Tag: Christianity

The failure of accomodation

The Washington Post laments the decline of the American church:

America’s churches are in trouble, and they are in trouble in communities that arguably need them the most.

One of the tragic tales told by Harvard scholar Robert Putnam in his important new book, “Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis,” is that America’s churches have grown weakest in some of the communities that need them most: poor and working-class communities across the country. The way he puts it, our nation’s churches, synagogues and mosques give children a sense of meaning, belonging and purpose — in a word, hope — that allows them to steer clear of trouble, from drugs to delinquency, and toward a bright and better future, warmer family relationships and significantly higher odds of attending college.

The tragedy is that even though religious involvement “makes a bigger difference in the lives of poor kids than rich kids,” Putnam writes, involvement is dropping off fastest among children from the least privileged background, as the figure below indicates.

The picture of religion painted by Putnam, a political scientist and the foremost scholar of American civic life, is part of a broader canvass in his book showing that kid-friendly institutions — not just churches, but also strong families and strong schools — are withering, but almost entirely in less-affluent communities. American children from better-educated and more affluent homes enjoy decent access to churches, families and schools, which lifts their odds of realizing the American Dream, even as kids from less-privileged homes are increasingly disconnected from these key institutions, making the American Dream that much more difficult for them to pursue.

Why is it that the country is witnessing not only a religious decline, but one that is concentrated among its most vulnerable men, women and children? Four factors stand out in understanding the emptying out of the pews in working-class and poor communities across the United States: money, TV, sex and divorce.

These things are all symptoms, not the actual problem. There are many, many strong Christians across the USA and around the world who do not attend organized churches because the organized churches have been invaded by entryists and gutted. The tolerant, welcoming, accomodating, and worldly churches are dying because they lack the only thing a Christian church needs: an unflinching commitment to Jesus Christ and the Bible.

Society cannot destroy the Church, but the Church can destroy itself by making societal approval its priority.

Mailvox: suicide of a San Francisco church

A soon-to-be ex-member sends along his the decision of the church “elders” to knowingly embrace sin as church policy:

Dear Friends,

I want to speak with you on behalf of the Elder Board of our church about a pastoral conversation we have been having over the past 9 months. In May of 2014 the Board asked me for a book that was clearly grounded in Scripture that we might study on pastoring our brothers and sisters in Christ who are part of the LGBT community. We read Ken Wilson’s A Letter to My Congregation. The book is rare in that it shows great empathy and maturity to model unity and patience with those who are in different places on this conversation, all the while dealing honestly with Scripture. Since our church already lives in the reality of a multiplicity of viewpoints held with humility, this book seemed to us a good choice. I want you to hear where we have arrived as a Board and invite you into a conversation and healthy discussion about how we arrived there. 

Our pastoral practice of demanding life-long “celibacy”, by which we meant that for the rest of your life you would not engage your sexual orientation in any way, was causing obvious harm and has not led to human flourishing.

(It’s unfortunate that we used the word “celibacy” to describe a demand placed on others, as in Scripture it is, according to both Jesus and Paul, a special gift or calling by God, not an option for everyone). In fact, over the years, the stories of harm caused by this pastoral practice began to accumulate. Our pastoral conversations and social science research indicate skyrocketing rates of depression, suicide, and addiction among those who identify as LGBT. The generally unintended consequence has been to leave many people feeling deeply damaged, distorted, unlovable, unacceptable, and perverted. Imagine feeling this from your family or religious community: “If you stay, you must accept celibacy with no hope that you too might one day enjoy the fullness of intellectual, spiritual, emotional, psychological and physical companionship. If you pursue a lifelong partnership, you are rejected.” This is simply not working and people are being hurt. We must listen and respond.

Imagine the feeling! Someone, somewhere, has suffered FEELBAD! One guess what the response will be.

Summary: What has actually changed here?

On one hand, nothing. This aligns with our existing core vision: the doors of this church are as wide as the arms of the Savior it proclaims. We remain passionate about having as many people hear the gospel as possible. City Church will continue to receive into membership all those with a credible profession of faith and expect the same commitments represented in their membership vows.

