Dave Silverman Appears on FOX To Discuss ‘Inflammatory’ HuffPo Article February 29, 2012

Dave Silverman Appears on FOX To Discuss ‘Inflammatory’ HuffPo Article

By Hemant Mehta
February 29, 2012

I love it when Dave Silverman appears on FOX News Channel.

He was invited on there today, along with religion advocate Sandy Rios, to discuss a recent piece bashing Catholicism on Huffington Post.

The substance of that conversation isn’t all that interesting, but you have to love the way Dave uses his “last word” (starting at the 8:32 mark):

I think he and Sandy just bonded 🙂

(via Mediaite)

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What Are Your Thoughts?leave a comment

  • “Leading conservatives have demanded that the post is taken down…”

    Attempting to silence the non-believers. How traditional!

  • Anonymous

    Freedom of speech only applies when others believe what you say!

    Leave it to the Christian to break the civility.

  • Christopher

    It was hilarious to me, and also rather accurate as well. They might not like being called cannibalistic, but they are “eating the “flesh” of someone they believe was fully human and fully divine, fully human, yea, that means cannibalism.

  • bigjohn756

    Satire is not humor it’s ridicule. 

  • Anonymous

    Would have been great if they asked what exactly was inaccurate in the story.

  • Anonymous

    Why the random, “and thank you for believing in nothing” comment from Sandy? Soooo witty!

  • Anonymous

    I became an atheist in sixth grade – of catholic school.  One thing that led me to free thought was the hymn “Sons of God”.  The chorus is (to be sung joyously according to the directions):
    Sons of God: Hear His Holy word,
    Gather around the table of the Lord
    Eat His Body, drink His Blood
    And we’ll sing a song of love
    Allelu, allelu, allelu, alleluia.

    Doyle is being criticized for pointing out what these people actually believe.  Read those words!!!!!!  And the nun smacked me when I asked if that meant that cannibalism was OK.

  • Video unavailable! D:

  • All fixed!

  • Johnk

    Why won’t silverman answer the questions? He comes across like a snippy kid, then plugs an event. His body language spoke volumes: barely contained rage at something he hates.

  • Johnk

    You need to watch this again if you think silverman was being civil. You would never speak to anyone that way unless you wanted to be an irritant. (his specialty).

  •  I give David Silverman a lot of credit. He goes on these showing KNOWING that no matter how well he does (and personally I think he did really well in the few dozen seconds he had to speak) there will be fellow atheists who criticize his word choice, his tone, his facial expressions, his body language, his beard vs. no-beard, etc.

    It is true that we all have free speech to critique that David Silverman could have said this, or Dan Barker could have said that, or Annie Laurie Gaylor could have pointed out the other thing, etc..

    But at the end of the day I’m just thrilled that we have these freethought champions who are far more articulate and persuasive than I am, so I am happy to keep sending membership funds and donations to American Atheists, FFRF, etc.

  • So??? WHo gives a fuck???

  • Greisha

    The piece in HP looks more like a drunken runt than an article. 

    Comparing Catholicism to Christianity is strange – as a former Catholic boy he should know that Catholicism was the original Christianity.  Invoking Nazi or his Internet “research” on NAMBLA is ridiculous.

    Mental cannibalism part was a fair bit, but it did not lead to any meaningful conclusion – just runt. 

    Using old KKK claims about Catholic president who follows the Pope commands and “hinting” on the end of JFK presidency was plain low.

    One can’t even use ends justifies means excuse because what he wrote did not promote any ends.

    Silverman was OK/fair.  He was right about free speech and his joke about poor Catholic church was good,   He did not, however, answer question about the reaction to Koran burning that was awful (reaction on both sides).  In reality he did not have anything to defend the author, so I would not go too hard on him.

  •  Silverman’s body language was twitchy, not raging. In fact, he had a much more well-prepared statement for the end than his counterpart did, and he was giggling as she spoke.

  •  Where was the question about Koran burning?

  •  She couldn’t address anything Silverman actually said, so she had to go with her preschool default.

