Monthly Archives: February 2007

Don’t bother me with pesky "evidence"

Posted on by
2

Courtesy of my daily e-mail from the Texas Freedom Network:

E-MAIL FROM THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT
Text is taken directly from e-mails written by religious-right groups. The Texas Freedom Network does not edit the content for grammar or accuracy.

Date: February 28, 2007
From: American Family Association
By: Don Wildmon

The Discovery Channel documentary slams Christianity

The documentary claims that the tombs of Jesus, Mary, Mary Magdalene and a supposed son of Jesus —Judah— have been found, thus making the Bible and two thousand years of history a lie.

According to the Discovery Channel’s documentary “The Lost Tomb of Jesus” airing Sunday, March 4, the bones of Jesus– buried with His family — have been found. In addition, the documentary says that Mary Magdalene and Jesus might have had a son named Judah.

Here is what The Discovery Channel says about the program and the Christian faith: “All leading epigraphers agree about the inscriptions. All archaeologists confirm the nature of the find. It comes down to a matter of statistics. A statistical study commissioned by the broadcasters (Discovery Channel/Vision Canada/C4 UK) concludes that the probability factor is 600 to 1 in favor of this tomb being the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth and his family.”

Having watched how Hollywood portrays Christians and Christian values for the past 30 years, it is clear that Hollywood considers Christianity its greatest enemy. Because of our silence, Christianity is the only religion they feel free to attack!

It is time for Christians to send a message to The Discovery Channel and Hollywood that enough is enough! Don’t stay silent while The Discovery Channel and Hollywood continually attack our faith and our values.

The documentary was produced by James Cameron, whose claim to fame is directing the movie “The Titanic.” Saying that Cameron is qualified to make a documentary on Jesus is like saying Hugh Hefner is qualified to make a documentary on abstinence before marriage!

Having not seen the documentary yet (and I doubt Rev. Wildmon has either, unless he has a time machine), I can’t say much about its production values, attribution of claims, or the general quality of its historical research. I can say that there is not very much harm in presenting information about something that somebody found somewhere and letting people draw their own conclusions from it. The e-mail above does not challenge the veracity of any claims made by the documentary–it barely scratches the surface of identifying any claims made by the documentary. In fact, Rev. Wildmon does not challenge a single assertion made by the publicity for this documentary. He does say this, though: “The documentary claims that the tombs of Jesus, Mary, Mary Magdalene and a supposed son of Jesus —Judah— have been found, thus making the Bible and two thousand years of history a lie.”

I guess one man’s metaphor is another man’s lie. Rather than critically examine archaeological evidence that may or may not have any impact on his faith, he would stick his nose back into an old book and pretend it isn’t happening. And he would have everyone else do the same.

But it doesn’t stop there. See, presenting evidence that might contradict one man’s narrowly-drawn version of reality isn’t bad enough…there must be a bigger bogeyman behind the scenes. He identifies the documentary as a broadcast of a Canadian network, a British nework, and the Discovery Channel (whose umbrella corporation is headquartered in Maryland), and then makes the following statement: “Having watched how Hollywood portrays Christians and Christian values for the past 30 years, it is clear that Hollywood considers Christianity its greatest enemy. ”

Huh?

How did we get to Hollywood? And what happened 30 years ago?

Oh, right. Hollywood is run by liberals, liberals hate America, America is Christian to its core, and therefore Jesus is going to kick our asses…the argument goes something like that. Point being, it’s a docu-freakin’-mentary. At least try to formulate a coherent argument that addresses the evidence it presents.

Or is “Hollywood” a code word for something else???…

“Don’t stay silent while The Discovery Channel and Hollywood continually attack our faith and our values.” He isn’t so clear what he wants his peeps to say to the Discovery Channel and Hollywood (oh my!), but I’m not exactly his target audience. I guess something along the lines of “Your objective and corporeal evidence offends me. I object to your displaying it on a basic cable network most people do not watch on a Sunday night.” Come to think of it, that is easier than actually crafting a counter-argument.

I should note that I am not out to offend or denigrate anyone else’s religious beliefs. I should also note that I do not believe for a millisecond that people like Don Wildmon would ever extend to me the sort of courtesy I tried to extend in the previous sentence. So anyone with tender religious sensibilities should just skip the rest of this paragraph. Now then, it may seem easier to draw life lessons from an ancient book of fairytales that has not been edited since at least the 5th century AD (or CE). But really, in the face of a second-rate documentary by the guy who brought us The Abyss, I guess peddlers of a rather poorly-edited anthology of uncertain attribution and extensive internal inconsistencies should be worried about the staying power of their wares.

That said, there are many valid criticisms of the documentary’s facts (remember those?), such as the following:

Stephen Pfann, a biblical scholar at the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem who was interviewed in the documentary…is even unsure that the name “Jesus” on
the caskets was read correctly. He thinks it’s more likely the name “Hanun.”

