I don’t think Genesis can be turned into a good movie

Darren Aronofsky wants to make an “edgy re-telling” of the Noah’s Ark story for $130 million. I don’t know why; if you ask me, it’s a stupid story, on the order of wanting to do a live-action big budget remake of the Flintstones…and nobody would be stupid enough and unimaginative enough to do that, would they?

It does have potential as a bitter, nasty story: tyrant god kills everyone and everything on the planet in a massive, brutal catastrophe, leaving one family to salvage the entire worldwide ecosystem with a wooden boat; despite that, the first thing this family does when the boat lands is a mass slaughter of representatives of every species to propitiate their evil deity. Then Noah gets drunk and curses his son and all of his progeny with eternal servitude.

So it could be written as a grim, bleak, apocalyptic tale, but I don’t see much of interest in it…largely because the spectre looming over it is the fact that it isn’t true, and not just in a fictional way, but because we know it couldn’t have happened.

Also, the Christians (or at least, apologists for Christianity) are already girding themselves to hate the movie. Don’t you know, the Ark story is supposed to be uplifting and cuddly-cute, with all those animals?

First of all, the story of Noah has been told on the big screen before, most notably in John Huston’s superb film The Bible: In the Beginning (1966), in which one of the central episodes tells the story of the Ark with Huston himself playing Noah. The Bible features an all-star cast of Ava Gardner, Peter O’Toole, George C. Scott, Richard Harris, and Stephen Boyd. Huston’s retelling of the Noah’s Ark story is stylish and insightful. A real warmth and joy pervades the scenes in which Noah runs around the ark caring for and soothing the animals during their long voyage. This kind of warmth and humanity is notably lacking in Aronofsky’s coldly neurotic films.

I only vaguely recall that movie; it came out when I was 9. I do remember that it was cheesy and boring. Here’s the trailer.

Yeesh. A disaster movie about the obliteration of life on Earth is supposed to be filled with “warmth and joy”? Only by ignoring the magnitude of the events that occur in it.

These reviewers are very distressed at the possibility of a dark movie about an imaginary cataclysm.

Can we not see these demons in the much-lauded ‘edginess’ of Aronofsky’s films? Films like Pi, Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler, and Black Swan are replete with masochism and bodily mutilation. Aronofsky seems possessed by a Manichaean viewpoint that sees the world and the flesh as fallen and subject to mortification of a kind usually only seen in medieval art and literature. Demented, self-flagellating figures are the villains in movies and books like The Da Vinci Code – but in Aronofsky’s films, they’re actually the protagonists we’re supposed to identify with. The madness and self-mutilation in Aronofsky’s films takes the place of any serious exploration of character or story and has only one motivation: to transgress life with violent images that abuse the human body.

OK. I will mention one name and one movie. Mel Gibson. The Passion of the Christ.

Maybe it will be a perfect fit to Christianity after all.

American Patriarchy News wants to poll you on their god

Today is the day of Governor Rick Perry’s crazy prayer rally in Houston. It’s going to fizzle: Reliant Stadium seats 75,000, and only 8,000 tickets have been sold (if you go, please get pictures of the sea of empty seats); he invited all 50 governors of the US to attend, only one said he would (Throwback Brownback of Kansas), and even he apparently hasn’t made travel arrangements, so it’s more like he said he would but won’t. And then it’s going to be populated with odious villains like Hagee and Dobson and Perkins on the stage, and is paid for by the gay-hatin’ American Patriarchy Association.

What’s really sad about this monstrous promise to violate separation of church and state and to pander to the most hateful lunatics of the extremist religious right is that it might just work…American evangelicals will just love Governor Godhair.

Here’s a nice little evangelical poll prompted by Perry’s folly.

Do America and its leaders need God’s guidance?

Without a doubt – 58.86%
Probably – 0.25%
No – 40.89%

Take one more step, please

Those secular Europeans…they’re almost there. Klass Hendrikse is a Dutch minister who is apparently reasonably typical of the breed. He doesn’t believe in gods.

“Personally I have no talent for believing in life after death,” Mr Hendrikse says. “No, for me our life, our task, is before death.”

Nor does Klaas Hendrikse believe that God exists at all as a supernatural thing.

“When it happens, it happens down to earth, between you and me, between people, that’s where it can happen. God is not a being at all… it’s a word for experience, or human experience.”

Oh, yes, god as blithering bafflegab. It’s mostly harmless, it’s entirely pointless, and you might as well change the name of his church to the Gorinchem Social Club and be honest about it all. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a social club.

So finish it, and do one more thing: read that Bible you keep waving around.

