In this installment of my series dealing with a local small papers regular article, I respond to the misdirection of energies to ideas surrounding religious and political extremism. A proper understanding of both history and one’s own political leaders can direct... Read More
Well, my cruise to Hawaii and back went as well as one could expect. One of my favorite parts was being “buzzed” by the USS Vinson (Carrier) on our last sea day. Not only did we see a floating military airport, F-18′s, Sea-Hawks, and E-2C Hawkeyes… but we... Read More
Just a quick note on when John says (see below) that he doubts “the origin of homosexuality will be discussed,” he does not discuss it either (if there is even an “origin” to be discussed). And while I admit to not following John’s every... Read More
Now, before I post the exact same critique of the above “meme/quote” I placed on a friends mom’s FaceBook, I wish to note a few things about the “interaction” that followed. Firstly, this action taken by D.N. (friend’s mom) proves yet again... Read More
This is a short, 6-point reason why I believe same-sex marriage should not be “normalized” by society as a whole — THAT IS, gay-unions should not be placed in importance, culturally, as equal in its benefiting society. Gender differences are important and have... Read More
In all my discussions with people about the “hot-button issue” of today, same-sex-marriage, I see a theme. And that is, bias. Not an admitted bias, or a healthy bias, one flirting with fascism. “FASCISM! How can you say that Papa Giorgio!?” Easy, a... Read More
“Properly speaking, homosexuality does not exist among animals…. For reasons of survival, the reproductive instinct among animals is always directed towards an individual of the opposite sex. Therefore, an animal can never be homosexual as such. Nevertheless, the... Read More
I have been too busy as-of-late to keep up with “Concepts,” an article in a local small paper. This recent article did, however, peak my interest and awoke me from my slumber. (As usual, you can click the graphic to enlarge to be able to read the article if so... Read More
It is funny. In this conversation (which is part two, part one can be found here) I have noticed a theme… which is, the detractors in question will bring up topics of a religious bent, even going as far as quoting Scripture; then, when corrected on the theological or... Read More
I was graciously invited to a site that is a depot for many conservatively minded homosexuals as well as supporters of these Republican leaning folk. For the record there are many independents and libertarian leaning guys and gals in the group as well. The person that invited me... Read More
A story in the Washington Post yesterday about the Internal Revenue Service’s Cincinnati office, which does most of the agency’s nonprofit auditing, clearly contradicted earlier reports that the agency’s targeting of Tea Party groups was the result of rogue agents.
The Post story anonymously quoted a staffer in Cincinnati as saying they only operate on directives from headquarters:
As could be expected, the folks in the determinations unit on Main Street have had trouble concentrating this week. Number crunchers, whose work is nonpolitical, don’t necessarily enjoy the spotlight, especially when the media and the public assume they’re engaged in partisan villainy.
“We’re not political,’’ said one determinations staffer in khakis as he left work late Tuesday afternoon. “We people on the local level are doing what we are supposed to do. . . . That’s why there are so many people here who are flustered. Everything comes from the top. We don’t have any authority to make those decisions without someone signing off on them. There has to be a directive.”
Via NRO’s Andrew Johnson, Joe Scarborough isn’t the only TV show host rethinking his scorn of gun-rights advocates this week. Piers Morgan, who engaged in some of the worst demagoguery outside of the White House and Capitol Hill over the last six months on that issue, routinely derided the idea that the American government couldn’t be trusted to abide by the law and tell the truth. Now, after watching what happened at the IRS — and to the Associated Press — the CNN host admits to Penn Jillette that maybe people had a point about creeping tyranny after all.
To those who think IRS snooping was masterminded by rogue agents… please explain why such snooping didn’t occur while George W. Bush was President of the United States. (Via Gay Patriot)
These “rogue” employees were getting info in 2012… the act had been happening since 2010 and the IRS has admitted to knowing about it in 2011. So how can these guys/gals be “off the reservation” in 2012? Breitbart:
FOX 19 is reporting that four Cincinnati workers have been identified for disciplinary and possible criminal action for targeting “right wing” groups applying to the IRS for non-profit status. However, according to sources, IRS workers in Cincinnati, OH “simply did what their bosses ordered.”
