Christianity: A Religion of Death and Mass Destruction

Nice definition of the 26 per centers, Adam!  Some are numbskulls and others are Rapturists.  However, to state "These end-timers have great influence over the U.S. government's foreign policy" may overstate the impact of the Rapturists on foreign policy.

Consider this alternative:

Individuals will not work against their perceived personal interests over time. Therefore the productivity of a team is directly correlated with the extent to which the goals of the group align with the self-interests of the team members. This is known as goal congruence.

Ergo,

[(This one's for Poppy)+(PNAC Bullyism)+(All that OIL)]+(The Rapture) = INVADE IRAQ

(Bush Administration's Self Interests)+(Armageddonite's Self Interests) = Goal Congruence!

Q.E.D.

Since the goal is to be all powerful, who will take the place of the scapegoat when all of the people they hate now are gone.  Certianly one knows he can't have two masters.  Somehow, the "end timers"shield themselves in the viel of "righteousness, patriotism, and democracy, and we blinded by the light follow like sheep, against our best interests to our own demise.

Understand that the "end timer's" goal is to "reign (have dominion) over the earth" with their sick utopias, whether it be 72 virgins, or with Jesus, or whatever else these evil ones are wanting to go.  God help those who support this now.  Unfortuantly, to them who support, condone, or participate in the evil of elimination now, the death of the scapegoat will seem merciful compaired to the terror they know will come upon them, simply because they have gloried in the suffering of another, and know the evil that is going to visit them.

I guess there is justice.

Sorry June,

I dont see any goal congruence.

Anything bad that Bu$h causes to happen is good for Armageddonites:

Wars, especially pre-emptive wars that could spawn additional wars.
Millions dead, dying, suffering
Massive debt and the potential economic collapse of America and perhaps the world....mass suffering that would follow
Missplaced nukes that could either be dropped on Infidels or 'acquired' by Infidels to mass murder.
Destruction of the Constitution
One World Superpower
Corporate control
Persecution of "Israel', real or percieved
The general rise of EVIL, anger, hatred and fear...

All signature Bu$h accomplishments and goals and signs that God is returning.....

The ONLY thing that could possibly seperate the Armageddonistas from Bu$hCo would be for Bu$h to become a "blessed' peacemaker....a sure sign of the Anti-Christ.

The most powerful jihadists in the world, belong to Bu$h's base....

Zanubiyah says:  Since the goal is to be all powerful, who will take the place of the scapegoat when all of the people they hate now are gone. 

The ultimate enemy of a tyrant is his own people....

The sickest part is, that supporters like bAA actually have the delusional beliefs that with their 'Sound-Bite' religiosity from the Bible Buffet, and bumper sticker mentality that somehow GOD will reward them and greedy hatemongering bastards while torturing good people, becuase bAA read or said some "magic" words in part of Book and the good people did not.

It is by choice that these sick twisted bastards yearn for the torture and mass murdering of people that they do not know, but fear so that they can be 'saved' from themselves.  And this 'god' they worship is not even powerful enough to do the job, 'god' needs 'them' to fullfill this religious genocide.  A GOD powerful enough to create, time, the universe and everything in it, needs petty ignorant people like bAA to kill off most of his creation....

You know you have created GOD in your own image, when he hates the same people that you do......

Adam,

I am sure that AA is not like you say he is.  He is not evil, or a bad person.  Really, I am not sure he is being misguided.  I am sure he is a good man.  To me, his strong beliefs are manifested by his words, and sometimes those words seem harsh.  However, they are only words.

I think that you have come to a fien conclusion though, not about AA, but about religion, not just Christianity, but all others as well.  When a person says that he worships an "omnipotant, eternal, and perfect being", and fears enough to give over his rights and privacy to a few man who say they will protect them from other men to me seem to be a lack of faith.  Why would an omnipotnat being need men, and tanks and bombers and guns to bring evil to it's end?  Why would the death of so many innocents, and destruction of so many ways of life be neccessary to bring about freedom and peace?  And who gets to say what righteousness is, or virtue?

Perhaps you hit on the answer.  When we worship icons, institutions and books over and above the unifier (the creator being) we have to fight.  Such things are not eternal, and are subject to corruption.  In other words, we are not protecting the faith in God, we are protecting the institution, the book, or the icon.  We see campaigns of putting God in courthouses by placing a slab of stone with the 10 commandments on them.  God is not a slab of stone, and the words mean squat unless they are manifested in the lives of the reader.

But of course, living as an examplar of the faith we claim is harder than pointing out the board in our neighbour's eye, especially in the lumberyard of the other religion.

Zanubiyah,

I beg to differ with you, people like bAA ARE EVIL....they are supporting DEATH and DESTRUCTION based on LIES....in light of all the facts and the profession of LOVE and LIFE in their 'religion'
Their FAITH in TORTURE, mass MURDER and HATE is an EVIL FAITH.

EVIL does exist, and IMHO, exists only in ignorance and fear.

On the subject of GOD, we appear to be in complete agreement.

The whole Christian story about Satan and his Hell is all about seperation from GOD, as you speak of.
Worshipping Bu$h, or money or power or fear all seperate people from each other, leaving them easy pickings for EVIL.
DECEPTION is the only tool of Satan, and its goal is to seperate people from GOD.
You can see how DECEPTION has rallied hatred for Muslims, just as Hitler's actions rallied hatred against Jews.  

DECEPTION allows people like bAA to worship Darby  and Scoffields's interpretation of the Bible instead of Jesus's.  It allows for 'Sound-bite' believers to take bumer-sticker quotes from the 'bible' to spread they own hatred and fears, while entirely ignoring the actual life of Jesus, their profit.

