SRR #52 | Bill Nye Destroys The Culture

I do a podcast.

I'm not interested in your podcast.

Folks, these are wolves. Truth be told, I oftentimes lay awake at night trying to figure out how I can get rid of wolves.

We are unabashedly, unashamedly Clarkian. And so, the next few statements that I'm going to make, I'm probably going to step on all of the Vantillian toes at the same time. And this is what we do at Simple Riff around the radio, you know.

We are polemical and polarizing, Jesus style.

I would first say that to characterize what we do as fashion is itself fashion. It's not hate, it's history. It's not fashion, it's the Bible. Jesus said, Woe to you when men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way, as opposed to blessed are you when you have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness.

It is on. We're taking the gloves off. It's time to battle.

Introducing Joe Lanza and His Background

Alright, welcome back everybody. This is Tim from Simple Riff around the radio and I have with me today somebody who is new to our podcast. I think that a lot of people out there are going to know who he is but we're trying to bring him on board with Simple Riff around the radio.

So, let me go ahead and introduce him and then just ask him to tell us a little bit about himself. With us we have Joe Lanza. Did I say it? Is it Lanza or Lonza?

Both is fine.

Both is fine. Alright, well Joe is here with us and he is an admin. You're an admin, right? Or are you a moderator for the Bible. Thumping Wingnut.

Facebook group? Technically I'm a moderator but in essence it's the same thing. I just can't delete Tim Hurd.

Yeah, I think that would be a I think that's a no-no. That would be a mutiny. Well anyways, Joe is pretty active on the Facebook page and so if you follow the Bible Thumping Wingnut group then I think that you would already know who he is.

He's been on Council of Google Plus before with those guys and so I think he's a pretty good fit because he's a Reformed Baptist and he's Clarkian and so I think he's a pretty good fit for our podcast.

I'm trying to get him to come on with us and this doesn't mean that we're replacing any of the guys that we have on here. We're still hanging with Joseph when we get the opportunity and Carlos when we get the opportunity and I think I'm recording with Tim Kaufman tomorrow.

Man, that guy has some excellent, excellent content. We are just so grateful that he can that he's willing to put his material on our podcast and I believe we're going to do we're going to do a couple of more episodes with him on Roman Catholicism and then I think we're going to go into eschatology so that's going to be fun.

I think that's going to be really, really fun. Tim has probably influenced my eschatological views more than anybody else that I can think of so I'm very grateful to have him as a friend and just have him on the podcast but today I want to give Joe an opportunity to introduce himself, tell us a little bit about who you are, where you're from.

I know that you're Reformed Baptist but where you fall theologically so let me give you an opportunity to say hello, Joe.

Thanks for having me on and hey everybody out there that's listening and just I guess a little bit about myself is I'm from the Warren, Ohio area. Warren, Ohio is just a little bit south of Cleveland for people that aren't familiar with the Ohio area.

I was born and raised there, pretty much grew up in a lower middle class family and I learned how to love the Lord through my parents and I really didn't become saved until I was about 15 years old. I was Christian-like from birth but it wasn't until I was about 15 that I actually understood my sinfulness before God and just my pure inability to live up to his standards without his son.

So.

About the time I was 16 I had left the church that my parents and I were attending and shortly after they followed, I would even consider that church now to be cult-like very much leaning toward Pelagianism works righteousness softly.

King James only-ist even though they wouldn't flat out say that it's you only go with the King James. That would kind of be the go-to Bible for them though. And then I ended up meeting the woman that would become my wife.

And I am a five-point Calvinist and I do happen to hold to a type of Charismaticism. I'm probably less Charismatic than somebody like Matt Slick but definitely more Charismatic than somebody like Jordan Hall for example which isn't really saying much because he would consider himself nearly cage-stage when it comes to cessationism.

So anyways I've been a Calvinist for about three years or two or three years something like that and just haven't met a whole lot of people around me too happy with that. But I think slowly but surely people are kind of understanding what I believe a little bit better and specifically in my area I told them at Ohio Fire last year not this past year but the one before I told them that that was the first time I had ever actually stepped foot into a church that wasn't Arminian.

