Comment by Robb Allen

January 7, 2010 @ 6:02 am

Careful with that broad brush, Phil. Not all of us are like this whack job.

In fact, I’m rather fond of Sci-Fi and read it much more than I do anything religious in nature.

Comment by Phil

January 7, 2010 @ 7:49 am

The brush isn’t as broad as you might think it is. Robb. I seriously doubt that you vote for the guy who loves God more than individual rights.

Comment by Rivrdog

January 7, 2010 @ 8:05 am

Hey, we’re part of the “intolerant Right”. Doesn’t that give us leave to be intolerant with those hiding in our midst who want to burn books and ban writers?

The Left gave us the sobriquet, let’s use it!

Comment by DFWMTX

January 7, 2010 @ 8:15 am

As much as their stupider sayings annoy/irritate/infuriate me, I want to keep the Religious Right on our side. Why? They argue for decency, something the Progressives are doing away with in our culture. While liberals focus on abortion being the Holy Grail of reproductive rights, it’s the Religious Right who’re telling us that if you’ve gotten to the point of needing the abortion -except in a few scenarios- you’ve already been screwing up for a while. Also they fight the anti-theism that comes from the Progressives. I like that. Their fighting to praise Jesus helps me keep the freedom to praise “Bob”.

Comment by DFWMTX

January 7, 2010 @ 8:20 am

On the other hand, would some Christian sci-fi fans point out the instances of spirituality in sci-fi to this chode? I’m not sure Orson Scott Card’s Mormon faith would be acceptable for this guy. And din’t C.S. Lewis write a few things that’d classify as sci-fi? I once read an essay of his “Religion and Rocketry” on evangeliszing to alien species we find and determining if it’s even needed or not. Other than those 2, drawing a blank.

Comment by alanstorm

January 7, 2010 @ 9:46 am

“Sagan and Asimov, for example, were prominent evolutionary scientists.”

An astronomer and a chemist were evolutionary scientists?

I think somebody’s mangling the language here.

Comment by Myles

January 7, 2010 @ 10:02 am

Read some of the other “articles” on that website. It is hardcore fundamentalist. There is a whole section on “Rock” music and how Christian Rock is evil. There is also a pretty funny article about a survey given to men on women’s clothing and how short skirts and tight tops make men more lustful. (I don’t think it was supposed to be funny but I laughed)

Comment by Robb Allen

January 7, 2010 @ 1:22 pm

Oh, there’s plenty of religious idiots out there. There’s also some hard core, totally over the top atheists. Every group has their kooks!

And Tolkien was a religious man himself, IIRC. I have a feeling this ass-cracker would go into fits of apoplexy if you mentioned Sauron, though

Comment by DirtCrashr

January 7, 2010 @ 1:25 pm

I wonder if it’s real: The serious-face dude with the old-school glassses and wild 19th Century hair and whiskers. The header above with the pinched-faced man in tight haircut and plaid holding a bible - a fire-and-brimstone background. It’s a little over the top - or maybe what the Left thinks that religiously observant people must be like, God knows they look-downa nd mock them without any benefit of theological insights or knowledge.
As if the “Religious-Right” were really some kind of unified all-powerful Movement, or even a Conspiracy - only a Conspiracy Theorist would fall for that.
The Leftoid Media loves to hold-up, exaggerate, and even sock-puppet the “Religious Right” - they nearly wouldn’t exist if they weren’t propped up as a bait-and-switch strawman argument by the MSM. In reality they don’t represent the kind of monolithic voting bloc that the Left claims - they are not a gigantic fused-Granite entity that stomps around “crushing dissent” - that’s more cartoon-work like some mocking, Baby Borat-in-Diapers.
This is Alinsky Method Acting at work: they gladly give them a stage and a bullhorn to magnify the effect and inflate their prospects, and repeat the same noises with extra re-verb. In reality there is much more activity in the Left-Channel of American Protestantism as we gradually have Presbyterians and American Baptists succumbing to the “inevitability” of gay marriage, falling down in the Culture Wars, to which the Unitarians (and their coffee-pot*) have already gone.
*religious humor joke

Comment by Toastrider

January 7, 2010 @ 3:19 pm

I see your religious whackjob website and raise you one Timecube: http://www.timecube.com/

*grin*

Comment by BillH

January 7, 2010 @ 5:40 pm

Phil, did Sister Mary Holywater keep you after school when you were a kid? You’ve got a serious pantytwist over the eeevilll religious right. Give it a rest man, if it bugs you so much, just ignore them.

Comment by Jim

January 7, 2010 @ 9:30 pm

I’m a believer (of the born again variety) in the Lord Jesus Christ.

But I rather doubt that any of you have detected such from my various rants and odd postings ’round the ‘net and my moldering, moribund site.

Let me point out this bit of my own personal theology. Adam only had dominion over this world. God’s plan for Man, especially as regards salvation and redemption, applies specifically to this world.

We have absolutely no idea of how G*d has manifested Himself to other worlds, and how His dominion may have been manifested therein.

Leviticus (among other passages) is clear. Long before Adam, there were other beings and races on this globe. Beings which G*d wiped out in the original flood (described in the opening verses of Genesis). In the ancient form of Hebrew, the term “without form and void” pretty much translate to “having been judged and condemed”, just as easily as “without form and void”.

I have no problem with the Big Bang, just so long as it’s proponents go further with me, and delve into just who made the Big, and who said “BANG!”.

And I have no problem with the fantasies of sci-fi, otherworldness and however the writers wish to project their thoughts of the religions of those times and worlds.

Imagination, after all, is a gift from G*d, among many of which seperate us from the beasts.

That dominion thing that G*d gave Adam? It includes imagination, and that as far is it can take us.

Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX

Comment by D.W. Drang

January 7, 2010 @ 10:27 pm

Meeting Christian Science Fiction fen would probably make this guy’s head implode. And, yes, there are quite a few Christian SF authors, although, again, this guy may be the sort of Christian who regards members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints (Orson Scott Card) to be pagans of the worst stripe. (I’ve seen otherwise sane and rational Christians turn into drooling, raving maniacs at the mention of Mormons…)

Seen flyers at cons for a Christian SF society, “Order of St. Chiros”, or something like that…

Comment by Rivrdog

January 8, 2010 @ 10:13 am

I have no problem with the Christian faith. My wife and all my children are Christians (although one is a Unitarian, and that’s a whole ‘nother world). I live among Christians, and willingly choose to socialize with them. They are a fine lot of humans.

That said, there exists, UNDENIABLY Jim, among the Christians, a few who see it as their life’s goal to not only proselytize the rest of the world, but to encode their proselytizing into law and custom so that all of us have to toe their line.

We can’t stand for that. Our Forefathers KNEW we couldn’t stand for that, because they had to toe that line with the Church of England when they were British Subjects.

There REALLY IS a bright line. Whenever a Christian (or a Jew, or a Muslim, Hindu, whatever else), stands on OUR soil and says, “It WILL be so because our Good Book says it will be”, that person has crossed that Bright Line, and is an enemy of this country’s freedom.

The way that the Forefathers saw this idea, YOU were free to believe what you wanted to believe, and in their time, they had no problem with a head of family establishing a religion within HIS household, either. What the Forefathers warned against, and tried so hard to get into the Constitution, was the idea that the STATE may not establish religion, only individuals could, for themselves and their families.

Several years ago, when the GOP still had control of the Government, the Feds used the power of their Government to try to prevent a Florida man from “pulling the plug” on his brain-dead wife. The application of that Federal process was nothing more or less than an attempt to Establish Religion.

Currently, that same religion is still powerful, strong enough to cross party lines and attempt to get the Socialized Medicine Bill to prevent Federal funds from being used for a common medical procedure, abortion. THAT’S “establishment” as well.

The bottom line is that I could be a Christian. I’ve grown up with their ideas for the most part, and lived among them, fought among them in war. I’m comfortable with them.

The ONLY reason I haven’t declared myself to be a Christian is simply that I hold this one, “un-Christian” belief: no religion has the right to tell me how to believe, temporally. When the Christians finally admit that, I am the first through the door of one of their Churches.

Until I hear those words, I stand guard for intellectual and personal freedom OUTSIDE that Church, on the “other” side of that Bright Line.

Comment by BillH

January 8, 2010 @ 3:19 pm

Rivrdog, your misunderstanding of Christianity is showing. Christianity does not have the right to “tell you how to believe, temporally”, nor does it claim that to itself. You are simply wrong on that, so your hardline stand is over something that doesn’t exist.

Which is not to say that some believers in any religion you can name are pinheads and have it wrong too.

And believing that abortion kills a human being and working to stop that is NOT establishment of religion, any more than stopping slavery, or outlawing theft is.

Jeez you guys, calm down. You’re fighting ghosts, killing snakes. There is no need.

Comment by Rivrdog

January 8, 2010 @ 3:30 pm

Historically, there were the Calvinists, and about the same time, the Inquisition. Today there are sects of the Baptist church that tell one how to live his/her temporal life, and of course the Mormons. Depending on the diocese, the Catholic church can be quite intrusive.

Plenty of Christianity tells it’s adherents how to live their temporal lives. How much? On a percentage basis? I haven’t a clue, and BillH, do you REALLY expect someone who is not a part of those sects to have such data?

Yep, there are Christian sects who preach the Gospel, then tell their adherents that once they have taken Christ, they will surely know how best to lead their lives. Good on them. For the others, there are stricter regimes.

I’m not here to bash Christianity, I’m here to defend individual liberty. Any edicts which threaten that liberty, be they State or Canon, earn my scorn.

Comment by Groundhog

January 9, 2010 @ 11:52 am

I dunno, that time cube guy seems pretty level headed to me

Comment by DirtCrashr

January 9, 2010 @ 5:32 pm

I dunno, when I flipped to the website the first thing that popped into my head was, “what’s Issac Asimov doing here?” I mean the look-alike thing is scary - and I wonder if it’s intentional. Anyhow this guy doesn’t pass the smell-test for me.

For background; my dad has a PhD in Theology from Berkeley, and is an ordained American Baptist minister - part of the qualifications for being a missionary I guess. His belief system is very Liberal close to Marxist, and currently with a strong does of Liberation Theology - and none of the How-To-Live crap. It’s New Testament based, not Old Testament. I practically grew up in church - I was a missionary kid in India.
As far as Heinlein, goes we read “Stranger in a Strange Land” as a part of my Youth-group Bible study - so this guys theories don’t necessarily wash out in the Real World. There’s Kurt Vonnegut - and if you insist that he subscribed to a code which, “does not accept supernatural views of reality.” then you havn’t reads much of his writing! And then there’s C.S. Lewis who was a consummate Catholic with a well versed foundation of Catholic knowledge.

Anyhow no feathers ruffled, but I wish I had big hair like that dude. It’s huge.

Comment by Sulaco

January 9, 2010 @ 9:05 pm

Umm as some one the far “Religious Left” who believe in nothing but themselves want all humans to die so that Gaia can cleanse herself. Not sure I would want to occupy a fox hole with that crowd either. Let us AGAIN recall that the left, social utopians of all stripes no matter what they call themselves today killed 90+ MILLION people last decade. Who exactly have the worse record of treatment of others?

One must ask Phil, which subset do you consider yourself a part of?