Category: religion

Self-Education… Through Entertainment REPRINT

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 From August 22, 2015

I have been dipping into R.J. Rushdoony’s The Philosophy of the Christian Curriculum (Ross House Books, Vallecito, CA: 1981, 2001 reprint–available from http://www.chalcedon.edu ), and it has set my mind on fire.

Culture, said Henry Van Til, “is religion externalized.” In light of that statement, one good, hard look at our culture of today should send us running madly for the exits. And one of the chief determining factors of a culture is, of course, the education provided to its members.

And here’s the thought that blows my mind:

Our consumption of “entertainment”–novels, movies, stories, television programs, etc.–is a form of self-education.

This entertainment is what we pour into our heads when we are not in a formal “educational” setting. As a society, we have more leisure time than we used to have; and much of that time is spent consuming entertainment.

The horror! The horror!

Take a good look, kimosabe, at what we’re stuffing into our minds. Is it any wonder we’re in such a mess? Given what we educate ourselves into, of course we’re going to redefine marriage, excuse all forms of lawlessness, lie and cheat six ways from Sunday, and in general behave as if there is no God.

Because so much of our entertainment, our self-education, is absolutely, positively Godless.

Think it over–long and hard and carefully. What are we learning from our entertainment?

Our elite “educators” have labored mightily to wean our nation away from Christianity. But their efforts are a drop in the bucket, compared to the weaning-away accomplished by our entertainment.

The point is so subtle as to be well-nigh invisible. We thus defend ourselves: “It’s only a movie, it’s only a novel, it’s only a TV show”–as if our steady diet of it had no effect at all.

I thank Rushdoony for this insight.

REPRINT ‘Why You Have a Problem With Authority’ (Mark Rushdoony)

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Rebel against authority

“Viva yo!” (Spanish proverb)

From June 30, 2024

What could be simpler? Our problem with authority–especially with God’s authority–goes all the way back to Genesis 3:5: “ye shall be as gods.”

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/why-you-have-a-problem-with-authority

We want to be as gods, defining good and evil for ourselves. As Mark Rushdoony writes, “Even churchmen are ingenious in devising theologies that discount God’s authoritative law-word in favor of their own.”

Don’t we see this every day? We ourselves are sometimes guilty. Maybe even often. How often do we hear the words, “But I think…”? All the way back to Adam and Eve. And the serpent.

Obedience to God’s word, not man’s, justifies us and leads to spiritual regeneration and, eventually sanctification. God’s law is law, and it’s the same for every kindred, every tribe. But there are as many versions of man’s law as there are groups of human beings, most of them contradicting one another. That’s why so many of our laws are unjust–or even irrational.

But God’s laws are both just and sane.

There Is Power In the Blood

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David Horowitz: It’s War REPRINT

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From May 16, 2019

I have to review a book for Chalcedon, Dark Agenda by David Horowitz, and I’m feeling overwhelmed by the weight and seriousness of his argument, and the mountain of evidence he cites to support it. This blog post is an effort to warm up for the challenge.

Usually when I read a book to review, I mark striking passages with a pen and dog-ear the pages that I want to cite. I think I’ve dog-eared every other page in here. Well, that won’t do. Think, think, think…

Horowitz was raised by Far Left parents and grew up to become an activist for their movement in the 1960s. When he talks about the revolutionary Left, he knows what he’s talking about. That’s why they ban him from the social(ist) media. He has left his radical past behind and come over to our side.

The book’s subtitle is “The War to Destroy Christian America.” The fact that “war” is the most appropriate word he could have used is what’s so overwhelming about it. The Far Left literally means to destroy and erase everything about America that makes it America.

Horowitz, who is Jewish, believes that Christian America is one of the best things that ever happened to the human race, and that it deserves to be defended and preserved.

The bad guys aren’t kidding, folks. Radicalism is their religion, and they are waging a jihad against Christianity, which they hate with a passion that, for many of them, crosses the line into the psychotic. No debate, no compromise, no shared humanity: their goal is to wipe out every vestige of Christian America and create an authoritarian, atheistic hell-hole with themselves in charge.

No, I’m not exaggerating. Neither is David Horowitz. This book was shocking even to me.

The ancient Chinese sage, Sun Tzu, author of The Art of War, laconically described a certain kind of military situation in which strategy and tactical finesse don’t matter.

“On death ground, fight.”

Either Christian America wins, or Christian America dies. God give us strength: and may God fight for us.

And They Say We Believe in Silly Things REPRINT

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   From May 15, 2016

Way back in 2004, some scientists–I use the word advisedly–trotted out a theory that Homo erectus, formerly known as Java Man, had a really thick skull, much thicker than ours, because the males had a habit of popping each other over the head with clubs. This cartoon-like image was carefully dressed in the most posh scientific language , but it’s still a cartoon.