I believe that that church was Calvinistic in their soteriology and that would have been the first time I ever met another Calvinist in person.

So.

Let me ask you a couple of questions. The church that you're attending is Arminian or are they Calvinist?

No they are Arminian.

So you wouldn't be able to lead anything in that church right? I mean.

Oh no I do. I lead the evangelism team I take them out and we go out and talk to people in the parks and we've gone to different like major events in the area and I'll go out and open air preach.

And so they know that you're a Calvinist and they let you lead evangelism? Yep. Well that's good to know. So your parents left the church that they were going to before when you were a kid. What was the reason that they left that church?

For them it was a number of reasons. Some of it was kind of church politics other portions where they were seeing I would say a bit of corruption of power with the pastor involved and everything. I've never I don't like getting into it too much with talking to them about it because it's kind of a hot button topic for them still.

They've been in and out of churches ever since and it kind of gets to them a little bit I think and how they understand church government is a little bit different than mine so then we end up getting into those conversations.

My parents are not reformed. I do believe both of them to be saved. They were saved in the mid 1980s or so but yeah they their views are a little bit different than mine and as far as I understand mainly some corruption issues were their problem.

I actually didn't even leave myself for any theological reasons. I left because of an accident that happened in the church and it caused the death of somebody and I knew that my pastor would have pretty much preached a sermon on how we have to pretty much live better lives or the same thing will happen to us and I just kind of saw it coming and I just decided that day that I wasn't going to go back and I've never gone back ever since.

Thank you for sharing that. I was actually going to ask if your parents go to the same church as you but you already answered that question. That's good man. Well I'm glad to hear that you're Calvinist.

I know that we talked a little bit about where you stand theologically so you said that you're a Reformed Baptist. When we talked what do you mean when you say that you're Reformed. And what do you mean when you say that you're a Reformed Baptist?

Well specifically I think the most Reformed thing about me would be my soteriology being that I am a Calvinist.

I.

As I study I'm finding more that I hold closer to the 1689 Latin Baptist Confession but considering I haven't put any deep study into the actual confession itself I could hold to 50 or 90 I'm not really sure exactly how much of it I agree with.

I'm assuming based on the fact that the majority of the Reformed Baptist people that actually go to Reformed Baptist churches that I agree with largely everything that they believe in. Obviously like I said I hold to the 5 points I hold.

A.

Soft charismaticism but I'm being told more and more as I articulate my position that I actually am a cessationist that that just doesn't realize that I'm a cessationist yet which I'm not completely sure that that's the case.

As far as the Reformed ecclesiology I would always prefer the Reformed position that there be multiple elders that the elders be the ones that you know kind of enact church discipline and so on. Actual Matthew 18 church discipline being brought about in the church would be ideal male leadership so on and so forth.

And you know just generally the Reformed Baptist position as far as I know without cessationism.

Yeah that's good man. I've been told the same thing that I'm really a cessationist. I just need to go a little bit further in the scriptures. Carlos and I probably disagree on that a little bit because I'm leaning more one way and he's leaning in the opposite way.

But.

We're glad to have you man. Let's go ahead and do this. Let's go ahead and play the commercials that we've got and we'll be back after that to get into what we're going to get into. Alright, be right back.

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Bill Nye Saves the World and the Problem of Cultural Propaganda

Alright, we are back with Joe Lanza. Thank you Joe for taking the time to share all of that with us. So let's go ahead and do this. We decided that we were going to talk today about Bill Nye the Science Guy and we're specifically going to tackle one of the episodes in his new Netflix TV show, Bill Nye Saves the World.

This is really the only episode from this that I've seen because I decided that I wanted to address it and I'm not a fan of Bill Nye. I'm not a fan of the show. I think the show is pretty lame, possibly even blasphemous because it's Christ who is our Savior.

