Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Potrzebie…
See, the problem with reading all of this right-wing honk and blat every day is that, for instance, I came across this item a little while ago, and realized that I’m no longer intelligent enough to make fun of it:
Call Darwinists ‘Slime-Snake-Monkey-People’ Author Urges Christians
Merited Ridicule May Shame Them into Accepting Evidence in Greek Art for Genesis EventsANNAPOLIS, Maryland, August 21 /Christian Newswire/ — Solving Light Books announced today the release of Robert Bowie Johnson Jr.’s new book, “Noah in Ancient Greek Art,” featuring 27 ancient images of the Greek version of Noah. The book details Noah’s role in Greek art as a known historical figure in relation to whom the artists were able to depict, and boast of, the rapid growth of their contrary spiritual outlook, exalting man, instead of God, as the measure of all things.
In his previous book, “The Parthenon Code: Mankind’s History in Marble” (a 288-page hardback now translated into Greek and French), Mr. Johnson presents abundant evidence that ancient Greek art preserves a record of humanity’s origins matching the Genesis account, but from an opposite viewpoint- that the serpent enlightened, rather than deluded, the first couple in paradise.
“In Greek art, we find detailed, consistent portrayals of the early Genesis themes including: the ancient garden, the serpent-entwined apple tree, the first family, Cain killing Abel, the Flood, and the successful rebellion against Noah after the Flood. Greek artists made the gods look just like people because that’s who they were-our ancestors. Socrates himself referred to the gods as such,” Mr. Johnson said.
The author devotes the final section of his new book to explaining why mainstream scientists, academics, and journalists remain oblivious to the true significance of Greek art. “Their ruling paradigm is Darwinism, a closed-minded, anti-Creator mindset which compels them to ignore or deny any evidence which tends to validate the Book of Genesis. Viewing Greek art as what it truly represents — human history — painfully contradicts their pompous evolutionist speculation. That’s why they must blindly insist that ancient Greek vase-painters and sculptors spent their entire lives portraying nothing more than myths,” Mr. Johnson stated.
To shock the Darwinists out of their denial of the overwhelming evidence in Greek art for the reality of Genesis events, the author urges Creationists to refer to evolutionists as what they imagine they are-“Slime-Snake-Monkey-People.” Mr. Johnson, who holds a general science degree from West Point, also suggests that since Slime-Snake-Monkey-People insist they evolved over millions of years through a countless series of random mutations, Christians should also refer to them as “mutants.”
My brain is standing by the bus stop wearing a little hat and carrying a little suitcase with a shirttail hanging out of it.
Ummm… yeah, because the ancient Greeks were such well-known Christians, what with living centuries before that Christ guy.
That’s exactly why I stopped posting on Warcheerleaders. The pivotal moment for me was involved vehement arguments that Hitler was a leftist. After that, any wits I ever had were scattered in the wind like… um…
Personally, I don’t mind being called an SSMP (although I’m not sure that is the exact or complete lineage). But if that’s what they’re calling us, I nominate the new name for fundies as Dust-Breath-Apples (for the men) and Dust-Breath-Rib-Apples (for the ladies).
Mr. Johnson, who holds a general science degree from West Point, also suggests that since Slime-Snake-Monkey-People insist they evolved over millions of years through a countless series of random mutations, Christians should also refer to them as “mutants.”
We should all listen to him because he’s got a degree in Science!
Oooohhh. A “general science” degree from West Point. Well, then that certainly qualifies you to write about Greek art, evolutionary biology, and comparative theology all at once. I once ate a gyro, so as someone with a little more background in these fields, let me tell where your argument fails….
HemlockEcho, PZ Myers explained why Mr. Johnson gets the lineage pretty completely wrong.
Christians should also refer to them as “mutants.”
X-MEN UNITE!
Ole’ Robobowie is himself rapidly becoming a classic in classicist circles. One of his previous works was actually reviewed in the serious, scholarly Bryn Mawr Classical Review a few years back, although not exactly resulting in an unequivocal endorsement.
Eh. Erm. Uh. So … this means that Zeus is real? Because there were pictures of him and shit?
Wow. You’d have to upgrade most of his premises simply to get his argument up to wrong.
So is he saying that Jesus is just a metaphor for Apollo?
