When we are in a personal crisis we often cry out to the Lord. When you are needy, and have no one to help, what else can you do? Needy people, who call upon him, are precisely those whom God helps. The Lord can help you with temporal concerns and supply the spiritual necessities you require to sustain you in difficulty. Your cry is not unheard.

It is the full and self-sufficient who are foolish. The Lord speaks directly to us in verse 25: To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? says the Holy One. The Lord is turning us away from the folly of idolatry.

Psalm 14 speaks of the curse of idolatry: The fool says in his heart there is no God. They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds, there is none who does goodThey have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.

The psalm isnt speaking of atheism but idolatry. Men form their own gods and the Bible says even their outward good deeds are corrupted under the examination of the holy God. Men are swollen with pride, even though their life is frail and fleeting.

It is in this condition that the gospel comes to men. Gods Spirit magnifies to men their sin and misery, and enlightens their minds to knowledge of Christ. And the Lord doesnt refuse any sinner who comes to him. It truly is amazing grace, and it is sweet to the redeemed soul.

God identifies himself as the Holy One (verse 25). Holiness describes the otherness of God, his uniqueness, separate and above his creatures and creation. He alone is God. It also points to him as morally pure and perfect; he is pure light, with no darkness.

His will is not a created will, capable of unrighteousness, as well as righteousness. His justice is a holy justice; his wisdom a holy wisdom; his truth is holy truth; it is not possible that anything he promises or warns will fail. So when his Spirit works savingly upon a soul, his holiness is manifested to that soul. The need of reconciliation becomes indispensable; priority one.

The soul under conviction begins to understand his own works and righteousness under Gods examination will not suffice before the judgment of God. He sees himself in a way he hasnt before. The Son of Gods willingness to die for him is revealed in both its love and sufficiency. He now understands that God is pleased in all his holy purity with Christs offering for his sin.

Because God is holy, his love is boundless to those he has made holy in Christ. He delights in their holiness, because he reckons them as righteous as Christ. The more the Christian comes to understand this, the less he strives and worries about his acceptability before God on his own merits. Conversely, the less he is insensitive to his sin and vanity. He realizes he now belongs to the Holy God.

Strangely, the more the Christian understands the love of Christ and the certainty of his salvation as free and owing to nothing he has done, but wholly because of what Christ has done, the more self-less he becomes in serving Christ, and less the approval of men he seeks. He becomes motivated more from faith and love because Christ gave himself for him.

Verse 26 is a good one to memorize if you want to have the love of Christ before you always. The Lord directs you to look at the stars above and consider that he knows them all by name. Christ, in John 10, says he is the Good Shepherd who calls his sheep by name.

God formed the stars for your instruction. First, that he alone is Creator of all; he brought all into existence for his own glory. Second, that in Christ, you are of greater significance than the stars. The Son of God loved you and saved you. He has called you by name, led you out of sin and death. He has given you hope and a future. You are to follow him and not look back; seeking his glory, as his star.

The end of verse 26 says, By the greatness of his might, and because he is strong in power not one is missing. By speaking of the stars this way, the Lord is saying to you what he also said of his sheep in John 10: No one will snatch them out of my hand. None of his sheep will be missing on the Day of the Lord. The Lord is my Shepherd. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life.

See the original post here:

GETTING THE MESSAGE/Isaiah 40:25-26 - Madison County Journal

Marriage is a beautiful sacrament and a powerful path to holiness. But while there are many amazing saintly couples who found holiness together, not every married saint was blessed with a holy partner. Many lived for years with the cross of an unbelieving or lukewarm spouse. And while some of those spouses did ultimately come to know the Lord, others died unconverted. For those who struggle to follow the Lord while married to a non-Christian or non-practicing spouse, there is hope in the witness of the saints who found holiness in these marriages.

St. Monica (331-387) is, of course, most famous for her years of interceding for her son St. Augustine. She prayed and wept and sought advice from one priest after another until, finally, her son was converted and became one of the greatest theologians of all time. But before Augustines conversion, Monica had prayed for the conversion of his father. A bad-tempered man, Patricius made life difficult for Monica, ridiculing her for her faith and even forbidding the baptism of their children. Through the mercy of God (and the unceasing intercession of his wife), Patricius was converted on his deathbed. Baptized just before he died, from heaven he joined his wife in interceding for their son.

St. Catherine of Genoa (1413-1463) had hoped to enter religious life, but her brother convinced her instead to make what seemed to be a good match. When her husband turned out to be an unfaithful man with a violent temper, Catherines devotion was no match for such suffering and she fell away from the fervent practice of her faith. For five years, she moped. For the next five years she sought to forget her unhappy marriage in the things of the world. But finally she was converted (after a mystical experience) and her witness combined with a financial crisis led her husband to conversion only six months later. The couple made a vow of abstinence and began a life of prayer and service.

St. Augustine Yu Chin-gil (1791-1839) was a Korean convert to Catholicism, converted by a chance discovery of scraps of a book written by Servant of God Matteo Ricci. Though he traveled throughout the country evangelizing, he was never able to convert his wife or daughters; by all accounts, they died without ever accepting the faith. When Chin-gils son, on the other hand, heard that his father had been arrested, he presented himself at the prison to be martyred as well. St. Peter Yu Tae-chol was only 13 years old when he and his father were killed for the faith.

Servant of God Elisabeth Leseur (1866-1914) married a man raised in a devout family, but her husbands atheism was no youthful phase. The intellectual Felix was deeply in love with his wife and generally kind, but he had a habit of ridiculing her faith. The pressure overcame Elisabeth and she stopped attending Mass for a time. Eventually, though, she returned to the practice of the faith, offering up all Felixs slights and barbs (along with her chronic illness and infertility) as prayers for his conversion. After her death, Felix read her diaries and learned of all she had suffered and all she had offered for him. Determined not to be moved, he traveled to Lourdes to debunk the faith once and for all but was converted and became a Dominican priest. He devoted the rest of his life to telling the story of his beloved wife.

Bl. Lucien Botovasoa (1908-1947) was married to a Catholic woman, but his wife was not pleased with what struck her as an excess of piety in her husband. Lucien was a good husband and a loving father, but Suzanne thought he could make more money if he quit his job as a teacher and he could have more time for her if he would only abandon his vigils and daily holy hours. At the root of it was a fear that her husband would leave her to become a priest; when Lucien discovered this, he reassured his wife that he would not leave her. He kept his word until civil unrest in Madagascar led to his martyrdom. He left behind his wife and five children.

Servants of God Cyprien and Daphrose Rugamba (1935-1994, 1944-1994) ended up in a holy and loving relationship, but their marriage wasnt always idyllic. They were married after Cyprien, a former seminarian, had lost his faith completely. Though Daphrose was a faithful Catholic, Cyprien was a philanderer who had multiple affairs and one illegitimate child during their marriage. For nearly 20 years, Daphrose prayed for her husbands conversion. Finally, as he lay dying, Cyprien had a sudden conversion and looked up to see his wife beside him. Cyprien was healed and begged Daphroses forgiveness, which she gladly gave.The next 12 years of their marriage were beautiful and joyful, until the couple was killed (with six of their children) in the opening days of the Rwandan genocide.

See the rest here:

Saints who had to live the faith without the support of their spouses - Aleteia IT

I have just had this levelled against me:

I rather doubt there is such a thing as atheism. When atheism manifests itself, it appears to be no more than a mixture of confusion and father issues. Most professed atheists seem to live as if there is a god, despite their rejection of him, and a great many expend a great deal of anger towards this thing they claim does not exist. This is probably why you cant draw them in on an argument. No matter what you say, theyre fighting with their fathers and theyre going to stay out later after curfew no matter what the old man says: Hey, screw you Dad! is what you get.

To which another interlocutor, Guy, (both of these commenters have featured in articles here though dont comment here) opined in obsequious agreement:

perfect a straw God easily dispensed with and knocked over with a feather. Never a willingness to posit what a real omniscient and omnipotent God *would* be (whether he exists or not) and how absurd his creatures making demandsthat he prove his existence to them would also be. Basically its a prejudice that never honestly entertains a question it affects to be examining. Its just the imposition of a prejudice as opposed to an honest examination of an issue.

The first commenter was the person who claims Christians are the most persecuted. A very simple assertion that took me a big old article to analyse and debunk. I claimed his point about fatherhood was a really common myth about atheists that it didnt really warrant a response. He then stated:

But if the point I make is as tired and commonplace as you say, it would be very easy for you to bring up a CONCISE and satisfactory response to it.

Okay, what annoys me about climate denial, science denial, bald assertions, Trumps lies, lies in general, is that they are very easy to say and one can be very concise. But just because you can state them concisely, it doesnt mean you can unpick them concisely. Indeed, this is precisely the gripe. It takes so much more effort to build than to destroy, to build up cases using evidence and robust methodology than to destroy such edifices with lies and bald assertions.

This is the big shame about skepticism: it requires far more effort to be right than it does to be wrong.

The annoying thing is the burden of proof should be on the claimant. So, here, I should demand robust argumentation and evidence from him to support his initial claims. Instead, I come here to put down my thoughts in greater detail. More fool me. More fool me for even engaging with such silly comments.

Hey ho. Here goes. Slightly out of order:

Most professed atheists seem to live as if there is a god, despite their rejection of him, and a great many expend a great deal of anger towards this thing they claim does not exist. This is probably why you cant draw them in on an argument.

Russell Blackford (with whom I used to blog), a few years back, wrote a super book 50 Great Myths About Atheism with Udo Schuklenk because they got tired of the same old naive assertions made by theists. Three of the chapters are pertinent to this:

Myth 3 Atheists Believe in God but are in Denial 14Myth 5 Atheists Hate or are Angry with God 21Myth 6 Atheism is a Rebellion Against Gods Authority 24

These chapters are well worth reading and put these sorts of claims to bed.

Michael Martin wrote a 1996 response (Are There Really No Atheists?) to Van Til, who in 1969 claimed there were no atheists (as well as greg Bahnsen). Go read it.

Part of the problem is the phraseology here with the commenter. It is a straw man. Indeed, most of that thread is an army of straw men. Lets fix the statement:

Most professed atheists live as if there is no god, including in their rational rejection of the idea of itor arguments presented for its existence.

