January 15, 2008
| American Taliban | Extremism Politics Religion |
Digby points to this, in which Mike Huckabee shows his true colors:
"I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution," Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. "But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do — to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view."
That's the GOP front runner, and he's not joking. Theocracy here we come.
Posted by Jonathan at 09:32 PM
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December 27, 2007
| Wrapped In The Flag, Carrying A Cross | Extremism Politics Religion |
Mike Huckabee says he doesn't believe in evolution. If only that were all there is to it. Excerpts from an excellent piece by Chris Hedges:
George Bush is a happy stooge of his corporate handlers. He blithely enriches the oligarchy, defends a war that is the worst foreign policy blunder in American history and callously denies medical benefits to children. Huckabee is different. He has tapped into the rage and fury of the working class, dispossessed and abandoned by the mainstream Democrats and Republicans. And he refuses to make the ideology of the Christian right, with its dark contempt for democratic traditions and intolerance of nonbelievers, a handmaiden of the corporate establishment. This makes him a much more lethal and radical political force.The Christian right is the most potent and dangerous mass movement in American history. It has been controlled and led, until now, by those who submit to the demands of the corporate state. But the grass roots are tired of being taken for rubes. They are tired of candidates, like Bush or Bill Clinton, who roll out the same clichés about working men and women every four years and then spend their terms enriching their corporate backers. The majority of American citizens have spent the last two decades watching their government services and benefits vanish. They have seen their jobs go overseas and are watching as their communities crumble and their houses are foreclosed. It is their kids who are in Iraq and Afghanistan. The old guard in the Christian right, the Pat Robertsons, who used their pulpits to deliver the votes of naive followers to the corporatists, is a spent force. Huckabee’s Christian populism represents the maturation of the movement. It signals the rise of a truly radical, even revolutionary force in American politics, of which Huckabee may be one of the tamer and less frightening examples. [...]
Huckabee has close ties with the Christian Reconstructionist or Dominionist branch of the Christian right. The Dominionist movement, which seeks to cloak itself in the mantle of the Christian faith and American patriotism, is small in numbers but influential. It departs from traditional evangelicalism. It seeks to redefine traditional democratic and Christian terms and concepts to fit an ideology that calls on the radical church to take political power. It shares many prominent features with classical fascist movements, at least as such movements are defined by the scholar Robert O. Paxton, who sees fascism as "a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cultures of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."
Dominionism, born out of Christian Reconstructionism, seeks to politicize faith. It has, like all fascist movements, a belief in magic along with leadership adoration and a strident call for moral and physical supremacy of a master race, in this case American Christians. [...]
Dominionism teaches that American Christians have been mandated by God to make America a Christian state. A decades-long refusal by most American fundamentalists to engage in politics at all following the Scopes trial has been replaced by a call for Christian "dominion" over the nation and, eventually, over the Earth itself. Dominionism preaches that Jesus has called on Christians to actively build the kingdom of God on Earth. America becomes, in this militant Biblicism, an agent of God, and all political and intellectual opponents of America’s Christian leaders are viewed, quite simply, as agents of Satan. Under Christian dominion, America will no longer be a sinful and fallen nation but one in which the Ten Commandments form the basis of our legal system, in which creationism and "Christian values" form the basis of our educational system, and the media and the government proclaim the Good News to one and all. Labor unions, civil rights laws and public schools will be abolished. Women will be removed from the work force to stay at home, and all those deemed insufficiently Christian will be denied citizenship.
Baptist minister Rick Scarborough, founder of Vision America and a self-described "Christocrat,"...has endorsed Huckabee. Scarborough, along with holding other bizarre stances, opposes the HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccine on grounds that it interferes with God’s punishment of sexual license. And Huckabee, who once advocated isolating AIDS patients from the general public and opposed increased federal funding in the search for a cure, comes out of this frightening mold. He justified his call to quarantine those with AIDS because they could "pose a dangerous public health risk."
"If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague," Huckabee wrote. "It is difficult to understand the public policy towards AIDS. It is the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population, and in which this deadly disease for which there is no cure is being treated as a civil rights issue instead of the true health crisis it represents."
Huckabee has publicly backed off from this extreme position, but he remains deeply hostile to gays. He has used wit and humor to deflect reporters from his radical views about marriage, abortion, damnation, biblical law, creationism and the holy war he believes we are fighting with Islam. But his stances represent a huge step, should they ever become policy, toward a theocratic state and the death of our open society. In the end, however, I do not blame Huckabee or the tens of millions of hapless Christians — 40 percent of the Republican electorate — who hear his words and rejoice. I blame the corporate state, those who thought they could disempower and abuse the working class, rape the country, build a rapacious oligarchy and never pay a political price.
We keep moving further and further into uncharted territory. Each new election cycle, things that would have seemed unimaginably grotesque in the not too distant past suddenly become mainstream. Then they, too, are surpassed. Like the proverbial boiling frog, we fail to act as things change by gradual degrees.
Resentment builds and is fed by people skilled in exploiting it. The bursting credit bubble, imploding dollar, and skyrocketing energy costs may yet push the US economy over the cliff. Then, look out.
Posted by Jonathan at 11:17 PM
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December 25, 2007
| What The Christian Right Forgets | Religion |
This being Christmas, let's remember what Jesus said:
For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me. Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these, my brethren, you did it to me. — Matthew 25
And yet Republicans are viewed as the party of Jesus. Weird.
Posted by Jonathan at 11:51 AM
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October 26, 2007
| Creationist Math | Humor & Fun Religion |
Posted by Jonathan at 10:45 PM
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July 25, 2007
| Messin' With Texas | Extremism Politics Religion |
Texas governor Rick Perry has appointed a creationist dentist named Don McLeroy to head the State Board of Education. The Austin American-Statesman (via Pharyngula) tells us:
In 2001, McLeroy and a majority of the board rejected the only Advanced Placement textbook for high school environmental science because its views on global warming and other events didn't comport with the beliefs of the board majority. The book wasn't factual and was anti-American and anti-Christian, the majority claimed. Meanwhile, dozens of colleges and universities were using the textbook, including Baylor University, the nation's largest Baptist college.In 2003, McLeroy voted against approving biology textbooks that included a full-scale scientific account of evolutionary theory. The books were approved.
Just the guy to put in charge of public education.
Need I add, both Perry and McLeroy are Republicans.
Posted by Jonathan at 04:57 PM
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June 15, 2007
| The Atheist's Nightmare | Religion |
And pineapples?
