Denialism

Here’s my impression of Barry Arrington

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by

MarkH
in

I don’t have the time to be anything but a jerk today so I’m going to imitate Barry Arrington of Uncommon Descent, who tried to place the blame for the most recent shootings at a church on atheist writers.

You see, yesterday, there was an attack on the New York subway. In one of those events generally embarrassing (and oddly redeeming) for humanity, a man was attacked for replying “Happy Hanukkah” when someone wished him “Merry Christmas”. Oddly, the fight was broken up when a Muslim guy rescued the Jewish guy from the Christian guy.

Now, if I was a giant screaming asshole like Barry A, I’d say something like, “People like Bill O’Reilly who make up the imaginary ‘war on Christmas’ or Ann Coulter and her remarks about Christians being ‘perfected Jews’ should consider themselves responsible for this event. If they didn’t promote their pro-Christmas, pro-Christian agenda, no one would feel the need to attack Jewish people for wishing them a Happy Hanukkah.”

After all, crazy assholes aren’t responsible for their behavior. It’s the people who write books! They were just following orders (still looking for those “kill Christians” orders in The God Delusion). Just like the Matrix made the DC sniper kid shoot all those people – it was the movie’s fault, not the kid’s. And this bus stop shooting over a girl, if right wingers weren’t constantly pushing a heterosexual agenda, maybe we wouldn’t see people killing over heterosexual sex.

You see? It’s easy to be a giant asshole. All you have to do is take your ideology, ghoulishly apply it to recent tragedies so as to scapegoat whoever you dislike, and then act surprised when people think you’re a monster. How’d I do?

Comments

  1. Some lurker

    The religious folks failed to obey orders. If they had they would not tried to beat up, they would have tried to kill.

    The stuff you are probably looking for starts at Deuteronomy 13:6 and goes to the end of the chapter. But you can find lots of other good stuff (or rather bad stuff) by searching for words like kill, stone, and sword.

    Reply
  2. Orac

    still looking for those “kill Christians” orders in The God Delusion

    Actually, there is rhetoric that arguably flirts with “kill Muslims” in Sam Harris’ The End of Faith. It doesn’t quite go over the line, but it goes disturbingly far.

    Reply
  3. J=Dog

    Unfortunately, you’re not even fit to hold barry A’s KKK hood, as your entire post ignores his previous body of work, and of course his lock-on love for ID.

    If you’re gonna bring the crazy, you got to do better than this. Did you even foam at the mouth while typing? I thought not.

    Reply
  4. factician

    Nicely done.

    Reply
  5. Dennis

    (still looking for those “kill Christians” orders
    in The God Delusion)

    You have to read the book backwards – It’s in there! I swear on a stack of bibles!

    Reply
  6. Skemono

    You have to read the book backwards – It’s in there! I swear on a stack of bibles!

    Is it available on audiobook? Maybe if we play one of those backwards we’ll hear it.

    Reply
  7. QrazyQat

    If you have people in positions of authority continually pushing the idea of elimination of one’s “enemies” — elimination as in physical attacks or killing — then the pushers do have responsibility, even though less weak followers wouldn’t do it anyway. But that’s not what you have on the atheist side. You do have that on the rightwing side, on the Cristianist side, on talk radio, on telvangelists’ shows, from powerful politicos on the right, from cable tv rightwingers.

    What Barry is doing is yet another case of rightwing projection. Again and again over the past 7 years we’ve seen this clearly (it has been going on longer, but it’s really come into focus since then).

    Reply
  8. Chris Noble

    You have to read the book backwards – It’s in there! I swear on a stack of bibles!

    Nahh. You have to use the Bible Code.

    Simply start at letter 10254 and then take every 666th letter from there on.

    Reply
  9. chris y

    Oddly, the fight was broken up when a Muslim guy rescued the Jewish guy from the Christian guy

    Why oddly? He was a decent and courageous guy, which has nothing to do with his religion. You might say it was odd that the rest of a carful of passengers on the subway stood by and did nothing, but I fear the days when that would have been noticeable are long gone.

    Reply

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