Monthly Archives: May 2009

Politics

One of Obama’s worst ideas

And he’s had lots of bad ideas.

The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is a controversial bill that was passed by the House in 2007 and stalled in Senate 2008.  It was reintroduced to Legislature as of March 2009.  Obama has committed to passing it.

It is an awful bill that will do great damage to our economy.

Current Law (NLRA)  

  • If 30% support union, NLRB grants a “Secret Ballot Election”. 
  • Union certified if majority vote is YES.
  • Companies must “bargain” in good faith but are not required to reach an agreement.

Proposed Law (EFCA)

  • Card Check – If over 50% of cards affirm union support then the NLRB certifies the union without an election.
  • If no contract is reached within 120 days, a binding arbitration guaranteed contract for 2 years is put in place without a vote.

Eliminating secret ballots could lead to union intimidation, unfair representation, etc.  Union organizers can follow people out in public, get in their faces, pressure them to sign cards, etc. 

Unfair binding arbitration will have all sorts of consequences.  Once you get a union it is almost impossible to get rid of it.  They cost jobs.  The U.S. automakers made lots of bad decisions over the years, but the unions were the biggest catalyst in their failures.  You simply can’t compete when your costs are that much higher than your competitors.

EFCA is profoundly un-American and bad idea.

Politics

George Tiller probably won’t RIP

It is between him and God, of course, but killing unborn children for a living hardly qualifies as good fruit — even if you do go to church on Sunday. 

And this guy didn’t just do abortions, he did “partial birth abortions,” AKA infanticide.  The pro-aborts are mourning him and even holding vigils.  Ugh.

And what kind of a church lets a guy like that be a member, let alone serve?

From AP:

Dr. George Tiller, one of the nation’s few providers of late-term abortions despite decades of protests and attacks, was shot and killed Sunday in a church where he was serving as an usher.

As Melinda noted at Stand to Reason, Killing Abortionists Is Wrong. Period.

A friend pointed out the irony of this statement about Tiller:

The family said its loss “is also a loss for the city of Wichita and women across America. George dedicated his life to providing women with high-quality health care despite frequent threats and violence.”

And more irony:

President Barack Obama said he was “shocked and outraged” by the murder. “However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence,” he said.

Of course we shouldn’t resort to killing abortionists, but abortion itself is a heinous act of violence.  If abortion isn’t violent, nothing is.  It should be illegal, just as killing Tiller was illegal.

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I saw one Christian writing that the murderer took away Tiller’s chance to repent.  Don’t worry, folks, God is sovereign. No one will be able to claim that they just needed a little more time to repent and believe.

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Another writer said to pray for his soul.  Uh, sorry folks, too late for that. 

Hebrews 9:27 Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment

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Also see The Wintery Knight blog, which “strongly condemns all abortion-related violence, whether it’s committed against the born or the unborn,” while asking if it is rational for atheists to condemn his murder.

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I subscribe to over 100 blogs.  Well over a dozen have commented on this.  I’ve yet to see one that didn’t condemn the murder, though I’m sure the MSM will ignore the clear and consistent principles of the pro-live movement and try to demonize and broad-brush us with this.

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Bible

Authorities Forbid Bible Study

Authorities Forbid Bible Study : Stop The ACLU — This has been reported on all over on blogs, but I wanted to make a quick note about it. 

When I first heard it I figured it must be some type of urban legend.  Apparently not.

Pastor David Jones and his wife Mary have been told that they cannot invite friends to their San Diego, Calif. home for a Bible study — unless they are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars to San Diego County.

“On Good Friday we had an employee from San Diego County come to our house, and inform us that the Bible study that we were having was a religious assembly, and in violation of the code in the county.” David Jones told FOX News.

“We told them this is not really a religious assembly — this is just a Bible study with friends. We have a meal, we pray, that was all,” Jones said.

A few days later, the couple received a written warning that cited “unlawful use of land,” ordering them to either “stop religious assembly or apply for a major use permit,” the couple’s attorney Dean Broyles told San Diego news station 10News.

