Because I care.
Also, maybe one of the greatest descriptions ever:
This latest salvo is fired by author/professor Stanley Fish, a prominent religion-peddler of the pointy-headed, turtlenecked genus, who made his case in his blog at the New York Times. Fish was mostly riffing on a recent book written by the windily pompous University of Manchester professor Terry Eagleton, a pudgily superior type, physically resembling a giant runny nose, who seems to have been raised by indulgent aunts who gave him sweets every time he corrected the grammar of other children.
That made me laugh.
Steeplejack
Is Brick Oven Bill buying ad space now?!
At the top of my page:
“How to make electricity. Don’t pay for electricity, when you can make it simple & cheap at home.”
Walker
Fish has always struck me as the worst kind of academic: exceedingly skilled at the politics and spectacle of the profession, but ultimately believing in nothing at all.
asiangrrlMN
Woo-hoo!!!!!!!! New thread! I was jonesin’ for one. Thanks, man.
As for Fish–I cannot read him. I agree with Walker that Fish is a lot of erudite talk with no content.
Right now, I have a cat resting on my legs, and the weather is a cool 48 degrees. Ah, life is good.
DougJ
I like Fish’s and Eagleton’s academic work a lot.
But they are jack asses.
DougJ
The trouble with both these guys — Eagleton especially — is that they should not write about anything to do with the actual world. Stick to the page.
In fairness, I really like Fish’s take on academic freedom (basically, that there is none with regard to the classroom and an unlimited amount for everything outside the classroom). He articulates it well.
gbear
Listening to the new Jill Sobule record ‘California Years’ this morning. She got sick of dealing with record companies so she funded the entire recording via internet donations. Great idea and a great record. Use John’s link to Amazon.
Next up in rotation, Ray Davies ‘Working Man’s Cafe’ and Paul Kelly’s ‘Ways & Means’.
Then some hosta splitting and weed pulling if it doesn’t rain. Rain is good too.
asiangrrlMN
@DougJ: That was the article I read. I thought he was a pompous ass at the time, and I still do. Hm. So it’s more about the way he said it than what he actually said. Duly noted.
gbear, it’s gonna rain. I hope. I love rain. WTF is hosta? P.S. That’s cool about Jill Sobule. I hope more musicians do the same.
Agi
Stanley Fish’s blog is almost as painful as reading a Thomas Friedman column.
Notorious P.A.T.
Matt Taibbi rules. I still get a kick out of his calling Joel Osteen a “human haircut”.
geg6
Ha! That is a truly excellent description. We ended up not eating wings last night, but watching the Pens at Applebee’s instead. It was a great crowd with the whole restaurant cheering all the way, not just those of us in the rowdy crowd at the bar. I was surprised to see they had no salad bar. And though I looked all over the dining room, David Brooks and Tom Friedman were not dining there last night. I’d have been disappointed but the ass kicking Pens made up for it. Meanwhile, I am preparing to go to a Saturday matinee showing of Star Trek, after which my lovely man will be grilling me a lovely steak with some morels and fresh spring green salad with which we’re pairing with a couple of bottles of pinot noir and the Pens once again. What a lovely weekend I’m having. I must have done something right this past week to have it.
mt
No idea what is going on, nonetheless love the phrase “pimping the righteousness of faith.” Can I have a cookie?
SGEW
Taibblog is an essential (even though there’s a little too much “inside baseball” (literally) there for my tastes, but it’s entirely worth it for his takedowns of national columnists).
And nothing matches his Thomas “Doesn’t Make Any Fucking Sense At All” Friedman pieces. Hope you caught his latest.
gbear
@asiangrrlMN:
Hosta. They love shade but hate drought, so the last three summers have been really rough on them.
Don’t know if this got covered in the long last thread, but Colbert had a bitchin’ prayer day prayer on his show.
Cat Lady
That whole column was pitch perfect, but this gets to the nub of my own take on it:
Count me in as one of those other people.
tjproudamerican
I think Matt Taibbi is funny. He is also not as smart as he thinks he is.
I am a believer. I do not care if non-believers ever get ‘converted’ and I know that God does not punish anyone for not believing in God.
Eagleton is returning to an argument made by Jacques Elul and many others that rationalism and technology are forms of thinking that enforce further rationalism and technology. And meanwhile, the human, our life as this being that dies, escapes.
Religion makes the mistake so often of re-enforcing thinking also: that is, religious ideas lead to other religious ideas rather than an understanding of what it is to be fully human, and then institutionalized religion imagines a threatening God who “loves men so much He tortures them forever for not loving Him unconditionally” even though He is invisible and He keeps Bad Company like Pat Robinson and the Pope.
But I hope you do not confuse Thou Shalt Not with wonder. Religion is based in wonder. Wonder leads to love, and love leads to being fully human. I know Matt Taibbi would make me look stupid, but please don’t confuse an endlessly cynical nihilist like Taibbi with wisdom and please give a hearing to Fish, Terry Eagleton and Dawkins.
Bill E Pilgrim
Stanely Fish falling on this side of that particular debate was so unsurprising as to be boring.
I particularly like the way Eagelton uses name calling like “Ditchkins” while in the same breath piously berating the “school-yard taunt” level of critique of religion from Dawkins and Hitchens.
One little caveat is to remember that Eagleton trundles between England and Ireland and may not be quite so familiar with the horrors of excess that religion is taken to our side of the pond. Something with which Dawkins, having lived here, is. And Hitchens of course.
Though of course the horrors of excess that religion was taken to on the European side shouldn’t be all that hard to remember either.
On a side note, if anyone doesn’t know the Fish-inspired character in David Lodge’s novels, they’re very funny and worth a read.
Bill E Pilgrim
Oh and Taibbi is my new favorite writer, at least of non-fiction.
His columns on Friedman alone are priceless gems.
asiangrrlMN
@gbear: Lovely! Have at it. I saw Colbert’s prayer day segment. Very funny.
P.S. Love the hostas. No wonder–they’re from ‘my’ part of the world.
@tjproudamerican: I would rather give you a hearing than Fish and Eagleton combined. Dawkins, I can read, but I’m not that interested. I find any kind of concrete belief to be off-putting. If more people in the God wars would admit to doubt and be a tad bit more humble, I might actually read or listen to them.