Yesterday, Acting IRS Commissioner Steve Miller described two Cincinnati workers as “rogue” and “off the reservation.” But two sources tell the news outlet that there are four workers “pin-pointed” by the IRS, as opposed to only two as mentioned by Miller.
Fox19 has confirmed that the four employees in question made unusual requests for information from:
1. The Richmond, Virginia Tea Party in January of 2012. 2. The Ohio Liberty Council in January of 2012.. 3. Dan Backer, a lawyer based in Washington D.C. who helped six small conservative groups apply for 501c4 status in February of 2012. 4. The Liberty Township Tea Party in March of 2012.
Four Cincinnati IRS employees not two were involved in targeting conservative and Christian groups. The employees said they “simply did what our bosses ordered.”
Criminal! Peter Riehm, chairman of the Common Sense CampaignIRS, a conservative group was on with Neil Cavuto today. Riehm told Neal they withdrew their application after months and months of harassment.
You will go to jail for not accepting government gay marriage, says WA State Democrat AG. From the SeattleTimes, State sues florist over refusing service for gay wedding:
The state attorney general has filed a lawsuit in Benton County Superior Court against a Richland florist who refused to provide flowers for the wedding of longtime gay customers, citing her religious opposition to same-sex marriage. The state’s suit against Barronelle Stutzman, owner of Arlene’s Flowers and Gifts, came just days after the Attorney General’s Office wrote to ask that Stutzman reconsider her position and agree to comply with the state’s anti-discrimination laws.
“Under the Consumer Protection Act, it is unlawful to discriminate against customers on the basis of sexual orientation,” Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a statement. “If a business provides a product or service to opposite-sex couples for their weddings, then it must provide same-sex couples the same product or service.”
A civil rights icon who gave the benediction at President Obama’s inauguration said that he believed ‘all white people were going to hell’.
The Reverend Joseph Lowery, 91, was speaking at a rally in Georgia.
According to an account in the Monroe County Reporter: ‘Lowery said that when he was a young militant, he used to say all white folks were going to hell.
‘Then he mellowed and just said most of them were. Now, he said, he is back to where he was.’
The point is, if one is a hate crime? Why isn’t the other considered such? In other words, President Obama shouldn’t have awarded the top civilian medal to a racist… unless Obama is a racist?
Interesting FB questions/comments and input on this story:
One friend writes:
If this florist is not a “Religious institution or business” it should allow its services without discrimination toward its buyers or customers, as well as employees who may be homosexual. I dont think this is Gay Marriage Tyranny, we all have opinions and we all have facts, hopefully, to build our opinions off of, but being a public service, or public business, they cannot discriminate on race, color, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, against hippies, or police officers, or punk rockers, or business men, or whatever.
Only in the event that they cause the business harm, can the business owner, or manager refuse service. Its kind of the same thing with Adoption agencies. These are public businesses, not so much religious institutions. It is the owners rights to close down or move its business if it doesn’t want to comply with the laws, but it is not necessarily their right to refuse service because they don’t believe its right or wrong. Remember the Chik Fila thing. They can believe what they want, but it doesn’t stop them from serving people food, regardless of their beliefs.
I know the attacks on the Institutions are coming and I hope you know Sean that I agree with you on the Christian Stance in all things. We can come up with non-faithful reasons to argue our points as well but #1 is that God is first among all things. If God is really first to this florist, then she should understand that selling flowers to someone is not condoning their behavior or their sexual orientation, its simply providing a service in which someone is paying for something. If she didn’t know they were Gay, she would have sold them flowers irregardless and this wouldn’t be a sin.
