________
I really enjoyed the latest James Bond film NO TIME TO DIE and for my thoughts on it you can go to this link.
The Daily Hatch________
I really enjoyed the latest James Bond film NO TIME TO DIE and for my thoughts on it you can go to this link.
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15 A gentle answer deflects anger,
but harsh words make tempers flare.
2 The tongue of the wise makes knowledge appealing,
but the mouth of a fool belches out foolishness.
3 The Lord is watching everywhere,
keeping his eye on both the evil and the good.
4 Gentle words are a tree of life;
a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit.
5 Only a fool despises a parent’s[a] discipline;
whoever learns from correction is wise.
6 There is treasure in the house of the godly,
but the earnings of the wicked bring trouble.
7 The lips of the wise give good advice;
the heart of a fool has none to give.
8 The Lord detests the sacrifice of the wicked,
but he delights in the prayers of the upright.
9 The Lord detests the way of the wicked,
but he loves those who pursue godliness.
10 Whoever abandons the right path will be severely disciplined;
whoever hates correction will die.
11 Even Death and Destruction[b] hold no secrets from the Lord.
How much more does he know the human heart!
12 Mockers hate to be corrected,
so they stay away from the wise.
13 A glad heart makes a happy face;
a broken heart crushes the spirit.
14 A wise person is hungry for knowledge,
while the fool feeds on trash.
15 For the despondent, every day brings trouble;
for the happy heart, life is a continual feast.
16 Better to have little, with fear for the Lord,
than to have great treasure and inner turmoil.
17 A bowl of vegetables with someone you love
is better than steak with someone you hate.
18 A hot-tempered person starts fights;
a cool-tempered person stops them.
19 A lazy person’s way is blocked with briers,
but the path of the upright is an open highway.
20 Sensible children bring joy to their father;
foolish children despise their mother.
21 Foolishness brings joy to those with no sense;
a sensible person stays on the right path.
22 Plans go wrong for lack of advice;
many advisers bring success.
23 Everyone enjoys a fitting reply;
it is wonderful to say the right thing at the right time!
24 The path of life leads upward for the wise;
they leave the grave[c] behind.
25 The Lord tears down the house of the proud,
but he protects the property of widows.
26 The Lord detests evil plans,
but he delights in pure words.
27 Greed brings grief to the whole family,
but those who hate bribes will live.
28 The heart of the godly thinks carefully before speaking;
the mouth of the wicked overflows with evil words.
29 The Lord is far from the wicked,
but he hears the prayers of the righteous.
30 A cheerful look brings joy to the heart;
good news makes for good health.
31 If you listen to constructive criticism,
you will be at home among the wise.
32 If you reject discipline, you only harm yourself;
but if you listen to correction, you grow in understanding.
33 Fear of the Lord teaches wisdom;
humility precedes honor.
How to Be the Father of a Wise Child
Why do some children adore their dads and others hate their dads? What’s the difference in dads? I’ve observed dads, and there’s one characteristic I’ve found in almost all dads whose children love and follow them. I’m going to tell you what that characteristic is in a moment.
Sometimes children are caught up in the mistakes and mindset of fathers who won’t do what they should to guide those children into a safe, secure haven. Their own pride and arrogance make shipwreck both of their own lives and their children’s. It doesn’t have to be this way.
The book of Proverbs is a veritable owner’s manual on how to raise a wise child. In large part, that’s why the book was written. From the first chapter, it says:
2To know wisdom and instruction, to perceive the words of understanding; 3To receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment and equity. 4To give subtlety to the simple and to the young man, knowledge and discretion. 5A wise man will hear and will increase learning and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels… 20Wisdom crieth without, she uttereth her voice in the streets. 21She crieth in the chief place of the concourse in the opening of the gates. In the city she uttereth her words saying, 22“How long ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? And scorners delight in their scorning and fools hate knowledge?” (Proverbs 1)
Underscore three words in this passage: simple, scorners, and fools. A child isn’t born a scorner or a fool. Verse 22 reveals there’s a long road in the evolution of a fool.
THE IGNORANCE OF THE SIMPLE
The word “simple” in verse 22 means open and naïve; children’ minds and hearts are plastic—easily shaped, innocent.
They lack understanding. 22“How long ye simple ones will ye love simplicity?” There comes a time when the child must be guided out of his simplicity and into wisdom and maturity.
They are easily led into error. A child is an easy target for Madison Avenue, MTV, false religions, and sinful friends. Because they’re so open, they’ll believe anything. They’re like a sponge, you can trick them, flim-flam them, but they’re living in constant danger. “The simple believeth every word…” (14:15). “A prudent man forseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on and are punished” (22:3). The simple thinks he’s indestructible, never weighing the future, easy to lead to the slaughter.
THE DEFIANCE OF THE SCORNER
The scorner, however, has gone a step farther. Heads up, dads. If not guided by dad and mom, they take the next step down—they become the scorner. They get their jollies from being the teenage smart aleck, the cynic in business, the mocker at the university. It breaks my heart to say it, but most teenagers in America are now scorners.
They defy instruction because “scorners delight in their scorning” (1:22) “A wise son heareth his father’s instruction, but a scorner heareth not rebuke (13:1). A scorner will fire back at you (9:8). They won’t listen. It’s like talking to a brick wall—they’ll tune you out.
They despise the good and godly. “A scorner loveth not the one that reproveth him” (15:12). They’ll never come and say, “Dad, I need help. Will you help me out?” When you try to correct the scorner, they’ll look at you and say with their eyes, “I hate your guts.”
They’re destined for destruction. “Whoso despiseth the Word shall be destroyed” (13:13). If they laugh at the Word of God, they may laugh their way right into Hell. The scorner is very hard to reach, but there is yet hope; they can still be reclaimed.
THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FOOL
First there was the simple—naive, open, and carefree. But if he’s not taught, he becomes the scorner. Then the scorner becomes a fool. The scorner is insolent, but the fool is immovable— rebellious, arrogant, and wicked.
The fool rejects wisdom. 22“And fools hate knowledge.” “The heart of him that hath understanding seeketh knowledge, but the mouth of fools feedeth on foolishness” (15:14).
He ridicules righteousness. “Fools make a mock at sin” (14:9). This is why we have sitcoms that laugh at drunkenness, glorify adultery, mock marriage, promote homosexuality and relish perversion. Who does that? Fools.
He rejoices in iniquity. “Folly is a joy to him that is destitute of wisdom” (15:20-21). His moral sense has been so perverted, he calls good evil and evil good. His heart is hardened, conscience seared, mind defiled.
He rejects reproof. “Whom the Father loves, He chastens and scourges every son whom He receiveth.” God will chasten those who are His own, but “A reproof entereth more into a wise man than a hundred stripes into a fool” (17:10).Trying to reprove the fool will get you nowhere. Don’t even try. He won’t hear you. He is intransigent. If he were wise, when God chastised him, he would repent.
God gives us little children who begin life “simple”—innocent and open. But if you’re not careful, society will turn them into a smart aleck. If they’re not rescued, dad, when they becomes scorners or smart alecks, they’ll become fools. The fool is on the fast-track for Hell.
We are in serious trouble in America. In 1962, prayer in public schools was declared unconstitutional. In 1963, Bible reading in schools was deemed “unconstitutional” but the killing of pre-born children somehow became (1973) a Constitutional “right.” Then (1980) the Ten Commandments posted on school walls must be removed because—they said—“The child might be tempted to emulate them.”
Secular humanists have proven to be great strategists. They found the one segment of life almost every child will pass through—public education—and targeted it to become their “Sunday School” for humanist philosophy. To do that, they had to purge out any vestige of Christian influence.
To not to raise a fool, what can you do? With everything in modern culture fighting against you, you must gear up for this battle, dads.
1. Expound truth. Saturate them in the Proverbs. Emblazon the Ten Commandments onto their consciousness. Teach them the Beatitudes, that they might learn these simple, basic truths. The battle is for the mind. As the child thinks, so is he.
It’s your God-given responsibility (see Deuteronomy 6:6-9) is to teach these commandments to your sons and grandsons that your family will survive and your home endure.
2. Expose sin. The simple will learn by example when they see discipline falling upon the scorner. Children need to see what happens when sin is exposed and consequences are suffered. “When the scorner is punished, the simple is made wise” (21:11). The worst thing would be for your child to live in a sinful society where he never sees the repercussions of sin. Our children today are insulated; often they don’t see the result of sin. You need to help them understand. Don’t only expound truth, but expose sin. Take him down to skid row. Take him to the prisons. Let him see the end result of bad choices. “Smite a scorner, and the simple will beware” (Proverbs 19:25). They will learn. He thinks he’s indestructible. He does not know. You need to pull back the veil.
3. Expel scorners. Do not let your children hang around with scorners and fools. Just don’t do it. Help him select his friends. That means you may have to be firm and cast out the scorner. Why? Impressionable children will succumb to peer pressure.
Open up your house to your child’s friends. Make your home the headquarters for happiness. And while they’re there, you can monitor those friends. Peer pressure is not bad if the peers are good. If there’s a scorner, a smart aleck, or a fool, you say, “Son, there’s the sidewalk.” “Cast out the scorner and contention shall go out. Yea, strife and reproach shall cease.” (22:10). Moms and dads, underscore this: “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise. But a companion of fools shall be destroyed” (13 20).
4. Express love. Love your children! Delight in them. “For whom the Lord loveth He correcteth, even as a father the son in whom he delighteth” (3:12). Be positive! Don’t be negative. Words can hurt your children more than a slap in the face. Learn to listen. Try to see life from their point of view. They’re facing things you never faced.
5. Be gentle. This is that one characteristic I mentioned at the beginning, which I’ve seen in all dads whose children love and follow them: They are gentle. That’s what children want out of their dad. Yes, they want a dad they can look up to, who’s the strongest, wisest, smartest, fastest, best dad in the world…but they want him to be gentle! Touch them, hug them, give them non-verbal affection.
6. Be transparent. Let them know your fears, joys, disappointments, failures, and goals. They already know you’re not perfect; they don’t want you to be a phony.
7. Be available. Make it a priority that you’re going to be available to your child.
You say, “Pastor Rogers, very frankly, I’m not adequate.”
I know—I’m not either. None of us has what it takes to be this kind of dad or mom. That’s the reason we need Jesus isn’t it? We’ve got to have Christ in our hearts! Because the Christian life is not difficult, it’s impossible. Only one can do it, and that’s Jesus. But He will do it in us and through us if we’ll let Him. The best thing you can do for your children is to love God will all your heart. Give your heart to Jesus.
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Early last year, I shared a video explaining that Karl Marx was a despicable human being. Today, let’s look at a video that further examines him and his hideous ideology.
This raises an interesting question of picking the most offensive feature of Marxism.
and starved 100 million people?The the video above is from the Ayn Rand-inspired Atlas Society, I suspect they might emphasize answer #3.
And that certainly is correct, but the best answer is “all of the above.”
I’ll close with the observation that Marx was a bad person, but he’s not nearly as bad as modern-day Marxists.
That’s because Marx was guilty of coming up with a bad theory. Today’s Marxists, by contrast, not only believe in that bad theory, but they hold to those noxious views in spite of 100 years of evidence that communism is a failure of practice.
Though maybe today’s Marxists are simply big fans of very strict diets?
P.S. To see the difference between a good person and a bad person, here’s a comparison of Marx with another person from central Europe.
E P I S O D E 5
I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970’s and I wanted to share it with you. Francis Schaeffer noted, “Reformation Did Not Bring Perfection. But gradually on basis of biblical teaching there was a unique improvement. A. With Bible the ordinary citizen could say that majority was wrong. B. Tremendous freedom without chaos because Bible gives a base for law.”
Another great point that Schaeffer makes in this series is that Communism has NEVER EXISTED WITHOUT BRINGING REPRESSION. A few months ago a young person said to me, “I think that Marx was misunderstood and that true communism has not been really tried yet.” I responded that there are a hand full of Communist countries today and they all have several similar conditions: NO FREEDOM OF PRESS, NO POLITICAL FREEDOM, NO FREEDOM OF RELIGION AND NO ECONOMIC FREEDOM. I noted that Schaeffer has rightly said that Communism is basically based on materialism and a result it must fail. It does not have a Reformation base.
T h e
REVOLUTIONARY AGE
I. Bible as Absolute Base for Law
A. Paul Robert’s mural in Lausanne.
B. Rutherford’s Lex Rex (Law Is King): Freedom without chaos; government by law rather than arbitrary government by men.
C. Impact of biblical political principles in America.
1. Rutherford’s influence on U.S. Constitution: directly through Witherspoon; indirectly through Locke’s secularized version of biblical politics.
2. Locke’s ideas inconsistent when divorced from Christianity.
3. One can be personally non-Christian, yet benefit from Christian foundations: e.g. Jefferson and other founders.
II. The Reformation and Checks and Balances
A. Humanist and Reformation views of politics contrasted.
B. Sin is reason for checks and balances in Reformed view: Calvin’s position at Geneva examined.
C. Checks and balances in Protestant lands prevented bloody resolution of tensions.
D. Elsewhere, without this biblically rooted principle, tensions had to be resolved violently.
III. Contrast Between English and French Political Experience
A. Voltaire’s admiration of English conditions.
B. Peaceful nature of the Bloodless Revolution of 1688 in England related to Reformation base.
C. Attempt to achieve political change in France on English lines, but on Enlightenment base, produced a bloodbath and a dictatorship.
1. Constructive change impossible on finite human base.
2. Declaration of Rights of Man, the rush to extremes, and the Goddess of Reason.
3. Anarchy or repression: massacres, Robespierre, the Terror.
4. Idea of perfectibility of Man maintained even during the Terror.
IV. Anglo-American Experience Versus Franco-Russian
A. Reformation experience of freedom without chaos contrasts with that of Marxist-Leninist Russia.
B. Logic of Marxist-Leninism.
1. Marxism not a source of freedom.
2. 1917 Revolution taken over, not begun, by Bolsheviks.
3. Logic of communism: elite dictatorship, suppression of freedoms, coercion of allies.
V. Reformation Christianity and Humanism: Fruits Compared
A. Reformation gave absolutes to counter injustices; where Christians failed they were untrue to their principles.
B. Humanism has no absolute way of determining values consistently.
C. Differences practical, not just theoretical: Christian absolutes give limited government; denial of absolutes gives arbitrary rule.
VI. Weaknesses Which Developed Later in Reformation Countries
A. Slavery and race prejudice.
1. Failure to live up to biblical belief produces cruelty.
2. Hypocritical exploitation of other races.
3. Church’s failure to speak out sufficiently against this hypocrisy.
B. Noncompassionate use of accumulated wealth.
1. Industrialism not evil in itself, but only through greed and lack of compassion.
2. Labor exploitation and gap in living standards.
3. Church’s failure to testify enough against abuses.
C. Positive face of Reformation Christianity toward social evil.
1. Christianity not the only influence on consensus.
a) Church’s silence betrayed; did not reflect what it said it believed.
b) Non-Christian influences also important at that time; and many so-called Christians were “social” Christians only.
2. Contributions of Christians to social reform.
a) Varied efforts in slave trade, prisons, factories.
(1) Wesley, Newton, Clarkson, Wilberforce, and abolition of slavery.
(2) Howard, Elizabeth Fry, and prison reforms.
(3) Lord Shaftesbury and reform in the factories.
b) Impact of Whitefield-Wesley revivals on society.
VII. Reformation Did Not Bring Perfection
But gradually on basis of biblical teaching there was a unique improvement.
A. With Bible the ordinary citizen could say that majority was wrong.
B. Tremendous freedom without chaos because Bible gives a base for law.
Questions
1. What has been the role of biblical principles in the legal and political history of the countries studied?
2. Is it true that lands influenced by the Reformation escaped political violence because biblical concepts were acted upon?
3. What are the core distinctions, in terms of ideology and results, between English and American Revolutions on the one hand, and the French and Russian on the other hand?
4. What were the weaknesses which developed at a later date in countries which had a Reformation history?
5. Dr. Schaeffer believes that basic to action is an idea, and that the history of the West in the last two or three centuries has been marked by a humanism pressed to its tragic conclusions and by a Christianity insufficiently applied to the totality of life. How should Christians then approach participation in social and political affairs?
Key Events and Persons
Calvin: 1509-1564
Samuel Rutherford: 1600-1661
Rutherford’s Lex Rex: 1644
John Locke: 1631-1704
John Wesley: 1703-1791
Voltaire: 1694-1778
Letters on the English Nation: 1733
George Whitefield: 1714-1770
John Witherspoon: 1723-1794
John Newton: 1725-1807
John Howard: 1726-1790
Jefferson: 1743-1826
Robespierre: 1758-1794
Wilberforce: 1759-1833
Clarkson: 1760-1846
Napoleon: 1769-1821
Elizabeth Fry: 1780-1845
Declaration of Rights of Man: 1789
National Constituent Assembly: 1789-1791
Second French Revolution and Revolutionary Calendar: 1792
The Reign of Terror: 1792-1794
Lord Shaftesbury: 1801-1855
English slave trade ended: 1807
Slavery ended in Great Britain and Empire: 1833
Karl Marx: 1818-1883
Lenin: 1870-1924
Trotsky: 1879-1940
Stalin: 1879-1953
February and October Russian Revolutions: 1917
Berlin Wall: 1961
Czechoslovakian repression: 1968
Further Study
Charles Breunig, The Age of Revolution and Reaction: 1789-1850 (1970).
R.N. Carew Hunt, The Theory and Practice of Communism (1963).
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1957).
Peter Gay, ed., Deism: An Anthology (1968).
John McManners, The French Revolution and the Church (1970).
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (1957).
Louis L. Snyder, ed., The Age of Reason (1955).
David B. Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (1975).
J. Kuczynski, The Rise of the Working Class (1971).
Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma (1958).
John Newton, Out of the Depths. An Autobiography.
John Wesley, Journal (1 vol. abridge).
C. Woodham-Smith, The Great Hunger, Ireland, 1845-1849 (1964).
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Senators Tom Cotton and Marco Rubio today are calling on the Justice Department to arrest and prosecute abortion activists who are engaging in illegal protests outside the homes of Supreme Court justices.
As LifeNews reported today, the U.S. Department of Justice will provide extra security to the U.S. Supreme Court justices and their families as pro-abortion protests and threats of violence grow. The order came from Attorney General Merrick Garland in response to demands that his office stop illegal intimidation and protests outside the justices’ homes after news broke last week about a leaked U.S. Supreme Court draft ruling that overturns Roe v. Wade.
But Cotton and Rubio say that’s not enough and that the leftists engaging in harassing and threatening protests outside the homes of justices like Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Altio are doing so illegally.
Cotton blasted Attorney General Merrick Garland for the Justice Department not arresting the leftist protestors. In a letter to Garland, Cotton threatened impeachment proceedings if the attorney general didn’t “take immediate action to enforce the law even-handedly against your party’s political opponents.”
“Please explain why you have refused to enforce the federal law against picketing and protesting at the homes of Supreme Court Justices,” Cotton wrote Garland. “Left-wing mobs have recently targeted the homes of Justices (John) Roberts, (Samuel) Alito, (Clarence) Thomas, (Neil) Gorsuch, (Amy Coney) Barrett, and (Brett) Kavanaugh, a blatant and obvious violation of 18 USC § 1507.
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“These unlawful protestors widely publicized their plans, yet it appears that no federal law-enforcement officers were present to arrest the lawbreakers and no investigation is ongoing. Further, President Biden’s own press secretary announced this week that the Biden administration ‘certainly continue[s] to encourage (protests) outside of judges’ homes, and that’s the president’s position.’”
Senator Rubio agrees and sent his own letter to Garland.
“As you know, there is an ongoing, coordinated campaign of intimidation against the majority of the justices on the Supreme Court,” Rubio wrote. “The DOJ can no longer remain silent on this issue if it hopes to protect the integrity of the Supreme Court.… Will the DOJ commit to identifying and pursuing criminal charges against those who violate 18 U.S.C. § 1507? If not, why?.”
Dear Attorney General Garland:
I write with great concern to ask that the Department of Justice (DOJ) publicly condemn the ongoing and unlawful efforts to intimidate Supreme Court Justices. This includes disturbing and dangerous threats made toward the justices, and their families, outside of their homes. This behavior, and lack of DOJ enforcement against those who are violating federal law, is unacceptable.
In the past, you have opined on similar incidents, including in the October 4, 2021 DOJ memorandum, “Partnership among federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement to address threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.” In that memo, you promised to address the “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” against school-board administrators. You also state that the Constitution does not protect “threats of violence or efforts to intimidate individuals,” and that “threats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation’s core values.” You also pledged to use the DOJ’s authority to identify and pursue criminal charges against bad actors who commit such crimes. Of course, Supreme Court Justices are also public servants who deserve protection. So why have you remained silent while evidence mounts of a coordinated campaign to intimidate them as they consider Dobbs v. Jackson?
As you know, there is an ongoing, coordinated campaign of intimidation against the majority of the justices on the Supreme Court. It first took the form of an unprecedented leak of a draft opinion, and now, disguised as protestors, vigilantes have taken “justice” into their own hands. One group, “Ruth Sent Us,” has posted the home addresses of the justices’ online. Following the posting, streets in front of the justices’ homes have been filled by mobs of angry picketers, shouting threatening speech in scenes similar to the unhinged riots during the summer of 2020. Some have drawn hangers, symbolizing abortion, on the street pavement in front of the justices’ homes, while others have threatened, “if you take away our choices, we will riot.” Standing before the Supreme Court, one person yelled, “F*** it! Let’s burn this place down.” That call was amplified thousands of times on social media.
Worse yet, the Biden Administration is actively encouraging this behavior. This week, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki stated, “I know that there’s an outrage right now, I guess, about protests that have been peaceful to date” and “we certainly continue to encourage that, outside of judges’ homes, and that’s the President’s position.” Similarly, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot tweeted that the news surrounding Roe’s potential reversal “has to be a call to arms.” The comments made by the president’s staff and members of the Democratic Party threaten the safety of members of the Court. Those who act at their behest should be held to account as violating federal law, which is clearly laid out in 18 U.S.C. § 1507 and prohibits the picketing or parading outside of a residence occupied by “any judge, juror, witness or court officer” with the intent of influencing the “discharge of his duty.” These woke actors are not engaged in protected speech but instead attempting to intimidate Supreme Court Justices into submission.
The DOJ can no longer remain silent on this issue if it hopes to protect the integrity of the Supreme Court. As such, I ask for responses to the following questions:
- Is the DOJ investigating the doxing of U.S. Supreme Court Justices and how the locations of their homes were obtained?
- Will the DOJ commit to identifying and pursuing criminal charges against those who violate 18 U.S.C. § 1507? If not, why?
- Will the DOJ publicly condemn the activities outside of the Justices’ homes?
Thank you for your attention to this urgent matter.
The protests are technically illegal in Virginia and the abortion activists should have been arrested.
According to the Code of Virginia, “Any person who shall engage in picketing before or about the residence or dwelling place of any individual, or who shall assemble with another person or persons in a manner which disrupts or threatens to disrupt any individual’s right to tranquility in his home, shall be guilty of a Class 3 misdemeanor.”
They’re also a violation of federal law.
Federal U.S. code 1507 prohibits individuals from protesting with the “intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer … in or near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge, juror, witness, or court officer.” Violators face fines and/or imprisonment of up to a year.
Several churches have been vandalized with pro-abortion graffiti since the Supreme Court leak, including a Catholic church in Boulder, Colorado, another in Fort Collins, Colorado, the Catholic News Agency reports; and a third, the Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Houston, Texas. A Tabernacle also was stolen from Saint Bartholomew Catholic Church in Katy, Texas.
Police are investigating arson at two pro-life organizations in Wisconsin and Oregon, as well as vandalism at several pro-life pregnancy centers. Pro-life advocates also have shared videos and reports of being assaulted by abortion activists at rallies and events. And abortion advocates have threatened to bomb a church in New York City.
Alito, the author of the draft opinion, and his family were moved from their home to a secure location due to the threats of violence.
Meanwhile, some Democrat leaders have condoned the illegal activity.
“So long as they are peaceful, that’s OK with me,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters Tuesday.
Similarly, President Joe Biden’s spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Tuesday that the White House “encourages” the protests outside of the judges’ homes as long as they are peaceful.
In a letter to the attorney general Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, slammed the protests outside the justices’ homes as “flagrantly illegal.”
“Federal law makes it a crime for a person, ‘with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer, in the discharge of his duty,’ to ‘picket or parade … in or near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge.’ 18 U.S.C. §1507,” Hawley said.
In a separate letter to Garland on Wednesday, Republican Govs. Larry Hogan, of Maryland, and Glenn Youngkin, of Virginia, also urged the Justice Department to “provide sustained resources to protect the justices and ensure these residential areas are secure,” the Washington Times reports.
Since the draft ruling was leaked, pro-life advocates also have been the targets of arson, vandalism, assaults and threats all across the country.
At least two pro-abortion groups have been calling for churches, especially Catholic Churches, to be the target of abortion activists’ outrage. And one group posted the addresses of the Supreme Court justices online to urge people to protest outside their homes.
“The leaked draft memo that states the Supreme Court has struck down #RoeVWade is an ATROCITY but It is not yet law & doesn’t have to be, but what they plan to do & will do if WE don’t stop them. Rise up! & RAISE HELL!” the group Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights wrote on Twitter.
Abortion activists are trying to intimidate the Supreme Court justices to change their minds and uphold Roe after the leaked draft opinion showed the majority voting to overturn the infamous 1973 ruling. The draft is not final, judges can change their minds, and it is not clear when the high court will issue its final ruling on the abortion case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, but many believe the court will overturn Roe and allow states to protect unborn babies again.
Polls consistently show that most Americans support stronger legal protections for unborn babies than what Roe allows. LifeNews highlighted 11 recent polls here. A new Rasmussen poll shows more Americans want Roe v. Wade overturned (48 percent) than want the ruling to remain in place (45 percent).
Since 1973, more than 63 million unborn babies and hundreds of mothers have died in supposedly “safe, legal” abortions.
In his recent article on abortion Richard Dawkins wrote that “Christopher Hitchens had qualms” about abortion, but the fact was that Hitchens was 100% pro-life and he knew the pro-abortion view of MY BODY MY CHOICE would ultimately lead to demands of 3rd trimester abortions! Take a look at both gentlemen’s views on abortion below:

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the January 1988 print edition of Crisis Magazine. It has been edited for brevity.
CRISIS: Is abortion really a political issue? It seems not. After all, politics is a dispute over the arrangements by which a community lives. Abortion raises a prior question: who belongs to the community? In this sense it seems to be a pre-political question.
HITCHENS: All human value disputes are either political or are capable of being politicized. Even allegedly transcendent matters like transubstantiation have been intensely political, as you well know. The politicization of abortion stems from its central position in the feminist agenda. To a lesser extent, the axiom of “the woman’s right to choose” is an organizing principle in what you might call the broader humanist program as well. As a supporter of humanism and feminism I have strong misgivings about the wisdom, in both senses, of this one-dimensional position. I don’t think feminism should contradict humanism.
What do you mean?
I agree with Michael Kinsley (editor of the New Republic) who once wrote a column saying that the Roe v. Wade decision, which was of course made by a conservative-centrist Court, was the biggest reverse for liberalism in our time. He was speaking tactically, and about the “backlash.” Nobody on the left can avoid noticing that the so-called “prolife” forces are overwhelmingly female and from income groups that traditionally voted Democratic. Yet this simple rebellion by what one might dare to term humble people has been written off as reactionary by people who can’t or won’t see the essential dignity of the right-to-life position.
When did you first start thinking seriously about the abortion issue?
In Britain during the 1960s, there was a “liberal hour” when Parliament during one session voted to abolish capital punishment, to legalize homosexuality for adults, to relax the provisions of the divorce law, and to permit abortions for social reasons as well as the usual clinical or traumatic ones. This was the foot in the door for abortion on demand. It might interest your readers to know that Margaret Thatcher voted to keep capital punishment, to keep homosexuality criminal, to make divorce harder to get, and for the abortion bill. I gather that she’s since changed her position on the latter. My own vote would have been, as so often, exactly the reverse of hers.
Why so?
I really couldn’t bring myself to accept the so-called “social clause.” I had a queasy feeling about the disposability of the fetus. This queasy feeling has not gone away.
What about the feminist claim that abortion is an issue of a woman’s right to control her own body?
Look, once you allow that the occupant of the womb is even potentially a life, it cuts athwart any glib invocation of “the woman’s right to choose.” If the unborn is a candidate member of the next generation, it means that it is society’s responsibility. I used to argue that if this is denied, you might as well permit abortion in the third trimester. I wasn’t as surprised as perhaps I ought to have been when some feminists—only some, and partly to annoy—said yes to that. They at least were prepared to accept their own logic, and say that the unborn is nobody’s business but theirs. That is a very reactionary and selfish position, and it stems from this original evasion about the fetus being “merely” an appendage.
But it’s only an evasion if we have some firm grounds for suspecting that the fetus is a human being.
True. But I think that by now we know where babies come from. And dialectics will tell you that you can’t be meaningfully inhuman unless you are actually or potentially human as well. Pointless to describe a rat or a snake, say, as behaving in an inhuman fashion. I put the question like this. You see a woman kicked in the stomach. Your instinct is properly one of revulsion. You learn that the woman is pregnant. Who will reply that this discovery does not multiply their revulsion? And who will say that this is only because it makes it worse for the woman? I don’t think this is just an instinctive or an emotional reaction (not that we should always distrust our instincts and emotions either). We are stuck with a basic reverence for life.
But aren’t all these notions of the sanctity of human life and so on alien to your otherwise Marxist view of the world?
Hitchens: On the contrary. As a materialist I hold that we don’t have bodies, we are bodies. And as an atheist I believe that we do not have the consolation of the afterlife. We have only one life to live, so it had better be good. All the nonsense we hear about mediate and immediate animation, the point where a soul enters the unborn and so on, is at best beside the point. It has in common with the sectarian feminist view a complete contempt for science and the theory of evolution—which establishes beyond reasonable doubt that life is a continuum that begins at conception because it can’t begin anywhere else.
Would you favor reversing Roe v. Wade and returning abortion to the states, so that there would be local prohibitions on abortion, perhaps with the exceptions you recommend?
I would prefer to see abortion as a federal issue. Nothing is more horrible than inconsistency on the life question. Just look at capital punishment. The tremendous variance from state to state totally undermines the idea of stable justice or fair retribution. This moral objection applies whether or not capital punishment is a deterrent, which I don’t think it is.
A federal prohibition on abortion, then, with rape and incest exceptions?
Yes, but I would like to see something much broader, much more visionary. We need a new compact between society and the woman. It’s a progressive compact because it is aimed at the future generation. It would restrict abortion in most circumstances. Now I know most women don’t like having to justify their circumstances to someone. “How dare you presume to subject me to this?” some will say. But sorry, lady, this is an extremely grave social issue. It’s everybody’s business.
What about people who say they are personally opposed to abortion but think it should be legal? Is that a coherent position?
Hitchens: I suppose it could be made coherent in libertarian terms. I mean, people, say that they object to drinking or racial discrimination but they don’t think the government should ban either. Actually, the popularity of the position comes from people’s reluctance to tell women they haven’t met, who have gone through circumstances they cannot begin to comprehend, that “they know” what she should do about a pregnancy. I myself was reluctant to do this even when my wife got pregnant. It came at the worst possible time. Neither of us wanted to have a kid. My wife was considering an abortion. I urged her not to get one, and ultimately she decided not to, and didn’t. But I wouldn’t have, even if I could, gone beyond an effort to persuade her.
Liberalism claims, for its cardinal virtue, caring or compassion. Isn’t this claim rendered suspect by liberal inability to feel for the fetus?
Well, I’m not exactly a liberal. But there is a debased compassion at work. It tends to be one-sided, exclusively focused on the female condemned, as they say, to domestic serfdom. We should recognize that there are proper concerns and aspirations behind this. Women have been kept down for too long. Their struggle for greater autonomy is, in general, a just one. But its simplistic extension to abortion, I think, has aspects of neurosis and over-reaction. I think some women are trying to take revenge in part for centuries of being told by men precisely how they should live. The prolife movement, if it is to be successful, must understand these sentiments. You cannot conduct any intelligent combat if you do not understand the impulses you oppose.
Photo credit: Getty Images
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Christopher Hitchens was a celebrated essayist, debater, and social critic. A self-professed contrarian known for his dry wit, Hitchens is perhaps the best-known proponent of the “New Atheism.” He died in 2011 at the age of 63.
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C. Everett Koop
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| 13th Surgeon General of the United States | |
| In office January 21, 1982 – October 1, 1989 |
May 12, 2022
A substantial proportion of religious-Right voters care about, or at least vote on, only one issue: abortion. They swallowed their distaste for Donald Trump’s hypocrisy and (by their lights) egregious sinfulness and voted for him because of just one thing. He promised (and, as we now know, alas, delivered) a U.S. Supreme Court that would overturn Roe v. Wade.
Why are they so fanatical about this one issue, eclipsing, as it does, all others? It is because they really think abortion is murder. They synonymize “embryo” with “baby.” Abortion is baby-killing.
Put yourself in the shoes of someone who really believes—deeply and sincerely believes—that abortion is murder. You’d count up the number of “babies killed” and liken it to an annual holocaust of hideous magnitude. No wonder they scream outside abortion clinics and even occasionally murder the doctors who staff them. Wouldn’t we all scream if we believed what they believe?
But how do we respond, we who march in the vanguard of progressive, enlightened thought? “Keep your rosaries off my ovaries.” A woman’s body is hers alone, and nobody else’s business. “My body, my choice.”
Of course I empathize with those slogans. But can you see how hollow they sound to someone who deeply and honestly thinks an embryo is a baby and abortion is murder? “Yes, your woman body is yours but there’s another body inside it, a human being with rights just like yours.” Can you see how the standard pro-choice arguments would fall flat to someone who can’t distinguish an embryo from a baby—someone who sincerely thinks human life begins at conception? Our standard arguments would not only fail with such people, but they’d find them downright infuriating.
We have to modify our arguments to meet the deeply held beliefs of our opponents head-on. We have to persuade them out of their fallacious belief, their passionate conviction that human personhood begins at conception and therefore abortion is murder.
The fallacy is articulated with almost childlike naivete in the official Roman Catholic Doctrine of the Faith titled Donum Vitae:
From the time that the ovum is fertilized, a new life is begun which is neither that of the father nor of the mother; it is rather the life of a new human being with his own growth. It would never be made human if it were not human already. To this perpetual evidence … modern genetic science brings valuable confirmation. It has demonstrated that, from the first instant, the program is fixed as to what this living being will be: a man, this individual-man with his characteristic aspects already well determined. Right from fertilization is begun the adventure of a human life. …1
“It would never be made human if it were not human already.” Seriously? Does that mean that an acorn is an oak tree? Does that mean the whispering embryonic zephyr out in the Atlantic is synonymous with the hurricane that later flattens a town in Florida? Monozygotic twins part after fertilization. Which twin ends up in possession of the unique new human life? Which twin is the inhuman zombie?
But does an aborted embryo experience pain? This is a question we cannot answer for certain. But if it does have a capacity for feelings or experiences, there is absolutely no reason to suppose its capacity exceeds that of an embryonic pig or cow (which it closely resembles in every relevant respect). And, whatever an embryo may or may not feel, it is beyond doubt that an adult pig or cow has a hugely greater capacity to feel pain and dread when led to the slaughter. If you both eat meat and simultaneously object to abortion on the grounds that the embryo might feel pain, you are a hypocrite—or else you just haven’t thought it through. “Pro-life” turns out to mean exclusively pro-human-life.
Maybe the “pro-lifer” carries human exclusiveness further. Even if the embryo has no greater capacity than a pig embryo, it has the potential to become a human being with very much greater capacity than a pig. By aborting it, you are depriving a future human of a fulfilled life. Your abortion robs a would-be thinking, feeling, loving person of existence. What joys might she, or he, have experienced in a long and full life but for your callous act? Might you be killing a Beethoven?
That argument cuts closer to the bone. It is hard to resist speculating on what that incipient little life could have become. But now imagine the potential life you prevent every time you refrain from sexual intercourse. But the “Road not taken” argument rapidly spirals out of control. All too soon we arrive at Michael Palin’s “Every sperm is sacred.” “It is your moral duty to have (unprotected) sex with me because of the potential human life you might be denying if you do not.”
Here’s another point we might make, and this one will work only if—admittedly a fairly big “if”—our hypothetical pro-lifer accepts the truth of evolution. At what point in evolution does human life achieve its peculiar level of sacredness such that killing a human embryo resembling a small fish is infinitely worse than killing an actual fish? If, hypothetically, a latter-day Livingstone stumbled upon a relict population of Australopithecus, Ardipithecus, or Sahelanthropus, should we treat them as infinitely precious human life for moral purposes such as those we deploy in the abortion debate? If you think human life is infinitely precious but “animal” life is not, where in the evolutionary continuum would you draw the line?
This conundrum doesn’t worry me because I’m not an enthusiast for drawing lines—either in evolution or in the parallel process of embryonic development (which is also a smooth continuum, in this case from zygote to baby and beyond). Nor will it worry you if—as is quite possible in a dogmatic “pro-lifer”—you don’t believe in evolution. But there must be some sensible evolutionists out there who are also foes of abortion (even Christopher Hitchens had qualms), and this last argument might give them pause.
But, to return to my main point, our most popular “pro-choice” style of argument—a woman’s absolute right to control her own body—won’t cut any ice with “pro-lifers” who think abortion is murder. If we want to persuade them—and there are plenty of them in Congress and other influential positions—we have to target our arguments directly toward their fundamental premise: the illogical, or at least dubious, premise that personhood begins at conception. “My body, my choice” is very persuasive to you and me. It will leave them cold, even needlessly hostile. And they are the ones we need to persuade.
1. http://www.priestsforlife.org/magisterium/donumvitae.htm
Richard Dawkins is an English ethologist, evolutionary biologist, and bestselling author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was the University of Oxford’s Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008. In 2006, he founded the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science, now a division of the Center for Inquiry.

