- (AgapePress) - So, Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly thinks
that Christians who believe the Bible and attempt to live according to
its precepts are "religious fanatics."
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- His view surfaced during a recent segment of his program,
The O'Reilly Factor, in an interview with Stephen Bennett, a former homosexual
and now a spokesperson for Concerned Women of America.
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- During the course of the segment, Mr. Bennett asked Mr.
O'Reilly if he believed the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Mr. O'Reilly replied,
"I believe that was an allegorical story. You know what I mean by
allegorical ... I don't believe it literally."
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- Frankly, this should not be a surprise to anyone. In
his book, The O'Reilly Factor, published in 2000, he admitted, "The
most important thing I can say about religion is that it's a good thing
for all of us to have. It doesn't matter what you believe -- as long as
you believe in something."
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- God help us. Osama bin Laden had religion and he believed
in something.
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- Bill O'Reilly is typical of many modern-day conservatives
who have lost sight of their true biblical roots. Jesus would ask, "Can
the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into the ditch?"
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- When a person claims, "it doesn't matter what you
believe," moral absolutes are negated. And when there is no absolute
truth, then everything reduces to my opinion. The result is that whoever
comes up with the most convincing argument, based on some utilitarian premise,
wins the debate.
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- Mr. O'Reilly commented later during the exchange with
Mr. Bennett, "I am not God." But in fact that is the role Mr.
O'Reilly has assumed, unknowingly or otherwise, by picking and choosing
which portions of the Bible are to be taken literally and which are to
be dismissed as mere allegory.
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- At one point during the show, Mr. O'Reilly said, "I
have a big problem with the Old Testament."
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- He was referring to passages in Deuteronomy and Exodus
where God ordered promiscuous girls and those who worked on the Sabbath
to be put to death. These were indeed laws issued by God to the nation
of Israel when it was living under a theocracy.
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- But his problems with biblical exegesis go deeper than
even he is willing to admit. In a bold display of his ignorance of the
New Testament, he insisted that it is only in the Gospels where we find
the word of God.
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- "Look, the Gospel is named the Gospel, Mr. Bennett
for a reason. That is the word of God, That's the Gospel," he said.
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- But if we go to the Gospels, we discover that three of
them, Matthew, Mark and Luke, all mention Sodom and Gomorrah in their accounts
of Jesus' pronouncement of judgment on the cities of his day for rejecting
him as the Messiah.
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- In Luke's Gospel, Jesus referred to God's destruction
of Sodom and Gomorrah as an historical event: "...But on that day
that Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and
destroyed them all."
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- Mr. O'Reilly shouldn't have a problem with any of this.
He admitted to Bennett, "Yes, of course ... as a Catholic ... I do
[believe Jesus Christ is God]."
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- So then if Jesus' words are God's words, what exactly
is his problem?
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- When a ship's rudder is subject to the currents of the
ocean, the captain must take control and steer or the ship wanders off
course or flounders. When a man's rudder is left unattended, and subjected
to the currents of modernity, then it is the culture that shapes his values
and not vice versa.
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- With no fixed vantage point, a man in such an ocean might
just as well be adrift.
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- The truth is not always easy to embrace, let alone live
on a day-to-day basis. Or in Mr. O'Reilly's own words taken from the introduction
to his book, "The truth is often annoying. It's always easier to look
the other way."
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- Yeah, Bill, tell us about it.
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- http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/9/102002gr.asp
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- Comment
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- From C.J. Davis
- sfb27902@sfb9.net
- 9-15-2
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- I think this AgapePress article on O'Reilly constitutes
a compliment to him by virtue of the odd religious orientation of the author,
who apparently feels God ordered the deaths of prostitutes and Sabbath
breakers.
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- Judging by the title, I really thought the article was
going to be a condemnation of O'Reilly's backing of Bush's plans for an
attack on Iraq. I recently wrote O'Reilly with some facts--many gleaned
from your great site--that cast doubt on the legitimacy of the administration's
"facts" and war rationale, because I often agree with him on
issues, as he has shown a willingness to go against the grain and form
positions independently.
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- I have recently become disillusioned with O'Reilly. I
wrote him a while back to bring his attention to Ruppert's important research.
Soon after, Geraldo Rivera, another Fox news figure, was scheduled to have
Ruppert on the show, as I'm sure you know, before the appearance was canceled
at the last minute when Cheney suddenly gave a press conference.
