[Curios Meerkat]

http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5211218-2.html

Bill Moyers: There is no tomorrow
Bill Moyers
January 30, 2005

One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington.

Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.

Remember James Watt, President Ronald Reagan's first secretary of the interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever-engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, "after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back."

Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he was talking about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out across the country. They are the people who believe the Bible is literally true -- one-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is accurate. In this past election several million good and decent citizens went to the polls believing in the rapture index.

That's right -- the rapture index. Google it and you will find that the best-selling books in America today are the 12 volumes of the "Left Behind" series written by the Christian fundamentalist and religious-right warrior Timothy LaHaye. 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 (the British writer George Monbiot recently did a brilliant dissection of it and I am indebted to him for adding to my own understanding): Once Israel has occupied the rest of its "biblical 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'm not making this up. Like Monbiot, I've read the literature. 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's why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. It's 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." A war with Islam in the Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed -- an essential conflagration on the road to redemption. The last time I Googled it, the rapture index stood at 144 -- just one point below the critical threshold when the whole thing will blow, the son of God will return, the righteous will enter Heaven and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire.

So what does this mean for public policy and the environment? Go to Grist to read a remarkable work of reporting by the journalist Glenn Scherer -- "The Road to Environmental Apocalypse." Read it and you will see how millions of Christian fundamentalists may believe that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed -- even hastened -- as a sign of the coming apocalypse.

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 and 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 Sen. 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 on 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?"

Because these people believe that until Christ does return, the Lord will provide. One of their texts is a high school history book, "America's Providential History." You'll find there these words: "The secular or socialist has a limited-resource mentality and views the world as a pie ... that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece." However, "[t]he Christian knows that the potential in God is unlimited and that there is no shortage of resources in God's earth ... while many secularists view the world as overpopulated, Christians know that God has made the earth sufficiently large with plenty of resources to accommodate all of the people."

No wonder Karl Rove goes around the White House whistling that militant hymn, "Onward Christian Soldiers." He turned out millions of the foot soldiers on Nov. 2, including many who have made the apocalypse a powerful driving force in modern American politics.

It is hard for the journalist to report a story like this with any credibility. So let me put it on a personal level. I myself don't know how to be in this world without expecting a confident future and getting up every morning to do what I can to bring it about. So I have always been an optimist. Now, however, I think of my friend on Wall Street whom I once asked: "What do you think of the market?"I'm optimistic," he answered. "Then why do you look so worried?" And he answered: "Because I am not sure my optimism is justified."

I'm not, either. Once upon a time I agreed with Eric Chivian and the Center for Health and the Global Environment that people will protect the natural environment when they realize its importance to their health and to the health and lives of their children. Now I am not so sure. It's not that I don't want to believe that -- it's just that I read the news and connect the dots.

I read that the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has declared the election a mandate for President Bush on the environment. This for an administration:

• That wants to rewrite the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act protecting rare plant and animal species and their habitats, as well as the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires the government to judge beforehand whether actions might damage natural resources.

• That wants to relax pollution limits for ozone; eliminate vehicle tailpipe inspections, and ease pollution standards for cars, sport-utility vehicles and diesel-powered big trucks and heavy equipment.

• That wants a new international audit law to allow corporations to keep certain information about environmental problems secret from the public.

• That wants to drop all its new-source review suits against polluting, coal-fired power plants and weaken consent decrees reached earlier with coal companies.

• That wants to open the Arctic [National] Wildlife Refuge to drilling and increase drilling in Padre Island National Seashore, the longest stretch of undeveloped barrier island in the world and the last great coastal wild land in America.

I read the news just this week and learned how the Environmental Protection Agency had planned to spend $9 million -- $2 million of it from the administration's friends at the American Chemistry Council -- to pay poor families to continue to use pesticides in their homes. These pesticides have been linked to neurological damage in children, but instead of ordering an end to their use, the government and the industry were going to offer the families $970 each, as well as a camcorder and children's clothing, to serve as guinea pigs for the study.

I read all this in the news.

I read the news just last night and learned that the administration's friends at the International Policy Network, which is supported by Exxon Mobil and others of like mind, have issued a new report that climate change is "a myth, sea levels are not rising" [and] scientists who believe catastrophe is possible are "an embarrassment."

I not only read the news but the fine print of the recent appropriations bill passed by Congress, with the obscure (and obscene) riders attached to it: a clause removing all endangered species protections from pesticides; language prohibiting judicial review for a forest in Oregon; a waiver of environmental review for grazing permits on public lands; a rider pressed by developers to weaken protection for crucial habitats in California.