Adam

We all have the capacity to be good and evil.  I (for example) can be a female Usama bin Laden, and truely, at times in my life I may have been, supporting (at least in my mind) every evil and ugly that I could think of to destroy whole peoples, men, women, children, thier animals and crops, and wipe them off the face of this earth.  As you and I hopefully know the first victim of hatred is the hater.  I learned that.  In those days, to truely destroy evil, I would have had to step to the frist of the line to my own slaughter.  By the was adam...I can't compair myself to a person like Mother Teresa because I have never been that good.  I probably have the capacity though, but can't erase my past that much to reach that potencial.  In other words...I never forget, and never fully forgive, and have chosen simply not to retaliate.

I wish it was easy to seperate good and evil by seperating good people from bad.  However, again, we are both.  The thing is being religious can help bring out good in people by putting them together with other people,  causes and resourses to help others.  To me, Islam is less about me (that is probably a good thing) and more about diciplining myself to live amonst people who are not like me.  You might say that our mortal life is like school, the textbook being the Holy words we choose to follow, the teacher being the prophet, the Earth being our homework and our conscinece being our grader.  That is the way I see religion.  Also, religion is seperate from a belief in God.  Some of our advanced students, who have sharpened their skills so well that they need not a textbook or a teacher have learned this already. 

We should stop seeking to put names and faces to the ideology of evil.  This is the diversion we use.  We focus on fearing the person so much (for example Usama bin Laden) that we put our energies into destroying the individual instead of what made him the way he is.  As you know, when we take out a face of evil, those who follow think of him as an examplar of virtue...he died for his cause.  As you can see adam, we use the face of evil to instill fear.  To the fighter for freedom, the face should be moot, as the cause is not to destroy, but to liberate. 

My belief is we should undermine evil at its source by exposing it to the light of reason.  We need to ask logical, common sense questions to cut through the propaganda, and instead of riticuling the follower of ideology, we should ask him to justify his beleifs in his own words.  It is up to us to focus ourselves on the mission, and not to fall into the traps they set for us.  Diversion, division, name calling and avoiding the hard questions make the freedom fighter just like the oppressor.  When there is no difference between the tactics, then all is lost.  You have become the oppressor. 

A fighter for freedom must always be ready for self reflection, and constant reckoning to the standard of his mission. lest he loose his way, and become his own enemy.  I look at this as war, not against people, but against ideology.  I think the people what to be free of the bonds of unity by uniformity.

At the school I teach, the High School senior class picks a theme each year.  Last year, the students picked one that states your belief quite nicely ( "EVIL does exist, and IMHO, exists only in ignorance and fear.")

They chose..."Knowledge is the arsenal of freedom"

Interesting comment, Zanubiyah!

But - I think you confuse two issues here that need clarification.  First, evil is in the eye of the beholder.  Second, is the role of faith versus experience in reaching our own, personal notions of what constitutes evil.

"My belief is we should undermine evil at its source by exposing it to the light of reason.  We need to ask logical, common sense questions to cut through the propaganda... and we should ask him to justify his beleifs in his own words."

Expose evil to the light of REASON?  C'mon Zan - FAITH fills a vacuum that REASON cannot!

I would suggest that your approach works for experientially-based notions of evil but what if the accused evil-doer justifies his beliefs and actions as "Ah, it is written!" 

Whether it's Osama, Auda Abu Tayi, Pat Robertson or the Archbishop of Canterbury, the dialogue that pits FAITH against REASON, as you suggest, would be about as fruitful as the Scripture Wars here at VoA.

June posts...

"

Expose evil to the light of REASON?  C'mon Zan - FAITH fills a vacuum that REASON cannot!

I would suggest that your approach works for experientially-based notions of evil but what if the accused evil-doer justifies his beliefs and actions as "Ah, it is written!" 

I am going to say for this record that I do not seperate myself from my faith at "convenient" times.  Everything I am, a woman, a wife, mother, American, foriegner,  a Muslimah...and alot of other things is is how I see the world, and expressed in what I say and do, and write.  I personally see no conflict between a person of faith and a person of reason. 

To me, yes there is a creator being in which I can't explain.  I have faith (since I have no proof or disproof)  that that being exists, and pretty much act as if it does.  My beleif in the Creator is my commonality to you, even though I do not know you personally.  My belief says that we come from the same origins,   we are here because the creator being gave us both the right to exist, and we must co exist in order to survive.  The being gave us both the tools for us not to fall into sheepdom.  They are, the ability to reason, the ability to manipulate the enviornment, the ability to make choices and to know and understand the consequenses of our acts even before we commit them, and what some faiths dismiss ...the will to resist not just temptation to do evil (in their view of evil) , but to also resist oppression and surrender of those abilities either to ideology or another person or institution.  I strongly support and defend that last part.  I defend it for myself, and defend it for you also, simply because it is in my best interests to keep the tyrants under control.

Though I do practice Islam, faith to me has another meaning other than simply beliving in something I do not understand.  Faith really is only the first time someone trys something new.  Faith is (and should be)  gradually replaced by a "series of confidences" that makes one act as if a percived outcome will occur.  It drives our perception of the world into what is customary and usual, and we mold our social behavior to that perception.  There are things in which the social fabric of our society hinges...especially American society.  If my faith in justice (for example) is tarnished, then I will not seek it in a civilized manner.  This is where some fail in their faith...to replace it with rational thoughts.