A couple days ago there were “women’s marches” all over the country. It was a very important event I hear tell. Momentous. Charged with meaning. Galvanizing. It was sort of like a Tea Party protest of the left, only without any particular point. There were lots of pink p**sy hats, and so I guess that showed us. Madonna managed to attract the attention of the Secret Service—and about time—and f-bombed her way into an affirmation of the need for all of us to choose the way of love.
And Ashley Judd demonstrated for us that she rants like a girl. If you want a real rant, you need a peeved Scotsman who was left out in the rain for a little bit. So for such an object lesson, we are that far to the good.
In fact, Ashley Judd encapsulated the besetting problem of this whole business, which is the standing problem of the Irony Fail. She read a poem that began “IIII am a naaaasty woman.” The rhetorical stance of her whole approach was to mock Donald Trump’s dismissal of Hillary as “such a nasty woman.” But it order to mock something like that, it cannot be self-evidently true. And it was true of Hillary, and true of all her imitators. But back to Judd, it is too much to have that bile come out of a face that looks like a real down home sweet pea, and expect all the rest of us to keep a straight face. Like keeping battery acid in a cocoa mug.
Look. You cannot be the kind of movement that applauds topless slut walks for a decade or two, and at the end of it still attract the instinctive respect that men used to show to their great grandmothers. That is what you feminist ding dongs deliberately threw away. You cannot be the organizer of the city-wide Herpes on Heels March and somehow have the same moral authority that Galadriel had.
These are the people who, if you were talking to them abYou cannot be the organizer of the city-wide Herpes on Heels March and somehow have the same moral authority that Galadriel had.out the authority of the Scriptures, would protest that the Bible cannot be taken as the Word of God because it required the extermination of Canaanite men, women and children. These are the same people who, just two days ago, were out there marching in the defense of their own right to slaughter their own children. In short, they do not object to taking of human life, but rather they object to the taking of Canaanite life by the God of Scripture. They object to this because they are obviously Canaanites, and so the whole set up makes them nervous. They do agree that the deity has the right to take life as the deity wills it—they just insist on the right to be the deity.
And don’t you love how that word “protester” gets used so creatively these days? It is so hard anymore to tell the difference between protesters and rioters. Here is yet another Irony Fail. As David Burge pointed out, during the Inauguration, “protesters” were a couple blocks away from the main event, all dressed in black, smashing windows, setting fire to cars, because they were . . . wait for it . . . drum roll . . . protesting fascism. And for good measure, I have ten bucks here that says these stalwart anti-fascist “protesters” would overwhelmingly have a deep antipathy for the state of Israel, and would love nothing more than to broaden their protests into a little Jew-baiting.
But one of the first things the election they were protesting is likely to result in is a move of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and a state of high coziness with the Jewish state. This new friendliness is no doubt opposed by glass-smashing rioters, in black shirts, who are also worried about our new president’s Hitlerian tendencies. These black shirts never need to be pressed because they have all the irony they need already.
I interrupt this important series of observations to remind my readers that I did not vote for our new president. This is not being written by a Trump partisan. That is not my point here. As soon as Trump does something idiotic, I stand ready to say so, using all the adjectives I can find. But golly. The aftermath of this election has provided us with one gaudy display after another of why Trump won.
And I will observe in passing that if the pantywaist opposition to Trump that was displayed by the evangelical leadership in some quadrants were in charge of everything, they would have, if confronted by anything like these women’s marches, capitulated ten times already, and apologized twelve times. For if anything distinguishes the stalwart, modern man of evangelical action, it is his fear of women.
I am a mere observer. A reporter. I simply comment on what I see. It is not lost on me that our nation is in the throes of a cartoon convulsion, an animated algospasm, a painted paroxysm. The Anglo Saxon weird is upon us. The lovers of normal have chosen the oddest champion ever, and so he has ridden out to fight with the nasty women. It slowly begins to dawn—with horror it begins to dawn—on the soi disant evangelical intelligentsia that he intends to actually fight with them. Not only that, but it looks like he might even fight dirty.
So let’s get back to those pink p**sy hats for a minute. These are the people who have been degrading public discourse for a generation, fighting for the mainstreaming of every form of vulgarity, insisting that the taxpayers fund their blasphemous art, fighting technology that has figured out how to scrub crudity from our entertainment, and have been demanding that various forms of filth be decanted into fifty gallon drums and imported into polite company. And then Trump says something that would have gotten him drummed out of polite company seventy-five years ago, and they want to turn it into material for a national march. Where have you been?
We had a women’s march here in our community as well, and one of my parishioners saw a woman wearing a shirt with the text I have included off to the right. There it is, out in the open: “Keep calm and kill babies.” Kind of right out there. Isn’t it? What was the problem with what God did to the Canaanites again? They could never believe in a God who would kill babies.
No, not really. They could actually never believe in a God who would ask them to have babies. That is the root of the problem, the source of their rebellion.
And so, rebelling against their own nature, revolting against the sweetness that God gave to them, rising up against the impulse that is down in their bones, they really have become nasty women. What impulse is it that they are repressing? The impulse to conceive a child, carry him for nine months, suckle him at the breast, hold him on her hip, push a stroller around, and get back home in time to make the child’s father a sandwich. If you start by making fun of such decent things, it should not be a surprise that you end with “keep calm and kill more babies.”
“Fill their faces with shame; That they may seek thy name, O Lord” (Ps. 83:16).
This won’t make many friends, but if truth causes a person to hate you… that’s a them problem, not a you problem.
Pastor Wilson this is the clearest most impactful explanation of the Canaanite Genocide I’ve ever seen and I’ve sent it to several of my friends and family, I read it to a couple of my Romanist buddies at our firepit last week and they were extremely impressed with it and had me forward it to them. Thank you for writing this.
I always chuckle when I read John 12:9-11:
Does make one’s head tilt.
So……..are you saying that the black shirts invented permanent press? ????
Also, the Babylon Bee found that 100% of marchers had a mother who chose life, at least once!
FAKE NEWS! FAKE NEWS! FINGERS IN MY EARS – I CAN’T HEAR YOU!!
Dang! ‘Guess this makes me a “birther”!(?). ????
No need irony with perm press
No, I’m pretty sure it was Nazis!????
“For if anything distinguishes the stalwart, modern man of evangelical action, it is his fear of women.” How very true, and very observable.
Picky maybe, but “the Bible cannot be taken as the Word of God” =
Shouldn’t we reserve Jesus as the designate Word, and refer to the Bible as a very few of His words?
“a cartoon convulsion, an animated algospasm, a painted paroxysm.”
A panjandrum tantrum.
We irritated you. That’s enough for one day.
Irritating me? Talk about a low bar . . .
That can also be accomplished by flinging poo around, which is about equally constructive and not a bad metaphor for 1/21/17.
It’s a good post, a great post, but I wish you would stop saying things like this, “For if anything distinguishes the stalwart, modern man of evangelical action, it is his fear of women.” For one, it isn’t true. As someone who frequently must tackle these guys,trust me, they aren’t afraid of women at all. In fact, they tend to fight just like girls, meaning nasty, below the belt, and vicious. It’s not fear of women at all, it’s fear of their own selves. Second of all, there are a huge group of men who have bought into false propaganda… Read more »
Memi, if you consider that fear is the opposite of love, and hate is an expression of fear, this idea could put you and our host on the same page. Guys more often understand how to deal with guys, where they don’t understand how to deal with gals, as the “rules” are different. Because of this, guys can be intimidated by either awful or even decent women.
To address this problem, our host advocates for Godly, Word grounded masculinity.
A masculinity that takes a lot of doing, and humility to do right.
Yes, I see that, he does indeed. The problem is that guys often fall for rhetoric too, and miss the subtleties there. So when we say, “For if anything distinguishes the stalwart, modern man of evangelical action, it is his fear of women,” rather then shaming men into waking up, all we do is drive more of them away. We also label a bunch of evangelical men wussies, which isn’t true at all, but again it serves more to fuel fears and excuses that church is for girls.
So stick around and keep commenting Memi, it informs the discussion!
????????????
I think that a lot of decent guys are easily intimidated by a lot of decent women. Just the means used to settle disputes are so different that good men (not thuggish, brutal men) feel at a disadvantage. Men have trouble dealing with silence, withdrawal, and tears, just as many women can’t handle loud voices and slammed doors. I think that, recognizing that, good women try not to use those weapons, just as good men try to avoid awakening the panic that women can feel at being yelled at.
Jilly, a short version re: disputes would be, between guys, physical aggression is an option after relational aggression.
For most guys, physical aggression is not an option in disputes with women. Beyond that, women might be better at relational aggression, than most men. ????
Somehow, marches don’t seem to be much of a solution!????
There’s a reason “church lady” is a cliché.
Sure there is. I don’t particularly care for most of them myself. But the fact that something exists or may exist in some settings, does not then translate into a “distinguishing characteristic.”
“For one, it isn’t true.”
I have seen you make this point multiple times, ME, and have concluded that you must not be from around here. What planet do you live on?
“Which planet is it that you live on?”
I think the proper form for the question is: What color is the sky in your world?
LOL, honest to goodness, I ask myself that very question sometimes. I live in a bubble apparently, were the men are men and as such, pretty brave and self assured. I can’t imagine causing fear in my own Pastor and I’m about 8 inches taller. Then there’s my husband, the youngest with 9 sisters. We could say that any fear of women he may have once have had, was long since beaten out of him. I think my point still stands, though. While there may be men who fear women, to make a blanket statement about evangelicals really writes a… Read more »
Your situation is more unusual than you believe, sounds like.
With few exceptions (such as my very own OPC, among others) church in the West has become very feminized. There is definitely a place for the feminine in both church and Christianity as a whole, but Western Christianity has demonized masculine traits as sinful. Is it really any surprise that honest men would opt out when told that natural traits are inherently sinful?
I believe many of you are mischaracterizing problems with the Western church as being feminine in spirit and squashing masculinity. What are these “masculine traits” you speak of? Because as far as I can tell, the allegation is that women are so bold, so scary, so “feminine,” that the vast majority of evangelicals are afraid of us. Is the church, 90% of which is run by men led by men, taught by men, NOT bold and scary enough? If that is the case, perhaps what you need is to take page out of the feminine play book and stop sitting… Read more »
Male, maybe. Not necessarily men.
No it isn’t, and this is part of the actual problem.
Well Ashv, I don’t wish to stomp on any male pride here, but bold and scary doesn’t come from masculinity or femininity, it comes from Jesus Christ. He is our strength and our source of power. So if the church is not bold and scary enough it is because we do not have Christ within us the way He needs to be.
Sure. I don’t see a dichotomy here.
That is the best thing I’ve ever heard you say! Not that the other comments were junk mind you, but this is in Triple Word/Letter Score Territory, plus a few gold stars to boot!
“Is the church, 90% of which is run by men led by men, taught by men, NOT bold and scary enough?”
With its saccharine contemporary music (that no man with adequate T-levels can sing loudly), syrupy sermons or “man up and obey your wives!” message? Hardly.
And please don’t forget to mention all that compulsory hugging and hand holding!
I am right with you on the hymn singing. With gorgeous, inspiring hymns like “For All the Saints” and “Praise my soul the King of Heaven,” why are we doomed to the kind of drivel that makes sensible women wince, let alone strong men?
