Newsflash

[thebitterguy]

Man Who Publishes Strip About Wife Beating Drunk Thinks Ben Stein is Onto Something.

Edit: Sorry, I thought he had some position at the Creator's Syndicate, instead of just being some obnoxious asshole.

Comments

[granolademonic.livejournal.com]

"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."




Yep.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Is that the guy who does Andy Capp? Or there two wife-beater strips?

[kinra.livejournal.com]

I don't think he's a cartoonist, he's just an idiot who runs a crackpot organization or three (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Brent_Bozell_III).

[rodshark.livejournal.com]

I love how "A supernatural being named "God" waved his hand and magically created the universe and all life on it" is supposed to be an intelligent counter-argument to natural selection and evolution.

Oh and how Nazi's and Hitler were all Darwinists. I have read things claiming the Hitler thought he was fulfilling a Christian prophesy of destroying all the jews and creating a kindom for "gods" chosen people, the followers of christ.

Any side can spin and bullshit something to support their ideas or attack the ideas of others.

[thebitterguy]

You are correct, he is just a columnist; I thought he was in a position with Creator's Syndicate.

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

I love how people seem to actually think this is a debate about religion vs. science, instead of the manufactured issue designed to malform cultural identity and derail attention to injustice that it is.

[waiwode.livejournal.com]

Not to come to the defense of Stein, or the movie, but...

...the scientific philosophy of Eugenics, the conscious direction of evolution, wasn't just some 'crackpot theory' that the Nazi's latched onto. It was a popular and widespread movement, for instance Indiana and Virginia enacted 'compulsory sterilization laws' and in Alberta the Sexual Sterilization Act (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Sterilization_Act_of_Alberta) of 1928 wasn't overturned in court until 1972.

Eugenics occurred on both sides of the fence, and although Eugenics isn't what Darwin was on about, it was one logical but morally reprehensible conclusion that could be drawn ... that we can take an active hand in directing the future of the species.

With the mapping of the human genome and the various debates going on about genetically modified plants or animals, it is pretty clear that this isn't an issue we're quite ready to put away yet.

Doug.

I was thinking of Andy Capp, but...

[thebitterguy]

Nah, I thought he was an exec with Creator's Syndicate, instead of an obnoxious columnist.

[fossilapostle.livejournal.com]

"I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews. I am doing the Lord's work."
- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

"Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith. . . we need believing people."
— Hitler, April 26, 1933, during negotiations which led to the Nazi-Vatican Concordat of 1933.

"Embued with the desire to secure for the German people the great religious, moral, and cultural values rooted in the two Christian Confessions, we have abolished the political organizations but strengthened the religious institutions."
— Adolf Hitler, speaking in the Reichstag on Jan. 30, 1934

Yeah. Atheist. Darwinist. Riiiiiiiight.

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure eugenics started with Plato. Or, theoretically, caste systems.

[waiwode.livejournal.com]

Sure. Humanity has always had "we're better than them" built right in. And Plato did discuss it, and the Spartans and Romans and probably a hundred other cultures all practiced infanticide.

However Stein is discussing the Eugenics theories created by Galton after he read The Origin of Species. (It was Galton who first used the word "Eugenics".) Galton didn't recommend a course of action, other than the need for people with "superior" intellect or talents to breed.

In Expelled Stein is creating a direct connection between Darwin and Death-camps, as if Darwin, by proposing how evolution worked, somehow recommended that killing each other off was the only way forward. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Doug.

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Are you sure? He was a rich English dude in the 19th century.

[waiwode.livejournal.com]

Hahaha. Touché.

Okay, regardless of how Darwin may have felt about it, The Origin of Species wasn't forward-looking, it laid out neither paths nor courses of action nor recommendations for the betterment of our species.

Doug.

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I wonder if 'evolution' has too many positive connotations to accurately describe the actual theory.

[absinthe-dot-ca.livejournal.com]

The whole creationist upsurge in recent years reminds me of something I was actually told by a "good, honest, god-fearin' man" some years ago. He said, and this is pretty much verbatim, "Of course things change over time, that's just nature! But that ain't evolution!"

I showed a considerable amount of restraint in that I did not reply - I just kept drinking.