The day I first saw this movement, religious people who take our responsibility and duty to protect the world God gave us seriously, I literally almost cried. I can feel in my heart that we are supposed to take care of God's gift to us in the best manner we are capable of. The fact that the Catholic Church has been missing on this issue as well as a couple of others are the reason I do not consider myself to be a Catholic any more. I never lost my faith in God, just in man's instruments purporting to act for Him and in His name. This is the same reasoning that made me an independent voter instead of a Republican as I used to be.

To see young leaders like this stepping up and fulfilling our shared duty is a breath of fresh air. I support him and others like him and will not be shy about it. It is an issue I passionately believe in and always have, even before it was "popular". I just hope to one day be in a position to help people like this and help them fight for this shared belief.

Basically, what both the Republican and Evangelical leadership is saying is that you can't be part of their club unless we are willing to foul our air and water, kill off many of God's animal creations, lie and cheat to subvert the population into killing other races/religions, and confuse issues so that we do not do the right things and make bad choices for the benefit of the few. Oh, let's not forget shutting up, doing what we're told whether it is right or not, and send them our money because God doesn't feel we properly glorify His alleged preachers.

After reading the story of Jesus running the money lenders out of the temple, I cringe to think of what he would say with our current political and religious situation.

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"If its not just like me then it must be born of satan and headed straight for hell!"

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A few days ago Richard Dawkins spoke with Marty Nemko of SF's FM 91.7. During the interview he ruminated:

"I'm not an American so I must be a little careful here but I cannot help but feeling that any electoral system, any constitutional system, which is capable out of a population of 300 million - well, you'd think that somehow the best would rise to the top and you'd get the best possible President - how can an electoral system give rise to George W. Bush? What went wrong? For goodness sake do something about the electoral system that can give rise to this extraordinary phenomenon that such a low-grade, anti-intellectual, second-rate idiot can be elected to the most powerful nation on Earth."

I'm fairly that had he seen the video clip here, he would admit to having the explanation he was looking for.
~Rev El Mundo
Pastor, WVCSR

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In what reality do these idiots live in? Some of then seem well educated, yet they speak like morons. Does belief in corrupt, organized religions mean that reality doesn't exist? I don't get it. Back in the middle ages, thoughts like these were considered to be heresy. We are in serious trouble as a civilization.


Good night and good luck...

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Isn't the basic belief of End Times evangelicals supposed to be: it doesn't matter if we trash the Earth, because Jesus will descend on a cloud and carry all these pseudo-holy, hypocritical wastes of oxygen up to Heaven?

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Some Christians are finally realizing they have been manipulated by the greediest, most un-godly people on earth. About time.
The line in Genesis goes that God gave mankind "dominion" over the earth, which they have taken as an excuse to overpopulate, pollute, and lay waste. This ignores the Bible's teachings that "the earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof." The recurring theme is that man is an overseer, or as the Bible would say, a steward.
A steward manages another persons property; think of the story of Joseph, who became the steward of Potiphar, and later Pharoah. Joseph had all the authority of his employers, he wore a nice robe, and got his own chariot, but their wealth did not belong to him, he just managed their affairs for them.
Likewise, the Bible teaches Christians are stewards (managers and overseers) of the environment. If as they believe, Jesus return is imminent, they need to be found taking care of "the father's business," which includes environmental stewardship.

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First:

While it's a wonderful thing that there are those within the evangelical movement who want to save themselves from irrelevancy, those of us who are secular progressives (as opposed to some form of religious progressive) should not take too much heart from this change. This isn't necessarily a softening of a movement as much as it is younger folks getting politically savvy.

Second:

Those of us who are progressives should really not let the Right get away with the environment what they did on civil rights. Anyone with any sense knows that conservatives were vehemently opposed to civil rights as late as, say, 25 years ago. Now, we let them pretend that they were also on the bus, singing 'Freedom, freedom, freedom' but they weren't. So for those young progressives out there, don't forget that 25 years down the road, the conservatives were the ones who stood in the way of science on global warming. More to the point, don't let them off the hook for that opposition and pretend to have been the good guys all along.

