Wednesday, September 08, 2010
Congressional Democrats Plot To Herd The Masses Into Glorified Concentration Camps
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
Regarding the threat by the church playing with less than a full deck to burn Korans: in America at least you are free to have as many Korans as you want for any purpose. In lands where Islamists rule, it is against the law to own a Bible and a capital offense to eventually be persuaded as to the veracity of that particular text.
If General Petraeus is now handing down edicts as to what kind of expression is going to set off radical Islamists in regards to the plans to burn Koran's by one church, is he also going to hand down similar opinions regarding sodomite nuptuals and tramps sauntering about with 3/4's of their jiggly bosoms exposed for all to see?
Friday, September 03, 2010
Are Fundamentalists claiming singles, especially women, shouldn't be permitted to live on their own because only women of ill repute did so in Biblical times also going to stick their hands between their employer's thigh when making a promise since it seems that was also the practice in Biblical times.
Thursday, September 02, 2010
Those touting Zipcars as an alternative to automobile ownership should stop and think seriously for a moment. This concept is gaining in popularity on college campuses. As such, are these cars thoroughly screened and cleaned between renters. If not, when you are pulled over by police, are you willing to go down on a drug charge for the last person that borrowed the car and forgot to take their pot with them when they parked it?
John Lofton has threatened to "report me" if I dare post anything on his facebook wall. Guess he doesn't like me questioning his desire to see Glenn Beck executed as a false prophet. People need to wake up not only to the vipers outside of Evangelical Christianity but as well as the snakes they have let inside the tent as well.
Taser-Happy Cops Zap Cardiac Patient
Burro orifice John Lofton forbids me from posting on his profile asking him to clarify his position on wanting to execute those he disagrees with such as Glenn Beck. Given that the show he hosts for his employers at the Institute on the Constitution, the American View, sounds similar to some of my websites The American Worldview which the IOTC use to link to years ago, you'd think I'd deserve a bit more respect.
Wednesday, September 01, 2010
Did Prince Phillip Have Lady Di Murdered For Refusing To Bed Him?
If one of the organization’s primary spokesman thinks that Glenn Beck and Harold Camping should be executed, should average Conservatives and Christians feel at ease at a meeting of the Institute on The Constitution? For if one of the meeting’s organizers had his way, he would just as likely burn you at the stake. At the groups upcoming barbecue, just stop and think that it might very well one day be you turning on the rotisserie.
Contrary to a commenter of one of my columns posted at Redstate.com, my purpose as a commentator is not “to get conservative Republicans elected to office. To paraphrase the Bard,. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in you electoral system.” Politicians are to serve us and not we them. Anyone that believes that thought and expression should be curtailed to serve the alleged needs of establishmentarian Republicans are as much enemies of human liberty as any Democrat.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Red China Turns U.S. Human Rights Molehills Into Mountains
Before America as a nation takes this criticism seriously, perhaps we should consider what the law entails and how this compares with what goes on in Red China.
The Arizona law will permit police to ascertain an individual's identity and thus legality after initial contact. Essentially, this isn’t anything that isn’t already authorized by law and is perhaps an even better guarantor of individual liberty and dignity than what is already permitted.
In a number of decisions, the Supreme Court ruled that police could compel an individual to identify themselves even when it had not been established that the law had even been violated or that there was probable cause indicating such. Interestingly, there were no riotous mobs in the streets when it was thought these kinds of identity checks were only going to be aimed at actual Americans.
Even if scores of those with no legal standing in the United States are removed from the streets of Arizona as a result of the new law, they will still fair considerably better than those taken into custody in dictatorships. In Iran, several American coed tourists straying over the Islamic Republic’s border with Iraq were sentenced to lengthy prison terms.
And unlike illegals here, those there are not fawned over with lavish government handouts with their bureaucratic benefactors hoping the outsiders will recast the entire society in a foreign image.
It could be properly argued that the American students deserved some kind of punishment for violating another country’s sovereign borders. What likely cannot be argued against is that the accommodations they languished in made Camp Gitmo look like a swanky New York City hotel. Guards there are not going out of their way to provide American delicacies or to treat our holy books and founding documents with a nauseating degree of deference.
In China, one house church pastor sentenced to prison was allowed to languish and suffer without access to his diabetic medicine. And it could be argued that he can be considered one of the lucky ones. It has been claimed that organs are regularly harvested from dissident Tibetans and Christians.
