Bruce Gerencser has prepared a nice précis of evangelical eschatology, explaining the importance of The Donald’s summary gift of the Golan Heights to Israel, concluding …
Still think religious beliefs aren’t harmful and don’t pose a threat to the rest of us? Still think Evangelicals are a bunch of irrational people with quaint, but irrelevant, beliefs? If you have read this far, surely it has dawned on you that Evangelical eschatological beliefs pose an existential threat to the future of humanity. I am not overplaying my hand here. God’s chosen people, Israel, and God’s city on a hill, the United States, both have nuclear weapons. So does Russia. Do you know that millions of Evangelicals believe that a war against the United States and Russia is prophesied in the Bible?
Gerencser is absolutely correct: Unreasoning belief in this crazy stuff is a menace to all of us. The faith, the belief without evidence, the suspension of reason, that preachers howl and bellow for and demand is an evil.
I am not as worried as Bruce, however. According to the Inerrant Bible, the Forces of Satan will arrive at the Battle of Armageddon on 200,000,000-horses. Well, as it happens, the world horse population has been in decline since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, and according to U.N. estimates it now stands at about 50,000,000. Years ago, I did the math: If the horse population begins today to grow at a rate of 5% per year, we’ve got about 30- to 35-years until the Big Showdown. I’ll be dead and disintegrated when that happens. I suppose it’s possible that an Invisible Wizard will reassemble me and somehow restore the unique complex of genes and memories and electrical impulses which comprise my consciousness in order to torture me for eternity, but there are obvious practical problems with that and I am unable to feel any real worry.