Nowhere more than in the period leading up to our invasion of Iraq have we heard more black/white, either/or, you're with us/against us, and almost worst of all, analysis=paralysis, as though reasoned, analytical debate is just too tiresome and a less free, less analytical, less progressive society would be a vast improvement because it wouldn't challenge our short attention span. It's horribly reminiscent of the earliest days in this country, before we had a free society, when ignorance and authoritarianism ruled. We need to stop and think carefully whether our own sad, polite tolerance of this "know-nothing" absolutism doesn't become a way of life -- the end of the democratic republic, of our free society.
Lewis Lapham writes in the May Harper's that the makers of America's liberties "feared the power of religion to harm the state... Jefferson [he writes] associated the power of religion with a tyranny that 'has been severely felt by mankind, and has filled the history of ten or twelve centuries with too many atrocities not to merit a proscription from meddling with government.'" Lapham goes on to say:
Quote:...Tirelessly curious about all things great and small, the inventors of the American idea pursued what they took to be the proper study of mankind in as many spheres of reference as they could crowd into a Philadelphia library company or a Boston philosophical society, always with the hope of constructing a government on the blueprint of universal reason...
President Bush speaks for an earlier period in American history, from a pulpit in the Puritan forest before it received the gift of books. If his biographers can be trusted, we now have in the White House a president so secure in his belief that the course of human events rests in the "hand of a just and faithful God" that he counts his ignorance as a virtue and regards his lack of curiosity as a sign of moral strength. A similarly primitive way of thinking (fearful, intolerant, fond of magic) darkens the mind of the shamans drawing up the Pentagon's plans for the conquest of evil and accounts for the punitive reign of virtue currently being imposed on the American body politic by the Justice Department, the Congress, and the Supreme Court. The collective retreat into the mist of a simplified past speaks to the exhaustion of the mentality that framed the Constitution and for two centuries carried forward the American experiment with freedom. Our Washington geopoliticians like to imagine their war on terrorism as "a clash of civilizations." They flatter themselves with the high-toned noun; what they have incompetently in hand is a clash of superstitions, and when I listen to them talk I hear the rattle of feathered drums and the echo of bronze and braying horns...... From "Notebook: Shock and awe" by Lewis Lapham, Harper's, May 2003.
Bush Marks Holy Season, Reflecting on Iraq War, God's agent
Bush Marks Holy Season by Reflecting on Iraq War
By Patricia Wilson - 4/19/03
CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - President Bush (news - web sites), whose public expressions of faith have raised eyebrows in Europe, on Saturday mourned the loss of American lives in Iraq (news - web sites), saying God's purposes were "not always clear."
Marking the religious holidays of Easter and Passover in his weekly radio address, Bush said the holy season had "special meaning" this year and welcomed the release of seven U.S. prisoners of war rescued north of Baghdad.
He pointed out that the parents of newly freed helicopter pilot Ronald Young of Georgia had thanked people "from across America and as far away as Australia and Japan for their cards and flowers and prayers." He said the United States "continues to pray for all who serve in our military and those who remain in harm's way."
Young and co-pilot David Williams were captured on March 23 when their Apache Longbow helicopter went down in Iraq. Rescued along with five others on Sunday, they were returning to Fort Hood in Texas this weekend.
Bush, who is taking an Easter holiday break at his ranch near Crawford, about 50 miles north of the Army base, will attend church services at Fort Hood on Sunday and could meet privately with the two men.
"This year, Easter and Passover have special meaning for the families of our men and women in uniform who feel so intensely the absence of their loved ones during these days," Bush said. "This holy season reminds us of the value of freedom, and the power of a love stronger than death."
Bush's evangelical Protestantism, which he embraced about 16 years ago when he gave up alcohol, has prompted questions abroad and in mainstream U.S. media about how much it colors his presidency, his stand on Iraq and the war on terror.
Aides say Bush reads the Bible every day, opens Cabinet meetings with a prayer and sometimes prays in the Oval Office. During the 2000 presidential campaign, he declared Jesus Christ the political philosopher or thinker he most admired "because he changed my heart."
TERMS OF GOOD AND EVIL
Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Bush has painted the world in stark terms of good and evil. He told reporters last month he sought guidance from God in making the decision to send U.S. troops into Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) and rid the country of suspected weapons of mass destruction.
