On smart people believing stupid things

Religion and Secularism
21

@Mriana

“The Passion of the Christ.”

No. Just fucking no.

Violence porn, created by racist, homophobic, antisemitic, abusive drunk, Mel Gibson.

My stepson Christo was about 12 when that came out, and his Fundy mom took him to it, along with their church’s youth group. (!)

My ex (again, he was an Eastern Orthodox priest) and I were not happy. At all. We objected to it on principle. Many principals.

My ex and I were SUPER “into” film. It wasn’t (just) that it was violent, and for Christo’s age. (“Kill Bill” and “Se7en” were two of our favorite films, and we let Christo watch them with us. In certain ways, our parenting was very “liberal,” and that really pissed off Biomom.)

No, it was the grotesque, gratuitous, numbing violence IN THIS STORY, to elicit guilt in the viewer (Look what Jesus endured for you!)

Since Orthodox don’t have Substitutionary Atonement, or Original Sin in the same way Catholics & Protestants do, extreme focus on Jesus’ suffering strikes most of them as grotesque and disrespectful.

And this was extreme. I never did see it myself, but I know it was the most violent “R” film made up until that time, missing an MPAA rating by like 2 frames. And why…?

Beyond that, we both thought Gibson was an asshole.

Of course, it didn’t mean much to Christo. When we asked about it, he shrugged, and compared it to some action movies.

I AM interested in watching it to hear the language and see the cinematography, but I wouldn’t pay because I don’t want to see past the arrest.

The Passion of the Christ opened in the United States on February 25, 2004 ... It earned $83,848,082 in its opening weekend... ranking the biggest weekend debut for a February release, until Fifty Shades of Grey was released.*

It went on to earn $370,782,930 in the United States, and remains the highest grossing R film in the domestic market.

  • BWAAHAAHAHAA!!

 

22

@lausten

I would like to see more discussion about religious thinking
Tangentially, this reminds me of why I support teaching basic comparative religion in high schools, unlike many atheists.

I feel like one unit should be required (with a nationwide curriculum), with basic history and definitions of the largest world religions, as well as defining atheism, agnosticism etc.

My reasoning: I have noted that Americans are incredibly Christocentric, and unaware of diversity.

Many think Christians are 90% of the world’s population and that Christianity is the world’s oldest religion, anong other things.

Realizing that many other religions exist, and that their believers are just as convinced in theirs as Christians are of Christianity, paves the way for rationality and skepticism.

It is religious illiteracy that brought us Trump.

“Teaching religion” and “teaching ABOUT religion” are two different things. We remain ignorant at our own peril.

23

I’m gonna make that a separate post.

24
...I support teaching basic comparative religion in high schools, unlike many atheists.
I'm on board with that 100%. There will be a lot fewer religious people if that were to happen.

It won’t happen.

There’s no way an impartial and fair curriculum would be allowed by any religion. They would demand that they get to create how their religions are taught, and the same glossing over of the terrible parts (most of it) would happen. You’d end up with church in school.

 

25

@teebryantoo

“The Passion of the Christ.”

No. Just fucking no.

Violence porn, created by racist, homophobic, antisemitic, abusive drunk, Mel Gibson.

Exactly. We were crying… at the theatre! Mother and son crying, while little brother wanted to see it again. Many times my older son and I have said “no” in unison. That was one of them.

26

I’d really like to know how the UK pulls it off. Seems like it’s taken decades to get to where they are.

27

@3point14rat

@lausten

I just posted the topic in Religion & Secularism

Can you comment there?

 

 

28

@citizenschallengev3

Are we talking a hollywood movie
Wait, am I reading this right? Had you not heard of Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ?"
29

@Tee

Extraordinary Video ?

Alex O’Connor is a Superb Young Man!! He nailed it when he said “I value Truth more than Comfort”

30

A few threads within this thread. Here’s more on the “what people want religion to be” theme. From Dietrich Bonhoeffer the German theologian who died in prison at the hand of Hitler:

The attack of the Christian apologetic upon the adulthood of the world I consider to be in the first place pointless, in the second ignoble, and in the third un-Christian. Pointless, because it looks to me like an attempt to put a grown-up man back into adolescence, i.e. to make him dependent on things on which he is not in fact dependent any more, thrusting him back into the midst of problems which are in fact not problems for him anymore. Ignoble, because this amounts to an effort to exploit the weakness of man for purposes alien to him and not freely subscribed to by him. Un-Christian because for Christ himself is being substituted one particular stage in the religiousness of man.
Unfortunately I think the apologetics did win. They became the dominant face of Christianity, in America at least. They returned people to adolescence and put old problems of the age of the earth and where morals come from back in the forefront.
31

Well, yes Tee I have heard of Gibson’s movie - not seen it, no interest in it.
What’s important is that it has as much to do with “Jesus’s Passion”

as Madonna the pop star has to do with Madonna the ‘Virgin Mary.’

