Recorded some years ago, but still wonderful and even more explicit on Eric’s earlier article:
Man I love Penn & Teller. Even though I’m one of those crazy religious types that they don’t like. I think it’s because as a child I always looked for people who were trying to fool me, and thus magicians always annoyed the crap out of me.
I felt the same way about Santa Claus: I felt deeply betrayed by all the adults around me when I became certain there was no Santa Claus. Especially when I asked them about it and they seemed angered by my inquiries. All I wanted was the truth, dammit, and they seemed offended when I asked for it.
Whether I agree with Penn & Teller any particular political or philosophical point is irrelevant: what I love best about this duo is that they’ll always admit what they’re doing and, most of the time, will reveal at least part of how they create their illusions.
I always want to know how the trick is done. Always, always, always.
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They? I know Penn is a hard libertarian, and they all seem to hate the religiously devout, but I’ve never heard Teller say anything.
Ever. About anything. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the man speak.
However, since they both did Bullshit, I guess they’re on the same page about a lot of stuff. I don’t know for sure though.
Well, part of their act is that Penn does all the talking. It’s been that way for like 20 years with them.
Penn has in many forums stated that they–both of them–are atheist libertariains. He’s made no bones about it, and been very explicit with it.
And, he’s also been explicit that Teller remains silent as part of the act, but that when Penn says such things, he’s speaking for "they." So when he says "we’re atheist libertariains," I take him at his word that he’s speaking for both of them.
I thought this was interesting. Obviously, he’s not converting, but I agree with The Anchoress that he seemed moved by the experience and I think this is golden:
“How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible, and not tell them that?â€
TexasAg03′s last blog post..Big Moon
Not a bad little video. However, I think it’s telling about how deeply he’s really probed the Bible when he thinks Psalms is in the New Testament.
Just remember that when you want to call him, as The Anchoress does, insightful and a deep thinker. The largest and one of the most popular books in the Bible he placed in the wrong half.
Insight and thinking doesn’t mean a lick if it brings you to the wrong conclusions. It just means you’ve spend a lot of hard work going the wrong way.
I’m not saying this to tear the man down but to point out that there is an answer to the question of God’s existence and there are a lot of sincere, insightful, and thoughtful people on each side and someone has to be right. That means someone, no matter how well-meaning and articulate, got it very wrong.
"Just remember that when you want to call him, as The Anchoress does, insightful and a deep thinker. The largest and one of the most popular books in the Bible he placed in the wrong half."
That has nothing to do with either the insight or depth of his thinking, but rather the depth of his knowledge. And for something like the layout of the bible, that’s really a matter of who taught him when he was a child. If he was raised by atheists, there’d be no reason for him to know the layout of the bible, and yet his thinking on subjects like theism versus atheism can be just as profound.
(I don’t claim that they are; I haven’t seen much of Penn’s talking on the subject.)
So, what you’re saying then, he can come to a thoughtful conclusion the existence of the Judaeo-Christian God without ever having read the Bible because he came to a conclusion on theism vs. atheism? A decision on the general is a decision on the specific? Hell, I think generally liberalism is wrong but at least I’m willing to take in on an issue by issue basis.
I’m sorry but you don’t have to have a religious background to know that the Psalms are an Old Testament book. If he’s wrong on something so widely known, how really thoughtful can he be on the issue of theism as it relates to Judaeo-Christian thought?
You want to defend the guy, that’s your right. I’m just not buying into the whole deep thinker sphiel.
And it’s not on this issue alone I hang my hat on. I’ve seen a number of his Bullshit episodes and his logic don’t track as well as he’d like it to.
Kevin,
What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
Kevin: I think he can come to a thoughtful conclusion about the existence of ANY God, Judeo/Christian/Muslim/Bahai or any other set of proposed deities, without knowing any one particular holy book or book collection in depth.
