Unholy water?

I'm sure that most people have heard about holy water - water blessed by the clergy, often used against undead beings, if they happen to pester you (would that work against Jesus or the Holy Ghost?).

Well, somehow I can't help thinking of this as unholy water.

Falwell's dream of selling bottled water nears reality

Falwell envisioned the 16.9-ounce bottles of Liberty Mountain Natural Spring Water as novelty items. Plans are to sell it at the museum bearing his name, the school's visitor center and possibly at athletic and church events, school officials said.

"He saw it as sort of a souvenir," said Jerry Falwell Jr., Falwell's son who took over as chancellor of the university after Falwell died on May 15. "He thought it was a memento that people could take back home after visiting Liberty."

The spring is located university property once owned by the late U.S. Sen. Carter Glass, who used it to provide water for his mansion, which now serves as the school's administrative offices.

The spring had been out of commission for at least three decades until about six months ago, when Falwell decided to get it going again. Before his death, he frequently drove up to what he called Liberty Mountain to check on its progress.

In other words it's another money making scheme, to rip off the faithful.

And I thought I collected too much junk

Sorry about the light posting, but it has been a busy week. However, I thought I should bring this article to peoples' attention.

Falwell memorabilia hits eBay after death

Since his death two weeks ago, more than 300 items related to the Rev. Jerry Falwell have been put up for sale on eBay, including an autographed bobblehead doll of the controversial evangelist dressed in a suit and holding a Bible.

It sold for $145.

$145? Couldn't those money have been used much better? Think of the meals for the poor such an amount could buy.

Oh, and I noticed something disquieting

An autographed 1978 Bible that the seller said was given to contributors to Falwell's Liberty University in its early stage of construction went for about $90.

Aren't books normally autographed by the author, illustrator or translator? Why would Falwell feel it appropriate to sign a Bible? Did he consider himself on equal level with "author" of the book?

Falwell still dead, Coulter still vile

The always vile Ann Coulter uses the death of Jerry Falwell to once again show what kind of person she is. Warning: the link leads to a TownHall article by Coulter.

She starts off by explaining what lessons can be learned from Falwell in her bizzaro world.

No man in the last century better illustrated Jesus' warning that "All men will hate you because of me" than the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who left this world on Tuesday. Separately, no man better illustrates my warning that it doesn't pay to be nice to liberals.

Falwell was a perfected Christian. He exuded Christian love for all men, hating sin while loving sinners. This is as opposed to liberals, who just love sinners. Like Christ ministering to prostitutes, Falwell regularly left the safe confines of his church to show up in such benighted venues as CNN.

He was such a good Christian that back when we used to be on TV together during Clinton's impeachment, I sometimes wanted to say to him, "Step aside, reverend -- let the mean girl handle this one." (Why, that guy probably prayed for Clinton!)

For putting Christ above everything -- even the opportunity to make a humiliating joke about Clinton -- Falwell is known as "controversial." Nothing is ever as "controversial" as yammering about Scripture as if, you know, it's the word of God or something.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the rest of us remembers the vile remarks that Falwell rutinely made.

Of course, Counter doesn't think that such remarks were vile. Instead, she thinks they were too mild. After 9/11, Falwell said

The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way—all of them who have tried to secularize America—I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.

To Counter this is perfectly acceptable, except that he didn't go far enough.

Actually, there was one small item I think Falwell got wrong regarding his statement after 9/11 that "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians -- who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle -- the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.'"

First of all, I disagreed with that statement because Falwell neglected to specifically include Teddy Kennedy and "the Reverend" Barry Lynn.

Second, Falwell later stressed that he blamed the terrorists most of all, but I think that clarification was unnecessary. The necessary clarification was to note that God was at least protecting America enough not to allow the terrorists to strike when a Democrat was in the White House.

