Transgender tennis

As I've remarked before, one of the things I appreciate about the transgender movement is its chaotic potential to destroy liberal ideology from within. For instance, what happens when second-tier male tennis players who aren't good enough to win major championships decide to play the transgender card and invade the women's tennis circuit? What happens when they "discover" their inner womanhood and take over women's tennis? A man who isn't quite good enough to beat the very best male tennis players may well be good enough to beat the all the top female tennis players. 

And that's just one sport. That's just for starters. 

Who can stop them? What's the argument? 

You've come a long way, baby

i) I'm of two minds about discussing Bruce Jenner's "transition." Like Josh Duggar's past, these aren't events that merit national attention. They have no intrinsic importance beyond the affected parties.

They only acquire a larger significance when certain people make them more important than they are. And in that respect they sometimes merit comment. 

The social engineers like to make certain individuals iconic figures for the cause. 

ii) Apropos (i), there's a Satanic mastermind behind what we are seeing. And I'm not speaking figuratively.

The dark side is infiltrating strategic institutions. Corrupt the church ("gay clergy"). Corrupt the military ("gays in the military"). Corrupt sports.

Male athletes symbolize masculinity. I'm by no means suggesting you have to be athletic to be manly. I'm just discussing the symbolism.

iii) One of the ironic things about the Vanity Fair cover is that it actually subverts the logic of the transgender movement. We're told gender is a state of mind. It's not about biology. It's not about male or female bodies.

But if that's the case, why is it so important for Jenner to look like a woman? And not just that. But to look like a girly-girl. A fashion model. If gender identity is separable from the body, why does he try so hard to look like Rene Russo?

If it's that important to appear feminine, why is it unimportant to be feminine–in terms of physiology and genetics? Why mimic female anatomy if gender is a state of mind?

So the whole presentation gives the lie to the transgender philosophy. In order to sell the message to the general public, the vehicle subverts the message. 

iv) In addition, the picture is fishy. Take the hair. Is that for real? Or is that a wig? He's pushing 66. At that age, many men are bald or balding.

v) Likewise, take the face. Once again, he's pushing 66. And he lives in sunny Southern California. I assume he spends lots of time out of doors.

Between his age and his exposure to sunshine, shouldn't his face be fairly weatherbeaten by now? So something is off.

By the same token, what happened to that square jaw he used to have? The facial bone structure of a classic jock? 

Is it cosmetic surgery? Makeup and lighting? Is it photoshopped? 

vi) It looks more convincing because no one is standing beside him. In real life, Jenner is 6' 2". How many women are that tall? If you stuck him in a group of men and women, it would shatter the illusion.

vii) One function of the long loose hair is to help disguise the fact that he has the broad shoulders of a male athlete.

The demure pose allows him to conceal his hands. 6' 2" jocks don't have lady-like hands–or feet. 

Likewise, the pose tries as best it can to downplay the muscular thighs.

If, according to transgender activists/apologists, gender is a purely psychological identity with no essential genetic or physiological component, then why did Jenner go to such lengths (extreme makeover surgery) to look feminine?

Why the desperate effort to efface his masculine appearance and superimpose a feminine simulacrum if gender is just a state of mind?

viii) I wonder if one of Jenner's problems was that he peaked at age 26. What do you do for an encore? Having won the gold medal in his mid-twenties, what do you do for the rest of your life? What do you do with the rest of your life? Did he have a plan? Or was it a big letdown after the prize?

ix) There's an American burlesque tradition of tough guys who dress in drag. It's a lark. A sight-gag. 

What makes it funny is the contrast between appearance and reality. A he-man who plays against type. It only works because the man's masculinity is beyond reproach. Powder-puff football is another example. 

If the performer were actually effeminate, it would backfire. That's why it's not funny when Jenner does it. It's just pathetic.

It reminds me of Michael Jackson's self-mutilation. Cosmetic surgery which defaced his racial identity. Made him look like a circus clown. It also reminds me of some actresses like Joan Crawford and Mae West who didn't know when to stop. 

x) Apropos (ix), it's revealing to contrast this with tough-guy actors of the past, viz. Humphrey Bogart, Charles Bronson, Sean Connery, Kirk Douglas, Clint Eastwood, Charlton Heston, Burt Lancaster, Steve McQueen, Robert Mitchum, Edward G. Robinson, Frank Sinatra, John Wayne. 

