You really do need to watch all of this video from the Christian Broadcasting Network:
A couple of years ago, while giving a lecture at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, I was astonished when a lecturer told me that half of his students would agree with the proposition that a war in the Middle East would lead to Armageddon, and that would be a good thing. In Ann Arbor, bot the Deep South.
The extent to which US support for Israel is driven by these christian violent religious extremists should not be underestimated. They are a major force in US politics.
The extraordinary thig is that violent religious extremists in both the US and Israel look forward to fighting sude by side against the forces of evil in the Last Battle in the Middle East, yet extremist jews and extremist christians each also believe that at the climax, when the world ends, their cherished allies will go to Hell with their enemies.
It is of course the American christians who are the most destructive violent religious extremists in the world.
‘The rise of the religious right in Australia’
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/dec2005/chri-d05.shtml
Many Christians are realising the extent of the fabricated lies and conjecture they have been indoctrinated into regarding a geographical Israel and are leaving the institutionalised church in droves. There is a movement to understand that what is happening in the Middle East has nothing to do with the spiritual Israel that the Bible talks about. There was a false premise brought about through misrepresentations in the Scofield bible under J.N. Darby’s influence many years ago, which then spread through American society as it was the most widely used Bible at the time.
I drove past a church in Birmingham, England only yesterday evening to see on its noticeboard an advert for a forthcoming talk, “Bible Prophecy and The Middle East”.
Cripes! I hope they haven’t caught this meme too.
‘You really do need to watch all of this video from the Christian Broadcasting Network’
No, really, I don’t.
The fucking evangelicals are starting to make themselves heard in the UK as well, and it’s becoming quite depressing.
violent religious extremists in both the US and Israel look forward to fighting side by side against the forces of evil in the Last Battle in the Middle East, yet extremist jews and extremist christians each also believe that at the climax, when the world ends, their cherished allies will go to Hell with their enemies
That’s coalition politics for you.
>I was astonished when a lecturer told me that half of his students would agree with the proposition that a war in the Middle East would lead to Armageddon, and that would be a good thing.
Christian and Jewish suicide bombers joining together with their Muslim brethren.
Jesus.
That is some desperate and idiotic crap.
Anyone for a game of Lemmings?
The funny thing about all of this is that, after the Great Conflict, all this business about Gog and Magog rising in the middle east, then the Second Coming will come about. This doesn’t work out at all well for the Jews, who will either have to convert to Christianity or be slaughtered, according to christianist doctrine.
Dubbya Bush was insane enough to believe he was bringing about these end-times prophesies, confessing same to Chirac while trying to get him “on-board” for the Iraq adventure:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/aug/10/religion-george-bush
Dubbya also had biblical verses (old testament, of course) on the top of his PDB (presidential daily briefings), giving a summary of how the war was proceeding. We all know about how christians infest the US armed services, particularly the air force.
So the christianists are fully in support of Israel, right up to the point when they’ll all have to be slaughtered. And the Israelis are happy enough for the christianists to believe this hogwash, regarding them as useful idiots for now.
Naturally, the tea-baggers, evangelicals etc. are also used as useful idiots by the repugs, who are more than happy to see them denounce Obama as possibly being nothing short of the anti-christ himself. Little wonder that the right wing in the US wants to destroy their education system, the ability to perform critical thinking is not a skill they like to encourage.
They refer to it not as Armageddon but ‘Readying for the Rapture’. Just hope they don’t take us all down with them.
Look up Wikipedia on Pat Robertson the founder of this CBN outfit and many others on other continents and be very afraid.
‘Look up Wikipedia on Pat Robertson the founder of this CBN outfit and many others on other continents and be very afraid.’
Google John Ashcroft
‘and be very afraid.’
Love the attempted spelling of “living” 🙂
Also he is not clear where the Caucasus is.
Doh!
Craig,
if you dismiss as nutters people who hold strong, fundamentalist religious beliefs that aren’t entirely justifiable by logic (like most of our beliefs), you ought to realise first that this will include most of the inhabitants of the countries that you have worked in; people you admire and love; most of the inhabitants of huge areas of the world.
A little humility wouldn’t go amiss. People do have, and are entitled to have, beliefs that you believe to be crazy – probably far, far more people than you would care to admit.
I know that you are well-travelled and well-educated, but you still look at the world through narrow, privileged eyes. Which is pretty astonishing really, given what you have seen and done.
On the plus side, you will attract a small but somewhat fanatical band of disciples (if that’s a plus, in your opinion).
“It is of course the American Christians who are the most destructive violent religious extremists in the world.”
Who knocked down the World Trade Center?
(1) Pope John Paul II
(2) Billy Graham
(3) Mohammed Atta
(4) Melanie Phillips
(5) Ron L Hubbard
(6) The Dalai Lama
Select one answer only.
EI exclusive: Leaked documents show PA undermined Turkey’s push for UN flotilla probe
http://www.winstanleys.org/2010/06/ei-exclusive-leaked-docs-pa/
@Neil – the right to hold fanatical beliefs should be limited by their impact on other people, as is the case with all rights. Armageddonists can reasonably be called nutters, given the violence that comes attached to their views, and which they are calling for, loudly. Your point about privilege is relevant, but not in the way you intended: Christian and Jewish extremists who use the Book of Revelations to justify imperialism in Palestine are either part of a privileged elite, or are directly supporting it.
