Welcome to episode 12 of the Knight and Rose podcast! In this episode, we talk about three classical movies that are entertaining, and will give you insights for living out your Christian faith. If you like this episode, please subscribe to the podcast, and subscribe to our Youtube channel. We would appreciate it if you left us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Podcast description:

Christian apologists Wintery Knight and Desert Rose discuss apologetics, policy, culture, relationships, and more. Each episode equips you with evidence you can use to boldly engage anyone, anywhere. We train our listeners to become Christian secret agents. Action and adventure guaranteed. 30-45 minutes per episode. New episode every week.

Episode 12:

Episode  Summary:

Wintery Knight and Desert Rose discuss classical movies that offer wisdom for practical Christian living. The first movie is a war movie that offers insight to Christians about our motivation for serving the Lord at a time when serving is no longer easy or popular. The second movie is a classical romance movie, which offers a superb portrait of classical masculinity in action. The third movie is an adventure / romance movie that challenges us to put our duty to higher causes above our own suffering and disappointment.

Speaker biographies

Wintery Knight is a black legal immigrant. He is a senior software engineer by day, and an amateur Christian apologist by night. He has been blogging at winteryknight.com since January of 2009, covering news, policy and Christian worldview issues.

Desert Rose did her undergraduate degree in public policy, and then worked for a conservative Washington lobbyist organization. She also has a graduate degree from a prestigious evangelical seminary. She is active in Christian apologetics as a speaker, author, and teacher.

Notes

At one point in his summarizing of the first movie, WK says “Childers” when he means “Hodges”. Hodges takes half of the marines through a marsh on the low ground, and gets ambushed. Childers takes the other half of the marines up on the high ground, and finds the commander who is controlling the ambush.

References

Please see our three previous podcasts about problems and solutions in the Christian church, for our thoughts related to the theme of the first movie:

• What We Found in Churches and Campus Ministries
• Strategies for Making More Effective Christians, Part 1
• Strategies for Making More Effective Christians, Part 2

Please see our two previous podcasts about masculinity, for our thoughts that are related to the theme of the second movie.

• Knighted by the King: Authentic Masculinity
• A Marriage Fit for the King

If you liked these movie reviews, check out my previous analysis of “High Noon” a classical movie that teaches lessons about masculinity:

• A lesson about men for marriage-minded women from the movie “High Noon” by Wintery Knight

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Music attribution:

Strength Of The Titans by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5744-strength-of-the-titans
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Seattle has a reputation as being the most atheistic city in America. LGBT scandal after LGBT scandal. Including the resignation of their gay mayor for sex with an underage minor. Does atheism make a difference to human rights and moral behavior? I think it makes human rights and moral behavior impossible to rationally ground.

Anyway, here is the story from the Daily Wire: (H/T Samizdat, a Canadian apologetics web site)

A Seattle street preacher says he was arrested for simply reading his Bible at a public park near a Seattle Gay Pride event.

Matthew Meinecke was surrounded by Seattle police officers and taken to the police station, where he was fingerprinted before being released.

“So at this point we can no longer stand by,” a police officer told Meinecke as he arrested him. “The risk that you pose for public safety by remaining here can be mitigated if you leave, it’s your last chance.”

“I don’t want to leave because I’m not in danger,” Meinecke responded.

The video of the arrest is here:

Here’s what you can expect in the way of morality, in atheist Seattle:

One Seattle Pride event featured several men riding their bicycles naked as some children watched; during another event some men paraded around naked in front of children, according to footage posted of the event.

Meinecke posted a video of Bibles that he said had been seized from him and ripped as one person yelled at him, “Get the f*** out of here! Get your holy water off my ovaries, b****! Get the f*** out!”

One person yelled at Meinecke to “forget about your imaginary fairy in the f***ing sky.”

What is rational, once you accept the idea that the universe is an accident, and human beings are machines made out of meat? What kind of morality is possible if you accept “survival of the fittest”?

Can you rationally ground human rights on atheism?

On atheism, morality is reduced to cultural fashions, like clothing fashions and cooking fashions. It differs by time and place, and each standard is “right” in that time and place. Infanticide is right in some times and places, and wrong in other times and places. When an atheist says X is wrong now, the same atheist can say X is right in a different time and place. Atheists aren’t referring to any objective standard when they talk about right and wrong, they’re just describing what cooking or clothing is OK for their time and place. The words are just to present themselves a certain way to people around them. Moral language is meaningless. It’s just social behavior – saying what will make people like you. Atheists don’t spend time thinking about morality. There’s nothing to study. There’s nothing to reason about. There’s nothing to submit to. Who would waste a moment thinking about which flavor of ice cream is “morally right” for everyone, in all times and in all places?

But even this pretense of morality stops the moment that a prescribed course of action goes against an atheist’s self-interest. This is the only life they have, and they are determined to feel as happy as they can, regardless of who else gets hurt. Right to free speech? Right to religious liberty? Those things can be trampled by the state the minute they offend an atheist. Just look at what happens to Christian business owners who decline to participate in same-sex wedding ceremonies in atheist cities like Seattle. Atheists don’t think that forcing people to disobey their consciences is wrong. That article I linked to points out how the laws are never enforced when it’s an LGBT-owned business discriminating against Christians. “Atheist morality”. Justice is not rationally-grounded on atheism. It’s all about power.

I recently linked to a couple of excellent posts on morality and atheism. Check them out. In that post, I also linked to a post by James Bishop, featuring TONS of interesting quotes by famous atheists, about the implications of adopting the worldview of atheism.

Here’s one by former Cornell University paleontologist Will Provine:

Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear … There are no gods, no purposes, 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 for me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning to life, and no free will for humans, either.

There are tons of quotes like that from leading atheists on James Bishop’s blog. It’s very important to understand that atheists who use moral language are speaking about things that they believe do not actually exist in reality. You really have to check a person’s worldview before you can trust them.

Are suicide rates for LGBT people the same as the suicide rates for heterosexual people in countries with high levels of LGBT-affirmation? In case I get asked this question, I thought it might be good to look at the data in advance, and decide what the evidence looks like, and what line I should take in a debate about it. And since I have a blog, I’m going to post all of my findings below.

First, I want to note that in this NBC News article, the following countries are listed in the “15 Best Countries for LGBTQ Expats“:

• Denmark
• Iceland
• Sweden

I say this, because these are the countries measured in the studies below.

So, here is one study from November 2019, published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, entitled “Suicide among persons who entered same-sex and opposite-sex marriage in Denmark and Sweden, 1989–2016: a binational, register-based cohort study“.

The abstract says:

This large register-based study found higher suicide rates among individuals who entered an SSM, compared with those who entered an OSM. A lower suicide rate was noted for individuals in SSMs in recent years. More research is needed to identify the unique suicide risk and protective factors for sexual minority people.

SSM means same-sex “marriage” and OSM means opposite-sex marriage.

Here’s another study from Sweden about same-sex “married” LGBT people, published May 2016, in the European Journal of Epidemiology. The title is the “Suicide in married couples in Sweden: Is the risk greater in same-sex couples?”

The abstract says:

Even in a country with a comparatively tolerant climate regarding homosexuality such as Sweden, same-sex married individuals evidence a higher risk for suicide than other married individuals.

Here’s another study from Sweden about LGBT individuals, published in March 2016 in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, entitled “Self-reported suicide ideation and attempts, and medical care for intentional self-harm in lesbians, gays and bisexuals in Sweden“.

The abstract says:

Positive histories of suicidal ideation, attempts and medical care for intentional self-harm, including higher levels of recurrence, are more prevalent among LGB individuals in contrast to heterosexuals. Lesbian/bisexual women evidence an earlier age of onset of treatment.

Here’s another study from Sweden about people who underwent sex-reassignment surgery, published in February 2011, PLoS One, entitled “Long-Term Follow-Up of Transsexual Persons Undergoing Sex Reassignment Surgery: Cohort Study in Sweden“.

The abstract says:

Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population.

Here’s a study from Iceland about LGBT adolescents, published in May 2015, and entitled “Suicidal risk and sexual orientation in adolescence: A population-based study in Iceland“.

The abstract says:

The LGB girls were six times more likely to have had frequent suicide attempts, whilst the LGB boys were 17 times more likely to have attempted suicide that often.

So, there are some studies I found, and if anyone asks me about this, I’ll explain that although I am not a social science researcher, the studies of people in LGBT-friendly countries show that there is a higher risk of suicidal thoughts and attempted suicide for LGBT individuals and couples than there is for heterosexual individuals and couples. And if they ask which countries, I’ll say Sweden, Iceland and Denmark. I’ll say that these are countries where same-sex “marriage” is legal.