Big phony: Hoping religiosity will get points

Associated Press – May 19, 2007:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told Liberty University’s graduating class Saturday to honor the spirit of school founder Jerry Falwell by confronting “the growing culture of radical secularism” with Christian ideals.

Gingrich, who is considering a 2008 presidential run, quoted Bible passages to a mournful crowd of about 17,000 packed into the university’s football stadium four days after Falwell’s death.

“A growing culture of radical secularism declares that the nation cannot profess the truths on which it was founded,” Gingrich said. “We are told that our public schools can no longer invoke the creator, nor proclaim the natural law nor profess the God-given quality of human rights.

“In hostility to American history, the radical secularists insist that religious belief is inherently divisive and that public debate can only proceed on secular terms,” he said.

Gingrich also decried what he called judges’ overreaching efforts to separate church and state.

“Too often, the courts have been biased against religious believers. This anti-religious bias must end,” he said.



  1. Jerko Jerry says:

    Newt is a scumbag moron. How can anyone follow such a 2 faced lying POS as Newt?..

    Next time you religious nut jobs want to meddel where you dont belong or in waters too mentally deep for you, maybe you shouldn’t follow idiots like him and that even bigger POS Fallwell, may he ROT IN HELL.

  2. OhForTheLoveOf says:

    #17 – Thanks for your debate. In response, my argument isn’t to make America a Christian nation, but to allow Christianity to be practiced by others.

    Is there some problem with your right to practice Christianity? Are Christians being prevented from worshipping in America? Because if they are, please tell me about it and I will join your cause and stand up for their right to worship as they please.

    But that really isn’t happening at all is it? Do you know why? Because there is no persecution of Christians as evidenced by the fact that they are the ruling class in America today. You can’t throw a softball in an American city without hitting a church. A born again (so he claims) Christian is the President of the United States.

    Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, is having their right to worship the Lord Jesus Christ, their personal Lord and Saviour, abridged. There are some people struggling with religious freedom in this country, albiet to nowhere near the extent that people struggle in places like China, or the Middle East, but those people are decidedly not Christians.

    However, the Declaration of Independence says we get our rights from our Creator and if you can think of another creator than the Christian God it could refer to, please let me know.

    The Declaration is not a legal and binding document which does not have the force of law… But further is does not say we get our rights from our creator…

    It says: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

    Average Americans today are far less sophisticated about language these days, which is a crying shame, but I’m not average. “Their” is a very significant word and it means something different from “our”.

    THEY are endowed by THEIR … Not really very inclusive language, is it?

    The document also, in the first paragraph, refers to “Nature’s God”, which is fairly unusual wording for those supposedly basing our nation on Christianity.

    In fact, the primary founders were deists, and weren’t really all that terribly interested in Christianity. I would go so far as to describe them as enlightened, which isn’t a word I can honestly ascribe to most Christian thinkers.

  3. BubbaRay says:

    #15, Scott, However, insulting small adorable newts by associating them with wacko is really uncalled for. What did the newts ever do to you?

    Sorry, it wasn’t the newts, it was the witch — she turned me into a newt (but I got better.) And what do we do with witches??

  4. Greg Allen says:

    I’ll take radical secularism over Newt Gingrich’s SHAMELESS HYPOCRISY any day.

  5. Thomas says:

    Seriously people. Go back and read your history. Hitler was not even close to being an atheist. He was frothing at the mouth Catholic. Killing the Jews was retribution for killing Jesus. Holy Roman Empire anyone?

  6. Misanthropic Scott says:

    OK, I think it’s time to get a little more irreverent here. Does anyone else think that Newt in a yarmulke looks like a large penis?

    #63 – BubbaRay,

    So, if Newt weighs less than a duck ….

  7. bobbo says:

    I’m getting ready for bed, and all day long here, not a single christian posting how he has been denied the right to practice his religion while a few have posted atleast the inference that they have been oppressed.

    Maybe the tide will bring in some floatsom?

    Favorite Newt Hypocrisy Fact–he was cheating on his wife as he urged impeachment against Clinton for his at work BJ. I cant forgive Clinton the BJ because I don’t condemn him for it in the first place, but I cannot forgive him for lying to us all over it–and even worse, using the authority of his office to sell it. So, they are both bastards, or is that redundant when speaking of our fine politicians?? //// Bobbo.

  8. Satan says:

    #22 “I’ve never quite understood how the Christian mentality that allows them to boast about being the majority while simultaneously decrying the fact that they are an oppressed minority works.”

    With the Lord, all things are possible…

  9. TJGeezer says:

    Hypocrite and whore with no moral foundation. The revolutionary religio-right certainly attracts such people.

  10. BubbaRay says:

    #66, Scott, if Newt weighs less than (or the same as) a duck… (or a very small rock), then, er, ah, um, he must be a witch!! Burn him!!

    Now if science could just get rid of holy wars (and all wars), we’d be able to get on with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Unfortunately, those inertial dampers are likely to be offline for a long time.