The only other option for this florist is to Close down shop. IF she really feels so strongly about it being a sin and that providing flowers for this couple would make God mad or upset with her, and the owner really loves God, then putting Him first means closing up shop. In her mind of course.
What do you think Sean?
Another friend:
What ever happened to “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone”?
The first friend responds:
It doesn’t give the owners the right to Really refuse ANYONE. For example they can’t refuse you service because your wearing a blue shirt, or a hat. It can’t be some arbitrary reason. Maybe if your being offensive, or wearing something offensive, overly having a Public Display of Affection.
I respond:
Economics 101
Link through picture as well, to the section EVERYONE should read… click “Victicrats Should Take Economics 101″
I am very busy this last week-and-a-half leading up to my cruise… so I will quickley say that yes, if homosexuality were immutable, like skin color [ethnicity], I would say you would have a point. But if a person wants to not serve someone who doesn’t have shoes on, who skins animals, or prefers to catch instead of pitch… they have the prerogative to do so. Let the free market work, see the section “Victicrats Should Take Economics 101″ http://tinyurl.com/ck4vcck
My wife’s family member gives her input:
I am a professional vocalist and I sing for numerous weddings. I would not sing for a same sex ceremony. I have refused to sing for weddings that I did not support – even though they were a man and woman. Does this mean that now I could be sued for refusing to take the job if offered by a gay couple? A marriage is more than just a ceremony to me. It truly is a Faith issue for me. I find it hard to believe that if I (or a florist) choose to refrain from extending my talents and abilities for hire to someone that I do not support in their marital decision than I lose MY rights. This is CRAZY and out of CONTROL. I am sure there are plenty of gay florists out there – They would probably appreciate the business.
I chime in:
Great point, would a person lose his or her right to not provide a service to a couple who didn’t get per-marital counseling from a pastor? Are they disenfranchised? Or can they simply take their business elsewhere? They should simply take their business elsewhere. That is what the free-market is for.
For the record, I would have provided the flowers, seeing that it would have been a great opportunity to befriend and witness to a lost world.
Alas, Hugo Chávez will not live long enough to atone for his abuse of millions of Venezuelans nor to correct the corrupt and destructive policies that have wrecked the country he leaves behind. Moreover, although his cronies and their Cuban handlers are maneuvering to hold on to power, a Chavista succession is neither stable nor sustainable. With more audacious leadership among Venezuela’s democrats and intelligent solidarity from abroad, Chávez’s legacy might be buried with him.
The foundations of Chavismo are being shaken by an impending socioeconomic meltdown, a faltering oil sector, bitter in-fighting in his own movement, complicity with drug-trafficking and terrorism, rampant street crime, the inept performance by Chávez’s anointed successor, and growing popular rejection of Cuban interference, corrupt institutions, and rigged elections. Beset by these challenges and with Chávez no longer at the top of the ballot, the regime will use every advantage to engineer a victory in a special election to choose a new president.
A currency devaluation last month was too little and too late to break the fall of a Venezuelan economy that has been decimated by gross mismanagement, staggering corruption, and policies that were meant to strangle the independent private sector. The Chavista economic team is scrambling to stabilize the economy in advance of the election, but its incompetence is evident as it ratchets up restrictions that will stifle production and commerce. Inflation, food shortages, power outages, and crumbling infrastructure are taking a terrible toll on the quality of life of all Venezuelans.
Unlike in the past, Venezuela will not be saved by a windfall of oil revenues, because production is greatly diminished and oversubscribed. Contrary to official numbers, actual production is 2.4 million barrels per day, far below a peak of 3.3 million before Chávez. And sweetheart deals with China, Russia, and Iran as well as giveaways to Cuba and other client states in the Caribbean and Central America are bleeding Venezuela dry. Although China loaned about $28 billion to Chávez in the last 18 months, Beijing has closed its checkbook because of the questionable legality of the interim regime and the simple fact that Venezuela has no crude oil left to sell. As a result of this mess, there are reports that Venezuela is actually importing gasoline to satisfy domestic demand. In short, Chávez politicized the state-run oil company and treated its revenue as his petty cash fund – now the company is ruined and the till is empty….
