#on why i -personally- think it’s a misrepresentation of david’s character | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

christianstevefinnell · 3 years

Text

Only True Christianity is Defensibleby

Kyle Butt, M.A.

Recently I was involved in a very productive discussion with two atheists. They were in their early thirties, intelligent, and extremely well spoken. We arranged the meeting to discuss why they had chosen to adopt atheism, and reject God and Christianity. In the course of the two-hour discussion, it became clear that many of their complaints about “Christianity” were legitimate. In fact, I heartily agreed with a host of their lengthy refutations of, and rebuttals to, “Christianity.” Lest I mislead the reader, however, let me explain. Notice that I have put in quotation marks the “Christianity” against which they railed, because the term demands qualification. Much of the “Christianity” that so incensed these young men involved gross misrepresentations of God and heinous misinterpretations of the Bible. For instance, during the discussion, one of the men explained that if, according to John Calvin’s views, God arbitrarily chose some people to be saved and some to be lost, regardless of their choices, then God would be unjust. He explained this point in detail for several minutes. After listening attentively to his astute refutation of Calvinism, I completely agreed with him, but noted that Calvinism is not true Christianity. It seemed that since Calvinism had been so inseparably bound-up in many “brands” of “Christianity” to which this young man had been exposed, he was taken aback that any “Christian” would so readily agree with his assessment of its evident flaws.

The discussion with these men, coupled with a critical reading of the atheistic community’s primary authors, has impressed upon my mind the fact that skeptical writers have a knack for exposing pseudo-Christianity for the error that it truly is. Unfortunately, skeptics often use the pseudo-Christianity and misinterpretations of the Bible that they so adequately debunk as straw men that they insist represent true Christianity. In truth, they certainly do not. It is a useful study, however, to notice several areas of biblical misinterpretation and un-Christian beliefs that skeptics have correctly identified as flawed.

THEISTIC EVOLUTION IS INDEFENSIBLE

In 2006, David Mills authored a book titled Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism. Much of the material in that book is incorrect. But chapter six, titled “Can Genesis Be Reconciled with Modern Science?” has some trenchant things to say about those who claim to believe the Bible but try to bend its interpretation to jibe with modern evolutionary findings. At the beginning of the chapter, Mills stated:

According to Genesis, God made Adam and Eve on the sixth day of Creation Week. The Genesis genealogies then detail the exact ages at which Adam and his male descendants “begat” their own male offspring. The New Testament books of Matthew and Luke [NOTE: Matthew and Luke actually do not give ages—KB] then continue the genealogy from David to Jesus, again specifying the age at which each male descendent “begat” the next generation. Since we have a fixed “historical” time period for Jesus’ birth, creationists thereby calculate that the heavens and Earth were created by God in the year 4004 B.C. Earth, therefore, is only 6000 years old by biblical chronology. [NOTE: Although Mills is correct about the general age of 6,000 years, the chronology is not so precise as to nail down the exact date of 4004 B.C.—KB.] Despite widely divergent viewpoints, creationists and evolutionary biologists agree on a crucial fact: Six-thousand years is insufficient time for evolution to have produced the complex life-forms we observe on Earth today.... A 6000-year-old Earth means therefore that Genesis and the Theory of Evolution are forever irreconcilable (p. 137).

Mills further noted:

If Earth’s history began with Creation Week, and if Genesis provides an accurate historical record, then Earth had no prehistoric eras, no prehistoric peoples, and no prehistoric animals. Dinosaurs walked the Earth only a few thousand years ago, side-by-side with modern man (p. 141).

Mills went on to write: “If creationists now wish to abandon their historical position and acquiesce to an ancient Earth, then I applaud their progress. But it is a farce to maintain that Genesis never really demanded a young Earth since the genealogies were always intended as metaphors” (p. 148, emp. added).

Regarding those who attempt to compromise the literal nature of Genesis and accept both the Bible and evolution, Mills wrote: “Citing the Day-Age theory, these Great Pretenders make believe that Genesis actually describes an ancient Earth. The purpose of this pompous intellectual charade is to allow the Great Pretenders to ‘have it both ways’—imagining themselves to be both religious and scientific at the same time” (p. 151). In what sounds exactly like a young Earth apologist’s writings, Mills then commented: “In seeming anticipation and preemptive rebuttal of the Day-Age theory, however, the Book of Genesis itself provides a clear and specific definition of Creation Week...‘the evening and the morning’ were a day—a literal 24-hour day” (p. 151).

Mills is exactly right in regard to the fact that a compromise of the Genesis account of Creation is indefensible and illogical. He does an excellent job of showing that the special pleading needed to warp the text of Genesis into agreement with modern evolutionary ideas cannot stand critical scrutiny. He concludes correctly that: “A 6000-year-old Earth means therefore that Genesis and the Theory of Evolution are forever irreconcilable” (p. 137). Those who compromise the text of Genesis in an attempt to force it to agree with modern evolutionary teachings have gotten it wrong, and would do well to listen to Mills’ criticism of their inaccurate interpretation.

Unfortunately, Mills leaves his critical thinking at the doorstep of his correct assessment that the Bible and evolutionary theory are irreconcilable. He incorrectly reasons that the Bible has been wrong all along and that evolution is the true creative agent of our planet. We have shown repeatedly that such simply cannot be the case (cf. Jackson, et al., 2008), and Mills and other atheists would do well to apply the same critical thinking to the false evolutionary theory as they so aptly apply to indefensible compromises of the biblical text.

INHERITED SIN

Many people who consider themselves Christians today have accepted the idea that humans are born with a sinful nature. These religious people believe that sin can be inherited from one’s ancestors, and that every human, even infants, deserve death due to their inherently sinful nature. The Bible, however, nowhere teaches such a doctrine. Thus, when atheists and skeptics seize on this false interpretation of Scripture, they correctly insist that such a teaching would manifest a contradiction in the nature of the God of the Bible.

Christopher Hitchens, in his discussion of Christ’s death on the cross, wrote:

Furthermore, I am required to believe that the agony was necessary in order to compensate for an earlier crime in which I also had not part, the sin of Adam.... Thus my own guilt in the matter is deemed “original” and inescapable. However, I am still granted free will with which to reject the offer of vicarious redemption (2007, p. 209, italics in orig.).

Hitchens correctly concluded that such an idea “negates the moral and reasonable idea that the children are innocent of their parent’s offenses” (p. 99). Richard Dawkins weighed in on the idea as well: “The sin of Adam and Eve is thought to have passed down the male line—transmitted in the semen according to Augustine. What kind of ethical philosophy is it that condemns every child, even before it is born, to inherit the sin of a remote ancestor?” (Dawkins, 2006, p. 251, emp. added).

Hitchens, Dawkins, and numerous other atheistic writers correctly conclude that a god who condemns children because they inherited their ancestors’ sins would be an unjust being unworthy of worship. The biblical portrait of God, however, is not of such a cruel, unjust being. In fact, it is the exact opposite. The Bible points out in unambiguous terms that children do not inherit the sins or guilt of their ancestors. The prophet Ezekiel wrote: “The one who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself” (18:20). It has been shown repeatedly and beyond doubt that the Bible never indicates that children inherit sin or guilt from their parents (

Butt

, 2004), nor do children ever suffer any type of spiritual punishment as a result of the sins of their parents (

Butt

, 2003). While it is the case that children often suffer physical consequences of their parents’ wrong choices, such as when a drunken father abuses his children, it is not the case that those children bear any of the father’s spiritual guilt or inherit any of their parents’ sin.

