Tag Archives: Atheism

News

Is Barack Obama responsible for rising gas prices?

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Here’s an article that takes a look at the effects of his energy policies. (H/T Ari)

Excerpt:

With gasoline currently above $3 per gallon nationwide and economists expecting that price to rise even further in 2011, America should be getting serious about producing more of its own resources. But instead of focusing on how to bring more relief to American motorists, President Obama has imposed massive new regulations, restrictions, and even threatened higher taxes on American energy, all of which negatively impact domestic production.

What follows is a list of the five most egregious actions on the part of the Obama administration that have contributed to higher gasoline prices and greater dependence on foreign dictators for our energy…

Here’s the one I thought was the most interesting:

Cancelling existing permits: Immediately after taking office in 2009, President Obama’s handpicked Secretary of the Department of Interior, Ken Salazar, canceled 77 leases for oil and gas drilling in Utah. The fact that this was one of the administration’s first regulatory decisions meant that American energy companies were immediately concerned about their ability to produce oil and gas in the future, injecting a level of uncertainty into the market that moves the country away from job creation and economic recovery. One year later, the administration canceled 61 more leases, this time in Montana, as part of President Obama’s war on global warming.

And here’s the conclusion:

Why has President Obama led the charge to restrict American energy? The answer is elusive, and it’s anyone’s guess what his administration will do (if anything) to fight for lower gasoline prices. But if past statements from him and his administration are any indication, the U.S. could be stuck (absent major legislative and regulatory changes) with prohibitively high gasoline prices: Then-Senator Obama said on the campaign trail in 2008 that he doesn’t object to high oil prices as long as they come about gradually, and Secretary of Energy Steven Chu once famously said he hoped the U.S. would “boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” where prices are currently about $7 per gallon.

Yes, it’s true. People on the left are willing to enact policies that cost consumers more money, reduce the number of jobs for Americans, outsource energy production to other countries, and even pay our enemies to produce energy in ways that are more damaging to the environment than our ways of producing energy. This is the Democrat way. They don’t care about you having cheaper energy prices, they don’t care about creating jobs for Americans, and they don’t care about reducing pollution. If you want to see where this is going, just look at the policies of the socialist Dalton McGuinty in Ontario, Canada.

Why do they do this? Well, people on the secular left are often stuck believing in doomsday predictions about overpopulation and resource exhaustion that were discredited years ago. Having rejected God’s sovereignty over the universe as part of their embrace of moral relativism and rejection of ultimate accountability, they look to big government to reduce the uncertainties and fears of a mindless, random universe.

If no one is in charge, then anything could happen, they think – and they are frightened. Thus, they look to government to coerce people to behave predictably, and also to reduce the total number of people (abortion, DDT bans, purges of dissenters, etc.). And of course fussing about imaginary bogeymen like global warming gives them an inflated sense of self-righteousness and justifies their nanny-state micro-managing of ignorant taxpaying businesses and workers.

These are not good people. These are not competent people.

Commentary

Why do young Christians become atheists in college?

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Here’s a post on Sean McDowell’s blog about how Paul Vitz, professor of psychology at New York University, lost his faith in college.

Excerpt:

In fact, he believes the major barriers to belief in God are not rational but psychological. Psychological factors are not determinative, but strongly shape our perception and approach to God.

To see how this relates to kids leaving the faith, let’s briefly consider Vitz’ own story. He grew up in a “wishy-washy” Christian home in the Midwest. He became an atheist in grad school and remained so until his re-conversion back to Christianity in his late thirties. While he would have denied it at the time, he now realizes that his reasons for becoming an atheist from 18-38 were “intellectually superficial and largely without a deep thought basis”. Vitz is convinced that this phenomenon is widespread today.

Rather than reasoning to his atheistic beliefs, he was simply socialized into them. He cites three reasons for his initial conversion. First, he had a degree of social unease coming from the Midwest. It seemed terribly dull, provincial, middle class, and narrow. He wanted to be part of the glamorous secular world at Michigan when he arrived on campus as an undergrad. Just think about all the young people arriving in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago or other big cities or campuses who are embarrassed by their fundamental upbringing. This kind of socialization, says Vitz, has pushed many people away from God.

Second, he wanted to be accepted by the powerful and influential people in his field of psychology. His professors at Stanford had two things in common—their intense ambition and rejection of religion. Vitz concludes, “In this environment, just as I had learned how to dress like a college student by putting on the right clothes, I also learned to think like a proper psychologist by putting on the right, that is, atheistic or skeptical, ideas and attitudes”.

The third factor is personal convenience. Vitz explains, “The fact is, it is quite inconvenient to be a serious believer in today’s neo-pagan world. I would have to give up many pleasures, some money and a good deal of time. I didn’t have enough pleasures, I didn’t have enough time, and I didn’t have enough money to do any of that as far as I was concerned”. Doubts about God often follow when young people grasp how inconvenient Christianity can really be. I’ve had countless discussions with young people about God, the Bible, evolution, and other apologetic issues only to discover that what is really driving their doubts is immoral behavior (usually sex). This is not always true, but I’m surprised how many times it is.

This is what parents need to prepare for before sending their children off to college. Do you have a plan?

 

 

Commentary

Should Christians support government-run day care?

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Recently, a Gallup poll came out about human origins.

