Near the end Piers whines that Penn is defending what Piers claims is his church.
Um, no Piers, it’s not.
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I enjoy Penn’s work, and respect his opposition to Christianity. I disagree with him, but that’s fine.
It’s sometimes nice to see an atheist who doesn’t reflexively sneer when discussing Christianity. So many atheists are utterly nasty, abrasive, obnoxious people… who just can’t WAIT to point out how stupid, moronic, and regressive any sort of believer is.
Such people are incredibly tiresome, and debating them is pointless. You might as well discuss racial equality with a Klansman.
Or a Black Liberation Theology believer.
Indeed.
I’ve long thought Penn Jillette is a tool, and I still do. But I will give kudos to him, here.
Or, in the case of nishi, anything.
In a sense there really isn’t much distance between “every day is sacred” [Every Day is an Atheist’s Holiday!] and “every sperm is sacred”, is there? They’re both stultifying pieties, no?
every day in every way I’m becoming a better and better lieutenant junior grade
Agreed, Bones. I’ve drifted far from a friend of mine who became an evangatheist.
Penn obviously understands the salient issue better, and applies logic to it — while Morgan is devoted to the idea that each generation gets to re-create the universe in its own image, God and all.
If that’s how you’re going to see it, you can’t legitimately call yourself a Catholic or, indeed, any kind of Christian. If you believe in the God of the Bible, you believe that what is written in it was inspired by God, who is eternal. In this exchange the atheist gets it, and the pseudo-Catholic clearly does not.
I kept waiting for Penn to tell Morgan, “If you don’t believe the Pope is your conduit to God, what the hell are you doing calling yourself Catholic? When I decided I couldn’t continue to believe what my childhood church taught, I didn’t demand the church change to suit me, I left the church. You should do the same.”
As he should. And this country too.
Belief in God or Atheism? That decision boils down to an individual’s answer to the biggest question ever posed: a yes-or-no answer to, does a human possess an immortal soul?
If one answers yes, then that person has a path and a clear purpose in his/her life: to find a religion that explains how to deal with that ‘yes’ answer. A religion is but a path; some offer less difficult paths to follow. Some paths change over time, become wider and easier to follow, but where do they lead? Which, if any, religion is the ‘right’ one?
The much easier way to go about one’s life? Just don’t believe in this spiritual ‘immortal soul’ crap. After all, it’s been proven past doubt that humans are but animals. Given that our massive brain case and it’s sluggish contents were, by sheer dumb luck and millions of years of evolution, evolved to the point where we can point and laugh at the entire concept. Look! the funny apes have invented religions!
We live on a just-right-sized-and-positioned mudball located in a nowhere arm of a minor galaxy somewhere in non-infinite space. All of these minor physical facets essential to non-fragile life could easily be considered rolls after lucky rolls of cosmic dice over the staggering long time that’s passed since…whatever, and is left to pass, if indeed time even passes in a single direction. Why believe any religion that states all that’s just foreplay?
Why, I read just the other day that scientists claim that life on earth might’ve been generated when comets slammed into this virgin planet, bringing along cheerfully boiled peptides, the precursors of proteins and…life. Thankfully, comets! So, why bother worrying about having a soul or not, when we’ve some 70-80 years of things so much better to do! Fun times indeed!
Oh. “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” ~ C.S. Lewis
I think he gets it. Or got it, for whatever good it did for him.
coochie coochie yaya dada
god it looks like nishi
must be the clouds in my eyes
get *hic*, honkyfoot
the change is gonna do you good
Apparently nobody has explained the concept of the Magisterium to Piers.
Penn has also said that, unlike many atheists, he is not offended when believers try to convert him. He understands that they believe they’re saving him from Hell, and that they are acting out of love. He believes that they are wrong, but that they are doing exactly what they should do if they believe what they say they believe.
I don’t know that he’s always been this understanding. Glenn Beck thinks he might have helped out over the last few years, since he first started having Penn on his CNNHLN show. He recently said he’s considering asking Penn if it’s OK to turn some of their emails into a book, because he thinks they might be that interesting. (By now, that conversation may have already happened.)
And the bigger issue here is that the Left simply does not understand how conservatives and libertarians think. They can only caricature us and attack the caricatures. We, on the other hand, understand exactly how the Left thinks. That’s because we’ve all been five-year-olds.
