All posts by Wintery Knight

https://winteryknight.com/
News

Reason #736 why men are opting out of dating and marriage: paternity fraud

1 Comment

Statistics show that men are choosing to disengage from dating and marriage. There are many reasons for this. I can name a dozen. One of the reasons is “paternity fraud”. Paternity claims occur when a woman has a child, and then tries to collect child support from a man by claiming that he is the father. Sometimes, the man she identifies as the father is not the actual father. This is “paternity fraud”.

Before I get started on paternity fraud, let me explain how child support works today, from this article in USA Today:

The most well-known case was of a Kansas boy who, at age 13, impregnated his 17-year-old baby-sitter. Under Kansas law, a child under the age of 15 is legally unable to consent to sex. The Kansas Supreme Court in 1993 ruled that he was liable for child support.

California issued a similar state court ruling a few years later in the case of a 15-year-old boy who had sex with a 34-year-old neighbor. In that case, the woman had been convicted of statutory rape.

In both cases, it was the state social-services agency that pursued the case after the mother sought public assistance.

[…]In Arizona, the Department of Economic Security oversees child–support enforcement. Its written policy is not to exempt situations like Olivas’ from child-support responsibilities, unless the parent seeking child support has been found guilty of sexual assault with a minor or sexual assault.

[…]The state has more routes than the courts to acquire money from a parent. It can garnishee wages up to 50 percent of disposable income. It can take a tax refund. It can put a lien on a home or a vehicle. It can suspend driver’s licenses or revoke passports. And it can seize money out of bank accounts.

And another one from Fox 2 Detroit:

A Metro Detroit man cleared his name after Friend of the Court sent him a letter saying he had a baby with a woman he never met.

[…]Late last year, DeAngelo received a letter from Friend of the Court in Berrien County saying that he was the father of a baby girl.

“Said she’s a stripper from Detroit, we had a one-night stand at some hotel, and this is the story that was told to me,” DeAngelo said.

His wife first spotted the letter in the mail from Friend of the Court.

“Let’s just set the record, I trust my husband,” Tyahvia Smith said. “I know his character, man of integrity.”

While waiting for the child’s mother to take the baby for a DNA test, DeAngelo said the school where he teaches received an inquiry for possible garnishment in case the child was his.

“It made it something that is not being alleged, but now it’s something that’s being taken into action and no paternity has been established,” he said.

Finally, the woman had the DNA test done, and DeAngelo has since gotten a letter confirming he was not the father.

The request for money comes to the man’s employer first, the DNA test comes later, and only if the man fights the system to get it.

I show these cases, so that people will understand what men are facing from social services agencies and courts. Basically, in cases where a woman statutory rapes a man, she is still entitled to child support from the victim of the rape. One can imagine the uproar if the sexes were reversed. The laws are anti-male in many ways, this is just one example. Anti-male laws deter men from dating and marrying women.

Now let’s look at paternity fraud, another example of anti-male bias in the legal system.

Here’s a story about it from CBS News Detroit:

A Detroit man has been ordered to pay $30,000 in back child support for his ex-girlfriend’s child — even though he’s not the father.

Carnell Alexander brought his case to Wayne County Circuit Court with hopes for a fix. Instead, Judge Kathleen McCarthy told him Tuesday he waited too long to challenge the situation and “failed to take this matter seriously.”

Alexander said the paternity case started in the 1980s when the woman gave his name to a case worker so she could get assistance for her baby, who was born in 1987.

The woman agrees that Alexander wasn’t the father and a DNA test taken in 2013 backs that up. But that wasn’t enough to sway McCarthy, who ruled that despite the case being decades old, Alexander still has to pay.

Here’s another story of paternity fraud from NBC News Miami:

A man in North Florida is fighting the state after he was told to pay child support despite DNA tests proving that he was not the father.

Joseph Sinawa told NBC affiliate WTLV-TV that he signed the birth certificate because he did truly believe he was the father – adding that the mother of the child doesn’t want him to have to pay, but the state is forcing the issue.

“She told the judge she just wants this to be done and over with, and so do I,” he said from his home in St. Augustine.

Sinawa found out he was not the father after the DNA test was administered by a St. Johns County court following a custody question – but the state’s Department of Revenue appealed the decision because they say Sinawa has not properly attempted to disestablish paternity.

“At the time it had been taking $83 out of my paycheck, more than 1/3 of my pay,” he says. “When I thought I was the father I didn’t have a problem with it.”

Sinawa is currently representing himself in court cases due to financial issues and has filed the necessary paperwork, but no time table has been set and it is unknown if he will be refunded any of the money spent.

According to this study in  the peer-reviewed journal Epidemiology & Community Health, the median rate of paternity fraud across various studies is 3.7%:

Paternal discrepancy (PD) occurs when a child is identified as being biologically fathered by someone other than the man who believes he is the father. This paper examines published evidence on levels of PD and its public health consequences. Rates vary between studies from 0.8% to 30% (median 3.7%, n = 17).

