[Moderator Hat: ON]
This is a continuation from the earlier thread, A Movie That Might Change Your Life….
David B, SDMB Great Debates Moderator
[Moderator Hat: OFF]
Thanks, David B.
To other readers, especially FriendofGod: I await comments and responses to my latest lengthy missive with considerable interest.
FoG said:
I have yet to see a single shred of evidence that you could follow a marked path through an open prairie, let alone a logical discussion.
Yes, in other words, you never named one. Instead, you tried to weasel out of it – which is pretty much what you’ve been doing since then.
And you have yet to provide a single piece of evidence for it. Do you understand this?
And you have yet to provide a single piece of evidence for it. Do you understand this?
Which supports our position and opposes yours. Do you understand this?
And you have yet to provide a single piece of evidence that it has. Do you understand this?
Things have been getting “wacky” ever since you have been practicing your intellectual dishonesty. I just got tired of your BS.
”Attack mode”? If you “think” that was attack mode, you ain’t seen nothing. Pointing out that you are ignoring evidence and squirming around to avoid admitting error is not “attacking.” Attacking would be telling you what I really think of you right now. But I’d have to take this to the Pit in order to do that.
You know, in this megapost, you have continued to show your ignorance of simple debate.
You made a claim and provided no evidence to back it up. I (and others) provided evidence to the contrary. You still refused to provide any evidence to back up your original claim.
Know what? You lose.
Why was it that I said we had proven you wrong? Because, as I’ve already noted, you have yet to prove yourself right. You were making the positive claim, yet you refused to back up that claim. You can’t just expect all the rest of us to say, “Oh, FoG says it’s true, so it must be.”
Heck, if you’d spent half the time on looking for evidence (which you claim is all over the place) instead of digging through this thread to whine and show how little you understand debate, you might have actually found something. But you chose the route of trying to make it look like the roles were reversed, instead. The main problem with that, FoG, is that people around here aren’t stupid and they aren’t a bunch of Born-Agains who will support you no matter what you say. They aren’t going to fall for that.
What debate? You made claims and refused to back them up, whining when we tried to get you to do so! You poisoned the well with your own intellectual dishonesty – don’t accuse me of poisoning you just because I’m feeding you some of that well water.
As I’ve noted, it was so easy to prove you wrong because you have yet to provide a single shred of evidence to support your own claim. You want to overturn what I’ve said? Fine. Provide some evidence of your own. Oh, wait, I forgot – you’re far too busy to do that. Silly me.
Run along.
Following up to the religion persecuted in the media in the last ~35 years…
My wife did part of her master project for her MLIS (Master of Library and Information Science) on how religion was addressed in books. Specifically she was working with adolescent fiction.
She found that in the last 20-30 years, religion is rarely mentioned at all. Those books which do mention it usually fall into the following categories:
[ul]
[li]All religion presented was was scary and bad. All adherents were mindless bible-thumpers who were also hypocritically non-compliant with their beliefs.[/li][li]Very bad Christian fiction (that is, the author was inexperienced, and the writing quality was poor).[/li][/ul]
It’s only recently that things have improved, and most of that is that Christian authors (and some authors of other religions) have gotten better.
The success of the “Left Behind” series is not due to great writing (trust me, I’ve read all the books and the writing, while occasionally very good, is mediocre), but rather the hunger that Christian readers have felt to have their faith realistically rendered. I think it’s been successful at that. (I think the movie failed miserably to translate the first book to screen, however.)
My wife’s impression is not isolated. Orson Scott Card has lamented the state of religion in fiction, see http://www.phantastes.com/00spring/interview.html to read his comments.
I was thinking about this on the walk home today, and I decided that I disagree with it totally. I think the media does an excellent job of showing the consequences of what you would call “sinful behavior”. I’ll use premarital sex as an example.
True, in sitcoms, you rarely see people catching awful STDs or unintentionally becoming pregnant. That’s because there is no good way to make those things funny, and funny is what sitcoms do. (Unless, of course, it’s “A Very Special ‘Blossom’”).
