Well, I suppose that would make Bill Clinton the False Prophet (Profit) and George Bush the Whore of Babylon (Iraq / Commerce).

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Newsweek is just acting as the look-out guy while the looters finish their dirty work. Who wants to read sobering news about the last-minute cash grabs by Bushco - when they could be reading a puff piece designed to help the righteous feel more righteous than they already think they are :.(

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Jon Meacham, a crazy religious nut in his own right.

I heard him interviewed by Charlie Rose right after he was named editor of Newsweek, and he said he was going to do more "religious" stories because of the religious tone of the country. (Not to mention his own beliefs.)

This wouldn't be so bad if it were in a column titled: "Batshit Crazy Item of the Week" or some such thing.

But as "news" this is ridiculous!

Newsweek, you need to fire Jon Meacham!!!

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

I haven't been Christian for about 30 years, but the book hasn't changed, and when I was reading it, it said that no one would be able to predict the rapture.

Keep predicting, guys. If I thought it would actually happen, I'd be grateful for you postponing it.

I should not that there are plenty of people who believe Obama to be a Light Worker as well. Me, I think he's a gifted orator who has a chance to make a positive difference, and that's good enough for me. I don't need a Messiah or an Antichrist.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

I'm sure nutcases thought he was the Anti-Christ, too. After all, he did emancipate the slaves. That probably seemed like the end of the world to many Southerners.

Since then, we've suffered from their bigotry, their actions, and their politicians. If you're going to predict the end of the world, you should be required to kill yourself if it doesn't come about just as you suggest.

Now there's an idea! What we need to do now is promote the idea that the rapture doesn't happen through mystical or magical means, but that God expects his most faithful followers to shoot themselves... and only themselves. To shoot others would be murder, and they couldn't get into heaven with the stain of murder on their souls. But suicide at the point of rapture would be perfectly acceptable.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Quote:
"... Obama's own use of religious rhetoric belies his liberal positions on abortion and traditional marriage, Staver says, positions that "religious conservatives believe will threaten their freedom."
--------------------

So....if you use religious rhetoric at any time (you walk in a room, switch the overhead on and exclaim "Let there be light!") that is an indicator that you are pro-life and anti-gay marriage?

That's me screwed and drummed out of International Atheists....

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

'Whack job' is an example of "racist, sexist OR OTHER DISCRIMINATORY OR HATEFUL LANGUAGE" (emphasis mine.) - especially if used as a label for all people W/mental illness. (The term 'job' adds an extra element of contempt and further dehumanizes the person so labelled. - S/he is a thing or a piece of sh*t.)

The notion that Obama is the Anti-Christ is, of course, ridiculous, bizzare, and offensive.
But a person who holds this belief is usually not beyond redemption.

With some exceptions, the best policy is to "fight mental illness, not mentally ill people."

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

'Whack job' is an example of "racist, sexist OR OTHER DISCRIMINATORY OR HATEFUL LANGUAGE" (emphasis mine.) - especially if used as a label for all people W/mental illness. (The term 'job' adds an extra element of contempt and further dehumanizes the person so labelled. - S/he is a thing or a piece of sh*t.)

The notion that Obama is the Anti-Christ is, of course, ridiculous, bizzare, and offensive.
But a person who holds this belief is usually not beyond redemption.

With some exceptions, the best policy is to "fight mental illness, not mentally ill people."

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

I'll save everybody the trouble. *I'M* the Anti-Christ.
Well, I'm not exactly anti CHRIST, per se, just anti Christian.

Heck, I'm anti everybody.

We're all Christ. We're all the anti-Christ (at least Dick Cheney is). And there is NO Christ or Anti-Christ.

It is all so stupid. Hopefully the Newsweek article doesn't lead to Obama being assassinated by some religious idiot, though!

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

And it is falling right straight down like a rock breaking all natural laws to land on the Newsweek head office! That is about as likely as any human being the Anti Christ. Wake the F up you ding bats you have sold out to the Anti Christ of Corporate Greed! It owns your soul your family's souls and your dog’s soul.

