Repeat of '92?

[Stonehead]

I read that the Republican Convention next month will include the Reverend Jerry Falwell who will give the invocation during opening night at the convention. Here's a few choice quotes from the man:

 

"The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country."

 

"If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being."

 

"It appears that America's anti-Biblical feminist movement is at last dying, thank God, and is possibly being replaced by a Christ-centered men's movement which may become the foundation for a desperately needed national spiritual awakening."

 

"The Bible is the inerrant ... word of the living God. It is absolutely infallible, without error in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as well as in areas such as geography, science, history, etc."

 

"I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!"

 

"AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals."

 

"I had a student ask me, "Could the savior you believe in save Osama bin Laden?" Of course, we know the blood of Jesus Christ can save him, and then he must be executed."

 

"There is no separation of church and state. Modern U.S. Supreme Courts have raped the Constitution and raped the Christian faith and raped the churches by misinterpreting what the Founders had in mind in the First Amendment to the Constitution."

 

"The Jews are returning to their land of unbelief. They are spiritually blind and desperately in need of their Messiah and Savior."

 

"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, "You helped this terrorist attacks happen."

 

Whooo.....

[JoshK]

Falwell...what a fucking nazi son of a bitch. I *hope* the republicans trumpet him out...it'll further the belief that they pander to the nazi christian right wing assholes.

 

I like this quote...

 

"The Bible is the inerrant ... word of the living God. It is absolutely infallible, without error in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as well as in areas such as geography, science, history, etc."

 

Yes, as we all know the bible really nails science and geography on the head! And if you like revisionist history, it's great at that as well...

[glacier]

Regarding 9/11 - (NYT article dated 9/19/01)

 

The Rev Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson set off a minor explosion of their own when they asserted on US television that an angry God had allowed the terrorists to succeed in their deadly mission because the United States had become a nation of abortion, homosexuality, secular schools and courts, and the American civil liberties union.

 

Liberal groups and commentators denounced their remarks yesterday, as did President Bush, who has long enjoyed the political support of the two evangelists.

 

"The president believes that terrorists are responsible for these acts," said a White House spokesman, Ken Lisaius. "He does not share those views, and believes that those remarks are inappropriate."

 

Yet Mr Falwell's and Mr. Robertson's remarks were based in theology familiar to and accepted by many conservative evangelical Christians, who believe the Bible teaches that God withdraws protection from nations that violate his will.

 

Several conservative theologians and evangelists said in interviews yesterday that they agreed with the basic notion but rejected the idea that mere humans can ever know which particular sins lead to which particular tragedies.

 

The Rev R Albert Mohler Jr, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and a friend of Mr Falwell, said, "There is no doubt that America has accommodated itself to so many sins that we should always fear God's judgment and expect that in due time that judgment will come. But we ought to be very careful about pointing to any circumstance or any specific tragedy and say that this thing has happened because this is God's direct punishment."

 

Mr Falwell, chancellor of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, and senior pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church there, was in Washington yesterday in a service at the National Cathedral at Mr Bush's invitation.

 

He released a statement on the controversy, saying: "Despite the impression some may have from news reports today, I hold no one other than the terrorists and the people and nations who have enabled and harboured them responsible for Tuesday's attacks on this nation.

 

"I sincerely regret that comments I made during a long theological discussion on a Christian television programme yesterday were taken out of their context and reported and that my thoughts - reduced to soundbites - have detracted from the spirit of this day of mourning."

 

What Mr Falwell said on Thursday on The 700 Club, while chatting with the programme's host, Mr Robertson, was this: "What we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be minuscule if, in fact, God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve."

 

Mr Robertson responded: "Jerry, that's my feeling. I think we've just seen the antechamber to terror. We haven't even begun to see what they can do to the major population."

 

A few moments later Mr Falwell said: "The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularise America, I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.' "

 

To which Mr Robertson said: "I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government."

 

James Robison, a well-known evangelist in Euless, Texas, and host of the Christian television programme Life Today, emphasised a different catalogue of what he saw as sins: arrogance in relationships with third world countries, plundering other countries for resources while supporting their despots, and indifference to others' poverty and pain.

 

"Any time you get away from God, you do become vulnerable," Mr Robison said. "Bad judgment always leaves the door open to perpetrators of pain."

 

Among evangelicals, the terrorist attacks have unleashed renewed calls for repentance, prayer and spiritual revival.

