Tag Archives: Knowledge

Audio of Greg Koukl’s talk yesterday in Ottawa

This is audio from his morning address in the 9 AM service at the Metropolitan Bible Church in Ottawa, Canada.

The link is here. (40 minutes)

This is basically an introduction to Greg Koukl’s idea of what an ambassador should be. He focuses on 3 topics: knowledge, wisdom and character.

An amazing women’s Bible study

I got a very interesting report from a person who saw my announcement post and attended the event. He met a woman there who had taught FOUR CLASSES in a row on Lee Strobel’s book “The Case for Faith”. The Case for Faith! And she also uses the DVD. The attendance ranged from 20-50 women! I thought women didn’t like apologetics… but I guess there are some places where they do!

Greg Koukl’s organization is Stand to Reason.

Which political party knows the least about economics?

Story from the Wall Street Journal. (H/T Health Care BS via ECM)

Excerpt:

Who is better informed about the policy choices facing the country—liberals, conservatives or libertarians? According to a Zogby International survey that I write about in the May issue of Econ Journal Watch, the answer is unequivocal: The left flunks Econ 101.

Zogby researcher Zeljka Buturovic and I considered the 4,835 respondents’ (all American adults) answers to eight survey questions about basic economics.

The first question was “Restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable.” The unenlighted answer for that one is “disagree”, since restrictions on development reduce the supply of available housing. Demand stays the same and so there is a shortage, and prices rise. D’uh!

Here are the others:

The other questions were: 1) Mandatory licensing of professional services increases the prices of those services (unenlightened answer: disagree). 2) Overall, the standard of living is higher today than it was 30 years ago (unenlightened answer: disagree). 3) Rent control leads to housing shortages (unenlightened answer: disagree). 4) A company with the largest market share is a monopoly (unenlightened answer: agree). 5) Third World workers working for American companies overseas are being exploited (unenlightened answer: agree). 6) Free trade leads to unemployment (unenlightened answer: agree). 7) Minimum wage laws raise unemployment (unenlightened answer: disagree).

And the results:

How did the six ideological groups do overall? Here they are, best to worst, with an average number of incorrect responses from 0 to 8: Very conservative, 1.30; Libertarian, 1.38; Conservative, 1.67; Moderate, 3.67; Liberal, 4.69; Progressive/very liberal, 5.26.

It’s true, the majority of Democrat voters are people who don’t work at all, or they “work” for government, or they “work” in education, or they hold picket signs while on strike, or they are in prison, or they are chasing ambulances, or they are Hollywood celebrities. No economics knowledge is required for any of that. Republicans work in private industry, and many of us own small businesses. So we actually have to work to earn money, because we have competitors to watch out for and consumers to please.

Remember this post: Who knows more about economics? Obama or people who run businesses?

Should pro-lifers argue against sexual libertinism?

Consider this article from Christianity Today about the tactics of the pro-life movement by Dinesh D’Souza.

Excerpt:

Why then, in the face of its bad arguments, does the pro-choice movement continue to prevail legally and politically?

I think it’s because abortion is the debris of the sexual revolution. We have seen a great shift in the sexual mores of Americans in the past half-century. Today a widespread social understanding persists that if there is going to be sex outside marriage, there will be a considerable number of unwanted pregnancies. Abortion is viewed as a necessary clean-up solution to this social reality.

In order to have a sexual revolution, women must have the same sexual autonomy as men. But the laws of biology contradict this ideology, so feminists who have championed the sexual revolution—Simone de Beauvoir, Gloria Steinem, Shulamith Firestone, among others—have found it necessary to denounce pregnancy as an invasion of the female body. The fetus becomes, in Firestone’s phrase, an “uninvited guest.” As long as the fetus occupies the mother’s womb, these activists argue, the mother should be able to keep it or get rid of it at her discretion.

If you’re going to make an omelet, the Marxist revolutionaries used to say, you have to be ready to break some eggs. And if you’re going to have a sexual revolution, you have to be ready to clean up the debris. After 35 years, the debris has become a mountain, and as a society, we are still adding bodies to the heap. No one in the pro-choice camp, of course, wants to admit any of this. It’s not only politically embarrassing, it’s also painful to one’s self-image to acknowledge a willingness to sustain permissive sexual values by killing the unborn.

This analysis might help to explain why otherwise compassionate people fight so tenaciously against the most helpless and vulnerable of all living creatures, unborn persons.

Here is a podcast from the Life Training Institute discussing that article.

The MP3 file is here. (Just the first 34 minutes)

Topics:

  • Dinesh says to argue against sexual promiscuity as part of pro-life apologetics
  • LTI’s general position is to focus on the humanity of the unborn
  • should pro-lifers change strategies to argue against sexual libertinism
  • is Dinesh right to say that arguing for the humanity of the unborn is not enough?
  • how strong are the philosophical arguments for the pro-life position
  • why has the effort to de-fund Planned Parenthood failed?
  • have the best arguments for the pro-life position become common knowledge?
  • do women who have abortions believe that the unborn are human or not?
  • do the arguments against abortion address the real circumstances of the woman?
  • why do people accept the humanity of the unborn, but still are pro-choice?
  • do people accept abortion because they refuse to give up sexual libertinism?
  • what is really behind the disrespect that people for the right to life?
  • is it possible for pro-lifers to convince people to give up irresponsible sex?
  • how did people begin to believe that a sexual revolution was a good idea?
  • has the sexual revolution increased or decreased social ills like divorce?
  • can a scientific case be made that sexual libertinism is destructive and costly?
  • should pro-lifers argue abortion on moral ground alone, or on utilitarian grounds?

This first file switches topics about 34 minutes into the podcast. There is actually a second file, too.

The MP3 file for part two is here.

The second topic is a paper written by an abortionist who is performing abortions while she is pregnant. She talks about performing a second-trimester abortion in the paper. Just as she describes tearing out the leg of the baby inside the other woman, her own baby kicks inside her abdomen. It’s interesting to hear this woman explain her feelings about this occurrence, and how she wants to suppress them. You can listen to the rest of the first MP3 file and then the second file as well to hear about that topic.

My thoughts

I have a lot of friends in the pro-life movement, and I also donate to pro-life debaters and sponsor pro-life events, (and I do the same for the marriage issue). But there is something else I do, too. I feel very, very badly about how women have adopted the habit of having sex before marriage, simply because they have bought into feminist ideology hook, line and sinker. Premarital sex causes women a lot of pain and emotional damage, as I described before. By abolishing sex roles, women are left with no idea about how to make a man love them and commit to them.

So it’s not just that I oppose abortion and support traditional marriage. It’s not just that I oppose women who murder their unborn children and who raise children without fathers. It’s that I oppose premarital sex, period. And I oppose the root of all these problems – feminism. It’s feminism that abolishes sex roles, chivalry, courting, romance, traditional marriage, two-parent families, at-fault divorce laws, small government, and eventually, liberty itself. And the way that I argue against feminism is by sharing the way that I treat women with you, my readers.

You can read more about my anti-feminist, pro-woman, pro-life, pro-marriage views in the related posts below.

Related posts on chastity, chivalry, courtship and marriage

Related posts on feminism and sexual libertinism

    Related posts on abortion

    Related posts on adult stem cell research