I must have demons on the brain today. Reader Miss May sent me this picture, and I’ve verified the quotes from Goodreads and Joyce Meyer’s document, “Helping your kids win the battle in their mind.”
Meyer is one of America’s most famous religious speakers, a Charismatic Christian who, of course, lives lavishly with several homes and a private jet. Her book on the Battlefield of the Mind for Teens has 4.5 stars on Amazon.
Here’s a similar statement from a man known for his humility, who refuses to live lavishly. I made this slide for my talk in Kamloops, and the quote comes from a radio broadcast last November by the Pope:
The denigration of reason in favor of obedience and faith is, of course, a constant strain in Christianity, both Catholic and otherwise. Nobody made more statements about the dangers of reason than Martin Luther. (Remember, too, that Francis appears to believe in Satan.)
h/t: Miss May
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‘Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:’
From ‘The Charge of The Light Brigade’
I’d rather charge headlong into cannon fore than worship these idiotic gods.
‘fire’…
“Don’t reason, just obey” is the creed of totalitarians like Hitler and Stalin.
Just following orders …
I can’t adequately describe my disgust of Joyce Meyer in a civil manner. I am morbidly curious about whether or not she believes her own drivel or if she is purely a money grubbing carny.
As is so typical her behavior demonstrates that she does not believe that her admonishment about avoiding reasoning applies to her. Unfortunately for all, not only does her reasoning suck, but when you reason about evidentially unfounded crap it doesn’t matter how well you reason anyway. You still end up with crap. Toxic crap in this case.
I’ve got no problem classifying this as child abuse. We have laws requiring Rage Against The Machine to have warning labels on their CDs, pure bullshit, but Meyer’s stuff should have warning labels on every page.
That’s a very good point about RATM!
Religion began when the first scoundrel met the first fool.
– Voltaire
You have everything right about her. The part that kills me is that when she’s preaching, she constantly tells the listener exactly what’s on god’s mind and what he means by everything that happens in the world and what god had in mind when the bible was written because although she won’t tell you that god wrote the bible, she will tell you he inspired every word. And she’s the one who can tell us what he meant to say. She also knows what’s on everyone else’s mind. She will tell you what John the Baptist was thinking when he waded into the water. Egotistical only begins to explain her. Narcissistic is more like it. If she believes the things she say then she is psychotically delusional. If she doesn’t, she is a Charlatan and yes, a child abuser. And an adult abuser.
But she’s such a sweet looking person, she must have our best interests at heart!
Maybe you’re right. But don’t look into her eyes.
Have you ever noticed that her eyes look just like Michelle Bachmann’s?
Like limpid pools of stingent darkeness?
I would ditch limpid pools and replace with avaricious pits.
I think that does work better.
Your last point really struck me as highlighting the insanity of religion: most people, even religious people, will condemn violence committed in the name of religion. They may try to explain away the religious causation, but at least they get that violence is bad.
OTOH, we have actual laws based on the idea that some magic words – incantations – will destroy civilization if the wrong people hear them. That’s insanity. Especially when you consider that it should be bloody obvious that eschewing reason in fact is a sure ticket to all sorts of awfulness.
To go OT, I can’t stand the argument some Puritans make that people who swear have an impoverished vocabulary. That’s ridiculous. Swearing serves to convey just how upset you are and how seriously the offender should take you. If I were to try to express my anger with learned, polysyllabic gentility, people wouldn’t think I was upset as I really was.
In closing: fuck Joyce Meyer!
HaHahaha . . .
Regarding swearing means lack of vocabulary, Christopher Hitchens seems like a good example to demolish that bit of wishful rationalization.
Stepehn Fry, too.
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Oh yes. It would be worth it to draw Stephen Fry’s ire just to hear what he has to say about it.
Him, too…
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It takes not just a great vocabulary, but great writing skills to be able to convey the same level of anger and disgust as a shitfuck here and a fuckshit there can convey. I obviously lack those skills.
Why not be efficient? The hallmark of a poor engineer is an overly complicated design.
A well placed “fuck off” is hard to beat. Especially in response to an offensive blow hard who thinks that as long as they aren’t using curse words they somehow hold the moral high ground regardless of how assholish they are being.
That’s the flip side of what you have pointed out here. You don’t have to use curse words in order to qualify as an offensive prick. If the meaning is the same the words themselves don’t matter.
But this is Jerry’s house, and I respect his standards, so I really should stop with the curse words!
Besides which, I simply disagree.
No concoction of words acceptable in polite conversation will convey the same message as “fuck!” Words like “fuck” exist for a reason.
