Tag Archives: Dawn Eden

Bible

Sorry, but Mary can’t save you or even hear you. Don’t pray to her.

This showed up in my stats from 2009, so I thought I’d update and rerun it.  It is still wrong to pray to anyone other than the Trinity.

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 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 about 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 would “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 we required to have a relationship with her to get to Jesus.

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

—

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.

—

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.”

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

—

There are many non-sequiturs 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.

—

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.

—

Read the New Testament and look for mentions of Mary.  The Book of Acts: one passing note that she was in 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, appearing to anyone, etc. 

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

—
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 them but pray to them.

Here is a sample of documentation.

—

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.

—
A common claim was that if the Catholic church got the Bible right, all tradition is infallible. Does 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 that the Bible is infallible, which is a great starting point. However, no one has ever demonstrated from our common source that the Catholic church’s tradition is infallible.

—-

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.

—–

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 disputable matters in Romans 14. 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 church’s message? 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.

—–

When addressing the false teachings about praying to saints, I typically start by pointing out that the Catholics have the burden of proof to demonstrate from scripture that the saints can hear the prayers of nearly 8 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.
—–

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

—–

I greatly respect 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.  But we should seek to avoid all errors and find the most sound churches we can.

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

Favorites, Politics, Pro-life

Planned Parenthood overview

29 Comments

Here are some facts about Planned Parenthood, any one of which should render them ineligible for any government funding, let alone why the leaders should be jailed.

1. They crush and dismember innocent but unwanted human beings for a living.  Abortion is not health care.  That is their primary revenue source, but even if it wasn’t that would be all you need to know.

2. They have been caught countless times, both on audio and on video, hiding statutory rape.  That alone should result in them being not only being de-funded but put out of business.  Businesses who commit serial felonies don’t get to point to other (alleged) good things they do to avoid responsibility.

See Planned Parenthood Never Told Parents of Abortion on Raped 12-Year-Old for an example.  They will kill your grandchild, perform an incredibly serious surgery on your daughter and protect her rapist — for a fee.  Oh, and using your taxes.  It is so sad that false teachers support them and claim Jesus’ support for it.  Such blasphemy!

3. They have been caught many times hiding sex trafficking, which includes victims of human trafficking.

4. Their CEO falsely claimed that Planned Parenthood provides mammograms and that a loss of Federal funding would end these.  How many CEOs don’t know what services their organization provides?  Was this incompetence or a deliberate lie about a highly emotional, most-favored-disease issue to sustain public funding for her organization?  Why hasn’t she or the mainstream media highlighted and corrected this error?

5. Planned Parenthood is not the only provider of these non-abortion services.  If taxpayer funding of PP ended these services could easily be provided elsewhere – preferably somewhere that doesn’t kill humans beings, hide statutory rape, hide sex traffickers / human traffickers, etc.

6. According to PP’s own research arm, 54% of abortions are performed on women who were on birth control.  Their business model is not working to prevent pregnancies, it is working to generate abortions.  That statistic exposes the lie that more birth control distribution will reduce abortions.  PP wants to reduce abortions in the same way McDonald’s wants to sell less hamburgers.

7. Margaret Sanger, PP’s founder, was a racist eugenicist.  Some of her quotes are here.

8. Planned Parenthood targets minorities and is the largest provider of abortions in the U.S.  Abortion rates for blacks are 3x that of whites and the rate for HIspanics is 2x that of whites.  Margaret’s dream lives on.

9. They aggressively promote their worldview to teens, encouraging them to ignore their parents and their religion, via their public school lessons and their youth website, Teenwire. They put up billboards telling kids that “Getting it on is free.”  They discourage parents from viewing it, of course. You can find lots of valuable advice [sarcasm intended], like the tidbit from a 14-year-old girl who said that kids shouldn’t have sex until they are mature enough to know how to use a condom and their official advice that, “Hooking up is only one way to get close to someone.” They regularly promote anal sex as a good way to avoid pregnancy (technically true, though it won’t prevent disease transmission and is not advice most people want their kids to hear).

It follows the same philosophy they use in the classroom, which is to steer kids away from parental authority and to make decisions about sexuality on their own. They don’t offer any limits to children, other than telling them that the kids should decide when they are “ready.” They encourage them to experiment with sex and their sexual orientation.

Most of the offenses are too perverse to list on this blog, but here is a sample of how they encourage kids to ignore their parents and their religion (from the Canada site; the link to the original post from Dawn Eden’s site is broken):

Maybe your religion or parents are influencing your decision. Take control. Remind yourself that what you do is always a choice. You choose whether to follow the values of your religion. You choose whether to be honest with your parents. They may not be easy choices, and others may not agree with the choices you make. But they are still YOUR choices and they should be based on what’s important to you.

10. Planned Parent used to claim that “An abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun.” At least that was their view in this 1964 advertisement. Did they learn anything about science in the few years after that when they changed their minds? Of course not. Science couldn’t be more clear: A new human being is created at conception.  Planned Parenthood is about making money off abortions and about advancing their perverse ideology with your money.

