Posted by Helen on: 10.13.2006 /
First, the final segment of a Simpsons episode. Lisa’s school decides to teach creationism instead of evolution and Lisa fights back in court.
[sorry everyone - this is no longer available on youtube]
Second, Eliza’s write-up of class #2 reminded me of the following clip of Richard Dawkins questioning Ted Haggard.
In it Ted Haggard makes an assertion of ‘arrogance’ in the scientific community very similar to the one the pastor teaching the class made to Eliza. Unfortunately the video clip does not end with Dawkins and Haggard parting on friendly terms, unlike Eliza and the pastor.
Comment by: Julie Marie
1 10/13/06 8:14 AM | Comment Link |oh my. I hadn’t seen Haggard in action before. Obviously this is a man who is NOT used to being questioned. And for as inflammatory as Dawkins repuatation is (judging by some of the conversations on the ebay atheist and the discussion boards) I didn’t find him offensive. Well, okay, the Nuremburg comparison was less than diplomatic. But interestingly, that wasn’t what annoyed Haggard.
on the other clip: poor Homer.
Comment by: Paul
2 10/13/06 8:22 AM | Comment Link |Well i gotta say i liked the simpsons better - at least they were nice about it…
as for dawkins and Ted - they both weren’t backing down were they, which is a shame really, cos in my view they are only arguing from positions of faith, both using science and the bible to bludgeon each other into a submisson position that neither was gonna accept… :)
For once I’d just love someone in the church to say, you know what Richard, you’re probably right, i see why you believe what you believe and thanks for what you’re doing to encourage people with living in this world and trying to make it a better place for all of us… c’mon i’ll buy you a beer…
Comment by: Julie Marie
3 10/13/06 8:57 AM | Comment Link |well that would be disarming, for sure!
Comment by: Eliza
4 10/13/06 11:39 AM | Comment Link |The Simpsons video clips all seem to have been pulled from You Tube…must have just happened.
Ted Haggard seems almost Jekyll & Hyde-like - pretty appealing & charismatic speaking in front of his flock, but kind of scary when confronting Richard Dawkins. (Wasn’t it interesting that Haggard didn’t take offense on the Nazism comparison?? Could it be that he didn’t understand that’s what it was??)
For anyone interested in reading more about eyes & what evolutionary theory proposes about them, here’s Wikipedia’s page on it, including at the bottom a discussion of ID. I’ve been reading Dawkins’ book The Blind Watchmaker - kind of a hard slog, but really interesting. Several of his comments throughout the book are pertinent to the eye and evolution:
(1) as a soft structure, eyes don’t fossilize (thus, we can’t tell what eyes were like in the past);
(2) eyes are an example of evolutionary “convergence” (where different species apparently developed eyes in different ways, so they look similar at this point -but actually, the retinas of mammalian eyes and of squid eyes are structured quite differently on the microscopic level - with squid eyes being far “better designed”!);
(3) eyes are an example of runaway evolution, in which a step toward improvement in one species (like a photoreceptor on its head, that can sense light/dark & give really basic information on “what’s out there”) would put alot of selection pressure on the prey, or predators, of that species. Either the other species develops some way to compete, or it dies out. Thus, even small steps toward the formation of, and then towards the improvements in, photosensitive areas would result in significant advantages, & would select for competitors with similar advantages (that is, would select strongly against competitors without similar advantages) whether or not the mechanism/design is the same - & voila, you’d have “eye inflation”!
Comment by: Julie Marie
5 10/13/06 12:07 PM | Comment Link |I was suprised at how Haggard let that comparison go unremarked as well. Maybe someone told him after the interview was over and that’s why he came roaring up in his truck to kick them off the property at the end.
Comment by: Helen
6 10/13/06 12:11 PM | Comment Link |I was figuring someone said something to Haggard after the interview which made him go after Dawkins. Perhaps at the time of the interview he didn’t know Dawkins was a well-known evolutionist (at least in the UK) who had written a number of books defending evolution; and/or perhaps he didn’t know Dawkins was filming the interview for a TV series highly critical of people of faith.
Comment by: Julie Marie
7 10/13/06 1:01 PM | Comment Link |I watched the video again - and I think Haggard started reacting reflexively when Dawkins told him he obviously knew nothing about evolution.
I reacted reflexively the first time I was confronted with the assertion that the God I believe in, as depicted in the Bible, does not exactly come off as Mr. Wonderful. The difference is my reflexes caused me to retreat, rather horrified, rather than attack.
I think the man was insulted to be told he was ignorant, and just got madder and madder about it. Haggard is the President of the American Evangelicals, I think. I doubt he is used to much confrontation. And its not Dawkins did an fairly unobtrusive brow furrow and head shake, a la our diplomatic Eliza, which would have allowed at least publically, the retention of “man with the answers” personna.
Comment by: David H
8 10/13/06 1:46 PM | Comment Link |I’m with Paul. The Simpsons are funner and nicer than real life. Is funner a word? Perhaps it will evolve into one. ;-)
What disturbed me most was Haggard’s reference to church services being like rock concerts. Wonder who he thinks is the rock star? Is it God? I have a sneaking suspicion it’s not.
Having worked in editing of videos and word stories, I am pretty sure the church footage — with the hand-saluting crowd — was a very subtle effort to reinforce the Nuremburg comment. Still, seeing such church services have an almost visceral negative affect on me.
I don’t pretend to be an expert on either side of this debate. I can see where creationism looks preposterous (where did all of these bones come from after all). But the Intelligent Design advocates have hit on a difficulty for evolution with complex organs (like eyes) and micro-cellular development. It isn’t that the explanation provided by Eliza is ridiculous, it’s just that the evidence doesn’t now exist (and may never) that such convergence or runaway evolution occurred. But I just don’t see how any of that should pose a challenge to God. If it doesn’t, why do Christians get so het up about it?
