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Monday, June 6, 2011
Saturday, January 1, 2011
"The Story of Suzie" (REVISED)
Last night, at about 4:00 in the morning (MST), I downloaded everything thing I've ever posted to Facebook. I've been wanting to do this for a while. Now that I have actually had a chance to get some sleep, I'm starting to review the things that I've posted to there in the past year. I posted this video from the Thinking Atheist as my status update on Facebook exactly one year ago today. Part of what surprised me about posting it on my FB wall is exactly how little attention it received from my FB "friends". I'm sure many of my FB "friends" never even saw this or chose to just ignore it.
In looking at the comments for this video on YouTube, it is curious to note how defensive and angry some of the reactions to it are. It is clear that the point of the video is to show how ridiculous the world view of many modern Christians is in regards to how they think prayer works and how blissfully and/or willfully ignorant they are of the almost certain ineffectualness of praying for a supernatural entity to improve our planet. I was once a believer. In fact, I was once a "Suzie". But, coming to the realization that there is probably no interventionist god at work in the world didn't make me angry at those that were pointing it out. It made me angry at myself for allowing myself to be duped by those who had used the concept of an interventionist god to extort money from me.
I also find it curious that this video, as of this writing, only has slightly over 101,000 views. Many of the videos that question religion and religious thinking seem to have much higher view counts than this. I can't help but wonder if this is because this video is so painful for the "Suzies" of the world to watch. I'm not saying that that is the reason, there's a definitely a flew other plausible scenarios for this video not having had more views. (Note: I just noticed that there is note from the author saying that the original edit, which had a more graphic version of the pastor being shot, was "wildly popular", so it could be that by the time this edit was posted, this video was just old news at that point- so much for my theory.)
At any rate, what a fun way to start the new year- review all of my past FB posts and to rediscover a very thought provoking and provocative short film. Here's to hoping that in 2011 a few more "Suzies" will see this video and start to question the idea of an interventionist god at work in the world.
In looking at the comments for this video on YouTube, it is curious to note how defensive and angry some of the reactions to it are. It is clear that the point of the video is to show how ridiculous the world view of many modern Christians is in regards to how they think prayer works and how blissfully and/or willfully ignorant they are of the almost certain ineffectualness of praying for a supernatural entity to improve our planet. I was once a believer. In fact, I was once a "Suzie". But, coming to the realization that there is probably no interventionist god at work in the world didn't make me angry at those that were pointing it out. It made me angry at myself for allowing myself to be duped by those who had used the concept of an interventionist god to extort money from me.
I also find it curious that this video, as of this writing, only has slightly over 101,000 views. Many of the videos that question religion and religious thinking seem to have much higher view counts than this. I can't help but wonder if this is because this video is so painful for the "Suzies" of the world to watch. I'm not saying that that is the reason, there's a definitely a flew other plausible scenarios for this video not having had more views. (Note: I just noticed that there is note from the author saying that the original edit, which had a more graphic version of the pastor being shot, was "wildly popular", so it could be that by the time this edit was posted, this video was just old news at that point- so much for my theory.)
At any rate, what a fun way to start the new year- review all of my past FB posts and to rediscover a very thought provoking and provocative short film. Here's to hoping that in 2011 a few more "Suzies" will see this video and start to question the idea of an interventionist god at work in the world.
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