Outside Context

Found on: http://atheist.8k.com/irritate.html

Some fool­proof meth­ods to irrit­ate your favor­ite athe­ist. Just be care­ful how you use them, or you may start won­der­ing why the athe­ist is strangling you.

1) Ask them why they are bit­ter against God.

2) Tell them that if there’s no God, they might as well go out and kill people.

3) Ask them to pray with you.

4) Invite their chil­dren to go to church with you.

5) Insist that there is a God, and show them where in the Bible it says so.

6) Hide Chick tracts in clever places around their office.

7) Tell them that the uni­verse is too com­plex to “just exist,” and must have been cre­ated by a God who “just exists.”

Make up statistics.

9) End a dis­cus­sion with “Well, I know you’re smarter than I am, but I know I’m right.”

10) Accuse them of per­se­cut­ing you.

11) Bring up argu­ments that make no sense what­so­ever; crit­icze their response with “You’re just not mak­ing sense.”

12) Use mul­tiple ver­sions of Pascal’s Wager as though you thought them up yourself.

13) Use the Second Law of Ther­mo­dy­nam­ics to dis­prove evolution.

14) Post inane argu­ments on the Inter­net, and never fol­low up on them.

15) Say that seper­a­tion of church and state isn’t in the Con­sti­tu­tion; insist that the Con­sti­tu­tion is based on the Ten Commandments.

16) Cite Kent Hov­ind as a legit­im­ate source of information.

17) …and call him “Dr. Hovind.”

18) Tell them they know in their hearts that God exists.

19) Point out that we all take things on faith.

20) Before start­ing an argu­ment, say “You’re an athe­ist? That means you’re going to hell!”

21) After los­ing the argu­ment say, “I pity you.”

22) Accuse them of will­fully ignor­ing the “obvi­ous truth.”

23) Use bad math to back up your claims.

24) Drink the last beer in the fridge.

25) …and buy nat­ural light to replace it.

26) Wit­ness for Jesus, and com­pletely ignore any­thing your com­pet­i­tion says.

27) Call him a meanie.

28) Tell him you don’t care what you say or prove, you will still have your faith.

29) When given a Bible verse that looks bad, tell him that’s what the verse says, but that’s not what it means.

30) Argue that the Bible stor­ies are not myths … they’re par­ables. And they’re all true!

31) Lead off your cri­ti­cism of the Big Bang the­ory with the dis­claimer that you’re not a phys­i­cist like he is.

32) Lead off your sug­ges­tions for ways to prove that Noah’s Flood occured with the dis­claimer that you’re not a geo­lo­gist like he is.

33) Over­whelm him with your know­ledge of sci­ence, using examples: “And because of entropy you have to press the nozzle on the spray can. The nozzle is entropy.”

34) Use Latin a lot.

35) Main­tain that the King James Ver­sion is THE Bible; ignore ques­tions as to who was saved prior to 1611.

36) Tell him that Moses wrote the Books of Moses.

37) Explain that the lack of proof doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

38) …and give him a blank look when he says that all people tried for a crime would go to jail.

39) Blame abso­lutely everything wrong in soci­ety on evolution.

40) Repeat some­thing over and over, as if that made it true.

41) Repeat some­thing over and over, as if that made it true.

42) Repeat some­thing over and over, as if that made it true.

43) Tell him that he acknow­ledges Christ every time he uses “A.D.” — which, of course, stands for “After Death.”

44) Accuse him of being an agnostic, since he isn’t 100% pos­it­ive that God does not exist.

45) Insist that the Bible is meant to be taken lit­er­ally — all except that verse he just showed you.

46) Tell him that God works in mys­ter­i­ous ways.

47) …and we’re too small to com­pre­hend his reasoning.

48) …and we shouldn’t think of him as “how he should be.”

49) Point out that the fact that he talks about God so much proves God’s existence.

50) Tell him you know God exists because Mount Everest exists.

51) If a plane crashes killing 300 pas­sen­gers and crew, but one little girl sur­vives with only third-degree burns, tell him that this mir­acle proves the exist­ence of God.

52) Insist that Noah’s Ark and the Shroud of Turin are real.

