That Awkward Moment When Your Pastor Dad Quotes The Bloodhound Gang

Peter‘s dad was a pastor. Peter grew up with a lot of religion. In fact, Peter once sat through a sermon in which his dad quoted that song by The Bloodhound Gang…

One Sunday, he took the pulpit and declared, grave-faced, that today’s sermon would be on the blasphemy of modern sexuality.

He turned on his god-is-very-disappointed-with-you preacher voice. “There’s a song on the radio,” he said, “with the most evil chorus I have ever heard. It goes like this.” He cleared his throat and slowly articulated every syllable: “You and me, baby, ain’t nothing but mammals. So let’s ‘do it’ like they do on the Discovery Channel.”

Here we go.

…

Somehow, it got worse. The crux (see what I did there?) of his argument was that god intends sex to be a glorious, sacred part of his blessed institution of marriage, not an expression of animalistic lust. “Sex is a gift from god,” he said, “and it brings us closer to him. I have known the joy of conjugal embrace (I swear those were his exact fucking words), and fear that the young people of this generation, including my sons, will have this experience tainted by the values our culture is giving them.”

Disturbing… and hilarious. You need to read the whole post.

In fact, you should all bookmark his site because Peter tells wonderful(ly awkward) stories.

Melissa E

Discussing your son’s sexuality in public isn’t normal.

But on rel… you know how it goes.
Anonymous

Clearly he’s never enjoyed “animalistic lust”.
A secret red slider

I did read his whole article and – it was awesome. I’m glad he can at least look back on it with a sense of humor.
Keith

Then I suggest the pastor never investigate the lyrics to tBG “Hell Yeah”, or “Take the Long Way Home” then.
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bloodhoundgang/hellyeah.html
Nena

He needs to listen to “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails.
Nena

He needs to listen to “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails.
Mrs. B.

Peter needs to crank up some Kings of Leon’s “Sex is on Fire.” His dad could get years and years of fire and brimstone sermons out of that one.

Is “conjugal embrace” the new “missionary position?”
Reginald Selkirk

“Sex is a gift from god,” he said, “and it brings us closer to him…”Is it just human sex which is a gift from God? How about cod orgies, or bonobo promiscuity, or wind-aided plant pollenization? Because as someone with a little knowledge of biology, any argument which depends on human exceptionalism doesn’t cut it with me.
Rich Wilson

It’s amazing how frequent that is in apologetics. “Only humans mourn”, “Only humans have love”, “Only humans”

When there is an abundance of evidence that this is clearly not true. And pretty easy to see how it all evolves as well.
59 Norris

You don’t think we are exceptional among the animals?
Mrs. B.

p.s. – Thanks so much for twigging us onto Peter’s blog! I’ve got a new favorite.
Rich Wilson

Sure.

But so are cuttlefish.
59 Norris

So, are you saying we are no more exceptional that an invertebrate?
Heartfout

What, exactly, is wrong with invertebrates?
Rich Wilson

We would appear to be exceptional in our ability to contemplate ‘meta’ questions. We can question questioning. We can think about thinking. We can think about how we are here. We can consider the existence of God. Lots of animals are curious, and can even solve rather complex puzzles, and use tools to make tools. But obviously not nearly to the degree we can.

But that’s just one measure of exceptional. Other animals think, just not to the same degree. There are lots of things that other animals can do that we can’t. Our cognition has put us in a position to be able to wipe entire other species, so in that sense we are at the top of the food chain. On the other hand, we may well be headed for self destruction. If we do make the planet uninhabitable for humans, then we’ll be a short stub on the evolutionary tree, and probably other forms of life will continue without us.

Let’s put it this way: I think that if there is a creator, and/or we have souls, then I still don’t think humans are particularly ‘touched’ or ‘with soul’ than any other life form. Every argument I’ve heard otherwise ignores evidence in the natural world.
Siveambrai

Wow. I’m glad no one in my family was a preacher. Although this song did warrant an entire school assembly where the little old nuns told us about how it was immoral and wrong. So you aren’t alone in hearing the wrong people quote those lyrics.
59 Norris

Some are very tasty.
59 Norris

Could we be exceptional in our exceptionality?
Larry Meredith

“Sex is a gift from god,” he said, “and it brings us closer to him.

