Why should Christians vote? To live out a faithful life plan, you need freedom, safety, and the ability to prosper. This means being able to work without facing discrimination, keeping (most of) what you earn, and educating your children according to your values. But at the most basic level, you need to stay alive. And there are laws that affect whether you are going to be able to stay alive or not.

Now, most of us Americans feel secure from crime. At the local level, we count on the police. We don’t have two-tier policing, like in the UK. American police forces are responsive to taxpayers, not to criminals. Not only do we have great police, but we can also own and train with weapons (if we pass a background check). And even more, now the federal government under Trump is deporting criminals who belong in other countries. For Christians, this means the fundamental need to avoid being killed by criminals is largely met, at least in conservative states with strong self-defense laws.

But now let’s consider Canada.

Here’s the latest story from the Toronto Sun:

This all happened early Monday on Kent St. in downtown Lindsay.

“Officers arrived on scene and learned that the resident of the apartment had woke up to find another male intruder inside his apartment,” said a news release from Kawartha Lakes Police. “There was an altercation inside the apartment and the intruder received serious life-threatening injuries as a result of that altercation.”

[…]“The (alleged) intruder was transported to Ross Memorial Hospital and later air lifted to a Toronto hospital,” say police.

[…]Kawartha Lakes Police Service added: “When released from hospital, he will be held in custody pending a bail hearing.”

So they took the intruder to the hospital, but they arrested the homeowner:

Ezra Levant of Rebel News has spoken with the man who is named Jeremy McDonald.

“A 44-year-old Lindsay man (homeowner) was charged with: aggravated assault and assault with a weapon” but was “released with a future court date,” said that release.

Perhaps in court there will be presented a fuller picture of why police decided to lay the charge on both the alleged intruder and on the break-in victim. Until then, people see it as just another example of letting criminals off easy while victims have to take it — even when they are in a dream state.

Now, those charges – aggravated assault and assault with a weapon – those are very serious charges.

Grok says:

In Canada, the maximum sentence for one charge of aggravated assault under section 268 of the Criminal Code is 14 years imprisonment, as it is a straight indictable offence. For one charge of assault with a weapon under section 267, the maximum sentence depends on the prosecution method: if prosecuted by indictment, it carries a maximum of 10 years imprisonment; if by summary conviction, the maximum is 18 months incarceration.

Imagine that you were an elderly Christian scholar like Wayne Grudem or William Lane Craig, and you got sentenced to 10 years of hard time in a federal prison for defending your home and family from an armed intruder. That’s what happens in Canada! And the feminized majority up there vote for that – it’s “compassion”. I know there are some great conservative Christians in Canada, but that’s not who is making the laws and the policies.

I asked Grok what would happen for a similar case in a conservative American state with Castle Doctrine and Stand Your Ground laws:

Consider the same scenario in Florida. If a homeowner wakes to an armed intruder wielding a knife, grabs a baseball bat, and injures the intruder, Florida’s Castle Doctrine (Fla. Stat. § 776.013) presumes the homeowner acted lawfully. As long as the response was proportionate and the threat imminent, the homeowner is unlikely to face charges and may be immune from civil lawsuits. Excessive force, like attacking a surrendering intruder, could lead to charges, but the law strongly favors the homeowner’s right to self-defense.

Here’s an actual case from Tennessee, reported by The Blaze, that shows how diferently self-defense is handled in conservative Americans states:

A Tennessee grand jury will not bring charges against a Lenoir City homeowner who fatally shot an intruder through a front door in May, saying the shooting was a “stand your ground” self-defense case, according to a Wednesday press release from Russell Johnson, the 9th Judicial District Attorney General.

[…]The grand jury reviewed a presentation by Lenoir City Police Department detectives Lynnette Ladd and Jon Yates and agreed with the District Attorney General Johnson’s decision not to bring criminal charges against the homeowner who fatally shot Owen based on the “stand your ground” statute and that it was a case of self-defense.

