Wednesday, February 05, 2014

Why I despair of the internet as a source for intelligent conversation

And yes, I know, we're all supposed to despise Woody Allen right now...

A comment from this article:

"A more fruitful debate would be between Ham or any member of his Young Earth Creationist cadre and a dedicated Christian ethicist "

Like police, politicians and the Mafia, Christians never turn on each other.

Let me know when said debate is scheduled. It will mark the beginning of real, productive dialogue.
Later that same day, on the same website:

On the Wednesday edition of his TV show, “The 700 Club,” Robertson indirectly implored Ham to put a sock in it, criticizing [Ken] Ham’s view that the Earth is only 6,000 years old.

“Let’s face it, there was a bishop [James Ussher] … who added up the dates listed in Genesis and he came up with the world had been around for 6,000 years,” Robertson began. “There ain’t no way that’s possible … To say that it all came about in 6,000 years is just nonsense and I think it’s time we come off of that stuff and say this isn’t possible.”

“We’ve got to be realistic that the dating of Bishop Ussher just doesn’t comport with anything that’s found in science,” Robertson continued, “and you can’t just totally deny the geological formations that are out there.”

“Let’s be real,” Robertson begged, “let’s not make a joke of ourselves.”
I'm not sure how productive this debate would be, but Robertson has a point.

Don't you wish real life were like this?

6 comments:

  1. "Like police, politicians and the Mafia, Christians never turn on each other."

    The same guy would probably start gassing on about all of the different denominations of Christianity and the inter-denominational warfare a discrediting religion on another thread. I have to admit, reading them online for the past eleven or so years, ASS (After Sam Spoke) I have come to conclude that not believing in sin and so not believing it is a sin to tell a lie really does really have an effect on atheists' discourse. It's not all ignorance and bigotry, some of it is casual lying.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Make that "After Sam Spewed".

    ReplyDelete
  3. I confess to having completely misjudged Pat Robertson. That was shockingly reasonable.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Remember when Robertson made that anti-global warming spot with the Rev. Al Sharpton? He's evil, not stupid.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I've a question I asked in a Nye-celebrating comment thread at LG&M:

    "why does this matter? creationist literalists are only worth noticing because they swing a disproportional amount of political power. how was this debate going to get the agnostics, freethinkers and non-loony religious together to put the creationists in the political margins"

    nobody wanted to touch it, and I can't figure out why. it seemed like a fair question - but maybe no?

    (Nye's time would be better spent debating GMO crops or the wisdom of vaccinating kids, in my opinion)

    ReplyDelete
  6. jim--

    And they have that power because nobody notices. Even the Texas GOP, hardly a bastion of liberalism, squashed the Texas Board of Education when it tried to approve creationist texts for Texas public schools. Yes, the Lt. Gov. candidates have all made obeisance to Creationism before primary voters, but the majority of even GOP voters know this stuff is nuts.

    And the solution is more voter involvement, not Bill Nye squaring off on YouTube in a "Creation Museum" against a guy even Pat Robertson thinks is nuts. Because the people who think Ken Ham makes sense still do, and the rest of the world is still going "Bill who? Ken what?"

    ReplyDelete