Part of the problem with arguments of God is the gendered pronoun usage. God is best described as an it (I often make this point by calling God she). This possibly underwrites the erropneous claims that come later concerning the rejections of father-figures.

Back to the denial of God issue I think the commenter needs to be more specific here in exactly what he means (Martin sets out two interpretations in his refutation the strong and weak theses). This simply appears not to apply to any atheist I know, As for being angry with God, we literally cant be angry with something we genuinely think does not exist.

Its a clever ruse that ends up being an unfalsifiable claim. When I provided some atheists, such as Blackford, in defence of the original accusations made, Guy stated: By appeal to people who reject theism, comically. So I cannot use atheists to defend atheism? Because not only is this an insane argument, it can be used to invalidate defences of theism by theists, too. Oh dear.

I am just wondering, though, can we claim that Christians hate Muslims on account of the same logic? Do they then have tacit admission that Allah exists? How about Zeus, oror?

As Blackford states (p.21-22):

It might suit Jensen and like-minded religious figureheads if we were not sincere or serious in our view that God does not exist. Robert T. Lee is one critic of atheists who makes this quite explicit. He argues that atheists think since they deny the existence of God, they cannot hate Him. But its really the other way around: they know He exists, thats why they hate Him (Lee, 2004). It goes without saying, perhaps, that this kind of logic is question-begging. From an atheistic viewpoint, the various gods worshiped by Christians and others are essentially fictional or mythological characters. Why hate them?

Of course, that does not prevent atheists from viewing the Abrahamic God, as depicted for example in various books of the Bible, as a most unattractive character. It is easy to see this being as loving vengeance and warfare, as being prurient in its obsession with matters of sex, and as especially repulsive in its demands for endless praise and worshipand in its requirement of blood sacrifice before forgiving sins. For that reason, many atheists are glad not to live in a world that contains this being. Such a world is clearly not the same as one created and ruled by a truly benevolent deity. Unfortunately, we appear not to be living in that world either.

Thus there is a religious cottage industry devoted to explaining (away) the evil that exists in our world despite the presence of a benevolent God, who supposedly created it. Theologians call this the theodicy problem (often referred to as the problem of evil). How can it be that there is so much evil existing in a world they believe has been created by an all-powerful, all-knowing, and benevolent deity? The obvious answer is that there simply is no such deity.

Atheists tend to find the religious answers to such questions contrived or unsatisfying. That is not, however, the same as hating an actual being God. Nor do atheists tend to hate historical or legendary figures, such as Jesus, any more than other such figures about whom little is known with certainty. Some atheists are critical of the moral character of Jesus as depicted in the traditionally accepted Gospels (e.g., Tooley, 2009), but that should not be confused with hatred. More generally, there is a tendency for religious apologists to blur the distinction between harsh criticism and expressions of hatred.

For example, Alister McGrath comments, not exactly in a charitable spirit, on Richard Dawkins: Dawkins preaches to his god-hating choirs, who are clearly expected to relish his rhetorical salvoes, and raise their hands in adulation (McGrath and Collicutt McGrath, 2007, p. x).

I could quote the whole chapter, but expediency, right?

However, I will leave you with some, er, data. You know, actual evidence. Blackford, again:

Interestingly, and not surprisingly perhaps, surveys suggest that religiousbelievers are often angry with the God they believe in. A study undertakenby Julie Exline and colleagues found that between one-third and two-thirds of religious people surveyed in the USA conceded being angry with their respective gods. The reason most frequently mentioned is that theyfeel let down by God, usually in the aftermath of a major health scare orother personal tragedy that he did not prevent (Exline et al., 2011).

I know you are, you said you, but what am I?

We have two forms of atheism: strong atheism and weak atheism. Lets start with weak atheism a lack of belief in a god or gods. You cant really get clearer than that a belief you just dont have. But with either position, as with all positions, it is about several things: psychology and rational argument. I agree that psychology is always at play when we come to bel;ieve things, I just disagree that the psychology here involves the rejection of a father. Either way, the pyschology does not invalidate the rational arguments, even if it can, with post hoc rationalisaiton, involve the scrabbling around for those arguments to defend an intuitively-taken position.

I accuse many Christians and right-wing commenters of doing that here (see the endless discussions on the Second Amendment, conceptual nominalism and natural rights).

When it comes to rational argument, atheists really are clear. It might revolve around the problem of evil, or the inherent contradictions and confusions in arguing for OmniGod under classical theism, or the nonsenses of the Kalam Cosmological Argument. The clarity is there. There is no confusion. I am very clear:I am Certain of My Atheism. Ive Said All I have to Say. Or Have I?

The confusion from theists comes from a top-down appraoch. Rather than buil;ding to a conclusion, they start with God and the Bible and attemt to build backwards. Its a messay and very, very confused affair. Heck, christian theologians the world over disagree with their theologies. Thoedicies abound. So no, I would certainly posit, instead, that theism is far more confused. Necessarily so. Here is the huge hypocrisy.

When you have to apply an ancient, parochial book to history, science and philosophy, the mental contractions and rational gerrymandering you have to do is quite astounding. It is even why I have argued previously that presuppositionalist biblical literalists are far more logically consistent than almost all Christian theists of the modern, more liberal UK persuasion, even if their starting premises are broken. Trying to allow a liberal understanding of, say, homosexuality to jibe with the Bible and theology is embarrassing to watch, at times.

See my segment in the Skepticule podcast episode 51 for more details on this:Counter-apologetics on Original Sin, Adam and Eve, the Westboro Baptist Church etc available now!(I thought Id written an article on it turns out that will be my next piece).

No matter what you say, theyre fighting with their fathers and theyre going to stay out later after curfew no matter what the old man says: Hey, screw you Dad! is what you get.

As Blackford again opines, this issue is one that has been around for some time. At the beginning of his chapter Myth 6 Atheism Is a Rebellion against Gods Authority, he refers to the seminal work of George Smith (p.24):

As George H. Smith mentions, atheists are often accused of being in some sort of neurotic rebellion, especially if the atheist concerned is young. Smith notes, however, that atheists cannot win once this approach is taken a middle-aged atheist can be accused of such things as the frustration of daily routine, the bitterness of failure, or alienation from oneself and ones fellow man. If the atheist is old, the accusation can relate to the disillusionment, cynicism and loneliness that sometimes accompany ones later years (Smith, 1979, p. 24). All of this is question-begging since neither youth nor old age is evidence of any kind of neurotic response to the God question. Speculations about states of mind get us nowhere.

Indeed, as Smith himself says in Atheism The Case Against God (p.19):

Contrary to what many theists like to believe, atheism is not a form of neurotic rebellion or mental illness. The religionist cannot rid the world of atheists by committing them to an isolated asylum where they can be ignored. To label atheism as a psychological problem is a feeble, almost laughable attempt to evade the fundamental questions of truth and falsity. Is theism true? What reasons are there for believing in a god? These are the important issues, and these are the issues to which the theist must address himself if he wishes to confront the challenge of atheism.

(There is further discussion on p.160 of this.)

Its not that God represents an authoritarian father-figure that all, every single one of us atheists have had some issue with, its that God is a parochial and outdated invention with parochial and outdated moral strictures.

For many of us, the moral norms advocated by morally conservative theists do not look like the edicts of a superlatively wise and benevolent being, but more like relics from a less enlightened era. At best, some of them may have made sense as standards of behavior in earlier social circumstances, even though they make little or no sense now. Once we reach that point, holy books, traditional teachings, and official pronouncements from religious organizations appear unlikely to be divinely inspired. That, in turn, casts doubt on their authority in other matters such as claims about the existence and character of supernatural beings. (p.26)

Perhaps he is referring to the nonsense that is Paul Vitzs Faith and the Fatherless, but I dont think so: this isnt about absentee fathers, but about reacting, psychologically, to some kind of authoritarian father-figure rooted in somehow in the atheists experiences. Perhaps, then, it is taking the thesis of James Spiegel in hisThe Making of an Atheist:How Immorality Leads to Unbelief. You would hope not, as this is a book and thesis that atheists have taken serious issue with (by all accounts its drivel). He makes such claims as:

We may summarize the biblical diagnosis of atheism as follows. The atheists problem is rebellion against the plain truth of God, as clearly revealed in nature. This rebellion is prompted by a morality, which diminishes understanding, and a genuine ignorance results. This is not a loss of intelligence so much as a selective intellectual obtuseness or imperviousness to truths related to God, ethics, and human nature. But the root of this obtuseness is moral in nature.

It follows from the biblical diagnosis that atheists arguments are an intellectual ruse masking their rebellion. The recent spate of new atheist books, like the entire history of atheistic publications, amounts to little more than a literary subterfuge. The flaws in their arguments are easily exposed whether matters of bad logic or faulty presuppositions. These are further symptoms of their wilful disbelief, which takes both this active form (presenting atheistic arguments) and the passive form of ignoring the myriad evidences for God, to which Paul briefly refers and which atheist apologists, from Plato and Aquinas to CS Lewis and Peter Kreeft have tirelessly illuminated. (p.56)

Holy moly. This is just nonsense. I wouldnt take this seriously in any form, and yet Spiegel seems to be one of the main rebellion against God as father proponents. Sadly, his case is built largely around biblical exegesis rather than any serious psychology. And to think that somehow Thomists and CS Lewis and Kreeft have somehow closed the book (when Thomism is arguably at loggerheads with other theologies) is village theism.

Thus, the choice of the atheistic paradigm is motivated by non-rational factors, some of which are psychological and some of which are moral in nature.

The hardening of the atheistic mind-set occurs through cognitive malfunction due to two principal causes. First, atheists suffer from paradigm-induced blindness, as their worldview inhibits their ability to recognize the reality of God that is manifest in creation. Second, atheists suffer from damage to the sensus divinitatis, so their natural awareness of God is severely impeded. (p.114)

I just dont know where to start with the sheer hypocrisy of this last quote. If my interlocutor wants to take these arguments seriously, have at it. they are laughable assertions.

So, really, this goes back to supposedly rebelling against Gods authority as if we just dont like those house rules that God has imposed, that we staying out beyond curfew.

Or is it that, in Gods house, you get executed for being gay, stoned for adultery (in the Portsmouth Diocese, on the decree of the Diocese, our primary schools were responsible for teaching that moral edict to Year 1 children when I worked in faith schooling 6 year-olds), that slaves are okay knocking about the house, being dehumanised, so on and so forth. And if we go to war, its okay to rape enemy families.

