“‘Choose life’ is a ‘pro-choice’ message; it presumes it is ethically and legally legitimate to choose murder.

This is nonsense.

I do agree with him that we have as an ultimate goal the end of legal abortion and also that the Tim Tebow ad will probably be fairly ‘warm and fuzzy’ but it doesn’t follow in the slightest that it is implicitly a pro-choice assumption.

My wife and I have a story very similar to the one that Terry is denouncing.  He says,

“The ad will be warm and fuzzy; Mrs. Tebow will talk on camera about how her doctor advised her to abort her pregnancy because of health risks; she will say something like ‘I just knew I couldn’t do it; I was going to have this baby no matter what.’  She will refer to prayer or her faith.

It is the part where Mrs. Tebow says she “was going to have this baby no matter what” that is most similar to the situation with my wife and I.  We were told that our daughter had spina bifida and were given the ‘option’ to ‘terminate.’  We declined.  (Read more:  http://www.wechoselife.com).

If Mr. Terry is to be believed, we made the absolute wrong decision, here.  Since abortion was legal, there was no value to choosing life.  By choosing life and refusing to take part in a silent holocaust, we were, in fact, presuming that it is ethical and legitimate to choose murder.

This is absurd;  dare I say, it is stupid.

I said before that it is an ultimate goal that abortion on demand be outlawed.  However, there is something to be said for the notion that we could make the law unnecessary by persuading people to… choose life.  Obviously, that is not realistic:  nor is it realistic to suppose that if we outlaw abortion, abortions will end.

You see, we definitely need both.  We need to restore a respect for life in the law of the land but we also need to change hearts.  Mr. Randall seems to think that a strategy of changing hearts is an ethical compromise- which is nonsense- but I do wonder how he hopes to change the laws without first changing hearts.

Seriously.  Mr. Randall, you need to think about that.  How is it that you want to make abortion illegal without a population containing a critical mass of people who believe we should choose life- even if the government is willing to allow you to do otherwise?

It is head splitting to imagine that in Randall Terry’s mind all these people who chose life actually were endorsing a pro-choice position.  I wish I would have known that before.  Maybe at the ultrasound we just would have said, “Ah well.  We don’t want to legitimize the pro-choice perspective so I guess you just gotta kill her.”

Asinine.  Mr. Randall, think.

Apparently, such divisive matters should not be presented to us during the Superbowl… far better to focus on what unites us:  clever beer commercials and scantily clad women and the occasional wardrobe malfunction.

I think I know what is really going on, why they are so hostile.  I think it is because they understand that their agenda can only be furthered when it happens under the radar.  The worst thing in the world, from their perspective, is that the topic be out in the open.  Like the cockroach and termite, their only hope is that no one notices while they do their nasty work, for if someone did, out would come the spray.  And light is the medium by which they are spotted.

I was recently invited to be a columnist on a Christian news site called the CypressTimes.  One of my first articles was on this very topic.  Here is a snippet:

..it is just plain silly to suggest that a 30 second ad should- and can- deal with every trifling detail.  Megyn Kelly on FoxNews presented this and generally trounced Gloria Allred through intelligent questioning, revealing how desperate the pro-abortionists are in reacting to the Tebow ad.

My wife and I were also given the option to abort our daughter when we discovered that our daughter had spina bifida- a ‘choice’ that was similar to the one Tebow’s mother made.  (You can see our story here)  In my experience discussing this, it has been amazing how angry people have gotten when I present our story.  How dare we present the fact that we chose life?  How dare we impose our views on others?

The insanity is obvious:  the mere presentation of our views is not at all an imposition.  We are led to believe that the ‘pro-choice’ advocates really want people to make informed choices but judging from the hostility when the choice for life is presented, the only side that Planned Parenthood wants people to hear is their side;  the only choice they really honor and respect is the choice to abort.  People who choose life should sit down and shut up.

