Tag: Christianity

A portrait in Churchianity

I tweeted this to the #jewsforrefugees hashtag and promptly received this response from a “pastor”.

Pastor Richard ‏@thebiblestrue
And you call yourself a Christian?


Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
Yes. Who said this?  “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”


Pastor Richard ‏@thebiblestrue
Jesus said it. But what did he mean?


Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
He meant that the nations exist, and the interests of the children of the nation come before the interests of other nations.


Pastor Richard ‏@thebiblestrue
@voxday Wrong. He meant the gospel came to the Jews first. But he still healed the gentile woman’s daughter. God loves all people equally.

This is all too typical. Pastor Richard is clearly a Churchian and one of the wolves in sheep’s clothing of whom the Apostle Paul warned. The Churchians preach a god who does not hate the wicked and they preach the Gospel of Babel, in which there are no nations and everyone is the same and all are loved equally by their god.

And their god is not our God. Their god is the prince of this world.

Notice how this dishonest “pastor” is playing the usual deceptive bait-and-switch. He switches the context with regards to the meaning of the phrase spoken by Jesus, and claims that the meaning of the phrase is somehow defined to the contrary of its clear meaning by substituting for it the meaning of a different part of the story that is not even referenced in that phrase!

Of faith and fairy tales

John C. Wright considers the charge that Christianity is nothing more than a fairy tale:

There are those who call Christian faith a fairy tale. I assume such scoffers are not old and wise enough to believe in fairies.

To them, I give the answer of that most excellent marshwiggle and insightful theologian, Puddleglum: Suppose my account is a fairy tale. Your account is not even that.

Let us contrast and compare the Christian fairy tale with the tale told by witches both white and green, both modern and ancient.

One modern account of the world consists of little more than saying “Life is a bitch, and then you die, and in the end nobody lives happily ever after. Entropy triumphs over all, a nightfall of endless darkness and infinite cold.”

Well, says I, if you actually believed your account, the wise thing to do is to swallow cold poison and jump into the sea: so the fact that you are still here hints that at some level you know your account is unsatisfactory: a poorly constructed story, pointless, plotless, and with a weak ending. It is not a tale at all, but a complaint.

Another account, this one with considerably more pedigree, says, “We are all just naked apes or meat machines: our souls are made of atoms blown together by the twelve winds with no more purpose and meaning than the shape of the sand dune: we are helpless and without free will, victims of blind evolutionary forces and blind historical forces. Atop the Holy Mountain no gods dance, and no burning bushes speak. Death is dreamless sleep and soft oblivion. Therefore let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Entropy triumphs over all, a nightfall of endless darkness and infinite cold.”

This is a poor story: a tale of despair, a myth to justify hedonism.

A nobler version of this same account says, “Man is a rational animal, capable of moral reasoning, creativity, productiveness, love. Man is heroic. Therefore let us live rationally working with mind and heart and soul to produce such works of art and science as befits so dignified a creature: let each man to live for himself alone, a paragon of self-reliance  each man in the solitary but invulnerable tower of his self-made soul, never demanding nor making any selfess sacrifice. Nor hopes nor fears of after-lives or nether-worlds need detain us: Therefore let us think, and work, and triumph, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Entropy triumphs over all, a nightfall of endless darkness and infinite cold.”

This is a poor story: vanity, vainglory, and blindness to the pain and misery of life. The pretense that bad things never happen for no reason to good people is a very thin pretense: since the days of Job, we have all known better. This is a tale of vainglory.

He is correct, though, to conclude that there is no better answer than the marshwiggle’s. We choose the fairy tale regardless. And there is nothing in your moralities, nothing in your philosophies, nothing in your sciences that can provide one single legitimate reason to criticize that choice.

