After the first 90 seconds, I have to believe this is a video made by non-Christians “actors” in an attempt to document the worst possible “Christian” arguments against evolution. Does the nature of the content change if I watch further?
Oh, and for the record, if evolution is, in fact, the explanation for how we got to our present form, I find this in no way contradictory to my Christian faith.
On the other hand, I find the fear and occasional blindness with which some proponents defend evolution to be ironically (and amusingly) similar to the way in which some Christians (and adherents of other faiths) defend their beliefs.
At the end of it, there’s a statement that all was taken verbatim from fundamentalist Christian online forums.
This is a nice segue-way into a topic I was going to float that ties issues of religious faith to issues of creativity. The image of God as a Divine Designer is in many ways congruent with the notion of the Master Artist (Mozart, Dickens, Michaelangelo, etc) producing the sublime masterwork. What would be the result for one’s religious outlook if one’s creative preoccupations shifted from an aspiration to be a sublime creative master to focus instead on a more mundane manipulation of elements, processes, undecidables, chance? “Art” that in part relies on contingencies and unpredictable movements or generations of effect.
Instead of expecting all materials to submit absolutely to the Master’s will, with nothing left over that is still “material,” all of it in seamless service of the Conception and Idea and Vision–what of the art that in part lets the material be untransformed or un-idealized. The artist might be accused of laziness or lack of wherewithal, talent, etc. by those who hold to the notions of a consummate creator (or God?) who can pull all of the strings all of the time. Would a God who adopted such “materialist” contingent strategies as the poor schlep of a “lazy” artist still be God, God as Creator?
Critics appreciate design. Artists do, too. Design can make us euphoric. Design can be sublime. Music of the Spheres, etc. But is Design the true nature of the Transcendent?
Turff, I understand your near compulsion to “balance” out the tirades, but seriously, the video shows the tip of an iceberg of some pretty solid irrationality, and that irrationality is a threat to society.
Marc (and everyone), I highly recommend The Vertigo Years: Europe 1900-1914, which I am about to finish (like I’m about to go downstairs and finish it). I’ll start passing it around.
The whole book is like A Distant Mirror was for the 70s and 80s: drawing societal parallels between then and now. It has resonated deeply with me. Perhaps we should all read it and have a called meeting around the fire in about a month.
Dale:
I agree with your first assertion, but not sure about your second (see how I compulsively “balanced” that?)
IOW, I couldn’t possibly argue that these positions are worthy of defense. But just because there are idiots lining up on a particular side of an issue doesn’t make that side wrong or right (more balancing). I mean, liberals have Alec Baldwin. Need I say more? I take Sicko as an excellent example. Moore does an awesome job for 2/3rds of a movie of making some incisive points about how we think about health care. Then, he burns some minutes being Castro’s tool. There may have been a good story in Cuba about health care, but in his grandstanding, he failed miserably to report/advocate on it. Does this bad bit of film making mean we don’t have a problem with health care in America? Of course not. Does it mean M. Moore’s approach to jousting at windmills is a threat to the fabric of our great nation? Despite what some conservatives believe, no.
If one wants to consider deeply held religious convictions to be irrational, I suppose that’s an option. The crime I saw committed within the thoughts that were presented in the video above was more often sourced by stupidity and laziness, however. Any society so easily threatened by those two dynamics may be in need of reshaping anyway.
I wonder if it would be true to say that fundamentalist lunatics are usually not ridiculed for believing in the basic tenets of Christianity (depending, of course, on what sect is formulating them–let’s call it the bare bones essence of belief and ritual and practice). Rather, it is when they begin to spin out a set of conclusions about all manner of worldly issues, matters of science, politics,culture, jurisprudence, etc., that they feel is somehow is a reflection of their faith, but which is more often than not the result of unfortunate psychotic lapses in rational process. Our ridicule of their thinking is then interpreted by them, of course, as persecution or the fulfillment assorted scriptural enigmas.
Here’s the source for many of these comments. There are, incredibly, worse. My favorite is the one about rape victims not having abortions, accepting the will of God, and “raise the interracial baby as their own.”
I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.
