I’m not seeing why physical impossibility makes one statement dumber than the other. I suspect the average American knows more about the interior composition of pyramids than he/she does about the formation of islands.
Leaving aside your ridiculous strawman, it’s pretty clear you didn’t read this thread.
The male WASP majority in this country is seeing their power erode ever so slightly to women, to other religions, and to immigrants and minorities, that they concocted this belief that they’re being persecuted. What Cruz said fits right into that martyrdom mentality. Its not ok for the president or someone running for the office, but its likely the only stance for a particular denomination of Christianity that would be even remotely acceptable. Cruz is playing a game here that involves riling up the most hate and fear and capitalizing it to get into office. He knows what he’s doing. We can only hope it doesn’t work
Are you serious?
The method of rebutting the idea that an island is vulnerable to tipping over and capsizing is not to start landing Marines on it! This reminds me of a Calvin and Hobbes strip: Calvin and his parents are driving along and pass a “Weight Limit - 10 Tons” sign on a bridge. Calvin asks his dad how they know the weight limit for a bridge.
“They keep driving heavier and heavier trucks across the bridge until it breaks. Then they weigh the last truck and rebuild the bridge.”
“Oh. That makes sense,” muses Calvin, while his mom remonstrates “Dear!” to her husband for misleading the boy.
The way to rebut the idea that an island will not tip over and capsize, by the same token, is not to load up Marines, or even sumo wrestlers (a better choice given the sumo wrestlers’ more impressive BMI). It’s to LOOK UNDER THE WATER AND LEARN THAT AN ISLAND IS NOT A DISK FLOATING ON WATER. No one needs to load up the island to test this theory.
It’s true that the pyramids are not spacious realms of interior storage, I don’t dispute that for an instant. And it’s true that they predate Jacob’s journey to Egypt: again, cheerfully conceded.
But my point is very simple: if any reasonable, neutral analyst were asked to place the following facts in an ordered list, with the order being “Most adult Americans know this,” the result is not really a matter of great surprise.
Our neutral analyst might quibble over which precedes the other: does “Pyramids lacked large amounts of interior space,” rank above, or below, “Pyramids were built before Jacob’s sojourn to Egypt.” Reasonable minds might differ on which of those two facts is more well known.
But the addition of “Islands cannot tip over and capsize,” would absolutely and without question be higher on that ordered list. You must know this, right? You cannot seriously contend that you are in the slightest measure confused about which of those three facts is most well-known.
Are you?
Again, this is equivocation. The story that a man walked on water is obviously contrary to our expectations of nature – it explicitly invokes a supernatural claim. The nature of the belief that it once happened is not the same as a belief that it routinely happens, or is possible absent supernatural intervention. It’s not the same thing.
Huh?
Are you serious?
You think the average American might believe an island can somehow tip over and capsize before he’d believe that the Great Pyramid had enough interior space to store grain?
Really?
The OP’s suggestion is the kiss of Death here in Washington State. A few years ago we had a Republican candidate for Governor, one Ellen Craswell, who was doing OK but then decided to announce publicly that she planned to govern using the principles of the Bible.
I think she got maybe 5% of the vote in King County, by far the biggest and most liberal county in the State. Sunk her like a stone.
I think that one might be stretching it. A large stone building being used for grain storage? Nothing implausible about that. A giant rock floating in water? That’s not happening in any normal sense. A person of average intelligence should be able to figure out that islands are attached to the ocean floor and aren’t floating free in the water.
Absolutely.
I mean – come on. How is this even a remotely serious point of contention?
It would be more conclusive to load it up. Yes, you can look under the water (have you done that for Guam?), but even if you see [del]turtles[/del] land all the way down, as opposed to, say, a large disk topping a slender spire of rock, how do you know it’s stable? Sinkholes appear in sold-looking land all the time. And many islands are the tops of volcanoes. The entire north face of Mt. St. Helens collapsed in a few seconds, but it has had dormant periods lasting thousands of years.
And just by the way, you are smearing Johnson by repeatedly implying that he thought that capsizing was a possibility for islands in general. He was speaking specifically about Guam, and only Guam. You may be unaware that Guam lies right on the edge of the Pacific tectonic plate, close to the Mariana Trench (the world’s deepest subduction zone), and has a history of recent earthquakes of up to 8.7 on the Richter scale. IMO it takes more specialized education to know whether this geologic history makes the island’s destruction (and of course, Johnson was speaking allegorically when he said “capsize”) improbable rather than impossible, than it does to know whether the earth is 6000 years old, or if life has evolved from earlier forms. It certainly takes more education than is required to know whether a pyramid of almost solid rock, with tiny entrances high above the ground, makes a useful grain silo.
