Evangelical Meltdown Epidemic (PADA News)

 

 

Srila Prabhupada: Religion without philosophy is fanaticism

[PADA: Not too surprising results here, many people who predicted "God is in favor of our program" self-evidently failed to ask God -- does He actually favor their program. What if God does not favor their program? A lot of these "conservative pastors" are the people who helped create our current government leadership by their dedicated support. 

And a number of them are some sort of "White House" advisors or hand maidens of the current "management." Oooops, and they "managed" to have a deadly virus designated as "another hoax" which caused that virus to spread like wildfire all over "God's sacred country." Of course God was not going to allow the virus to become a big problem -- because they are "protected by God." This is seen by many others as an irresponsible if not fanatical idea. 

Meanwhile places like S. Korea have had less than 400 virus deaths, and Taiwan, Singapore, Viet Nam, Thailand etc. have also had fewer virus deaths, because they worked hard on their own, and did not "depend on God" to fix their problem. They contained the virus themselves with masks, tests and contact tracing etc. In sum, they did not sit around and wait for God to fix their problem. They acted responsibly and took direct actions themselves, which self-evidently helped them contain the problem. 

How many huge empires in the past human history came and went, under the idea that they were protected by God? First of all, we need to be qualified to be protected by God before we can expect Him to intervene. There are also many people in the world who think it is their duty to kill the "unbelievers" because -- God wants them to do that. Just because people think God is protecting their actions, does not guarantee He is. 

This "false identification of God's support" phenomena also happened in the Hare Krishna religion. In 1978 eleven leaders were artificially designated as "God's living successors" and those of us who protested were branded as "faithless people who are not supporting God's plan." Unfortunately, God's alleged "eleven living successors on earth" began almost immediately to create illicit sex scandals, and a host of criminal scandals including orchestrated murders. So it is no small  problem when people artificially assume God is protecting their program, when self-evidently, He is not.   

The upshot of "God's program for the USA" is: more people are now sick and dying; more people lost their jobs and are going to the food bank; the deficit has grown -- actually exploded; China's exports are up ten percent; USA jobs are still being siphoned off to China -- in part because the pandemic is creating a bad atmosphere for manufacturing investment in USA; environmental rules being cut back has been creating more pollution problems -- such as contaminated ground water; and oddly -- Church meetings have become recognized as "superspreader" events where numbers of people have been getting the virus. 

So we need to get God's support, that is a great idea. However, we cannot simply artificially designate ourselves as "protected by God" without getting God's approval first of all. All sorts of "religious people" in history thought God was going to protect their nation, but their nation now no longer exists. Read: God was not factually protecting their nation. 

I grew up with the evangelicals and was not too happy with a lot of their ideas even when I was a child. Often, they are the nicest people you'd ever want to meet, but with many ideas that may be a little fanatical and impractical.

Main problem: it seems that they have some overall idea that they can assist mass destruction of the environment on planet earth -- and that is because "Jesus is coming real soon." Thus, they are going to be swept up to heaven any day now. 

My uncle took me for a ride in his speed boat in the 1950s when I was about ten, and I was shocked to see dead fish floating in Lake Erie. My uncle explained, "That is because the factories are dumping waste into the lake." The attitude is, no big deal, just a few dead fish. Recently, the USA "conservative" president expressed almost the same idea "the radical left -- wants to save a few fish." 

And -- just before -- the planet eventually becomes uninhabitable due to gradual environmental decay -- such as: loss of species; global warming; extreme weather; contaminated ground, water and air; harmful chemicals filtering into human's blood stream; global pandemics etc. they will be magically whisked off to heaven when Jesus comes here to pick them up. It will only be us faithless sinners left here to drink the contaminated water. Very convenient!   

It also looks like the Evangelical / conservatives have a sort of "scorched earth resources depletion policy," such as chopping down forests, using up oil and coal, fracking for natural gas and so on. Again not a problem since Jesus will fix it. 

So when their current "conservative" leaders announced they were going to "revive the coal industry" -- along with cutting regulations for oil and gas fracking, that made me feel like they are not quite getting the message -- that these industries are not only bad for the citizens on the planet now, but for the future citizens of this planet. Never mind that, many animal species also cannot live very well with these by-products. Just like we saw that many fish could not live in parts of Lake Erie in the 1950s.   