Posted by Jonathan at 05:56 PM
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June 14, 2007
| God Speaks, And Speaks, And Speaks... | Religion |
Via Pharyngula, here (scroll down) is a transcript of a conversation Young Earth Creationist preacher and convict Kent Hovind says he had with God. Fascinating, in a I-can't-help-but-look-at-the-car-wreck kind of way. The comments, too. These people sure inhabit a different mental universe from mine.
Posted by Jonathan at 03:55 PM
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April 27, 2007
| Unevolved | Extremism Politics Religion Science/Technology |
This is disheartening, putting it mildly. The graph below shows public acceptance of human evolution in 2005. You'll find the US at second-to-last.
From National Geographic's description:
Adults were asked to respond to the statement: "Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals." The percentage of respondents who believed this to be true is marked in blue; those who believed it to be false, in red; and those who were not sure, in yellow.A study of several such surveys taken since 1985 has found that the United States ranks next to last in acceptance of evolution theory among nations polled. Researchers point out that the number of Americans who are uncertain about the theory's validity has increased over the past 20 years. [Emphasis added]
Note that the question was just whether humans evolved from earlier animals. It said nothing about evolution being by purely natural means, via natural selection, or without participation by a deity. It's just: "did humans evolve?"
It would be hard to overstate how clueless you have to be to say no.
The study also found — no surprise here — that evolution deniers in the US tend to be Republicans:
The team found that individuals with anti-abortion, pro-life views associated with the conservative wing of the Republican Party were significantly more likely to reject evolution than people with pro-choice views.The team adds that in Europe having pro-life or right-wing political views had little correlation with a person's attitude toward evolution.
The researchers say this reflects the politicization of the evolution issue in the U.S. "in a manner never seen in Europe or Japan."
"In the second half of the 20th century, the conservative wing of the Republican Party has adopted creationism as part of a platform designed to consolidate their support in Southern and Midwestern states," the study authors write.
Miller says that when Ronald Reagan was running for President of the U.S., for example, he gave speeches in these states where he would slip in the sentence, "I have no chimpanzees in my family," poking fun at the idea that apes could be the ancestors of humans. [Emphasis added]
It would be funny, in a sick sort of way, if it weren't so downright scary, considering the belligerence and military power of the US. People who have flipped the mental switch that lets them ignore the evidence of physical reality so they can be accepted by the herd are people who can be led into all sorts of mischief. And they're armed to the teeth. Superstitious primates with guns.
Posted by Jonathan at 05:31 PM
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April 23, 2007
| Dawkins On O'Reilly | Religion |
Richard Dawkins went on Bill O'Reilly's show tonight on Fox. Video here.
I was hoping for a longer segment with a little more substance. Silly me. O'Reilly was actually civil, maybe because he knew he was completely overmatched. But still, the inane non sequiturs that come out of O'Reilly's mouth...
Posted by Jonathan at 10:19 PM
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March 24, 2007
| Global Warming: WWJD? | Environment Ethics Religion |
Is denial of global warming a Christian thing to do?
Here's what Al Gore told the Senate in reference to Senator Inhofe, who often cites the Bible as the source for his political views:
I say to Senator Inhofe, I don't prostelytize my own beliefs, but all religious traditions hold to the same teachings: That the Earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof. That the purpose of life is to glorify God, and you cannot do it while heaping contempt on God's creation.
Not to mention the enormous suffering, especially among the world's poor, that global warming will cause. As Jesus himself said:
What you did to the least of these, you did to Me, and...whatever you neglected to do for the least of these, you neglected to do it for Me.
Jesus wept.
Posted by Jonathan at 04:05 PM
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March 14, 2007
| In A Nutshell | Religion |
Posted by Jonathan at 12:50 PM
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December 27, 2006
| In The Name Of Jesus | Extremism Religion |
The inimitable Matt Taibbi on the Left Behind video game that lets you slaughter nonbelievers in the name of Jesus (aka, the Prince of Peace):
Left Behind: Eternal Forces allows you to command the tribulation force, uncover the truth about worldwide disappearances and save as many people as possible from the Antichrist.Lead the Tribulation Force from the book series, including Rayford, Chloe, Buck and Bruce, against Nicolae Carpathia — the Antichrist.
Defend yourselves from the forces of the Antichrist. Engage in physical and spiritual warfare!
Use Prayer and Special Abilities to boost the Spirit of your forces! Command over 30 unit types through dozens of missions and online player action!
Defend against the spiritual influences and physical warfare of the Antichrist's army through the power of prayer and worship!
— Left Behind: Eternal Forces game synopsis
It's been a long time coming, but this week I finally received the Christmas gift I've been waiting for for what seems like ages — my Left Behind: Eternal Forces video game.
This is the first Christmas gift I've ever bought for myself. Normally, I hate Christmas. In fact, I make it a point each year to search out and print out all the news stories from around the world involving thefts from/desecrations of nativity scenes. When I'm finished, I plaster my office area with all the photos of the glum Yuletiders standing around the now-headless Josephs and Marys, and I make this news-mural my private sanctuary, the place I run to when the holidays (and particularly the holiday commercials) get to be too much to take. [...]
Anyway, back to the Left Behind game, which is the first gift I've ever gotten that actually fills me with Holiday Spirit. For those of you who are not familiar with Left Behind, it is an enormously popular Christian book series which depicts an Armageddon scenario in which the true believers are whisked up to heaven at the Second Coming, literally vanishing out of thin air even as they do things like pilot commercial jet-liners, leaving the rest of us amoral nihilists on earth to bathe in our own blood and generally massacre each other. In the video game, the Believers roam a desecrated New York City landscape (it is highly amusing that both al-Qaeda and the makers of Left Behind: Eternal Forces chose to make their masterpiece against a canvas of a burning Manhattan) wasting the forces of the Antichrist, leaving huge piles of bodies everywhere they go. It is hard to imagine a product that better encapsulates, in one package, the spirit of both modern American capitalism and modern American Christianity. If you have a serious gore jones, it's also not a bad video game. The soundtrack (especially the "Street Fight, Main Theme") kicks ass.
Those of you who were not on the original Left Behind mailing list really missed out, as the e-mails the company sent out in anticipation of this video game launch are easily some of the greatest examples of unintentional comedy ever to grace the Internet. From the start, the company asked its customers to assist them with prayer, and as such sent out regular "prayer requests," for instance this letter asking us to pray for a good reception at a Christian retail convention:
Left Behind: Eternal Forces for the PC is getting closer to completion every day, and we appreciate your prayers! We would ask that you keep the Left Behind Games staff in your continued prayers as we get closer to our release date, from spiritual warfare, and protection for our families.We will be attending the 2006 International Christian Retail Show in Colorado on April 10th to the 13th, please pray that God will bless our presence at his show.
