Religious Spam Round-Up 10: Isplam

Every day social media users, especially those identifying as agnostics, atheists and skeptics, are subjected to a barrage of religious spam from true believers. This tends to be repeated, day in, day out, several times a day with no attempt to engage or discuss the matter. It’s spam, plain and simple. Some groups even seem to use small botnets, multiple accounts or proxies to spam hundreds of identical or similar messages all in one go.

Let’s look at some, all from one afternoon and evening on Twitter and only a small sample…

Sometimes, several times a day, we get this…

Tidal Wave of Bullshit

Coordinated spam, all at once, dominating the feed and the hashtags. Usually #atheism and #atheist but often other faiths and whatever happens to be the trending topics at the time. Always linking to the same stuff and when you can get a reply referring to eDialogue where you can sign in and be proselytized to by an implacable Islamic parrot. If it’s them trying to attract traffic, bad show. If its spammers acting independently, bad show too.

Ignoring it is hard because searches don’t always honour blocks and filtering will make discussion and debate impossible with legitimate people.

I suggest logging on to it, reporting this and linking back.

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Religious Spam Round-Up 9: Just Watch this Video!

Every day social media users, especially those identifying as agnostics, atheists and skeptics, are subjected to a barrage of religious spam from true believers. This tends to be repeated, day in, day out, several times a day with no attempt to engage or discuss the matter. It’s spam, plain and simple. Some groups even seem to use small botnets, multiple accounts or proxies to spam hundreds of identical or similar messages all in one go.

Let’s look at some, all from one afternoon and evening on Twitter and only a small sample…

Just Watch this Video!

A sort of Gish Gallop by proxy, linking to a video that you’re expected to watch, some of which go on as much as two hours, seems to be a tactic more designed to shut you up than to actually engage. These videos usually contain a torrent of fallacies, lies, half-truths, no-truths and nonsense and it’s impossible to reply to all of them in any sort of short order.

If you don’t watch the whole thing you’ll be whinged at. If you do they’ll have moved on and stopped replying.

My current tactic is to stop watching after the third bit of bullshit or to ask them what they consider the best argument that’s presented. Rarely will anyone take me up on it though.

Using the above, just as an example, here’s all the problems…

0:38: Fallacy of shifting the burden of proof. Believers must provide evidence for god. There’s no onus on non-believers to disprove something for which there’s no evidence.
0:43: But you can get something from nothing – energy and particles (vacuum fluctuations). Regardless, even if we couldn’t we’d simply be saying ‘I don’t know’. If we don’t know something, that doesn’t mean god did it. This is the fallacy of the argument from ignorance.
0:47: It’s not a rational explanation if there’s nothing to support it and no reason to believe it. Appealing to the majority of people as any reason to believe something is another fallacy. Argument from popularity. That lots of people believe something doesn’t make it true.
1:00: Feelings etc, all these aspects of our lives can be explained natrualistically and this would simply be an argument from ignorance again anyway.

That’s four problems within the first minute, so you can see how it’s not worth continuing.

Religious Spam Round-Up 8: The Phear

Every day social media users, especially those identifying as agnostics, atheists and skeptics, are subjected to a barrage of religious spam from true believers. This tends to be repeated, day in, day out, several times a day with no attempt to engage or discuss the matter. It’s spam, plain and simple. Some groups even seem to use small botnets, multiple accounts or proxies to spam hundreds of identical or similar messages all in one go.

Let’s look at some, all from one afternoon and evening on Twitter and only a small sample…

You’re Going to Hell!

While we’re gratified that you are so worried about the ultimate fate of our immortal soul (that we don’t believe in).

It is very nice of you to warn us that unless we repent god (the one who supposedly loves us and who we don’t believe in) will condemn us to eternal hellfire unless we believe exactly the same thing you do.

Here’s the problem though.

We don’t believe in hell, so the threat is about as terrifying as being told a dragon will eat you if you don’t finish your vegetables. If we don’t believe in god, sin or hell how can it scare us and why would you think this would persuade us?

If I tell you that unless you send me $100 via paypal that Bigfoot will come and kick you in the nards/tits you’re not that worried about it happening, are you? Why? Because you don’t believe in Bigfoot the Debt Collector.

And we don’t believe in hell. So don’t bother.

Religious Spam Round-Up 7: There’s No Book Like it!

Every day social media users, especially those identifying as agnostics, atheists and skeptics, are subjected to a barrage of religious spam from true believers. This tends to be repeated, day in, day out, several times a day with no attempt to engage or discuss the matter. It’s spam, plain and simple. Some groups even seem to use small botnets, multiple accounts or proxies to spam hundreds of identical or similar messages all in one go.

Let’s look at some, all from one afternoon and evening on Twitter and only a small sample…

Magic Book

Typically Muslims, but sometimes other faiths, try to claim that there is no other book like theirs. That it is magical, irreplaceable, that it cannot be imitated.

