Monday, February 24, 2014

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Video: The Thomist Cosmological Argument (Peter Kreeft)



Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft explains the Thomistic cosmological argument.  I feel like I'm back in Philosophy of Religion with Van Fleteren again.

Saturday, February 22, 2014

No, Republican Tom Delay. God is not the author of the U.S. Constitution

The Huffington Post reports:
Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) urged Americans to realize that God “wrote the Constitution” and predicted an upcoming “awakening” during an interview on John Hagee Ministries’ Global Evangelism Television network on Wednesday.
“I think we got off the track when we allowed our government to become a secular government,” DeLay told host Matthew Hagee, the executive pastor of the Texas Cornerstone Church. “[W]e stopped realizing that God created this nation, that he wrote the Constitution, that it’s based on biblical principles.”
No sir, God did not write something that would fundamentally reject his rule.

Steve Halbrook of Theonomy Resources somewhat explains:
He rightfully opposes today's secular humanist approach to civil governmentwhich to one degree or another has infected most of American Christianity. This is indeed an area that needs reformation. He also rightfully points out the anti-Christian nature of the U. S. Constitution; not that we deny that it is has some good procedure law, but it is at the very least dishonoring to Jesus Christ in its neglect of recognizing Him as the highest political authority in the land. (Covenanters pointed out this fatal flaw long ago.) 

Vladimir Putin learns the wrong lesson from the Soviet Union's collapse

As I was watching the opening ceremony for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, a commentator said that Vladimir Putin thought the collapse and break-up of the Soviet Union was devastating, or something to that effect, and that Russia lost a lot of "good Russians." 

Bizarreness of that statement put aside, it deflects from real analysis of the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991.

What we should make of the Soviet Union's collapse was that we saw the complete and utter collapse of a nation based on an idea: Socialism. 

The "former glory of the Soviet Union" was no glory at all because socialism -- no matter how many years and decades it will take -- always plants the seeds for economic destruction. So going back to it would be like a "dog going back to its vomit" (Proverbs 26:11), and fool repeating his folly.

One other point here.

We are not unlike the Soviet Union.

As Thomas Woods explained in his 2009 book "Meltdown": "[the U.S. Federal Reserve System] is dedicated to central economic planning, the great discredited idea of the twentieth century. Except instead of planning the production of steel and concrete, as in the Old Soviet Union, it plans money and interest rates, with consequences that necessarily reverberate throughout the economy."

We are in the midst of a grand experiment that will end in nothing less than devastation for a lot of people. As I explained in previous statuses**, the time for a "soft landing" was over a decade ago. We should end our foolishness now to avoid an even harder landing later.

**Originally written as a Facebook status

God is like a mother waiting for her child to return home

God is like that mother who waits for her child to come back home from playing outdoors and makes sure the child gets washed up, nourished and ready for the next day. (Late Elementary & Middle school memories of my Mom waiting at the front door with the door wide open come to mind here)

Of course, in some sense that's where the analogy ends because kids should totally play outside. But we who know the Lord Jesus Christ have someone ready to clean us when we get dirty in sin from time to time. ~The Proprietor

WCF Chapter One "Of Holy Scripture" Sunday School (Sept.-Oct. 2021)

Our text for Sunday School (also "The Confession of Faith and Catechisms") Biblical Theology Bites What is "Biblical Theology...