Reader Tips

Reader Tips 40 Comments

Very little is known about the life of Reverend Sister Mary M. Nelson, other than that she “seems” to have been born in the late 19th century, and was “probably” a Pentecostal storefront preacher in Memphis, Tennessee. She did leave behind four recordings, one of which is tonight’s musical selection: From a 1927 vocals-only performance released on the Vocalion record label, and later reissued on Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, here’s Reverend Sister Mary M. Nelson giving due warning to liars, drunkards, hypocrites, and various and sundry that they’d better get ready for Judgement.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.

40 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  1. Tony Blankley at RCP:
    “Wiki” is a cute Hawaiian word for “quick” — borrowed by Ward Cunningham, creator of the first Internet wiki — from the name of a fast little interterminal shuttle at Honolulu International Airport.
    But cute and innocent as the word may sound, when attached to damaging wartime leaks by WikiLeaks operator Julian Assange, its cuteness should not protect Mr. Assange from being prosecuted and possibly executed by the U.S. government for wartime espionage.
    Title 18 U.S. Code, Section 794, Paragraph (b) reads:
    “Whoever, in time of war, with intent that the same shall be communicated to the enemy, collects, records, publishes, or communicates, or attempts to elicit any information with respect to the movement, numbers, description, condition, or disposition of any of the Armed Forces, ships, aircraft, or war materials of the United States, or with respect to the plans or conduct, or supposed plans or conduct of any naval or military operations, or with respect to any works or measures undertaken for or connected with, or intended for the fortification or defense of any place, or any other information relating to the public defense, which might be useful to the enemy, shall be punished by death or by imprisonment for any term of years or for life.”
    Our friends at The New York Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel — who coordinated the publication of his leaks — might find the following Subsection (c) also to be a revealing read:
    “If two or more persons conspire to violate this section, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each of the parties to such conspiracy shall be subject to the punishment provided for the offense which is the object of such conspiracy.”
    And, according to Friday’s New York Times, “Justice Department lawyers are exploring whether Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks could be charged with inducing, or conspiring in violations of the Espionage Act.”

  2. Well, to each his own I suppose, personally I prefer a Panis Angelicus or Te Deum, any day. Easier on the vocal cords.

  4. In “A Rather Angry America“, Victor Davis Hanson describes some of the serious political/cultural problems in the US, and writes:
    “The common denominator? If one were to survey the elite campuses around 1975 and talk to those in law school, poly sci, or the humanities, then imagine them 35 years later as our elite leaders in government, the media, the universities, the foundations, and the arts, one could pretty much expect what we now have.
    “The present symptoms that characterize both our popular culture and current governance — shrill self-righteousness; abstract communalism juxtaposed with concrete pursuit of the aristocratic good life; race/class/gender cosmic sermonizing with private school and Ivy league for the kids; crass and tasteless public expression; a serial inability to take responsibility for one’s actions; the bipartisan mega-deficits; the inability to cut pensions and social security for the baby boomers — from the trivial to the fundamental, all derive from a bankrupt cohort that came of age in the sixties and seventies.”

  5. Legal Project.org
    On August 4, 2010, the Public Prosecutor for Copenhagen charged International Free Press Society (IFPS) president Lars Hedegaard with racism. The IFPS describes itself as an organization ‘exclusively devoted to defending the right of free expression.’
    “The basis for Hedegaard’s prosecution was an interview from December 2009 in which he made controversial statements about Islam. These assertions included critiques of what Hedegaard saw as Islam’s permissiveness regarding child abuse and bearing false witness, as well as Islam’s general intolerance concerning apostacism and critical speech. Snaphanen, a Danish blog, published the original interview, and Hedegaard has since clarified some of his remarks.
    “Hedegaard’s statements earned him a hate speech charge under Danish law. While Denmark’s constitution ostensibly protects freedom of expression and forbids censorship (see Section 77), the Criminal code provides that ‘expressing and spreading racial hatred’ is a criminal offense punishable with up to two years imprisonment.”

  7. EBD – Mr. Hedegaard should remind his prosecutors than Islam isn’t a race. Case dismissed.

  10. Apart from the fact that Islam is a belief system created by man and not a genetic attribute, there is something else extremely illogical about the charge.
    IF someone points out the facts, i.e., that Islam, as a belief system, rejects telling the truth and supports false witness, and rejects anyone rejecting their belief system – and all of this can be found in the Islamic texts and also, in criminal cases brought by Islamic nations against their own people…well, if these are true facts then how can pointing them out be defined as ‘hate speech’?
    Is Denmark really going to assert that objective science, if it comes across ‘unpleasant facts’ about a belief system – can’t publish or talk about these objective facts?

  11. This Danish ruling appears to be like our section 13.1 against Mark Steyn etc.
    But even progressive Obama loving, state propagandized media brainwashed Danes are worried about the Muslims not assimilating. I was in Copenhagen last month and the Post Office has signs that allude to the need to take off your burka (they PC obfuscate by also saying you have to take off your cap) before making a transaction so that they can see the client. It’s not a law like France, it is not compulsory to remove, it is simply suggested.
    Danes are worried; many think it’s too late. Europe simply does not know how to assimilate immigrants, they are terrible at it.