Rich Lowry recently “eulogized” the media stronghold regarding Chavez at Politico:
Let us pause and reflect. The left’s favorite self-aggrandizing thug has shed this mortal coil. Hugo Chávez, R.I.P.
All the country’s least reflective and most reflexive ideologues of the left immediately issued warm farewells — Sean Penn, Michael Moore, Oliver Stone and, of course, the nation’s 39th president, Jimmy Carter.
Carter praised Chávez for his commitment “to bring profound changes to his country,” which by installing himself as the effective president for life, he certainly did. Carter noted his “formidable communications skills,” a quality that is not unusual in successful populist demagogues. In the gentle tone of someone who regrets that his good friend sometimes cheats at bridge, Carter allowed that he did not agree “with all of the methods followed by his government.”
Such is the appeal of the socialist caudillo that ThinkProgress had to take a break from blogging about the latest Republican idiocy, real or imagined, to warn off its allies with a piece titled, “Why Democrats Shouldn’t Eulogize Hugo Chávez.”
It didn’t get to New York Rep. José Serrano in time. He rushed to praise Chávez: “He understood democracy and basic human desires for a dignified life.” As a technical matter, Serrano is right: Chávez understood democracy exceedingly well, if by that you mean he understood how to exploit its forms while hollowing out its institutions to entrench himself in power in perpetuity.
He displaced a corrupt, conscienceless oligarchy when he took power in 1999, and replaced it with his own corrupt, conscienceless rule. In a recent report, Human Rights Watch detailed how “the accumulation of power in the executive and the erosion of human rights protections have allowed the Chávez government to intimidate, censor, and prosecute critics and perceived opponents in a wide range of cases involving the judiciary, the media, and civil society.”
[....]
The night of his death, Rachel Maddow had Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson on her program to discuss Chávez. She asked Robinson in a voice heavy with sarcasm whether Hugo Chávez was really “the monster” he was made out to be. Robinson explained that Chávez bonded with the poor and had lots of popular support. Maddow very gently prodded Robinson to address criticisms of Chávez for not advancing freedom, “even as he did advance economic populist aims.”
Unable to muster any of the denunciatory venom he lavishes on Republicans once or twice a week, Robinson issued forth with a strangely tortured construction, “he was not what we would call a lover of democracy as we would like to see it practiced.” Eric Cantor must wonder why Robinson doesn’t similarly mute his criticisms of him. Robinson noted that Chávez gerrymandered electoral districts, but, hey, “that happens elsewhere as well.” All in all, he was … “a man of contradictions.” You know, like Disraeli or Gladstone.
I have followed the actions of Marxists in Venezuela for quite some time (here as well as at my old blog), and the craziness Hollywood supported Hugo Chavez with. I wish to post again a blogger from Venezuela, and her clear statement of the travesty our Left embraces… from The End of Venezuela As I Know It:
Chavez died today…. When I heard the news, these past fourteen years passed by me in an instant. My adolescence, my youth, all that fear, all that disappointment, all those street demonstrations, all those stories, all those lives that were lost in the way not by cancer but by the sound of a trigger. I wrote to my friends, to all those people who accompanied me during all those years when everything was about Chavez. All those people with frustrated dreams and hopes. Everyone who saw in this fourteen years a definite ruin of what we once called home. Pain, that is Hugo Chavez legacy.
One should keep in mind that this destruction of human life for a “conceived of” utpoia is what the Left will sacrifice. That is, lives for an ideal. Here is an older informal poll showing that Chavez was more popular than Kerry (via Breitbart):
In an informal poll in 2004, the populist progressive site Democratic Underground took a reader poll asking who they respected more: Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez or then-Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. Chavez won, 70% to 30%.