“Judeo-Christian” is antisemitic

“Judeo-Christian is not merely anti-Christian propaganda, but as one rabbi points out, it is also antisemitic:

The Constitution entitles you to your opinions and religious beliefs and even affords you the right to express those convictions in your pursuit of public office. But as a Jew and a rabbi, I am writing to ask you to please leave me, Judaism and my people out of your rhetoric. Don’t use “Judeo-Christian” to try to appropriate my religion and my people’s history to advance your agenda.

I can appreciate that Jews and Christians share many similar values and beliefs, just as I recognize that many of the values I learn from my tradition are also shared by many other religions. But while our respective religions have many things in common, we also diverge in significant ways. You and I read the same Bible very differently and draw sometimes contradictory conclusions from it. I honor those differences and I affirm that Jews and Christians (as well as Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists and many others) can come together to exchange ideas and live at peace with one another. But your particular brand of Christianity bears little resemblance to the Judaism I practice, and when you use the term “Judeo-Christian” to really mean “Christian,” you erase the distinctions between our faiths — and you essentially erase Jews….

When you use the term “Judeo-Christian,” you give your particular brand of Christian ideology a veneer of universalism it does not merit. It is misleading to suggest that your ideas are part of a “Judeo-Christian tradition.” The term “Judeo-Christian” was originally coined in the 1930s by liberal Christians and Jews who sought to encourage ecumenical relations between those two faiths for the purpose of fighting the growing racism, xenophobia and nativism of that time. But in the 1950s the term was adopted by political conservatives who used the phrase “Judeo-Christian values” as a cudgel in the fight against fellow Americans they accused of being “Godless communists.” And since the 1970s the call for a return to so-called “Judeo-Christian values” has been used by the Christian right as code language to their base for a particular brand of conservative policies that are anything but inclusive.

Perhaps those Christians who are not even remotely concerned about endorsing an anti-Christian term will think twice about it now that they understand it is also antisemitic and deplored by Jews.

This is not an isolated example. The Jewish Press is even more straightforward in correctly rejecting the legitimacy of the term:

Let’s be clear: Far from “sharing” one tradition, Orthodox Jews are prohibited from marrying Christians, setting foot inside a Christian church—and we can’t even drink from an open bottle of kosher wine that has been used by a Christian. We reject the Christian idea of salvation, we abhor Christian divine teachings on every subject, and we are repulsed and outraged by incessant attempts by Christian missionaries to bring us into their fold.

It is particularly disturbing when Klinghoffer makes statements which reveal his complete assumption of elements of New Testament Pauline ideology, for instance, the requirement that wives submit to their husband’s authority. There is no mandate on precisely how a woman should behave with her husband—Jews expect the happy couple to work it out for themselves. Also, while divorce may be a tragedy, and God cries, it is in no way banned—in Judaism, that is. The story in Christianity, and Klinghoffer’s “Judeo-Christian Biblical America,” is different.

Incidentally, we have more in common with Muslims than we do with Christians; Jewish law permits Jews to enter a mosque… but not a church….

Jews and Christians differ on every single fundamental principle—even on the meaning of core Scriptural texts. More crucially, Christians rely on the Old Testament for legal delineation; whereas Jews rely solely upon our rabbinic tradition. We never, ever turn to our Bible for legal guidance, only to our rabbinic literature. To suggest that our Sages had anything at all in common with the likes of Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Carter or Pat Robertson is a slap in the face of 2500 years of scholarship.

“Judeo-Christian” is as valid a concept as happy-joylessness, or tall dwarves. Klinghoffer’s yearnings for this repugnant “ideal” is a deviant phenomenon without a trace of commonality in traditional Jewish thought, ancient or modern.

Considering that it is almost solely Christian Zionists in the US who proudly utilize the term, I tend to doubt there are many rhetorical ploys more powerful than accusing anyone who uses the term “Judeo-Christian values” of antisemitism.

I also think the term “Judeo-Christian values” is obviously racist, as if we are to apply the idiotic logic used to defend it, the more accurate term to describe the values upon which the United States was founded is “African-Christian values”, since everyone who is a United States citizen was, until very recently, believed to have been descended from an African ancestor and it is terribly racist to suggest otherwise, regardless of what the latest science might say.

