Prince of tides
By DougJ, Head of Infidelity February 3rd, 2011
Sometimes I wonder if Bill O’Reilly isn’t just screwing with us.
For anyone who believes that in a giant sprawling universe, there’s a pretty good chance intelligent life will randomly come together somewhere, please read the following lines of text:
How da Moon get dere?
How da Moon get dere?
How da Moon get dere?
How da Moon get dere?
How da Moon get dere?
How da Sun get dere?
How da Moon get dere?
How da Moon get dere?
How dit get dere?
Posted in Hoot-Smalley
Daddy, where did I come from?
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:20 pm
Did he say that Mars does not have the sun, or a moon, but the earth does? And that proves something? Did I hear that wrong?
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:20 pm
Bill O’Reilly is still alive? Who knew?
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:21 pm
Well, how did it get dere, you Godless secular liberal? You don’t have an answer, do you? Moon goes up, moon goes down. No miscommunication. Tide comes in, tide goes out. No miscommunication. Bill opens his mouth, stupid bullshit comes out. No miscommunication there either. And before you even try to explain THAT one away, let me follow up: how’d dat stupid bullshit get dere?
How can you deny that there’s a God in the face of such overwhelming evidence?
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:22 pm
@JPL: When a man, a woman, and a loofah fall in love…
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:22 pm
He said Mars doesn’t have a moon.
Oh Bill …
I must have done something wrong, why can’t act like a fucking ignorant inbred dipshit and get paid millions for it?
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:23 pm
“Cloud goes up, Cloud goes down, Cloud goes up, Cloud goes down, Cloud goes up…”
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:23 pm
I had no idea O’Reilly was so stupid. And he has the chutzpah to call other people pinheads.
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:24 pm
And where did God come from, Bill?
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:24 pm
@ChrisS: You were raised to have a conscience? If you can kill that off, you can definitely make out well in America.
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:24 pm
So O’Reilly is a juggalo, right?
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:25 pm
Where does felufal come from?
Where do women’s opinion that felufal is not sexy, when mentioned with salacious intent by old people over the phone, come from?
Edit: where does hypocrisy and ignorance come from? Where does bad faith come from? Where does mental illness come from?
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:26 pm
Damn, the difference between this and “Magnets?!?” is pretty tiny.
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:27 pm
He has single-handedly destroyed whatever remaining value a harvard diploma might have.
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:27 pm
Why doesn’t Mars and Venus have the sun? We share the same sun because we are in the same solar system. Oh my.
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:28 pm
Spring is on its way, 2 days in a row now the sun has been in my eyes through the window before dropping below the cliff.
edit: that means the sun is setting more north in the west than it was. Longer days too Yay!
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:28 pm
Paging Mr.Phobos. Paging Mr. Deimos.
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:29 pm
who calls people pinheads any more? is he some sort of grizzled prospector from nineteen ought three consarnit?
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:31 pm
“And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space
‘Cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth”
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:32 pm
KIN I HAZ SUNZ?
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:33 pm
don’t forget, he gets to interview the President as part of the Super Bowl activities, I’m not sure if I should watch it or load up the Firefly DVD’s instead. Can someone send Bill-O a copy of They Might Be Giants DVD that has “The Sun is a mass of incandescent gas”?
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:33 pm
I don’t know about a god or gods, but the fact that Billo is able to find work, much less prosper, is a good argument for the existence of demons.
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:34 pm
Wow billo is stupid, he thinks that stuff hasn’t been explained? Hey Bill! USE GOOGLE!
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:35 pm
I can’t wait for the Jon Ronson profile of Papa Bear.
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:35 pm
@justawriter:
win.
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:36 pm
@Dan: Isn’t the value of a Harvard diploma automatic entry into the Real Americans for American and against everything unAmerican club?
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:36 pm
During the course of Bill O’Reilly’s rant, it became clear that he was using a vibrator upon himself, and that he ejaculated.
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:37 pm
Wow. Just… wow.
He starts out with the regularity of the tides being proof of God, because it’s completely inexplicable otherwise. Then when it’s patiently explained to him, he takes it as a given that because he used tides as evidence of God, tides are now something that is amazingly wonderful and makes Earth better than other planets, rather than just different.
The projection (“this is just desperate”) is pretty amazing, too.
Sometimes I wonder if Bill O’Reilly isn’t just screwing with us.