Archaeologists quickly discounted the theory that the boxes contained the bones of Jesus and his family because the names inscribed on the boxes were quite common in the region during the 1st Century.

So how’s about we quit the whinin’ and the bellyachin’ and let the documentary stand on its own (possible lack of) merits. I have no idea if the documentary is any good, or in the least bit convincing. If it shakes Christians’ faith to the core, that’s their problem, and it would only prove that Don Wildmon is not very good at his job. See, faith isn’t supposed to depend on facts or evidence anyway, remember?

I can’t finish this post without ridiculing one other part of the e-mail:

The documentary was produced by James Cameron, whose claim to fame is directing the movie “The Titanic.” Saying that Cameron is qualified to make a documentary on Jesus is like saying Hugh Hefner is qualified to make a documentary on abstinence before marriage!

Ah, the ad hominem attack, lynchpin of the man with no solid argument in the first place. But really, is a film director making a documentary on Jesus any worse than a glorified televangelist attempting to discuss archaeology?

Also, give Mr. Cameron a little credit for The Terminator, seriously.

In closing, now that I’ve read about all this controversy, I’m definitely going to watch the documentary (Sunday, March 4, 8 p.m. CST).

Share

Deliberate ignorance finds a new home on the web

Posted on by
Reply

I can’t sleep, and this was too strange not to mention. Apparently Phyllis Schlafly and those of her ilk have decided the liberal bias of Wikipedia is too much to bear, so they have launched their own site, Conservapedia. There are some amusing comments on the site’s content and lack thereof.

Is it too much to hope for that this marks the beginning of a trend; that Ms. Schlafly and her followers will simply abandon other modes of contemporary communication to start their own? Eventually, they will disappear into self-imposed segregation (yeah, I said it), secure in the knowledge that they will never have to hear a dissenting opinion, have their Christian faith questioned, or hear the word “evolution” again. They will breed prodigiously for a while, what with the total lack of condoms or sex education, but without any knowledge of evolution, flu epidemics will probably be common (since there would be no need to ever update their vaccine supply, since viruses couldn’t possibly mutate or evolve without God’s help.) Large-scale flu epidemics would be tragic, please understand. I’m just the messenger.

Oh, for fuck’s sake, this is satire! Chill out.

Share

Condoleeza Rice thinks you are stupid

Posted on by
Reply

I’m not going to bother to reprint any of her argument from Fox News yesterday. My opinion of those who try to compare the current war situation to World War II should be clear by now (ignorant, indefensible, and akin to slime mold).

Secretary Rice may have hit a new low by essentially reversing history and suggesting that we should not have used force…wiat, we should have used force but not rebuilt…uhh…shit, I can’t make heads or tails of anything she said. You owe it to yourself to watch what Keith Olbermann had to say.

Seriously, watch it.

Don’t come back until you’ve watched it.

This is more like old school SportsCenter Keith, not new stodgy Keith.

OK, hopefully you’ve watched it by now. I’m too pissed off to write much more. Let me just ask a (presumably rhetorical) question: if Iraq is so comparable to WWII, why are we throwing so few resources at it, where are all the calls for sacrifice, and so forth? We kicked Hitler’s ass after throwing everything we had into the fight, and then we threw even more into rebuilding the place. You can’t save the world on the cheap.

Share

New definition requested: "Stable"

Posted on by
2

I’ve pretty much given up on ever getting a definition of “victory,” so I might as well move on to the next bit of ambiguity. Laura Bush had this to say on Larry King:

Many parts of Iraq are stable now. But, uh, of course, what we see on television is the one bombing a day that discourages everyone.

I guess it depends on what your definition of the word “stable” is. Mine doesn’t allow much wiggle room on the issue of daily bombings.

And damn those insurgents for harshing our buzz with their daily bombings!

I try to flippant to keep from losing my mind, but this is just getting fucking depressing.

Share

The Swift Boating of Al Gore

Posted on by
2

Say what you will about Al Gore, but he made a good movie and he doesn’t deserve this:

Last night, Al Gore got very favorable national press and worldwide television exposure.

This afternoon, a group calling itself “The Tennessee Center For Policy Research” sent out a press release denouncing Vice President Gore for the size of his household electrical bills.

Apparently the attempt at a smear has spread throughout much of the internet already–heck, it’s been nearly 24 hours since the awards show. The question is, will they get away with it this time? I have long been of the opinion that Al Gore was too freakin’ polite for much of the 2000 campaign, but I am conflicted about the best way to deal with it long-term. Maybe progressives need a shadowy corps of smear artists to go head to head with Fox News and its ilk. There are two principal problems with that idea, though: (1) most progressives have too much integrity/self respect/human decency to routinely engage in the lying/twisting/manipulating of basic common sense and reality so common in their opponents, and (2) progressives may be too darned independent-minded to take the kind of marching orders that would be necessary for this sort of plan. This is not the kind of problem that will go away if you ignore it (it would if everyone ignored them, but that ain’t gonna happen.)

