An interview with Andrew Torba on Gab

Mark Dice interviews Andrew Torba about Gab. Torba is the founder and CEO of Gab. Both Dice and Torba are conservative Christians (e.g. Torba even seems to follow Doug Wilson). Torba regards what's happening today with the left, big tech, social media, and the mainstream media as part of a spiritual war. I applaud and support what Torba is attempting to do with Gab: that is, make Gab the free speech alternative to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, reddit, various web browsers including Google Chrome. I pray for his success and the success of others (especially other Christians) like him. If he succeeds, I think it'll prove good for many people including Christians. Torba will need all the help he can get.

Helm reviews Live Not By Lies

Paul Helm reviews Rod Dreher's Live Not By Lies.

The lesson of Trump

William Lane Craig:

The case of Donald Trump is an object lesson how a man’s flawed character can lead to his own undoing. Given his considerable accomplishments—such as the appointment of three Supreme Court justices, brokering a Mideast peace agreement, engineering a revival of the US economy, revitalizing the US military, confronting China’s economic and military threat, stemming the tide of illegal immigration, and much more—he could have been a great US president. But he has been his own worst enemy. Like a figure in a Greek tragedy, his nemesis is his own deeply flawed character, which has contributed to his downfall. This should be a lesson to every Christian, but especially to those in leadership positions, to be mindful of our character development, to try to recognize, as best we can, our own sinful proclivities, and to allow the Holy Spirit to do His work in conforming us to the image of Christ, lest we bring disrepute upon His name.

Chad McIntosh:

Craig is right about Trump’s accomplishments, but wrong about the lesson of Trump’s presidency. There have been previous occupants of the Oval Office with worse character. The lesson is that Democrats and their enablers in media, entertainment, education, and even ostensibly non-partisan institutions like the FBI are unquestionably the biggest threat to America as an economically prosperous country of liberty with law and order that puts its own citizens first. There is no backward or unjust law they will not support or moral perversion or mental illness they don’t want to normalize, and they will use any means necessary to get what they want. That is the lesson. Trump was a bigger obstacle to them than previous milquetoast Republicans, so they went harder than ever against him.

But make no mistake: the next Republican candidate for president, no matter how upright or milquetoast, will also be literally Hitler. And so will the one after. And after. It’s not about character at all. It’s about how serious of an obstacle one is to the evils of progressivism.

California dreamin' no more

I'm a native Californian from the Los Angeles area. Quite arguably much of California has become a dystopia (e.g. many parts of LA and SF). Many parts of the state are more like a developing nation than a developed nation. A third world nation. Tremendous poverty, tent cities, drug addicts, mental issues, etc.

The dystopia that California has become is also known as the progressive dream. California is considered a role model for progressives. It's a foretaste of what the US could be if the US was like California according to progressives. As such, I think this post can serve as a warning about progressivism.

In any case, here are my pros and cons about my (once) beloved state. In no particular order:

That's just your interpretation!

A highly agitated performance by apostate Randal Rauser

https://randalrauser.com/2020/05/what-is-progressive-christianity-and-why-does-alisia-childers-think-its-so-dangerous/

1. Throughout the video, Rauser plays his dogeared hand about how conservative Christians collapse their interpretation of scripture into scripture itself. Yet his application of that distinction is totally one-sided inasmuch as he exempts his progressive interpretation from the distinction he urges on conservative Christians. The conservative understanding is just their interpretation whereas his progressive interpretation is true. 

2. He says the OT prophets had a false understanding of God because they didn't believe in the Incarnation or the possibility of an Incarnation. But that fails to distinguish between lacking belief in something, due to ignorance, and denying something. For instance, they didn't know that Jesus would be the messiah. That doesn't mean they disaffirmed the messiahship of Jesus. They just had no idea who Jesus was. They didn't know who the messiah was going to be at that level of biographical detail. But that hardly implies that they'd be opposed to Jesus as the fulfillment of messianic prophecy.

Notice how radical Rauser's position is. The messiahship of Jesus requires OT validation. Yet Rauser says OT prophets had a false concept of the messiah. Evidently he interprets the OT in unitarian terms. 

