Coming Soon to a Christian Music Festival Near You

Jihad Watch: UK: Christian festival to feature Islamic worship chants

How marvelously broad-minded! Pope Francis [along with the muckity-mucks of the Church of England] would be thrilled! But once again we see that this kind of gesture of good will is all one-way. When is the Islamic festival featuring Christian liturgical chant? Why, the very idea would be absurd, of course. ...

Christian worshippers at this year’s Greenbelt Festival will have the opportunity to learn Islamic worship chants – thanks to an organisation which says its primary aim is to ‘guide seekers of Allah’.

Atheism and Infanticide

Shadow to Light: Atheism and Infanticide

Shadow to Light: “As Coyne’s reasoning makes clear, the legalization and normalization of abortion has provided the slippery slope toward infanticide. I can’t be sure, but I bet if you look at the arguments of those opposed to legalizing abortion back in the 1960s and 70s, you’d find people warning about this exact development and you’d find such warnings being dismissed.”

Ilíon: I can be sure, I remember it. And it wasn’t just in the 60s and 70s. I wasn’t really aware of the abortion regime until about 1980 … and at least into the 1990s, if not into this century, the pro-abortionists were pooh-poohing the argument not only that that “the legalization and normalization of abortion has provided the slippery slope toward infanticide”, but that it *must* lead to infanticide.

At some point in the very recent past, the pro-abortionists totally switched it up — whereas previously they had pooh-poohed the argument that “the legalization and normalization of abortion has provided the slippery slope toward infanticide”, they began to actively argue that *since* there is no moral difference between a pre-birth human being and a born human infant and *since* the killing of a pre-birth human being is legal, that *therefore* the killing of a born human infant must also be legalized.

You know, exactly as we anti-abortionists had argued they eventually would and must.

Here is an exchange from Facebook occasioned by the post at Shadow to Light --

Ian Bibby: The "Slippery Slope Fallacy" - the one "fallacy" that somehow results in correct predictions 100% of the time.


Bradley Nartowt: Strictly speaking, the slippery slope States that A does not mandate B as a consequence.

Often, people will misuse this and think "because slippery slope, if A, then B is prohibited." Which, of course, is nonsense.


Ilíon: There is also a Slippery Slope which can be stated as "He who says 'A' must say 'B'", and that's the one that the people who want 'A' and don't really object to 'B' always pooh-pooh.

"He who says 'A' must say 'B'" -- that is, given that 'A' entails 'B', if someone asserts 'A', then ultimately he will assert 'B'.

Here, 'A" is abortion (because that is the moral outrage that our society accepted first), and 'B' can be either euthanasia or infanticide. Here, the Slippery Slope does indeed apply. As Ian said, "he "Slippery Slope Fallacy" - the one "fallacy" that somehow results in correct predictions 100% of the time." The Slippery Slope applies becasue the same *premise* that justifies any one of euthanasia or infanticide or abortion -- denial of the Imago Dei, and thus denial that all persons possess the inalienable right to life -- also justifies all of the others.

'Ilion, you are out of bounds here'

This is me laughing at that assertion.

Recently, Victor Reppert put up a post called "Joe Hinman turns Derrida on his head ". To that title, I responded with: "Joe Hinman turns logic (and grammar) on its head, why not Derrida, too?"

And Joe Hinman, being who and what he is, responded with:

Eric Sotnack who teaches Philosophy at Akron helped me structure the argument, So a professional philosopher who is an atheist thinks it's valid.

show me a grammatical error I'e committed. do you even know the grammar, spelling, and punctuation>?

Ignoring the first paragraph, which naturally had nothing to do with what I said, I responded with: "^ I leave it to Gentle Reader to supply his own guffaws."

This was too much for that professional "nice" guy, Victor Reppert (*), who decided to jump in with:

Ilion, you are out of bounds here. However you may disagree with him, especially on politics, we all know he is dyslexic and needs help with some mechanical issues in writing. My doctoral dissertation advisor, Hugh Chandler, was the same way.

I responded with:

I am never "out of bounds"; I say the truth that you do not wish said. Said or unsaid, reality remain what it is -- "Joe Hinman turns logic (and grammar) on its head, why not Derrida, too?".

It seems that you have as little respect for this particular prancing fool as I do, albeit differently grounded (**).