53) …and tell him about the spe­cial on FOX where you saw it.

54) When he shows you a verse about gen­o­cide, ask him how he dares to ques­tion the mor­al­ity of God.

55) Punch him in the face. Hard.

56) When asked to prove a state­ment you made, say that you already proved it.

57) Tell him that we all fall short of God’s grace.

58) Insist that faith is the only logical answer.

59) No mat­ter what he quotes from the Bible, say that it’s out of context.

60) …and when he points out that the quotes are in cor­rect con­text, tell him you need to be a Chris­tian to under­stand the true mean­ing of the Bible.

61) Tell him you must study the Bible for many years to reject Christianity.

62) …and when he points out that you reject Islam des­pite never hav­ing stud­ied the Qu’ran, say that you have faith, and faith is all you need.

63) Ask him how he knows God isn’t real if he can’t see the air.

64) Sigh, shake your head, and say “I just know that someday you’ll need Jesus.”

65) Talk about how you used to be a miser­able, sin­ning, drug-abusing, alco­holic, sex-addicted, spouse-beating crim­inal until you found God.

66) Change your handle every couple weeks.

67) Knock on his door at 9:00 in the morn­ing and offer him a pamphlet.

68) Tell him that God loves him, even if he doesn’t love himself.

69) Admon­ish him to have sex for repro­duct­ive pur­poses only.

70) Tell him about Christ’s plan for sal­va­tion for the bil­lionth time.

71) Refuse to debate.

72) Name a bunch of smart Chris­tian people.

73) …and when he names a bunch of smart athe­ist people, call him stupid.

74) Attrib­ute every appar­ent error in the Bible to mistranslation.

75) …and then pull up a mis­trans­la­tion from Isaiah to prove that Jesus ful­filled prophecy.

76) Burn him at the stake.

77) When shown that the Bible says that Pi=3, say that the Hebrews didn’t know any­thing about sci­ence, so it’s not their fault.

78) When shown the cre­ation account in Gen­esis, insist that the Hebrews had all kinds of sci­entific savvy, being inspired by God.

79) Lead him on until the very last moment, then tell him no … not until you’re married.

80) Insist that a per­son who makes Chris­tian­ity look bad was not a True Christian.

81) Claim intel­lec­tual superi­or­ity on the grounds that only smart people read the Bible.

82) Smile smugly and tell him that there are no athe­ists in foxholes.

83) Quote Psalm 14:1 to him.

84) …and then tell him that you think highly of him, and want to be his friend.

85) Give him the spe­cial gift of his very own “para­phrased” mod­ern Bible.

86) Speak to him with a fake Aus­trailian accent.

87) Cite my Format­ted Theo­logy page as a col­lec­tion of suc­cess­ful proofs for God’s existence.

88) Threaten to kill your­self if he doesn’t believe.

89) Equi­voc­ate sci­entific faith with reli­gious faith, and con­clude that, meta­phys­ic­ally, you are both in the same boat.

90) Claim that archae­ology is proof of the Bible’s truth.

91) Mis­con­strue logical terms in order to prove that logic does not work.

92) Claim that logic is the atheist’s god.

93) Claim that athe­ism is not only a belief — it’s a know­ledge claim.

94) Sup­port your ludicrous con­ten­tions with “Most schol­ars agree that…”

95) Use only cir­cu­lar reasoning.

96) Claim that the athe­ist only uses cir­cu­lar reasoning.

97) Claim that cir­cu­lar reas­on­ing is legit­im­ate due to cir­cu­lar reas­on­ing being legitimate.

98) Use the phrase “Hate the sin, love the sin­ner” as a blanket response to the notion that Chris­tian­ity is at fault for something.

99) State that Chris­tian­ity has done a lot of good along with all the mass murder.

100) When asked to explain a theo­lo­gical concept, com­pare it to some­thing simple, like “water,” and then mis­un­der­stand that you have incor­rectly labeled the con­structs of your ana­logy, then dis­miss the whole thing with, “You’ve just got to have faith.”

101) Upon hear­ing that he is an athe­ist, jump back reflex­ively, as if you don’t want to catch whatever it is he’s got.

