One last weekend video from Hell: God hates America

That still frame of the nose, mouth and spoon is a shot from an old Army instructional video about the atom bomb. . . You can find it in the Strangelove-esque compilation film The Atomic Cafe (1982); it's the same one where you can see soldiers marching directly towards a mushroom cloud. It might also be in the Internet Archive's collection of A-bomb clips.

Well, there was once amusing spot: the woman wearing the red t-shirt emblazoned with the Coca-Cola logo. One hand held a "God is your enemy" sign; the other a "God hates America" sign. Somehow the juxtaposition of those signs with the corporate logo of the quintessential American beverage struck me as funny. Seriously, though, the Westboro volk, although they disgust me, are on to something. The god(s) of the OT (notice the speaker only quotes the OT?) is NOT a god of love. He/they is vicious and vindictive. The Westboro Volk have picked up on that and are trying in their own sick way to follow the dictates of that primitive god(s). And people wonder why I reject the notion of god(s)! Given his/their alleged track record over the years, I don't see how I could do otherwise.

One of the best-known philosophical arguments against the existence of God is the "argument from evil", which says that there is too much evil in the world for it to have been created and run by an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God. That argument will not work on the folks from the Westboro Baptist Church.

notice the speaker only quotes the OT?

Without wanting to watch that tosh again, I'm pretty sure he quoted Luke as well at one point.

Not that that really makes much difference. It's always been obvious that the loopy fundamentalists take far more notice of the OT than the NT. The NT provides some things that even I (as an unbeliever) can identify with, but the OT is so off the wall (for the modern world), I don't know where to begin.

It's all more anecdotal evidence that the Pharisees of 'biblical' times co-opted a populist peacenik preacher for their message of hate and unquestioning servitude.

And we are expected to worship this vicious creature out of what, cowardice?

Depressed? Me, too. It's not that such thinking exists in our country. It's that, as far as I can tell, it's on the rise. And the sense that they are a subset of the even larger and faster-growing group that rejects all forms of fact in order to maintain their beliefs. Funny: blogging, I guess, implies at some level a belief that it's possible to change things. Yet being depressed over such messages suggests a realization that it's in fact not possible. Blog on. At least there'll be a record in the ashes. Now I'm really depressed.

The only observation I can make is that if God didn't hate America why did he sick that lot on it?

As a resident of an almost totally secular country (New Zealand) you have my sympathy, and wish you all the best. Remember its better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.

Anyone else notice the "Thank God for Katrina" sign? It reminds me of the sort of catastophism espoused by the lunatic fringe of the environmentalist movement. Not only is this type of thinking growing, it comes from both sides of the political spectrum. They're burning reason's candle at both ends.

I am an atheist, and someone who considers religion a mental malfunction that, hopefully, we are slowly growing out of, but the comments I've read here bother me greatly.

If a Christian blogger wrote an article about Larry Darby, the atheist Holocaust Denier who ran for Alabama Attorney general, and used his positions to demonstrate 'what atheists are really like,' there isn't one of us who would not criticize them as being stupid and bigoted.

How would that differ from the comments here? The Westboro Church consists, for the most part, of members of ONE FAMILY -- and despite the fact they have been around for well over a decade, they haven't grown. They have been condemned universally by even the most radical Christians. The entire membership not only is smaller than the regular congregation of an MCC Service (the theologically conservative church, founded by a student of Billy Graham, that is also the original "gay church.'), it is probably smaller than the number of people who view Elian Gonzalez as a "manifestation of the Diety" (http://www.religioustolerance.org/elian.htm).

Even if these people actually believe what they are saying -- and there is a persistent rumor they they are a gigantic scam, that they make deliberately offensive statements, hoping that somone will attack them physically, and support themselves by suing those people -- they are such an aberrant minority even among extreme Christians that the comments I see here, generalizing their position to attack Christianity or the 'sacred-texts,' is stupidity and bigotry that is not worthy of the people who have comented here.

(On the other hand, if you want to take one Dominionists, Tim LeHaye, or the platform of the Texas Republican Party -- which declares the US a "Christian Nation -- pass some of those rocks over here. I want to get my pitching arm back in shape.)

take one = take on
sorry, when the temperature passes 87 the brain and typing skills melt.

These guys almost make me wish there was a God, so that Phelps and his flunkies could meet up with Divine Judgment. Instead they just get to be worm food. Not good enough.

Even if they're talking about the New Testament God (is that like New Coke TM?) I can see how S/he would be a bit put out with America, even having been rebranded "God is Love."

I mean, you start a religion based on things like love, the Golden Rule, turning the other cheek, going the extra mile, and you see what America is up to while claiming to be a Christian nation (parts of it making the claim anyway)... If I were God, I'd be pissed.

Prup is right, this is a small self-selected sample of Christians which any statistician will tell you is of little inferential value.

As I said earlier what worries me is that this attitude seems to be leaking out of the rabid right and into the rabid left, both of which seem to be getting more rabid in the US. Critical thinking seems to be missing from public debate only uncritcal accpetace or uncritcal rejection of current policy.

I wish you all well with fixing this. I'm glad its not my responsibility.

Bible stories show many examples showing actions and emotions of "the God" as they sometimes call Allah in Pakistan. The stories about "the God" are numerous as to how he felt towards his chosen ones, the Israelites, who were formerly the sons of Jacob. The bible is a great source of knowledge of WWGD (what would God do under certain circumstances). A lot of these original Israelite people ended up settled in a real cool city, Jerusalem. God also liked them a lot of the time. Solomon's rule was the greatest government which has ever existed to date on God's green earth. That government, by the way, is a foreshadowing of the islamic ummah to be extant world wide in the not-too-distant future.

