Category Archives: Commentary

Commentary

Historian James Hannam debunks myths about Christianity and science

4 Comments

James Hannam has written a book about Christianity and the history of science.

The Daily Caller has posted an interview with James Hannam.

James Hannam is the author of “The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution,” set to be officially released Monday.

Hannam earned his undergraduate degree in physics from St. Anne’s College at Oxford University and a PhD in the History and Philosophy of Science from Cambridge University. He has been published in numerous scholarly and non-scholarly publications and is also the author of “God’s Philosophers.”

Wow, we could certainly use more scholars like this to plead our case.

That article features 10 questions and answers with Dr. Hannam, and here are the three best ones:

2. You contend that contrary to popular belief, there was great scientific advancement during the Middle Ages because of the Church. How did the Church help spur this scientific discovery and why do most people believe the Church was a hindrance to science?

The Church made math and science a compulsory part of the syllabus at medieval universities for anyone who wanted to study theology. That meant loads of students got grounding in these subjects, and professors could hold down jobs teaching it.

The myth that the Church held back science dates from the “enlightenment” when Voltaire and other French philosophes invented it to attack the Catholics of their own day as impediments to political progress.

[…]4. You write that it is a myth that people in the Middle Ages believed the world was flat. How did this supposedly erroneous notion about the Middle Ages become part of our conventional wisdom?

The earliest record I’ve found of this myth is from a book by Sir Francis Bacon written in the sixteenth century. Sir Francis was a Protestant who claimed believing the Earth is flat was evidence for medieval Catholic stupidity. So the myth started off as Protestant propaganda but was soon used to denigrate the Middle Ages in general.

5. What are some of the other great myths of the Middle Ages that we haven’t touched upon so far but our readers would find intriguing?

There are loads! For example, witch trials didn’t get going until the Renaissance and reached their peak in the seventeenth century, so they are not really medieval at all. Even medieval torture devices like the iron maiden turn out never to have existed until 1800 when they were invented as gruesome hoaxes. My favorite myths, because they are so ridiculous, is that a pope excommunicated Halley ’s Comet and that medieval theologians liked to ask how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

If you get objections about Christianity and science, now’s your chance to prepare your answers. It’s amazing how people who don’t know the history believe what they want to believe. And I think that is interesting – it shows that the Bible is right in diagnosing the human condition. We don’t know, because we don’t want to know. We speculate, because we want to have a buffer to do what we want without having to be accountable.

Hmmn. Isn’t it funny that in secular public schools, atheists don’t put more science into the curriculum, but instead inject more religion, e.g. – Darwinism, global warming, feminism, socialism, multiculturalism, etc. Ideology, not math and science. But the religious people put in math and science.

Commentary

A closer look at Michele Bachmann’s record on fiscal policy

Leave a comment
Michele Bachmann: On the Issues
Michele Bachmann: On the Issues

An analysis of Michele Bachmann’s record on economic policy, courtesy of the Club for Growth.

Summary:

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann was first elected to Congress in 2006 after serving in the Minnesota State Senate from 2001 to 2006. If elected President, she would be the first woman President and the second person elected directly from the U.S. House of Representatives since James Garfield. Congresswoman Bachmann received a 100% score in the Club for Growth’s 2010 scorecard and has a lifetime score of 94%. The average house Republican score from 2007-2010 was 78%. Congresswoman Bachmann also has a lifetime score of 94% from the Minnesota Taxpayers League during the time she served in the State Senate. The average score for Republican State Senators during that time was 76%.

These guys do the most thorough job of anyone vetting the candidates – they go over every bill, every speech, every vote, every editorial – even campaign advertisements.

The report covers the following areas:

  • TAXES
  • SPENDING
  • ENTITLEMENT REFORM
  • REGULATION
  • FREE TRADE
  • SCHOOL CHOICE
  • TORT REFORM
  • POLITICAL FREE SPEECH
  • POLITICAL ACTIVITY & ENDORSEMENTS

Excerpt:

SCHOOL CHOICE
The Club for Growth supports broad school choice, including charter schools and voucher programs that create a competitive education market including public, private, religious, and non-religious schools.  More competition in education will lead to higher quality and lower costs.
Congresswoman Bachmann not only has a strong record on school choice, she is the first major presidential candidate to actually found a charter school. In fact, Congresswoman Bachmann co-founded the first K-12 charter school in the nation, New Heights Charter School back in 1993.  Her record on school choice has, predictably, been flawless since then.
In 2011, Bachmann voted to re-establish the DC school voucher program.  As a member of the State Senate, Bachmann voted to prohibit teacher strikes during the school year.  She also voted to allow parents to use education tax credits for tuition at private schools.  She’s introduced legislation to make foster children eligible for education vouchers.
As far back as 2003, Bachmann was fighting the No Child Left Behind Act, filing a bill in the Minnesota legislature that would have prohibited the Dept. of Children, Families and Learning or any other state agency “from entering into a contract or other agreement under the provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, unless the financial consequences to the state and each school district have been identified.”  Another bill, S.F. 1921, “requires all state plans, agreements and contracts associated with NCLB compliance to be nullified and revoked on June 1, 2004, unless the Legislature specifically affirms implementation of the federal law by that date.”

Conclusion:

With very few exceptions, Congresswoman Bachmann has supported pro-growth policies throughout her career. She especially deserves praise for her consistent defense of school choice. After reviewing her record, we are confident that Congresswoman Bachmann would be a pro-growth President.

For my social conservative friends: please print out the paper and read it. These guys are not indifferent to your concerns at all.

Pat Toomey and the Club for Growth

The past director of the Club for Growth is current Pennsylvania senator Pat Toomey.

Here’s a blurb from his web site:

Pat is pro-life and believes that children should be welcomed into the world and protected by its laws.

While reasonable people may differ on the question of abortion rights, we should all be able to agree on policies that encourage adoption over abortion, that avoid taxpayer funding of abortions, and that allow parental involvement in decisions that involve minors. As a senator, Pat will support policies that further these important goals.

Pat also believes the tradition of marriage is sacred and is best defined as between a man and a woman. As a congressman, Pat voted to protect the institution of marriage in many ways. For example, Pat voted to reduce the tax penalty on married couples and will support similar policies as a U.S. senator. Throughout his time in Congress, Pat voted for legislation to protect innocent life, strengthen marriage, and protect the traditional values upon which this country was founded.

His voting record on abortion:

  • Voted YES on making it a crime to harm a fetus during another crime. (Feb 2004)
  • Voted YES on banning partial-birth abortion except to save mother’s life. (Oct 2003)
  • Voted YES on forbidding human cloning for reproduction & medical research. (Feb 2003)
  • Voted YES on funding for health providers who don’t provide abortion info. (Sep 2002)
  • Voted YES on banning human cloning, including medical research. (Jul 2001)
  • Voted YES on banning Family Planning funding in US aid abroad. (May 2001)
  • Voted YES on federal crime to harm fetus while committing other crimes. (Apr 2001)
  • Voted YES on banning partial-birth abortions. (Apr 2000)
  • Voted YES on barring transporting minors to get an abortion. (Jun 1999)
  • Rated 0% by NARAL, indicating a pro-life voting record. (Dec 2003)

And on marriage:

  • Voted YES on establishing nationwide AMBER alert system for missing kids. (Apr 2003)
  • Voted YES on reducing Marriage Tax by $399B over 10 years. (Mar 2001)
  • Rated 100% by the Christian Coalition: a pro-family voting record. (Dec 2003)

This is the record of the former leader of the most fiscally conservative PAC. The most pro-business group. The most anti-spending group.

Fiscal conservatives are more socially conservative than you think. If you are a social conservative, but not a fiscal conservative, then you should print out the paper on Michele Bachmann, a radical social conservative, and see how these fiscal conservatives at the Club for Growth judge what counts as fiscally conservative. It might be the case that fiscally conservative positions actually dovetail nicely with socially conservative positions. I think they do.

Campaign speeches, interviews and debates

Speeches:

Reactions from her recent debate performance:

Profiles of Michele Bachmann:

Michele Bachmann on television news

Let Americans spend their own money

Time to prioritize spending

Obama’s plan is to raise your taxes

Michele Bachmann in the legislature

Against socialism:

For economic growth:

Against ACORN funding:

Commentary

A closer look at the Christian doctrines of guilt and forgiveness

3 Comments

This is from Randy Alcorn’s Eternal Perspectives web site.

Excerpt:

It is a critical mistake to try to eliminate feelings of guilt without dealing with the root cause of guilt. No matter how often someone says “you have nothing to feel guilty about” to someone who has sinned against God and others, his guilt feelings will remain. Why? Because he knows better. Only by a denial of reality can he avoid guilt feelings. But such a denial is inherently unhealthy. It sets him up for emotional collapse whenever something reminds him of the sin. People need a permanent solution to their guilt problem, a solution based on reality, not denial or pretense.

Because it offers a solution to the guilt problem found nowhere else, I will quote from the Bible and cite references to specific biblical books, chapters and verses. This way you may look up these verses in a Bible yourself and think about them on your own.

Because of Christ’s death on our behalf, forgiveness is available to all.

