Fundamentalists & other Fun People.

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In following a link in the thread "Hate pamphlets distributed in US Mosques" I came across the following:

Freedomhouse

Because of various threads referencing "Fundamentalists" I thought it of interest. There are good people everywhere. Unfortunately there are some not so nice people. It just as wrong to make blanket statements about people who disagree with us as it is wrong for them to do it to us.

I get angry at many of the things that the "Right Wing Conservative Christians" say and it is easy to throw terms around that just aren't correct.

 

If you are religious, you believe in a deity, you must believe that this deity exist to believe in it. If this religion is monotheistic you believe there is only one god, thus your god exist and all others do not. This means that you are right and good and that others are wrong and if they oppose you, as you are good, they must be evil.

This is a simplified explanation why I disagree with the author of that article when he stated that the people he listed in the beginning was wrong. I believe they are absolutely correct.

 

I know Bush has said some absurd things but did he really say that God told him to attact Iraq? What did the religions leaders of the USA say about this? I thought this would be a dangerious thing to say in front of 'believers'.

Are we forgetting Mormons? We get them every year around here and they keep trying to push their religion as well as American politics. There is only so many times you have to tell them to 'go away' (or words to that effect!).

I also forgot to mention that tacky 'silver ring thing' that is pushed here even though we have a low rate of HIV and STD than the US does.

 

Yes. Don't have the link right now, but Google and you will find.

Waddyathink? "w00t w00t" maybe?

 

We have already been through the "God speaks to GW issues".

http://www.sorcerers.net/ubb/ultimatebb.php?/topic/34/76.html#000003

No one could provide proof of it then, and I seriously doubt anyone will now.

This is just another one of those issues that one side kept saying over and over again until it became accepted as fact.

America is a religious country, that was founded by Christians, and they wrote the laws and constitution from a certain standpoint, and it included Christian values. The majority of Americans are still Christians to some degree or another, and really have no issue with Bush's beliefs that God plays an active role in his life, and that his perspective is from that of a born again Christian. Most of the Christians I know (which is a lot, including most of my family, I am a black sheep because I don't go to church) don't believe that God speaks to them in a manner such as hearing a voice in their head or seeing an entity in front of them. They do believe that God "speaks" to them in little ways, nudging them this way, providing opportunity that enables them to move in a manner God approves, and that type of thing. It is subtle, and they believe that they are free to make other choices, but if they are supposed to do something, and they put it in God's hands and it works out, they believe that it is a "calling". This is much the way I interpret the words that Bush has said regarding his faith.

This is quite different from extreme forms of fundamentalism, where the "righteous" believe that they are empowered to kill or enslave those who do not follow their beliefs. The history of Christianity is full of this type of behavior, as is that of Islam, however, I have not seen any evidence of this in the US gov't or our programs. There have been occasions where individuals or small groups have taken upon themselves to behave in the manner, but the US gov't has generally distanced itself from these organizations.

 

Well there was a report on 'Fighting Satan' in the BBC.

"A lot of the marines that I've had wounded and killed over the past five months have been by a faceless enemy. But the enemy has got a face.

He's called Satan. He's in Falluja. And we're going to destroy him."

That sounds like the ramblings of an extremist.

Holywater, holyfire, metal crosses, wooden crosses, Bibles, incense, chantings and Exorcisms? -nah just leave these behind because Lt Col Brandl has found Satans ONLY weekness - ordinary bullets and rockets.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4037009.stm

 

Cesard,

There are 28,000 Lt Colonels/Commanders in the US military, the statements of one of those 28,000 hardly indicates an extreme fundamentalist movement. I can understand the concern, but the behavior doesn’t match up with the rhetoric (if they really believed that Satan inhabited Falluja, it would be a nuclear parking lot now).

As far as the Haaretz article, if I used something like that to prove that Hillary, or Kerry said something I would be trashed for being swayed by a third party report from a dubious source. If this type of behavior is so common for President Bush, it would be easy to find multiple direct quotes in the mainstream media, rather than having to rely on hearsay evidence.

Sorry, but I am not ready to place such a broad and damaging tag on someone based upon such flimsy evidence.

Edit, forgot to address the denial angle.

This is a fringe article (at least in the US) that has received no press in the US. The President would only be lending credence to it by acknowledging it, so of course he wouldn't deny it. If Barbara Wawa asked him about it, he would have to address it, but otherwise it is better to just let it fade away.