Many of them asserting these religious views, I think, do not intend to advance the neo-conservative and corporate causes in the US and in Israel, but that’s what they’re achieving. I paraphrase a wise commenter on this board, who said that the point of religion is to interfere in the +political+ sphere, and this is what is happening now. In a way, it has nothing to do with religion – irrational beliefs are just the cover.
Incidentally, your implication that commenters here are just yes-people for Craig comes quite close to trolling, in my view. I differ with Craig on several points, but that doesn’t stop me taking part in these discussions. I doubt you think you’re a yes-man for anyone, so it perhaps is not fair for you to throw the same charge about.
Michael: I think the correct answer is: (7) None of the above.
“@Neil – the right to hold fanatical beliefs should be limited …”
No, it should not. Beliefs are not acts. You are supporting thought police.
In answer to the question ‘who knocked down the World Trade Centre’, could I hazard a guess at The C.I.A. under orders from G.W.Bush.
lol, Jewish books were written for what was good for Jewish people only. I don’t know why these hackers from Europe would waste their time explaining Jewish books. Don’t they have their own books?
Jon – “Incidentally, your implication that commenters here are just yes-people for Craig …. ”
You see implications that aren’t there.
@Neil – Perhaps I put it the wrong way – I didn’t specifically intend to mean that Christian/Zionist religionists should be legally compelled (say, in the UK) not to say what they think. But I do mean to say that there is an impact to calling for religious war, especially given that the war (i.e. the occupation of Palestine) is (to put it mildly) as contentious as is the case. Just look at the list of UN resolutions against Israel on the issue!
On the topic of free speech, are you in favour of British Muslim speech that calls for the deaths of UK personnel in Afghanistan? Should they be invited on the radio to say that, in equal numbers to military spokespeople? I should state that I am not in favour of anyone calling for anyone’s death, even though I sympathise with the Muslim perspective that the superpowers are up to their old imperial ways with the Islamic world.
My point about privilege and religion being used as a mechanism to further selfish political ends was quite salient, and I should be interested to hear your thoughts on it.
@brian powell
That would indeed be a hazardous guess.
It’s a pity the 9/11 truthers have to pop up on Craig’s blog quite so often; it only aids the neo-con trolls.
Neil,
Actually, I think the whole quote was
“…the right to hold fanatical beliefs should be limited by their impact on other people…”
which is just a clumsy way of asserting the limitations of positive rights to religious belief, insofar as they are used to justify *acts* that threaten the liberty of others, and not – as you claim through deliberate misquoting – expressing support of ‘the thought police’.
Then again, I suspect you already knew that.
@Neil – could go on about how instilling this insane apocalyptic, violent gibberish in children amounts to child abuse, but you’d just come back with some other brand of twisted give-em-a-chance bibble-babble. So, in essence, G-F-Y.
Is the Michael above Michael Petek? I think we should be told.
PS Will it be very quiet around here for the next hour or two whilst the 11 very overpaid men in red this time kick a ball around with 11 other men from another country?
PPS One of the fans (fanatics) dressed as a Crusader complete with sword and shield bearing the cross of St George was interviewed beforehand outside the stadium. ‘We were just warming up before. It’s like Jerusalem. We took a long time to warm up then.’ How disgusting. What a mindset.
Wrong, MJ, it was Mohammed Atta. No points there.
Multiple choice question No. 2.
According to Islamic law, unbelievers are given the choice between: (1) becoming Muslims; (2) surviving in the degrading and humiliating condition of dhimmis; (3) being put to death.
If threatened to this effect, what is the correct response to your counterparty?
(1) Become a Muslim.
(2) Agree to live as a dhimmi.
(3) Allow yourself to be killed.
(4) Ram a circus tent spike up his arse.
Select one answer only.
The most destructive religious extremists in the world have been Communism as a state religion, in the first half of the twentieth century, and in the last generation the Islamist Al Qaeda. This can be seen, in the case of Communism, from the books by John Barron and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. American Christians encompass a broad spectrum. Jimmy Carter, for example, is not an uncritical supporter of Israel; his book “Palestine: peace not apartheid” can be recommended. I’ve just ordered his “We can have peace in the holy land”. There are many people holding narrow or even crackpot views in America, and many of these are excessively uncritical of the state of Israel; but American and other christianities are as a group part of the solution, not the problem, because the influences that make for a solution are active in their midst.
@somebody – yes, this is Michael Petek. He’s the only one to use the phrase “dhimmi”, which I presume means “non-believer”.
@Michael – your certainty regarding unbelievers in Islamic law is misplaced. There are a number of examples where Muslims believe they have been commanded to live alongside non-Muslims peaceably. Your position that all Muslims are extremists is akin to my suggesting that all Christians are Zionists and Rapturists, even though most Christians are much more sensible and peaceful than that.
Meanwhile I suspect you are no longer signing with your full name, as you don’t want to be directly related to your website, which reveals you to be an End Of Times believer too. I am not sure I have seen from you, amongst all your anti-Muslim diatribes, a defence of your belief system, which I would argue fuels the violence between Israel/Palestine and their respective sides.