Since Megan and myself both engage in debates with people of the religious persuasion fairly regularly, we always enjoy watching/reading other people’s exchanges to see where the arguments for and against supernatural beliefs have been headed lately. “Collision” is a real treat in that department, as it chronicles a series of debates between pastor Douglas Wilson and prominent atheist writer Christopher Hitchens. The trailer for the documentary can be seen in the clip below.
I would highly recommend that Christians and atheists alike watch the full documentary, as it sheds a lot of light on how the other side thinks and what they have to back up their positions. For anyone who has read the works of Christian apologists or engaged in discussion with the religious before, it won’t be a much of a surprise as to who comes out on top of the debates most often, but it’s still absolutely worth watching.
Rampant immorality is one of my biggest problems with Christianity, and the reason why I certainly wouldn’t convert even if there were evidence to back up the existence of a deity, his zombie son, or his talking snake nemesis. Throughout the Bible, the Christian deity commits, commands, and condones such horrifying atrocities as rape, murder, slavery, and genocide. As I’ve mentioned in several of my previous discussion with the religious, some of the more outright evil passages are Numbers 31 (in which God commands Moses to slaughter the Midianites and kidnap the surviving women), or Judges 21 (in which God condones the Israelites slaughtering an entire city and raping the surviving virgins, as well as their abduction and rape of even more virgins when the slaughtered city didn’t produce enough spoils).
Hitchens brings up the immorality issue frequently, even going after the core belief of Christianity: the salvation plan. Besides the outright immortal nature of the salvation plan itself (that the all-knowing, all-powerful God’s genius plan to save the world from his own decrees of hellfire involves human sacrifice), Hitchens takes it a step further and attacks the idea behind it. The idea that one can put all their responsibilities on someone else and have them pay the price for you is not exactly a moral concept on its own.
After his first assault on the immoral teachings of Christianity, Wilson responds that what Hitchens is doing is working within the framework of Christianity to attack Christianity. Wilson claims that this is essentially “hijacking the Christian car” and trying to purposefully run it into a tree. Clearly Wilson didn’t think this idea through, though. He’s essentially saying that atheists can’t borrow the ideas of Christianity to attack Christianity, which is a transparent attempt to deflect valid criticism of his religion. If this idea were correct, then Wilson himself could never attack Islam, or Judaism, or Wicca, and he most definitely can’t ever attack atheism. If we follow Wilson’s line of reasoning, then he can’t ever say “Atheists think this, and I disagree because….” Because he’d be hijacking the atheist car and trying to run it into a tree.
Like many other Christian apologists, Wilson tries to undermine atheism by stating that you can’t distinguish right from wrong or be a moral person if you believe in evolution (never mind that evolution has nothing to do with atheism, as atheism is a lack of belief in a deity, and not a verifiable natural process or study of biology). Unfortunately he doesn’t seem to understand that evolution is a not a system of morals. Evolution is a scientifically verifiable, observable fact. Evolution is real, regardless of what anyone decides to do with that fact. Survival of the fittest is a reality – but absolutely no evolutionary biologist would suggest that we use survival of the fittest as the basis for our morals or values. On a related note, Megan recently posted up a blog about how atheism does affect morals and societies, and how atheists compare to religionists in terms of incarceration rates at this location.
In a later segment of the film, Wilson says that if he’s in a dungeon chained to the wall, he will admit he can’t touch the jailer’s nose, but there’s no reason to think the jailer can’t come and touch him. He’s trying to use the analogy to indicate that we shouldn’t stop believing in a deity figure just because we can’t interact with it any way, as presumably it could interact with us if it chose to. What he’s failing to understand here is that his analogy doesn’t actually apply to deities or other supernatural events. In this scenario, you can see the jailer, the dungeon, and the chains. In reality, you can’t see any god, or any supernatural powers or sins preventing you from touching God, whether it be Zeus or Allah or Jesus or any other deity.
Getting back to the morality issue, Hitchens gets Wilson to openly say he has no problem with God commanding acts of genocide and war in the bible, such as the destruction of the Amalekites. Wilson even goes so far as to say that it would have been wrong to NOT kill the Amalekites because God commanded the killing, and he sees no moral problem with murder if God condones it. It’s always sickening when religious people use the same rationale as suicide bombers and see no problem with it. I’m the supposedly evil and immoral atheist, and I find the concept of slaughtering an entire group of people to be morally wrong – always. Yet somehow the Christians, who claim to have moral absolutes and to be morally superior to myself, are willing to ease their restrictions on genocide just because God said it was OK.
During a debate in which the crowd participates in the discussion, someone asks how Wilson explains that Norway, Finland, and Sweden are predominately atheist or agnostic, but are still among the most morally upright and benevolent in the world. He responds by saying that the prodigal son didn’t run out of the money on the first day, implying that all these countries will have to become Christian down the line or come to ruin. Apparently he’s missed that all three of those nations are consistently rated higher than the more Christian United States when it comes to literacy and quality of life, and that Finland was recently ranked as the best nation in the world (determined by comparing education, health, overall quality of life, economics, and political environment).
At one point Wilson says the Bible isn’t an arbitrary set of instructions, but rather a description of God’s character, and an example of how we should act. He says God is love and will love his neighbor and not do harm to his neighbor, even though he had previously said he was perfectly fine with God ordering the slaughter and eradication of the Amalekites. At the risk of being crass, I can only say that this shows what an immoral, hypocritical fucktard Mr. Wilson (and Christians in general) really is.
In yet another example of Christians somehow arriving at the conclusion that is the exact opposite of reality, Wilson even tries to infer that Hitler was an atheist. To determine the truth or falsehood of this claim, one only has to head down to their local library and pick up a copy of “Mein Kampf.” Adolf Hitler specifically writes about his faith and belief in both God and Jesus numerous times in the book. A list of resources covering his statements and writings regards his religious beliefs can be found at this location. It’s honestly disheartening how it appears that the religious in general, and Christians in particular, have such a hard time with factual accuracies, and a total inability to research a topic before discussing it.
I’ll let the rest of the documentary speak for itself so as not to ruin the entire thing for anyone who wants to watch – you won’t be disappointed.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Putting Faith Healing to the Test
Back in August I posted up a blog response to the Christian documentary "Finger of God," which claims Christians can resurrect the dead and perform other healing miracles. During my discussions with the individual who recommended the movie, and several of his acquaintances, I frequently heard claims of magical healing brought on by faith in Jesus. There was, of course, never any evidence to back up these claims. Tiring of my constant demands for evidence, several of these religious folks put together some money for Megan and myself to take a trip to Portland, Oregon and experience faith healing ourselves at the Church of Grace. A 10 minute video documenting our encounter with Christian healing can be viewed below.
It should go without saying that of course no magic healing occurred. What's so humorous to us about this trip is that we were constantly frustrated with the gentleman who paid for us to go to Portland because of his staunch refusal to research any issues or look at any scientific evidence available. That came back to haunt him in a big way on this trip. Before we left, Megan even discussed with this guy that the church's website was entirely in Russian (apparently he hadn't bothered to look before taking it on faith that this was the right healing church for us.) His response was that the Russian text was a "server error" and that there would be English speakers waiting for us on the healing service on Tuesday, which of course turned out to be a Russian prayer service that we were specifically told not to go to.
As quick side note - people have asked what I meant when I said "You lose $600" at the end of the video clip. That was the amount the religious folk gave us to go visit the healing church and have Megan’s Type I, child-onset diabetes magically removed.
On the non-religious front, our trip to Portland was amazing! Powell's Books was a truly awesome experience, as it takes up over a full square block and they give you a map when you walk in. I came out with way, way more roleplaying books than I needed, rounding out my collection of Vampire: The Masquerade stuff and picking up the new Trail of Cthluhu game. A blog covering some of the great meals we had there can be found at this location. We of course had to spend a good deal of time basking in the glory of Whole Foods and all the other stores we don't have in Montana. One thing that we didn't expect was that their liquor sales laws are a lot different than ours (where you can buy bottles until 2AM any day of the week and on all holidays) - so we ended up having to buy wine at a gas station one night. Of course, I forgot the corkscrew, so I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to tear out a cork with my keys :) For anyone wondering, yes, I was eventually successful after several episodes of The Next Iron Chef on the hotel TV.
Back on to the documentary: we knew that the people who sent us to Portland wouldn't ever watch the video, as they have consistently refused at every turn to read any articles or watch any clips that don't come from an explicitly Christian source. Unfortunately this meant we had to undergo a little mild deception when we got back and let them assume magic healing had occurred (as they aren't willing to do any research and actually call the church in question to find out themselves....). For a week on Facebook we only posted ambiguous or carefully worded phrases. We didn't ever lie about anything, but all our posts were worded in such a way that Christians could choose to interpret them from a religious angle. The best part? We learned that little bit of coy ambiguity from them during our discussions. If karma were real, it'd be a bitch.
For anyone who was wondering about certain posts or hasn't seen them, here are my Facebook comments in chronological order. The part in parentheses is my explanation of what was really meant.
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Just posted some photos from the Portland trip. You'll note that Megan isn't wearing her insulin pump for some reason in some of these... (This is true, Megan wasn't wearing her insulin pump in most of the pictures, but it wasn't because her diabetes was magically healed. Her pump requires that infusion sets be replaced every so often, and her new infusion sets hadn't arrived in the mail yet before we left for the trip. Megan had to do normal needle injections of insulin during the trip without the infusion sets)
Heading out to shoot the final scenes for our Portland trip documentary. Hopefully will be online very early next week, as we have a powerful message about faith that the whole world needs to see. (The message is that blind faith isn’t just silly nonsense, it leads to lack of judgment, poor decisions, and can even be actively dangerous, as in the case of Christians who let their children die because they think prayer works better than medicine.)
Dressed up on a Sunday morning. This hasn't happened in years. (We felt like looking nice when we went out for lunch. We didn’t go to church.)
So many amazing and miraculous things happened yesterday - could they have really just been coincidences? Video of our Portland trip is just a few days away! (The amazing events included incidents such as the massively long line at Sam’s Club disappearing by the time we got to the register with our apple cider – so unless Jesus really wanted me to spend all day getting drunk on cider and rum, then yes, it was in fact just a coincidence.)
An elderly woman approached us out of the blue at Albertson's today to share a testimony of love. Yet another amazing event that's happened since our Portland trip. Video documentary coming very, very soon! (A woman saw us with our arms around each other and told us how cute it was that a young couple was showing love so early in the morning on a random errand. She shared a story with us about someone approaching her and her now-dead husband many years ago in a similar fashion in Norway. It had nothing to do with testimony about Jesus.)
After our Portland trip we have some big life changes staring us in the face that will be hard to implement. On another note, the video explaining the events that took place there will hopefully be up on Sunday. (We've been seriously considering moving out of state for some time now, and Portland was near the top on our list of possible choices. Packing up all our stuff and driving it all the way there will indeed be hard to implement, and a royal pain in the ass, when it finally happens.)
What a blessing! We had the wonderful opportunity to get this vacuum at no cost. Wonderful things just keep happening since our amazing trip. (I got the vacuum free because I'm a member of the Amazon Vine program, which sends out free products for people to review. It had nothing to do with Christianity or magic.)
To all the doubters: If God can cure diabetes, then surely he can touch the heart of an atheist! (Some people had started to doubt my conversion was real, so I needed something to keep up the ruse. This is a "half truth" statement. Surely if the Christian God could cure diabetes, he could in fact touch the heart of an atheist. But as it should be clear, neither the Christian deity, nor any other mythological figure, cured Megan's diabetes.)