The company was a little quiet after that, but as the release neared and it began focusing on the inevitably problematic marketing campaign, it increasingly asked for prayer help with its promotional efforts. Here's one from October:
Left Behind Prayer Requests:
1. Wisdom as we prepare our promotional strategies
2. Travel safety as our team attends meetings and interviews
3. Unity as a team and that our efforts bring glory to our LordThank you for keeping us in your prayers. God bless you!
As the launch neared, the requests began to be directed towards the reviewers:
Left Behind: Eternal Forces will be available at stores this weekend!Thank you for helping to make this happen. We are praising God! Please keep the game in your prayers.
1. Critics and reviewers will give positive feedback on the game.
2. Church and youth leaders will see the potential of using the game as an outreach tool.
3. Players will multiply as they invite their friends to play with them online.
4. God will bless this game and it will honor Him.
But when the date arrived, the company's "Prayer Team leader," Annette Brown, began to get more and more specific in her corporate prayer goals:
1. Pray God will put it on the heart of the consumers to purchase our product at select Walamart [sic] Stores (top 100 stores) that have our invetory [sic].
2. Next weekend is the biggest shopping weekend of the year, pray the game hits record sales for PC Games.
3. The press is still reviewing the game, pray they will be kind in their reviews.I mean, how twisted do you have to be to pray that consumers will buy your product at select Wal-Mart stores? Wouldn't you hesitate and call a psychiatrist before sending that out into cyberspace?
The requests from Thanksgiving week:
Please pray that our sales will skyrocket this weekend. We have a big God that promises to surpass all that we could ask of Him.Once reviewers got hold of the game, and started to point out the odd dichotomy between its supposedly Christian message and its corpse-strewn video landscape, the company began to pray for good media appearances:
Prayer requests:
1. God will give Troy, Robilyn and Jeff wisdom during their many interviews.
2. God will use these interviews to open the hearts and minds of the listeners to the true intentions and purpose of the game.
3. God will bless us as we develop and choose our sales force.Anyway, if you haven't bought it already, I strongly advise everyone reading this to log on to leftbehind.com and buy the game. It is the perfect American holiday gift. Celebrate the birth of Jesus by wasting dozens of people at a time, using a provocative variety of Christ-sanctioned weapons! You can even operate tanks to destroy whole areas of New York City! Who knows, you might even get to kill Ethan Hawke ("slumming" in a ball cap and dirty jeans) in a Marxist bookstore-coffeeshop on Eighth Street! Kill, kill, kill!
Merry Christmas, America.
Funny in a twisted sort of way, but it would be a lot funnier were it not for the fact that the US military is being led, more and more, by people with this same nightmare vision of what constitutes reality. Video game weapons are one thing...
Posted by Jonathan at 06:41 PM
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December 15, 2006
| Pentecostalgon | Extremism Religion |
Former Air Force JAG and Air Force Academy grad Mikey Weinstein is speaking out about evangelical Christians in the US military who are, he says, "trying to turn the Pentagon into a frickin' faith-based initiative". Here are excerpts from what Weinstein told an interviewer at Salon. He refers to a video that was shot inside the Pentagon by a group called Christian Embassy that featured very senior officers, in uniform, talking about the evangelical faith. Weinstein:
You sound like you're too young to remember Robert Redford in "Three Days of the Condor," but the premise of that movie was that there was a CIA within the CIA. We have a virulently dominionist, fundamentalist evangelical Christian element within the Pentagon. They would prefer this to be the "Pentecostalgon," not the Pentagon. That's what they would prefer. They're trying to turn the Pentagon into a frickin' faith-based initiative, and that is not what our military is about.These are the people who, when I talk to senior members of the military at the flag-level rank [admiral or general]...that have looked at me and said, "Come on, Mikey, what's your problem? We have the cure to cancer. If you had the cure to cancer, wouldn't you want to spread the word?" They don't realize when they say it, they don't have the mental wherewithal to understand that to a person who isn't an evangelical Christian, you're calling our faith a cancer. [...]
This, to me, constitutes as much of a national security threat to this country as al-Qaida. In fact, the video itself, to me, would be the No. 1 recruiting tool...to get angry young Islamic men and women in Iran, Syria and Lebanon to join the insurrection and jihadi terrorist activities. This would be a perfect accelerant to create even further conflagration.
Now, I was a JAG [judge advocate general, the lawyers who act as prosecutors and defense attorneys within the military] in the Air Force. I spent three and a half years as a lawyer for President Ronald Reagan in the West Wing, I've been Ross Perot's general counsel. I know the religious right would love to vilify me as a tree-hugging Northern California Sierra Club membership chardonnay-sipping liberal...but I'm not. I'm a Republican...We have 115 years of combined active-duty military service to this country in my immediate family...
[T]hese people can pray all they want to themselves, like kids in school can pray to themselves, but when you're in the military, and you're coming in like that one person, [Air Force Maj. Gen.] Catton, whom I knew when I was a kid at the [Air Force] Academy, and he goes, "I share my faith, that's who I am, and let me tell you right now, the hierarchy as an old-fashioned American is that your first duty is to the Lord, second to your family and your third is to your country." That is the exact opposite of what is taught, and for anyone who understands anything about the military, it is always the country first. When you're told, "Troopers, we're going to go take that hill," you can't stop, fall to your knees and see what your particular version of Moses, Vishnu, Satan, Jesus, Mohammed, Allah, whatever they're going to say, and then quickly make a cellphone call to your family. So it is beyond-the-pale egregious, it is a national security threat every bit as bad as al-Qaida, and these people should be court-martialed.
...I get calls 24/7 from the soldiers, Marines and airmen...They're being tormented. And 96 percent of those who come flooding in, on fire with torment, are Christians, three-fourths of whom would be traditional Protestants: Lutherans, Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians. The other one-fourth are Roman Catholics. These are Christians being preyed upon by evangelical Christians...and being told that you're not Christian enough, therefore you're going to burn in a hell of fire. [...]
The U.S. military, which I consider a noble and honorable institution, is technologically the most lethal organization ever created by Homo sapiens. When you have the leadership believing that to be a good soldier, good Marine, good airman or sailor you have to be not just a Christian but the right type of Christian, we're no better than al-Qaida. And it's hideous, beyond belief. My kids were called "fucking Jews" and accused of total complicity, they and their people, in the execution of Jesus Christ, by superiors up and down the chain of command at the Air Force Academy.
But like I've said before, most of the people who've come to me are Christians. That's been the big sea change here. Look, Sinclair Lewis said it best, in [the 1930s]. He came back from Germany, he was observing it for a number of months ... and he [said] that he had now seen fascism up close and personal, and he knew that when it came to America it would be wrapped in the American flag, carrying a cross. And you know what? He's right. [...]
