I was amused, in a dark sort of way, reading the usual Worldnut Daily drivel today. Here’s what Farrah’s linkbait de jure quoted in his piece Why Can’t Atheists be Real Americans? (Hint, because they’re atheists! Duh.)
(WND) — Pastor John Hagee, senior pastor of San Antonio’s Cornerstone Church, is making People for the America Way very angry with some comments about atheists. “This nation was not built for atheists or by atheists. It was built by Christian people who believed in the Word of God. To the atheists watching this telecast, if our belief in God offends you, move. There are planes leaving every hour on the hour, going every place on planet earth. Get on one, we don’t want you and we won’t miss you, I promise you.”
Of course there were many people who built America who weren’t sure about God at all. But to the larger point, why would anyone feel threatened or intimidated by Hagee’s statement? After all, like it or not, it’s mostly true.
Let’s try this: “This nation was not built for blacks or by blacks. It was built by white people who believed in the supremacy of white people. To the blacks watching this telecast, if our belief in white supremacy offends you, move. There are planes leaving every hour on the hour, going every place on planet earth. Get on one, we don’t want you and we won’t miss you, I promise you.”
How’s that strike you? Golly, that wouldn’t make anyone angry, would it? Nothing to fear, nothing to make anyone uncomfortable, right? And besides, like it or not, it’s mostly true.
As to Farrah’s main thesis, it’s been pointed out endlessly exactly how wrong he is both legally and historically. Another dissection here won’t do any good at all. He’s not writing in hope of convincing anyone, he’s leading a cheer for his pep squad. The same cheer sociopaths have used to rally — and I would say trick — the faithful into charging into certain death from the dawn of written history right through the Third Reich and on into Two World Trade Center. It’s an evil, tribal weakness exploited by natural and cultural selection taking many forms but always with one unifying modern characteristic: the firm, unshakable delusion usually cultured from birth that Farrah’s magical invisible sky wizard, or bin Laden’s sky wizard, or the Nazi sky wizard, etc., is head among all the invisible sky wizards, and if you die in service to it, you will not only be magically protected from death, you will live out an eternity in paradise.
What’s to fear? What could possibly go wrong with that schema in this modern nuclear age?
Didn’t the black people do the building – and sowing and picking and slaving – while the white folks oversaw? At leats mostly, generally and all that.
Also , um, what about the Native Americans? They built the country first didn’t they and weren’t exactly Christian were they?!
Or let’s try this fixed for Pastor Hagee version that’s a little closer to the truth :
(Too much bold?)
The Bad Astronomer, Phil Plait, wrote a great article here where he went through the US law versus Biblical Ten Commandmants comparison :
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/06/08/are-the-ten-commandments-really-the-basis-for-our-laws/
Showing that the US of A really isn’t a based on Christian law but is secular instead – and his first link from there
also does a great job of debunking the whole Christian nation and is well worth reading too.
Hope its okay that I’ve linked these here, apologies and please let me know if not.
Nice rewrite.
Yeah you could put anyone in there, Filapino, Chinese, etc., it doesn’t matter to racists and revisionsists that the Chinese helped build the ICR or that Filapinos helped sabotage the Imperial Japanese behind the lines during WW2, a good racist will find reasons why that doesn’t count, or never happened, and they’ll do the same with black slaves building America. If I were to channel my inner klan member I’d start with something like “Well, records show that most early slaves were actually white indentured servants who went on to earn their freedom while building America unlike the blakc slaves which came later …” And then go on lying from there. It’s not hard to convince people who want to believe …
What I’d like to say to Hagee, given the chance, is this:
“No, sir, it isn’t your belief in god that offends me. As silly as it seems to me, that is your choice, and you are free to live your life by whatever ridiculous dogma you choose. The thing that does offend me is this- that you don’t want to allow that same choice to others. You want to kill them, imprison them, or make them get the hell out, if they happen not to believe what you do, or live by the principles your religion defines for you. And your religion, you think, empowers this (“christian nation”). So it isn’t your belief that offends me, it’s the use you make of it.”
BTW- this whole “[i]t was built by Christian people who believed in the Word of God” strikes me as the same justification for the “christian nation” meme as creationists using scientists who happened to be christian justifying the “bible is the foundation of science” nonsense (I had a bit of a debate going with a guy who trotted out a long gishy list of scientists who were christian in defense of this idiotic idea). Science isn’t done on christian principles just because it happens to be done by christians; and our government isn’t run on christian principles just because some of the founders happened to be so.
I, too, am not offended by Christians. I am, however, offended by Christian bigots toxifying the public sphere against the diversity of conscience our forefathers sought to protect in the founding documents of this country.
There’s also the little matter that to many of the people who push the “Christian nation” thing that in their minds, “Christian” is a synonym for “good”. They genuinely can’t see why anyone would oppose the forces of “good”.
Maybe Hagee has never heard of Roger Williams or John Clarke. Or maybe he’s never heard of (or is quite possibly infuriated to blindness by the Catholicism of) Lord Baltimore, responsible for the first law of religious tolerance (albeit ashamedly only for other minority Christian sects.)
His oversimplification of American history is nye treasonous in its inaccuracy and slanders our founders, the real ones, not the idealised religiously intolerant versions used to prop up Hagee’s own intolerance. Like God being coopted to support a position not found in the heart of faith, but in the hearts of men, Hagee uses the founders in the same manner. And if coopting God or Jesus is a blasphemy and is treason against Heaven, then Hagee should be deported to Guantanamo.
I wonder what his response would be to the fact that the Christians who supposedly built America before, oh say 1830, would never have heard of the Rapture nonsense he and his fellow US conservative Christians tend to believe in, and likely would have considered it a weird heresy if they did.
If Hagee preaches “love thy neighbour” too often, church attendances dwindle and the collection suffers. So every now and then he whacks in an “exile the atheists” hate sermon.
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The resultant publicity excites the flock and they all turn up at the next service – and Hagee scores a huge collection.
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When he says “I love my people” he really means “I love how much money these ratbags give me every week”.
I’m betting he’d end up missing >95% of the scientists before they’d miss him.