Hummalla babaloo zeebaloo bop!

Posted on September 9, 2008 by Tyson Koska

Filed under: Absurdity, Religion | Tagged: |

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8 Responses

  1. Roger Norling, on September 9, 2008 at 9:12 am said:

    Oh boy.. I don’t know if I should laugh or cry…

    Reply
  2. Yeiser, on September 9, 2008 at 9:19 am said:

    I find the disdain distateful and hypocritical. How is this any more absurd than dancing at a nightclub or shouting chants at a sports event? I refer to the actual activity taking place in the video, not to whatever political motives you might assume they have.

    This seems like just poking fun at these people. You’re better than that.

    Reply
  3. Tyson Koska, on September 9, 2008 at 9:24 am said:

    Yeiser said:
    “I refer to the actual activity taking place in the video, not to whatever political motives you might assume they have.”

    But it’s the motives and beliefs that are the issue, not the dancing… so, in a way i agree with you — dancing is indeed not the problem — and if it weren’t for the motives of both the scamming preacher or the fanatical devotees, you’d not see it posted here…

    Reply
  4. Yeiser, on September 9, 2008 at 10:32 am said:

    So if there is a scam going on in that video, make the case! If you actually know something about the motives of that preacher, or his “fanatical devotees” beyond what is depicted in the video, tell us!

    Otherwise, it just seems like “look how stupid these jesus freaks are. don’t they look silly.” Which is beneath you.

    Reply
  5. Yeiser, on September 9, 2008 at 10:41 am said:

    After some reflection, I’ve decided that it’s your blog, you should do what you want with it. I’ll butt out.

    No one likes a scold.

    Reply
  6. Tyson Koska, on September 9, 2008 at 10:54 am said:

    Well… it’s all part of “the discussion”… personally i don’t see that there’s any question that the revivalist tradition generally (and the modern-day televangelist tradition particularly) is one tied-up in the fleecing of believers… i recommend the 1972 documentary Marjoe for an entertaining example…

    Reply
  7. Miriam Brown, on September 9, 2008 at 11:35 am said:

    To Yeiser: Personally, I don’t find this excerpt laughable or mocking. I find it mind-blowingly upsetting. But I freely admit I pay attention to moment-to-moment election polls/noise. And for me, this has become THE big, fat issue. [i also know that’s exactly the way the repubs want the discussion concocted].

    Moving on, I also have in-laws who fall close to this category of belief, so I’m quite familiar w/ the phenomenon. And frankly, I don’t so much care about the whole fleecing of the devotees. That’s what happens when believers willingly forgo their questioning powers and adopt mob hysteria.

    And while I cannot speak for this congregation in particular, I know from attending several of these types of churches [as a guest/visitor] and from family, these are the people that want to take over the “values” and social structure of our country. i.e. teach intelligent design alongside evolution [or get rid of evolution altogether], see American wars as a “task” sent from God, believe you are an agent of evil if you don’t buy into their fiery brand of belief … i could go on. I haven’t even gotten to abortion, but i confess reasonable people can disagree on that one.

    Sorry, but I’m all for the light of day being shone on these people. Because Americans need to know that few of these folks should be handed our faith in their judgment.

    Reply
  8. Roger Norling, on September 9, 2008 at 6:17 pm said:

    If taking an alien observer view on human behavior all of our activities would seem more or less absurd, but we need to know the intentions and motivations of humans to understand them, just as Koska say.

    Dancing and shouting have social reasons. One is about people having fun together, the other about cheering for your favorite team. Both have real and concrete purposes. Now, about envangelical gatherings such as these.. But god? holy fire? scepter of righteousness? hablakablabla-something?? These people accept phrases which are nonsense, and belive in things they have never seen or meet. And even if they would exist it doesn’t in the least argue for these kind of strange behaviors.

    If we would take these activities out of it’s context, would you not infact find it prudent to call 112 if you found a person on the street with which seem to have muscular spasm? Doesn’t this speak to the strangeness of what the video shows?

    Now, when it comes to the preachers I think that in most cases they are not scamming their church members, they belive every word they preach. This can be called a free floating rational, as described by Daniel Dennett. Again we can use memes to explain religion, where religious ideas are spread because they are good at surviving, that is people find them pursuasive for whatever reason.

    But in the end one have to ask how successfull they realy are. These are rediculus ideas, and they doesn’t contribute to happiness in any way. Would this be the case religion would be like the psychologist, you just need it for a period in a life and then you can leave it.

    We must be allowed to make fun of these ideas if we find them to be false and/or dangerous. In politics it’s called satire, what makes religion so sensitive to the same?

    Reply

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