But the major use permit could cost the Jones’ thousands of dollars just to have a few friends over.

They should win easily on appeal, what with that pesky First Amendment thingy that Obama hasn’t completely repealed yet.

Christian worldview

The Immaculate (Mis)conception

I was recently corrected by a fellow blogger because I used the term “Immaculate Conception” in an erroneous way.  I always thought the term referred to Jesus’ conception, but it turns out that it refers to the false teaching that Mary was conceived without original sin.  My bad.

(As noted on the Sorry, but Mary can’t save you post, there is no biblical justification for Mary being sinless and plenty demonstrating that despite her unique role and great example she was a sinner in need of a Savior just like us.  If Mary “had” to be sinless, as many commenters claimed, then by that reasoning her parents had to have been sinless as well, and their parents, and so on.  And if she could have been sinless through some other means, then of course that could have applied to Jesus as well.  If you need more please read that thread.  I don’t want to replay that discussion here.)

But back to my mistake . . . there are a few takeaways from this experience.

Important life lesson: If you become sure that you are wrong about something then the best thing to do is quickly concede that point.  It is an effective strategy at work and at home.  Don’t let pride get in the way.  It just makes you look bad.

The person who corrected me was factual, polite and discreet, taking the time to gently correct me via email.  A comment on the blog would have been fine, but I appreciated his extra effort and friendly tone.  I let him know that I sincerely appreciated the correction.  I would have hated to continue using the term in error, so what he did was the loving, Christian thing.

Also, it is fun to point out to my critics that I’m not the rigid, dogmatic fundy they like to pretend I am.  You see, if you show me legitimate evidence that my views are wrong I will gladly change them.

It is just that I’ve exhaustively studied issues like abortion, oxymoronic “same sex marriage,” what the Bible teaches about human sexuality, the divinity of Jesus, the fact of Jesus’ resurrection, the exclusivity of Jesus, etc.  and am extremely confident that the facts support my views.  Is it possible, in a hyper-technical sense, that I could be wrong on any of those topics?  I suppose so, but the evidence just isn’t there to demonstrate that. 

But under no circumstance can they claim I’m not correctable.  I seriously doubt that they’ll be correctable on their false view that I’m not.  Abandoning life in Stereotype Land is just too hard for some people

Speaking of immaculate things, I do have faith in the Immaculate Reception and the Immaculate Interception.  Go Steelers!

Politics

If you don’t even understand the job description . . .

. . . you shouldn’t get the job.

All you need is 26 seconds to know that Sotomayar is unqualified:

This wasn’t some slip of the tongue or misstatement.  We should be charitable to anyone who makes an innocent misstatement and let them correct it.  But as one blogger put it, this was pure wink-wink-nudge-nudge.  She made no secret of how she really felt and the audience laughed along. 

Given her errors on the role of judges, she is not only unqualified to be a Supreme Court justice, she isn’t even qualified to judge a local dog show.  I mean that in the most literal sense.  Judges interpret laws, they don’t make them.  It couldn’t be more simple. 

I am the VP of an Internal Audit group.  We may make recommendations at times, but we don’t create the rules.  We just audit the organizations and see if they are in compliance.  It is a similar situation as with being a judge.  Different entities have different roles and responsibilities.  Things get really messed up in a hurry when one group does another group’s job.

I was very proud of my high school daughters when they read Obama’s views on judges and immediately realized he was 180 degrees from the truth.

Speaking at the Planned Parenthood conference in DC this afternoon, Barack Obama leveled harsh words at conservative Supreme Court justices, and he offered his own intention to appoint justices with “empathy.”Obama hinted that the court’s recent decision in Gonzales v. Carhart — which upheld a ban on partial-birth abortion — was part of “a concerted effort to steadily roll back” access to abortions. And he ridiculed Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote that case’s majority opinion. “Justice Kennedy knows many things,” he declared, “but my understanding is that he does not know how to be a doctor.”

