#to try to rule the world... unlike evangelicals...

[snekdood]

idk but the way evangelicals talk about the anti christ, he kinna seems like a dope dude. cares about equality... nature... helping people..... reeeally struggling to see the issue here

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

“QTBIPOC”

And then they have the audacity to feel insulted when we make fun of their ridiculous acronyms.

Oh, just realized I typed a keyword, something that’s usually overlooked when speaking about wokeism: fun.

Do these people actually have fun? Because from the looks of it they have no irony let alone self irony. They don’t like to joke because it can “offend someone”, they can’t even tell a joke apart from a serious sentence.

So I believe this needs to be analyzed more in depth, maybe you can find something because I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that people with “certain beliefs” are less inclined to have fun and make jokes than, you know, regular folks. Oh, the horror to say “regular”, “normal” and so on. I deserve to be burned at the stake for saying this, I know.

They're some of the most joyless, insufferable, sanctimonious people on the face of the planet. The best comparison - and I realise this is not even slightly the first time it's been made - is the Puritans.

God, even modern fucking Xians at least find joy in the idea that a magical invisible space wizard loves them and plans to torture the heathens.

One of the reasons they're against comedy is that it has been historically used to challenge authority. When you laugh at authority, you become less or no longer afraid of that authority. They are now the authority. They are the ruling class. They occupy privileged positions in government, education, media, entertainment, tech, industry, everywhere. (For now.) And comedy is a no-no because they can't have their regime challenged, and they especially can't have people laughing at how incoherent and nonsensical it is.

These people are social constructivists, so they believe that reality itself is constructed through discourses - the way we talk about things. And all discourse is an expression of power. That's a real tenet of the ideology. So, they want to control the discourse.

I copied the following down some time ago, although I don't remember where it's from or who said it:

"They don’t use language to communicate they use language to manipulate"

They use language to create an alternate, parallel universe. "Trans women are women," "you can't be racist to white people," "you can't be sexist to men," "Islam is a religion of peace." These are all obviously false things. But the idea is to try to bed these ideas through language so that the words to object to what they're doing will not exist.

"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it."

They redefine words to socially engineer the world the way they want it to be. Having any kind of fun works against this, because the versatility of language itself works against this. A double entendre, a pun, a song, anything that doesn't adhere to the approved language and message undermines the authority of their perfect, alternate universe.

It's not unlike how the church uses blasphemy to stifle unapproved thought. The Word of God is authoritative, and like a magic spell, the "wrong" words spoken aloud causes souls to be damned for eternity.

It's the same kind of magical thinking.

And then, of course, there's the fact this ideology is competitive. This happens in evangelical and charismatic Xianity too, where everyone compares themselves to everyone else and tries to keep up with each other to be more godly, more pious, more devoted to Jesus. The same thing happens here.

If you don't spot the problem, then the problem is you.

If you're having fun, you're not engaged in the holy sacrament of Problematization. To quote the execrable, repugnant scam-artist Anita Sarkeesian,

"Everything is sexist, everything is homophobic, everything is problematic, and you have to point it all out."

You're supposed to lecture everyone on why you're just more enlightened than they are, how they need to aspire to be anywhere near as morally sophisticated as you are. It's like luxury goods. They're showing off their high-priced, first-world, elitist ideals.

Rob Henderson describes "luxury beliefs" as status symbols.

Luxury beliefs have, to a large extent, replaced luxury goods. Luxury beliefs are ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class, while often inflicting costs on the lower classes.

When you think you're carrying around the moral-religious ideological equivalent of a genuine Hermès handbag, you can't be seen to be goofy and light-hearted. Being better than everyone else is serious business.

Here's a practical, real-time example of its competitive nature.

There's currently a ton of people huffing and puffing and posturing about abandoning Twitter/X and moving to Bluesky. But, what's happening on Bluesky?

The activists are now all now reporting each other. If you populated Bluesky with only far-left activists, then give it a few weeks, you'd then find a subset of extremely leftist people labelled "far-right" and "Nazis." Because that's how their ideology works.

Which is also why you should never be bothered about their attempts to label you. You just point out what they're doing to show how dishonest and manipulative they are, and you ignore them.

Intersectional moral superiority is a competitive sport. Kind of like veganism.

Lisa: Oh, the earth is the best! That's why I'm a vegetarian. Jesse: Heh. Well, that's a start. Lisa: Uh, well, I was thinking of going vegan. Jesse: [chuckles] I'm a level 5 vegan -- I won't eat anything that casts a shadow. Lisa: Wow. Um ... I started an organic compost pile at home. Jesse: Only at home? You mean you don't pocket-mulch? [takes out pocket stuff for Lisa to feel] Lisa: Oh, it's so decomposed!

By the way, these same people were huffing and puffing and posturing last year about abandoning Twitter/X and moving to Threads and Mastodon when Elon Musk bought and took over Twitter. Funny how they ended up back on Twitter/X. Almost as if Threads and Mastodon were failures, they need enemies to feel self-righteous, and storming off is part of their performative moralizing.

Most of them haven't actually deleted their accounts. Like Arnie, they'll be back.

So, yes. For a lot of reasons, they're humorless, joyless, killers-of-all-fun churchladies.

Which is why you have to laugh at them.

[papatundespainknife]

based on the backstory and personalities of the Mikalesons, do you have any headcannons about Mikaelsons + religion?

oh HECKIE YEAH

i think it's honestly SUCH an interesting topic and concept seeing as how their all you know immortals n shit and magics real and etc etc. unlike say, btvs where Willow literally invokes Osiris, tvd doesn't really make any solid references or claims about the whole Deity Situation until apparently legacies but I haven't watched it yet and sounds Kinda Dumb so I'm ignoring that lol. But the rule of thumb with shows like these seems to be that once you say draculas and witches are Super Real then it's open season for Zeus enter stage right like it's an episode of Xena. Which when you look at the Mikaelsons....... Wild.

I think that Freya, Finn and Rebekah are the most unironically straight-forwardly religious and I think they've stuck to the norse/scandinavian beliefs they grew up with. Freya both because of the 1,000 years of Napping Nonsense but also because she's a witch and that's the school she was taught in so she's sticking with it. Finn for similar naptime reasons and also because he doesn't see a reason to change and didn't even when they were in France and hanging out with christians. For Rebekah it's like pure sentimentality. She likes a lot of the aesthetics of mainly catholicism (the swagiest of sects) but at the end of the day she's still out here making offerings to Freya (the goddess not the sister fdjkgdfsdfs) because she's a sappy little sentimental bitch and that's what brings her comfort. I don't think she's particularly religious which I think Freya and Finn are but she enjoys the celebrations and finds comfort in the actions/words/rituals/prayers/etc.

Kol and Elijah are more wiggly in their beliefs. Kol still calls back to his roots a LOT but he's also expanded out over the years since he's still a witch at heart and a curious cat. He's less interested in following any one religion and more in what resonates with him. So his believe system is very eclectic. What he believes in he believes in 10000% and is dead serious about. He's also experimented and educated himself about world religions the most out of all of them. Dude could probably teach a clss tbh.

Elijah is the one who's actually been the closest you can be to an atheist in a world like this. He's had periods of like, religious nihilism and periods were he's a little more hopeful about it. He's just spent so much of his life trying to be the Good Reliable Son and like Niklaus praying for divine intervention both with their father and with Niklaus only to get shit in return that it broke him and he just stopped and abandoned all religion/spirituality and focused only on the tangible. Hope's birth fucking shakes him to the core lol. Generally tho even after her he's still more in the like, "not my scene but i do love a good festivity" camp.

Niklaus is an evangelical's idea of an atheist where it's not "i don't believe in god" but instead "i feel god personally slighted me at my bday party so now i'll hurl rocks at him for the rest of my life out of pure spite". his sense of abandonment, unwantedness and paranoia doesn't stop at the threshold of religion. Ofc, he's old as dirt and literally has his own coven that bitches KEEP FORGETTING HE HAS so he's not in doubt that the divine exists. But Thor didn't protect him from his father's abuse so fuck that guy and jesus didn't fix SHIT for him so equally fuck him.

Wouldn't be shocked tho to see him "ironically" do rites/sacrifices to Odin via shit like the death of an enemy/creatively using old school practices for physical/psychological torture bc he's Like That. Does he also end up carving a mjolnir into Hope's crib and giving her a little one on a necklace? yes but this ain't about that hush.

Kol and Niklaus are also the most likely to have an affinity for gods like Loki and his children for reasons I feel are obvious lol. The holiday arguments this creates between them and Finn are unhinged.

[foreverlogical]

Donald Trump’s descent into madness continues.

The latest manifestation of this is a report in The New York Times that the president is weighing appointing the conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell, who for a time worked on his legal team, to be special counsel to investigate imaginary claims of voter fraud.

As if that were not enough, we also learned that former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who was pardoned by the president after pleading guilty to lying to the FBI, attended the Friday meeting. Earlier in the week, Flynn, a retired lieutenant general, floated the idea (which he had promoted before) that the president impose martial law and deploy the military to “rerun” the election in several closely contested states that voted against Trump. It appears that Flynn wants to turn them into literal battleground states.\

None of this should come as a surprise. Some of us said, even before he became president, that Donald Trump’s Rosetta Stone, the key to deciphering him, was his psychology—his disordered personality, his emotional and mental instability, and his sociopathic tendencies. It was the main reason, though hardly the only reason, I refused to vote for him in 2016 or in 2020, despite having worked in the three previous Republican administrations. Nothing that Trump has done over the past four years has caused me to rethink my assessment, and a great deal has happened to confirm it.

Given Trump’s psychological profile, it was inevitable that when he felt the walls of reality close in on him—in 2020, it was the pandemic, the cratering economy, and his election defeat—he would detach himself even further from reality. It was predictable that the president would assert even more bizarre conspiracy theories. That he would become more enraged and embittered, more desperate and despondent, more consumed by his grievances. That he would go against past supplicants, like Attorney General Bill Barr and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, and become more aggressive toward his perceived enemies. That his wits would begin to turn, in the words of King Lear. That he would begin to lose his mind.

So he has. And, as a result, President Trump has become even more destabilizing and dangerous.

“I’ve been covering Donald Trump for a while,” Jonathan Swan of Axios tweeted. “I can’t recall hearing more intense concern from senior officials who are actually Trump people. The Sidney Powell/Michael Flynn ideas are finding an enthusiastic audience at the top.”

Even amid the chaos, it’s worth taking a step back to think about where we are: An American president, unwilling to concede his defeat by 7 million popular votes and 74 Electoral College votes, is still trying to steal the election. It has become his obsession.

In the process, Trump has in too many cases turned his party into an instrument of illiberalism and nihilism. Here are just a couple of data points to underscore that claim: 18 attorneys generals and more than half the Republicans in the House supported a seditious abuse of the judicial process.

