Major breakthrough in Christian genetics
Category: Humor
Posted on: March 29, 2008 8:04 AM, by PZ Myers
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PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
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(Complete listing)Of the three Popes, John the Twenty-third was the first victim; he fled and was brought back a prisoner; the most scandalous charges were suppressed; the Vicar of Christ was only accused of piracy, murder, rape, sodomy, and incest.
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Comments
Outstanding!
Posted by: NJ Osprey | March 29, 2008 8:13 AM
HAHA!
IS THIS SERIOUS?
haha. good times. PS i know it's fake.
PZ you're on a roll.
Posted by: genewitch | March 29, 2008 8:32 AM
You realize, of course, that this means Christians are "born that way," and can't help it. It makes Christianity excusable.
Thank, uh, goodness I've been out of the "lifestyle" going on four years now, although those darned old genes are always trying to drag me back.
Posted by: mikespeir | March 29, 2008 8:34 AM
Hah! Extremely well done. That's Onion-level satire, right there.
Posted by: Vegan Atheist | March 29, 2008 8:35 AM
That is just awesome!
Posted by: AJS | March 29, 2008 8:47 AM
Do you think that somehow this will lead to a cure? I have always been in favor of a treatment method of beer and discussion, but haven't been able to deomstrate much success. Perhaps they will develop a vaccine which can be slipped into the beer?
Posted by: Mike Haubrich, FCD | March 29, 2008 8:49 AM
CNNN was the precursor show to the Chaser's War on Everything, right?
Posted by: Josh | March 29, 2008 8:56 AM
Now please stop harassing the poor Christians. They can't help it, it is a genetic defect. Hopefully (but of course only with God's help) some day there will be a cure. My money is on an approach involving lentiviruses and /or siRNAs. For the moment we can start developing a prenatal screening test.
Meanwhile I have lots of questions. I'd like to know the details about the difference between christian and non-christian rats. Are catholic rats intolerant towards homosexuality? I never heard of such a phenotype (I mean gay-intolerance) in non-human animals.
Finally, is Islam caused by another allele of the same gene, or is it an entirely different defect.
Posted by: amph | March 29, 2008 8:56 AM
Its amazing what you can do with counselling isnt it
Posted by: Rosie | March 29, 2008 8:57 AM
Well, that explains much. My father was deep into the life, as a Presbyterian church elder, and my brother is the same. You can always find him hanging out at one Christian club or another, especially the freaky establishment of the notorious activist celebrity Joel Osteen. Mom was a Christian too, but it appears to have been simply a perverted taste for the mystical, since the rest of her family is free of the taint. Now that I've been able to overcome my Christian tendencies with the help of forces greater than myself... Oh, wait.
Posted by: speedwell | March 29, 2008 8:59 AM
Hey, that's Craig Reucassel from The Chase's War on Everything, and the voice is of course Chris Taylor. This must be from their last episode special "The Chaser Decides". I downloaded it, but I thought it was all about the past Australian elections so I didn't get to see it yet completely. Of course it's a parody, but these guys are notoriously atheist. They made a few jabs, but their best like about it was uttered by Andrew Hansen before taking a break for easter last year: "We're all atheists, but we're also hypocrites, so we'll take easter off, see you then" or something like that.
Other notorious jabs are the Jesus stain and the famous The Secret video.
Also, look up the "eulogy song" on youtube.
Posted by: andyo | March 29, 2008 9:09 AM
I posted a comment before about this bit being probably part of The Chaser's last episode of last year, which was a special about the election, and had this mock news format. It got withheld, I guess, since there were a couple of links.
Posted by: andyo | March 29, 2008 9:15 AM
Holy crap...I can't stop laughing...that was a-mazing!
Posted by: Tricia | March 29, 2008 9:18 AM
Are we back to that "Nature v. Nurture" argument again? Those happy scientists are wrong!
It's their upbringing. No one was "born" with Christianity--it's proselietized (did I spell that right?) right into them, I tell you!
Now if you had said some people are "born stupid", I might have been convinced.