On the other hand, we want to be clear what this now means. We will no longer discriminate based on sexual orientation and demand lifelong celibacy as a precondition for joining. For all members, regardless of sexual orientation, we will continue to expect chastity in singleness until marriage. Please pray for our Board as we continue to discuss pastoral practices with our LGBT brothers and sisters in Christ. Pray for our denomination, the Reformed Church in America, as it does the same.

One sad piece of news: two of our Elders, Tyler Dann and Bruce Gregory, resigned from the board. We received these resignations with sadness and understanding. These are fine members of our church who love Jesus deeply.

Well, I’m sure the City Church of Ken Wilson will flourish every bit as well as the Episcopalian and Anglican churches have since they embraced other forms of anti-Christian heresy. “By their fruits you will know them,” we are told.  And when the organizations wither and die, we’ll be assured that it had nothing whatsoever to do with their embrace of open and unrepentant sin.

I find it interesting that these progressive churches still insist on turning a cold shoulder to unrepentant murderers and child molesters. It’s really rather intolerant and unChristian of them, isn’t it?

Notice in particular the gentle and understanding tone in which the missive is written. That is the insidious whisper of Hell.

This is Christian leadership

The nations of Europe are throwing off the poisoned dream of multiculturalism. And I don’t think it is an accident that it is those who successfully survived decades of socialism that are the first to clearly recognize the evils of diversity. From the Prime Minister of Hungary’s State of the Nation address:

The Honourable Chair has mentioned wiseacre analysts who take the view that the concept of a civic Hungary (i.e. one based on Christian-democratic, conservative principles) is merely a political product, and that this has somewhat shaken the faith of the members of our political community. I understand the concerns, but I hope for more self-confidence from Reformed Church pastors, let alone ministers. For our flag is flying high; everyone can see that. Everyone can see that we are a people’s party community, based on Christian-democratic foundations – the ideal, guiding star of which is a civic Hungary. I do not think that this would change in the next hundred years….

Hungary gave its own answers to the most important European questions in
2010. Already since 2010, we have been living in the future which many
other countries are only just setting out towards or will attempt to
reach sooner or later. Europe today continues to huddle behind the moats
of political correctness, and has built a wall of taboos and dogmas
around itself. In contrast, we took the view that the old pre-crisis
world will not return. There are things from past periods which are
worth keeping, such as democracy – as far as possible in a form which
needs no modifying adjectives; but we must let go of everything that has
failed and has broken down. We must let go of these things before they
bury us beneath them. We have chosen the future. Those who do not make
choices find that instead circumstances will make the choices for them.
Those who do not actively decide will find that their lives will be
decided for them. We therefore let go of neo-liberal economic policy,
and perhaps we did so as late as we possibly could have; we let go of
the policy of austerity, just before we were about to share the fate of
Greece; we let go of the delusion of the multicultural society before it
turned Hungary into a refugee camp, and we let go of liberal social
policy which does not acknowledge the common good and denies Christian
culture as the natural foundation – and perhaps the only natural
foundation – for the organization of European societies. We decided to
face the barrage of unfair attacks and accusations, and also let go of
the dogma of political correctness.

And as far as I see it,
Hungarian people are by nature politically incorrect – in other words,
they have not yet lost their common sense.

What a tragedy that the USA does not have such a leader. What a tragedy that we don’t even have a nation for such a leader to address.

Christianity’s killers

I was not surprised there has been an amount of pushback against the idea that a Christian should do anything except sit on his ass and prayerfully expect that God will take care of everything in due time. Now, this is not to denigrate the power of prayer, which is vital and can absolutely be efficacious, but rather the idea that it is God’s will for us to always refrain from any action of any kind that might bruise the feelings of anyone, especially an enemy.

There is an intrinsic conflict between the moderates and the extremists of any movement or organization. The moderates are inward-focused, conservative, defensive, and believe that public relations is the ultimate determinant of victory or defeat. The extremists are outward-focused, creative, offensive, and believe that material conditions are the ultimate determinant of victory or defeat. These two rival perspectives tend to hold true regardless of whatever the issue might be, from politics and cultural war to sports and business affairs.