Just saw the first edit of the Portland trip documentary. It's 10 minutes that just might change your life. My hope is that the people who need to see it most will watch it and be touched. (Whether it changes their lives by waking them up to how absurd supernatural beliefs are, or they get touched in a sexual manner immediately after watching is fine with me!)
And here it is - the mini-documentary of our Portland trip is now online! Anti-Christian comments are not welcome on this post and will be deleted. If you have something negative to say about faith, you can send it to me in a private message. (Anti-Christian comments weren't welcome and would be deleted, because they would have tipped off the Christians that this isn’t a pro-Christian video, of course!)
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Let me know what you think of the video, and we'll be back to our regularly scheduled responses to Christian documentaries and conversations with the religious next week! There's also a good deal of additional footage of me ranting about the evils and contradictions of Christianity that didn't make it into the final cut of the video clip. We'll be posting that up as a separate video down the road.
It should go without saying that of course no magic healing occurred. What's so humorous to us about this trip is that we were constantly frustrated with the gentleman who paid for us to go to Portland because of his staunch refusal to research any issues or look at any scientific evidence available. That came back to haunt him in a big way on this trip. Before we left, Megan even discussed with this guy that the church's website was entirely in Russian (apparently he hadn't bothered to look before taking it on faith that this was the right healing church for us.) His response was that the Russian text was a "server error" and that there would be English speakers waiting for us on the healing service on Tuesday, which of course turned out to be a Russian prayer service that we were specifically told not to go to.
As quick side note - people have asked what I meant when I said "You lose $600" at the end of the video clip. That was the amount the religious folk gave us to go visit the healing church and have Megan’s Type I, child-onset diabetes magically removed.
On the non-religious front, our trip to Portland was amazing! Powell's Books was a truly awesome experience, as it takes up over a full square block and they give you a map when you walk in. I came out with way, way more roleplaying books than I needed, rounding out my collection of Vampire: The Masquerade stuff and picking up the new Trail of Cthluhu game. A blog covering some of the great meals we had there can be found at this location. We of course had to spend a good deal of time basking in the glory of Whole Foods and all the other stores we don't have in Montana. One thing that we didn't expect was that their liquor sales laws are a lot different than ours (where you can buy bottles until 2AM any day of the week and on all holidays) - so we ended up having to buy wine at a gas station one night. Of course, I forgot the corkscrew, so I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to tear out a cork with my keys :) For anyone wondering, yes, I was eventually successful after several episodes of The Next Iron Chef on the hotel TV.
Back on to the documentary: we knew that the people who sent us to Portland wouldn't ever watch the video, as they have consistently refused at every turn to read any articles or watch any clips that don't come from an explicitly Christian source. Unfortunately this meant we had to undergo a little mild deception when we got back and let them assume magic healing had occurred (as they aren't willing to do any research and actually call the church in question to find out themselves....). For a week on Facebook we only posted ambiguous or carefully worded phrases. We didn't ever lie about anything, but all our posts were worded in such a way that Christians could choose to interpret them from a religious angle. The best part? We learned that little bit of coy ambiguity from them during our discussions. If karma were real, it'd be a bitch.
For anyone who was wondering about certain posts or hasn't seen them, here are my Facebook comments in chronological order. The part in parentheses is my explanation of what was really meant.
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Just posted some photos from the Portland trip. You'll note that Megan isn't wearing her insulin pump for some reason in some of these... (This is true, Megan wasn't wearing her insulin pump in most of the pictures, but it wasn't because her diabetes was magically healed. Her pump requires that infusion sets be replaced every so often, and her new infusion sets hadn't arrived in the mail yet before we left for the trip. Megan had to do normal needle injections of insulin during the trip without the infusion sets)
Heading out to shoot the final scenes for our Portland trip documentary. Hopefully will be online very early next week, as we have a powerful message about faith that the whole world needs to see. (The message is that blind faith isn’t just silly nonsense, it leads to lack of judgment, poor decisions, and can even be actively dangerous, as in the case of Christians who let their children die because they think prayer works better than medicine.)
Dressed up on a Sunday morning. This hasn't happened in years. (We felt like looking nice when we went out for lunch. We didn’t go to church.)
So many amazing and miraculous things happened yesterday - could they have really just been coincidences? Video of our Portland trip is just a few days away! (The amazing events included incidents such as the massively long line at Sam’s Club disappearing by the time we got to the register with our apple cider – so unless Jesus really wanted me to spend all day getting drunk on cider and rum, then yes, it was in fact just a coincidence.)
An elderly woman approached us out of the blue at Albertson's today to share a testimony of love. Yet another amazing event that's happened since our Portland trip. Video documentary coming very, very soon! (A woman saw us with our arms around each other and told us how cute it was that a young couple was showing love so early in the morning on a random errand. She shared a story with us about someone approaching her and her now-dead husband many years ago in a similar fashion in Norway. It had nothing to do with testimony about Jesus.)
After our Portland trip we have some big life changes staring us in the face that will be hard to implement. On another note, the video explaining the events that took place there will hopefully be up on Sunday. (We've been seriously considering moving out of state for some time now, and Portland was near the top on our list of possible choices. Packing up all our stuff and driving it all the way there will indeed be hard to implement, and a royal pain in the ass, when it finally happens.)
What a blessing! We had the wonderful opportunity to get this vacuum at no cost. Wonderful things just keep happening since our amazing trip. (I got the vacuum free because I'm a member of the Amazon Vine program, which sends out free products for people to review. It had nothing to do with Christianity or magic.)
To all the doubters: If God can cure diabetes, then surely he can touch the heart of an atheist! (Some people had started to doubt my conversion was real, so I needed something to keep up the ruse. This is a "half truth" statement. Surely if the Christian God could cure diabetes, he could in fact touch the heart of an atheist. But as it should be clear, neither the Christian deity, nor any other mythological figure, cured Megan's diabetes.)
Just saw the first edit of the Portland trip documentary. It's 10 minutes that just might change your life. My hope is that the people who need to see it most will watch it and be touched. (Whether it changes their lives by waking them up to how absurd supernatural beliefs are, or they get touched in a sexual manner immediately after watching is fine with me!)
And here it is - the mini-documentary of our Portland trip is now online! Anti-Christian comments are not welcome on this post and will be deleted. If you have something negative to say about faith, you can send it to me in a private message. (Anti-Christian comments weren't welcome and would be deleted, because they would have tipped off the Christians that this isn’t a pro-Christian video, of course!)
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Let me know what you think of the video, and we'll be back to our regularly scheduled responses to Christian documentaries and conversations with the religious next week! There's also a good deal of additional footage of me ranting about the evils and contradictions of Christianity that didn't make it into the final cut of the video clip. We'll be posting that up as a separate video down the road.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Everything's Inevitable
This story is no longer available - see the latest blog for what's happening with these!
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Lions and tigers and dinosaurs, oh my!
A few months back we had a long series of discussions with a family friend we'll call "DD." You can check out a brief appearance of DD in a previous blog here (it's the one in which a Christian likens Megan and myself to "sorcerers and whoremongers"), and there will be a lot more of him in the future. During one of our discussions, DD brought up several arguments defending the Biblical account of the flood that he took from a Creationist named Kent Hovind. We wanted to get a better insight into where DD was drawing his beliefs from, so we went out and got a copy of one of Hovind's seminars on dinosaurs.
DD wasn't aware when he sang Hovind's praises to us that Kent is currently serving a 10 year prison sentence resulting from being convicted of 58 federal counts related to tax fraud. Before being jailed, Hovind ran a successful Creationist theme park, which brought in a significant amount of money that he never paid any taxes on. Hovind's defense at his trial, and I'm honestly not making this up, was the money wasn't his - it was God's, and God doesn't have to pay taxes.
If you want to kill brain cells for a few hours but can't find any paint cans or gas fumes, you can view the entire "Dinosaurs and the Bible" video here, as well as the rest of Hovind's seminars. Another one of note is "The Dangers of Evolution," which is just as silly as the rest, but also actively offensive to anyone with any ability to think through arguments or use reason. Humorously enough the video is hosted on a site called "Free Hovind" that wants to overturn all of Hovind's criminal convictions and set him free. One of the most telling factors of the total lack of credibility is the opening segment when a Hovind supporter talks about cryptozoology, which isn't even a psuedo-science, it's just plain science fiction.
If you'd just like to catch some of the highlights and not waste two hours, you can check out this humorous rebuttal video here (the user didn't allow embedding for some reason).
There have been several champions of creationism or intelligent design throughout the years, but three of the most infamous are the previously mentioned Kent Hovind, evangelist Ray Comfort, and Ken Ham, who runs the Creation Museum and the organization Answers in Genesis. For a little more information about Ray Comfort, you can check out my previous blog about Comfort's lack of understanding of evolutionary biology. I've also got another blog about the movie "Fireproof," that includes a video refuting the ideas behind Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron's beliefs about evolution.
Ken Ham, Kent Hovind, Ray Comfort and their peers aren't scientists, and they do not in any way follow the scientific method, as shown by this humorous comic strip:
The problem with how Creationists operate is that they start with the presupposition that the Bible is true and all the stories contained within it actually happened. They then filter all information they find to make it fit within that belief, and ignore any evidence that contradicts that belief. That isn't science, that is religion, which is the exact opposite of science. They do not in any way seek out evidence first to see if the Bible is true, or seek out evidence to see if their God actually exists. They simply assume these ideas are true without any facts, which corrupts any information they look at from that point onward.
Ken Ham directly explained why Creationists operate this way in his interview with Bill Maher in the movie "Religulous." Maher asked Ken Ham why he felt so strongly that the creation myth in Genesis needed to be supported. Ham responded by saying that he had to prove the Christian creation myth, because if the creation story in Genesis wasn't true, then there was no reason to believe any of the rest of the claims of the Bible. You can check out a brief video of Ham in the movie explaining this belief here.
Ham starts with the belief the Bible is true, and then either distorts any information he receives to try to make it fit that belief (putting a square peg in a round hole), or outright ignores any contradictory information. It doesn't matter to Ham that there is evidence for evolution and no evidence for the Christian creation tale, because he needs to keep believing the Christian creation myth in order to continue believing that a big invisible man in the sky has a plan for him and is watching out for him.
Science works exactly the opposite of this behavior. Science requires evidence to support a claim before anyone can take the claim seriously. Rigorous testing is required before an idea is given credibility, and science actively attempts to disprove its own claims in order to reach the correct conclusion.
Before moving on to Hovind's seminar on dinosaurs, I thought it was pertinent to point out that even the insane folks from Answers in Genesis take exception to Hovind's stupidity. Answers in Genesis put together a list of arguments Creationists should never use, which includes basically all of Hovind's arguments.
It shouldn't be surprising that even other creationists disagree with Hovind, as his background in science is incredibly shaky. He claims to have been a science teacher for 15 years (those poor children's minds!), but leaves out that they were private schools that did not require teachers to have any sort of accreditation. Hovind has touted that he has a master's degree and a doctorate, but fails to mention he got them from a non-accredited school that lets you receive a doctorate in months and (thankfully) no longer offers that particular program. There is a page all about Hovind's attempt at a thesis paper at this location.
Moving on to the actual seminar, I knew we were in for a horrific thrill ride like no other when Hovind put a picture up on his wall screen of a daddy and baby dinosaur reading the Bible together. It doesn't take long for the crazy to come out full force, but before that hits Hovind tries a few methods of discrediting evolution by mentioning common Creationist tactics.