One can completely understand why the skeptical community would be aghast at a being who would cast innocent babies into hell as punishment for the sins of their parents. Yet, a correct interpretation of the Bible shows that such is not the case. While it is sad that many religious people have falsely taught such a view, their false teaching on the subject, and the skeptics’ acceptance of that false teaching as a correct interpretation of the Bible, cannot be used as a legitimate weapon to impugn the character of the God of the Bible.

WRONG DEFINITION OF FAITH

It is unfortunate for Christianity that some who call themselves Christians completely misunderstand the basic concept of faith. For many in Christendom, faith is a warm feeling in their hearts when they have failed to find adequate evidence to justify their beliefs. Modern dictionaries have done much to engrain this false definition of faith into modern Christianity. For instance, Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary states that faith is “a firm belief in something for which there is no proof” (1988). The American Heritage Dictionary gives as a primary definition of faith: “belief that does not rest on logical or material evidence” (2000, p. 636). The idea that faith is a warm, fuzzy feeling divorced from logical thinking and separated from all “material evidence” does not coincide with what the Bible actually says about faith (cf. Sztanyo, 1996). As Sztanyo correctly noted: “There is not a single item in Christianity, upon which our souls’ salvation depends, that is only ‘probably’ true. In each case, the evidence supplied is sufficient to establish conclusive proof regarding the truth of the Christian faith” (1996, p. 7).

The false view that faith is “a leap in the dark” without adequate evidence provides the skeptical community plenty of fodder for their atheistic, anti-Bible cannons—and rightly so. If believing in God, or the divine inspiration of the Bible, or the deity of Jesus Christ is not established by rational, logical evidence, then those ideas are as unworthy of belief as the unprovable ideas of atheism and evolution. Knowing the inconsistency of such a false definition of faith, Sam Harris wrote: “In fact, every religion preaches the truth of propositions for which no evidence is even conceivable. This put the ‘leap’ in Kierkegaard’s leap of faith” (Harris, 2004, p. 23, italics in orig.). Christopher Hitchens, building on the “leap of faith” idea, opined:

Actually, the “leap of faith”—to give it the memorable name that Soren Kierkegaard bestowed on it—is an imposture. As he himself pointed out, it is not a “leap” that can be made once and for all. It is a leap that has to go on and on being performed, in spite of mounting evidence to the contrary (2007, p. 65).

In his analysis of religion, Richard Dawkins quipped: “The whole point of religious faith, its strength and chief glory, is that it does not depend on rational justification” (2006, p. 23, emp. added). Because of his belief that biblical faith is belief without rational justification, Dawkins concluded: “We believe in evolution because the evidence supports it, and we would abandon it overnight if new evidence arose to disprove it. No real fundamentalist would ever say anything like that” (p. 283). What Dawkins really means to say is that no fundamentalist who has adopted the concept that faith does not depend on rational justification would abandon his or her belief if evidence were provided to the contrary. But if his definition of faith is wrong, then he is incorrect to conclude that those who believe in God, the divine inspiration of the Bible, and the deity of Christ would not alter their views based on the evidence. In fact, according to a proper definition of biblical faith, it is only because of the rational justification and logical evidence available that true Christians hold to their beliefs.

When Dawkins states, “Christianity, just as much as Islam, teaches children that unquestioned faith is a virtue. You don’t have to make the case for what you believe” (p. 306), he manifests his lack of knowledge of what biblical faith is. Biblical faith is based completely and solely on truth and reason, as the apostle Paul succinctly stated in Acts 26:25. The prophet Isaiah underscored this fundamental truth about biblical faith when He recorded God’s invitation to the Israelites: “‘Come now, and let us reason together,’ says the Lord” (1:18). Luke, in his introduction to the book of Acts, pressed the point that Jesus’ resurrection was attested by “many infallible proofs” (1:3). For one to believe in the resurrection requires faith, based on infallible proofs.

Sam Harris wrote: “It is time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail” (Harris, 2006, p. 67). Harris’ accusation is justified when it is applied to false religions, and to those who attempt to defend Christianity without providing a logical, rational justification for their belief. But his allegations, and similar sentiments from Dawkins, Hitchens, and other atheists, are wholly inadequate to attack true, biblical faith. Sadly, too many self-proclaimed Christians open the door for the skeptical community to bash Christian “faith,” when, in reality, the “faith” that is being destroyed was never biblical in the first place.

MODERN MIRACLES

It is often the case that “Christianity” is abused by modern skeptics due to the tendency of many in Christendom to claim that the Holy Spirit continues to work miracles today just as He did during New Testament times. Atheist Dan Barker wrote about the time that he was thrown out of “Peter Popoff’s ‘miracle’ rally” (1992, p. 291). Barker wrote that Popoff “grabbed a woman’s head, deliberately mussed up her hair, shook her and pronounced her healed” (p. 293). During Popoff’s healing antics, Barker noted, “The audience punctuated his ‘healings’ by loudly speaking in tongues, raising their arms, shaking, crying, and hollering ‘Amen,’ ‘Thank you, Jesus!’ and ‘Hallelujah!’ It had the feel of one of those professional wrestling matches on TV” (p. 293).

Barker’s assessment of the event was, “It was comical; and it was sad. The man was practicing medicine without a license, raising false hopes and endangering lives. (Many of his believers have discarded medicine or cancelled doctor’s appointments.) I remember having participated in meetings just like this when I was a full-gospel evangelist, and I was ashamed” (p. 294). Barker’s caustic assessment of Popoff’s “faith healing scam” is accurate in many ways. As Barker admitted, he at one time in his past participated in many false-healing events, and thus he knows the inherent dishonesty involved in such deceptive shenanigans. Here again the skeptical community has logically and correctly concluded that such faith healings are not valid. As David Mills wrote: “If God has the power to miraculously cure others (though invariably in a vague and uncertain way), why doesn’t God ever help amputees?” (2006, p. 161).

Mills is right to surmise that if the miraculous power that was available during the time of the apostles is still available today, as many Christians erroneously teach and believe, then miracles that can be empirically verified like the healing of amputees should be documented. After all, even the enemies of the apostles had to admit that the miracles worked by the apostles were empirically verifiable: “For indeed, that a notable miracle has been done through them is evident to all who dwell in Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it” (Acts 4:16).

In truth, the skeptical community does an excellent job of showing that such “faith healing” events are emotionally charged frenzies that do not produce legitimate medical results. The problem arises, however, when the skeptical community tries to lump all Christians into this mold, or attempts to use these verifiably false miracles to discount the possibility of any type of miracle at any time in history. The fact of the matter is, the Bible predicted that the miraculous power that was available to the apostles would come to an end, and would not continue throughout the ages until modern times (

Miller

, 2003). Furthermore, it has been repeatedly and definitively shown that such false miracles sustain no argumentative value against the historical legitimacy of true miracles recorded in the Bible, such as the resurrection of Christ (

Butt

, 2002).