I don’t object to cussin’, but I do get annoyed when it is overdone. Hearing someone use the adjective “fuckin'” in every sentence is as annoying (and meaningless) as hearing someone say “like, ya know” in every sentence. Words like “fuck” do exist for a reason, but using them so often that they become routine negates the reason for using them. I agree with Dorothy Parker, who said that vulgarity, like good china, should only be brought out on special occasions. (Not that I always follow that advice.)
Agree
Absolutely agree with the above and Dorothy Parker. Words like ‘fuck’ or ‘oh shit’ – used as expletives in the right context – can give flavour to language the same way spice does to a recipe. You wouldn’t want spice with everything but it’s definitely missed if it’s not there when needed.
And compared to most preachers on TV, she comes across as the most sensible and level-headed. (:P)
That’s why she’s so popular and so dangerous. She ‘comes across’ as the most sensible and level-headed because she appears to be showing her logic as she goes along and she uses vocal inflection that make her sound reasonable, so when she reaches her conclusion the audience is right there with her as if they thought of it. But she is not sensible or level-headed and certainly not logical. She’s a nut.
Yet few people were more curious than the profoundly religious Isaac Newton.
Profoundly but heterodoxly, though.
Come on somebody! Let me have some pithy answers to religionists who bring up Newton.
Being openly non-religious in those times was not good for your health.
Newton was one of the greatest scientific geniuses who ever lived, but think of how much more he might have accomplished if he hadn’t been hobbled by Chistianity.
It matters not what Newton believed, but what he could and did show as fact. He thought alchemy would work. He was wrong in that, so what makes one think he was right in one more silly thing like religion?
Newton, undoubted genius though he may have been, also believed in astrology and alchemy and devoted much of his life to discovering the secret of The Philosopher’s Stone.
All of which just goes to show that even great minds can be wrong about this or that and why arguments should be judged on their merits, not the status of the person making them.
Bingo!
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Newton wasn’t a Christian. He believed he had a personal revelation from God that the divinity of Jesus was a heresy.
Of course, modern xtians are so fuzzy brained that they either forget or don’t realize that the primary issue for xtians isn’t just belief in God but belief in Jesus as the Savior.
I have told people that while Newton was both religious AND a scientist, he only was successful as a scientist when he shut the book of God (the Bible) and opened the book of Nature.
It is my information that Newton is best described as an Arian, which belief is considered heresy in most Christian denominations.
That is correct, colnago80.
Well yeah, but imagine what he could have done if he’d have spent the time that he used for religious study (a lot) on something more useful.
Wow! The mind boggles. Thanks Chris.
When I was a teenager I was fed the line, “Don’t reason, just believe.” It made me question my own judgement, my ability to perceive reality. It was a recipe for insanity. If you can’t believe in your own perceptions, what can you believe in?
Yes, but what about that great song “Reason to Believe”? 🙂
“If I listened long enough to you
I’d find a way to believe that it’s all true
Knowing that you lied straight-faced while I cried
Still I look to find a reason to believe”
This is obviously referring to [Rod Stewart’s] trust in his girlfriend, nothing to do with Belief in any gods.
This is absolutely right. It’s deeply insidious.
Wasn’t it Rick Santorum who said it was dangerous to send your (Xian) kids to college, where they would learn about things other than religion and learn to think critically?
I think his specific point was that they entered college as believers and left as non-believers. See reason does work! (For some people, some of the time.) Even Santorum disagrees with the accomodationists.
if the spirit of curiosity is not a good spirit, how does the Pope explain the 1.8 meter telescope the Vatican Observatory maintains in Arizona? Is it there just for the off chance to see angels flying to and from heaven?
Perhaps it’s for spotting nightjars. Mt. Graham has Mexican whip-poor-wills.
In the event of aliens, they’ll be waiting with holy water in one hand and a baptismal certificate in the other.
Yes, but what if the aliens are coming here to convert us to !*their*! religion? This was the premise of a hilarious low-budget B-movie in the 1990s called “Invasion of the Space Preachers”.
Curiosity killed the CATholic?
Another short salvo in the aeons long war of attrition against the ever present foe called ‘Curiosity’.
These shits would have us be blanks slates for them to write on, to direct and ultimately, to own. Screw em.
It’s talk like this that leads to pseudoscience. Also revolutions.
Also massive suffering and nastiness.
Wait, this is not satirical or exaggerated? Besides, how does one know what [insert your preferred deity here] wants? Ah, right, the people who know [insert your preferred deity here]’s will. Oh well.
“What God leads a person to do does not always make logical sense to his mind”
Right.
