MAGA Pastor: If You Accept Climate Change, "You're Deceived by Satan" | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos
Category: News & Politics
Via: hal-a-lujah • 3 years ago • 28 commentsBy: Hemant Mehta (Friendly Atheist)
Religion Poisons Everything
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
By Hemant Mehta August 16, 2021
Right-wing pastor Shane Vaughn of Mississippi's First Harvest Ministries, who credited Donald Trump with the COVID relief bill that not a single Republican voted for, has just decided that accepting reality is a sin and that his followers shouldn't go along with it.
In a video posted last week, he didn't even bother pretending climate change was a hoax. He just said anyone who accepts it is going to spent eternity in Hell.
"Climate change is not scientific," Vaughn said. "It is a religion. It is an anti-Christ religion that has taken over the minds of the world. In today's lesson, I'm going to prove to you from God's word that it is a sin to believe in the ideology and the religion of climate change."
"Satan has deceived the whole world," he added. "If you believe that mankind is causing climate change, you're deceived by Satan. Do you know that the American West is withering as I speak to you right now? California is withering. Have you seen the levels of the lakes there? Folks, wake up America! Return to your God. Submit to Yahweh. Obey his commandments. Keep his sabbath holy. Give him his tithe. Walk circumspectly before him. Oh, hallelujah."
"God causes these conditions," Vaughn continued. "He controls the rain, the droughts, the famines, the floods. Do you know why we want to believe that climate change does this? It gives us the power. You scientists from the pits of Hell, how dare you take from Yahweh the sovereign right over the weather that he alone claims and he alone controls, you demonic demons from the cesspools of the abyss of Hell!"
By his logic, accepting climate change is evil because it suggests we have any control over the environment when, in his delusional mind, only God has that kind of power.
But you could say that about anything and see how useless it is. Why work if God will provide? Why care for others if you believe God is looking out for them? Why bother with a safety belt when driving or a parachute while skydiving if God protects you? It just doesn't make any sense.
Christians could easily argue — and many have — that if God gave us this world, it's our responsibility to care for it, and that means mitigating our contribution to the climate crisis. It doesn't have to be a lost cause, but the situation is dire precisely because some people wrongly think it's out of our control, some people purposely spread misinformation, and because ignorant preachers like Vaughn encourage the worst kinds of behavior in the name of Jesus.
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Of course it would never be possible to convince everyone in existence that god exists and that we all need to revere it and obey some religious doctrine. So as long as there is a contingent of nonbelievers then deplorable sleazebags like this guy will continue to fleece moronic believers of their cash with this obtuse line of reasoning. Even if 100% of humanity somehow became convinced and turned to religious faith, scum like this would just find another idiotic excuse why god continues to punish us by fucking up our world all by itself - because we mortals are powerless to negatively impact the planet’s climate, right?
It appears that Satan is more powerful than their god, since their god can't stop him.
Hey, Satan is cunning - when he appears he will be charismatic in his deceit. He will be like … God. Hmmmm.
Hmmmm indeed...
Let me pose this:
If god is all powerful then why can he not stop Satan without the help of humans? If it is a test why does god test humans? If it is to prove their love and devotion, since he is (supposedly) all knowing wouldn't he already know they are devoted & love him? And if he is ever loving why does he torture his devoted ones so much - again if it is to prove themselves to him - all knowing god should already know this...
I could go on for HOURS.
The typical answer I hear for that question is that God cannot logically allow great good without great evil. Thus God allows Satan to exist in order, logically, to have good. In other words, God chose to have great good and deals with the logical consequence of that choice which is to have great evil.
The key flaw in that argument is the imposed dichotomy of good and evil. It is simply posited that good cannot exist without evil. Much like light cannot exist without dark. There certainly could be a reality where nobody engages in evil acts. There will be acts of extraordinary good (e.g. altruistically saving lives in peril) and acts that have no goodness quotient at all (e.g. drinking water). There is no logical requirement of evil to have measures of goodness.
The other argument is that Satan is simply the consequence of God allowing free will. Logically, if God is to allow free will then He must allow even his angels to revolt against Him. Well, okay, but ultimately God is the creator of everything and it is God's choice to have this free will. And, logically, God could have free will with limitations. The religious here would object and claim that would not truly be free will. My response is that limited free will is what the Bible et. al. describe. After all, if we had true free will there would be no consequences from God yet God is written as one who is constantly imposing rules on His people. So the free will argument is dead on arrival.
I agree completely.
" Some creationists even insist that the fossil evidence for dinosaurs was planted by the Great Deceiver himself, Satan."
Any facts that don't fit their indoctrinated beliefs are simply dismissed as products of their ultimate nemesis. It's somewhat reminiscent of the conspiracy theorists like Qanon, who simply believe in baseless, fact-less fantasy because they want to, like a mental patient who has created their own alternate reality where they are important, have meaning and are at the center of the story, the 'main character' if you will. They are desperate for a meaningful existence so when they are presented one in the form of fantasy religion or conspiracy theories they reject their reality in favor of the imaginary where they can believe themselves some holy warrior hero battling evil or even aliens like those who believe earth has been infiltrated by some lizard race. And the delusion is so strong that some have attacked and killed people at places of worship like temples or mosques, some have murdered their own children with spear guns, some have even attacked our capital trying to overthrow our system of government. And as always, they try and escape any blame by throwing it on their favorite fantasy villain, Satan.