CONCLUSION

Mortimer J. Adler once stated, “Christianity is the only logical, consistent faith in the world” (as quoted in Sharp and Bergman, 2008, p. 288). Unfortunately, the truth of his statement is often obscured by the copious, false philosophies and inaccurate biblical interpretations that masquerade as Christianity. Calvinism, theistic evolution, inherited sin, misdefined faith, and a belief in modern-day miraculous healings are just a few of the obstacles standing in the way of a proper understanding of New Testament Christianity. To this list could be added hundreds of similar ideas fraught with error such as the unscriptural concepts of purgatory, limbo, modern-day Divine inspiration, the perseverance of the saints, and a plethora of ridiculous “predictions” supposedly rooted in the biblical text of Revelation. Those who genuinely wish to defend the validity of New Testament Christianity must be willing and able to assess the writings of modern skeptics, separating the wheat from the chaff. By acknowledging the mistakes that are inherent in false concepts of “Christianity,” the honest-hearted truth seeker can be led to see that such foibles and errors do not mar authentic, defensible Christianity.

REFERENCES

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin), fourth edition.

Barker, Dan (1992), Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist (Madison, WI: Freedom From Religion).

Butt, Kyle (2002), “Jesus Christ—Dead or Alive?” Reason & Revelation,

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/121

Butt, Kyle (2003), “Do Babies Go to Hell When They Die?”

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2255

Butt, Kyle (2004), “Do Children Inherit the Sins of the Parents?”

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2543

Dawkins, Richard (2006), The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin).

Harris, Sam (2004), The End of Faith (New York: W.W. Norton).

Harris, Sam (2006), Letter to a Christian Nation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf).

Hitchens, Christopher (2007), god Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: The Twelve).

Jackson, Wayne, Eric Lyons and Kyle Butt (2008), Surveying the Evidence (Montgomery, AL: Apologetics Press).

Miller, Dave (2003), “Modern Day Miracles, Tongue-Speaking and Holy Spirit Baptism—A Refutation,” Reason & Revelation,

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2569

Mills, David (2006), Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism(Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press).

Sharp, Doug and Jerry Bergman, eds. (2008), Persuaded by the Evidence (Green Forest, AR: Master Books).

Sztanyo, Dick (1996), Faith and Reason (Montgomery, AL: Apologetics Press).

Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (1988), (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster).

We are happy to grant permission for items in the "Doctrinal Matters" section to be reproduced in their entirety, as long as the following stipulations are observed: (1) Apologetics Press must be designated as the original publisher; (2) the specific Apologetics Press Web site URL must be noted; (3) the author’s name must remain attached to the materials; (4) any references, footnotes, or endnotes that accompany the article must be included with any written reproduction of the article; (5) alterations of any kind are strictly forbidden (e.g., photographs, charts, graphics, quotations, etc. must be reproduced exactly as they appear in the original); (6) serialization of written material (e.g., running an article in several parts) is permitted, as long as the whole of the material is made available, without editing, in a reasonable length of time; (7) articles, in whole or in part, may not be offered for sale or included in items offered for sale; and (8) articles may be reproduced in electronic form for posting on Web sites pending they are not edited or altered from their original content and that credit is given to Apologetics Press, including the web location from which the articles were taken.

For catalog, samples, or further information, contact:

Apologetics Press

230 Landmark Drive

Montgomery, Alabama 36117

U.S.A.

Phone (334) 272-8558

http://www.apologeticspress.org

0 notes

goconservativechristian · 4 years

Text

Only True Christianity is Defensibleby

Kyle Butt, M.A.

THEISTIC EVOLUTION IS INDEFENSIBLE

Mills further noted:

INHERITED SIN

Christopher Hitchens, in his discussion of Christ’s death on the cross, wrote:

Butt

, 2004), nor do children ever suffer any type of spiritual punishment as a result of the sins of their parents (

Butt

WRONG DEFINITION OF FAITH

MODERN MIRACLES

Miller

Butt

, 2002).

CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin), fourth edition.

Barker, Dan (1992), Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist (Madison, WI: Freedom From Religion).

Butt, Kyle (2002), “Jesus Christ—Dead or Alive?” Reason & Revelation,

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/121

Butt, Kyle (2003), “Do Babies Go to Hell When They Die?”

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2255

Butt, Kyle (2004), “Do Children Inherit the Sins of the Parents?”

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2543

Dawkins, Richard (2006), The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin).

Harris, Sam (2004), The End of Faith (New York: W.W. Norton).

Harris, Sam (2006), Letter to a Christian Nation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf).

Hitchens, Christopher (2007), god Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: The Twelve).

Jackson, Wayne, Eric Lyons and Kyle Butt (2008), Surveying the Evidence (Montgomery, AL: Apologetics Press).

Miller, Dave (2003), “Modern Day Miracles, Tongue-Speaking and Holy Spirit Baptism—A Refutation,” Reason & Revelation,

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2569

Mills, David (2006), Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism(Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press).

Sharp, Doug and Jerry Bergman, eds. (2008), Persuaded by the Evidence (Green Forest, AR: Master Books).

Sztanyo, Dick (1996), Faith and Reason (Montgomery, AL: Apologetics Press).

Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (1988), (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster).

For catalog, samples, or further information, contact:

Apologetics Press

230 Landmark Drive

Montgomery, Alabama 36117

U.S.A.

Phone (334) 272-8558

http://www.apologeticspress.org

#READ MORE AT. steve-finnell.blogspot.com

0 notes

stevefinnellp-blog · 5 years

Text

Only True Christianity is Defensibleby

Kyle Butt, M.A.

THEISTIC EVOLUTION IS INDEFENSIBLE

Mills further noted:

INHERITED SIN

Christopher Hitchens, in his discussion of Christ’s death on the cross, wrote:

Butt

, 2004), nor do children ever suffer any type of spiritual punishment as a result of the sins of their parents (

Butt

WRONG DEFINITION OF FAITH

MODERN MIRACLES

Miller

Butt

, 2002).

CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin), fourth edition.

Barker, Dan (1992), Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist (Madison, WI: Freedom From Religion).

Butt, Kyle (2002), “Jesus Christ—Dead or Alive?” Reason & Revelation,

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/121

Butt, Kyle (2003), “Do Babies Go to Hell When They Die?”

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2255

Butt, Kyle (2004), “Do Children Inherit the Sins of the Parents?”

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2543

Dawkins, Richard (2006), The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin).

Harris, Sam (2004), The End of Faith (New York: W.W. Norton).

Harris, Sam (2006), Letter to a Christian Nation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf).

Hitchens, Christopher (2007), god Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: The Twelve).

Jackson, Wayne, Eric Lyons and Kyle Butt (2008), Surveying the Evidence (Montgomery, AL: Apologetics Press).

Miller, Dave (2003), “Modern Day Miracles, Tongue-Speaking and Holy Spirit Baptism—A Refutation,” Reason & Revelation,

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2569

Mills, David (2006), Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism(Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press).