No one should misunderstand me here, thinking that I prefer PP themselves to sit down and shut up.  Quite the opposite.  I hope they keep talking.  Come into the light, my little crunchy friends.

Read the rest of my CypressTimes Column.

My jaw dropped when Holder and Obama began offering their justifications.  They clearly thought that they were being reassuring but they made it much worse.  For example, in response to the argument that going through the civilian courts… you know, giving the terrorists status under the Constitution of the United States… meant leaving open such possibilities that these terrorists could get parole or even declared innocent, it was replied, essentially, “Not to worry, there is no chance that a guilty verdict won’t be returned.”

Oh?  Then why have the trial at all?  If you can assure us of a guilty verdict before the trial itself how is this not actually a show trial?

There are any number of tweaks to the system that will have to be made in order to have a fair trial under the Constitution.  For example, how are we to provide the accused a fair jury of their peers?  Do we need to import people from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan to find men like the accused?  Also, wouldn’t a change of venue be in order?  If I was the defense attorney I’d ask for one, and since I wouldn’t expect anyone in America (excepting those who write for the Huffington Post, but again, they aren’t rabid Islamicists, so not exactly peers) to feel less than outrage over the attacks, I would ask for the trial to be moved to Europe, or Pakistan or failing this, back to Gitmo.

Now we note, in passing, that these men haven’t had their Miranda rights read to them.

Today I heard Obama arguing that we have had terrorists go through the criminal justice system before and bemoaning the ‘partisanship’ of those who have any objections.

If insisting that trials be free, fair, and impartial makes me partisan, then so be it.

In the race to be more civilized before the world by eschewing those horrid military tribunals, Obama seems hellbent on engaging in the same sort of ‘civilized’ fashion of the Soviets and any other tyrannical government putting on trials.  It is a disgrace and unAmerican.  Anyone who advocates for a show trial, even if they don’t give it that name, ought to be impeached.  A rose by any other name is still a rose.

I here leave aside all the concerns that can be raised about chain of evidence or the potential release of national security secrets concerning methodology, sources, etc, or the possible dropping of charges rather than have such a horror (or revise them weirdly, as in the case of Jose Padilla).

We have military tribunals for a reason.  They are tested by time, and the Supreme Court has said that they are certainly applicable in the case of these terrorists.

But there is something, apparently, that makes them abhorrent to Holder and Obama;  so much so, that they’d rather have a show trial.

Despicable.

[P]eople will instinctively dismiss the writings of a man that are a shade over 100 years old.  The truth, however, is that nothing he confronted then has actually gone away.  He confronted the materialistic view of Man in his own life, determining finally that Christianity offered the truest account.  He stood against the Darwinists, the eugenicists, the relativists, and the liberal theologians.  All these are still here and with us.  The only difference is that they have been re-packaged and re-presented.

Maybe I’ll have to subscribe to their magazine. 

]]> http://sntjohnny.com/front/media-mention-gilbert-magazine-chesterton-orthodoxy/772.html/feed 0 http://sntjohnny.com/front/pro-life-presentation-st-patrick-catholic-pro-life-speaker-sparta-wi/768.html http://sntjohnny.com/front/pro-life-presentation-st-patrick-catholic-pro-life-speaker-sparta-wi/768.html#comments Tue, 26 Jan 2010 16:34:49 +0000 Anthony http://sntjohnny.com/front/?p=768 I will be presenting at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Sparta, WI on Jan 31st, 2010.

Details:

Witness for Life
What: Pro Life March and Youth Rally
for grades 6 thru adults

When: Sunday, January 31

Time: 12:00 pm—5:00 pm (10:30 Mass at St. Pat‘s Church in Sparta for anyone who wants to attend and conclude with Rosary at 5:00 in the church)

Where: We will meet at St. Patrick‘s School Gym in Sparta, WI and pilgrimage to other churches and places in Sparta.

Cost: $5.00 per person

Special guest speaker Anthony Horvath
and others.

Praise and worship music by Traditional Division.