Wow… that must be really weird to be his wife. This man has sex with you while thinking about god. That’s who gets him off. Not you. God.
This man is in love with God.
Trina

Went to a church once (early megachurch) , when I still sometimes went to churches, and was shocked to hear a long and scathing rant on Joan Osborne’s “What if God Was One of Us?” which was a song I just loved. And still love. It’s art. I’m allowed to take it as a metaphor.
Rich Wilson

I’m not sure exactly what that means, but sure, anything could.

I would hasten to add that our exceptional ability to discover has led us to discover that our place in the universe isn’t nearly as exceptional as we first thought. Far from being the center of the universe around which everything revolves, we are actually living on the 3rd ‘large’ mass orbiting an unremarkable star part way out the yet another galaxy among hundreds of billions of galaxies.

And never mind our place-in-the-universe unremarkable, there’s also our place in time. Forget the ~14 billion years of the universe. Spread your arms wide. The earth forms at the fingertips of your left hand. Time spreads towards your right hand. We don’t get two celled things until the mid point. No bones until your right wrist. Dinosaurs make up your fingers.

The entirety of human history is contained in the dust of one stroke of a nail file.

http://jersey.uoregon.edu/~mstrick/AskGeoMan/geoQuerry16.html

There’s an awful lot of space-time out there to ignore if we are to consider ourselves remarkable.
Reginald Selkirk

Hey Troll-baby: Howzabout you answer my question before trying to change the topic. Is only human sex a gift from God, or is all sex covered?
Reginald Selkirk

After providing that answer, then maybe you can provide a list of animals you think are not exceptional in any way.
59 Norris

Gee Reginald, I missed where you previously directed a question to me.

I suppose if one is to believe in God one would conclude that all creative activity is a gift from God, even for animals.

If one does not believe in God, then the question is likely meaningless outside of, er, ah, emulating trollish behavior. Pot; Kettle; etc.

And, I suppose one can argue that all living things are in some way exceptional, but I can’t escape the notion that that’s similar to every kind in a given school finally getting one of those Student of the Month bumper stickers for the parent’s car bumper.

Peace out Reggie.
59 Norris

That should have been, “…every KID in a given schoole…” etc.
59 Norris

“There’s an awful lot of space-time out there to ignore if we are to consider ourselves remarkable.”

True, if one assumes that the extraterrestrial space-time necessarily has life in it, and that temporal duration is the final benchmark of exceptionability in terrestrial space-time.

But if life exists only here on Earth, then I think it fair to consider that human life is exceptional in a way that surpasses that of all other life forms.
Sulris Campbell

i don’t like to assume human exceptionallity based on our ability to think. the problem being that you only have evidence of your own thinking.

you have no idea what thoughts are in another human or dog or cuttlefish.

on what basis do you say a cuttlefish is not meta-thinking and the man behind the counter at dairy queen definitely is?

humans have a tendency to assume anything that looks like them are better at everything than things that don’t look like them… racism… speciesism… the line should not be drawn at squirrelly poorly defined thoughts… escpecially assumptions about what thoughts are in whose heads.
Nordog

Sulris, if you are arguing that you are not more exceptional than a dog or a cuttlefish, I’ll not try to disabuse you of that notion.
Avicenna

I always thought that being moved “closer to god” was a euphemism for dying.

If that is the case then you are doing it wrong.
59 Norris

I’m not particularly fond of mosquitoes, does that count?
Rich Wilson

No matter what a cuttlefish is contemplating, I feel comfortable in saying that we think bestest. I just don’t think good thinking means we (uniquely) have a soul. If we have a soul, then I think all life has a soul.

