Pat Robertson- All Asshole, All the Time.
The Carpetbagger has a partial list of Robertson’s sins.
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Hotline to God?
Jack Grant asks: How many people seriously believe that Pat Robertson has a hotline in to God? I say Robertson is an idiot, all those in favor say aye! John Cole seems to agree?…
Doug
I think Mr. Furious had it exactly right:
Ancient Purple
I am at wits end trying to discover why it is that the rest of the Religious Right doesn’t tell Robertson to go intercourse himself. Every time one of their own does some outrageous tripe like this, they wring their hands and say that is was “inappropriate” and move on.
I wish that ABC Family would simply refund the money the 700 Club spent to secure airtime on that network and say, “There’s a bus leaving town in 10 minutes. Be under it.”
Mr Furious
I’ve been content to lurk around here for the last couple weeks—no posting at my own blog due to other obligations. Even Abramoff and/or Bush’s recess appointments didn’t get a post out of me, but dammit if Robertson isn’t the biggest prick walking the Earth, and it’s a post that writes itself…
Thanks for the material, Pat, you psychopath, and thanks for the link, John. Now I’ll have to start blogging again…
Mr Furious
LOL! I’m sure I’ve seen that before, but I laughed like it was the first time…
capelza
That thing about the Right just shrugging their shoulders or discounting his influence….was it him or that other prat, Falwell that Bush called when he was considering a SCOTUS nominee. I would like to take this opportunity to publically pillory the Democrats for using Ward Churchill as a policy advisor.
Ozymandius
Pat, Pat, Pat. I shouldn’t, but I have to admit, you always find ways to shock me.
Aye Dios mio.
Another Jeff
I know trying to apply rational thought to something Robertson says is a lost cause, but does he realize that maybe, just maybe, Sharon is in this condition because he’s really old and pretty overweight?
Now, what he said wouldn’t be any less stupid if this happened to a 40 yr old triathlete, but does there really have to be a reason for an old, overweight man having a stroke?
Krista
Sweet jumping Jesus. Yeah, he’s a special kind of crazy. He’s not all that alone, though. Did anybody read Craig Unger’s article about the Rapture in last month’s Vanity Fair? It freaked me right the hell out to find out how many people seriously believe in all that stuff, and to find out how much it’s influenced international politics.
Davebo
Robertson should start blogging.
I have no doubt the Fedora and Pony Tail would sign him up in a heartbeat!
rilkefan
Isn’t this claim consistent with a plain reading of the Bible and with standard argument in some sorts of Christianity?
Steve
It was Falwell, not Robertson, who was consulted on the Supreme Court nominations.
demimondian
Hey, this is Pat “The reason for the earthquake was the Hindu apostasy” Robertson you’re talking about. You actually expect sanity out of Pat “Mobotu Seze Seku is an good man because he provides my company with blood diamonds” Robertson?
Sam Hutcheson
Did Pat comment on what those 12 miners were doing that pissed off God so much?
Jorge
“Isn’t this claim consistent with a plain reading of the Bible and with standard argument in some sorts of Christianity?”
The issue with Mr. Robertson is that he deems himself capable of interpreting God’s intentions in events and God’s intentions always seem to back up Robertson’s political beliefs. It isn’t anything new – many Christian leaders through out time have chosen to interpret the world solely through the harsh lens of revelations and the old testament and not through the lens of a redeeming Christ dying for our sins on the cross.
As far as why so many evangelicals support Robertson – well, there are quite a few reasons but the most mainstream one is that Mr. Robertson’s ministry has helped lead millions to Christ. Many of those who share his beliefs find it hard to throw him under the bus because they’ve literally come up in their own faith admiring Robertson’s work. I’d wager that deep down they might worry Robertson is getting a bit senile but they aren’t ready to side with folks they feel are already resentful of evangelicals and take every chance to bash us.
Jorge
Sam,
I believe that is payback to all of America for “Brokeback Mountain.”
Mr Furious
Pat didn’t that I know of, but the asshole running this church did. He’s giving Robertson a run for his money in the “hateful religious motherfucker” category…
W.B. Reeves
I’m not sure how seriously this comment was intended but you had me in stitches with the reference to the “plain reading of the Bible.” There’s not a single book of the Bible for which we possess the original text. What we do possess is the product of many hands and many tongues over thousands of years. Most Christians are familiar with these texts only through translation. The idea of “plain meaning” in this context strikes me as humorous. Rather like the Protestant fundamentalist who proclaimed: “I believe in the inerrant word of the King James Bible. It was good enough for Jesus and it’s good enough for me.”
