Ben Stein's Commentary on Religion and Atheists

[Justforfun000]

This is old to me...I had seen it ages ago a couple of times in my email history but I do NOT recall it being attributed to Ben Stein.

It's actually quite cleverly written. There are a FEW actual good points said, but the rest of it is full of false dilemma fallacies and appeal to tradition bullshit.

I just got this most recent email attributing it to Stein. Does anyone know when this was writen? I did a quick search for a phrase of this and didn't come up with anything so I assume it was never discussed here.

The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning


Commentary.

My confession:

I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees, Christmas trees.. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are: Christmas trees.

It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, 'Merry Christmas' to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu . If people want a crèche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed a round, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship celebrities and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him? I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where these celebrities came from and where the America we knew went to.

In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.

Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her 'How could God let something like this happen?' (regarding Katrina) Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, 'I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?'

In light of recent events... terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found a few years ago) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK. Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. The Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr Spock's son committed suicide) . We said an expert should know what he's talking about. And we said OK.

Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with 'WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.'

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing yet?

Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on
your address list because you're not sure what they believe, or what they
will think of you for sending it.

Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.

Pass it on if you think it has merit. If not then just discard it... no one will know you did. But, if you discard this thought process, don't sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in.


My Best Regards, Honestly and respectfully,


Ben Stein

[Stark]

That's actually kinda scary.

[TithonusSyndrome]

So how is this guy a member of the "intelligentsia" again? Sheer repetition of the meme in interviews? Because repeating the old canard that violent crime is on the rise certainly doesn't cut him out for inclusion.

[Losonti Tokash]

This reeks of generic chain letter-ism. I would put down money that Ben Stein has never had anything to do with the creation of this thing.

[Pablo Sanchez]

So how is this guy a member of the "intelligentsia" again? Sheer repetition of the meme in interviews?

I wouldn't say he's a member of the intelligentsia, he just plays one on TV. But on the other hand he's well-educated (Yale Law) and was a speechwriter for a couple of presidents, both of which demand some level of mental ability. If anything Ben Stein is demonstration of the fact that intelligence and education aren't everything, it's also necessary to have intellectual tools (like skeptical inquiry) and the willingness to use them even on your own deeply-held beliefs.

[JLTucker]

Snopes has some info on this.

[Thanas]

The whole thing is just hilarious. Christians saying quietly "OK" to no school prayer? Revisionist history at work here.

Also, beat your children and they will develop into conscientous people. Parenting at best. I am sure after I beat my hypothetical son every week, he will just love me in return.

[General Zod]

This gif has never been more appropriate.

[Stark]

Listen Thanas, traditional child-raising practices worked just fine on me okay????!?/1?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? Lol.

That's actually quite sneaky; they use something he actually said to get the door open and then silently attribute other shit to him.

[Rye]

I don't know how to seriously regard someone who says "how come we're able to worship celebrities but not God" when talking about the United States without extreme contempt and dismay. Fucking prepuce-thieving apologist dicksnot. Then again, I like this bit:

Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her 'How could God let something like this happen?' (regarding Katrina) Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, 'I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?'

Using the same reasoning about the holocaust, where prayer in schools was reintroduced, where the state and church were very closely linked, where "Gott mit uns" can become so ubiquitous a notion it's inscribed on belt buckles, where was God? He must've been giving his blessing to the mass murder of millions of jews, slavs, atheists, communists, homosexuals, gypsies and the other people that a load of christians hated enough to allow to be killed en masse. What a coincidence!

[Thanas]

^Also, his argument from ignorance about the constitution and secularism is really, really sophisticated. It amounts to "LALALALA!! I CAN'T HEAR YOU, LEGAL SCHOLARS/HISTORIANS."

[Count Chocula]

It's Ben Stein. I lost what little respect I had for the man when he came out in favor of the handout bailout for spurious, poorly thought-out reasons. He should stick to Clear Eyes commercials and keep his schnozz out of politics. IMHO.

[Bilbo]

If he really said this then Ben Stein can get bent. I am sticking with Bill Maher.

[Stark]

Uh guys, there's already a link in this thread to an explanation of this; Ben Stien said some centrist 'I don't care either way' stuff, and people bolted on something else to the end.

[TithonusSyndrome]

So how is this guy a member of the "intelligentsia" again? Sheer repetition of the meme in interviews?

I wouldn't say he's a member of the intelligentsia, he just plays one on TV. But on the other hand he's well-educated (Yale Law) and was a speechwriter for a couple of presidents, both of which demand some level of mental ability.

