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While atheists love to whine about Christian wars that took place nearly a thousand years ago, you can always count on them to remain silent whenever atheists are occupied with killing religious people around the world today:

Hundreds of monks, nuns and local Tibetans who tried to march on a local government office in western China to demand the return of the Dalai Lama have been turned back by paramilitary police who opened fire to disperse the crowd.

The only time you’ll ever hear an atheist mention the ongoing atheist persecutions of Christians and Buddhists in China, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam is to try to explain that the atheists doing the persecuting are No True Atheists, and therefore it’s really religion’s fault when an atheist kills someone.

Scott Hatfield defends the Age of Enlightenment and a few of the modern myths about it:

There are positive values that come out of the Age of Enlightenment. Some of them are religious in nature, some are not, but they are characteristic of that age, not of the age of the Magna Carta or the tradition of English common law.

Very well, specifically what are these positive values? One of the most annoying things about discussing the Enlightenment, especially with its would-be restorers, is that they simply don’t know enough about it was to be specific about what it is they are defending. In almost every case, what is purported to be a positive “Enlightenment value” can be easily proven to be nothing of the sort, as we saw with Kelly of the RRS’s bizarre example of “democracy”. The level of historical ignorance is shocking.

If things would just arrange themselves neatly into Christian and non-Christian intellectual movements the world would be a simpler place, but that’s not how things are. Cherry-picking the past to serve a present agenda is not the right way to do history, and that goes for both the secularist and dominionist takes on the Founding Fathers, I think.

First, I am no dominionist, my amusingly inaccurate Wikipedia entry notwithstanding. Second, it is not cherry-picking to point out that the religious intellectual tradition of the Christian Founding Fathers which led to the separation of church and state – for the good of the church – had nothing to do with the Enlightenment, but rather stemmed from the pre-Enlightenment Reform tradition that was hugely influential in England.

Don’t play games. The notion that God places temporal rulers in their position is a clear teaching found throughout the Bible. The idea that people should rise up against their God-appointed rulers to seek political liberty is not clearly taught. It has to be teased out of the text by someone whose sensibilities are modern, rather than medieval. That idea emerged in the period known as the Age of Enlightenment. It is not an anti-Christian idea, but neither is it the one, true, historic ‘Christian’ position. If it were, there would innumerable examples in the 17 centuries that proceeded John Locke of Christian nations with elected rulers.

Don’t play historically ignorant. There is a small, pre-Enlightenment movement called “Protestant” which even in its name suggests that people should rise up against those claiming to be their God-appointed rulers. I note that you can’t possibly argue a distinction between spiritual and secular ruler here, because that would depend on applying a concept that you are claiming did not exist for another 200 years. And in addition to the rebellious pre-Enlightenment traditions of the Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights, medieval England also gave us the limited government concept of the Charter of Liberties, which dates back to 1100. The Enlightenment was merely a short-lived and perverse offshoot of this combination of Christian intellectual movements in the spiritual and secular arenas.

I should like to know, Scott, were you aware of the existence of the pre-Enlightenment English Bill of Rights when you declared the American Bill of Rights to be a product of the Enlightenment?

As for the example of Christian nations with elected rulers, I would point to the Prince-Electors of Germany, who made up the electoral college responsible for selecting the Holy Roman Emperor from 1125 until 1806 when Napoleon ended the practice, along, one might add, with the Enlightenment itself. Moreover, the cantons of Switzerland long had a Christian tradition of elected rule, dating back prior to the establishment of the confederation in 1271. This Swiss tradition was extremely influential due to Geneva being the heart of the Reform church, in fact, John Calvin’s biography notes: “Calvin was the first of the Reformers to demand complete separation between Church and State, and thus he advanced another principle which has been of inestimable value. The German Reformation was decided by the will of the princes; the Swiss Reformation, by the will of the people; although in each case there was a sympathy between the rulers and the majority of the population. The Swiss Reformers, however, living in the republic at Geneva, developed a free Church in a free State, while Luther and Melanchthon, with their native reverence for monarchial institutions and the German Empire, taught passive obedience in politics and brought the Church under bondage to the civil authority.”

