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Creationists Demand Equal Airtime With 'Cosmos'
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Travis Gettys reports that creationist Danny Falkner appeared Thursday on "The Janet Mefford Show" to complain that the Fox television series and its host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, had marginalized those with dissenting views on accepted scientific truths. "I don't recall seeing any interviews with people – that may yet come – but it's based upon the narration from the host and then various types of little video clips of various things, cartoons and things like that," said Falkner of Answers In Genesis who also complained that Tyson showed life arose from simple organic compounds without mentioning that some believe that's not possible. "I was struck in the first episode where he talked about science and how, you know, all ideas are discussed, you know, everything is up for discussion – it's all on the table – and I thought to myself, 'No, consideration of special creation is definitely not open for discussion, it would seem." To be fair, there aren't a ton of shows on TV specifically about creationism says William Hamby. "However, there are entire networks devoted to Christianity, and legions of preachers with all the airtime they need to denounce evolution. Oh, and there was that major movie from a few years back. And there's a giant tax-payer subsidized theme park in Kentucky. And the movie about Noah. And entire catalogs of creationist movies and textbooks you can own for the low low price of $13.92.""
TV is not a government entity, you want equal time, pay up. You have no rights of speech with a privately owned business. You want your time in the spotlight during prime time, go out and make a show that doesn't suck, then pay for its spot to air. Its quite simple. Quit with the 'entitlement' mentality already.
Yes, i do realize the FCC says you have to give SOME time away to public interest to get a broadcast license, but not equal time.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Equal time to creationists on Cosmos, equal time for actual knowledge (read: science) on all televangelist broadcasts. That sounds like a fair compromise.
not a debate you would have anywhere in europe, not even in Rome....
the vast majority in europe would just start crying in laughter at the idea of creationism, because it's just so incredibly infantile...
Neil deGrasse Tyson seems to follow Sagan's old show and lines of reasoning. This means the worst is yet to come for "special creationists".
If we demanded equal time in church gatherings. I mean fair is fair right. So you creationists wouldn't object to that? In that case I'm sure there wouldn't be a problem.
Because Cosmos is a science show.
Yaknow, I used to think the Two Minutes Hate from Orwell's 1984 was the least realistic, most suspension-of-disbelief breaking part of the book. It just didn't make any sense and the idea of people getting up in front of others to show how much they hated Big Brother's enemies was just ridiculous. But now that I'm older, hell...what else is this story other than despising those who think differently than we do? We write something to show how much we support the prevailing point of view and then move on with the rest of our day. And keep an eye out for that bastard Emmanuel Goldstein, you never know where his agents are.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
It's fairly easy to show how the eye evolved. That's been debunked ages ago.
Actually the eye is a perfect proof that it WAS evolution rather than creation. Because our eye is perfected for seeing under water, a smart creator (and I guess God is supposedly not an idiot according to creationists) would have created an eye that's better suited to seeing on land rather than increasing the work overhead for the brain to compensate for the shortcomings of the eye we have.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Religion, magic, witchcraft, and other hocus pocus have no part in science.
If they want to sell the fiction that 'flu strains don't change and pests can't get resistant to pesticides ...
That is not what creationists believe. They accept that organisms can adapt to their environment. They just deny that these adaptions can lead to entirely new species.
Believing that something is not possible is not good enough grounds to warrant inclusion in anything. There are reasons why some things are not discussed on shows about science, and that is because they are either irrelevant to the subject at hand or proven to be untrue. I don't know where this idea of every point of view being equal has arisen from, but it's fucking terrible in its ignorance. The whole reason every moron and his puppet made of hair and excrement wants their claims discussed as an equal to scientific claims is because of science's epistemic integrity. If their ideas had epistemic integrity of their own, they wouldn't care about science as an authority.
"No, consideration of special creation is definitely not open for discussion, it would seem."
Nice try, except scientists have considered creationism. For instance, Stephen Jay Gould has written screeds analyzing creationism scientifically. The issue isn't a lack of consideration, but rather that such scientists have thoroughly refuted creationism. I actually wouldn't mind a series scientifically analyzing creationism in principle, perhaps along the lines of some of Gould's work, but I somehow doubt that such a public flaying would satisfy the good folks at AiG.
