Christians Can Sometimes be Funny

This article, "The Best of Racists" is actually pretty funny in an ironic way.

I'll start with a paraphrase version of the article. Some remarks in parenthesis.

01) Don Imus said some racist things and got fired.

02) We all know that some forms of communication help people and some communicate hurt people. It appears that we support hurtful communication and suppress hurtful communication.

03) People who are religious have kids that do well in school. Oh, wait, let's quote the actual study where it says that people who belong to religion AND have an intact and stable family do well in school.

04) Highly religious minorities can outperform white students.

05) Therefore atheism is racist. (somehow #4 indicates #5)

06) Atheists are eugenicists because one atheist author, Margaret Sanger supported eugenics. Eugenics is racism.

07) Slavery was started by Christians

08) Slavery was ended by Christians

09) Atheists are cold people who write off large segments of humanity as having insufficiently endowed genetics

10) For a logically consistent atheist, altruism enables mediocrity.

11) Christians love everybody. God loved us in to existence. The widow's mite is worth more than the whole treasury of the Temple. The best that is worst in use produce more than the intellectual elite can manufacture. (Please note, he is attaching intellectual elite to atheism here)

12) The intellectual elite knows this, but is stubborn and won't realize their own weakness.

13) People who cannot see beyond the skin (atheists are who we are talking about) represent a danger to those who believe and can see beyond the skin.

14) Atheists are going to destroy the world.

So, let's take it point by point.

01) Don Imus said something that was racist and got fired for it. Well, according to a writer on CNN.com, what Imus said wasn't so much racist as sexist. What Imus said wasn't illegal. It was; however, something that corporate entities tied to his show don't want to be associated with and that is why he got fired. What the author is attempting to do in this piece is attack free speech. The very free speech that allows him to write the referenced article.

The article Steve Kellmeyer wrote; however, isn't free speech. It is hate speech. What he wrote as much as he derides Imus, is far worse. I will prove that it is hate speech and that his article is a little bit confused.

02) He suggests that we all 'know' what is right and wrong in terms of speech. But this simply isn't true. We are all very different people that share certain commonalities. What would be terribly insulting to one person is humorous and a learning episode to another person who enjoys frank discussion. This idea is simply the idea that there is a universal right and wrong and that people flaunt it actively. Haven't we all had that incident where we have said something to another person that we thought would be funny and they got insulted? Now, I'm not considering what Imus said to be in this category, I'm just challenging this idea that Steve Kellmeyer is presenting as a premise and saying that he is wrong.

03) People who are religious have kids that do well in school. The first way Mr. Kellmeyer presents this is to appear that religion is the only component in this equation. Later quotes in his article and statements he himself make water this down. A stable and intact family play a huge role in this matter. Anyone who has a friend or has endured parents getting divorced I am sure can attest to the fact that divorce has an effect as well as single parent families.

04) Highly religious minorities can outperform white students. Now this is a paraphrase, but you have to understand that inherent in this statement is a bit of racial superiority. Maybe we should re-state this a bit and say that highly religious white students can do as well as Asian students. It is an implicit statement of superiority.

05) Therefore atheism is racist. Somehow - our author seems to think that #4 indicates that atheists are racist. If we look at #4 it basically states: The greater the religion in a person the better they will do in school. The appropriate corollary to this is not that atheists are racists. It should be that atheists don't do well in school or in fact that atheists do the worst in school.

06) Atheists are eugenicists because one atheist author, Margaret Sanger supported eugenics. Eugenics is racism. I'm not exactly sure where Mr. Kellmeyer is getting his information. I think this is his attempt to tie atheism to Hitler. Who knows? I am an atheist as are many people that I know online and in the real world. None are eugenicists. I know one online that is incredibly racist. Here is the problem with Mr. Kellmeyer's assertion: You can't classify an entire group of people on the basis of a single individual Perhaps if he would like to associate atheism with eugenics and racism he'd like anyone with historical knowledge to trot out the hundreds of notable Christians that were in favor of slavery, racism and characterize all Christians as just like those individuals. Perhaps we should think that all Christians will take a person and tie them to the back of a pick-up truck and drive around since Chrisitians did that relatively recently to someone that they didn't like. We can go on further about this. When you get statistics about churches what do you find? That churches are racist. You have your black churches, your white churches and your Korean churches, but guess what, finding a church that is multi-racial is very hard to find. I don't know what Christians do to maintain this - sit and watch in the churches parking lot before deciding to go in and look at the race of the people going in the church? Oh, dog, its a black church, honey drive to the next church!!!

