Category: Religion

Of Course, Evolution Is Racist

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Our friends at Breitbart are having a point-and-laugh carnival about the fact that England’s Sheffield University has made Charles Darwin the latest historical figure to be “cancelled” because, it is alleged, his theory of evolution was used to “justify white male supremacy.”

While we may enjoy the fun — “Hahaha! Crazy academic radicals!” — I must soberly remark that the wokies may be onto something here.

What are the logical implications of Darwin’s theory?

The most obvious inferences one must deduce from evolutionary theory is that there is no God and the Bible is not true. And this is why every atheist claims to be a devotee of Science with a capital S.

What Darwin proclaimed was that the origins of the world (and all life in the world, including human life) were the result of random coincidence, rather than the creation of God: “Fiat lux.”

This first logical implication of evolutionary theory leads to a second: There is no divine Law, no transcendent Truth, no discernible moral order in human life, no fixed standard of right and wrong.

In a world where there is no such thing as sin, where there is no fear of eternal punishment for wickedness, then everything in human life ultimately must be a struggle for power, as Nietzsche foresaw.

The philosophical path from Darwin to Nietzsche is entirely logical, if one accepts the Darwinian premise of a godless world, a random cosmic accident without divine law. Human life has no inherent value — no meaning or purpose — in the Darwinian scheme of things, and if one accepts this as true, the Nietzschean “will to power” must rule.

That such beliefs led directly to the totalitarian nightmares of the 20th century is certainly no accident, nor was it accidental that the Jews — whose scriptures formed the basis for worship of the Creator as the norm in Western culture — were chief among the victims.

If you are inclined to theological contemplation, it is difficult to ignore the significance of what happened in the 20th century as a consequence of atheistic philosophies based on belief in Darwinian evolution as Science with a capital S. Of course, Darwinism is racist, regardless of whether Darwin himself intended it to be so (he didn’t). However, many evils in this world happen that way — well-meaning intellectuals promote ideas that they believe will be beneficial to mankind, but which lead to the most dreadful results. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked.”

God rules the universe, all men will be judged by Him, and “there is no respect of persons with God.” The high and the low, the rich and the poor, men of every race and tongue — all shall acknowledge God’s authority at the final day. Never doubt that for a minute. Selah.




 

‘Allahu Akbar’: Muslim Immigrant Decapitates French Teacher

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The Religion of Peace™ strikes again:

A history teacher who had shown caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Muhammed in class was on Friday decapitated and his assailant shot dead by French police as they tried to arrest him, police and prosecutors said.
The attacker shouted “Allahu Akbar” as he was confronted by police, a police source said. The Muslim phrase, meaning “God is Great,” has often been heard in jihadist attacks.
The suspect’s identity was not made public. French media reported that the suspect was an 18-year-old Chechen, born in Moscow. That information could not be immediately confirmed.
French President Emmanuel Macron called the beheading an “Islamist terrorist attack.” . . .
French anti-terror prosecutors said they were investigating the assault which happened on the outskirts of Paris at around 5 p.m. (1500 GMT) near a school in Conflans Saint-Honorine, a western suburb of the French capital.

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

Notice that when “right-wing” or “white supremacist” violence occurs, the motive becomes the most important thing about the story, and every politician is expected to denounce the motive, per se. By contrast, when violence is perpetrated by left-wing extremists, by Muslims, or by any protected minority group, the media will never generalize these crimes as representing the collective sentiment of a group, nor is there any political pressure to denounce the attacker’s motive.

In fact, the media will often times bend over backward to humanize terrorists who fit a favored political or ethnic profile, with the suggestion that their motives are legitimate grievances. The media feels compelled to depict certain terrorists (e.g., Dzhokhar Tsarnaev) as sympathetic figures because, they fear, an unsympathetic portrayal of such figures might inspire “backlash” against whatever group the attacker represents. Obversely, when the accused terrorist is white and can plausibly be shown to have a “right-wing” motive, not only is the perpetrator (e.g., Dylann Roof) depicted without sympathy, but the media employ broad-brush smear tactics to imply that similarly hateful sentiments are widespread among white people, and that every vaguely “right-wing” public figure is somehow complicit in the atrocity. The rationale of news coverage in such cases is to inspire prejudice against conservatives, and particularly to incite fear that further “right-wing” violence is likely, requiring renewed efforts to “educate” the ignorant masses.




