Is there unanimity among scientists about global warming?This British program answers with a very firm "no."
The feature is over an hour long but if you watch just the first six minutes you'll get the feeling that a lot of what you've been told about global warming is probably not true. This is an important documentary for anyone who wants to hear a side of the story not often publicized in the MSM.
RLC
It seems that when Arab Muslims can't kill Jews or Americans they content themselves with killing each other. Killing in the Arab world is a sport much like soccer or basketball in the civilized world. Take Palestine, for example. Fatah and Hamas were at each other's throats for months until they decided to attempt a rapprochement. This triggered a rebellion among those Hamas members who wanted to destroy Fatah. These malcontents are now killing other Hamas as well as Fatah.
Then the local branch of al Qaeda decided to join in the fun and has declared that it wants to kill all of them, both Hamas and Fatah, and has proclaimed itself at war with both groups. DEBKAfile gives us the play-by-play:
As Palestinian and Israeli leaders, Mahmoud Abbas and Ehud Olmert finished discussing the Gaza Strip's fate Sunday, March 11, three events showed how little they and Hamas are in control.
Al Qaeda's No. 2, Ayman Zawahri issued a declaration of war on the Palestinian Authority and Hamas in a videotape aired by the Arabic TV Al Jazeera.
An hour later, the Islamic Brotherhood of Justice (another name for al Qaeda's operational branch in the Gaza Strip) announced the launching of its Operation White Land, targeting the political and military leaders of Fatah and Hamas.
DEBKAfile's military sources also reveal that a rebellion has sprung up against the top Hamas leadership.
Olmert and Abbas nonetheless continue to act out a Pan-Arab diplomatic process at Washington's behest (see separate item on this page), which has as much chance of getting off the ground in Gaza as Fatah's Abbas' assurance that the kidnapped Israeli soldier, Gilead Shalit, would be freed very soon.
The Zuwahri statement assailed the legitimacy Saudi Arabia extended to moves for a Palestinian unity government at the Mecca peace conference as recently as Feb. 8. Negotiations between the two factions are bogged down anyway.
"The leadership of Hamas government has committed an aggression against the rights of the Islamic nation by respecting international agreements," thundered Ayman Zawahri Sunday. "I am sorry to have to offer the Islamic nation my condolences for the Hamas leadership as it has fallen into the quagmire of surrender."
The Gaza al Qaeda cell then defined the four missions of Operation White Land:
1. Targeting the most senior figures of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas leaders.
2. Focusing on group abductions rather than individuals, especially symbols of political corruption.
3. Beheading is ordained for members of these groups. Their executions and confessions will be videotaped and aired as they are in Iraq.
4. Blowing up Internet cafes and businesses selling alcohol; putting prostitutes to death to cleanse the streets of Gaza of prostitution.
Announcing these missions have won the sanction of Palestinian religious scholars, the communiqu� ends with the words: "Operation White Land has begun."
As for the revolt in Hamas, its Executive Force chief Jemal Jarah and his deputy, Yusouf a-Zahar (brother of Hamas foreign minister Mahmoud a-Zahar), accuse prime minister Ismail Haniyeh of being too soft with Abbas and Fatah and failing to follow through to victory on the battles they fought for weeks against Fatah. Determined to finish the job, Hamas rebels were back on the streets of Gaza this week, shooting and abducting their rivals, the Mecca Reconciliation Accords already a dead letter.
It'll soon be every man for himself in Gaza as the aborigines take to the streets to see how many heads they can lop off before they themselves are killed. I guess you have to be an Arab to appreciate the attractions of such sport.
RLC
The Secular Coalition for America has done some investigating and come up with this:
There is only one member of Congress who is on record as not holding a god-belief.
Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.), a member of Congress since 1973, acknowledged his nontheism in response to an inquiry by the Secular Coalition for America. Rep. Stark is a senior member of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee and is Chair of the Health Subcommittee.
Although the Constitution prohibits religious tests for public office, the Coalition's research reveals that Rep. Stark is the first open nontheist in the history of the Congress.
Surveys vary in the percentage of atheists, humanists, freethinkers and other nontheists in the U.S, with about 10% (30 million people) a fair middle point. "If the number of nontheists in Congress reflected the percentage of nontheists in the population," Lori Lipman Brown, director of the Secular Coalition, observes, "there would be 53-54 nontheistic Congress members instead of one."
Given the number of congresspersons who seem to be completely bereft of any sense of ethical obligation or conscience I suspect that Ms Brown's estimate is a little low.
