← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Happy Hacker
Thread ID: 16662 | Posts: 12 | Started: 2005-02-08
2005-02-08 18:12 | User Profile
James Dobson publishes a Christian newsletter. In a recent newsletter, there was a note that We Are Family is providing a video featuring many popular cartoon images to many elementary schools. The video is designed to promote "diversity" and "tolerance" including in regards to "sexual identity." The WeAreFamily.org website is a homosexual activist website. Supposedly, the correct We Are Family website is WeAreFamilyFoundation.org. But, how many families will make it there before running into the homosexual website? Many parents may never know they ended up at the wrong website, either way, they'll be there with their child trying to explain things.
This is the kind of thing that Dobson should have included in his newsletter. Parents should know how the schools are promoting the homosexual agenda.
The liberals responded with mockery and mischaracterization. They claim that the Christian Right was claiming that Sponge Bob would make you children gay. Dobson never said that Sponge Bob is a homosexual nor did Dobson criticize the Sponge Bop cartoon series.
Here comes Cal Thomas, official member of the Christian Right. Does he try to set the record straight? On the contrary, he de facto concedes to the mischaracterization version and then blames Christians like Dobson for the video! Thomas concludes:
Might we please see less energy (and money) spent on criticizing what others are producing and more channeled into developing better lawyers, professors, philosophers, artists, journalists and filmmakers? This way produces results. Criticizing cartoon characters doesn't.
As if Dobson's organization, Focus on the Family at family.org, is worthless to Christians and America and that he should have beat We Are Family to making a cartoon promoting diversity and tolerance for the public schools. Incidentally, Focus on the Family devotes very little space to criticizing.
Instead of scapegoating Dobson for America's decline, Thomas should look in the mirror. Thomas is a big Bush supporter. You know, Bush the president who openly supports extending the government to blessing same-sex civil unions (marriage in all but name).
Thomas defended the Weapons of Mass Destruction lies. And, then eventually wrote a column claiming that no one ever claimed Iraq had stockpiles of Weapons of Mass Destruction (there's an imaginary mischaracterization he was willing to correct). That revisionism should have been enough to destroy any crediblity Thomas might have had left.
Thomas, like other neocons, really objects to Dobson for being more concerned with how the schools are raising your children than with resistance to Israeli occupation. Neocons pay lip service to conservative culture, but they have no real concern for the quality of the culture.
The Cal Thomas article can be found here: [url]http://www.townhall.com/columnists/calthomas/ct20050207.shtml[/url]
I'm finding myself realizing that real Christians are but a tiny minority in America.
2005-02-08 18:43 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Happy Hacker] I'm finding myself realizing that real Christians are but a tiny minority in America.[/QUOTE] Unfortunately, you are exactly right. I used to think most Christians were fundamentally sound, but just needed a gentle nudge in the right direction. Now, I'm not so sure. The Church is certainly in its worst state since the Arian heresy, and maybe its worst state ever.
2005-02-08 19:09 | User Profile
It was prophesized that the time of the end would be preceded by a mass apostasy...
[COLOR=DarkRed][I][B]1 Timothy 4:1[/B] The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons
[B]2 Timothy 3:2[/B] People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God--having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.
[B]2 Peter 3:3-4 [/B] First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, "Where is this `coming' he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation."
[B]2 Timothy 4:3[/B] For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.[/I][/COLOR]
Petr
2005-02-08 19:09 | User Profile
Like it or don't - and most of the OD faithful won't - the vast majority of Americans - Christians included - believe that the current administration [I]is [/I] a fundamentalist Christian administration, or as close as we've come in the past century.
Bush's flyover country 'base' is almost certainly self-identified believing Christians; Bush himself has not been shy about contributing to this perception by citing Jesus and God at every opportunity. Even Reagan speechwriters (like Peggy Noonan) are taken aback by the relentless pandering to the Deity whenever Dubya opens his cake-hole.
And, of course, Professional Christians like Cal Thomas only reinforce this view.
Those of us who take a dim view of mixing religion and politics can only hope the two will be crowbarred apart, and soon, before "God's work" results in millions, rather than thousands, being kiled.
2005-02-08 19:31 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno]Like it or don't - and most of the OD faithful won't - the vast majority of Americans - Christians included - believe that the current administration is * a fundamentalist Christian administration, or as close as we've come in the past century. This is why heresy is so much more dangerous than out-and-out falsehood. Heresy mixes just* enough truth in with the error to make it seem plausible. Millions of people are supporting an anti-Christian, secular, revolutionary Empire, while remaining convinced all the while that they are good Christians.
[QUOTE=il ragno] Those of us who take a dim view of mixing religion and politics can only hope the two will be crowbarred apart, and soon, before "God's work" results in millions, rather than thousands, being kiled.[/QUOTE] I don't object to mixing religion and politics per se, but I do object to mixing heresy and politics. I agree that the 'Christian Zionists' are currently doing a great deal of harm, but I also think that they are the carrier, not the virus itself. When they come crashing down, the parasite will attach itself to another movement that serves its ends.
2005-02-08 19:39 | User Profile
Well said, il ragno.
