The RAPTURE!

[CubaSocialista]

I believe that the Christian Nationalistic furor that has overcome the United States has disastrous potential. This is an obvious element of that religious fanaticism, but what concerns me in particular are not only the evangelical Christian nutjobs slamming the book of revelations, but their horrifyingly zealous belief in an event called "The Tribulation", as popularized in the book series "Left Behind", has become a mainstream idea, and one that is now influencing American foreign policy, along with domestic..

The lack of regard for the future of resources is one thing. As Ann Coulter once said, voicing an opinion quite common among the religious right, "The Earth is yours. Take it, rape it. It's yours." And, due to the impending end of the world that these wonderful creatures believe in, as well as the "I'm saved, I believe it, that settles it, you're damned!" mentality, there is no need to work towards sustainability or peace or better society; "the Rapture is coming, so we must do what we must to be good Christians and provide for ourselves and our families" and to hell with the other billions.

Many Christian Zionists desire the continuation of the Israeli state simply so that it will be a catalyst to rebuild the Second Temple, a sign that will usher in the causes of the end of the world. These people want the Hell that will be a "Rapture" and a terror of unimaginable chaos on the planet, so that they shall be rewarded and fulfill their"God's" desires. They are literally attempting to hasten disaster in the terrifying belief that they will then be whisked off the planet, their job done, and the world left in Chaos, tribulation.


I realize this was a rant, I'm very tired. However, maybe someone can elaborate on my points. Evangelism, Dispensationalism, "Pretribulationism", and the death of millions are all the goals that these human fecal manifestations desire.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribulation
For more.

I just think that we really need to keep watch on the reactionay of evangelism that will totally contradict the foundations and necessary elements for humanity's progression...and survival.

Anyone who believes in the unfathomable horror of "eternal torture" of an individual's consciousness is deranged, and anyone who teaches such incomprehensible terrorism should be dealt with. Save the World, Kill an Evangelist.

[CubaSocialista]

I'll give this one bump. If it fails to get any more attention, I'll leave it be. But we need to address this particularly disturbing part of the Fundamentalist mindset.

[Zero]

Well, you can bet your ass that if people start voicing opinions like "Well, if we fuck the world over now, we can go to heaven that much faster!" Shit will hit the fan at ten thousand miles an hour.

[CubaSocialista]

What the Religious Right Has to Do with the Environment

A couple of things happened with Evergreen News all-time hero and supreme journalist Bill Moyers recently. For one, he was awarded the fourth annual Global Environment Citizen Award by the Center for Health and the Global Environment Citizen Award at Harvard Medical School. Board member and actress Meryl Streep presented the award, praising Moyers for his “resourceful, intrepid reportage and perceptive voices from the forward edge of the debate.”

For another thing, Moyers stepped down from his PBS news show role last month. So to fill our fast-widening Moyers gap, here is an edited transcript from Moyers’ acceptance speech at Harvard, including some Big Kudos for Seattle-based online environmental magazine Grist (check out www.grist.org). Be forewarned; Moyers’ perspective might disturb an otherwise peaceful day:

“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.

“Remember James Watt, President 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.

The Rapture Index

“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: 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. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven.

“I’m not making this up. 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 Revelation, 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.

Environmental Apocalypse

“So what does this mean for public policy and the environment? Go to Grist to read a remarkable work of reporting by 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 Senator Zell Miller of Georgia, who recently quoted from the biblical book of Amos on the senate floor: ‘The days will come, saith 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 Revelation are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks.

“Plus, as Grist puts it, why, in fact, 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?

“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.

A Bush Mandate

“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 that requires the government to judge beforehand if actions might damage natural resources.

“The same administration that wants to relax pollution limits for ozone; eliminate vehicle tailpipe inspections; and ease pollution standards for cars, sports 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 plans 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 nine million dollars — two 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 ExxonMobil and others of like mind, have issued a new report that climate change is ‘a myth; sea levels are not rising.’ It noted that 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.

The Future in Front of Us

“I read all this and look up at the pictures on my desk, next to the computer: pictures of my grandchildren, Henry, age 12; Thomas, age 10; Nancy, 7; Jassie, 3; Sara Jane, 9 months. 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 to match the science of human health 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.” — Bill Moyers

This speech originally appeared on www.alternet.org.

[CubaSocialista]

Our environment and our way of life, our sovereignty over the future of ourselves as individuals and as a society, and our very fate and legacy will all be assuredly impacted in a most negative sense by this fanatical mindset.

It is the mindset of a withdrawn, hapless drug addict. Doom is inevitable, so, ironically, rightist American Evangelism encourages an orgy of resource consumption and earth degradation in seeking material pleasures, which is also upheld, quite strangely, as a sign of self-support, independence, and responsability by the Fundamentalist.

These people are defeatists, no different from drug addicts nor the hedonists that they decry. They are without conscience and justify their action with their Bible. Rather than conclude from facts, they desperately scramble to find facts to support their inalienably static and inevitable conclusion. Worse, the majority of the Evangelcals foresee the Rapture as occurring in June of 2007 or June of 2014. That reserves both dates, but especially the latter (due to their fanatical "certainty") as times at which chaos and insanity will reign and these individuals will attempt to incite and hasten the most horrific of events in their twisted, sick, childish wet dream of being thrust into the sky to meet their sorcerer.

This mindset must be reduced to rubble, because I fear it will generate the worst forms of insanity. Especially when both aforementioned dates result in no Tribulation (though the "Rapture Index" suggests this Rapture is likely to happen any day now) and thus the panicked, not-to-be denied Evangelicals will conclude that they must set forth the necessary elements of disorder and famine and pestilence to leave perfect conditions for their self-serving "salvation" where they can damn the Earth but save themselves and those with their mindset.

The introduction of these delusional animals into the mainstream will be like chromium in water. It will accumulate into a cancerous disaster.

The likes of the "Left Behind" authors and Pat Robertson need to be "liberated" from their mortal coil before they and their sheeple become the next Black Death.