Why We Fight - An Atheist's Explanation

********************************* UPDATE*************************************
It has been pointed out to me that my first instinct was correct, and the site I linked to was in fact a joke.  I made a mistake and I apologize.  I am leaving the post intact 1) To preserve my folly for all to see and mock me for and 2) The points made at the end I feel are still valid, even if you remove the site.

Again, my apologies.
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You know how sometimes you see something so utterly ridiculous that your first instinct is to assume it's a joke?  That happened to me when I cam across this.  Please take a look at that before going any further, because you will have a brand new appreciation for your own intellect.

Now, it's one thing to be religious the way most people are.  You believe in (a) god, maybe go to church once a week, and use the teachings from said church as a moral guide for life.  Ok.  But this guy goes way beyond that.  He is a living cartoon; the broadest of all caricatures us atheists could ever come up with.  He isn't just trying to argue the existence of a supernatural being, he is arguing against the basic tenants of physics in the most laughable manner possible.  With his three "experiments" Rev. Osborne "proves" that the Earth is flat.  He does so mostly by ignoring gravity.

To briefly address each "experiment":

1. Jump!

Those crazy scientists claim the Earth rotates between 700-1000 mph.  But then why is it that when you jump up you come straight back down?!?  If you jump up while standing in a truck bed while it's moving, you wouldn't fall back into the truck, you'd fall out!

Except, like I stated above, this completely ignores gravity and what it does.  Gravity is really good at keeping things on the ground, and A LOT of force is required to get high enough where to negate inertia (if you don't know what inertia is, please go back to 5th grade).  I go back to his truck bed analogy, if you have a quarter and you toss it up an inch, it'll still fall back into your hand.  But if you toss it up as high as you can, it'll fly off the truck.

2. Blow!

To his credit, he acknowledges gravity here, but only because it's a sham created by scientists with their mumbo-jumbo sciency stuff.  I mean, if bigger things cause smaller things to stick to them (his definition of gravity, I guess), then if you blow up a balloon as big as you can and try to stick a small piece of paper underneath, it should stick.  But it doesn't!  Gravity debunked!

Density.  For all the science terms he tried to throw around, he completely forgot about density.  Mass per volume.  And it is density that determines whether something is able to pull another object towards it.  The balloon is indeed bigger than the paper, but the paper is actually more dense.  That's why the paper falls to the ground faster than the balloon does.

3. Get High!

I'm gonna be honest, his logic on this one is so mind boggling ridiculous I don't know how to respond to it.  I guess he seriously underestimates how tiny we are compared to the Earth to think we could see far enough to notice the curvature.

But this was all just the tip of the iceberg.

This refusal to accept basic 5th grade science would be troubling but mostly amusing on its own.  But in addition to the Reverend's anti-intellectualism, there are some frightening notions of how he and the commenters on his post live their lives.

All the users (including Rev Osborne) have little badges displaying awards or achievements, and by holding your mouse over them, it will tell you what they got it for.  Some of these are pretty run of the mill, like for the number of years of Bible college they attended, or for various missions they have been on.  And then there are ones like the shaking fist, which when you hold the mouse arrow over it, you see "Tell Her Once."  Yep, they are proudly displaying a badge for domestic abuse.  Apparently wife beating is a perfectly acceptable Christian ideal.  I think it was the 12th commandment or something.

Even worse is the face with a black eye and a lump on the head some of the women on the page have for "Most Obedient."  So not only are the men bragging about hitting their wives, but the women see absolutely nothing wrong with being struck and seem proud of the fact that the men in their lives will beat them for daring to have an opinion of their own.  There are plenty of other strange prizes they award themselves, such as "True Christian Caucasian" and "Porn Resistant" and of course "Flat Earth," but is the casual nature with which they promote violence against women that is truly horrific.  For all their moral masturbation, they see nothing wrong with violating a woman's basic right to have her own thoughts and disagree with her husband (or a man in general).

I bring this up to show theists why we care so much about getting religion out of public schools and the government as a whole, and our problem with it in general.  I understand that the vast majority of Christians are nothing like these people.  They don't think the Earth is flat, they know gravity is real, and they don't think wife beating is OK.  But there is a bit of a slippery slope involved.  Whether it's the non-existance of gravity or a virgin birth, you are choosing to ignore constructs of reality.  You are ignoring basic biology, physics, science in general, in favor of supernatural "miracles" and fantastical explanations.  It becomes difficult to explain why believing Jesus brought someone back from the dead is any less ridiculous than believing the Earth is flat and only 6,000 years old.  Both are in the Bible.  This becomes an even greater problem when the beliefs lead to oppressing the rights of others, such as the domestic abuse described above or preventing gays from getting married.  You are inflicting harm on others based on a belief system that runs contrary to everything we know about how the world an universe works.  Believing in those kind of things are fine when you are dealing with it yourself, as an intimate personal belief, but not if you want to impose them on others or society as a whole.

Again, I know most Christians are not as extreme as all this.  But it is not the individual people we are fighting with.  It is the IDEA.  For example, there has been a lot of talk about Jessica Ahlquist this week; the 16 year old girl who won a lawsuit against her public high school, forcing them to remove a prayer banner.  She won because, whether people like it or not, having that prayer up was unconstitutional.  That's the law.  But that didn't matter to the countless Christians who threatened her.  And they threatened her because of a belief in something that has no basis in reality, a belief that cannot be verified at all, yet a belief they are willing to act like this toward a 16 year old girl for.  There is a strange, dangerous disconnect at play here, and it is a perfect example of why it is so important to atheists to keep religion out of policy and public institutions, and as an individual's private matter.

People will say we are hypocrites, because we hate and are fighting against a god we don't believe in.  The problem is it isn't God we are fighting or mad at.  It is people like this, and the idea that allows them to do it, we have a problem with.