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Millions of Evangelical Christians Want to Start WWIII to Speed the "Second Coming" ... and Atheist Neocons are Using Religion
MILLIONS OF EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS WANT TO START WORLD WAR III ... TO SPEED UP THE SECOND COMING
The Founding Fathers weren't particularly anti-Islam.
But millions of Americans believe that Christ will not come again until Israel wipes out its competitors and there is widespread war in the Middle East. Some of these folks want to start a huge fire of war and death and destruction, so that Jesus comes quickly.
According to French President Chirac, Bush told him that the Iraq war was needed to bring on the apocalypse:
In Genesis and Ezekiel Gog and Magog are forces of the Apocalypse who are prophesied to come out of the north and destroy Israel unless stopped. The Book of Revelation took up the Old Testament prophesy:
“And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.”
Bush believed the time had now come for that battle, telling Chirac:
“This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins”…
There can be little doubt now that President Bush’s reason for launching the war in Iraq was, for him, fundamentally religious. He was driven by his belief that the attack on Saddam’s Iraq was the fulfilment of a Biblical prophesy in which he had been chosen to serve as the instrument of the Lord.
And British Prime Minister Tony Blair long-time mentor, advisor and confidante said:
“Tony’s Christian faith is part of him, down to his cotton socks. He believed strongly at the time, that intervention in Kosovo, Sierra Leone – Iraq too – was all part of the Christian battle; good should triumph over evil, making lives better.”
Mr Burton, who was often described as Mr Blair’s mentor, says that his religion gave him a “total belief in what’s right and what’s wrong”, leading him to see the so-called War on Terror as “a moral cause”…
Anti-war campaigners criticised remarks Mr Blair made in 2006, suggesting that the decision to go to war in Iraq would ultimately be judged by God.
Bill Moyers reports that the organization Christians United for Israel - led by highly-influential Pastor John C. Hagee - is a universal call to all Christians to help factions in Israel fund the Jewish settlements, throw out all the Palestinians and lobby for a pre-emptive invasion of Iran. All to bring Russia into a war against us causing World War III followed by Armageddon, the Second Coming and The Rapture. See this and this.
This all revolves around what is called Dispensationalism. So popular is Dispensationalism that Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series has sold 65 million copies. Dispensationalists include the following mega-pastors and their churches:
They are supported by politicians such as:
- Texas Senator John Cronyn
- Former House Minority Whip Roy Blunt
- Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay
- And others
Dr. Timothy Webber - an evangelical Christian who has served as a teacher of church history and the history of American religion at Denver Seminary and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Vice-President at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in Lombard, IL, and President of Memphis Theological Seminary in Tennessee - notes:
In a recent Time/CNN poll, more than one-third of Americans said that since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, they have been thinking more about how current events might be leading to the end of the world.
While only 36 percent of all Americans believe that the Bible is God's Word and should be taken literally, 59 percent say they believe that events predicted in the Book of Revelation will come to pass. Almost one out of four Americans believes that 9/11 was predicted in the Bible, and nearly one in five believes that he or she will live long enough to see the end of the world. Even more significant for this study, over one-third of those Americans who support Israel report that they do so because they believe the Bible teaches that the Jews must possess their own country in the Holy Land before Jesus can return.
Millions of Americans believe that the Bible predicts the future and that we are living in the last days. Their beliefs are rooted in dispensationalism, a particular way of understanding the Bible's prophetic passages, especially those in Daniel and Ezekiel in the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation in the New Testament. They make up about one-third of America's 40 or 50 million evangelical Christians and believe that the nation of Israel will play a central role in the unfolding of end-times events. In the last part of the 20th century, dispensationalist evangelicals become Israel's best friends-an alliance that has made a serious geopolitical difference.
***
Starting in the 1970s, dispensationalists broke into the popular culture with runaway best-sellers, and a well-networked political campaign to promote and protect the interests of Israel. Since the mid-1990s, tens of millions of people who have never seen a prophetic chart or listened to a sermon on the second coming have read one or more novels in the Left Behind series, which has become the most effective disseminator of dispensationalist ideas ever.
***
During the early 1980s the Israeli Ministry of Tourism recruited evangelical religious leaders for free "familiarization" tours. In time, hundreds of evangelical pastors got free trips to the Holy Land. The purpose of such promotional tours was to enable people of even limited influence to experience Israel for themselves and be shown how they might bring their own tour group to Israel. The Ministry of Tourism was interested in more than tourist dollars: here was a way of building a solid corps of non-Jewish supporters for Israel in the United States by bringing large numbers of evangelicals to hear and see Israel's story for themselves. The strategy caught on.
