| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"The Last Liberal / ShyDavid / Desertphile" |
| Date: |
14 Jan 2005 02:35:32 AM |
| Object: |
Bush's Reelection [sic] Ignites the Religious Right |
http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=980
Bush's Reelection [sic] Ignites the Religious Right
Do God's work by waging war in Iraq, and don't worry about the
environment since the "end of days" is near.
By Gerald Rellick
It appears that members of the Religious Right feel empowered
these days following the reelection of their man, George W. Bush.
In addition to the usual social and cultural issues that incite
these people, they also have strong views on the war in Iraq and
the environment.
In a speech at Harvard Medical School, Bill Moyers lamented the
twisted views of many on the Religious Right. Moyers writes that
these are people who subscribe to the fundamentalist doctrine of
the Apocalypse and the related Rapture, which concepts "[are]
rather simple, if bizarre....
"Once Israel has occupied the rest of its 'biblical lands,'
legions of the anti-Christ will attack it, triggering a final
showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not
been converted are burned, the messiah will return for the
rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and
transported to heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of
God, they will watch their political and religious opponents
suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts, and frogs during the
several years of tribulation that follow."
Moyers continues:
"I'm not making this up. I've reported on these people, following
some of them from Texas to the West Bank. They are sincere,
serious, and polite as they tell you they feel called to help
bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That's
why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish
settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers.
It's why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act,
predicted in the Book of Revelations.... A war with Islam in the
Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed -- an
essential conflagration on the road to redemption."
And there is official support in Washington for these Apocalyptic
views. According to an article by Glenn Scherer in Grist, House
Majority Leader Tom Delay -- a self-declared member of the
Christian Zionists, an End-Time faction numbering 20 million
Americans -- was present at a fire and brimstone sermon at John
Hagee's San Antonio-based Cornerstone Church in 2002 when Hagee
told his congregation, "The war between America and Iraq is the
gateway to the Apocalypse." After Hagee's sermon, Delay was quoted
as saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, what has been spoken here
tonight is the truth from God."
In Delay's view, and those of others End-timers, our soldiers are
being thrown into combat to help fulfill a two-thousand year old
Biblical prophecy that intelligent people know to be myth. It's
true that since WMD and a connection to al Qaeda have both been
discredited, George Bush's rationale for the war in Iraq has been
forced to shift to "higher ground." But Bush has yet to lay this
one on the American people. Perhaps this will come after the Iraq
democracy experiment fails.
The Environment
The Religious Right's position on care of the environment, Scherer
explains, is much like their view on the war in Iraq. Many
fundamentalists feel that "environmental destruction is not only
to be disregarded but actually welcomed -- even hastened -- as a
sign of the coming Apocalypse." As Scherer puts it:
"Why care about the earth when the droughts, floods, famine and
pestilence brought by ecological collapse are signs of the
apocalypse foretold in the Bible? Why care about global climate
change when you and yours will be rescued in the rapture? And why
care about converting from oil to solar when the same God who
performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes can whip up a few
billion barrels of light crude with a word?"
Scherer reports that in the 2000 election, the Christian Right
cast about 15 million votes, and Karl Rove was shooting for 20
million in this last election. Beyond its voting strength, the
Christian Right already has considerable power in place in the
form of members of Congress who are also "End-Time" believers. The
two most powerful of these are House Majority Leader Tom DeLay
(again!) and Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chair
James Inhofe of Oklahoma. Both have expressed their scorn for
environmental protection. According to Scherer, "DeLay has fought
to gut the Clean Air and Endangered Species acts. [And] Inhofe
invited a stacked deck of fossil- fuel-funded climate-change
skeptics to testify at a Senate hearing that climaxed with him
calling global warming 'the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the
American people.'"
And Inhofe once stated to a religious publication, "I don't
believe there is a single issue we deal with in government that
hasn't been dealt with in the Scriptures."
Two measures of the anti-environment stance among legislators are
the rankings given to them by certain major advocacy groups. To no
one's surprise, Inhofe scored a 100 percent rating in 2003 from
the three major Christian-right advocacy groups, while earning
only a five percent rating from the League of Conservation Voters.
And of nine Republicans on Inhofe's Senate committee, eight earned
an average 94 percent approval rating in 2003 from the Christian
right, while scoring only four percent on the environmental
approval rating. And Delay and Inhofe are not alone. Scherer notes
that 231 U.S. legislators either believe apocalyptic End-Time
doctrine or, "for political expediency, are happy to align
themselves with those who do."
A Darker Agenda
While the fundamentalist religious views held are to some degree
probably genuine, there is also a darker side to these
legislators' anti-environment agenda: nearly all of them have
strong ties to the energy industry. Inhofe, writes Scherer,
"received more than $558,000 from the fossil-fuel industry,
electric utilities, mining, and other natural-resource interests,
according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Eight of the nine
other Republican members of Inhofe's committee received an average
of $408,000 per senator from the energy and natural resource
sector over the same period. By contrast, the eight committee
Democrats and one Independent came away with an average of just
$132,000 per senator from that same sector since 1999."
This is tie that binds -- Jesus merging with the energy industry
to clear the land and despoil the air and water, or what Alexander
Zaitchik calls "the synchronicity between God and chainsaw."
Writing in the New York Press, Zaitchik puts it all in good
perspective:
"Southern evangelicals set the social agenda at the grassroots
level, while secular forces in the north (and west) set the
economic and foreign policy agendas. These policies are then fed
back to the religious base through industry-subsidized Christian
Right leaders in Congress and the media, who reinforce the idea
that pollution controls are part of the same godless liberal plot
that wants gay porn and home-abortion kits distributed in the
public school system."