RLC
Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela, seems determined to confirm the opinion of those who think him to be little more than a knave and buffoon. This statement which he delivered last weekend suggests that the future of Venezuela is in the hands of a man completely oblivious to modern economic realities:
"Those who want to go directly to hell, they can follow capitalism," Mr Chavez said in the town of Trinidad in Bolivia. "And those of us who want to build heaven here on earth, we will follow socialism," he added.
Which country, especially in the Spanish speaking world, has ever followed socialism to heaven on earth? How many times does the left have to relearn the lesson that attempts to coercively establish socialist paradises almost always end in firing squads, tyranny and dystopia.
On the other hand, though their achievements are certainly more modest than the establishment of "heaven on earth," the greatest engines of high standards of living for all its citizens have been capitalist societies: England in the 19th century, the U.S. in the 20th century along with Asian economic successes like Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore. Historian Rodney Stark makes the point exceptionally well in his book The Victory of Reason: How Christianity led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success: Everywhere free markets and private property are protected there is prosperity, at least until governments can no longer resist the temptation to levy onerous taxes and kill the goose laying the golden eggs.
Socialism deadens economic growth because it sucks wealth from those who produce it and thus provides not only a disincentive to produce (why create if the state is going to take it), but it also prevents businesses from investing in improvements and research and development because the funds needed for these projects have been siphoned off by a parasitic state. Socialist governments kill off wealth production in other ways by burdening businesses with heavy regulations, onerous paper work, litigation and other barriers to success that businessmen find too difficult to surmount. Often they just give up, sell their businesses, and get a government job so they can live off the tax revenues imposed upon their former colleagues.
Socialist countries are often economically moribund, as we see in large swaths across Europe, and although there may be some people, usually state employees, who do well, most who live in socialist societies would dispute Chavez's characterization that they are heaven on earth. When socialism is combined with despotism, as it was in the communist world, and as it appears it may soon be in Venezuela, it becomes a literal hell.
Chavez aspires to be another Castro. No doubt he hopes to turn Venezuela into another Cuba. We should keep the Venezuelan people in our prayers.
RLC
Stephen Weinberg, a brilliant cosmologist, makes some very puzzling assertions in his favorable review of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. Indeed, if Weinberg weren't such a brilliant scientist I'd almost think some of what he says is kind of dopey. Take this excerpt for instance:
[Dawkins] calls the God of the Old Testament "the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynist, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully". As for the New Testament, he quotes with approval the opinion of Thomas Jefferson, that "The Christian God is a being of a terrific character - cruel, vindictive, capricious, and unjust". This is strong stuff, and Dawkins obviously intends to shock the reader, but his invective has a constructive purpose. By attacking the God of sacred Scripture, he is trying to weaken the authority of that God's commands ....
Well. Which commands would Dawkins and Weinberg wish to weaken, I wonder. The command not to murder? The command not to commit sexual infidelity, or steal, or lie? The command to honor our parents? Maybe it's the command to love our neighbor in the same way we love ourselves that Messers. Dawkins and Weinberg find offensive.
Maybe these two prominent atheists want to weaken all of God's commands the better to facilitate the creation of an atheist paradise. Of course, should they manage to bring such a utopia about they'd have to build a Berlin wall to keep people from trying to escape it.
Weinberg goes on to meditate on the mass retreat from Christianity he sees reflected in the high degree of religious tolerance he finds everywhere in the U.S.:
Most Christian groups have historically taught that there is no salvation without faith in Christ. If you are really sure that anyone without such faith is doomed to an eternity of Hell, then propagating that faith and suppressing disbelief would logically be the most important thing in the world - far more important than any merely secular virtues like religious toleration.
How does it follow that suppressing unbelief would follow from a conviction that unbelievers are eternally lost? Why not think instead that Christians recognize that a belief that is not freely accepted is not genuine belief and that the suppression of dissenting views does nothing to change the hearts of those inclined toward unbelief.
Weinberg has more:
Yet religious toleration is rampant in America .... My many good friends in Texas who are professed Christians do not even try to convert me. This might be taken as evidence that they don't really mind if I spend eternity in Hell, but I prefer to think (and Baptists and Presbyterians have admitted it to me) that they are not all that certain about Hell and Heaven. I have often heard the remark (once from an American priest) that it is not so important what one believes; the important thing is how we treat each other. Of course, I applaud this sentiment, but imagine trying to explain "not important what one believes" to Luther or Calvin or St Paul. Remarks like this show a massive retreat of Christianity from the ground it once occupied, a retreat that can be attributed to no new revelation, but only to a loss of certitude.