Working from scanty evidence, if we might be so kind as to call it that, scientists reasoned (if we may call it that) that Mr. Erectus evolved his thick skull because the other guys were beatin’ on him: in their words, a lot of Erectus’ anatomical features “evolved in response to interpersonal violence.”

I can’t tell whether this is bosh or tommyrot. Are they really asking us to imagine untold generations of Alley Oop conking each other on the noggin until thicker skulls “evolve”?

Yeah, yeah, I know, natural selection and all that: the lads with the thin skulls get clubbed out of existence, and only the ones with the thick skulls survive to make bambinos with thick skulls, chips off the old blockhead. Except DNA can be so uncooperative in that regard! It keeps on reproducing the same thing, unless somehow interfered with. But most of those random mutations are either harmful or totally without effect, so the great humanist god, Chance, is called upon to work miracles.

Loaves and fishes, no. Thick skulls from thin skulls, can you gimme halleluia?

Meanwhile it’s 50 degrees outside today on May 15 and there’s a frost warning on for tonight… and you can bet the house that sooner or later some government scientist is going to come along and declare that this has been the warmest May in recorded history, blah-blah-blah…

And they say we Christians believe in silly things.

 

Scientific Ninnies REPRINT

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From May 7, 2017

I love archeology, and I enjoyed one of the writer’s earlier books; so I’ve been reading The Lost City of the Monkey God (2017) by Douglas Preston.

In 2015, using the latest technology, scientists finally found a lost city in the heart of the most impenetrable jungle on the planet, in Honduras. People had been looking for this city, and not finding it, for some 500 years. They called it The White City, or The City of the Monkey God.

All of that is very interesting. It isn’t every day we turn up what appears to be a whole civilization that history had forgotten.

Now, the thing is, some of these native American civilizations went out of business before the Europeans came, so their demise can’t easily be blamed on Whitey (although you can be pretty sure our academics will soon get around to trying). The Mayan cities in the rain forest were simply abandoned: it seems the people got tired of the way things were and just walked out. There are still Mayan people today, and because their language has survived, we finally learned how to read the ancient Mayan inscriptions.

But none of those writings mention these very large cities in Honduras. Ah, but the question comes up again–why were these sites abandoned? What happened to the people who build the cities? Why was it all left to be devoured by the jungle?

And here’s where the scientific ninnie-ness comes in.

When the 2015 expedition announced its findings, academics who just sat on their fat kiesters in air-conditioned offices hastened to denounce the reports as hype, or even hoax. Really, there is not even a reasonable doubt that the expedition found the things it said it found. But academics, to paraphrase Deion Sanders, are like a bunch of crabs in a bushel basket: whenever one tries to climb out, the others pull it back down.

Preston himself is guilty of major ninnie-ness.

He thinks, see, that civilizations go bust because of capitalism, which he likens to a “cult” on a par with Scientology. Oh, well, just get rid of capitalism and bob’s your uncle, everything will be just perfect from then on. Says Preston, it’s the capitalist “elites” who crash civilizations. As if it would really make a difference if the elites just changed the color of their jerseys and called themselves socialists! Yo, Doug! You don’t like capitalism, go live in North Korea for a while. You won’t find any elites there (wink-wink, nudge-nudge)!

At the risk of incurring the displeasure of the whoopee crowd, dare I suggest that the main reason these American civilizations collapsed–or were overthrown by Spain–is because their abominable religious practices estranged them from God’s protection.

God hasn’t really let all that many civilizations get wiped out for good. He may destroy their empires and turn them into has-been nations, but usually something survives.

The native religion of the American civilizations revolved around the worship of gods who were no gods and the practice of human sacrifice on a massive scale. Should God have protected this? It seems He chose not to.

And before you scream at me for being an apologist for Spanish imperialism–well, that empire isn’t around anymore, is it? Could it have been accused of governing itself and its possessions according to God’s commandments? According to Jesus Christ’s teaching and example? Not a bit. So no more Spain as a great power in the world.

We live and thrive, all of us, Christian and non-Christian alike, at God’s pleasure. When He turns His face from us, we are troubled.

God will judge the whole earth, every nation, every tribe. And, as Abraham declared, shall not the judge of all the earth do right?

He will. He has and He will.

Talkin’ Like a Liberal REPRINT

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From July 7, 2015

Well, after all this time, they finally did it to me: got me to talk like a liberal. Now I know how Ben-Hur felt when Esther told him, “You have become Messala!”

My wife was reading me the news report about a woman who visited a San Francisco tourist site and was gunned down by an illegal alien who’d already been deported a number of times and kept coming back to commit more crimes. I lost it when we came to the part, “The White House has blamed the Republicans for the incident…”

That was when I spoke like a liberal.