Christianity merely compounds this intrinsic conflict, it does not create it. And it is not, as some might have it, a mere intellectual difference of opinion, which is why discussing the different perspectives and attempting to come to some compromise seldom works. Consider what Maj. Dick Winters, of Band of Brothers fame, wrote about Easy Company in Beyond Band of Brothers:

On reflection, we were highly charged; we knew what to do; and we conducted ourselves as part of a well-oiled machine. Because we were so intimate with each other, I knew the strengths of each of my troopers. It was not accidental that I had selected my best men, Compton, Guarnere, and Malarkey in one group, Lipton and Ranney in the other. These men comprised Easy Company’s “killers,” soldiers who instinctively understood the intricacies of battle. In both training and combat, a leader senses who his killers are. I merely put them in a position where I could utilize their talents most effectively. Many other soldiers thought they were killers and wanted to prove it.

In reality, however, your killers are few and far between. Nor is it always possible to determine who your killers are by the results of a single engagement. In combat, a commander hopes that nonkillers will learn by their association with those soldiers who instinctively wage war without restraint and without regard to their personal safety. The problem, of course, lies in the fact that casualties are highest among your killers, hence the need to return them to the front as soon as possible in the hope that other “killers” emerge.

In other words, the dynamic between actors and non-actors is entirely normal and the latter always outnumber the former. Keep in mind that the men of Easy Company were aggressive, competitive, highly-trained young men who belonged to the absolute elite of the US military. And even there, the “killers are few and far between”. In war, physical or metaphorical, there are very few who are capable of instinctively waging it “without restraint and without regard to their personal safety”. And one important difference between actual war and cultural war is that in the case of the latter, many of the nonkillers spend a fair amount of their time sniping at the killers on their own side rather than at the other side.

Imagine how effective Easy Company would have been if instead of being expected to follow the killers’ example, its nonkillers dedicated themselves to explaining at length that instead of flanking the German gun position on D-Day and killing the German gunners, they should all prove themselves to be better than the Germans by being nice to them. And then, when the killers ignored them and began the flank attack, instead of laying down covering fire, the nonkillers started shooting at the killers. Does anyone seriously think this would be a successful way to wage war?

Why, then, does anyone imagine that the same tactical approach will succeed in cultural war? If the moderates will not at the very least provide covering fire for the extremists, they are useless. And to the extent that they open their cowardly mouths to criticize, correct, and concern-troll the only people on their side who are taking action, they are worse than useless.

As for the Christians, let us reflect upon the Biblical example that many “nonkillers” like to cite, Matthew 26:51

With
that, one of Jesus’ companions reached for his sword, drew it out and
struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear. “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.
Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?”

There is a great deal of significant information here, particularly the situation-specific aspects of the command, but with regards to the present subject, the most important point is this: Jesus knowingly chose a hot-tempered “killer” as one of his closest companions and the rock upon which he would build the Church. Like David, beloved of God, and Paul, the great evangelist, it is the “killers” whom God has historically preferred and chosen to utilize. I do not think the moderates and nonkillers who sit back and snipe in the comfortable confidence that they are doing God’s will by sitting on their plump posteriors and doing nothing that will offend anyone should be so confident that God’s Will is in line with their own.

Keep in mind that the incident is also recounted in John 18:10

Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant, cutting off his right ear. (The servant’s name was Malchus.) Jesus commanded Peter, “Put your sword away! Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?”

Clearly the relevant point is not the non-use of swords, but the non-use of a particular sword in a particular situation. As to “dying by the sword”, what of it? That doesn’t mean that one’s actions that put one at risk of it are necessarily wrong. It’s merely a factual warning. Recall what Winters pointed out: “The problem, of course, lies in the fact that casualties are highest among your killers.” Winters also wrote about the guilt he sometimes felt at reunions, as he was reminded that there were about half as many survivors of 1st platoon as there were from Easy Company’s 2nd and 3rd platoons due to the heavier casualties they took. But consider why he leaned upon them so heavily:

With thirty-five men, a platoon of Easy Company had routed two German companies of about 300 men. American casualties (including those from Fox Company) were one dead, twenty-two wounded. German casualties were fifty killed, eleven captured, about 100 wounded.