Food and refreshments .

In point of fact, these anti-knowledge criticisms really only began with the rise of the Fundamentalists and this in turn was spurred on by the rise of Darwinism.  Even the shallowest of research will reveal that Christians have been at the forefront of investigation, scholarship, and yes, even science.  (Dawkins answer to this:  “But if they had lived in our day, these Christians would have been atheists.”  What a chump)

The criticism has another angle, though, and it has to do with the relentless attack on the Bible as the ‘ancient writings of nomadic goat herders.’  Dan Barker would be a good example of an atheist presenting this attitude.  The basic idea here is that if the Bible was really written by God, then it should be amazing in its clarity and its insight would be, divinely, penetrating, and certainly it should at all points validate whatever science has claimed to have discovered, since God, being God, would of course know these things.  They would say, in short, that for a book supposedly inerrant and divinely inspired, it is a very human book.

Here is the brutal reality:  the Bible’s ‘human’ nature is precisely an argument in its favor.

By contrast, take two examples in history where a religion has taken aim at the human authorship of the Bible and sought to counter it by alleging that God himself has moved to deal with the problem personally, providing an authorized text.

In the first place, you have Islam, where we are told that Mohammed went off to be instructed personally by Allah through the angel Gabriel- an event unwitnessed by anyone else.  The information that Gabriel allegedly brought was then transmitted through a single man, Mohammed.

Secondly, you have Mormonism, where we are told that Joseph Smith was directed by the angel Moroni to the location of some golden tablets.  These, we are informed, were eventually witnessed by a small handful of others, but the translation and their ‘discovery’ was all transmitted through a single man, Joseph Smith.

How can you test these claims?  You can’t.  One doesn’t even have the ability to compare and contrast different accounts of the same event.  Likewise the texts themselves… Smith did Mohammed one better by at least allegedly producing some golden tablets, but of course they aren’t around any more to ascertain how accurate his translation was.

I call this an ‘epistemological bottleneck.’  This phenomena occurs when knowledge of any sort is funneled down through a single source.  This kind of thing happens all the time and is not inherently ‘bad’ but it is the kind of thing where, when important matters are afoot, you have to think about.   Alleged declarations from God would be such an example.

Note, however, that under the ‘new atheist’ point of view, verbatim transmissions of God’s word to ensure that there are no textual variants (ala Ehrman, etc) or corruptions of the manuscripts, etc, etc, are exactly what they would prefer.  However, seen as epistemological bottlenecks, Mormonism and Islam don’t seem to be all that superior, after all.

The nature and character of Christianity is completely different.  While the Bible does contain some instances of ‘bottlenecks’ we usually see that the more ‘extraordinary’ the claim, the more people are involved as witnesses.  Yes, we only have Abraham’s word that God came to him in a vision, but when Moses brought down the tablets from Mt. Sinai, the whole mountain was shaking and trembling and the hundreds of thousands of witnesses had only just seen the waters of the Sea of Reeds/Red Sea rolled back so they could escape on dry land.

Similarly, while Jesus did teach his disciples privately sometimes, he did much of it in public and his miracles, likewise, were usually in public, too.  He taught as one who had authority in the Sermon on the Mount, but on more than one occasion he fed all of thousands of his listeners at one time in their plain sight.  When he was resurrected, he did not only appear to the disciples, but to “500 at one time.”  (1 Cor 15)

Buffoons who go so far as to deny that Jesus even existed will often say that Jesus didn’t even do us the courtesy of leaving behind his own writings- as if this would have mattered to them!  It is often objected that what we know about Jesus comes to us primarily from those who knew him, and this is raised as a bad thing!  In fact, this is a good thing, as this way there were enough people familiar with what Jesus had actually said and done, if someone raised something spurious, the others would be knowledgeable enough to dispute and refute it.

