Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch on Muslim protests in the US against the US support for the Muslim Brotherhood

 

Some of what is covered in the video above:  Muslim protests in the US over the mainstream media's bias for the Muslim Brotherhood, the extreme fundamentalist Islamic group that is responsible for torching churches in Egypt and trying to turn the population against Christians. Also, these protests are aimed at the Obama Administration who also seems to be supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.  Apparently, also Obama's his best friend in the world is the Turkish president or prime minister who has recently blamed Israel for what is going on with the Muslim Brotherhood causing mayhem in the Islamic world.  That is typical Islamic anti-semitism; something goes wrong in their world and it's all Israel's fault. 

My opinion is that Israel would have to be stark raving bonkers and not to mention suicidal to be destabilising the Middle East to the point where Islamic fundamentalists such as the Brotherhood can then take over.  Yet this is what I'm hearing from a commenter on KiwiBlog who says he is an atheist but appears to react to Jews and Christians like a rabid Muslim.

Meanwhile, it looks like the US is preparing for war against Syria, which is not good, to say the least.  I think it is far more likely that chemical weapons were used against the civilian population by rabid Brotherhood crazies in order to give the US a reason to attack.  The Russians are warning the US and UK to cease and desist and saying that they are "like a monkey with a grenade".

This is just seriously not good: As the West considers action against the ruling Assad regime in Syria, we must take note of a chilling warning from 1914 ~ Daily Mail

Related links: Robert Spencer on Sun TV on rallies against the Muslim Brotherhood ~ JihadWatch

To meet Islam head on we need to understand it

How did you become interested in learning more about Islamic thought? And what have you learned?

Reilly: My background really was in the Cold War and I am a student of political philosophy. Most of that was applied to 19th and 20th century Western ideologies. It was only after 9/11 that I wondered whether what I knew could apply to the situation we were facing.

So for more than 10 years now I have been studying mainly Muslim theology—and what passes for philosophy and metaphysics and epistemology—to try to get to the source of why things have gone so wrong there. And I traced it back to an enormous intellectual drama in the 9th century in Baghdad between those who wished to give primacy to reason and those who wished to give primacy to pure will and power. So you had, on one side, the first theological school in Islam that said, “God is rationality and justice,” and the other side which said: “No, God is pure will and power. Rationality has nothing to do with Him and whatever He does is incomprehensible to us and He cannot be confined to what is thought to be reasonable or unreasonable.”

You’ve talked about Islamic metaphysics, which conceives of the movement of an object across a desk as a process in which that object is being destroyed and reconstituted a million times every second. Is this not in direct contradiction to the Greco-Roman or Western understanding of reality?

Reilly: Yes, absolutely, because it’s a denial of natural law and because of this almost perverse concentration on God’s omnipotence. The theological school in Sunni Islam called Ash’arism, which is the majority theological school, even today says that God is the first and only cause of everything and there cannot be secondary causes (such as natural law) because that would be a challenge to God’s omnipotence. So for God to be omnipotent, nothing else can be even so much as potent. Therefore, gravity does not make the rock fall; God does. Fire doesn’t burn cotton; God does. There is, therefore, no cause and effect in the natural world. This teaching has destroyed the Sunni Muslim world.

And their metaphysics that you referred to is: How do they explain how things are constituted if they have no essence or a nature (which they deny)? They are constituted by these time/space atoms which God, in an instant, agglomerates into certain shapes or things like a plant or a tree or a person. And why that tree should remain a tree in the following instant has absolutely nothing to doing with having the nature of a tree; it has no nature. It is only for reasons we will never know that God wishes to reconstitute it as a tree in the next instant—because things are constantly passing into and out of existence, and they seem to be the same thing; but they are not. Everything is made new almost instantaneously.

This, of course, means everything is miraculous. All nature is miraculous and all miracles are natural, as one thinker put it. The problem with this is that if everything is miraculous, it becomes incomprehensible. That’s the quality of a miracle—that it is temporary suspension of natural law for which you can give no account.

