Secular Society

The Spiritual “Animism” Found in Leftist Social Movements

Published by Papa Giorgio

I came across this Tweet and I loved the self introspection of the spiritual “feeling” the Left offers in their myriad of social movements that create a false sense of unified purpose.

This was Neil Shenvi’s response that led  me to a co-authored article that is well worth the read:

Here are some excerpts, but the entire article is worth your attention — and, if you are a prodigious reader, I suggest marrying it with this book [chapter] chapter (HERE) from Melanie Philipps, book: “THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN: THE GLOBAL BATTLE OVER GOD, TRUTH, AND POWER.”

The last few years have witnessed a great revival in the United States, as people have gathered to hear a message of sin and repentance proclaimed by spiritual leaders like Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X.Kendi. While the antiracist, antisexist, anti-oppressive message of the Great Awokening is allegedly secular rather than religious, its promises of equity, diversity, absolution, and inclusion have captured the imaginations and allegiances of everyone from scholars, to H.R. administrators, to entertainers, to mainstream journalists.

As many cultural commentators have suggested, we are witnessing the emergence of a new, secular religion, which views all reality through the lens of oppression, power dynamics, and social justice. But many people are also noticing a dark side. Last summer, the Smithsonian Institute released an infographic describing “rational, linear thinking” and “cause-and-effect relationships” as attributes of “whiteness.” Public school trainings accuse educators of the “spirit murdering of black and brown children,” and the Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals announced a “gender-inclusive language” policy that replaced the word “breastfeeding” with “chestfeeding.”

Worried by these developments, we join with classical liberals, moderates, and conservatives to oppose the growing illiberalism we’re seeing in our culture. But while secular liberalism is in many respects a procedural set of principles (with an assumption of moral authority) for settling disputes through open dialogue and the rule of law, the ideology of the moment is a grand metanarrative about reality. Trying to oppose an epic metanarrative by appealing to abstract principles may be a fool’s errand. As Christians, we believe this ideology is best challenged not by the secularism from which it emerged, but by an older vision—the one preached by Christianity for thousands of years.

[….]

Second, Christianity knows that we’re all seeking moral justification, whether we explain it with religious or non-religious language. In other words, all of us are seeking to be considered “righteous,” “good,” and “worthy.” While many accusations of performative “virtue signaling” are, no doubt, accurate, some people actually believe what they are saying. When they loudly lament their whiteness, abase themselves for the smallest infractions (microaggressions), and promise to “do better,” they are motivated by the same drive that led Medieval peasants to wear hair shirts, kiss cathedral steps, and buy indulgences.

Christianity doesn’t scoff at this impulse, but redirects it. Our deep, human urge to be justified, to be declared righteous, can ultimately only be met by God’s forgiveness. It won’t be achieved through a never-ending cycle of grievance and absolution.

[….]

The unremitting bitterness and mercilessness of cancel culture flows out of this ideology that draws a sharp line between the bad people and the good people. In contrast, Christianity draws a line between the bad people (all of us) and Jesus. Our hope is not in that we have lived up to God’s righteousness, but in that Jesus did so on our behalf, in his life, death, and resurrection. Thus, every Christian has reason to be overflowing with gentleness and grace: the one who has been shown mercy, shows mercy.

Christians understand C.S. Lewis’s warning that “spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison.” Hence, we believe that the true, Christian story of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration in the gospel of Jesus Christ is the most effective and complete way to dislodge the mythos of critical social justice. But for those who believe that no such transcendent story exists, fighting wokeness will be an uphill battle.

Here is their forthcoming book: CRITICAL DILEMMA: THE RISE OF CRITICAL THEORIES AND SOCIAL JUSTICE IDEOLOGY―IMPLICATIONS FOR THE CHURCH AND SOCIETY

More via PRAGER:

  • Judaism and Christianity hold that people are not basically good. Leftism holds that people are basically good. Therefore, Judaism and Christianity believe evil comes from human nature, and leftism believes evil comes from capitalism, religion, the nation-state (i.e. nationalism), corporations, the patriarchy and virtually every other traditional value.
  • Judaism and Christianity hold that utopia on Earth is impossible — it will only come in God’s good time as a Messianic age or in the afterlife. Leftism holds that utopia is to be created here on Earth — and as soon as possible. That is why leftists find America so contemptible. They do not compare it to other nations but to a utopian ideal — a society with no inequality, no racism, no differences between the sexes (indeed, no sexes) and no greed in which everything important is obtained free.
  • Judaism and Christianity believe God and the Bible are to instruct us on how to live a good life and how the heart is the last place to look for moral guidance. Leftists have contempt for anyone who is guided by the Bible and its God, and substitute the heart and feelings for divine instruction.

Now for some past posts/uploads of mine… in full….

A NEW RELIGION

This is a great article via the WALL STREET JOURNAL. I clipped the base of the article as it might not be viewable at WSJ’s website. A great and insightful read (h-t to Dennis Prager):

When a mob at Vermont’s Middlebury College shut down a speech by social scientist Charles Murray a few weeks ago, most of us saw it as another instance of campus illiberalism. Jonathan Haidt saw something more—a ritual carried out by adherents of what he calls a “new religion,” an auto-da-fé against a heretic for a violation of orthodoxy.