 

"Many people are calling this a wake-up call, and yet it doesn't help us respond to God to somehow feel that we've been chastised by this," said Steve Hawthorne, director of WayMakers, a prayer ministry in Austin, Texas.

 

"It might be wise for us to examine our lives and our hearts and our practices."

 

© New York Times

[JoshK]

Falwell is a genious. Clearly 9/11 was payback for gays, "abortionists", secular schools, and god forbid, that damn organize that fights for equal rights...the ACLU!! How dare they!

[wally]

As a Father disiplines his children, so God disiplines those He loves. If the Bible indeed is true then America is not quite following what it says. As a child if you ran away from home you would no longer be under the protection of your dad. Same goes for God's children, to each of us personally and Nationally.

[JoshK]

wally, wtf are you talking about? People like you and adolf falwell are what give religion a bad name.

[ashw_justin]

Ok, let's assume God is punishing us. So how do you know he's not punishing us for fucking over the middle-east for the last 40 years? eh? Step up to the plate and stand for your sins. Not only do you tolerate a nation rampant with heathens, you also tolerate a government that ruins other nations for its own selfish gains.

 

True followers of the Christian faith would not be pointing fingers at the faults of others. Take some responsibility FOR CHRIST'S SAKE.

[Dave_Schuldt]

LORD SAVE ME FROM YOUR FALOWERS!

[JoshK]

Ironically, the general correlation between wealth+intellect/education is inversely proportional to religious beliefs. Meaning on a whole the trend is the less money you make and the less educated you are, the more likely are to belief in religion. Seems funny that christ would reward his followers with little yet his disbelivers with wonderful lives, doesn't it??

[Stonehead]

About religion:

 

Let us try a hypothetical exercise.

 

Imagine, for a moment, that you wanted to create a memetic virus - a belief or system of beliefs of your choosing that would spread from person to person, instill its targets with specific thoughts or opinions of your choosing, and be almost impossible to eradicate once it had taken root in a mind. Why anyone would want to do such a thing is not really important for the purposes of this exercise, but there could be many reasons. Perhaps you were after personal gain and wanted to foster a belief system that would convince people to give their money and possessions to you. Perhaps you were an aspiring tyrant striving for the unquestioning obedience of the populace. Perhaps you were a political or military leader seeking to create the perfect army of fanatically dedicated and loyal soldiers. None of that truly matters. The question is, how could you create such a virus? How could you craft a system of beliefs that would inspire this reaction?

 

The first thing you would need to do would be to find a way to insinuate your virus into a mind - to convince people to accept your new ideology. True viruses work by surrounding their 'payload' of genetic material with a protein coat that disguises them as innocuous substances. When the virus comes in contact with a cell, the protein shell is able to successfully dock with the cell membrane's receptors, like a key fitting into a lock. Once this has happened, the virus is able to penetrate the membrane and inject its own DNA into the nucleus of the cell.

 

The same principle holds true here. To convince people to accept your memetic virus into their minds, you must disguise it as something innocuous, even something beneficial. Without a doubt, the best way to do this would be to convince people that the belief system you are offering them is good for them - that positive results will accrue if they accept it. The most rational way to do this would be to promise them a reward of some sort: money, fame, power, attractive members of the opposite sex, and so on. But that's needlessly complicated. Why not just go for the jugular? All these things are routes to pleasure, so let's just set them aside and promise your adherents pleasure in its pure form, undiluted happiness and bliss. That seems simple enough.

 

However, there is a problem with this. If you promise people a reward you can't deliver, and then don't deliver, they will realize that your ideology is false and abandon it. How can we avoid this? The logical answer is to make the reward proposition a perpetually moving target: keep promising them that they'll get it if they work a little bit harder, do a little bit more for you. That way, if they don't get the reward you can move the blame from yourself to them, and they'll have to believe you. But there will always be sharp-eyed skeptics who'll want to see examples of people who have gotten this reward, just to prove it exists. So, as a final twist, let's move the reward to a place where no one can verify or disprove the fact of its awarding. Like... after death! That's the ticket! We now have a nicely unfalsifiable proposition. No one will ever be able to show evidence that you were wrong.