I do agree that we have a tendency to evaluate other things on our own terms. Walk a mile with retractable claws etc. But I can’t imagine any other species contemplating the spin of quarks.I think the “of all life, we’re special” is not unlike “out of all groups on earth, we’re special (so suck it, Canaanites!)”
Rich Wilson

Space:

a) God made life here and elsewhere.b) abiogenesis occurred here and elsewhere.
c) God made life only here.
d) abiogenesis occurred only here.

To me c) is the one that is illogical, and I realize you have to suspend your logic questions when it comes to God. But why your greatest creation on some obscure corner? Had to be somewhere, sure, but why not give us a bigger planet? Hey, at least he didn’t stick us on the moon.

Time:

Why do you think we’re done? If aliens had observed us when Neanderthals were around, they may have assumed that THEY were exceptional. Maybe we’ll wipe ourselves out and some kind of insect life form will become top Ant, and we’ll be just a dead end on the evolutionary tree. Are you sure that God’s image doesn’t have 6 legs?

It’s just too convenient for us to decide based on our own parameters that not only this place, but this time and this species is IT. That works fine if you assume the veracity of the Bible (which, conveniently, we wrote).
Gordon Duffy

In some quite interesting ways I am less exceptional than a mimic octopus.
59 norris

Regarding your last paragraph, “it” also works based on that thing so prized among so many sceptics here: available evidence.
59 Norris

Yes, between the two of you, the octopus in an exceptionally better choice for sushi.
Rich Wilson

Regarding your last paragraph, “it” also works based on that thing so prized among so many sceptics here: available evidence.

I only see our desire for the universe to fit us. It’s like we put ourselves into the puzzle first, and we attempt to add all the other pieces without moving ourselves at all. And as we discover that the Earth revolves around the sun, and that the universe is 14b years old, and that chimps are more closely related to us than gorillas, it’s getting harder and harder to make the puzzle work while not moving our assumptions about our piece of the puzzle.
Anonymous

“…will have this experience tainted…”If a taint enters your sexual experience, you know you’re doing it wrong… or really, really right.
59 norris

I’m with Aristotle regardng souls. All living things do have them. It is the difference between a living thing and a non-living thing.
Rich Wilson

Group Hug.
59 norris

I’m not sure what the puzzle is to which you refer. In any event, I have yet to see evidence of extraterrestrial life. UFO Hunters on a cable channel doesn’t count.

I think life is unique to this planet. Perhaps there’s life elsewhere, but I’m sceptical. However, I will be happy change my opinion when I see the evidence for it.
Anonymous

Really? An amoeba has a soul? Where does it keep it? Where does an apple tree keep it’s soul? Cultivated apple trees are made by combining root stock from one tree and the fruit growing part of a different tree. Do they have two souls?

When do living things get their souls? We have a huge range of reproductive options available. Does each daisy gain a soul when it grows above the soil or do they share a soul if they are connected by roots? When you clone a banana tree do they keep the same soul or have independent ones? Does the sperm or the egg carry the soul in sexual reproduction? I think it would probably be the egg given the investment that a female animal body puts into producing one.

I’m being facetious deliberately. Souls might make a suitable “just so” story for people who haven’t thought about it but it isn’t an explanation that makes sense or we can use.
Rich Wilson

by puzzle, I just mean us humans piecing together our knowledge of everything. We keep learning new things, and adjusting. We used to think the Earth was the center of the universe, and that humans were created entirely separately from all other life. As we learn things that contradict this (Jupiter’s moons, DNA) we’ve had to adjust how everything fits together. But we’re still really tied to the idea that we’re special.

I treat the life on other planets hypothesis like the god hypothesis, although IMO a little more likely. I don’t have a way to investigate either, so it’s moot. When people start using tax money to teach that we were created by aliens, I’ll care more about it.
59 norris

LOL, good one Rich. I’ll join you in any future action against tax payer money going toward teaching alien origins.
59 norris

Great questions. I’ll have to dust off my copy of “de Anima” and see what I make of it all.