Sharp, Doug and Jerry Bergman, eds. (2008), Persuaded by the Evidence (Green Forest, AR: Master Books).

Sztanyo, Dick (1996), Faith and Reason (Montgomery, AL: Apologetics Press).

Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (1988), (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster).

For catalog, samples, or further information, contact:

Apologetics Press

230 Landmark Drive

Montgomery, Alabama 36117

U.S.A.

Phone (334) 272-8558

http://www.apologeticspress.org

0 notes

bountyofbeads · 5 years

Text

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-02/trump-s-impeachment-saga-stems-from-a-political-hit-job-gone-bad

Joshua Green's new @BW piece: Trump's impeachment saga stems from a right-wing hit job gone bad -- an anti-Biden project funded with Mercer family money that Trump and Giuliani hijacked, only to have it blow up on them: https://t.co/mw9TuUCr87

Trump’s Impeachment Saga Stems From a Political Hit Job Gone Bad

The president's obsession with finding dirt on Biden goes back to Steve Bannon and Clinton Cash.

By Joshua Green | Published October 2, 2019 | Bloomberg | Posted October 3, 2019 10:20 AM ET |

The irony of President Trump’s sudden impeachment peril is that it’s the unintended result of an effort to help him: a political hit job aimed at a likely opponent (Joe Biden) and funded by a major right-wing donor (Rebekah Mercer) that Trump and his lawyer (Rudy Giuliani) impatiently hijacked, with consequences that could turn out to be disastrous for them.

To understand how Trump wound up the target of a House impeachment inquiry, it’s first necessary to understand why he was so obsessed with finding dirt on Biden that he pressured Ukraine’s president in a July 25th phone call to “do us a favor” and investigate Biden and his son, Hunter. The notion that Hunter Biden and his father could be complicit in Ukrainian corruption was first aired in a 2018 book, Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends, by conservative author Peter Schweizer. The book and its author had a purpose and a lineage.

Schweizer, an editor at Breitbart News, is the president of the Government Accountability Institute (GAI), a nonprofit group whose board chairwoman and major donor is Rebekah Mercer, a prominent Trump supporter and benefactor of right-wing causes.

In a book I wrote about Trump and Steve Bannon, I described how Schweizer and Bannon, GAI’s founding chairman, deployed a staff of lawyers, investigators, and forensic data scientists to scour public records, corporate filings, and the dark web to compile damning evidence that Hillary and Bill Clinton behaved unethically by associating with unsavory, favor-seeking foreign donors through their work with the Clinton Foundation. Bannon, the project’s mastermind, had a specific goal in mind. He wasn’t interested in firing up conservatives, who already despised the Clintons. He wanted GAI’s findings presented in non-partisan fashion to independents and Democrats who were considering supporting Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential bid. In May 2015, on the eve of her campaign launch, Schweizer published GAI’s findings in a book, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. It instantly became a New York Times bestseller.

Because the book documented a series of ethically dubious actions—unreported foreign gifts, Bill’s dinner with Kazakhstan’s autocratic president on behalf of a donor seeking lucrative mining rights—the mainstream media took up and amplified its investigations into the Clintons. As Bannon had intended, the whiff of corruption attached itself to Hillary and became a major theme of the media’s coverage, poisoning her image. “They’ve enriched themselves while playing up the worst cast of characters in the world,” Bannon argued of the Clintons at the time. Material from GAI even showed up on the front page of the New York Times. “Looking at it from their point of view,” the liberal strategist David Brock told me of Schweizer and GAI, “the Times is the perfect host body for the virus.”

Clinton’s subsequent loss in the 2016 election was proof of concept: You could spot a Democratic frontrunner years out and tarnish that person badly enough to ruin their candidacy.

So Schweizer and GAI sought to repeat the trick. Looking ahead to 2020, it wasn’t hard to foresee that a moderate, two-term vice president like Joe Biden, popular across the party, was likely to run for president and be a good bet to win. Nor was it difficult for GAI to turn up examples of ethically questionable behavior by Biden’s family members and publish the information in Secret Empires.

In 2014, while his father was vice president, Hunter became a highly paid director of Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas company, despite lacking expertise in resource extraction, Eastern European energy concerns, or Ukrainian regulatory affairs. The year before, after flying to China with his father aboard Air Force Two, Hunter Biden joined the board of an investment fund, BHR Partners, co-founded by a Chinese private-equity investor trying to raise $1.5 billion. To all appearances, Hunter Biden was cashing in on the family name in way that’s common among political families in both parties. (In this 2015 Bloomberg Businessweek piece, for example, I explained how Jeb Bush leveraged his famous surname to fund private equity deals with Chinese investors.)

As with Clinton Cash, Schweizer didn’t allege in his book on the Bidens that any laws were broken. Instead, his reporting laid out a suggestive timeline that led readers to the inescapable conclusion that what had transpired reeked of influence-peddling and moral, if not legal, corruption—the sort of self-dealing voters despise. While Ukraine’s prosecutor general told Bloomberg News he found no evidence of wrongdoing, the facts surrounding Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings prompted the mainstream media, including the New York Times, to take notice.

But Secret Empires didn’t have anything like the effect on Biden that Schweizer’s last book had on Clinton—it pretty much came and went. When I spoke to Schweizer last week, he offered several reasons why the book kind of came and went: one, it didn’t focus solely on Biden, but included other politicians. “That probably affected the vectoring of the narrative,” he speculated. It also appeared well before Biden entered the race, he noted, depriving it of “the urgency of the campaign” to drive it into the news cycle. Another factor, which he didn’t mention, is that the primary bad actor in Schweizer’s tale isn’t Joe Biden, but his son, who isn’t running for president.

Rather than the wall-to-wall cable news coverage his Clinton book produced, the impact of Secret Empires landed almost exclusively in conservative media, much to the frustration of Bannon, who griped about it at the time.

This is important for two reasons. First, the political effectiveness of projects like Clinton Cash and Secret Empires rests on their ability to enter the public’s consciousness as something other than “conservative attacks.” The information needs to be legitimized—or “weaponized,” to use Bannon’s term—through the mainstream press. This requires patience, restraint, and enough sophistication to understand why a damaging story published on the front page of the New York Times has infinitely more political utility for conservative partisans than the same story appearing on Breitbart.com. As a GAI staffer explained to me in 2015, “We don’t look at the mainstream media as enemies because we don’t want our work to be trapped in the conservative ecosystem.”

By this past spring, it was clear the Biden attack was stuck in the conservative ecosystem. And here’s where Trump enters the story—and inadvertently kicks off the whole impeachment saga: Trump may be the single most devoted consumer of conservative media, absorbing hours of it each day. He was mainlining the Biden coverage as part of his daily media diet.

We know from his Twitter feed and frequent outbursts that Trump isn’t patient, doesn’t restrain himself from trying to dictate press coverage, and repeats—and often exaggerates—what he hears in right-wing media. (Helpfully, he also name-checks his sources, including Schweizer.) His former Homeland Security adviser Thomas Bossert confessed over the weekend to being “deeply disturbed” that Trump couldn’t distinguish truth from fiction, choosing to believe a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 election.