 

Trump Getting 50% of the Catholic Vote

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The abortion issue is hurting Biden:

Catholic voters have an opportunity in November to help elect only the second Catholic president in U.S. history in former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, but already the more devout followers are lining up behind President Trump.
Gone are the days when nearly 80% of Catholic voters united to push Irish-Catholic Democrat John F. Kennedy into the White House in 1960. Catholic voters today are split on the 2020 candidates, even though Mr. Biden is a lifelong Mass-attending Catholic, and Mr. Trump is a Presbyterian.
A Pew Research Center poll released last month found that 50% of registered Catholic voters plan to vote for Mr. Trump, while 49% back Mr. Biden.
“The Catholic vote is not a monolithic vote in America,” said Brian Burch, president of the conservative CatholicVote. “We’ve moved away from that kind of tribal, if-he’s-a-Catholic-therefore-I-trust-him view. There are other reasons inside our own church for that as well. It’s not enough to merely say you’re Catholic.”
While Mr. Biden is known for his regular church attendance — he and his wife Jill Biden worship at St. Joseph on the Brandywine in Greenville, Delaware — polls show his supporters within the church tend to be less fastidious in their Sunday habits.
“The more you go to Mass and the more you self-describe as following the church’s teachings, the more likely you are to be voting for Trump,” said EWTN executive editor Matthew Bunson. “If you go to Mass less often and disagree with key teachings, you’re more likely to support Biden.”
About 18% of Catholics say they accept all the church’s teachings, versus 38% who say they accept most of them, and 29% who say they do not accept some key teachings, according to a February EWTN News/RealClearOpinion poll.
“Among Catholics who do practice the faith in a substantive way, yes, there’s been a dramatic shift over the last several decades away from the Democratic Party and into the Republican Party, and I think it’s been especially pronounced under President Trump,” Mr. Burch said.
He cited not only the abortion issue, on which Mr. Trump has been widely described as the most pro-life president ever, but his appeals to “this notion of the importance of place, of country, of patriotism, of family, of meaningful work,” as well as his political grit in the face of opposition.
“His policies are demonstrative proof of his pro-life credentials, but more important, and I increasingly hear this from Catholics, are his fortitude and courage,” Mr. Burch said. “Many Republican administrations in the past have paid lip service to the issue, and while they might be sympathetic to our cause, when things got difficult, they abandoned ship.”
Both camps are making plays for Catholic voters, and for good reason: Not only do they make up 22% of the U.S. electorate, but in nine of the last 10 presidential elections, Catholics voted with the winner, Mr. Bunson said.

Most Americans who identify as “Catholic” are what might be called cultural Catholics — usually people of Irish, Italian or Polish ancestry — who don’t regularly attend services and certainly don’t practice Catholic teachings, or otherwise they’d have six or eight kids. The fact that self-identified Catholic women do not, on average, have significantly more children than other American women tells you all you need to know about the decline of faith. If religious belief does not manifest itself as a behavioral difference from non-believers, then the salt has lost its savour.

To be pro-life is not merely to be anti-abortion. Catholic teaching explicitly condemns artificial contraception, and it is therefore to be expected that self-described Catholics would have far more numerous offspring than non-Catholics. The self-evident failure of Catholics in America to “practice what they preach” is at least as much of a scandal as pedophile priests, and these two scandals are not unrelated. Both are evidence of institutional corruption and being “conformed to this world.”




 

‘Climate Scientist Explains …’

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When I was in school, back in Ye Olde Ancient Tymes, we were taught that skepticism was necessary to science. That is to say, our teachers emphasized the distance between theory and proof, teaching an experimental approach to the scientific method — trial and error, etc.