Naw, the eye thing is passe for creationists. Their new tactic is claiming that "intelligence only comes from intelligence". It's from the book "Darwin's Doubt" from the Discovery Institute. Big best-seller on the god-botherer circuit.
Here's the way the argument goes (I'm not kidding): "A human brain is like a computer. And only intelligent entities can design computers. Thus...Intelligent Designer!" In other words, "there is too much information in DNA for it to have come from anywhere but the mind of Jehovah because screw Hindus".
Yep. That's it. Game over. Pwned. Until you suggest that it means the Intelligent Designer must have also come from a previous Intelligent Designer so we're looking at polytheism all the way down. Then, the argument rapidly devolves into, "The Christian Deity is the only possible explanation".
I'm telling you, I prefer the Young Earth creationists, who at least put their mythology right up front. They're honest about "God made it". These ID people are trying to subvert reason and science to get to the same place as the Young Earthers in the most dishonest way possible. All while pushing this notion of "teach the controversy", which is basically code for allowing people to proselytize for a particular religion in public schools.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Noah?
This Noah?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt19...
With Russell Crowe, Emma Watson, visual effects galore and explosions - that Noah?
Yeah it may have some connections to the story of Noah, but then '300' had some connections to the actual story of the Battle of Thermopylae.. I don't think either should be taken too particularly seriously as exemplary of the source material.
It's hard to get equal time considering the material.
"And now we will take some time to discussing the evidence that supports the theory of creation.
(long uncomfortable pause)
Well, that's done. Back to science!"
Which is like saying you can only add 1s together to get small numbers (aka "microevolution) but not big numbers (aka "macroevolution"). It's an absurd position. New species arise through the accumulation of lots of small changes not the silly "chimp giving birth to a human" fallacious argument that creationists spew.
I'd *love* to see that.
The FCC could force religious broadcasting channels to give equal time to well founded scientific shows. Like, science without any sort of religion involved at all. Every television show with religious content can be forced to contain an equal part science, presented by a person with a scientific background and no theology is allowed in that part.
That would pretty much derail every religious show broadcast.
I know what they want though. They want half of the Cosmos show, so they can preach during it. I wouldn't watch it, if half the content is ancient mythology.
I wonder if we could extend this to everything on television (cable or broadcast). Then we could have a perfect clusterfuck.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
The fun thing about "inteligent creation" is that the argument is "xyw is too complicated to evolve "naturally" it needs something even more complicated to "make it"...
Of course how the "more complicated stuff" was created does not need any explanation...
But a least it gives some arguments for a compationate God, since s/he does not smite them in anger for keeping on telling him, her, it how to do its job...
that the only reasonable explanation for the lack of equal time is that God doesn't want the creationists to have it. How could a just and righteous creator hang his PR department out to dry like this? One might make the mistake of thinking that it is all just bullshit and that we reasonable people won't gain anything by engaging with the creationists...
Providing equal airtime leads to people thinking that each side has equal weight and so that the real answer is a compromise between the two extremes, a form of false compromise[1]. This leads to thinning in effect that the anti science side is mostly right, if they play their rhetorical cards right. This is a problem even with non partisan moderation but for fox news.... will the climate scientist get anything like even treatment? Why should a climate scientist support an interview that will, at best, undermine him and portray an "armchair expert" as his equal by its very nature?
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation
The dissenters should just commission their own series, perhaps called Creation.
It opens with a bright blue eyed boy of about 4 years old, sitting on his knees on the carpet, toy rocket in hand, talking to what is presumably his great-grandfather who is seated in a comfortable chair, sipping from a cup of tea in his right hand, a copy of the Holy Bible on one of the armrests. "Grampy," the boy asks, "where did the world and all the stars come from?"
The man puts his other hand on the bible. "Boy," he says, "the answer to that and all other questions is right in here!" He puts the cup of tea on a side table and picks up the bible, thumbing through it, then closing it and holding it up in front of the boy. "It's all here because God wanted it to be here. He said: Let there be light! And there was light. And the next 5 days He spent building everything you see, including us. And on the 7th day He rested."
The boy ponders over this for a second, then frowns. "But Grampy... then where did God come from?" The man's face turns into an angry scowl, he lifts up the bible high into the air as if to strike down the young man with it... then screams "Blasphemy! How dare you ask such questions! Off you go, get out of my eyes!"
