Drilling for Jesus
Today in Have a Seat news, Jesus enthusiast and wingnut extraordinaire Bryan Fischer thinks that damn dirty hippy liberal ingrates are hurting God’s feelings.
Why?
Because God put oil and fossil fuels on this earth for us to exploit, dagnabbit, and if we don’t stop focusing on all this “energy independent” and “green energy” malarkey, we’re basically unwrapping a special present from God, and staring disdainfully at its contents before we summarily throw that gift right back in God’s stupid face.
And that’s just rude, man:
The Cornwall Alliance’s Calvin Beisner, who has previously said that believing in climate change “is an insult to God,” explained on Thursday that the Bible said it was also very rude to not use oil, coal and natural gas.
~snip~
Fischer likened the situation to a birthday present he was given at the age of six.
“I opened up a birthday present that I didn’t like, and I said it right out, ‘Oh, I don’t like those,’” the radio host recalled. “And it just crushed — and the person that gave me gift was there. You know, I just kind of blurted it out, ‘I don’t like those.’ And it just crushed that person. It was enormously insensitive of me to do that.”
“And you think, that’s kind of how we’re treating God when he’s given us these gifts of abundant and inexpensive and effective fuel sources,” Fischer added. “And we don’t thank him for it and we don’t use it.”
“You know, God has buried those treasures there because he loves to see us find them.”
Listen up, America — when God created the earth, took a rib from Adam, slathered some barbecue sauce on it, and fed it to the dinosaur that Eve was riding when Adam and Eve first hooked up and decided to go apple-picking, God also dumped a bunch of fossil fuels, oil, and other shit all over the earth so that God-lovers could find it and use it. ALL OF IT. God set up an Eternal Easter Egg Hunt just for you, you ungrateful jerks, and all this “oh noes! climate change!” nonsense is fucking up God’s program. He likes it when we find the treasures he has hidden for us, and there’s still some resources we haven’t drained yet! So what are you doing sitting around contemplating buying a fucking Prius?!
Stop being an asshole and trying to “save the planet.” Put down your goat milk latte, unplug your stupid electric car, and go off-roading in your Hummer to search for new wildlife reserves to drill.
It’s what Jesus would have done.
[cross-posted at ABLC]
Michael G
I never understand: Why not save our oil and use up everyone else’s first?
r€nato
also, he put so much of that Jesus juice under the sands of the Mooslim infidels as our reward for killing them. It’s not stealing, it’s our justly earned reward, in the same way that Israelis aren’t stealing Palestinian land; they are just taking back what God said was theirs in the first place.
Caliph Garrett
I doubt the subtitle was a reference to this song, but I larfed anyway.
TooManyJens
I still don’t understand why Bryan Fischer gets so much attention. Does he have any actual power?
I’m not just aiming this at ABL — lots of people post about every lunatic raving that comes out of the guy’s mouth, and I have no idea why. Talk about “dog bites man.”
r€nato
@TooManyJens: it would seem someone has to be the unrestrained id of the fundy nutbag Christianists, and Pat Robertson seems to have retired himself from that role.
Baud
Who does Bryan Fischer think he is? The Chairman of the House Science Committee?
Tim I
So Fischer is saying that God is putting enormous lumps of coal in our Christmas stockings and we should be grateful for that?
Smiling Mortician
@r€nato:
I prefer Pastor Grant Swank at RenewAmerica. Unfortunately, it seems he dropped off the internet sometime last year.
Smiling Mortician
@efgoldman:
Pat Robertson now says this is a lie.
Commenting at Ballon Juice since 1937
What is special about oil? What else did God bury for us to find?
Gindy51
@r€nato: Imagine if Moses had taken a straighter path instead of turning left once he got out of Egypt?
Also back when engines were first being designed, wasn’t there a choice between in the ground oil an oil grown from seeds? Back then oil from the ground was looked at as way cheaper and easier to get at, let alone you didn’t have to depend on Mother Nature to help you grow it from seed.
http://www.cyberlipid.org/glycer/biodiesel.htm
Imagine how different life, our planet, and ourselves would be if Rudolf Diesel had his ideas espoused.
Hungry Joe
James Watt, Reagan’s point man on planet pillage, said the same thing 30 years ago: If, by the time Jesus comes back, we haven’t used up our resources, he (Jesus, not Watt) is going to want to know why.
PeakVT
@efgoldman: The Rapture is coming any day now, so they don’t care about running out. Just by coincidence, that dovetails perfectly with IGMFY thinking.
Citizen Alan
@efgoldman:
I once had a 69-year-old client assert that oil was, in fact, self-renewing and that peak oil was a liberal conspiracy. I resolved to charge him more in the future.
the Conster
These nutjob helmet haired pastors have a spiritual worldview that a 5 year old would consider childish. He needs a good smiting.
Baud
OT, but crying out for front page exposure:
If they weren’t so awful to so many people, I’d feel sorry for them.
Zifnab
I’ll take this as a good thing. As soon as you’ve got god-botherers jumping on a bandwagon, it becomes that much easier to discredit. Shackling AEI and David Brooks to the Discovery Institute isn’t going to do the professional hacks any favors.
