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Worldview Weekend

The ignorance is astounding

I managed to get on the mailing list of Worldview Weekend, which tends to be one of the largest repositories on the internet for right-wing, religious, conspiracy-theory crazies. I leave myself on the list for entertainment purposes and I’ve yet to be disappointed. Unfortunately, it’s a little scary, too, because I know there are people who actually believe what’s being presented on the site.

This week, Phyllis Schlafly decided that she was going to take on the role of climatologist in a piece titled Global Warming Is Frozen Over, with predictable results. Here’s her opening salvo.

Whether or not the groundhog sees his shadow on February 2, there’s no denying that January put into a deep freeze the claims of crisis by global warming alarmists. Frigid temperatures destroyed fruit and coral in Florida, and snow fell on Al Gore’s palatial home in normally warmer Tennessee.

What I find most significant is that she thoroughly discredits herself in her first sentence by demonstrating a significant lack of understanding about global warming. She’s not the only one, though, as I’ve seen similar claims made by people all over the internet and even among my friends on Facebook. It’s as if Schlafly (and the others) completely overlook the meaning of the word “global” in “global warming.” They also tend to misunderstand (or ignore?) the difference between “climate” and “weather.” In addition, from what I’ve generally seen, they also have a very thin grasp on science in general… especially when science points to something that contradicts their firmly entrenched political or religious ideology.

Schlafly goes on to bring up the CRU email “scandal” (Climategate) which is essentially a manufactured controversy, calling the CRU an “official collaborator” with the IPCC. She says…

Those disclosures told the world about some scientists’ willingness to suppress climate-change data and rig the process in order to pretend there is consensus among scientists about global warming, to ostracize contrary views, and to promote their globalist agenda.

As anyone who’s honestly followed the incident knows, the CRU emails did no such thing. The inclusion of “globalist agenda” is also discrediting and points to her conspiracy-theory leanings, something which will no doubt endear her to global warming denialists everywhere.

In her rant, Schlafly says that lowering our level of emissions to the level that Obama has proposed will also lower our standard of living to 19th century levels, that Scott Brown’s election in Massachusetts “repudiated cap-and-trade,” and that Osama Bin Laden has blamed the United States for not stopping global warming (as if the notion that Bin Laden accepting global warming somehow means it’s not true). She also includes lengthy quotes from Czech Republic president Vaclav Klaus as if he is some sort of leading climatologist when it seems, based on the included quotes, that he’s basing his analysis on political ideology instead of on science.

Of course, no Worldview Times rant on global warming would be complete without a reference to Al Gore and An Inconvenient Truth and, for an added bonus, Schlafly includes a slam on The Story of Stuff, a video that promotes conservation, albeit in polemic way.

In her conclusion, Schlafly says that what we need to do to solve unemployment and poverty is to increase our use of energy (which is Schlafly’s way of saying “burn more fossil fuels”). Think I’m kidding?

The main cause of unemployment and poverty is the lack of enough energy. Rather than expanding government to limit energy, we should be increasing the use of energy to eradicate hardship.

In the immortal words of Wikipedia… Citation needed.

Howse wants to reclaim the church

Brannon Hose Last week, Brannon Howse wrote an article explaining why a biblical worldview is so critical in light of trends showing more and more people leaving the church. It seems to be mostly a marketing ploy for his program materials, but he rants on for quite a bit. He cites a book by Ken Ham titled Already Gone: Why your kids will quit church and what you can do to stop it. In the book, Ham had surveys taken from conservative congregations and found that today’s kids are leaving the church at a record rate… and not just in college.

In addition, he concludes that Sunday school doesn’t help kids develop a Christian worldview and that they are “statistical failures.” Sunday school, it seems, is allowing parents to “shrug off their responsibility as the primary teachers, mentors, and pastors to their family.”

I’ll agree that there seems to be (at least anecdotally) an increasing number of parents who do “shrug off” their responsibilities in raising their children, but if Sunday school keeps them from indoctrinating their kids with a religious worldview, then I can’t help but think Sunday school can be a good thing.

From the article…

Only 11 percent of those who have left the Church did so during the college years. Almost 90 percent of them were lost in middle school and high school. By the time they got to college they were already gone! About 40 percent are leaving the Church during elementary and middle school years!

