Unlike the illegals of today, at no time did the Hebrew progentiors Abraham up through Joseph demand that those in the lands where they sought refuge cater to their preferences or change the fundamental tenets of these respective cultures in which these figures sought refuge.

 Secondly, if one is going to compare the majoritarian English culture to that of the Pharaohs, it must be remembered that in the end Egyptian authorities prevented the Hebrews from leaving the empire. No one is preventing illegals from returning to their respective homelands.

Furthermore, just how far are liberals going to take the Biblical comparison? For if the migrants of today are to be fawned over as the equivalent of the Hebrew forefathers, perhaps we should consider what it was that this people did when they reached the Promised Land. In many incidents, the Israelites executed the inhabitants of the cities they came to occupy.

Though that may shock our contemporary sensibilities, since the Israelites were told directly by God to do this, it is not really our place to pass judgment on this historical reality. However, it is theologically sound to assume that God does not at this time or dispensation deal as directly or as explicitly as to what one nation should inflict upon another.

But if one is going to place upon one’s own shoulders or those one admires a divine mantle, shouldn’t one more clearly elaborate the parameters of this emulation, especially when veiled allusions to bloodshed are made that can be deciphered by those schooled in what to look for.

Deceptive leftists will assure the unwitting that I am out of my mind for insinuating that those on the side of illegal aliens in general and Hispanosupremacists in particularly are quietly biding their time until the day when they will launch a violent uprising against the United States. To paraphrase Gauis Baltar in the finale of Battlestar Galactica, just because I am crazy doesn’t mean I’m not right.

Already, radical groups such as MEChA and La Raza have threatened to kill when the day arrives any Whites found within the borders of the "reconquesta" they will name "Atzlan". Essentially, the kinds of groups fawned over on the nation’s college campuses and often quoted as respectable spokesmen of an ethnic perspective in the organs of the mainstream press don’t really differ to any appreciable degree from the deadbeats of the Ku Klux Klan.

If these uninvited arrivals don’t want to think of themselves primarily as Americans in terms of nationality and view themselves as Israelites and the remainder of us as Canaanites, what makes their elitist backers think they will escape the pending carnage. After all, in the eyes of the interlopers, don't all gringos pretty much look alike?

by Frederick Meekins

In keeping with the spirit of the celebration, youngsters should tell towns passing ordinances forbidding Trick or Treating for children over 12 years of age or six feet of height to "go to Ghenna".

It is claimed that the regulation is justified on the grounds of the fear felt in part by single mothers confronted by trick-or-treaters nearly six feet tall. However, isn’t that the fault rather of whatever reason or moral shortcoming as to why the mother is single in the first place?

For starters, since most adolescents have don’t have official ID’s prior to obtaining a driving license, on what grounds can a child be compelled to reveal their ages to law enforcement and (more importantly) how can age even be legitimately proven? After all, it seems foreigners can’t be compelled to reveal their identities, so why ought actual Americans be forced to?

The hyperpious will snap that any law that restricts what they consider to be a heathen practice is a good thing. However, if that is the case, what is to prevent statutes from being promulgated that will arbitrarily forbid activities that ought to be of an ethically neutral nature in the eyes of the state such as at what age one can be given a Bible or at what age teens should be permitted to date?

Those not wanting to deal with Halloweeners beyond a certain age or size are perfectly free to ignore the knock at the door and to have prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law those that get destructive over not having been rendered the coveted confections.

The passage of yet another layer of regulation to which once free citizens are required to bend the knee a bit more is not always the answer. Those failing to realize this rank among the most frightening boogeymen of all.

by Frederick Meekins

The tests or methodologies of epistemology are just the first step into the realm of Apologetics. These, in turn are applied to the assorted worldviews.

The first worldview examined will be Deism. As with Christianity, Deism believes that God created the universe and set it up to operate in accord with a system of natural laws both physical and moral that are discoverable by mankind. What sets Deism apart from Christianity is the extent to which each believes God intervenes in the affairs of both nature and man.

Often, Deism is described as the watchmaker view of God. Those holding to this view believe that, while God created the world and set it into motion, the natural laws He established were so comprehensive that God no longer intervenes in or on His creation’s behalf. This assumption puts it at odds with orthodox Biblical theology on a number of points.

As a system, it could be said that Deism served as a transitional set of beliefs between two great epochs of Western intellectual history. Following the upheaval of religious conflicts such as the Thirty Years War, in a sense Deism was a recoil to the horrors of dogma that had been exorcised of the doctrines of compassion and moderation.

Deism also softened the shock to those wanting to turn their backs on a Biblically-based understanding of life but not yet ready to embrace the rampant secularism characterizing the more recent contemporary era. Deism was also the end product of the scholastic undertakings of the Renaissance and the Age of Exploration whereby European thinkers had to come to grips with the realization that a world, a goodly portion of it consisting of cultures as at least as complex as their's, existed beyond the borders of Christendom.

The Father of English Deism was Herbert of Cherbury. In his book “On Truth“, Herbert established the following principles as common to all men: that there is one supreme God, that he ought to be worshipped, that virtue and piety are the chief parts of worship, that we ought to be sorry for our sins, and that a divine goodness dispenses rewards and punishments both in this life and the hereafter (153).

At a quick glance, the list does not appear all that controversial and there is not much there the orthodox Christian would disagree with. However, it is what is not on the list that Deists following after Herbert of Cherbury expanded upon that brought this worldview's anti-Christian underpinnings to full fruition for all the world to see.

One thinker that most have at least a cursory knowledge of connected to Deism was John Locke. According to Geisler, Locke in “The Reasonableness Of Christianity” endorsed the Deist unitarian view of God and denied the deity of Christ.

Among early Deists, the average Christian would really have to be on their toes to detect the subtle attacks against the faith. Often then the attacks were carefully aimed at other religious systems rather than directly on the Bible itself. However, as society became more accepting as to the amount of dissent that could be openly expressed, a number of Deists more bluntly stated their antagonisms with varying degrees of success.

For example, Matthew Tindal in “Christianity As Old As Creation” argued that, since God is perfect by definition, the revelation of God in the created order is so complete that the idea of the Bible is superfluous and is actually inferior as Tindal considered the Bible to be full of errors anyway (160). And by the time of the founding of the United States of America and the early years of the Republic, Thomas Jefferson edited a version of the Bible exorcising the Scriptures of their miraculous content. Our third president ended the Gospel with “there laid they Jesus, and rolled a great stone in front of the sepulcher and departed”, thus causing this version of the good news not to be all that good as Jesus had not risen according to this act of censorship (165).

Source: Geisler, Norman. "Christian Apologetics". Baker Academic, 1988.

by Frederick Meekins

Leftist kooks are infiltrating the faculty of Liberty University.

A biology professor there is insisting that modern society has developed an unfounded prejudice against bare feet.

As part of his proof, he cites photographs of early 20th century school children with unshod feet.

What he fails to realize or point out is that those children were likely that way because their parents couldn't afford shoes rather than as a result of conscientious fashion choice.

This case reminds me of some nutcase pastor from the Baltimore area, who despite his many trips abroad and such, berated his congregation for having more than one pair of shoes because the Africans he had encountered didn't have more than one pair.

Of course, it was never mentioned if we shouldn't travel abroad because the average African doesn't tend to travel abroad.

Before this foolishness meets its conclusion, as in the case of those that disfigure themselves with religious tattoos or those that made a big production of being discalced in the times of medieval Catholicism, those that go about without benefit of shoes will be applauded as spiritually better than the rest of us and those refusing to participate in podiatric nudity as average Americans will be accused yet another drain on environmental resources.

by Frederick Meekins

In the 4/19/10 edition of USA Today, religious antiquarian Phillip Jenkins, by comparing extremist Islam with assorted atrocities committed in the name of Christianity over the centuries, details from an historical perspective how any religion can be co-opted in the name of violence. Though his warning is in part a timeless one that needs to be considered in all ages, Professor Jenkins' case overlooks a number of important points.

