An Atheist Looks at the Neo-Atheists

Theodore Dalrymple, an atheist, critiques the neo-atheists in an essay titled, 'What the New Atheists Don’t See', 'To regret religion is to regret Western civilization' in City Journal.

[...]The philosophers Daniel Dennett, A. C. Grayling, Michel Onfray, and Sam Harris, biologist Richard Dawkins, and journalist and critic Christopher Hitchens have all written books roundly condemning religion and its works.[...]

[...]The thinness of the new atheism is evident in its approach to our civilization, which until recently was religious to its core. To regret religion is, in fact, to regret our civilization and its monuments, its achievements, and its legacy. And in my own view, the absence of religious faith, provided that such faith is not murderously intolerant, can have a deleterious effect upon human character and personality. If you empty the world of purpose, make it one of brute fact alone, you empty it (for many people, at any rate) of reasons for gratitude, and a sense of gratitude is necessary for both happiness and decency. For what can soon, and all too easily, replace gratitude is a sense of entitlement. Without gratitude, it is hard to appreciate, or be satisfied with, what you have: and life will become an existential shopping spree that no product satisfies.[...]

[...]Harris tells us, for example, that “we must find our way to a time when faith, without evidence, disgraces anyone who would claim it. Given the present state of the world, there appears to be no other future worth wanting.”[...]

It becomes even more sinister when considered in conjunction with the following sentences, quite possibly the most disgraceful that I have read in a book by a man posing as a rationalist: “The link between belief and behavior raises the stakes considerably. Some propositions are so dangerous that it may be ethical to kill people for believing them. This may seem an extraordinary claim, but it merely enunciates an ordinary fact about the world in which we live.”[...]

For those with no vision for eternity it used to be, 'Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.' 'Christians, stop shoving your 'gospel' down our throats.'

Now, however, it is increasingly likely to be, 'Eat, drink, and don't allow anyone to be merry outside of the approved parameters or tomorrow they'll die.' 'Citizens, we'll judicially legislate our gospel throughout your lives.'

The wicked plots against the righteous and gnashes his teeth at him, but the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he sees that his day is coming. Psalm 37:12,13 ESV

Am I My Brother's Keeper?

"Cain spoke to Abel his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. Then the LORD said to Cain, "Where is Abel your brother?" He said, "I do not know; am I my brother's keeper?'"

Cain's question is most often interpreted to be a selfish denial of his responsibility to be his brother's keeper. To the contrary, however, Cain had actually presumed to be his brother's keeper. He considered Abel's life to be under his authority, to be given or taken at his pleasure. Cain had taken and swallowed the bait of temptation just as his mother, Eve, had done when she chose to act upon the claim, 'You will be be like God.'

In more modern times, the seductive lure of being like God changes only in outward rhetoric. It nonetheless remains as Solomon stated so long ago, "There is nothing new under the sun."

One 'academic scribbler from a few years back' causing wannabe 'madmen in authority to distill their frenzy' is Julian Huxley. In his essay, 'Transhumanism' published in New Bottles for New Wine in 1957, Huxley purported to be like God, albeit in more sophisticated, yet nevertheless thinly veiled terms:

As a result of a thousand million years of evolution, the universe is becoming conscious of itself, able to understand something of its past history and its possible future. This cosmic self-awareness is being realized in one tiny fragment of the universe-- in a few of us human beings.[italics mine][...]

It is as if man had been suddenly appointed managing director of the biggest business of all, the business of evolution-- appointed without being asked if he wanted it, and without proper warning and preparation. What is more, he can't refuse the job. Whether he wants to or not, whether he is conscious of what he is doing or not, he is in point of fact determining the future direction of evolution on this earth. That is his inescapable destiny, and the sooner he realizes it and starts believing in it, the better for all concerned.

What the job really boils down to is this-- the fullest realization of man's possibilities, whether by the individual, by the community, or by the species in its processional adventure along the corridors of time.[...]

The world's unrest is largely due to this new belief... The unrest will produce some unpleasant consequences before it is dissipated; but it is in essence a beneficent unrest, a dynamic force which will not be stilled until it has laid the physiological foundations of human destiny.[italics mine][...]

We are already justified in the conviction that human life as we know it in history is a wretched makeshift, rooted in ignorance; and that it could be transcended by a state of existence based on the illumination of knowledge and comprehension,[...]

We shall start from new premises. For instance, that beauty (something to enjoy and something to be proud of) is indispensable, and therefore that ugly or depressing towns are immoral; that quality of people not mere quantity, is what we must aim at, and therefore that a concerted policy is required to prevent the present flood of population-increase from wrecking all our hopes for a better world;[...]

It is only a small wonder that Progressive politicians are distilling their frenzy from this academic scribbler's voice in the air. It has always been seductive to view yourself as God, not only over your own life, but also over the lives of others. It is certain, they say, that we are our brother's keeper.

The intended answer to Cain's question is, "No, I am my brother's brother. LORD, you are my brother's keeper, as well as mine."

Working to Fix Social Security

Social Security- George Bush, Paul Ryan, and Lance Burri just don't get it. They have been sucked into the vortex of the great misconception swirling throughout the present political scene. Like them, most think that there presently exists no politically feasible fix to the fast approaching Social Security collapse.