P.S. Bishop Spong. I like him.
jp
Actually, the line about Eagleton having his tongue up the anus of the American ruling class was also pretty sweet.
Matt Taibbi is a national treasure.
demimondian
Taibbi is clever, but deliberately obtuse.
There are questions for which no complete empirical answer can be given. “Where did the Universe come from?”, for instance, is unanswerable, because any answer defines a universe of things which exist, and one can ask “OK, fine, so where did *that* universe come from?” There are two possible answers to that question, then, one, that “it just doesn’t matter” or two, that there is some answer, but we can’t reason it out. Believing that there’s an answer is an exercise in faith, not reason.
Does that mean that the God of the Muslims, Jews, and Christians exists? Hardly — there are arbitrarily many different answers to the question “Who or what made the universe?”, and they are truly answers of faith. But Taibbi, like many aggressive would-be rationalists, makes the classic mistake of believing that the only questions which should be asked are the ones which he can answer — and that’s a bit of pietist arrogance as great as anything ever said by the Pope.
Michael D.
You may not like Fish, but he was awesome on Barney Miller.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Taibbi sez:
This.
To take just one small example, the smell of rain in the desert is one of life’s little bonuses that makes one grateful to be alive (assuming you don’t suffer from serious allergies). It doesn’t have to have any deeper meaning, it just is.
If you can’t step outside your front door, close your eyes and inhale that wonderful smell without getting all theological and wondering if this rain is a sign from God that he/she/it loves us, or instead is just pissing from the sky on the guy down the block who just washed his car in order to punish him for his sins, then something is seriously wrong with you. In fact, you might be an asshole.
slag
@Cat Lady:
I’m totally with you here. But I would also say that I am uncomfortable with people who claim to know the answers and won’t admit that they don’t. It reflects a dangerous anti-intellectualism that gets us involved in stupid wars and overly reliant on frivolous “symbolic issues” (eg, dijongate) in our socio-political world.
asiangrrlMN
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Hee hee. I like what you said. I can feel the wonder of the world–I don’t HAVE to analyze it. Granted, I do, but even I can stand in the rain and feel the beauty.
DougJ
I tend to find all three a bit tiresome, personally.
Personally, I think the whole Judeo-Christian-Islamo tradition is stupid, nonsensical, and mostly intellectually barren. But plenty of people that I respect believe in it, make sense of it, and share the same beliefs about society and the physical world that I do. Why should I care whether Jimmy Carter prays to Jesus or the Flying Spaghetti Monster if he’s building houses for the poor? And the same goes double for Martin Luther King. Who am I or Richard Dawkins to judge them?
At the same time, Eagleton and Fish are pompous asses who may do well with literature but are, frankly, out of their depth on this one. The kind of sophistry that seems brilliant in a discussion of Milton (Fish started as a Milton scholar) just doesn’t cut it in this arena.
Steeplejack
John Cole: I posted a longish comment on last night’s open thread that never appeared, and when I tried to repost it an hour ago I got a screen telling me I was repeating myself. But neither post ever showed up (at least so far).
I was wondering if I had too many hyperlinks in my post, if it was too long (can’t believe that) or if if just went to moderation and the moderation gnomes haven’t dealt with it yet.
No big deal. I’m just trying to better understand the rich tapesty that is the Balloon Juice experience.
DougJ
It’s not in moderation. Dealing with the spam filter (where it could be because of hyperlinks) is above my pay grade. Maybe John knows what happened to it.
Persia
@demimondian: But I don’t think that’s what he’s saying at all, at least in this piece.
He doesn’t say that the questions shouldn’t be asked, just that he’s not asking them, and he doesn’t understand why people get so pissed about that state of mind.
slag
@gbear: Hilarious Colbert video. I’m curious as to how Faux News could possibly have found atheists who were pissed at Obama for not holding a prayer event. Who are these people?
Cat Lady
@slag:
Totally agree, and I stay away from those people as much as possible. If anyone asks if I believe in God, I ask them to define God. That pretty much works as a monkey wrench, and also serves to tell me way more about them than God.
JK
Matt Taibbi has an excellent BS detector. He should loan it out to those dummies in the Washington Press Corps especially the worthless, ring kissing, navel gazing, status obsessed, A-holes attending tonight’s WH Correspondents’ Dinner.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
I do too. Also, hoping that my comment doesn’t get misinterpreted, I’m not saying there is something wrong with being that way sometimes. If people want to get all theological about something, that is fine with me. There is a time and a place for everything, including deep introspection and metaphysical speculation. What I find strange and unhealthy are some of the folks I’ve met who feel a sort of obsessive compulsion to think that way all the time, for everything, as if they don’t have an “off switch” for it, and who then see it as a deficiency in the rest of us for not being like that.
Bill E Pilgrim
@demimondian:
“But Taibbi, like many aggressive would-be rationalists, makes the classic mistake of believing that the only questions which should be asked are the ones which he can answer—and that’s a bit of pietist arrogance as great as anything ever said by the Pope.”
I entirely disagree. That this is what either Taibbi or Dawkins are saying. It’s not a matter of declaring that everything is knowable, now, rationally, empirically. I’ve never read either of them declare any such thing. It’s an objection to claiming that since we don’t know, then an imaginary belief to explain things somehow can’t be dismissed or criticized.
Eagleton’s main argument is actually that unless you debate religion at the level of theology and history, knowing these in great detail, then it just amounts to “school yard taunts”.
That’s like saying that you have to be a scholar of mythology to declare that perhaps Zeus doesn’t really exist.
The Grand Panjandrum
@SGEW: I saw that piece the other day and it will probably keep me laughing for at a Friedman Unit.
BTW, Yusuf Islam (the erstwhile Cat Stevens) has a new CD out. It’s pretty good if you are a fan of his music.
Montysano
Last night’s Real Time with Bill Maher was Taibbi, Iranian author Reza Aslan, and Naomi Klein. And let me just say that on top of everything else that Naomi Klein has going on (I think “Shock Doctrine” is dead-on brilliant)….. fucking woof.
slag
@DougJ:
Perfect analysis!
@Cat Lady:
I would stay away from them too, but they have a tendency to lay waste to our public discourse at every opportunity. Jesus smash!
