What the Boss likes – Reason Rally review

So, the Reason Rally has come and gone. And it was wet, really wet.  But not one peal of thunder from the sky, no petulant Bronze Age gods showing up to “smite” the freethinkers. It was just another spring day inWashingtonDC. I know it must be so hard for some theists to not say that the rain was their god’s will, but most of them seem to know when to keep their opinions to themselves.  But darn, I was hoping for at least one or two. Then I could have asked why their god seemed to really have a hate on for Branson or Joplin or any place that has suffered any natural disaster that are so often invoke by theists as divine revenge. 

I remember Jessica Ahlquist’s speech the most.  She did an excellent job.  I missed Greta Christina and Adam Savage by thinking that people would actually show up to meet me.  Alas, my idealist side got the better of the cynic. Oh well, with a new stake in place, maybe it’ll stay dead. I got a nice photo of tulips in any case.

  I looked and looked for the “True Reason” people and their promised booklet that would tell atheists just how wrong we were, having all of the “good” arguments they had for their god.  They were no where that I could find them. (EDIT 03/28/12 1:05 EDT) : I got an email from Tom Gilson, the editor who is insistent that they were there but they weren’t trying to be “disruptive”.  considering no t-shirts, no signs, no magical books, they were being quite “unobtrusive”, rather reminiscient of their god, invisible and evidently doing nothing.  Tom has claimed to have talked to P.Z. Myers whom I’m looking to confirm with. But again, *I* didn’t see them at all, just like I said)  Pity, maybe I would have become a Christian again if I had just seen their magic book! Or not…  Maybe they didn’t get all of the money they asked for from other Christians and prayed for.  Because, you know they did pray.  Pity they can’t be honest and admit that this failed too.  I wonder what their excuses are now. 

Oh!  I see that they now have their “book” up: http://book.truereason.org/   And for just $3, you can get the really true, for sure honest answers on how you can tell that this god exists. 

The excerpt?  Well, you can get it all from this quote “It is the skill and practice of what we might call reason proper: the appropriate use of reason and logic (along with evidences) in the forming of one’s conclusions. It is the ability to draw proper deductive inferences from premises, or proper inductive inferences from evidences, or properly credible explanations of observations and phenomena.”  See, it’s only these particular Christians that have “proper” reasoning skills.  Anyone who doesn’t accept what they claim, with no evidence, is not reasoning “properly”. Oh they like that word, “proper” and “properly”, don’t they?   It’s the usual Christian tactic to try to pretend that they and only they have the “right” answer.  They are astonished that there is little in “atheist literature” about this magical “reason proper”.  That’s because atheists talk about reason, not some made-up term used to excuse their baseless claims.  It’s just such a pathetically typical Christian tactic, trying to redefine a word so they can claim that it’s only them that use “real” reason.   It’s an exemplary example of the utter deceit that theists must employ all of the time.  But unfortunately for them, reason already is defined: rational ground or motive; the power of comprehending, inferring, or thinking especially in orderly rational ways; a sufficient ground of explanation or of logical defense (Merriam-webster.com)  I do love how they pull the “TrueChristian” card by claiming that some Christians aren’t as wonderful as they are “We have had our seasons of anti-intellectualism, and our moments (sometimes long ones) of embarrassment. We have representatives of our religion today who embarrass reason by their lack of skill in it.”  They have of course decided now that they won’t print a paper copy unless there is “demand”.  I guess that confirms that they didn’t get the outpouring of support they prayed for.  Tsk. 

There were a few Christians there of course, with their ooooooh-scary t-shirts threatening hell.  They looked more like refugees from a gaming convention, with all of the unpleasantness *that* implies.  I guess the good Christians from theWestboroBaptistChurchwere lurking about but I didn’t see them (I wonder if those are the “embarrassing” Christians that the “True Reason” Christians are so upset by.).  Poor little bullies, can’t actually stand up to people who’ll call you on your lies.   Jesus showed up in various places, riding a dinosaur and as a big puppet.

Ended up leaving just after noon since it was raining harder and harder and we’d been there for three hours already.  I wasn’t ready to court hypothermia since I indeed know my science.   All in all, it was a good time and I thank all those who put the very hard work in to make it happen.