Slowly it dawns on me...

[caraher]

I'm teaching a course as part of my university's January mini-term program. These courses tend to be non-traditional in format and/or subject matter, and faculty are free to pursue any interest regardless of their fields of specialization. My course is called "War and Conscience" and I had a very enlightening discussion with a student today...

Here on DU we tend to watch *'s approval ratings with amazement (not to mention a kind of horror that they are above zero at all). We know there appears to be a hard floor to those levels of support, the folks whose commitment seems impervious to any facts. Today I had a fairly long one-on-one discussion with a student who'd previously indicated his support for the war and Our Great Leader as well as his reluctance to talk about it in class.

He described his adherence to a brand of Christianity that strongly believes the world around us is filled with portents of the "End Times," the whole "Left Behind" thing. The part I found interesting was not so much his uncritical acceptance of the notion that Shrub is genuinely in contact with The Guy Upstairs and heeds His counsel in setting the course for our country. It was more his explanations of the implications of that belief.

Basically, given that belief plus the notion that God's plans are beyond human comprehension, the consequence is that critical reasoning about the actions of the White House is pointless. Our comprehension is necessarily inadequate to absorb all of the Divine Plan, and it should not be surprising that its elements, including what emanates from the Oval Office, often seem bizarre, even insane. Going beyond what this student said, apparent irrationality could even be taken as a sign that *'s actions are indeed divinely inspired (since we certainly don't need God to reveal policy courses human reason would favor!).

In retrospect, this may be obvious. (But I guess most things are in hindsight...) Still... it was a very striking realization for me, one with a lot of very serious implications.

[wryter2000]

1. Interesting, indeed

Welcome to DU. :hi:

[peacebird]

2. uyou have just scared the holy bejeezuz out of me.... Are they truly THAT far gone?

[B3Nut]

9. Yes they are.

I almost was. Thank reason I started thinking for myself!

Fundamentalism is a horrific sickness. I'm glad I don't suffer from it anymore. But it becomes an insular, all-encompassing philosophy that absolutely will not allow contradictory information to enter. But I got to the point that I could not ignore contradictory data from nature and reason and still consider myself an honest person. Once I started asking questions (and getting over the fear of asking questions!) the whole shebang just disintegrated.

Todd in Beerbratistan

[YDogg]

3. i guess one could ask why this kid is in college at all

welcome to DU!

:hi:

[monmouth]

4. All this stupidity in the name of God. He must be livid.....

[EST]

5. Like the guy who stayed up all night, wondering where the sun

went?

Actually these crazies are around in every generation. At this moment, it is more acceptable for them to "come out" as it were.

In times past, there were places to put them, but, with the population explosion, we've run out of monasteries, monkeries, asylums, desert islands, etc.

Think about the sort of crazy who wandered around in the desert for most of his life, subsisting, by choice, on locusts (grasshoppers) and wild honey, his brain eaten up by gonorrhea, and on a continuous, years long acid trip.

He comes into town often enough so that others can be aware of this raving lunatic and some enterprising fiction writer makes the two millennia old observation, "By god, truth really IS stranger than fiction!"

He then writes some of the disjointed ravings down and -voila!- out comes a short book that nobody understands and that is so funged up that it can serve as anything from erotica to revelations, confounding the gullible for thousands of years.

[Clevenger]

6. The student is either incapable of critical thinking, or is willfully ignorant...

Either way, madness and tragedy will be the end result for him and for those he influences.

I enjoyed your accurate but chilling 'if it makes no sense, it must be of God' assessment. Of course, that's exactly how the Religious Right, and their co-conspirators in the White House, want people to believe.

[MistressOverdone]

7. I just wrote a rather similar post

about a new neighbor.

I think perhaps the one thing that is the most frightening is that they are completely unable to be the least bit flexible in their thinking. They have bought it all, hook, line and sinker and NOTHING is going to shake them.

[bryant69]

8. I don't know though

God's plans apparently also include us having brains and reason (to the extent that we possess these qualities).

Bryant

[Lydia Leftcoast]

10. Right, the fanatics forget about that part

I bet the student you're talking about grew up in one of those fundie churches that doesn't let its people have much contact with non-fundie people or media.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

11. the difference between this fundamentalist

and mystics that I know is that a mystic doesn't rely on any second hand experiences--they have direct spiritual experiences themselves. And they don't tend to put people on pedistals just because someone has had a particular experience or more experiences of a certain kind than they have had. Any true spiritual teacher, in fact, does his or her best to make sure they are NOT put on a pedistal, but are perceived to be human beings like everyone else.

This idea that a leader is more spiritual, or that only an elite can have spiritual experiences, is not something that mystics generally hold to; those fundamentalists who do have apparently not awakened to their own inner power.

[ChrisCat]

12. I used to attend a church that taught this

And their favorite quotes were that you were to "come unto Jesus as a little child" and that we were the "lambs of God". This meant no thinking for yourself or questioning God's will. I still have friends and family there and in other churches with similar teachings, and they still thank God that we have a "Christian president". It boggles the mind.