Monday, December 09, 2013
Thursday, December 05, 2013
Harry Potter Goes From Hogwart's Superstar To Emptying Mad Scientist's Bed Pans
Wednesday, December 04, 2013
A fuss is being made that the American education system is coming in near at the bottom. At this point in the social decline, is it really going to matter? Unless you are good at boozing and carousing, it’s not like busting your hump on the books is going to get you anywhere anyway above the lower end of average. Even in Christian circles, you are going to need a tale sprinkled with at least hints of debauchery if you expect anything to be dropped into your outstretched hand.
If we are to curtail artistic, literary, and analytical criticism of a particular religion of peace for fear of sparking a homicidal rampage in these otherwise docile spiritualists, does Chairman Obama intend to condemn Paris Hilton for cavorting three-quarters naked in the geopolitical backyard of those we are suppose to censor ourselves over for the purposes of mollifying?
It was remarked on an episode of Generations Radio that fellow parishioners ought to move their conversational interactions beyond friendly banter about topics such as sports or the weather. Instead, they are to interrogate one another about their respective walks with the Lord. But provided I’ve kept my hands off their teen daughters (an increasing problem in a number of Fundamentalist congregations) or not staggered into the church drunk (interesting enough no doubt from booze often served at functions under the auspices of congregations on the Reformed end of the Evangelical spectrum) something that personal really isn’t the business of those gathered there once they have a pretty good indication that I have professed faith in Christ.
Fanatic Homeschooler Pronounces Condemnation Of Lily Pad Christians
By that, he is expressing an underlying disdain for church hoppers and shoppers.
Instead, once you land in a church, under almost under no circumstances other than gross doctrinal error ought one consider leaving the respective congregation in which one finds oneself.
There is no winning with this variety of legalist.
For Swanson is also among a growing cabal regularly pronouncing condemnation upon those not married off by the time they are 22 years of age.
But what if there is next to no one appealing in these kinds of hardline congregations?
And just as importantly, what if a church is so small and strict that there is the likelihood those outside of a small clique that will never be able to exercise any sort of spiritual or ministry gift there other than pewfilling and dropping an offering in the collection plate?
by Frederick Meekins
Tuesday, December 03, 2013
Government propagandists a part of Frau Obama's anti-obesity initiative Let's Move have produced public service announcements geared toward American Indian and Hispanic populations featuring music from those respective cultures. Will there be comparative broadcast spots targeting respective White demographics? Will Rednecks get a PSA with bluegrass playing in the background? Will science fiction enthusiasts have an announcement produced in their honor set to the tune from Star Wars or the classic version of Battlestar Galactica?
If it is wrong for authors to write stories where a dictatorial regime uses brutal entertainments and public displays to keep a terrified population in line such as The Hunger Games, wouldn't it be wrong to write about similar accounts taking place in the Roman Empire? In particular, by this guideline, wouldn't it then be wrong to propagate the story of one such person condemned as a troublemaker who was nailed upon a cross but whom some say ultimately rose from the dead?
Fanatic homeschooler Kevin Swanson is continuing to condemn the Hunger Games series on what he insists are Biblical grounds. As in regards to the first film, he insists that David in the Old Testament sets a better example for Christian youth because the Hebrew shepherd boy was so deferential to authority that he would not assassinate a slumbering Saul when the opportunity presented itself. Yet their seems to be no indication as of yet in the Hunger Games cinematic storyline of Catniss or any of the other protagonists getting so horny that they have their romantic rivals murdered so they can get their freak on.
Monday, December 02, 2013
Sunday, December 01, 2013
Diseased Televangelist Apparently Lacked Faith
However, one cannot help but observe in these situations that when you, mere pewfiller, fall ill that to these faith healers it is because of some unconfessed sin in your life (usually refusing to send a direct deposit each month into the bank accounts of these religious charlatans).
Yet when such tragedy befalls these types, the event is spun in terms of them going home to the eternal reward that they so richly deserve.
Click On The Headline
Friday, November 29, 2013
Doesn't “How The Grinch Stole Christmas” convey the message that a thief that returns what belonged to you to begin with should be rewarded? The special should have ended with his corpse hanging from the tree in the town square. If the Who's in Whoville weren't so soft on crime, the Grinch would have been too afraid to loot their village.
Isn't 8:30 am on Thanksgiving when a sizable percentage might not even be out of bed a little early to activate the telephone prayer chain? So it's worth the risk of someone getting up and breaking a hip forcing them into the hospital because someone else is on the way to the hospital? God's last name is not Gallup or even Zogby. He's not more likely to answer a prayer the way that you want it just because that petition's polling numbers are on the rise.
