Memes are in many ways the currency of Twitter. Some are funny (usually, in our opinion, memes from the right), while some are meant to make you think. The ones that are more thought pieces are a lot harder to pull off, of course, because if there's one thing that people tend to not much like it's being preached to when they haven't asked for it. Plus you run into the complication that something that seems like a really good point in your head maybe doesn't work as well as you thought it would once other people start critically analyzing it. Take, for example, this post from an account that goes by 'Young Atheist', doing their edgy best to show how much better atheism is:
And.. that's what makes us better. pic.twitter.com/onOV4fwReP
— Young Atheist ⚛️ (@YoungAtheist0) February 24, 2024
This isn't a new thought... heck, this isn't even a new meme! We wrote about someone else out there peddling this meme a few months ago in fact... and with surprisingly similar results: People asking where all the atheist hospitals are, mostly.
Where the hospitals then bro
— Good Tweetman (@Goodtweet_man) February 26, 2024
Where's the hospital you built?
— XBradTC (@xbradtc) February 26, 2024
Why don't atheists build hospitals? The Catholics have built thousands
— Toell Nemesis (@toellsnemesis) February 26, 2024
This is very much true. As noted by the Catholic Health Association of the United States,
Comprised of more than 600 hospitals and 1,600 long-term care and other health facilities in all 50 states, the Catholic health ministry is the largest group of nonprofit health care providers in the nation. Every day, more than one in seven patients in the U.S. is cared for in a Catholic hospital.
So... surely there are some atheist examples we can be pointed to? Where's 'Saint Nobody's Hospital For The Sick'? Where's 'There's No God General Hospital'? Anybody?
I have to ask - how many atheists have built hospitals and charitable organizations? Furthermore, how many have built universities and libraries and soup kitchens?
— Gregory Gelfond (@HushGregory) February 25, 2024
Atheist built that instead of a donating to a hospital
— Caro (@OutlawObscenity) February 25, 2024
Has atheism accomplished anything other than smug self-congratulation?
— And Don't Call Me Shirley. (@Meme_Behavior) February 26, 2024
Show us something that atheism built. Anything.
Atheism and anti-theism hasn't built much, no, but as is pointed out it's destroyed stuff and that's just a good, right?
These guys were atheists too. Just sayin pic.twitter.com/xp9g1rWPCJ
— Jon Miltimore (@miltimore79) February 26, 2024
Yeah, we're guessing those aren't the atheists the author of the meme had in mind. Of course given that the quote itself is from Madalyn Murray O'Hair, the anarchist radical feminist founder of 'American Atheist Magazine' who was also a holocaust denier maybe she'd be cool with being lumped in with Stalin and Mao. Who knows.
To be clear about your errors:
— Pudge (@pudgenet) February 26, 2024
* the first two sentences are false dichotomies; Christians believe both sides
* you give no reason why the “instead of” side of the sentence is bad
* the third sentence falsely asserts what Christians believe
* Christians believe the last sentence
That’s a remarkably dumb quote. Atheists don’t build hospitals, religious people do.
— tim maguire (@timmaguire42) February 26, 2024
How is it possible you don’t know that?
“We are the folk song army.
— Feral Goddess (@LadaMokusa) February 25, 2024
Every one of us cares.
We all hate poverty, war, and injustice,
Unlike the rest of you squares.”
- The Folk Song Army, Tom Lehrer 1965
The marvel of Tom Lehrer is that on most topics there's a song he did decades ago that's apropos to the topic. This is of course no different.
Christians built thousands of hospitals *and* churches.
— Joanne Mason (@JoanneMason11) February 26, 2024
Christians feed the hungry, house the homeless *and* pray.
Christians engage with, and are involved in life *and* hope for eternal life.
Christians treat disease, feed the poor *and* hope for peace.
M. M. O'Hair was a thug. https://t.co/CPHQLmzKkt
yeah but Christians build hospitals AND churches, and all you guys built was this stupid cube https://t.co/vtDjxDgERX
— jardiniernormie (@jardiniernormie) February 26, 2024
“Well, St. Nobody’s down on Fifth has a phenomenal cancer ward, but, considering the patient is a child, you should check out Our Person of Despair in Des Moines.” https://t.co/5XCbKWWT4Z
— Aelfred The Great (@aelfred_D) February 26, 2024
Honestly if atheists wanted to step up and start running hospitals I doubt most religious organizations would mind, as long as people were getting the care they needed. Somehow though it's so much easier to try to insult those who are doing stuff than it is to actually do stuff yourself... couch warrioring is the way of things these days. But there's also the problem that the whole point of atheism is that there is no unifying principle to it; churches have a central tenet and deity around which they can rally, whereas atheism just has a generalized agreement in the absence of a deity, which would be an odd and difficult thing to build a religious or quasi-religious organization around. The closest they can really muster are things like The Satanic Temple which doesn't do much but build cheap statues of Baphomet in state houses to be edgy which is a big fat lot of help to nobody.
But rest assured that the next time one of these folks gets unexpectedly ill and needs medical attention there's likely to be a nice doctor at a nearby catholic hospital that will be happy to see to their health... it's only the Christian thing to do.
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