"Battlefield Earth"

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The posts on this thread are pretty self-evident. Thus, since you are so kind to offer, I would like to take you up on that offer.

 

I just skimmed the article, but it seemed to be an argument that fundamentalists in America are supporting Israel in an attempt to hasten the end of the world. Somebody who gets into this kind of thing let me know if I am wrong…

Hmmm, I wonder if the topic went so off-topic because it is ludicrous? I live in what is called the buckle of the “Bible Belt”, and I can tell you that the number of people who support Israel here because they are trying to bring about the Rapture is about nil. A small percentage, perhaps 10 to 25 believe that Islam is a religion of Satan, and probably 50 to 70 percent believe that all Muslims are going to eternal damnation when they take the eternal celestial dirt nap. That is a little scary, but poor old Bill, if he indeed penned this, is finally slipping into senility. Another old and storied journalist slips the bounds of rationality…

 

We too live in the Bible Belt, nearer the collar than the buckle, and what I see is not re-assuring. How many people here believe in the "Rapture"? I haven't done a poll. For those of you who don't know, the Rapture is when all True Believers are taken instantly to Heaven--planes crash as their pilots are whisked away to eternal bliss (seems a bit cruel to the passengers, even if they are sinners). Similar incidents of melodrama dot the literature. The rest of us are "left behind" to deal with apocalyptic disasters and the coming of anti-
Christ. La Haye & Jenkins have written a series of books about it, the Left Behind series, in twelve volumes, which has sold a couple of zillion copies, each new installment topping the best-seller list. Jenkins previous experience was as author of a sports-oriented comic strip that was popular in small town newspapers; La Haye is an evangelist whose opinions are now reverently solicited on the History channel. If you don't live here, it must seem like some weird surrealist joke, an impossibility beyond the real world. Let me assure you that it's not. At the county fair here--we still have such things--there are Left Behind booths attended by sweet-looking little old ladies who will assure you that you are damned or doomed, if not both. Darwin is equated with Satan,and I mean that literally. How can I tell you that Moyers has not gone off the deep end; that he is simply describing what is really happening; that these people exist and have power; and are looking forward, with unspeakable joy, to bringing their truth to your world?

 

Personally, it's not the religious crackpots I found scarieest, it's the environmental policies that were described farther down in the speech. $970, a camcorder, and some clothing to allow your child to be exposed to neurologically-damaging chemicals?! How sad to think that enough parents will accept this offer to make this - and future variations - a viable practice.

 

I cannot comment on the madness that the Bible has inspired nationwide, however, my father fits the described American to a T.

He has said things to me like "2/3 rds of the world's population do not have souls because they were created to die in the endtimes..."

Umm...

So yeah...

I tread carefully when having conversations with my father.

I really wish I could understand him. My father is a successful business man, he is intelligent, although not a very kind man. One personality defect I have noticed about my father is his painful shyness and inability to confront other men (whom are emotionaly close, not other business men...and my father would never say emotionaly close, heh).

Perhaps he needs this kind of nonsense to...I don't know...I wish I did though as it would help me to understand him.

The thing is though, other than his need for an apocolypse (he also had a thing for nuclear warfare...plans have been drawn for the bomb shelter...i'm not joking), he is a normal man. Read the preceding and you wouldn't believe it, but it's true.

I have met a few other men similar to my father. A young guy I worked with had an interesting father. The father was very mathematically gifted and worked for IBM as a computer programmer. To give you insight into his skill as a programmer, after the end of communism in Russia, he was sent by IBM to Moscow to help set up their Social Security system. The whole family lived there for a year or so. The man is no slouch.

Yet despite his obvious intelligence, he believes that the men of the Bible lived to be 900 years old or whatever the exact number of centuries is, because back in Biblical times the atmosphere had significantly more oxygen. Now there are two problems with this: the first is that the atmosphere did not have more oxygen back then and secondly, more oxygen does not in any way cause you to live longer (at least in terms other than suffocation). But despite his obvious errors in thinking, the important fact is this very intelligent man had rational (of his own kind) reasons for believing what any other person would say was nonsense.

That is significant. A man of obvious mental capabilities would abandon reason because it did not fit within the context of the Bible.

Where does that come from?

Is it a social thing?

I wish I had answers rather than questions.

At the same time I also recognize the need for a book such as the Bible. Hey, something created the universe. The physical laws of our reality required an author. That in no way means the Bible has a single word of authenticity, but what the Bible does do is allow people to gaze up together .

That is very important.

I think the world would be a much better place if we wrote a new Bible. But you cannot rationally write a Bible. You simply can't.

How do you explain that their is no magic, no miracles, only the guarantee of nature?

Things like mathematics and words are tools we have created to describe the natural world. They are inherently flawed as they are only descriptions of something we can never fully understand. Therein enters God. The human god of the Bible is the bridge between the natural world that does in fact exist and the flawed version of nature which exists in all of our minds. There is no real magic or miracles in this world, only our errors in describing nature. If it is impossible for us to accurately describe nature, how can we possibly describe the Creator of it?

The simple answer is we cannot. So instead we create an unbelievably powerful human and call him God. This is just another flawed description. Unfortunately, spiritual laziness and the social pressures of religions have denied the vast majority of people from refining their description of the Creator from an account made two thousand years ago. What other tool has survived that long without refinement? Only a failed one.

I implore you people to look deep inside yourself and deep into the night sky so that you may not fall victim to the spiritual pit-traps than have ensnared men like my father and others like him.