I've had nine death threats since about 10 o'clock last night. I usually get about two or three a week. They're very grotesque, everything from wanting to gas all the Jews in America and send the corpses back to Israel to threatening to blow me up, threatening my house will be blown up, raping my wife, blowing up my house. We've had our tires slashed, we've had feces and beer bottles thrown at the house, we've had dead animals placed on the front door of the house.
I was in Topeka, on a book tour, and the local Episcopal priest came out to support me and five hours later his church was burned down. And the local synagogue in Topeka, where I was to speak that night, was desecrated with spray paint saying, "Fuck you, Jews" and "KKK," all that stuff. [...]
My response is I've given the new secretary of defense 20 days to answer the Freedom of Information Act request, which the law gives him, and at the end we intend to get as much information as we can, fashion it into a dagger and then stab at the heart of this unconstitutional, wretched, vile, darkness at the Pentagon. This unconstitutional darkness, we will stab at it with our dagger until we kill it. [Emphasis added]
Somebody should give these people a copy of the Sermon on the Mount. I don't know what Jesus they think they're following, but it's surely not the Jesus of the Gospels.
Scary stuff. Very, very scary.
Posted by Jonathan at 04:29 PM
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November 19, 2006
| Prospering By Promoting Conflict | Religion |
Various blogs have linked to the latest outrage from Pat Robertson:
A viewer wrote in to ask Pat Robertson a question:Why [do] evangelical Christians tell non-Christians that Jesus (God) is the only way to Heaven? Those who are Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, etc. already know and have a relationship with God. Why is this? It seems disrespectful.Robertson replied that it is not all disrespectful because all other religions really just worship "demonic powers."
No. They don't have a relationship. There is the god of the Bible, who is Jehovah. When you see L-O-R-D in caps, that is the name. It's not Allah, it's not Brahma, it's not Shiva, it's not Vishnu, it's not Buddha. It is Jehovah God. They don't have a relationship with him. He is the God of all Gods. These others are mostly demonic powers. Sure they're demons. There are many demons in the world. [Emphasis in the original](Video here.)
Yes, Pat Robertson is an asshole. And yes, we're right to recoil from his primitive, small-minded atavism. But he's hardly alone.
Everywhere we look, some religious leader or other is promoting conflict against another religious group. Sunnis and Shiites, Jews and Muslims, Muslims and Hindus, etc., etc. And now this (Time):
When [Pope] Benedict XVI travels to Turkey next week on his first visit to a Muslim country since becoming pope last year, he is unlikely to cloak himself in the downy banner of brotherhood, the way Pope John Paul II did during his sojourn there 27 years ago.Instead, Benedict, 79, will arrive carrying a much different reputation: that of a hard-knuckle intellect with a taste for blunt talk and interreligious confrontation. Just 19 months into his tenure, the pope has become as much a lightning rod as a moral leader; suddenly, when he speaks, the whole world listens.
And what takes place over four days in three Turkish cities has the potential to define his papacy — and a good deal more. [...]
[T]his year he has emerged as a far more compelling and complex figure than anyone had imagined. And much of that has to do with his willingness to take on what some people feel is today's equivalent of the communist scourge — the threat of Islamic violence.
The topic is extraordinarily fraught: there are, after all, a billion or so nonviolent Muslims on the globe; the Roman Catholic church's own record in the religious-mayhem department is hardly pristine; and even the most naive of observers understands that the Vicar of Christ might harbor an institutional prejudice against one of Christianity's main global competitors.
But by speaking out last September in Regensburg, Germany, about the possible intrinsic connection between Islam and violence and refusing to retract its essence — even when Islamic extremists destroyed several churches and murdered a nun in Somalia — the pontiff suddenly became a lot more interesting.
In one imperfect but powerful stroke, he departed from his predecessor's largely benign approach to Islam, discovered an issue that might attract even the most religiously jaded and managed (for better or worse) to reanimate the clash-of-civilizations discussion by focusing scrutiny on the core question of whether Islam, as a religion, sanctions violence.
He was hailed by cultural conservatives worldwide. Says Helen Hull Hitchcock, a St. Louis, Missouri, lay leader who heads the conservative Catholic organization Women for Faith & Family: "He has said what needed to be said." [Emphasis added]
By slandering Islam, one of "Christianity's main global competitors," Benedict made himself, Time says, "a lot more interesting." Now, "when he speaks, the whole world listens."
Sociologists Rodney Stark and Roger Finke have studied religions from the perspective of rational choice theory — people adhere to religions because they believe the benefits they get from religion justify the costs. Their analysis has led to a number of propostions about religious "firms" that must compete for adherents. To wit:
Proposition 76. Even where competition is limited, religious firms can generate high levels of participation to the extent that the firms serve as the primary organizational vehicles for social conflict. (Conversely, if religious firms become significantly less important as vehicles for social conflict, they will be correspondingly less able to generate commitment.)
Or, as Danial Dennett puts it in his book Breaking the Spell,
In other words, expect religious "firms" to exploit and exacerbate social conflict whenever possible, since it is a way of generating business.
I leave it to you to decide if Robertson, Benedict, et al, act out of instinct or calculated manipulation. Either way, the result is the same. In what should be an increasingly interconnected world, religion has emerged (or, re-emerged) as a deliberate, active sower of discord, giving people something we really don't need: yet another reason to hate one another, a reason supposedly bearing a stamp of approval from one god or another.
The great thing about Robertson's outburst is that it is so nakedly primitive, so anachronistic, so superstitious that it lets us see clearly what's going on. Now let's apply that insight to all religious pronouncements that seek to divide us. They're all equally bogus, even if they're stated with more finesse.
Must we, at this late date, persist in believing that our Invisible Avenger in the Sky (George Carlin's phrase) wants us to hate and kill people who believe in a differnt Invisible Avenger? Time to grow up and stop letting ourselves be played for such suckers.
Posted by Jonathan at 07:18 PM
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November 09, 2006
| Jesus Camp Shutting Down | Religion |
The summer camp featured in the documentary "Jesus Camp," which includes scenes with disgraced preacher Ted Haggard, will shut down for at least several years because of negative reaction sparked by the film, according to the camp's director."Right now we're just not a safe ministry," Becky Fischer, the fiery Pentecostal pastor featured in "Jesus Camp," said Tuesday.
The documentary, which hit select U.S. theaters during the summer, portrays Fischer, 55, as drill instructor to a group of young evangelical children steeling themselves for spiritual and political warfare.