Since you don’t take him at his word that he was joking, you have no idea what Rep. Johnson’s rationale was. In particular, you don’t know whether he was also making a supernatural claim. Maybe he thought Guam was sacred to Cthulhu(pbuh), and that he would tip Guam over and spill the Marines off as a punishment for violating his shrine. It’s no more preposterous than the claims of the likes of Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson (whom Republican candidates past and present have embraced), when they say that hurricanes and earthquakes are God’s punishmentfor gay marriage or whatever.
“Routinely happens” is a straw man; as noted above, Johnson was speaking only about Guam. And I would think it’s self-evident that it’s less crazy to believe that something impossible might happen once in the future, than to believe it’s already happened once in the past.
Well, the average American has probably seen inside the Great Pyramid on the History Channel or something. The average American has probably not seen what’s under an island.
In any event, I think we are probably doing ourselves a disservice about arguing about which is dumber. Both ought to be disqualifying.
Do you know the fallacy involved when claiming that in order to know that Guam can’t capsize, it’s necessary to examine Guam, as opposed to simply having an understanding of islands?
And of course, checking it once is insufficient – after all, turtles might swoop in after you’ve checked and replace the supporting geology with their own unstable bodies, right?
You watch the video. You tell me honestly (as opposed to defending a point) that you believe he was not literally speaking of the island capsizing.
Are you serious? I have seen pictures that purport to represent the inside of pyramids. I have stood on islands, looked at mountains from their base, dug holes in dirt and stepped on rocks. I have about 10,000 times more experience with “what’s under an island” than with the inside of the Great Pyramid.
But I guess I’d better watch the video.
When I first heard this story I assumed he had to be joking and I read that his line, dry sense of humour. But when I watched the video there is no frigging way. He went on and on about the physical size of Guam before raising his capsizing concern. And when the general responded “I’m not worried about that happening” he just moved on to another point, didn’t follow up with a “what I mean to say”.
Me, too. I read the story first on a forwarded link that turned out to be a “Look how dumb the Democrats are,” type site, and I was rolling my eyes and thinking it was a typical take-a-line-out-of-context attacks.
Then I watched the video.
And, just as you say, I realized in shock that the guy was absolutely, literally, seriously, asking about Guam physically flipping over.
Wow, I skipped page 2…apparently this thread has gone in some interesting directions!
Anyway, to the OP, I agree with those who have pointed out that any seriously religious person will view their religion as a more central aspect of their identity than their nationality; I certainly do, and I am about as far politically from Ted Cruz as it’s possible to get. I imagine that, if put on the spot, Hillary Clinton would probably say the same thing as Cruz.
It’s only a problem for a political candidate if there is reason to fear that there will be a conflict between their religious beliefs and their ability to uphold the laws of a democratic, secular society. In Clinton’s case, based on her history and on the theology of her denomination, there is very little reason to fear this will be a problem. Cruz, not so much.
You have argued at length that the average American, who is dumb as a rock, knows that islands don’t tip over.
Johnson was born into a middle-class black family, and became a college graduate, a law school graduate, and a Buddhist, which indicates both native intelligence and intellectual curiosity.
So you tell me, which is more likely: that even you can mistake a total stranger’s deadpan joke for a serious statement, or that a man like that doesn’t know that islands don’t tip over.
Hank Johnson is my Congressman. He’s dumb as a box of hammers (and I’m a Democrat) - one can be learned while being an idiot (put it another way: book smarts vs. street smarts). I’ve seen the video. I don’t think he was joking.
If it were just my reaction, I would likely conclude that his wry humor slipped past my sensors.
However, I have never shown that video to anyone who did not reach the same conclusion.
Have you watched it?
Of course. As I said several posts ago, it reminded me of myself. And of my dad, from whom I learned deadpan.
I’ve only seen him on the one video, but his wiki bio says that he had a period of several years where he was suffering from a condition that made him seem confused and tongue-tied. Also that he’s better now. FWIW, this was announced long before the Guam thing.
And street smarts has nothing to do with knowing an island doesn’t tip over. I really can’t imagine anyone capable of reading a book of not knowing that.