Frankly, before I started reading the SDMB, I’d never heard of Jack Chick. I’ve never seen his name mentioned in any mainstream newspapers, I’ve never heard him mentioned on television… in short, he’s a nobody, who matters to hardly anyone. But it seems that most non-religious (and ALL anti-religious posters) on the SDMB can quote everything the guy has ever said or written!
Similarly, outside of conservative publications I subscribe to, I’ve never seen or heard any mention of any major “secular humanist” organizations. I don’t doubt that they exist, but they’re tiny and almost utterly powerless. But conservative publications and (especially) people on the religious right obsess over every feeble pamphlet put out by the “American Humanists Association,” the “Humanists Assocation of America,” the “People’s Humanist Front of Judea” (okay, I admit, I made that one up).
My point is, both Jack Chick and the militant secular humanists are of NO importance. Their enemies are the only ones paying any attention to them!
Presumably, it makes people feel more important and noble if they can convince themselves their enemies are a powerful bloc bent on world domination, rather than a tiny, ill-organized, ineffectual gang of nobodies. But if there’s a BETTER reason that so many atheists hang on Jack Chick’s every word, or that fundamentalist conservatives are analyzing every word of “Humanist Society” meeting minutes, I’d love to hear it.
I agree that they are pretty marginal. On the other hand, if you wander over to the Jack Chick web site, you’ll find lots of links to pages by purported scholars making serious claims to support the lies, fabrications, errors, and distortions that are found in Chick’s pamphlets–and there are a great many people who do subscribe to the teachings of those purported scholars.
I suspect that the same charge could be leveled against the “other side” to greater or lesser degrees.
So, we’re looking at the most extreme cases of willful ignorance and hatred, getting a picture of slightly less extreme cases of ignorance and disinformation (if not, actually, hatred). We aren’t really fighting with Chick (he won’t persuade us and we won’t persuade him), but we’re looking over a representative of “the opposition” for those occasions when we do encounter a fellow believer of that stripe.
Chick is an extreme loon, but if you’ve watched these boards long enough, you’ve probably seen more than a few visitors come in with the same ideas. (If you go visit the Left Behind Message Board–simply to observe quietly and not to come back and talk about them–you will see that Jack Chick is not alone in his beliefs. There are other people who believe as he does. How many people believe that way is a different question.)
Ah, the argument from ignorance! “I’ve never heard of him, so he must not be important or well-known.” Is that what’s passing for reasoned argument at the SDMB these days?
Well, let’s see, I’ve known of Jack Chick, and seen his tracts stuck in library books, since 1989, and was handed a Chick tract in the grocery store as recently as last month. So what does that prove? Not much, huh?
Jack Chick does have influence over some parts of the Christian Fundimentalist community. People do buy those tracts, after all (and yes, I’ve seem them “in the wild”, both on the DC Metro and in Christian bookstores). He provides a resource to these fundimentalist churches, and also serves as an intellectual support for them. (“See, Chick’s book proves that Jesuits control international Communism!”) You don’t see him much in the mainstream press because he doesn’t interact much with the mainstream press. It’s not his audience and it’s not who he’s trying to sell the tracts to. Also, mainstream culture doesn’t pay much attention to Fundimentalist Christianity as a whole. How many people have heard of Bob Jones University before the whole political flap. How many people know who Hal Lindsay or Jack Van Impe are? Who’s the president of Fuller Theological Seminary. It’s a subculture, and Chick is important within it.
Gee, I guess I’ll cancel my subscription to “Humanist.” Too bad I wasted my time moderating a Humanist discussion group last Wed on “Culture wars, Humanism in the mass media.”
Oh yeah, and I collect Chick tracts.
Well, Hal Lindsay’s book The Late, Great Planet Earthwas a number-1 bestseller for a while.
Oh, and there’s one other group that’s well aware of Jack Chick: people who play fantasy role-playing games. (Or at least, most of them have heard of this tract.)
Being a Catholic, of course I’d heard of Chick Publications. I’ve see his little ‘comic books’; actually puts you in mind of the ‘8 pager’ fuck books of a bygone era.
But, I hadn’t heard of him lately, and never thought much of it until I saw the post on this board. I don’t even remember where it was, but the OP said something about ‘always’ bringing up Jack Chick and his drivel to ridicule.