For starters, the history of coal use is not very pretty, and in places like London it looks like people were complaining it was causing foul air way back in the 1700s. Later there was a large "coal smog" outbreak in London in 1952 that killed thousands, and sickened many thousands more. The evidence is already in -- and for hundreds of years -- coal is not a good industry to promote as the way forward, especially in modern times. 

"Reviving coal" might at best produce a small quantity of jobs, but the energy sector offers limited employment opportunities in any event. The main job sector for the USA up to the 1960s has been -- its manufacturing base -- where most of the people had jobs in factories. That economic model started to change as large retail corporations lobbied to have "less restrictions on imports," so they could sell cheaper imported goods. And then the USA's "big box" retail stores began to fill up with more and more imported products, and less and less USA manufactured goods. 

Eventually the USA was flooded with cheap imported goods, mostly from China. Nixon was part of "opening up trade" when he visited China. Later on Ronald Reagan wanted to reduce China trade restrictions, and later on Newt Gingrich and his "family values" party wanted a policy of EVEN MORE expanded "free trade with China." And thus China was eventually given the USA's "most favored" trade partner status. Oddly, the people who opened the flood gates for China trade seem to be some sort of hero examples of "conservatism." Fine, if the object is to "conserve, preserve and secure" -- jobs in China. 

Part of the reason these large USA retail corporations wanted their goods made in China was -- their lack of environmental regulations. Making products in places that are more "friendly to the environment" simply costs more money to manufacture. Moving manufacturing "off shore" to China was used as a method of bypassing these regulations. China has subsequently tried to tighten up some of these environmental rules, but the damage has already been done. Millions and millions of USA manufacturing jobs have been moved "off shore" to China, and will not come back here soon, or at all. And the damage to the rivers, oceans and planet etc. --- is already upon us.  

USA habit of "buying everything from China" means: 

USA is funding this industry. There is something called "karma."

Some of my own "conservative" friends have been upset that I have not been helping them promote their "conservative leader" -- who is in favor of reviving coal burning industries and other environmental nightmares from the 1950s. This appears to be the Christian Evangelicals agenda all along, keep up the economy -- at the expense of the environment. 

We are the foolish "tree huggers" who are worried about the survival of rare fish, owls, toads and so on. However, once these species are gone, it is permanent. And therefore "Making America Great Again" is going to be accomplished when we -- go back to the 1950s evidently.

According to predictions in India's ancient Vedas, the mass loss of species will be one of the features of the sinful age of "Kali Yuga." The species will diminish and eventually people will start eating other people (cannibalism) as the other species are eliminated one by one. We should not make a government policy that accelerates the decline of these species. Some sci-fi movies have already been made showing dire times ahead as the environment deteriorates, so it is known to be a possible future for the planet.

  

It does not surprise me that many of these folks are therefore in climate change denial; they are apparently not very concerned about a program that approves pesticides toxic to bees etc.; and they are also anti-FBI, CIA, NSA, WHO; anti-news media; anti-doctors; anti-statistics; anti-information in general. The virus is a hoax. Even if it is not a hoax, it is only killing old people. Who needs old people anyway? Classic denial.

And their famous age old classic line, after the election no one will be talking about the virus. Except after the election the numbers of cases exploded and White House staff and similar others of the "it will disappear after the election" crowd, tested positive. People are "still talking about it" because these leaders failed to take proper action to contain it (like China, Singapore, S. Korea, Viet Nam etc. have reduced their number of cases). They did not act responsibly, and wanted God to take responsibility for their lack of accountability. That is not God's job.

This is all part of the overall "conservative" pattern of allowing environmental problems, including pandemics, to run their course (herd immunity) -- with little restriction because -- Jesus will fix it eventually. All these problems are going to disappear, like magic! "It will disappear soon." Maybe not? Sorry, none of these problems are going to disappear like magic. We are the designated shepherds of the planet, and it we burn it up, we are responsible for the results -- and not God. ys pd

 Many people who thought they had 

"God on their side" 

-- didn't.