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Polemics

Bible study: the importance of truth in religion

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Here’s an interesting passage of the Bible. What do you all think the practical value of this passage is?

1 In the second year of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams; his mind was troubled and he could not sleep.

2 So the king summoned the magicians, enchanters, sorcerers and astrologers to tell him what he had dreamed. When they came in and stood before the king,

3 he said to them, “I have had a dream that troubles me and I want to know what it means.”

4 Then the astrologers answered the king, “May the king live forever! Tell your servants the dream, and we will interpret it.”

5 The king replied to the astrologers, “This is what I have firmly decided: If you do not tell me what my dream was and interpret it, I will have you cut into pieces and your houses turned into piles of rubble.

6 But if you tell me the dream and explain it, you will receive from me gifts and rewards and great honor. So tell me the dream and interpret it for me.”

7 Once more they replied, “Let the king tell his servants the dream, and we will interpret it.”

8 Then the king answered, “I am certain that you are trying to gain time, because you realize that this is what I have firmly decided:

9 If you do not tell me the dream, there is only one penalty for you. You have conspired to tell me misleading and wicked things, hoping the situation will change. So then, tell me the dream, and I will know that you can interpret it for me.”

10 The astrologers answered the king, “There is no one on earth who can do what the king asks! No king, however great and mighty, has ever asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or astrologer.

11 What the king asks is too difficult. No one can reveal it to the king except the gods, and they do not live among humans.”

12 This made the king so angry and furious that he ordered the execution of all the wise men of Babylon.

13 So the decree was issued to put the wise men to death, and men were sent to look for Daniel and his friends to put them to death.

14 When Arioch, the commander of the king’s guard, had gone out to put to death the wise men of Babylon, Daniel spoke to him with wisdom and tact.

15 He asked the king’s officer, “Why did the king issue such a harsh decree?” Arioch then explained the matter to Daniel.

16 At this, Daniel went in to the king and asked for time, so that he might interpret the dream for him.

17 Then Daniel returned to his house and explained the matter to his friends Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah.

18 He urged them to plead for mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery, so that he and his friends might not be executed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon.

19 During the night the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision. Then Daniel praised the God of heaven

20 and said:

“Praise be to the name of God for ever and ever;
wisdom and power are his.

21 He changes times and seasons;
he deposes kings and raises up others.
He gives wisdom to the wise
and knowledge to the discerning.

22 He reveals deep and hidden things;
he knows what lies in darkness,
and light dwells with him.

23 I thank and praise you, God of my ancestors:
You have given me wisdom and power,
you have made known to me what we asked of you,
you have made known to us the dream of the king.”

24Then Daniel went to Arioch, whom the king had appointed to execute the wise men of Babylon, and said to him, “Do not execute the wise men of Babylon. Take me to the king, and I will interpret his dream for him.”

25 Arioch took Daniel to the king at once and said, “I have found a man among the exiles from Judah who can tell the king what his dream means.”

26 The king asked Daniel (also called Belteshazzar), “Are you able to tell me what I saw in my dream and interpret it?”

27 Daniel replied, “No wise man, enchanter, magician or diviner can explain to the king the mystery he has asked about,

28 but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries. He has shown King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen in days to come. Your dream and the visions that passed through your mind as you were lying in bed are these:

29 “As Your Majesty was lying there, your mind turned to things to come, and the revealer of mysteries showed you what is going to happen.

30 As for me, this mystery has been revealed to me, not because I have greater wisdom than anyone else alive, but so that Your Majesty may know the interpretation and that you may understand what went through your mind.

This passage is interesting to me because it shows the kind of attitude that God answers. The King in this passage was tired of hearing man-made stories from his servants – stories that were undoubtedly influenced by the servants desire to survive the King’s wrath. The servants would only have told the King things that were vague and happy, so that they could never be proved wrong or found to be judgmental or offensive. But the King was tired of that. He wanted someone with authority to tell him the truth about the way the world was.

In the rest of the chapter, Daniel interprets the dream, and concludes by saying this: “The great God has shown the king what will take place in the future. The dream is true and its interpretation is trustworthy.”. The King replies: “Surely your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries, for you were able to reveal this mystery.”

I think it is is going to be difficult for Christians living today to be able to tell people their dreams like that. But what we can do is talk about God’s miracles as revealed by science and history. We can study astrophysics, biochemistry and history and we can explain what God did in creating and fine-tuning the universe for life, in sequencing amino acids into functioning proteins, in creating brand new body plans in the Cambrian explosion, in raising Jesus from the dead as a matter of historical record, and so on. We have to show how great God is to people who do not even think he exists, and without assuming that they believe in the Bible. And we have to do it by focusing on what is true. 

Early last week, I got a message from a friend who was interested in a girl that he met on an online dating service. She claimed to be a Christian. My friend explained why he was so interested in some of the evidences I outlined above. She was not impressed. She said “I prefer to show people Christianity is true by not judging them, by being compassionate, by introducing them to a fun and affirming community”. There was no emphasis on truth in her approach. In fact, any religious group could do those things and “establish” their religion as true, by appealing to feelings. But this is clearly not what the God of the Bible intends for people who seek him. He is a God of truth, and truth is established by logical reasoning and supporting evidence.

