Ab_Normal

I read through the <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/faith/talk/a.html" target="_blank">messages posted</a> in response to the show. The believers in [insert sect here] complaining that their [brand] was left out were particularly entertaining.

eldar1011

That brought me to tears...even when I read that portion in the transcript.

eldar1011

Entertaining and frustrating. I recall several messages decrying the lack of representation from the Christian Conservatives.

I mean, come on! How much more do they want? They're everywhere. And still it's not enough.

Greedy SOBs

john_v_h

I found the program to be well-written, mostly nonjudgmental and frequently poetic. However, the producers' orientation -- kind of a liberal pantheism -- jumped out at me in the last quarter-hour. You know, the "God is love, God is in everything, we are all part of God" philosophy. And the final astrophotographic sequence was unfortunately reminiscent of L. Ron Hubbard and The Outer Limits.

RobertE

This was the only broadcast of its type the SO and myself decided to watch during the next week. The inundation of 'remembrances' already in the print and broadcast media are simply too emotionally overwhelming for us. We thought Frontline's presentation was very well done and now we don't want to see anymore like it for a while.

We were both thankful though that Frontline chose not to include the fundamentalist Christian perspective. They already wasted their fifteen minutes with the Falwell/Robertson "America deserved God's wrath" vomit. To give some fundy crackpot a say would have been as innappropriate as letting a radical Islamist rail against the "great Satan". They've had their say, thank you very much, and we reject it utterly.

[ September 05, 2002: Message edited by: RobertE ]</p>

Opera Nut

The babble about God combined with pics of the great nebula of Orion, etc. didn't work. TO me it felt like it was tacked on the end just to satisfy the theists. You may notice that in my posts, I tuned out the message when they got to that.

The reverence for the galaxy thing was done a lot better before: Once at the end of "The Incredible Shrinking Man" (a cheesy 50s movie I saw at the age of two -- scared the pee outta me)

and of course, COSMOS.
Seeing the young Kepler throwing water out of the window at school to try to understand it, and walking on a lonely road with a look of utter despair and bewilderment on his face, after the Church imprisoned his mother for witchcraft, dreaming of going to the moon some day....that just says it all for me. Understanding through studying nature and fighting the ignorant authorities.

"The Church says the Earth is Flat. But I have seen the Shadow on the Moon, and it is Round; and I have More Faith in a Shadow on the Moon, than in the Church."
-- Ferdinand Magellan

Opera Nut

End of last episode, COSMOS:
Shows the stars, the lunar module, the rituals of india, the rituals of America, Carl talks about how so much more similar all humans are and all cultures are than different, to Beethoven's Seventh, the excitement of the space program, people running computers, flinging Voyager out toward the planets.....

The final words:

THESE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS HYDROGEN ATOMS CAN DO, GIVEN FIFTEEN BILLION YEARS OF EVOLUTION.


<img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" /> <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" /> <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" />

Albion

Well, that piece from the Revd David Benke was quite something. When a minister gets hate mail for joining in an ecumenical service after something like this, that says a great deal about the people who wrote it. That sort of "my religious system is better than your religious system" attitude is a large part of the problem that caused the attacks in the first place.

Ab_Normal

And the odds of getting the theists with that attitude to acknowledge this are minimal. Sigh.