If he is dyslexic, then that is *his* problem, and it is up to him to take the care that what he posts isn't so scrambled that no one else has the faintest clue as to what he means.

And, in any event, his underlying problem isn't dyslexia, it's illogic ... and vicious leftism.

By the way, my immediate supervisor is dyslexic ... and he doesn't need anyone to run interference for him when we can't make heads nor tails of what he means to communicate to us.

Now, the thing is, I mostly ignore Joe Hinman, precisely because he is an irrational fool; but given Reppert's title, it was just too much temptation to resist my initial quip. I mean, Derrida (***)!

And the other thing is, Joe Hinman not only seems to be unable to ignore me, but he also seems to have a hard time resisting attacking me. This is what Reppert is alluding to with "However you may disagree with him, especially on politics"; you know, that old "even-handedness" for which "even-handed" people are so noted -- if Hinman says the most outrageous lies about me, that's just a difference of opinion, but if I laugh about Hinman's grammar-on-its-head disputation of my statement that he regularly turns grammar on its head, well, that's "out of bounds".

AND, actually, it's not true that "we all know he is dyslexic and needs help with some mechanical issues in writing". "All" includes me, doesn't it? I didn't know this claim about him.

And knowing it, I don't care.



(*) Who will *never* pipe up with the smallest of trillings when Joe Hinman (or any other leftist, or 'atheist') makes the most outrageous, and easily seen to be false, assertions about me or about any other anti-leftist.

(**) I think he's an adult and a moral agent who chooses to be a fool; Reppert apparently thinks he's a child below "the age of accountability" who must be shielded from the consequences of his own choices.

(***) Turning logic and language on their heads was Derrida's specialty and his claim to fame.

But what sort of martyr?

Maureen Mullarkey at TheFederalist: Was Jacques Hamel A Martyr To The Faith Or To His Illusions About Islam?

Set aside, if you can, all horror at Hamel’s murder. Look past, please, all warranted sympathy for this good man and his terrible end. There remains a question: Was the priest a martyr for the faith or to his own illusions about Islam?

By all accounts a kindly man, Hamel served in a parish committed to the very illusion of ecumenical agreement with Islam that de Mattei abhors. The Belfast Telegraph reports the nuns gave reading lessons to Muslim kids in the tower blocks. Church authorities soared above such neighborliness. Courting dhimmitude, they donated the land beside Hamel’s church to local Muslims to build the mosque his two young killers attended. During Ramadan, the parish hall “and other facilities” were given over to Muslims. (In terms of Islamic jurisprudence, the mosque and the ground under it belong forever to the eternal ummah. The archdiocese has ceded a portion of Normandy to the caliphate. Allah be praised.)

In his last pastoral letter, Hamel called for communities to live together and “accept each other as they are.” But accepting Islam means recognizing its totalizing nature. Authentic acceptance is unsentimental. It is a prod to staying watchful. To befriend Muslims as individuals does not cancel the necessity to know Islam’s history, its millenarian ambitions, and its enduring theological imperative toward violence.

Christian charity does not entail any obligation to accommodate Islam’s muscular expansion in the West. One way to love the enemy is to defeat him. Yet Hamel’s parish was actively lending itself to Islam’s ascendancy. Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray is a lesson in the price Christianity pays for the fanaticism of profligate mercy.

Refusing to see what's right in from of your face

William Vallicella: Does Evil Prove the Nonexistence of God? --

I'll grant you that it does if you grant me that truth, existence, order, conscience and twenty of so other phenomena prove the existence of God. And let's not leave out the moral heroism of Maximilian Kolbe.

You can reasonably ask how there could be a God given the fact of natural and moral evil. You can also reasonably ask how there could not be a God given the transcendent moral heroism and selflessness of Kolbe and others like him.

I'll grant you that evil argues the nonexistence of God if you grant me that evil also argues the existence of God. (Click on the first hyperlink and locate the argument from evil for the existence of God.)

My point is that there are no rationally compelling arguments for or against the existence of God.

Whatever it may be, it is not his *point* that "there are no rationally compelling arguments for or against the existence of God."

Consider -- "I'll grant you that evil argues the nonexistence of God if you grant me that evil also argues the existence of God."

What Vallicella is referring to here is that 'evil' is utterly meaningless if atheism is the truth about the nature of reality.