I used to wonder that, too. Now I think that if it was ever true, he’s become like the dictator in Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, who started out playing the role but became unable to distinguish between the role and himself.
PS: Trying to find the exact quote, I stumbled across this, which seems apropos:
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:44 pm
@Barb (formerly Gex): And on the third day god gave us loofahs.
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:45 pm
@jl: no, you heard that right… pretty sure that Mars has the same sun we do, and that it has a moon or two as well… I don’t know if O’Really is as
stupidpin-headed as he sounds, or if he knows his listeners are incapable of using the google.February 3rd, 2011 at 3:46 pm
@Redshift:
Oh, wow. Must go back to reading Vonnegut. If that doesn’t sum up Fox News’ viewers I don’t know what does.
aimai
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:48 pm
And to think that he got into Harvard, and I didn’t.
But, ironically, I took astronomy at the state university I attended.
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:49 pm
If BillO is screwing with you, you’ll know because your answering machine will be full.
OT, but Christiane Amanpour interviewed Mubarak this afternoon. Here are some nuggets (via The guardian):
That’ll go over well with the protesters.
More:
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:49 pm
I wonder that too, but then I see him double down like this, and I see the mindless nodding their heads in agreement and waiting slavishly for the next showing of Glenn Beck, and I realize that yes, it truly is possible to be this dumb and ignorant. It’s a depressing thing to be reminded so and have your previous impressions of where rock bottom his constantly revised downward.
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:49 pm
Against stupidity; God Himself is helpless. -Yiddish Proverb
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:50 pm
God would never have thought of creating the tides if He hadn’t created the Moon first.
There was a lot of stuff to make, and putting a big rock next to the Earth made Him realize he had to do some things to make it look like there was some big effect other than moonlight.
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:52 pm
here is the fundamental problem with these arrogant christian types:
aren’t they the first people to run around screaming that man cannot know the mind of god? that “god works in mysterious ways”?
if so, aren’t these arrogant christian types just claiming to know the mind of god by categorically dismissing scientifically proven facts as somehow incompatible with the magical, unknowable image of god that they, as mere humans, have constructed for themselves?
after all, what the fuck is theologically wrong with the proposition that god created gravity, and all the other related forces of the universe, and left the universe to pop into existence at the big bang and then coalesce slowly over the course of 14+ billion years!!??? Answer: NOTHING. Isn’t god supposed to be able to do whatever the heck he wants?
also too, why do these prideful simple men stand as god’s final mouthpiece on the subject of evolution, when god could easily have decided to create man and all the beasts of the earth by setting in motion the complex evolution of life that started with some amino acids simmering in the primordial soup?? Again, who the heck are these arrogant pricks to tell me whether god did it that way or not??
in my view, there is nothing in what i believe that deigns to put boundaries on what this god of theirs might have had in mind when he supposedly created the universe and the life within it.
arrogant christian fucks like bill o’reilly, however, are doing exactly what they claim not to do, which is to categorically state what god did and did not do, or would or would not do, and thereby put outer boundaries on what god is supposedly capable of.
it’s such a pile of horseshit and remains one of the really big things about arrogant religionists that really pisses me off at a visceral level.
i can deal with christians who have a mystical reverence in faith and all that jazz, so long as they at least TRY to have a little fucking internal consistency.
/rant
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:55 pm
@Kryptik: Mubarak sounded like he was auditioning for a job on Fox News.
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:55 pm
Relevant.
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:58 pm
there is certainly plenty to find funny in this, but the sad/disturbing aspect is that it is this kind of ignorance that is preventing the country from taking serious action on climate change.
February 3rd, 2011 at 3:59 pm
Yes, Billo, we are just lucky. So lucky that you can get a camera and a website.
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:01 pm
How’d God get dere?
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:02 pm
@Dan: not to mention making us laughingstocks on the world stage. that and the fact that roughly only 16% of americans believe in a god-free theory of evolution http://politicstheoryphotograp.....ry-of.html
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:04 pm
@Library Grape:
It’s all about projection. These are petty, simpleminded people, so God must also be petty and simpleminded.
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:05 pm
True story:
2 year old to his four year old brother, from the crib, pointing towards the ceiling light:
“Jay, why dat light up dere?”
“Jay, why dat light up dere?”
“Jay, why dat light up dere?”
Long pause:
“So we can’t bweak it.”