You cannot read the New Testament without noticing that the disciples had no problem standing up to one another.  See Acts 15, and then compared and contrast Galatians 2:11-16 with 2 Peter 3:14-16.  We don’t see in the Gospels or in the early Church fathers any lingering concerns by any of the disciples about the factual content and accuracy of any of the other disciples.

Revealing Himself before humans and entrusting his message to them, and lots of them at the same time, speaks to an issue that I don’t think a lot of atheists have really thought through.  Just how does a transcendent and immanent entity reveal himself to people in a way that it is known that it is this entity and not an imposter (human or angelic)?

We know that merely revealing highly accurate scientific details or technology wouldn’t satisfy atheists:  here Dawkins has insisted that any such advanced technology would be seen as ‘divine’ by those who were not as developed;  in short, if God ever appeared and performed a demonstration, we’d be justified as believing it were highly sophisticated space aliens ala Sagan’s Contact as that it was God!

God’s solution to this dilemma is multi-faceted and I don’t mean to get into all of it here, but the fact is that the Bible is about as far away from being an epistemological bottleneck as one can get.  As the Bible is actually 66 books written by dozens of people over thousands of years, it is very hard to make the charge of ‘collusion’ stick.    These books are permeated with events that even highly evolved space aliens are not expected to be able to perform, whatever our science fiction authors suggest.  (ie, the feeding of the five thousand from a few loaves is as violent an overthrow of the law of conservation as we might hope for).

Christians, I am afraid, undermine this line of reasoning by constantly presenting the Bible as inerrant and inspired to unbelievers.   Our strongest arguments do not come from the Bible’s divine nature, but from its human nature, just as the incarnation of God in Jesus is God’s validation that it is not unreasonable, in the final analysis, for men to ask and receive for God’s Revelation in such a form as to be able to see it and touch it (1 John 1).  The Bible in the form we have is a continuation of God’s choice to ‘incarnate’ and so validate the human need for a solid epistemological basis for belief, ie, a reasonable faith.

Probably the highest representation of this same theme is God’s insistence to use messy humanity- in the form of the Church- to extend his kingdom.

Everything about Christianity is messy, and that is its strength.

I have discussed the malthusian nature of abortion proponents at length on this blog so I won’t rehash it.  Essentially the point is this:  if you really believe that over population is the worst crisis facing the planet, then the mass destruction of tens of thousands of people must be, ultimately, something to celebrate.

For the person bobbing along in the waves of life, such an assessment will be seen as outrageous and insensitive.   Still, the assessment is true.  In the article I linked to begin with, there is this little quote:

“There are reports of women giving birth on the side of the road as hospitals and houses have been demolished,” said Ms. Stacey, noting also that Planned Parenthood is encouraging donations to Americans for UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, which is also bringing assistance to pregnant women in Haiti.

“The donations (Planned Parenthood is promoting) will help UNFPA provide emergency reproductive health kits,” said Ms. Stacey. “These kits could essentially function as OB wards as they contain essential drugs, equipment and supplies to provide lifesaving services to pregnant women.”

Now, an ‘emergency reproductive health kit’ is obviously a euphemism for an on-the-run abortion kit, right?  Whether or not they really have the capability to ‘provide lifesaving services’ or only have that capability ‘when the life of the mother’ is at risk, I don’t know.  What I’d really like to point out that PP is getting these kits from UNFPA- the United Nations Population  Fund.

This is an organization that is pretty straight forward in its belief that the world is in big, big trouble because of there being so many people.   Moreover, it has bought into the notion that the fate of the earth itself is at stake if action is not taken to reduce the number of people on the planet.   The UNFPA actively promotes population control- that is to say, the abortion of as many people as possible- as the solution to ‘climate change.’

PP and the UNFPA ostensibly appear to want to help people but according to their logic the best way to help people is to end people, the more the better, and as soon as possible.  They would never say that because they are not stupid, but others can’t help stating some obvious logical conclusions.  I’ve documented a number on this blog but for a quick and dirty example, consider Diane Francis who wrote in Canada’s national paper that it was time to impose on the world a global one child policy akin to what we see in China- to save the planet, of course.

