"Duck Dynasty" patriarch Phil Robertson is under fire again after giving a gruesome speech about atheists during the Vero Beach Prayer Breakfast on Friday.
In the speech, Robertson gives a fictional account of a grisly rape and murder of an atheist man’s wife and daughters, suggesting that the assailants would use his atheistic beliefs to excuse their crimes.
“And then they can look at him and say, 'Isn't it great that I don’t have to worry about being judged? Isn't it great that there's nothing wrong with this? There's no right or wrong,’” Robertson said before going on to describe more graphic violence. “‘Wouldn't it be something if this [sic] was something wrong with this? But you’re the one who says there is no God, there’s no right, there’s no wrong, so we’re just having fun. We're sick in the head. Have a nice day.’ If it happened to them, they probably would say, 'Something about this just ain't right.'"
Atheists have taken issue with the suggestion that they are immoral an incapable of judging right and wrong.
"Robertson has made a mistake so old and so worn out that it can only be a deliberate lie or a result of sheer ignorance. Atheism is not, and never has been, a synonym for moral nihilism,"
Dustin Chalker of the Mobile Atheist Community told AL.com.
He went on to point out the morality is separate from religion.
"Rather than obedience to a mystical authority that probably doesn't exist, atheist morality is based on things that we can prove: other humans exist and behavioral self-regulation is necessary for peaceful coexistence," Chalker said.
Writing on the Friendly Atheist blog, Terry Firma said Robertson neglected to talk about the number of crimes committed by people of faith.
“I don’t know a single atheist or agnostic who thinks that terrorizing, raping, torturing, mutilating, and killing people is remotely OK, and I frankly think that Robertson doesn’t either,” he wrote.
John Bona, founder and co-chair of the Prayer Breakfast at which
Robertson was speaking, told The Blaze the "Duck Dynasty" star was just making an illustration.
"I think Phil was saying that we have laws against murder, because the people who made the laws back then had a high degree of the value of life and they believed it is wrong to murder," he said. "What he was saying — if there’s no fixed point of morality, God’s law, that leads directly back to a God, then anything goes.”
Bona also pointed out to The Blaze that Robertson "repeatedly told the crowd that 'he loves everyone.'"
Robertson’s comments drew heated responses on Twitter.
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