It always makes my day when Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association stops grunting unintelligible mountain man gibberish about gay people and instead chooses to sputter about the members of the animal kingdom that scare him. Today, he’s upset about bears. Take it away, Kyle at Right Wing Watch:
He has already voiced his outrage that a whale a Sea World was not put to death for killing a trainer, but what makes Fischer really livid is that bears are not just being shot on sight, as he has now dedicated a second blog post to claiming that attacks by “savage beasts” is proof “that the land is under a curse”
Because, you see, bears were never mean until Barack Obama and the gay abortions and the Muslims and stuff. Let’s read some of Bryan’s words and make fun of him for a minute.
One human being is worth more than an infinite number of grizzly bears. Another way to put it is that there is no number of live grizzlies worth one dead human being. If it’s a choice between grizzlies and humans, the grizzlies have to go. And it’s time.
Bears! Here’s my question, though. If one human being > infinity bears, and x bears < one dead human being, how many bears were there on Noah’s Ark, and why did he take them anyway, if they were just going to growl at Bryan Fischer in his dreams and stuff?
Anyway, his piece is about some bear attacks, and how all bears should be shot, and also about how human-caused climate change is a fantasy, because God Is In Control or something trite like that.
To sum up: Global warming = Fake. Bears = Makes Bryan Fischer pee.
No word on how he feels about Twinks.
Any word on how he feels about cubs? Otters?
Has someone told Stephen Colbert about this?
Nobody tell him about Girth and Mirth events. He may not ever recover.
I did the calculations, and as far as i can tell, Missy Fishy is worth approximately .000235759 bears.
that’s one cast off toenail.
If gawd is really in charge why doesn’t Bryan ask him to deal with the Big Bad Bears?
You’re asking him to show some logical consistancy, Buffy?
But I thought bears were instruments of God’s “justice”. Isn’t there a Bible story wherein a couple of them rip apart 42 children because a couple of them teased Elisha about his bald spot?
I’ve often thought it would be funny if the Bible stories were re-written to reflect a God who was truly loving, moral, and all-knowing and powerful. This would be a perfect one to re-write-
Elisha said, “In the name of the Lord, I curse you.”
A few minutes passed, and nothing happened. So Elisha again said, “In the name of the Lord, I curse you!”
And still, nothing happened. So he began again, “In the name of the L-”
And the Lord interrupted, “I heard you the first time.”
Elisha, puzzled, asked, “Then why do you not punish these boys?”
The Lord replied, “Let me see if I got this: you want Me to send a couple bears to dismember 42 kids because a couple of them hurt you fee-fees by making fun of your bald spot?”
“Yes”, Elisha replied.
“Forget it. I don’t honor curses from a******s”
“But, but, I am your prophet!”
“Yeah, and I never said that job would be easy. If you can’t take a little teasing from some kids, you’re f*****g useless to me. Suck it up, you f*****g crybaby!”
Hey Bill, funny thing is, at work we were discussing this bible verse a couple weeks ago. It was on the Cracked magazine website as one of the 9 most kickass bible verses.
I like the one from the Old Testament about Korah. He sassed Moses or somebody & God opened up a hole & in fell Korah & his entire family (a couple hundred people) & they all suffocated to death when the earth closed up over them. Whew! And anti-abortion people think that God loves fetuses when he went around smiting anybody who had an original thought? Yeah, sure. Hey, where’s Bob? He always likes to comment on the bible.
Devin asks “Hey, where’s Bob? He always likes to comment on the bible.”
I just got in. My comment on the Elisha story is that the Bible account is terse as usual so the whole context is not easy to see. I think there was a very large gang of hostile young men, more than the 42 mentioned, taunting Elisha. I suspect they were more like skinheads than innocent little children. They were some kind of organized gang. The times were very cruel and a type of low level religious civil war was raging. I think this mob could be seen as a possible threat to Elisha’s life. The taunt was probably not a literal reference to Elisha’s lack of natural hair but rather a reference to Elisha’s commitment to the Lord (shaving his head as a symbol of his prophetic office) or meant as pure scorn (Elisha not literally being bald or shaven, his head may have been covered). and a further, reference to Elijah’s “going up”. They may have been saying “Prove you are a prophet of the Lord by doing what Elijah did” while insulting him at the same time.
Let’s take the situation up to date. Imagine you are a gay man walking the street’s of Belfast at night and you wander into unsafe territory. Suddenly you become surrounded by a gang of dozens of angry skinshead teens
who taunt you and threaten to kill you. You curse them and try to get away and they follow you with such anger that in following you they cross train tracks right in front of an approaching train and many are killed. You didn’t want them to die but it happened. Elisha’s curse is not recorded so we don’t know if he literaly cursed them to death or if the maulings were just what happened by divine providence.
It was an organized and direct challenge to Elisha’s authority as a prophet of God before the nation.
Bob, that’s the problem with the bible. Xtians are so determined to defend it & whenever the cruelties of the O.T. come up, they (you) quickly recast the whole story to make it more acceptable for a modern audience. But sheesh, just try to recast the whole ‘men lusting after men’ biz & xtians freak out & demand that it be read as is, despite the fact that it is on wobbly ground. What about Korah & his family (& children) being smothered to death? What about the people who God ordered to be murdered, the pregnant women cut open & their fetuses killed? Huh? Huh? You can’t just sit there & rewrite the bible when a story in it doesn’t suit your taste. So don’t go & twist dead children into a gang of skinheads, OK?
Devin, then go make the case, don’t just make the claim, that they were and must have been only innocent little children. As far as I can tell, the Hebrew supports the young men interpretation and the context supports something very serious going on. Looking at the context I would hardly call “recasting”.
The fact that Christians, including me, are perfectly capable of being inconsistent and insensative boors sometimes is simply proof that we are also flawed humans in need of the Grace we proclaim. I get that. I think it is true modern Christians overemphasize the ” ‘men lusting after men’ biz” as you stated. The historical context of those Biblical positions has to be accurately considered to know what the Scripture is actually saying and I think many modern Christians take a naive simplistic view at least in how they selectivly emphasize some things over others.
“One human being is worth an infinite number of grizzly bears” I say it depends on the human.