News

Hate speech: Democrat party Biden incites violence: “put Trump in a bullseye”

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I collected together a few articles below connecting the Democrat party and the Biden administration to the attempt on Trump’s life. Each article makes a different point that was significant to me.

Democrat party’s attempt to take away Trump’s security detail: (Daily Caller)

Months before the shooting at former President Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, Democratic Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson introduced a bill in April that would have removed Trump’s Secret Service detail.

The Disgraced Former Protectees Act was introduced by Democratic Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson of the House Committee on Homeland Security in April, with the bill aiming to remove “Secret Service protection for those who have been sentenced to prison following conviction for a Federal or State felony,” according to a press release from April. In light of the shooting at Trump’s rally, the importance of the Secret Service protection given to former presidents was demonstrated for all to see.

Biden hate speech inciting violence against Trump: (Politico)

A defiant President Joe Biden insisted to his donors on Monday that he is “done talking about the debate” and implored the party to ignore any further distractions and direct its attention back to Donald Trump.

“We need to move forward. Look, we have roughly 40 days til the convention, 120 days til the election. We can’t waste any more time being distracted,” Biden said in a private call with donors Monday, according to a recording obtained by POLITICO.

“I have one job, and that’s to beat Donald Trump. I’m absolutely certain I’m the best person to be able to do that. So, we’re done talking about the debate, it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye,” Biden said.

Biden says that Trump is a threat to democracy: (Toronto Sun)

Just two weeks earlier, Biden told supporters that Trump was a threat to America’s existence.

“Donald Trump is a genuine threat to this nation. That is not hyperbole. He’s a threat to our freedom. He’s a threat to our democracy,” Biden said, adding that he wouldn’t let Trump destroy America just before the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

The corporate news media tried to cover for the Democrat party: (Daily Caller)

Multiple corporate media outlets initially did not report that shots were fired at a campaign rally featuring former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday.

[…]Screenshots of corporate media sites showed that they did not initially report the shots in their headlines.

“Secret Service rushes Trump off stage after popping noises heard at his Pennsylvania rally,” a headline from NBC News said, according to a screenshot posted on X by Drew Holden.

“Trump whisked off stage in Pennsylvania after loud noises rang through the crowd,” a Los Angeles Times headline read, according to another screenshot Holden posted.

CNN tried to portray it as Trump’s fault: “Secret Service rushes Trump off stage after he falls at rally.”

Congerssman Steve Scalise, a previous victim of Democrat domestic terrorism, spoke up in the Wall Street Journal:

House Majority Steve Scalise (R., La.,) who was himself seriously injured during a shooting in 2017, criticized Democratic leaders’ political rhetoric in his statement Saturday night. The shooter in the 2017 attack, who was killed by police, had belonged to several anti-Republican groups and volunteered for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign. There was no immediate information Saturday about who the shooter was or the motivation behind the attack.

“For weeks Democrat leaders have been fueling ludicrous hysteria that Donald Trump winning re-election would be the end of democracy in America,” Scalise said in a statement. “Clearly we’ve seen far left lunatics act on violent rhetoric in the past. This incendiary rhetoric must stop.”

Time will tell about whether this case is similar to the plot to kidnap the Governor of Michigan: (Washington Times)

Defense attorneys wanted jurors to see more communications between FBI handlers, undercover agents and paid informants who had fooled Fox and Croft and got inside the group. They argued that any plan to kidnap Whitmer was repeatedly pushed by those government actors.

But at the 2022 trial, U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker greatly restricted the use of certain text messages and audio recordings under his interpretation of evidence rules.

“Trials are about telling your story, giving your narrative, trying to persuade,” Croft’s appellate lawyer, Timothy Sweeney, told the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which posts audio on its website.

“When you’re denied the ability to use the rules of evidence where they benefit you, that is an unfair trial. … This case needs to be reversed and sent back for a new trial for that reason,” Sweeney said.

He might have Judge Joan Larsen on his side. She was the most aggressive on the three-judge panel, at one point seeming incredulous with the government’s stance on an important legal precedent at play in the appeal.

“Oh, come on,” she told Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler. “Really?”

Larsen said defense lawyers wanted jurors to see that “government informants were just pounding” Fox and Croft.

“Make a plan, make a plan, make a plan – you’re just sitting around. You’re all talk, you’re no action, make a plan,” she said. “Surely that’s relevant.”

That article is from June 2024, so we are still waiting on answers in that case. Given what we know about the FBI’s involvement in pushing the Steele dossier to influence an election, and the statements of elite national security people denying that the Hunter Biden laptop was real, anything is possible. Don’t count on Democrats to have any morality, they’re atheists, and atheists cannot rationally ground morality. When objective morality goes against their self-interest, they choose their self-interest. That’s why 100 million people died as a result of godless communism in the last century. These people are not like William Wilberforce. The Christian worldview comes up with “free the slaves” and “let the babies live” and “adults should stay married and love their children”. The atheist worldview comes up with “anybody who threatens my power has to be arrested, tortured and sent to a forced labor camp to die of starvation”.

Certainly it looks like the Biden administration Secret Service acted strangely. They either failed to do their jobs, or they intentionally did not do their jobs. Was this a consequence of Democrat DEI policies or typical government incompetence, or was this similar to the case of FBI agents vowing to stop Trump from becoming President?

“[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Page texted Strzok in August 2016.

“No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it,” Strzok responded.

This isn’t the first time that violence like this has been committed against Republicans by Democrats. After all, if your most sacred belief is in abortion, then any kind of violence is possible. Abortion is the act of murdering an unborn child that you created with your own actions, in order to avoid having to lose your happiness. The people who have them value reckless, irresponsible sex more than they value taking responsibility to care for the most innocent and needy human beings. If that’s your core view, then anything is possible. You literally have no morals. And those are the types of people who are running federal law enforcement today. They focus on pre-dawn raiding the homes of peaceful pro-life demonstrators, while ignoring gun violence against Republicans from their allies in the Democrat party. That’s what sin does to a person.

Polemics

Dr. Walter Bradley lectures on scientific evidence the creation and design of the universe

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This lecture is special to me, because I bought a VHS tape of it just after I started working full-time, and watched it a million times. A lot of people come to their convictions about God’s existence because of parents or church or intuitions, but for me it’s all about the scientific evidence. This lecture changed my life. I wish more people taught their children about this evidence! This lecture was delivered at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

About the speaker:

Dr. Bradley received his B.S. in Engineering Science and his Ph.D. in Materials Science from the University of Texas in Austin.

Dr. Bradley taught for eight years at the Colorado School of Mines before assuming a position as Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University (TAMU) in 1976.

During his 24 years at Texas A&M, Dr. Bradley served as Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University and as Director of the Polymer Technology Center, and received five College of Engineering Research Awards. He has received over $4,500,000 in research grants and has published over 140 technical articles and book chapters. He has also co-authored “The Mystery Of Life’s Origin: Reassessing Current Theories. He is a Fellow of the American Society for Materials and of the American Scientific Affiliation and serves as a consultant for many Fortune 500 companies.

He currently serves as Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Baylor University.

The lecture: (63 minutes lecture, 25 minutes audience Q&A)

Summary slide:

This slide summarizes the content of the lecture
This slide summarizes the content of the lecture

Introduction:

  • At the beginning of the 20th century, people believed that the progress of science was pointing away from an intelligent Creator and Designer, and towards naturalism
  • A stream of new discoveries has shifted the support of science towards theism, and away from naturalism
  • Richard Dawkins, an atheist, says that nature only has the appearance of design, but that if you look closer, naturalistic mechanisms can account for the appearance of design
  • When deciding between design and apparent design (“designoid”), it matters whether you think there is an intelligence there to do the designing

Evidence #1: The Big Bang:

  • an eternal “steady state” universe is more compatible with naturalism, but a created universe is more compatible with a Creator
  • In 1929, Hubble used telescopes to observe that the light from distant galaxies was redshifted. The further away galaxies were, the faster they were moving away. Therefore, space is expanding in all directions, suggesting an explosive origin of the universe
  • In 1965, the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation matched a prediction of the Big Bang cosmology, and of the creation event
  • In 1992, the COBE space telescope allowed us to test four specific predictions of the Big Bang model, especially the predictions for light element abundances (hydrogen and helium), which matched the predictions of the creation model

Evidence #2: Simple mathematical structure of the physical laws

  • the simple mathematical structure of natural laws allows us to understand these laws, make discoveries, and engineer solutions to problems
  • early scientists saw the mathematical structure of the universe to mean that nature was designed by an intelligent to be understood
  • the fundamental equations of the laws of the universe can be easily written on one side of one sheet of paper
  • Eugene Wigner’s famous paper, “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Physical Sciences” makes the point that this simple structure is an unexpected gift that allows is to do science

Evidence #3: fine-tuning of the physical constants and quantities

  • in order for any kind of complex life to survive, we need stars that provide energy within specific ranges for long periods of time
  • in order for any kind of complex life to survive, we need planets with stable orbits that will not suffer from extreme temperature swings as it varies in distance from its star
  • in order for any kind of complex life to survive, we need stable atomic structure
  • in order for any kind of complex life to survive, we need to have chemical diversity and correct relative abundances of each element
  • organic life has minimum requirements: process energy, store information, replicate, and you can’t fulfill those functions if there is only one element, e.g. – hydrogen
  • the energy level from the photons from the sun have to match the energy levels of the different elements in order to drive the chemical bonding needed for life
  • These requirements for life of any imaginable type depend on the values of the constants and quantities. The constants and quantities cannot vary much from what they are, or the universe will lose the characteristics (above) that allow it to support complex life of any imaginable time
  • For example, ratio of strong force to electromagnetic force:
    – if 2% larger, then no stable hydrogen, no long-lived stars, no compounds containing hydrogen, e.g. – water
    – if 5% smaller, no stable stars, heavy hydrogen would be unstable, few elements other than hydrogen

Evidence #4: initial conditions for habitability

  • Universe: expansion rate of the universe must be fast enough to avoid a re-collapse, but slow enough to allow matter to clump together and form stars and planets for complex life to live on
  • Planet: right distance from the star to get the right climate
  • Planet: right mass to retain the right atmosphere

Evidence #5: origin of life and information theory

  • It’s possible to explain every process in an automobile engine using plain old naturalistic mechanisms – no supernatural explanation is necessary to understand the processes
  • But the existence of engine itself: engineering all the parts has to be explained by the work of an intelligence
  • Similarly, we can understand how living systems work, but the existence of the living systems requires an intelligence
  • Even the simplest living system has to perform minimal function: capture energy, store information and replicate
  • Living systems are composed of objects like proteins that are composed of sequences of components complex such that the order of the components gives the overall structure function
  • Developing the components for a simple living cell is very improbable – even given the large number of galaxies, stars and planets in the universe, it is unlikely that complex, embodied life would exist anywhere in the universe

Evidence #6: more initial conditions for habitability

  • Location within the galaxy: you need to be away from the center of the galaxy, because the explosions from dying stars, and excessive radiation will kill life
  • Location within the galaxy: you need to be close enough to the center in order catch the heavy elements you need for life from the explosions of other stars
  • Location within the galaxy: the best location is between two arms of  a spiral galaxy, where you can get the heavy elements you need from dying stars, but without being hit with explosions and harmful radiation
  • Star mass: determines rate at which the sun burns, determines the energy level of photons that are used to drive chemical bonding reactions, determines the length of time the star will be stable
  • Star mass: star mass must be the correct value in order to allow liquid water on the planet’s surface, while still preserving stable orbit

I wish there was more curiosity about science in churches, and young Christians understood how critical science is for grounding the rationality of the Christian worldview. We need to be training up more scientists who think about the big questions, like Dr. Walter Bradley.

Polemics

The authors of the gospels of Mark and Luke knew eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus

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Were the authors of the gospels of Mark and Luke connected to eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus? Well, it turns out that there are good reasons to think that Mark was linked to the eyewitness Peter, and Luke was linked to Paul, who had a post-mortem appearance of Jesus in 1 Cor 15:8, and who met with Peter and James in Galatians 1 and again in Galatians 2.

There is a list of evidence for Peter’s influence on Mark on the Cold Case Christianity blog.

Here’s my favorite one from the list:

Peter’s Embarrassments Have Been Omitted

There are many details in the Gospel of Mark consistent with Peter’s special input and influence,including omissions related to events involving Peter. How can Mark be a memoir of Peter if, in fact, the book contains so many omissions of events involving Peter specifically? It’s important to evaluate the entire catalogue of omissions pertaining to Peter to understand the answer here. The vast majority of these omissions involve incidents in which Peter did or said something rash or embarrassing. It’s not surprising these details were omitted by the author who wanted to protect Peter’s standing in the Christian community. Mark was quite discreet in his retelling of the narrative (other Gospel writers who were present at the time do, however, provide details of Peters ‘indiscretions’ in their own accounts. See Cold-Case Christianity for a more detailed explanation).

It makes me laugh to imagine Peter looking over Mark’s shoulder and saying “no, don’t put that in it” and “no, don’t tell them I did that”. Funny! But also very good evidence. The rest of Wallace’s list makes it even more clear.

And what about the gospel of Luke? Well, did you know that the author of Luke’s gospel knew Paul? If you read it carefully, you’ll see that Luke switches from describing history from an “I” perspective to describing things from a “we” perspective in the book of Acts (which he also wrote). Who is the “we” he is talking about?

Here’s famous Christian scholar William Lane Craig to explain:

Now who was this author we call Luke? He was clearly not an eyewitness to Jesus’s life. But we discover an important fact about him from the book of Acts. Beginning in the sixteenth chapter of Acts, when Paul reaches Troas in modern-day Turkey, the author suddenly starts using the first-person plural: “we set sail from Troas to Samothrace,” “we remained in Philippi some days,” “as we were going to the place of prayer,” etc. The most obvious explanation is that the author had joined Paul on his evangelistic tour of the Mediterranean cities. In chapter 21 he accompanies Paul back to Palestine and finally to Jerusalem. What this means is that the author of Luke-Acts was in fact in first hand contact with the eyewitnesses of Jesus’s life and ministry in Jerusalem.

[…]There is no avoiding the conclusion that Luke-Acts was written by a traveling companion of Paul who had the opportunity to interview eyewitnesses to Jesus’s life while in Jerusalem. Who were some of these eyewitnesses? Perhaps we can get some clue by subtracting from the Gospel of Luke everything found in the other gospels and seeing what is peculiar to Luke. What you discover is that many of Luke’s peculiar narratives are connected to women who followed Jesus: people like Joanna and Susanna, and significantly, Mary, Jesus’s mother.

Was the author reliable in getting the facts straight? The book of Acts enables us to answer that question decisively. The book of Acts overlaps significantly with secular history of the ancient world, and the historical accuracy of Acts is indisputable.

This has recently been demonstrated anew by Colin Hemer, a classical scholar who turned to New Testament studies, in his book The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History. [5] Hemer goes through the book of Acts with a fine-toothed comb, pulling out a wealth of historical knowledge, ranging from what would have been common knowledge down to details which only a local person would know. Again and again Luke’s accuracy is demonstrated: from the sailings of the Alexandrian corn fleet to the coastal terrain of the Mediterranean islands to the peculiar titles of local officials, Luke gets it right.

I know a lot of people (like my Dad) read the Bible devotionally, looking for feelings or trying to “get right with God” so they get blessings. But I think it’s helpful to look at things from an evidential point of view – how am I going to make a case for this? When you look at things from that perspective, the Bible gets a whole lot more interesting. And you can talk about it with non-Christians when you know about these interesting details.