Food for thought…

Cobb is serving up some meaty, satisfying food for thought on self-determination.  Just because the video is about eight minutes long doesn’t mean it’s fast food. Read more

What I’m Not Reading Because I’m Working

A twist on my usual “What I’m Reading Instead of Working” posts.  All I had time for was to run quickly through my RSS feeds and mark stuff that looked interesting.  I read one or two of these, but not many. (But what I did read this morning was three chapters of Hebrews. I read the entire book yesterday, and I’m going to continue reading it once a day for at least the next month.)

Quote of the Day

Amy Alkon, at Advice Goddess Blog, on the attacks from the left for her heresy against leftist doctrine and her doubleplus ungood thoughtcrime:

The worst thing about this for me is learning how naive I’ve been in pooh-poohing right-wingers when they tell me how the real fascists are on the left. Again, I take people as individuals, but I’ve learned that there are a whole lot of people who call themselves “progressives” and “liberals” who see speech they disagree with not as a reason to speak out themselves, but as a reason to work very hard to intimidate the person who’s spoken from speaking their mind again.

And this encouraging comment from Tom, emphasis added:

Amy,

What is happening to you has been happening on college campuses for years. Conservatives are generally not welcome on campus. The reason fo this is that the faculty and administrations of 99% of our institutions of higher learning are leftists. “Speech codes” are the norm on most campuses. Some going so far as to ban speech that makes an individual of a certain group uncomfortable. (unless that group is Christian and white)

Democrats are talking about reinstituting the “Fairness Doctrine” because they cannot compete in the marketplace of ideas. This is serious stuff. This is dangerous stuff.

I work with many far left people. I have found that I often find their political positions to be naive, uninformed or in direct contradiction to the facts. I just think they are misguided. They think I am evil. That’s a huge difference.

The biggest problem facing The West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is the stranglehold that the far left has on our media and academic institutions. There is a big difference between being educated and being indoctrinated.

I’m glad you are not some one who is easily intimidated, Amy. I really enjoy your column and I read it daily. You are way more socially liberal than I am, but I appreciate your intellectual honesty. Because I respect you as a person of reason you have made my re-evaluate some of my positions on various issues. You haven’t changed my mind, but you make me think. Isn’t that what the exchange of ideas should be all about?

Keep your head up.

Tom

Recommended Reading

Henry Neufeld has two good posts: Barack Obama’s Income Redistribution Plan. We don’t agree on everything with regard to energy technology, but it’s a good read and I wholeheartedly agree with this:

I am disappointed with congress and with both our presidential candidates, though I’m not surprised at their action. We, the voters, are demanding that they behave irresponsibly, and they’re just doing what we ask. No, not what we say we want. What our actions show we want.

In Redistribution: Wealth and Responsibility he considers the redistribution of both money and responsibility vis a vis health care:

But we need to look very carefully at what we’re giving away and what we’re getting. Count the cost. Despite political promises, none of this stuff comes without a cost.

New site in the creation/evolution debate - DetectingTruth.com

I purposely stay out of the evolution/creation debate, because I’m not willing to put the time in to have a well-informed, defensible opinion and because many people involved seem to have their own facts, not just their own opinions. I don’t want to take the time to sort through not just asserted facts, but personalities history, and motives. Ben Stein, who I always had a good deal of respect for, seems to have used some Michael Moore-style film tricks in Expelled. While it doesn’t automatically disqualify everything he says, it’s disappointing and it makes me view him with a far more skeptical eye. Then there are the shenanigans at the Discovery Institute… rather than parse every phrase in arguments like this, I have stayed out.

I believe that science declares the glory of God. In this debate, there’s been plenty of dishonesty on both sides, from outright faked evidence to purposely dowdifying quotes to change their meaning. Frankly, I’m more distressed by the dishonesty on the creation side because I have higher standards for Christians than non-Christians. So I’m extremely happy to report that a friend of ours has started a new site to engage in the debate. Mark is someone I know personally and trust. He is humble, honorable, and above all loves the Lord. I know that the information I read on his new site, DetectingTruth.com will be honest and as accurate as humanly possible. He’s got an IT/engineering background and a talent for putting the cookies on the lower shelf so people like me, who really are new to the debate, can grasp it easily. This post on Evolution and the Second Law of Thermodynamics is a good example.

Last May, I wrote -

One thing I do believe - where there seems to be a conflict between God and science, it’s because we have a faulty understanding of one or the other.

So the next time I want to dip my toe into the creationism/evolution pool and try to gain some understanding of all this, I have a really trustworthy resource at my disposal.

Bookmark Detecting Truth or add it to your RSS reader.

Trackposted to Read more

Quote of the Day

Cobb: Obama’s Fascist Temptation

In a world of broadcast media where Jim Cramer’s volume moves millions and where the likes of Chris Matthews are considered to have gravitas, this is a story from heaven. In the greatest nation on earth where serious intelligent people operate the heavy machinery of civilization, this story is a station wagon full of children with a drunk driver behind the wheel. I’m not sure which is worse, the drunk driver who crashes or the one who survives to abscond with more trust. Whichever the case may be, Obama’s shallow following allows him all the opportunities of a fascist. I don’t think he is any more or less corruptible than the average Senator, but the nature of this following provides the sort of power that personality alone cannot and will not check. For that, he needs a rationality and policy that will be consistent when a man cannot be. For his campaign to denounce that which defends him logically but offends his illogical supporters demonstrates that he will lie when the truth is sophisticated. It is the first mark of a man who doesn’t respect the capacities of the citizenry, the license of the free press and the world as it is.