***
Shortly after the Six-Day War, elements within the Israeli government saw the potential power of the evangelical subculture and began to mobilize it as a base of support that could influence American foreign policy. The Israeli government sent Yona Malachy of its Department of Religious Affairs to the United States to study American fundamentalism and its potential as an ally of Israel. Malachy was warmly received by fundamentalists and was able to influence some of them to issue strong pro-Israeli manifestos. By the mid-1980s, there was a discernible shift in the Israeli political strategy. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Jewish state's major lobbying group in Washington, D.C., started re-aligning itself with the American political right-wing, including Christian conservatives. Israel's timing was perfect. It began working seriously with American dispensationalists at the precise moment that American fundamentalists and evangelicals were discovering their political voice.
***
Probably the largest pro-Israel organization of its kind is the National Unity Coalition for Israel, which was founded by a Jewish woman who learned how to get dispensationalist support. NUCI opposes "the establishment of a Palestinian state within the borders of Israel."
***
In their commitment to keep Israel strong and moving in directions prophesied by the Bible, dispensationalists are supporting some of the most dangerous elements in Israeli society. They do so because such political and religious elements seem to conform to dispensationalist beliefs about what is coming next for Israel. By lending their support-both financial and spiritual-to such groups, dispensationalists are helping the future they envision come to pass.
***
Dispensationalists believe that the Temple is coming too; and their convictions have led them to support the aims and actions of what most Israelis believe are the most dangerous right-wing elements in their society, people whose views make any compromise necessary for lasting peace impossible. Such sentiments do not matter to the believers in Bible prophecy, for whom the outcome of the quarrelsome issue of the Temple Mount has already been determined by God.
Since the end of the Six-Day War, then, dispensationalists have increasingly moved from observers to participant-observers. They have acted consistently with their convictions about the coming Last Days in ways that make their prophecies appear to be self-fulfilling.
***
As Paul Boyer has pointed out, dispensationalism has effectively conditioned millions of Americans to be somewhat passive about the future and provided them with lenses through which to understand world events. Thanks to the sometimes changing perspectives of their Bible teachers, dispensationalists are certain that trouble in the Middle East is inevitable, that nations will war against nations, and that the time is coming when millions of people will die as a result of nuclear war, the persecution of Antichrist, or as a result of divine judgment. Striving for peace in the Middle East is a hopeless pursuit with no chance of success.
***
For the dispensational community, the future is determined. The Bible's prophecies are being fulfilled with amazing accuracy and rapidity. They do not believe that the Road Map will-or should-succeed. According to the prophetic texts, partitioning is not in Israel's future, even if the creation of a Palestinian state is the best chance for peace in the region. Peace is nowhere prophesied for the Middle East, until Jesus comes and brings it himself. The worse thing that the United States, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations can do is force Israel to give up land for a peace that will never materialize this side of the second coming. Anyone who pushes for peace in such a manner is ignoring or defying God's plan for the end of the age.
***
It seems clear that dispensationalism is on a roll, that its followers feel they are riding the wave of history into the shore of God's final plan. Why should they climb back into the stands when being on the field of play is so much more fun and apparently so beneficial to the game's outcome? As [one dispensationalist group's] advertisement read, "Don't just read about prophecy when you can be part of it."
ATHEIST WAR HAWKS MANIPULATE BELIEVERS TO BEAT THE DRUMS OF WAR
Leo Strauss is the father of the Neo-Conservative movement, including many leaders of the current administration.
Indeed, many of the main neocon players - including Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Stephen Cambone, Elliot Abrams, and Adam Shulsky - were students of Strauss at the University of Chicago, where he taught for many years.
The people pushing for war against Iran are the same neocons who pushed for war against Iraq. See this and this. (They planned both wars at least 20 years ago.) For example, Shulsky was the director of the Office of Special Plans - the Pentagon unit responsible for selling false intelligence regarding Iraq’s weapons of mass. He is now a member of the equivalent organization targeting Iran: the Iranian Directorate.
