Where did it come out that doesn’t like atheists?
LS: What place does religion have in our lives? Can you be moral without belief in God?
MN: Well, as a Judeo-Christian nation, there’s obviously a great tradition of religion, but I do think there now seems to be a phobia about speaking of it in the public sphere. It’s too bad, because it closes off a gigantic, well-developed and thorough intellectual discipline. (And I happen to believe there’s that whole “saving your soul” issue, that I wouldn’t want people to lose sight of.) As the apologist Greg Koukl is fond of pointing out, Christianity is well-equipped to compete in the marketplace of ideas.
And obviously, you can be a wonderful, completely moral, thoroughly beautiful human being without a belief in God (I think it’s much more difficult, and you’d be pulling it off in spite of your beliefs, not because of them.) But on the intellectual plane, many Atheist thinkers have tried to construct a framework for morality and all of them have been unconvincing. To my thinking, “morality” is meaningless unless you talk about “absolute morality.” And you can’t do that without bringing God into it.
To be fair, “doesn’t like” is a bit strong for that quote. It still ticks me off, though. He’s fallen for the “oh noes, you can’t talk about Christianity in America even though 85% of the nation self-identifies as Christian!” nonsense.
Ah got it, thanks. He problably feels that way because the entertainment industry tends to attract those of us on the left more so that other vocations.
What fucking garbage. I think it’s the other way around. The majority of “god fearing” folks I’ve met have deep prejudices one way or the other. A good ole secular humanist generally won’t believe “Gays are abominations unto the Lord” for instance, or that women are soulless tools to serve man.
I think the 7th season is the funniest, best all-around (and most compact) seasons with the best material honestly, they pulled out all the stops for those 6.
The Rifftrax are all mostly enjoyable and worth supporting, it’s almost quite MST3K.
— Alan
He triiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiied to kill me with a forklift! Woo hoo!
There are so many funny ones, it’s hard to recall them all. Mr B Natural stands out, of course (and wasn’t that on the tape with The Amazing Colossal Man? - good one) but the short about springs was also great.
Joel has to win it though, and the invention exchange was almost always great.
I recall a bunch of the Hercules movies being wonderful, as well as Secret Agent Super Dragon (?) - and some other secret agent movie, Operation Double 007 or some such. But the one I remember was some sort of sword in the stone ripoff - ah, found it, from Season 4: The Magic Sword.
I voted Mike, because I met Joel briefly a few years ago and he was kind of an ass to me. However, now that I read the Mike quote Angie posted, I’m torn – they’re both kind of asses.
I love Tom Servo more than either of them anyway.
Speaking of Season 7, the episodes are:
- Night of the Blood Beast
- The Brute Man
- Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell
- The Incredible Melting Man
- Escape 2000
- Laserblast
Not really sure there are no finer six episodes of riffing around.
Not to be left out, Season 6 has some real dingers… fans must watch the Coleman Francis trilogy as some of the worst, dumbest horribly-made drek around. One movie (Beast of Yucca Flats) doesn’t even have anyone talking on screen (all of the dialogue is either voice-over or out of frame).
— Alan
“This is-a-list of people much-bet-ter-look-ing than Estelle…”
Except Mike was in the single greatest host segment of all time:
Tubular Boobular Joy!
Breach Hull, All Die!
I prefer the Patrick Swayze-Roadhouse Christmas song from Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. But I haven’t seen the one you’re talking about here.
Oh yeah, I totally forgot about Space Mutiny… jesus was this awful and dreadfully funny. The guy screaming during the action sequences is just priceless.
— Alan
Mitchell!
Rowsdower?
(or however you spell that)
John Don Backer is Mittens!
“Relax, you’re sitting in your own room!”
I had to watch it again to see if Chet Awesomelaser was one of the names they tossed out when they were making fun of ol’ Reb.
There was an earlier episode (12 To the Moon) where they did that as well, and I actually wrote down the names because I thought they’d make funny online personas:
Chunk Manmusk
Cliff Beefpile
Sledge Riprock
Tank Concrete
Crank Drywall
Stump Hugelarge
Chunk Pylon
Ron Codpiece
Chuck Hardslab
The Space Mutiny episode had many, many more…
— Alan
Don’t forget Bolt Vanderhuge.