Monday, November 30, 2009

Want to know how Romanists dance?

I've got a perfect example - Romanist apologist Scott Windsor. Watch him scurry around and make excuses for the Roman Church's refusal to excommunicate, among others, Nancy Pelosi. Instead, she gets served the Eucharist by the Pope himself. Voting in favor of murdering babies every single time apparently earns you a pat on the back from the Roman Church, not punishment.

Over at his blog.
Over at Beggars All.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

More on killing aborticians

LearningIsFun brings up a couple of interesting statements from the last post.

Didn't you notice that your original post is entirely an appeal to possible hypocrisy? Wasn't that whole point? You wanted to get people to see the inconsistency between their feelings on abortion and their feelings about the thought experiment?

I don't think it's the same thing. I'm appealing to consistency of position, and illustrating it by removing the age-ist bias, which you display as well. You are a bigot.


I, personally, feel differently about the two scenarios because my moral sense doesn't equate the life of a fetus with that of an adult.

Who cares what you feel, though? How about an argument why they're different? You know, evidence?


I'm genuinely surprised that you would not save the innocent people by killing the person systematically murdering them

It would be murder on God's Law, yes, as murder is defined as the unjustified taking of human life. But it wouldn't be murder on the law of the land, and I as an individual don't have the authority given to me by God to just overturn that law whenever I want towards others. It's the same reason I don't kill aborticians or blow up their abortuaries - that's not my role and I don't have authority to do it.
(As an aside, if someone told me they were the one who killed an abortician, I'm not at all confident I'd turn them in. I'd lean towards keeping mum and plausible deniability, and would have to be persuaded to turn the person in. Same if I witnessed him setting fire to the abortuary.)


You'd probably only have to kill about a dozen doctors to make the rest too scared to continue.

That's true, and it's tempting, and I mean that. But like I said, I don't have the authority to dole out death as I see fit; only in self-defense, just war, or as part of a legitimate gov't capital punishment would I have the God-given authority and permission to do so.


By the way, I'm not advocating violence. I'm advocating that pro-lifers stop equating abortion with murder,

I understood what you were getting at, but I appreciate the clarification.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

The hospital wing and the cure

Imagine a hospital wing in which lie 100 patients, in comas and unresponsive to external stimuli for the past 6 months due to a so-far incurable and terminal illness, which happens to move slowly in comatose victims. You are the admin of that wing and know that a cure, the only possibility, is being worked on, but is not ready yet.

Scenario 1: The cure is announced to be close, within the next few weeks, and you have every reason to expect it will be delivered on time. The cure is projected to bring ~20% of the patients to recovery, and that's the best that can be hoped for at this time.
Question on Scenario 1: Is it justifiable to harvest the patients' bodily organs (thus killing them) for medical experimentation before giving them the cure?

Scenario 2: The cure is discovered to be far off, ~5 years or more, and the projected recovery rate is ~20%. The patients' conditions are generally not expected to worsen in ~5 years.
Question on Scenario 2: Is it justifiable to harvest the patients' bodily organs (thus killing them) for medical experimentation while waiting for the cure?

Scenario 3: The cure is nearly available, but only 80 doses are available anytime soon. 80 of the patients are around the age of 40. The other 20 are teenagers and in their 20s. You as the hospital admin have no access to any info about their lives or families.
Question on Scenario 3: Is it justifiable to give the doses to the 40-year-olds because they are more developed and have greater ability and intelligence?


Now, if you haven't figured it out yet, conduct the following replacements:
-"terminally ill patients" -> lines of fertilised embryos that are frozen in stem-cell lines
-"medical experimentation" -> medical experimentation
-"cure" -> implantation into a woman's uterus in order to grow to full-term and be born like normal
-"recovery" -> surviving the implantation process and being born

Monday, November 23, 2009

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Friday, November 13, 2009

Why should my tax dollars go to this?

In a country in which the federal government wastes and wastes and wastes some more, it can numb us to the little things, but I heard this on the news today and it irritated me to some extent.

