Another socialist laboratory bursts into flames

Armed robbery in Cyprus:

The Demon Behind the Benevolent Mask of the Welfare State II: Property Rights Edition 

Are We All Just Cypriots Now? 

[The Cypriot bank deposit seizure] reminds me of a criticism that Margaret Thatcher once lobbed at the socialists. Their problem, you see, is that they always run out of other people’s money. Well, relax Lady Thatcher. They now have at app for that. Saul Goode, Baby! I wonder if anyone in the United States is studiously taking notes...

Not to worry Komerade Amerikan. There are apps for [the Fourth Amendment] as well. Kelo v. New London is a landmark case that helps put the subjects in their proper place. As long as your bank account can be construed as conferring a public benefit through public use, this lovely piece of jurisprudence would justify its seizure down to the last penny. 

Bottom line: The state can steal your property, your wealth and your sustinence at any time they get pissed off enough or desperate enough to do so. You have no recourse to the law against this. The law is pathetically bastardized. Remember how that Arch-Conservative Supreme Court was poised to heroically strike down The AACA? Forget it Jake, we are all Cypriots now.

We keep voting for these bastards because free stuff tastes good, and we hope we'll be eaten last. 

A burning question about the Big Bang

Commentor bachfiend:

Egnor uses the 'Big Bang' as evidence of God. He would have been excommunicated and burned at the stake if he'd posited the Big Bang in 1600s Italy.

:-/

I must have missed the reason why invocation of the Big Bang Theory in the 1600's would have led to excommunication and immolation. The Catholic Church was the primary scientific institution in the world during the centuries of the scientific revolution. It did not burn scientists at the stake. Virtually all scientists of the era were Catholics. Thirty five craters on the moon are named for Jesuit scientists.

And bachfiend implies bizarrely that the Catholic Church opposed the Big Bang Theory. Actually, the Big Bang Theory is closely tied to the Church, and denial of the Big Bang Theory was championed by an atheist.

The Big Bang theory was first proposed in 1931 by Fr. Georges Lemaitre, a Catholic priest, at the Catholic University of Louvain. Lemaitre was honored extensively for his development of the Big Bang Theory, both in the scientific world and by the Catholic Church. He was elected to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and became the president of the Pontifical Academy in 1960. His fellow members of the Pontifical Academy have included Ernest Rutherford, Max Planck, Otto Hahn, and Niels Bohr. Lemaitre was elevated to Prelate Monsignor in 1960 by Pope John XXIII, and he was invited to Vatican II by the Pope.

Lemaitre died of a heart attack in 1964, having successfully escaped immolation.

Lemaitre's scientific nemesis was Fred Hoyle, an atheist, who for decades propounded the Steady State model of the universe. Hoyle denied the Big Bang explicitly because of his atheist belief that the universe was not created-- until Lemaitre's Big Bang Model was definitively confirmed by Penzias and Wilson in 1966.

"Junk DNA" was not the first theory born of atheist metaphysics that has massively impeded science.

Lemaitre joins Copernicus, Newton, Kepler, Faraday, Maxwell, Mendel and countless other Catholic and Protestant clergy and laity who created the scientific revolution.

What about atheism's contributions to science?

As noted, atheist presumptions (Steady State cosmology and Junk DNA) have held cosmology and molecular genetics back for decades. And despite rule of a third of humanity by State Atheism in the 20th century, atheism's positive contributions to natural science have been virtually nil.

Atheist innovations have primarily been in architectural science.

Happy Palm Sunday!

Many blessings to all as we enter Holy Week!

Mainline Protestantism is winning

Mainline Protestant Churches are bleeding membership, while more conservative orthodox churches have shown a lot of vitality and growth over the past few decades. It would seem that mainline Protestantism has lost the struggle with more orthodox Christian denominations.

But that may be a misunderstanding.

John Turner at Patheos makes an interesting observation:

The Rise of Liberal Religion

...observers of American religion have been too obsessed with institutional strength at the cost of ignoring culture... Liberal Protestants may have ultimately lost the battle for membership, but they won the larger cultural struggle. A trenchant quote from the sociologist Christian Smith: “Liberal Protestantism’s organizational decline has been accompanied by and is in part arguably the consequence of the fact that liberal Protestantism has won a decisive, larger cultural victory.”

Indeed, culture is where the war for souls is mainly fought today. And in the culture, the mainline Protestant presumptions-- that the Gospel is primarily a social and self-affirming doctrine, rather than the radical proclamation of Christ's redemption of creation and call to holiness-- has become the implicit cultural stance.

I saw this when I converted to Christianity almost a decade ago. I went to a couple of mainline churches, and I left thinking that I could get the same pabulum in any sociology department seminar or Liberal Party conclave. Christ wasn't there.

Mainline Protestant churches are floundering, but mainline Protestantism has merged with the culture, each shaping the other.

Many aspects of our hedonist consumerist culture are toxic, and one doubts that the our enabling Laodicean Churches are capable of providing the antidote.  

'So Mike', you ask, 'what are you doing for Lent?'

Of course, you don't really ask, but I'll tell you anyway.

