I saw this on reddit the other day and it almost made me weep that people can be so fucking stupid.

How do you cram so many shit arguments into 508×657 pixels? It would be impressive if not in the service of rank ignorance.

Ok, away we go. We’ll start with what the kid is saying:

Mister Dawkins, I made this clay pony. His clay eyes and ear can’t see me, but here I am.

That’s great, kid. And you’re right: because we can’t detect something doesn’t mean it isn’t there. But it also means that you don’t have a good reason to believe it’s there. What’s more, think of all the hypothetical things you can’t detect: flesh-eating invisible pizzas hiding under your bed, juggling heat-resistant smurfs in the middle of the sun, etc. There are all kinds of hypothetical invisible things we can invent, and while we can’t know for sure they’re not out there we can be sure enough that you don’t believe in them.

What’s more, imagine you made your clay pony with the ability to feel pain, and then you made a furnace into which you were going to throw it forever if it didn’t believe in you (regardless of how kind it was to other ponies)…and then you made its eyes and ears incapable of detecting you. You’d be an sadist, a psycho, and an asshole.

What’s more, what you said doesn’t rebut what the hypothetical Dr. Dawkins said. He points out that if everything has a creator, god would also need one. You respond that you made the pony, but you have a creator. Way to miss the point kid (who is really the adult cartoonist who should know better).

As for the sign in Dawkins’ clay that reads:

Do not touch, pony evolving.

Apparently making commentary on shit you don’t understand is awesome in Christianity. I think I’ll go lecture the entire community of physicists and then walk around demanding 10% of everybody’s income.

The argument is that without intelligent hands nothing happens to clay, which is true (save for it getting hard and brittle, all without god doing anything). So what? Clay is not made out of molecules that self-replicate. That makes it very unlike DNA. If you have a self-replicating molecule (which requires no appeal to god), all you need is reproduction, mutation, and some form of selection for it to produce increased functionality over time. That is exactly the environment in which we find ourselves.

Pointing out that clay doesn’t evolve to disprove evolution is like pointing to lawnmower’s inability to inhibit rainfall as proof that umbrellas don’t work.

NOTHING x 4.6 billion years = EVERYTHING

It is the believer’s premise that there was ever a state of nothingness, they should be obliged to defend it. Any explanation for how god can be eternal can be applied to matter, which makes god an unnecessary part of that equation.

And yes, over billions of years things change. Hydrogen has time to be converted to stars, stars have time to collapse, self-replicating molecules have time to form and then more time to evolve.

If I believe it doesn’t exist, I HATE IT

We’re to believe that people like Dawkins (and myself) aren’t miffed with religion because of the harm its doctrine causes, but just because we arbitrarily hate everything we don’t think exists. It’s a funny thing though, I doubt Dr. Dawkins believe in faeries, or leprechauns, or unicorns, etc., but I’ve not heard him say a single word about hating those things.

Hey, maybe he hates that some people try to make rules and force other humans to live by them based not on compassion but rather what a particular group of people from 2,000+ years ago said we should do. Do you think that could be it? Maybe he thinks the gullibility thrust upon children with threats of hell slows down human progress and creates unnecessary suffering in the world and, brace yourself, Dr. Dawkins finds indoctrinated gullibility and suffering unappealing because he cares about the world!

The last thing on the board was:

I have no value.

If you think people and things have no value except for when god says they do, you’re a shallow fucking person. Does the cartoonist believe that Richard Dawkins believes he has no value? If so he’s a bigger idiot than whoever wrote Exodus (which is saying something).

Do you value honesty? Awesome! You don’t need god for that or to value honest people.

Do you value kindness? Awesome! You don’t need god for that or to value kind people.

In a world without god, we determine what we find valuable in people based on the content of their character. It is in this way that a lying Christian can mean less to us that a compassionate and honest atheist, even though by Christian logic the noble atheist gets punished forever while the shitty Christian get rewarded. Which prompts me to ask if you value justice and fairness. If so, you’ll only find it at the hands of human beings. You won’t get any from the Christian god.

And just for shits and giggles I looked up the bible verse, Luke 17:1-2:

Jesus said to his disciples: “Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come. It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble.

It’s worth pointing out that just a few sentences later we hear that those with even an iota of faith can pull trees out by their roots and throw them into the sea (Luke 17:6) and the idea that slaves should obey their masters (Luke 17:7-9). Yeah, woe to the people convincing children that’s a bunch of bullshit and that science is better than superstition. If god is the type who rewards people for eschewing science, dishonestly representing their opponents, and convincing children to do the same, even if that god exists he’s unworthy of humankind.

But when you’re dealing with people who are told that a guy rose from the dead and walked on water and if you don’t believe it you burn forever and they nod their heads and say “That sounds reasonable,” it’s hardly surprising when they read a comic like this one and say “Yeah, that’s exactly what Richard Dawkins says! And clay doesn’t evolve, so how could living things?” The problem is that a lot of people don’t give a shit about what is true, they just giving a shit about being convinced they’re right. It’s a way to feel smart without all the hard work required to learn.