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Events
32 comments
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Jasper
December 10, 2012 at 12:05 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Fast Fact: Caller #1 as the 41st caller to bring up some form of “first mover” argument, because, as we know, the 41st time is the charm.
Jasper
December 10, 2012 at 12:07 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Well, since episode 328, that is.
ah58
December 10, 2012 at 1:27 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
But few are brave (or stupid) enough to bring up the banana argument. So Kudos to him. It made me LOL.
Curt Cameron
December 10, 2012 at 4:26 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
When he started on the banana thing, at this point everyone knew that he was not a believing Christian but was just faking it. Didn’t everyone know that? He was rattling off the old apologist cliches like he had a cliche dispenser. My take was that the banana thing was what gave him away.
He better be careful – Matt has been known to marry people who do that. And with this week’s news out of Washington state…
markberry
December 10, 2012 at 6:40 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
It should be labeled “Pez Apologetics”.
Sonorus
December 11, 2012 at 9:09 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
I don’t see the question. To me it sounded typical. When confronted with the logical fallacy of one argument, he jumped to another unrelated one. That’s seems to be what theists do, not just poes. He could have been a poe. It’s so had to tell the difference between the real thing and a satire thereof.
Lord Narf
December 11, 2012 at 2:35 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
The banana thing was a give-away. Yes, up until then, he could have been for real. The jumping around from argument to argument is authentic theist.
Even Ray has acknowledged how idiotic his banana argument was, though. The only people who would bring up bananas are people who are mocking the creationists.
Sonorus
December 15, 2012 at 6:59 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Maybe you didn’t grow up fundamentalist, but I was still hearing that Madeleine Murray O’Hare was going to get the FCC to ban religious programming over 10 years after she died. Once something gets started in that crowd it never dies. I have relatives who have sent me the same forwarded email multiple times, even though each time I respond with the link to snopes.com that debunks the message. The fact that Comfort has abandoned the banana argument, doesn’t mean it has disappeared from fundamentalist Christian circles.
Although I will admit that it could have been a poe. Just not convinced (yet).
Alicia
December 12, 2012 at 8:41 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
That has to be immensely annoying. I have very little patience for that and would probably go all sistah girl on the caller in “Oh no he didn’ ” fashion. It’s almost as if there is this default argument mechanism that falls into the most irrelevant and laughable Christian premises in an effort to–I dunno–confuse and deflect? Either way, most amusing.
Muz
December 11, 2012 at 3:52 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
So, wait. Are we saying banana guy was a total wind-up now?
He was one of the better ones if he was. Actually had some contentions that provoke interesting discussion. That part kinda makes me wonder.
Lord Narf
December 11, 2012 at 2:36 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
He was one of the better ones, until he mentioned the banana. Pity.
Alicia
December 13, 2012 at 1:39 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
I have seen better more solid Xtian debaters, but he was among some of the most coherent. I could swear I’ve heard the talking points elsewhere. though..
Another Matt
December 12, 2012 at 12:41 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
If banana guy really was for real, every single one of his arguments seems to have come from William Lane Craig’s bag of tricks. Seriously, you could have programmed a computer to spit out the WLC talking point for each topic that came up until the banana.
Bob
December 10, 2012 at 7:11 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Why don’t they say anything about the ACA, positive atheism or the separation or church and state at the start any more?!
I really miss that…
michaeld
December 11, 2012 at 2:50 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Time’s a factor but they also have new rules against promoting things so I think promoting the ACA that way might run a foul of the public acess tv rules.
Lord Narf
December 11, 2012 at 2:53 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Damn, you beat me by 60 seconds, again. Pretty funny timing, since we’re replying more than 7 hours after the post we’re responding to.
Lord Narf
December 11, 2012 at 2:51 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
It has to do with new regulations for Austin Public Access. They can’t advertise for … some classification of organizations, which the ACA is grouped in with. I don’t recall the exact details.
That’s also why they occasionally say stuff like “We’re going to be at Threadgill’s after the show. What you do with that information is up to you.” They often slip up and invite people to join them wherever they’re eating, since it’s not strictly enforced, but they’re not supposed to.
LuisD
December 10, 2012 at 8:19 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
I thought this was a good, above-average show. Matt and Jen dismantled every argument thrown at them and patiently walked the callers (and viewers) through the underlying logic. Even though the Banana guy sounded like a poe towards the end, it’s no waste because Matt’s thorough explanations were of great value.