Led by Fischer, the children pray in tongues, as is common in charismatic strains of Pentecostalism; tearfully beg God to end abortion; and bless President Bush at a weeklong camp in Devils Lake, N.D.
Fischer has drawn fire from some corners for "brainwashing" the children. After vandals damaged the campground last month and critics besieged Fischer with negative e-mails, phone calls and letters, the pastor said she's shutting down the camp for at least several years.
"I don't think we'll be doing it for a while," she said.
Fischer lives in Bismarck, N.D., and is chief pastor at The Fire Center, a church devoted to children's ministry there. She has run the weeklong "Kids on Fire" summer camp, which is featured in the film, since 2002, with 75 to 100 children attending each year.
The documentary also includes scenes of Haggard, the evangelical leader accused of gay sex and drug use.
In one scene, directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady visit Haggard's 14,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colo. He tells the vast audience, "We don't have to debate about what we should think about homosexual activity. It's written in the Bible."
Then Haggard looks into the camera and says kiddingly: "I think I know what you did last night," drawing laughs from the crowd. "If you send me a thousand dollars, I won't tell your wife." [Emphasis added]
Guess he had it coming.
Posted by Jonathan at 09:51 AM
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October 02, 2006
| Letter To A Christian Nation | Religion |
This is excellent. Go read it.
I just ordered my copy of Harris' book. Only 10 bucks at Amazon.
[Thanks, Miles]
Posted by Jonathan at 09:35 PM
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July 14, 2006
| Marriage In Massachusetts | Religion Rights, Law |
A story you won't hear on Fox News.
Liberalism and same-sex marriage lead to high divorce rates. Right? Well, no. The exact opposite is true. The facts (Talk to Action):
Over two years have passed now since same sex marriage was legalized in Massachusetts, and data from all of 2004 and the first 11 months of 2005 are now available. [...][F]or several years now the Commonwealth [of Massachusetts] has had the lowest divorce rate of any state in the union.
In 2004 the Massachusetts divorce rate, at 2.2 per 1,000 residents per year, was considerably lower than the US national average rate for that year, 3.8 per 1,000. Indeed, it was lower than the national average rate for 1950 (2.6 per 1,000) and even approached the national rate of 1940 (2 per 1,000).
In 2003, total divorces in Massachusetts declined 2.1% relative to 2002. But in the first two years of legal same sex marriage in the Bay State, Massachusetts showed a more rapid decline and will very likely hold on to its title as the US state with the lowest divorce rate in the nation. [...]
[T]he group of US states...which have passed both state laws and also state constitutional amendments prohibiting same sex marriage, lag dramatically in terms of divorce rate improvement when compared to same sex marriage friendly states.
Among those US states that are most opposed to same sex marriage which have also provided divorce data for the time period...the average divorce rate (unadjusted for population changes) for 2004 and the first 11 months of 2005 increased 1.75%. This group contains 4 of the 5 states with the highest divorce rate increases in the US during 2004 and the first 11 months of 2005. [...]
Meanwhile, the one state in the United States Of America that has legal same sex marriage, Massachusetts, will be among the top ten states — or better — with the largest drop in divorce rates in America during 2004 and 2005. [Emphasis added]
So, to summarize. Massachusetts, widely regarded as the most liberal state in the union, the only state where same-sex marriage is legal, has the nation's lowest divorce rate and its divorce rate continues to decline rapidly. Indeed, the divorce rate in Massachusetts today is lower than the US rate back in the era of "Father Knows Best." Meanwhile, in states where people banned same-sex marriage, divorce rates are high and climbing.
Facts have a way of getting between us and our prejudices.
Posted by Jonathan at 08:30 PM
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June 06, 2006
| Blastocysts Are Not People | Ethics Religion |
I happened to catch The Daily Show the other night when the guest was one Ramesh Ponnuru (video), author of a nasty little tome called The Party of Death. The party in question, in case you were wondering, is the Democratic Party. "Of Death" because of abortion, on which this Ponnuru takes an absolutist all-abortion-is-murder-from-the-moment-of-conception position. Ditto for using 5-day-old embryos for stem cell research.
The American Prospect, however, points out that even The Wall Street Journal's reviewer finds Ponnuru's position extreme. Quoting the WSJ review:
It doesn't matter to Mr. Ponnuru that this argument flies in the face of a complex intuition that seems to underlie the American ambivalence: Invisible to the naked eye, lacking body or brain, feeling neither pleasure nor pain, radically dependent for life support, the early embryo, though surely part of the human family, is distant and different enough from a flesh-and-blood newborn that when the early embryo's life comes into conflict with other precious human goods or claims, the embryo's life may need to give way. [Emphasis added]
Wow. I never thought I'd say it, but good for the Wall Street Journal.
As I watched Jon Stewart's interview with Ponnuru, here's the question I was dying for him to ask:
Imagine you are walking by a stem cell laboratory and you see that a fire is raging inside. You see a person lying unconscious on the floor inside and, nearby, a tank containing some number of five-day-old embryos (blastocysts). Which do you save, the person or the embryos?Or, to make the scenario even more clear-cut. Suppose what you see are a dozen trapped children and a petri dish containing 13 five-day-old embryos. There are more embryos than children. Which do you save, the children or the embryos?
I would have loved to watch Ponnuru stammer his way through that one. People who haven't surrendered their basic common sense understand that a fully developed human being and a nearly microscopic flyspeck are simply not equivalent. What could be more obvious?
And, as I pointed out in an earlier post, when it comes to stem cell research the which-do-you-save question is more than just hypothetical, since it "illustrates exactly the choice that faces us. I.e., there are living human beings with a variety of maladies who could be saved by research and therapy utilizing stem cells. Do we save them, or do we save the five-day-old embryos?"
Posted by Jonathan at 05:27 PM
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April 20, 2006
| Where Did People Come From? | Religion |
From PollingReport:
CBS News Poll. April 6-9, 2006. Adults nationwide."Which of the following statements comes closest to your views on the origin of human beings? (1) Human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, and God did not directly guide this process. (2) Human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, but God guided this process. (3) God created human beings in their present form."
Not directly guided by God 17% Guided by God 23% God created in present form 53% "Which of the following statements comes closest to your views on the origin of human beings? (1) Human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, and God did not directly guide this process. (2) Human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, but God guided this process. (3) God created human beings in their present form within the last ten thousand years."
Not directly guided by God 17% Guided by God 30% Created by God within the last 10,000 years 44%
I'm guessing that a lot of people who say God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years are giving the answer that they think puts them on God's team. I.e., it's not that they've thought about it all that much; they just know what answer a "good" person is supposed to give. And they probably have a superstitious fear of pissing God off. But still, you either have to be deeply ignorant, or have never developed a mental habit of noticing logical inconsistencies, to be able to profess something that so flies in the face of all the evidence in the real world. I really wonder what that's like, to be inside their heads.