In point of fact, most Christian Fundamentalists don’t practice plain reading. The same book of Leviticus they cite as condemning homosexuality also condemns shaving and wearing blended fabrics. We’ve yet to see their campaign against the blended fabric agenda or Gillette.
As for the “standard argument.” Which argument? That Sharon and Rabin divided Israel? That God smote the both of them? That Pat Robertson has any clue whatever what God is up to? I don’t think any of these topics are standard with any significant branch of Christianity so I don’t quite comprehend your question.
docG
Mr. Furious, your cite is the deranged Fred Phelps, Kansas’s greatest embarrassment. And if you follow the news, that’s one hell of an accomplishment.
Zifnab
That bring up the funny story of Ma Ferguson – the first female governor of Texas. There was a movement for some time to make Texas a bilingual state (this made quite a bit of sense at the time, being so close to Mexico and having so many Spanish speakers in her borders). But Texas wisdom prevailed when Ferguson stated that “if English was good enough for Jesus, then it’s good enough for Texas.”
Ah, stupid people and the bible. I know a number of theology majors at UT and they find people like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and James Dobeson to be a religious embarassment of biblical proportions.
Paul Wartenberg
Pat Robertson is proof that God loves Unitarians.
Sam Kinison, preacher turned comedian, once did a hilarious spoof of Robertson’s manaical insistence on hearing God’s instructions by playacting a scene of God telling Pat to check his tire pressure at 3 am in the morning.
I believe in Sam Kinison’s authority to speak for God over that of Pat ‘How can I speak in tongues with my foot shoved in my mouth’ Robertson.
Faux News
I eat shellfish, which is prohibited by the Old Testament. Shall I expect a thunderbolt of lightning to hit me the next time I indulge in this horrible sin?
Signed Communist Creustacean (Red Lobster)
rilkefan
“Standard argument” refers to “seeing God’s hand in events on earth”. The Hand that sent floods, turned women into salt pillars, blinded Saul, is gonna smite the world, all that jazz.
Sam Kinison’s kind of dead, isn’t he?
Jorge
rilekfan –
Many kids have died in car accidents as well. As a Christian, I believe God a had a hand in those Biblical events because they are in our sacred text. However, nothign new has been added to the Bible in 2000 years.
Since I don’t believe God divulges His inner workings to Pat Robertson, I don’t believe he has any right to attribute certain tragedies to God’s wrath. And again, the events that you mention of God’s wrath are all old testament. I’ll go back to my statement about Robertson not seeing the world through the redemptive eyes of Jesus.
rilkefan
Saul’s New, the plagues and assorted unpleasantnesses of Revelations ditto. Catholicism and I thought every other mainstream branch accepts miracles and sees the hand of God in common events, from war to baseball.
Davebo
God hath shown his anger on the HEATHENS at USC!!
Smited them real good he did!
Krista
Pat Robertson makes baby Jesus cry.
Otto Man
If you prefer to soak in Robertson’s insanity through a video feed, Media Matters has you covered.
Brian
I was involved in that transaction when it went from Fox/Saban to ABC, and it’s in the contract that 700 Club stays right where it is. It was the case when it went from Robertson to Fox, and when it went to ABC. It’s the tail that wags the dog, to the unending frustration of the owner of the channel.
Seems like us conservatives are getting God’s punishment (if you believe in that sort of God) by characters like Robertson, DeLay, Abramoff, etc. all coinciding into one big broomstick up the ass.
The Other Steve
Perhaps it’s time that God take out Robertson and save the CIA the trouble.
rilkefan
“into one big broomstick up the ass”
I expect it will be bristle-end-first next time…
W.B. Reeves
If you believe in a deity that is all-knowing, all-powerful and ever-present, it follows that nothing occurs without that deity’s knowlege and acquiessence. This belief isn’t limited to Christianity but is common to all three major monotheisms.
For that matter, I know of no pantheistic or animistic belief that excludes the divine from direct intervention in human affairs.
By definition all religions posit a supernatural reality that trumps material reality. It hardly seems reasonable to single out Christianity on this point. Unless you’re attemping to equate all Christians with the likes of Pat Robertson.
Perry Como
More blatant Christian bashing from the Liberals.
Brian
True, but he’s such an easy target for them, isn’t he? Sort of like the Right’s version of Howard Dean. Open mouth, insert foot.
Brian
Now we have Ahmadinejad in Iran saying that he hopes for Sharon’s death.
Wacky.
SeesThroughIt
No, just appalling stupidity-bashing. It’s not our fault this appallingly stupid man also happens to be a prominent Christian media whore.
juan gewanfri
Actually Brian and Perry, It’s the bashing of a stupid, corrupt businessman who would partner with satan himself if there were more profit in it than using God. I’m not surprised you would defend him. Jesus would have hated him.
