The New Apostolic Reformation is nothing more than just another religious wehrmacht preaching scammy dreams of world domination to the disenfranchised.
In last night's debate, Rick Perry, stumbling over his answer denying the science of climate change, opined, "Galileo got outvoted for a spell." Of course Galileo, considered the father of modern science, wasn't "outvoted" by other scientists, he was subjected to an inquisition by the church for being a heretic.
"Sectarian Christians" is the term Sherkat uses for what most reporters and pundits call evangelicals, but by which Sherkat means denominational and non-denominational Christians who believe the bible is the literal, inerrant word of God. Sherkat writes in a forthcoming paper in Social Science Quarterly [ http://socialsciencequarterly.org/ ] that nearly one third of Americans "identify with sectarian Protestant denominations" and that "resources from these organizations and their sympathizers have been instrumental for establishing religious alternatives to the teaching of evolution—fostering a vibrant industry promoting 'intelligent design' and 'creation science.'" Josh Rosenau of the National Center for Science Education says that the same strategies are now being directed at attacking the science of climate change.
For his research, Sherkat analyzed responses to 13 questions on scientific fact and reasoning from the 2006 General Social Survey, collected at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. The questions really are quite basic: one covers understanding that the earth revolves around the sun and not vice-versa -- the heart of the church's effort to silence Galileo 500 years ago. Sectarian Christians performed more poorly than other respondents to these queries on basic scientific knowledge.
Sherkat tells me, "The differences are not explained by ethnicity, educational attainment, income, or region of the country. Indeed, religious factors are far larger than gender or racial differences in scientific literacy." Although the public discourse of conservative activists focuses on rejection of evolution and efforts to stymie stem cell research, Sherkat writes that his study "shows that the effect of sectarian religious identifications and fundamentalist religious beliefs extends well beyond these two issues. Given the low levels of scientific literacy prevalent among fundamentalist and sectarian Christians, they may have difficulty understanding public issues related to scientific inquiry or pedagogy, and they may have a limited capacity to understand technical information regarding their own health and safety." These "low levels of scientific literacy," he concludes, "are a substantial barrier to reasoned discourse and informed political action."
Rick Perry, the Texas governor presidential wannabe 2.0, and Galileo Galilei, one of the great scientific thinkers in Western history -– BFFs?
It was a double-take moment in the Republican presidential sweepstakes debate at the Ronald Reagan presidential library in Simi Valley. Perry, a science scoffer on evolution and global climate change, invoked the ghost of the persecuted and brilliant Galileo to support his fingers-in-the-ears, don't-confuse-me-with-facts sentiments about global warming:
"The science is not settled on this. The idea that we would put Americans' economy at jeopardy based on scientific theory that's not settled yet to me is just nonsense," Perry said. "Just because you have a group of scientists who stood up and said, 'Here is the fact.' Galileo got outvoted for a spell," he said.
"Outvoted for a spell"? Like science is the New Hampshire primary?
Even in his lifetime, Galileo was not entirely an outlier on this; Copernicus had broken ground on the "heliocentric"’ solar system -– the sun at the center, and the Earth revolving around it; Johannes Kepler was pretty much on board too.
The people who "outvoted" Galileo on his theory -– and "theory" in science has a different sense from the political-fringey one -- were not the enlightened scientific community; they were not the 17th-century equivalent of the world's present-day climate-change scientists, marshaling reams of data over decades and laying it out in peer-reviewed journals.
The people who opposed Galileo were not standing against conventional wisdom. They were the conventional wisdom, without the wisdom part: biblical literalists, papal politicos, church authoritarians, and a few hack astronomers not bright enough to understand the science.
Galileo, the Inquisition concluded, was "vehemently suspect of heresy." Under duress, he abjured his work (although supposedly muttering under his breath in Italian, "Eppur si muove" -– essentially, "The Earth does SO move.") He was sentenced to house arrest for the rest of his life, and his work was banned, not only what he had already written, but whatever he might write. (The Catholic Church issued a formal "oops, never mind, Galileo was right" nearly 20 years ago.)
It might all be droll -– like what happened when JPL named its Saturn probe spacecraft "Cassini [ http://articles.latimes.com/1997/oct/17/local/me-43638 ]," and lawyers for "Oleg Cassini," the fashion line named for ther stylist and socialite, demanded to know why JPL hadn't sought its permission. Because JPL's Cassini is an 18th-century astronomer, that's why. Oh, the Oleg Cassini people said.
It would be droll, if Perry weren't seriously running and seriously supported for the most powerful job in the nation, arguably in the world.
Last month, in New Hampshire, a woman prompted her son to ask Perry about science and evolution. Perry answered that evolution is a "theory that is out there, and it's got some gaps in it. In Texas, we teach both creationism and evolution in our public schools. Because I figure you're smart enough to figure out which one is right."
