Thom Hartmann vs. Bryan Fischer - Using Jesus for profit

[thomhartmann]

Run time: 08:40 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm3yYDmc4-M   Posted on YouTube: December 05, 2011 By YouTube Member: thomhartmann Views on YouTube: 424   Posted on DU: December 07, 2011 By DU Member: thomhartmann Views on DU: 1123

 

[baldguy]

1. A person cannot promote RW corporatism at the same time they claim to follow Christ.

The two philosophies are incomparable. If you want to enjoy the Yuletide season buying a lot of food, strange decorations and expensive gifts for your family & friends - all the while adding to America's foreign trade deficit & the profit margin of soulless, unfeeling corporations - that's fine & dandy. But don't make the mistake believing it has anything to do with being a Christian. Blackmailing Wal*Mart and forcing it to order it's wage slaves to say "Merry Christmas" has nothing to do with Jesus Christ and his teachings.

[Cole Tersaliar]

4. Capitalism and Theocracy can't work together

When you look at the issue from Fisher's point of view, you realize that he has a conundrum. Fischer ends the interview by using Matthew 25:14-20 (The Parable of the Talents) to say that it is holy and right to use your money to make more money, and to not do so is wrong. But neither he, nor the parable says how those additional talents were made ("the man who received the five talents went at once and put his money to work..."). I would hope that the talents were made in a right and just way, but it is not explained. So with that in mind, how, in the commercial/capitalist world, where the making of a profit trumps all else, does the promotion of Christmas and Christianity play into the making of a profit? It DOESN'T, unless you're trying to attract the Christian market, at the possible expense of losing non-Christian potential buyers or investors. Companies make BUSINESS decisions, regardless of religious values or principles. What Fischer wants in this country is a laissez-faire capitalist theocracy, which cannot work without government intervention, destroying the laissez-faire part, and there you have your conundrum!

[ProfessorPlum]

2. Wow. That chuckling hypocrite really got his ass handed to him.

I'll bet he thought this was going to be a "yuck yuck" interview, and Thom came at him with seriousness and righteous fury.

Not enough of this.

[Jack Rabbit]

3. It would have been just as productive to argue about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin

I really hate to see two grown men argue about religion, especially when both profess the same faith yet each accuses the other of heresy.

OK, my world view is a lot closer to Mr. Hartmann's than Mr. Fisher's, but I at some point I realized that Christianity was not something that could justify any particular world view. It's too big for that. (To interject an irrelevant aside, I am now a Unitarian, so who is right and who wrong about what is the correct Christian interpretation of the New Testament is not my concern). The Bible speaks of slavery as if it is an everyday thing, which in the first century AD, it was. There is no point in concluding that the failure of Jesus Christ to condemn slavery as passionately as did Frederick Douglass is no reason suppose that Jesus thought the institution justifiable. In fact, it was early interpretations of of Christianity that led people to first condemn Christians enslaving other Christians (it was still OK to enslave a pagan Slav, thus the word slave). This led to the now widely accepted modern view that all slavery is immoral. Give thanks to the Lord for that.

Whatever Christianity is, it is not monolithic. Listening to Mr. Hartmann and Mr. Fisher make fools of themselves arguing about what Christianity is and isn't is clear evidence of that.