Steeplejack
@DougJ:
Thanks for checking. I’m just trying to better understand the machinery here.
Edit: I see that my long comment has magically appeared in the other thread. Thanks! Send an extra packet of Cheetos to the Balloon Juice gnomes on me.
JenJen
++2 points for linking to Matt Taibbi’s blog! :-)
Alan
Police Detective Subjects His Own Faith in God To Rough Questioning
Steeplejack
@JK:
My lengthy reply to your question about the different versions of “Stolen Moments” just appeared on last night’s thread. Comment number 237. With links!
asiangrrlMN
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Yup. I tend to do my musing while not marveling at the wonders of our world. When I am faced with a brilliant sunset, I just soak it in.
Persia
@Bill E Pilgrim: That’s one of my main objections too– there’s a real arrogance there. And it contradicts so much, you know, actual theology.
demkat620
Anybody want to shoot me some tech advice? I want one of those mini laptops for email and internet. What do I need?
Shade Tail
Taibbi nails it. Why is it that some people can’t tolerate the existence of we folks who don’t care about the “basic questions” of existence? And why do they always have to attack reason and science in the process?
“Reason can’t work without a basis of faith! Otherwise, you have nothing to start from!” say Eagleton and Fish.
Oh sure, if you’re a solipsist who refuses to acknowledge the existence of the world right in front of your eyes, you may be able to say that with a straight face, but solipsists are dumb-asses. If you do acknowledge the existence of objective existence beyond yourself, then there’s the basis for reason and science right there.
The kicker is, most atheists, like me, are quite happy to co-exist with religious people as long as they don’t smugly pretend to have the right to look down on us for not agreeing with them. If they just didn’t act like total snobs and assholes, they wouldn’t hear a peep from us. And most of them don’t act like that, but the few who do get very annoying very fast.
blogenfreude
A while back I had some fun with Prof. Fish here.
Krista
Count me in. Not only that, but I find it pretty damn laughable that anybody thinks that we petty, limited humans know the answers. I think that whatever “the answers” are, they’re so far beyond the scope of human comprehension, that it’s ludicrous for us to think that we’re even close to grasping them.
I’m perfectly happy not knowing. I figure that when I die, I’ll either know, or I won’t. So why twist myself in knots trying to figure it out in the meantime?
asiangrrlMN
@Bill E Pilgrim: Ok, now you’ve gone too far! You can’t take Zeus away from me!!!!!!
Dennis-SGMM
If the religiously inclined held themselves to the basic questions of existence that would be fine, even commendable. Concluding that the answers to these questions is “God” is okay too. Some of them seem unsatisfied with this and they go on to put their words into God’s mouth, call the result God’s Will and assert that we all must live our lives and even govern our country according to it. That’s when they start to stink.
Steeplejack
@demkat620:
During my recent upgrade ordeal I found myself drooling over a lot of stuff that I don’t need and can’t afford right now. This little ASUS box caught my eye. For about $400 you get 1 GB of RAM (upgrade to 2 GB for about $20-30 more), 160GB hard drive, Windows XP Home, external VGA port and USB ports for external mouse and/or keyboard. Under 5 pounds. No CD/DVD drive, but you can pimp it out with an external drive if you want to. Screen is only 10″, but you said “mini.” It gets good reviews from technically knowledgeable Amazon readers. In particular, a lot of them praise the keyboard (important to this 100 wpm touch typist). I would think this would be glorious overkill for “Internet and e-mail.”
I haven’t done any exhaustive research, but I am a software/computer drone, and this caused my consumer-lust glands to tingle a bit. I’ve put it on my own short list for consideration later.
Oh, yeah: it has built-in wireless for your roaming needs.
Bill E Pilgrim
@asiangrrlMN:
I actually first spelled it as “Zeuss” and had to look it up.
Which one wrote “Homer Hears a Who?”
JK
@Steeplejack:
Many, many thanks to you for that info. It will help take my mind off of the depressing news in my corner of the real world.
demkat620
@Steeplejack: That is everything I am looking for. I get a discount from Dell, but I don’t know how they are.
I just want something for surfing and email. Dell is suggesting the 10″ mini.
Mike P
Since this crowd strikes me as tech savvy, I would be remiss if I didn’t pass along what might be the coolest gadget ever:
Is that wi-fi in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
Do want.
Steeplejack
@demkat620:
Dells are good, in my experience, although I don’t have any specific knowledge about the mini. One of my colleagues and sometime collaborators is more in the hardware/network end of things, and he uses Dells a lot for his clients. Good support, good specs, good components.
Steeplejack
@Mike P:
Majorly do want!
demkat620
@Steeplejack: Thanks. My DH thinks I’ll be happier with the 10 instead of the 9 and he likes Dell too. I just want it to work.
JK
The Meaning of Life by Terry Eagleton
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t–KMaxdI90
srv
@demkat620: Look at the little lenovo’s. I know a few people who like them a lot, but they’ve only had them for a month or so.
wasabi gasp
I’m not big on the Jeez, but he seems like a Magical Unity Pony fallen right out of the trojan horse pinata of God, only to have a bunch of jackasses chew his shit up.
Cat Lady
@Shade Tail:
What really, really gripes my cookies the most is the assumption made by religious folks that adherence to religion is necessary to be moral. My children were raised outside of religion – they were exposed to a variety of beliefs and occasionally were taken to services here and there, but the only thing “religious” I ever thought worthwhile teaching them was the Golden Rule. They are now 2 of the most ethical, compassionate and moral people I have ever known. The most religious people I know are clueless fuckwits.
JenJen
White House Correspondents’ Dinner is tonight! Oh, yay. It’s on C-SPAN starting at 8:00; I hope David Broder gets a seat right up front!
Dennis-SGMM
@demkat620:
I’ll second Steeplejack. In my professional experience, Dells were solid machines, fairly priced and they lived forever. No experience with the Mini though.
harlana pepper
John, I just want you to know I Furminated all three cats this morning and I now have enough to knit two mufflers for Tunch.
I’m buying one for my mom for her long-haired Chi.
Steeplejack
@srv:
Those look good too. Looks like there is a market niche developing around these general specs and the $400 price point.