Three:

Progressives should encourage the likes of Tony Perkins to do as many unscripted riffs on social issues as can be put on TV! The *more* the likes of Perkins talks, the more clear it becomes to more and more people that the entire *philosophy* this guy represents and shills for is over-the-top loony.

Cheers

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I believe in Jesus! I believe he is lord and savior, for me. I am a personal friend of his. He never built a church building, he pissed off the religious and political leaders of his day, his followers were socialists, and everyone gave their all for the betterment of all.

There is plenty to go around and the technology is only expensive because those controlling 60% of the world’s wealth (some say 1% control 80%) make it expensive.


They say we have to destroy to conquer. How about we cooperate to better our neighbors’ lives, and the world around us.

Isn't it ironic that we will recite the imprecatory Psalms of David to solicit our creator's help to destroy our "evil" enemies and then the universe's deliverance through premillenial theology to destroy earth (paradise) to go to heaven and heaven is right here? That is why whatever is bound or loosed here, is the same in heaven. (Same Place) Both the spiritual and physical world exist simultaneously like film overlaid on each other I laugh that we think we will "go to heaven", only to find out we recirculate through this life again, into the very world we helped destroy. Interesting isn't it.

The whole earth sinks and/or swims together. So let's talk about family values and the environment.

How about 1 week paid off when we marry. (Gay or otherwise)

6 moths paid off for a baby

Someone paid to help the new mother and/or father for the first three months.

Free child care or reduced rates

Free healthcare with free or reduced prescriptions

5 weeks paid vacation even for part time employees.

1 day paid off if you move houses or apartments

Paid sick leave, no matter how long a person is off. If you are sick, you are sick; you should have no other worries than recovery.

Environmental policies that reduce emissions and invest in free, renewable energy for all.
Profitability based on investing in renewable resources. Those that want to take their dollars and invest elsewhere is ok. GO! It is Americans who built America, not the rich, not the politicians, not the rock stars, actors, or sports figures, but all of us. We have all contributed and we need to recognize that we all deserve good lives, not just the rich. Let's not destroy the planet and solutions that do need to be rejected.

Here are just a few solutions of the real issues facing the church. I am pro-life and recognize the fact that each individual must make the choice concerning abortion. But to legally limit the influence of the whole community including the position that this is a human life and that other options may exist without condemnation if the person makes an informed decision to either have the baby or not, should be our goal. The good of the one person who must make the choice, which should be our goal. Yes and the awareness that this is a human life and the person most responsible and affected by this decision should be the one who carries the baby inside her.

Our idol, here in America is money and power. Dress it up anyway you want. We worship it in buildings with penises on top. We worship it in our casinos, our banks, our government; we worship it in "SUCCESS". We change the message to legitimize our own greed and then wonder how this will all work out. Yep, a revolution.

We need to take our country, our faith, our love for each other, our generosity that wants out and make it fair for all creatures including the polar bears and understand we must stop this insane love for oil and excess. I'm all for the rich having yachts after the homeless have the same healthcare they have, and the same leisure time.

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Your all a bunch of freaking hypocrates whos beleif in your fairytails has ruined life for sooooooooo many others we are losing count.
Ask any Native or better any Iraqi.

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Thanks to the wars for oil, more severe economic damage due to enronomics and keeping the RIGGED market intact, and more support of the worst polluters, "abortions" have gone up for the past 28 years. It's long past overdue to go GREEN.

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Hint: If you drive an SUV, you're giving more money to the GOP rightwing lunatics, rightwing religious zionists, and Al Quaida.