First, it must be remembered that, though horrible, the lynching and dismemberment of Hypatia and the abuses perpetrated by Cyril highlighted by Professor Jenkins occurred centuries ago. The violence committed by Islamic extremists is going on today.

That does not diminish the evils inflicted so long ago or repudiate the lessons that can be learned from such ancient accounts. However, the danger arises when this sense of scholastic detachment is then applied to the issue of contemporary terrorism.

Secondly, it must be remembered that such violence perpetrated solely for expansive religious purposes in the name of the Lord by human hands is not endorsed by Christ during the dispensation of grace. In Acts 17, Paul debated and dialogued with the Athenian philosophers on Mars Hill; he didn’t crack open their heads.

For Christians, Jesus during the time of His first advent and Paul are to serve as examples in regards to faith, practice, and missiological strategy. It could be argued that Muhammad serves a similar function in the life of the Muslim.

It would be factually incorrect to say that all Muslims are prone to fanatic violence. However, those using violence for socioreligious ends are more faithful in emulating the example set by Muhammad and the text he promoted than supposed Christians committing violence are in living up to New Testament standards.

Professor Jenkins would no doubt argue that those emphasizing violent manifestations of Islam while neglecting violent expressions of Christianity are doing a disservice to history. He has committed this very offense by insinuating that violent atrocities are a phenomena exclusive to unhinged religions and not something plaguing other social institutions.

Jenkins writes, "Out-of-control clergy, religious demagogues with their consecrated militias, religious parties usurping the functions of the state --- these were the common currency of the Christian world just a few decades after the Roman Empire made Christianity its official religion. He continues a paragraph or two later, "...given a sufficiently weak state mechanism, any religion can be used to justify savagery and extremism."

Are you going to tell me that an historian of Phillip Jenkins'  repute is not aware of the countless deaths that result not so much from a "sufficiently weak state mechanism" but from a state made too strong at the expense of other cultural spheres? For example, Jenkins writes, "Between 450 and 650 AD, during what I call the 'Jesus Wars', inter-Christian conflicts and purges killed hundreds of thousands, and all but wrecked the Roman Empire."

Such conflict is tragic. However, it could be argued that the Roman Empire was, to use a highly technical historical metaphor, heading down the toilet well before then and for a number of additional reasons.

Frankly, the Roman Empire wrecked itself. Christians didn't instigate the debaucheries for which the waning years of the Empire have become infamous such as gladiatorial combat, rampant orgies, and even incest among the ruling elite.

History is as much a reflection of the values of those writing it as it is about the past era being written about. As such,  Professor Jenkins needs to be asked why he thinks the violence perpetrated by warring bishops is somehow worse or the victims any more dead than the Christians slaughtered by Roman authorities for little more than quietly adhering to their own convictions.

It would seem that the most important lesson to take away from the great tragedies of history is that innocent human lives are lost when institutions of authority assume power to extents and over matters they were never intended. The regimes more blatantly hostile of Christianity such as Nazism and Communism were actually the regimes that turned the slaughter of the innocent and dissidents into an exact science.

It has been said that those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Concentrating power in the hands of government at the expense of other social institutions in the name of preventing tyranny is one of the surest ways of bringing about that particularly undesirable state of political affairs.

by Frederick Meekins

MSNBC denounced the Tea Party as overwhelmingly White. Will the network denounce illegal aliens as overwhelmingly Hispanic?

Cops should have probably shot the owner along with or rather instead of the dog at a DC street festival. As with people that drag newborns out into extreme cold or heat, often those that have to drag their dogs to mass gatherings unless they are seeing-eye type dogs merely want attention for themselves and don't really care about their animals.

First Nag Michelle Obama believes restaurants should serve more apples and less butter. And that is from someone that's probably barely cooked a meal in her entire adult life. Her mother lives with here and she has had a chef on her staff back when she was a nobody just like the rest of us. Frankly, if one goes out to eat, one is going out for the slop. One can eat healthy at home.

The government is deploying X-ray vans to gather intelligence of motorists. The stated purpose is to find contraband such as weapons, narcotics, and human smuggling. But given the Obamas' propensity to control every aspect of your existence, what is to prevent them from determining what kinds of foods you are purchasing at the supermarket?

Bob Schieffer condemned John Boehner for smoking. Did the CBS correspondent ever go after with similar vehemence Ted Kennedy's boozing, whoremongering, and generalized subservience to Moscow? Is Bob Schieffer going to point out the medical drawbacks to Barney Frank of the alternative lifestyle wallowed in by the lisp-speaking Massachussetts Congressman?

Time magazine's 2010 annual national service issue insists to "Teach Is To Serve". So if government teachers can get paid upwards around $45,000 to $50,000 and still be considered to be engaged in public service, why should the rest of us be continually hounded about "giving back to the COMMUNITY" for free when the occupations we are engaged in are as every much a social and economic necessity as the teaching profession?

According to the 9/14/10 edition of USA Today, Colorado provides a free school breakfast for all students. From the text and photo, it seems this meal consists primarily of a carton of milk and a prepackaged serving of cereal. If parents can't afford this at home, THEY OUGHT TO KEEP THEIR PANTS ON AND REFRAIN FROM PROCREATNG!!!

Because the preponderance of students achieved standardized assessment benchmarks, the principal of Bladensburg Elementary dressed as a giant wiener and allowed students to squirt condiments such as catsup, mustard, and relish all over her. Perhaps the taxpayer-subsidized school lunch program needs to be curtailed sinc...e no one enrolled there is near starvation if food can be spared for such deliberate waste.

Those that go around burning books or flags at mass rallies have too much time on their hands. A sizeable percentage of these probably live on some kind of welfare --- be it government (Food Stamps or foreign aide) or ecclesiastical (handouts collected by threatening congregations how they will incur God’s wrath if they don’t pony up into the collection plate).

Maybe if thousands of Afghans were as enthusiastic about going to work and actually taking care of their families as they are about rampaging in the streets, that nation wouldn't be one of planet earth's toilet bowls.

Are these hayseed clergymen so bereft of rhetorical and homiletical aptitude that they must resort to pyrotechnics in order to exort as to the dangers of false teaching?

Before threatening to resort to pyrotechnics, did these pastors actually take the time to teach their respective congregations as to the dangers posed by Islam or its methods of ensnaring minds and cultures?

A Tennessee pastor stepping forward to burn a Koran needs to be asked exactly how does burning one make you a better Christian as he insists.

In his Sept 11th remarks, Obama insisted Americans need to "give back to their COMMUNITIES". You'll be doing plenty of that in more ways than you realize come January when tax rates are expected to rise.

For supposedly being among the toughest people to walk the earth, the NFL certainly gets its collective athletic supporter in a jumble in regards to every politically correct cause that comes down the pike.

Wonder if cashiers at Aldi's more foo-foo line of Trader Joe's stores also toss the food in the cart as if the customer is a piece of gutter trash.

An immigrant woman in line proceeded to pay for eggs and such with WIC credits. She then paid for chips and such out of her own pocket. If she has enough for the extra snacks, she essentially doesn't need the government "entitlements" to provide necessities.

So if Focus on The Family has altered its abstinence curriculum to curry the favor of Chinese Communist overlords, does that mean there will be an episode of the audio drama "Adventures in Odyssey" assuring the kiddies its OK to compromise your values and to deny the Lord when it suits your pragmatic agenda?

