There is a difference between people who believe in God (as I do) and fundamentalists who believe it’s their mission to meld Church and State.

But the difference is that Obama wasn’t picked soley to appeal to those with a dangerous political agenda, who have already tried to jam their agenda through Congress.

The difference is that Palin was picked because of a belief in diversity of ideas and the importance of individual free will in terms of self-defense and free speech.

Peopl’e reasons and their actions do not conveniently fit into this closed off box of yours, Oz, simply because it is your belief that it is so. Regardless of what you know as a Christian, regardless of what you believe, and regardless of what you believe Sarah believes, it has no impact on what Sarah actually believes.

Palin has a pastor problem, as did Obama.

False equivalency.

There is no such thing as a “pastor problem”. There is such a thing as virtue, vice, evil, good, weakness, and strength. These are objective. You attempt to equivalate your problem with Sarah with our problem with Obama as if it was just dependent upon subjective viewpoints. It isn’t. It’s an objective criteria we use to apply to Obama. Unfortunately, objective criterias have more stringent standards than the subjective criteria that says Sarah Palin believes in this and was chosen because of this because that is how you would like to see it as, Oz.

My goal is actually to be as concise as possible while wrapping up with a refutation of what Ozzie later said in #33:
Palin has a pastor problem, as did Obama.

Here we have Ozzie performing complete moral equivalency: They each have the same problem to the same degree. This is his conclusion based I think on the information provided in #28. This use of complete moral equivalency is the usual trap.

So let me begin with Obama. (And remember Mike: brevity!) He spent 20 years under Rev. Wright. He attended the sermons many, many times. He formed a close personal relationship. He has described this relationship in his books and lately in speeches in ways that contradict each other, but that’s par for his course: obfuscation. He takes Wright’s sermons with him on plane trips to listen to them.

Obama claims to have no knowledge of all the incredibly outrageous statements by Rev. Wright and has never explained the depth of his knowledge of Black Liberation Theology, the guiding force behind Rev. Wright’s church.

Now, Sarah Palin. A visiting preacher from Africa attended her church and gave a series of ten sermons. If you go to Ozzie’s link at the bottom of #38 and read you get to another link to “Irregular Times” that has archived many sermons from that church, including the ten from Pastor Mathee. The link:
http://irregulartimes.com/index.php/archives/2008/09/16/what-is-the-wasilla-assemblies-of-god-trying-to-hide-for-palin/

Examine the titles of the ten speeches. Nothing will leap out at you. More on this later.

It is described that he laid his hands on her and prayed (see #38). She found this bold and also said the following:
he’s praying not “oh Lord if it be your will may she become governor,” no, he just prayed for it. He said “Lord make a way and let her do this next step. And that’s exactly what happened.”

Just exactly what is objectionable about *that*? It’s the standard graceful way of asking solely for a door to be opened and to be aligned with God’s will. I’m agnostic, I don’t get it myself, but it doesn’t get any more graceful than that. To respect faith is to allow this kind of prayer, under any and all conditions.

And now we come to the trick: The story immediately segues into the past history of Pastor Muthee, and does so seamlessly. The inference is subtle but clear: Sarah Palin *knows* all this sordid history of what was done to that woman in Africa. Based on what? She was never there, and certainly not for twenty years. She never had a close personal relationship with him. The relationship can be described as: He gave a week’s worth of sermons at her church in a manner that suggests a conference, as the title of the last one is “Bringing the Whole Week Together”.

This is the complete story. That’s it.

It strains credulity, at least to me, that based on that, I am supposed to link Sarah Palin to what happened in Africa. I am not required to prove she didn’t know. You are required to prove she did. I am not going to listen to all ten speeches to clear them of objectionable content. For one, sending each of us off to individually listen to all the sermons sounds like a classic Alinsky tactic, and I’m not falling for it. The requirement of proof is on the accuser. And I am sure the Palin haters have already scoured those speeches for content, word by word. I am certain of that. There’s no there there.

What you are left with, then, is a comparison of Barack Obama’s history with Reverend Wright and Sarah Palin’s history with Pastor Muthee. There is absolutely no way I see a direct moral equivalency between the two where you could claim an equality.

In closing, one is free to claim there’s no smoking gun proving Obama in the pews during one of Rev. Wright’s more blistering sermons. But the circumstancial evidence is far, far more overwhelming when you weigh that evidence against what is presented against Sarah Palin.

I reject the claim of moral equivalency of this comparison. Absent the evidence, I reject even the claim that Sarah Palin has a “pastor problem” at all. Just because the pastor has a problem doesn’t mean that she has a pastor problem.

You’re free to disagree.

God is a concept that seems to be different for people across the world..Anyone who thinks that their way is THE way (and seeks power in the process) gets a thumbs down from me.

So, no, I dont think people can know God. They can only try to behave according to what they believe is His will.

Does God direct the affairs of humans? Brian

I have no idea. And neither does anyone else.

Is Jesus God? -Brian

Once again, I don’t know.

I was raised Catholic and in addition to the Father and Son,the Holy Ghost was thrown in the mix, too. As you might have guessed, I tended to question everything, and thought much of what they taught in Catechism simply could not be true.

Jesus could be a number of things.

I won’t know the truth until the day I die.

But we aren’t supposed to remember that.

Deana

But the difference is that Obama wasn’t picked soley to appeal to those with a dangerous political agenda, who have already tried to jam their agenda through Congress.

Palin was.

But we aren’t supposed to remember that.

Deana

There is a difference between people who believe in God (as I do)

Interesting. Do you believe God is knowable?
Does God direct the affairs of humans?
Is Jesus God?

Let’s Start Them Young – Part II…

I was raised a Christian. Everyone I knew was raised a Christian. Most of us knew that the earth is not only 6,000 years old and that dinosaurs never walked the earth with men.

There is a difference between people who believe in God (as I do) and fundamentalists who believe it’s their mission to meld Church and State.

Palin has a pastor problem, as did Obama.

The differnce, however, is celar. I don’t see him catering to Evangelicals who have a stated political agenda.