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
What about *equal* tax exemption status for Science organization that the Churches have been enjoying?
There's no crocoduck. You can't explain that!
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Yes, science is intolerant of stupidity. It has to be or it wouldn't work.
Science requires critical thinking, learning, knowledge (not to be confused with belief, a frequent problem among religious and stupid people). It is based on reason and facts in the form of data. It recognizes the limitations of that data and seeks to improve it through more study, research, and experiment and will quickly throw away old ideas when they are shown to be wrong.
Yes, it is discriminatory. Yes, it is intolerant. These are both characteristics of disciplined intellectual effort and minds. These characteristics have led to all the technological advances that the human race currently enjoys, and many of the miseries (including AGW).
I've given up on the name of most channels being accurate. None of them really show what they claim. Hell, even the guide channel isn't just a guide, it's a commercial with some guide information on it.
I go to Comedy Central for News, and Fox news for comedy. Syfy is B movies and wrestling, and Discovery/History/A&E have shows about guys who make duck calls, and wackadoodles talking about aliens. CSPAN is to see rich white politicians argue for their purchased opinions, if they bother to show up to work. Well, no other channel can you watch a mostly empty stage for hours on end. It's almost like reading Slashdot and expecting News for Nerds.
The only channel I ever expect to be as advertised is "Off", and I lose fewer IQ points watching it.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I agree; we have to avoid this deep indoctrination of children without choice; every christian church gathering as should share time equally between their own brand of Christianity, Kibology, Eventualism and the Pastafarians. Other religions such as Hinduism, Islam and The Cult of the Earth Godess should be added as and when representatives are available.
I'd rather have equal taxation for churches.
John
Sadly Christianity in the US has sects that might as well be in a Looney Tunes cartoon. It starts with rabid, primitive ministers who preach absurd sermons. They take one word, not understanding the meaning, and form cults from the linguistic confusion. LeBron James played an inspired basketball game the other night. It was wonderful to watch. He may have been inspired by god, Himself. That does not imply that Lebron played a perfect basketball game. there is a huge difference between inspired and perfect. The men who wrote the Bible were inspired. The King James version in particular is a work of the highest art. That does not imply that the bible is perfect. After all, it was written by men who were just like LeBron james inspired but not perfect. Further the message of the Bible had to be delivered in a way that people could understand it. Terms that are understood to men in the 21st. century would have meant nothing at all to men 2,000 years ago. But take a backwoods Baptist minister wound up in full religious fervor and he can take a Bible and twist it into nonsense beyond all reason. As America has declined we have more and more wrectched people who simply latch on to straws trying to survive. The doctrines that they latch onto would be an abomination to Christ and are not part of the Christian faith. But we all understand that no matter how much proof of evolution emerges that backwoods nut of a minister can simply claim the proofs were created by the devil and are all false proofs. If anything it was that minister who was created by the devil to deceive the followers.
I'd rather have equal taxation for churches.
Yes yes yes this this THIS times a million!
We need to start taxing 'religious' organizations the same way we tax every other business -- because that's what they are: businesses. Have been for a long, long time now, and it's time everyone stopped sticking their heads in the sand and admitted that. "Oh but that money is to do charitable work!" some are going to say, but I call bullshit on that. Know what they do with that money? They spend it on politics, and on building extravagant churches! Enough's enough, time for them to pay up like everyone else, and time for them to get their religious noses out of politics.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
offering weekly moral instruction to children
Particularly laughable. In the bible slavery, polygamy, genocide are all fine. Not appropriate 'moral instruction' for a modern era. Keep the fairy tales out of science programming, end of story.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Particularly laughable. In the bible slavery, polygamy, genocide are all fine.
Ask True Believers about this, and they reply with variations on "Oh, that part of the bible does not count." Really.
And for each viewpoint...
So we got Christians, Atheists, FSM, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindu, Scientologists, etc... Keep things going and it'll only be like one second for each every service day.
I'd rather have equal taxation for churches.
@plover...
In the Bible, Christ preaches that his followers should pay their taxes. You know 'Render unto Rome what is Rome's...". I believe that fundamentalist christian churches should volutarily be paying taxes, even if the law does not require it.
After all the bible tells them to do it!
