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News

Jordan Peterson tweets an article about the minimal facts approach to the resurrection

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Jordan Peterson is aware of the best case for the resurrection of Jesus - are you?
Dr. Jordan Peterson is aware of the best case for the resurrection – are you?

Wow.

Jordan Peterson is now known to be aware of the strongest case for the resurrection, because he’s tweeted about it. Let’s see what he tweeted and what’s in the article.

It’s this article, written by Dr. Gary Habermas, which was published at The Stream:

Not too long ago I listed six of these events in a dialogue with an agnostic New Testament scholar. I used the historical facts that 1) Jesus died by crucifixion, 2) his early followers had experiences a short time later that they thought were appearances of Jesus, 3) and as a result, they were transformed to the point of being willing to die for this message. Further, two former unbelievers 4) James the brother of Jesus and 5) Saul of Tarsus (later the apostle Paul) both similarly thought that they had seen the risen Jesus, as well; and 6) This Gospel message of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ began to be taught very soon after these events.

Some might be surprised to hear that the agnostic scholar with whom I was dialoguing not only agreed with the historical nature of these six events, without exceptions, but he even added that each one was very well-recognized.

How come?

Perhaps the chief reason for the widespread agreement comes from recent critical recognition that the New Testament contains dozens of brief snippets of information from the earliest church teaching — preserved from the first 20 years before the first canonical books were written. Scholars call these “creedal texts” or traditions. The best known of them is 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 which scholars agree originated no later than the early to mid-30s AD, or within just five years of the life of Christ. There is also 1 Corinthians 8:6 and 11:23-25, Romans 1:3-4, 10:9, and Philippians 2:6-11. That’s not all of them. Among the many others are Luke 24:34 and the Acts sermon summaries. These texts actually predate by many years the works in which they appear.

Another avenue comes from the regular use of different tools and rules used by historians and others to recognize the occurrence of past historical facts. These are often called the criteria of authenticity. Here are six of these that help explain how scholars come to this kind of agreement:

  1. Some events are established by the reliable testimonies from people who were close to or who even participated in the events.
  2. Sometimes the witnesses reported these things very soon afterwards, rather than waiting years to do so.
  3. On other occasions, these events are attested by two or even more independent sources.
  4. Sometimes, enemies who actually oppose the occurrences and would have preferred that they had not happened, might agree that they nonetheless did so.
  5. Or the accounts may be told in a way that is so embarrassing to those telling it, or to their loved ones or their cause, that the best explanation for them saying it is simply that it’s the truth.
  6. Another test preferred by some scholars is the result of an event fitting well with or exhibiting similarities to other occurrences that are known to have occurred (coherence).

There are other historical tools and rules as well, but these are among the best-known ones. Often, two or even several of these additional reasons are present and endorse the same event from different angles. Once in a while, the list of confirmatory reasons can get quite lengthy. In such cases, it becomes more and more difficult to deny the factual nature of the reports. So actually, agreement among dissimilar scholars can be fairly common.

If you’ve ever seen debates with atheist scholars like James Crossley, Bart Ehrman, Gerd Ludemann, etc., you know that they agree with some or all of these “minimal facts”.

Now, this post is about Jordan Peterson. How come he is tweeting this argument? Well, I think part of the reason is that Peterson is a brilliant scholar, and he’s going to find out about pretty much everything that he sets out to investigate. I have been told that the New Testament is an area of interest for him. I can’t help but believe that his recent dialog with the venerable Christian scholar William Lane Craig might have put him on the right track.

Here is that dialog, in case you missed it:

I would like all my readers to pray for Jordan Peterson. Ask God to do what God does best – putting people into a time and place where they can find out something about him that leads to a relationship with himself.

If you want a place to start, read Acts 17:24-26 and then ask God to engineer Jordan Peterson’s life in such a way that he finds the answers to his questions from the people he meets and situations he finds himself in. God is a master architect and a brilliant general.  Looking back on my life, I can clearly see how carefully he led me to know things about him, and then to know him. We just have to ask God to do what he does for Jordan Peterson. Asking is free. It might be a good idea to pray for wisdom for Dr. Peterson, as well.

News

Education Secretary Betsy Devos scores a victory against public sector union

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Secretary of Education Betsy Devos
Secretary of Education Betsy Devos

Although you would never know it from the mainstream news media, Secretary of Education Betsy Devos is doing her best to advance a taxpayer-friendly agenda in education policy.

Here’s the latest from the American Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank:

In a noteworthy development, DeVos’s team this month radically revamped the collective-bargaining agreement (CBA) that governs the 3,900 employees at the U.S. Department of Education. The new CBA, between the Department and Council 252 of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), includes big changes from the 2013 agreement negotiated under the Obama administration.

The new agreement doesn’t address compensation or benefits, of course, since those are governed by federal law, but it does include a raft of sensible, taxpayer-friendly changes.

The new CBA eliminates the set-aside of “official time” for union business. Under the old agreement, designated union representatives were free to work on union business during normal, government hours — all on the taxpayers’ dime. The old CBA stipulated that “no fewer than 75” (!) union stewards across the country could work up to 40 hours a year on “official time,” while another three union officers would devote 100 percent of their time to union business. Henceforth, union business will be done on union time, rather than on the taxpayers’.

Under the old agreement, department employees were given only a solitary 48-hour window each year in which they could opt out of union membership; miss that, and they were automatically enrolled. Henceforth, employees who wish to be in the union each year will be free to do so, and they will have an extended period in which to enroll — but they will have to actively choose to join.

The revamped accord also removes the requirements for “pre-decisional consultation.” Under the previous CBA, the department was required to consult the union before every agency-wide decision that could be construed as affecting the work of employees (such as transferring employees from one office to another, or even shifting employees from one project to another within the same office). Now, the department needs only notify the union of such decisions.

Under the new CBA, the union will be charged “fair-market rent” for the use of government office space and federally furnished equipment to conduct union business. Under the Obama-era accord, taxpayers were required to provide space and equipment to the union free of charge.

More generally, the new agreement removes a number of provisions that added burdensome procedural directives above and beyond statutory requirements when it came to things such as telework and grievance procedures.

If there is one thing I expected from Betsy Devos, it’s taxpayer-friendly education policy.

Unfortunately, the Republican party didn’t help her very much in that massive $1.3 Billion spending bill that they passed, with Democrat support. Betsy wants to cut federal spending on education, and return control of education policy to the states and municipalities. But the GOP just gave the Department of Education a bigger budget. We really need to switch out some of these big government Republicans for authentic conservatives.

News

Middle Eastern men who ran Oxford child sex-trafficking ring found guilty

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Muslim populations in Europe
Muslim populations in Europe

Note: this story is NOT about the Telford sex-trafficking ring that I reported on recently. This is about the Oxford sex-trafficking ring that I reported on in 2015.

Although this article from the far-left BBC refuses to find the common denominator in the seven men who were convicted of sex-trafficking children, but you might be able to discern it for yourself.

Excerpt:

Seven men have been found guilty of grooming and sexually abusing teenage girls “on a massive scale” in Oxford.

The gang was convicted of more than 20 offences including rape and indecent assault between 1998 and 2005.

Prosecutor Oliver Saxby QC said they carried out the “routine, cynical and predatory sexual exploitation” of vulnerable girls who were groomed with alcohol and drugs.

The five victims were aged between 13 and 15 when the offences started.

Opening the case at Oxford Crown Court, Mr Saxby said the gang preyed on girls who had a background of problems at home.

He said they offered their victims “company, attention, acceptance into the group” as well as “food, parties, alcohol, and sometimes drugs”.

Mr Saxby said this was all part of “the grooming process” the gang used in order to carry out “sexual exploitation on a massive scale”.

He said the girls would be made to have sex at parties, in cars or parks, with other men around, and sometimes after being subjected to threats and violence.

One girl was taken to a B&B in Iffley Road and told to have sex with older men, who one of the defendants described as “uncles”, he said.

Mr Saxby added: “She says she has lost count of the number of ‘uncles’ she had sex with… After sex she would sit in the shower and scrub herself.”

And here are the names and ages of the men:

  • Assad Hussain, 37, of Iffley Road, Oxford, guilty of five counts of rape and two counts of indecent assault, not guilty of one count of indecent assault.

  • Kameer Iqbal, 39, of Dashwood Road, Oxford, guilty of three counts of rape.

  • Khalid Hussain, 38, of Ashhurst Way, Oxford, guilty of rape and indecent assault, not guilty of one count of rape.

  • Kamran Khan, 36, of Northfield Road, Bolton, guilty of indecent assault and false imprisonment, not guilty of rape.

  • Moinul Islam, 41, of Wykeham Crescent, Oxford, guilty of rape, two counts of indecent assault and supplying cannabis, not guilty of false imprisonment.

  • Raheem Ahmed, 40 of Starwort Path, Oxford, guilty of two counts of indecent assault and false imprisonment, not guilty of rape.

  • Alladitta Yousaf, 48, of Bodley Road, Oxford, guilty of indecent assault.

In my previous article about the Telford gang, I reported on how the secular, leftist, politically correct UK police refused to take the complaints of the girls and their mothers seriously, for fear of offending the Middle Eastern men who were being accused. The police did nothing to protect the children, because the Labour Party had carefully instructed them in politically correct leftist dogma. If they had done anything to prosecute the predators, they would have lost their jobs for insensitivity and intolerance.

This is not the first time that we have had sex-trafficking gangs run by men of Middle-Eastern origin.

Rotterham

How about the Rotterham sex-trafficking gang?

Here are the facts from Powerline Blog:

Full text:

You are probably familiar with the Rotherham scandal. Rotherham is a city in England where over a period of years, more than 1,400 girls, many of them pre-teens, were raped and trafficked by a loose consortium of men. The men were all Muslim immigrants or sons of immigrants, the girls were all, or nearly all, white. When the scandal finally came to light in 2014, city officials said that they had been reluctant to do anything about the problem for fear of being accused of racism.

Several criminal trials have resulted from the scandal. The third such trial has just been completed. Six defendants were convicted and sentenced to 10 to 20 years for rape and other crimes. The Sun identified them:

Brothers Basharat Dad, 32, and Nasar Dad, 36, of both of Rotherham, and Tayab Dad, 34, of Sheffield, were jailed on Tuesday for sex offences along with Matloob Hussain, 41, of Rotherham, Mohammed Sadiq, 40, of Rotherham, and Amjad Ali, of Worksop, Nottinghamshire.

This is the most curious aspect of the news report:

There were emotional and chaotic scenes at Sheffield Crown Court after two of the defendants shouted “Allahu Akbar” as they were led from the dock.

But wait, there are more examples.

Rochdale

Another case reported in the UK Telegraph:

Taxi driver Shabir Ahmed, 59, was already serving a 19 year sentence from May for conspiracy, two rapes, aiding and abetting rape, sexual assault and sex trafficking. His domineering temper earned him the nickname “Daddy” by the white teenage victims.

The ringleader, who called the judge a ‘racist b——‘, was one of nine men jailed at Liverpool Crown Court for a total of 77 years for passing round the youngsters and plying them with drugs and drink.

[…]His victim, who cannot be named, revealed Ahmed once made her kneel on the floor in a pose called the ‘chicken’, with her arms threaded through her legs and touching her ears, before striking her on the back with a cricket bat.

The girl, now an adult, claims she was repeatedly raped over many years. He left her never wanting to have sex again or get married.

The girl said when she was first raped she was so young she needed to stand on a chair to reach a sink.

[…]Ahmed told the court he was a standard-bearer for “targeted and weakened British Muslims”, and claimed the police were anti-Muslim

He said of the Rochdale grooming trial: “We were all innocent. My only crime was to be Muslim. Not of the majority race.”

In May, Ahmed and his eight co-defendants were jailed for their role in a child-sex ring.

In other cases, the police ignored the complaints of the victims.

This happens often because the UK deliberately chose a “compassionate” open-borders immigration policy. We should not imitate their example. Merit-based immigration is best.

I find it very interesting that so many Christian leaders like Russell Moore take progressive positions on refugees and illegal immigrants. Are they not aware of what is going on in countries that embraced open borders? Or do they just not care about the fatherless little girls who suffer from their “generosity”?