Your Fucking Stupid And Superstitious Press

[filkertom]

Okay, you guys know I went full-blown atheist over the past couple of years. But I've got a number of close friends who are very religious, not to mention my mom -- and, hey: Religion got her singing again, after a twenty-year hiatus, and she sounds great, and it fills her life. So I try, I really try, to coexist with religion, as long as it doesn't stomp on my friends' wombs or stuff like that. You know what I mean. I really do try not to step on anyone's toes, unless it seems to me they're just brain-damaged about it.

Like this:

ZAHN (voice-over): As rockets rain down, bringing random death and destruction, families seek refuge deep underground. How do they survive the weeks of stress and the nightmare of a war with no end in sight?

Plus, with shockwaves of violence spreading through the Middle East, is the erupting warfare a prophecy of Armageddon? What ominous signs convince these people that the end of the world is upon us?

[...]

ZAHN: And we're back. One of the most disturbing and mysterious books of the Bible is Revelation. For centuries, Christians have read its visions of wars, plagues, and the end of the world and asked themselves if they were living in the so-called end times. Well tonight a lot of Christians are convinced that the apocalypse may be coming soon. Take a look at the Rapture Index on the World Wide Web. It assigns numerical values to wars, earthquakes and disasters. And tonight, it's at 156, which is in the "fasten your seat belt" category. So are we really at the end of the world? We asked faith and values correspondent Delia Gallagher to do some checking.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DELIA GALLAGHER, CNN FAITH AND VALUES CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They say the end of the world is coming.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As far as I can tell, we are at the very end and we need to prepare ourselves for that according to the world of God.

GALLAGHER: The Israeli Hezbollah conflict they say is a sign that the Bible's final chapter, the Book of Revelation is unfolding before our eyes.

One of the Bible's most widely debated books, Revelation is filled with vivid and frightening imagery: Satan, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, the mark of the beast. It all depicts a great world apocalyptic battle for Israel, Armageddon, that ushers in the return of Jesus Christ and the beginning of a thousand-year period of peace.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The sixth angel sounded and I heard a voice from the four...

GALLAGHER: At this pentecoastal church in Dallas, Pastor Craig Treadwell (ph) tells his congregation that their salvation is tied to events happening 6,000 miles away.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are we in World War III right now? It certainly looks like we are.

GALLAGHER: Events he says that were predicted 2,000 years ago.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Bible prophetized that two billion people will die. There is a massive nuclear holocaust just ahead.

GALLAGHER: Scary stuff coming from a popular local posture, but he's not alone. Well known reverend Jerry Falwell updated his Fallwell Confidential column last week to say "it is apparent, in light of the rebirth of the state of Israel, that the present day events in the holy land may very well serve as a prelude of forerunner to the future battle of Armageddon and the glorious return of Jesus Christ."

In recent times some Christians have looked for signs that the apocalypse is near. Some have even tried to carry out its prophecies, and over 62 million have bought these fictional books, the "Left Behind" series, describing the inevitability of the end.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Today we will read straight from the bible. GALLAGHER: And pastor Treadwill's radio show that he co-hosts with Pastor Ervin Baxter, the talk is of end time.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You've got one-third of mankind killed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You've got two billion dead, Israel will survive but will suffer a lot, and then finally relations between Israel and the international community will go south, the world community invades, Armageddon.

GALLAGHER: Treadwell and Baxter say we're in or near the final seven years leading up to Armageddon. They say just look to Revelation chapter 9 if you have doubts.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This war will emanate from the River Euphrates. Did you know most of the Euphrates river is in the nation of Iraq?

GALLAGHER: The pastor says there's a correlation between almost every image in the bible and current events.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The bible talks about tsunamis, it talks about the waves in the sea roaring. It talks about a dramatic increase in earthquakes.

THE REV. KEVIN BEAN, ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S CHURCH: There's a fiction being created here, like a Steven King horror movie.

GALLAGHER: Reverend Kevin Bean of St. Bartholomew's Church of New York City says Revelation is not meant to be read so literally and he says, it's irresponsible and dangerous to misinterpret the text.

BEAN: It's a part of our church, it's a part of our tradition, but we don't read it the way a lot of people do, which is to make that false correlation with present day events. That is a crock.

GALLAGHER: According to a Harris Interactive Poll of 1,000 people 59 percent say they believe the events described in Revelation will occur at some point in the future and 17 percent say that it will happen during their lifetime. So the question remains, how was Revelation meant to be read?

BEAN: Apocalyptic is about encouraging and consoling a people that are facing calamitous and catastrophic times. To say that, in spite of all of this, there is a God at work in this terrible world and a God that will vindicate.

GALLAGHER: And back at North City's Church in Dallas plans are being made.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Look to the book of Revelations as indicators for what's going to happen.

GALLAGHER: For what they believe may be the end of the world as we know it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GALLAGHER: And the question of what just is going to happen is hotly debated amongst Christians who have very different interpretations of this cryptic book of their scripture.

ZAHN: Delia, stand by. Because when we come back, we're going to bring in a panel of religious experts to debate just that, whether we covering the start of an even bigger story than we thought, is Armageddon really coming or is the literal interpretation a crock, as we just heard a priest in Delia's piece say? We're going to take a short break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAHN: You've just seen how some Christians are convinced that the latest explosive events in the Middle East fulfill a clear biblical prophecy, that Armageddon, the end of the world is on the way. Let's go to our top story panel tonight. Faith and values correspondent Delia Gallagher, who's report you just saw, Jason Christy, editor of "The Church Report," a monthly magazine for Christian clergy, and Bruce Filer, a writer and photographer, whose books include "Walking The Bible." All right, I'm going to steal the words of the priest we just heard from in your piece. Is this little translation of Revelation a crock?