 

Haaretz didn't report that Bush said this; they qualified their report by stating that it was "according to Abbas". This is what makes it third party. The article does not state the GW stated "x", they are reporting what someone said was said by a third party. We all know how every time something is passed from one person to another it is changed, thus one of the reasons that Haaretz qualified their report by stating "according to Abbas".

Again, these are baseless charges with no credible evidence (that I have seen) to support them. It is unjust to make such accusations based on hearsay evidence. If someone wants to say that they think that Bush thinks he has a direct line to God based upon the way he acts, that is their opinion. It is a totally different thing to state that Bush does think God speaks directly to him because everyone knows he has said so, but then not be able to present a single shred of direct evidence. This is slanderous and libelous (at least philosophically).

 

And the Abbas quote doesn't jive with Bush's stated theology from every other time that he has described his Faith...

1. Third-party quotation
2. Inherent language translation issues
3. Unsupported by other reports
4. Inconsistent with what GWB has expressed as his Faith

C'mon...it doesn't even "sound" like W.

I don't see how anyone can believe from this source that Bush claims to talk to God. Absurd. He's not even what is considered a Christian Fundamentalist.

 

Here is the proof that Bush is talking to God, his inbox . Just see how many e-mails he has received from God.

(Yep, I know that this is a serious discussion but I could not resist.)

 

I started this thread to link to an article about tolerance not about whether God spoke to Bush or didn't speak to Bush. Now it belongs in AoLS and I am feeling slightly intolerant. Please let us all show a little tolerance. I'll try if you will.

 

Someone needs to determine which persons were responsible for hijacking this thread and send them a harshly worded warning.

A note on tolerance...funny, but I think I've experienced the highest level of "religious intolerance" from fellow Christians...but then again I've never stared down the AK47 of a fanatical islamist.

I agree with the article that Christian Fundamentalism emergered from the pamplets "The Fundamentals" which were originally penned by non-fundamentalists...but today I think that the term "Christian Fundamentalists" refers to members of the numerous denominations that have more recently emerged in rejection of the churches that began subsequent to the Protestant Reformation (or as I call it, the Protestant Rebellion).

I must confess though, there were many things in the article that I simply didn't understand.

Is this thread back on topic now?

 

Most of this is true. But like the article itself, generalizations without the specifics are not helpful here. But the Constitution makes no mention of God. When asked after the Constitutional Convention was over, Hamilton remarked: "No mention of God? I guess we just forgot."

Whether or not the major founders - Hamilton, Jefferson, Adams, Washington, Franklin and Madison were pious, religious men is an open question among historians and others who try to look closely at their lives and their writings. Certainly, they thought that Chirstian virtue was what everyone should aspire to. But whether they were Christians in the modern sense of the word is difficult.

I would define all of them as rational Christians, tempered by the Enlightenment. Jefferson referred to himself as a religion of one; Adams is thought to be an agnostic by many, but I think he was always trying to see both sides of any issue, even with God. Washington hardly ever spoke of God, except in abstract terms: "The Divine Being" or the "Supreme Being of Providence." But I think he believed in a personal God.

The thing is, most of the rank-and-file Christians of the Middle Ages were probably more pious than these men were. They were fiercely independent, brilliant men, who relied on their own abilities and powers.

So, the real question is: Was America more Christian than Europe in 1776? Perhaps, because it was smaller, with far less people. And the Chruch was the "great leveler" in early American society. Some of the formation of American government grew out of the town meetings halls in religious communities in places like coastal New England.

What this article fails to mention, is that what one sees as one looks closely at them, is that the Founders moved political power away from the religious leaders and the church, very deliberately towards men of civic and public minded virtues. They would be more inclined to read Cicero, rather than St. Paul. To be sure they knew their Gospels, but they were ultimately men of government, and they saw it as their own sphere, not that of the chruch's.

[ February 05, 2005, 06:34: Message edited by: Chandos the Red ]

 

Right... My very first post & I'm in at the deep end!

I read the article, and have to say that it was a mixed bag. Certainly, though, I see where the author's coming from with the issue of secularity as a religion. In some cases it's certainly behaving as one. French schools are probably the best example that I can think of at the moment: that whole issue of banning religious symbols seemed rather over-the-top. I think it's a textbook case of secular principles inflating to the point where people feel they need to take on some of the characteristics of religious intolerance as practiced by religions past. Certainly, banning the Muslim headscarf was unnecessary.

I know France sees separation of Church & State as sacrosanct, but it is entirely different to be neutral to someone's beliefs - i.e. by allowing everyone to wear their respective religious dress - and seeking to suppress it.

I think they over-stepped the mark toward the latter with their proposals there.

Secular Fundamentalism: discuss...