-Kahlil Gibran
After the first 90 seconds, I have to believe this is a video made by non-Christians “actors” in an attempt to document the worst possible “Christian” arguments against evolution. Does the nature of the content change if I watch further?
Oh, and for the record, if evolution is, in fact, the explanation for how we got to our present form, I find this in no way contradictory to my Christian faith.
On the other hand, I find the fear and occasional blindness with which some proponents defend evolution to be ironically (and amusingly) similar to the way in which some Christians (and adherents of other faiths) defend their beliefs.
At the end of it, there’s a statement that all was taken verbatim from fundamentalist Christian online forums.
This is a nice segue-way into a topic I was going to float that ties issues of religious faith to issues of creativity. The image of God as a Divine Designer is in many ways congruent with the notion of the Master Artist (Mozart, Dickens, Michaelangelo, etc) producing the sublime masterwork. What would be the result for one’s religious outlook if one’s creative preoccupations shifted from an aspiration to be a sublime creative master to focus instead on a more mundane manipulation of elements, processes, undecidables, chance? “Art” that in part relies on contingencies and unpredictable movements or generations of effect.
Instead of expecting all materials to submit absolutely to the Master’s will, with nothing left over that is still “material,” all of it in seamless service of the Conception and Idea and Vision–what of the art that in part lets the material be untransformed or un-idealized. The artist might be accused of laziness or lack of wherewithal, talent, etc. by those who hold to the notions of a consummate creator (or God?) who can pull all of the strings all of the time. Would a God who adopted such “materialist” contingent strategies as the poor schlep of a “lazy” artist still be God, God as Creator?
Critics appreciate design. Artists do, too. Design can make us euphoric. Design can be sublime. Music of the Spheres, etc. But is Design the true nature of the Transcendent?
re: #2
Turff, I understand your near compulsion to “balance” out the tirades, but seriously, the video shows the tip of an iceberg of some pretty solid irrationality, and that irrationality is a threat to society.
Marc (and everyone), I highly recommend The Vertigo Years: Europe 1900-1914, which I am about to finish (like I’m about to go downstairs and finish it). I’ll start passing it around.
The whole book is like A Distant Mirror was for the 70s and 80s: drawing societal parallels between then and now. It has resonated deeply with me. Perhaps we should all read it and have a called meeting around the fire in about a month.
Sounds good! Can’t wait to read it.
Dale:
I agree with your first assertion, but not sure about your second (see how I compulsively “balanced” that?)
IOW, I couldn’t possibly argue that these positions are worthy of defense. But just because there are idiots lining up on a particular side of an issue doesn’t make that side wrong or right (more balancing). I mean, liberals have Alec Baldwin. Need I say more? I take Sicko as an excellent example. Moore does an awesome job for 2/3rds of a movie of making some incisive points about how we think about health care. Then, he burns some minutes being Castro’s tool. There may have been a good story in Cuba about health care, but in his grandstanding, he failed miserably to report/advocate on it. Does this bad bit of film making mean we don’t have a problem with health care in America? Of course not. Does it mean M. Moore’s approach to jousting at windmills is a threat to the fabric of our great nation? Despite what some conservatives believe, no.
If one wants to consider deeply held religious convictions to be irrational, I suppose that’s an option. The crime I saw committed within the thoughts that were presented in the video above was more often sourced by stupidity and laziness, however. Any society so easily threatened by those two dynamics may be in need of reshaping anyway.
I wonder if it would be true to say that fundamentalist lunatics are usually not ridiculed for believing in the basic tenets of Christianity (depending, of course, on what sect is formulating them–let’s call it the bare bones essence of belief and ritual and practice). Rather, it is when they begin to spin out a set of conclusions about all manner of worldly issues, matters of science, politics,culture, jurisprudence, etc., that they feel is somehow is a reflection of their faith, but which is more often than not the result of unfortunate psychotic lapses in rational process. Our ridicule of their thinking is then interpreted by them, of course, as persecution or the fulfillment assorted scriptural enigmas.
What Marc said.
Here’s the source for many of these comments. There are, incredibly, worse. My favorite is the one about rape victims not having abortions, accepting the will of God, and “raise the interracial baby as their own.”
I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.
-Kahlil Gibran