These people are sick.  Their idea for sparing people pain and suffering is to prevent them from coming into existence in the first place.  They set themselves up as gods who in their majesty know who needs to live and die.  I don’t dare assert that the majority of them don’t really want to help people- but this is because they lack Diane Francis’s (and Jonathan Porritt’s, etc) courage to follow their own logic and urge as the Final Solution the elimination of those who need help.

So what?  They are sick.  Who cares?  Well, while it probably turns the stomach of the average American to think that what Haiti really needs now is abortion technology and won’t pay a dime to support Planned Parenthood’s operations, in fact the average American is already responsible for doing just that:  they elected Barack Obama, who, in one of his first acts as new president, restored United States funding of the UNFPA.  Moreover, our tax dollars support Planned Parenthood.

It is a bizarre irony that generous Americans are working so hard to help the people of Haiti and suffering people all over the globe while at the same time the American government is working hard to fund organizations that believe that it is better for us all if there were fewer of these people to begin with.

It’s time to wake up and smell the coffee.  These groups are not fringe and they are not poorly funded.  Their advocates publish the logical conclusions of their ideas right in broad daylight.  It is clear that we live again in 1930… but in which country, I don’t know… It is time to stop being a ’splendid dupe.’

Can it really be said, though, that all taxation represents a reduction in freedom? The answer to this must be yes, even if we recognize that the effect on freedom might be slight in some cases. To illustrate, imagine a small income tax of a dollar. It might be an easy matter to get by without that dollar, but it is still one more dollar that you cannot spend according to your own priorities. Consider what the impact is if instead the tax is 25 percent of your income!

We also have to ask about those who are doing the taxing. They obviously believe they have the right to take your resources from you. They must believe that they can obtain some good that you, and perhaps few others, would have subsidized if left to your own devices. They must believe that they know how much they can fairly extract from you. They must believe that they have the right, if you protest, to incarcerate you and take your possessions by force if need be. In sum, they are almost indistinguishable from tyrants.

Christians should not support tyrants or adopt their methods and so become tyrants ourselves. If there is a cause we wish to support, we ought to do so from our own resources out of the free expression of our own hearts (2 Corinthians 8).

Read the rest of the article.

I would like to give free-thinking objective and even handed and mentally superior atheistic friends an opportunity to exhibit integrity by highlighting the three examples (plus a bonus one) that come to mind and calling upon the atheists and their defenders to own up to these refutations.  If I had to make a prediction, it would be that they will exhibit all that they renounce in ‘religious fundamentalism’ and do essentially as Dan Rather did in Rathergate, standing by the story after the facts supporting it have been withdrawn.

1.  Richard Dawkins. Not long after Dawkins released his Delusion, I tracked down a quote that he employed to further his argument that Christianity was against knowledge and stifled curiosity.   The quote was from Augustine’s Confessions but the 45ish word quote was actually spliced selectively out of a longer section 750ish words in length.   See my evidence.

Dawkins’s crime here was not the fabrication but the wholesale adoption of the quote without checking it himself.  One can see why he wouldn’t, since it played so well into his conceptions.   To this day, people are running around the Internet citing this passage and thumping their chest about how anti-knowledge Christians are.  To their credit on account of my research, some atheists have backed off.  Others have pushed forward, convinced that the ‘underlying story’ is nonetheless true.

I hereby call upon Richard Dawkins to own up to this fabrication and in turn call upon his free thinking lackeys (aka, the ‘Brights’) to abandon this piece of fiction.

2.  Richard Carrier. About two years ago Antony Flew released his book explaining why he was no longer an atheist.  Richard aka “The Bloodhound” Carrier sent Flew a questionnaire to fill out and the net result was his accusation that Flew’s book was actually written by Christian apologists taking advantage of an old man to put words in his mouth.  The only problem with this is that yours truly had been in correspondence with Dr. Flew even before I knew there was a book coming out and in those letters Dr. Flew recounted for me various things that he believed.  Many of these showed up in his book.  In short, I have in my possession Dr. Flew’s handwritten letters that show numerous correspondences to the book.