Meanwhile, as Lewis Black says, "Our side has fossils. We win."
Posted by Jonathan at 03:23 PM
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April 08, 2006
| Elvis Didn't Do No Drugs! | Humor & Fun Religion |
Penn & Teller take on the Bible (via The Atheist Jew):
Hilarious.
Fair warning: contains rational thought and, uh, profane language.
Posted by Jonathan at 05:09 PM
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April 07, 2006
| Moving The Goalposts | Religion Science/Technology |
You may have seen the reports yesterday of the discovery of a rather spectacular fossil: a transitional form intermediate between a fish and the first four-legged land-dwelling vertebrates. Scientific American:
Paleontologists working in the Canadian Arctic have discovered the fossilized remains of an animal that elucidates one of evolution's most dramatic transformations: that which produced land-going vertebrates from fish. Dubbed Tiktaalik roseae, the large, predatory fish bears a number of features found in four-limbed creatures, a group known as tetrapods. [...]Like all fish, Tiktaalik possesses fins and scales. But it also has a number of distinctly un-piscine characteristics, including a neck, a flat, crocodilelike skull, and robust ribs. As such Tiktaalik neatly fills the gap between previously known tetrapodlike fish such as Panderichthys, which lived some 385 million years ago, and the earliest tetrapods, Ichthyostega and Acanthostega, which lived about 365 million years ago. "Tiktaalik blurs the boundary between fish and land animals," Shubin observes. "This animal is both fish and tetrapod; we jokingly call it a 'fishapod.'"
Especially significant is the anatomy of Tiktaalik's pectoral fin, which contains the makings of a proper tetrapod arm...."Most of the major joints of the fin are functional in this fish," Shubin notes. "The shoulder, elbow and even parts of the wrist are already there and working in ways similar to the earliest land-living animals." [...]
Tiktaalik is already drawing comparisons to the iconic early bird, Archaeopteryx, for its explanatory power as a transitional fossil. But it certainly leaves room for more discoveries, especially those bridging the new gap between it and the first tetrapods, along with those that contain clues to the origin of the tetrapod hindlimb. [Emphasis added]
Creationists have long pointed to the scarcity of such "missing links" in the fossil record as (allegedly) evidence against evolution. So how do they react when such fossils are found? Here's what Robert Crowther had to say on a blog of the anti-evolution Discovery Institute (via Pharyngula):
"This latest fossil find poses no threat to intelligent design." So says Discovery Institute senior fellow and leading intelligent design theorist Dr. William Dembski, adding:"Intelligent design does not so much challenge whether evolution occurred but how it occurred. In particular, it questions whether purposeless material processes — as opposed to intelligence — can create biological complexity and diversity."
The fossil poses no threat to Intelligent Design because nothing can pose a threat to ID. There is no conceivable finding that can disprove ID, because ID proponents can always say that whatever evolution did it did because the Intelligent Designer designed it that way. Which is why ID is not science. As Karl Popper pointed out long ago, the hallmark of a scientific theory is that it can be tested and disproved. Claims that cannot be falsified are necessarily unscientific.
Crowther goes on to say:
Even though this find does not challenge intelligent design, there may be good reasons to be skeptical about it.These fish are not neccesarily intermediates, explain Discovery Institute scientists I queried about the find. Tiktaalik roseae is one of a set of lobe-finned fishes that include very curious mosaics — these fishes have advanced fully formed characteristics of several different groups. They are not intermediates in the sense that have half-fish/half-tetrapod characteristics. Rather, they have a combination of tetrapod-like features and fish-like features. Paleontologists refer to such organisms as mosaics rather than intermediates. [...]
According to DI Fellows a number of these fishes — Ichthyostega, Elpistostege, Panderichthys — have been hailed in the past as the "missing link." Maybe one is a missing link; maybe none are. What remains unexplained is how natural selection and random mutation could produce the many novel physiological characteristics that arise in true tetrapods. [Emphasis added]
This is just plain dumb. First of all, transitional forms should be mosaics. That's what evolutionary theory predicts. Second, scientists don't talk about "missing links", Creationists do. Scientists certainly don't talk about the missing link. What would that even mean? There are any number of transitional forms — indeed, one could argue that all species are transitional forms, since species are constantly in flux — and the idea of the missing anything is absurd.
But, that aside, the whole response shows how intellectually dishonest the Creationist position is. They decry the lack of "missing links," but whenever a transitional form is found they move the goalposts and say, you may have found that one, but there are still others you haven't found. But of course the fossil record will forever be incomplete. Only an infinitesimal fraction of creatures are fossilized when they die. Even so, the fossil record is constantly being added to and refined. You'd have to be a Creationist not to see that.
Posted by Jonathan at 10:37 PM
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February 21, 2006
| Deranged | Religion |
Rabid anti-gay crusader Rev. Fred Phelps and his followers have switched from picketing funerals of AIDS victims to staging protests at military funerals. AP:
Phelps believes American deaths in Iraq are divine punishment for a country that he says harbors homosexuals. His protesters carry signs thanking God for so-called IEDs — explosives that are a major killer of soldiers in Iraq. [...]Shirley Phelps-Roper, a daughter of Fred Phelps and an attorney for the Topeka, Kansas-based church, said [nothing] can silence their message that God killed the soldiers because they fought for a country that embraces homosexuals.
"The scriptures are crystal clear that when God sets out to punish a nation, it is with the sword. An IED is just a broken-up sword," Phelps-Roper said. "Since that is his weapon of choice, our forum of choice has got to be a dead soldier's funeral." [...]
During the 1990s, church members were known mostly for picketing the funerals of AIDS victims... [Emphasis added]
Jesus wept.
Posted by Jonathan at 12:25 PM
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February 05, 2006
| Why The Outrage Now Over Cartoons Published Last September? | Religion |
The cartoons of Mohammed that have angered many Muslims were published last September. Why the outrage now? A post at EuroTrib offers what seems like a plausible explanation.
Posted by Jonathan at 10:45 PM
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January 09, 2006
| Falwell: Alito Would Be Biggest Win In 30 Years | Politics Religion |
As the Alito hearings open, Jerry Falwell tells us what's at stake:
Christian conservative leader Rev. Jerry Falwell said on Sunday that confirming Federal Appeals Court judge Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court U.S. Supreme Court would be the biggest victory for his constituency in three decades."What we‘ve worked on for 30 years, to mobilize people of faith and value in this country, what we've done through these years is coming to culmination right now," Falwell said at a rally on the eve of Alito's confirmation hearing.