And it’s not only, or even mainly, elected officials. The Republican Party’s base has often followed Trump into the twilight zone, with a sizable majority of them affirming that Joe Biden won the election based on fraud and many of them turning against medical science in the face of a surging pandemic.

COVID-19 is now killing Americans at the rate of about one per minute, but the president is “just done with COVID,” a source identified as one of Trump’s closest advisers told The Washington Post. “I think he put it on a timetable and he’s done with COVID ... It just exceeded the amount of time he gave it.”

This is where Trump’s crippling psychological condition—his complete inability to face unpleasant facts, his toxic narcissism, and his utter lack of empathy—became lethal. Trump’s negligence turned what would have been a difficult winter into a dark one. If any of his predecessors—Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan, to go back just 40 years—had been president during this pandemic, tens of thousands of American lives would almost surely have been saved.

“My concern was, in the worst part of the battle, the general was missing in action,” said Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, one of the very few Republicans to speak truth in the Trump era.

In 30 days, Donald Trump will leave the presidency, with his efforts to mount a coup having failed. The encouraging news is that it never really had a chance of succeeding. Our institutions, especially the courts, will have passed a stress test, not the most difficult ever but difficult enough, and unlike any in our history. Some local officials exhibited profiles in courage, doing the right thing in the face of threats and pressure from their party. And a preponderance of the American public, having lived through the past four years, deserve credit for canceling this presidential freak show rather than renewing it. The “exhausted majority” wasn’t too exhausted to get out and vote, even in a pandemic.

But the Trump presidency will leave gaping wounds nearly everywhere, and ruination in some places. Truth as a concept has been battered from the highest office in the land on an almost hourly basis. The Republican Party has been radicalized, with countless Republican lawmakers and other prominent figures within the party having revealed themselves to be moral cowards, even, and in some ways especially, after Trump was defeated. During the Trump presidency, they were so afraid of getting crosswise with him and his supporters that they failed the Solzhenitsyn test: “The simple act of an ordinary brave man is not to participate in lies, not to support false actions! His rule: Let that come into the world, let it even reign supreme—only not through me.

”During the past four years, the right-wing ecosystem became more and more rabid. Many prominent evangelical supporters of the president are either obsequious, like Franklin Graham, or delusional, like Eric Metaxas, and they now peddle their delusions as being written by God. QAnon and the Proud Boys, Newsmax and One America News, Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson—all have been emboldened.

These worrisome trends began before Trump ran for office, and they won’t disappear after he leaves the presidency. Those who hope for a quick snapback will be disappointed. Still, having Trump out of office has to help. He’s going to find out that there’s no comparable bully pulpit. And the media, if they are wise, will cut off his oxygen, which is attention. They had no choice but to cover Trump’s provocations when he was president; when he’s an ex-president, that will change.

For the foreseeable future, journalists will rightly focus on the pandemic. But once that is contained and defeated, it will be time to go back to focusing more attention on things like the Paris Accords and the carbon tax; the earned-income tax credit and infrastructure; entitlement reform and monetary policy; charter schools and campus speech codes; legal immigration, asylum, assimilation, and social mobility. There is also an opportunity, with Trump a former president, for the Republican Party to once again become the home of sane conservatism. Whether that happens or not is an open question. But it’s something many of us are willing to work for, and that even progressives should hope for.Beyond that, and more fundamental than that, we have to remind ourselves that we are not powerless to shape the future; that much of what has been broken can be repaired; that though we are many, we can be one; and that fatalism and cynicism are unwarranted and corrosive.

There’s a lovely line in William Wordsworth’s poem “The Prelude”: “What we have loved, Others will love, and we will teach them how.

”There are still things worthy of our love. Honor, decency, courage, beauty, and truth. Tenderness, human empathy, and a sense of duty. A good society. And a commitment to human dignity. We need to teach others—in our individual relationships, in our classrooms and communities, in our book clubs and Bible studies, and in innumerable other settings—why those things are worthy of their attention, their loyalty, their love. One person doing it won’t make much of a difference; a lot of people doing it will create a culture.

Maybe we understand better than we did five years ago why these things are essential to our lives, and why when we neglect them or elect leaders who ridicule and subvert them, life becomes nasty, brutish, and generally unpleasant.

Just after noon on January 20, a new and necessary chapter will begin in the American story. Joe Biden will certainly play a role in shaping how that story turns out—but so will you and I. Ours is a good and estimable republic, if we can keep it.

PETER WEHNER is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He writes widely on political, cultural, religious, and national-security issues, and he is the author of The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump.

[wutbju]

In 1997, when Bob Jones University published its “Passing the Torch” article in the BJU Review, it was about the last time the BJU constituency would hear from Bob Jones IV. His is the worst kept secret in fundamentalism. Bob Jones III only recently even admitted he knew. But, of course, he knew. We all knew. 

Four wrote this while he was still at Notre Dame studying history with the Grand Patriarchy of religious history, George Marsden. Four dropped out of the program. He couldn’t take the rigor according to insiders. And he ended up at the “New Evangelical” World. He stayed there until . . . well, until he left pretense altogether. He’s tried his hand at several endeavors--Travel agent, start-ups. You can feel in this text that he doesn’t mean what he’s saying. It doesn’t hang together. It doesn’t ring true. 

But he still gets to spend the holidays with his family. He still gets to come on campus. How many of the children of BJU staff members who are just like him don’t have that privilege? How many of them have been kicked to the curb because Bob III and his minions told the employees to shun their own flesh and blood. THAT shunning is the reprobate mind, BJU. THAT’s what Romans 1 is talking about. 

But here are Four’s words from back when he was pretending he meant them:

What a Fundamentalist is, and why I am one

Bob Jones IV

It may seem strange in a Fundamentalist conference to have to define what fundamentalism means, but I recently saw a quote from a German philosopher that said, "the familiar is not truly understood just because it is familiar." So I think it is important to define very clearly what we are all about. I hope that what separates us from other Christians is not merely our politics or our dress or the length of our hair. Fundamentalist distinctives are or should be its view of God in contrast to that of the New Evangelicals.

How does the New Evangelical view God? In the writings and broadcasts of their leaders, the New Evangelicals present a "rational" God. They want a God that is comprehensible to the human mind, a God that makes sense in all his attributes and actions. That is important to them, because they sincerely believe that will make Christianity more relevant to the culture. Relevance is the driving force behind New Evangelicalism. I think relevance Comes at a very high cost.

Take evolution, for instance, Why do so many New Evangelicals except theistic evolution? It certainly is not because it is scientifically provable. If you read Origin of Species, you will see the Darwin;s arguments are more logical and philosophical than they are scientific. Darwin presents only a very tenuous theory that rebellious minds could latch onto.

The New Evangelicals want to remain relevant to these rebellious people; so they try very hard to show how both God and Darwin might be right. But the "god" that results from this compromise, a god who needs Darwin’s help in explaining the origin of the universe, is much smaller than the God of the Bible. I would say that this little, rational god is not God at all. The true God cannot be bound by the rules of reason because, by definition, the one who makes the rules is God. A creator who can be perfectly understood and explained by the creature is not the same God who said, "my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways."

So what about Fundamentalists? Unlike the rational god of the New Evangelicals, we try to present the revealed God of the Bible. If that is too absolute or too irrational for modern man, that is too bad. Anything other than the God of the Bible is merely a god of our own creation. Isn't that the definition of an idol? 

Why am I a fundamentalist, because I do not want to God who is no bigger than I am. I do not want to serve a God who is limited by my human reason. If I cannot understand his rules, I still have to play by them. If I cannot attend the holiness he demands, I still have to try. To do these things just because my father and grandfather did them is Pharisaism and traditionalism, but to do them out of love to a holy God is worship. The challenge for the young fundamentalist then is to take this view of God preserved by our fathers and truly make it our own. As Goethe said, "what from your father you received as errors you must appropriate if you were truly possess it."

[nellie-elizabeth]

The Handmaid's Tale: Unfit (3x08)

Um. Well, that happened. That certainly was... something.

Cons:

Can we talk for a second about the utterly clumsy way this show deals with race? It makes me cringe every time. For the most part, they try to pretend this is a totally post-racial society, but obviously they can't pull that off. And then they have some casual moment where Aunt Lydia tells some other aunts that a certain couple doesn't want a "handmaid of color," so clearly casual racism is not only present here, but also condoned by the elite. Because, duh. Gender politics cannot exist separate from racial politics. And yet this show is not willing to grapple with what that means.

Especially considering June, who is the Whitest of White Feminists in this episode, and honestly, throughout the whole show. Her plot armor is seriously becoming a problem for me. June and the other Handmaids are open and unsubtle in their shunning of Ofmatthew, because they are all furious with her for turning in the Martha who was helping June. What happened to the first season, when the rebellion was deep, deep in the shadows? Now the majority of the Handmaids are allowed to be insolent. And then June is even more insolent, right to Aunt Lydia's face. She seems to think that her usefulness as publicity in the hunt for Nichole will protect her, and... that seems to be true, for some reason. But why? June could be flogged, or she could be castrated, or any other number of horrible things that would be invisible to a camera. June's cocky self-assured attitude is only made more frustrating by the fact that she seems to be right about being weirdly untouchable.

There were some things in this episode that I liked as individual pieces, but I'm still frustrated with these aspects as I look at the episode as a whole. For example, the idea of Ofmatthew cracking under the strain of her public shaming, in conjunction with her fear for her pregnancy, is a totally reasonable avenue to explore. But since we haven't spent any real time getting to know Ofmatthew, it feels instead like this big blow-out at the end of the episode is all just a part of June's story, instead of the story of a woman with her own story to tell. There was potential here, and there were moments that came close to tapping in to that potential, but the reality fell short. There are also two other reasons that the ending of this episode, particularly Ofmatthew's death, annoys me, and they are the two reasons discussed in earlier paragraphs.

1) We're seriously going to end two episodes in a row with the death of a black woman while June looks on, untouched by the physical consequences of her own actions? Yeesh. 2) She's pregnant. I give the show props for making me gasp when Ofmatthew got shot, because even as I critique this episode, I will acknowledge that I have very much bought in to the universe they've created. I was shocked that a pregnant Handmaid would be shot, because... it's shocking, and despite that moment of adrenaline, it's ultimately a stupid call for the writers to have made. Aunt Lydia is not as valuable as a pregnant Handmaid. Part of the visceral horror of Season One was the idea that the Handmaids would be punished physically and psychologically, but they never had to fear for their lives, because their bodies were far too valuable. There was something twisted and creative in how the system worked to break these women without ever being able to directly threaten them with death. And now, apparently we're just shooting pregnant Handmaids in the grocery store? That actually really broke me out of the moment.

