BS: 911 & The Sport of God (Moyers speech)

Subject: RE: BS: 911 & The Sport of God (Moyers speech)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Sep 05 - 05:54 PM

What we really DO need is more folksongs about hamsters. And William Shatner.

I guess I'll just have to write and record some.

Subject: RE: BS: 911 & The Sport of God (Moyers speech)
From: GUEST,Martin Gibson
Date: 13 Sep 05 - 05:59 PM

yeah, amos the anus is still stuck in the 1960s smoking weed and protesting the Viet Nam war.

wake up Amos, your life has passed you by while you bang away at this silly forum everyday blabbering about what god is.

Meanwhile, you have grown so fat, you have to look in the mirror to see your schmuck.

Love

Martin Gibson
the real one who comes here now only occassionally and doesn't even care to log in any more because of the precense of some liberaly trained attack dildos and douche bags.

Subject: RE: BS: 911 & The Sport of God (Moyers speech)
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 13 Sep 05 - 06:09 PM

Someone above asked about the rapture. Bill Moyers has some interesting perpsective on exactly that right here.

" One-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup Poll is accurate, believes the Bible is literally true. This past November, several million good and decent citizens went to the polls believing in what is known as the "rapture index."

    These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the imagination of millions of Americans. Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre: Once Israel has occupied the rest of its "bibli-cal lands," legions of the Antichrist 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.

    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 is why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. That is why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book of Revelations, where four angels "which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of man." For them a war with Islam in the Middle East is something to be welcomed - an essential conflagration on the road to redemption. The rapture index - "the prophetic speedometer of end-time activity" - now stands at 153.

    So what does this mean for public policy and the environment? As Glenn Scherer reports in the online environmental journal Grist, millions of Christian fundamentalists believe that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but hastened as a sign of the coming apocalypse..."

Double Yikes.

Subject: RE: BS: 911 & The Sport of God (Moyers speech)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Sep 05 - 06:37 PM

That's bad, TIA. Very bad. What is almost as bad is that over 35% of the American public is still willing to vote either Democratic or Republican at election! A little over 35%....

Incredible what people will put their faith in, isn't it?

Subject: RE: BS: 911 & The Sport of God (Moyers speech)
From: Ebbie
Date: 13 Sep 05 - 06:38 PM

Here is the "demagogue" at work. The article itself is long- but it's meaty and rich. (Some people should be ashamed of themselves, imo.)