Although President Bush proposed a solution, it was swept from the table with scorn and derision. Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan's plan never even saw the light of day as it was ripped from the womb and thrown into a D.C. dumpster. Few others even dare speak of the 'third rail' (other than to criticize the present administration) so no other serious plans are even being discussed. This totally misses the reality, however, that this national economic crisis is already well on the way to being solved. There are just a few of the small preparatory steps to be laid and/or finished in order to complete the successful Progressive fix of Social Security.

The first stepping stone in a Social Security fix has already been laid and is nearly finished. This is the rock of the public/government educational system. It's importance is not only prescribing particular accepted curricula, but also proscribing that which may not be taught or even broached for the purpose of contrasting ideas. Its inculcation stretches from pre-kindergarten on through Ph.D. programs throughout the system.

The next step is actually composed of a mosaic that incorporates numerous smaller stones to form a single step. It is made up of individual tiles such as global warming/climate change, diversity, immigration issues, multiculturalism, imperialistic foreign policy history, political correctness, poverty, racism; all the evils of capitalism. To be an American is to be guilty; guilty not only for one's own selfish missteps, but also for those of all other Americans, especially those long dead.

One major issue of the upcoming 2008 election that will form the final stepping stone toward the Progressive fix of Social Security is government run health care. The universally proven high cost and limited efficacy of similar programs in other nations will prove invaluable tools in fixing Social Security in ours.

With all these stones in place, the ancient First Table will have been totally bypassed; the Second Table will be written on recycled paper in pencil with a large eraser on standby. The path to saving Social Security will be successfully completed.

In the near future, the 'Baby Boomers' will be the majority of recipients of Social Security. For each recipient there will only three or four taxpayers to support them. Economic pressure, both personal and national will be great. The guilt-trip laid upon the shoulders of the elderly would even make a 'Jewish Mother' blush. Already weakened by decades laden with the guilt of having live a life of greed, imperialism, racism, and planet-destruction, these senior parasites will finally succumb under the further burden cast by accusations of selfishly spending their children's inheritance through over usage of medical facility space and equipment, wasting technical expertise and staff hours, and causing skyrocketing costs. They are not even keeping up with their carbon credit payments for their planetary sins. Legislated euthanasia will ease that pressure. The elderly will be humanely provided a painless death with dignity.

A good death. A death with dignity. Every senior a wanted senior. It's for the children. It will help save the planet. Who would be so callously selfish as to protest against that?

When Man's path circumvents the First Table- The commandments that state 'I am the Lord your God' to 'You shall have no other gods before me' to 'You shall not bow down to them or serve them' to 'Honor your father and mother'- The Second Table's commands- 'You shall not murder, commit adultery, steal, lie, covet'- devolve into moralisms. Moralistic law not derived from absolutes are easily moldable to keep up with the enlightened, pragmatic 'scientific' fads of the times. Forced euthanasia could soon become as common and acceptable as present day abortions. Social Security will be saved.

Without the First Table, Man's actual guilt before God devolves into an impotent angst. To assuage these feelings, modern American Man is rendered incapable of seeking removal of them according to God's ordained plan, but chooses to seek salvation elsewhere. In our case the saviors become those more highly educated, those purported to be scientific experts, and government officials. Man becomes easily manipulated and directed, even made to feel more guilty, becoming sheep being led to slaughter. It is not difficult to see how closely 'The Jewish Problem' and 'The Social Security Problem' have similar solutions.


Grandpa shipped out to open sea as a sacrifice for the children. (An old dignified Eskimo custom) He will also provide a last supper for the polar bears that he helped to doom.

Madmen in authority,
Who hear voices in the air,
Are distilling their frenzy
From some academic scribbler of a few years back.
- Adapted from a quote by John Maynard Keynes
(Ironically, both a madman in authority and an academic scribbler of a few years back.)

Our Loss

DR. D. JAMES KENNEDY DIES:
FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA., (September 5,2007) — Founder and Senior Pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church Succumbs to Complications from Cardiac Arrest

Dr. D. James Kennedy, founder and senior pastor for 48 years of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church (CRPC) in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., passed away peacefully in his sleep at approximately 2:15 a.m. at his home with his wife and daughter by his bedside, following complications from a cardiac event last December. He was 76.

“Now, I know that someday I am going to come to what some people will say is the end of this life. They will probably put me in a box and roll me right down here in front of the church, and some people will gather around, and a few people will cry. But I have told them not to do that because I don’t want them to cry. I want them to begin the service with the Doxology and end with the Hallelujah chorus, because I am not going to be there, and I am not going to be dead. I will be more alive than I have ever been in my life, and I will be looking down upon you poor people who are still in the land of dying and have not yet joined me in the land of the living. And I will be alive forevermore, in greater health and vitality and joy than ever, ever, I or anyone has known before.”-D. James Kennedy, Ph.D.

Brother, you will be missed... but, only for a while.

To the Shores of Tripoli

Quickly scan the archives of your memory and list the top ten reasons that you have heard for the Islamist jihad against our nation, freedom, and way of life. Our friendship with Israel, imperialist economic oppression, lust for oil, George W. Bush, cartoons, yada, yada, yada?

According to Gerard W. Gawalt, the manuscript specialist for early American history in the Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Muslim leaders must have foreseen these reasons long before they ever took place. In Gawalt's research he records the circumstances during the first days of American independence:

After the United States won its independence in the treaty of 1783, it had to protect its own commerce against dangers such as the Barbary pirates. As early as 1784 Congress followed the tradition of the European shipping powers and appropriated $80,000 as tribute to the Barbary states, directing its ministers in Europe, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, to begin negotiations with them. Trouble began the next year, in July 1785, when Algerians captured two American ships and the dey of Algiers held their crews of twenty-one people for a ransom of nearly $60,000.

