I know that Steve Allen was a lifelong skeptic and freethinker, but was he also a squid worshipper? How else to explain this sign?
Through the Center for Inquiry in LA, which hosts that Steve Allen Theater, there's also a very useful list of dramatic productions of interest to freethinkers, including everything from Agnes of God to Zardoz (sorry: Red Dawn didn't make the cut). Any college students interested in subverting their university's film series might want to recommend some of the movies from this list. Or you might just try adding all of them to your Netflix subscription.
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Allen was a skeptic, but I don't think he was a freethinker. He self-identified as a Christian.
A Tony Millionaire illustration! I love that guy's comic ( http://www.maakies.com ) [WARNING: Rude and profane]
Sad to say, a lot of freethinkers are social Christians in America.
Maybe it doesn't include "Red Dawn", but even worse, it includes "Star Trek V" -- you know, the really awful one with Spock and Kirk singing "Row, row, row, your boat" in a round. Yes, the evil being at the end has a remarkable resemblance to the Judeo-Christian god, but that's not enough to make up for the singing.
I would add George Lucas' THX1138 to the
list. A perfect example of a totalitarian
state hijacking religion for their own
purposes....
You are a true believer. Blessings of the state, blessings of the masses. Thou art a subject of the divine. Created in the image of man, by the masses, for the masses. Let us be thankful we have an occupation to fill. Work hard; increase production; prevent accidents, and be happy.
Question for Professor Myers.
Are you really on the faculty, or are you a comedian, or are you just another atheist fanatic?
Whatever, keep up the good work...for the other side, you stupid moron.
I would also add "Paradise Now" to the list.
A good example of how group pressure and religion
lead believers to a bad place (blowing themselves
and others up).
Question for Professor Myers.
Are you really on the faculty, or are you a comedian, or are you just another atheist fanatic?
Whatever, keep up the good work...for the other side, you stupid moron.
Mick wrote:
The talking point parrot squawks his soundbite.
Be careful....you may be outsourced to a program
that reurgitates whatever talking point is needed..
You know you're not being paid to think anyway.
I don't think this guy is much of a threat if he can't even figure out how to find UMM faculty with a web browser and a search engine. What a maroon.
Not really related to discussion here, but I was chatting with a student in my office about how her semester was going and she mentioned that she was taking a freshman seminar course entitled "Edible Invertebrates". How fucking cool is that? Man, I wish I could have taken that. I need to find out if staff can audit those types of courses...Course credit for eating squid, I can dig it.
"Edible Invertebrates"
Careful, it might be an experiment to use freshman to determine which ones t are edible and which ones are *not*!
I cannot believe anyone would recommend that people voluntarily watch "Zardoz". The only part I liked is when the masked guys began shooting all of the immortals. Too bad they didn't go on to shoot the writer, director, and producer of this alleged film.
Bill--the sight of Sean Connery in a loincloth makes up for a multitude of other sins.
Dark Matter: i have a short snippet of C code that can regurgitate insults faster, better and cheaper than Mick can.
the sad thing is, it also generates better insults.
The only redeaming quality of Star Trek V is the line: "Jim, you don't ask the Almighty for his ID" The rest is utterly, painfully, Shatnerian... Some others aren't great either. And "Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter" didn't make the list...
Spock's "But Jim, Life is *not* a dream" is pretty good, too.
I liked the "why does God need a spaceship" part.
Steve Allen (always liked him) quotes:
There are hundreds of millions who believe the Messiah has come. If he did, then it is unfortunately the case that his heroic sacrifice and death have had no effect whatsoever on the very problem his coming might have been expected to address, for history demonstrates, beyond question, that we Christians have been just as dangerous, singly and en masse, as non-Christians. [Steve Allen, Steve Allen, on the Bible Religion & Morality]
No actual tyrant known to history has ever been guilty of one-hundredth of the crimes, massacres, and other atrocities attributed to the Deity in the Bible. [Steve Allen, More Steve Allen, on the Bible Religion & Morality]
If...we assume that there is no God, it follows that morality is even more important than if there is a Deity. If God exists, his unlimited power can certainly redress imbalances in the scale of human justice. But if there is no God, then it is up to man to be as moral as he can. [Steve Allen]
It is not hardness of heart or evil passions that drive certain individuals to atheism, but rather a scrupulous intellectual honesty. [Steve Allen, quoted in 2000 Years of Disbelief, Famous People with the Courage to Doubt, by James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996]
If you pray for rain long enough, it eventually does fall. If you pray for floodwaters to abate, they eventually do. The same happens in the absence of prayers. [Steve Allen, quoted in 2000 Years of Disbelief, Famous People with the Courage to Doubt, by James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996]
I don't think that's right. I think Allen described himself as a freethinker, but not an atheist (and a "humanist" but not a "secular humanist") who said "I don't deny the possibility of God," which would be a pretty weak position for a Christian. (He might also have "identified" as a Christian without believing anything that most people would call Christianity; I don't really know.)
