#157: Ron Graham

If Billy Graham is in many ways a tactful and (relatively) sane proponent of fluffy-feelgood Biblical literalism, then his namesake Ron is his maniacal, deranged, twisted and distorted mirror-image. The latter is an uncompromising fundamentalist who criticizes those, like Billy, who try to change God to suit their personal beliefs and wishes (i.e. making him anything but a psychotic mass-murderer). See him criticize people for taking verses out of context, and doing the exact same thing himself when trying to prove that God isn't quite as nasty as his actions, words and apparent intentions really entail. In this one he also apparently claims that any non-Christian is non-human (so God’s killing them would more be like pest control taking care of ants, or gardeners cutting down the tall weeds, as they used to put it in Rwanda). His argument-style is called SPAG, and it’s probably fun.

If you want to leaf through Graham’s rants (not necessarily recommended), you’ll find the collection here. Graham is a Biblical literalist. No, really – he is really, really a literalist. Meaning (mostly) that he assumes Medieval musers’ (Dante, Pico etc.) interpretation. That doesn’t go very well with science, of course, but Graham is willing to bite any bullet that comes his way: “Scientists would have us all believe that the edge of the universe is billions of light years away […]. I submit to all those enthralled by man’s fabrications that the heavens are simply rolled out as a scroll just as the Bible states. I’ll even take it a step further and say that all we humans see in the night sky, as far as deep space is concerned, is only a wonderful holograph, an illusion if you will. Well, my theory is no more farfetched than that of the proponents of billions of years.” Except that intuition and incredulity aren’t really the arbiters of scientific truth. Furthermore “[S]cientists tell us it all occurred with a big bang. God was there in the beginning, where were the scientists?” That one will sure be a partypooper at any physics conference, I bet. I suppose it is redundant to mention what Graham thinks about evolution (but if you insist). His whole view of science is summed up here.

At least he has some charming views about those who disagree with him. It is supposedly watertight - since he speaks the words of God (SPAG), it follows that those who disagree with him speak the voice of Satan.

And of course there is the usual stuff: “the real landslide of the decay of our society began years ago when we allowed the Bible to be taken out of our public schools. Soon after that we had the legalization of abortion and the teaching the lie of evolution as a fact not as a theory, even to the exclusion of any other possible scenario for life to have occurred on earth. Then, more recently, we’ve seen the teaching in our public schools of the abomination of homosexuality as being a fully acceptable and normal lifestyle.”

Diagnosis: Completely insane, and the kind of figure bad parents use to scare their children – an excellent Halloween prop, really. It is hard to imagine that he has many followers, but you never know.