  12. National Inquirer doesn’t have nothing ’bout M&O, yet?
    …-
    “Spain Trip: Todd Senses ‘Something More’ Happening Behind Scenes With Michelle O
    NewsBusters ^ | Mark Finkelstein
    “Uncomfortable” was the word of the day at Morning Joe when it came to discussing Michelle Obama’s decision to go on a luxurious vacation to Spain in the midst of a recession—and to miss celebrating her husband’s birthday with him to boot.
    Chuck Todd didn’t go into details, but NBC’s clearly ill-at-ease political director suggested: that this was a “private decision” by the First Lady; that it wouldn’t have made any difference what the Pres. Obama’s political advisors would have said; and that “you get the sense here that there was something more to this” than pure politics.
    Joe Scarborough reinforced Todd’s message: “this is part of a bigger narrative, isn’t it, about Michelle Obama?”
    View video here.”
    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2567202/posts
    (Go for the comments)

  13. The Southern Ontario Town of St. Marys is preparing to host the International Goat Symposium.Rumor has it the restaurants are stocking up on halal meat in anticipation of a large influx of Muslims.
    http://www.lfp.com

  15. Of Taliban Jack LaytoNDP’s Muslims & “Chretien to nurses”.
    …-
    “Afghan woman executed for alleged adultery
    HERAT, Afghanistan – Taliban insurgents publicly flogged and executed an Afghan woman for alleged adultery, a police official said on Monday, in a reminder of the era when the militant Islamist group ruled Afghanistan.
    The 48-year-old widow was given dozens of lashes before being shot dead on Sunday in the remote Qades district held by militants in northwestern Badghis province, said Abdul Jabar, a senior provincial officer.
    “It happened before the public … Although no-one has complained, the government will take its own measures about the incident,” Jabar told Reuters by telephone from Badghis.
    A statement issued by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said “according to reports””the woman was pregnant and was whipped 200 times before she was shot by a Taliban commander.”
    http://www.torontosun.com/news/world/2010/08/09/14969486.html
    …-
    “Chretien to nurses: ‘A-1 service!’
    CBC.ca – Andrew Davidson”
    …-
    http://www.bluelikeyou.com/2010/08/09/just-watch-me/#comment-87580

  16. Patricia Neal, the Oscar-winning actress whose life off-screen contained as much drama, tragedy, and inspiration as any of her film or theater roles, died Sunday at her home in Martha’s Vineyard of lung cancer; she was 84.
    An Oscar, Tony and Golden Globe winner, Neal was just as well-known for the trials, tribulations and triumphs she lived through, including a nervous breakdown, the death of one of her children, and a series of strokes that left her in a three-week coma while pregnant at the age of 39.
    [connected to Ayn Rand]
    **********************************
    I just borrowed ‘A Face in the Crowd’ from the library last month.

  17. OK, so here’s a book that needs to be read for anyone outraged by how Muslim extremism and Shari’a Law are making outrageous demands that our fearless, er, I mean, fearful leaders are bending over backwards to accommodate: Melanie Phillips’ The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle Over God, Truth, and Power, published in 2010 by Encounter Books.
    From her blog (http://www.melaniephillips.com/):
    In what we tell ourselves is an age of reason, we are behaving increasingly irrationally. More and more people are signing up to weird and wacky cults, para-psychology, seances, paganism and witch- craft. There is widespread belief in ludicrous conspiracy theories, such as the 9/11 terrorist attack being an American plot.
    The basic cause of all this unreason is the erosion of the building blocks of Western civilisation. We tell ourselves that religion and reason are incompatible, but in fact the opposite is the case. It was Christianity and the Hebrew Bible that gave us our concepts of reason, progress and an orderly world-the foundations of science and modernity.
    The loss of religious belief has meant the West has replaced reason and truth with ideology and prejudice, which it enforces in the manner of a secular inquisition. The result has been a kind of mass derangement, as truth and lies, right and wrong, victim and aggressor are all turned upside down. In medieval-style witch-hunts, scientists who are skeptical of global warming are hounded from their posts; Israel is ferociously demonized; and the United States is vilified over the war on terror — all on the basis of falsehoods and propaganda that are believed as truth.
    Thus the West is losing both its rationality and its freedoms. It is succumbing to a “soft totalitarianism,” which not only is creating an ugly mood of intolerance but is undermining its ability to defend itself against Islamic aggression. While the Islamists are intent on returning the free world to the seventh century, the West no longer seems willing or able to defend the modernity and rationalism that it brought into being.

  20. there will be a time when the trials and triumphs of Reverend Mary Neilson will be known by ALL, including drunkards, hypocrites . . .

  22. Batb, we were discussing religion after golf last week. 6 men from across the political spectrum, architect, business leaders, IT technical specialists all retired with kids and families.
    Not one of us believes in god as we responded to that question. Of our vast number of friends and family an incredible few attend church and all have raised responsible children with a great home life. We are reasoning individuals, well read and worldly, and all have come to the same conclusion. God is a myth created by man to explain things he didn’t understand. We have gradually explained the vast majority of these questions and no longer attribute the mysteries of our universe to some mystical creature.
    We are not evil or misguided and it was the demise of Christian dogma, freedom from religion and the age of enlightenment that allowed the flourishing of Western civilization. The Chinese have built a successful country, though they have many issues that we dont agree with, and lasted far longer than we have without Christianity.
    Throughout history cultures, empires, tribes and countries have risen and fallen, most had their specific gods, the Greeks, Mayan, Egyptians or Romans. None of their gods saved their collapse.
    You have your beliefs and faith and good for you. I nor anyone I know is interested in challenging your faith. But please don’t attack, criticize or be condescending to us that choose not to follow your faith.
    It will not be Christianity or Judaism that will see us through our challenges. It wont be our high tech weapons or modern army that will protect us in the long term but the belief that our culture and freedoms are worth defending.
    Thomas Sowell: “If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.”

