That's the message I get from this horrible little video. The conceit is that someone writes a letter to god, asking why he let violence occur in the schools, and he replies…and gee, god sure sounds like a snide pissant. The omnipotent, omniscient lord of the cosmos couldn't do a thing because those liberals put a restraining order on him. Right. Crazed madmen run through a public school murdering children, and good ol' Jehovah channels Cartman and says, "Whoa, let 'em bleed to death — some of the kids don't pray to me, and the principal doesn't begin the school day with a public obeisance. Screw you guys, I'm going home."
Fundamentalist theology sure is an ugly thing, isn't it?
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You got that right...those people do not value human life. Get a load of this guy
Copyright prevents me from quoting him directly, but get a load of what he says on page 10 of his little opus, right after the "2 Samuel" bible verse:
He says that anyone who thinks that "god's glory" is not worth the death and suffering of billions of people has too high an opinion of himself and of humanity.
All I needed to see was 'available for purchase at afa.net'. I decided not to sacrifice brain cells by progressing any further into that bilge.
Wait. Are you suggesting that God is really Cartman?
god = wrathfull, jealous, intolerant, petty, vindictive and amoral
Cartman = wrathfull, jealous, intolerant, petty, vindictive and amoral
I think we're on to something here
There are some similarities:
- self-centered
- vindictive
- whiny
- plays with dolls
- big-boned
My wife, being a quilter(whoa is me!), would be interested in the idea that "You rape what you sew".
My first instinct of course was something snarky, but how many of them truly believe this? I understand if they think it is wrong that people have abortions or premarital sex, but their logic goes from there to killing in schools.
I think it is because that is what they would do without God. God truly is their policeman and what keeps them in line. They see no problem with going from profanity to killing strangers, because that is how their brain works.
Do you mean "concept", rather than "conceit"? An appropriate slip, I think.
Screams 'Respect my authoritah!' a lot...
god = wrathfull, jealous, intolerant, petty, vindictive and amoral
Cartman = wrathfull, jealous, intolerant, petty, vindictive and amoral
Rush Limbaugh = wrathfull, jealous, intolerant, petty, vindictive and amoral
hmmmmm.
Interestingly enough, the map that's used at the start colours the places where killings occurred in blue. But I wonder how many of the districts where school massacres happened are actually red, republican zones? It looks to me like the vast majority.
So it seems that we do indeed reap what we sow: repression and religious republican values breed over-reaction on the part of predictably messed up teenagers. Who would have thought?
Oh, and blaming the current economic crisis on democrats, feminists and hippies is... well, just dumb beyond words.
Dear God,
Why were little boys molested by priests?
-pompy
... not to mention: both are fictional, and (barely) two dimensional.
It opens with a spotting scope--
God's rifle, from above--
That seeks to find His victims
Then he'll pump them full of love.
If God in his omnipotence
Is weak against O'Hair,
Don't tell the little children;
They might think he isn't there!
Almighty God is weak, compared
To school boards, so it feels.
Don't blame him; after all, the buses
All have iron wheels.
I wouldn't mind the petulance
Of God the Petty Whiner
If only those who followed Him
Could be a bit benigner.
@ #1
still reading to try to find some justification for that statement (or rather some sensible justification he seems to be relying on a version of 'god works in mysterious ways.) But frankly views like that are reductio ad absurdems for Christianity. How could suffering conceivably glorify anything? especially an agent that possesses complete counter-factual level control over all things.
You Sir are on to something.
so wait, child pornography is protected speech now?
When did that law get passed?
Hmm. In the UK we apparently have to have faith based congregations of students (this is being petitioned at the moment, though) however our schools are notably secular, in so far as god is never really mentioned or argued over (I think).
Strange then that there have never been, to my knowledge, mass murders or attacks. Sure there's the occasional death, but we don't have god and we don't have mass murder.
I reckon there's more to it than Mr Doesnt-Know-His-Own-God's-Powers is moaning about.
Plus - murder, rape etc... I've read about them somewhere. Where was it now... the bible?
As painted by Michelangelo and approved by the Church,
God
- has nipples
- has a belly button
- resides inside the human brain
Oh I do love rating Youtube videos and their comments. Fellow pharyngulites should see this as another poll to crash. If you don't have a Youtube account yet, sign up. Go to the video page and vote one star. Then go to the comments page and use the thumbs up buttons next to the comments to help fellow rationalists be heard, and the thumbs down buttons to silence the godbots. You can comment too, but you have to keep it short.
Is this censorship? Perhaps. But the creotards have done much worse to the videos of Thunderf00t and others, and YT has done nothing about it. It's time to fight back!
