A motivation for one of our suggested articles. Ad hominem attacks should be avoided, they are pernicious and often irrelevant, but Bill O’Reilly is simply crazy. The namesake of the Fox show The O’Reilly Factor boasts one of the biggest followings for a ‘news’ programme on American TV, so this isn't picking on the weak or obscure. His latest attack (video below the post) on the ‘deluded’ atheist band is almost too hard to criticise through its astounding unreason. In response to posters published by the American Humanist Association which read ‘Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake’, O’Reilly had this to say:
“So why does the American Humanist Society, who wants to be good for goodness’ sake, why do they loathe the baby Jesus? He’s just a baby”
Adding...
“You don’t sell atheism by running down a baby do ya?’ How do you sell atheism by running down a baby? It’s just a baby”
For what it’s worth, here is the quasi-syllogism that perhaps went on in O’Reilly’s head (and I really have tried to be fair here):
Proposition 1 – The American Humanist Association believe you can be good without God or a god and release posters saying just this.
Proposition 2 – The baby Jesus was God.
Conclusion – Therefore atheists loath the baby Jesus and try to promote atheism by insulting a baby.
At this point, one of O’Reilly’s Angels even began laughing and later chuckled ‘I think you’re nuts’. Yes... Quite. Maybe they aren’t so immune to logic after all.
In a similar ‘infantocentric’ vein, O’Reilly writes this in his newspaper column –
‘But there is a serious side to this, and the American "humanists" should listen up. Christmas is a joyous time for children; that's the big upside of celebrating the birth of Jesus. Why, then, do people who want to "be good" spend money denigrating a beautiful day? Could it be that the humanists are not really interested in good at all? Maybe.’
This illogicality would even lead me to doubt the man’s sincerity if it weren’t for the abrasive and close-minded tone with which he is so synonymous.
But this argument is just a prelude to O’Reilly’s dialectical masterpiece, the pièce de résistance as he sees it: atheists hate Christmas because atheists are jealous. He writes –
‘The question is, why bother? Why spend money at Christmas time to spread dubious will among men? The reason, I believe, is that the atheists are jealous of the Yuletide season. While Christians have Jesus and Jews have the prophets, non-believers have Bill Maher. There are no atheist Christmas carols, no pagan displays of largesse like Santa Claus. In fact, for the non-believer, Christmas is just a day off, a time to consider that Mardi Gras is less than two months away.’
I’ll let you be the judge of that and our proposed article on atheist Christmas celebrations should be just the place. View our ‘Suggested Topics’ section for the full title. Detailed cross-examinations of O’Reilly are welcome too – if you’re brain can handle such nonsense without self-destructing that is.
12 comments:
Ugh, I honestly can't stand this guy. He is so rude to anyone who disagrees with him on his show!
And you know what? I am an atheist who happens to love christmastime. Not for the spiritual reasons, obviously, but for the cheer, the time with my family, the time off, the food, the fun, and yeah, even the carols. I adore christmas carols. Just because I don't believe in what they are saying doesn't make me not like them. Plenty of Christians love "Frosty the Snowman", and none of them believe in talking snowmen.
What did a humanist ever do to him that makes him so bitter? Believe it or not, Bill O'Reilly, non-believers aren't just a bunch of bitter alcoholics, like you makes us sound. We have friends and family, and so many other reasons to enjoy the holidays that we don't need to be jealous of the religious.
As a true example of his ignorance: "In fact, for the non-believer, Christmasis just a day off, a time to consider that Mardi Gras is less than two months away." Perhaps Mr. O'Reilly, defender of all that is Christian in the world, doesn't realized that Mardi Gras is also a religiously based holiday. Mardi Gras, French for "fat Tuesday," is just the day before Ash Wednesday. Essentially, it's just a day for Christians to do all sorts of indulgent things before starting the overwhelmingly enjoyable forty days of fasting for Lent.