P.S. Can’t believe we’ve gotten even this far in the discussion without someone dropping in to throw the “Buy a Mac, you idiot!” bomb.
JK
@JenJen:
One of the more nauseating aspects of the WH Correspondents Dinner is C-SPAN’s airing of the arrival of the guests into the Hilton Hotel.
I can’t imagine how empty a person’s life has to be to stand behind a barrier to catch a glimpse of pampered, pompous, bootlicking guardians of the status quo.
I can understand wanting to catch a glimpse of a rock star, a movie star, or a star athlete but catching a glimpse of David Broder, Mark Halperin, David Gregory, Maureen Dowd, or George Will??
demkat620
@Steeplejack: @Dennis-SGMM: @srv:
Thanks! We use lenovo at work so I know they are decent. That Dell discount is pretty sweet for me the though. I’ll be under $350 with everything.
Steeplejack
@demkat620:
Win. Let us know how you like it. My colleague gets a Dell dealer discount, so I may be looking at that one myself in the near future.
Dennis-SGMM
@Cat Lady:
Once worked with a guy who was some sort of pentecostal. One day I jokingly remarked that I’d probably burn in hell for something or other. He looked me right in the eye and told me that if I hadn’t been baptized a Christian and accepted Jesus as my personal savior I would absolutely burn in hell. Couldn’t let that one go.
“What about Buddha?” I asked him.
“Burn in hell.”
“Ghandi?”
“Burn in hell.”
“The Jews?”
“Burn in hell.”
“Infants who die at childbirth?”
“Burn in hell.”
“Everyone who lived before Jesus?”
“Burn in hell.”
I told him that I’d prefer the company in Hell.
Robertdsc-iphone
this is for Freelancer in last night’s thread.
If you need a save data file for MGS4, i’ve got one with all 40 emblems, all the guns, all iPod tracks, all costumes/facecamos, & 30 million Drebin Points in the bank. Hit me up at metallicasnake at gmail dot com & I’ll send a .zip file over.
JenJen
@JK: Oh, no. For serious? “Fans” view it like an Oscars Red Carpet arrival or something?
I think I’m going to be ill. Are there paparazzi, too? “Mr. Todd! Mr. Todd! Can I get your autograph?” “Ms. Sawyer! Who are you wearing?” “Ms. Brzezinski! Look over here! Big smile… love the shoes!”
Hmmm… then again, it would provide an excellent opportunity to pie Mark Halperin!
ironranger
@Dennis-SGMM: Excellent! 90% of the time I think of great comebacks like that much, much later.
J.
@Michael D. (#21): I’m with you. That Stanley guy’s a jerk, but Fish on Barney Miller, genius.
So, anyone need some great Mother’s Day gift ideas? Here you go! (Laughter is not only the best medicine, it makes a great present.)
blogenfreude
@Steeplejack: I have a Mac Mini that I love, but I don’t evangelize. It runs everything, it’s inconspicuous, and it’s fast. Eight hundred or so plus an HD monitor. You could do worse.
demimondian
@ironranger: But it assumes that the company would be available. If that would make Hell pleasant, you can assume it won’t be. If there is a place of eternal punishment, then you can assume that God would be thorough, don’t you think?
What gripes me no end about the atheist objections to theology is how simple minded they are, and how ignorant. I can’t tell you the number of times some clever reader of Dawkins has asked me about whether God can solve the halting problem, and been shocked when I point out that the question is only the old schoolboy canard about God being able to construct a rock which he cannot lift said with fancier words — and subject to the same trivial rejection.
Do you folks honestly think you’re asking *new* questions? Seriously, Richard, I know your scholarly work — I was a logician, after all — but as a theologian, you haven’t asked a single question which wasn’t disposed of a thousand years ago.
R-Jud
@ironranger:
I also suffer from l’esprit de l’escalier. Or whatever the equivalent would be for thinking of a superbly pithy quip just as my five minutes of edit time expire here on the Juice (seeing as how there’s no staircases–“l’esprit de l’jus”? l’esprit de l’fuckingwordpress”? I don’t know from French).
Emma Anne
We’re all Buddhists at our house now, except DH is who is still a cheerful agnostic. DOD tends toward believing in reincarnation, while DYD and I think this is probably it. It’s all good.
TheOtherMikey
Bill E Pilgrim
I’ve been unable to take Fish seriously ever since I discovered he was the model for Maurice Zapp.
Emma Anne
@Steeplejack:
Apple doesn’t have a netbook, so we’re safe. :-)
Dennis-SGMM
@demimondian:
Or at least disposed of to the satisfaction of the theologians.
Bob In Pacifica
There was a family of Fishes (no joke), reactionary Republican semi-fascists back during WWII. Is this guy the spawn of one of them?
Comrade Kevin
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Matt Groening
Steeplejack
@blogenfreude:
I likes me the Macs, too, and, in fact, one other byproduct of my recent upgrade odyssey is that I’m thinking about building a “Hackintosh.” There’s an interesting article in the current Maximum PC.
I just don’t like it when someone–from either side–comes in, ignores the original question as posed and spouts some dogmatic line that doesn’t really help the person with her question.
Charity
@Emma Anne: Apple has the MacBook Air, and if you just want to email, web surf, and play music, a Mac can do that all just as well as a PC. I’ve not used the Air myself, but it seems pretty awesome and lightweight.
Heck, I have the iPhone, and for checking email, surfing, posting to Facebook, Twitter, my LiveJournal, it’s perfect! It will be so nice to be able to do all my webbernet stuff when we visit my husband’s parents this summer, and not have to go on their computer if I don’t want to.
Steeplejack
Gotta blow for work. Back around midnight, I hope.
Laura W., have your people contact my people. We need to song-link.
demkat620
Well, I bought the Dell 10″. I just couldn’t pass. I’ll let you all know what I think but for me if I can get email, watch videos and internet, that’s all I need.
Thanks, everybody for your advice.
angulimala
@demimondian
Religion should not be about answering pseudo-scientific questions like “How did the Universe begin?”. It should be about answering questions like “How should I act in this life?”.