Mr. Johnson presents abundant evidence that ancient Greek art preserves a record of humanity’s origins matching the Genesis account, but from an opposite viewpoint- that the serpent enlightened, rather than deluded, the first couple in paradise.
This entirely ignores the Mad-Scientist-Englightened viewpoint expressed in Egyptian art in which men’s heads were replaced with those of crocodiles and ibises.
I’ve read Herodotus, and it is interesting that he makes absolutely no mention of the Israelites in his book. If the Greeks were really making works of art based on the Noah story, you would think that Herodotus would have found the time to go to Jerusalem.
That is SO freakin cool. I’ve always LOVED the Noah/Flood story. And I get how he went all around, even to places that weren’t discovered yet, BEFORE the ark was finished, and got two of everything. I get the monkeys and the elephants and the rats and the Himalayan goats and bigfoots. I get that the unicorns were off fuckin around and literally missed the boat. I get all that.
The fascinating mystery is how he got all the microbes! Billions of species, some in tiny micro environments, all over the world, some living miles underground.
Did that slow our intrepid Noah down? I should think NOT! This guy was tenacious, and when it finally started to rain, he had all the earth’s critters ready to go.
Noah is DA MAN!!!
mikey
I’ve studied a decent amount of ancient Greek art in my time, including a course focused on the statuary on the Parthenon. I don’t even know where to begin.
This is like Chariots of the Gods, only not funny.
West Point? You mean, the West Point Close-Cover-Before-Striking Bible College of Agriculture? That West Point?
One question also springs to mind.
Darwin’s theories ain’t that old. Study of ancient Greece in the west predates him by at least a couple centuries.
How, exactly, did Darwin retroactively taint these efforts?
some sort of angel or something
It looks like Archangel Gabriel, on the verge of Enunciation.
All right! You found Steyn’s strawman’s weaponized ballcock!!
And it’s earned its wings!!!
Apollo Akhbar!!1!
…unlike Steyn himself, who prefers a weaponized ball gag…..
If this country was founded on Christian principles, it only makes sense Greece was founded on Old Testament truths!
Geez Gavin, isn’t it obvious Hermes represent the fusion of snake and man in knowledge in the Garden of Eden?
By defacing them Alcibiades proved he, and therefore Socrates and Plato, was an early Darwinist moonbat, meaning the Sicilian Expedition is our fault, we’re Spartan sympathizers, and Augustine’s usage of Platonic myth in establishing Christian metaphysics was a secret plot by islamodarwinofascists to make Jebus kiss a monkey.
Ah man, you guys got no “skeptiosity”
You’re totally ignor-dulitous.
mikey,
what he fails to tell you is Noah was only able to pull it off with the help of a mutant reindeer.
If Zeus is Adam then it helps to explain where all those other people came from, because they were like bursting out of his brain and stuff.
I know I was always getting into arguments in genetics class because their models couldn’t account for the obvious, inerrant depictions of the birth of Athena. I mean, hello, documented fact, Mr. Pointyheaded Professor man.
How, exactly, did Darwin retroactively taint these efforts?
Through a world-wide conspiracy by the atheist scientific community to systematically hide and discredit any and all evidence that the world is six thousand years old and all life was created.
Seriously, they believe this.
Come on you slime snake monkey people, get up and shake that thing.
A few trolls dedicated to this bullshit would be pretty sweet right about now.
A few trolls dedicated to this bullshit would be pretty sweet right about now.
Um, OK, I’ll give it a go. (But don’t make fun of me! I’m knew at this.)
Evolution is just a theory.
The eyeball is too complicated to have evolved.
If Earth was really billions of years old, the silt from the Mississppi would have filled up the Gulf of Mexico by now.
Since all evolutionists are atheists, they must be very immoral and have empty lives because they don’t believe in anything spiritual.
(Brace yourself! Here comes the zinger for which there is no known defense.)
If man descended from monkeys, how come there are still monkeys?
Answer that, Darwinists! I dare ya!
Provided he’s actually found the shit he thinks he’s found, it would take a pretty tortured analysis to conclude that it validates Judeo-Christian doctrine instead of the much more obvious truism that many religions and cultures draw on parallel and even identical myths. This is sort of like discovering that the Egyptians honored the grain god Osiris by drinking beer to represent his blood and eating bread to represent his flesh thousands of years before the supposed birth of Christ and saying “See, the eucharist is valid and historically-based because other people were doing it!”
