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News

Democrat senators attack judicial nominee for her Catholic faith

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This is from National Review.

Excerpt:

This afternoon, during a confirmation hearing for 7th Circuit Court of Appeals nominee Amy Coney Barrett, Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein attacked the nominee for her Roman Catholic faith.

Barrett is a law professor at the University of Notre Dame who has written about the role of religion in public life and delivered academic lectures to Christian legal groups. Drawing on some of these materials, Feinstein launched a thinly veiled attack on Barrett’s Catholic faith, asserting that her religious views will prevent her from judging fairly.

“When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you,” Feinstein said. “And that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for for years in this country.” Feinstein is clearly hinting here at the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, a ruling that Feinstein supports so vociferously that she has even called it a “super-precedent.”

[…]Other Democratic senators took issue with Barrett over her faith as well. Senate minority whip Dick Durbin criticized Barrett’s use of the term “orthodox Catholic,” insisting that it unfairly maligns Catholics who do not hold certain positions about abortion or the death penalty. (Durbin himself is a Catholic who abandoned his previous pro-life position.) “Do you consider yourself an orthodox Catholic?” he later asked Barrett point blank.

And Hawaii senator Mazie Hirono snarked, “I think your article is very plain in your perspective about the role of religion for judges, and particularly with regard to Catholic judges.”

It was reported that Feinstein actually said “The dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern“. Think about that.

To me, the more important thing about this story is how comfortable secular people are about forcing their secular convictions down the throats of others. What they’re essentially saying is this: “I can use power to push my worldview onto you, and I can use power to stop you from living according to your convictions”. You can be certain that Diane Feinstein has answers to all of the same big questions that theists have answers to: “does God exist?” “did Jesus rise from the dead?” “is there a purpose to suffering and evil?” “is there life after death?”, etc. She has different answers to those same questions, but she wouldn’t accuse herself of having dogma. She feels very comfortable pushing her worldview through political power, but doesn’t think that theists ought to be able to do the same.

And this provides an interesting lesson for Christians: how did it come to be the case that Christian convictions are automatically perceived by secular leftist elites to be irrational and dangerous? Why is it that Christians shouldn’t be allowed to participate in politics, but atheists should, since they answer the same big questions with their respective worldviews? The answer is simple. Atheists perceive Christians as having a worldview that is not based on fact. And they perceive themselves as having a worldview that is based on fact. How did this happen?

Well, simply put, Christian leaders made it happen, by refusing to focus on apologetics and evangelism. For better or worse, Christian churches (from fundamentalist Pentecostal to conservative Presbyterian) have decided that evangelism and apologetics are not important enough to focus on at church. And the result of this is that as non-Christians work their way through school and into the workplace, they never encounter any intelligent Christians who have reasons and evidence for their beliefs. Not just Christian beliefs, but policy beliefs, too. The church has failed to teach their members and adherents the importance of having answers, and this (along with the Sexual Revolution) is one of the main reasons why America has gone secular.

Even if you spend your childhood and teen years in church, you will never hear serious discussion of whether God really exists or whether the Bible is historically reliable. These things will be assumed to be true. You will be shamed if you ask questions, and you will even be shamed if you study apologetics to know how to answer these questions. This is considered pious by most church leaders, no matter what denomination you’re in. Atheists are not blind to the fact that most people who profess Christ are ignorant of competing views, and cannot explain why they hold their views using reason and evidence. And this is where the perception that Christians are too dangerous to be allowed to participate in politics comes from.

This past week, I had a conversation with a senior engineer about his beliefs. He had attended Christian schools K through 12, and Christian churches his entire life. It all ended for him the minute he hit college. I perceived that he had questions that had gone unanswered, and asked him if he had ever seen any formal debates on Christianity. His answer? “I did not know that such a thing even existed”. I sent him a couple of debates to watch, and we are going to have lunch to discuss his background, because he was open to a rational discussion of the evidence. It doesn’t matter what church you are in, you will almost certainly never see a formal debate on Christianity. Because of this lack of emphasis on open debate, we lose a lot of intelligent people the minute they hit the university campus.

Things have gotten so bad, that it is now dangerous to even come out as a Christian in the education system, although there is still space to do it in the workplace, if you are careful who you speak to, and when. Most Christians I know, though, have no interest in jeopardizing their careers by being perceived as stupid at work. And yet there is this tremendous need for every Christian to reset the perceptions on ultimate questions. We must do this, or we are finished.

Anyway, it’s interesting to take a look at two of the nominees that Democrat senators opposed. Are they even qualified? Or are they anti-intellectual dingbats with no experience at all?

The Daily Signal has a helpful article about them. It turns out that they are exquisitely well-educated and have solid resumes, as well. That’s something else that Christians should not neglect if we want to be respected by secular elites.

We should all be very serious about our educations, careers and finances. Finances are important because it is an immediate signal to others that you have a wisdom about how to live. If we marry, then our marriage and children also sends a signal about competence. My view is that Christians should be learning much more than just the Bible in church. A little basic economics, basic apologetics, basic New Testament, and basic philosophy of religion would definitely help to correct the perceptions that others have of Christianity. And the study of those areas would make the average rank-and-file Christian much more confident about discussing those things in school and at work.

Positive arguments for Christian theism

News

Mother puts makeup on her son and parades him in public

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Here is the boy's mother. The boy's father is not mentioned or quoted in any article
Here is the boy’s mother. The boy’s father is not mentioned in any article I found

This story appeared in The Blaze, and I think it’s worth blogging.

Excerpt:

Nemis Quinn Mélançon Golden started getting into drag when he was 7, the Advocate reported.