“The great majority of college students want to learn. They’re perfectly reasonable, and they’re uncomfortable with a lot of what’s going on,” Mr. Haidt, a psychologist and professor of ethical leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business, tells me during a recent visit to his office. “But on each campus there are some true believers who have reoriented their lives around the fight against evil.”

THESE BELIEVERS ARE TRANSFORMING THE CAMPUS FROM A CITADEL OF INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM INTO A HOLY SPACE—WHERE WHITE PRIVILEGE HAS REPLACED ORIGINAL SIN, THE TRANSGRESSIONS OF CLASS AND RACE AND GENDER ARE CONFESSED NOT TO PRIESTS BUT TO “THE COMMUNITY,” VICTIM GROUPS ARE WORSHIPED LIKE GODS, AND THE SINNED-AGAINST ARE SUPPLICATED WITH “SAFE SPACES” AND “TRIGGER WARNINGS.”

The fundamentalists may be few, Mr. Haidt says, but they are “very intimidating” since they wield the threat of public shame. On some campuses, “they’ve been given the heckler’s veto, and are often granted it by an administration who won’t stand up to them either.”

ALL THIS HAS BECOME SOMETHING OF A PREOCCUPATION FOR THE 53-YEAR-OLD MR. HAIDT. A LONGTIME LIBERAL—HE RAN A GUN-CONTROL GROUP AS AN UNDERGRADUATE AT YALE—HE ADMITS HE “HAD NEVER ENCOUNTERED CONSERVATIVE IDEAS” UNTIL HIS MID-40S.

[…..]

“What we’re beginning to see now at Berkeley and at Middlebury hints that this [campus] religion has the potential to turn violent,” Mr. Haidt says. “The attack on the professor at Middlebury really frightened people,” he adds, referring to political scientist Allison Stanger, who wound up in a neck brace after protesters assaulted her as she left the venue.

The Berkeley episode Mr. Haidt mentions illustrates the Orwellian aspect of campus orthodoxy. A scheduled February appearance by right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos prompted masked agitators to throw Molotov cocktails, smash windows, hurl rocks at police, and ultimately cause $100,000 worth of damage. The student newspaper ran an op-ed justifying the rioting under the headline “Violence helped ensure safety of students.” Read that twice.

Mr. Haidt can explain. Students like the op-ed author “are armed with a set of concepts and words that do not mean what you think they mean,” he says. “People older than 30 think that ‘violence’ generally involves some sort of physical threat or harm. But as students are using the word today, ‘violence’ is words that have a negative effect on members of the sacred victim groups. And so even silence can be violence.” It follows that if offensive speech is “violence,” then actual violence can be a form of self-defense.

Down the hall from Mr. Haidt’s office, I noticed a poster advertising a “bias response hotline” students can call “to report an experience of bias, discrimination or harassment.” I joke that NYU seems to have its own version of the morality police in Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia. “It’s like East Germany,” Mr. Haidt replies—with students, at least some of them, playing the part of the Stasi.

How did we get here, and what can be done? On the first question, Mr. Haidt points to a braided set of causes. There’s the rise in political polarization, which is related to the relatively recent “political purification of the universities.” While the academy has leaned left since at least the 1920s, Mr. Haidt says “it was always just a lean.” Beginning in the early 1990s, as the professors of the Greatest Generation retired, it became a full-on tilt.

“Now there are no more conservative voices on the faculty or administration,” he says, exaggerating only a little. Heterodox Academy cites research showing that the ratio of left to right professors in 1995 was 2 to 1. Now it is 5 to 1.

The left, meanwhile, has undergone an ideological transformation. A generation ago, social justice was understood as equality of treatment and opportunity: “If gay people don’t have to right to marry and you organize a protest to apply pressure to get them that right, that’s justice,” Mr. Haidt says. “If black people are getting discriminated against in hiring and you fight that, that’s justice.”

Today justice means equal outcomes. “There are two ideas now in the academic left that weren’t there 10 years ago,” he says. “One is that everyone is racist because of unconscious bias, and the other is that everything is racist because of systemic racism.” That makes justice impossible to achieve: “When you cross that line into insisting if there’s not equal outcomes then some people and some institutions and some systems are racist, sexist, then you’re setting yourself up for eternal conflict and injustice.”

Perhaps most troubling, Mr. Haidt cites the new protectiveness in child-rearing over the past few decades. Historically, American children were left to their own devices and had to learn to deal with bullies. Today’s parents, out of compassion, handle it for them. “By the time students get to college they have much, much less experience with unpleasant social encounters, or even being insulted, excluded or marginalized,” Mr. Haidt says. “They expect there will be some adult, some authority, to rectify things.”

Combine that with the universities’ shift to a “customer is always right” mind-set. Add in social media. Suddenly it’s “very, very easy to bring mobs together,” Mr. Haidt says, and make “people very afraid to stand out or stand up for what they think is right.” Students and professors know, he adds, that “if you step out of line at all, you will be called a racist, sexist or homophobe. In fact it’s gotten so bad out there that there’s a new term—‘ophobophobia,’ which is the fear of being called x-ophobic.”