If Red China had the illegal alien problem plaguing the United States, do you honestly believe authorities there would do little than look over the papers of these transnational vagrants, whisper sweet nothings in their ears, and release them on their recognizance which many have very little of to begin with given their connections to the drug trade, human smuggling, and assorted gangs. And given the propensity of a certain atrocity to occur throughout Chinese history (be it during the Great Cultural Revolution or in rumors a few years back regarding what was being done to fetuses), if a wife in China told her husband that they would be having a little Mexican later that evening that wouldn't mean he should expect to have a taco or burrito for dinner.
Many infringements upon human rights stem from an improper understanding of the relationship between social institutions such as government and the individual. In America, the extremes of these have been minimized in part due to the assumption that the individual possesses worth of his own created in the image of God. The individual is not owned by the state.
As an officially atheistic socialist country, the Chinese Communist Party and state see themselves as the highest authority with these determining that it is not so much the individual that counts but rather the group as a whole. After all, if we are simply nothing more than animated primordial ooze as the Darwinian insists and upon which Marxist-Leninism rests, it is kind of hard to get worked up over one person when there are over a billion more walking around easily capable of taking the place of a defective cog in the machine of state.
Since in the Communist system you are less an individual, the more the system provides of those things deemed to be necessities by the overseers (under whom fewer things end up being defined as necessities than in a free market economy) in such command societies such commodities extended only so that the goals mapped out for you by the COMMUNITY might be achieved. In a constitutional republican system, it is believed that the individual is best suited to determine for themselves which needs and desires should take priority for oneself and one's family. Granted, the system is not perfect, but it is far preferable and more in line with what God intended for humanity.
Thus, that is no doubt why China would rank homelessness as a human rights violation while not batting an eye at putting a bullet in the back of the head of a House Church pastor so that his kidneys might remain undamaged for organ harvesting. In America, those who love liberty must first inquire as to why the individual is homeless before formulating an appropriate policy response.
Though it is not politically correct to mention it these days and even if they represent only a fraction of those without a domicile, frankly there are those that simply refuse to do that which is necessary to maintain a residence or they engage in behaviors that cause their homes to be lost. Of those that went into vapors when Glenn Beck critiqued the subject, tell me where is the social justice to take from those working and scrimping in order to hoe their own path to give it to those living irresponsibly and demanding a standard of living far above a subsistence level with a few basic comforts that they are not willing to exert the labor necessary to acquire?
One might feel sorry for the children of such deadbeats and somehow provide enough for the children to get by without hardly a single bread crumb going to such pathetic excuses for parents. It is preferable that such outreach come from the private sector free to point out the deficiencies of individual character and the blunt steps necessary to correct the situation. Often in these times where we must constantly walk around on eggshells for fear of offending some self-enlightened leftist do-gooder with a law degree or a bullhorn and definitely too much time on their hands, government is unable to articulate those steps necessary for complete restoration.
And while we are at it, perhaps something needs to be said about and to these women that fall for scumbag men. If you find the boozing and carousing attractive when you are young only to have it morph into not knowing how you are going to feed the five kids because he's blowing the milk money on beer and backhanded you across the face because you dared ask where he was the night before, other than for tossing his rear in jail, don't expect much pity and especially don't expect some behaved guy you wouldn't give the time of day to 15 years ago to take you in as if he has some obligation to provide for another man's progeny.
One of contemporary liberalism's most glaring intellectual deficiencies is that it assumes that the remainder of the world, when you come down to it, lives no differently than the people of the United States. Before we pull out the sackcloth and ashes to belittle ourselves embarrassingly on the world stage, let’s at least make sure we don’t waste the effort on autocrats, thieves, cutthroats, and homicidal mass murderers.
by Frederick Meekins
What is Planned For The Ground Zero Mosque Mystery Floors
Monday, August 30, 2010
Parents Letting 13 Year Olds Race Motorcylces Are Downright Negligent
Friday, August 27, 2010
For once, Jim Wallis is correct. Glenn Beck is no Martin Luther King. Despite the Fox News correspondents attempts to emphasize the equality called for in a number of King’s speeches, ironically Beck who claims to view history as pivotal in restoring liberty to America, comports himself so as to downplay the connections King had to a number of subversive socialistic front groups and individuals.