When the pseudo-religious bray about how “Science can explain physical reality but can’t answer the deeper questions such as questions about how to be a ‘good’ person” I want to shout “I agree, but that means you people should actually focus on addressing those questions and stop ignoring them in favor of trying to one-up science in attempting to explain physical reality”. That is exactly what separates the pseudo-religious from the religious.
demimondian
@Dennis-SGMM: Well, when you can ask a question that they didn’t already ask and answer, you can offer that criticism.
JK
@JenJen:
I only wish it were a joke, but C-SPAN actually does cover the arrival of the journalists for the WH Correspondents Dinner and the Radio & TV Correspondents Dinner.
It truly does have a Red Carpet feel to it.
I love C-SPAN, but I think they tarnish their brand by covering this nonsense as if it were something important.
Indylib
@Dennis-SGMM:
FTW. I plan on stealing that one for use when talking to my fundie-whacko sister-in-law.
Krista
@ Cat Lady:
Ditto. Don’t get me wrong — there are lots of religious folk with whom I get along very well, due to mutual respect for each others’ beliefs (or lack thereof, in my case.) So, I’ll say the following not about religious people in general, but about those who believe that religion is the only way for someone to be moral:
Personally, I find it incredibly insulting, not only towards the non-religious, but the religious as well. First of all, if you’re religious, and you genuinely think that you’d be a horrible person, were it not for your faith, then you’re not giving your own intellect and character very much credit, are you? Not to mention the fact that you’re not giving your parents much credit either — I’m certain they would have done a fine job raising you as an ethical human being even if they’d done so without faith. To say otherwise is to insult their parenting, IMHO.
It does truly cheese me off when people find out that I’m agnostic and the husband’s atheist, and give backhanded compliments about how we have really strong morals and ethics “even though we’re not religious”. We have strong morals and ethics because we try to live a life with honesty and in which we don’t hurt ourselves or other people. That has nothing to do with religion — we simply want to be good people. Not because we’re afraid of some afterlife punishment, and not because we’re vying for some afterlife reward — just because it’s the right thing to do, dammit.
I just wish that this religion = morality myth would go away already. I’ve seen more than one con artist start out by joining a local church and attending regularly, in order to make people think he or she is a trustworthy, upright citizen.
Krista
And I’m sorry, but I just cannot agree with the idea that a baby who dies in childbirth is destined for Hell. What kind of asshole God would implement a cockamamie rule like that?
demimondian
@angulimala: In fact, all religions do offer very direct instructions on how to be a good person in this life. There are a bunch of things which you’ll find in common among all the modern religions, and they all are a part of what we consider to be “living life as a good person”.
You know, things like publicly taking responsibility for harm done to others, and humbly acknowledging that was something wrong, and meditating not only on how you’ve failed of your ideals, but also thinking about what you’ll do to avoid making that same mistakes again, and recognizing that you can’t undo that past, but must move forward, in hope and in honest self-assessment, and all those silly things…they’re an important part of *being a good person*.
A place that would do that would be some kind of a “school for sinners”…oh, wait. Our culture has organized bodies which are built around doing just that. We call them “churches” or “mosques” or “temples”. They come in all sorts of denominations, shapes, and sizes.
I deny that you need to be religious to do those things, but I argue that anyone who does them, on a regular basis, just like they would exercise, would be a regular attendant at something which would be indistinguishable from a religious service — and so would be functionally religious, whatever their alleged reasons for their behavior would be.
demimondian
@Krista:
Hardly. It’s much, much easier to say “there’s no reason to do the right thing” and give up than it is to say “I believe in this, for which I have no evidence, and will therefore try hard to do the right thing”. Someone who believes that he or she has just enough fortitude to hold on to his or her core religious principles despite the very real temptation to give them up is someone to be honored.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s their *religious* faith or their adherence to a set of secular principles that keeps them on the straight and narrow; it matters that they have enough reverence for them to *stay* on the straight and narrow which matters.
JK
@Cat Lady:
Don’t forget Mitt Romney’s religion speech
If this SOB runs for President in 2012, people need to call him out on this nonsense.
tripletee (formerly tBone)
I’m surprised no one mentioned that some of these netbooks – the Dell Mini 9 is one – work great for Hackintosh projects. I’ve thought about doing that but I think I’ll wait and see if Apple’s rumored media tablet thing emerges.
Krista
.
And then there are those who say “there’s no reason to do the right thing” but do it anyway, simply because it’s the right thing to do. I would argue that is even harder than doing the right thing because they were told that it is what Jesus or Buddha or Allah or the FSM wants them to do.
But, we’re likely arguing around each other — the most important thing, IMHO, is that people actually do the right thing, regardless of their reasons for it. And if your reasons are different from mine, and we’re both happy to let each other have our reasons, and acknowledge that we’re both good people, then that’s good enough, right? It’s when people get into the “You’re wrong and I’m right” crap that all the trouble begins.
R-Jud
@Krista:
Funny, I was just sternly warned today that by not having the Bean baptized as a Catholic, we were risking her being sent to Limbo if she died.
But whatever. What annoys me more than the harshness of this “rule” (which is nowhere in the Bible, as far as I’ve seen– and I do read mine often)– is the years and years of brainpower and effort wasted on piecing together the ins and outs of who gets what fate in the afterlife, and why, and what God was thinking when he set things up that way (or all the different classifications of angels, etc.). Catholic fan fiction, basically. Meanwhile the hungry go unfed and the naked go unclothed, and all those loving self-denials that, y’know, Christ actually challenged his followers to do, are given lip service.
John Cole
My invisible, omnipotent, omniscient God tells me that all of you have to put $100.00 in my paypal account or you are going to hell. Also, gay people suck and you can’t have meat on Friday.
Chew on that for a while.
John Cole
Also, I haven’t been drinking, but there is a bush on fire in my backyard and it is talking to me, and it swears that if you don’t do what I say, you are going to hell. For realz! You gotta have faith, bitches!
demimondian
@Krista:
Why is that?
Are you really qualified to judge the soul of someone who tells you that the only reason they are a good person is because of their religious beliefs? Would you think less of me if I said that there are times when the first reason I didn’t do something wrong is because I reflexively thought that it would be a sin — and only then thought through the harm it would do?
Remember, God didn’t step in and tweak my will; at most, he reminded me of The Way Things Are. I still was in control of myself, either way.
Krista
Lovely thing to tell a new mother, I’ve always found.
