Jesus has an M16

What Caliber Would Jesus Choose?

The blending of christianity and militaristic nationalism is not unusual. Maybe it's time to bring out the Dylan song "With god on our side." Specifically, the last verse: "If god's on our side, he'll stop the next war."

I'm scared these kids are going to be specifically trained to go Columbine or something.

So, according to the t-shirt in the picture, it's ok to pick on nerds by equating them with Satan? If I believed in Satan, I'd be offended.

So how long til Jason barges in and starts shrieking?

we can just hope all the friggin zealots kill each other. solving a lot of problems in one go.
hopefully i'll find someplace to hide.

Oh, I thought you meant Jesus in M16. My mistake.

Stop brainwashing our youth, Ron Luce. If you try really hard, I bet you could still become a productive member of society. We don't need another narrow-minded religious zealot plotting to transform America into a theocracy.

For me, this ranks about up there (or rather, down there) with hard-core imams in middle-eastern countries teaching children how to fire guns, and how to blow others up for Allah.

The hard-right Christians here always talk a game about how they don't commit violent acts, but they way they conduct themselves, especially associating guns with Christ, is reprehensible and pathetic, and morally unjustifiable.

Yes, wear that "abortion is homicide" shirt at a Christian rally touting unrepentant militarism for you "loving" god. Thanks for being an idiot, idiot.

For me, this ranks about up there (or rather, down there) with hard-core imams in middle-eastern countries teaching children how to fire guns, and how to blow others up for Allah.

The hard-right Christians here always talk a game about how they don't commit violent acts, but they way they conduct themselves, especially associating guns with Christ, is reprehensible and pathetic, and morally unjustifiable.

Yes, wear that "abortion is homicide" shirt at a Christian rally touting unrepentant militarism for you "loving" god. Thanks for being an idiot, idiot.

Garth,

Unfortunately, the zealots don't start on each other until they're the only ones left!

The "Satan was a nerd" T-Shirt is the downright scariest thing I've seen today. That's frighteningly close to how some people justify murdering innocents.

Faith and demographics -
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GK08Aa01.html

Check out the images at the fourth link listed at the top of the piece. The event definitely had a Nuremberg vibe. Or at least it was trying to. It was kind of like a really, really dorky Nuremberg rally.

"What Caliber Would Jesus Choose?"

I might even buy and wear that wristband...

I read this as "Jesus has an MI6" and thought 'so much for omniscience'.

Bob

Damn, these people are scary.

In the same way that creationism evolved into its sneakier, more subtle form, "intelligent design," and yet kept the core motivation, BattleCry strikes me as a glitzy, stealthed version of the KKK.

The evolutionary step here is that the movement found a way to bypass civil rights filters: jettison the race-hate telltales but accomplish the same goal in the end by making it all about "our" religion, so that everybody else, including other races, cultures and religions, become outgroups. (Nobody's said, but I'd bet those rallies are as white as Sunbeam Bread.)

From the inside, it's pure fear motivation, amped up to the level of raging paranoia. Once you get that paranoia going in some of these young heads, it's largely self-reinforcing. ANY negative reaction, even just saying you don't want to hear what they have to say, is automatically an attack. If they become their religion, and you stand in the way of it, you're trying to destroy not just their religion, but THEM. Suddenly YOU are the Nazi, and they're the helpless victim ... which justifies any magnitude of defensive response.

Speaking of Nazis, I've heard throughout my lifetime that Hitler and his followers were "pure evil," but I believe framing them that way cheats us out of a valuable lesson of history -- that for many people, there is some possible path from innocent child to killer. For a certain fraction of them, hopefully very small, there is some possible path from an ordinary childhood to an adulthood of remorseless mass murder.

Certainly an organization actively teaching hate, speaking BattleCry's paramilitary lingo, can easily be a part of that path. The Hitler Youth of the pre-WWII era were just ordinary kids, skillfully seduced into hate in full view of their parents and peers by such an organization.

Don't think "It couldn't happen here." Don't even think "It COULD happen here." It IS happening here. This is it. One proof is that we've passed the critical threshhold where anybody in a position of power -- the news media, or political "leaders" -- really dares to speak against them.

Think about it: There is no elected official in the United States today who will say anything publicly negative about these people. Probably none of them would be killed, but their careers might well be over. So they sit back and make nice.

And so it grows.