The question at issue isn't whether OT prophets were consciously Trinitarian but whether OT theism is consistent with or open to the revelation of the Trinity and Incarnation. 

In addition, while the OT witness of the Trinity is oblique, the OT contains many passages that dovetail with the more explicit witness to the Trinity. This isn't a reversal of OT theism.

A fundamental purpose of the OT is to correct false views of God. Pagan views. Not to substitute a different false view of God.

3. He also attacks the imprecatory psalms as expressing false views of God. That's another hobby horse of his. 

He says we should use Jesus as our standard of comparison to correct the OT. But that's duplicitous because, as he's expressed elsewhere, he regards Jesus as a fallible, timebound, culturally-conditioned teacher, based on Rauser's Kenotic Christology. Rauser's yardstick isn't Jesus but Rauser's moral intuitions. 

Progressive theology

I'll venture a few comments on apostate Randal Rauser's video:

https://randalrauser.com/2020/05/is-progressive-christianity-worse-than-atheism-my-response-to-alisa-childers/

BTW, I often pick on Rauser because he's a good foil. A good representative of the opposing position (progressive theology).

All Christians range somewhere along a progressive>conservative continuum

That's not a Christian continuum. There's a variety of positions among theologically conservative Christian positions. Progressive theology is out of bounds. 

Sometimes liberals were on the right side of the issue while conservatives were on the wrong side (e.g. Antebellum slavery, segregation).

True, but:

i) People can be right for the wrong reasons.

ii) Deceptively equivocal. Supporters of Antebellum slavery and Jim Crow misinterpreted the Bible due to social conditioning and economic incentives. By contrast, we can see the issue with greater critical detachment because we don't have a personal stake in the issue.

Rauser might say that conservative Christians are too invested to see certain issues with clarity. That may be the case, but it cuts both ways. Progressives are subject to social conditioning, too, with blind spots that are conspicuous to conserve Christian observers.

iii) Rauser's comparison is a bait-n-switch because he doesn't think Southern white supremacists misinterpreted the Bible. Rather, he thinks the Bible condones slavery and the Bible is wrong. For him, experience and his moral intuitions override the Bible.

otherizing…marginalization…just label people so that we don't have to listen them anymore.

i) Everybody has a plausibility structure. Some are good and some are bad. Some elements of our plausibility should be revisable. But we use our plausibly to evaluate claims. Indeed, Rauser is very dogmatic about his appeal to moral intuition. To what is morally intuitive to Rauser. He treats his imagined moral intuitions as nonnegotiable. 

ii) Apropos (i), not every position has two sides. Technically, conspiracy theories about the lunar landings represent one  side of the issue, but my point is that there's nothing wrong with refusing to take that seriously.

iii) Apropos  (ii), there's a difference between not listening in the first place and ceasing to listen. How much do you need to know about a position? It only has to have one or more disqualifying tenets. 

Ironically, Rauser's own appeal to experience and moral intuition to automatically eliminate certain positions from further consideration is an example of doing what he faults in others. 

Paul was open to considering evidence for the falsity of Christianity (1 Cpr 15:14).

i) A misreading of Paul. To begin with, how plausible is it to suppose Paul thought Christianity was false given his personal experience with Christian miracles? Both miracles he witnessed (e.g. the Damascus Road Christophany) as well as miracles he personally performed? It's too late for Paul to entrain the possibility that Christianity might be false. He has too much direct experience to the contrary.

ii) Rather, 1 Cor 1 15:14,17 are cases of per impossible counterfactual reasoning, which proceeds from a patently impossible premise:

https://www.iep.utm.edu/reductio/#H7

In responding to the Corinthians, Paul working back from what cannot be the case. 

Curfews and open borders

I am baffled by people who support the police using armed cops and drones to keep me from taking my children to the park but don't support an #ImmigrationBan that uses the same measures to keep people who may have COVID-19 from entering the country.

— Trent Horn (@Trent_Horn) April 21, 2020

Why are gun sales up?