Salvatore Giunta is the first living recipient of the Medal of Honor since the Vietnam War. Wonder how many other soldiers named John Smith have acted as valiantly but whose names were not alluringly exotic enough to merit such public accolades.

A kook suspected of threatening the President is being charged in part with illegally possessing body armor. So basically, the police are allowed to protect themselves from homicidal miscreants but we as citizens are not allowed to protect ourselves from homicidal miscreants which easily include errant police. Since no one is harmed if an individual owns a bullet proof vest since the vest alone cannot be used as an implement of violence, a free citizen would be allowed to own a bullet proof vest.

In coverage of a lunatic possessing body armor believed to be a threat to the President, it was remarked one should not be allowed to threaten the President. And that is absolutely correct. But shouldn’t it be as much a crime to threaten all of America as a whole? As such, the Ground Zero Imam should be taken into custody as well.

Interesting how the leftist media will ridicule someone for having repented of witchcraft as if it doesn't exist but will herald it as an alternative, enlightened form of spirituality when it is advocated in mainstream cultural dialogue. You don't hear them snickering at J.K. Rowling. If Obama used dope as a youth, technically in terms of Biblical definition, wouldn't that make him a greater sorcerer than Christine O'Donnell likely ever was?

Obama removes mention of Creator from recitation of Declaration of Independence. Makes you wonder what else liberals expunge from the historical record.

By Frederick Meekins

During his campaign for the presidency, Barack Obama lamented the tendency of Americans to eat what we want, drive SUV's, and keep our homes climate controlled at 70 degrees.  Some will observe that I have already published a number of columns regarding the aforementioned sentiment.  And I will continue to do so for as long as the Obama's hypocritically admonish to the minutest detail how we are to live lives of sacrificial austerity for the sake of the COMMUNITY while they themselves wallow in opulent luxury.

According to NBCBayArea.com, the President attended a fundraiser in California primarily for the benefit of Senator Barbara Boxer.  Despite likely expending more in fossil fuels to reach his destination than the average suburbanite does puttering around town in a Ford Explorer or Jeep Cherokee, the opulence did not stop there.

When most regular Americans have a get together, they usually have cheese whiz and maybe Dominoes Pizza if they really feel like splurging.  Such provisions, however, aren't quite good enough for those that not only think they are better than the rest of us but that it is their place to run our own lives as well.

According to SFGate.com, those paying over $17,000 per person to attend the fundraiser held at the Getty Mansion ingested quail eggs and caviar, salmon, avocado on tortilla chips, and Kobe beef short ribs with potatoes.  For desert, those gathered had buckwheat crepes with roasted cherries and almond ice cream.  If one is what one eats, wouldn't that now make Obama "buckwheat" with one granted linguistic amnesty from being denounced as racist since one would simply be making a dietary observation.

As the type that expect to be praised and heralded for all that they do, the Obamas's didn't start a vegetable garden at the White House as a way to relax by poking around in the dirt at the end of the day.  Rather, to the First Lady especially, the very bounty of the Good Lord's earth is to be co-opted for the purposes of scolding the American people as to our ways deemed errant in the eyes of contemporary world Bolshevism.

One of the obvious reasons behind the garden is to rub the noses of the American parents in the nutritional insufficiencies of what they decide to feed their children.  For example, should the social conditioning proposed by Frau Obama fully take hold, feeding your kids short ribs and ice cream all in the same meal will probably be grounds for a visit from social services should the neighbors catch wind of it.

The symbolism of the White House garden, however, goes beyond the centrality of nutrition to healthy living.  The Obamas not only want to tell us what to eat but also from where to eat.

Catching on among those ashamed for enjoying a standard of living above that of Third World squalor are the Slow Food and Locally Grown Food movements.  According to the advocates of these positions, the elites should admonish we lowly masses to only consume non-processed victuals grown in our respective areas.  Most conveniently fail to mention that, if this mindset replaced current food production practices, Americans would be chained to their kitchens (or wherever else these fanatics allow us to prepare our sustenance) and more importantly, what is to prevent widespread starvation in areas where not much grows in the winter.

But so long as the likes of the Obamas have full bellies, it really doesn't matter what kind of gastronomical hardship their policy idiosyncrasies might impose upon the American people.  It is the assumption, after all, among the circle Obama is most comfortable with that the population needs to be reduced anyway.

It has been argued that an army travels on its stomach.  Other than the relationships with God and family, none are as profound as one's relationship with food.

A leader's attitude towards basic sustenance will reveal a great deal about his underlying political philosophy.  Unfortunately, it seems Obama believes he is to be denied no culinary delight while you as a mere commoner are to endure happily a life of dietary aestheticism.

by Frederick Meekins

The United States and China discussed human rights at a round of high-level talks. One might be surprised that the meeting did not so much focus on the egregious atrocities that have gone on under this Communist tyranny from the time of its founding to this very day. Rather, Obama administration officials allowed America to be berated on issues such as homelessness and the new Arizona immigration law.

Before America as a nation takes this criticism seriously, perhaps we should consider what the law entails and how this compares with what goes on in Red China.

The Arizona law will permit police to ascertain an individual's identity and thus legality after initial contact. Essentially, this isn’t anything that isn’t already authorized by law and is perhaps an even better guarantor of individual liberty and dignity than what is already permitted.

In a number of decisions, the Supreme Court ruled that police could compel an individual to identify themselves even when it had not been established that the law had even been violated or that there was probable cause indicating such. Interestingly, there were no riotous mobs in the streets when it was thought these kinds of identity checks were only going to be aimed at actual Americans.

Even if scores of those with no legal standing in the United States are removed from the streets of Arizona as a result of the new law, they will still fair considerably better than those taken into custody in dictatorships. In Iran, several American coed tourists straying over the Islamic Republic’s border with Iraq were sentenced to lengthy prison terms.

And unlike illegals here, those there are not fawned over with lavish government handouts with their bureaucratic benefactors hoping the outsiders will recast the entire society in a foreign image.

It could be properly argued that the American students deserved some kind of punishment for violating another country’s sovereign borders. What likely cannot be argued against is that the accommodations they languished in made Camp Gitmo look like a swanky New York City hotel. Guards there are not going out of their way to provide American delicacies or to treat our holy books and founding documents with a nauseating degree of deference.

In China, one house church pastor sentenced to prison was allowed to languish and suffer without access to his diabetic medicine. And it could be argued that he can be considered one of the lucky ones. It has been claimed that organs are regularly harvested from dissident Tibetans and Christians.

If Red China had the illegal alien problem plaguing the United States, do you honestly believe authorities there would do little than look over the papers of these transnational vagrants, whisper sweet nothings in their ears, and release them on their recognizance which many have very little of to begin with given their connections to the drug trade, human smuggling, and assorted gangs. And given the propensity of a certain atrocity to occur throughout Chinese history (be it during the Great Cultural Revolution or in rumors a few years back regarding what was being done to fetuses), if a wife in China told her husband that they would be having a little Mexican later that evening that wouldn't mean he should expect to have a taco or burrito for dinner.

Many infringements upon human rights stem from an improper understanding of the relationship between social institutions such as government and the individual. In America, the extremes of these have been minimized in part due to the assumption that the individual possesses worth of his own created in the image of God. The individual is not owned by the state.

As an officially atheistic socialist country, the Chinese Communist Party and state see themselves as the highest authority with these determining that it is not so much the individual that counts but rather the group as a whole. After all, if we are simply nothing more than animated primordial ooze as the Darwinian insists and upon which Marxist-Leninism rests, it is kind of hard to get worked up over one person when there are over a billion more walking around easily capable of taking the place of a defective cog in the machine of state.