From my own experience, I have no issue with my father in this way. Despite the fact that he, as well as my interlocutor, voted Brexit, the gay relatives I have are safe in his house, and he doesnt keep slaves. We might disagree a lot on politics right now (a very recent thing), but he and my mother live around the corner and were just fine, thank you very much,

But no, me rejecting God is definitely because I just want to rebel: Aw, Dad! Cmon! Please, do I haveto murder my mixed-race neighbours to keep Gods people pure?! (Numbers 25:6-13)

I mean, these ten biblical passages I reject solely on account of mere father-figure rebellion (Dan Barkers list), right?

10. God destroys a good family for no reason.

(Job 2:3 New Revised Standard Bible)

9. God destroys the fetuses of those who do not worship him.

(Hosea 13:4, 9, 16 New International Version)

8. God approves the massacre of a peaceful people so one of his tribes could have a place to live.

(Judges 18:128 NIV)

7. Babies are slaughtered and wives raped.

(Isaiah 13:916 NIV)

6. A mixed-race couple is murdered by a godly priest to keep Gods people pure.The righteous priest Phinehas murdered a loving couple for the crime of miscegenation. Then he was praised by God and rewarded for the hate crime with a perpetual priesthood for keeping the nation racially pure.

(Numbers 25:613 NRSV)

5. A daughter is burned as an acceptable sacrifice to God.

(Judges 11:3039 NIV)

4. The cannibalistic God makes people eat human flesh.

(Leviticus 26:2729 King James Version)

3. God threatens rape, then takes credit for it.

(Jeremiah 13:1526 NRSV)

2. God threatens sexual molestation.

(Isaiah 3:1617 KJV)

1. God wants you to be happy to dash babies against the rocks.

(Psalm 137:89 NRSV)

Let me return to Guys point:

perfect a straw God easily dispensed with and knocked over with a feather. Never a willingness to posit what a real omniscient and omnipotent God *would* be (whether he exists or not) and how absurd his creatures making demandsthat he prove his existence to them would also be. Basically its a prejudice that never honestly entertains a question it affects to be examining. Its just the imposition of a prejudice as opposed to an honest examination of an issue.

Well, I have written an ebook on entirely this problem. Its not a straw man, its classical theism.

The Problem of God: Classical Theism under the Spotlight (UK).Hes welcome to read it. At any rate, were not asking that he (God) proves he exists, we ask his followers prove it, the god-entity, exists, or at least provide compelling enough arguments, just as they would ask of Muslims, climate change, unicorns, UFOs, etc.

Whats good for the goose, and all that.

Essentially, silly rhetorical nonsense.

Stay in touch! Like A Tippling Philosopher on Facebook:

Link:

Hating God: Atheism as Rebelling Against a Father-Figure and Other Nonsenses - Patheos

THERE was a time when I worked closely with Cardinal Miroslav Vlk, Archbishop of Prague. He had been a clandestine priest, working as a window-cleaner, during the Communist period. I did not always agree with him, but I took everything that he said with the greatest seriousness, because he spoke with the authority of experience, experience of the States atheism and of the Churchs faith.

Halk comes with the same credentials and with a background in sociology, psychology, and philosophy, as well as theology; and he is a public intellectual in the Central European mould, who returned to Prague from Britain in 1968, rather like Bonhoeffer to Germany in 1939, to become an adviser to President Havel and to engage in dialogue with other religions and with atheism.

He is a prolific author on a wide range of topics, and this book makes an admirable introduction to his theology and main concerns. Its starting-point, as its title suggests, is St Augustines Amo: volo ut sis (I love you: I want you to be). He tangles with the most profound of atheists, Feuerbach and his beloved Nietzsche. Vitriolic, disgruntled, and far-sighted, Nietzsche . . . taught me the courage to dare to venture out into the sea of doubt, without a compass, and he is grateful to them for their help in stripping away false and sentimental ideas of God.

He draws on Eckhart, Pascal, Buber, and Teilhard de Chardin, among others, encouraging the reader to search widely for witnesses to the truth. At the heart of the book is a reflection on Jesuss double answer to the single question about the greatest commandment in the Law. Jesus does not just link the love of God to the love of neighbour: he transforms the transcendence of God into the immanence of love for, and service to, ones fellow human beings. There is a practical answer to the theoretical objections of atheists.

All this and much more is to be found in this treasury of fascinating and challenging insights from one who, like his Master, speaks not as the scribes, but with authority.

The Very Revd Dr John Arnold is a former Dean of Durham.

I Want You to Be: On the God of loveTom HalkNotre Dame 24.95(978-0-268-10073-5)Church Times Bookshop 22.45

Continued here:

I Want You to Be: On the God of love, by Tom Halk 24 Jul 2020 - Church Times

Photo: Clouds of Jupiter, by Gerald Eichstdt and Sean Doran (CC BY-NC-SA)/NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS.

Editors note: This article is an excerpt from John Lennoxs new book, 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity. Dr. Lennox is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford.

Science proceeds on the basis of the assumption that the universe is, at least to a certain extent, accessible to the human mind. No science can be done without the scientist believing this, so it is important to ask for grounds for this belief. Atheism gives us none, since it posits a mindless, unguided origin of the universes life and consciousness.

Charles Darwin saw the problem. He wrote: With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of mans mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy.

Similarly, physicist John Polkinghorne says that the reduction of mental events to physics and chemistry destroys meaning:

Thought is replaced by electrochemical neural events. Two such events cannot confront each other in rational discourse. They are neither right nor wrong. They simply happen . . . The world of rational discourse dissolves into the absurd chatter of firing synapses. Quite frankly that cannot be right and none of us believes it to be so.

Polkinghorne is a Christian, but some well-known atheists also acknowledge the difficulty here.

In his book Mind and Cosmos, leading atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel says:

If the mental is not itself merely physical, it cannot be fully explained by physical science . . . Evolutionary naturalism implies that we should not take any of our convictions seriously, including the scientific world picture on which evolutionary naturalism depends.

That is, naturalism, and therefore atheism, undermines the foundations of the very rationality that is needed to construct or understand or believe in any kind of argument whatsoever, let alone a scientific one. In short, it leads to the abolition of reason a kind of abolition of man, since reason is an essential part of what it means to be human.

Not surprisingly, I reject atheism because I believe Christianity to be true. But that is not my only reason. I also reject it because I am a mathematician interested in science and rational thought. How could I espouse a worldview that arguably abolishes the very rationality I need to do mathematics? By contrast, the biblical worldview that traces the origin of human rationality to the fact that we are created in the image of a rational God makes real sense as an explanation of why we can do science.

Science and God mix very well. It is science and atheism that do not mix.

Read the original here:

Why Science and Atheism Don't Mix - Discovery Institute

***Update***: The largest atheist group in Australia, the Atheist Foundation of Australia, has pulled out of joining as an affiliate due to Sherlocks statements.

I posted yesterday about a troubling situation brewing at Atheist Alliance International, one of the larger atheist organizations in the world, with nearly 200,000 fans on Facebook and Special Consultative status with the United Nations.

You can read the details here, but the gist of it is that the groups executive director Michael Sherlock had called one critic a cunt and used the slur retarded in multiple tweets. (His defenders insisted he was using the technical definition meaning slowed or delayed, but its clear in context that wasnt the case.)

Three members of AAIs not-yet-publicized advisory board told me they were resigning as a result of the comments. Sherlock himself spent part of yesterday lashing out at me personally.

Now we have an update.

Last night, AAI posted their own statement online. It says that the board has suspended Sherlock for a month, without pay. He has also been reminded that damaging the groups reputation could lead to being fired without advanced notice.

Thats a start. Interesting that (as of this writing) they posted it on Twitter, where they have significantly fewer followers, and not on Facebook, which is their primary way to communicate with supporters.

Whilst AAI expects to encounter controversy in the public sphere, it is our strict policy to treat everyone with respect. Our job is to attack bad ideas or behaviors but not to attack people and certainly never to resort to personal insults. The committee found that Michael fell short of these ideals in this exchange.

Theyre referring to the exchange in which he called a critic a cunt twice. But what about all the other times he used that word or other similar slurs? Saying he fell short suggests his rhetoric was just fine with AAI until he used that particular word in that particular thread.

But its his overall behavior thats a problem, not a singular incident. Hes just abad representative for the organization.

What about the use of retarded? AAI doesnt care about that one at all.

The committee found that Michael used the word without intending any disrespect or offense to anyone.

Oh. Well that settles it then. He meant retarded in a good way. Obviously.

Kaitlyn Gleason, the person Sherlock insulted, didnt buy the statement either, saying it missed the mark. She told me this last night:

I dont care if Michael thinks Im a cunt. I care about using language that is hurtful to intellectually disabled people. We should all do our best to ensure we do no harm to vulnerable groups of people. There are plenty of other words he could have used and he should have. There is no excuse.

Today, he again defended using the word while calling those of us who were concerned irrational, a militia of morality police, and self-righteous and self-appointed conformity crusaders on a jihad.

How can you stand by someone who does not understand how using a word like retarded is a problem? Clearly, members of your advisory board agree that this word has no place in a decent, humanist society since multiple members resigned.

As atheists, we have to do better and we have to demand better. We already struggle with a bad reputation simply because we dont believe in gods. This kind of behavior does not help our cause.

Again, I appreciate the consideration that you gave this incident and I wish you continued success in the work you do.

I would just reiterate that I want groups like AAI to succeed. If their goal is to make atheism more acceptable and help people in other countries when their rejection of religion puts them in harms way, Im right there with them. But when their leader is openly hostile to constructive critics and making statements that are impossible to defend, its creating more obstacles for our shared goals.

Why even have a group to solve big problems when all youre doing is creating new ones? I dont get it.

I guess well find out in a month (or sooner) how seriously the board takes its own statement and how much of a leader Sherlock wants to be. In the meantime, there are other groups doing much of the same work in normalizing atheism. Consider becoming a member of any of them.

Excerpt from:

Atheist Alliance International Temporarily Suspends Director Over Use of Slurs - Friendly Atheist - Patheos

The left used to hate religion. For the past few decades, a common criticism from the left was to label anyone who was a conservative Christian as being a member of the dreaded, Religious Right. In the past this powerful voting block that tend to vote for Republicans was often called an unholy alliance.