  • dorothy30

    i haven’t heard that ditty in over 30 years! you made my day, as soon as i started reading the words, the tune sprang to mind.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8oPQTyyJlw
    how did i not see the stupidity in it as a child????

  • Keulan

    I thought Dave Silverman did well, considering it was on Fox “News.” I wonder why they keep bringing him on for discussions and such when his views are clearly the opposite of their conservative, pro-Christianity bias.

  • Anonymous

    Fox brings on guests they know their viewers won’t like for the purpose of sensationalism, with the bonus benefit of being able to claim it as evidence that their presentation of the news if “fair and balanced.”  Note that, from the beginning, the host frames the discussion in terms of the article being outrageous and offensive to Catholics and Christians.  The conservative Christian guest then gets to give an emotion rant to rile up the viewer.  Then Silverman gets to say a few words while the viewer mutters “Rassm frassm atheists…”, meanwhile not really digesting any of the alien concepts he’s trying to introduce within an extremely limited window.  Then the host asks a leading question about how Christianity’s always a target but not other religions and the first guest gets to spew some emotional stuff about how liberals love Islam so much.  Then they give the atheist a tiny window to conclude before the segment gets cut off.  This way it looks like “Hey!  Fox even gave him the final word,” even though the first guest’s mic was left on and she was allowed to take a potshot as the segment was closing.  The Christian guest and the host get the majority of the segment to stir up negative emotions toward liberals and atheists, and the atheist just gets a couple of seconds to chime in.  It’s how Fox rolls.  They used to have Christopher Hitchens on periodically because his talking points sounded totally alien and weird to the Fox demographic and his delivery could easily be construed as rude and hateful, thus reinforcing negative preconceptions of atheists.  He also always made for good TV.  That’s what Fox News is all about.  They’re a business first, a three-ring circus second, conservative propaganda third, and any other role they fill is way, way, way down the list of priorities.

  • Anonymous

    I think it’s probably pretty hard to do Fox News when you know you’re being brought on as the target, that you’re only going to be given a couple of seconds to respond to complex issues that the host and the other guest will get more time to talk about, and that the other people on the show will be referencing concepts that are regular talking points familiar to Fox viewers, while yours will be a completely foreign point of view that you will not have any time to expand on or clarify.

  • T-Rex

    Bingo!

  • Johnk

    Apparantly curst does, since she pointed out, which is what I was responding to.
    Thanks for chiming in though, especially with foul language.

  • Johnk

    That’s true, twitchy is a better description. But we all know an angry smile when we see one!

  • Matto the Hun

    You should consider yourself lucky that’s all she did. She may well have fried you up and served you to the class for lunch.

  • Matto the Hun

    It can’t be both? If done well, I find it to be so

  • Brian Scott

    I’m pretty sure the piece was satire, mean to invoke the same type of hysterics present in a lot of fundamentalist Protestant writings against organisations they don’t like (e.g. trying to link current gay rights movements to NAMBLA).

  • Alice

    Rarely to the party it is ridiculing.

  • Xeon2000

    I always had this thought that communion derived via the cultural influence of earlier pagan cults in which consuming the blood and/or flesh of something allowed you to take in its “essence”. Christians just symbolized it because they stopped worship animals and couldn’t find their “God” to hunt and eat.

  • Ok, here’s my point I’ve been making within Purdue Non-Theists. It’s a challenge to Dave Silverman…do a non-Fox News interview.

    The fact that Silverman is more interested in fighting Fox News head on shows he thinks he can cherry-pick the disillusioned Christians. You know what, they’re probably not watching Fox News. They’re watching other networks that don’t cater to the Religious Right and other conservative interests.

  • p

    But is not a symbol. As an ex catholic in the sense of a child who attended church schools in the UK it’s a lesser known  but important part of the faith that the communion host/ bread is not a symbol of the body of christ but at every mass , a “miracle” occurs and it actually becomes the body without changing its appearance . Barmy I know but there you have it.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transubstantiation 

  • cool story bro

  • Anonymous

    I actually prefer a RITZ cracker, with a little slice of cheese………  Maybe they could substitute a little chunk of pepperoni for the body of christ…..