Friends, for the last, oh, two thousand years, you would generally struggle to find anyone in the West willing to condemn the Bible and/or spit directly in the face of God, but the 21st Century is a brave new world in which almost all established norms, and even some rules of nature, are being flouted by leftists hellbent on "transforming"...everything and everyone. Case in point: the Left has become adroit at charging anyone who says something they don't like with "hate speech". Remember, hate speech is speech that makes someone (who leftists give a damn about) feel bad. Well, there's very little that we conservatives say and do, by this definition, that isn't HATEFUL to the core. And that which is hateful, lest we forget, can be banned, criminalized, and punished. That appears to be happening with the Bible itself in England, as you'll see here. And this is just the thin edge of the wedge. Much more is coming. One wonders how Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are currently handling invocations of the Bible to criticize homosexuality?
There's more bad news on the morals front: marijuana use continues to escalate among young people, which can come as no surprise, since the cultural elite has long since decided that cigarettes are icky, but pot is cool. Personally, I say, if you're an adult, imbibe whatever you like -- but don't expect me to pat you on the back and give you a medal! And be prepared for the negative consequences that your decisions entail, because you own those decisions and the aftereffects -- or at least you ought to.
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/gallup-poll-cigarettes/2022/11/28/id/1098212/
RAY TO NICK AND JACK
ReplyDelete1. For starters, take a look at an article in FIRST THINGS by Nina Shea (dated 12/22/20), titled "China's Threat to the Bible". Walk in most Christian book stores, and you will find that most Bibles are printed in China (PRC).
2. Then read up on just how much the Holy Bible has been changed, beginning over 100 years ago, when a lot of "scholars" started tinkering with the King James Bible, adding and deleting words in
translations.
3. Getting bored? Start checking out all of the scandals going back at least 50 years, with the biggest in The Pentecostal World, although now it looks like The Southern Baptists are outdoing the Roman Catholics in that area.
4. Consider all of the denominations and the conflicting and confusing theology coming out of them. One of the biggest is "The Rapture" which was literally unknown until John Nelson Darby invented it in the 19th Century. That, and anything from speaking in tongues, to foot washing will catch your attention.
5. Look at all of those fat cat megachurches with lots and lots of very wealthy pastors, many of whom are cleaning up royalties on all those books about the end of the world, which is supposed to have already happened.
6. Walk in most Protestant churches today, and all you are going to get is a rock concert with a pep talk about Jesus, with parking and coffee bars as a priority.
7. Many churches today promote an LGBT agenda. Among those denominations are United Methodist, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to name two large denominations, and both have gay clergy.
So if nothing else, Christianity, along with The Holy Bible is, by and large, responsible for its own rapid decline in the 21st Century. Going to church is really not much different than the pagan and atheist world, so why bother to go?
RAY TO NICK AND JACK
ReplyDeleteAs far as Christianity in the UK goes, it's been heading downhill for many many years now, with the so called Church of England in the lead. It's a long way from C.S. Lewis for sure, and I always had my doubts about him, and you can throw Ronald Knox in too.
Dr.Waddy from Jack: A reasoned, objective criticism of Christianity, like that above, is honorable. But for those who would scoff and sneer at it, dismiss it out of hand or strive to destroy it because it is essential to Western civilization: I bid them read Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, a warning about human reason's inability to comprehend divinity which still has the power to urge fear of God's righteousness and his wrath!Too, try explaining the similarity between the opening verses of Genesis and the Big Bang Theory. Never yet seen an atheist do that credibly. Christianity is the scrutinized, tested , fought over, reformed and proven resilient institution in the West. It has been pondered and examined exhaustively by some of the towering intellects of the last 2100 years.The sight of commie pukes trembling alongside Saint John Paul II as he blessed the unfathomable multitude which welcomed him on his monumental return to his Poland; that said it all.