We would do very well together except I should warn you that I tend to get the giggles in church over things that only the truly immature would find amusing. I had to be moved out of the front row of the choir.
I have my doubts as to when you last set foot in a church, but if what you say is true about your own alleged church, that too is squarely your fault. We are the church, and if you have allowed your church to be come saccharine and syrupy, then you have fallen down on the job.
You don’t get extra credit points for hiding behind your keyboard and endlessly whining about it and trying to blame others.
Why do you think mkt doesn’t go to church? I think he has said in the past that he attends a reformed Anglican church.
Not very reformed, but it is high church. When I’m out of town I sometimes visit churches that sing “Jesus is my boyfriend” praise songs. I’m sure they don’t consider me very spiritual since I can’t bring myself to sway back and forth or do the pop star inflections.
Do you use the 1928 prayer book? I love the catechism: “To order myself reverently before my betters, and to do my duty in that station of life to which it has pleased God to call me.” Don’t see too much of that nowadays.
Yeah, the 1928 is great.
This from someone who incessantly disregards the 9th commandment? Yeah, that means a lot.
I don’t attend one of those churches, but I suspect you do. And with your disregard for truth-telling, I have my doubts about most everything you say…including your successful alpha-alpha relationship with your husband (as if such a thing exists).
I incessantly disregard pathetic whiners who I deem unworthy to judge me.
I’m a charitable soul however, if you wish to stop attacking me and start acting like a human, I might reconsider.
This isn’t about attacking. It’s about making claims about others and refusing to provide evidence. In one case, your claim was proven 100% wrong by just scanning someone’s blog for about 1 minutes (he took the opposite position that you claimed in multiple posts).
Call that attacking if you want. I call it a basic integrity issue.
“In one case, your claim was proven 100% wrong by just scanning someone’s blog…”
Are you still defending Biblical Gender Roles with his fondness for BDSM, his kinky definitions of submission, his arguments in favor of both pornography and polygamy?
I don’t lie and you’ve proven nothing, except that you have a propensity for willful blindness.
I disagree with BGR’s views on submission, pornography, and polygamy. But he did specifically say that BDSM is outside Christian sexual morality, is a deviant form of sexuality for which counseling should be sought, and is something no woman should go along with. He said flat out that tying people up to have sex is sinful.
Jilly, please don’t take this personally, but I read comments on this site and I just see a church so willfully blind, so painfully disconnected, so self absorbed we actually think persecution has something to do with worship music. We are anal retentive beyond all reason, bragging about our blasted exegesis and hermeneutics so devoid of love, they are unrecognizable as gospel. It is downright embarrassing, grievous,and shameful, and I take that personally because we are the church, we should know better, we were handed a sacred trust and good grief, what tragic mess we’ve made of things. I would… Read more »
You’d shave your head and put on sack cloth, but can’t admit you’re wrong? You don’t have to agree with BGR on much of anything, but his position on BDSM was exactly the opposite of what you said. If you can’t own up to that, this is modern pharisaism to the nth degree.
Hi, ME. I didn’t take it personally, and I agree that BGR is a creepy guy. But I think that accuracy, even over trifles, is important. When people can go to his site and read his explicit condemnation of BDSM, then they are less likely to take us seriously when we comment on his other views. I think that a lot of what he says is both demented and inexcusable, but I think he says enough to discredit himself without our adding something he didn’t say. And I know he did not say it because I looked it up. But… Read more »
“But I think that accuracy, even over trifles, is important.” And I think there’s something terribly wrong with a woman who says to me, “he’s demented, inexcusable, extremely unpleasant, I strongly disagree with his stance on polygamy, pornography, and submission, BUT YOU’RE A LIAR because I personally find his stance on BDSM acceptable?” For pete’s sake Jilly I’m not charging the man with a crime, I’m simply pointing out that he uses scripture to teach things that are harmful to women. It’s a simple truth, no big deal. Can you find it in your heart to just flippin acknowledge that… Read more »
ME, I didn’t call you a liar. For all I know, you might not have even seen the part where he condemns BDSM. And I didn’t say you should not be taken seriously Far from it. I agree that he uses scripture to teach unscriptural, harmful things. I think he is a head case, and an unpleasant one at that. But I still think accuracy matters. If somebody said to me, “Hitler was an evil, sociopathic, racist mass murderer who was mean to dogs,” I would have to answer, “Yes, I agree with that, but there is evidence that he… Read more »
Okay Jilly, I’m sorry I’m snapping at you. I know you yourself didn’t call me a liar directly, but you’re doing what I always call “straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel.” No you’re not a pharisee, it speaks more to the nature of subjective truth,the world we live in, and what you were talking about in another comment, what is truth in a world full of deception and fake news?
I actually blogged about gnats and camels, totally different subject, but perhaps you’d appreciate it, as well as Ravi’s article which I Iinked to.
https://insanitybytes2.wordpress.com/2017/01/24/straining-at-gnats-swallowing-camels/
Thanks, I will read it. One of your respondents had a great Luther quote the other day about respecting women. I want to track it down.
I never defended him nor read his blog. Talk about trapping yourself in a web of lies.
Several others here went to his blog and found out you were 100% wrong in your allegation. But you never owned up to it. You just hardened your stance.
” I never defended him nor read his blog.”
Oh. So not only are you willfully blind, you’re now making false allegations against me based on nothing more then gossip?
I do not retract my stance, people like BGR, and many other red pills, are doing a great deal of harm to women. They are also teaching something quite unbiblical.
No.
1) You accused BGR of promoting BDSM
2) Several people here perused his blog and found he opposed BDSM
3) To this day, you’ve never retracted your statement. All of the false allegations and gossip are from you. Talk about projection!
It’s that simple. Red herrings, transplanted goal posts and insults do nothing but hurt your case.
1. He does.
2. I could care less about “other people.”
3. I have no intention of retracting the truth.
And lastly, I don’t have “a case,” and I’ve already revoked your authority to discern “what is truth,” anyway.
You revoked my case by lying even more? How self-deceived you are.
…Is there any chance that you could take your problems with other people’s blog to those blogs?
Complaining to the people here isn’t going to change anything there, especially when the people here don’t read anything from there
“.Is there any chance that you could take your problems with other people’s blog to those blogs?”
No. That blog was directly related to a point I made in another thread about how scripture is being used to demean women, the same point I am now being accused of misrepresenting, primarily from people “here,” who claim to have read nothing from “there.”
If you have read nothing from “there” that is fine, that is good, but in that case you really have no business criticizing me “here.”
I have often thought that the contemporary church service (even Catholic ones which leave little room for improvisation) offers little that would attract me if I were a guy. There are too many hymns, most of them syrupy and hard to sing, too many choral performances, too many unnecessary distractions like liturgical dancers, clown communions, and really lousy rock bands, and far too many sermons that scold us all for stuff we haven’t done wrong while ignoring the stuff that we have. When there have been times that I have fed my daughter by not feeding myself, I really don’t… Read more »
What are these “masculine traits” you speak of? Male headship in the family and church, competition of any kind, fist-fighting, drinking a beer in public, public debate, spanking your child, that should do for now. 90% of which is run by men led by men, taught by men The fact that it is only 90% is part of the problem. But let’s be real, those metrosexual hipster pastors don’t count. Neither do the feminist husbands who “lead” the church but not the home. If that is the case, perhaps what you need is to take page out of the feminine… Read more »
K’, my thought is that Memi, our host, you and myself are not far apart on the church and Word Grounded gender roles.
Godly femininity is good.
Godly masculinity is good. The Church should reflect due portions of both.
Ungodly feminism is bad. Ungodly machismo is bad. Many churches reflect some of these bad, disobedient traits.
If all of us articulated the above distinctions, I think we would find we have more unity than it would first appear.????????
Perhaps that is true and honestly I hope so. However the issue I was taking on was the shaming of masculinity and natural male traits in church. How do you see it?
K’, this is where I think you and Memi are needlessly missing each other. Memi knows that there is weak and wrong masculinity and femininity in the church. She wants more Godly masculinity and femininity in the church. How and where you define and perceive the wrongs, is your only difference, and that is “cured” by talking for one, along with obeying and praying. For instance, Memi likes this post in general, she is concerned, as always, that it might encourage the fake masculinity, and fake femininity , so amply demonstrated by “Karen”. Memi does have her own blog, where… Read more »
Yes. That.
Okay guys, where I live we have to deal with issues like child sexual abuse, some guy hanging himself from a tree down the road, or the horrors of a rampant meth and heroin trade. Then when I go on the internet seeking my male Christian leadership what do I find??! We’ve been de-masculinzed by blasted worship music?? We feel oppressed by the youth pastor and his skinny jeans?! What is this, like First World Churchian problems?? Are you guys seriously that disconnected from reality? Do you ever have real problems that go somewhere beyond, “I need a safe space… Read more »
Weak, emasculated worship in the vast majority of churches in the U.S. (and many parts of the world) is a real problem with real consequences. Meth trade in your local area is immaterial to the discussion.
Worship is warfare. Read Revelation if you don’t think the content, posture and reverence of it is important.
Well, weak church leadership and meth trade are both darkness, so let’s stand againts all darkness, not just the shade that is closest to us.
That’s not the point. You don’t dismiss the rotten excuse for music/liturgy in the majority of churches today by saying “who cares about that when there’s rampant crime 5 miles from my home!” That’s a textbook red herring.
Mkt, don’t you think rampant crime, meth and heroin, the condition of our culture and our families has a whole lot to do with church leadership? Shouldn’t church leadership care about what is going on all around them?
You are trying to tell me that crappy worship music is robbing men of their masculinity. Call me crazy, but I think a whole lot of men have much bigger fish to fry, like the economy, suicide, addiction, family courts, crime.
Mkt, I did mean to put both problems together. I, and I think, Memi actually agree that: “Weak, emasculated worship in the vast majority of churches in the U.S. (and many parts of the world) is a real problem with real consequences.” One of those consequences IS meth trade. You and she may have some differences about what constitutes both weak and strong Church leadership. But you both, I think agree that it is needed. After that Memi is saying, if your church leadership is weak, then do something to strengthen it. For my part, I know that I am.… Read more »
“Meth trade in your local area are immaterial to the discussion.”
Well there’s your problem right there. You think engaging the culture has nothing to do with getting your hands dirty and everything to do with claiming to be persecuted by “boyfriend music.”
Keep talking mkt, you’ve got me halfway convinced the church really can’t find their masculinity with two hands and a flashlight.
I said nothing of the sort. You’re totally misrepresenting the truth again.
I said a weak, feminized church has led to all sorts of problems. You keep trying to dismiss the idea by bringing up completely unrelated stuff. Next we’ll hear that female pastors are no big deal when we have real problems like world hunger.
One consequence of the demise of worship and male leadership are busybodies like yourself. Don’t you have something better to do…like make your husband a sandwich or something?
“Don’t you have something better to do…like make your husband a sandwich or something?”
Chicken enchiladas. The man is now contentedly watching TV.