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September 25, 2021
President Biden c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. I know that you don’t agree with my pro-life views but I wanted to challenge you as a fellow Christian to re-examine your pro-choice view.
In the past I have spent most of my time looking at this issue from the spiritual side. In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented against abortion (Episode 1), infanticide (Episode 2), euthanasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close look at the truth claims of the Bible.
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I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the video WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? which can be found on You Tube. It is very valuable information for Christians to have.
Today I want to respond to your letter to me on July 9, 2021. Here it is below:
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
July 9, 2021
Mr. Everette Hatcher III
Alexander, AR
Dear Mr. Hatcher,
Thank you for taking your time to share your thoughts on abortion. Hearing from passionate individuals like me inspires me every day, and I welcome the opportunity to respond to your letter
Our country faces many challenges, and the road we will travel together will be one of the most difficult in our history. Despite these tough times, I have never been more optimistic for the future of America. I believe we are better positioned than any country in the world to lead in the 21st century not just by the example of our power but by the power of our example.
As we move forward to address the complex issues of our time, I encourage you to remain an active participant in helping write the next great chapter of the American story. We need your courage and dedication at this critical time, and we must meet this moment together as the United States of America. If we do that, I believe that our best days still lie ahead.
Sincerely
Joe Biden
Mr. President, my wife was born in JEFFERSON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL in Pine Bluff, Arkansas and Adrian Rogers tells a story about another lady that was born in that same hospital: “They took that grocery sack and Maria home and one hour passed and two hours passed and that baby was still crying and panting for his life in that grocery sack. They took that little baby down to the hospital there in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and they called an obstetrician and he called a pediatrician and they called nurses and they began to work on that little baby. Today that baby is alive and well and healthy, that little mass of protoplasm. That little thing that wasn’t a human being is alive and well. I want to tell you they spent $150,000 to save the life of that baby. NOW CAN YOU EXPLAIN TO ME HOW THEY CAN SPEND $150,000 TO SAVE THE LIFE OF SOMETHING THAT SOMEBODY WAS PAYING ANOTHER DOCTOR TO TAKE THE LIFE OF?”
Carl Sagan pictured below:

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Recently I have been revisiting my correspondence in 1995 with the famous astronomer Carl Sagan who I had the privilege to correspond with in 1994, 1995 and 1996. In 1996 I had a chance to respond to his December 5, 1995letter on January 10, 1996 and I never heard back from him again since his cancer returned and he passed away later in 1996. Below is what Carl Sagan wrote to me in his December 5, 1995 letter:
Thanks for your recent letter about evolution and abortion. The correlation is hardly one to one; there are evolutionists who are anti-abortion and anti-evolutionists who are pro-abortion.You argue that God exists because otherwise we could not understand the world in our consciousness. But if you think God is necessary to understand the world, then why do you not ask the next question of where God came from? And if you say “God was always here,” why not say that the universe was always here? On abortion, my views are contained in the enclosed article (Sagan, Carl and Ann Druyan {1990}, “The Question of Abortion,” Parade Magazine, April 22.)
I was introduced to when reading a book by Francis Schaeffer called HE IS THERE AND HE IS NOT SILENT written in 1968.

Francis Schaeffer
I was blessed with the opportunity to correspond with Dr. Sagan, and in his December 5, 1995 letter Dr. Sagan went on to tell me that he was enclosing his article “The Question of Abortion: A Search for Answers”by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. I am going to respond to several points made in that article. Here is a portion of Sagan’s article (here is a link to the whole article):


Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan pictured above
by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan
For the complete text, including illustrations, introductory quote, footnotes, and commentary on the reaction to the originally published article see Billions and Billions.
The issue had been decided years ago. The court had chosen the middle ground. You’d think the fight was over. Instead, there are mass rallies, bombings and intimidation, murders of workers at abortion clinics, arrests, intense lobbying, legislative drama, Congressional hearings, Supreme Court decisions, major political parties almost defining themselves on the issue, and clerics threatening politicians with perdition. Partisans fling accusations of hypocrisy and murder. The intent of the Constitution and the will of God are equally invoked. Doubtful arguments are trotted out as certitudes. The contending factions call on science to bolster their positions. Families are divided, husbands and wives agree not to discuss it, old friends are no longer speaking. Politicians check the latest polls to discover the dictates of their consciences. Amid all the shouting, it is hard for the adversaries to hear one another. Opinions are polarized. Minds are closed.
Is it wrong to abort a pregnancy? Always? Sometimes? Never? How do we decide? We wrote this article to understand better what the contending views are and to see if we ourselves could find a position that would satisfy us both. Is there no middle ground? We had to weigh the arguments of both sides for consistency and to pose test cases, some of which are purely hypothetical. If in some of these tests we seem to go too far, we ask the reader to be patient with us–we’re trying to stress the various positions to the breaking point to see their weaknesses and where they fail.
In contemplative moments, nearly everyone recognizes that the issue is not wholly one-sided. Many partisans of differing views, we find, feel some disquiet, some unease when confronting what’s behind the opposing arguments. (This is partly why such confrontations are avoided.) And the issue surely touches on deep questions: What are our responses to one another? Should we permit the state to intrude into the most intimate and personal aspects of our lives? Where are the boundaries of freedom? What does it mean to be human?
Of the many actual points of view, it is widely held–especially in the media, which rarely have the time or the inclination to make fine distinctions–that there are only two: “pro-choice” and “pro-life.” This is what the two principal warring camps like to call themselves, and that’s what we’ll call them here. In the simplest characterization, a pro-choicer would hold that the decision to abort a pregnancy is to be made only by the woman; the state has no right to interfere. And a pro-lifer would hold that, from the moment of conception, the embryo or fetus is alive; that this life imposes on us a moral obligation to preserve it; and that abortion is tantamount to murder. Both names–pro-choice and pro-life–were picked with an eye toward influencing those whose minds are not yet made up: Few people wish to be counted either as being against freedom of choice or as opposed to life. Indeed, freedom and life are two of our most cherished values, and here they seem to be in fundamental conflict.
Let’s consider these two absolutist positions in turn. A newborn baby is surely the same being it was just before birth. There ‘s good evidence that a late-term fetus responds to sound–including music, but especially its mother’s voice. It can suck its thumb or do a somersault. Occasionally, it generates adult brain-wave patterns. Some people claim to remember being born, or even the uterine environment. Perhaps there is thought in the womb. It’s hard to maintain that a transformation to full personhood happens abruptly at the moment of birth. Why, then, should it be murder to kill an infant the day after it was born but not the day before?
As a practical matter, this isn’t very important: Less than 1 percent of all tabulated abortions in the United States are listed in the last three months of pregnancy (and, on closer investigation, most such reports turn out to be due to miscarriage or miscalculation). But third-trimester abortions provide a test of the limits of the pro-choice point of view. Does a woman’s “innate right to control her own body” encompass the right to kill a near-term fetus who is, for all intents and purposes, identical to a newborn child?
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End of Sagan Excerpt
When I was in high school the book and film series named WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? came out and it featured Doctor C. Everett Koop and Francis Schaeffer and they looked at the issues of abortion, infanticide, and youth euthanasia and they looked at comments from such scholars as Peter Singer and James D. Watson.

C. Everett Koop pictured above and Peter Singer below

Peter Singer, an endowed chair at Princeton’s Center for Human Values, said, “Killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all.”

In May 1973, James D. Watson, the Nobel Prize laureate who discovered the double helix of DNA, granted an interview to Prism magazine, then a publication of the American Medical Association. Time later reported the interview to the general public, quoting Watson as having said, “If a child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice only a few are given under the present system. The doctor could allow the child to die if the parents so choose and save a lot of misery and suffering. I believe this view is the only rational, compassionate attitude to have.”

On August 30, 1995 I mailed a letter to Carl Sagan that probably prompted this discussion on abortion and it enclosed a lengthy story from Adrian Rogers about an abortion case in Pine Bluff, Arkansas that almost became an infanticide case:
An excerpt from the Sunday morning message (11-6-83) by Adrian Rogers in Memphis, TN.
I want to tell you that secular humanism and so-called abortion rights are inseparably linked together. We have been taught that our bodies and our children are the products of the evolutionary process, and so therefore human life may not be all that valuable to begin with. We have come today to where it is legal and even considered to be a good thing to put little babies to death…15 million little babies put to death since 1973 because of this philosophy of Secular Humanism.
How did the court make that type of decision? You would think it would be so obvious. You can’t do that! You can’t kill little babies! Why? Because the Bible says! Friend, they don’t give a hoot what the Bible says! There used to be a time when they talked about what the Bible says because there was a time that we as a nation had a constitution that was based in the Judeo-Christian ethic, but today if we say “The Bible says” or “God says “Separation of Church and State. Don’t tell us what the Bible says or what God says. We will tell you what we think!” Therefore, they look at the situation and they decide if it is right or wrong purely on the humanistic philosophy that right and wrong are relative and the situation says what is right or what is wrong.
This little girl just 19 years old went into the doctor’s office and he examined her. He said, “We can take take of you.” He gave her an injection in her arm that was to cause her to go into labor and to get rid of that protoplasm, that feud, that little mass that was in her, but she wasn’t prepared for the sound she was about to hear. It was a little baby crying. That little baby weighed 13 ounces. His hand the size of my thumbnail. You know what the doctor did. The doctor put that little baby in a grocery sack and gave it to Maria’s two friends who were with her in that doctor office and Said, “It will stop making those noises after a while.”

(Adrian Rogers pictured above)


They took that grocery sack and Maria home and one hour passed and two hours passed and that baby was still crying and panting for his life in that grocery sack. They took that little baby down to the hospital there in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and they called an obstetrician and he called a pediatrician and they called nurses and they began to work on that little baby. Today that baby is alive and well and healthy, that little mass of protoplasm. That little thing that wasn’t a human being is alive and well. I want to tell you they spent $150,000 to save the life of that baby. NOW CAN YOU EXPLAIN TO ME HOW THEY CAN SPEND $150,000 TO SAVE THE LIFE OF SOMETHING THAT SOMEBODY WAS PAYING ANOTHER DOCTOR TO TAKE THE LIFE OF? The same life!!! Are you going to tell me that is not a baby? Are you going to tell me that if that baby had been put to death it would not have been murder? You will never convince me of that. What has happened to us in America? We have been sold a bill of goods by the Secular Humanists!

