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Posted on 01/20/2003 3:07:38 PM PST by Houmatt
The magic-comedy team of Penn & Teller has performed a stunt parodying the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, offending some attendees of a major magicians' convention, reports columnist Norm Clarke of the Las Vegas Review.
The skit, performed last week in Las Vegas, included Teller, dressed as Christ on a full-size cross, entering the room on a cart. According to the column, a midget dressed as an angel "performed a simulated sex act on the near-naked Teller." Penn, in a Roman gladiator costume, unveiled the scene by pulling away a "Shroud of Turin" that covered the cross.
A group of people attending the event, billed as a roast of magician Amazing Johnathan, walked out in protest, says Clarke.
According to Rick Neiswonger, a longtime magician and marketing executive, said "the majority" of the 400 who attended the roast were offended.
"They (organizers) warned everybody that something offensive was going to happen, but my God, where do you draw the line? … This was beyond bad taste," Neiswonger told the Review.
One magician, Lance Burton, defended the stunt in an address at the finale luncheon of the conference.
"I told them, 'You were warned ahead of time.' It was a roast; it was held late at night (midnight)," he said, according to the Review column. "Penn & Teller are my dear friends and I would take a bullet for them, and you can write that."
Amazing Johnathan told the Review he was aware that a number of what he called "gospel magicians" walked out of the performance.
"This was performance art," said Johnathan. "I know that Penn is a practicing atheist, and I agree with him that Christianity can be dangerous. Look at the Trade Center. That was done in the name of religion."
Clarke said in his column that Penn & Teller declined comment.
There are only individuals -- atheist or otherwise.
It is not true that atheism requires either utilitarianism or hedonism. Rand (an individual) herself subscribed to neither.
I find myself along similar but different objective grounds for atheistic morality.
The question isn't whether you disagree, of course, since you will always disagree. The question is simply whether a reasonable case can be made for an objective morality without need of a mythical diety. The answer is yes.
If you could actually prove that God existed, that might make an interesting case. As it is, you are merely handwaving a mythical creature in an effort to give the appearence of substance to what are, in fact, fanciful arbitrary value judgements.
I believe these verses mean when you pray for those who may never come to the Lord that you leave them more severly convicted or at the very least it gives them some extra attention from God who will someday ultimately judge them for the condition of their hearts!
We can Boycott them, tell them they are wrong, and try to set them right, and of course pray but in the end it is up to the Lord.
I cannot prove God exist, nor can you prove He does not. Therefore we weigh the virtues of the ideologies based on those two assumptions. The one that works is given credence by proxy.
Your very statement ”…to what are, in fact, fanciful arbitrary value judgments” proves my logic. Without an Absolute Moral Authority all morals and values are “fanciful” and “arbitrary”.
So how can you say one man is right and one is wrong? How can you build a society on that? A society with rules and regulations, one with laws against such actions as murder.
You cannot, unless you choose to believe that somehow one man has more rights than another or that a majority can force compliance on penalty of death. And of course neither is “moral”, just what is choosen.
At the very foundation of this country is the concept of all men being created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights. Those rights are inalienable because no man can rightfully take what God has given you. Remove that and you have men ruling men, with no right and no wrong.
Can you tell me how Hitler was not morally justified in killing 3m Jews and 6m Christians, Gypsies and Gays? What made him wrong.
That is illogical, objective incorruptible moral authority must come from outside man.
At level man is corruptible (fallible) therefore nothing he can produce is incorruptible or infallible. Morality is not moral unless it is free of all defects by default.
There is no room for “reasonable” when you are discussing absolutes and without absolutes you have no morality, that is the nature of morality. Morality is absolute “law” by which all may be judged equally, without bias or fallibility.
That is illogical, objective incorruptible moral authority must come from outside man.
At level man is corruptible (fallible) therefore nothing he can produce is incorruptible or infallible. Morality is not moral unless it is free of all defects by default.
There is no room for “reasonable” when you are discussing absolutes and without absolutes you have no morality, that is the nature of morality. Morality is absolute “law” by which all may be judged equally, without bias or fallibility.
I would say that fails Occam's razor. You've invented a God to make your theory work.
Of course a God could be a foundation for an objective truth -- but until you can demonstrate his existance, it is just wishful thinking.
So how can you say one man is right and one is wrong? How can you build a society on that? A society with rules and regulations, one with laws against such actions as murder.
Well, quite clearly humans can organize around any concept, logical or not. So it isn't a question of how you can build a society around any concept -- many societies have been built around rather different philosophical concepts.
If you are asking me what sort of concept I would organize a society around, I would say it would be one of non-contradiction.
Aggression is a contradiction, a logical inconsistency. By aggressing you assert that it is okay to use violence -- hence you have just justified your victim's defense.
As a society we don't really care what motivates murderers or how to convince them not to murder -- since those who do usually go ahead and do it no matter what we say.
Instead we look to morality to find what WE may do in response -- and that is act in self-defense. The aggressor's action justifies the defense against it. To say otherwise is to grant the aggressor a superior status not in evidence.
Reciprocity, the Golden Rule, what have you. These are simple statements of non-contradiction, yet they are the fundamental justification for all responses (i.e. rules) to aggression.
No diety need be involked to see that I may rightly respond to acts of aggression by self-defense.
All men have an equal claim to self-defense. Aggression is special pleading. Aggression is a contradiction to the evidence that all men have equal claims. It is not logically possible to have equal claims when one is an aggressor and one is a victim. The aggressor must necessarily assert a superior claim of authority over the individual of the victim.
I don't need a God to recognize the asymmetry of aggression. And it is not exactly rocket science either. Most individuals in both the animal and human world recognize when they are under attack and that self-defense is called for. No one has to consult the Bible to know that if someone is trying to harm them that they can repulse the force with the best of their ability.
So, along with pretending this never happened, you are implying WND and their actual source, Norm Clarke of the Las Vegas Review-Jounal, are lying.
If at anytime you desire to come out and say it to their faces, you go right ahead.
For the record, I've had dinner with Penn Jillette.
Which shows off your bias against the truth.
Have a good day.
One of my co-workers uses this kind of logic all the time. It's his claim that the net effect of religion on the world has been negative.
While I'm not much of a Christian, I tell him that he's speaking nonsense. "When the Pope issues a fatwa" I tell him, "or when the Mormon Tabernacle choir arm themselves with machine guns and pray for death to the infidel, then we can talk." Until then he should remember that Christianity is the cornerstone of western civilization, and one cannot look at anything good about the west without admitting that Christian thinking has played some part in making it so."
He seemed persuaded, so I figured I was doing pretty good for a guy who hasn't been to church in over a decade.
No, they don't. Some men are objectively better than others. The bad ones need killed, and they have no right to defend themselves.
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