I Dont Think This Church Gave Enough Thought to the Quotation on Its New Mural

[NeoGreen]

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/07/24/i-dont-think-this-church-gave-enough-thought-to-the-quotation-on-its-new-mural/

I Don’t Think This Church Gave Enough Thought to the Quotation on Its New Mural
July 24, 2017 by Hemant Mehta

If you visit Christ Way Missionary Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, you’ll see a new mural they painted on the side of the building. It’s very colorful, with buildings and flowers and a diverse group of hands hoisting a globe. Reader Scott noticed it last week and was immediately moved to take a picture.

Mostly because he saw the inspirational quotation they included: “We rise by lifting others.”

It’s not the line itself that stood out — they probably found it by Googling “inspirational quotations” and seeing what came up — but Scott noticed the name of the man who said it because it’s written there in small print: Robert Ingersoll, a.k.a. “The Great Agnostic.” One of the most fierce critics of religion in his time.

Did this church have any clue that they were quoting someone who would almost certainly never step foot inside the building?

A few days ago, I emailed the church to let them know about Ingersoll and to ask if they knew about him and/or regretted the decision. I figured it would be easy for them to just laugh it off and say the words mattered far more than the person who said it.

I still haven’t heard back.

[Squinch]

1. Meh. This seems like a silly "gotcha" kind of thing. If the statement is true, it's true

The founding fathers almost all owned slaves. Does that nullify the rights codified in the Constitution?

[Lordquinton]

5. There's a Margeret Thatcher quote floating around

"You have to be lucky every day, we only have to be lucky once"

The problem is that she didn't say it, the IRA said it... about her...

Does it matter who said it?

[Duppers]

2. Wow.

But this fits with the rest of their ignorance.

[gilbert sullivan]

3. No big surprise

There are many amazing things in this world. One of the most astonishing is that many people still appear to believe in talking snakes and asses, global floods, virgins magically impregnated, invisible undetectable gods up in the sky, men living inside fish, eternal paradise/heaven, prophets riding horses up to heaven where 72 virgins await martyrs, and dead guys waking up after 3 days.

But then people who substitute faith for thinking have no intellectual horsepower anyway.

[lunasun]

4. No clue because they probably believe only the folks of thier religion would believe that

and only if you are religious would you help others

[Towlie]

6. Repeating a witty saying is not endorsement of its author.

For example, Lawrence Krauss begins Chapter Two of A Universe From Nothing with this quote:

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.

—DONALD RUMSFELD

I think it's safe to assume that Lawrence Krauss is not a fan of Donald Rumsfeld, or, more importantly, that his use of this quote wasn't meant to imply that he is. He credited the author of what he found to be a useful quote out of simple courtesy.

Also, I know that many of us have repeated the quote from Voltaire that "Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer." ("If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him" ), even though Voltaire was actually a believer and didn't intend any irony in his statement. We repeat it because it's a catchy expression of an objective truth, not because we represent its author as an authority.