05.05.08
Posted in General at 10:00 pm by Hemant Mehta
Hanna Rosin, author of God’s Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America, discusses this peculiar and omnipresent phenomenon at Slate.
Here are the best couple paragraphs you’ll read all day:
One night, a couple of years ago, I walked in on a group of evangelical college boys sitting on a bed watching The Daily Show. I felt alarmed, and embarrassed, as if I had caught them reading Playboy or something else they had to be shielded from. Jon Stewart, after all, spends at least one-quarter of his show making fun of people like them. But they eagerly invited me in. I soon learned that they watched the show every night it was on, finals or no finals. So strong was their devotion to Jon Stewart that I was tempted to ask: If Jesus came back on a Tuesday night at 11, would you get off the bed?
Over time, I came to understand this as a symptom of a larger phenomenon: evangelicals’ deeply neurotic relationship with popular culture. Whether or not they were the butt of all of Stewart’s jokes seemed irrelevant to them. The point was that the high priest of political comedy spent a lot of time thinking about them. Once, after I’d met Jon Stewart, they all crowded around and asked the same question: What does he really think of us?
She discusses Daniel Radosh’s book (Rapture Ready!: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture) and how Christian popular culture is a watered down version of mainstream pop culture.
The problem is that purity boundaries are hard to police in the Internet age. Show a kid a Christian comedian, and soon he’s likely to discover that the guy is a pale imitation of this much funnier guy—Jon Stewart—who’s not a Christian at all, and doesn’t even like Christians. Which might then lead to a whole new set of anxieties, such as: Why are Christians so constitutionally unfunny? And, what is the point of Christian culture, anyway?
…
At a Christian retail show Radosh attends, there are rip-off trinkets of every kind—a Christian version of My Little Pony and the mood ring and the boardwalk T-shirt (”Friends don’t let friends go to hell”). There is Christian Harlequin and Christian chick lit and Bibleman, hero of spiritual warfare. There are Christian raves and Christian rappers and Christian techno, which is somehow more Christian even though there are no words. There are Christian comedians who put on a Christian version of Punk’d, called Prank 3:16. There are Christian sex-advice sites where you can read the biblical case for a strap-on dildo or bondage (liberation through submission). There’s a Christian planetarium, telling you the true age of the universe, and my personal favorite—Christian professional wrestling, where, by the last round, “Outlaw” Todd Zane sees the beauty of salvation.
The Prank 3:16 video referred to in the article, by the way, can be seen here.
And did anyone else know about the JPM — Jesus-per-minute — counts on Christian music by some watchdog groups?
[tags]atheist, atheism[/tags]
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Posted in General at 7:27 pm by Hemant Mehta
Anne Jackson asked the question in good faith, but you all might take it a bit less seriously.
Which might make it *far* more amusing 
What is something you feel you can’t say in church, or around other Christians?
Some of Anne’s own commenters (mostly Christian, I assume) have some fantastic responses:
- I’d rather look like a good christian than put in the time and effort to actually be one.
- …I just had a drink last night and it tasted really good.
- When I say “I’ll pray for you.” I don’t usually mean it. I have been a Christian for 27 years and I still don’t understand the point of praying.
- oh, and i really really like amy winehouse.
- Why do I have to pray for this crippled guy again? and again? and again?… Why won’t he just get healed already?
Let’s see what the atheists have to say…
[tags]atheist, atheism[/tags]
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Posted in General at 3:00 pm by Hemant Mehta
Someone brought that comic to my attention (via The Flowfield Unity).
No, I don’t agree with it.
I was asked recently if, on the whole, I thought atheists were smarter than the religious.
My gut instinct was to say “Yes.” The vast majority of scientists don’t believe in God. Despite what critics might say, I find the books written by the New Atheists much more intellectually stimulating than most of the “Christian lit” I read.
But I know far too many intelligent theists to say they are not as smart as the atheists I know. There are also a number of atheists who are… well… less than brilliant.
Obviously you have to take it on a case-by-case basis.
So where would you draw the line between intelligent (however you define it) and not?
Maybe you think someone who believes Christ rose up from the dead shouldn’t be taken seriously.
But that would eliminate every Christian from the list including some well-known scientists (atheist Reed Braden adds: “I’m dumber than Francis Collins by far”).
Maybe you think someone who believes in Creationism can’t be very educated.
But Dr. Kurt Wise (who studied under Stephen Jay Gould) is one example of someone who really does know his stuff and chose to follow Scripture instead of science.
Maybe you think you’re smarter than someone who believes in any type of (non-religious) superstition.
But wouldn’t that eliminate virtually everyone you know?
So what’s a dealbreaker when it comes to intelligence and religion?
Where do you draw the line and say that someone is less intelligent than you because of a particular belief?
(Thanks to all the people who let me bounce these ideas off of them!)
[tags]atheist, atheism[/tags]
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Posted in General at 8:00 am by Hemant Mehta
This might be NSFW. The link is rated-R, anyway.
Would someone like to tell me what this is all about?
The nude atheism? Bah. The Skepchick/Skepdude calendars aren’t even out until next month.
I don’t really know what “atheist porn” would consist of that’s different from any other kind… fewer screams of “Oh God!” I suppose…
(via ToolChronicles)
[tags]atheist, atheism[/tags]
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