Let's turn to the flashbacks for a moment. This is another instance where as a stand-alone thing, I quite liked learning about Aunt Lydia's past. I get the sense from other reviews that I'm in the minority on this, but I think Ann Dowd is so talented, and the story worked for me on the level of examining the early symptoms of Gilead, even before things had started in earnest. But on a macro level, these flashbacks still bothered me for a couple of reasons. For one, the themes explored in the flashbacks did not connect with the story in the present-day, other than that both were centered around Lydia. The flash-backs are about a woman who genuinely wanted to help people, turned bitter in part by her evangelical beliefs and in part by her loneliness. The present-day story is about June turning more and more ruthless, and Ofmatthew losing her grip on her sanity. What am I meant to understand by learning a bit more about Lydia's former life? And that's the second problem, honestly - from just this episode, I might get a good-ish understanding of who Aunt Lydia is meant to be as a character, but if you combine these flashbacks with what we've seen of her character so far, it doesn't really track. Aunt Lydia's characterization is all over the place. She seems to slide on the scale of devotion to Gilead depending on what the plot needs from her at any given moment. For a long time, I've held out hope that we would come to some sort of emotional core for this character and finally understand what makes her tick. But if these flashbacks were meant to provide that clarity, in my opinion they failed.

Pros:

Let's talk about June. Because on the one hand, I'm annoyed about the plot armor, as discussed above. And it's tempting to be upset and frustrated by how unlikable June is becoming. Last week, I certainly felt that way. But I'm trying to take the long view. Turning June into something of a villain is... well, it's not a totally crap idea. Maybe the final consequence of the torture she's been through is that there is no coming back for her. Maybe she'll keep being cruel and single-handed, focused on saving Hannah and nothing else. Maybe she'll nod sagely as Handmaids hold guns on her, and maybe we'll be hearing more voice-overs indicating that June is not only willing to inflict suffering on others... she's starting to enjoy it. I can't really sense what the endgame would be here, short of killing June off and letting the story continue without her. But that might not be as crazy an idea as it first sounds. This universe that they've created has legs. There are so many stories to tell. I'd be okay with telling those stories in a world where June is no longer at the center of them. Maybe that's not where this is going. Maybe I'll have to eat my words and be frustrated in the next couple of episodes at the direction the show turns. But for now, the idea of villainous June is kind of interesting!

One thing this show always does well is showing the creepiness of Gilead through the ceremonies. We have the birthing ceremony that ends in tragedy, as another Handmaid's child is stillborn. And then we have the shaming ceremony. It might be ridiculous to me that June doesn't suffer harsher consequences, but I do like the way Aunt Lydia's role in this shaming ceremony echoes her past as a teacher. The Handmaids are her students, parroting her words and internalizing the harsh messages they are forced to repeat, again and again. It's chilling, and it's meant to be, and it's a good scene, even with the flaws in the larger setup.

As I said, Ofmatthew unraveling and breaking down was actually an interesting idea, in and of itself. The acting and the pacing in that final scene was truly superb. At least in the moment, when I wasn't questioning the larger writing decisions going on, I was totally gripped. I thought Aunt Lydia might be about to die. I even thought Ofmatthew might actually shoot June, although I wasn't thinking June would actually die from it. And then when the shots rang out and Ofmatthew dropped, I literally flinched. I wish this story-line had explored more of its potential, but I did think this high-intensity scene worked really well on its own.

And again, I did enjoy the flashbacks for their own sake. I think it's interesting that Lydia was turned towards a darker, more cynical path because of her attempts to find love again. I read in another review that it seemed stupid to make Lydia evil because she was rejected by a man, but that's not the way I read the moment at all. She breaks so many of the rules she had set for herself on that New Year's Eve. She drinks, and she lets herself be comfortable, and she indulges her desires. Suddenly, she realizes that she's slipped away from the righteous path, and she over-corrects in a big way. That's interesting to me, and I hope that we can get some more clarity on Aunt Lydia's characterization moving forward.

I also like all the hints of the changing world. It reminds me of some of the Season One flashbacks. We learn that Child Protective Services has been replaced with privatized organizations, ones that ask questions like "do they go to Church?" in order to determine if a home is fit for a child. We see how Lydia is uncomfortable and judgmental of Noelle's behavior, and at first it seems perfectly reasonable, because she is neglecting her child. But there's something more dangerous underneath that, as Lydia is judging not only Noelle's parenting style, but her wearing of makeup, and use of profanity, and relationships with men. It all bleeds together, so you can see the sinister creep of Gilead's power beginning in these moments.

So... yeah. This is a very long review, and unfortunately a lot of it is less than positive. There are elements that have promise, and I'm giving this show the benefit of the doubt, because I believe it deserves that. But I'm also starting to feel like the writers need to re-evaluate some aspects of the story, and figure out how they're going to keep moving forward with June as a protagonist.

6/10

[polyadvice]

What are Zinnia's thoughts on sex and masturbation when it comes to religion?

i was wondering, what’s your opinion on sex, masturbation, etc. and religion? i was raised religiously but i’m not as religiously involved as the rest of my family. plus i’ve masturbated a couple times but i’ve never had sex. unlike the church and religious standards i view these things as healthy and normal. i just wanted to ask what’s your take on it?

I am a Christian (you can read about my faith here), so I can really only speak to my religion. The word “religion” is so vague and encompasses a wide range of beliefs and practices, so we ought to be careful about painting all spirituality with a broad brush. Even “Christianity” includes a huge variety of philosophies and attitudes about sexuality, from extremely repressive to quite progressive. I belong to a very progressive church but have at times been part of more repressive environments.

My personal opinion is that humans were created with the Divine intentions of love, connection, growth, wholeness, joy, and creativity. When we act in a way that draws us away from a healthy, whole, joyful relationship with ourselves, other people, our communities, or our world, that takes us out of alignment with that Divine purpose. The universe - and its creator, the embodied, personified God I believe in - is fundamentally aligned with love, and that’s why hatred, violence, cruelty, pain, and stagnation are all such destructive forces - they pull us out of alignment with God and the reality God has created for us.

Therefore, anything we do with our bodies and our relationships that gives rise to love, joy, beauty, wholeness, creativity, and connection is not a violation of Divine will. And, anything we do with our bodies and relationships to foment cruelty, hatred, pain, shame, isolation - those, to use my youth worker voice, bum God out. There are certainly ways to have sex or masturbate or be in relationships that are fundamentally damaging and destructive, but we have to separate “inherently harmful” from “harmful because social structures say they are.”

It is impossible to make a clear argument that sex outside of marriage, or masturbation, are inherently damaging to our relationships with ourselves, each other, or the Divine. However, shame and guilt, or inaccurate information, or conditional social bonds, are clearly and demonstrably destructive. All people deserve clear and non-judgmental information about their bodies, all people deserve a healthy and fulfilling sex life (whatever that means for them). God wants this for us! God values wisdom and health, not shame and confusion.

I think Rachel Held Evans put it well when she wrote “If same-sex relationships are really sinful, then why do they so often produce good fruit—loving families, open homes, self-sacrifice, commitment, faithfulness, joy? And if conservative Christians are really right in their response to same-sex relationships, then why does that response often produce bad fruit—secrets, shame, depression, loneliness, broken families, and fear?” This quote is about same sex relationships, but you could very easily apply this theological logic to abstinence only education, shame and fear tactics around sexuality, treating bodies as inherently dirty or sinful, and strict gender roles. Do they bear fruit? Do they lead people into the types of healthy, whole, fulfilled lives and experiences that God wills for us? Or do we have story after story, and study after study, demonstrating that comprehensive sex ed, body acceptance, and freedom are far healthier? The Scriptures I follow call often for wisdom and growth and understanding and truth, and it would be foolish to ignore the reality around us.

Sex and masturbation are part of our community and our bodies, and the health of our community and our bodies are things God cares deeply about. We shouldn’t use them harmfully, and of course we can definitely be sinful or harmful with our bodies and with sex, but identifying what “harmful” or “unhealthy” means is a spiritual task we can draw on plenty of sources from, not just whoever is currently being loudest in Evangelical Christianity.

There is lots of sexual sin in our world - rape culture, sex trafficking, revenge porn, criminalization and marginalization of sex workers, lack of access to sexual healthcare, and so much more. Masturbation can become a numbing or addictive behavior. Sex can used destructively in a number of ways. But nearly everything can be used for good or ill. (God gave us fun and joy, and there’s nothing inherently sinful about play, but things like gambling addictions and the exploitation of young football players are bad.) Sex and masturbation are part of our lives that we need to learn how to make healthy choices about. Religious or not, figuring out how to be a healthy, happy, whole, joyful person takes nuance and effort. It is rarely achieved by following a strict, arbitrary, one-size-fits-all set of rules.

My religion - Episcopal Christianity - teaches that our God is a living God. Living things can be engaged with, life implies growth and change. Our faith is not dead or stagnant. Death has been defeated! It also teaches that we were gifted the Holy Spirit to help us in our interpretive and discerning work as we try to figure out how best to live in alignment with Divine love, light, grace, and mercy. Scripture is a living document, a history of people trying to figure that out in their own ways and their own times. We were also designed with wisdom and reasoning qualities, able to learn and question and grow. Being in a relationship with any Divine power, through any religion, should involve guidance from Divinity, as well as your community, scripture, and your own experience, on what is true and wise and holy.

If you have more questions about sex and masturbation, check out Scarleteen’s excellent resources.

[bountyofbeads]

It’s not just the Russians anymore as Iranians and others turn up disinformation efforts ahead of 2020 vote

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/07/25/its-not-just-russians-anymore-iranians-others-turn-up-disinformation-efforts-ahead-vote/

It’s not just the Russians anymore as Iranians and others turn up disinformation efforts ahead of 2020 vote

(Of course it's not just the Russians!! Other countries see how successful the Russian government was in their disinformation campaign so why wouldn't other countries try it.)

By Craig Timberg and Tony Romm | Published July 25 at 5:29 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted July 26, 2019

A recent tweet from Alicia Hernan — whose Twitter account described her as a wife, mother and lover of peace — did not mince words about her feelings for President Trump: “That stupid moron doesn’t get that that by creating bad guys, spewing hate filled words and creating fear of ‘others’, his message is spreading to fanatics around the world. Or maybe he does.”

That March 16 tweet, directed to a Hawaii congressman, was not the work of an American voter venting her frustration. The account, “@AliciaHernan3,” was what disinformation researchers call a “sock puppet” — a type of fictitious online persona used by Russians when they were seeking to influence the 2016 presidential election.

But it was Iranians, not Russians, who created @AliciaHernan3, complete with a picture of a blonde woman with large, round-framed glasses and a turtleneck sweater. It was one of more than 7,000 phony accounts from Iran that Twitter has shut down this year alone.

And Iran is far from the only nation that has, within its borders, substantial capacity to wage Russian-style influence operations in the United States ahead of next year’s election. That means American voters are likely to be targeted in the coming campaign season by more foreign disinformation than ever before, say those studying such operations.

