Some people claim that 2 + 2 = 4 in base 10 math. But think about this for a moment. Someone could claim that 2 + 2 = 5. Or that 2 + 2 = 7,380,934. Now here’s the thing about that. Those people who would say the answer to 2 + 2 is some particular answer or another are typically those people who fit into a certain demographic (i.e., those who come up with counterarguments to poor reasoning may be culturally biased toward stating 2 + 2 = 5). So we can use the OTF to examine whether it is right in treating any answer to 2 + 2 as valid.
Now there are essentially an infinite number of answers you could claim satisfy 2 + 2. Yet certain mathematicians will insist that 2 + 2 = 4 in all cases in base 10 math. Even facing the OTF, they insist their answer could be the only correct one.
Fine. I understand this and I grant it. Even though their particular brand of mathematical solution has a low probability to it they could still have the correct answer after all. At this point though, they are talking about possibilities. Their answer could still be true even though the odds are their answer is wrong. This is sort of like winning the lottery when there are an infinite number of mathematical tickets to draw out of a barrel. The odds are 1 in infinity but that doesn’t give any one of them pause. Even if we pare the possible solutions down to positive whole numbers, acknowledging the rest are negatives or fractions or even irrational numbers, this still doesn’t change much of anything, nor would it give them any pause. Why? Because they have done a dance that I now call The Delusional Sidestep (TDS). Since the consequences of the demographic data are quickly recognized by them to require the OTF they make a quick sidestep to avoid it by claiming they could still be right despite the odds. Wait just a minute!? What about the odds? Ahhh, just ignore them we’re told. There is nothing to see here. Move along. We prefer our delusion to the actual probabilities.
Remember, it doesn’t matter that someone can provide actual reasons why one answer is valid and another isn’t. WE MUST NOT IGNORE THE ODDS! Why, any statistician would agree with me here. What are the odds the Roman Empire was located in present-day Italy? Well, there are 195 countries in the world now, so the answer is 1 in 195. Obviously, therefore, it is not at all likely that the Roman Empire was located in present-day Italy. What are the odds that Obama is president of the United States? Well, the population of the United States is 307,006,550, so the answer is 1 in 307,006,550. Obviously, therefore, it is not at all likely that Obama is president of the United States.
It’s obvious to any intelligent person that there are far more ways for a factual question to be answered incorrectly than correctly, and therefore the odds that any particular answer is actually true is quite low. Therefore, if you make a factual claim, the OTF says you’re talking bunk so I don’t have to listen to a single thing you say. Only a non-scholar could possibly disagree with my brilliance.
Those words by atheist Michael Martin are located in the blurb he wrote that appears on the back cover of The Christian Delusion, edited by John Loftus (speaking of back cover blurbs, Dale C. Allison, Jr. starts his blurb by instructing us to “Forget Dawkins” and that’s sage advice no matter who gives it). Furthermore, Keith Parsons states of The Christian Delusion that “there can have been few works as effective” at debunking Christianity. Ken Pulliam states: “It demonstrates that those who believe in the tenets of evangelical Christianity truly are deluded.”
The book contains chapters written by a wide range of modern atheists, including Hector Avalos, Richard Carrier, and Edward T. Babinski[*]. (If those names sound familiar it’s because we’ve engaged with each of them many times on Triablogue.) Of his contribution to the book, Carrier slapped both of his chapters with a “tour de force” label and confidently assured us, “I doubt I’ll ever have to write another [refutation of the resurrection].” He says: “My debunking of [Christian claims on science] is so decisive in this chapter, you won’t need to refer anyone anywhere else.”
But such hubris vastly overreaches reality, and Triablogue is here to demonstrate it with The Infidel Delusion.
The Infidel Delusion was written (in alphabetical order) by Patrick Chan, Jason Engwer, Steve Hays, and Paul Manata. This is a true tour de force. By the time I got to Manata’s debunking of Valerie Tarico’s naturalistic reductionism in chapter two, the perfect metaphor had formed in my head: Collectively, these Triabloggian authors were firing intellectual howitzer shells point-blank into a cardboard shanty town.