? Martin
@efgoldman:
Well, the rapture will come before we run out. Remember, the time on earth is finite for all believers. The rest of us, the unbelievers, those destined to suffer forever on earth will have to do so in Nissan Leafs – which probably proves their case.
There are 47 percent of the people who will believe in Jesus no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with Him, who are dependent upon His gifts, who believe that they are sinners, who believe God has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to oil, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And God should give it to them. And they will believe in Him no matter what.
Wait, that probably doesn’t help.
God put them their bones in the ground to test our faith. God is better at trolling than DougJ.
YellowJournalism
So does that mean God created genitals because he likes amateur pron?
PeakVT
@Baud: Yeah, but they are that awful. I’d even say they deserve more disappointment and heartbreak.
Keith
God gave us the sun and wind first, so shouldn’t we open those gifts first?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Commenting at Ballon Juice since 1937:
Well duhhh. Uranium-235. God wants us to build bombs and have a nuke-takular ending to our very special birthday party. Now everybody make a wish before I blow out all your candles!
Baud
@YellowJournalism:
“And we don’t thank him for it and we don’t use it.”
Frankensteinbeck
Another vivid reminder that tribalism drives conservatism. They’re trying to protect THEIR culture, and since environmentalists are against letting them enforce their culture on the world, environmentalists must be wrong and they’ll find a way to make their culture say so.
MikeBoyScout
For Mohammed’s sake I love you Imani.
Happy Ho-Ho!
The other other Max
Seems like I heard this rationalization for heroin, too.
MikeJ
@efgoldman:
Actually, gas station logos notwithstanding, it’s mostly plants, not dinosaurs.
Are there any Sinclair stations around anymore? Do fundies boycott them?
PurpleGirl
Why did God make it so hard to find and extract oil?
Easy, God is the ultimate job creator. Think of all the jobs in the petroleum industry, and the chances of a small number of people to become fabulously wealthy.
Yutsano
@MikeJ: Amazingly enough, yes.
LosGatosCA
The ‘god’ that these folks worship is one very convenient diety.
The god of money, power, and any other damn thing you want if you vote Republican.
Raw, unadulterated narcissistic stupidity.
Mike in NC
@Baud: Loved it! Thanks for sharing.
Jay C
@Yutsano:
“We’re about as American as it gets” ???
Oy vey….
Brachiator
Also, too, human caused global warming could never be catastrophically destructive because only the Deity, not man, can destroy the Earth. Says so in the Bible.
You don’t need no stinking science when you got the Baby Jesus by your side.
piratedan
waiting for the prophesied return of his Son to Earth and as the chosen surround him and shout joyously because of his arrival, he turns and says in Hebrew, “where did all of these white people come from?”
Mike in NC
That must also be the reason God created the Powerball lottery.
d. .b cooper
but God is make believe…
Mike G
@Frankensteinbeck:
This. This is the American Family Association — WTF does oil exploration have to do with “family values” and the other god-bothering social authoritarian BS they’re supposedly concerned about?
They’ve got that covered with the petroleum version of creationism pseudoscience — “abiogenic oil”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin
Yutsano
@Jay C: Well they are based in Utah. So it doesn’t surprise me that they overplay that angle.
quannlace
And God created natural plants like hemlock, wild hellebore, belladonna and aconite. It would be completely disrespectful to not use these to their full capacity, otherwise why did he put them on this Earth? We need to start poisoning more people, damn it.
Did I mention that they’r all natural, so it must be okay.
Riccardo Cabeza
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Angry Invisible Non-Existant Sky Father gave us Wind, Sunshine, the Tides and a nice warm core in our earthly gooey center.
Why doesn’t that hateful superstitious prick mention that? He is such a disingenuous evil cuss.
Narcissus
I’m loving the inevitable agglomeration of the various conservative fundamentalist ideologies.
J.D. Rhoades
While I believe in a Creator, the God these people believe in is a fucking psycho.
Brachiator
@Zifnab:
This really hasn’t happened with creationism and other, similar bullshit. These people are immune to reason and logic, and the worst of them still infect school boards, state governments and even the Congress.
jl
Bryan Fischer is wrong about this godless liberal. For I do thank God, or the FSM, or the BuddhNature, or whoever or whatever we should thank for abundant fossil fuel resources. I thank him or her or what mightily from the bottom of my heart for abundant fossil fuel resources.
I also thank the deity of your choice for modern antibiotics. But that does not mean I eat them for breakfast. I also give thanks for electricity but that does not mean I stick my fingers into power sockets. I give great and abundant thanks for automobiles (steam, electric and internal combustion), but that does not mean I drive everywhere. Like from my living room to the bathroom, or try to drive one over a trail when I go on a hike.
” To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven ” That is in the Bible, the Word of God.
