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Aron Ra Quotes (1962-)
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About Aron Ra
L. Aron Nelson (born October 15, 1962), known professionally as Aron Ra, is the Texas state director of the American Atheists, host of the Ra-Men Podcast, a public speaker, video producer, blogger, and vlogger.
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“Not everything that is big and dead is a dinosaur.”
“To the best of my understanding, bigotry, intolerance and hatred are not values, but then faith isn't a virtue either.”
“Your greatest strength, Ray, and possibly your only strength, is in pretending that you don't understand simple things.”
“We ‘unbelievers’ are not a threat; we offer help. Whoever comes away from delusion will be better off. Just ask some of those who already have. They’ll be happy to help you.”
“Theism is nothing more than a bunch of fables made up by superstitious primitives. Having a doctorate in theology is consequently not significantly different than having a PhD in Mother Goose.”
“Some people criticize philosophy as pointless navel-gazing. But there is a lot more to it than just that. There’s also a lot of beard-stroking: and to my experience, quite a lot of arrogant condescension too.”
““How do you reconcile materialism with idealism?” Whenever I hear a philosophical question like that, I think “Here we go. We’re going to use smoke and mirrors to change the subject and thus avoid it.””
“There is no such thing as a religious theory, just like science doesn’t promote “non-religious doctrines” either. A doctrine is a set of taught beliefs. Science is an investigation; not a matter of belief.”
“There are no special attributes to distinguish Christianity from any other collection of baseless lies. If there were no Christians tomorrow, we’d still have Muslims and a slough of other indefensible belief systems.”
“For me to believe in God would probably require blunt force trauma to the brain, or perhaps a debilitating cognitive disorder. What would it take for you to believe that the myth of Persephone explains the seasons? Or that babies are delivered by a stork?”
“The pledges come from a believers’ standpoint. The country needs to earn the support of its citizenry. You can’t extort it. You can’t get people indoctrinated by always saying every morning before class where they’ll never question what you’ll do.”
“Despite the severity of their punishments, religions have still consistently failed in virtually all attempts to curtail criminal behavior, and have in fact actually empowered or promoted criminality in many ways. More reasonable laws are usually more effective.”
“It seems that religion only knows how to react violently, out of vengeance. Again this is because it’s a belief system rooted in dichotomy and bigotry, with little or no desire to consider extenuating circumstances and NO ability to question itself objectively.”
“Do you know the penalty for blasphemy? It's death, just as it always is whenever religion is threatened, especially the Abrahamic religions. Violence is only the answer for those who don't understand the question, and religion is a misunderstanding of everything.”
Aron Ra Quotes by Topic
Find exactly what you are looking for by browsing this categorized list of Aron Ra quotes by topic.
Aron Ra on Godzilla 3 quotes
“I wasn’t really a fan of kaiju, (giant Japanese monsters) only Godzilla himself. He was my hero as a boy, and even now his roar has been my only ring tone any of the cell phones I have ever had.”
Aron Ra on Pterosaurs 3 quotes
“Most people think of pterosaurs as "flying dinosaurs". When I was a boy, I remember the other kids called them "dinosaur-birds", but they were neither dinosaurs or birds. The first problem is that most people don't know any more about the fossil record than what they've seen in a few plastic pieces in a prehistoric playset. Not only do they typically think that all these things are dinosaurs, they might even think that these are all the fossil forms that are known. They have no idea how rich the fossil record is.”
Aron Ra on Abrahamic religions 2 quotes
“Asking for the meaning of life is no different than a fortune teller casting tea leaves, chicken bones, or Tarot cards, then looking at the random mess they created and wondering what that means. Abrahamic religion offers no purpose either, apart from a Stockholm syndrome, because the best you can hope for is to be imprisoned by an indomitable despot and have to press your lips to his colon for the rest of eternity –or else suffer a fate worse than death. You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”
Aron Ra on Paranormal
“Who would want to be trapped in a house with an indomitable telepathic despot and have to guard your thoughts –or be voluntarily mindless- and endure that existence forever and ever?”
Aron Ra on Heaven
“Who would want to be trapped in a house with an indomitable telepathic despot and have to guard your thoughts –or be voluntarily mindless- and endure that existence forever and ever?”
Aron Ra on Jehovah
“If YHWH promised a holy land to his chosen people, they should expect more damnation than paradise. That would be consistent with the Bible's blood-stained stories, and that's the way we've always seen it on the news in my country.”
Aron Ra on Belief
“Believe as hard as you want to. But convincing yourself however firmly still can’t change the reality of things. Seeing is believing. But seeing isn’t knowing. Believing isn’t knowing. Subjective convictions are meaningless in science, and eyewitness testimony is the least reliable form of evidence.”