That fear runs deep—including in Mr. Haidt. When I ask him about how political homogeneity on campus informs the understanding of so-called rape culture, he clams up: “I can’t talk about that.” The topic of sexual assault—along with Islam—is too sensitive.

It’s a painfully ironic answer from a man dedicating his career to free thought and speech. But choosing his battles doesn’t mean Mr. Haidt is unwilling to fight. And he’s finding allies across the political spectrum.

[….]

Following the Middlebury incident, the unlikely duo of Democratic Socialist Cornel West and conservative Robert P. George published a statement denouncing “campus illiberalism” and calling for “truth seeking, democracy and freedom of thought and expression.” More than 2,500 scholars and other intellectuals have signed it. At Northwestern the student government became the first in the country to pass a resolution calling for academic freedom and viewpoint diversity.

[….]

He offers this real-world example: “I think that the ‘deplorables’ comment could well have changed the course of human history.”

the Religion of the Left (David Horowitz)

 

Part 2: Jews are the Most Religious People (Manpons)

Published by Papa Giorgio

(First and foremost I must thank Dave Rubin for an excellent interview and channel. The original file can be found HERE) This will serve as the follow-up clip to the first: “Part 1: Jews are the Most Religious People (Secular or Religious)“. This is the very next part of the excerpted discussion/interview of Dennis Prager by Dave Rubin.

This video is worth teaming up with my previous posts:

It is worth clipping a portion from that 1st linked post to further Crowders point:

 

✂️ SNIP ✂️

…And yes, it appears that the Menstrual Equity Act is a real thing. H.R. 1882, otherwise known as the Menstrual Equity For All Act of 2019. Apparently Beto thinks women across America have never heard of a pharmacy. Oh but wait, this absurd legislation isn’t just for women! According to GovTrack, this legislation will “increase the availability and affordability of menstrual hygiene products for individuals with limited access, and for other purposes.”

Individuals. Because men have periods too! Duh! Beto may not have gotten that memo, but Cory Booker and Julián Castro did. …

Here is the bit by Julian Castro that got those who love science scratching their heads:

Here is the above in print via THE DAILY WIRE:

On Wednesday, during the Democratic presidential debate, Julian Castro, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under former President Barack Obama, decided biological men should be given the same rights to an abortion as biological women, stating, “Let’s also not forget someone in the trans community, a trans female, is poor, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have the right to exercise that right to choose.”

Trans females are biological men who claim identity as women.

Castro’s answer was triggered by NBC News’ Lester Holt, who asked, “Secretary Castro, this one is for you. All of you on stage support a woman’s right to an abortion. You all support some version of a government health care option. Would your plan cover abortion, Mr. Secretary?”

Castro answered, “Yes, it would. I don’t believe only in reproductive freedom, I believe in reproductive justice. And, you know, what that means is that just because a woman — or let’s also not forget someone in the trans community, a trans female, is poor, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have the right to exercise that right to choose. And so I absolutely would cover the right to have an abortion.”…

Part 1: Jews are the Most Religious People in the World

Published by Papa Giorgio

(First and foremost I must thank Dave Rubin for an excellent interview and channel. The original file can be found HERE)

I had to isolate this point, it is excellent. A friend and I were just talking talking about the Jewish nation (people) being blessed of God. Chosen. Set apart. And we talked about the advances of the Jews that were so helpful and a blessing to themselves as well as the world.

  • Although Jews are only 0.2% of the world’s population, Jews were awarded 24% of the Nobel Prizes in science and medicine. Similarly, while Jews account for only 2% of the American population, they received 37% of the US Nobel Prize awards in these fields. (TIMES OF ISRAEL)

And that this was an evidence of God… but so too are the advances by Jewish persons that harm society. Take Hollywood as one example; or, Marxism as another… George Soros as yet another. The Jewish people seem to advance well, and both sides of the coin are evidences of God’s promises to the Jewish nation. (And His judgement, past and future.)

My friend and I talked last Sunday at Smokehouse on Main. I watched this 4-days after our getting together. Prager said it best:

 

Is the Constitution and It’s Signers… Secular? (Fraudulent Memes)

Published by Papa Giorgio

A Facebook friend posts a lot of stuff from the Left. And while I could spend all day refuting in similar fashion much of it (like the below), this topic caught my eye. Here is the FB graphic she posted on her wall:

So, let’s deal with these in order, shall we?

THOMAS JEFFERSON

This is the headline at THE JEFFERSON MONTICELLO site: “Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man (Spurious Quotation)” — spurious indeed. They follow this with the fuller quote:

This comment on Christianity is a somewhat paraphrased excerpt from the following letter written by Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Priestley:

“this was the real ground of all the attacks on you: those who live by mystery & charlatanerie, fearing you would render them useless by simplifying the Christian philosophy, the most sublime & benevolent, but most perverted system that ever shone on man, endeavored to crush your well earnt, & well deserved fame.” – Jefferson to Priestley, March 21, 18011 (entire letter)

There are other useful links at MONTICELLO’S link to this topic. Even CHECK YOUR FACT has this regarding the Jefferson quote:

Verdict: False

There is no evidence that Jefferson ever said or wrote this. His estate at Monticello includes the saying on its list of “spurious quotations.”