Dramas, on the other hand, often do show such consequences of premarital sex. “ER” had a character this year who got pregnant. HIV+ characters are not uncommon on television. In fact, I’d say that you see these situations more often in television drama than you see them in real life, since they do make for good drama. I don’t think I even need to mention what goes on on most soap operas.
But, you say, the vast, vast majority of people having premarital sex on television are not getting pregnant or getting STDs. That’s true. I hate to be the one to tell you, FoG, but the vast, vast majority of people who are having premarital sex in real life are not experiencing those consequences, either! You could similarly complain that the consequences of automobile operation are not portrayed adequately because rarely does a major television character die in a fiery crash.
So I would say that in the aggregate, the consequences of premarital sex are displayed on television at least as commonly, if not more commonly, than they occur in real life. Sure, you could make sure that everyone on TV who has premarital sex has some sort of horrid fate befall them because if it, if you wanted television to be like a Chick tract.
Dr. J
As a matter of fact, ER just had a male couple, one HIV+ and one HIV-, where the negative partner wanted to contract HIV from his partner (“bug chasing,” in the vernacular) so that they could “truly be committed” or whatever rationale the barebacking subculture uses as an excuse to want to be sick and die. Obviously the resident doctor came out strongly against their sexual habits, which spoke as much of the self-esteem of the negative partner as much as the inbalance and problems with their relationship, and the issue was not resolved per se in the episode (as they often are in ER - lots of threads left hanging, as they would be in a real emergency room).
Of course, should anyone interpret this as, “Faggots get AIDS because it’s what they deserve,” I’m sure they’d be quite mistaken.
Esprix
emarkp: *My wife did part of her master project for her MLIS (Master of Library and Information Science) on how religion was addressed in books. Specifically she was working with adolescent fiction.
She found that in the last 20-30 years, religion is rarely mentioned at all. Those books which do mention it usually fall into the following categories:
-All religion presented was was scary and bad. All adherents were mindless bible-thumpers who were also hypocritically non-compliant with their beliefs.
-Very bad Christian fiction (that is, the author was inexperienced, and the writing quality was poor). *
?!?!? What about the many excellent books written for adolescents in the past 20-30 years by Madeleine L’Engel, for example? Lots of positively portrayed religious characters and themes. What about Joan Aiken? Rachel Field? Lois Lenski? Judy Blume? Robert Cormier? E. L. Konigsburg? Virginia Sorensen? Etc…
Believe me, in the 1970’s and '80’s I read just about all the decent adolescent fiction in English published in those decades, and there was lots that dealt seriously with issues involving religion. I think your wife may be lucky I wasn’t on her thesis committee! 
As for the sex-on-TV question, FoG, I think DoctorJ’s remarks are very much to the point. Yes, there is much more sex than religion in sitcoms, and the reason is that sex is funny and religion (if respectfully portrayed) isn’t. You simply can’t make a case for society-wide anti-Christian denigration out of that, and so far you haven’t really presented any other evidence.
Actually, FoG is in fact making a case out of that, a case which in his mind is valid, because it’s true to his worldview. But as I’ve repeatedly pointed out, the validity of the case depends on the a priori position that extramarital sex, homosexual sex, etc., do have negative consequences – specifically, you go to hell – a position not shared by everyone. Without that a priori assumption, one is left debating real-world specifics as opposed to philosophical positions, and of course real-world specifics that support FoG’s position are few and far between.
Indeed, the “consequences” of extramarital sex (to take one example) in the real world are largely doled out at random. Sometimes, pregnancy results. Sometimes, disease. Sometimes the cuckolded partner discovers the deception, and the marriage dissolves. Sometimes the partner discovers the deception and the marriage holds together. Sometimes the partner never discovers the deception, the cheater stops the relationship on his/her own, and nothing further happens until after they’re both dead.
And sometimes, of course, you have a loving couple that has never sinned, never cheated, attends church regularly, and reads the Bible nightly – and out of the blue, they get creamed on the freeway by a cement truck and are killed instantly. Consequence of what, exactly? Nothing. Sh*t happens.