I think we see where BillO is going with his equally sophisticated analysis of the lights up dere.
aimai
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:06 pm
Like aimai, I think I’m gonna go read some Kurt again. I exhausted it all by 1986 and it’s time to revisit.
ot question: Is there anything better (more FOSS) than a kindle?
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:06 pm
Wait, I thought that the Moon was one of the eyes of Horus.
And thank you Wikipedia, for the most awesome origin story ever:
dms
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:08 pm
Who put the sham in the shama lama ding dong?
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:08 pm
An interesting question is “How did Bill O’Reilly get there?” It’s a research question with obvious policy implications for our beloved mass media and political system.
Beck will spin a communofascistIslamatheiObama conspiracy out of it.
I can hardly wait for their next get together for an informative chat.
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:09 pm
@RSR: Hell, I still haven’t found out who wrote the book of love.
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:11 pm
Nah, don’t misunderestimate Bill. He knows he’s been eclipsed by Beck and Palin as the Overton Window at Fox News has moved somewhere to the right of a lobotomized Baghdad Bob. He’s trying to play catch up.
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:11 pm
@freelancer: a very excellent point indeed
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:11 pm
Maybe this is our curse—to live at a time where we have answers to so many of the scientific questions that humans have been seeking answers to throughout our history, and yet to be surrounded by a bunch of nimrods who aren’t even interested in finding them out.
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:13 pm
@Dan: quite the irony no?
i sometimes wonder if our mental ability will ever start to devolve by hundreds of years of billions of ignorant idiots self-selecting themselves into breeding pairs with other ignorant idiots…
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:17 pm
@Redshift:
Ah yes, I was trying to think of a way to explain Glenn Beck and I think this fits him as well.
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:18 pm
@piratedan: ah, but the sun is not a mass of incandescent gas. that thesis is no longer valid.
the sun is a miasma of incandescent plasma.
and yes, i got that album for my 3 yr old, but it rocks anyway.
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:20 pm
@piratedan: ah, but the sun is not a mass of incandescent gas. that thesis is no longer valid.
the sun is a miasma of incandescent plasma.
and yes, i got that album for my 3 yr old, but it rocks anyway.
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:20 pm
Good grief. I’m religious* and think this guy is an idiot.
Comments disabled on You Tube. Quelle surprise.
*though as a gay liberal Episcopalian most religious people would disagree…
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:20 pm
Follow my logic: All of this stuff couldn’t possibly just exist—so God must have poofed it into existence. And God, of course, just exists.
That’s the part of this whole rationale that has always annoyed me. Saying “God did it” doesn’t solve the problem at all. It abstracts it one layer, but the problem remains.
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:20 pm
It would be so awesome if members of Bill O’s audience reacted with horror at the flaming stupid. It won’t happen, even if they are actually smart enough to recognize it as such. The flaming stupid is always considered an acceptable weapon in defense of the baby Jesus.
You: But… but… IT’S FLAMING STUPID!
Them: But he’s defending the baby Jesus, you big meanie!
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:21 pm
@Library Grape: Have you ever seen the movie Idiocracy? That’s the gist of it.
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:23 pm
It’s a fun question but I’d redirect it because I think it misses the point. My answer is that he’s an actor on TV. Same goes for Olbermann or Big Ed. Hannity’s just an ugly fraud.
Think Alec Baldwin. Is AB screwing with us? (I sat through State and Main last night. wow, that sucked.)
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:26 pm
This is one of the more prevalent lines of reasoning that people use for Deity arguments and many other things. Why do you think O’Reilly is “screwing with us”? This is how many people think.
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:31 pm
That bears a similarity to the theme of Mother Night, which Vonnegut uncharacteristically spelled out explicitly: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
I still haven’t read Cat’s Cradle. I’m so glad there are still Vonnegut books I get to read for the first time.
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:34 pm
@Dan: i’ve so been meaning to watch it. although i’ve been watching a few too many documentaries lately (like Gasland) that make me cry. i should just man up and watch it, even though it will likely just add to the anger and despondency :)
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:41 pm
@Shabbazz: not to mention the fact that religious people are failing to realize that if god created everything, he could just as easily create physics and evolution and just set things in motion, rather than just waving a wand and – poof – everything appears the way it currently is. it’s just so damn simplistic.