What differentiates Trump from other power-consumers of conservative media is that he’s the president and was willing to use his governmental powers to attack a political rival. Impatient to advance a story he believed would damage Biden, Trump tapped Giuliani, who told the New York Times in May that he was going to Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, to push the new government to investigate the Bidens. “That information will be very, very helpful to my client,” he said. (He later canceled the trip.) He told CNN that “a well-regarded investigator” had brought Hunter Biden’s story to his attention.

Schweizer says it wasn’t him. “I don’t know Rudy and I’ve had no contact with Trump or the White House,” he told me. “I know there was a lot swirling around Ukraine, but I was as surprised as everyone” to learn that Trump delayed military aid to Ukraine and called Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy about Biden.

Last week, the White House released a rough transcript of the call, along with a whistleblower’s report, confirming that Trump pressured a foreign government to help him discredit his rival. On the same day the transcript became public—even as Republicans began to recognize the danger it poses to his presidency—Trump was still trying to force the Biden story into the news by misconstruing and exaggerating one of Schweizer’s central claims in Secret Empires. Trump told reporters: “When Biden’s son walks out of China with $1.5 billion in a fund and the biggest funds in the world can’t get money out of China and he’s there with one quick meeting and he flies in on Air Force Two, I think that’s a horrible thing.” (In a statement, a lawyer for Biden called this a “gross misrepresentation” and said “Mr. Biden has not received any return or compensation on account of this investment or his position on the board of directors.”)

The collective effort to impugn Biden doesn’t appear to have sent him into a tailspin, at least not yet. A new Politico/Morning Consult poll this morning finds that 40% of likely Democratic voters think Biden has the best shot of beating Trump, up one point from the last poll.

But there’s no question the anti-Biden effort has boomeranged on Trump, who is suddenly under siege from the Democrats’ fast-moving impeachment inquiry. Giuliani has been subpoenaed by House investigators. So has Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who admitted this morning he was on Trump’s call with Zelenskiy. Kurt Volker, the former special envoy to Ukraine who quit on Friday, will testify in the House impeachment inquiry on Thursday, while Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who was abruptly ousted in May, will sit for a joint House deposition next week.

At this point, no one can say what effect all this will have on the 2020 election. But it looks increasingly like it won’t be the one that Biden’s antagonists, from Trump to Schweizer, were aiming for.

0 notes

stevefinnell-blog · 5 years

Text

Only True Christianity is Defensibleby

Kyle Butt, M.A.

THEISTIC EVOLUTION IS INDEFENSIBLE

Mills further noted:

INHERITED SIN

Christopher Hitchens, in his discussion of Christ’s death on the cross, wrote:

Butt

, 2004), nor do children ever suffer any type of spiritual punishment as a result of the sins of their parents (

Butt

WRONG DEFINITION OF FAITH

MODERN MIRACLES

Miller

Butt

, 2002).

CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin), fourth edition.

Barker, Dan (1992), Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist (Madison, WI: Freedom From Religion).

Butt, Kyle (2002), “Jesus Christ—Dead or Alive?” Reason & Revelation,

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/121

Butt, Kyle (2003), “Do Babies Go to Hell When They Die?”

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2255

Butt, Kyle (2004), “Do Children Inherit the Sins of the Parents?”

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2543

Dawkins, Richard (2006), The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin).

Harris, Sam (2004), The End of Faith (New York: W.W. Norton).

Harris, Sam (2006), Letter to a Christian Nation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf).

Hitchens, Christopher (2007), god Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: The Twelve).

Jackson, Wayne, Eric Lyons and Kyle Butt (2008), Surveying the Evidence (Montgomery, AL: Apologetics Press).

Miller, Dave (2003), “Modern Day Miracles, Tongue-Speaking and Holy Spirit Baptism—A Refutation,” Reason & Revelation,

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2569

Mills, David (2006), Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism(Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press).

Sharp, Doug and Jerry Bergman, eds. (2008), Persuaded by the Evidence (Green Forest, AR: Master Books).

Sztanyo, Dick (1996), Faith and Reason (Montgomery, AL: Apologetics Press).

Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (1988), (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster).

For catalog, samples, or further information, contact:

Apologetics Press

230 Landmark Drive

Montgomery, Alabama 36117

U.S.A.

Phone (334) 272-8558

http://www.apologeticspress.org

0 notes

harryandmeghan0-blog · 5 years

Text

Rowling does gays more harm than good - Royal Gazette

New Post has been published on https://harryandmeghan.xyz/rowling-does-gays-more-harm-than-good-royal-gazette/

Rowling does gays more harm than good - Royal Gazette

J.K. Rowling never had to fight for her freedom to marry and it shows.

Seemingly unsatisfied with the shock value of making the characters in her Harry Potter franchise racially ambiguous, she has decided to double-down on her 2007 declaration that Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore, a beloved elderly male character, is gay. Last week, in an interview added to the Blu-ray DVD for Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Rowling confirmed something fans have long wondered: Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald, a dark wizard who is a friend-cum-rival, had “a relationship with a sexual dimension”.

I have never cast a spell before, so here goes nothing: tedious gravitas!

In the DVD commentary, Rowling says: “Their relationship was incredibly intense. It was passionate, and it was a love relationship. But as happens in any relationship, gay or straight or whatever label we want to put on it, one never knows, really, what the other person is feeling. You can’t know, you can believe you know. So I’m less interested in the sexual side — although I believe there is a sexual dimension to this relationship — than I am in the sense of the emotions they felt for each other, which ultimately is the most fascinating thing about all human relationships.”

Viewers and readers especially cannot know feelings between two characters when neither uses words or actions to express them. There’s a word for that: closeted. By imbuing Dumbledore with a sexuality that does not speak its name, ink its page, or fill its screen in 2019, Rowling outs herself again as a 1990s throwback of a grandstanding faux-ally. “Do not pity the dead, Harry,” Dumbledore tells Harry in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. “Pity the living, and, above all those who live without love.”

Pity characters penned in fictional, unnecessary closets even more.

Rowling published the first book in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, in Britain in 1997. She wrote six more Harry Potter books before she outed Dumbledore, which she did only after the final novel was published. Just like this time, that revelation came not in the text, but in a 2007 question-and-answer session with fans, who broke into rapturous applause. She described Dumbledore not just as a gay man, but as broken, pathetic, unrequited, lonely, doomed. In those intervening years — when 21-year-old Matthew Shepard was brutally murdered in an anti-gay hate crime, when same-sex marriage was illegal in most US states and in Britain — the children reading her books could have used a beloved gay character, which might have given gay life some sorely needed heroes. Rowling has said she wrote some aspects of the novels, such as Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley’s relationship, as “a form of wish fulfilment”.

An openly gay Dumbledore was not her wish.

What if she had heeded Dumbledore’s own wisdom? “It’s our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities,” the Hogwarts headmaster tells the boy wizard in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. “Call him Voldemort, Harry. Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.”