“Sutcliffe regularly saw prostitutes in Leeds and Bradford. His obsession with killing female street-based prostitutes seems to have originated with an argument over payment, but he later claimed to have been sent on a mission to kill prostitutes by the voice of God. In a meeting with his family shortly after his arrest he was heard to say that “the women I killed were filth – bastard prostitutes who were littering the streets. I was just cleaning up the place a bit.””
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sutcliffe
Just one of many
You can go farther back than Martin Luther:
“For it is written, I will destroy the wisedome of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.
Where is the wise? where is the Scribe? where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisedome of this world?”
Paulus, 1. Corinthians 1:19-20
“Hence men go on to search out the hidden powers of nature (which is besides our end), which to know profits not, and wherein men desire nothing but to know.”
Augustine Confessiones 10.35.55
“We don’t want to split ourselves equally between Christ and the world. Rather than lapsing and ephemeral goods, eternal bliss shall be ours.”
Hieronymus, Epistulae 107, 4.9
“After Jesus Christ, we have no need for inquiry. If we believe, we don’t desire anything beyond belief.”
Tertullian, De praescriptione haereticorum 7.14
“God said it; we believe it; that settles it.”- On the marquee of a Texas Baptist Church.
Luke 14.33 is the ultimate response to this bit of religious bullshit: “So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.”
It’s almost worth wasting the time to talk to a religious fanatic just to watch them try to explain away this verse, which comes directly from the mouth of Jesus (in their theology).
“…which to know profits not…”
Hmm. What was the infant mortality rate or average life expectancy in Augustine’s day?
All those babies got to join Jesus sooner.
http://www.theonion.com/video/report-leading-cause-of-death-in-us-is-god-needing,35522/
Probably not, if they hadn’t been baptised…
Until the Mormons came along…
The books of the idiot Joyce Meyer were instrumental in the choice of my Christian wife of 25 years to leave me… a move she later regretted.
Among the gems found in JM’s books is this: “You must decide to believe.”
What idiocy. Any chosen belief is a phoney belief. Also, any belief which was chosen presumably did not have enough evidence supporting it for it to be believed automatically.
After all, the Original Sin was eating from the Tree of Knowledge.
Or, from our pagan forebears, it was curiosity that opened Pandora’s box.
One of the reasons elites have always found organized religion useful is as a weapon against questioning the way things are, and wondering how they could be instead.
While I think it is stupid to claim credit for another person’s virtues merely because you share some trait with them* (like nationality or sex), I do wear it as a badge of honor that women in both myths are responsible for bringing knowledge to the human race.
*OTOH, both myths try to blame all the pain suffering and evils of this world on women, so I consider it reclaiming my birthright…
Nice point. 🙂
Karl Marx said it best, religion is the opiate of the people.
So, Joyce, it was satan who was teaching the logic course I took in college? Damn, I should have looked closer to see whether he had horns!
It has always seemed to me that Satan was the one character that had his head on fairly straight.
Now Yoda, that little bastard is truly what a devil is supposed to be.
Another Babble quote (I forget the location): “He who increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow.”
Any intelligent person who closely examines this mad world of the “insane, greedy, killer monkeys” is BOUND to end up sad and confused; if you’re not, you probably AREN’T thinking!
Ecclesiastes 1.18
Reason is religion’s greatest threat hence the proscription.
In reason I trust.
Speaking of Satan, maybe it was the devil himself that made Kevin Lowery violate the nation’s Constitution for if Lowery pledged allegiance to the nation, surely he wouldn’t otherwise do such a thing.
“The devil he has a slippery shoe and if you don’t watch out he’ll slip it on you.”
I think Joyce Meyer is trying to reason. OMg, she is Satan!!!
From an etching by Goya: “The sleep of reason brings forth monsters.”
“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves”
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_15101998_fides-et-ratio_en.html
In light of Pope Francis’ remarks, I’m now thoroughly confused! Oh wait, he said this would happen, therefore God. Henceforth, this shall be known as The Argument from Obfuscation.
Martin Luther is on record as saying that reason is the ENEMY of faith. I think he was spot on. But he was wrong to believe that faith is a good thing.
Hmmm…Maybe if Pope Frank was around 500 years ago, this whole nasty schism and centuries of sectarian violence could’ve been avoided. Nah, who am I kidding?
I’m amazed at how some kids or 20 yr olds and older obey their parents wishes.Take the Dugger family of 19 kids you know.Well they won’t kiss until the wedding day or so it seems in the show.They never seem to have a problem with this and just go along.
that’s because they are marrying to produce children for their “army”, not for love. Not hard to not kiss someone you don’t care about but were assigned.
