I know it looks long, but it is a good read. Especially if you like The Onion's humor..
Brings Us Back to Reality
This speech was presented at the 2008 National FFRF Convention
in Chicago on Oct. 12, 2008. This is the script–minus a PowerPoint
presentation of Scott’s favorite irreverent Onion headlines and stories.
By Scott Dikkers
"I’d like to start out, if I may, with a few insults. I’d also like to
show you some articles from The Onion, the newspaper that I founded and
then edited for 15 of the past 20 years. Then, I’ll tie it all together
with a heartwarming defense of rational thinking.
So, I saw this U. of Minn. survey that came out a while back. Perhaps
you saw it as well. It asked Americans, who do you trust? And they
broke it down into categories: Do you trust a Christian? Most said yes.
In fact, Christians were at the top of the list. Do you trust a black
person? A Muslim? A homosexual? etc.
The
group that came out at the very bottom of the list–and I’m talking
about below terrorists, below sexual predators, below the guy who skins
babies alive and wears the skin as a mask and then dances in the
moonlight while gargling the blood of his infant victims–after that
guy, was atheists.
(And when I say “atheists,” I mean atheists, agnostics,
freethinkers of every stripe, because the culture as a whole thinks of
us as the same.)
We are the single-most reviled group of people in the country. Maybe the world. By far.
What we have to ask ourselves is, what can we learn from the terrorists
and the serial killers? Well, for starters we need to find out who does
their PR. We’ve got to ask the racists and the rapists, what’s your
secret? Child molesters, how did you get to be America’s sweetheart?
Show us how it’s done. Maybe we could move up a notch or two if you’d
share with us some of your winning people skills.
First of all it’s the name. Atheist. It’s a cold and prickly word, like
Recidivist. Rapist. Terrorist. Anal cyst. It’s a terrible word.
Agnostic is no better. It sounds clinical. It’s two letters off from
diagnostic. “I’m sorry to have to tell you, Mr. Johnson, we got the
results back from your agnostic, and we’re going to have to amputate
your testicles.”
Christian. Christian–it flows off the tongue like a crisp autumn
breeze. Christian. It sounds like a guitar being strummed in the grass
under a sycamore tree.
The words we use are important. The freethinking community–a better
term than atheist–is not doing well in the pr department. People still
call us atheists. They’re still scared of us. We’re losing the war of
public opinion, and we’re losing it badly. On every front. All I can
say to that is I’m so glad that we’re an invisible minority.
Atheists are good people. Historically, we’re an important check on
religious excess. The Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment
brought us out of the Dark Ages. The secular nation of America saved us
from religious tyranny and the divine right of kings.
Yet people say they would never vote for an atheist or an agnostic for
president. They’d sooner vote for Jeffrey Dahmer, evidently. What they
don’t realize is that they have in the past–they just didn’t realize
it. Thomas Jefferson was an agnostic. Abraham Lincoln was an agnostic.
But I guess to get any PR benefit we have to wait until a good president is revealed to be an atheist or agnostic.
It’s not fair the way atheists and agnostics are treated.
Atheists are blamed for some of the greatest genocides of the 20th
century. Hitler, Stalin, Mao. People think that these lunatics were
simply fulfilling the dictates of the moral vacuum of atheism. These
guys are an albatross around my neck every time I get talking to a
religious person. Pointing out how many millions have been killed by
religious extremists usually devolves into an argument where we’re just
adding up numbers of dead in columns, and that’s not productive. Can’t
reasonable people simply agree that human beings in the grip of any
ideology can be real jerks? Especially if they are bat-shit insane?
We can do better. We can turn the tide of public opinion that runs so
disproportionately against us. First, we need a mascot–a puppet, or
some kind of lovable character. Christians have the character of God.
He’s got a fuzzy white beard. He’s cuddly. He loves everybody. He’s
like your grandpa. He’s like Santa Claus.
Now, he admits he is jealous and vengeful, and he has slaughtered
entire cities full of people, wiped out virtually everyone on the
planet in a great flood. In fact he set up his own son to be viciously
beaten and tortured and killed–but he did it for us. So we should say
thank you for that, I guess. Whatever the case, Americans love him. We
need a lovable, old, child-killing curmudgeon mascot. And let’s make
him a cartoon character because everybody loves cartoons.
What else can we do? I was watching Fox News the other day and came up
with another idea. (I hate Fox News because they’re better at writing
funny news than I am.)
