5/5 Slices through irrationality with sharp political incorrectness!
  by Peter Lairo (Frankfurt, Germany)
Exposes may commonly held "beliefs". Smart and reason-based. Slashes right through idiotic propaganda.

A little bit too much cussing (f-word, s**t), but it's part of the breaking out from the idiotic numbness of political correctness, so it actually serves as a symbolic tool.

These are must-have episodes for anyone curious about what beliefs they might be "certain" about ... but are wrong.

There are no "holy cows" here, so be prepared to lose some dearly held beliefs.

Enjoy!

5/5 Eye Opening
  by J. Eshleman (Riverside, CA USA)
Penn & Teller have always been masters of illusion, so who better than they to debunk other illusionists...only it's not other magicians they're uncovering, it's everyday scam artists that many in today's society accept as "experts."

1/5 Why Believe Them?
  by Kevin Meares (New Hope, PA United States)
You know the thing the later episodes of BS need? Its called evidence. They spend a lot of time mocking people and very little time dealing with the hard evidence on the matter. Let me give two examples:

A) Drugs: Why do they ignore the biological side of addiction? A medicom of research would easily show hard evidence that physical (as opposed to psychological) addiction is caused by known alterations in brain chemistry. Further several notable studies (prominantly using identical twins seperated at birth or close to) have shown genetic links to alcoholism.

B) THe Bible: Isn't it fascinating they ignore the New Testament? Think maybe its because the evidence shows the New Testament was written by eye witnesses or written based on their direct testimony? See the writtings of Jerome in 95 AD for example who was already talking about all 27 books of the new testament as being true scripture. Or the quotes of the church fathers that cite almost the entire New Testament during the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. No other historical document of similar length has the textual accuracy found in early bibles (compare 11 disputed lines in the NEw Testament to 40 in Homer's works).

If you want a show aimed at using science to dispel people's nonsensical notions try Mythbusters. If you want to watch a loud mouth laugh at people who disagree with him then this is the way to go.

2/5 DEBUNKING THE BIBLE--CUTE THEATRICS, LOUSY ARGUMENTS
  by Silence Dogood (States)

While Penn and Teller generally do a good job exposing various forms of hokum on their show, their half-hour format only suffices when delving into easy targets, like anti-aging miracle treatments or safety hysteria. It's not nearly enough time to effectively debunk more complex subjects. Such is the case this season when they attempt to lay waste to the Bible, a book that's been around in its present form for about 450 years, and includes writings that have stood the test of time for eons. In this episode P&T promise to "reveal the many discrepancies and contradictions in the Bible" and call into question not only whether Moses parted the Red Sea, but whether Jesus even existed. As a deist, I'm always on the lookout for evidence confirming or disproving events in the Bible, but frankly I was disappointed by what's uncovered. P&T demonstrate at most a dim awareness of the Bible, and the duo resort to a jumbled, let's-throw-everything-we-can-at-the-subject-and-hope-some-of-it-sticks approach. What the viewer gets are hyperbolic accusations with little more than theories to back up the claims.

P&T and their one expert--Skeptic Magazine's publisher Michael Shermer--assert the Bible is "mythic story-telling and nothing more," that archeology has revealed "most everything in the Bible is fiction." Yet their archeological evidence proving the fictitious nature of the Bible is actually the LACK OF archeological evidence that's surfaced supporting certain events that allegedly took place. In fact, P&T somehow manage to go thirty minutes without producing a shred of archeological evidence proving any part of the Bible is fiction.

For example, their evidence that the Hebrews' exodus from Egypt never took place is the lack of a corroborating account by the Egyptians. While this may call into question the Hebrews' version of events, it does not disprove them. Further, as Paul Maier--the episode's lone expert defending the Bible--points out (and Shermer grudgingly concedes), Egyptians recorded their victories, not their defeats.

The episode spends a fair amount of time on Genesis. Here P&T demonstrate that Chapters 1 and 2 give two different versions of the Adam and Eve-creation story (though they fail to mention that the versions are not contradictory) and make light of the notion that Noah built an ark and gathered up two of every creature in anticipation of the great flood. Their evidence that the latter never took place consists of interviewing people on the street to ask whether they believe the Noah story, and pointing out that the story bears a resemblance to a well-known tale involving a Sumerian king and the Euphrates River. Perhaps the Sumerian king's adventure inspired the Noah tale, perhaps not. But speculation is not archeological evidence proving the Noah tale never happened, nor does it demonstrate any kind of inconsistency or inaccuracy. While they do provide an example of an impossibility--Noah couldn't have collected two of every species and later redistributed them to their proper habitats--showing one impossibility does not prove the Bible is full of them, as Penn and Teller contend.

Their case grows far shakier when they jump from the Old Testament to the New. Unfortunately for P&T, plenty of archeological evidence exists confirming events and figures depicted in the New Testament, so here they resort to a different approach. They start out by making a ludicrous comparison between Elvis Presley and Jesus Christ. Both figures, they point out, achieved fame, had plenty of followers, died and were seen alive years later. Apparently they're attempting to diminish the Jesus accounts by finding a like example in our own time. But their argument falls apart when one examines what they leave out. The people who supposedly sighted Elvis in the nineteen eighties were not acquaintances of his, whereas Jesus made multiple appearances to people who knew him and who wouldn't have confused him with a look-alike. And the people who claim Elvis is still around believe he never died, whereas Jesus' followers believe he came back from the dead. Further, no miracles are attributed to Elvis, and to date none of the Memphis Mafia has given up his life proclaiming Elvis was the Messiah.

