All posts by Wintery Knight

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Videos

Do all religions lead to God? A lecture by Mike Licona

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Mike Licona is one of my favorite Christian apologists. I’ve met him, and he is very very down to Earth and direct.

Here’s a lecture where he defends the view that having accurate views about Jesus is very important in order to be rightly related to God: (45 minutes)

Summary:

  • even in the ancient world, Christians were persecuted for their exclusivity
  • some people feel that exclusivity is unfair, but feelings don’t determine truth
  • there are three views of salvation: universalism, inclusivism, and exclusivism
  • does the Bible teach universalism?
  • Paul writes that sincerity is not enough to be saved (see verse below)
  • Paul writes that an accurate view of God is required to be saved
  • Paul writes that those who reject Christ will not be saved
  • John also writes that those who reject Jesus will not be saved
  • Jesus says that you have to have true beliefs about him to be saved
  • Jesus says that the way to salvation is narrow and few find it
  • there is broad agreement across the New Testament for exclusivism
  • the earliest Christians held to exclusive salvation
  • the probability, historically, that Jesus made exclusive claims, is high
  • what about those who have never heard the gospel?
  • what about babies and the mentally handicapped?
  • what about those who are sincere but don’t believe?
  • what about the obligation to be tolerant?

If there is one good verse to take away from this lecture, it’s Romans 10:1-4:

1 Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved.

2 For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge.

3 Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.

4 Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.

Sincerity doesn’t count. What counts is knowledge.

Another thing I really, really liked the part at 33 minutes where he tells the story about the desert and discussion group he participates in with his wife and some non-Christian couples. If there is one reason for me to get married, it’s that my wife and I could discuss interest things with people we have over,  and that would be fun.

News

Rick Santorum: Catholic bishops should not have supported Obamacare

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Have you all heard that the Obama administration is forcing religious organizations to cover contraception?

Excerpt: (links removed)

HHS has issued a rule that requires non-exempt health care plans to cover all FDA-approved contraceptives, sterilization, and related education and counseling.

On the ground that certain FDA-approved contraceptive methods can sometimes “cause the demise of embryos both after and before uterine implantation,” many institutions also believe that the rule forces them to cover abortion.

Paying for, providing, educating about, or otherwise participating in abortion, contraception, and/or sterilization violates the religious or moral conscience of many individuals and institutions. Coupled with Obamacare’s new health care coverage mandates, the HHS rule therefore represents one of the broadest attacks on freedom of conscience ever in this country.

The rule includes an exemption for religious employers. But as Heritage stated in public comments submitted to HHS in 2011, the exemption “is too narrow to accommodate properly the interests protected by First Amendment freedoms.”

Indeed, according to The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the exemption is based on “the stingiest definition” of a religious organization ever to appear in federal law. The definition likely would not protect many religious charities, hospitals, colleges, nursing homes, universities, and others.

The exemption also fails to protect individuals who object to enrolling in or contributing to plans that cover the morally controversial items now mandated by law.

The HHS contraceptive mandate powerfully illustrates the principle that freedom of conscience in health care goes hand in hand with more personal control and freedom of choice over health care decisions.

Why would I want to get coverage for contraception? I’m chaste. It’s wrong to force me to pay for contraceptives, when I don’t want them or need them. And I don’t want to lower the cost of premarital sex for other people by handing them free condoms. Medical insurance should not be a form of wealth redistribution or social engineering. I don’t want to subsidize the lifestyle choices of others. And I don’t want to normalize behaviors that I don’t agree with by making everyone pay for them.

In any case, let’s see what Rick Santorum thinks.

Here is an excerpt from an interview where Rick Santorum reacts to this attack on religion by the secular leftist Obama administration:

HH: Now I want to talk to you about two substantive issues, Senator Santorum. The first are these new regulations from the Obama administration. I read the letter from Archbishop Olmstead of Phoenix on the air. Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles has written a new article in First Things. It’s shocking, actually, what’s going on. Should this be a centerpiece of whoever the nominee’s campaign is?

RS: I talked about it in every speech I’ve given today. And here’s what I said, though, Hugh. I said that I took issue with the Catholic Bishops Conference, because Hugh, you may remember, they embraced Obamacare.

HH: Yes.

RS: They embraced it and said…here’s what I said to them. Be careful when you have government saying that they can give you rights, that you have a right to health care, and government’s going to give you something, because once you are now dependant on government, they, not only can they take that right away, they can tell you how to exercise that right, and you can either like it or not. And that’s the problem. That’s what the Catholic Bishops Conference didn’t get, that there’s no free lunch here, folks. If you’re going to give people secular power, then they’re going to use it in a secular fashion. And that’s why, you know, I hate to say it, but you know, you had it coming. And it’s time to wake up and realize that government isn’t the answer to the social ills. It’s people of faith, and it’s families, and it’s communities, and it’s charities that need to do this as it has in America so successfully for so long.

The funny thing is that most Catholics voted for Obama. So Rick Santorum is really calling them to account for that. He sounds so much like an evangelical Protestant, no wonder we like him so much.

Rick Santorum

News

Ross Douthat sheds light on the mainstream media’s pro-abortion bias

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From the radically leftist New York Times. (H/T Richard)

Excerpt: (links removed)

But if you’ve followed the media frenzy surrounding the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation’s decision — which it backpedaled from, with an apology, after a wave of frankly brutal coverage — to discontinue about $700,000 in funding for Planned Parenthood, you would think all these millions of anti-abortion Americans simply do not exist.

From the nightly news shows to print and online media, the coverage’s tone alternated between wonder and outrage — wonder that anyone could possibly find Planned Parenthood even remotely controversial and outrage that the Komen foundation had “politicized” the cause of women’s health.

“That ubiquitous pink ribbon … is sporting a black eye today,” Claire Shipman announced on ABC News Thursday, while Diane Sawyer nodded along.On MSNBC, Andrea Mitchell dressed down the Komen foundation’s founder, Nancy Brinker: “I have to tell you,” Mitchell said, “this is shocking to a lot of your longtime supporters. … How could this have taken place?” In story after story, journalists explicitly passed judgment on Komen for creating a controversy where none need ever have existed.

[…]Planned Parenthood likes to claim that abortion accounts for just 3 percent of its services, for instance, and this statistic has been endlessly recycled in the press. But the percentage of the group’s clients who received an abortion is probably closer to 1 in 10, and Planned Parenthood’s critics have estimated, plausibly, that between 30 and 40 percent of its health center revenue is from abortion.

By way of comparison, the organization also refers pregnant women for adoption. In 2010, this happened 841 times, against 329,445 abortions.

For the minority of Americans who have no moral qualms about using surgery or chemicals to put an end to a growing embryo or fetus, there should be nothing troubling in these numbers. And if you think abortion rights are more important to female health and flourishing than the nearly $2 billion the pink ribbon has raised for breast cancer research, Komen deserved your scorn and Planned Parenthood deserves your donations.

This article is encouraging to me, because people in New York have to be some of the most close-minded, dogmatic people in all of the United States. It’s very important to hear a different point of view on controversial issues.

Related posts on Planned Parenthood