Democracy in the Balance

"The old story had a paradox at its core. In no small part because of Baptists like Thomas Helwys and other "freethinkers," the men who framed our Constitution believed in religious tolerance in a secular republic. The state was not to choose sides among competing claims of faith. So they embodied freedom of religion in the First Amendment. Another person's belief, said Thomas Jefferson, "neither picks my pocket nor breaks my bones." It was a noble sentiment often breached in practice. The Indians who lived here first had more than their pockets picked; the Africans brought here forcibly against their will had more than their bones broken. Even when most Americans claimed a Protestant heritage and practically everyone looked alike, we often failed the tolerance test; Catholics, Jews, and Mormons had to struggle to resist being absorbed without distinction into the giant mix-master of American assimilation.
   So our troubled past with tolerance requires us to ask how, in this new era when we are looking even less and less alike, are we to avoid the intolerance, the chauvinism, the fanaticism, the bitter fruits that mark the long history of world religions when they jostle each other in busy, crowded streets?"
    "In our time alone the litany is horrendous. I keep a file marked "Holy War." It bulges with stories of Shias and Sunnis in fratricidal conflict. Of teenage girls in Algeria shot in the face for not wearing a veil. Of professors whose throats are cut for teaching male and female students in the same classroom. Of the fanatical Jewish doctor with a machine gun mowing down 30 praying Muslims in a mosque. Of Muslim suicide bombers bent on the obliteration of Jews. Of the young Orthodox Jew who assassinated Yitzhak Rabin and then announced to the world that "Everything I did, I did for the glory of God." Of Hindus and Muslims slaughtering each other in India, of Christians and Muslims perpetuating gruesome vengeance on each another in Nigeria.
    "Meanwhile, groups calling themselves the Christian Identity Movement and the Christian Patriot League arm themselves, and Christians intoxicated with the delusional doctrine of two 19th-century preachers not only await the rapture but believe they have an obligation to get involved politically to hasten the divine scenario for the Apocalypse that will bring an end to the world. Sadly, Christians, too, can invoke God for the purpose of waging religious war. "Onward Christian Soldiers" is back in vogue and the 2lst century version of the Crusades has taken on aspects of the righteous ferocity that marked its predecessors. "To be furious in religion," said the Quaker William Penn, "is to be furiously irreligious."
    "THIS IS A TIME of testing - for people of faith and for people who believe in democracy. How do we nurture the healing side of religion over the killing side? How do we protect the soul of democracy against the contagion of a triumphalist theology in the service of an imperial state? At stake is America's role in the world. At stake is the very character of the American Experiment - whether "we, the people" is the political incarnation of a spiritual truth - one nation, indivisible - or a stupendous fraud."
    "There are two Americas today. You could see this division in a little-noticed action this spring in the House of Representatives. Republicans in the House approved new tax credits for the children of families earning as much as $309,000 a year - families that already enjoy significant benefits from earlier tax cuts - while doing next to nothing for those at the low end of the income scale. This, said The Washington Post in an editorial called "Leave No Rich Child Behind," is "bad social policy, bad tax policy, and bad fiscal policy. You'd think they'd be embarrassed but they're not."
   Nothing seems to embarrass the political class in Washington today. Not the fact that more children are growing up in poverty in America than in any other industrial nation; not the fact that millions of workers are actually making less money today in real dollars than they did 20 years ago; not the fact that working people are putting in longer and longer hours just to stay in place; not the fact that while we have the most advanced medical care in the world, nearly 44 million Americans - eight out of 10 of them in working families - are uninsured and cannot get the basic care they need."
    "THAT'S THE SHAME of politics today. The consequences: "When powerful interests shower Washington with millions in campaign contributions, they often get what they want. But it is ordinary citizens and firms that pay the price, and most of them never see it coming," according to Time magazine. Time concludes that America now has "government for the few at the expense of the many."
    That's why so many people are turned off by politics. It's why we can't put things right. And it's wrong. (emphasis original) Hear the great Justice Learned Hand on this: "If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: 'Thou shalt not ration justice.'" He got it right: The rich have the right to buy more homes than anyone else. They have the right to buy more cars, more clothes, or more vacations than anyone else. But they don't have the right to buy more democracy than anyone else."
    "And, yes, they are proud of what they have done to our economy and our society. If instead of producing a news magazine I was writing for Saturday Night Live, I couldn't have made up the things that this crew in Washington have been saying. The president's chief economic adviser says shipping technical and professional jobs overseas is good for the economy. The president's Council of Economic Advisers reports that hamburger chefs in fast food restaurants can be considered manufacturing workers. The president's labor secretary says it doesn't matter if job growth has stalled because "the stock market is the ultimate arbiter." And the president's Federal Reserve chair says that the tax cuts may force cutbacks in Social Security - but hey, we should make the tax cuts permanent anyway.
    You just can't make this stuff up. You have to hear it to believe it. This may be the first class war in history where the victims will die laughing.

Subject: RE: BS: 911 & The Sport of God (Moyers speech)
From: John Hardly
Date: 18 Sep 05 - 10:48 AM

"I don't see anything of hatred or demagoguery in Bill Moyers."

I wanted to respond to this before, but I wanted to look into it further -- ask around a bit among those I know -- run an informal poll.

A demagogue is an unprincipled public speaker who will twist truth to gain advantage. Moyers has (as I understand it) a post-graduate degree in some form of religious studies. If not a degree then, like me, he at least has some hours of post graduate studies in religion.

But when he can rile the troops -- give you all some red meat to feed the already growing fear you have of Christians to enforce your wish that the Christian conservative should be disenfranchised, he paints a picture of fundamental(ist) Christians in a manner that, with his education, he should know is inaccurate, misleading.

I was raised in a church that taught a rapture and an end of times with Jesus returning. I have had pastors from the leading evangelical seminaries in the country (Dallas, Trinity, etc). I can assure you that I was never taught that there was anything that we, as believers, would, could, or should do that could bring on or hasten the return of Jesus.