“I hate the White House, and I wish everyone in it would die a miserable death.”

Shameful, isn’t it? I sounded just like those liberals who cursed Michael Crichton’s survivors when he died, because he dared disbelieve in Global Warming.

True, that person occupying the White House today is utterly despicable, and he has surrounded himself with toadies and creeps. His policies are evil, and should be undone. On top of all that, he’s a race hustler who has done immeasurable harm to the country which he swore an oath to protect.

But is any of that an excuse for talking like a liberal? Really, I am ashamed of myself.

I’m comfortable with hating what people do, especially when it goes against God’s word and they try to impose their own wickedness on whole nations. Resist it to the utmost, denounce it, try to undo it. And if the bad guys want to fight, make righteous war against them.

And if they repent, forgive them.

Yes, that’s hard. But it’s what God commands. Not that any of these villains is going to repent any time soon: you don’t get to be the head of a teachers’ union by repenting evil works,. God Himself forgives sinners. He has forgiven me. And you.

But of course if you’re a lefty loon, you don’t believe that, and you are free to indulge unbridled hatred and commit crimes for your cause… as witness the entire history of that lamentable 20th century.

We can’t understand God’s ways. He is God and we aren’t. When it’s as counter-intuitive as this appears to be, we are thrown back on our faith: and that’s how He makes us grow.

Arrested for preaching the gospel

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If it were not for this young woman’s post I never would have known that this is happening now.  In Northern Ireland.

The Great False Prophet of ‘Democracy’ REPRINT

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Credit: Getty Images/Hulton Archive

 

From April 7, 2021

John Dewey

There is a reason why we have always heard, and continue to hear, so much babble about “democracy” when the country we live in is, by law, a republic.

Much of that reason is John Dewey (1859-1952), often hailed as America’s greatest philosopher, a great sage–guilty, though, according to R.J. Rushdoony, of calling Christianity “an alien faith” because “committed to a fundamental discrimination and separation to a ‘spiritual aristocracy”… and “the opposition of the human kingdom to God’s kingdom” (Thy Kingdom Come, pg. 54).

So what we have is “America’s greatest philosopher,” powerful and influential, baldly stating his opposition to Christianity–in a Christian country founded by Christians. And being applauded for it.

Rushdoony quotes Dewey: “I cannot understand how any realization of the democratic ideal as a vital moral and spiritual ideal in human affairs is possible without surrender of the conception of the basic division to which Christianity is committed.”

Did you get that? Christianity is bad, Dewey has taught generations of American academics, because it’s not “democratic.” That makes it… bad.

Now just because academics and their students today probably couldn’t tell you who Dewey was, doesn’t mean they aren’t drinking from the well he dug. They are drinking deeply; and as for the well, many lesser fat-heads have labored on it since, always digging deeper.

That we can’t think of any thinker who successfully unmasked Dewey as a charlatan does not speak well for our late-19th and early-20th century crop of thinkers.

And so our republic gets eroded, now more than ever, and our foolish “intellectuals” seduce us with “democratic ideals.” What God couldn’t do, they will! Make way for utopia! All we need is an all-powerful government, advised by themselves, to take us there.

These sins go back a long way in our history, and their effect is being felt today.

Another Darwinian Fairy Tale REPRINT

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From April 17, 2016

Thanks to Global Warming and all that, says a scientist at the University of Kent, UK, rising sea levels are going to inundate the earth and the human race will evolve to live underwater, complete with gills, webbed feet and hands, an extra layer of fat for insulation, etc., etc. ( http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3396624/Webbed-feet-cat-s-eyes-gills-Features-just-humans-evolve-deal-water-world-global-warming-second-ice-age.html ) And voila! The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

It’s hard to decide how to label this. Is it poppycock, humbug, or just B.S.?

If a population of human beings devoted themselves, every day for hours at a stretch, to jumping as high as they could and flapping their arms, how long would it take for their arms to “evolve” into wings?

Or, if that’s asking too much of people who just might have better things to do, perhaps we could perform an experiment. Take some bats and don’t let them fly, but rather keep them in a watery environment day in, day out, for as many generations as it takes for the bats’ wings to evolve into flippers. What will we get out of this, other than a lot of wet, uncomfortable, and down-hearted bats?

I mean, is this stuff even science anymore? Our man from Kent relies on mutations to transform the human race into mermaids. That seems like a long shot, to me. But then that’s why the Darwin set insists on millions, or even billions, of years for Evolution to work its magic. Alas, the vast amounts of time involved make observation somewhat impractical. “You just wait a couple million years, and then you’ll see we were right!” What bunk.

And they say we Christians believe in silly things.