In Answer to the objections of Atheists...

...to Auster, Coleman, et al.

Here is an excerpt from Washington's Farewell Address apropos to the discussion, and a strong defense of the position of those mentioned:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness - these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule indeed extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric? (emphasis mine)

Indeed! Who that is a sincere friend to our species of free government can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric? Messers Auster and Coleman, et al, are simply doing what they have to do. And they have the force of a Washington to back them up, whom I invoke.

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Christianity -- the West's suicide pact?

The long discussion on religion continues over at Mangan's Miscellany. Let us recall, as apropos to the discussion, Kristor L.'s excellent analysis of genuine Christian teaching vs. the teachings of "liberal Christianity" in this August, 2007 VFR entry, permanently linked in my left sidebar under Select VFR Articles.

Note: I've left a comment at Mangan's to this effect.

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Darby, Mangan, Auster, Morris -- and disbelief in the central doctine of Christianity

This October 9th, 2007 Webster's post is being bumped to the fore in light of this VFR entry on this Mangan's Misc. entry.

A great and most important discussion, by the way, from all sides.

We've had these discussions before, here and elsewhere, but where have we ever settled the issue? ...

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Update: below is my response to certain assertions of commenter "Anonymous" over at Mangan's with Anon's comments highlighted in italics.

Christians claim that there is an all-knowing, all-loving God who created the universe. Several arguments are used to prove God's existence. They are all inadequate.

- A first argument is the Bible: "The Bible says God exists, so he must." The problem is that if we ask a Hindu, a Muslim, a Sikh or a Jew the same question they too will point to their respective holy books as proof of the existence of their Gods.

First of all, this is an oversimplification (perhaps purposeful) of how Christians determine the Bible to be evidence of God's existence. Some Christians may express it in these inadequate terms, but I personally do not know many, if any, that do. If you want to reduce it to a simple statement it would be more along the lines of "The Bible claims to be the Word of God spoken in human language. If this claim is true then God must exist, and he must possess all the attributes that the Bible says he possesses. And he must have communicated his will for man -- his creation -- in man's language." Of course this also means, by implication, that if the claims of the Bible are not true, then the biblical God most likely doesn't exist, which is not to say that some other supreme being does not exist. But the Bible also denies the existence of all deities other than the singular deity it describes and gives testimony to.

Second, why is it a problem for the God of the Bible that if you ask a Hindu he will point to his scriptures as evidence of the existence of Hindu gods? My understanding about Muslims and Jews is that they believe their God to be one and the same God as the God of the O.T. scriptures, so there seems to be at least some unity here, and I do not understand why Anonymous lumps Muslims and Jews in with Hindus. Muslims and Jews deny Christ's deity, and this is one area where they and Christians part ways. But again, I can hardly see how this is a problem for the God of the Bible. Because the book of Mormon exists, and Latter Day Saints profess belief in its teachings presents no problem for the existence of the Biblical-Christian God.

- Christians will sometimes say "The universe didn't just happen, someone must have made it and therefore there must be a creator God." There is a major flaw in this argument. When it starts to rain we do not ask "Who is making it rain?" because we know that rain is caused not by someone but by something - natural phenomena like heat, evaporation, precipitation, etc. A cause (or causes) need not be a being. Even if we believe that a divine being is needed to explain how the universe came into existence, what proof is there that it was the Christian God? Perhaps it was created by the God of Islam.

Again you seem to be completely unaware that the God of Islam purports to be the same God as the God of the Old Testament Bible. Now, admittedly, Christians who understand what the Koran teaches about Allah will emphatically deny that Allah and the Biblical God can be one and the same being. Christians would maintain that one of them does not and cannot exist -- Allah -- because Allah claims attributes that are impossible for God to possess.

- The Christian will of course maintain that the universe does not merely exist but that its existence shows perfect design. But how does the Christian know that it was his God who is behind creation? How does the Christian know that only one God designed evrything? And...is the universe perfectly?

Because if there is such a thing as a Supreme Being (or God, if that is your preference), then logically there can only be one God. If there were more than one Supreme Being then neither of them could possibly live up to their billing. All the Bible is saying about the deity is that He is necessarily a singularity; a simple being with no potentiality ... as opposed to all others. Moreover, no informed Christian that I know of would ever assert that the universe is perfect. Only God is perfect, and he cannot transmit his perfection to a created thing. But how do you know that the universe is not perfect? Why do the vast majority of us agree that the universe is not perfect, that the earth is not perfect, that mankind is not perfect? Is it not that we are somehow endowed with a sense of perfection? How, I ask, by anyone's standards, did we come by this sense of perfection? Don't tell me, by random mutations and chance occurances.

- Christians will sometimes say that everything has a cause, that there must be a first cause, and that God is the first cause. This old argument contains its own refutation, for if everything has a first cause then the first cause must also have a cause. There is another problem with the first cause argument. Logically there is no good reason to assume that everything had a single first cause. Perhaps six, ten or three hundred causes occurring simultaneously caused everything.