Yet there's Moyers, talking about these fundamentalists with which he's familiar. And though he should know better (I'm sure he does), he carefully characterizes these Christians as typical, in order to scare you, and inflame you against Christianity, and make Christians seem even more kooky (if that's possible) as a raging cult out to hasten armegedon.

I have know fundamentalists and evangelicals all my life -- read their books, their periodicals, listened to their sermons, met them in their fellowships, been related to them. I've yet to meet one that thinks that anything we could, would, or should do would hasten the end of times. I've met MANY who think we are at the end of times, but I've never met one who thinks that we could bring them to any different conclusion.

Subject: RE: BS: 911 & The Sport of God (Moyers speech)
From: Ebbie
Date: 18 Sep 05 - 12:44 PM

Nor have I, John. The fundamentalists I have known watch for signs of the 'end times' but I don't know any who call for actions to bring it on.

However, I don't think that is what Moyers is claiming. In the paragraph below, my understanding of what he is saying may be more clearly shown by inserting what I bolded:

"Meanwhile, groups calling themselves the Christian Identity Movement and the Christian Patriot League arm themselves, and Christians (who are intoxicated with the delusional doctrine of two 19th-century preachers not only await the rapture but believe they have an obligation to get involved politically to hasten the divine scenario for the Apocalypse that will bring an end to the world."

But that really does not address your charge against what and who Bill Moyers is. Your disdain and even outright hostility of the man goes much deeper, imo. That's what I object to. That is the opinion that I feel you have not justified.

Were you to say that you don't like his hair or his glasses or his voice I could put it down to the kind of irrational thing we all find ourselves doing at times. But you are vilifying someone's faith and demonizing his goals and methods and trying actively to get others to share your view. At the very least it is not a Christian thing to do, right?

Subject: RE: BS: 911 & The Sport of God (Moyers speech)
From: John Hardly
Date: 18 Sep 05 - 01:01 PM

Ebbie, if that's not what Moyers is trying to claim, then why did he bring up a splinter, cult group as representative of fundamental Christianity?

Subject: RE: BS: 911 & The Sport of God (Moyers speech)
From: dianavan
Date: 18 Sep 05 - 02:48 PM

Amos said, "The ONLY thing, aside from a wealth of natural resouece, which has given this country any claim to ascendancy among nations has been its assertion that individual freedoms are paramount. As long as we walk that talk, we can survive anything."

My question is this:

What happens to individual freedoms when the wealth of natural resources is exhausted?

I think that is what is happening now. Could it be that Bush truly believes that he is trying to provide for his people?

Seems to me that the quest for world domination is driven by personal greed but that in order for it to have any real power, it must be sanctioned by a nation hungry for the natural resources of other nations. In this case, personal freedom becomes secondary.

Until U.S. consumption decreases, those who are elected will continue to plunder for the sake of their own.

Subject: RE: BS: 911 & The Sport of God (Moyers speech)
From: Don Firth
Date: 18 Sep 05 - 04:04 PM

John, this "spinter, cult group," as you call them are fundamentalists. But not all fundamentalists belong to this group. The problem is that this "splinter cult group" is now in the position of making foreign policy.

That goes a long way toward explaining the reasons for our less than peace promoting behavior in the Middle East.

Once again, you seem to be taking "some" for "all." We've been over this ground before.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: 911 & The Sport of God (Moyers speech)
From: Don Firth
Date: 18 Sep 05 - 04:41 PM

Let me revise what I just posted above. Strictly speaking the Millennialists—those who are actively trying to accelerate the coming of the "Rapture"—are not, technically speaking, fundamentalists. What defines a fundamentalist is the taking of what is in the Bible as the literal truth—as history, not as metaphor or allegory, as most of the world's religions regard their mythology.

[Note:    When I say "mythology," I don't mean "false." What is meant by "mythology" is "a story which is not literally, factually true, but contains a truth which is difficult to express in other ways." In short, parables on a somewhat grander scale. As you know, Jesus used parables a lot as a teaching technique. There was no real "good Samaritan" or "prodigal son," these were "for example, suppose there was a. . . ." stories that Jesus told to put his points across graphically.]   