Commentators in Britain, where Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites)'s firm but discreet Christian beliefs have also aroused attention, have described Bush as "chaplain in chief" and analyzed his use of religious phrases and images in detail.
German and French leaders have joined religious figures in voicing concern about religion's prominent political role in the United States, where conservative Christians are an important constituency of Bush's Republican Party.
"America mourns those who have been called home and we pray that their families will find God's comfort and God's grace," Bush said on Saturday. "His purposes are not always clear to us, yet this season brings a promise: that good can come out of evil, that hope can arise from despair ..."
Bush, who speaks of the power of prayer and has hinted at God's "divine plan," recalled the battlefield loss of Cpl. Henry Brown, a 22-year-old soldier from Mississippi, and the words of the soldier's best friend Frank Woods.
"He believed God was working through him and he was part of the plan. I guess part of the plan now is God calling his soldier home," Bush quoted Woods as saying.
Quote:"He believed God was working through him and he was part of the plan. I guess part of the plan now is God calling his soldier home," Bush quoted Woods as saying.
That's what makes it ok to send soldiers to their deaths, they go to heaven.
Reply to Blatham
Hi, Blatham, if one does not believe in God or in Heaven, then I guess its back to "dust to dust."
Which brings me to another question I've pondered for some time.
You know how Muslim males who become martyrs are promised 40 or 50 virgins when they enter heaven as reward for their sacrifice? Well, I wonder what female martyrs making similar sacrifices can expect when they get to heaven---if they are not lesbians? I never hear of any hunks being offered to female martyrs.
--------BumbleBeeBoogie
Bumble -- That's because women aren't real people with real needs. But you knew that...
Blatham -- The horror is imagining the poor troops going to Bush's heaven, a heaven in which there are elites and paybacks and the undersides of the clouds are all lies...
actually i find it difficult to understand why anyone would be interested in virgins. certainly not my idea of good times.
blatham
Quote: That's what makes it OK to send soldiers to their deaths, they go to heaven.
A religious fanatic is a religious fanatic no matter what the persuasion. We would be better off if he had remained an alcoholic.
NEW YORK—Responding to recent events on Earth, God, the omniscient creator-deity worshipped by billions of followers of various faiths for more than 6,000 years, angrily clarified His longtime stance against humans killing each other Monday.
Above: God.
"Look, I don't know, maybe I haven't made myself completely clear, so for the record, here it is again," said the Lord, His divine face betraying visible emotion during a press conference near the site of the fallen Twin Towers. "Somehow, people keep coming up with the idea that I want them to kill their neighbor. Well, I don't. And to be honest, I'm really getting sick and tired of it. Get it straight. Not only do I not want anybody to kill anyone, but I specifically commanded you not to, in really simple terms that anybody ought to be able to understand."
Worshipped by Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike, God said His name has been invoked countless times over the centuries as a reason to kill in what He called "an unending cycle of violence."
"I don't care how holy somebody claims to be," God said. "If a person tells you it's My will that they kill someone, they're wrong. Got it? I don't care what religion you are, or who you think your enemy is, here it is one more time: No killing, in My name or anyone else's, ever again."
The press conference came as a surprise to humankind, as God rarely intervenes in earthly affairs. As a matter of longstanding policy, He has traditionally left the task of interpreting His message and divine will to clerics, rabbis, priests, imams, and Biblical scholars. Theologians and laymen alike have been given the task of pondering His ineffable mysteries, deciding for themselves what to do as a matter of faith. His decision to manifest on the material plane was motivated by the deep sense of shock, outrage, and sorrow He felt over the Sept. 11 violence carried out in His name, and over its dire potential ramifications around the globe.
"I tried to put it in the simplest possible terms for you people, so you'd get it straight, because I thought it was pretty important," said God, called Yahweh and Allah respectively in the Judaic and Muslim traditions. "I guess I figured I'd left no real room for confusion after putting it in a four-word sentence with one-syllable words, on the tablets I gave to Moses. How much more clear can I get?"
"But somehow, it all gets twisted around and, next thing you know, somebody's spouting off some nonsense about, 'God says I have to kill this guy, God wants me to kill that guy, it's God's will,'" God continued. "It's not God's will, all right? News flash: 'God's will' equals 'Don't murder people.'"