Man, Piers is a jerk! I love how he believes the church (and in effect, God) should change because because people are having unprotected sex (and, I assume, outside of marriage). Heaven forbid we actually expect people to change the behavior that is putting their lives at risk, which is what the church is advocating. No, Morgan puts his faith in large institutions, such as the federal government, to make all of our decisions for us (to the point of disarming us & even selecting which foods we consume), completely ignoring the concepts of free will, personal responsibility and consequences. Instead of him making the choice to follow the church or leaving it, Morgan wants to take the easy way out and just have the church validate whatever he feels like doing. Instead of him making the choice to own a gun or not, he wants the government to make the decision for all of us.
I think the more important point isn’t what moves the believers — and I think Penn is more of a believer, in what he believes, than Piers Morgan is — but what moves those who don’t believe.
They really do feel entitled to re-create the universe, God and all, in their own image. The once-ironic comment that Man creates God in his own image has now become the one common thread in the dominant ethos of Western civilization.
We were promised there wouldn’t be another Flood, but we have to be bearing down on the next cleanse.
Piers believes in the infinite wisdom of Piers. I believe he’s an idiot.
What happened to McGehee? WHen did he become the scribe of slog?
I work much and miss things.
SOmeone fill me in.
Ilike Penn more and more.
Carin, I renamed my blog and am using my handle here, on Twitter, on Disqus, and a couple of other places to sort of promote it.
My first real blog had a funny name, and back in ’03 I found an anagram generator that respelled it (among other ways) “Scribe of Slog.” I liked it then and have decided to embrace it at last.
JD’s mashup reminds me of Illika Damen ( can’t remember if that was spelled correctly) and all the other bloggers that somehow turned between 2004 and 2008 into full-throated Obamaphiles.
Michele (one “L”) what’s-her-face who was suddenly no longer interested in discussing politics.
I really would like to have some of these people answer for their beliefs and votes. Nishi too.
assholes.
Ah. got it. Thanks.
” No more water, the fire next time.”
I’ve always enjoyed Penn and Teller’s “Bullshit” series. The best part is, that with them there are no sacred cows (sorry, Vishnu).
We don’t have to agree with them, but they are pretty damned intelligent and funny, as well. I recommend their magic show in Las Vegas if they are still performing.
Ol’ Geordie Santayana might have been talking about Noah’s flood with his remark about being doomed to repeat history.
True that.
The good Lord did give us His covenant in the rainbow as His never to flood the Earth again. I’m guessing He has something more spectacular in order next time up.
There’s a significant percentage of Catholics who I think will ultimately have alot of splaining to do to their Creator.
G-d doesn’t need to punish us. We seem to do a very good job of punishing ourselves.
There’s a
significantpercentage of [blank] who I think will ultimately have alot of splaining to do to their Creator.****
Insert any religion in the blank.
If the Pope is Peter’s True Heir, then God tells him when and what to change, just as God told Peter to start preaching to the Gentiles and that non-Jewish converts didn’t need to practice circumcision or keep kosher.
Moses, Samuel, Elijah, Isaiah, Paul, John: they didn’t sit around interpreting scripture; they created it. God inspired them; they wrote it down.
Martin Luther was an interpreter of scripture. He didn’t claim to be a prophet of God. The whole idea of Protestantism is that there aren’t any more prophets, so there’s no more scripture being generated
Furthermore, prophecy isalways resisted in its own time. (“Prophecy” meaning “contemporary revelation from God,” not prediction of the future.) God is never impressed by the output of scholars and academics and popular culture. It has to be obvious that God’s ways are always going to seem strange or weird or “out of touch” in the context of human society (which is always corrupt in one way or another).
If you don’t believe the Pope is your conduit to God, what the hell are you doing calling yourself Catholic?
Exactly. Either the Pope is the Vicar of Christ or he isn’t, and if he isn’t, you’re better off elsewhere.
God didn’t ask us to steady the ark (2 Sam. 6:6-7); he asked us to trust Him, even when doing so makes us look foolish in the eyes of the world.
Quinnipiac says most American Catholics support SSM. But the “real” scandal among the U.S. Catholic clergy is a few gay ephebophiles and not the complete lapse of doctrine from church teachings.
now bring us some figgy pudding now bring us some figgy pudding
now bring us some figgy pudding
for fuck’s sake bring us some goddamn figgy pudding already
I’d say the altar boy crap is a symptom of the real lapse.
