Last updated on April 9th, 2018 at 06:54 pm
TV’s Hercules, Kevin Sorbo, who stars in the apologist’s dream film, God Is Not Dead, wants to know why you atheists “get so angry at something you don’t believe in?”
I’m a Christian myself and had to play an atheist. I see the anger of these (atheist) guys on TV and it’s like ‘wow, how do you get so angry at something you don’t believe in?
Sorbo is saying if you don’t believe in something, you have no reason to be upset about it.
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How well does this work in practice? It doesn’t even work for Kevin Sorbo.
For example, why is Kevin Sorbo so upset that people don’t believe? Why feel the need to make a movie in opposition to people who don’t believe God exists?
Not only, according to his own logic, does he have no reason to be upset, but his own Bible tells him to “turn the other cheek.” He ought to just take it in stride and move on.
And Sorbo is far from alone.
If you’re not supposed to get upset about things you don’t believe in, why are these so-called Christians so upset about people of other religious persuasions? About Pagans and Hindus and Muslims and others?
Why get so angry about something you don’t believe in?
Why be so upset that other people are using contraceptives? Why be so upset that other people are getting married? Why be so upset that other people are getting abortions?
Or, in a recent and extreme example, why be so upset, like Missouri’s GOP chief, that black people in Ferguson are registering to vote? I suppose, when you think about it, that it’s not all that different from when Allen West got upset that Muslim-Americans vote.
I mean, it’s not like they have a right to vote or anything.
It’s their vote, after all. If you’re not black, what business is it of yours? If you’re not Muslim, what business is it of yours?
Nobody is forcing you to revise your vote, just as nobody is forcing you to use contraceptives, marry a person of the same sex, or have an abortion. If you shouldn’t be upset about things you don’t believe in, and gay people believe in Jesus loves them anyway, why is Linda Harvey of Mission America telling gay Christians that they’re “thumbing their nose in the face of God”?
Shouldn’t she be dutifully quiet about it, as Sorbo insists atheists should be?
If it doesn’t matter that somebody believes something you don’t, why insist our children be taught your Bible in our public schools? Why insist the Ten Commandments be prominently displayed everywhere but take offense at displays of other religious beliefs?
If people shouldn’t be upset about something they don’t believe in, why is the so-called Religious Right so worked up about President Obama’s religion? Isn’t that his business, and his business alone?
But Fox News’ Todd Starnes feels the need to say Obama is not really a Christian.
The president has really pushed forward a secular-humanist agenda during his administration and it’s really puzzling: this man professes to be a follower of Jesus Christ and yet he allows his administration to attack his own faith, it just doesn’t make sense.
Never mind that Starnes calls himself a Christian but is of a political persuasion that attacks the poor that Jesus extolled, and defends the rich that Jesus condemned.
And even if what you say true, Mr. Starnes, why are you upset about it? Per Sorbo, you should just be quiet, like Harvey.
Yet we’ve got more Religious Right figures than you can shake a stick at claiming Obama is a Muslim, from Pat Robertson to Jim Garlow to Rick Wiles to Sandy Rios to Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach to Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) and so on and so on.
If he is a Muslim, and you obviously are not, because it’s something you don’t believe in, then why are you so upset? And why isn’t Kevin Sorbo pointing fingers at these people too?
And the holidays are coming up all too soon so we’re all ready for a little imaginary war on Christmas action. Are you that insecure about your faith that you need reminders of it everywhere, and require all reminders that other people believe differently be expunged?
If everybody says “Marry Christmas” this holiday season, you can imagine you live in a world of white Christians, with a white Jesus and white Santa, like your grandparents did?
Sorbo complained,
It’s funny how they can get nativity scenes pulled down because they say it offends them but they’re offended by something they don’t believe in. What offends 90 percent of the country is that they take down nativity scenes but apparently the majority doesn’t have a voice in the country anymore so what are you going to do?
Actually, I don’t think if offends 90 percent of the country, since Gallup says only 77 percent of Americans are Christian and not every Christian says religion is important in their daily life. And fully 20 percent of Americans identify themselves as having no religious affiliation. I don’t know where Sorbo imagines he is going to find his 90 percent. It’s not going to be in 2014 America.
You can pretend you live in the days when your ideas of diversity meant white people from Germany, white people from Britain, white people from France, or maybe even white people from Italy. But you don’t live in those days.
You live in these days, and in this country, where the Constitution of the United States, that is the law of the land, was written to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority, the so-called “excesses of democracy” noted with alarm by the Constitution’s framers.
This is a diverse country with diverse beliefs. And the demographics of this country are changing, bringing more diversity.
Sorbo is complaining that the majority ought to have their way. He may want to be cautious in this approach, as it won’t be many years until Christian voices are no longer in the majority. When the country is 90 percent non-Christian, will he still be insisting that the majority get their way?
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