ReplyDeleteDr.Waddy from Jack: For the luvva . . . Einstein himself, the possessor of a mind actually capable of some fundamental understanding of how the universe works, believed in God. In the little town I live near, the biggest buildings are the school and a church and this is true throughout this essentially Christian land. Is all of it a product of feckless speculation?I Oh I do think not.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: The most destructive organized secular evil in history, Marxism, tried to destroy Christianity and even in the lands it ruled with totalitarian inhumanity. . .failed.This cannot be just happenstance.
ReplyDeleteDr.Waddy from Jack: The left and those pitifully captured by it is as we know, devoted to the destruction of all civilizations which doubt its utterly bigoted secular foundation in Marxism. To attack a work as sacred as the Bible is fully to be expected of this historically discredited and consequently condemned untruth.
ReplyDeleteBREAKING NEWS FROM RAY TO NICK AND JACK
ReplyDeleteApparently, The San Francisco Police Department has authorized robots to kill criminals in order to spare police lives.
Dr.Waddy from Jack: I think in sound intellectual discourse, participants must be willing to responsibly define terms they express; except in extremes such as attributes ascribed to divinity (eg. ". . . we hold these truths to be self evident") or sometimes and cautiouslywhen hyperbole is constructively used (" why, that word says it all"). To arbitrarily enforce a certain meaning and to excoriate or materially disadvantage those who disagree, is characteristic of totalitarians, whose power is enhanced by such presumption and bullying when unchallenged. The left is necessarily antiintellectual despite haughty pretense to wisdom because its tenets cannot survive principled discussion and examination.Accordingly it subsumes certain terms into its arsenal of terms which condemn upon accusation. "Hate" and "discrimination" are examples.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: How should we respond? From we of modest public import to prominent persons with mass audiences, we must refuse to allow the left to own such words. When they casually drop such terms, if in personal expression with smirks and sneers (eg. Schumer, Pelosi, Phil Donahue)but in most circumstances , providing one runs reasonable risk, challenge the perpetrator to define the term. Often they will descend to sputtering, discrediting ad homina in outrage at your perceived insolence in daring to doubt them.If they do offer a definition it often either points back to them or can be followed logically with many contradictory examples or refutations. Eg. "you have used the word 'discrimination' as if all discrimination is bad. But we discriminate when we change channels or choose a pair of shoes. Unfortunately that word alone has taken on a widely perceived pejorative meaning,mainly because of irresponsible misuse of it! Be specific if you can";or "you have used the word "hate", which is a superlative meaning the most intense of personal antipathy.It should be used advisedly and your use of it appears presumptuous and frivolous".
ReplyDeleteDr.Waddy from Jack: Another useful tactic is to use the usurped word freely and
ReplyDeleteproperly but without misgivings fostered byleftist bigots. Its easy to do that with leftists because they express and impose hateful policy reflexively and recklessly. The evil they demonstrate in power manifests this certainty.
Dr.Waddy from Jack: The author David Horowitz has been a n exceedingly eloquent, sometimes lone, always courageous advocate of confronting the disdainful left, for decades in his fine books!
ReplyDeleteRAY TO JACK
DeleteGlad you mention Horowitz. He is (in my opinion) more qualified than anyone in these United States of America to talk about The Left. At one time, he was the Nr. 1 Leftist in this country, and he knows every trick in the book when it comes to The Left. I'm sure glad he changed sides.
Oof! As always, Ray, you don't sugarcoat anything, but your analysis has a lot of truth to it. Christianity has been so watered-down and "reformed" that almost all the moral and spiritual content has been drained out of it. You're right, of course, that the Bible and Church tradition can be spun to support almost any agenda, including the agenda of wokeness, broadly conceived. Exit polls tell us that religious people are much more likely to be conservative, and to vote Republican. I guess that's nice, but it doesn't say much about the spiritual health of the nation, which, as Ray opines, is nothing to write home about. And, as Ray also says, as bad as things are here, they're far worse in Europe. It would be one thing, of course, if we had replaced Christianity with something else that was affirming and civilized, but we haven't. Cultural Marxism is seemingly all we've got in the tank.