But if everything is that way, then you can’t give account of anything. And this is how world escapes the Islamists and why things become incomprehensible to them—and why they become subject to the wildest and most absurd conspiracy theories.

And you can’t dialogue with such an ideology. Is there any response that can be made to that way of thinking?

Reilly: Even though this bizarre metaphysics is asserted, it doesn’t abolish reality; reality is still there, even if they are incapable of recognizing it as it is. So, you still have reality on your side. If somebody wishes to cook their meal, they still have to light the stove, even though they deny the relationship between lighting the match and the gas igniting.

In fact, as the denial of reality is getting more profound, the sharper the crisis [within Islam] becomes. Through the profusion of these satellite channels throughout the Middle East, they’re having the West shoved in their faces on a daily basis and the sense of their own inferiority in comparison becomes more acute.

How do they respond to this? They respond by becoming even more Islamist. Their only recourse is their religion and therefore they become more extreme in it. That’s not the direction in which things need to go for things to improve there. It’s in the opposite direction of a re-Hellenization.

Read the whole thing as I've posted only a small section of the interview here.

Related link: Delving into the mind of Islam ~ MercatorNet

On that "horrific" law that is as bad as the Nuremberg ones, or so we are led to believe

JAY LENO: Something that shocked me about Russia. I'm surprised this is not a huge story. Suddenly homosexuality is against the law. I mean, this seems like Germany with let's round up the Jews. Let's round up the gays. It starts with that. You round up people who you don't like. I mean, why is not more of the world outraged at this?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, I have been very clear that when it comes to universal rights, when it comes to people's basic freedoms, that whether you're discriminating on the basis of race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation you are violating the basic morality that I think should transcend every country, and I have no patience for countries that try to treat gays or lesbians or transgender persons in ways that intimidate them or are harmful to them.

This post will be far longer than I'd like but it can't be helped. Part A will briefly illuminate some of the sheer nonsense that has occurred in the past two weeks over the objections some people have to a Russian Law.  A law which when it comes down to it is none of their business since the law only applies within the Russian Federation to those who live there or who are visiting.

In Part B I will briefly detail the law as best I can so you can make up your own mind about how "horrific" or "draconian" it is or actually isn't for yourself.

Part A

A few days after the words at left were uttered it became a "huge story". The world athletics championships were being held in Moscow, you see. Valerie Adams had already won her gold and all was well with the world.

But then two Swedish athletes who did not set the world on fire with their performance in the field drew attention to themselves with rainbow colored nail polish, to protest "that law".

And Stephen Fry called for a boycott of the Sochi Winter Olympics next year, he even got to meet with David Cameron.

The extraordinary ‘gay rights pub summit’ between the actor and the Prime Minister on Monday evening came days after Mr Fry had written an open letter to No 10. He claimed that Russia’s President Putin was making scapegoats of gay people, just as Hitler did with the Jews. Mr Fry had made no attempt to conceal his lifelong disdain for the Tories, although he praised the Prime Minister’s stance on gay rights in the UK.

And a Russian world champion was asked her opinion of the Swedish girls protest and the law they were protesting and when she gave response all hell broke loose around her

And then great excitement over two more Russian female champions when a photo of their congratulatory kiss was spun as Lesbianism and/or a protest when, of course, it was neither

Part B

The law causing all this angst is titled in Russian: "О защите детей от информации, причиняющей вред их здоровью и развитию"

or in English: "On Protection of children from information harmful to their health and development".  So far so good but here is where it gets tricky - the information the Russian Duma deem harmful to children's health and development is that pertaining to "non-traditional sexual relationships". Cue outrage.

Whether or not preventing non related adults presenting material on "non-traditional sexual relationships" or promoting them to other people's children is a "violation of human rights" is up for you to decide but parents within the Russian Federation overwhelmingly agree that they don't want these  sort of concepts presented to their young it seems and this particular law has the support of 85%+ of Russian citizens.