Millennialists, rather than eschewing interpretation of the Bible as true fundamentalism demands, picked and chose the isolated verses that they wanted, and constructed their own mythology. That, whether they like it or not, is interpreting the Bible to make it fit what they want it to fit. They are not true fundamentalist Christians, no matter what they try to claim.

The spectacular success of the Left Behind series of books (fiction—fantasy) gives a pretty good, not to mention scary, idea of how many Americans believe this stuff.

And many of these folks are now running the government.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: 911 & The Sport of God (Moyers speech)
From: John Hardly
Date: 18 Sep 05 - 04:47 PM

Somehow I'm not surprised that you chimed in, Don. Your firm grasp of fundamentalism should put all discussion and disagreement to rest. Thanks.

Subject: RE: BS: 911 & The Sport of God (Moyers speech)
From: John Hardly
Date: 18 Sep 05 - 05:04 PM

Sorry, Don, that was snide.   If I'm not in the mood to hear about the ignorant fundamentalists that you know, I don't have to log on, now do I? :^)

If you will notice, you inferred (from Moyer's piece, above) exactly what I am saying one will probably infer...

...that the "Christian Identity Movement" and the "Christian Patriot League" are typical of fundamentalists who "seek power" in a political sense.

But if you will notice, Moyers has cleverly (demogogically) inserted them as a non-sequitor into his piece. OF COURSE he WANTS you to infer -- as you have -- that those are typical Christian groups. Then he goes forward and describes the danger that "they" have put America in.

And you have done exactly that...

"The problem is that this "splinter cult group" is now in the position of making foreign policy."

He said no such thing. He cleverly implied it (presumably so that he can always back out and claim "I never said that").

Subject: RE: BS: 911 & The Sport of God (Moyers speech)
From: Don Firth
Date: 18 Sep 05 - 06:21 PM

Damn it, John! Once again you didn't read what I wrote above. Or if you did read it, you didn't understand--or want to understand--what I wrote. And you're doing the same thing with what Moyers says.

I'm not talking about "the ignorant fundamentalists" I know. You're putting your own spin on what I've been saying all along.

Come on, you're a bright guy! You can do better than this!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: 911 & The Sport of God (Moyers speech)
From: Greg F.
Date: 18 Sep 05 - 06:39 PM

John, the words "paranoid" and "delusional" come to mind.
You're seein' things that just ain't there.

You need help, man, and I mean that in a kindly way.

Subject: RE: BS: 911 & The Sport of God (Moyers speech)
From: John Hardly
Date: 18 Sep 05 - 07:04 PM

Why, if not to characterize the "Christian Right" as believing as those of the "Christian Identity Movement" and the "Christian Patriot League" (and thereby to make the face of the "Christian Right" as more scary, more wacko) did Moyers include the description of them in his essay?

Why, when even Ebbie (who agrees with Moyers), agreed with my point that it is exceedingly rare to find an evangelical or a fundamentalist who believes as the small group that Moyers picked out as his example of the "Christian Right", did he choose THAT group as exemplary?   Why does one come away from that essay assuming that those two groups are large and powerful?

And why, if he didn't intend to make them exemplary, did you take them as such?

Do you really think that one would read Moyer's essay and not come away with the notion that his two examples were common examples of fundamentalist Christianity and that they were also empowered? Obviously you did: "The problem is that this "splinter cult group" is now in the position of making foreign policy."


I'm more than willing to admit that we are talking past each other. I'm just not sure that I am soley at fault here.

And I don't think it is I who exhibits the paranoia. I'm not the one seeing some great religious bogeyman (as Moyers has built it up) trying to bring on Armegedon. I'm the one saying that Moyers is the incendiary. And he is.

Subject: RE: BS: 911 & The Sport of God (Moyers speech)
From: Grab
Date: 18 Sep 05 - 07:42 PM

For sure he writes great speeches. "Demagogue" is harsh, because it implies he's out for profit. But "motivator" would be well on the mark. I guess he's difficult to argue against because he *does* use well-reasoned arguments based on historical precedent, and his arguments *do* attempt to show multiple sides to the problem, even if he comes down on one side in particular.