Obama also won a laugh at the expense of Chief Justice John Roberts, saying that judgments of Roberts’ character during his confirmation hearings were largely superficial. “He loves his wife. He’s good to his dog,” he joked, adding that judicial philosophy should be weighted more seriously than such evaluations. “We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that’s the criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges.”

The Bumbling Genius has a great piece about the tragedy of this situation.  Check it out.

Side note: The news said she would make the sixth Catholic on the S.C.  No one seems to mind, though, because as a pro-abortionist she’s about as Catholic as I am. 

This is one of the greatest reasons the last election counted so much.  Shame on the Christians who voted for Obama.

Will she ultimately get nominated?  Sure, but the Republicans need to do their jobs and educate people on what judges are supposed to do.  One of Bush’s biggest failures was not communicating his message.  He could have stood up every week and explained why abortion is wrong, for example.

Roundup

Roundup

Government run businesses = Epic fail — But hey, things are different now.  These guys can definitely run GM, the banks, all of our health care, etc., right?

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Mormon women sure seem to get a raw deal — a summary of some lesser known teachings about marriage and how Mormon women supposedly get into Heaven. 

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Domestic Divapalooza makes some good points on the No H8 campaign — The commercial starts with their favorite false dichotomies: Either you are fully behind the pro-gay agenda or you hate gays.   Either you support “same sex marriage” or you are anti-gay.  Sure.

Then they try the “equality” ploy.  But skin color is morally neutral and sexual behavior is not.  “Same sex marriage” is an oxymoron. They have as much right to it as I have to a square circle.  Pointing that out doesn’t mean I hate gays.

I know quite a few gays.  We get along great.  One is the retired dance teacher for the girls.  I saw him at the Cinderella performance and we hugged (Eek, right?).  A couple of the guys I performed with were gay.  We talked about family, work, etc.  Shocking, eh? 

Hopefully some counter-ads will explain these remarkably simple concepts.

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Obama’s Supreme Court nominee looks like  a jurisprudence train wreck — I won’t blog much about her given that the news is everywhere on this.  Just imagine if a white guy had said a different version of the following:

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.

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If You Care about Hygiene, Don’t Stay at the Hilton Chicago Hotel — Host to ‘International Mr. Leather’ Deviant-Sex-Fest — Caution: Graphic.  Just one more thing that your friendly liberal Christians support as a “Civil Rights” issue.

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Pro-life

Pro-abortion Fallacies-R-Us and more

I participated on an interesting thread at a blog hosted by a guy named Ed. I typically make it a practice to ignore it when Ed links to my site. But it has been a while since he (the first person banned from commenting at my site) had linked, so curiosity got the best of me. I discovered that Ed had been lying about me multiple times and continued to do so on that thread. 

But what was most interesting was the non-stop fallacies they threw out to defend abortion.  I finally made a summary to I could just copy and paste the responses when they would repeat them.

1. I don’t throw the word “liar” around lightly. People can be mistaken, and that isn’t lying. But when one is corrected, when one clearly knows better and when one deliberately repeats untruths then we have a name for that person: Liar.

The pattern was repetitive: Ed uses a ridiculous logical fallacy, Neil calls him on it, Ed lies and said Neil did it, Ed fails to concede the obvious or apologize, Ed uses the fallacy again. I addressed Ed’s use of a guilt by association fallacy regarding Joseph Stalin multiple times on my blog. I also confronted him about it on other blogs. And he used it reflexively on his blog. So the origin couldn’t have been more clear. Just read the comments section of this post and search for Stalin. And as a dog returns to his vomit, so Ed returns to his embarrassing use of a logical fallacy.

But then I came back to this site and found that he had accused me of bringing it up!

I objected to Simpson’s off-the-wall claim trying to link Darwin to Stalin in an exchange some time ago.

It’s a reference to last year’s discussions with Simpson, in which he inaccurately tried to link Stalin to Darwin’s sins.

I couldn’t care less what Ed thinks of me, but I was surprised to see him lying to thoroughly and repeatedly. I figured a public service announcement was in order.