Carl Sagan asked, “Does a woman’s “innate right to control her own body” encompass the right to kill a near-term fetus who is, for all intents and purposes, identical to a newborn child?”
This message “A Christian Manifesto” was given in 1982 by the late Christian Philosopher Francis Schaeffer when he was age 70 at D. James Kennedy’s Corral Ridge Presbyterian Church.
Listen to this important message where Dr. Schaeffer says it is the duty of Christians to disobey the government when it comes in conflict with God’s laws. So many have misinterpreted Romans 13 to mean unconditional obedience to the state. When the state promotes an evil agenda and anti-Christian statues we must obey God rather than men. Acts
I use to watch James Kennedy preach from his TV pulpit with great delight in the 1980’s. Both of these men are gone to be with the Lord now. We need new Christian leaders to rise up in their stead.
To view Part 2 See Francis Schaeffer Lecture- Christian Manifesto Pt 2 of 2 video
The religious and political freedom’s we enjoy as Americans was based on the Bible and the legacy of the Reformation according to Francis Schaeffer. These freedoms will continue to diminish as we cast off the authority of Holy Scripture.
In public schools there is no other view of reality but that final reality is shaped by chance.
Likewise, public television gives us many things that we like culturally but so much of it is mere propaganda shaped by a humanistic world and life view.
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I was able to watch Francis Schaeffer deliver a speech on a book he wrote called “A Christian Manifesto” and I heard him in several interviews on it in 1981 and 1982. I listened with great interest since I also read that book over and over again. Below is a portion of one of Schaeffer’s talks on a crucial subject that is very important today too.
A great talk by Francis Schaeffer:A Christian Manifesto
by Dr. Francis A. SchaefferThis address was delivered by the late Dr. Schaeffer in 1982 at the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It is based on one of his books, which bears the same title._________
Infanticide and youth enthansia ———So what we find then, is that the medical profession has largely changed — not all doctors. I’m sure there are doctors here in the audience who feel very, very differently, who feel indeed that human life is important and you wouldn’t take it, easily, wantonly. But, in general, we must say (and all you have to do is look at the TV programs), all you have to do is hear about the increased talk about allowing the Mongoloid child — the child with Down’s Syndrome — to starve to death if it’s born this way. Increasingly, we find on every side the medical profession has changed its views.
The view now is, “Is this life worth saving?”I look at you… You’re an older congregation than I am usually used to speaking to. You’d better think, because — this — means — you! It does not stop with abortion and infanticide. It stops at the question, “What about the old person? Is he worth hanging on to?” Should we, as they are doing in England in this awful organization, EXIT, teach older people to commit suicide? Should we help them get rid of them because they are an economic burden, a nuisance? I want to tell you, once you begin chipping away the medical profession…
The intrinsic value of the human life is founded upon the Judeo-Christian concept that man is unique because he is made in the image of God, and not because he is well, strong, a consumer, a sex object or any other thing. That is where whatever compassion this country has is, and certainly it is far from perfect and has never been perfect. Nor out of the Reformation has there been a Golden Age, but whatever compassion there has ever been, it is rooted in the fact that our culture knows that man is unique, is made in the image of God. Take it away, and I just say gently, the stopper is out of the bathtub for all human life.

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Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband. Now I wanted to make some comments concerning our shared Christian faith. I respect you for putting your faith in Christ for your eternal life. I am pleading to you on the basis of the Bible to please review your religious views concerning abortion. It was the Bible that caused the abolition movement of the 1800’s and it also was the basis for Martin Luther King’s movement for civil rights and it also is the basis for recognizing the unborn children.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733,
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By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom, pictured attending a gala in Beverly Hills, California, on May 4, has pushed for a series of funding packages and pro-abortion bills in California. (Photo: David Livingston/Getty Images)
California Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to make sure you know how much he approves of abortion.
On Wednesday, he announced $57 million in state funding to promote abortion—on top of $68 million he announced in January. The package includes $40 million to abort babies of low-income women, $15 million to subsidize pro-abortion activism, and $1 million each to maintain an abortion website and to research other avenues to bankroll the abortion industry.
In light of a bill sailing through the Legislature (so far it has passed three Senate committees with a combined vote of 23-3), Newsom’s announcement amounts to sponsoring abortion tourism.
Under SB 1142 (which has sailed through), the state’s Commission on the Status of Women and Girls (can you define those terms, please?) would administer an Abortion Practical Support Fund that accepts any and all donations to sponsor abortion—essentially a GoFundMe campaign—which is partly targeted at patients who “come from out of state.”
The bill also provides for state-sponsored advertisements about how to obtain an abortion (as if anyone doesn’t know) and explicitly “declares” that “abortion care is a constitutional right.”
Newsom’s funding and SB 1142 are part of a blizzard of pro-abortion bills sweeping through California’s Legislature. In March, he signed into law SB 245, which eliminates insurance copays for abortions.
Also scoring huge committee wins (18-5 so far) is Assembly Bill 2223, which would decriminalize “actions or omissions with respect to … perinatal death [aka after the child is born] due to a pregnancy-related cause,” which blurs the line with infanticide if not outright permitting it.
California Family Policy Council keeps an extensive list of the most concerning bills (on abortion and other issues), which includes:
Do elected officials in Sacramento have nothing better to do than sit around and think up ways to kill other people’s unborn children? Not quite. It turns out Newsom outsourced that distasteful responsibility to the California Future of Abortion Council, a cabal of over 40 abortion industry advocates, including eight Planned Parenthood affiliates, which gave the state government “45 policy recommendations relating to seven main areas of focus.” It seems that this sudden rash of bills is simply the state giving the abortion lobby everything it asked for.
Why is California’s government so zealous for abortion? In part, California is responding to anticipation of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which may overturn Roe v. Wade and return abortion policy back to the states, according to a draft opinion leaked last week.
But it’s more than that. Newsom has endorsed abortion tourism for much longer; all the way back in the misty, pre-COVID-19 past of 2019, he signed a proclamation “welcoming women to California” for abortions. Additionally, the FAB Council’s report and Newsom’s January budget were both released before the draft Dobbs opinion was leaked.
At some point, we simply must conclude that California Democrats want more babies aborted. Leftists like to complain about greedy corporations getting sweet deals from the government at the expense of the general public—but that’s exactly what’s happening in California with abortion businesses.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of California’s quasi-religious extremism is the religious undertone. “We’ll be a sanctuary,” promised Newsom—that is, a place that is safe because it is sacred.
But safe for whom, or rather, for what? Certainly not for the unborn babies whose lives are ended, nor for the mothers who face crushing guilt and often life-threatening complications. Only the right to end a baby’s life, a staple of demonic cults for millennia, is protected by this sinister “sanctuary.”
When the draft opinion was leaked, Newsom declared, “We are going to fight like hell,” but what he meant as an expletive is quite literally true.
God blessed Adam and Eve by commanding them, “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28), and all Scripture reaffirms that “the fruit of the womb [is] a reward” (Psalm 127:3). Yet today many people are desperate to extinguish their offspring to avoid the natural consequences of their sexual immorality.
The consequences—children—are good gifts from God. “Let the children come to me,” said Jesus; “do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:14). California has distinguished itself as a leader in hindering the children from living at all, and that will bring its own consequences.
Originally published by Family Research Council.
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In his recent article on abortion Richard Dawkins wrote that “Christopher Hitchens had qualms” about abortion, but the fact was that Hitchens was 100% pro-life and he knew the pro-abortion view of MY BODY MY CHOICE would ultimately lead to demands of 3rd trimester abortions! Take a look at both gentlemen’s views on abortion below:

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the January 1988 print edition of Crisis Magazine. It has been edited for brevity.
CRISIS: Is abortion really a political issue? It seems not. After all, politics is a dispute over the arrangements by which a community lives. Abortion raises a prior question: who belongs to the community? In this sense it seems to be a pre-political question.
HITCHENS: All human value disputes are either political or are capable of being politicized. Even allegedly transcendent matters like transubstantiation have been intensely political, as you well know. The politicization of abortion stems from its central position in the feminist agenda. To a lesser extent, the axiom of “the woman’s right to choose” is an organizing principle in what you might call the broader humanist program as well. As a supporter of humanism and feminism I have strong misgivings about the wisdom, in both senses, of this one-dimensional position. I don’t think feminism should contradict humanism.
What do you mean?
I agree with Michael Kinsley (editor of the New Republic) who once wrote a column saying that the Roe v. Wade decision, which was of course made by a conservative-centrist Court, was the biggest reverse for liberalism in our time. He was speaking tactically, and about the “backlash.” Nobody on the left can avoid noticing that the so-called “prolife” forces are overwhelmingly female and from income groups that traditionally voted Democratic. Yet this simple rebellion by what one might dare to term humble people has been written off as reactionary by people who can’t or won’t see the essential dignity of the right-to-life position.
When did you first start thinking seriously about the abortion issue?
In Britain during the 1960s, there was a “liberal hour” when Parliament during one session voted to abolish capital punishment, to legalize homosexuality for adults, to relax the provisions of the divorce law, and to permit abortions for social reasons as well as the usual clinical or traumatic ones. This was the foot in the door for abortion on demand. It might interest your readers to know that Margaret Thatcher voted to keep capital punishment, to keep homosexuality criminal, to make divorce harder to get, and for the abortion bill. I gather that she’s since changed her position on the latter. My own vote would have been, as so often, exactly the reverse of hers.
Why so?
I really couldn’t bring myself to accept the so-called “social clause.” I had a queasy feeling about the disposability of the fetus. This queasy feeling has not gone away.
What about the feminist claim that abortion is an issue of a woman’s right to control her own body?
Look, once you allow that the occupant of the womb is even potentially a life, it cuts athwart any glib invocation of “the woman’s right to choose.” If the unborn is a candidate member of the next generation, it means that it is society’s responsibility. I used to argue that if this is denied, you might as well permit abortion in the third trimester. I wasn’t as surprised as perhaps I ought to have been when some feminists—only some, and partly to annoy—said yes to that. They at least were prepared to accept their own logic, and say that the unborn is nobody’s business but theirs. That is a very reactionary and selfish position, and it stems from this original evasion about the fetus being “merely” an appendage.
But it’s only an evasion if we have some firm grounds for suspecting that the fetus is a human being.
True. But I think that by now we know where babies come from. And dialectics will tell you that you can’t be meaningfully inhuman unless you are actually or potentially human as well. Pointless to describe a rat or a snake, say, as behaving in an inhuman fashion. I put the question like this. You see a woman kicked in the stomach. Your instinct is properly one of revulsion. You learn that the woman is pregnant. Who will reply that this discovery does not multiply their revulsion? And who will say that this is only because it makes it worse for the woman? I don’t think this is just an instinctive or an emotional reaction (not that we should always distrust our instincts and emotions either). We are stuck with a basic reverence for life.
But aren’t all these notions of the sanctity of human life and so on alien to your otherwise Marxist view of the world?
Hitchens: On the contrary. As a materialist I hold that we don’t have bodies, we are bodies. And as an atheist I believe that we do not have the consolation of the afterlife. We have only one life to live, so it had better be good. All the nonsense we hear about mediate and immediate animation, the point where a soul enters the unborn and so on, is at best beside the point. It has in common with the sectarian feminist view a complete contempt for science and the theory of evolution—which establishes beyond reasonable doubt that life is a continuum that begins at conception because it can’t begin anywhere else.
Would you favor reversing Roe v. Wade and returning abortion to the states, so that there would be local prohibitions on abortion, perhaps with the exceptions you recommend?
I would prefer to see abortion as a federal issue. Nothing is more horrible than inconsistency on the life question. Just look at capital punishment. The tremendous variance from state to state totally undermines the idea of stable justice or fair retribution. This moral objection applies whether or not capital punishment is a deterrent, which I don’t think it is.
A federal prohibition on abortion, then, with rape and incest exceptions?
Yes, but I would like to see something much broader, much more visionary. We need a new compact between society and the woman. It’s a progressive compact because it is aimed at the future generation. It would restrict abortion in most circumstances. Now I know most women don’t like having to justify their circumstances to someone. “How dare you presume to subject me to this?” some will say. But sorry, lady, this is an extremely grave social issue. It’s everybody’s business.
What about people who say they are personally opposed to abortion but think it should be legal? Is that a coherent position?
Hitchens: I suppose it could be made coherent in libertarian terms. I mean, people, say that they object to drinking or racial discrimination but they don’t think the government should ban either. Actually, the popularity of the position comes from people’s reluctance to tell women they haven’t met, who have gone through circumstances they cannot begin to comprehend, that “they know” what she should do about a pregnancy. I myself was reluctant to do this even when my wife got pregnant. It came at the worst possible time. Neither of us wanted to have a kid. My wife was considering an abortion. I urged her not to get one, and ultimately she decided not to, and didn’t. But I wouldn’t have, even if I could, gone beyond an effort to persuade her.
Liberalism claims, for its cardinal virtue, caring or compassion. Isn’t this claim rendered suspect by liberal inability to feel for the fetus?
Well, I’m not exactly a liberal. But there is a debased compassion at work. It tends to be one-sided, exclusively focused on the female condemned, as they say, to domestic serfdom. We should recognize that there are proper concerns and aspirations behind this. Women have been kept down for too long. Their struggle for greater autonomy is, in general, a just one. But its simplistic extension to abortion, I think, has aspects of neurosis and over-reaction. I think some women are trying to take revenge in part for centuries of being told by men precisely how they should live. The prolife movement, if it is to be successful, must understand these sentiments. You cannot conduct any intelligent combat if you do not understand the impulses you oppose.
Photo credit: Getty Images
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Christopher Hitchens was a celebrated essayist, debater, and social critic. A self-professed contrarian known for his dry wit, Hitchens is perhaps the best-known proponent of the “New Atheism.” He died in 2011 at the age of 63.
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C. Everett Koop
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| 13th Surgeon General of the United States | |
| In office January 21, 1982 – October 1, 1989 |
May 12, 2022
A substantial proportion of religious-Right voters care about, or at least vote on, only one issue: abortion. They swallowed their distaste for Donald Trump’s hypocrisy and (by their lights) egregious sinfulness and voted for him because of just one thing. He promised (and, as we now know, alas, delivered) a U.S. Supreme Court that would overturn Roe v. Wade.
Why are they so fanatical about this one issue, eclipsing, as it does, all others? It is because they really think abortion is murder. They synonymize “embryo” with “baby.” Abortion is baby-killing.
Put yourself in the shoes of someone who really believes—deeply and sincerely believes—that abortion is murder. You’d count up the number of “babies killed” and liken it to an annual holocaust of hideous magnitude. No wonder they scream outside abortion clinics and even occasionally murder the doctors who staff them. Wouldn’t we all scream if we believed what they believe?
But how do we respond, we who march in the vanguard of progressive, enlightened thought? “Keep your rosaries off my ovaries.” A woman’s body is hers alone, and nobody else’s business. “My body, my choice.”
Of course I empathize with those slogans. But can you see how hollow they sound to someone who deeply and honestly thinks an embryo is a baby and abortion is murder? “Yes, your woman body is yours but there’s another body inside it, a human being with rights just like yours.” Can you see how the standard pro-choice arguments would fall flat to someone who can’t distinguish an embryo from a baby—someone who sincerely thinks human life begins at conception? Our standard arguments would not only fail with such people, but they’d find them downright infuriating.
We have to modify our arguments to meet the deeply held beliefs of our opponents head-on. We have to persuade them out of their fallacious belief, their passionate conviction that human personhood begins at conception and therefore abortion is murder.
The fallacy is articulated with almost childlike naivete in the official Roman Catholic Doctrine of the Faith titled Donum Vitae:
From the time that the ovum is fertilized, a new life is begun which is neither that of the father nor of the mother; it is rather the life of a new human being with his own growth. It would never be made human if it were not human already. To this perpetual evidence … modern genetic science brings valuable confirmation. It has demonstrated that, from the first instant, the program is fixed as to what this living being will be: a man, this individual-man with his characteristic aspects already well determined. Right from fertilization is begun the adventure of a human life. …1
“It would never be made human if it were not human already.” Seriously? Does that mean that an acorn is an oak tree? Does that mean the whispering embryonic zephyr out in the Atlantic is synonymous with the hurricane that later flattens a town in Florida? Monozygotic twins part after fertilization. Which twin ends up in possession of the unique new human life? Which twin is the inhuman zombie?
But does an aborted embryo experience pain? This is a question we cannot answer for certain. But if it does have a capacity for feelings or experiences, there is absolutely no reason to suppose its capacity exceeds that of an embryonic pig or cow (which it closely resembles in every relevant respect). And, whatever an embryo may or may not feel, it is beyond doubt that an adult pig or cow has a hugely greater capacity to feel pain and dread when led to the slaughter. If you both eat meat and simultaneously object to abortion on the grounds that the embryo might feel pain, you are a hypocrite—or else you just haven’t thought it through. “Pro-life” turns out to mean exclusively pro-human-life.
Maybe the “pro-lifer” carries human exclusiveness further. Even if the embryo has no greater capacity than a pig embryo, it has the potential to become a human being with very much greater capacity than a pig. By aborting it, you are depriving a future human of a fulfilled life. Your abortion robs a would-be thinking, feeling, loving person of existence. What joys might she, or he, have experienced in a long and full life but for your callous act? Might you be killing a Beethoven?
That argument cuts closer to the bone. It is hard to resist speculating on what that incipient little life could have become. But now imagine the potential life you prevent every time you refrain from sexual intercourse. But the “Road not taken” argument rapidly spirals out of control. All too soon we arrive at Michael Palin’s “Every sperm is sacred.” “It is your moral duty to have (unprotected) sex with me because of the potential human life you might be denying if you do not.”
Here’s another point we might make, and this one will work only if—admittedly a fairly big “if”—our hypothetical pro-lifer accepts the truth of evolution. At what point in evolution does human life achieve its peculiar level of sacredness such that killing a human embryo resembling a small fish is infinitely worse than killing an actual fish? If, hypothetically, a latter-day Livingstone stumbled upon a relict population of Australopithecus, Ardipithecus, or Sahelanthropus, should we treat them as infinitely precious human life for moral purposes such as those we deploy in the abortion debate? If you think human life is infinitely precious but “animal” life is not, where in the evolutionary continuum would you draw the line?
This conundrum doesn’t worry me because I’m not an enthusiast for drawing lines—either in evolution or in the parallel process of embryonic development (which is also a smooth continuum, in this case from zygote to baby and beyond). Nor will it worry you if—as is quite possible in a dogmatic “pro-lifer”—you don’t believe in evolution. But there must be some sensible evolutionists out there who are also foes of abortion (even Christopher Hitchens had qualms), and this last argument might give them pause.
But, to return to my main point, our most popular “pro-choice” style of argument—a woman’s absolute right to control her own body—won’t cut any ice with “pro-lifers” who think abortion is murder. If we want to persuade them—and there are plenty of them in Congress and other influential positions—we have to target our arguments directly toward their fundamental premise: the illogical, or at least dubious, premise that personhood begins at conception. “My body, my choice” is very persuasive to you and me. It will leave them cold, even needlessly hostile. And they are the ones we need to persuade.
1. http://www.priestsforlife.org/magisterium/donumvitae.htm
Richard Dawkins is an English ethologist, evolutionary biologist, and bestselling author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was the University of Oxford’s Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008. In 2006, he founded the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science, now a division of the Center for Inquiry.

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September 25, 2021
President Biden c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. I know that you don’t agree with my pro-life views but I wanted to challenge you as a fellow Christian to re-examine your pro-choice view.
In the past I have spent most of my time looking at this issue from the spiritual side. In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented against abortion (Episode 1), infanticide (Episode 2), euthanasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close look at the truth claims of the Bible.
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I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the video WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? which can be found on You Tube. It is very valuable information for Christians to have.
Today I want to respond to your letter to me on July 9, 2021. Here it is below:
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
July 9, 2021
Mr. Everette Hatcher III
Alexander, AR
Dear Mr. Hatcher,
Thank you for taking your time to share your thoughts on abortion. Hearing from passionate individuals like me inspires me every day, and I welcome the opportunity to respond to your letter
Our country faces many challenges, and the road we will travel together will be one of the most difficult in our history. Despite these tough times, I have never been more optimistic for the future of America. I believe we are better positioned than any country in the world to lead in the 21st century not just by the example of our power but by the power of our example.
As we move forward to address the complex issues of our time, I encourage you to remain an active participant in helping write the next great chapter of the American story. We need your courage and dedication at this critical time, and we must meet this moment together as the United States of America. If we do that, I believe that our best days still lie ahead.
Sincerely
Joe Biden
Mr. President, my wife was born in JEFFERSON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL in Pine Bluff, Arkansas and Adrian Rogers tells a story about another lady that was born in that same hospital: “They took that grocery sack and Maria home and one hour passed and two hours passed and that baby was still crying and panting for his life in that grocery sack. They took that little baby down to the hospital there in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and they called an obstetrician and he called a pediatrician and they called nurses and they began to work on that little baby. Today that baby is alive and well and healthy, that little mass of protoplasm. That little thing that wasn’t a human being is alive and well. I want to tell you they spent $150,000 to save the life of that baby. NOW CAN YOU EXPLAIN TO ME HOW THEY CAN SPEND $150,000 TO SAVE THE LIFE OF SOMETHING THAT SOMEBODY WAS PAYING ANOTHER DOCTOR TO TAKE THE LIFE OF?”
Carl Sagan pictured below:

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Recently I have been revisiting my correspondence in 1995 with the famous astronomer Carl Sagan who I had the privilege to correspond with in 1994, 1995 and 1996. In 1996 I had a chance to respond to his December 5, 1995letter on January 10, 1996 and I never heard back from him again since his cancer returned and he passed away later in 1996. Below is what Carl Sagan wrote to me in his December 5, 1995 letter:
Thanks for your recent letter about evolution and abortion. The correlation is hardly one to one; there are evolutionists who are anti-abortion and anti-evolutionists who are pro-abortion.You argue that God exists because otherwise we could not understand the world in our consciousness. But if you think God is necessary to understand the world, then why do you not ask the next question of where God came from? And if you say “God was always here,” why not say that the universe was always here? On abortion, my views are contained in the enclosed article (Sagan, Carl and Ann Druyan {1990}, “The Question of Abortion,” Parade Magazine, April 22.)
I was introduced to when reading a book by Francis Schaeffer called HE IS THERE AND HE IS NOT SILENT written in 1968.

Francis Schaeffer
I was blessed with the opportunity to correspond with Dr. Sagan, and in his December 5, 1995 letter Dr. Sagan went on to tell me that he was enclosing his article “The Question of Abortion: A Search for Answers”by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. I am going to respond to several points made in that article. Here is a portion of Sagan’s article (here is a link to the whole article):


Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan pictured above
by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan
For the complete text, including illustrations, introductory quote, footnotes, and commentary on the reaction to the originally published article see Billions and Billions.
The issue had been decided years ago. The court had chosen the middle ground. You’d think the fight was over. Instead, there are mass rallies, bombings and intimidation, murders of workers at abortion clinics, arrests, intense lobbying, legislative drama, Congressional hearings, Supreme Court decisions, major political parties almost defining themselves on the issue, and clerics threatening politicians with perdition. Partisans fling accusations of hypocrisy and murder. The intent of the Constitution and the will of God are equally invoked. Doubtful arguments are trotted out as certitudes. The contending factions call on science to bolster their positions. Families are divided, husbands and wives agree not to discuss it, old friends are no longer speaking. Politicians check the latest polls to discover the dictates of their consciences. Amid all the shouting, it is hard for the adversaries to hear one another. Opinions are polarized. Minds are closed.
Is it wrong to abort a pregnancy? Always? Sometimes? Never? How do we decide? We wrote this article to understand better what the contending views are and to see if we ourselves could find a position that would satisfy us both. Is there no middle ground? We had to weigh the arguments of both sides for consistency and to pose test cases, some of which are purely hypothetical. If in some of these tests we seem to go too far, we ask the reader to be patient with us–we’re trying to stress the various positions to the breaking point to see their weaknesses and where they fail.
In contemplative moments, nearly everyone recognizes that the issue is not wholly one-sided. Many partisans of differing views, we find, feel some disquiet, some unease when confronting what’s behind the opposing arguments. (This is partly why such confrontations are avoided.) And the issue surely touches on deep questions: What are our responses to one another? Should we permit the state to intrude into the most intimate and personal aspects of our lives? Where are the boundaries of freedom? What does it mean to be human?
Of the many actual points of view, it is widely held–especially in the media, which rarely have the time or the inclination to make fine distinctions–that there are only two: “pro-choice” and “pro-life.” This is what the two principal warring camps like to call themselves, and that’s what we’ll call them here. In the simplest characterization, a pro-choicer would hold that the decision to abort a pregnancy is to be made only by the woman; the state has no right to interfere. And a pro-lifer would hold that, from the moment of conception, the embryo or fetus is alive; that this life imposes on us a moral obligation to preserve it; and that abortion is tantamount to murder. Both names–pro-choice and pro-life–were picked with an eye toward influencing those whose minds are not yet made up: Few people wish to be counted either as being against freedom of choice or as opposed to life. Indeed, freedom and life are two of our most cherished values, and here they seem to be in fundamental conflict.
Let’s consider these two absolutist positions in turn. A newborn baby is surely the same being it was just before birth. There ‘s good evidence that a late-term fetus responds to sound–including music, but especially its mother’s voice. It can suck its thumb or do a somersault. Occasionally, it generates adult brain-wave patterns. Some people claim to remember being born, or even the uterine environment. Perhaps there is thought in the womb. It’s hard to maintain that a transformation to full personhood happens abruptly at the moment of birth. Why, then, should it be murder to kill an infant the day after it was born but not the day before?
As a practical matter, this isn’t very important: Less than 1 percent of all tabulated abortions in the United States are listed in the last three months of pregnancy (and, on closer investigation, most such reports turn out to be due to miscarriage or miscalculation). But third-trimester abortions provide a test of the limits of the pro-choice point of view. Does a woman’s “innate right to control her own body” encompass the right to kill a near-term fetus who is, for all intents and purposes, identical to a newborn child?
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End of Sagan Excerpt
When I was in high school the book and film series named WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? came out and it featured Doctor C. Everett Koop and Francis Schaeffer and they looked at the issues of abortion, infanticide, and youth euthanasia and they looked at comments from such scholars as Peter Singer and James D. Watson.