Of course there are people in the church who say that it doesn't matter what you believe, and of course religious toleration is rampant in America, but why conclude from that that there's a massive retreat from Christianity going on? It could be as easily assumed that professor Weinberg's Christian friends pray for him often and believe his salvation is in God's hands, not their's. It might also be the case that professor Weinberg's friends are only nominal Christians.
In any event, the most interesting part of his statement is his use of the phrase "loss of certitude."
It's not at all clear what he means by this. Is Professor Weinberg claiming that American Christians are less sure today than in earlier times that God exists? Does he think that Christians are losing their confidence that there is an afterlife? If so, I doubt very much that he's correct. I don't think that Christians are any less convinced of the truth of these beliefs than they ever were.
Perhaps what Professor Weinberg means is that Christians are not as certain about the fate of non-Christians as they once were, but if they are (and I think they are)that's hardly indicative of a massive retreat from Christianity. For an atheist to take hope that Christianity is weakening because Christians are not as soteriologically exclusive as they were in the early 20th century is to doom oneself to a frustrated hope. It'd be like a 16th century atheist hoping that the Reformation's challenge to the doctrine of papal infallibility would result in the collapse of the Christian faith.
Since we're talking about hopes, I hope Weinberg's Christian friends haven't given up on him, but I have to admit that it'd take a miracle to bring him to belief.
RLC
You have doubtless heard by now of the unfortunate confrontation between House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-WI) and some anti-war folks in the hallway outside his office. Unaware that he was being taped, Obey candidly demonstrated the disdain our public servants sometimes have for their constituents who pay their salaries. It appears that liberals cannot even be civil to each other. Michelle has the video and the transcript at the link.
A little background: Obey is trying to end the war in Iraq through a piece of legislation that will remove the president's authority to wage the war. The citizens he encounters in the hallway are apparently anti-war activists who want him simply to vote to defund the war. Obey doesn't want to do that because it will put the troops in the field in jeopardy and take resources away from veterans' programs and hospitals.
Obey quickly grew impatient with the woman, who is evidently the mother of an Iraq war vet in his third deployment there, and acts pretty much like the south end of a north-bound horse in this intramural squabble among opponents to the Iraq war. In the process he offers some choice descriptions of those groups who are pressuring congressional Democrats to take more radically decisive action to end the war - at one point calling them "idiot liberals."
The incident reminded us of Peggy Noonan's quip that elected officials of both parties are contemptuous of their base but that Democrats tend to think of theirs as "barking mad."
Obey later apologized when he learned that his whole ugly performance is now on YouTube.
RLC
The following exchange took place in the course of an interview with Mike Huckabee, formerly Republican Governor of Arkansas and likely Presidential candidate. Huckabee articulates a view one wishes all conservatives shared:
Q: "But do you believe there's a human role in climate change?
A: There may be. But whether there is or there isn't, it doesn't release us from the responsibility to be good stewards of the environment. It's the old boy scout rule: you leave your campsite in as good or better shape than how you found it. It's a spiritual issue. [The earth] belongs to God. I have no right to destroy it. I think we work toward alternative energy sources. [We need to make it] like the Manhattan Project or going to the moon. We need to accelerate our energy independence."
We could vote for a guy like that.
HT: Prosthesis
RLC
Those who wish a vivid reminder of how the war against terrorists is being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan are invited to watch this video of a recent action against enemy combatants who made the mistake of firing on American aircraft. R.I.P.
RLC
I just finished reading Beginning at Moses by Michael P.V. Barrett several weeks ago. It's about finding Christ in the Old Testament. Mr. Barrett is talking about Psalm 22 on page 312.
The Lord expresses His confidence that His prayers have been heard and then in the next section begins to detail the answer to those prayers. It becomes clear in the second division that all the suffering of the first division was not in vain. As you meditate your way through this Psalm, do so with what should become an overwhelming impression that you are reading what the blessed Savior said, thought, and prayed while He was suffering vicariously for His people on the cross. The New Testament reveals that the initial lament was audible: 'My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?' (see Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34). There is no indication that men could hear the rest of the prayer, but God heard. In this Psalm, we are allowed into the mind and soul of the Savior. You can see why I say that this is holy ground.
