Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Happy Kwanzaa



From Erik Erickson:

Kwanzaa: The Scientology of Holidays 
What do you get when you take a bad science fiction writer with a desire for immortality and add a lust for tax breaks? Scientology. What do you get when you take a neo-marxist felon and add a desire for black nationalism? Kwanzaa. What do both Kwanzaa and Scientology have in common? They are products of post-modern culture given legitimacy by a press hell bent on diminishing the Judeo-Christian heritage in the United States. 
Over the next few weeks, the media will be profiling families celebrating Kwanzaa — advent wreath lighters are too religious for media profiles. 
Kwanzaa has absolutely nothing to do with Africa and everything to do with hating the United States.
So where did Kwanzaa come from?
Kwanzaa has absolutely nothing to do with Africa and everything to do with hating the United States. Kwanzaa is the brain child of Ron Everett, who you will not be surprised to learn, chaired the African American Studies department of California State University, Long Beach, from 1989 to 2002. Some time before that, he spent several years in jail for torture, changed his name to Maulana Ron Karenga, put on a dashiki, embraced marxism, and declared Kwanzaa a real holiday. 
In 1971, a California jury convicted Karenga of assaulting and torturing two women. A May 14, 1971, article in the Los Angeles Times documented the torture: “Deborah Jones, who once was given the Swahili title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Ms. Davis’s mouth and placed against Ms. Davis’s face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vise. Karenga also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths, she said.” 
Being California, the state released Mr. Karenga in 1975, then promptly admitted him to public universities so he could become Dr. Ron Karenga. In 1977, Karenga outlined the principles of Kwanzaa and later noted, “People think it’s African, but it’s not. I came up with Kwanzaa because black people wouldn’t celebrate it if they knew it was American. Also, I put it around Christmas because I knew that’s when a lot of Bloods were partying.” Karenga went on to call Christ “psychotic” and declared Christianity a “white religion.” Apparently, the media agreed. 
As the late Tony Snow once commented, “There is no part of Kwanzaa that is not fraudulent.”
The more I see of this bizarre world, the more convinced I am that cultural shifts and conflicts are fundamentally a conflict between Christianity-- in its explicit and implicit forms-- and all the ideologies and people who hate Christianity. The idea that Kwanzaa-- a fake "holiday" nobody celebrates that was fabricated by a convicted torturer and certified nutjob who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a university let alone be faculty-- is culturally sanctioned and even celebrated in schools is simply a dollop of spit aimed at Christmas and Christianity.

The same can be said for liberals' bizarre embrace of Islam, which is as illiberal a religion as can be imagined-- except that it is anti-Christian, which is the cynosure of the liberal enterprise, beginning with Diderot and ending... with twerking or whatever.

Kwanzaa is a racist rite, bizarrely lent credence by our rapidly rotting pop culture-- a culture that is basically defined by all that is not Christian. 

37 comments:

  1. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyDecember 31, 2013 at 6:51 AM

    Doc: "cultural shifts and conflicts are fundamentally a conflict between Christianity-- in its explicit and implicit forms-- and all the ideologies and people who hate Christianity"

    Or, in other words, between Truth and Lies; between Light and Darkness; between Love and Envy; between Life and Death; between Good and Evil.

    Exactly so, Doctor.

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  2. They need racial (racist?) holidays too. Not just racially exclusive dormitories, graduations, proms, professional associations, awards ceremonies, and universities.

    It seems that plenty of black people like segregation just fine. They just want to be the ones excluding others, not being excluded.

    The Torch

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    1. I've always despised the racial seperatism of our society. It's so hypocritical.

      Every January those racial separatist hypocrites get all weepy about Martin Luther King, as if today's black leadership wants to live in a world in which skin color doesn't matter. Then they'd have to give up their special holidays, special scholarships, special clubs. They won't do that.