It was twenty years ago that James Watt, Ronald Reagan's first
Secretary of the Interior, testified before Congress, dismissing
care of natural resources, explaining that "after the last tree is
felled, Christ will come back." Watt resigned shortly thereafter.
Who would have thought that Watt's sick vision would come back to
haunt us at a time when the United States should be leading the
world in environmental stewardship? Polls have consistently shown
that Americans favor strong environmental protection laws. We need
to send a message to Washington that representative democracy is
still alive in this country, and that rejecting the will of the
people is a dangerous path to walk.
---
Sig Heil! A *FREE* random signature quote program by Desertphile RiceWare
http://holysmoke.org/sig/index.html
"I am pro-life. I'm in agreement that not only is the abortionist a mass
murderer, but that the mother who consented to the abortion is a
murderer. Both are worthy of the death penalty." -- Arthut Biele
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| User: "Al Klein" |
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| Title: Re: Bush's Reelection [sic] Ignites the Religious Right |
14 Jan 2005 03:52:13 AM |
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On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 02:35:32 GMT, (The Last
Liberal / ShyDavid / Desertphile) said in alt.atheism:
As the Jews who have not been converted are burned
Christians never recognize themselves in their own myths, do they?
"Jews who have not been converted" would have to refer to Christians -
those who haven't been converted back to the religion of Jesus.
True believers
Jews, of course. That is, after all, the religion of Jesus. Why
would he raise into heaven those who torture and kill his own people?
--
"My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid
consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and
ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who
works on the basis of reward and punishment. "
- Letter to M. Berkowitz, October 25, 1950; Einstein Archive 59-215
(random sig, produced by SigChanger)
rukbat at verizon dot net
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| User: "Fredric L. Rice" |
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| Title: Re: Bush's Reelection [sic] Ignites the Religious Right |
14 Jan 2005 04:38:59 AM |
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On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 03:52:13 GMT, Al Klein <rukbat@pern.invalid>
wrote:
On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 02:35:32 GMT, (The Last
Liberal / ShyDavid / Desertphile) said in alt.atheism:
As the Jews who have not been converted are burned
Christians never recognize themselves in their own myths, do they?
"Jews who have not been converted" would have to refer to Christians -
those who haven't been converted back to the religion of Jesus.
Jews recognize the fact that the Jesus mythos isn't the
always-sought-for "messiah" talked about in the Christian
mythologies. As I recall the King Solomon mythologies,
the messiah's name was to be Michael.
Christians have it wrong, as usual. Jews are waiting
while Christians think theirs has already come and go and
they missed out.
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| User: "Fredric L. Rice" |
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| Title: Re: Bush's Reelection [sic] Ignites the Religious Right |
16 Jan 2005 02:00:46 AM |
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On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 02:35:32 GMT, (The Last
Liberal / ShyDavid / Desertphile) wrote:
http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=980
It's why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act,
predicted in the Book of Revelations....
The author added an "s" to the name of the written mythologies.
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| User: "The Last Liberal / ShyDavid / Desertphile" |
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| Title: Re: Bush's Reelection [sic] Ignites the Religious Right |
16 Jan 2005 03:53:46 AM |
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On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 02:00:46 GMT, (Fredric
L. Rice) wrote:
On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 02:35:32 GMT, (The Last
Liberal / ShyDavid / Desertphile) wrote:
http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=980
It's why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act,
predicted in the Book of Revelations....
The author added an "s" to the name of the written mythologies.
I saw that and I sent a correction to the web site. I did not get
a reply.
---
Sig Heil! A *FREE* random signature quote program
http://holysmoke.org/sig/index.html
"If a man pretend to me that God hath spoken to him supernaturally and
immediately, and I make doubt of it, I cannot easily perceive what
argument he can produce, to oblige me to believe it... To say that God...
hath spoken to him in a dream, is no more than to say he dreamed that God
spake to him." - Hobbes 'Leviathan'
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| User: "Severian" |
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| Title: Re: Bush's Reelection [sic] Ignites the Religious Right |
16 Jan 2005 04:25:17 AM |
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On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 02:00:46 GMT, (Fredric L.
Rice) wrote:
On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 02:35:32 GMT, (The Last
Liberal / ShyDavid / Desertphile) wrote:
http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=980
It's why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act,
predicted in the Book of Revelations....
The author added an "s" to the name of the written mythologies.
Surely a sign that they never even read it. Like most fundies, they
merely inaccurately repeat what they are told.
Remember the telephone game?
--
Sev
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Bush's Reelection [sic] Ignites the Religious Right |
16 Jan 2005 02:13:57 PM |
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In talk.atheism Severian <severian@chlamydia-is-not-a-flower.com> wrote:
On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 02:00:46 GMT, (Fredric L.
Rice) wrote:
On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 02:35:32 GMT, (The Last
Liberal / ShyDavid / Desertphile) wrote:
http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=980
It's why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act,
predicted in the Book of Revelations....
The author added an "s" to the name of the written mythologies.
Surely a sign that they never even read it. Like most fundies, they
merely inaccurately repeat what they are told.
Ummm...errr...that website isn't a fundy site. It's a left-wing site and the
article was blasting the fundies. But many people on both sides do add the
's' to the name of the book.
Remember the telephone game?
--
Sev
--
Mike
W hat atheism: a non-prophet organization...
W ould
J enna
D rink?
-------------------------------
Creation Science: an oxymoron actually created by morons...
-------------------------------
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you
do criticize them, you're a mile away, and you have their shoes.
-------------------------------
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop
thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do
we," George W. "Shrub" Bush Aug 5, 2004
-------------------------------
The only product that Micro$oft could produce that *wouldn't* suck would be a
vacuum cleaner..
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