The first division highlights three spheres of suffering endured by the Savior. He suffered before the holy God (1-5), by cruel men (6-11), and in His whole person, body and soul (12-18) The opening stanza brings us to the heart of the atonement. The simple answer to Christ's agonizing question 'Why has thou forsaken me?' is that God forsook His Son in order that He might forgive us. With our sin and guilt imputed to Him, He who knew no sin, having become sin for us, took the full force of God's just and necessary wrath against our sin. While Christ was suffering on the cross, God dealt with Him in terms of us. I confess a total inability to explain the utter dereliction of Christ that is expressed by this statement. It boggles the mind. It declares how absolutely offensive sin is to the holiness of God and how absolutely gracious God is in giving His dear Son to be the only Savior. How dare any man say that there is any other way to God!
Well, it would be silly of me to try to add anything to that.
How can the President get the media to pay attention to all the important things going on in the world? Perhaps the best way, maybe the only way, would not be popular with GW. At least Ramirez doesn't think it would:
George Weigel of the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinks that the new generation of atheists is angrier and dumber than their intellectual forbears. I don't know about dumber, but they certainly are angrier.
RLC
The blog Conscious Entities has an interesting post on Idealism and also one on the moral, intellectual, and phenomenal gaps between animals and humans.
Idealism is the view that everything we encounter in the world is ultimately reducible to ideas in minds. There is no material substratum to reality.
It was given its most notable expression by George Berkeley (1685-1753) in Principles of Human Knowledge where he argues that all we can experience are sensory phenomena like color, fragrance, sound, etc. But these sensory phenomena exist only in minds, thus all we can have experience of are ideas in our minds. It follows that if knowledge is a product of experience then all we can know are these ideas. A material "stuff" that generates the phenomena of experience is not only absurd but unknowable.
Since Berkeley was an empiricist and believed that all of our knowledge comes through sense experience, he concluded that we can know nothing of anything other than these ideas in our minds. We have no experience of, and therefore no knowledge of, matter. The notion that there is a material world behind the phenomena of our senses is superfluous and should therefore fall victim to Occam's Razor.
All that exists, according to Berkeley, are ideas in minds, and for Berkeley the entire world exists as idea in the mind of God. The world is a virtual reality generated by God, which may be one way to read Hebrews 1:3 and Colossians 1:13.
RLC
So why do American kids find school boring? Is it because of poor teaching as the No Left Turns guys say? Probably to some extent, but there's more to it than that, as many of our readers have pointed out.
American kids are jaded by affluence. It takes a lot to excite young people surrounded by stimulants that appeal to their hedonism and materialism. Having never wanted for anything, many students find any kind of intellectual work unappealing and unnecessary. They do enough to get by, but any glimmer of concern for the life of the mind is easily extinguished by social and extra-curricular concerns.
Schools minimize academics. In many schools today only lip-service is paid to the importance of academics. Everything else the school does implicitly sends students the message that the least important thing they do in their school day is what they do in the classroom. At the school at which I taught for thirty-five years a student could be taken out of an academic class for almost any activity imaginable, but a teacher of an academic subject dare not insist that the student remain in class nor could he take the student out of another activity to do academic work. For instance, if the band needed to rehearse, or the swim team had a meet, or the student council had an activity students could leave class to participate, but a classroom teacher was not permitted to take the student out of band class, or swim practice, or student council to tutor him/her on what was missed.
In other words, every activity trumped the academic program in my school, and, I suspect, the same situation exists at most schools. When the school administration tacitly communicates to the student the lesson that academics are the school's lowest priority, only the exceptional students can be expected to take a particular interest in them.
Modern culture devalues great literature, art, history, and philosophy. The value of these disciplines is intrinsic, not instrumental. One studies them for the intellectual satisfaction and enrichment one gains from them, not because they'll enable the student to one day buy a new Lexus. Our culture, however, tacitly disdains any curriculum which is not oriented toward a career or the making of money. Subjects which are pursued for their own sake are deemed less important than those which are more utilitarian. Students realize this and take such classes only because they are a state requirement, and they embark upon it with the attitude that they'll put forth the minimum effort necessary to get whatever grade they feel they need.
Finally, many kids in many schools come from homes and neighborhoods which are so dysfunctional that the student starts out way behind and can never catch up. He/she has no idea what's going on in the classroom and tunes it out. This starts in the earliest grades and continues all through school. By the time the student is in tenth grade he/she is often languishing at a second or third grade level. Understanding nothing of what's going on in the classroom it's little wonder they're bored.
So, to Peters Lawler and Schramm at No Left Turns, yes, there are too many teachers in classrooms who are uninspiring and apathetic, but that situation certainly exists in schools in India and Asia. It's in fact probably worse there than it is here. So why do those kids do so well and ours perform sub-optimally? Look at the affluence, look at the importance placed on academics and the life of the mind, and look at the culture.