The cultural elite is hellbent on sabotaging the masculine image. I'm not suggesting these actors were Christian role-models. But common grace can preserve a residual witness to the natural order.  

xi) Jenner is shaking his fist at God. Hurling his God-given manhood back in God's face. Simultaneously perverting the gifts of the manhood and womanhood alike.

There are Christians who say we should pray for Jenner. I appreciate the sentiment. But I don't think that being rich and famous entitles one to special consideration. Honestly, I don't sympathize with Jenner. There are millions of people more deserving of my sympathies. Why should celebrities be the priority? 

As a gay atheist, I want to see the church oppose same-sex marriage

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2015/05/as-a-gay-atheist-i-want-to-see-the-church-oppose-same-sex-marriage/

Aging atheist syndrome

Over at DC, John Loftus was recently having a cryfest because Jeff Lowder dissed his debate performance with David Wood on the Resurrection.

A few quick observations:

i) Loftus exhibits aging atheist syndrome. I've observed a number of prominent unbelievers who becoming increasingly bitter as they age, viz. Nietzsche, H. G. Wells, H. L. Mencken, Mark Twain, Thomas Paine, Quentin Smith, Richard Carrier, Richard Dawkins, 

Likewise, I wonder if Keith Parsons, Robert Price, Jerry Coyne, and PZ Myers were always this sour. Christopher Hitchens could be charming when he wasn't drunk:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1901636/posts

Atheism is a grim worldview, and as the padding of youth wears out, there's nothing to insulate the atheist from the polar night of despair. 

ii) Carrier, Lowder, and Loftus are all very vain, image-conscious men. However, Loftus suffers from an inferiority complex.

Aside from the fact that Lowder is at a better place in life than Loftus, he has too much self-regard to publicly humiliate himself the Loftus so often does. Loftus just can't restrain himself. He has nothing to look forward to. 

He can't stand to be belittled, yet he makes himself an object of ridicule. He brings upon himself the very thing he finds intolerable. If you show people where your buttons are, they will push your buttons. It's so predictable.

iii) When I say he suffers from an inferiority complex, I don't mean that as a putdown. Many men and women struggle with feelings of inadequacy or even self-loathing. In my observation, that usually goes back to childhood. A father they could never please. Lacking social acceptance in junior high and high school.

What's ironic about Loftus is that he pushes away the very thing and only thing that would salve his condition. Everyone benefits from the Gospel in different ways. That includes people who struggle with low self-esteem. The Gospel can compensate for a lack of self-worth. But Loftus shuns the very medicine that would alleviate his pain. 

The Quiverfull movement

In this post I'm just sketching the lay of the land. 

i) The Duggar scandal has drawn attention to some related issues. There's an overlap between the homeschooling movement, the Quiverfull movement, and the Patriarchy movement. These are separable, and they are often separate in practice, but some members of one group belong to two or all three groups. 

ii) I think much of the hostility towards the Duggars is due to the fact that some young liberals find the very idea of childbearing offensive. An antinatalist philosophy is taking hold in secular circles. Couples who prefer dogs to kids. They disapprove of childbearing. They're into "saving the planet" from "overpopulation." 

iii) I don't know much about the Patriarchy movement. I'm guessing that Doug Wilson is probably its best representative. By that I mean, if you wish to evaluate the Patriarchy movement, he's probably the most articulate, responsible, and nuanced spokesman. I expect that he makes the best case that can be made for it.

I believe the Patriarchy movement intersects with the "Christian courtship" movement–as an alternative to dating. Likewise, the headcovering movement. 

There's a "family" of positions. 

I believe the Bayly brothers straddle some of these positions. 

Keep in mind that the liberal media and "progressive Christians" use "patriarchy" as an abusive synonym for complementarianism. The go-to site for complementarianism is the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. 

iv) I don't know much about the Quiverfull movement, but even though it's Protestant, it seems to take the Roman Catholic position to its logical conclusion.

Although I disagree with his position, I think Bryan C. Hodge has made what is the most scholarly case for traditional opposition to contraception, from an evangelical perspective. 

v) Critics of complementarianism can point to cases of abuse. That, however, needs to be counterbalanced against horrors stories involving feminism. In a fallen world, whoever has power is in a position to abuse their authority. In a fallen world, abuse of power is inevitable. 

