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Republicans introduce bill to block tax on pro-life religious institutions

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First, let’s look at this article from Life News, which discusses the tax that Obamacare imposes on pro-life religious institutions.

Excerpt:

The new Obama mandate that requires religious groups to pay for birth control and drugs that may cause abortions for their employees could result in fines as much as $2,000 per employee or $100 each day if they refuse to comply.

Recently, Republicans in Congress asked the Congressional Research Service to examine the new mandate and the consequences for employers that do not want to follow it because it would violate their consciences and CRS issued a document finding noncompliant employers could face federal fines of $100 per day per employee.

“If a group health plan or health insurance issuer failed to provide contraceptive services pursuant to guidelines authorized by ACA, it seems possible … that a plan participant could be able to bring a claim for that benefit,” the memo states.

The report indicates the IRS is empowered to levy a tax penalty on noncompliant religious employers of $100 per day for each employee in their health plan.

Commerce Committee Republicans, according to Politico, are not happy with the findings.

“Implementing a federal mandate that violates the conscience of an individual or organization, regardless of their religious affiliation or organizational purpose, is in direct violation with the First Amendment,” the committee said in a release announcing the report. “Imposing a fine on these individuals pours salt in the wound.”

They said, according to Politico, that a charity or hospital with 100 employees “chooses to exercise its religious rights instead of complying with the Obamacare mandate, it could be subject to a $3.65 million annual fine.

The Republicans have introduced a bill to block the tax on pro-lifers who object to being forced to dispense drugs that cause abortions.

Excerpt:

“Sebelius’s taxman is coming. Sebelius’s taxman is coming.”

That was the rallying cry of Jim Sensenbrenner on Tuesday in the House of Representatives, where along with his chief co-sponsor Diane Black, he announced the Religious Freedom Tax Repeal Act, meant to be “a follow-on” to the recently concluded Fortnight for Freedom called for by the U.S. Catholic bishops, focusing on prayer and education about religious liberty.

The Freedom Tax Repeal Act seeks to “shock people into how confiscatory the taxes imposed would be for those who choose not to violate their consciences are,” Representative Sensenbrenner tells me.

“What has not been discussed” in most of the debate over the Department of Health and Human Services contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drug mandate, Sensenbrenner says, “is the tax that is imposed upon those that fail to comply with that mandate, either through religious objections or moral grounds. Those taxes are severe; they are confiscatory.”

“It is $100 per employee per day,” Sensenbrenner says, spelling out the taxing implications out. “So, a religious institution that, say, has a church and an elementary school beside it that has 50 employees total, which include the administrative and maintenance personnel, end up being taxed $36,500 per employee per year. Or the 50-employee institution would have to pay a tax of $1,825,000 per year, every year.

A lot of people who claim to be pro-life seem to think that Obamacare is a great idea, but one wonders whether they know anything about the law at all – or whether they are really as pro-life as they claim to be.

Mentoring

How to apologize effectively: responsibility, restitution, repentance

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One of my friends recommended this book “Things I Wish I’d Known Before We Got Married” by Gary Chapman, so I got it and read it this weekend. The book re-capped one of his other books about the 5 languages of apologies or something.

Here’s a re-cap of his five languages of apologies.

Here are the two that I want to emphasize:

Apology Language #3: Making Restitution

In the public arena, our emphasis upon restitution is based upon our sense of justice. The one who commits the crime should pay for the wrongdoing. In contrast, in the private sphere of family and other close relationships, our desire for restitution is almost always based upon our need for love. After being hurt deeply, we need the reassurance that the person who hurt us still loves us.

“How could they love me and do that?” is the question that lingers in our minds. The words “I’m sorry; I was wrong” may not be enough.

For some people, restitution is their primary apology language. For them the statement, “It is not right for me to have treated you that way,” must be followed with “What can I do to show you that I still care about you?” Without this effort at restitution, this person will question the sincerity of the apology. They will continue to feel unloved even though you may have said, “I am sorry; I was wrong.” They wait for the reassurance that you genuinely love them.

The question, then, is how do we make restitution in the most effective way? Since the heart of restitution is reassuring the spouse or family member that you genuinely love him or her, it is essential to express restitution in the love language of the other person.

[…]If restitution is the primary apology language of an individual, then this becomes the most important part of the apology. “I’m sorry; I was wrong” will never be taken as sincere if these words are not accompanied by a sincere effort at restitution. They wait for the assurance that you still genuinely love them. Without your effort to make amends, the apology will not have the desired results of forgiveness.

Apology Language #4: Genuinely Repenting

The word repentance means “to turn around” or “to change one’s mind.” In the context of an apology, it means that an individual realizes that his or her present behavior is destructive. The person regrets the pain he or she is causing the other person, and he chooses to change his behavior.

Without genuine repentance, the other languages of apology may fall on deaf ears. What people who’ve been hurt want to know is, “Do you intend to change, or will this happen again next week?”

How then do we speak the language of repentance?

  • It begins with an expression of intent to change. When we share our intention to change with the person we have offended, we are communicating to them what is going on inside of us. They get a glimpse of our heart—and this often is the language that convinces them we mean what we say.
  • The second step down the road of repentance is developing a plan for implementing change. Often apologies fail to be successful in restoring the relationship because there is no plan for making positive change.
  • The third step down the road of repentance is implementing the plan. Following through with the plan gives evidence to the offended party that your apology was sincere.

Most people do not expect perfection after an apology, but they do expect to see effort.

Thus, expressing your desire to change and coming up with a plan is an extremely important part of an apology to this person. Inviting the offended person to help you come up with a plan for change is perhaps the best way to effectively show repentance.

I think this is somewhat useful, but I wanted to add some of my own thoughts to make it more practical.

Here are some practical tips that I recommend to someone who has done something morally wrong and who wants to apologize.

To fix the problem you need more than talk

To me, the only thing that needs an apology is breaking a moral rule – you can’t beat someone up for just making a mistake. Whenever someone breaks a moral rule with me, like disrespecting me or being selfish, then I pick out a book for them to read and ask them to read it and then write something about how what they learned in the book applies to what they did to me. I don’t pick very long books! But I do this for a very important reason.

The very important reason is that I don’t trust people who just agree with me. I don’t trust people’s words. If someone is really sorry about something, then I want them to read something that describes the moral rule that they broke, and explains what place the moral rule has in some plan for achieving some greater goal. Let me give an example.

Suppose that I am friends with a young lady who wants me to help her to get her atheist uncle, who has a degree in physics, to consider whether Christian theism might not be true. I accept her quest and begin to negotiate with Dr. Michael Strauss, a particle physicist who does research on the top quark at Fermilab, and also teaches physics at the University of Oklahoma – Norman. I contact Dr. Strauss, and contact Lawrence Krauss, the atheist physicist, and I set up a debate between them at the local university. I notify her of my plan, and she promises to bring her uncle to the debate.

The day of the debate comes and it goes off without a hitch – Strauss demolishes Krauss, and Krauss cries for his mommy. The audience laughs at Krauss and he runs away sobbing into the night, clutching his Darwin doll tightly. I beam with delight at a plan perfectly executed, and then look around for the young lady and her uncle, so that we can all go out for a late dinner with Dr. Strauss. But she and her uncle are nowhere to be found! I rush around the auditorium frantically, but to no avail. Finally, in desperation, I call her cell phone.

She answers. I say “where are you? where is your evil uncle Dawkins? The debate is over and we won!”. She says “Oh, I totally forgot. The worship leader at the local mega church had a better idea anyway. She invited me over to her church with my uncle to try snake-handling instead.” Me: “You did what???!!!” She (excited): “Yes, this is a lot more fun than a stuffy debate, and my uncle is about to play patty-cake with a harmless rattlesnake, and… uh oh”. Me: “Oh no…” She: “Um, I’ll call you back. I need to make a call right now.“. Click.

Wow, that’s pretty awful.

So here’s what I would expect from her by way of apology.

