Faith, Beer, and Other Things That Interest Geoff

Christian Terrorist?

Ok, this is weird. Michael Medved's show today a caller brought up Eric Rudolph as a "Christian terrorist" and another caller said "communism was like a religion."

Medved commented and I found this on the web:

Eric Rudolph, who bombed the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, two abortion clinics and a gay nightclub, wrote to his mom about born-again Christians: "They have been so nice I would hate to break it to them that I really prefer Nietzsche to the Bible." His letter was published by USA Today.

Oops, there goes another Christian fundamentalist terrorist.

Rudolph's dark devolution from "pro-lifer" to mass murderer owes far more to progressive thought structures than to any traditionalism, Christian or otherwise. For example, about Herman Melville's "Billy Budd," Rudolph writes home: "It makes a powerful statement" about "the relativity of history, and just who ends up being the good guy or bad guy depends on who gets to write the story."

Social constructionism in a nutshell: The person who writes the story gets to decide who the good guys and the bad guys are. Good and evil, as Nietzsche taught, are just the tastes and preferences of the powerful. Who are the powerful? Well, as Nietzsche also taught, anyone who can write a new storyline and persuade the sheep to follow it. Thus are men tempted to become as gods to their fellow men, to abandon both reason and faith in pursuit of power.

So Eric Rudolph, who was the Christian "terrorist" poster-boy for a number of years, got more inspiration from an adamant atheist, Nietzsche, than the Bible. If you are wondering what irony looks like, this would be it.