The most notable example is when he tries to say that Piltdown Man somehow disproves evolution. For anyone not familiar with the story, Piltdown Man was a skull fragment originally thought to be the skull of an early human ancestor, but which was later proven to be a hoax. This event is frequently cited by Creationists, and was referenced many times in the "science" class at the Christian school I attended.
What Creationists always fail to mention is that skepticism of the Piltdown Man skull existed from the very beginning, and that it was evolutionary scientists who discovered it was a hoax and promptly announced their findings. It's not like some avenging Creationist crusader swooped down and proved the evil scientists were actively lying to people. As was stated before, science actively tries to disprove its own claims to reach the truth, which is what happened with Piltdown Man.
Later during the seminar, Kent tries to discredit the idea that the earth is older than 10,000 years by pointing out that the commonly accepted age of the Earth has changed throughout history. This just further shows that he doesn't understand the scientific method, and that he has failed to realize that our estimates of the age of the Earth continuously get OLDER, not younger. The number has changed because more information has been gained and a more accurate number is being reached.
It's not long after that Hovind brings out the big gun crazy: he believes that dinosaurs still exist today. Yes, that's right, according to Kent Hovind, there are dinosaurs wandering around unseen all over Earth. He starts off sneaky, trying to lay a groundwork for making the idea seem less amazingly absurd. He quotes an article that begins with an innocent statement about no one alive having seen dinosaurs. Hovind claims that the author can't possibly know that, unless he has personally questioned everyone alive on Earth. This is an idea that Christians love, because it lets them believe things that have no evidence behind them. Christians don't understand how the burden of proof works, or that ideas don't have to be accepted just because they are put forth. Until valid, verifiable evidence comes to light to back up a claim, that claim doesn't have to be taken seriously.
So Hovind starts with the idea that we can't possibly know for sure that no one alive today has seen a living dinosaur, because we aren't all knowing. He then quotes a Bible verse, which does not in any way say that Adam saw dinosaurs, to make the claim that Adam saw dinosaurs. Apparently he's already forgotten that he just said he can't know for sure whether someone has seen dinosaurs unless he asks them first?
He then goes on to explain that Noah took dinosaurs on the ark to escape the world wide flood described in the Bible. To explain how dinosaurs fit on the ark (remember that the Bible actually lists its exact measurements), he says that Noah only took baby dinosaurs. I suppose at the very least its good to see Hovind trying to apply logic to an exceedingly illogical story, but he can't get around the fact that its still an insanely illogical story. Somehow every single species of animal on the entire planet lived within walking distance of Noah's house, and they all just followed him on the ark? We are still finding new species of animals today on every continent of Earth, so there's no way Noah was able to round them all up. They all just coexisted peacefully without the carnivores eating the other animals? There is a reason Noah's Ark is frequently a theme for baby rooms - its obviously a fairy tale. This is a no-brainer.
Hovind tries to avoid the issue of how many species there are on Earth by claiming Noah didn't get two of every species, but rather took two of every "kind." What he means by that is that Noah took two dogs, from which all other types of dogs eventually sprang, and so on. Apparently he doesn't realize that he's actively advocating for evolution by using this argument.
Later on, Kent proclaims that evolution "takes faith," which is similar to the infamous Christian apologist argument that they don't "have enough faith to be an atheist." First off, apparently this man doesn't understand what the word "faith" means, as it denotes a belief that has no evidence behind it. The theory of evolution is accepted as scientific fact in the way that the theory of gravity is accepted as scientific fact. While scientists continue to learn new things about evolution, and debate some of the particulars of how it works, it is a foregone conclusion that evolution is a reality.
This site has an easy to follow list of the evidence for evolution that is broken down by topic and builds on previous information. There is a massive collection of references for the evidence behind common descent at this location, covering topics such as the fossil record, evidence from gene sequences, evidence of observed natural selection, and much more.
But the issue of evidence aside, its never clear if this claim that evolution "takes faith" is meant as an insult or a compliment. Is Hovind trying to say that believing in something without evidence is a bad thing? If so, then he'd better stop believing in talking snakes and zombie saviors right away. Is he trying to say that believing in evolution without evidence as an act of faith is a good thing, since that's what he does with his beliefs? If so, then what was the point in the statement to begin with?
To further lay the groundwork for how he will try to explain that dinosaurs still exist today, Hovind discusses how there are supposedly 270 different flood legends throughout history. He feels the number of flood legends must clearly prove that the Biblical flood happened. Hovind goes through some of those legends, which come from a variety of different cultures. What's interesting is how Hovind picks and chooses which parts of those legends he wants to believe, and discards the rest. He likes the part about the flood, so he accepts that part of the legend is true. But he then ignores the other legends from those cultures, which frequently contradict a Biblical worldview and are the basis of belief systems for opposing religions. He also ignores how there are many legends of a son-of-god character, born of a virgin who eventually dies and is resurrected, that all took place well before the advent of Christianity.
At this point I'm thinking to myself "If he's willing to accept that multiple flood myths proves the Biblical flood, then obviously he needs to believe in other absurd myths that are prevalent throughout history, like dragons." I'm chuckling to myself, thinking that idea is ridiculous. I should have known better. His next point in the seminar is that all the dragon myths throughout history somehow prove that dinosaurs still exist. I don't think I've ever face palmed as hard as I did at that moment.
He goes through many legends of dragons, and again selectively picks the parts he likes to believe. He's more than happy to believe that the Norse dragon Fafnir existed, but then forgets all about the rest of that particular legend, which involves dwarves and a magic sword. He's fine with accepting Chinese depictions of dragons, but rejects the rest of the legends surrounding those depictions.
As another "proof" that dinosaurs survived the Biblical flood and still exist, he talks about finding artifacts of children's toys that show dinosaurs and people living together. Think about this argument for a second. Fast forward two or three hundred years, and picture a descendant of Kent Hovind giving a lecture to a future generation. "Archeologists have dug up plastic children's toys from the ruins of old America, and can you believe it, they have dinosaurs and people together! The people of 21st century America MUST have seen living dinosaurs!"
You'd think that believing dinosaurs still exist, with no proof whatsoever, would be about as crazy as you can get, but you'd be wrong. Hovind also believes that creationism isn't taught in schools because of a conspiracy among the "New World Order" (which he thinks consists of Jane Fonda, Ted Turner, the English royal family, Israel, and the ACLU). He proclaims that, were he President of the United States, the first thing he would do was abolish public schools and dismantle the Department of Education. Thank fuck Kent Hovind will never be President.
As a humorous side note, Kent mocks Saddam Hussein's belief that he was Nebuchadnezzar reincarnated as obviously ridiculous. Does this man not listen to the things he himself is saying? His beliefs are far more absurd!
After the seminar ends, Hovind interviews a few people who claim to have seen living dinosaurs. Almost every time I watch a religious documentary, engage in a debate with a religious person, or read any sort of religious literature, I again have to link to the video below about personal anecdotes. People claiming they have seen dinosaurs does not prove that dinosaurs are still alive. These people need to have evidence to back up their claims, of which there is absolutely none.
Although it's not touched on much in this particular video, Creationists frequently put forth the idea that evolution or the Big Bang aren't science because they are in the past and can't be recreated. Apparently these people are unaware of archeology or paleontology or geology? We absolutely can make informed, scientific claims about past events based on the evidence left behind. It also shows that Creationists don't understand science, as they are unaware that evolution is biology, and the Big Bang is cosmology. These are two completely separate areas of science that don't rely on the other. The Big Bang is a complex subject beyond the scope of this blog, but it should be stated that there absolutely is observable evidence for the Big Bang, and its currently the best answer to explain what we see in the universe. You can find out more about the evidence for the Big Bang here, here, and here, among many other easily obtainable resources.
Kent Hovind, and many other Creationists, claims that the theory of evolution is dangerous because it directly led to Hitler's atheism, quest for war, and the eradication of the Jews. The atheism bit is actively at odds with reality, as Hitler identified himself as Christian, argued against atheism, and frequently cites God and Jesus throughout "Mein Kampf" as the inspiration for his future atrocities. But lets put that issue aside for a moment, and pretend that Hitler was some kind of evil atheist who felt that the idea of survival of the fittest gave him free reign to eradicate specific groups of people. Guess what? That doesn't in any way invalidate the theory of evolution. Even if evolutionary ideas were used for absolute evil, that doesn't make them wrong. The invention of gun powder has led to an absurdly huge number of deaths throughout history. Does that fact somehow disprove the existence of gun powder?
As a final note about common Creationist claims from Comfort, Ham, and others, I'd like to briefly go over the claim that there are no transitional forms or "missing links." What Creationists are failing to understand is that literally every thing is a transitional form. Every creature is going from something to something else due to environmental pressure. If Creationists were willing to perform a 2 second Google search, they would see that there are many, many, many examples of transitional forms that have been discovered. Two specific examples of known transitional forms can be found here.
To finish off this blog, I'll leave you with the humor of another atheist blogger who organized a group of skeptics to visit Ken Ham's Creation Museum. This wonderful comic strip depicts Ken Ham riding a dinosaur battling cephalapods summoned through the power of Cthulhu. What could be more awesome?
DD wasn't aware when he sang Hovind's praises to us that Kent is currently serving a 10 year prison sentence resulting from being convicted of 58 federal counts related to tax fraud. Before being jailed, Hovind ran a successful Creationist theme park, which brought in a significant amount of money that he never paid any taxes on. Hovind's defense at his trial, and I'm honestly not making this up, was the money wasn't his - it was God's, and God doesn't have to pay taxes.
If you want to kill brain cells for a few hours but can't find any paint cans or gas fumes, you can view the entire "Dinosaurs and the Bible" video here, as well as the rest of Hovind's seminars. Another one of note is "The Dangers of Evolution," which is just as silly as the rest, but also actively offensive to anyone with any ability to think through arguments or use reason. Humorously enough the video is hosted on a site called "Free Hovind" that wants to overturn all of Hovind's criminal convictions and set him free. One of the most telling factors of the total lack of credibility is the opening segment when a Hovind supporter talks about cryptozoology, which isn't even a psuedo-science, it's just plain science fiction.
If you'd just like to catch some of the highlights and not waste two hours, you can check out this humorous rebuttal video here (the user didn't allow embedding for some reason).
There have been several champions of creationism or intelligent design throughout the years, but three of the most infamous are the previously mentioned Kent Hovind, evangelist Ray Comfort, and Ken Ham, who runs the Creation Museum and the organization Answers in Genesis. For a little more information about Ray Comfort, you can check out my previous blog about Comfort's lack of understanding of evolutionary biology. I've also got another blog about the movie "Fireproof," that includes a video refuting the ideas behind Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron's beliefs about evolution.
Ken Ham, Kent Hovind, Ray Comfort and their peers aren't scientists, and they do not in any way follow the scientific method, as shown by this humorous comic strip:
The problem with how Creationists operate is that they start with the presupposition that the Bible is true and all the stories contained within it actually happened. They then filter all information they find to make it fit within that belief, and ignore any evidence that contradicts that belief. That isn't science, that is religion, which is the exact opposite of science. They do not in any way seek out evidence first to see if the Bible is true, or seek out evidence to see if their God actually exists. They simply assume these ideas are true without any facts, which corrupts any information they look at from that point onward.