Fact Check:

The quote has been frequently attributed to Jefferson on social media, appearing in numerous memes and posts on Facebook.

However, the Daily Caller found no record of Jefferson ever saying or writing this expression. A search of the Papers of Thomas Jefferson returned no results matching the alleged saying. It doesn’t appear in a collection of his quotes and letters either.

His estate at Monticello also includes the statement on its list of “spurious quotations.” The first known appearance in print dates back to 1996, according to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation…..

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

The fuller quote reads… and note, many say this about their youth as well. I say similar things — as I stayed out of the church as a youth when I could.

  • “I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies.”

Later in life however, Franklin (and I would say myself) wrestled with religious matters well, and came out on the theistic end of life. Here, for example, is a letter from Benjamin Franklin to the “atheist” Thomas Paine:

TO THOMAS PAINE.
[Date uncertain.]

DEAR SIR,

I have read your manuscript with some attention. By the argument it contains against a particular Providence, though you allow a general Providence, you strike at the foundations of all religion. For without the belief of a Providence, that takes cognizance of, guards, and guides, and may favor particular persons, there is no motive to worship a Deity, to fear his displeasure, or to pray for his protection. I will not enter into any discussion of your principles, though you seem to desire it. At present I shall only give you my opinion, that, though your reasonings are subtile and may prevail with some readers, you will not succeed so as to change the general sentiments of mankind on that subject, and the consequence of printing this piece will be, a great deal of odium drawn upon yourself, mischief to you, and no benefit to others. He that spits against the wind, spits in his own face.

But, were you to succeed, do you imagine any good would be done by it? You yourself may find it easy to live a virtuous life, without the assistance afforded by religion; you having a clear perception of the advantages of virtue, and the disadvantages of vice, and possessing a strength of resolution sufficient to enable you to resist common temptations. But think how great a portion of mankind consists of weak and ignorant men and women, and of inexperienced, inconsiderate youth of both sexes, who have need of the motives of religion to restrain them from vice, to support their virtue, and retain them in the practice of it till it becomes habitual, which is the great point for its security. And perhaps you are indebted to her originally, that is, to your religious education, for the habits of virtue upon which you now justly value yourself. You might easily display your excellent talents of reasoning upon a less hazardous subject, and thereby obtain a rank with our most distinguished authors. For among us it is not necessary, as among the Hottentots, that a youth, to be raised into the company of men, should prove his manhood by beating his mother.

I would advise you, therefore, not to attempt unchaining the tiger, but to burn this piece before it is seen by any other person; whereby you will save yourself a great deal of mortification by the enemies it may raise against you, and perhaps a good deal of regret and repentance. If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if without it. I intend this letter itself as a proof of my friendship, and therefore add no professions to it; but subscribe simply yours,

B. Franklin

Other interesting items of Mr. Franklin’s faith in God can be found here: “Benjamin Franklin Was Not A Secularist“

I start out this upload with a call into the show this week… after a little back-n-forth it ends. BUT, I include a bit of the show Dennis Prager speaks about during the call. That is from late February. A great topic covered well. Here is the creed spoken of:

✦ I believe in one God, the creator of the universe.
✦ That he governs by his providence.
✦ That he ought to be worshipped.
✦ That the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children.
✦ That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this.

For a very good discussion of the influence of the Calvinistic tradition on the thinking of Benjamin, see:

  • John Eidsmoe, Christianity and the Constitution: The Faith of Our Founding Fathers (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987), 191-213.

JOHN ADAMS

The fuller quote from Adam’s sheds some light on Calvinism’ influence on the founders. The quote was taken out of context from a letter from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 19 April 1817 (entire letter):

  • Twenty times, in the course of my late Reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, “This would be the best of all possible Worlds, if there were no Religion in it”!!! But in this exclamati[on] I Should have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without Religion this World would be Something not fit to be mentioned in polite Company, I mean Hell. So far from believing in the total and universal depravity on human Nature; I believe there is no Individual totally depraved. 

A slightly more English friendly version is this:

“Twenty times, in the course of my late reading, have I been on the point of breaking out, ‘this would be the best of all possible Worlds, if there were no Religion in it!!!’ But in this exclamation, I should have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion, this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in public company – I mean hell.” (Charles Francis Adams [ed.], The Works of John Adams, 10 vols. [Boston, 1856], X, p. 254.)

  • Taken from They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions, by Paul F. Boller, Jr. & John George, p. 3.

Adam’s was using the quote as a hyperbolic analogy to make a larger point. The opposite point as displayed in the meme. And the point was the depravity of mankind in a VERY Calvinistic structure. Here, as a way to drive the point home that this topic — that is, religious influences on the founding of America — is a topic I have for seminary studied well. Here is a bibliography of books used for a class. Books that sit on my shelves, I will highlight one in particular I recommend:

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Atkinson, James. The Great Light: Luther and the Reformation (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2006).

