I'm already hearing it: accusations of being "slanted" or "biased," and, as such, some people won't read it. Well, I already acknowledge that everyone has a bias, so let's get past that. And if there's certain words that push your buttons, again, try and get past certain words and try to look at the article as a whole.
The question, I guess, is whether one would agree that the crux of this argument is correct: that the Religious Right and, by extension, the GOP don't care about saving the environment, because the world is going to end anyway in a short period of time, so we might as well blow it all! Plus, ecological disasters that may be attributed to "global warming" may be a "good thing," as it might be signs of "the end," so why would we want to stop it?
http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2004/10/27/scherer-christian/
That's just an excerpt. The whole article is in the link.
Thoughts?
Melon
The question, I guess, is whether one would agree that the crux of this argument is correct: that the Religious Right and, by extension, the GOP don't care about saving the environment, because the world is going to end anyway in a short period of time, so we might as well blow it all! Plus, ecological disasters that may be attributed to "global warming" may be a "good thing," as it might be signs of "the end," so why would we want to stop it?
http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2004/10/27/scherer-christian/
Many End-Timers believe that until Jesus' return, the Lord will provide. In America's Providential History, a popular reconstructionist high-school history textbook, authors Mark Beliles and Stephen McDowell tell us that: "The secular or socialist has a limited resource mentality and views the world as a pie ... that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece." However, "the Christian knows that the potential in God is unlimited and that there is no shortage of resources in God's Earth. The resources are waiting to be tapped." In another passage, the writers explain: "While many secularists view the world as overpopulated, Christians know that God has made the earth sufficiently large with plenty of resources to accommodate all of the people."
Natural-resource depletion and overpopulation, then, are not concerns for End-Timers -- and nor are other ecological catastrophes, which are viewed by dispensationalists as presaging the Great Tribulation. Support for this view comes from an 11-word passage in Matthew 24:7: "[T]here shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places." Other End-Timers see suggestions of ecological meltdown in Revelation's four horsemen of the Apocalypse -- War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death -- and they cite a verse mentioning costly wheat, barley, and oil as foretelling food and fossil-fuel shortages. During the End Time, the four horsemen shall be "given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth." Some End-Timers note that Revelation 8:8-11 predicts a fiery mountain falling into the sea and causing great destruction, followed by a blazing star plummeting from the sky. This star is called "Wormwood," which dispensationalists say translates loosely in Ukrainian as "Chernobyl."
A plethora of End-Time preachers, tracts, films, and websites hawk environmental cataclysm as Good News -- a harbinger of the imminent Second Coming. Hal Lindsey's 1970 End-Time "non-fiction" work, The Late Great Planet Earth, is the classic of the genre; the movie version pummels viewers with stock footage of nuclear blasts, polluting smokestacks, raging floods, and killer bees. Likewise, dispensationalist author Tim LaHaye's "Left Behind" novels -- at one point selling 1.5 million copies per month -- weave ecological disaster into an action-adventure account of prophesy.
That's just an excerpt. The whole article is in the link.
Thoughts?
Melon