What a boatload of wrong and repugnant.
NOT beating children is a problem?? It's god's will we should smack kids? No hitting=no discipline?
Perhaps we can find that smug, evil narrator and give HIM a bit of disciplining.
Widegetas, there was Dunblane, with fifteen murdered kids.
http://century.guardian.co.uk/1990-1999/Story/0,,112749,00.html
Guy @8, nah, PZ means "conceit", as in a fanciful idea, rather than as vanity.
Gee, if I had known years ago that Whiny God would go away if I just told him to I could have saved myself a heap o' trouble. And my family might have remained intact.
I didn't know he was so obedient. My bad, ignorance being no excuse . . .
This video makes me almost foam at the mouth in rage, especially the idiotic notion that discipline means hitting people, and that hitting people on a regular basis is harmless.
Anyone who thinks that hitting kids is a good idea should go have a look at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ian_dunbar_on_dog_friendly_dog_train…
I better go cool my head down or something lest I start ranting.
@#18
Right! These kids just need to read the bible. No bad stuff in there, just wholesome xtian goodness.
what? No, no no. I mean the new testament. With Jeebus an all.
what? Well, not that verse. I mean the good ones.
GBM,
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the comments regarding suffering from Mother Teresa? She spoke very highly of it as a virtue.
I bet everything will be alright as soon as we start with obligatory prayer in school, and then smack the children. That's really civilised and enlightened.
The Bible may have said "Thou shalt not kill" and so on, but why did they leave out all the awesome parts with God being portrayed as a psychotic, powerhungry massmurderer?
Widgetas... I think the corollary is the fact (and some libertarians on here are going to plotz) that guns are not as readily available in the UK. Shock. Disbelief.
=============================================
Ah, I see - it's not the parents' fault when kids go nuts and use their guns.
You see, God is like magical pixie dust that, if you believe hard enough and think happy thoughts, will make everything okay, and in the end will allow you to fly off to Neverland. By "banning" God, we've stolen the magical dust which children need to keep them soporific. Hmmm. So, if God is Cartman, does that make Peter Pan, Jesus Christ?
Being that PZ has now established a link between Cartman and God we should all be working furiously to create deity sized cheesy poofs.
Such an awesomely simplistic video - the usual false dichotomy of either God (the Christian God of course) or mad atheist anarchy. The logical leaps from contraception to murderous sprees are ridiculous and disgusting. So too is the odd one from condoning people's right to private activity to legitimising child pornography - I think there's a little more to the idea of private activity than 'anything goes', like, um, consenting adults and principles of harm? I don't think child porn is legal somehow... Not that you'd expect a fundie to even think beyond the most superficial level of their ideas.
This guy clearly hasn't got the difference between secularism and atheism either; you can sense that he thinks a school without God is as atheistic as Stalin's Russia, rather than simply non-religious.
I do feel familiar with his voice though - does he do voice-overs for tv programmes? Perhaps it's an English thing and you all sound the same on tv to my ears...
And the lord said,
I am the lord, and i loveth cheesy poofs,
Thou loveth cheesy poofs,
If thou did not haveth cheesy poofs
Thou would be lame.
@#1 Reynold
"You got that right...those people do not value human life."
Because they value only the afterlife. After all, they would just say, "they're in heaven now, so it doesn't matter when people die." I think that Nietzsche once expressed the idea that when one values the otherworldy a whole lot more, one values the current world a whole lot less.
I'm surprised that they mentioned the Fayetteville, TN school shooting. I lived nearby when it happened.
If I recall correctly, the shooter was a devout Christian who thought he was doing God's handiwork. I think he wrote that he was a "fiery angel of God's vengeance" or something similar.
Of course, I'm guessing he wasn't a True Christian... or maybe he just didn't get spanked enough.
There's so much wrong in this video, it's hard to know where to start. I find it bizarre that some Christians are presumably comfortable with saying that God can't come into the schools because He's not "allowed," when they usually fall all over themselves insisting that God is "everywhere" and all-powerful.
How do they explain shootings in churches?
Simplistic answers to complex problems. If only we spanked our kids, then they wouldn't turn into mass murderers. They'd know right from wrong. And they'd know what to do with people who are "wrong." The fact that many if not most violent offenders were seriously physically abused in the home doesn't seem to break into their fantasy scenario of lazy, spoiled children with over-sensitive liberal parents going on death rampages for "kicks."
They live out fantasies in their heads, and take them for reality.
@ # 22 Richard Harris - Yes Dunblane. I didn't think anyone would bring that up as it wasn't a kid who did it. It was a madman with his own handgun, in a primary school.