Barton, David. America’s Godly Heritage (Aledo, TX: Wallbuilders Press, 1993).

___________. Original Intent: The Courts, the Constitution, & Religion, 3rd ed. (Aledo, TX: Wallbuilders Press, 2000).

Belloc, Hilaire. The Protestant Reformation (Rockford, IL: Tan Books and Publishers, 1928).

___________. Characters of the Reformation: Historical Portraits of 23 Men and Women and Their Place in the Great Religious Revolution of the 16th Century (Rockford, IL: Tan Books and Publishers, 1936).

Berman, Harold J. Law and Revolution II: The Impact of the Protestant Reformations on the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).

_____________. Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983).

Eidsmoe, John. Christianity and the Constitution: The Faith of Our Founding Fathers (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1987).

Esolen, Anthony. The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2008).

Estep, William R. Renaissance and Reformation (Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1986).

Evans, M. Stanton. The Theme is Freedom: Religion, Politics, and the American Tradition (Washington, DC: Regnery, 1994).

George, Timothy. Theology of the Reformers (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 1988).

Hannah, John D. Charts of Reformation and Enlightenment Church History (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 2004).

Hillerbrand, Hans J. The Reformation: A Narrative History Related by Contemporary Observances and Participants (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1964).

___________. How the Reformation Happened (New York, NY: Harper Perennial, 1968).

Hoffecker, W. Andrew. Revolutions in Worldviews: Understanding the Flow of Western Thought (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R, 2007).

House, Wayne H. Charts of Christian Theology & Doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1992).

_____________. Charts on Systematic Theology ( Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2006).

Lowenthal, David. No Liberty for License: the Forgotten Logic of the First Amendment (Dallas, TX: Spence Publishing, 1997).

MacCullouch, Diarmaid. The Reformation: A History (New York, NY: Penguin, 2004).

Marshall, Paul. God and the Constitution: Christianity and American Politics (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002).

McGrath, Alister E. Reformation Thought: An Introduction, 3rd ed. (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1999).

______________, ed. The Christian Theology Reader (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1995).

Nichols, Stephen J. The Reformation: How a Monk and a Mallet Changed the World (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2007).

Noll, Mark A. America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (New York, NY: Oxford University Press).

Olberman, Heiko A. The Dawn of the Reformation: Essays in Late Medieval and Early Reformation Thought (Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1992).

Parker, G.W.H. The Morning Star: Wycliffe and the Dawn of the Reformation (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2006).

Pelikan, Jaroslav, Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300-1700), vol. 4 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984).

Sandoz, Ellis, ed. Political Sermons of the American Founding Era: 1730-1805 (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1991).

Sharansky, Natan. Defending Identity: It’s Indispensible Role In Protecting Democracy (New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2008).

Skinner, Quentin. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought: The Age of Reformation, vol. 2 (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1978).

_____________. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought: The Renaissance, vol. 1 (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

_____________. Liberty Before Liberalism (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

Spellman, W.M. John Locke and the Problem of Depravity (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1988).

Stark, Rodney. The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success (, New York, NY: Random House, 2006).

            _____________. For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery (Princeton, NJ: Princeton university Press, 2004)

Tomkins, Stephen. A Short History of Christianity (Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005).

Walton, Robert C. Chronological and Background Charts of Church History: Revised and Expanded (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 2005).

Witte, John Jr. Religion and American Constitutional Experiment (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2005).

___________. The Reformation of Rights: Law, Religion, and Human Rights in Early Modern Calvinism (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

___________., and Frank s. Alexander, eds. Christianity and Law: An Introduction (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

___________. From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage, Religion, and Law in the Western Tradition (Louisville, KY: WJK, 1997)

___________. God’s Joust, God’s Justice: Law and Religion in the Western Tradition (Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006).

___________. Law and Protestantism: The Legal Teachings of the Lutheran Reformation (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

Woods, Thomas J. Jr. The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2004).

Later in life, Adams wrote:

  • “I love and revere the memories of Huss, Wickliff, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Melancton, and all the other Reformers, how muchsoever I may differ from them all in many theological metaphysical & philosophical points. As you justly observe, without their great exertions & severe sufferings, the USA had never existed.” — John Adams to F. C. Schaeffer, November 25, 1821, in James Hutson, ed., The Founders on Religion: A Book of Quotations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 15–16.

GEORGE WASHINGTON

The quote by our first official President does not even hint at secular thought? The entire letter in fact does not. An excellent site recording the non-secular events surrounding the Constitution, also note the following — to use just one example from the many via Is the Constitution a “Secular Document?”

…After being sworn in, George Washington delivered his “Inaugural Address” to a joint session of Congress. In it Washington declared:

[I]t would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a Government instituted by themselves . . . .  In tendering this homage to the Great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not less than my own, nor those of my fellow-citizens at large less than either. No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency; and . . . can not be compared with the means by which most governments have been established without some return of pious gratitude, along with an humble anticipation of the future blessings which the past seem to presage.

[W]e ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained….