Aron Ra on Existence of God
“Proving evolution wouldn’t disprove God unless your god is a book. The Bible is easy to disprove, but that shouldn’t be enough to disprove God. Whether God exists or not, evolution is still an inescapable fact of population genetics and the Bible is still a man-made compilation of falsified fables. Not even the existence of God could change either of these things.”
Aron Ra on Birds
“Every feature that is known to exist in every bird universally accepted as such is also found on dinosaurs: four-chambered heart, fused caudal vertebrae, gastroliths, even the avian respiratory system have all been found on fossil theropods, especially dromaeosaurs and maniraptors. You can distinguish birds among dinosaurs, but it is no longer possible to distinguish birds from dinosaurs.”
Aron Ra on Dinosauria
“Every feature that is known to exist in every bird universally accepted as such is also found on dinosaurs: four-chambered heart, fused caudal vertebrae, gastroliths, even the avian respiratory system have all been found on fossil theropods, especially dromaeosaurs and maniraptors. You can distinguish birds among dinosaurs, but it is no longer possible to distinguish birds from dinosaurs.”
Aron Ra on Godzilla (2014 film)
“I like Godzilla as much as the next guy. No, I like Godzilla more than the next guy! Since I was a little kid, I watched all those absurd rubber-suit movies thinking how cool it would be if we remade Gojira as a big budget block-buster. They failed to do that in 1985, when they brought back Raymond Burr. They failed to do that in 1998, with Tristar’s GINO (Godzilla In Name Only) and I’m sorry to say that they failed again with the latest attempt.”
Aron Ra on Godzilla (1998 film)
“Amusingly in 1954, Toho made a giant lizard and called it a dinosaur. In 1998, Tristar re-designed Godzilla as a dinosaur, but called it a lizard. Of course that wasn’t the only thing Tristar did wrong. They tried to ruin the monster completely. They took away the only thing that worked in decades of sequels, the look of the monster itself. Then they took away everything that made Godzilla appealing to Kaiju fans, then they tied it down and shot it. Such disrespect. If you’re going to make a movie that already has a fan-base, and they are the ones who will decide whether your film will pay off, respect those fans and the story they’re paying to see.”
Aron Ra on The Bible
“The Bible was very definitely written by men, and not superior men either; far from it! This is why so much of it can be shown to be historically and scientifically dead wrong about damned-near everything back-to-front. We’re talking about people who believe snakes and donkeys can talk, who believe in incantations, blood sacrifice, ritual spells, enchanted artifacts, pyrotechnic potions, astrology, and the five elements of witchcraft. They thought that if you use a magic wand to sprinkle blood all over someone, it will cure them of leprosy. We’re talking about people who think that rabbits chew cud, and that bats are birds, and whales are fish, and that π is a round number. These folks believed that if you display striped patterns to a pregnant cow, it would bare striped calves. How could anyone say that who knows anything about genetics? Obviously the authors of this book didn’t.”
Aron Ra on Creationism
“To adequately understand evolution, you not only have to understand how to be scientific, (which is the real trick for most people) but you also have to know something about cellular biology, genetics, and anatomy, geology, particularly paleontology, as well as environmental systems, tectonics, atomic chemistry, and especially taxonomy, which most people don’t know squat about at all. Most people who accept evolution also tend to know a whole lot about cosmology, geography, history, sociology, politics, and of course, religion. But to believe in creationism, you don’t have to know anything about anything, and it's better if you don’t! Because creationism relies on ignorance. It is not honest research! It is a scam, a con job exploiting the common folk, and preying on their deepest beliefs and fears. Creationist apologetics depends on misrepresented data and misquoted authorities, out-of-date and out-of-context, and uses distorted definitions if it uses definitions at all.”
Aron Ra on Godzilla (1954 film)
“The original 1954 Japanese film, Gojira was iconic, and only made a couple mistakes of any significance. (1) They killed him in the end, and we saw his body turned to skeleton. Not the best way to begin 60 years worth of sequels. (2) Godzilla was depicted as a dinosaur, and was associated with living trilobites. Even if there was some sort of ‘realm that time forgot’ out in the Pacific somewhere, Trilobites were already extinct before the first dinosaurs, and Godzilla was clearly no dinosaur. The conceptual artists reportedly referenced illustrations of dinosaurs, but that’s not what they rendered. All bi-pedal dinosaurs [Therapods] were digigrade, walking on their toes, like birds, and usually only three or four digits. Godzilla was plantigrade and pentadactyle, (having five digits and walking on the whole foot) just like lizards. It even looks like a lizard, apart from the fact that no reptile has an actual nose or external ears. In a sense, what Toho pictures created was actually an oriental dragon. These tend to mix reptilian and mammalian traits. Amusingly in 1954, Toho made a giant lizard and called it a dinosaur. In 1998, Tristar re-designed Godzilla as a dinosaur, but called it a lizard. Of course that wasn’t the only thing Tristar did wrong. They tried to ruin the monster completely. They took away the only thing that worked in decades of sequels, the look of the monster itself. Then they took away everything that made Godzilla appealing to Kaiju fans, then they tied it down and shot it. Such disrespect. If you’re going to make a movie that already has a fan-base, and they are the ones who will decide whether your film will pay off, respect those fans and the story they’re paying to see.”
