There’s a new article the UK Telegraph, with the headline: “Government ‘withholding data that may link Covid jab to excess deaths’”. The subtitle is “UKHSA argued that releasing figures would lead to ‘distress or anger’ of bereaved relatives if connection were discovered”. The UK government, a leader in COVID hysteria, is refusing to release data that would show what they caused.

It says:

The public health watchdog has been accused of a “cover-up” after refusing to publish data that could link the Covid vaccine to excess deaths.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) argued that releasing the data would lead to the “distress or anger” of bereaved relatives if a link were to be discovered.

Public health officials also argued that publishing the data risked damaging the well-being and mental health of the families and friends of people who died.

Last year, a cross-party group expressed alarm about “growing public and professional concerns” over the UK’s rates of excess deaths since 2020.

In a letter to UKHSA and Department for Health, the MPs and peers said that potentially critical data – which map the date of people’s Covid vaccine doses to the date of their deaths – had been released to pharmaceutical companies but not put into the public domain.

[…]UsForThem, a campaign group, requested that UKHSA release the data under freedom of information laws. But the agency refused, making a number of different arguments including that publishing the data “could lead to misinformation” that would “have an adverse impact on vaccine uptake” in the public.

It’s important to be skeptical of any dogmas embraced by the secular left. They are alarmed by human freedom and personal responsibility, so they tend to seize on anything that that attacks them. Their goal being to equalize outcomes for all, regardless of persona life choices. They don’t like that some people choose to buy big SUVs. They don’t like that some people live in big houses. They don’t like that some people have a lot of children. They don’t like that some people send their kids to better private schools. They REALLY don’t like when families homeschool their kids. They want everyone to agree with them, and they often use government to achieve that goal. That’s why they get so excited when everyone isn’t moving in the same direction that they want. Like with Darwinian evolution, man-made global warming, and pandemics.

Keep in mind that people were losing their jobs left, right and center because of their refusal to take these vaccines. And anything you said online was being scrutinized to shut down your free speech.

Now might be a good time to review my reason for not taking any COVID vaccines: manufacturer liability waivers. I simply do not use products made by companies who bear no consequences for causing me harm. That’s also my reason for disliking government monopolies by the way. I don’t like big government, because so often, they have get-out-of-jail-free cards for their crimes – just look at Hillary Clinton’s private, unsecure e-mail server as a good example.

This far-left CNBC article is from December 2020, and it says:

If you experience severe side effects after getting a Covid vaccine, lawyers tell CNBC there is basically no one to blame in a U.S. court of law.

The federal government has granted companies like Pfizer
and Moderna
immunity from liability if something unintentionally goes wrong with their vaccines.

“It is very rare for a blanket immunity law to be passed,” said Rogge Dunn, a Dallas labor and employment attorney. “Pharmaceutical companies typically aren’t offered much liability protection under the law.“

You also can’t sue the Food and Drug Administration for authorizing a vaccine for emergency use, nor can you hold your employer accountable if they mandate inoculation as a condition of employment.

Congress created a fund specifically to help cover lost wages and out-of-pocket medical expenses for people who have been irreparably harmed by a “covered countermeasure,” such as a vaccine. But it is difficult to use and rarely pays. Attorneys say it has compensated less than 6% of the claims filed in the last decade.

And then there was a more recent article from the far-left Bloomberg News in December 2024, letting us know that these get-out-of-consequences-free cards had been extended:

The US Department of Health and Human Services is extending through 2029 liability protections for those producing and administering Covid-19 vaccines, in a move to guard against future potential health emergencies.

[…]The announcement comes as people working in the vaccine injury space have called for Covid-19 vaccines to be covered under the HHS’ Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Known as the VICP, the program pays people injured by standard childhood vaccines and shields drugmakers from litigation.

Covid-19 vaccine injuries aren’t currently covered by the VICP.

Extending the protection from liability was one of the last things that Biden (or his autopen) did, on his way out.