Really? Just plop down a couple of opposing points of view in front of those kids and they'll figure it out? Well, then, why stop at evolution? String theory, the single-bullet theory -– just leave it up to those smart fifth-graders. Let them decide whether global climate change is real. Who needs teachers? (Maybe that's the grand scheme behind all of this: They don’t teach -– you decide.)
The boy also asked Perry how old he thinks the Earth is. "You know what, I don't have any idea," Perry answered. "I know it's pretty old, so it goes back a long, long ways. I'm not sure anybody actually knows completely and absolutely how old the Earth is."
Nobody actually knows? Or does Perry know he doesn't want to get pinned down on this one?
"Young Earthers" and some biblical literalists believe the Earth's age can be counted in thousands of years; a 17th-century Irish bishop named James Ussher set the start of creation as the eve of October 23, 4004 BC, a Sunday (which I find confusing given that Sunday is also the deity's day of rest. And I don't know whether that is Greenwich Mean Time or local time, sorry.) Creationism museums sometimes show dinosaurs and humans coexisting.
Scientists using real science stuff –- instruments and measurements and all that – have put the earth’s age at about 4.5 billion years, so we’re not talking about a rounding-error difference here.
Columbus Day rolls around next month, and in case Perry is considering allying himself to the bold thinking of Christopher Columbus in defying the flat-Earthers, it should be pointed out that anyone who was literate in the late 15th century didn't believe the Earth was flat. They were pretty much just arguing over the size of the sphere. It wasn't until a handful of decades ago that the flat-Earth "theory" has enjoyed a vogue unknown since maybe the 3rd century.
Isn't it curious how some people who disparage science and its "experts" are paradoxically eager to trot out anyone they can find in a lab coat -– and now even, shamelessly, the dead and defenseless Galileo –- as human shields, to prove how wrong those smarty-pants scientists really are?
Copyright 2011 Los Angeles Times (emphasis in original)
Perry’s Ponzi-Talk Implies Fraud in Long-Popular Social Security Sep 8, 2011 Charles Ponzi was a legendary Boston swindler who promised investors 100 percent returns in 90 days if they joined a scheme to buy and sell international postal coupons. In 1920, after roughly seven months of easy riches, he was exposed as a fraud and arrested. Social Security is a government-run insurance program that provides the typical retiree with single-digit returns on contributions deducted from their paychecks over the course of their working lives. The program has operated for 76 years amid praise from presidents of both parties. In 1983, even as staunch a critic of big government as President Ronald Reagan vowed: “The Social Security system must be preserved.” To presidential hopeful Texas Governor Rick Perry, however, the country’s most expensive entitlement program is a financial con that would have made Charles Ponzi blush. “It is a Ponzi scheme to tell our kids that are 25 or 30 years old today, you’re paying into a program that’s going to be there,” Perry said during a Sept. 7 debate of the Republican presidential candidates, reprising a theme from his 2010 book “Fed Up.” Experts on both Ponzi schemes and Social Security say Perry is wrong. ... [...] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-09/perry-s-ponzi-talk-implies-fraud-in-long-popular-social-security.html
THE end is near — or so it seems to a segment of Christians aligned with the religious right. The global economic meltdown, numerous natural disasters and the threat of radical Islam have fueled a conviction among some evangelicals that these are the last days. While such beliefs might be dismissed as the rantings of a small but vocal minority, apocalyptic fears helped drive the antigovernment movements of the 1930s and ’40s and could help define the 2012 presidential campaign as well.
Christian apocalypticism has a long and varied history. Its most prevalent modern incarnation took shape a century ago, among the vast network of preachers, evangelists, Bible-college professors and publishers who established the fundamentalist movement. Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Pentecostals and independents, they shared a commitment to returning the Christian faith to its “fundamentals.”
Biblical criticism, the return of Jews to the Holy Land, evolutionary science and World War I convinced them that the second coming of Jesus was imminent. Basing their predictions on biblical prophecy, they identified signs, drawn especially from the books of Daniel, Ezekiel and Revelation, that would foreshadow the arrival of the last days: the growth of strong central governments and the consolidation of independent nations into one superstate led by a seemingly benevolent leader promising world peace.
This leader would ultimately prove to be the Antichrist, who, after the so-called rapture of true saints to heaven, would lead humanity through a great tribulation culminating in the second coming and Armageddon. Conservative preachers, evangelists and media personalities of the 20th century, like Billy Sunday, Aimee Semple McPherson, Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell, shared these beliefs.
Fundamentalists’ anticipation of a coming superstate pushed them to the political right. As the government grew in response to industrialization, fundamentalists concluded that the rapture was approaching. Their anxieties worsened in the 1930s with the rise of fascism. Obsessed with matching biblical prophecy with current events, they studied Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin, each of whom seemed to foreshadow the Antichrist.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt troubled them as well. His consolidation of power across more than three terms in the White House, his efforts to undermine the autonomy of the Supreme Court, his dream of a global United Nations and especially his rapid expansion of the government confirmed what many fundamentalists had feared: the United States was lining up with Europe in preparation for a new world dictator.