So what are the penalties under this "horrific" law, I hear you ask? Well an individual may be fined up to $5000 roubles for violating it - in New Zealand's currency about $190 - just a little more than the penalty for not wearing your seat belt while driving   and a trifle less than you would receive for not displaying a current warrant of fitness.

For organizers of events that break this law the penalties are steeper, fines up to 50,000 roubles may be imposed - ballpark NZ$2000.

And for corporations the fines can be as high as $1,000,000 roubles, let's say roughly NZ$40,000.

You can of course hold events promoting "non-traditional sexual relationships" in private spaces provided you do not admit those under 18 to them and nobody under 18 is exposed to any materials that may be distributed to those who attend.

Foreigners who break the law may cop the fine, and be sent back to from whence they came being  held for up to 15 days in custody before deportation.

There are other aspects to this law relating to broadcasting and so forth but that is the gist of it.

Is this really something worthy of an Olympic boycott? Or is this all just hysterical nonsense?

NZ Redefined A Societal Institution For 0.7% Of The Country

Yep, according to today's NZ Herald which has the statistics for how many gay couples are in New Zealand and Australia, we just redefined a societal institution for less than 1% of the country.

Here is the takeaway -

Same-sex couplesAustralia

* 1996 0.3 per cent
* 2001 0.5 per cent
* 2006 0.6 per cent
* 2011 0.7 per cent
New Zealand

* 2006 0.7 per cent.

And here is more of a breakdown in the numbers -

Australian Census figures show that same-sex couples have increased from 0.3 per cent of all couples in 1996 to 0.7 per cent, or 33,700 couples, in the 2011 Census.

New Zealand's 2006 Census found that 0.7 per cent of Kiwi couples were in same-sex relationships.

In both countries, homosexual couples are younger, much better educated and better paid than heterosexual couples, although the pay differences partly reflect more heterosexual women (and some men) taking time out of paid work to bring up children.

In Australia, 1.6 per cent of partnered young people aged 15 to 24, but only 0.1 per cent of partnered seniors aged 65-plus, were in same-sex relationships in 2011. The comparable New Zealand data for 2006 were 1.6 per cent and 0.2 per cent.

The proportions of same-sex couples were highest in Sydney and Canberra (1.1 per cent) in 2011, and in Wellington (1.1 per cent) and Auckland (0.9 per cent) in 2006, with the lowest percentages in rural areas. 

The numbers aren't very different overseas either, with an article in the Telegraph from 2010 citing numbers of one and a half percent gay population in the UK.

And yet society is being pressured to change laws based on these small percentages. Why? Part of it must be due to pressure that these minorities exert by way of activist members who make it into parliament and push their agendas. Part of it is also due to these groups having a large voice in the media and in entertainment. And that was part of their agenda from the start and part of the marketing plan that Kirk and Madsen put forward in their book, After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90's. In it, Kirk and Madsen reveal their marketing plan using Hollywood and the media to make homosexuality acceptable.

Looks like it has worked. Heaven knows where we'll go from here.

Journalistic malfeasance and obsession with seaminess

Great excitement yesterday in some quarters over this picture. It even appeared on Stuff prominently displayed for a short time before, (I hope) common sense prevailed and the story was quietly demoted (and I'm fairly sure amended to remove some of the more hysterical speculation)

The Guardian gets more mileage from this image today

When two Russian athletes locked lips after taking gold at the World Athletics Championships, speculation was rife that the pair were protesting against the country's recently passed anti-gay law.

After narrowly edging out the US team to win the 400m relay at Moscow's Luzhniki stadium on Saturday, Ksenia Ryzhova and Yulia Guschina celebrated their victory with lingering kiss. They kissed again on the podium as their two teammates looked on.

But in her first comment on the incident, Ryzhova told the Guardian on Monday that the kiss was not a political statement and had nothing to do with the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.