It should not be a surprise that looking into it reveals that the platoon responsible was Easy Company’s 1st platoon. Dying by the sword is not a sin. It is, in many cases, a sacrifice.

Most damning of all, I think, is the observable hypocrisy of many moderates, who flagrantly violate their own advice. They are very often more than happy to insult their nominal allies and attack their own side’s extremists with the very names they refuse to call the enemy.

Red with the blood of Christians

The Middle East is red with the blood of Christians. The atrocity by Islamic State sympathisers in Libya highlights the worsening persecution of non-Muslims all over the Middle East – violence that is driving them from their Biblical homelands. The beheading of 21 Coptic Christians in Libya by forces sympathetic to Islamic State over recent days is sadly not an isolated case. On the contrary, it is the latest of countless outrages perpetrated against Christians in or near the Church’s Biblical heartlands over many years. 

It is time to end the long and suicidal Western experiment with religious tolerance. Tolerance is evil. Tolerance is “the sin of Jeroboam”. Tolerance is the death of civilization.

“As we mourn with the families of those 21 martyrs, we’d better take this warning seriously as these acts of terror will only spread throughout Europe and the United States,” warned Rev. Graham.

The 21st century is about to learn that far from being the epitomes of evil, the Crusades, the Reconquista, and the Spanish Inquisition were all right, necessary, and above all self-defensive reactions by Western civilization against aggressive Islamic expansion. The battle for the West will begin within the next two decades, and the Men of the West had better be ready for it.

The media certainly isn’t:

The morning after the much anticipated Saturday Night Live 40th anniversary special, NBC’s “Today” Show gave the SNL special more than 10 times the coverage during its first three hours Monday than the brutal beheadings of Egyptian Christians by ISIS…. “Today” thought the SNL special was of vast importance, covering the
humor-filled three and a half hour-long affair for 15 minutes and eight
seconds (908 seconds in total). Meanwhile, coverage of the ISIS
beheadings totaled a meager one minute and 28 seconds.

Mailvox: the anti-Puritans

SJ emails and makes what I consider to be an all-too-common mistake among Christians with regards to the rating system I created upon request yesterday:

Read your post on a Christian Ratings System. As the father of two young boys, there is a lot I like about this. And I laugh at how similar my experiences are with other Christian fathers. But I think it is important to think through one aspect of this sort of effort: Christians have self-selected towards being at the bottom of the food chain, often the victims, in our modern society.

That isn’t necessarily meant as a defense of modern society, other than being a reminder of the reality we live in. Regardless, I am sick and tired of Christians coming up on the short end, and I am concerned that the lesson that our churches and families are teaching our young men. With my own boys, I have taken the tack of raising Christian men in a Fallen and potentially violent world. I see no disparity between Christianity, being strong, and being realistic. In, not of.

Thus, I don’t necessarily argue with the idea of scores per se, but of the thresholds. For example, I am not sure that I wouldn’t let my boys read something more than a 15, and I balk at saying that a book that contains openly atheist characters scores a +3. What about the atheist characters being contrasted with Christian characters? What about setting up an atheist for a religious awakening?

My point is really not to pick nits, or to argue line items, but to try to argue for:

a) a more granular system that allows for more insight into the “Christians” of the book
b) in support of (a) but more tangentially, possibly having categories of scores
c) somehow trying to allow for books and material that encourages a realistic approach to Christianity

It’s really this latter point that makes me write this email because by making such a scoring system seems likely to help the self-same self-selecting Christians to self-select into ever more naive, victim-filled categories. I think this is especially true if the system is more or less linear and additive, as you have suggested. Ultimately, you are on to a great idea here, but it shouldn’t abide by the standards and metrics that a Fallen world has seen fit to place on Christianity. For example, some Christians swear, dammit, and the Song of Solomon is ostensibly about Sex. Perhaps with a little more granularity and possibly with some helpful Categories, this becomes a tool to teach rather than a grading system for my 4th grade Sunday School teacher.

I think we may need a word to describe the modern Christian anti-Puritan, the sort of Christian who fears that somewhere, somehow, there might be another Christian out there who is insufficiently exposed to the world. But is there truly a Christian in the world of 2015 who is insufficiently exposed to the material existence of godlessness, obscenity, sex, and sin? And what shall we call these advocates of being sufficiently engulfed by the world, though not of it? Soilitans? Filthians? Those Who Wallow? Edified Mudrollers?