      TRISH

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    2. more blacks celebrate the coming of the christ child every year than this made up holiday. i know very few who observe it. but you're right, blacks are comfortable with segregation so long as they aren't being excluded. if they are the ones excluding others it's fine. everyone is afraid to call that racism but that's what it is.

      naidoo

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  3. I've never heard of Kwanzaa before. I'm bemused that you think it's a fake holiday. The late pagans probably thought the same thing when their festival for the Winter solstice was usurped by Christianity.

    The Gospels don't actually state when Jesus was born. Perhaps shepherds in Palestine did keep watch over their flocks by night around the Winter solstice, as Luke has it.

    The accounts of the birth of Jesus are contradictory. Matthew has Joseph and Mary living in Bethlehem, Jesus being born in an ordinary house, the three wise men following a star to Bethlehem following a detour to inform Herod of the momentous event, who then decides to kill Jesus. But since he doesn't know who Jesus is, orders the murder of all male children under the age of 2 (so apparently Joseph, Mary and Jesus continued to live in Bethlehem). In the meantime, an angel warns Joseph of Herod's plans, so the holy family flee to Egypt for refuge, later returning to Palestine, diverting to Nazareth, thinking it's safer there.

    Luke, on the other hand, has Joseph and Mary living in Nazareth, having to go to Bethlehem for an empire-wide census (which is recorded in no other source), having to shelter in a stable, with Mary giving birth there (and the shepherds paying homage). And then the holy family return to Nazareth via Jerusalem after about a week.

    The contradictory accounts just to have Jesus born in Bethlehem, but coming from Nazareth.

    They're not minor differences in detail that might be expected from eyewitnesses, such as one eyewitness reporting that the murderer wore a black coat, and another eyewitness reporting that he was wearing a dark brown coat.

    They're major discrepancies, similar to one eyewitness reporting that the murderer waited 30 minutes then left in a car, and the second eyewitness reporting he left immediately on a bicycle.

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    1. You always think your trope is so profound, Bachfiend. I think you think you're enlightening us.

      I wonder, why was your immediate reaction to this post to bash Christianity?

      You obviously know little about it. Nowhere is there any account of three wise men, only that they brought three gifts. Furthermore, the Gospel of Matthew does not have Mary and Joseph living in Bethlehem. It doesn't mention at all where they were living, only that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Where they came from and under what circumstances is not mentioned. There's no contradiction there. You simply made it up.

      You are not a Biblical scholar. You read a lot of nonsense on bigot websites which leads you to believe that you're brilliant.

      TRISH

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    2. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyDecember 31, 2013 at 7:58 AM

      The accounts of the assassination of John Kennedy are contradictory. The accounts of the attack on Benghazi are contradictory. The accounts of the chemical attack in Syria are contradictory.

      So what's your point? Or, perhaps more to the point, what's your standard for perfection, who do you choose to hold to it, and why?

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    3. bach doesn't know a thing about christianity. what a surprise.

      naidoo

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    4. The Kennedy assassination, the Benghazi attack, and the use of chemical weapons in Syria are very well documented from multiple sources including video, eye witness accounts, and examination of physical evidence. Considering people can’t even agree on these contemporary events, it’s absurd to think the contradictory third-hand accounts written 50-100 years after the events in question presented in the gospels represent absolute truth. The fact is, unlike Mohamed, there is very little evidence that Jesus actually existed at all.

      -KW

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    5. KW;

      The Gospels tell the same story, from different perspectives, as one might expect from ordinary people witnessing a world-changing event (the Incarnation). It is the essential continuity, combined with the disparity in detail, that makes the Gospels so historically credible. If the Gospels were absolutely identical, one might (reasonably) infer conspiracy to fabricate, in unison. If they were utterly different, one might wonder how they could be describing the same thing. They are similar enough, and different enough, to be utterly credible.