[…] Piers Morgan anticipates a delicious dish of Catholic-bashing; atheist Penn Jillette serves up somet… […]
I don’t think the scandals represent a “majority” of catholics. It is a rather complicated issue, and much can be traced back to the liberalization of American Catholic hierarchy. A part of which American catholics are only guilty because they won’t abandon the faith in which they were raised.
can be traced back to the liberalization of American Catholic hierarchy
By this, do you intend the adoption (on the part of some members of the clerisy) of Democrat (progressive) Party political (hence moral) values?
Of course the scandals don’t. But they are a symptom of a lapse of doctrine, the responsibility for which lies at the door of the Vatican. In a top-down institution, failure (or worse) at street level means the guy at the top screwed up.
In particular, previous popes have softened doctrine and simply trusted that subordinates would take it only as far as they intended — while failing to enforce that intent with the authority that papal infallibility is supposed to imply.
Wrong joint, junior.
This here’s a pie place.
Yum.
“I’m Catholic, so long as the Catholic Church tells me what I want to hear.”
I love people thinking that any of this stuff is new.
*the*
By this, do you intend the adoption (on the part of some members of the clerisy) of Democrat (progressive) Party political (hence moral) values?
There was a very interesting article I read about a year back – and I wish I could find it. I did search a bit, but was unable to locate it.
But, short answer? yes.
I think perhaps the Anchoress linked it, so I should go look there.
Which is an important perspective. I have that problem with a lot of my lefty friends who get all wound up about compromise. Certain beliefs don’t leave room for compromise, and I think it is important to understand that.
Perhaps these Barnhardt pieces Carin. Had to use a Free Republic link as I can’t bring up the originals.
Penn could attempt to explain Piers’ own historicist (non-Catholic) position to Piers, but it would take much longer than any tv segment would allow. The only alternative would seem to be for Penn to suggest Piers read up on the subject, then leave it to Morgan to undertake the necessary introspection in order to winkle out his own self-imposed doctrinal difficulties. But then Hegel is awfully dry stuff, and Piers urgently wants to be a man of the moment, a man of his times, regardless of the origins of his falderol — so there’s inherently little hope of that possibility.
An aside, but relevant to the discussion in this thread.
Just because the pontiff is Peter’s successor, the head of the Catholic church, the rock the church is built on, doesn’t mean he’s the faithful’s conduit to God. That role is reserved for Christ himself, exclusively.
The Pope is simply the head of the priesthood; the current Admiral of the apostolic succession, so to speak :)
Anyway, I don’t want to threadjack via theology, I just thought I’d throw that in.
My regards to all
Thatb link above went further than I was trying to so maybe this one from “The Anchoress” which stays on the connections with the progressive left which is what I was going for.
Here’s another angle at the specifically American Catholic faith: Please God, Not an American Pope
The U.S. segment of the Catholic Church needs to undergo a counterrevolution of the sort now occurring in the Anglican Communion.
as long as the new pope is better than the last one we’re trending up I’d say
Your chirpy insights are as useful as always, tautologyfeet.
I’m a keen observer of the human condition is why come Mr. Slog
‘feets, if you’ve got nothing to say, try not saying it.
Otherwise, people might start to thinking that you’re pretty much a poo-flinging attention whore. Wouldn’t want that.
That’s Mr. Scribe to you.
Benedict was a fine Pope. It’s tough duty to follow a rock star like John Paul II.
I admire Benedict for his humility and willingness to do the right thing by stepping down when he felt his health was an impediment, rather than hanging in unto death. Plus Pope Emeritus is pretty cool.
I still think they should call him Grandpope.
leigh understood my gist Mr. W
sometimes I’m just very subtle is all
He isn’t defending the Church, Piers, he is explaining it to you.
Which is even sadder, isn’t it?
I am also curious as to how Piers thinks condoms would save lives given the Churches position on the definition of life.
Ha! I just gave him credit for thinking! How ridiculous.
how Piers thinks condoms would save lives given the Churches position on the definition of life.
Do they define spermses as human life? Little homunculi?
Or do they just discourage being careless with one’s reproductive cells?
Catholics believe sexual intercourse to be fundamentally procreative by design, di. It wouldn’t so much be careless as disregarding the appropriate ways to get it on. If a couple is married and their love-making results in another little baby there is much to rejoice over. The other options? Sorta fraught.
That’s pretty much the whole idea as I was taught.
