{"id":779,"date":"2007-12-20T16:48:22","date_gmt":"2007-12-20T16:48:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/2007\/12\/20\/woc-update-riky-gervais-gets-s\/"},"modified":"2007-12-20T16:48:22","modified_gmt":"2007-12-20T16:48:22","slug":"woc-update-riky-gervais-gets-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/20\/woc-update-riky-gervais-gets-s\/","title":{"rendered":"WOC Update: Riky Gervais Gets Serious"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Comedian <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ricky_Gervais\">Ricky Gervais<\/a> has engaged in a debate about theology with the Archbishop of Canterbury &#8211; confessing at the end that he might have &#8220;blown his image&#8221; by taking life seriously.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Gervais is more concerned that religious indoctrination is a form of brainwashing, and he has an interesting reason for thinking this.<!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Because I believe in evolution, I believe that a child&#8217;s brain is a sponge, and it is meant to be because it believes everything it is taught because it has to to survive &#8230; &#8220;I think if the first thing you are exposed to is that there is a God and you should do these things, I think there is a problem with that. For example, if your kids at the age of seven came to you and said &#8216;there isn&#8217;t a Santa is there?&#8217; you would say &#8216;no there isn&#8217;t&#8217; would you?&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The debate was with Dr Rowan Williams, who&#8217;s major counter argument was that belief in Santa is not as important as belief in God.  Whatever.<a href=\"http:\/\/ukpress.google.com\/article\/ALeqM5gcgC06UzPiJGt-wpxvpkmRIf93qg\">[source]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Comedian Ricky Gervais has engaged in a debate about theology with the Archbishop of Canterbury &#8211; confessing at the end that he might have &#8220;blown his image&#8221; by taking life seriously. Gervais is more concerned that religious indoctrination is a form of brainwashing, and he has an interesting reason for thinking this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[185],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-cz","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}