I would hate to be you Editors and News writers of Newsweek when the bill comes due. That Demon is Mammon born right out of the bowels of Abaddon and it is going to eat you after it has eaten all the poor folks in the infrastructures of your cities! When there is no one left to protect your ass from the REAL predators of this world it will have to come to you for sustenance. Then we will see what Anti Christ is all about.

Do you really think it cares what you have done to feed its hatred and wrath at not being in control of your lives? It feeds on your fear and your hatred of difference! It will stomp you down flat only because that raises it up in your eyes! Newsweek you are like the self immolating whore who cries : “Oh, master beat me burn me make me write bad cheques!”

Your religious leaders are nothing but compound lies constructed from false interpretations of scripture. Their Xenophobia has led to a nearly rabid condition of mindless verbal and physical violence toward both small populations and large populations of otherwise innocuous people. The Leaders of Religious Organizations worldwide have incurred an impossible debt on themselves. I would much rather be a mouse or a mole than a Religious Zealot when the fecal material strikes the rotary air oscillator. Remember you: “(It is written) so as you have done to the least of these, my brethren, so have you done it to me!”

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Basing your cosmoconception on John's acid trip (or whatever it was) is idiocy. But these types need somethin' to keep 'em going and under the thumb of the Lord.

Imagine actually using this energy to work in a constructive way (no, TRULY constructive) for the betterment of people and the world HERE and NOW.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

The truth about religion can be found in these books and others:

"The Neuropsychological bases of god beliefs" Dr. Michael A. Persinger MD,
psychiatrist 1987 "Religious people are just like my temporal lobe patients"

"The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bi-Cameral Mind" Julian
Jaynes Professor, Harvard University 1976 "Religious people are just like
schizophrenic patients"

"The Psychiatric Interview in Clinical Practice" Roger A. MacKinnon, M.D.,
Robert Michels, M.D. W. B. Saunders Co. 1971 "Religiosity is a common
symptom [of] schizophrenic patients"

"The God delusion" by Richard Dawkins. "Religion is caused by a kind of
computer virus that infects the living computer, the human brain."

"The Science of Good and Evil" by Michael Shermer, 2004 "Morality and Ethics
are now in the jurisdiction of Science and greatly improved thereby."

Many books in the new science called "Sociobiology": Morals and ethics are
instinctive and they evolved.

"God: The Failed Hypothesis" by Victor Stenger. Scientific proof that god does
not exist.

"The God Part of the Brain" by Matthew Alper 1996. "The USA is anomolusly
religious because many early founder groups were religiously insane and fleeing
prosecution in Europe. Religion is a genetic disorder."

"The Accidental Mind" by David J. Linden, 2007 Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press. Religion is caused by the extreme klugeyness of the "designed"
by evolution brain. In particular, the narrative creation system cannot be turned
off. It generates false narratives that are believed by the generating person. This is
seen in experiments done in the laboratory. This book has the best explanation of
resistance to evolution: "There has also been an assumption that if one accepts the
idea that life developed without divine intervention, it necessarily follows that all
aspects of religious thought must be rejected. Those who take this line of
argument to extremes argue that when religious thought is rejected moral and
social codes will degenerate and "the law of the jungle" will be all that is left. It is
imagined by religious fundamentalists that those who do not share their particular
religious faith are incapable of leading moral lives." These suppositions are not
true many times over. Linden later mentions that the creationists [intelligent
design advocates] are exactly 180 degrees wrong rather than just a little wrong.
Being exactly wrong, they are unable to unlearn their error. See Sociobiology or
Sciobio.

"Scientists Confront Intelligent Design and Creationism" edited by Petto &
Godfrey, 2007. The ID and creationist crowd are trying to do away with science.
They see science as a "godless religion." Science is a process, not a religion.

"Manufacturing Belief" by Lewis Wolpert
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/05/15/lewis_wolpert/

"The End of Faith" and "Letter to a Christian Nation" by Sam Harris

"Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon", by Daniel Dennett
Let's do scientific research on religion and find out what causes it.