Paying the ransom would only lead to further demands, Jefferson argued in letters to future presidents John Adams, then America's minister to Great Britain, and James Monroe, then a member of Congress. As Jefferson wrote to Adams in a July 11, 1786, letter, "I acknolege [sic] I very early thought it would be best to effect a peace thro' the medium of war." Paying tribute will merely invite more demands, and even if a coalition proves workable, the only solution is a strong navy that can reach the pirates, Jefferson argued in an August 18, 1786, letter to James Monroe: "The states must see the rod; perhaps it must be felt by some one of them. . . . Every national citizen must wish to see an effective instrument of coercion, and should fear to see it on any other element than the water. A naval force can never endanger our liberties, nor occasion bloodshed; a land force would do both." "From what I learn from the temper of my countrymen and their tenaciousness of their money," Jefferson added in a December 26, 1786, letter to the president of Yale College, Ezra Stiles, "it will be more easy to raise ships and men to fight these pirates into reason, than money to bribe them." [...]

As he declared in his first annual message to Congress: "To this state of general peace with which we have been blessed, one only exception exists. Tripoli, the least considerable of the Barbary States, had come forward with demands unfounded either in right or in compact, and had permitted itself to denounce war, on our failure to comply before a given day. The style of the demand admitted but one answer. I sent a small squadron of frigates into the Mediterranean. . . ."

The American show of force quickly awed Tunis and Algiers into breaking their alliance with Tripoli. The humiliating loss of the frigate Philadelphia and the capture of her captain and crew in Tripoli in 1803, criticism from his political opponents, and even opposition within his own cabinet did not deter Jefferson from his chosen course during four years of war. The aggressive action of Commodore Edward Preble (1803-4) forced Morocco out of the fight and his five bombardments of Tripoli restored some order to the Mediterranean. However, it was not until 1805, when an American fleet under Commodore John Rogers and a land force raised by an American naval agent to the Barbary powers, Captain William Eaton, threatened to capture Tripoli and install the brother of Tripoli's pasha on the throne, that a treaty brought an end to the hostilities. [...]

In fact, it was not until the second war with Algiers, in 1815, that naval victories by Commodores William Bainbridge and Stephen Decatur led to treaties ending all tribute payments by the United States.(emphasis mine)

Thomas Jefferson apparently popularized the 'carry a big stick' policy long before Theodore Roosevelt. He was dissatisfied with the first treaty and its tribute requirement so he fought again to delete the tribute clause.

Today's 'enlightened' reasoning behind Islamist militant action against the United States doesn't really apply to the larger historical picture of their terroristic activities.

There is one reason that many of you may have never heard before.

According to a Muslim apologetic site, Ishmael:

The people of Ishmael are clearly the Arabs (through biological descent), and all Muslims through theological descent. No knowledgeable non-Muslim would dispute that.

"And the angel of the LORD said to her [Hagar], "Behold, you are pregnant and shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael, because the LORD has listened to your affliction. He shall be a wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone's hand against him, and he shall dwell over against all his kinsman." (Genesis 16:11-12, ESV)

The festering of the worst of this biological and theological heritage, coupled with modern technology has made today's Barbary Pirates an extreme danger to anyone within their sights. Jefferson reasoned that a second war was necessary as does President Bush. In this he has my full support, only I would request that he maximize the abilities of our armed forces and not attempt to carry a smaller, more popular stick.

Remember Lot's Wife, but Don't Forget About Job's or Adam's

Paul Edwards writes in an article titled 'Jerry Falwell was a Theophobe' in Townhall.com:

Rev. Dr. Mel White... After working with Dr. Falwell on his autobiography Mr. White announced to his family that he was gay. He soon left his wife for his male lover. He had “come out.” He now leads a pro-homosexual, anti-evangelical activist group of college kids who purport to be both Christian and homosexual...

Mel blames Dr. Falwell’s message in part for his own lifelong battle to overcome same-sex attraction. He told me:

I went through 35 years of electric shock, and aversive therapy and exorcism trying to get rid of the demon of homosexuality. I finally slit my wrists and went to the hospital, and my wife said, “You know, Mel, you’re a good person, but you’re gay and you need to accept that.” And in accepting that I began a new kind of life; my whole life changed, and I became a person who loved Christ in a whole new way, I felt His Holy Spirit working in a whole new way.

"...Mel, you’re a good person, but you’re gay and you need to accept that.” It would have been wise for Mel White to follow Job's example concerning certain suggestions from his wife...

So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes.

His wife said to him, "Are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die!" (Job 2:7-9, NIV)

Mr. White needed to mimic Job's reply:

He replied, "You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?" In all this, Job did not sin in what he said. (Job 2:10, NIV)

Job was apparently familiar with the account of Adam and Eve in Genesis concerning the result of a similar circumstance:

To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, `You must not eat of it,'
"Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.

It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.

By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are and to dust you will return." (Genesis 3:17-19, NIV)

Paul Edwards:

There is no question that there was fear inherent in the words spoken by Jerry Falwell on the moral issues confronting our nation. But it wasn’t Dr. Falwell’s fear of homosexuality (or any other sin) that fueled his passion to call this nation to repentance, but rather his fear of God. Jerry Falwell spoke the words of Christ to the nation. Jesus said, “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they would not have sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin” (John 15:22). Jerry Falwell was a voice crying in the wilderness of the moral decline of late 20th century America. He lifted up his voice like a trumpet, boldly confronting his generation with Christ’s words. The voice of the prophet may be silenced, but the word of our God shall stand forever.