IF there is no Creator (*) -- if the world just randomly happened -- THEN there can be no "way things ought to be"; that is, there is no such thing as 'good'. AND, if there is no "way things ought to be", then there can be no violation of the "way things ought to be"; that is, there is no such thing as 'evil'.

Contrary to all the confused (when not merely dishonest) bleating of 'atheists', far from being evidence against the reality of God, the reality is evil is evidence *for* the reality of God.

Now, Vallicella does actually know this, but he will not see it and he will not acknowledge it, because he has a prior commitment to the falsehood that "there are no rationally compelling arguments for or against the existence of God."

In other words, the man is a fool.


(*) Not only must it be the case that there is some entity which may be called 'God', but this entity must be the cause of the world -- this 'God' cannot be an item in the world, but is rather "outside the world" -- this 'God' must be transcendent and immaterial and eternal. At the same time, it is not enough that 'God' be the cause of the world, 'God' must be the deliberate cause of the world -- this 'God' must be personal.

In other words, even before he can appeal to 'evil' as his rationale for denying the reality of God, the so-called atheist must make the logically prior appeal to a transcendent, eternal, immaterial and personal Creator-God.

No Truce With the Left

Daniel Greenfield: No Truce With the Left

There comes a time when every conservative thinker tries to find some common ground with the left in some area. Today it's criminal rights and the headlines have Rand Paul denouncing the racist justice system while Grover Norquist and the Koch Brothers join with the left to back their reforms. As usually happens, the conservatives or libertarians turn out to be the useful idiots of the left.

Liberals have a long history of being the left's useful idiots. It's only fair that libertarians get a turn.

...

To understand the left, you need to remember that it does not care about 99 percent of the things it claims to care about. Name a leftist cause and then find a Communist country that actually practiced it. Labor unions? Outlawed. Environmentalism? Chernobyl. The left fights all sorts of social and political battles not because it believes in them, but to radicalize, disrupt and take power.

The left does not care about social justice. It cares about power.

That is why no truce is possible with the left. Not on social issues. Not on any issues.

The left is a drunk in a bar trying to pick a fight with you. Trying to convince him that you didn't disrespect him, put something in his beer to make him dizzy or make his feet so heavy won't work. There's no 'agree to disagree' possible here. He's picking a fight with you because he wants a fight.

The left does not care about Bruce Jenner. It does not care about gay rights, equal pay, police brutality or even slavery. Its activists 'care' about those things a great deal right now, but they could easily be persuaded tomorrow to be outraged by telephone poles, shredded wheat or people in green sweaters.

They care mainly about emotional venting and exercising power over others. It's the same phenomenon witnessed during the Salem Witch Trials, the French Revolution or any other mob scene. Except the individual elements of the mob are on social media and have a hashtag.

The outraged social justice warrior was laughing at tranny jokes a few years ago. Now he's ready to kill over minor verbal missteps. A few years from now he'll be laughing at them again.

I especially liked the last one

The Sacred Cow Slaughterhouse Some Fights You'll Never Win

His name is 'Bruce'

Add me to the list of "haters" (and, should the leftists have their ultimate way, imprisoned or executed for it), for I will never pretend that Bruce Jenner is a 'she' nor that his name is 'Cairlyn'. He is a very mentally (and spiritually) disturbed man, but a man -- a male human being, however unmanly -- nonetheless.

The Other McCain: War on Human Nature: The Celebrity Fantasy Dress-Up With ‘Caitlyn’ Game


Isn't it odd that in Leftie World, as Ben Shapiro tweeted: "Your biological sex is completely mutable, but your sexual orientation is completely immutable." (Of course, this holds only so long as the leftists find "gays" to be useful. When "gays" are no longer collectively useful to the left, they'll be putting them in the death camps, right along with us Christians)

Also, isn't it all rather odd that the very people who like to congratulate themselves on being "the reality-based community" are so very against reality?


Edit:
Walt Heyer: "Sex Change" Surgery: What Bruce Jenner, Diane Sawyer, and You Should Know -- "Bruce Jenner and Diane Sawyer could benefit from a history lesson. I know, because I suffered through “sex change” surgery and lived as a woman for eight years. The surgery fixed nothing—it only masked and exacerbated deeper psychological problems."