Since in the Communist system you are less an individual, the more the system provides of those things deemed to be necessities by the overseers (under whom fewer things end up being defined as necessities than in a free market economy) in such command societies such commodities extended only so that the goals mapped out for you by the COMMUNITY might be achieved. In a constitutional republican system, it is believed that the individual is best suited to determine for themselves which needs and desires should take priority for oneself and one's family. Granted, the system is not perfect, but it is far preferable and more in line with what God intended for humanity.

Thus, that is no doubt why China would rank homelessness as a human rights violation while not batting an eye at putting a bullet in the back of the head of a House Church pastor so that his kidneys might remain undamaged for organ harvesting. In America, those who love liberty must first inquire as to why the individual is homeless before formulating an appropriate policy response.

Though it is not politically correct to mention it these days and even if they represent only a fraction of those without a domicile, frankly there are those that simply refuse to do that which is necessary to maintain a residence or they engage in behaviors that cause their homes to be lost. Of those that went into vapors when Glenn Beck critiqued the subject, tell me where is the social justice to take from those working and scrimping in order to hoe their own path to give it to those living irresponsibly and demanding a standard of living far above a subsistence level with a few basic comforts that they are not willing to exert the labor necessary to acquire?

One might feel sorry for the children of such deadbeats and somehow provide enough for the children to get by without hardly a single bread crumb going to such pathetic excuses for parents. It is preferable that such outreach come from the private sector free to point out the deficiencies of individual character and the blunt steps necessary to correct the situation. Often in these times where we must constantly walk around on eggshells for fear of offending some self-enlightened leftist do-gooder with a law degree or a bullhorn and definitely too much time on their hands, government is unable to articulate those steps necessary for complete restoration.

And while we are at it, perhaps something needs to be said about and to these women that fall for scumbag men. If you find the boozing and carousing attractive when you are young only to have it morph into not knowing how you are going to feed the five kids because he's blowing the milk money on beer and backhanded you across the face because you dared ask where he was the night before, other than for tossing his rear in jail, don't expect much pity and especially don't expect some behaved guy you wouldn't give the time of day to 15 years ago to take you in as if he has some obligation to provide for another man's progeny.

One of contemporary liberalism's most glaring intellectual deficiencies is that it assumes that the remainder of the world, when you come down to it, lives no differently than the people of the United States. Before we pull out the sackcloth and ashes to belittle ourselves embarrassingly on the world stage, let’s at least make sure we don’t waste the effort on autocrats, thieves, cutthroats, and homicidal mass murderers.

by Frederick Meekins

The next theory of truth and religious knowledge is pragmatism. Developed initially by Charles Sander Pierce and expanded by William James, pragmatism is the theory that truth is not determined by what one thinks, feels, or discovers but rather by what works.

Christians may instinctively recoil from this initially. However, the proper response to this epistemological methodology needs to be more nuanced than the believer might originally suspect.

Providing in part an alternative to the early 20th century viewpoint promoted in large part by Sigmund Freud that belief in God was psychologically harmful, in works such as The Varieties Of Religious Experience, James believed religion should be judged by its results in the life of the individual. Overall, James concluded that, "In a general way...on the whole...our testing of religion by practical common sense and the empirical method leaves it in possession of its towering place in history. For economically, the saintly group of qualities is indispensable to the world’s welfare (109).”

However, any alliance the Christian apologist may make with William James is tenuous at best. For example, James categorized the pantheistic outlook of Mediterranean paganism as healthy and those emphasizing the need to be “twice born” as epitomizing a Germanic dourness characterized by an obsession regarding man’s fallen nature and need to be saved by God (105).

Though few in number, Christian apologists have adapted pragmaticism to the defense of the faith. Foremost among these is Francis Schaeffer.

Schaeffer’s method might not be considered solely pragmatic by the methodology’s purists as he does not allow a worldview’s viability to determine whether or not it is true but rather to show how the Christian worldview is the most consistently livable. Schaeffer refers to this test as an experiential teleological argument (110).

In a Schaefferian apologetic, one takes the propositions of a particular worldview and projects them onto the movie screen of life. For example, Schaeffer noted how the materialism of Jackson Pollock drove the artist to suicide and how musician John Cage did not adhere to the philosophy of chance that categorized his music when it came to picking potentially deadly mushrooms

The next epistemological methodology is combinationalism. Throughout this discourse thus far, it has been observed that, while each methodology contributes something to our understanding of God and knowledge, none of these approaches is sufficient enough to stand alone as the only way through which to obtain an understanding of reality. But instead of falling into a state of solipsistic dismay that nothing can be known since each approach falls short, combinationalists suggest that the insights of each method ought to be knit together in order to produce the most comprehensive understanding possible.

One such apologist utilizing this approach is Edward J. Carnell. Carnell combines rationalism, which he defines as a “horizontal self-consistency so that all of the major assumptions of the position can be so related together that they placate the rules of formal logic” and evidentialism, which he categorizes as “a vertical fitting of the facts” in that one’s assumptions must cohere with the “real concrete facts of human history (122).” Together, these elements make up systematic consistency.

However, even combinationalists must proceed with caution. As Geisler points out in “the leaky bucket argument”, if the other methodologies are insufficient on their own, these do not necessarily hold the epistemological water any better when they are combined together (129). Furthermore, often when one proceeds to evaluate a worldview, it can be very easy to fall into the trap of presupposing the worldview before it has been established or the facts are spun in such a way to fit into the worldview.

For example, Geisler uses the example of Christ's Resurrection. Geisler writes, "An apologist...cannot legitimately appeal to the miracle of Christ's resurrection as a proof for the existence of God (129)." This statement, shocking on its face value, means that God is already presupposed if the event is categorized as miraculous in terms of its explanation. Geisler reassures, "On the other hand, grant that God already exists, then the resurrection may very well be a miraculous way of confirming that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God (129)."

Source: Geisler, Norman. "Christian Apologetics". Baker Academic, 1988.

By Frederick Meekins

The next methodology is experientialism. Though fideism strives to make faith alone the justification for religious knowledge or belief, Geisler observes that this faith is ultimately justified in terms of an experience had by the individual (65).

To the experientialist, God or the Ultimate is not so much something to be understood or comprehended but rather felt. Stretching all the way back to the Neoplatonist Plotinus, experientialism views what the believer refers to as God as "the one beyond all knowing and being (66)."

In fact, God is so far beyond what the finite mind is capable of comprehending that to really say anything about God is highly inaccurate as to do so would be limiting God. As such, the best the individual can aspire to is an intuitive mystical union with the universal by turning inward through an ascetic detachment from the physical world around us in pursuit of a metaphysical unity.

Friedrich Schleiermacher provided for a more accessible apprehension of the cosmic or divine by equating religious experience not so much with monastic solitude but rather with the feeling of absolute dependence we all feel from time to time. According to Schleiermacher, this feeling is actually the World Spirit reaching out to us and actualizing within each of us.

To experientialists, dogmas and doctrines are not that important (that itself actually a doctrine though) as these conceptual formulations are merely shadows or echoes of the deeper experience. While experientialists are correct that the individual must have some kind of encounter with God beyond that often referred to as "book knowledge", one begins to trod upon dangerous ground when the experience becomes the ultimate criteria for judgment by positing that those having more intense experiences are somehow more in touch with the cosmos as in the case of certain meditation cults.

If experience itself is made the highest standard, the individual will end up not knowing whether or not he is being led into deception. I John 4:1 tells us to test the spirits to see if they are from God.