What Aron Ra Said About Others
Discover personal opinions Aron Ra shared regarding contemporaries.
Aron Ra on Ray Comfort
“Your greatest strength, Ray, and possibly your only strength, is in pretending that you don't understand simple things.”
Aron Ra on Charles Manson
“If Manson lived 2,000 years ago, we might have churches worshiping him now. So it was easy for me to imagine a completely fraudulent scamming huckster named Jesus.”
Aron Ra on Rousas John Rushdoony
“He was a racist, misogynist Christian Dominionist who unabashedly denounced democracy in favor of an American theocracy which he hoped would be so extremist that it would enforce Levitical law.”
Aron Ra on Pope Benedict XVI
“I’m gonna miss the old sith lord. He was the best pope atheists could hope for. He started out as a Hitler youth actually wearing a Nazi uniform. As a Cardinal, he famously conspired to conceal sex crimes against children for the sake of the church. As pope, he addressed an audience in an AIDS ravaged area of Africa, and told them that use of condoms actually increased risk of STDs. His objection to birth-control took precedence over human life. That is how evil he is.”
Aron Ra on Jack T. Chick
“Jack Chick was a graphic artist who lived his delusional life in lies, prejudice and paranoia, promoting racist, sexist credo-specific bigotry against everyone smarter than him, or who understood things better than he did: which is pretty much everyone since he was really impressively fucking stupid -even compared to other creationists. He was so bad that Chick Publications is recognized as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. So now I hear that this creepy old dogmatic fucktard has finally stopped breathing at 92 years old. I’m unapologetically glad about that. His death makes our world a better place. I think that everyone who believes the way that he did should show solidarity by burying their faces in the sand and holding their breath until Jack Chick breathes again. Because our world just doesn’t need anyone like that -making life irritating for everyone capable of rational or compassionate thought.”
Aron Ra on Ken Ham
“It may be rude of me to call Ham a liar, but only because sometimes the truth hurts. So now we come to the real reason why Ham won’t debate me, and why he won’t let any of his PhD stand-ins debate me either: He knows they can’t win. I know that just sounds like a boast, but I’m serious. If it were him and I on the stage together, we would be two extremists, I admit. But one of us would be clearly correct and the other obviously not. He’s got a multimillion-dollar scam going. I know his game, and he knows I’ll show it to everyone else. My whole purpose in this is to hold Ham accountable, to prove in a public demonstration that Young Earth Creationism is not science, and is not like science; that it will teach children to understand nothing about the natural world. Thus it would be nothing less than an injustice to allow him to peddle that to other people’s children as if it were actually factually accurate or has any scientific or educational merit whatsoever. Ham knows that I’m familiar enough with the under-handed tactics of creationists that I can expose his fraudulent position better than most professors could. So if he debates me, it will cost him. He’ll lose even more of the already dwindling support base he still has.”
Aron Ra on Kent Hovind
“So, Kent Hovind gets out of prison and every atheist wants a piece of him. I understand that; I hate liars, I hate anyone who deceives even little old ladies and especially other people's children. So, of course I'd love to have the opportunity to get into it with Mister (not Doctor) Kent Hovind, as would every other atheist activist with a passion for science and a concern for truth. Understand though that this charlatan is every kind of fraud. He just wants to reestablish his racket. His schtick is to pretend to be more important than he is; we all know that his thesis was just as bogus as the PHD that he bought from a mail order catalog for about $100, he also claims to have taught high school science for about 15 years, hoping that folks will think that he has some verifiable connection to a high school somewhere (an actual school), but what I suspect is really the case is he may have preached to homeschooled kids at his house (which he used as a church sometimes). I can understand Atheist Podcast wanting to have this guy on to take him to task, but remember, he is a conman, a professional fraud. In his mind, he gains merit and financial supporters as a result of being "oppressed in the face of adversity", so go ahead and have him on, but only as a sideshow freak, someone to gawk at; show him the contempt he deserves. Don't treat him like an opponent, as if he had something to bring to the table.”
About Aron Ra
L. Aron Nelson (born October 15, 1962), known professionally as Aron Ra, is the Texas state director of the American Atheists, host of the Ra-Men Podcast, a public speaker, video producer, blogger, and vlogger.