My thinking is much like astorian’s. Chick is a dim bulb and most people have never heard of him, better let him stay buried. Why ridicule someone whose grip on reality is tenuous at best. As for fighting ignorance, I really don’t think any of our musings are going to convince Chick of the error of his ways.
As far as message boards go, they span the spectrum, this one is one of the best, but then there are some really far out ones.
I think astorian’s spectrum is radically skewed. Jack Chick is, as has been repeatedly demonstrated on the SDMB, a paranoid, reactionary bigot. But someone like Tim LaHaye is scarcely better, and LaHaye’s Left Behind books have sold tens of millions of copies. On the other side, we have a group of basically moderate atheists (except that being an atheist is seen as being an immoderate position in and of itself in this country), who are marginalized within American culture and politics, and used as a whipping boy by preachers like LaHaye to incite the faithful to greater fervor. What’s the secular humanist equivalent of Tim LaHaye, anyway? Pat Robertson may be seen as a marginal loon by the mainstream of this country, but he still has his own media empire. Where’s the Secular Humanist Broadcasting Network? At one end of the spectrum you have a large subculture of religious zealots who basically see anyone who disagrees with them as enemies of God, shading off into smaller fringe groups which are clinically paranoid or openly totalitarian in their aims. In the middle you have a broad culture which is generally pluralistic but which is deeply admiring of religious faith and “spirituality”. You have a subculture which is “secular”, but rarely openly atheistic or anti-religious. Then off at the far, far fringe, you have people who are themselves openly atheistic, but by no means believe that all religious people are evil degenerates, or want to impose atheism by state fiat. These people are then equated with the most paranoid or politically authoritarian fringe of religious believers in this country. Somewhere in America there must, I suppose, be a handful of unrepentant Marxist-Leninists of the Stalinist or Maoist varieties who actually think organized religion should be violently suppressed by the power of the state, but I don’t know where they are.
Astorian wants to have it that believing in God and being traditionally religious is the moderate position; being a “religious fundamentalist” is “extremist”; but being an atheist is also “exremist”. But I would reject that view. In the middle are the moderates, whether they’re traditional believers or New Age spiritualists or secular humanists, who don’t believe that anyone with different views is in league with Satan himself. At the extremes are people who ultimately have no tolerance for different religious or philosophical views. But one extreme, in the United States today, is a whole lot bigger than the other.
Let’s try another analogy. I happen to consider communism an utterly worthless, morally bankrupt philosophy. In SPITE of that opinion, I haven’t seen any great need to monitor the domestic Communist Party. Communism never held much appeal in America even during the Great Depression, and the American Communist party was a feeble, toothless organization duing the 1950s. They were hardly worth paying attention to at all. Wseacres have been saying for years ichad Reyfuss used he joke again last week) that half the U.S. Communist party’s members are FBI agents. That is, NOBODY takes the American Communis movement seriously except its enemies.
MEBuckner,asecular humanist, resents being lumped in with Jack Chick, and that’s understandable. But when I’m comparing “fundies” and self-proclaimed hanists, I’m not suggesting they’re equivalent. Though I’d neer wnt to live in a society dominated by either group, I’d choose the humanists in a heartbeat, if I ever HAD to.
Rather, I was making the point that BOTH groups are small, marginalized, and pretty much powerless.
Even the most passionate editor of the most popular secular humanist newsletter KNOWS that he isn’t terribly powerful. What must he think when he reads the tirades that his newsletter spawns in reigious right circles? While part of him is almost certainly flattered and gratified, deep dwn, he HAS to wonder, “What do they see in me? What are they so dang afraid of?”
And even though Jack Chick would probably be delighted to know just how deeply he’s gotten under secularists’ skins, even such a fruitcake would have to wonder why h’s tting so much attention.
I wonder if Richard Dreyfuss’ scenario is true here. I wonder if there are more fundies than atheists reading humanist maifestoes. And I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more anti-Christians hanging on Jack CHick’s every word than there are Christians.
But they aren’t. Perhaps pound for pound at the national level, but at the local level, they’re quite powerful. At least the fundamentalists are.
This Pit thread shows that the fundamentalists are still large and in charge throughout the state of Alabama.
Ralph Reed is chairman of the Georgia Republican Party.
Don’t you still live in Texas, astorian? It’s illegal there for a proclaimed atheist to hold public office or serve on a jury.
The President of the United States is a born-again Christian.