So I am calling on all intelligent independent-minded people to resist all these b.s. attempts to deflect attention away from what people like Al Gore say and towards misleading innuendoes about who they are. See, there probably aren’t very many actual counter-arguments, so the goal is to distract attention from that fact. I’m still trying to get my head around the arguments of those who doubt global warming–highlights seem to include that liberals hate America and that science can be determined democratically if enough people simply refuse to believe something (I choose to reject Avogadro’s number. I’ll get back to you on how that works out.)

Don’t just ignore this, though. It may not be worth dignifying with a response, but silence is really no longer golden.

Sigh.

Share

Intel Building demolition – WHEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!

Posted on by
2

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

The Intel Building at 5th & San Antonio, long the blight of the Austin downtown skline, finally went away Sunday morning, sort of. The demolition wasn’t quite as complete as we onlookers had expected, although it apparently went exactly as planned, and it drew some disquieting comparisons to 9/11 from some in attendance. Of course, everyone there had their cameras at the ready. Here’s my footage, complete with excessive commentary:

Of course, it wouldn’t be a public event in Austin without 9/11 conspiracy nuts. Somebody (I didn’t get a picture) was waving a sign with something about Googling WTC7 on it. Sigh.

Cross-posted at The Albatross.

Share

SCROTUM!!!!!

Posted on by
Reply

Editorial: Don’t let your kids read this

This is a good one. A number of librarians are complaining because the latest Newberry Award-winning children’s book, “The Higher Power of Lucky,” describes a rattlesnake biting a dog on the ballsack…I mean scrotum.

The book uses the anatomically-correct term, so what’s the problem, exactly? That a children’s book acknowledges the existence of canine private parts? I am using nearly all my strength to suppress the urge to vomit at the thought of a rattlesnake biting anything anywhere near my…scrotum, but that really isn’t the point, anyway:

“Because of that one word, I would not be able to read that book aloud,” one [librarian] explained, calling it “a Howard Stern-type shock treatment.” We have three words for that: Oh, come on.

I recall several Newberry books I read as a kid, and many of them deal with some pretty tough issues. While I am not certain that snake bites on the junk are on the same level as death or racism when it comes to issues children must confront, I am not convinced that this is such a horrible thing for a librarian to have to say out loud.

I wonder what the book is actually about?

Share

The USA’s slick new marketing campaign (UPDATED)

Posted on by
Reply

This one really threw me off for a while:

This was apparently created as part of a campaign to combat rising anti-Americanism in the UK and elsehwere in Europe. I hate to be a spoilsport, but I have to argue with the some of the “history” presented here–if there were no America, would everything else have proceeded exactly the same way except with right-wing-talking-point-friendly side effects?

Just a thought: if America never existed, there might have never been a French Revolution, so no Napoleonic Wars, no dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, no Franco-Prussian War, no World War I, and therefore no World War II in which the Soviets could liberate Paris first. That may be going a bit far, so let me slow things down a little.

If there were no America during World War I, but otherwise everything else was the same, how long would the Allies and Central Powers continue slugging it out on the Western Front? It has been suggested that, without U.S. intervention on the Allies’ behalf in 1917, the war in the west might have eventually ended in a draw of sorts. Here is one interesting scenario:

In World War I, America remained strictly neutral until the beginning of unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917. To this, America had to respond, but as the President pointed out, this did not commit America to taking part in the disastrous ground war being fought on the French frontier. Instead, a vigorous and ruthless naval campaign was carried out against both German submarines and surface vessels, whether civilian or military. At the same time America’s scientific establishment cam into action, developing a sonar device as early as 1919 and effectively ending attacks on American vessels. Without American intervention, neither side could prevail, and in 1921, with both Germany and France physically and financially exhausted, and threatened from within by Communist revolution, the Western Powers concluded a peace treaty that left matters substantially as they had been in 1914. Without the indignity of military occupation or the vindictive conditions of an imposed peace, including vast “reparations” from the defeated, radical right-wing German parties could gain little traction; an obscure agitator called Hitler was killed in a beer garden brawl in 1937.

My point is simply that nothing about history is pre-ordained (a point I’ve tried to make in earlier posts) and that hindsight is 20/20.

All the same, it is kind of nice to have the UK stumping for us, isn’t it? USA! USA!

UPDATE:

It occurred to me that it sort of sounds like I’m saying that, without America, there would not have been any war for the past 200 years. There certainly would have been wars, just not the same ones. The Crimean War may have occurred unchanged without a US, as well as the Russo-Japanese War. A lot of things would have been different, though, and “better” or “worse” is hard to say. I’m inclined to say worse, though.

Share