Ken Ham directly explained why Creationists operate this way in his interview with Bill Maher in the movie "Religulous." Maher asked Ken Ham why he felt so strongly that the creation myth in Genesis needed to be supported. Ham responded by saying that he had to prove the Christian creation myth, because if the creation story in Genesis wasn't true, then there was no reason to believe any of the rest of the claims of the Bible. You can check out a brief video of Ham in the movie explaining this belief here.
Ham starts with the belief the Bible is true, and then either distorts any information he receives to try to make it fit that belief (putting a square peg in a round hole), or outright ignores any contradictory information. It doesn't matter to Ham that there is evidence for evolution and no evidence for the Christian creation tale, because he needs to keep believing the Christian creation myth in order to continue believing that a big invisible man in the sky has a plan for him and is watching out for him.
Science works exactly the opposite of this behavior. Science requires evidence to support a claim before anyone can take the claim seriously. Rigorous testing is required before an idea is given credibility, and science actively attempts to disprove its own claims in order to reach the correct conclusion.
Before moving on to Hovind's seminar on dinosaurs, I thought it was pertinent to point out that even the insane folks from Answers in Genesis take exception to Hovind's stupidity. Answers in Genesis put together a list of arguments Creationists should never use, which includes basically all of Hovind's arguments.
It shouldn't be surprising that even other creationists disagree with Hovind, as his background in science is incredibly shaky. He claims to have been a science teacher for 15 years (those poor children's minds!), but leaves out that they were private schools that did not require teachers to have any sort of accreditation. Hovind has touted that he has a master's degree and a doctorate, but fails to mention he got them from a non-accredited school that lets you receive a doctorate in months and (thankfully) no longer offers that particular program. There is a page all about Hovind's attempt at a thesis paper at this location.
Moving on to the actual seminar, I knew we were in for a horrific thrill ride like no other when Hovind put a picture up on his wall screen of a daddy and baby dinosaur reading the Bible together. It doesn't take long for the crazy to come out full force, but before that hits Hovind tries a few methods of discrediting evolution by mentioning common Creationist tactics.
The most notable example is when he tries to say that Piltdown Man somehow disproves evolution. For anyone not familiar with the story, Piltdown Man was a skull fragment originally thought to be the skull of an early human ancestor, but which was later proven to be a hoax. This event is frequently cited by Creationists, and was referenced many times in the "science" class at the Christian school I attended.
What Creationists always fail to mention is that skepticism of the Piltdown Man skull existed from the very beginning, and that it was evolutionary scientists who discovered it was a hoax and promptly announced their findings. It's not like some avenging Creationist crusader swooped down and proved the evil scientists were actively lying to people. As was stated before, science actively tries to disprove its own claims to reach the truth, which is what happened with Piltdown Man.
Later during the seminar, Kent tries to discredit the idea that the earth is older than 10,000 years by pointing out that the commonly accepted age of the Earth has changed throughout history. This just further shows that he doesn't understand the scientific method, and that he has failed to realize that our estimates of the age of the Earth continuously get OLDER, not younger. The number has changed because more information has been gained and a more accurate number is being reached.
It's not long after that Hovind brings out the big gun crazy: he believes that dinosaurs still exist today. Yes, that's right, according to Kent Hovind, there are dinosaurs wandering around unseen all over Earth. He starts off sneaky, trying to lay a groundwork for making the idea seem less amazingly absurd. He quotes an article that begins with an innocent statement about no one alive having seen dinosaurs. Hovind claims that the author can't possibly know that, unless he has personally questioned everyone alive on Earth. This is an idea that Christians love, because it lets them believe things that have no evidence behind them. Christians don't understand how the burden of proof works, or that ideas don't have to be accepted just because they are put forth. Until valid, verifiable evidence comes to light to back up a claim, that claim doesn't have to be taken seriously.
So Hovind starts with the idea that we can't possibly know for sure that no one alive today has seen a living dinosaur, because we aren't all knowing. He then quotes a Bible verse, which does not in any way say that Adam saw dinosaurs, to make the claim that Adam saw dinosaurs. Apparently he's already forgotten that he just said he can't know for sure whether someone has seen dinosaurs unless he asks them first?
He then goes on to explain that Noah took dinosaurs on the ark to escape the world wide flood described in the Bible. To explain how dinosaurs fit on the ark (remember that the Bible actually lists its exact measurements), he says that Noah only took baby dinosaurs. I suppose at the very least its good to see Hovind trying to apply logic to an exceedingly illogical story, but he can't get around the fact that its still an insanely illogical story. Somehow every single species of animal on the entire planet lived within walking distance of Noah's house, and they all just followed him on the ark? We are still finding new species of animals today on every continent of Earth, so there's no way Noah was able to round them all up. They all just coexisted peacefully without the carnivores eating the other animals? There is a reason Noah's Ark is frequently a theme for baby rooms - its obviously a fairy tale. This is a no-brainer.
Hovind tries to avoid the issue of how many species there are on Earth by claiming Noah didn't get two of every species, but rather took two of every "kind." What he means by that is that Noah took two dogs, from which all other types of dogs eventually sprang, and so on. Apparently he doesn't realize that he's actively advocating for evolution by using this argument.
Later on, Kent proclaims that evolution "takes faith," which is similar to the infamous Christian apologist argument that they don't "have enough faith to be an atheist." First off, apparently this man doesn't understand what the word "faith" means, as it denotes a belief that has no evidence behind it. The theory of evolution is accepted as scientific fact in the way that the theory of gravity is accepted as scientific fact. While scientists continue to learn new things about evolution, and debate some of the particulars of how it works, it is a foregone conclusion that evolution is a reality.
This site has an easy to follow list of the evidence for evolution that is broken down by topic and builds on previous information. There is a massive collection of references for the evidence behind common descent at this location, covering topics such as the fossil record, evidence from gene sequences, evidence of observed natural selection, and much more.
But the issue of evidence aside, its never clear if this claim that evolution "takes faith" is meant as an insult or a compliment. Is Hovind trying to say that believing in something without evidence is a bad thing? If so, then he'd better stop believing in talking snakes and zombie saviors right away. Is he trying to say that believing in evolution without evidence as an act of faith is a good thing, since that's what he does with his beliefs? If so, then what was the point in the statement to begin with?
To further lay the groundwork for how he will try to explain that dinosaurs still exist today, Hovind discusses how there are supposedly 270 different flood legends throughout history. He feels the number of flood legends must clearly prove that the Biblical flood happened. Hovind goes through some of those legends, which come from a variety of different cultures. What's interesting is how Hovind picks and chooses which parts of those legends he wants to believe, and discards the rest. He likes the part about the flood, so he accepts that part of the legend is true. But he then ignores the other legends from those cultures, which frequently contradict a Biblical worldview and are the basis of belief systems for opposing religions. He also ignores how there are many legends of a son-of-god character, born of a virgin who eventually dies and is resurrected, that all took place well before the advent of Christianity.
At this point I'm thinking to myself "If he's willing to accept that multiple flood myths proves the Biblical flood, then obviously he needs to believe in other absurd myths that are prevalent throughout history, like dragons." I'm chuckling to myself, thinking that idea is ridiculous. I should have known better. His next point in the seminar is that all the dragon myths throughout history somehow prove that dinosaurs still exist. I don't think I've ever face palmed as hard as I did at that moment.
He goes through many legends of dragons, and again selectively picks the parts he likes to believe. He's more than happy to believe that the Norse dragon Fafnir existed, but then forgets all about the rest of that particular legend, which involves dwarves and a magic sword. He's fine with accepting Chinese depictions of dragons, but rejects the rest of the legends surrounding those depictions.
As another "proof" that dinosaurs survived the Biblical flood and still exist, he talks about finding artifacts of children's toys that show dinosaurs and people living together. Think about this argument for a second. Fast forward two or three hundred years, and picture a descendant of Kent Hovind giving a lecture to a future generation. "Archeologists have dug up plastic children's toys from the ruins of old America, and can you believe it, they have dinosaurs and people together! The people of 21st century America MUST have seen living dinosaurs!"
You'd think that believing dinosaurs still exist, with no proof whatsoever, would be about as crazy as you can get, but you'd be wrong. Hovind also believes that creationism isn't taught in schools because of a conspiracy among the "New World Order" (which he thinks consists of Jane Fonda, Ted Turner, the English royal family, Israel, and the ACLU). He proclaims that, were he President of the United States, the first thing he would do was abolish public schools and dismantle the Department of Education. Thank fuck Kent Hovind will never be President.
As a humorous side note, Kent mocks Saddam Hussein's belief that he was Nebuchadnezzar reincarnated as obviously ridiculous. Does this man not listen to the things he himself is saying? His beliefs are far more absurd!
After the seminar ends, Hovind interviews a few people who claim to have seen living dinosaurs. Almost every time I watch a religious documentary, engage in a debate with a religious person, or read any sort of religious literature, I again have to link to the video below about personal anecdotes. People claiming they have seen dinosaurs does not prove that dinosaurs are still alive. These people need to have evidence to back up their claims, of which there is absolutely none.
Although it's not touched on much in this particular video, Creationists frequently put forth the idea that evolution or the Big Bang aren't science because they are in the past and can't be recreated. Apparently these people are unaware of archeology or paleontology or geology? We absolutely can make informed, scientific claims about past events based on the evidence left behind. It also shows that Creationists don't understand science, as they are unaware that evolution is biology, and the Big Bang is cosmology. These are two completely separate areas of science that don't rely on the other. The Big Bang is a complex subject beyond the scope of this blog, but it should be stated that there absolutely is observable evidence for the Big Bang, and its currently the best answer to explain what we see in the universe. You can find out more about the evidence for the Big Bang here, here, and here, among many other easily obtainable resources.
Kent Hovind, and many other Creationists, claims that the theory of evolution is dangerous because it directly led to Hitler's atheism, quest for war, and the eradication of the Jews. The atheism bit is actively at odds with reality, as Hitler identified himself as Christian, argued against atheism, and frequently cites God and Jesus throughout "Mein Kampf" as the inspiration for his future atrocities. But lets put that issue aside for a moment, and pretend that Hitler was some kind of evil atheist who felt that the idea of survival of the fittest gave him free reign to eradicate specific groups of people. Guess what? That doesn't in any way invalidate the theory of evolution. Even if evolutionary ideas were used for absolute evil, that doesn't make them wrong. The invention of gun powder has led to an absurdly huge number of deaths throughout history. Does that fact somehow disprove the existence of gun powder?
As a final note about common Creationist claims from Comfort, Ham, and others, I'd like to briefly go over the claim that there are no transitional forms or "missing links." What Creationists are failing to understand is that literally every thing is a transitional form. Every creature is going from something to something else due to environmental pressure. If Creationists were willing to perform a 2 second Google search, they would see that there are many, many, many examples of transitional forms that have been discovered. Two specific examples of known transitional forms can be found here.
To finish off this blog, I'll leave you with the humor of another atheist blogger who organized a group of skeptics to visit Ken Ham's Creation Museum. This wonderful comic strip depicts Ken Ham riding a dinosaur battling cephalapods summoned through the power of Cthulhu. What could be more awesome?
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Can't you get a little respect? No, you can't.
In my various discussions online regarding religious beliefs, I've frequently come across a plea from the more moderate and less hysterical religious people for a modicum of respect for the beliefs of other people. At first this sounds perfectly sensible, after all, we all believe things that others don't, so why not have a level of respect for someone else's personal beliefs and just let them be?
