Onward Christian soldiers

When I say it, I get a rush of protest proclaiming that not all Christians are like that. I know they aren’t, but we ignore the theocratic Right at our peril.

Prophetic Christians, Phillips writes, often shape their view of politics and the world around signs that charlatan biblical scholars have identified as predictors of the apocalypse—among them a war in Iraq, the Jewish settlement of the whole of biblical Israel, even the rise of terrorism. [Phillips] convincingly demonstrates that the Bush administration has calculatedly reached out to such believers and encouraged them to see the president’s policies as a response to premillennialist thought. He also suggests that the president and other members of his administration may actually believe these things themselves, that religious belief is the basis of policy, not just a tactic for selling it to the public.

I’m afraid the kooks and RaptureReady folks and Left Behind fans and Christian Reconstructionists and Dispensationalists and Bible Belt prudes are the face of American Christianity. Don’t complain to me: it’s the Christians who ought to be deeply, shamefully embarrassed about this…but as usual, I expect they’ll find it easier to complain about those damned godless people who dare to hold up a mirror.

Oh, and evangelicals might want to think about the fact that unbelief is growing faster than any religion (although I suspect the poll results likely reflect a shallow response to the bad rep of Christianity than any fundamental shift in philosophy).

CotG #36

There are freethinkers frolicking over at Daniel Morgan’s place.

If you’ve been wondering where the heck I’ve been, it’s been one of those days. I had to drive #2 Son to Minneapolis to catch his bus back to Madison—it’s the end of his spring break—and then I had to wrestle with that ugly bloatware called WebCT Vista to take care of stuff my students find important (grades, that kind of thing) for my class. I’m feeling surly and tired, but have no fear: I’ll bounce back soon.

It’s a beautiful day

I slept in this morning, got up, had a bowl of oatmeal and a glass of orange juice, and read about the probability that we’ll go to war with Iran.

I sat down in my easy chair and put my feet up and read that yesterday was the 38th anniversary of My Lai. As long as I’m looking at old atrocities, new atrocities are only a click away.

I sip some coffee while reading about yet more war drums in the distance, and my country’s security plan.

The document [“America’s National Security Strategy”], published yesterday, reasserts the right to pre-emptive strikes as a means of self-defence should the union deem itself liable to devastating attack by weapons of mass destruction. This reflects Washington’s view of Iran as a threat not just to Israel and Iraq, but also to America itself, a perception inadequately understood on this side of the Atlantic.

The skies are clear here and the sun is shining, I think I’ll put the computer away and go for a walk, do a little lab work and tidy up my office. No worries here…it’s just another quiet Saturday. We’re going to watch a play this evening.

Say, do you remember—I think it was only a few years ago—when we watched with horror and fascination as our military bombed Baghdad and our tanks rolled across the Iraq? We were assured our smart bombs would make this a clean war that would only help the Iraqi people, and our pundits crowed about our easy victory. I felt rage and pity, I was on the streets with a sign protesting, I wrote to my representatives and complained and cajoled and threatened. I howled in fury at the futile waste of lives and money, the jingoism, the injustice.

So today I’m going for a pleasant walk.

Does anyone care anymore?

Anyone?

This is how the monsters win, you know. They launch horror after horror, and as long as we have our electricity and orange juice and the quiet comforts of our homes, after a while we stop flinching, we just sit benumbed, we tell ourselves, “I’ll rouse myself for the next really big one,” and we remind ourselves that we couldn’t stop the last war, so how can we be expected to stop the next one? We tell ourselves that the democratic way to stop this ongoing nightmare is to elect better leaders at the next election (always the next, it rarely seems to be this one), and then we vote for soft, rotten representatives who, with rare exceptions, simply surrender to the insanity.

So I’m going for a walk.

I’m a monster, too.

The SF fanboy stirs again

More SF indulgence, excuse me: Gary Farber has been reading Heinlein’s rediscovered “first” novel (brief summary: it’s very bad), and Kevin Drum raises the question of correlation between early SF preferences and later political biases, with Heinlein inspiring conservatives and Asimov motivating liberals (Drum says, “Well, I liked ’em both, but I liked Heinlein more and I turned into a liberal.” I’m not touching that straight line.)

I disliked Heinlein’s stuff intensely. It was badly written, with a patronizing tone, and always smugly assumed that his simplistic opinions were absolutely true. Even his juveniles were irritating in that way, but those self-indulgent later doorstops with old men waited on by nubile vixens? Gah.

I also wasn’t a big fan of Asimov. He was OK, but those gimmicky stories didn’t do much for me.

My favorites began with Edgar Rice Burroughs and Jules Verne—I was very old school. As I began to branch out in grade school looking for new stuff, after gagging over Heinlein and being bored by Asimov, I really got into Ray Bradbury. Later I favored a collection of British authors—Brunner, Wyndham, Moorcock—and then Harlan Ellison, Fritz Leiber, anybody who could actually write, a talent that eluded the old guard. Nowadays I lean towards Banks and Mieville.

I don’t know what that says about how my political inclinations were shaped. I think the stronger correlation is with my utter apathy towards engineering, not my politics.

Rude and foolish Kansans

Kansas Citizens for Science has a troll who brought up a post of mine, and a reader asked for a clarification…so I made two short comments in reply. That prompted a comment here from someone named “Dave”.

Mr. Myers, at Kansas Citizens for Science we are fighting a tough battle to have the present school board replaced.

When you, and Robert Madison who invited you over (and who is an outspoken atheist) link your atheism to science, going beyond anything science can provide, you are playing in to the hands of our opponents.

The primaries here are coming up, and having atheists swarming our site will not, AT PRESENT, be helpful.

Your choice.

Shorter “Dave”: “Shut up, atheists.”

I guess Kansas is in an even more benighted state than I thought. This is a board for activists who want to promote good science teaching, and it’s infested with the likes of Salvador Cordova…yet the contributors they (if “Dave” is actually representative, and I am assured he is not) want to exclude are those who don’t buy into their religion.

He’s wrong.

Having atheists, who are sympathetic to their cause and perfectly willing to offer their expertise, contribute (uh, “swarming” is absurd hyperbole, I think everyone can see) to their site would be helpful, and I know there are freethinkers already working with them. Perhaps “Dave” would like to shoo them away, too? I think that more outspoken atheists are precisely what Kansas needs: rather than hiding them away or demonizing them or asking them to leave, they should be standing up and showing their neighbors that godless people are also decent human beings who may also like Kansas and want what’s best for the state and their children.

I’m afraid that a state that tolerates only good Baptist biologists is just as much a sinkhole of stupidity as one that tolerates only good Baptist anti-biologists. Oh, and I think a statewide organization dedicated to a goal of interest to all citizens that only included the godless would also be a damned dumb thing, too.