    • Messages and Papers of the Presidents, George Washington, Richardson, ed., vol. 1, p.44-45

Following his address, the Annals of Congress reported that:

The President, the Vice-President, the Senate, and House of Representatives, &c., then proceeded to St. Paul’s Chapel, where Divine service was performed by the chaplain of Congress.

These people obviously didn’t get the memo about the Constitution creating a secular government…..

More on Washington can be found HERE.

The Left’s Fanaticism and Hypocrisy ~ Children Suffer

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Originally posted in September, 2010)

U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Sexual Abuse of Boys by Afghan Allies

KABUL, Afghanistan — In his last phone call home, Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley Jr. told his father what was troubling him: From his bunk in southern Afghanistan, he could hear Afghan police officers sexually abusing boys they had brought to the base.

“At night we can hear them screaming, but we’re not allowed to do anything about it,” the Marine’s father, Gregory Buckley Sr., recalled his son telling him before he was shot to death at the base in 2012. He urged his son to tell his superiors. “My son said that his officers told him to look the other way because it’s their culture.”

Rampant sexual abuse of children has long been a problem in Afghanistan, particularly among armed commanders who dominate much of the rural landscape and can bully the population. The practice is called bacha bazi, literally “boy play,” and American soldiers and Marines have been instructed not to intervene — in some cases, not even when their Afghan allies have abused boys on military bases, according to interviews and court records….

(New York Times)

This has been a burning topic in my mind for quite some time. The reason being is that while Bush was President I was told all the time (by the Left) about his apparent connections to Wahhabism via Saudi Arabia… and how we shouldn’t support a President who has these ties. The Ground Zero mosque Imam said he would take funds from any country, and now he is a hero of the Left. Odd. This Imam has already accepted money from known terrorist funding conspirators and I am sure as the money trail is followed, more will come to light. A great article on Front Page Magazine stirs this up again in me. I will post some ideas to maybe get this topic stirred in your mind as well. Could you imagine though, if the Catholic Church executed homosexuals in 5 or 6 countries and then they wanted to build a catholic college on the site where Matthew Shepard was killed. WOW! The outcry from the Left would be deafening.

Here are some excerpts from the article entitled The Mullahs’ Gulag for Gays:

In September 2007, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stood before an audience of college students and faculty at Columbia University and made the perverse claim that there were no homosexuals in Iran. ”In Iran we do not have this phenomenon, I don’t know who has told you that we have it,” he said. Ahmadinejad’s comments, made in a year in which Iran had executed 200 people, homosexuals among them, made shock waves around the globe. Yet the absurdity of the official denial may also have been unintentionally salutary, spotlighting as it did the terrible plight of homosexuals in the Islamic Republic.

There is a good reason that Iran’s theocratic dictatorship denies the existence of gays inside the country. An honest acknowledgment of reality would force the authorities to acknowledge that Iranian gays are regularly marginalized, harassed, tortured, and executed. Sometimes, they are forced into gender-altering operations. Ahmadinejad’s claim also called attention to the hypocrisy of the international community on the issue of gay rights in Iran. President Ahmadinejad’s absurd claim received overwhelming disapproval, yet when Iranian homosexuals are routinely abused and lawfully executed simply for their sexual preferences, that same international community, and the “progressive” Left that claims to champion gay rights, are deafeningly silent….

[….]

….As the progressive backlash against Prop 8 indicates, gay rights are a significant and sensitive issue for Americans, particularly on the Left. But despite passionate outbreaks by the gay community and others, Americans have been uncharacteristically uninterested in the brutal treatment of homosexuals in Iran. These advocates ardently insist that homosexuals have the right to wed, to raise children, and to live as others do, yet they turn a blind eye to the execution of gays in Iran simply for their sexual orientation.

Such executions are in fact enshrined in Iranian law, where homosexuality is punishable the death penalty. Human rights groups estimate that almost 4,000 gays have been executed since 1979, when the Islamic regime took power. Gays are arrested, beaten, tortured, and in most cases, hanged or even stoned.

Sharia, or Islamic law, the legal code applied in Iran, prohibits any type of sexual activity outside the realm of heterosexual marriage. No distinction is made between consensual and non-consensual relations nor between sexual activities conducted in private or public. Any sexual relations other than the traditional marriage between a man and woman—referring to sodomy or adultery, as we’ve recently seen in the case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the woman sentenced to stoning for allegedly having an extra-marital affair—is punishable by death….

[….]

….older males experimenting with younger males has been a part of Islamic societies for centuries as a way to ease sexual temptation in a segregated society that condemns pre-marital sex. Celebrated Iranian poets have often referred to the love between men and young boys in century-old poetry.

Iran is currently one of five Muslim countries to apply capital punishment to homosexuals along with Saudi Arabia, Mauritania, Sudan, and Yemen, according to the 2010 International Lesbian Gay Association’s World Legal Survey. Under the Taliban, Afghanistan also applied the death penalty, as did Sadaam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. After the collapse of the Taliban regime, Afghanistan began punishing homosexuality with fines and imprisonment. In Iraq, Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Islamist militia followed the Taliban’s lead, attacking, torturing and murdering hundreds of gay men in “honor killings.”