Consent: the god without reason

http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2015/06/consent_the_god_without_a_reas.html

Prelapsarian predation

http://bnonn.com/prelapsarian-predation-1/

http://bnonn.com/prelapsarian-predation-2/

The new anti-somatic Gnosticism

https://www.facebook.com/robert.a.gagnon.56/posts/10155769976175045

Robert A. J. Gagnon

The face of the new anti-somatic Gnosticism: The sick national conspiracy to pretend that Bruce Jenner is a woman because he is mentally confused, has surgically mutilated his male body, and received plastic reconstruction surgery to give him a not entirely successful appearance as a woman, to the fanfare of the twisted leftwing elite and with the financial windfall of a reality TV show. For that he gets an award for "courage": "Shortly after the cover reveal, ESPN announced that Caitlyn, a former Olympian, will receive the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the EPSY Awards in July." The man needs help; instead he gets validation for his neurosis. This is not love. This is functional hate.

Continue to respect the stamp of masculine gender that the Creator bestowed on Jenner by using a masculine pronoun of Jenner and his parents' chosen masculine name for him. "Transgender" is a misnomer.

As if to underscore the complaint and rebellion, “sex reassignment surgery” (SRS)—a benign name for what others might designate intentional mutilation or butchering—is major, painful, and expensive surgery whose results are incomplete at best. One has to go far in an effort to overturn God’s design and even then it is never complete. Typically SRS involves the surgical removal of perfectly healthy internal genitals (testes or ovaries/uterus) and radical alteration of perfectly healthy external genitalia. For male-to-female (MF) transsexuals this involves “vaginoplasty”: gutting the insides of the penis, creating a “vaginal” cavity, and constructing a “clitoris” from the head of the penis.... For MF transsexuals “transformation” also entails painful electrolysis of facial hair and sometimes also electrolysis of body hair, facial plastic surgery, voice surgery, breast implants, and silicone injections in the hips and buttocks.

The superficial character of these attempts at physical reassignment is obvious from the fact that the chromosomal inheritance doesn’t change. Functioning internal genitalia consistent with the new sex cannot be created. The “reassigned” body does not respond by producing its own other-sex hormones (whether testosterone or estrogen). Hormone treatment, through patch, pill, or injection, is lifelong. Fertility is destroyed. For MF transsexuals the new “vagina” must be regularly dilated through the use of dildo-like plastic rods. And even after very expensive and complete procedures most transsexuals still don’t quite look, sound, and act like members of the sex to which they were allegedly reassigned.

Jenner appears to fit the profile of an "autogynephilic transsexual" to a "t." Autogynephilic transsexuals are, as the name suggests, erotically aroused by the thought or image of themselves as women (auto for “self,” gyne for “woman,” and philic for “loving”; i.e., loving oneself as a woman). They tend to be attracted to women and men, sometimes to one or the other or, if asexual, to neither. Chiefly, however, they are sexually excited by the image of themselves as females with vaginas. As adolescent boys they found sexual gratification through secretly wearing women’s lingerie, looking in a mirror, and masturbating to that image. Since autogynephilic transsexuals as boys engaged in male sports and had male friends, they were not perceived by others to be particularly feminine boys. Typically they have been married to a woman before becoming an overt transsexual, find employment in ‘masculine occupations’ (technology, science, etc.), don’t come out publicly as women until their late thirties or beyond, and have a more difficult time than "homosexual transsexuals" in passing themselves off as women.

Essentially autogynephilic transsexuals are misdirected heterosexuals who have transferred the woman of their desires from outside themselves to within themselves; in short, they are men who are heterosexually oriented to the woman inside them. Anne Lawrence refers to them as “men trapped in men’s bodies” rather than “women trapped in men’s bodies.” For obvious reasons it is not unusual for autogynephilic transsexuals to hide from others the fact that they get sexual thrills from thinking of themselves as a woman.

See further my article, "Transsexuality and Ordination" at http://www.robgagnon.net/artic…/TranssexualityOrdination.pdf

Dembski on NDEs

Hi Jeremy,

Thanks for alerting me to this article in your email to me (and others). I enjoyed reading it. That said, I’m not sympathetic to your approach or conclusions.