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:43 pm
It totally solves the problem. They no longer have to worry about not knowing the answer, instead they are able to feel the answer. Replacing truth with truthiness is all the solution some people need.
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:44 pm
@Library Grape:
But… Idiocracy… ?
haha. has a happy ending. Kinda like An Inconvenient Truth.
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:46 pm
@twiffer: I hear ya twiffer, but it’s Billo, so I figured baby steps were in order
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:46 pm
@Shabbazz: This is why God invented the fingers in the ear and the “I’m not listening, la la la la!” move. They have to be able to end the discussion somehow.
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:49 pm
@Library Grape: Deism is un Amwerican. What would the Founders’ think?
/snark
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:49 pm
The problem with Bill is he has the same disease millions of other Americans have. It’s a disease called Goddidit (also known as “Religion”). It’s a terrible disease which infects the brain and is known to cause the blockage of critical thought and inquiry.
It also has an interesting defense mechanism. When those who are infected are exposed to rational thought, facts, data, science or anything of the sort..the victims eyes and ears cease to function properly preventing exposure to reality. Most cranial activity ceases (breathing and nervous system remain intact, although usually go into a heightened state), and it’s even been known to cause violent physical outbursts or incoherent blathering about mystical beings.
A truly deadly and debilitating disease. Science is currently working on a cure.
Stay tuned.
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:50 pm
@Library Grape: None of these things put humans as the pinnacle of existence, much less explain how men should be kings of their home while God is king of everything else.
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:51 pm
@Restrung: thanks for letting me know. that gives me strength to watch it. i would definitely recommend watching gasland but it might make you cry :)
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:53 pm
@freelancer:
One of my favorite quotes by Anne Lamott is: “You know you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that He hates all the same people you do.”
It’s sad that they feel compelled to create a God as small, petty, and ignorant as they are.
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:55 pm
I blogged this yesterday for a couple friends who are more into science than I am – headaches were had by all. An idea strikes me: why don’t we all just send him one simple question?
Namely, “Fucking magnets, how do they work?”
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:57 pm
I really don’t want the case against God to rely on whether I can explain how the moon got there.
Because I can totally do that.
February 3rd, 2011 at 4:58 pm
Exit through the Gift Shop made me cry. But Idiocracy is not a docu.. aw fuggit.
February 3rd, 2011 at 5:01 pm
And all previous ones have been scrubbed. Somehow that says it all.
February 3rd, 2011 at 5:01 pm
On the one hand, people believe that God requires us to use faith to encounter his existence, so we must rely upon faith rather than God giving us any physical evidence.
On the other hand, God is apparently really stupid or a fraud, and it turns out the faith thing is all apparent bullshit.
Because apparently God couldn’t figure out how to create one fucking thing without making it impossibly obvious that it could only have come into existence by his magic.
So, which is it?
Are we required to use faith to learn of the existence of God? Or do we just look at the tides and go, ‘fuck, who could explain that? Must be God’ and get rid of this ‘faith’ shit altogether.
February 3rd, 2011 at 5:04 pm
@Restrung: i’ve been meaning to see that one too. my netflix queue is stuffed!
February 3rd, 2011 at 5:05 pm
@Restrung: Idiocracy was not a documentary; it was a training video. It’s the society they want.
February 3rd, 2011 at 5:06 pm
@Restrung:
I rather liked using Kindle’s software on my iPod (for casual reading when trapped somewhere, not as a primary reading device), especially since I wanted an iPod for audio files and portable email and web anyhow – but now that Apple has decreed that they’re going to bleed competing retailers of ebooks dry (by insisting that all sales go through Apple and give Apple a huge cut – 30%, f’FSM’s sake, quite likely the whole profit margin for the retailer even on overhead-free electronic stock), starting with Sony’s eReader software on iOS but presumably extending soon to Amazon, I don’t know what I’ll do. Look forward to the inevitable Android iPod equivalents, I guess.
February 3rd, 2011 at 5:06 pm
I’m down with the latte with extra foam, but the rest of that future kinda sucked.
February 3rd, 2011 at 5:11 pm
don’t know if Bill’O realizes it but he said in his little “how da moon get dere” bit that “it takes more faith to not believe...than it does to believe” in God… listen closely from the 1:09 point…
guess all us non-believers are a pretty faithful bunch…
February 3rd, 2011 at 5:11 pm
@Cris: Cat’s Cradle is my favorite.