We won’t be baptizing our sprogs either. If they have questions about religion, we’ll do our best to answer them and will help them do research on them. Later on, if they decide that a certain faith speaks to them, and they wish to join that faith, then that’s fine, because they’ll be making that decision of their own free will. But I’d be the ultimate hypocrite if I baptized my baby into any particular religion, where I don’t actually believe in any of them.
demimondian
@John Cole: Thanks for reminding me; I do owe you my annual donation. I’ll take care of that this week. Gay people do suck dick — at least, many gay men do. And the historical basis of the avoidance of flesh on Fridays lies in trying to avoid eating meat that was sacrificed on the altars of the Roman gods. If it’s all the same to you, I don’t see that as a major concern in my life, but I do thank you for your concern.
You point was?
Bill E Pilgrim
@John Cole:
“My invisible, omnipotent, omniscient God tells me that all of you have to put $100.00 in my paypal account or you are going to hell. Also, gay people suck and you can’t have meat on Friday.”
Yes but if Stanley has fish on Friday, isn’t that cannibalism?
Avoid one sin, step in another. Sheesh.
demimondian
@tripletee (formerly tBone): And, beside which, what’s the MacBook Air, if not a failed netbook?
Dennis-SGMM
@demimondian:
I can offer that criticism right now, thank you. They answered the questions to their satisfaction, they may have answered them to your satisfaction but I can assure you that they didn’t answer a lot of them to my satisfaction. Are you asserting some sort of penumbra of infallibility that informs their work?
R-Jud
@John Cole: Define “meat”. Do you consider that to mean anything with a face, or can we still eat fish? What about frogs, or otters and beavers? Do they count as meat since they live in the water most of the time? Also, would that be 100 USD, or would Canadian suffice?
Clearly, we must call a council to debate what you really meant by your comment, and its implications as to how we live our lives.
Krista
No, and no. See the last paragraph in that comment of mine. As long as you’re doing the right thing, it really doesn’t matter to me whether you’re doing it because you’re scared of sinning, because of your own personal code of ethics, or because the underpants gnomes told you to do it.
And of course I’d never think less of you, demi — you know that. Besides, if you’re doing the right thing to avoid sin and are ALSO thinking it through, then how can I have anything but admiration for that?
There are a lot of folks who don’t get to that second step, though. Their actions are purely reflexive based on sinning/not sinning, as opposed to any real thought process. With regards to those people, I wouldn’t judge, but I would probably be a little concerned for them and what might happen should they have a crisis of faith. There are pitfalls to mindless obedience.
JK
@John Cole:
Does God sound more like NFL Films narrator John Facenda or NY Yankees Public Address announcer Bob Sheppard?
John Cole
@demimondian: That people who believe in all sorts of crazy things are really not in a position to be mocking or looking down at people who don’t choose to believe crazy things.
That is my real problem with people who loudly practice their religion. I want to ignore them, but they refuse to ignore me.
ironranger
I avoid people who think they have the answer to everything, not just religion. I have a hunch the pentacostal guy Dennis-SGMM encountered would probably be just as insufferable if he was Buddhist, Catholic, atheist or whatever.
I read somewhere that full of himself Mel Gibson who follows a very conservative form of Catholicism, described his estranged wife as a saint but sadly, she wouldn’t be allowed to join him in the afterlife.
demkat620
@John Cole: You got a religion that calls people bitches? I’m in!
ksmiami
As a Catholic-turned atheist, I think the issue is this. Most people can’t get out of bed to face their lives without thinking, hoping, praying that it must be worth it cause you will get a just reward in heaven, or in the flying spaghetti bowl, or 40 virgins, or well on and on… but I can say that just appreciating the natural beauty around us, the miracle of evolution, love, the hunger for more empirical knowledge is, to me why we are here at all. In other words, most atheists I know really do want to make this life as good as it can be for as many people as possible and live everyday as though it could be their last chance to open their eyes ever. That and it is strange to really consider that the true engine for our existence is composed of ether and tiny microbes powered by a giant fireball 90 million miles away. (H/T to Douglas Adams)
Mike in NC
George Will IS a rock star, movie star, and star athlete all in one divine package. Especially when he wears the denim tux. Amity Shlaes sez so, too.
Krista
And my bank account tells me that you’re just going to have to suck it up, princess.
John Cole
@JK: God sounds like Jack Fleming:
John Cole
Also, Major Harris was the greatest college football player ever.
demimondian
@Dennis-SGMM: I’m asserting your ignorance. I sincerely doubt that you’ve asked a question which wasn’t asked and answered a thousand years ago, but that you aren’t sufficiently familiar with the literature to know that.
CuriousBlogSampler
John,
Printing this quote about Fish and Eagleton make you sound like Shaun Hannity. Cut it out.
tripletee (formerly tBone)
b-b-but it fits in an envelope!
You know, If we can get a Mac vs. PC debate going to accompany the believers vs. nonbelievers argument, this could be the longest and most tiresome thread in BJ history.
Dennis-SGMM
@demimondian:
And your displaying your obtuseness. My point was that the answers provided by the theologians may have satisfied them but they may not satisfy me. You smug, pompous asshole.
John Cole
Fleming also announced the Immaculate Reception.
JK
@John Cole:
Jack Fleming sounded great. I regret that I never got the chance to hear him call a game.
demimondian
@Krista:
Yes, there are, and yes, there are.
But not everyone is really equipped to take the second step — and, in fact, even the people who can do so sometimes can’t do so all the time. That’s why a set of well-thought-out hard and fast rules is useful. Nothing can replace thinking it through…but sometimes, you don’t have time for that.
There *are* pitfalls for mindless obedience, both for those who give it and those who demand it. Isn’t that what we’ve spent the last eight years arguing about? As a rule, in fact, I think that those who believe that they give mindless obedience are lying — and, as a result, I doubt many other things about them, too. But I’m not willing to judge whether it is, in itself, a bad thing, given that it is sometimes necessary.
demimondian
@tripletee (formerly tBone): I’m liking it. That’s got great promise.
But we need to get Pb in there first, to throw the Linux…err, I mean, LinSux…bone in there, too.
demimondian
@R-Jud: St. Athenasius to the rescue!
demkat620
@JK: No, James Mason.