Always heading towards a Godly understanding Memi, yes, the pajama boy Church leadership that our host here speaks against, very much exists at my church, Park Street Church (Boston), its “sister” church Grace Chapel (Lexington Ma) and their supporting Seminary, Gordon Conwell Theological Smeinary. Their “feminized” disobediance to God’s Word has led to litteral criminal behavior on their part, that threatened the existence of my family. (Their feminized counsel brought us close to divorce.) To your point, I am fighting the good and Godly fight, againtst the disobediant leadership of the 3 figurehead church institutions of “Evangelicalism” in New England.… Read more »
Well, to Memi’s point, talk to him about it, but. based on my experience, don’t expect it to go well.
Our host here does repeat a quote to the effect that a failure of the culture is a result of failures in the pulpit.
????
There can be both. You can be dealing with incredibly serious personal problems and suicide-level depression, be determined to be as brave and strong as you can possibly be, be helping out your troubled friends, and need a safe place to go where you can find peace for your soul. For me, being Canadian, being hugged by people I don’t have a super close relationship with invades that peace. We are surrounded by tragedy everywhere. For you, it ‘s meth; here, it’s other stuff, but it is out there. The people you excoriate here may be dealing with tragedies you… Read more »
“Such as my very own OPC”. Having been taught 30 years ago in the OPC that women are to honor Christ by covering mans glory in worship with a simple hat or scarf, does your congregation do the same? Or like Calvin said, are they just playing games with the church by not doing so?
Our goal in worship is to play games, so no, they just make sure their hair is as feminine as possible and hope for the best.
Are we talking about the men or women? I know, it’s sad I have to ask.
Lol! Not bad for an Anglican, sir!
“Call me father, dress like mother.”
You’ve come a long way baby!
So you have partaken of the wordsmithy spiritual smoothie. It does make things very pleasant.
I am not sure what you mean by this, at all.
I suppose I was a little too snarky in my response, though I do think insinuating that we play games was off base. But, perhaps my response was, too. Let me apologize and try again.
Do you see the biblical understanding of the covering as hair (as I do, as well as my session) as sinful?
Greetings Kilgore. The covering is not hair, as the moderns love to tell. Its simply a hat or scarf practiced for over 1900 years by every denomination. So, yes it is a great sin even described as shameful by Paul for ministers to teach that women need not obey this practice as historically taught. God creates Adam, places a real symbol in the sanctuary to acknowledge His headship, and then calls Adam to sit with Him for a special meal. Now, through Christ’s very death, we are brought back into the sanctuary and are told to acknowledge His headship, and… Read more »
Wow, before the inauguration I would have asked for a photograph to prove it… Watching, and reading the press these last days though…
I thought I’d seen enough degrading things to desensitize me of the years, but those shirts just appall me.
The second one was like a knife through my heart. I wish I could un-see it.
Yes, I had a moment there where I wondered two things…
1) Did I just read what I read?
2) Will lightening strike my screen?
I had to take just a moment.
“As soon as Trump does something idiotic”? The man is a walking caricature of bullying and ignorance for years now — — including since he announced for the presidency. I hope you’re not implying those of us “soi disant evangelicals” who recognize BOTH he and Hillary are unacceptable as leader of the free world are pantywaists. The easy thing this election cycle would have been to go along with the Trump-can-do-no-wrong mob. I’ve lost relationships over my refusal to excuse his routinely doggish behavior. It hasn’t been fun being a fan of neither him nor her.
No, I saw that. Took issue with the “pantywaist” implication, however. I know some anti-Trump evangelicals who are anything but that. As I noted, some folks — myself included — have paid a dear, personal price for speaking out against him.
The dictionary definition of a “pantywaist,” is a Christian, from a swing state, regardless of gender, who did not vote for Trump. This definition takes into account Trump’s negatives.
Witty — and thanks for confirming my point. Trump’s managed to convince people that biblically defined decency and the refusal to abandon moral distinctions = weakness. I guess Jesus missed that lesson when He was down here doing His thing. To bad he didn’t have Donald Trump along to show Him the way.
Was there somebody running for president who had these qualities?
No. Is that relevant?
LOL. Never change, Dunsworth.
I hope I do change….I’ll be interested to see if you ever do.
Actually, i believe there were a handful, but neither Hillary nor Trump were among them. Both have led an adult lifetime demonstrating corrupt, lying, low character.
Of course it did. And I know a FEW believers who have demonstrated an attitude of genuine grief over this dilemma. Most, however, range between ecstasy over the ascent of Donald Trump, or tossing off a pro-forma and meaningless, “Well, nobody is perfect,” “He has his flaws”, blah, blah, blah — and then proceed to gush about the man. I understand the abortion and Supreme Court concerns; it’s a very important and grave one. I also get the notion of a Hillary Clinton presidency is flatly intolerable. I don’t however, believe it is the church’s job to surrender our moral… Read more »
That’s good news. May God multiply their numbers in the days ahead — and may they act like they really believe it when Donald Trump needs to be challenged on an issue or his behavior.
Once again, thanks for proving my point. Like the man so many Christians have been cheering indiscriminately for over a year now, Trump-enthusiasts will brook no disagreement, no challenges, no alternative opinion — too often their final recourse is insult. If someone like myself dares breathe a suggestion there is an inherent dissonance with the view that one can cherish the Beatitudes and crown Trump one’s champion at the same time, we are maligned as “Pharisees”, “legalists” and, as we see, “morality police”. You lecture me about all the people you know who have big problems with Trump but who… Read more »
“….there is an inherent dissonance with the view that one can cherish the Beatitudes and crown Trump one’s champion at the same time…”
Well, I’m rather fond of the Apostle Paul and he was once out torturing and murdering Christians. Than there’s Peter, he once lopped of a man’s ear and denied Christ 3 times. David, adultery, had the husband killed.
You’re leaving out an important detail: all of the above repented and and went on to “bear fruits worthy of repentance”. Donald Trump has never owned and expressed sorrow in any meaningful way for the dozens (scores?) of hideous things he did to win the presidency (I’m not even including his entire pre-political adult history of viciousness, profanity, adultery, lying, etc.) At one point, he openly admitted he didn’t feel a need to confess his sins. If I recall, there was one vague reference to having said some things he regrets, then an excuse involving “locker room banter”, but that’s… Read more »
“And that’s no excuse for this constant dismissing of the serious problem it poses for America that the best we could do for president was Donald Trump.” Oh, I don’t dismiss that at all! Donald Trump really is representative of the Western church in America. Downright horrifying, isn’t it? While I am rather astounded to wake up and realize we really are this pathetic, God is not surprised, God already knows. So our attempts to hide ourselves in fig leaves after the fact, as if we can just stick our noses up at Trump and pretend we the church are… Read more »
” I know some anti-Trump evangelicals who are anything but that.”
Let me guess… Russell “Macho Man” Moore?
Genuinely curious @sjp, you allowed this political sideshow to bring about loss of relationships? Actual relationships?
Allowed? Well, yeah. I can’t exactly kidnap people who want to part ways with me over Donald Trump and make them be my friend. I wasn’t aboard the “Trump Train” with them — so they bid me adieu. Btw, I don’t agree this whole matter is a “sideshow” — the manner of government or leadership a nation chooses speaks a lot about what kind of a people they have become; and how God is dealing with them. Certainly, politics can become TOO important to some people — but it remains a very important aspect of life.
Roy’s question assumes that loss of relationships were completely under sjplwc’s control.
I’m party to a family rupture over this as a result of one person unilaterally deciding she would have no longer have anything to do with people who expressed certain ideas out loud. It wasn’t precisely about Trump, but she’s one of those who was all wound up about Trump and the election was definitely the tipping point for her. My husband, who was the direct target, did nothing to “allow” the loss of relationship — he was informed that having a relationship with her was no longer an option.
Having seen what the well-informed and sensitive among us have got up to, I’m willing to give bullying and ignorance a chance.
Right-o. Let’s abandon righteousness for the pragmatic cause of Trump. Wonderful lesson to derive from all of this. And fear not, “bullying and ignorance” are being given the full exposure you desire. For a long time it’s been the Left doing it, now it’s “our side”. Terrific. What an accomplishment.
Can you give an example of the alternative you’d prefer?
It took a bully to defeat a criminal.
and where one man might perceive a bully, another might see someone standing up against a bullying media. …and BTW, I personally could never have been honestly described as part of the Trump-can-do-n-wrong mob.
As long as the bully is not a criminal as well.
This confuses me because I am the first one to punch a bully in the head and yet I don’t really perceive Trump as a bully at all. Who did he bully, oppress, silence? He pretty much just stood up for himself and for those he was representing. Bullies tend to prey on the powerless,those who are weak and cannot fight back.
Hmm. You have what seems to be a point – but I can’t shake my sense that Trump is a bully. What would you characterize his endless fallacious attacks on his fellow Republican nominees (not that they don’t deserve ignominy for being so pathetic as to lose to Trump)? I say nothing about his attacks on Hillary, because I believe most of them were not nearly as fallacious.
“What would you characterize his endless fallacious attacks on his fellow Republican nominees….” Well, there’s a fine line between being a bully and speaking truth to power. So speaking truth to power is about attacking those who are more powerful then you in as civilly and refined a manner as possible. So I have written some strongly worded letters to Republicans, but I can hardly be said to have been bullying them because of the vast power differential. I also could not bully President Obama with my alleged racism,while sitting down here in the boonies watching him fly overhead in… Read more »
Hmm. But there’s a difference between your criticism of Obama and Republicans (which I would likely agree with, largely, because I would believe they were true) and attacking Ben Carson for being like a child molester, attacking Ted Cruz for…his father killing JFK?, attacking Marco Rubio for being little, and attacking Jeb Bush’s wife because Jeb Bush is pathetic.
Like I said,Trump is a bit rough around the edges and unrefined. Trump was more addressing the culture then giving a legal brief of evidence based testimony about those guys. So Marco Rubio really is little, Ben Carson does have a temper that could be likened to the pathology of a pedophile, etc. And Trump himself is a thrice married philanderer with a child born out of wedlock who likes to grab and well, kiss women at the very least. The point being he was addressing the narratives we all have in our heads, and defending his right to have… Read more »
Hmm. I’ll have to think about it.
Ian, to aid your thoughts here, keep in mind, that when Jesus, Stephen and Paul “won” arguments, sometimes people picked up stones to stone them. Not all “thugs” back down when they are beaten, as often as not they go into “spite” mode. I do think that the msm is in spite mode with Trump, because he and Wikileaks have schooled them so badly!????????????
I mean…to me, the battle between Trump and the media (and many of the Republicans, and Hillary) is a case of evil vs. evil. Mmmm. I do completely agree that the media is piling on imagined offenses instead of actually trying to keep Trump accountable. Making it worse is just how fawning they were for over a decade of Obama, and how they’re snapping back to how they treated Romney, McCain, and Bush.
If you treat men of reasonable character like a despicable piece of garbage, why should we listen to you about a real despicable piece of garbage?
Well, to reiterate a point, made perhaps too darkly:
How would a President Trump compare to a President Clinton?
Close,……………but no cigar. ; – )
See…I’m not convinced. Not because Trump isn’t doing things that are somewhat better than Clinton (SecEd, AttGen particularly). But he is a liar, and a strip club owner, and bragged about adultery. I fear the damage he might do to the conservative cause will be more than the damage done in opposition to Clinton.
It’s why I couldn’t and still can’t vote for him.
Also…hehe…would Trump taste, but not inhale?
Did you miss the video in which he imitated and mocked a disabled reporter?