My more literate response is to quote Aslan: “Child…I am telling your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.”

It is no more SJ’s business to concern himself with how these self-selecting Christians self-select into ever more naive, victim-filled categories than it is for them to determine the precise threshold that will determine what books his young boys are permitted to read. And notice that all of his concerns are about influence and interpretation; he is bothered by the idea of simply permitting other Christians to acquire accurate information about the books and make their own judgments concerning them. In answer to his questions and points:

  1. What about the atheist characters being contrasted with Christian characters?
  2. What about setting up an atheist for a religious awakening?
  3. a more granular system that allows for more insight into the “Christians” of the book
  4. in support of (3) but more tangentially, possibly having categories of scores
  5. somehow trying to allow for books and material that encourages a realistic approach to Christianity 

1. What about them? Whether they are contrasted with Christian characters or not, the either exist in the book or they don’t. Why should parents who don’t want their children to be prematurely exposed to atheism be intentionally kept in the dark from knowing that there is a godless character in a book?

2. What about it? I’d rather like a system that would warn me: LAME AND UTTERLY CONVENTIONAL CONVERSION STORY AHEAD so I could avoid ever reading the book. “And then he became a Christian and lived happily ever after” is not the sort of thing I’m interested in supporting even if that was within the scope of the rating system. Which it isn’t. Regardless of what happens to the atheist over the course of the book, he is still there. How can any Christian rationally oppose parents simply being informed of godlessness in their children’s books?

I am perhaps uniquely qualified to comment on this. Does anyone seriously think I am even remotely afraid of exposing my children to atheist arguments, let alone fictional atheist characters presenting dumbed-down versions of those arguments? I throw Plato and Cicero and William S. Lind at my kids, does anyone seriously doubt that they can chew up arguments presented by the likes of Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins without even blinking? At the same time, I’d still like to know that they are being tested in this way when it is taking place.

3. No. That goes well beyond the purpose of the rating system, which is to simply inform parents what is in the book. It doesn’t involve insight into anyone, for any reason. It describes, it doesn’t interpret.

4. The more complicated the system, the less useful it is and the less anyone will use it. Again, this is an attempt to sneak interpretation and influence in through the back door.

5. And who is to define “a realistic approach to Christianity”? I doubt anyone wants me doing that. Here the attempt to influence is overt, which is in absolute contradiction to the intention of the ratings system, which is simply to inform parents of what specific elements are present within works of fiction.

The rating system is a tool for people to use, not a tool for using people. Try to keep that in mind if you’re looking to improve it.

Mailvox: atheist theology or the ignorance therein

The self-aware  Trimegistus seems to share my incredulity:

I ‘m an unbeliever (I stopped using the term “atheist” when it became a
synonym for “self-righteous asshole”) and the staggering ignorance of
other unbelievers always shocks me. I know I’m not an expert on
theology; I know history, I’ve read Lewis and Sayers and St. Augustine
but that’s about it — and yet I’m like the frickin’ Vatican Curia
compared to the general run of atheists.

One thing I’ve noticed about many atheists of the general run variety is that they cannot follow simple if/then statements. Consider these facepalm-inspiring tweets inspired by this morning’s post:

Milo Yiannopoulos ‏@Nero
Perhaps the neatest skewering of @stephenfry ever, from @voxday

#OttawaStrong ‏@Canadastani
Summary: God is real because the bible says god is real! LALALALLALAKALALALALALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!!! #bacon

Vox Day ‏@voxday
Your summary is false. I merely pointed out the God-concept he is attacking is not the Christian God.

Dan Sereduick ‏@Globalizer360
Your summary of the Christian god is one that exists in advanced theology, not in ordinary religion.

Vox Day ‏@voxday
The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings are NOT advanced Christian theology.

#OttawaStrong ‏@Canadastani
Your imagination is not a real place either, but that doesn’t stop your imaginary friend Yahweh.

Vox Day ‏@voxday now
Look, you can’t criticize fiction for things that are not there. Sauron is not in Narnia.

