After that last post, you may need to read this over on The Thinklings--and some of the comments are as funny as the post. 

That's a much better way to start your weekend.

I hear a pretty constant stream of a specific kind of personal attack by leftists against conservatives, including to my face.  And honestly, I'm sick of it.  The basic idea they're convinced of is that deep down, we have secret, selfish motives for everything, and/or that we're downright evil.  You can see how this leads to fine, rational conversations about policy with us. 

Here's an excerpt from the latest example of the vile, civilized-political-discourse-destroying, irrational assumption that conservatives (and in this particular case, the President) have only evil motives (even if good leftists can't always uncover them) spewed by Peter Mehlman on the Huffington Post.  (If they take it down, you'll be able to find the whole thing here.)  And frankly, this isn't an unusual opinion, in my experience:

So now we're six and a half years into Bush and everyone from Helen Thomas on down is declaring him the worst president ever. What no one is saying is the one overarching reason he's the worst: the Bush administration is the first that doesn't even mean well.

With the possible exception of immigration reform -- and who knows what grotesque financial incentive underlies that -- try to pinpoint even one policy motivated by the desire to lessen human suffering, to improve the life of citizens. Nothing. There is nothing....

It's been the ultimate frustration to consider the people who don't see Bush's malevolence....You could argue that even the world's worst fascist dictators at least meant well. They honestly thought were doing good things for their countries by suppressing blacks/eliminating Jews/eradicating free enterprise/repressing individual thought/killing off rivals/invading neighbors, etc. Only the Saudi royal family is driven by the same motives as Bush, but they were already entrenched. Bush set a new precedent. He came into office with the attitude of "I'm so tired of the public good. What about my good? What about my rich friends' good?"

How can anyone not see it? It's not that their policies have been misguided or haven't played out right. They. Don't. Even. Mean. Well.

There you go, folks.  I'm so disgusted by this that I have no commentary--at least, none without expletives, and this is a family show.

If you're interested in reading a more level-headed response to this phenomenon that I wrote back when I still naively believed I could reason with leftists about conservative ideas--before I had banged my head against the wall of "secret evil motives" so often that I lost the motivation to interact, read this. 

Do you ever get those spam emails that have a short advertisement at the top (the real point of the email) and then fill up the rest of the space with bits of text gathered throughout the internet to create a semi-coherent message designed to get said spam past the junk mail gatekeeper?

Well, they must somehow do word searches on blogs and then create the text disguise accordingly, sending targeted emails to the connected addresses, because this is an excerpt from the one I got last Monday:

The Bush administration blew their chance with lies, bad faith and monstrous incompetence, and the majority of conservatives I know feel betrayed. It must have been in much the same condition in Joseph Smith's day when fragments of it were glued haphazardly to other totally unrelated papyri. Although his horrible actions are nothing to be admired, his skill at forgery and his ability to fool even the best experts for years was an impressive feat. It would be an understatement to say I loved my mission. Even Mormon scholars agree that.

She refused to believe me. He would charge people a nominal fee to let them view the papyri and mummies. So he was willing, based on what we knew at the time, to let Sadam [sic] retain WMD and work with terrorists, that is a very strong defense position?

I brought this email out several times this week to relive the chuckle.  Then finally, today I got curious about where some of the pieced-together fragments used for this spam came from, so I picked a sentence and Googled it.  It brought me directly to my friend Rob Sivulka's site at Mormoninfo.org. 

Either it's a very small world, or their technology is scary out of control.

In Genesis 9:6, God commands, "Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man."  Because he bears the image of God, the value of a man is so great that there is only one punishment worthy of the unjust taking of his life.  The ultimate crime against the innocent demands the ultimate penalty for the guilty.  This is not only just, it's also a way to protect the innocent.  According to the article "Studies say death penalty deters crime," anywhere between 3 and 18 (depending on the study) lives are saved when a murderer is executed.

"Science does really draw a conclusion. It did. There is no question about it," said Naci Mocan, an economics professor at the University of Colorado at Denver. "The conclusion is there is a deterrent effect."

A 2003 study he co-authored, and a 2006 study that re-examined the data, found that each execution results in five fewer homicides, and commuting a death sentence means five more homicides. "The results are robust, they don't really go away," he said. "I oppose the death penalty. But my results show that the death penalty (deters) -- what am I going to do, hide them?"

Another professor responded:

"Abolitionists or others, like me, who are skeptical about the death penalty haven't given adequate consideration to the possibility that innocent life is saved by the death penalty."

