The first topic is Obama’s refusal to defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act. A lot of people made a mistake when they voted for Obama in 2008. Although he claimed to be a Christian and said that he believed in traditional marriage. Newsflash! Obama is a radical anti-Christian leftist who is deep in the pocket of the anti-marriage left. Of course he is opposed to traditional marriage! The lesson for 2012 is that Christians need to never believe what politicians say when they are trying to get elected – look at their record and see what they’ve done.
The second myth she punctures is that a secular left government is OK with Christian parents teaching children about Biblical morality. It’s not just that they would want to indoctrinate children to reject Biblical morality. It’s not just that they want to monitor what children say to make sure they don’t express any Biblical moral views in public. Its that they actually think that Christian parents should not be allowed to teach children in their care about Biblical moral views. You don’t own your children – the state owns them. The state decides what your children will believe.
This one is about Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, a university professor who has decided to abandon her children out of selfishness, and become a deadbeat mom. Here summary of her view is “I didn’t want to do give up my life for someone else.”.
This one is about artificial reproductive technologies, and was delivered to a class of nursing students in their medical ethics class. Timely – because the Democrats just rescinded conscience protections for medical workers.
In this shorter talk she discusses the Ruth Institute, the views of the next generation on marriage, and the consequences of abandoning or redefining the institution of marriage. She delivered a longer version of this talk the next day at Aquinas College.
This talk is based on her book “Smart Sex”. The topic of that book is on how irresponsible sex can actually drive people away from each other, and how we are rejecting the obligations we have to other people out of selfishness and preventing ourselves from enjoying life-long married love.
About Jennifer Roback Morse
Here’s her bio:
Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D. is the founder and President of the Ruth Institute, president of the Ruth Institute a project of the National Organization for Marriage to promote life-long married love to college students by creating an intellectual and social climate favorable to marriage.
She is also the Senior Research Fellow in Economics at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty.
She is the author of Smart Sex: Finding Life-long Love in a Hook-up World, (2005) and Love and Economics: Why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn’t Work (2001), recently reissued in paperback, as Love and Economics: It Takes a Family to Raise a Village.
Dr. Morse served as a Research Fellow for Stanford University’s Hoover Institution from 1997-2005. She received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Rochester in 1980 and spent a postdoctoral year at the University of Chicago during 1979-80. She taught economics at Yale University and George Mason University for 15 years. She was John M. Olin visiting scholar at the Cornell Law School in fall 1993. She is a regular contributor to the National Review Online, National Catholic Register, Town Hall, MercatorNet and To the Source.
These lectures are particularly timely for me, as I am working my way through Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s “Stupid Things Parents Do To Mess Up Their Kids”, and getting some ideas for public policies and laws that would really be pro-child and pro-marriage. That book is my light reading book, and I recommend it. Dr. Laura Schlessinger is hit or miss, but this one is definitely a direct hit. My heavy reading books are “Signature in the Cell” by Dr. Stephen C. Meyer and “Economic Facts and Fallacies” by Dr. Thomas Sowell.
Bauckham was arguing that the Gospels are based on eyewitness accounts and therefore should be regarded as fundamentally trustworthy.
Joining him was New Testament historian Dr. James Crossley, discussing the implications of Bauckham’s work and whether the Gospel of John was written by the disciple John himself, as Bauckham claims.
This is a great debate between two great New Testament scholars.
Debate 2: The divinity of Jesus
The second debate concerns whether the belief in Jesus’ divinity was early and authentic, or whether it developed slowly over time. Richard is very thorough and works only with minimal facts that skeptical scholars will agree with. James Crossley is an excellent atheist and argues his side as well as any atheist I have ever heard in a debate on historical questions.
The author of CT’s 2007 Book Award winner in biblical studies, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, Richard Bauckham proposes a new (or, rather, an ancient) paradigm through which to view the Gospels: as the eyewitness testimony of trustworthy insiders. Wheaton professor Gary Burge asked the St. Andrews scholar how his approach diverges from mainstream New Testament scholarship—and what it means for our understanding of Jesus.
I’m really excited by the respect he is getting in the academy. This is a completely NEW perspective on the gospels that is getting a lot of attention.
James Crossley
Crossley specializes in Mark, the earliest and most reliable gospel. Mark’s source for the Passion narrative of Jesus is dated to the 40s, about 10-20 years after the death of Jesus. Mark’s gospel is based on the eyewitness testimony of his companion Peter. So it is fun to hear them debate Mark in the first show. And they get into 1 Corinthians 15 as well, which is dated to 1-3 years after Jesus died.
WINTERY KNIGHT 