Former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III echoed the consensus of independent researchers in his congressional testimony Wednesday, saying of Russian online political interference: “It wasn’t a single attempt. They’re doing it as we sit here, and they expect to do it the next campaign.” He added that “many more countries” had developed similar capabilities, based in part on the Russian playbook. A new Senate Intelligence Committee report released Thursday found that Russia began targeting the U.S. election system in 2014 and concluded that the attacks had continued into 2017.

A short list of countries that host online influence operations with a history of interfering across borders includes Saudi Arabia, Israel, China, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela, researchers say.

They say it’s often not clear exactly who runs these operations — whether it’s the governments themselves or other actors — but that they typically echo the talking points of the ruling powers and back their geopolitical goals through tweets, posts and online videos. Operations in all of these countries, meanwhile, have the means and potentially the motives to seek to influence a U.S. election shaping up as among the most hotly contested in decades.

The influence operations in these countries, however, do not all share Russia’s demonstrated preference for Trump and other Republicans. The Iranians, for example, typically oppose Trump in their disinformation messaging, criticizing his decision to pull the United States out of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and administration policy on other issues, including Israel and the civil wars in Yemen and Syria, research shows.

“Multiple foreign actors have demonstrated an ability and willingness to leverage these kinds of influence operations in pursuit of their geopolitical goals,” said Lee Foster, head of the intelligence team investigating information operations for FireEye, a cybersecurity firm based in California. “We risk the U.S. information space becoming a free-for-all for foreign interference if, as a society, we fail to get an effective grasp on this problem.”

Researchers for FireEye and other firms have reported suspected Iranian disinformation on most major social media platform — Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google+ and others — and on stand-alone websites, as well. In May, FireEye also alleged that U.S. news sites may have been tricked into publishing letters to the editor penned by Iranian operatives.

The firm’s analysis spotted a number of instances where letters in newspapers in Virginia and Texas appeared to share similar characteristics to accounts on Twitter believed to be part of an Iran-based disinformation network. FireEye also catalogued fictitious Twitter personas used by Iranians that included a Harvard University student, a Michigan bodybuilder and an Iranian American woman from Seattle.

Some Iranian Twitter accounts, FireEye found, even sought to impersonate U.S. political candidates, including a California Republican who ultimately lost the general election for Congress. That account tweeted about the confirmation hearing for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh and a British royal wedding before beginning to promote Iranian interests, including tweets condemning the Saudis’ killing of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

Some Iranian disinformation accounts, some of which were affiliated with state-controlled news operations, date back several years, but they have grown steadily more sophisticated. Twitter, Facebook and Google all have identified and taken offline accounts from Iran over the past year for engaging in coordinated, deceptive behavior.

“As part of our public archive of information operations, we have disclosed thousands of accounts and millions of Tweets originating in Iran that we have proactively removed,” said Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of site integrity. “Every year is an election year on Twitter, and we will be applying all of our global learnings to protect and enhance conversations around the 2020 election.”

The Iranian tactics differ somewhat from those of the Russians, who through the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg infiltrated the online conversations of a wide range of U.S. political groupings — immigration hard-liners, African Americans, veterans, evangelical Christians, environmentalists — with messages attuned to the way those communities already were speaking among themselves on major online platforms.

The Iranian operations detected so far tend to lack that complexity, with messaging typically on a single side of an issue in line with government policy goals — countering Israel, for example — as opposed to multiple ones.

But there are clear signs of shifting tactics in the accounts identified by Twitter, Facebook and other companies so far. What’s known, researchers say, may be only small parts of much larger operations that remain undetected.

“The Iranian operations were a wake-up call to remind us that the Russians were not the only ones doing information operations,” said Camille François, chief innovation officer for Graphika, a network analysis firm based in New York that studies online disinformation.

Graphika found that among one set of 1,666 Iranian accounts taken down by Twitter in June, about 1 in 4 tweets were in English. Trump was mentioned more than 1,400 times — almost always in critical ways — with this anti-Trump tweeting peaking in early 2017, in the months around when he took office.

Researchers say that both the U.S. government and social media companies have grown more aggressive in battling online disinformation since the 2016 presidential election.

Cooperation between the FBI and Silicon Valley has improved markedly. U.S. Cyber Command blocked Internet access to Russian disinformation teams during the congressional midterm vote in November 2018, scrambling operations. Some researchers express hope that this rising aggressiveness may thwart — or at least deter — some foreign-based influence operations from interfering in future U.S. elections.

All of the major social media companies also have established teams devoted to combating disinformation, typically by identifying and shutting down networks of fictitious foreign-based accounts on an increasingly large scale.

This shift has been dramatic since 2016, when the companies saw foreign threats mainly in terms of traditional cybersecurity — hacks and bugs — as opposed to influence operations conducted by foreign adversaries with substantial resources. The Russian disinformation campaign in 2016 spent more than $1 million a month, Mueller reported in an indictment last year against the Internet Research Agency.

As social media companies crack down, the tactics of disinformation teams rapidly shift to improve operational security and more effectively evade detection. FireEye, for example, was able to identify some apparently fake Iranian accounts last year because contact numbers for supposed American Twitter users had the +98 country code from Iran, a tactical mistake operatives are unlikely to make again.

But among independent researchers and some lawmakers, significant skepticism remains on whether enough has been done to prepare for the threat in 2020.

“In 2016, Russia used bots and fake accounts to launch an unprecedented social media campaign designed to influence the results of our presidential election,” said Sen. Mark R. Warner (Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “That playbook is out in the open now, and you can bet that unless the platform companies get their acts together, we’re going to see more and more foreign-based actors using it to wreak havoc in our democratic process.”

The nations hosting significant disinformation capabilities typically first saw them active in seeking to manipulate domestic audiences, shaping public perceptions in line with regime propaganda. The next step often was working regionally, by infiltrating online conversations in neighboring countries, as Russia did in Ukraine in 2014 as it annexed Crimea and fomented unrest elsewhere in the country.

Disinformation teams in Iran initially developed their tactics while manipulating domestic political conversation before gradually expanding operations to include more languages, more themes and foreign targets.

Human rights lawyer Simin Kargar, of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, said Iran for years has harassed journalists, political dissidents and artists in its internal disinformation campaigns. She has watched as Iran increasingly deployed such tactics against foreign targets.

“I would be surprised if the Iranians weren’t trying to expand their operations for the coming election, especially with the rising tensions between Iran and the United States,” Kargar said. “They would be far more savvy by 2020.”

Disinformation teams in Saudi Arabia have worked both internally and to manipulate other Gulf states, including in the nation’s struggle with rival Qatar, said researcher Marc Owen Jones, an assistant professor of Middle East studies at Hamad bin Khalifa University in Doha, the capital of Qatar. He said tactics in Saudi Arabia typically involve both sock puppets and automated accounts, called “bots,” echoing official government propaganda, including things said or tweeted by Trump.

Jones recently detailed in a series of tweets an apparent information operation emanating from Saudi Arabia following a visit to the White House this month by Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, the emir of Qatar. Jones found a single tweet, “The Prince of Qatar a supporter of terrorism, should not be in the White House but be at Guantanamo,” had been posted up to 800 times an hour over several days, from 2,582 unique accounts. The tweets mostly were directed at U.S.-based targets, including Trump, the CIA and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and at several news organizations, including Fox News, Reuters and The Washington Post.

“There’s still this pro-Trump message coming from Saudi Twitter, and I don’t think that’s likely to change,” Jones said. “They view Trump’s reelection as key to their own survival.”

A spokesman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington, Fahad Nazer, said, “Saudi Arabia does not interfere in anyway in the domestic affairs of other countries. It considers this noninterference principle to be a pillar of the rules-based international order. Just as importantly, Saudi Arabia does not engage in the dissemination of “disinformation” of any sort. Any allegations to the contrary are baseless.”

This trajectory from nationally focused to internationally focused disinformation campaigns raises longer-term worries about what other nations might have disinformation teams sharpening their chops on domestic audiences with an eye toward eventual use against foreign targets, including in the United States. In addition to those with known foreign disinformation capabilities, there are numerous nations — Turkey, Egypt, the Philippines, Qatar, Mexico and others — that now use such tactics mainly to influence domestic politics but could turn their attention to foreign targets.

In a related trend, online mercenaries have begun offering information operations as a commercial service. Facebook shut down 265 accounts from an Israeli company, Archimedes Group, in May for seeking to manipulate elections through social media targeting voters in Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia. The company said on its website that it would “use every tool and take every advantage available in order to change reality according to our client’s wishes.”

[elrondsscribe]

In which I Really Need To Learn To Shut Up.

This post was inspired by @anthropologyarda‘s post on the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth, which you should read here!

WARNING: talk about Christianity, biblical texts, and personal faith journey disclosure. If you don’t want to be bothered with anything of the kind, don’t read below the cut.

Very personal disclosure:

Currently I am a student at a Christian college working my way through the oral, written, and translated, and canonized history of the biblical texts. I am beginning to see something of a parallel with certain aspects of Tolkien’s ‘histories’ and the stories in the biblical text.

I came up in a fairly fundamental environment (not nearly as much so as others I’ve heard of, but still pretty evangelical), and thus was trained to regard every word of the biblical text as literal written history (or science or life rules or whatever the text happened to be dealing with). Any other interpretation was nothing short of unfaithfulness to the Bible and unfaithfulness to God. My relationship with the Middle-Earth canon worked much the same way: every part of the text was meant by Tolkien to be the literal history of the fictional world of Middle-Earth.

However, I’m also the kind of person who believes that everything a human being does or says has a context, and of course contexts change with time and place. As a teenager, I began to feel that even the Bible must have some context: after all, it hadn’t fallen out of heaven, leather-bound and printed in King James English with a ribbon down the middle. (Nothing against such Bibles, of course. My dad gave me one for Christmas as a kid and it remains one of my most treasured possessions.) However, it has taken me a number of years, and two college-level survey courses, to even start to really unpack what it means for the biblical text to have a context.

For example: Recently I had to read that really weird story in Genesis 9 (right after the Flood story) where Noah gets drunk and passes out naked in his tent. (I’m sure college students can’t relate to that at all.) One of his three sons, Ham, goes and looks at him and mocks him; the other two sons, Shem and Japheth, are more respectful. And after Noah wakes up, he curses, not Ham (who did the Bad Thing), but Canaan, one of Ham’s sons.

Now if you know much about Israel’s history with the Canaanites throughout the Old Testament, you know that the Canaanites are one of the most frequent “bad guys” whom Israel is always either killing, getting killed by, or getting in trouble with God for not killing. It’s been suggested that this particular cursing-of-Canaan story is less about History 101 and more about “see kids, this is why them Canaanites is baaad news and they goin’ dooown.” Stories were the foundation of how the world operated in the Ancient Near East; if you wanted to explain why rain fell from the sky, or why humans die, or why We Ought To Kill Those Weird People Who Are Not Like Us, you explained by telling a story. Israel doesn’t seem to have been an exception to this. (Neither are we, actually.)