  23. Dave: ” … it was the demise of Christian dogma, freedom from religion and the age of enlightenment that allowed the flourishing of Western civilization.’
    You’re kidding, right? Christianity has been around for over 2000 years; the enlightenment? ‘A few hundred.
    As I said above, some reading wouldn’t be a bad idea.
    Dave: “We are not evil or misguided.” I’m not suggesting at all that people without faith are evil. The point is, Christianity has provided the foundations of our major judicial, educational, and medical institutions in the West — for everyone, not just for those who are believers, and the most sublime art and music. Sure China’s chugging along, but what about the standard of living of the average Chinese family compared to families in the West? Different ideologies do make a difference.
    Please provide proof of any group, other than Christians, who has successfully stood up to the advances of militant Islam. And, then, tell me why the West is lying down today and essentially saying to militant Islamists, “Walk all over us. Dhimmie us. That’s your ‘right’ because we’re just so open and tolerant and enlightened.”
    What is the defining difference between the, until recently, Christian West, which stood up to the advance of tyrannical Islam a few hundred years ago, and the West, today, which seems to be in retreat in the face of an identical threat?
    I’m suggesting that, historically, countries in the West which, for the most part until the past 40 or so years have self-identified as Christian nations, have always risen up against tyranny. But, now, with few of us practising the faith of our fathers and mothers, radical Islamists seem to have carte blanche to threaten our civilization, to threaten our Western way of life, while doing almost nothing to counteract their barbarism.
    I’m suggesting that our Christian faith over the centuries has a) allowed us as Western peoples to discern threats from militant Islam and b) has given us the courage to fight any Islamist threat — in other words, NOT to be wimps in the face of barbarism.
    Far from being condescending or on the attack against people who aren’t Christian, I’m making a credible claim for the Judeo-Christian faith and its importance as a catalyst in the West to combatting the tyrannical and barbaric practices of radical and militant Islam. I’m suggesting, as many others have (Phillips, Weigel, et al.) that the loss of this sustaining faith in the West, which for centuries was a given, has become our Achilles Heel and is one of the major reasons why we have allowed the barbarians not just to approach our gates but to enter our citadels and begin to take over.
    Why do you find this argument to be condescending?

  24. batb: “The loss of religious belief has meant the West has replaced reason and truth with ideology and prejudice”
    Religious belief has nothing to do with reason and truth, it has to do with faith. The attack on reason (which is man’s tool of survival) began in earnest with Immanuel Kant in the 1700s when he divorced reason from reality. The “soft totalitarianism” also stems from this (although it goes back to Plato’s Republic) — as does the hard kind.
    batb: “It was Christianity and the Hebrew Bible that gave us our concepts of reason, progress and an orderly world-the foundations of science and modernity”
    Pardon my skepticism. Exactly where in the Bible are the rules of logic laid out?
    Rationalism grew in Christian Europe only after the Enlightenment, when the Church influence was waning.

  25. nv53 and Dave, I think you’re mistaking quotes made by British writer Melanie Phillips for mine (see my post @ 5:57 p.m., where I link the extensive quote from Melanie Phillips’ blog.) I only wish I was as knowledgeable and eloquent as she.
    As for this, nv53: “Pardon my skepticism. Exactly where in the Bible are the rules of logic laid out?”
    They aren’t, but that doesn’t mean that Christians are unreasonable or irrational. We seem to have figured out that marriage between one man and one woman vastly benefits any child(ren) born of the union; we’ve figured out that marriage for life vastly benefits not only children but society as a whole — you know? We’ve figured out that order and sanctity trump chaos and promiscuity every time. That seems “reasonable” to me. What’s unreasonable or illogical about the Christian way of life when you look at the ordered society it tends to foster: sex within marriage rather than casual and multiple encounters with the soaring rate of commensurate STDs we see today, not to mention broken hearts and broken lives; volunteerism on an unprecedented scale in the care of the homeless, the sick, the hungry, and the disenfranchised — not only in the West but around the world?
    The Bible isn’t about rules of logic but about plumbing the depths of the human heart and the deep mystery of the love of the Creator, learning to love our neighbours as ourselves, learning to sacrifice our immediate pleasures for the good of others, learning to build communities of love and good order for the benefit of all — not just those who believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus but all of humankind.
    If you’re honest — and open and tolerant, c’mon! — I think you’d have to admit that this Christian “experiment” which, up to now, has lasted over 2000 years and has largely benefited humankind, has been at the root of every democracy in the world. (As a counterpoint, look at every country that’s either trashed the Christian faith or never worshipped at the Christian altar: utter chaos, murder on a barbaric scale, populations in hunger and turmoil, with no human rights. This is a fact, not a fancy of mine.)
    It was Judeo-Christian “thinking” that forwarded the idea of individual dignity and individual rights as apart from tribal, collective rights; it is this thinking that undergirds our judicial systems in the West, and it is this thinking that has built our educational systems which, until recently, included Judeo-Christianity as one of the multiple cultures in our society. (Now that Christianity has been trashed in our Western educational systems, look at the disarray. I teach. I know. The schools are now “safe” for the bullies and “zero tolerance” applies to any teacher who consistently points out who the bullies are — especially if the bullies happen to be from a visible minority. Chaos reigns, believe me.)
    It saddens me that what is utterly clear as a matter of historical fact — that Judeo-Christian values are the operative foundational principles upon which Western democracies have been founded — has been revised to put the Judeo-Christian culture at the bottom of the heap.
    As the saying goes, those who don’t know their history are bound to repeat it. It is fashionable in the West, today, to champion “logic” and “rationalism” over matters of faith, even equating faith with illogic and irrational thought. Faith and rationality are not mutually exclusive, so your argument, nv53, is based on a faulty premise.
    So, answer me this: How has logic and rationalism better served humankind since “the Enlightenment”? You might reference, at the start, the Godless regimes in the last century that were responsible for the mass murder of millions. They would have argued, and did, that they didn’t need God, that Christianity was harmful, unreasonable, not rational, and went so far as to murder its priests and followers by the hundreds of thousands. You might also reference the millions of children not born in the West, because of “rational” thinking like “our bodies, ourselves,” or “every child a wanted child,” both slogans created by pro-abortionists which make little sense. (When a woman is pregnant, there are two bodies involved not just her body. Every child IS a wanted child, perhaps not by his/her biological parent: Look at the long wait time to adopt a child now that there’s a full frontal assault on the child in the womb. What’s reasonable or rational about snuffing out the lives of our future generations?)