The next apologetic methodology is evidentialism. Rationalism, fideism, and experientialism are largely inwardly focused approaches to knowledge of God with both fideism and experientialism also being highly subjective as well. Evidentialism tends to be more objective as it points to evidence existing independently of an individual's internal emotional or intellectual states to make a case for the existence of God.

While experientialism stresses the importance of a personal acquaintance with what we categorize as the divine, evidentialism provides an anchor to prevent such hypothesizing from meandering off into exceedingly esoteric or individualized speculation by providing a basis for belief any interested party is free to investigate at their own leisure. The primary forms of proof offered by evidentialists are nature and history.

Nature is probably the form of evidence best used when the individual being appealed to is not yet even a theist. This proof for the existence of God is known as the teleological argument in that it holds that the intricate structures found in the world point to the need for a designer.

This idea is expressed in terms of the Watchmaker Hypothesis formulated by William Paley. Paley contended that, if one found a watch in the woods, one would from the intricacies of its parts working together in tandem for a purpose assume the contraption would need a designer. Likewise, since the world is no less complex and actually even more so, it is only logical to conclude that the physical universe around us would also require a designer.

Having lived from 1743-1805, Paley himself did not face the Darwinian onslaught. However, others since then have tweaked the argument to make it stronger against criticisms such as those of John Stuart Mill. Mill argued that the watchmaker analogy was weak because we know things like watches have watchmakers and, without a perspective beyond which a finite human being is capable, Hume's speculation of organicism with the world growing like a vegetable could very well be correct.

To counter the Darwinian and Humean notions that given enough time a number of elements could be reshuffled enough to fortuitously result in the world we see around us, A.E. Taylor and F.R. Tennat have argued that the world around us shows too much adaptation and anticipation to have been the product of random chance. For example, Taylor notes how the body’s need for oxygen is anticipated by biological structures such as membranes and organs. Geisler writes, “In fact, mind or intelligence is the only known condition that can overcome the improbabilities against the development and preservation of life...In short, the order evident in natural development of life is evidence of God (90)."

While this brand of evidentialism is vital in convincing the atheist or agnostic that God exists, it is not enough to bring someone to a saving knowledge of Christ as many of the world's religions such as Judaism, Islam, and even apostate forms of Christianity are full of theists barreling down the road to Hell. An evidentialist approach emphasizing history directly confronts the unbeliever with the decision he will have to make to decide his eternal destiny.

One of the aspects of Christianity that sets it apart from many of the other religions and belief systems is its historical nature in that the validity of its claims ultimately rest upon the veracity of actual events. II Peter 1:16 says, "For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty?"

Since these events took place within the flow of normal time, by utilizing research methods similar to those used to investigate the past such as the examination of ancient documents, one can construct an intellectual framework reasonably assuming that Christ did indeed exist. Prominent evidentialists utilizing history would include John Warwick Montgomery and Lee Strobel.

Despite the strength of evidentialist apologetics, its efforts to elevate religious dialogue beyond one's internal feelings (the burning in the bosom referred to by the Mormons which could very easily be indigestion), the approach is not without drawbacks. For while facts can indeed exist as objective realities, the individual can often go to great lengths to put a spin on them that fits them into an individual’s preconceived worldview.

For example, those inclined to marvel at the world around them can more easily be persuaded that everything was created by a wise and loving God than those who view the world through a survival of the fittest mindset focusing on the violence, bloodshed, and disease that often characterizes both the human and animal realms. Evidentialists will counter that often the theistic interpretation turns out to be the most credible rather than naturalistic ones that stretch plausibility such as the Apostles absconding with Christ’s body or Jesus being revived in the cool of the tomb.

Source:

Geisler, Norman. "Christian Apologetics". Baker Academic, 1988.

By Frederick Meekins

Though Whale Wars is an interesting program, in light of it, Discovery Networks should broadcast from a favorable standpoint a program about a band of prolife activists disrupting the operations of an abortion clinic.

On Whale Wars season 2, episode 8, the Japanese whalers should be applauded in their restraint by only use an acoustic weapon on the Sea Shepherd copter. These beatnik environmentalists should just be grateful a surface to air missile wasn't used.

Perhaps the Japanese whalers should get their own rubber dingies and toss noxious substances onto the Sea Shepherd ship for a change. Given the disgusting things Asians are known to eat, are pungent aromatic assaults the best way to deter the whalers?

Will there be a season of Whale Wars where the Sea Shepherds plan to harass Eskimos for hunting cetaceans? Guess the Japanese are too close to honorary White people to be able to gum up the conceptual relativism of these leftwingers by asking who are they to impose their dietary values on another culture.

The Sea Shepherds ought to be glad they are not dealing with the Japanese of the World War II era. Say what you want about that empire's faults, it's doubtful they would put up with hippies harassing that nation's ships.

Seems Paul Watson is the only crew member to grow obese on a vegetarian diet. Most of them look pathetically sickly and thin. Even the crews pet African looked plumper than the average Westerner onboard

With the sinking of the Ady Gil, maybe the organization now knows how it feels to have one of their vessels rammed.

It was stated that $5 million was paid for the Sea Shepherd's vessel the Bob Barker. Was that bid closest to the actual retail price without going over?

by Frederick Meekins

Most Americans are no doubt aware of the tragedy of the oil slick coating the Gulf Coast from the damaged petroleum rig. What they might not be aware of is the attitude among elites of how we as citizens and consumers are simply to go along with whatever position they craft as a response regarding the matter.

A headline from the 5/25/10 online edition of the Washington Post bemoans "For Some Washington Drivers, Convenience Outweighs Calls For BP Gas Boycott”. The story laments the tendency of certain consumers who “...prioritize convenience over taking a moral or political stand.”

For starters, in this day where it is constantly pounded into our heads that no one is to impose their views on any one else or to even dare to suggest that certain values might be superior to others, on what grounds are we expected to do something because someone with no real binding authority over us tells us to?

Many of the rabblerousers behind the BP boycott are some of the same nags behind the boycott of the state of Arizona regarding the immigration law. Yet these crusaders would turn around and become moral libertines if some pro-family coalition organized a boycott of states such as Vermont authorizing sodomite matrimony.

In all fairness, busybody progressives are not the only ones to use boycotts not so much in pursuit of a policy objective but rather to exert power and control over their respective constituencies.

I remember in the early 90’s in some Christian circles how an edict was handed down how the truly spiritual wouldn’t shop at K-Mart because at the time its B. Dalton Booksellers subsidiary was selling a line of erotic novels. From the vehemence behind the pronouncement, one almost feared the possibility of expulsion from the more doctrinally rigorous Christian schools if it was discovered that was where one’s parents shopped every once in a while.

It is a good thing to have as much information as possible as to the implications of one’s socioeconomic decisions. However, when an interest group advances beyond the function of conveying information regarding a perfectly legal and acceptable product to demanding that a certain action be taken in response to the purveyors of the product for reasons tangential rather than inherent to the particular product in question and threaten with sanction or approbation those deciding not to go along with the particular campaign, the group presenting the overly enthusiastic warning may also require additional scrutiny as a threat to our liberty.

by Frederick Meekins

The next epistemological methodology is rationalism.  Of rationalism, Geisler writes, "Rationalism is characterized by its stress on the innate a priori ability of human reason to know truth.  Basically, rationalists hold that what is knowable or demonstrable by human reason is true (29)."  To the rationalist, the mind takes precedence over experience and the information acquired through the senses as a foundation for truth and knowledge.

In a rationalist methodology, there exists  in  the  mind  a number of innate ideas or principles that allow the individual to arrive at an understanding of the universe.  These include principles of logic such as the law of noncontradiction.  It is from contemplation upon ideas generated through reflection upon such foundational principles that the thinker is able to postulate systems of truth in a manner reminiscent of mathematics and geometry.