I read all this and look up at the pictures on my desk, next to the computer -- pictures of my grandchildren. I see the future looking back at me from those photographs and I say, "Father, forgive us, for we know not what we do." And then I am stopped short by the thought: "That's not right. We do know what we are doing. We are stealing their future. Betraying their trust. Despoiling their world."

And I ask myself: Why? Is it because we don't care? Because we are greedy? Because we have lost our capacity for outrage, our ability to sustain indignation at injustice?

What has happened to our moral imagination?

On the heath Lear asks Gloucester: "How do you see the world?" And Gloucester, who is blind, answers: "I see it feelingly.'"

I see it feelingly.

The news is not good these days. I can tell you, though, that as a journalist I know the news is never the end of the story. The news can be the truth that sets us free -- not only to feel but to fight for the future we want. And the will to fight is the antidote to despair, the cure for cynicism, and the answer to those faces looking back at me from those photographs on my desk. What we need is what the ancient Israelites called hochma -- the science of the heart ... the capacity to see, to feel and then to act as if the future depended on you.

Believe me, it does.

To the Christians in this forum: Should Christians work towards Christ's second coming, as outlined above?

To the non-Christians: Do you feel comfortable with that attitude?

Why? Why not?

[dcmacdaddy]

Originally posted by Curios Meerkat:
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5211218-2.html

<interesting and inflammatory article snipped.>

To the Christians in this forum: Should Christians work towards Christ's second coming, as outlined above?

To the non-Christians: Do you feel comfortable with that attitude?

Why? Why not?

Let both sides work at their respective goals. Whoever wins in the end must be right. Right?!?

[Twilly Spree]

I'm sure when He's ready, or thinks the time is right, He will return.

It's not like His first arrival was expidited by us humans.

[SimeyTheLimey]

You are a couple of weeks too late.

Earlier this afternoon, Bill Moyers called James Watt and "apologized profusely" for misquoting him and misrepresenting his views on the environment. Moyers says he will produce a written apology and think about ways to make the apology as public as the smear was.

Link

[Curios Meerkat]

OK, but the topic stands. Wether Watt was misquoted or not seems secondary to me. Please fell free to provide alternate views on the topic at hand, if you feel that would balance the discussion.

[Curios Meerkat]

More on the same topic, with a different slant:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satelli...=1106537800119

US politician hopes to speed building of third temple
Yaakov Katz, THE JERUSALEM POST
Jan. 25, 2005

Orly Benny-Davis has come a long way from her youth in Ramat Gan. Today a well-known US political activist, Benny-Davis ran for the senate last year in her home state of South Carolina. On Monday night, she was in Jerusalem to attend the 11th annual Temple Mount dinner and to help speed up the construction of the third temple.

Close to 1,000 right-wing religious activists converged on the Jerusalem International Convention Center to celebrate Tu Bishvat and listen to speakers on various topics – ranging from what the economy will be like in the time of the third temple to what type of government is ideal according to the Torah.

"The temple is part of our history," Benny-Davis, who sponsored the festivities, told The Jerusalem Post. "When I argue with people who criticize us that we are occupying another nation, I explain to them that the land has been ours for thousands of years. Just look at the Temple Mount."

The Jews, she says, deserve a temple just like the Christians and the Muslims.

"Look at what the Italians did in Rome with the Vatican and how much money they make," Benny-Davis, who spent 15 years living in Italy, said. "The Muslims also have a temple, and we, who came back to our land 2,000 years later, don't have one, which is needed to initiate the final return to Israel."

Calling her 2004 bid for the senate "a battle for God," Benny-Davis said she is in the process of lobbying congressmen to pass a resolution that would ensure Israel retains sovereignty over all of the holy sites, including the Temple Mount.

The point of the festive dinner, she said, is to get people excited about their Jewish heritage. "We need to get the ball rolling and to get people excited to make things change," she said.

Prior to the festive dinner, the Temple Mount Faithful met in the foyer to look at the most recent temple artifacts Rabbi Menahem Makover, of the Temple Mount Institute in the Old City, has constructed.

Makover said his institute has already completed constructing all of the artifacts except for the altar, which needs to be physically constructed on the Mount.

How will the temple be rebuilt while the Muslim mosques are currently standing?

"No one knows how the temple will be built," he said. "But that is not the main issue. What we are here to do is to inform people of the importance of the temple and to show them it is not a theoretical idea but is real and alive."

Not everyone agrees with Makover that the way to rebuild the temple is not known.

"Maybe there will be a tsunami-like disaster similar to the one in Southeast Asia which killed hundreds of thousands of people," said Baruch Ben-Yosef, a member of the Temple Mount Faithful. "The mosques will be moved to Mecca where they should be, and we will climb the Mount to build an altar and conduct sacrifices."