Viewed empirically, therefore, the “consequences” of extramarital relations (or gay lovin’, or anything else) can be documented as risks, nothing more. You rolls the dice, you takes your chances. There are risks for everything, not just behaviors that are considered “sin” in some people’s minds. There’s even a risk to reading the Bible too much; you could ruin your eyesight.
It is disingenuous to suggest that everybody who sins will pay the price in the real world. Of course, the real danger, the real payback, the real consequences happen in the afterworld when one stands before God and is judged. At least, that is, according to the Christian worldview as espoused by FoG and others. If you put yourself in that mindset, if you imagine the same filter being put over your perception and your interpretation of the world, it’s easy to see how offering up “lots a nookie on da tee vee!” would seem to be a reasonable argument.
What I’ve repeatedly tried to explain is that these kinds of arguments hold no rational, empirical water in the real world. You want to believe that Christians are persecuted more than Wiccans, gays, etc.? Fine. You want to believe we never landed on the moon? Fine. You want to believe putting tinfoil over your windows keeps out the alien mind-control rays? Fine.
But if you’re going to assert those beliefs as fact, then you had damn well better have factual evidence to back it up. And if you don’t have the wisdom to recognize the difference between factual evidence and “evidence” that relies on the predeterminations of your filtered worldview, then you’re doomed to have your arguments attacked and dismissed.
FriendofGod wrote:
The Humanist Manifesto spelled it “orthadox”?!
FriendofGod wrote:
The New Standard Encyclopedia defines Fundamentalist Christianity as follows:
[emphasis mine]
I confess that I shared FoG’s perception that born-again Christians are portrayed in the media as a little (or a lot) nutty. Yet I find it difficult to come up with examples. [Note to FoG: If you have trouble coming up with examples, it’s a sign that you may be confused or insufficiently informed. It turns out I was.]
Prior to my web search, I only had 2 sets of examples. The first set included the 700 club and other Sunday religious programming. Sorry, but in all honesty, the participants appear a little strange to me.
The second example was from the movie “Oh God”, when the TV preacher (“Oh yeah, the football player”) was the designated villain.
So far pretty thin. On to the internet. Conclusion: there simply isn’t a lot of religious content, of any sort, in entertainment television. When I skimmed a summary of 6 hours of tv content, I couldn’t find any religious references. http://srd.yahoo.com/drst/6490248/*http://cinemaspace.berkeley.edu/~judd/index.html
(While searching for ammunition, I also skimmed through a few web pages concerning TV’s serious and critical examination of Southern Culture, “The Dukes of Hazzard”. I couldn’t find any religious buffoons. Heck, I couldn’t find any religious characters at all.)
Later, I found a relevant link (check this out, it’s better):
http://museum.tv/ETV/R/htmlR/religionont/religionont.htm
Here’s a quote:
“In the 50-year history of television in the United
States, fewer than two dozen series or pilots have
featured religious persons in leading or title roles. The
majority of these were Roman Catholic, with only nine
non-Catholic examples.”
Frankly, if we want to find examples of fictional born-again Christians looking foolish, we should turn to the movies: the networks like to avoid needless controversy.
SO: I call out to Straight Dopers (and Movie Geeks): Do any of you have Ebert’s Guide to the Movies on CD ROM? Could you try a keyword on “Minister”, “Priest”, “Preacher”, or “believer”? For, say, 10 cites, what share of the religious folk are sympathetic? Are there any examples of Pentecostals, (white) Southern Baptists or Jehovah’s Witnesses who are not designated villains or fools?
[hijack (Sorry!)]
KIMSTU –
Help me out here. I agree that you can find some thread of religion in Field, Lenski, and Sorensen, but Field died in 1942, Lenski died in 1974, and while Sorensen didn’t die until 1991, most of her books were published in the '50s. Where is the religious imagery/message in “The Chocolate War” or “I Am The Cheese”? Where is it in “Tales of A Fourth-Grade Nothing” or “The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler”?