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The people we call "evangelicals" today are really fundamentalists - a bunch of religious fanatics who separated from the historic Protestant churches in the 1920s and started their own sects, with kooky names like the Baptist Bible Fellowship and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (the Southern Baptists were started about 80 years earlier in support of white supremacy). They left the Protestant churches because the old churches accepted the scientific truth of evolution and textual approaches to the Bible that allowed one to study the Bible as a historical document using literary motifs rather than a divine dictation from God.

Even since they split from the mainline churches, the fundamentalists have steadily eaten crow and backed off from their earlier stands. The so-called "inerrancy of Scripture," the belief that the Bible is dictated word-for-word by God and is free from all scientific and historical errors, has been steadily modified with rejoinders that the text uses literary motifs, figures of speech, grammatical conventions, etc., to the point where the evangelicals today preach a view on the Bible's inspiration that isn't much different than the ideas proposed by the "liberals" in the 1920s.

Evangelicals today are on the verge of accepting evolution as God's method of creation (we'll probably have to wait about 15 years before evolution is fully accepted without controversy in any given evangelical church) and the biological basis of at least some instances of homosexuality - not that they'll even say it's not a sin, but they'll give up on "reparative therapies" and have a more nuanced view of the subject.

As evangelicalism has a whole becomes more moderate, smaller and smaller numbers of true extremists retreat into churches that expressly label themselves "fundamentalists," like the "King James Only" Baptists, and associate with institutions like Bob Jones University or Pensacola Bible Institute, and become even more odd.

Theologically, there really isn't much to separate the younger generation of evangelicals from traditional Protestants like the American Baptists or the United Methodists. Each year, more and more books come out from younger evangelicals questioning beliefs like the inerrancy of Scripture or the automatic damnation of those who aren't Christians. Having been raised as an evangelical, I'm loathe to say that evangelicalism as a distinct movement was one big mistake; many in the mainline churches did become too namby-pamby and politically correct, naively embracing Marx and Freud and other ideas that didn't stand the test of time. The veneer of social respectability made them lax and spiritually apathetic. But it's become clear to many that the evangelicals were at least partially on teh wrong side of key issues - the truth of science, the nature of the Bible - that splintered Protestantism.

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There is only one part of the Bible I think has hit the mark -- the part about the AntiChrist.

Tony Perkins and his ilk are that Anti-Christ.

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in Mississippi, on Saturday nights we all got drunk and lynched us a nigger and on Sunday we went to church a praised the lord. Hallelujah!!!!! Back then lynching was a terrorist tool to keep the blacks, Italians, native Americans, and other undesirables in check, and the lynchings were carried out by good white god-a-fearing Christians. I am so goddamn sick of these christian assholes always looking for some else to blame for their failures.

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defend the actions of tony blair - bu$hco's lap dog?...can he defend the fact that fewer brits recycle than americans? sorry, but his country is just as bad as this one...so maybe he should clean his own house first...

also, have you noticed he has that same possessed look evangelicals do?

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I was raised Southern Baptist and raised on the NE coast, that being said, I haven't practiced for over 35 years. I took my 83 year old Mom to church Sunday before last, same church I attended since I was 6, she made me stay, she has Alzheimers and I take care of her most of the time and didn't want to rile her, there was never a mention from the Pastor we had suddenly over the years become Evangelicals. I guess I found out from a preceding poster, my Mother still is a Southern Baptist, we are not Evangelicals, if I told her by the time services were over she would not have remembered anyway.
I bit my tongue until it bled through that service, the Pastor was all sorts of gushing about a $2000 check we got!!!!(small church, lots 'o money)Then he continues from the Chaplains at GITMO!!!! He said Guantanamo Bay, as if they were on an Island vacation, I waited until I had him alone. I've known this guy for over 20 odd years, my Mother likes when we attend with her, since Dad passed, on Holidays, I never go at all anymore, now I know why, I asked "Pastor, why would you accept any money from GITMO?", this man has a Doctorate in Theology he is not an idiot, he says "Rhoda, What do you mean it's from the Chaplains", I said "Yes, the Military Chaplains that never stopped the Torture of innocent Detainees!", he said "Money is neither moral or immoral it is ammoral", I said "Perhaps but where it came from is!", I said "You are Military, I am Military, how dare you accept that check, and if this money is without an identifying morality WHY DID JESUS OVERTURN THOSE TABLES IN THE TEMPLE, HUH???He said "Anything can be made in to Propaganda", I yelled as I was walking, stomping away "S'POSE SO IF YOU ARE A bush MAN!" The balls, huh???