JASON CHRISTY, EDITOR, "THE CHURCH REPORT": It scares me. We did a poll last week because there was a lot of chatter both through the phones, on TV, and online and what we came up with in one day, 160,000 viewers, 88 percent of my viewers on my website said no, we're not buying into this. It looks --

ZAHN: They may not be, but an awful lot of people are.

GALLAGHER: Well, and the question is what are they not buying into? Because there are those who say these particular events in the Middle East are not the forerunner of Armageddon, we are not seeing Armageddon now, but that Christians hold that Armageddon will at some point in the future happen is the question. Because this is part of their scripture, and it's something which needs to be interpreted in some way and many of them go for the literal interpretation as they go for the literal interpretation of the gospels on other things.

BRUCE FEILER, AUTHOR, "WALKING THE BIBLE": I think the larger question here, Paula, is who gets to speak for God, and you have this battle going on in the world today between the extremists and those who view the world as a different creation, as being a more moderate open issue, and I think that what's problematic about this view is not that people believe it, it's that it is an interpretation that we are headed for some conflict, some sort of ultimate end of time.

ZAHN: All right so how do Jews view this?

FEILER: I think with Jews, I think as a contrast to that do believe there's going to be a Messianic Age, but I think that Judaism is far less focused on an end that ultimate kind of end game, where God swoops down and has this fight with the devil, as they're focused on what we can do on this earth, and I think that that is, for those of us who love the bible, are troubled by this. Is that what the bible is is God and humans trying to work together to create a more righteous world. And I think that anything that gets the focus off this world and toward the idea, a hastening, we want this somehow, World War III, there's this idea, you mix it with politics, it's very dangerous.

ZAHN: I don't understand, the evangelical support for Israel and what that is rooted in and why we need to pay attention to it.

GALLAGHER: Well, that's part of this. It's wrapped up in it. Obviously if you feel that the second coming is going to happen in Israel, then you want to see that Israel is going to be a secure and safe place for that to come, and there are a number of sort of different things which they believe have to be fulfilled in order for that to happen.

CHRISTY: It's very scary though. I think back to the late 80s, '89 in fact, there was a movement in the Christian evangelical movement that said this is it, 1989 is going to be the end, and a lot of new Christians were brought in to the church and there was this tremendous feeling of rapture and then nothing happened, and there was a feeling of oh, I just sold out to the chicken little theology. And people had a real bad taste about that in their mouth.

FEILER: There is no literal interpretation of something that is not literal.

ZAHN: Give us context here, Bruce, because you're the guy that studies this. This is written in the first century A.D. at a time when Christians were ...

FEILER: Were small and vulnerable and felt that they were being persecuted by Rome. And think that there has been this big question of who is the persecutor. At times it was the Catholic Church, at times it was the Soviet Union. Recently it has been Islam. That's why it's catching hold today because there is this fear, particularly in this country, that Christianity is being persecuted today and this kind of plays into that, but, again, I think the problem is you take the lesson of the prophets.

My new experience has been retracing the prophets, and the lesson of the prophets is God's not going to take care of it, you are responsible, you redeem yourself, you make the world a better place and it's keeping the focus on you and this is taking the focus of what we can do to make the world better and saying it's all part of God's plan.

ZAHN: So I assume you have plans above and beyond the next seven years, Bruce?

(CROSSTALK)

FEILER: I'm not going to predict who's going to win the U.S. Open, or, you know, when the next hurricane is going to come.

ZAHN: Thank you, expert panel, always good to see you. Bruce Feiler, Jason Christy and Delia Gallagher. And you can see more of Delia's reporting on "AMERICAN MORNING" every weekday at 6:00 a.m.

They actually filled prime time with this. Not on CBN, but CNN. At least they did a little debunking of it. But the fact that the crazies get coverage at all shows where we are as a society.

As was pointed out in comments on the Israeli-Hizbollah cease-fire thread yesterday, there are a lot of people out there who are looking forward to Armageddon, the Rapture, whatever you want to call it, because they will be going home to Jesus. And, are those folks, then, really the ones you want in power?

So much of this irrational shared psychosis is being instituted in the halls of power in this country and around the world that I genuinely fear for the future of civilization -- not at some vague, abstract point down the line, but right now. The Middle East is a powderkeg right now. (Just love all the coverage of how the Middle East has been in turmoil for over two weeks, as if the ongoing war in Iraq hasn't been happening for almost three and a half years.)

Religion is supposed to be a good thing. But it gets increasingly hard for me to see that. And I don't want my life, the lives of my friends and family, the lives of my fellow citizens, the survival of my species, determined by a bunch of superstitious assholes who believe the delusional rantings of three-thousand-year-old goatherders are lining up like dominoes waiting to fall.

Unfortunately, that's exactly who's running the show.

Comments

Re: What I wonder about

[mannoftalent.livejournal.com]

Keep in mind that this is hardly the biggest conflict there's ever been in the middle east. Also, if you're referencing the historical location of Armaggedon the fields of Meggido. Hello, fighting isn't anywhere near that part of a very small country.