The "Left Behind" crowd in the US has plenty of faith -- too much, in fact. They're so certain that they're right that they're willing to sacrifice everything and everyone for their beliefs. No need to fear a major war -- or even a nuclear conflict -- when afterward you're going to get to go be with Jesus for eternity anyway, right? Of what value is earthly life in that case?
It's too bad the "children Left Behind" don't read ALL of their Bibles -- especially the part about offering no resistance to enemies, doing good to those who hate you, and so on. That might curtail their appetite for war somewhat.
2005-02-08 19:52 | User Profile
Some people used the words "White Christian" as a badge of honor, like if they are white and Christian they are better than anyone or "special". To me is like the Jews when they say that they are the "Chosen Ones"......bull.
I don't care about your religion or your race (but for the Zionists) because what I look for is that you are a good person.
Even if I don't know you I will do anything that I can for you till you prove me wrong by doing wrong.
2005-02-08 20:02 | User Profile
Quantrill,
The problem with terms like "heresy" is that one man's heresy is another man's religious "truth." For example, to the Roman Catholic Church, every non-Catholic Christian is a heretic. I'm sure most Protestants have a similar view of Catholicism.
If Christians could agree on even the most basic teachings of their religion, then that would help things a lot. Unfortunately, they seem to have a lot of trouble doing even that:
[url]http://www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetID=192[/url]
2005-02-08 20:51 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Angler] The problem with terms like "heresy" is that one man's heresy is another man's religious "truth." For example, to the Roman Catholic Church, every non-Catholic Christian is a heretic. I'm sure most Protestants have a similar view of Catholicism. The fact that there is disagreement over what constitutes 'truth' does not mean that there is no such thing as objective truth. People, or groups, can be mistaken about what constitutes heresy, but the fact that some things are true and some are false remains. If the concept of 'heresy' is worthless because there are differing opinions as to its definition, then one could state that the concept of morality, or ethics, or family, or nation, or race, are equally as worthless, since are all defined differently by those of different minds. Since Christian Zionism was invented approximately 1900 years after the establishment of the Christian religion, has no serious precursor in orthodox Christian thought, and is not supported by either of the two oldest Christian bodies (the Catholic and the Orthodox), it is quite obviously heresy. [quote=Angler]If Christians could agree on even the most basic teachings of their religion, then that would help things a lot. Unfortunately, they seem to have a lot of trouble doing even that:
[url="http://www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetID=192"]http://www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetID=192[/url][/QUOTE] True, and unfortunate; but what is your point exactly? Are you suggesting that consensus equals truth?
2005-02-09 00:49 | User Profile
[COLOR=Indigo][I][B] - "True, and unfortunate; but what is your point exactly? Are you suggesting that consensus equals truth?"[/B][/I][/COLOR]
That would happen to be the Talmudic approach:
[COLOR=Blue]" According to Fish, there was no Torah; there was only Talmud. The Talmud, the interpretation, had complete hegemony over the Torah, or text. The Talmud permitted what the Torah forbade. Just as the text was supreme in the New Criticism version of sola scriptura, the Rabbi/Interpreter was supreme in Fish's reader response theory. [B]Truth was what the rabbi said it was. [/B] Fish was resurrecting what Paul Johnson called, in his history of the Jews, the cathedocracy.
Kevin MacDonald said something similar in his book The Culture of Critique: [/COLOR]
[COLOR=Navy][I]"[A] [B]fundamental aspect of Jewish intellectual history has been the realization that there is really no demonstrable difference between truth and consensus[/B]. Within traditional Jewish religious discourse "truth" was the prerogative of a privileged interpretive elite that in traditional societies consisted of the scholarly class within the Jewish community. Within this community, "truth" and "reality" were nothing more (and were undoubtedly perceived as nothing more) than consensus within a sufficiently large portion of the interpretive community."[/I][/COLOR]
[url]http://www.culturewars.com/2003/Skin.html[/url]
Petr
2005-02-09 04:45 | User Profile
I like James Dobson I can not recall anything bad about him, but I do not keep track of him.
All too true. [QUOTE]Thomas, like other neocons, really objects to Dobson for being more concerned with how the schools are raising your children than with resistance to Israeli occupation. Neocons pay lip service to conservative culture, but they have no real concern for the quality of the culture.[/QUOTE]
2005-02-09 05:42 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Angler]Well said, il ragno.
The "Left Behind" crowd in the US has plenty of faith -- too much, in fact. They're so certain that they're right that they're willing to sacrifice everything and everyone for their beliefs. No need to fear a major war -- or even a nuclear conflict -- when afterward you're going to get to go be with Jesus for eternity anyway, right? Of what value is earthly life in that case?
It's too bad the "children Left Behind" don't read ALL of their Bibles -- especially the part about offering no resistance to enemies, doing good to those who hate you, and so on. That might curtail their appetite for war somewhat.[/QUOTE]
[Two Christian Zionists are talking]:
Sally ChristianZionist: "Israel must be saved at all costs. In fact, Israel is Jesus' birthplace, so Israel's needs must come first! Jesus was a Jew!"
Cathy Loves-The-Jews: "Right, Sally! Let's join hands with the Jews and sing spirituals in praise of Zionism. Jews are just like us - only they have bigger noses!"
[Jews laughing at Sally and Cathy]: "Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Stupid goyim."