PowerSwitch

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/ame ... 317805.ece

President George Bush has claimed he was told by God to invade Iraq and attack Osama bin Laden's stronghold of Afghanistan as part of a divine mission to bring peace to the Middle East, security for Israel, and a state for the Palestinians.

Hahahahahahahaha....

this would be hilarious if we weren't talking about such serious issues!

Isn't this the sort of argument that crazy people use then trying to explain a murder or something of that nature? In absence of any logical, fact based, defendable argument we're left with "God told me to do it!".

clv101 wrote:Isn't this the sort of argument that crazy people use then trying to explain a murder or something of that nature?

Indeed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sutcliffe

Think that's bad?


Who shall we invade next? (2MB - Windows Media)

As Grist makes clear, we're not talking about a handful of fringe lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. Nearly half the U.S. Congress before the recent election - 231 legislators in total - more since the election - are backed by the religious right. Forty-five senators and 186 members of the 108th congress earned 80 to 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian right advocacy groups. They include Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Assistant Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Conference Chair Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Policy Chair Jon Kyl of Arizona, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, and Majority Whip Roy Blunt. The only Democrat to score 100 percent with the Christian coalition was Senator Zell Miller of Georgia, who recently quoted from the biblical book of Amos on the senate floor: "the days will come, sayeth the Lord God, that i will send a famine in the land.' he seemed to be relishing the thought.

And why not? There's a constituency for it. A 2002 TIME/CNN poll found that 59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the book of Revelations are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks. Drive across the country with your radio tuned to the more than 1,600 Christian radio stations or in the motel turn some of the 250 Christian TV stations and you can hear some of this end-time gospel. And you will come to understand why people under the spell of such potent prophecies cannot be expected, as Grist puts it, "to worry about the environment. 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?"

http://www.yubanet.com/cgi-bin/artman/e ... i/10/15874

DamianB wrote:

And you will come to understand why people under the spell of such potent prophecies cannot be expected, as Grist puts it, "to worry about the environment. 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?"

OK, so God created the universe, so a few billion of light crude should be no problem at all. But what these people should ask themselves is why God would want to help America out in this way. The "loaves and fishes" miracle mentioned in the article DamianB quoted was to feed a huge crowd of people who were miles from home, had nothing with them, and were only there because they'd spent all day listening to Jesus' teaching.

Now lets compare this to the American nation... Blessed with huge natural resources, the dominant world power for over 50 years now, yet as a nation they are squandering these resources, starting wars and torturing their prisoners, just to mention a few things! So why exactly do they think God would like to help them out of the mess they've got themselves into?

Nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks.

Hmmm. Well I know of Christians, American and other nationalities, who were prepared to consider whether 9/11 was in fact divine judgement on nation, so maybe the surveyors should have asked some different questions. Mind you, maybe asking that particular one would get them shot!

Finally, the other thing the Christian Right in the US should remember is that in Genesis (and other bits of the bible) humanity is commanded to take care of the Earth - we are supposed to "rule over it" in the way that a good responsible monarch might, not like a tyannical ditcator. So, they should not be ignoring the environment, thinking that God will just rescue them from it bfore it all gets too bad. He might just leave them in it to suffer the consequences of their actions.

Rant over I'd just like to add that there are many individual Americans , Christian and not, who this criticism does not apply to - it's not personal.

mikepepler wrote:So why exactly do they think God would like to help them out of the mess they've got themselves into?

... the other thing the Christian Right in the US should remember is that in Genesis (and other bits of the bible) humanity is commanded to take care of the Earth - we are supposed to "rule over it" in the way that a good responsible monarch might, not like a tyannical ditcator. So, they should not be ignoring the environment, thinking that God will just rescue them from it bfore it all gets too bad. He might just leave them in it to suffer the consequences of their actions.

Who was it that said something like ?the bible tell you all you need to live your life provided that you add to it a multiple of interpretations?

Religion can and has been used to justify any position that people want. After all, people who believe in religion are not noted for logical thinking!

isenhand wrote:Religion can and has been used to justify any position that people want. After all, people who believe in religion are not noted for logical thinking!

You're right - religous texts, beliefs, etc are often used to justify things which were never intended. However, I'd disagree with the logical thinking bit - many of the greatest scientists and inventors of the last few hundred years were devoutly religious people. Science and religion not getting on is only something that's happened in the last 50 years or so, and the disagreements are often not as big as you might be led to belive by the media.

mikepepler wrote:Science and religion not getting on is only something that's happened in the last 50 years or so, and the disagreements are often not as big as you might be led to belive by the media.

I disagree, a lot of scientist being religious was due to the times they lived in, often where being an atheist could carry a death sentence. However, even in modern times there are scientists who are religious but in my experience they tend to turn off rational thinking when it comes to religion.

Science and religion are incompatible, they work from different assumptions about the world.

isenhand wrote:Science and religion are incompatible, they work from different assumptions about the world.

I guess we ought to agree to differ then. It's not a critical issue in facing up to peak oil in any case, and there's probably more pressing things for us to discuss

"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind" - Albert Einstein

(one of the more notable scientists of the 20th century)

God must have voted him into office as well

It's such a terrible shame that Bill Hicks is dead. He'd have had such a good time on Bush!

Isenhand -

"Science and religion are incompatible, they work from different assumptions about the world. "

With respect, I'd differ with the view shown above, in that the difference IMV is one of hypotheses, not assumptions.

While one recognizes and seeks to learn of the presence of universal conscious being (whatever the name) that suffuses the creation we inhabit,
the other acknowledges the material world but chooses to await delivery of a disectable definable body before acknowledging universal conscious being.

Thus I doubt that one can be considered more rational than the other; particularly as one's choice is primarily down to the geographic accidents of birth and of nurture.

What seems to me tragic, at least among the 3 great religions sprung from the Old Testament, is:
1/. that Jaweh's Wife got written out of the script very early on and all her shrines and sacred groves were destroyed (by some power-hungry urban zealot), and,
2/. those religions' propensity for 'Synarchy,' being the vicious co-operation between elites in generating hugely profitable animosity in the other party's proleatariat.
The malign interdependence of Southern Baptist and the Wahabi sects is just the latest version of that ancient corruption.

In this light religion may IMHO have a critical role to play, both in rediscovering the duty of respect for the creation,
and in transcending the adversarial diversionary games of unsustainable political power structures.

Notably the first Welsh Archbishop of Canterbury for over 1400 years is making headway on these fronts . . .
And he's named after a tree ! .

regards,

Billhook

Edit PS: It's maybe worth observing that what Bush is actually doing with this news of divine guidance is claiming the Divine Right of an Absolute Monarch,
and demonstrating yet again the utter corruptability of the Republic's system of an executive presidency.
- Personally, as a Commoner, my loyalty is to a Constitutional Monarchy . . . .