It seems that you are putting forward a false dichotomy: brain activity vs. objective experience of heaven. As a nonmaterialist, I don’t see consciousness as ultimately reducible to brain activity (I think you give neuroscience way too much credit). Thus it seems that people, especially in circumstances of extremity such as near death, could have access to a nonmaterial realm that at the same time provides them information they might not have accessed through some material chain of causation. (I address this general point at length in my forthcoming book BEING AS COMMUNION: http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781472437853 ; I also address NDEs directly there.)

For you, a boy seeing his deceased sister who was lost through a miscarriage is him subconsciously piecing together items of information that he received from his parents and other sources through normal chains of material causation. But what if such information never got to him? It’s speculation on your part that the information had to get to him through “normal channels.”

The NDEs that have persuaded me most are those where patients access information about their setting (usually a hospital) to which they would have had no direct access. Now one can always argue that these are not controlled experiments, and so there might have been some access after all. This is how James Randi and other skeptics deal with all psi phenomena. And I see you taking the same tack. The type of skepticism that you seem to be buying into is dealt with, in my view, effectively in Dean Radin’s THE CONSCIOUS UNIVERSE. The take-away lesson for NDEs for me is that people do have access to sources of information that are not reducible to purely material explanations (and thus at odds with a materialist neuroscience).

As for the insights people with NDEs have about heaven, one can hold them up to theological yardsticks and find them wanting. But I’m not sure that invalidates them. I’ll grant you that none of these experiences that I’ve seen recorded or written about have provided information that would unequivocally implicate the supreme being of the universe (as a mathematician, for instance, I would like very much for an NDE to provide a proof of the Riemann Hypothesis or the Goldbach Conjecture).

But let’s not forget that the Bible itself doesn’t provide such slamdunk information of an afterlife. Jesus had more than an NDE — he actually was dead and came back. When he came back from the dead, why was he unrecognizable? As people saw him after his resurrection, did he always look the same? Did his apparent age stay fixed? The Bible doesn’t say. But it does seem to indicate that every time people saw him, they had to do more than a double-take to make sure it was him — they actually had to interact with him.

So, if people have NDEs and claim to glimpse heaven, I’m not ready to dismiss it because the visions don’t match up with some objective scene, as we might require of people if we were to ask them to describe Central Park in New York. I personally don’t have a problem with subjective features conditioning our view of heaven. It may even be that we can consciously shift or simultaneously experience aspects of heaven in multiple ways. Granted, this is pure speculation. But such considerations lead me to be more open to these experiences of the afterlife than you are.

http://jeremyroyalhoward.com/2014/05/11/are-near-death-experiences-genuine-visits-to-the-afterlife/comment-page-1/#comment-6

Rape-inflation rhetoric

I wouldn't normally comment on the Duggar scandal. However, I see that philosopher Paul Moser is back on the war path, plugging a post by Zach Hunt. The Duggar scandal is a pretext to attack the Bible and Bible-believing Christians. The point of my post is not to defend the Duggars, but to defend Christians against scurrilous guilt-by-association.

i) Josh has been accused of molesting "minors." However, that's misleading inasmuch as he himself was a minor at the time. From what I've read, he just turned 14. Both he and the victims were minors. And underage boy, with underage girls. 

In addition, he's accused of "fondling" the "breasts" of some girls. That suggests the victims weren't prepubescent girls. Rather, they were old enough to have breasts. Say age 12 or thereabouts. 

So, to judge by the report, this involves misconduct between an adolescent boy and adolescent girls, about one or two years apart.

In fact, it's unclear from what I've read if he was even older than the girls. When reports say it was his "younger sisters," "younger" qualifies "sisters." That doesn't necessarily mean they were younger than their brother. Rather, "younger sisters" stands in contrast to their other sisters. They were younger than their older sisters.

Moreover, the misconduct in question involves fondling the erogenous zones. Given the nature of the offense, and how close they were in age, that isn't anywhere close to "rape" or "sexual violence." Rather, that's sexual harassment. 

There's a rape-inflation rhetoric that's popular in feminism because it's politically expedient. 

ii) By the way, suppose that was reversed. Suppose a 12-year-old girl sexually fondled a 13-year-old boy–without prior consent. Would the critics be outraged that the girls weren't prosecuted? Or is there a double standard in play?

iii) If fondling is all there was to it, and if Josh and the girls were just one or two few years apart, then I don't think the parents had a moral duty to report him to the authorities. I think that's the kind of situation which should be handled within the family. Parental discipline.