This one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aYFC_7ZIn4
No. Wrong. We don’t become like the bad guys in order to defeat the bad guys. That’s moral relativism and is the epitome of godless thinking, the anti-thesis of what Jesus came to teach. Of course, Donald Trump is a moral relativist — you “punch him” he “punches back twice as hard” as we have tediously heard for over a year from his apologists. Every time he behaved like a crass bully/blowhard, his and his defenders’ rationalization was “Well, the other side started it.” Most of us wouldn’t accept that from our eight year old — but we did from… Read more »
It’s my observation of history, not my preference.
“It’s my observation of history, not my preference.”
Good to hear. i hope you’ll join me in calling out my fellow Christians when they fall for it, or start peddling it. After all, we have the example of the greatest victory ever won, in all of history, and He never compromised one iota.
This was Wilson’s best commentary yet. Here is an exchange I participated in on FB where a person sympathetic to the marchers posted the following in response to a “snarky comment” by me relating to the purely subjective attractiveness of the marchers. Just to be clear, most of the marchers were (to me at least) a sobering collection of the worst looking women and epic fashion failures imaginable. =========== Dear Women, Whatever you have to say means nothing, and you’re all fat (because vapid insults come more easily than calm and rational disagreement). Instead of joining you in this greatly… Read more »
Well, it’s a bit wordy and emotional. You should go with the shorter version, “In 24 hours, Trump managed to get more chubby women out walking than Michelle Obama did in 8 yrs. ” Then just leave it at that and walk away.
…I am very amused by this wit.
I actually said something similar to the short version elsewhere, but this person’s poor attempt at wit called for full broadside.
President Trump just signed executive order to stop federal funding of abortion. To GOD be the glory!
thanks for the clarification.
So, the USA has been funding abortion overseas? Not content with killing our own babies I guess. How kind of us.
I must have been thinking about the Hyde Amendment, which was gutted via Obamacare and the ‘word’ the Obama admin gave to pro-life democrats to get their votes. Hopefully this is an executive admin decision, at least until Obamacare is destroyed, and Pres Trump can end that too with a pen stroke.
Not quite. We were not funding overseas abortion OR domestic abortion. The policy bans all funding for groups that perform abortions overseas. However, it does not pertain to domestic abortions, so PPA is not yet out of the loop.
We can hope that was deemed properly handled separately.
He will need the help of congress to do that…
I am not counting any chickens until they’re hatched and the shells have rotted, but this may very well be something that needs to be done in steps due to the legalities involved. Domestic defunding is likely a statutory rather than a purely regulatory matter, for example.
Still, I will be unsurprised if Trump deems domestic defunding not to be worth the necessary expenditure of political capital.
More: the ban of funding of agencies that perform overseas abortions is known as the Mexico City Policy, and it’s basically been a game of Executive Order Ping Pong ever since Reagan instituted it in 1986. Every President who differed from his predecessor on the point has acted on it very shortly after taking office. So this is something that is recognized to be within the purview of EOs — funding of agencies that do domestic abortions is not because they get their money via a statutory appropriation. I do expect to see congressional action on this — we can… Read more »
I saw some folks on Twitter trying to come up with a better name for this thing. i think the winner was “The ‘Not Exactly Miss’ March”.
How about:
“The bromides of March” ?
The looooong wedding March?
Might the “Keep Calm…” T-shirt be another clear thinker trying to spread the irony?
I think it likely is, because “kill babies” is not the language of the other side.
However, the “if Mary had an abortion” stuff is real.
Is anyone else troubled by “alternative facts”? To me, that phrase suggests intentional lies. When Clinton said he did not have sex with that woman, was that not merely an alternative fact? When a defense lawyer presents knowingly false evidence, is he not simply presenting alternative facts? It may have been an unimportant subject overall, but I don’t think we should be accepting this as a polite word for lies.
Trump starts playing the Left’s game, and doing so better than them, and now everyone cares about “alternative facts.”
Does any clear thinking person really think Trump cares about inauguration attendance? All part and parcel of Trump playing the media for the fools they are.
I think Trump does care about inauguration attendance, which is probably the only reason the media brought it up.
If you think a billionaire New York businessman is so thin-skinned that he gets all worked up over some numbers, then you, sir, are being played for a fool. When he is in the process of dismantling Obamacare, shifting federal funding on abortions, forming his cabinet, among other actual consequential moves, he is not bothered one iota by some attendance pictures. The media brought it up as a way of making themselves feel better about losing, and because they knew it would stoke ratings among people like you, apparently. Trump’s team ran with it to provide him cover. This is… Read more »
Trump is a thin skinned dude, yes. It’s not exactly a secret.
You may be right about it all being a front. I’m no mind-reader. But the simplest explanation for recent events is that Trump actually cares about this kind of stuff.
Literally every one of Trump’s biographers has written about this being a dominant personality trait of his, perhaps the dominant personality trait, since long before he ever entered the political arena. No one tweets attacks on Gold Medal families or Miss Universe contestants at 3:30am if thin skin is not a problem. I have no clue why you think being a New York businessman makes him not “thin-skinned” when he’s been giving ample receipts for such an issue his entire career.
**
Hey Matt,
Here is another perspective on this subject. Perhaps this may get you to see another side to this.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/01/26/white-house-press-media-donald-trump-glenn-reynolds-column/97042872/
I am on board for calling Trump a liar.
I am glad you also point out that it’s not a conservative- or Republican-only trait, though.
Jilly, both positions are somewhat anecdotal, but the msm projects their anecdote as “fact”.
I believe the NPS stopped issuing Mall crowd estimates, to avoid involvement in these sorts of disputes. If the msm really thought the issue was a “minor” point, why did they “report” it?
In turn, the msm minimizes their MLK bust error, which does, I think, reflect the depth of their bias.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/22/politics/kellyanne-conway-alternative-facts/ Facts are facts and they’re either true or false. But if the progressives are getting all up in a tizzy about Conway’s use of the silly term “alternative facts”, remember they’re the ones who were telling us back in the 90’s that “what’s true for you is not true for me.” They’re not saying that so much anymore, of course. Today it’s more “what’s true for me better be true for you, so bake the damn cake and smile while you’re doing it!” And if Chuck Todd wants to live in a world where facts are facts and true… Read more »
Or at least due retractions!????????????
Well said.
It would have been interesting to have seen Conway use the “what’s true for you is not true for me” line, and thrown it back in the face of that arrogant op editor posing as a journalist. Then she should have asked him, speaking of alternative facts, whether it is a fact that 2-week old unborn babies are biologically and factually alive and human, or not?
Actually I’m not and ought not to be, but I do see why those opposed to truth would sometimes be troubled by the notion of alternative facts (e.g. the alternative fact that the MLK bust isn’t removed). I recommend you spend some time in a dictionary in the ‘Aa’ and ‘Ff’ sections if you still don’t understand that ‘alternative’ ‘facts’ need not mean/suggest “false evidence” or “lies” as you’ve fallaciously/foolishly strawmanned. Wow Jilly your malpractice in textual/linguistic interpretation is quite amazing sometimes; perhaps too much time spent in typical L.A. environs or in Pope/priest-pill interpretation swallowing (Lk 10:26; 1 Jn… Read more »
I believe there can be alternative explanations of evidence. I believe that sincere people can be misinformed. I believe that facts, like statistics, can be twisted to support divergent points of view. But I also believe that a statement can generally be assessed as accurate or inaccurate, true or false, and I don’t believe we are entitled to invent our own facts to support our chosen narrative. This is something I learned in graduate school studying textual and linguistic interpretation. However, that was a long time ago, and perhaps the world has moved on and left me behind, clinging to… Read more »
I doubt that is what Conway meant when she used the term. The facts are often used to tell the worst sort of lies, as is meant by the popular saying that “there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.” It appears now, that whoever posted the side by side photos (09 vs. 17 inauguration crowds) was using facts to intentionally tell a lie; this based on other photos and eyewitness reports (alternative facts).
Every president spins the press. With Obama in office, the press was aching to dance. They might complain a bit when the spin was too fast or too clumsy – but he was their man and would dance when asked. When there was any ambiguity, Obama always got the benefit of the doubt. On the other hand, they despise Trump. He’s vulgar, crude and was the very last dance partner they wanted. They’re not going to take his spin and are not in the mood to ever give him the benefit of the doubt. So, Trump teed up a little… Read more »
Um, you trying to lie with your own alternative facts? No, his exact words were, This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe.” So it is clear that he is claiming that the in person crowd was the largest such audience, unless he uses a special kind of English that is different than everyone else’s. Also, Obama’s television ratings were better too. And Spicer said, “We know that 420,000 people used the D.C, Metro public transit yesterday, which actually compares to 317,000 for president Obama’s last inaugural. Proves again that… Read more »
I am no trump fan but I think people are reading way to much into the phrase. I think that she just meant different evidence to consider. In other words, you present your set of facts, I present mine, and we will let the populous judge.
But there was no “different evidence”. The claims he made, that the public transportation ridership was higher or that hundreds of thousands of people were held out because of different security standards or that white sheets just make it look like there are fewer people, were all outright lies..
Jonathan, I am not arguing that Trump is right, for the record, I am just arguing that Conway’s intent behind the term “alternative facts” was not bad in any way (I think she meant alternative evidence). I think that attacking someone’s wording like that is perhaps the major problem in American discourse. Attack the meaning not the words. Because you can always find funny or stupid sounding phrases if you dig through every word someone says and pick phrases out of context. As Cardinal Richelieu said, “If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest… Read more »
I think it’s troubling, but I also think it’s pretty clear that everyone knows it was a lie. I completely agree that we live in a post truth environment – I’m just frustrated that it only gets called out by the media (who are full of alternative facts themselves) only recognize it when their enemies do it.
I saw a lovely meme of GW saying “I cannot tell an alternative fact.”
I’m very curious to see if Kellyanne Conway’s career can survive this. And I’m very curious to see if I care – she played so many nasty tricks during the campaign. She’s incredibly smart and effective, but she doesn’t appear to have a solid moral center.
She creeps me out a bit. Brains without morality are terrifying.
I mean, just because someone is bullied does not mean they are also a bully. The myth of the innocent victim is one of the biggest dangers of Marxist thought.
I also enjoyed the Vox.com headline: “Women’s March expected to be largest gathering of people with disabilities in US history”.
Speaking as somewhat an authority on women (I’ve been one my whole life), I can safely say, after listening to snippets of Madonna’s and Ashley’s speeches, that they are of the “les froootcakes” variety of my sex. Barking mad nut jobs. Whirling dervishes whipped into a frenzy by their blood-lusting master. Come on ladies. If you really want to show chutzpah in standing up for women’s rights, then go to the Middle East and protest female circumcision, or to DC and demand an end to the pedo-girlie-traffic or to West Africa and fight Boko Haran or… any one of a… Read more »
I have no love for the women’s march, but I really dislike this argument.
“Somewhere there is something worse going on than whatever you are protesting, therefore your protest is invalid/unserious.”
The argument against the march is implied within Ginny’s sharp remarks.
The fact of the matter is women have equal rights in this country. They can vote, own property, attend schools and colleges, sue for divorce, and become doctors, attorneys, CEOs, etc. These are rights which are notably absent in the areas of the world mentioned above, so yes, it is relevant to bring this up when rebutting the nonsense which came from this protest.