Strauss, born in Germany, was an admirer of Nazi philosophers and of Machiavelli. Strauss believed that a stable political order required an external threat and that if an external threat did not exist, one should be manufactured. Specifically, Strauss thought that:
A political order can be stable only if it is united by an external threat . . . . Following Machiavelli, he maintained that if no external threat exists then one has to be manufactured
(the quote is by one of Strauss' main biographers).
Indeed, Stauss used the analogy of Gulliver's Travels to show what a Neocon-run society would look like:
"When Lilliput [the town] was on fire, Gulliver urinated over the city, including the palace. In so doing, he saved all of Lilliput from catastrophe, but the Lilliputians were outraged and appalled by such a show of disrespect." (this quote also from the same biographer)
Moreover, Strauss said:
Only a great fool would call the new political science diabolic . . . Nevertheless one may say of it that it fiddles while Rome burns. It is excused by two facts: it does not know that it fiddles, and it does not know that Rome burns.
So Strauss seems to have advocated governments letting terrorizing catastrophes happen on one's own soil to one's own people -- of "pissing" on one's own people, to use his Gulliver's travel analogy. And he advocates that government's should pretend that they did not know about such acts of mayhem: to intentionally "not know" that Rome is burning. He advocates messing with one's own people in order to save them from some "catastophe" (perhaps to justify military efforts to monopolize middle eastern oil to keep it away from our real threat -- an increasingly-powerful China?).
What does this have to do with religion?
Strauss taught that religion should be used as a way to manipulate people to achieve the aims of the leaders. But that the leaders themselves need not believe in religion.
As Wikipedia notes:
In the late 1990s Irving Kristol and other writers in neoconservative magazines began touting anti-Darwinist views, in support of intelligent design. Since these neoconservatives were largely of secular backgrounds, a few commentators have speculated that this – along with support for religion generally – may have been a case of a "noble lie", intended to protect public morality, or even tactical politics, to attract religious supporters.
So is it any surprise that the folks who planned war against Iraq and Iran at least 20 years ago are pushing religious disinformation to stir up the evangelical community?
Conservative Christians were the biggest backers of the Iraq war. And the Neocons are catering to them to try to back them into war with Iran, as well.
I've recently seen a swarm of spam claiming that all Muslims are evil, that they want to take over the world and establish a Muslim caliphate, and that they want to nuke Iran. They misquote Muslims and use false statements to try to stir up religious hatred.
They are simply promoting the Straussian playbook: stir up religious sentiment - even if you are personally an atheist - to create and demonize an "enemy", so as to promote war ...
NOT A PROBLEM WITH A PARTICULAR RELIGION ... BUT OF IMMATURITY
Most Americans confuse Zionism and Judaism. But many devout Jews are against Zionism, and Zionists can be Christian.
And as I've repeatedly noted, fundamentalist Jews, Christians, Muslims and Hindus are all very much alike, and often willing to use violence to spread their ideology ... while more spiritually mature Jews, Christians, Muslims and Hindus are all much more tolerant and peaceful than their evangelical brothers:
As Christian writer and psychiatrist M. Scott Peck explained, there are different stages of spiritual maturity. Fundamentalism – whether it be Muslim, Christian, Jewish or Hindu fundamentalism – is an immature stage of development. There are peaceful, contemplative Muslim sects – think the poet Rumi the poet and Sufis – and violent sects, just as there are contemplative Christian orders and violent Christian groups (and peaceful and violent atheists).
While there are certainly some Arab terrorists, Islam cannot be blamed for their barbaric murderous actions, just as Christianity cannot be blamed for the Norwegian Christian terrorist - Anders Behring Breivik's actions. University of Chicago professor Robert A. Pape – who specializes in international security affairs – points out:
Extensive research into the causes of suicide terrorism proves Islam isn’t to blame — the root of the problem is foreign military occupations.
The 9/11 hijackers used cocaine and drank alcohol, slept with prostitutes and attended strip clubs … but they did not worship at any mosque. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this. So they were not really Muslims.
And even atheists like Stalin can be terrorists, or at least genocidal maniacs.
Indeed, all religions teach compassion, love and the Golden Rule. Likewise, atheism teaches respect for the individual, the most good for the most people, and helping everyone reach their human potential.
Some within each philosophy follow these teachings, and others want to kill everyone who doesn't agree with them. The issue is not really the label of this religion or that, but of maturity and true spirituality and compassion.
Postscript 1: Neoliberals and Neoconservatives are very similar in many ways. And because Neocons are not conservative, nothing in this post is meant to criticize conservatism.
