MSNBC's Chris Matthews is quite the narcissist. What Matthews, in essence, is all about on his daily Hardball program,…. is hearing himself talk. It's always and invariably all about Chris Matthews. He is a case study in D.C Villagerdom. He regards himself as a kind of common sense Lone Ranger (like David Broder). As far as Matthews is concerned, the left has too many whackos and the right has too many wingnuts, leaving him and a handful of Very Serious Centrist Thinkers to make grown-up sense out of all the "extremist" nonsense out there in the political universe.
In May Matthews took on Mike Pence (R-IN) about the anti-science and anti-evolution beliefs of American conservatives. Start at the 2:40 mark for the sake of today's post….
Matthews mocks the literal 6 day creation belief of Christian fundamentalists and tries to get Pence to say he doesn't believe in evolution….
"Do you believe in evolution? I don't think your party is committed to science."
Tweety offers a quick one-liner airing his 'concern' about conservative fundamentalists….
"They believe in belief itself."
What is implied is that conservative fundamentalist Christians who believe god magically created the universe in 6 literal days instead of over billions of years through evolution is "believing in belief itself." Something that Tweety, himself, being the Very Serious Centrist that he is….would never do.
On other occasions as well, Matthews, a proud Catholic Christian, has stated his firm conviction that he has no trouble following science's lead on evolution. He's very comfortable with the idea that an invisible and never seen god (for him the Christian god) created everything…..it's just that this invisible and never seen god did so over a period of 3+ billion years. Matthews "believes in that belief."
See….Matthews isn't like those fundamentalists who think an invisible god made everything in six 24 hour periods. Those fundamentalists are all silly people "believing in their belief." How wingnutty can those fundamentalist Christians be? Instead, Matthews believes in the scientific explanation of the origin of all things….evolution over 3+ billion years, THAT THE INVISIBLE AND NEVER SEEN GOD STARTED.
Being a non-believer myself, I want to take this opportunity to pointout the utter bullsh*tness of Matthews position.
Within Catholic Christianity, god (Yahweh, Jesus' Father) is believed to be all powerful, all knowing, and everywhere present. Permeating the doctrines of Catholicism is the teaching that this never seen god is, unquestionably, worthy of human worship. Good Catholics, like Matthews proudly says he is, believe that this all powerful, all knowing, everywhere present god, "saved" humanity through some invisible cosmic legal transaction completed by a Nazarene preacher 2000 years ago. Matthews, when he attends Mass, has a wafer placed in his mouth which, good Catholics believe, once eaten, becomes the literal, yet totally invisible and mysterious, "body of Christ."
Matthews "believes in that belief."
Now the absurdity.
If god is all powerful, all knowing and everywhere present, and chose 3+ billion years ago to start the process of evolution…..what kind of god is he and why should this god be worshipped by humans at all?
He's a god, though all powerful and all knowing, who would sit back after sparking evolution 3+ billion years ago and watch his crowning glory,….man made in his own image,….suffer unceasingly under disease, the butchery of war and human conflict, and natural disasters. A god who has never intervened, though all powerful, to stop any of the darkest moments through which humanity has endured. Not once.
This is the invisible god Chris Matthews worships, this is the god Matthews believes in…..not the 6-literal-days-to-make-everything god….that's just stupid and worthy of mockery…..but an all powerful, all knowing, everywhere present invisible god who "made" everything by sparking evolution, and then sat back and watched the resultant quagmire of misery without ever intervening.
If you had the power and knowledge to stop your children from suffering, getting a disease, or dying……would you intervene for the sake of your children? Or, with the power and knowledge to alleviate suffering, disease and death at your command, would you sit back, like god does, and not do anything?
The point I'm trying to make is this: How self-unaware can a person like Matthews be when he mocks fundamentalist Christians for "believing in belief" when it comes to 6 literal day creation scenarios…..while simultaneously "believing in belief", himself, about an invisible, all powerful, all knowing, everywhere present, deserving of human worship god, who "created" everything over 3+ billion years through evolution but won't, or can't, lift a divine finger to end the suffering, misery and death which grips all of the "creation?"
{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
So you don't believe in God. That's fine.
Just answer two questions for me, and I'll agree with you.
How was the universe, with all it's unimaginable complexity and magnitude, created ?
How did life, with all it's unimaginable complexity, originate on earth ? (Hint – Darwin's The Origin Of The Species doesn't come close to answering that question).
Until you can answer those questions, your opinion is no more valid than the Christians you ridicule. Until you can answer those question, you are in essence ridiculing yourself, because you have no better answer.
Rev. saying that a person can't both say that creationism is a myth and that god exists is very callous. God has lifted several fingers to "end the misery" and people continuously give in to their free will to fight against each other for material things. God gave us free will, and sent us messenger's to tell us the proper path, it's our fault that misery exists because we choose to steal from each other, use false word to convince others to fight each other, and treat less fortunate as animals.
As far as evolution, yes it does exist. God did create everything. And then he let the universe go. Eventually through miracles of nature humans came to existance. The 6 day story is just that, a story. How does an all knowing being that transcends time convey to a feeble minded barely evolved human how long the universe took to create. That was the point of "enlightenment" people who obeyed God's word would know how the world worked and evolved. They would realize that he was never absent and that all good things were done through and because of him.