February 3rd, 2011 at 5:20 pm
Why is everything
deletedFebruary 3rd, 2011 at 5:23 pm
@Major Mel Funkshun:
How’d da strikethrough get dere?How’d da strikethrough get dere?
How’d da strikethrough get dere?
How’d da strikethrough get dere?
How’d da strikethrough get dere?
February 3rd, 2011 at 5:27 pm
OMG, he really says Mars doesn’t have a moon. OMG.
February 3rd, 2011 at 5:29 pm
O Reilly is an entertainer; a fatuous entertainer.
The only reason that I have to take him seriously: there are people who actually believe him.
February 3rd, 2011 at 5:30 pm
So is thunder just God ‘breaking wind? (Double pum intended.)
February 3rd, 2011 at 5:33 pm
Apparently God must love Jupiter 63 times more than Earth.
February 3rd, 2011 at 5:37 pm
Bill O’Reilly went to college? You could have fooled me.
There should be a law against someone of his extraordinarily meager intellectual gifts calling someone else a “pinhead.”
Perhaps the sum of intelligence and ego has a maximum value in any one person. It’s a zero sum game—the more of one there is, the less of the other there must be. In the case of people like Beck and O’Reilly it’s pretty clear that the ego has reached its theoretical maximum, leaving no room at all for intelligence. The most amazing thing is how their egos compel them to demonstrate their stupidity publicly.
I take that back…maybe the most amazing thing is that someone pays them to demonstrate their stupidity publicly. But wait, is that more amazing than the fact that people waste their time watching these buffoons? (Beck is officially a clown; both are buffoons.)
One thing is clear—as long as these two and Ann Coulter continue to ply their trade in public, the three ring circus is not dead. (For anyone lucky enough to have missed it, Coulter recently claimed on Hannity that “there’s a lot of evidence that owning a gun and a Bible is better for society than everyone having to own health insurance.” I’d love to see all that evidence, Ann. Or is it stored on the moon?)
February 3rd, 2011 at 5:44 pm
lmao. Well I have to say, I began the clip as a non-believing agnostic, but really, how can anyone walk away not believing in God in the face of such sound logic? I tip my hat to you sir!
February 3rd, 2011 at 5:47 pm
@joe from Lowell:
Actually, I find the history of the moon rather remarkable. And when I consider that we need a moon of that relative size to stabilize the earth’s axis so we can have stable climates, I am even more amazed. And the idea that development of life as we know it totally depended on one planet getting smashed by another one at just the right angle and . . . . .
Anyway, the story of the moon is kinda amazing.
February 3rd, 2011 at 5:51 pm
Reminds of an old Peanuts cartoon.
Charlie Brown and Lucy are watching a snowstorm out the window. The dialog goes rouhgly like this (from memory, so paraphrasing):
CB: Isn’t it nice to watch the snow come down, Lucy?
L: Snow doesn’t come down, Charlie Brown. Snow comes up.
CB: What?
L: Grass comes up, doesn’t it? Trees come up, don’t they? Well, so does snow!
CB: But you can see it coming down.
L: That’s just the wind, blowing it around.
CB: Good grief!
L: See?! You’re being weighed down by the cool logic of my theory.
How dat snow get dere? Huh?
February 3rd, 2011 at 5:59 pm
@daveNYC:
you talk like some sort of fag
February 3rd, 2011 at 5:59 pm
Lay off O’Reilly. It’s just his “paddy factor” kicking in, and the poor devil can’t help it.
Read what Juno had to listen to from her “Paycock”, as recorded by Sean O’Casey in 1924:
“I ofen looked up at the sky an’ assed meself the question – what is the stars, what is the stars?
February 3rd, 2011 at 6:00 pm
@Dan:
You may cry after watching Idiocracy, but not because it is a sobering documentary. It is actually fiction and is supposed to be funny but IMHO fails for the most part. FWIW, it was made by the creator of Beavis and Butthead. It is an interesting premise. Not as good as Office Space.
February 3rd, 2011 at 6:28 pm
After all the comments here and at Wonkette, I’m amazed that nobody opined that Bill will next wonder about the rings around Uranus. It’s something he should definitely look into.
February 3rd, 2011 at 6:30 pm
Why isn’t DougJ not writing about something that someone on the internet cares about?
http://xkcd.com/386/
And yes, this is now my standard response to every DougJ front post.