I was watching Fox News, and some guy came on to promote a book that
says evolution is false and creationism is true. He was an older guy,
but healthy looking, wearing a suit. Well groomed. I was thinking, he
probably lives a pretty modern lifestyle even though his beliefs are
200 years old.
Reasonable people know evolution is a scientific fact. We’ve mapped the
genomes of several species. Chimpanzees share 96% of their DNA with
humans. And the way you get DNA is from sexual reproduction. Ergo,
chimpanzees and humans have a common ancestor. And that’s just the
genetic science. It’s verified by every other science that we know.
For evolution to be false, some of the most basic facts of nature that
we know to be true would have to be wrong. If you’re going to reject
evolution, a lot of well-established science has to be thrown out the
window along with it: Chemistry, genetic science, physics.
So I thought, we should, as a society, bar anyone who doesn’t accept
evolution from partaking of any technological advance derived from the
science that makes evolution true. No access to modern medicine, no
access to basic biological, chemical products or knowledge. You want to
heat up your food before you eat it? Sorry. You’re eating your meat raw
because you don’t believe in germs. And forget antibiotics. You’re on
your own. You’re welcome to pray for a better life, but you can’t use
science. That’s cheating because you don’t believe in science. If
people want to live in the 17th century, let them.
If we adopted this simple rule, this author on Fox News would come on
dressed in a dirty burlap sack, with rotting teeth and matted hair,
barking at the hosts like a dumb animal. And that at least would make
sense, given his beliefs.
An idea like this would encourage people to appreciate all the good
things that science and empirical evidence have brought to the world.
It would give our PR effort a needed boost.
It would also incentivize more people to accept reality. The
alternative is fantasy. People now have the option to just believe
whatever they want–just make something up–it doesn’t matter if it’s not
substantiated. And that hurts the rest of us.
To me, as a writer, what’s worse is that most people don’t even make up
a fantasy for themselves. They actually take something someone else
made up and believe that
as absolute truth. I really don’t understand that. If you’re going to
make up a reality out of whole cloth, at least be original. Come up
with your own fantasy scenario. Something new. Catholicism, Mormonism,
Islam, Hinduism, Scientology–these are all just somebody else’s made-up
ideas. You can’t just take someone else’s idea and accept it wholesale
as your cherished personal belief. That’s like stealing someone else’s
Halloween costume idea and showing up at the same party.
Let me take a moment now to tell you a little bit about the reality
that I invented–for fun. I don’t really believe it. It’s a powerful
newspaper empire. Our flagship publication is called The Onion. It’s
the leader in news and information without any real competitor in any
known medium. Through the centuries The Onion has covered all the major
news events that have shaped our world.
1910s: Sears, Roebuck Plead ‘Not Guilty’ To Pornography Charges.
1920s: Scopes Monkey Trial Raises Troubling Question: Is Science Being Taught In Our Schools?
1930s: New President Assures Nation, ‘The Only Thing We Have To Fear Is A Crippling, Decade-Long Depression’
1940s: War Rationing Board Restricts Nylon Use To Armed Forces, J. Edgar Hoover Only
1950s: Pentagon Develops A-Bomb-Resistant Desk
1960s: Holy Shit; Man Walks On Fucking Moon
1990s: Drugs Win Drug War
Today: ONN Clip: Take Your Daughter To War Day
See, atheists and agnostics aren’t scary. Listen to their laughter!
It’s a joyous sound, like the laughter of innocent children. You can
trust us!
Furthermore, I want to say to the world, you need us. As I hope I’ve
demonstrated here, atheists are fun. We’re fun to be with. We like
playing make believe as much as the next guy, but we know the
difference between fantasy and reality. And our crucial role in society
is to remind everyone else of the cold hard facts.
We live in an age now that could easily turn into another dark ages.
It’s a time when irrational beliefs that run counter to established
science are accepted not just by a large percentage of the population
but also by our elected leaders.
The religious like to say they’re “saved.” But after eight years of
their pick for president, it’s the rest of us who need to be saved.
And the people who voted for this leadership are ready to do it again,
because they are ideologues, who are incapable of learning–they reject
any factual information that contradicts their beliefs.
Who’s going to save the religious from their demonstrably terrible
choice in elected leaders? Who’s going to save us all from the mistakes
those leaders inevitably make when they base their decisions not on
empirical facts but on made-up information, make-believe intelligence?
Who’s going to save us all from living in a fantasyland and bring us
back to reality? We are."
Thoughts?
Source: http://www.ffrf.org/fttoday/2008/nov/dikkers.php
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