Correcting the Churchians

One of Jerry Pournelle’s readers points out that there are considerably more lessons from the Bible that can be applied to the question of immigration than are generally applied by Churchians who carefully cherry-pick a single element from a verse they otherwise ignore:

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

“St. Paul may have been an optimist.” – Jerry Pournelle

Or Galatians 3:28 is being grotesquely and disingenuously wrenched out of context to attempt to justify secular social and political goals and ideas it never had the slightest connection with.  Coincidentally enough this verse and a few others before and after were the Epistle reading a few Sundays ago at our church.  Since you appear to be using the Berean Literal Bible I’ll continue with it:

Galatians 3:26 teaches, “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.”

Galatians 3:27 continues, “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”

And Galatians 3:29 followed up with, “Now if you are of Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to the promise.”

Taken together this very clearly refers to a fellowship of all Christian believers.   It certainly can never be used under any circumstances to justify an unlimited influx of non-Christians into any Christian land.  And it can’t even be used at all unless a theocracy is set up.

Alternately we could go ahead and add numerical references to each word in the Bible, or even each letter.  This will make it still easier for people to indulge that favorite pass time of using the Bible to justify their personal positions.  As the late Sam Francis observed on the occasion of the Southern Baptist Convention’s apology for slavery, the Bible endorses human slavery and does not prohibit it.  Even John the Baptist and the Apostle Paul advised slaves to be content in their situations.

But this being Sunday, I’ll quote one another applicable Bible teaching, this one on the question of the extremely wealthy welcoming strangers while imposing all the costs of their hospitality involuntarily on their poor neighbors:

2 Samuel 12:1-6

The Lord sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, “There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him. 


“Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.”


David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die!  He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.”

This seems appropriate for the many persons who enjoy the large profits of low cost immigrant labor – frequently illegals – while involuntarily imposing all the social costs onto the broader community.  Mark Zuckerberg and his H1B programmers come to mind here.

As is ALWAYS the case every time the Churchian case is examined, it turns out to not only have destructive and diabolical consequences, but it is obviously theologically incorrect, and all too often, directly anti-Biblical. In fact, as far as immigration goes, this is merely scratching the surface of the total historical falsity of the Churchian pro-immigration case.

Churchianity is a series of lies stacked upon other lies. I will not go so far as to say it is the religion of the Antichrist, although it carries a distinctly deceitful odor that is in line with various prophecies of that abomination. But there is no doubt whatsoever that it is anti-Biblical and anti-Christian.

UPDATE: I forgot to answer a question posed by Jerry:

We’ll assume it is possible for the sake of discussion, but can we all agree that it will be very difficult and expensive to deport them all, and the benefits of deporting all 11 million are likely to be lower than the costs?

No. It may be difficult and expensive, but it will definitely be worth the cost. And then we can start on however many are necessary to restore the promised pre-1965 demographic levels.

Churchianity and the feminized church

It’s really rather remarkable, that as Christians lament declining attendance in their churches, and particularly, the growing absence of men of any age in them, they continue to double-down on the Churchian doctrine of the Holy Lady Parts. Rollo Tomassi observes that there is a material price to the structural and spiritual violations of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, to say nothing of 1 Timothy 2:11–12 and 1 Timothy 3:11.

After almost six years of following the religious aspects of the Red Pill, I think it’s high time men acknowledge that modern Christian culture simply does not have men’s best interests as part of its doctrine anymore. Christianity, in particular, is by women, for women – if not directly executed by women, though even that is changing.

Church culture is now openly hostile towards any expression of conventional masculinity that doesn’t directly benefit women and actively conditions men to be serviceable, gender-loathing Betas. The feminist narrative of “toxic masculinity” has entirely replaced any semblance of what traditional masculinity or manhood once was to the church. Any hint of a masculinity not entirely beholden to a now feminine-primary purpose is not only feared, but shamed with feminine-interpreted aspersions of faith.