So the type of help needed in South America/Venezuela is not one that will readily coming from our current administration. Another horrible effect of the past election, or mandate — “loss of lives traded for an unproved ideal.” Another “thank you Dems” is needed.
In fact, one of the largest financial supporters to the Democratic Party — the SEIU — held a candlelight vigil for Hugo Chavez:
The SEIU radicals organized a Hugo Chavez memorial march and candelight vigil in New York City on Friday. Global Dispatch reported:
[....]
A memorial vigil was held Wednesday at the Venezuelan consulate in Manhattan, but the union march is raising eyebrows.
“Bring candles will walk to the statue of the Liberator Simon Bolivar in Central Park.” – instructions included in the hispanic announcement which reached out to Fidel Castro supporters as well.
[....]
A Celebration and procession for the life of our comrade Hugo Chávez, an extraordinary human and revolutionary. Your energy, love and example will not be forgotten.
The revolution will continue until there is liberation for all.
And again, the Marxist/National Socialist connections at he SEIU have been confirmed a long time ago:
Our goal as socialists is to abolish private ownership of the means of production. Our immediate task is to limit the capitalist class’s prerogatives in the workplace…In the short run we must at least minimize the degree of exploitation of workers by capitalists. We can accomplish this by promoting full employment policies, passing local living wage laws, but most of all by increasing the union movement’s power…
Through SEIU, DSA has 2.1 million paid lackeys to do just that.
…Conservatives are fighting a losing battle of moral arithmetic. They hand an argument with virtually 100% public support—care for the vulnerable—to progressives, and focus instead on materialistic concerns and minority moral viewpoints.
The irony is maddening. America’s poor people have been saddled with generations of disastrous progressive policy results, from welfare-induced dependency to failing schools that continue to trap millions of children.
Meanwhile, the record of free enterprise in improving the lives of the poor both here and abroad is spectacular. According to Columbia University economist Xavier Sala-i-Martin, the percentage of people in the world living on a dollar a day or less—a traditional poverty measure—has fallen by 80% since 1970. This is the greatest antipoverty achievement in world history. That achievement is not the result of philanthropy or foreign aid. It occurred because billions of souls have been able to pull themselves out of poverty thanks to global free trade, property rights, the rule of law and entrepreneurship.
The left talks a big game about helping the bottom half, but its policies are gradually ruining the economy, which will have catastrophic results once the safety net is no longer affordable. Labyrinthine regulations, punitive taxation and wage distortions destroy the ability to create private-sector jobs. Opportunities for Americans on the bottom to better their station in life are being erased.
Some say the solution for conservatives is either to redouble the attacks on big government per se, or give up and try to build a better welfare state. Neither path is correct. Raging against government debt and tax rates that most Americans don’t pay gets conservatives nowhere, and it will always be an exercise in futility to compete with liberals on government spending and transfers.
Instead, the answer is to make improving the lives of vulnerable people the primary focus of authentically conservative policies. For example, the core problem with out-of-control entitlements is not that they are costly—it is that the impending insolvency of Social Security and Medicare imperils the social safety net for the neediest citizens. Education innovation and school choice are not needed to fight rapacious unions and bureaucrats—too often the most prominent focus of conservative education concerns—but because poor children and their parents deserve better schools.
Defending a healthy culture of family, community and work does not mean imposing an alien “bourgeois” morality on others. It is to recognize what people need to be happy and successful—and what is most missing today in the lives of too many poor people.
Ben, Heidi, and Brian talk about the death of Chavez and the confused reaction by the left and the press. (Posted by: Religio-Political Talk) A very small portion of Celsius 41.11′s opener (http://tinyurl.com/cwhd22p) is inserted after the audio of the NYT’s reporter.