"Origins of the Modern Mind" by Merlin Donald 1991 "So what did you expect
from a brain that is based on the Chimpanzee brain?

"Atheism, A Case Against God" by George Smith

"God is not Great; how religion poisons everything" by Christopher Hitchens, 2007

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

As a sophomore undergraduate student in Physics, your homework in Probability
and Statistics class may include figuring out when the second coming would be
required, assuming that the bible was 100% true in the year zero. That is, when
would the bible be down to 50% true? The popular and professors' answer in
1965 was the year 500. The true answer: A friend of mine was born and raised in
Budapest, Hungary. As an adult, he came here and stayed. After 25 years, he
visited his home town of Budapest. He was unable to communicate with his high
school classmates because the Hungarian language had changed so much. The
correct answer is less than 25 years. The first gospel was not written down until
50 years after the alleged events and then in a different language. The people who
told the story were at about the same level of civilization as "wild Indians", I mean
Native Americans before Columbus got here. We have all played or seen played
the game called "Telephone" in which a story is passed down a line of re-tellers.
By the Sixth re-telling, the story has no resemblance to the original. The gospel
story had to have been re-told at least 6 times before it was mis-translated the first
time. [Note that whoever wrote it down the first time was free to write whatever
he wanted to. The storytellers were illiterate and unable to check his written text
by reading it. Besides that, he wrote in Greek rather than Aramaic.] Conclusion:
There is no truth anywhere in the bible, and there never was. There is no way to
know what "jesus" or "mohammed" or any other such character actually said or
did.

ALL of the jurisdictions that were formerly in the jurisdiction of religion have
been taken over by Science. There is no longer a need to debate the issue.
Religion is an unfortunate side effect of having evolved from a chimpanzee-like
animal in a very brief 6 or 7 million years. "God" will not save us from the
consequences of global warming or an asteroid impact or a tornado because there
is no such critter as "god.". Ethics and morality are instinctive, not derived from
religion. Female instinct has greater force in morality than male instinct because
the female is in command of the sexual encounter. Look up "Sociobiology". The
origin of the Universe is the subject of Cosmology which is part of astronomy
which is part of the science of physics.
Religion is a SCAM. ANY religion, there are 10,000 to choose from at any one
time. People keep inventing new religions [for the benefit of the "prophet," of
course] and forgetting other religions. ALL preachers, priests, imams, rabbis,
iatolas, etc. belong in jail for "grand theft, bunko type".

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

"Religion ruins everything."

Sometimes I really feel the whole country is insane and stories like this only reinforce that notion.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Im sure a skilled and competent writer could have managed to stretch the article just enough to make it seem coherent.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Aren't you proud of US mainstream media? One of the two leading news magazines, Newsweek is on the way to become a tabloid. The other one, Time will probably follow suit. After all, they have been tabloids in disguise serving their owners, who you should know who they are. Now they have decided they are mature enough to do it without disguise.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

I just traded emails with Todd Strandberg. He is an idiot. His only counter to any argument one poses is that tired old silly nonsense about how I would not be writing to condemn him if only I accepted Christ as my savior. Would you believe? In the 21st century?

I wrote back to point out that there is not one shred of historical support for the notion that there was ever a person called Jesus Christ. (At most, there was a prophet, one among hundreds at that time, known as Reb (for Rabbi) Yeshua (Joshua). I also pointed out that so-called Christianity was literally born in blood: Emperor Constantine, at the Council of Nicea, condemned to death all those bishops who disagreed with his interpretation of Reb Yeshua's substance, especially the Arianists.

