This is people saying what they really truly think. (Although I think even Pat Robertson isn’t fully on board with Kristi Watts’ chain of “logical” argument, here.)
700 Club on Why Atheists Should Hate Trees
Transcript: 700 Club, presenters Pat Robertson and Kristi Watt’
PR: Atheists don’t believe in ANYTHING. I mean, a theo means “no God”, they have no Gods, so they don’t have anything, so they don’t believe in anything. But they can protest, somebody who believes in SOMETHING. I mean, isn’t this a strange thing, that we would allow somebody who doesn’t believe in anything to restrict the freedom of those who do? It makes no sense! Sooner or later we’re going to wake up, but I think maybe we are…but our hats are off to the forest service, this is just one minor little skirmish, but these atheists, they’re just enormously creative in figuring out things they can do that give us trouble. Kristi,…
KR [interrupting]: You know what I just thought of, Pat?
PR: What’s that?
KW: You know you’ve got different kinds of, well, let’s call them religions…there’s one called Wicca, and they’re all about the environment, right? So, their religion that believes in the environment, and they believe that trees are their god, why are these atheists not saying that we should cut down every tree? Because it’s offensive. [holds out hand towards PR} Do you know what I mean?
PR: Yes [Ed: he sounds a bit unconcertain, actually]
KW: [puts her hand on PR's arm] It’s the same mentality!
PR: Oh, absolutely.
KW: Right?
PR: Absolutely. OK.
KW: [dramatic shrug] Just a thought.
Yep, supposedly atheists don’t believe in ANYTHING except hating on religion, and this means that we really should be out cutting down every single tree anywhere because Wiccans worship them. Better get all the other plants as well, because who knows – one of those little seedlings might become a tree one day!
Sadly, I’m not sure Watts even knows that trees provide oxygen that keeps people alive, which is the major reason that atheists wouldn’t chop them all down even if it was Pat Robertson who was worshipping them. We need them, and besides, the Wiccans are harmless – I don’t see any Wiccan sects trying to gain political power over my freedoms.
I don’t hate religious people. Most religious people are just trying to get through life a day at a time like everybody else and trying their best to make sense of it all. Religion as a matter of personal belief doesn’t bother me one little bit.
But people like Pat Robertson (who didn’t say the wacky stuff above, he just said that people without belief basically don’t deserve any civil rights, which isn’t funny at all) – people like him don’t want religious faith kept just as a matter of personal belief. They want Dominion over the law of the land and the right to scourge those they deem unrighteous in the name of their God. The 700 Club, and all those people who donate tens of millions of dollars to Robertson’s ministry of hate, year after year after year? They scare the shit out of me, truly.
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* Quicklink to recent open threads
mindyhoyden: 
bluemilk: 
vivsmythe: 
CastIronBalcony: 
puzzlement: 
ChallyWrites: 
ilauredhel: 
That is insane troll logic. Also, Wiccans worshipping trees? Out of which hat did they pull that one?
I think she’s got her Wiccans confused with her Asatru for a start, and then failing to understand that viewing some trees as sacred to their gods doesn’t mean that they are actually worshipping any tree, let alone all the trees.
And did you catch that dismissive little “well, let’s call them religions” dig?
I do love (where “love” means “find vaguely puzzling”) this notion of various deists (of all kinds of religious stripes) that one needs to have absolute, proofless faith in a deity of some variety in order to be capable of belief, full stop. I feel it rather leaves believers in the immanent divine (such as myself) out in the cold, however, since we’re not required to take the existence of our personal deity or deities on spec, but rather we see the evidence of their existence all around us every day.
Oh well, at least my deities aren’t liable to vanish in a puff of logic when the Babel fish is finally found.
Even for folks like me who have no belief in the divine at all, that doesn’t mean that I believe in NOTHING. I firmly believe that the world would be a better place if everybody did just a little bit more for other people each day than they do for themselves, for instance – and that belief is based purely on documentation (and some personal observation) of the benefits of mutual reciprocity to both the individuals who practice it and the communities in which they live.
DERAIL ALERT: It just struck me – “doing more for other people than for oneself” is the core of feminine social conditioning – women who DON’T do this are regarded as unreasonably selfish and generally unwomanly. But it’s generally expected to be mostly done within the household rather than in the world at large (except for one’s religious community, naturally – where women are the backbone of timekeeping, food provision and washing/polishing for gatherings).
The broader social traditions of charitable giving tend to be predicated more on injunctions against greed in the form of hoarding money/stuff rather than prescribing the expenditure of personal time/effort for the benefit of others, thus men tend to gain sufficient social approval for simply giving money rather than for actually mucking in, which is often considered emasculating because of its connotations of subservience.
Just a thought.