Postscript 2: Most evangelicals are not dispensationalists, and so do not want to bring on armageddon.
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A personal god is the creation of mankind and the need to explain death. There is no personal god because mankind is not important enough to deserve one.
Bush only claimed to be a born again Christian because a political advisor told him there would be revival of religious fundamentalism and he wanted to ride that wave. He would have declared himself the Easter bunny if he thought that would get him elected.
Choi:
Hallelujah. You’re my savior, man. My own personal Jesus Christ.
Neo:
If you get caught using that…
Choi:
I know. This never happened. You don’t exist.
Neo:
Right.
Gave hivekiller an up for the second part of his statement, the first part, not so much.
Other way round for me.
Sometimes the mask slips, and you can see the kleptocrat/parasite zombi under George's facade.
I favor Bacchus, Thor, and the Poison Tree Frog, but I refuse to blame a handful of snake handlers for the evil of the International Banking Cartel. George pretends to hate both parties, but he lies. He is a libtard and an aparachnik. Those who have eyes, let them see.
Maybe you should pay more attention to the infuence of churches on politics and recognize two hands washing each other.
The shitites if iran think the same way. They believe some descendent of mohammad lives at the bottom of a well and they think world jihad or war will make him come back sooner. It is a central tenent if Shiite moslem belief apparently. His second coming will have him popping out of a well. Fundie christians and fundie islamists are both trying to hurry up the apocalypse. I think they are both insane.
Was that an OIL well?
I think George Washington is more right about how Dispensationalist Christianity has affected the US Middle Eastern foreign policy than about the causes of the uprising in Syria.
I have previously here on zerohedge said that the Scofield Bible got to be least expensive political investment in history as regards the “political return on investment”. The cost of buying reverend Cyrus I. Scofield, an adulterer and alcoholic, and promoting the Bible with “his” comments (which were later also modified and radicalized) must have been very modest compared to the incredible influence this Bible has had on the way the Christian religion has been transformed over the past 100 years.
Furthermore, I also wonder whether the unauthorized Swedish 1900th century Bible translation with comments by Peter Fjellstedt has been influenced by the same theology as Scofield. Fjellstedt lived in Britain for a short while in the 1830s when the Dispensationalist theology just had been launched. It also seems as if he didn´t have a job when he wrote his Bible translation in the mid-1900th century and was living as a guest with his family on the estate of a wealthy family. I´m not sure that somebody bought Fjellstedt but I suspect that somebody that was looking for a priest that he could buy would probably have considered it easier to persuade Peter Fjellstedt than most other priests. I can imagine what the message the persuader would have tried use in order to persuade Fjellstedt:
- How are you going to support your family, Peter? Grow turnips like your father? What do you think that your wife´s upper-class family, and others, will think if you, the son of a peasant, can´t support her?
However, I doubt that Tony Blair – provided that he is a true catholic – is influenced by Dispensationalism. Catholic theology is replacement theology and the very opposite to Dispensationalism. On the other hand I doubt that Blair takes the Christian religion seriously. My impression is that he is the same kind used car salesman type of politician like most other politicians are. I don´t think that he believes that politicians go to hell if they fool their electorate, lie and takes decisions which mean that lots of people are going to get killed although there are other, realistic options available supported by mainstream politicians like Robin Cook (who died shortly after opposing the war on Iraq), for instance.
I also must say that there have been very few mainstream Christians that have really opposed Dispensationalist theology. Instead, they have prioritized ecumenicalism. At the same time, some Dispensationalists have openly claimed that replacement theology Christians, like the Pope, are heretics and will not go to heaven. However, Jews don´t have to believe in Christ in order to go to heaven according to John Hagee and Jerry Falwell.
I think that traditional replacement theology will lose out and be replaced Dispensationalist theology (or something that is very similar to that) if no perceived mainstream Christians explain to people that Dispensationalism is not traditional Christianity but rather a modern 1900th century invention which in the 20th century became popular in the US and to some extent also in parts of Western Europe. Unless no credible alternative to the Scofield Bible is offered to the general public or if no alternative that points out that Dispensionalism is just one of many Christian theologies and is not traditional Christianity, well then I think that Dispensationalism will prevail. And if that happens, I think that Karl Marx was right when he said that the Christian religion has dissolved itself into Judaism, although his conclusion was a bit early since Dispensationalism had just begun in the mid-/late 1900th century.