Gaywalkers, Gaytards, and the Gaystapo

Douglas Wilson: Gaywalkers, Gaytards, and the Gaystapo

Douglas Wilson: Too Thick to Deal With -- "... We are a generation that, in the words of Dabney, are simultaneously sentimental and inhumane. The only way we react with moral outrage anymore is if someone insults our bizarre and disjointed sentimentalist taboos.

But this is not mindless behavior on their part; it is a play they are running. They are running it very successfully. They arbitrarily make more and more things offensive to say, and then well-meaning Christians who want to “maintain a good witness” volunteer to police the boundaries of their new prohibitions. Orwellian double-speak abounds, with Christians who really should know better serving as the double-speak cops. They do this, thinking it our duty for the sake of the witness, when our real duty is to put our foot through the side of every double-painted lie."

'Liberal' political response to 'the will of The People'

Bob Parks: Bonehead Of The Day

Republicans Claim Historic Win In Annapolis Mayoral Race
Annapolis City Council considers stripping mayor’s powers
Flashback: MA legislature flip-flops on governor’s senatorial appointment power

Using Annapolis Alderman Ross Arnett and Massachusetts’ desire for one-party rule as precedent, maybe we should make the Virginia governor a “ceremonial” position until a Republican is reelected. That’s only fair, right Dems?

Since the Democratic Party went insane in 1968, they've been even worse about this sort of thing than they were before. This isn't just "dirty politics", this is leftism in action.

Keep this *always* in mind: leftists are always liars, scoundrels and hypocrites; you *can't* compromise with these people, about anything. You might as well be done with it and just cut your own throat.

Take it seriously. Because they do.

Wm.A.Jacobson (Legal Insurrection): Tyrants if left to their own devices

Hypocrite

As Gentle Reader may know, I long ago lost interest in the hypocrite. However, I didn't (nor plan to) remove the link on my blogroll to his blog. I happened to bounce over there a minute ago... to see what the people on his blogroll are talking about ... and happened to see his 'Now' post.

Then

Then

Now

Thoughts on the Seattle Slutwalk

American Clarity: Thoughts on the Seattle Slutwalk

The Unmourned

Mark Steyn (in NRO's 'The Corner'): The Unmourned

...
Instead of my Arizona comparison, what about Sandy Hook? One solitary act of mass infanticide by a mentally-ill loner calls into question the constitutional right to guns, but a sustained conveyor belt of infanticide by an entire cadre of cold-blooded killers apparently has no implications for the constitutional right to abortion. As one commentator wondered two years ago:

Does 30 years of calling babies “blobs of tissue” have no effect on the culture?

For the answer, consider the testimony of “Nurse” Moton - and the clarification by AP writer Maryclaire Dale:

She once had to kill a baby delivered in a toilet, cutting its neck with scissors, she said. Asked if she knew that was wrong, she said, “At first I didn’t.”

Abortions are typically performed in utero.

“Typically.” So, finding oneself called on to “abort” a “viable fetus” in a toilet with a pair of scissors, who wouldn’t be confused as to whether it’s “wrong” or merely marginally atypical?

And yet . . . the couch

Douglas Wilson: Wendell Berry's Halcyon Bean Patch

Second, let me briefly respond to Berry's observation that the Bible has a "lot more to say" about other sins, like fornication and adultery. This is quite true, and almost entirely beside the point. Say that a mother came home from grocery shopping to find out that her twelve-year-old son had set fire to the couch. When she was remonstrating with him, suppose further that she was met with the argument that he had been listening carefully to her for years, and that she had always had a "lot more to say" about table manners than this. This may be perfectly true . . . and yet . . . the couch.

For believing Christians, the issue is what the Bible teaches, not how much it teaches on one thing compared to other issues. There are matters of first importance compared to other matters, but this is determined by wisdom, and not by word counts. We should not tally up citations of the Ten Commandments throughout Scripture in order to manage our disobedience by triage. ...

edit:
J.V. dropped me an email note saying that she appreciated this, and that the last (quoted) sentence was "BAM!" I hadn't thought of it in those terms ;), but that last sentence is precisely why I wanted to share Wilson's piece.

