This billboard is not insulting

Bill O’Reilly has accused David Silverman and American Atheists of “insulting” religion with this billboard. However, the truth is never insulting. To illustrate this point let us assume that Bill O’Reilly had the intelligence to be a doctor and had in fact earned his PhD in applied medicine. We will further assume that the erstwhile “Doctor” O’Reilly has a thriving medical practice. One day he enters an examining room and is confronted with the following scene. The man is sitting there nearly naked. “Doctor” O’Reilly is first taken aback by the voluminous folds of adipose tissue cascading across the examining table. As “Doctor” O’Reilly is recovering from the shock of seeing all that naked fat he smells something burning. It is at this moment that “Doctor” O’Reilly realizes the patient is smoking and is just now tapping the ashes of a cigarette into an empty beer can. Various wrappers lying near the morbidly obese patient suggest he has just consumed several “super size me” fast food meal combos. “Doctor” O’Reilly – always mindful of his patient’s feelings is now faced with a conundrum. He may choose to “insult” the patient by pointing out all the insalubrious habits which will soon kill the patient (and push healthcare costs higher for the rest of us). Or “Doctor” O’Reilly may “politely” ignore all the facts and through his silence give the patient a clean bill of health.

This is analogous to Atheists telling society that it is ill with religion. In fact humanity is about to O.D. on religion. “Christians” reading this will immediately take offense and start blubbering about “persecution” and all the usual tripe. This is their version of denial – just as the morbidly obese cigarette smoker will deny his addictions to nicotine and fattening foods. “Christians” and other persons infected with religion will try to point to all the good which comes from religion. Yet any humanist is evidence that “good” need not have any connection with religion. In fact it can be easily argued that the humanist is far more moral than the “Christian” – the humanist requires no promise of paradise or threat of eternal torment in lakes of fire before doing what is “right” and “good.”

Religion is bad for humanity and the planet upon which we live. First religion demands that we all be “fruitful and multiply.” This causes overpopulation. This problem pales in comparison to another evil of religion. The people most likely to fall prey to the treachery of religion are predisposed to belief in fairy tales. This propensity to believe in the unbelievable spills over to cause other irrational beliefs. If only more people carried guns then fewer people would die from guns. Drill! Baby! Drill! “Global Warming” is a hoax perpetrated by socialist and communists! If I strap dynamite to my body and kill some “infidels” in a suicide attack then I am guaranteed a place in paradise. If I give my church enough money then I can become a “fully functioning Thetan” or better yet become a god with my own planet to rule over after Judgment Day.

Because of these irrational beliefs people with religion procreate far more often than people without irrational beliefs – and that tilts the gene pool away from genes for rational minds in favor of genes for irrational minds. It is this selection pressure exerted by religion which dooms humanity.