{"id":94,"date":"2006-01-13T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-01-13T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2006\/01\/steven-colbert-funny-by-design.html"},"modified":"2006-01-13T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-01-13T12:00:00","slug":"steven-colbert-funny-by-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/01\/steven-colbert-funny-by-design.html","title":{"rendered":"Steven Colbert: Funny by &#8220;Design&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div>\n<p>I have been a fan of comedian and satirist Steven Colbert since he began doing segments on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.comedycentral.com\/shows\/the_daily_show\/index.jhtml\" target=\"_New\">\u201cThe Daily Show\u201d<\/a> such as \u201cThe Week in God.\u201d No religion or religious figure was above Colbert\u2019s barbs.   That certainly hasn\u2019t changed since he started his own show, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.colbertnation.com\/colbertnation\" target=\"_New\">The Colbert Report<\/a>.&#8221; I have been waiting for the chance to blog about him here and last night\u2019s episode finally gave me a perfect opportunity. Colbert interviewed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/story\/171\/story_17123_1.html\" target=\"_New\">Kenneth Miller<\/a>, a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.brown.edu\" target=\"_New\"> professor at Brown University<\/a>, to discuss, as only Colbert can, the issue of evolution vs. intelligent design. Miller\u2019s first argument for believing in evolution&#8211;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Darwinism\" target=\"_New\">Darwinism? <\/a>Big Bang theory? Nope. Flu shots. According to Miller, \u201cAnyone who had a flu shot this year should sign a statement saying they believe in evolution.\u201d Why? Because, Miller argues, the flu virus changes or evolves creating new strains every year (thus a need for a new shot every year ), so therefore it is safe to assume humans have evolved or changed from apes to who we are now.<\/p>\n<p>While this argument was just one of several intentionally ( I think!) ridiculous arguments,  it was interesting to me that both Colbert and Miller identified themselves as Catholics, and  in Miller\u2019s case, he vehemently proclaims that being a Catholic does not get in the way of believing in evolution. In fact, Miller states that he actually believes in a bigger God than those of us who believe in intelligent design, and he actually writes about this very topics on his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.millerandlevine.com\/km\/evol\/\" target=\"_New\">very interesting website<\/a>. At any rate, I wish all pop-culture-war debates were as funny, lively, and entertaining as this one. But for the record, Mr. Miller, I have had a flu shot, and I am still not signing any paper, okay?<\/p>\n<div style=\"clear:both;padding-bottom:0.25em\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have been a fan of comedian and satirist Steven Colbert since he began doing segments on \u201cThe Daily Show\u201d such as \u201cThe Week in God.\u201d No religion or religious figure was above Colbert\u2019s barbs. That certainly hasn\u2019t changed since he started his own show, &#8220;The Colbert Report.&#8221; I have been waiting for the chance&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Steven Colbert: Funny by &quot;Design&quot;<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/01\/steven-colbert-funny-by-design.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Steven Colbert: Funny by &quot;Design&quot;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I have been a fan of comedian and satirist Steven Colbert since he began doing segments on \u201cThe Daily Show\u201d such as \u201cThe Week in God.\u201d No religion or religious figure was above Colbert\u2019s barbs. That certainly hasn\u2019t changed since he started his own show, &#8220;The Colbert Report.&#8221; I have been waiting for the chance&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/01\/steven-colbert-funny-by-design.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Idol Chatter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-01-13T12:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"kris rasmussen\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Steven Colbert: Funny by \"Design\"","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/01\/steven-colbert-funny-by-design.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Steven Colbert: Funny by \"Design\"","og_description":"I have been a fan of comedian and satirist Steven Colbert since he began doing segments on \u201cThe Daily Show\u201d such as \u201cThe Week in God.\u201d No religion or religious figure was above Colbert\u2019s barbs. That certainly hasn\u2019t changed since he started his own show, &#8220;The Colbert Report.&#8221; I have been waiting for the chance&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/01\/steven-colbert-funny-by-design.html","og_site_name":"Idol Chatter","article_published_time":"2006-01-13T12:00:00+00:00","author":"kris rasmussen","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/01\/steven-colbert-funny-by-design.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/01\/steven-colbert-funny-by-design.html","name":"Steven Colbert: Funny by \"Design\"","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-01-13T12:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2006-01-13T12:00:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/6baab619ead9f7802dafa6d473ab380e"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/01\/steven-colbert-funny-by-design.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/01\/steven-colbert-funny-by-design.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/01\/steven-colbert-funny-by-design.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Steven Colbert: Funny by &#8220;Design&#8221;"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/","name":"Idol Chatter","description":"Beliefnet Entertainment blog, TV blog, Movie blog, Religion in entertainment blog","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/6baab619ead9f7802dafa6d473ab380e","name":"kris rasmussen","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"kris rasmussen"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/author\/kris-rasmussen"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/281"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}