Showing posts with label Jerry Falwell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jerry Falwell. Show all posts

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Ross Douthat’s Poison Pen on Religion – New York Times - “All the news that’s fit” to be bought


If you can define the parameters of an argument, you will likely win the argument.
There is a poison in American Religion. It is politics.
It started in the eighties when one third of a modern day version of an Anti-Christ in the form of Ronald Reagan, an actor, was helped into his cushy CEO crony job with the aid of southern bigots aka as “born again” Christians in the form of Jerry Falwell Incorporated. 
The television evangelists labeled their Edsel version of religion televangelism.  There were no warning labels on the make it up as you go along programming and or snake oil product and the resulting wealth brought out the vote for a washed up black and white film “B” Hollywood Actor in 1980. Every marketing success spawns repeat and imitation.
There is a poison in American Religion.  It goes beyond the Bush “Black Purse” ongoing bribe given to churches to dole out soup but not condoms to the poor.
There used to be a fairly decent Religion section the British Newspaper The Guardian. It disappeared one night that coincided with the visit of King Benedict the German of the Vatican 108 acre based money laundering empire.
In fact, I don’t recall The New York Times ever being big on religion or where religion would be booked except in the leisure section is in fact it ever existed.
I guess no doubt the editorial staff heard about all the Religious Politics or is it Political Religion that has poisoned the modern and or virtual American Town Square. FOX NEWS moronity sells papers so to speak and attracts sponsors.
On to the scene of the past few years is the Harvard educated Conservative Ross Douthat to explain modern religion to a seemingly godless liberal New York Times readership. No truth to the rumor that the NYT needed an emergency midnight loan to survive one day back when and the Knights of Columbus, the Roman Catholic Church’s “Black Banker” came through in a pinch, and Ross now has a bought desk, boutique stall, at the grand old lady of news as a concession or condition of that emergency Vatican backed loan?
Anyway, I keep seeing wanna be memes popping up from time to time based on the NYT Vatican Desk in the form of  "TC" theologically correct Ross Douthat articles on a truly global news site that has room even for a token puissant or is it pissant opinion pundit like Douthat.
Memes flow through the blogosphere. There are whole chucks of Catholic and or right wing “Born Agains” or the new flavor of the month title is “evangelicals” blogs that repeat, reverberate and praise the Douthat Vatican echo chamber.
There was quite a stir about the dangerous “Pantheism” theology threat of the Movie Avatar that Ross probably got nominated for a Pulitzer on.  Straight off the secret? GOP/RCC daily talking points sheet. Wink. Nod.
In a way, Douthat is the Ivy League version of the Beer and Sauerkraut Bill Donohue at the Catholic League directed toward the Church Militants, “igorant enlightment” for the lower classes on the right and wrong American Catholic PC political opinion and positions of the hour, day and month these days.  It is not like the Catholics ever read the NT.
Which brings me to the latest politically labeled religion piece by Ross trying to piss on Mainstream American Protestantism.
I have read many blogs in response of this piece of political trash masquerading as religion.
Give it a read and form your own individual opinion while you still have that option in a "free" America.
When did any Christianity become “Liberal” or “Conservative”?
Those are political terms!
And once this form of "Boutique Journalism" courtesy of the RNC and Ross Douthat interjects terms like liberal or conservative into the opinion page of the Beard NYT, then the parameters of the argument are already set. The argument is won by the controlling out of touch corrupt 1% elites trying to use one more ploy to prostitute religion into a political matrix of the 2012 election.
Christianity is neither liberal or conservative. It just is.
And for those of you that need a visitor’s guide to Christianity, take the Douthat tour and drink in his religion and in the end wake up in bed with dross of the soul.
Your soul.  

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Thursday, December 10, 2009

Is Intelligent Design Bullshit ?


If you can define the parameters of any argument, you have the advantage to winning the argument.

I remember when the Jerry Falwell Public Relations oily communication thing was all cranked up under the emperor god Reagan. Cranking out the evil of “secular humanism”.

I at the time heard the phrase and was too busy living my life to try and understand this new modern phrase for satanism or the like. Few if any were challenging the new word factory being pumped out of Fundamentism Central or to admit my ignorance, I was not aware of anybody fighting this abuse of language in the name of the Jebus cash cow.

In retrospect, it is two words. It is secular, a neutral thing. And it is about humanism, a good thing. How can two fine words be put together and be so misused.

How about Intelligent Design as an example?

I recently heard the term Intelligent Design.

From Wiktionary – Intelligent Design :
A conjecture claiming that biological life on Earth, or more broadly, the universe as a whole, was created by an unspecified intelligent agent rather than being the result of undirected natural processes.
Intelligent Design grates on my ear. If Joe the Pope likes it, I know there must be something anti-free choice and pro-mind control about it.

Pope prepares to embrace theory of intelligent design
There have been growing signs the Pope is considering aligning his church more closely with the theory of "intelligent design" taught in some US states. Advocates of the theory argue that some features of the universe and nature are so complex that they must have been designed by a higher intelligence. Critics say it is a disguise for creationism…

The Pope also raised the issue in the inaugural sermon of his pontificate, saying: "We are not the accidental product, without meaning, of evolution."
Intelligent design seems like half-assed science to me. It is two parts “H” without the “O”. It is Hydrogen without Oxygen. It is not the answer. It is not water – the basis of all carbon life forms as we think we understand them. It is an assumption. If you assume, you are likely to makes an “ass” of “U” and “me”.

We may not be an accident in the Universe. But who is to say how much randomness was programmed into the original design? Who is to say that that “design” was not the result of whole eons of universes coming and going from big bang to ultimate implosion over and over again? Maybe randomness is the ultimate program – and not the desired dead end stop – of us – as we would like it or temporarily Re-design it to be?

Maybe this dead end result of how great we are as a species is stalled – an idol of we who cannot manage the natural resources of this planet bestowed on us by “Nature”.

We stand on this sick and or dying planet proclaiming ourselves to be the greatest designed species in the history of the universe.

We, as a limited species, are more than likely little more than a Ford model Edsel, 1958-1960. – Just waiting for another species to absorb or destroy us before we get the chance to destroy ourselves looking blindly into the mirror of life and only seeing “man” and or the man made design of the latest great version of a personal god. Me. Me. Me. Me. I!

It is a continuation of the concept of the personal gods designed in separate ages by Abraham, Moses and Mohammed. The energy that each comes up with to make an intellectual choice and say this is what it is all about may be fine and good. But what did Abraham, Moses and or Mohammed really believe?

If the bible and other writings are any indication of anything, over time the three gods of three prophets merge into one god. We somehow along with cultural conformity must conform to this ancient hodge podge of thought by once living intelligent beings each in their own historic setting. They and their resulting hodge podge of things are valid? And we are not?

I have to agree with the argument in Urban Dictionary that this shit should be taught in schools along with creationism and Darwinism. I look forward to apocryphal stories of Jebus accidently killing his pet dinosaur “Spike” and resuscitating it too etc.

In a way, all of us, individually and collectively and even the disorganized religion types needs a better and or new definition of God. All the old definitions of God, I think, are obsolete.

Though you might not think it, I am searching for that other new definition of God.

I would not think of imposing my definition on others, should I find it, for the sake of an alpha-male “I am RIGHT and you are wrong!” kind of thing.

I respect those people with the gumption to say “I don’t honestly know”.

This grasping for a cliché – sound bite - assumption called Intelligent Design sounds more like imitation science than true faith.

We must I think, agree with Voltaire’s character of Candide, and “cultivate our own gardens” because this is not “the best of all possible worlds”.

Good luck to us all, the human race, in Copenhagen.