      And your historiography is skewed. The Gospels weren't written "50-100" years after His life. There is nothing in the New Testament that refers to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 66-70 (except as prophecy), and the destruction of Jerusalem was the seminal event in Jewish life of the era. Furthermore, John 5 refers to the pool at Bethesda as existing at the time of the writing of the gospel --" There is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool...". The pool was destroyed by the Romans during the sack of Rome, so that part of the Gospel of John was written before 66-70. Luke almost certainly used or had access to Mark and Matthew, and his Gospel was explicitly written before Acts, and Acts contains no reference whatsoever to the Roman sack of Jerusalem, which dates all of the Gospels prior to 66-70. There may have been some compilation post-70, especially in John, but the basic texts were obviously set within a few decades of the Resurrection.

      The late dating of the Gospels is untenable and was originally motivated by an intent to undermine the historicity of the NT.

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    6. Trish,

      I read the account in Matthew. I read the account in Luke. Why don't you do the same? List the events recorded in Matthew in chronological order. Next to that list the events recorded in Luke, also in chronological order. Compare. What do you have to add to the accounts to make the accounts consistent?

      I suppose, Matthew forgot to mention that Joseph and Mary moved from Nazareth to Bethlehem before the birth of Jesus. Matthew forgot to mention that Joseph, Mary and Jesus went back to Nazareth. When Herod sent the wise men to Bethlehem, Matthew forgot to mention that the wise men then managed to find their way to Nazareth. Matthew forgot to mention that Herod when he ordered the murder of all males under 2 in Bethlehem also included Nazareth, a massacre that Josephus forgot to mention in his history (Josephus was otherwise meticulous in recording Herod's crimes). Matthew forgot to mention that when Joseph and Mary were returning to Palestine from Egypt, that Nazareth was their hometown, not Bethlehem.

      I didn't have any immediate reaction to Kwanzaa. I have regarded Christmas to be a secular holiday. I have for decades. Some Christian churches don't celebrate Christmas because it's non-biblical.

      Where's your evidence that Jesus was born around the Winter solstice, and that Christianity didn't just take over a pagan festival (as it also did in taking over pagan temples to build its churches)?

      A lot of Christmas traditions are just pagan or commercial.

      I'm just bemused that Christians are upset about someone adding a fictional holiday to Christmas, when Christians did much the same thing with the pagan festival for the Winter solstice.

      The nativity scenes which show Jesus in the manger surrounded by the three wise men and the shepherds adulating him is just a fiction, a pastiche, of two contradictory stories.

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    7. Megnor,

      Really? The Gospels were written outside of Palestine by Greek speaking Gentiles in Greek. The destruction of the temple in Jerusalem wasn't a seminal event for them. It's like claiming that an account of the Vietnam war written in 2010 has to also include a description of 9/11.

      And the pool near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem? How do you know that John didn't have access to a text describing Jerusalem? Or that pools near sheep gates weren't just a fairly common feature of towns of the era?

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    8. Your only arguments are all straw men, Bachfiend. No one said that Christ was born on December 25th. The Bible isn't specific. I never said that He was born on December 25th.

      "I suppose, Matthew forgot to mention that Joseph and Mary moved from Nazareth to Bethlehem before the birth of Jesus. Matthew forgot to mention that Joseph, Mary and Jesus went back to Nazareth."

      Forgot to mention? Sure. The account in Matthew says nothing about Mary and Joseph and where they came from. It simply says that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, from which you wrongly fully assumed that his parents must have been from there which is a non sequiter on your part not a contradiction on the part of evangelist.

      Here's a clue, Egnor. I wasn't born in the same city that my parents lived in. Telling you where I was born tells you nothing about where they were living at the time.

      TRISH

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    9. "The nativity scenes which show Jesus in the manger surrounded by the three wise men and the shepherds adulating him is just a fiction, a pastiche, of two contradictory stories."

      So you're finally admitting that the Magi were not numbered. That's progress. Here's an idea--artists who wanted to depict the scene had to choose a number. That doesn't change the fact that the number is not specified in the Bible. You would know that of course being a leading Bibl;ical scholar who actually knows hardly anything.