However, out of all of this, the most startling assertion I heard in that video was when Haggard said that the Bible is a book written over 1,500 years by 40 different authors on one subject and “it doesn’t contradict itself.” Even if you can believe that there are no contradictions in the commonly accepted text of the Bible (and there is some stretching involved there), that is due at least in part because people came together at certain points in time to pick the pieces that agree and discard the pieces that were more difficult, contradictory or just weird. The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha are extra-biblical writings most of which didn’t make the cut in the canons of Christian and Jewish scripture. And there are some early “Christian” writings — including several epistles — that didn’t even rate consideration among the A and the P. There is a nice collection that includes many of these at: http://www.pseudepigrapha.com/
All of the latter is only to say, it is somewhat disengenuous on the face of it for Christians to claim that the Bible is a monolithic tome that miraculously came together on its own as a signle subject text with no contradictions. Sure the people at the canons could have been inspired just the same as the writers of the books. But that doesn’t change that they “engineered” much of the coherent structure of the Bible.
Comment by: Mike O
9 10/13/06 8:25 PM | Comment Link |Didn’t anyone else think Dawkins’ commentary was inflamatory? Everyone’s commenting on Haggard. But reverse the roles, and let Haggard be the antagonist on the atheist, and I suspect you’d still find fault with Haggard and not Dawkins.
It’s easy to produce an anti-anything video. I give you the upcoming election season. Every opposing candidate is ridiculously inept and corrupt … at least in the eyes of the candidate sponsoring the commercial.
Same thing here … neither of them gave a rat’s rear about the other. Dawkins was no white knight, either.
But I’ll grant you this … Haggard didn’t come across too well, did he? As for the ending, I have no idea what that was all about, or what Dawkins may have done to provoke it, or whether Haggard just blew a gasket (which is what Dawkins made it look like, so it’s probably not quite true).
I didn’t like either of them.
Comment by: Pam Sardar
10 10/13/06 9:25 PM | Comment Link |I’m with you, Mike O, I thought they both looked foolish and the very arrogance mentioned by Ted was being portrayed by Ted. Both were arrogant; neither gracious. But back to the old theme…imperfect humanity at work.
Comment by: Mike O
11 10/13/06 10:34 PM | Comment Link |I like it much better here.
Comment by: Paul
12 10/13/06 11:49 PM | Comment Link |I think it was a shame really that Ted didn’t follow up the Nuremburg comments - it would have been great just to have a discussion which went something like Richard saying well that struck me as being Nuremburg esque and Ted saying, well that’s an interesting thought, why do you say that? And then unpacking/talking about some of Richard’s fears about religion.
To me the whole comparisons with National Socialism are fascinating - ultimately the Nazis had no care for creation, they saw people as things to be shaped to fit their vision - so a whole religion/people could be exterminated without batting an eyelid. The Nazis took Darwin to the extreme and made themselves the arbiter of natural selection to fit a world order just because the could…
To flip it round to religion I am aware that exactly the same thing has been done - people not valuing creation but instead choosing to determine who has the right to life (namely people like them) and who does not…
Which gets me thinking that maybe to argue about the cause of creation is to miss a whole lot of common ground of respect for life, of a fascination that we are cognitive beings who wonder together, who want to explore the mysteries of how we are what we are and from appreciating something of how complex that reality is having a profound respect for life, for existence, for each other…
to remove the respect/wonder for humanity from both an evolutionary or creationist perspective would seem to me to tempt further inhumanity…
Comment by: Helen
13 10/14/06 10:08 AM | Comment Link |Mike, I agree that Dawkins was inflammatory - I would even say he was somewhat hostile. I prefer when people make their case more calmly and respectfully.
Comment by: David H
14 10/14/06 9:39 PM | Comment Link |Perhaps I was too subtle. I think Dwakins edited his video to present his viewpoint — not necessarily to tell the truth. But, I have bigger problems with Haggard and his crowd because (at least in name) I am one of them.
Dwakins has made no pledge to love God above everything and love his neighbor as himself. He believes he is in a fight against something ugly and insidious and damaging to human life itself.
How would it hurt Haggard to respond: “Maybe we will never see eye-to-eye, but I love you and nothing can ever change that.” Instead he tries to out-smart and out-argue. When that fails he settles for just being angry.
Try to imagine this, how would it have hurt Dwakins video if Haggard have driven up in his pickup and, instead of threat and expulsion, said: “I know I blew my top back there when we were talking. I’m sorry and I would like to ask your forgiveness for not showing you the love that Jesus asks me to show.”
At the absolute worst, Dwakins doesn’t have a nice pat ending to his piece about those brainwashed Christians.
Comment by: Benjamin Ady
15 10/15/06 8:19 PM | Comment Link |About the idea of someone in the church trying to be more companionable to Dawkins and saying “C’mon, I’ll buy you a beer”. I’m guessing Haggard couldn’t/wouldn’t do this for reason beyond that he didn’t like Dawkins and wouldn’t want to have a beer with him. I’m guessing Haggard and co think that drinking alcohol is a sin. One notes on their web site that new life serves “bread and grape juice” for communion. In my opinion, this is a bit sad. IMO, when compared to wine, grape juice just makes a pathetic symbol for something theoretically powerful/life changing/goddish like the blood of god. I mean if I were god, I’d much prefer people to use wine to represent my blood. plus that’s what JC said and used, and that’s what the church used for hundreds and hundreds of years. But I digress…
Comment by: Julie Marie
16 10/18/06 8:17 AM | Comment Link |yeah, in his wildest dreams Dawkins couldn’t have scripted the melodramatic ending Haggard gave him.