There are still people out there like the King who are looking for someone who can speak to them with authority. All it takes from us is a little studying, and we can be like Daniel, too. But we have to know what God has done from science and history, and speak with authority about how we can know that God has acted supernaturally. Authority to speak comes from having knowledge about what we are talking about, and knowledge comes from studying and debating with people we disagree with. Nebuchadnezzar  was not a believer in the God of Israel, but he was still interested in truth. That won’t always be the case, but it is the case for some people.

News

New study: there is no gay gene that causes homosexuality

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I heard one of the authors of this new study commenting on how he was a gay man, and the purpose of his research was to show a genetic basis for homosexuality, in order to make it equal to race. His goal was to make it impossible to disagree with homosexual behavior, because homosexual behavior would be seen as natural and normal. Let’s see if his new study helps him out.

The blog of the peer-reviewed journal PLOS One reported on the new study, which was published in the prestigious journal Science.

Excerpt:

The once-prevailing concept of a “gay gene” dictating sexual orientation has been put to rest in a powerhouse study published today in Science. The work brilliantly illustrates the very nature of science: evolving with the input of new data, especially the large-scale contributions of bioinformatics and crowd-sourcing.

“We formed a large international consortium and collected data for more than 500,000 people, comparing DNA and self-reported sexual behavior. This is approximately 100 times bigger than any previous study on this topic,” said lead author Andrea Ganna, of the Institute of Molecular Medicine in Finland and an instructor at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, opening a news conference earlier this week.

[…]The investigation estimates a genetic contribution to same-sex sexual behavior as under 1 percent, thanks to analysis of a trove of data from the UK Biobank and the consumer genetic testing company 23andme.

So, there you have it, there is no gay gene. But this is of course something we’ve known for decades, as all the previous studies had found the same thing.

The normal way that people do these studies is to analyze identical twins, and see how often both identical twins are gay.

Eight major studies of identical twins in Australia, the U.S., and Scandinavia during the last two decades all arrive at the same conclusion: gays were not born that way.

“At best genetics is a minor factor,” says Dr. Neil Whitehead, PhD. Whitehead worked for the New Zealand government as a scientific researcher for 24 years, then spent four years working for the United Nations and International Atomic Energy Agency. Most recently, he serves as a consultant to Japanese universities about the effects of radiation exposure. His PhD is in biochemistry and statistics.

Identical twins have the same genes or DNA. They are nurtured in equal prenatal conditions. If homosexuality is caused by genetics or prenatal conditions and one twin is gay, the co-twin should also be gay.

“Because they have identical DNA, it ought to be 100%,” Dr. Whitehead notes. But the studies reveal something else. “If an identical twin has same-sex attraction the chances the co-twin has it are only about 11% for men and 14% for women.”

Because identical twins are always genetically identical, homosexuality cannot be genetically dictated. “No-one is born gay,” he notes. “The predominant things that create homosexuality in one identical twin and not in the other have to be post-birth factors.”

Dr. Whitehead believes same-sex attraction (SSA) is caused by “non-shared factors,” things happening to one twin but not the other, or a personal response to an event by one of the twins and not the other.

By the way, a previous study also found that transgender behavior was not genetic, but was clearly linked to environmental factors such as peer approval and social media.

Here is the report from Science Daily:

This month, a Brown University researcher published the first study to empirically describe teens and young adults who did not have symptoms of gender dysphoria during childhood but who were observed by their parents to rapidly develop gender dysphoria symptoms over days, weeks or months during or after puberty.

[…]The study was published on Aug. 16 in PLOS ONE.

Littman surveyed more than 250 parents of children who suddenly developed gender dysphoria symptoms during or after puberty.

[…]“Of the parents who provided information about their child’s friendship group, about a third responded that more than half of the kids in the friendship group became transgender-identified,” Littman said. “A group with 50 percent of its members becoming transgender-identified represents a rate that is more 70 times the expected prevalence for young adults.”

A previous study also found that children are more likely to be gay if they are raised by gay adults. It was reported in AOL News.

Excerpt:

Walter Schumm knows what he’s about to do is unpopular: publish a study arguing that gay parents are more likely to raise gay children than straight parents. But the Kansas State University family studies professor has a detailed analysis that past almost aggressively ideological researchers never had.

[…]His study on sexual orientation, out next month, says that gay and lesbian parents are far more likely to have children who become gay. “I’m trying to prove that it’s not 100 percent genetic,” Schumm tells AOL News.

His study is a meta-analysis of existing work. First, Schumm extrapolated data from 10 books on gay parenting… [and] skewed his data so that only self-identified gay and lesbian children would be labeled as such.

[…]Schumm concluded that children of lesbian parents identified themselves as gay 31 percent of the time; children of gay men had gay children 19 percent of the time, and children of a lesbian mother and gay father had at least one gay child 25 percent of the time.