If he was incorrigible, that's different. Also, I don't know if or how he was disciplined. 

iv) Mind you, it's important to get the girls' side of the story. It could be worse. 

To the extent that there are bigger issues here:

v) What were his qualifications to be hired for a top spot at the Family Research Council? None that I can see. 

It was just celebrity. Apparently, the Duggars are folk heroes in some reactionary Christian circles (e.g. Quiverfull movement, Patriarchy movement). 

vi) Mike Huckabee and Michael Brown are right to say that what he did was forgivable. However, the way they cast the issue is somewhat confused.

Forgiveness is a category mistake for anyone who wasn't even wronged by him. 

vii) Moser's comparison is typically confused. Islam does sanctify terrorism. 

By contrast, Christianity doesn't sanctify "sexual violence."

viii) The Duggar scandal has nothing to do with Christians in general. 

Abolition of Reason

A new ebook in response to Abolish Human Abortion.

From Olympian to drag queen

Vanity Fair has a cover fearing the debut of "Caitlyn Jenner."

In related news, how about Eddie Murphy:

Does atheism have a higher intrinsic probability than theism?

One Bayesian style argument for atheism I run across on the internet goes like this:

The more specific the claim, the lower the intrinsic probability. Atheism is merely nonbelief in God or gods. That's simpler, less specific than theism, much less Christian theism in particular.

Seems to me there are two basic problems with that strategy:

i) It artificially isolates atheism, as a bare proposition, from godless reality. But don't we need to compare one state of affairs with another state of affairs? 

What's the overall complexity of reality without God compared to reality with God? Is reality with God a more specific claim? Is reality without God a simpler claim?

ii) What about the proposition that before God made the world, only God existed. Is that claim more specific or less specific than naturalism?

There's also the ambiguity of complex with respect to what. For instance, take decorated pottery. That's more complex than unadorned pottery. But would it be sensible to say that the existence of decorated poetry has less intrinsic probability than merely utilitarian pottery?

Poetry is more complex than prose. Likewise, there are novelists who revel in complexity, viz. Umberto Eco, Italo Calvino, James Joyce.

By the same token, composers like Bach revel in complexity. 

That's a facet of human creativity which mirrors divine creativity.

As a friend of mind observes:

That entire approach is foolish because it acts as if we are in a pre-evidential state--a state with no evidence on the subject. The non-existence of my mother is also "simpler" than her existence with respect to a situation where I have no evidence, but, y'know, I have plenty of reason to believe that my mother exists! It would be much less simple to try to explain away the evidence for my mother's existence while denying her existence. That would require a more complex hypothesis than the hypothesis of her existence (e.g., someone pretending to be my mother who isn't really my mother, my having come into existence somehow without a mother, etc.). 

The non-existence of anything can be regarded as simpler than the existence of anything, but that doesn't mean the most rational position is the belief that nothing exists! Entities should not be multiplied without necessity, but we are constantly confronted with the evidential necessity of postulating entities, from atoms to zebras, from other minds to God.

Antipope Francis: “I feel like saying something heretical…”

“And it comes to my mind to say something
that may be foolish, or perhaps a heresy,
I don’t know.”

Yes, as someone has put it, “Pope Francis” is the gift that keeps on giving. When I say he “keeps on giving”, I mean he “keeps on saying things that his handlers – keepers of the ‘infallibility’ – find distressing because of the confusion they create”.

We remember “who am I to judge?” and “don’t be like rabbits” (when it comes to having children). But based on his latest statement, it seems to me that “Pope Francis” is saying these kinds of things in a calculated way, to heighten the impact.

Look at what he said last week to “a group focused on unity” (source):

Dear brothers and sisters, division is a wound in the body of the Church of Christ. And we do not want this wound to remain open. Division is the work of the Father of Lies, the Father of Discord, who does everything possible to keep us divided.

Together today, I here in Rome and you over there, we will ask our Father to send the Spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and to give us the grace to be one, “so that the world may believe”. I feel like saying something that may sound controversial, or even heretical, perhaps.

Whoops! A pope uttering a heretical utterance? Is he baiting us?

But there is someone who “knows” that, despite our differences, we are one. It is he who is persecuting us. It is he who is persecuting Christians today, he who is anointing us with (the blood of) martyrdom. He knows that Christians are disciples of Christ: that they are one, that they are brothers! He doesn’t care if they are Evangelicals, or Orthodox, Lutherans, Catholics or Apostolic…he doesn’t care!