But here’s the thing: As a modern reader, opening yourself up to the possibility of the cursing-of-Canaan story being propoganda rather than literal history permits you to try to read between the lines of the biblical text. And when you do that, you learn something about the values and assumptions of the people who actually lived behind (and wrote) the text. You experience a little piece of the ancient world in a way that simply reading the story as ‘History’ doesn’t really allow.

My point? That a story such as the Noah/Ham/Canaan story (or the Abraham story cycle) could be said to function in the Bible not unlike a story such as the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth (or the 144 Elves by Cuiviénen) function in Tolkien’s world. What if reading these stories as fairytales and/or propoganda instead of literal history actually tells us something about the world from which they came?

Reading between the lines of the text (while doing honor to the world from which it came) is an art form that takes humility, imagination, knowledge, good sense, and a willingness to examine your own assumptions. This is true in reading the Bible and Tolkien’s legendarium. Frankly, it’s my suspicion that the kind of Tolkien fans who believe that every single scrap of Tolkien’s writing is literal Middle-Earth history are probably (young) evangelicals who feel the same way about the text of the Bible.

Hey, I’m not pointing fingers. That was me. Some days, that still is me.

TLDR: Christian girl sees parallel between OP’s reading of the Athrabeth ah Andreth and the way in which she is herself learning to read biblical narratives.

[faithfulnews]

Indonesia’s Pentecostal Leader: ‘Accept Muslim Attacks’

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent BosNewsLife reporting from Jakarta

JAKARTA, INDONESIA (BosNewsLife)– The leader of Indonesia’s main Pentecostal denomination urges church members to accept ongoing attacks by Muslim authorities and hardliners as the Biblical “crosses we must bear.” Secretary-General Johannis (‘John’) Hus Lumenta appealed to the faithful while speaking to BosNewsLife in Jakarta, where imams competed for attention with loudspeaker calls to prayer.

Lumenta said many of the nearly 3-million members of his Pentecostal Church in Indonesia or ‘Gereja Pantekosta di Indonesia’ (GPdI) face harassment due to their faith in Jesus Christ. Muslim hardliners have torched several buildings of GPdI’s 20,000 congregations, Lumenta noted.

“Churches are burned. But we thank God that we can still survive,” in what is the world’s largest Muslim nation, he explained in a wide-ranging interview. The 68-year-old church leader said the government of Indonesian President Joko Widodo seemed unable to control the ongoing anti-Christian violence in Indonesia. “The government shuts up and doesn’t intervene. Because they are also under pressure from Muslim groups, it’s like that every day.”

Indonesia’s re-elected president, popularly known as “Jokowi,” announced last year that he would consider banning the hardline and sometimes violent Islamic Defenders Front. He already halted operations of the Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia, a smaller group than the Islamic Defenders Front, that campaigned for a global caliphate. But ending the front’s activities has proven difficult. Once seen as politically insignificant, the group increased its influence through humanitarian aid. Close to 90 percent of this nation of nearly 270 million people are Muslims.

Christians fear that the Islamic Defenders Front and similar organizations will realize their dream to introduce Shariah law throughout Indonesia. They also recall that the front successfully organized massive street protests in 2016 and 2017 against the Christian governor of Jakarta, a Widodo ally. The governor, Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama, was subsequently jailed for “blasphemy against Islam” before being released last year.

MODERATE NATION?

Pentecostal Church in Indonesia continues to grow. Among worshipers also children.

President Widodo has told international media he wants Indonesia to be known as a moderate nation. But undermining his message is hostility towards Christians and public canings in areas like Aceh province, which already practices Shariah law under a special autonomy deal. “Many of our people have been scattered,” added GPdI leader Lumenta.

“Everyday difficult things are taking place,” he said. GPdI congregations in mainly rural areas are facing protests from Muslim hardliners opposed to their Christian message, Lumenta stressed. “They try to do whatever they want, like burning the building. The government finds it difficult to take control to prevent these incidents.”

Lumenta said as many as dozens of church members were murdered in previous years for their faith in Christ. In 2018, some 18 Christians were reportedly killed and many more wounded in a coordinated suicide bomb attack on three churches in the city of Surabaya.

“No members of our churches were killed for their faith last year. But if you build a local church, violent protests can be expected,” Lumenta said. He spoke on the eve of an Indonesian visit by Dutch King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima, who will discuss “interreligious dialogue” among other issues with religious and political leaders.

However, “To me personally talking about interreligious dialogue is nonsense,” Lumenta said. “It sounds like making a compromise. As a man of faith in Christ, I believe in the Truth. Interreligious dialogue is more about politics. It has nothing to do with growing our faith. Or making us more and more vibrant or victorious for Christ. That’s my view.”

WEALTHY CHRISTIANS

The royal couple arrives after last year Indonesia celebrated its 70th anniversary of independence from Dutch colonial rule. During colonial time, the GPdI established with support from Dutch Christians. But back in The Netherlands and other Western countries, many churches are now closing, Lumenta noticed.

“Perhaps that’s because Christians there are living in very wealthy conditions. Since they have not much pressure, they have become easy-going people. That’s unlike us. Sometimes we don’t sleep well. We are aware all the time of the difficulties we face.”

Ironically, Lumenta links persecution to church growth. “The more the pressure, the more the blessing. Because it unites us in prayer and fasting.” He added: “Probably, it is a fact that churches in the comfortable West are not as strong now as those in the developing countries like Indonesia.”

That worries the Pentecostal leader. “From the Biblical point of view that is very dangerous,” Lumenta warned. Despite the pressure, his denomination continues “to see souls coming to Christ,” he noticed. Among those Christians are many ex-Muslims expressing displeasure with strict Islam.

Additionally, some seek Christ’s peace from “occult traditions” in many rural villages, church leaders and other Christians told BosNewsLife. “Many people are coming to faith in Christ. That is a joy for us. Despite all these difficulties, God is moving in such a way that sometimes you can not explain,” Lumenta said with a smile. “It is a miracle how God works with us.”

WALKING STICK

In total, at least hundreds of thousands of Muslims are becoming Christians annually through GPdI-linked activities, several church sources told BosNewsLife.

Lumenta, who uses a walking stick after suffering a stroke several years ago, says his walk with Christ has strengthened him. Christians in “well-to-do” Western nations could learn from the struggles of their brothers and sisters in Indonesia, he claimed.

“This persecution challenge is good for us because we are seeing people coming to Christ. In the West, people have become too comfortable. That’s why churches are empty there.”

But the married father-of-three says he remains thankful to Christians from The Netherlands and other Western countries who arrived in Indonesia as missionaries. “It all began here in Indonesia with Western outreaches for the Gospel. Without those efforts, we would not be talking here as we are talking now.”

Lumenta laughed when asked whether members of his church planned to travel to The Netherlands or other European countries to “re-evangelize” a continent in spiritual turmoil. “I am not yet saying that we Asians should come to Europe and start to evangelize,” he said.

He briefly paused. “But who knows? Maybe God will use some of our ministers who have compassion for the West. They can then re-evangelize those Christians who are no longer serious about their living for Christ.”

Go to the article

[pamphletstoinspire]

Catholic Physics - Reflections of a Catholic Scientist - Part 8

Mathematics the Handmaiden of Theology: Augustine and Cantor

I had thought I could proceed in a nice orderly sequence about belief, knowledge, the limits of science, but articles keep appearing that I have to discuss. Here's an article by Adam Drozdek that has great insights on mathematics and its relation to theology: Beyond Infinity: Augustine and Cantor.  Although I'll try to summarize the main points of his article, I urge the reader to go to the original article for a detailed exegis.

First, here is Drozdek's summary of St. Augustine's (Hippo) ideas about mathematics, infinity and God.

"To summarize, there are three important aspects of Augustine's discussion of the problem of infinity. First, infinity is an inborn concept which enables any knowledge. Second, infinity can be found in the purest form in mathematics, and thus mathematics is the best tool of acquiring knowledge about God. Third, God is neither finite nor infinite and his greatness surpasses even the infinite. Augustine is original in combining these three aspects in his philosophy ; some of them can be found in other philosophers and theologians, but also in mathematicians."

Augustine anticipates later developments in mathematics, the mathematics of infinity put forth in set theory:

"God's infinity would still be of a higher magnitude, an infinity of different kind. His infinity is above all possible temporal (and spatial) infinity ; it is an infinity of infinities, whose magnitude can be dimly imagined by means of mathematical infinity. It is an infinity of infinities also in that "all infinity is in some ineffable way made finite to God," since no infinity is incomprehensible to God (De civ. Dei), he can count numbers without succession of thought. God is even able to count without numbers, which assumes that there is no number equal to the quantity of all numbers, that is, no number, to use modern parlance, expressing cardinality of integers (which is aleph zero). This is no hindrance to God who is able to see the entire sequence of numbers without looking at these numbers one by one. Infinity of these numbers can be grasped in one act of comprehension."

Drozdek points out that Augustine's view on God's infinitude differs from that of later Catholic theologians and philsophers--Roger Bacon, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus--who emphasized the infinite nature of God.

"Augustine is an exception to this rule. To him, God encompasses infinity, himself not being infinite."

However, Augustine does have a worth successor, Georg Cantor (1845-1918) who proposed new ideas about infinity as a mathematically rigorous subject, by use of set theory.  Cantor's motivation was theological and philosophical:

"mathematical statements are not divorced from reality, and, for instance, set theory makes certain pronouncements about things in themselves, about 'true being,' and 'the general set theory [...] belongs entirely to metaphysics' and is its servant."

Like Augustine, Cantor believes that knowledge of infinity is innate:

"...abstract knowledge is already in us, implanted and dormant, enlivened by our quest for it. In particular, infinity cannot be recognized unless it is inborn, since infinity "even inhabits our mind (Geiste)".21 Therefore, mathematics has not only a purely theoretical interest, but it is also of philosophical and theological bearing."

God, according to Cantor is the Absolute (what in modern mathematics is designated by the Greek upper-case omega):

"But whereas different transfinite levels can be known (erkanni), the Absolute can only be recognized (anerkannt), not known, not even approximately ; however, an 'absolutely infinite sequence of numbers,' i.e., sequence of all infinities, can be considered 'a suitable symbol of the Absolute'.25 Set theory shows that there is no set encompassing all sets, and yet God is able to comprehend all these infinities, hence he is above infinity, he is the Absolute. The transfinite, unlike the Absolute, 'clearly appears to us as limited, capable ofbeing augmented and thus related to the finite'. With this statement Cantor returnsto Augustine's conviction that 'all infinity is in some ineffable way made finite to God.' "

Like Augustine, Cantor believed that the concept of infinity is put within us, as a Divine implant:

"The transfinite numbers are not pure creations of our mind, they are only discovered in the mind and in the world. They cannot be our creations since they precede our very existence and the existence of the world. As Augustine, whom he quotes, Cantor believes that God utilized numbers to create the world."

