I spent some time on the weekend looking over some nice videos featuring Dr. Stephen C. Meyer. The topics were theistic evolution and the existence of God. It occurred to me that Dr. Meyer is the top defender of Christian theism today. And it made me wonder why he doesn’t have the same standing in the Christian community as charismatic pastors like Matt Chandler.

Recently, Christian scholars J. P. Moreland, Stephen C. Meyer, Christopher Shaw, Ann Gauger and Wayne Grudem got together and wrote “Theistic Evolution” – a 1008 page case against theistic evolution. This book is important to help Christians reject Darwinian evolution, which is by definition unguided. Belief in evolution discourages Christians from using evidence for intelligent design in biology and paleontology to support theism, and also to persuade others to accept theism as true.

Dr. Meyer also put together a 3-book series documenting 4 areas that challenge atheism. “Signature in the Cell” talks about how the origin of the first living system requires information, and that effect is best explained as a result of an intelligent agent. “Darwin’s Doubt” talks about how an intelligent agent is the best explanation for the massive amount of information required to create so many body plans in the very short period of time known as the Cambrian explosion. “The Return of the God Hypothesis” talks about the origin of the universe and the fine-tuning of the universe for life. So we have FOUR arguments that falsify atheism. That’s powerful, effective Christianity. And he knows how to talk to lay audiences too – he did the first two True U DVD sets for Focus on the Family, which are for college students.

But almost no one except Christian apologists know who people like Stephen C. Meyer are. Instead, the leadership of the church seems to be dominated by charismatic pastors who haven’t demonstrated the ability to use evidence persuasively when interacting with non-Christians.

I found two videos of Matt Chandler at Dalrock blog, a famous blog with over 25 million page views.

Here’s an interview that Matt Chandler did with Vice TV:

Pastor Matt Chandler… is a contributor to The Gospel Coalition (TGC), the president of the Acts 29 church planting network and a council member of the ERLC. In the video below Chandler explains to Vice TV why so many evangelicals support President Trump.

Here’s the first video:

Here’s what Matt Chandler says about Trump’s popularity with evangelicals:

I think people are frightened. I think people are frightened at the speed at which things are changing culturally. So I think they begin to grasp for something that might help. The Obama presidency, great man, some of his policies and the way he rolled out his policies really really scared evangelicals. And without any kind of real help from Pastors and ministers to help us understand, the news media just whipped us into a frenzy and made people feel desperate.

[…]But I think especially around topics like homosexuality where we are quick to say it’s a sin.

[…][P]eople were terrified by that bathroom bill… the thought that their children were going to be in a bathroom with the opposite sex, and… that made [conservatives] go “whoever the opposition is to that I’m voting for” and then they lost their soul on that…

The Washington Times reported on a court case related to bathroom bills:

A federal judge on Wednesday rejected a Christian college’s request to halt the Biden administration’s directive on gender identity in dwellings.

The College of the Ozarks, a Christian college in Missouri, had argued the government order, which claims to fight discrimination against transgender people, impinges on the rights of Christians and violates Biblical beliefs.

The dispute sets up a new legal battle over religious liberty and gender identity.

Judge Roseann Ketchmark, an Obama appointee… announced she would deny the college’s request to issue an injunction against the rule, which requires that segregated facilities such as dorms and restrooms be based on a person’s gender identity.

That’s the sort of legislation pastors mean when they lament that Christians are too concerned about “bathroom bills”.

Dalrock found another Matt Chandler speech:

Pastor Matt Chandler does an outstanding job with both in his speech to Equip Austin, an event produced by the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) in 2015.

And here’s the second video:

Matt Chandler seems to be worried that Christians are not supportive enough of gay rights and gay activism:

One of the things I’ve seen is that some people are very terrified of homosexuality. The accusation that Christians are homophobic actually is true about certain Christians I’ve been around. They are mortified of homosexuals; they are grossed out by [them]. And the gospel (really on any subject) reshapes us to a place of compassion, it reshapes us to a place of love, and it reshapes us back to an eager hope for reconciliation in all things.

Thanks to pastors like Matt Chandler, I see so many “conservative” rank-and-file Christians justifying support for abortion and gay activism by appealing to “love” and “compassion”. And charismatic pastors do nothing to counter atheism, feminism and socialism with arguments or evidence. I would prefer that the handsome, charismatic pastors write articles to defend what the Bible teaches, using evidence to persuade non-Christians. I’ve written reasoned arguments against abortion and against same-sex marriage that appealed to non-Christians with evidence. And I’ve also written in opposition to the Equality Act, which eliminates religious liberty, and in opposition to the Women’s Health Protection Act, which eliminates state-level restrictions on abortion.

I’d like Christians to reject charismatic pastors and instead prefer Christian scholars who engage non-Christians with evidence. We need to defend what the Bible teaches on issues using evidence. Our job isn’t to compromise Christianity so that non-Christians accept us. Our job is to cast down speculations set up against the knowledge of God. And we do that by being ready for anyone who asks us for reasons for our hope.

I feature legal decisions from Canada on this blog. It’s an area of interest to me. Over the past decades, Canada has appointed many far-left judicial activists as judges, many of them progressive women. I’ve written about cases where the rights of men, fathers, husbands, Christians, churches and Christian universities were trampled by the courts. Today, I want to show you how bad it really is up north.