Ivy League Word Games Undermine Human Dignity
Those professing to be enlightened and progressive scoffed that such a claim was an over-exaggeration designed to elicit fear. However, in the thirty-plus years since the legalization of abortion, some of the nation’s most celebrated academics in the most prestigious publications are now advocating that we as a society do away with infants that do not live up to some standard while going out of their way to defend the rights of animals and criminals.
Princeton Professor of Bioethics Peter Singer, who advocates bestiality (giving a whole other connotation to the phrase a boy and his dog) and animals rights as epitomized by the Great Apes Project which argues gorillas and orangutans deserve many of the protections enjoyed by human beings, believes that it is permissible to kill an infant up until 28 days after birth because an infant is not self-aware nor worthy of personhood since the baby has no preferences concerning living or dying. Furthermore, such a course of action might be of benefit to the family.
Interestingly, Singer is not some lone crank that got hold of a bad batch of pot in the faculty lounge. Professor Steven Pinker, director of MIT’s Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, in the November 2, 2000 issue of the New York Times Magazine defended the practice of infanticide by suggesting that the killing of an infant should be treated differently than a person.
Pinker argues that we only have a right not to be killed if we have “an ability to reflect upon ourselves as a continuous locus of consciousness, to form and savor plans for the future, to dread death, and to express the choice not to die.” Thus, infants do not qualify for protections against murder, and may be disposed of without offense.
The fundamental issue of this debate is perhaps one of the most important of all in this day of unsettled foundations. That of course is the question of what exactly is a human being.
Both Singer and Pinker argue that newborns should not enjoy legal protection from on the part of parents or the medical establishment because they are not fully human since they have not reached a certain level of development. The traditional ethical position contends that the baby is entitled to the same protections from bodily harm as any other member of the human family. Though these two professors have countless accolades and honors heaped upon them for their acclaimed erudition, both science and Biblical teaching affirm the position considered outdated by influential opinion-makers.
From scripture, it clearly teaches, “Thou shalt not murder.” And though many theologians and Bible scholars grant an exception for the taking of human life in the case of self-defense in the case of war or when confronted by someone intent on doing bodily harm and in the case of capital punishment authorized by the Noahic covenant as spelled out in Genesis 9, in no way does an infant pose the kind of threat presented by these specific exceptions. Inconvenience just does not constitute that manner of bodily harm.
Jeremiah 1:5 says, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.” In Psalms 139:13-16 it says, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;...My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.”
If the embryo inside the mother is not a distinct person in his own right, how is the Lord able to know a specific collection of cells apart from the mother? Life as a continuum from conception and gestation on through birth and maturation is further confirmed in Psalms 51:5 which says, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” Nonpersons are not capable of existing in a state of sin.
Those with degrees as long as their arms cannot turn around and claim such speculations are ancient Hebrew superstitions. These prophetic revelations are confirmed by the very science the wonders of the modern world are based upon.
Both the fetus and the newborn are as genetically unique at these particular stages as the ethicists and physicians pondering the nuances of this philosophical quandary. Scott Rae writes, “(1) An adult human being is the end result of the continuous growth of the organism from conception. (2) From conception to adulthood, this development has no break that is relevant to the essential nature of the fetus. (3) Therefore, one is a human person from the point of conception onward (142).”
One of the most powerful arguments against both infanticide and abortion is that if you devalue human life at these stages, what is to prevent it from being devalued at other stages by radical utilitarians and the like? This is what happens when the standard suggested by both Peter Singer and Steven Pinker is employed.
For starters, what even is a “continuous locus of consciousness” and even if we knew, how many would even want to reflect upon it? Furthermore, even if one did, shouldn’t human value be based on something more than whether or not the individual is tickled pink at the prospect of his own belly button?
What if the individual does not temporarily possess the ability to reflect upon oneself as a “continuous locus of consciousness”; does this mean the disgruntled spouse has a window of opportunity each night to whack their mate as the sleep and get a get of jail free card? After all, during many stages of sleep one is not even aware of one’s surroundings much less one’s inner emotional workings.
The other criteria used to determine whether or not an infant is worthy of life are no less troubling. Both Pinker and Singer hold to a standard that an individual is not worthy of life unless one has the ability to ask to be kept alive.
If that is the case, if one slips on the ice and knocks themselves out, they had better come to before the ambulance gets there because who knows what organ hungry doctors would do if this criteria is allowed to play itself out. Before you know it, your kidneys and corneas could be on airplanes headed in multiple directions.
All joking aside, Pinker’s comments especially cause one to stop and pause to wonder if these remarks could be used to justify a sliding scale for human life not all that different than the blue books used by insurance companies to assess automobile depreciation. For example, Pinker says, to be worthy of life, one must savor plans for the future and dread death. Since the twenty-year old has more of these than the eighty-year old, doesn’t it then follow that it would be a greater offense to kill the twenty-year old than the eighty year-old? If the Professor has raised his children in light of such values, I trust for his own sake he does not let his guard down around them for fear of what he might find being plunged in his back as he ages.