  26. Thanks, batb, I agree.
    On the other hand, nv53, I think your facts and reasoning are incorrect. E.g., You ask, “Exactly where in the Bible are the rules of logic laid out”? Nowhere. Who suggested they were? (Perhaps you’ve heard of inference and deduction. But maybe you’re a product of the public educa . . . I mean, indoctrination . . . system.)
    Read “The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle Over God, Truth, and Power”: it is only one book of many—e.g., Thomas Cahill’s “The Gifts of the Jews” and George Weigel’s “The Cube and the Cathedral”—that provides a comprehensive account of how the dignity and worth of the individual in the eyes of One God—versus a multitude of competing and vengeful Nature gods—and the idea of a progressive human narrative, both found in the Old Testament, laid the groundwork for human progress and prospering.
    The so-called “Enlightenment” almost immediately led to tyranny and death, as has every other secular, political movement since then. For a start, check out Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot: their secular ideologies led to the brutal murders of millions of their own citizens—and countless others. I wouldn’t say that fascism and communism are very good examples of reason. In fact, as we all know, these secular ideologies rely on the brutal suppression of truth.
    Another example of “rationalism”? Check out the religion of global warming, where science has now been thoroughly co-opted to prop up another man-made ideology and suppress the truth.
    I’ve been in schools for four decades: as the influence of the Christian church—the founder of virtually all educational, cultural, and medical institutions in Europe centuries ago—has waned, so has civility—and the ability to reason. Our kids—a critical mass of whom behave more like barbarians by the minute—are indoctrinated into an altogether secular, anti-Christian, left-wing, me-myself-and-I mindset. nv53, I conclude—I did learn to reason—that you’ve drunk the same Kool Aid: e.g., if rationalism didn’t appear on the scene until after the Enlightenment, what were Aquinas, Thomas More, Shakespeare, Copernicus, Bach, Mozart, etc., up to? And, yes, all those Christian founders and benefactors of all the European hospitals, universities, and great art?
    As far as I’m concerned, the secular, left turn the West took at the Enlightenment has, in just a few hundred years, unravelled both civilization and the rule of law. Like the Roman Empire, we’re a civilization rotting from the inside, due to self-indulgence and anomie: we prefer our bread and circuses and tolerating the threat of invasion from outside to preserving the more challenging and difficult self-discipline and responsibility set out in the Ten Commandments.
    If the West’s soft thinking and self-indulgence—leading to a lethal level of tolerance for moral and societal decay, within, and tyranny, without—is the best that Enlightenment “reason” can do, count me out.

  27. Yes, lookout, we’re on the same page.
    I wonder where Dave and nv53 are? Come back! Come back! wherever you are, and answer some of our questions … we’ve answered some of yours.

  28. Yes, I was wondering where our protagonists have got to as well . . .
    Another book these misguided (I believe) sceptics might consider is one my husband just bought today, “The New Vichy Syndrome”, by the very fine Theodore Dalrymple—who, BTW, is an atheist (also a British psychiatrist, who’s retired and now lives in France).
    Re the idea that everything is hunky dory, minus the God of Abraham, Jacob, Isaac, and Jesus, one pertinent observation in the book: “. . . God is dead in Europe and I do not see much chance of a revival except in the wake of catastrophe. Not quite everything has been lost of the religious attitude, however; individuals still think of themselves as being of unique importance, but without the countervailing [Judeo-Christian] humility of considering themselves to have a duty towards the author of their being, a being inconceivably larger than themselves. Far from inducing a more modest self-conception in man, the loss of religious belief has inflamed his self-importance enormously.” (This irreligious Me-Myself-and-I also increasingly shuns any idea of justice and duty towards his neighbour, an obligation both the Old and New Testaments teach. Altruism or, in fact, its absence, is a topic Dalrymple has written about prolifically.)
    As Dave noted, quoting the estimable Thomas Sowell, “If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.” He’s right in more ways than one: on his own turf, it seems that Western man is now both wimp and, increasingly, hedonistic barbarian. Does Dave really think that this hollowed out sell-out of a citizen still retains “the belief that our culture and freedoms are worth defending”?
    Like me and batb, Dalrymple makes the connection between religious faith—to suggest that faith negates truth and reason is nonsense—and faith in one’s past: “Most Europeans are not religious. Most Europeans don’t believe in any large political project . . . Most Europeans have no concept any longer of “la gloire” [glory], that easily derided notion that can nevertheless impel people to the highest endeavour, and to transcend themselves and their most immediate interests. Most Europeans would mock the very idea of a European civilization and therefore cannot feel much inclination to contribute to [or defend] it.
    So, when Dave posits that, “It will not be Christianity or Judaism that will see us through our challenges . . . but the belief that our culture and freedoms are worth defending”, I disagree: Christianity and Judaism are, in fact, the bathwater, and the baby—“the belief that our culture and freedoms are worth defending”—has been quite unceremoniously tossed out with it.
    Kyrie eleison.