@RandalRauser

Just for the record, you can't kill #COVID19 with bullets:

About 2 Million Guns Were Sold in the U.S. as Virus Fears Spread

A New York Times analysis shows that March was the second-busiest month ever for gun sales, fueled by worries over the coronavirus.

nytimes.com

https://twitter.com/RandalRauser/status/1246095179645202432

1. Progressive theologian Randal Rauser is such a phony. On the one had he has sanctimonious tweets about how you haven't accurately represented a position you disagree with unless your opponents recognize their position in your representation. But he never makes a good faith effort to be consistent with his own advice when respenting groups and positions he viscerally disagrees with. Rather, he reaches straight for the caricature. 

2. I don't know for a fact why gun sales are up. I have't read the stories. I do know for a fact, and so does Rauser, that it's not because gun owners think you can kill a virus with bullets. 

3. Having said that, you can kill the carrier with bullets, and it's not hard to imagine secular regimes gunning down COVID19 carriers if the pandemic spirtals out of control. Consider a 28 Weeks Later scenario where a quarantine area is firebombed when it becomes contaminated.

Other reasons gun sales may be up:

4. If the pandemic causes a breakdown in civil order, then it's every man for himself. You can't expect the police to be able or willing to protect you. 

5. As a matter of fact, some Democrat officials have already said that police won't protect private property. They won't make arrests for property crimes. In that event, it's up to homeowners and businessman to defend themselves.

6. On the one hand, Democrat officials are putting all the law-abiding citizens in entire cities and states under house arrest. On the other hand, they are releasing convicted sex offenders into the community.

7. Democrat officials are using the crisis as a pretext and cover to shut down gun shops.

8. The police themselves become a threat to the public. Consider news footage from English of policemen and police drones harassing and fining private citizens for simply walking in the countryside. 

9. Likewise, if you had an economic collapse, and law enforcement officers weren't paid, they might resort to shakedowns. 

Staying Connected While Staying In

For the second time I got this Facebook notification:

Staying Connected While Staying In

People on Facebook are showing how they're helping to slow the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19). Add a frame to your profile picture to increase awareness.

As a nonconformist who rejects the policy, the propaganda, and the social coercion, I decline. 

"Biblical violence and moral/cultural relativism

@RandalRauser

Many Christian apologists are strident defenders of objective moral knowledge. And yet, they defend readings of biblical violence that suggest moral relativism. For example, genocide is objectively evil today but it was not objectively wrong in ancient Israel. That's a problem.

https://twitter.com/RandalRauser/status/1242423435323555840

1. Rauser says Christians should steelman the opposing position. Improve on the argument for the position you oppose, then knock it down. But Rauser routinely does the opposite when attacking evangelical theology. He picks the weakest arguments. He resorts to caricatures. 

2. One tactic is to manipulate definitions. He tries to use a rubbery definition of genocide that covers both OT holy war and modern examples. Of course, if you invent a definition that's sufficiently indiscriminate, that makes the comparison easier. But that's just verbal sleight-of-hand. 

3. The argument is not that "genocide is objectively evil today but it was not objectively wrong in ancient Israel." Sure, he quote some Christian layman somewhere who will say that, but that's the tactic of an intellectual bully. 

4. The consistent, defensible argument is what God commanded ("biblical violence") ancient Israel to do wasn't objectively wrong, and if he commanded an analogous action under analogous circumstances today, that wouldn't be objectively wrong, either. 

5. Finally, these aren't just particular "readings" of sacred text. Rather, that's what it says and what it means. Rauser understands that, which is why thinks the texts are false when they attribute such commands to God. In reality, he interprets the texts on "biblical violence" the same way his opponents do. He doesn't think the interpretation is wrong; instead, he thinks the message is wrong. If he were more honest and forthcoming, he'd admit from his perspective that the original text is morally relativistic. 

Quisling for Islam

A predicable and typical example of virtue-signaling by apostate Randal Rauser:

I’m guessing you have no Muslim friends because if you did, you’d recognize that the views you just expressed represent a selected portrait (one popular among conservative American media) which mirrors the uncharitable portrait of conservative Christians common in liberal media.

Your question — when are professed “Christians ever this bad? — suggests you have some rather dark rose tinting on your glasses. Professing Christians commit violent and un-christlike actions all the time. To be sure, you can say “Those aren’t real Christians” but then you fall into the no True Scotsman fallacy.