The fear of the LORD versus the fear of PMS or PMDD. We preach, you decide.

Dunn on Falwell

Here are some excerpts from an article by J.R. Dunn posted on American Thinker, 'Why the Left Hated Jerry Falwell So Much':

[...] But of course, none of that is what it's really about. Falwell was despised and loathed for a very simple reason: he defied the leftist consensus, and he won. He made them back down. He frightened them terribly, by confronting them with clear evidence that the country was not what they insisted it was, and that their utopian dreams would never come to pass. That was his crime, one for which he could never be forgiven.

It was in the late 1970s when Jimmy Carter, having rescued the economy, tamed communism, chastised the Sandinistas, and humiliated the mullahs, looked out over the country in search of more work for his restless farmer's hands. What he found sore displeased him. For it seemed that down South, his very own people, the blood of his blood, worshiping the God of his fathers, had opened private schools for the education of their young ones. And Jimmy was made wroth by what he beheld, because their purpose was racist; those schools had been founded for the sole purpose of keeping blacks out. It could be naught else. You couldn't fool Jimmy. He knew what those crackers were like. [...]

That's how Moral Majority was born. Not as an American Taliban, not as a vigilance committee targeting gays, abortionists, and feminists, not as a reactionary political cult, but as an organization to protect a despised religious minority from an overreaching government. [...]

It was Jerry Falwell who gave those people a voice, who created the religious right out of whole cloth, and made it into a force that moves the country to this day. That was his achievement, and that is why he's so hated, and why the tolerant, life-affirming left has cheered so loudly at his demise. Because nothing was the same after the Moral Majority appeared.

Before the Moral Majority, liberalism went where it willed and did what it pleased. You took up against liberalism at your peril, and few carried it off successfully or for very long. It was the religious right that revealed the country's bedrock, the fact that its basic nature remained unchanged despite forty-odd years of effort to the contrary. The Evangelicals were the reef against which the left broke itself. It's impossible to imagine the conservative counter reformation that began with Ronald Reagan, one of the crucial events of our time, ever occurring if the religious right had not led the way.

That's how the history will read, after all the missteps and gaucheries are forgotten, all the lies and disinformation cleared away. That's how Jerry Falwell will at last be seen. [...]

Among all the Leftist dancing and pissing on Falwell's grave there was one 'odd man out':

The Reverend Jerry Falwell and I were arch enemies for fifteen years. We became involved in a lawsuit concerning First Amendment rights and Hustler magazine. Without question, this was my most important battle - the l988 Hustler Magazine, Inc., v. Jerry Falwell case,where after millions of dollars and much deliberation, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in my favor.

My mother always told me that no matter how much you dislike a person, when you meet them face to face you will find characteristics about them that you like. Jerry Falwell was a perfect example of that. I hated everything he stood for, but after meeting him in person, years after the trial, Jerry Falwell and I became good friends. He would visit me in California and we would debate together on college campuses. I always appreciated his sincerity even though I knew what he was selling and he knew what I was selling.- Larry Flynt statement on CBS5.com

Green is the New Red

Jeffrey Osonitsch makes some good points in an American Thinker article, 'The Paradox of Secular Scientism':

[...] When science lost its moral foundation through hostility to religion, it became preyed upon by another corrupting influence: politics. And once infected thus, science slowly transmogrified into scientism, or the religious advocacy (by elites within the scientific, academic, journalistic, and government communities) of consensus-based theories whereby a majority-rule mentality takes the place of the traditional scientific method. Under this system theories need not be proven, only agreed upon, and once agreed upon, these dogmatic beliefs become the stuff of enforced orthodoxy and woe to anyone who dissents from the majority.

This new scientism is then used as a means to justify extreme and dangerous political orthodoxies. It is how the dubious and scientifically unsupported claims (namely that the use of pesticides to control mosquito populations have a catastrophic ripple effect across the food chain) of an obscure writer named Rachel Carson led to the ban on the use of DDT as an insecticide, which in turn resulted in the loss of tens of millions of lives to a disease (malaria) which had been all but eradicated by Western science. The human cost, particularly in Africa, was disregarded by a preening elite of self-satisfied Western secularists who abused science to institute a new and infinitely more insidious form of imperialism affecting mostly poor, third world people. One wonders how long the ban would have lasted had it been Europeans dropping dead by the thousands daily.

Similarly dubious scientific claims are made to oppose such things as over-population, man-made climate change, the use of bio-engineered foods, and nuclear power. These are clearly political movements dressed up as science and have had some truly bizarre results. For example, some proponents of secular scientism are in the weird position of rejecting the consumption by humans of bio-engineered foods while supporting efforts (through cloning, selective abortion, euthanasia, DNA manipulation, embryonic stem-cell cultivation, etc.) to bio-engineer human beings themselves! They then propose to mitigate the unproven harmful effects of the consumption of bio-engineered foods by increasing the malnutrition and starvation which inevitably result from its ban. [...]