I daresay that I read most of those same exact books, and I’ll be darned if I can think of any that dealt with religion extensively enough to leave an impression. My impression, to the contrary, was that modern adolescent literature, then and now, was determinedly non-religious, the sole exceptions being (1) books that were written prior to whenever mention of God/religion became essentially verboten (Alcott, Wilder, Lenski, Field); (2) books (usually badly written) that are sold as unabashedly “religious” books (like those found in the young-adult section of Christian bookstores); and (3) books that mention religion because it is historically relevant, as opposed to for its own sake, like Summer of My German Soldier or The Diary of Anne Frank. The sole exception I can think of off hand is Number The Stars, and it wasn’t around when we were kids.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not arguing that Christians have been poorly portrayed (or that anyone has). But I would agree that there is a dearth of any discussion about religion in this genre of books.
[/hijack]
Most of Judy Blume’s books take a look at one topic as it relates to the lives of pre-teenage children. She did discuss religion in her book Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret. The protagonist was the daughter of a Christian mother and a Jewish father. Ms. Blume’s worldview is Jewish, and Christianity really isn’t discussed in any great depth, except that some people are Christian and some are Jewish and that’s the way life is.
Robin
Yes, but Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret was published in 1970.
Similarly, A Wrinkle in Time by L’Engle was published in 1962.
FOG quoted the humanist creed:
We believe, however, that traditional dogmatic or authoritarian religions that place revelation, God, ritual, or creed above human needs and experience do a disservice to the human species.
With minimal paraphrasing this can be read as Jesus’ lesson about violating the Sabbath to save a life - Jesus didn’t approve of using the commandments as an excuse for allowing suffering to continue. So maybe the humanists are following Christ after all.
Andy
P.S. I would like to note that “The Practice” episode did make out one character (the Catholic, Bobby) to be willing to use bigoted terminology in his arguments. The more fundamentalist person (a Jehovah’s Witness) came off much the better, which is ironic since “The Practice” has been criticized as the one of the most “liberal” shows on TV.
Jodi: Help me out here. I agree that you can find some thread of religion in Field, Lenski, and Sorensen, but Field died in 1942, Lenski died in 1974, and while Sorensen didn’t die until 1991, most of her books were published in the '50s.
Sorensen’s “Plain Girl” appeared in 1983, and (being about an Amish girl in a mostly non-Amish public school) had religious differences as a very important theme. Yeah, if the 1970’s are the cutoff, that rules out Field and Lenski: thanks for the catch.
Where is the religious imagery/message in “The Chocolate War” or “I Am The Cheese”?
Who said it had to be “imagery” or “message”? What I’m claiming is that in a lot of these books, religious themes or issues are significant, as IMHO the parochial-school background of “The Chocolate War” certainly is, in contrast to emarkp’s claim that this genre in this era either “doesn’t mention” religion, portrays religious figures very negatively, or is mediocre Christian fluff.
Where is it in “Tales of A Fourth-Grade Nothing” or “The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler”?
I was thinking specifically of Konigsburg’s “About the B’nai Bagels”, about the Jewish boys’ baseball team.
My impression, to the contrary, was that modern adolescent literature, then and now, was determinedly non-religious, the sole exceptions being (1) books that were written prior to whenever mention of God/religion became essentially verboten (Alcott, Wilder, Lenski, Field);
Again, what about those mentioned above, as well as L’Engle and Blume (e.g., “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret”)?
(2) books (usually badly written) that are sold as unabashedly “religious” books (like those found in the young-adult section of Christian bookstores); and (3) books that mention religion because it is historically relevant, as opposed to for its own sake, like Summer of My German Soldier or The Diary of Anne Frank. The sole exception I can think of off hand is Number The Stars, and it wasn’t around when we were kids.
