So this is a bit tricky to explain to people, even a lot of people who grew up in an “Evangelical” household. But I’ll try to do my best here, because understanding this is important right now.
The Rapture is an even bigger part of the post-WW2 evangelical theology and identity than you think. This is mostly true for baby-boomers, and decreasingly so for subsequent generations. But we are still here because baby-boomers still have a lot of power in America. To understand Baby Boomer American Evangelicals you have to understand that the world they grew up in really did look like the end times.
Consider their lives: they grew up during a time of absolutely unprecedented middle class wealth, AND they had a new unprecedented national mass media/advertising system telling them they are really special (if they buy the right stuff), AND they are growing up in the shadow of the atomic bomb, AND F***ing Israel was refounded! So yeah, the message that Jesus was going to come back during their lives was damn convincing.
Now, the refounding of Israel is not prophesied in the Bible. In fact, that theology is considered by most Christian denominations to be flat wrong. For most denominations, Christ refounded Israel when he instituted the Church at Pentecost. Israel means “Struggles with God”, and everyone who “Struggles with God” is a part of the people of Israel. In the mid-1800s a dude misinterpreted scripture and tried to created the concept of “dispensations”. Part of this misinterpretation included a reconstruction of the physical temple of Israel (again this was never orthodox theology. Orthodox theology teaches that Jesus’ body is already the reconstruction of the temple).
But this wrong theology gained quite a following, primarily in the US, as “Manifest Destiny” was being widely taught. So, Zionists were happy to piggy back on this theology and make it into a self-fullfilling prophecy.
So the refounding of Israel, combined with a number of unprecedented social, scientific, and governmental events, really convinced the baby-boomers that they were special.
Meanwhile, the American Evangelical movement in America, which traditionally taught a more “personal” view of salvation and reverence, was taken over by charismatic sales people that saw an opportunity to mix the “personal” salvation theology with conservative politics and modern mass media advertising to create the Evangelical Right that we know today.
Then came 9/11. Which was also hugely influential. In the boomers minds, 9/11 was supposed to be the great Armageddon war. And there just happened to be an evangelical in the white house to lead the war. This was finally their moment.
…Except it was a quagmire, which they could not explain. Then a black man with African and Muslim names was elected president and they absolutely lost their minds. (Enter the tea party.) Everything for them fell apart.
And here is the real kicker that blows the minds of progressives: they know Trump isn’t Christian. In fact there is a not small minority of American evangelicals that voted for him because they believe he’s the Antichrist and that his ruinous presidency is necessary for Jesus’ return.
That’s where we are today. We are being ruled by people that really believe that in order for Jesus to return the world has to be destroyed.
But that’s still not the end of it, because this theology has also been adopted by a new generation of atheist techno-utopianists. Just like the Christian Right has decided that the world must be destroyed to recreate it with them as kings, so does the atheist techno-utopianist right. (It’s just the method is different. But the results are the same.)
If are an atheist this fact is probably insulting to you, because you feel implicated. But you need to consider the fact. The people in Power are not all Christians Nationalists. Many, if not most, are atheist techno-utopianists that are happily partnering with the Christian Nationalists.
As much as we are being ruled by a Christian Right that wants to destroy everything, we are also being ruled by an Atheist right that wants the same thing.
I feel like you didn’t quite cover the motivation and reasoning, so I’ll try to throw this in here with my limited scope of knowledge.
So the goal for these people is specifically the Rapture. For them, it’s a get out of death free card. They genuinely think that if the rapture happens, they can skip the unpleasantness of dying and go right up to heaven in perfect heaven bodies, and can gleefully watch bad people burn and suffer on Earth.
Their problem, as they see it, is that it only is supposed to happen right before the apocalypse, and that no one knows when that’s supposed to happen exactly. But there’s signs for when it’s supposed to kick off, like the Jews rebuilding the temple and sacrificing a bull on it or something.
That’s a big reason why they pushed for Israel to be founded, because they want that big sign to finally happen.
So for years evangelicals pushed for their congregations to get jobs in politics and get as much political power as possible, so they could stack the deck as much as possible to get governments to jump start the end of the world. That’d why so many politicians talk about God and Christian values, because for the politician it’s an important voting block to appeal to if they want elected, or they are a plant from these churches.
They don’t care about the future of the planet, because to them it doesn’t matter anyway, it’s all going to be burned up. Throw in prosperity gospel, and then you have the idea that clearly God wants you to destroy the planet for money because God is rewarding you with fat stacks.
This is part of why they think rich people are good and working for God. They are clearly God’s chosen, starting the final conflict between heaven and hell.
They don’t care about micro plastics, they are going to float off to heaven any day now with new perfect bodies. Who cares about animals, they don’t have souls anyway. They don’t care about people dying, they are going to be judged and go where they are supposed to go. They want to convert as many people as possible to get into heaven, so they have to scream at random people’s funerals.
