Jesus Camp
So- I missed the boat when this was a hot item, my sister told me about it, I hadn’t been able to sit down and (attempt) to watch it till now.
I’m 16 minutes, 47 seconds in, and already I have to stop it, There is just so much that makes my brain hurt. For instance, one of the kids in the beginning ‘got saved’ because he was missing something in his life?!
Get this, he was five years old when he came to the conclusion that he was missing something in his life. For FSM’s sake, all I remember from when I was five is shooting a bubble-gun off of the cess-pool cover in my front yard[1]!
Then, it gets better. “Creationism Adventures”, in which an archaeologist-looking man[2] asks whether we came from “goo” which he promptly plays with some combination of xanthan gum and borax, to be sure[3]. He further places a triceratops reading the news, the earth exploding in the “big bang”, and numerous other horrific misunderstandings of solid science.
But minutes 14-16:47 are the best, when the mother — who homeschools her lovely, born-again-from-5-years-old-cause-he-was-missing-something son science. But Science notsomuch, it is in fact science falsely-so-called. Ranging from global-warming denial, “The average temperature has only gone up 0.6 degrees over the last few years.” To “Creationism is, when you look at it, the only possible answer.”
Ma’am, I direct you, if Creationism is the only valid argument for existence, to the creation myths of the countless religions preceding and post-dating your own dogma. Ma’am, global warming is more than just an increase in temperature. Global warming is about an increase in carbon emissions, every region of the world doesn’t necessarily get “hotter”, it’s about the average temperature of the whole planet. Your data is probably okay, the average temperature of the US has gone up a little, but we’re in a temperate zone, the average temperatures of other parts of the world have gone up much more.
And in any case, even if global warming isn’t a problem now, why not do something to prevent it? Doesn’t your God give a shit about the world? I mean he supposedly created it, you’d think he’d want to keep it clean.
I can’t watch any more of this right now, I think I’m going to start working on a commentary for it. The documenters, from what I’ve seen so far, seem to have a fairly balanced look at this whole thing. There is no commentary in the actual film, it’s simply recordings of these peoples lives.
Astounding that I managed to crawl out of that kind of thinking.
[1] that is my actual first memory, it informs much of my life, I think…
[2] Why an archaeologist is explaining evolution, I know not. Maybe he was a paleontologist, but he looked like a fat Indiana Jones
[3] Thank you “Home slime kit” I won from my VBS at the ripe old age of 8.