Even men who are not at risk for paternity fraud understand the lesson of paternity fraud. The courts are anti-male, and men need to stay well clear of those courts. And that means minimizing exposure to those courts. And that means keeping to themselves, and tending to their own problems and pursuing their own goals.

Men are getting smarter now. Men understand that society does not have their interests at heart. Now men want to be left alone.

News

Biden administration is weaponizing the justice system against Christians

1 Comment

If you’re not following the writing of Mary Margaret Olohan at Daily Signal, you should be. She’s writing about how the Biden administration is using the legal system to punish Christians and pro-lifers, even as they turn a blind eye to crimes committed by secular leftist criminals and terrorists. I’ll post one story below, and then you can check her recent headlines yourself.

Here’s the story from Daily Signal:

Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee accused President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice on Tuesday of “unjustly” persecuting pro-life activists exposing the “horrors of abortion.”

“The Biden administration is using the FACE Act to give pro-life activists and senior citizens lengthy prison terms for non-violent offenses and protests—all while turning a blind eye to the violence, arson, and riots conducted on behalf of ‘approved’ leftist causes,” Lee told The Daily Signal in a Tuesday statement.

The senator added: “Unequal enforcement of the law is a violation of the law, and men and women who try to expose the horrors of abortion are being unjustly persecuted for their motivations.”

Now, you might remember how the Biden Justice Department gave very lenient sentences of about 12 and 15 months to two secular leftist domestic terrorists who fire-bombed a police car. So what kinds of sentences are Mike Lee’s “pro-life activists and senior citizens” getting?

Lee’s comments come after news that pro-life activist Lauren Handy has been sentenced on DOJ charges to almost five years in prison for attempting to stop abortions of unborn babies from taking place at a Washington, D.C., abortion clinic.

Handy will spend 57 months in prison and is the first person sentenced for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, a 1994 law that supposedly protects both abortion clinics and pregnancy resource centers, but has been heavily enforced by Biden’s DOJ against pro-lifers since the June 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Here’s something interesting from the background of the woman who is pushing these cases:

Those efforts are led by Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, the head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, who recently admitted following a report from The Daily Signal that she hid an arrest and its subsequent expungement from investigators when she was confirmed to her Justice Department post.

If she had revealed the arrest, then I don’t think she would be eligible for a Justice Department post.

And here’s Mary’s conclusion:

The president’s critics have accused Biden and the DOJ of weaponizing the FACE Act against pro-lifers while failing to charge pro-abortion criminals for the hundreds of attacks on pregnancy resource centers since the May 2022 leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion indicating Roe would soon be overturned.

Here are some of Mary’s other columns from Daily Signal, if you want to double-check the details about what the Biden administration is doing to Christians, conservatives and pro-lifers:

  • DOJ Puts Pro-Life Grandmother Behind Bars for Trying to Stop Abortions
  • Biden DOJ Ramps Up War on Pro-Lifers With Lawsuit
  • DOJ Attorney Expressed Concerns About Conservative Media Coverage of Biden Admin Persecuting Christians, Pro-Lifers
  • DOJ’s Kristen Clarke Celebrates Prison Time for Pro-Life Activists
  • Pro-Life Activist Charged by Biden DOJ Gets Almost 5 Years in Prison for Trying to Stop Abortions
  • DOJ’s Kristen Clarke Asked Ex-Husband to Say She Wasn’t an Abuser During Confirmation Process, Ex Alleges

Well, this is all very troubling. I always get upset when evidence emerges about the Democrat party persecuting Christians and conservatives. I don’t want to believe that I live in a country where secular leftists are presiding over a two-tier justice system. There’s one (lenient) justice system for the criminals who commit domestic violence, domestic terrorism, arson and infanticide, and then there’s another (harsh) justice system for the married people who read the Bible, pray, attend church, homeschool their children, and don’t need student loan bailouts.

There’s an easy way for voters to give an opinion about the Biden administration – all they have to do is show up and vote for it, or against it, in November. And if you think that someone you know would be interested in these Daily Signal articles, then it might be a good idea to send them to all your friends.

News

Study: belief in free will linked to ability to behave morally and to help others

2 Comments

A while back I finished reading “God’s Crime Scene”, the new book by J. Warner Wallace. I wanted to post something about some studies he mentioned in Chapter 6, on free will. This is one of the places where he found evidence in a surprising area.

Wallace says that free will makes more sense if theism is true, because we have non-material souls that interact with our bodies, but are not causally determined by them. On atheism, only matter exists, and you can’t get free will (or consciousness) from matter. So atheists like Sam Harris and Alex Rosenberg, for example, deny free will, because they are materialists and atheists.

Anyway, here’s what he writes on p. 256:

In 2008, researchers from the University of Minnesota and the University of British Columbia conducted experiments highlighting the relationship between a belief in determinism and immoral behavior. They found students who were exposed to deterministic literature prior to taking a test were more likely to cheat on the test than students who were not exposed to literature advocating determinism. The researchers concluded those who deny free will are more inclined to believe their efforts to act morally are futile and are, therefore, less likely to do so.