Yes, I can see why John disagrees, and it's the same reason any European (living in a continent in which fundamentalist religious doesn't have any significant stronghold) would disagree if they read it as a description of *all* religion.

The problem is that the current US President is a fundamentalist Christian. As a man of conscience (I assume), he would clearly feel that he *must* use his position to impose a belief system on the nation that he considers is the only true system. But these beliefs of fundamentalist Christianity are incompatible with the governmental obligation to treat all citizens equally, regardless of race, sex or religion.

Anyone think of a recent example of modern America? The British Empire in the mid-late 1800 comes more and more to my mind. A great nation, producing vast wealth and ingenuity - but underpinned by crushing poverty amongst the working classes. And the whole system ruled by patriarchal factory-owners who financed the local churches and hence could influence what sermons their workers heard. Fortunately the British Empire crashed and burned. Not only did the countries of the Empire take their freedom, but America took all Britain's inventions and knowledge and ran with it to produce the next great superpower.

So what next? My prediction is that in about 50 years, it'll be over. By then, Americans will finally have got over the God thing and the ultra-capitalism thing in the same way that Europe did, and America will finally get some kind of social democracy in place which ensures the poor *can* get food, healthcar and education without the assistance of charities. The oil will be running low, so conspicuous energy consumption may have dropped off. And "developing nations" will have taken America's knowledge-based industries and beaten them to death. My money's on India - but my money's also on America not wising up for another generation or more.

Shit, I've just realised I'm writing polemics too - just not as good as Bill Moyes. Ho hum. ;-)

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: 911 & The Sport of God (Moyers speech)
From: John Hardly
Date: 18 Sep 05 - 07:46 PM

Never mind. I am wrong and you are right. It is I who was reading into the essay. Moyers does not, in that essay, ever try to make the case that the two small groups cited are exemplary of any kind of Christianity.

I still don't care for Moyers or his tactics, but in this case I am dead wrong.

Subject: RE: BS: 911 & The Sport of God (Moyers speech)
From: Greg F.
Date: 18 Sep 05 - 08:41 PM

You're also misguided, John, in seeing Moyers as "The Enemy".

Ya want to do some good, take on the fanatics, irrational wackoes and fundie charlatans who are giving "Christianity" a bad name.

As a Methodist minister of my acquaintance once said: "Jesus came to take away your sins- not your brain".

Subject: RE: BS: 911 & The Sport of God (Moyers speech)
From: M.Ted
Date: 20 Sep 05 - 04:09 PM

First off, Bill Moyers is an ordained Baptist Minister, courtesy of the fine folks at the Southwest Baptist Theological Seminary in Forth Worth. And for those who steadfastly claim he has no political agenda, may I remind you that he was Lyndon B. Johnson's Press Secretary, and of of the Architects of "The Great Society"--as well as one of the Kennedy whiz-kids.

He is wholesome, straightforward, and honest, and has a reputation as one of the greatest broadcast journalists of his generation--the heir to Edward R. Murrow--and he has brought the wisdom of the greatest minds of our times to television--at least if you believe his clippings---

Now I am not a conservative--but I don't like Bill Moyer, and I never have. Not because he is a Baptist Minister, Not because I necessarily disagree with his politics, Not because he was part of the administration that bought their social agenda with the Vietnam War(which we can talk about another time), but because I think he is a gladhander and an apple polisher of the worst sort.

He is exactly like the folks that he criticizes, meaning that he knows what his "flock" want to hear, and he tells it to them--just like they want to hear it—even if it requires bending the truth a little bit--

He's the master of Sunday Dinner Philosophy--his "deeply probing" broadcast and written works, on Joseph Campbell and such, are calculated to ask the questions about life that we like to raise after the chicken is done, and before the pie comes out--and like every shrewd minister, he knows better than to raise certain questions with the folks whose offering allow him to continue his good work—

His object is simple—to keep people interested enough to buy the books, watch the programs , and pledge to the PBS stations--

Subject: RE: BS: 911 & The Sport of God (Moyers speech)
From: John Hardly
Date: 20 Sep 05 - 07:52 PM

Eloquently said, M.Ted.