Going to Heaven

This is a repost from one year ago today. Heaven doesn’t often come up in conversations I have with non-Christians and it aggravates me when people so obviously steer the conversation around to a topic they can proselytize on - if you do that, STOP! Honestly, you drive people away because they think they’re going to suddenly become that socially awkward. Just pray and let God provide opportunities; no need to force the situation. But on the rare occasions when it does come up, I tend to just hear them out, and then ask, “On what do you base that belief?” Not in a snarky way; I really want to know. And they generally haven’t a clue. It’s what their mom said. Half remembered concepts from Sunday School 30 years ago. Wishful thinking. Their idea of how a “just” God should reward them - after all, they’re “good” people! And you know what - on several occasions the conversation has just ended there, because I don’t want to argue with anyone. I just want them to think about what they believe and why.

As for me, the blogging break’s over, and it’s back on my head!

______________________________________________________________________

For what is your life? For it is a vapor, which appears for a little time, and then disappears. (James 4:14)

Most people believe in God and most people think heaven exists. Almost everyone polled, even people who are not religious, thinks they’re going to heaven when they die.

[Note: of those who have no religion, over 50% profess a belief in heaven, but according to the poll analysis there was not enough of a sampling for data on how many of those believe they are going there.]

Eighty-nine percent in this ABC News poll believe in heaven, which is consistent with data going back 30 years. Among believers, 85 percent think they’ll personally go there — mainly in spirit, since 78 percent say it’s a place where people exist only spiritually.

Who gets in is another matter. Among people who believe in heaven, one in four thinks access is limited to Christians. More than a third of Protestants feel that way, and this view peaks at 55 percent among Protestants who describe themselves as very religious.

About 40% of Protestants overall think access to heaven is limited to Christians. Let’s examine that for a moment. The whole Protestant movement was based on a return to a stricter belief in the bible, as opposed to man made traditions. That was the entire point of the Reformation. Of all faiths, Protestant denominations are most likely to believe in the accuracy of the bible - yet only 15% of non-evangelical Protestants, 50% of evangelical Protestants, and 55% of very religious Protestants think that only Christians will go to heaven.

A lot of people will read the previous paragraph and think, “You intolerant jerks! Who are you to say that heaven is only for Christians!?” My question for those folks is, on what do you base the belief that heaven is for anybody but Christians? What’s your source for that? Where is it written in the bible? And if you’ve found it written somewhere else, what is the basis for that belief? Read more

What I’m Reading Instead of Working

PostTask is keeping me remarkably on track, because the notice that, based on my current task list “There are 12:25 h left! You could be done by 9:56 pm.” has a tendency to sober me right up and keep me from fooling around too much. The phone’s going to be ringing and emails coming in with new tasks, but if I can narrow the gap and only carry six hours of work over to tomorrow, I’ll be satisfied. Still, I had to at least read my “Favorites” folder in Google reader before I declared RSS bankruptcy. Half an hour of bloggy goodness before I start to slog through the task list.

On the Obama front - come on, does anyone really believe there’s a Michelle Obama “whitey” video? Can she really be that stupid? I think it’s another Karl Rove frogmarch fantasy. The guy who’s promoting the rumor - and reaping tons of traffic from it - is a known crank who is thoroughly in the tank for Hillary, and obviously she benefits a great deal from these rumors. Tens of thousands of hits later, he’ll find a way to weasel out of it. Also - don’t ANY of Obama’s friends like America? Now we’re “America is the greatest sin against God“? That word, sin… I don’t think it means what he thinks it means.

More media newspeak:

recession (noun)- an undefined, unprovable crisis due to George Bushitler’s economy of hate. Women, children, minorities, hardest hit. All we can do is raise taxes and hope for the best.

This is the second “recession” where the economy has not actually, you know, recessed. I miss the days when words had meanings.

I also miss the days when the media reported actual facts; I caught this AP article also and practically gnashed my teeth in frustration. The new “truth” is that Plame was outed by Rove and Libby. Armitage who? Oh - Armitage, McCain’s buddy. Armitage is a viper, and I’m sorry to say that Colin Powell is implicated as well. McClellen has a fact problem in the Plame department too; he glosses over the truth to conform to the narrative. Is he bucking for a job on MSNBC?

Obama, Clinton, and McCain are all saying the g-word. So once the UN arrives, the remaining people of Darfur can take a break from being slaughtered and starved in order to be raped. Well, my grandmother used to say a change is as good as a rest. But you have to admit, when the UN is the solution, the problem is nearly beyond hope. And you thought oil-for-food was a scandal? That was because they hadn’t gotten into the carbon offset business yet. And if the Senate and John McCain get their way, we’ll be following along.

The Danes will still not submit.

Retrosexuals - a welcome change from metrosexuals.

“Universal” health care - rationing and penalties to force everyone down to the same low standard.

Finally and most importantly, keep an eye on Mark Steyn’s attempted kidnapping today. Believe it or not, this is a major battle in the war to defend western civilization.

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