Each chapter of The Christian Delusion is thoroughly debunked by Hay’s philosophical and theological acumen, Engwer’s encyclopedic knowledge of history, Chan’s medical training, and/or Manata’s philosophical prowess. Contrary to the tactic The Christian Delusion used—to attack the weakest arguments put forth in the name of Christianity—the authors of The Infidel Delusion dismantled the strongest arguments atheists had to offer. Indeed, if there truly are “few works as effective” as The Christian Delusion, as Parsons claimed, then Triablogue shows atheism to be in a sad state indeed.
A Quick Overview of What’s in The Infidel Delusion
After introductions from Hays, Engwer, and Manata, the debunking of The Christian Delusion begins. In chapter one, Eller’s entire premise is shown to be at odds with the rest of The Christian Delusion, making that book internally incoherent. Eller’s belief that there is no real Christianity, but instead thousands of Christianities, actually destroys the basis for The Christian Delusion by rendering the idea that there is such a thing as Christianity (singular) to refute moot. If atheists are to be consistent, either Eller’s contribution must go or it must stand alone.
Chapter two shows Tarico’s cognitive research to be nowhere near adequate to explain what she thinks it explains. In addition to being self-refuting, Manata makes an excellent case that Tarico doesn’t even understand the issues involved in naturalism and scientific reductionism. Additionally, Chan includes a great deal on the medical issues involved, including debunking the idea that Paul’s vision of Christ on the Road to Damascus could be explained by a frontal lobe seizure.
Chapter three deals with Long’s attempt to show cultural background determines how one will believe. This sort of cultural relativism is a double-edged sword, however. If it works against Christianity, it is only at the expense of destroying atheism in the process.
Chapter four gets us to the heart of The Christian Delusion, the Outsider Test for Faith that forms the key of Loftus’s atheistic apologetic. Hays demonstrates how Loftus doesn’t consistently apply this test since it equally destroys his own view. Engwer shows that the attitude Loftus has about how beliefs are formed doesn’t cohere to Christian experience. And finally, Manata demonstrates that the outsider test is “vague, ambiguous, invalid, unsound, superfluous, informally fallacious, and subject to a defeater-deflector.”
Chapter five reviews Babinski’s flawed view of Jewish cosmology based on uncharitable assumptions about the stupidity of ancient people and their lack of ability to understand figurative language; chapter six shows Tobin’s repeating of common objections to Scripture (creating “dilemma” by ignoring all conservative scholarship, and even most liberal scholarship); and chapter seven refutes Loftus’s claim that Scripture is unclear, ironically in part by showing that if Loftus’s chapter is true, Babinski’s and Tobin’s must be false! But internal consistency is not something The Christian Delusion was concerned with.
Chapter eight deals with Avalos’s claims that Yahweh is a “moral monster.” Yet this once again requires us to reject Loftus’s chapter seven, and furthermore Avalos’s moral relativism defeats his own argument.
Chapter nine deals with concepts of animal suffering as evidence for the non-existence of God. Amongst other arguments, Hays deftly shows how Loftus’s claims are unsupported anthropomorphisms, while Engwer focuses on the ludicrous demands Loftus requires of believers to “answer” this “problem” and Manata shows Loftus’s argument is really nothing short of wishful thinking completely divorced from the Christian theology it was supposed to debunk.
Chapter ten reviews Price’s misuse of methodological naturalism, including the fact that Price actually ignores the vast majority of modern scholarship in rejecting the very existence of Jesus as a historical figure. Chapter eleven examines similar weaknesses of methodology in the claims Carrier makes regarding the resurrection.
Chapter twelve examines Loftus’s poor exegetical skills and his inability to understand even simple Biblical passages in context. In critiquing Christian prophecy, Loftus manages to all but ignore the preterist movement and makes some rather basic label errors on the positions he does look at.
Chapter thirteen deals with Eller’s moral claims, especially in light of his rejection of objective morality. The Infidel Delusion shows how his evolutionary claims are insufficient to create any type of morality.
Chapter fourteen shows that Avalos’s argument that atheism didn’t cause the Holocaust is irrelevant to the issue of whether Christianity is true. Finally, chapter fifteen shows that Carrier’s historical claims that Christians are not responsible for modern science is both irrelevant to the issue of the truth of Christianity as well as focused on the wrong issues, even within the context of his argument.
The last section of The Infidel Delusion consists of ten appendices that give us more detail into some of the arguments presented within the various chapters, as well as a look at some of the specific claims made by contributors to The Christian Delusion outside of the scope of that actual book.