Ed also breaks his own rule a lot:

“Darrell’s Corollary of Godwin’s Law is that if posters in an internet discussion know to avoid the mention of Hitler to avoid their opponents’ invoking Godwin’s law, they’ll compare the actions to Stalin instead.”

After countless comments he finally conceded what he had done.  No accompanying apology, but I didn’t expect that.

2. You see, the most important and amusing part of the thread is that the Mr. Science People deliberately and repeatedly ignore the scientific fact that a new human life begins at conception. They aren’t using intellectual honesty to follow the truth where it leads. They come to science with their biases and twist the data to conform to them. Propping up their pro-abortion views puts them at odds with scientific facts but they work hard to rationalize them away. They use (bad) philosophical arguments and not scientific ones.

If he was really pro-science he’d be pro-life. Embryology textbooks are clear about when life begins, but he chooses to rationalize that away to support the legalized crushing and dismemberment of 3,000+ human beings per day. It is so ironic that he cranks out posts about “dangerous, anti-science bigoted ignorance” when his views on abortion fit that title perfectly.

Nothing is more dangerous to the unborn than abortion. If you get out of the womb alive you are very lucky. Abortion constitutes 99% of all murders.

3. Nick repeatedly tried the Pro-lifers don’t care about kids after they are born canard. I demonstrated multiple times that one can protest immoral acts without taking ownership of them. If the government decided to jail or kill all homeless people, Nick could protest that without having to let them all live with him.

I also pointed out how even though pro-lifers don’t have to adopt all the kids to protest the evils of abortion, we do all sorts of things to help with our own time and money.

4. Ed and Nick have lived in Liberal Land too long. The concept of personal responsibility is foreign to them. They continually argue that I am “forcing” these women to have babies.   I’m not sure if they thought I’m the father of 1,000,000+ pregnancies per year (Really, I’m not.  I’m a serial monogamist) or if they think these are all unplanned in vitro fertilizations.

But these people have already created new life. I’m just interested in protecting that new life. But Ed & Nick reflexively latch on to the prejudice that to be pro-life is to want to control women. Tell that to all the female pro-lifers.

5. They continually abandon scientific arguments and use faulty “if legal, then moral” reasoning. Yes, abortions are legal. But while slavery used to be legal, it was always immoral.

6. They ignore the scientific fact that these aren’t hypothetical human beings or potential human beings. They already exist on planet earth. They are at the proper stage of development for their age.

7. They both exercise anti-religious bigotry and prejudices to dismiss my views. I pointed out that while I am a Christian, I save biblical arguments for those who claim to be Christians. The pro-life case is so powerful that you don’t even need the Bible to demonstrate it. And of course, there is nothing illogical about using my religious views to inform my political views. No one seems to protest when I use my religious views to oppose stealing, perjury and murder. Oh, and there is also that First Amendment thingy.

They missed the irony, of course, that they also used religious arguments to justify their positions. Nick used a bad exegesis of Exodus to rationalize abortion. Not only did he cherry-pick a mistranslation to make his point, but he ignored the legions of pro-life verses, starting with “don’t murder.” But my main point is by his own reasoning Nick is forcing his pro-abortion religious views on innocent unborn children. What hypocrisy!

In addition, he just repeated his claim that Exodus supports abortion but never defended it with facts. He didn’t even attempt to refute the scholarship in the link that I provided, which went back to the original language and demonstrated how some poor translations led to pro-abortionists misusing the passage.

8. And of course they trotted out the “anti-women” ad hominem attack. They had no response to my questions about why they support gender selection abortions, virtually all of which destroy innocent female human beings. They ignore the reality of post abortion trauma and the chauvinism of abortion, which puts the burden on the woman to use it as a form of birth control. I also pointed out how the pro-life position is actually pro-women. Many women are pushed into abortions by men who won’t take responsibility for their actions.

I reject the reasoning that says women must have the ability to kill their unborn children to prove their worth and to fit into society, the workplace and politics.

9. Nick tried to act like I was hypocritical for not wanting to finance the care of unwanted children, but he didn’t realize that he was pointing fingers back at himself. In his “kindness” he unwittingly concedes that he would prefer that unborn human beings be destroyed rather than inconvenience him.

