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That’s right, I found an error in my Bible.  It’s not a very big error, but it’s an error nonetheless.  What is this error?

And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.

 

That’s right, in my copy of the English Standard Version, Isaiah 6:7 (quoted above verbatim), has the beginning quote for the angel’s speach but not the end quote!

Of course, if one has a little historical perspective, one will realize that not only did the original Hebrew not have quotations marks…it didn’t even have vowels in the text.  Thus the addition of the vowels is not inspired, nor is the punctuation as it occurs in the English language.

Naturally, this isn’t a problem to those of us who hold to a correct view of inerrancy, which is that the original autographs were inspired by God and without error.  Copies and translations of those originals, however, are not inerrant.

Unfortunately, inerrancy is almost never taught correctly in churches these days and most Christians have a Bibilolatrous view of Scripture.  But most people would think that admitting modern translations have errors would open up all kinds of problems with stating the Scripture is authoritative.

This is easily dismissed by Scripture itself.  In the New Testament, Old Testament passages were frequently quoted using the Septuagint (LXX) instead of the Hebrew Scriptures.  Even Jesus quoted the LXX, and He used it authoritatively.  That is because what is inspired is the content and not the lingustic labels given to that content.  This is why translation can take place, and this is why translations are still authoritative.

Just read this article on ABC News.  It asks the all-important question: “What Was Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Doing on Day of Supreme Court Swearing-In?”

My answer: who cares?

But they told us anyway.  Apparently (are you ready for this horror?), Scalia was playing tennis!  OMG!  HOLD THE PRESSES!  WE HAVE A NEWS STORY HERE!!!!

Of course, you’re probably still thinking: who cares?  And if so, you’d be right.  But what is most noticable about this column is the following little tid-bit.  After bashing Scalia for possible ethics violations (although there aren’t any here), ABC News concludes this:

 

An examination of the Supreme Court disclosure forms by ABC News found that five of the justices have accepted tens of thousand of dollars in country club memberships.

 

Okay, you got that.  Five justices (which happens to be the majority of them, in case you’re keeping track).  So, which five justices would those be?

Good luck finding out.  The column only mentions Scalia at first (who, although not stated, we can probably assume is to be included in those five justices) and Clarence Thomas.  NO ONE ELSE IS NAMED.

But that’s okay, because ABC News obviously doesn’t care about who those other three justices are.  They end the article stating: “Roberts, Scalia and Thomas declined comment and requests for interviews by ABC News.”

So apparently Roberts (who wasn’t a justice until this year), Scalia, and Thomas are the only justices that ABC cared to ask anything about regarding this article.  And what do those three have in common?

Oh yes, they’re the CONSERVATIVE justices.

And ABC News still wonders why we think they’re biased towards the left?  Add that to the fact that they’re ignorning all the Democrats who were on Jack Abramoff’s payroll and trying to pass that off as a Republican problem and you’re getting the following:

The media stands and shouts and points at the Republicans for peccidillos.  Meanwhile, they bury their head in their…I mean in the sand when it comes to the Democrats.

We have no bias to sell you today.  No sir.  The truth will never appear in our media!!!

Well, that’s not completely true. At least this guy is honest enough to admit he hates the troops.  It only took him three years to admit it.

I just read this article on Fox News about a gay right’s group who is complaining that “American Idol” is homophobic.  What is the offense?

…Cowell told one male contestant to “wear a dress” and Jackson asked another, “are you a girl?”

This is, of course, bashing the male contestant by questioning his masculinity.  But is that the same thing as homophobic “gay bashing”?  The gay rights advocates in GLAAD think so, stating: “The real offense here was in the producer’s decision to add insult to injury by turning a contestant’s gender expression into the butt of a joke.”

But look at the flawed presupposition here.  GLAAD presupposes that joking about a “gender expression” is equivalent to homosexual bashing.  This is false for obvious reasons.

Take me for an example. I am a male and I express my gender as masculine.  If someone were to joke about my “gender expression” it is by definition not joking about homosexuality as I am a male who is heterosexual.  If you are to jokingly question my masculinity, it in no way implies that I am suddenly homosexual.  Sexual conduct has absolutely nothing to do with joking about my masculinity.

The bottom line is that questioning someone’s masculinity does not have anything to do with questioning their sexual preference in the first place.  And even if it did, there’s another more fundamental presupposition that GLAAD makes here:

They presuppose that it is wrong to question someone’s sexual preference in the first place.