However, it seems the left has found a religion, and it is rapidly becoming a powerful force in American politics. Whether social justice, Black Lives Matter, or global warning (aka, climate change), it all falls under the banner of this formidable entity: The religion of Wokeness. This may soon dwarf all other religions in our country, including Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Evangelicalism, Scientology and perhaps even atheism.

There are a number of characteristics of mainstream religions, and Wokeness has them too. Religions have sacred literature. Christians have the Bible, specifically the New Testament. Jews have the Torah. Muslims have the Quran. Scientologists have the writings of L. Ron Hubbard, and the Church of Latter-day Saints has the Book of Mormon. There are sacred texts as well in the religion of Wokeness. These include the Communist Manifesto, the writings community activist of Saul Alinsky, and Howard Zinns A Peoples History of the United States, or what radio host Dennis Prager likes to call A proctologists view of American history.

Commentator John McWhorter identified a major aspect of this Woke religion: the immorality of white privilege. Just two years ago he wrote, The parallels with Christianity are almost uncannily rich. White privilege is the secular white persons Original Sin, present at birth and ultimately ineradicable. One does ones penance by endlessly attesting to this privilege in hope of some kind of forgiveness.

McWhorter was a bit ahead of his time as a handful of liberal politicians, all white of course, recently acknowledged their privilege by publicly kneeling at the U.S. Capital, a prominent act of public self-punishment. But real penance, at least for the left, means getting rid of all privilege. And when they talk privilege, what they are really referring to is wealth. For them, wealth must be transferred from oppressor to the oppressed, which is why many doctrines of Wokeness are straight out of the Communist Manifesto.

Few religions punish their non-supporters as severely as the Woke. It is one thing to not oppose a religion, but you must embrace the Woke, or you are labeled, of course, a racist. The Woke religionists will hunt down and expose those who refuse to be converted, making sure they are shamed, fired from their jobs or derided publicly.

Another characteristic of those who are extremely religious is an intolerance toward images or symbols they dislike. In the last few weeks we have seen countless statues torn down by the Woke, even those who were never controversial, including President Abe Lincoln and abolitionist Frederick Douglas. In a way, Woke fanatics resemble radical Islamists who destroy all things that offend their faith.

Finally, most religions have some kind of a Messiah. Islam has Muhammad, Mormons have Joseph Smith, and Christianity has Jesus. Wokeness has several, with the most prominent being George Floyd. Floyd, as was reported extensively, died while being arrested in late May in Minneapolis, and the four officers involved have been charged with murder. Conservative commentator Candace Owens took to Facebook and stated that what happened to him was wrong, and charges against the officers should be pursued. However, she also questioned why Floyd was being heralded as someone to be worshipped by her fellow Blacks, due to his extensive criminal record. For this she was condemned for her blasphemy. One cannot criticize the Messiah!

According to the Woke, certain names are sacred, and anyone who dare disparage them violate the commandment of Thou Shall Not Take Thy Name in Vain.

But there is a huge difference between the religion of Wokeness and the more traditional religions in our country, and that has to do with worship. Most Christian churches were ordered to close their doors during the COVID crisis in the spring. But those who follow the religion of Wokeness were allowed to get together in mass gatherings, all in the name of justice for George Floyd. However, many of these worship services were riots and they ended up with the burning and looting of stores, even police stations.

What is most disturbing is this destruction is now being directed at Christianity. In the past few weeks multiple houses of worship have been desecrated or destroyed in California and Florida. It could be connected to Black Lives Matter activist Shawn King and his recent condemnation of the symbols of Christianity. He wrote, They are a gross form of white supremacy. Created as tools of oppression. Racist propaganda. They should all come down.

The religion of Wokeness is not harmonious with Christianity, or any other mainstream religion in our country. It represents a serious danger to the values that have shaped America. If Wokeness does become the dominant religion, Im afraid the country that you and I grew up in will be gone with the wind, just like the name of the Washington Redskins.

Tom Kuiper lives in Sibley. He may be reached at thomaskuiper85@gmail.com.

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Kuiper: The left's worshipping of Wokeness will dwarf other faiths - nwestiowa.com

As he began his 1979 pilgrimage through Poland, Pope John Paul II preached a soaring sermon that was fiercely Catholic, yet full of affection for his homeland.

For Communist leaders, the fact that the former archbishop of Krakow linked faith to national pride was pure heresy. The pope joyfully claimed divine authority to challenge atheism and the government's efforts to reshape Polish culture.

"Man cannot be fully understood without Christ," John Paul II told 290,000 people at a Mass in Warsaw's Victory Square. "He cannot understand who he is, nor what his true dignity is, nor what his vocation is, nor what his final end is. ... Christ cannot be kept out of the history of man in any part of the globe, at any longitude or latitude of geography."

Pope John Paul II waves to the faithful April 23, 1997, as he crosses St. Peter's Square at the Vatican.(Photo: AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

That was bad enough. Then he added: "It is therefore impossible without Christ to understand the history of the Polish nation. ... If we reject this key to understanding our nation, we lay ourselves open to a substantial misunderstanding. We no longer understand ourselves."

This was the stuff of sainthood, and John Paul II received that title soon after his 26-year pontificate ended. But the global impact of that 1979 sermon is a perfect example of why many Catholics believe it's time to attach another title to his name "the great."

"The informal title 'the great' is not one that is formally granted by the church," explained historian Matthew Bunson, author of "The Pope Encyclopedia: An A to Z of the Holy See."

"Every saint who is also a pope is not hailed as 'the great,' but the popes who have been called 'the great' are all saints. ... When you hear that title, you are dealing with both the love of the faithful for this saint and the judgment of history."

In the case of John Paul II, mourners chanted "Santo subito!" ("Saint now!") and waved posters with that slogan at his funeral. During a Mass only 13 hours after his death, Cardinal Angelo Sodano spoke of "John Paul, indeed, John Paul the Great."

When he was chosen to succeed John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI's first words to the crowd in St. Peter's Square were, "After the great pope ... ."

Discussions of attaching "the great" to this saint's title were jump-started by a recent letter from Benedict XVI that marked the centenary of the birth, in the Polish town of Wadowice, of the man who would become John Paul II.

Terry Mattingly, News Sentinel columnist(Photo: Paul Efird / News Sentinel)

"The word 'saint' indicates God's sphere, and the word 'great,' the human dimension," Benedict wrote. The term "great" is harder to define, he added, and in the "course of the almost 2,000-year-long history of the papacy, the title 'the great' has been maintained only for two popes: Leo I (440-461) and Gregory I (590-604). In the case of both, the word 'great' has a political connotation, but precisely because something of the mystery of God himself becomes visible through their political success."

In both of those cases, Bunson said, the future of Rome and the Roman world were at risk with Leo dealing with Attila the Hun, while Gregory faced the invading forces of the Lombards. Pope Gregory the Great also produced epic works of theology, especially on the liturgy and the work of bishops.

"With that in mind, just look at the dramatic life of John Paul II," Bunson said. "You start with his underground work against the Nazis, then all the ways that he stood up to Communism during the Cold War. Finally, there are his encyclicals opposing the existential threat of postmodernism what he called the 'culture of death' to the value of the human person."

In his letter, Benedict XVI quoted the famous words of Russia's Joseph Stalin, who asked, considering Europe's future: "How many divisions does the pope have?"

As it turned out, Pope John Paul II was more than a worthy opponent.

"Let us leave open the question of whether the epithet 'the great' will prevail or not," noted the retired pope. "It is true that God's power and goodness have become visible to all of us in John Paul II. In a time when the Church is again suffering from the oppression of evil, he is for us a sign of hope and confidence."

Terry Mattingly leads GetReligion.org and lives in Oak Ridge. He is a senior fellow at the Overby Center at the University of Mississippi.

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Is it time to add 'The Great' to 'St. John Paul II'? | Terry Mattingly - Knoxville News Sentinel

The greatest Muslim mystic, Jalal Uddin Rumi said, There are many ways to the divine, but I have chosen the ways of song, dance and laughter.

On the contrary, the greatest exponent of atheism and intellectualism, a radical German philosopher and composer, Friedrich Nietzsche said, Without music, life would be a mistake.

Music is a precious gift from nature and it is the only catharsis of humans ever and nowadays in clinical psychology music has become credible psychotherapy. Music is the language of the universe and it is the only thing, which can never be eliminated from any aspect of life. It can also never be unrecognisable for any creature of this universe, even animals can understand the language of music. Music has the same value and importance in all cultures across the globe and no civilisation has ever existed without the colour of music, but the music of subcontinent is more ancient and more adorable than other civilisations of the world. That is sad to us, After partition, we have intentionally sidelined all kinds of fine arts, particularly music. We have perished the value of fine arts. Rather, we have destroyed the image of those people who were directly related to fine arts, particularly musicians. We didnt give the real respect to the greatest musician of the Kasur Gharana, Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan Sahib. Thats why he left Pakistan after partition and settled in India. We always degrade musicians and all types of artists. Music is a divine sound and is directly related to our metaphysical core. The Sufi mystic of our region, Hazrat Ali Hujwiri alias Data Gaj Baksh, said in his book, Kashf-ul-Mahjoob, Except hypocrite, every person understands the language of music.

Music is the language of the universe

The music of subcontinent is technically called Shastri Sangeet or Hindustani classical music. It is the first and very ancient music in the world. The music of subcontinent dates back to more than 1500 BCE and it is first time written as literature in Hindu religious scripture Samaveda.

Our first musical instrument was Veena, Sarangi and Tanpura. Veena is the very classical and ancient form of Sitar, which is no longer used today. Shatria Sangeet or Hindustani Classical music is purely based on melody. Like western music, we do not use notations and scales. We utterly emphasise on vocal techniques and give chance to a learner that he can use the natural strength of his vocal range. So on the base of that rule, in Hindustani music, the particular vocal techniques have discovered. Later on, it was called Gharana, i.e. singing school. Our music is based on Layakari. Layakari means vocals following the rhythmic cycles. The most prominent Gharanas in Pakistan are Patiala Gharana, Qawwal Bachon Ka Gharana, Shamchurasi Gharana and those in India are Mewati Gharana, Gwalior Gharana, Agra Gharana, Kirana Gharana, Bhendi Bazaar Gharana, Jaipur-Atrauli Gharana, Rampur-Sahaswan Gharana and Indore Gharana. Gharana is a style of singing, which is a specific recognition of the musicians.