Let me get this straight - a repeat sex offender, a dirtbag, tries to commit suicide and the officer of the law stops him? So he can be in critical condition and go to the hospital at many $1000s per day of recovery? Who's paying for this dirtbag to get hospital care and for his long recovery process? When he wanted to die badly enough that he sneaked an exacto knife into a courtroom and tried to stab himself in the neck, multiple times? Come on, think. Personal responsibility. Let him die. I can think of many hundreds of better uses to which my tax dollars could go.




Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Carrie Prejean is an embarrassment, not a hero

Carrie Prejean has done apparently one halfway-good thing in her far too long stint in the limelight - she truthfully (and sort of correctly) answered a question in a beauty contest put to her by a moronic airhead who asked a question to which he didn't know the answer.

Apart from that, she's been one embarrassment after another, mostly to herself and also to the evanjellyfish community who has foolishly embraced her. I suppose I shouldn't be amazed at the depths to which American evanjellyfish will stoop to get their ears tickled. The ironic thing is that said tickling often comes at the hands of someone who knows exactly what to say to hit the right nerve. Given Prejean's evident intellectual limitations, I doubt she has been the calculating sort, maneuvering and finagling her way into evanjellyfish hearts everywhere; rather, she seems like a victim of this terribly sub-biblical thinking who has probably been manipulated by some clever agents into extending her public presence far, far beyond where she should have gone.
In this case, it should be obvious that saying "in my country, in my family I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman" will get one into the good graces of the evanjellyfish community. Thing is, that community has a hard time letting go. The examples are numerous - The Shack, Billy Graham, Joel Osteen, Benny Hinn, Phillips Craig and Dean, TD Jakes, Ted Haggard, Jaci Velasquez, POD, Amy Grant...I could go on, and I have in the past. As long as someone uses the word "Jesus" in conversation and expresses commonly decent moral sensibilities, they've got the secret evanjellyfish handshake down pat, and you don't get kicked out.

So, ever since she did that one thing, she's been persecuted shamelessly by the left, and shame on them for their easily-documented and highly visible idiocy and moral blindness. Backlash against Hilton for his stupid question, to which he clearly only wanted one answer? Right, sure.
Prejean has since dang near made a whole career out of people talking bad about her on national media. I don't necessarily blame her for that as much as I blame the American consumer of media, both on the left and on the right in the evanjellyfish community, and to the latter I ask: Why keep taking her in? Why keep giving her a platform? Why invite her to speak at your conferences? Why react favorably when surveyed (as her publisher no doubt did before commissioning her book) as to whether you'd buy a book about her?

Where has she given any evidence of a biblical worldview besides saying "I believe marriage is heterosexual"? Is saying "in my country, in my family, I believe" an appropriate preface to expressing a biblical statement, that homosexuals and homosexual activity are under the judgment of God, that homosexuals are commanded to repent of all their sin, including homosexuality, and be saved by the only Savior, Jesus Christ? Nowhere that I've seen (though I admittedly don't follow Prejean's life very closely).

Further, let's not forget in which context her big "Here I stand" moment took place - in a beauty pageant, a soft porn meat market, where one wins because one has a hot bod and can strut about sensually in front of dozens of cameras. That's bad enough. But nnnnoooo, she couldn't stop there.
-She openly encourages other girls to expose their bodies and sexuality to endless ogling in future pageants. It's a noble calling, you know.
-Breast augmentation surgery. Sigh.
-Pornographic photos, taken before the pageant. Double sigh.
-A pornographic video, sent to a boyfriend. Dear God, does it never end?
"That was a mistake of youth, sent to my boyfriend with whom I was in love" she says of the vid. It was 5 years ago! When you were 17! You're only 22!!!! Youth? How about "Yes, I did that, and it was a horrible sin against my Lord Jesus Christ and against my future husband, not to mention the boyfriend to whom I sent it. I didn't love him at all; my sending him that vid brought him DOWN, not up. I led him into terrible impurity, and for that I am also deeply sorry"?
But at least she said it was a mistake!
Oh yes, thank God she did. All the young girls watching her can now know that:
1) you can make a sex vid for your boyfriend
2) whom you "love"
3) at the age of 17
4) and then apologise and make it all better, 5 years later when someone else finds out about it and makes it public, and still go on to sell books to "Christians" and no one will care.
Great example for my little girl.