"It was just happiness for our team," which has trained together for many years, Ryzhova said on Monday. She declined to comment on her attitude toward LGBT rights.

"If people want to write all sorts of dirt about us, they should at least know that Yulia and I are both married," she added.

That picture is not what it is purported to be, my friends, there wasn't one kiss on the podium yesterday, there were six. though you wouldn't know it from the reporting - the image, as captured just gave airhead reporters an opportunity to spin yet another story which was about sport into their favorite topic which doesn't have anything to do with sport.

Obeying The Bible On Sex and Marriage

I mentioned this on another forum and thought I'd do a post here on it as well.

When it comes to the subject of sex, many people consider that what the Bible has to say on the subject is very old fashioned; and perhaps it is, but there is wisdom in following the laws of God.

These days having sex with another person to whom you are not married is commonplace; so common that it isn't thought of as a sin any more where once it would have been scandalous. You don't even have to love each other now; just find someone willing on a Friday night. The Bible calls it "fornication".

The Bible also has something to say about homosexual sex -

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

 Now, one can argue what this "due penalty in themselves" could be. Could it be disease? I guess that is just one interpretation, but my argument is this: would society have such numbers of people (both gay and straight) suffering from venereal disease (and even AIDS) if we followed the Biblical principles of remaining chaste (not fornicating) until marriage, being faithful to our partners (not committing adultery), and if couples refrained from homosexual conduct?

I believe there is a strong argument in the affirmative.
And if sex were between married couples only, wouldn't it also lesson the need for contraception? For condoms, the pill, abortion, IUD's, Gardasil etc

Now, don't get me wrong. I think sex is good, but I believe it should be confined to marriage. Sex isn't only for pleasure; it is also for procreation and bringing the next generation into the world. I suppose one can compare sex with another function of the body: eating. Eating food is good; it is also pleasurable, but is the pleasure we get from eating the main purpose for it? No, the main reason we eat is to nourish the body. One could argue that that is why we have an impulse to eat - otherwise we would die - but no one ever died from not having sex.

Sex (like eating) is also a strong bodily impulse. If we didn't procreate then the human race would die out. I suppose this is one of the main reasons that God made sex (like eating) enjoyable. But God, in his Word, has given us rules that govern sex. They are for our benefit, and not following them has consequences. One of them being disease.

Marriage Day? You've got to be kidding.

Stuff: Richard Rawstorn and Richard Andrew are already civil union partners but want to receive the same rights as opposite-sex couples.

Today is the day that New Zealand (in law) no longer recognises real marriage. It's been a long time coming, what with divorce, contraception, the removal of the need to consummate a marriage; and now we have the absurd situation where two men or two women can pretend that they are able to get married, and the State participates in this delusion.

To celebrate this historic occasion, same-sex couples such as Richard and Richard pictured above, are upgrading their civil union to a marriage to get the same rights as male and female couples.  Someone's going to have to break this to them - they don't have the same ability and therefore the right to procreate with each other.  No matter how much they try and take temps and watch for mucous, a little baby Richard will not miraculously appear in one of their tummies.

David Farrar calls today, Marriage Day. 

Related link: Historic day arrives for same-sex couples ~ Stuff

No More Heroes?

This is quite interesting. A conservative film maker is starting to make his own films but in a column expresses what I feel sometimes (the part in bold) about heroes.

After starting one of the most successful viral ad campaigns in the history of the Internet, “Will It Blend,” YouTube invited us to come to their first-ever live event in San Francisco right after the 2008 presidential election.

This was a two-hour event that included the likes of Katy Perry, will.i.am (when his dumb Yes We Can Obama song was big) and Jamie and Adam from The Mythbusters.

All at once I saw that this was not just a streaming event with everyone who was famous on YouTube, this was an Obama celebration.