Andrew Reeves
There’s not a single book of the Bible for which we possess the original text.No, we don’t possess the autograph of any text of the Bible. Nor Plato, nor Thucydides, nor Ovid, nor Herodotus, Nor Livy, nor Tacitus, etc. We don’t possess the autograph of *any* classical texts. The earliest mss of most extant classical texts usually date from around the eighth and ninth centuries.The events of Greece and Rome happened a long, long time ago.
rilkefan
W.B. Reeves: not singling out xianity, just sayin’ don’t blame Pat unless you want to blame common faiths.
AR, thought we had a text or two from very old midden-heaps reconstructed with laser and accelerator techniques. If “autograph” means “in the author’s hand” – did Aristotle actually write his stuff down personally? Homer certainly didn’t…
rilkefan
“Jesus would have hated him.”
And probably kicked his butt up and down Main Street.
Beej
Wasn’t it Robertson who declared that the ravages of Hurricane Katrina were America’s punishment for its evil? No, wait, that was some Islamic fundamentalist nutjob. Isn’t it interesting that some fundamnetalists of whatever religion seem to positively salivate at the prospect of “God’s wrath” being visited on someone or something? Of course, it’s only cited if it confirms their own preachments. The fact that at least a few faithful Muslims had their homes and lives destroyed in Katrina completely escapes the Islamic fundamentalists. The fact that there must be at least a few people who agree with Robertson in Dover, PA doesn’t count for anything either. The entire community is condemned. Guilt or innocence plays no part in these kinds of rantings. It’s all about “I told you so.”
Evangelicals like to ask, “What would Jesus do?” in any given situation. I seem to remember a biblical story about Jesus taking a horsewhip to the moneychangers in the temple. Look out Pat!
SDN
Just like Oral Roberts, I’d pay God 8 mill to call Pat home.
The Other Steve
Only one problem. Pat Robertson is not a Christian. If anything he’s a Satanic cult leader.
Ancient Purple
Probably the most accurate statement made today.
rachel
And Robertson would have been at the front of the mob howling, “Crucify him!”
the friendly grizzly
Putting things in NASCAR terms, Robertson is nothing more than Fred Phelps with a restrictor plate.
the friendly grizzly
Brian said: “Seems like us conservatives are getting God’s punishment (if you believe in that sort of God) by characters like Robertson, DeLay, Abramoff, etc. all coinciding into one big broomstick up the ass.
To which Rilkefan replied: “I expect it will be bristle-end-first next time…”
And conservatives say I’M the pervert?!?!? :-{)}
Andrew Reeves
Rilkefan,
You do get the occasional lucky find like a papyrus dump or a jar of carbonized scrolls found in a Pompeian library. Those scrolls are perhaps the closest thing that we have to the “original text,” since they are works of Philodemus that are just about contemporaneous with that particular philosopher.
Usually, though, even a the papyrus found in a rubbish heap will still date from decades if not centuries after the original composition of a work.
If we have the complete text, though, it’s guaranteed that the original has long since gone to dust and we’re working from something that came down to us through the process of manuscript copying.
My point, of course being that when you say, “We don’t have a single original copy of the Bible,” you’re basically just saying that the Bible is an ancient text.
Jorge
Rilkefan,
Firsts – you’re very right about Revelations. I mentioned it in my initial post about Robertson’s view of Christianity and then let it drop. Thank you for pointing out my error – My statement really deals with the life and teachings of Jesus as reported in the New Testament. And when I look at the world through that Biblical lens, it is hard to subscribe to Robertson’s views of God’s divine plan or workings. Even though the Bible tells us that we won’t see the end times coming, Robertson is absolutely obsessed with reading the tea leaves and wants everyone to believe the end is near. It is very convenient for someone with desires for political power to be able to claim that the actions of his ideological opponents are insults to God. Robertson is a modern Pharisees. He uses the law as a lash while diminishing the spirituality behind the faith.
Stormy70
Pat Robertson is a moronic hack, who needs to use his head for something other than to part his ears.
CaseyL
The difference being that, as much as we value Plato, Thucydides, et al., nobody considers their words or works to be the infallible Word of God, to be interpreted literally and made the basis of national law.
Robertson – and Bush, come to think of it – more closely resemble the Anti-Christ than anything really ‘Christian.’ The Anti-Christ, from what I can gather, is supposed to present itself as The Most Christian Leader and deceive people into following it, while pursuing an actual agenda of damnation.