During the past several decades, however, the emphasis on skepticism and logical processes of research has apparently been abandoned, largely because education bureaucrats were determined to eradicate Christianity from the classroom. Bible believers kept raising doubts about the scientific basis of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, and so it was that indoctrinating students to accept evolution as proven fact — no skepticism permitted — became a core goal of curriculum and pedagogy. Having purged from the classroom any criticism of Darwinian theory, these education bureaucrats thereby paved the way for the promulgation of other official dogmas, including “climate change,” i.e., anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Not long after skepticism of AGW was declared heretical — “The science is settled!” — a new official dogma was introduced to the curriculum; now anyone who dissents from Third Wave Gender Theory is denounced as a transphobic bigot who is anti-science.

You can ask Colin Wright about this. He is an accredited evolutionary biologist, who has been mocking Christian creationists since he was a teenager. After he got his Ph.D., however, Dr. Wright became increasingly irritated by dogmatic Gender Theory proponents. As a result of his criticism, Dr. Wright became persona non grata in academia, and has been smeared as a “racist,” to boot. The science is settled!

God moves in mysterious ways, and has a profound sense of irony, too.

So this morning, I received an email promoting the work of another scientist, Dr. Peter Langdon Ward (Dartmouth College, BA 1965, and Columbia University, MA, 1967, PhD 1970), who spent many years working for the U.S. Geological Survey, and who could be called a dissenter from the AWG “consensus”:

In a 2009 paper, Ward suggested that “large volumes of SO2 [sulfur dioxide] erupted frequently appear to overdrive the oxidizing capacity of the atmosphere resulting in very rapid warming.” In addition, he noted that sulfur dioxide is a strong absorber of visible light. He proposed that the rapid increase in global warming during the 20th century was caused by these mechanisms as a result of the rapid increase in sulfur dioxide emitted by the burning fossil fuels. Since 2009 Ward has been arguing that Climate Change is caused by ozone depletion and not human-derived CO2 [carbon dioxide] emissions, a hypothesis that is not supported by referred literature.

Dr. Langdon’s speciality is volcanos and earthquakes, and his theory (at least as I understand it, as a mere amateur) is that the impact of volcanic eruptions on the atmosphere has been underestimated by those fixated on carbon dioxide emissions. You see that Dr. Langdon’s scientific expertise, however, has had no impact on the “consensus,” because anyone who criticizes the official dogma is ostracized as a heretic.

Anyway, the email I got this morning:

ONCE UPON A TIME ALL HUMANS
HAD DARK SKIN
Climate Scientist Explains Global
Variables to Evolving Skin Color
Since the mid-18th century, skin color has been the single most important physical trait used to define human groups, including variously named varieties, races, subspecies, and species.
Humans are a colorful species, yet all modern humans share a common ancestor who lived around 200,000 years ago in Africa. Once upon a time, all humans had dark skin. Variations in human skin color we know today are adaptive traits that correlate closely with geography and the sun’s ultraviolet (UV) radiation.
“For thousands of years, human skin was the sole interface between our bodies and the environment,” says Dr. Peter L. Ward, 27-year veteran of the U. S. Geological Survey.
Human skin evolved to absorb just enough ultraviolet-B radiation long before clothes were available. The dosage of ultraviolet-B radiation reaching human skin is greatest in the tropics, least around the poles, and varies with climate change.
Around 1.2 million years ago, in response to climate change killing trees, hominins moved out of tropical rain forests into sunny savannas where they lost body hair, evolved more efficient perspiration, and evolved short, curly, Afro-textured hair to protect the thermosensitive brain from bright sunshine. The loss of body hair led to heritable increases in melanin, a pigment that blackens the skin and darkens the eyes of people living in intense sunlight in equatorial regions.
Our species, Homo sapiens, evolved in Africa and were originally dark skinned. As humans migrated out of equatorial Africa to higher latitudes, where sunshine is less intense, they evolved over hundreds of generations lower levels of melanin, leading to lighter skin and lighter eye color so that they could absorb adequate ultraviolet-B radiation to have healthy levels of vitamin D. Humans evolved straighter hair that provided increased warmth. Eskimos in the Arctic kept dark skin perhaps because of nearly 24-hour sunlight half the year and because they absorb large amounts of vitamin D from their diet primarily of fish, seals and other animals.
“Thus, the existence, health, and even skin color of humans living on Earth is determined by having just the right Goldilocks balance between how much solar ultraviolet-B radiation is absorbed by the ozone layer versus how much reaches Earth’s surface.” says Dr. Ward.