Well, first off, those personal beliefs directly impact me and the people I love. They lead to people enacting legislation to take away people's basic human rights, and they lead to presidents and judges banning federal funding for stem cell research (which could cure my wife's diabetes). These beliefs I'm supposed to respect, even if I disagree with them, force Christians to rationalize all the times in the Bible when the Christian God commits, commands, or condones rape, slavery, genocide, and murder.
But all the moral issues aside, the idea that certain beliefs, regardless of their truth or falsehood, must be respected because they are religious beliefs (as opposed to any other kind of belief) isn’t just absurd, it’s actively insane. If you’ve ever felt that people need to just accept your religious beliefs, because they are your religious beliefs, then think of this example:
I approach you on the street, and I proclaim that I only weigh 100 pounds. You look me up and down and start laughing, because I clearly weigh a great deal more than that. I become very offended at your laughter, and again proclaim that I am clearly 100 pounds, and nothing you can say can shake my belief in that fact.
You, being a rational and logical person, provide me with a weight scale, and ask me to stand on it so we can determine just how valid my claim really is. I step on the scale, and we see concrete, verifiable, observable proof that I weigh far more than 100 pounds. At this point you begin mocking my absurd, and clearly false, beliefs.
That’s when I invoke religion. You see, it’s actually my religious belief that I only weigh 100 pounds, and my personal spiritual growth has taught me this is true. It’s my religious belief that I weigh 100 pounds, and a weight scale saying otherwise is just an evil instrument of the devil trying to distract you from the TRUTH that I weigh 100 pounds.
Why you would you possibly respect this belief? It is clearly, verifiable, observably WRONG. I don’t weigh 100 pounds. It doesn’t matter how much I believe it, or how much I think a deity has mandated it, or how much I think the devil is trying to disprove it. I still weigh far more than 100 pounds. The fact that it’s my religious belief is completely irrelevant.
The religious, or anti-religious, aspect of any belief does not change its truth or falsehood in any way. Gravity remains a real force regardless of whether anyone believes in it. If I proclaim that my religion teaches gravity is a lie of the devil, I would stall fall to my death if I jumped off a tall building. If I proclaim that my religion teaches the earth is flat, I’d still have a hard time hitting a target with a rifle at extreme distances due to the curvature of the earth – because the earth is round regardless of my religious beliefs on the subject.
Likewise, if someone claims, with no evidence behind the claim at all, that Jesus of Nazareth existed and performed works of magic, then I don’t have to respect that belief. If someone claims, in direct opposition to reality, that every single species of animal in all the Earth lived within walking distance of Noah’s house, then I don’t have to respect that belief. If someone claims that Jonah can live in the belly of a great fish for three days, I don’t have to respect that belief.
Just because your belief is religious in nature doesn’t mean it isn’t WRONG. I am a grown adult who can distinguish fantasy from reality, and I don’t just expect, I absolutely demand that other grown adults have that same ability.
I will not respect your beliefs if you have no evidence to back up those beliefs, especially if there is a mountain of evidence existing that shows them to be absolutely wrong.
If I told you that microwave ovens don’t exist, you could immediately provide me with multiple sources of evidence to show that microwaves do actually exist. You could show me a YouTube video of someone using a microwave. You could point me to an online user manual showing the inner workings of the microwave. You could email pictures of your microwave, or even take me to Walmart and buy me one.
Now let’s consider the Christian perspective on that. I tell you that your God doesn’t exist. Where is the evidence for the existence of your God that you’d immediately be able to show me? There isn’t any. Not only is the mountain of evidence lacking, there isn’t even one single shred of basic, verifiable evidence for any deity’s existence. There are no videos or pictures of your God. You can’t take me to the store and show me where your God is hanging out.
Whether we are discussing the Christian God, or Zeus, or Thor, or Hecate, or dread Cthulhu, or fiery Hephaestus, or Allah, there remains absolutely no evidence you could show me to prove the existence of those beings.
If I ask for proof of the existence of microwave ovens, it can immediately be provided. If I ask for proof for the existence of a deity, it cannot be provided in any way. Think about that.
Well, first off, those personal beliefs directly impact me and the people I love. They lead to people enacting legislation to take away people's basic human rights, and they lead to presidents and judges banning federal funding for stem cell research (which could cure my wife's diabetes). These beliefs I'm supposed to respect, even if I disagree with them, force Christians to rationalize all the times in the Bible when the Christian God commits, commands, or condones rape, slavery, genocide, and murder.
But all the moral issues aside, the idea that certain beliefs, regardless of their truth or falsehood, must be respected because they are religious beliefs (as opposed to any other kind of belief) isn’t just absurd, it’s actively insane. If you’ve ever felt that people need to just accept your religious beliefs, because they are your religious beliefs, then think of this example:
I approach you on the street, and I proclaim that I only weigh 100 pounds. You look me up and down and start laughing, because I clearly weigh a great deal more than that. I become very offended at your laughter, and again proclaim that I am clearly 100 pounds, and nothing you can say can shake my belief in that fact.
You, being a rational and logical person, provide me with a weight scale, and ask me to stand on it so we can determine just how valid my claim really is. I step on the scale, and we see concrete, verifiable, observable proof that I weigh far more than 100 pounds. At this point you begin mocking my absurd, and clearly false, beliefs.
That’s when I invoke religion. You see, it’s actually my religious belief that I only weigh 100 pounds, and my personal spiritual growth has taught me this is true. It’s my religious belief that I weigh 100 pounds, and a weight scale saying otherwise is just an evil instrument of the devil trying to distract you from the TRUTH that I weigh 100 pounds.
Why you would you possibly respect this belief? It is clearly, verifiable, observably WRONG. I don’t weigh 100 pounds. It doesn’t matter how much I believe it, or how much I think a deity has mandated it, or how much I think the devil is trying to disprove it. I still weigh far more than 100 pounds. The fact that it’s my religious belief is completely irrelevant.
The religious, or anti-religious, aspect of any belief does not change its truth or falsehood in any way. Gravity remains a real force regardless of whether anyone believes in it. If I proclaim that my religion teaches gravity is a lie of the devil, I would stall fall to my death if I jumped off a tall building. If I proclaim that my religion teaches the earth is flat, I’d still have a hard time hitting a target with a rifle at extreme distances due to the curvature of the earth – because the earth is round regardless of my religious beliefs on the subject.
Likewise, if someone claims, with no evidence behind the claim at all, that Jesus of Nazareth existed and performed works of magic, then I don’t have to respect that belief. If someone claims, in direct opposition to reality, that every single species of animal in all the Earth lived within walking distance of Noah’s house, then I don’t have to respect that belief. If someone claims that Jonah can live in the belly of a great fish for three days, I don’t have to respect that belief.
Just because your belief is religious in nature doesn’t mean it isn’t WRONG. I am a grown adult who can distinguish fantasy from reality, and I don’t just expect, I absolutely demand that other grown adults have that same ability.
I will not respect your beliefs if you have no evidence to back up those beliefs, especially if there is a mountain of evidence existing that shows them to be absolutely wrong.
If I told you that microwave ovens don’t exist, you could immediately provide me with multiple sources of evidence to show that microwaves do actually exist. You could show me a YouTube video of someone using a microwave. You could point me to an online user manual showing the inner workings of the microwave. You could email pictures of your microwave, or even take me to Walmart and buy me one.
Now let’s consider the Christian perspective on that. I tell you that your God doesn’t exist. Where is the evidence for the existence of your God that you’d immediately be able to show me? There isn’t any. Not only is the mountain of evidence lacking, there isn’t even one single shred of basic, verifiable evidence for any deity’s existence. There are no videos or pictures of your God. You can’t take me to the store and show me where your God is hanging out.
Whether we are discussing the Christian God, or Zeus, or Thor, or Hecate, or dread Cthulhu, or fiery Hephaestus, or Allah, there remains absolutely no evidence you could show me to prove the existence of those beings.
If I ask for proof of the existence of microwave ovens, it can immediately be provided. If I ask for proof for the existence of a deity, it cannot be provided in any way. Think about that.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
The Trades - Finger Of God
The documentary about Christian faith healing titled "Finger of God" is another in our "trades" series that has arisen from our many discussions with the religious. What I mean by "trades" is that a Christian acquaintance asked us to watch it, which we did, and then that person refused to watch an atheist documentary in return. For anyone who wants to actually see the movie before reading my thoughts, all 10 parts of "Finger of God" are embedded at the bottom of this post, so just scroll down and hit play.
The website for the film has a F.A.Q. dealing with issues about the movie, such as why the "miracles" discussed in the movie weren't verified in any way. Director Darren Wilson says he didn’t “have the luxury” of verifying any of the “miracles” by talking to doctors or having follow-up interviews because he didn’t have enough money. And yet, in the About the Movie section of the website he says, “But that's where I found myself, and I quickly discovered that God is an incredible film producer. He funded the whole film (I never had to ask for money), took me around the world, and introduced me to some truly incredible people.” So God couldn’t find the spare change to help you verify any tales of supernatural occurrences to convince unbelievers? Wow, the creator of the universe is a real cheap skate.
The reason that this basic verification is so important is because the movie consists entirely of off the wall and ridiculous claims that absolutely cannot be accepted without some evidence to back them up. Claims made in the movie include people having their bad hearts miraculously swapped with new hearts, missing eyes spontaneously regrowing, gold teeth magically replacing bad teeth, and people coming back from the dead.
It should be noted that none of this is ever shown on camera. These miraculous events always occur just before Wilson turned on the camera, or they are second or third hand accounts from people not directly involved.
I have another post dedicated entirely to these types of unverified personal anecdotes from religious folks here. The post discusses the disconnect between what sort of supernatural claims a Christian will accept from members of their own faith, while being completely unwilling to accept identical claims from members of opposing religions. It also covers the "but why would they lie?" question that Wilson and many other Christians frequently ask when skepticism is displayed towards second hand supernatural claims.
Something else humorous about the documentary's F.A.Q. is when it states that it’s a difficult issue for Wilson on whether people are allowed to burn the movie to DVD and give it out for free. His dilemma over whether people should be allowed to see these amazing miracles that will ensure they accept Jesus and don't spend eternity in hell? Because it cost him so much to make and he doesn't want to give it away for free. If God can randomly give people gold teeth and replace hearts in chests, why can’t he manifest some money for these people to continue on the work of such important, life changing magnitude? For that matter, why can’t God just poof a copy of this DVD in every unbeliever’s home? As the people in the movie like to harp on the issue of not limiting God, why is Wilson limiting God by not giving his DVD away for free and expecting God to take care of the rest?
One of the first groups discussed is the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship (now known as Catch the Fire Toronto – probably because of a lot of negative press). In the film, the members of the church claim that God magically poofs gems and gold dust into existence for them on a regular basis.
While looking into this group, I found that even other Christian groups such as this site or this blog or this page attack these guys . It’s amazing how 50 people can read the same religious text, and come away with 50 completely different ideas of what it said and what people need to do to follow its teachings. More amazing is that members of the same religion are willing to call each other heretics and proclaim the other denomination is completely wrong and probably hellbound. (Another fun example I recently found was an exchange of comments here about a Christian song being sung in a public school. At one point, as the discussion goes predictably way off topic, a religious commenter states that anyone in early American history who was involved with slavery or the subjugation of the Indians wasn't a "real" Christian. I guess that gets rid of, well, pretty much all of the founding fathers, not to mention all the times in the Bible were god explicitly commands slavery and slaughter against the native inhabitants of a land so the Israelites can move in.)