The word “gospel” means “good news.” The good news is that God loves you, and desires to freely forgive you for all your sins, no matter how ugly or destructive. But before the good news can be appreciated we must know the bad news. The bad news is that there is true moral guilt, that all of us are guilty of many moral offenses against God. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

The Hebrew word for sin means literally “to miss the mark.” Sin is falling short of God’s holy standards. Sin separates us from a relationship with God (Isaiah 59:2). Sin deceives us and makes us think that wrong is right and right is wrong (Proverbs 14:12). The Bible says, “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23).

Jesus Christ is the Son of God who loved us so much that he became a member of the human race to deliver us from our sin problem (John 3:16). He came to identify with us in our humanity and our weakness, but did so without being tainted by our own sin, self-deception and moral failings (Hebrews 2:17-18; 4:15-16). Jesus died on the cross as the only one worthy to pay the penalty for our sins that was demanded by the holiness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). Being God, and being all-powerful, he rose from the grave, defeating sin and conquering death (1 Corinthians 15:3-4, 54-57).

When Christ died on the cross for us, he said, “It is finished” (John 19:30). The Greek word (teleo) translated “it is finished” was commonly written across certificates of debt when they were canceled. It meant “Paid in Full.” Christ died so that the certificate of debt consisting of all our sins could once and for all be marked, “Paid in Full.”

Here’s an article from CARM that talks about feeling guilty after getting forgiveness.

Excerpt:

There is an important lesson you need to learn about forgiveness that begins with understanding two things:  justification and sanctification.  Justification is God’s legal declaration upon a sinner in which the sinner is declared righteous in God’s sight; this is also known as salvation.  Sanctification is God working in the Christian, through the Holy Spirit, to make the Christian more like Christ.  Justification is instantaneous; sanctification lasts a lifetime.  Justification is easy because we receive it by faith (Rom. 5:1; Eph. 2:8).  Sanctification is difficult because it is something we do in cooperation with God as He works in our hearts daily.  If we are not very sanctified in our actions, thoughts, and words, we are still justified; we are still saved because of Jesus.  Justification does not depend upon our sanctification.  In other words, our salvation is not dependent on our works in any way.  Justification (salvation) is based upon what Jesus did.  Jesus bore our sins in His body on the cross (1 Pet. 2:24).  Jesus paid for our sins, all of them.  They are gone because He removed them.  It is all because of Jesus and what He did, and not because of what we have done.  Praise be to Him.

Now, I have a question for you.  Can you earn your salvation or do anything at all to merit forgiveness from God?  No, of course not.  That is why salvation is by faith, and not by works or faith and works.  If you did not get your salvation by your works, then you do not keep it by your works, either.  In other words, you do not keep your salvation by doing good or by suffering for your sins so that you might, somehow, be made good enough to be with God.  It can never happen!

Finally, here is the point.  Some Christians, after they have committed a sin, punish themselves by retaining the guilt of their sin and do not receive the full forgiveness of Christ until they have put themselves through enough suffering that they have then “earned” the right to be forgiven.  Of course, this isn’t the intention of holding on to guilt, but sometimes it’s the underlying reason.  It is a danger because it is nothing more than trying to earn the forgiveness of God through our works; in this case, through suffering.  This is an insult to the cross of Christ.

Now, I am not saying that we should never feel guilty for doing something wrong.  I am saying that you should confess your sins and be forgiven (1 John 1:9).  Once confessed and forgiven, it is wrong to harbor the feelings of guilt as a way to punish yourself so that afterwards you might feel you’ve done enough to “feel” good enough to have fellowship with God.  That is what’s wrong, and it is sin.  If that is what you are doing, then you need to realize that God does not require you to pay for your sins through feeling guilty.  He has already paid the full price.  Your part is to humbly and truly confess your sin to the Lord, turn from it, and leave it.  By looking to Jesus and what He has done, you can let the guilt and the guilty feelings fall away from you.  Put your eyes on Jesus.  Praise Him for His great love and forgiveness, and continue in your walk of sanctification.  Lay it all before the cross.

I think the key thing to look for when you are asking for forgiveness is that you have to be sure that what you did really was wrong, based on the Scripture, whether it worked out for you or not. If you do something that the Bible forbids, then there is no excuse for what you did. No desire that you have allows you to sin. No noble purpose you have allows you to sin. No unfair condition allows you to sin. No imagined success or hope of victory allows you to sin. No failure of anyone else allows you to sin. Either you sinned or you didn’t. If you think you didn’t sin then you’re not needing forgiveness, and you don’t have it. If you think you did sin, then you can get forgiveness if you ask Jesus for it, and if you know that he is able to give forgiveness to you.