Chavez died today…. When I heard the news, these past fourteen years passed by me in an instant. My adolescence, my youth, all that fear, all that disappointment, all those street demonstrations, all those stories, all those lives that were lost in the way not by cancer but by the sound of a trigger. I wrote to my friends, to all those people who accompanied me during all those years when everything was about Chavez. All those people with frustrated dreams and hopes. Everyone who saw in this fourteen years a definite ruin of what we once called home. Pain, that is Hugo Chavez legacy.
…Dr. Edmundo Chirinos, a psychiatrist who got to know Mr. Chávez as a patient, described him in a profile in The New Yorker in 2001 as “a hyperkinetic and imprudent man, unpunctual, someone who overreacts to criticism, harbors grudges, is politically astute and manipulative, and possesses tremendous stamina, never sleeping more than two or three hours a night.”
Mr. Chávez would delight in angering his critics in rich countries. He heaped praise, for instance, on Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, the Venezuelan terrorist better known as Carlos the Jackal, with whom he corresponded.
“I defend him,” Mr. Chávez said of his friend, who was jailed in France on charges of murdering two French police agents and a Lebanese informer in Paris in 1975. “I don’t care what they say tomorrow in Europe.”
No mentor was more supportive than Mr. Castro, who well understood how important Venezuela’s subsidized oil shipments were to Cuba’s fragile economy. An ally from the start of Mr. Chávez’s presidency in 1999, he offered help in one of Mr. Chávez’s most difficult moments, a coup d’état that removed him from office for 48 hours in April 2002. Mr. Castro telephoned Venezuela’s top military officials, pressing them to assist in returning Mr. Chávez to office.
The collapse of the coup, which received tacit support from the Bush administration, and Mr. Chávez’s swift return to power signaled a shift in his presidency. Seemingly chastened, Mr. Chávez promised compromise and harmony in the future. But instead of reconciliation, his response was retaliation.
He began describing his critics as “golpistas,” or putschists, while recasting his own failed 1992 coup as a patriotic uprising. He purged opponents from the national oil company, expropriated the land of others and imprisoned retired military officials who had dared to stand against him. The country’s political debate became increasingly poisonous, and it took its toll on the country.
Private investors, unhinged over Mr. Chávez’s nationalizations and expropriation threats, halted projects. Hundreds of thousands of scientists, doctors, entrepreneurs and others in the middle class left Venezuela, even as large numbers of immigrants from Haiti, China and Lebanon put down stakes here.
The homicide rate soared under his rule, turning Caracas into one of the world’s most dangerous cities. Armed gangs lorded over prisons, as they did in previous governments, challenging the state’s authority. Simple tasks, like transferring the title of a car, remained nightmarish odysseys eased only by paying bribes to churlish bureaucrats.
Other branches of government often bent to his will. He fired about 19,000 employees of Petróleos de Venezuela, the national oil company, in response to a strike in 2002 and 2003. In 2004, he stripped the Supreme Court of its autonomy. In legislative elections in 2010, his supporters preserved a majority in the National Assembly by gerrymandering.
He also basked in the comforts allowed him as head of state in a nation with some of the largest oil reserves outside the Middle East. He traveled in a luxurious Airbus A-319. In one jaunt around Venezuela in 2007 with the actor Sean Penn, he roamed the plane regaling foreign journalists with tales from his days as a soldier…
I celebrate with others their happiness of Hugo’s loss.
Here’s one of the emails to Bob Woodward from Gene Sperling, via the Politico:
From Gene Sperling to Bob Woodward on Feb. 22, 2013
Bob:
I apologize for raising my voice in our conversation today. My bad. I do understand your problems with a couple of our statements in the fall — but feel on the other hand that you focus on a few specific trees that gives a very wrong perception of the forest. But perhaps we will just not see eye to eye here.