Iowa Police Downplay Violence Against Whites
Thursday, August 26, 2010
At an event where he shoved his nose up the backside of radical Islam, self-loathing Jew Michael Bloomberg said not building the Ground Zero mosque would "undercut the values...so many died protecting." What value then is being upheld by refusing to let the St. Nicholas Orthodox Church from being rebuilt?
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Home Owner Association Classifies "Don't Tread On Me" Flag As Yard Debris
Taliban Launch Attack On Afghan Girl's School
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
A White House "water carrier" acted like the Obama Administration had extended Franklin Graham the epitome of tolerance by recognizing that the evangelist is titled to his opinion when Graham pointed out that, according to Islamic law and tradition, Barack Obama was considered a Muslim through his father’s parentage. Technically, Graham’s statement would be considered a FACT rather than an opinion. I guess this is one way we simply disappear entire inconvenient epistemological realities now.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Friday, August 20, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
American Teen Duped Into Being North Korean Pawn
Court Grants Right To Lie About Military Service
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Lessons In Apologetics #4: Pragmaticism & Combinationalism
The next theory of truth and religious knowledge is pragmatism. Developed initially by Charles Sander Pierce and expanded by William James, pragmatism is the theory that truth is not determined by what one thinks, feels, or discovers but rather by what works.
Christians may instinctively recoil from this initially. However, the proper response to this epistemological methodology needs to be more nuanced than the believer might originally suspect.
Providing in part an alternative to the early 20th century viewpoint promoted in large part by Sigmund Freud that belief in God was psychologically harmful, in works such as "The Varieties Of Religious Experience", James believed religion should be judged by its results in the life of the individual. Overall, James concluded that, "In a general way...on the whole...our testing of religion by practical common sense and the empirical method leaves it in possession of its towering place in history. For economically, the saintly group of qualities is indispensable to the world’s welfare (109).”
However, any alliance the Christian apologist may make with William James is tenuous at best. For example, James categorized the pantheistic outlook of Mediterranean paganism as healthy and those emphasizing the need to be “twice born” as epitomizing a Germanic dourness characterized by an obsession regarding man’s fallen nature and need to be saved by God (105).
Though few in number, Christian apologists have adapted pragmaticism to the defense of the faith. Foremost among these is Francis Schaeffer.
Schaeffer’s method might not be considered solely pragmatic by the methodology’s purists as he does not allow a worldview’s viability to determine whether or not it is true but rather to show how the Christian worldview is the most consistently livable. Schaeffer refers to this test as an experiential teleological argument (110).
In a Schaefferian apologetic, one takes the propositions of a particular worldview and projects them onto the movie screen of life. For example, Schaeffer noted how the materialism of Jackson Pollock drove the artist to suicide and how musician John Cage did not adhere to the philosophy of chance that categorized his music when it came to picking potentially deadly mushrooms
The next epistemological methodology is combinationalism. Throughout this discourse thus far, it has been observed that, while each methodology contributes something to our understanding of God and knowledge, none of these approaches is sufficient enough to stand alone as the only way through which to obtain an understanding of reality. But instead of falling into a state of solipsistic dismay that nothing can be known since each approach falls short, combinationalists suggest that the insights of each method ought to be knit together in order to produce the most comprehensive understanding possible.
One such apologist utilizing this approach is Edward J. Carnell. Carnell combines rationalism, which he defines as a “horizontal self-consistency so that all of the major assumptions of the position can be so related together that they placate the rules of formal logic” and evidentialism, which he categorizes as “a vertical fitting of the facts” in that one’s assumptions must cohere with the “real concrete facts of human history (122).” Together, these elements make up systematic consistency.
However, even combinationalists must proceed with caution. As Geisler points out in “the leaky bucket argument”, if the other methodologies are insufficient on their own, these do not necessarily hold the epistemological water any better when they are combined together (129). Furthermore, often when one proceeds to evaluate a worldview, it can be very easy to fall into the trap of presupposing the worldview before it has been established or the facts are spun in such a way to fit into the worldview.
For example, Geisler uses the example of Christ's Resurrection. Geisler writes, "An apologist...cannot legitimately appeal to the miracle of Christ's resurrection as a proof for the existence of God (129)." This statement, shocking on its face value, means that God is already presupposed if the event is categorized as miraculous in terms of its explanation. Geisler reassures, "On the other hand, grant that God already exists, then the resurrection may very well be a miraculous way of confirming that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God (129)."
Source:
Geisler, Norman. "Christian Apologetics". Baker Academic, 1988.
By Frederick Meekins