The Sufi singing style is called Qawwali and it is specifically performed by Qawwal Bachon Ka Gharana. In Pakistan, the most prominent members of Qawwal Bachon Ka Gharana were Ustad Iftekhar Ahmed Nizami and Ustad Munshi Razi Uddinuddin. Similarly, the Patiala Gharana is the most influential musical school in subcontinent music, It was founded by Fateh Ali Khan and Ali Baksh Khan and was initially sponsored by the Maharaja of Patiala, Punjab. It was known for Ghazal, Thumri and Khayal styles of singing. The most influential Patiala singers are Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Ustad Ashiq Ali Khan and Ustad Bade Fateh Ali Khan.

This Gharana tends to favour pentatonic ragas for their ornamentation and execution of intricate taans. Ektaal (12 beats rhythmic cycles) and Teentaal (16 beats rhythmic cycles) are the most common taals chosen by members of this Gharana. Besides, Khayal exponents sing the Punjab-Ang thumri. The special feature of Patiala Gharana is its rendering of taans. Taan is the singing of very rapid melodic passages using vowels. These are very rhythmic, vakra (complicated) and phirat (wandering) taans, and are not bound by the rhythmic cycle. Taans with clear aakaar are presented not through the throat but the naavi (navel).

This Gharana has been criticised for neglecting basic raga characteristics such as the primary development octave and for overusing ornaments and graces (thumri style) without considering the nature and mood of the raga. The music of subcontinent is the music of nature, like western music our musicians do not emphasise on falsetto. The musicians of these Gharans do not use any scale or orchestral arrangement like western musicians rather they use a melodic pattern which is recognised as raga. Raga is the essence of subcontinent music. Without a melodic pattern, the style of singing becomes light or pop music. Raga, alap, aakaar, taan, murki, khatka, gamak, meend and kan are the specifications of Hindustani music.

The writer is a psychologist and a polymath

The rest is here:

The music of the subcontinent - Daily Times

Im Catholic. Now What? by Shaun McAfee. Our Sunday Visitor (Huntington, Indiana, 2019). 335 pp., US$19.95.

What to Say and How to Say It: Discuss Your Catholic Faith With Clarity and Confidence by Brandon Vogt. Ave Maria Press (Notre Dame, Indiana, 2020). 235 pp., US$16.95. Reviewed by MITCH FINLEY (CNS)

These two books give readers an overview of what it means to be Catholic. They share the strengths and weaknesses that any such book is bound to have.

On the positive side, each gives clear explanations for topics related to being Catholic in todays world. On the negative side, each encourages the reader to believe that there is only one acceptable Catholic point of view, one acceptable Catholic answer to ethical and moral conundrums indeed, one acceptable way to be a good Catholic.

In other words, these books present a black-and-white view of Catholicism, as if no grey areas exist. They tend to overlook G.K. Chestertons observation that Catholics know the relatively few transcendental truths on which they do agree, and take rather a pleasure in disagreeing on all the rest.

That said, such books have their place and can be helpful.

This is the book cover of Im Catholic. Now What? by Shaun McAfee. The book is reviewed by Mitch Finley. (CNS) See BOOKS-FAITH June 12, 2020.

Shaun McAfee, author of Im Catholic. Now What? is a former evangelical Christian who joined the Catholic Church. This gives him the ability to speak to those with a non-Catholic background about Catholicism, knowing what their perspectives and questions are likely to be.

At the same time, former evangelical Christians tend to shift their former inclination to find all the answers in a kind of biblical literalism, to an inclination to find all the answers in a kind of Catholic doctrinal literalism, and this seems true of these books. Both McAfee and Vogt seem to assume that all official Catholic documents and teachings are at least virtually infallible.

While Vogts book limits itself to certain more-or-less controversial topics, McAfees book addresses Catholic topics of many kinds, including the Bible and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the sacraments, Mary and the saints, prayer, drinking beer, kissing a bishops ring, opposing relativism, euthanasia, evolution, Church history, and genuflecting and bowing.

Vogt became a Catholic as a young adult but, prior to embracing a Catholic doctrinal literalism similar to that of McAfee, he was a millennial none. Vogt divides his book into nine sections: Answering Atheism, Evil and Suffering, Trusting the Gospels, Explaining the Eucharist, Abortion, Same-Sex Marriage and Transgenderism. Particularly appealing is that each of these includes an expert interview with an individual whom Vogt regards as an expert on that topic. These include Peter Kreeft and Jesuit Father Robert Spitzer.

One advantage of Vogts What to Say and How to Say It is that it includes one of the few easily available popular theological discussions of transgenderism.

When it comes to issues on which there is considerable Catholic disagreement such as the morality of contraception McAfee embraces the official Catholic point of view with no mention of contrary beliefs. McAfee turns frequently to The Catechism of the Catholic Church so, in this regard, it would have been helpful had he at least remarked on the catechisms ambiguity on the topic of freedom of conscience.

Both of these books make good reading for both new and cradle Catholics. Readers do well, however, to remember that the authors wrote their books from a certain ideological perspective on what it means to be Catholic.

Read more:

A black-and-white view of what it means to be Catholic - NZ Catholic

In our latest podcast, Jessica and I discussed the past week in politics and atheism.

We talked about:

Be sure to check out the Being Reasonable podcast if you enjoy street epistemology!

Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany wrongly thinks science supports reopening schools. (1:16)

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is promoting Christian Nationalism in a new document. (8:07)

The White House held secret phone calls with evangelical leaders urging them to apply for forgivable PPP loans they didnt need. (13:04)

Dont use slurs when youre the leader of an atheist organization. (15:05)

These irresponsible parents are leading a Million Unmasked March. (35:01)

Rush Limbaugh wants us to follow in the footsteps of cannibals. (40:58)

Anti anti-Trump ad features evangelical Christians admitting Trump used them. (45:57)

Sudan is taking big steps in the direction of human rights by overturning religious rules. (52:31)

Atheists arent hypocrites for taking PPP loans. (57:28)

Does Laura Ingraham know where Toronto is? (1:01:23)

Wed love to hear your thoughts on the podcast. If you have any suggestions for people we should chat with, please leave them in the comments, too.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or Google Play, stream all the episodes on SoundCloud or Stitcher, or just listen to the whole thing below. Our RSS feed is here. And if you like what youre hearing, please consider supporting this site on Patreon and leaving us a positive rating!

(Screenshot via YouTube)

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Podcast Ep. 331: The Science is Not on Trump's Side - Friendly Atheist - Patheos

I was involved in an argument on Facebook concerning the news of the cathedral in the Frensch city of Nantes. This was fresh news: it was only just happening. And yet, already, the person in question wrote this comment alongside a video of the burning building:

There are people who hate the truth, hate the light and hate life itself. They have set themselves the task of extinguishing it from the world, and replacing it with chaos: darkness and death. They are evil.

I took issue with this because we knew literally nothing at the time other than an arson investigation was due to start. How could they make such sweeping claims in light of such a lack of knowledge about what was going on? But this wasnt my main issue; my main bone of contention concerned the next comment:

Christians are the most oppressed and most attacked religious group. How else should I frame that, except in the way I have?

Indeed, the whole conversation was so simplistic and in poor methodology that it makes me sad that people just arent interested in actually trying to find out the truth of matters of furthering their own knowledge base. That said, before we start, let me lay out ( just for intellectual rigour) two arguable assumptions I am making that were not challenged and so were implicitly accepted: a) atheism is included, in discussion here, in religious group, a sort of generalised category; b) oppressed and attacked is synonymous with persecuted.

With those two assumptions accepted by my interlocutors, let me now address this ubiquitous claim, one that is pushed by Christians the world over.

My conclusion, that I will lay out now and then work towards, is that this term most persecuted is too simplistic to be able to engender a straightforward answer given that it is actually a complex area belying a nuanced understanding of what is being talked about. Furthermore, atheists, as a group, and in some meaningful way, are not being adequately considered in most persecuted religious group terminology and research. I could also add in that his assumption that an arson attack on a church is an attack on Christians and Christianity(qua persecution) may also be a hasty conclusion, but I wont go into that one for now.

My initial demand was for some data. I was ridiculed for asking for, you know, substantiating evidence by another person whom I have had public arguments at this blog with, who said:

data produced by that mythical creature, the impartial recording angel with no axe to grind or narrative to smuggle in to the outcome results. Apparently an expedition has gone into the swamps of darkest Africa looking for him. They are expected to report back in 10 years or so.

Im not sure what the alternative is for this guy: making claims that are mere bald assertions (like the initial one) so that no claims made can or should be defended by empirical evidence?

Wow. That is going nuclear in the worst possible abstract sense. But, I digress.

So, lets start by looking at a few questions.

And so on. Its like saying, white people are the most violent in the world. What does this mean? Does this take into account white people in majority-black countries, majority-white countries, in terms of domestic abuse or in terms of war, or both? Point being, making huge generalised claims is a silly pastime that needs a whole host of explanation to be useful to anyone.

Let me lay out the Wikipedia definition (with required footnotes and links):

Religious persecution is defined as violence ordiscriminationagainst religious minorities, actions which are intended to deprive minorities ofpolitical rightsand force them to assimilate, leave, or live assecond-class citizens.[1]In the aspect of a states policy, it may be defined as violations offreedom of thought,conscienceand belief which are spread in accordance with a systematic and active state policy which encourages actions such asharassment,intimidationand the imposition ofpunishmentsin order to infringe or threaten the targeted minoritysright to life,integrityorliberty.[2]The distinction between religious persecution andreligious intolerancelies in the fact that in most cases, the latter is motivated by the sentiment of the population, which may be tolerated or encouraged by the state.[2]The denial of peoplescivil rightson the basis of their religion is most often described asreligious discrimination, rather than religious persecution.

Examples of persecution include the confiscation or destruction of property,incitementofhatred, arrests, imprisonment, beatings,torture,murder, and executions. Religious persecution can be considered the opposite offreedom of religion.

Ill go with this for the sake of expediency.