      TRISH

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    10. Trish,

      OK, Matthew just states 'wise men'. There could have two, three (as in Western Christian tradition to reflect the number of gifts - and they were later given names in the 5th century and made into kings of specified countries) or twelve as in Eastern Christian tradition.

      The fact remains. Matthew mentions wise men, whom Luke doesn't mention. Wise men following a star would have taken a considerable time to reach Palestine (and one of the traditional wise men is supposed to have come from India).

      So either Matthew forgot to mention that Joseph and Mary had returned to Bethlehem, and the wise men visited them there, or they stayed in Bethlehem, contradicting Luke.

      The simplest explanation is that both Luke and Matthew had access to 'Mark', which doesn't include the birth of Jesus, and both wanted to include it in their accounts.

      The problem was that both Matthew and Luke were Greek speaking Gentiles living outside Palestine who were familiar with the Greek translation of the Judaic texts, which appeared to indicate that the Messiah would be born of a virgin (actually, just a young woman) in Bethlehem (the town of David).

      And the problem was that Jesus came from Nazareth, so the stories were devised so as to have Jesus born in Bethlehem.

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    11. Trish,

      And anyway, my challenge remains. List chronologically the events described in Matthew. Next to it, list chronologically the events described in Luke. Compare. Resolve any differences.

      Anyway - my original point remains. Certain Christians are upset that a fictional holiday was added to Christmas. Christians did the same thing to the pagans by taking over the festival of the Winter solstice.

      No one knows when Jesus was born. There was no census anytime near Jesus' birth to give a 'date' as Luke implied. And it would be extremely unusual for people to be required to return to the hometown of one of their ancestors from a varying number of generations (with different names) from around 1000 years earlier (in Matthew 29 generations). I can't be bothered counting them in Luke.

      And don't claim that one genealogy is that of Joseph and the other of Mary. Matthew finishes with Joseph begat by..., and Luke starts with Joseph son of...

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    12. Oops, I've just noticed a typo'. Matthew has the wise men visiting Mary and the young child in a house. Not a stable. No Jesus in a manger. Some time after Jesus' birth. Herod ordered the killing of males under the age of two in Bethlehem and coasts.

      So Matthew is contradicting Luke in having Joseph and Mary continuing to stay in Bethlehem past the week Luke has them there before returning to Nazareth via Jerusalem. Or he forgot to record it, and they returned to Bethlehem later, only to be forced to flee to Egypt. And then when they felt safe enough to return to Judea, they heard that Herod's son was ruling, so they decided Nazareth - first time mentioned in Matthew - was safer.

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  4. First, KW, a question: Are you absolutely sure that there is no such thing as absolute truth? Please don't answer, "absolutely!" or you will show yourself to be even dumber that you appear to be right now, if that were possible.

    "The fact is, unlike Mohamed, there is very little evidence that Jesus actually existed at all."

    This is an astoundingly ignorant statement, KW. First, Mohamed came 500 years AFTER Christ and Islam is simply a perversion of the Judeo/Christian trinitarian religion but beyond that glaring omission, saying there's little evidence Christ existed is like saying there's little evidence New York exists. It is astoundingly stupid.

    Most intellectual atheists like Christopher Hitchens (may God give him peace) when making this very unscholarly statement, at least had the knowledge to add, "outside of the New Testament," which in and of itself was blatantly false, but you didn't even bother to add the usual disclaimer. You just revealed yourself to be either extremely ignorant, a liar or just plain dumb or some combination of all three. I vote for the latter.