For example, in his system, Descartes started from his "cogito, ergo, sum (I think, therefore I am)" as his ability to doubt was the one thing he could not doubt.  From here, Descartes built a theistic proof.

Descartes begins this with the admission that, since he lacks knowledge, he is imperfect.  However, to realize one is imperfect, one must have knowledge that perfection exists.  Yet perfection cannot arise from within the imperfect.  Therefore, there must be a perfect mind from which perfection originates and this is God (31).

An apologetic utilizing the rationalist approach possesses a number of strengths as well as drawbacks.  As to its strengths, the rationalist method stresses a consistency of reality.

It follows that a rational God would create a universe that regularly operates in accord with verifiable laws that we as His creations would be able to arrive at through deliberative contemplation.  As rationalists posit, the mind to an extent must possess some kind of mental architecture to process the jumble of sense experiences the individual is bombarded with almost constantly.   Even  Scripture  indicates   that  part  of   man's knowledge regarding God and His character is innate as Romans says that even the Gentiles, who were not formally given the Law in the same direct manner as their Hebrew counterparts, still had many aspects of the Law written upon their hearts.

Despite the strengths of the rationalist approach to apologetics, the methodology is not without drawbacks.  The foremost is the acknowledgement that it can be argued that the rationally consistent does not always translate into the realm of necessarily actual and does not provide the bedrock certainty its advocates claim. For example, regarding the ontological argument, Geisler notes, "But it is not logically necessary for a necessary Being to exist anymore than it is for a triangle to exist...But the point here is that there is no purely logical way to eliminate the 'if' (43)."

Of the next religious epistemology, fideism, Geisler writes, "In view of the fact that empiricism led to skepticism...and that rationalism cannot rationally demonstrate its first principles, fideism becomes a more reliable option in religious epistemology.  Perhaps there is no rational or evidential way to establish Christianity (47)."  Thus fideism holds that truth in religious matters rests on an accepting faith rather than a critical scrutiny.

As with the other methodologies, fideism comes in a variety shades. On its more moderate side, one finds Blaise Pascal.  At the more extreme end of the spectrum, one would find the likes of Karl Barth.

As a fideist, one might find Pascal a bit subdued.  Though one would assume reason had no place in fideism, Pascal did not dismiss rational appeals outright.  He just did not build his foundation or case upon them.  Of Pascal's position, Geisler writes, "A proof at best may be the instrument by which God places faith in one's heart (49)."

Thus, the real difference between Pascal and the rationalist was basically a differing estimation in what each thought reason could achieve.  To the rationalist, the thinker is able to deduce their way to a logically irrefutable foundation for a belief in God.  To Pascal, such proofs were not absolutely conclusive and the chasm separating doubt and certainty had to be crossed by a bridge of faith.

Since at best, in the mind of Pascal, the individual is left with a fifty/fifty chance regarding the existence of God, the matter did not come down to a dispassionate calculation but rather to a matter of personal existential destiny best summarized by his famous wager (49).  According to this wager, if the odds as to whether or not God exists are about even, one is better off believing God exists and then be proven wrong since upon death you would merely pass out of existence than to say God does not exist and then be proven wrong upon death as then one would end up in Hell.

At the other end of fideism's spectrum stands the Neo-Orthodox such as Karl Barth.  According to Barth, God is "wholly other" in that God can only be known through faith in revelation.  Geisler summarizes Barth's position as such: "We do not know the Bible  is  God's  Word  by  any  objective  evidence.   It  is  a self-attesting truth (54)."  Thus to the Barthian, the accounts contained in the Bible transpired on a plane beyond the parameters of objective, investigative history.  One either accepts them by faith or one does not.  Therefore, the believer does not have to answer and is immune from those such as the Higher Critics claiming to apply the rigors of scholarship to the scriptural texts in the hopes of either authenticating or discrediting these documents.

As with rationalism, fideism has both strengths and drawbacks.  Fideists are to be commended for holding that the God of the Bible is much more than the God of mathematics.  Though there is merit in the attempt to prove that belief in God does not violate reason and logic, there is a great danger in reducing God to the level of a distant first cause not all that interested in how human beings live their daily lives.  Fidesits are also correct that ultimately, no matter how much evidence one might collect or how many syllogisms one might be able to deduce, one has to make a leap of faith over those gaps of doubt that remain no matter how small they might be.

Yet despite the strength of their methodology, it has shortcomings as well.  Foremostly, fideism makes it very difficult to engage in a debate or discussion with someone holding to another worldview if one must accept a comprehensive system of faith solely by faith without evaluating between them with some agreed upon criteria.  Geisler writes, "...either a fideist offers a justification for his belief or else he does not.  If he does not,  then  as  unjustified  belief  it  has  no rightful claim to knowledge (63)."

Source:

Geisler, Norman. "Christian Apologetics". Baker Academic, 1988.

by Frederick Meekins

In "Into The Heart Of Darkness, Part 1", I examined the Black liberation theology of Jeremiah Wright and how the leftist radicalism at the heart of this worldview serves as the foundation of the belief system of President Barack Obama and forms the basis of many of his policies. And even though Obama claims to have renounced his connections to his former pastor Jeremiah Wright, since Obama sat under this pastor for nearly 20 years and continues to advocate these kinds of policies, it is obvious Obama has not distanced himself from sociopolitical radicalism to the extent he claims he has.

Even if Obama is successful in tossing under the rug the insinuations of having embraced Afrosupremacist theology, he has gone out of his way repeatedly to let the world know he spent the early years of his career as a community organizer. Obama supporters would have average Americans believe that this position involved little more than getting the plumbing fixed in rundown apartments or organizing senior citizens outings to the local supermarket for the elderly without their own transportation.

While these are laudable undertakings, these tasks do not encapsulate the true purposes and intents of community organizing. These are just the bait to lure the needy yet unsuspecting into deeper levels of manipulation.

Though Barack Obama looked to Jeremiah Wright to provide a theological foundation for his ambitions and life's work, the danger the President represents goes beyond even the vile message propagated by his religious mentor. For despite his egregious faults, one has to hand it to Jeremiah Wright that at least he is upfront about what he believes and speaks his mind.

Obama's apostles have tried to place their liege's hallowed past beyond the realm of critical scrutiny by insinuating it is now racist to look into what exactly community organizing is and that Jesus Himself was one. However, it is anything but holy and nothing whatsoever to do with race.

At its heart, community organizing is about Communist agitation. In a National Review article titled "What Did Obama Do As A Community Organizer", Byron York defines community organizing as "the practice of identifying a specific aggrieved population...and agitating them until they become so upset about their condition that they take collective action to put pressure on local, state, or federal officials to fix the problem often by giving the affected group money."

It sounds like such an approach is morally neutral as it doesn't differ on the surface all that much from the tactics employed by any group along the political spectrum. However, in the case of Barack Obama, this strategy would be used to implement the kinds of things he learned from Jeremiah Wright and the other acolytes of perdictious revolution.

The school of activism with which Obama aligned himself employed such tactics in pursuits of obviously radical leftist ends. Obama's employer the Calumet Community Religious Conference embraced the doctrines of Saul Alinsky.

Alinsky's magnum opus Rules For Radicals is dedicated to none other than Lucifer, the Prince of Darkness. Thus, if Obama was mentored by those who in turn took their inspiration from the devil, by definition, doesn't that make Obama none other than Satan's intellectual grandchild?

The original purpose of the Church was to use its resources to assist the individual to get their lives straightened out in the name and power of the Lord Jesus Christ. However, under the rubric of social organizing, we are to no longer view ourselves as responsible for ourselves but instead as part of a COMMUNITY and with docility take commands and instructions from those that have set themselves up as the vanguard of the proletariat who are not bound by the restrictions placed upon we lower breeds of humanity.