Here’s a sharper take from WNYC’s Nancy, a queer podcast, which, in a 2017 episode called “There Are No Gay Wizards”, took issue with Rowling getting too much credit for writing an “iconic gay character”, as the show’s producer Matt Collette put it. “Of all J.K. Rowling’s many accolades, there’s one I find particularly noteworthy: queerbaiter,” Collette said. “That’s a writer who puts in just enough of a queer storyline to appease the fans who’d like one, but not so much as to offend anyone who doesn’t like gay people. There’s subtext — hints at queer stories — throughout her work, but nothing more.”

How could this clumsy betrayal by a clueless straight woman get any worse? By her straight male director, David Yates, chiming in within the same DVD commentary: “I was very conscious of wanting to try to suggest that Dumbledore still held this affection for Grindelwald. There was not just regret, but there was still a love that existed between the two men.”

The love existed between them because neither offered a bridge to close that distance.

And, sorry, Yates was very conscious of wanting to try to suggest? What does that mean? Wanting to try is for bucket lists and Kamasutra positions. There’s such barbed hypocrisy in this self-congratulatory pride about a closeted character from someone who was so aware of the power and perils of representation and misrepresentation that she hid her femininity behind her initials.

Cowardice expellum!

I understand Rowling is a 53-year-old children’s book author and that maybe it is difficult to access Gossip Girl or Riverdale or Big Mouth in Britain, but teen romantic culture — and sexual culture — has come a long way since she began this franchise in the 1990s. It doesn’t need to be the rote, prudish Potterverse pettiness of ill-conceived Valentine’s Day dates, rookie kisses, and showing up to the school dance with a surprise on your arm. Remember when Rowling prided herself on the length of the books, scolding the industry for underestimating the amount of complexity young readers could handle? What happened to that person?

For her characters, romantic and sexual emotion exists in Rowling’s mind with the no-questions-asked simplicity of invisibility cloaks and the quidditch rulebook. Harry never ever thinks of Cho Chang when he is kissing Ginny. Ron and Hermione do not have talks about how to spice up their sex life — pardon, their lovemaking. She has fetishised Dumbledore’s gay pain so much that she is unwilling to write any healing for him. But Dumbledore deserves that Brokeback breakthrough every out person gets: “It could be like this, just like this, always.”

Rowling does not understand how painful it is for queer people to see a straight person be proud of open vagueness. In the real world, we don’t get to do that. All queer sexual identities are defined explicitly by their expression. While straight virgins are accepted and respected, queer virgins are rushed with gaslighting doubts, such as: How do you know until you try it? Are you confused? Could this be a phase?

The books and movies span seven years of Potter’s life and decades of ours. But no one has lived in the Potterverse longer or deeper than Rowling. Her persistence, then, in promoting a storyline that isn’t actually in the story is becoming unforgivable. Closeted Dumbledore is her Jar-Jar Binks, and she is curdling into the Potterverse’s George Lucas — well-intentioned and respected as tenured emeritus, but ultimately distrusted to continue the canonical work.

If Rowling thinks, in a fantasy world of magic and possibility and polyjuice potion and metamorphmagi, that easter-egging a character as ex-post-facto closeted is in any way helpful to anyone wondering what to do with gay thoughts and gay feelings, she is wrong.

Dumbledore’s pep talk on love rings as hollow as gays who strike thirsty NOH8 poses and cheer #lovewins but then also decry fats, femmes and “black guys” on their dating profiles or hook-up apps.

Rowling’s toxic vacuity is not an incidental problem. Her fans are the sort of people who have been so inspired that they have created the Harry Potter Alliance, which “turns fans into heroes” for equality. It’s a beautiful manifestation of fans who grew up and decided to bring the magic of literacy to others. It’s time for Rowling to grow up, too.

As an artist and creator, she has the ability to show us anything. Then, why choose to show us so little of what she has imagined for Dumbledore? In all these years, in all her work, she does not yet believe in the full power of the only real magic wand that exists in her world: her pencil.

•Richard Morgan, a freelance writer in New York, is the author of Born in Bedlam, a memoir

Source: http://www.royalgazette.com/opinion/article/20190319/rowling-does-gays-more-harm-than-good&template=mobileart

0 notes

megaonewayjesuslove-blog · 5 years

Text

Only True Christianity is Defensibleby

Kyle Butt, M.A.

THEISTIC EVOLUTION IS INDEFENSIBLE

Mills further noted:

INHERITED SIN

Christopher Hitchens, in his discussion of Christ’s death on the cross, wrote:

Butt

, 2004), nor do children ever suffer any type of spiritual punishment as a result of the sins of their parents (

Butt

WRONG DEFINITION OF FAITH

MODERN MIRACLES

Miller

Butt

, 2002).

CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin), fourth edition.

Barker, Dan (1992), Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist (Madison, WI: Freedom From Religion).

Butt, Kyle (2002), “Jesus Christ—Dead or Alive?” Reason & Revelation,

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/121

Butt, Kyle (2003), “Do Babies Go to Hell When They Die?”

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2255

Butt, Kyle (2004), “Do Children Inherit the Sins of the Parents?”

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2543

Dawkins, Richard (2006), The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin).

Harris, Sam (2004), The End of Faith (New York: W.W. Norton).

Harris, Sam (2006), Letter to a Christian Nation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf).

Hitchens, Christopher (2007), god Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: The Twelve).

Jackson, Wayne, Eric Lyons and Kyle Butt (2008), Surveying the Evidence (Montgomery, AL: Apologetics Press).

Miller, Dave (2003), “Modern Day Miracles, Tongue-Speaking and Holy Spirit Baptism—A Refutation,” Reason & Revelation,

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2569

Mills, David (2006), Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism(Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press).

Sharp, Doug and Jerry Bergman, eds. (2008), Persuaded by the Evidence (Green Forest, AR: Master Books).

Sztanyo, Dick (1996), Faith and Reason (Montgomery, AL: Apologetics Press).

Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (1988), (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster).

For catalog, samples, or further information, contact:

Apologetics Press

230 Landmark Drive

Montgomery, Alabama 36117

U.S.A.

Phone (334) 272-8558

http://www.apologeticspress.org

#READ MORE at. steve-finnell.blogspot.com

0 notes

friend-clarity · 5 years

Text

Dartmouth Nightmare: leftism poisons our universities

Dartmouth Nightmare, November 9, 2018, David Horowitz

On October 23, I spoke at your college. I was invited by members of College Republicans and Students Supporting Israel. They probably wanted to hear what I had to say because I am one of the most prominent conservative intellectuals in America, having published over twenty books, three of which were New York Times best-sellers and one of which was nominated for a National Book Award. The feminist Camille Paglia has said of me: “I respect the astute and rigorously unsentimental David Horowitz as one of America's most original and courageous political analysts…. As a scholar who regularly surveys archival material, I think that, a century from now, cultural historians will find David Horowitz's spiritual and political odyssey paradigmatic for our time. ...

