Without A Leg To Stand On A Message For Freethinkers Mark A. Smith
In a scene from the comedy movie Monty Python And The Holy Grail, King Arthur's way is blocked at a small bridge by the Black Knight. Naturally, a sword fight ensues, and whoosh! Off flies an arm of the Black Knight. King Arthur, assuming the battle to be over, congratulates the knight on his bravery, but is surprised to hear the reply, "It's only a flesh wound; fight, you coward!" More sword play and again, chop! Now the other arm flies off. Surely now the Black Knight will have the sense to admit the battle is lost and graciously accept defeat. But as Arthur attempts to cross the bridge, the crazed and now armless Black Knight commences to kick the King of England in the rear! Arthur warns the "dis-armed" knight to stop, but he doesn't. Chop! Off comes a leg. Now will he concede the fight? No- now he starts hopping on his one remaining limb, and ignoring Arthur's pleas for peace, starts bumping into the King. Arthur can take no more. Slice! The Black Knight, now reduced to a limbless bloody torso, ignorantly continues to taunt King Arthur with charges of cowardice, and "come back and fight!". The Black Knight ignores the fact that he now is totally helpless to defend the bridge. He refuses to recognize that he lost, and that he is now without a leg to stand on. Too often in trying to dissuade Christians from their superstitions, we find the Christians continue to defend their "bridges" even after they are "without a leg to stand on." We will chop off argument after argument, giving more than enough evidence to make a normal, rational person admit defeat. But good Christians are not rational, and will not admit defeat, regardless of how many "limbs" they lose. One may show a Christian that the supposed Old Testament "prophecies" of Jesus are bogus. Or one can demonstrate that the contradictory testimony between the various gospels invalidates what these "witnesses" claimed to have witnessed. Or who knows, maybe a time machine will be built that will totally destroy the Christian myth. Surely that would convince the "Black Knight" he hasn't a leg to stand on! But it won't convince him. Years of false prophecies haven't drained the Jehovah's Witnesses of suckers. Nor has Joseph Smith's reputation as a fraud hindered his Mormon church from becoming one of the fastest growing groups in the world. Neither has Christianity suffered from new discoveries in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Gospel of Q, or the findings of The Jesus Seminar (which has pulled the rug out from underneath the gospels, as documented in their book, The Five Gospels.) We have yet to witness a mass exodus from the churches. And we have yet to admit that a few hours of facts and figures are no match against years of religious brainwashing. For example, let's say after a few hours you've attained that satisfying position of having answered all of a Christian's trick questions and objections. Maybe you've blown away every shred of argument he's put forth. Maybe every time he lifted another limb you chopped it off. At this point you have demolished his precious religion into smoking ruins and left him a limbless soldier on the field of intellectual battle. NOW he'll give in! NOW you'll hear him admit, "I was wrong." But no such luck. It ends up that YOU were wrong-- wrong to expect anything except more ignorant taunts of "Come back here and fight, you coward! I still got Jesus in my heart and you can't touch that!" You see, Christianity, though pretending to be verifiable, logical and rational, turns out to be just the opposite when its false veneer is stripped away. They sometimes make pretensions at being scientific, in order to question evolution, then cry "foul!" if you, via science, question their myths of heaven, hell, evil spirits and such. Christianity, in its essence, consists of inner subjective feelings, as this is what they will fall back upon when reason runs dry on their way to fantasyland. They will cling to their feelings as a child to a security blanket. They are, at that point, beyond the reach of all rationality. Hallucinations, emotionalism, childhood memories and life-long brainwashing are what keeps a person a good Christian, regardless of contrary realities. Some will even confess up front, "I don't care what you prove...I'll always believe in Jee-Jus." Just thank them for the warning and move on. Don't waste your time. For when push comes to shove, and a Christian's world-view starts to sink against your relentless onslaughts, he'll jump ship and swim to the lifeboat of irrational, mindless, emotional experiences. "I saw Jesus walking with Elvis! I'll never deny my gods!!!" It is these subjective experiences, and not any objective truth, that keeps a Christian a Christian. Most got into their religion through birth, not through an exhaustive study of the facts. And the Christian, cocooned in these emotional experiences, is safely beyond the reach of your objective truths. Don't waste excess time on these types- unless verbal volleyball amuses you. As Jesus said, "Cast not your pearls before swine." He has given up his mind, and with it, any way of being reached. The Objectivist philosopher Ayn Rand once wrote: I WIN BY MEANS OF NOTHING BUT LOGIC AND I SURRENDER TO NOTHING BUT LOGIC. I DO NOT SURRENDER MY REASON OR DEAL WITH MEN WHO SURRENDER THEIRS. I HAVE NOTHING TO GAIN FROM FOOLS OR COWARDS." (1) Do not concede even an inch on this. Demand scientific, objective proof for each goofy belief they put forward. This should be your response: "Oh, so you claim a parallel universe exists, called the spiritual realm? Please show me the scientific evidence. You have no evidence? Then you have no argument! Good bye!" Leave these mindless dolts to bleed to death on the field of intellectual battle. Seek out the 1% of Christians who have not yet had their lobotomy for Jesus, whose brain is still functioning. For when the 99% abdicate their minds, they no longer have a leg to stand on.
(1) Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, Signet Books, New York, 1957, page 949 ***********************
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