Posts Tagged “US”

Why I’m Catholic (Reason 34)

Kenneth Hynek • 28th Jan 2010 • Religion, Atheism, Religion, Catholicism, Religion, Christianity, Society, Law, Politics, Religion, Protestantism • , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

From Dave Armstrong’s list:

The absence of the idea of submission to spiritual authority in has leaked over into the civic arena, where the ideas of personal “freedom,” “rights,” and “choice” now dominate to such an extent that civic duty, communitarianism, and discipline are tragically neglected, to the detriment of a healthy society.

It shouldn’t be a controversial thing, at this late stage in our society’s decadence, to assert that we, as a society, have largely set aside the idea that rights possessed are accompanied by responsibilities in turn. We have a right to vote for one of a slate of candidates in an election; we should recognize that having such a right places several responsibilities on us, including:

  • the obligation to actually get out and vote, rather than just sit at home bitching about the result
  • the obligation to vote only the allowed number of times and, relatedly, the obligation to both not become involved in, and to report, any attempts by any group to taint election results with e.g. false ballots
  • the obligation to inform ourselves about the issues relevant to the election and the stances if each candidate thereupon

This is one small example, but it is also a revealing one. Think of a typical election…and at how it is often genuinely surprising to hear, afterward, that fully 34% of eligible voters actually turned out, since that’s almost 2% more than in the last election. Think of any number of people whom you, good reader, may know personally who refuse to vote yet reserve the right to complain, loudly and frequently, about what the government is doing wrong. Probably, they have even worked out compicated reasoning to “explain” why yes, it-is-in-fact-perfectly-fair-thank-you-very-much that they get a say about the state of things even though they abdicated their most direct, meaningful ability to influence that state in the first place!

Vote rigging, meanwhile, is nothing new, of course. And yet while “questionable” ballots were a huge issue in the 2000 presidential election, various examples of vote fraud (illegal voter registrations, dead people casting ballots, trunkfuls of fake ballots, etc.) in the 2008 presidential election went more or less unreported.

(No, I’m not claiming that stole the election…this isn’t I’m running here. Obama won by a wide enough margin to leave me with no doubts that his election was anything but legitimate.)

One expects to hear of such things in far-away places, where tin-pot dictators hold “elections” periodically to give evidence to the claim that their despotism is the will of the people. But the same sort of election-rigging happens in a place like , or for that matter, and seems to be doing so with increasing frequency. It’s no longer a sensational thing, or not as much as it once was.

And let us only briefly mention how woefully under-informed the average voter is today. Stephen Harper is a competent leader to a certain reasonable degree…but he’s also done some stunningly unpopular things whilst in office, and some stunningly dumb things as well. One suspects, at times. that one key to his remaining in power has to do with the fact that his principal opponents, the , have lately demonstrated a talent for picking leaders who do not resonate well with the public.

Things arent any better in the US. Barack Obama is president today for three reasons: “hope”, “change”, and his skin colour. And as he has yet to deliver on the first two, it’s not unreasonable to look on the third as being his principal — and ongoing — qualification for holding the office he does.

(And in a way, Obama’s most ardent supporters — in the media and amongst the general public — help to prove this on a stunningly frequent basis. One cannot attempt a criticism of any of Obama’s policies without risking being denounced as a “racist,” which suggests that even Obama’s own supporters see him first as a (half-)black man, and second as a skilled politician/orator/Messiah.)

Any reasonable person — in looking at Obama’s stated political views, and his electoral platform — could probably have predicted that Obama would have flubbed handling the , or that he would have gone back on his pledge to close , or that his health care bill would have started out poorly and gotten progressively worse as it made its way through the House and the Senate.

But few people actually considered such things when casting their vote, I suspect.

What’s the point to all this, the good reader might now be wondering. Weren’t we talking about ?

Well, yes, yes we were…and still are. What the above example illustrates is how, with respect to voting, things like “personal ‘freedom,’ ‘rights,’ and ‘choice’” have come to dominate the practice of voting and people’s approach thereto. And it also demonstrates how “civic duty, communitarianism, and discipline” fall by the wayside.

This happens everywhere in society, at all levels and with respect to all things. Rights predominate, but nobody takes responsibility for, or ownership of, anything…except their new 52″ flatscreen , perhaps.

You can trace this decline back to things like the 1960s and the deconstruction of social norms that the hippies advocated — and agitated — for. That movement, in turn, grew out of, among other things, socialist philosophy, which of course owes much to e.g. . (Yes, I’m simplifying a bit. Bear with me.)