W.B. Reeves
Not just. It is also to say that you are (most likely) reading a translation of a copy of a copy of copy, with all the distortions, misreadings and interpolations that implies. This, leaving aside the vettings of various religious authorities who decided what would and would not be admitted into the canon. We cannot even be certain who the authors of the various scriptures were. In some instances it appears that there were multiple authors for some of the texts.
The point being that when someone argues for the inerrancy of scripture they are’nt just arguing that God is infallible, they are arguing that thousands of nameless scribes, copyists and clerics over thousands of years were infallible, not to mention the particular translation in hand.
As CaseyL points out, no one makes such claims about the works of Plato, Thucydides, et al. In fact, historians have spent a great deal of blood, sweat and tears sorting out what texts may be authentic to these authors from those that were either misattributed or outright forgeries. Most historians agree that the final book of Thucydide’s Pelopynesian War was compiled by an unknown editor or author after his death and that most of the speeches cited throughout that history were largely the author’s own imaginative retellings. Even the Platonic dialogues are not viewed as reliable reportage of actual events in the career of Socrates. It’s almost certain that some of these were examples of Plato puting his own ideas into the mouth of his teacher.
While everyone may agree that the Bible is an ancient text, its not at all clear that everyone understands the practical import of that designation.
Krista
Ha! I’ve never heard that before. Mind if I use it on occasion?
Brian
What are you talking about? Where did I defend Robertson?
Andrew Reeves
Right. As is the case with any ancient text. The manuscript tradition for the Bible is actually better than most others, if for no other reason than that there are just so damn many manuscripts. Moreover, you’ve had armies of textual critics working on the MSS for close to five hundred years (there were also some Byzantine and Carolingian efforts to get more reliable mss as well, but what we think of as textual criticism didn’t really begin until the modern period).
I seem to be reading that you’re saying that the process of transmission makes the Bible rather unreliable. It’s that contention that I’m disagreeing with, since the Bible, as a text, is about as reliable as anything from the classical period.
That’s really more of an Islamic argument than a Xian one. Most protestants believe that the Bible is inerrant in the original texts, though there are sects of protestants out there that argue that Erasmus’s edition of the New Testament is infallible, and that this edition (the final edition that he produced in his life) is the only infallible edition of the New Testament that is. Most mainstream protestants and Catholics consider such people to be nuts.
Islam, OTOH, does dogmatically state that there are no variant manuscripts or readings of the Qu’ran. For this reason, certain Muslims have threatened to kill any scholar who finds manuscripts with variant readings (which is a rather odd action to take if you genuinely believe that God has supernaturally preserved your ms tradition, but I digress).
There are indeed reasons to distrust the NT, but it’s antiquity and that it comes down to us via the normal process of manuscript transmission isn’t one.
pharniel
the best part is that diviniation is SPECIFICALLY called out in Duet. as punishable by death, unlike other magic…
ATS
Like Nietzsche said, “the only true Christian died on the cross.”
SDN
I prefer Ambrose Bierce:
“The Christian life hasn’t been tried and found wanting; it’s been found difficult and left untried.”
rilkefan
Seems to me re manuscripts that God is a get-out-of-analysis-free card.
“Ear-parting” – excellent.
W.B. Reeves
I find your argument a little hard to follow and some of your assertions questionable. Are you saying that the problematic nature of the sources is not a problem or that the sources are not problematic?
You seem to be saying that all ancient texts have difficulties with their pedigree so what does it matter if the origins of sacred scripture are a wee bit dubious. I can’t agree. The more elevated the claim, the higher the critical standard which should be applied.
Speaking of critical standards, the ongoing textual analysis of the NT has not produced anything like complete agreement among the faithful. While Biblical scholars debate which statements attributed to Jesus were actually said by him, they are attacked by fellow believers who view questioning so much as a jot or tittle of the text as apostasy.
Which leads to another assertion of yours that I find baffling. What does it mean to say that “most Protestants” believe in the inerrancy of the original texts? Since the original texts don’t exist that hardly seems a meaningful point.
I don’t know what Protestants you’ve been hanging out with but I was born and raised in the Bible Belt and I assure you that the ones I know (including the holiness members of my family) wouldn’t have a clue as to what you are talking about. They take the question of Biblical inerrancy quite literally, whether they accept the doctrine or not. If they say they believe the Bible to be the infallible word of God, that is precisely what they mean. If they don’t say so, you can be certain that they don’t accept it. In either case, you can be sure that by Bible they mean the one that they read, not some non-existent “original text”.
Off hand I can think of several Protestant denominations which do not require the acceptance of Biblical inerrancy as a condition for communion or fellowship. Where do you get the idea that “most protestants” uphold this doctrine?