February 3rd, 2011 at 6:52 pm
Billo is propping up the Republicans’ alternate reality. This kind of talk-to-the-gut insult-the-cortex rhetoric has served Republicans very well so far, and I see no reason to assume that this phenomenon won’t continue.
Mocking it is good, clean fun, but how about we work on our own rhetoric for once, rather than assuming—against all the evidence—that merely laying out the facts will convince voters to support our positions?
February 3rd, 2011 at 6:54 pm
He’s making an old deist argument, albeit poorly. He’s not really being any more stupid than Benjamin Franklin was about this.
February 3rd, 2011 at 7:06 pm
@AAA Bonds:
Oh yes he is. Benjamin Franklin did not have the benefit of Darwin and Watson & Crick (evolution and common origin of all life), Einstein, Heisenberg, Hubble et al (nature of the universe), Wegener et al (plate tectonics), or Manabe, Hansen, and many more (climate change).
These days you have to be willfully ignorant—that is, burning with teh stupid—to espouse Billo’s views. Or, you have to be evil. I vote for evil.
February 3rd, 2011 at 7:28 pm
And God said “Fuck it! We’ll do it live. WE”LL DO IT LIVE!!”
February 3rd, 2011 at 7:44 pm
@Judith Preeth: The winner, ladies and gentleman! Step forward to collect your internet.
February 3rd, 2011 at 8:13 pm
Two seconds on teh Googlez taught me that Mars haz two moons.
February 3rd, 2011 at 8:39 pm
@Tonal Crow:
Yeah, but the response is the same: isn’t it proof of God that all that stuff works or even exists (evolution, tectonics, particle physics, etc.)?
And no, it’s not, you’re right, but it wasn’t a good explanation for the world that Benjamin Franklin knew, either.
February 3rd, 2011 at 9:39 pm
@AAA Bonds:
@Tonal Crow:
I’m a little surprised at the insularity of the comments in this thread, as if O’Reilly’s comments are so self-evidently stupid that he can’t possibly show his face in public again. What he’s saying is clumsily expressed and delivered with his characteristic, mm, let’s be generous and call it bravado, but it is not different in kind from many of the classic arguments for the existence of God. And when you get down to it, is what O’Reilly said any more irrational than “Jesus Christ spoke to me”?
February 3rd, 2011 at 9:43 pm
Neither Benjamin Franklin nor Thomas Jefferson would have proudly professed ignorance at whether or not anyone explained the working of the tides in a scientific manner.
In any case, Deists or not, they both knew of and had studied Newton, who had explained the tides as part of the study of gravity.
I was quite religious for a long time and held something of what would be called a Deist outlook.
And I never, ever would have made some inane statement like “No one can explain the tides” or “How did the Moon get there” and expect it to be seen as a deep philosophical first causes question which leapfrogged the responsibility to outline the actually available, rational, empirical exploration of what we do, in fact, know about them.
It’s pretty hard to imagine Franklin or Jefferson hearing O’Reilly and concluding, ‘Well, really, he’s pretty much adopting our same outlook on the universe.’
Does it sound like O’Reilly’s suggesting that he’s interested in or has the foggiest idea of what the scientific explanations of tides or the formation of the Moon or the Sun are?
It didn’t sound to me, in either the live version or this response, that O’Reilly was doing anything other than just saying “God did it”.
Neither does O’Reilly strike me as the sort of guy who thinks God has withdrawn himself from meddling in human affairs, and that God mostly got the clockwork universe going and can now admire its workings from his celestial penthouse suite or whatever.
February 4th, 2011 at 12:10 am
@El Cid:
No, that would be liberal, ya know… evolution and science and stuff.. not magic fairy dust or whatever.
February 4th, 2011 at 12:50 am
The only question that matters to a nation filled with doubt and longing? Who does God favor in the Super Bowl? Each year at about this time God devotes all of his attention to deciding which team is more deserving of a victory. Prayers of millions, even billions, go unanswered because God isn’t paying attention to trivialities.
To make matters worse God has to decide which ad aired during the Super Bowl is the best. Decent human beings will acknowledge the burden on God and take a break from asking for stupid, selfish things in their prayers; things like world peace, good health for their loved ones, and the alleviation of pain and suffering for the innocent.