Posted by: Nic Nicholson | March 29, 2008 9:23 AM
Good to see the Chaser lads are getting some exposure outside the US.
The answer to Josh's question is yes. The Chaser's War on Everything came after CNNN. We Aussies reckon the Chaser's apex was the APEC stunt they pulled last year.
Posted by: Shaun | March 29, 2008 9:24 AM
Clearly, this is the work of the Expelled people....
Posted by: Thomas S. Howard | March 29, 2008 9:32 AM
Excellent!
Posted by: Strider | March 29, 2008 9:44 AM
For some real programs on science, and many other things, consult the archives of the BBC Radio 4 program "In Our Time".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_science.shtml
There are hours and hours of good listening. At the moment I am listening to the one on Alexander von Humboldt.
Posted by: bernarda | March 29, 2008 9:52 AM
Oh, I see now that CNNNN was a show that came before The Chaser's War on Everything. I guess they just went back to CNNNN format for the election coverage.
By the way, the APEC stunt was hilarious, but what made me almost wet myself was when they returned the next day with their cardboard motorcade.
Are there any news of them coming back any time soon? I think I read on their website that they're taking the first half of 2008 off, because people (from one of the shows they mock, maybe ACA) were complaining they were a waste of taxpayer money.
Posted by: andyo | March 29, 2008 10:21 AM
Isn't there a real genetic basis to religion?
Nothing this specific, but general types of religion...
Posted by: Wazza | March 29, 2008 10:47 AM
Hosted by LiveLeak, I notice. Presumably this means that no Christians have issued death threats at anyone distributing this video...
Posted by: Nelson | March 29, 2008 10:53 AM
For more on the Chasers, check YouTube. They are well represented there.
And they don't hold back on religion.
Posted by: shonny | March 29, 2008 11:05 AM
Not really funny at all. It's a bad attempt at satire.
#4, I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but Onion-level satire is nothing to be proud of.
Posted by: Alex | March 29, 2008 11:14 AM
I don't know. Some of it may be genetic, but what about those older men that prey on vulnerable youngsters, trying to get them to see their deviant ways as "normal".
I'm agin it. Agin it I say.
Posted by: Scrofulum | March 29, 2008 11:14 AM
This is hilarious! I love the way parody can be used to see our culture differently.
Posted by: Sam | March 29, 2008 11:19 AM
I would not be surprised at all if there turns out to be some genetic predisposition to belief or even faith. What that belief will be about is probably determined by the environment.
Posted by: amphiox | March 29, 2008 11:21 AM
Bwa hahaha! Turnabout is fair play, very nice slam pink tiger.
Posted by: toddahhhhh | March 29, 2008 11:38 AM
There obviously is no such thing as a gene for religion. However, there may be a number of genes that predispose their carriers to conformist behaviour, particuarly where authority figures are involved.
There is evidence that, in at least some primitive societies, those who obeyed the priests & went along with the religious observances prospered. The genes for such behaviour would therefore spread preferentially.
I liked the implication in the final comment in the video, "There is a choice, which is good for Xians everywhere."
Posted by: Richard Harris | March 29, 2008 11:49 AM
There may be a genetic basis to "religiosity", because extreme religiosity does seem to be connected with temporal lobe epilepsy (Devinsky, O. and Lai, G. "Spirituality and religion in epilepsy", Epilepsy Behav. 2008 May;12(4):636-43. Epub 2008 Jan 2.) If this is correct, there is at least sometimes an identifiable physiological basis, and I would guess susceptibility to temporal lobe epilepsy would be heritable to some degree. If it can be definitively shown that there is heritable variation in religiosity, this would raise interesting scientific questions about why such variation exists, and yet another puzzle for at least the Abrahamic religions: why would God be so unfair as to impose a handicap on those with low innate religiosity in the race for salvation?