And in their eyes, they are the heros.
TLDR: evangelicals want to start the apocalypse so they don’t have to die to get into heaven, so they have been trying to manipulate politics and power for decades to do it.
That is all generally correct.
I would add to this that the Covid pandemic was ironically dangerous to their theology. The world is supposed to end, but not that way!
But really it can’t be understated how catastrophic the War on Terror was to their identity. They were faithful and God didn’t show up. That’s damn psychologically traumatic.
If this isn’t a death cult, I don’t know what is.
The only caveat to that that I would add is that neither the Evangelical Right nor the Atheist Right plan on dying for their prophecies.
They intend for everyone else to die for their prophecy (including their respective counterparts as it would be).
No death cult ever thinks death will be the end.
I would say the Atheist Techno-utopianists Right are a death cult that thinks their death would be really inconvenient.
A few days ago someone posted a nice summary backed by bible quotes to prove that Trump is in fact the Antichrist…
There was a website someone put up during his first term that he had to keep updating. Not sure if he still maintains it, I imagine it would basically be a full time job at this point.
You might be surprised at how many Evangelical White Christian Nationalists would quietly agree.
Whats funny is prophecy is not prophecy if its done by a group trying to make the prophecy. I prophesize you will get punched in the face next week. So my followers. Remember. If my prophecy is wrong then you and all your ancestors and all your descendents have wasted your lives.
There are different kinds of “prophecies”. The common contemporary connotation for prophecy is basically “fortune telling”, but that actually a pretty modern thing.
Historically “prophecy” is more akin to professional advice, or social trend analysis. For example, a priest might provide the king with a prophecy that “If you don’t make sure the poor people are taken care of, then God is going to take away your divine right.” (The method of the removal of the right may or may not be specified, but the result from the King’s perspective is the same.)
In the case of the reconstruction of the Temple… It’s neither. It’s just bad reading comprehension and bad scriptural analysis. Darby needed to go to seminary.
Rightwing atheism, and atheists overly hostile to religion are just as insufferable as religious extremists.
If you do not believe in God as I do not, here is how to see things.
The least compelling question about religion is whether God exists or not.
Any other question you want to hyperfocus on with religion, ok, fine, criticize it, research it, expose the hypocrises inherent… but whatever you do nobody gives a shit that you don’t think God exists or that you think people are stupid for believing in a God and a bunch of silly rules.
Organized religion OBVIOUSLY has done unbelievable amounts of evil, I am not defending it but rightwing Atheists completely miss the point by insisting on being helpless, idiotic and hateful sheep in wolves clothing.
I disagree. As we have seen, religion corrodes the mind and destroys a person’s ability to think rationally and critically. Believing in god is not harmless, just like believing in astrology isn’t. It’s all magical thinking that breaks people’s minds.
Believing in god is not harmless
Where is your proof of that?
gestures broadly at everything
That is not proof, be specific and use your words.
Here’s one study… https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5742220/
I’m honestly not sure how to be more succinct than this: a person who is willing to base what they consider the most important belief they can possibly ever have, on something with zero evidence, and then form their entire life around that irrational belief, then there is literally nothing in their life that they won’t do the same exact thing for.
Anyone who has talked about religion with an evangelical Christian can tell you this. They have to shut off (or severely cripple) the critical thinking part of their psyche, otherwise their entire worldview falls apart. And they cannot let that happen at all costs.
Anyone who has talked about religion with an evangelical Christian can tell you this. They have to shut off (or severely cripple) the critical thinking part of their psyche, otherwise their entire worldview falls apart. And they cannot let that happen at all costs.
This is not purely a result of religion or else everyone who is religious would be like this?
I appreciate you actually linking evidence but I think philosophically your point fails.
It is a mistake to think the most popular cults are religious, this is about a pattern of thinking not whether you believe or don’t believe in a floating deity in the sky.
Idiots are more likely to interpret religion literally, but outside of that we are talking metaphors and morality stories, which ok… I honestly don’t understand why the absolute reality of those things is actually relevant. Dissecting religion that way entirely misses the point for most people.
They are like this. If you worship something with zero evidence that it even exists, then you have critical thinking issues. By definition.
Make no mistake. The right wing atheists aren’t “missing the point”. They know exactly what they are doing.
Just as the Zionists in the early 20th century partnered with American Christians to bring about their self-fullfilling prophecy, so are the Atheist Techno-utopianists. They know what they are doing.
They didn’t make the alliance, Big Business and the Religious Right made a deal in hell in 1971 or so. These tech parasites are just a faction of big business.
No. Big business isn’t new, and the evil rich people used to have some morals. These tech-utopianists are something brand new. They really are quite evil.