If you guys can’t even decide what your religion is really all about, why would I want to be a part of it? If your God can regrow eyeballs and poof gold teeth into people's mouths, then he absolutely should be capable of showing up down here and saying "OK, sorry about the confusion, but THIS is actually what I meant. This denomination has it right and these other ones don't."
In one segment they show a man covered in gold colored dust (although after he's been covered, not in the act) and then later show a man falling down as he is being prayed for. When the camera pans down, he has what looks hilariously like a pile of gold splooge on his crotch. The "gold dust" is very clearly some sort of glitter they bought at a store, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out the minor sleight of hand required to throw it as someone is falling over. However the director clearly believes this is real gold dust, but then nonsensically says “No one’s making money on gold dust.” If God were dropping real gold on his followers, what precisely does he want them to do with it other than sell it or somehow use it in a monetary fashion?
A later segment of the movie deals with Bethel Church in Redding, CA, which has classes for young people at the “School of Supernatural Ministry” on how to perform supernatural healing. These students of the supernatural then go out in teams to perform these miracles for anyone they find who has any affliction - from headaches to cancer. These people honestly believe they are able to heal any ailment through the power of their deity. So at this point one has to wonder - has the hospital there just gone out of business? Oh yeah, that's right, Redding actually has two fully functional hospitals still treating people - because magic isn't real.
The kids from Bethel, when talking about their healing powers, proclaim that something supernatural happens every time they pray for healing, it’s just that sometimes what happens is invisible or doesn’t happen until after they leave. How anyone can make a statement like that without immediately feeling immensely foolish is beyond me.
The later segments of the film deal with the missionary Heidi Baker and her adventures across Africa. This segment also includes the claim of a man being resurrected from the dead. Of course Heidi chooses places like Africa for the sites of this nonsense, because Africa has a deep seated religious background that includes belief in sorcery, witchcraft, and resurrection from the dead. Their traditional religious beliefs going back hundreds to thousands of years include beliefs in nonsensical supernatural actions that would seem absurd in other settings (more information on Mozambique specifically, where Heidi has spent much time, can be found here). Many of the people in Africa who have since converted to religions such as Christianity and Islam still include these ideas of sorcery and raising from the dead in their mythology, attempting to mesh the theology of their pasts with the religions of the present.
Interestingly enough, it turns out there are actually quite a few Christian groups who believe that resurrection is a real phenomena which occurs in modern day. You can find a website explaining how Christians can raise the dead at this location (along with a host of second hand personal anecdotes about resurrection stories). Another website claiming you can resurrect the dead can be found at this location. It's bizarre that these sorts of claims continue to be propagated in modern times, especially with news stories readily available in which bodies are found by authorities after people have tried, and obviously failed, to raise them from the dead.
Let's compare these Christian websites to a page like this one, which follows a similar format of personal anecdotes and easy steps to work love magic to snare that guy who just won't give you the time of day. Or how about we compare these claims to this site, which describes “real” ghost stories (i.e. easily explainable personal anecdotes or outrageous stories with no evidence behind them).
This site has many similar claims to those of the Christians we’ve spoken with – that the supernatural is real but we’ve been trained to ignore it or not notice it since we were children. The kicker? It’s about Wiccan magic, not Christian healing. The site claims that “Magick is not only real, it's the only thing that is! Wicca magick is just one form of the mysterious and infinite Creative Power of the Universe. Life is full of real magick. But we've been trained not to notice it, even when it's right in front of our noses. Making magick is your birthright - a personal gift from the Divine. Learn how magick works and how to work magick, and nothing can stop you from creating the life you dream of.” Does reading this person’s personal assurances that magic is real make you believe in magic? Of course not! Likewise, I'm not taking Wilson's word for it that any of this magical nonsense happened until he can verify it in some way.
Wilson eventually puts his camera on the man who claims to have been resurrected from the dead after being beaten to death by several criminals. The man doesn’t speak English, so we only have the word of the person translating it. As the story progresses and other people discuss this issue, someone actually admits that the man was in the hospital, the church folk thought he was dying, they prayed, and then apparently he came back from the dead. Since these people were all at the church, and this man was at the hospital, none of them actually saw this happen. The director does not speak with any doctors who will verify that he died and then got back up. If he had been dying in a hospital, but had been revived by doctors through normal medical means, why would this be miraculous? This reminds me of that absurd claim of supernatural resurrection by Dr. Chauncey Crandall, who admits a dead man was revived by using a defibrillator, but still maintains it was his prayer before hand that did the job.
The worst part is that the man claims (or at least the translator claims) that he forgave the people who “killed” him and didn’t press charges. Not only is this absurd, it’s immoral. That man will officially be responsible when those people go and rob and kill someone else next.
The person who recommended this video to us has a favorite quote from the film, when Heidi says “All children believe in miracles until adults tell them otherwise.” When I was a child I believed I could contact the spirits of the dead and that I could summon dragons from another world – does that mean those things are real? Of course not! This same quote could be used to back up a belief in Santa Claus or the Easter bunny. We learn that miracles aren’t real through experience. When grandpa dies, he stays dead, and kids figure that out during their progression into adulthood. Casting aside childish beliefs in the supernatural is a good thing, not a bad thing.
At one point Heidi is speaking at night to a large crowd in Africa, composed almost entirely of people who don’t speak English. A woman is brought up whom Heidi claims is deaf (we have no way of knowing whether that’s correct or not) and then she prays over her and claims the woman has gotten her hearing back. The only problem is that the woman never says this, nor does it appear in any way that she is healed. She doesn't jump up and down for joy, or flip out because of all the sudden noise. She just stands there the whole time looking confused, wondering what the hell is going on, and then they shuffle her away from the camera after the so-called “healing” occurs.
In another segment Heidi comes across a woman who appears to be Islamic or has some other religion other than Heidi’s brand of Christianity. This woman very calmly, very nicely explains that she doesn’t want what Heidi is offering. At one point during this exchange, as Heidi will not get the hint and leave her alone, the woman puts her hands on her chest as she’s gesticulating. Heidi takes this to mean the woman has chest pains (even though this was clearly not the motion she was making) and then leaves proclaiming that her prayers healed the woman’s pain – even though nothing of the sort happened. These people live in a fantasy land.
As a side note - take a quick watch of the footage Wilson claims is of Jesus physically manifesting on Earth and rushing through a crowd. Something I learned from this movie is that not only is Jesus invisible, but he loves knocking over black people. Silly Jesus!
As the director goes into some of the poorer parts of Europe they come upon gypsies, and you see they live in absolute squalor and are missing teeth and are in exceedingly poor health. So why precisely did God give gold teeth to the rich Christians in Toronto, but doesn’t care about the teeth of gypsies in Europe? Oh yeah, those people couldn’t afford the dentists who put in the gold teeth, because God didn’t have anything to do with it.
At this point I'm just going to let the movie speak for itself, because there honestly isn't a single scene that isn't mind-numbingly stupid. You can watch the film in its entirety below. Grab some popcorn, crack open the beers, and invite the friends over - because this is a laugh riot you don't want to miss. Take special note of the section in the first clip when Wilson "proves" that God put gold teeth in people's mouths. How does he know this happened? Because the people making the claim are his aunt and uncle, and everyone knows that Darren Wilson's aunt and uncle have never told a lie in their lives!
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The website for the film has a F.A.Q. dealing with issues about the movie, such as why the "miracles" discussed in the movie weren't verified in any way. Director Darren Wilson says he didn’t “have the luxury” of verifying any of the “miracles” by talking to doctors or having follow-up interviews because he didn’t have enough money. And yet, in the About the Movie section of the website he says, “But that's where I found myself, and I quickly discovered that God is an incredible film producer. He funded the whole film (I never had to ask for money), took me around the world, and introduced me to some truly incredible people.” So God couldn’t find the spare change to help you verify any tales of supernatural occurrences to convince unbelievers? Wow, the creator of the universe is a real cheap skate.
The reason that this basic verification is so important is because the movie consists entirely of off the wall and ridiculous claims that absolutely cannot be accepted without some evidence to back them up. Claims made in the movie include people having their bad hearts miraculously swapped with new hearts, missing eyes spontaneously regrowing, gold teeth magically replacing bad teeth, and people coming back from the dead.
It should be noted that none of this is ever shown on camera. These miraculous events always occur just before Wilson turned on the camera, or they are second or third hand accounts from people not directly involved.
I have another post dedicated entirely to these types of unverified personal anecdotes from religious folks here. The post discusses the disconnect between what sort of supernatural claims a Christian will accept from members of their own faith, while being completely unwilling to accept identical claims from members of opposing religions. It also covers the "but why would they lie?" question that Wilson and many other Christians frequently ask when skepticism is displayed towards second hand supernatural claims.
Something else humorous about the documentary's F.A.Q. is when it states that it’s a difficult issue for Wilson on whether people are allowed to burn the movie to DVD and give it out for free. His dilemma over whether people should be allowed to see these amazing miracles that will ensure they accept Jesus and don't spend eternity in hell? Because it cost him so much to make and he doesn't want to give it away for free. If God can randomly give people gold teeth and replace hearts in chests, why can’t he manifest some money for these people to continue on the work of such important, life changing magnitude? For that matter, why can’t God just poof a copy of this DVD in every unbeliever’s home? As the people in the movie like to harp on the issue of not limiting God, why is Wilson limiting God by not giving his DVD away for free and expecting God to take care of the rest?
One of the first groups discussed is the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship (now known as Catch the Fire Toronto – probably because of a lot of negative press). In the film, the members of the church claim that God magically poofs gems and gold dust into existence for them on a regular basis.
While looking into this group, I found that even other Christian groups such as this site or this blog or this page attack these guys . It’s amazing how 50 people can read the same religious text, and come away with 50 completely different ideas of what it said and what people need to do to follow its teachings. More amazing is that members of the same religion are willing to call each other heretics and proclaim the other denomination is completely wrong and probably hellbound. (Another fun example I recently found was an exchange of comments here about a Christian song being sung in a public school. At one point, as the discussion goes predictably way off topic, a religious commenter states that anyone in early American history who was involved with slavery or the subjugation of the Indians wasn't a "real" Christian. I guess that gets rid of, well, pretty much all of the founding fathers, not to mention all the times in the Bible were god explicitly commands slavery and slaughter against the native inhabitants of a land so the Israelites can move in.)
If you guys can’t even decide what your religion is really all about, why would I want to be a part of it? If your God can regrow eyeballs and poof gold teeth into people's mouths, then he absolutely should be capable of showing up down here and saying "OK, sorry about the confusion, but THIS is actually what I meant. This denomination has it right and these other ones don't."
In one segment they show a man covered in gold colored dust (although after he's been covered, not in the act) and then later show a man falling down as he is being prayed for. When the camera pans down, he has what looks hilariously like a pile of gold splooge on his crotch. The "gold dust" is very clearly some sort of glitter they bought at a store, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out the minor sleight of hand required to throw it as someone is falling over. However the director clearly believes this is real gold dust, but then nonsensically says “No one’s making money on gold dust.” If God were dropping real gold on his followers, what precisely does he want them to do with it other than sell it or somehow use it in a monetary fashion?
A later segment of the movie deals with Bethel Church in Redding, CA, which has classes for young people at the “School of Supernatural Ministry” on how to perform supernatural healing. These students of the supernatural then go out in teams to perform these miracles for anyone they find who has any affliction - from headaches to cancer. These people honestly believe they are able to heal any ailment through the power of their deity. So at this point one has to wonder - has the hospital there just gone out of business? Oh yeah, that's right, Redding actually has two fully functional hospitals still treating people - because magic isn't real.
