Ken Ham is promoting this goofy exercise in special effects by Eric Hovind, a movie that claims to portray the 6 creation days of Genesis by throwing money at the CGI folks. Now Ham is quite irate that Silverman is intolerant of the movie. Just look at the wickedness Silverman spouts:
“I’m not at all surprised at this kind of support,” said David Silverman, president of American Atheists. “As we have seen in nearly every religion in world history, indoctrinated victims of religion will do anything, including pay large sums of money, to have their antiquated beliefs of immortality validated. Flashy movies may make Christians feel like there is validity to the myth that they are immortal, covering up the known and proven truth with special effects.”
Waaaait. Intolerance would be if Silverman were to use all the funds at American Atheists’ disposal to crush Eric Hovind, or was calling for a world-wide boycott of all of Hovindiana. But opining that the movie is ridiculous and self-serving, and that Christians will dump buckets of money on it? That isn’t intolerant at all. That’s just expressing an opinion (and an accurate opinion at that.)
That’s what scares me about the Christian right. They have a definition of intolerance that repudiates any disagreement with Christianity at all — when they can see a comment that simply says there is soon to exist a silly movie that uses special effects to patch over Christian insecurities, and then regard it as an intolerant act, you can imagine the depths of persecution they would execute if they had any more power.
This reminds me of the recent Barilla event: when the CEO of Barilla said he opposed same-sex marriage, that the company had no interest in ever doing an ad featuring a same-sex couple, and that as far as he was concerned gay and lesbian shoppers could buy another brand of pasta — that was a wonderful example of free speech and personal choice in action. But when gays and lesbians and their allies responded with, “Fine — we’ll do just that”, and proceeded to actually buy different brands of pasta … according to the Right, that was a vicious and intolerant attack on free speech and personal choice.
hmm, i’d still say that opinions can be classified as “intolerant”. it’s just that this doesn’t approach the impact of other forms of intolerance.
also the whole topic of science, anti-science, reality, fable, reason, and unreason are not exactly areas where “tolerance” makes much sense.
Free Speech obviously requires that you AGREE with whatever you’re being told…
Not that it makes a difference, but I see this get switched around a lot: CGI is a way to make a movie cheaper. However, to a lot of people, it may still seem like a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster of movie because it’s using CGI and fancy “new” technology and so forth. But if you could just take away one thing from this bullshit movie, “perception is not reality” probably wouldn’t be a bad choice.
I’ve got no idea how “flashy” it is or what kind of “large sums” we’re talking about, but it helps to be clear about it anyway. It’s the special effects themselves which can make fantasy look like reality, not the money spent on it, that’s doing the deed here. There’s also completely implausible storytelling: that would be doing it even if there weren’t any special effects.
If it can be accurate, then it concerns a fact, no? It still isn’t intolerant, of course.
Of course it’s intolerant to oppose that movie. Everyone knows that CGI = reality!
Wait….
Genesis has now become almost as believable as Green Lantern.
Sophisticated theology ftw!
“Intolerance would be if Silverman ….. was calling for a world-wide boycott of all of Hovindiana.”
What’s intolerant about that? It’s also an opinion to say that nobody should waste money on Hovindiana, including that movie. So it firmly belongs to the freedom of speech.
So here I go. Don’t waste money on that movie. Don’t buy your gasoline at Shell, because of spoiling the environment in SOuth-Nigeria etc.
According to PZ I’m intolerant.
So be it.
At the bottom of Ken Ham’s page he writes: “Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying.”
Click the word praying and you go to a story about Ham’s plan to build an ark.
Click the “Ark Encounter” link on that page and you are sent to the donate page.
Pray/Donate, the terms are interchangeable.
Poor paranoid Ken Ham (remember when his Museum lackeys recorded the license plate numbers of atheist guests?) is arguing that we should reserve judgment until yet another movie weighs in on creationism.
Does that mean we can expect some new ideas in the movie?
That’s of course a typo, it’s “paying”
Intolerance would be if Silverman were to use all the funds at American Atheists’ disposal to crush Eric Hovind, or was calling for a world-wide boycott of all of Hovindiana.
I agree with mnb0. It is not “intolerance” (admittedly a squishy term) to say ‘don’t go to that movie’? That would have made Siskel and Ebert the most intolerant people on Earth.
And given the numerous boycotts the religious right has announced … well, there is a eye beam that needs attention.
Nor is using all the funds at your disposal to “crush” your opponent “intolerance,” unless the Democratic Party is “intolerant” of the Republican Party and vice versa … OK, that might not have been the best example!
Hovind Industries™
We prey, you p
ray!I would have to say that Silverman is wrong, this sounds like a great movie. I’d love to see Genesis’s story of creation on film.
It’s just silly that there will be people out there who think it’s a documentary, rather than fiction.
Apparently I was under a stump and thought this wasn’t an actual thing . . .
But, nope it’s real. Thanks for pulling me from the stump I was under and ensuring I never buy Barilla again.
I think I’ll wait until the next Avengers movie. At least that’ll have a verifiable real God in it.
Ham is aping Bill Donahue.
It’s evilution!
I read all of Ham’s message.
He has to use the tired cliche that all atheists are in rebellion against god and throws in a comment about gay marriage to boot.
And, according to Ham, atheists are the intolerant ones, but he cannot tolerate what Mr. Silverman has to say. Pathetic.
What’s wrong with intolerance? Ken Ham has earned it. Christianity has earned it.
How does “Intolerance would be if Silverman were to use…funds…to crush Eric Hovind, or was calling for a world-wide boycott of all of Hovindiana.” qualify as intolerance? Sounds like a good idea to me.
@U Frood (#13)
Are you thinking a kind of God of War-style flick where an evil god deliberately creates a universe to maliciously destroy it like a petulant sociopath killing and ruining the lives of those deemed weaker than He, and after they’ve been stripped of immortal life, it’s up to Adam and Eve to find the power to kill a god, and following an arduous battle, they tower over his corpse and absorb his power?
(What’s a little creative license among friends?)