Reason Rally Irony
Posted on Mar 28, 2012
Forgive me for enjoying some irony. Before the Reason Rally, the True Reason group I’ve been co-leading was told repeatedly, “Don’t come! Don’t spoil our fun! Don’t crash our party!” David Silverman, the lead organizer for the rally, told us that if we “interfered” we would be escorted away by “plentiful” security.
And now on Amazon.com a “reviewer”[1. It is unclear whether this person read the book; thus I put "reviewer" in quotes.] is complaining that he couldn’t find us there. The same writer sent a message to True Reason website admins calling us “hypocritical,” because he thought we weren’t there. Before the rally the concern was we would raise too much of a ruckus; now this person is upset that we didn’t raise enough of one!
We were there, dozens of us, but we weren’t “crashing” anything. The notion of “party-crashing” doesn’t apply to a public policy-related event on public land in Washington, D.C. in the first place, but the point is that we were to interact, not to interfere.
We handed out lots of free water, which many people gratefully accepted, even though the weather was cool and rainy. We handed out excerpts of the True Reason book. We had the quiet, respectful conversations we said we were going there to have: person-to-person, recognizing that we are all human beings interacting with fellow human beings on matters of great importance. We did exactly what we said we would do, and we’re glad we went.
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It’s a good thing you did show up, otherwise the total tally of attendees would have been even smaller. Thanks for attending. After all, the atheists, as you’ve said, don’t own reason. Also, thanks for the recent article at the Washington Post Online blog. It was excellent.
Over the years, I have often seen theists pose this type of challenge to Gnus: If there is no God, what is to keep the atheist from murdering and raping?
It’s a ridiculously weak challenge, as the atheist easily responds: Oh, I don’t know. How about empathy, a respect for the laws and civilization, and love of my fellow humans?
But maybe that morality challenge shouldn’t be so over the top. Let’s try another version.
If there is no God, what’s to keep the Gnu from posting a dishonest and misleading “book review” on Amazon.com?
As we can see……Nothing.
Mike Gene,
Or, reappearing as a sock puppet after being banned from a blog. That happened here just today (3/29/12).
Tom to Greg:
Greg’s behavior strikes me as being very dishonest, disrespectful and disingenuous… The question is why? Sadly, Greg’s behavior is not uncommon.
My sole purpose in participating in forums like this one is to have honest and friendly discussion, dialogue and debate. The problem is finding agnostics and non-theists who are capable of being honest. However, maybe that goes to show that their problem isn’t really intellectual, it’s moral and spiritual.
I’m that “reviewer” and as I’ve stated, all of those “great” arguments can be had for free on the internet, not for $3. No need to pay for something that has no worth. As anyone who doesn’t beleive things blindly, I asked Tom for evidence since *I* did not see them there after being there for three hours and looking for them. He complied and I have edited my amazon comment. I have no problem in adjusting my posts when presented with evidence. It’s a shame that theists are often reluctant to do the same.
Vel, if you are so committed to evidence, and to not believing things blindly, perhaps you could produce the evidence to prove that “all of these ‘great’ arguments can be had for free on the Internet.”
You could do it, perhaps, by summarizing the argument I make against Sam Harris and showing where you can find the same thing in the same detail on the web.
You see, when I claimed that I was at the Reason Rally, you wouldn’t accept that claim without corroborating evidence. You claim that everything in the book is also available on the Internet, but I don’t see any evidence you’ve even read the book. Not that you’re lying; you haven’t even gone so far as to tell us that you’ve read it. You just know what’s in it, somehow.
Vel thinks he deserves some type of credit for wiping some of the egg off his face. Sorry Vel, but if you had relied on reason in the first place, you would not have embarrassed yourself. What kind of rational approach would conclude and declare that Tom was not at the event because you could not find him among the other 10,000 or so attendees?! Is this the same type of reasoning skills you use to conclude God does not exist?
As for your purported need for evidence, let me remind you of the following:
1. There is no evidence you bought the book.
2. There is no evidence you read the book.
3. There is no evidence that you spent three hours looking for Tom and his group.
So you expect others to believe things blindly, thus showing your reliance on double standards.
There seem to be several atheists who comment on this blog. How many criticized this person and his “book review?” Zero. Zilch. Nada.
Atheist morality on display.
Our society is pnhsiug self truth there is really no right or wrong. If we can give our children a foundation that they can grasp onto, something that is “proven”, to explain why it’s real they can fight against the negative, against God society. If we adults struggle how can we expect our children to stand up for what is right if we don’t train them up in the Lord and teach them how to follow Him and why we want to follow Him, we can’t expect much. This is SOOOOOO important in this time to teach them why it’s real!! Thank you Answers for providing tools to do this.