 

The second problem is transmission. You may be able to sway a few people into believing you, but you can't spend all your time evangelizing. The logical solution is to add to the forming memetic virus a suite of beliefs that cause the newly converted themselves to want to spread it to others. Since we already have the reward proposition, that next step is a simple one. Convince your acolytes that it is beneficial to them - that it will increase their own reward further - to spread the good news to everyone they know. Better yet, phrase it in a more selfless form: convince them that they should convert other people for those own people's good. That way everyone can enjoy the reward they've already been promised.

 

You now have your vector - a means by which the memetic virus can be spread from host to host. True viruses work in a similar way: they invade the cell, conquer its DNA, and in effect give the cellular machinery the message "make more copies of me." Your ideology is now poised to multiply in similarly explosive fashion. There's just one problem left.

 

Medical science has defenses against viruses and other pathogens: antibiotics, vaccines, and so on. Yet viruses have their own counter-defenses; they can mutate and so gain immunity to the substances designed to kill them. How can we make our memetic virus immune to a cure?

 

The answer, once again, is marvelously simple. Add to your virus another suite of beliefs. These ones will convince the infected that questioning the virus is wrong. Teach them that doubt is evil, that skepticism is to be set aside, that critical thought is to be avoided. Teach them that even a rational examination of their own beliefs will put them in serious jeopardy of losing their promised reward, and that instead, blind faith is essential. Trust me, your message will go. Don't think for yourself. Don't research. Believe what I tell you. Obey me and believe that I am always right. In this way, you will never give skepticism a chance to take root; you can cut doubt off at the pass.

 

Your memetic virus is now ready to go. There are a few conceivable changes you could enact to make it even more effective: for example, you could balance the promised reward with a promise of punishment for those who stray, to ensure even stronger obedience among your believers. You could add that those who are not infected are in dire jeopardy of this punishment, to increase the urgency and effectiveness of its transmission. You could insert an instruction to believers to infect children as early as possible, before a strong 'immune system' of critical thinking skills can form. You could add rules and doctrines to create an entire culture based around this virus, so people grow up without ever being exposed to possible counteragents. But by and large, what we have now will suffice. Insert the 'payload' of whatever specific beliefs you wish it to instill, release it on an unsuspecting populace, and the rest is history.

 

Of course, virtually every reader will by now have realized where this is going. Religion is precisely such a memetic virus. I am not necessarily claiming that religion was invented for any of the reasons described above. I am claiming that religion is the textbook example of a system of thought designed to stifle critical thinking and keep its adherents enslaved to doctrine. If you wanted to invent a system to hold people in mental thralldom, you couldn't do any better than the belief systems we already have.

 

con't. here

[ashw_justin]

Any historical/sociological study of religion in general will lead to similar conclusions, intriguing philosophies being bastardized into instruments of social control. In the end, it's all about what you want to believe, and whether you want your beliefs to give power to people who can't be trusted with it. I don't have much against the Christian faith itself, but Church Inc. and non-secular elements of our government can go suck a .

[JoshK]

The rise of "Church Inc." is a really bad thing. Again, it is things like this that make me feel sorry for those members of the christian faith who don't think of religion like these nutjobs do.

[lummox]

capping on reverend falwell? you mutha fukers need to have your ass kicked.

 

leave the sped alone.

[glacier]

And don't forget Pat Robertson:

 

"Feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians."

[wally]

easy on the insults, you boxed me up on two sentences. I don't totally agree with the statements by farwell. I was just stating that their rational comes from the belief that the bible is the word of God and that there are consequences to our actions.

[wally]

falwell rather, how edumacated is I? Store up for yourself treasures in heaven were theives cant steal where rust and moths can't destroy. (spoken like A poor uneducated Christian white boy)

[ashw_justin]

yeah sorry for the foul language. I hold sacred no human sand castles. But I wasn't responding to you in particular or anything, I just got pissed at all the scapegoating...

[wally]

no prob

[ian]

"As a child if you ran away from home you would no longer be under the protection of your dad. Same goes for God's children, to each of us personally and Nationally."

 

I would have to disagree with that...the whole point of the prodigal son was that God NEVER abondons you...even when you stray...

 

as far as being poor and unedukated there were and are plenty who dissagree with the hate and bile that freely flows out of Falwell's mouth

[wally]

never said God leaves you, just saying that if you choose to ignore Him you are opening yourself up to a world of hurt. God is always there for us if we choose to turn to Him. (All right lets bash the preacher boy wally)