While we're on this subject I want to mention a pet peeve of mine — a phrase frequently employed by Al Mohler and other proponents of creation-ism. It's a phrase that bothers me as a lover of the Bible and of stories and of words. That phrase is "the creation account" or "the creation account in Genesis." The book of Genesis offers no such account. It provides a creation story — more than one, in fact, the first 11 chapters... Read more
Some felt I was being unfair to Al Mohler in this recent post by stating his position in an unflatteringly blunt way. As a general rule, it is best — both kindest and most constructive — to try to restate the positions of those with whom we disagree in terms they would accept. But I'm not sure that's possible with Mohler's position here. His implicit position seems deliberately left implicit and so any attempt, such as in the previous post,... Read more
Tribulation Force, pp. 289-293 Before reading these books I would have said that, as a rule, introducing broad ethnic stereotypes into a story is never a good idea. They're insulting and stale and they can't really function as characters since they're indistinguishable from and interchangeable with one another. Yet here in the World's Worst Books, the arrival of such a stock caricature actually turns out to enliven the storytelling. "Rabbi Marc Feinberg" may be nothing more than a familiar stereotype... Read more
Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, believes that the Bible is a book of lies. The test of a Christian, Mohler argues, is if they remain loyal to those lies — choosing them rather than the truth no matter how clear and irrefutable that truth may be, no matter how hard reality beats us over the head with its undeniable actuality. That's madness — the very definition of madness, but it is what Al Mohler insists it means... Read more
Tribulation Force, pp. 281-289 To create is to love. Artists know this. To paint a picture, sing a song, play a part or write a story is an act of love. This is a truth expressed on the very first page of the Bible, a refrain in the creation story of the first chapter of Genesis. One expects a creation story to be a hymn of praise to the creator, but Genesis turns that upside down, presenting the story as... Read more
It seems this week is when the self-appointed serious people have decided to discuss their grand schemes for long-term debt-reduction, so allow me to get in on the act. I do not share the conventional wisdom that this effort must entail something nasty and unpleasant. I think long-term debt- and deficit-reduction should, like short-term deficit-reduction, make people's lives better rather than worse. The biggest short-term deficit problem, after all, is unemployment. The obvious solution to joblessness is jobs. Put the... Read more
The Atlantic's Marc Armbinder notes that the new Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives "plans to hold high profile hearings examining the alleged 'scientific fraud' behind global warming, a sleeper issue in this election that motivated the base quite a bit." OK, then, let's do that. Let's have just exactly that conversation in that forum. Please. Yes, I understand that the intent of such hearings would be to create a circus of misdirection and misinformation and that the... Read more
I think Frank Schaeffer oversimplifies and overstates his case here, but he's also right in identifying a major contributing factor to the American tea party movement and its influence on the recent election. To understand this movement and this election, Schaeffer says, you have to understand "the End Times folks." Specifically, he argues, you have to understand the phenomenally popular Left Behind series written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins: Jenkins and LaHaye provide the ultimate revenge fantasy for the... Read more
Tribulation Force, pp. 279-282 Rayford Steele telephones Bruce Barnes for some last-minute advice on meeting with the Antichrist and here we are given another inadvertent glimpse of what constitutes virtue in the Left Behind universe: Rayford Steele arrived at the United Nations. He had been praying silently since he phoned Bruce Barnes just before he boarded his flight. "I feel like I'm going to meet the devil," Rayford said. "Not much in this life scares me, Bruce. I've always taken... Read more
Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy offered an emphatic recommendation of NASA's Climate Change Evidence site, a recommendation heartily seconded by Teresa Nielsen Hayden who says: It’s clear, authoritative, and visually striking: a single-link refutation to throw at denialists. Bookmark it now. This is excellent advice. It's just the sort of single, comprehensive and accessible presentation of the evidence that is needed to persuade climate-change denialists who may be misinformed. The problem, though, is that most such denialists are not simply... Read more
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