So even just the premise gets me a little bit annoyed but I decided that I wanted to address this because I've seen a lot of the stuff from this episode popping up on Facebook. There's a horrendous awful dance number that came out of this.

There's a little segment on ice cream flavors but it was about sexuality and it was about gender being on a spectrum. And so I'd ask Joe to jump on here with me and so that way we could talk about it, we could tackle it.

But Joe, let me just get your first impressions from watching the episode. What did you think about what you saw?

It was rough. I just think in general like I almost want to go back and watch the old Bill Nye the Science Guy shows just to see if the nostalgia of it is what I remember or if the actual quality of the show is what I remember because I remember those shows being pretty good.

They were entertaining and well done but this was just from a production value. It was terrible.

From.

Reality it was terrible. From what's considered to be science terrible. Just all around was bad. I think that the script that they have is bad. I think the topic that they have is bad. I think their conclusions, the way that they come to their conclusions, all of it is just really bad and it's kind of rude and vulgar on top.

Of it. Yeah, certainly they're trying to be edgy. They're trying to be provocative. I find it very irritating. We have a Netflix account and I usually watch stuff off of Amazon. We have an Amazon Prime disc and with that comes Netflix and man after going and looking at this I've been thinking about I need to sit down and go through it again because I've been thinking about canceling Netflix and the reason why is because you can't decide to censor any of the stuff that they're promoting on Netflix and that bothers me because I have a four year old who's now learning how to use the remote control and so he can go into there's a kids app and then there's an adult app but sometimes he can go into the adult app and he can see things on there that I just do not want him seeing even in just the promotion of certain shows.

One of them, I don't even know the name of it. My wife was telling me about it but it's about the whole show's premise is about transgenderism and I think it's about a dad who becomes a mom or something like that and it's pretty disgusting and when I saw the Bill Nye the Science Guy episode I wanted to give him a one star rating just to do it, just to give him a one star rating but unfortunately I think after Amy Schumer's flop of comedy routine on Netflix if you're not familiar it was kind of a big deal for her.

Amy Schumer had a comedy skit on Netflix and it got a one star rating and so she complained and basically said that it was all the haters and after this Netflix started to redo the way that they do their rating system and so I wasn't able to give Bill Nye's episode a one star rating.

I wanted to give it that but I basically rated it with a thumbs down and it was, I think you said it appropriately Joe it was pretty awful but there are several main segments in it. One of them as I said before was a dance we're not even going to tackle that.

This dance.

Was.

It was awful.

Even.

Mainstream secularists were criticizing it because it was just so poorly done the talent was just non-existent and it was crass and it was brutal. It was brutal to watch but we were going to tackle two segments from this and one of them was the ice cream segment and I don't even know how much I want to.

I'm probably going to play a little bit of this so that way we can tackle what is being said but let's go ahead and start off with that one. What do you say Joe? Should we start off with that one or a different one?

Yeah start with that one.

Okay so I'm going to stop it very early but this is a mockery of what I would consider to be this is a mockery of Christianity. So let's go ahead and play that. I'm going to stop it very early because there's just absolutely no need to play the whole thing.

Hold on. Of course enlightened and forward thinking but not everyone sees it this way. But there are lots of flavors to sexuality.

Why are we here Vanilla? Oh this again? Come on!

Ah! Straubs! Settle.

Everybody settle.

Okay so what has happened. I'll describe it for our audience. What has happened is Vanilla has just put up a sign that says ice cream conversion therapy and everyone's saying oh not this again and in the little video there's different flavors of ice cream and this is supposed to be representative of sexuality.

So there's different flavors of sexuality there's different flavors of just as there are different flavors of ice cream. That would be the analogy and Vanilla who is representative of the white male Christian is wanting to convert everybody to Vanilla.

So that's what's going on right now.

Now I've spoken to some of you about my theories on the nature of being ice cream which have no basis in science. It's the science of feelings and as Vanilla I feel that I am the most natural of the ice creams and therefore the rest of you should just go ahead and also be Vanilla.

