The OC Atheists Have a New Billboard, It's Also Ignorant

I wrote about these guys before, when they ripped apart Bible passages they found objectionable.  These guys demonstrated that they aren't exactly the pinnacle of genius, so to speak, because they ripped apart Bible verses based on a misunderstanding of what was in them.  Their prior publicity stunt (ugh) demonstrated a sort of ignorance on their part, and this one is no different.  Here's the full story...

This time they put up a billboard that says....well I'll just put a picture of it up because it really doesn't say anything.

They also put out a press release and...well the mistakes in their reasoning are numerous and awful.  Worse than this, attention seeking billboards like these speak poorly of the modern state of atheism as I'll get to below. 

Superstitions
 

What is superstition?  I'm not going to quote it's definition, either you know it when you see it or you don't.  Generally even people that are superstitious will admit that they're superstitious.  Everyone, except apparently these OC Atheists, knows the difference between religion in general and religious superstition.

To establish what I mean by superstition, I would roughly define it as a way of irrationally ascribing chance to objects, circumstances, and actions that have nothing to do with chance.  In other words, if you believe a rabbit's foot will provide you with luck, when it's obviously just a rabbit's foot, you're superstitious.

• Magic Underwear
• Astrology
• Voodoo (sort of)

Those are the only three things I can see which explicitly require superstitious beliefs.  "a Cracker" may involve superstition, but I have no idea what it is.  Google tells me that Cracker is a pejorative for European Americans and then provides me with a video of a rodent eating a cracker so who knows?

Some of those examples are so NOT superstition that it begs the question of what these atheists were thinking when they made this billboard.  Sin is an expression of a moral system, and moral thinking regardless of whether or not it's religious has nothing to do with superstition.  Halal is a system of religious laws governing things like what you can eat, so I fail to see how that relies on superstitious thinking. 

Some of the examples given aren't even religious, which demonstrates an even worse level of confusion.  For instance, some proponents of Intelligent Design postulate that we were created by aliens.  Astrology?  Not religious. 

So what do these atheists think superstition means?  Anything having to do with religious thinking apparently.  But if religion is synonymous with superstition, then this billboard was apparently designed by someone working at the Department of Redundancy Department.  Instead of reading, "Reject all Religious Superstitions" it basically reads, "Reject all Superstitious Superstitions".  On top of all of the other mistakes, this shows a serious lack of actual substantive thought put into this billboard.  I don't think anyone other than Atheists will find this very convincing. 

In other words, it's stupid.  These atheists are hoping to draw more people into the fold by doing stupid things. Way to represent, Atheists.

The Real Argument

There's an actual argument behind this billboard, based on the press release.  And it's just as bad as the billboard.  From the press release:

Atheists and humanists believe the world would be a better place without religious superstitions

I seriously doubt that if we were all as ignorant about other people's beliefs as these Atheists, the world would be a better place.  Perhaps they think if we all had the same lack of critical thinking skills they've demonstrated, we'd be better off?  

Here's the real "meat", and I use that term loosely, of their argument:

Although people of faith ignore religious superstitions outside of their faith, they see their own superstitions as fact and real. This billboard's message is that many superstitions are confirmed false by a believer when the superstitions in question are outside of their faith, but the believer will confirm the superstitions as true and real when they are tenants of their own religion.

In other words, this is the old Atheist canard that says that because there's more than one religion, all religions are false.  Presumably they'd all convert to Islam if it was the only religion on the face of the planet.

Their argument relies on two assumptions that call the entire argument into question.  1).  People who are religious, don't have any reason to believe in their religion, they just believe.  2).  People who are religious don't have any reason to reject other religions.  In other words, if you believe there is good reason to be a Christian or Muslim, then you've defeated their argument already.  The reason doesn't even have to be good.

As far as rejecting other religions goes, oftentimes religious people do have reasons for rejecting other religions.  For instance, I think that Islam is a logically incoherent religion.  They teach salvation based on a measure of how "good" a person you are, but they also teach that God, who measures a person's goodness, is perfectly good.  If God is perfectly good, then it doesn't matter how good you are, you're not good enough.  So I will never convert to Islam. 

Of course, there's a large amount of religious people who neither have any reason to believe in their religion, nor do they have good reason to reject any other religion.  Do atheists really want to attract people who believe something without applying any critical thought to their own beliefs?  Hm...on second thought those people would fit right in with these Atheists.

The State of Atheism

Believe it or not, back in the early years of the 20th century, Atheism had reached it's peak.  Based on the philosophical thought of the day (positivism), everyone "knew" there was no rational basis to any sort of religious talk or propositions about God.  Atheism was all but assured to be true.  Shortly after this, philosophers discovered that the lynchpin of Atheism,  positivism, was self-defeating and far too limiting to intellectual discourse and that it had to be discarded.  Atheism, since then, has been on an intellectual decline.  

Which brings us to the modern day, to these Atheists here.  Atheism not too long ago was the only rationally mature option.  Nowadays it's regressed into an immature, teenaged-like status.  These atheists, with their billboard, remind me of those kids in high school who wore leather jackets with metal studs, and talked about Marxist philosophy without actually having studied what the philosophy was.  Atheism has become little more than a rebellious, attention seeking subculture without any intellectual backing. 

Of course, not all Atheists are as ignorant as these OC Atheists are.  I don't want to overgeneralize too much, but even the more rational amongst these Atheists aren't much better.  For instance....