10. Ed objected to a link I posted with images of abortion. But if abortion is a moral good and doesn’t kill an innocent human being then what could be wrong with showing images of it? And why is Ed so concerned about the innocence of these alleged children who read his blog? He fully supported the “rights” of their mothers to have them crushed and dismembered before they were born, and now he wants to profess his concern that viewing images of this allegedly moral procedure will harm them?

11. They tried the angle multiple times that I don’t use evidence, but I’m the one who used evidence throughout: Evidence that Ed is a unrepentant liar, evidence that the book of Exodus does not support abortion and evidence that a new human life is formed at conception. They were the ones with the fact-free fallacy-fest.

12. Ed claimed that I want to poison Africa. Sure, Ed. I pointed out that I’ve been on mission trips there three times, have donated tens of thousands of dollars to various causes there and have had a World Vision Sponsor child there for ten years. I don’t say that out of pride, just to point out how ridiculous it is for him to say I want to poison Africa. I’m still waiting to hear just how much Ed has contributed to Africa in terms of his own time and money.

13. Ed added these new lies:

The point is that you advocate creationism to be taught to innocent children in schools.

Nick parroted Ed’s lie that I push for creationism to be taught in public schools and he made all sorts of vicious accusations in doing so. I challenged them to find any evidence of that in the nearly 1,000 posts I’ve done on my blog. They found none. I am on record for saying that I don’t want non-Christians or theologically Liberal Christians (but I repeat myself?) to teach the Bible in public schools. They would probably teach that all religions lead to God, Jesus is not God, there is no Hell, the Bible can’t be relied upon, God is pro-abortion and pro-gay marriage, etc.

Was Nick lying? I don’t think so. I think he was using bad discernment in trusting Ed without evidence and was prideful in failing to apologize for his outburst.

14. Nick claimed that since it would be ineffective to make abortion illegal because it wouldn’t eliminate all abortions. That reasoning would mean we’d get rid of all laws, because despite the risks people still steal, rape, murder, etc. So his argument is faulty because it proves to much.

15. Ed claimed I was bigoted for disagreeing with Rachel Carson because she was unmarried. The only problems with that are a) I didn’t know she was unmarried, b) it wouldn’t have mattered even if I had known and c) using that “reasoning” you could never disagree with a woman or any minority without Ed calling you a bigot.

16. Ed tried the miscarriage canard by implying that abortion must not be wrong if miscarriages happen so frequently. It is hard to believe I have to explain this, but killing an infant by chopping him up is a “little” different than if the infant succumbed to SIDS. In the same way, the unborn are scientifically proven to be human beings. Death via abortion is wildly different than a miscarriage.

17. Nick tried the “better dead than poor” line. I wonder why it took him so long. It is as fallacious as ever. The “your pro-life policies will result in more poor” line ignores the fact that Nick’s pro-abortion policies will result in more dead.

So according to Nick, it would be good to kill poor children.

It also ignores the fact that only 23% of abortions are due to inadequate funds at the moment, not that it would be a moral reason to kill an innocent human being.  The source of that figure was from Planned Parenthood’s research arm.

18. Ed tried the “keep government out of bedrooms” fallacy, which ignores that the government shouldn’t care where murders are committed. You can’t kill a toddler in your bedroom. And of course, if he really held that view he’d oppose Planned Parenthood funding and involvement in schools, as well as any government involvement with Gardasil.

19. Ed repeatedly used the viability argument, concluding that abortion was acceptable because the unborn weren’t viable. That fails on many levels. Lots of people outside the womb aren’t viable without care (e.g., infants) but we don’t let people chop them up. And many human beings who are aborted are viable. The viability argument is philosophical, not scientific. The science is clear: Abortion kills an innocent human being.

Also, that argument implies that Ed is firmly against partial birth abortions (aka infanticide), which, if true, he has never bothered to mention.