Under the rule of the late Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, homosexuality was accepted to the extent that there was often news coverage of same-sex wedding c ceremonies. Gay rights were a popular item, and there were even some nightclubs that specifically catered to homosexual patrons. According to Janet Afary, professor of global religion and modernity at the University of California Santa Barbara, one of the critiques made about the Shah’s government, eventually leading up to the Revolution of 1979, was that it was excessively liberal on moral issues, such as homosexuality….

You would think that the Progressive Left would be supportive of regime change in theocratic societies that cause such discriminatory [deadly] practices against homosexuals. But they typically do not. Many were for the student uprising in Iran, but their support was typically for the Marxist movement within the Islamic faith. So I see this as more of a support for one view of Utopian versus another view. BUt both views are Utopian, and this may explain the support it engenders from the Left.

The full documentary can be seen here.

Warning: the content of the linked documentary is graphic and disturbing.

The example of a university about 20-minutes away from me should be mind-numbing for the common sense person. You will see what I am talking in this August 15th, 2005 article by Dr. Reisman where she intimates the Left’s love affair in pederasty (bringing it a bit closer than Afghanistan):

Academics need money and have respectability. Pedophiles and pornographers need respectability and have money. The relationship between academic institutions and pornographers and pedophiles, which began with Playboy’s funding the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, continues today at CSUN. The following example demonstrates the link between pornographers and academia.

In August 1998, CSUN used its state-supported offices to organize a “World Pornography Conference.” Led by former Kinsey Institute researcher James E. Elias, pornography industry leaders and performers met with “academics” to discuss and shape national pornography and pedophile strategies to be implemented in schoolrooms, newsrooms, bedrooms and courtrooms.

James Elias, CSUN’s Sex Research Director received his doctorate from the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality of which Wardell Pomeroy was the former Academic Dean. As noted in Kentucky v. Happy Day (1980), Wardell Pomeroy was a Kinsey co-author and sex partner who publicly sought funds from the pornography industry to produce child pornography (Jones, 1997).

The conference featured Paidika: The Journal of Paedophilia editor Vern Bullough and his pedophile editorial colleagues: John DeCecco, Daniel Tsang and Wayne Dynes — all professors at major American colleges.3 Chairing the CSUN “Erotic” section on “Child Pornography” was Harris Mirkin, an associate professor of political science at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. Mirkin’s 1999 article, “The Pattern of Sexual Politics: Feminism, Homosexuality and Pedophilia” (Journal of Homosexuality, Vol. 37) describes the steps pedophiles need to take to gain social acceptance. He advises pedophiles to advocate for the elimination of words like “child molestation” and “child abuse.”

Ralph Underwager was a featured speaker during the section on child pornography. Underwager is a psychologist and theologian who frequently testifies as a defense expert in child sexual abuse cases. In 1993, Underwager and his wife, Hollida Wakefield, were featured in an interview in Paidika: The Journal of Paedophilia (Winter 1993, p.3). In his interview, Underwager stated: “Pedophiles can boldly and courageously affirm what they choose. They can say that what they want is the best way to love…” Conference speaker Ted McIlvenna, founder of the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco, contributed an article in December 1977 to Hustler magazine 4 in which he urged legalization of incest and adult-child sex.

Is there a history of the New Left and this wanting of Islamo-Nazi type regimes that denigrate women and lift rape of young men to new levels? We read just a bit from David Horowitz’s intro of his book, Unholy Alliance:

A further irony of these complaints was that the shah had been, in fact, a modernizer who promoted education and the equality of women. His social progressivism was the very cause of the Islamic revolution that overthrew him. President Jimmy Carter’s liberal aversion to the shah’s authoritarian rule helped to undermine his regime and pave the way for the reign of the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Islamic revolution. While American radicals welcomed the revolution of the ayatollahs, their regime was far more reactionary and repressive than the government of the shah, and it both created and inspired the Islamic radicals who confront America as enemies today.

Why has the American Left made alliances of convenience with Islamic radicals who have declared war on the democratic West and whose own values are reactionary and oppressive? Why have American radicals actively obstructed the War on Terror, thereby undermining the defense of the democracies of the West? Why have liberals opposed Operation Iraqi Freedom, whose goals are the overthrow of tyranny and the establishment of political democracy and human rights—agendas that coincide with their own? Why have Democrats turned against the policy of regime change, which they had supported during the Clinton administration in both Kosovo and Iraq? Why has the Democratic Party declared political war on the president’s war and thus made foreign policy a point of partisan conflict for the first time since the end of World War II? What does this fracture of the American consensus mean for the future of America’s War on Terror?

These are the questions the current inquiry seeks to address. In doing so, it necessarily must confront others: What is the nature of the American Left? How does it think about the world? How did it come to ally itself with Islamic jihad? How significant is the threat posed by its opposition to the War on Terror? How powerful is its presence in the Democratic Party? What is its role in shaping the American future?