It's the one true flavor.

No! Don't make me stop being strawberry delicious!

Oh Christ look no one can make you stop being strawberry strawberry. You're strawberry! Hold me salted caramel! I just think if you want to get right with the big ice cream in the sky change your flavor by wishing to be Vanilla.

What if the big ice cream in the sky is chocolate?

Blasphemy! Everyone should pretend to be Vanilla until they no longer have the urge not to be Vanilla.

Alright so I believe. He said oh Christ and that was blasphemous and just makes me mad.

So.

That's all you need to know. That's it right there. That's all we're going to play. The whole thing is garbage. It's stupid so right.

There.

Vanilla is wanting to he says it's the science of feeling and then he wants to get everybody else to bend to bend to his subjective reality. And then strawberry comes in and says oh no I'm strawberry or he doesn't want to change from being strawberry.

So Joe I want to point something out. I want to point out how stupid this is. Joe, what do you notice about strawberry?

Well I'm thinking that strawberry is the homosexual of the group that's.

Okay that's fine but what do you notice about strawberry? What color, what is strawberry?

Oh well he's like pink or red.

He's strawberry he's objectively strawberry. This is why this is so stupid. They have to portray strawberry as objectively strawberry and it's almost as if they're going to lose the argument if they don't do this and it's very subtle what they're doing.

They're presenting the vanilla the christian position as the one who is wanting to put his subjective feelings as that which is true for everybody else. That is not what christianity is, that is not what christianity does, christianity has an objective standard of truth.

And what's so funny is that what vanilla ice cream is doing in this skit is what the LGBTQ community is doing. It is not what christians are doing. The LGBTQ community, their agenda is they feel, it's the science of feeling, they feel like you know this guy feels like he's a girl.

You're not if you're a male, if you're biologically a male, you're biologically a male but he feels like he's a girl. Well then what they're trying to do is they're trying to get everybody else around them to bend to their subjective impression of reality and so what they're doing is it's amazing that they're actually doing this.

I mean and you have to think about the level of intellectual engagement with the audience because they're not picking up on this they're not realizing, wait a minute why is strawberry actually represented as strawberry, if you watch the video it is objectively strawberry, on the outside not on the inside, on the outside and so apparently it's the vanilla guy the christian who is wanting to reject that.

Okay. Well objectively on the outside yeah you are strawberry and I guess he wants to make them vanilla but the christian position is this.

Basically.

What are you objectively, are you a man? Did god make you a man or did god make you a woman. And it's the christian position that basically says objectively, if you're male then you're male. And I thought that was really interesting I thought that.

And really this kind of this goes to show how they're forced to steal from the christian world view in order to reject the christian world view because they have to acknowledge that truth is objective and they have to present that in the show, if they presented.

A character.

Who's running around saying that he's strawberry.

But.

Objectively speaking he looks like he's pistachio. Then even a child would look at that and say well I don't understand why is he saying he's strawberry. Because that's not what strawberry is and so in order to do this they had to represent things as they actually are and then twist it.

I wrote something out for this, just a little something that I wanted to read. Let me pull it up. The opponents of christianity must stand on the christian world view in order to denounce it. They must assume it's legitimacy in order to declare it illegitimate, they must assume it's truth in order to declare it false.

And we see that the christian world view purports that truth is objective. It doesn't really matter what you feel if you feel that you can fly well that doesn't really mean that you can fly.

I think that if they were being consistent then pistachio would have shown up and said I was assigned pistachio when I was scooped and actually I'm chocolate. I'm actually chocolate. I was just assigned pistachio so the ice cream maker just got it wrong.

That's what he did.

But they weren't able to do that because at that point I think that everybody would recognize how foolish this really is, how stupid this really is and so it's better to just mock christianity and mock the christian position and there was a reference to the ice cream in the sky or something like that and so obviously when you're mocking the christian position you're just not you're not even engaging your mind intellectually, there's just no intellectual engagement and they're pushing this onto the culture and it's completely irrational, it's stupid and it doesn't even make sense.