Leading the pack of Dartmouth character assassins who mobilized to combat my presence was Professor Annelise Oreleck, an out-of-control Gender Studies professor ... Professor Oreleck’s protest instructions happened to be – and surely this was no coincidence - exactly what the Dartmouth Socialists were planning to obstruct my lecture - namely to turn an academic talk into a circus so that no one would pay serious attention to anything that was said. They came in force to play loud porn videos, put on headphones to block out my words, unfurl distracting banners with slogans like “Trans Rights Are Human Rights” and “ICE is the Gestapo,” and to periodically walk out of the room throwing jibes in my direction as further distractions before they left. One transgender person, dressed as though she was going to Mardi Gras, sat herself near the front and eyed me intensely in the hope I guess that I would find her disturbing.

President Philip Hanlon Dartmouth College Hanover, New Hampshire

Dear President Hanlon,

Despite my credentials, and even though these conservative students pay the same tuition - $75,000 per year – as your leftwing students, I was forced to raise the money to underwrite my visit and lecture. This was particularly galling to the Dartmouth conservatives who invited me, because the previous spring Dartmouth’s “Office of Pluralism and Leadership” sponsored a visit by notorious anti-Semite and terrorist supporter Linda Sarsour – who has no academic credentials to speak of – underwriting her expenses and paying her a reported $10,000 honorarium for her talk.

My hosts were also probably interested in what I had to say because over the preceding decades, Dartmouth has purged conservative intellectuals from its faculty so effectively that the students could only name two Dartmouth liberal arts professors who were conservative. This reflects a collective faculty attitude that intellectual diversity is dangerous and unwanted. This is a disgraceful fact of academic life, which could easily be remedied, which prevents Dartmouth students from getting a decent liberal arts education, where all issues are controversial and intellectual diversity is the only guarantee that students are being educated rather than indoctrinated, or that there are reasonable checks on unchallenged leftist professors going off the deep end. As it happens my visit elicited a professorial outburst showing just how far leftwing bigotry and anti-academic discourse can go on your campus. I will come to this in a moment.

Before my arrival, an anonymous leaflet was circulated, apparently by the Dartmouth Socialists club. It was filled with lies about my work, calling me a “racist, sexist and ignorant bigot.” These slanders were drawn from the Southern Poverty Law Center, an institution so discredited that it recently had to pay a devout and moderate British Muslim $3.4 million after it libeled him as “a violent anti-Muslim extremist.” None of the students behind this slander sheet was apparently aware that I have a 50-year public record as a civil rights activist, or that I have published three books in the last 20 years dedicated to Martin Luther King’s vision of an America in which people are judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. And why should Dartmouth students be aware of my views since Dartmouth’s leftwing faculty obviously has no respect for conservative perspectives, which is why conservatives are as rare as unicorns on your faculty. Leading the pack of Dartmouth character assassins who mobilized to combat my presence was Professor Annelise Oreleck, an out-of-control Gender Studies professor who tweeted: “Long-time hater, Islamophobe and anti-intellectual David Horowitz is speaking today in Rocky 3 at 6pm. He is a hater of the first order. If you’re so inclined, support students who are organizing a protest – Bring signs. Turn your back. Stage a walkout.” What justification can there be to have such an angry, close-minded individual teaching Dartmouth students?

Professor Oreleck’s protest instructions happened to be – and surely this was no coincidence - exactly what the Dartmouth Socialists were planning to obstruct my lecture - namely to turn an academic talk into a circus so that no one would pay serious attention to anything that was said. They came in force to play loud porn videos, put on headphones to block out my words, unfurl distracting banners with slogans like “Trans Rights Are Human Rights” and “ICE is the Gestapo,” and to periodically walk out of the room throwing jibes in my direction as further distractions before they left. One transgender person, dressed as though she was going to Mardi Gras, sat herself near the front and eyed me intensely in the hope I guess that I would find her disturbing.

All the disrespectful antics of the protesters were in fact disturbing – not least because they were displays of Ivy League students wasting what could have been a valuable educational opportunity, and demonstrations of their total lack of interest in what someone who disagreed with them, and was far more educated, might be saying. When I was a college radical, as I told them to no effect, I always wanted to hear what our opponents were saying because I thought it would make me a better radical. Apparently, today’s radicals are so dedicated to self-righteous know-nothingism that they couldn’t care less what they are fighting against. As for the transgenderism, like many other conservatives, I am actually a very tolerant person. I happen to have a transgendered grandson who graduated from an Ivy League school and would never think of attending a college lecture only to mock it.

Wondering how students paying $75,000 a year for a Dartmouth education could throw away such an opportunity, it occurred to me that maybe they were not paying anything at all, but were so-called “marginalized” and “under-served” affirmative action scholarship cases. What a travesty that Dartmouth would encourage them to squander the opportunity their scholarships provided by not insisting on behavior appropriate to an academic community. When educators encourage closed minds, what is left of the learning process?

As it happens there were several Dartmouth administrators overseeing this event, including Keysi Montás, the Director of Safety and Security who was in charge. Unfortunately, they were not there to enforce an educational decorum but to encourage the protesters by tolerating their antics and refusing to eject them.

The whole travesty was sealed by the school newspaper, The Dartmouth, which bills itself as “The Oldest College Newspaper,” and which sent a reporter named Andrew Culver to cover the event. Before I began speaking, I gave Culver a recorded interview at his request. In it, I defended myself against the slanders in the anonymous leaflet, and showed him exactly how and why they were gross misrepresentations of the facts. For example, I was called a “sexist” for pointing out the scientific fact that men score higher on mathematical aptitude tests than women. What the slander sheet left out was that I also said, women score higher than men on verbal aptitude tests, and that I brought up these facts in defense of Harvard’s liberal president, Larry Summers, who was under fire for stating them first. I also described my public record as a civil rights activist, mentioned the fact that I had three black grandchildren, and was probably the only conservative in the country to defend Trayvon Martin during the trial of his killer George Zimmerman.

The Dartmouth reporter Andrew Culver failed to print a single word of my interview. Instead he opened his article by repeating the lies in the leaflet – namely that I was a racist, a sexist and a bigot. Culver’s mis-reporting of the event closed off the possibility that anyone in the Dartmouth community at large would be exposed to anything I had actually said. Only the slanders would remain. This is the state of education at a once admired Ivy League institution, where students can go four years without encountering a conservative adult. Moreover, if one is invited to campus to speak, he will be drowned out by students who shouldn’t be in college in the first place.

You had no personal role in these travesties, but you are president of the institution that made them possible. I’m not going to ask you to have your “Office of Pluralism (how Orwellian is that)” sponsor a return visit from me, since it might well provoke a faculty riot. I just want you to think about these signs of a damaged institution. and the warping of the educational experiences of your students.

I would like an apology from you on behalf of the Dartmouth community. I would also like to see some instruction from you to your staff on the importance of promoting educational values rather than encouraging close-minded political bigotry at your school. Perhaps hiring a dozen or so conservative administrators might help.

Sincerely,

David Horowitz

0 notes

sophia0527-blog · 7 years

Text

Asexuality in Media

In this blog post I will talk about how asexuality is perceived in the media. This includes TV shows, talk shows, etc. I will pull in shows such as House and Riverdale and talk about how these two shows misrepresent asexuality. Furthermore, I will also talk about the daytime TV show The View and how they put a bad label on asexuality when David Jay went on to talk about asexuality.