This is seen in terms of the denigration of American icon John Wayne. In most of his films, John Wayne portrayed characters that looked to their own moral wherewithal or their families to solve their own problems. Such thinking that is nowadays mocked used to be admired as self-reliance. In the worldview of Barack Obama, we are to have both our guns and our God wrest from us and are instead to look to the state for purpose and to solve our problems as epitomized by his remark that he wanted to “make government cool again”.

Though he may not say it directly, but by examining what Obama says and in analyzing it in light of its implications and how he himself lives, one can legitimately conclude that this would-be messiah thinks that you exist for the benefit of the state and those like himself better than you. For example, at the cornerstone of Obama’s social philosophy is the plan to reduce the standard and quality of life for the vast majority of Americans. In May 2008 in a speech in Oregon, Obama said, “We can’t drive our SUV’s and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times.”

Does the average American really comprehend the level of control being proposed here? Why in the name of perdition does anyone want a president that thinks it is his place to tell you what to drive, what you can eat, and how warm you can keep your house? For any government that can tell you what you can and cannot do in your own home to that extent will eventually no longer permit you to live in your own home for reasons of national security, environmental sustainability, or whatever other bogus excuse will be bandied about the day the mass roundups start.

Even worse, Obama does not live by the standard he thinks out to be imposed upon you. For while you are not to eat anything not on a government approved menu or go anywhere beyond the radius one can travel by unicycle or pogostick, Obama does not sit home in the dark, shivering with a blanket draped over his shoulders, munching on saltines.

The environment is no where near the point of collapse that he wants you to be duped into believing. One of the places Obama vacations is the U.S. Virgin Islands. Though some esteem Obama with an almost messianic aura and he has come close to applying such rhetoric to himself in prattle about turning back the seas and such, I some how doubt he walked to that particular destination.

Yet it is not enough for Obama that your life comes to a screeching halt to assuage the environmental consciences of big shot liberals such as himself and Al Gore (who has obviously been eating whatever he wants since leaving the Vice Presidency). Obama also wants your life regimented and under close government scrutiny.

According to the sacred Barack, it is not enough for the average citizen to mind their own business and take care of one’s own family. Rather, one must surrender oneself to the will of the group or the COMMUNITY.

As the next stage of the liberation theology he sat under for nearly 20 years in the church overseen by Jeremiah Wright, Obama postulated in a commencement address at Wesleyan University in June 2008 that “our individual salvation depends on collective salvation.” This is quite revealing as to the underlying religious orientation of this particular president.

In traditional Biblical theology, salvation is a state of grace or unmerited favor imputed to the INDIVIDUAL pardoning one from the penalty for sin because it the individual that must believe in Jesus as the only begotten Son of God who lived the perfect life we could not, died, and shed His blood as the penalty for our sins and rose from the dead that we have eternal life. However, to Barack Obama, salvation is not about an eternal reward for loving Jesus with one’s mind, body, and soul; rather salvation to Barack Obama is about conformity to the group. You, as a distinct consciousness, do not matter all that much.

This is evident in both Obama's policy proposals as well as in his disdain for the behavioral principles underlying the moral code based in Scripture that prevents some of man's tendencies from degenerating into tyrannical anarchy or collectivism if these desires become unshackled from the realist perspective that man is a sinner and still hears sin’s siren call even when forgiven and redeemed through the shed blood of Christ.

To prevent the masses of the Biblically illiterate from being swept away by Obama’s rhetorical manipulations, Dr. James Dobson spoke out against some of the secular messiah’s misinterpretations of the Good Book. Falling for some of the hype that he’s the best thing since Jesus Christ and actually the Lord’s replacement in the hearts of many, Obama has proceeded to inform the rest of us which parts of his “predecessor’s” Word may apply in the new “AB” era, as some have suggested all of history now be divided between before and after Obama.

Without a more careful exegesis into and research of the Biblical text, the holy Obama concluded that, if one thinks that prohibitions against homosexuality still apply today, than those against the consumption of shellfish still apply as well. In response, according to a 6/24/08 Associated Press article titled “Obama: Dobson Is Making Stuff Up With Bible Criticism”, Dobson dared to say of Obama’s assertion, “I think he’s [Obama] deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology.”

Dobson’s opinion is actually closer to the historic Christian position. Most denominations and theologians claim that the majority of Israelite dietary guidelines do not apply to the Church composed of both Jews and Gentiles because these restrictions were not reiterated in the New Testament and in fact were set aside in various passages.

For example, in Matthew 15:11, Jesus Himself assures that that one is not defiled by what goes into one’s mouth but rather by what comes out of it. And in Acts 10, the Apostle Peter is told in a vision to deliberately eat of an animal said to be ceremonially unclean. If the act of eating a particular kind of animal was in and of itself immoral and sinful, would the God of the universe have given instructions to have done so?

The same cannot be said of homosexuality. Nowhere are the Old Testament injunctions labeling the practice as wrong rescinded in the New and in fact they are reemphasized in passages such as Romans 1 and included in a list of offences barring their perpetrators from entering Heaven if one does not seek forgiveness for them through the shed blood of Christ.

And contrary to all the sissies in a hissy over Rick Warren offering the inauguration prayer because Warren did not endorse the notion of gay marriage, insisting that this lifestyle is wrong does not mean that those falling into this temptation will be rounded up and sent to prison (though a percentage would probably enjoy that) or be put to death. It could be argued that Jesus softened the penalty for the transgressions of the lustful flesh.

Though Jesus was merciful He nevertheless retained the position that what the women at the well did was sin by telling her to sin no more. Today, those wanting to air their dirty laundry with pride rather than keeping it between only God and themselves as those with a tender conscience would prefer, vociferously insist that what they have done isn’t even sin.

And in the eyes of mystical humanists such as Obama and his ministerial supporters in the Order of the Scarlet Woman, this is the area in which Dobson has done something unforgivable. Dobson has held on to the notion that sin, in its most basic form, is an individual act.

According to Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, who basically endorsed Obama for no other reason than that Obama is Black as before Caldwell supported George W. Bush, said Dobson was “a bit over the top”, and “crossed the line”. More importantly, Caldwell admonished, “There has been a call for a higher level of politics and politicking. So to attack at this level is inappropriate and I think unacceptable and we at least want to hold everybody accountable.”

Ladies and gentlemen, what is being called for here is an abridgement of the fundamental constitutional liberties of anyone daring to disagree with or even question the new messiah. For while Dr. Dobson has been told to essentially sit down and shut up, a cabal of leftwing clerics of which Cadwell has been numbered established a website called JamesDobsonDoesntSpeakForMe.com. Examining the groups fundamental principles is quite instructive regarding the new social gospel that elevates the group above the individual.

For example, the website proclaimed regarding Dobson, “He doesn’t speak for me when he uses religion as a wedge to divide.” Let’s look at this for a moment.

Aren’t Obama, his false prophet Jeremiah Wight, and lesser luminaries such as Rev. Caldwell each riding the coattails of each using religion to divide? For crying out loud, the Black liberation theology expounded by Jeremiah Wright thinks God doesn’t even love you if you are White.

Furthermore, who says religion is not meant to divide? While Scripture tells us that God is not willing that any should perish, there are just as many other passages informing us that Christ came to separate the sheep from the goats, the wheat from the chaff.

Also, interesting, isn’t it, how in the coming together in unity that it is those holding to a traditional understanding of Biblical morality that are to compromise their standards rather than those who fall short of these principles and from then on strive to elevate their conduct?