For a relativistic organization (one who implies there are no morals dealing with sexual preference), it is highly interesting that these people suddenly have objectivist morals when regarding whether or not it is proper to joke about something.  Does their presupposition allow this sudden shift to objectivism?  Of course not.  But that won’t stop them because consistency isn’t the point with them.

Scoring political points is.

As most people already know, the Denver Broncos lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC championship game.  Since I live in Colorado, I got to hear some of the sports radio talk shows immediately following the game.

First, I should point out that while I don’t mind football, I am by far primarily a hockey fan.  Thus, I didn’t really have a vested interest in the outcome of the game.  Perhaps that’s why I viewed some of the callers in a different light than some of the “true blue” (or is it “true orange”) fans who called in.

For a while, it seemed like it was a Jake Plummer hate-fest.  And the logical fallacies were rampant.  One talk-show host actually said (in as close a paraphrase as I can get): “When Denver doesn’t get the turnovers, when the running game doesn’t work, when the defense isn’t clicking, then Jake Plummer doesn’t have the ability to bring the Broncos to a win.  That’s why the Broncos lost, because he doesn’t have the ability to lead them to victory without being able to rely on the running game and good defense.”

What this comment illustrates is a fundamental erroneous presupposition.  Presuppositions form the basis of all thought, not just philosophical thought, and thus presuppositional errors in a sports thought can help us view presuppositional errors in philosophical thought by way of analogy.

What is the flaw?  It is simply this: that a quarterback is at fault for a loss when the team “doesn’t get the turnovers, when the running game doesn’t work, when the defense isn’t clicking.”  In other words, when the entire team tanks, it’s is the quarterback’s fault for not finding a way to win the game anyway.

This presumes that the quarterback is the only person on the field who matters.  It presumes that when the rest of the team is horrible, the quarterback still ought to magically pull out the victory anyway.

Now I, on the other hand, look at it this way.  If the whole team stinks, the whole team is to blame for the loss.  If the quarterback could have pulled it out by himself (which is sorta difficult since he wouldn’t be throwing the ball to himself), then yes the quarterback would be a great quarterback.  But the opposite is not the case; that is, the quarterback does not become a bad quarterback if the game is lost.  The only way the quarterback would be considered a bad quarterback is if the team as a whole played well, and he played poorly and caused the loss.  Only then could the “fault” be placed on his shoulders.

But of course it’s easier to put all the blame on the quarterback instead of the team as a whole.  The quarterback leads the team, and thus as the head of the team he gets the blame. 

Perhaps this is a latent form of Federal Headship that it’s not even recognized by the people who view it…  But that’s for a different presuppositional argument.  What this does show is that our presuppositions color everything–even how we view sports wins and losses.

It’s hard for someone to recognize that the premise to their argument is flawed, even in something as simple as who to blame for a football game loss.  How much more so is it hard for someone to recognize their flawed premises when it comes to philosophical debate!

Following a link from Dr. White’s blog, I read this article about abortion in New York City.  This got me to thinking.  Why is it that Leftists normally support animal rights, but they have no problem with abortion?  Why is it that you can save the whales but not the unborn?

I think perhaps the answer is found in Romans 1.  We read:

“For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.  Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles” (Romans 1:21-23).

So why is it that people would want to exault fuzzy animals while killing off unborn humans? Could it be because mankind is created in the image of God, and thus to denegrate man is yet another way (an underhand way, perhaps a subliminal unconscious way) of trying to denegrate God Himself?  In other words, to mar the image of God and to treat it as less than the worth of the animals is to say that animals (created beings) are of higher value than that which is created in the image of the uncreated God.  It is simply yet another means by which men can exchange the glory of the immortal with the things that are created.

Naturally, if you take this argument as implying that mankind is basically divine you have misunderstood this post.  I am not saying that men are gods.  However, consider the depravity and the hatred of the one who would stoop so low as to not only ignore God, but to also denegrate His image.  This is truly the state that we are in.

So save the whales (collect the whole set, only $19.95!) if you must.  But remember that humans are worth more because they are created in the image of the Almighty Lord.  Forgetting this, our depravity will only increase as we are given even further into the reprobate spirit.

Is it just me, or does it seem like Bin Laden’s latest tape sounds exactly like something Howard Dean would have written?  Seriously, it sounds exactly like what I’ve heard the anti-war protestors on the left say for years now.  Which amazingly is exactly the same thing that the New York Times, et. al, is reporting too.