Posted by: Nick Gotts | March 29, 2008 12:04 PM
When I first saw the headline, I thought it was something like this:
http://www.scq.ubc.ca/jesus-speaks-to-a-geneticist/
or this:
http://www.scq.ubc.ca/memorandum-from-the-intelligent-design-biotech-corporation/
Posted by: Owlmirror | March 29, 2008 12:26 PM
@Nick Gotts: Interesting point. My mom was the first Christian and the first narcoleptic in her family, and she grew progressively worse. When I was in elementary school, she was insistent on church attendance. When I was in high school, the church womens' group was practically her whole social life. When I was in college and shortly after, she divorced Dad and started going to a "Bible-believin'" Baptist church. Later she started attending televangelist seminars. By the time she died (I was in my early thirties), she had moved in with her mother, was attending a very fringey, fundamentalist, "Holy Spirit filled" church, had resisted conventional medicine for her terminal breast cancer because her preacher told her God was using her cancer to bring people to their knees in prayer, and browbeat my grandmother into pretending to be "saved" because Grandma would have bitten her own arm off at the shoulder if it made Mom feel better. Grandma is a good actress. :D
Posted by: speedwell | March 29, 2008 12:32 PM
If they were 'born that way', then what is to account for all the 'born that way-agains'?
I'm confused.
Posted by: Duncan | March 29, 2008 1:00 PM
re: #8
perhaps Islam is part of the same allelic series that Christianity is. ;)
Posted by: milk | March 29, 2008 1:02 PM
haha, that was so great! Thanks for finding us these little gems.
Posted by: LisaJ | March 29, 2008 1:35 PM
Do you think we could develop some siRNA for use on Casey Luskin... oh heck, lets just use it on the whole discovery institute. That'd be a good test of the ID's not religion hypothesis.
Posted by: Sean Walker | March 29, 2008 1:35 PM
Genetic, maybe - but long ago, V. S. Ramachandran did a wonderous how on Nova about it CERTAINLY is "mental": http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2812mind.html
JC
Posted by: JC | March 29, 2008 2:25 PM
Drat it all - "how" should be "show" - of course.
Posted by: Jack Chastain | March 29, 2008 2:27 PM
Posted by: Dustin, OM | March 29, 2008 2:40 PM
My favorite part:
"Christianity is a lifestyle CHOICE. It's perfectly NATURAL!"
Haha.
Posted by: EntoAggie | March 29, 2008 2:51 PM
Very, very good. Even those whiny about the content have to give props to the execution. Right down to the ambient noise and the meandering montages, it was a spot on satire of local news.
Posted by: T. Melorin | March 29, 2008 3:31 PM
Alex, nope, you're just a humorless twat with a bit too loud a mouth. this video is plain brilliant
Posted by: reinis | March 29, 2008 3:36 PM
Clearly the work of Jib Jab.
Posted by: Michael X | March 29, 2008 3:59 PM
Whoever the creators of the video are I hope they make some more for us to enjoy. What a great way to start the weekend with so much laughter!
Posted by: Gretta | March 29, 2008 4:13 PM
Absolutely wonderful! My side aches and I'm having trouble wiping all the laughter tears out of my eyes.
Posted by: David Denning | March 29, 2008 4:15 PM
#40
I agree. Clearly pro-Christian, too.
Posted by: James F | March 29, 2008 4:17 PM
Yes CNNN was made by The Chaser crew in Australia. The Americans who have seen this might like to note that this show was produced using Australian federal tax dollars.
Posted by: Tom | March 29, 2008 4:52 PM
This is highly pleasing to me as an actual gay scientist!
Posted by: Blake | March 29, 2008 5:04 PM
Not as cool as the last vid, but still pretty damn good. Oh, if only it were true.
Posted by: Richard Eis | March 29, 2008 5:53 PM
To the confused above, this is the work of a team of comedians based in Sydney, Australia. They started out as a parody of CNN. They concocted a transnational organisation called the Chaser Corporation. The spoof TV show was Chaser Nonstop Network News, hence CNNN. The real CNN apparently considered suing but wiser heads prevailed. The 28 min CNNN shows were brilliant, side-splittingly funny. Taping them was a must, as the moving text was easy to miss. It was unrelenting and right up there for irreverent jokes. They poked fun at everyone, even themselves. This especially included egomaniacal journalists who were more interested in ratings via showy items than reporting facts.