Glad to hear you have no love for the women’s march. Jesus had no problem arguing this way. Gloria, Ashley and Madonna whip everyone into a lather over Trump’s remarks from a decade ago (sinful and awful yes, but recanted by Trump and which could be labeled a gnat, relative to. . .) yet are silent on the atrocities currently being committed against women and girls in our own country and elsewhere (the proverbial camel). It’s all a lying game to them, otherwise they would just call the march what it is—“Pro-Abortion.” But it’s not a game to me and… Read more »
Well put it this way: How many marches and speeches do they need to devote to these other things before they’re allowed to protest what they want to protest?
Protest for abortion rights all you want–just give it an honest moniker.
So, your thoughts are that women in the U.S. aren’t as repressed as women in other cultures, so we should just shut up? We should let know-nothing politicians write laws to dictate our reproductive health care rather than doctors? We should roll over for those who wish to impose their religious dogma onto us?
Not going to happen. The battle for reproductive rights, LGBT rights, freedom-from-religion rights, is a worthwhile fight.
As I said before my thought is that you don’t actually care about women in other cultures, not enough to march or protest for them anyway.
…and as I’ve said before, you just vacillate from one crazy accusation with no basis in reality to another.
My accusations are based on your comments here.
No, dear, you wildly accuse based on what you interpret my comments to be–I suspect according to your ‘conservative brain’. “Recent converging studies are showing that liberals tend to have a larger and/or more active anterior cingulate cortex, or ACC—useful in detecting and judging conflict and error—and conservatives are more likely to have an enlarged amygdala, where the development and storage of emotional memories takes place.”–Your Brain on Politics: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Liberals and Conservatives: discovermagazine “Sexuality and Reproductive Health. “Many conservatives—especially on the Christian Right—claim that having an abortion increases a woman’s risk of breast cancer or mental… Read more »
Your goal here appears to be to laugh at those who disagree with you, so you don’t need to have any argument for your position. And when others try to seriously engage you (not me, I’m mostly giving you snark) you regurgitate talking points instead of responding honestly.
Honey, I’m a scientist…I’m all about facts…it’s sad (pathetic really) that the religious-based conservative brains here cannot grasp the fact that WOMEN are human beings and are entitled to the same civil rights and liberties as men.
“Honey, I’m a scientist…I’m all about facts ..it’s sad (pathetic really) that the religious-based conservative brains here cannot grasp the fact that WOMEN are human beings ”
Okay. Here’s a fact for you. In November 30 million women marched into a voting booth and made Donald Trump President. I think we’re clearly human, and we actively exercised our civil rights.
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by almost 3 million. Time to do away with the electoral college that has prevented us from two decent presidents–Al Gore and Hillary Clinton. “More women voted for Trump’s rival Democrat Hillary Clinton than for the real estate mogul, a Pew Research report said, citing the exit poll conducted by Edison Research for the National Election Pool. Clinton garnered 54 percent of votes from women, compared to Trump’s 42 percent. White women without a college degree supported Trump by nearly a 2 to 1 margin…”–International Business Times …and those of us who are educated… Read more »
“Time to do away with the electoral college that has prevented us from two decent presidents–Al Gore and Hillary Clinton.”
Well thanks a lot lady, in one fell swoop, you’ve just neutered my ability to argue in favor of the 19th amendment.
“Enlightened” must mean having the critical thinking skills of a soap dish. You’ve displayed nothing here but arrogance and enough logical fallacies and cognitive biases to fill a few textbooks with examples.
“Lunkhead, I’m a scientist…I’m all about facts…”
Is it a fact that human fetus’ like human embyos are not humans? Or are they entitled to human rights like the rest of us?
“it’s sad (pathetic really) that the religious-based conservative brains here cannot grasp the fact that WOMEN are human beings and are entitled to the same civil rights and liberties as men.”
Sure, but you and I also disagree about what rights and liberties men are entitled to.
Honey, you must have missed all those posts with quotes by developmental biologists stating that although human embryos do, indeed, possess human DNA, it takes much more than DNA to be a sentient “human being”.
Wrong, grantig that embryos are not human is there any diference between a week old embryo and a 39 week fetus? Or do babies magicaly go from embryo to child at birth?
Women don’t give birth to wallabies or puppies. “Human” (the adjective) embryos coming out of a “human” female are “human”–just not “human beings” (the noun).
“It’s a worn cliché, but it bears repeating—an acorn isn’t an oak tree and the egg you had for breakfast isn’t a chicken.”–Joyce Arthur
….because we don’t eat fertilized eggs. Those have chickens in them.
I’ve likely eaten many a fertilized chicken and duck egg at the Great-grandparents farm. You must have only consumed supermarket eggs in your life?
It’s true. I had eggs from a friend’s chickens once but the taste was strange to me. And we eat so many I could never afford to keep us in farm-fresh eggs!
Duck eggs have a ‘strong’ taste. I’d rather use them in baking, than fry up for breakfast.
Thanks to ye olde google I now know that duck embryos are a Filipino delicacy. Tastes like egg with duck, apparently.
A human being is a homo sapiens. If we aren’t homo sapiens before birth how long after birth does it take to become a homo sapiens?
Technically modern humans are a subspecies of Homo sapiens—we’re Homo sapiens sapiens…and since we share 99.9% DNA with Neanderthals, they are also a subspecies named Homo sapiens neanderthalensis…. Hence…Neanderthals, of which many of us carry their genes, were “human beings”. Hmmm…we share 98.7% DNA with Bonobo chimpanzees…now this “human” and “human being” stuff is getting complicated…at this site so many people are concerned with embryos that possess “human DNA”… However, DNA is not a “person”. A “human” embryo is made of human cells. It possesses “human” DNA. It is alive; it is composed of protoplasm. It is even a colony… Read more »
So you don’t have any medical professionals to back up your claim that before birth the fetus is not a homo sapiens sapiens?
“Once those “human beings”, i.e., Homo sapiens sapiens, have been born, they become equally important”
Equaly important to whom?
Have you missed all my prior posts with quotes from developmental biologists, stating that “human embryos” are NOT “human beings”? Have you missed the statements I’ve posted from our medical associations stating that abortion is reproductive health care for women? *Facepalm*. I swear. I just talk to myself on this forum! Feel free to substitute Homo sapiens sapiens for “human” and “human being”: “What I’m concerned with is how you develop. I know that you all think about it perpetually that you come from one single cell of a fertilized egg. I don’t want to get involved in religion but… Read more »
These are refering to early pregnancy, you’re the one who can’t diferentiate between a 40 week fetus and a freshly fertalized zygote.
Also you haven’t given any reason why newborns qualify as homo sapiens sapiens when they don’t moments before.
Casey may require a complete course in human paleontology.
Doctors are smarter than us. People don’t know Science. Dr. Mengele found a new career as an abortionist after his Scientific studies in Germany because he was Smart and knew Science, like all doctors.
There are ‘smart’ doctors, and doctors, who I find quite dumb–both medical and Ph.D.–usually because of a fanatical devotion to an irrational religious dogma.
I do know “Science” with a capital “S”.
Dr. Sharon Diehl
You should put M.D. or something after “Dr. Sharon Diehl” so we’d be even more impressed.
She isn’t even trying. How about Nobel Laureate, French Academician, Fellow of the Royal Society, Full Professor, Mensa Member, and Smartest Person in the Room?
I’ll settle for “Let me be the person my dog thinks I am”. I bring home the bacon–the pets think I’m awesome–and the family does, too…
Not a M.D….just doctorate…geochemist/geologist with a master’s background in biological studies. My life is not constrained by the religious dogma of others, and it never will be. I thank whatever-powers-may-be to be blessed with intelligence, a quest for knowledge, and a wonderful existence on this fascinating planet and awesome universe. It’s too bad I have to devote a part of my life to keep religious fanatics from imposing their irrational dogma up the vaginas of all women and out of our public school science classrooms.
Atta girl!
I think this is a not a great board on which to pull academic rank. I wouldn’t be surprised if a very large number of regular posters hold advanced degrees. And not merely in the Theology of the Talking Snake.
You thank “whatever-powers-that-may-be” to be “blessed.” That sounds like religious language to me. According to your view of the world, the only power that is, is chance. Are you going to thank it?
If your mother had taken the morning-after-pill, no Sharon. How sad is that?
What if you are wrong, Sharon? What if the Power-that-is says that the life He creates begins at a time He says, not us? What if He will hold you accountable for condoning the unlawful taking of life and encouraging others to do the same?
Re: “mother had taken morning after pill”: I read nonsense like this from your sort all the time. You must be undergoing existential crises? If I had never been born, I wouldn’t ‘know’ it, now would I? My parents are/were pro-choice; they had the two children they wanted and could afford. Sweetie, look at it this way: “Because I was conceived by sperm number 4,333,215 out of 6 million, the world lost out on 5,999,999 other humans that might have been conceived that fateful night. They simply do not exist. Because I was conceived in January, the several million humans… Read more »
Human life is His to give and His to take and you didn’t answer my question. Not really.
Honey, I answer ‘questions’ here all the time, but you people pretend not to ‘hear’ because you don’t like the answers.
It’s Her, honey. Her.
That’s one bloodthirsty deity ya’ got going for yourself there. Enjoy.
Actually, I’m rather fond of Ganesha, the remover of obstacles. This deity has done much to remove rightwing obstacles to reproductive health care. I must be praying to the right ‘god’ to have Roe vs Wade to insure women of their medical privacy, plus the defeat of unconstitutional bills like Texas HB2. Yep, I pick Ganesha as the deity of the moment!
Such condescension. I’m not worthy.
I’ll take that as an “I don’t want to contemplate if I’m wrong nor accountable.”
Babycakes you never answered my question about how you scientifically prove that some humans are more human than others.
Honey, I have posted over and over and over again that it takes more than possession of human DNA to be a “human being”. Assuming you have a modicum of intelligence, you grasp that most human embryos fail to implant or ‘miscarry’ prior to the 8th week (e.g. Mange and Mange, 1999; “Basic Human Genetics”). Estimates range that anywhere from 35 to 50% of pregnancies spontaneous abort depending on gestational age. “There is no assurance that any given egg, embryo, or fetus will survive to be born”. Yet anti-choicers demand that every human embryo and fetus be treated as a… Read more »
A person could believe in no religion at all–like Nat Hentoff–and still believe that human life is valuable and should be protected. Perhaps the fact that the second trimester fetus has overcome amazing odds to make it just that far is reason enough not to destroy it. You seem to suffer from a lack of imagination. Because the fetus isn’t visible, holding its bottle, and cooing at its mother, you can’t imagine that it might be a human being. It will do all those things if it is given a chance to be born. You keep dodging this question. I… Read more »
This is a bit problematic if you define “smart” as not holding an “irrational” religious dogma. You were inclined to think I was sort of smart when you believed that I more or less agreed with you, but now I am just another religious dumb bunny without even the advantage of medical or scientific training. I tend to think this is both inaccurate and a little unfair (not in my own case, where others’ assessment of my smartness or dumbness does not generally distress me), but in general. I am perfectly capable of disagreeing with your perceptions and opinions without… Read more »
I do confess I find it more than a bit ‘crazy’ for people to actually “believe” that men wrote a book dictated by an invisible supernatural deity. Take the ‘author’ of this blog–Doug Wilson–from what I’ve read of his other works, he is a YEC, a young earth creationist, a very literal buybull, er, bible type, like our [gag] vice president, new Energy Secretary, HUD leader, and many of the others of tRump’s poorly chosen government appointees. Supposedly these are intelligent functioning people–like all of us posting comments here [big roll of the eyes again]–yet they cannot grasp the basic… Read more »
This coming from the brain-damaged woman.