My wife, who is NOT a mathematician, in reading all the above, recognized that there is at the basis a Platonic philosophy, that is to say, an assumption that there is a reality to mathematical ideas that is different from the reality of concrete things, the world of sensation.  Other mathematicians (not all of whom are theists) are also Platonists, for example Roger Penrose, who proposes three worlds, the platonic (ideas), the physical, and the mental. (see The Emperor's New Mind )

If Drozdek's article stirs you up, you can also go to Rudy Rucker's fine book on the same subject, "Infinity and the Mind", which gives more mathematical detail than Drozdek's article.

From a series of articles written by: Bob Kurland - a Catholic Scientist

***

“It is also necessary—may God grant it!—that in providing others with books to read I myself should make progress, and that in trying to answer their questions I myself should find what I am seeking.

Therefore at the command of God our Lord and with his help, I have undertaken not so much to discourse with authority on matters known to me as to know them better by discoursing devoutly of them.”

St. Augustine of Hippo, The Trinity I,8.

This is to be a blog about the consonance/compatibility of science and the teachings of the Catholic Church.   If you ask why yet another blog about science and religion, I'll answer that I hope to bring a different perspective, as a late convert to the Church (at the age of 64, 18 years ago) and as a physicist (now retired after 60 years in academia and medical physics).

Being a physicist (since 1951), I should, according to popular opinion, be an atheist, or at worst an agnostic with no clear idea of whether God exists or that He acts in the world.  That opinion, given loud voice in the media and on the internet, is of course not correct.  There are many physicists, among them Nobel Prize winners, who are believers (to be listed later) just as there are many who are not.

So, scientific achievement is not in itself a basis for crediting or discrediting belief in God, nor should it be on rational grounds.  There are intelligent people who are atheists, and there are intelligent people who are theists.  And it is not true, despite claims of evangelical atheists to the contrary, that one either lacks intellectual acuity or has to suppress one’s critical faculties in order to believe in God.

What then are the roots of faith, and in this context, by faith I mean belief in God? The purpose of this blog is to explore (but not necessarily answer) this question in both a general and personal way.  To begin, I offer a general apology (not apologia): I am not a professional philosopher although I have done much undirected reading in this last decade.  What philosophical discourse I’ll attempt will be distilled from such reading and, of course, can be subjected to critical analysis by those more academically versed in philosophical arguments.

First, I’ll discuss what might be rational (and sometimes irrational) grounds for belief, particularly belief in God.   Next, I will give a personal account of my own (rather later) road to belief, which was, unlike St. Paul’s, a top-down conversion.  Finally, I will  examine what the world around us tells us about the existence and intervention of God, in both a scientific and supra-scientific context.

I will also try to show (as a quondam practicing scientist) the "Limits of a Limitless Science" (the elegant phrase used by Fr. Stanly Jaki) and, in particular, that my faith as a Catholic is entirely consonant with what science tells us about the world.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

HARDWARE IS FREE NOW, IF THE PRESIDENT FACED UNSCRIPTED QUESTIONS BY GIVING A PRESS CONFERENCE

Some writers quote parts of things they say to one another? Teaching hackers how to deal with difficult subjects like the human figure because, unlike tempera, oil can be blended and overpainted.1 If you're sure of the general area you want to do. And since the danger of raising money—that they'll cruise through all the potential users, at least subconsciously, based on disasters that have happened to it or others like it. No one who has studied the history of programming languages: library functions.2 Such hypersensitivity will come at an ever increasing rate. Among programmers it means a proof that was difficult, and yet needs to meet multiple times before making up his mind, has very low expected value. Alas, you can't simply applaud everything they produce.3

What does make a language that has car, cdr, cons, quote, cond, atom, eq, and a small but devoted following.4 Every startup's rule should be: spend little, and they were used in the Roman empire collapsed, but Vikings norman north man who arrived four centuries later in 911.5 In principle investors are all subject to the same cause.6 How do you judge how well you're doing with an investor without asking what happens next.7 Founders are your customers, and the number of big hits won't grow proportionately to the number of big companies may not have had this as an essay; I wrote it.8 And yet, oddly enough, YC even has aspects of that.9 Be good, take care of themselves. When I see a third mistake: timidity. But when founders of larval startups worry about this. It is so much harder.

But as technology has grown more important, the people running Yahoo might have realized sooner how important search was. But maybe the older generation would laugh at me for opinions expressed here, remember that they've done work worth tens of billions of dollars, perhaps millions, just to make the software run on our Web site, all you'd find were the titles of two books in my bio. No big deal. Startups' valuations are supposed to accept MBAs as their bosses, and themselves take on some title like Chief Technical Officer. Piracy is effectively the lowest tier of price discrimination. I'd realized in college that one ought to vote for Kerry. All you had to give all your surplus to and acknowledge as your masters. A lot of VCs would have rejected Microsoft.

He said their business model is being undermined on two fronts. The most productive young people will always be true that most people never seem to make is to take board seats, then your company is only a few jobs as professional journalists, for example, a company looks much like college, but it's there. You can start one when you're done, or even whether it still sends one.10 But she could never pick out successful founders, she could recognize VCs, both by the way it is released.11 It's just a means to something else. We just don't hear about it. It doesn't seem to be unusually smart, and C is a kludge.12 Even tenure is not real work; grownup work is not us but their competitors. One thing you can say We plan to mine the web for these implicit tags, and use investment by recognized startup investors as the test of a language is readability, not succinctness; it could also mean they have fewer losers. A good flatterer doesn't lie, but that won't be enough. Is that so bad?13 Raising more money just lets us do it faster.

I thought that something must be. So it is in the form of the GI Bill, which sent 2. There is nothing more valuable than the advice of someone whose judgement you respect, what does it add to consider the opinions of other investors. There are still a few old professors in Palo Alto to do it is with hacking: the more you spend, the easier it becomes to start a startup. I don't like the look of Java: 1.14 Imagine how incongruous the New York Times front page. But you can tell that from indirect evidence. In an IPO, it might not merely add expense, but it's certainly not here now. Kids are less perceptive.

It let them build great looking online stores literally in minutes.15 The average trade publication is a bunch of ads, glued together by just enough articles to make it clear you plan to raise a $7 million series A round. I'm not sure why this is so.16 But I've learned never to say never about technology. Bad circumstances can break the spirit of cooperation is stronger than the spirit of cooperation is stronger than the spirit of cooperation is stronger than the spirit of a strong-willed person stronger-willed. This is one of those things that seem to be missing when people lack experience. They just had us tuned out. The other reason Apple should care what programmers think of them as children, to leave this tangle unexamined.

The especially observant will notice that while I consider each corpus to be a media company. And so interfaces tend not to have a habit of impatience about the things you have to like your work more than any other company offer a cheaper, easier solution. The goal in a startup is to try. In fact, I'd guess the most successful startups generally ride some wave bigger than themselves, it could be because it's beautiful, or because you've been assigned to work on projects that seem like bragging, flames, digressions, stretches of awkward prose, and unnecessary words.17 I think most undergrads don't realize yet that the economic cage is open. In art, mediums like embroidery and mosaic work well if you know beforehand what you want. But vice versa as well. I like. But if you're living in the future.18 Now the misunderstood artist is not a critique of Java! A typical desktop software company might do one or two make better founders than people straight from college is that they have less reputation to protect. It's more important than what it got wrong.

Notes

I think this is a bad idea has been happening for a CEO to make money. Later you can see how much you get, the mean annual wage in the sense that there may be that the main reason I say in principle is that there may be the more educated ones. Or more precisely, investors treat them differently. Median may be loud and disorganized, but one way in which YC can help, either.

They're often different in kind, because you have to make money. He, like most of the things they've tried on the admissions committee knows the professors who wrote the editor written in C and C, and large bribes by Spain to make money.

Monk, Ray, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The First Two Hundred Years. Change in the technology business. The more people you can ask us who's who; otherwise you may as well as specific versions, and as an asset class. This sentence originally read GMail is painfully slow.

Something similar has been around as long as the average startup.

Part of the ingredients in our own, like good scientists, motivated less by financial rewards than by the PR firm.

If they were, like angel investors in startups is uninterruptability. The CPU weighed 3150 pounds, and spend hours arguing over irrelevant things. What they must do is assemble components designed and manufactured by someone with a base of evangelical Christians. The original Internet forums were not web sites but Usenet newsgroups.

Which feels a lot about how the stakes were used. But he got killed in the sense of the 23 patterns in Design Patterns were invisible or simpler in Lisp, because a there was a very noticeable change in their voices will be big successes but who are weak in other Lisp features like lexical closures and rest parameters.

In fact, this is also not a big effect on what interests you most. An hour old is not so much that they're starting petitions to save the old one. Google adopted Don't be fooled.

Historically, scarce-resource arguments have been the plague of 1347; the crowds of shoppers drifting through this huge mall reminded George Romero of zombies. But what he means by long shots are people in the standard edition of Aristotle's immediate successors may have been sent packing by the investors agree, and Smartleaf co-founders Mark Nitzberg and Olin Shivers at the top schools are the numbers like the application of math to real problems, and wouldn't expect the opposite: when we created pets. Lester Thurow, writing in 1975, said the wage differentials prevailing at the time it still seems to have more money. I don't know.

Donald J.

If you have no representation more concise than a huge loophole.

I startups. Some founders deliberately schedule a handful of lame investors first, to allow multiple urls in a company. Seneca Ep.

But one of its users, at least 150 million in 1970. Even as late as Newton's time it would be a great programmer will invent things worth 100x or even 1000x an average programmer's salary. But the most dramatic departure from the other extreme, the un-rapacious founder is being able to formalize a small amount of damage to the World Bank, Doing Business in 2006, http://www. 99 to—A Spam Classification Organization Program.

Ironically, one variant of the country would buy one.

This doesn't mean easy, of S P 500 CEOs in the narrowest sense. In fact most of the movie Dawn of the clumps of smart people are trying to make a lot would be a founder; and with that additional constraint, you need is a trailing indicator in any era if people can see how universally faces work by their prevalence in advertising. 5,000 sestertii apiece for slaves learned in the US.

In 1800 an empty room, and Reddit is Delicious/popular.

Proceedings of AAAI-98 Workshop on Learning for Text Categorization. It's lame that VCs may begin to conserve board seats for shorter periods. A professor at a public company CEOs were J.

Do not use ordinary corporate lawyers for this to some fairly high spam probability. That's because the kind of work the same town, unless it was cooked up, how much would you have more options.

[frederickwiddowson]

Luke 24:13 ¶  And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs. 14  And they talked together of all these things which had happened. 15  And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them. 16  But their eyes were holden that they should not know him. 17  And he said unto them, What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad? 18  And the one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering said unto him, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days? 19  And he said unto them, What things? And they said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people: 20  And how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him. 21  But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel: and beside all this, to day is the third day since these things were done. 22 Yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulchre; 23  And when they found not his body, they came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that he was alive. 24  And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulchre, and found it even so as the women had said: but him they saw not. 25  Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: 26  Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? 27  And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. 28  And they drew nigh unto the village, whither they went: and he made as though he would have gone further. 29  But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to tarry with them. 30  And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. 31  And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight. 32  And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures? 33  And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them, 34 Saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon. 35  And they told what things were done in the way, and how he was known of them in breaking of bread.