Prayer, fasting, and penance. I'm seriously trying to get better with my praying. I've long prayed spontaneously, many times each day, as I think of the Lord and as I face the daily joys and tribulations. Sometimes I feel as if my life is a running conversation with Him.

It's formal prayer that I have a problem with. I'm trying to pray more consistently in a formal way in the morning and evening. Parts of the Rosary especially. I've never been good at formal prayer-- I think that I have adult ADD, and I find it hard to stay focused. But I am trying.

I am seriously working on the fasting thing. I've tried juice fasts, which are quite effective and not as difficult as going cold turkey, and I've eliminated eating alone. I eat with family and friends. It works.

Penance I'm reasonably good at, because I'm neurotic by nature and punish myself a lot anyway. I'm going to confession regularly, and I count the fasting as part of my penance.

I'm also reading a couple of spiritual books. Each day I'm reading a chapter (they're short) of Kempis' Imitation of Christ. I read it several years ago, and found it profound. I'm a little further along the Christian road now, and I'm finding much deeper and richer meaning in it. Here is an excerpt from Chapter 25 of Book One:

One day when a certain man who wavered often and anxiously between hope and fear was struck with sadness, he knelt in humble prayer before the altar of a church. While meditating on these things, he said: "Oh if I but knew whether I should persevere to the end!" Instantly he heard within the divine answer: "If you knew this, what would you do? Do now what you would do then and you will be quite secure." Immediately consoled and comforted, he resigned himself to the divine will and the anxious uncertainty ceased. His curiosity no longer sought to know what the future held for him, and he tried instead to find the perfect, the acceptable will of God in the beginning and end of every good work.

Kempis' 15th century masterpiece is perhaps the most profound devotional book of the Christian faith, after the Bible. I love it, and plan to keep reading a chapter a day even after Lent.

Since the election of Pope Francis, I've begun re-reading Chesterton's biography of St. Francis. An extraordinary commentary through spiritual glasses on the Saint's life and impact on the Church and on all of humanity.

I'm usually pretty bad at Lent-- I'm nearly always disappointed at the end, because I felt I didn't do enough. This year I'm doing a little better.

:)

or should I say

:(

because it's Lent.

How are you celebrating (if that's the word) Lent?

Rabbi ridiculed by adorable meat puppet

Larry Moran at Sandwalk touts the effectiveness of ridicule and mockery in atheist evangelism:

"From time to time we hear from religious people who are upset about the way we treat their faith. They claim that by making fun of their logic and their defense of god we are only making religious people more convinced that they are right. According to them, we'll never convince any religious person to abandon god(s) by using ridicule and mockery.


Perhaps that's right but I very much doubt it. Here's Sam Harris illustrating the power of ridicule to make a point."

Pretty funny.

Rabbi David Wolpe makes a series of eloquent intelligent observations about God and man, and Harris responds by comparing belief in God to belief that Elvis is still alive.

Harris believes that everything came from nothing, life crawled spontaneously out of the mud, 'stuff happens and survivors survive' explains life, biological structures like DNA and internal organs have no purpose, objective moral law doesn't exist, and human beings like himself are just meat puppets dancing to the vagaries of chemistry.

Let's parley in ridicule, meat puppets. 

"... then the world wouldn’t [still] be here."

Pope Francis delivered his first Sunday Angelus and blessing to the crowd in St. Peter's Square.

From Vatican Radio:

After returning into the church to take off his liturgical vestments, Pope Francis again greeted the faithful outside, before making his way to his study and the window overlooking St Peter’s Square, below which was gathered a crowd to rival the more than 100 thousand-strong who braved cold, rain and dark to meet the Pope on Wednesday – the night of his election – and receive his blessing for the first time. Dozens of national flags were visible in the packed Square, and a deafening cheer went up when, at last, Pope Francis appeared. Mercy was once again the cornerstone of his reflections ahead of the traditional prayer of Marian devotion. 

He told a story, of an elderly widow he encountered during a Mass for the sick celebrated in connection with a visit of the image of Our Lady of Fatima. “I went to confession during the Mass,” he said, “and near the end – I had to go to do confirmations afterward, and an elderly lady approached me – humble [she was] so very humble, more than eighty years old. I looked at her, and said, ‘Grandmother,’ – where I come from, we call elderly people grandmother and grandfather – ‘would you like to make your confession?’ ‘Yes,’ she said – and I said, ‘but, if you have not sinned…’ and she said, ‘we all have sinned.’ [I replied], ‘if perhaps He should not forgive [you]?’ and, sure, she replied, ‘The Lord forgives everything.’ I asked, ‘How do you know this for sure, madam?’ and she replied, ‘If the Lord hadn’t forgiven all, then the world wouldn’t [still] be here.’ And, I wanted to ask her, ‘Madam, did you study at the Gregorian (the Pontifical Gregorian University, founded in 1551 by St Ignatius Loyola, the oldest Jesuit university in the world)?’ – because that is wisdom, which the Holy Spirit gives – interior wisdom regarding the mercy of God. Let us not forget this word: God never tires of forgiving us,” he repeated, “but we sometimes tire of asking Him to forgive us.” Pope Francis went on to say, “Let us never tire of asking God’s forgiveness.”

We're going to love this Pope.