Bless your heart, Sharon.
Sweetie, I was never so brain-damaged as to start believing in a talking snake, talking donkey, talking bush, people walking on water, nor zombies rising from the dead.
The snake is real enough. Just saying.
But you do you believe that inanimate masses, given enough time and maybe a lightning strike, will eventually talk, breed and overlook the “magic” of their own existence.
How is believing that a donkey can talk any less believable than pond scum eventually commenting on a blog thread?
Re: “less believable”: Because of actual physical “evidence”. All protoplasmic life on earth shares an ancestral population that lived about 1.6 billion years ago–this is based on the passing down of genetic information. DNA is a powerful tool to show divergence and relationships among species. Go back in time, and we share 99.9% DNA with extinct Homo sapiens neanderthalensis and 98.7% DNA with Bonobo chimps. Go further back in time as species diverged, and we only share 84-85% DNA with canids (dogs, wolves) and ruminants (cattle, goats, deer). Go further back in time along diverging lines of speciation, and we… Read more »
More words and more distraction. You are still left with the basic problem I addressed in my post, and evolution isn’t the answer. Life forming from goo is believable, but talking animals are not. Your beliefs are not as objective as you believe them to be.
Re: “Life forming from goo is believable, but talking animals are not.”: There you go; I knew someone would catch on. ;-)
Seriously, at least gravitate into the Intelligent Design movement, which acknowledges an old earth, and you can go “Gee Whiz! life is soooo complicated that a ‘he should not be named’ designed it!”…and you can substitute biblical ‘god’ for unnamed ‘designer’.
You still haven’t answered as to why you consider life arising from non-life to be a given and more probable than an animal speaking. Scientific consensus maybe?
I know, my question arises from stupidity, poor education and a belief in fairy tales. I’ll save you some time, you can skip the insults. Duly acknowledged for the sake of focusing the comments.
Then again, he could morph all the way into a full-blown evolutionist and big bang theorist, theist or atheist, and still think that killing the unborn is wrong.
Evolutionists do seem stuck with saying that life is both completely improbable and absolutely inevitable at the same time.
Evolutionists do seem stuck with saying that life is both completely improbable and absolutely inevitable at the same time. That would be because it’s true. Life coming to exist in the exact form it is now is incredibly unlikely, but at the same time life of some variety coming to be is in fact inevitable. If our form of life did not develop, then some other form of life would eventually have developed instead. Think of it this way: For those who play the lottery it is highly improbable that any single individual will win. At the same time it… Read more »
“If our form of life did not develop, then some other form of life would eventually have developed instead.”
Why is that nessessarily true?
See the other post you responded to.
There is no particular reason the self replication processes need to be of the varieties found on earth, but the manner in which reality functions means some form of self replication will inevitably arise. The only way to prevent it from ever arising would be to alter reality so that catalysis was non-existent, which would require changing the properties of matter itself.
From your choice of wording, I’m going to hazard a guess you don’t have a strong scientific background. Everyone has to start somewhere though, so I’m going to try to explain some of the scientific principles and processes relating to self replicating molecules and the start of life. Chemical reactions are constantly occurring with individual atoms coming together only to fall apart again. Catalysts function by orienting atoms/molecules and/or shifting the energy levels of atoms/molecules thereby making a certain chemical reaction more likely to occur (in other words, catalysts increase the probability of a certain chemical reaction occurring). Once a… Read more »
“Probability dictates that given enough time such self replicating and/or cross replicating molecules will eventually arise. ”
The question is how much time is enough…
That’s a rather meaningless question actually. It could take a great deal of time or it could take no time at all. It’s not like the atoms are thinking to themselves “Gee, we’d better not undergo the reactions required to make a catalytic molecule until sufficient time has passed!” It happens when it happens. Human psychology is such that we have certain expectations of probability that aren’t actually relevant. For example: Back when I was in high school I took a psychology class where we ended up talking about human perceptions of randomness vs. actual randomness. We were all asked… Read more »
All the evidence indicates that around 4,000,000,000 years is about the time needed for the most abundant chemicals in the universe to allow the current flora and fauna of the world to evolve.
Good explanation, thank you. It does kind of make life sound inevitable the way you describe it. It also sounds easily repeatable. So have you personally witnessed these self-catalyzing molecules coming together to form life?
Molecules are too small to observe with the naked eye I’m afraid, so it’s not the sort of thing that can be observed just walking down the street. (It’s a shame, because as a chemist I think it would be fascinating to just be able to see that sort of thing). I did provide a link to a research article where such molecules were observed though. (Here if you missed it). It is also important to note that because our planet is already populated with many forms of life, when new varieties of molecules come together in this manner they’re… Read more »
The very definition of a miracle is a thing that physical processes do not normally permit. The person who denies the possibility has to explain why it is impossible (not merely unlikely) for such exceptions to occur at the behest of an all powerful Being.
I think the most that any scientist can state with certainty is that he or she has not seen or read credible evidence of such suspensions of natural law and finds them unlikely. He or she can also say that scientists, restricted by their methodology to using only natural explanations for phenomena, do not, while in their labs, consider metaphysics and philosophy. As the Sensuous Curmudgeon often says, labs are not equipped with angel detectors. If scientists go beyond that, they are venturing outside their province and expressing opinion.
I’m afraid you are mistaken. With such things the burden of proof is not on the person telling you they don’t believe you, rather it’s on you to prove it did in fact occur, or at least that some power can repeatedly demonstrate this ability. The reason the burden of proof is on the person making the claim, not the person who doesn’t believe them, is because otherwise we would be stuck in a situation where we would necessarily believe absolutely everything. I could tell you that yesterday my arm was chopped off but it miraculously grew back over night,… Read more »
You are getting ahead of the point I made. I am not insisting you believe that any particular thing happened just because I said it did. I am suggesting that “that can’t happen” is not a sufficient response to “there exists a power that can make such things happen, that could not happen in any other way.” Whether a particular thing did or did not happen does require some kind of convincing demonstration, but if the very nature of the happening is in fact outside normal means of measurement or normal modes of physical behavior, you can’t simply declare it… Read more »
Maybe not, but you do admit to brain-damage. Your inability to accurately represent the beliefs of others is perhaps one result of your broken psyche, no?
That’s why I’ve asked Jillybean to go easy on you; you’re clearly not equipped to deal with people who have their full mental faculties intact. It’s grossly unfair, but you play the hand you’re dealt.
In the meantime, dearie…
Bless your heart.
People here have divergent views on accepting evolution, the age of the earth, and whether certain parts of scripture are to be interpreted metaphorically or literally, as history or as poetry. People also have divergent views on the acceptability of certain kinds of birth control. You are attempting to suggest that most people here who oppose abortion do so because they are too stupid to understand modern science.
The Catholic church accepts evolution and a 14-billion year old universe, yet still manages to believe that killing the unborn is wrong. So try again with the talking snake stuff.
According to an eye witness, Mengele ripped an unborn child from its mother’s uterus and tossed it into the trash because it wasn’t a twin. He briefly lost his medical license in Argentina after a teenaged girl died while he was aborting her pregnancy.
On the other hand, as I just read on a website, at least Mengele wasn’t in it to buy himself a Lamborghini.
Doctors know best!
“It’s a worn cliché, but it bears repeating—an acorn isn’t an oak tree and the egg you had for breakfast isn’t a chicken.”
It’s also folk wisdom, not science, creampuff. Ask an orthnithologist or a dendrologist what species a chicken egg and an acorn belong to.
“Honey, I’m a scientist”
That sounds like the name of a really bad 80’s movie.
Ghostbusters 1984 was a GREAT movie. I always liked the bumper sticker:
“Back off, Man! I’m a Scientist!”
It should read, though: “Back off Bible-Humpers! I’m a Scientist!
YES. THIS. Killing your own offspring is so much more smarter, says Science!
Why are the nations in an uproar And the peoples devising a vain thing? The kings of the earth take their stand And the rulers take counsel together Against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying, “Let us tear their fetters apart And cast away their cords from us!” He who sits in the heavens laughs, The Lord scoffs at them. Then He will speak to them in His anger And terrify them in His fury, saying, “But as for Me, I have installed My King Upon Zion, My holy mountain.” — Psalm 2:1-6 As an aside, killing babies isn’t… Read more »
Embryos are not ‘babies’, honey. Women have civil rights to their own bodies, dear. There are people on this thread tossing buybull, er, I mean bible, quotes about as if they are facts that should prevent a woman from exercising her reproductive rights. Using a belief in an invisible supernatural deity to demand physical control over another person is perfectly ludicrous. Re: “killing babies isn’t reproductive health care”: Of course, not dear. *Pats On Head*. Call 911 if you see a baby being killed! Whereas, abortion is reproductive health care. “Safe, legal abortion is a necessary component of women’s health… Read more »
Clearly Diehl has nothing against being sanctimonious or patronizing. The blood lust is apparent in Diehl’s retort, but she will stand before the living God. She will probably be surprised to discover that the AMWA doesn’t carry any authority with God, the actual Judge.
Honey, as others have said, you are free to live your life by “following ancient laws written in dead languages by ignorant, racist, sexist, superstitious barbarians, who believed everything they couldn’t explain in the world was magical” and didn’t know where the sun went to at night.
Others of us live in the 21st Century, dear, and dwell in reality, where your imaginary friend has no bearing on a woman’s physical rights for reproductive medical care.
Diehl can comfort herself with whatever words she wishes, but it won’t make God go away, and wishes won’t help her in the judgment. Clearly she is not prepared to be wrong.
In the meantime we will continue to speak the truth, and to seek compassion and justice for new human life in the womb.
No, dear, what you mean to say is that you will continue to try and impose the bible-humping beliefs, which you have imposed on yourself, onto others…and can’t see the silliness of it.
I am really struggling to understand your approach. You quote medical and scientific authorities as if you actually wish to persuade anyone here that your defense of abortion is not just reasonable but ethical. Yet you use a phrase like Bible-humping which is so incredibly offensive that what comes across most clearly is not your attitude toward abortion but rather your contempt for Christians. Would you go on a Muslim board and accuse the regulars of wanting to hump their Korans? Well, maybe you would, but you would have even less success over there. Could you clean that up for… Read more »
I meant what I said. Diehl doesn’t seem to be prepared to be wrong when it comes to this issue, or to God’s judgment. In the meantime, there is nothing silly about compassion and justice for new human life in the womb. Diehl was unable to respond to the fact that we are discussing new human life. Babies don’t become babies at the instant of delivery. Diehl is the one who needs to face reality in that respect. Already in most states abortion is illegal after the second trimester. If women have “civil rights to their own body”, how can… Read more »
No, women/girls/children in North America (and elsewhere) are being VERY oppressed. That is my point. The Women’s March just isn’t fighting for them.
http://www.missingkids.org/1in6
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtstlx96s8M
https://www.fbi.gov/audio-repository/news-podcasts-inside-inside_071211.mp3/view
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/corey-feldman-pedophilia-problem-child-actors-contributed-demise/story?id=14256781
https://medium.com/@LoriHandrahan2/child-rape-crisis-in-north-america-2dfe2f4898d0#.o4ejjwh4r
Is that a fight worth fighting for?