What’s your favorite TV show? Why is it your favorite TV show? Is it because you love the actors on it? Is it the plot? Or is it because you can relate to the main characters? Mine was Sirens on abc until it got cancelled. The reason it was my favorite show aside from the fact that it was a good show was that it was the first time a show had a correct representation of an asexual that I could relate to. Even seeing an asexual person on mainstream TV is something so rare. So when I heard Sirens had represented an asexual correctly I had to watch. A lot of popular movies and shows do not have asexual characters and if they do they are usually stereotypical versions or it turns out the asexual person was not even asexual but was just “sick”. The latter is the case for an episode of the TV show House.

In this particular House episode there is a women that comes into the hospital who identifies as asexual as well as her husband. House doesn’t believe that they are really asexual and makes a $100 bet with his colleague that he can find a medical reason as to why they do not want to have sex. Later on it is discovered that the man has a pituitary tumor that’s killing his sex drive. Then the big reveal: The wife is just pretending to be asexual to make her husband happy. Therefore, at the end, House ends up winning the bet. So instead of celebrating the fact that a major TV network featured self-identifying asexual characters, the asexual community had to denounce it. This representation not only reinforces some of the myths of asexuality but it makes people, especially those who haven’t come to terms about their sexual orientation, believe that asexuality is “fixable” or that there has to be a medical explanation behind their “problem.” David Jay, the founder of AVEN, went on to say that the representation was, “disturbing but not unexpected.” In which I am completely onboard with. I do not think that being asexual is something to laugh about or automatically dismiss as a sickness.

Another TV show that has me upset is Riverdale. Riverdale actually started off as a comic series. A comic series in which one of the main characters is actually asexual. Cool, right? I thought so too. So I decided to read the comics and I loved them. Then when I heard the CW was a making a show out of the comics I couldn’t have been any more excited. A tv show of my favorite comics? AND it will feature an asexual character in a major TV network? Like yes! But plot twist. The asexual main character in the comics, Jughead Jones, has been changed in the show to not be asexual. And this is a problem. It is important to keep the asexuality of the character because representations like these, as I said earlier, are rare and very important for those that resonate with it. Furthermore, changing the character from asexual to not has underlying implications that that it was changed because there is a problem with being asexual.

Now to touch more on daytime TV. Another misrepresentation of asexuality can be seen when David Jay went on The View in 2006 to explain asexuality. The ladies on the panel did not take him seriously nor his explanation about asexuality. They openly mocked him with stereotypes and even try to give possible explanations as to why he is asexual. That maybe he is “repressed” and that maybe he just “doesn't want to face what sexuality might look like.” These obviously being false. By putting this dialogue out there on national TV you are giving a false representation and a voice to doubt asexuality to millions.

I will admit that since 2006 the conversation about asexuality has become more open and asexuality itself has become more visible but there is still so much left to be done. When you were younger you looked up to those characters in movies and tv shows who you related to. But unfortunately most of these characters are white and cisgender. Who am I to relate to as a Latinx asexual? Who do I have to look up to?

This blog is based of Meg Lazarus’s presentation about asexuality in the media.

#asexuality #representation #asexuality in media

0 notes

goconservativechristian · 4 years

Text

Only True Christianity is Defensibleby

Kyle Butt, M.A.

THEISTIC EVOLUTION IS INDEFENSIBLE

Mills further noted:

INHERITED SIN

Christopher Hitchens, in his discussion of Christ’s death on the cross, wrote:

Butt

, 2004), nor do children ever suffer any type of spiritual punishment as a result of the sins of their parents (

Butt

WRONG DEFINITION OF FAITH

MODERN MIRACLES

Miller

Butt

, 2002).

CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin), fourth edition.

Barker, Dan (1992), Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist (Madison, WI: Freedom From Religion).

Butt, Kyle (2002), “Jesus Christ—Dead or Alive?” Reason & Revelation,

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/121

Butt, Kyle (2003), “Do Babies Go to Hell When They Die?”

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2255

Butt, Kyle (2004), “Do Children Inherit the Sins of the Parents?”

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2543

Dawkins, Richard (2006), The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin).

Harris, Sam (2004), The End of Faith (New York: W.W. Norton).

Harris, Sam (2006), Letter to a Christian Nation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf).

Hitchens, Christopher (2007), god Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: The Twelve).

Jackson, Wayne, Eric Lyons and Kyle Butt (2008), Surveying the Evidence (Montgomery, AL: Apologetics Press).

Miller, Dave (2003), “Modern Day Miracles, Tongue-Speaking and Holy Spirit Baptism—A Refutation,” Reason & Revelation,

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2569

Mills, David (2006), Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism(Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press).

Sharp, Doug and Jerry Bergman, eds. (2008), Persuaded by the Evidence (Green Forest, AR: Master Books).

Sztanyo, Dick (1996), Faith and Reason (Montgomery, AL: Apologetics Press).

Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (1988), (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster).

For catalog, samples, or further information, contact:

Apologetics Press

230 Landmark Drive

Montgomery, Alabama 36117

U.S.A.

Phone (334) 272-8558

http://www.apologeticspress.org

#READ MORE AT. steve-finnell.blogspot.com

0 notes

stevefinnellp-blog · 5 years

Text

Only True Christianity is Defensibleby

Kyle Butt, M.A.

THEISTIC EVOLUTION IS INDEFENSIBLE

Mills further noted:

INHERITED SIN

Christopher Hitchens, in his discussion of Christ’s death on the cross, wrote:

Butt

, 2004), nor do children ever suffer any type of spiritual punishment as a result of the sins of their parents (

Butt

WRONG DEFINITION OF FAITH

MODERN MIRACLES

Miller

Butt

, 2002).

CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin), fourth edition.

Barker, Dan (1992), Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist (Madison, WI: Freedom From Religion).

Butt, Kyle (2002), “Jesus Christ—Dead or Alive?” Reason & Revelation,

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/121

Butt, Kyle (2003), “Do Babies Go to Hell When They Die?”

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2255

Butt, Kyle (2004), “Do Children Inherit the Sins of the Parents?”

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2543

Dawkins, Richard (2006), The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin).

Harris, Sam (2004), The End of Faith (New York: W.W. Norton).

Harris, Sam (2006), Letter to a Christian Nation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf).

Hitchens, Christopher (2007), god Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: The Twelve).

Jackson, Wayne, Eric Lyons and Kyle Butt (2008), Surveying the Evidence (Montgomery, AL: Apologetics Press).

Miller, Dave (2003), “Modern Day Miracles, Tongue-Speaking and Holy Spirit Baptism—A Refutation,” Reason & Revelation,

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2569

Mills, David (2006), Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism(Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press).

Sharp, Doug and Jerry Bergman, eds. (2008), Persuaded by the Evidence (Green Forest, AR: Master Books).

Sztanyo, Dick (1996), Faith and Reason (Montgomery, AL: Apologetics Press).

Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (1988), (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster).

For catalog, samples, or further information, contact:

Apologetics Press

230 Landmark Drive

Montgomery, Alabama 36117

U.S.A.

Phone (334) 272-8558

http://www.apologeticspress.org

0 notes