I can't help but think back to January 2009, when Rick Warren participated in the inauguration of Barack Obama, and I thought to myself:
"We're going to probably hear more homophobic bullshit from this guy, anyway."
You know, because he'd been there before, and because we weren't going to actually see any sort of a new, kinder, gentler, more inclusive evangelism from people who have probably figured out that the best they'll get from us "tolerant" types is more tolerance,while hateful people will always back you up if you reinforce their biases.
And so it happened, we sometimes do hear some homophobic stuff from this guy, and it's typical and not unexpected, but this little bit here pulled me up and I had to take a look at it for a second:
“I’m more against the redefinition of the term marriage than anything else.”
And then came Warren’s real semantic argument.
“I don’t think other groups get the opportunity to redefine a term. For instance, if a Muslim says this is a term we use and all of the sudden I take that term and mean it for me. Well, that’s not right,” the pastor stated.
“Don’t take a term and and make it something different. Orwell talked about doublespeak, where words mean the exact opposite of what they used to mean.”
So, same-sex marriage to Pastor Rick Warren means “the exact opposite” of opposite-sex marriage.
This fascinates me because I like to think about what words mean. What do we mean by "marriage", and what do we socially expect of married people? What do married people do, and how do they act towards and about each other?
This Tweet blames acts of mass murder on evolution. Because.... Because he can? This isn't a critique of evolution, so much as a demonizing of it. He's saying: Students learn this witchcraft science of evolution and proceed to do horrible things (so avoid it). It seems very likely that James Holmes was mentally ill and didn't become so because of his acquaintance with the theory of natural selection. It seems Warren is taking an opportunistic stab at evolution because Holmes was studying science (Warren finds a witch!)
For what it's worth, evolutionary biologists aren't regularly shooting up schools and malls and movie theaters.
Animals also didn't invent guns and don't commit acts of mass murder against their own kind. Only human beings do that, and they have been doing it for a long time. You can find acts of mass violence of man against man, such as war, throughout history. You can even read about it in the Bible.
I'm putting this under the label of "disasters" because it's the same kind of religious doomsaying where the horrible example of the moment is said to have occurred as a result of disobedience to God--it's nice to know we'll still have this tradition around when the old ghouls like Pat Robertson shuffle off their mortal coil (not).
Life is cheap to those who think they're god. Mao,Stalin& Hitler(God-deniers) caused 110 million deaths without remorse.
Yeah. You know, that sort of thing--it doesn't make atheists think you want to be friends, Rev.
Now, I have said before and I'll say again, I don't care for the Atheist/Believer Body Count pissing contest, because it's nonsensical. We can't really, really know what a person does or doesn't believe, we can only know what they say they do. Hitler, for example, frequently represented as a believer. Does that make him a model Christian--oh no! The killing and so on--very not Christ-like. Was he a nihilist? Maybe. Some people gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back, and those people say, "I see your endless nothingness and raise you absurdity and nightmares." But one can be a nihilist in a world with a god in it, too--sure, an incomprehensible and possibly mad god that howls in the vacant wastes of an expanding universe and gazes uncaring on life and death, but you know--still a god. There just isn't reason enough to assume that Hitler either thought he was god or denied god. Same arguments can be applied to Stalin and Mao--although I'll give him Mao, and he really did suck. For that matter, I'll give him the Kims of North Korea--and the father did and the son does seem to act as if they are like gods (incomprehensible and probably mad gods that don't actually run a country especially well, but mean to run it very thoroughly.)
I also think it possible that people who believe that God talks to them or through them can do a lot of harm. Maybe not on the scale that leaders of nations can. But serious harm nonetheless. Take Uganda and the proposed death penalty legislation. Now, I'm not putting Pastor Rick's involvement on Scott Lively's footing (although, Mr. Lively is a believer, and so are, presumably, the people who put up this legislation in the first place. But there is a correlation between the Saddleback Church's AIDS mission, which doubtless is well-intentioned, and the message that church carries regarding homosexuality. The pastor definitely has made his views on that clear--albeit not necessarily in front of more secular audiences:
He has repudiated the Ugandan proposal re: the death penalty, but probably doesn't realize that he helps nurture the notion that people who are gay are wrong or unnatural. His likening of the relations of consenting gay adults to pedophiles--which are non consensual abusers, is ridiculous.
And let's take it just a step further--sometimes the crime isn't in leaving dead bodies behind, but killing part of the human imagination, the spirit of exploration, the impulse of human dignity to seek liberation. His ministry, shiny, happy, and recently flush with many donations after he sent out a poignantly poor-mouthing letter, represents in many ways the triumph of feel-good rhetoric over works, the anti-intellectualism of creationism, the judgementalism of the bigot.
I am a god-denier. That doesn't mean I think I'm god. For what it's worth, since I don't believe in god, I don't believe any of us mere humans are god, either--I'm suspicious of idols and would prefer they not track their clay-footprints on my mental carpet. To me, life is pretty precious because it's all we have. I also value that people should be able to enjoy a good quality of life, and be able to make certain choices for themselves that hurt no one, without censorship from one purporting to speak for god.
Perhaps he didn't mean to cover all atheists with a blanket slur that puts us in bed with Hitler, but you know what? I'm kind of seeing it that way.