Marx’s philosophy, in turn, grew out of Enlightenment philosophy, including Enlightenment . Indeed, atheist formed a part of the core of Marxist communism. Enlightenment atheism, in turn, was a logical outcome, and in some respects an offshoot, of the . It’s not exactly a profound logical leap to note that the rejection of the authority and validity of flows pretty naturally from a rejection of the authority and validity of the Church, who first promulgated the Biblical canon (Protestant claims of Scripture’s perspicuity and self-authentication are little more than wishful thinking).

Indeed, as was previously noted, what is an atheist if not a Calvinist who, in addition to rejecting everything else the Church teaches, has gone ahead and rejected the as well?

And it is the Church alone who sets herself against all the destructive ideals that have thus far enabled — if not accelerated and encouraged — the degradation of Western society. Partly, this is because the Church alone understands who it is that has inspired all these destructive things and worked to set them in motion. And partly, this is because alone understands, or grasps to the maximum possible degree, the genuine roles and obligations of men (and women) in their relationship to , and furthermore understands that those roles and obligations are — or should be — reflected in how men and women inter-relate, both at a personal (one-to-one) level and at a societal level.

Maybe go drop the HillBuzz boys a note of support…

Kenneth Hynek • 20th Jan 2010 • World News, American News, Politics, American Politics, Society, Freespeechery, The Sciences, The Interwebs • , , , , , , , , , , ,

…because it it sounds like their support for Scott Brown in Massachusetts has made them a target for the deranged Left.

Some background: the HillBuzz boys are gay Democrat supporters; they supported Hillary Clinton in her bid for presidential candidacy. And after witnessing the appallingly racist and sexist treatment that Clinton received at the hands of Obama’s supporters, they refused to support Obama in the election. Indeed, they supported Sarah Palin, especially, and to this day continue to do so. Being political moderates, they also began to oppose various Obama policies (e.g. ObamaCare).

Then, Ted Kennedy died. Which left vacant his seat in the US Senate. And despite the efforts of various groups to claim that he had “appointed” Martha Coakley as his replacement, a by-election was called. Scott Brown (“Hottie McAwesome” is, I believe, what the HillBuzz boys call him) was on the Republican ticket…and last night managed to pull off a win in a state that hasn’t voted red in 40 years.

And HillBuzz supported him every step of the way, rightly understanding that the by-election was also, in its own way, a referendum of sorts on the Obama administration and its policies. Brown’s victory is a repudiation of Obama, of his cap and trade policy, of the Democrat card check policy, and of ObamaCare.

Anyhow, for all this, the HillBuzz boys have come under direct attack from the nurture parts of the Left. Democratic Underground and other similar aggregation points of pre-rational leftist groupthink have been attempting to smear the HillBuzz boys, even going so far as to threaten them physically and call for harm to be done to them.

It’s like a Lefty jihad, basically.

To their credit, the HillBuzz boys are fighting back, and their lengthy post is admirably defiant; it’s exactly the right response to give to a pack of mealy-mouthed bullies and Obama syncophants.

Still…a lonely fight is never fun. Drop in and give ‘em a smile, good reader, if you’ve got a minute or two.

It’s beginning to look at lot like…fraud

Kenneth Hynek • 21st Nov 2009 • The Sciences, Computers, Society, Environmentalism, World News • , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Okay, long-time readers of this blog (or my previous one) will know that when it comes to global warming and climate change, I’m pretty much a dyed-in-the-wool skeptic. Not of changes in the Earth’s average temperature, I should hasten to note, nor of upward changes therein. No, what I am ultimately skeptical of is a) whether humanity makes any meaningful, causative contribution to these changes, and b) whether it’s worth getting alarmed about in the first place.

Sears is currently running an ad in which the father explains to the Sears associate that due to pressure from various people, he’s been thinking of buying a “greener” washer and dryer. His daughter chimes in with a forlorn remark about polar bears, while pointing to a picture of just such a bear sitting on an ice floe.

That’s kind of what I mean when I list (b) above. Do I really care if the polar bears — nasty, violent animals that they are — are having a hard time lately (they aren’t, by the way, but that’s a separate discussion)? No, not really. Not at all, actually.

But I digress. Suffice to say: I’m a global warming skeptic. There…that should prevent me from ever being invited to dinner parties again.