And in fact JC Superstar is basically another version of the same “Passion of Jesus.”

The stations of the cross and all that. I’d think you’d be more familiar with that than me.

32

:atom_symbol: 1// @blaire

Extraordinary Video

Alex O’Connor is a Superb Young Man!!


Right??

Had you seen Alex before this?

I recently discovered him, and I’m making my way through all his stuff. (His voice is so soothing.)

He’d be extremely intelligent, insightful, knowledgable, thoughtful and articulate if he were 35. But he’s 20. Practically an argument for God ?

People say he reminds them of Hitch. I honestly don’t know of Hitch that well. (Wasn’t Hitch sometimes kind of rude? Because I LIKE that Alex is respectful.)

I listen to a lot of atheist Youtubers & podcasters, and Alex is the most rational and even-tempered.

I’m posting a few of my favorirs of his videos, for anyone interested. (Very often he points out things others aren’t saying.)

❂

Dennis Prager is Wrong About the 10 Commandments

FANTASTIC takedown of Prager. Right out of the gate he points out that there are THREE versions of the 10 Commandments in Genesis, and the only one CALLED “the Commandments,” and given by God on stone tablets, is a version most people haven’t heard of. Almost no one points this out!!

13 minutes

@mikeyohe should watch this one since he really believes morality and law came from the Bible.

33

:atom_symbol: 2// @blaire

Are We Intelligently Designed?

HE WAS 17 YEARS OLD HERE.

This one is for @holmes.

11 minutes

 

34

:atom_symbol: 3// @blaire

Liberal Hypocrisy About Islam

@timb

He does not get much into the theology of Islam here (he does in other videos). But in terms of the liberals’ lack of internal consistency in their arguments, this this this this this.

9 minutes

 

 

35

:atom_symbol: 4// @blaire

Response to JW anti-gay video

He is SIXTEEN here. This is one of his top videos, and he apologizes for swearing. (He doesn’t swear in his later vids.)

 

8 minutes

36

:atom_symbol: 5// @blaire

With You, original song by Alex O’Connor

OH MY GOD I’M DEAD

He was 16 here, and he wrote this.

? I just now discovered his other channel. I had NO idea he does music too, and this song is BEAUTIFUL.

How can ONE KID have this much going for him? Kinda scary.

:heart:???

I’m a 55-year-old woman, crushing on a 20-year old kid 4,000 miles away, and I don’t even know if he is gay or straight.

The comments below reveal I’m not alone. Men & women are all saying the same thing! LOL

 

 

37

DAMN!! post vanished ???

Again, quick

@citizenschallengev3

Sorry, it sounded like you hadn’t heard of it.

I have not seen it either, but read a lot about it. Actually I would like to see parts of it because they speak Aramaic.

What’s important is that it has as much to do with “Jesus’s Passion”as Madonna the pop star has to do with Madonna the ‘Virgin Mary.’
????

 

Maybe you don’t know what the word “passion” means in this context?

In Christianity, the Passion (from Late Latin: passionem, lit. "suffering, enduring") is the short final period in the life of Jesus beginning with his triumphal entry into Jerusalem and ending with his crucifixion and his death on Good Friday.
That is the exact timeline the movie portrays. It is just like "passion plays" held usually by Catholic churches.

So it has to do with “the passion” quite literally.

 

And in fact JC Superstar is basically another version of the same “Passion of Jesus.”
Yes, but in the same way "Schindlers List" and "The Producers" are both just different versions of the Holocaust ?
38

Oh My. Your cougar-ish admirations of the young man, are cute. I admire his paradigm for maintaining internal philosophical consistency and intellectual integrity.

39

Intelligence really has nothing to do with beliefs at all. That’s more psychology and the subconscious, which is in a battle with the conscious when there is a particularly unintelligent belief which we, as intelligent people, might hold. That’s why some Christians really want to get their religious doctrine back into schools. If you want a grown man to believe in magic you have to teach a little boy that belief in magic is acceptable and right and then wait for him to grow up.

Given the right motivation you can convince yourself any stupid belief is true, no matter your level of intellect. In fact, may people here likely hold a stupid belief or two. When a Christian says to you that evolution is a lie, do you try to convince them otherwise? If you do it’s because you hold the belief that you, untrained in biology or genetics or any related field, are qualified to understand evolution enough to give an informed response. You are not. You know what the experts tell you, which means you know what they say to the public in a way that even an idiot could understand it. You likely know nothing whatsoever about the actual science. You certainly are not qualified to hold your own opinion on the matter unless you have qualifying training. The laymen’s opinion should not be well thought out and reasoned, it should be whatever the peer review process tells them is right. As laymen we are simply not qualified to reason out complex scientific principles, which is why the peer review process is in place, to give us our opinions on complex matters we cannot possibly understand without incurring the time and expense of the education required for us to understand.