I got to meet The Mythbusters, who I loved and ironically have seen my “Will it Blend” channel and told me how much they loved it. I felt a connection. They invited us to their shop, etc. But, once the topic of where we were from came into play (Utah … oh, you must be Mormon), they pointed out that we sure did real damage with Proposition 8. This was just weeks after the election and it was still heavy on our minds. They ignored us the rest of the show.

I have come to realize that everything has become political, that my heroes of yesterday (Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, others I won’t name) slowly one-by-one were now against me or anything I stood for. There are honestly no more heroes.

The chance of any directing career in Hollywood were never going to surface for me simply because of who I am.

The Last Eagle Scout is a response to this charge.

Documentaries are great, very needed and serve their purpose, but they honestly preach to the choir. It is time for us right of center folk to stop caring what the pop culture says about us and just make our own films.

The Last Eagle Scout is a dramedy/action “what-if” film about how the government tries to shut down the Boy Scouts, while scouter Cliff Elliot (Nick Whitaker) is trying to get his Eagle award.

It really is quite sad to know that some of the people whose work I admire (be they film makers, recording artists, or other creatives) go against the core beliefs I have. Did they always believe this way? Or are they protecting their livelihoods by going with the flow? It seems that to stay alive in the creative industries you must think (or pretend to think) a certain way. You must believe homosexual marriage is alright, and abortion, and Obama etc etc. It is not good when a whole industry is slanted in one direction and blackballs anyone who goes against the fashionable morality of the times.

I was just asking myself before dinner (before I saw the above article), does it matter what the artist thinks? Can I like his work without liking him? I would like to think not, but it probably does matter. Yes, there are some artists that are openly conservative (and I admire them for that), but sometimes I get the feeling that I am 'adopting' them just because they think like me and that I don't particularly have any strong feeling for their work.

There is such a thing as free speech; you can say what you like (mostly). But that doesn't mean that your freely expressed opinions won't have an effect as regards the way people treat you or hire you.

Medieval Justice

The Latest Technology

I haven't had time to fully appraise Paula Bennett's proposed new laws, but if they are half as bad as what I'm hearing, then it is entirely appropriate that I pronounce on them without full evidence.

For that seems to be the way these proposed laws are going.

National seem to be saying that this whole "presumed innocent until proven guilty" is a medieval concept, and no place in this rational, evidence based, scientific society*

And therefore, the new, advanced, pedophile detecting screening test is just what we need to pronounce people guilty if they manage to prove otherwise in a court of law.

Well, bravo. So what is this new, advanced screening test?

Apparently, you need a deep pond and a "float meter" that accurately measures the extent a person is floating or sinking.




*And it was a medieval concept, founded in Roman Law and documented as part of a codex of laws around 533.  The phrase we know today was eventually coined around the 1800's.  Thus, the irony in this post is that as we denigrate medieval times for "medieval thinking" we actually end up rejecting the wisdom developing over those times that fought the injustice of unfair trials.

Christian Churches in Egypt being attacked

This video shows an attack by various men and boys on the St. George church in Sohag, Egypt. It was put together from what looks like various security camera videos. What I find bizarre about the attack is the number of people just throwing stones at the church building itself. To me that indicates a hatred of the building and everything it stands for.

From a couple of days ago, a list of the destruction which has nothing to do with Government of Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood, as well as having a massive tanty that their guy has been removed, are venting their anger on the minority Christians of Egypt.

Until 7pm this afternoon, the following churches and Coptic-owned institutions in Egypt had been burned at the hands of Islamists. Watani lists them here chronologically:

Three churches and six buildings at the monastery of the Holy Virgin and Anba Abra’am in Dalga, Minya, Upper Egypt
The church of Mar-Mina in the district of Abu-Hilal in the town of Minya
The bishopric church of Mar-Girgis (St George) in Sohag, Upper Egypt
The church of the Holy Virgin in Nazla, Fayoum, Lower Egypt
The Baptist church in Beni-Mazar, Minya
Coptic-owned shops in Gumhouriya Street in Assiut, Upper Egypt
The Good Shepherd School in Suez
The Fransiscan School in Suez
The Holy Bible Society in Fayoum
The church of al-Amir Tawadros (St Theodore) in Fayoum
The church of the Holy Virgin in the district of Abu-Hilal in the town of Minya
The Catholic church of St Mark, Minya
The Jesuit church in Abu-Hilal, Minya
The church of Mar-Morqos (St Mark) and its community centre, Sohag
18 houses of Coptic families in Dalga, Minya, including the home of Father Angaelus Melek of the Holy Virgin and Anba Abra’am’s
The Evangelical church on Nassara Street in Abu-Hilal, Minya
The church of Anba Moussa al-Aswad in Minya
Coptic-owned shops, pharmacies, and a doctor’s clinic in Minya
The Jesuit church in Minya (attacked, not burned)
The St Fatima Basilica in Cairo (attacked, not burned)
St Joseph’s School in Minya (attacked, not burned)
The Nile boat al-Dahabiya, owned by the Evangelical Church in Minya
Coptic-owned shops, pharmacy, and hotels on Karnak Street and Cleopatra Street in Luxor (attacked and looted)
The church of Mar-Girgis (St George) in Wasta (attacked)
The church of St Michael on Nemeis Street in Assiut, Upper Egypt
The Adventist church in Assiut; the pastor and his wife were both kidnapped
The Greek church in Suez
The church of Mar-Girgis in Assiut
Coptic houses on Qulta Street in Assiut attacked
The church of Mar-Girgis (St George) in Arish, North Sinai
The church of St Dimiana and the Evangelical church in the village of Zerbi in Fayoum
The offices of the Evangelical foundation in Minya, and those of Umm al-Nour in Beni-Mazar, Minya
The church of Anba Antonius in Kerdassa, Giza
The bishopric church in Etfeeh, Giza

In addition to the attacks against the Copts, their churches, businesses, and property; Egyptians were aghast at attempts by the Islamists to break into the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) in Alexandria and set it on fire. The BA security and staff confronted the assailants in the courtyard, and there was an exchange of gunfire. According to Khaled Azab, the BA’s media manager, the conference hall was plundered, and a number of acquisitions went missing. The glass façade was shattered.

In Deir Muwass, Minya, the locals called Watani in horror to report that 30 armed Islamists broke into the local water treatment station and cut off the water supply to the nearby villages and towns, meaning that should a fire erupt there would be no water to put it off.

While I'm sure that there are Muslims that are peaceful, the sad reality is that in Egypt, it is the Muslims that are involved in these attacks. The religion of Islam generates this sort of behaviour. The Muslim Brotherhood is just the latest name taken on by the fanatics who arise out of Islamic populations. Historically, there has always been a fanatical subset of Muslims who will terrify the population into submission.

Related links: Video: Brutal Muslim Brotherhood attack on St. George church in Sohag, Egypt ~ JihadWatch
In addition to destroying numerous churches, Muslim Brotherhood attempts to destroy Library of Alexandria ~ JihadWatch

Democracy, freedom of speech and how idiotic journalists don't really get either

Yelena Gadzhievna Isinbayeva is now the greatest female pole vaulter of all time.

She is 31 years old and wants to start a family and is about to.

But the BBC and other Western media are in high dudgeon over comments she made (in English) at a news conference after winning her third women's world pole vault title.

Now here's the thing my friends the comments that are causing journalists across the western world heads to explode were made in response to questions asked of her by those self same journalists.

They were asked of her in her country about laws relating to her country, passed unanimously by both houses of the government of her country with the overwhelming support of the citizens of her country. For those of you slow on the uptake that means democratically.

And when this well educated and accomplished woman speaking in the language of the idiotic reporters, rather than her native tongue expressed her support for the laws of her land - er well the meltdown began.

Now if you haven't watched the BBC item linked above go do it and then as a thought experiment, imagine if one of the "commentators" in that piece had decided to support Yelena Isinbayeva's sentiments or even her right to speak her mind and ask yourself what would happen to that person.