I recently read a study that our current generation is the least religious in history and I think as far as men are concerned much of that disdain for religion is attributable to a church culture that constantly and openly ridicules and debases any male-specific endeavors or anything characteristic of conventional masculinity. It’s no secret in today’s church franchisement that reaching out to, and retaining the interests of, men is at its most difficult.

Again, this is attributable to a generation of feminized men being raised into a church culture, and eventual church leadership, that has been taught to prioritize and identify with the feminine and reinforced with articles of faith now defined by the Feminine Imperative. The modern church has trouble reaching men because the church no longer has a grasp of what it means to be ‘men’.

To be clear, that’s not an indictment of the genuine faith itself, but rather a fairly measured observation of the way a feminine-primary church culture has shaped that faith. In the future, any man with a marginal capacity for critical thought will avoid the contemporary Christian church and religion for the obvious misandry it espouses; the only religious men you will find will be those raised into a life of religiously motivated Beta servitude – or those dragged to the feminine-directed church by wives who hold authoritative ‘headship’ in their relationships.

And even in what some consider to be pro-masculine or “macho” churches, we still find the Paper Alpha leaders preach from a mindset that defers wholesale to the feminine’s “Godly perfection” as they attempt to AMOG other male member to greater devotion to qualifying for, and identifying with, the feminine influence that pervades their church.

In this, as in so many things, observe that the consequence of following the lie is eventual destruction. This is what Paul means by knowing things by their fruits. If a church can throw out such clear Biblical direction in the interest of remaining in harmony with the current social or political consensus, it is only a matter of time before it will throw out any other instruction that makes anyone feel uncomfortable, and eventually, the Cross and the very concept of sin as well.

One need not be a theologian, or even a Christian, to see how this process has played out over the last 50 years.

Mailvox: what is Churchianity

Yesterday we had a few requests for a definition of “Churchianity”:

 Is there anywhere on this blog where you define “Churchian”? 
– MS

I too would like a definition of Churchian. Could you cover that in a future post?
– Jaypo

While I have frequently alluded to it, I have not addressed Churchianity directly on this blog before. In part, that is because I am loath to play Christian Police, a role for which I am ill-suited spiritually and temperamentally. I wish to stress that I cannot, and will not, be the judge of whether anyone is a genuine Christian or is a mere Churchian instead; that determination is well above my pay grade. It does not fall to me to even be the judge of my own Christianity, as we are all fallen and none of us know whether we will be saved or we will be one of those from whom Jesus will turn and say “I never knew you.”

In this, as in all things spiritual, we see as though through a glass, darkly. And yet, we are also given eyes and wit and perhaps even a modicum of spiritual discernment, so if we cannot judge another man’s soul, we can certainly judge institutions by their actions and intellectual concepts by their consequences.

I gave the matter a fair amount of thought when writing Chapter 9 of Cuckservative, “Christianity and Cuckservativism”. As my co-author, John Red Eagle, is agnostic, the task of addressing that particular topic naturally fell to me. I go into considerably more detail in the book, particularly concerning how Churchianity relates to various trends that have swept the American churches, but a few excerpts from it should help provide a better understanding of what Churchianity observably is before we attempt to define it.

Many churches have reduced Christianity to the parable of the Good Samaritan, to such an extent that their religion could be more reasonably described as Good Samaritanism than Christianity. And while they subscribe chiefly to salvation through works and societally-approved attitudes rather than faith, they nevertheless possess complete and utter faith in the intrinsic goodness of foreigners.

Churchians (for it would not be strictly accurate to describe them as Christians) are liars and deceivers. They worship the god of Babel, not the Christian God. They serve the world, not Jesus Christ.

