He can be both, like the late Cheif Justice Earl Warren 
Posted on 08/28/2006 6:31:13 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
The Holocaust wasn't Hitler's fault. Darwin made him do it. Complicit as well are any who buy into the scientific theory that modern man evolved from lower animal forms.
That's the latest lunacy from one of our more fanatical right-wing American Christian television outfits, the Coral Ridge Ministries in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Coral Ridge espouses that America is not a free-religion nation, but a Christian one. It argues there should be no separation of church and state.
Thus it's America's Taliban, America's Shiite theocracy.
It certainly has a propensity for explaining or excusing Hitler. A few years ago it brought in a conference speaker to argue that American abortion was a more horrible atrocity than the Holocaust.
One year it disinvited Cal Thomas as a conference speaker after Brother Cal got too liberal. You're thinking I must be kidding. But I kid you not. Brother Cal had displayed the utter audacity to co-author a book contending that American Christian conservatives ought to worry a little more about spreading the gospel from the bottom of the culture up rather than from the top of politics down.
Now this: Coral Ridge is airing a couple of cable installments of a "documentary," called "Darwin's Deadly Legacy," that seek to make a case that, without Darwin, there could have been no Hitler.
Authoritative sources for the program include no less than columnist Ann Coulter, noted scientist, who says she is outraged that she didn't get instructed in Darwin's effective creation of Hitler when she was in school. She says she has since come to understand that Hitler was merely a Darwinist trying, by extermination of a group of people he considered inferior because of their religion and heritage, to "hurry along" the natural survival of the Aryan fittest.
Also quoted is Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Project, who tells the Anti-Defamation League that his comments were used out of context and that he is "absolutely appalled" by the "utterly misguided and inflammatory" premise of Coral Ridge's report.
The documentary's theme is really quite simple: Darwin propounded the theory of evolution. Hitler came along and believed the theory. Hitler killed Jews. So, blame Darwin for the Holocaust. Blame, too, all others who agree with or advance Darwin's theory. Get back to God and Adam and Eve and all will be right again with the world.
"To put it simply, no Darwin, no Hitler," said Dr. D. James Kennedy, president of Coral Ridge Ministries. "The legacy of Charles Darwin is millions of deaths."
Obviously, the theme is breath-taking nonsense. You can't equate academic theory with murderous practice. You can't equate a thinker and a madman, or science and crime.
And you can't ever blame one man for another's actions. That once was a proud conservative precept. In a different context, you'll no doubt find Coral Ridge fervently preaching personal responsibility. Except, apparently, for Adolf Hitler, to whom these religious kooks issue a pass. Ol' Adolf, it seems, just fell in with a bad crowd.
By Coral Ridge's premise, Mohammed is to blame for Osama bin Laden. Actually, Coral Ridge might not argue with that. So how about this: The pope is to blame for the IRA. And Jesus is to blame for Mel Gibson, not to mention Coral Ridge Ministries.
[Omitted some author detail and contact info.]
"Islam is a western religion."
Other than historic incursions into "the west," triggering the Crusades, Islam has played no significant role in the practice of religion in the west, by westerners. That even remains so today, despite a fairly large wave of immigration. Islam certainly isn't an eastern religion, but to call it a western one is more than slightly peculiar, no matter how many quotes you might have mined describing it thusly.
It's a western religion because it is descended from the God of Abraham and because it recognizes Jesus as a prophet.
It is a rather great heresy, but no more so than Christian Science or LDS. It is rather belligerent, but it has conquered no more territory than Christianity.
It strikes me as medieval, but then what we call medieval was Christianity before secular governments arose.
I agree with you about those hummers...I used it only in return to someone using it with me....
"It strikes me as medieval, but then what we call medieval was Christianity before secular governments arose."
"Secular" only in the sense that the government was actually a separate entity. And, this didn't just arise, whole, out of some primordial soup ... it was the direct result of the Protestant Reformation.
From the viewpoint of the Greeks at the time of Alexander (which is the classical standard of Western civilization), all "western religions" are what they would have considered eastern. It's only because Rome abandoned its traditional gods and became Christian (300 years after Alexander) that we consider the Abrahamic religions to be part of the West. Originally they weren't.
West shmest. You need a scorecard.
I haven't seen any nation voting to go back to the divine right of kings, or even to reinstate an official religion. It seems that once people are free of religious coercion, they don't voluntarily go back.
I suspect the current infatuation with official sanctioning of religion, by a vocal segment of the Republican Party, is the primary reason why educated people tend to be horrified by the party.
It's a bit like what happened to the democrats with the peace movement. They found themselves attached to a winning party, assumed they were responsible for the wins, and proceeded to trash the party.
"It seems that once people are free of religious coercion, they don't voluntarily go back."
Yes, that certainly is true. It's true of me, and true of my family going back to the British Isles and Europe, the ones that weren't here before colonization at least. The Scots-Irish were placed in Ireland in an attempt at breaking Catholic control ... more a political move than a religious one. Anglo-Irish parliamentarians attempted the same thing. French Huguenots, Quaker, Dutch Reformed, Moravian, I count them all among the people without whom I would not exist. They were hounded across Europe and eventually ended up here, in what was to become a wonderful country, with a constitution expressly designed to never permit governmental meddling in religious matters again. But, "congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" has been turned on it's ear, to the point that this "establishment clause" is actually being used to suppress religious expression. And, people who advocate no belief, in any god, are at the forefront of that suppression. That's where we've gone astray. You fail to see your own complicity, obviously, else you wouldn't be pontificating upon being free of religious coercion.
I have beliefs, but I do not care to enforce them on others. I spend a lot of time explaining to others the things I hold to be true.
I am not completely ignorant of history. I know the government of the United States has supported religion. I went to public schools where the Lord's Prayer was recited every day.
But the government once supported slavery also. And then segregation. I am not arguing that religion is equivalent to thes evils, but I will argue that once an error in law has been corrected, it is finished. There is no going back.
The government support of religion was an atavism. It would not have happened except for inertia. It will not come back.
"The government support of religion was an atavism. It would not have happened except for inertia. It will not come back."
You'll not see me cheering governmental hostility to religion. How is state enforcement of "no religion" any less odious, in your estimation, than enforcement of a state religion? Your profession of unnamed religious beliefs aside, can you not see the pitfalls inherent to this form of religious coercion as well? Irreligious societies are not immune to genocide. Active hostility to religion will draw such a thing all the closer. Think about that.
Yep.
This question has historical roots unrelated to religion.
First, I support a ban on the promotion of religion by government. I am less enthusiastic about bans affecting individuals and private organizations.
But these go back to an era of government enforced segregation and government complicity in private racism. The laws against discrimination attacked a genuine evil. As with all laws, they have unintended consequences.
That's what I figured. I'm just glad I'm not the only one!
It's just sooooo smarmy, isn't it? Especially the posts that are just a hum. Say what you mean, people! Don't make me interpret your grunts, sighs and moans. I should only have to do for my husband. ;)
Oh, I am sure you are not the only one...I think most Freepers find those hummers quite disgusting...and smarmy is exactly the correct word for those hummers...
Regards to your hubby....
Either the publishers were real slow, or old Erasmus was still writing at a goodly age. (Do you know if he is still living?)
He can be both, like the late Cheif Justice Earl Warren
They're Creationists, less than honest behaviour is expected
There is no inevitable conclusion that a Protestant religion leads to secular government.
Counter examples: John Calvin, Dr James Kennedy.
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