As a result, prominent fundamentalists joined right-wing libertarians in their effort to undermine Roosevelt. That this mix of millennialism and activism seemed inconsistent — why work for reform if the world is destined for Armageddon? — never troubled them. They simply asserted that Jesus had called them to “occupy” until he returned (Luke 19:13). Like orthodox Marxists who challenge capitalism even though they say they believe it represents an inevitable step on the road to the socialist paradise, conservative Christians never let their conviction that the future is already written lead them to passivity.
The world in 2011 resembles the world of the 1930s in many respects. International turmoil and a prolonged economic downturn have fueled distrust of government, as has the rise of a new libertarianism represented in the explosive growth of the Tea Party.
For some evangelicals, President Obama is troubling. The specious theories about his place of birth, his internationalist tendencies, his measured support for Israel and his Nobel Peace Prize fit their long-held expectations about the Antichrist. So does his commitment to expanding the reach of government in areas like health care.
In 2008, the campaign of Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee, presciently tapped into evangelicals’ apocalyptic fears by producing an ad, “The One,” that sarcastically heralded Mr. Obama as a messiah. Mr. McCain was onto something. Not since Roosevelt have we had a president of charisma and global popularity, who so perfectly fits the evangelicals’ Antichrist mold.
While Depression-era fundamentalists represented only a small voice among the anti-Roosevelt forces of the 1930s, evangelicals have grown ever savvier and now constitute one of the largest interest groups in the Republican Party. In the past, relatively responsible leaders like Mr. Graham, who worked with Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon, and even Mr. Falwell, who reined in evangelical excess in exchange for access to the Reagan White House, channeled their evangelical energy.
Not now. A leadership vacuum exists on the evangelical right that some Republicans — Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and even Ron Paul — are exploiting. How tightly their strident anti-statism will connect with evangelical apocalypticism remains to be seen.
The left is in disarray while libertarianism is on the ascent. A new generation of evangelicals — well-versed in organizing but lacking moderating influences — is lining up behind hard-right anti-statists. While few of the faithful truly think that the president is the Antichrist, millions of voters, like their Depression-era predecessors, fear that the time is short. The sentiment that Mr. Obama is preparing the United States, as Roosevelt did, for the Antichrist’s global coalition is likely to grow.
Barring the rapture, Mrs. Bachmann or Mr. Perry could well ride the apocalyptic anti-statism of conservative Christians into the Oval Office. Indeed, the tribulation may be upon us.
Matthew Avery Sutton, an associate professor of history at Washington State University, is the author of “Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America.”
Like the vast majority of the people in the TV and movie industries, James Garner was a staunch, lifelong Democrat. That’s hardly unusual — according to this article in Suite .. https://suite.io/chet-dembeck/48kd2q2 , Hollywood gives five times more money to Democrats than to Republicans. But where many Hollywood Democrats like to talk the talk, Garner walked the walk — sometimes literally.
On August 28, 1963, Garner was photographed .. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/march-washington-50-years-gallery-1.1435341?pmSlide=1.1435338 .. by the New York Daily News walking hand-in-hand with black actress Diahann Carroll during the March on Washington — a peaceful demonstration .. http://www.core-online.org/History/washington_march.htm .. that was a watershed moment in the Civil Rights Movement. At the time, the very act of a white man holding hands with a black woman would have been outrageous. But that did not matter to James Garner; throughout his career, he stuck to his strongly democratic principles, even incorporating his beliefs into his acting career.
For the 1985 CBS miniseries Space, Garner asked that the political affiliation of the lead character be changed from Republican to Democrat, saying, “My wife would kill me if I ever played a Republican,” according to a 1985 Boston Globe article that is not currently available online, but is cited on Garner’s Wikipedia page .. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_garner#cite_note-51 .
Interestingly, when principled Democrat James Garner had to work with “ultraconservative” Mel Gibson on the 1994 film version of Maverick, there was no friction between the two actors. He later told The Village Voice .. http://blogs.villagevoice.com/dailymusto/2011/12/mel_gibson.php : “Mel and I got along fine.
--- “In my opinion, Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn’t qualified to be governor of California. Ronald Reagan wasn’t qualified to be governor, let alone president.” ---
Also in his memoir, James recounts being approached about running for U.S. Congress as a Republican in 1962.
--- “It didn’t stop them when I told them I was a Democrat…. They just thought I could win.” ---
He was again approached about running for office, this time for Governor of California in 1990, and again turned the opportunity down.
--- “There’s one difference between me and [Schwarzenegger and Reagan]: I know I’m not qualified.” ---
What is your opinion of entertainers such as James Garner, Tim Robbins, and Natalie Maines mixing politics with entertainment? Let us know in the comments.
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