Some examples of Israelite disobedience told about in the Bible are such as the time God allowed or directed (I forget which) them to be taken captive for 70 years for some type of disobedience; and there is the account of the time 36,000 of them were annihilated for illegal sexual intercourse with temple prostitutes. Tsk, tsk, tsk.

Now the original sons of Jacob are scattered, just as they were warned (Torah Lev 28) would happen in case of disobedience. All their proof of geneology linking them to Jacob has now been lost as it was burned up with the temple when the Romans pushed down the temple around them and burned it, just like Jesus said would happen. they sure mocked him when he said that, didn't they, those chosen ones. God gave them multiple passes for disobedience as a race of chosen people but of course they finally lost everything after doing what Mel Gibson depicted that they did to Jesus. How do they expect the Great God to put up with something like that, no matter how merciful he is? Bad move, Isreal. Now the only thing left of them is that abortion of a state "Israel" which is actually only an impostor (see rev. 2:9, 3:9) pretending to be the non-existent fleshly israelites who got scattered. This state now is filled with imposter ashkenazi asians making a valiant try to convince people they are actual israelite semites but in actual fact these "israelites" do the work of their father Shaitan der Teufel! No true chosen ones of God would ever do the despicable things that they do every day towards others. Don't they know that God loves these people they are oppressing and killing? We can identify whether they are devils or God's chosen ones by their conduct, Jesus teaches us. Just this week these imposters have gone wild again. They have torn up Beruit Lebanon again with American made weapons! With this type of conduct, their subterfuge as "chosen ones" will not cover them over and hide them for very much longer. The blood they shed this time will cause the jigg to be up for them, but unfortunately, by that time, those nations aiding and abetting the synagogue of satan will pay the same price as they do. Wake up America. These people who you always support right or wrong because you think they are the chosen ones of God (WAKE UP!)and who you are supplying WMDs to right now are aligned with Satan, not God! A fine mess you have gotten us in to!

It might already be too late for you America. You have zealously bought their lie of being "Jews" hook, line and sinker. Americans! Demand that the USA change course, or dissasociate now from the USA! You don't want to be a fellow sufferer with it do you, a sharer of the severe punishments richly deserved by "Israel" do you?

Allah Haffiz
Hamid

DUDES: urban dictionary fails or refuses to publish this, so fuckum

Bill Gates
A shrewd businessman who was smart enough to jump on the gravy train when IBM decided to start producing personal computers. Gates was able to bind IBM to an operating system which he did not even own at the time he was first dealing with IBM, and because of the international clout of IBM, everyone started using the IBM "AT" (Advanced Technology) machines and so pretty soon the IBM operating system began to be the world standard.
At this point, the world benefitted because prior to IBM, there were many different operating systems, but Bill Gates was not satisfied to be known as the unifier of operating systems and instead he greedily attempted to make sure that computer programs would only run, or would run best on his own "operating system" which has "secret code" which can easily disable programs produced by others.
Bill Gates' company was finally sued for monopolistic practices by the USA, and in the first lawsuit Microsoft agreed that the definition of an operating system is the system in the computer which connects the motherboard chip of the computer to the peripherals of the computer, such as the keyboard, monitor, drives, etc. so that the main board and the peripherals are interconnected as of course they must be.
Gates consented to the definition of an "operating system" in the decree but then illegally was able to contemptuously extend the "operating system" to include other things such as Web Browsers and other desktop programs such as "Office" so that he gained even more control over the desktop and the Web Browsers, which he had not at first recognized as being potentially a big market. By contemptuously but de facto extending the definition of the operating system in this manner he was able to extend his control over the pc even more. In this illegal way he was also able to also profit from programs produced by his own company which would only run on his extended system with its secret code. His criminal extension of his monopoly into the internet and the desktop is not fooling the European powers who have ordered Gates to produce a basic, truly defined operating system upon which any other computer may run without his interference.
Gates pretends in a showy way to be a philanthropist but he only gives about .01% of his obscene wealth to liberal charities, while in truth his criminal greed has kept computing power out of the hands of the common man because his chicanery has led him to expect and receive a big payment out of every single pc sold, so that if he keeps getting his way, none of the world's common men and women will ever be able to afford a pc of their own. His greed and avariciousness, because of these illegal, monopolistic and lawless practices, is beyond compare. That he is up to his same old tricks is shown by how he has just recently used his expanded system to keep the company Google from running its universally respected search engine on his latest system so that users can only use his micromonolopy search engine on his system.What a surprise!
The USA should begin condemnation actions against his company so that computing power can truly be released to all the people. In the condemnation trial, we would hope the jury would give him and his shareholders ZERO RECOVERY because of the fact that the current position the company is in was acquired by illegal and unethical practices, and he should be jailed for contempt of court regarding the first anti-trust action where he himself agreed to the limited definition of an operating system.
When people's good deeds are counted up on judgment day, Bill Gates is sure to be one of the many that are denied entry into the renewed Garden of Eden, and he will surely be burned to a crisp because of his selfishness, lies and greed.
Bill: how much do you think your uncounted earthly riches will help you at that time? You are advised to make a public dedication of your system before it is too late.