But remember, this is a definition that takes into account a plurality of types and methods of persecution, all of which will contain a different weighting in terms of seriousness. This, as I will explain, represents a huge problem in terms of comparing countries that have different populations and prevalence for different types of persecution. Who buys the most stuff? A person who buys a bag of 100 nuts for $2 or someone who buys a single car for $100,000? Definitions, definitions, definitions.

And, concerning the data itself at source (discussed later), there are different areas of persecution, from laws and ruling governments, to nationalist parties, to organisations, to cultural norms, to general people.

The first and obvious obstacle we come across, which will then massively affect collecting data, is that atheists are too afraid to admit they are atheists. I interviewed Iranian atheist Kaveh Mousavi, fellow Patheoser, and had to blur him out of the video for fear of death on account of his beliefs and claims. And yet, currently, there are at least 600 churches and 500,0001,000,000ChristiansinIran operating above board. In Iran, atheism is officially unrecognised. In other words, you cant officially be an atheist; you cant admit it. Iran is one of 13 countries where atheism is punishable by death. I am not aware of any country where Christians are officially punished with death for their belief. Thats not to say they arent themselves punished in some way, or even killed for some reason by someone, this is about state-sanctioned punishment.

What does this mean for both prosecution and data collection? Well, it simply means there will be no real data that is usable to put this question to bed. Atheists cant even admit their belief for them to be persecuted as atheists! In other words, their persecution invalidates their own persecution from being admitted and recorded!

Atheist dont live in communities and they will not admit atheism in such countries. This means that a Christian who is born into a minority community will be born into a community that does, in some places, suffer real and open persecution all their lives. How do you compare this in any sensible way to an atheist who cant even admit their atheism because they will be killed, and so pretends to be Muslim? Mohsen Amir-Aslani was convicted of making innovations in religion and was executed. How do you, in terms of data, compare these two people, the Christian and the atheist? The atheist wont experience persecution because, due to persecution, they have to pretend to be the majority in-groupidentity of Muslim. The few who get found out, die. The Christian, who doesnt really get to do this, suffers persecution, and the data looks like Christians suffer way more instances of persecution in Iran, for example.

Not only this, but how many non-violent persecutions are worth one Amir-Aslani? Again, how do we equitably record and measure such different instantiations of persecution?

We could stop the conversation here for two reasons.

a) on state-sanctioned official persecution, atheists fare worse than any other group, if this was our metric.

b) all data is so problematic that meaningful conclusions and claims are pointless.

But, alas, Ill carry on.

The one piece of data I was eventually provided was from this Church Times piece: Christians are the most persecuted religious group in the world, says Pew report. That is, providing an incredibly short news article without going to the source data first of all and discussing its nuances. Here is literally half of the article:

CHRISTIANS remain the most persecuted religious group in the world, new figures from the Pew Research Centre show.

The Centres report on religious harassment in 2016 found that Christians were harassed in 144 countries, up from 128 the year before, while Muslims were harassed in 142 countries, up from 125 in 2015.

Publishedlast week, the report says: Christians and Muslims have typically been harassed in the largest number of countries around the world.

These two groups are the largest religious groups in the world, and have substantial populations in more countries than other smaller and less geographically dispersed religious groups. . .

There was also a jump in the number of countries where Jews were harassed in 2016, following a small decrease in 2015.

As many of you will have noticed straight away, we have classic issues over most. Does this mean in terms of real numbers, proportion or type? We could have many, many different scenarios:

So on and so forth. You start to see the problems with such a facile statement as the original one.

All the while atheists dont even get recorded because they cant even admit or report persecution because it is illegal or culturally forbidden to admit atheism.

Looking at the source data (as ever, Pew), which would be a sensible thing for my interlocutor to have done (and, indeed, The Church Times), we can see a plurality of metrics that invalidate the claims of people such as my friend, and headlines such as from the aforementioned publication. Therein are listed two different:

Overall, Muslims were the most common target of harassment by nationalist political parties or officials in 2016, typically in the form of derogatory statements or adverse policies. This was the case in Denmark, where the Danish Peoples Party (DPP) backed a measure passed by the city council in Randers that made traditional meals including pork products mandatory in public institutions, including schools. Martin Henriksen, a spokesperson for the DPP, said the bill would preserve Danish culture and that the party was fighting against Islamic rules and misguided considerations dictating what Danish children should eat. The bill was opposed by members of the Muslim community because they saw it as stigmatizing; Muslims traditionally do not eat pork.

Outside of governmental or opposition political parties, this was also the case with Nationalist organizations who targeted religious minorities as well, where Muslims again fared the worst:

In European countries, Muslims were targeted most frequently. Muslims were the focus of nationalist groups in 20 of the 25 European countries where these types of groups were active. Following the terrorist attacks in Brussels in March 2016, for example, the Spanish nationalist group Madrid Social Home hung signs near a major mosque in Madrid reading Today Brussels, tomorrow Madrid? and posted Mosques out of Europe on Twitter.

But while Muslims were the primary target of nationalist movements across the globe

So, on the above two metrics, or a total of both metrics, Muslims are the most persecuted as according to you know, the source data that The Church Times cherry-picked.

In fact, the source data paints a very different picture:

Meanwhile, Europe and the Americas werekdffvk j the only regions to experience increases in median levels of social hostilities involving religion, with Europe seeing the sharpest increase. The Middle East-North Africa region continued to experience a decline in its median score, although it remained the region with the highest levels of social hostilities.

Again, this doesnt really look like the narrative that is being claimed by my interlocutor. Furthermore,and I cannot stress this enough, the type of harassment makes a massive difference. Take China, where state restrictions may officially but rather lightly affect Christians: this concerns a massive population; but it also includes huge disparities in type of harassment as Uighur are detained in concentration camps.

To continue:

When combining measures of government restrictions and social hostilities, more than four-in-ten countries (42%) had high or very high levels of overall religious restrictions in 2016. Since some of these countries are among the worlds most populous (such as China and India), this means that a large share of the worlds population in 2016 83% lived in countries with high or very high religious restrictions (up from 79% in 2015). It is important to note, however, that these restrictions and hostilities do not necessarily affect the religious groups and citizens of these countries equally, as certain groups or individuals especially religious minorities may be targeted more frequently by these policies and actions than others. Thus, the actual proportion of the worlds population that is affected by high levels of religious restrictions may be considerably lower than 85%.[my emphasis]

Finally, concerning the Pew data, it does not mention anywhere, not once, non-religious people. They are utterly absent from the report.

The IHEU, on the other hand, now produce the Freedom of Thought Report that details the best and worst countries in which to be an atheist, clearly laying out their ranking system.

The only other argument I was offered to defend the initial claim was:

Heres a genocide nobodys interested in: Are Nigerias Christians the target of a genocide?

Again, we have the difficult calculation: Does one instance of genocide, which could arguably at times be defined as cultural tribalism, count as persecution and does this one instance get counted multiply in terms of the number of deaths? In the case above, this is Boko Haram instigating a religious war. Is this persecution of Christians, per se? Arguably, this is an attack on all non-Muslims who just so happen to be Christians in that area, but who would otherwise be anyone non-Muslim.

Of course, we get back to the difficulty of admitting atheism in places like Nigeria, where you can get locked up for such or executed(same guy, two different instances). So where people are calling for genocide of Christians, we dont know how many are actually atheists, since it is essentially forbidden to announce oneself as such, and wedoknow that the outcome is identical for both sets of people, Christians and atheists alike. So where this is reported as persecution of Christians in the simplistic media reports, it is actually a persecution of non-Muslims. A distinction that makes all the difference.

Indeed, we can guess that the Islamists would treat atheists worse, as in line with Islamic holy texts.

The argument as to whether persecution and genocide are different actually becomes one of legal definitions (e.g., as below, Persecution and Genocide. About the Delimitation of Genocide and Persecution, by Sonja Kohl):

First of all, it is useful to define the notions of crimes against humanity, persecution and genocide and briefly explain the differences between them. The definition of these crimes has long been uncertain due to the complex history of their development. However, more recently, they have been defined by the statutes of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (hereinafter ICTY) and International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (hereinafter ICTR), which emerged after serious offences, and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (hereinafter ICC).

Despite considerable differences between the Statutes, they all definecrimes against humanity4as including a certain listed act (murder, extermination, torture, rape, persecution, etc.) committed as a part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population.

Persecution5is one of the acts that can constitute a crime against humanity. However, in contrast to the other crimes against humanity, persecution derives its unique character from the requirement of a specific discriminatory intent6. An unlawful discrimination must be the perpetrators goal. It is not enough for him to know or even to be virtually certain that discrimination will occur7.

The crime ofgenocide8consists of a mental element, namely the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such, and a physical element, which includes one of certain listed acts. These acts can be non-lethal in nature, such as causing serious bodily or mental harm, preventing births or enforcing the transfer of children to another group.

Both crimes against humanity and genocide can be committed in times of peace. There is no requirement that the acts take place during an armed conflict9. Also, both can be committed against any individual, whether civilian or combatant10. However, there are three important differences between persecution and genocide, one of them affecting the mens rea and two affecting the actus reus.

I wont bog this piece down by going into the detail of the three differences, but I will merely point out that offering genocide as an example of persecution is difficult in terms of how you calculate it, but also whether it should be calculated at all.

Hemant Mehta, The Friendly Atheist, has also taken issue with such claims:

Last week, the Pew Research Center released a study aboutreligious hostilitiesaround the world. They looked at which religions were being oppressed by the government and where.

(It wont surprise you to learn that nations under Islamic rule are pretty damn hostile to non-Muslim people.)

The study found that 52 governments rank high or very high when it comes to religious restrictions. (It was only 40 in 2007.) The number of countries involved has gone from 39 to 56 over the past decade.

Yet the headlines in some Christian news outlets tell a very selective story of how Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world which is both technically accurate and utterly misleading.

1)Harassment literallyincludes anything verbal hate to government oppression. So we dont know if the incidents reported in those 143 countries were, say, more life-threatening than whatever Muslims faced.

2)Christians and Muslims represent the two largest religious groups in the world, soof coursethe number of countries in which they reported harassment is going to be higher. Its not necessarily because theyre hatedmore; its because theres a lot of them all over the world.

He goes on to mention issues with the number of atheists that there officially are (or at least those who admit it) and the type of persecution they get. Real term numbers, proportionality, and weighting of different subsets. Its about being intellectually rigorous.