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by Curios Meerkat:
OK, but the topic stands. Wether Watt was misquoted or not seems secondary to me. Please fell free to provide alternate views on the topic at hand, if you feel that would balance the discussion.

What is to discuss about an article based on a falsehood written by an author who has already withdrawn the premise upon which it is written?

[MacNStein]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
What is to discuss about an article based on a falsehood written by an author who has already withdrawn the premise upon which it is written?

Makes good Liberal and atheist fodder.

[BRussell]

I've read a few of those books - there's a trilogy called "The Christ Clone Chronicles" that makes a pretty good sci-fi book about how an attempt to clone Jesus from DNA on the Shroud of Turin brings about some, um, unexpected results, namely, the end of the world.

The main issue to me is how cruel of a God it is who comes back and slaughters the entire planet. I don't understand how people can at the same time worship that God and also complain about Saddam Hussein. Saddam has nothing on that God in terms of genocide, torture, and obedience.

I don't know how many Christians believe a God like that. I don't think it's justified by the Bible, though.

[Curios Meerkat]

Watt's quote is not the premise of the article, and it's not the topic ("Working towards Christ's second coming").

Are you embarrassed by your political allies that much?

[BRussell]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
What is to discuss about an article based on a falsehood written by an author who has already withdrawn the premise upon which it is written?

I wouldn't say that was the entire premise on which it was written. He's talking about apocalyptic beliefs in general, and I think it's hard to argue those don't exist at all. It is true that the Left Behind series is extremely popular, for example, and we did just go through a millennial period in which lots of people were talking about those kinds of things and some crazies came out of the wordwork.

For what it's worth, I think the case is overstated, and I doubt there's anyone in government who actually wants to destroy the environment in order to bring about the rapture. But it is a weird belief system that does exist, and there are folks like Boykin who see the war in Iraq as a religious war, and there are also people who think of Israel as a kind of religious stepping-stone. I don't think one can ignore those beliefs and really fully understand people's beliefs about those issues.

[Secret__Police]

Originally posted by Twilly Spree:
I'm sure when He's ready, or thinks the time is right, He will return.

It's not like His first arrival was expidited by us humans.

Do you think Christ really wants to come back?? With almost everyone wearing crosses on their necks.
The last thing he wants to see is another cross.

[MacGorilla]

"The mosques will be moved to Mecca where they should be, and we will climb the Mount to build an altar and conduct sacrifices.

Yummy! I'll bring the party favors!

[olePigeon]

Speaking of alters and sacrifices, anyone see The Wicker Man? I love that movie.

[malvolio]

Originally posted by olePigeon:
Speaking of alters and sacrifices, anyone see The Wicker Man? I love that movie.

One of my favs! And a great plot twist at the end.
On the whole, I much prefer the Lord of Summerisle to Bush as a chief executive.

[Zimphire]

Originally posted by BRussell:
I've read a few of those books - there's a trilogy called "The Christ Clone Chronicles" that makes a pretty good sci-fi book about how an attempt to clone Jesus from DNA on the Shroud of Turin brings about some, um, unexpected results, namely, the end of the world.

The main issue to me is how cruel of a God it is who comes back and slaughters the entire planet. I don't understand how people can at the same time worship that God and also complain about Saddam Hussein. Saddam has nothing on that God in terms of genocide, torture, and obedience.

I don't know how many Christians believe a God like that. I don't think it's justified by the Bible, though.

Difference, Saddam didn't give people free will.

God doesn't do anything to us. We do it to ourselves.

[BRussell]

Originally posted by Zimphire:
Difference, Saddam didn't give people free will.

God doesn't do anything to us. We do it to ourselves.

If God tortures through eternity those who don't worship him, how is that different from Saddam? Iraqis had free will to "worship" Saddam as well, and if they didn't they would suffer the consequences. Where's the real difference?

I don't know your beliefs, Zimphire, but if that's what one believes about God - that he will eternally torture you if you don't worship him - is that a worthy God? We would never accept as legitimate an earthly ruler with such a policy.

[SimpleLife]

Originally posted by BRussell:
If God tortures through eternity those who don't worship him, how is that different from Saddam? Iraqis had free will to "worship" Saddam as well, and if they didn't they would suffer the consequences. Where's the real difference?

I don't know your beliefs, Zimphire, but if that's what one believes about God - that he will eternally torture you if you don't worship him - is that a worthy God? We would never accept as legitimate an earthly ruler with such a policy.

God works in "mysterious" ways...