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Go Home The Infallible, Unchanging, Perfect Argument Against...

THE PLANK MARCH 30, 2009

The Infallible, Unchanging, Perfect Argument Against Catastrophic Climate Change

BY AUTHOR INFO NEEDED

God save us from legislation by Genesis:

 

(via Andrew Sullivan)

--Christopher Orr

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21 comments

wow.  surreal does not even begin to describe what i just watched.

- mghogwild

March 30, 2009 at 3:32pm

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did anyone notice the girl directly behind him start to smirk when he began quoting scripture?

- mghogwild

March 30, 2009 at 3:36pm

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Why even bother to have Congress if we have, as Christopher Hitchens likes to say, a celestial dictatorship?

- rozenson

March 30, 2009 at 3:37pm

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Yes, Shimkus is an evangelical who doesn't believe in climate change or evolution. But, in the guy's defense, he is according to Wikipedia a St. Louis Cardinals fan who hates the Cubs.

It's like looking through the bars of a cell door in a maximum-security prison and discovering a quadruple murderer who has befriended a kitten.

There remains hope for Shimkus' soul.

- williamyard

March 30, 2009 at 3:56pm

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The Bible is a collection of fantastic legends without scientific support.-- The Communist Dictionary issued by the Soviet State Publishing

Are you a Communist Orr?

(Just back from Londontown. There's some serious security over there; I mean big time security. My bag was scanned twice on the trains alone but they told me no one that handsome could be a terrorist so they let me go. Did I miss much? Has TNR renamed itself the Goldman Sachs PR Weekly yet? I'm not even going to read that anti-fairness editorial on the left hand side. Sheeesh.)

- The Ignorant Populist

March 30, 2009 at 4:16pm

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yard, does he represent the district containing East St. Louis?  If so, he should know that God abandoned his district a long time ago.

- mghogwild

March 30, 2009 at 4:23pm

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As a pastor, this is an embarassement.  Let me just quickly say that his argument makes no theological sense.  Christians believe in a "new heaven and new earth" but that should not be the basis of irresponsibility to this heaven and this earth.  Christians believe in the resurrection of the dead, but this does not believe that we should mutilate our bodies while we are alive.  In fact, its the opposite.  The earth belongs to the Lord, it is not ours to destroy.

- Andrew Davis

March 30, 2009 at 4:32pm

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Even though i don't live there anymore, I'm embarrassed to say that this guy represents my home town. I just sent a link of the clip to all of my family and friends in the district, and encouraged them to pass it along.

Also, did anyone else notice that he quotes the "infallible" Genesis, and then follows up with a mention of "the age of dinosaurs?" How do those two thoughts fit together in his mind?

- dsimpson

March 30, 2009 at 5:15pm

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DS - They believe that God put Dinosaur bones on the earth as a way to trick men and challange their faith. I'm not making that up. "A prankster god."

See here for further research: www.youtube.com/watch

- The Ignorant Populist

March 30, 2009 at 5:37pm

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IP - I know that some people believe that, but Shimkus apparently doesn't. Because if he did then he wouldn't believe that there ever was an age of dinosaurs.

Unless, of course, he's just using an argument he doesn't actually believe because it's convenient to his preferred outcome.

- dsimpson

March 30, 2009 at 5:57pm

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This is yet another example of "The Infallible, Unchanging, Perfect Argument Against" letting evangelically minded religious nuts anywhere near a microphone or a WMD.

Basically, he is arguing that nothing mankind might do to planet earth [or to each other] is measurable against what God chooses in the end to do. This essentially gives people like him carte blanche authority to pursue anything they please knowing that if it contradicted God's Purpose, He would not permit it.

Pursuits like, say, the Holocaust?

That American citizens would actually elect someone like this to Congress is truly stuptefying. It is nothing less than a portent of what could come to pass if the economic crisis reaches the point where equally mindless people like him go looking for a Savior.

Hitler is nothing less than how far this mentality can go. After all, if Nazis were intent on creating the death camps and God did nothing to stop them [until millions and millions were slaugtered], this can only be construed as within God's Sacred Narrative.

As for the age of the dinosaurs, how come T-Rexes and Velosoratpors didn't make the cut on Noah's Ark?

george walton

- iambiguous

March 30, 2009 at 7:31pm

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Just imagine an idiot like him with his finger on the nuclear trigger.  What's to stop him from pushing it because he believes God would never allow us humans to destroy ourselves.   It's this kind of looney religious thinking that can lead to total nuclear/biological/climatic holocaust.

- woland

March 30, 2009 at 9:14pm

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Me, I like this infallible, perfect word of God (Daniel 8:8):

"The goat became very great, but at the height of his power his large horn was broken off, and in its place four prominent horns grew up toward the four winds of heaven."

Four horns, "prominent" horns - that'll make it a large horny goat.  This is a literal, not a symbolic horny goat, reaching up to the four - not three, not five, but *the* four winds of heaven.  What can be more perfect than that?

- icarusr

March 30, 2009 at 9:54pm

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There is nothing wrong with quoting scripture. But it really helps to use exegesis rather than isogesis. People with an "ax to grind" tend toward isogesis rather than exegesis. It is possible to look just as stupid to fundamentalist Christians as to non believers when quoting the Bible.

- sdmcleod

March 30, 2009 at 10:05pm

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Sad to say he is my congressman, though not my choice or vote, previously best known as the congressional page protector and leader of the Baltic caucus.  Guess he was no the correct side about Blago.

- jemerk

March 31, 2009 at 12:38am

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Consider the Genesis reading, there's no promise the humans will endure in that passage, just the rock itself.  You can argue all you want about 'seed, time, and harvest' implying that it's humans doing the work.  But animals are also beholden to those cycles in nature without human intervention (spring, summer, fall).  God doesn't promise humans will be spared in Shimkus's first passage, only that not all creatures will be destroyed as a result of man's evil nature; it takes a pretty big ego to assume otherwise.  This passage doesn't make Shimkus's case well.

Neither does Matthew for similar reasons (the statement is too general).  Matthew simply states the belief that the world will end and that an agent other than humans will cause that end.  God (if you want to argue that way) might smite the earth with a solar flare for all we know, or send that Doomsday planet eater after us before we invent Star Trek, the Enterprise, warp engines and Jim Kirk (professional space babe seducer and saver of universes).  I mean that planet eater is horn shaped after all.

- jet

March 31, 2009 at 1:07am

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Four is the number of the counting, and the number of the counting shall be four ... five is right out!

- JEFF FREY

March 31, 2009 at 2:39am

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Wasn't it three, Jeff?

- cspencef

March 31, 2009 at 11:56am

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cs: three begat four, and four begat five, and they lived peaceably amongst the Pharisees, but neither three nor five was the number that begat the winds from heaven.

- icarusr

March 31, 2009 at 12:24pm

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cspencef, I think you are right. But if you are, I will claim that I adapted the Monty Python reference instead of mis-remembering it. Must watch the movie again! (I'm proud to say that my kids, 11 and 14, watch Flying Circus clips on YouTube; important elements of culture have been passed down to another generation).

- JEFF FREY

March 31, 2009 at 1:35pm

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sdmcleod -- good point, but it's "eisegesis," not "isogesis."

- tarfon

March 31, 2009 at 1:35pm

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