The kids from Bethel, when talking about their healing powers, proclaim that something supernatural happens every time they pray for healing, it’s just that sometimes what happens is invisible or doesn’t happen until after they leave. How anyone can make a statement like that without immediately feeling immensely foolish is beyond me.
The later segments of the film deal with the missionary Heidi Baker and her adventures across Africa. This segment also includes the claim of a man being resurrected from the dead. Of course Heidi chooses places like Africa for the sites of this nonsense, because Africa has a deep seated religious background that includes belief in sorcery, witchcraft, and resurrection from the dead. Their traditional religious beliefs going back hundreds to thousands of years include beliefs in nonsensical supernatural actions that would seem absurd in other settings (more information on Mozambique specifically, where Heidi has spent much time, can be found here). Many of the people in Africa who have since converted to religions such as Christianity and Islam still include these ideas of sorcery and raising from the dead in their mythology, attempting to mesh the theology of their pasts with the religions of the present.
Interestingly enough, it turns out there are actually quite a few Christian groups who believe that resurrection is a real phenomena which occurs in modern day. You can find a website explaining how Christians can raise the dead at this location (along with a host of second hand personal anecdotes about resurrection stories). Another website claiming you can resurrect the dead can be found at this location. It's bizarre that these sorts of claims continue to be propagated in modern times, especially with news stories readily available in which bodies are found by authorities after people have tried, and obviously failed, to raise them from the dead.
Let's compare these Christian websites to a page like this one, which follows a similar format of personal anecdotes and easy steps to work love magic to snare that guy who just won't give you the time of day. Or how about we compare these claims to this site, which describes “real” ghost stories (i.e. easily explainable personal anecdotes or outrageous stories with no evidence behind them).
This site has many similar claims to those of the Christians we’ve spoken with – that the supernatural is real but we’ve been trained to ignore it or not notice it since we were children. The kicker? It’s about Wiccan magic, not Christian healing. The site claims that “Magick is not only real, it's the only thing that is! Wicca magick is just one form of the mysterious and infinite Creative Power of the Universe. Life is full of real magick. But we've been trained not to notice it, even when it's right in front of our noses. Making magick is your birthright - a personal gift from the Divine. Learn how magick works and how to work magick, and nothing can stop you from creating the life you dream of.” Does reading this person’s personal assurances that magic is real make you believe in magic? Of course not! Likewise, I'm not taking Wilson's word for it that any of this magical nonsense happened until he can verify it in some way.
Wilson eventually puts his camera on the man who claims to have been resurrected from the dead after being beaten to death by several criminals. The man doesn’t speak English, so we only have the word of the person translating it. As the story progresses and other people discuss this issue, someone actually admits that the man was in the hospital, the church folk thought he was dying, they prayed, and then apparently he came back from the dead. Since these people were all at the church, and this man was at the hospital, none of them actually saw this happen. The director does not speak with any doctors who will verify that he died and then got back up. If he had been dying in a hospital, but had been revived by doctors through normal medical means, why would this be miraculous? This reminds me of that absurd claim of supernatural resurrection by Dr. Chauncey Crandall, who admits a dead man was revived by using a defibrillator, but still maintains it was his prayer before hand that did the job.
The worst part is that the man claims (or at least the translator claims) that he forgave the people who “killed” him and didn’t press charges. Not only is this absurd, it’s immoral. That man will officially be responsible when those people go and rob and kill someone else next.
The person who recommended this video to us has a favorite quote from the film, when Heidi says “All children believe in miracles until adults tell them otherwise.” When I was a child I believed I could contact the spirits of the dead and that I could summon dragons from another world – does that mean those things are real? Of course not! This same quote could be used to back up a belief in Santa Claus or the Easter bunny. We learn that miracles aren’t real through experience. When grandpa dies, he stays dead, and kids figure that out during their progression into adulthood. Casting aside childish beliefs in the supernatural is a good thing, not a bad thing.
At one point Heidi is speaking at night to a large crowd in Africa, composed almost entirely of people who don’t speak English. A woman is brought up whom Heidi claims is deaf (we have no way of knowing whether that’s correct or not) and then she prays over her and claims the woman has gotten her hearing back. The only problem is that the woman never says this, nor does it appear in any way that she is healed. She doesn't jump up and down for joy, or flip out because of all the sudden noise. She just stands there the whole time looking confused, wondering what the hell is going on, and then they shuffle her away from the camera after the so-called “healing” occurs.
In another segment Heidi comes across a woman who appears to be Islamic or has some other religion other than Heidi’s brand of Christianity. This woman very calmly, very nicely explains that she doesn’t want what Heidi is offering. At one point during this exchange, as Heidi will not get the hint and leave her alone, the woman puts her hands on her chest as she’s gesticulating. Heidi takes this to mean the woman has chest pains (even though this was clearly not the motion she was making) and then leaves proclaiming that her prayers healed the woman’s pain – even though nothing of the sort happened. These people live in a fantasy land.
As a side note - take a quick watch of the footage Wilson claims is of Jesus physically manifesting on Earth and rushing through a crowd. Something I learned from this movie is that not only is Jesus invisible, but he loves knocking over black people. Silly Jesus!
As the director goes into some of the poorer parts of Europe they come upon gypsies, and you see they live in absolute squalor and are missing teeth and are in exceedingly poor health. So why precisely did God give gold teeth to the rich Christians in Toronto, but doesn’t care about the teeth of gypsies in Europe? Oh yeah, those people couldn’t afford the dentists who put in the gold teeth, because God didn’t have anything to do with it.
At this point I'm just going to let the movie speak for itself, because there honestly isn't a single scene that isn't mind-numbingly stupid. You can watch the film in its entirety below. Grab some popcorn, crack open the beers, and invite the friends over - because this is a laugh riot you don't want to miss. Take special note of the section in the first clip when Wilson "proves" that God put gold teeth in people's mouths. How does he know this happened? Because the people making the claim are his aunt and uncle, and everyone knows that Darren Wilson's aunt and uncle have never told a lie in their lives!
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Saturday, July 31, 2010
The Trades - Fireproof
Lately we’ve been attempting to “trade” resources during our conversations with the religious, where we will agree to watch a religious movie or read a religious book and the other party will agree to watch an atheist video or read an atheist book. Unfortunately it hasn’t worked out very well, as we listen to the sermons or watch the documentaries, and then we find the other party dismayed that we weren’t immediately converted and they then renege on their end of the bargain (apparently lying isn’t a sin if you do it for Jesus).
The Christian themed movie “Fireproof” does fall into this category, although several members of our family have also been trying to get us to watch it since it first came out. After having now seen the film, I’m mildly offended by the fact that our Christian friends and family were so adamant that we needed to watch it. For anyone who isn’t aware of the movie, it’s a tale of a firefighter who is on the verge of divorce because he isn’t Christian. Nope, I’m not making that up. This movie actually tries to put forth the idea that any marriage not based on the Christian messiah Jesus is already in dire straights, the couple is already fighting like cats and dogs over inane issues, and the union is ultimately doomed to failure.
I have to wonder if that’s how our Christian relatives view our marriage? Nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve been blissfully married to my best friend for four years now (completely Jesus free), and I don’t see anything changing in that department, well, ever.
So onto the film itself, which combines three things I greatly do not enjoy – Kirk Cameron, Christianity, and commercials. What’s that you say? Commercials? Yes, this movie is a 122 minute commercial for the book “The Love Dare.” I’ve read conflicting reports online of whether the movie or the book came first, but since both directly quote the other, it doesn’t really matter. Both are nothing more than marketing tools to get the Christian demographic to shell out the cash for the other. “Fireproof” is essentially the Christian equivalent of a Pokémon movie, as it exists to prompt people to buy other products.
We actually skimmed through “The Love Dare” the other day prior to watching the movie to see what it was all about. The book consists primarily of common sense (and outright no-brainer) tips about not being mean to your spouse and trying to have sex regularly. What baffles me is that there are people who haven’t figured that stuff out yet. Then there are a couple of instances where they bring up Jesus and dare you to pray for your spouse on certain days.
On to Kirk Cameron, another of my least favorite things in life. For anyone not familiar with Kirk, he was on the TV show “Growing Pains,” and is now involved in several Christian ministries with buxom buddy Ray Comfort. For some back story on Comfort, I had a blog about his appearance on Pat Robertson’s show a month or so back that can be found here.
Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort decided to have a fun publicity stunt in which they gave away copies of Darwin’s “Origin of Species,” but they chopped out four chapters and added a 50 page introduction. This intro attempted to equate evolution with the Holocaust (never mind the fact that Hitler was a Christian) and tried to debunk modern biology. Here’s the original video announcing the “special edition” release, in all its mind-numbing glory:
I could respond to each point and explain how absurd the whole thing is, but this lady already did it pretty damn amazingly:
To help you further understand Kirk Cameron, here’s a wonderful clip of him saying something that no one should ever say at any point in time:
Kirk claims he was a “hardened atheist” before accepting the love of Jesus. I’d like to take this opportunity to point out he converted to Christianity at the age of 17, so he wasn’t a “hardened” anything yet (unless you want to count being a “hardened masturbator” as something worth mentioning).
One last little nugget of fun about Kirk, and this one directly pertaining to the movie! In another fun publicity stunt, Kirk refused to kiss the actress portraying his wife in the movie, as he feels he can only kiss his real-life spouse. For the final scene they brought in Kirk’s real wife and shot in silhouette so you couldn’t tell the difference. Apparently he doesn’t understand what is involved in the acting profession. If Kirk doesn’t want to kiss women other than this wife, then he needs to find a job that doesn’t include pretending to be someone else’s husband for long stretches of time. I hear McDonalds is hiring, and they don’t make you kiss anybody.
So now that that’s all out of the way, let’s get onto the movie itself. Actually, scratch that. Before watching this movie, go watch any random episode of “Rescue Me” first. OK, now that you’ve seen an actually compelling firefighter drama, now let’s move on.
The first thing you’ll notice is the absurd number of studios involved in this movie. Affirm films, Provident films, Carmel Entertainment, Sherwood Pictures, and Samuel Goldwyn films all have their hands in this pot. And somehow, it was still a low budget and poorly acted B-movie.
Actually, calling it “poorly acted” is giving it too much credit. The acting was actively distracting in how bad it was. Wooden dialogue delivered in a stilted monotone is the order of the day, for pretty much every character. It was unfortunately obvious that the writers were going out of their way to present a squeaky-clean and church friendly movie, as the firefighters in tense situations never once curse or talk about sex or make off color jokes or do anything else that real people do. We both had a wonderful belly laugh at the unintentional humor of one character proclaiming someone was going to get a “karate chop sandwich!” All of the various characters also always say exactly what they are thinking internally, instead of letting the character’s actions speak.
Another one of the unintentionally humorous moments is worth a special mention. As Kirk Cameron is rescuing a kid from a fire, he realizes it’s really hot in the conflagration, so clearly the best course of action is to TAKE OFF HIS FIRE RETARDENT COAT and throw it to the side. We were in stitches when the exact next scene is of Kirk in the hospital being treated for burns on his arms.
The bulk of the movie shows off how terrible the main couple’s marriage is because of their lack of Christianity, and how Kirk gets religion and suddenly starts being a perfect husband. The abrupt and out-of-character transition from douche bag to perfect Christian man is honestly on par with the bungled Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader transformation in Episode 3.
