The new co-host of "The View," Sherri Shepherd, insisted Tuesday that Christianity was older than ancient Greece, and even Judaism.Even Whoopi Goldberg didn't seem too sure whether there were any Christians around at the time of Epicurus (341-270 BCE), even though she was pretty sure there weren't. Hmm, you would have thought the popular usage "BC" would have been a big clue...
I would imagine that even creationists, who are total numbskulls, know that Judaism predated Christianity, because the Bible makes it clear that Judaism came first (unless the reader is severely intellectually challenged). It also mentions the other religions that were around at the time when Christianity started, and which fairly obviously predate it (e.g. in the Book of Acts when the silversmiths of Ephesus raise a clamour against Paul, saying "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians").
You would have thought that before somebody went on TV to talk about Epicurus (or any other topic), they would be required to get their facts straight. Not only does this woman think that there have always been Christians (what, even in prehistory?) but she also said earlier this year that she didn't know if the world was flat or round.
This would be funny if it wasn't deeply, deeply tragic that this kind of nudnik is actually allowed on TV, or indeed, allowed out on their own without supervision.
[Thanks to Caroline Tully for sending me this.]
5 comments:
No, how could that be!? I can't believe people are honestly that dumb... :-/ I guess in a sound-byte culture where everything was either "now" or "a long time ago" and even last year is cause for nostalgia, this type of thing isn't so unexpected... Still... It makes me sad.
And a lot of historians point to ancient Egypt's brief flirtation with a single god, the Aten worship brought in by Akhenhatan, as a precursor to all the later main monotheistic religions, although from the sound of it this dizzy twonk thinks there were Christians around then too... I'd like to think this was just for a show to get folks talking but sadly there are large numbers of people who are exactly this stupid. Can we please remove them from the gene pool now?
Also, you might want to bear in mind that there is a strong sentiment in some evangelical circles that anything before Christ's birth was merely "setting the stage for him." So to them, everything in the Old Testament (including the entire Jewish religion) was nothing more an elaborate set-up to bring about the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ. I felt I saw much of that mentality underlying Sherri's comments, though it's clear she doesn't fully understand them and is incapable of expressing such an opinion well.
@ Joe & Jarred: I don't think her "analysis" was that that subtle.
@ Jarred: Actually that is seen as the correct way to read the Bible in the Greek Orthodox and Catholic traditions also. Personally I just can't get my head around providential history - in my opinion if the theory of providential history were true, the Arian heresy would have won the day back in the 4th-9th centuries.
@ Ali: I fear there really are people that dumb :(
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