Conclusion
The Infidel Delusion debunks the entirety of The Christian Delusion. This is not to say it addresses every single flaw in The Christian Delusion—such would take multiple volumes. But there is no major claim made in The Christian Delusion that withstands the criticism leveled at it in The Infidel Delusion. As Steve Hays wrote in his introduction, “…if The Christian Delusion turns out to be just another white elephant in the overcrowded zoo of militant atheism, then that‘s a vindication of the Christian faith.”
The Infidel Delusion certainly demonstrates this.
Full disclosure: While I did not contribute any writing to The Infidel Delusion, I did edit, collate, and format the ebook.
UPDATE:
[*] To be fair, Babinski classifies himself as an agnostic.
In my opinion (which therefore makes it infallible truth, seeing as how Jesus said “Thou art Peter and upon this rock” etc.), the most consistently funny television show of all time was Whose Line Is It Anyway? By which I mean the American version, because the British version wasn’t as funny, although it still had its moments of greatness too. Whose Line was all about improv. There was no script, just a bunch of comedians who acted out sketches on the barest of suggestions.
One of the better sketches was called “Newsflash” and consisted of two members pretending to be newscasters while a third (usually Colin Mochrie) was put in front of a green screen. He didn’t know what was being displayed on the green screen behind him, but had to pretend that he did. By the end of the sketch, based on clues given him, he had to guess what it had actually been showing.
Here’s one of my favorite examples:
Now that you’re back from following the linked videos and getting your fill of Whose Line clips, I’ll appear to randomly change the subject…
When most of us try to visualize time, we tend to think of it from the perspective in which we perceive it. That’s to be expected, of course, but if we think about it in detail, we find flaws with our typical concepts. For example, we tend to believe that what we are experiencing as “now” is now for everyone, everywhere. That it’s some kind of “universal now.”
But this treats time as an objective reality. However, modern physics (and many philosophies) reject the objective nature of time. Time is relative to the observer in physics—there is no constant “speed” of time, and there is no objective “now” for any two observers. Indeed, one observer may view two events as simultaneous while another observer views those same two events as one preceding the other. Both views are equally valid, if you take their relative motion into account.
In the end, time is intricately linked to space. Einstein’s method of treating time as a fourth dimension worked well in math, and typically physics still keeps time as an extra dimension. Even in M-theory, where there are eleven physical dimensions, time is seen as an extra dimension too (so it’s common for someone holding to M-theory to say “There are eleven dimensions plus time”). String theory typically states there are ten dimensions plus time, and so on. Additionally, in theistic views, time is usually seen as having been created by God along with the rest of the universe. Therefore, time is intimately linked with space under theistic views too.
It’s easy for us to visualize space (or at least objects in space) as an abstract quantity. We can imagine any object, say, a desk. It exists in space, and the dimensions of the desk define the dimensions of the space the desk exists within. It is far more difficult to picture time in here as well, but we can imagine a desk as it progresses through time. The desk starts new, then gets scratches, coffee spills on it, kids draw on it, until such point as the wood begins to rot and eventually the desk crumbles away.
While it is easy for us to visualize the special aspect of the desk, we can’t visualize the entire time-line of the desk as a whole in spacetime, as that would require us to view something in at least four dimensions. But while it is difficult for us to view it, it is not at all difficult to write mathematical equations about it and understand how the variables interact with each other.
Since we view only the special aspects, we usually think of various objects as special snapshots within time. We mentally compare a start point with an end point, but we cannot see the time dimension itself. I would like to suggest that in order to view the entirety of the object, one must also take into account the timeline of the object, viewing the whole in spacetime rather than just in space. I would suggest that that is how God views the universe. Obviously we cannot do it, but we can come up with analogies to help us better understand certain concepts.
One of the better analogies has come to us from the movie industry. This is the epitome of a series of snapshots in time, usually at the rate of 24 frames per second (for movies) or 30 per second (for TV). What’s interesting is if you film at, say 48 frames per second, and play back at 24 frames per second, time will appear to take twice as long for the actors involved. Or, if you film at 12 frames per second and play it at 24 frames per second, time will appear to take half as long. Varying the speed at which action is filmed varies the appearance of time, and gives us such things as the “slow-motion” shot. Alternatively, you can alter the speed at which the film is played back (such as when you press fast-forward while playing a movie) instead of when the film is shot.