But where does this religious obsession with improving the world through works come from, when it has been absent from Christian theology for the greater part of two thousand years? Indeed, the entire conceptual core of Christianity is fundamentally based on the nature of the world not only being fallen and imperfect and ruled by an immortal spirit of evil, but remaining that way until the Son returns, the Prince of the World is cast down, and the Kingdom of Heaven is established.

Justice, in both Greek philosophy and proper Christian theology, is “rectitude of the will”, as can be seen in Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, specifically Secunda Secundæ Partis, Question 58, Article 1. And in the Christian sense, rectitude of the will is defined by conformity with God’s will, which can be debated, but being immutable, is assuredly not defined by the ever-mutating social justice narrative.

So social justice Christianity, or Good Samaritanism, or Churchianity, all amount to the same thing: a false form of Christianity that cloaks itself in Christian rhetoric while denying both the conceptual core of Christianity and the fundamental nature of the justice to which it nominally dedicates itself. And these false forms all flow from a concept that is considerably newer than Christianity, although it is related to an older religion.

The term tikkun olam is from the rabbinic literature known as the Mishnah, which dates back to 1492 and is believed to come from an oral tradition that may be as much as a thousand years older. It appears in the phrase mip’nei tikkun ha-olam “to indicate that a practice should be followed not because it is required by Biblical law, but because it helps avoid social disharmony.”

The phrase is often translated as “for the sake of the healing of the world”, which is why the expression appears in English as a directive to “heal the world” or “fix the world”, but a better translation is “for the sake of the perfection of the world”.

In other words, the cuckservatives and other Churchians have elevated a literally extra-Biblical post-Christian concept that flies directly in the face of genuine Christian theology to a super-Scriptural level, then used it as the basis to judge both members of the Church and the Bible itself!

So, we can summarize all of this with the following definition:


Churchianity is social justice-converged pseudo-Christianity that cloaks itself in Christian rhetoric and trappings, follows the world rather than Jesus Christ, and seeks salvation through works instead of faith.


And if I can say this without sounding too eschatological, I expect it, or something very like it, will be the seed of the religion that worships Antichrist in the place of Jesus Christ.

“Judeo-Christian” is anti-Christian

“Judeo-Christian” is another false construct, not even as old as “the melting pot” or “a nation of immigrants”. From Wikipedia:

History of the term
The term is used, as “Judeo Christian”, at least as far back as in a letter from Alexander M’Caul dated October 17, 1821. The term in this case referred to Jewish converts to Christianity. The term is used similarly by Joseph Wolff in 1829, referring to a style of church that would keep with some Jewish traditions in order to convert Jews.

Use of the German term judenchristlich (“Jewish-Christian”), in a decidedly negative sense, can be found in the late writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, who emphasized what he saw as neglected aspects of continuity between the Jewish world view and that of Christianity. The expression appears in The Antichrist, published in 1895 and written several years earlier; a fuller development of Nietzsche’s argument can be found in a prior work, On the Genealogy of Morality.

Promoting the concept of United States as a Judeo-Christian nation first became a political program in the 1940s, in response to the growth of anti-Semitism in America. The rise of Nazi anti-semitism in the 1930s led concerned Protestants, Catholics, and Jews to take steps to increase understanding and tolerance.

In this effort, precursors of the National Conference of Christians and Jews created teams consisting of a priest, a rabbi, and a minister, to run programs across the country, and fashion a more pluralistic America, no longer defined as a Christian land, but “one nurtured by three ennobling traditions: Protestantism, Catholicism and Judaism….The phrase ‘Judeo-Christian’ entered the contemporary lexicon as the standard liberal term for the idea that Western values rest on a religious consensus that included Jews.”

Anyone who is using the term “Judeo-Christian” is referencing, consciously or not, left-wing anti-Christian agitprop. There are no historical “Judeo-Christian” values; to the extent there is overlap they are Christian values.

Note that “Judeo-Christian” in its post-1940s revisionist usage is a part of the same program as the 1965 Hart-Celler Act. It was adopted specifically to redefine America and destroy the historical fact of America having been founded as a de facto Christian nation.