As the declaration points out, “What does speak for me is David’s Psalm celebrating how good and pleasant it is when we come together in unity.” That is true, but in order to unite, there must be considerable agreement as to what principles one is going to unite around. Of those with whom one disagrees considerably, the Bible commands, “Come from out among them and be ye separate.”

The declaration continues, “James Dobson doesn’t speak for me when he uses the beliefs of others as a line of attack; He doesn’t speak for me when he denigrates his neighbors’ views when they don’t line up with his.”

As noted earlier, by criticizing Dobson’s criticizing, aren’t they themselves guilty of criticizing? Did not the holy Barack partake of the same act?

What if Dobson's neighbor was a vile skinhead that plucked the eyes out of newborn kittens? Is Dobson just suppose to sit their and not say anything about this ethical transgression as well if we are to take the mutated uncontextualized version of judge not to its ultimate conclusion?

Contrary to the Obamaist declaration, Dobson does not confine the values of faith to two or three issues. First off, Focus on the Family is not a church.

Thus, the organization does not necessarily have the same spiritual mandate to address to the same extent the totality of existence of life that God's sacred assembly has been called to. Yet that said, Focus on the Family addresses a wider array of issues and concerns than these liberal Black churches that have for the most part confined their message to propagating the blame Whitey mentality of whom Republicans and Conservatives rank their primary targets.

From the tone of the declaration, Dobson stands accused of not seeking justice, encouraging the oppressed, or defending the cause of the vulnerable. Yet when Dobson rises to do so, these collared hypocrites accuse him of reducing the faith to two or three issues and not working to restore what is broken in our communities. If the efforts of Focus on the Family have been reduced to two or three issues, it is only because that apostates like Obama and his supporters have focused their war against Christ and the Bible towards a few central cultural pillars in the hopes of causing the entire edifice of our heritage of liberty to implode in upon itself.

Unable to speak or act on their own behalf, who is more than the unborn that the babykillers can’t wait to hack apart with their meat cleavers? What institution is more vulnerable than the contemporary family with the assorted threats out to achieve its abolition through easy divorce, its dilution through its alleged recognized extension to homosexuals, and through the proliferation of government programs that make parents of both sexes feel either redundant in the case of men as providers or obsolete in the case of work at home mothers.

Leftist clergy drone on and on about the beauty of religious unity and cooperation. However, if they are going to embrace practices such as infanticide and sodomite nuptials as good and positive things, one might as well toss the Bible in the paper shredder and sleep in Sunday morning. Under such a worldview, nothing is wrong anymore and you might as well do whatever the Sheol you please.

Under the Obama regime, while your obligation to God might be diminished, don’t think you are going to slide by on easy street in terms of guilt being toned down. Rather a whole new litany of demands will be placed upon an otherwise productive citizen.

In commencement addresses given in both 2008 and 2009, Obama repeatedly called for a renewed spirit of national service. To most Americans accustomed to working for what they have, on the surface this may sound like little more than what they are already doing. However, the plans go much shockingly further.

In the free market economy of the United States, the individual offers some kind of commodity --- be it labor, a tangible good produced, brainpower, or time --- in exchange for monetary compensation. And though the system is not perfect, the higher the participant rises in the system, the greater the rewarding compensation one is able to accrue.

However, that may come to a screeching halt if our Seigneur and Chief gets to have his way. For in his worldview, no longer will it be enough to strive within the rules to get the things one wants. Rather in a manner not unlike a medieval manor, if the New World Order advocated by a succession of presidents each in their own way with distinctive emphases comes to pass, you will be bound to the same occupational station and residential area not until you as a free person decides to change it but rather until those higher up the system decide to amend such biographical characteristics.

In his 2008 commencement address, Obama said, “There’s no community service requirement in the real world; no one is forcing you to care. You can take your diploma, walk off stage, and chase only after the big house and the nice suits and all the other things our money, culture says, you should buy. You can choose to narrow your concerns and live your life in a way that tries to keep your story separate from America’s.”

Obama cites as precedent his own case where he took a position as a community organizer making $12,000 per year while driving a $2,000 car. But whereas you are suppose to remain content at a life of minimal toil, since Obama has always been in his own mind the man who would be king, he was always entitled to possess so much more.

According to an Investor’s Business Daily article posted at Yahoo News on 6/2/2008 titled “Living On Obama’s Collective Farm", Obama made over $4 million that year. But I guess that’s what it takes to keep a ball-and-chain like Michelle in $500 athletic shoes far uglier than my $20 K-Mart ones and $5000 handbags (a good used automobile doesn’t cost much more than that).

From comparing these dichotomies, one can conclude that Obama does not really care so much about the poor. Rather, in true Alinskyite fashion, he sees those in such circumstances as pawns to agitate into a froth through which to seize power and advance his own status. If it had meant a life of toil and anonymity as it does for most dedicating their lives to uplifting the poverty-stricken, would Obama have even pursued this path in his early career?

As to whether or not Obama will allow participation in national service to remain an individual choice is open to interpretation. In the 2008 address, Obama went on to say, “On the big issues that our nation faces, difficult choices await. We’ll have to face some hard truths, and some sacrifice will be required --- not only from you individually, but from the nation as a whole.” But in light of $5000 handbags, weekend jaunts onboard Air Force I to Broadway plays, and pizza chefs flown in from the Midwest to appease a gastronomical hankering, that call does not apply to his highness of course.

Often, those without an inclination towards politics shrug their shoulders at these grandiose pronouncements and go about their business thinking that those in authority won't go much beyond the stage of public elocution. However, this time around such disengaged citizens might not be so insightful.

The President's ball-and-chain Michelle said in a campaign speech, "Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zone...Barack Obama will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."

Listen up, you battle ax, I'll be as cynical as I want to be. Your hubby might have been a Professor of Constitutional Law, but apparently he was as dedicated to that occupational station as he was to his seat in the Illinois State House, where he regularly and decisively voted “present, and to the U.S. Senate, where his attendance was shoddy at best as he merely used that office to campaign for the presidency and to pull down a hefty paycheck while doing it.

The First Amendment protects the rights of the individual to believe whatever they want and to enunciate their opinion as to the actions and motivations of the nation’s leaders. This includes saying that these politicians are little more than frauds. Any legislation or executive order to the contrary is an infringement of this Constitutional protection.

And as to being isolated and in one’s “comfort zone”, so long as one pays their bills and stays to themselves, they have the right to be every bit of a hermit as they want to be. Until any President can lock down the border and prevent illegal aliens from violating the territorial integrity of the United States, the Chief Executive has so failed in his fundamental responsibility that he ant those that work beneath him should have no spare time whatsoever to be concerned with how I spend my own time.

Though the discerning might have to weave the disparate fragments together into a complete tapestry, the minions of despotism and iniquity are so full of themselves that they cannot resist scattering crumbs and often wholesale cognitive meals detailing their intentions to destroy liberty and reduce the population to the level of modern day serfs. Shame is, the election of Barack Obama is proof how a significant percentage of the American people would rather ignore the harsh realties staring them right in the face.

by Frederick Meekins

Contrary to the Dobsonian propaganda on the 3/26/10 Boundless podcast, provided that they behave themselves and that they work, there is nothing in the Bible about what age a young person is to leave home.

Interesting how the hosts enunciated a double standard that it's OK for young women to remain at home but not acceptable for young men.

Any woman that holds to such a position is basically a gold-digger.

These standards were justified as holdovers of Jewish culture.

However, unless I'm allowed to carry an Uzi down the street, our society is not a Jewish culture to that extent.

What about Isaac remaining at home until his 40's or do we only invoke those aspects of the Old Testament that fit the preconceived notions of the psychologist paying the weekly check?

By Frederick Meekins