  11. Misanthropic Scott says:

    #71 – BubbaRay,

    Well, now that you mention it, perhaps science is complicit in this. Religion provides the impetus for many (not all) wars. Science provides the technology for the advanced weaponry to kill more people faster. Maybe we just need to keep breeding for lower intelligence. Once we’re back at the level where we can not make or use advanced weapons, we should once again be only as dangerous as chimps.

  12. Misanthropic Scott says:

    Self-referential comment? No. Just PEBKAC. I meant #70 not 71, of course.

  13. ethanol says:

    Misanthropic Scott (#56),

    My post in #37 never mentions Hitler – Intolerance and hatred are very closely related. Oh yeah, Mao Zedong and Stalin didn’t kill anybody, right?

    Just want to be clear that I did not bring Hitler into this…

  14. Misanthropic Scott says:

    #73 – ethanol,

    I apologize profusely. I usually try to be more carefully than that. Checking again, it was Graham that first introduced Hitler into this thread and clearly referenced him as secular.

    #17 – Graham,

    I think you’ve already been pretty hammered on this point. Sorry to do so again. However, it is kind of important to note that calling Adolf secular is a true mistake. (of biblical proportions?)

    Anyway, here is the entire section on Hitler’s religious beliefs from Wikipedia. (I removed the footnotes but left the sole point of a missing citation for completeness)

    Hitler was raised by Roman Catholic parents, but as a school boy he rejected Catholicism as he was influenced by nationalism. Apparently, after Hitler left home, he never attended Mass or received the Sacraments.

    In later life, Hitler’s religious beliefs present a discrepant picture: Publicly he often spoke positively of the Christian heritage of German culture and belief in Christ. Hitler’s private statements, reported by his intimates, are more mixed, showing Hitler as a religious man but also critical of Christianity. However, in contrast to other Nazi leaders, Hitler did not adhere to esoteric ideas, occultism, or neo-paganism, and ridiculed such beliefs in his book Mein Kampf.[citation needed] Rather, Hitler advocated a “Positive Christianity”, a belief system purged from what he objected to in traditional Christianity, and reinvented Jesus as a fighter against the Jews.

    Hitler believed in Arthur de Gobineau’s ideas of struggle for survival between the different races, among which the “Aryan race”—guided by “Providence”—was supposed to be the torchbearers of civilization and the Jews as enemies of all civilization. Whether his anti-semitism was influenced by older Christian ideas remains disputed.

    Among Christian denominations, Hitler favored Catholicism, which was more open to such reinterpretations. At the same time, he made use of some elements of the Catholic Church’s hierarchical organization, liturgy and phraseology in his politics.

  15. BubbaRay says:

    #71, Scott, Science provides the technology for the advanced weaponry to kill more people faster.

    Correct — science, a power so great it can only be used for good or evil.

  16. Greg Allen says:

    65/Thomas,

    He famously remained a Catholic in good standing, even when his atrocities were well known.

    However, others have concluded that, privately, Hitler had a nationalistic religion which he shared with the other inner core of Nazis — a kind of Nazi occult, mystic paganism around race and nation.

    Wikipedia has a separate entry on HItler’s religion.

    http://tinyurl.com/ymskna

    They conclude that Hitler was not a Christian but may have not been particularly religious but concedes that we may never know for sure..

  17. BubbaRay says:

    #54, Scott, #44 – BubbaRay

    That comment (#44) wasn’t mine, it was from OFTLO, just to keep the record straight. Next time, if you like, you can mistake my quotes to be from Feynman, Gell-Mann or Hawking.

  18. Misanthropic Scott says:

    #77 – BubbaRay and OFTLO,

    My brain must really have been on vacation with respect to keeping quotes straight on this thread. Now I’ve got two eggs on my face and apologize again.

  19. Thomas says:

    #76
    > They conclude that Hitler was not a Christian but may have
    > not been particularly religious but concedes that we may
    > never know for sure..

    I think your conclusion is mistaken (the article provides no conclusion).

    “The Führer is deeply religious, but deeply anti-Christian. He regards Christianity as a symptom of decay” (Joseph Goebbels).

    The first part of this statement clearly runs contrary to the idea that he was an atheist. The second part could be in reference to the trappings of the Church rather than Christianity per se. That was a common feeling in Europe and in America. The earlier reference by Speer in the article where he states that Hitler had “no real attachment to it” substantiates this notion as it refers to the Church rather than Christianity.

    The next statement is made by Albert Speer: “You see, it’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn’t we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?”

    This sounds more like a moment of self-reflection about the merits of his current belief. Thus, I would not conclude that Hitler means “I am no longer religious but if I were this other religion is superior.” Rather, I read this comment as “It is a shame that the religion to which we believe does not have the same traits as those of this other religion.” In other words, I do not see Speer’s comments as lending any credence to the notion that Hitler was an atheist or even not religious.

    I see nothing in this article that would make me conclude that Hitler was anything other than Christian. However, I will admit that he his private statements make him out to be less “frothing at the mouth” than Mein Kampf.


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