was that my email being read on the radio? I suppose it was...oops.
Listening to an angry guest on a local radio show broadcast by our Canadian public broadcaster "CBC", I developed some rather angry emotions about the major current conservative viewpoints of "anti marijuana", "anti climate/science" and "anti homosexual", and decided to send this rather unloving, poorly thought out letter to the station.
Thinking to myself, ah, I got that off my chest and chances are they will never read something like that on air. But, they did. I didnt hear it, but my evangelical conservative mother mentioned it to me that one of her fellow churchgoing friends pointed out my "rather hateful" rant was played on the radio and asked her if that was indeed "her son??"
I should point out that while many of my posts on this blog site are very anti religious, in this case my rant is not against all religions, or even against Christianity. For the most part, Christians are relatively benign, reasonable people with little to differentiate them from anyone else. They largely do not dispute (or even care about) evolution or the climate issues, and generally do a lot to make the world a better place at least when it comes to helping people in poverty, and many of them probably partake in the odd toke now and again like most people. This letter was aimed squarely at James Dobson & Dominionism and Christian Reconstructionist politics. I see those movements as a direct threat to our secular democracy, and its important to remember, modern democracy is not a biblical ideology in the least, it has no roots in biblical teaching - nor does a "republic" either. This movement that somehow has managed to twist the bible into being in lockstep with 4 key principals while ignoring others that are clearly mandated in the bible. The three are anti-hemp, anti gay, anti abortion, and anti science (evolution in particular)
The bible says nothing about hemp, drugs, marijuanna specifically. Nothing. The bible is also silent on abortion, except for clearly condoning it in a few circumstances. There is no dispute the bible is anti gay, but its also anti a lot of things that are routinely practiced by James Dobson and his ilk. (eating meat, sacrificing animals, women allowed to speak in church etc). There was no "science" as we know it at the time of the bible, evolution was not an existing theory, and the bible is truly vague at best when it comes to the origin of the universe.
That said, the bible is EXTREMELY clear about one thing. Poverty. Jesus seems to have no tolerance for the rich. He says at one point it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. It is incredibly ironic that the greatest concentration of these "fundamentalist christians" are in the parts of the earth where the worlds wealth is the most concentrated. (Texas, New York, Southern California etc).
Anyway, the 4 non poverty related things like being anti homosexual, anti science, anti hemp, and anti climate/science/evolution play very well into the hands of the largest corporations in the world IE Exxon, Gilead Pharmaseuticals (controlled by one of the most powerful Christian Reconstructionists, Donald Rumsfeld) etc. Hence my email. Could I have included all this explanation and context, I would have been more comfortable hitting send the other day but I posted it here instead on the off chance some people heard the broadcast and know my blog.
Thanks for reading!
Hemp competes with corn, cotton, and other major corporate centralized industries, as well as disrupting clear corporate pharmaceutical interests as pointed out by the guest you had on the phone.
The Harper government represents an extremist, delusional, religious agenda that, like the clerics in the Muslim theocracies, makes use of "their sacred unquestionable values" to prevent our society from making use of hemp, doing something about alternative energy research, and eroding the rights of our homosexual minorities. Under the guise of "doing their god's will", they are, in fact, performing the will of corporate interests, because it is so easy to make the gullible religious masses believe whatever they want as long as it comes from one of the pulpits in their closed, dark halls.
As Voltaire said, "get them to believe absurdities and you can make them commit atrocities".
The Harper government represents an extremist, delusional, religious agenda that, like the clerics in the Muslim theocracies, makes use of "their sacred unquestionable values" to prevent our society from making use of hemp, doing something about alternative energy research, and eroding the rights of our homosexual minorities. Under the guise of "doing their god's will", they are, in fact, performing the will of corporate interests, because it is so easy to make the gullible religious masses believe whatever they want as long as it comes from one of the pulpits in their closed, dark halls.
As Voltaire said, "get them to believe absurdities and you can make them commit atrocities".
Thinking to myself, ah, I got that off my chest and chances are they will never read something like that on air. But, they did. I didnt hear it, but my evangelical conservative mother mentioned it to me that one of her fellow churchgoing friends pointed out my "rather hateful" rant was played on the radio and asked her if that was indeed "her son??"
I should point out that while many of my posts on this blog site are very anti religious, in this case my rant is not against all religions, or even against Christianity. For the most part, Christians are relatively benign, reasonable people with little to differentiate them from anyone else. They largely do not dispute (or even care about) evolution or the climate issues, and generally do a lot to make the world a better place at least when it comes to helping people in poverty, and many of them probably partake in the odd toke now and again like most people. This letter was aimed squarely at James Dobson & Dominionism and Christian Reconstructionist politics. I see those movements as a direct threat to our secular democracy, and its important to remember, modern democracy is not a biblical ideology in the least, it has no roots in biblical teaching - nor does a "republic" either. This movement that somehow has managed to twist the bible into being in lockstep with 4 key principals while ignoring others that are clearly mandated in the bible. The three are anti-hemp, anti gay, anti abortion, and anti science (evolution in particular)
The bible says nothing about hemp, drugs, marijuanna specifically. Nothing. The bible is also silent on abortion, except for clearly condoning it in a few circumstances. There is no dispute the bible is anti gay, but its also anti a lot of things that are routinely practiced by James Dobson and his ilk. (eating meat, sacrificing animals, women allowed to speak in church etc). There was no "science" as we know it at the time of the bible, evolution was not an existing theory, and the bible is truly vague at best when it comes to the origin of the universe.
That said, the bible is EXTREMELY clear about one thing. Poverty. Jesus seems to have no tolerance for the rich. He says at one point it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. It is incredibly ironic that the greatest concentration of these "fundamentalist christians" are in the parts of the earth where the worlds wealth is the most concentrated. (Texas, New York, Southern California etc).
Anyway, the 4 non poverty related things like being anti homosexual, anti science, anti hemp, and anti climate/science/evolution play very well into the hands of the largest corporations in the world IE Exxon, Gilead Pharmaseuticals (controlled by one of the most powerful Christian Reconstructionists, Donald Rumsfeld) etc. Hence my email. Could I have included all this explanation and context, I would have been more comfortable hitting send the other day but I posted it here instead on the off chance some people heard the broadcast and know my blog.
Thanks for reading!
Labels: Christian Reconstructionism, Donald Rumsfeld, Focus on the Family America, Gilead, Hemp, Homosexuality, James Dobson, Jesus Christ, Marijuana, Racism, tolerance
posted by Code Handyman at
5:55 PM
2 Comments:
A footnote, I see Jamees Dobson as the "god father" or "supreme pope" of all current leaders in the Christian Right Neo Conservative movement, including Steven Harper, at whom my letter is targeted. So when I say James Dobson, I am also referring to the new conservative government of Canada that is born of the evangelical arm of the Christian Reform party of canada, plus of course Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush Jr., Sarah Palin etc. Its a "royal dobson" I suppose.
argh...my post is full of errors. Another note is that I dont thing the anti-abortion thing plays well into the hands of corporations. That plays the other way, it adds a "life or death" dimension to the extremist follower that gives them reason to justify civil disobedience and terrorist acts. Hard to justify terrorism with anti science claims alone, so it works. Personally I am opposed to abortion in most circumstances except for the most extreme but my feelings on the matter have no bearing here, I just wanted to point out that besides conjecture of "value of life" arguments, there is no direct verse opposing abortion, and there are verses that put the life of a fetus at some small number of silver pieces (Not sure of the exact amount, but its not a "life for life" kind of thing in the OT)
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