Michael Peroutka gave a speech in which he revealed how Bible interpretation is done. He declares that evolution is anti-American, and to prove it, he says he is quoting from the Declaration [of Independence]…I’m paraphrasing
. You will be surprised at what’s in that document.
There exists a creator God. He is the God of the Bible. He is not Allah, nor any of the Hindu deities, nor is he the God that is in the wind or in the trees or some other impersonal force. He created us. We did not evolve from apes or slimy, swampy things.
I looked real hard in the Declaration of Independence, and I saw a mention of “Nature’s God” and being “created equal”, but all the rest…well. I guess you have to read between the lines and use your imagination a little bit.
Wow, that’s fucking pathetic.
Biblical literalism is just doing a find and replace to change “I say” by “God says”.
You can even get a few “IGod sasays” in there.
In his handwritten draft, it appears that Thomas Jefferson wrote “nature’s god,” without capitalization. (More details here.) What would Peroutka make of that awkward detail?
I have actually known people who insist that the Bible is the Inerrant, Eternally And Literally True Word of God. And then use The Living Bible for worship and study. Almost as bad are the literalists who use the King James Version, one of the worst English translations to exist.
If you really want to bunch the panties of people like Peroutka, insist that the Declaration of Independence is obviously Baal, a fertility god of nature (Nature’s God, get it?) and demand that they prove otherwise. With all the resulting head-spinning, it’s like watching a possessed owl.
If being anti-ignorance is anti-American, then count me as anti-American.
If you’re quoting, you can’t be paraphrasing. If you paraphrase, you can’t be quoting. Quoting… Paraphrasing… Quoti…
Help us Landru…
Almost as bad are the literalists who use the King James Version, one of the worst English translations to exist.
Don’t forget the bumper-stickers that say “The King James Bible is the inerrant word of God!” Like the guys whom God first inspired to write it in the original Greek and Hebrew got it wrong?
Actually it’s kind of true I believe all men are slime (they are at times, in any case, though not literally) and that I have no rights at all (except for those I’m willing to fight for). But I suppose Peroutka’s either/or does not allow for parenthetical qualifiers.
So nature’s god is not the god of wind and rain and stuff?
Even if evolution were antithetical to America’s founding values, that wouldn’t mean it had to be wrong. It would mean the founders were wrong. Now what?
I’m confused, the declaration mentions Creator, but my creators aren’t xian and their names are Pat and Jim, not Yahweh. Does that mean I’m not American or doubly American?
My brain died a little bit.
Wow… that was just … wow.
Slightly off topic. I found out this weekend that I have been using the term non sequitor mostly (but not entirely)incorrectly. Which is too bad because that’s a perfect example of what I would have called a non sequitor by my incorrect definition. I mean you can’t even touch that it’s so… self-isolated.
That guy is so far out to lunch that I can’t even …
If you search-and-replace “king” with “god” there in the declaration, you’d get a fair atheist document. The king was, of course, ordained by god AND was head of the church. Rebelling was pretty ungodly.
So many wrongs.
1.) The Declaration of Independence does not trump the Constitution, which has no mention of God. If it had been so critical, religious language and laws would have been all over it.
2.) The “Nature’s God” in the Declaration was a God as revealed through nature and reason. This theistic rationalism is consistent with humanism and functions the same in practice. There is no conflict in saying that nature created us an endowed us with rights, or that human equality evolved.
3.) Whoa. From what I can gather, Peroutka thinks that any beliefs the Founders had regarding how the world worked forever established what all Americans must believe. Given that these gentlemen lived in the 18th century, that would mean that every single scientific theory and advance since then is “unamerican.” If the Founders didn’t believe in quantum physics, then it’s traitorous to believe.
What an idiot.
In the final the following words were all capitalized despite not being the first words of sentences or formal nouns:
Course Laws Nature God Creator Rights Life Liberty Happiness Men Form Government People Government Safety Object Despotism Guards Colonies Systems King Tyranny States Facts Assent Governors Assent Representation Legislature Records Representative Houses Legislative Annihilation, Naturalization Foreigners Appropriations Land Administration Justice Judiciary Judges Will New Offices Officers Standing Armies Consent Military Civil Assent Acts Quartering Trial Murders Trade Taxes Jury Seas Province Arbitrary Boundaries Charters Protection War Coasts Mercenaries Cruelty Head Citizens Captive Arms Country Brethren Hands Indian Savages Oppressions We Petitioned Redress Petitions Prince We Separation Enemies Peace Friends General Congress Assembled Supreme Name Authority That Independent Absolved Allegiance Power Commerce Providence Fortunes and Honor.