But I do truly believe you should rethink your comment about saying saying that Potus asking for revenues is moving the goal post. I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim. The idea that the sequester was to force both sides to go back to try at a big or grand barain with a mix of entitlements and revenues (even if there were serious disagreements on composition) was part of the DNA of the thing from the start. It was an accepted part of the understanding — from the start. Really. It was assumed by the Rs on the Supercommittee that came right after: it was assumed in the November-December 2012 negotiations. There may have been big disagreements over rates and ratios — but that it was supposed to be replaced by entitlements and revenues of some form is not controversial. (Indeed, the discretionary savings amount from the Boehner-Obama negotiations were locked in in BCA: the sequester was just designed to force all back to table on entitlements and revenues.)
I agree there are more than one side to our first disagreement, but again think this latter issue is diffferent. Not out to argue and argue on this latter point. Just my sincere advice. Your call obviously.
My apologies again for raising my voice on the call with you. Feel bad about that and truly apologize.
WASHINGTON — Bob Woodward isn’t the only person who’s received threats for airing the Obama administration’s dirty laundry. It seems anyone is a potential target of the White House these days – even former senior members of the Clinton administration.
A day after Woodward’s claim that a senior White House official had told him he would “regret” writing a column criticizing President Obama’s stance on the sequester, Lanny Davis, a longtime close advisor to President Bill Clinton, told WMAL’s Mornings on the Mall Thursday he had received similar threats for newspaper columns he had written about Obama in the Washington Times.
Davis told WMAL that his editor, John Solomon, “received a phone call from a senior Obama White House official who didn’t like some of my columns, even though I’m a supporter of Obama. I couldn’t imagine why this call was made.” Davis says the Obama aide told Solomon, “that if he continued to run my columns, he would lose, or his reporters would lose their White House credentials.”….
Across the Atlantic, Americans see European economies faltering under enormous debt, overburdened welfare states, governments controlling close to fifty percent of the economy, high taxation, heavily regulated labor markets, aging populations, and large numbers of public sector workers. They also see a European political class that is unable — and, in many cases, unwilling — to implement economic reform.
This timely and sobering video explains why Americans cannot ignore the “canary in the coalmine” across the pond in determining our future. We must ask the question: “Is America becoming Europe?”
To learn more read Dr. Samuel Gregg’s Becoming Europe: Economic Decline, Culture, and How America Can Avoid a European Future: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1594036373/
Biased: I have my own interests and personal beliefs in mind when talking to others, spiritually or politically (Proverbs 21:2; Matthew 15:19); Fallen: I am a sinner and tend towards ~ naturally ~ what is not best for me or others. In other words, I will probably let you down (Romans 3:10; 3:23; Lamentations 5:16); Sentenced: since I tend towards rebellion and selfishness, I am judged accordingly and righteously (Romans 5:12; 6:23a; Job 36:6); Forgiven: I am justified before God not through works but by faith (Galatians 2:16; Romans 6:23b; Psalm 86:5); Relational:mercy is not getting what you deserve. And grace is getting what you absolutely do not deserve (Hebrews 4:16; Ephesians 1:5; Jeremiah 15:19a).
Some Questions About Evolution that Should Be Exhumed
Oldest Language
The Chinese were prodigious historians, crafting their language to draw scenes from history, and then combing these pictures into more complex ideas. These offer great apologetic evidences for the Genesis account of history, separate from the Bible.
Biased: I have my own interests and personal beliefs in mind when talking to others, spiritually or politically (Proverbs 21:2; Matthew 15:19); Fallen: I am a sinner and tend towards ~ naturally ~ what is not best for me or others. In other words, I will probably let you down (Romans 3:10; 3:23; Lamentations 5:16); Sentenced: since I tend towards rebellion and selfishness, I am judged accordingly and righteously (Romans 5:12; 6:23a; Job 36:6); Forgiven: I am justified before God not through works but by faith (Galatians 2:16; Romans 6:23b; Psalm 86:5); Relational: mercy is not getting what you deserve. And grace is getting what you absolutely do not deserve (Hebrews 4:16; Ephesians 1:5; Jeremiah 15:19a).
