"People like you are still living in what we call the reality-based community. You believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you are studying that reality (judiciously, as you will) we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors, and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."Whether insisting that the United States is "a Christian nation" or that Donald Trump was chosen by God to lead the country, the claims made by Christian fundamentalists have become ever more delusional, challenging the suspension of disbelief required to embrace their ideology. Whether due to a fanatic belief in the Rapture or an insatiable appetite for greed and corruption, many Christians have wrapped themselves in a toxic combination of white supremacy, intense denial, and so-called "family values" in order to claim that they are, in fact, "the real Americans."
A 2017 study published by Neuropsychologia entitled "Biological and Cognitive Underpinnings of Religious Fundamentalism" examined religious fundamentalism in a large sample of penetrating traumatic brain injury patients. Co-authors Wanting Zhong, Irene Cristofori, Joseph Bulbulia, Frank Krueger, and Jordan Grafman noted that:
"Patients with ventromedial prefrontal cortex lesions reported greater fundamentalism, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex lesions increase fundamentalism by reducing cognitive flexibility and openness. These findings indicate that cognitive flexibility and openness are necessary for flexible and adaptive religious commitment, and that such diversity of religious thought is dependent on dlPFC functionality."While the study published in Neuropsychologia has clinical value, one need not have a penetrating brain injury to become brainwashed to the point of abject stupidity (that job belongs to Fox News). If anything, reality is starting to punch holes in the normally indefatigable forces of Christian fundamentalism.
- Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's diplomatic assertions that God put Donald Trump on Earth have tarnished our nation's international image as a society that values logic and science.
- One year following the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the tide seems to be turning against the National Rifle Association which (in addition to being implicated in cooperating with Russia to help tilt the 2016 Presidential election) is in danger of losing its tax-exempt status. The NRA recently announced that its finances were so precarious that the once powerful organization could end up bankrupt.
- South Bend, Indiana's native son, Pete Buttigieg, has put Vice President Mike Pence on the defensive by publicly criticizing Pence's homophobic policies and religious hypocrisy (right-wing Bishop E. W. Jackson is already claiming that Buttigieg's goal is to turn America into a "homocracy").
- Die-hard Christian conservatives like Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Michele Bachmann are sounding more deranged than ever. After the Mueller report focused on how glibly Sanders lied to the press, this clip from the 2018 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner took on new weight.
Among the passengers on our Congressional Ship of Fools is a caucus of morons that includes Republican Representatives Louis Gohmert of Texas, Jim Jordan of Ohio, and Thomas Massie of Kentucky (who can be seen making an utter fool of himself in the following video clip).
Poking fun at self-righteous Evangelicals who wallow in willful ignorance as contentedly as pigs wallow in mud often ignores the damage they do to people who suffer under their policies or from how their propaganda inspires others to perform acts of violence and discrimination. Two new documentaries (set on opposite sides of the earth) offer interesting perspectives into who is seeking truth and dignity and who is using Christianity as part of an elaborate scheme to bludgeon "others" while stoking culture wars, subverting science, and enriching themselves with taxpayer dollars.
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In a recent article entitled "Fossil Site Reveals Day That Meteor Hit Earth and, Maybe, Wiped Out Dinosaurs," The New York Times reports on a new fossil find that pinpoints the moment when an asteroid crashed into Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula (causing a massive extinction event) as approximately 66 million years ago. Such a date offers a sharp contrast to Young Earth Creationists who insist that our planet and the life forms that inhabit it are barely 10,000 years old. |
| Dan Phelps, a geologist who criticizes the Ark Encounter in a scene from We Believe in Dinosaurs |
To truly appreciate the difference between carbon dating and willful ignorance, consider the message from an article entitled "Civil War Soldiers Killed A Dinosaur, According To This Creationist Preacher." Now in his mid-twenties, Preacher Matt Powell (who believes that the Bible demands gays be killed) boasted to atheist John Gleason (a former Catholic) that Civil War soldiers actually shot down a pterodactyl and offered the following image (found on the Internet) as proof. As the author of the article cautions:
"Here’s the photo that 'anyone can look up online.' Even if you’re not a savvy Internet user you should be able to tell that photo is one that anyone can create and post online (the photo actually appears to be a picture of a prop by Fox Television/Universal Studios). If you’re telling people that the only evidence for something happening during the Civil War can be found online, it’s probably not true! You’d think that people who purport to live their lives according to Bronze Age texts would put a little more stock in primary sources from the time period in question."
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| Purported historical photo showing Civil War soldiers with a recently shot pterodactyl. |
The 2019 San Francisco International Film Festival recently presented the world premiere of We Believe in Dinosaurs, an intriguing new documentary by Clayton Brown and Monica Long Ross which focuses on the people behind the Creation Museum (which opened its doors in Petersburg, Kentucky in 2007) and its sister project, the Ark Encounter (a Creationist theme park in nearby Grant County which made its much-publicized debut on July 7, 2016). While the Evangelicals and Young Earth Creationists involved in the planning, fundraising, and construction of both attractions deny Darwin's theory of evolution (preferring to believe that God created all life on Earth on the sixth day), they stubbornly insist that law and science must be judged within a Biblical time frame of approximately 6,000 years while promoting an ideology based on "alternative facts." The film devotes substantial attention to the con game being run by Ken Ham (the driving force behind both attractions and the President of Answers in Genesis).