So suppose you watch a scene of a movie and you set your DVD player to play it in slow motion. The events unfold and seem to take much longer than they normally would; but, from the perspective of the characters in the video, time does not take any longer than normal. That’s because, from the character’s perspective, everything has slowed in relation to each other. Put it this way: if it takes 24 frames for the character to reach a certain point, it will always take 24 frames regardless if you play it at 12 frames per second or 48 frames per second. Changing the frame rate in playback doesn’t affect the number of frames used for the action.
Let us extend the analogy. Suppose that there are four scenes in a movie: A, B, C, and D. Suppose that for the characters, the events unfold chronologically. A happens before B, B before C, and C before D. What would happen if you took D and spliced it between A and B? You would have A, D, B, C (this would be similar to old theaters when the rolls of film got mixed up). The characters at point D know things that occurred in B and C, but D is played before B or C are played. From the point of view of the characters involved, B and C both preceded D even if D is played back before B and C. That is, as far as the characters in the movie are concerned, they have a specific history that is related to the story itself that has nothing to do with how the film is played back. You could actually randomize the entire movie so that there are no two consecutive frames. Pick any frame at random, and the characters in it will have knowledge of the history of whatever went before them, and will know nothing of the future that is ahead of them, within the context of that frame.
This means that, again as far as the characters are concerned, you could completely randomize time and they would not know it. Someone who watches the movie would know, but not the characters in it. Techniques like this (although not as extreme) have been used by many non-linear movies. Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction is an example of such a non-linear story, where the things that occur chronologically at the end of the story are shown in the middle of the movie, etc. As far as the characters are concerned, there is no “jumping” in time—but the audience can see it.
Let’s take that analogy and apply it to reality itself: as long as we have a concept of history, time itself could actually be completely randomized and we would not know it. That is, the “now” that we have could have been preceded by a “now” in the middle of next week, but we wouldn’t know it because we have only the experience of our history in mind at our “now.” While it is certainly unlikely that this is the case, what it shows is once again that our experiences in time do not have any bearing on the way that time actually unfolds from the perspective of an outside observer, such as God. God could have arranged time like a movie director, in that as He “views” the movie of the universe, He might see the Flood occur after the Resurrection. For that matter, time could be flowing backwards.
Of course, such assumes a closed future. That is, it views all objects in their entirety in both space and time. If God views the Flood after He views the Resurrection (on His heavenly DVD player), then the characters at the Flood could not do other than they did do. For God has already seen the Resurrection, which occurred after the Flood in chronological time, and required the actions of the Flood to have already been in the history of the universe at that point, even if it hadn’t yet been viewed.
It is important to note that this truth has absolutely nothing to do with what the people existing in time observe. Again, time could be completely randomized and they would not sense it. This is a function of an outside observer having seen that portion of the spacetime existence of an object, not a function of the character who is in time itself.
In the end, this means that if someone can view a complete object in spacetime, then the future is closed for that object. Whatever will happen is what will happen and it is unavoidable because it has been seen. More importantly, it means that if we exist as objects seen fully in spacetime by someone outside of spacetime, that means that the future is fully, 100% determined for us too! This means that an outside observer could “play” history over and over, just like we do a video, and the same exact results will obtain because the object that exists at any particular point in time (from its perspective) exists in the future and the past as that same object. If it were to change, then it would mean that randomizing time would be observable to people within time.
And this brings me back to Whose Line (bet you thought I forgot). Because of the movie analogy, it is tempting for someone to argue that this determinism is due to a feature of characters following a script. Whose Line has no script, yet the same principals apply. Take a frame from the above video, say one that occurs 30 second into the clip. Colin at that point doesn’t know what is on the green screen. You could splice in a frame from 3:40 in. Colin now knows what was on the green screen. It doesn’t matter what order you play those frames in, nor if you play it forwards or backwards. As far as Colin is concerned within the context of the film clip, how you view it does not alter time for him. You can alter the outside perception of time—play it in slow motion or speed it up—but it will not affect his perception of what went on. When you view the clip, the events are fully determined. The ending will be what it will be as you watch it; it cannot be other than what it is.
