I believe in “the supernatural.” I believe in the power of prayer. I believe in miracles. I believe there are mysteries in life that the most brilliant scientists cannot completely explain.
But I do not believe that the Sun Goddess came down to earth and had sex with the emperor of Japan, causing his country’s economy to self-destruct.
I do not believe that God sent Hitler to hunt down the Jews and make them return to the Promised Land.
And I do not believe that Oprah is the “harbinger of the Anti-Christ.”
These outlandish comments were among the bizarre claims made by pastors who will be featured in Texas Governor Rick Perry’s Day of Prayer and Fasting on August 6.
Perry (shown exercising his Second Amendment rights in the photo above) plans to solve the country’s economic problems with prayer. And I am all for that. Nothing else seems to be working.
But some of the people he has tapped to pray for America are very, very strange.
Click here to view a video of Rachel Maddow’s show featuring their weird proclamations.
What’s really scary is that the Day of Prayer is apparently a publicity stunt to kick off Perry’s presidential campaign.
Yes. The guy is reportedly planning to seek the Republican nomination for the 2012 presidential election.
And I think he has a good chance of getting the nomination.
He’s tall, and some people might call him good looking – in a rugged, Texan kind of way.
He professes to be God-fearing and he pushes all the right Tea Party buttons.
But can he win the presidency?
Liberal pundits scoff at the idea. They believe most mainstream American voters would dismiss him as a crackpot.
But I am not so sure.
There’s a growing rejection of enlightenment in America. Politicians like Michele Bachmann rewrite history and mangle logic with impunity. Her husband gets tax money to try and “reform” homosexuals through “therapy.”
While Rachel Maddow was laughing at Perry’s kooky pastors, Dick Army, a former Speaker of the House and one of the people most responsible for giving the Tea Party movement money and credibility, was mocking American college professors on another show without so much as a word of disagreement from his host.
In today’s America it has become “reasonable” to scoff at climate change science, to preach extremist “free-market” economics, to make up historical “facts” and in dozens of other ways reject the findings of decades of academic research.
In today’s America, politicians win popularity by displaying their lack of education and sophistication, by being one of the “everyday folks” who didn’t like school and don’t like smart-ass professors.
And as the politicians’ wrong-headed policies bring the American economy ever closer to ruin, they use this excuse to slash education funding, to encourage “home schooling” and other dubious trends, to nurture “private schools,” and in other ways weaken American education.
The result can only be more ignorance, more absurd academic heresy and more wild-eyed superstition.
I see this as the path to a “Dark Age” like the one preceding the emergence of scientific thought more than 500 years ago.
Pray that I am wrong.
