Thursday Open Thread [4.4.13]

Here are two stories with somewhat of a similar theme to them, and that is, “if people know the truth, they wouldn’t like us,” with us being the Republican Party and organized religion.

First, the good old GOP. Gary Bauer, a former Republican presidential candidate and religious right stalwart, told some truth about the varied and now disperate factions of the GOP:

“If we gave our voters an accurate portrayal of our ideas, that we want to cut the rate of growth on Social Security, give tax cuts to billionaires and then the values issues, the values issues would be more popular than the economic agenda of the current Republican Party.”

It is always refreshing when a Republican tells the truth, if only because it is so rare. Bauer admits that Republicans have to lie to their voters about what they really stand for and then distract them with “family values” nonsense.

Second, the good ole Pat Robertson. A 700 Club viewer asked this of Mr. Robertson:

Why do amazing miracles (people raised from the dead, blind eyes open, lame people walking) happen with great frequency in places like Africa, and not here in the USA? What can we do to encourage those things to happen here? Is America too far gone for miracles like this? — KEN

First off, if there are people rising from the dead in Africa, then the Zombie Apocalypse has begun. Alert the media!!! Seriously, Ken, “The Walking Dead” is FICTION.

Anyway, here is Mr. Robertson’s response:

”Those people overseas didn’t go to Ivy League schools. Well, we’re so sophisticated, we think we’ve got everything figured out, we know about evolution, we know about Darwin, we know about all these things that says God isn’t real, we know about all this stuff. And if we’d be in many schools, the more advanced schools, we have been inundated with skepticism and secularism. Overseas they’re simple, humble. You tell them God loves them, and they say ‘ok, he loves me’. You say ‘God will do miracles’ and they say ‘okay, we believe him.’ And that’s what God’s looking for, that’s why they have miracles.”

So here is Robertson admitting that if you have to be uneducated to believe in all the miracle stuff. There was a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode that captured this concept brilliantly. But to the less advanced society, modernistic technology appears as miracles. For example, the tricorder or lasers of those cool side opening doors. It’s all technology, but to the caveman it is magic and miracles. So here is Robertson admitting that religion, especially when it comes to the miracles, really only works on the uneducated and unadvanced.

Another take or intrepretation of Robertson’s response is that God only wants dumb uneducated followers, and will only treat the dumb and uneducated to the miracles.