Additionally, this does NOT require infallible knowledge on the part of the observer. For instance, if you watch the above clip, it requires a certain history to be true for the characters who have been filmed. This means that if you watch them “now,” it necessitates their history so that they get to that point, yet you are not infallible. And this means that if the last “frame of time” has been viewed by any outside observer, the entire scope of spacetime has been determined, because it must be what it is to get to that last frame.
Ultimately, this means that even if God knows our “future” imperfectly—if He simply knows any of it—determinism obtains up to that point. Whatever God knows from our future requires a certain history for the world to get to that future. If God has seen scene D in the movie, then scenes A, B, and C are determined even if we are only in scene A “now.”
The only way to avoid this is to assert that there is no actual future; there is only the present and an eternally unfolding “now.” But this would require an “objective now” that even God must follow. God cannot have seen the ending, because if He has then all the preceding events are determined even if He didn’t want them to be.
I’ve been mulling over something. I noticed that in discussions involving responsibility and culpability, there is often a hidden variable smuggled into the definition of terms. It’s a variable that, when you think about it, doesn’t seem to be relevant to the discussion; yet it is one which nearly every philosopher discussing the subject has, at the very least implicitly (and quite often explicitly), in his or her definition. That variable is time.
Consider for a moment a typical generalized libertarian definition of responsibility. “A person is responsible if at time (t) a person could have done other than he did do.” Here we have an explicit reference to time. Yet it can also be hidden in the shorter version: “A person is responsible if he could have done otherwise.” The assumption of “could have done” is that time is relevant to determining responsibility. (Note: to be fair, the “could have done otherwise” is really dealing more specifically with the idea of “freedom” rather than “responsibility,” but this is usually crammed together in the idea that “one cannot be responsible unless one is free” so I will be treating this concept as being part of “responsibility” throughout.)
This is immediately awkward when we view God. God is outside of time. He is eternal and transcends time. Indeed, time itself was created by God. If responsibility implies a time aspect, then it seems to me that by definition God can be responsible for nothing that has been created. For “God is responsible for creation because at time (t) God could have done otherwise” is nonsensical—there is no time (t) before God created time.
Yet it seems completely absurd to say that God is not responsible for creating the universe. It seems that only if responsibility refers instead of the concept of cause that God is responsible for creating the universe, because He caused the universe. Yet causality requires no reference to time, it only requires logical precedence. In other words, a logical effect cannot logically precede its cause, which (when it comes to the physical world) will typically mean the logical effect cannot temporally precede its cause too; however, there are certain relative space-time frameworks where a cause and its effect are temporally simultaneous (Einstein’s example of a moving train with a signal being observed simultaneous to some other event for the observers on the train, but not simultaneous for those outside the train, being an example of such a relative framework).
Or think of it this way. Suppose C is a cause and E is an effect such that E cannot occur unless C has caused E. C is therefore responsible for E (in the causative sense), no matter what; yet C is only responsible for E if C could have done otherwise in the libertarian sense, and that requires a temporal distinction between C and E.
E cannot occur apart from C regardless of any temporal aspect though. E necessitates a logically prior C regardless of the length of time between C’s occurring and E coming about. We can even think about E temporally preceding C (such could even already occur with antimatter, which is mathematically described as normal matter going backwards through time). Regardless of that, one can always say C and E can be simultaneous.
So it seems to me that any definition of responsibility that requires a temporal aspect must be a completely different “animal” than any definition of responsibility that deals only with a logically causal chain. Perhaps the libertarian will say that this shows the difference between moral responsibility and causative responsibility. I think this means merely that which definition you chose will automatically beg the question.
Regardless, it appears to me that under libertarian principals, God’s responsibility for creating the universe cannot have any moral connotations. That is, He was not commendable for His creation, nor can He be condemned for it. In other words, this would automatically defuse the concept that God is the author of evil in any moral sense of the word “author.”
On the other hand, if one were to claim that God is still morally responsible for creation (as I would argue—after all, we commend Him for what He has done), then it seems to me that one cannot keep a view of responsibility that necessitates a temporal aspect within its definition.
There’s a scene in the movie Fargo where our intrepid car salesman, Jerry Lundegaard, sits behind his desk while a customer berates him. It seems that they had worked out an agreement on the price of a vehicle, but when the customer came in to pay for the vehicle, Jerry informed him that it would cost more than originally stated. This scene ends with the customer angrily calling Jerry a liar before angrily shouting: “Where’s my [expletive] checkbook? Let’s get this over with.”