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Reference: "The Republican War on Science" by Chris
Mooney, 2005, Basic Books. It has the following URLs:
http://www.waronscience.com/home.php
http://www.chriscmooney.com/
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05268/576883.stm

See also:
"Undermining Science, suppression and distortion in the
Bush Administration" by Seth Shulman, 2006

"The Republican War on Science" by Chris Mooney says:

"Because Trofim Lysenko convinced Josef Stalin that
genetics is wrong, 12 million people died of starvation.
The coal companies convinced President George W. Bush
[and Senator Inohe] that global warming hasn't happened
and 12 hundred people died in hurricanes in 2005. For the
same reason, people died in the wildfires in Oklahoma."
12 hundred is less than 12 million, but GWB is still
comparable to Stalin. Both adopted anti-science policies
for ideological reasons and thereby murdered large numbers
of their own citizens.
George W. Bush favors a form of "democracy" called
Theocracy.
There is something that needs to be made explicit: Truth
is not determined by a vote of scientists. Scientists are not
authorities. Nature is the Only authority. There is only
one vote that counts, and Nature casts it. It isn't just "not
nice" to fool Mother Nature, it is impossible. Scientists
understand and believe this so innately that they never say
it, but other people may think that scientists wield power or
authority.
Reference: book: "Science and Immortality" by Charles B.
Paul 1980 University of California Press
The Eloges of the Paris Academy of Sciences (1699-1791)
page 99: "Science is not so much a natural as a moral
philosophy".
page 106: Nature isn't just the final authority, Nature is the
Only authority. When you try to disobey Nature [In
older language: "When you try to tell God how to run the
Universe".], the result is less subtle than a train wreck: The
rocket explodes on the launch pad. Oklahomans die in
wild fires when it should be winter. The Gulf coast suffers
the worst hurricane season ever. Tornado season extends
into January.
Book: "The Long Summer, How Climate Changed
Civilization" by Brian Fagan 2004 Basic Books
Summary: Small climate changes caused the fall of many
civilizations.

The Religious Right is also giving a war on Science, trying
to convince people that Evolution is wrong and trying to
prevent the teaching of Science in school. As we all know,
religion is caused by mental illness.

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Religion is caused by any one or more of about half a dozen mental illnesses.
The truth about religion can be found in these books:

"The Neuropsychological bases of god beliefs" Dr. Michael A. Persinger MD,
psychiatrist 1987 "Religious people are just like my temporal lobe patients"

"The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bi-Cameral Mind" Julian
Jaynes Professor, Harvard University 1976 "Religious people are just like
schizophrenic patients"

"The Psychiatric Interview in Clinical Practice" Roger A. MacKinnon, M.D.,
Robert Michels, M.D. W. B. Saunders Co. 1971 "Religiosity is a common
symptom [of] schizophrenic patients"

"The God delusion" by Richard Dawkins. "Religion is caused by a kind of
computer virus that infects the living computer, the human brain."

"The Science of Good and Evil" by Michael Shermer, 2004 "Morality and Ethics
are now in the jurisdiction of Science and greatly improved thereby."

Many books in the new science called "Sociobiology": Morals and ethics are
instinctive and they evolved.

"God: The Failed Hypothesis" by Victor Stenger Scientific proof that god does
not exist.

"The God Part of the Brain" by Matthew Alper 1996. "The USA is anomolusly
religious because many early founder groups were religiously insane and fleeing
prosecution in Europe. Religion is a genetic disorder."

