Dispatches from the Creation Wars

Mel Gibson on Evolution

Posted by Ed Brayton on December 29, 2005
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Jim Lippard has some amusing excerpts from a Playboy interview (though I have it on good authority that Jim reads it only for the articles) with Mel Gibson. It’s an interview that leaves you wondering why on earth someone would put such stupidity on display in public. To wit:

PLAYBOY: So you can’t accept that we descended from monkeys and apes?

GIBSON: No, I think it’s bullshit. If it isn’t, why are they still around? How come apes aren’t people yet? It’s a nice theory, but I can’t swallow it. There’s a big credibility gap. The carbon dating thing that tells you how long something’s been around, how accurate is that, really? I’ve got one of Darwin’s books at home and some of that stuff is pretty damn funny. Some of his stuff is true, like that the giraffe has a long neck so it can reach the leaves. But I just don’t think you can swallow the whole piece.


If you run into anyone over the age of 14 who actually wonders why apes are still around if evolution is true, you can be quite sure that you’re dealing with either an idiot or an ignoramus. Those are really the only two choices. The remark about carbon dating, which has precisely nothing to do with evolution, is further evidence of rank ignorance. And when it turns to politics, it gets worse:

GIBSON: I really believe that. He was a Rhodes scholar, right? Just like Bob Hawke. Do you know what a Rhodes scholar is? Cecil Rhodes established the Rhodes scholarship for those young men and women who want to strive for a new world order. Have you heard that before? George Bush? CIA? Really, it’s Marxism, but it just doesn’t want to call itself that. Karl had the right idea, but he was too forward about saying what it was. Get power but don’t admit to it. Do it by stealth. There’s a whole trend of Rhodes scholars who will be politicians around the world.

PLAYBOY: This certainly sounds like a paranoid sense of world history. You must be quite an assassination buff.

GIBSON: Oh, fuck. A lot of those guys pulled a boner. There’s something to do with the Federal Reserve that Lincoln did, Kennedy did and Reagan tried. I can’t remember what it was, my dad told me about it. Everyone who did this particular thing that would have fixed the economy got undone. Anyway, I’ll end up dead if I keep talking shit.

I’ll take paranoid conspiracy theories for $1000, Alex. Mel, I’ve got some advice for you. If your father is a holocaust denier and a nutball, as yours is, it’s probably best not to swallow what he tells you uncritically.

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Comments

  1. #1 llDayo
    December 29, 2005

    A shame really, I liked Lethal Weapon and Payback :(
    Now he’s turning as loony as Tom Cruise did. Will this be another actor I’ll stop watching because of insane soapbox preaching? /cries

    Oh, and what else is a giraffe’s neck used for if not to get higher level vegetation?

  2. #2 rjw
    December 29, 2005

    First Chuck Norris, now Mel Gibson. Do we have at least Steven Seagle on our side?

  3. #3 Dave S.
    December 29, 2005

    I’ll take paranoid conspiracy theories for $1000, Alex.

    Well he did star in a movie of that name (Conspiracy Theory). Who knew it was meant to be taken autobiographically?

  4. #4 fake ed brayton
    December 29, 2005

    Chuck Norris? Wha’d he say?

  5. #5 jpf
    December 29, 2005

    Oh, and what else is a giraffe’s neck used for if not to get higher level vegetation?

    IANAGE, but looking for predators and apparently some sort of male mating combat involving those silly antenna-horns they have.

    What I like is the “I’ve got one of Darwin’s books at home…” line. It wonderfully captures the mentality among creationists — a mentality that the ID folks play up by exclusively using the terms “Darwinism” and “Darwinist” — that Darwin was the L. Ron Hubbard of the religion of Darwinology — that it’s all a crazy cult of personality.

    You can just picture Mel lounging around in his home office, with bloody posters of Christ on the walls, holding a cigar in one hand and The Voyage of the Beagle in the other, intermittently guffawing as he flips through it, eventually putting it down and dialing the studio on the speaker phone to pitch a biopic of Captian Fitzroy done entirely in the Fuegian language.

    Anyway, since the topic is Mel Gibson and his undeserved sense of self-importance… did you know that Mel Gibson is mentioned in the Bible? It’s a scientifical factoid!

  6. #6 raj
    December 29, 2005

    The best that can be said about Mel Gibson is that he is an excellent marketer. He showed that with his marketing effort for his movie Passion For The Cash–er–Passion of the Christ. Zero marketing budget, but apparently made oodles of cash.

    The first time around.

    The second time around (it was re-released with little fan-fare) it went ker-plunk.

    It’s amusing that a purported christian like Gibson did an interview with a soft-core porn magazine like Playboy, but I’m not amazed.

  7. #7 grasshopper
    December 29, 2005

    I think Mel Gibson was Shirley Maclaine in a past life.
    I know I was.