They then seek, in spite of the potential cost of millions of lives through the likely increase in poverty caused by the implementation of such radical eco-political policies as the Kyoto Protocols, to limit the potential for global economic growth through their opposition to the use of such technologies as nuclear power and the burning of fossil fuels needed by modern economies by overstating their harmful effects. These restrictions will impact worst those in the developing world least able to withstand the economic repercussions. This is not a magnanimous or moral application of science for the betterment of mankind, this is raw power politics. The cosmopolitan proponents of centralized, global power here seek to use science not to serve, but to control. Coincidence or not, Earth Day is celebrated on the anniversary of the birth of Communist pioneer Vladimir Lenin. It appears green is the new red. [...]

Francis Schaeffer called this paradigm shift of science to scientism, modern science to modern modern science, science within a closed material system.

Contrasting Truths to Contrasting Powers

Alan Sears writes in an article on Townhall.com:

[...]Leftists are especially fond of citing that old Quaker quote about “speaking truth to power.” It makes them feel brave – standing up to a gracious, polite society, calling for the decimation of the spiritual foundations of Western civilization – with no one to back them up but an omnipresent mass media, a posse of increasingly activist judges, and the glittery Hollywood Thought Police.

The irony, though, is that public prayer is the ultimate venue for speaking truth to power.

Mother Teresa understood that. Invited to share a few words the 1994 National Prayer Breakfast, she responded with some stabbingly plain truths about abortion:

“Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love one another but to use any violence to get what they want,” she said. “This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.”

Those words brought hundreds to their feet, but not President Bill Clinton – or Mrs. Clinton, or Vice President Al Gore. Seats planted, faces set like stone, that potent trio gazed, dazed, on the wizened old face of wisdom…and sat powerless, for a moment, in the face of the truth. [...]

The National Day of Prayer was established as an annual event in 1952 by a joint resolution of the United States Congress and signed into law by President Harry S. Truman.

The A.C.L.U. is considering the exhumation of Harry Truman and all members of the 1952 U.S. Congress in order to sue them for violating the Constitution.

Today is the 56th annual National Day of Prayer.

"If you abide in My word, then you are truly disciples of mine; and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." (John 8:31b,32)

Speak truth to power.

Hindsight

It is often said that hindsight is 20/20. Even in the VaTech tragedy there are those who, in hindsight, say that this could have be averted if the murderer has been helped in some way or institutionalized earlier, if the administration had locked down the school after the first two murders, if other students had been allowed to carry concealed handguns to defend themselves and others, or if there existed tighter gun control laws in the state of Virginia.

This is, like the wisdom of almost all hindsight, patent nonsense. It is just as likely that if any of those changes in history had been made, the murderer may have slain 100, escaped, and duplicated the incident on 10 other campuses throughout the country.

Humans, confusing themselves for God, regularly feel that they can manipulate the script like the director of a movie and bring to bear the ending that is more pleasing to them. Foolishly they do not see that their changes bring into play other unforeseen variables that result in an end far from the intended result and regularly much worse than that of the original.

So often is the case with political action. Legislators or judges whose vision within the greater scheme is only 'seeing through a glass darkly', attempt to play God and direct the 'movie' of human society. So many of their actions have resulted in disasters. Yet, in their blindness, they fail to learn and follow the adage, 'If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.'

Whether attributed to Ben Franklin or Albert Einstein, the following is more applicable: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

So, in hindsight, I would say that the only way that this tragedy would have been averted would have been for someone to murder Cho Seung-Hui before his actions at the university. But then again, perhaps, 7 angry relatives or friends might have taken vengeance and slaughtered even more. I'm not God and therefore lacking in omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence. If there were 9 of me on the U.S. Supreme Court, or 50 of me in the U.S. Senate, or 435 of me in the U.S. House of Representatives, or even 6 billion of me, my hindsight, as well as my ability to direct reality would be laughable.

Pitiful, just pitiful.

The Separation of God from Culture

To listen to the portrayal of America in the modern press, both news and opinion; to view the Hollywood depiction of America, both historically and at present, is to be led toward the understanding that the United States is, and always has been, the epitome of evil in the world. George Bush is Hitler. American foreign policy is one of imperialism; of ill-treatment of other cultures that leads the rest of the world to naturally develop hatred and nurture terrorist cults. The United States attacks Sadaam to control his oil, but disregards the slaughter in Darfur because no benefit will be derived for Halliburton or ExxonMobil. Our lifestyles and policies are even credited with spearheading the destruction of the planet. America, the world's bully, seems to be despised as much at home as it is by al-Qaeda.

How could so many citizens, who are so lavishly nourished at the breast of America's luxury, mangle the fruitful nipple that feeds them with such ferocity? Countless speakers and writers are persuaded to account for this by reaction to deep-seated guilt. This guilt provides the impetus for the great number of irrational actions and charges.

In his book, The Politics of Guilt and Pity, Rousas Rushdoony addresses the presence of this guilt that well explains the incongruous activity that is spurred by today's American guilt. This book was first published in 1970.

The direction of American culture:

The human race, in apostasy from God, is deeply involved in a rebellious claim to autonomy and in the guilt which follows that claim. As a result of this omnipresent sense of guilt, there is an omnipresent demand for justification. The expression, "He's trying to justify himself," points to this demand by man for justification, and insistence on psychic or spiritual wholeness of health. A sense of guilt leaves a man feeling like a leaky, sinking ship: the energies must all be resolved to the repair of that breach. The psychology of the guilty man is this geared to self-defense, to spiritual survival, by means of an overcoming of the breach of guilt. The concern is a demand for salvation: the sinking ego wants to save itself, to find justification by making atonement for its guilt. [...]