Next P&T bring forth Shermer again, who remarks that "within the community of people who study this stuff, there are some who are [skeptical Jesus existed]." But he doesn't then provide the names of the skeptics, or their credentials, or even hint as to why they question Jesus' existence. Instead he (grudgingly once more) acknowledges that he himself believes Jesus probably existed. P&T then admit that a couple sources outside the Bible make mention of Jesus, leading the viewer to wonder why the issue was even raised.

Following this letdown, Shermer points out that during Jesus' time there were lots of would-be Messiahs. This is true, of course, as Jesus lived during an age when the Romans occupied the Jewish homeland, and the Messiah was expected to rise up and toss them out. But so what? Only one Messiah kicked off a religion that continues to prosper two thousand years later. If anything this point seems to weigh in favor of Jesus being the true Messiah.

Then Shermer commits the biggest blunder in the episode. In an attempt to demonstrate Jesus really wasn't all that remarkable a character, Shermer carts out Apollonius of Tyana, a Greek Pythagorean philosopher and teacher who was also around in the first century. His followers, we are told, believe he healed the sick, raised the dead, walked through walls, was persecuted for his religious beliefs, was put on trial by the Romans, was crucified, ascended into Heaven, and came back and met his followers. In light of the apparent similarities between Apollonius and Jesus, one is forced to conclude somebody ripped off somebody else's story. The only question is, who ripped off whom, and the answer couldn't be more obvious. First of all, Apollonius wasn't born until about 40 AD, approximately seven years AFTER Jesus died. The Apostle Paul's first writings--in which he stated in no uncertain terms Jesus rose from the dead--began surfacing about ten years after the death of Jesus, when Apollonius was still a toddler. The Acts of the Apostles and the Gospels began appearing somewhere between 40 AD and 100 AD (scholars tend to date their emergence at around 65 AD). So, in order for the Gospel writers to have stolen Apollonius' story rather than the other way around, they would have begun writing their accounts when Apollonius was around 25. (Never mind that the stories in the Gospels were probably circulating for decades by word of mouth before being put to paper.) Apollonius lived to 120 AD, so the authors of the Gospels documented Jesus' resurrection at least 20--and probably 55--years before Apollonius supposedly duplicated the feat.

Things look even worse for Apollonius when one considers that virtually everything known about him regarding his supposed supernatural abilities comes from a biography that was finished around 230 AD, 110 years AFTER Apollonius' death and 130 years after the latest estimate of the Gospels' emergence onto the scene. The author was one Philostratus, a Greek sophist who wrote the biography at the behest of the Roman empress Julia Domna. Philostratus claimed he drew his information from multiple sources, but if they ever existed they've been lost to time, and modern scholars dismiss much of the work as pure fiction. Using it to disprove Jesus' divinity is like citing passages from Erich Von Daniken's "Chariot of the Gods" to deny the Jewish Holocaust took place.

Shermer doesn't stop there, however. Next he makes the absurd claim that "most of the miracles" attributed to Jesus could be performed by P&T on their stage show. Sure, P&T are skilled illusionists capable of performing versions of Jesus' miracles, but if forced to adhere to the specifics of the miracles as laid out in the Gospels (e.g. turning a jug of water into drinkable wine rather than red-colored water) while limited to using whatever means a first-century peasant had available, they'd have a pretty tough time of it. I, for one, would be the first in line to catch a show featuring such illusions as curing a man known to be blind since birth, healing lepers, walking across a non-frozen lake, feeding 5,000 people with two fish and five loaves of bread, reattaching an ear that's been cut from a man's head, bringing back to life a man who's been dead for four days, and calming a storm upon command.

Having failed to disprove Jesus' existence or explain away his miracles, Shermer then turns to the reliability of the New Testament writings, pointing out that some early writings were not included in the official canon. I'm not sure what his point is, but he raises the question, Why were these other "sacred" books left out of the Bible, and why were committees formed to determine what got included in the official canon? Apparently it never occurred to Shermer that both Christians and non-Christians might have produced fraudulent writings to further their own particular agendas. Perhaps Shermer thinks God should have automatically prevented bogus gospels to be produced, but doing so would have been contrary to the basic concept of free will. Therefore it became necessary for early Christians to form committees to squelch the gospel writings that were not authentic. As Maier points out, the committees integrated those works that had already become tradition in the Christian church. Furthermore, they weeded out those works that presented a different version of Jesus than existed in the legitimate books of the New Testament.

Finally, P&T switch gears once more and focus on the Ten Commandments. Here P&T and Shermer aptly demonstrate that the Bible in general and the Old Testament in particular contain a dizzying array of laws to obey, including such rarely followed edicts as stoning disobedient children. Clearly, as the illusionists contend, contemporary Christians and Jews pick and choose which laws they're going to obey, and admittedly P&T score some points on this subject. But for what it's worth, one of the things Jesus was clear about in the Gospels is that he sought to do away with the myriad laws that came before him. He essentially boiled down the earlier laws to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind" and "Love your neighbor as yourself." The implication seems to be that too many questionable laws had been set forth by earlier Jewish leaders, and God was trying to make things clearer. One of the last comments Shermer makes is that the Bible is human-edited, and on that he couldn't be more right. The Bible is a complex work, and partly it serves as a document of man's attempt to understand God, God's will, and the nature of man's relationship to God. It is neither a clear-cut history book nor a code of ethics to follow, nor does it seem to be free of errors. But for all we know, these errors exist to challenge us to think critically and are part of God's plan.





5/5 best show ever!
  by Smart one (texas)
This is the best show ever produced on t.v. I would pay twice as much just to get the DVDs.