Let’s all argue about who’s not a Christian

It is so common, so predictable that whenever the silliness or insanity of one pastor or another is discovered (surprise!), some defender-of-the-Faith will declare that this person and his followers are not really Christians. I’ve heard fervent Muslims and Jews say the same thing about their co-religionists and the claim in Islam is frequently used as an excuse for murder.

 

It strikes me that one cannot say that Parsely and Haggee are not Christians. Not any more than one can say that Clinton or Bush or Obama are not Americans just because we don’t agree with them.

 

Christians would LIKE to believe that following Christ is a cure for stupidity, venality, lust, greed and bad hair. Since following Jesus makes you a good person, if you’re an obvious tool, then you can’t be a Christian. They cannot concede that some Christians are simply stupid, evil, barbaric assholes because that would mean the magic doesn’t work. That would mean that you can’t buy personal transformation. Jenny Craig won’t make us thin, Yale won’t make us smart, Chanel won’t make us pretty, an SUV won’t give us a big dick and Jesus doesn’t make us better: We’ve still got to do the work ourselves. 

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Shameless, or Clueless?

Ben Stein has now invoked the Holocaust, saying that it was science and scientists that dragged millions of jews into Nazi extermination camps in WW2.

“When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. [PZ] Myers, talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed.… Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.”

 

“God is With Us” was the slogan emblazoned above the swastikas on the belt buckles of the Nazis that led Ben Stein’s relatives to their deaths. It was pseudo-science they used to cloak centuries of institutionalized religious hatred and their ideology of racial superiority beneath a veneer of card-board legitimacy. In opposition to reason, decency and science, the Nazi’s employed quackery, intolerance, defamation and religious fanaticism. These very tools are being used enthusiastically by Ben Stein and the Creationist movement and have produced a similar result: Dogma slathered with fable. 

We’ve been pummeled by images of 9/11 for the past seven years, by the very people who’s dereliction made the attack possible in the first place, and the tactic has worked very well. In a contemptible homage Stein is now exploiting the holocaust and violating the memory of it’s victims. 

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