102) …then look at him as if he were a dis­eased leper who just spit in your eye.

103) End all your posts with John 3:16.

104) …or “God Bless.”

105) When he takes the time and trouble to explain where your ana­logy or inter­pret­a­tion is at fault, begin your response with a sigh, so he’ll know how patient you’re being.

106) Open a minor-league base­ball game with the national anthem, fol­lowed by a gos­pel quar­tet singing a hymn, and sol­emn prayer. (True story!)

107) Open and close a mar­tial arts class with oblig­at­ory prayer, includ­ing the spec­tat­ors. (Another true story!)

108) Claim that God chooses who is going to heaven and humans have noth­ing to do with his decision, but he’s going to hell because he sinned.

109) State that whatever he says is not worthy of con­sid­er­a­tion, because the Bible says athe­ists can’t dis­cern what’s true anyway.

110) Offer inane apo­lo­get­ics books in the hopes that he hasn’t heard the argu­ments in them a thou­sand times already.

111) Patiently explain that the 42 chil­dren that were torn to bits by two bears sent by God were not really chil­dren, but spawn of Satan.

112) When asked if they would sac­ri­fice their own child for God, respond with “God would never ask me to do that.”

113) Care­fully explain that Lot’s daugh­ters were never in danger of gang rape, and that Lot knew this all along.

114) Most care­fully of all, explain that while all of the Bible is inerr­ant, Rev­el­a­tion does not lit­er­ally mean what it says.

115) Tell him that God answers all pray­ers — some­times the answer is no.

116) Tell him that Chris­ti­ans aren’t per­fect — just forgiven.

117) Tell him that he can’t love any­one — that’s why he can’t love God.

118) Offer to drive, then insist on listen­ing to Chris­tian Talk Radio.

119) …and laugh when you hear “This condom-nation will face condemnation.”

120) Claim that Ein­stein was a Christian.

121) Claim that Dar­win recan­ted evol­u­tion on his deathbed.

122) Tell him that he’ll come around just like your daugh­ter did … when she got con­firmed just so that she could get mar­ried in a big church.

123) Vehe­mently claim that the the­ory of evol­u­tion is incom­pat­ible with the­ism, then turn around and blame the the­ory for pro­mot­ing atheism.

124) Say that evol­u­tion is not proven — there­fore the Bible is correct.

125) Tell him it’s his respons­ib­il­ity to prove that God doesn’t exist.

126) Invite him to a church social func­tion, and show up late.

127) …because you were with his wife.

128) Deny that his child looks like him.

129) Ask what he believes in, if not God.

130) …then tell him that non­be­lief is also a world­view, there­fore there is no such thing as an athe­ist and Chris­tian­ity is true.

131) Explain that Buddha’s last words were “Jesus, for­give me.”

132) …and tell him that you were “saved” when you heard that story.

133) …and when he explains that Buddha died 500 years before Jesus was born, give him a blank look.

134) Say that God can’t reveal him­self with any real proof, because that would remove the need for faith.

135) When some­thing awful hap­pens, tell him not to blame God — he doesn’t interfere.

136) When some­thing won­der­ful hap­pens, tell him to credit God — he made it happen.

137) Tell him not to ask what hap­pens to those who have never heard of Jesus … HE has, and what is HE going to do about it?

138) Explain that it doesn’t mat­ter whether or not he thinks he’s sinned — all humans were imbued with ori­ginal sin at the moment of their birth.

139) …then tell him that babies auto­mat­ic­ally go to heaven.

140) …and men­tally retarded people.

141) …and those with Down’s Syndrome.

142) Treat noth­ing he says as cred­ible, because he is pos­sessed by Satan.

143) Show that the Bible must be true because when you take the ori­ginal Hebrew let­ters, spread them out and twist them around, you can spell words.

144) …and when he points out that that will work with lit­er­ally any work in any alpha­bet, accuse him of closed-mindedness and blasphemy.

145) Spell it “athiest.”

146) Spell it “evilution.”

147) Tell him that the Bible is true because the Bible says it is.

148) Tell him that Hitler was an atheist.

149) …and all athe­ists are there­fore Nazis.