Now, it seems probable that the reason the two Reformations happened to occur where they did is primarily due to pagan Germanic tribal traditions that survived the conversion to Christianity, although it’s worth noting that the establishment of the democratic Icelandic Althing closely corresponds to Iceland’s conversion to Christianity. But regardless, the concepts that came out of this process of Reformation clearly became Christian ones that long preceded the Age of Enlightenment and it is absurd to attempt to retroactively assign them to a profoundly anti-democratic, anti-individualistic tradition such as the Enlightenment.

I don’t follow college basketball very closely, although watching the Georgetown-Davidson game was fun, as it was sort of like time-travel to watch Coach Thompson directing a Ewing in a Hoya uniform. My grandfather and I used to watch Georgetown hoops when I was visiting Virginia during the winter, so while I’m not a big fan, I’m still somewhat of a Hoya sympathizer in his memory. And any enjoyment of Davidson’s exciting comeback and eventual upset was further lessened by the fact that towards the end of the game I learned they’re not in Patriot League anymore, although I distinctly recall them being in it at one point or another in the hazy days of my ill-spent youth.

And when did American join? Needless to say, I don’t pay much attention to the old alma mater, but it’s a bit jarring to realize just how out of it one happens to be. I’m so out of it, in fact, that I had the Hoyas reaching the Final Four and Duke losing to UNC in the final.

The Magic Negro threatens the nation:

Obama, in an interview, said that “a lot of these old labels don’t apply anymore.” He said he was a progressive and a pragmatist, eager to tackle the big issues like health care and convinced that the Democrats could rally independents and disaffected Republicans to their agenda. Only then, he said, could the party achieve what it has so rarely won in modern presidential elections – a mandate to do big things.

Doing big things. Progress towards… doing big things. That pretty much sums up exactly what I don’t want the government to be doing. On the plus side, I shouldn’t lack for material no matter who wins.

UPDATE – VDH has a cogent summary of Obama’s post-speech situation:

Even elites will wake up to the fact that they’ve been had, in a sense, once they deconstruct the speech carefully and fathom that their utopian candidate just may have managed to destroy what was once a near-certain Democratic sweep in the fall.

I have to admit, this is the first time that I’ve felt the need to rethink the chance that McCain could win. Hillary would crush him, of course, but if the Magic Negro somehow manages to defy my expectations and grab the nomination, he’d get absolutely buried under a blizzard of quotes from his black supremacist pastors. I think he’s done after a Pennsylvania landslide.

Kelly of the Rational Response Squad is quite rightly moving onto the second chapter of The Irrational Atheist, but she did take the time to respond to my response in order to clarify a few things. My subsequent reply can be read here as we wait for the next onslaught of reason to descend upon us:

I never stated that the concept itself was new, only that the right to express it, even in opposition to the government, was. And just for the record, I don’t believe in absolute free will, either. I believe that people will make certain decisions, seemingly of their own volition, based on genetic and environmental variances. The nature versus nurture debate will likely never end, but a critical examination of the studies will show that things as trivial as your vehicle preference are correlated to genetic similarity. If free will exists as you claim it does, then how is it that I have control over my own destiny which according to the bible was determined before I was even conceived?

Kelly didn’t state the concept itself was new in her initial response, she wrote: “I wonder where he got those ideas regarding man’s free will and right to exercise it. Could it be…the Enlightenment? The irony is almost overwhelming.”

As she now knows, no, it could not be the Enlightenment. There is no irony at all. Despite her backpedaling, the concept of a right to exercise one’s free will contra the government was not new either. The pre-Enlightenment English Bill of Rights is only one of many possible examples and contains an explicit right to free speech against the crown. Again, Chapter 15 will answer her question, I don’t believe her destiny is pre-determined; I am not an omniderigiste.

