I’d never heard of Ralph Drollinger before

Can I please go back to my state of innocence?

Drollinger is a minister of some sort who gets together with Trump’s cabinet every week to lead them in the path of righteousness through prayer. Like Trump’s “spiritual advisor”, Paula White, he seems to be a huckster and a grifter who’s there to influence powerful but stupid people.

The Drollinger-led Bible study meets every Wednesday morning with members of Trump’s cabinet, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and Health Secretary Alex Azar. Carson and Azar, notably, are members of the coronavirus task force guiding the federal government response to the pandemic.

Vice President Mike Pence, a member of the task force and a listed host of Capitol Ministries, is also tied to the Bible study. Emails obtained by Gizmodo show administration officials coordinating with Drollinger’s group to schedule a session of the Bible study, including the possibility of hosting the weekly event in Pence’s West Wing office.

What could he be telling them, you wonder. It’s all predictable right wing bullshit. The pandemic is all the fault of China, homosexuals, and environmentalists.

“Relative to the coronavirus pandemic crisis, this is not God’s abandonment wrath nor His cataclysmic wrath, rather it is sowing and reaping wrath,” wrote Drollinger. “A biblically astute evaluation of the situation strongly suggests that America and other countries of the world are reaping what China has sown due to their leaders’ recklessness and lack of candor and transparency.”

Neither does he miss a chance to condemn those who worship the “religion of environmentalism” and express a “proclivity toward lesbianism and homosexuality.” These individuals, Drollinger argues in “Is God Judging America Today?”, one of the minister’s posts about coronavirus pandemic, have infiltrated “high positions in our government, our educational system, our media and our entertainment industry” and “are largely responsible for God’s consequential wrath on our nation.”

How many of these loons are influencing our country? Do they think Rasputin was a good influence on Russia, too? I sure hope we can get a president who can grab these scoundrels by the ear and kick their asses out the door.

Christians are selfish, awful people

While other people are isolating themselves to slow the spread of the epidemic, Michigan Republicans pushed through an exemption to allow churches to have gatherings of 50 or more people.

Meanwhile, in Florida, this pompous ass is encouraging his congregation to hug each other and promises that he’ll never close his services.

Before you say Darwin award, keep in mind that the purpose of all this quarantine stuff is to reduce the chances that community medical infrastructure isn’t overwhelmed. These selfish assholes are going to kill other people outside their church.

The only way to avoid that is if we add a further restriction to that church exemption: sure, you can gather in loud Jebus-whoopin’ crowds and hug and slobber all over each other, on the condition that we get to lock you in, and you don’t get to come out until the worst of the pandemic is over. I’m sure the Lord will protect you.

Uh-oh. I just glanced at Right Wing Watch

I do believe in monsters. Except they’re all human, and mostly religious.

I can’t recommend it. Not that it isn’t honestly reporting what the Right is doing, but that it’s more terrifying than I can take. A small sampling:

Paranoia, conspiracies, End Times lunacy, QAnon garbage, it’s all there. The Left is accused of hysteria and overreaction when sensible and necessary action is taken to control the pandemic, but these looneytunes are taking it all to a new level. I’m waiting for the parade of flagellants and the right-wing coup in the midst of the chaos now.

If you want nightmares, watch creepy Kenneth Copeland curing everyone through their television screens.

What’s all over his hand? Ewww.

It’s almost a relief to turn to Answers in Genesis, where they just have a glitter in their eye and see the coronavirus as a mere opportunity to proselytize.

I’m convinced that this coronavirus outbreak is possibly the greatest outreach opportunity for the church worldwide. The coronavirus has covered the globe and, thus, brought missions to our own turf. The church needs to respond to the current situation sensibly and centered around the gospel. Here are some things we should be doing during this time of worldwide panic.

The “things” are to assemble a medical mission team (evangelize while treating people), buy up all the personal hygiene products from your local stores to bribe the local community, and write up Bible tracts to be distributed with your bottles of hand-sanitizers.

