Has Falwell gone to Far

Peregrin Toker · Post by **Peregrin Toker** » 2002-09-12 11:16am

Wicked Pilot wrote:Yes, and there are even funnier stories. Did you know that JW's believe Smurfs are evil?

He's not alone. One of my friends believes that the Smurfs cartoon is part of an insidious anti-semitic propaganda campaign. (although he isn't christian, at least not last time I checked)

salm · Post by **salm** » 2002-09-12 02:02pm

what are his arguments for the nazi smurfs?

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2002-09-12 02:24pm

I think I read somewhere that Poppa Smurf represented Stalin, he wore all red and everyone looked to him to lead the village even though the village was run like a communist collective, everything was done for the greater good, no pay, everyone was equal and a worker - there were no beaugoise smurfs. You get the idea.

Joe · Post by **Joe** » 2002-09-12 02:29pm

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/1709/

Red ain't dead.

Singular Quartet · Post by **Singular Quartet** » 2002-09-12 03:27pm

Welcome to America. If you want the assholes to leave, you'll have to give your freedoms to the Bush Dynasty.

Howedar · Post by **Howedar** » 2002-09-12 04:55pm

I suppose I'm technically some sort of Christian, and certianly Falwell is not a friend of any religion.

To be a fundamentalist IMHO, you need to incoporate beliefs from a religion and skew and inflate them well beyond their logical conclusion. Falwell is simply an evil and psychotic excuse for a human being.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2002-09-12 05:26pm

Howedar wrote:I suppose I'm technically some sort of Christian, and certianly Falwell is not a friend of any religion.

He's a friend of Christian fundamentalists. He is also arguably a friend of Islamic fundamentalists, since he gives them a highly visible, extremely negative public persona that can be used for hasty generalizations about all Americans and all Christians.

To be a fundamentalist IMHO, you need to incoporate beliefs from a religion and skew and inflate them well beyond their logical conclusion. Falwell is simply an evil and psychotic excuse for a human being.

Fundamentalists do not skew their religion in any way. That is their problem; they take every word literally, they dot every "i" and cross every "t". The evil stuff in the Bible that you and I ignore (eg- the parts exhorting followers to hate those of other religions or execute homosexuals), they treat as unalterable divine law.

Christians need to recognize that their Bible contains much evil; it's not some bizarre invention of fundamentalists; it's right in there, written in black and white. Fundamentalists take every word of the book (OT, NT, it doesn't matter) as absolute gospel. If God says to kill homosexuals in Exodus or Leviticus, they conclude that it would be good to kill homosexuals, if only it wasn't criminalized by secular law. And while the NT is less violent, that's a bit like saying neo-Nazis are less violent than the originals; the fact that they claim allegiance to a group which committed such horrors is a big problem for normal people, and that's basically how non-Christians view the whole NT/OT thing.

Jesus vaguely suggested that we should adopt a more humanistic set of rules according to certain interpretations, but he never explicitly repudiated those hateful OT laws, and as we have seen from many discussions on this board, it is possible for Christians to rationalize just about anything (up to and including murder) as not being hateful or evil by simply projecting matters into the afterlife, hence the ability of Christians throughout past centuries to kill in the name of Christ.

That's what Falwell hangs his hat on; he's a symptom, not a cause.

salm · Post by **salm** » 2002-09-12 07:49pm

And while the NT is less violent, that's a bit like saying neo-Nazis are less violent than the originals; the fact that they claim allegiance to a group which committed such horrors is a big problem for normal people, and that's basically how non-Christians view the whole NT/OT thing.

that´s not really true. the OT is not valid to christians (that´s how it´s supposed to be, of course loads of so called christians dont understand that). it´s sort of an appendix.
the old nazis ARE valid to the neo nazis and they commit the same crimes. not on the same scale of course because there are a lot less. [/u]

CorSec · Post by **CorSec** » 2002-09-12 08:14pm

salm wrote:that´s not really true. the OT is not valid to christians (that´s how it´s supposed to be, of course loads of so called christians dont understand that). it´s sort of an appendix.
the old nazis ARE valid to the neo nazis and they commit the same crimes. not on the same scale of course because there are a lot less. [/u]

Just in case you didn't read all of it:

DW wrote:Jesus vaguely suggested that we should adopt a more humanistic set of rules according to certain interpretations, but he never explicitly repudiated those hateful OT laws, and as we have seen from many discussions on this board, it is possible for Christians to rationalize just about anything (up to and including murder) as not being hateful or evil by simply projecting matters into the afterlife, hence the ability of Christians throughout past centuries to kill in the name of Christ.

