Tag: religion

Prophecy has its privileges

I have to admit, I didn’t even know this was an issue:

The Mormon founder Joseph Smith married as many as 40 women, including a
14-year-old girl, church leaders have acknowledged for the first time in a
surprising revelation about their most important prophet. Although the Mormon church was closely associated with polygamy during its
first decades, its teachings had previously portrayed Smith as happily
married to one woman. The reality was apparently very different from that monogamous picture. And
with increasing speculation circulating on the internet about his marital
history, the Church hierarchy has revealed Smith as a prolific polygamist
via an essay posted on its website.

Anyhow, congratulations to the church hierarchy for deciding that truth is better than falsehoods and propaganda. Better late than never.

Mailvox: Abomination and Galatians 3:28

Needless to say, I did not respond in a supportive manner:

The Galatians 3:28 Movement is a grassroots Christian movement (of all denominations) demanding civil rights and marriage equality for all people — straight, gay, of any race, of any orientation, non-cisgendered, etc.  This movement has no leadership and is completely organic.

Galatians 3:28 states:  “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Now, many people get the first part about race not being important to Jesus (but unfortunately not everyone does as there are still tons racists around).  But most people ignore the second half where Jesus explicitly denies the importance of gender. For Jesus, gender and gender differences are unimportant.

Then why do we still insist that marriage be between a “man and a woman”?  This outdated, non-Christian way of thinking only highlights gender difference, the exact thing Jesus was trying to get away from.

In other words, for marriage, your gender does not matter.  Marriage can be between a man and a woman; two men; two women;  or between transgendered people.   Jesus loves everyone.  And that is what Galatians 3:28 is all about.  Marriage equality and civil rights.

Share some love.  Spread the word of Christ.  Support marriage equality and civil rights.

Another verse springs to mind. Namely, Isaiah 5:20.

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. 

One certainly can’t say that America doesn’t fully merit a plague or two these days.

The sixth-most evil author

John C. Wright was not only voted the sixth-greatest living SF author, he was also named #6 on a list of evil authors, led by the evilly evil Orson Scott Card:

Though not as well known as Orson Scott Card, sci-fi author John C. Wright has been even more vocal about his distaste for homosexuality. After the SyFy Channel promised to be diverse in its portrayal of gay people, Wright took to LiveJournal with a shockingly homophobic post: “Why are you willing to tolerate sexual perversion but not racism? In a world with no standards, what makes a malfunction of love higher on your standard than a malfunction of hate? Is an irrational lust and longing to mimic the mating act with a sex with which one cannot mate, at its root, any more or less disconnected to reality than an irrational fear and hatred of a Negro?” He also compared being gay to bestiality, necrophilia, and the sexual abuse of children.

As the Supreme Dark Lord of the Evil League of Evil, I can only approve, of course. I am also amused by all the great writers of the past that were omitted; if “distaste for homosexuality” is sufficient to land one on the list of evil bigots, then the greater part of the contributors to the Western literary canon will necessarily need to be included as well.

Of course, the Bible speaks on this in the Book of Isaiah: Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.

To put it bluntly, if you are not being labeled evil by the world these days, you should probably reflect upon what it is you are doing wrong. And with regards to homosexuality, it’s hardly new. To assert that its increasing public acceptance is an indication of human progress is to demonstrate one’s historical ignorance. As with an overabundance of credit, open and culturally permissible homosexuality is an indicator of late stage societal decadance. It’s not a cause of rapid civilizational decline, but it is a warning sign that such a decline is in the works.

Diversity in action

Multiculturalism and religious pluralism in Oklahoma works out about as well as one would expect:

Sgt. Jeremy Lewis says the alleged suspect, 30-year-old Alton Nolen had just been fired when he drove to the front of the business, hit a vehicle and walked inside. He walked into the front office area where he met 54-year-old Colleen Hufford and began attacking her with a knife.

Sgt. Lewis confirms the type of knife used in the attack is the same kind used at the plant. Lewis confirms that Hufford was stabbed several times and that Nolen “severed her head.”

At that point, Lewis claims Nolen met 43-year-old Traci Johnson and began attacking her with the same knife. Officials say at that point, Mark Vaughan, an Oklahoma County reserve deputy and a former CEO of the business, shot him as he was actively stabbing Johnson.

The FBI is now looking into Nolen’s background after his former
co-workers said he tried to convert them to Islam after recently
converting himself.

A convert too. It would appear that diversity is a virus one can catch. Now that we’ve got Islamic beheadings from London to Oklahoma, it may be time to rethink the rejection of America as a Christian nation. Human nature observably abhors a religious vaccuum.