It is also worth noting that despite Islam being related to both Christianity and Judaism in precisely the same manner, we do not hear much talk of “Judeo-Islam” or “Islamo-Christianity”, much less take seriously the idea that Americans must defer to Muslims or grant them any special status on those grounds.

To claim “Judeo-Christian” is nothing more than recognizing Christianity’s roots in the Old Testament is akin to claiming that “Communism” just means people sharing with other members of their community. Moreover, to claim that Christianity is “Judaic” in that sense is to erase the other tribes of Israel; it would be 12 times more accurate to say “Hebreo-Christian”, “Israeli-Christian” or “Jacobite-Christian”.

Churchian theology

Erick Erickson ‏@EWErickson
Oh no, alt-Reich! It turns out the creator of heaven and earth is a Jew! Literally!! You are not His chosen people, they are!

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
Who are the “Jews who are not Jews”? And what is “the Synagogue of Satan?”

Since you’re a theologian and all now.

I’m actually genuinely curious how people explain those two concepts from Revelation 3:9, whether they are preterists or more conventional eschatologists.


Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee.

Moreover, my understanding is that Jesus was a Galilean, not a Judean. However, I don’t see how it matters much, considering that we’re in virgin birth territory anyhow.

The fruits of cuckservative Churchianity



Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.
– Matthew 7:15-20

If an apple tree brings forth a withered pear, it is not a good apple tree, but a corrupt one. So it is with men.

There was a time when Americans considered America blessed by God. What sort of madman would dare to make that claim now?

UPDATE: the cartoon was created and commissioned by Faith and Heritage. Clearly an organization that understands the concept of good rhetoric.

Not so, however, with ‘cuckservative.’ Not only does it not suffer from the vagueries of its close equivalents; it also cuts much deeper because its targets cannot be in doubt. It lays finger on the more personal dimensions of treason – the relinquishment of one’s own house, wife, and children to invasive predators. The power of its poignancy lies in the fact that it highlights the abdication of a man’s most intimate duties. It brings home the implications of liberalism on border and race issues as violating the principle of 1 Timothy 5:8, disregard of one’s own family. It impugns the manhood of its subjects, and concomitantly any and all professions of a man’s Christian faith as well. So yes, the acerbic potency of this word is couched in the most basic allegiances and undergirded by the biblical understanding of familial duty. Even if it would seem indecipherably archaic to post-family Marxists, those yet anchored to traditional categories, however so tenuously, still comprehend the gravity and accuracy of the charge.

The caterwauling it has evoked from so many so-called conservatives is indicative of not only its power, but the identity of those to whom it most applies. As the old chestnut goes, “When you pitch a rock into a pack of dogs the one that yelps is the one you hit.” Its targets simply cannot be mistaken. Yes, they may cavil that allusions to cuckoldry are somehow just not cricket. But none putting on the most delicate Victorian airs presently ever imagined the term cuckold as improper before now; in the works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, or the whole roster of English literati since, it appears no one ever took the term ‘cuckold’ as unchristian, uncharitable, or inappropriate till the dawning of the age of the Social Justice Warrior and Neo-Christianity. Clearly, the reason so many Beltway Conservatives* balk at it is that it crystallizes the depth of their betrayal and heaps burning coals upon their heads.

I have to say, I kind of like these guys.

Smack my atheist up

In which Stickwick and I tag-team a pair of godless self-appointed wonderboys. First up, DookerT:

On people like Sam Harris. I don’t know how anyone can really debunk anything he says, you can just make your own subjective moral arguments of why you think he’s wrong and you’re right. As far as the final word goes, it’s in the eye of the beholder. The Christian will generally see people like Vox as being correct and an atheist might generally agree with Harris . There simply are no certainties in this realm of debate, at least in my opinion.