Jen’s bit about Santa and using it as a learning experience was excellent as well. I’m going to have to remember that when I have children of my own.
Alicia
December 12, 2012 at 8:43 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
I have kids–two of them, and I am doing the Santa thing–hope it doesn’t end up biting me in the ass
ericvon germania
December 11, 2012 at 3:23 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
But the guy just said “banana”. Maybe he was going somewhere else with that.
ericvon germania
December 11, 2012 at 3:27 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
btw, I love the new FTB, don’t know why but the page is more light for my old laptop. Usually new pages (youtube, myspace, etc) are much heavier for my computer, but this one is the other way around. yeaah!!!
Gordon
December 11, 2012 at 4:29 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
I always found “speaking in tongues” bizarre because it seemed to me to be the opposite of what the bible described. The bible talked about a magical Babel Fish that made everyone hear the words in their own language. So the apostles were understood by all. But now speaking in tongues means speaking incomprehensible gibberish. Weird.
ericvon germania
December 11, 2012 at 4:42 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Hmmm I guess you haven’t read Paul’s letters. In these letters you find many warnings about how speaking in tongues should be regulate for people that would come and won’t understand anything and find those christians fools. So Paul wrote not speaking in thongues all at the same time and only three, one after the other and has to be someone able to translate (so it wasn’t someone who talk and everyone understood). so when we see those babling from everyone without an interpreter in many pentacostal churches, those people are “sinning” and not following their own bible. haha
I think the place where it is mentioned that someone talk and everybody understand is in the book of acts, but as I just mentioned that wasn’t the case in Paul’s letters.
Sonorus
December 11, 2012 at 9:12 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
The discussion of speaking in tongues is interesting to me. I grew up Southern Baptist and back in the 70s and 80s, nothing would split a church faster than a group of people insisting on this practice. Some even claimed that you weren’t a true Christian if you couldn’t do it, which I’m sure led to people faking it (but I’m also sure convincing themselves they were really doing it).
Lord Narf
December 11, 2012 at 2:58 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
You got this sort of thing in a Southern Baptist church? That’s just weird. From what I’ve seen, it’s only ever a Pentecostal thing. Where did you run into Southern Baptists doing this?
Sonorus
December 11, 2012 at 4:35 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
There was a trend in the 1970s and early 1980s. A new pastor would be hired at a church and soon he’s start in with the speaking in tongues thing. The old timers would run him off and he’d take a good bit of the church with him. A new location would pop up and go for awhile and then start to decline. There are a bunch of barely used church buildings all over the south as a result. (Sometimes the old timers would be the ones run off. There are obviously a lot of variables in how this played out.) Many of these charismatic churches split off from a Baptist church at some point and more often than not it was over speaking in tongues. Note: this never happened at any church that I attended, but then my father was a pastor and very anti-glossolalia.
lancefinney
December 13, 2012 at 9:10 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
It happened at the Minnesota Lutheran church I went to.
No, it was an unusual Lutheran church, more Charismatic than actually Lutheran, but that’s what it said on the door.
davidmcnerney
December 12, 2012 at 8:49 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
It looks like someone has snuck a copy of the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy into you the binding of your bible.
Andrew Ryan
December 13, 2012 at 8:49 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Well, the babel fish WAS named after that bible story.
ericvon germania
December 11, 2012 at 5:03 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Here you can read that classical passage by Paul at http://kjv.us/1_corinthians/14.htm
Andrew Ryan
December 13, 2012 at 8:48 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Pretty much if any guy starts talking with a Scandinavian accent, it’s going to be a troll, probably Matt from Oslo. This time Matt was too quick for him, but really, as soon as you hear that voice now you should be on alert!
Alicia
December 13, 2012 at 4:10 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
or when the accent is so obviously fake in attempt to hide his voice. Sad thing is, he is so not proving Christians are sane with his obnoxious behavior, so what is the point? To underline our most negative stereotypes about religious folks?
News – The Atheist Experience #791 (full episode) | TheReasonChannel.com - A Life of Reason through Skeptism, Science, Politics & Atheism
March 6, 2013 at 10:29 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
[...] You can read more about this episode and leave your comments on the official Atheist Experience blog: ► http://freethoughtblogs.com/axp/2012/12/10/open-thread-for-aetv-791 [...]