I think that it really it comes down to whether or not those people are actually thinking for themselves, are they being sheep or are they actually willing to think for themselves and look at it in a way that could be considered objective, so if they're not even going to see the blatant contradiction in their little cartoon that they made I don't think that they were looking for consistency.

I think, like you just said, I think it was just to mock the christianity. I don't think it was any coincidence that people consider vanilla to be boring and that the the christian is the boring one. I also don't think it's any coincidence that amongst all the social justice warrior fandom that that show is going to have that vanilla being the white ice cream is the white ice cream and it's kind of the cliché.

Well christians are just white people that are trying to oppress the minorities of the world.

Yeah and basically the whole thing is a false analogy. Perhaps maybe this would have been better suited for a racial segment on race because there are and I know that we're all one race. I agree with what Ken Ham in Answers in Genesis has to say about that.

But you know with different skin tones you have darker skin tones lighter skin tones you have different people groups from different places that have different features and so maybe it would have been better suited for something like that.

It might have worked a little bit better for that. But did you have anything else that you wanted to say about that?

Not really I think that it kind of speaks for itself in its silliness. I mean to an extent I think that it they're obviously being satirical and they're even purposefully caricaturing the christian world view and all of the big ice cream in the sky.

And it's the science of feelings. Even though I've never heard anybody use the term science of feeling it doesn't exist.

Yeah I've never heard that either. So let's go ahead and play the other one. This one is pretty bad and I think I'm just going to go ahead and play the whole thing.

Sexuality, Gender, and the Science of Feelings

One thing's clear about sexuality. There's a lot more going on than meets the eye. Female or male. Gay or straight. Pink or blue. We were taught to see these as binary. Now we're realizing it's more like a kaleidoscope.

And this stuff isn't just for adults. Parents know this already. Kids explore gender expression attraction. Before they've ever heard of a spectrum. Take sex. We used to think it was pretty straightforward.

X and a y chromosome for males two x's for females. But we see more combinations than that in real life. And even for people with just two sex chromosomes hormones can vary wildly. So can anatomy. What makes someone male or female isn't so clear cut.

How about attraction. Some people argue the natural thing is to only be attracted to the opposite sex. But in practice it ain't so simple. Kids some people are gay some are bi some are asexual. And some will take whatever they can get.

You know what I mean. It's another sexy sliding scale. When you throw in gender it gets even more colorful. By three or four. Most kids identify with a gender and it doesn't always match the sex they were assigned at birth.

And a person's gender identity may change over their lifetime and culture is getting us new ways to express all of this. How you dress, how you act talk, how you present yourself.

To the world.

It should be up to you sure this might make things confusing for those who insist everyone pick an M or an F. But people, we have to listen to the science. And the science says we're all on a spectrum.

Our labels, our fashion even our washrooms are still catching up to that truth. I think you'll find when we look at sexuality this way it is more complicated but it's also a lot more honest and it's more interesting.

I learned a lot tonight. I mean, I'm this cis male guy who's been living in this world. But this stuff to me from a scientific standpoint is just cool. Science is the process by which we understand nature by which we understand our place in the world how we all fit in.

And so every one of these insights is just so exciting for me. We working together can dare I say it save the world. So everybody that's our show.

Alright that was that was garbage. I don't even think Bill Nye is cool anymore. Joe, first impressions man.

I.

This frustrates me a lot, it really does. He I mean, kind of to describe for the people that can't see the video he has four mannequins kind of set up in the room and they're all projected images on them and everything and it's just not I don't know, like I was saying before, it's not good production quality.

Bill Nye he's clearly either reading from a script or just has lines memorized and then just the world view that's being put out, it can't be held to consistently and it's actually rather, to me this would be confusing, if I was trying to actually learn what science taught about this, I don't think I actually would know, other than where they stand on it, like obviously I can tell where they end up and how they conclude, but I don't know how they get to the conclusion that they get to.