This is prima facie evidence that the book substantially reflects the actual views of Dr. Flew.  I displayed this in a fairly long treatment here but I suggest you look at Richard Carrier’s article before you look at mine so that you can enjoy mine properly.

As far as I know, to this day, Carrier- who has been informed of my evidence (I informed him) – has not withdrawn his argument or even attempted to rebut it.  I am aware of a curt dismissal and no more.  In the meantime he’s continued on his merry way bashing the credibility of Flew’s book.

Richard Carrier:  man up.  Admit that you were wrong on this particular point.

3.  Dan Barker. Good ol’ Dan and his ‘Easter Challenge.’  You know this one:  The Bible isn’t true because you can’t harmonize the Resurrection accounts… in his rebuttal to a book attempting to do what Barker says is impossible, he makes the statement that Matthew 28:1-8 must be taken as a “discrete, unbreakable element” (because Barker says so).   Barker’s argument is that in these passages the disciples are instructed to immediately go to Galilee where Jesus will appear to them for the first time, but in contrast to the other Gospels, Jesus appears to the disciples immediately that day and the days right after that.

In my post, however, I point out the very elementary observation that Galilee was some 80 miles from Jerusalem and the disciples probably (I could be wrong) did not own a car.  As such, they’d have to do it on foot or at best on horse.  In sum, there is no way anybody knowledgeable about Palestinean geography (as we would imagine the disciples to be) to expect to arrive in Galilee that day or even the very next.

However, I am open to refutation on this point.  Thus, I reiterate my challenge to Dan Barker right now:  Dan, you live about the same distance from me as Jerusalem was from Galilee.  You have the benefits of good roads and well policed high ways.  Therefore, if you can set out on foot and arrive in my home area within two days, I shall withdraw my argument.  Also, I will treat you to dinner.

If however you fail to achieve this small thing, I call on you to revise your argument concerning Matthew’s use of time.  If you refuse to even make the attempt, I call upon you to cease employing this argument until you do.

Austin Cline. I must give Mr. Cline at least some credit.  In his post on Pontius Pilate at About Atheism, he asserts:  “Pontius Pilate was prefect (not procurator, as some sources say)” but that is not what he originally wrote.  What he originally wrote, which is still available in the Google intro to the page, was:  “Pontius Pilate was prefect (not procurator, as the gospels say)”.  This change was prompted by yours truly contacting Mr. Cline to inform him that the gospels say no such thing.  Not long after, Mr. Cline changed his site to reflect reality.

This might seem like a refreshing breath of integrity until I tell you that when I informed Mr. Cline, very cordially, of this fact, he responded by being a big fat jerk.  He persisted in this and I don’t know what prompted him to examine my contention.  Now, the change has been made, but I note that I never received any kind of acknowledgment (or apology) and that (more importantly) Mr. Cline refused to give the Gospels their due in having their facts right all along.  That would have been a nice addition to his Pontius Pilate entry, don’t you think?  But no, he simply cuts out his accusation and replaces it with unspecified ’sources.’

I expect nothing of Mr. Cline here.  I add this to cap off the general lesson that I would like to draw here, as the four names I have listed here are prominent atheistic spokespersons:  atheists are not the vanguards of reason that they would like us to believe they are;  they make mistakes just like everyone else, and no one should think that they are above being too proud to admit it when they are.  These examples I have given are minor in the grand scheme of things but I submit that they illustrate why no one should ever defer thinking to anyone else, regardless of how smart they insist they are, how many degrees they have, how high their IQ is, or even if they currently represent the consensus position on a topic, be it evolution, global warming, climate change, etc, etc, etc, etc.

