Civil Commotion

For some mysterious reason, it is the people who carry-on most about religious freedom who are most hostile to allowing Muslim immigration and worship.

Franklin Graham says stop Islamic immigration. He’s right.

I have been arguing since the Ft. Hood massacre of 2009 that the time has come to stop Islamic immigration, stop the building of mosques, and stop the practice of allowing Muslims to serve in our military, all for the purposes of protecting our national security.

In the wake of the terrible cold-blooded murders of four unarmed Marines and a sailor in Chattanooga at the hands of a Muslim jihadist, Franklin Graham is calling for the cessation of Muslim immigration into the United States. He’s entirely right to do so.

Because, I guess, religious freedom is so important it should be entrusted to only those who think rightly.

Southeastern Seminary’s blog alerts us there is a new guide to understanding Genesis.

The first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis provoke some of the most difficult interpretive questions in the entire Bible. What language did humans speak before Babel? How could the Nephilim have survived the flood (Numbers 13:33)? Who was Cain’s wife (Genesis 4:17)?

Answering these questions is not easy.

No, they are not easy, because they rise out of stories that anybody of ordinary intelligence and education knows perfectly well are nonsense and untrue.

But you get here a nice sense of how Christianity’s premises — in this case, Biblical inerrancy — corrupts clear thought and intelligent discussion. As Ayn Rand used to say:

Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

And, most pertinently:

To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one’s mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.

I will spell it out for those poor trusting souls who just don’t get it: Practically nobody, not even the most vociferous Bible-thumper, has ever read the Bible — or is willing to admit that. When the clergy, who are the self-appointed experts on the Bible, assert inerrancy, they are setting-up a shibboleth that exploits both their listener’s ignorance of the Bible and their reluctance to admit their ignorance of their Bible; it puts the clergy in control.

That is all inerrancy has ever been about — control.

Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
V: Concerning the Slander of the so-called Evil Qualities

§368   Pity is a waste of feeling, a moral parasite which is injurious to the health, “it cannot possibly be our duty to increase the evil in the world”. If one does good merely out of pity, it is one’s self and not one’s neighbour that one is helping. Pity does not depend upon maxims but upon emotions, it is pathological. The suffering of others infects us, pity is an infection.

David Barton, bona fide pseudo-historian, now is a victorious constitutional lawyer, too.

Warren Throckmorton, who unearthed this gem, says this:

My point isn’t that Barton is responsible for the false things people say about him (although in Beck’s case, he should have corrected the misinformation). Rather, I am focusing my attention more on the social and cognitive factors that operate in the evangelical environment that elevate Barton to expert status.

Well, Warren, they’re crazier than shithouse rats, and that’s the entire story.

Sooner or later, truth will come out and pulpiteers who are uninformed buffoons will be exposed. Why not just presume that someone intelligent will hear your stuff and might even google it?

William Thornton

Thornton eventually blows it by adding that the Bible is true and has lots of good stories, but how can you not admire a pastor who frankly advises other pastors to not risk the possibility that there might be somebody out in the pews who is not an uninformed halfwit?

Show of hands: How many of you are surprised to learn how much contempt pastors really have for their flocks?