You're 100% right about the undue influence of the Scofield Bible (whether any of the comments specifically are right or wrong, no-one should be taking comments as if they were the Word itself), not sure if I buy into a conspiracy theory on it, though. probably 90% of what's in the comments (I have a copy) is totally fine but the eschatalogy there is very particular, and has some rather unusual ideas that becuase of the popularity of the Scofield became common currency in Evangelicalism, and then others just took them and ran with them. Another one is Clarence Larkin, and his ilk, who believed in "rightly dividing the word of Truth" (II Titus 2:11) as a proof text for dispensationalism ("dividing" those passages which refer to Israel from those which refer to the Church, etc.) The problem with this is that orthotomounta ton logos means "to cut straightly the word," which is idiomatic for handling it properly, but not for "dividing" it up in pieces. Don't get me started on the idea (Ruckmanism) that the specific English words of the King James Version are somehow inspired ... that Jesus spoke the King's English ... that the historico-grammatical context can be avoided.
Excellent comments overall, CTG.
Lutheran and Reformed theologians have produced quite a lot of scholarship in recent years opposing dispensationalism and historic orthodox Christianity's amillennialismam. Admittedly I haven't seen much from other confessions.
Excellent point and well noted. The ecumenical movements within the major Christian denominations are a cancer on many levels. Thankfully I believe their numbers and influence are waning.
Absolutely. Pre-mil dispys are some of the most rabid judaizers in existence. Their stiff-necked dogmatism is leading more and more folks away from the recent toxic phenomena of "left behind" American evangelicalism.
'On the other hand I doubt that Blair takes the Christian religion seriously'
What religion would you look to after supporting mass murder of children? A guilt infested one maybe?
Regarding Marx, he was correct but then went on to prophecy a doctrine of equality on Earth like nobody since... ? That's right, early Christianity. Let us not forget Marx was the son of a successfully assimilated Jew. Of course, his Secular Religion also degenerated, not because of theory but because the hearts of men just as capitalism is now almost on the verge of doing.
So Karl Marx was the intellectual father of the quip that Christianity is "Judaism for gentiles"?
Wouldn't surprise me ...
What else would you call a blatant Hellenization and "new covenant"?
Modern ChristianDUMB has so mangled anything remotely resembling Christianity.
Christianity, the way of a father and his family has been turned into a global guilt trip by rock stars wannabees with a bible under their arm spewing redemption via the approval of man.
It the bible used to be the internet of the 16th century, banned by the State run church, yet when read without any interference from the outside was able to free men from the shackles, condemnations and dictates of the organized religion.
You will have to convince me that people really want to be free because what I am seeing is an entire world that yearns to be enslaved and fed pablum from the plastic tits of the state.
This is not a new story. The "Second Coming" motivation is what has driven many of the neo-conservative crowd to support Israel so resolutely.
Do you really think that the neocon crowd is largely composed of the pious but mislead?
You mean aside from the profit motive?
God I hate organized religion.
Father Lucifer
God I hate organized religion.
With a handle name such as yours, its easy to see why.
In order to hate organized religion, one must understand it.
Father Lucifer: God I hate organized religion.
Hey, hey, hey, how can the populace be controlled and civil society be maintained if we don't have organized religion to tell them what to think and belive in?
every thing has a rule and a law, and the embedded guilt for transgressions - makes life so simple.
God hates it too.
God I hate that absent organized religion same manipulators would not merely use another shill.
There's something particularly sinister about using people's natural instincts as leverage for attempted mind control.
There's something particularly sinister about using people's natural instincts ...
But you must admit that it is efficient.
as a recovering dispensationalist i can say that this theological sysem has true and false aspects....what all must understand is that god's redemption is broad and wide - he has promised fantastic things for all semites - jew and arab....there is plenty goodness for all in the coming dispensation of yahushua in the peaceable kingdom where man learns war no more....
mt horeb near damascus is perhaps the holiest mountain in all the world....the bible tells us...
and yes, god's word, when properly understood, can be understood literally and confidently....
however, we must all understand that god reveals himself to us in degrees and at his own timing - sometimes waiting until the afterlife....thus tolerance of different beliefs is required for harmony and peaceful living...god will reconcile all to himself including the most heretical, obstinate, murderous sinner....he who does not love his neighbor hath not god....
god will reconcile all to himself including the most heretical, obstinate, murderous sinner....