Furthermore, who at some point in their lives (especially during the moody teenage years) hasn’t gone through a period where they didn’t care one way or the other whether life continued or not? Even if one is no where near jumping off the root of a building or suck fumes out of an exhaust pipe hasn't gone through times where the thought did not transiently skip across out minds how much easier things would be if we simply didn't wake up the next day. That did not mean that those around us had the right to do away with us.
It has been said that a society will be judged by how it treats its weakest members. If current academic opinion about how easily the unborn can be discarded is any kind of barometer, America could be in for a tumultuous twenty-first century.
By Frederick Meekins
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Issue Of Personhood Foundational In Bioethical Debates
Perhaps the most fundamental concern raised by a standpoint informed by the principles of the Bible is none other than personhood. Though something we each possess, its value varies drastically depending on the worldview each of us brings to the concept.
For example, to the person living out a consistently evolutionary or materialistic perspective, the idea of personhood is not that important since it is merely an arbitrarily contrived social and intellectual construct with no inherent worth other than what we decide to give it. Thus, it is no major concern if the concept is altered to exclude those at the extreme ends of life’s continuum unable to sustain themselves apart from intensive medical intervention.
However, if one approaches the matter from the Judeo-Christian perspective, the concept of personhood impacts dramatically the techniques and procedures one finds morally justifiable. Since man is made in the image of God, the life and spirit of man (his personhood if you will) is unique in all of creation. As such, it is due a respect placing it just below the reverence due God Himself.
Since the human being holds a special place in the heart of God, it is God Himself that establishes the guidelines regarding how we are permitted to relate to and treat other human beings. In Genesis 9:6, where God establishes His covenant with Noah it says, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man”. Later in the Ten Commandments this decree is reiterated in the command “Thou shalt not commit murder”.
From this, it is established that it is morally incorrect to take an innocent human life not having itself taken another human life. Therefore, it is improper to deliberately take a human life that does not threaten yours or has not violated the law.
Since the minds of men dwell continually on evil, a number of wily thinkers attempt to skirt around the issue by redefining personhood to make it distinct from the humanity of these individuals facing the prospects of having these procedures inflicted upon them. However, even these attempts prove inadequate as they endeavor to describe things how some would like them to be rather than how God created them.
For humanity/personhood is something one possesses inherently rather than bestowed upon you as a result of having reached some developmental milestone. The individual remains a distinct biological entity throughout the continuum of existence.
If anything, by limiting personhood to those having reached some arbitrary standard such as viability, quickening, or sentience speaks more to the limitations of medical science than an actual state of ontology. And with advances, these frontiers are being pushed back further all the time.
Things are now to the point where doctors are able to do surgery inside the mother’s womb. A photo of one such procedure where a tiny hand reached out of the mother’s abdomen got Matt Drudge fired from the Fox News Network. It was feared such an image might unsettle or disturb the consciences of viewers regarding the issue of abortion.
Scott Rae in “Moral Choices: An Introduction To Ethics” concludes his examination of the abortion issue with the following argument advocating for personhood of the unborn: “(1) An adult human being is the end result of the continuous growth of the organism from conception... (2) From conception to adulthood this development has no break that is relevant to the essential nature of the fetus... (3) Therefore, one is a human person from the point of conception onward (142).”
by Frederick Meekins
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Perhaps if its Dean wasn't a gay-pandering atheist, the National Cathedral wouldn't have to start charging tourists a $10 admission. There may be a away around this. The broadcast story pointed out the fee would not be accessed against those coming to the Cathedral to worship. Since the structure usually holds several worship services per day, it might pay to sneak into one of these and then stay in the building to snoop around once that has concluded. The last time I visited, I saw there was cash register at the designated "visitors entrance." The trick is just to barge straight through the front door and to just keep walking like you know what you are doing.
Monday, November 25, 2013
It was proclaimed from a Baptist pulpit that a generalized pronouncement that one would shoot a nocturnal intruder does not exhibit a proper fear of God. Instead, the believer is to rely on the Holy Spirit to provide a solution in such a situation. But who is to say in such a self-defense situation that it is not the Holy Spirit leading the individual to blow the assailant's brains out?
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Don't Claim All Links Are Equal If You Aren't Willing To Treat Them That Way
But apparently not all links are viewed as equal on the site if a number of moderators are censoring or suppressing access to alternative sources of information through the site to the right side of the political spectrum.
It might be retorted that on a private website it is well within its rights to propagate the vision of the world that it sees fit.
However, in comparing the rhetoric that claims to celebrate the bold expression of all ideas without fear of rejection or of the consequences and a reality where some ideas are forbidden as being less than equal than others, those caught redhanded in such a conceptual cookie jar are in part responsible for the long steady march towards the totalitarianism that Orwell warned about.