"Thomas Hamilton, aged 43, ...turned one of his four guns on himself after killing or injuring all but one of a class of 29 five- and six-year-olds at Dunblane primary school, near Stirling."
Maybe I wasn't clear enough in my original post - I thought all those killings in school were by students, and the video states that they did it because there was no god in school. Chin chin.
Heidi Anderson: There may be something to your analysis, but I think it has more to do with their belief in communal punishment. We, as a society, sin by allowing homosexuals to walk around without stoning them to death, by allowing abortion to be practiced legally and safely, and by having such things as the Pill and condoms. To punish us, god drives our children mad (has nothing to do with poor parenting, abusive peers and teachers, inattentive school administrators, or a society that glorifies violence), gives them guns (again, not the fault of a society in which guns are easily and quickly attained by anyone with half a brain), and sets them loose to kill all the good kids, even the fundie ones. Similar thinking was why early settlers were willing to crush 60-year-old women under a half-ton of stone to cleanse their communities of witches. I'll leave you to decide how despicable you find such a world view.
I love how, according to that video, Taber, Alberta is somewhere in Saskatchewan.
I can't be bothered looking for a map for all the American locations, but I'm not trying to make a whiny video, so I find it strange that they didn't place Taber, Alberta in Alberta and put it right near the Canada/US border. Not that I'm surprised, as fundies tend to want to replace education with God.
Small point about the Taber (a small, rural community with more readily available guns than in a city) shooting, probably not even worth mentioning... The one kid killed was the son of a pastor.
This is the part I don't understand: how is presuming to know God's will and putting these words into God's mouth anything other than blasphemy? For that matter, doesn't this fall into the category of bearing false witness?
Widgetas "Hmm. In the UK we apparently have to have faith based congregations of students (this is being petitioned at the moment, though) however our schools are notably secular, in so far as god is never really mentioned or argued over (I think)."
Faith schools are a problem in the UK, as this article in the Guardian today (one of many) shows http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/mar/03/school-appeal-process
The British Humanist Association is doing its best to stop the slide towards more and more faith schools that has been a feature of the New Labour government policy on education. YOu can support the BHA's efforts by donating at:
http://www.justgiving.com/faithschools
...or, is there a loophole in the rules, where it's okay, as long as you blaspheme and lie in a smug, dickish way?
Sastra: Nor does the fact that the children who do these things are typically not the lazy, spoiled spawn of liberal parents, but the alienated, put-upon spawn of inattentive, hard-to-please conservatives. Propagating this "liberal killer" myth is one off the reasons the media focused so tightly on the homosexual insults flung at the boys who committed the Columbine massacre.
I have trouble believing that a fundamentalist ever said "an expert should know what he's talking about".
Funny thing is that the red dot for Littleton, Colo. is nowhere near the right place for Littleton. Looks more like Rifle. Which is rather ironic, when talking about school shootings.
My favorite bit was the idea that giving condoms to high school boys will let them have "all the fun they desire." I'm thinking back to my own high school days, and how much sex I got was orthogonal to my condom count.
Ouch! My opening up the a1-h8 diagonal, Black has sacrificed both time and space. Better would be c7-c5, a2xb3, which loses a pawn but exposes whites queenside for attack.
Which is another way of saying, the voice in this video is the same as Chessmaster's Natural Language advice.
That God is a WATB.
Maybe to combat this kind of junk we should create more reasoning videos.
With a monkey. (Need that viral appeal.)
Jonesboro is in the wrong part of Arkansas! Jonesboro is in North East Arkansas not North Central Arkansas. Maybe God wasn't in his geography class either.
The largest town near the dot that he said is Jonesboro would be Harrison, the town where I live.
What is wrong with these pictures:
You have an omnipresent, omnipotent being that can be barred from an area because someone who should worship them says they can't go there.
Also, kids can pray in school. They can group together before and after class to pray. They just can't do so in a manner that bothers other kids. Yet prayer isn't allowed.
The religious mind. Delusion city.
@#23: Oh, OK. My bad.
#47: Nailed it! Right down to the disturbingly mechanical faked personality.
I really appreciate their use of crosshairs when they're talking about dead children at the beginning of the video. That was nice.
Apparently geography isn't a strong point for christians either. Taber, Alberta is about 500 miles east of where they've placed it.
"You have an omnipresent, omnipotent being that can be barred from an area because someone who should worship them says they can't go there." => God has to be invited to enter a private place.
The non-bat kind of vampires have to be invited to enter a private place. Hmm.. Nah.