07) Slavery was started by Christians. This is true.

08) Slavery was ended by Christians. This is only partially true. Certainly Christian motivations for getting rid of slavery weren't based in the bible which appears to approve of slavery and make recommendations on how it should be performed and how people who are slaves should behave. There is a really good book by Susan Jacoby: Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. It goes over in detail the abolition movement and women's suffrage. The origin of these ideas comes from the enlightenment, not the bible or Christianity. Later, these ideas would take hold in Christians that it is wrong to enslave people and wrong to not allow them to vote because of their sex and wrong to treat people differently on the basis of race.

09) Atheists are cold people who write off large segments of humanity as having insufficiently endowed genetics - this is really the author trying to set up moral superiority over atheists. He continues to use the racism card with regard to atheism, but where is he really going with calling atheists racists. We'll see...

10) For a logically consistent atheist, altruism enables mediocrity. Well, he's staying on the atheists must be racists kick here. He probably thinks that all atheists that aren't racists aren't really atheists. Most atheists can be called secular humanists in terms of morality. Secular Humanism is best described as the philosophy of utilitarianism. This philosophy resides in the idea of doing what is best for humanity. Is it best for humanity to pursue an elitist eugenic movement creating a race of super humans? Not really. Such a path would really only produce more strife within humanity. Now to improve humanity in general? Yes, that is a good thing. Genetically? Maybe, but certainly not now when our knowledge of genetics is in its infancy. In utilitarianism, the mediocre plays a vital role in creating a stable society. In that way, we should all hope to be mediocre. Those who have more talents, should use those talents toward improving the world after reaching a certain point in personal stability.

11) Christians love everybody. God loved us in to existence. The widow's mite is worth more than the whole treasury of the Temple. The best that is worst in use produce more than the intellectual elite can manufacture. (Please note, he is attaching intellectual elite to atheism here)

It should be noted that our writer isn't very consistent. He goes from attacking atheists (invalidly and illogically) to attacking the intellectual elite. His implication is that the 'intellectual elite' are atheists. Perhaps this intellectual elite is running the country right now? Oh, wait, you can't possibly be elected to office if you are an open atheist. So, who is running the country (which is apparently headed for destruction)? Well, its Christians. Just like George W Bush. So, somehow with none of the power atheists and the so-called intellectual elite receive the blame for the purported downward spiral of our country. Another problem with his statement is that it is all too clearly a lie. If it wasn't a lie then there wouldn't be any homeless people on the streets because the 85% Christian country would raid all the church coffers in a second to ensure that everyone had shelter and food. This isn't the case. The case is that the vast majority of churches are social clubs with a nice non-profit tax umbrella.

12) The intellectual elite knows this (that it is inadequate and doesn't care for the average person), but is stubborn and won't realize their own weakness. This is just plain an insulting passage designed to bully people to his side of the argument, because after all who wants to be a bad person and these intellectual elitists are the worst there are... This is a simple nudge at dehumanizing the opponent.

13) People who cannot see beyond the skin (atheists are who we are talking about) represent a danger to those who believe and can see beyond the skin.

This is funny, please see my remarks above about the racial components of churches. Go ahead, watch television and these churches on TV, black preacher, black people in the audience, white preacher, white people in the audience and a couple of token black people. I'm not exactly sure when this happened, but it seems like it is ok for a few clean-cut black people to be in a white church, but not for white people to be in a white church.

14) Atheists are going to destroy the world. This isn't exactly what he says in the last paragraph. But the article is all about laying a case against atheists and the 'intellectual elite' whoever they may be. Here he makes a claim that 'society as we know it will be destroyed'. Now if you are a tried and true follower, what exactly do you do if you believe something is going to destroy society? You destroy it first. What is it? Atheists and the intellectual elite. He even spells it out 'these people are the greatest danger.'

So, this article is a hate article. Hate the atheists because they are racists and they are going to destroy the world.

What do you expect someone who reads this article and is a believer of everything this guy has to say and meets an atheist? You know, if the person is a go-getter, a person that does things about the wrongs in society, I know what they would do. Let's hope 'they' don't meet me.

Personally, I've got two kids, wife, two dogs, three cats and a snake that need me to be their sole provider. I don't want to be killed because some jackass that reads this article and is a tried and true believer thinks he's saving the world from the evil atheists.

What's more, Steve Kellmeyer's article is hate speech, and hate speech is not protected speech, it is illegal. Perhaps he'd like to post known atheist names on his website and cross them out when people kill them.