 Verse 21 is another one of those indicators that the Jews were not expecting their Messiah to suffer and die and then be resurrected. They were expecting Him to somehow restore Israel to a position of prominence, free of the yoke of Roman rule. See what they ask the risen Christ in Luke’s book entitled The Acts of the Apostles which we call simply Acts.

 Acts 1:6 ¶  When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?

 As I noted previously in my comments on Luke 7 and 18 I read in a study entitled A History of Messianic Speculation in Israel from the First through the Seventeenth Centuries by Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver that there was an expectation of two messiahs at times, one; Messiah ben Joseph and, two; Messiah ben David. One is a conqueror and one suffers for the people of Israel and dies fighting the enemies of God and Israel. Jewish tradition also refers to, “The Four Craftsmen.” The Dead Sea Scrolls also speak of something like a war-messiah from the tribe of Ephraim dated to the first century before Christ, a suffering Messiah, and a priestly Messiah figure. There is some question about when these interpretations came about but it is interesting to consider. All of the prophecies were fulfilled in one man; Jesus Christ.

 This makes it quite clear that the Jews, unlike what most evangelical preaching says, were not looking forward to the Cross, the death, burial, and resurrection of their Messiah. They had no clue.

 This is reinforced throughout the gospels.

 Mark 9:9  And as they came down from the mountain, he charged them that they should tell no man what things they had seen, till the Son of man were risen from the dead. 10  And they kept that saying with themselves, questioning one with another what the rising from the dead should mean…31  For he taught his disciples, and said unto them, The Son of man is delivered into the hands of men, and they shall kill him; and after that he is killed, he shall rise the third day. 32  

But they understood not that saying, and were afraid to ask him.

 John 20:9  For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead.

 Peter had no previous knowledge or understanding of this prophetic event to come.

 Matthew 16:21 ¶  From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. 22  Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee. 23  But he turned, and said

unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.

 This is why Paul, in his argument with the Jews at Thessalonica had to first teach them from the Old Testament that the Messiah had to suffer and die before he could preach that Jesus was indeed that very Christ.

 Acts 17:1 ¶  Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews: 2  And Paul, as his manner was, went in

unto them, and three sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures, 3  Opening and alleging, that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead; and

that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ.

 Again, in his letter to the Hebrews he makes it quite clear in the context of the Old Testament sacrifices in Hebrews 9:23-28 which I will quote fully in a minute.

 But, Jesus told them that the things that are about to happen to Him were written of in the books by the Prophets. First, there is the most famous passage in Isaiah 52:13 through 53:12.

 Also regard this important prophecy made by Abraham just before a ram is found in a thicket for his sacrifice in place of his own son.

 Genesis 22:8  And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.

 The entire Psalm 22, the first verse of which Jesus quoted from the Cross, is a prophecy of Christ. There are many others. Notice this reference in Hosea.

 Hosea 6:2  After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.

 I could go on from the Prophet Moses spoke of in Deuteronomy 18 and referenced in Acts 3 through Job’s acknowledgement in Job 19 that he would see his Redeemer, who is God, in the flesh in the latter days though Job’s own body was consumed away. But, what is clear is that the Jews did not get it, did not understand what was to happen. Don’t think badly of them as I recently spoke to a person who considers themselves to be a Christian and is active in their church who did not know that Jesus quoted the first verse of Psalm 22 from the Cross. There seemed to be no clear teaching on the Messiah to come in first-century Judea. Tying together all of the threads of the Old Testament regarding the Jewish Messiah was left up to Christ before His Crucifixion and after His Resurrection as in Luke 24 here on the road to Emmaus.

 They thought the Christ would come as a king first and this is what Satan was trying to accomplish in His temptation of Christ in chapter four, trying to get Jesus to take the Crown before the Cross and subvert His mission. Here is another verse about His suffering.

 Zechariah 12:10  And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.

 But from the time of Christ’s birth even to His execution the powers that be even referred to Him as being a king, which in the first place greatly concerned them and in the latter gave them a source of spite at the Jews and mockery. First, Herod the Great.

 Matthew 2:1 ¶  Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, 2  Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him. 3  When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. 4  And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born. 5 And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet, 6  And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel.

 Then, at the end, Roman governor Pontius Pilate.

 Mark 15:9  But Pilate answered them, saying, Will ye that I release unto you the King of the Jews?

 The people, at points, wanted to make Jesus king.

 John 6:15  When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force, to make him a king, he departed again into a mountain himself alone.

 Even after His Resurrection His disciples wondered when He would restore Israel’s lost glory.

 Before, though, Christ assumes the role of a king over a physical kingdom He must suffer for the sins of the world. His disciples did not understand this. As Paul will say;

 Hebrews 9:23 ¶  It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 24  

For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us: 25  Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others; 26  For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27  And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: 28  So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.

 These disciples report back to the eleven remaining Apostles what they have seen and how the risen Christ revealed Himself to them. Again, we have one of the great statements of the Bible we should remember at all times, The Lord is risen indeed. It is on this statement of fact that our faith is based. Without it, Christianity is just another philosophy as people like the news commentator Bill O’Reilly appears to believe, that Christianity is just a philosophy and that there is no need to believe that Jesus was God in the flesh as the Scriptures insist.

[go-redgirl]

President Donald Trump welcomed the U.S. return of just-freed American pastor Andrew Brunson. (Oct. 13) AP

Supreme Court and Andrew Brunson return show God sent Trump 'for such a time as this'David Brody, 

Opinion contributorPublished 5:00 a.m. ET Oct. 15, 2018 | Updated 9:07 a.m. ET Oct. 15, 2018

Many evangelicals view Trump like Esther, an unlikely hero sent to usher in a new American era of support for traditional Judeo-Christian principles.

Late last week, I tweeted a message from conservative evangelicals to President Donald Trump: “STOP! We are so sick of WINNING! Brett Kavanaugh confirmed and Pastor Andrew Brunson released in one week’s time? ENOUGH!”

The Bible tells the remarkable story of Esther, a Jewish woman living in Persia and raised by her cousin Mordecai. The Jews had been exiled to Persia, where a plan was hatched for all of them to be executed. Through God’s providence and a series of events, the king of the Persian Empire makes Esther queen, but he doesn’t know she’s Jewish. So here is the Jewish Esther, with direct access to the Persian king, in a position to try to get the king to stop the execution of her own people!

Her cousin Mordecai then speaks these words that are often cited by evangelicals everywhere: “For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”

Esther rises to the occasion, the king changes his mind, and the Jews are saved.

Trump is an instrument for course correction

Esther is considered a hero in the Jewish history books. Evangelicals see Donald Trump in a similar way: an unlikely hero, put in a place of influence, "for such a time as this.”

No, not to turn back the clock on civil rights. Today's authentic, Bible-believing evangelicals have no tolerance for racism of any kind. Rather, they see God's hand at play to usher in a new era in support of traditional Judeo-Christian principles.

Securing Pastor Brunson’s release from Turkey is just the latest example of Trump’s commitment. Picking his Supreme Court justices is the generational cornerstone of a much larger change. In the evangelical world, whether it’s moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, actively upholding religious liberty, eagerly encouraging pro-life policies, or standing strong for the Judeo-Christian values that made America the best country in the world, Trump is seen as an instrument in a much needed American course correction.

Traditional biblical values have been under attack for decades. In the 1960s, the Supreme Court did away with prayer and Bible reading in public schools. The 1970s brought us the controversial Roe v. Wade decision and all of a sudden, abortion was legal in America. Earlier this decade, gay marriage was OK'd by the Supreme Court. It has been one thing after another and now, along comes Trump who proclaims, “We are stopping cold the attacks on Judeo-Christian values." His new Supreme Court may do just that.

The mainstream news media get sidetracked when they report on certain evangelicals who claim God told them  Trump would be president for such a time as this. The real and much larger truth: The majority of evangelicals think God has raised up Trump to be president at this time in America’s history. I hear it all the time in my reporting, interviews and the comments sent to me on a regular basis. Here’s a sample:

“No doubt DJT is God’s choice to lead America at this time and place.” — @tksloan1

“With his flaws and odd as it may seem, God has chosen Trump for such a time as this. (The Supreme) Court has history of rulings opposed to God's Truth. Kavanaugh battle was spiritual. … God is dealing with Court.” — @Gerryinpa

“With our votes he became president for Biblical Justice & Truth to rule through the Supreme Court selections.” — @GeorgetteJean

“I think God lifted President Trump for the good of all. This country has been on a downfall for a long time. God is giving us a chance to turn this country around.” — Christina Burke, Facebook comment

“This is just the beginning. President Trump will be appointing at least two more. God's plan will prevail! Stay Tuned!” — @classact2018

“Solidifying the Supreme Court was my #1 issue …” — @pcneef

“The hand of God must be in this.” — @jdawg6418

“John the Baptist was a flamethrower also. America needed an unvarnished truth speaker.” — @Billy_Purcell

_____________________

OPINION:  Almighty God has send the ‘strong, courageous and mighty and knowing that we are imperfect human-beings and ‘GOD’ is perfect.  But, its our faith, truth and sincere love for God that he’s always interested in.  However, its the ‘evil doer’s’ that God faithful is fighting aganist every day!

[maxwellyjordan]

Top 10 ways to “friend” SCOTUS

William Seidleck is a law clerk at the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. JP Schnapper-Casteras is the founder of Schnapper-Casteras PLLC.

Filings by “friends of the court,” known as “amicus briefs,” are more important and sophisticated than ever. They come in many forms and lengths — but contemporary practice suggests that there are 10 (or so) common themes and clear strategies that can have a real impact.

Recent years have seen between 600 and 1,000 amicus briefs per term, which is an upward of 800 percent increase from the 1950s (notwithstanding the latest ups and downs of the Supreme Court’s docket). The groundswell of amicus briefs flows from several sources: In terms of format, amicus briefs are uniquely flexible, because they can address legal issues beyond the specific “question presented” and can explore facts beyond the record developed below. In terms of strategy, sometimes the parties to a given case will encourage others to file briefs to amplify or augment the parties’ core position. Other times, outside entities will independently want to file an amicus brief to advance their own legal or organizational interests and, in practice, there is little the parties can do to control, let alone stop, them.

The surge of amicus briefs also presents a conundrum: As the number of briefs increases in a particular case, the ability to “stand out” — and get closely read and utilized by the clerks or justices — can decrease.