Plenty of people are well-educated, but unless Stein defines "intelligentsia" in some way different than "within the sphere of public intellectuals" which is just my roughest guess at what this vague term means in the first place, then I wouldn't put him in there.

If anything Ben Stein is demonstration of the fact that intelligence and education aren't everything, it's also necessary to have intellectual tools (like skeptical inquiry) and the willingness to use them even on your own deeply-held beliefs.

How much education has Ben Stein in biology? I'm sure he can rattle off policy wonk code words and world history and other simple-science stuff with ease, but I would say that he is a better example of a man abusing his reputation as a member of the "intelligentsia" to tread into matters he is unqualified to comment on and may not even have a layman's understanding of.

[B5B7]

I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish.

No one can make this claim, as no one knows who all their ancestors were. Even if they did know, Jews have only existed for roughly 4,000 years, and before that would have been part of the general genetic heritage of humanity, and therefore most of their ancestry would be non-Jewish.

[PeZook]

On another note, how come some people can be such miserable failures so as to believe spanking their children would've fixed all parenting mistakes they made?

[Dooey Jo]

On another note, how come some people can be such miserable failures so as to believe spanking their children would've fixed all parenting mistakes they made?

Because it has worked for thousands of years in thousands of countries.

At least that's what the guy, I debated on the issue a while back, said. Remember that these people are not very rational about the issue (lord knows why though; do they actually want to hit kids?). This particular specimen thought common sense, like the above, was more scientific than actual scientific studies (that's a verbatim quote, for the record, he even said it before I got around to posting any).

[Ender]

On another note, how come some people can be such miserable failures so as to believe spanking their children would've fixed all parenting mistakes they made?

Because it has worked for thousands of years in thousands of countries.

At least that's what the guy, I debated on the issue a while back, said. Remember that these people are not very rational about the issue (lord knows why though; do they actually want to hit kids?). This particular specimen thought common sense, like the above, was more scientific than actual scientific studies (that's a verbatim quote, for the record, he even said it before I got around to posting any).

You mean like the scientific studies that show the learning portions of the brain flare up with the pain receptors? Spanking is an effective discipline tool.

[PeZook]

You mean like the scientific studies that show the learning portions of the brain flare up with the pain receptors? Spanking is an effective discipline tool.

It's a tool (and an extreme one, too), not a magickal remedy for all parenting fuck-ups. If you mess up your kid's upbringing, no amount of spanking is gonna help.

[Count Chocula]

OK I'll follow the OT bread-crumb trail. When my son was 2, I didn't spank him very often. Instead, I taught him to give himself a spank any time he dropped a Matchbox car on our wood floor. As he entered his rebellious phase (which is continuing now), yep I started spanking him as a form of discipline.

He just turned 4. I still spank him as a reminder to stay in line, but now he's learning what behaviour will get him spanked. I expect that by the time he's 6 or 7 I'll have to enforce discipline with a swat rarely, if at all.

The key here, in my observations, is that small children do NOT understand consequences and can NOT be reasoned with - they need to be 'told' physically where their boundaries are. As they learn to reason and understand things, physical reminders become less necessary. Spanking is not an extreme tool, it's one of several tools in the parenting Snap-On box.

[Surlethe]

I wonder if shitty parents are more likely to resort to spanking as a "get-quick-results-without-doing-work" method of punishment, and that's one reason why spanking is correlated with a poor upbringing.

[Count Chocula]

I wonder if shitty parents are more likely to resort to spanking as a "get-quick-results-without-doing-work" method of punishment, and that's one reason why spanking is correlated with a poor upbringing.

Possibly. It's certainly easier to ignore then spank a kid than it is to set standards for behavior and enforce them.

[K. A. Pital]

Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.

Yeah, other people actually exist. They can love or hate and meaningfully interact with me. God does not interact with the world in a meaningful way even if we grant it's existence per christian beliefs; and whenever something happens which doesn't seem to indicate God's plan, it's just his plan all along, a little complicated, with suffering and death so that everyone feels the love and glory in the end.

I'm reminded of the God-man and Human-man comic.

[Dooey Jo]

Because it has worked for thousands of years in thousands of countries.

At least that's what the guy, I debated on the issue a while back, said. Remember that these people are not very rational about the issue (lord knows why though; do they actually want to hit kids?). This particular specimen thought common sense, like the above, was more scientific than actual scientific studies (that's a verbatim quote, for the record, he even said it before I got around to posting any).

You mean like the scientific studies that show the learning portions of the brain flare up with the pain receptors? Spanking is an effective discipline tool.

Of course it is. No would have used it if it didn't work. The question is whether it is a good tool, that doesn't have negative side effects.