  30. lookout: “You ask, ‘Exactly where in the Bible are the rules of logic laid out’? Nowhere. Who suggested they were?”
    Well, batb said “It was Christianity and the Hebrew Bible that gave us our concepts of reason”, and I was responding directly to it. Pretty obvious really.
    batb: “How has logic and rationalism better served humankind since ‘the Enlightenment’?”
    lookout: “The so-called ‘Enlightenment’ almost immediately led to tyranny and death, as has every other secular, political movement since then. For a start, check out Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot: their secular ideologies led to the brutal murders of millions of their own citizens—and countless others. I wouldn’t say that fascism and communism are very good examples of reason. In fact, as we all know, these secular ideologies rely on the brutal suppression of truth.”
    You’re both at least partly right on this one. The reason for the bloodshed, as I’ve been repeating here ad nauseam, is the degradation of philosophy by Immanuel Kant and his descendents like G. W. F. Hegel who still hold sway today. Kant divorced reason from reality; one result was that (as Ayn Rand commented) the existentialists pointed to modern philosophy and said, “if this is reason, then to hell with it!” But problem is not the fact that the irrational modern ideologies were secular, it’s that they were irrational.
    batb: “Faith and rationality are not mutually exclusive”
    Then please define what you mean by them so that I know what you’re talking about.
    batb: “[The Bible is about] … learning to sacrifice our immediate pleasures for the good of others”
    Then it’s beneath contempt. Others are perfectly capable of looking after themselves, as we all are. We produce and trade with others for mutual benefit; we don’t sacrifice. There is nothing wrong with occasionally giving a helping hand to someone who has fallen on hard times, but it’s not a moral primary.
    batb: “[Christianity] has been at the root of every democracy in the world”
    Mostly, but may I remind you that the earliest Greek democracy arose four or five centuries B. C.
    batb: “It was Judeo-Christian ‘thinking’ that forwarded the idea of individual dignity and individual rights as apart from tribal, collective rights; it is this thinking that undergirds our judicial systems in the West”
    Even Ayn Rand said words to the effect that Christianity started people thinking about individual salvation, which is a related issue. I would lose the word “dignity” however, it’s a left-wing buzzword that means nothing, i.e., an anti-concept.
    batb: “I wonder where Dave and nv53 are? Come back! Come back!”
    I’m not signed in 24/7, so you might as well lose the sarcasm too.

  31. nv53, please don’t attribute quotes to me that are Melanie Phillips, although I do agree with her.
    Thanks for your responses, but please answer the question “How has logic and rationalism better [than Christianity] served humankind since ‘the Enlightenment’?”
    Then, you don’t think that sacrificing one’s immediate gratification in one’s family or community is a good idea? Go to today’s Reader Tips (August 11), and read the link furnished by EBD on the narcissism of the Boomers:
    http://brandywinebooks.net/?post_id=3757
    That’ll give you the perspective I’m coming from.
    And, is it just pure coincidence that as soon as the Boomers gave up on religion, aka Christianity, they began living utterly selfish, hedonistic lifestyles? Is it just pure coincidence that most of their children (the ones I’m teaching), who’ve never seen the inside of a church and have been taught that “the Church” is ee-vil, are entitled, self-centred, tyrannical, brats? ‘No milk of human kindness, just I’m-Number-One boorishness.
    I didn’t mean to be sarcastic, but seeing as there was a bit of a back-and-forth going here, I wondered why you hadn’t responded to what I considered were sensible, reasonable, rational questions.

  32. And, just to be clear: I don’t expect everyone to be a believer or to go to church. Faith is a gift — but it helps to receive it if you’re at least open to it. I don’t at all think that those who don’t practise Christianity are evil. Some ARE misguided, especially those who out of hand reject and ridicule the Christian faith and believers — and there are lots of people who fit this description, especially in our Chattering Classes.
    I simply would like to see some intellectual honesty in this debate — thank you for yours, nv53 — and not a knee-jerk reaction of “you’re attacking, criticizing or being condescending” simply because I make the observation, followed by documentation, that having lost/trashed the faith once believed and practised by most in the West, our civilization is fast being destroyed, leaving us as easy prey to those who wish to conquer us.

