Ricky Gervais Interview Newstatesman

In the Christmas edition of the New Statesman Ricky Gervais as interviewed by Robin Ince, in particular about atheism. Just one highlight:

This is very important – there is a difference between people who happen to believe in God, for whatever reason, and the very small minority of crazy, mental, psychotic people who use their religion as a conduit for hate.

There is a difference between people who think, “I’m going to go to heaven and see my relatives” and people who say, “If my son is born homosexual, I’m going to murder him.” There is a chasm. Fundamentalists have no more in common with the average Christian, Muslim or Jew than atheists do.

Being a good person has nothing to do with believing in God or following any religion, OK? There are good people that believe in God, and there are bad people that believe in God. And there are good atheists and bad atheists. The big difference is, no atheist does things in the name of atheism. There’s no such thing. This myth that atheism is a religion, it’s ludicrous; [atheism is] the absence of belief. Atheism is a religion like health is a disease.

Agnosticism queers the picture a little bit because they are technically right, that you can’t know in a very hard sense whether there is a God or not. But when I ask someone and they say they’re agnostic, I change the question. I change it from “Is there a God?” to “Do you believe in God?” because the answer for that can’t be: “I don’t know.”

You’re allowed to say, “I’m 99 per cent sure there is or there isn’t,” but you can’t say you don’t know if you believe or not. Someone sent me a tweet saying, “Well, that’s not fair, because I could ask you now over Twitter whether you think I’m wearing a red jumper and you couldn’t really have an educated guess either way – it’s not based on anything.” I said, that’s true. Now tell me your red jumper created the universe. Now tell me your red jumper’s telling me to stone people to death.

The full article from the Newstatesman here

Related previous blog: morality of an atheist

On twitter Ricky does cover other things – mercifully below.

Article written by John Sargeant on Homo economicus’ Weblog

Follow @JPSargeant78

Tom Willis – Should Evolutionists Be Allowed to Roam Free in the Land?

The Creation Science Association for Mid America

If you look hard enough you will find someone that demonises any group, and will suggest all manner of horrors that should be invested on them. Displaying willful ignorance, to a point where you wonder if it is downright stupidity or evil that this cold hearted dispersion on humanity originates.

Enter Tom Willis and his article as titled above of the Creation Science for Mid America. He mentions a previous article he wrote which stated:

“Hard-line evolutionists spend their entire life declaring Christians to be ignorant, crazy and, probably dangerous. But evolutionism is totally contrary to the empirical facts of science. Anyone truly believing evolution is either totally deluded or ignorant. Regarding who is really the dangerous group, in their unmitigated, and totally unjustified arrogance, evolutionists have caused more misery, and killed and tortured more people, in the last 90 years than all the wars of the last 2000 years.
“Thus, Evolutionist rhetoric, juxtaposed against the facts of science and history demonstrates that they are totally incompetent, in addition to being angry and dangerous. In a truly sane society, e.g., the one to be run by God, evolutionists, at a minimum, would not be allowed to vote.”

For the absurdity of this argument I may as well blame Hitler being a Roman Catholic as the cause for the holocaust, and that Stalin’s original training for religious orders caused him to be a paranoid psychopath. We may as well blame the theory of gravity for people committing suicide by jumping from high rise buildings.

Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” was banned by the Nazis. Even if we grant the premise that it was not a history of pogroms against the Jews, or the ideology of Marxism against dissenters, or paranoia of dictators with absolute power, and making use of people’s prejudices to attempt genocide. Even if inspired by how natural selection works was how they justified their evil deeds, it no more legitimizes it than a rapist pointing to nature and saying what they are doing is inherent in nature. How nature works is not how society has to work.

Willis goes on to claim that it will, as a sign of end of days, be Muslims killing Christians and Evolutionists:

Nevertheless, I find it instructive and entertaining to analyze what should be done with evolutionists before their end comes. After all, they are manifestly the most dangerous and destructive people on the planet (Well OK, Muslims are strong competitors). Using their religion to dominate education, they have, as previously pointed out, killed more people than anybody in history.

Going on to claim that evolutionists are socialists and acquainting Democrats as the modern day Nazis he suggests this line of treatment for those that agree that evolution explains life on earth:

Clearly then, “evolutionists should not be allowed to roam free in the land.” All that remains for us to discuss is “What should be done with evolutionists?” For the purposes of this essay, I will ignore the minor issue of Western-style jurisprudenceand merely mention possible solutions to the
“evolutionism problem,” leaving the legal details to others:

• Labor camps. Their fellow believers were high on these. But, my position would be that most of them have lived their lives at, or near the public trough. So, after their own beliefs, their life should continue only as long as they can support themselves in the camps.

• Require them to wear placards around their neck, or perhaps large medallions which prominently announce “Warning: Evolutionist! Mentally Incompetent – Potentially Dangerous.” I consider this option too dangerous.

• Since evolutionists are liars and most do not really believe evolution we could employ truth serum or water-boarding to obtain confessions of evolution rejection. But, this should, at most, result in parole, because, like Muslims, evolutionist religion permits them to lie if there is any benefit to them.

• An Evolutionist Colony in Antarctica could be a promising option. Of course inspections would be required to prevent too much progress. They might invent gunpowder.

• A colony on Mars would prevent gunpowder from harming anyone but their own kind, in the unlikely event they turned out to be intelligent enough to invent it.

• All options should include 24-hour sound system playing Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris reading Darwin’s Origin of Species, or the preservation of Favored Races by Means of Natural Selection. Of course some will consider this cruel & unusual, especially since they will undoubtedly have that treatment for eternity.

This is an incitement to a hate crime. Thankfully most people do not agree that a debate on ideas or review of evidence should resort to such inhumanity. Tom Willis is nothing less short of a wolf dressed in a shabby argument. As a fundamentalist he demonstrates that too much religion really can poison you. I would recommend others avoid his acquaintance less their reputations become contaminated due to association.