I’ve come to realize that our government is Jerry Lundegaard. It’s always promising us a lot while delivering nothing. And we…well, we’re the customer demanding our checkbook so we can get this over with.
Taxes are a fact of life, more certain than death. And if we do not wish to live in anarchy, they are essential to the functioning of government. This is why Christ commanded His followers to “render unto Caesar.” Yet what happens when, after you render unto Caesar, nothing gets accomplished? What if you pay for services and they never materialize? In that case, you have the unjust theft of your money.
I live in Colorado Springs. Despite being a fairly conservative town, the Springs has recently gone through a budget shortfall. Not surprisingly, all the social services paid for with taxes are taking a hit. For example: snow plows are limited to “The Main Roads” this year (it took me a couple of snowfalls to realize that “The Main Roads” is apparently a proper name and not the set of roads used most often in the city), potholes are going unfilled, streetlights are being turned off at night (and burned out bulbs are not being replaced), and the transit service cut over 70 jobs and reduced hours of operation, including cutting both evening and weekend service entirely.
So Colorado Springs tried to pass a tax increase late last year (it was defeated). Somehow, immediately after the bill failed, the city accountants “discovered” an accounting error—they had an extra $4 million they didn’t realize they had. I should point out that this was before winter set in, before the transit service was gutted, before the snowplows were sent off the road. The city had $4 million in funds that they had not expected. Obviously this would be a good time to pay for road repairs, or subsidize the transit service for another year, or any number of these social programs that government so touts before they take your money.
But of course this is the real world. The money was spent on a dog shelter, to restore trash pickup service in the America the Beautiful Park, and on the mayor’s “youth initiative” (which, apparently, initiates youths or something). Meanwhile, the snows came down and roads were not plowed. Large potholes formed. People hit these potholes and tore out the suspensions on their cars. But now they couldn’t ride the bus to work because service was cut, and thus firings commenced. But at least the unemployed can take heart knowing they can get a dog and trot around America the Beautiful Park with all the youths who are picking up trash. That is, if they risk hypothermia by walking there.
I suppose that the government misspending $4 million isn’t that big of a deal anymore. But the real kicker came last week when I turned on the radio and heard that the city was graciously allowing people to “adopt a streetlight.” That’s right, if you paid a measly $100 in a residential area ($210 for businesses), you could adopt your streetlight and the city would maintain that light for you.
I don’t know about you, but I feel honored to be allowed to pay for a service that I already paid for with my tax money. It warms the heart.
This, however, shouldn’t come as a surprise. It is the natural outcome of socialism. The problem with socialism, as Margaret Thatcher once pointed out, is that eventually you run out of other people’s money. And when you run out of their money, you have to cut your social services—the very justification you used to take that money in the first place. The only way to keep these services going is to resort to the free market: those who can pay for the services can have them.
Congress just passed the health care abortion of a bill. If you want to know what will happen to the health care system, just look at the streets of Colorado Springs. Services will be cut, but those who are wealthy enough to pay for their health care twice (once in taxes, and once on the open market) will be the only people who will still have those services. Everyone else will just have to deal with the darkened lights, potholes, and snow drifts.
One of the refrains that leftist newscasters (but I repeat myself) oft repeat is that the Republican Party is in trouble because it embraces its radical right wing kook fringe. The premise is that if the GOP would just get rid of social conservatives and focus only on maintaining fiscal conservatives, the GOP would win elections again.
Given that this advice comes from leftists, conservatives already ought to reject it (since when does the opposition really care about helping their enemy win elections?). However, since there is a libertarian wing that is fiscally conservative while socially liberal, they echo these claims too.
That’s why examining the recent initiatives in California and Maine are so important. In California, the courts ruled that gay marriage should be allowed because there was nothing in the state constitution to deny it. So social conservatives passed a constitutional amendment to outlaw it. Even though Obama carried the state by a wide margin, gay marriage failed.
Ditto in Maine, where the only distinction is that the legislature passed the law instead of the courts ruling it. Still, it was not put to a popular vote, and once it was…gay marriage was defeated. In fact, in every state (31 total) where gay marriage has been put to a vote, it has been defeated.