And the mirror opposite applies as well: my Muslim friends are loving and kind and thoughtful. They are like Izzeldin Abuelaish, the Muslim doctor who wrote a memoir, “I Shall Not Hate,” chronicling his journey of forgiveness for the Israelis that killed his family.

Of course, as you say the true Christians aren’t violent, you can also say the true Muslims are, in which case you can exclude Abuelaish as a false Muslim. And in that way, you can stumble yet again into the no true Scotsman fallacy.

A better way: you could choose to love your neighbor and treat them the way you want to be treated, to get to know some Muslims, and to set aside your stereotypes.

https://randalrauser.com/2020/03/no-true-christian-no-true-muslim/

1. Rauser is smart enough to know that he's blurring crucial distinctions. The fundamental question isn't how professing Muslims and Christians behave, but whether their behavior is consistent with or even mandated by their authoritative religious sources. 

2. Modern-day Muslims routinely commit atrocities and social pathologies on a wide scale, viz. acid attacks, beheadings, female genital mutilation, sex slaves, a rape culture, honor-killings, jihad, martyring Christians, flogging women who refuse to wear a hijab, ISIS, Boko Haram. There's nothing comparable going on in modern-day Christianity. At one point Rauser tried to draw a comparison with the Rwandan genocide. 

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/01/would-you-rather-be-muslim-who-acts.html

3. We could go back in time to the brass-knuckle tactics of Roman Catholicism, which used to resort to torture and warfare to suppress "heretics" and "schismatics." In many cases I think their motives were sincere. They were being true to their religion. Of course, Catholic theology has undergone some drastic change since then, at the expense of internal consistency. I'm not obligated to vouch for their Christian bona fides. I'll leave that assessment to God. 

4. Islam isn't a sola-Quran religion. The Islamic faith is defined by the development of authoritative traditions and interpretations. 

5. Part of Rauser's duplicity on this issue is due to the fact that he's a progressive theologian who naturally sympathizes with progressive Muslims. Just has he rejects biblical authority, he deems it consistent with Muslim identity for them to reject their authoritative religious sources. He seems them making the same moves that he does. But, of course, that's hardly represents normative Islam. It just reflects the secularizing wings of Christianity and Islam alike. 

6. BTW, one of Rauser's tactics is to pick on soft targets. He will quote somebody who's easy to outargue, then pat himself on the back. 

Progressive crisis management

So progressive NYC Mayor Blasio is contemplating a Shelter-in-Place order:

https://nypost.com/2020/03/17/shelter-in-place-order-could-hit-nyc-heres-what-it-means/

Aside from devastating the NYC economy, consider the unintended consequences. Under the curfew, people are confined to their homes. One thing many people do when homebound is to order out. Delivery pizza and Chinese food, &c. But as I understand it, the lockdown would force all "nonessential businesses" to close. So you couldn't order out.

Of course, you could probably cook your own meals, but then you need to restock, which means leaving home to go to the supermarket. You along with countless others who may be asymptotic carriers.

Keep in mind that families are hotbeds of disease transmission. So if you're confined at home, all your family members may well become infected.

That's is a problem with folks who mindlessly intone the new instant trope about social distancing, as if human existence is capable of being that compartmentalized. 

Who's the biggest threat to homosexuals?

1. In the modern era there's a paradoxical relationship between Christians and homosexuals. On the one hand, many homosexuals feel threatened by biblical norms regarding homosexuality, as well as the political influence of Christians.

2. Ironically, homosexuals are safer in a society that's culturally and numerically dominated by Christians than a secular regime. An exception would be theonomists, who believe homosexual behavior ought to be a capital offense. I've discussed that here:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2017/03/should-sodomites-be-executed.html

3. However, it's my impression that most evangelicals take a fairly live-and-let-live attitude towards homosexuals. Mind you, I think homosexuals should be banned from positions of authority (e.g. occupations like public school teachers, Boy Scout leaders, mayors, governors, judges, attorneys general, military officers).

The reason homosexuals are safer in a Christian culture (theonomy excepted) is because Christians believe in basic human rights, grounded in moral realism. There's a general floor for how all humans should be treated. 