Dr. Francis Collins, whom President Obama has appointed to lead the National Institute of Health and led the Human Genome Project, also believes that God has acted through evolution to create life on Earth. An eminent scientist, leading one of the most powerful scientific instutions on Earth who believes in God. No offense Rev, but if someone of his intellect is able to believe in both God and evolution, then it must not be too absurd.
Thanks for the thoughtful comments.
My attempt was at honing a point. I don't care one way or the other what people believe about an invisible god.
Mocking Christians who believe in literal 6 day creationism accomplished by the same god you believe created everything, only through evolution, appears, to an atheist like me, to be highly hypocritical and contradictory. That's what I called absurd.
To King…I have answered, for myself, the issue of god. There is absolutely no empirical or scientific reason to believe in some all knowing, all powerful, everywhere present divine being. Everything around us shouts that loud and clear. No supernatural event has ever transpired on earth. The burden of proof is not on me, it's on those who insist, without evidence, that god exists.
And G-Mann, what's callous about it? Is it callous to point out to your children that the fairy tale books are not true, that Santa doesn't really exist, etc? As far as the "god lifting several fingers" part….is that what you would do if you had god's alleged power? Stand back and watch the misery, suffering, death, disease and atrocities and only occasionally "lift a few fingers?"
Yes, man has made choices that are destructive….but that doesn't begin to explain why an all powerful, all knowing divinity won't do something to alleviate the quagmire of misery suffered by mankind. The natural disasters are even harder to explain in light of an alledgedly all powerful and loving god.
Although I'm sure you believe this…."That was the point of "enlightenment" people who obeyed God's word would know how the world worked and evolved. They would realize that he was never absent and that all good things were done through and because of him."…..there's a lot of pre-conceived religious doctrines woven in it. And in the end, what sense does it make? I'm not condescending, so please don't take it that way.
Bubba….sure, millions of people believe in both evolution and the existence of god. That's basically the non-fundamentalist view. What I was striving towards was what I see as a total contradiction. If god is all powerful, all knowing, everywhere present and deserving of human worship, and sparked evolution 3+ billion years ago resulting in thousands of years of suffering, misery, atrocities, and death of his crowning glory….man…..why on earth should, or would, we believe that that god is righteous and good, deserving of human worship?
I don't think the two are reconcilable.
*And G-Mann, what's callous about it? Is it callous to point out to your children that the fairy tale books are not true, that Santa doesn't really exist, etc? As far as the "god lifting several fingers" part….is that what you would do if you had god's alleged power? Stand back and watch the misery, suffering, death, disease and atrocities and only occasionally "lift a few fingers?"*
That is the kind of comment I would expect from a feeble minded atheist. Most atheists tend to be "victims". If I had God's power, and I created man, to live a free life, and make their own decisions. Which is what God did, yes I would just sit back and watch. See you feel victimized by "misery, suffering, death, disease" so you say "There must not be a God. A God who loved his people would not do these things or allow them to happen." If he didn't allow them to happen, we would not be higher thinking creatures. Even then, are we to be treated so much better than any of God's Other creatures? You step on an ant hill, think of the atrocity that you cause that colony. You leave your water on and think of what it does to worms living in your yard. We are just another of God's creatures who were supposed to protect the planet. Some of do, and some of us rape it, and other's like you, just live in it with no sense of higher purpose.
Rev. , I'm not sure what the point of this particular blog is, 1) to bash Chris Mathews , or 2) to disagree with Christian beliefs. I personally like to bash Chris Mathews, to call yourslf "Hardball" and throw out "softball" questions (and slow pitch at that) is as you said "narcissist" the blog could have ended there. As for the creation v. evolution theroy's, god's existence isn't any harder to belief than our own. I find it noble to have convictions and to stick with them, regardless how misguided they may be.
Read the Book. It's explained. God didn't say that this life would be a cake walk. In fact he said just the opposite because he knew of the natural core actions of man.
Also, if we really read it and paid close attention, people like Dr Phil and Oprah as well as the entire psychological community would be out of business. It's all in there. Was it because these men were so enlightened or because there was an instruction book given to us by someone?
We have barely begun to understand this world. Science is a series of guesses and temporary proofs that those guesses work, then later these first guesses are looked at again and new guesses are put their place. It's a puzzle. But if you think man can effect the big picture, you might as well believe in building the Tower of Babel.
The Reverend is no atheist. He's obviously fighting his belief because something has disappointed him bitterly.
Like on "Signs."
How did everybody descend from Adam and Eve?
Rev,
Matthews is too much of a putz to spend any time on. As you say, he is a narcissist. He asks his guests questions then talks over them while they try to answer. I also agree that he must have a tremendous lack of self-awareness to not recognize that his version of "God" is as inane as the fundamentalists'. Their difference is how they use the Bible. Matthews' Catholic belief is that the Bible must be interpreted by the Church. The fundamentalists believe that the Bible is to be taken literally (although there seems to be no shortage of ministers or churches to tell you what it all means). I always wonder whether those who cite the Bible as being "the word of God" have a clue to its origins. I wonder if they know of the rivalry between of the sects within the Church at the time or the political machinations of Constantine. I also wonder why the "fundamentalists" reject the Marian Bible with its inclusion of the Apocrypha in favor of the later King James version.
