Frontline - God In America - Has anyone been watching this - interesting

[benld74]

3rd night now and they are getting into the Snopes Trial. Began Sunday night with the Puritans,,,

[stopbush]

1. Apparently not.

No one is watching, maybe because people are just tired of religion on TV, even when it's a historic documentary.

Baseball playoffs, football season, new fall TV shows. Not exactly competitive to run a mini-series on dog, er god.

[SocialistLez]

2. If it were "Atheism in America" or something to that effect...

I'd watch

[Delarage]

3. I watched tonight

I was particularly interested in the Civil War part, with Lincoln's history of religion (he distrusted the emotional Baptist way he was brought up and refused to join the church, preferring a more reasoned approach) and how he struggled with the meaning of it all during the war. I shudder when Repukes today claim him as one of their own; he totally did not de-humanize the enemy, did not gloat in victory. He recognized the horror of it all, for everyone involved. But he did see it as a punishment for the U.S. for the abomination of slavery. His own assasination was viewed as additional punishment---the U.S. had deserved more punishment for slavery, but he took the last measure for us (it was viewed in very Christ-like terms back then, which I had not been aware of). It was very interesting.

The Snopes stuff was also interesting, but I was fading out by then. I did like that they made the fundies look like the whack-jobs they were and still are, with very literal interpretations of the Bible. When they can't avoid it (like the world being made in 7 days), they don't even see themselves as the hypocrites they are. We all have to interpret the Bible to some degree, yet they see "liberal" interpretations as sins and their own as "necessities".

[Archae]

4. A chunk of the show is bullshit.

Noted here:

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2010/10/12/14742/575/Front_Page/History_is_Powerful_And_PBS_Gets_It_Wrong