  1. Read something on science apologetics as a make-up assignment. Something like Edgar Andrews’ “Who Made God?“.
  2. Listen to Dr. Michael Strauss’ lecture on science apologetics, which he delivered at Stanford University.
  3. Go back to the uncle and sit down with him and watch Dr. Michael Strauss’ lecture on science apologetics from Stanford University, which is up on Youtube.
  4. When the lecture is over, talk with the uncle about his remaining questions, and be available should he think of any more questions.

This would make up for all the work I put into the event because it fixes the problem, and it makes sure that it will never happen again.

The goals of this apology is not just to hear the words “I’m sorry”. It’s not even just about making me feel better. I think the real customer of a mistake like this is God, who is not well served by ineffective Christians. My goal is to prepare her for future evangelism, and for future nurturing of any children she might have. The only way to convince someone to take the right course of action the next time is to change their mind between the time they failed and the next time they try again. There is no way to change how a person behaves unless they convince themselves by reading about the issues, on their own time, through their own effort.

For more on how beliefs change, see this lecture by J.P. Moreland, entitled “Love Your God With All Your Mind“.

News

Sean McDowell reviews Sam Harris’ new book “Free Will”

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Jay Watts of LTI tweeted this book review by Sean McDowell.

Excerpt:

After rightly emphasizing the importance of the question of free will, Harris concludes, “Free will is an illusion” (p. 5). According to Harris, we are not the conscious source of our actions and we could not have behaved differently in the past than we did. He says, “I, as the conscious witness of my experience, no more initiate events in my prefrontal cortex than I cause my heart to beat” (9). “In physical terms,” says Harris, “we know that every human action can be reduced to a series of impersonal events” (27).

Harris rightly points out that there are three main approaches to the problem of free will and determinism: determinism, libertarianism, and compatibilism. He then says, “Today, the only philosophically respectable way to endorse free will is to be a compatibilist” (16). But if determinism were true, as Harris asserts, why would any position be philosophically unrespectable? After all, people are determined to hold their beliefs—whether compatibilist, libertarian, or determinist—by forces outside of their control. Why would he bother to critique other positions if the people who hold them couldn’t have believed differently? In fact, his critique is just the result of chemicals moving in his brain, so why do they matter? What makes his chemicals more respectable than others?

Later in the book Harris says that giving up free will (and becoming more aware of the background causes of our feelings) allows people to have greater creative control over their lives. “Getting behind our conscious thoughts and feelings,” says Harris, “can allow us to steer a more intelligent course through our lives” (p. 47). Do you see the contradiction? The idea of “steering” a more intelligent course through life, of course, has no meaning in a deterministic world. On Harris’ view we can’t steer anything! The belief that we can steer our lives is an illusion. All of our beliefs and behavior are entirely the result of forces outside our control. In one breath Harris says all our beliefs are determined, but then in another breath he speaks about steering the course of our lives. Which is it?

[…]He says that dispensing with the idea of free will allows us to focus on things that matter most—assessing risk, protecting the innocent, and deterring crime (p. 53). He seems to be implying that we ought to accept his deterministic views for the betterment of mankind. Yet again, if determinism is true then we can’t change any of our beliefs—we can’t freely follow his logic since our beliefs are already set. The very fact that he argues for his position undermines his stated belief in determinism.

Sean McDowell did a debate a while back in which he argued that morality was not rationally grounded on atheism because atheism denies free will, and free will is necessary for making moral choices. And here is the atheist Lawrence Krauss denying that free will exists. It’s very hard to see how there could be any freedom of the will if humans are just matter in motion, which is the view of humans that fits most naturally with atheism.

Another atheist William Provine also 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.

Like Provine, Krauss also denied that objective morality existed at all in his debate with William Lane Craig. His view is that morality evolves in different times and places arbitrarily, and that whatever evolves in any group is right for them in their time and place. It’s important to understand what the implications of atheism are for things like rationality and morality.

I always thought that the “freethought” name that atheists sometimes apply to themselves was ironic for that reason. Not only are they not free, but they have no non-physical minds to think with, either.