We know the answer to this - his or her career in sports journalism would be over because in the West freedom of speech no longer exists

Things you wont read in the New Zealand Herald or hear reported on Radio New Zealand

What are Barack Obama's allies up to: A Succession of Sacrileges?

So which world leader is concerned about these developments? A "bored schoolboy"¹ is.

(1) This was the leader of the "free world's" description of Vladimir Putin last week, just after he appeared on a comedy show and just before he took off for a week on the Golf course.

Hmmm

Paula Bennett to dramatically increase the powers of the State

Bloody hell! was my first reaction when I read the front page of the Dominion Post this morning.

Suspected child abusers could be banned from being around children for up to 10 years without being convicted of a crime under a proposed law to be announced today [...] If police or Child, Youth and Family believed on the "balance of probabilities" that someone posed a threat to a child, High Court or District Court judges could impose the ban, similar to restraining orders in cases of domestic violence.

Will these judgements be made publicly or privately? Will the person have a chance to defend themselves? We'll have to wait and see what the detail is on this proposed law.

Mrs Bennett expected opposition from human rights and civil liberties groups but believed she had the support of New Zealanders for the moves.

Ya think? Has Paula Bennett ever studied history? Looked at what increased state powers can do in a country?

Mrs Bennett admitted the law would be controversial but said she was putting the welfare of children first. There were too many children dying and on the balance of probabilities, the crime was committed by one adult in the room.

Children are in the most danger when their mother has relationships with men that are not married to her, whether they are biological father or not only confers a slight level of safety, so married step-fathers are far safer than unmarried biological fathers.

Marriage, not increased state powers is what will keep children safe. Wake up Paula!

The Six Great Mysteries of the Bible

Stephen Beale on Catholic Exchange writes about the six great mysteries of the Bible. Most of them I hadn't even considered, but the first one, what happened to the Garden of Eden, I have wondered about from time to time, and my children have asked me about it as well.

What happened to Eden? The forbidden fruit had been eaten and mankind was banished from the Garden of Eden. So what happened to Eden? No one is quite sure where it was originally located, although there seems to be a general consensus that the garden was somewhere in the Middle East, perhaps in modern-day Iraq. Presumably, the great flood of Genesis would have wiped out it out, but, for centuries, the Christian world had an unquestioning belief in the continued existence of Eden on earth, hidden from man. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote that the terrestrial paradise was “shut off by mountains, or seas, or some torrid region” which he said could not be crossed. So firm was the belief in the enduring physical presence of Eden that it was depicted on medieval maps. The belief persisted into the age of exploration: in 1498, Christopher Columbus recoiled with horror from sailing further up the Orinoco River in present-day Venezuela, believing that he was about to enter the Garden of Eden and would incur certain death as a result. Today, with our maps now complete, it seems that Eden has truly vanished without a trace.

Related link: Six Great Mysteries of the Bible

Intelligent women and children

From the Herald today, there is an article on a researcher who looked into intelligence and desire for children by women when they were young. The more intelligent the girl, the less children she wanted, apparently.

Women lose a quarter of their maternal urges for every 15 extra IQ points they have, according to international research.

...

Using data from Britain's National Child Development Study, Mr Kanazawa studied the links between intelligence and maternal urges in women. He found more of the former meant less of the latter.

Even after adding controls for economics and education, the results remained the same - the more intelligent the woman, the less likely she was to have children.

Mr Kanazawa published his findings in his book, The Intelligence Paradox, and the research into the number of children compared with IQ was in the chapter titled "Why intelligent people are the ultimate losers in life".

He found that the more intelligent both men and women were in their childhood, the fewer children they wanted when they were older. Those who wanted no offspring when they were young had a mean IQ of 105.5, almost 7 points higher than those who did want children.

But while the level of intelligence affected whether women reproduced later in life, it did not affect men.

