Youth Culture Killed My God
Natural Family, 28 June 2007
Memo to Dare2Share: YOU ARE DUMB.
As an atheist, there are few things in this world funnier than youth ministry. Specifically, fundamentalist Christianity trying to market the J-Man to the kids today with their baggy jeans and their text messaging and their love of the hip-hop.
It's funny because it's so transparent. It's funny because it'd be funny to watch ME try to "relate" to teenagers, and I'm an gamer nerd, atheist, and all around bon vivant. Replace me with a sheltered tightass, and the comedy grows exponentially.
They have no clue, but they often have a shitload of money that they use to produce very slick, very modern web sites that they then completely undermine by naming them, oh... DARE 2 SHARE. And slogans like "training teenagers to transform their world."
What are they daring to share? Their faith, of course! And how are they transforming their world? By sharing their faith, of course! This sharing is so important, the site provides convenient tips and tutorials on how to share their faith with different alliteratively-named people, or what the rest of us call "ludicrous strawmen". Like Andy The Atheist.
Andy is represented by a schlubby looking guy in a black T-Shirt with the word "ATHEIST" clumsily photoshopped over it on the diagonal. And to be fair, if I saw a guy with a shirt like that, I'd want to have a long talk with him too. Just, you know, not the talk Dare 2 Share would want me to have.
According to D2S (their abbreviation, not mine), atheism is "defined as 'not having a "god belief".' This is important to remember, because it's not that an atheist doesn't believe in god, because that statement opens the possibility that god or a supreme being exists." This is completely wrong, and not just because it makes no fucking sense. It actually IS that atheists don't believe in God. That's what the letter "A" in front of "theist" means. I'm not sure how not believing in God opens up the possibility that God might exist. But I guess that's just the limitations of my rational mind.
Astonishingly, D2S gets the rest of its facts about atheism right, although it helps that it's full of blatantly obvious conclusions like "Since Andy lacks a 'god belief', the concept of the Trinity is totally irrelevant." Of course, they also think that "Jebus" is a sarcastic term atheists invented to mock Christ, instead of just being a Simpsons reference that's worked its way into common parlance. So much for being tapped into the youth culture.
But what about their advice? How is some poor Christian teen being told to approach his atheist peers? ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!"The first thing you need to ask an atheist is "do you really seek to discover the truth - even if it costs you your reputation, and even your friends?" If the answer is no, then realize that he/she is not willing to go where the evidence leads; you won't be having an honest intellectual dialogue, but your conversation may still have a spiritual impact."
Damn you, Dare 2 Share! For decades we atheists have been trying to hide our secret truth that the only reason we don't believe in God is so we can hang around other people who don't believe in God. And once we're in, all we care about is maintaining our atheist reputation, or "rep", as the atheists say on the street. I know I'd hate for the other atheists to think I was "wack".
What else have they got? Oh, all atheists believe in situational moral relativism without God's moral compass to guide them, so, to paraphrase John Cleese, DON'T MENTION THE SIN. And then there's this gem:
"Don't get dragged into arguments about what God did or didn't do. Focus on the evidence that Christ existed, died on the cross, and came back from the dead. As well, your personal testimony can be a powerful tool, because it's very difficult to 'disprove' the real and lasting change that Christ has brought to your life."
OK, now I feel really bad for any kid following this advice. Because they are going to get the ontological shit kicked out of them. I mean, even a wanky teenage atheist could deal with this paragraph in about twenty seconds. I don't need to disprove the change that your belief in Christ has made in your life. Hell, I don't even need to mock or deride it. If it works for you, gets you up in the morning, lets you sleep at night, that's great.
But that's not proof that Jesus is actually floating around, beaming waves of pure Christian love into your heart, and making you better than me or Andy. It just means that you've channeled your particular harmless (hopefully) delusion in a mostly positive (again, hopefully) way. We don't need to change how you live your life to make us feel better about how we live ours. Something the Dare 2 Share people might want to consider trying some time.
And that way, you can leave Jordan the Jehovah's Witness, Erin the Evolutionist(!), Willow the Wiccan (!!), Sid the Satanist (!!!!), and Mo the Muslim (!!!!!) the fuck alone for a change.