So one of the founding principles of the American constitution is now invalidated. Mayb e you’ll all disappear in a puff of magic smoke ?
The Founding Fathers also supported slavery. So does this guy? Yes, that is close to being a Godwin but if his thought process is to be believed then why shouldn’t it be applied to other things as well?
Alverant, some of them supported slavery. Some bitterly opposed it. There was a series of compromises specifically so the new nation wouldn’t tear itself apart immediately. That whole 3/5 of a person for purposes of the census and slave States vs. free States are just two of the more prominent examples.
anuran, yes some did support slavery and others did not. I should have clarified that or said the Constitution supported slavery.
@woozy #14
From the ever reliable David Crystal; Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language.
Hart was a spelling reformer.
@anuran #17 – Most of the Framers were slave owners, even those from northern states like New York and Connecticut. The 3/5 compromise was all about power in the House of Representatives. Also, please note that the compromise includes “Indians not taxed,” not just slaves.
I think it was South Carolina that was the flash point. As I recall, in the late 18th century only 10% of the population was European; the rest were slaves and First Nations. If only free whites were counted, the state would have had one of the smallest delegations to the House of Representatives; if every person was counted, it would have had the largest. It was a similar situation in Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia, states where the economy was dominated by plantations and which thus had very large numbers of slaves.
Smaller states, mostly in the north, had a much higher proportion of free whites, leading them to demand that only free whites be counted; this restriction would have greatly enhanced their own power in the House. Maryland falls in this category: while its economy was plantation based, it had a lower proportion of slaves than other southern states. The Framers from the state crunched the numbers and realized that they would have more power if slaves were not counted. New York and Pennsylvania also opposed counting slaves and First Nations for similar reasons: while these states would have large delegations regardless, their power would have been diluted if Virginia, George and South Carolina had larger delegations.
Racism in general, and slavery in particular, certainly did figure in to the conversation. But it was not the motivation behind the 3/5 compromise.
Funny how all those mentions of god somehow prove the US of A is a christian nation and everything that this entails, but suddenly becomes a ceremonial deistic god when a separation of state and church issue comes up.
Doesn’t mean some of us didn’t evolve into slimy, swampy things.
I find it interesting that the cross on the transparent podium seems to be censoring his crotch area . . .
Wait…isn’t there a Commandment that refers to not lying? Now he’s done it. Hell for you Mr. Peroutka.
Unless there’s an exception I’m not aware of.
The most revolutionary aspect of the Declaration of Independence was the recognition that “governments are instituted among men and derive their just powers from the consent of the governed”, and not from an imagined deity. The era of the so called divine right of kings was coming to an end and with it the authoritarian mindset of the Christian religion.
@19 alexmcdonald From the ever reliable David Crystal; Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language.
Useful and informative.
My point being that “Nature’s God” being capitalized doesn’t actually have the significance one would think it does. In fact, I would argue that be referring to it as “Nature’s God” rather than “the Christian God” or “the Biblical God” or “our God” or eve simply “God” implies he most distinctly is *not* claiming that the creator is the God of the Bible.
I have long thought that creationists – especially the ones like this guy – WANT to have been created by a god, because they have a hugely inflated sense of self-importance, weirdly mixed with an inferiority complex. Being created by a god, rather than evolving from an ape (it’s not like most of them even acknowledge or know that apes and humans have a common ancestor, rather than one evolving from the other) or a “slimy, swampy thing” means that they’re special snowflakes. That someone or something other than their fellow humans gives a fuck about them existing.They just can’t accept the idea that they’re no more special than any other animal and are, at their core, very pathetic and insecure people.
So, “bible literalism” means only the bible is taken literally, and everything else is “interpreted”…instead of vice versa, which is how each was written.
If *everything* written in the Declaration is Absolute Truth; does that mean “inalienable” is an actual word (vs “unalienable”)? [or vice-verse. can never remember which is which, I only remember Madison disputing Jefferson over misspelling the one Jefferson wrote there.]