Fundamentalist Christians have more political power than ever before in this country, and anyone who believes otherwise simply is not paying attention. Sure, there are outright loonies on the margins as there are in any social movement, but on the whole, fundamentalism is more legitimate and powerful than it ever was.
Humanism, on the other hand . . . atheists and humanists are considered fair game for slamming by believers on a daily basis. When editorials like this appear in major mainstream newspapers like USA Today, but we all know that an editorial which held the opposite viewpoint would never be allowed to run, it makes it difficult to argue that fundamentalism and humanism are both marginal.
Nice way to completely ignore the arguments that were actually made, astorian. How, exactly, do fundamentalist bigots count as “small, marginalized, and pretty much powerless” when President Bush Sr. said "“I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God”?
Ben- gosh, has your citizenship been revoked? Are you posting your messages from a prison cell?
No… you’re just whining again. That’s ANOTHER thing Jack Chick and the humanists have i common. They both LOVE to pose as victims of an infinitely more powerful cabal!
I have to ask, if the religious right is so powerful, wy isit that, 21 years after the election of Ronald Reagan, virtually NONE of the big-icket items on their agenda have been implemented? Have prayers been reinstituted in schools? Nope. Has abortion been outlawed? Nope. Is the Bush Cabinet loaded with icons of the religious right? Hardly- with the exeption of Ashcroft (a token appointment), the Bush Cabinet is run by retreads from the Ford and Bush Sr. Administrations.
The religious right is in the same position vis a vis the GOP that Al Sharpton is in with regard to the Democrats. Their votes are needed, so no one’s going to repudiate them (even when they deserve it), but nobody’s paying much attention to them, either.
Oddly enough, publications of both the religious right AND the anti-religious (usually) left, BOTH employ the same tone and the same rhetoric. Both say things like, “Our enemies are winning everywhere because THEY’RE united and well funded and well oranized, and we aren’t.”
In reality, BOTH sides would give ANYTHING to be as powerful and important as their enemies claim they are. Both sides need a bogeyman with which to frighten their followers. Ben & friends find that bogeyman in Jack Chick and other nuts like him. Chick & followers find that bogeyman in “secular humanism.”
As a Catholic, I’m not terribly worried about either group-I merely find it puzling (and vaguely amusing) that boh goups are so worried about each other.
Yeah, I guess you’re right. It’s not like THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES has any real power- he’s just a lone, powerless nut whose comments about atheists don’t really mean anything. And all those fundamentalists on the various State Boards of Education? It’s not like they have any power to damage science education, right? And even though three of the four most recent Presidents have been fundamentalists, there have been plenty of outspoken atheists in the Oval Office in the 20th century, right?
I must say, astorian, this thread is following the usual pattern of your arguments. You make a statement, and when people provide evidence to the contrary, you just keep reiterating your original statement.
From the Texas Constitution. Article I, Section 4, “Religious Tests,” in its entirety:
“No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this State; nor shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being.”
You know many atheists who are willing to “acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being?” I sure don’t. Hence, atheists may not hold public office in the state of Texas. IIRC, this has been extended to being allowed to serve on a jury (through that “public trust” thing), but I may be wrong about that.
Oh, and the obvious answer to astorian’s might conundrum is that the fundamentalists have realized that they will never accomplish their political goals in a top-down manner, so they have worked steadily for the last decade or so to implement them from the bottom up. Local school boards, state Senates and Assemblies, and other such offices are a better springboard for such widespread political goals.
And, yes, they do accomplish them all the time. Ben already alluded to the ongoing evolution battles. Virginia implemented a “moment of silence” last year, (which is, of course, the backdoor route to school prayer) and the state Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to it. Texans find every was possible to have official prayers at football games and school events.
It’s obvious to most people that they will never accomplish their goals at the national level. The big ones astorian mentions – abortion, official school prayer, etc. – you simply have to come to the middle on when you get to those levels of office. But at the state and local level, the fundamentalists are and will probably continue to be quite successful.
Make that two of the last five Presidents. Your point about no athiest making it to that office is valid, however, neither Bush Sr. nor Reagan can be considered Fundamentalist Christians by any objective definition. (Carter could be.) Right wing, conservative, reactionary, under the influence of Fundamentalists, sure, but Reagan wasn’t even religious and Bush Sr. was much more faux Anglican than Fundamentalist.