Posted by: Roger Scott | March 29, 2008 6:43 PM
I had linked to a couple other Chase videos, but the comments got held. Many of us are waiting for The Chaser's War on Everything to come back for 2008 they did 2 seasons. Look up their videos on youtube, or just bit torrent them. They are quite popular in the internets, and they encourage youtubing their videos and downloading, since they are smart and do appreciate how hugely popular it has made them.
Anyway, not to have this comment held, I embedded the video on my name. Click on my name to see the video, but it's not for the squeamish, or if you're somehow having something to eat. It is MUCH more in-your-face than this one.
Posted by: andyo | March 29, 2008 6:45 PM
Thanks andyo. It didn't all load for me but I could hear all the audio. That was hilarious too.
Posted by: Gretta | March 29, 2008 6:55 PM
Posted by: Dustin, OM | March 29, 2008 7:11 PM
"it is impossible to write a parody of Pharyngula comments which is also unmistakably a parody"
What else do you expect in an echo chamber for juvenile athiest sycophants? And why can't we be a bit more civil towards each other?
Posted by: windy | March 29, 2008 7:34 PM
Posted by: Dustin | March 29, 2008 8:03 PM
"This media item has been removed due to copyright/terms of service violation."
Posted by: wildlifer | March 29, 2008 8:19 PM
Dustin: #50, QED ;)
Posted by: windy | March 29, 2008 8:23 PM
uh, Dustin, was that a parody of Windy's parody?
I only ask because, ya know, it's impossible to write a parody of Pharyngula comments which is also unmistakably a parody. Or did someone say that already?
Posted by: pedlar | March 29, 2008 8:23 PM
The meta...
The meta...
Posted by: Ken Cope | March 29, 2008 8:36 PM
"Clearly the work of Jib Jab."
You're an idiot. It's obviously Stone & Parker. Didn't you see the beady eyes and bouncing skulls on those Canadian scientists?
Posted by: Rey Fox | March 29, 2008 8:43 PM
*rocks back in forth in the corner muttering about gnomes*
Posted by: Dustin's Sanity Has Been Shattered | March 29, 2008 10:52 PM
Posted by: Owlmirror | March 29, 2008 11:05 PM
Right... now is this any way to frame Science ?
These people should just keep their heads down and let someone better suited take on this Christian Gene issue. (/end sarcasm)
Well done! very funny!
Posted by: DLC | March 30, 2008 12:02 AM
Dateline March 30th, late. (Or early depending on when you get up)
Irony and Satire were murdered today while participating in two videos on the popular science blog Phyarngula. The coroners office has declared the cause of death to be stray words haphazardly shot from the mouths of unwitting commenters. Also at the scene was Humor who was badly injured and is currently in critical condition. Doctors have offered aid, but humor simply laughed them off, saying that she "already has the best medicine." She then added, "I'm kidding, only jackasses believe that, now gimmie some morphine damnit."
Posted by: Michael X | March 30, 2008 1:50 AM
reinis, #41: Although you may have not realized this, humor is subjective. I think the premise is funny, but the report itself was unfunny.
Posted by: Alex | March 30, 2008 5:14 AM
That's strange, it's just a youtube video. Anyway, my original post is up now at #11, there's the other Chaser videos liked Also, search for "eulogy song" and "if life were a musical". Those Chaser guys are the best to happen in TV comedy since Colbert.
Posted by: andyo | March 30, 2008 5:42 AM
Parents, don't be depressed for your christian child! It's not your fault, you're just a recessive carrier. The good news is that modern medicine can do something for you: with your next embryo, you now can go and have it checkes and selected for being homozygously atheist, an achievement that will change the world. Or you can even have your child cured by gene therapy if you can put up with its little side effects like cancer. But what's life worth beleiving in Jesus, anyway?
Posted by: andrew | April 1, 2008 5:44 AM
video link is now broken, sadly.
Anyone have an alternative link?
Posted by: bob of qf | April 9, 2008 4:33 AM
Alternate (YouTube) Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPKH_XjY5aI
Posted by: fiXedd | April 23, 2008 4:33 PM