So if Cartman is god does that make Kenny jesus? He seems to die and rise an awful lot. It's been a few years since I've watched South Park so my references may be way off base. Also, of all places for an all powerful god to intervene in a school shooting wouldn't Moses Lake be the choice? And I'm a little confused with this being a godless liberal and all, but isn't free access to birth control, not beating your children, not allowing school officials to beat your children, and not forcing beliefs upon others that they may not share good,intelligent ideas?
About 30 s from the end of the video, I was just thinking they had been careful to avoid mentioning TEH GAY. Right on cue, in fades the penultimate shot (the last if you don't count the generic close-up of wheat blowing in the wind). Over this footage, apparently of a Gay Pride event, the narrator says, "Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience; why they don't know right from wrong; why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, classmates or even themselves."
It's well known that humans tend to have better recall of the first and last few items of a sequence than of the items in the middle ("primacy" and "recency" effects"). I'd be surprised if the makers of this video didn't also know this, and I ask myself why they chose this shot in particular to round up.
This is dog whistle politics, and very sinister.
Why do we have all this violence in schools? Because we stopped beating our children, damn it. Stupid liberals.
He also fucked up the location of Moses Lake. He put it in the I-5 corridor near Centralia instead of in Eastern Washington. God really sucks at geography.
This is just an audio-visual update of a years-old chain email. At least they backed off on any false mention of Dr. Spock's son committing suicide (though his grandson did, sadly). Once, when I cared more about rebutting chain emails from Xian relatives, I formulated a line-by-line takedown of the stupid claims and kept it handy to shoot back. Eventually everyone removed me from their distribution lists. Thank the almighty FSM for small favors.
God's reply: "I'm not allowed in schools..." made me nearly wet myself. So much for omnipotence...
OH MAH GAHD. GAHD KILLED KENNAY!
"I'm not allowed in schools" was as far as I got, too. Someone's god is decidedly not awesome.
Diane @ #56:
Intelligence is very very bad, according to to Christianity (and other). The first two humans, according to religion, were kicked out of Eden _because_ they acquired knowledge, which God didn't want them to.
Classic Cuttlefish 44 minutes after the original post. I'm impressed.
'I'm not allowed in schools'!
That's what happens when you try to touch the kiddies, God.
With regard to the Taber shooting, the pastor father of the boy who was killed is campaining against bullying in schools, not for more god in schools. He actually looked at what led to the shootings.
According to the video, God is like a vampire. He can't come in unless he has been invited.
Dear God, why didn't you save the children at Bart Township, Pennsylvania?
~Concerned Student
--------------------------------------------------
Concerned Student: I am not allowed in schools.
Sincerely, God
--------------------------------------------------
But the school shooting in Bart Township happened at an Amish school...
~Doubtful Student
--------------------------------------------------
Uhhh... I'm not... um... be quiet!
Sincerely, Fake God
Wait, condoms are needed to play football??
"Helmet... check
shoulder pads... check
cleats.... check
condom.... Hey coach! I can't play, I don't have my condom!"
God is omnipresent. But can't come in unless invited. Cue dilemma music.
I of course ment to say Taber is 500 mile west... not east. Oops
Kids should be allowed to pray in schools, shouldn't they? There aren't, after all, any other buildings that people can go to if they want to pray or worship.
Wow, if that wasn't creepy enough the "smack 'em into submission" stuff was even worse.
Looks like someone got their panties in a knot, the video got taken down. Anyone have an alternate source by chance?
Um, aren't most of those schools in God's country where all of his wacked out ideas are accepted? That map looks strangely like a "belt" across the United States. Hmmm. And isn't it also the case that many of the things he lists in his video are hotly contested and NOT legal in most places. Sounds to me like he has already won. Fear-mongering shit!
Dear God:
Even though you had an eternity to develop an intelligent design, and you had all of the powers needed to create a perfect Earth, and you had complete foreknowledge that your design would fail, that humanity would suffer pain and agony for thousands of years, you created Adam and Eve anyway?
And you wonder why we no longer adore and praise your incompetent ass?
Re #1. You called it. That's some serious evil there.
My favorite: "...man must obey God's commands because God says
that man must obey, and whether or not he has the ability to obey is irrelevant."
Actually the whole paragraph (bottom of p. 5) is a doozy.
I, of course, blame Kyle's mom. (Warning: NSFW)
Thanks for posting it! It's pretty funny.
in case anybody has a still-working irony meter, the guy who posted this has a favorite bible verse posted
"Proverbs 12:1-Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but whoever hates correction is stupid."
gotta love fundies.
Raynold @#1:
I have always suspected that there are some whose lives are dedicated to a cold, remorseless hatred of others. That these people, given the wherewithall, would without hesitation bring about the total annihilation of the human species, even if it meant their own destruction as well. Vincent Cheung has just now confirmed that suspicion.