ReplyDeleteJack, yes, Christianity had a hand in knocking Marxism-Leninism off its pedestal, but ask yourself: was the love of God or the love of blue jeans a stronger motivator for most Eastern Europeans? Maybe Poland was an exception, but it seems to me that crass materialism and age-old resentment of the Russians explains most of what happened in late '89.
Did the Soviets and their fellow travelers try to stamp out Christianity, in their day? Sure. At that time, Christianity must have seemed, and probably was, a potent threat. Now? The Left barely bothers to attack Christianity, and I expect that's mainly because they're busy subsuming it like they subsume everything else.
Mind you, I'm not criticizing Christianity itself, much less God Himself. I'm suggesting, as per Ray, that modern Christianity can often be a sorry specimen.
As for confronting the Left's "rape" of the English language, and its strangely anti-intellectual brand of intellectualism, we're on the same page, Jack. All the techniques you cited can be powerful weapons in our arsenal, although I think we have to acknowledge that political loyalties are mostly mediated by emotion, rather than reason. Ergo, talking sense to a leftist just isn't going to work 90% of the time. We have to be satisfied with small victories, therefore.
Dr.Waddy et al from Jack: Horowitz is one hell of a guy! He once denounced my very school ,SUNY New Paltz, NY, calling it "the most commie school east of Berkley. "After New Paltz welcomed William Ayres I challenged the college President ( actually a decent guy) to invite Horowitz to the campus. I had torn up my diploma and sent it to the President of the college with a letter protesting Ayres' visit but I got the usual "academic freedom " hogwash in reply and David was never tendered an invite. Sic semper . . .
ReplyDeleteDr.Waddy from Jack: I agree that it is close to useless to try to hold a frank political conversation with even the many leftist who attempt objectivity and give and take.. I've tried but emotion soon wraps them in a veritable phantasm of rejection. But in public, say in speeches or debates, its possible I think for patient conservatives to lay them traps. I remember Al Gore's childishly frantic and premature dismissals of "W"s positions coming over clearly even on the radio.
ReplyDeleteDr.Waddy from Jack: You are right about political loyalties being mediated by emotion but principled public on the spot challenge of leftists's haughty pronunciamentos , snorts of derision and bemused headshaking can show them up to independents and the undecided for the lordly prigs they so often show themselves to be.
ReplyDeleteHa! "Academic freedom". Isn't that an oxymoron, kinda like they used to say about "military intelligence"?
ReplyDeleteTrue, Jack -- once in a while leftists will lock horns with us in something akin to a free-wheeling debate. When that happens, as you say, we want to leave them sputtering and apoplectic whenever possible, and the quickest way to do that is to expose the intellectual quicksand on which they stand.
Dr.Waddy from Jack: One time during a reenactment, as Yank, I insolently ventured into the rebel camp. "What the hell you doing here yank?!" Says I lamely: "thought I'd snitch a little intelligence and being Yank, I can use some". They generously refrained from sending me on my way to Andersonville. But I know that you fully appreciate the decisive benefits military intelligence gave us in WWII (eg. Midway).
ReplyDeleteDr.Waddy from Jack: Some other cultural benefits championed by the South and benefitting the nation: religious fundamentalism, respect for the military, convinced patriotism and Scotch-Irish culture.
ReplyDeleteOh, Jack, I wouldn't question the overarching importance of military intelligence even for a second. Good information on the enemy's strengths, weaknesses, and intentions is frequently valuable beyond measure. If German intelligence had been better re: the Soviets, I'm quite sure the Krauts would hold sway over Eurasia as we speak.
ReplyDeleteDr.Waddy from Jack: I asked my father if he considered in1941 that we might lose. He said he knew from the start that we would win. Just imagine though if the Axis HAD won! Could well have happened and Von Braun would have continued to ply his original vocation in Germany and not for us.
ReplyDeleteFrom Jack: My comment above on cultural benefits from the South is out of context; its from an earier post.
ReplyDeleteJack, your father was quite the optimist! I can see his point that the United States could hardly "lose", in the sense of facing enemy occupation, but most of our allies were not so fortunate. I believe firmly that the outcome of the war rested on the shoulders of the Soviets.
ReplyDelete