RLC
This young man is perhaps the most astonishing human being you will ever see. I started watching the documentary about him (at Telic Thoughts) and couldn't stop. It's 48 minutes long, but it only takes about five minutes to realize that you're watching something that is both incredible and spooky at the same time.
At the end of the film one man observes that he wonders what abilities are latent in the human mind that most of us cannot use. I wondered the same thing as I watched the video, and wondered, too, if perhaps we will ever be able to access those capacities.
RLC
Rick Pearcey offers a very clever analysis of the Ann Coulter contretemps in light of contemporary thinking and concludes that there's really nothing wrong with what she said. Pearcey is being satirical, of course, but there is a truth implicit in his essay that should be teased out.
The only people who have any basis for criticizing Coulter for her specific remark are Christian conservatives. There are several reasons for this, but let me focus on just one: If one believes, as liberals do, that there is nothing wrong with being gay then there's no reason to be upset that Coulter calls someone a "faggot"? Sure she meant to be insulting, which is kind of insulting all by itself, but the insult is akin to a secularist calling a conservative Christian a "fundie." The term is meant to be insulting since it connotes a certain lack of sophistication, but a lot of conservative Christians would be only mildly irritated by the epithet and a lot of them would simply laugh at the idea.
People who believe that homosexuality is a deviant lifestyle, however, see a much deeper insult in Coulter's words and are upset that one who speaks for conservatives and for Christians would engage in that sort of discourse. But, and this is the point, it is only those who see homosexuality as deviant who have reason to find her language offensive.
Meanwhile, compared to the vicious rhetorical felonies the left commits everyday (Remember Alec Baldwin saying that people should stone Henry Hyde to death, along with his entire family?) against the people they hate, which is about everybody to the right of George McGovern, Coulter's words, as bad as they were, are a misdemeanor.
As Pearcey observes, there are lots of others who have no reason to take umbrage in her words. Read his piece titled "Faggot" Easy to Defend.
RLC
A number of people whose heritage is Muslim but who may or may not themselves still be Muslim met recently in St. Petersburg to proclaim their intention to contend against the brutes and thugs who dominate the Islamic world on behalf of fundamental human rights. Here is the declaration that resulted from their convocation:
We are secular Muslims, and secular persons of Muslim societies. We are believers, doubters, and unbelievers, brought together by a great struggle, not between the West and Islam, but between the free and the unfree.
We affirm the inviolable freedom of the individual conscience. We believe in the equality of all human persons.
We insist upon the separation of religion from state and the observance of universal human rights.
We find traditions of liberty, rationality, and tolerance in the rich histories of pre-Islamic and Islamic societies. These values do not belong to the West or the East; they are the common moral heritage of humankind.
We see no colonialism, racism, or so-called "Islamaphobia" in submitting Islamic practices to criticism or condemnation when they violate human reason or rights.
We call on the governments of the world to:
- reject Sharia law, fatwa courts, clerical rule, and state-sanctioned religion in all their forms; oppose all penalties for blasphemy and apostacy, in accordance with Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human rights;
- eliminate practices, such as female circumcision, honor killing, forced veiling, and forced marriage, that further the oppression of women; protect sexual and gender minorities from persecution and violence;
- reform sectarian education that teaches intolerance and bigotry towards non-Muslims;
- and foster an open public sphere in which all matters may be discussed without coercion or intimidation.
We demand the release of Islam from its captivity to the totalitarian ambitions of power-hungry men and the rigid strictures of orthodoxy.
We enjoin academics and thinkers everywhere to embark on a fearless examination of the origins and sources of Islam, and to promulgate the ideals of free scientific and spiritual inquiry through cross-cultural translation, publishing, and the mass media.
We say to Muslim believers: there is a noble future for Islam as a personal faith, not a political doctrine;
To Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Baha'is, and all members of non-Muslim faith communities: we stand with you as free and equal citizens;
And to nonbelievers: we defend your unqualified liberty to question and dissent.
Before any of us is a member of the Umma, the Body of Christ, or the Chosen People, we are all members of the community of conscience, the people who must chose for themselves.
God bless those who signed off on this document, and may God protect them from those who will inevitably seek to kill them for their heresy.
RLC
A terrible story nears its end:
MIAMI (AP) - A sex offender was found guilty Wednesday of kidnapping and raping a 9-year-old girl and burying her alive in a case that led to a crackdown around the country on people convicted of sex crimes.
