One More Place to Dispel the "Obama is the AntiChrist" Emails

I guess I'm just not on the proper right-wing nutjob email lists because for some reason, this "Obama is the anti-Christ ohmygod really it's right there in Revelations!" email didn't get to me until just today.

If you haven't seen it--probably because you don't run in circles where people's IQs are lower than the number of tires on their front lawns--allow me:

According to The Book of Revelations [sic] the anti-Christ is:
The anti-Christ will be a man, in his 40's, of MUSLIM descent,
who will deceive the nations with persuasive language, and have a
MASSIVE Christ-like appeal....the prophecy says that people will
flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace, and
when he is in power, will destroy everything ..

Is it OBAMA??

So as requested by Obama himself, I'm going to Fight the Smears and graciously permit truth to get in the way of a good rumor.

1. Obama's not Muslim. If we've learned one thing from this Reverend Wright debacle it's that Obama GOES TO CHURCH.

2. The book in the bible is called Revelation. The book of revelations sounds like something from Dr Phil.

3. The non-partisan Politifact does a great job of having religious scholars take the email on point by point. They all point out that the word anti-Christ doesn't appear at all in the book of Revelation, there's no mention anywhere of a man in his forties, and no mention of the word Muslim.

4. Don't believe Politifact? Snopes reprints the entire chapter. (They're staying real busy over there these days by the way, already tackling 18 false Obama internet rumors and counting.)

5. My friend Patrick O'Connor, a brilliant editorial cartoonist, forwarded me his paper's resident biblical expert's point "Revelation preceded Islam by a good 600-700 years." Hm.

6. If there is any anti-Christ at all, it's easily George Bush. Some would argue it's Dick Cheney, but I challenge you to name three people who find him appealing, Mrs. Cheney included.

Final score:
Truth: 1, Ignorant Asshats: 0

You know, sometimes I do have second thoughts on this whole "everyone has a right to vote" policy of ours. 

Liz Gumbinner can be found blogging at Mom101 and really really loves the word "asshats."

Comments

[jaelithe]

Heh. My first very thought when I saw this, before I even read your whole post was, "But, but, the Christian Bible was written centuries before the emergence of Islam! The word Muslim doesn't even appear in the Christian Bible!"

So I'm glad your friend had you mention it . . . Not that the people who will believe this email are even likely to know that Islam is a post-Christian religion . . .

So, for those folks: I HAVE seen some pretty persuasive arguments on the internet that George W. Bush is the Anti-Christ. They can't BOTH be the Anti-Christ, can they?

[cynematic]

And there's still a percentage of Americans today who believe the sun revolves around the earth...putting them in a pre-Copernican 15th century A.D. universe. Sigh.

People, information and facts are your friends! Critical thinking is good! Doublecheck the $100 Nieman Marcus cookie recipe (and much else) at Snopes.com before forwarding!

[Glennia]

Islam was not founded until 600 years after the death of Christ, so there would not be a word for it in Revelation because the religion did not exist. Asshats indeed.

[debbie]

srsly, Liz, did you see the slate thing? HI-larious.

http://www.slate.com/id/2193798/

and thanks for this post. ya nailed it.

[Liz]

I hadn't seen it Debbie - fabulous! I love the idea that his skin is the color of AMERICAN SOIL.

[John J.]

No, John (the author of Revelation) just was so psychic that he knew about Islam in 100-150 AD even though Mohammad wouldn't form it until 622 AD. Just because it wasn't formed yet doesn't mean a psychic couldn't know about it ;).

What I really wonder is, did John predict how out of context and misquoted he would be?

[Michelle M]

I can't even believe that this is a frakkin' issue. How dumb does one have to be to even ponder this idea? It really makes me lose faith in humanity. I guess smart people are far and few between.

[Lawyer Mama]

Yep, this is exactly why our founding fathers decided we needed a representative form of government rather than a strict democracy! (-;

[Daisy]

It scares me more than a little that people actually base their votes on garbage like this. I keep hoping that if a voter is low-functioning enough to believe this, maybe he/she can't read a map to the polls, either.

[Jess]

Hilarious. One time my mom (concerned that my younger sister was reading them) showed me an forwarded email that describled J.K. Rowling as the antiChrist and the HP books as, "the dark side of evil." I laughed until I wet my pants (because, what, you mean as opposed to the light & fluffy side of evil?) and then gently pointed out that it was an Onion article.... and the tried to explain The Onion. Sigh, am I the only Christian with a sense of irony?