Following the massive fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris earlier this week, many Christians have been searching for meaning amidst the chaos.
Our friend Hemant Mehta over at Friendly Atheist posted today about how, apparently, some Christians saw the Jesus in the flames.
If you don’t see him, look closer.
There he is! See him now?
(Me neither.)
Sort of a weird flex for the second coming of Jesus to burn down a monument built in his honor. But then again, according to Christians, the best way for Jesus to first appear on Earth was by being born to a virgin. One would think that an all-powerful deity would have the ability to just pop into existence, but there I go thinking rationally again.
Hemant, as he often does, shared his thoughts a bit more eloquently than I could:
Yes, take comfort in watching a church burn. Find solace in a God who very easily could’ve killed a lot of people. Find joy in a Higher Power who allows a historic building to burn in order to show you His avatar for a split second.
This is a phenomenon known as Pareidolia, where you see familiar things in a vague stimulus, like seeing a cloud that looks like an elephant, a “face” on the surface of Mars, or the face of Jesus in burnt toast.
This, of course, wasn’t the only example of Christians locked onto. They also praised their god for saving the altar and a golden cross.
As you’ve probably seen by now, I had one interpretation of the situation on the Twitter yesterday:
Because the melting point of gold is 1064°C and a wood fire burns at around 600°C https://t.co/IkVfPS8W6c
— Dan Broadbent 🚀 (@aSciEnthusiast) April 16, 2019
I thought it was funny, but simple. Apparently a lot of other people did, too. And just to make it clear that it was a joke, I followed it up with this:
WOOD FIRE DOESN'T MELT GOLD BEAMS
— Dan Broadbent (@aSciEnthusiast) April 16, 2019
But I’ve gotten no fewer than 50 messages (all from men) trying to explain how I’m wrong.
(Yes, I just embedded a Facebook post of my Twitter post. Get mad about it.)
If you’re looking for nuance and depth of conversation on Twitter, you’re on the wrong platform. I’m aware that fires can be hotter than 600° Celsius. While the melting point of gold is indeed 1064°C, I am aware it would become weakened before that point. I’m also aware the fire was mostly on the roof. If you try to break down a joke for 100% accuracy, you’re gonna have a bad time.
The only real goal I had with the tweet was to knock down the notion that there was any kind of supernatural explanation for it. As a bonus, I thought *maybe* some people would look up the conversion of Celsius to Fahrenheit, and help normalize the metric system here in the US.
But I’m really happy that it’s taken off and done so well, because it really shows how successful atheism activism has been, and how far we’ve come in normalizing criticism of religion.
I re-framed my original tweet though, using this picture of a burned down McDonald’s I found:
After a terrible fire at this McDonald's, Ronald Mcdonald remained untouched – and still smiling.
Please explain to me how you don’t believe in Ronald Mcdonald after seeing this! pic.twitter.com/guUYY2QgKk
— Dan Broadbent (@aSciEnthusiast) April 16, 2019
But the response from religious trolls have been the most amusing part. It’s as if they think I won’t re-post the awful things they say or something. I don’t get it.
I’m not unfamiliar with handling people on the internet. I mean, if they want to really cut through the noise and get to me, they should be happy about the extra publicity, right? So let’s give it to them.
This might be a good spot for me to put an ad for one of my shirts, and I think this is the perfect one:
You can get this shirt here, or see other cool designs I have in my store!
I also have had a lot of people try to slide into my DMs.
At least this guy told me to have a nice day. He didn’t have to do that. He could have just left it at “twat” but he took the extra effort to wish me well. I respect that.
I went as far as a simple Google search, and that made him upset.
This next one might be one of my all-time favorites, because I’m a fascist.
I like that he says I wouldn’t say something in person, and when I inform him I did (I’m going to edit the video of it at some point and post it, I promise), he says I’m being egotistical.