Don’t call the gathering a Women’s March when it’s really about abortion, which over half of the women in this country think should be either more restricted or completely illegal.
I imagine you don’t want pro-life doctors involved in making decisions about your reproductive health care. Only the Gosnells and Tillers.
Re: “Gosnell”:…and here I had thought you were halfway intelligent… Re: “pro-life doctors”: Correct. I would not want a member of the religious-based American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) to be my doctor if I was pregnant. I want an objective doctor, who would look upon me as the primary patient should complications occur. Can you imagine that for some strange reason there are only around 2,500 members of the AAPLOG, yet around 58,000 members of the mainstream American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists? Now, I wonder why that is…(not really…just being facetious). …and yes, dear, I would… Read more »
I wonder if Soros pays Disqus commenters $12/hour or something? That may explain the JV team that descended on this thread.
JV?
Joint Venture?
Jesse Ventura?
Junior Varsity?
I mean the last one, obviously, babe. Don’t they teach womyn how to understand things in context these days?
Jugular Vein?
Journal Voucher?
Joint Vision?
Ah…your reference of ‘junior varsity’ doesn’t make any sense to me….but then….so much of the babbling at this site is senseless.
I’m not surprised it went right over your sweet head, darling. I’ll try to dumb it down a bit. Even though have advanced degrees (or so you say), you’ve shown no ability to think critically, follow an argument or understand (even slightly) what your opponents are saying. You hold on the same old straw men. Whether you really lack these skills or do this out of laziness/trolling, I’m not sure…but I was being nice when I said “JV.”
I read quite clearly what people are ‘saying’ here. In the simplest terms, my “opponents” are stating that a fertilized egg, with a capitalized HUMAN adjective, of which most expire, is more important than the woman carrying it. I don’t agree with this; I find it quite silly.
I think this is a false equivalency. Nobody here would argue that we should kill the mom to save the baby. Every pro-life person I know generally values the physical well being and safety of mother and child equally, and many would argue that in a genuine life and death situation where you can save only one, you save the mother. What you are stating is that the mother’s desire not to be pregnant should always trump the unborn child’s right to be born (you still haven’t told me if this extends right up to the third trimester, although I… Read more »
Re: “Nobody here would argue that we should kill the mom to save the baby.”: Ah…i don’t think you know your fellow anti-choicers as well as you think you do. You must have missed my various posts on women being arrested for miscarriage and charged with murder, and tales from catholic hospitals, in which no one here batted an eye. There are people, especially those celibate males in long funny dresses, who are only too pleased to have a woman die a martyr in childbirth. Didn’t we go over this before? E.G.: “In 2010, doctor’s at the Catholic-affiliated hospital, St.… Read more »
It’s “bat an eyelid or an eyelash“, Sugarcube. Batting whole eyes is what they do down at Planned Parenthood.
I can’t imagine why I am taking the time to explain Catholic medical ethics to you, but here goes. A doctor who refused to treat this poor woman’s hypotension (by the way, she was not dying at the time of the abortion) would also have been guilty in the eyes of the church. Catholic medical personnel have a duty to attempt to save both mother and child. If that is impossible, they generally try to save the mother–but it is never permissible to proceed with an explicit intention to kill the child. The doctor is required to treat the disease.… Read more »
Conversely any consideration of the babys health or womans lack thereof is not relevant, all that matters is the womans choice. Anyone who suggests otherwise hates women.
Is it just me?
Or does Granny Diehl make Randman look like an Apostle?
; – )
Wonder what put the bee in her bonnet? !
I am getting tired of her. Time to vote her off the island.
I missed her until today.
I wonder if she was a commisar in a previous life? ; – )
She seems more articulate than Madonna, but the song remains the same. : – 0
The blue canary?
https://youtu.be/9zOKBvHNWus
I used to work for Flansburgh’s dad. (!?)
Anyway, I think Granny Diehl might dispute that she had a soul!
; – )
Re: “third trimester”: A friend of mine, in a Nebraska hospital, was denied an abortion at 28 weeks by the hospital board, even though she was suffering from polyhydramnios and the fetus was anencephalic, and her doctor recommended termination. Had I known her before her ordeal, I’d have brought her to our good Dr. Hern here in Colorado. She went through a very rough time at delivery, flatlined a few times, and the ‘birth’ shredded her uterus. The fetus died, of course, and my friend could no longer have any more children. I repeat, honey: “I am comfortable with abortion… Read more »
Does ACOG make its political pronouncements based on a poll of its members, I wonder? And how many members of AAPLOG are also members of ACOG? ACOG is a professional credentialing organization, not merely an advocacy group.
Apparently bringing up real cases that counter Poopsie-boots’s reality makes you stupid in her eyes.
What ‘real’ cases are those your’re referring to, dear? The fact that there are bible humping misogynistic OB GYNS? There are bible humpers in any profession. Since AAPLOG and ACOG are at loggerheads, it would be a unique medical personnel practitioner to walk both sides.
The real case of Gosnell, lamb chop. Gosnell not living up to your standards doesn’t make him go away. Anyway, it’s nice to know you’re preserving your smooth forehead by not thinking hard enough to figure that out.
People join ACOG because they are boarded specialists. It’s part of getting the credential. ACOG presumes to speak for its members but doesn’t necessarily, much like the AARP.
Perhaps you admired his precision with a scissor blades and a small-sized shop vac?
Odd to think that the Manson girls and Scott Peterson got first degree murder convictions for killing a third trimester child–sorry, Snickerdoodle, my bad. Or course I meant killing an unwanted, evanescent gelatinous mass of tissue.
“We should let know-nothing politicians write laws to dictate our reproductive health care rather than doctors?”
What if a women disagrees with her doctor about her reproductive health care?
“…Legislators should not needlessly interfere in the patient-physician relationship or the practice of medicine. ACOG (American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists), as an organization, joins other women’s health advocates in supporting the legal right of women to obtain an abortion and opposing laws that are dangerous, unscientific, and criminalize medical care.” “The American Medical Women’s Association [AMWA] will oppose efforts to overturn or weaken Roe v. Wade, either directly or indirectly, as in the case of legislation which burdens access to the abortion procedure. AMWA considers all such laws and court rulings to interfere with the doctor-patient relationship, and thus… Read more »
So when you write
“If a woman and her doctor feel it best to abort an inviable fetus with abnormalities not conducive to life, it is up to her.”
The doctor and the health (or lack thereof) of the fetus are irrelevent and what you mean is that if a woman wants an abortion she should find a doctor to give her one. Since you put the womans choice as the supreme moral factor shouldn’t it be illegal for any qualified doctor to refuse an abortion?
After reading this thread, you are the one who is “irrelevant”. Note correct spelling.
Do I get a medal or something?
Message to all Christians: Keep Calm and Have More Babies.
Demographics beat silliness every time.
If one can keep them. Plenty of God-fearing parents wind up with children who either never learn why they should preserve the faith and culture of their forebears, or were raised in a way to drive them towards anything else.
Stats say that most kids keep the faith at a 75% rate (which is better than non religious that only stay non religious about half the time). If you have 4 kids and 3 keep the faith (the average) you will be adding 3 to 1 Christians/secularists every generation. That is pretty overwhelming Christian growth. And that is pretty much how Christianity grew the first time around (in the Roman empire).
This is a terrible idea if we are merely going to have them and hand them off to government lackies to indoctrinate into secularism. Having more babies only works if you actually catechize them and make deliberate attempts to raise them in the faith rather handing them off to “I don’t care” nurseries, then onto liberal, progressive training land.
Kilgore, Did I say “Have more babies and then hand them to government schools”? Nope. No I did not. If you think I said that, please go back and reread. But all the studies show that kids tend to keep the faith of their parents to about the 75 % or more level. In other words, devout catholics tend to have catholic kids, devout evangelicals have evangelical kids, and devout mormons have devout mormon kids. And non religious tend to have non religious kids. Those that have the most kids tend to win out in the long run. That is… Read more »
Excellent points, and I can’t believe Kilgore and ashv are counter-signaling you here.
On the flip side there is also a kind of justice inherent to abortion–namely the loss of offspring which contribute to demographic decline of secularists and liberals.
The Christian position must be that abortion should be illegal and punished whenever we have the (earthly) political power to do so, yet we can’t forget that God has permitted legal abortion to take place in this country for some reason. Is it not ultimately part of the punishment for those who reject Him and His commands? Paul’s words in Romans 9:22-23 seem relevant here.
Yeah. It is just so sad for the babies who are being killed by their mothers.
“These black shirts never need to be pressed because they have all the irony they need already.”
Only by the grace of God did I not spit coffee all over my computer screen when I read that! :-D
I think that one counted as a quarduple entendre’, which in fact, is double the norm! ; – )
This tweet ticked off a lot of people.
https://twitter.com/AndySwan/status/823546757216956416
Fwiw the hats are supposed to look like pink cat ears
Missing here is an understanding of how informal the marches are. The “pro life groups uninvited” narrative is just a stick to hit pro lifers who marched with as to somehow deny them their expression. These weren’t organized protests like the union protests at the WI capitol a little ways back where those involved broke down fairly predictably between those who paid dues to a single org for and those who didn’t against. Institutional control thins as protests get larger, thinner here than even the BLM protests. The Free Beacon had a v well written diary that touched on the… Read more »
Bill Clinton’s rapes? I’m pretty sure the Monstrous Regiment of Women are silent on that.
Wilson has some good points, but he buries them in his snarky delivery. Preaching to the choir is pointless, and this article is intended to infuriate rather than help his opponents. Want to convince people and actually do some good? Stop the immaturity. Logic with truth is a bite to the jugular, but insults and pettiness reduce it to a kick in the groin.
Sometimes people beclown themselves, and it is no sin to point out that they have done so. Sometimes the tombs apply whitewash to themselves, and it is okay to then call them whitewashed tombs, even if they find it insulting.
Seems like there are plenty of non-Wilson-choir folks who follow this blog. Plus DW links in his Twitter feed to these posts for all the world to see.
“Den of vipers”, “hypocrites”, “white-washed tombs” “blind tour guides” Was Jesus snarky?
I’m sorry, but women and men who dress up as giant vagina hot-dogs and scream obscenities while posturing for respect for women need to be ridiculed.
As David Burge pointed out, during the Inauguration, “protesters” were a couple blocks away from the main event, all dressed in black, smashing windows, setting fire to cars, because they were . . . wait for it . . . drum roll . . . protesting fascism. Uh, the guys dressed in all-black smashing windows are anarchists. They’ve been showing up to random large protests, and trying to incite destruction, for at least 18-19 years now. Some of them are centered in Oregon City and I think Eugene as well, so they most often show up in Eugene/Portland/Seattle protests, though… Read more »
They’re well-funded by the likes of George Soros and have pro-bono legal protection from well-known firms, not that that will do them much good after the wrath of Jeff Sessions comes down on them.
