News

Australia considers bill to criminalize free speech by Christians

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From the Australian. (H/T Thoughts Out Loud)

Excerpt:

Australians who wear a crucifix to work or offer to pray for a patient in hospital could run foul of a charter of rights, according to a British legal expert who says its introduction in this country would trigger an attack on religious expression.

Barrister Paul Diamond said equivalent laws in Britain had intensified religious resentment and introduced a degree of uncertainty into the rule of law.

He cited the example of a workplace dispute at British Airways in which the company had tried to prevent an employee from wearing a crucifix while permitting other workers to carry Sikh ceremonial knives and wear turbans and Muslim head scarfs.

Mr Diamond said the secular ideology of the British Human Rights Act was being used to politicise the judiciary and eradicate “unacceptable religious viewpoints on same-sex, on women, on a whole range of moral issues”.

[…]He said one of his most frightening cases concerned a man known as David Booker who was threatened with dismissal for telling a co-worker that Christians opposed pre-marital sex and same-sex relations.

“She had asked him about his Christian faith. She complained and he was suspended and would have been sacked had we not intervened. It was a private sector employer interpreting their diversity policy to eliminate offensive Christian viewpoints from the culture.”

Here are some stories from the UK:

Canada has similar infringements on religious expression because of the anti-Christian Canadian Human Rights Act.

And bad things are already happening the United States.

My recommendation? Don’t vote for Democrats like Obama.

News

OB-GYN doctor quits medicine over $160,000 malpractice insurance premiums

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Story at the NY Post. (H/T Stop the ACLU via ECM)

Warner Todd Huston comments on the story:

Doctor Jacquelline Perlman has had it. After a 12-year career as an OB-GYN doctor she his quitting her practice.

[…]Last spring her insurer dropped her and several of her fellow doctors because of the high risk of covering OB-GYNs. Dr. Perlman’s new insurer was to charge $160,000 a year for coverage and that proved too much for Perlman to take.

Perlman noted that over the last five years, as her insurance costs multiplied, her actual income dropped by 20 percent.

So, another good doctor — one that has never had a malpractice case stick to her — leaves the profession. Now, before some of you out there assume the insurance companies is the villain here, let us pinpoint the real villain: trial lawyers.

It is the nuisance lawsuits, those filed merely to harass doctors in order to get a quick settlement, and lawyers that game the system with nonsense lawsuits as well as clients looking for a lottery-like payout that will make them instant millionaires that cause this problem.

Click here to read the rest. Remember, the Democrats are heavily supported by the trial lawyer lobby, and therefore tort reform was not included in the health care reform bill.

Polemics

How is Christianity different from other world religions?

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Peter Sean Bradley comments on the Hindu/Christian debate I posted yesterday. The debate really showed the difference between how Hindus view religion and how Christians view religion. I thought one of his points was particularly interesting.

Peter Sean Bradley writes:

According to Professor Philip Carey, Christianity is unique in the religious-sphere because of its obsession with the person of Jesus.  Because Christianity is about a person, it is essential to know who that person is, which therefore puts a heavy emphasis on doctrine, specifically correct doctrine, about the person of Jesus.  Christianity is thus a faith rather than simply a practice and faith – being intellectual adherence to ideas – are by definition exclusive.  One can, for example, be faithful to many things, until there is a conflict among those things, and then the true faith has to be determined. This is the reason for the Christian obsession with orthodoxy, i.e., “correct belief,” rather than some Christian proclivity for hair-splitting.

The apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:12-14:

12But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?

13If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.

14And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.

Basically, Christianity is the only religion that stands or falls on a historical event: the resurrection. Either it happened or it didn’t. And the job of every individual is to test for themselves and act accordingly. Christianity is about truth – what really happened. If people are just interested in religion to comfort them, or to spur them towards good deeds, or as a cultural/ethnic identity, or as a set of rules and rituals, then they cannot be Christians.

Consider the words of Jesus from John 18:36-37, when he is being questioned by Pilate:

36Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.”

37“You are a king, then!” said Pilate.
Jesus answered, “You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

And it turns out that Hindus are not the only ones who tend to think that religion is not about propositional truth. Peter Sean Bradley cites this interview with Paula Fredricksen, a Jewish historian who specializes in ancient history. Paula says that even Judaism is not exclusive in the sense that it required pagans to abandon other gods in order to worship in the Jewish synagogue.

My experience dealing with Jewish believers is that they have one of two views. The ones I’ve met were either cultural Jews who are functional atheists, or they believed that a religion is “true” so long as it results in good works. In my experience, debates and apologetics are not emphasized in Judaism, (or in Hinduism). Two of my favorite radio talk show hosts are Jewish. Michael Medved (orthodox) and Dennis Prager (Reformed), have both stated this point of view on air many times.