Just to twist it around, you don’t seem to have read the entire Koran. Is it therefore possible for you to come to any thoughtful conclusions about Islam and its truth or falsity? The same might be said of Hinduism and their Baghavad-Ghita, the books that survive of the early Zoroastrians (who were monotheists around the same time the Jews were), or the Talmud. Or the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
I’ve read all of the New Testament and large swaths of the Old; if I were really a hard-core Catholic I’d go to Mass every single day, because if you do then over the course of a year every single verse in the entire Old Testament and the entire New Testament (INCLUDING all of the "apocryphal" books, but excluding Revelation, which is considered appropriate for separate study because no one TRULY understands that book).
Yet if I don’t go to Mass every day, and I don’t actually read every single verse of the Bible (gosh it gets hard in the O.T. once you get into those damned "begats"), can I come to any firm conclusions?
The atheist’s burden is hard in some ways, but easier in others: if Penn didn’t grow up in a Christian home, or grew up in a home with minimal religious life like so many other people do, then it’s very very easy for him to sustain a view that says all religions are false. To prove anything to him, you have it incumbent upon yourself to explain why YOUR Christian faith is superior to all the others, why YOUR Holy Book is superior to the others and deserves his special attention. Why should he think the Bible is more important than the Baghavad-Ghita? Or the Talmud? If you can’t give him a compelling answer, other than "well our religion is the most popular," then, that’s not a really strong answer is it? Madonna is the most popular female recording artist on the planet–does that mean you have to be intimately familiar with her entire catalogue of CDs before you can judge whether she’s any good or not?
Which is a point I think you’re missing: this one Christian got through to Penn better than (apparently) anyone else had done to date in all of Penn’s 53 years on Earth. With a few simple words, and a simple gesture offered out of simple friendship and concern, really MOVED Penn. And Penn is a deep enough thinker that he was able to say, "Wow, you know, if I believed what you believed, of course it would be terrible of me not to at least try to help you."
That IS a deep thought on his part. Waaaay deeper than most of the people I meet who say they "hate being proselytized." He just got proselytized by this guy, and thought hard enough about what the guy was saying to him that it really made him think–and he’s a deep enough thinker to have actually tried to understand where the proselytizer was coming from, without calling the proselytizer a zombie, a fool, or anything else but a sincere human being. That’s way deeper than most atheists in my experience. (I said MOST.)
Now having said all that, I might also say that he doesn’t lose his "deep thinker" status just because he flubs a line. Maybe he knew it was in the Old Testament but because he hadn’t thought about all this stuff in a long time, he didn’t remember at that exact moment. I suspect that if someone had said, "no, Psalms is in the O.T." he’d have probably said, "Oh, yeah, right, I kinda lose track of that," you’d have no beef. Psalms is one of those books that’s especially wonderful, because Christians, Jews, Mormons, Muslims, and Bahai all frickin’ love it. That’s part of why the Gideon people were so clever: they wanted an edition that was easy to fit in your shirt pocket, and they couldn’t do that if they included the ENTIRE O.T., but they picked the one book in the Old Testament that practically EVERYONE loves. So they put out "New Testament Plus Psalms" as a handy edition to work from. I’ve seen a few copies. That’s obviously what the guy gave Penn.
Also, possibly he just had a brain fart and said "new" when he meant "old." I mean, dude, he was just Video Blogging and talking off the top of his head.
Ultimately, here’s this big-time celebrity with a thousand other things on his mind, and he was moved by one simple gesture by a fan. That shows a depth of character there. Go with that, eh?
Waaaay too long, Dean. I’m not going to read a treatise by you in response to a paragraph or so by me. I don’t have the time. Brevity is the soul of wit. Keep it short and to the point please.
See, short and to the point.  I like that. I don’t need to set aside a block of time to worry about reading a comment on Penn and Teller, two people I’m not really all that interested in talk in depth about.
OK Kev, here’s short and to the point:
He at least thought hard about it. No?
Kevin,
You’re still confusing knowledge and wisdom.
Or possibly you’re just hung up on the idea that the bible is self-evidently true. Is that it?
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