Mr Hendrikse describes the Bible’s account of Jesus’s life as a mythological story about a man who may never have existed, even if it is a valuable source of wisdom about how to lead a good life.

I’ve read the Bible; I think most Christian’s eyes must glaze over before they hit the second chapter of Genesis, and then they skip ahead to Revelation. This version of Jesus as the loving wise man isn’t in there. Instead, he’s a patriarchal rabbi with an apocalyptic vision who wanders the land, doing cheesy magic tricks and making extravagant claims about himself. I certainly don’t think he modeled a good life, and the nice humanist bits in some of his purported sermons you can get just as well by reading some of the Greek philosophers.

So the Dutch have a little bit further to go, but at least they’re further down the road of reason than the typical American preacher.

“experienced the heavenly session; she felt the all consuming fire of heaven”

Oh, my. Warren Jeffs certainly has a flair for exaggeration. That’s how he described his 12-year-old “spiritual bride’s” response when he had sex with her. On tape. On tape. He recorded his sexual encounters with underage girls as part of his “priestly records”, and now they’re being played back in court, while he’s raging and protesting.

He’s also on tape patiently explaining to twelve girls on how they have to work together to sexually satisfy him. I think we’re saying the real motivations of patriarchal religions being exposed rather nakedly in this courtroom.

Also, Jeffs is rather angry about it all. He got a message directly from God about what will happen if they don’t let him go.

“I, the Lord God of heaven, call upon the court to cease this open prosecution against my pure, holy way,” Jeffs read. If it fails to do so, “I will send a scourge upon the counties of prosecutorial zeal to make humbled by sickness and death.”

I don’t think the trial is going well for him. It’s not really a good strategy to announce, after you’re caught on tape screwing a 12 year old girl, that you have “pure, holy ways”.

Two worldviews

I’m not going to say a word about this video: it’s theologian Paul Begley reading from the book of Revelation.

What I think of Paul Begley and his explanation cannot be adequately expressed in words so I’m not even going to try to write them. Use your imagination.

Here’s the scientific explanation. Contrast the two.

A drought has left the OC Fisher Reservoir in San Angelo State Park in West Texas almost entirely dry. The water that is left is stagnant, full of dead fish — and a deep, opaque red.

The color has some apocalypse believers suggesting that OC Fisher is an early sign of the end of the world, but Texas Parks and Wildlife Inland Fisheries officials say the bloody look is the result of Chromatiaceae bacteria, which thrive in oxygen-deprived water.

Which one makes more sense to you, and actually tells you something useful about the world?

Two worldviews

I’m not going to say a word about this video: it’s theologian Paul Begley reading from the book of Revelation.

What I think of Paul Begley and his explanation cannot be adequately expressed in words so I’m not even going to try to write them. Use your imagination.

Here’s the scientific explanation. Contrast the two.

A drought has left the OC Fisher Reservoir in San Angelo State Park in West Texas almost entirely dry. The water that is left is stagnant, full of dead fish — and a deep, opaque red.

The color has some apocalypse believers suggesting that OC Fisher is an early sign of the end of the world, but Texas Parks and Wildlife Inland Fisheries officials say the bloody look is the result of Chromatiaceae bacteria, which thrive in oxygen-deprived water.

Which one makes more sense to you, and actually tells you something useful about the world?

Australian Catholics are also clueless

This is a horrific story out of Victoria, where a church school had two rather nasty pedophiles tag-teaming the student body, Gerald Ridsdale who was the school chaplain, and Robert Best was the principal. They were raping pre-teen boys in their offices; over the years, many victimized kids committed suicide. This sounds like a real horror story.

But here’s the kicker: the Catholic church, as always, doesn’t see the problem. The two bad guys are gone now, but the government wants to dig deeper — I think 26 dead children is adequate cause — but the church says no further inquiries are necessary.

But Bishop Connors on Tuesday said not even revelations from Detective Sergeant Kevin Carson that 26 young men had killed themselves after being abused by priests and brothers in Ballarat convinced him that more would be learnt from an inquiry.

“I think we’ve learnt a lot of things about what is appropriate behaviour and what’s not appropriate behaviour,” Bishop Connors said.

That’s become typical Catholic behavior. A priest brings a young boy into his office, and rapes him repeatedly until he loses consciousness, and later the traumatized child kills himself. When confronted by the police, he says, ‘Oh, officer, I didn’t know that was wrong! I’ll be much nicer in the future. Thank you and goodbye!’

There’s not much hope for Catholicism if learning that tyrannizing and raping and driving kids to their death is new knowledge for them.