A common recourse is to self-atonement and self-justification. A modern term for such behavior is masochism... self-punishment as atonement...

This masochism manifests in a variety of ways:

-Psychosomatic ailments; to suffer for sins
-Gambling; losing inevitable
-Alcoholism and drug use
-Burden-bearing; self-conscious public works of virtue, worry and fretting, worship or penance
-Injustice collecting; finding pleasure in displeasure, placing oneself in positions where he will be sure to feel offended
-Will to self and others' failure; individually as well as through political and economic views and activities calculated to fulfill the urge to mass destruction, factors which enter in include the craving for individual power and the motive for revenge. Victory through defeat.

A closely related activity is sadism, the transfer of guilt to an innocent party to reduce them to the same level of impotence and guilt. [...]

The reality of man apart from Christ is guilt and masochism. And guilt and masochism involve an unshakable inner slavery which governs the total life of the non-Christian. The politics of the anti-Christian will thus inescapably be the politics of guilt. In the politics of guilt, man is perpetually drained in his social energy and cultural activity by his over-riding sense of guilt and his masochistic activity. He will progressively demand of the state a redemptive role. What he cannot do personally, i.e., to save himself, he demands that the state do for him, so that the state, as man enlarged, becomes the human savior of man. The politics of guilt, therefore, is not directed as the Christian politics of liberty, to the creation of godly justice and order, but to the creation of a redeeming order, a saving state. Guilt must be projected, therefore, on all those who oppose this new order and age. [...]

...the caretaker state masks its tyrannical love under the name of 'social justice.'

The more a civilization advances, the deeper will its sense of sin become, because the increase of prosperity and cultural advantages will only increase the masochistic desire to pay for progress, which the individuals unconsciously believe requires atonement before enjoyment. As a result, the very liberating forces of civilization themselves call into existence the forces of enslavement. [...]

...Communism has used moral nihilism to prepare the way for passive political slavery: guilty men are more docile slaves.

...In the United States, as the nation has departed progressively from God, it has indulged progressively in a debunking of its history, in a general confession of many past faults, some often imagined. The hypocrisy of such confessions is striking: by confessing the sins of past generations, the present scholar or generation thereby implies its own superior virtues and it innocence of those sins. By the fact of such debunking or confession, it confesses also, very modestly, that wisdom is now born to us and is among us, so that confession again becomes a vehicle of pride. [...]

Again, Americans are repeatedly assured that American history is a long account of guilt, towards Indians, Negroes, minority groups, labor, Mexico, and, ultimately, all the world as well for refusing the to enter the League of Nations. This is defective history and perverse politics. Its purpose is the cultivation of guilt in order to produce a submissive populace.

More basically, the subtle indoctrination of humanistic scholarship infers that the Christian, and, in America, the Protestant in particular, is guilty because he is a Christian. The inference is that the Christian has no right to his identity; he must recognize all others and their rights, but he himself has none. The principles of the atheist must govern state and school; the wishes of all others have status before the law, and his have none. [...]

Wherever false responsibility is promoted, and ugly strategy of power is present. This strategy can be briefly summarized. First, make men feel guilty for all things and for everyone. Whatever happens on any continent or country is their responsibility and their burden. All the starving, needy, oppressed, and all the indigents, criminals, and diseased of the world are their burden, and they are guilty of evading their responsibilities if they do nothing about them.

Second, it is obvious that men cannot do much more than care for their own families. Therefore, ask them to exercise this imposed responsibility for the world by delegation, to delegate it to the state and the elite planners.

Third, by being given this world responsibility, the state and its elite planners become gods, governors of all things. They can now begin to remake the world in terms of their superior wisdom. God, after all, hardly had their superior and scientific intelligence.

Fourth, salvation has thus become the work of man. Man remakes man by statist law and action....

Rousas Rushdoony's description of 'the slippery slope' of humanism was written over 35 years ago, but it depicts so well the attitudes and cultural criticisms that we see happening today.

Yeeee-Haw!

Jason Apuzzo reviews the new film, The Reaping on LIBERTAS, a forum for conservative thought on film.

Here are some selected portions of his review:

The Reaping is about a small Southern town hit by 10 Biblical plagues brought on by a supposed Satan worshiper.[...]

As two dozen white Southern Christian bigots drove off in their shotgun filled pick-up trucks to kill an innocent child due to their white Southern Christian bigoted need to kill all things they don’t understand, one of them actually yelled, “Yee-Haw!”

I lived in the south for ten years. I’ve seen white Southern Christian bigots grab their shotguns and jump in pick-up trucks to kill something they didn’t understand. But no one ever yelled “Yee-Haw.”[...]

The favorite Director Scare is the screeching cat jumping out of nowhere. Cats don’t screech and jump. They may jump. They may screech. But they never jump and screech.

I grew up with cats, and never once did one jump and screech. And if one had I would’ve grabbed a shotgun and jumped in a pick-up truck to kill it.[...]

In the end, The Reaping is good for nothing more than yet another insight into how elite Hollywood views the South and religion. To them the South is filled with scary, pious, hypocritical fanatics, who are both unsophisticated and dumb. And naturally, religion has turned them ugly and worse. It’s okay for the Black Guy to be religious. For some reason Christianity isn’t threatening to Hollywood when the Christian is black. Maybe they find it cute and quaint.