Anyhow, fraud.

First, let’s begin by noting that the revelations that follow were only made possible because someone hacked an email server. Obviously, there’s a bunch of ethical issues with that — indeed, one notes that information obtained by such means would not be admissible as evidence in a court of law. What compounds the problem, from an ethical perspective, is that the materials obtained by the hacker — and subsequently posted to a web forum as an FTP download — is that they are themselves materials covered under the US Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA), and so are technically a matter of public record. The ethical conundrum, then, is that the materials themselves — which include code snapshots, datasets, and emails exchanged by various scientists who have become the “big names” in climate change research circles (Phil Jones, Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, Malcolm Hughes, etc.) — include evidence of collusion by these parties to suppress or restrict public access to these materials, including deletion of emails and jimmying of datasets.

Hence, the ethical conundrum: the hacker illegally obtained public materials that were being illegally kept from the public eye. And the revelations those materials contain are, or seem to be, utterly damning. If the recovered materials are genuine, the damage to the credibility of both the involved individual climate scientists and the conclusions drawn from their research is — or will be — catastrophic.

All the usual folk are carrying the story: Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit, Anthony Watts’ Watts Up With That?, Hot Air, and numerous others. I first saw the story at
Ace of Spades, but it’s also been picked up by the likes of Aussies Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt. Predictably, major media outlets have been eerily silent on the matter.

(One of Tim Blair’s links has what I think might be the tone-perfect prediction of how this can be expected to play out: “The Global Warming scam keeps on truckin’, but a whole bunch of lefties suddenly become interested in the ‘ethics’ surrounding the hacking of files.”

Because hardly anyone seemed to find an ethical problem when Sarah Palin’s email account got hacked by a Democrat representative’s kid.)

As to the genuine nature of the emails, there’s still some room for doubt, though not all that much. Phil Jones admitted that the CRU had been hacked, and that “loads of data files and emails” had been taken from their systems. Andrew Bolt, I note, muses on the theory that the hacker story might just be that — a cover story to hide the fact that an insider has blown the whistle. Whether that’s true or not, it should be noted that the CRU did cancel all its existing electronic account passwords.

Which would be an awful lot of headache to endure if in fact these emails and datasets were fraudulent themselves. Smart money is on a genuine breach, and genuine materials. If you’d like to make that call for yourself, good reader, there’s now an online searchable database of the hacked materials. You can also download my locally hosted copy:

A number of the hacked emails are getting a lot of coverage on the blogs (in what could once have been called the mainstream media, mammoth dung is the hotter topic), none more than this one (deservedly so):

From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@[snipped], mhughes@ [snipped]
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@[snipped],t.osborn@[snipped]

Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,

Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow. I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd [sic] from1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.

Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers, Phil

Prof. Phil Jones

Climatic Research Unit

Climate Audit (the site may be slow, as its servers are getting just pounded with traffic at present) has the details on what “hide the decline” means, and it too is devastating. In layman’s terms, Jones and others goosed their data in order to fabricate the infamous “hockey stick graph” which purports to show that global average temperatures have shot up alarmingly in the last century or so.

In reality, something almost the opposite is true…the global average temperature edged up a bit, but fell into a gradual decline again 30 to 40 years ago.

Funnily enough, Der Spiegel — which has garnered a fairly deserved reputation as being “left wing” — launched a story yesterday (how’s that for timing?) about how global warming “appears to have stalled.”

As Robin Williams might say: “Really?!?”

I guess it’s okay to report on such things now, what with them being true and all. Which comes back to my skepticism. As noted, I don’t deny that that the Earth’s average temperature changes, nor do I deny that sometimes that change is an upward one. What I deny is man’s role in those fluctuations. As we’ve just seen, other men have to goose the data to even demonstrate the kind of pronounced warming that the likes of Al Gore assure us man is responsible for. Meanwhile, the Sun — that big glowing thing up in the sky which is the ultimate source of pretty much all the heat life on Earth needs — continues to have its cyclical fluctuations in intensity.

And hey, guess what? Mr. Sun’s having a bit of a low-energy phase right now, after coming off of a fairly high-energy phase. But I’m sure that has nothing to do with the fluctuations in Earth’s average temperature. No sir.

Media? Yes. Mainstream? No.

Kenneth Hynek • 16th Sep 2009 • World News, American News, Politics, American Politics • , , , , , , , , ,

Ace makes a darn good point as an afterthought to his remarks on the brewing scandal in the right now:

… is dead-bang right, we have been giving the media an accolade it never deserved by calling it the “.” It is not mainstream. It is leftwing.