The following article from The Truth Seeker has some quotes from his book Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion, and Morality. (Towards the end of the article.)
http://www.banned-books.com/truth-seeker/1995archive/122_1/ts221l.html
Here's one:
"Prayer. For me to appreciate is, in the same moment, for me to feel grateful. If I am appreciating a meal prepared for me, there is a sense of gratitude toward the preparer. In that sense, of course, it is not unusual that one reaction leads to the other. We respond by thanking the person who hands us a cold drink on a hot day, something to eat when we are hungry, or who does even less important favors or services. But I feel the same pairing of emotions about the gifts and splendors of nature, even though there is no way to determine whether they are available because of a creator's intent or are simply fortunate accidents."
It's been a long time since I saw Cool Hand Luke, but I'm pretty sure the Paul Newman character is arrested and sent to jail for cutting the heads off of parking meters during a drunken binge, not for any religious reasons.
There's an excellent (if incredibly long) play called The Deputy, by Rolf Hochhuth, about Pius XII during the Nazi years. I've never seen a production, but I've read it several times and it's worth looking up. It's very devastating. Dunno if there's a movie of it.
Best, Marc
From the post just above yours, emphasis added:
I've read one of his books in which he identifies himself a Christian. He may be a very liberal Christian, but I don't think that qualifies him as a "freethinker". I would include deists and agnostics under the label of "freethinker", but I think a Christian is necessarily a theist.
"freethinkers"
This is sort of off-topic, but I keep looking at this term, and considering that we're not in the 19th Century, wondering what the hell it means. Aside from meaning "not Christian" or "not religious," I dunno, and why anyone should presume that Christian or religous, should be the default that needs to be distinguished from, or that one who is defining one's self by a negative is actually thinking freely, I dunno.
I've never thought of myself as a "freethinker," because I've always taken that to be a category that ceased having meaning by the late Enlightenment; it doesn't seem to me that any sort of actual "free thinking" needs categorization. I don't understand whom I'm supposed to be categorized with if I'm a "freethinker." People who think for themselves, after all, aren't thinking alike; if they're thinking alike, by definition, they're not thinking for themselves. So what's the sense of this term?
If it's just a fancy way of saying "atheist," well, I don't go around particularly thinking of myself as an atheist, either; any more than I think of myself as any other sort of "I don't believe in X"=ist. The whole idea seems weird and incomprehensible to me. I just happen to be an atheist, just as I happen to not believe there's a huge Egyptian pyramid behind me just now, and that there's not a wolfman hiding in my closet, and my skin isn't plaid. There are a million-gazillion things I don't believe in, but defining myself by things I don't believe in would be nuts. The list is infinite.
But that's just me, and it's clear that we think differently about a lot of this stuff.
The key issue, Mr. Farber, is that very few people believe that there is a wolfman in your closet et cetera. Virtually no one believes that believe in such a wolfman (etc.) is an inevitable part of being alive and human.
Very many people are theists, and many people believe that being a theist is not only the default but the inevitable. In such conditions, stressing your non-belief is reasonable.
You're also limiting yourself to the case of weak atheism. Strong atheists are defining themselves in terms of something they believe.
Interesting list of movies, most of which I have not seen, and will have to add to my Netflix list. After I've invented a device that will stretch my day so I can catch up with what I've already got on that list, of course!
However, why is The Mahabarata on there? I agree that Peter Brooks' version was really great, and for someone like me brought up on the mythology in India, this outsider's take on the essence of the epic may qualify as freethinking. In know that many Indians were unhappy with the international cast, especially having African actors as major characters in the epic. I'm puzzled by its inclusion on this list though. OTOH, this may be another example of even Freethinking being limited to particular religious/cultural perspectives!
It's been a long time since I saw Cool Hand Luke, but I'm pretty sure the Paul Newman character is arrested and sent to jail for cutting the heads off of parking meters during a drunken binge, not for any religious reasons.
Sounds like an offense against the American God to me.
Jesus de Montreal is crackalicious.
I'd also recommend Touch with Christopher Walken and that guy who looks like Johnny Depp.
Gary, one of the things I quite like about the term freethinker is that it sounds faintly archaic. It serves as a reminder that principled godlessness is not a recent phenomenon. I also think it's a handy blanket term that encompasses atheism, antitheism, agnosticism, humanism, etc., etc., so as to avoid the kind of petty ideological clades into which freethinking people so eagerly divide themselves. (FREX: "I'm an agnostic but not an atheist, who is secular but not a strict materialist.") Those distinctions might be important to us, but I guarantee they don't mean a thing to those who would deny us a seat at the table.
On the other hand, I've lately noticed that fringe credulists like the David Icke crowd have started to misuse the term "freethinker" to mean "open-minded to the point one's brain falls out."
Perhaps we should co-opt "godless" as a badge of honor (in the manner of "queer" or "black".)
Perhaps we should co-opt "godless" as a badge of honor (in the manner of "queer" or "black".)
I prefer the term "god-free", myself.
"The key issue, Mr. Farber, is that very few people believe that there is a wolfman in your closet et cetera."
Could be, but why I should care about what other people think, I don't know.
"After I've invented a device that will stretch my day so I can catch up with what I've already got on that list, of course!"
I've yet to get my Netflix queue under 400, myself, but I'm also ready to quit Netflix and try Intelliflix since Netflix has started throttling and giving me absurd excuses and lies; and I only tend tend to get 2-3 new films a week, if that many. Speaking of which, back to Bad(er) Santa.