I have met an exhausting amount of conservative atheists who hate organized religion with a passion but don’t understand how they just replaced a blind worship of a silly god with a blind worship of hate and exclusion of others who aren’t like you.
I agree, the people in power know what they are doing, but in order for the attractiveness of edgey atheism to work it needs a constant influx of righteous formerly religious idiots to maintain the facade.
The phrase “wrong theology” is amusing.
People generally disagree on what is good theology, and people can disagree on whether or not there is correct theology.
But I think everyone generally agrees there is a such thing as wrong and bad theology.
What, in your estimation, differentiates between “wrong theology” and “right theology”?
Well, theology is a whole field of study, so that’s a difficult and complicated question to answer.
It’s like asking “what differentiates between wrong and right literature studies”. It would take a while to explain.
I wasn’t asking about right vs wrong theology studies (though that’s about as amusing a concept). I was asking about right vs wrong theology, since that’s the phrase you used.
Instead of “right” or “wrong”, let’s start with a discussion of “healthy theology” and “unhealthy theology”.
I would describe “healthy theology” as theology that promotes humble reverence and communal accountability. “Unhealthy theology”, on the other hand, promotes selfishness and pride.
For example, if a strict materialist atheist made the claim “the material observable universe is all that there is” I would argue that’s a theological statement. That is an impossible statement to test scientifically, so it’s not science. It’s theology. By itself it’s neither healthy or unhealthy.
What makes it healthy or unhealthy is what you do with that. For example, if the atheist continued that statement and said, “…And therefore pain that I cause other people is meaningless because they are just as much pointless side effects of a meaningless uncaring universe as an amoeba”, I would say that’s unhealthy theology. Again, it’s not a scientific statement, you can’t demonstrate scientifically that “we live in an uncaring universe”. It’s theology, and it’s unhealthy theology.
But, if that atheist instead continued that statement with, “…And that’s why we must take care to preserve and respect the accident of life that we are privileged to enjoy”, then I would say that’s healthy theology because it promote humility and communal accountability.
I wasn’t asking about healthy vs unhealthy theology. I was asking about right vs wrong theology, since that’s the phrase you used.
Then it’s the same thing as above. Just do a find replace yourself.
Many, if not most, are atheist techno-utopianists that are happily partnering with the Christian Nationalists.
Kinda strikes me as “no true Christ-manning” like the idea that Hitler was an atheist. No “Gott mit uns” belt buckles to ignore yet[1] but it’s still early. Today,
Many, if not mostbut I can’t wait to grow old and hear about how those darn atheists went and ruined the surface-world while the energetic dust blanketing what used to be our planet slowly cooks off.Ha, just kidding, I don’t expect to grow old.
Something something, Prussian phrase, whatever. It wasn’t put on there by accident. ↩︎
I’m guilty of “no true Christ-manning” every bit as much as you are guilty of “no true atheist-manning”.
Hitler was happy to use the church when it suited his need it, and the church in Germany was a willing pawn he would play. He also rejected the church when he got in power. He spoke of replacing Christianity with Nazism, and even tried to replace Christmas with a celebration of Nazi heros. So yes, both are true. He used Christianity and had every intention to replace it with a secular religion.
The entire New Atheist movement is Zionists paid for by Israel. Hawkins was having a jolly time on Epstein Island and so did the rest of them.
I don’t think Elon Musk and Peter Tiel are exactly Zionists.
Kinda the opposite, actually.
Okay, so they are Zionists Nazis. 🤷♂️
Atheists aren’t like the religious.
The religious are easy to control, that’s the entire point of religions. Trying to control atheists is like trying to herd cats. Good luck with that, they all have their own opinions and will do what they want.
Having said that, saying that atheists somehow bare responsibility for this is just plain fucking bullshit so please take that opinion and shove it where the light doesn’t shine.
Saying that atheists have responsibility for this is the same as saying that all atheists are like Stalin because he was atheist. No. That might work for the religious, they have a family homogeneous way of thinking, but I’m atheist and I make up my own mind. Fuck Stalin with an umbrella.
I’m atheist and I make up my own mind.
… While responding completely predictably.
PLEASE! Please rapture all of these smarmy self-righteous know-it-all assholes off of the planet so the rest of us can get on with our lives in peace!
I mostly agree with your theory. What I don’t understand is how a Christian can think that voting for the Antichrist will get them to heaven.
They don’t think that. They just believe that it isn’t something that would prevent them from getting to heaven.
It’s a method of last resort for them. Despite their faith, Jesus hasn’t returned and hasn’t made them kings and queens of the earth.
If I actually thought it would happen I’d be helping them too. Imagine how nice everything will be when they’re gone.
I know, maybe that was the plan all along, in his wisdom, god engineered all the worst assholes to go fuck off.