And just a year later — under his stage name “Lactatia” — he’s now the newest sensation in Montreal’s drag scene, the outlet said.

[…]“Anyone can do what they want in life,” Lactatia told LGBT in the City on camera. “It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. If you want to be a drag queen and your parents don’t let you, you need new parents. If you want to be a drag queen and your friends don’t let you, you need new friends.”
After taking voguing classes, Lactatia showed up at the Werq the World drag tour when it stopped in Montreal recently. At the show, Bianca del Rio — star of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” — invited Lactatia onstage where the elementary school-aged drag queen “charmed the dress off the older queen,” the Advocate reported.

Lactatia told LGBT in the City that he’s been wearing dresses “and being into girls’ stuff since I was like 3.” As for the origin of his stage name, Lactatia said his sister “made it up, and we all thought it was funny.”

And who does Lactatia’s makeup? His mother, of course.

The video, which I will not link to, has 30 million views and 225,000 shares. Which just goes to show you that a lot of people think that it is no problem at all to sexualize a child, and march him/her around in public.

The UK Daily Mail has more about the mother:

Nemis’ mother Jessica explains that her little boy was asking for her to put make-up on him from the age of two – and he just grew to love the art of it.

‘We just want our kids to express themselves however they see fit,’ she says. ‘As long as they are respectful and nice people, then I really don’t care!’

As long as her kids are nice, she doesn’t really care. This is what parenting has come down to in the 21st century, at least in progressive strongholds like Montreal.

I’m sure the mother isn’t doing this to her child for the attention, either. After all, women with nose piercings and tattooed chests shown off by low-cut tops are not seeking attention at all. Just incredible.

News

Does Al Gore really believe in global warming?

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Satellite global temperature measurements 1979 - July 2017
Satellite global temperature measurements 1979 – July 2017

I think that if the rich Democrats who warn us about global warming really believed in global warming, rather than just scamming people out of their wealth, then we should be able to see it in their personal decisions about energy consumption. For example, they should fly commercial instead of on private jets, and they should live in modest homes that use less than average amounts of electricity.

Let’s take a look at what Al Gore is like in real life.

The Daily Caller explains:

On Friday, Al Gore’s sequel to “An Inconvenient Truth” – “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power” – arrives in movie theaters across the country. But there’s another inconvenient sequel worth noting and, like most sequels, this one is even worse than the original.

Gore’s hypocritical home energy use and “do as I say not as I do” lifestyle has plunged to embarrassing new depths.

In just this past year, Gore burned through enough energy to power the typical American household for more than 21 years, according to a new report by the National Center for Public Policy Research. The former vice president consumed 230,889 kilowatt hours (kWh) at his Nashville residence, which includes his home, pool and driveway entry gate electricity meters. A typical family uses an average of 10,812 kWh of electricity per year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

It gets worse.

Last September alone, Gore devoured 30,993 kWh of electricity. That’s enough to power 34 average American homes for a month. Over the last 12 months, Gore used more electricity just heating his outdoor swimming pool than six typical homes use in a year.

The National Center for Public Policy Research obtained the environmentalist’s energy-usage information from individuals at the Nashville Electric Service, the utility that provides electricity to Gore’s home and much of Middle Tennessee.

[…]Spending more than $1,800 a month on an energy bill would sink most Americans, but it’s pocket change to Gore. He has manipulated environmental concerns into a big business. When his term as vice president ended in 2001, Gore’s net worth was less than $2 million. Today, Gore is worth an estimated $300 million.

[…]Astonishingly, Gore also owns at least two other homes – a penthouse in San Francisco and a farmhouse in Carthage, Tennessee – so his carbon footprint is even larger than it appears.

It doesn’t look like Al Gore is serious about global warming. If he were serious he would be living in a smaller house, driving smaller cars, and using less electricity.

Maybe Al Gore is an exception, though. Let’s take a look at Elon Musk and big corporations that support global warming alarmism.

The center-left The Hill reports:

Take Elon Musk, for example. Two of his companies, Tesla and SolarCity, have accepted billions in global-warming-predicated government loans and federal tax credits. Put another way, Musk has a multibillion-dollar personal stake in global warming.

Nor is mogul Musk alone. GE, Microsoft, Google, JP Morgan, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley – all benefit from “warmist” tax equity arrangements that allow them to take a 30 percent federal investment tax credit when financing solar projects.

That preferential tax treatment can be worth hundreds of millions of dollars per deal. In 2013, for example, Goldman Sachs offered a $500 million financing arrangement for SolarCity rooftop solar leases.

Goldman Sachs has also been associated with other solar projects beholden to the federal taxpayer for financial backing. They include the Desert Sunlight utility solar project (with over $350 million in stimulus funds and a nearly $1.5 billion loan guarantee from the Department of Energy) and the Alamosa Solar Generating Project (with cash grant from Treasury exceeding $35 million and a more than $90 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy).

GE’s Shepherds Flat wind farm received over $1.2 billion in federal and state subsidies, despite the Obama administration’s estimation that it would “likely move without the [Department of Energy] loan guarantee.” The Obama administration also determined the climate benefits fell short of the total subsidies by a factor of six.

Google, General Electric, Chevron, BP, and Statoil are among a host of companies that own Ivanpah, the solar farm boondoggle that has cost Californians and federal taxpayers hundreds of millions

So, when you see these big billionaires lecturing the rest of us on how we need to rein in our energy consumption, recycle, etc. you need to understand why they may have a reason for keeping the Big Lie going. The most elementary reason of all: welfare. The reason that these big corporate global warmists advocate for global warming is the same reason many rank-and-file Democrats vote for big government: they like to collect welfare.