Of course, Howse’s answer to this “crisis” of mass church exodus is “Biblical worldview and apologetics training” (conveniently available for purchase from his website). Howse laments that, even though the church has had billions of dollars, only 1% of adults have what he defines as a “Biblical worldview” and teens are leaving the church in ever-increasing numbers because they don’t have that worldview. In this article, he doesn’t spell out exactly what that worldview entails (though I’m sure he does elsewhere on his site), but he does mention that churches that used to be evangelical now “reject the exclusivity of Jesus Christ, the inerrancy of Scripture and most of the essential Christian doctrines.”

He expounds a bit on what should be happening in the churches.

Even among our truly evangelical, Bible-believing churches, how many churches teach the Biblical worldview for law, science, economics, history, family, social issues, and education? At church do adults or students learn about the lie of global warming, radical environmentalism, socialism, evolution, postmodernism, situational ethics, political correctness, population control, the myth of the separation of church and state, the Biblical worldview for marriage, the Biblical role of men and women and the lie of feminism?

There’s just so much wrong in that one paragraph that it threatens to make my head hurt. When people talk about injecting religion (especially fundamentalist, evangelical religion) into every aspect of our lives, my skin starts to crawl at the thought. It’s not because, as some theists claim, that I want to live my life however I want and be able to do whatever I want without eternal consequences. I’ve addressed that before. It’s because the implication is that dogmatic, inflexible, 2,000-year-old mythology, when vehemently applied to modern life, will improve our standard of living. It’s a horribly Orwellian idea, but folks like Howse would love to have it applied world-wide.

He continues by criticizing the church’s actions.

Because the church is not answering the real-world questions of our students and the public school system is, Christian youth increasingly believe that at church we deal with “spiritual” issue but at school we talk about “real life” issues. The truth is, all issues are spiritual; every issue can be examined in light of Biblical principles but not if the church is only teaching Bible stories instead of Biblical principles contained in those Bible stories.

Schools are supposed to teach answers to “real life” issues… especially our public schools. Howse’s brand of woo (or any brand, for that matter) has no place in our public school system, for at least three reasons. First, it’s unconstitutional to promote a religious view in our schools. Second, Howse’s version of Christianity is intellectually dishonest. Third, Christianity (and other theistic religions) is morally ambiguous at best and frequently morally reprehensible.

The window of freedom is closing on America and soon I, and our other speakers, could be prosecuted for the Biblical truth we are teaching. Hate-crime laws would do just this.

That’s Howse at his alarmist, fear-mongering best. Hate-crime laws would never prevent anyone from speaking about their religion, regardless of how absurd or spiteful their religious views are. His alarmism continues with vague statements about what I assume to be the “Fairness Doctrine” and a prayer at a booster club luncheon, implying that jail time is inevitable for people who speak from a “Biblical worldview.”

Then comes another sales pitch that hinges on the OMG!!! from the previous paragraph.

Worldview Weekend is training, equipping, and encouraging individuals of all ages that will be just like these men. Our nation needs Christians that will stand up and speak out with the truth of a Biblical worldview even in the face of persecution and prosecution.

Of course, it wouldn’t be Brannon Howse if there wasn’t some conspiracy theory hullaballoo thrown in for good measure (emphasis mine).

[…] the worldview war in America is connected to four major forces; occultism/pagan spirituality, the apostate church, corrupt government/corporate officials and the educational establishment. All four of these groups are aggressively working at the national and international level to accomplish their ultimate goal of global governance as predicted by many New Age writers like Alice Bailey. The Bible predicts this will occur and at this year’s rallies we will look at how God would have us to respond to what is happening at break-neck speed.

If I didn’t think he was serious, I’d find his writing hysterically funny. As it is, it’s both disturbing and sad. People like Howse, who seem to be barely hanging onto the fringe of the fundamentalist, right-wing precipice, want to teach their views as truth to our nation’s children. It’s bad enough that otherwise seemingly rational adults subscribe to this intellectually harmful nonsense, but to promote the foisting of this drivel onto our children is reprehensible.

Fortunately, as the beginning of his article notes, kids are leaving the church in droves. No doubt some of that is from apathy, but it’s nice to imagine that some of them are just coming to the realization that religion is simply an unnecessary obstruction to a healthy, happy life. It’s also hard to buy into the “young earth creationist” idea that The Flintstones is an accurate portrayal of history.

Howse ends his article with a plea for help in getting those wayward kids back in church. He wants help distributing magazines to advertise his seminars, he wants prayers, and of course, he wants money.