Some time ago, I published and edited a book of deconversion accounts called inBeyond an Absence of Faith(UK), and because this was about deconverting from Christianity and Islam (mainly) to atheism and because atheism is persecuted from the US to Iran, a number of contributors wrote under pseudonyms (and this includes in the US, for goodness sake). I wonder how many Christians around the world cant even give their real names for fear of reprimand, either systemically or locally. For atheists, this is surprisingly globally common. I have produced writings here from Indonesia, for example, showing the same phenomenon. SeeReligion in Indonesia: An Insight, written pseudonymously.

I think its obvious from this that anyone claiming X are the most persecuted is being either disingenuous and willfully ignorant or just plain ignorant (in both a pejorative and a non-pejorative sense). Someone who is very well-read and purports to be a certain level of intellect should not openly peddle such claims. They should be better than that. But, as ever, its about narratives, and the Christians are the most persecuted is an oft-peddled myth.

His final comment to me, so far, was:

Im going to have to see some sort of evidence. This persecution of atheists thing seems very limited. Im not saying that it doesnt exist, or that its not horrible to any of the people who suffer it, but the idea that it comes anywhere near the persecution of either Christians or even Muslims seems to not be true. Did you just say it for something to say?I think you made it up merely to obfuscate the clear message that there is widespread persecution of Christians in the world.

Wow, as if I was the one to obfuscate when my whole mission there was to actually clear up clearly-evident obfuscation. It makes me not want to engage in such conversations again. I dont have time to worry myself with such people but I just cant help it.

Hopefully, this shows that making the claim is basically a non-starter. I would say that neither Christians, nor atheist, nor Muslims are the most persecuted. The statement X are the most persecuted is incoherent, unless completely and utterly qualified in a heck of a lot of detail.

What I would say is this:

Any other such claim, as we saw above, is simplistic, naive and essentially incoherent at best, disingenuously incorrect at worst.

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Assessing the Claim that Christians Are the Most Persecuted Group - Patheos

What do you want to ask anAtheist? Fill out the form below orsubmit your question online.

By Jim Downard

Only in the sense that I wasnt prone to proselytizing the matter, not bringing it up just as confrontational thing. But thinking through my memory, I was never shy about expressing my views on whether particular gods existed.

Now to be fair, I was raised in a functionally secular household, where the issue didnt arise from my familyno obligatory attendance even at holiday religious services.And my attitude towards education was the same one my parents had, which was that public school was not a place where that needed to be discussed.In fact my mother pulled me out of a grade school Bible hour class that she had not approved and considered not the responsibility of the school to do in the first place. Those sorts of things arent a feature of public schools these days.I dont recall any backlash or social outcasting on that account at the time, by the way.But then I was only 6 so maybe just didnt notice.

See the article here:

Ask an Atheist: Ever hesitant to announce your atheism? - spokanefavs.com

As he began his 1979 pilgrimage through Poland, Pope John Paul II preached a soaring sermon that was fiercely Catholic, yet full of affection for his homeland.

For Communist leaders, the fact that the former Archbishop of Krakow linked faith to national pride was pure heresy. The pope joyfully claimed divine authority to challenge atheism and the governments efforts to reshape Polish culture.

Man cannot be fully understood without Christ, John Paul II told 290,000 people at a Mass in Warsaws Victory Square. He cannot understand who he is, nor what his true dignity is, nor what his vocation is, nor what his final end is. ... Christ cannot be kept out of the history of man in any part of the globe, at any longitude or latitude of geography.

That was bad enough. Then he added: It is therefore impossible without Christ to understand the history of the Polish nation. ... If we reject this key to understanding our nation, we lay ourselves open to a substantial misunderstanding. We no longer understand ourselves.

This was the stuff of sainthood, and John Paul II received that title soon after his 26-year pontificate ended. But the global impact of that 1979 sermon is a perfect example of why many Catholics believe its time to attach another title to his name the great.

The informal title the great is not one that is formally granted by the church, explained historian Matthew Bunson, author of The Pope Encyclopedia: An A to Z of the Holy See.

Every saint who is also a pope is not hailed as the great, but the popes who have been called the great are all saints. ... When you hear that title, you are dealing with both the love of the faithful for this saint and the judgment of history.

In the case of John Paul II, mourners chanted Santo subito! (Saint now!) and waved posters with that slogan at his funeral. During a Mass only 13 hours after his death, Cardinal Angelo Sodano spoke of John Paul, indeed, John Paul the Great.

When he was chosen to succeed John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVIs first words to the crowd in St. Peters Square were, After the great pope ...

Discussions of attaching the great to this saints title were jumpstarted by a recent letter from Benedict XVI that marked the centenary of the birth, in the Polish town of Wadowice, of the man who would become John Paul II.

The word saint indicates Gods sphere, and the word great, the human dimension, wrote Benedict. The term great is harder to define, he added, and in the course of the almost 2,000-year-long history of the papacy, the title the great has been maintained only for two popes: Leo I (440-461) and Gregory I (590-604). In the case of both, the word great has a political connotation, but precisely because something of the mystery of God himself becomes visible through their political success.

In both of those cases, Bunson said, the future of Rome and the Roman world were at risk with Leo dealing with Attila the Hun, while Gregory faced the invading forces of the Lombards. Pope Gregory the Great also produced epic works of theology, especially on the liturgy and the work of bishops.

With that in mind, just look at the dramatic life of John Paul II, Bunson said. You start with his underground work against the Nazis, then all the ways that he stood up to Communism during the Cold War. Finally, there are his encyclicals opposing the existential threat of postmodernism what he called the culture of death to the value of the human person.

In his letter, Benedict XVI quoted the famous words of Russias Joseph Stalin, who asked, considering Europes future: How many divisions does the pope have?

As it turned out, Pope John Paul II was more than a worthy opponent.

Let us leave open the question of whether the epithet the great will prevail or not, noted the retired pope. It is true that Gods power and goodness have become visible to all of us in John Paul II. In a time when the Church is again suffering from the oppression of evil, he is for us a sign of hope and confidence.

Terry Mattingly leads GetReligion.org and lives in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He is a senior fellow at the Overby Center at the University of Mississippi

Read the original:

MATTINGLY: Is it time to add the Great to St. John Paul II? - Bristol Herald Courier

Not only is America a Christian country, but the Constitution has been perverted by infidels and atheists, according to MAGA cultist and Trump sycophant Pastor Robert Jeffress.

He made the comments on his Pathway to Victory broadcast during a series of episodes earlier this month promoting the Christian Nation myth. In the excerpt below, he was complaining about Supreme Court decisions that removed mandatory Bible readings from public schools.

And heres the question: What has changed? What has changed? In these 150 years,has the Constitution changed and nobody told us? Is that what happened? Of course not. What has happened is we have allowed the secularists, the humanists, the atheists, the infidels, to pervert our Constitution into something our Founding Fathers never intended. And it is time for Americans to stand up and say Enough! Were not going to allow this in our Christian country anymore. It is time to put an end to this.

Its time to once again reiterate that the Bible says far more about welcoming the immigrant and serving the poor and marginalized than anything about abortion or LGBTQ issues which Jeffress also brought up elsewhere in his episodes. (Interestingly enough, helping the poor would also result infewer abortions, a fact Jeffress never seems to care about.)

Pretending we live in a Christian Nation doesnt make it true. Lying about the past wont change reality either. The fact remains if our government treated atheism or Islam the way weve historically treated Christianity, Jeffress would never stop whining about it.

(via Right Wing Watch)

View post:

Robert Jeffress: We Allowed Atheists and Infidels to Pervert Our Constitution - Friendly Atheist - Patheos

Our National Anthem is once again under attack.

Lets face facts, the Star Spangled Banner was written by a slave owner, is focused on rockets and bombs, and is impossible to sing by normal patriots such as me.

In my early leftist days we wanted Woody Guthries This Land Is our Land. Although a socialist, he was home-grown and sincere, and I could hum along without embarrassment.

We took a hard look at American the Beautiful by Irving Berlin, a Jew born in Russia who immigrated to the US as a child. This uplifting song has found a niche in our American fabric since 9-11.

Leftists now want Image penned by John Lennon, a Brit with Green Card who had a path to citizenship at his untimely death. His song is morally vapid, praising atheism and globalism. Thats not America.

Im sticking with those broad stripes and bright stars. You sing and I will listen with hand over chest.

Disclaimer: As submitted to the Arizona Daily Star.

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Letter: The National Anthem is under attack by the left - Arizona Daily Star

Welcome toPetition Worthy, a biweekly column that revisits canceled TV shows that we wish had a longer lifespan. In some cases, well also make a plea for them to be given another chance. This entry spotlights Freaks and Geeks.

If Paul Feig and Judd Apatow combined their powerhouse talents to create a TV show these days, it would probably be a hit. Back in 1999, though, Feig and Apatow werent Hollywood A-listers, and Freaks and Geeks wasnt the huge success story it should have been.

That said, Freaks and Geeks has left its mark on pop culture. The show helped launch the careers of several stars, including Seth Rogen, Linda Cardellini, and Jason Segel. But giving a break to future Hollywood A-listers isnt the only legacy Freaks and Geeks will be remembered for. The shows ability to resonate with young people is its true special power.

Shows about high school often portray teenage life as exciting and sexy. Dawsons Creek, which was the most popular teen show in the late 90s, is a prime example of that. Freaks and Geeks, meanwhile, provided a more authentic snapshot of adolescence and all of the insecurities that come with it. Furthermore, it did so while being consistently funny.

For Feig, it was important to create a show that reflected the high school experience that he and many others understood. In an interview with Vanity Fair, he explained that his goal was to give young people a show that could guide them through their own coming-of-age journeys.

My friends and I werent popular in high school, we werent dating all the time, and we were just trying to get through our lives. It was important to me to show that side. I wanted to leave a chronicle to make people who had gone through it laugh, but also as a primer for kids going in, to say, Heres what you can expect. Its horrifying but all you should really care about is getting through it. Get your friends, have your support group. And learn to be able to laugh at it.

Freaks and Geeks was created for the outsiders and misfits. But thats most teenagers to some degree. Set in the early 80s, the story revolves around a group of teens who are just trying to make sense of the world. The central characters are Lindsay (Cardellini) and Sam Weir (John Francis Daley), a pair of siblings who lead the titular freaks and geeks of McKinley High.