150) Tell him that he’s play­ing right into Satan’s hands, because Satan’s greatest ploy is con­vin­cing people that God doesn’t exist.

151) Use the word “athe­ist” as a verb.

152) After your argu­ment has been effect­ively refuted, wait a few days and then repeapt the argu­ment, adding, “You still haven’t addressed this.”

153) Make up your own lan­guage, and claim that his inab­il­ity to under­stand is due to his atheism.

154) Claim that Jesus is the God based on the Old Test­a­ment, then turn around and say that the Old Test­a­ment has noth­ing to do with the New Covenant.

155) Use the word “pre­sup­pos­i­tion” incor­rectly, repeatedly.

156) Argue the most insig­ni­fic­ant point you can think of; when he doesn’t address your pet­ti­ness, claim victory.

157) Con­stantly attempt to equate athe­ism with theism.

158) Argue that the trans­la­tion “errors” in the KJV were actu­ally God-inspired improve­ments, and there­fore the KJV is the most accur­ate of all trnslations.

159) Say that God believes in him, whether or not he believes in God.

160) Call the Branch Dav­idi­ans a “cult,” but insist that your par­tic­u­lar fac­tion is a “religion.”

161) …and argue that a prac­tical dis­tinc­tion actu­ally exists.

162) State with a straight face, “Yes, I believe that an invis­ible fairy god king magic­ally blinked us all into exist­ence in order to pun­ish us for our sal­va­tion and that we must all humble ourselves and eat his flesh and drink his blood,” and then claim your belief is per­fectly rational and sup­perior to the athe­ist “mind-set,” which can provide no answers.

163) Tell him that he can’t use abso­lute logic because God is the only absolute.

164) Tell him the signs are there — he’s just not looking.

165) Tell him he wouldn’t believe even if someone rises from the dead.

166) Play Mat­thew McCon­na­ghey: “Do you love this per­son? Prove it.”

167) Tell him that the third hour was Jew­ish time; the sixth hour was Roman time.

168) Try to per­form an exor­cism on him.

169) Claim to be speak­ing in tongues when actu­ally you’re just bab­bling incoherently.

170) Say that the Bible (as opposed to other holy books) is true because it’s an eye­wit­ness occount.

171) When he points out an appar­ent incon­sist­ency of God’s attrib­utes, just say that God is infin­ite. The athe­ist, with his finite, human brain can­not begin to under­stand God.

172) For Muslims only: Say that it’s per­fectly reas­on­able for any­one to con­vert to your reli­gion, but no one has a valid reason to leave Islam; it is the per­fect religion.

173) Tell him that every­one has faith in SOMETHING.

174) Say that whatever you turn to in your hour of need is God.

175) Make him clean out your car.

176) Include cos­mo­logy and abio­gen­esis when dis­cuss­ing evolution.

177) Tell him he won’t under­stand unless he believes, and he can’t believe unless he understands.

178) Ask how he can have any mor­als if he doesn’t believe in God.

179) Say that you know in your heart that belief in God is per­fectly logical and rational.

180) Say that going to church is fun.

181) …and when he says it’s bor­ing, act surprised.

182) Leave little Jesus cards on the tables at restaurants.

183) Talk about all the great things Dubya is going to do for our nation.

184) Insist that homo­sexu­al­ity is a choice.

185) Insist that Thomas Jef­fer­son was a Christian.

186) Tell his that it’s not a reli­gion — it’s a per­sonal rela­tion­ship with Jesus Christ.

187) Sing.

188) When asked what’s wrong with evol­u­tion, tell them that it doesn’t account for the ori­gin of matter.

189) Tell him he only doesn’t believe in God because his fam­ily hates him.

190) Advert­ise for heaven and hell.

191) Send a child over to wit­ness to him.

192) …when he tells the child he’s not inter­ested, send over two adults to say the same things.

193) …when he refuses again, give a Chick tract to a 3 year old to give to him.

194) Send a chat room mes­sage that he is a black-hearted sinner.

195) …then turn your IM off so that he can’t respond.

196) Tell them that Dar­win recan­ted evol­u­tion on his deathbed.

