I loved the three brothers - Dooleys? - singing, hair and all. Totally charming even if a bit loopy around the edges. And very diplomatic. I like the fact that they gently put Denton in his place when he started asking about Islam. “Brother, you need to read the Koran”. Denton mumbles. “Have you read the Koran?” Denton had to admit he hadn’t.

In your place Denton.

On the other hand, enjoyed Denton and the old gold dust (er it’s a substance not known to man) on the hand trick from that shyster. Noticed how shyster grabbed his hand and drew it over suddenly etc etc. And Denton politely but firmly said he didn’t see anything. Hee.

Ah Leon, I speak from experience! Quite a long discussion I had about God with two work colleagues ended with a very long-winded description of the Rapture, followed by a discussion between themselves as to when it was going to occur so that they could make appropriate arrangements re their earthly affairs. And these were just your average committed dinki-di Aussie christians…

On the train home, I read an excellent New Yorker essay that makes some of the same points you do, and amplifies them:

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/05/21/070521crbo_books_gottlieb/

One practical problem for antireligious writers is the diversity of religious views. However carefully a skeptic frames his attacks, he will be told that what people in fact believe is something different. For example, when Terry Eagleton, a British critic who has been a professor of English at Oxford, lambasted Dawkins’s “The God Delusion� in the London Review of Books, he wrote that “card-carrying rationalists� like Dawkins “invariably come up with vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince.� That is unfair, because millions of the faithful around the world believe things that would make a first-year theology student wince. A large survey in 2001 found that more than half of American Catholics, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, and Presbyterians believed that Jesus sinned—thus rejecting a central dogma of their own churches.

It’s one problem would be that it lacks philosophical rigour, but it covers a lot of ground and the writing is thoroughly enjoyable.

‘What set off the big bang’ is a scientific question and the answer would be made from the available evidence, but it would be some physical process, not a supernatural being. On a religious level, positing God as the entity who pushes the cosmic button and sits back, is silly. ‘Why’ there was a big bang is a more interesting question that has interesting implications, one of these implications possibly being the existence of a deity.

Yes, ‘why’ is an interesting question, and it’s not a scientific question really, as it is not meant to be answered by science, which is all I was really trying to get at in the first place.

It is because of this ‘why’ that I get highly frustrated at those who insist that absolutely no way is there a God. Firstly, religious faith is a pretty broad thing. Even among Christians there is no way that all take the Bible as a literal history of the earth. Even the Catholic church for all its anachronisms, seems comfortable with scientific fact at this point. And why not?

I’m borderline agnostic myself, but inclined to think that while any God is pretty much unknowable, that does not disprove him/her/it.

Anyway most religious questions are only concerned with the cosmic in terms of what it means for how humans should live. That’s what I meant about science and religion being concerned with very different questions, and why I don’t see the expansion of scientific knowledge as some sort of ‘threat’ to spirituality. Either there is a deity, or there isn’t. If there is, that being is no more or less present now than he/she/it was in 1850.

Homosexuals are an abomination [boooo!]
but I like fly fishing [yayyyyy!]

Violence in the Middle East will usher in the rapture [booo!]
but I absolutely adored the later symphonies of Beethoven [yayyyyy!]

re: the three gents, I felt I was looking at a Beastie Boys video circa 2018.

Denton remained totally genial throughout the entire program, whereas Dawkins’ two main interviews (with Ted Haggard and the convert to Islam from New York) became heated very quickly.

St Margaret, I don’t really think that rapture stuff is too relevant to Australia. The group most often considered “fundies” in Australia besides Charismatics - Sydney Anglicans - are almost entirely amillenial. A lot of elements of the fundamentalist stereotype - rapture, cheesy cartoons, comics - are pretty distinctly American.

Also, do they really think atheists are all that concerned with theory? I just wished they’d stop banging on about God and smell the coffee.

I liked their singing too.

The woman married 8 times only had all those marriages (except the last) before she was ‘born again’, and that’s part of her story about how she believes her faith has changed and benefited her life, helping her settle down in a stable marriage. If it works for her, half her luck.

