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Sunday, June 28, 2009

Holy people to compete to convert atheists on Turkish TV show

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According to a report on the Hurriyet DailyNews.com Web site, a new Turkish TV show is set to air in September that will challenge holy people to convert atheists to their brand of godliness. The show, which is loosely translated as "Penitents Compete," will feature a "Muslim imam, a Christian priest, a Jewish rabbi... a Buddhist monk" and 10 atheists.



Interesting concept. I'd love to see what their various arguments are, and whether they'll have any actual atheists on the show, or if it'll be like much of the "reality" tv in the US where it's all a setup and scripted by the shows producers. I think the show has the potential to be a dangerous (for religion) as the head of the Religious Affairs Directorate mentions, since the single most dangerous thing to religion is to expose people to different ideas and create "complications" in their minds.
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2 comments:

stuart said...

I'm sorry. This doesn't have anything to do with this post but I am just SOO ANGGRRY!

I am an atheist and I have grown very disheartened by our self-defeatist culture. I was corresponding with one of the biggest atheist bloggers – the guy who guys by the name of ‘Sabio Lantz’ (he acknowledges that this is not his real name) over at http://triangulations.wordpress.com

I told him that he should read this new book called the Real Messiah by Stephan Huller which I had been turned on to by Robert Price. I wanted to reach out to every atheist blogger to tell them that we can finally disprove the entire rationale of Christianity at one fell swoop.

He send me back a nasty email and then proceeds to slam the book in a manner which is worse than anything ever said about the Real Messiah by religious nutbars:

http://www.amazon.com/Real-Messiah-Throne-Origins-Christianity/dp/1906787123/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246919916&sr=8-1

His negative review of this book is a depressing demonstration of the selfishness and self-defeatism that often pervades individuals on our side of the debate:

“My site and many others were spammed for the sale of this book. That alone is enough to stop me purchasing it until I hear amazing reviews from those I trust.”

The point is that I actually sent him links to positive reviews for the book in Publishers Weekly:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6640240.html&

And a list of New Testament scholars who support the book:

http://plainview.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/jesus-was-not-the-messiah/

The aforementioned site was from a CHRISTIAN BLOG for God’s sake!!! Look at the objectivity even with these people when compared to us.

Now I am not against someone having their own opinion about a book. ‘Sabio’ or whatever his fake name is can say whatever he wants about the Real Messiah IF HE READ THE BOOK. Yet it seems entirely self-defeatist to me for we atheists to deliberately sabotage a work whose specific intention is to destroy the Christian paradigm.

Unlike our enemies in the Religious Right we are rarely united, politically naïve and basically content to sit around engaging in intellectual masturbation while our rights are systematically stripped away from us. My intention was not to spam anyone. I was simply trying to find a way for our side to go on the offense for once. We are always on the defensive while they (the religious folks) take shots at us.

I thought the Real Messiah was special because it is centered around a physical object which the author found in the Basilica di San Marco in Venice. It is universally understood to have been taken there by Italian sailors stole from the most ancient Church of St. Mark in Alexandria in the ninth century. Huller demonstrates that the throne goes back much further than that - i.e. all the way to the beginning of Christianity in Egypt.

In any event this throne is the real deal. It has an inscription written out in Hebrew letters and symbols which prove that Jesus was not the messiah of Christianity. Here are pictures of the throne:

http://www.therealmessiahbook.blogspot.com


We have to defeat the myth of Jesus Christ with another myth – a ‘rational myth’ to coin the language of Robert Price.

I am not asking you to ‘join my cause.’ I just want to defeat the oppressive ideas of Christianity with freedom and rational discourse.

Anders Branderud said...

They should give the ahteists in the Turkisk show the arguments found in bloganders.blogspot.com (left menu) which proves the existence of an intelligent Creator.

After that they should you deduction to arrive to the conclusion of which religion is the right one. That will mean that three of the clerymen will need to either abandon or stick to their illogical faith.