It’s horrible, exploitive, and ghoulish behavior, exactly what I expect from Christians any more, but it’s also almost quaint against the backdrop of the outright dangerous nonsense other groups are promoting.

So this is how civilizations die. I’d rather not be in the middle of it.

I was quoted in Charisma magazine!

Oooh, the thrill of recognition. I got a whole paragraph, too, not just a one-liner. Here’s my moment in the spotlight:

To be sure, tentacles have lots of “suckers.” The squid’s suckers are even more effective than the octopus’ in capturing prey. P.Z. Myers spells it out on ScienceBlogs.com: “They contain a piston-like structure inside an interior chamber, coupled so that when something tries to pull away from the sucker, it lifts the piston, further decreasing pressure inside and strengthening its grip—like a Chinese finger-trap, the more you struggle, the harder it is to get away.”

Except…REWIND. What’s Charisma saying to lead into that quote?

What I didn’t know was that a sneaky squid spirit would soon start stalking me.

Right about now, you might be scratching your head and asking, with all sincerity—or with all mockery—”What in the world is a squid spirit?” Essentially, it’s a spirit of mind control but its affects go way behind what you would think.

In his classic book, Demon Hit List, Eckhardt lists mind control and defines it this way: Octopus and squid spirits having tentacles; confusion, mental pressure, mental pain, migraine.” Sounds a lot like witchcraft, and I imagine that’s what it actually is. There are many expressions—and many manifestations—of witchcraft.

And what comes immediately after the quote?

Here’s a lesson: We’re not wrestling against flesh and blood. We can’t overcome a squid attack in our flesh. The more we struggle in our flesh, the greater the hold this spirit seems to get on us. The more we get in our heads trying to figure things out, the more ground the squid takes because the squid is attacking our head (our mind).

Squids also have a chameleon persona. Reference.com reveals, “Squid have the largest nervous system in the animal kingdom. They have the ability to change colors because they have translucent skin. The colors come from chromatophores, which are pigment cells that are on the outside of the skin that expand or contract to show colors.”

Spiritually speaking, this chameleon-like characteristic means it can change its behavior or appearance to stay hidden. It’s sneaky! Squids are fast swimmers and some of them can even fly. Again, that’s why you need discernment in any spiritual battle. Internet checklists and articles can be helpful if the Holy Spirit illuminates the truths within them, but we must ultimately wage prophetic warfare if we are going to win the battle.

The ignominy of it all — I am reduced to sciencey-sounding window dressing to add one little tidbit of true facts to a heaping bowl of bullshit. I shall have my revenge. When I’m dead, my incorporeal spirit will command a legion of squid demons, and they will slake their thirst for vengeance on this author’s head.

Or not. There are no floating souls or cephalopod demons, sorry.

Is this the kind of drivel that gets routinely published in Christian magazines?

I rejected them, so they’re coming to get me

The other daaaay, I was asked to do a YouTube debate with an Islamic group, and I told them no, with this email.

I dislike debates, and find them to be nothing but rhetorical games. If you’d care to send me a written summary of your best argument that “the Quran is a scientific miracle”, I’ll consider addressing it. I have a few conditions: you should define what you mean by “scientific miracle”, and I would prefer that any examples you use discuss it from the perspective of biology, since that is my area of expertise.

They replied. This has gotten worse.

Yes you bring up a good point. The Quran and science argument has evolved
significantly since your discussion with Hamza Tzortis. A great deal of care
was given to refutations provided by skeptics.

We can send you a pdf of the new arguments, perhaps you can look them over.

We are planning to do an event at Univ of Minnesota at Morris via Muslim Student Association,
in which we talk about Quran and science. Once you reviewed the material, perhaps you can
provide some feedback/discussion during the question and answer period?

First, do I really believe their argument has evolved in any substantial way, or that they actually deal honestly with skeptical arguments? No, I do not. The fact that they’re trying to argue that Quran is a scientific treatise rather than a social, political, historical, and cultural document is revealing. Still, I’d be happy to look over their “new” arguments.