@woozy #26 (and others)
Apologies for an overdose of google-fu here in some of what I post here, but as a non-Murrican I find the issue novel and interesting. So to one viewpoint by David J. Voelker on the intertubes (and my apologies if it’s a rehash of arguments made better elsewhere).
And all I heard was “lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie…”
Then again, I’m self-declared anti-US, so… yay!
Oh wait! The Founding Fathers couldn’t be evolutionists because Darwin wasn’t alive when the US was founded!
Another lie…
I for one do not doubt for a second that if he had the power he would re-institute an inquisition every bit as terrible as the catholic one.
uncle frogy
#4 Gregory in Seattle Just having an argument with a particularly fluffy CofE follower who “tolerates” the inaccuracies in the Bible because they were a product of the times and defends how it “borrows” myths and parables from other faiths.
It’s like fighting a marshmallow …
Yep. It also highlights the tension between instituting governments “to secure these rights,” and “the consent of the governed.” If the governed consent to the loss of those rights, then we have ourselves a contradiction. Which is more or less the fundamental problem of governance–on par with, and somewhat related to, Douglas Adams’s observation that, “those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it… anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
Those who thump loudly for biblical literalism don’t know the bible (in its myriad incarnations) very well.
Peroutka is about as kooky as they get.
1. He is a neo-confederate sessionist.
2. He is a xian Dominionist theocrat who hates democracy, especially the American one.
3. He once ran for president, getting 0.09% of the vote.
Raven, that’s still a quarter of a million people who voted for him. That’s still a bit scary.
Of course he also goes with Pascal’s Wager in that either his religion is true or Atheism. He probably didn’t even consider the possibility that a different religion may be true.
@playonwords #33:
Yup, that’s the CofE for you. The High Church lot are damn near Catholic but a good proportion of the mainstream and liberal end appear borderline agnostic. I once heard one group describe Jesus as little more than a metaphor for good behaviour (hitting fig trees doesn’t count, naturally).
@alexmcdonald #19
John Hart lived in the 16th century and died 200 years before the Declaration of Independence. If you look at Jefferson’s handwritten draft, capitalisation there is practically the same as it would be today.
peterh, #35:
QFT.
Actual biblical literalism is the best cure for biblical literalism. It might or might not lead to deconversion, but if not, it will drive an honest believer toward liberalism.
Fundies like to say, “It’s all there in Genesis 1-3,” meaning that all the fundamentals of their belief can be drawn from there. I’m inclined to agree: if you honestly read those chapters, literally, then you find that the sky is a solid dome, the sea contains monsters, there’s water above the sun, and snakes used to be able to talk. You also find two contradictory creation accounts. If that doesn’t deconvert you completely, it will force you to conclude that the Bible isn’t supposed to be taken literally in the first place, which basically precludes the kind of dogmatism necessary to continue insisting that slavery, patriarchy, heterosexism, etc., are “God’s will.”
Biblical literalism only goes as far as it takes for it to not be useful. Then we suddenly have all sorts of interpreting going on, like which contemporary politician the Antichrist is, or that Jesus meant our generation when he said the End Times were imminent, not that of the apostles.
@alexmcdonald
I think that’s pretty clear. He literally rewrote the Bible (at least, the New Testament), taking out all the supernatural bits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible
Charles Bukowski
or nailing jello to a wall.
Listening to him either/or any contray views, I kept thinking “Only Sith deal in absolutes…”
Been playing WAAAY too much SWTOR.
“We did not evolve from slimy, swampy things.”
So, he openly admits what exactly he and his kind are! Lucky for them that Libtard atheists do not judge other lifeforms based on our personal preferences – and that many of us have a little “thing” for the slimy and swamp.
All I can say is;
#STOPSUPERSTITION and #STOPGODWORSHIP
I’m waiting for Ape Creationism to appear: The claim that non-human apes were created specifically and seperately by somebody who had nothing to do at all with the creation of human apes because that would be just too embarassing for the non-human apes.
Raging Bee @ 7:
“But of course they got it wrong! Those book are all fulla Funny Furrien Squiggle Words, not real writin’ like Jeezus used!”
“paraphrasing”
I’m not sure that word means what he thinks it means.
he takes a paragraph and phrases into whatever twisted mess he wants — para phrasing.
playonwords@33:
Just don’t cross the streams.