For Biblical inerrantists, the whole Bible is beyond suspect. Though many focus mainly on the positive humanistic teachings of Christ, they never negate that the Old Testament is equally free of error.

salm · Post by **salm** » 2002-09-12 08:34pm

For Biblical inerrantists, the whole Bible is beyond suspect. Though many focus mainly on the positive humanistic teachings of Christ, they never negate that the Old Testament is equally free of error.

biblical inerrantist need to be shot anyway. they´re not christians, they´re a bunch of idiots who claim to be christians.

Jesus vaguely suggested that we should adopt a more humanistic set of rules according to certain interpretations

it vaguely suggests it? now, i´m not completely sure about that but isnt there a lot of "if somebody hits you, dont retaliate but show him your other cheek and let him hit that one as well" crap in the NT? it seem like its almost an opposite to the OT.

no dont get me wrong. i dont like christianity. i´m not christian. i used to be. born into it. i got out of church a couple of years ago which cost me 25 marks (back in the days when there was no EURO). all i´m saying is that christians arent necesarily all that bad. even their main beliefs are not entierly evil.

Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi · Post by **Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi** » 2002-09-12 08:44pm

The reason why we don't see more peopple like Fawlell because in Catholic schools (at least the ones I've been to), we didn't read the Bible word for word and take it as Gospel.

Singular Quartet · Post by **Singular Quartet** » 2002-09-12 08:49pm

I only ever listened to 2 sermons in my life, each were roughly the same in message, and each wa smade by a completely different person.

The ministers were Mr. Rogers (before I moved to MA, I was his neighbor) and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Their sermon: Love each other. Very simple. Not all that open to interpretation. And that was all.

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2002-09-12 09:18pm

He has his own goddamn university, cranking out fundies by the thousands.

....no. Jesus. Fucking. Christ. No.

It must be destroyed.

Howedar · Post by **Howedar** » 2002-09-12 09:36pm

Darth Wong wrote:He's a friend of Christian fundamentalists. He is also arguably a friend of Islamic fundamentalists, since he gives them a highly visible, extremely negative public persona that can be used for hasty generalizations about all Americans and all Christians.

An interesting thought. I suppose you're correct, but so is Hitler a friend of those who would wish to demonize the German population. A semantic issue I suppose, but I wouldn't quite call that being a friend of someone, more a useful tool.

Fundamentalists do not skew their religion in any way. That is their problem; they take every word literally, they dot every "i" and cross every "t". The evil stuff in the Bible that you and I ignore (eg- the parts exhorting followers to hate those of other religions or execute homosexuals), they treat as unalterable divine law.

They take things out of context. That is skewing to me. Again, I'm being an asshole and arguing semantics.

Christians need to recognize that their Bible contains much evil; it's not some bizarre invention of fundamentalists; it's right in there, written in black and white.

Certainly. I'd be the last to argue otherwise. As far as I can tell, God is just a woman, and the time covered in the OT was just "that time of existance"

Fundamentalists take every word of the book (OT, NT, it doesn't matter) as absolute gospel. If God says to kill homosexuals in Exodus or Leviticus, they conclude that it would be good to kill homosexuals, if only it wasn't criminalized by secular law. And while the NT is less violent, that's a bit like saying neo-Nazis are less violent than the originals; the fact that they claim allegiance to a group which committed such horrors is a big problem for normal people, and that's basically how non-Christians view the whole NT/OT thing.

I take exception to your calling non-Christians "normal people" considering the rough percentage of the population that is Christian in some way, but again I'd be the last to claim that the Bible is devoid of excessive violence.

Jesus vaguely suggested that we should adopt a more humanistic set of rules according to certain interpretations, but he never explicitly repudiated those hateful OT laws, and as we have seen from many discussions on this board, it is possible for Christians to rationalize just about anything (up to and including murder) as not being hateful or evil by simply projecting matters into the afterlife, hence the ability of Christians throughout past centuries to kill in the name of Christ.

Who knows? I certainly wasn't around then. Certainly the Bible was written by people, for people, and I wouldn't expect it to represent anything accurately, let alone events that happened hundreds of years before it was put to paper.

For God's sakes, don't interpret this as me claiming that Jesus definately did such things.

Also note that many denominations of Christianity tend to kill each other, certainly lumping everyone together in such a fashion is a hasty generalization.

That's what Falwell hangs his hat on; he's a symptom, not a cause.

Certainly he started with interpreting the Bible super-literally, but as far as I can tell he's moved on to the Book of Falwell. He is definately a ssymptom in the broader sense, but he is a cause in and of himself IMHO.

Peregrin Toker · Post by **Peregrin Toker** » 2002-09-13 09:54am

salm wrote:what are his arguments for the nazi smurfs?

His arguments are the racial and religious uniformity amongst the smurfs, in other words - the fact that no Jewish smurfs have been observed[/b]