Finally, she has the audacity to "write" a book about her life so far. To nearly-quote the Abbé Faria from The Count of Monte Cristo - your life, young woman, has been too short to contain anything of significance. I don't know why I'm surprised that her shame threshold is a long, long way off.

The central problem with her wide acceptance among evanjellyfish is that not once has she ever even expressed a basic understanding or history of her own interaction with the Law and the Gospel. Not once that I've seen or heard has she ever recounted her struggle with her guilt under the Law of God, being crushed and shattered under the weight of its impossible demands, or crying out to God to save her from her guilt under His Law. Jesus as only Savior? Jesus as Lord? Repentance? Trusting in Christ alone, being thankful for His forgiveness, purchased on the Cross? Nowhere to be found. Rather, she was raised that way. This is one of the most common evanjellyfish idolatries - this is how my parents raised me, and my parents are kind, good people.
No, your parents are not kind, good people, and neither are you. You are a filthy sinner, rebellious, an enemy of God, and you're either forgiven and saved in spite of yourself or you're not. If you are, one would rightly expect you'd talk about it occasionally, especially when you have the spotlight (unwisely) shone directly on you. As it is, I see no reason to think Prejean has any idea what it means to know and follow Jesus. Just like the majority of American evangelicals.

Here's hoping she does everyone a favor, and soon - retreat out of the limelight, permanently. Find a godly man (for someone as hot as you, that shouldn't be a problem), marry him BEFORE having sex with him, have children and lead a godly, quiet life. And change your last name when you get married.

Monday, November 09, 2009

A quick comparison

Heard a talk-radio host this morning speaking derogatorily of recent Ft Hood mass-murderer Hasan's self-description as "Muslim first, American second". He wasn't thinking very straight, which is, in my lengthy experience, very typical among conservative talk-show hosts when they talk religion. They virtually always get it wrong, to my frustration. I myself am a Christian first, a Baptist churchman second, and an American third. It all comes down to the content of the doctrine, not its priority, as to whether I am thus a danger to society and subject to governmental repression of my religious beliefs which admittedly come before my allegiance to my country. So here's a quick comparison chart:

IslamAtheismBiblical Christianity
Objective moral authority?YesNoYes
Obligation to put allegiance
to religion before
allegiance to country?
YesN/A. On atheism, there is no
obligation to do anything.
Yes
How are you supposed to
treat enemies?
Kill themHowever you want.Love them and pray
for them (Matthew 5:44-45)
Under what circumstances
is it OK to kill people?
If they're unbelievers and won't submit to Islam or pay submission taxWhenever you want.As a soldier in a just war; as an executor of just capital
punishment as part of a
legitimate gov't; in self-
defense and in defense of others who are defenseless
Founder have
a history of
killing people and making war to
advance worldview?
Very yes.N/ANo, He got unjustly killed to advance His worldview.
Suicide bombers?Quite a lotNoNo

Friday, November 06, 2009

Sola Scriptura Debate: My first cross-examination question

DavidW, in your 2nd rebuttal you made the following statement:

--Rhology misunderstands Christ’s word in Mark7, confusing the issue here as being one of oral versus written, while it is a conflict between the “commandments of God” and the “traditions of men;” Rhology has yet to prove that all “commandments of God” are written and has already admitted that not all traditions are “traditions of men.”--


In Mark 7:1-13, Christ identifies the Pharisees' question about eating with unwashed hands as wrongheaded, quoting Isaiah's statement, "TEACHING AS DOCTRINES THE PRECEPTS OF MEN". He goes on to add, “Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men." The fact that I said not all traditions are traditions of men is exactly what I'm getting at. Christ was informing us how we can differentiate between valid and invalid traditions. So how do you know what traditions nullify the commandment of God and which do not? If any "tradition" is potentially a "commandment of God" or potentially a "tradition of men", what standard of comparison do you use to identify good big-A big-T Apostolic Tradition over and against bad little-t tradition?