Start, Wage, Loving: For Joy Serve Soul In Solidarity

Rev. Franklin Graham is leading a "disinformation campaign" against President Obama by attacking Obama's Christian faith and distorting Islam's theology, says a leading religion professor.

After CNN's John King gave Graham a full news cycle to raise a lifted eyebrow at President Obama's Christian profession of faith, Stephen Prothero, religion professor at Boston University, came on King's show Friday night to undercut Graham and question why CNN would ask an evangelist known to slur Islam, to speculate on its theology.

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According to a transcript released by CNN, Prothero, author of God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World, told King, the finding in a recent survey that 18% of Americans believe Obama is Muslim ...

... is because we have people who are supposed to be responsible public leaders, like Franklin Graham, who are spreading what seems to me like a sort of disinformation campaign... What Franklin Graham should say: 'Barack Obama says he's a Christian, he's a Christian, end of story.'

Prothero also pointed out that Obama prayed with Franklin and his father, America's most famous living evangelist, Rev. Billy Graham, in May but Franklin still repeatedly used the "if" word to answer King's questions Thursday on whether Obama has accepted Christ.

Prothero said:

Franklin Graham doesn't seem to be interested in focusing on preaching the gospel of -- of Jesus. He wants to be spreading misinformation about the religion of Islam.
... Why are we listening to Franklin Graham?

Church and state issues underlie the current fracus over President' Obama's religious identity.

CAPTION

By Web Bryant, USA TODAY

Prothero, who also wrote a book on Americans' ignorance about their own faith traditions as well as those of others (Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know -- And Doesn't) told King,

.. it doesn't help the conversation we need to have as a public about Islam to be having people who are just basically spreading falsehoods about the tradition.

We should be listening to Muslims about their tradition. We should be listening to scholars about their tradition. But we shouldn't be listening to Evangelical preachers who are out to trash the Muslim religion in order to gain some political and perhaps religious advantage.

Prothero also pounced on Graham for cherry-picking quotes from the Quran that highlight violence. (In U.S. Protestant culture, picking quotes out of context from the Bible to prove a point is called "proof-texting."). Prothero highlighted

... shared beliefs and practices across Christianity and Islam. And we shouldn't be talking about the worst of the tradition of Islam and comparing it with the best of the tradition of Christianity.

When Jesus says, "I come not to bring peace, but a sword," is it fair to say, oh, Jesus is out to kill people?

No, because you read that in the context of the whole Bible. You read that in the context of the Christian tradition. That's how you need to understand passages in the Quran, is in the context of the whole Quran and in the context of the whole Islamic tradition.

"Our Only Hope: BarackObama.com - Every Cent, Every Second you can spare. NOW." SL

Wash Post: President Obama's winning streak

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/19/AR2010081904771.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

8.19.2010

NBC: GOP blocks, Pr. Obama Supports 9/11 First Responders Health Bill. (Hypocrites are who?)

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local-beat/Obama-Flips-Agrees-to-Sign-911-Health-Measure-101069329.html
NBC: GOP blocks, Pr. Obama Supports 9/11 First Responders Health Bill. (Hypocrites are who?)

"Rather than Love Him (Serve Him), we've made a fetish of Jesus to Pleasure ourselves." SL

"Rather than Love Him (Serve Him),
we've made a fetish of Jesus to Pleasure ourselves." SL

"The one way to Universal Love: Be it, Exclude ALL Else. Repeat. Repeat..." SL

"'Start, if there were only more of you.' I'm nothing. Tough Love is EVERYTHING, and I'm now full of it." SL

"'Start, if there were only more of you.' I'm nothing.
Tough Love is EVERYTHING, and I'm now full of it." SL

"What if, as I think, Pr. Obama is our 'under cover agent' behind enemy lines? Are we doing our job to support him? HE IS. WE ARE NOT." SL

"What if, as I think, Pr. Obama is our 'under cover agent' behind enemy lines?
Are we doing our job to support him? HE IS. WE ARE NOT." SL

8.18.2010

"If you were Pr. Obama, what would YOU have achieved to date?" SL

"Nothing is so dangerous as Evil in the Garb of Virtue." MLK Jr.