20. If you ban Ed from your blog for moronic, repetitive comments he accuses you of being a censor (I didn’t know I was the government and the only blog in town!). But he is glad to advance the idiocy that to even question macro-evolution is to be slowing down the cure for cancer, and he can’t stand the thought that schools would teach the strengths and weaknesses of his worldview — oops, I mean his pet (false) theory.

BTW, here’s a direct quote from Ed:

It’s absolutely true: Every dime spent advocating ID is a dime deprived from working for a cure for cancer. And, I’m still waiting for you to explain how your views on Darwin differ from Stalin’s.

I know that sounds made up, but it isn’t!

The irony is lost on him that while he is busy throwing around the guilt-by-association Stalin fallacy he is the one trying to shut down the free exchange of ideas. Hey, maybe the irony isn’t lost on him . . . he’s probably just cynical enough to do it deliberately. He doesn’t appear to have any shame. At least the guys exposed in Expelled! are a little more subtle than Ed.

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I’ve probably missed some things, but that will give you a flavor for their tactics and “reasoning.”

Summary: Normally I follow Proverbs 26:2 and ignore things like Ed’s petty personal attack above, but I decided that he needed a little lesson here. Plus, it was fun to demonstrate how anti-science he really was. And if he is such an unrepentant liar and his biases keep him from understanding “2+2” scientific concepts such as how a new human life begins at conception, why should I trust him on topics like evolution, DDT or Gardasil?

Abortion is the greatest moral issue of our time. Over 3,000 innocent human beings will be destroyed today in the name of “choice.” It is a scientific fact that these are human beings. It is a shame that so many allegedly in the pro-science crowd deny that truth.

Bible

Sorry, but Mary can’t save you

Update 2: I finally figured out how to turn comments off.  I think 308 is enough.  Thanks to all the commenters for participating.  Everything has been said multiple times by now.  If you don’t like something, just keep reading and you’ll find someone who agrees with you.

The comments at Dawn Eden’s place were pretty much the same arguments refuted here.  Ironically, she titled her piece Attention, Catholic apologists: Share Mary with a skeptical Evangelical, thus tipping her hand that it is just as much about sharing Mary as it is sharing Jesus for them.  While I might talk about Paul, Peter or others in the Bible, it would never occur to me to say I was going to “share” them with someone.  It should all be about Jesus when it comes to that.

For the record, I am not skeptical at all.  I am highly confident that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.  I am equally confident that his mother, while a sinner in need of a Savior, was a great woman of God whose life teaches many important lessons. But under no circumstances should we pray to her or bow down to an idol of her, and under no circumstances are you required to have a relationship with her to get to Jesus.

Here are some of the more common arguments of the “Mary defenders.”

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A common false dichotomy was that you are either on the Catholic bandwagon for Mary or you are dishonoring her.  There is at least one other option: A proper understanding of her role.  This came up over and over.

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They agree that the Bible is infallible, which should be a great foundation for us both to reference.  However, they then dive into a circular reference where they insist that you need the authority of the Catholic church to determine what the Bible really says.  But where do they get that authority?  I challenged them to demonstrate it from the Bible and no one offered anything.  Even if they found something, it would be circular.  They often beg the question and assume that “church” means “Roman Catholic Church.”

And as noted elsewhere, if we can’t read the Bible and understand it without the Catholic church interpretation, what guarantees that we’ll be able to understand the Catholic church interpretation?   Of course it is helpful to have experts and study guides, but the Bible doesn’t require that.

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Lots of non sequitors about how Jesus loved his mother, so [fill in the blank].  Yes, Jesus loved his mother, but that doesn’t mean we should pray to her or bow to her idol. 

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The immaculate conception argument about Mary goes in circles.  They want to claim that she had to be without sin so Jesus could be born un-tainted.  But then it stands to reason that Mary’s parents must have been born without sin as well, and their parents, and their parents . . .  otherwise Mary would have been tainted.  Then they backtrack to say that something special was done at Mary’s birth.  But, uh, why couldn’t that have been done at Jesus’ birth as well?  Back to the beginning.

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Read the New Testament and look for mentions of Mary.  The Book of Acts: one passing mention noting that she was n the room.  That’s it.