  33. nv53 has responded, which, like batb, I appreciate. But I think there’s still some misunderstanding here.
    nv53: lookout: “You ask, ‘Exactly where in the Bible are the rules of logic laid out’? Nowhere. Who suggested they were?”
    nv53: Well, batb said “It was Christianity and the Hebrew Bible that gave us our concepts of reason”, and I was responding directly to it. Pretty obvious really.
    Well, not pretty obvious really. (I too would appreciate having my words, not other’s assumptions, attributed to me.) batb’s statement actually doesn’t lead to the idea that the concepts of reason are laid out in the Bible like the Ten Commandments, as you suggest, nv53. I believe, it’s like I suggested: Jews and Christians used inference and deduction.
    The Bible tells the story of One God, who has created the earth in an orderly way for the benefit and good of mankind. This was a quite revolutionary concept—versus the capriciousness of many malevolent nature gods: human life and sacrifice repeated in a cyclical manner in order to appease them. On the other hand, the idea of a benign deity and an established order laid the foundation for reason and scientific discovery: once mankind understood that there was order in the world, both progress forward—rather than around and around, according to the seasons—and inquiry to discover the rules and their limits (science) became possible.
    On another topic, I’m quite astonished at your apparent disdain for the altruism that batb mentioned (and the woeful lack of it Theodore Dalrymple references): this concern and care for the welfare of others IS pretty well laid out in the Ten Commandments. Actually, C.S. Lewis studied the moral codes of many of the ancient civilizations and discovered that most of them were remarkably similar to the Ten Commandments. He called this moral code, The TAO, and it is perfectly rational: without the virtues enumerated there, communal life would disintegrate into anarchy—a state to which we’re headed rather more quickly than when Western society honoured the Ten Commandments.
    nv53, you write, “Then it’s [batb: learning to sacrifice our immediate pleasures for the good of others] beneath contempt. Others are perfectly capable of looking after themselves, as we all are [sic]. We produce and trade with others for mutual benefit; we don’t sacrifice [sic]. There is nothing wrong with occasionally giving a helping hand to someone who has fallen on hard times, but it’s not a moral primary [sic].” (You might consider checking out the story of the Good Samaritan.)
    On what grounds do you ridicule altruism? (I’m sad that you’ve arrived at such a conclusion.) Have you considered the outcome of what you’ve said here? The multitude of generous riches of Western civilization would never have happened if our forebears had had such a moral pygmy attitude. Now that the West is headed away from altruism at an astonishing speed—“Me-Myself-and-I, first and foremost, 24/7/365—things aren’t looking so good for our prosperity and safety.
    nv[envy?]53, as a person who appears to primarily value personal comfort and well-being above other considerations, beware what you wish for: I believe you’ll get the opposite of prosperity: widespread selfishness—which we see everywhere these days—breeds anarchy, not peace.
    I don’t mind criticisms of Christianity—for millennia, the Church has been very good at it! As a result, Christianity has developed and adapted. What I do mind are the countless, unreasonable pot shots made against Christianity and Christians at all levels of society—even by some people who should know better—out of sheer ignorance. It seems that anti-Christian bigotry is quite acceptable in the West—at the same time that Islam (where, with official approval, altruism is often distinctly lacking) is being accorded protected status. How reasonable is that?

  34. As I wrote before there are millions of North Americans who do not follow religion of any sort and certainly would not go to war with another state to impose Christianity on them. All my uncles and my father fought in WW2 not for some god but to defend our way of life and freedoms as I would today.
    “As Dave noted, quoting the estimable Thomas Sowell, “If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.” He’s right in more ways than one: on his own turf, it seems that Western man is now both wimp and, increasingly, hedonistic barbarian. Does Dave really think that this hollowed out sell-out of a citizen still retains “the belief that our culture and freedoms are worth defending”?” I believe the vast majority of Canadians as our esteemed host Kate shows in her forum will defend these freedoms and it is the MSM that glorifies these losers. As is happening in the US as the economy worsens there will be no money to support the lifestyle of these parasites.
    Quebec was ruled by the church until just recently and education and business was frowned on as something the English did. Only when this yoke was thrown off was there a sea change and companies like Quebecor and Bombardier are now representative of their rise in business.
    Lookout, benign deity, please, your god is one of fear, punishment, all powerful. I don’t want to critique your faith, its yours, keep it but don’t say unless all of us follow it we are doomed. The morality of the Catholic church has turned it into a sad joke. Again I am not anti-Christian and believe the words of Jesus of peace and love are a powerful message but as men have done throughout its 2000 year existence twisted his words for their own power.
    I and millions like me don’t need a deity to force us to follow a moral path, my parents did that guidance day by day by their example and I do for my son.
    We have the ability to reason as humans and I am amazed that people can still call upon this mystical god to protect us when it did nothing to stop the priest attacking a whimpering child alone in the night in your god’s own house. Or the god of Abraham letting millions of his followers perish in the ovens. Or this all powerful god allowing the muslims to overthrown and butcher his followers over the centuries in the middle east, Africa and Europe. It was the skill of Martel who stopped islam’s advance in Europe just as the prowess of Genghis Khan slaughtered the muslims in his time. It is men and women that drive civilization’s rise and its fall and their gods along with it.
    Look at Toronto today, filled with leftists who delay, tax, weaken any progress while feeding on the diminishing private businesses. Initiate every vice, like gambling, to take the public’s money to support their own bureaucracies. Cicero warned about this in ancient Rome as did Thomas Jefferson as it kills eventually all societies.
    Hirsi Ali’s books, particularly Nomad, shows the dead zone of the muslim world where its theocracy has total control of every minute detail of your life. I could feel the walls closing in as I read it.
    Lookout and batb, I can’t live in your world but I certainly agree that the left and liberalism is destroying ours and all the gods in the universe will not prevent our collapse as your god didn’t prevent the collapse of Rome now that it was a Christian empire.