Hollywood treats no other culture in the world as poorly and with such contempt as they do the Southern Christian. And yet, they probably don’t even see their own bigotry. They just believe that what they portray is fact. Of course, that’s the worst kind of prejudice. The most dangerous. The most ignorant.

Yeah! We Northern White Christians are just as scary, pious, hypocritical & fantatical, unsophisticated, and dumb. When do we get our due?

The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly

I recently finished reading two books by Bruce Bawer. The first is titled While Europe Slept- How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within. Bawer, from New York, moved to Europe in the late 90's.

"In the Netherlands, where political dicourse had moved beyond 'culture war' platitudes, I felt light-years removed from the foolishness of fundamentalism. There, for the first time, I allowed myself to feel the rage that had built up inside me. Yes, I loved my country, but I also realized that I wanted to be away from it-away from the idiocy, the intolerance, the puritanism. More and more I felt that I belonged in Europe." (p. 10)

After years of immersion in the European culture in several EU nations, Bawer came to realize that behind the outward 'high culture' there lurked a denial of the realities of the present situation.

"The main reason I'd been glad to leave America was Protestant fundamentalism. But Europe, I eventually say, was falling prey to an even more alarming fundamentalism whose leaders made their American Protestant counterparts look like amateurs. Falwell was an unsavory creep, but he didn't issue fatwas. James Dobson's parenting advice was appalling, but he wasn't telling people to murder their daughters. American liberals had been fighting the Religious Right for decades; Western Europeans had yet to even acknowledge that they had a Religious Right. How could they ignore it? Certainly as a gay man, I couldn't close my eyes to this grim reality. Pat Robertson just wanted to deny me marriage; the imams wanted to drop a wall on me. I wasn't fond of the hypocritical conservative-Christian line about hating the sin and loving the sinner, but it was preferable to the forthright fundamentalist Muslim view that homosexuals merited death." (p. 33)

He asks a question that summarized the situation:

"In a war between people who had rock solid beliefs and people who are capable of nuancing away pure evil, who has the advantage?" (p. 161)

I tend to think that the U.S. has slipped closer to the European political/cultural situation than Bawer seems to. The American 'brilliant elite' strives ever to catch up to their European counterparts begging for similar results.

While Europe Slept is an excellent piece of work and I highly recommend it.

The second Bruce Bawer book that I picked up was Stealing Jesus- How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity. Owing to the respect that was earned through While Europe Slept, I wanted to understand Bawer's analysis on Christianity in America.

Bawer's observations on selected portions of Christians' activity in the U.S. were well taken. We often do act in hypocritical ways. However, Bruce's views on what Christianity actually means is based only on finely selected Scriptures. He deletes the whole Old Testament, Revelation, most of Paul's epistles, and ignores most of the writings of the Gospels.

In effect, Bawer creates a Christian doctrine similar to the elitist/multicultural/diversity doctrine of the European culture that he fisks so well in While Europe Slept. In other words he creates a Christianity from his own feeling and emotion just as the European elite have done while ignoring the truth within their own culture.

Don't waste your time on Stealing Jesus.

Has Lucy Pulled Away the Football Again?

Michael Medved posts an article titled 'Biblical Liberation from Liberalism' on Townhall.com based on a verse from Leviticus.

"You shall not commit a perversion of justice: you shall not favor the poor and you shall not honor the great, with righteousness shall you judge your fellow." (Leviticus 19:15)

Good News About The Good News

Monday, March 5, 2007

Iranian Imam Receives Christ Via Satellite TV, Escapes Country
Four More Imams Are Underground Believers

By Mark Ellis
Senior Correspondent, ASSIST News Service

WOODLAND HILLS, CALIFORNIA (ANS) -- One of the top Islamic leaders in Iran accepted Christ and left the country after facing death threats and imprisonment, according to an Iranian pastor living in the U.S.

“This man has been watching Christian TV programs for the past two years,” said Pastor Elnathan Baghestani, founder of Iran for Christ Ministries. (www.iranforchrist.com) Pastor Baghestani and his wife provide Christian programming to the Mohabat Network satellite, which broadcasts 24/7 into Iran and other Middle Eastern countries.

The imam called one of the phone counselors connected to Iran for Christ Ministries and prayed to receive Christ in early February. “The man has been watching Christian TV programs for the past two years,” Baghestani said. “He said he has believed since he began watching the programs but his salvation was sealed through his confession.”

“This man knows all the verses of the Qur’an by heart,” he added. “After he began watching, doubt began in his heart about the Islamic faith.” The man spent nine months in prison after he questioned the violence of radical Islam. Following his release from prison, he faced numerous death threats and escaped the country.

Several other religious leaders may follow suit. “He knows four other high-ranking imams that are in the same condition and want to leave Iran,” Baghestani said.

While it is illegal to own satellite dishes in Iran, many hide them on their roofs or other locations on their property. “They arrest people for having satellite dishes because they know the Christian programming is effective,” Baghestani noted.

The imam who fled left everything behind. “His salary was 700,000 of their monetary units every month,” Baghestani said. “He was honored and respected, but when the gospel came to him he lost everything,” he noted. “Now he is a poor refugee in a foreign country.”

“God is shaking the foundation of Islam in Iran,” Baghestani said. “We have been praying for some of the main government officials to come to Christ and God is answering us,” he reports. “I pray God will open more doors for us to send the gospel to the Middle East.”

