Johnny Skeptic

I look forward to reading replies from readers.

Evoken

Bush said. "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them."

http://www.reandev.com/taliban/

JamesBannon

Valz,

That link is really frightening. You people in the 'States have my sympathy for having to put up with lunatics like that. What really puzzles me though is why the hell do people vote for such fruitcakes.

Evoken

Heh, some highlights.

"We had lost the fight for the preservation of the white race until God himself intervened in earthly affairs with AIDS to rescue and preserve the white race that he had created.... I praise God all the time for AIDS."

"AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals. To oppose it would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharoah's chariotters."

"If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being."

"Anybody that believes in separation of church and state needs to leave right now."

"Being nice to people is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity, as opposed to other religions whose tenets are more along the lines of 'kill everyone who doesn't smell bad and doesn't answer to the name Mohammed'"

"Not only is homosexuality a sin, but anyone who supports fags is just as guilty as they are. You are both worthy of death."

No wonder people hate the fundamentalist.


Valz

Ojuice5001

I think that in a way, this kind of incident still shows some kind of progress for the idea of separation of church and state. In some premodern cultures, the rulers have had to couch all of their directives in terms of commands from the gods, even if the gods had nothing to do with it in reality, and even if it was just a mundane law like an injunction not to steal chickens from your neighbor's farm. Secular government was once unthinkable.

But today it's the opposite. A man like Bush worships Yahweh, and he's suspected of being such a zealous servant that he chooses his foreign policy on the basis of commands (real or imagined) that he receives from his god. But notice that he has to keep quiet about this fact (if it is a fact), just as the ID advocates have to pretend that they are not motivated by religion. In all of Bush's dealings with the general public, he has to downplay it.

Family Guy satirized Bush's religion very well; one episode portrayed a phone conversation between Bush and his God, where his God urged him, "You know how you've been telling everyone that you talk with me? Yeah? Um, could you maybe keep quiet about our relationship, not mention it so much? Okay?"

Ojuice5001

As for whether Yahweh really did give Bush any kind of command, I'll just say two things. First, Yahweh has an extremely rivalrous relationship with Allah. They've been plotting against each other since the seventh and eighth centuries.

And second, we live in a modern world where it is unseemly to leave important decisions in the hands of supernatural forces. The other gods are perfectly capable of influencing human politics with subtler methods than giving orders to particular politicians by means of personal revelation. I'd like to think that Yahweh understands that as well. So Bush's wars are likely the result of Yahweh's will, but that still doesn't mean that Yahweh would stoop to using a personal revelation that Bush is consciously aware of.