The intellectual elite which I have called out in this post answer to a higher standard and I hope that this post will elicit some acknowledgment that their arguments are not always as rock solid as they suggest.  I predict quite the opposite, so again:  remember in your skepticism to be skeptical too of the skeptics.

Haiti made a deal with the devil and it is reaping the consequences?  Ok, while I’d like a little more information about this so called ‘deal’ made 200 years ago, I’ve got to say that this isn’t the kind of thing you just randomly say.  You’re not helping anything and I doubt you helped anyone.  Indeed, there is no doubt in my mind that you just made evangelism and apologetics much more difficult.  Thanks for that.  Really appreciate it.

Carry on.

Atheists do not have “more” say than religious people, we just don’t want government (public-owned) resources to be used to promote religion. Religious people already have tax-free churches; if you want statues and monuments, you can put them there. No one is demanding anyone “hide” their religious belongings – when you all put up those 10 commandments signs in your yards, did anyone complain? No, that’s your property. Put up whatever you want there. But government property is my property, so keep your backward magic superstition off my lawn.  [Emphasis in the original newspaper]

This logic, very common among evangelical atheists of the Dan Barker/Freedom from Religion type, is flawed at so many levels, paragraphs could be devoted to refuting each phrase.  For tonight, I’ll just settle on making the simple observation that government property, public land, is not only Kevin Hundt’s.  It is also mine.

Perhaps a refresher in the Constitution is in order:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Atheists make much of the establishment clause but apparently don’t read the rest of the amendment.  That, or they really think that my right to freely express my religion ends on public property.  Perhaps, too, we have freedom of speech- but only on private property… it ceases once we step onto ‘public land’ (which is Kevin’s property, actually).  Maybe our right to peaceably assemble is limited only to private party.  And perhaps we can only petition the Government on nonGovernmental property?

Of course, that is all absurd.  Interesting how atheists would never extend their logic to the rest of the 1st amendment, insisting that those rights can’t be exercised on Kevin’s property.  Somehow, only the part that explicitly says that the free exercise of religion shall not be prohibited is… prohibited:  on Kevin’s land.

It’s a darn shame that we can’t just hang such loosey-goosey logic on the necks of atheists, who after all can’t be blamed for their biased reading.  A century of forgetfulness by the courts that the 1st amendment begins with “Congress shall make no law…”

It’s amazing what has been allowed to pass as Congress making laws- even if its little city halls that simply want to display statues.  But I suppose a century of viewing the Constitution as a ‘living document’ tends to have the effect that the actual words of the thing don’t really matter.

But I digress.

Apart from the discussion linked above, this morning I was reminded of another element of the modern day Santa Claus phenom I don’t like.

We celebrated Christmas today as a family because we were traveling over the holiday.  In the morning, my oldest- whom I just said believes in Santa despite our efforts- sized up the presents and counted the ones ‘from Santa.’  Some are listed as being from Santa just for his sake.

He didn’t spot any for one of his brothers and announced to the brother, “You must be on Santa’s naughty list because you don’t have any presents from him.”  I confronted him immediately on this and then told his brother (who was beginning to tear up) that mommy and daddy were Santa Claus but, “Shhhhh, your brother doesn’t know that yet.”  (This was said in the hearing of the eldest.)

While I like the idea of celebrating God’s gift to humanity by giving gifts to each other, the Santa Claus mythology has a twist that I just don’t appreciate:  On Christmas we celebrate God’s free gift to a very naughty humanity that did nothing to deserve it and can do nothing to cause God to withhold it, but Santa Claus only gives his gifts to those who are not on his ‘naughty list.’

This is devilish twist of God’s grace that just bothers me and one more reason why we don’t tell our kids that Santa Claus is ‘real.’  Granted, this devilish twist doesn’t have to be there… parents could counter act it.  I’m not here judging anyone, I’m just making an observation.

For years and years I was befuddled by the Parable of the Shrewd Manager (Luke 16).  It is too long to quote here.  The essence is that the master fires his manager who then reasons to himself, “What shall I do now?  My master is taking away my job.  I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg- I know what I’ll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.”