197) …and when he tells you about the Lady Hope myth, cry.

198) Cre­ate a web­site chal­len­ging evolution.

199) …and when he actu­ally does, close it down.

200) Cre­ate a term for a blatant para­dox in your reli­gion, then call other reli­gions false because they don’t have it.

201) Get into a chat­room argu­ment with him, then start SCREAMING the lyr­ics to “Amaz­ing Grace” while your friends write “Amen, brother” and other such non­sense as the athe­ist tries to make his point.

202) After los­ing an argu­ment hor­ribly, say that you will pray for his eternal soul.

203) …then begin pray­ing loudly without his permission.

204) Yell and scream about how he is going to hell dur­ing a debate.

205) …and when he gets tired of your yelling and scream­ing, back out of the debate.

206) When los­ing a debate, take advant­age of his good nature by punch­ing out some­body near you until he stops talking.

207) …when you see someone else do this, stop him by say­ing that his reli­gion is a peace­ful one.

208) Put gigantic crosses on everything he owns that you can get your hands on.

209) Counter every argu­ment that begins with “God is defined as…” with “So you believe in God?”

210) Cry foul when he tries to cre­ate a club that is not religious.

211) Fail to have a basic grasp of his­tory. (Span­ish Inquis­i­tion? What’s that?)

212) Have your pas­tor hunt him down and force him into a debate over dinner.

213) When all else fails, never talk to him, and con­vince a lot of other people to never talk to him either.

214) Treat his Chris­tian wife like shit.

215) Com­plain to him about your own church, but don’t leave it.

216) Send the DEA an anonym­ous tip that he has bundles of cocaine in his garage.

217) Put a large cross in his yard.

218) …then set it on fire with your hooded brethren.

219) PUT ALL ARGUMENTS IN CAPITAL LETTERS TO GIVE THE IMPRESSION THAT YOU’RE YELLING AND SCREAMING!

220) Start your own uni­ver­sity ded­ic­ated to reli­gious narrow-mindedness and restric­tion of free choice.

221) …and name it “Liberty.”

222) Per­petu­ally ask saps for money on your tele­vi­sion show.

223) Avoid taxes and reg­u­la­tions because you’re doing God’s work.

224) Ask why he only focuses on the bad parts of the Bible.

225) Accuse him of closed-mindedness for not accept­ing your extraordin­ary claims.

226) Tell him he has to believe before he can under­stand the evidence.

227) Tell him he is innumerate.

228) Tell him he is illiterate.

229) Tell him he is pissed.

230) Tell him he won’t agree with you because the Holy Spirit has closed his eyes to the truth.

231) …then con­tinue preach­ing to him.

232) Insist that you’ve already refuted everything he said.

233) Ask God to bless his dark heart.

234) Threaten to sue his uni­ver­sity for infringe­ment of free speech after he heckles you.

235) Tell him that long hair is the Devil’s work.

236) Tell him that all your music is the Devil’s work.

236) Tell him that the fossils in the earth are the Devil’s work.

237) Cre­ate hoaxes to prove cer­a­tion­ism (i.e. a human foot­print along­side a dino’s footprint).

238) Claim that God can cure HIV if one prays hard enough.

239) …then say that it is God’s choice who he will cure, and any­way hav­ing HIV is bet­ter than an etern­ity in Hell.

240) Turn up your amps so that every­one within three blocks has to listen to him rant about Jesus.

241) Double park on Sunday. Claim the prin­ciple of righteousness.

242) Ask who he turns to when he’s in danger.

243) …when he says him­self, say “No — when you’re REALLY in danger.”

244) Grossly mis­un­der­stand the word “theory.”

245) Declare that every­one knows in his heart that God exists, but just want to wor­ship themselves.

246) Declare that without God there are no ulti­mate answers to anything.

247) …then declare that WITH God there is an ulti­mate answer to everything — and that answer is God.

248) Declare that without God you finally die alone.

249) Declare that athe­ism gives you noth­ing to hope for except the false prom­ises of this world.

250) Use trans­it­ive verbs intrans­it­ively (e.g. “Jesus raised from the dead”).