The ignorance of the irreligious

Damien Walters is very poorly read:

Dear religious folks. All of your prophets agreed on one thing, DON’T KILL PEOPLE. Start listening, stop killing. Yours, Damo.

Oh, did they now?

  • “Moses said to Joshua, “Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites” – Exodus 17:9
  •  “Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and
    women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.” – 1st Samuel 15:3
  • “Then Elijah commanded
    them, “Seize the prophets of Baal. Don’t let anyone get away!” They
    seized them, and Elijah had them brought down to the Kishon Valley and slaughtered there.” – 1st Kings 18:40
  • “It is not for any Prophet to have captives until he has made slaughter in the land.” – Sura 8:67  

One wonders what prophets he has in mind, considering the words of Moses, Samuel, Elijah, and Mohammed. The truth is that the religious understand that there is always “a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build”

It is really astonishing how pig-ignorant these guys are, especially considering that they tend to consider themselves to be the well-educated side. 

A Jew speaks out for Christians

It is noteworthy for Mr. Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress, is speaking out for Christians in being massacred in Africa and the Levant:

The general indifference to ISIS, with its mass executions of Christians and its deadly preoccupation with Israel, isn’t just wrong; it’s obscene.

In a speech before thousands of Christians in Budapest in June, I made a solemn promise that just as I will not be silent in the face of the growing threat of anti-Semitism in Europe and in the Middle East, I will not be indifferent to Christian suffering. Historically, it has almost always been the other way around: Jews have all too often been the persecuted minority. But Israel has been among the first countries to aid Christians in South Sudan. Christians can openly practice their religion in Israel, unlike in much of the Middle East.

This bond between Jews and Christians makes complete sense. We share much more than most religions. We read the same Bible, and share a moral and ethical core. Now, sadly, we share a kind of suffering: Christians are dying because of their beliefs, because they are defenseless and because the world is indifferent to their suffering.

Good people must join together and stop this revolting wave of violence. It’s not as if we are powerless. I write this as a citizen of the strongest military power on earth. I write this as a Jewish leader who cares about my Christian brothers and sisters.

The Jewish people understand all too well what can happen when the world is silent. This campaign of death must be stopped.

It would be nice if Mr. Lauder’s example would encourage Mr. Foxman and other Jews living in America to stop shrieking about how celebrating Christmas is a second Holocaust and attempting to import more Muslims into the West.

Sun Tzu did not approve this message

Although he is vastly unpopular with the pinkshirts due to a combination of his huge success as a SF writer combined with his lack of enthusiasm for homosexuals playing house, Orson Scott Card is no conventional conservative. His political positions are more than a little incoherent, especially those where he appeals to what he claims is Christian theology:

The Republican Party deserves to fail, has chosen to fail, and this death wish continues in full force. They could have elected Mitt Romney in 2012 and stopped the
national nightmare by installing in the White House the most competent
man to be a major party nominee since Dwight Eisenhower.

But the evangelical Christians stayed home in droves rather
than vote for an evil Mormon – thus remaining “pure” but refusing to
govern.

The irony is that these very “Christians,” so determined to be
pure, now have as their single most important test of purity the most
unChristian dogma in present-day politics: No Amnesty!

Card’s first mistake is failing to recognize that the Republican Party chose to fail in 2012 by nominating Mitt Romney. But evangelical Christians were not Romney’s problem. Card simply does not have his facts straight. Not only did evangelicals vote for Romney at a higher rate than Mormons did, 79 percent vs 78 percent, but according to Pew
Research they gave him more support than they gave either John McCain (65 percent) or George W. Bush (63
percent and 67 percent in 2000 and 2004).

If anything, Card should be blaming Hispanic Catholics, whose support dropped five points, from 26 percent to 21 percent, from 2008 to 2012.

There were, of course, other Republican groups who were less than keen on the Romney. Libertarians loathed him. Ron Paul’s supporters despised him as well as their treatment by the Republican machine. Competent or not, the man was nearly as foolish a choice as John McCain, and would be even stupider in 2016. What the Republican party leaders always describe as “electable” has reliably turned out to be the opposite.

Mormons may well be fine, upstanding individuals on average. They still belong to a statistically insignificant religious group that is looked on with some suspicion due to their unusual views concerning what is, and what is not, Christian. Among them, apparently, being the idea that amnesty for criminals is a Christian concept, when that actually goes well beyond heresy into the realm of pure fiction.

