RE: MD quality religion (Christianity)

From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Wed May 12 2004 - 02:44:39 BST

  • Next message: David Morey: "Re: MD quality religion (Christianity)"

    Wim and all:

    59% of Americans believe in a literal interpretation of the book of
    Revelation. That stat has a nice way of quantifying the problem. Imagine it.
    You live in a country that spends more on the military than the rest of the
    world combined. And in that over-armed nation a MINORITY of the people DON'T
    believe events in Jerusalem will inevitable lead to the end of the world.
    And just as Islamic fundamentalist begin their war in earnest, that same
    nation is being led by a President who frames foreign policy issues in terms
    of good and evil and identifies his own aggressive military policies with
    the divine will. If that isn't a recipie for disaster, I can't imagine what
    is.

    Welcome to my nightmare,
    dmb

    -----Original Message-----
    From: Wim Nusselder [mailto:wim.nusselder@antenna.nl]
    Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 2004 3:17 PM
    To: moq_discuss@moq.org
    Subject: Re: MD quality religion (Christianity)

    Dear all (especially Americans),

    Back from holiday (and catching up with what you wrote in my absence) I was
    quite shocked to read in my newspaper (de Volkskrant) today that 59% of the
    Americans (cf. 2,5% of the Dutch) believe that the bible book of Revelations
    is literally true (i.e. reliably predicts the -literal- 'being taken up into
    Heaven' of faithful Christians preceded and followed by all kinds of
    disasters associated with Israel, 'Babylon', a 'resurrected Roman empire'
    etc.)... The article didn't state a source for this statistic. Is it true in
    your experience?
    That it is 'dangerous to let one's life be motivated by non-rational belief
    systems' (ascribed 3 May 2004 20:46:49 -0700 by Mark H. to Noam Chomsky)
    then gets a whole new meaning for me when it is endorsed by Americans
    (supposedly from the other 41%)... If such ideas (implying the welcoming of
    those disasters) have considerable influence on the foreign policy of the
    USA (as the article stated), to what extent can it be a force for Good in
    the world then???

    Needless to say that I have something quite different in mind when I am
    writing about religion in general and Christianity in particular (and so did
    Sam, I'm sure).

    With friendly greetings,

    Wim

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