And more importantly, in the California election, the initiative came at the same time as the presidential election. Which means there were a lot of people casting a vote for Obama and Proposition 8 at the same time. In Maine, homosexual activists were quite vocal in trying to keep the law the legislature had passed, yet they failed too.
Because of libertarians, we know that one can be fiscally conservative and socially liberal. But voting evidence indicates there are also a sizeable number who are fiscally liberal while remaining socially conservative. This is why California and Maine could vote for a liberal president and still vote against gay marriage.
If the GOP wants to win elections, they have to stop nominating “moderate” candidates and return to their socially conservative base. The public consistently votes for socially conservative initiatives even in liberal states. This means liberals must rely on the courts to impose their agenda, because they lack popular support.
Why anyone would consider socially conservative voters to be a weak-point in their party can only be explained by willful blindness.
I love how the media complains that bloggers need to be “fact checked” and yet then they fall for fake quotes attributed to Rush Limbaugh without bothering to, you know, “fact check” and all. Irrelevancy would be an upgrade for the lamestreet media.
Here’s hoping Limbaugh sues for libel. In any sane legal system, he’d win. But this is America…
We’ve known for some time that the Nobel Peace Prize is a piece of crap, worth little more than the prom king crown. It’s nothing but a gauge of how well leftist Eurodweebs like you. A popularity contest among an inbred festering sore of intellectual laziness.
I thought Al Gore winning it was bad. Winning as a talking zombie obsessed with the thermostat was pretty far down on the list of “reasons why you should win the Nobel Peace Prize” in my book. Now President 0 has “won” it. Yet nominations ended February 1—you know, when Barak was still picking the color of drapes Michelle would wear to their first “let’s go to New York” trip.
Apparently, peace these days means “being a president not named Bush.” Because as far as I can tell, that’s the only thing Barry has managed to “accomplish” in his whopping 9 months of using our country as a rented mule. Perhaps a 9.8% unemployment rate (17% if you count numbers the way they were under Bush, who had the horrific 5% rate that proves he was a dunce) is a means to peace. After all, it works well in France, all those unemployed “youths” who go around burning cars in the name of peace…
If Nobel knew his prize would have been used in this way, I think he might have dynamited Oslo himself.
WARNING: This post contains graphic quotes from court testimony and is not meant to be read by children.
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It is impossible for the Left to get their priorities straight. This has been seen often in the court system where leftists victimize the perpetrator of crimes while accusing the victim of promoting the crime. Most recently, we can see this displayed in the hysterics leftist raise regarding the arrest of admitted pedophile Roman Polanski.
When Polanski was arrested in Switzerland on a 31-year-old warrant, Hollywood elitists went ballistic. A petition has been passed around the Zurich film festival stating, in part, that “Film-makers in France, in Europe, in the United States and around the world are dismayed by this decision.”
Dismayed that an admitted pedophile is arrested?
“It seems inadmissible to them that an international cultural event, paying homage to one of the greatest contemporary film-makers, is used by police to apprehend him.”
And I find it inadmissible that a party in Jack Nicholson’s home, paying homage to massive Hollywood egos, is used by a pervert to rape and sodomize a 13-year-old girl. Somehow, one of these “inadmissible” behaviors is not like the other.
There is no way I’d go to Switzerland now. You can’t watch films knowing Roman Polanski is sitting in a cell 5 km away.
Yes, poor Roman! He’s going through what some Polish film-makers have called a “judicial lynching” all because of something that happened back in the 70s. He’s the victim here. Not the 13-year-old Californian girl.
A. I went into the bathroom and started drying off.
Q. Did you see Mr. Polanski then?
A. Yes, he came into the bathroom.
Q. What happened at that time?
A. He asked me if I was all right, if my asthma was bad.
Q. What did you say?
A. I said that I wanted to go home because I needed to take my medicine.
Q. What did Mr. Polanski say?
A. He said, “Yeah, I’ll take you home soon.”
Q. What did you do?
A. I told him – I said that I wanted to get – I wanted to go home. I said, “No, I have to go home now.”
Q. What did Mr. Polanski say?
A. He told me to go into the other room and lie down.
…
Q. What did you do when he said, “Let’s go in the other room”?
A. I was going, “No, I think I better go home,” because I was afraid. So I just went and I sat down on the couch.
Q. What were you afraid of?
A. Him.
…
Q. What happened when you sat down on the couch?
A. He sat down beside me and asked if I was okay.
Q. What did you say, if anything?
A. I said, “No.”
Q. What did he say?
A. He goes, “Well, you’ll be better.” And I go, “No, I won’t. I have to go home.”
Q. What happened then?
A. He reached over and he kissed me. And I was telling him, “No,” you know, “keep away.” But I was kind of afraid of him because there was no one else there.
