A fine article by Aaron, who writes at Apologetics Junkie.
Excerpt:
A self-defeating (or self-refuting) statement is one that fails to meet its own standard. In other words, it is a statement that cannot live up to its own criteria. Imagine if I were to say,
I cannot speak a word in English.
You intuitively see a problem here. I told you in English that I cannot speak a word in English. This statement is self-refuting. It does not meet its own standard or criteria. It self-destructs.
The important thing to remember with self-defeating statements is that they are necessarily false. In other words, there is no possible way for them to be true. This is because they violate a very fundamental law of logic, the law of non-contradiction. This law states that A and non-A cannot both be true at the same time and in the same sense. For example, it is not possible for God to exist and not exist at the same time and in the same sense. This would violate the law of non-contradiction. So if I were to say, “God told me He doesn’t exist” you would see intuitively the obvious self-refuting nature of this statement.
Aaron goes on to explain how to deal with self-refuting statements in the article.
Students are learning less and less of value at college
The latest episode of the Cold Case Christianity podcast is useful to help parents understand what awaits their children at the university.
Details:
In this episode of the Cold-Case Christianity Broadcast, J. Warner examines four popular misconceptions and misstatements about the nature of objective truth, tolerance and our over-reliance on science. If there are no objective truths (or they can’t be known) there is little reason to examine the truth about God. We need to get to the truth about truth before we can ever know the truth about anything else.
Wallace does a lot of speaking on university campuses, so he gets to meet and talk with the college kids. It’s interesting to hear what an evidence-driven cold case homicide detective thinks about the squishy postmodern views of the average college student.
A proposal to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees to the United States has ignited a bitter debate in Washington, but more than 10 times that number of people from the embattled country have quietly come to America since 2012, according to figures obtained by FoxNews.com.
Some 102,313 Syrians were granted admission to the U.S. as legal permanent residents or through programs including work, study and tourist visas from 2012 through August of this year, a period which roughly coincides with the devastating civil war that still engulfs the Middle Eastern country. Experts say any fears that terrorists might infiltrate the proposed wave of refugees from United Nations-run camps should be dwarfed by the potential danger already here.
[…]Numbers obtained from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection show 60,010 Syrian visa holders have entered the U.S. since 2012, including 16,245 this year through August. Additional numbers provided by a Congressional source showed another 42,303 Syrians were granted citizenship or green cards during the same period.
Should we be concerned about letting in so many people from countries with high levels of support for radical Islam? Let’s take a look at some other news stories and get the facts.
Two people have been arrested at a refugee center in the Austrian city of Salzburg on suspicion of being connected to last month’s Paris attacks, the Salzburg prosecutors’ office said on Wednesday.
The two are men who are thought to have provided help to members of the group that carried out the attacks on Nov. 13 in which 130 people were killed, two Austrian newspapers reported.
“Two people who arrived from the Middle East were arrested at the weekend in accommodation for refugees on suspicion of belonging to a terrorist organization,” Robert Holzleitner, a spokesman for the Salzburg prosecutor’s office, said.
“As part of the preliminary investigation, evidence suggesting a connection with the Paris attacks is being verified,” he added, declining to comment on the specifics of the newspaper reports.
The men came into contact with the Paris attackers in Austria, local newspaper Salzburger Nachrichten reported, adding that they were found based on information provided by a foreign intelligence service.
National tabloid Kronen Zeitung said they were French, of Algerian and Pakistani origin, and entered Europe through Greece on fake Syrian passports with members of the group that carried out the Paris attacks.
An Austrian Interior Ministry spokesman and a Salzburg police spokeswoman declined to comment.
An article on Breitbart News that listed 30 recent immigrants who were implicated in terrorist attacks.
Here’s are a few: (links to primary sources removed)
A refugee from Uzbekistan was convicted of providing material support and money to a designated foreign terrorist organization. According to the Department of Justice, he also procured bomb-making materials in the interest of perpetrating a terrorist attack on American soil. (August 2015)
An immigrant from India, who applied for and received Lawful Permanent Resident status by virtue of his marriage to an American citizen, was indicted in federal court on charges of conspiring to provide thousands of dollars to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in order to assist them in their global jihad, and on one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud. (November 2015)
A second immigrant from India, who is married to a U.S. citizen, and who is the brother of the individual listed above, was also indicted on charges of conspiring to provide thousands of dollars to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in order to assist them in their global jihad, and on one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud. (November 2015)
An immigrant from Syria, who applied for and received Lawful Permanent Resident status, and then subsequently applied for and received U.S. citizenship, was charged with smuggling night-vision goggles and rifle scopes from America to a Syrian rebel group that fights alongside and allies itself with an al-Qaeda affiliate. (December 2015)
The Boston Bombers were granted political asylum and were thus deemed legitimate refugees. The younger brother applied for citizenship and was naturalized on September 11th, 2012. The older brother had a pending application for citizenship. (April 2013)
I like skilled immigrants from countries that do not have a significant portion of radicalized Muslims. But the problem is that the Obama administration is too politically correct to filter immigrants by weighing the value they offer us as law-abiding taxpayers against the potential threat they pose. The Obama Department of Homeland Security admits people to the United States without even checking social media to see if they have made public statements in support of radical Islam! And in a recent hearing, a DHS official admitted that she had no idea how many Syrian refugees had been admitted to the US. The Democrats are obsessed with political correctness and leftist blame-America ideology – we simply cannot trust them to protect us from threats.
WINTERY KNIGHT 