The one who “knows” and “doesn’t care” is the Devil. To my knowledge, no Roman Catholic doctrine is based on what the Devil thinks. So a pope can say pretty much anything about “what the Devil thinks” and he would know that it’s not “heresy”.

This raises the question, why would “Pope Francis” bring up the tantalizing possibility that “what I’m going to say may be heresy”?

The possibility that “Pope Francis” wouldn’t know whether or not seems beyond the realm of possibility. According to one “traditionalist” website, it is a pope’s duty “to be informed on these matters”.

So he didn’t not know this. That leaves the other possibility as a live one: he said this intentionally, merely to be provocative.

To these traditionalists, he is “Antipope Francis”.

Bergoglio’s gig this time: intentional deception.

Mark Twain's premonition

Mark Twain's premonition of his brother's death:

--------------------------------------------------------- 

Then in the early days  of May, 1858, came a tragic trip–the last trip of that fleet and famous steamboat. I have told all about it in one of my books called "Old Times on the Mississippi." But it is not likely that I told the dream in that book…It is impossible that I can ever have published it, I think, because I never wanted my mother to know about that dream, and she lived several years after I published that volume. 

I had found a place on the Pennsylvania for my brother Henry, who was two years my junior…he was a "mud" clerk…The dream begins when Henry had been a mud clerk about three months…On the night of the dream he started away at eleven, shaking hands with the family, and said good-bye according to custom. I mention that hand-shaking as a good-bye was not merely the custom of that family, but the custom of the region–the custom of Missouri, I may say…These good-byes of Henry's were always executed in the family sitting-room on the second floor, and Henry went from that room and downstairs without further ceremony. But this time my mother went with him to the head of the stairs and said good-bye again, as I remember it she was moved to do this by something in Henry's manner, and she remained at the head of the stairs as he descended. When he reached the door he hesitated, and climbed the stairs and shook hands good-buy once more.

In the morning, when I awoke I had been dreaming, and the dream was so vivid, so like reality, that it deceive me, and I thought it was real. In the dream I had seen Henry a corpse. He lay in a metallic burial case. He was dressed in a suit of my clothing, and on his breast lay a great bouquet of flowers, mainly white roses, with a red rose in the center…I walked to 14th, and to the middle of the block beyond…before it suddenly flashed upon me that there was nothing real about this–it was only a dream. 

Henry always joined my watch about nine in the evening, when his own duties were ended, and we often walked my rounds and chattered together until midnight. This time we were to part, and so the night before the boat sailed I gave Henry some advice.

Two or three days afterward the boat's boilers exploded at Ship Island, below Memphis, early one morning…I found Henry stretched upon a mattress on the floor of a great building, along with thirty or forty other scalded and wounded persons, and was promptly informed, by some indiscreet person, that he had inhaled steam; that his body was badly scalded, and that he would live but a little while; also, I was told that the physicians and nurses were giving their whole attention to persons who had a chance of being saved. They were shorthanded in the matter of physicians and nurses; and Henry and such others as were considered to be fatally hurt were receiving only such attention as could be spared, from time to time, from the more urgent cases. 

The physicians on watch were young fellows hardly out of the medical college, and they made a mistake–they had no way of measuring the eight of a grain of morphine, so they guessed at it and gave him a vast quantity heaped on the end of a knife-blade, and the fatal effects were soon apparent. He was carried to the dead-room and I went away for a while to a citizen's house and slept off some of my accumulated fatigue–and meantime something was happening. The coffins provided for the dead were of unpainted white pine, but in this instance some of the ladies of Memphis had made up a fund of sixty dollars and bought a metallic case, and when I came back and entered the dead-room Henry lay in that open case, and he was dressed in a suit of my clothing. He had borrowed it without my knowledge during our last sojourn in St. Louis; and I recognized instantly that my dream of several weeks before was here exactly reproduced, so far as the details went–and I think I missed one detail; but that one was immediately supplied, for just then an elderly lady entered the place with a large bouquet consisting mainly of white roses, and in the center of it was a red rose, and she laid it on his breast. 

