James Dobson laments losing on all the big culture war battle fronts:
"The battles that we fought in the Eighties now, we were victorious in many of those conflicts with the culture, trying to defend righteousness, trying to defend the unborn child, trying to preserve the dignity of the family and the definition of marriage. We fought all those battles and really it was a holding action.
That's adherence to Fundamentalist Christian morals like abstinence-only education, opposing abortion, and opposing gay marriage for those of you speaking English.
[W]e made a lot of progress through the Eighties but then we turned into the Nineties and the internet came along and a new president came along and all of that went away and now we are absolutely awash in evil. And we are right now in the most discouraging period of that long conflict. Humanly speaking, we can say that we have lost all those battles, but God is in control and we are not going to give up now, right?
Yes James, you have lost (or are losing) all those battles, and you gave the reason yourself: the internet. Until very recently the churches always had a huge organizational advantage over their enemies. They met weekly to discuss philosophy and political strategy, and were able to move with one organized voice against the ever-bickering factions of the intelligentsia, a large part being unbelievers more suited to social anarchy.
Then the internet came along, which brought with it the ability to communicate and exchange information at a speed and efficiency never before conceived. The intelligentsia, the unbelievers, and everyone else interested in thinking about and researching subjects without the guiding hand of a church had found theirs. And since they were always more interested in information than the church groups, who preached faith instead, they came to dominate that forum and use it to its maximum. There's a reason the fact-checking sites inevitably come to be accused of a liberal bias.
Now we can quickly research any statement made for veracity, debunk any lie. Every evolution/creation debater now has the ability to research all information on his opponent and his likely arguments. School board members cannot keep their anti-education stealth agendas hidden for long. Political organization is redefined (eg Obama's revenue machine) in a way the old methods simply cannot keep pace.
The list goes on and on. Now that we can organize, the balance of power has shifted dramatically to the side of reason over faith. So get used to losing Dobson, cause we got a lotta mo for ya.
Hat tip: PZ Meyers.
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7 comments:
Christians and pro-lifers are also learning how to use the internet like the tea parties learned how. But Dobson was right; God is in charge. It is not over yet.
Christians are learning to use the internet too, sure, but they have two great disadvantages:
1) The leftwingers dominate the younger end of our population, while righties dominate the older wing, and we all know how much easier it is to grow up with a system than to try learning it as an adult.
2) The right doesn't deal with information like the left does. The right deals in dogma. Note how much more prevalent it is for rightwing blogs to censor comments vs leftwing sites. Those that disallow comments entirely are almost always right wing. Because of this, they'll never be able to us the forum like lefties do.
It isn't left vs right: its reason vs superstition and bigotry.
To deny a pair of consenting adults the same rights given heterosexual couples: simply because both have penises or vagina's; is discrimination -- plain and simple.
If you say your god doesn't sanction it: fine -- however our law does not recognize religious bigotry: at least it shouldn't.
Let's not forget the last decade, as Dobson seems to be trying to do. After the nineties they were losing so badly that they got a Christian elected on a mostly Christian platform. Seems to me that watching what religious fundamentalist politics brings to the society- planes into buildings, fear mongering, debasement of science, ineptitude, and a disregard for civil liberties and privacy, have made a lot of people realize that a lot of what the right stands for is neither moral nor righteous.
I keep thinking of Ghandi:
"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."
"School board members cannot keep their anti-education stealth agendas hidden for long."
To them, their GOAL is to improve education. In your view, the RESULT will be to weaken education.
I think you should try to be straight about that.
My view - and the view of nearly every educational and scientific expert (that is, people with academic achievement in these areas) - is that the proposed behavior by said school board members would weaken education, since what they propose including in the education system is FALSE (standard anti-evolution canards). What these people SAY their proposals would do is worthy of little credibility, since they get caught lying constantly (ie Buckingham in Dover, and McLeroy in Texas, admitting its all about religion and not science when they don't think anyone but the faithful is listening).
It's all about trying to get the Bible and Jesus back into the classroom as much as possible, and lying to do it, and I have no problem being very straight about that, thanks.
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