I grew up a Jehovah’s Witness and this “line of reasoning,” to use an ironic phrase, is pushed hard in that cult. “do not lean upon your own understanding” and “the heart is treacherous” are two oft repeated platitudes meant to shut down a member who has questions, or disagrees with doctrine. Everyone is to obey the “governing body” (the handful of leaders of the group) and only they are allowed to “lean on their own understanding.”
They too warn about sending your kids to college. They liken it to being on a life raft surrounded by sharks, and then sending your child to swim for shore even though you know help is coming. The sharks of course being wicked things like evolution, religious studies, secular history, and philosophy. Anything that will help them learn to reason on their own, or contradict the “governing body’s” bizarre twisted version of history. Education is strongly discouraged. Reasoning for yourself is outright banned, punishable by institutionalized shunning by everyone including your own family.
The source for all of this is Proverbs 3.5-6, which I won’t dignify by typing out (or even cutting and pasting).
When I make up my list of ten most destructive bible verses, that will surely make the final cut.
Joyce wrote a manual to demonstrate how poor reasoning results in illogical conclusions. She succeeded spectacularly. Hence, four and a half stars.
What? She didn’t intend to provide an illustrative example of shit thinking? Oh.
Never mind.
Hey Pope, what leads to confusion is you not knowing what you’re talking about. Stick to social work and stop trying so hard to impart wise words. You’re more inspirational with your mouth closed.
What’s amazing is that I have been saying the same things as Ms. Meyer on my blog and Twitter, but, per Poe’s Law, there is real doubt on whether I’m a parody of extremism.
I’d say one must wonder whether she’s a subtle parody of extremism, but no, she really seems to mean it.
On which: Wow. WOW.
Joyce Meyer, the classic verminous TrueChristian, who must do her best at trying to tell others not to think because if they did, they’d not buy her books.
Indeed, if what Christians claim is true, their god does make them do stupid things, like kill their children because God said to and give their money to parasites like Meyer
I think the pope may be a closet Witness!
I recently came across a quote from thriller author Ira Levin who regretted he had contributed to the increase of belief in Satan in America through writing “Rosemary’s Baby”. Unlike the novelist who wrote “The Exorcist” (a believing Catholic and believer in Intelligent Design), Levin was a thorough non-believer who just thought he was writing an engaging thriller.
He was quoted in 2002 as saying
““I feel guilty that ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ led to ‘The Exorcist,’ ‘The Omen,’ A whole generation has been exposed, has more belief in Satan. I don’t believe in Satan. And I feel that the strong fundamentalism we have would not be as strong if there hadn’t been so many of these books […] Of course, I didn’t send back any of the royalty checks.”” (Source: New York Times via Wikipedia article on Levin).
Time for a Marvin-ism (via the mind and pen of DNA) : “It gives me a headache to think down to that level.”
Spiritual lobotomy – We don’t need no stinkin surgery!
as re “Nobody made more statements about the dangers of reason than Martin Luther,” Dr Rosalind Miles on page 102 of “The Sins of the Mothers,” in her Women’s History of the World, states of among the many of Martin Luther’s statements thus against 53% of the human World, “… … woman was no more than a machine to make babies for him.”
An oft repeated precept among Martin Luther’s dicta re that least reasonable ( o’course ) of all demographics: female human beings, “Let them bear children TILL THEY .D.I.E. OF IT. .T.H.A.T. is what they are for.”
Blue
Don’t reason!
Just .. oh .. pay!
Meyer has an interesting perception of reality. Or should that be delusional??
Oh really?
http://www.vintagebarbies.net/photos/Picture%20or%20Video%20069.jpg
Yet the religious will often use reason to explain why competing claims about reality from other religions are false. So apparently, religions other than the one you believe in are not allowed to the use the “ignore reason, what we tell you about God may not always make logical sense” argument.
I would really like to see a debate involving two fervent believers of competing religions. A Mormon vs. a Catholic, or a Baptist vs. a Shi’a Muslim. I would love to see how, since they both rely on faith, they would support their truth propositions.
Would it descend into a shouting match about whose Sensus Divinitatus is better calibrated?
I recall a line from Ivanhoe, made by the inquisitor during the trial of Rebecca…
“Reason is the tool of the Devil, used to make us doubt our faith.”
I don’t think there is any scripture in support of knowledge. Joyce Meyer is just following in the long tradition of the church that has required people to believe because it is impossible and by all standards to remain fools
Good post, but there’s a typo in the title (unless it’s an ironic subtlety lost on me!) – “moar” should be “more”, no?
It’s a mispelling used for LOLs on teh interwebs. (see what I did there – using context to explain the context). Here is more (or moar).
Like a bunch of Morans hoping for Happy Days ahead.
Reblogged this on The Atheist .