Romans?  Zero.  1 Corinthians?  Zero.  2 Corinthians?  Zero.  Hebrews?  Zero. And on and on.

I am not dismissing her importance, but the facts are clear: She was not a part of the Gospel message.  There are no references to her leading people to Jesus, answering prayers, etc. 

The apparitions of Mary typically have unbiblical or anti-biblical messages.  Therefore, they are not from God.

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Despite claims to the contrary, there is much evidence of people praying to Mary and other saints and bowing to idols of her.  I’ve seen it myself and many on this thread conceded that they pray to saints.   Not just talk to the saints, but pray to them.

Here are pictures and just a sample of documentation.

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A common argument was that we ask friends to pray, so we can ask the deceased to pray as well.  I think the difference is fairly obvious:

  1. The deceased are deceased, unlike friends here who are alive. 
  2. The Bible says not to contact the deceased.
  3. The Bible does give examples of asking the non-deceased to pray.
  4. The Bible does not even hint that the dead have omniscience or anything close to it.

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A common claim was that if the Catholic church got the Bible right, then all tradition is infallible. Anyone see how that doesn’t follow?  Paul got his letters just right, but not everything he did was inspired.

They don’t demonstrate how the organization that administered the Canonization process is synonymous with the Roman Catholic Church.

They ignore the laundry list of errors the church has committed.  Again, I’m not saying the Protestants get everything right.  But they aren’t claiming infallible traditions, either.

We agree on the infallibility of the Bible, which is a great starting point.  No one ever demonstrated from our common source how the Catholic church’s tradition is infallible as well.

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I’ve heard of people praying to Saint so-and-so when they lose their keys.  Then they find the keys and treat that as validation.

But remember that Satan knows where your keys are. If you pray to the dead in clear violation of Scripture then God is under no obligation to answer you or protect you.

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The “infallible tradition” position and the notion that we have to have the Roman Catholic Church interpret the Bible  for us fail in other ways.

First, consider that the Bible teaches how to handle disputed matters. Now if the church was infallible and couldn’t get the interpretation wrong, why would the Bible mention such a thing?

Second, how do you know if you properly understood the message of the church?  If you can’t be trusted to understand the infallible Bible then why can you be trusted to understand the church’s allegedly infallible interpretation of it?  Think carefully about that.  It is bulletproof.

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When addressing the false teachings about praying to saints, I typically start by pointing out that the burden of proof is on the Catholics to demonstrate from scripture that the saints can hear the prayers of over 6 billion people 24 x 7 x 365 in any language. 

I read countless “just so” stories and hypothetical situations, but none with scriptural evidence and many that were in direct violation of scripture.

We should only pray to God.  Simple stuff.
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I encourage newcomers to search for “Marie,”  “Glenn” or “Wintery Knight” and read their comments.  Great points.

Peace,
Neil

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Update: A special welcome to visitors from Dawn’s blog!  Feel free to comment or look around.  We will probably not agree on the topic of Marian devotion, but you might enjoy some of the pro-life, pro-family and other pieces.

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I have great respect for Dawn Eden’s pro-life endeavors and her promotion of abstinence in her book, The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On.  She makes winsome and compelling cases on some important issues.

But a sad side of her life transformation is that she has wholly embraced Catholicism and its false teachings.  Please note that I know many Catholics who hold authentic Christian beliefs about the essentials.  They are “bad Catholics” in the sense that they don’t buy the un-Biblical dogma from the bowels of the Roman Catholic Church such as Mary-worship, praying to the saints, purgatory, salvation by works, Papal infallibility, etc.  Their local parishes actually teach fairly sound doctrine.  I think there are many saved people in Catholic churches just as there are many unsaved people in Protestant churches.  It all comes down to having true faith in Christ.

Dawn recently had a link highlighting a video about a man struggling spiritually.  He was crying out for help.  Guess who saved him.  Jesus?  No, it was Mary.  The “highlight” of the video was a vision of Mary that shifted to a statue of Mary.  Just your basic idol worship.