Hey, lookie there, the christian god is just like this government, let criminals run rampant and no prosecution.
Guess we don't have to worry 'bout hell anymore, TB declares (his) god is gonna forgive everyone.
... however, we must all understand that god reveals himself to us in degrees and at his own timing ...
How do you know this? We only know God through what is revealed in writing. Which writing does your claim come from? Is it writing that has been judged over the centuries to be legitimate? Heretical? Of a non-christian faith?
All we need to know about the Christian God is revealed in the Old and New Testament. It's revelation of God is available to us all-at-once now. However, the understanding of what is written does not come to us all-at-once. That takes education and study. In that context, I agree with you that God can help to bring understanding to someone where understanding did not exist before. But God helping someone understand what has already been revealed in writing is not the same thing as God revealing himself to someone over time.
But perhaps I am splitting hairs over what you meant in your post.
Sweet! This means I can murder and rape my own children and still go to heaven?! AWESOME!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rmo64fcvKs0
The radical muzzie winning the Super Bowl err I mean after 9/11.
why didn't the evil zionistas use real muslims and Iraqis at that?
like the planting of WMDS they just forgot.
Views of America’s People, Culture, and Freedom of Expression
Views of the American people and culture are not as negative as for the American government, but are still largely negative. In Egypt, 64 percent have an unfavorable view (57% very) of the American people; 26 percent have a favorable view. In Indonesia a plurality of 43 percent sees the American people negatively, though those saying "very" are only 8 percent; 33 percent have a favorable view. In Pakistan, 49 percent are unfavorable (32% very); 20 percent have a favorable opinion of the American people.
These views have changed little since 2007, apart from having worsened slightly in Egypt. There unfavorable views have risen from 60 to 64 percent.
This question was also asked in Iran in early 2008. There a bare majority of 51 percent viewed the American people favorably, up from 45 percent in late 2006. Those with an unfavorable view diminished from 49 percent in 2006 to 37 percent in 2008.
On American culture, majorities have unfavorable views in all three countries asked. In Egypt, 60 percent have an unfavorable view—55 percent very unfavorable—of American culture, while 29 percent have a favorable view. In Indonesia, a very large majority—86 percent—express an unfavorable view, but this majority is evenly divided between a somewhat unfavorable and very unfavorable opinion (43% each). In Pakistan, 55 percent take an unfavorable view of American culture (39% very), but only 12 percent view it favorably—a third expressed no opinion.
Since 2007, negative views of American culture have intensified in two out of three countries. In Egypt, those taking a
very
unfavorable view have increased slightly, by 7 points. In Indonesia, those saying "very unfavorable" have risen 21 points from 22 percent to 43 percent. In Pakistan, however, those taking a very unfavorable view have declined 7 points—though people with a favorable view remain rare (12%; 11% in 2007).
Attitudes toward the laws permitting freedom of expression in the US remain rather negative. In the current poll, a 48 percent plurality of Egyptians viewed these laws unfavorably (43% very), while 42 percent were favorable (28% very). In Indonesia, 57 percent were negative and only 33 percent were positive. Forty-four percent of Pakistanis had an unfavorable view, while 23 percent were favorable.
Indonesian views of US laws permitting freedom of expression have, however, shifted in a positive direction. The numbers with a favorable view of these laws have doubled from 17 percent in 2007 to 33 percent in the current poll, while the 57 percent majority that is unfavorable has declined from 73 percent.
Attack Americans
significant numbers say they would at least have mixed feelings if a family member were to join such a group and more people say they express approval of such groups to others than say they express disapproval.
Views of al Qaeda are complex. Majorities agree with nearly all of al Qaeda’s goals to change US behavior in the Muslim world, to promote Islamist governance, and to preserve and affirm Islamic identity.
Another al Qaeda goal for Islamist governance is
"to require a strict application of Shari’a law in every Islamic country." In Egypt 81 percent said they agreed with this goal. Pakistanis were similar at 76 percent; Indonesians, however, agreed by only a narrow plurality:A primary al Qaeda related to US behavior is
"to push the US to remove its bases and its military forces from all Islamic countries." This goal was endorsed by large majorities (Egypt 87%, Indonesia 64%, Pakistan 60%), and rejected by no more than 16 percent anywhere.http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/feb09/STARTII_Feb09_rpt.pdf
(I know evil zionista media propaganda)
Let's review, the radical islamic muzzie largely despises US culture and looks upon the American people unfavorably(this doesn't really jive with your know nothing assertion that the avg radical muzzie only dislikes the US government), particularly the part involving freedom of expression and equal rights for women. Wants to keep the western world from corrupting their backwards culture which over the last 100years has seen much of the world pass them by.