Not to step on Cuttlefishes tentacles...
Here at the school, just in class chillin'
When God bust in and he start some killin'
Bustin' a cap, or three, or twenty
Now he'll be respected, man they'll love him plenty
make with the prayer, or you're all dead
can't the schoolborards get that through their head
Peace Out!
I have to give it to anyone who could watch the whole dam thing. If I watched the whole f'n thing what little reason I do know would how to use would be lost to me for some period of time and my breakfast would be ruined. I hope that this message should be spread far and wide often so people might learn how completely idiotic and negative it really is. Truly distasteful.
I like the implication that individual people are not really accountable to the rest of the society that they live in but only to "god"?
what is the law for?
without a god and "god's law" we would have to agree what we as a society would permit and what we would not permit wouldn't we?
The AFA's "news" and videos appeal to the hysterical, rock-dumb shrew scampering around at the core of every fundie brain. Their headlines make no more effort to be honest than their videos and are aimed only at whipping even less literate and educated people into a frenzy (and selling them shit).
The best part is how they threw prohibition of "spanking" along with all the other "evils" that sent God away. Quite telling.
Hmm, I would guess secularism in European schools is even more firmly entrenched. But I don't recall having heard of any school shootings there. Anyone?
There's been some shootings in schools, but not by students. Usually a lunatic comes in pissed off at the world or something and starts killing.
There was one in scandinavia on one in wales or scotland I believe.
An omnipotent god can be wherever he wants, so that's certainly not the problem here. What Christians are worried about is that they are no longer to indoctrinate children with religious myths. Perhaps it was a bad idea to invent an omnipotent god who is said to punish people, when it's so difficult to produce the necessary special effects. Even the best magician couldn't hold the appearance up forever.
Well, obviously: God didn't save the kids at Moses Lake, Washington, because he spent the day wandering lost around Centralia instead.
Doesn't make me want to bother to go on to find out who the second group of kids were that God didn't save, let alone why.
@Steve_C
There was the Erfurt Massacre in Germany around 2002. That's the only one I could think of. Really, school shootings are really rare in Europe. Just compare the number of shootings in the United States with the number wordlwide (Europe doesn't even get its own section)
I think it's got a lot to do with gun control - guns are banned nearly all across Europe or at least not easy to obtain.
Annnyway, back to topic. This vid is horrid. The comments are entertaining though. They're full of godless liberals!
Child porn is not covered under free speech!
Geesh that was creepy.
The skull was a nice touch. I nearly shat myself laughing. And of course God ignored the Alberta school shooting. We had a liberal government then and we all know God is a righty. ;)
Why are we ascribing all this nonsense and wasted words to something that does not exist? Hey, let's discuss Astronomy or so many other numerous scientific endeavors. Insert "easter bunny" in place of that god; would the conservation manage to uphold? I don't want to discuss religion, I just want to ridicule it to it's deserved end.
I remember a bumper sticker or some such with a similar approach. The question, "God, why do You permit so much violence in schools?", and the answer,"I'm not allowed in schools."
This brings to my mind two responses, the first specific to my gopher avatar: "I'm not allowed in flower gardens, but that's never stopped me."
Second? "I'm completely in favor of allowing God in schools. He's got a right to an education, just like everyone else!"
It's truly amazing how powerless their magic sky fairy is in the face of such formidable opposition as people not talking about him constantly, isn't it?
The bible has no place in schools as a handbook for how to live our lives. It's a misogynistic, spiteful document. So it says thou shalt not kill? Fine, but so do many other holy books! How about teaching the koran and hindu books in schools? But the fundies wouldn't want that.
I know pharyngula readers already know all this, but it annoys me no end. Including the bible as a lifestyle handbook is insulting to at least half the population. Can't we just be honest about it?
Awe, it's just like visiting family during the holidays... oops I'm mean, Chistmas, and thats spelled with a fucking Christ... you know why, it's his birthday... (Okay last year was extra stressful)
Well, I've posted a couple comments over there, one of which has gotten eaten twice. Trying to direct a fundie commenter to a post of mine which I think was pretty good. (And thanks to Lifewish for contributing one more entry.)
Can an omnipotent being really be outlawed from a building, be it an educational facility or otherwise?
And, as far as all that other stuff goes: "What happened to parenting?"
Or rather, I'd say that bad things happen when children aren't taught to think, but merely to follow. Also, getting them to warp reality by believing in a magic fairy will impede critical thinking.
So if your kid has trouble discerning the obvious fact that shooting people in movies and shooting people in real life are completelyfuckingdifferent, then you may want to take a damn good hard look at the parameters of his Reality vs Imagination.
