BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 08:26 AM

But the problem is that extreme, delusional religious beliefs and believers are being exploited by politicians with nefarious political agendas, to trump both facts and truth.

The current Republican leadership are the definition of demagoguery, pure and simple.

Question is when, if ever, will the American demagogue worshipping electorate throw the bums out?

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: kendall
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 08:16 AM

"No amount of belief can create a fact."

"The loonies have the microphone." That's a good one, and so true.

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: John Hardly
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 08:02 AM

"shaking us from our neutrality."

as if.

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: Bobert
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 07:58 AM

Well, I have Faith that this nightmarish cycle will return to more moderate behaviors and attitudes... Yes it would seem that the loonies have the micorphone these days. But in a way that is good because for folks who might have forgotten they are now getting barrages daily the loonies view of the world...

Throw in the fact that what these ideologues have tried to do hasn't helped mankind one bit I think it is safe to say that their microphoone days are numbered, unless they somehow declare martial law...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 07:53 AM

That's because you are so full of that old time religion Susan.

Clearly, these hysterical mass funerals we are seeing--Diana, the pope, and god only knows who next--are so removed from reality, one can only draw one conclusion: the media driven cult of celebrity is clearly out of hand amongst the world's old guard: the British and Vatican royals.

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: wysiwyg
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 07:43 AM

I prefer to find amusement in the private hysteria of Scientology, myself.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 07:23 AM

It's obvious to us in the UK that the proliferation of right wing radio and TV channels in the US is massively driving this lemming stampede towards ignorance and bigotry, but are there a balancing number of stations taking the attitude of this article? If not, why not? Shouldn't those who understand that the future of us all is in hoc to these lunatics start putting up the money to put weight on the other end of the see-saw?

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 06:05 AM

The mass hysteria (pardon the pun) surrounding the pope's death is the perfect example.

And the greatest irony is it is the narcissists voting against their own self-interests.

Go figure.

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: Joe Offer
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 04:49 AM

Fundamentalist Protestants and fundamentalist Catholics make strange and scary bedfellows, but bedfellows they are. I'm hoping they have a lover's quarrel and do each other in - remember John Wayne Bobblitt andd his loving wife Lorena?
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 03:59 AM

Baa baa baa democracy Freda , lots of those same sheep put their X for the Barbie Party too. You can fool most of the people most of the time, just look at GWB.
Giok

Subject: RE: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: freda underhill
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 03:45 AM

what amazes me is in the small opportunity of empowerment that happens at each election, large numbers of people can be so easily persuaded to vote against their own self interest.

people in the western world have democracy, take pride in our individuality, yet when presented with fear-based ideologies, behave like sheep.

Baaah humbug.

Subject: BS: On The Madness of Mass Belief
From: Amos
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 12:35 AM

Commercialism, football, war, Xianity, Muslimism, or witch-hunting, it begins to appear that when the numbers of people buying a belief system reach a critical threshold, madness ensues.   Maybe that's the only way a belief CAN get wide acceptance, I dunno.

An example, from Xian extremism, but it could be any group:

Welcome to Doomsday

By Bill Moyers

1.

There are times when what we journalists see and intend to write about dispassionately sends a shiver down the spine, shaking us from our neutrality. This has been happening to me frequently of late as one story after another drives home the fact that the delusional is no longer marginal but has come in from the fringe to influence the seats of power. We are witnessing today a coupling of ideology and theology that threatens our ability to meet the growing ecological crisis. Theology asserts propositions that need not be proven true, while ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. The combination can make it impossible for a democracy to fashion real-world solutions to otherwise intractable challenges.

In the just-concluded election cycle, as Mark Silk writes in Religion in the News,
the assiduous cultivation of religious constituencies by the Bush apparat, and the undisguised intrusion of evangelical leaders and some conservative Catholic hierarchs into the presidential campaign, demonstrated that the old rule of maintaining a decent respect for the nonpartisanship of religion can now be broken with impunity.

The result is what the Italian scholar Emilio Gentile, quoted in Silk's newsletter, calls "political religion"—religion as an instrument of political combat. On gay marriage and abortion— the most conspicuous of the "non-negotiable" items in a widely distributed Catholic voter's guide—no one should be surprised what this political religion portends. The agenda has been foreshadowed for years, ever since Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and other right-wing Protestants set out to turn white evangelicals into a solid Republican voting bloc and reached out to make allies of their former antagonists, conservative Catholics.

What has been less apparent is the impact of the new political religion on environmental policy. Evangelical Christians have been divided. Some were indifferent. The majority of conservative evangelicals, on the other hand, have long hooked their view to the account in the first book of the Bible:

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth."

There are widely varying interpretations of this text, but it is safe to say that all presume human beings have inherited the earth to be used as they see fit. For many, God's gift to Adam and Eve of "dominion" over the earth and all its creatures has been taken as the right to unlimited exploitation. But as Blaine Harden reported recently in The Washington Post, some evangelicals are beginning to "go for the green." Last October the National Association of Evangelicals adopted an "Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility," affirming that "God-given dominion is a sacred responsibility to steward the earth and not a license to abuse the creation of which we are a part." The declaration acknowledged that for the sake of clean air, clean water, and adequate resources, the government "has an obligation to protect its citizens from the effects of environmental degradation."

But even for green activists in evangelical circles, Harden wrote, "there are landmines."

Welcome to the Rapture!

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