Oh and obviously see's the USA as the single largest threat to the status quo.
the fed already practices sharia law with interesr free money
"god wants to wipe out his enemies"... pretty silly when you think about it. God's own creation (humanity) are now his enemies? use your freaking brains people, God the creator would not chose one group of humans and empower them to wipe out all the rest... that sounds like something that an entirly different entity might come up with.
God the creator would not chose one group of humans and empower them to wipe out all the rest...
Ever read the Old Testament ... the part where God tells the Israelites what to do to the pagan countries as the Israelites move out of Egyptian bondage and back into Canaan?
Oh wait ... you were talking about a different God, right?
Disintermediation of dogmatic thinking goes a long way.
who wrote the Old Testament? possible there is an agenda? oh wait, we must take bible literally (ignore multiple translations for thousands of years, including pre-hebrew languages, and ignore the obvious fact that the bible actually describes multiple "gods"). and listen as the fundie heads explode...
As I stated above, we can only know God through what is written about him. The God of the Old Testament used one group of people to wipe out other groups of people - a direct contradiction to the claim/post I was addressing. But perhaps the poster was making a claim about a different God, described in a different book. I made allowance for that in my post.
the people who rewrote the old testament are most pleased that you see it that way. as long as you are reading the script they wrote for you, you will remain a good little goyim and do what you are told.
... the people who rewrote the old testament are most pleased that you see it that way.
In your claim that what we have available to use today is rewritten (you imply significantly changed from the originals?) - are you claiming access to an original that you are using to compare to the Septaugint and the Latin Vulgate? Without access to such an original, how can you prove that the Septaugint and the Latin Vulgate do not reflect accurately what the original documents stated?
I do understand that the original documents are not available to us today - that what we are reading is, indeed, a re-write of most if not all of what is in the Old and New Testaments. I disagree with your attempt to imply that the rewrites are significantly different from what the original documents were. Without the original documents, no one can prove such a claim. Because of that, it is a pointless claim to make.
Wait - you're serious?!?
most of the stories in the OT are so old that they predate the Hebrew language... so if you are relying on written documents here, you have a serious problem.
You used the word rewrote. That means the written word. I responded to that, so you change the subject to oral history?? I understand there is an oral history, but we were discussing the written word being changed.
you think it just showed up in writing one day? those stories are older than writing itself. and once writing came on the scene, they were re-written repeatedly... irrelevant to the point anyway, taking the bible literally and as a final authority is well, silly for self apparent reasons. I will say however, that if you study the changes over time, you get a pretty good picture of how millions of people can be easily mind controlled.
Bravo Achmed! with the obvious conclusion being absent religion same other entirely different entity would be using something other than God to promote their agenda. Religion is not the problem, the people who use it for nefarious purposes is the issue.
"Religion is not the problem, the people who use it for nefarious purposes is the issue. "
And of course this is just human nature. But... the best way to mitigate these problems is to discourage the centralization of power, religious OR secular. Power-mongers will ALWAYS take over the helm, and, well...
Only Mohammed said that of Allah. The God of Abraham and Joseph, the God of though shalt not kill, changed his mind into kill anyone who doesn't believe as you do.
Only Mohammed said that of Allah. The God of Abraham and Joseph, the God of though shalt not kill, changed his mind into kill anyone who doesn't believe as you do.
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There is no change in mind. From the beginning, the ordinance to kill anyone who does not believe as you do is issued.
Apparently, you dozed off some time some day.
Time of old testament: plenty of 'heathens' running big civilization
Time of new testament: much less heathens on God's land, much,much less. Guess what happened in the between.
Jesus is involved in the killing of people in the new testament. Guess who they are.
Once again, a job done is a job not to be done.
The difference.
Oh praise be unto Him who made it possible for AnAnonymous to actually post something without once mentioning US Citizenism!
Ameen.
Allah is God is Allah, the God of Creation. the God of Abraham from which Christianity, Judaism and Islam flow. suckers fall for the divide and conquer every time.