There is ONE group that could easily stop them: the leaders and members of other Christian denominations, actively attending their rallies and speaking up in numbers, pointing out the danger of their lies and hate.

But will they? I doubt it. Because I'll bet a lot of them find what's happening at these rallies very seductive. Without being able to admit it to themselves, they like what they see. The unbelievers will be smitten, and God's Chosen People will triumph, and that is just too good to shut down.

. All religions kill, or enslave, or torture.

To verify this, one need only read a very little history, or contemporary newspaper reports.
At this point, an excuse is always presented by the 'believers':
"They are ( or were ) not PROPER Christians / Muslims / Marxists / etc. .... We're different!"
Oh, yeah?
O.S.D. is still part of the Roman Catholic church, isn't it? Is Ian Paisley a Christian minister, or not? Are the Persian and Taliban ayatollahs clerics, or not? Were Stalin, Mao Zhedong and Pol Pot Marxists, or not?
Besides which, if these, and similar cases, are, or were not "proper believers", why do those proper believers never, ever do anything about it, except whinge?

we have a Corollary: The bigots are the true believers.

There is a dangerous trap here. By fighting and studying the evil dragon of their opponent(s) and/or oppressors, a group, sect, or religion can easily become its' own evil mirror-image. Three current (2005) cases will suffice. I am sure any intelligent person will be able to supply their own additional exemplars.
[I] Virtually everything Ian Paisley and his followers say about the RC church and its "evil" are true, and correct. But they have failed to see that they have also become a narrow, bigoted, bloodstained and oppressive reflection of the thing they most despise and fear.
[II] The previous Pope (John-Paul II) faithfully opposed the cult of Nazism, (or did he, really?) and the Stalinist version of Marxism. And, he became dragon too. Nowhere as evil as Adolf, or Joe, but a narrow, oppressive, censorious dictator, opposed to freedom of thought, reason, or logic, nonetheless. The current Pope (Benedict II), beautifully parodied by the magazine "Private Eye" as "Cardinal Ratpoison", is even worse. His rampant homophobia, his apparent joining of the Hitler-Jugend before it became compulsory, his authoritarianism ... need one go on?
[III] Persia / Iran, where opposition to the rule of the late Shah has produced a classic theocratic state. Of course, as always happens, an even more extreme movement, the Taliban, appeared in Afghanistan. Both these states have automatically enslaved half of their own populations - the female half. These are true "communities of saints", as were Calvin's Geneva, Cromwellian England, or Stalin's Soviet Union. Perhaps the best example of a total theocracy, where even when the personal representative of the people's enslavement dies, they mourn, rather than celebrate, is North Korea.

Some more thoughts on this topic.

If one looks at the actual record and behaviour of Christian "saints", or their equivalents in other belief-systems, one finds that most of them were complete egotistical bastards.
"Saint" Cyril of Alexandria ( Inventor of the doctrine of virgin birth ), Bernard of Clairvaux, Trotsky, and Joshua are all classic exemplars. People like that oddly matched pair, Saladin the Kurd, and Francis of Assisi are the exception, not the rule.
There is a relevant, subsidiary question.
What is a religion, what is a cult, and what, if anything, is the difference?
The only discernible real distinction is in the numbers of their followers, and the physical and political power that any one movement can wield. That apart, there appears to be no difference at all, particularly given the nature of the irrational rubbish purveyed by the major religions. An approximate measure has been humorously (?) suggested by the late J. L. Chalker: "When a cult converts more than 10% of a population, it is to be considered a religion."
Cults can, of course, arise as subsets of established religions or orders.
Current and past examples include:
The "Toronto blessing" and similar fundamentalist lunacies in Protestantism, Opus Dei, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, the Hasisheen, the orders of flagellants or the stylytics, etc. ...

It is very curious, that in most forms of Christianity, the teaching of Thomas Aquinas is official doctrine, but is almost never followed. Namely, that if the recorded "bible" says one thing, and careful experimental test and observation shows something else, why then, the "bible" is wrong.
In spite of this, in various faiths, we have all the usual irrational nonsenses. Concerning evolution, they say it is wrong, geocentric universes, female inferiority, the dictatorship of the proletariat, virgin birth, listening and writing down the words of angels reciting, etc.