It’s not that hard. My critique of Fry holds whether God exists or not. Christian theology is very well-defined. It is explained on multiple levels, from Tertullian and Thomas Aquinas all the way down to children’s novels like the Chronicles of Narnia. And yet, Stephen Fry quite clearly doesn’t know ANY of it.

You don’t have to believe in something to know what it is. I don’t believe in the Labor Theory of Value, but I can explain it to you. I don’t believe in Keynesian Economics, but I can explain multiple variants of it to you. I am skeptical of the Theorum of Evolution by (probably) Natural Selection, Biased Mutation, Genetic Drift, and Gene Flow, but I can explain how it is supposed to work.

The Cross and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ are the core of the Christian faith. And that core is absolutely and utterly predicated on the EVIL OF A FALLEN WORLD. So for Fry to claim that the observable existence of evil somehow condemns the Creator God requires either a) perverted quasi-Calvinism or b) stupendous ignorance.

Atheism and the problem of ignorance

Although I’ve seen more than a few episodes of QI, I’ve never considered Stephen Fry to be either very well informed or very intelligent. He strikes me as a considerably messed-up actor who plays the role of an educated and intelligent man for the masses, as opposed to actually being such a creature. Of course, it’s a lot harder to sound intelligent when you’re not being fed lines through your earpiece, which explains how Fry managed to betray an astonishing ignorance of nearly 2,000 years of Christian theology and abandoning one primary atheist line of defense in the process:

Fry was being interviewed for an Irish television show called The Meaning of Life when he launched into an impassioned tirade about God’s existence. Asked if he thought he would get to heaven, he replied: “No, but I wouldn’t want to. I wouldn’t want to get in on his terms. They’re wrong.

He added: “The God who created this universe, if he created this universe, is quite clearly a maniac, an utter maniac, totally selfish. We have to spend our lives on our knees thanking him. What kind of God would do that?”

“Yes, the world is very splendid, but it also has in it insects whose whole life cycle is to burrow into the eyes of children and make them blind. Why? Why did you do that to us? It is simply not acceptable. Atheism is not just about not believing there’s a god. On the assumption there is one, what kind of God is he? It’s perfectly apparent that was monstrous, utterly monstrous, and deserves no respect.”

Now, for those whose knowledge of theology does not rise to the level of the Narnia novels, let me point out that basic Christian theology points out that while God’s Creation was initially perfect, it was His choice to give both Man and Angel free will that permitted Lucifer’s initial fall from Heaven, and Man’s subsequent fall from Grace. From these two failures entered in every form of sin, death, and evil.

Furthermore, Jesus Christ himself made it very clear that it is not the Creator God who rules the Earth. Hence his command to Christians to be IN the world rather than OF it. He specifically refers to Satan as both the prince and the ruler of the world, as one translation has John 12:31: The time for judging this world has come, when Satan, the ruler of this world, will be cast out.

Fry is clearly blaming the wrong party. The utter maniac, the totally selfish and utterly monstrous being he castigates is not the Creator God. It is the usurper who rules the world, whose name is devil, Satan, Lucifer. And what makes his rant so ridiculously stupid is that all of this information is not only in the Bible, but in Milton, in Lewis, in Tolkien, and indeed, in many of the greatest works of the Western artistic canon. God is not “utterly evil”. God is good, and loving, and thank God, merciful. It is the ruler of this world, the prince of the powers of the air, who is utterly and irredeemably evil.

Ironically enough, Fry commits the same sin as that utter evil, in demanding the right of the clay to judge the potter.

Notice that Fry also insists that, contra both linguistic etymology and practically every petty Internet atheist ever, “atheism is not just about not believing there’s a god”. In other words, he is conflating atheism and secular humanism, something other atheists have tried very hard to distinguish, and for good reason, because doing so simply transforms atheism into a pallid religion that has no ability to compete intellectually or spiritually with Christianity, Islam, or paganism.

And then he descended into utter self-parody when he claimed to prefer Greek paganism: “Fry said he preferred the religion of the ancient Greeks whose Gods did not
present themselves as being “all-seeing, all-wise, all-kind, all
beneficent”.” This is rather amusing, as the Greek gods were a collection of rapists, adulterers, and murderers who were descended of a parricide and never hesitated to shed vast quantities of human blood in pursuit of their selfish objectives.