... once all of the science organizations start running various charities, food shelves, hospitals, orphanages, offering weekly moral instruction to children ...
You mean like finding answers to health, nutrition, construction problems the way scientists, physicians and engineers do? Or like passing on modern ideas on philosophy and morality in stead of ancient and outdated scripture, the way academia does?
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
Being a scientific organization is one of the major listed justifications for tax exempt status - assuming the other criteria are met.
The part in bold there is kind of the point. Scientific organizations--actually educational organizations of all kinds--can indeed apply for non-profit status, but they have to prove they meet the standards. Churches are assumed to qualify a priori.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Funny that they have a fit if you dare even suggest taxing churches but didn't their own book say "Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's"?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Last time that happened in the USA, it was called the Great Depression, you want version 2.0, so the rich can start jumping out of windows again?
To qualify for tax exempt status churches also have to meet various criteria. (.pdf)
I will also note that everyone on Slashdot loves to quote the Constitution, but tend to be forgetful about some clauses.
First Amendment to the United States Constitution
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.[
There seems to be historical and documentary evidence that freedom of religion was important in the founding of the US.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
"Yes yes yes this this THIS times a million! "
No, no, no... billions and billions of times. (Yes, I know: Sagan never actually said that.)
Here's the problem with that, and it's such a HUGE amount of history that it shouldn't even need to be mentioned. But it seems that it does, so here goes:
History says very clearly that once you allow government to get involved with religion, or religion with government, pretty soon you have government-mandated religion, or religion-run government. And both of those are Very Bad. Religions have never -- ever, ever -- been good heads of government. And it's pretty obvious why government-mandated religion is just as bad.
That is why we have effective separation of Church and State in the US. But many people misunderstand it.
Contrary to what many people seem to think, the reason for that separation is not to "keep religion out" of everything. At all. It is intended to prevent any kind of official government sponsorhip of a particular religion. Our Founders were intimately familiar with religious persecution, and it was their intent to prevent it. But it was not their intent to suppress religion.
Example: a nearby city government had prayer before every meeting. The prayers were generally given by a Catholic priest, probably just because there was a big Catholic church just down the street. Some people objected, and it went all the way up to the State Supreme Court. This is what the court said (paraphrase):
"There is no law or clause in the Constitution preventing you from having prayer. However, you ARE prohibited from supporting any PARTICULAR religion. Offering Catholic prayer before every meeting is de facto government sponsorship of a particular religion."
The city's answer: now, any religion that wants to participate can get put on their list. They either rotate through the list or draw them at random... I'm not sure which. But the upshot is that they still have prayer before every meeting, but it isn't necessarily Catholic or even Christian. I remember once they had prayers from the local Baha'i faith.
Now, nobody has any reason to object and there are no problems. Even the atheists don't seem to have a problem with it.
The difference is that churches are allowed to actively lobby for a cause while maintaining their tax exempt status. While a church is not allowed to, for instance, lobby for a particular candidate, they can lobby for a particular cause that is relevant to their faith (such as same sex marriage).
By contrast, if a scientific group lobbies for something such as reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, replacing fossil fuel plants with nuclear and renewables, or more stringent oversight by the USDA on GMO's ecological impact, they would usually lose their charitable organization status.
So sure, scientific organizations are tax exempt, but as soon as they step out of the scientific arena by issuing weak "statements" into the political arena to spend money trying to effect change, at the very least, they have their charitable status revoked so you cannot claim donations as deductions. On the other hand, many churches were able to maintain their charitable organization status even as they poured millions of dollars into fighting for clearly partisan causes, such as opposing same-sex marriage.
You appeared to be arguing that the differences in tax status of religious vs scientific institutions, such as they are, are justified because some of the former act charitably some times. I don't mean to diminish that at all, by pointing out that efforts of modern scientists also contribute a great deal of practical and immediate value. And, by that measure, the tax status difference can not reasonably be justified, imho.
Values such as you mention have not become obsolete, but following them blindly because some old book says so has. The reason I live by "do unto others..." despite being an atheist is it makes basic sense to me. I find I keep having to point out the obvious, not being a christian (or whatever) doesn't mean I oppose all of its ideals as a matter of principle or something.