I don’t mind religious people saying “hey, this worked for me”. It’s the second part, always implied and often strenuously asserted “so I just know it will work for you too”. Where is the evidence that what works for one will work for everybody, in any field of human endeavour?

Then there’s the third most invidious part:”so we need lots of laws to make you do this because you’ll thank us one day, honest”.

I’m guessing Denton asked them about the hair ? Why pick on them? There was plenty of hair issues around. One of the women, who mentioned she had been married 8 times!, whilst espousing family values, (natch) had very serious hair.

Those three brothers seemed charming old codgers and I was drawn to them when I heard them singing from the other room. They sang so sweet that I’d put up with a whole lot of their holy rollin’ nonsense to hear them sing on sunday.

But really, I don’t see how the big bang or what physical events happened before are very interesting or significant to religion. It’s amidst the universe that grows and changes after the big bang (and before the Gnab Gib), and all the galaxies and planets and stars and suns and worlds and meteors and comets and people and things that populate that universe with meaning that you’d probably find the most fertile ground for religious considerations.

In any case, I find it all a bit depressing, as the whole question of faith does not fit in any way into one of two neat boxes: the guy in Sunday night’s doco vs. the freaks at the Jesus convention. It just doesn’t.

What about those of us who have no trouble with evolutionary theory but just find ourselves asking, ok, and so who/what set off the chain reaction (dated from the Big Bang, if necessary)? And why?

I go along with those comments tigtog. My fundy consumption level runs to about 45 minutes. Then I start reaching for the door stop. It would have been much improved if it ran over 2 weeks.

If they had of been cleverer, they would run 45 mins of it, then the first part of Dawkins on the one night.

A perfect mix?

Also, these weren’t typical Denton interviews: in the ‘Enough Rope’ scenarios, Denton typically talked to odd characters about life in general; here, he was talking to God Bothers at a God Botherer Convention, about God. It’s a scenario that tends to reinforce stereotypes and not really inform us much about people: we might have walked away feeling much more sympathetic to the characters if we saw them at home, or if we had learned that (say) this guy really loved fly-fishing, or this lady absolutely adored the later symphonies of Beethoven (etc, etc).

The questions were a little odd, too - was there really any point to asking the puppet thing whether it ‘liked’ George Bush? This sort of question was always, without fail, answered by the respondents with ‘Yes, but George Bush is an imperfect human, and I’m sure he’s doing the best job he can’. They probably would have answered the same thing if a Democrat President was in power. Remember, many of these folks would probably also believe that *everything* that happens in the world was pre-destined by God - so obviously Democrat presidencies are ‘predestined’ just as much as Republican presidencies.

Denton is a sensitive and intelligent interviewer, but also a comedian who knows his audience - I think he wanted to make some gentle fun with the typical stereotype of the right-wing Bible-belt fundamentalist. When this premiered in Melbourne, it was shown at the Nova in Carlton, and Denton gave a talk. Carlton is a nice suburb, and the Nova is a decent cinema, but these days it’s definitely a hang-out for the inner-city left. Yep, I think Denton was playing to the audience.

But the men and women of blind faith that Denton provided performance space for, are rich and powerful players in an American Theocracy. Which isn’t quite so funny. When god’s on your side in the league they play in, anything goes. Just ask their President.

Anyway, the same picture is on the article linked to in the ABC-TV text below the spot where the picutre should be. It’s tiny, anyway, so you can’t properly see the astonishing hair. The Age has a better size picture with their review

Annmareer Bellman thought it was too long and too dull. Maybe it was a bit long, but I though Denton did a very good job of letting his subjects speak for themselves.

His last formal question was probably the best too. What if a muslim had the same experience and was convinced they too were spoken to by God? (or something to that effect) The response? No, that is not the word of God.

How can anybody argue with that bent logic???

It seemed like that guy in the red shirt in particular considered himself to be some sort of profound, philosophical theologian, preaching like he was God himself. Fortunately, most of us here in Oz see them for what they are, narrow minded, intolerant old wowsers, irrelevant to everyone else outside of that insular Bible belt section of the USA, with shocking bloody hair.