Today’s frightening story comes from Quillette, a web-site that features many voices from the center-left and left that question the far-left narrative. The article talks about the de-platforming and canceling of a lawyer named Sha4hdin F4rs4i. She’s a minority and a woman, but that didn’t save her from the secular leftist mob.

The article says:

The back story begins on December 16th, 2020, when the B.C. Provincial Court issued an announcement advising lawyers and the public of a new practice directive stipulating that all parties appearing in court would henceforth be asked to specify what pronouns they want others to use when referring to them, as well as their preferred forms of address. (Examples provided are “Mr./Ms./Mx./Counsel Jones.”) The Chief Justice of the B.C. Supreme Court issued a similar practice directive on the same day, though without a press release.

This policy, pushed by far-left lawyers, was done so that the courts would be more “inclusive” and “respectful of everyone”. And you’re going to see in a minute how “inclusive” and “respectful of everyone” left-wing fascists really are.

More:

On the surface, Sha4hdin F4rs4i may seem like an unlikely target for a progressive mob. She’s a young Iranian-Canadian lawyer whose B.C.-based practice has focused on dispute resolution and estate planning. Before joining a law firm, she clerked at the B.C. Supreme Court and obtained a master’s degree in Public Policy.

[…]To F4rs4i, the new directives from the B.C. courts represented a form of compelled speech—and not just in a nominal sense. Reciting one’s pronouns may seem like a mere courtesy, and no doubt, many people who do so intend it as such. But it also has a political and ideological connotation, as the ritual is meant to suggest that one’s biologically rooted (and outwardly observable) identity can be altered by declaration, and that everyone must accede to that self-identification, even in contexts where the interests of others are thereby affected.

In mid-January, F4rs4i’s article opposing the courts’ new policy was accepted by the Advoc4te, which is published by the Vancouver Bar Association and funded with fees collected from lawyers through the Law Society of B.C. F4rs4i’s essay was not a generalized rant against trans people (as critics would later claim), but a well-informed critique of a policy that, as F4rs4i persuasively argued, may serve to compromise a client’s legal interests in cases involving family law or alleged sexual assault…

According to the article, the far-left lawyers (called S0G1C) “allegedly threatened the Advoc4te with legal action, and raised the idea that the publication’s funding could be at stake, if they published F4rs4i’s piece.” See, that’s inclusive and respectful of everyone. Threatening people you disagree with with lawsuits and de-funding. Far-left activists really are tolerant people who are quite comfortable tolerating those who disagree with them, and letting them act according to their consciences. Real respecters of free speech and other human rights, they are.

Among the objections B4in received to F4rs4i’s (then unpublished) piece was an email from the aforementioned Adrienne Smith, who is described by the S0G1C as “the leading [gender] educator in this area within B.C.’s legal community.” Smith called the article “hateful, inflammatory, and wrong at law.” Smith also suggested that publication “would expose the Advoc4te to liability (or at least notoriety) in a human rights complaint for hateful publications.” S0G1C founder Barb4r4 Find14y personally telephoned B4in, “strongly encouraging” him not to publish the F4rs4i piece, and giving him “further case law citations to consider.”

Find14y speaks with some authority on these pressure tactics. In a 2016 seminar at the University of British Columbia, she told audience members:

Well, speaking as an organizer, the way—I mean, what I do is I file a human rights complaint. And I say, “Those regulations are deficient because … the omission of those kinds of things contravenes the Human Rights Code.” I do that without particular regard for whether ultimately I will be successful, because it’s an excellent pressure tool … And so then you’re armed with something more than your opinion. You’re armed with a legal duty. You say, “Don’t we have a legal duty to do this?” Yes, we do.

In the case of the Advoc4te, as it turned out, these tactics were successful: The editor was intimidated into killing F4rs4i’s piece.

They threatened them with legal action… in order to get the speech that they deemed “hateful” censored. That’s the secular left.

It was the tweets that really got me thinking, though:

So, the article they didn’t like wasn’t criticized LEGALLY. It was just declared hateful, mean, bigoted, and offensive. It wasn’t worth an intellectual response. It was worth a totalitarian fascist response.

Rather than accept what their consciences were telling them about the morality of their choices, secular left fascists  instead try to use power to force anyone who disagrees with them to celebrate and affirm what they were doing. Like this “I feel bad, but I’m not going to stop being immoral. I’ll just use the government to trample the human rights of people who disagree with me. I’ll start with taking away their basic human rights, like free speech, freedom of association, freedom of religion, parental rights, etc. Then I’ll move on to getting them fired, vandalizing their property, threatening them with death or injury, imprisoning them, seizing their children, or even actual violence.” And our culture looks to them for moral leadership in “inclusivism”, “diversity” and “respect”.

One neat thing about Canada’s descent into secular left fascism is that it spells the end of marriage. After all, marriage requires a certain minimum level of moral character, self-control and mental health. The stability of the relationship depends on it. What kind of stable relationships can you expect from secular left fascists? Who would be stupid enough to speak to these people – or have anything to do with them? Eventually, they (and the people watching them) will understand that you can’t go full psychopath and have a normal productive life that includes love and marriage. Everyone will learn what works from their self-destruction, and destruction of others.