It’s quite easy to debunk much of what he says, as it happens. Sam Harris makes many arguments that are based on objective assertions. They can be, and have been, conclusively debunked by the simple mechanic of showing those assertions to be factually false. There is nothing subjective about it. A very good example can be found in the appendix of On the Existence of Gods.

The ironically named Mr Rational picked the wrong blog to try to dazzle with pseudo-intellectual posturing when he responded to a statement about the Big Bang theory:

You do realize that the current model of cosmology is a creationist theory, do you not?

That statement utterly discredits you.  Creationists may have tried to claim Big Bang/Inflation theory as their own, but it is utterly without theistic implications.  If you are listening to people who claim it does, you are listening to liars.  The left has its own liars telling lies which support its dogmas; if you commit the same errors you are no better than the left.

I am moderately familiar with the theory of inflation (far more than most readers here, I’m certain).  The fluctuations in the temperature of the Cosmic Background Radiation associated with quantum density variations frozen in the cosmic fireball as space expanded too fast for them to reach equilibrium again is predicted by WHAT holy book in WHAT passage, precisely?  If it is fair for Vox to demand a specific list of mutations to turn organism X into organism Y, it is eminently fair for me to demand this specificity in theological claims and pronounce the theology worthless if it fails.

I responded to this myself, by pointing out that a) the Big Bang Theory and expansion were conceived by a Belgian priest, and b) the Big Bang Theory is a necessary, though not sufficient requirement for the Bible to be true, but Stickwick’s response is better. She is, by the way, a very well-regarded astrophysicist with a bibliography of published scientific papers on esoteric cosmological matters that is much longer than my list of publications:

I can’t decide if this is the stupidest thing ever said here or the funniest. Others have done a sufficient job explaining to you why this is wrong, but I’ll add one thing. A few years ago, I was present as a Nobel laureate and one of the greatest living physicists explained to a group of non-scientists that the multiverse hypothesis was developed at least in part because of the theistic implications of the big bang.

You’re doing something very annoying, which is attempting to dazzle people with the details of science instead of addressing the heart of the matter. Unless you’re an expert, this is a bad idea, because not everyone is going to be bowled over by your ability to parrot this information. I’m certainly not, because you’ve failed to realize that inflation is not yet a theory with any predictive power. The recent BICEP2 results that supposedly confirmed it were disproven. Inflation is a nice idea, and one that I think is probably correct, but let’s be honest — so far there is no conclusive evidence supporting it.

In any case, it’s absurd to say that the theistic implications of a theory hinge on whether a holy book mentions one particular unproven detail of the theory. It’s like the idiot biologist I talked to who said Genesis was bogus, because out of the dozens of scientifically-testable statements made by Genesis 1, she could find no mention of bacteria. The theological implications of a theory do not hinge on whether it contains every possible detail of the theories of the natural development of the universe, but on whether it says anything that confirms or denies a central tenet of a religion.

As Vox already explained to you, the big bang confirms the first three words of the Bible. The Bible begins with Genesis 1, because, among other things, it establishes God as the sovereign creator of all things. Without this, the Abrahamic religions are meaningless. If the universe is eternal, that’s obviously a big problem for Christianity. Scientists in the 1950s and 1960s understood this very well, which is (partly) why there was so much initial resistance to the big bang and why physicists continue to try to find loopholes in the theory that imply the universe is de facto eternal.

Now, before any atheist gets his panties in a bunch, I hasten to add that I know perfectly well that neither DookerT nor Mr Rational speak for all atheists nor are representative of the best that they have to offer. There are atheists I like, respect, and even admire.

But I think it would be wise for the average Internet atheist to understand that not only are there Christians who are better-educated and more intelligent than they are, but that there are actually more highly intelligent Christians than there are highly intelligent atheists. According to the GSS, in the United States, there are 11.4x more +2SD theists who either know God exists or believe God exists despite having the occasional doubt than there are +2SD atheists who don’t believe God exists.

And if you don’t understand why that is, you’re really not equipped to even enter the lists here.