People need to be wise when deciding who to believe about things. Most of the people in the commanding heights of this society think that the universe is eternal, that there’s a viable naturalistic explanation for things like the origin of life, the Cambrian explosion, cosmic fine-tuning, etc. People believe that abortion doesn’t take a human life and that human action has more effect on global temperatures than solar activity. So, that’s how some people arrive at their beliefs – whatever makes them feel good. Whatever makes them get approval from the elites. Whatever leads to more and bigger government making everyone “equal” – especially equal in their beliefs about things.

These people haven’t done any work to investigate anything themselves. It’s just convenient for them to believe it. In totalitarian regimes, lots of people committed atrocities because that’s what was easiest for them. The trick is spotting the trends and getting out before they can force you to go along with their schemes.

My favorite news web site to read every day after I have a look at Twitter is The Federalist. Imagine my surprise when I found not one, not two, but three columns about how feminism harms young women. And all of them written by women! Normally, when I read these columns, the authors make it sound as though it is men who are to blame for bad outcomes. But none of these did that.

Here’s the first one by Brooke Brandtjen, entitled “NYC Women Voted For Mamdani Because They Can’t Bag a Man“. That was the original title, she changed it to something almost as good.

Here is my favorite part – explaining how Democrats trick women into voting for big government:

Left-wing politics are predatory. Democrats make emotional arguments — about “empathy,” “equity,” contrived “rights,” and “safety” — which largely appeal to a notoriously emotional demographic. In fact, Democrat leaders want the government to fill a husband-like role, making their constituents dependents of the state — and they’ve been working toward it for years. Remember former President Barack Obama’s “Life of Julia” campaign in 2012, for instance. Playing on female anxieties about college, health insurance, motherhood, and career, Democrats made women feel vulnerable and presented the government as a sort of benevolent husband for every point in “Julia’s” life. Compared to Mamdani’s radical communist agenda, Obama’s vision feels tame, but it offered Democrats a playbook for targeting young women.

Conservative logic often takes a backseat to left-wing talking points. Abortion advocates cry “my body, my choice” to make young women feel empowered, while simultaneously stripping them of agency and true femininity. Social justice warriors tell them “love is love,” “diversity is strength,” and “silence is violence.” Corporate media post photos of crying illegal aliens facing deportation to show how cruel American border enforcement is. Democrats rely on emotional manipulation to get their base out to vote.

Many of these young women are also crippled by student loan debt. Gen Z has the fastest annual student loan compound interest rate, a whopping 6.72 percent. Almost half of Gen Z has student loan debt. The good careers they were promised from their overpriced colleges aren’t as readily available as they had hoped, either. With a staggering number of entry-level positions being outsourced to foreigners or AI, there is less chance they will earn a salary that chips away at their compounding interest.

After being lied to about living in a fascist, intolerant, sexist society and crushing themselves under a mountain of debt, it’s no surprise that young women are scrambling to alleviate the pain. The number of young women prescribed SSRIs has skyrocketed in recent years, and many of them are in therapy. Young women are conditioned to be sad, angry, and financially unstable.

Honestly, you have to read the whole thing, it is a masterpiece. The author attends a Bible-based church in Wisconsin, so if you are a young man out there, you might see if she is single, and if she is, ask her out on a date. Because I don’t think she will be single for long.

Here is the second article, written by Jennifer Galardi, entitled “Most Women Are On Crazy Pills, And It’s Bad For Everyone“.

The title is already great, but here is an excerpt:

The ease of self-diagnosis, combined with increased accessibility to SSRIs, has led a large number of young women to pursue medical intervention for their problems. Approximately one in four adult women in the United States reported taking at least one psychiatric medication (antidepressants, anxiolytics/sedatives, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, or ADHD drugs) in the past year, according to recent CDC National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) data.

