All posts by Wintery Knight

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News

Why aren’t men marrying? nearly 70% of unmarried women voted for Democrats

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Because I’m still unmarried and have done well in my career and finances, and I sometimes approached by people who think that it is a good time for me to get serious about marriage. Although the previous generation of women was very good at marriage, the current generation of younger women is terrible at marriage. And you can see how terrible by looking at how they voted.

Here’s an article from Breitbart News to explain:

Sixty-eight percent of unmarried women favored Democrats in the U.S. House midterm elections compared to 31 percent who favored Republicans, according to exit poll data.

[…]A majority of women (67 percent) also said they were either angry or dissatisfied with Roe v. Wade being overturned, with 72 percent of women who supported Democrat candidates agreeing, compared to 27 percent who supported Republicans. On the other hand, 30 percent of women were either enthusiastic or satisfied with Roe being overturned, with a majority supporting Republicans (84 percent) compared to Democrats (15 percent).

Daily Wire adds:

Studies suggest single women vote Democrat more often than married women because they depend on a single income, have feminist attitudes towards social issues like abortion and pre-marital sexual behavior, and agree with ideologies that redefine gender roles and family responsibilities.

[…]Other notable figures from CNN’s exit poll data show that 72% of women between 18 and 29 voted Democrat.

Are women who vote Democrat a good match for a man who is interested in marriage? Let’s see.

1. Democrats support no-fault divorce laws, and that’s dangerous for men, because we get financially ruined by divorce courts. Divorce courts regularly disregard pre-nups, even if you have one. Men only marry women who hate divorce. Women who hate divorce think that it is their responsibility to evaluate a husband candidate, and then commit to him, no matter what happens. Society just isn’t making women who want the responsibility of choosing a good man, and making a life-long commitment to him.

2. Democrats support abortion, and that’s horrifying for marriage-minded men. Good men value the needs of children above the needs of selfish adults (it’s our protective nature). Pro-abortion women think that they need to be free to “have fun” with attractive men who won’t commit to them before sex. And then if they happen to get pregnant, they can just stop their new baby from living. Unborn babies have their own DNA, distinct from the parents. They are human beings, distinct from their parents. Marriage-minded men don’t want to marry women who are willing to kill other people in order to escape from responsibilities.

3. Democrat women typically value careers over children. They want to put their kids in daycare, and go back to work. But marriage-minded men want someone trustworthy to stay home with very young children for the first 5 years. Research indicates that children benefit from having mom in the home for at least the first 2 years. Marriage-minded men don’t want to get married to women who are going to throw the kids in daycare and go back to work.

4. Democrat women prefer higher taxes and more government spending. When husband earns money, they think that government knows how to spend it better. And they think that teachers, judges and bureaucrats (who are paid by husband) are better at leading the home than husband. Marriage-minded men aren’t interested in paying government people to run his home. He wants choices in everything – especially about who will educate the children.

5. Democrat women favor subsidizing single mothers who make fatherless babies. Instead of setting moral boundaries on single motherhood by choice, Democrat women want to tax husbands to pay for single moms. Marriage-minded men know they only have enough money to pay for their own household, and their own kids. They don’t have money to pay for other people’s kids.

6. Democrat women are in favor of same-sex marriage. That means that they think that marriage is just an arrangement of 2 or more people based on feelings, with the goal of making the adults happy and socially respectable. “Love makes a family” they say. And they think it’s fine to deprive a child of their relationships with a biological mother, or a biological father, or both. Marriage-minded men know the research on how all this affects children. And we aren’t going to marry any woman who puts the selfish desires of adults above the needs of the children for their mom and dad.

If women don’t understand the needs of husbands and children, then marriage-minded men will not marry them

In conclusion, I think it’s important for people who expect marriage-minded men to get married to understands that most of the young women who are available would not make good wives and mothers for us. Men want marriage because they want to lead a home, and to be respected as leaders in their home. If society produces a generation of women who believe in student loan forgiveness, infanticide, gay rights, high taxes, and government regulation of fathers, then society will have to deal with declining marriage rates.

Husbands want to lead. We can’t lead if we don’t get to keep what we earn. We can’t lead if we are overruled by teachers, judges and bureaucrats. We can’t lead if we are dragged into divorce courts. Women will have to choose between voting Democrat, and having husbands.

Polemics

Is the definition of atheism “a lack of belief in God”?

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First, let’s see check with the Stanford University Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

‘Atheism’ means the negation of theism, the denial of the existence of God.

Stanford University is one of the top 5 universities in the United States, so that’s a solid definition. To be an atheist is to be a person who makes the claim that, as a matter of FACT, there is no intelligent agent who created the universe. Atheists think that there is no God, and theists think that there is a God. Both claims are objective claims about the way the world is out there, and so both sides must furnish forth arguments and evidence as to how they are able to know what they are each claiming.

Philosopher William Lane Craig has some thoughts on atheism, atheists and lacking belief in God in this reply to a questioner.

Question:

In my discussions with atheists, they  are using the term that they “lack belief in God”. They claim that this is different from not believing in God or from saying that God does not exist. I’m not sure how to respond to this. It seems to me that its a silly word-play and is logically the same as saying that you do not believe in God.
What would be a good response to this?
Thank you for your time,

Steven

And here is Dr. Craig’s full response:

Your atheist friends are right that there is an important logical difference between believing that there is no God and not believing that there is a God.  Compare my saying, “I believe that there is no gold on Mars” with my saying “I do not believe that there is gold on Mars.”   If I have no opinion on the matter, then I do not believe that there is gold on Mars, and I do not believe that there is no gold on Mars.  There’s a difference between saying, “I do not believe (p)” and “I believe (not-p).”   Logically where you place the negation makes a world of difference.