  8. #8 Steve Reuland
    December 29, 2005

    Oh, fuck. A lot of those guys pulled a boner. There’s something to do with the Federal Reserve that Lincoln did…

    You know the Fed is powerful when its agents can travel back in time, 48 years before its founding, and assassinate a president who tried to mess around with what the non-existent Fed wanted to do.

  9. #9 Grumpy
    December 29, 2005

    …a biopic of Captian Fitzroy done entirely in the Fuegian language.

    I’d see that! Well, I’d see the DVD. Or at least put it in my Netflix queue.

    As for giraffes… Gibson must own a copy of Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, since that’s the only reference in the Darwin canon to giraffe necks. There’s a single reference to giraffe *tails* in Origin of Species, as Gould pointed out in his essay, “The Tallest Tale.”

  10. #10 Matthew
    December 29, 2005

    The Patriot and Braveheart are two of the most historically inaccurate movies of all time. What can you expect from the guy.

  11. #11 spyder
    December 29, 2005

    I just want to get clear on this: All Rhodes scholar recipients are vested with a commitment to create new world order!??? Wow, i did not know that. Astonishing insight that is, so i ponder the list of most recent ones. These fellows at Duke certainly have the omnipotent goal thing down:
    http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2005/11/rhodes.html

    and they are just some of the list of 32 each year that get the “prize.” So many to take control of the planet, wouldn’t they fight among themselves???

  12. #12 raj
    December 29, 2005

    Spyder, maybe they have a habit of moving the goal posts down there at DukeU.

    BTW, the author of the article is extremely kind to Cecil Rhodes. He wasn’t a philanthropist. He was a plunderer.

  13. #13 KeithB
    December 29, 2005

    Some of our best philanthropists were plunderers. I would argue that Bill Gates might belong in that crowd…

  14. #14 raj
    December 29, 2005

    KeithB at December 29, 2005 06:19 PM

    As you wish. But Cecil Rhodes was also a murderer.

    Are you really unfamiliar with his history in Southern Africa? With the complicity of Queen Victoria, of course.

  15. #15 KeithB
    December 29, 2005

    Not totally unaware, but I was responding to “plunderer” which is a very different moral class than “murderer”.

  16. #16 norbizness
    December 29, 2005

    Anyone who believes in literal transsubstantiation (he’s a Catholic who doesn’t subscribe to Vatican II) and whose father is a Holocaust denier (only made relevant by the “I heard a lot of stuff from my dad” comment in the second exchange) should probably lay off such derision.

    I personally hope that Jeff “The Perfect Weapon” Speakman is in Science’s camp.

  17. #17 dkew
    December 29, 2005

    Folks, that Gibson interview was published in 1995. There’s no reason to think he’s changed his mind, but it’s really, really old news.

  18. #18 raj
    December 29, 2005

    KeithB at December 29, 2005 07:07 PM

    Point taken and understood ;-)

  19. #19 beervolcano
    December 30, 2005

    You know the Fed is powerful when its agents can travel back in time, 48 years before its founding, and assassinate a president who tried to mess around with what the non-existent Fed wanted to do.

    The constitution was written so that only Congress has the authority to print money. This is intentional to keep private banks from being in control of the nation’s currency. At the time there was a big fight between two camps (figureheaded by Jefferson and Hamilton) whether to allow provate banks to issue money and draw interest on it. There were various attempts to switch from Congress-issued money (upon which if any interest is drawn it goes to the treasury, not to private interests) to a private Federal Reserve or Federal Bank. Andrwe Jackson was the first to valiantly fight off the big money bankers of the time who kept trying to set up a national bank to issue money and skim off the top. Lincoln was also very opposed to it and some say that was the main reason he was assasinated. Teddy Roosevelt was against it too. Woodrow Wilson didn’t exactly know the full implications of what he was doing when he signed the Federal Reserve Act. He thought it was best because it would tend to quell the monitary impact of market crashes (didn’t seem to help in 1929). The Fed is controlled by private banks, mainly in England (Rothchilds is a major controller) and they basically skim money off the top of our entire economy. This is why there is always inflation, never deflation. There are other negatives to having the Fed and they all screw the little guy. Anyway, Kennedy was trying to start the ball rolling on the abolishment of the Fed, but that was also stopped short. Who knows why he was assassinated (civil rights?). Lincoln too. I can’t decide if it was big money or white supremacy in both cases.

  20. #20 dkew
    December 31, 2005

    And the Fed must monopolize the tinfoil hat market too, since beervolcano can’t find his.

  21. #21 Treban
    January 2, 2006

    Good gods is Mel an idiot. I thought that conspiracy theory was the best role he’s played, hmm, well er, ever – now I know why.