I don't believe that I ever had any doubts whatever concerning the salient points of the dream, for those points are of such a nature that they are pictures, and pictures can be remembered, when they are vivid, much better than one can remember remarks and unconcreted facts. Although it has been so many years since I have told that dream, I can see those pictures now just as clearly defined as if they were before me in this room. I have not told the whole dream. There was a good deal more of it. I mean I have not told all that happened in the dream's fulfillment. After the incident in the dead-room I may mention one detail, and that is this. When I arrived in St. Louis with the casket it was about eight o'clock in the morning…When I went upstairs there stood the two chairs which I had seen in my dream… Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1: The Complete and Authoritative Edition (U. of California Press, 2010). 129-133. 

God or Natural Law: A False Dichotomy

http://www.mandm.org.nz/2015/05/god-or-natural-law-a-false-dichotomy.html#more-11872

From bane to blessing

you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord (1 Cor 5:5). 

among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme (1 Tim 1:20).

Given the elliptical nature of these enigmatic passages, we can't be sure what they mean. In his revised commentary on 1 Corinthians, Fee denies that Paul is using an "execration formulation."

Fee thinks this is a colorful metaphor or personification for excommunication. However, a basic problem with that explanation is how excommunication would have a purifying effect on the wayward Christian. He's cut off from the sanctifying influence of Christian fellowship. And that, in turn, leaves nothing to offset the moral and spiritual corruption of his heathen environment. 

So it seems more likely that Paul is alluding to the judicial or punitive role that the OT assigns to Satan (Job 1-2; 1 Chron 21:1; Zech 3:1-2).

In effect, he may be hexed. Cursed to suffer a string of bad luck. One setback after another. Things go from bad to worse. 

His misfortune constitutes remedial punishment–prompting contrition. 

Of course, it is not Satan's intention to restore a wayward Christian to the fellowship of the church. That's a case of God's overruling providence. God uses Satan to achieve a beneficial result in spite of Satan's malicious designs. 

I think that's the most reasonable interpretation. God can use misfortune and personal tragedy as spiritual discipline. That can be instigated by Satan, even though the end-result is at cross-purposes with Satan's malevolent intentions. 

Comparing something to nothing

I've already written a general evaluation of this response, now I'd like to zero in on a specific part of the argument:

http://blog.abolishhumanabortion.com/2015/05/what-about-these-babies.html

As noted above, Mr. Cunningham uses these studies to point out that pro-life legislation is effective in saving babies lives.  He further argued that we ought to support these measures because they work, we lack the political clout to completely ban abortion, and failure to take what we can is tantamount to turning our backs on these neighbors.
So what do we make of this?
Even if we admit Dr. New’s analysis is correct and that there is a genuine correlation between abortion rates/ratios and the passage of pro-life laws, we do not think this study address the real question at hand.  Abolitionists do not argue that pro-life laws don’t do some good.  We openly admit they likely have some positive influence in reducing the number of surgical abortions.  The real question, however, is how do we know that rallying around an immediatist position in the 1990s would not have had the net effect of saving even more than are currently saved?  Simply put, Dr. New’s work, while insightful and interesting, cannot address this question because the data sets needed to address it do not exist.  We do not know whether or not a different strategy would have had a worse outcome.  It is entirely possible that the methods used in the 1990s yielded far fewer babies being saved than if a stronger immediatist position had been embraced.  The point is that we don’t know and, as such, these studies are moot. 
To return to the studies Mr. Cunningham raised in the debate, we are grateful that those children are alive, and we are grateful that surgical abortion has been curtailed to some degree.  We suspect, however, that those saved babies are not indicative of God honoring those methods but that He is bringing about good in spite of our failed, compromised methods.

It's important to notice that PChem is changing the subject. Here's a reminder of Cunningham's original statement:

Then, holding up Dr. New’s research on the effectiveness of incremental bills for saving lives, Cunningham asked, “What about these babies? Should we allow them to die instead of passing incremental legislation that would save them?” Hunter initially said “no,” but when Cunningham pressed him for clarification, he called the question a “charade” because if all incrementalists would become immediatists, we could put the ax to the root and end abortion. Gregg continued, “For the record, Russ didn’t answer the question. Should these babies have been allowed to die instead of passing the incremental legislation that saved them?” When Hunter again declined to answer and called incremental victories “shallow,” Cunningham again held up Dr. New’s study and asked, “Are you saying this guy made this stuff up when he said these laws save lives?” 

http://lti-blog.blogspot.com/2015/05/debate-between-gregg-cunningham-and-t.html

Notice that PChem doesn't dispute the accuracy of Cunningham's claim. He concedes that New's studies support Cunningham's claim. Legal restrictions on abortion do, in fact, save babies. 