I don’t think (3) should count as a separate category; after all, a lot of the best adolescent fiction is historical fiction, and it’s an extremely well-represented genre. Look at the list of Newberry Award winners over the past thirty years; at least a third of them are set in an earlier era, and most have settings that include some role for religion. (And I definitely include “Number the Stars” in this group; it’s adolescent fiction from the past 20–30 years and it’s over 10 years old, so presumably it doesn’t fall into emarkp’s “recent” exceptions.)
I’m not claiming that religion is mentioned “for its own sake” (I’m not even sure what that would mean) in all of these books, but I do maintain that it has been nowhere near as suppressed or disparaged in this genre as emarkp’s comments suggest.
[Note added in preview: 1970 is within the limit I was using for an informal cutoff, emarkp: you can rule it out if you like. The remaining books of L’Engle’s “Wrinkle in Time” trilogy were published in the 1970’s.]
FTR, I first read Judy Blume in the late 70s. And according to Amazon.com, Are You There God was re-released in 1991, so there are still people buying this.
Personally, I don’t think children’s literature is necessarily ephemeral. Although published in 1970, I don’t find AYTG to be dated, and I think the message of the book holds true even today. In fact, you can make the argument that one of the qualities of true literature is that it will seem fresh to each generation.
Perhaps I missed it, but why are we focusing on children’s literature?
Robin
Sorry, ms r, it was a hijack. emarkp joined the discussion of whether Christians are unfairly neglected/misrepresented in media with a comment on his wife’s research purporting to show that religion in general was neglected/misrepresented in adolescent fiction of the past 20–30 years. I took exception to those conclusions, and that’s how the fight began. “I live on Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James; and I’ve told in simple language what I know about the row that broke up our society upon the Stanislow.” 
Once in a while, when politicians get a little bit uppity, Hollywood will crank out some movies with religious themes. A few years ago, we had “The Preacher’s Wife” and “Michael”, both of which gave very positive, although not 100% biblically accurate, portrayals of Christianity. Other examples might include “The Family Man” (last December) and “The Apostle” (1997). The problem is that every time one of these movies bombs, it just gives Hollywood more reason not to make religious films.
Well, I came on tonite hoping to respond to whatever had been posted and came upon this rather mammoth set of posts! Wow! Lots of interesting and good discussion today! By the way thanks DB for starting a Part 2. Thanks for the “Etc” since the movie subject is long gone.
There is no way I could even begin to plow through each and every point in detail. I will try, probably tomorrow night, to go through and at least extract one main point from each post (gasp!) as best as I can. I’ll try to summarize the main point and respond. Of course I say that but I always go on and on with each one, eh?
As a general comment: DB, once again you prove yourself to be disingenous. You said: "You can’t just expect all the rest of us to say, “Oh, FoG says it’s true, so it must be.” " DB, I’m sorry, but this takes the cake. I refuse to believe that you are that big of an idiot. I had clearly said: “David, I never intended to “prove” this to you or anyone. You don’t have to believe me. I’m not asking you to . . . . Well, I don’t mind people saying, ‘I won’t believe what you say until I see evidence’. That makes sense to me.” Could you please show me, ANYWHERE, where I said, “You know guys, this is what I believe and you should believe it just because I said it.”
You are aware that I never said anything like that. So why do you disingenuously act as though you think I did?
You reeeeeeeeeealy don’t want people to believe I’m right, do you?
Since it is obviously a waste of my time to convince you of your folly, I will simply summarize my thoughts on this mini-debate within a debate as follows:
- My not giving proof for my original claim does not “prove” that it’s not a true claim.
- DavidB, myself and others giving a handful of examples antithical to the original claim does not “prove” that it’s not a true claim.
That’s just plain common sense.
NOW … GASP … with that out of the way … as I mentioned to DB somewhere in there, I have emailed the AFA to see if they have statistical information on the types of things I’m talking about. I hope to hear from them in the next day or so.
In the meantime, since it seems to be quite a hot topic, I will try to give some examples of Christians being ridiculed in the mass media just off the top of my head. Note, however, that I would not foolishly claim that a few examples off the top of my head would prove my claim, unlike some folks ;).