Can she sink any lower? I feel the need to quote Welch's immortal words to Senator McCarthy (one of Coulter's great heroes)

You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

Except for the gender pronoun, I feel the same could, and should, be said to Coulter. She is a hateful harpy, who thankfully has a more limited ability to do harm to other peoples' careers, but she still has access to mainstream media.

What does it take to get the media and the politicians tp stop to give her prominence? When can we expect that the newspapers that bring her columns have had enough of her?

Reactions on Falwell death

As most people are probably aware, the US right-winged Christian Jerry Falwell died yesterday. He was mostly known for founding Moral Majority and being a major cause of the prominence of right-winged Christianity in US politics these days. After leaving Moral Majority he ran Liberty University until his death.

Though, not as prominent in later years, as he was during the Reagan adminstration, he still had some influence on US politics, as the pandering by the current GOP candidates shows.

He left behind a wife, three grown children and some grandchildren, who are undoubtfully saddened by his passing. They have my condolences.

Now, for some of the reactions to his death.

Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue issued this statement (with my comments in between).

“Mary and I join the American people in mourning the passing of Reverend Jerry Falwell. Reverend Falwell founded Thomas Road Baptist Church, the Moral Majority and Liberty University. He built Christian elementary schools, homes for unwed mothers and a home for the treatment of alcoholism.

Let's just say that it's not exactly all the American people who mourn his passing, as demonstrated by Anti-Memorial.

"It was apparent to me in meeting with Reverend Falwell last October that the three most important things in his life were Christ, his family and his students.

And power. Mustn't forget the power.

He never shied away from speaking his mind or fighting for what he thought was right, and he firmly believed that people of faith had a role to play in politics.

That role obviously being pushing their religious views on all others, first amendment be damned. As for speaking his mind, well, let's say that he quite frequently displayed how small-minded he was.

Newsweek had a somewhat balanced profile, though it doesn't in any way do justice to the bigotry of the man.

Clinton Fein has a more honest blogpost about the man.

PZ Myers has a video-clip of Hitchen speaking the truth about Falwell.

Slate repeats some of the worst remarks made by Falwell.

As the above probably show, I am not a fan of Falwell. He was the worst kind of religious bigot, and together with other religious bigots he managed to change the political discurse in the US. While it's generally said one shouldn't speak evil about the dead, I believe that one should speak truthfully, and I truthfully believes that teh world is a better place without him.

Jerry Falwell on global warming

I am sure you have all been dying to hear Jerry Falwell's take on global warming, and luckily for all of you, it's now available to the world.

Falwell Says Global Warming Tool of Satan

Wow, that sounds like he really think it's something that we need to pay attention to. I mean, we can't ignore something linked to Satan, can we?
Well, maybe we can....

Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell, who has worked for decades to involve conservative Christians in politics, said Sunday the debate over global warming is a tool of Satan being used to distract churches from their primary focus of preaching the gospel.

"If I decide here as the pastor and our deacons decide that we're going to get caught up in the global warming thing, we're not going to be able to reach the masses of souls for Christ, because our attention will be elsewhere, " Falwell said in Sunday's sermon at Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va. "That's pretty wise for Satan to concoct."


Falwell urged preachers listening on TV across the country, particularly evangelicals who signed an Evangelical Climate Initiative statement declaring man-made global warming a moral issue: "Don't be duped any longer. The jury is still out on global warming."

So not only is global warming a tool of Satan, used to distract preachers from saving souls, it's possible not even true.
What kind of egocentrical moron would think that global warming is an hoax played on everyone to ensure that less people are saved, and he is the only one to see through it?

Falwell didn't deny the earth is warmer than it once was, but he said fluctuations in the earth's temperature have nothing to do with human activity. He described the "truth" linking global warming to a rise in man-made carbon dioxide gases as the "greatest deception in the history of science."

I am sure that Falwell is a quite good authority on deception, but obviously he isn't an authority when it comes to neither science or the history of science.