We [bloggers] are the mainstream media. We’re also the minor media, but we are the mainstream.

And so I’m never going to refer to them as “” again.

File this one in the same folder as “it’s not -GATE, it’s -QUIDDICK.”

Speaking of ACORN-quiddick, it’s a pretty darn interesting story to watch unfold. ‘s go-to “community organization” seems to be awfully willing to turn a blind eye to things like and child .

Update: Ouchie… comes up with a doozy: “ACORN COULDN’T LOOK WORSE RIGHT NOW IF KANYE WEST WAS WEARING ONE OF THEIR T-SHIRTS.”

Bruce Bawer in Montreal

Kenneth Hynek • 16th Sep 2009 • Politics, American Politics, World News, European News, Politics, European Politics, Society, Freespeechery, Religion, Islam • , , , , , , , , , ,

From Point de Bascule: “At the invitation of Point de Bascule and the Free Thinking Film Society, Dr. will be speaking at major venues in Montreal, Quebec and Ottawa.

Bawer is a renowned essayist and author bestselling books (, and ) Based in , he is known internationally for his straightforward criticism of and his deeply informed warnings about the threat of ic radicalism to Western security, culture and identity. A gay activist who became disillusioned by what he saw as the increasing influence of ‘s religious right, Dr Bawer left his homeland in 1998, only to be shocked by alarming trends he discovered on arriving in once-tolerant Europe. He witnessed the Old World’s post-Enlightenment traditions of and openness under siege: Islamic fundamentalism was on the march, and time-honoured rights were failing along with the cultural confidence and self-respect of ‘s indigenous populations.”

The conference can be watched live this evening (7 PM, Montreal time) by means of the below (buried beneath a ‘More’ link so it doesn’t clutter up the page with connection error warnings prior to the event):
(more…)

Another reason Calvinism is poisonous theology

Kenneth Hynek • 24th Aug 2009 • Religion, Catholicism, Religion, Christianity, History, Religion, Protestantism, Religion, Theology • , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Near the very end of ‘s series of articles — in the final article, in fact — was buried a comment that made me reflect on a certain tenet of : .

Like most Calvinist teachings, limited atonement is bollocks, though not because it is patently false. Rather, it mixes truth and falsehood in some measure. Unlike some other Calvinist tenets, it’s not the sort of thing that’s nice in theory but not workable in reality; the errors with this doctrine are purely within the realms of , , and .

And in fact, arguing against the tenet is quite easy. Far too many Protestants — including and perhaps especially those of a Calvinist bent — like to use John 3:16 as a forum or email signature. And while there’s nothing wrong with using Scripture in this capacity, there is a problem in that they often use this particular verse in ignorance of its complete meaning. This is especially the case for those who believe that false doctrine called limited atonement.

What does John 3:16 say, then? In the , it is rendered thusly:

For so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son: that whosoever believeth in him may not perish, but may have life everlasting.

For completeness, we should also consider the two verses that follow.

For God sent not his Son into the world, to judge the world: but that the world may be saved by him.

He that believeth in him is not judged. But he that doth not believe is already judged: because he believeth not in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

One could exegete these three verses to assault another Calvinist tenet as well, but let’s table that matter for now and focus on two key points regarding atonement that the above verses teach, concerning its scope and the means by which man can attain its saving power.

John separates these two categories remarkably well. Concerning the first — atonement’s scope — he is explicit: “For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son…that the world may be saved by him.” Christ was sent into the world to save the world, not just an “elect” subset of the world. John makes no bones about this! The Gospel does not say that “God so loved his own, as to give his only begotten Son…that his regenerate may be saved by him.”

At this point, we could almost stop; noting only as much as we have already done is actually sufficient. Limited atonement — basically, that Christ’s death and only atoned for the sins of “regenerate” Christians — is obviously false, as Scripture itself indicates. Christ was sent to save all the world, and as such His death must necessarily have atoned for the sins of all the world.

So why does teach limited atonement?

There was a recent incident in the in which a deranged man shot up an exercise class at a gymnasium, before turning the gun on himself. On his blog, discovered some hours later, he detailed his reasons for killing…but also talked at length about his former pastor’s somewhat liberal stance on what Christ’s atonement meant. In his (errant) view, had already atoned for the sins he was about to commit, so he had to fear no eternal condemnation for either his pending murders or his present-day .