These are great questions. I think the book that answers them more fully in a short and concise manner can be found in the chapter entitled “The Red-Black-Green Islamic Axis,” in the book by Melanie Phillips — The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle Over God, Truth, and Power. While my small quote from Melanie does not do her thesis justice, it is a key connecting point in my minds eye:

These curious coalitions are frequently explained as merely opportunistic alliances, where certain groups make common cause with ideological opponents in pursuit of the shared aim of bringing down Western society. This explanation surely is only partly correct. What these various movements have in common goes much deeper: they are all utopian. Each in its own way wants to bring about the perfect society, to create a new man and a new world.

Each therefore thinks of itself as progressive; the supporters of each believe themselves to be warriors in the most noble of causes. The greens believe they will save the planet. The leftists believe they will create the brotherhood of man. The fascists believe they will purge mankind of corruption. And the Islamists believe they will create the Kingdom of God on earth.

What they all have in common, therefore, is a totalitarian mindset in pursuit of the creation of their alternative reality. These are all worldviews that can accommodate no deviation and must therefore be imposed by coercion. Because their end product is a state of perfection, nothing can be allowed to stand in its way. This is itself a projected pathology. As Eric Hoffer suggested in The True Believer, the individual involved in a mass movement is in some way acutely alienated from his own society, an alienation to which he is completely blind. Projecting his own unacknowledged deficiencies onto his surroundings, he thinks instead there is something wrong with society and fantasizes about building a new world where he will finally fit.” This belief that humanity can be shaped into a perfect form has been the cause of the most vicious tyrannies on the planet from the French Revolution onwards.

As Jamie Glazov notes in his book United in Hate, the totalitarian believer publicly denies the violent pathologies within the system that he worships. Privately, however, these are what drew him towards that system in the first place because he is aware that violence is necessary to destroy the old order so that utopia can arise from its ashes. Pretending he is attracted to “peace,” “justice” and “equality,” he actually stands for their opposite. He needs to empathize with the “martyrs” and the downtrodden in order to validate himself vicariously. The Third World, intrinsically noble since it is uncorrupted by the developed world, provides an apparently inexhaustible supply of such validation. That’s why the image of the Palestinian youth armed with only a slingshot touches the radical soul so deeply, and why the radical does not want to hear—why he even denies—the guns that are ranged just behind that youth as he throws his stones.”

Later, after following through with the history of the coining and idea behind the term “Westoxification,” she has a fabulous paragraph that puts in a pretty bow why the Progressive Left so often finds solace in these radical views you would think it would reject:

The Islamists committing mass murder in New York’s Twin Towers or a Jerusalem cafe really do believe they are fighting for justice and to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth. The communists and the fascists really did think they were ending, respectively, the oppression and the corruption of man. The environmentalists really do think they are saving the planet from extinction. The radical left really do think they will erase prejudice from the human heart and suffering from the world. And those who want Israel no longer to exist as a Jewish state really do believe that as a result they will turn suicide bomb belts into cucumber frames, and that they are moving in the way that history intended.

I highly recommend this book. As an agnostic, she has a fair view of this program the Left calls egalitarianism. This egalitarianism trumps their placatory stances on homosexuality, women’s rights, and the like.

The Religious is Uplifting, The Secular Is Not ~ Prager`s 2013 Christmas Eve Show (Hours 1 & 2)

Published by Papa Giorgio

At one point you hear Prager get diverted on Christmas movies… Medved reviewed a Christmas movie that from this year (Black Nativity) that he said clearly showed the message of salvation (giving it 3-out-of-4 stars). Prager should listen to Medved… or at least Medved’s movie reviews played during his show.

I Dont Believe In God-I Came from Monkeys~Atheist

Published by Papa Giorgio

SecularStupidest h/t:

  • “I shall always be convinced that a watch proves a watch-maker, and that a universe proves God.”

~ Voltaire


Excerpt from an old debate:

…Instead of thinking of Christianity as a collection of theological bits and pieces to be believed or debated, we should approach our faith as a conceptual system, as a total world-and-life view.  Once people understand that both Christianity and its adversaries in the world of ideas are worldviews, they will be in a better position to judge the relative merits of the total Christian system.  William Abraham has written:

“Religious belief should be assessed as a rounded whole rather than taken in stark isolation, Christianity, for example, like other world faiths, is a complex, large-scale system of belief which must be seen as a whole before it is assessed.  To break it up into disconnected parts is to mutilate and distort its true character.  We can, of course, distinguish certain elements in the Christian faith, but we must still stand back and see it as a complex interaction of these elements.  We need to see it as a metaphysical system, as a worldview, that is total in its scope and range” (An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, p. 104).

The case for or against Christian theism should be made and evaluated in terms of total systems.   Christianity is not simply a religion that tells human beings how they may be forgiven, however important this information is.  Christianity is also a total world-and-life view.  Our faith has important things to say about the whole of human life.  Once Christians understand in a systematic way how the options to Christianity are also worldviews, they will be in a better position to justify their choice of Christianity rationally.  The reason many people reject our faith is not due to their problems with one or two isolated issues; it is the result of their anti-Christian conceptual scheme, which leads them to reject information and arguments that for believers provide support for the Christian worldview…

Consider their beliefs in light of these: