I was recently on two episodes of ‘the Place’ with Dr & Mrs Jones of the New Covenant Group.
First they talked just with me.
That went pretty well, so I joined the panel for the evening show.
I very much enjoyed participating in the show, and I applaud the effort behind maintaining an interfaith dialogue. It’s especially necessary now because there are two trends which need to be considered separately, and then comparatively. One is that religion is in general decline in all fifty states. Those who reject religious classification, those who have no interest or need of religion, and those who are coming out atheists and antitheists make up overlapping demographics accounting for at least 20% of the American population so far, and all charts indicate that percentage is rising fast. However the percentage of believers who are creationist, those who (perhaps unknowingly) reject not only the conclusions of science but also its methodology -is actually on the rise, They account for almost half the nation’s population, and they’re the majority among those who still cling to faith at all.
Now it used to be -several decades ago, that most people believed in some sort of faith-based mumbo-jumbo; but those same people usually knew better than to mix religion and politics, and every sensible person knew that you’d better understand science regardless whatever else you might believe. But now, those who accept and employ science are abandoning religion completely, and those who praise faith are rejecting epistemology entirely, becoming religious extremists. In short, the US population is becoming polarized, and that’s not a good way to be.
It was cool to see you on that show, after seeing the episode with David Silverman, Sye Ten Buggerencats, and Eric Hovind, I was instantly a big fan of Dr. Michael Jones, he’s pretty impressive, his bibble-ripping tirade was the equal of most any atheist’s. Kicking Sye off for being such an irksome douche was priceless.
For the Austin Darwin Day festivities put on by cfi-Texas, we met at the Trinity Methodist church, a typical meeting place for them, and I got to see the pastor there for the first time, and here about who he is. And he admits to basically being an atheist, and that his congregation knows all about it. Quite refreshing, and really jarring! Jones isn’t quite to such a point, I have yet to see much detail about his outlying theology, but his contempt for most of current christianity is made adamantly clear. In that episode, he also merely asks a few simple questions of Hovid, and reveals how profoundly ignorant Eric is of his own bible, how ridiculous it is for him to have so strong a commitment to the words of an english translation of a Hebrew that is no where near as well understood as most theists would have us all believe.
That particular episode can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=By3ijuxkxDg
At this time I am going away to do my breakfast, after having my breakfast coming yet again to read other news.
It was fascinating to see the look of sheer terror which seemed to come over Eric’s face during the last quarter of the program when Dr.Jones started to question him on his linguistic understanding of bible origins. Towards the end the good doctor took pity on him and allowed him to change the subject.