There was a form of democracy in Greece, true. I think that there are some benefits to an Athenian style democracy, personally, but the system itself was still not as sophisticated as what we have currently.

That’s beside the point. Democracy and limited government both pre-date the Enlightenment. Even worse for Kelly, that more sophisticated American-style system was specifically designed to limit the will of the people… which is quite in keeping with the Enlightenment and its totalitarian impulses.

Your assumption that I am unfamiliar with Aquinas, Augustine, or enlightenment philosophers in general is patently absurd. Not to drag “formal” education into the debate, but I did study theology and philosophy at a Jesuit university for 2 years, and have read many of the works of all of the aforementioned. “Free will” as a concept was present in christianity, but my remark was related to governments and the legal right to exercise our autonomy. I could, perhaps, chalk this up to a semantic or contextual misunderstanding, but it is also likely that you just purposely interpreted what I said in such a way that you could accuse me of ignorance of those subjects.

I have no idea what Kelly’s education happens to have been nor do I care. Her point is what it is, and I suggest that no one who has properly understood either Aquinas or Voltaire would make such a bizarre statement about free will and the Enlightenment. Especially since the Enlightenment 2.0 advocates deny the very existence of free will. Again, let the reader decide.

And in answer to DJ’s question over at Kelly’s blog, the assertion that Jean Meslier was the first atheist was not mine, it belongs to Michel Onfray and was made by him in his book Trattato di Ateologia. If you would like to argue the point or find it to be lacking in any way, I recommend that you take it up with him.

The amusing thing is that on the science blogs, they’re still yammering on about the “scientific fact” of greenhouse gas-caused global warming:

Last Monday – on ABC Radio National, of all places – there was a tipping point of a different kind in the debate on climate change. It was a remarkable interview involving the co-host of Counterpoint, Michael Duffy and Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. Anyone in public life who takes a position on the greenhouse gas hypothesis will ignore it at their peril.

Duffy asked Marohasy: “Is the Earth still warming?”

She replied: “No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you’d expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years.”

Duffy: “Is this a matter of any controversy?”

Marohasy: “Actually, no. The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognises that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have plateaued … This is not what you’d expect, as I said, because if carbon dioxide is driving temperature then you’d expect that, given carbon dioxide levels have been continuing to increase, temperatures should be going up … So (it’s) very unexpected, not something that’s being discussed. It should be being discussed, though, because it’s very significant.”

Duffy: “It’s not only that it’s not discussed. We never hear it, do we? Whenever there’s any sort of weather event that can be linked into the global warming orthodoxy, it’s put on the front page. But a fact like that, which is that global warming stopped a decade ago, is virtually never reported, which is extraordinary.”

So, let’s see. Embryonic stem cell research, check. Dark matter, check. Global warming, check. Evolution, okay, jury’s still out. These days, skepticism is the only rational perspective for the intelligent layman to regard what passes for science today.

It seems to me that the more you understand the “science”, the more likely you are to completely fail to see the flaws in the consensus model. This tends to remind me of economics, where all the experts habitually deny that a recession is approaching until they decide post-facto that we’ve been in one for three quarters. I’ve been saving some of the housing forecasts from NAR’s chief economist and they make for hilarious reading when you compare them to the NAR reports that cover the period predicted.

According to the “scientific” forecast, housing prices were to stabilize in late 2007 and hold firm in 2008. Here’s the November 2007 forecast for 2008: “Existing-home prices are expected to decline 1.7 percent to a median of $218,200 for all of this year and hold essentially even in 2008 at $218,300. Wow, what precision! To a tenth of a percent! The February report comes out this week… let’s just say that instead of $218k, I’m expecting a decline that would project to $175k or less by the end of the year. But what do I know, I’m not an “expert” paying close attention to the “science” of the housing market, after all.