Besides which, if the Greeks “knew” that a single God created the world, then why were they so adamant about “exalting man, instead of God, as the measure of all things?” (His words)
I used to really like Joseph Campbell, but now I’m wondering if he had some sort of secret agenda because he never mentioned that Greek art totally validates the Genesis version of creation and completely disproves Darwin.
Joseph Campbell is a LIAR. I’m going to write him a letter! He’s dead? Well, then I’ll write a letter to the editor of the local wingnut newspaper.
In his previous book, “The Parthenon Code: Mankind’s History in Marble”…
Johnson is jumping on the “Bible Code” bandwagon several years too late. Apparently he thinks that was “scholarship’.
Greek artists made the gods look just like people because that’s who they were—our ancestors.
Yeah well David Icke takes ancient myths literally too only his account is way cooler. He’s got flying saucers and the Illuminati and shape shifting reptilians that eat human babies. Top that ya punk.
How is it that Greek myths are completely and totally based on historical events, and yet this somehow PROVES that the Genesis story is true?
Um…don’t most of the Greek myths actually contradict the Genesis story? And that’s assuming you have one, holy, Hellenic tradition in mind, instead of that inconvenient “different stories for different cities” issue.
Slime-Snake-Monkey-People make better lovers.
Darwin ruined everything Dorothy. It’s Darwin’s fault we think the snakes on the Parthenon are part of a representation of the procession in Athens’ main religious festival, in which snakes are venerated as the beings the original Athenians grew out of, thus proving Athenians were literally of the soil the lived on and had an unquestionable right to the land. (Among other things.) Darwin apparently wanted each polis to have their own genesis myth where their ancestors literally srpung from the ground, because……. ummmm, he hated Jebus.
Those of us taught these myths were expressive of an underlying awareness that Greeks were far from the first inhabitants of their lands and thus uncertainty in their own positions (again, among many other things, I’m simplifying a great deal, obviously) were basing our claims of knowledge on things like the textual and archaeological record, and not the gut intuitions of one guy with a science degree from either a military institute or really, really crappy tech school. Our bad.
Um…don’t most of the Greek myths actually contradict the Genesis story?
The Genesis story contradicts the Genesis story.
vehement arguments that Hitler was a leftist.
You’ll still find those arguments on Blogs for Bush. If you point out that it’s a load of shit, you’ll get attacked for your “revisionist history.” And speaking of B4B, I’ll bet Noonan is pissed he didn’t come up with this book idea first.
I wonder if one can reconstruct what passes for logic in the book of Robert B. Johnson Jr. It starts OK: Greeks were the guys who migrated from the Tower of Babel in a different direction than the Hebrews, so they had no recollection of Hebrews, just of the Genesis and the Paradise, and the good old Snake who helped them out of that pretty but very boring place.
But what images were supporting the more detailed claims? The snake probably comes from the staff of Aesculapius. Noah could be Jason questing for the Golden Fleece, or Ulysses. Kain killing Abel — Hercules fighting Antheus? Plenty of heroes killing their opponents to choose from. The ancient Garden of paradise — backdrop for Satires chasing Nymphs? Successful rebellion against Noah — the sack of Troy?
Carl the Creationist,
Not a bad start. However, man didn’t “descend from monkeys”. Go ask The Great Gazoogle about punctuated equilibrium.
You didn’t by chance get that brain-with-suitcase idea from:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/07/16
did you?
dectia
Go ask The Great Gazoogle about punctuated equilibrium.
You go ask the Great Gazoogle about punctuated equilibrium.
And while you’re doing that, why don’t you go ask conservapedia about “irreducible complexity.”
In your face, atheistic, Darwin-worshipping, fascist LIEberals!
West Point? You mean, the West Point Close-Cover-Before-Striking Bible College of Agriculture? That West Point?
Naaah, I think he just left a letter out of Wrest Point.
Viewing Greek art as what it truly represents — human history
So how does this explain the story of Leda and the swan? When did we lose the ability for men to turn into swans and seduce women? And do women still have sex with swans? If so, where? And why? It’s human history, after all. Bestiality-R-Us, it seems.