Card’s version of Christian theology is as incorrect as his grasp of the 2012 voting patterns. I recommend to him the example of Jesus speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well. There may be neither Greek nor Jew in Christ Jesus, but at no point does Jesus, or any of the apostles, ever suggest that Roman citizenship belongs to everyone or that the Samaritans should be supported by Jewish taxes.

And as for a Mormon scare-quoting evangelicals and referring to them as “Christians” on the basis of their failure to support an foreign invasion consisting of tens of millions of aliens, well, let’s just say I don’t think that is the wisest choice of theological ground for Mr. Card to fight that particular battle. The fact that evangelicals generally tolerate Mormons these days does not mean they are going to be terribly inclined to having the legitimacy of their Christianity questioned by one.

Especially when Mr. Card simply embarrasses himself with his observable lack of knowledge of the Bible.

These “Christians” would do well to read chapter 18 of the Gospel of
Matthew, where Jesus tells his exact opinion of those who demand “no
amnesty, ever!” for other people’s sins – while they expect to be
forgiven for their own much greater ones.

Card is, theologically speaking, a complete illiterate. Jesus says absolutely nothing about “those who demand no amnesty ever.” Quite to the contrary, he says: “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”

In other words, Christians are to treat their unrepentant sinful brothers like pagans. Presumably, they need not treat unrepentant criminal aliens any better. As for the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant, the three requirements are for the debtor to admit that the debt is owed, be willing to pay it, and beg for patience, none of which apply to invading foreigners.

My suspicion is that Card is sufficiently Biblically illiterate to have confused the reference to gouging out an eye in Matthew 18:9 with Matthew 7:5’s reference to planks and specks.

Community cohesion and its foes

Apparently the new term for freedom of association is “community cohesion”:

A nun in east London climbed to the top of a local building and ripped down a flag similar to the one flown by Jihadist militants in Syria and Iraq.

IB Times reported Friday that the flag was being flown alongside Palestinian flags and slogans in support of Gaza. Community members issued complaints over the flag with local council members, claiming that it was causing tension within the community. When council members went to take the flag down, they were surprised to find, someone had beat them to it.

“The council can confirm that following reports this morning of a
flag erected on the Will Crooks Estate, council officials took steps to
remove it but found it had already been taken down by Sister Christine
Frost, a well-known local activist and promoter of community cohesion,” a
council spokesman said.

Some argued that the black flag with
arabic writing resembling the flags flown by ISIL, also known as ISIS,
was only a symbol of Muslim faith and was not flown in support of
militant groups.

Don’t listen to the taqiyyah. The black flag is a symbol of Islamic supremacy. It is a sad testament to the spineless men of the West that a woman has to act in their stead.

Never forget what ISIS stands for: murdered men, raped women, beheaded children, and the extermination of Christianity.

The non-problem of pain

Gene Wolfe explains why the so-called “problem of pain” is simply not a credible argument for the non-existence or non-beneficence of God: 

You once said that pain tends to prove God’s reality rather than the opposite; that pain was not a theological difficulty for you.

No, it isn’t. If you catch a dragonfly and bend the end of its body up, it will eat itself until it dies. When people have had their mouths numbed for dentistry, they must be warned not to chew their tongues. I think if we assume that pain is simply an evil we’re oversimplifying things. 

[Thinks a moment.] You’re saying that pain may be a necessary design feature that the Divine Engineer—

Yes, absolutely. 

—put into his animated machines.
 If you had living things without pain, they would have a very rough time surviving.

More than ten years ago, I pointed out a similar observation concerning the existence of evil, which, far from being any sort of theological problem, is in fact evidence of the factual basis of Christian theology. Wolfe is observing that pain has an important purpose in life, as it is there to provide negative feedback to self-destructive actions. This does not mean that pain is good per se, only that it provides a good purpose.

For those interested in discussing the literary aspects of Mr. Wolfe’s observations, some of the more interesting parts have been posted at Castalia House, as well as a link to the full interview.

High IQs and theism

This is no surprise. As I’ve shown in the past, “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.”

Have you ever heard the claim “all smart people are atheists”, or maybe
its inverse: “people who believe in God are dumb”? It’s quite a
pervasive urban legend, and one which I’ve known is false for a long
time, but I didn’t realize just how false until the other day. I
recently decided to do a quick cataloging of the ten highest IQ’s on
earth, and discovered that it’s nearly the exact opposite of the truth!

The appeal to intelligence is a fallacy. But, any atheist who makes it is not only violating logic, he’s also demonstrating his own ignorance.