Falwell quoted a scientist saying the west Antarctic ice shelf has been retreating two inches a year for 10,000 years. "I would back it up to 6,000," Falwell quipped, alluding to an intramural debate between "theistic evolutionist" Christians, who believe life developed over eons in evolutionary processes guided by God, and "young-earth" creationists, who hold God created the earth directly in six 24-hour days only a few thousand years ago.

Yes, Falwell, you probably would. The rest of us are however living in the real world, and not in whatever anti-science bizzaro world that you live in.
As I have written about before, the ice has retreated enough for scientists to find entirely new species in remote areas, which they haven't been able to reach before.

Falwell said his sermon title alone, "The Myth of Global Warming," would prompt 500 letters to the editor from "tree-huggers and the liberals and anybody who gets upset at any challenge to the alarmism and the hysteria that's going on." He said the debate ought to be about science, but it has been about politics for a long time.

You know what, I actually agree with part of what Falwell says here: the debate should be about science, and not politics. The scienctific community is pretty much in complete agreement about global warming (except for a few exceptions, who are always mentioned in the media). It's people with political agendas, like Lomborg, that screws up the debate.
Having said that, how does Falwell's inclusion of religion into the debate help make it more about science? It doesn't of course.

Falwell cited two Bible verses that he said apply to the global-warming debate: Psalm 24:1-2, which declares "The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof," and Genesis 8:22, which says there will be seasons of spring, summer, fall and winter for "as long as the earth remains."

Isn't that nice. I'm sure that I could also quote parts of Shakespeare's works that could apply to the global-warming debate. The difference is that I don't believe that it actually apply to the debate.

"Now that alone ought to let you sleep better at night, after you read Al Gore and attend his 'Inconvenient Truth' film," Falwell said. "It may get him an Oscar, and also get him elected. I mean that what it's all about, politics. The fact is, it's all phony baloney. The fluctuation of temperature is real, and the temperatures have risen somewhat the last few years…. This is cyclical and has been since God created the earth."

Quotes from a book that claims that bats are birds, should make me sleep better at night? I don't think so.

"Now how long will the earth remain?" Falwell asked. "It will remain until the new heavens and the new earth come. And that won't happen until, well, over in the last two chapters of the Bible--after the tribulation, after the thousand-year reign of Christ, then new heavens and new earth. Why? Because the former things are passed away. The earth will go up in dissolution from severe heat. The environmentalists will be really shook up then, because God is going to blow it all away, and bring down new heavens and new earth."

I think quite a few people would be shook up if God came and made a new earth. Those of us living in reality, however, have to deal with the problems that global warming causes, and not just wait for some deity of our choice to come and fix it all.

In recent years, "since Al Gore invented the Internet and then accelerated global warming," Falwell said, "our world has been in turmoil."

Oh, how witty. Completely untrue, but witty. Isn't there something about bearing false witness in the Bible?

The "promoters of this alarmism," Falwell said, include the United Nations, which he described as "no friend of the U.S.," liberal politicians, radical environmentalists, liberal clergy, Hollywood and pseudo-scientists.

Why don't he just call them "rational people"? And pseudo-scientists are the people arguing against global warming with doubtious science, not the people doing real scientific work in the fields related to the subject.

The Kyoto Treaty, which the European Union is pressuring the United States to sign, Falwell said is "abominable" and would bring America to financial ruin and turn it into a second-rate power. The first step alone, he said, would increase the price of a gallon of gasoline by 35 cents.

Oh cry me a river. I live in a country where a liter of gasoline costs $1.5, and yet it's doing financially well. Much better than the US I might add.

Unfortunately, Falwell said, "naïve Christian leaders are also being duped," jumping on a bandwagon with "persons who are on the left of everything."

"Left of everything"? Well, I think the right-winged governments in Europe that signed Kyoto would be surprised to hear that they are actually much more left-winged than they thought.