Is it possible to acknowledge and love the Creator of our universe without creating a description of It? Sadly, I do not think so. That is unfortunate as it seems our various descriptions of the Creator have caused so much pain and insanity throughtout the history of mankind including this very day (the Middle East...I am looking at you).

Well, I realize this is quite long and difficult to read so a big "Thanks" from me to you. I would really appreciate some feedback as sometimes I worry about myself. Am I a sane and rational person trying to describe insanity that surrounds me or am I doing a waltz near the deep-end? I would like to know what you think.

 

Well it's not late at night here, but it's pretty good thinking. You are, at least, not alone in your own definition of sanity.

 

As many times past Late-Night thinker puts my thoughts much more eloquently than I ever could.

 

Late-Night Thinker, as others have said, you are not alone in your sanity\insanity. Have you tried to explain these thoughts of yours to your father, or the friend of yours from IBM? If so, what were their responses? It's always dangerous ground to question someone's belief structure, and even more dangerous to try to point out flaws in the reasoning behind said structure. I always avoid most religeous conversations for this reason. However, I would definitely have words with anyone who felt the environment is not something worth worrying about, and would probably smack anyone who told me they purposely do things to aid in its demise. Luckily, I've never heard such talk from anyone, and agree with the others that the 59% statistic has got to be off.

 

@Late-Night Thinker
Since you've specifically stated you're looking at me ( ), I'll try and say something on this. Don't expect any real answers or solutions though.

Starting from the bottom up, there's no need to worry about yourself. You're perfectly sane, and if you're not then you're not the only one

As for your father, I understand it must be very hard not being able to understand him, but as long as he lives his "normal" life normally, I wouldn't worry about him. I think the problem with him, and others whose beliefs seem to contradict their life in such a way, is that no matter how much they're involved (especially those who are into science) in what they do, nothing can really give any meaning to life. Look at it this way: no matter how much we like to think we have control over our lives, no matter how much we try to control them, there are two points over which we have NO control whatsoever: birth and death. As it happens, those are the two critical points: the one that started it, and the one that will eventually end it.

Personally, I'm not a religious man. My father is what I would call a very moderate Muslim (he doesn't fast, and he doesn't even go to the Mosque, but he's a believer), and my mother is a moderate Christian (she strongly believes, but that never stopped her from, for example, marrying my father). I got exposed to both religions, mostly through my grandparents. When I was younger, I thought I could solve the problem, and bring both religions together. It was simple, really. First, forget about tiny insignificant details (Muslims don't drink wine, Christians drink wine as part of their prayer) and look at the bigger picture: nothing in the Bible contradicts Islam in anyway way, and the Kur'an on the contrary has plenty of good things to say about the Bible (remember, it does acknowledge the biblical Creation as it is, and includes plenty of references to other passages in both the Old and New testament). Read between the lines, and you see that both religions practically worship the same God.

Of course, once you look around a bit at what's happening in the world (the American Crusade vs Iraqi Jihad is a wonderful example), you realize this doesn't work. Because if you only try to take the bigger picture (ie there is God, period), you haven't solved the problem of control. You still didn't choose to live, and you will die, and there's nothing you can about it. So, you need something "more". Enter the details. The Kingdom of God, the Apocalypse, etc. And then, the similarities start fading away.

This can take two forms. On the one hand, you have a more moderate form: very strong internal belief that doesn't influence everyday life. Your father is a prime example of this. I can give you others from the "other side". The majority of my fellow graduate students (in Biology) are Muslims. They're deeply believers, they fast every day of Ramadan, they pray five times a day, they go to the Mosque, they don't drink alcohol... your perfect Muslims, both men and women. That doesn't stop them from conducting research into just about any area of molecular biology you can think of. Ethanol is their best friend: they're constantly spraying it to ensure their cultures don't get contaminated. To them (and this is perhaps a "better" belief than your father's) there is no dichotomy: biological research gives you more insights into how the living functions, and therefore gives you a better understanding of God's creation, therefore bringing you closer to Him. It might help that Islam as a religion encourages scientific research (yes, believe it or not, it's textually written in the Kur'an) and particularly biology.

On the other hand of course, there's the second, more vicious form. People are not content to simply believe and live out normal happy lives. They have to impose their belief on the world. Hence fanaticism. On one side you have the head-chopping in Iraq, on the other Bush, James Watts, and the stuff Bill Moyers describes ("Not the same thing!" I hear you say? Think again). A documentary the other day was analyzing the frequency of references Bush makes to the Bible - freaky, especially when he takes them so blatantly out of context to support some fundamentalist ideology.

In a nutshell, that is why these people need this "nonsense". Because without it, you cannot justify your existence, and that is nuts. Nonsense is better than nothing at all, it seems. And of course, each religion comes up with its own nonsense, but it basically comes down to the same thing: something better later on, in another life, because if this is the only life we'll have then it's not worth it. And of course, since science and an afterlife don't fit together very well, you exploit the gaps in science to create God (I won't repeat your definition, since I couldn't agree more with it), thereby solving the problem for yourself.

Of course, if for any reason you cannot do this, then you feel excluded, because you come up to people whom you just can't understand. And within their belief system, the Apocalypse is coming, and you are soulless, etc. I know, I've had to put up with people kindly explaining to me that I will rot in Hell because I did not convert to [insert religion here].

I just wish people could believe what they want, have whichever faith they want, and leave others alone.