More good reasons to MOCK religious ideas in the public sphere

Timshel

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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/aug/10/religion-george-bush

Bush, Gog and Magog
Just when you thought it couldn't get crazier, a well-sourced story claims Bush invaded Iraq because of Bible prophecies

Here's a story we should all be ashamed of missing: George W Bush attempted to sell the invasion of Iraq to Jacques Chirac using biblical prophecy.


In the winter of 2003, when George Bush and Tony Blair were frantically gathering support for their planned invasion, Professor Thomas Römer, an Old Testament expert at the university of Lausanne, was rung up by the Protestant Federation of France. They asked him to supply them with a summary of the legends surrounding Gog and Magog and as the conversation progressed, he realised that this had originally come, from the highest reaches of the French government.


President Jacques Chirac wanted to know what the hell President Bush had been on about in their last conversation. Bush had then said that when he looked at the Middle East, he saw "Gog and Magog at work" and the biblical prophecies unfolding. But who the hell were Gog and Magog? Neither Chirac nor his office had any idea. But they knew Bush was an evangelical Christian, so they asked the French Federation of Protestants, who in turn asked Professor Römer.


He explained that Gog and Magog were, to use theological jargon, crazy talk. They appear twice in the Old Testament, once as a name, and once in a truly strange prophecy in the book of Ezekiel:


And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,


Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him,
And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal: And I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws, and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armour, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords:
Persia, Ethiopia, and Libya with them; all of them with shield and helmet:
Gomer, and all his bands; the house of Togarmah of the north quarters, and all his bands: and many people with thee.


Who are all these people? The best opinion is that like all Bible prophecy, it is a mixture of wish-fulfilment and contemporary (iron age) politics. Some of it at least seems to refer to the turmoil brought about by Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC (unlike Bush, Alexander actually conquered Afghanistan). But they have been for the last two hundred years the subject of increasingly excited evangelical fanfic, especially in America; in the 70s and 80s, Gog was meant to be Russia. Ronald Reagan seems to have believed that.


But with Reagan, the prophecy appreciation part of his brain functioned quite independently of the part that started wars (there's nothing in the Old Testament about Nicaragua or even Grenada). Bush seems to have taken the threat of Gog and Magog to Israel quite literally, and, if this story can be believed, to have launched a war to stop them.http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/aug/10/religion-george-bush
 
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/07/iraq.usa

George Bush: 'God told me to end the tyranny in Iraq'
President told Palestinians God also talked to him about Middle East peace

George Bush has claimed he was on a mission from God when he launched the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a senior Palestinian politician in an interview to be broadcast by the BBC later this month.


Mr Bush revealed the extent of his religious fervour when he met a Palestinian delegation during the Israeli-Palestinian summit at the Egpytian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, four months after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.


One of the delegates, Nabil Shaath, who was Palestinian foreign minister at the time, said: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I am driven with a mission from God'. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did."
 
Thanks, Prof. Excellent examples.

Reminds me of a (so far) fictional example - "The Dead Zone". I haven't read the book but saw the movie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dead_Zone_(film)
Johnny discovers through a handshake that a US Senatorial candidate whom Sarah is volunteering for, Greg Stillson (Martin Sheen), will become President of the United States, with a vision of Stillson ordering a nuclear strike against Russia, thus presumably bringing on a nuclear holocaust. He seeks the advice of Dr. Weizak, asking, by way of example, if one could foresee the atrocities of Adolf Hitler, would it justify murder before the acts themselves?

And the reason Stillson is going to bring on the nuclear war is religious... he has a vision or something that makes him launch war.

I really need to get the book!
 
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