I find valuable lessons, alongside unbearable smallmindedness, in the various holy scriptures, in the same way as I might find them in (other) fairytales, aphorisms, plays, poems, etc.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
History says very clearly that once you allow government to get involved with religion, or religion with government, pretty soon you have government-mandated religion, or religion-run government. And both of those are Very Bad. Religions have never -- ever, ever -- been good heads of government. And it's pretty obvious why government-mandated religion is just as bad.
Yes, but you missed the point by exactly 180 degrees there.
Government giving special status to religions (by tax excemption) is the opposite of government staying out of religion. What the GP wants is that religion has no special status and is treated just like everyone else, and that would be less government involvement with religion, because it does away with the special treatment and registration, and reduces the interface between them. Now they aren't special little kids anymore, they're just taxpayers just like everyone else.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
In the bible slavery, polygamy, genocide are all fine.
I get that you might have some difficulty accepting that its not to be taken literally, its a common disorder among techies, we have a difficult time accepting that not everything means exactly what it says sometimes since we tend to work in technical absolutes as much as possible ... but if you are so utterly stupid that you think it 'approves' of those things then I realize I'm wrong, you're not that stupid, you're that ignorant.
Let's just take a look at mass murder. I'm sure you remember the story about the walls of Jericho, right?
Then the Lord said to Joshua, "See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men.["] ... Joshua commanded the army, "Shout! For the Lord has given you the city! The city and all that is in it are to be devoted* to the Lord ... so everyone charged straight in, and they took the city. They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it - men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys... Then they burned the whole city and everything in it, but they put the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron into the treasury of the Lord's house... So the Lord was with Joshua, and his fame spread throughout the land.
Maybe that doesn't fit the exact description of genocide, but it is GOD commanding mass murder.
This is my favorite sentence from that chapter:
All the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron are sacred to the Lord and must go into his treasury.
See, the Creator of the Universe needs some cold hard cash, similar to today. You'd think he'd be even better than the fed at printing money being the all powerful ruler of everything, but alas, no.
Regarding the actual definition of genocide, this is him saying to commit genocide:
For the day has come to destroy all the Philistines and to remove all survivors who could help Tyre and Sidon.
Show me where, in anything that I just posted, that it says not to take it literally, because it looks literal to me. Or do you mean that your pastor told you not to take it literally?
The bible as a work of literature has its exemplary moments, and I would encourage everyone to read it, from start to finish. But as a book on morality it is severely lacking in that you can never tell what to take literally, and what to not take literally. I guess use your own judgement? Well, you don't need the bible to do that.
*The Hebrew term refers to the irrevocable giving over of things or persons to the Lord, often by totally destroying them
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
1/3 of American Christians do think the bible should be taken literally, according to various polls. 56% think the bible should "have a greater role in society", yet - 57% didn't read the bible at all the year the poll was taken. 75% of people in the USA think the bible is the word of god, or inspired by god.
If you accept the Bible to be the "word of god", and most Americans do, then you are NOT taking it metaphorically. But, on the other hand most Americans haven't actually read the whole bible and only hear the "good" parts in church, as selected by their pastor. The evidence is overwhelming that most USA christians have a simple, literal, or almost literal, belief in the bible. They are not taking it metaphorically.
Once you decide that the bible should be taken "metaphorically" how does one decide what it really means? How does one decide which parts should be ignored? How does one decide which parts are good? It appears that most theologians are using rational, post enlightenment ideals, to cherry pick the good parts from the bible, and explaining away the parts that are evil, or contradicted by science as metaphor. Once you start down this path you are pretty close not needing the bible at all for your moral outlook, and discarding the iron age myths in favour of modern secular morals will seem a sensible step.
Anarchists never rule
"In the Bible, Christ preaches that his followers should pay their taxes. You know 'Render unto Rome what is Rome's...". I believe that fundamentalist christian churches should volutarily be paying taxes, even if the law does not require it. "
First, churches are not their followers... the followers do pay taxes.
Not on money they give to their church. So it's really 2 tax exemptions, the one for the individual deducting money given to the church and one for income to the church not being taxed. If the church were a business (it's not, it's a virus - the only goal of a church is to grow) it would have had to pay taxes on the income and the individual would have to pay taxes as well, Meanwhile, the rest of us pick up that tax shortfall (and pay for the "quiverfull" families).
Enigma