Very interesting, as a theory.

My early education in scientific skepticism requires me to point out that, however much evidence there is for humans originating “1.2 million years ago” in “tropical rain forests,” this is nevertheless a speculative theory, rather than a fact proven by science. My own belief — and it is merely a belief, which I cannot prove — is that human life began approximately 10,000 years ago. Thus, the racial differences among mankind are of rather recent origin and, as best as I can determine from the Bible, originated with Noah’s sons Shem, Ham and Japheth.

Of course, it is impossible to prove my belief, but my observation of human differences (one of my five grandchildren is playing with his toys about 10 feet from my desk as I write this) suggests that if, like Noah, you had three sons married to three daughters-in-law, there might be tremendous variation in the appearances of your grandchildren. If these three families of your descendants went their separate ways — Noah’s sons repopulated the entire earth — it strikes me that within a few hundred years there might be remarkable differences between your remote descendants. Whatever the evidence may be for Dr. Ward’s assertion that “all modern humans share a common ancestor who lived around 200,000 years ago in Africa,” I do not believe that such a lengthy amount of time was necessary for the “evolution” of racial differences.

Well, I suppose we must agree to disagree on this topic, but I must insist on pointing out the dangers inherent in the demand for a scientific “consensus” in areas of inquiry where our knowledge is imperfect. Totalitarian regimes in the 20th century sought to impose an “official” view of science, which led to Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union and to the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. We should hope that old-fashioned skepticism and intellectual freedom can make a comeback.




 

Muslim Immigrant Attacks Police

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Is it OK to stop calling this “mostly peaceful” yet?

Authorities are looking into whether the Wednesday night stabbing of an NYPD officer in Brooklyn was a terror-inspired attack, law enforcement sources said Thursday.
One officer was stabbed in the neck and two others were shot during the confrontation in the Flatbush neighborhood. All three officers are expected to recover, Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said at an early Thursday press conference. The suspect was shot eight times and is in critical condition at a hospital.
Three senior law enforcement sources identified the suspect as Dzenan Camovic, 20, an immigrant from the Balkan region. One senior source said Camovic had recently shared anti-police sentiments on his social media feeds.
Camovic had not been on police radar, the sources said, but is associated with “individuals of concern.” Terrorism, however, is just one theory for what happened, they said, and nothing has been ruled in or out.

Can we rule it out? I don’t think so:

The man suspected of stabbing an NYPD cop in the neck without warning is a “practicing Muslim” whose family is from Bosnia — but he’s “absolutely not a terrorist,” a relative who was interviewed by federal terrorism investigators said Thursday.
The relative also said that Dzenan Camovic, 20, never expressed any anti-police sentiment to him and questioned the official account of Wednesday night’s incident in Brooklyn.
‘“I’ve known him since he was 6-inches tall. That this is a terrorism, it’s illogical,” said the middle-aged man, who declined to give his name.
“He was raised here, [English] is his only language … He was as good of a child as a child could be.”

Oh, a “practicing Muslim” from Bosnia would never commit terrorism.

Ace of Spades makes the obvious point: Why are we importing such people? Do we have a shortage of cop-haters in America, so that in order to keep the cop-hating industry functioning at full capacity, we have to bring in cop-haters from foreign countries? The fact that this particular cop-hater is white helps illustrate what’s wrong with the frequent claim that anyone who opposes the open-borders agenda is “racist.”

While we may stipulate (and it would be dishonest to deny) that racism is a factor in concerns about immigration, does admitting something like a million foreigners a year do anything to reduce racism? For all we know, this Dzenan Camovic character was radicalized because he couldn’t adjust to the ethnic diversity of Brooklyn. And there are plenty of similar examples of immigrants (or children of immigrants) who underwent a similar process of radicalization. It is difficult enough for any American-born kid, whatever their race, to adjust to adult life in this complex and confusing postmodern culture. When you add immigration to the mix of influences, you increase the potential number of factors that may contribute to psychological alienation. And this is true whether the immigrant is from Sweden or Somalia or Surinam.