(Reprinted by permission)

Cheeky Monkey

Robert C. Cheeks writes in The American Thinker about the life and thought of Alexksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn; 'Solzhenitsyn, the Prophet':

"In his corpus Isaevich teaches us the history and pathological reality of Soviet Man, who in reality very much mirrors Western Man. He also makes us aware that the foundation of the Marxist System is the Enlightenment project and the triumph of its heresies. From doubting God, to destroying God, to the Gulag, Western man's egophanic revolt results in a profound disorder of language and articulation, a destruction of the noetic symbols of transcendence, and the loss of the cosmic order. There can be little wonder, then, that modernity collapsed into relativism, nihilism, objectivism, and the resultant postmodern age is best described as the anti-philosophical triumph of "groundlessness," the epoch devoid of the meta-narrative, the age without God."

If I've said that once, I've said it a thousand times.

Metaxas Interview

N.R.O. editor, Kathryn Lopez interviews Eric Metaxas, author of Amazing Grace, the story of William Wilberforce and his battle to abolish both the slave trade and then slavery in early 19th Century Britain.

The historical context: (A quote from the book taken from Rich Lowery's article, 'The Wilberforce, How faith moved a nation', also in N.R.O.)

“Slavery was as accepted as birth and marriage and death, was so woven into the tapestry of human history that you could barely see its threads, much less pull them out. Everywhere on the globe, for 5,000 years, the idea of human civilization without slavery was unimaginable.”

Lopez: "What’s the Wilberforce message for today’s politicians — besides the obvious: slavery, human trafficking, is evil?"

Metaxas: "One needs a core. If one is merely a “party man” one cannot succeed any more than one who governs by poll or focus groups. Wilberforce was an exceedingly canny politician, and he understood the political process brilliantly — but at the end of the day, he played to a constituency of One. And it needs to be said that he did it with the very greatest humility, not with any sort of moralistic or triumphalist arrogance. He didn’t think that he was God’s vector, to get back to Euclid and others. He knew that he was a sinner, saved by God’s grace. He really knew that and one can see it in how he lived, and how he treated his political opponents, with a disarming and quite extraordinary graciousness."

Black History Month

Marvin Olasky writes a piece on Townhall.com about an upcoming historic anniversay:

"I hate your little whittling sneer
Your pert and self-sufficient leer
begone, for shame
Thou dwarf with big resounding name."

This little ditty was penned by James Boswell, the famed biographer of Samuel Johnson, directed to the 5 foot giant, William Wilberforce. There were many such sentiments directed to Wilberforce during the first 20 years of his politcal career, but Wilberforce did not react in kind. Rather, he continued to press his agenda forward.

Finally, on February 23rd, 1807, the patience and determination of Wilber Wilberforce began to pay off. On this day, the British Parliament finally voted to abolish the slave trade. (It was another 30 years before the Brits abolished slavery in the Commonwealth, just 3 days before Wilberforce died.)

Olasky quotes Wilberforce, showing that his words are as applicable today in America as they were in 19th Century England, "...the national difficulties we face result from the decline of religion and morality among us. I must confess equally boldly that my own solid hopes for the well-being of my country depend, not so much on her navies and armies as on the persuasion that she still contains many who love and obey the Gospel of Christ. I believe that their prayers may yet prevail."

Why Do They Hate Us?

Dinesh D'Souza wrote an article in the Washington Post answering personal attacks on him by critics of his newly released book, The Enemy at Home.

Some excerpts:

[...]"Contrary to the common liberal view, I don't believe that the 9/11 attacks were payback for U.S. foreign policy. Bin Laden isn't upset because there are U.S. troops in Mecca, as liberals are fond of saying. (There are no U.S. troops in Mecca.) He isn't upset because Washington is allied with despotic regimes in the region. Israel aside, what other regimes are there in the Middle East? It isn't all about Israel. (Why hasn't al-Qaeda launched a single attack against Israel?) The thrust of the radical Muslim critique of America is that Islam is under attack from the global forces of atheism and immorality -- and that the United States is leading that attack."

"Contrary to President Bush's view, they don't hate us for our freedom, either. Rather, they hate us for how we use our freedom. When Planned Parenthood International opens clinics in non-Western countries and dispenses contraceptives to unmarried girls, many see it as an assault on prevailing religious and traditional values. When human rights groups use their interpretation of international law to pressure non-Western countries to overturn laws against abortion or to liberalize laws regarding homosexuality, the traditional sensibilities of many of the world's people are violated."

[...]"In other words, bin Laden believes that the United States represents the pagan depravity that Muslims have a duty to resist. The literature of radical Islam, such as the works of Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb, resonates with these themes. One radical sheik even told a European television station a few years ago that although Europe is more decadent than America, the United States is the more vital target because it is U.S. culture -- not Swedish culture or French culture -- that is spreading throughout the world."

[...]"Contrary to the accusations of Alan Wolfe and others, I have no sympathy for bin Laden or the Islamic radicals. But I do respect the concerns of traditional Muslims, the majority in the Muslim world." (Emphases mine)

To me, it is doubtless that D'Souza makes some excellent points. But I also believe that the reasons go much deeper, but have very little to do with the urban legends that are purported by most of the talking heads.

One critic of D'Souza claims that he is siding with Jerry Falwell who stated that we were attacked due to our legitimization of abortion and homosexuality.

Although I cannot state that these attacks are a result of God's judgment, I don't have any problem with considering the possibility. God often acts in history to call people and nations to repentance. He also often uses people or nations that are even more evil than those he is warning to carry out His admonition.