I respect Chris Pratt a lot for doing this. You can tell he wanted to make the speech about faith and God, but had to pad it with a few, forced jokes here and there. It’s like he had a big, delicate vase–something that could break and shatter very easily–and a very small box to put it in (the mind of Hollywood) and so he fit it with a few packing peanuts (jokes about turds, mostly) to ensure it arrived in one piece. Mostly, I think he succeeded, but who cares even if he didn’t? Hollywood, Schmollywood: Chris Pratt spoke to the heart of America.
People talk about bravery and all this stuff. People say celebrities are brave when they accept some weird looking trophy and bash Donald Trump while holding it on stage. But that isn’t exactly what I think of when I imagine bravery. What I think of when I imagine bravery are martyrs and soldiers and whoever. But bashing Donald Trump at some Hollywood award ceremony is the surest way to a standing ovation; it is the farthest thing from being “brave.” This should be obvious regardless of how you feel politically, whether you like Donald Trump, despise him, or are indifferent about him. (This post, believe me, is not politically motivated; but it is spiritually motivated.) I think we can all say there is nothing particularly brave about insulting somebody in front of people who all insult that person themselves.
But I was heartened to see how much support Chris Pratt was getting from the common folk, even from people on otherwise non-religious outlets. The video was shared to me numerous times, and the comments were rather exuberant and celebratory. Of course, there were a few inane statements, here and there, which is to be expected when there are atheists about. For example,
The lady’s response is interesting and worth looking at, but not the point that I would make.
The point that I would make is this Andrew fellow really doesn’t seem to have much thinking capacity at all, and that, in typical atheist fashion, is attacking a conception of God that no straight-thinking believer in God actually purports to hold. This is why atheists resort to strawmen; they can’t offer a single valid position for their claim, and so present their opponents position as a sort of obscene caricature. This is why I have such a hard time taking most atheists seriously, especially those who fall into the “New Atheist” camp.
God–and let me say this for the 1000th time–isn’t some “being in the sky”, or even one being among many. God, by deduction and necessity, is immaterial, timeless, spaceless, and so on. A fairy creature is a physical thing, I would suppose, if it actually existed–it would have parts, and it would move about in space. Same with Flying Pasta Balls, and whatever else atheists like to use as examples of God. These are not difficult conceptions to dispel; one need only a rudimentary understanding of logic to see why these village atheist presentations of God are so silly and sad. It goes to show that to be an atheist is really an act of will, NOT an act of reason–it involves pretending God into something you want God to be, so you don’t have to believe in him; not trying to understand God as he actually is. Otherwise people wouldn’t say such embarrassing things.
But one more funny note about this Andrew fellow. He mentions “the right thing to do.” But I would like to know where he gets this idea of some “right thing to do”? It seems he’s advocating a sort of objective morality–like there actually is a Truly Right and Truly Wrong in the world. But on atheism, as I’ve discussed no short number of times, and most recently here and here, there can be no such thing as objective morality, because it lacks the necessary ontological foundation. For there to be a Moral Law–and especially for there to be moral obligations and duties–there must be a moral law giver. But on atheism, all we have is the fantastically improbably, unexplained chance occurrence of nature and evolution, so morality is reduced, inevitably, to a mere survival mechanism shaped by selection on random mutation. “The right thing to do” doesn’t exist on atheism, because there is no way that such a notion could exist. As our favorite atheist philosopher Neiztche once told us, “There are no objective moral facts.” It’s all subjective, in other words. An illusion, and nothing more.
This only further underscores the utter shallowness of most atheists’ capacity for abstract thought. If this Andrew wants to talk about the right thing to do, he needs to pull in objective morality to do it, but if he brings in objective morality, then he must also bring in God, which explodes his entire position.
But why let inconsistency get in your way when attacking a person’s religion, particularly Chris Pratt’s? Surely, this has never stopped atheists before.
– Pat
Mike Rickard says
Pat, I’ve heard some rational arguments from atheists, but this guy does not fall into the category. As you mentioned, his concept of what Christians believe is so far-fetched you can’t help but wonder whether he was impaired when he wrote the comments. I like to hear Christians share their testimonies because it’s a great example of what God can do in the life of an individual. I know there are some intelligent, rational, and perhaps even well-meaning atheists, but you can’t make a strawman argument and expect people with critical thinking skills to take it seriously. Apparently, this person is of low intelligence and/or gets their concept of Christianity from watching TV and film. Try stepping into a church and see first-hand what it’s all about.
Cheska J says
I actually admired Chris Pratt for what he did, you are right he had to include some other tips before he reached his testimonial, perhaps to sway the audience a bit because directly giving a testimonial in this world today especially in a context where it is not usually expected would receive direct backlash by many. I’ve read so many comments similar to the Andrew guy on how we don’t need some “thought up idea of a god” to tell us what is right or wrong and how we can follow what is right and wrong without such, it all goes back to the points you’ve made in your previous posts and how this could not simply be. Learning from you has truly been a great experience for me, Pat. I look up to how well read and how you can explain things in a way that clears things out.