Some Things for Saturday

 I don't write in here every day like I used to, but I usually don't skip posting for more than a day.  Hell, this time is something of a record, though.

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Some things to note:

Nepo baby evangelist Franklin Graham tries to stay relevant in an increasingly secular country.

Such over-the-top antics by him and his ilk are efforts to try and stem the tide of increasing numbers of people who are not going to church.  Contrary to some vocal atheists, it isn't because people are embracing agnosticism or atheism but rather have decided not to go to a brick-and-mortar church. Some  stopped going after the COVID shutdown of the country, some have decided they can't stand the right-wing politics of too many pastors, ministers, and preachers, but perhaps the biggest overall reason for the drop in attendance has to do with the increased presence of social media.  It is a tough hill to climb for ALL outside clubs and other organized groups, not just churches.  Gen Z especially is wired to the phone 24/7, and they have alternatives.

Religious attendance has held steady according to Pew Research.  There has been no move to a return to churches or religion.

I think, though, as life experience goes on, many of them will find that science really has none of the answers as to the meaning of life because it is a separate discipline from religion.  It always was and always will be.  As the years go on and people experience hardship and especially the death of loved ones, that is when religious belief really comes in and becomes more common especially as one reaches the senior years.  It will be the same here.  People will not turn to atheism as much as the New Atheists want to believe.  Religious belief isn't going anywhere even if churches close down more and more.  They aren't synonymous, after all.

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From years ago this piece I came across about so-called "maintenence sex," which is nothing more than relationship/marital rape.

There is no "right" to sex.  Period.

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In a stunning reversal, Mr. 47 Percent says the rich should be paying more taxes.  Of course, Mitt Romney is no longer in the Senate.

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Speaking of which, Wyoming's junior senator Cynthia Lummis, 71, has decided to call it a day from the august body.  She said she was "exhausted."

Interesting background to note:  Her late husband was a Democratic Wyoming legislator, and the two of them served at the same time then, being one of the few married couples to do so.  She was a Republican then.

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The "Religious Right" is on the Ropes

Thanks to Trump's impeachment by the House of Representatives, these misnamed "evangelicals" are all in a tizzy over the Christianity Today editorial calling for Trump's removal, including and especially Franklin Graham, who blathered his dad voted for Trump (although years ago he had been a registered Democrat) as if that has anything to do with anything since 2016.  The editorial, while not accurate about Bill Clinton, really stuck it to these charlatans who have perverted Christianity and given it a black eye, especially to the idiot millennials who now have embraced all kinds of bullshit in response.  I have written about the millennials' vulnerability to cults like animal "rights," veganism/vegetarianism, the "New Atheism," postmodernism, queer theory, transgenderism, New Age, and all kinds of other bullshit.  Their stupidity is only surpassed by their arrogance, but they have left conventional religion in droves, if they were ever there in the first place.

Franklin Graham

Graham's remarks can be found here among many places.

These people are not "evangelicals" but actually dominionists.  The religious right started hijacking the "evangelical" label around 1980 because it sounded better than being called fundamentalists or even pentacostals or charismatics.  However, "evangelical" denominations also include Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, all mainline denominations (though there are some dominionists in these groups) as well as the Assemblies of God, Church of the Nazarene, and other conservative groups.  Most of these dominionists are independent of any denomination and look like cults from the view of outsiders.  The media followed suit with the mislabeling, so now "evangelicals" are practically synonymous with the religious right, Christian reconstructionism,  or dominionism.  No matter what they are called these people think they have to force society into their twisted interpretation of the Bible so Jesus can return or whatever.  I am not a theologian.  I have, however, followed the televangelists since the late 1960s with the likes of Oral Roberts, Billy Graham, Garner Ted and Herbert W. Armstrong, Rex Humbard, and many, many others.  It wasn't until 1980 when they got into the political act with their support of Ronald Reagan.  However, that support is nothing like it is now.  Now the religious right has gone completely off the rails to full-scale fascism and insanity.  They are downright dangerous, with some of the fringe types  regularly appearing in programs like the Jim Bakker Show or are featured on the RWW Blog YouTube channel all but explicitly calling for the assault and murder of public officials who are Democrats or Republicans critical of Trump's corruption.   Free speech does not mean inciting people to commit civil unrest while cloaking it as "prophecy."

Yes, "prophecy."  According to these whack jobs, the way they get around the hypocrisy label of supporting an insane, irreligious, profane, cheating, corrupt, criminal president is they give him the label of a "modern day Cyrus" and claim he is "prophesied" in the Bible and other such nonsense.  They will not admit to the public they HATE our system of government and want to replace it with fascism complete with the arrest and murder of "enemies."    Instead, they will say all of this is in the Bible.   They will blather about Trump's supposed support of Israel as a reason he HAS to remain in office, but these people do NOT care about Israel or the Jewish people--they are just pawns in the Armageddon scenario, nothing more, and nothing less.  These people are desperate for Trump to remain in office so he can continue to appoint federal judges to whittle away abortion rights, women's rights, and roll all these and other rights to bring back the halcyon days of the 1950s, when men were men, women knew "their place," gays and lesbians remained in the closet, and blacks and other minorities were not a threat to the almighty white male dudes in jobs, education, politics, and life in general.

That era isn't coming back.  However, this country is indeed on the ropes, or, to use the current name of this blog, on the edge,  thanks to the support of fascism by those who call themselves "evangelicals."  They do pose a threat to this country.

In related news,  the Christian Post's editor quit in response to this publication's rebuttal of the Christianity Today editorial.