Quote:
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However, I think one can make a good argument that liberalism is a religion in itself
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Let's hear it then.
After reading more of the book and digesting more of LaHaye's philosophy and comparing it with some of my history "book learnin'" it is brutally clear how he wants the American government run, and it's a form of totalitarian antimodernism called
Fundamentalism, in particular:
1) Hostility towards liberalism - self explanatory.
2) Apocalypticism - Obsession with the end times...co-author has also written the Left Behind Series.
3) Indoctrination of youth - Set up aggressive outreach programs to children, give them black and white answers , them on one side and everyone else in league with Satan. Provides then with a feeling of importance.
4) Ideological conformity - You may not disagree with the word of the party, or in this case the church.
5) The Big Lie - If a lie is repeated often enough it will become the truth: Evolution is "just a theory", Humanists are amoral.
6) Strict moral standards - All in the attempt to run your life - very much about the "culture of life." Hitler and Mussolini also banned abortion and birth control, among other sexual practices.
7) Paranoia of subversion - Spread lies about conspiracies that attempt to undermine your way of life: "Humanists goal of world domination", Orange alerts right around election time.
He also attacks Harvard, Yale, UC Berkely, and many other colleges quoting that "Recent surveys reveal that the more educated a person becomes (especially in the social sciences and humanities), the more likely he is to be an atheist." AND he makes a call to the Evangelical Christians to do whatever they can to get the "amoral, one-world humanist overlords out of office and replace them with traditional, pro-moral leaders."
Later in the same chapter titled "The Wisdom of Man" he lays out the 5 Tenets of Humanism:
1) Atheism
2) Evolution
3) Amorality
4) Autonomous Man
5) Globalism
By equating the following with the evil Humanists he makes it easier to set up a grossly inaccurate straw man attack on evolution, at one point calling "unscientific". All of LaHaye's attacks on science and modernism are completely baseless, hes quotes creation "scientists" and other religious leaders instead of actual scientists. Hell, LaHaye's doctorate is in pastoral studies! Instead of relying on facts, following in other fundamentalists footsteps, he relies on his BELIEF in the verbal inerrancy of the Bible, that it is the direct word of God.