In fact, this is exactly the misconception about our qualifications that the “teach the controversy” movement tried to exploit to get intelligent design creationism into the classroom. They made the very reasonable sounding argument that you should teach both sides and let the students decide. It sounded very fair on the surface. But the reality was that 9th graders were not qualified to draw conclusions of the validity of a scientific theory, especially when they were only given the very tiny fraction of the information believed to be simple enough for even less intelligent children to understand. To be qualified to decide for themselves they needed about 8 more years of schooling. It was intended to hold 150 years of science on equal ground with a brand new method of magical thinking.

40

@widdershins

I totally agree. I just want to add one thing that people forget when they say, “Why don’t we teach BOTH sides (Darwin and Genesis?)”

Because to be REALLY FAIR, then we would also have to teach:

List of creation myths

Creation from chaos
Cheonjiwang Bonpuri (a Korean creation myth)
Enûma Eliš (Babylonian creation myth)
Genesis creation myth (Christianity, Islam and Judaism)
Greek cosmogonical myth
Jamshid
Kumulipo
Leviathan (Book of Job 38-41 creation myth)
Mandé creation myth
Pangu
Raven in Creation
Serer creation myth
Sumerian creation myth
Tungusic creation myth
Unkulunkulu
Väinämöinen
Viracocha
Earth diverEdit
Ainu creation myth
Cherokee creation myth
Väinämöinen
Yoruba creation myth
Ob-Ugric creation myth
EmergenceEdit
Hopi creation myth
Maya creation of the world myth
Diné Bahaneʼ (Navajo)
Zuni creation myth
Ex nihilo (out of nothing)Edit
Debate between sheep and grain
Barton cylinder
Ancient Egyptian creation myths
Kabezya-Mpungu
Māori myths
Mbombo
Ngai
Popol Vuh
World ParentEdit
Coatlicue
Enûma Eliš
Greek cosmogonical myth
Heliopolis creation myth
Hiranyagarbha creation myth
Kumulipo
Rangi and Papa
Völuspá
Divine twinsEdit
Proto-Indo-European creation myths

RegionalEdit
AfricaEdit
Ancient Egyptian creation myths
Fon creation myth
Kaang creation story (Bushmen)
Kintu myth (Bugandan)
Mandé creation myth
Mbombo (Kuba, Bakuba or Bushongo/Boshongo)
Ngai (Kamba, Kikuyu and Maasai )
Serer creation myth (cosmogony of the Serer people of Senegal, the Gambia and Mauritania)
Unkulunkulu (Zulu)
Yoruba creation
AmericasEdit
MesoamericaEdit
Coatlicue (Aztec)
Maya creation of the world myth
Popol Vuh (Quiché Mayan)
Mid North AmericaEdit
Anishinaabeg creation stories
Cherokee creation myth
Choctaw creation myth
Creek creation myth
Hopi creation myth
Kuterastan (Plains Apache)
Diné Bahaneʼ (Navajo)
Raven in Creation (Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian)
Zuni creation myth
South AmericaEdit
Legend of Trentren Vilu and Caicai Vilu (Chilean)
Viracocha (Incan)
Xolas (Chilean)
AsiaEdit
Central AsiaEdit
Mongolian creation myth
Tungusic creation myth
East AsiaEdit
Ainu creation myth (Japan)
Au Co (Vietnamese)
Chinese creation myth
Cheonjiwang Bonpuli (Korean)
Dangun creation myth (Korean)
Japanese creation myth
Nüwa (Chinese)
Pangu (Chinese)
Samseonghyeol legend (Korean)
Indian subcontinentEdit
Ajativada
Buddhist cosmology
Folk Hindu creation myth
Hiranyagarbha creation (India)
Jainism and non-creationism (India)
Mimamsa eternalism (India)
Nyaya-Vaisheshika atomic theory (India)
Samkhya-yoga theory (India)
Sanamahi creation myth (India)
EuropeEdit
Greek cosmogonical myth (Greek)
Pelasgian creation myth (Greek)
Väinämöinen (Finnish)
Völuspá (Norse)
Raelian creation myth (French)
Middle EastEdit
Debate between sheep and grain
Enûma Eliš (Babylonian)
Genesis creation myth (Hebrew)
Islamic creation myth (Arabic)
Mashya and Mashyana (Persian)
Sumerian creation myth
Leviathan (Book of Job 38-41 creation myth)
Pacific Islands/OceanicEdit
Areop-Enap (Nauruan)
Kumulipo (Hawaiian)
Māori myths (Māori)
Rangi and Papa (Māori)
Sureq Galigo (Buginese)