Approximately 17 percent of college students (ages 18–25) use psychiatric meds, mirroring wider population trends — and the percentage of female college students taking these meds is likely much higher. Bottom line — adjusting for trends over the past few years — roughly 30-35 million American women are currently on at least one psychiatric medication, with the true number likely closer to 35 million because overall mental-health treatment (including medication) has risen every year since the pandemic (23.9 percent of all adults in 2023).

When I was 18-25, I remember spending my money on an occasional computer game. Maybe I would buy Harpoon, and go hunting for Soviet submarines with sonobuoys, SOSUS and sonars in the GIUK Gap. I learned a lot about modern warfare from playing that game. Or maybe I would buy a boxed wargame, and play that with my friends. Boy hobbies are certainly a lot more wholesome than the girl hobby of doing drugs. And less expensive!

Anyway, the third one is a bit sad. It’s by Jordan Boyd, and it’s entitled “Kelsea Ballerini’s ‘I Sit In Parks’ Exposes The Heartbreak Of Buying Girl Boss Lies“.

The whole thing is wonderful, showing how young women are being taught by celebrities to delay marriage for careers. In this case, the celebrity is Kelsea Ballerini (I’ve never heard of her).

It starts like this:

Kelsea Ballerini is suffering from a broken heart. The 32-year-old’s troubles do not necessarily stem from an off-again, on-again relationship with beau Chase Stokes, though that probably plays a role. Rather, Ballerini’s obvious emotional ache comes from a deep longing to be a wife and mother.

Ballerini’s real-time struggle between the girl boss identity she bought into at just 19 years-old and the reality that it’s left her “sitting in parks” coveting the love and memories made by families with kids is documented in her latest release “I Sit In Parks”.

And this is the part I loved, it really shows you what is going on:

Ballerini doesn’t explicitly say it in her song, but she appears to have some regret about the end of her nearly five-year marriage in 2022. After all, her relationship with fellow country music star Morgan Evans was the closest she’s gotten to the life she now desperately dreams of and desires in her latest song.

At the time of the split, Ballerini claimed the two went their separate ways due to “irreconcilable differences.” It wasn’t until later that she admitted her devotion to her career and her unwillingness to have children at the time — if at all — played key roles in the divorce.

Women don’t get a lot of wisdom from conservative men these days. Conservative men seem to be afraid to tell young women the truth about the likely outcomes of their decisions. Those men are weak men, because they put their desire to be liked by women above their obligation to protect women by telling them the truth. Some of them got married to feminists, and just don’t want to get kicked out of the bedroom – or get served with divorce papers.

It’s fashionable today to just let women chase their careers into their 30s. People want to blame men for not marrying career women when they are in their 30s. But men don’t want to marry a woman who works full-time and who puts the kids in daycare and public schools. Besides, those men probably had their proposals rejected by the career women when those women were in their 20s.

It’s better to warn young women about making bad decisions when they are still young enough to change course. That’s what these three articles do. So, I’d like you to read them and share them.

At the last Sound Faith conference in 2024, I heard about a magnificent presentation by Michael Licona, that was based on his academic publications but presented with a slideshow to the layperson. In that presentation, he made a case that there was more flexibility for authors of biographies in ancient times than modern people understand.

My reaction to his presentation was that Christians who like normal inerrancy (and I do like my inerrancy that way) can keep it. But if you are fighting a skeptic like Bart Ehrman, then according to Licona, you can find enough flexibility in the style of ancient biographers to avoid contradictions in the Bible by understanding how ancient biographers worked.

So, I have been hoping that this presentation would become available, and now and here it is: 

Share that with all your non-Christian friends.

This presentation draws on Mike’s academic work, for example, his book “Why Are There Differences in the Gospels?: What We Can Learn from Ancient Biography” which was published in 2016 by Oxford University Press.

This book is not designed for evangelizing people who already accept the traditional view of inerrancy in the Bible. This is a book designed to allow skeptics to stop getting hung up on alleged contradictions. None of you reading this post needs to be convinced about inerrancy. But Bart Ehrman does, and so we need someone extra clever to make a special academic university press case designed for him.

Anyway, here is the news about the debate, which is their eighth debate! It happens on the first day of the Sound Faith 2025 conference, November 20-22, in Boston, Massachusetts:

This November, join Sound Faith 2025 in Boston for a three-day conference to learn from and engage with the most influential voices defending the Christian faith today. Held at the beautiful Tremont Temple Baptist Church, this event will feature interactive sessions on topics such as God’s existence, the resurrection of Jesus, faith and science, and more. One of the feature events will be a hard-hitting debate between Christian historian Michael Licona and agnostic textual critic Bart Ehrman – on a topic neither has ever publicly debated before! We’ll also have an in-depth discussion on the resurrection between Licona and Dale Allison, whom William Lane Craig described as “a very prominent New Testament scholar of considerable repute.” Our tremendous speaker lineup includes philosophers, historians, professional apologists, social media influencers, and more! The magic of these conferences happens when attendees are able to ask questions and have discussions with speakers and other attendees, so throughout the conference there will be tons of interactive opportunities, both inside and outside of the presentations. Our goal is this: to equip you with a SOUND FAITH ready to face the toughest challenges facing Christianity today!

The debate is on day 1 of the conference and then on day 2, Mike has to go up against another high-power historian, Dale Allison. Rose and I both have Dale Allison’s book on the resurrection, because although he is skeptical, everyone thinks his work on this topic is top shelf quality.

Now, I want to say one more thing about Mike’s arguments and who they are for. I had a friend Murdina (“Dina”) who lived in Inverness, Scotland and she was my best friend for a long time until she passed away. Just the wisest person you could ever meet. She had multiple degrees in medicine and was extremely respected in health care management. She was also Young Earth, King James Bible only, and super, hyper Calvinist. She used to call the middle knowledge view that I hold to “Middle Earth Hobbitry”. And she had lots of mocking nicknames for everything else that I liked, for example, calling my the Etrian Odyssey series of games that I love so much “Estrogen Oddity”. (Best. Music. Ever. And here is my favorite remix!)

Anyway, Dina had an atheist younger brother, who had abandoned the faith of the family and become an atheist. Because I had been buying her all the best books about evidential apologetics (Stephen C. Meyer) and free market economics (Thomas Sowell), she had really learned a lot about how to make a case with evidence. One day, her brother came up from Glasgow for a fishing trip. And Dina called me on Skype and dropped her phone into her pocket, so that I could hear them talking. Then she let her brother have it with both apologetics fists for about 2 hours. She used the arguments of old-Earth intelligent design and the minimal facts case for the resurrection of Jesus to smash every single objection he made from his brittle atheistic fundamentalist view of Christianity. By the end, he was so flustered that he started to say the most incoherent things, and I laughed and laughed at how badly she had beaten him.

For weeks after, this atheist brother would text her constantly, trying over and over to wiggle out from the thrashing that she had given him. But there was no escape. Although he had mocked her constantly prior to this engagement, in private and in public, he never ever mocked her again.

I asked her why she used the mainstream science arguments and the minimal facts argument, instead of just quoting the Bible to him, or trying to argue young Earth or KJV only. And she said “first step is to get him into the church. After that, I will fix his wrong views about the young Earth, my beloved KJV, and Reformed theology”.

I tell you all this so that you will understand how I see Mike Licona’s work. It is a tool for the most hardened skeptics. The first step, as Phillip E. Johnson used to say, is to get the thin edge of the wedge into the log. After that comes the hammering.

I don’t think anyone has ever debated the reliability of the gospels with an academic skeptic like Bart Ehrman eight times. To me, that says that Mike is a special person who is able to make friends with his opponents, so that they keep coming back. He isn’t rude, insulting and abrasive. So you have a rare package of extraordinary ability as a historian, paired with extraordinary character. And that’s what allows him to make a difference.