If the findings are correct, they pose a real dilemma for those who oppose the death penalty:  Is it right to keep a murderer alive if it means as many as 18 innocent people will die? 

I came across an incredible article, "Death of a Guru" about a man named Rabi Maharaj who left the comforts of being worshipped within his Hindu religion for something even more enticing. He had become increasingly unsettled as he came to realize that his view of the divine didn't match what he knew to be true about goodness and reality.  Ultimately, he left the emptiness and inevitable losing of oneself that happens through meditation (a process he had witnessed in his father) and embraced the One outside of himself who is real and good and solid.

A condensed version of the story:

For eight long years [my father] uttered not a word. The trancelike condition he had achieved is called in the East a state of higher consciousness and can be attained only through deep meditation....  "Why is Father that way?" I would ask my mother, still too young to understand. "He is someone very special--the greatest man you could have for a father," she would reply. "He is seeking the true Self that lies within us all, the One Being, of which there is no other. And that's what you are too, Rabi...."

I was obviously [according to the astrologers and palm readers] a chosen vessel, destined for early success in the search for union with Brahman (the One). The forces that had guided my father were now guiding me....

It was encouraging to learn that the lines on my palms and the planets and stars, according to those who interpreted them, all agreed I would become a great Hindu leader....  How I loved religious ceremonies--especially private ones in our own home or those of others, where friends and relatives would crowd in. There I would be the center of attention, admired by all. I loved to move through the audience, sprinkling holy water on worshipers or marking foreheads with the sacred white sandalwood paste. I also loved how the worshipers, after the ceremony, bowed low before me to leave their offerings at my feet....

During my third year in high school I experienced an increasingly deep inner conflict. My growing awareness of God as the Creator, separate and distinct from the universe He had made, contradicted the Hindu concept that god was everything, that the Creator and the Creation were one and the same. If there was only One Reality, then Brahman was evil as well as good, death as well as life, hatred as well as love. That made everything meaningless, life an absurdity. It was not easy to maintain both one's sanity and the view that good and evil, love and hate, life and death were One Reality....

Before I finished [my prayer to Jesus for forgiveness], I knew that Jesus wasn't just another one of several million gods. He was the God for whom I had hungered. He Himself was the Creator. Yet, He loved me enough to become a man and die for my sins. With that realization, tons of darkness seemed to lift and a brilliant light flooded my soul.

Read the full story here.

From John 9:2-3:

And His disciples asked Him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?"  Jesus answered, "It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him." 

I was reminded again as I read this last night that everything is about God.  This man had endured blindness for who knows how many years, but it wasn't for nothing; it was for the noblest of all causes--to display the glory and power of God.  How much easier it is to endure everything when we remember that it's the glory of God that matters most (more than our comfort or even our lives), and that our sufferings for His glory are worth it because of what they accomplish for His plan!  When seen this way, we can embrace them as our duty and willing service and submit to them "for the joy set before us" both now and in the end.

From Nancy Pelosi's speech on Thursday in favor of the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2007:

Science is a gift of God to all of us and science has taken us to a place that is biblical in its power to cure and that is the embryonic stem cell research....  Yet, with his cruel veto pen, President Bush dashed the hopes of many for the healing potential of stem cell research.

First, though she says ESCR is "biblical in its power to cure," embryonic stem cell research has produced no usable results. 

Second, has she ever heard of private funding?  Has the president locked all the scientists in a dungeon?  No.  President Bush, with his "cruel pen," protected my will that I not fund ESCR.  Meanwhile, not only did he fund other types of stem cell research, but anyone is free to invest in ESCR if he wishes. 

Third, if anyone is thinking, "Well there aren't enough interested investors out there, so the government has to fund it," then I say, all the more reason for the government not to waste our money.  If there were any certainty about this supposedly huge potential in embryonic stem cell research, you can bet that all sorts of individuals and corporations would be clambering over each other to invest.  The fact is, other areas of stem cell research are far more promising in practice (rather than theory), with already-achieved results.

So why push so hard for this when breakthroughs like this one are already happening that involve no ethical concerns whatsoever?  Why this obsession with destroying embryos?  Why shouldn't we, as a nation, fund the stem cell research that everyone can endorse and leave the funding of ESCR to those who aren't opposed to it and who actually see within it some tangible promise?

She then says, "If we have a scientific opportunity to treat and cure disease, we have a moral responsibility to support it."

The principle she espouses here is ridiculous.  We have a moral responsibility to support whatever gives us scientific knowledge that might help people?  The Tuskegee Study, conducted from 1932 to 1972 was very helpful in teaching scientists about Syphilis and its effects.  Never mind that African-American men were denied available treatment so that the study could continue.  It's our moral responsibility to support it, right? 