251) …when cor­rec­ted on the above (e.g. Jesus ROSE or WAS RAISED from the dead), shout “Then you really do believe!”

252) Announce that God was watch­ing over a loved one who sur­vived a ter­rible tragedy.

253) …and when the loved one later dies from his wounds, announce that it was God’s will.

254) Get him to admit that he KNOWS God exists, but Satan has seduced him.

255) Invite every single per­son in your church to give Chick tracts to every­one they know.

256) Ask if he’s ever heard of Jesus Christ.

257) Show up on his front porch at 9:00 on Sat­urday morn­ing, and take advant­age of his grogi­ness by shov­ing cop­ies of Watchtower into his hands and get­ting him to read the Bible with you, then walk away before he has any idea what’s going on.

258) When he finally gets tired of you and launches sev­eral “Do Not Feed The Troll” cam­paigns against you, change your handle.

259) When con­fron­ted with a sound logical argu­ment, respond with “Yes, but I don’t believe that.”

260) Have the Gideon Bible wait­ing in the hotel room that he pays for.

261) Regale him with ques­tions such as “Who do you think wakes you up in the morn­ing? Isn’t that a mir­acle?” while you, the bus driver, should be watch­ing the road.

262) Scrape your fin­ger­nails on a blackboard.

263) If you’re an ISP, repeatedly cut him off dur­ing a net ses­sion, so that he must spend 90% of his time dialing.

264) Pro­gram your church bells to play very loudly at really odd hours.

265) Every time the sub­ject of his being an athe­ist comes up, burst out laughing.

266) Ask how he can pos­sibly raise chil­dren in a god­less environment.

267) Accuse him of hav­ing more than one personality.

268) Talk to him with the assump­tion that he shares your beliefs — i.e. start a sen­tence with “You know how God wants us to…”

269) When the sub­ject of homo­sexu­al­ity comes up, say “God cre­ated Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.”

270) …and expect it to be taken as an intel­li­gent remark.

271) Insist that the Bible is com­pletely true.

272) …and when he con­clus­ively proves oth­er­wise, acknow­ledge that the Bible is trash, but remain a Christian.

273) …then take him to church.

274) …and tell him he really must come more often.

275) Reply to every state­ment he makes, “That’s only your opinion.”

276) Post some­thing inflam­mat­ory about him, wait for him to respond, then go back and either delete or edit your post so that it appears that the ateist is attack­ing you for no reason.

277) Become com­pletely and totally para­noid about him.

278) After bring­ing up a num­ber of top­ics, explain your lack of response by refer­ring to some organ­ized sport that you par­ti­cip­ate in.

279) Point to some­thing in nature that’s really cool, and call it proof of God’s existence.

280) When he shows up at your wed­ding, bear­ing an expens­ive gift for you, return the favor by sicing your min­is­ter on him after the ceremony.

281) If he has can­cer, tell him with a sick­en­ingly sweet smile that you will pray for his recov­ery, because someone needs to.

282) Refuse to give him your wal­let after he quotes Mat­thew 5:42 to you.

283) Insist you believe in the lit­eral truth of the entire Bible, except for Mat­thew 5:42.

284) Take advant­age of a hor­rible national tragedy, caused in large part by reli­gious fan­at­icism, by push­ing your own reli­gious fan­at­icism as the only thing that will save us all.

285) …and announce that the tragedy only happened bea­cuse of those who ignore your reli­gious fanatacism.

286) When ask why you bother pray­ing to ask for things if God has a Divine Plan, tell him that you’re not really ask­ing for things, but you’re try­ing to get closer to him. (It’s a lie, of course, but don’t let that stop you.)

287) Insist that a denom­in­a­tion of Prot­est­ant­ism foun­ded in the ninteenth cen­tury is the only true way.

288) Insist on deathbed conversions.

281) When end­ing your con­ver­sa­tion with the athe­ist, prom­ise to read whatever book the athe­ist may have men­tioned, know­ing darned well that you your­self never made it through Leviticus.

Nearly all the par­ti­cipants of the Sec­u­lar Web’s FHJE board con­trib­uted to this list in some way — those who did not may share in the credit any­way. )