If I use the same sort of sweeping generalizations and nonlogic, then I could argue that putting God into the schools will actually make it more bloody. How many times have we heard of freaks going off and killing because "God" told them to?
Leave the Easter Bunny and Sky Fairy out of schools. We're having enough problems getting well-educated citizens in this country as is.
#57 RedGreenInBlue and anyone smarter than TFU
At 3:05..., that parade guy is holding what looks to me like a cephalopod toy make of rope. Or is it something else?
And azqax, #82
Keep your day job.
Apparently the geography teacher was too busy reading from the Bible and beating students to actually teach anything about geography.
Apparently the geography teacher was too busy reading from the Bible and beating students to actually teach anything about geography.
Nahh...it's that accuracy makes the baby Jesus cry.
Just to add to the geography corrections: El Cajon is only a couple of miles away from Santee both in San Diego County - the dot they had for it looks to be in LA. It is somewhat notable that Santee (btw, I live here) is a rather, shall we say, right wing, redneck and religious little town (some call it Klantee).
Also, the shooting at the Amish school was not done by a student. It was done by a distraught father who blamed God when his school aged daughter died (from some illness if memory serves.)
Or christian geography is just like the rest of christian stuff, from "science" to music : it really sucks.
If god isn't allowed in schools, how do sports teams manage to win games?
What comes through to me, from watching the video, is how much the fundamentalist Christians hate everyone and everything about American culture. These are the same people who used to (and in some cases still do) preach that dancing is sinful and music is the work of the devil. They do not like America, and this video really shows their true feelings.
Now that I think about it, I guess that reminds me of this, too: http://conservativesarealwayswrong.googlepages.com/
Maybe if people would realize that parenting is done in the home and not in the schools, there may be fewer teen pregnancies, school massacres, drunk driving, etc. Schools are for teaching facts and skills, parents are for teaching values. Taking "God" out of the schools is not the problem, taking parenting out of the home is.
I wonder how they explain the Bath School Massacre - worst school massacre in the USA's history, happened long before *any* of these things. School violence isn't new :-(
That map is very heavy on the south and pretty empty up here in the godless northeast where the least religious states in the country are. Connection?
Mena FTW!
You forgot one:
- made out of little scraps of paper
They're right, we should trust the protection of children to an imaginary genocidal maniac.
"...School violence isn't new :-("
Of course it isn't, but you're thinking rationally. In fact none of the evils they listed in that video are new at all. These things happen everywhere on some level, and have happened in other civilizations past, and likely in our not-too-distant future. As usual this blames everyone else and attributes just about anything wrong to others. It seeks to divide first by drawing the typical and errant correlation=causation frame. Right-wing thinking has always been happy by showing how messed up the world supposedly is because it's not exactly the way the critic thinks it should be. Listen to how they talk about the issues: they assume random individuals caused everything, and that society just blindly followed, so that's why everything is shit. Blaming a *single* woman who happened to be an atheist a long ass time ago; blaming Dr. Spock for all of our children being messed up whether anyone followed his ideas or not, blame blame blame.
I personally would like to understand exactly how, if the school system is so liberal, why it is that children from gun-owning parents - ya know, the God/guns/gays types - are always the ones shooting up schools. But that's hard-right religious thinking for you; reality doesn't matter when you can read how it's supposed to unfold in a musty old tome. I would also like them to explain the very recent study showing conservative states tend to be heavier consumers of porn. I would like them to explain how, in a rapidly changing world, they think it's the height of logic to curl up in a corner with one specific book, and let that comfort and guide them the rest of their days.
This sort of conservatism and religionism is nothing more than an expression of a group of humans abdicating their existence to things they can't and will never know because they are too powerless and self-involved to care about anyone but themselves.
Pathetic.
The bastard!
Isn't it weird how all fundie videos have the same echoey voice-over guy?
Just what I expect out of the AFA. slightly creepy, "we're being oppressed!" , vaguely homoerotic in spots. condoms for the football players. . . for when they're together in a pile.
Right, gotcha.
One day, men who grow up repressing their desire for football will be rare, and those who appreciate the game will finally be accepted in society.
Unfortunately, I couldn't post the following comment on Youtube, and hence couldn't disrupt the orgy of agreement taking place there.
Note that this was aimed at the fools who uploaded that video and those who approved of it, rather than at your estimable selves.
---------
Oh, dear. Oh, oh dear. The following comment might be a little long--those who wouldn't like a rational discussion of their arguments might want to sit down.