Two months of arguing over 10 hours of savings

Mark Steyn: Two months of arguing over 10 hours of savings "If courage is the willingness to take a stand and vote for a bad deal because you've been painted into a corner and want Obama to fly back to Hawaii at the cost of another $3 million in public funds that could have gone to algae subsidies so he'll stop tormenting you for a week or two, then truly we are led by giants."

'Another Irony Alert'

Barry Arrington (at Uncommon Descent): Another Irony Alert -- Of course, the *real* irony will be lost on that fool Arrington.

You see, there was a time that Mr Barrington let slip the truth that Elizabeth Liddle is intellectually dishonest. Then, following her passive-aggressive and I'm-a-poor-little-woman-why-are-you-picking-on-me-you-mean-old-man whinge, he "apologized".

His "apology" was one of those pseudo-apologies. You know, the "I'm sorry IF" gambit. And, if you know me, then you know how greatly the dishonesty of those pseudo-apologies disgusts me.

So, I pointed out -- and would not stop pointing out -- that:
1) Elizabeth Liddle is, in fact, intellectually dishonest;
2) Barry Arrington had, in fact, said that Elizabeth Liddle is intellectually dishonest;
3) Mr Arrington's "apology" was nothing of the sort, and was, in fact, itself an example of intellectual dishonesty.

That is, while I strongly disagreed with his act of (pretending to) apologize to her for having spoken the truth about her, I insisted that IF he was going to claim to apologize to her for having spoken the truth about her, that he must, in fact, apologize, rather than offering up one of those "I'm sorry IF" pseudo-apologies.

Now, do not think I did this unawares. I *knew* that he would ban me from UD for my insistence upon intellectual honesty, even toward "the enemy". I was putting him to the test, and he failed, as I expected he would. He showed himself to be a fool, and I want nothing to do with fools.

One simply cannot cannot compromise with he who seeks one's death and still be a living man. Likewise, one simply cannot compromise between truth and non-truth and still be an honest man.

'Why I'm Not a Libertarian'

Jeremy Egerer: Why I'm Not a Libertarian

Or, as I always say, when push comes to shove, when it *really* matters, the libertarians will always side with the "liberals"/progressives. For, at the root of both -isms is materialism and atheism and libertinism.

'Brutally Honest', quoting Fr. Lemieux: "This is why I am not a libertarian, but a conservative"

Only those not paying attention

Only those deliberately choosing to not pay attention will be "shocked" by this development.

Bob Parks: ACLU, Single Mom Gets Father-Daughter Dances Banned

In a society in which "discrimination" -- treating unlike things according to their due -- is the ultimate moral evil, in which (the recently invented) "right" to "self-esteem" is more important than the virtue of self-respect, and consequently it is "immoral" and "offensive" to express disapproval either of the "life-style" of causing children to be born bastards (*) or of the legal and social ease with which women discard the fathers of children, well of course it's going to be "discriminatory" to do anything that could be construed as suggesting that, Yes, Virginia, some little girls do have fathers.

Understand, the whole idea of a father-daughter dance is strange; and depending on the ages of the girls, not too far away from creepy. BUT, it isn't the "dance" the "liberals" are condemning, it is the 'father' in the equation.

(*) Hell! in such a morally twisted and degenerate society, it's "immoral" and "offensive" to use the terms 'bastard' and 'illegitimate birth' correctly.

Isn't it amazing

Isn't it amazing that Vox Day's "argument" against (what is called ) 'free trade' and for protectionism (*) *always* relies upon at least misrepresentation, when not outright lies? Free trade and war

The PRC is one huge slave-labor camp. No one engages in 'free trade' with Chinese citizens (there is no such thing in mainland China): any and all trade with (mainland) China is with the PRC, not with any Chinese person.


(*) by which governmental violent force and compulsion is harnessed by the organized and politically connected few so as to compell the unorganized and politically unconnected many to tender unto the few the fruits of the many's labor, in a manner they would not voluntarily do.

===
It is foolish -- and immoral -- to "compromises" with the unjust demands of protectionists. For, having done so, the very logic of the "compromise" itself allows no limit to the "protection" that can, and will, be further demanded.

If a man demands your right arm, and you "compromise" by giving him your index finger, by what logic will you not give him your entire right hand on the next iteration of his unjust demands?

The demand for protection against 'free trade' is the assertion of ownership by the organized few over the unorganized many citizens (or "citizens") of a state.