Second, I am not happy that they are trying to corrupt our Muslim students. When I first came to UMM, there was a fairly loud contingent of Christian creationists openly trying to undermine biology classes, specifically, and I do not welcome the idea of our Muslim students taking over that role. They’re smarter than that. But yes, I would definitely attend their event and point out the flaws in using the Quran as if it’s a science textbook.

How does Christian math work?

I don’t know how this adds up. So this Minnesota church is struggling with declining membership — only about 25 people show up each week, and most of them are elderly — so what they’ve decided to do is tell all those old people to stay home or go to a different church so … they … can … increase the numbers of … young people?

Grove United Methodist Church in the St. Paul suburb of Cottage Grove is closing in June, with plans to relaunch in November. The present members, most of them over 60 years old, will be invited to worship elsewhere, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported. The church is asking that they stay away for two years, then consult the pastor about reapplying.

There’s some funky logic going on here. They must have additional plans to reinvigorate the church, other than telling the old folks to stay away, unless they think somehow that older people actively repel the youth. But if they’ve got some dynamic plan to draw in more, younger members, why do they need to kick out the loyal congregation? And do they seriously think the ejected members will want to come back in two years?

They’ve got some new guy coming in as pastor, and I’d really like to know what magic he plans to work to get new people to join the church that just kicked out Grandma and Grandpa. Other Methodist churches are undergoing this peculiar division of their congregations, and it’s associated with deep splits over the inclusion of LGBTQ members. I wonder if that’s the unstated and unreported rationale for showing the membership the door.

What if a priest is invited to my family gatherings?

Cardinal Raymond Burke was asked about what to do if a family member brings their gay partner to an event which, I guess, we can use as a guideline to answering the question in my title.

This is a very delicate question, and it’s made even more delicate by the aggressiveness of the homosexual agenda. But one has to approach this in a very calm, serene, reasonable and faith-filled manner. If homosexual relations are intrinsically disordered, which indeed they are — reason teaches us that and also our faith — then, what would it mean to grandchildren to have present at a family gathering a family member who is living [in] a disordered relationship with another person? We wouldn’t, if it were another kind of relationship — something that was profoundly disordered and harmful — we wouldn’t expose our children to that relationship, to the direct experience of it. And neither should we do it in the context of a family member who not only suffers from same-sex attraction, but who has chosen to live out that attraction, to act upon it, committing acts which are always and everywhere wrong, evil.

And so, families have to find a way to stay close to a child in this situation — to a son or grandson, or whatever it may be — in order to try to draw the person away from a relationship which is disordered.

And we know that with time, these relationships leave the person profoundly unhappy. And so it’s important to stay [as] close as one can. But, that particular form of relationship should not be imposed upon family members, and especially upon impressionable children. And I urge parents or grandparents — whoever it may be — to be very, very prudent in this matter and not to scandalize their children or grandchildren.

Well. I certainly do regard the priesthood as a festering tradition of ignorance and evil, and I am concerned about not doing harm to my children and grandchildren, but I’m not going to accept the recommendations of an evil person. We should do the opposite. If a priest shows up at your garden party, don’t shun them, or call the police, or throw them out — treat them with sympathy and understanding. Explain to your kids that sometimes people fall into a bad crowd and make poor life decisions, but we still have to treat them with the dignity and respect owed to all human beings, no matter how flawed. Don’t try to convert them, no matter how obvious their suffering, because we don’t know what led them to this disgraceful state, and disrupting their life may cause even greater misery.

Let the kids learn from this person’s example…but by no means allow your children to be alone in a room with a Catholic priest.

A Christian Conservative Liberty Loving Republican

Am I the only person who remembers the movie Nothing But Trouble, with Dan Akroyd as Judge Alvin Valkenheiser, the presiding tyrant of a small town? For some reason, that was the first thing that I thought of when I saw this photo of this Texan Republican.

Give him a few years, that’s him. Jonathan Stickland has been ranting about vaccines. He told a professor of medicine at Baylor University to Make the case for your sorcery to consumers on your own dime, and that Parental rights mean more to us than your self enriching ‘science.’.

Sounds like another Tex-ass pustule has popped.