Worse yet, many of the worst violators claim that their actions are justified by passages in the Bible, Torah, and Qur'an.
"To be honest, there's some contradictory stuff in there, okay?" God said. "So I can see how it could be pretty misleading. I admit it—My bad. I did My best to inspire them, but a lot of imperfect human agents have misinterpreted My message over the millennia. Frankly, much of the material that got in there is dogmatic, doctrinal bullshit. I turn My head for a second and, suddenly, all this stuff about homosexuality gets into Leviticus, and everybody thinks it's God's will to kill gays. It absolutely drives Me up the wall."
God praised the overwhelming majority of His Muslim followers as "wonderful, pious people," calling the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks rare exceptions.
"This whole medieval concept of the jihad, or holy war, had all but vanished from the Muslim world in, like, the 10th century, and with good reason," God said. "There's no such thing as a holy war, only unholy ones. The vast majority of Muslims in this world reject the murderous actions of these radical extremists, just like the vast majority of Christians in America are pissed off over those two bigots on The 700 Club."
Continued God, "Read the book: 'Allah is kind, Allah is beautiful, Allah is merciful.' It goes on and on that way, page after page. But, no, some assholes have to come along and revive this stupid holy-war crap just to further their own hateful agenda. So now, everybody thinks Muslims are all murderous barbarians. Thanks, Taliban: 1,000 years of pan-Islamic cultural progress down the drain."
God stressed that His remarks were not directed exclusively at Islamic extremists, but rather at anyone whose ideological zealotry overrides his or her ability to comprehend the core message of all world religions.
"I don't care what faith you are, everybody's been making this same mistake since the dawn of time," God said. "The Muslims massacre the Hindus, the Hindus massacre the Muslims. The Buddhists, everybody massacres the Buddhists. The Jews, don't even get me started on the hardline, right-wing, Meir Kahane-loving Israeli nationalists, man. And the Christians? You people believe in a Messiah who says, 'Turn the other cheek,' but you've been killing everybody you can get your hands on since the Crusades."
Growing increasingly wrathful, God continued: "Can't you people see? What are you, morons? There are a ton of different religious traditions out there, and different cultures worship Me in different ways. But the basic message is always the same: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Shintoism... every religious belief system under the sun, they all say you're supposed to love your neighbors, folks! It's not that hard a concept to grasp."
"Why would you think I'd want anything else? Humans don't need religion or God as an excuse to kill each other—you've been doing that without any help from Me since you were freaking apes!" God said. "The whole point of believing in God is to have a higher standard of behavior. How obvious can you get?"
"I'm talking to all of you, here!" continued God, His voice rising to a shout. "Do you hear Me? I don't want you to kill anybody. I'm against it, across the board. How many times do I have to say it? Don't kill each other anymore—ever! I'm ******* serious!"
Upon completing His outburst, God fell silent, standing quietly at the podium for several moments. Then, witnesses reported, God's shoulders began to shake, and He wept.
"GOD" has shed more blood, wreaked more havoc, inflicted more tragedy than has any other concept the mind of man has ever formulated.
Timber
Not God but man in the name of God.
That's one of my favorites at The Onion, too, au.
I know what you mean, and I agree, au ... note I referred to man's CONCEPT of "GOD" ... not to any particular "God".
timberlandko wrote:I know what you mean, and I agree, au ... note I referred to man's CONCEPT of "GOD" ... not to any particular "God".
That's just so precious - men thinking they created God...
To paraphrase Shakespeare:
First, kill all the gods.
Frank Apisa wrote:To paraphrase Shakespeare:
First, kill all the gods.
I thought he said "lawyers".
Snood
JOKE:
Q: What is the difference between GOD and a lawyer.
A: GOD doesn't think he's God.
That was a paraphrased joke.
So was "First kill all the gods."
Jeez!!! ;-]
Frank Apisa wrote:Snood
JOKE:
Q: What is the difference between GOD and a lawyer.
A: GOD doesn't think he's God.
That was a paraphrased joke.
So was "First kill all the gods."
Jeez!!! ;-]
I have a healthy sense of humor, but forgive me - man thinking he's God, or thinking he created God, or thinking there is no God ain't funny to me.
Happy Easter, snood!!!
Yeah, I didn't think it was funny either.
Sounds like someone got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, Snood.