The source of the writing is always painfully apparent throughout the movie. The “fights” the main couple has aren’t real fights, they are caricatures of fights, like something a pastor would tell a congregation to get a point across. Compelling dramas (say for instance, “Rescue Me”) have fights that show character flaws and development. Here it is just a lame gimmick to get across the point that they don’t get along without religion.
Like in several religious movies we’ve seen, there is a disturbing undercurrent of sexism to the characters. All throughout “Fireproof” we are shown how the women are wrong, we need to shut up the women, the women need to submit and do what their husbands say, the women can only be what their husband’s make them into, etc.
Granted, it’s not as outright appalling as the 2008 film adaptation of Ted Dekker’s “House,” but it’s still pretty bad. For anyone who hasn’t seen that Christian take on horror movies, it actually explicitly says that a woman goes to hell for the sin of having been raped. Please go back and re-read that sentence so that sinks in. Apparently *being raped* is somehow a woman’s fault and puts an eternal stain on her soul that makes her worthy of being tormented for all time. I can’t express my distaste for that movie enough.
Back to “Fireproof,” there is an extended scene where Kirk’s dad tells Kirk he is going to hell for not meeting God’s standard and then explains the Christian salvation plan. At this point we found ourselves wondering who the audience for this movie was supposed to be. Since its mostly likely Christians who are going to see the movie, they don’t need to hear the story yet again. Any people of different religions or atheists are just going to chuckle through the scene, so it’s not really clear what they are trying to achieve with it. It also says something about the Christian mentality that they can’t keep (what they see as) truth out of fictional accounts, as the two are all jumbled up for the religious.
The scene does feature another annoying reminder of the idea the movie presents though, when Kirk’s dad says “You can’t love her because you can’t give what you don’t have.” He’s saying that husbands can’t love their wives if they don’t first love the Christian God, which is pretty ridiculous. Apparently these people aren’t aware of the Christian divorce rate, or that people who aren’t Christians frequently have successful relationships?
After converting to Christianity, Kirk decides to kick his “addiction” to pornography. For some terrifying reason he feels the best way to do this is to smash apart his computer and monitor with a baseball bat. At this point we are sympathizing with his divorce seeking wife, as clearly this man is violent and unable to handle issues in any sort of healthy manner. Apparently he didn’t think through this “solution” to the problem – what’s he going to do when he needs his computer for something else? Never mind the fact that there’s nothing wrong with pornography (Megan and I both watch it, and you’ll note our marriage is pretty damn kick ass), and it’s been shown time and again that masturbation is good for you. Even the extremely Christian Fox News agrees on that point, but since Fox isn’t exactly a valid resource you can also check out this article or this article or about a thousand others.
During the scene where Kirk has his big conversion moment, his dad takes him for a walk in their backyard, where he has a massive wooden cross erected. I’ve always thought this was a pretty sick practice. Do Christians not understand that the cross was a means of execution, and a particularly grisly one? Would you put up a vintage electric chair or gas chamber in your back yard? If Jesus had sacrificed himself with a grenade, would you wear a grenade necklace? It also says something about the mentality of the Christian deity, as he can’t ever come up with a better solution to problems than “human sacrifice.”
So, despite the assurances of Christians that watching “Fireproof” would give us a heart to love God, I have found that post-Fireproof I still lack a heart-on for Jesus. Oh well, there’s still plenty more religious propaganda coming our way!
The Christian themed movie “Fireproof” does fall into this category, although several members of our family have also been trying to get us to watch it since it first came out. After having now seen the film, I’m mildly offended by the fact that our Christian friends and family were so adamant that we needed to watch it. For anyone who isn’t aware of the movie, it’s a tale of a firefighter who is on the verge of divorce because he isn’t Christian. Nope, I’m not making that up. This movie actually tries to put forth the idea that any marriage not based on the Christian messiah Jesus is already in dire straights, the couple is already fighting like cats and dogs over inane issues, and the union is ultimately doomed to failure.
I have to wonder if that’s how our Christian relatives view our marriage? Nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve been blissfully married to my best friend for four years now (completely Jesus free), and I don’t see anything changing in that department, well, ever.
So onto the film itself, which combines three things I greatly do not enjoy – Kirk Cameron, Christianity, and commercials. What’s that you say? Commercials? Yes, this movie is a 122 minute commercial for the book “The Love Dare.” I’ve read conflicting reports online of whether the movie or the book came first, but since both directly quote the other, it doesn’t really matter. Both are nothing more than marketing tools to get the Christian demographic to shell out the cash for the other. “Fireproof” is essentially the Christian equivalent of a Pokémon movie, as it exists to prompt people to buy other products.
We actually skimmed through “The Love Dare” the other day prior to watching the movie to see what it was all about. The book consists primarily of common sense (and outright no-brainer) tips about not being mean to your spouse and trying to have sex regularly. What baffles me is that there are people who haven’t figured that stuff out yet. Then there are a couple of instances where they bring up Jesus and dare you to pray for your spouse on certain days.
On to Kirk Cameron, another of my least favorite things in life. For anyone not familiar with Kirk, he was on the TV show “Growing Pains,” and is now involved in several Christian ministries with buxom buddy Ray Comfort. For some back story on Comfort, I had a blog about his appearance on Pat Robertson’s show a month or so back that can be found here.
Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort decided to have a fun publicity stunt in which they gave away copies of Darwin’s “Origin of Species,” but they chopped out four chapters and added a 50 page introduction. This intro attempted to equate evolution with the Holocaust (never mind the fact that Hitler was a Christian) and tried to debunk modern biology. Here’s the original video announcing the “special edition” release, in all its mind-numbing glory:
I could respond to each point and explain how absurd the whole thing is, but this lady already did it pretty damn amazingly:
To help you further understand Kirk Cameron, here’s a wonderful clip of him saying something that no one should ever say at any point in time:
Kirk claims he was a “hardened atheist” before accepting the love of Jesus. I’d like to take this opportunity to point out he converted to Christianity at the age of 17, so he wasn’t a “hardened” anything yet (unless you want to count being a “hardened masturbator” as something worth mentioning).
One last little nugget of fun about Kirk, and this one directly pertaining to the movie! In another fun publicity stunt, Kirk refused to kiss the actress portraying his wife in the movie, as he feels he can only kiss his real-life spouse. For the final scene they brought in Kirk’s real wife and shot in silhouette so you couldn’t tell the difference. Apparently he doesn’t understand what is involved in the acting profession. If Kirk doesn’t want to kiss women other than this wife, then he needs to find a job that doesn’t include pretending to be someone else’s husband for long stretches of time. I hear McDonalds is hiring, and they don’t make you kiss anybody.
So now that that’s all out of the way, let’s get onto the movie itself. Actually, scratch that. Before watching this movie, go watch any random episode of “Rescue Me” first. OK, now that you’ve seen an actually compelling firefighter drama, now let’s move on.
The first thing you’ll notice is the absurd number of studios involved in this movie. Affirm films, Provident films, Carmel Entertainment, Sherwood Pictures, and Samuel Goldwyn films all have their hands in this pot. And somehow, it was still a low budget and poorly acted B-movie.
Actually, calling it “poorly acted” is giving it too much credit. The acting was actively distracting in how bad it was. Wooden dialogue delivered in a stilted monotone is the order of the day, for pretty much every character. It was unfortunately obvious that the writers were going out of their way to present a squeaky-clean and church friendly movie, as the firefighters in tense situations never once curse or talk about sex or make off color jokes or do anything else that real people do. We both had a wonderful belly laugh at the unintentional humor of one character proclaiming someone was going to get a “karate chop sandwich!” All of the various characters also always say exactly what they are thinking internally, instead of letting the character’s actions speak.
Another one of the unintentionally humorous moments is worth a special mention. As Kirk Cameron is rescuing a kid from a fire, he realizes it’s really hot in the conflagration, so clearly the best course of action is to TAKE OFF HIS FIRE RETARDENT COAT and throw it to the side. We were in stitches when the exact next scene is of Kirk in the hospital being treated for burns on his arms.
The bulk of the movie shows off how terrible the main couple’s marriage is because of their lack of Christianity, and how Kirk gets religion and suddenly starts being a perfect husband. The abrupt and out-of-character transition from douche bag to perfect Christian man is honestly on par with the bungled Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader transformation in Episode 3.
The source of the writing is always painfully apparent throughout the movie. The “fights” the main couple has aren’t real fights, they are caricatures of fights, like something a pastor would tell a congregation to get a point across. Compelling dramas (say for instance, “Rescue Me”) have fights that show character flaws and development. Here it is just a lame gimmick to get across the point that they don’t get along without religion.
Like in several religious movies we’ve seen, there is a disturbing undercurrent of sexism to the characters. All throughout “Fireproof” we are shown how the women are wrong, we need to shut up the women, the women need to submit and do what their husbands say, the women can only be what their husband’s make them into, etc.
Granted, it’s not as outright appalling as the 2008 film adaptation of Ted Dekker’s “House,” but it’s still pretty bad. For anyone who hasn’t seen that Christian take on horror movies, it actually explicitly says that a woman goes to hell for the sin of having been raped. Please go back and re-read that sentence so that sinks in. Apparently *being raped* is somehow a woman’s fault and puts an eternal stain on her soul that makes her worthy of being tormented for all time. I can’t express my distaste for that movie enough.
Back to “Fireproof,” there is an extended scene where Kirk’s dad tells Kirk he is going to hell for not meeting God’s standard and then explains the Christian salvation plan. At this point we found ourselves wondering who the audience for this movie was supposed to be. Since its mostly likely Christians who are going to see the movie, they don’t need to hear the story yet again. Any people of different religions or atheists are just going to chuckle through the scene, so it’s not really clear what they are trying to achieve with it. It also says something about the Christian mentality that they can’t keep (what they see as) truth out of fictional accounts, as the two are all jumbled up for the religious.
The scene does feature another annoying reminder of the idea the movie presents though, when Kirk’s dad says “You can’t love her because you can’t give what you don’t have.” He’s saying that husbands can’t love their wives if they don’t first love the Christian God, which is pretty ridiculous. Apparently these people aren’t aware of the Christian divorce rate, or that people who aren’t Christians frequently have successful relationships?
After converting to Christianity, Kirk decides to kick his “addiction” to pornography. For some terrifying reason he feels the best way to do this is to smash apart his computer and monitor with a baseball bat. At this point we are sympathizing with his divorce seeking wife, as clearly this man is violent and unable to handle issues in any sort of healthy manner. Apparently he didn’t think through this “solution” to the problem – what’s he going to do when he needs his computer for something else? Never mind the fact that there’s nothing wrong with pornography (Megan and I both watch it, and you’ll note our marriage is pretty damn kick ass), and it’s been shown time and again that masturbation is good for you. Even the extremely Christian Fox News agrees on that point, but since Fox isn’t exactly a valid resource you can also check out this article or this article or about a thousand others.
During the scene where Kirk has his big conversion moment, his dad takes him for a walk in their backyard, where he has a massive wooden cross erected. I’ve always thought this was a pretty sick practice. Do Christians not understand that the cross was a means of execution, and a particularly grisly one? Would you put up a vintage electric chair or gas chamber in your back yard? If Jesus had sacrificed himself with a grenade, would you wear a grenade necklace? It also says something about the mentality of the Christian deity, as he can’t ever come up with a better solution to problems than “human sacrifice.”
So, despite the assurances of Christians that watching “Fireproof” would give us a heart to love God, I have found that post-Fireproof I still lack a heart-on for Jesus. Oh well, there’s still plenty more religious propaganda coming our way!
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