"Now we're looking at what we really started on 30 years ago, reconstruction of a court system gone awry," Falwell said at a rally at a Baptist church in Philadelphia and broadcast on Christian radio and television.
"There could be a reconstruction of the U.S. Supreme Court in our immediate lifetime," said Falwell. [...]
"Go to the telephone, write your letter, get to your U.S. senators. Let's confirm this man, Judge Alito, to the U.S. Supreme Court," Falwell said. "And let's make one more step toward bringing America back to one nation under God." [Emphasis added]
Let's hope the Dems are listening.
Posted by Jonathan at 11:06 AM
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January 08, 2006
| Ministers Apply "Holy Oil" To Alito Hearing Seats | Politics Religion |
Three evangelical ministers says they applied "holy oil" to the seats in the hearing room for Alito's confirmation hearings. WSJ (via AmericaBlog):
Insisting that God "certainly needs to be involved" in the Supreme Court confirmation process, three Christian ministers today blessed the doors of the hearing room where Senate Judiciary Committee members will begin considering the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito on Monday.Capitol Hill police barred them from entering the room to continue what they called a consecration service. But in a bit of one-upsmanship, the three announced that they had let themselves in a day earlier, touching holy oil to the seats where Judge Alito, the senators, witnesses, Senate staffers and the press will sit, and praying for each of the 13 committee members by name.
"We did adequately apply oil to all the seats," said the Rev. Rob Schenck, who identified himself as an evangelical Christian and as president of the National Clergy Council in Washington.
Rev. Schenck called the consecration service the kick-off in a series of prayer meetings that will continue throughout the confirmation hearing.
Capitol Hill police said they weren't aware that the three had entered the hearing room earlier, but added that hearing rooms typically aren't locked because "they're not of interest to anyone." [...]
The three ministers insisted they weren't taking sides in the Alito debate. "This is not a pro-Alito prayer," insisted the Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition. With abortion, public prayer, gay marriage and right-to-life issues among those topping public debate, however, "God...is interested in what goes on" in the nomination hearing, Rev. Schenck said. [Emphasis added]
Simpletons.
Posted by Jonathan at 05:13 PM
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November 03, 2005
| Evolution Deniers | Politics Religion |
In spite of everything that's happened (Osama still at-large, nonexistent WMD, the disaster that is Iraq, letting Katrina ruin a major American city, investigations and indictments galore, John Bolton, Karen Hughes, Harriet Miers, etc. etc.), 35% of Americans say they still approve of the job Bush is doing. Who are these people?
Another CBS poll may shed some light: a majority (51%) of Americans believe God created humans in their present form. Which makes you want to ask, "Dude, um, fossils?" I mean, it's one thing to question the neo-Darwinist explanation for evolution. But to say evolution did not occur at all?
A mere 15% of Americans take the scientific view: humans evolved without God's intervention.
God created humans in present form 51% Humans evolved, God guided the process 30% Humans evolved, God did not guide process 15%
In addition, the poll asked, "Is it possible to believe in both God and evolution?"
Yes No All 67% 29% Believe in evolution 90% 8% Believe God created humans 48% 48%
There are just a lot of people out there who think they have to choose between God and science, that being religious means shutting one's eyes and one's mind to enormous quantities of objective data and scientific inference. If your intellectual world is one where evolution never occurred, evidence about things like WMD are unlikely to make much of a dent.
CBS didn't ask, but I think we can safely assume that the people who believe God created humans in their present form are many of the same people who believe — based on what actual evidence, one has to wonder — that Bush is a "Godly" man and therefore doing a job that by definition is worthy of approval.
Somehow, it doesn't seem to bother educated Republicans (they do exist) that their base is disproportionately made up of people untouched by the last century and a half of progress in science.
Posted by Jonathan at 01:01 PM
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October 07, 2005
| Hearing Voices | Politics Religion War and Peace |
Bush says God speaks to him. He calls him George. Guardian:
George Bush has claimed he was on a mission from God when he launched the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a senior Palestinian politician in an interview to be broadcast by the BBC later this month.Mr Bush revealed the extent of his religious fervour when he met a Palestinian delegation during the Israeli-Palestinian summit at the Egpytian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, four months after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
One of the delegates, Nabil Shaath, who was Palestinian foreign minister at the time, said: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I am driven with a mission from God'. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did." [My emphasis]
This is not just a person who believes God speaks to him. This is a person who believe God speaks to him, who also happens to command enough nuclear and conventional weapons to destroy the world many times over.
There is something unbelievably archaic and reckless about putting that much power in the hands of a single human being. It's like we think we're still a small band of primates living in the forest somewhere. The alpha male calls the shots.
Nobody should have that much power. Nobody. Human beings are highly fallible creatures. Sometimes, they're just flat out crazy. The only reason we accept the current state of affairs is that we are completely and foolishly in denial about its implications. But down here in the real world, not all stories have happy endings.
Posted by Jonathan at 06:06 PM
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September 28, 2005
| Religiosity And Societal Health | Culture Ethics Religion |
It's axiomatic among American conservatives — and many other Americans, too — that religion (in the conventional sense of the word) is a force for social good. The less religious a society, the greater will be the incidence of crime, abortion, sexual promiscuity, sexually transmitted diseases, suicide, and so on.
Sounds plausible. But if you actually look at the data, it turns out to be the opposite of the truth. Excerpts from a new study published in the Journal of Religion and Society:
In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies...The most theistic prosperous democracy, the U.S.,...is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so, and almost always scores poorly. The view of the U.S. as a "shining city on the hill" to the rest of the world is falsified when it comes to basic measures of societal health...No democracy is known to have combined strong religiosity and popular denial of evolution with high rates of societal health. Higher rates of non-theism and acceptance of human evolution usually correlate with lower rates of dysfunction, and the least theistic nations are usually the least dysfunctional. None of the strongly secularized, pro-evolution democracies is experiencing high levels of measurable dysfunction. [...]Indeed, the data examined in this study demonstrates that only the more secular, pro-evolution democracies have, for the first time in history, come closest to achieving practical "cultures of life" that feature low rates of lethal crime, juvenile-adult mortality, sex related dysfunction, and even abortion. The least theistic secular developing democracies such as Japan, France, and Scandinavia have been most successful in these regards. The non-religious, pro-evolution democracies contradict the dictum that a society cannot enjoy good conditions unless most citizens ardently believe in a moral creator. The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal disaster is therefore refuted. [My emphasis]
The exceptional nature of US society is seen most dramatically in the graphs that accompany the paper, some of which are reproduced below. It is shocking, in fact, what an extreme outlier the US turns out to be, the mark of a society in real trouble. Look for the U's:
(Legend: A = Australia, C = Canada, D = Denmark, E = Great Britain, F = France, G = Germany, H = Holland, I = Ireland, J = Japan, L = Switzerland, N = Norway, P = Portugal, R = Austria, S = Spain, T = Italy, U = United States, W = Sweden, Z = New Zealand)
Americans are so clueless, by and large, about the rest of the world that they will continue to believe that the US is Number One in all things good, even as we fall further and further behind other First World democracies. When an individual person's self-image is wildly divergent from his/her behavior, we recognize it as being symptomatic of psychological and/or moral pathology. What this study shows is an analogous situation on a national scale.