I always wonder why God created the Super Bowl, given how difficult it makes his life. It’s a wonder that he even has time to make the tides go in and out. Is there a risk the moon will simply fall out of the sky, because God is too busy weighing the merits of competing QBs or determining how many commandments the respective coaches broke during the regular season? And how does God rank the importance of the commandments? If one coach has taken the Lord’s name in vain repeatedly, is that worse or better than the other coach’s having shot and killed a person in a meth deal gone bad?
February 4th, 2011 at 1:52 am
And Keith Olbermann is the one who gets fired.
February 4th, 2011 at 2:53 am
Bill O’Reilly is a Juggalo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-agl0pOQfs
February 4th, 2011 at 8:14 am
@fasteddie9318:
I presume this is snark, and it’s good as snark—but even better if you take it at face value. God really did create guys like O’Reilly to shovel stupid bullshit to idiots. They stupidify religion just like they stupidify everything else they get their hands on.
http://books.google.com/books?.....38;f=false
February 4th, 2011 at 8:56 am
@Shoemaker-Levy 9:
You’re right, but see my comment just above at 113. The comments really are insular (you shouldn’t be surprised), and O’Reilly really is stupid. It’s tragic, really.
February 4th, 2011 at 9:02 am
O’Reilly’s comments are so self-evidently stupid that he shouldn’t show his face in public again.
He is not meditating on the deep reasons to conclude the existence of God. He’s proud that he’s ignorant of the things he discusses.
It is not like some of the classic arguments for the existence of God. It is a bellowing that he does not care what we know about the tides or the Moon or anything else, and it’s enough for him to say that ‘God did it’.
February 4th, 2011 at 9:06 am
You can’t reason people out of positions that they didn’t reason themselves into. I don’t see what’s wrong with making fun of O’Reilly for this: he has a huge ego and a little bit of bullying gives him tremendous pain. Bring it on, I say.
February 4th, 2011 at 10:53 am
@El Cid:
Perhaps I didn’t quite get my point across. O’Reilly has a characteristic way of expressing himself that educated people find comical, but the essence of what he said is exactly what a large proportion of your fellow citizens are thinking. Hence I was puzzled by Doug’s initial question of whether he’s putting us on. Most Americans think he’s probably making a good point. So when I see something like this O’Reilly exposition I’m a little puzzled by why it’s singled out, because I run across a hundred statements at least this irrational every day of my life.
Jefferson used the classic Argument From Design. O’Reilly is using a variant of the same thing. Jefferson expresses himself much more elegantly, and that is the only essential difference.
And I can’t think of a good reason why O’Reilly’s Argument From the Tides is more irrational than “Jesus Christ spoke to me,” Barack Obama’s words.
February 4th, 2011 at 11:31 am
“Jesus spoke to me” is not a falsifiable claim.
Explaining the tides as the result of God’s direct intervention is both a falsifiable statement and a false one.
February 4th, 2011 at 2:06 pm
@Joel:
No, of course it’s not. The actual claim is that a Deity set in motion the chain of events that led to the tides. That’s not falsifiable. The further claim that a Deity intervenes directly in such things (which O’Reilly doesn’t do, by the way, which makes me wonder if anybody actually watched the video) is also not falsifiable because the appeal will always be to a level of explanation that science has not reached. O’Reilly is expounding, crudely, more or less the same argument that Jefferson does.
And I still have no explanation of why it’s any more rational than O’Reilly’s exposition.
February 4th, 2011 at 3:41 pm
@gnomedad“How’d God get dere?”:
His mom and dad had a big bang?
February 4th, 2011 at 9:40 pm
Bill: I’m a tornado, I’m a tornado!
Reality: No, you’re not a tornado, Bill.
Bill: I’m a tornado, I’m a tornado!
Reality: Bill, for the last time, you’re not a tornado.
Bill: Yes, I am. I am so a tornado. I’m a tornado and you can’t prove that I’m not!
Reality: Okay, you’re a tornado, Bill.
Bill: I told you so.
February 5th, 2011 at 1:08 am
@Shoemaker-Levy 9: For me, it’s not a question of rationality. Some arguments are grounded in facts (falsifiable) and others are not. I don’t really give a crap about the non-falsifiable stuff, it’s usually someone’s opinion or just unadulterated bullshit. It’s when someone applies their bullshit opinion to something that’s factual and they’re wrong, well…
February 5th, 2011 at 12:57 pm