe out the common household pest Electricus Cordus (which is why they’re either secured out of his reach or protected), but I digress. The FSM (and, possibly, my rabbit) only knows what Ham meant by “life”.
That’s what they’re afraid of.
And for my fellow gaming geeks, I must express my profound disappointment that Wizards of the Coast never used Mark 9:42 as the flavor text for the Millstone.
I think you’re onto something more profound than you might realize with that.
For people with a legalistic, authoritarian mindset, following the letter of the law seems to satisfy their sense of right and wrong. It’s more important to them to be able to say they technically didn’t lie than it is to not actually deceive people.
For example, one G.W. Bush.
PeteJohn,
But be sure to find out why they made that choice. When I was little, I was pulled aside by the Religious instruction teacher, and told the priest wanted to see me, personally. That if I didn’t go to church, I would burn in hell for eternity, and that the only way to save myself and my family was to go to church.
Let’s just say that, were it not for a brave and observant nun, I would have fallen into the clutches of a pedophile priest. As it was, he spent years grooming me, and separating me from my family, keeping me trapped in the church after confession. It all came undone when he started lying about that to the nuns. Even without the physical abuse, he still caused great damage.
My parents took the view that it was my decision to go to church, and were hands off about it. I now wish they had been far more involved.
@echidna
Hmm… That’s a pretty daggone scary story. I wrote what I wrote imagining my kid growing up and choosing as an adult to go giddy for God, and should’ve made that clearer. Make no mistake about it, if all of a sudden my future 8 year old started talking about Jesus he/she would have some questions to answer. I’d be particularly upset if same-age peers had bullied/coerced he/she into faith, or even worse if it were some creep adult. With that said, I wouldn’t pray to evolution or consider beating/abandoning my kid for his/her faith. Probably should’ve made that clearer as well.
Ham’s misquoted the passage – probably altering it to suit his purpose. The passage is not talking about children, but about “humble believers” – i.e. the gullible, I guess.
Well look at that, Ken Hamm lies and deliberately misrepresents his critics, yet again.
The child abuse accusation has always been, SPECIFICALLY, for terrifying children with false indoctrination of eternal hellfire, and NEVER about creationism. (Which isn’t child abuse, but just stupid.)
Oink
Yes, Ken Ham, you make children to stumble and fall away from knowledge and truth. So yes, it would be better for those children whose lives you blast with your falsehoods and poisonous myths if you hung a millstone around your neck and dove in the ocean.
I can imagine K. Ham quote mining this post: “do you see? This proffesor of biology thinks I have gills with poison! There were no poisoned gilled animals in the ark!!”
“they want to reach children with their message … that the universe and all life is the result of totally naturalistic processes.”
Yeah… like who ever started the modern study of nature? They must have been godless heathens right?
Why do I picture a priests, ministers, and reverends hanging out in the alley behind the movie theater handing out bible quotes? First one’s always free!
No, the answer is separation of church and state. End homeschooling, enact some decent standards for school curriculums, and hire teachers that know what the fuck they’re talking about. Let the fundies teach their kids what they want after hours, and let the schools teach them reality. Kids are smart. They’ll figure out who’s lying to them.
Reaching children? I would like suggestions to reach one child: my sister’s son, Tristan.
He is 8 years old and my sister invited me for his first communion in two months. I dragged my feet, telling her I could not see the point of this bunch of lies, but she insisted, presenting this as an occasion for a family reunion.
My sister and I were raised as catholic. In the recent years I have come out as a strong atheist, opposed to the church. When my sister got married last year, my presents were “God is not great” and “The God Delusion”. My sister is not overly religious: she had her son outside of marriage, she is divorced, and she rarely goes to church. Yet she still give her children a basic catholic education (I’m not sure why, perhaps to please my mother, who is not too religious anyway).
Given that context, I would like to make a present to Tristan that would suggest his religious teaching may not be the truth. A kind of “The God Delusion” for children for example. I could not find anything on the net.
So what would be a nice atheist/skeptic child present?
Since we’re French, French language is better, but I welcome English suggestions anyhow.
I have recently been in (lengthy) mail exchange with one of these. I’m not an expert but I believe (!) now that religious fundamentalism is some kind of meme-induced mental illness and should be studied and (eventually) treated as such. The symptoms are similar, if not exactly the same in all (observed) cases. And there’s a strong possibility that the illness affects even physical senses such as seeing and hearing and obviously thinking.
@50 jdmuys:
Richard Dawkins has a new book out called “The Magic of Reality” that is written to be understandable to kids and is really gorgeously illustrated. I have no idea if it’s been translated into French, but it might be worth looking at.