Krista
But we’d need a troll to get everybody nice and riled up in order to beat the record.
What is the record, John? Do you know offhand the most comments any one thread has ever had?
R-Jud
@demimondian:
Just the Doctor we ordered. But first we have to convince him to stop hiding in his father’s tomb.
JK
@demkat620:
Thanks, that clip was great.
L. Ron Obama
You ignorant libs. All your questions about conservatism have already been asked and answered, to our satisfaction, over a hundred years ago. By conservatives who are smarter than you and have written more books. By your dumb tired stale old questions I can only assume that you are insufficiently familiar with these books. Go read them, and if you still have questions afterward, I have more books for you, along with a surprisingly helpful index. Repeat either until you discover we are right or until you die and see for yourself in Hell, where Satan wrote Linux. The Big Bang was a bootloader conflict between Windows 98 and LILO running on a Lisp machine. ed is the standard text editor.
L. Ron Obama
If you are an idiot, you should use Emacs. If you are an Emacs, you should not be vi. If you use ed, you are on the path to redemption. The so-called “visual” editors have been placed here by ed to tempt the faithless. Do not give in!
Furthermore, Steve Jobs is a sneaky back door nut sucker.
Deist
@John Cole:
What’s crazy about believing in a God? Either the Universe was deliberately created, or it wasn’t. If it was, then whatever created it is called God. Seeing as how no one has any idea about how the Universe started, why is that idea any crazier than the alternative- that there was nothing, followed by SOMETHING magically coming along in the midst of this eternal nothingness?
Then why stir up fights with your commentariat with these anti-religious posts? If my neighbor’s a Mormon, but he’s not proselytizing to me, I can politely ignore the topic of religion in his presence. I don’t have to loudly exclaim about how Mormons are lunatics when he’s within earshot.
asiangrrlMN
@Bill E Pilgrim: Plato wrote Horton Hears a Who.
Here’s my thing. You believe what you want to believe. I believe what I want to believe. You keep your religion out of my government, and I will do the same . Seems fair to me.
John Cole
@Deist: Believe it or not, I wasn’t trying to stir up a fight, I just liked the description of someone as “a pudgily superior type, physically resembling a giant runny nose, who seems to have been raised by indulgent aunts who gave him sweets every time he corrected the grammar of other children.”
Like I said in the post, I thought it was a great description.
tripletee (formerly tBone)
@demimondian:
Good idea. Then we’d have enough equivalents to also fight about which group are believers, which are agnostics, and which are atheists.
@Krista:
I may know where we can get a few.
@L. Ron Obama:
I’m touching my Xcode in an overly-familiar way right now. Ooooohhh….contextual autocorrect….
asiangrrlMN
@Deist: Um, maybe because it’s his blog and he likes to point out the pompous windbags of any stripe? I’m not trying to put words in John’s mouth. I’m just saying. You don’t HAVE to read his blog, so your comparison is not exactly analogous.
P.S. John, you are not my god of choice. Sorry. No money for you!
P.P.S. I see John beat me to it.
Deist
@asiangrrlMN:
Fair enough. It’s his blog, and we’re all his guests. But if my Mormon neighbor comes over for supper, and I insult Mormonism in his presence, he can leave. Doesn’t make it any less combative (and arguably rude) for me to start making fun of his religion when he wasn’t coming over for a religious fight, though, does it? I mean, I view this is a left-wing political blog, not an atheist chat board. If I’m mistaken in that assessment, it’s fine. Atheist chat boards aren’t my thing, is all. Different strokes for different folks.
Doesn’t matter, though. He’s already said he wasn’t trying to start a fight, and I believe him. Taibbi was, though. I’m not as enamored of Taibbi as many other leftists are. I essentially view him as a pimple on Hunter S. Thompson’s ass. In my opinion, Hunter S. Thompson’s “eulogy” to Nixon remains a finer piece of literature than everything Taibbi’s written put together.
Dave C
Okay, enough of this religion talk. What we should really be discussing is how awesome the new Star Trek movie is! :)
Cat Lady
@Krista:
That’s exactly what I did with mine, and it worked out great. I found that it was helpful for them to understand the concepts underlying Christianity because it’s the paradigm in this country at this time, and I said they’d probably be more right than wrong to identify themselves as Unitarians when they got asked, as kids will do. My in-laws took them to services at the Unitarian church, and they went to nursery school there, so it wasn’t a flat out lie, and the teachings are benign. It’s a little awkward for kids in school if they’re the only ones who aren’t “anything”. Plus, kids don’t know what a Unitarian is to make fun of, so it’s a two-fer.
Cat Lady
@JK:
He was my governor. I had to put up with his sanctimony enough then, to think of him back in the spotlight, which is all he wants, the talking hairdo, makes me want to punch him right in the neck.
baoke
Speaking of Star Trek…you though mustardgate was bad? They’ve topped themselves:
baoke
Did I fuck that up? New to posting. I clicked the “external link” button and tossed in the link. On the other hand, I was just linking to something on Redstate, so maybe it’s better that it didn’t get through.
Ejoiner
Just got back from Star Trek with a crew which included 40-something classic fans, non-fans and an 8 year old (who ran into a classmate while there). Everyone loved it and had a great time – check it out, it’s a fun summer movie that really delivers!
(And I wasn’t even paid to say that)
Laura W
@wasabi gasp:
That sentence and the resultant images paired beautifully with my first Pinot Grigio spritzer of the evening.
asiangrrlMN
@Deist: Well considering how much damage the religious right have done and are continuing to do, I actually do consider religion political.
Then again, I consider most everything to be politically-related, and therefore, fair game.
Comrade Baron Elmo
Hate to steer the thread away from such a lively debate, but all y’all simply must read this recent nugget from the feces mine that is Jonah Goldberg’s skull… all about the GOP’s seemingly insurmountable problem with The Latino Vote.
Goldberg’s solution? Not for his party to, you know, stop insulting Mexicans on a more or less daily basis. Heavens, no! What they need is — wait for it — a Latino equivalent of Ward Connerly!
Because Ward is so intensely loved by the African-American community (first black man EVAR to defend the KKK, y’know), and after all, he did do such a bang-up job delivering black votes in the last two elections…
The Money Shot from the Goldberg article, and a genuine “tell” concerning conservative integrity in general:
Read the whole thing. It’s 24-karat wingnut gold.
