Can We Make Real Knowledge as Appealing as Made Up Knowledge?

I came across this blog

The blog name is "Dispatches From the Culture Wars: Thoughts from the Interface of Science, Religion, Law and Culture" by Ed Brayton. The entry I first came across was "S.E. Cupp Hearts Glenn Beck", because I was looking up S.E. Cupp as a follow up to my previous blog about her. Ed starts off with this paragraph.

"Has there been a more annoying debut for a pundit than the emergence of S.E. Cupp over the last few months? All of a sudden she's on every show, from O'Reilly to Bill Maher. A self-proclaimed atheist who nonetheless rages at "the left" for daring to criticize religion, she comes off as someone who engages in relentless self-promotion far more than in actual thinking."

Oops! Ed caught a very important point I missed in my blog. Surprisingly, possibly irrationally, S.E. calls herself an atheist. To some, her "atheism" may make her more credible as she attacks atheists, to me it makes her doubly irritating. I'm getting tired of people claiming to be liberals attacking liberal values with conservative slogans and propaganda. I'm sure I will soon also get tired of people claiming to be atheists attacking atheists with "Born again Christian" talking points. I just assumed she was a Christian, if not a fundamentalist.

S.E. Cupp represents an escalation in the propaganda war, a combination of two ideas. The first is the "False Flag" liberal attacking other liberals. The second idea is the sexy young blond wearing spectacles, which is now very popular among conservatives. S.E. Cupp combines the sexiness and the false flag into a double barrelled attack on liberals.

I listened to a youtube video of S.E. Cupp, in a C-Span interview, giving her thoughts on politics and religion. She stated that she did not believe in a higher power, or a deity, which is why she calls herself an atheist. Then she stated that she preferred George W. Bush to Barack Obama because George was guided by a higher power. The C-Span interviewer: "If you don't believe in a higher power, when why do you admire George Bush for taking directions from it?". I don't remember S.E.'s answer, I guess because my memory works better for things that make sense. And her answer made no sense to me at all. The interviewer persisted, and came back again with a question about the President who takes us to war, making many life and death decisions, taking directions from this deity that you say does not exist. This line of questioning went nowhere, as you can imagine.

Anyway, the popularity of these false front "intellectuals" has rubbed off on me somewhat. I have begun to do the same thing in order to make points about religion. I refer to "my faith" when I probably should say "my lack of faith". I refer to things God said to me, as a rebuttal to things God said to Pat Robertson and others. In effect I have become a Jesus freak who defends Atheism, which is the exact opposite point of view as S.E. Cupp (Atheist who defends born again Christians). I cannot figure out any other way to debate a person who claims that God speaks directly to them.

The essential difference between me and S.E. Cupp (in our points of view) is that S.E. Cupp pretends to be a rational minded atheist defending irrational religion, while not exhibiting any logic or reason herself. On the other hand I take the point of view of a "believer" to question certain Fundamentalist Christian ideas, and obviously I fall short in the "unquestioning blind faith" department. Which must be frustrating to the true believers. Mary Ann picks up on it right away whenever I say "according to my faith..." and she blurts out "What faith? You wouldn't even make it in the door of a bible meeting with your irreverent attitude." She is probably right.

One comment I especially liked in response to Ed's blog was from Lytefoot Oct 22 2010: He is talking about the fact that Glen Beck poses as a teacher on Fox News, complete with old fashioned chalk board, and has convinced many viewers that they are learning stuff, secret stuff the liberals don't want them to know about.

"The question becomes, how can we counter the appeal? How can we make real knowledge as appealing as made-up bullshit?"

Picture: This is my Photoshop concept of a beautiful teacher in glasses posing as a Darwinian Evolutionist, carrying out a crude brainwashing attempt with Glen Beck's chalkboard set. Any resemblance to S.E. Cupp is coincidental. I added the Darwin brooch and coffee mug, and the writing on the board. I also made the teacher somewhat more modest than the original pic.