(I’m not exactly a Catholic in good standing even if I’ve come to respect such ideas in my advanced age.)
Here’s an anecdote though.
Opened up a business in the middle of nowhere hundreds of miles from where I know anyone.
Called the church to donate all the equipment and supplies here and I’m immediately hooked into the whole network.
Granted, people who’ve never done shit for anyone but make snarky internet comments will do so once more but in about two days a steam table and a double wide reach in fridge were allocated where there needed to be and I found out some kids might need to learn some geometry.
But, yes, we could always pretend that internet snark means something because popes are silly.
I sometimes wonder if everyone took a step back and considered what they do to buttress civil society to stand against the state if they wouldn’t be embarrassed.
Are you too cool to become involved with a church charity? Are you too busy to tutor kids? Are you doing things that fill this void?
The state will fill these spaces. It doesn’t get bored or disinterested.
This is another Burkean critique of a doctrinaire libertarian worldview.
I also sometimes wonder what would happen if the people who were most often talking econ here took some sort of basic and intermediate math test against others.
What would happen?
Is it possible that some people here are talking out of their asses?
They might be.
Should I press the point?
Should I make this a point of honor? Should I make it a line in the sand?
That could have been an interesting interview for me were I not so impatient with Piers that it makes it impossible to last more than a minute. Ever single time.
I don’t give a shit what the silly little ponce thinks or has to say and yet he persistently interviews himself. The same thing with Conan O’Brien last night. I tuned in for a minute and sure enough there he was interviewing himself by way of guest.
Not sure where you are coming from bh, but go for it.
I too am curious to see where bh is going.
Hat trick !!!
Bh is saying either one is a man or action or a man of words.
Action without direction doesn’t accomplish much. Words provide direction.
I somehow doubt that’s the entirety of bh’s point.
words are particularly apposite for use in comment sections I think
whereas the actions you can do at the grocery store or at where you work or at church and stuff
Not the entirety, McGehee. I was trying to be concise.
words are also especially apposite for the singings
here is a word: ten!
ten is the number of days away before you can buy the kacey musgrave’s debut album I’m not sure but it might could have this one on it (but they kinda gave it to Hayden to run with already)… which is a song where they do the singings with words and the words are about words:
it’s all talk talk talk
talkin in the wind
it only slows you down if you start listenin
and it’s a whole lot harder to shine
than undermine
I doubt bh was saying something so silly and untrue. The two are hardly exclusive.
I think he was going for something along the lines of; everybody believes in something, and you will know them by their works.
If you truly believe in God, you will do God’s work. If you don’t, your faith won’t be absent, it will just be transferred to something else.
Like government.
I could be wrong about what bh was saying though…
in the preceding comment, Mr. lee used his words to characterize Ms. leigh’s summation of Mr. bh’s words as “silly” and also “untrue”
How does this conflict affect the reader’s interpretation?
How could Mr. lee have used his words differently?
Do you agree with Mr. lee or Ms. leigh, and why?
…
*putt*
…
And that’s three of four sentences with nearly perfect punctuation and capitalization, for those of you keeping score at home.
The only kindergartener I see around here, chirpyfeet, is chirpyfeet.
you have to raise your hand to talk in reading circle Mr. Slog see like me now you try
Those are valid points. Look at it from a different perspective: I like kids, don’t have any of my own and should be a perfect candidate for some sort of mentor/tutoring gig.
But how are single old men who show unusual attention to children viewed these days? What risks am I personally exposing myself to it I do?
I have considered the idea, but why risk it?
Yeah, best not to expose yourself to mentoring children.
Also, this is a bad way to go about it…
Cowardice asks the question : Is it safe?
Expediency asks the question: Is it politic?
Vanity asks the question: Is it popular?
But conscience asks the question: Is it right?
And there comes a time one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular—but one must make it simply because it is right.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
This is a better summary of what I was getting at and it is neither silly or untrue.
here is an insurance policy you could get Mr. moe
Silly me, I thought we were talking about what bh was getting at.
i thought we were talking about whether the vatican’s launch of New Pope will be a big win or if people will want Pope Classic back
Yes, we were Lee. Since I don’t have the ability to read bh’s mind, this was my take on what he was saying.
Wisdom asks the question does the rightness outweigh the safety.
Sometimes the right thing to do is let the other guy speak for himself. Just sayin’.
Most times I’d say.
bh, where are you?