In addition, a study conducted by researchers from Florida State University and the University of Kentucky found participants who were exposed to deterministic literature were more likely to act aggressively and less likely to be helpful toward others.” Even determinist Michael Gazzaniga conceded: “It seems that not only do we believe we control our actions, but it is good for everyone to believe it.”” The existence of free will is a common characteristic of our experience, and when we deny we have this sort of free agency, there are detrimental consequences.

I decided to look up these studies.

Here’s the abstract for first study: (2008)

Does moral behavior draw on a belief in free will? Two experiments examined whether inducing participants to believe that human behavior is predetermined would encourage cheating. In Experiment 1, participants read either text that encouraged a belief in determinism (i.e., that portrayed behavior as the consequence of environmental and genetic factors) or neutral text. Exposure to the deterministic message increased cheating on a task in which participants could passively allow a flawed computer program to reveal answers to mathematical problems that they had been instructed to solve themselves. Moreover, increased cheating behavior was mediated by decreased belief in free will. In Experiment 2, participants who read deterministic statements cheated by overpaying themselves for performance on a cognitive task; participants who read statements endorsing free will did not. These findings suggest that the debate over free will has societal, as well as scientific and theoretical, implications.

And the abstract for the second study: (2009)

Laypersons’ belief in free will may foster a sense of thoughtful reflection and willingness to exert energy, thereby promoting helpfulness and reducing aggression, and so disbelief in free will may make behavior more reliant on selfish, automatic impulses and therefore less socially desirable. Three studies tested the hypothesis that disbelief in free will would be linked with decreased helping and increased aggression. In Experiment 1, induced disbelief in free will reduced willingness to help others. Experiment 2 showed that chronic disbelief in free will was associated with reduced helping behavior. In Experiment 3, participants induced disbelief in free will caused participants to act more aggressively than others. Although the findings do not speak to the existence of free will, the current results suggest that disbelief in free will reduces helping and increases aggression.

So what to make of this?

If you’re an atheist, then you are a physical object. And like every other physical object in the universe, your behavior is determined by genetic programming (if you’re alive) and external inputs. Material objects do not have the ability to make free choices, including moral choices.

Here’s prominent atheist Jerry Coyne’s editorial in USA Today to explain why atheists can’t ground free will.

Excerpt:

And that’s what neurobiology is telling us: Our brains are simply meat computers that, like real computers, are programmed by our genes and experiences to convert an array of inputs into a predetermined output. Recent experiments involving brain scans show that when a subject “decides” to push a button on the left or right side of a computer, the choice can be predicted by brain activity at least seven seconds before the subject is consciously aware of having made it. (These studies use crude imaging techniques based on blood flow, and I suspect that future understanding of the brain will allow us to predict many of our decisions far earlier than seven seconds in advance.) “Decisions” made like that aren’t conscious ones. And if our choices are unconscious, with some determined well before the moment we think we’ve made them, then we don’t have free will in any meaningful sense.

Atheist William Provine says atheists have no free will, no moral accountability and no moral significance:

Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear — and these are basically Darwin’s views. There are no gods, no purposes, and no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end of me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans, either.

(Source)

If you don’t have free will, then you can’t make moral choices, and you can’t be held morally responsible. No free will means no morality. Can you imagine trying to get into any sort of enterprise with someone who has this view of moral choices? A marriage, or a business arrangement, etc? It would be crazy to expect them to behave morally, when they don’t even think that moral choices is possible. It just excuses all sorts of bad behavior, because no one is responsible for choosing to do the right thing.

Believers in materialism are going to struggle with prescriptive morality, including self-sacrificial care and concern for others. Their worldview undermines the rationality of the moral point of view. You might find atheists acting morally for their own purposes, but their worldview doesn’t rationally ground it. This is a big problem for people who can see objective morality woven into the universe – and themselves – because they have the awareness of objective right and wrong.

Choosing to do the right thing

I think what atheists like to say is “I can be moral, too”. That’s not interesting. What is interesting is whether it is rational for you to be moral when doing the right thing sets you back. When I look at the adultery of Dawkins, the polyamory of Carrier, the divorces of Shermer and Atkins, etc. I am not seeing anything that really wows me about their ability to do the right thing when it was hard for them to do it. They all deny free will of course, and think that trying to resist temptation is a waste of time.

Wallace explains how the awareness of free will and moral choices caused him to turn away from atheism, in this blog post.

He writes:

As an atheist, I chose to cling to naturalism, in spite of the fact that I lived each day as though I was capable of using my mind to make moral choices based on more than my own opinion. In addition, I sought meaning and purpose beyond my own hedonistic preferences, as though meaning was to be discovered, rather than created. I called myself a naturalist while embracing three characteristics of reality that simply cannot be explained by naturalism. As a Christian, I’m now able to acknowledge the “grounding” for these features of reality. My philosophical worldview is consistent with my practical experience of the world.

I think atheists who want to be honest about their own experience of first-person consciousness, free will, moral realism, etc. will do well to just accept that theism rationally grounds all of these things, and so you should accept theism. Theism is real. If you like morality, and want to be a virtuous person, then you should accept theism.