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| Poster art for We Believe in Dinosaurs |
I don't dispute the fact that Mr. Ham is an extremely persuasive marketing and branding expert who has managed to draw millions of dollars in taxpayer funding from the state of Kentucky by positioning himself as a jobs creator bearing rosy visions of how faith-based tourism will bring prosperity to Williamstown. He's also quite adept at teaching visitors to the Ark Encounter that, if anyone challenges creationist theory with data linked to evolution, they should simply reply "Were you there?" as a means of stopping any argument dead in its tracks.
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| Creationist turned atheist David MacMillan revisits the Ark Encounter in a scene from We Believe in Dinosaurs |
Having been raised in a family of atheists (my father taught high school biology at Midwood High School and the Yeshiva of Flatbush), I look to science rather than faith for answers regarding the history of life on earth. To their credit, the filmmakers have included input from two men who aren't buying what Ham is selling. One is David MacMillan, formerly a gung-ho Creationist who was home schooled but, leaving Kentucky and being exposed to science, became disillusioned with Christian ideology and now claims to be an atheist. The other is Dan Phelps, a geologist who heads up the Kentucky Palentological Society.
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| David MacMillan and Dan Phelps are critics of the Ark Encounter's "fake science" in We Believe in Dinosaurs |
What impressed me most about We Believe in Dinosaurs was how effectively religious propaganda can come to life with enough funding to make things happen. The so-called scientists employed in the creation of the Ark Encounter seem to live in a state of rabid denial about evolution and paleontology. Meanwhile, artists and technicians can be seen working on audio animatronic dinosaurs, cavemen, and Biblical characters such as Noah, which can all be programmed to present a perverse experience in wildly inaccurate edutainment as the "God's honest truth!"
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| Artists at work creating audio animatronic dinosaurs in a scene from We Believe in Dinosaurs |
Although often attributed to the famous 19th-century huckster, P. T. Barnum, the claim that "There's a sucker born every minute" is said to derive from banker David Hannum in his description of the Cardiff Giant (one of Barnum's famous hoaxes). It should come as no surprise that many of the small business owners in Williamstown, Kentucky who hoped to cash in on Ken Ham's promises lost a great deal of money when the revenues he predicted from tourism failed to materialize. Despite controversies regarding its discriminatory employment policies and questionable justifications for tax incentives, the Ark Encounter still draws tourists.
While some find the story Ham and his colleagues are selling utterly reprehensible, years of home schooling followed by attendance at such faith-based institutions as Liberty University and Oral Roberts University have raised generations of culturally and scientifically illiterate people in an atmosphere of willful ignorance (as the old saying goes, "You can't rape the willing"). Here's the trailer:
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If you enjoyed Kumu Hina (a documentary screened at CAAMFest 2014, you’ll certainly want to attend a screening of Leitis in Waiting at CAAMFest 2019. This feature documentary by Dean Hamer, Joe Wilson & Kumu Hina Wong-Kalu focuses on Joey Joeleen Mataele and the transgender women of the Tonga Leitis Association. What sets their situation apart from many other transgenders is that, in the Kingdom of Tonga (the last remaining monarchy in the Pacific), fakaleitis enjoy the support of the royal family (Princess Salote Lupepau'u Tuita-taione is the group’s royal patron). |
| Princess Salote Lupepau'u Tuita-taione is the royal patron of the Tonga Leitis Association |
That’s not to suggest that Tonga’s leitis are free from controversy. While Cardinal Soane Patita Paini Mafi of the Catholic Church seems to take a “live and let live” approach to their presence, Pastor Barry Taukolo (a local televangelist whose church receives some funding from American Evangelicals) believes that homosexuals and transgender people should be imprisoned. Unfortunately for Pastor Barry, leitis are accepted as an integral part of Tongan culture (as many transgender people are in other Pacific cultures).
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| Lady Eva Baron and Fatima are two transgender women who appear in Leitis in Waiting |
As a young boy, Mataele's beauty so impressed the Queen of Tonga that she removed the dress from her life-size doll and put it on Joey instead. Under Mataele’s leadership, members of the Tongan Leitis Association participate in native cultural events as well as a transgender beauty pageant in which leitis like Fatima and Lady Eva Baron (who was kicked out of her family’s home by her hyper-religious Mormon parents) are given a chance to shine. Not only does Maetele (who co-founded the Tonga Leitis Association in 1992 and became the organization’s executive director) serve as the Pacific Island Representative on the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association's Executive Board, she also serves as Chairperson of the South Pacific MSM (Men Who Have Sex with Men) Network Group.
In 1993, Mataele founded the Miss Galaxy Queen Pageant (an annual event to celebrate the diversity and creativity of Tonga’s fakaleitis and LGBTQI community). She is also a co-founder of the Pacific Sexual Diversity Network (established in 2007 during the Pacific Games in Samoa), whose members hail from Fiji, Samoa, the Cook Islands and Papua New Guinea.
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| Lady Eva Baron performs her interpretation of Tina Turner's Proud Mary in a scene from Leitis in Waiting |
A devout Catholic who is a force to be reckoned with, the filmmakers follow Mataele to the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, where she participates in a United Nations panel entitled "Freedom of Religion or Belief and Sexuality: a Conversation with Civil Society."
While Leitis in Waiting is a bright new addition to the growing library of films about transgender people, it offers a delightful counterpoint to many American films on the subject. Here's the trailer:
2 comments:
A wonderful film and Eva Barons performance as Tina Turner is THRILLING!
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