4. By contrast, atheism is dangerous to everyone because it has no moral direction. The protected classes can change on a dime. It's driven by academic fads and power politics. Some groups have more rights than others, and the pecking order shifts arbitrarily and unpredictably. Blacks have been demoted in relation to homosexuals while feminists have been demoted in relation to trans. Your group can be a protected class one year, only to be a targeted class the next year.

5. Another factor is that straight Christians don't want anything from homosexuals, whereas one homosexual may view another homosexual the way vampires view humans: that's food! Because homosexuals want something from each other, that carries the risk of exploitation, rape, and domestic violence. 

Beyond binary

A friend asked me to comment on this:

https://sundayschoolanswers.wixsite.com/kalebgraves/post/a-christianity-beyond-binary

A Christianity Beyond Binary

God is beyond gender binary, so why can't our faith be too?

I’m a Christian, training to be a minister, and LGBTQ affirming. I was affirming of gender non-conforming and transgender people before I supported people seeking same-sex relationships. This may seem like a bigger step than just acceptance of same-sex marriage, but this affirmation is backed up by medicine, scripture, and praxis that has only gotten stronger since I took this position a few years ago.

For a couple of reasons I'm skipping over the "medical evidence:

12 hard questions

Here's a list of questions from recent book. Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World's Largest Religion

I haven't read it, but it's supposed to reflect up-to-date sociological data regarding how many younger-generation unbelievers view Christianity. So I'll take my own stab at answering the questions:

Viruses have rights too!

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-toss'd to me!

Have people forgotten that a virus is a living entity?

As a vegan and humanitarian, I welcome all refugees of any species.

And yes, that includes the coronavirus. #BeKind

— Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) February 26, 2020

Quarantine is just infection shaming. Stop the hate

— Shaun (@DubbleH33lix) February 26, 2020

Agreed. We must respect #COVIDー19's right to life. ✊🏽

But if the pathogen in question should become pregnant and wish to abort the living entity growing inside it then that's an entirely different matter.

MY👏VIRUS👏MY👏CHOICE👏

— 🌈✊🏾🧕🏿Clunge Fairy ☪️♀️🇻🇪 (@ConceptualMinge) February 26, 2020

Paper thin theology

@RandalRauser

There is no inconsistency between atheism and the existence of objective moral values. So Christians who insist that atheism entails moral relativism or, worse, nihilism, are simply mistaken. Atheists may have various accounts. See, for example, the platonism of Erik Wielenberg.

i) To begin with, Rauser acts like this is just a Christian caricature of atheism. But many atheist thinkers admit that atheism is inconsistent with objective moral values. Is Rauser so uninformed that he doesn't know their own side of the argument? 

ii) Then there's his fallacious appeal to "various accounts," including Wielenberg's platonism. But the fact that some atheists subscribe to moral realism fails to demonstrate that atheism is consistent with moral realism. It just shows you what they believe, not that their belief is true. By the same token, the fact that Wielenberg has an argument for secular moral realism fails to demonstrate that atheism is consistent with objective moral values unless his argument is successful. 

Assumption: if life doesn't go on forever, life is absurd. But why think that? If God created us only to live for 70 years and then extinguish, would our existence be absurd? No. So it doesn't follow that finite existence is, of itself, absurd.

Notice that Rauser offers no argument for his contention. Although I don't think immortality is a sufficient condition for human life to be meaningful (important, worthwhile), it is a necessary condition. Something I have argued for elsewhere. 

iii) But also notice, even by his own reckoning, how little his progressive theology contributes to what matters in life. According to him, God is unnecessary to ground moral realism. And immortality is unnecessary for life to be meaningful. So what does is progressive theology offer that atheism does not? On his view, there seems little to lose if God does not exist. Whether progressive theology is true or false makes little if any difference to what ultimately matters. 

It's no wonder that he's so sympathetic to atheism. From his perspective, there's so little at stake if God does or does not exist. It's no wonder that he constantly plays both sides of the fence. 

Rauser spends most of his time attacking conservative theology and conservative ideology. Although he's fairly clear about what his own political beliefs are, he has very little to say about what progressive theology stands for. 