"I learned to not see black or white; now, 'pretty,' or not. Thank Good." SL

8.17.2010

IDF Palestinian Abuse Photos are 'the norm'

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/rights-groups-controversial-photos-are-the-norm-1.308656

	Photographs depicting humiliation of Palestinian detainees by soldiers. The photos were published Tuesday by Breaking the Silence.
	Photo by: Breaking the Silence

CORRECTION - "Terrorists - EVERYONE opposing US/Israeli Corporate Financial RAPE AND PLUNDER." SL

"Terrorists - EVERYONE opposing US/Israeli Corporate Financial
RAPE AND PLUNDER." SL

"Terrorists - EVERYONE opposing US/Israeli Corp. Financial Interests." SL

"Terrorists - EVERYONE opposing US/Israeli Corporate Financial Interests." SL

IF YOU ARE HUMANE YOU'LL PUT YOUR BACK INTO BROADCASTING THIS -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnZAM454DbY

Israeli Terrorism, Torture, Lawlessness, Propaganda - Nazi Butchers 2

August 17, 2010, 09:56 AM

"Valuing Flesh Exactly Diminishes Valuing Soul, Humanity." SL

"Exact Measure of your Health: % your Life Spent on Our Neediest." SL

"Exact Measure of your Health:
% your Life Spent on Our Neediest." SL

"Opposite of War Causers, Peace Makers: Want Zero for Selves, Give ALL for Neediest...." SL

"Opposite of War Causers, Peace Makers: Want Zero for Selves, Give ALL for Neediest." SL

Rachel Corrie -
Contemporary Saint of Universal Love / Brotherhood / Humanity

StartLoving3
330 views

8.16.2010

"If you're not ready to die to stop Fossil Fuel GENOCIDE you are dead ignorant. NOW." SL

http://climateprogress.org/2010/08/15/new-york-times-front-page-story-in-weather-chaos-a-case-for-global-warming/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+climateprogress%2FlCrX+%28Climate+Progress%29&utm_content=Yahoo!+Mail

"If you're not ready to die to stop Fossil Fuel GENOCIDE you are dead ignorant. NOW." SL

New York Times front-page story: In Weather Chaos, a Case for Global Warming

Trenberth: "It's not the right question to ask if this storm or that storm is due to global warming, or is it natural variability. Nowadays, there's always an element of both."August 15, 2010

The floods battered New England, then Nashville, then Arkansas, then Oklahoma — and were followed by a deluge in Pakistan that has upended the lives of 20 million people.
The summer's heat waves baked the eastern United States, parts of Africa and eastern Asia, and above all Russia, which lost millions of acres of wheat and thousands of lives in a drought worse than any other in the historical record.
Seemingly disconnected, these far-flung disasters are reviving the question of whether global warming is causing more weather extremes.
The collective answer of the scientific community can be boiled down to a single word: probably.

That's the opening of "In Weather Chaos, a Case for Global Warming!" It is one of the better recent major media articles on global warming and extreme weather — and the best front page New York Times climate article in years.

The NYT is clearly making a major statement since not only is this "above the fold," but it takes up most of the front page with large photos of what's happening in Pakistan and Russia and the U.S. (see Russian Meteorological Center: "There was nothing similar to this on the territory of Russia during the last one thousand years in regard to the heat." and Hottest* July in RSS satellite record, record floods swamp Pakistan, U.S. set 1480 temperature records in past two months, and 2010 breaks 2007 record for most nations setting all-time temperature records):

Lots of good stuff in the story:

"The climate is changing," said Jay Lawrimore, chief of climate analysis at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. "Extreme events are occurring with greater frequency, and in many cases with greater intensity."
He described excessive heat, in particular, as "consistent with our understanding of how the climate responds to increasing greenhouse gases."
Theory suggests that a world warming up because of those gases will feature heavier rainstorms in summer, bigger snowstorms in winter, more intense droughts in at least some places and more record-breaking heat waves. Scientists and government reports say the statistical evidence shows that much of this is starting to happen.
But the averages do not necessarily make it easier to link specific weather events, like a given flood or hurricane or heat wave, to climate change. Most climate scientists are reluctant to go that far, noting that weather was characterized by remarkable variability long before humans began burning fossil fuels and releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
"If you ask me as a person, do I think the Russian heat wave has to do with climate change, the answer is yes," said Gavin Schmidt, a climate researcher with NASA in New York. "If you ask me as a scientist whether I have proved it, the answer is no — at least not yet."