In just one interview, it can be seen that Stephen Fry is a fraud. He is not a brilliant man, but rather, an obtuse and ignorant charlatan.

UPDATE: No wonder he gets away with it. Consider his fans:

Milo Yiannopoulos ‏@Nero
Perhaps the neatest skewering of @stephenfry ever, from @voxday

Steve Skipper ‏@SteveSkipper
@Nero @stephenfry hardly a skewering, @voxday is using elements of a fictional myth to explain a fictional myth

Vox Day ‏@voxday
You’re missing the point. To intelligently criticize a myth, you must criticize THE ACTUAL MYTH.

Steve Skipper ‏@SteveSkipper
@voxday @Nero @stephenfry whatever

The Divide-by-Zero Left

John C. Wright observes how the other side has transformed over the course of his lifetime:

Something rotten, very rotten has happened to the Left just in my lifetime. They used to be champions of free speech; and now they are its most vehement opponents.

They use to be able to give some sort of argument or logical reason
for their position, even if an incorrect argument; now they have no
argument, none of them, aside from wild and insincere accusations
delivered in a mechanical fashion without any hope of being believed,
phony as a three-dollar bill.

They used to be firmly on the side of the workingman; now they hate the workingman as a white racist oppressor.

They used to be in favor of free love and the sexual liberation; now
they object to rocket scientists wearing shirts with cartoon women
printed on them, they object to science fiction magazines showing a
scantily clad warrior princess slaying a monster, and they call all sex
rape, and demand strict segregation of women and men. On the same day as
these protests, they appear in front of the Pope, writhing on the
ground naked with crosses and crucifixes inserted into their vaginas. So
the Puritan rules apply arbitrarily, without sense or order, to anyone
or no one.

They used to be in favor of Blacks and other minorities; now their
disgust for all the impoverished and dispossessed is plain to see. All
they want is to keep the Blacks on the plantation, addicted to welfare,
addicted to crack, their children aborted, their parents unwed.

They used to be in favor of the Jews, and other minorities; now they
kneel to Islamic Jihad at every opportunity, vowing that those who
slander the prophet of Islam will no be in the future, and ergo the Left
now curse the Jews, and pray daily for the destruction of Israel, and a
new Holocaust in the warhead of a Muslim nuke.

What? You say that his the not what the Left says? That they say they
are creatures of purity, goodness, and sweetness, who live only to help
others out of the depth of their hearts and the depth of your wallet?
No, that was the old Left, back when the Left still had some scraps of
sanity and intelligence.

They serve Sauron and have forgotten their own names.

They do not say what they are, because, if you listen to them, they
say that words mean nothing, that truth is relative, that all
civilizations are no better than savagery, that no religion is better
than another, and that anything which is not illegal is allowed.  So of
course they say they are perfect angels: because the word has no meaning
to them, no words have meaning, and telling the truth is not correct.
Only political correctness is correct.

Now they have gone fullbore barking moonbat mouthfoaming evil.

To summarize: the answer to the question “is the Left evil or stupid?” is “yes”. The truth is what we always expected: they never held the values they professed. They were charlatans; they never had any intention of fighting for free speech with which they disagreed, they never gave a damn about blacks, Jews, homosexuals, immigrants, or science.

All those things were to them were tools. All those things were was a means of attacking that which they hate and want to destroy, Christian civilization in the West. They are literally nothing, they stand for nothing, they seek only to destroy and they have absolutely no more conception of what will come after the fall of Western civilization than Karl Marx did the Worker’s Paradise.

It is not possible to compromise with them because there is no middle ground on which to meet them. It is like trying to divide by zero. It’s not merely undesirable, it can’t be done. Their principles and their objectives are a constantly moving target, always pushing the outer limits, stretching them out further.

Reject them. Don’t seek their approval or try to reason with them or hope to win them over through dialectic and discourse. Their sickness is not of the mind, but of the soul.