My friend, your statement contains its own refutation. The term "first cause" means exactly that -- first -- which means there is nothing preceding it. When we speak of things in terms of their being "first" we usually mean precisely what the term indicates. Our first POTUS, George Washington, was the first president because no one had preceding him in the office. How could they when the office did not before the ratification of the Constitution exist? What Christians actually say is that everything that is not a necessary existence had a first cause. The only thing that Christians assert does not need a first cause is God, the necessary existence who not only needs no cause, but who can't be his own cause.

- Christians claim that miracles are sometimes performed in God's name and that the fact that this happens proves that God exists. If miracles performed in God's name prove the existence of the Christian God, then miracles performed in the name of numerous other gods must likewise prove that they too exist.

You assume that all so-called miracles, or claims of the miraculous, meet the same criteria. You make this assumption based on what? Muslims claim that their holy book is evidence of the miraculous -- that Mohammed who was illiterate must have therefore had Allah's assistance in writing the Koran. This is not even close to the same thing that Christians claim to be miraculous.

- Christians will often claim that only by believing in God will people have the strength to deal with life's problems, and therefore that belief in God is necessary. It is clear, however, that people from non-Christian religions and even those with no religion are just as capable of dealing with life's crises as Christians are - sometimes even better.

Yes; the United States of America, which was founded largely on Biblical-Christian beliefs (some prefer "Judeo-Christian" beliefs) has many equals in the annals of the history of nations.

- According to Christians, God is all-knowing - he knows all the past, all the present and all the future. If this is so, then God must know everything we do long before we do it. This means that our whole life must be predetermined and that we act not according to the free exercise of our wills but according to our predetermined natures.

You make the oft repeated mistake of believing that predetermination and free will are mutually exclusive concepts. But they are not, and this criticism has been answered thoroughly.

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How long before the U.S. goes belly-up?

Have a look at and contemplate the implications of this GoV entry.

Baron Bodissey writes:

Last night I mentioned the imaginary money that is being used to bail out the favorites of Treasury Secretary Paulson and other members of the Washington Mandarin class. The government has paid off bad bank loans and bailed out failing businesses by borrowing enormous quantities of money from — well, from future taxpayers who will somehow become three or four times richer than they are now under the new Socialist regime.

But it’s even worse than I thought: the level of federal indebtedness has moved beyond mere profligacy into a new realm of total financial fantasy. The national debt is about to surpass the net worth of every man, woman, and child in the USA.

As I said in a comment to the entry, I have no economic expertise, but I can add, and the numbers seem to me not to add up given current longstanding trends. Other commenters have pointed out that debt to net worth ratio needn't favor the latter for a person or an entity to remain economically viable. This is true I think and can be proven by a couple of simple examples. For instance, people frequently make large purchases which exceed their family's total net worth -- a house is a good example, but for some even the purchase of a 30 thousand dollar vehicle exceeds the individual's total net worth, whether he might like to admit it or not. I'm not saying it's wise (for an individual or a government) to do so, but it is pretty commonplace and it doesn't always end in financial ruin.

But again, the issue for me is the number of net taxpayers compared to the number of non-net taxpayers, current and future. What that comes down to in simple terms is the number of people who pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits vs. the number of people who receive more in benefits than they pay in taxes, and what that ratio will be in the coming years.

My view has always been that we have to reverse this trend. And that comes down to a little self-sacrifice on the part of individuals. Yes, it can be painful. But what that's truly valuable isn't painful in acquiring or achieving?

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Yes, they are hightailing it...

...back to Mexico.

But what is preventing their 'natural born' U.S. citizen children from returning in twenty years -- after having been raised and educated by foreigners, in a foreign country, under the authority of a foreign government -- and asserting their natural born United States citizenship status, and all the priveleges and immunities thereof? (Hat tip: VFR)

As they say (with enthusiasm): Only in America!

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Webster's

A good discussion on what constitutes "Americanism" and/or "American Patriotism" may be had here.

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Lawrence Auster on Islam back up and running permanently

As some of you are aware we've had some sporatic problems with the hosting of the page for at least a couple of months now, a more lengthy time period than I originally anticipated. If I had it all to do over again I would have found a permanent solution as soon as it became evident that the original hosting service was no longer going to work for us.

Nonetheless we've now solved the problem and the page is up permanently as the title indicates. Also, we've changed the way in which your comments and suggestions are to get to me. I'll be receiving them directly to my inbox if you follow the url provided under my introduction to the page.

My apologies to all for the inconvenience incurred while the page was down. And recall that I have the page, among others, permanently linked in my left sidebar under the heading "On Islam."

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Additionally some of you may have tried and failed to access the "Historic Documents" link provided in my right sidebar under the heading "Links of Interest" recently. The problem there had nothing to do with myself and was out of my control until just recently. But the link is working now.

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Request for my readers:

Take a look at this American Policy Center article on the danger of a supposed move for a Constitutional Convention. Keep in mind the entries I've done on the subject here at Webster's.