Lindsay is the gifted student who rejects academics to hang out with a bunch of slackers. She becomes more experimental following the death of her grandmother, who saw nothing just before she passed away. This affects Lindsay, but her newfound sense of atheism makes her a free thinker who questions authority and commands respect from her peers.

The shows decision to openly embrace atheism from the outset spoke volumes about its unconventional approach to storytelling. In a climate where so many teens shows chased commercialism, Freaks and Geeks was unafraid to explore existentialism. The show isnt anti-Christian, but it acknowledges the reality that many teenagers reject such belief systems.

Sam, meanwhile, is the charming nerd who is picked on by the school bullies. His sister has a tendency to fight his battles, and the teachers dont approve of him snitching on other students. He also meets the girl of his dreams, which leads to him becoming accepted in popular social circles for a minute. Then he realizes that he isnt interested in his dream girl because she and her friends are shallow.

In a conventional teen drama, Sam would have fallen in love with the cheerleader and lived happily ever after. They would have brought their respective social groups together and everything would have been rosy. If they did break-up, itd be soap opera-esque and dramatic. Freaks and Geeks simply presents them as curious and incompatible. Such is the nature of young love at times.

Sams romantic relationship also ties into the shows portrayal of sex. In one episode, he wears a V-neck to hide a hickey on his neck. This doesnt sit too well with his girlfriend, who wants him to wear the mark as a badge of honor. Sam is terrified of sex, though, and just wants to preserve his childhood for a while longer. And thats okay.

Freaks and Geeks also has a cast of actors who feel like real people. This is especially apparent in Rogens character. The actor was going through puberty at the time, and his voice was changing. Other actors would have been required to work with a drama coach. Freaks and Geeks showcases this awkward stage of adolescence in its truest form.

NBC executives gave Feig and co. creative freedom going into the show. When Garth Ancier took over as the networks president, however, things turned sour. Ancier arrived from The WB, which had found great success with Dawsons Creek. He wanted a show in a similar vein to the teen hit.

Ancier received a private school education. He didnt identify with the crummy public school dorks in Freaks and Geeks. The network president also wanted the show to have more victories for the characters, which went against the shows warts-and-all sensibilities.

The creators refused to obey the network, and the rest is history. Feig and co. were unwilling to buck to executive demands. This proved to be a death knell, though, as the shows ratings didnt justify a second season. Freaks and Geeks was canceled after 12 of the 18 episodes had aired.

That said, what would have happened if the show continued? The creators have talked about it throughout the years. Lindsay would have gone on tour with the Grateful Dead and experimented with drugs. Sam would have joined the drama club. Nick (Segel) would have been forced into the army. Those stories were just too depressing for NBC back then.

While the show was canceled too soon, at least it continues to find audiences to this day. The trials and tribulations faced by young people are timeless and universal. This is why so many of them continue to identify with the outsiders and misfits in this one-season wonder from 1999.

See more here:

Freaks and Geeks May Have Been A Little Too Real - Film School Rejects

RUDY GIULIANI (HOST): This is not - please, understand this - this is not isolated. This is not spontaneous. This is planned. This is planned by Black Lives Matter, it's funded by Soros to the tune of $30 to $40 million. And the plan is to change your government. To take it away from you. To take away from you a government based on free enterprise. To take away from you your Second Amendment right to bear arms.To take away from you, really, your right to have a religion. Soros is a notorious atheist. Proclaims the fact that he's an atheist. So are Marxists, by the way. It's one of the cores of Marxism, atheism.

And one of the cores of Marxism is no private property. They want your property. They want the government to control it. But they do want one preferred class and that's the people who are -- they're going to get, like, a lifetime salary. And that's going to be -- Black people will get that. And they'll also get to choose property that they want, and that's the reparations for slavery. Except, it'll include Black people that came from the Caribbean. And it's going to get paid by white people who never had anything to do with slavery.

The rest is here:

Rudy Giuliani: Black Lives Matter is going to take away your property and give it to Black people - Media Matters for America

As he began his 1979 pilgrimage through Poland, Pope John Paul II preached a soaring sermon that was fiercely Catholic, yet full of affection for his homeland.

For Communist leaders, the fact that the former Archbishop of Krakow linked faith to national pride was pure heresy. The pope joyfully claimed divine authority to challenge atheism and the government's efforts to reshape Polish culture.

"Man cannot be fully understood without Christ," John Paul II told 290,000 people at a Mass in Warsaw's Victory Square. "He cannot understand who he is, nor what his true dignity is, nor what his vocation is, nor what his final end is. ... Christ cannot be kept out of the history of man in any part of the globe, at any longitude or latitude of geography."

That was bad enough. Then he added: "It is therefore impossible without Christ to understand the history of the Polish nation. ... If we reject this key to understanding our nation, we lay ourselves open to a substantial misunderstanding. We no longer understand ourselves."

This was the stuff of sainthood, and John Paul II received that title soon after his 26-year pontificate ended. But the global impact of that 1979 sermon is a perfect example of why many Catholics believe it's time to attach another title to his name -- "the great."

"The informal title 'the great' is not one that is formally granted by the church," explained historian Matthew Bunson, author of "The Pope Encyclopedia: An A to Z of the Holy See."

"Every saint who is also a pope is not hailed as 'the great,' but the popes who have been called 'the great' are all saints. ... When you hear that title, you are dealing with both the love of the faithful for this saint and the judgment of history."

In the case of John Paul II, mourners chanted "Santo subito!" ("Saint now!") and waved posters with that slogan at his funeral. During a Mass only 13 hours after his death, Cardinal Angelo Sodano spoke of "John Paul, indeed, John Paul the Great."

When he was chosen to succeed John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI's first words to the crowd in St. Peter's Square were, "After the great pope ..."

Discussions of attaching "the great" to this saint's title were jumpstarted by a recent letter from Benedict XVI that marked the centenary of the birth, in the Polish town of Wadowice, of the man who would become John Paul II.

"The word 'saint' indicates God's sphere, and the word 'great,' the human dimension," Benedict wrote. The term "great" is harder to define, he added, and in the "course of the almost 2,000-year-long history of the papacy, the title 'the great' has been maintained only for two popes: Leo I (440-461) and Gregory I (590-604). In the case of both, the word 'great' has a political connotation, but precisely because something of the mystery of God himself becomes visible through their political success."

In both of those cases, Bunson said, the future of Rome and the Roman world were at risk -- with Leo dealing with Attila the Hun, while Gregory faced the invading forces of the Lombards. Pope Gregory the Great also produced epic works of theology, especially on the liturgy and the work of bishops.

"With that in mind, just look at the dramatic life of John Paul II," Bunson said. "You start with his underground work against the Nazis, then all the ways that he stood up to Communism during the Cold War. Finally, there are his encyclicals opposing the existential threat of postmodernism -- what he called the 'culture of death' -- to the value of the human person."

In his letter, Benedict XVI quoted the famous words of Russia's Joseph Stalin, who asked, considering Europe's future: "How many divisions does the pope have?"

As it turned out, Pope John Paul II was more than a worthy opponent.

"Let us leave open the question of whether the epithet 'the great' will prevail or not," noted the retired pope. "It is true that God's power and goodness have become visible to all of us in John Paul II. In a time when the Church is again suffering from the oppression of evil, he is for us a sign of hope and confidence."

Terry Mattingly leads GetReligion.org and lives in Oak Ridge, Tenn. He is a senior fellow at the Overby Center at the University of Mississippi.

See the rest here:

Is Pope John Paul II worthy of title 'the great'? - Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Photo credit: Jon Tyson, via Unsplash.

We are being lied to about everything. That was the entire anguished text of a tweet that struck me the other day. It was from a young woman whose top interests, to judge from her Twitter feed, include the science experts response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

It came on the heels of a remarkable public statement from another young woman, Bari Weiss, resigning her job as a journalist at the New York Times. She explained that she was sickened by the ruling orthodoxy at the newspaper, a predetermined narrative, bullying, online venom, smears, lies, and vicious false labels directed at the ideologically non-compliant.

Yes, she sounded like she was describing the world of academic Darwinism!

Americans are waking up and recognizing a dangerous lack of integrity in science and in the media. At a time of crisis, heres what you can do make a positive difference.

Imagine there was a pandemic and a great number of people found themselves greeting statements from scientists, conveyed by the media, with increasing jaded skepticism. In fact, the media at this moment worry about Americans not trusting the experts about COVID, whether regarding mandatory masks or about the fantasy land of a forthcoming return to normalcy, as a reporter for The Hill sneered.

Now imagine that, perhaps, what those scientists say really should be believed. Finally theyre telling the truth but half the country wont believe them. The cost in lives could be staggering.

People distrust the experts because large swaths of science and the media have traded truth for advancing an ideological agenda. Were numb to what they tell us.

Discovery Institutes Center for Science & Culture seeks to restore science to its own credibility. How? By sidestepping the media bullies, to directly challenge the experts. Our heroes are courageous, truth-telling scientists who upset the smug atheism of the intellectual establishment. They ask the most important questions of all: Where does life come from? Why are we here?

Two of our heroes have important books coming out in the fall from Discovery Institute Press. Please, we need your help us to publish, distribute, and publicize their work. Biologist Michael Denton arrives in September with The Miracle of the Cell, detailing the ultra-fine-tuned chemistry, down to the level of atoms, without which the first living cell would be impossible. Evolution presupposes intelligent design!

Then in November, look out for biochemist Michael Behe with his new book (not yet titled). One fib told about Behe is that he doesnt respond to critics. Wrong! He has been responding for decades, powerfully, to top ID critics including Kenneth Miller, Richard Dawkins, Sean Carroll, Richard Lenski, and Jerry Coyne. The new book, close to 500 pages, collects his very best replies.

The search for truth lives on. These works explain the evidence for purpose and meaning in life against the cynicism and deception of established science. Please help the world receive this hopeful message at a time when people need it most!

Discovery Institute Press provides vital resources to those searching for the truth about evolution and intelligent design.You are crucial to our success, as you join hands with our writers, editors, designers, and social media promoters to make these books a reality.

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Politicized Science Can Be Deadly; Time to Restore Integrity - Discovery Institute