It says elsewhere on this blog that U.S. President George W. Bush is making the world a much more dangerous place, and you're reading this opinion from someone who grew up during the Cold War, and remembers the Cuban Missile Crisis well.
I'm happy to hear that, now the election is over, Bush disapproves of kiddie diddling. (Does this mean the Pope Benedict will be unwelcome at the White House? We'll see.) Bush will have a much more difficult time getting his appointments approved by Congress, and that's a Good Thing.
We still need to do better, however. On Nov. 4, I was listening to the Tapestry program on CBC Radio. Tapestry is a program about religion, and the guest was Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation. CBC archives this program, and, if you have RealPlayer installed on your computer, you can listen to it here.
I found some of the facts reported by Harris to be genuinely scary. I wanted to pass this along before the Nov. 6 U.S. election, but was unable to do so because of a problem with CBC's web site.
At about 35 minutes into this program, Harris said that the main source of White House interns is not Harvard, MIT, Stanford, or Bush's alma mater Yale. Instead, they come from Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, VA. Not familiar with this institution? Well, it says this on the "Statement of Faith" page of their web site: “Jesus Christ literally will come to earth again in the Second Advent.”
Harris points out elsewhere in this program that there are people who believe that Elvis is alive, that Poseidon still controls ocean storms, and the Holocaust didn't happen. However, people who hold these beliefs don't get jobs like White House Intern, or Secretary of Defense. That means that there's a different standard for people who believe the equally silly things taught by Patrick Henry College and similar institutions.
It also creates a big problem for an Administration that, whether we like it or not, we depend upon to deal with terrorism that comes to us from Islamic fanatics. What makes a Christian who believes that “The Bible in its entirety is the inspired word of God, inerrant in its original autographs, and the only infallible and sufficient authority for faith and Christian living” (quoted from the same “Statement of Faith” mentioned above) any different from someone who believes the exact same thing about the Koran? The answer is, there is no difference.
And consider this; we have a justifiable concern about when and where the next passenger jets, piloted by Muslim engineering students, will crash into the next office building. Or when someone sells such terrorists a nuclear bomb. But try putting yourself in a different set of shoes. Imagine that you're a young Palestinian or Lebanese, and your local school or hospital has been hit by an Israeli artillery shell. Your local political and religious leaders won't hesitate to tell you that Israel is supported by a U.S. government run by people who believe that Israel's existence is part of the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. And if it's OK for Christians in positions of power to hold apocalyptic beliefs, how can we tell Muslims that it isn't OK to kill “infidels” in large numbers?