That is a distinction always worth remembering. The scientific literature is primarily filled with that which can be proven — and most climate scientists are unwilling to make public statements that go beyond what can be proven. That is a key reason so much of the scientific literature is conservative or understates what is likely to come on our current path of unrestricted emissions. And that goes double for reviews of the scientific literature that must be signed off on word for word by major governments, like the IPCC.

That's why talking to lots top climate scientists is so important for reporters or anyone who want to understand what is coming. That's how you learn what they really believe and what they expect will appear in the scientific literature in the coming years.

Here's more from the NYT:

In Russia, that kind of scientific caution might once have been embraced. Russia has long played a reluctant, and sometimes obstructionist, role in global negotiations over limiting climate change, perhaps in part because it expected economic benefits from the warming of its vast Siberian hinterland.
But the extreme heat wave, and accompanying drought and wildfires, in normally cool central Russia seems to be prompting a shift in thinking.
"Everyone is talking about climate change now," President Dmitri A. Medvedev told the Russian Security Council this month. "Unfortunately, what is happening now in our central regions is evidence of this global climate change, because we have never in our history faced such weather conditions in the past."
Thermometer measurements show that the earth has warmed by about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since the Industrial Revolution, when humans began pumping enormous amounts of carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. For this January through July, average temperatures were the warmest on record, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported Friday.
The warming has moved in fits and starts, and the cumulative increase may sound modest. But it is an average over the entire planet, representing an immense amount of added heat, and is only the beginning of a trend that most experts believe will worsen substantially.

Even Nashville's Katrina, which was severely underreported by the major media, makes the NYT story (see "Stunning NOAA map of Tennessee's 1000-year deluge"):

Scientists say they expect stronger storms, in winter and summer, largely because of the physical principle that warmer air can hold more water vapor.
Typically, a storm of the sort that inundated parts of Tennessee in May, dumping as much as 19 inches of rain over two days, draws moisture from an area much larger than the storm itself. With temperatures rising and more water vapor in the air, such storms can pull in more moisture and thus rain or snow more heavily than storms of old.
It will be a year or two before climate scientists publish definitive analyses of the Russian heat wave and the Pakistani floods, which might shed light on the role of climate change, if any. Some scientists suspect that they were caused or worsened by an unusual kink in the jet stream, the high-altitude flow of air that helps determine weather patterns, though that itself might be linked to climate change. Certain recent weather events were so extreme that a few scientists are shedding their traditional reluctance to ascribe specific disasters to global warming.
After a heat wave in Europe in 2003 that killed an estimated 50,000 people, the worst such catastrophe for that region in the historical record, scientists published detailed analyses suggesting that it would not have been as severe in a climate uninfluenced by greenhouse gases.
And Dr. Trenberth has published work suggesting that Hurricane Katrina dumped at least somewhat more rain on the Gulf Coast because the storm was intensified by global warming.
"It's not the right question to ask if this storm or that storm is due to global warming, or is it natural variability," Dr. Trenberth said. "Nowadays, there's always an element of both."

Kudos to the New York Times and reporter Justin Gillis for this story.

Media wakes up to Hell and High Water: Moscow's 1000-year heat wave and "Pakistan's Katrina": BBC, Reuters, USA Today, Time link warming and extreme weather; Trenberth, Stott, and Masters explain the science
Exclusive interview — NCAR's Trenberth on the link between global warming and extreme deluges: "I find it systematically tends to get underplayed and it often gets underplayed by my fellow scientists. Because one of the opening statements, which I'm sure you've probably heard is "Well you can't attribute a single event to climate change." But there is a systematic influence on all of these weather events now-a-days because of the fact that there is this extra water vapor lurking around in the atmosphere than there used to be say 30 years ago. It's about a 4% extra amount, it invigorates the storms, it provides plenty of moisture for these storms and it's unfortunate that the public is not associating these with the fact that this is one manifestation of climate change. And the prospects are that these kinds of things will only get bigger and worse in the future."