For instance, Bin Laden is poll driven (and if you still think the media isn’t hurting the US’s war effort, consider that for a minute):

To go back to where I started, I say that the results of the poll satisfy sane people and that Bush’s objection to them is false.

Sounds exactly like the Democrat Times–er, I mean NYT.  But we’re not done yet:

 

In fact, Iraq has become a point of attraction and recruitment of qualified resources.

I’m sure that if it were true that Iraq was going so well for Bin Laden that the first thing he would do is say that it was going so well for him.  I mean, if it was going so well for him why does he start his tirade with “My message to you is about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the way to end it.”

But in any case, this too is something that the Big Media has been saying too.  Iraq is causing terrorists to come about.  Consider this NYT headline from July 19, 2005–”British Intelligence Cites Iraq War as Cause of Terrorism.” This merely echos what the Washington Post said in February 17, 2005: “War Helps Recruit Terrorists, Hill Told.”  So pervasive was this belief that the Iraq war caused terrorism that the Washington Times had to have this headline: “Armitage: Iraq war did not cause terrorism.”  (Why did Armitage have to point that out in the first place?)

Yeah, the media sounds exactly like Bin Laden.  That’s comforting.

Bin Laden concludes:

 

We do not object to a long-term truce with you on the basis of fair conditions that we respect.

We are a nation to which God has disallowed treachery and lying.

In this truce, both parties will enjoy security and stability and we will build Iraq and Afghanistan which were destroyed by the war.There is no defect in this solution other than preventing the flow of hundreds of billions to the influential people and war merchants in America, who supported Bush’s election campaign with billions of dollars.

Boy is that comforting.  But consider something.  When did the Iraq war start?  That’s right, March of 2003. When did 9/11 happen?  Oh yeah…2001.  That’s a year and a half before the war in Iraq.  So, I ask, how pray-tell is it possible that the war in Iraq is causing terrorism?  And how, pray-tell, are we to believe that stopping the war in Iraq is going to stop Bin Laden?  His terrorism came before the war in Iraq, and it will continue until he is dead no matter what his empty claims of a truce state.But don’t look to the media grasping this concept.  They’re already parroting everything Bin Laden said before.  Watch the media fall for his truce dupe too.

I just read this article about Haleigh Poutre, a young girl in MA who was beaten into a coma, according to the police by her stepfather.  The details around the case are, naturally, somewhat heart-wrenching.  However, I think that this shows yet more reason why we need to take a look at the so-called “Right to Die” issues from a view of logic and reason rather than from an emotive response.

The girl was in what doctor’s thought was an irreversable vegetative state (similar to Terri Schiavo).  Now, however, doctors are saying that her condition has changed.  To what extent they have not yet revealed, but it does show two things:

1) Doctors are not infallible.

2) Medical situations change over time.

This obviously brings to question what means we should use to determine whether someone should be “allowed to die” (as the medical profession puts it, to make it a passive death rather than an active murder).  What are the ethical and moral standards that we ought to use for this?

One thing is certain.  To be philosophically fair, the standards must be applied across the board.  That is, whatever standard is used in determining what actions should be done for Haleigh must equally apply to any other human being.

From reading the article, we see the following justification for allowing Haleigh to die:

Haleigh’s doctors have said her brain stem is damaged and she would die within a few days without a feeding tube.

As you can see, there are two determining factors in this reasoning.  First, Haleigh’s brain stem is damaged; secondly, she would die within a few days without a feeding tube.  Neither one of these issues, taken by themselves, are sufficient reason for us to allow the death of another human being, and that is easily shown:

1) If someone’s brain stem is damaged but they can still feed themselves, no one would argue that that person should be killed.  Thus, brain stem damage alone does not determine that someone should be killed.

2) Infants, for example, cannot eat on their own, and yet infant murder is not condoned even if an infant is just left to die rather than actively killed.

Thus, neither reason by itself is sufficient to allow the death of the individual.  The question then is why having both of these conditions simultaneously would result in the ability for us to now kill the person.  In order for this to be morally valid, it must be demonstrated that there is some kind of correlation between brain-stem damage and inability to feed oneself that is morally sufficient to alter the way we would act toward a person who only had one or the other instead of both.