The manager then goes to his master’s debtors while still in his master’s service, sits down with them, and cuts their debt in half.  In short, the manager is stealing from the master in order to win favor with his master’s debtors.

This is all well and good until the real shock comes in verse 8:  “The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.”

I wasn’t expecting that.

I have heard various interpretations of this passage attempting to show that in fact Jesus was not speaking favorably about the dishonest manager but this seems to fly in the face of the text.

Read the full entry

“I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report,” Jones writes. “Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

In another, Jones and Mann discuss how they can pressure an academic journal not to accept the work of climate skeptics with whom they disagree. “Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal,” Mann writes.

“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor,” Jones replies.

From US Congressional Committee Report:  INTOLERANCE AND THE POLITICIZATION OF SCIENCE AT THE SMITHSONIAN (full report):

In a series of emails on August 30, Dr. Ferrari and Dr. Sues discussed the Smithsonian’s procedures for hiring and firing a Research Associate and how Dr. Sternberg was approved for his RA position. Sues lamented that “The Sternberg situation could not have been prevented by senior management because his CV looks credible and does not reveal his interactions with the creationist movement.”44 Dr. Sues seemed to be suggesting that if Sternberg’s supposed interactions with the “creationist movement” were known, he would not have been approved as an RA, and the “situation” would have been prevented.

Dr. Ferrari’s comments also suggested a very real bias in the selection process: “I wonder, however, if we might consider a more open process of vetting nominees? For example, while a post doc here Sternberg was listed in an advertisement in the NY Times as a scientist at the Smithsonian Institution who did not believe in evolution. I saw that page and certainly would have spoken up had I known he was a prospective research associate.”45 Ferrari seemed to be suggesting that questioning evolution would disqualify a candidate for a position.

Similarly, in an email on September 9, Dr. Sues blamed the scientist who nominated Sternberg as a Research Associate for not adequately investigating his background. “Sternberg is a well-established figure in anti-evolution circles, and a simple Google search would have exposed these connections.”46 The clear implication was that had a background check been conducted on Sternberg’s non-governmental activities, he would have been barred from being a Research Associate.

Given the attitudes expressed in these emails, scientists who are known to be skeptical of Darwinian theory, whatever their qualifications or research record, cannot expect to receive equal treatment or consideration by NMNH officials. [Emphasis theirs]

For a little background, read this paragraph from the executive summary:

In January 2005, an opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal first raised public awareness about disturbing allegations that officials at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) had retaliated against museum Research Associate (RA) Richard Sternberg because he allowed publication of an article favoring the theory of intelligent design in a biology journal.1 A well-published evolutionary biologist with two doctorates in biology, Dr. Sternberg claimed that after publication of the article, his colleagues and supervisors at the NMNH subjected him to harassment and discrimination in an effort to force him out as a Research Associate. [emphasis mine]

In debates about the merits of evolutionary theory it is customary to hear snide dismissals that opposing viewpoints are not published in ‘reputable’ ‘peer-reviewed’ journals.  The congressional inquiry exposes what skeptics of evolution have known for a long time:  there is systematic persecution of those who do not toe the evolutionary party line.  Of course there won’t be peer-reviewed journal articles when it is dangerous to one’s professional career to submit them or approve them.  Of course.

Contrary to allegations that acceptance of global warming is like acceptance creationism, the truth is exactly the opposite.  As the quotes regarding Climategate show, in fact, this is the modern day ’scientific’ method in action.

The Climategate emails shouldn’t arouse skepticism only about global warming, but anywhere we see the same kind of tactics.  The Sternberg situation is just one example.  I offer it here chiefly because the revelations come by email exchanges, concern a journal entry, and are thoroughly investigated and documented by no less an authority than the Congress of the United States.  But there are many other examples.  If you believe otherwise, you’ll believe anything.

And that, of course, is the problem.