Smart-alecky Australian kids…and a poll

A member of the Australian parliament, Fred Nile, has been pushing an interesting cost-saving measure. You know how Australian schools are saddled with chaplains and religious instruction? Well, he wants to keep that nonsense and kill the ethics classes that students can take as a secular alternative.Seems backwards to me, but then he is presumably a Christian, and so is perverse and backward by nature.

So Charlie Fine wrote an op-ed defending the ethics courses. Fine is 11 years old, and smarter than a member of parliament.

The facts show that only 33 per cent of the world is Christian, and in NSW a quarter of children choose not to attend lessons on theological scripture. I think it is possible to be non-religious and a good person.

By all means, Mr Nile, you go out and be as Christian as you want; I respect that entirely. But that does not give you and your supporters the right to attempt to shape a future generation of adults in your mould – that is a religious conservative.

Your views are out of step with modern society, so I would ask you to reconsider your actions and continue to allow parents and children a choice in their classrooms.

There’s a poll with the opinion piece. I guess Charlie Fine is very persuasive.

Where do you stand on ethics classes in schools?

For them

92%

Against them

8%

Oh, sure, you can go vote on the poll too, but I think Charlie has it all well in hand.

Australian Catholics are also clueless

This is a horrific story out of Victoria, where a church school had two rather nasty pedophiles tag-teaming the student body, Gerald Ridsdale who was the school chaplain, and Robert Best was the principal. They were raping pre-teen boys in their offices; over the years, many victimized kids committed suicide. This sounds like a real horror story.

But here’s the kicker: the Catholic church, as always, doesn’t see the problem. The two bad guys are gone now, but the government wants to dig deeper — I think 26 dead children is adequate cause — but the church says no further inquiries are necessary.

But Bishop Connors on Tuesday said not even revelations from Detective Sergeant Kevin Carson that 26 young men had killed themselves after being abused by priests and brothers in Ballarat convinced him that more would be learnt from an inquiry.

“I think we’ve learnt a lot of things about what is appropriate behaviour and what’s not appropriate behaviour,” Bishop Connors said.

That’s become typical Catholic behavior. A priest brings a young boy into his office, and rapes him repeatedly until he loses consciousness, and later the traumatized child kills himself. When confronted by the police, he says, ‘Oh, officer, I didn’t know that was wrong! I’ll be much nicer in the future. Thank you and goodbye!’

There’s not much hope for Catholicism if learning that tyrannizing and raping and driving kids to their death is new knowledge for them.

Jennifer Fulwiler responds

How fun! Fulwiler noticed that her claim to have five Catholic teachings that make sense to atheists actually didn’t, you know, make sense to any atheists, me included, so she’s now trying hard to rationalize it. She has a new post talking about reasoning with atheists that is even more confused and hilarious than the last. Here’s her first excuse:

I evidently did not make it clear enough that all of my examples were meant only to illustrate the intellectual consistency within Catholicism, and therefore assumed that you would be in a discussion with an atheist who would stipulate belief in God for the sake of argument.

So first, find an atheist who’s willing to pretend that she believes in a god. Then, while she’s pretending with all of her might, maybe her brain will be addled enough to accept the load of swill that follows. Brilliant! I have another suggestion: 1) find an atheist who is tripping balls on ‘shrooms, 2) whack them hard enough on the head to give them a concussion, and 3) proselytize! Jesus wins!

Of course, even if she does find an atheist willing to sit down with her and grant her one premise, that a god exists, the rest of her arguments still don’t work. “OK, you’ve granted that a god exists. Now, shouldn’t you be really impressed with the sinless, perfect, virginal woman who gave birth to him, just like a Catholic?” Uh, no. That’s a whole boatload of weird Catholic dogma you just dumped on me, in addition to the general premise.

Another part of her rationale is to displace the blame. You see, it’s not her fault that she can’t get through to me, it’s mine.

Myers and atheists like him are trapped in a prison of reason.

The title of her post is “reasoning with atheists,” but you see, the whole problem is that when you’re reasoning with atheists, they expect you to use reason. The bastards!

Finally, there’s some of the usual fol-de-rol about Love. God is like Love, you see, and just as you can’t reason someone into understanding love, you can’t reason them into believing in a god. She doesn’t seem to appreciate the difference, though: I can find evidence of love from some people, and evidence of a lack of love from other people. I don’t blindly charge up and announce my love for someone without signs of reciprocation, and any love I might feel for someone will wither in the absence of such signs. If she’s actually raising her kids teaching them that love is just like their faith in a Catholic god, I feel very sorry for them: they’re going to grow up to be disappointed fantasists and stalkerish weirdos.

The next post from Fulwiler is going to have to be something like “Winning hearts for Jesus with ‘shrooms and a ball-peen hammer”, ’cause that’s the only way she’s going to persuade an atheist with the drivel she’s churning out.