[…]Finally, Schumm looked at the existing academic studies… In all there are 26 such studies. Schumm ran the numbers from them and concluded that, surprisingly, 20 percent of the kids of gay parents were gay themselves. When children only 17 or older were included in the analysis, 28 percent were gay.

It’s very important for people to understand that there is a trend in society to make every behavior traditionally seen as sinful into something caused by genetics. The twin goals of this effort are to insulate the behaviors from criticism, and to minimize evaluation of the effects of these behaviors on society as a whole. The genetic argument was used extensively to normalize same-sex marriage and transgenderism. I have seen the genetic argument used to defend other behaviors like pedophilia and incest. But the scientific research does nothing to support any of these arguments. What’s amazing is how a majority of people in the United States have such false beliefs about the scientific research. They vastly overestimate the number of gay people, and also the influence of genetics.

News

Pastor is assaulted and arrested for opposing drag shows where children are present

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My friend McKenzie sent me a video clip from the Tucker Carlson show, where he first showed what happened to the pastor, and then asked all the leftist “Christian” leaders of our time: Beth Moore, David French, Tim Keller, etc. why they have nothing to say about free speech and religious liberty. I have the video of the Tucker segment in this post, and link to a couple of news articles.

Here’s the video to start:

It’s SO IMPORTANT that American Christians understand what the secular left does to Christians who take the Bible seriously. How are we supposed to behave as Christians, if we don’t have the same rights to free speech as everyone else does? Can you imagine the Canadian government and police arresting a Muslim like that? They would never do it. But they do it to Christians without hesitation.

And here’s the story from The Post Millennial:

On Thursday, Derek Reimer, the pastor at Mission 7 Ministries in Calgary was charged and arrested for mischief and causing a disturbance for his protest during a Drag Queen Story Hour event at Seton Library on Saturday.

According to Rebel News, Reimer was “forcibly removed by proponents of a Drag Queen Story Hour event” that was held at the Canadian library over the weekend. Video from the event shows several men pushing Reimer out of the room and shoving him to the ground.

After he gets up Reimer says, “It’s very abusive in there. For love is love, that looks like very hateful, very abusive.”

CTV reports that Mayor Jyoti Gondek has said she will unpack the “reasons” Canadian law enforcement could not use existing street harassment laws to crack down on protestors of drag queen story hour events.

According to Rebel News, Gondek “promised to weaponize Calgary’s anti-street harassment bylaws to prevent anti-drag show protests.”

Calgary police arrived at Reimer’s home on Wednesday and told him he was going to be arrested but did not complete the arrest at that time.

[…]Reimer was arrested previously for protesting at a different “all-ages” drag queen show.

“Reimer was the second client of the registered Canadian charity, The Democracy Fund’s (TDF) Fight The Fines program, after receiving Covid tickets for feeding the homeless, an act the City of Calgary called ‘illegal gatherings,'” reports Rebel News.

Interesting about the mayor of Calgary. Calgary used to be considered the most conservative of Canada’s major cities. But that was before they started electing a string of radical leftists, and not just at the municipal level, but at the provincial level as well.

Daily Wire had more, specifically about the Tucker Carlson clip:

Carlson noted that the administration of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has actively opposed Christian and conservative movements in recent years. “On some level, all governments hate religious people, because it’s competition. And revolutionary governments, totalitarian governments, go after religious people first,” he observed. “That is the measure of a free country in the end: are you allowed to believe that there’s an authority higher than the people in charge of your government?”

[…]“Canada has now become an atheist totalitarian state with amazing speed,” Carlson remarked. “In Canada, it’s now a crime to object to sexualized drag shows for children.”

Several Canadian ministers were likewise arrested for opening their churches despite government lockdown mandates. Pastor Tim Stephens of Fairview Baptist Church in Alberta garnered international attention as videos of police officers detaining him in front of his sobbing children and using helicopters to discover where his church had been secretly meeting circulated online. Stephens spent three weeks in jail and was served six provincial tickets for his alleged breach of public health orders, all of which were eventually dropped or cleared.

This was my favorite part – Tucker Carlson went after the big name leftist “Christian” leaders, who always seem to take the side of secular leftist Democrats who trample over the rights of Christians:

Carlson also referenced “professional Christians” who have frequently remained silent on governmental overreach and widespread disregard for biblical sexual ethics. “Where is David French, Beth Moore, Tim Keller, and all these people who are defending Christianity as actual Christians are being arrested for being Christians? Not a word.”

Daily Wire journalist Megan Basham has reported over the past several months about professed theological conservatives, including French and Keller, cooperating with efforts from the Biden administration to encourage mask-wearing and receiving the COVID vaccine. Keller and French also lauded former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, who has declared himself an “ally” of the LGBTQ movement and supported fetal human tissue research during his tenure, as a faithful Christian.

It’s too bad that these Evangelicals for Biden clowns are still respected by some ill-informed people in the church. Anyone can see what the secular left is doing, and their policies and laws are opposed to Christian values, and Christian freedoms. We need to be more serious about picking role models. I prefer people who fight against the secular left.