Fat Atheists, PZ Myers, Chuck Norris, and the Internet

I mentioned Conservapedia in that last post. And it’s hilarious. Have you read it? Apparently being an atheist makes you fat. It’s their “Article of the Month” at the moment – Atheism and Obesity,” basically the argument boils down to “atheists are fat. Y’all.” Actually. Most of the atheists I know are fat.

Here’s an excerpt…

“Two of the major risk factors for becoming obese according to the Mayo Clinic are poor dietary choices and inactivity, thus given the above cited Gallup research, it appears as if non-religious are more prone to becoming obese than very religious individuals.[8] The Bible declares that gluttony is a sin.[9] Furthermore, the Bible declares the physical body of Christians to be temples of the Holy Spirit.[10] Therefore, it is not surprising that many very religious Christians would leave healthy lives.

Christianity is the world’s largest religion and it has seen tremendous growth over its 2000 year history.[11] In the last fifty years, Christianity has recently seen explosive growth outside the Western World.[12][13][14][15] In 2000, there were twice as many non-Western Christians as Western Christians.[16] In 2005, there were four times as many non-Western Christians as there were Western Christians.[17] Of course, a big reason for the explosive growth of Christianity outside the Western world was due to highly religious people propagating the Christian faith and there are now more non-Western missionaries than Western missionaries.[18] Besides non-Westerners often being less sedentary, non-Western diets are often healthier than the diets Westerners consume and there is significantly less obesity in those non-Western cultures.[19][20][21] Therefore, in recent history Christendom has seen a large influx of very religious people who live healthy lifestyles and have low levels of obesity. For example, the noted Evangelical preacher Rick Warren recently made a public commitment to lose 90 pounds.[22] Have you seen any of the prominent atheists make such a pledge?”

The article then goes on to feature pictures of fat atheists. Like PZ Myers.

Who is contrasted with the super-fit, and Christian, Chuck Norris.

Perhaps the best bit of the article is Chuck Norris’ warning for Christian parents about atheists and the Internet.

“Atheists are making a concerted effort to win the youth of America and the world. Hundreds of websites and blogs on the Internet seek to convince and convert adolescents, endeavoring to remove any residue of theism from their minds and hearts by packaging atheism as the choice of a new generation. While you think your kids are innocently surfing the Web, secular progressives are intentionally preying on their innocence and naivete.

What’s preposterous is that atheists are now advertising and soliciting on websites particularly created for teens.

YouTube, the most popular video site on the Net for young people, is one of their primary avenues for passing off their secularist propaganda.[35]”