Once again, thanks to all for reading and considering this blog post. If you can believe it……I watched that Matthews-Pence encounter back in May and it really put a bad taste in my mouth that stayed with me until I just had to blog about it.
Hypocrisy is bad enough and we see it all the time.
But self-unaware hypocrisy that relishes in the pummeling of perceived lessers is especially repugnant.
Rev says, "There is absolutely no empirical or scientific reason to believe in some all knowing, all powerful, everywhere present divine being. Everything around us shouts that loud and clear. No supernatural event has ever transpired on earth. The burden of proof is not on me, it's on those who insist, without evidence, that god exists."
My answer is that the exact opposite is true. Everywhere around us is evidence of a higher power than man at work. Everywhere. All of our greatest scientific minds are engaged in one pursuit – to understand what has already been placed here in advance. Man hasn't created anything. It was all put here for us. We merely "discover" how to use what was already placed into existence long before we arrived. Creation does imply a creator of some sort, in my opinion. Different people have different ideas about the nature of that creator, but the alternative is to believe it is all some kind of incredibly enormous cosmic coincidence. Highly unlikely, if you ask me. The "coincidence" theory (atheism, if you will) has roughly the same odds that a monkey could write the collected works of Shakespeare on it's first try if you sat him in front of a computer keyboard. Theoretically possible, but it'd be foolish to believe it would happen. The intricately ordered structure of the universe, of our planet, from the quantum level on up, is a mind-boggling set of interdependent systems resulting in life on earth. Whether you call it natural or supernatural is ultimately irrelevant. The fact that this all exists in the first place is the testament to the miracle.
It's possible that life in the universe is/was more common than we think, if you consider the size and age of the universe. The universe is estimated to be 13.7 billion years old and 156 billion light-years wide. Our galaxy alone, the Milky Way, contains 200 billion stars, with 6 billion having planetary systems like ours. Cosmologists estimate there are 125 billion galaxies in the observable universe.
The Hubble Space telescope took an image in 2003 called the Ultra Deep Field. The Hubble stared at a blank patch of space for 11 days. The field of view was equivalent to a grain of rice held at arms length. In this small patch there were 10,000 visible galaxies. That's 27,000,000th of the whole sky.
Get a planet that's the correct distance from a star, add some water and over a few billion years you may get life of some sort.
What's truly amazing are the odds that we are alive and have a form of consciousness we recognize as ourselves.
When you try to wrap your mind around these numbers it's truly boggling. And it leads me to the exact opposite conclusion that King made. A supreme being created this tiny little planet out of the entire universe just for us? Talk about narcissism! 2,000 years ago if you thought all that existed was our earth, the sun and the stars overhead, I can see how the god of the Bible made sense.
Without getting into a huge argument over the existence of God, which I don't think the Rev wanted, I will only say this…
Chris Matthews is a turd, you'll get no argument about that from the right.
Why assume a creator would have created life only on one tiny planet, jimmy james? There are no rational conclusions to reach, really.
I just wanted to point out that some 1.8 billion out of 2 billion Christians belong to denominations whose doctrine embraces science. These denominations have formal social statements that clearly state their agreement that the modern theory of evolution is the best explanation for the diversity of life on the planet.
I am talking about the Roman Catholics, the Episcopalians, the Presbyterians, the United Methodists, and the ELCA Lutherans. The Lutherans don't have a social statement, but Lutheran writers are prolific in the area of science and religion.
A good example of a social statement is the one from the Episcopalians:
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/19021_58398_ENG_HTM.htm
All of these denominations firmly believe that God is the Creator of the Universe, but they also accept the scientific findings that this creation took place billions of years ago and the diversity of life on the planet is best explained by evolution.
pdt and I agree on something……that's good news. And thank you pdt for recognizing the objective of my blog post.
Chiefley fills out what I was saying earlier…..many millions of Christians have accepted evolution as the best explanation of how life developed here on earth.
The larger question of why a god who allegedly sparked evolution is deserving of human devotion, however, still remains to be answered.
jimmie……it's all, literally, overwhelming…isn't it? Man made god in his own image, and made themselves the center of that god's attention. Narcissism on steroids.
jimmy james says " supreme being created this tiny little planet out of the entire universe just for us? Talk about narcissism"
Because this was directed at me, I'll respond. I don't think we're alone in the universe. Far from it. I imagine there all kinds of planets that support life out there. There was nothing narcissistic about my comments. I also don't want to speculate about the nature of the "supreme being." I'm just saying the evidence indicates there is something of a lot higher order than man at work here. The "coincidence" is too huge. My point of view comes from humility, not narcissism.
Here is the narcissism on steroids:
"The larger question of why a god who allegedly sparked evolution is deserving of human devotion, however, still remains to be answered."
larry,
Maybe he'd prefer to be the void, beholden to nothing.
I rather like it the way things are.