Genius: Bananaman takes on John Lennon

[Rev. Rye]

I just got this movie forwarded to me yesterday, and, as it turns out, it's Ray Comfort's reworking 180 to go from the subject of abortion to John Lennon.

I'm honestly waiting for him to demonize him by calling him out for the lyrics to "Imagine."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7pe3_VQb...r_embedded#!

My thoughts will follow as soon as I'm done watching the damn movie.

[Cyberman]

Ray Comfort has no shame. That's only one of the things that he lacks, of course.

[frankiej]

Well, I won't be watching it unless it has Bananaman in it.

[Darkstar]

How can anyone still take him seriously after the "bannana: atheists' nightmare" incident?
...don't answer that. I want to have at least a little faith in humanity.

[Cyberman]

Never underestimate the power of wilful ignorance and the allure of a snake-oil salesman offering shiny beads.

[Rev. Rye]

Rye's thoughts on Genius:

Titles: Odd, the music seems to sound more McCartney than Lennon.

1:46: Seriously? You're confusing John Lennon with Franklin Pierce?

Remarkably, throughout most of his "intro-to-Lennon", he actually does stick to the facts. He clearly knows more about the Beatles than about Hitler. Granted, his implication that if the church services were less boring (probably like the more crazy American preachers), he'd have become a Christian doesn't ring true, because, from what I've gathered, reactions of irreligious Brits to the more vibrant (that's a tactful way to put it) Christianity of America seem to be nothing short of culture shock (at least at first.)

Rather Surprisingly, the vox pops guy at 7:00 knows more about the motivations of Mark David Chapman than Ray does. The man had a terrifying combination of fervent christianity and paranoid schizophrenia. He did it because he believed that John Lennon was turning into a phony and he saw hints in Todd Rundgren album covers. Seriously, there are books that can explain it better than I can. Hell, there are other docos (probably on Youtube) which explain it better than I can.

My question to where John Lennon is now: "somewhere in an urn in the Dakota." Either that or somewhere scattered in Central Park.

Why do I get the feeling that buddhist redhead lady was off her meds or at least filmed out of context."

What;s with the random blurring at 9:40 or so? Are you afraid of people jacking off to the random shit in the background, Ray?

Um, are you sure that slipping arsenic in coffee wouldn't get you caught? Because arsenic does show up in autopsies and, odds are, even if she gets blamed for it, there's always the possibility that she'd rat you out.

Maybe it's possible that a belief in moral accountability is just a function of actually having advanced morally throughout Piaget's stages. And, note to Ray: Before you go around claiming that disbelief in God leads a nation into immorality, look at the more "shamelessly" atheistic nations like France, or anything in Scandinavia.

Evolution isn't the doctrine that there's no God. It's not even the doctrine that we're descended from primates. It's the principle that life changes over time. It has absolutely nothing to say about God.

If you want proof, go to a museum, and try to couch it in more neutral terms than "there's no proof for evolution! It's a belief!" so they can actually take you seriously.

13:45: If evolution is a belief, what does that makes Christianity?

14:08: Seriously? Where did darkness come from? It comes from not turning on the goddam lights!

Males and females would have to evolve separately? If that would have to happen, we'd still be doing mitosis.

15:20 Ray Comfort as a skeptic? If he's a skeptic, let's see what he thinks of this scenario: I plan to create a building which contains just enough of every animal species to sustain its population; This building will have only 101250 feet of floor space. Do you think that this project can work if I seal this building off for about a year? If so, you'd have to say that Noah's Ark couldn't work.

16:07. Actually, John did say that he didn't believe in evolution; confirmation from a book called All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. page 114. Notably, Ray removed a large part of the quote:

Nor do I think we came from monkeys, by the way... That's another piece of garbage. What the hell's it based on? We couldn't've come from anything--fish, maybe, but not monkeys. I don't believe in the evolution of fish to monkeys to men. Why aren't monkeys changing into men now? It's absolute garbage. It's absolutely irrational garbage, as mad as the ones who believe the world was made only four thousand years ago, the fundamentalists. That and the monkey thing are both as insane as the apes standing up suddenly. The early men are always drawn like apes, right? Because that fits in the theory we have been living with since Darwin. I don't buy that monkey business. [Singing] "Too much monkey business..." [Laughing] I don't buy it. I've got no basis for it and no theory to offer, I just don't buy it. Something other than that. Something simpler. I don't buy anything other than "It always was and ever shall be." I can't conceive of anything less or more. The other theories change all the time. They set up these idols and then they knock them down. It keeps all the old professors happy in the university. It gives them something to do. I don't know id there's any harm in it except they ram it down everybody's throat. Everything they told me as a kid has already been disproved by the same type of "experts" who made them up in the first place. There.

Ray removed the parts in bold. The moral of the story: He's not a believer in evolution, nor is he a believer in creationism. What he was was a romantic who, like William Blake, didn't really give two shits for science.

And yes, if I was judged before God, I'd probably be condemned to Hell. On the other hand, if DeGaulle was judged before Hitler, he'd probably be condemned as well. That said, if DeGaulle was judged before Algerians, he'd probably also be condemned. Maybe I should have used Raoul Wallenberg as an example.

So, wait, if serious punishment awaits those who don't follow God's laws, why would it be treated like a fine? If God's supposed to be like a judge, he's a corrupt one.

22:00, fun fact: John did convert to Christianity, but it was only for a brief time, it happened in 1977. By 1979, he was bored with Christianity. Salinger probably stuck longer with Christianity than John Lennon.

23:05: Yes, you are judging her. You may be using someone else's criteria, but you're the one doing the judging.

24:00, if God doesn't take pleasure in the death of the wicked, then why allow it, unless there's a power higher than himself?

30:57: Yeah, I suppose that, semantically, "imagine there's no heaven" is semantically equivalent to "imagine there's no New York," in that it could be interpreted that he's acknowledging that Heaven exists in reality, but, really, why would Ray be defending it if it was the case? Even then, he's clearly embodying the "my god is bigger than your god" conceit that he quotes Lennon as protesting.

31:46-51 And one more thing: why is Bananaman standing behind a CGI Les Paul Standard? To the best of my knowledge, John never played a Les Paul Standard. Sure, he played a heavily modified Les Paul Special in his later years, but he's not a Les Paul man.

31:42, if God can usher in an age without wickedness, why not do it right now? Hell, why didn't he nip the thing in the bud as soon as Adam and Eve disobeyed?