CBS recently cancelled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Jon Stewart’s late night TV program, The Daily Show, is also owned by the same network. Stewart and Colbert not only worked together for years, they are also best friends. I wondered how Stewart would respond to CBS paying a 16 million dollar extortion payment to Donald Trump’s government, and then, two days later, cancelling The Late Show. I need not wonder any longer. Stewart came out firing, eviserating Paramount/CBS.
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Several years ago, The Daily Show produced a three-part series on America’s gun culture, gun violence, and how Australia successfully regulated firearms. Given the recent mass shooting in Las Vegas and congressional inaction of meaningful gun control legislation, I thought it important to share these videos with readers.
Bruce Gerencser, 60, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 39 years. He and his wife have six grown children and eleven grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist. For more information about Bruce, please read the About page.
Bruce is a local photography business owner, operating Defiance County Photo out of his home. If you live in Northwest Ohio and would like to hire Bruce, please email him.
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Polly and I regularly watch Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO. Real Time, along with John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight and Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, highlight the important news stories of the week, giving them a comedic twist. Sometimes, when these shows focus on American religion, especially Evangelical Christianity, I am often irritated when they play loose with the facts. Bill Maher, by far, is the worst.
Maher loves to bash creationists. I am all for him doing so, but I wish he would not distort their beliefs when he does. As an atheist and a critic of religion, Maher has the responsibility to speak accurately when critiquing, attacking, or ridiculing creationist beliefs. Look, they make it easy for us, so the least we can do is represent their beliefs accurately.
Over the years, I’ve heard Bill Maher repeatedly say creationists believe the earth is 5,000 years old. I know of NO creationist who believes this. None. Nor do I know any who think the earth is 10,000 years old. Adding another zero doesn’t make their belief any more rational or scientifically correct. Creationists are literalists. They believe the book of Genesis is a science and history textbook. When the Bible talks about Adam living 930 years, Noah living 950 years, Abraham living 175 years, David living 70 years, and Jesus living 33 years, creationists believe these ages are factual. They also believe the genealogies found in the Bible are factual. This is why James Ussher, a 17th century Church of Ireland archbishop, was able to add up the ages and genealogies and conclude that the God created the universe on October 22, 4004 BC.
The chronology is sometimes called the Ussher-Lightfoot chronology because John Lightfoot published a similar chronology in 1642–1644. This, however, is a misnomer, as the chronology is based on Ussher’s work alone and not that of Lightfoot. Ussher deduced that the first day of creation began at nightfall on Saturday, October 22, 4004 BC, in the proleptic Julian calendar, near the autumnal equinox. He elsewhere dates the time to 6 pm. Lightfoot similarly deduced that Creation began at nightfall near the autumnal equinox, but in the year 3929 BC.
Ussher’s proposed date of 4004 BC differed little from other Biblically based estimates, such as those of Jose ben Halafta (3761 BC), Bede (3952 BC), Ussher’s near-contemporary Scaliger (3949 BC), Johannes Kepler (3992 BC) or Sir Isaac Newton (c. 4000 BC). Ussher’s specific choice of starting year may have been influenced by the then-widely-held belief that the Earth’s potential duration was 6,000 years (4,000 before the birth of Christ and 2,000 after), corresponding to the six days of Creation, on the grounds that “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8). This view continued to be held as recently as AD 2000,six thousand years after 4004 BC.
The universe then, according to creationists, is 6,019 years old not 5,000 years old. I sent Maher an email and a tweet about his inaccurate date. He did not respond.
Here’s why this matters. We who think the universe is 14 billions years old often criticize creationists for playing loose with the facts. I know, the difference between 6,019 and 5,000 is just 1,019 years, but we should do our best to accurately represent our enemy. If atheists and scientists are going to do battle with creationists, then the least they can do is know what their enemy believes, Far too often, atheists say things about Evangelical beliefs that are not true. They read a meme or see something on Facebook or Twitter and they assume that what they read is correct. We make ourselves look bad when we misstate our opponents beliefs.
Last Saturday, Ohio State thumped Wisconsin 59-0 in the Big Ten Conference football title game. This impressive win was enough to propel Ohio State into the National Championship playoff. They will play Alabama on New Year’s Day. Texas Christian University, along with Baylor University are outraged that their teams did not make it into the final four. Before the Big Ten Conference game, Texas Christian held the number 3 spot. Ohio State bumped them out of the playoff. Fans of Texas Christian, Baylor, and the Big 12 Conference took to social media, blogs, and sports news sites to express their outrage over their team and conference being slighted. The outraged pointed out why Ohio State didn’t deserve a playoff spot, often using abusive, childish, and derogatory language.
Last night, Dan Barker appeared on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show to register his outrage over a restaurant giving patrons who say a prayer a discount. Barker’s Freedom from Religion Foundation sent a threatening letter to the restaurant demanding they stop their prayer discount immediately. Jordan Klepper made a mockery of Barker and the Freedom From Religion Foundation and I, as a member of the Foundation, was quite embarrassed.
President Obama can’t break wind in a White House bathroom without Fox News being outraged over his fartiness. Fox has expressed indignant outrage over everything from the President’s wardrobe to his children acting like teenagers. Every day, there is a new outrage at Fox News, end of the world wars on Christmas and Christianity.
And then there’s the Evangelicals. Is there anyone more offended, upset, and outraged than Evangelicals? From Worldnet Daily to James Dobson to Franklin Graham to John Piper to John Hagee to Phyllis Schlafly, Evangelical talking heads take to social media, their blogs, and ministry websites to express outrage over same-sex marriage, abortion, birth control, immigration, Xmas, the minimum wage, and countless other things that they are sure are condemned in the Bible. Why God is outraged and so are they! They have even convinced themselves that they are a persecuted remnant. Atheists, humanists, socialists, communists, secularists, and Democrats have taken a secret blood oath to destroy Christian America. Why any day now, Evangelicals will be rounded up and send off to concentration camps, or so the paranoid among them think.
I don’t know about you, but I am tired of all the fake outrage. It seems we have lost all sense of proportion. Even when there is an element of truth in a person or groups outrage, like in the case where the restaurant IS violating the law by only offering a discount to those who say a religious prayer, it seems that many people give every outrage equal weight. Result? Someone mentioning the Christian God at a high school graduation is equivalent to Mexican immigrants dying in the Sonoran Desert because of draconian, immoral immigration policies.
Everyone is so busy showing their outrage by posting to Facebook or Twitter and asking their friends to click like or retweet that they never consider how insignificant and petty their outrage is. As our climate warms and corporations continue to buy Congress, countless Americans are outraged over the series ending finale of Sons of Anarchy. As we fight a global war against a ginned up enemy called terrorism and countless civilians continue to be slaughtered in the Middle East and Africa, far too many Americans spend their time being outraged over their singer not winning The Voice.
Count me as one person who is outraged over the outraged. Is this what we what become, a petty populous indifferent and ignorant of our surroundings, more concerned over posting a bad restaurant review on Yelp than we are the future of the human race? If this is so, I wonder if there will even be a future for us to hope for. We are going to kill ourselves one tweet and like at a time.
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
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