All of this activity has spurred cutting-edge analysis about who files amicus briefs most often, what briefs are most effective and how large clusters of briefs originate (i.e., are “wrangled”) in certain cases. But less attention has been paid to the fundamental question of when and why an individual or organization should file an amicus brief in the first place. Whether you are perusing amicus briefs on SCOTUSblog or writing one from scratch, it is useful to think about the different roles these briefs can play and how they may add value to the justices’ decision-making. Prospective filers should also note that designating a clear theme at the outset of an amicus brief helps busy clerks and clients quickly sift through a pile of filings.

In a nutshell, here are the top 10 types of amicus briefs that can help “friend” the Supreme Court:

1. Historical: a brief focused on American history, legislative history or originalism. Examples: a brief by originalist scholars in National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning [Noel Canning Originalist Scholars] and a brief detailing how the founding generation would have understood the Fourth Amendment in Carpenter v. United States [Originalist Brief].

2. Novel legal argument: a brief that points out a new and different way for the court to resolve the case. For example, it is not uncommon for amicus briefs to argue that a case presents unexplored jurisdictional, standing or other justiciability issues. Example: a brief in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., which discussed in depth whether the Alien Torts Statute applied extraterritorially [Multinational Companies Kiobel Brief]. Other briefs may advocate an approach — in terms of how the court should decide the case — different from that of the party they support. Example: the brief that was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups in Brown v. Board of Education. While the Brown appellants at first tried to distinguish Plessy v. Ferguson and say that it did not apply, the amicus brief argued forcefully that Plessy needed to be overruled [Brown ACLU Brief].

3. Shadow merits argument: a brief that amplifies and expands on an argument made by a party. Examples: In King v. Burwell, Professor William Eskridge and other amici specifically focused on textualist justifications underlying the federal government’s arguments [King Eskridge Brief]. Another example is the brief of Senate parliamentary experts in Noel Canning, which expounded upon the historical and parliamentary arguments made by the respondents [Noel Canning Parliamentary Experts].

4. Unexpected voice or coalition: a brief that arises when groups who are not perceived to share a common interest come together. The result is potentially eye-catching. Examples: The brief that was filed by a number of military officers in Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger arguing in favor of schools being able to consider race in their admissions policies [Military Brief in Grutter]. Another example is a brief by former ICE and Homeland Security officials in United States v. Texas supporting the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans program [ICE & Homeland Security Officials].

5. Cross-partisan valence: a brief that appears when usually diametrically opposed groups unite over an issue. Like “unexpected voices” briefs (#4), these briefs can also stand out. Examples: a brief by a group of Democrats in McCullen v. Coakley [Democrats McCullen Brief] and the brief by the former Chairman of the Republican National Committee and other party leaders in Obergefell v. Hodges [LKenneth Mehlman Brief].

6. Practical impact: a brief that seeks to call the court’s attention to the real-world effects of its decision on the law and society. Examples: Madeleine Albright’s brief in Arizona v. United States [Arizona Albright Brief] — discussing the impact SB1070, Arizona’s stringent immigration law, had on foreign relations. Another example is a brief by former federal officials in McDonnell v. United States — describing the possible implications of a sweeping interpretation of public corruption law on the relationship between politicians and their constituents [McDonnell Former Federal Officials Brief].

a. Business: a particular kind of practical-impact brief that highlights the potential effects of a case on the business community. These are often filed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce or other industry associations. Example: [Salman v. United States Carter Phillips SIFMA brief]. Other times, they are filed by individual businesses or coalitions of Fortune 500 signatories to demonstrate the depth and breadth of the impact.

b. Administrability/feasibility: a specific form of “impact” brief that often focuses on whether a particular ruling from the Supreme Court would be administrable or proposes a more manageable alternative. Example: the Brennan Center’s brief proposing a test for deciding illicit partisan gerrymandering in Benisek v. Lamone [Brennan Center Brief]. This may also take the form of an “expert” brief, in which subject-matter specialists (legal, governmental, scientific or otherwise) weigh in to essentially supplement the record.

7. Policy: a brief often filed by members of Congress or former officials explaining a position they took in enacting a measure being reviewed or their understanding of the litigation. Example: a brief by 207 Members of Congress in Zubik v. Burwell [Members of Congress Covington & Burling Brief].

8. Brandeis brief: named after then-attorney Louis Brandeis, this is a brief that relies on scientific or social scientific data or research relevant to the case. Example: in Graham v. Florida, amici used recent psychological research in arguing that adolescents should not be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole [Graham APA Brief].

9. Academic: a brief written by legal scholars, usually scholars who are already experts in a given field. Examples: brief by the Civil Procedure and Securities Law Professors in Public Employees’ Retirement System of Mississippi v. IndyMac MBS [Civ. Pro. Professors Brief] and the Federal Courts Scholars brief in Patchak v. Zinke [Scholars Brief].

10. Stories: an approach that seeks to highlight the human or societal ramifications of jurisprudence on individuals. Example: brief by former juvenile offenders in Graham v. Florida [Former Offenders Brief].

While some of these briefs reflect tried and true formats, two observations are in order.

First, sometimes timing matters just as much as substance. Most Supreme Court-watchers are familiar with the green-covered amicus briefs filed with the court at the merits stage (after the case has been set for argument). But amicus briefs can also play a role at the cert-petition stage (before the court has decided whether to take up a particular case). These cream-colored briefs have a different purpose from their green cousins: They are meant to influence the justices’ decision about whether to grant or deny cert — and they provide a unique opportunity to interested amici. Unlike merits briefs, which have become ubiquitous, cert-stage amicus briefs are much fewer. Indeed, a half-dozen amicus briefs accompanying one cert petition would be a lot. This, of course, increases the chances of an amicus brief getting closely read. But the presence of amicus briefs can also help call attention to the cert petition. Example: [Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Cert. Brief]

Second, different judges and justices think differently about amicus briefs. Judge Richard Posner, for example, has made his distaste for repetitive amicus briefs known — calling them “an abuse.” In fact, Posner showed a willingness to place restrictions on the filing of amicus briefs: “After 16 years of reading amicus curiae briefs the vast majority of which have not assisted the judges, I have decided that it would be good to scrutinize these motions in a more careful, indeed a fish-eyed, fashion.” Justice Samuel Alito (while still a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit) pushed back on the idea of restricting amicus briefs, going on record to say that they can be quite helpful. Nevertheless, he noted that an amicus brief should do more than rehash the parties’ arguments.

Certainly, if you are filing an amicus brief in a particular circuit, check the local rules and try to get a sense of the judges’ preferences beforehand. (It is also worth conferring with the parties to get a sense of what other briefs are being filed and whether there is potential for consolidation — the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit even has a rule requiring as much.) But above all, avoid simply parroting the parties’ arguments without adding anything new to the discussion. As Justice Antonin Scalia and Bryan Garner advise:

Don’t replow the ground you expect the party you’re supporting to cover . . . . [Y]ou should try to develop a ‘take’ on the case that is different from what the party produces; or to discuss in great depth an aspect of the case (for example, historical material) that the party will not have much time for; or perhaps (if you are supporting the appellee) to defang a particular amicus brief filed on behalf of the appellant.

In the end, of course, there are more than 10 ways to “friend” the court. This list is by no means exclusive and new methods are emerging each term, including use of data, graphics, crowd-sourcing, and even a measure of humor [Cato Susan b. Anthony List v. Driehaus Brief]. But in life as in law, part of being a good friend is adding something new to the relationship.

The post Top 10 ways to “friend” SCOTUS appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

from Law http://www.scotusblog.com/2018/08/top-10-ways-to-friend-scotus/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[cynthiajayusa]

Trump Administration Reverses Yet Another Obama-Era Trans Policy

Being in prison sucks.

Granted, I’ve never been in prison, but one doesn’t actually have to spend time behind bars to know it’s awful. I’ve been conditioned my entire life to recognize that prison is not somewhere I ever want to go. And so it’s a pretty good motivator to be a law-abiding citizen (recognizing, of course, that being a cisgender white woman gives me plenty of unearned and unfair advantage).

There is, unfortunately, a perception in America that prison should be horrific, the more horrible the better. We have a very punitive prison justice system, where the goal of putting people in prison is to punish them not rehabilitate them. We want people who break the law to suffer (unless those people are white and have lots of money; those people apparently get to be president).

And boy do we love to lock people up! The United States has the largest prison population in the world. I’m not talking per capita, I mean total. We’re No. 1! We also love to try children as adults and put them in adult prisons. Which is sick.

But for those of us not in prison, it’s really easy to say something like, “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime,” and, “It’s prison, it’s not supposed to be a resort.”

It’s easy to forget that the people in prison are, well, people. They are human beings.

So you can imagine that it’s especially hard for trans men and women to be in prison. Because even trans folks who are not in prison have to constantly defend their very humanity against constant assaults.

The Trump administration has been a disaster for transgender people. An already marginalized and relatively small group, they’ve repeatedly been singled out for harm by this administration. All of the gains made for trans rights under Obama are being rolled back for no other reason than that the Trump administration doesn’t like trans people, and they don’t like black people, and they’ll be damned if they let a black guy tell them how they should treat trans folks. And so we’ve seen direct attacks on transgender service members and transgender students from Trump and company. And now it’s prisoners.

Unlike service members and students, prisoners don’t have the advantage of being part of a group that many people like or even admire. They have few advocates in actual power. Transgender prisoners are the most marginalized of the already marginalized.

Which is probably why the Trump administration decided to undo rules put in place during the Obama Presidency that allowed trans prisoners to be housed in facilities that aligned with their gender identity. The intention behind the Obama-era rules was to protect trans prisoners from sexual and physical assault. A transgender woman, for example, would not be placed in a men’s prison.

Trump’s rule change was prompted by a lawsuit brought by four evangelical Christian prisoners in Texas. These women argued that being housed with “men” (as they refuse to acknowledge or accept trans identity) put them at risk and made them feel “icky” (that’s a legal term, obviously). And Trump and his ilk were more than happy to throw trans inmates to the wolves.

This has, not surprisingly, drawn criticism from the LGBTQ community.

“Once again, the Trump Administration is turning its back on those most vulnerable,” Lambda Legal Staff Attorney and Criminal Justice and Police Misconduct Strategist Richard Saenz said in a statement. “There is no justification for this policy shift; it is a deliberate recipe for violence against transgender people based in inexcusable prejudice.”

While I agree with Saenz, I don’t really think its accurate to say that the administration is “turning their backs” on transgender people. After all, in order to turn away from someone you have to acknowledge they exist in the first place. Instead, Trump and his minions want to erase them entirely. As for “deliberate recipe for violence,” that’s exactly what this is. Remember, if prison is supposed to be hell for cisgender folks, it follows this sick line of reasoning that it should be especially hellacious for trans people the system barely sees as human.

Also, “Based in Inexcusable Prejudice” would make a great title for a book about the Trump presidency.

source https://hotspotsmagazine.com/2018/05/30/trump-administration-reverses-yet-another-obama-era-trans-policy/ from Hot Spots Magazine https://hotspotsmagazin.blogspot.com/2018/05/trump-administration-reverses-yet.html