Mr Kanazawa, who lived in Christchurch for a year, said: "More intelligent women have fewer children in their lifetimes than less intelligent women. In contrast, more intelligent men, despite having wanted to have fewer children at age 23, do not actually have fewer children by age 47."

And he did not believe that smart women choosing to not have children had anything to do with their desire to pursue academics or a career. The psychologist believed that only childhood intelligence, not educational achievement or earnings, decreased the number of children women had.

I think it's got nothing to do with intelligence as such over the long term, it's just a reaction by intelligent girls to the type of society we live in today, and the past few decades, and the impressions those girls have of what they need to do in order to get ahead in life. Right now the messages are to not have or to limit children, and the more intelligent are going to pick up on that, thinking that's the right thing to do.

This could have a negative impact on how smart society was.

Except that women don't tend to be excessively intelligent. We are typically clustered around the centre of the scale, with very few women being incredibly stupid and very intelligent. Unlike men who are strung out more with a higher number being stupid and also a higher number being intelligent. There far more average intelligent women than there are men as a result.

"If more intelligent women have fewer children, and are more likely to have fewer children, and are more likely to remain childless, then one potential consequence is that the average level of general intelligence in society may decline over time."

Mensa New Zealand member and clinical psychologist Dr Aloma Parker said the lowering of society's general intelligence was a possibility, but unlikely because research showed traits tended to drift back to the norm.

Dr Parker has an IQ of above 133 and is in the top 2 percentile. She also has two children.

But she agrees that smarter women do have a tendency to have fewer children, especially since the advancement of birth control.

My intelligence is at the top 0.25% percentile and I have had two children. I wish I had had more. I decided to only have two when I was young and that's how it turned out. I don't think it was a particularly intelligent idea to only limit myself to two children and to plan my life accordingly, but then when I was young I was picking up on the messages that society gave and that was that it was more important for women to be productive workers than have children. I have now overcome a great deal of the false societal programming of my youth, but it's too late for me to have more children. All I can do it warn others. I might end up having a bigger impact by doing that than if I had just had more children. Maybe. :)

Related link: Smarter women have fewer children, researcher discovers ~ NZ Herald

On Western Civilisation, what really matters

Christianity was founded by people who could not have cared less about “Christian civilization.” What interested them was Christ, and the reverberations of his coming on the whole of human existence. Christians believed in Christ, not in Christianity itself; they were Christians, not “Christianists.”

Those few sentences articulate what is wrong with the West today - Christ is no longer at our centre. Without Him, everything will fall.

Related link: An interview with Rémi Brague ~ University of Chicago Press

There are more things on Heaven and Earth......

Evolution Evidence?

A must see video on the lack of evidence for Darwinian evolution. When science students and professors are asked to provide even ONE example of Darwinian evolution, they can't come up with one that is provable by scientific methods.

Ugly Americans

This was filmed in Kiev and that is the Ukrainian National Flag.

A day later in Odessa the same cretin wiped his butt with the Russian National Flag.

Strangely enough when they got to the Kuban, in Southern Russia, they did not receive a warm welcome and were told where to go, that is home, to put it politely . On the way to the airport they were pelted with rotten vegetables and eggs and in the Airport itself got roughed up a little by Kuban Cossacks.

Americans have trashed their own Nation, dragged it into the sewer, and are now hell bent on pulling everybody else's into the cesspit with them it seems.

The ink isn't even dry on the legislation yet...

... and this already - how absolutely predictable.

Thank God for President Putin and the Russian Duma who are nipping this nonsense in the bud, even if it does hurt vodka sales¹

(1) In the video that accompanies the later story the vodka receiving the opprobrium of San Francisco gays is Stolichnaya, bottled of course, not in the Russian Federation but in Latvia, Vladimir Vladimirovich must be quaking in his boots about now.

Disease of the Week BIID

What can you say - in a world of suffering, where cruel things happen to people robbing them of any chance of a decent life we allow this to be taken seriously?