Do not miss this video, but don’t let your kids watch it, either:

11. PP has not accounted for millions of dollars given to them.

12. If PP’s supporters care so much for these non-abortion services, why don’t they open their own wallets and give?  There are more crisis pregnancy centers than abortion clinics, and nearly all run with no government funding (the center where I’m a volunteer and board member refuses any government funds).  It doesn’t seem very pro-choice to force people to fund the array of perversions, immorality and broken laws we see with Planned Parenthood.

13. PP doesn’t pay these salaries based on how many condoms they give away, they get it from performing 329,455 abortions. (P.S. they are the 1%.).  Note that these have gone up substantially in recent years.

President Cecile Richards $353,819
Chief Operating Officer Maryana Iskander $288,886
Chief Financial Officer Maria Acosta $263,443
VP of Medical Affairs Vanessa Cullins $257,115
VP of General Counsel Barbara Otten $251,379
VP of Public Policy Laurie Rubiner $248,438
VP of Operations Karen Ruffatto $247,932
VP of Affiliates Lisa David $245,322

14.  PP encourages gender-selection abortions.

15.  PP encourages Medicaid fraud.  More here and here.

16. PP encourages their employees to lie about breaking laws but will not protect them.

17. They aggressively promote filth to youth — they assume that every relationship will involve sex and that you will go from one sex relationship to another.  They pretend that people will actually follow their advice (Yeah, sure, people will always use condoms for oral sex.  Because gays would never rebel and break any safe sex rules!)

18. Planned Parenthood lies about its botched abortions.  Apparently and organization that kills unwanted human beings and perverts the minds of kids for a living doesn’t mind lying to help their business.

Our investigation exposes not only how unsafe Planned Parenthood clinics can be for women, but also how dishonest and untrustworthy Planned Parenthood is to the very women it claims to defend,” says Rose. “How shameful that two months after their clinic botched an abortion that took the life of 24-year old Tonya Reaves and her pre-born baby, Planned Parenthood lies to the public and pretends nothing happened. When it comes to the lethal dangers of its billion-dollar abortion business, no lie is too audacious for Planned Parenthood.

19. They would rather go back on their word and destroy a breast cancer charity than part ways amicably.

20. They try to deceive people by saying that only 3% of their business is abortion-related.  But 10% of the clients get abortion, and each one gets lots of services.  And even if 0.000001% of their business was from killing unwanted human beings they should be shut down.  A full analysis is here.

21. Former Planned Parenthood worker: ‘It was a money-grubbing, evil, very sad, sad place to work’ – Your tax dollars at work.

Marianne Anderson is a nurse who assisted Planned Parenthood abortionists by partially sedating women who paid extra for that luxury.  She told The Criterion newspaper that she saw many women pressured into abortions they did not want, including minor girls.

“One young girl came in with her mom,” Anderson told the paper.  “She was about 16. Her mom had made the appointment. That’s not supposed to be how it works. It’s supposed to only be the patient who makes the appointment. I checked her in, and she thought she was there for a prenatal checkup. The mom was pushing it. She blindsided her own daughter.”

Another time, said Anderson, “This guy brought in a Korean girl. I had no doubt in my mind this girl was a sex slave. This guy would not leave her side. They could barely communicate. He wanted to make all the arrangements.  During the ultrasound, she told one of the nurses that there were lots of girls in the house, and that the man hits them. She never came back for the abortion. I always wondered what happened to her. One of my co-workers said, ‘You’re better off to just let it go.’”

When women cried during the abortion procedure, Anderson said, abortionist Michael King would shame them. “These girls would start crying on the table, and Dr. King would say, ‘Now you chose to be here. Sit still. I don’t have time for this.’”

“One doctor, when he was in the POC [products of conception] room, would talk to the aborted baby while looking for all the parts. ‘Come on, little arm, I know you’re here! Now you stop hiding from me!’ It just made me sick to my stomach,” Anderson said. “The sound the suction machine made when it turned on still haunts me.”

Anderson told The Criterion she started working at the facility because she believed that as long as women were having abortions, they should be safe about it.

But Anderson quickly abandoned her illusions of safety once she began work at Planned Parenthood.  “I started feeling uneasy working there when people came from national in New York City to teach us the conscious sedation process,” Anderson told the paper.  “It was disgusting. These two ladies had this chant they would do: ‘Abortion all the time!’ I thought, ‘I’ve got to get out of here.’ That was about six to eight months after I started.”

Anderson said the overall experience of working for Planned Parenthood was “absolutely miserable.”

“It was a money-grubbing, evil, very sad, sad place to work,” she said. “I was always getting in trouble for talking too long to the girls, asking if they were sure they wanted to do this.”

22.  They market bondage, discipline/domination, sadism and masochism to teens.

23. They tell teens that the number of sex partners they have is irrelevant. See Planned Parenthood Tells Teens Nothing Wrong With Multiple Sex Partners

24. Now they have been caught lying about doing prenatal care. 92 out of 97 affiliates contacted admitted they do nothing of the sort.

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.”

—

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.

—

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.

—

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. 

—

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.

—

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.

—
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.

—

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.

—
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.

—-

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.

—–

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.

—–

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.
—–
I encourage newcomers to search for “Marie,”  “Glenn” or “Wintery Knight” and read their comments.  Great points.

Peace,
Neil

—–
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.

—–

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.