  35. Dave, I appreciate your response. You seem like a person of good will and I agree with much of what you say. On some other things, I believe you’re mistaken.
    My father, uncles, and grandfathers fought in WWs I and II and no one’s talking “imposing Christianity” on anyone, then or now. However, as I said yesterday: “ . . . when Dave posits that, ‘It will not be Christianity or Judaism that will see us through our challenges . . . but the belief that our culture and freedoms are worth defending’, I disagree: Christianity and Judaism are, in fact, the bathwater, and the baby—‘the belief that our culture and freedoms are worth defending’—has been quite unceremoniously tossed out with it.” (Try asking a student, politely, to pick up something on the floor and put it in the garbage, please. “Why should I? It’s not mine.” And you think that this entitled non-citizen is going to go out of his/her way to “defend our way of life and freedoms”? That would mean sacrifice and hardship: “Miss, what are those?”)
    Quebec: it’s the most religionless, socialist, entitled-but-can’t pay-for-it, whiny, spoiled brat province in Canada. It has the lowest birthrate and the highest crooked politician, co-habitation, and suicide rate in the country. What’s so good about that? It seems like out of the frying pan and into the fire to me.
    About Christianity’s God and Christianity, you say, “. . . don’t say unless all of us follow it we are doomed”. I won’t—and I didn’t—say that. I did posit, however, that a culture that no longer believes in itself and is fast severing itself from its very roots, while a hostile enemy is actually chopping down the tree, is in big trouble.
    G.K. Chesterton wrote, “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” Dave, the freedom you cherish doesn’t stand alone: it’s connected to such things as the American Constitution (now being trashed by Obama and his thugs), back to Magna Carta, back to the JUDEO-CHRISTIAN idea that all humans are created equal in the eyes of the Judeo-Christian God (your description of Whom is foreign to me): so, even kings are not above the law. I believe it’s very short sighted, to say the least, to think that freedom stands alone and that the spoiled brats we’re “raising”, who take freedom for granted, as a stand-alone right, will be willing to go much out of their way to defend it. They’ve been fed so much negative propaganda about Canada’s legacy from Christian Europe, they might think a Muslim takeover would actually be an improvement.
    You say, “I and millions like me don’t need a deity to force us [—God does not force His followers: it’s a free choice—] to follow a moral path, my parents did that guidance day by day by their example and I do for my son.” I believe you. However, Dave, we’re still living on the tail end of the Judeo-Christian dispensation: the morality you no doubt believe and follow is that of the Judeo-Christian West. We’ve nearly spent all that moral capital. Just look around. It will be harder and harder for your son to follow your moral path in a society that’s quite unmoored from the same, altruistic beliefs.
    Re free will and the problem of pain: if the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus had, like the Muslim theocracies “total control of every minute detail of [our] life”, we’d be slaves, not free people. Pain and sin are definitely a problem: whole libraries have been written about it. And, yes, the RC Church’s sex scandals are utterly sinful and altogether a travesty. The Church is a human institution and so, like humans, it sins. However, it is disingenuous, at the least, to reduce the Church to the sum of its sins, while altogether ignoring the millennia of goodness and service—hospitals, orphanages, schools, universities, the multitude of Mother Teresas: in short, hospitality and help to the helpless (and not so helpless!) of all nations and creeds. (The Church provided the social safety net for centuries.) And don’t forget the priceless beauty of the architecture and visual art and music inspired by Christ and sponsored by the Church.
    I quite agree with your sentiments about godless Toronto—hey, the liberals have banned Christianity from the public square—the theocratic, repressive, anti-Christian, Muslim countries, and the treasonous MSM.
    But, what’s this about “Lookout and batb, I can’t live in your world”: what world would that be? I can’t speak for batb, but I’d imagine that our lives are much like yours: we look after our families and homes, we work, we have some fun, we read, we think, we see our friends, we help our neighbours . . . What’s different? Perhaps we give more to charity and volunteer more (the stats show that Christians do) and we go to church. What’s bad about that?
    Dave, I think your view of the Christianity and its place in civilizing the West is seriously skewed. (Rome was pagan and totally cruel and debauched before Christianity arrived: watch HBO’s “Rome”.) When the world has been officially scrubbed of Christianity—a Muslim takeover would do that quite efficiently—I think you’d find the pagan or Muslim result absolutely dismal.

  36. Actually, Dave, the Roman Civilization that fell wasn’t Christian: It was, rather, pagan. If you watch some of the extras in the television series “Rome,” the producer makes the point that when Christianity did come to Rome, things vastly improved for the citizenry.
    As I pointed out in an earlier post, I’m not asking you or anyone else to become a Christian. What I and lookout are asking is a modicum of knowledge about what it is you and so many other Westerners criticize in Christianity. If you don’t know your history, if you don’t know what the Christian Church actually has accomplished in the West or what it teaches and practises – apart from the anti-Christian propaganda in the media and in our other Chattering Classes – then you need to be very careful about your negative salvos. Christians seem to be the last group in the West upon whom it is acceptable to bestow ignorant and degrading put-downs. It’s become a meme in the media and the “educational system” to ridicule the Christian faith and nine times out of ten, when I challenge ignorant statements – in the sense that people don’t have even basic facts straight – those being critical have to back down. They’re usually pretty sullen, too: Don’t confuse me with the facts, please.
    From what you’ve written, Dave, I’d like to suggest that you not present knee-jerk criticisms of Christianity and Christians and that you do some homework. I’ve suggested a couple of books – that present documented historical facts rather than anti-Christian propaganda – which would greatly benefit any future arguments you wish to make about Christianity: “The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics without God” by George Weigel and Melanie Phillips’ “The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle Over God, Truth and Power.”
    You have acknowledged that the leftists have really screwed things up; I can assure you that there IS a connection between their rejection of Christianity (the religion of the West for over 2000 years) and their skewed view of the world, a reality you would do well to be aware of.

  37. Once again I am not criticizing Christianity I am saying simply I do not believe in a mythical god, period, full stop.
    I have travelled a great part of the world and there are many cultures like Thai, Chinese, Japanese that have managed to move into the modern world and have a rich and wonderful life style. Every culture has its strengths and weaknesses and our greatest weakness is the decline of the family and the resultant loss of a solid base for the raising of children.
    I am very well read and am a student of history and am aware of what Christianity has accomplished but for many, many people it holds no relevance any more, it simply doesn’t. You can not make people have faith if they are truly indifferent to it. Even as a young boy in the Anglican church I was bored with the rotes and rituals. Religion meant belonging to a club where everyone attended at least once a week. It was something you had to do, well I don’t have to do that anymore.
    “In AD 313, the Emperor Constantine made Christianity legal and for the first time, Christians were allowed to openly worship. Churches were quickly built not just in Rome but throughout the empire. In AD 391, the worship of other gods was made illegal.” Sounds like Rome was Christian to me and Rome was at its height and most peaceful during the first 2 centuries AD.
    I have seen many cathedrals and churches throughout Europe and it is sad to see these empty masterpieces slowly withering away. Good luck to you and your fellow Christians in filling them again before the muslims do.
    I honestly wish you well and you are right that the left thinks Christians are county bumpkins but times are changing as always so who knows what the future holds.