It seems to me that the APC is applying a couple of conflicting standards regarding the Article V Convention, but I could be wrong. The APC certainly employs persons a lot smarter, and more in 'the know' than yours truly.

Let me know what you think in a comment to this entry.

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Webster's

A few new articles from various sites have been added under Webster's recommended blogposts in the upper-right sidebar, which, of course, I recommend you read.

Check out the short VFR article heading the list in which Auster points out that,

This is not our society celebrating the beautiful holiday of Christmas. This is the Liberal Controllers of our society carefully teaching children an unnatural and dangerous lie that they would never believe unless they were carefully taught. How many whites will militate against vitally necessary immigration restrictions in the decades to come, how many young white females will be raped and murdered by nonwhites in the decades to come, because of the message of trusting and loving racial aliens that programs like this implant in them?

An alternate title might be "How the Grinch stole the instincts of America's children," and I wrote a comment to the article under that subject line.

Years ago I was doing a job for an elderly retired Oklahoma teacher and we somehow got on the subject of interracial relationships, specifically the growing tendency of white girls to take an interest in black boys. The teacher was very discouraged and heartbroken over what modern society and the modern education system was then perpetrating on what she referred to as "these poor white girls." Her theory was that because these females are emotionally driven they're beginning to take it upon themselves, given what liberal society is teaching them concerning white guilt, to give themselves as sacrificial reparations for the sins that whites have committed against blacks in America, thus putting themselves in very precarious situations.

I imagine that has a lot to do with it.

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Definitive Proof that I was born in Oklahoma...

...even though I've stated otherwise.

The image you see is a digital scan of an authentic Oklahoma COLB altered to contain false information about myself for purposes of demonstrating the ease with which someone, virtually anyone can change information on such documents by the use of a cheap scanner, free software, through copy and paste techniques, and very little image enhancement. All else that is needed is the will and a couple of hours of time to achieve this level of quality. A much higher level may be achieved given more time and more desire.

Click on the image above (note the embossed seal on the image, which is genuine and unenhanced) to see the full document. If you're somewhat computer savvy and have an eye for detail you can enlarge the image to discover the places where the document has been intentionally forged, as well as intentionally left discoverable as a forgery in certain places. Others are not so easily discoverable, but Dr. Polarik would have no trouble whatsoever taking our forged document apart piece by meticulous piece.

Update: I've included some additional information, as well as a helpful link, concerning the COLB in the comments section of this article.

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Time for full enactment of H.B. 1804!

An alternate title might be something to the effect of "Either lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way!" That title would be more pointedly directed at the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, of course, where two key provisions in Oklahoma's Immigration law remain under federal suspension pending hearings on the matter.

Perhaps this recent court ruling on the subject in another state might help the 10th Circuit Court to make the right decision so that we in Oklahoma can get on with the business at hand. Indeed, there are security, as well as economic reasons for requiring that businesses confirm the eligibility of their employees via E-Verify. Of the two aspects mentioned in the article (there are more), I've focused mainly on the economic implications. But the security issue is very important, and a good argument can be made that the provisions in 1804 are necessary on that basis alone.

Incidentally, I think the record needs to be set straight on this little matter. While I can't be at all places in the state at all times, I do get around enough to know that on one point the author is misled into believing that the initial mass exodus of illegals from the State of Oklahoma ... to points unknown ... is an ongoing phenomenon. Not true. In fact, many of those who left the state initially are back. And they're definitely not currently leaving the state in droves as he says. In point of fact, I'd venture an educated guess that the illegal Mexican population in Oklahoma is on the rise again due in part to our inability to enforce certain provisions in 1804, namely sections seven and nine of the law as mentioned above.

The author also forgot to mention that our popular Democrat Governor has some kind of a fetish for Islam and Islamic subversives. It takes the form of something he calls the Governor's Ethnic American Advisory Council. But I guess that's beside the point.

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Listen up Sean

For the umteenth time, we have a Senate makeup which is virtually filibuster proof.

I was watching Hannity and Colmes the other night, nunoff election eve for Saxby Chambliss of Georgia. Chambliss was a guest on the show and a lot was made (by Hannity) of the fact that the Republicans enlisted the help of Governor Palin while the Democrats kept Obama off stage in Georgia.

As you know by now Chambliss won the runoff by 20 points. The point though is this, while Hannity was beating the drum that Obama's non-appearance in support of the Democrat opponent of Chambliss was some kind of indication that Obama is a coward, given that Obama ought to be doing all in his power to make the U.S. Senate filibuster proof per the cause of the Democrats, he seemed to be completely oblivious to the fact that on the things that matter most -- on the key issues -- the Senate is already, or, as I've said before virtually filibuster proof. Those key issues of which I speak are so-called 'comprehensive immigration reform', reinstatement of the gun ban, etc.

It's not about Democrat vs. Republican per se, it's about Liberalism vs. Conservatism. And there are at least a couple of Democrats in Republican garb (or RINOs if you prefer) who still hold seats in the U.S. Senate, of which John McCain is one. Harry Reid recognizes this, but somehow Sean Hannity doesn't.

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