Small wonder, then, that our national political leaders are a bunch of self-styled Fundamentalist Christians who conduct their affairs like gangsters and thieves.
Posted by Jonathan at 09:18 PM
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August 25, 2005
| ¡Viva Chávez! | Politics Religion |
Pat Robertson, supposed follower of Jesus "love your neighbor as yourself" Christ, called, as you know, for the assassination of Venezuela's popularly elected President Hugo Chávez. Robertson, at least, was forthright about the reason: Chávez controls "a huge pool of oil" and insists that his country has the right to control its own resources.
Besides the oil, there's also the fact that Chávez represents what Noam Chomsky has called "the threat of a good example." He uses his country's oil revenue to provide for its poor. He offers oil to other Latin American countries at below-market prices in exchange for barter in goods and services. He shows by his example that there is another way, a better way, for nations to conduct their affairs.
And you've got to love his sense of humor. In the face of attacks by the Bush administration and its allies like Pat Roberston, Chávez has responded by offering to sell half-price oil to poor Americans and by offering them Venezuela's free health care as well. America can strut about on the world stage all it wants, Chávez implies, but even lowly Venezuela does a far better job of providing for its own people. Take that! Guardian:
President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela hit back vigorously at calls by an ally of President George Bush for his assassination by offering cheap petrol to the poor of the US at a time of soaring fuel prices. [...]"We want to sell gasoline and heating fuel directly to poor communities in the United States," he said. [...]
Venezuela, the world's fifth largest crude exporter, supplies 1.3m barrels of oil a day to the US. It remains unclear how poor Americans might benefit from the cheap petrol offer, but Mr Chávez has set up arrangements with other countries for swapping services in exchange for oil. Cuban doctors are working in the poorer areas of Venezuela in exchange for cheap oil going to Cuba.
Jamaica yesterday became the first Caribbean country to reach an agreement with Venezuela for oil at below-market terms. The Petrocaribe initiative is a plan to offer oil at flexible rates to 13 Caribbean countries. Jamaica will pay $40 a barrel, against a market rate of more than $60. [My emphasis]
All of which makes Chávez Public Enemy Number One here at the center of the empire of greed.
Who is the more authentic follower of Jesus? Chávez, who champions the welfare of the poor and powerless, or Pat Robertson, who sits on hundreds of millions of dollars and issues his lunatic fatwas? When will right-wing Christians in America wake up to the sort of "Christians" they are following?
Jesus was their exact opposite, as is obvious to anyone who takes the trouble to read what Jesus actually said and did. For example, Jesus said this:
If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.
And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. — Matthew 19:21-24
What could be clearer?
Posted by Jonathan at 10:04 PM
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August 23, 2005
| Grooming Fundamentalist Fanatics For Political Power | Politics Religion |
Here's a disturbing report from the LA Times on fundamentalist Christian efforts to train future political leaders and place them in positions of influence and power. Excerpts:
In the blue and gold elegance of the House speaker's private dining room, Jeremy Bouma bowed his head before eight young men and women who hope to one day lead the nation. He prayed that they might find wisdom in the Bible — and govern by its word."Holy Father, we thank you for providing us with guidance," said Bouma, who works for an influential televangelist. "Thank you, Lord, for these students. Build them up as your warriors and your ambassadors on Capitol Hill."
"Amen," the students murmured. Then they picked up their pens expectantly.
Nearly every Monday for six months, as many as a dozen congressional aides — many of them aspiring politicians — have gathered over takeout dinners to mine the Bible for ancient wisdom on modern policy debates about tax rates, foreign aid, education, cloning and the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
Through seminars taught by conservative college professors and devout members of Congress, the students learn that serving country means first and always serving Christ.
They learn to view every vote as a religious duty, and to consider compromise a sin.
That puts them at the vanguard of a bold effort by evangelical conservatives to mold a new generation of leaders who will answer not to voters, but to God.
"We help them understand God's purpose for society," said Bouma, who coordinates the program, known as the Statesmanship Institute, for the Rev. D. James Kennedy. [...]
The center sponsors Bible studies, prayer meetings and free "Politics and Principle" lunches for members of Congress and their staffs, often drawing crowds in the hundreds. [...]
It's one of half a dozen evangelical leadership programs making steady inroads into Washington.
The most prominent is Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Va., an hour's drive from the capital. The college was founded five years ago with the goal of turning out "Christian men and women who will lead our nation with timeless biblical values." Nearly every graduate works in government or with a conservative advocacy group.
The Witherspoon Fellowship has had similar success, placing its graduates in the White House, Congress, the State Department and legislatures nationwide. The fellowship brings 42 college students to Washington each year to study theology and politics — and to work at the conservative Family Research Council, which lobbies on such social issues as abortion and same-sex marriage.
Such programs share a commitment to developing leaders who read the Bible as a blueprint.
As Kennedy put it: "If we leave it to man to decide what's good and evil, there will be chaos." [...]
Now the director of the Eagle Forum, a conservative lobbying group founded by Phyllis Schlafly, [23-year-old Jessica] Echard says Jesus would approve of a call for lower taxes: "God calls on us to be stewards of our [own] money."
She dips into the Bible to explain her opposition to most global treaties, reasoning that Americans have a holy obligation to protect their God-given freedom by avoiding foreign entanglements. [...]
Kennedy offers a similar take on education policy in the gilt-edged, leather-bound Bible his staff delivers to each new member of Congress. In an introductory essay, Kennedy quotes Scripture to explain God's views on taxes, capital punishment, gay rights and a dozen other issues. Most of the policy prescriptions he finds in the Bible dovetail neatly with the Republican agenda. [My emphasis]
It takes a member of a cult, really, to have the unthinking, unquestioning arrogance to believe he or she knows what the purported Creator of the Universe's positions are on taxes, science instruction, gay marriage, and everything else. People who have so completely surrendered their (God-given, if you like) faculties for critical thinking about the real world all around them are dangerous people to have in power.
When people thi