Here was an interesting finding in the survey:

A significantly higher percentage of Republicans indicated a creationist view of human origins, which Gallup experts say reflects in part the strong relationship between religion and politics in contemporary America. Republicans are also significantly more likely to attend church weekly than are others. Democrats and Independents showed similar views on human origins:

  • Republicans: 36 percent think humans evolved through a God-guided process; 8 percent say God had no part in the process; and 52 percent held the creationist view.
  • Democrats: 40 percent agree with evolution through a God-guided process; 20 percent say God had no part in the process; and 34 percent held the creationist view.
  • Independents: 39 percent agree with evolution through a God-guided process; 21 percent say God had no part in the process; and 34 percent held the creationist view.

Gallup officials wrote that it’s not surprising some 80 percent of Americans hold a view of human origins that involves God, since most Americans believe in God and about 85 percent identify with a religion.

What I find interesting is this – how the heck can someone be a young earth creationist, (which is a view that people can only hold because they are getting it out of the Bible), and yet vote for Democrats? Democrats stand for the enlargement of the secular leftist state, for the destruction of marriage and family, and for the complete elimination of religious liberty and traditional morality from the public square. No mature, authentic Christian votes Democrat.

What happens when Christians for left-wing parties?

Now, with that said, let’s look at the most liberal province in Canada, Quebec. Quebec is a French-speaking province that was traditionally dominated by Roman Catholicism.

Consider this editorial in the National Post, Canada’s best newspaper.

Excerpt:

It’s never too early to close the minds of the young. That’s the thinking of the provincial government in Quebec, which announced earlier this month a ban on religion in subsidized daycare centres.

Subsidized daycare is a central part of social policy in Quebec — parents pay $7/day, and provincial government pays the rest, which is about $40/day. The government of Quebec is now increasing its vigilance on what dangerous ideas the toddlers might be exposed to.

Just before Christmas, Family Minister Yolande James announced regulations that would seek to ban religion instruction from daycare centres that take government money. Given that four-year-olds are unlikely to be studying theology, the Quebec government is out to stamp out religious expressions — prayers, songs, bible stories, manger scenes and even explanations for religious dietary practices.

[…]Our editorial board argued on Tuesday that Quebec’s massive subsidies for approved daycare spaces has effectively crowded out non-subsidized daycare. The economic argument is clear — subsidize one form of child care over all others, and soon there will effectively be just one form of child care. Daycare has been de facto nationalized in Quebec, and the national religion of intolerant secularism will now be imposed.The cultural question is more troubling. So serious is Quebec’s government about imposing its view on all children that, concurrent with the new regulations, it will triple the number of inspectors to enforce them. Quebec will soon have 58 inquisitors dropping in on daycares to ensure compliance. One can only imagine the scene when the inquisition arrives, sifting through the sandbox in search of clandestine religious items. And who will write the code for the bureaucrats, ensuring that miscreant daycare workers don’t mention that la fête nationale was once upon a time Saint-Jean-Baptiste?

There is an economic cost to big government. There is also a cultural cost, if everywhere government goes alternative values and viewpoints must retreat. If government goes everywhere, including the care of babies, then not even babies are entitled to hear views that dissent from government dogma. Quebec has long since abandoned the neutral state in favour of the aggressively secular state. Where the Quebec state goes, religion must retreat, and there is no limit on where the Quebec state will go.

The heart of every culture is its attitude to the big questions of human life and existence. That’s why a sensible people leaves culture in the hands of the churches, the artists, the musicians and the writers. Only a deeply insecure society entrusts culture to bureaucratic inquisitors. And only bureaucratic inquisitors see threats emerging in the cradle.

Totalitarian states have always sought to control the kindergartens and the schools and the youth groups, all the better to ensure that the influence of parents on their own children is attenuated. There is the hard totalitarianism that comes by force of arms. Soft totalitarianism comes by way of subsidies, where first the family is embraced by the state, and only then is it suffocated.

The educational world in Quebec does not leave much room to breathe. On religious and cultural matters, the consensus position, as defined by the curriculum apparatchiks, must be taught without exception in all public schools, private schools and even at home. Until now, the preschoolers had escaped the stifling grasp of government. No longer.

As our editorial pointed out, the actual educational results of Quebec daycare are poor. Quebec’s nationalized daycares don’t teach little Quebeckers very much. Now they will ensure that the youngsters know even less.

And remember, the effort to ram sex education into the minds of younger children over the objections of their parents is quite common in Canada, and other European countries, too.

Every time a Christian votes to tax their rich neighbor or their rich employer, they are taking money away from the private, individual realm, and transferring it to the realm of government. Politicians use that money to buy votes from the masses by subsidizing their selfishness, irresponsibility and recklessness. Instead of having money spent by responsible workers and businesses for responsible workers and businesses, it gets wasted on people who are often lazy and who make poor decisions. To understand what this redistribution of wealth means, you need look no further than the skyrocketing out-of-wedlock birth rate and the resulting social problems, which imposes costs on all taxpayers.

There is a right way to look at politics and economics from the Christian perspective. And mature Christian should have thought these things through.

Now might be a good time to recommend Wayne Grudem’s new book, “Politics According to the Bible”. Grudem is a Bible-believing Christian with a Ph.D from Cambridge University. He is the author of the most widely used and respected systematic theology book. I also recommend Jay Richards’ book “Money, Greed and God”. Richards’ Ph.D is from Princeton University. Those looking for a smaller, simpler book can try “The Virtues of Capitalism”. A good economics book for beginners is “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism”. And a good longer book for beginners is “Basic Economics”, 4th edition, by Thomas Sowell.