I also pointed out that all of the Christian holidays were stolen from paganism, starting with Christmas, which falls on the celebration of Father Mithras, the Invincible Sun. Christianity is bulls**t. All religions are. None of Strandberg's quotations from the Bible prove the existence of "God." No one can. Christianity is a bogus faith. I accept NOTHING on faith alone. My god is DNA.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

So one of the quoted indicators is that, one week, one of the winning numbers in the lottery of the state Obama is from was 666, and this is "eerie" and an indicator that he is the Antichrist. This kind of extremely loose extrapolation is one of the indicators of psychosis. Another absurd quote suggests that Obama must be "using religious language" hypocritically since he's prochoice and pro gay marriage (actually only civil unions but never mind facts) and we know all religious people oppose these things. The piece goes on to say that members of the religious right feel "their freedom is threatened" by these stances. So your freedom is threatened by OTHER PEOPLE'S freedom to marry the person of their choice, or to choose whether to have an abortion or not?
Perhaps Newsweek is using these crazy quotes to expose just how whacko these beliefs are--but like the New Yorker parody cover, it only inflames the True Believers, who in fact may be a very real danger to Obama.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

just like in the 70s when I was in high school I was told "a vote for Jimmy Carter is a vote for the antichrist".
If ever anybody fit the antichrist label, it's Dick Cheney, isn't it? Or W? I mean, they are sweet talking the World Bank and the G-8 for their own evil plans of world domination, right? Killing thousands in the name of "freedom" and wrecking economies left and right.

Actually, there are more people who believe this antichrist idiocy than you want to know. It's NOT just a few on the fringes. Most people I know believe in a rapture of some sort, and so are open to the "fact" the antichrist may be amongst us now. And I'm not even living in the Bible Belt part of Ohio!
Be aware these folks are not willing to think for themselves, as it's a slippery slope from reason to the eternal damnation of hell.
I no longer believe this propaganda because I have grown up. I think.

To be fair, the piece WAS in the "belief watch" section of the magazine.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

This is, actually, a pretty neat ploy; it lumps right-wing Obama-haters in with the looniest of the lunatic fringe, and makes all the other talk of liberal media conspiracies sound like apocalytic rants. Lighten up, everyone!

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

A look at the author's bio (Lisa Miller) speaks volumes (she came from the Wall St. Journal, parthanon of neoconservative values) and explains why she has no idea what she's done with this inflammatory piece. If you still don't believe fascism is right here in 'Merkuh, you're absolutely not paying attention. It's a soft-pedal hit-piece that's riddled with "code" that Xtian fundies totally get. The ave. do-gooder liberal has no idea what half of it means thus they consider it, silly or harmless. Exactly the cover m.o. Xtian proto-fascists have been using for years.

Go check out the SPLC's site for the hard-core shitstorm being whipped up by the white supremacists (most of whom are fundie Xtians, BTW). Go read David Neiwert's substantive reportage on Xtian Nationalism and eliminationism in right-wing rhetoric. Then re-read Lisa Miller's hit-piece. You'll need a shower afterwards.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Although it would be nice to think that only a small lunatic fringe believes in the rapture, truth is that a huge number of people believe it.

The "Left Behind" series of books is one of the most popular book series of all time.

I read one and thought it was poorly written to say the least. How people can believe that "God is love" and at the same time god is going to exterminate people on a mass scale is beyond me. Sick and twisted indeed. That kind of love reminds me of O.J. Simpson.

Religious whack jobs have been insisting that different people are the anti Christ for a very long time. If every single person they thought was the anti Christ was indeed evil we all would have been dead a long time ago. If every prediction of when the rapture was coming had come true, we would also have all been dead a long time ago.

The word rapture is nowhere in the bible.

Not only is the bible full of weird, nonsensical stuff, most religious people do not follow, or even know, what it actually says.

Drives a logic-minded liberal like me nuts. So what else is new?

Religion is a form of condoned, even encouraged, mass insanity.

Granny's crazy videos = Go get a chuckle!

Luv,
Granny

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Maybe if jesus had ever really existed,maybe if there was a gawd,this BS might make sense.Try a really good book,one where nobody dies or gets tortured,like "Cat in the Hat".
For those who speculate on idiotic items like the antichrist,your misery is your own creation,hope it keeps you warm at night.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

To those who make the PC/'hypersensitivity' charge against my objections to 'whack job':
it's you who are overreacting here - in no way was I whining in yesterday's comment (and I'm no