The First Amendment

I'm having trouble with the first amendment. I believe passionately in the right of free speech and dissent. But is it possible that free speech and dissent can actually go so far as to become criminal? What is bothering me has to do with the Evangelical Christians who believe in Armageddon and the Rapture. They have now formed together, hired a lobbyist, and apparently have a great deal of influence on the White House. They are encouraging the Bush/Cheney nitwits to allow Israel to expand its territory, murder as many Palestinians and Lebanese as they wish, and by thus doing so accelerate the end of times, the Rapture. Now I suppose they are entitled to believe any kind of utter nonsense they want, but when they are encouraging outright murder and warfare in order to bring about something that I believe is utter nonsense, should I not be concerned? They are playing with my life (as well as yours). The outcome of their professed desires is not simply going to affect them, it is going to affect all of humanity. The Rapture is going to come and they who believe will be swept up to heaven while the rest of us will burn in hell forever. Frankly, I don't want my government to go to war with this outcome in mind. This is, I believe, a real problem at the moment, precisely because these nutcases actually do have influence on our foreign policy. Doesn't it bother you to know that reason and common sense are being swept aside by people who hold beliefs so ridiculous as to indicate some form of mental illness. Who are they to decide what should happen to our foreign policy and by implication the rest of us? If they want to believe in the literal truth of the bible that's one thing, but why should the rest of the world be forced to go along with this nonsense? I think that by encouraging Israel to engage in an all out war against its neighbors in order to bring about some fantasy outcome is basically criminal. I suppose you could argue that the way to counter their influence is to provide cogent arguments against it. But how can you provide cogent arguments against those who believe in something completely irrational but who are unwilling to even listen?

This bring up a further point. What has happened to our belief in science? People don't seem to have much problem believing in science when it comes to space travel, pharmaceuticals, technological advances in general, and so on. So why should they allow the Bush/Cheney administration to simply dismiss scientific opinion whenever they decide to do so. Take global warming as a great example. There is no doubt this is a serious problem, no doubt that it is occuring, the scientific community is virtually unanimous in this opinion. But this opinion is simply being dismissed. How can this be? What has happened to our culture in the past few years to enable our government to simply dismiss scientific opinion as no more worthy than biblical mumbo-jumbo? Are we truly ready to allow this to happen? Is no one concerned about the dangerous implications of this ignorance? Are we going to allow religious fundamentalists the power to decide what is going to happen to us as a nation, as a species? There was a very fine book written by Andrew White many years ago, A History of the Warfare between Science and Theology in Christendom. It sorely needs to be brought up to date.