And stryx, I’m with you on the birth of Athena thing (although on first reading, I swear you wrote “the bird of Athena”. I was trying to remember something about owls or penguins or whatever the damn bird was).
Man, I haven’t seen a “Potrzebie” reference in years! Nicely done.
Actively seeking out “Evidence of God” certainly sounds like a Faithless act to me, Mr. Johnston. “Greek art” is a Historical record of actual events.” certainly has the stink of “A Theory”!
You’re one faithless bastard aren’t you, Mr. Johnston?
Yes, of course, Mr. Johnston. People spending their entire lives “perpetuating myths” is such a RARE occurrence in human history.
Fine with me.
Carl you appear to have all the talents needed to be a rightwing troll. An impressive start with an even better followup. Now can you use your talents for good and find out who pays all the other trolls? LIEberals, that gets me everytime.
I love those genesis columns… They have centaurs depicted all around them!
Hum, the christian bible didn’t mention any centaurs living around the garden of eden.
Anyhow, uhh… When did Darwin talk about Greek art? o-o I rather thought we were happily surprised to find some of the ‘myths’ were based off of real places and we always noted that many of the religions in the areas had the same myths of floods and such. One builds on another, and whatnot.
Wait – is that the Darwin aspect? That societies don’t spring whole cloth, but instead build upon prior ones? And that we know from these histories that the christian one isn’t the first, second, fifth, etc?
must blindly insist that ancient Greek vase-painters and sculptors spent their entire lives portraying nothing more than myths
Does Mr Johnston explain why the Greek artists spent so much of their time portraying daily life in Sodom and Gomorrah?
I wasn’t a right-wing troll until this morning, but it’s really easy and it doesn’t take long to learn the ropes. You just memorize a few talking points and then act stupid if someone refutes them. Then you accuse all the LIEberals of hating God and wanting the terrorists to win!
Time for a little break. Where’s the nearest airport bathroom?
Hey, what about the rest of the world?
The Chinese have a flood myth too, but it isn’t a complete flood — more like an overflow myth — and the legendary sage king Yu the Great whips its ass with no help from any gods at all.
It’s fun to ask fundies this question: since the Han empire in China (206 BCE — 220 CE) was just as big as the Roman Empire in the time of Jesus (about 50 million population for each), and just as civilized, why did the Roman empire get eleven of the disciples, India got one (I think; and no one listened to him either), and China got zippo? God had a brain fart or what?
Han-o-fascist!
sunsin: keep in mind that God started small, with but one Chosen Nation, and not a very large one at that. It hints that He does not like to accomplish things in one fell swoop. First, you Create the world, together with some total bummers. Then we sweep away the worst dross with a Flood. Then you focus on one small nation to learn the ropes. Next project: enlighten an empire. And so on. Keep in mind that you want to have something interesting to do for eternity (presumably, after Apocalypsis you can start another project).
Why no disciples for China? Mud-people don’t get any crystal-white Jesus, that’s why!
It’s Freud who liked Greek art and mythology as an explanation of everything, not Darwin. Stupid wingnuts, can’t even keep their villains straight…
The old query: If man descended from monkeys, how come there are still monkeys?
I’ve always answered this in terms that Jonah Goldberg would appreciate:
The Milky Way (nougat and caramel) evolved from the Three Musketeers. And the Snickers (nougat, caramel, AND peanuts) evolved from the Milky Way. And yet, both the Milky Way and the Three Musketeers are still sold. Shouldn’t GOD have destroyed the Three Musketeers and Milky Way once he had perfected the candy bar?
Good god, the banana argument has met its match.
This “slime-snake-monkey-people” thing might just work.
I mean, Realtivity’s future was seriously in doubt right up until Einstein’s immortal “All Classical Physicists are Doodyheads” paper.
The Milky Way (nougat and caramel) evolved from the Three Musketeers. And the Snickers (nougat, caramel, AND peanuts) evolved from the Milky Way. And yet, both the Milky Way and the Three Musketeers are still sold. Shouldn’t GOD have destroyed the Three Musketeers and Milky Way once he had perfected the candy bar?
You LIEberals are so patronizing!!!
(Being a conservative troll is SO EASY! You only have to memorize a handful of talking points and you are SET! Even a caveman can do it.)