So far from being "moot," such studies are, by PChem's own admission, directly confirmatory. 

i) Since PChem can't refute Cunningham's claim, or New's supporting evidence, PChem attempts to recast the issue. The "real question" is whether incrementalism saves more babies than immediatism. 

From my reading, abolitionists play a shell game on this issue. On the one hand, there are abolitionists who refuse to admit that incremental legislation saves babies. They claim the restrictions are so easy to evade that they don't save any babies. Or they don't save a "significant" number of babies.

In that respect, it's important to remember PChem's concession. He grants the fact that incremental legislation does, indeed, save babies. He therefore changes the subject. 

From my reading, abolitionists oscillate between these two contentions. Sometimes they resist the claim that incremental legislation is effective. However, their fallback position is to say it doesn't matter if incremental legislation is effective. And they give two reasons: one is to claim that even if successful, the results are tainted by moral compromise.

But the other response is to shift grounds: it's no longer a question of whether incremental legislation is effective, but whether it saves more lives. 

It's important for abolitionists to be consistent. What's their actual argument? 

I think one source of the problem is that abolitionists have developed a conditioned reflex to certain objections. They have prepared answers. The aim is to deflect the immediate objection. They resort to any answer that's convenient at the moment. 

ii) Furthermore, they naturally squirm at having to admit that they are prepared to sacrifice the lives of tangible, living babies at hand to further their long-range strategy of maybe saving more babies at some future point. When you strip away the idealistic rhetoric, it's very harsh to say you will sacrifice babies in the short-term to possibly save more babies in the long-term. You will let babies die today to save hypothetical babies tomorrow. That's a choice they try to duck–even though their position commits them to that hard-nosed calculation. 

ii) In addition, they shift the burden of proof. They act as if the onus is on the prolifer to demonstrate that immediatism saves fewer lives. Of course, that's absurd. It is incumbent on abolitionists to defend their own position. It is incumbent on them to provide supporting evidence for their own position. In fact, their refusal to shoulder their own burden of proof betrays the poverty of evidence for their position. It makes no sense to say: "I have nothing to support my claim–now prove me wrong!" It's not up to prolifers to refute sheer assertions about a nonexistent, alternate history or wishful future.  

iii) PChem's comparison is inapt. The logical comparison would be to ask how many babies in the past would be saved by incremental measures had those same measures been in place at the time.  

Since, moreover, incremental legislation has a track-record, that supplies a frame of reference for extrapolating present laws and present results back in time.

iv) By contrast, immediatism has no track-record. There are no immediatist laws on the books–anywhere. New's studies are not deficient because they failed to compare something to nothing. There's no basis of comparison in the first place. Immediatism has no data to furnish a frame of reference. You can't extrapolate from nothing in the present to something in the past. 

Abolitionists are pinning all their hopes on a wishful future. They have zero evidence at present that abolitionist distinctives will be successful in any degree whatsoever. You can't pull estimates out of thin air. 

As we do this, we see lives changed and people who are used by God to save babies. As abolitionism grows the number of people going to abortion mills, schools, city streets, churches, and everywhere else grows. The number of memes we post, signs we hold, pamphlets we pass out, conversation we have, prayers we make, plans and campaigns we bring to fruition all increase. As a result, the number of abortions taking place will likely decrease. 

PChem doesn't know that abolitionism will grow. He doesn't know that it will probably grow. What if AHA is just a fad–like "Justice for Trayvon"? Compare some stats. AHA Facebook has 35,766 likes. Justice for Trayvon Martin Facebook has 283,346 likes. Remember 'Justice for Trayvon' rallies in 100 cities across USA? But that was just the cause du jour. Social activists moved on to other hot-button issues.

What happens when Facebook pulls the plug on AHA? Will AHA fizzle? Time will tell. But there's no evidence, as of yet, that AHA has any staying power. It's handing out vouchers backed by promises about its future achievements. But that's all hypothetical. 

The new australopithecine and the multiplying of species

http://toddcwood.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-new-australopithecine-and.html

The Irish vote on SSM

http://www.massresistance.org/docs/gen2/15b/Ireland-marriage-vote/result-analysis.html