"I agree every Christian ought to be an environmentalist of reasonable sort," Falwell said. "We should certainly pick up trash. We ought to beautify the earth as best we can. We ought to keep the streams clean. But we shouldn't be hugging trees and worshipping the creation more than we worship the Creator, and that is what global warming is all about."

Global warming is about how the world is getting heated due to human influence. The debate about it, is about how we can reduce the human effect. None of thse things have anything to do with worshipping.

Falwell said a better name for Gore's film, which later the evening following Falwell's Sunday morning sermon won an Oscar for best documentary, would be "A Convenient Untruth--convenient for him to alarm the people for his own political advantage, without any background."


"He's as much a scientist as I am," Falwell said. "At least I think I do the debates better than he does."

Gore is no scientist, and doesn't claim to be one. What he is, is a person who looked at what the scientists told him, and drew the correct conclusions from it, much earlier than most other people. Since the conclusions are so alarming, he has been busy trying to explain them, and the science behind it, to everyone else ever since.
Falwell doesn't understand science, is willing to believe in a young earth, and think that the concensus among scientists can be dismissed with a few verses from a self-contradicting book, filled with errors.

Falwell said there is intense pressure on evangelicals to "join the earthism crowd."

"They think they're doing the right thing and of course they get great press when they do that," Falwell said. "Conservative evangelicals join forces with the liberals, they get applauded, get invited on all the talk shows and so on."

Falwell said all he would have to do "to be the darling of the national media" is to say: "I've changed my mind, I'm pro-choice now. I've changed my mind, I'm pro-gay marriage. I've changed my mind, I'm pro-global warming."

"The Washington Post would have headlines on the front page for me," he continued. "But I'd be a liar and I would have dishonored my calling and what I know to be truth to do that, and I challenge my brothers out there to stop it."

You have dishonored your calling much before the hypothetical situation. As to lying, well, it seems to me that you haven't been too adverse to it so far.

"I want to challenge my preacher brethren that are listening right now," Falwell said. "I want to challenge deacons and Sunday school teachers who are listening right now, all across the nation. Don't be deceived. Don't be caught up with every wind of doctrine. Yes the temperatures are rising, and they will lower again, which does not mean we are going to have a global warming catastrophe or another ice age. It does not, because this is my Father's world, the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, and as long as the earth remaineth, our text tell us, there will be spring, and there will be fall and there will be summer and there will be winter, and cold and hot. God has it all under control. We should be responsible environmentalists, but not first-class nuts, like the ECI crowd and the tree-huggers, Al Gore's constituency."

Basicly what he is saying is: ignore the science, ignore the evidence.

A moderate Baptist ethicist commented that what gets Falwell in trouble "is not what he doesn't know, but what he knows that just isn't so."

"Falwell speaks with the certitude of a no-nothing buffoon," said Robert Parham of the Baptist Center for Ethics." His flat-earth theology is wrong. His misuse of the Bible for reactionary politics is wrong. His dichotomy between evangelism and environmentalism is wrong. His demonization of thoughtful pro-environment Christians is wrong."

"Like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell misspeaks every time he speaks," Parham said. "That must create another nightmare for Southern Baptists."

Well put. See, moderate sensible Christians do understand the difference between blind faith and science.

Falwell isn't the only public figure taking on Gore's film. The Tennessee Center for Policy Research made headlines about hypocrisy by reporting Gore's Nashville mansion consumes 20 times energy as the average home.

Public figure? Are we talking about the group of students calling themselves a thinktank that nobody had ever heards about?

After reviewing the bills, however, The Tennessean reported Gore appeared to be practicing what he preached. The paper said Gore paid extra premiums to purchase blocks of "green power" produced by renewable energy sources, installed solar panels in a renovation project to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and drives a hybrid SUV.

So why mention it at all?

Well, here we have it, Falwell's view is that gloabl warming is the tool of satan, a lie, and not relevant because God is going to fix it all. Oh, and Gore doesn't know what he is talking about, because he's not a scientist.