Woodrowfan
he also created the sun and the wind and the tides. So isn’t refusing to use them also “throwing God’s gift back in his face”???
jl
Also too in addition:
There is an idiotic meme going around and apparently reported with a straight face by or idiot failed corporate media experiment, that a large increase in US fossil fuel production will make the US energy independent, and solve the problem of high energy prices. I have lost count of the times I have heard or read some foolish thing like “US may surpass Saudi Arabia and become largest oil producer in the world. Problem Solved. You are Welcome”
That is sad snd silly stuff. Oil is fungible and there is a world market. Europe and even coal besotted China (of all places) is taking alternative renewable energy sources more seriously than the U.S. That means they will be able to reserve fossil fuels for highly productive uses for which there are few alternatives and be able to sustain higher economic growth wile paying higher prices for it than we will be able to.
And will reactionary politicians and fundamentalist crazies allow the U.S. to interfere with the Holy free market and forbid corporations from exporting U.S. oil? And will being the biggest oil producer guarantee that we will be a net exporter of oil? I doubt it. So even ‘energy independence’ in some nominal symbolic nominal sense is an illusion.
Unbelievable nonsense you see being passed around these days!
jl
@Woodrowfan:
Their god only recognizes and respects crony corporate capitalist unregulated “free market” bucks.
Jesus said so.
Felonius Monk
Phoenician in a time of Romans
And God created natural plants like hemlock, wild hellebore, belladonna and aconite.
Ahem – marijuana.
Kyle
@jl:
We need some artwork of Jesus in a hardhat giving a thumbs up in front of a gushing oil drilling rig. Waving an American flag.
arguingwithsignposts
@Woodrowfan: He created Earth, Wind and Fire! Why won’t these people groove?
Yutsano
@Kyle: I’m seeing a new version of the Buddy Christ coming into being. Yes, we can make this happen people!
West of the Cascades
The thing that offends me about this as a liberal Christian is that it’s so obviously contrary to so much of Jesus’s message and stories about him. It’s a hell of a lot easier to reconcile the Gospels with environmentalism than with the orgy of destruction and permanent pollution of the globe this jackass would invite. Jesus railed against the rich and those who exploited others — today’s oil and gas and coal developers. Jesus told his disciples to travel with almost nothing and make due with whatever manifested (the “daily bread” in the lord’s prayer).
The Gospels say he fed 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fishes — if there’s a better metaphor for doing more with less, for conserving the resources of our planet rather than wasting them, or for a doctrine of sustainable living and resource conservation instead of excess and resource exploitation, I can’t point to it.
It doesn’t say a whole lot about Bryan Fisher’s respect for creation that he’d encourage human beings to drill the fuck out of it.
Also what Felonius Monk said at 51.
Pseudonym
Don’t forget the link between Obama’s missing birth certificate and the environmentalist conspiracy: Black Gold Stranglehold
smike
You know, FSM also showed us how how to make nuclear bombs. Shouldn’t we be just using the shit out of those things?
Al
@r€nato: Would you care to wager how many christians we would have to talk to until we find one that doesn’t realize you’re making a joke. Based on my upbringing, my family and my neighbors, I wouldn’t bet past 8.
Woodrowfan
@Al:
Depends on the church. Some liberal church, it might take a lot more. Some conservative fundy church? No more than 2.
jl
@smike: Heck. I may be in charge of digging some irrigation ditches this spring for the family farm. And I don’t want to be ungrateful to God. Thanks for reminding me of the Ways of the Lord. I’ll worshipfully nuke my way to more ditches.
danielx
I had to go to the link to make sure it wasn’t a link to the Onion, as I strongly suspected that ABL was spending Saturday evening fucking with us.
Nay, not so – and at this point why would I be surprised, given the subject of the article. By now I should be accustomed to interviews with people who are clearly residing on a different plane of reality. But every so often one comes to my eye that rises above the usual wingnut frothing and this one most certainly rises higher than most.
pseudonymous in nc
Bryan Fischer is a professional wingnut welfare troll, and should be treated as such. Or slapped in the face every time he speaks in public. Either’s fine.
patrick II
All good Hummer drivers go to heaven.
JohnTh
Worth noting that this seems to be the same moron who announced to all and sundry that the Medal of Honor had been ‘feminised’ because it was being awarded to a man who had saved two buddies while under fire, taking a bullet in the vest and shooting two Taliban in the process. He hadn’t slaughtered enough Taliban, which is what Jesus would have insisted on. That was too much even for the hard right to swallow. Mehtinks he should have learned to shut his piehole and not open it again.
McJulie
Oil was obviously put in the ground by Satan. It’s black, it’s down below, it smells bad, it’s poisonous, and it catches on fire readily.
Codpiecewatch
My friend Pete tells people like this, “God put fossil fuels deep within the earth to prevent us from causing mischief with them. He gave us abundant sunshine and wind to meet our energy needs because He wanted us to look towards the Heavens for our energy needs rather than to the Underground.”
Craig
We have a finite supply of a resource essential to our economy and national defense. And some people want to pump it out of the ground NOW to lower its price so we can consume it faster. Madness.
feckless
I think this Fischer guy only voted for Yahweh because of all the gifts he was promised.
Typical moocher.
Definitely in the spiritual 47%.