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George Stephanopolous was a member of the Clinton Global Initiative in 2010 and 2011

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White House Senior Advisor George Stephanopolous with President Clinton in the Oval Office
White House Senior Advisor George Stephanopolous with President Clinton in the Oval Office

(Image source: Time Magazine)

The text at the bottom of the April 4, 1994 Time Magazine cover says: “White House Senior Advisor George Stephanopolous with President Clinton in the Oval Office”.

Breitbart News has more news on the ABC News defense of the Clinton Foundation by former Clinton administration top aide George Stephanopolous.

Excerpt:

George Stephanopoulos’ connections to the Clinton Foundation may be more substantial than he has so far admitted.

An archived page of the Clinton Global Initiative website lists George Stephanopoulos as a “notable member” for the years 2010 and 2011. ABC News has confirmed Mr. Stephanopoulos was a member during both years.

Blogger Jeryl Bier first noticed Stephanopoulos’ name on a CGI list of “notable past members.” The site did not specify when each individual listed had been a member. However, the Internet archive shows that Stephanopoulos was listed as a notable member in 2010 and 2011 along with a list of other well-known media members like Matt Lauer and Anderson Cooper.

[…]Breitbart News contacted ABC News and was told that Mr. Stephanopoulos did not pay a membership fee in either 2010 or 2011. According to a spokesperson, he was listed as a member because he moderated a panel for CGI events both of those years.

The Internet archive does not have a cache of the notable CGI members prior to 2010, but according to publicly available sources, Stephanopoulos also participated in CGI events in 2005, in 2006, in 2007 and in 2009. Therefore, it’s possible he was considered a member for every year between 2005-2011, with the possible exception of 2008, when he does not appear to have taken part in any CGI event.

On Wednesday of this week, the Washington Free Beacon discovered that ABC’s Stephanopoulos was listed on the Clinton Foundation website as a donor. WFB reporter Andrew Stiles contacted ABC News to confirm those donations. Rather than respond to the WFB, the spokesperson for ABC News appears to have leaked the story on the donations to Politico.

Politico is a left-wing organization, and they would have spun the story to protect the Clintons and ABC News. It amazes me that anyone looks to the mainstream media for news. Why would you trust people to tell you the truth about Clinton when they donated to the Clinton Foundation, did events for the Clinton Global Initiative, helped to get Bill Clinton elected President as a top aide, then worked in Bill Clinton’s administration as White House Communications Director?

Remember what Stephanopoulos did to Romney during the last Republican primary debate?

The radically leftist New York Times summarizes the clip above:

In 2012 advisers in the Romney campaign actively lobbied to exclude Mr. Stephanopoulos from the primary debates to no avail. Conservatives say their fears were borne out during the ABC News debate in New Hampshire that year. Mr. Stephanopoulos repeatedly asked Mr. Romney if he believed that states could outlaw birth control — a question that the Romney campaign saw as off-point and far afield of the issues that concerned voters. Mr. Stephanopoulos pressed repeatedly, asking six follow-up questions.

That’s right. He asked 7 questions about a topic that as relevant to the campaign as Clinton’s affairs with Monica Lewinsky. He did it in order to smear Republicans.

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News

ABC News anchor who defended Clinton Foundation donated $75,000 to Clinton Foundation

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White House Senior Advisor George Stephanopolous with President Clinton in the Oval Office
Text at the bottom: White House Senior Advisor George Stephanopolous with President Clinton in the Oval Office

(Image source: Time Magazine)

The text at the bottom of the April 4, 1994 Time Magazine cover says: “White House Senior Advisor George Stephanopolous with President Clinton in the Oval Office”.

Whenever the story is media bias, the web site to go to is Newsbusters.

First article:

ABC news host George Stephanopoulos admitted Thursday he had donated $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation and did not disclose this conflict of interest to viewers before interviewing the author of a book critical of the foundation’s foreign donors and influence over Hillary Clinton at the State Department.

Stephanopoulos, a former Bill Clinton communications aide, interviewed Clinton Cash author Peter Schweizer on the April 26 edition of This Week, where he pushed back against his reporting and Schweizer himself, repeating Democratic attacks that he had a “partisan interest” in disparaging the Clintons.

“They say you used to work for President Bush as a speech writer. You are funded by the Koch brothers,” he said. “How do you respond to that?”

“As you know, the Clinton campaign says you haven’t produced a shred of evidence that there was any official action as secretary that supported the interest of donors,” he asked later. “We’ve done investigative work here at ABC News, found no proof of any kind of direct action. An independent government ethics expert at the Sunlight Foundation Bill Allison wrote this: ‘There’s no smoking gun. No evidence that the changed policy based on donations to the foundation. No smoking gun.’ Is there a smoking gun?”

Stephanopoulos did not point out that the Sunlight Foundation is funded by left-wing billionaire George Soros.

[…]The story came to light when the Free Beacon‘s Andrew Stiles discovered Stephanopoulos’ donation and requested a comment from ABC News. Stephanopoulos then confirmed the donation to Politico and issued an apology for not disclosing it beforehand, and ABC announced it would not take any punitive action against him.

Second article:

Talking to Bloomberg Politics correspondent Joshua Green on Wednesday, Clinton Cash author Peter Schweizer said he was “really quite stunned” by the revelation that ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos gave $50,000 to the Clinton Foundation. Schweizer called it a “massive breach of ethical standards” for the Bill Clinton operative turned journalist.

Referencing a contentious interview with Stephanopoulos for This Week on April 26, Schweizer observed: “He fairly noted my four months working as a speech writer for George W. Bush. But he didn’t disclose this?” In that exchange, Stephanopoulos accused Schweizer of having a “partisan interest” in writing a book critical of the Clintons.

In 2014, Stephanopoulos offered a glowing puff piece on the Clinton Foundation, hailing it as an organization that “brings together world leaders…and celebrities, re-imagining the world and taking action.”

Also on Thursday, Kentucky Senator and Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul told The New York Times that Stephanopoulos should not be permitted to moderate any 2016 debates: “It’s impossible to divorce yourself from that, even if you try. I just think it’s really, really hard because he’s been there, so close to them, that there would be a conflict of interest if he tried to be a moderator of any sort.”

And Rand Paul is getting what he asked for, the former Clinton administration communications director George Stephanopolous will not be moderator of a GOP debate. Honestly, why was he in there in the first place? You might as well pick Satan to moderate a debate on the resurrection of Jesus. I’m really not sure why ABC News would make him their chief anchor, since the man is a diehard Democrat. A top Clinton aide, and White House Communications Director when Clinton was President. Do you know what the White House Communications Director does? He just says whatever he has to to make the President look good.

A fair moderator of GOP debates? Give me a break.

The radically leftist New York Times reminds us what Stephanopolous did in the 2012 presidential debate he moderated:

In 2012 advisers in the Romney campaign actively lobbied to exclude Mr. Stephanopoulos from the primary debates to no avail. Conservatives say their fears were borne out during the ABC News debate in New Hampshire that year. Mr. Stephanopoulos repeatedly asked Mr. Romney if he believed that states could outlaw birth control — a question that the Romney campaign saw as off-point and far afield of the issues that concerned voters. Mr. Stephanopoulos pressed repeatedly, asking six follow-up questions.

That’s right. He asked 7 questions about a topic that as relevant to the campaign as Clinton’s affairs with Monica Lewinsky. He did it in order to smear Republicans.

ABC News is, of course, not punishing him from reporting on a foundation that he donated to.

The original source for this story was the Washington Free Beacon. Credit where due.

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Polemics

Are Latter Day Saints (LDS) doctrines supported by philosophy, science and history?

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This post presents evidence against Mormonism/LDS in three main areas. The first is in the area of science. The second is in the area of philosophy. And the third is in the area of history.

The scientific evidence

First, let’s take a look at what the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, believes about the origin of the universe:

“The elements are eternal. That which had a beggining will surely have an end; take a ring, it is without beggining or end – cut it for a beggining place and at the same time you have an ending place.” (“Scriptural Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith”, p. 205)

“Now, the word create came from the word baurau which does not mean to create out of nothing; it means to organize; the same as a man would organize materials and build a ship. Hence, we infer that God had materials to organize the world out of chaos – chaotic matter, which is element, and in which dwells all the glory. Element had an existance from the time he had. The pure principles of element are principles which can never be destroyed; they may be organized and re-organized, but not destroyed. They had no beggining, and can have no end.”
(“Scriptural Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith”, p. 395)

A Mormon scholar named Blake Ostler summarizes the Mormon view in a Mormon theological journal:

“In contrast to the self-sufficient and solitary absolute who creates ex nihilo (out of nothing), the Mormon God did not bring into being the ultimate constituents of the cosmos — neither its fundamental matter nor the space/time matrix which defines it. Hence, unlike the Necessary Being of classical theology who alone could not not exist and on which all else is contingent for existence, the personal God of Mormonism confronts uncreated realities which exist of metaphysical necessity. Such realities include inherently self-directing selves (intelligences), primordial elements (mass/energy), the natural laws which structure reality, and moral principles grounded in the intrinsic value of selves and the requirements for growth and happiness.” (Blake Ostler, “The Mormon Concept of God,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 17 (Summer 1984):65-93)

So, Mormons believe in an eternally existing universe, such that matter was never created out of nothing, and will never be destroyed. But this is at odds with modern cosmology.