First of all, most Christian groups disown the Old Testament God's weaknesses and cruelty, to the extent that it seems out-of-place in the video. Furthermore, since when has omnipotence and -presence been defeatable by laws? I seem to recall Jesus breaking quite a few laws in his time...
The second chronologic point given, and the explanation thereof, suggests that the Bible itself is the sole provider of basic morality...which seems almost to deconstruct itself.
The third point presents reasonable suggestions (beating=bad) in such a light as to make them seem absurd, where again the error seems self-evident.
The fourth point suggests that students do not discipline students AT ALL--which is quite clearly false, as any student may attest. Also, it presents a simplistic mockery of the lawsuit system--the application of which is certainly flawed, but the concept is not.
The fifth seems amoral, certainly, but not necessarily as evil as it is portrayed. As with the following point, the basic error is the assumption that psyches modify themselves instantly (which seems appropriate for creationism), while in fact they are constantly maturing, which invalidates an age of consent and thus the idea that students should not be having sex. Again, I'm not suggesting they should, but merely that sex itself is not evil, even among students. Most certainly not evil is the use of contraceptive techniques.
It occurs to me that the seventh point and it's follow-ups are perfectly acceptable (which is to say that the criticisms are not so) to an extent--that extent being the child pornography, of course.
After that, there are several points made which seem to stem from fear of the unknown (eat your heart out, Dr. Breen!), namely the unknown new media, which ironically includes the internet.
I would be inclined to suggest that children of modern times do in fact have a conscience, and that insanity has existed as long as animals.
The finally of the video ("We reap what we sow") is thoroughly appalling--not only does it present an echo of the idea of an Old Testament God in the beginning, but also suggests that innocents should be punished for what YOU regard as mistakes.
Is that a furry parade towards the end? What is with Christians/Conservatives and furries?
http://blogs4brownback.wordpress.com/2007/08/04/sick-sad-world/
Anyone else think that the guy doing the voiceover said "elicit sex" when he meant to say "eXPlicit sex"?
He said "illicit sex".
Reynold #1
I just skimmed the document, "Problem of Evil, but it would appear that Vincent Cheung is successfully making the argument that his god really is a perverted sick fuck who cold stop evil, but prefers to sit around pulling his knob and letting letting his creation suffer while he gets his jollies. Or am I missing something.
Cuttlefish, you are my sunshine.
Also wik, Taber, Alberta is not above North Dakota, as the video presents. It's above Montana, near Lethbridge, Alberta.
Whatever. Theists don't need a fancy-pants geography book or a regular-pants google-map.
http://maps.google.ca/maps?q=taber+alberta&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&ie…
I didn't watch the video, nor do I want to. Obviously, just because some alleged Christian makes such wacky (and offensive) claims doesn't mean he represents what the Bible really teaches about this important subject. And it's not just individuals that do this. "Christian" churches have all but abandoned the Bible and followed their own traditions and philosophies. They are hopelessly divided and fragmented, and cannot agree on, let alone explain, what the Bible says. If one were to judge the God they claim to worship by their conduct, it's no surprise that many view God as "petulant" and "petty".
But the Bible does indeed explain how suffering began, why it is permitted to continue, and how it will be removed permanently. Are you open-minded and willing to at least give the Bible a fair hearing? If so, consider the explanation offered by Jehovah's Witnesses based entirely on what the Bible says.
I noticed that near the end of the video, the voice over says: "Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience; why they don't know right from wrong." Could it be that our children haven't eaten the forbidden fruit in the garden of eden and don't know good from evil? If so, that means that they are saved and they will live forever!!!
Yes no True Christian© would do such a thing.
Hey Are you a Jahovah's WItness?
Why don't you come by my house any longer?
1834 sounds like the time period this guy wants to get back to. I think that was the year Horace Mann wrote about seeing something like 300 floggings of students by teachers over 5 days of touring schools in Massachusetts. You have to wonder at that point... Makes me think that kids had to be behaving pretty badly back then, too. Only difference is, now we don't let teachers beat kids, and that's a good thing. You just know that some kids were marked from day one as being no good.
VIolence in schools has nothing to do with the prayer nonsense.
Back in the days before Engale v. Vitale (the "prayer case"), there was a man who went into a school in Houston with a suitcase bomb. Several children were killed.
Despite Engale v. Vitale, most schools in East Texas were all but Christian indoctrination centers. That didn't stop a girl in my jr. high P.E. class from bringing a gun to school and pulling it on our teacher. Chased her around the gym, got off a few shots, but missed. This was a school were students prayed every morning as part of the daily announcements.
Huh? When did they move Bethel to the North of Fairbanks? Oh wait, the video is from a fundy moron and geography is just a theory.