I’ve read the Bible a bunch.  I see remarkably few passages about Mary and none that even hint at the role the Catholic church ascribes to her.  Granted, Protestants sometimes overreact the other direction and ignore her, but they are far closer to the truth than Catholics.

I submit that if a vision of Mary comes to you then it isn’t the real Mary.  It is Satan, who is leading you away from the truth.

Mary can’t save you. 

Jesus can.

I do encourage commenters to focus on the post itself and not just attempt to re-create the Reformation (as great as the first one was!).  The video in question wasn’t just about having admiration for Mary.  The protagonist specifically cries out for God and Mary appears.  That’s really, really bad theology.

Politics

More False Teachers ‘R Us

Just a quick Saturday morning fisk of the latest inanities of the “Reverend” Chuck Currie (the unrepentent liar and class act who thought Wanda Sykes’ bit for Obama was hysterical and who claims, without evidence, that some Christian aid groups only help heterosexuals).

Liberty University, the “school” founded by the late Jerry Falwell, has banned a student run Democratic Party club because:

“The Democratic Party platform is contrary to the mission of Liberty University and to Christian doctrine (supports abortion, federal funding of abortion, advocates repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, promotes the “LGBT” agenda, hate crimes, which include sexual orientation and gender identity, socialism, etc.)”

Let’s review the record:

  • Democrats support economic policies that lift people out of poverty and create a more level playing field.  Republicans support economic policies that benefit the wealthy at the expense of the poor (those Jesus would have called “the least of these”) and middle class.

No, Democrats support socialism and job and wealth destroying policies.  Some of them have good intentions but know nothing about history, economics or basic human nature. 

Democrats support unrestricted destruction of the “least of these,” the unborn.

Democrats ignore the incredible success of the United States and capitalism, which has done more to lift people out of poverty than any other -ism.

Democrats ignore that conservatives give more of their own time, money and blood, while people like Currie advocate taking other people’s money at the point of a gun to fund their counterproductive ideas.

  • Democrats are working toward the goal of universal health care.  Republicans opposed even expanding health care for children.

Regarding “expanding health care for children,” Republicans know a Trojan Horse when they see one. 

Univeral health care is an awful idea and is being sold with lies.

  • Democrats back civil rights for all Americans.  Republicans oppose equality in many cases.

That is code for “Republicans don’t want to confer Civil Rights based on perverted sexual preferences.”  Yep.  Skin color is morally neutral, sexual preferences are not.

  • Democrats are trying to stop global climate change.  Republicans, while taking money from polluters, often argue there is no climate change occuring.

Republicans aren’t suckers.  Democrats, while taking money from extreme Liberals, often argue that they have evidence for man-made global warming and that their “fixes” won’t destroy jobs.  They are wrong.

  • Democrats are against torture.  Republicans embrace it.

Republicans oppose crushing and dismembering innocent human beings (warning: graphic link).  Democrats embrace it.  It is their God-mocking issue.

Some Republicans don’t have an issue with waterboarding three known terrorist leaders to save countless lives. 

I wonder if Chuck would prefer to be waterboarded or to have his skull crushed and limbs ripped off without anesthetic?

God is not a Republican…or a Democrat, says Jim Wallis, and he is right.  But Liberty University itself seems pretty far removed from anything that resembles the teachings of Jesus.   

Wallis is one of the biggest fakes going.  He uses his “God is not a Republican . . . or a Democrat” sound bite ad nauseam then proceeds to explain why God supports all of Wallis’ Democratic policies. 

Chuck disagrees with Jesus on virtually everything (his divinity, his exclusivity, his views on the Bible, his views on marriage, his views on other religions, his views on murder, etc.) so it is laughable that he would criticize anyone for not being in sync with Jesus.  If you want to know what Jesus thinks it is a safe bet to take the opposite position of liberal theologians like Chuck.

And where are the shrill calls from the ACLU et al regarding Wallis’ imposition of a theocracy?  Oh, right, they only fight religious views they disagree with — or do they just intuitively realize that the Lefties are really worshiping themselves and not God?