For those of you who find my evolutionary skepticism upsetting, please try to grasp that it has nothing to do with my religion, but rather is born of my understanding of the problems inherent to complex models with a high degree of variability and low levels of verifiable data. I received a sophisticated economics education long before I became a Christian. In fact, I have come to be convinced that it is the simplistic nature of the training for the biological sciences that causes most evolutionists to vastly overestimate the value and precision of their current models and massively underestimate the probability that they will have to serious overhaul them, if not entirely abandon them.

But regardless, don’t mind me, I’m far too busy enjoying the massive discomfiture of the neo-Keynesians to seriously annoy you right now. Notice that I’m far from the only one who sees a connection between the two scientific faiths of Keynesianism and Darwinism; I’d very much like to hear Paul Krugman attempt to explain away the current economic situation in terms he has not previously described as “religious”.

1.23: number of births per woman in Italy
2.66: number of children per family at Italian evangelical church
48%: percentage of congregation that were children under 18
2%: percentage of congregation that were retirement age

Conclusion: European post-Christianity may be a temporary phenomenon.

There is much that we do not understand about Jesus Christ. A baby born of a virgin, an innocent crucified as a criminal, a Prince of Peace come to divide brother from brother. I myself don’t understand the common portrait of the meek, mild and mealy-mouthed Savior, when the man of whom we read in the Bible is massively self-confident, brutally sarcastic and possessed of enough strength of character to empty a Temple with the force of his rage.

In one of history’s great metaphors, Paul tells us that now we see through a glass darkly. But even through that obscured glass, we see enough of Jesus Christ, the God-Man, that our hearts and minds are stirred to follow Him, each in our own clumsy and faltering way. As He warned it would, the world mocks what it does not understand and kills what it fears and hates. Let it look on in bewilderment, scorn and fear again today, as Christians around the world once more celebrate together the Resurrection of Our Lord and His victory over the grave. For history has shown that there are few words more lasting or powerful than those four simple words of celebration and salvation.

He is risen. Alleluia.

Gail Collins doesn’t understand the basics of sex:

This is what happens when a bunch of guys go to a place where their families can’t keep tabs on them. Of course, there are women in Albany — about a quarter of the lawmakers, although very few with any significant power. But the political culture, incubated over several centuries, is about guys on a road trip. The best argument for electing more women to State Legislatures might be that they put a damper on the fun.

Or, far more likely, this would lead to significantly more scandals since in addition to more female politicians, there would be more female staffers, interns, and lobbyists, since women generally prefer to surround themselves with women. Adding more women into the equation, and therefore creating more opportunities for sexual contact, isn’t terribly likely to reduce the incidence of sexual activity. One would think this conclusion would be totally obvious since the very scandal Ms Collins cites was an affair between the new governor of New York and an employee in the governor’s office. By Collin’s reasoning, if only more women had worked in that office, Mr. Paterson would have found it easier to resist temptation.

Chick logic… I’m never sure if I find it more amusing or appalling.

I never thought Obama was anything but a rabbit; now that the rabbit has foolishly refused to gracefully exit the race, he’s being thrown to the hounds:

Jesus is black. Merging Marxism with Christian Gospel may show the way to a better tomorrow. The white church in America is the Antichrist because it supported slavery and segregation. Those are some of the more provocative doctrines that animate the theology at the core of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Barack Obama’s church.

If the Lizard Queen doesn’t completely destroy him in the coming Pennsylvania primary, I have no doubt that we’re going to see some seriously ugly and well-documented information released about B. Hussein Obama. At this point, my guess is that he backs down quietly behind the scenes after losing badly in Pennsylvania and agrees to accept the VP slot, the “race” continues with both candidates suddenly electing to take the high road, and after some pretend drama at the convention, the “surprise” peace accord and unity ticket is announced to the public. Otherwise, if he chooses to stubbornly fight on, his Magic Negro persona will be destroyed too thoroughly for him to remain a viable candidate of national scope.