@Rev. BigDumbChimp:
Yes, I am one of Jehovah's Witnesses. I don't know why you aren't being visited but if you're serious you can always request a visit on the JW web site.
Chris, yes I have read the bible along with the so called holy books of the other major religions, more than once in fact. I used to be a xian, though admittedly a xian lite, but only until I actually read the wholly babble and started thinking for myself. And yes, if any god was even responsible for the wholly babble then god really should be considered a sick fuck. And please, enough already with the No True Scotsman fallacy. Or are you the only one allowed to decide who calls themselves a xian.
The “I’m not allowed in schools” motif reminds me of an account that made the rounds in email, about a teenaged girl who (allegedly) went off with some friends in a car. Her mother was worried because the driver wasn’t sober, so instead of forbidding her daughter to go, she only offered her a blessing: “My dear daughter, may God go with you and protect you.” To which the daughter responded, “Only if he rides in the trunk, because in here it’s already full!”
That night the car crashed, rolled, and burned: there’s a nice little bit of description mentioning that it was so completely destroyed they couldn’t tell what make it was. Everyone inside died, in agony and terror. But, according to the email account, a carton of eggs – undamaged, not even cracked – was found in the trunk.
Apparently many TrooBeleevers harbor a fascination with the notion that their God is as petty and small-minded and vindictive and mean-spirited as they themselves are.
Cactus Wren, that reminds me of another good Christian allegorical story:
A young unsullied woman is walking home alone. She has to walk down a dark alleyway, and prays for God to be with her the entire time. Some time after she arrives home, she sees on the news that another young woman has been bludgeoned to death in the same alley she had passed through earlier. The story on the news quotes the murderers as saying they had seen another woman earlier, but she had been flanked by two large men. The young woman realizes it was her and her guardian angels, sent by God to be with her.
Moral of the story: if you're not constantly begging God for help every second of the day, you deserve to die horribly in an alley.
Yup, Carlie. Second moral: if you get raped or beaten to death in an alley, it's your own fault because you DIDN'T PRAY ENOUGH.
@John Phillips, FCD
Name calling and profanity? Yikes. So much for a reasoned and logical discussion. No thanks.
Chris @135
Perhaps you didn't appreciate the tone of John Phillips' post. Don't let that put you off responding the actual substance though, the 'they can't be real Christians' fallacy is always brought up in these circumstances and to be honest it's a little ridiculous. Each sect of Christianity believes they're the only correct one, so who on Earth decides who are the real Christians and who aren't. There are plenty of horrific teachings and stories in the Bible, I doubt there are ANY so-called Christians on this planet who follow the whole thing, so who are you to decide which Christians are right and which aren't?
sigh
@Johnny
Name calling and profanity are the last resort of either the ignorant or the inarticulate. I don't respond to such.
As for the "True Scotsman fallacy", it was not my intention to say who is a "true Christian". The Bible itself gives the criteria for that. My point was that many people--including some posting on this blog--take the rantings of a nutcase who claims to be a Christian as justification to condemn the Bible as "babble". This is just the kind of logical fallacy such ones are quick to point out in others. Physician, heal thyself!
I feel I must point out that the little red dot they have for Taber Alberta is actually nowhere near the actual town. Not even close.
Is this a backlash against atheistic geography, you think?
There's also:
c. People who are tired of hearing (or reading) the same tired arguments and logical fallacies.
Your dismissal of the maker of the video as "some alleged Christian" is a prime example of the No True Scotsman fallacy. We've had many Christians describe different flavor Christians as not being true Christians. John Phillips was responding more in disgust than anger at your use of a logical fallacy.
Chris, actually, the only name calling I did was to call your god a 'sick fuck'. If anyone doesn't consider him one, then purely based on the wholly babble's own words, I would truly question their sense of morality. Oh and not the xian morality but the evolved 'morality' of a social species. If that is the best defence you have for your god or wholly babble (after all, with all the contradictions in the babble how can it be considered anything but aforesaid babble) then you really have nothing to offer.
As to the babble showing who is a xian, then it is strange how so many can read the babble and interpret it differently to you, hence my 'No True Scotsman' sentence. So, got anything else to offer beside the 'you have nothing of value to say because you were rude' fallacy.
BTW, if still overcome with my 'rudeness' to your god then see 'Tis Himself point c. for why I responded as I did.
Vultures.
More bible = .....LESS violence???
The bible is great, and RAP MUSIC is too violent?
I'm extremely confused. He must be talking about some other bible.
Who?
In case anyone is wondering, Gawd ha kindly cleared up this misunderstanding.
http://deusexeverriculum.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/dear-pz-myers-et-al/