  38. Dave writes, “Every culture has its strengths and weaknesses and our greatest weakness is the decline of the family and the resultant loss of a solid base for the raising of children.”
    I altogether agree with this, Dave. And, believe me, it has everything to do with the decline of Christianity: in all too many cases, it doesn’t seem that unbelief provides either the grit or the staying power needed to sustain the unselfish commitment that both marriage and child rearing require.
    The genie’s out of the bottle and, I agree, it’s not likely to be going back in any time soon. But, the result is not going to be conducive to a healthy or properous society. The decline of Christianity is going to exact a huge price.
    I appreciate your good wishes and send the same to you.

  39. batb: “How has logic and rationalism better [than Christianity] served humankind since ‘the Enlightenment’?”
    Logic, or reason, is man’s tool of survival, so there is nothing that serves humankind (more correctly, serves the individual) better than this. However, there has been a lot of irrational nonsense propagated under the guise of “reason” over the last couple of centuries. This stems from Immanuel Kant divorcing reason from reality.
    lookout: “On what grounds do you ridicule altruism?”
    batb: “widespread selfishness—which we see everywhere these days—breeds anarchy, not peace”
    batb: “the leftists have really screwed things up”
    You two don’t seem to understand that the entire leftist-socialist-collectivist viewpoint is founded on altruism, which is the notion that man does not have the right to live for his own sake.
    Selfishness means concern with one’s own interests. I am indeed primarily concerned with my own interests. I also recognize that others are primarily concerned with their own interests, of necessity. My primary interests are my survival and my quality of life, therefore I try to be productive and to trade with others, voluntarily for mutual benefit. This is the foundation of civilization, i.e., capitalism, and there is nothing altruistic about it. This is why capitalism is moral and socialism is evil.
    By the way, mindless self-indulgence of whims is not selfishness if one defines it as rational self-interest.
    There is nothing wrong with being a Good Samaritan if one can afford the resources (time and money), but that’s an example of benevolence, not altruism.
    Every socialist dictator uses the language of sacrifice, and too many of our own politicians and commentators do too.
    The best way to understand what I’m saying is to pick up a copy of The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand. Highly recommended.

  40. I posit that nv53 is somewhat mixed up: his/her thesis, such as it is, is full of misconceptions, contradictions, and a serious misuse of the English language. Where to start?
    nv53 writes, “You two don’t seem to understand that the entire leftist-socialist-collectivist viewpoint is founded on altruism, which is the notion that man does not have the right to live for his own sake.”
    Good grief, nv53: what you describe is slavery, not altruism. It’s clear that you have no conception of the term. Canadian Oxford Dictionary: “altruism: 1. regard for others as a principle of action. 2. unselfishness; concern for other people.”
    If one believes that socialist dictators are altruists, one would believe that spiders catch flies in order to give them a comfortable, temporary, resting place in their busy day.
    nv53 then writes, “Every socialist dictator uses the language of sacrifice, and too many of our own politicians and commentators do too.”
    This entirely contradicts his/her statement about dictators as altruists by admitting that socialists use a non-Muslim form of taqiyya, called euphemism—or outright lies—to fool the people. (Obama does it all the time.) nv53, you need to make up your mind.
    nv53 also writes, “There is nothing wrong with being a Good Samaritan if one can afford the resources (time and money), but that’s an example of benevolence, not altruism.” Wrong again. Yes, a Good Samaritan is benevolent, but the key element is that a Good Samaritan is a person who helps another with no thought of payment in return. The materially poorest person in the world can be a Good Samaritan—and many are. In fact, it seems that the more materialistic a society becomes, the less likely one is to find Good Samaritans: it seems that nv53 might be a good illustration of this phenomenon.
    nv53 seems confused about what selfishness means too: “Selfishness means concern with one’s own interests.” Not really: everyone is, quite rightly, concerned with one’s own interests. I suggest that nv53 acquire a good dictionary to rectify his/her many misconceptions. From the Canadian Oxford Dictionary: “selfish: 1. deficient in consideration for others; concerned chiefly with one’s own personal profit or pleasure.” Judaism and Christianity teach the opposite of this.
    And what’s with nv53’s “By the way, mindless self-indulgence of whims is not selfishness if one defines it as rational self-interest.”
    How can an action that’s “mindless” and “[a] whim” also be “rational”? (Such an action may be “intuitive” self-interest; it’s certainly not “rational”.)
    nv53’s ramblings appear to be the product of a thoroughly mangled thought process. To start with, this person obviously thinks of words as plastic: they can have any meaning one wants them to have. Sorry to burst your bubble, nv53, but that’s not how the real world works.
    I hope that nv53 has as good “quality of life” day today as he/she “[tries] to be productive and to trade with others, voluntarily for mutual benefit”. Heaven help—as nv53 won’t be available—the person who, for whatever reason, isn’t able to meet nv53’s (by admission) self-serving standards.

Proudly powered by WordPress & Skyrocket Themes

MENU

Navigation