Reduce legal immigration, build a wall to keep out illegals, and give America a generation or two to assimilate all the immigrants we have taken in for the past 50 years. Then maybe in about 2075 — when my grandchildren are reaching retirement age — you can reconsider.


 

 

‘For the Wrath of God Is Revealed From Heaven Against All Ungodliness …’

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Thus begins one of the most powerful passages of Scripture, and I was pleased today to learn from Denise McAllister that this has become the inspiration for a new website, Romans One. It is an ambitious and high-minded project, as the editors explain their intended mission:

Why choose this part of the Bible as the foundation of our message? Because we are living in those times. America was once a nation in which the Christian worldview graced every part of society from academics and journalism to science and politics, but now it looks more like godless Rome in the first century when the apostle Paul wrote a “cultural commentary” of his own. No doubt the Roman Christians were as frustrated and perplexed about how to engage the culture as Christians are today. They needed help, and Paul gave it to them.
In his letter to the Romans, Paul explains that the only answer to the immorality and willful ignorance plaguing humanity is the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is as true today as it was then, especially when America, like Rome, has embraced an ethos of sex, lies, and idolatry—the trio of depravity that is intertwined like serpents to form a death grip on culture.
What are Christians to do when faced with overwhelming hostility to their faith and such profound rejection of the truth about God, human nature, and society as a whole? Some Christians today feel so besieged that they are withdrawing from the public square. Others are wringing their hands in frustration, feeling powerless to make a difference. Still others are simply ignorant of what’s going on. Worse, some Christians so reflect the image of the culture that they have become part of the problem, appearing no different from the world around them and unable to be salt and light among the lost. . . .

You can (and should) read the rest.

Lot of that “wrath of God” stuff going around lately . . .




 

Fish Stories

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— by Wombat-socho

No, not that kind of fish story.

“Mermaid’s Dinner” by Sue Halstenberg

For some reason we don’t have a Food category among our tags, which is odd because I distinctly recall doing at least one post on burgers in my decade of blogging here at The Other McCain. In any case, this being Lent, it’s time to provide a brief review of the various fishburgers that the fast food chains of America roll out this time of year, the better to serve us Catholics who are supposed to be abstaining from meat on Fridays.

McDonald’s
Let us begin with the basic fishburger, the Filet-O-Fish served at the Golden Arches. This is truly your generic fishburger, made from Dagon knows what kind of fish & fish byproducts, topped with a slice of American Style Pasteurized Processed Cheese-like Substance, and smothered with entirely too much tartar sauce. There is also a Double Filet-O-Fish for those unsatisfied with the basic version. Cheap, filling, and that’s about all you can say for it. 70/100

Jack In The Box
Another generic fishburger. Outpoints McD’s because of larger fries and soda.
72/100

Checker’s/Rally’s
Rated slightly higher than McD’s because of the peppery fries, otherwise pretty much the same thing.
73/100.

Arby’s
Actually resembles a fish filet; it actually looks like you’re getting half an Alaskan pollock in your sammich. Yuge – hangs over the side of the bun. Beats the generic fishburger because it has no cheese or other adulteration and actually has a fishlike taste. Bonus points for curly fries.
85/100

Wendy’s
Allegedly made from hand-cut cod, looks and taste a cut above Arby’s because of better breading (panko) and because cod is better than pollack, which is Eskimo for “generic whitefish”. Unfortunately, the superior taste is ruined by pickles.
87/100

Burger King
I was surprised that BK’s Big Fish surpassed Wendy’s; while it’s made of panko-breaded pollack, which you would think would place it halfway between Wendy’s & Arby’s, in fact it is the superior sandwich because it’s served on a toasted bun, without pickles. Cheese is optional.
90/100

Culver’s
Unfortunately, we don’t have a Culver’s in Las Vegas; one has to drive up to St. George to enjoy their walleye sandwich, which is outstanding. Would be perfect if only Culver’s served Coke product.
99/100

Honorable mention: Del Taco
Del Taco doesn’t serve fishburgers, but they do offer fish tacos and shrimp tacos, both of which are yummy.