Deist
@asiangrrlMN:
We’re talking about something a little bit broader than right-wing religious hypocrites, though. I’ve never been right-wing in my life, nor have I proselytized to anyone in my life. I’ve done nothing that merits having my religious views mocked out of the blue on a blog that I come to for my political fix. But every time the subject comes up around here, commenters who believe in God are put on the defensive. Why? And why do the non-religious think that this lack of tolerance distinguishes them from the Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells?
I don’t come here and make comments about how atheists are idiots, so why am I supposed to grin and bear it when atheists make comments like that about me? And more to the point, what does any of this religious crap, taken to this level of abstraction and generalization, have to do with politics?
Well, then it can be a left-wing atheist chatboard, but if that’s the way it’s going to be then left-wing non-atheists are going to have less and less reason to come around here. It’s not a big deal, there are other blogs to go to. This blog’s already changed a lot, it used to be a right-wing political blog. It can turn into an atheist chat board if John wants to turn it into that, but just as the right-wing commenters (excluding trolls and spoofers) took off when he turned to the left, so most of the left-wing religious would probably leave if he turns it into a bash-religion blog.
I don’t come here looking to talk about God, or about how people who believe in the Christian God are as stupid and ridiculous as people who used to believe in Zeus, or about how the people who believe in a Prime Mover are as stupid and ridiculous as the people who believe in the Christian God. I come here looking to talk about politics.
JK
@Ejoiner:
Which did you prefer? Star Trek:Original Series or Star Trek: Next Generation?
L. Ron Obama
I prefer TNG over TOS and I enjoyed the new Star Trek movie a lot.
gil mann
Yeah, y’know what else is? Wonder. I’ll never understand why, or how, it diminishes the glory of the universe to suggest that it’s not there for the intended purpose of delighting self-aware bipeds.
Yeah, I would, actually. They just installed closed-circuit cameras at my work to cut down on theft, and I assume it’ll make a difference in the accounting, which’ll mean there’s someone who stopped stealing because he was afraid of getting caught. I’m hardly a role model, but I’m better than that guy—I wasn’t stealing shit because I don’t steal shit.
For the record, I’m of the mind that people is who they is, and the religion or lack thereof just sort of gets mapped onto the preexisting self, though I’m sure they grow and evolve in tandem. I don’t for a second believe the religious types who swear they’d turn into Kevin Bacon in Hollow Man if their faith in an omniscient God winked out.
Ejoiner
I grew up on ST “classic” but my wife and I really enjoyed TNG back in the early-mid 90’s. I’ve enjoyed all the variations but I’m not a “trekkie” by any stretch – I’ll check out an episode if I wander across it and its good but I don’t get into all the trivia and mythology and such.
Not to derail the Trek discussion but I’ve got to say again how good BSG is. A friend twisted our arms into checking out season 1 and my wife and I just nailed the last episode of S3 after a week of marathon viewing sessions. Damn, they really did a great job with that series.
Interesting side note – really enjoy comparing the themes/structure/characters from BSG to “Lost” which seem very very similar (in a good way) and I noted that half the credits at the Trek movie involved someone from the “Lost” writing/producing crew.
JL
@Krista: Mine too, but John’s site alone is worth it. Next time I order from amazon, I’ll definitely link from this site.
I was reading your earlier comments about Limbo and there are lots of priests that don’t agree that babies are left out floating somewhere in space. I like to say that I didn’t leave the Catholic Church but the Church left me. I chose not to raise my sons in the faith and they are kind, generous, donate their time to causes and are good. Recently I did read that children raised without faith are more apt to become evangelical which caused me some concern but I don’t see any signs of that yet.
Jamey
I like Taibbi a lot, but he comes off in print AND in person as a total fucking condescending cunt.
If I had to describe his style, I’d call it a continuum of moments like when Michael Moore harangued Chuck Heston in Bowling for Columbine. (Mr “From MY COLD DEAD HANDS” was easily the most unsympathetic figure imaginable. Yet Moore somehow managed to make Heston look like the victim.)
Taibbi’s a first-rate reporter, but his methods and incautious use of ad-hominems cuts his work off at the knees. Which is a shame, because his dispatches from post Soviet Russia are among the best writing on the topic anywhere.
Jamey
https://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=20966#comment-1229321
Hee-hee. “Feces mine.”
Wile E. Quixote
The first paragraph of Taibbi’s Rolling Stone article on the antics of the Republican party, “The Class Clowns” was pure gold.
Other gems from the article. His descriptions of Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan:
After reading this I filled out one of those little cards, wrote a check and subscribed to Rolling Stone again.
Quiddity
Back to the editor debate: Anyone ever use the RAND editor? Totally keyboard, but spatial in that you could cut/paste rectangular blocks. Absolutely wonderful when modifying or stealing old code fragments. Also, it used the function keys! (Does any application do that anymore?) In its day, the 1980’s, it was very popular by those exposed to it. But few were.
Steeplejack
@JK:
I think it has been definitively established that God sounds like Eddie Izzard channeling James Mason.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
Edit: Damn you, demkat620!
William
@demimondian:
It irritates me beyond words that you insist on conflating my attempts to be a better person with religion, just because you’re fond of the stuff.
I could equally argue that the better sort of religious person is functionally a secular humanist, one who just happens to spout some fairy tales to be comfortable with it. But I’d try to avoid that, as it would make me sound like a shallow, pompous blowhard.
Plus, given the already small amount of human attention given to trying to be better people, I’d hate to create unnecessary division and discord based on my little fantasies about what’s going on in the heads of people who think differently than I do.
But that’s just me.
Joel
I remember when Fish made his “objective” case for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama. It reminded me of the famous Hunter S. Thompson screed:
Fish is a douchenozzle, plain and simple.
Original Lee
@JL: I read that, too. I’ll have to say that anecdotally, it does appear to be true. Of the people I have known as children who were raised without a faith, most are now evangelical, with a few exceptions. Two were evangelical at first but are now Methodist, and one was evangelical at first but is now Buddhist.
To be fair, though, many of the people I have known as children who were raised in very devout households are now agnostic or lapsed.