Because, you know, woo is expensive.

Tibetan Demons and Dead Authors

Brannon Howse of the Christian Worldview Network The most recent podcast from my favorite right-wing, fundamentalist, conspiracy theorist Brannon Howse is a shining example of the effects of unrestrained ingestion of a toxic mish-mash containing equal parts religion, politics, and crazy.

The topic?

“The Spiritual Battle of Alice Bailey’s New Age Movement and its influence on America, the United Nations and its New World Order.”

Alice Bailey (1880-1949) is the author of New Age “woo” books such as A Treatise on White Magic or The Way of the Disciple, Rays and Initiations: A Treatise on the Seven Rays, The Consciousness of the Atom, and Soul and Its Mechanism. The Amazon description of Soul and Its Mechanism seems to be a good general example of her writing.

Here’s Howse’s take on her and her connection with Satan and what’s happening in the United States right now (emphasis mine).

Alice Bailey wrote twenty-four books that total thousands of pages. Bailey claimed to have written these books while under the guidance of a spirit guide she called Djwhal Klul or the Tibetan. Clearly Bailey was communicating with a demon which is strictly forbidden in God’s Word. It is quite clear that Satan and his army of demons have used the writings and worldview of Alice Bailey to grow their spiritual lies and to lay the foundation for the acceptance of a one-world government, one-world religion and one-world economy that will be led by Satan’s one-world leader the Antichrist. Are you coming to the clear and undeniable reality that what is happing in America and the world right now, is a spiritual battle and while in the coming months and years Satan will appear to have won, rest assured he will be defeated and God’s Kingdom will be triumphant and of God’s kingdom there shall be no end.

Wow.

Evidently, in Howse’s world, Satan and his “army of demons” are acting in a way that is blatantly obvious… using the writings of an author who’s been dead for sixty years to infiltrate their way into all the governments and religions of the world in order to bring about Armageddon. But Howse has no fear, despite his dire words, because God will prevail… against dead authors and demons?

In Howse’s world of demons and devils, one-world governments, one-world religions, and one-world economies, and one-world leaders, there’s a hidden conspiracy around every corner and shadowy figures lurking in all the dark recesses on Earth just waiting to activate their secret agendas, seize power, and bring about the end of the world.

Even Alice Bailey, if she were alive, would probably raise an eyebrow at that.

I sort of agree with Brannon Howse

brannonhowse Brannon Howse is probably best known as the founder of Christian Worldview Network, an organization that tends to lean toward religiously-based conspiracy theories and tunnel-vision perspectives about the world approaching the "end times" of the bible. I actually listened to one of his entire podcasts about a month ago and it was astounding. It’s really hard to accept the idea that anyone can take him even remotely seriously, but I have very little doubt that plenty of people do.

Somehow, I got on the Christian Worldview Network’s mailing list, so I get updates every week about new podcasts and articles on their site. I stay on the list for the amusement value. This week, I hit the jackpot.

In his weekly podcast, one topic that Howse addresses is Rick Warren speaking to the Islamic Society of North America. In the summary of the podcast, here’s what Howse says.

Rick Warren speaks for the Islamic Society of North America and not only does he NOT give the gospel as usual but Warren called for "a coalition of faith" which Jan Markell says is another way of calling for a one-world religion.

I don’t know who Jan Markell is, but I’m going to take a "leap of faith" here and guess that, whoever she is, Howse agrees with her completely. The whole "one-world religion" idea is so close to "new world order" that it seems right up his alley. I could do an entire post about why that idea is laughable, but that would be (even more of) a digression.

Now here’s where I start to agree with Howse.

Warren is proving that he is extremely ignorant and foolish. Is Warren really just a false teacher that has completely duped most non-thinking Christians, including tens of thousands of pastors? […] Sadly, many Christians will continue to follow Warren because they are completely void of discernment.

That’s probably about as accurate a statement as you’re going to get regarding Warren and the Christians who admire him. Warren is a woo-peddler of the highest degree… with the added benefit of being bigoted and homophobic. He’s also got charisma, which is what makes the "non-thinking" contingent of Christians hold him in such high regard.

The thing is, you could easily replace "Warren" with a number of other names in Howse’s statement and it would be just as accurate: Haggard, Graham, Falwell, , Baker, Ham.

Oh… and "Howse."