Indeed. The willful disconnect from reality in order to maintain a religious delusion is mind boggling.
It’s hard not to believe that humanity’s eternal flirtation with religion isn’t the basic fuel for the fire of crazy conspiracies. Obviously there are plenty of devout religionists who don’t go down that road, but they need to accept that when their own tribe refuses to outright dismiss the deranged beliefs of some of their most devout brothers and sisters, they themselves are part of the problem. In other words, if you refuse to discount someone’s sincere belief in transubstantiation out of respect for their religious beliefs, it is the equivalent of lending credence to the concept of lizard people. Both ideas are fucking nuts.
Truer words have never been typed.
And bears frequent repeating.
Can't forget this line... 'Cuse cash spends in heaven.
That was a fun rant ... I must Youtube him.
That was disappointing and another reason not to show up at the 'Rapture' if he's an example of what survives.
This is one of the masterstrokes of religion. Get people to believe in an evil entity that tries to warp them and then control their behavior by deeming certain beliefs and acts to be those of the evil entity.
What I find most interesting is the change in meaning of the word Satan. The original word in Hebrew meant "accuser" or "adversary" and throughout the Old Testament referred to various human characters. The first occurrence of the word as a supernatural entity is in Numbers 22:22. In 2 Samuel Yahweh sends "an Angel of God" to inflict a plague that kills 70,000 people, but then Chronicles 21:1 retells the same story changing an angel to "a satan". Still not "Satan". It isn't until we get to the Book of Job that Satan appears as a singular entity.
More we see a change in language use during the Second Temple Period and Satan took on more characteristics of the Zoroastrian god of evil. If I remember correctly Hebrew ha-Satan was translated into Greek as diablolos which means "slanderer" where later it was untranslated and remained as satan.
More modern characteristics of Satan can be found in the Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees. In the Jubilees Mastema (who is in charge of spirits) uses some of the demon children of angels and humans (talked about in Enoch) to temp humans into committing more sins so he can punish them.
It is language changes and adoptions of ideas of other times and other cultures that specially shows these major theological ideas to be man made. An omnipotent being obsessed with obedience wouldn't allow such deviation, would it?
The evolution of religious semantics (and stories) is one of the identifying marks (to me) of a product of human beings. Borrow ancient stories and modify them a bit. Find a new feature of some other gd and expand upon it and add it to your god's list of attributes.
The whole thing is so silly yet it is incredibly effective. Our species is incredibly gullible. Case in point, tens of millions of people believe that Trump actually won the election simply because he said so. That shows that people are capable of believing pretty much anything simply because some 'trusted' authority says it is true.
A good plot needs character development and character development needs a good plot ... Satan has become a lovable and loving character who can play the piano dead drunk.
I'm waiting for this last season to drop on Netflix.
(nodding at my monitor)
I will be forever confounded by the lack of foresight by anyone who believes in eternal life. The only just reward for living a life of virtue would be to be given an opportunity to do it all over again from scratch, with no baggage from the previous life - aka reincarnation. The land of milk and honey is going to become mindnumbingly boring, tedious, and torturous during the inescapable millennia following an earthly death, and a purely evil eternal fate beyond that. I don’t believe in either scenario, but if one were insistent that they must believe in some course of religious fate, it shouldn’t take much thought to figure out which of the two would serve them best.
To say that no one knows what heaven , if it exists , would actually be like is putting it mildly.
Religious visionaries present it in flowery fantastical terms because that is the way they imagine it with their limited capabilities.
No one knows what heaven (should it exist) might actually be like and no one (living) ever will.
I'll continue to trust in the The law of conservation of energy. At least that can be proven and is way more elegant than some fictional deity that gets pissed if I eat shellfish.
There are plenty of near death experiences that have an exponentially larger number of religionists convinced that heaven does exist and that the constant of time will be a factor. It is nearly impossible to imagine anything for which time is not a factor - anything that can be said to have happened did so over some period of time. It is a wild stretch to make an assumption that heaven will be both an enjoyable experience and one that is not subject to the constant of time.
Heinlein does a decent job of walking through an imaginary process of being a part of heaven in Job - A Comedy of Justice.
Alternatively American Gods was a great popcorn watch.
True. By the same token, why should anyone believe that Heaven exists since it is simply a product of human imagination with no supporting evidence?
Human beings invented Heaven and all other religious supernatural concepts. It is one thing to fantasize, but countless millions totally believe this and are willing to pay the price of their life for it. Case in point, the Allah-approval-seeking Taliban monsters.
I only saw the first season. It was very entertaining. I do have the book too. I've been meaning to dig it out and read it again. Right now I'm re-reading Gideon the Ninth - described as lesbian necromancers in space.... it's a confusing, but very fun read.