Hacker News Reader

Comment by pstuart | Hacker News Reader

Religious war surrounds us. The US military commander is a hard core evangelical who claims he's doing God's will. One of many terrifying aspects of this is that he's in the group that thinks Armageddon is going to happen in his lifetime and, what do you know? He can make that happen if he really feels like it.

And this, my friends, is one of the many reasons why I spend too much of my time tracking the bat shit crazy stuff these religious nut cases go on about -- because they're waging a holy war today against non-believers.

It must be emphasized: these people would be fine with exterminating non-believers. I would like to be wrong about this, but I've seen enough to know that a sizeable amount would relish the chance.

View on HN

> One of many terrifying aspects of this is that he's in the group that thinks Armageddon is going to happen in his lifetime and, what do you know? He can make that happen if he really feels like it.

This is pretty crazy especially when you consider that "No one knows the day or hour when these things will happen". Jesus is saying that not even the angels know when the world is going to end, and now a bunch of people not only say they know when this will happen, but even go so far as to say that you can cause such an event by bombing countries and somehow advancing that plan? It's not just a matter of just vs injust war, it feels more like an attempt from a group of people, who claim to believe in God, to try to force God's hand and speed up the process.

This is pretty <strikethrough>crazy</strikethrough> blasphemous. Not even Jesus Himself is said to know, and I can't think of a more arrogant, literally blasphemous thing than putting oneself in God's shoes, trying to "make Armageddon happen," like Hegseth and Company are doing.

Exactly. I was trying to put it in general terms so even atheists or people from other religions could get the point, but I totally agree.

Agreed. And yet one hears not a peep from "mainstream" Christians about this.

It's my contention that everyday Christians don't push back because they're ok with the general principles of make-believe involved in their faith. Because they're conditioned to here fire and brimstone sermons, they don't question the big picture of "are these people crazy and does their faith significantly factor in to that?"

Apparently 7/10 Americans believe that angels are real. FFS, they should believe Spiderman is real because we've seen so much proof of his existence, just like with angels.

It'll make you more paranoid to hear that the Pentagon prepared an Easter Sunday service exclusively for non-Catholic Christians. Nothing was arranged for Catholics

Why is organising a religious service the business of government?

It's common in theocratic governments:

  Afghanistan
  Iran
  Mauritania
  Saudi Arabia
  Vatican City
  Yemen

and there are a number of current USofA admin supporters and personal who are Dominionists, onboard with a Christian theocracy, particularly now the war / not war / excursion is officially (by declaration of the former TV host / national guardsman in charge) a holy war supported by Jesus, Prince of Peace.

Without speaking to the topic of GP, military chaplaincy is highly common. (I want to say universal, but I can't say with 100% confidence.)

Because those in power believe that the government should run for the purpose of white evangelicals -- there's a real struggle for power here. I know that I sound hyperbolic here but I'm not: they've made it quite clear what their goals are.

Project 2025 is their playbook and that has been followed extensively so far and if they get their way the will "purge" the US of all that don't belong, i.e., anybody who's not a white evangelical.

They are literally hacking democracy, and they are black hats.

> hard core evangelical

One might have assumed that being an immoral degenerate and a hardcore Christian of any type at the same time might have been incompatible, but alas.

At least in studies that are about a decade old now, atheists are the most disliked religious minority group in the U.S. We’re regularly linked to major historical genocidal regimes, and consistently blamed for a host of social ills. So yes, given long enough, I would worry about being explicitly targeted by the current administration. But I hope their excesses do them in long before that happens.

More recently that doesn’t seem to be the case. Atheists are still largely disliked, but the most uniformly disliked are Mormons. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/03/15/americans-fe...

From seeing enough fiction, I know that the Armageddon cults are never the good guys.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com