The devil called Driscoll

I know nothing about this “Pastor Driscoll” except for what I’ve read at Dalrock’s. And I would bet considerable money that he’s a Swaggart/Bakker debacle just waiting to be uncovered and exposed:

I’ve referenced Pastor Driscoll’s sermon Men and Marriage in several recent posts.  This is the sermon to watch, or better yet, read, if you wan’t to understand what I was describing in The only real man in the room.  In this sermon Driscoll opens with the prayer I quoted from in Fragging Christian Headship:

Father God, I pray that our time would be pleasing to
you, that it would be profitable to us, Lord God, as well. I pray for
those men who are here that are cowards, they’re silent, passive,
impish, worthless men, they’re making a mess of everything in their life
and they’re such sweet little boys that no one ever confronts them on
that. I pray for the women who enable them, who permit them to continue
in falling, those who are mothers and sisters and girlfriends and wives.
I pray, Lord God, for those men who are chauvinists, those who are
mean, who are brash, who are rude, who are harsh, who, Lord God, think
they are tough when in fact they are Satanic. God, I pray for those men
that they would have the courage today to not fight with a woman, but to
fight with you, to actually find their rightful place in creation, that
they might receive a good rebuke so that they can become honorable
rather than dishonorable sons. God, I pray for my tone, I pray for our
men, and I pray for the women who are listening in. I pray, Lord God,
that they would know this comes from a heart of passion, deep concern,
and love. I pray, Lord God, that we would think biblically, critically,
humbly, and repentantly, and that, Lord God, there would be dramatic
life change by the power of the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus, Amen.

If you read the sermon, you will see that Driscoll repeatedly makes it clear that when he uses terms like dishonorable, Satanic, cowards, passive, impish, worthless, jokes, losers, imbeciles, fools, etc.
he isn’t just referring to a few “peter pan” men who don’t have jobs
and/or aren’t married.  He is talking about the husbands and fathers
who sought out the church lead by Driscoll, the men who brought their
wives and children to the sermon.

…most of you men don’t know what masculinity truly is

Driscoll defines the six types of worthless men he regularly comes
across.   They are all either cowards or chauvinists and bullies.  And
again, Driscoll is addressing this not to men outside the congregation,
or even a smallish subset of the men in the congregation.  He means
nearly all of the men in the congregation:

Were this a women’s conference, I would not call you all
idiots and imbeciles and fools, that you’re a joke, okay? But you men,
this is where it needs to go. You’ve been glad-handed and buddied up and
positive thinking and you’re a winner and Jesus loves you and you can
do better. And I’m telling you, you’re a joke. And the real men in the
room know it and they see it. And maybe there’s one woman that you
fooled and she doesn’t see it because like Eve, she’s deceived.

The hallmark of a real man, a real Christian man, according to
Driscoll, is looking around at the other men in the room and knowing
that they are pathetic compared to you.  This is of course exactly what
Driscoll is doing throughout the sermon. Again, this is a sermon about men and marriage, and married men are
Driscoll’s primary target.  While he makes a short stop in Genesis for
background, the inspiration for the sermon is one single verse, 1 Pet.
3:7

Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an
understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel,
since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers
may not be hindered.

The disparaging of the men in the room goes on to the very end of the
hour and seven minute sermon.  I’ll repeat that I highly encourage you
to read the transcript.  There is simply too much to quote, as the stream of invective against the men in the room is non stop.

This guy is the epitome of the wolf in sheep’s clothing. He’s a wannabe cult leader, not a man of God. Reading his words, I can scent the stink of feminist-appeasing, neighbor’s-wife-seducing sulfur. The joke, the evil joke, is him.

No man who runs around posturing as “the only man in the room” in this manner is a Christian leader. He’s an Alpha male, a pathological seducer who can’t stand the fact that there are women in the room who prefer another man to him. I can just about guarantee you that he would react very, very badly to me if I merely walked into his church with Spacebunny and stared at him. His sort of Alpha absolutely hates Sigmas because a) we tend to marry attractive women and b) we see their bullshit for what it is.

Dalrock’s close was beautiful: “Miss Flowahs got Driscoll’s message, and no doubt so did the women in attendance.” His real message, not the fake sermon given as cover.

I never trust a man who pretends to be talking to God when he is actually talking to the people listening.