    There's good evidence the entire NT was written prior to 70 AD when the Romans destroyed the Temple (prophesied by Jesus in Matt 24) and scattered and killed and brutally tortured the Jews and the Christians. To put it mildly, there wasn't much writing going on as the Christians were dipped in tar and burned on the stakes on which they had been impaled. The persecutions had gotten started around AD 65 which is a little more than 30 years after Christ. By that time most of the Apostle Paul's letters were written which refer to the gospels. Luke's account was written prior to the Book of Acts as he mentions it in the opening. I offer you Kenneth Gentry's, "Before Jerusalem Fell," which makes the case that the entire NT and specifically Revelation was written prior to the Neronic persecutions that culminated in forever destroying Judaism aka the old covenant. As least get your facts straight so you don't come off embarrassing the atheist community.

    http://www.freebooks.com/christian/before-jerusalem-fell/

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    1. Big Rich, It's absolutely true that I am typing these words. I know this because it's happening at this moment under my direct control. You on the other hand can't be so sure. It would be reasonable for you to be believe me, but your distance in space and time forces you to evaluate the evidence for my claim and and determine the probability that it is true.

      Parts of the gospels are clearly fiction. How in the world did it take 50-80 years (50, 70, 80 it hardly matters to my argument) for anyone to write about the three hours of darkness, the earthquake, the zombie saints that“appeared to many”, or the “multitudes” allegedly healed by Jesus. I don't see how an honest evaluation of the evidence can lead anyone to believe that the events described actually happened. There are to many historical inaccuracies, scientific inaccuracies, and contradictions for me to believe the gospels are in any way authoritative, and outside of the gospels there's virtually nothing.

      Believe what you want, but I can rest assured, it's not me who's astoundingly stupid.

      -KW

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    2. Big Rich,

      Which of Paul's letters refer to the Gospels? About half of the Pauline letters are accepted by biblical scholars to be forgeries, written much later to bolster a disputed theological claim.

      The Gospels included in the Bible were settled on much later, in the fourth century, as being consistent with the orthodoxy that eventually won over other branches of Christianity, later regarded as heresies. These branches also had their gospels, which have largely not survived save as in fragments or indirectly in criticisms by the early church fathers in the 1st century.

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    3. "Big Rich, It's absolutely true that I am typing these words. I know this because it's happening at this moment under my direct control."

      Whooooh, deep stuff for such a shallow mind. When tactic one fails, change the subject? At least you don't care how pitifully transparent you are but you really should educate yourself in the topic you're about to step in to keep yourself from looking as as stupid as you have here. I'll agree with you for argument's sake that the Bible is flawed. Shakespeare is flawed. Does that mean Shakespeare didn't exist? Can you really not comprehend how anemic your logic is? I didn't think so. You just parrot what you've heard from the Sam Harris's of the world without ever actually doing a cursory bit of research to see how your throw-away lines actually stand up to the facts. Oh and BTW KDumbya, there are more ancient manuscripts of the Bible than there are for anything the Bard ever penned, and just to help you with your thinking processes, whether or not Jesus was God and whether or not he existed, are two different questions not mutually dependent.

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    4. Big Rich,

      There are no truly ancient manuscripts of the Bible. There are fragments of individual Gospels, including non-canonical ones such as the gospel of Peter, dating from within a few centuries of the life of Jesus.

      The Bible isn't a single book. It's a collection of separate books, which wasn't agreed upon until the 4th century as being consistent with the orthodoxy which had prevailed. There might be more different versions of the Bible from later on than there are different versions of Shakespeare's works, however the Bible for much of its history was copied by hand, with slight errors progressively creeping in, copy to copy. Mutations without natural selection to winnow out the errors.

      Shakespeare's works were written after the development of the printing press. The are many different copies, with different editing and formatting, of the same works, which are basically the same works. If typographic errors crept into later editions, it's still possible to go back to copies of earlier editions, and work out where the errors have crept in.

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    5. Big Rich, you really haven’t made a single point supporting your case. The meat of your “argument” is an ad hominem attack on me. For instance, the question isn’t whether Shakespeare is real, that’s irellevent. The question in this context is whether King Lear is real.

      Well, at least you agree the Bible is flawed.