Presumably, he received a rather rude awakening when he pulled the trigger for the final time.

Now, why do I mention this?

It is not, by any means, a new heresy, this teaching that since atoned for the sins of all, all are saved regardless of their deeds or beliefs. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of the name of the relevant historical heresy that taught this…but I am fairly certain that such a heresy was seen in the earlier days of .

I half-suspect that in inventing the doctrine of limited atonement, Calvin was attempting to argue against this heresy; that he was doing so in a way itself heretical is rather ironic. Oh, to be fair, the doctrine also proceeds, logically, from other Calvinist tenets — if one is going to believe that some people are born already, and then inexorably, damned, it’s not exactly a leap of great distance to likewise believe that Jesus did not die to atone for the sins of all mankind. It may be patent stupidity to believe as much, but it’s not illogical.

The problem, however, is that such a view isn’t really defensible from Scripture.

Oh, one could attempt to sneak the limitation in by the back door and argue that BELIEF (or disbelief) is predestined. This addresses the other category John talks about — how mankind accesses the salvation that flows out of Christ’s atonement for our sins. About this point, John is fairly specific: “…whosoever believeth in him may not perish, but may have life everlasting…he that doth not believe is already judged: because he believeth not in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” John does leave it to later authors — Paul and James, especially — to expand upon what it means to believe in Christ, and Jesus himself gives plenty examples of what the full implications, obligations, and responsibilities of being a believer are.

And to be fair, one could get into a lengthy discussion about whether individual men and women are, in fact, predestined to believe, or predestined to eschew belief, in Christ.

But equally, so what? The issue is atonement, which we’ve already established cannot be limited, else Scripture be found to teach falsely. Even if some are predestined to never come to the faith necessary for access to the salvation that flows from that atonement (and I’m granting a very big “if” there*), this does not in any way mean that atonement itself is limited.

Now, I mentioned John C. Wright, and the good reader could be forgiven for wondering at this point just where he fits into the picture. As I noted previously, he said something that got this train of thought moving for me. Here, then, is his observation:

Christ bled and died for my enemies, the Leftists and the aries, as well as for those tempted by sexual sins and lures. Not only must I pray for my enemies, I must do so even though that act or prayer holds me up to their derision. Since Christ died for them, I cannot hold these people up to the scorn they deserve, or mock their weaknesses, since those things are of secondary or even of no importance in the grand scheme of things.

What this statement got me thinking about was the implications of, especially, the first sentence if it were somehow proven that limited atonement was a valid and true doctrine. Do you see how the calculus would change, good reader? For, if Christ did NOT die for the sins of our enemies, if He did not bleed for them, then we need not pray for them…indeed, since they are inexorably damned, it would be a waste of breath and effort to do so! And since Christ did not die for “them,” there is no reason to spare them scorn, mockery, or derision for their weaknesses and sins.

One could even go so far as to argue that one’s enemies cannot be called “children of God,” and so need not even be thought of as brothers and sisters…which, in turn, means that one is free to pour out even hatred upon them, without fear of bring condemned as a murderer.

You laugh, good reader, but I’m not inventing anything here; I have heard such arguments before.

And indeed, we can see exactly such sentiments expressed in the writings and deeds of , who once wrote that he would sooner murder — or see murdered — a good friend rather than see the man revert to being a ‘papist,’ and whose persecutions of Catholics were substantially more vicious and cruel than the persecutions Catholics are accused (rightly or wrongly) of carrying out against early Protestants.

Whatever spirit the man felt himself being led by, it was not the spirit of Jesus. And in like manner, whatever spirit gave rise to this doctrine of limited atonement was not the spirit of Christ.

One can only pray, then, that this alien spirit did not lead Calvin’s soul to ruin, just as one must pray that following his poisonous teachings will not lead millions more souls to ruin.

What else can one do? Christ died even for Calvin, and for those who continue to preach his bilgewater doctrines.

* * *

* I cannot state in strong enough terms how odious a doctrine Calvinist predestination is. If we were to abstract life as a swimming pool, in which those who come to know salvation are those able to tread water for a set time, Calvinist predestination would be the teaching that Jesus deliberately holds some people’s heads under the water and drowns them…”for the glory of God.”

It’s an ugly teaching, and a temptation I struggle to resist (and then more often than I care to admit) is the temptation to hope that it is a damnable teaching.

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