"The Accidental Mind" by David J. Linden, 2007 Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press. Religion is caused by the extreme klugeyness of the "designed"
by evolution brain. In particular, the narrative creation system cannot be turned
off. It generates false narratives that are believed by the generating person. This is
seen in experiments done in the laboratory. This book has the best explanation of
resistance to evolution: "There has also been an assumption that if one accepts the
idea that life developed without divine intervention, it necessarily follows that all
aspects of religious thought must be rejected. Those who take this line of
argument to extremes argue that when religious thought is rejected moral and
social codes will degenerate and "the law of the jungle" will be all that is left. It is
imagined by religious fundamentalists that those who do not share their particular
religious faith are incapable of leading moral lives." These suppositions are not
true many times over. Linden later mentions that the creationists [intelligent
design advocates] are exactly 180 degrees wrong rather than just a little wrong.
Being exactly wrong, they are unable to unlearn their error. See Sociobiology or
Sciobio.

"Scientists Confront Intelligent Design and Creationism" edited by Petto &
Godfrey, 2007. The ID and creationist crowd are trying to do away with science.
They see science as a "godless religion." Science is a process, not a religion.

"Manufacturing Belief" by Lewis Wolpert
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/05/15/lewis_wolpert/

"The End of Faith" and "Letter to a Christian Nation" by Sam Harris

"Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon", by Daniel Dennett
Let's do scientific research on religion and find out what causes it.

"Origins of the Modern Mind" by Merlin Donald 1991 "So what did you expect
from a brain that is based on the Chimpanzee brain?

"Atheism, A Case Against God" by George Smith

"God is not Great; how religion poisons everything" by Christopher Hitchens, 2007

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As a sophomore undergraduate student in Physics, your homework in Probability
and Statistics class may include figuring out when the second coming would be
required, assuming that the bible was 100% true in the year zero. That is, when
would the bible be down to 50% true? The popular and professors' answer in
1965 was the year 500. The true answer: A friend of mine was born and raised in
Budapest, Hungary. As an adult, he came here and stayed. After 25 years, he
visited his home town of Budapest. He was unable to communicate with his high
school classmates because the Hungarian language had changed so much. The
correct answer is less than 25 years. The first gospel was not written down until
50 years after the alleged events and then in a different language. The people who
told the story were at about the same level of civilization as "wild Indians", I mean
Native Americans before Columbus got here. We have all played or seen played
the game called "Telephone" in which a story is passed down a line of re-tellers.
By the Sixth re-telling, the story has no resemblance to the original. The gospel
story had to have been re-told at least 6 times before it was mis-translated the first
time. [Note that whoever wrote it down the first time was free to write whatever
he wanted to. The storytellers were illiterate and unable to check his written text
by reading it. Besides that, he wrote in Greek rather than Aramaic.] Conclusion:
There is no truth anywhere in the bible, and there never was. There is no way to
know what "jesus" or "mohammed" or any other such character actually said or
did.

ALL of the jurisdictions that were formerly in the jurisdiction of religion have
been taken over by Science. There is no longer a need to debate the issue.
Religion is an unfortunate side effect of having evolved from a chimpanzee-like
animal in a very brief 6 or 7 million years. "God" will not save us from the
consequences of global warming or an asteroid impact or a tornado because there
is no such critter as "god.".] Ethics and morality are instinctive, not derived from
religion. Female instinct has greater force in morality than male instinct because
the female is in command of the sexual encounter. Look up "Sociobiology". The
origin of the Universe is the subject of Cosmology which is part of astronomy
which is part of the science of physics.
Religion is a SCAM. ANY religion, there are 10,000 to choose from at any one
time. People keep inventing new religions [for the benefit of the "prophet," of
course] and forgetting other religions. ALL preachers, priests, imams, rabbis,
iatolas, etc. belong in jail for "grand theft, bunko type".

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