Campus Freethought Alliance

Update: Congresswoman Davis Apologizes a week later. (And over a week ago.) http://www.wbbm780.com/pages/1980701.php

She was "having a bad day." Which of course is an excuse for blaming everything on atheists.

Update: Stumble Upon gives another take (while old) on the situation. http://xkcd.com/154/

Basically, a US Congress woman said " And it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists!" and more.

A beautiful quote from the comments. "Davis[the congress woman] is in good company. I received a similar reception when I told my kindergarten classmates there was no Santa Claus. The very idea of skepticism terrified them as well. But it is remarkable that the paranormal belief system of a member of the Illinois House of Representatives is as fragile as that of a five-year-old child." Yea. that is pretty remarkable. Actually, its terrifying.

http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2008/04/rep-moniqu...

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So there are a lot of stories passed around on the internet about how atheistic people are shown the "light" all the time. These two stories portray professors as unstable and dogmatic. The first one..
http://snnmiller.com/stories/isayjesus.htm

Debunk: Pick up the chalk, State to the class, "Bet he can't do it twice. :) " And then proceed to slam it on the ground. Boom. Chalk breaks. Onto class. If theres anything I know, peoples entire worldviews will not crumble because a piece of chalk slipped from their fingers. I give exponentially more evidence every day to believers without them ever considering my argument.

Next; a story that at its core is trying to defend the common attack raised by the Greek philosopher Epicurius.
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?

http://community.livejournal.com/bible_study/328745.html
The debunk for this is a beautiful read, mainly because the amount of philosophical knowledge these guys have is enormous. I stumbled across this this morning, which reminded me of other stories I had seen. There are responses to their debunk in epistemology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology), but it is eventually overwritten by the normal theistic defense "we can't judge God." In the "fixed" version of the story the professor points out why that crashes the theists argument.
Debunk: http://www.rationalresponders.com/debunking_an_urban_legend_evil_is_a_la... (rational response squad to the rescue!)

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