That example shows how flawed her principle is.  There are loads of things you could do to gain more scientific knowledge for cures, but there is clearly only a moral responsibility to pursue scientific knowledge to help others if the pursuit itself does not cause moral harm.  And if it does cause moral harm, we have the responsibility to not pursue it.

Therefore the debate over the moral harm of ESCR must be at least addressed before one can claim we have a moral responsibility to pursue it.  Pelosi can't just dismiss without explanation or defense the idea that ESCR causes moral harm and skip to the cure part.

Thank God for that cruel veto pen.

"For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!"

The Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati, 35, says that aid to Africa does more harm than good. The avid proponent of globalization spoke with SPIEGEL about the disastrous effects of Western development policy in Africa, corrupt rulers, and the tendency to overstate the AIDS problem.

Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa...

Shikwati: ... for God's sake, please just stop.

SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty.

Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.

What's better than books?  Free books!  At Christianaudio.com, you can download a different free audio book each month (either WMA or MP3 format), and this month they're featuring The Best of Jonathan Edwards Sermons.

Here's the description:

The Jonathan Edwards trilogy includes three of the most important sermons ever preached on American soil. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is maybe the most important and well-known sermon of his, but also included is A Divine and Supernatural Light describing and illuminating what Edwards describes as a supernatural light imparted by God. His farewell sermon was given in June of 1750 and is a commendation to those who are in the Lord's service, a plea to maintain unity, avoid dissension and false doctrine, and a call to devote themselves to prayer.

Be sure to bookmark this site and check back every month.

In yesterday's debate, Hitchens brought up an oft-cited argument against Christianity, saying that we would need an extraordinary amount of evidence before we could believe that an event as exceedingly improbable as the resurrection actually occurred.

I did a quick search on the internet and brought up a short debate (only 38 pages) between William Lane Craig and Bart D. Ehrman titled Is There Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus? that addresses this very issue.

Craig first presents four uncontested facts and clarifies the issue:

For now, I want to sketch briefly how a historical case for Jesus' resurrection might look.  In constructing a case for Jesus' resurrection, it's important to distinguish between the evidence and the best explanation of that evidence.  This distinction is important because in this case the evidence is relatively uncontroversial.  As we'll see, it's agreed to by most scholars.  On the other hand, the explanation of that evidence is controversial.  That the resurrection is the best explanation is a matter of controversy.  Now although Dr. Ehrman says that there cannot be any historical evidence for the resurrection, we'll see that what he really means is that the resurrection cannot be the best explanation of that evidence, not that there is no evidence.  (pp. 3-4, emphasis mine)

Ehrman dismisses the facts presented by Craig as irrelevant since he has already ruled out the possibility of interpreting them as describing a miracle:

[M]iracles are so highly improbable that they're the least possible occurrence in any given instance....  I wish we could establish miracles, but we can't.  It's no one's fault.  It's simply that the cannons of historical research do not allow for the possibility of establishing as probable the least probable of all occurrences.  For that reason, Bill's four pieces of evidence are completely irrelevant.  There cannot be historical probability for an event that defies probability, even if the event did happen.  (p. 12) 

Therefore, in this debate, Ehrman's position that there is no historical evidence for the resurrection is based on a philosophical objection, not on a lack of available facts.

Since the objection prevents Ehrman (and many people) from ever considering the actual evidence, Craig then confronts the charge that a miracle, by definition, will always defy probability despite any and all evidence.  He argues that we must take into account not only the intrinsic probability of the resurrection in light of our general knowledge about the natural world, but also in light of the specific evidence for the resurrection (I would argue that this should also include our evidence for the existence of God as well as any other background factors that make the resurrection more probable).  One also has to place the explanatory power of the counter-hypothesis that there was no resurrection into the equation.  He then proceeds to give a mathematical formula that will statistically account for all these factors, explaining where Ehrman's mistake lies:

Specifically, Dr. Ehrman just ignores the crucial factors of the probability of the naturalistic alternatives to the resurrection....  If these are sufficiently low, they outbalance any intrinsic improbability of the resurrection hypothesis." (p. 16)

I won't recreate the formula here since it would probably cause many of us to run screaming from our computers.  But if you're mathematically or statistically minded, take a look.  I heard Richard Swinburne speak about this formula once, and he came up with a probability of .97 for the resurrection (Craig notes this in the Q&A section at the end of the debate).