Are prolifers inconsistent?

@RandalRauser

What really gets me is being ostensibly prolife while wanting to block refugees with legit asylum claims…

Since Rauser is Canadian, I assume he's bitching about Canadian immigration policy. 

Speaking for myself, I'm all for a generous referee policy with regard to persecuted Christians. There is, though, no obligation to import Muslim timebombs into the country, who game the system under the ruse of "refugees" with "asylum" claims. 

…defending the right of angry, paranoid men to have AR-15s…

That's a clueless objection. There's a general right to self-defense. Private gun-ownership is a necessary means to exercise that right. 

It's not a right that singles out "angry, paranoid men". Rather, a general right, whether freedom of speech, driving a car, private property, &c., is an indiscriminate  group right. It carries the potential for abuse by particular individuals, but the right isn't conditional on an unpredictable outcome. Some people abuse the right to drive a car (e.g. drunk drivers), but that's not known in advance. Defending the general right to drive a car isn't specifically and intentionally defending the right of drunk drivers. Constitutional rights and civil rights are coarse-grained. There are tradeoffs in a free and open society. 

…shrugging your shoulders at the unfolding disaster of human-induced climate change…

Even assuming it's induced by humans, is it disastrous if Canadians enjoy longer summers and shorter warmer winters? 

And since developing countries refuse to cut back on carbon emissions, even though they are the primary polluters, any green police is unenforceable, and will simply wreck western economies. 

…fighting public healthcare, etc…

The question is what's economically feasible–as well as whether medical decision-makers are accountable to patients. 

Also, Rauser's green policies would destroy the prosperity required to support public healthcare. 

The demise of the BSA

Both the clerical abuse scandal and the BSA graphically illustrate one of the dangers of empowering homosexuals.

Marvin Olasky once drew a useful distinction between Classical conservatives and Christian conservatives. Classical conservative exemplify the old Roman virtues. Robert Gates is a honorable public servant, but he's a Classical conservative, which left him blindsided by the nature of the threat to the BSA. He's a Cold warrior at a time and place where a culture warrior was needed. He just wasn't up to the challenge because he fails to grasp the nature of the enemy and the kind of struggle we're in. Partly it's a generational thing. He came of age before the culture wars. And he lacks Christian discernment to adapt. It's a cautionary tale. 

Secular progressives win if they successfully infiltrate and co-opt male spaces like the BSA, and they also win if they successfully drive male spaces like the BSA out of business. Their objective is to obliterate normative masculinity and femininity. That applies to the destruction of female spaces as well (girls/women's sports).

Cultural genocide

@RandalRauser

Conservative Christians tend to be among the fiercest critics of cultural relativism ... except when it comes to the cultural relativism that says genocide is morally abhorrent today but it was a fine way to deal with the Canaanites.

i) Progressive Arminian theologian Randal Rauser never misses a chance to remind the world that he's 3/4 atheist and 1/4 nominal Christian. 

ii) God promised the descendants of Abraham a homeland. The Canaanites had forfeited the right to live their due to gross depravity. God held the Israelites to the same standard. If they desecrated the Promised Land, they'd be deported or exiled. God made the Promised Land an emblem of holiness. 

Under the new covenant, no piece of land is an emblem of holiness. If, however, the same conditions prevailed today that justified God's original policy, it would not be morally abhorrent to follow God's orders. 

I follow the definition recognized in international law:

any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

i) OT holy war wasn't committed with the intent to destroy the Canaanites due to their national, ethnic, or racial identity. They weren't executed because they were Canaanites. To the contrary, OT pagans were invited to convert to the one true faith. 

ii) Canaanites in the Promised Land were free to self-evacuate. The only Canaanite military targets were those who chose to stay behind and fight. 

iii) There's nothing sacrosanct about religion. Religion can be true or false, good or evil. Depends on the religion. 

There's a sense in which Christian missionaries commit cultural "genocide" when they convert Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, animists, and witches to Christianity. Some ideologies ought to be destroyed (e.g. Nazism, Communism). That doesn't single out any particular means. In some cases it can be peaceful. Rational persuasion.