How can you tell if it is a religion?
1: The body-count. If a large number of innocent people are killed in the name of the "holy cause", whatever it is, then it is a religion, no matter what that particular set of true believers aver to the contrary.
2. Does it treat a sizeable section of the population as inferior? It is usually women who get this one in the neck, but not always or uniquely so. Think of "unclean" or "low-caste" or "kulak" as well.
3. Does the mention of Darwin or evolution send the fundamentalists into paroxysms? It is not just the more obviously brain-dead ( and therefore more faithful) christians who fulfil this test. Fundamentalist muslims will have no truck with evolution, because of the passage in the "Recital" about god creating man from drops of blood. (Blood origin, species, type, etc are unspecified.) The teachings of the priests of Krishna also try to rubbish evolution, and the ultra-orthodox jews believe in a "recent" creation. Marxism passes this test as well - the torture and death of Vavilov and other Darwinian geneticists in the Gulag being the example.

Yes, wear that "abortion is homicide" shirt at a Christian rally touting unrepentant militarism for you "loving" god. Thanks for being an idiot, idiot.

Please distinguish between righteous killing and homicide. Homicide happens when a woman kills something that isn't really human, but that can be used to control her sexuality. Righteous killing happens when a right Christian sends a sinner to Hell with the approval of the Dominion.

"Doctor Goebbels would have been proud." - Richard Dawkins to Ted Haggard

I think that even Doctor Goebbels would have been flippin' terrified by this.

Please distinguish between righteous killing and homicide. Homicide happens when a woman kills something that isn't really human, but that can be used to control her sexuality. Righteous killing happens when a right Christian sends a sinner to Hell with the approval of the Dominion.

I remember a comment I saw on Amazon regarding a particular book that was either critical of, or explanatory of religion (I can't recall), and one of the posters was deriding the book in question for promoting a gentler, kinder approach to living religion (ya know, living it in a non-oppressive manner?).

This person fell back on the new "old standby" quote from the Bible, the one where Jesus says he came "to be a sword", which the dumber right-wing Christians now seem to consider as divine instruction (nay permission?) to go about using military force to install their god's perfect, theocratic rule. Never mind the fact that god's supposedly perfect and all-powerful, and could do it him/her/itself in literally an instant. For some reason they believe god needs them to do it for him, especially through oppressive, all-encopassing military force.

This reviewer was of the opinion (obviously) that war was OK in (their) god's eyes, and killing by corollary, if one side is righteous, and in the army of god. One is at pains to draw any contrast between someone thinking like this, and the Taliban types they rail against.

WoofsterNY: It's hard to remember this from a modern perspective, but the Nazis themselves had a victim mentality. They thought (or at least said) they were *defending* their land and their god from an evil Jewish conspiracy. This seems so utterly ridiculous today that it's hard to get your mind around it, but it's true. That's how they appealed to the people of Weimar Germany, until they could fool enough of them and terrorize the rest.

It's time to stop tiptoeing around the analogy. The shoe fits. Dominionism has many similarities to Nazism, primarily in its methods and the strength of its beliefs. And they are very willing to advocate killing anyone who disagrees.

Oh, and one more similarity:
(Nobody's said, but I'd bet those rallies are as white as Sunbeam Bread.)
Look at the crowd shot from the second link.
http://rogouski.com/albums/battlecry-1/31_G.jpg
Parts of the crowd are poorly lit, but I can't find a verifiably nonwhite person anywhere in that picture.

These people are organized, violent, and committed to the destruction of American freedom and democracy. They're not just using the methods of Nazis, but parts of their ideology as well.

I'm sure the 1930s Germans thought that they couldn't be serious, or they were fringe extremists that would never come to power, or that they were a fad that would soon die down. Well, the 1930s Germans were wrong. Let's not repeat their mistake. We may be able to stop them, if we take them seriously NOW.

It's worthwhile reminding folks that there *are* other points of view about this sort of thing: http://www.jesusforbidswar.org/ is a litte tract that begins "Christianity armed is Christianity Falsified" -- and backs it up with Biblical quotations to satisfy the scripturalists out there.

Whether you take this to mean that it is the militarists that have distorted Christianity, or just that the Bible is an ink-blot that can be read in any way one chooses, is up to you -- but the historical evidence is strong that the nature of the dominant form of Christianity changed and became more accepting of violence after it was adopted (co-opted?) by the state.

Any other peacenik bleeding-heart lefties ready to start stockpiling automatic weapons for the coming apocalypse?

I am afraid. Very, very afraid.

The problem is, Alex R, that both views (and then some more) are in the bible. That's the problem with a brazenly self-contradictory document ...