Everyone – the police and the District Attorney and the grand jury (fellow Tennessee taxpayers) – sided with the law-abiding homeowner and not the violent criminal.

In strong self-defense states like Tennessee and Florida, the law protects law-abiding citizens. When voting, Christians must consider this. Supporting policies like those of the Democrat Party risks two-tier policing, as seen in the UK, or the criminalization of self-defense, as seen in Canada. To live out your faith, stay safe, and remain free, vote for leaders who prioritize your right to protect yourself and your family from armed criminals.

Vote like your life depends on it, because one day, it might.

There were a couple of interesting articles in The Federalist about marriage and divorce, so I wanted to blog about them. The first one is about the no-fault divorce law in Texas. The second one is about temporary restraining orders. And then finally I wanted to talk about whether Christian social conservatives really are as socially conservative as they claim.

So there is the first article from The Federalist, and it’s about the Texas Christian man who has had a divorce initiated against him, and he is fighting it, because he doesn’t think it’s Biblical.

The article says:

Jeff Morgan was blindsided when his wife of 11 years recently filed for divorce in Dallas County, Texas. On Aug. 8, he filed a 31-page motion to dismiss the lawsuit, claiming the Texas no-fault divorce law is unconstitutional for 11 distinct reasons. Although Morgan isn’t an attorney and represents himself, his papers are packed with case law.

In a no-fault divorce, one party can dissolve the marriage – even if there are young children! They just say that the marriage is over because of “discord or conflict of personalities”. They don’t need to prove abuse or adultery or abandonment or addiction. Divorces are automatic just because one spouse is not getting along with the other.

Remember, 69% of the time divorces are initiated by women. Before you blame the husband for that, remember that lesbian couples have the highest rates of divorce. So it’s not men who are responsible for the majority of these cases. When men make a commitment, they really mean to keep it. Feeling “conflict of personalities” doesn’t make them break the marriage covenant.

So what happens in the divorce court? There’s no judge who listens to two sides in a divorce case – the person who files is heard, and the divorce is automatic. Morgan doesn’t get to make a case for why the marriage should stay intact, and how it will harm the children. No one listens and no one cares. Even in red states, supposedly conservative Christian lawmakers don’t want marriage laws to be conservative or Christian.

Why do people want no-fault divorce? Well, they want to make the decision about who to marry recklessly. They don’t want to feel any kind of constraint or responsibility to vet the other person for marriage abilities. Many of them get into marriages based on Disney stories about “soul mates”. And then when they find out how much work marriage really is – responsibilities, expectations, obligations – they want to get out of it. Doesn’t matter if it hurts the kids.

Here’s another article from The Federalist, this one is about “temporary restraining orders”. These orders are routinely used in divorce hearings in order to get men separated from their children and kicked out of their own houses. All the woman has to do is say “I’m scared” and the judge grants it immediately. No police report, no investigation of facts, no jury trial.

Note that Protection from Abuse Order (PFA) is the same as Temporary Restraining Order (TRO). It’s called different things in different states.

The article says:

In family court, PFAs are colloquially known as “silver bullets.” They instantly shift custody, restrict communication, and tilt the playing field in favor of the accuser. Even if dropped, the damage lingers.

[…]Take the case of Harry Stewart, a lay minister from Weymouth, Massachusetts. Stewart was arrested and jailed simply for walking to the door of his ex-wife’s apartment building and opening it. Why? He had violated a restraining order “that prohibited him from exiting his car near his ex-wife’s home.” The system treated this routine act of fatherhood as a criminal offense. Writing about the case in Salon, Cathy Young observed, “While his former wife told reporters that Stewart was dangerously unstable, her examples — that he had watched ‘prison movies’ with his 8- and 6-year-old sons and promised to send them some live caterpillars to grow into butterflies — seem shocking only in their innocuousness.”

As Stephen Baskerville noted in Taken Into Custody, “Stewart had already been jailed for six months not for committing any crime but because he refused to confess to one.” The real offense was not violence, but noncompliance with a legal fiction.

The consequences didn’t end with jail time. As Young wrote, “The client could have only supervised visitation for the next two years, until the social worker who monitored the visits finally gave him a clean bill of health.”

A lot of socially conservative Christians today are complaining about men. They are asking “why don’t men approach women?” and “why don’t men take women out on dates?”. They don’t know that men are very much aware of laws and policies like no-fault divorce, false accusations PFAs / TROs, paternity fraud, and biased policing of domestic violence. Men know, and men count the cost.

Have you ever heard a sermon that was critical of divorce or false accusations? Is there any popular music, like from Taylor Swift, that condemns such things? Are there movies, like The Notebook and Titanic, that argue against these things? We are not a culture that really values marriage. And Christians today are not battling against these threats to marriage and family, either.

Here is what I would do in order to make marriage more attractive to men, and better for children (stability):

• person who initiates divorce leaves with clothes on back, no access to kids except by permission of remaining spouse
• abolish single mother welfare, and all other welfare that rewards bad decisions about divorce and reckless sex
• no special category for domestic violence, just have regular criminal law apply to violence in the home
• false accusations to be punished by giving the accuser the sentence that the accused would have gotten
• mandatory paternity tests for all children after birth
• ban IVF in all cases
• remove abortion coverage from all medical insurance policies, and have them be a separate policy, like life insurance or home insurance
• abolish all government-provided, government-guaranteed student loans. (Only banks give loans, based on the likelihood of being paid back)

I mention student loans, because men see a woman’s student loans as a deterrent to marriage, and a predictor of financial irresponsibility that can lead to divorce.

Have you ever heard a Christian social conservative advocate for solutions like this? They would certainly solve the problem. So why don’t we hear anything about these solutions?

A while back I finished reading “God’s Crime Scene”, the new book by J. Warner Wallace. I wanted to post something about some studies he mentioned in Chapter 6, on free will. This is one of the places where he found evidence in a surprising area.

Wallace says that free will makes more sense if theism is true, because we have non-material souls that interact with our bodies, but are not causally determined by them. On atheism, only matter exists, and you can’t get free will (or consciousness) from matter. So atheists like Sam Harris and Alex Rosenberg, for example, deny free will, because they are materialists and atheists.

Anyway, here’s what he writes on p. 256:

In 2008, researchers from the University of Minnesota and the University of British Columbia conducted experiments highlighting the relationship between a belief in determinism and immoral behavior. They found students who were exposed to deterministic literature prior to taking a test were more likely to cheat on the test than students who were not exposed to literature advocating determinism. The researchers concluded those who deny free will are more inclined to believe their efforts to act morally are futile and are, therefore, less likely to do so.

In addition, a study conducted by researchers from Florida State University and the University of Kentucky found participants who were exposed to deterministic literature were more likely to act aggressively and less likely to be helpful toward others.” Even determinist Michael Gazzaniga conceded: “It seems that not only do we believe we control our actions, but it is good for everyone to believe it.”” The existence of free will is a common characteristic of our experience, and when we deny we have this sort of free agency, there are detrimental consequences.

I decided to look up these studies.

Here’s the abstract for first study: (2008)

Does moral behavior draw on a belief in free will? Two experiments examined whether inducing participants to believe that human behavior is predetermined would encourage cheating. In Experiment 1, participants read either text that encouraged a belief in determinism (i.e., that portrayed behavior as the consequence of environmental and genetic factors) or neutral text. Exposure to the deterministic message increased cheating on a task in which participants could passively allow a flawed computer program to reveal answers to mathematical problems that they had been instructed to solve themselves. Moreover, increased cheating behavior was mediated by decreased belief in free will. In Experiment 2, participants who read deterministic statements cheated by overpaying themselves for performance on a cognitive task; participants who read statements endorsing free will did not. These findings suggest that the debate over free will has societal, as well as scientific and theoretical, implications.

And the abstract for the second study: (2009)

Laypersons’ belief in free will may foster a sense of thoughtful reflection and willingness to exert energy, thereby promoting helpfulness and reducing aggression, and so disbelief in free will may make behavior more reliant on selfish, automatic impulses and therefore less socially desirable. Three studies tested the hypothesis that disbelief in free will would be linked with decreased helping and increased aggression. In Experiment 1, induced disbelief in free will reduced willingness to help others. Experiment 2 showed that chronic disbelief in free will was associated with reduced helping behavior. In Experiment 3, participants induced disbelief in free will caused participants to act more aggressively than others. Although the findings do not speak to the existence of free will, the current results suggest that disbelief in free will reduces helping and increases aggression.

So what to make of this?

If you’re an atheist, then you are a physical object. And like every other physical object in the universe, your behavior is determined by genetic programming (if you’re alive) and external inputs. Material objects do not have the ability to make free choices, including moral choices.

Here’s prominent atheist Jerry Coyne’s editorial in USA Today to explain why atheists can’t ground free will.

Excerpt:

And that’s what neurobiology is telling us: Our brains are simply meat computers that, like real computers, are programmed by our genes and experiences to convert an array of inputs into a predetermined output. Recent experiments involving brain scans show that when a subject “decides” to push a button on the left or right side of a computer, the choice can be predicted by brain activity at least seven seconds before the subject is consciously aware of having made it. (These studies use crude imaging techniques based on blood flow, and I suspect that future understanding of the brain will allow us to predict many of our decisions far earlier than seven seconds in advance.) “Decisions” made like that aren’t conscious ones. And if our choices are unconscious, with some determined well before the moment we think we’ve made them, then we don’t have free will in any meaningful sense.

Atheist William Provine says atheists have no free will, no moral accountability and no moral significance:

Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear — and these are basically Darwin’s views. There are no gods, no purposes, and 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 of me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans, either.

(Source)

If you don’t have free will, then you can’t make moral choices, and you can’t be held morally responsible. No free will means no morality. Can you imagine trying to get into any sort of enterprise with someone who has this view of moral choices? A marriage, or a business arrangement, etc? It would be crazy to expect them to behave morally, when they don’t even think that moral choices is possible. It just excuses all sorts of bad behavior, because no one is responsible for choosing to do the right thing.

Believers in materialism are going to struggle with prescriptive morality, including self-sacrificial care and concern for others. Their worldview undermines the rationality of the moral point of view. You might find atheists acting morally for their own purposes, but their worldview doesn’t rationally ground it. This is a big problem for people who can see objective morality woven into the universe – and themselves – because they have the awareness of objective right and wrong.

Choosing to do the right thing

I think what atheists like to say is “I can be moral, too”. That’s not interesting. What is interesting is whether it is rational for you to be moral when doing the right thing sets you back. When I look at the adultery of Dawkins, the polyamory of Carrier, the divorces of Shermer and Atkins, etc. I am not seeing anything that really wows me about their ability to do the right thing when it was hard for them to do it. They all deny free will of course, and think that trying to resist temptation is a waste of time.

Wallace explains how the awareness of free will and moral choices caused him to turn away from atheism, in this blog post.

He writes:

As an atheist, I chose to cling to naturalism, in spite of the fact that I lived each day as though I was capable of using my mind to make moral choices based on more than my own opinion. In addition, I sought meaning and purpose beyond my own hedonistic preferences, as though meaning was to be discovered, rather than created. I called myself a naturalist while embracing three characteristics of reality that simply cannot be explained by naturalism. As a Christian, I’m now able to acknowledge the “grounding” for these features of reality. My philosophical worldview is consistent with my practical experience of the world.

I think atheists who want to be honest about their own experience of first-person consciousness, free will, moral realism, etc. will do well to just accept that theism rationally grounds all of these things, and so you should accept theism. Theism is real. If you like morality, and want to be a virtuous person, then you should accept theism.