Well, they've already arrived at the conclusion that they're at so let's break this down. You typed up the you transcribed what was said so I'm just going to go ahead and read it. One thing's clear about sexuality, there's a lot more going on than meets the eye.

Female or male, gay or straight, pink or blue, we were taught to see these things as binary. Yeah, we were taught that in Bill Nye the Science Guy's original TV show back in the 90's and Netflix actually had to pull that from Netflix because people were showing the inconsistency.

I just think that's what was the original show? Bill Nye the Science Guy, right?

That was what it was called, yeah but this is just it's rather silly that he even mentions because he says male or female and obviously that's the binary they don't want to deal with gay or straight, they also don't want to deal with that but then they go with pink or blue and that's what one of the inconsistencies is because the pink and blue those two divisions pink being for girls and blue being for boys that's just an arbitrary standard a boy can like something pink and it not be a girly thing and vice versa.

Yeah, I think that's a good point. Let me continue reading, it says. Now we're realizing it's more of a kaleidoscope. And this stuff isn't just for adults. Parents know this already. Kids explore gender expression attraction.

Before they've ever heard of a spectrum. Take sex, we used to think it was pretty straight forward. X and a y chromosome for males, two x's for females. I think that he put that in there because that's actually what he used to teach on his Bill Nye the Science Guy TV show and he says, but we see more combinations than that in real life.

And even for people with just two sex chromosomes hormones can vary wildly now. This is very misleading because the example that he gives is in the episode. If you can remind me, it was of an animal right?

He didn't give a human example.

I don't.

He did the clownfish.

Clownfish, that's what it was, yeah. And so his example of the more combinations is of a fish, it's not of a human and this is deceptive. And man, I can't even put into words how bad this is. So he gives no examples of all the different combinations of.

X and y.

I mean, I would love to see the evidence. He gives no evidence, he doesn't demonstrate it scientifically, there's no scientific experimentation that's done to prove these things or to illustrate these things.

But the example that he gives is of a fish and it's such a gross error that I think you would literally just have to shut your brain off to not catch it. He's wanting to talk about human sexuality and the basis for his argument is a fish.

So that's pretty bad. Let me see. Ok, so he says we see more combinations than that in real life. The combinations are not, were never given in. There were no human examples of this. So, whatever. And hormones can vary wildly.

Sure, you know I can see that, but he says so can anatomy what makes someone male or female isn't so clear cut, yeah it is. How about attraction. Ok, so this is where I really want to get into this. He says how about attraction, some people argue the natural thing is to only be attracted to opposite sex, but in practice it ain't so simple, kids.

Some people are gay, some people are bi some are asexual and some will take whatever they can get alright, so what about the and I'm going to bring this up, because I'm basically imploring the use of an ad hominem reply, which is I'm basically accepting his propositions as true for the sake of argument so that I can deduce from them either positions that he would reject or contradictory propositions.

So I'm going to accept this as true, for the sake of argument. But, what about pedophilia. What about those people that are pedophiles. I mean, they're on the spectrum. They would be on the spectrum. You know, he says attraction isn't so simple.

What about those people that are attracted to kids.

It's not just that either I mean, if you're attracted to, you know your own sibling, or you're attracted to your family pet, I mean, we could. And this isn't the slippery slope fallacy either, I mean people want to try to label it as just being the slippery slope fallacy but the reason it's not is because it's the logical outpouring of this.

Man, I love it when people try to name fallacies and they have no idea what they're talking about. I've heard that too, and basically what we're doing is we're reducing this to its logical conclusion, and we're not the ones who are making the fallacy here.

But, the problem is is that, okay you want to say that the kid issue. They're probably going to say that the kid issue is morally wrong because you're hurting an individual, right? Well, why is it wrong to hurt somebody else, in your world.

View?

And you bring up some other good examples. What about incest? What about a person who wants to marry their mom, or something like that, or a dad who wants to marry his daughter or a dad who wants to marry his son, I mean this can just go on for days.