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- C.J. Davis
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- Comment
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- From William Fairchild
- William.Fairchild@ca.com
- 9-20-2
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- I, too, saw the program in which O'Reilly and Bennett
were both befuddedly trying to prove their point using Biblical references.
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- O'Reilly made a complete ass of himself by his gross
incompetence in his dismal knowledge of the Bible, with statements such
as Sodom and Gomorrah were allegory and the four gospels were the most
important part of the New Testament because they were "the word of
God". He, like most other North American "Christians",
is a hopeless illiterate when it comes to real knowledge of the Bible.
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- Mr. Bennett also made a complete ass of himself by his
argument, although he definitely knew his Bible far, far better than O'Reilly.
Bennett's position was that of a true believing fundamentalist fanatic
who holds with the literal interpretation of every part of the Bible.
I know this to be an asinine position, as I was once one of these kind
of bipeds myself. But at least Mr. Bennett did so smilingly and pleasantly.
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- So we viewers were treated to an illiterate arguing and
ranting against a happy, smiling, highly literate fanatic. What a farce.
What a waste of viewers' time. However, the producers and sponsors must
have been well-pleased, since the main purpose of O'Reilly's "All
Spin Zone" is not to emanate an honest inquiry into the truth but
rather to engender strife (which, of course, is condemned in the New Testament)
and thus have max viewership with max profits.
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- I have watched O'Reilly's spin now for almost five years,
and until this week was a confirmed viewer, believing pretty much along
the same conservative lines as most of his opinions. However, his handling
of an email of mine this week has soured me against his mindless pro-government
cheerleading claptrap, and now I will try to avoid watching him.
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- About six months ago I sent in an email which he read
on the air, thus winning for myself an autographed copy of his book, in
which I blasted his attitude of attacking Canada for allowing international
terrorists to make it through their border and thus enter the USA. I pointed
out that it takes two to tango, and he must also equally blast the USA's
stupidly lax border policy of allowing the same terrorists into the USA
who moments earlier were happily allowed to exit Canada. As he always
asks emailers to do, my email was pithy, and consisted of three concisely
worded sentences. What he read on the air was one sentence and a short
fragment of another. Then he blasted me for sucking up to Canada and their
apparent pro-terrorist stance. But at least I got his autographed book
for free. Big deal.
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- Then this week, on Monday 16 SEP, he was blasting all
the so-called US allies who don't mindlessly go along with our insane juggernaut
to attack Iraq. He said that 80% of Canadians think the US government
is at least partially responsible for the 9-11 attacks, and also blasted
Canadian PM Chrtien for not mindlessly sucking up to Bush's Iraq plans.
Again I spent considerable time composing a concise, PITHY email with
four sentences in it on why I agreed with the 80% of Canadians. I also
explained patiently to the moronic O'Reilly that the US government and
its hideously evil foreign policy are not the same thing as the wonderful,
trusting, decent US people. He read my email on the air Tuesday night,
after leaving out about 80% of it. Then he blasted me and said that if
I love Canada so much I should get on the Massachusetts Turnpike and move
to Montral.
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- I sent him an angry, pithy, cogent reply today in which
I blasted him for his massive spin factor on my email, his refusal objectively
to seek the real truth, his mindless pro-Bush war-mongering cheerleading,
his stupid cop-out by refusing to answer my points and instead dismissing
me with an "All dissenters get out of my country" attitude, and
called him a "lying-ass dog". He is a liar because he claims
not to have any spin, then spins everything, even emails, to make dissenters
like me seem as loony and wacko as possible. I used that whole phrase
because I have seen the movie "Ransom" several times, Gary Sinese
calls many people lying-ass dogs in that movie, and it seems like a fun
phrase to me.
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- O'Reilly, you suck. You are a lying-ass dog. You spin
everything to suit your rabid pro-government position. Your main goal
is profit for your sponsors. To hell with you, Bill O'Reilly. Spin this.
Factor this.
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- Bill Fairchild
- Douglas, Mass.
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- P.S.: I do not plan to move to Canada, although I have
been there many times and would love to live in Montral. I would rather
stay in the country of my birth, the U.S.A., and exercise freedom of speech,
something that Bill O'Reilly obviously hates.
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