Roger Ebert is a creationist

[pokerfan]

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080921/COMMENTARY/809219997/-1/RSS

[Tallison]

1. Wow. Just...wow.

I wonder whether, and if so how, it affects his politics. In other words, how literally he takes the rest of the Bible. Unusual for such a Christian fundie to be so supportive of the arts, as I know he is, but hey, I appreciate all exceptions to every rule. (Still wonder about his politics, though...)

[Tunkamerica]

2. what happened to the swimming dinosaurs?

did they drown too? Or was it the Ice Epoch that did them and only them in?

[pokerfan]

4. That would be a good question for a creationist

There are a bunch of them on the IMDB board for Ben Stein's Expelled movie:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1091617/board/threads

You can try there, but be warned that they get really cranky when they are asked to support their claims.

[parasim]

3. Uh, I believe that is satire.

Another article by Ebert:

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050328/COMMENTARY/503280301

[Tunkamerica]

6. huh- he fooled me. I guess that's his point.

I don't see the funny so much, but maybe it's me.

[pokerfan]

7. He's not very good at it

It's just a standard parroting of all the creationist positions. Wouldn't satire use humor or exaggeration to make a point?

[parasim]

9. Satire doesn't need to be funny to make a point.

Like Colbert, his brand of satire is actually scary when you realize that the right-wingers actually do think that way.

[Realityhack]

11. I disagree.

Just saying exactly what someone else said is not satire. And that article either is not satire or is some of the worst satire ever.

[parasim]

16. Yeah, I guess you're right, the more I think about it...

My Colbert comparison was pretty lame. He is funny, despite the fact that there are a lot of people out there that think he is for real. That's the scary part.

[NWHarkness]

5. Most likely, his site was hackedn/t

[TwilightZone]

8. Folks, it's satire. The moose comment should have been the first (last?) clue.

[Tunkamerica]

10. Not a very good one. n/t

[Realityhack]

12. Shityest satire ever. n/t

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

13. Geez, people, it's satire.

Think it through.

Yeesh.

[pokerfan]

15. Well, as Viking12 pointed out

Fundamentalist young-earth creationism is pretty much impossible to satirize.

[Bill McBlueState]

19. I love how the response

from people who didn't get it is, "Well, it's not very good satire." :rofl:

[Viking12]

14. Poes law

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Poe's+Law

[gtar100]

17. The picture of the shoe has me convinced. It even has a hole in it

I looked in the sky where an elephant's eye
Was looking at me from a bubblegum tree
And all that I knew was the hole in my shoe
Which was letting in water

I walked through a field that just wasn't real
With one hundred tin soldiers which stood at my shoulder
And all that I knew was the hole in my shoe
Which was letting in water

I climbed on the back of a giant albatross
What flew through a crack in the cloud
To a place where happiness reigned all year round
And music played ever so loudly

I started to fall and suddenly woke
And the dew on the grass had soaked through my coat
And all that I knew was the hole in my shoe
Which was letting in water

-Traffic 1967

[Tummler]

18. Ebert's follow-up post: "This is the dawning of the Age of Credulity"

Were there invisible quotation marks about my Creationism article? Of course there were. How could you be expected to see them? In a sense, I didn't want you to. I wrote it straight. The quotation marks would have been supplied by the instincts of the ironic reader. The classic model is Jonathan Swift's famous essay, "A Modest Proposal." I remember Miss Seward at Urbana High School, telling us to read it in class and note the exact word at which Swift's actual purpose became clear. None of us had ever heard of it, and she didn't use a giveaway word like "satire." Yet not a single person in the class concluded that Swift was seriously proposing that the starving Irish eat their babies. We all got it.

What you do is, first, consider the source. Jonathan Swift was not a noted cannibal. Then you look for little giveaways, or triggers. Did I supply any triggers in my Creationism piece to inspire such a process? Yes, although they were not waving flags and calling attention to themselves. Possible triggers have been identified in the comments I've read. The most cited was the Q&A about the moose. I didn't want to be obvious, because I hoped to reach readers who were uninformed about Creationism and would find the information interesting. If I had used an obvious slant, readers might have responded according to their pre-existing beliefs. I wanted to fly under the radar. I seem to have been all too successful.

...

These days, there is no room for ambiguity, and few rewards for critical thinking. Now every word of a politician is pumped dry by his opponent, looking for sinister meanings. Many political ads are an insult to the intelligence. Here I am not discussing politics. I am discussing credulity. If you were to see a TV ad charging that a politician supported "comprehensive sex education" for kindergarten children, would you (1) believe it, or (2) very much doubt it? The authors of the ad spent big money in a bet on the credulity and unquestioning thinking of the viewership. Ask yourself what such an ad believes about us. No politics, please.

More:
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/09/this_is_the_dawning_of_the_age.html