LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

ozarque has an excellent blog where she touches upon many interesting things, mostly about linguistics and language. Her recent Religious Language post has some observations about the Religious Supremacists:

When I used the phrase "imminent threat to humankind" I was not thinking of the beliefs the group in question holds about abortion, homosexuality, gay marriage, gun rights, inclusive language, or the Patriot Act. Not at all. Whatever my own positions about those beliefs may be, they weren't what was in my head.

My concern is with that element of the Christian Religious Right whose unifying metaphor -- the metaphor that serves as a filter for their perceptions -- is this one: "This present time is the End Times." That worldview carries with it some or all of the following set of beliefs...

1. Every word of the Bible, including the prophecies in Revelation, is literally true.

2. There's no need to conserve any of the Earth's resources. We human beings have only a very short time left, and there's more than enough of everything to last that long.

3. War in the Middle East is a good thing and must be supported, because it moves us forward toward the Second Coming and the Rapture. The Second Coming can't happen until all of the "Holy Land" belongs to the Jews as God promised, so that a new temple can be built on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem -- and war in the Middle East is the only way to get to that point and see those prophecies fulfilled.

4. There's no need to be concerned about the various catastrophes all around us -- the tsunamis and famines and plagues and floods and droughts and genocide and civil wars and insurgencies and all the rest -- because all of that is just part of the troubles predicted in the Bible for the End Times. All these horrors are just signs that we're coming to the end of this wicked present world now and moving closer at last to the arrival of the Kingdom of God.

Those four ideas, which I can hear all around me both on and off the Internet, are the ones that I had in mind when I said I saw "an imminent threat to humankind." They're not rare ideas now, and they're not the ideas of some band of ragged poverty-stricken demented outsiders wandering the streets with signs that order us to repent. These ideas are at the very top of the food chain now, part of the belief system of the most powerful people among us. I do find that a threat, and I see no way to turn it around except by persuasion. As a number of you have said in your comments, it can't be turned around by force. That, it seems to me, leaves only surrender or persuasion. Surrender doesn't strike me as rational.

I think that she sums up quite neatly what it is that also discomfits me about this religious trend. It isn't their beliefs as much as it is what they're doing with them. How do you reason with someone who believes that Jesus is a'comin', and we don't need this old world much longer? How do you deal with people who believe that double-crossing another faith will get them a fast track to heaven? The "End Times" stuff has been around for as long as Revelation has been, but it has become a virulent new meme in today's world. It is a meme which needs to be dealt with head on, and soon. They believe that they can force the hand of God, and are trying to make it happen. Is there a way that this energy can be redirected to a less volitile and dangerous end? How can we change our language and change the world?

"Imminent threat to humankind" is strong language, but language that needs to be taken seriously if we want to keep our planet intact.