For the record, I probably am. I’m making a blog post about replies to me, after all. And if you’re going to do anything in the public sphere of any magnitude, you have to have some pretty thick skin or a great therapist (or both!).
But I really do hope he orders those snickers, and if he does, I’m really sad I didn’t put my affiliate code in that link.
But hey, at least I can fix that problem now (buy those Snickers in the ad above or something else on Amazon so I can make some money, thx).
I hope he had the existential crisis that I did after I typed that.
There were also replies on Twitter too that I felt stood out enough for me to retweet.
I'd rather take my time and be correct instead of claiming something is magic and be proven wrong countless times https://t.co/aA3iYAN7ka
— Dan Broadbent (@aSciEnthusiast) April 16, 2019
Being quick, but wrong is not a very good selling point. Imagine if your Uber driver promised to be super quick, but dropped you off at the wrong spot. Not very useful, right?
Good thing I said wood fire instead of charcoal then isn't it https://t.co/5v1lK4vK84
— Dan Broadbent (@aSciEnthusiast) April 17, 2019
Thanks for the brosplaining, bro.
Imagine thinking people who state objective facts are "shitheads" https://t.co/KY52OFeJUq
— Dan Broadbent (@aSciEnthusiast) April 17, 2019
I’ve been called worse.
If I meet a god when I die I'll have a shitload more questions for him than he will have for me, such as:
– The Holocaust. Why didn't god stop it?
– That whole "cancer in kids" thing
– Wars. The fuck is up with that?
– Killing other living things for our own survival. What?!? https://t.co/x6P3fhPYaM— Dan Broadbent (@aSciEnthusiast) April 17, 2019
The thing here is that god is all-knowing, so even before I was born, he would have known that I would be an atheist. But if he grants forgiveness when you die, as long as you said “oops I was wrong,” then what’s the point of wasting time (and money tithing) by being religious during the one and only life that you will ever have?
This one was just kind of lazy, and the only reason I’m posting it is because of the sad attempt at a personal attack (and because I couldn’t stop dunking on people yesterday on Twitter).
He did end up deleting the tweet and blocking me, though.
Guess the snowflake couldn't take the heat pic.twitter.com/scXjxdOA62
— Dan Broadbent (@aSciEnthusiast) April 17, 2019
Apparently I made someone delete their Twitter account, too.
My favorite is @RVelovic pic.twitter.com/pxSuAPFAp0
— Dan Broadbent (@aSciEnthusiast) April 17, 2019
Apparently he put his account in “protected” mode pretty quickly (meaning only approved people could see/reply to his tweets), and shortly thereafter just up and deleted his entire account.
Holy cow, now he's deleted his account.
I think this is the first time I've ever made someone delete their account.
— Dan Broadbent (@aSciEnthusiast) April 18, 2019
I’ve told people to delete their accounts before, but nobody has actually done it. Pretty cool feeling.
More #quickmafs:
Granite melts at ~1215° C
This stuff is really easy to Google, people https://t.co/ssrWCNOAIh
— Dan Broadbent (@aSciEnthusiast) April 17, 2019
With some 4000 replies to the original, I’m sure there are more gems I missed. I only really paid attention to it last night and haven’t looked today. If you find some particularly good ones, feel free to screenshot them and put them in the comments.
And look, I get it. “Not all Christians are like that.” I know. There are also a lot of atheists who are dickheads, too. However, I’ve yet to encounter an atheist, even an asshole one, who has sent things like that to someone in the name of Physics or in the name of Isaac Newton or in the name of Darwin.
Religion truly poisons everything.
But to close out on a happy note, here’s a cat tax of our four good bois. Feel free to shower them with compliments and suggest names for their album cover.
Oh my Darwin how did I almost forget to cat tax you people?!?
From left to right:
Garfield
Professor Galileo Borealis (or just The Professor)
Little Man
Jack, Esquire pic.twitter.com/kTUYzJwOaZ— Dan Broadbent (@aSciEnthusiast) April 17, 2019