It's bizarre. Christmas (which was a pagan festival hi-jacked by xtians) has now been massively hijacked once again by commercial organisations who have turned it into a spend-fest. It's become a training exercise in materialism for kids.
Why doesn't the great Bill O'Reilly sound off about that. It's far more pernicious.
What is the relevance of the atheist ads? Look at the context. This is the Christmas season. Deal with it instead of getting hyper.
The problem with atheists is that they take offense too easily. They see a church and they take offense, they see a cross and they take offense. So what do they do, they create ads and billboards they know will offend religious people. You guys should really lighten up and stop trying to push people's buttons.
And one last word, Bill O'Reilly was just being facetious, so don't have a cow over his cow.
So when O'Reilly writes 'But there is a serious side to all this' and follows it with such a bogus argument which you can read above, he is just being facetious? Usually facetiousness isn't indicated by phrases such as 'But there is a serious side to all this...'.
This is a pretty tame ad campaign, and it seems O’Reilly is the one who really needs to ‘get over it’. I don't get offended by crosses or religious adverts, but if I did, it wouldn't matter and I'd never make a hoo ha about it. I would try to argue my point though, without recourse to offense. Acknowledging the perils of generalisation, it seems that there are really only two main circumstances that cause atheists or humanists offence; one is the charge that we cannot be moral with religion and secondly, when we see children labelled by religion. But perhaps in this second instance ‘disgust’ rather than ‘offence’ is more accurate. Oddly enough, O’Reilly claims the same thing, that atheists are pretty much like evil grinches who want to ruin the enjoyment of children. Odd, since a major point of the ad, featuring snowflakes and Santa hats, is to promote Christmas among non-believers...
To the Anonymous above me...
I'm an atheist and I don't take offense to everything Christian around me. I don't believe those billboards were created to offend people just to ask them to stop and think. The one that talks about being good for goodness' sake is clearly saying that being good doesn't have to be done just because God says so.
Also, the whole running over the baby part is silly because, regardless of who Jesus really was, he isn't a baby anymore. Saying that atheists hate baby Jesus is like someone saying I hate baby Obama. For one thing, I don't hate Obama and even if I did I would hate the adult Obama. If I were to hate Jesus, I would hate him in his present form.
If atheists' are having a 'cow' it's because...
1. O'Reilly is presenting a completely false idea about us.
2. And he's using erroneous arguments to do it.
Hah! O'Reilly thinks that the ad is attacking Christianity, though I don't see where the ad explicitly denigrates or even mentions Christianity, so he attacks atheists by saying they're jealous and have nothing better to do at Christmas!
Bill can't take it, so he dishes it out.
"Look into the eyes of the baby jesus... and all my logical fallacies will make sense..."
The ad isn't attacking Christmas, it's attacking the idea that you need God to be good. I've encountered people (and I'm sure others have) who believe just that. Sure they picked Christmas time to address it, maybe to play on the 'good for goodness sake' line, or maybe it's because Atheists hate a baby.
I LOVE Christmas, I love the christmas trees, candy canes, Santa Claus, stockings, and Roudolph. There isn't really anything for us to be jealous of. We get to celebrate it the same way others do.
Sorry Bill, I'm not jealous of anything that has to do with Theism. I'm especially not jealous of any distorted pagan holidays which supposedly represent the birth of Christ, when no one knows his actual birth date. That makes a lot of sense. Jealous??????? Lol
Christmas would be a lot more awesome with a Bill Mahr special on it though. Thank you Mr. O'Rilley for finally contributing a useful idea to mass media.
Actually, there are many pagan aspects of Christmas, and no doubt, in the Christian religious tradition. The drinking of blood for example. Eating of bread to symbolize the body of Christ. These stem from long ago when people took it more literally (although I think many still do!) Also, the belief in witches is itself pagan and quite interesting if you think about it. The witch hunt was an admission of a belief in witchcraft and its dangers.
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