Jurors deliberated about four hours before returning the verdict against John Evander Couey in the slaying of Jessica Lunsford, who was snatched from her bedroom in 2005 about 150 yards from the trailer where Couey had been living.
Her body was found in a shallow hole, encased in two black plastic trash bags. She had suffocated, and was found clutching a purple stuffed dolphin.
Couey had a record as a sex offender. In 1991, he was arrested on a charge of fondling a child. In 1978, he was accused of grabbing a girl in her bedroom, placing his hand over her mouth and kissing her.
This case raises two questions which might be asked of those who oppose the death penalty. First, does John Couey deserve to be executed or doesn't he? Second, if he does deserve it what good is served by not doing it?
By refusing to execute a man such as this for the horrific crime he commited we send the message to society that Jessica Lunsford's life is not worth executing her murderer over. A society which refuses to execute people like Couey sends the message that it just doesn't value innocent life very highly, at least not highly enough to make taking a life punishable by the most severe penalty.
To allow him to live is a bit like assessing a rapist a $50 fine. The penalty sends the message that the crime isn't very serious and that women really aren't worth protecting.
Justice is served by nothing less than the execution of John Couey. It's better than what he deserves.
RLC
Mark Skousen commemorates Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged 50 years later in the Christian Science Monitor. Rand's work is not literature, exactly, but it is, according to a 1991 poll of American readers, the second most influential book ever written. Only the Bible was voted more influential.
I'm not sure about this assessment myself, since back in the late fifties and early sixties everyone was reading Rand, and then shortly thereafter we suffered our national, wrenching lurch to the left which represented in many ways everything Rand deplored.
In any event, Atlas Shrugged is a book of philosophical ideas about morality, economics, and collectivism set as a novel. Her ideas are both good and bad. When they're good they're very good and when they're bad they're very bad. Skousen's essay sorts them out.
RLC
John Edwards seeks political traction with Christians by invoking Jesus on behalf of the poor, but either he's tone deaf to how evangelicals regard Jesus or he's just not as articulate in talking about Christ as he is when he's appealing to a jury to award a huge settlement to his client and thus to himself:
Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards says Jesus would be appalled at how the United States has ignored the plight of the suffering, and that he believes children should have private time to pray at school.
Edwards, in an interview with the Web site Beliefnet.com, said Jesus would be most upset with the selfishness of Americans and the country's willingness to go to war "when it's not necessary."
"I think that Jesus would be disappointed in our ignoring the plight of those around us who are suffering and our focus on our own selfish short-term needs," Edwards told the site. "I think he would be appalled, actually."
What exactly does Edwards mean when he says that "Jesus would be appalled"? Does he mean that if Jesus only knew about the plight of today's oppressed masses He would be appalled by it? Does he think that Jesus doesn't know about it, but would be outraged if He did? If so, then Edwards has a long theological road to travel before he rests in evangelicalism's good graces. Most Christians believe that Jesus was divine, that He is alive today and quite aware of everything that happens in this world. It's Christologically incongruous, in other words, for Edwards to speak in hypotheticals.
Edwards failure to fire his two potty-mouthed anti-Christian bigot bloggers didn't do much to endear him to Christians, and he certainly won't score any points by using clunky rhetoric that suggests that Jesus is purely past tense or otherwise oblivious to what's going on in the world.
But setting all that to one side, what might appall Jesus even more than the plight of today's poor is the hypocrisy of people who live in opulent extravagance and ostentation while invoking His name to criticize others for their alleged lack of concern for those who live in hovels.
RLC
Here's an interesting development in the deteriorating state of affairs concerning Iran. An Iranian general with much knowledge of his country's espionage efforts and weapons programs has either defected or been kidnapped:
One respected analyst with sources in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard says Gen. Ali Reza Asgari has defected and is now in a European country with his entire family, where he is cooperating with the U.S.
Other reports have suggested that the general may have been kidnapped by the Israeli secret service, the Mossad. A spokesperson at the CIA declined to comment on the reported defection.
"This is a fatal blow to Iranian intelligence," said the source, explaining that Asgari knows sensitive information about Iran's nuclear and military projects. Iran called tens of its Revolutionary Guard agents working at embassies and cultural centers in Arab and European countries back to Tehran out of fear that Asgari might disclose secret information about their identities, according to the analyst.
In either case, it seems that there will be an intelligence bonanza for the U.S., unless, of course, the guy is a double agent out to plant disinformation.
RLC