Dishonorable mention: Chick-Fil-A
For some reason, the home of God’s Only Begotten Chicken Sammich does not serve fish of any kind in Las Vegas. Truly regrettable.

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A Curse Be Upon Them: NY Times Blames America’s Christianity for #Coronavirus

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The New York Times is published by atheist perverts who hate America, and who have covered themselves in disgrace for decades. They forfeited whatever credibility they still had when they refused to return the Pulitzer they got for Walter Duranty’s Stalinist propaganda during the Soviet “show trial” era, and their irresponsible reporting about the Duke University rape hoax helped incite a campus firestorm that, among other things, radicalized Trump adviser Stephen Miller.

Now, however, the New York Times has blasphemed against the Most High, and has viciously attacked God’s people, in an op-ed column blaming Christians for the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak:

The argument, by journalist and author Katherine Stewart, is that because religious voters supported Trump, that means he governs without regard for science.
Stewart also claims that Republicans, more than Democrats, are likely to deny science.
In her op-ed, titled “The Road to Coronavirus Hell Was Paved by Evangelicals,” she writes:

Donald Trump rose to power with the determined assistance of a movement that denies science, bashes government and prioritized loyalty over professional expertise. In the current crisis, we are all reaping what that movement has sown.
At least since the 19th century, when the proslavery theologian Robert Lewis Dabney attacked the physical sciences as “theories of unbelief,” hostility to science has characterized the more extreme forms of religious nationalism in the United States.

She then goes on to provide several quotes from pastors who pushed back against the idea of closing their churches.
Stewart admits: “By all accounts, President Trump’s tendency to trust his gut over the experts on issues like vaccines and climate change does not come from any deep-seated religious conviction.”
But she adds: “But he is perfectly in tune with the religious nationalists who form the core of his base.”

 

Putting aside, for now, the partisan bias involved — Ms. Stewart and the New York Times are only against religion when it gives them an opportunity to attack Republicans — what of their effrontery in defaming the 19th-century Presbyterian theologian R.L. Dabney? They might as well have dragged down in the mud the names of Knox, Calvin and Luther, and indeed all of the Apostles, as no honest student of the Bible could ever have disputed Dabney’s faithfulness to the Gospel.

You would never see the New York Times smearing Muslims this way, and indeed they would be the first to scream “Islamophobia!” at anyone who dared mention the many Muslim beliefs and practices that liberals might otherwise find objectionable. Likewise, you won’t find any criticism of the (alleged) Catholicism of Andrew Cuomo or Nancy Pelosi in the New York Times. It is only those Christians who vote Republican whose faith is routinely impugned by the New York Times.

By the way, do you know how it was that Katherine Stewart came to be an “expert” on the Religious Right? A Boston native, she moved to California where the local public school had a Bible study club, as approved by the Supreme Court in its 2001 decision Good News Club v. Milford Central School. Stewart became so angry that such a club existed that she wrote an entire book about this vast right-wing conspiracy “to convert children to fundamentalist Christianity.”

There is a specific set of “fundamentalist” beliefs that the Left finds objectionable. To believe in Sola Scriptura — the authority of the Bible — is objectionable to the Left, since a Bible-based faith contradicts the moral relativism and man-made authority the Left prefers.

Supposedly, the Bible is “anti-science,” and therefore Christians are to blame for the spread of coronavirus in the United States. This argument fails to explain, of course, why the Chinese in Wuhan were eating bats, a practice specifically condemned by the Bible (Deuteronomy 12:18).

This column by Katherine Stewart (@kathsstewart on Twitter) is the point of no return. By publishing this column, the New York Times has finally — unmistakably and irrevocably — declared war on God. Let us pray that the Almighty will pour out His undiluted wrath upon them. Let them go bankrupt and be utterly obliterated. Pray to God that this destruction should come upon them suddenly, “as a thief in the night.”

Selah.