But where your atheist friends err is in claiming that atheism involves only not believing that there is a God rather than believing that there is no God.

There’s a history behind this.  Certain atheists in the mid-twentieth century were promoting the so-called “presumption of atheism.” At face value, this would appear to be the claim that in the absence of evidence for the existence of God, we should presume that God does not exist.  Atheism is a sort of default position, and the theist bears a special burden of proof with regard to his belief that God exists.

So understood, such an alleged presumption is clearly mistaken.  For the assertion that “There is no God” is just as much a claim to knowledge as is the assertion that “There is a God.”  Therefore, the former assertion requires justification just as the latter does.  It is the agnostic who makes no knowledge claim at all with respect to God’s existence.  He confesses that he doesn’t know whether there is a God or whether there is no God.

But when you look more closely at how protagonists of the presumption of atheism used the term “atheist,” you discover that they were defining the word in a non-standard way, synonymous with “non-theist.”  So understood the term would encompass agnostics and traditional atheists, along with those who think the question meaningless (verificationists).  As Antony Flew confesses,

the word ‘atheist’ has in the present context to be construed in an unusual way.  Nowadays it is normally taken to mean someone who explicitly denies the existence . . . of God . . . But here it has to be understood not positively but negatively, with the originally Greek prefix ‘a-’ being read in this same way in ‘atheist’ as it customarily is in . . . words as ‘amoral’ . . . . In this interpretation an atheist becomes not someone who positively asserts the non-existence of God, but someone who is simply not a theist. (A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, ed. Philip Quinn and Charles Taliaferro [Oxford:  Blackwell, 1997], s.v. “The Presumption of Atheism,” by Antony Flew)

Such a re-definition of the word “atheist” trivializes the claim of the presumption of atheism, for on this definition, atheism ceases to be a view.  It is merely a psychological state which is shared by people who hold various views or no view at all.  On this re-definition, even babies, who hold no opinion at all on the matter, count as atheists!  In fact, our cat Muff counts as an atheist on this definition, since she has (to my knowledge) no belief in God.

One would still require justification in order to know either that God exists or that He does not exist, which is the question we’re really interested in.

So why, you might wonder, would atheists be anxious to so trivialize their position?  Here I agree with you that a deceptive game is being played by many atheists.  If atheism is taken to be a view, namely the view that there is no God, then atheists must shoulder their share of the burden of proof to support this view.  But many atheists admit freely that they cannot sustain such a burden of proof.  So they try to shirk their epistemic responsibility by re-defining atheism so that it is no longer a view but just a psychological condition which as such makes no assertions.  They are really closet agnostics who want to claim the mantle of atheism without shouldering its responsibilities.

This is disingenuous and still leaves us asking, “So is there a God or not?”

So there you have it. We are interested in what both sides know and what reasons and evidence they have to justify their claim to know. We are interested in talking to people who make claims about objective reality, not about themselves, and who then go on to give reasons and evidence to support their claims about objective reality. There are atheists out there that do make an objective claim that God does not exist, and then support that claim with arguments and evidence. Those are good atheists, and we should engage in rational conversations with them. But clearly there are some atheists who are not like that. How should we deal with these “subjective atheists”?

Dealing with subjective atheists

How should theists respond to people who just want to talk about their psychological state? Well, my advice is to avoid them. They are approaching religion irrationally and non-cognitively – like the person who enters a physics class and says “I lack a belief in the gravitational force!”.  When you engage in serious discussions with people about God’s existence, you only care about what people know and what they can show to be true. We don’t care about a person’s psychology.

News

Biden administration opens border to illegals, but wants to deport homeschoolers

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Everyone knows that the border is in a crisis right now. Tons of unskilled immigrants are being admitted, and most of them cannot even speak English, much less find employment. The Biden administration is actively making it easier for this sort of lawlessness. But, if you come into legally and work to pay your own bills, then the Biden administration wants to get rid of you.

Here’s the first story from the Washington Examiner:

More than 300,000 immigrants attempted to enter the United States unlawfully or were paroled during August, surpassing all national records and spelling a catastrophe for the Biden administration that claimed its sweeping policy reforms were working.

[…]Since President Joe Biden took office, Border Patrol agents have apprehended more than 7 million people who illegally entered the country between ports of entry nationwide.

The Biden administration thinks that people who just cross the border illegally are the “good” kind of immigrants.

The bad kind of immigrants are the ones who are fleeing persecution, who are married with kids, and who work to pay their own way. They have to go!

Here’s an article from NBC local news:

For 15 years, the Romeike family has lived in Morristown. Uwe Romeike, the father of the seven Romeike children, works as a piano accompanist at Carson-Newman University. Now, they say, the U.S. government is trying to deport them.

The family moved to the U.S. from Germany in 2008. Their application for asylum said they were fined by the German government roughly $9,000 after homeschooling their children, court documents show.

An immigration judge initially granted the family’s application for asylum. The U.S. Department of Justice appealed the decision, and the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals revoked the family’s asylum status, documents show.

The family, with the help of the U.S. Home School Defense Association, appealed to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. A three-judge panel unanimously ruled against the family.

They’re paying their own way, that’s not the sort of immigrant Biden wants. He wants people who will impose costs on other taxpayers. Biden doesn’t want Western immigrants who believe in the free market system, school choice and Christianity. He wants people who come from communist countries who vote for big government, and pass their bills to people who are here legally.

Disgusting.