Obviously this is somewhat subjective. What one person sees as brilliant another may see as terrible. However, there are certainly a large number of books and writings of this ilk, so nobody’s religious tome is unique or special. That’s without even taking into account fiction books that exceed the brilliance of often rather stodgey, boring and self-contradicting religious texts.

There’s only one real answer to this claim.

Religious Spam Round-Up 6: Science in the Koran

Every day social media users, especially those identifying as agnostics, atheists and skeptics, are subjected to a barrage of religious spam from true believers. This tends to be repeated, day in, day out, several times a day with no attempt to engage or discuss the matter. It’s spam, plain and simple. Some groups even seem to use small botnets, multiple accounts or proxies to spam hundreds of identical or similar messages all in one go.

Let’s look at some, all from one afternoon and evening on Twitter and only a small sample…

Science in the Koran

Christian creationists have, again, largely been beaten back to the fringes, despite their undue influence in the USA. The idea that their pseudoscience is actually scientific is not a wide, globally held belief within Christianity since they’ve taken a drubbing on that score year on year.

Muslims, however, very much like to believe – and it seems in a more mainstream sense – that somehow their belief is not only compatible with science but that the Koran contains miraculous scientific knowledge.

Balderdash and piffle and much of this runs into the same logical problems that assert claims of prophecy.

1. This is post-hoc reinterpretation of vague, poetic scripture to fit modern understanding. The original passages are so vague as to be able to be interpreted any number of ways and, indeed, they have been over the ages. Many modern claims of science in the Koran use older, discredited scientific conclusions in their claim that the Koran is accurate.

2. If the Koran is so amazingly scientific where are the scientific discoveries attributable to the Koran? As with prophecy, what’s the use of a prophecy that can only be interpreted after the event? Post-hoc reinterpretation yet again.

3. The few things that sound remotely credible are accountable for from ancient knowledge. We consistently underestimate our forebears. Greek knowledge of the period and before is recognisable and other claims can be accounted for from simple observations available to even the crudest peasant.

Short version, there’s no reason to believe any of these claims.

If you want a longer version, TheIslamMiracle on Youtube is a great debunking resource.

Religious Spam Round-Up 5: Things About God

Every day social media users, especially those identifying as agnostics, atheists and skeptics, are subjected to a barrage of religious spam from true believers. This tends to be repeated, day in, day out, several times a day with no attempt to engage or discuss the matter. It’s spam, plain and simple. Some groups even seem to use small botnets, multiple accounts or proxies to spam hundreds of identical or similar messages all in one go.

Let’s look at some, all from one afternoon and evening on Twitter and only a small sample…

God Qualities

Day in, day out…

God loves you!

God wants you to be happy!

God has done so much for you!

You should be grateful to god!

Etc, etc, etc.

Free advice to the theistic. Odds are you will get nowhere whatsoever with this approach. Emotional appeals aren’t convincing and before you start asserting things to an atheist about god you should first establish that a god exists.

Good luck with that.

Religious Spam Round-Up 4: Atheism is Irrational! Somehow…

Every day social media users, especially those identifying as agnostics, atheists and skeptics, are subjected to a barrage of religious spam from true believers. This tends to be repeated, day in, day out, several times a day with no attempt to engage or discuss the matter. It’s spam, plain and simple. Some groups even seem to use small botnets, multiple accounts or proxies to spam hundreds of identical or similar messages all in one go.

Let’s look at some, all from one afternoon and evening on Twitter and only a small sample…

Atheism & the Denial of Reason

This charming individual even has their own special definition of atheism, which they conflate with materialism and various other factors. While it is common that atheists are also materialists, rationalists, skeptics etc it is by no means guaranteed and the definition of atheism is just ‘I don’t believe in god/s’. Anyway, moving on with the article…

The article is actually nothing to do with ‘reason’ but to do with determinism. It attempts to suggest that as an atheist (as they define it) one must necessarily believe that anything and everything is deterministic and that there’s no free will whatsoever. From there it somehow tries to suggest that determinism denies reason.

There’s several problems with this.

1. A deterministic ‘clockwork universe’ is an old-fashioned, Newtonian view. It does not mesh with modern understanding via chaos theory and quantum mechanics. The tiniest changes in a complex system can lead to different results and things are in constant flux.

2. Determinism wouldn’t deny that we’re rational agents anyway. Computers work entirely deterministically and operations only work if they are logical, with correct syntax. A rational conclusion is one reached via the evidence given. A logical conclusion. Damage the mind, bias it and it won’t come to logical conclusions. You could consider religion akin to a computer virus in this instance.

3. Religious beliefs don’t allow for free will. An omniscient agent precludes free will. You can either have an omniscient deity or free will, but not both as they’re logically incompatible. This either results in no human free will (Calvinist approach) or an imperfect or non-existent god.