The Big Bang cosmology is the most widely accepted cosmology of the day. It is based on several lines of evidence, and is broadly compatible with Genesis. It denies the past eternality of the universe. This peer-reviewed paper in an astrophysics journal explains. (full text here)

Excerpt:

The standard Big Bang model thus describes a universe which is not eternal in the past, but which came into being a finite time ago. Moreover,–and this deserves underscoring–the origin it posits is an absolute origin ex nihilo. For not only all matter and energy, but space and time themselves come into being at the initial cosmological singularity. As Barrow and Tipler emphasize, “At this singularity, space and time came into existence; literally nothing existed before the singularity, so, if the Universe originated at such a singularity, we would truly have a creation ex nihilo.“

[…]On such a model the universe originates ex nihilo in the sense that at the initial singularity it is true that There is no earlier space-time point or it is false that Something existed prior to the singularity.

Christian cosmology requires such a creation out of nothing, but this is clearly incompatible with what Mormons believe about the universe. The claims about the universe made by the two religions are in disagreement, and we can test empirically to see who is right, using science.

Philosophical problems

Always Have a Reason contrasts two concepts of God in Mormonism: Monarchotheism and Polytheism. It turns out that although Mormonism is actually a polytheistic religion, like Hinduism. In Mormonism, humans can become God and then be God of their own planet. So there are many Gods in Mormonism, not just one.

Excerpt:

[T]he notion that there are innumerable contingent “primal intelligences” is central to this Mormon concept of god (P+M, 201; Beckwith and Parrish, 101). That there is more than one god is attested in the Pearl of Great Price, particularly Abraham 4-5. This Mormon concept has the gods positioned to move “primal intelligences along the path to godhood” (Beckwith and Parrish, 114). Among these gods are other gods which were once humans, including God the Father. Brigham Young wrote, “our Father in Heaven was begotten on a previous heavenly world by His Father, and again, He was begotten by a still more ancient Father, and so on…” (Brigham Young, The Seer, 132, quoted in Beckwith and Parrish, 106).

[…]The logic of the Mormon polytheistic concept of God entails that there is an infinite number of gods. To see this, it must be noted that each god him/herself was helped on the path to godhood by another god. There is, therefore, an infinite regress of gods, each aided on his/her path to godhood by a previous god. There is no termination in this series. Now because this entails an actually infinite collection of gods, the Mormon polytheistic concept of deity must deal with all the paradoxes which come with actually existing infinities…

The idea of counting up to an actual infinite number of things by addition (it doesn’t matter what kind of thing it is) is problematic. See here.

More:

Finally, it seems polytheistic Mormonism has a difficulty at its heart–namely the infinite regress of deity.

[…]Each god relies upon a former god, which itself relies upon a former god, forever. Certainly, this is an incoherence at the core of this concept of deity, for it provides no explanation for the existence of the gods, nor does it explain the existence of the universe.

Now let’s see the historical evidence against Mormonism.

The historical evidence

J. Warner Wallace explains how the “Book of Abraham”, a part of the Mormon Scriptures, faces historical difficulties.

The Book of Abraham papyri are not as old as claimed:

Mormon prophets and teachers have always maintained that the papyri that was purchased by Joseph Smith was the actual papyri that was created and written by Abraham. In fact, early believers were told that the papyri were the writings of Abraham.

[…]There is little doubt that the earliest of leaders and witnesses believed and maintained that these papyri were, in fact the very scrolls upon which Abraham and Joseph wrote. These papyri were considered to be the original scrolls until they were later recovered in 1966. After discovering the original papyri, scientists, linguists, archeologists and investigators (both Mormon and non-Mormon) examined them and came to agree that the papyri are far too young to have been written by Abraham. They are approximately 1500 to 2000 years too late, dating from anywhere between 500 B.C. (John A. Wilson, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Summer 1968, p. 70.) and 60 A.D. If they papyri had never been discovered, this truth would never have come to light. Today, however, we know the truth, and the truth contradicts the statements of the earliest Mormon leaders and witnesses.

The Book of Abraham papyri do not claim what Joseph Smith said:

In addition to this, the existing papyri simply don’t say anything that would place them in the era related to 2000BC in ancient Egypt. The content of the papyri would at least help verify the dating of the document, even if the content had been transcribed or copied from an earlier document. But the papyri simply tell us about an ancient burial ritual and prayers that are consistent with Egyptian culture in 500BC. Nothing in the papyri hints specifically or exclusively to a time in history in which Abraham would have lived.

So there is a clear difference hear between the Bible and Mormonism, when it comes to historical verification.

Further study

There is a very good podcast featuring J. Warner Wallace that summarizes some other theological problems with Mormonism that I blogged about before. And if you want a nice long PDF to print out and read at lunch (which is what I did with it) you can grab this PDF by Michael Licona, entitled “Behold, I Stand at the Door and Knock“.