Q. After he kissed you did he say anything?
A. No.
Q. Did you say anything?
A. No, besides I was just going, “No. Come on, let’s go home.”
Q. What was said after you indicated that you wanted to go home when you were sitting on the couch?
A. He said, “I’ll take you home soon.”
Q. Then what happened?
A. And then he went down and he started performing cuddliness.
Q. What does that mean?
A. It means he went down on me or he placed his mouth on my vagina.
…
Q. What did he do when he placed his mouth on your vagina?
A. He was just like licking and I don’t know. I was ready to cry. I was kind of – I was going, “No. Come on. Stop it.” But I was afraid.
Q. And what did he say, if anything?
A. He wasn’t saying anything that I can remember. He was – sometimes he was saying stuff, but I was just blocking him out, you know.
…
Q. How long did Mr. Polanski have his mouth on your vagina?
A. A few minutes.
Q. What happened after that?
A. He started to have intercourse with me.
Q. What do you mean by intercourse?
A. He placed his penis in my vagina.
Q. What did you say, if anything, before he did that?
A. I was mostly just on and off saying, “No, stop.” But I wasn’t fighting really because I, you know, there was no one else there and I had no place to go.
…
Q. At any time did he ask you when your period was?
A. Yes.
Q. When was that?
A. While he was having intercourse with me.
Q. Did he ask you about being on the pill?
A. Yes.
Q. When did he say that?
A. At the same time.
Q. What did he say?
A. He asked, he goes, “Are you on the pill?” And I went, “No.” And he goes, “When did you have your period?” And I said, “I don’t know. A week or two. I’m not sure.”
Q. And what did he say?
A. He goes, “Come on. You have to remember.” And I told him I didn’t.
Q. Did he say anything after that?
A. Yes. He goes, ‘Would you want me to go in through your back?” And I went, “No.”
…
Q. What happened after he says, “Do you want me to – “ was it go through the back?
A. Yes.
Q. What happened then?
A. I think he said something like right after I said I was not on the pill, right before he said, “Oh, I won’t come inside of you then.” And I just went – and he goes – and then he put me – wait. Then he lifted up my legs farther and he went in through my anus.
Q. When you say he went in your anus, what do you mean by that?
A. He put his penis in my butt.
Q. Did he say anything at that time?
A. No.
Q. Did you resist at that time?
A. A little bit, but not really because – (pause)
Q. Because what?
A. Because I was afraid of him.
I must be pointed out that Roman Polanski pleaded guilty to statutory rape. In the above, we see that his victim told him “No” and to stop at every step of the way. And as we all know, “No means no.”
Unless you’re a famous Hollywood director.
Of course, that could move into a “he said, she said” type of event. Perhaps she did come on to him. But that ignores and important fact.
She was thirteen.
Some Polanski defenders have said she looked old for her age. At the time, the age of consent in California was 16 (it’s now 18). Suppose that his victim actually did look like she was 16. Polanski was 44 years old at the time. If you’re 44 years old and you’re having to wonder if the person you’re having sex with might be underage, that ought to be giving you warning bells.
In any case, since this unfortunate “event” occurred, Polanski has been forced to live in “exile” in France. And while that generally would be considered cruel and unusual punishment, his exile included multi-million dollar homes, a wife, children, an Oscar award, fame, and recognition for making slightly better crappy movies than the other crappy movies out there. The only real tragedy is that Polanski couldn’t pick up his Oscar in LA…
Sickening.
At root, this simple fact cannot be lost: Roman Polanski raped a 13-year-old girl. This is not in doubt—he admitted it. I don’t care if he found the cure for cancer instead of just making more money for Hollywood schlubs, he ought to be punished for his crime.
The fact that Leftists are making him into a victim shows just how morally incompetent they are.
