Hagee-Pagee

See, this is what comes of me being a sad example of free thought. John Hagee never was my kind of man of God. He's one of those Christian fundamentalists with a creepy obsession with Israel that isn't necessarily for the good of Israel or Jews.

But when he says the Holocaust and Hitler were done according to God's will, isn't that the necessary consequence of having faith in the existence of an omnipotent and omnicient divine being? Isn't grappling with that situation incumbent on all Christians, all monotheists, not just a portly TV preacher from Texas?

It's a tough row to hoe and I don't envy them. I confess I find it easier to believe I live in a world without an omniscient and omnipresent god than to try to reconcile the 20th century (or the life cycle of certain wasps) with the assurance that a just and loving god is in charge everywhere and foresaw all this from the first flare of creation and not a sparrow falleth and all that.

As for the rest of it, he's trying to make sense of it using only the book he's been given. Which, again, a lot of people do about a lot of things. Creationists do it. I think they're nuts, but that's just me. The book is the central difficulty of Christianity, to an outsider like me, and it seems to be the foundation and consolation of it to many believers.

Anti-Science Ecumenism

[Posted by reader_iam]

Maybe fundamentalist Christians and conservative Muslims could join forces to battle the "deceit" of the theory of evolution. Talk about unholy alliances!

It is the voice of Adnan Oktar of Turkey, who, under the name Harun Yahya, has produced numerous books, videos and DVDs on science and faith, in particular what he calls the “deceit” inherent in the theory of evolution. One of his books, “Atlas of Creation,” is turning up, unsolicited, in mailboxes of scientists around the country and members of Congress, and at science museums in places like Queens and Bemidji, Minn.

At 11 x 17 inches and 12 pounds, with a bright red cover and almost 800 glossy pages, most of them lavishly illustrated, “Atlas of Creation” is probably the largest and most beautiful creationist challenge yet to Darwin’s theory, which Mr. Yahya calls a feeble and perverted ideology contradicted by the Koran.

In bowing to Scripture, Mr. Yahya resembles some fundamentalist creationists in the United States. But he is not among those who assert that Earth is only a few thousand years old. The principal argument of “Atlas of Creation,” advanced in page after page of stunning photographs of fossil plants, insects and animals, is that creatures living today are just like creatures that lived in the fossil past. Ergo, Mr. Yahya writes, evolution must be impossible, illusory, a lie, a deception or “a theory in crisis.”
...
In the book and on his Web site (www.harunyahya.com), Mr. Yahya says he was born in Ankara in 1956, and grew up and was educated in Turkey. He says he seeks to unmask what the book calls “the imposture of evolutionists” and the links between their scientific views and modern evils like fascism, communism and terrorism. He says he hopes to encourage readers “to open their minds and hearts and guide them to become more devoted servants of God.”

Yeah. OK. Right. Just keep it the hell out of our schools.

And I, too, would love to know where the money trail leads. Wouldn't you?