In this case, I don’t see what the valid argument would be.  Naturally, I cannot prove a negative and thus I cannot prove there is no argument that could be made; but the burden of proof is on the one who claims there is a sufficient reason to kill someone who displays both of these problems when we know there are individuals who have only one problem who we would not kill.

Most commonly, this focuses around the issue of the ability of a person to feed and care for oneself.  If we restrict the argument to just this point it may help clarify the issue somewhat.  Is it morally justifiable to kill someone who cannot feed and care for himself?

1. We know that in the case of infants, this is not morally justifiable.

2. The only difference between an infant and an adult is the age of the human being. 

Is the age of a human being sufficient reason to kill or allow the death of that individual? 

Some may argue that this difference in age also includes a difference in the “potential” of a person–an infant has the potential to grow and mature while an adult does not.  Thus, one does not expect that an infant will stay incapacitated forever, while the adult is not expected to recover.

Let us grant that the doctors do not err in determining that someone is beyond recovery (although as we have seen they often do err).  Is “potential” a sufficient reason to allow the death of one person and not another?  How much “potential” is required?  What is the standard to use in this case?

In point of fact, there is no real standard of “potential” but instead one must arbitrarily declare, “This person has potential and that person does not.”  Potential, after all, is something that may occur, and therefore is by definition a guess about the future.  Some guesses are certainly more reasonable than other guesses, but does a guess give us the moral ability to act in a certain way toward one person and not another?

These are certainly issues that call for much thought.  The “right to die” argument is far from settled because until these questions are actually answered instead of simply ignored no one will be able to make informed moral judgements.  Until these questions are answered, it is only an emotive response.

Not all who seek are interested in what they find.  For many, there is nothing beyond the search itself.  To find something would be to end their very purpose.  Thus they seek not to find, but to be.

This is a bit of a rant, and as such will cover a couple of different topics.  Sue me later.

First, what is it with CBS and their stupid three-hour long commercials?  You know, like the one they had during the Broncos-Patriots game.  Every ten seconds was another commercial.  Maybe it was just to get Phil Simms to shut up, because he obviously doesn’t have a clue about what’s going on on the field but he’ll still talk about it anyway.  It’s like: “Tatum Bell runs forward for six yards on that play before he was tackled.  And you know being tackled kinda stops your momentum.  Perhaps it even ends the play.  The Broncos are going to have to be careful about that, because you don’t want your play to end.”  Meanwhile the audience lapses into a coma so they think it’s safe to plug their reality TV shows: “Survivor Baghdad will be on next week, and someone will get killed!  Following that is CSI: Urbana on Friday.  And don’t forget the all-new-hit-series that we’ve played commercials for every five minutes for the past year, Sponge Monkey!”  Meanwhile, when they finish, you see that the Broncos have scored two touchdowns and the Patriots have added a field goal.  So they go to their commercial break while the refs review the previous play to find out that gravity does, in fact, make the ball come down from the sky when you throw it up in the air.  Then when the commercials end, you hear Simms saying, “The clock is the most important part of keeping time.  If it doesn’t run out, you still have a chance to score.  If you have the ball.  And an offense.  And time on the clock.  Anyway, you know that Cleveland’s got to be feeling pretty good right now even though they’re not in the playoffs this year.  They’re only down by fifty-six points.”

Maybe it’s just me, but every time I see a commercial for these stupid shows more than once per hour it makes me think, “That’s one show I’m not going to watch.”  I mean, these people really get desparate.  It’s like, “Please watch our show!  PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE” and you just wanna hit them in the head with a 2×4 and say, “You’re obnoxious and annoying.  Shut up and let me watch football in peace!”

Something tells me that networks haven’t considered the whole “negative commercial” response that’s out there.  I know that I’m not alone in this.  Perhaps it’s just a natural reaction that the more someone wants to sell you something, the less you want to buy it.  But whatever the case, I think just watching advertisements alone is enough of a reason to want to drop-kick your TV off the fourth floor balcony into the middle of the gang war going on in the alley.

I’m sorry, but when someone says, “This is what we think you’ll find funny” and they hype up a show with jokes I learned in third grade, and then they say, “This is what we think you’ll find sexy” and they show hideously ugly scantily clad people who you wouldn’t give a dollar to on the sidewalk because you know they’d just buy booze with it, and then they say, “This is what you’ll find entertaining” and they show something that is so insulting to your intelligence that you’d rather talk to wet paint…well, then it just kinda makes you sick knowing that this is what is passed off as the cutting edge.  Gag me with a spatula.