      -KW

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    6. KW:

      Your Shakespeare/Lear analogy is flawed.

      The apt analogy is: 'the issue isn't whether Tacitus is real, that's irrelevant. The question in this context is whether Tiberius is real'.

      The Gospels make historical claims, as Shakespeare does not. There is no doubt among historians about Jesus' existence, and there is no historical basis (aside from ideological bias) to discredit the supernatural aspects of the Gospels.

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    7. I get your point, but Big Rich brought up the Shakespeare analogy, not me.

      -KW

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  5. As we speak KW is furiously Googling to find some factoid to throw out over which he will claim victory before moving on to easier topics that require less actual knowledge.

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    1. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyDecember 31, 2013 at 11:24 AM

      Apparently, you were right.

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    2. A quick Google finds many hundreds of factoids that support my argument. It doesn't take much to see how deeply flawed the Bible is. The twisted arguments of apologetics is what takes real effort and commitment.

      -KW

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    3. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyDecember 31, 2013 at 12:38 PM

      Popeye: "A quick Google finds many hundreds of factoids that support my argument."

      For once, Popeye, we agree.

      factoid: a questionable or spurious (unverified, false, or fabricated) statement presented as a fact, but without supporting evidence (wiki); an invented fact believed to be true because it appears in print (Merriam-Webster)

      And yes, apologetics do take real effort and commitment (and facts).

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  6. Christians are murdered in Muslim countries and discriminated against in the post-Christian West. It's not a vast conspiracy it's just bigotry. You're a prime example of that bigotry.

    JQ

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  7. Murder and discrimination are not really oppression in KW's mind, if the victims are Christian. To him true oppression is a manger scene at the court house.

    TRISH

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  8. I should say in Hoo's mind. They're practically an echo of each other, two anti-Christian bigots.

    TRISH

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  9. TRISH,

    If I have ever exhibited anti-Christian bigotry, give us a quote. Else, apologize for an unsubstantiated accusation of bigotry.

    Hoo

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  10. "Yeah, the whole world is out to get poor Christians. Especially the vast atheist conspiracy."

    TRISH

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  11. Where is bigotry in that, TRISH? I am satirizing Egnor's ridiculous conspiracy theory, meaning no disrespect to believers in Christ.

    Try again or acknowledge your error and apologize.

    Hoo

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  12. Looks like my post did not take yesterday...
    Oh well.
    Best wishes in the New Year to all.
    Here's a rehash of some of what I had posted.
    Kwanzaa (isn't in my dictionary, literally speaking) is just another 'new age' cult. There are cults of personality, cults of futurism, cults of matter, cults of wealth, cults of human sacrifice, earth cults, space cults, alien cults, drug cults, eastern cults.... all sorts of cults popping up these days. Kwanzaa is a bloodline cult. A race cult.
    It has, as the Doctor has noted, one similarity with all these myriad cults. That similarity is notable to a Christian.
    From a historical point of view it looks as if we're at the pit of a down turn in the cycle (civilization, culture wise). The good news is that a Renaissance is soon in order. The bad news is that it usually takes a very powerful outside force or internal change to cause such a massive change in direction. That kind of force usually results in a significant loss of life. When the water turns over it becomes very fresh, but is extremely cold for quite some time.
    From a religious perspective I see these groups and their hostility as something of a confirmation. Even a badge of honour.
    For Christians to be so targeted with contempt and derision; and so relentlessly from so many quarters, we surely must have the adversary's attention! As a soldier, that speaks to opportunity.
    Lastly I would like to note that given the subject matter, the reaction of some of the more anti-Christian commentators is worth reading through. The hostility noted in the article is palpable in the comments.
    Well pointed out, Mike.
    Happy New Year!

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    1. Crusader, I know you feel having your beliefs questioned is hostile; you seem to be very sensitive that way. However, I think if you honestly evaluate the comments above you will see most of the hostility is coming from your side of the table.

      -KW

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