“But they have nothing to do with the rest of the protesters.” How do you know this with certainty? It’s interesting that when one person throws a punch at a Trump rally, it’s supposedly indicative of the entire Trump ethos. The entire MSM agreed on that. But these anti-fascist fascists can damage property and assault people for 20 years, yet we’re never supposed to associate them with the Left…despite seeing more moderate forms of this behavior (e.g., throwing things at conservative speakers and trying to shut down their 1st Amendment rights) all over the place. I’m guessing this is the… Read more »
There was far more than one guy who threw a punch at a Trump rally – there were at least a dozen such incidents over the course of at least six months, several of which Trump had publicly egged on beforehand and praised afterwards. If the rally organizers had said something like, “We’ll cover all the legal fees for anyone who destroys property” beforehand and “Maybe that that property DESERVED to be destroyed” afterwards, then they’d likely be treated the same way that Trump was. As they should. You’re right that I can’t know with certainty. I’m relying on a… Read more »
We’re still comparing a few stray punches with a van load of guys attacking with baseball bats and knives. There’s no comparison here. To say the Left isn’t isn’t responsible for their violent problem children is beyond ludicrous. And they’re not stopping: http://www.mediaite.com/online/dont-attack-nazis-and-dont-praise-those-who-do/ 230 people were arrested in D.C. (who knows how many hundreds/thousands were also guilty) and multiple cops were injured. This is beyond a few isolated incidents. Stop defending them with quotes worthy of the Huffington Post or Vox. As you mentioned, the “anarchists” have been vandalizing, breaking and burning since the 1990s. And it didn’t start then.… Read more »
There is no comparison, you are right. There’s also no comparison between people who are actively being egged on by the event coordinator and people who are working against the expressed interests of the event coordinators. You’re trying to compare two things that make no sense to compare. I mean, there’s also no comparison between shooting an abortion doctor and refusing to let a pro-lifer march in your rally. But it’d be silly to pretend that abortion doctor shooters and rally coordinators are the right comparison. I don’t see any point for your comparison beyond, “There are also violent people… Read more »
To each their own. Some women will enjoy pushing that stroller. Some women will enjoy spending time in the lab studying cancer using yeast as a model organism. Some women will enjoy doing both.
All women wish to make their own decisions in this life and are entitled to do so.
“All women wish to make their own decisions in this life and are entitled to do so.”
Absolutely. If some woman wants to be Elizabeth Bathory, I think we should fully support her lifestyle choices.
*Pats On Head*
Chauvinist much?
What feminists are trying to tell you is that women are first and foremost people, not uteri, and we are sick and tired of being treated as though the presence/status of our uterus is the most important aspect of ourselves. A woman’s value has NOTHING TO DO WITH the number of sexual encounters and/or partners she has had. Our brains, our ideas, our thoughts, our emotions, etc. are all infinitely more important. If you ignore all these things and instead determine if we are worthy of respect based on our sexual history, then your “respect” isn’t real respect at all.… Read more »
Embryos aren’t children, as in human beings older than infants but younger than adults. They are children in that they are human offspring. In the 25th week of gestation, people are fetuses, not embryos. To steal their lives is to steal their futures, all of the hopes and dreams they should have had and now will not.
I truly do not care about others’ uteri or vaginas. It is the feminists who want to wave their reproductive organs around in my face.
What drives me crazy is that the human status of the embryo/fetus/almost ready to be born child depends solely on whether it is wanted by its mother. During my much wanted pregnancy, no medical practitioner ever referred to the health or development of my fetus. It was always my baby, right from the beginning. “Don’t take tranquilizers or aspirin; they can hurt your baby.” How can the question of whether this is an unborn baby or a meaningless clump of tissue depend only on my feelings about carrying it?
In this world, opinion trumps biology; see transgenderism.
Embryo is a more general term that applies to the entire time in the womb actually, which is why I used that word and not fetus which depends on the stage of the pregnancy. To steal their lives is to steal their futures, all of the hopes and dreams they should have had and now will not. The same can be said of every egg and every sperm that fail to combine. If they don’t combine, they die and so all the hopes and dreams they would have had if they combined, they now will not. Thinking about this sort… Read more »
Really? I used to work for an obgyn journal, and I only ever heard embryo used for the first 8 weeks after fertilization.
I wasn’t talking about “hypothetical” people; I was talking about actually conceived people. A sperm or unfertilized egg is not a developing human with its own set of DNA, that will grow into an adult, but a gamete. Different ballgame.
Really? I used to work for an obgyn journal, and I only ever heard embryo used for the first 8 weeks after fertilization. The word has both a more specific and a more general meaning. em·bry·o an unborn or unhatched offspring in the process of development, in particular a human offspring during the period from approximately the second to the eighth week after fertilization (after which it is usually termed a fetus).A sperm or unfertilized egg is not a developing human with its own set of DNA, that will grow into an adult, but a gamete. A sperm and/or egg… Read more »
On your reasoning, what would prevent us from actively killing people in vegetative comas? They do not have thoughts, hopes, and dreams. A mother’s relationship to her five-year-old child is custodial, fiduciary, and benevolent. She makes decisions on behalf of the child but in the child’s ultimate best interest. The greater amount of control she holds over the child now as compared to when it is adult does not entitle her to harm the child. So I have trouble with this reasoning. If a day-old infant lacks meaningful cognition and does not have hopes and dreams. On your reasoning, why… Read more »
On your reasoning, what would prevent us from actively killing people in vegetative comas? They do not have thoughts, hopes, and dreams. For people in vegetative comas there are past wishes to consider, same as with those who are dead. We don’t cremate a person who wanted to be cremated because we think they still have thoughts and wishes on the matter after all, it is a matter of respect for the person that was. For an embryo, there is no person that was with past opinions for us to respect. A mother’s relationship to her five-year-old child is custodial,… Read more »
It’s not just people in comas anymore. The merely mentally disturbed are being actively killed in the Netherlands:
Female Dutch doctor drugged a patient’s coffee then asked her family to hold her down as she fought not to be killed – but did not break the country’s euthanasia laws
“Pre-25-week-old embryos on the other hand don’t have the capacity for thought and don’t particularly care if they live or die.”
So is a post 25 week abortion any more objectionable than at pre 25 weeks?
In my opinion, yes. All women still have the right to bodily autonomy though, so while I may personally object I am unwilling to support the law forcing my opinion on others.
Is there any point at which you do support the law enforecing your opinion?
LadySunami wrote: In my opinion, yes. All women still have the right to bodily autonomy though, so while I may personally object I am unwilling to support the law forcing my opinion on others. Still have? As a point of fact, women have no such legal right to bodily autonomy in over 40 states in the U.S. where abortion is banned after the second trimester. It’s interesting to note that LadySunami used an argument regarding the thought life of 25-week-old unborn, which she doesn’t even follow anyway. In other words, she places a legal fiction about a woman’s bodily autonomy… Read more »
As a point of fact, women have no such legal right to bodily autonomy in over 40 states in the U.S. where abortion is banned after the second trimester. Which is why many people see this as a huge problem. I understand why they object to such laws and so respect their efforts to fight against such restrictions, even though I do not personally participate. My position isn’t as confusing or inconsistent as you’re trying to make it out to be. I neither fight against laws that restrict post 25-week abortions (unless they lack exceptions for the health and safety… Read more »
LadySunami wrote:
LadySunami is not only self-contradictory in her arguments for abortion, she is flat wrong on the legal merits with her invented notion of a legal right to bodily autonomy for expecting mothers. There is already a legal recognition that the mother’s body is not the only body in view.
What feminists are trying to tell you is that women are first and foremost people, not uteri, and we are sick and tired of being treated as though the presence/status of our uterus is the most important aspect of ourselves. A woman’s value has NOTHING TO DO WITH the number of sexual encounters and/or partners she has had. Our brains, our ideas, our thoughts, our emotions, etc. are all infinitely more important. If you ignore all these things and instead determine if we are worthy of respect based on our sexual history, then your “respect” isn’t real respect at all.… Read more »
I do tend to judge men on the number of sexual partners they have had, especially if they were married at the time they had them. Men are first and foremost people, not penises, and while their brains, emotions and thoughts are undoubtedly more important, I tend to withhold some respect if their sexual history includes infidelity, promiscuity, adultery, broken promises, cruel trifling with the feelings of others, and gross irresponsibility regarding birth control and management of STD’s. Don’t you?
I tend to be full of mercy and compassion, Jilly. I nursed a couple of those guys at the end of their life and they totally broke my heart. They were so filled with regret and sorrow, grief over never having had an actual intimate connection with a woman, never having found what they were looking for, just trying to pour all these women into the abyss of their souls their whole lives. “A woman’s value has NOTHING TO DO WITH the number of sexual encounters and/or partners she has had.” Yes it does. Just like those guys, if she’s… Read more »
LadySunami wrote: Treating an embryo like a child when it isn’t a child doesn’t make sense, just as treating a 5-year-old child as an adult doesn’t make sense. Even the Bible knows this, which is why the death of an embryo is only punishable by a fine, not life for a life. This is popularized, but deeply flawed reasoning. First, the text of Exodus 21:22-25 does not indicate that the child dies. It only indicates that the pregnant woman delivers. The language would also be consistent with a premature live birth, with potential attending complications that may manifest later on… Read more »
First, the text of Exodus 21:22-25 does not indicate that the child dies. It only indicates that the pregnant woman delivers. Jewish writings that elaborate on this point, and records that indicate how the law was actually applied, disagree with your interpretation. I’m inclined to believe the people who actually wrote the book and lived by its laws. An unintentional killing, though involving a real person, does not call for the death penalty. This is the same situation that is going on when men are struggling with each other and a pregnant woman is hit. I think you need to… Read more »
LadySunami wrote: The brainwaves of a sleeping person are different then those of an awake person, but they still exist. First, notice that LadySunami moved her goalposts from “coherent thought” to the mere presence of “brainwaves”. Great. In moving the goalposts in this way, she seems to have completely forgotten that “the brainwaves of the unborn person are different than those of a birthed person, but they still exist” after week eight. So if LadySunami is not to be killed in her sleep, by virtue of her brainwaves, then neither are the unborn to be killed after week eight. She… Read more »
LadySunami wrote: I don’t object to post 25-week restrictions, as long as they allow for exceptions for the health of the mother. So let’s get this straight. LadySunami was against abortion because of the inviolate right for a woman to be the sole arbiter in control of her own body. But, suddenly, after 25-weeks, LadySunami tosses that nonsense out the window and agrees that a woman can be required not to abort? So much for the sole right to control her own body. We find that not even LadySunami believes in that argument. Probably because it’s obviously not just the… Read more »
LadySunami wrote: Babies are babies only after the moment of birth, just as adults are only adults after the moment they turn 18. I realize it’s a hard line division that can seem somewhat arbitrary (Why 10 seconds after birth and not 10 seconds before? Why at 12:01 am on a person’s 18th birthday and not 11:59 pm the night before?), but the line has to be drawn somewhere. LadySunami is a bit self-conscious about being so completely and utterly arbitrary, but at least she realizes how foolish it must seem to those of us who actually understand that we… Read more »
Yes, they would kill Him if they could. But make no mistake–He will kill THEM.
“Vengeance is Mine, and recompense;
Their foot shall slip in due time;
For the day of their calamity is at hand,
And the things to come hasten upon them.” (Deu. 32:35 — NKJV)