C. Everett Koop pictured above and Peter Singer below

Peter Singer, an endowed chair at Princeton’s Center for Human Values, said, “Killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all.”

In May 1973, James D. Watson, the Nobel Prize laureate who discovered the double helix of DNA, granted an interview to Prism magazine, then a publication of the American Medical Association. Time later reported the interview to the general public, quoting Watson as having said, “If a child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice only a few are given under the present system. The doctor could allow the child to die if the parents so choose and save a lot of misery and suffering. I believe this view is the only rational, compassionate attitude to have.”

On August 30, 1995 I mailed a letter to Carl Sagan that probably prompted this discussion on abortion and it enclosed a lengthy story from Adrian Rogers about an abortion case in Pine Bluff, Arkansas that almost became an infanticide case:
An excerpt from the Sunday morning message (11-6-83) by Adrian Rogers in Memphis, TN.
I want to tell you that secular humanism and so-called abortion rights are inseparably linked together. We have been taught that our bodies and our children are the products of the evolutionary process, and so therefore human life may not be all that valuable to begin with. We have come today to where it is legal and even considered to be a good thing to put little babies to death…15 million little babies put to death since 1973 because of this philosophy of Secular Humanism.
How did the court make that type of decision? You would think it would be so obvious. You can’t do that! You can’t kill little babies! Why? Because the Bible says! Friend, they don’t give a hoot what the Bible says! There used to be a time when they talked about what the Bible says because there was a time that we as a nation had a constitution that was based in the Judeo-Christian ethic, but today if we say “The Bible says” or “God says “Separation of Church and State. Don’t tell us what the Bible says or what God says. We will tell you what we think!” Therefore, they look at the situation and they decide if it is right or wrong purely on the humanistic philosophy that right and wrong are relative and the situation says what is right or what is wrong.
This little girl just 19 years old went into the doctor’s office and he examined her. He said, “We can take take of you.” He gave her an injection in her arm that was to cause her to go into labor and to get rid of that protoplasm, that feud, that little mass that was in her, but she wasn’t prepared for the sound she was about to hear. It was a little baby crying. That little baby weighed 13 ounces. His hand the size of my thumbnail. You know what the doctor did. The doctor put that little baby in a grocery sack and gave it to Maria’s two friends who were with her in that doctor office and Said, “It will stop making those noises after a while.”

(Adrian Rogers pictured above)


They took that grocery sack and Maria home and one hour passed and two hours passed and that baby was still crying and panting for his life in that grocery sack. They took that little baby down to the hospital there in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and they called an obstetrician and he called a pediatrician and they called nurses and they began to work on that little baby. Today that baby is alive and well and healthy, that little mass of protoplasm. That little thing that wasn’t a human being is alive and well. I want to tell you they spent $150,000 to save the life of that baby. NOW CAN YOU EXPLAIN TO ME HOW THEY CAN SPEND $150,000 TO SAVE THE LIFE OF SOMETHING THAT SOMEBODY WAS PAYING ANOTHER DOCTOR TO TAKE THE LIFE OF? The same life!!! Are you going to tell me that is not a baby? Are you going to tell me that if that baby had been put to death it would not have been murder? You will never convince me of that. What has happened to us in America? We have been sold a bill of goods by the Secular Humanists!

Carl Sagan asked, “Does a woman’s “innate right to control her own body” encompass the right to kill a near-term fetus who is, for all intents and purposes, identical to a newborn child?”
This message “A Christian Manifesto” was given in 1982 by the late Christian Philosopher Francis Schaeffer when he was age 70 at D. James Kennedy’s Corral Ridge Presbyterian Church.
Listen to this important message where Dr. Schaeffer says it is the duty of Christians to disobey the government when it comes in conflict with God’s laws. So many have misinterpreted Romans 13 to mean unconditional obedience to the state. When the state promotes an evil agenda and anti-Christian statues we must obey God rather than men. Acts
I use to watch James Kennedy preach from his TV pulpit with great delight in the 1980’s. Both of these men are gone to be with the Lord now. We need new Christian leaders to rise up in their stead.
To view Part 2 See Francis Schaeffer Lecture- Christian Manifesto Pt 2 of 2 video
The religious and political freedom’s we enjoy as Americans was based on the Bible and the legacy of the Reformation according to Francis Schaeffer. These freedoms will continue to diminish as we cast off the authority of Holy Scripture.
In public schools there is no other view of reality but that final reality is shaped by chance.
Likewise, public television gives us many things that we like culturally but so much of it is mere propaganda shaped by a humanistic world and life view.
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I was able to watch Francis Schaeffer deliver a speech on a book he wrote called “A Christian Manifesto” and I heard him in several interviews on it in 1981 and 1982. I listened with great interest since I also read that book over and over again. Below is a portion of one of Schaeffer’s talks on a crucial subject that is very important today too.
A great talk by Francis Schaeffer:A Christian Manifesto
by Dr. Francis A. SchaefferThis address was delivered by the late Dr. Schaeffer in 1982 at the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It is based on one of his books, which bears the same title._________
Infanticide and youth enthansia ———So what we find then, is that the medical profession has largely changed — not all doctors. I’m sure there are doctors here in the audience who feel very, very differently, who feel indeed that human life is important and you wouldn’t take it, easily, wantonly. But, in general, we must say (and all you have to do is look at the TV programs), all you have to do is hear about the increased talk about allowing the Mongoloid child — the child with Down’s Syndrome — to starve to death if it’s born this way. Increasingly, we find on every side the medical profession has changed its views.
The view now is, “Is this life worth saving?”I look at you… You’re an older congregation than I am usually used to speaking to. You’d better think, because — this — means — you! It does not stop with abortion and infanticide. It stops at the question, “What about the old person? Is he worth hanging on to?” Should we, as they are doing in England in this awful organization, EXIT, teach older people to commit suicide? Should we help them get rid of them because they are an economic burden, a nuisance? I want to tell you, once you begin chipping away the medical profession…
The intrinsic value of the human life is founded upon the Judeo-Christian concept that man is unique because he is made in the image of God, and not because he is well, strong, a consumer, a sex object or any other thing. That is where whatever compassion this country has is, and certainly it is far from perfect and has never been perfect. Nor out of the Reformation has there been a Golden Age, but whatever compassion there has ever been, it is rooted in the fact that our culture knows that man is unique, is made in the image of God. Take it away, and I just say gently, the stopper is out of the bathtub for all human life.

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Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband. Now I wanted to make some comments concerning our shared Christian faith. I respect you for putting your faith in Christ for your eternal life. I am pleading to you on the basis of the Bible to please review your religious views concerning abortion. It was the Bible that caused the abolition movement of the 1800’s and it also was the basis for Martin Luther King’s movement for civil rights and it also is the basis for recognizing the unborn children.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733,
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By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)
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In his recent article on abortion Richard Dawkins wrote that “Christopher Hitchens had qualms” about abortion, but the fact was that Hitchens was 100% pro-life and he knew the pro-abortion view of MY BODY MY CHOICE would ultimately lead to demands of 3rd trimester abortions! Take a look at both gentlemen’s views on abortion below:

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the January 1988 print edition of Crisis Magazine. It has been edited for brevity.
CRISIS: Is abortion really a political issue? It seems not. After all, politics is a dispute over the arrangements by which a community lives. Abortion raises a prior question: who belongs to the community? In this sense it seems to be a pre-political question.
HITCHENS: All human value disputes are either political or are capable of being politicized. Even allegedly transcendent matters like transubstantiation have been intensely political, as you well know. The politicization of abortion stems from its central position in the feminist agenda. To a lesser extent, the axiom of “the woman’s right to choose” is an organizing principle in what you might call the broader humanist program as well. As a supporter of humanism and feminism I have strong misgivings about the wisdom, in both senses, of this one-dimensional position. I don’t think feminism should contradict humanism.
What do you mean?
I agree with Michael Kinsley (editor of the New Republic) who once wrote a column saying that the Roe v. Wade decision, which was of course made by a conservative-centrist Court, was the biggest reverse for liberalism in our time. He was speaking tactically, and about the “backlash.” Nobody on the left can avoid noticing that the so-called “prolife” forces are overwhelmingly female and from income groups that traditionally voted Democratic. Yet this simple rebellion by what one might dare to term humble people has been written off as reactionary by people who can’t or won’t see the essential dignity of the right-to-life position.
When did you first start thinking seriously about the abortion issue?
In Britain during the 1960s, there was a “liberal hour” when Parliament during one session voted to abolish capital punishment, to legalize homosexuality for adults, to relax the provisions of the divorce law, and to permit abortions for social reasons as well as the usual clinical or traumatic ones. This was the foot in the door for abortion on demand. It might interest your readers to know that Margaret Thatcher voted to keep capital punishment, to keep homosexuality criminal, to make divorce harder to get, and for the abortion bill. I gather that she’s since changed her position on the latter. My own vote would have been, as so often, exactly the reverse of hers.
Why so?
I really couldn’t bring myself to accept the so-called “social clause.” I had a queasy feeling about the disposability of the fetus. This queasy feeling has not gone away.
What about the feminist claim that abortion is an issue of a woman’s right to control her own body?
Look, once you allow that the occupant of the womb is even potentially a life, it cuts athwart any glib invocation of “the woman’s right to choose.” If the unborn is a candidate member of the next generation, it means that it is society’s responsibility. I used to argue that if this is denied, you might as well permit abortion in the third trimester. I wasn’t as surprised as perhaps I ought to have been when some feminists—only some, and partly to annoy—said yes to that. They at least were prepared to accept their own logic, and say that the unborn is nobody’s business but theirs. That is a very reactionary and selfish position, and it stems from this original evasion about the fetus being “merely” an appendage.
But it’s only an evasion if we have some firm grounds for suspecting that the fetus is a human being.
True. But I think that by now we know where babies come from. And dialectics will tell you that you can’t be meaningfully inhuman unless you are actually or potentially human as well. Pointless to describe a rat or a snake, say, as behaving in an inhuman fashion. I put the question like this. You see a woman kicked in the stomach. Your instinct is properly one of revulsion. You learn that the woman is pregnant. Who will reply that this discovery does not multiply their revulsion? And who will say that this is only because it makes it worse for the woman? I don’t think this is just an instinctive or an emotional reaction (not that we should always distrust our instincts and emotions either). We are stuck with a basic reverence for life.
But aren’t all these notions of the sanctity of human life and so on alien to your otherwise Marxist view of the world?
Hitchens: On the contrary. As a materialist I hold that we don’t have bodies, we are bodies. And as an atheist I believe that we do not have the consolation of the afterlife. We have only one life to live, so it had better be good. All the nonsense we hear about mediate and immediate animation, the point where a soul enters the unborn and so on, is at best beside the point. It has in common with the sectarian feminist view a complete contempt for science and the theory of evolution—which establishes beyond reasonable doubt that life is a continuum that begins at conception because it can’t begin anywhere else.
Would you favor reversing Roe v. Wade and returning abortion to the states, so that there would be local prohibitions on abortion, perhaps with the exceptions you recommend?
I would prefer to see abortion as a federal issue. Nothing is more horrible than inconsistency on the life question. Just look at capital punishment. The tremendous variance from state to state totally undermines the idea of stable justice or fair retribution. This moral objection applies whether or not capital punishment is a deterrent, which I don’t think it is.
A federal prohibition on abortion, then, with rape and incest exceptions?
Yes, but I would like to see something much broader, much more visionary. We need a new compact between society and the woman. It’s a progressive compact because it is aimed at the future generation. It would restrict abortion in most circumstances. Now I know most women don’t like having to justify their circumstances to someone. “How dare you presume to subject me to this?” some will say. But sorry, lady, this is an extremely grave social issue. It’s everybody’s business.
What about people who say they are personally opposed to abortion but think it should be legal? Is that a coherent position?
Hitchens: I suppose it could be made coherent in libertarian terms. I mean, people, say that they object to drinking or racial discrimination but they don’t think the government should ban either. Actually, the popularity of the position comes from people’s reluctance to tell women they haven’t met, who have gone through circumstances they cannot begin to comprehend, that “they know” what she should do about a pregnancy. I myself was reluctant to do this even when my wife got pregnant. It came at the worst possible time. Neither of us wanted to have a kid. My wife was considering an abortion. I urged her not to get one, and ultimately she decided not to, and didn’t. But I wouldn’t have, even if I could, gone beyond an effort to persuade her.
Liberalism claims, for its cardinal virtue, caring or compassion. Isn’t this claim rendered suspect by liberal inability to feel for the fetus?
Well, I’m not exactly a liberal. But there is a debased compassion at work. It tends to be one-sided, exclusively focused on the female condemned, as they say, to domestic serfdom. We should recognize that there are proper concerns and aspirations behind this. Women have been kept down for too long. Their struggle for greater autonomy is, in general, a just one. But its simplistic extension to abortion, I think, has aspects of neurosis and over-reaction. I think some women are trying to take revenge in part for centuries of being told by men precisely how they should live. The prolife movement, if it is to be successful, must understand these sentiments. You cannot conduct any intelligent combat if you do not understand the impulses you oppose.
Photo credit: Getty Images
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Christopher Hitchens was a celebrated essayist, debater, and social critic. A self-professed contrarian known for his dry wit, Hitchens is perhaps the best-known proponent of the “New Atheism.” He died in 2011 at the age of 63.
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C. Everett Koop
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| 13th Surgeon General of the United States | |
| In office January 21, 1982 – October 1, 1989 |
May 12, 2022
A substantial proportion of religious-Right voters care about, or at least vote on, only one issue: abortion. They swallowed their distaste for Donald Trump’s hypocrisy and (by their lights) egregious sinfulness and voted for him because of just one thing. He promised (and, as we now know, alas, delivered) a U.S. Supreme Court that would overturn Roe v. Wade.
Why are they so fanatical about this one issue, eclipsing, as it does, all others? It is because they really think abortion is murder. They synonymize “embryo” with “baby.” Abortion is baby-killing.
Put yourself in the shoes of someone who really believes—deeply and sincerely believes—that abortion is murder. You’d count up the number of “babies killed” and liken it to an annual holocaust of hideous magnitude. No wonder they scream outside abortion clinics and even occasionally murder the doctors who staff them. Wouldn’t we all scream if we believed what they believe?
But how do we respond, we who march in the vanguard of progressive, enlightened thought? “Keep your rosaries off my ovaries.” A woman’s body is hers alone, and nobody else’s business. “My body, my choice.”
Of course I empathize with those slogans. But can you see how hollow they sound to someone who deeply and honestly thinks an embryo is a baby and abortion is murder? “Yes, your woman body is yours but there’s another body inside it, a human being with rights just like yours.” Can you see how the standard pro-choice arguments would fall flat to someone who can’t distinguish an embryo from a baby—someone who sincerely thinks human life begins at conception? Our standard arguments would not only fail with such people, but they’d find them downright infuriating.
We have to modify our arguments to meet the deeply held beliefs of our opponents head-on. We have to persuade them out of their fallacious belief, their passionate conviction that human personhood begins at conception and therefore abortion is murder.
The fallacy is articulated with almost childlike naivete in the official Roman Catholic Doctrine of the Faith titled Donum Vitae:
From the time that the ovum is fertilized, a new life is begun which is neither that of the father nor of the mother; it is rather the life of a new human being with his own growth. It would never be made human if it were not human already. To this perpetual evidence … modern genetic science brings valuable confirmation. It has demonstrated that, from the first instant, the program is fixed as to what this living being will be: a man, this individual-man with his characteristic aspects already well determined. Right from fertilization is begun the adventure of a human life. …1
“It would never be made human if it were not human already.” Seriously? Does that mean that an acorn is an oak tree? Does that mean the whispering embryonic zephyr out in the Atlantic is synonymous with the hurricane that later flattens a town in Florida? Monozygotic twins part after fertilization. Which twin ends up in possession of the unique new human life? Which twin is the inhuman zombie?
But does an aborted embryo experience pain? This is a question we cannot answer for certain. But if it does have a capacity for feelings or experiences, there is absolutely no reason to suppose its capacity exceeds that of an embryonic pig or cow (which it closely resembles in every relevant respect). And, whatever an embryo may or may not feel, it is beyond doubt that an adult pig or cow has a hugely greater capacity to feel pain and dread when led to the slaughter. If you both eat meat and simultaneously object to abortion on the grounds that the embryo might feel pain, you are a hypocrite—or else you just haven’t thought it through. “Pro-life” turns out to mean exclusively pro-human-life.
Maybe the “pro-lifer” carries human exclusiveness further. Even if the embryo has no greater capacity than a pig embryo, it has the potential to become a human being with very much greater capacity than a pig. By aborting it, you are depriving a future human of a fulfilled life. Your abortion robs a would-be thinking, feeling, loving person of existence. What joys might she, or he, have experienced in a long and full life but for your callous act? Might you be killing a Beethoven?
That argument cuts closer to the bone. It is hard to resist speculating on what that incipient little life could have become. But now imagine the potential life you prevent every time you refrain from sexual intercourse. But the “Road not taken” argument rapidly spirals out of control. All too soon we arrive at Michael Palin’s “Every sperm is sacred.” “It is your moral duty to have (unprotected) sex with me because of the potential human life you might be denying if you do not.”
Here’s another point we might make, and this one will work only if—admittedly a fairly big “if”—our hypothetical pro-lifer accepts the truth of evolution. At what point in evolution does human life achieve its peculiar level of sacredness such that killing a human embryo resembling a small fish is infinitely worse than killing an actual fish? If, hypothetically, a latter-day Livingstone stumbled upon a relict population of Australopithecus, Ardipithecus, or Sahelanthropus, should we treat them as infinitely precious human life for moral purposes such as those we deploy in the abortion debate? If you think human life is infinitely precious but “animal” life is not, where in the evolutionary continuum would you draw the line?
This conundrum doesn’t worry me because I’m not an enthusiast for drawing lines—either in evolution or in the parallel process of embryonic development (which is also a smooth continuum, in this case from zygote to baby and beyond). Nor will it worry you if—as is quite possible in a dogmatic “pro-lifer”—you don’t believe in evolution. But there must be some sensible evolutionists out there who are also foes of abortion (even Christopher Hitchens had qualms), and this last argument might give them pause.
But, to return to my main point, our most popular “pro-choice” style of argument—a woman’s absolute right to control her own body—won’t cut any ice with “pro-lifers” who think abortion is murder. If we want to persuade them—and there are plenty of them in Congress and other influential positions—we have to target our arguments directly toward their fundamental premise: the illogical, or at least dubious, premise that personhood begins at conception. “My body, my choice” is very persuasive to you and me. It will leave them cold, even needlessly hostile. And they are the ones we need to persuade.
1. http://www.priestsforlife.org/magisterium/donumvitae.htm
Richard Dawkins is an English ethologist, evolutionary biologist, and bestselling author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was the University of Oxford’s Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008. In 2006, he founded the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science, now a division of the Center for Inquiry.

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September 25, 2021
President Biden c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. I know that you don’t agree with my pro-life views but I wanted to challenge you as a fellow Christian to re-examine your pro-choice view.
In the past I have spent most of my time looking at this issue from the spiritual side. In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented against abortion (Episode 1), infanticide (Episode 2), euthanasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close look at the truth claims of the Bible.
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I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the video WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? which can be found on You Tube. It is very valuable information for Christians to have.
Today I want to respond to your letter to me on July 9, 2021. Here it is below:
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
July 9, 2021
Mr. Everette Hatcher III
Alexander, AR
Dear Mr. Hatcher,
Thank you for taking your time to share your thoughts on abortion. Hearing from passionate individuals like me inspires me every day, and I welcome the opportunity to respond to your letter
Our country faces many challenges, and the road we will travel together will be one of the most difficult in our history. Despite these tough times, I have never been more optimistic for the future of America. I believe we are better positioned than any country in the world to lead in the 21st century not just by the example of our power but by the power of our example.
As we move forward to address the complex issues of our time, I encourage you to remain an active participant in helping write the next great chapter of the American story. We need your courage and dedication at this critical time, and we must meet this moment together as the United States of America. If we do that, I believe that our best days still lie ahead.
Sincerely
Joe Biden
Mr. President, my wife was born in JEFFERSON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL in Pine Bluff, Arkansas and Adrian Rogers tells a story about another lady that was born in that same hospital: “They took that grocery sack and Maria home and one hour passed and two hours passed and that baby was still crying and panting for his life in that grocery sack. They took that little baby down to the hospital there in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and they called an obstetrician and he called a pediatrician and they called nurses and they began to work on that little baby. Today that baby is alive and well and healthy, that little mass of protoplasm. That little thing that wasn’t a human being is alive and well. I want to tell you they spent $150,000 to save the life of that baby. NOW CAN YOU EXPLAIN TO ME HOW THEY CAN SPEND $150,000 TO SAVE THE LIFE OF SOMETHING THAT SOMEBODY WAS PAYING ANOTHER DOCTOR TO TAKE THE LIFE OF?”
Carl Sagan pictured below:

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Recently I have been revisiting my correspondence in 1995 with the famous astronomer Carl Sagan who I had the privilege to correspond with in 1994, 1995 and 1996. In 1996 I had a chance to respond to his December 5, 1995letter on January 10, 1996 and I never heard back from him again since his cancer returned and he passed away later in 1996. Below is what Carl Sagan wrote to me in his December 5, 1995 letter:
Thanks for your recent letter about evolution and abortion. The correlation is hardly one to one; there are evolutionists who are anti-abortion and anti-evolutionists who are pro-abortion.You argue that God exists because otherwise we could not understand the world in our consciousness. But if you think God is necessary to understand the world, then why do you not ask the next question of where God came from? And if you say “God was always here,” why not say that the universe was always here? On abortion, my views are contained in the enclosed article (Sagan, Carl and Ann Druyan {1990}, “The Question of Abortion,” Parade Magazine, April 22.)
I was introduced to when reading a book by Francis Schaeffer called HE IS THERE AND HE IS NOT SILENT written in 1968.

Francis Schaeffer
I was blessed with the opportunity to correspond with Dr. Sagan, and in his December 5, 1995 letter Dr. Sagan went on to tell me that he was enclosing his article “The Question of Abortion: A Search for Answers”by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. I am going to respond to several points made in that article. Here is a portion of Sagan’s article (here is a link to the whole article):


Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan pictured above
by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan
For the complete text, including illustrations, introductory quote, footnotes, and commentary on the reaction to the originally published article see Billions and Billions.
The issue had been decided years ago. The court had chosen the middle ground. You’d think the fight was over. Instead, there are mass rallies, bombings and intimidation, murders of workers at abortion clinics, arrests, intense lobbying, legislative drama, Congressional hearings, Supreme Court decisions, major political parties almost defining themselves on the issue, and clerics threatening politicians with perdition. Partisans fling accusations of hypocrisy and murder. The intent of the Constitution and the will of God are equally invoked. Doubtful arguments are trotted out as certitudes. The contending factions call on science to bolster their positions. Families are divided, husbands and wives agree not to discuss it, old friends are no longer speaking. Politicians check the latest polls to discover the dictates of their consciences. Amid all the shouting, it is hard for the adversaries to hear one another. Opinions are polarized. Minds are closed.
Is it wrong to abort a pregnancy? Always? Sometimes? Never? How do we decide? We wrote this article to understand better what the contending views are and to see if we ourselves could find a position that would satisfy us both. Is there no middle ground? We had to weigh the arguments of both sides for consistency and to pose test cases, some of which are purely hypothetical. If in some of these tests we seem to go too far, we ask the reader to be patient with us–we’re trying to stress the various positions to the breaking point to see their weaknesses and where they fail.
In contemplative moments, nearly everyone recognizes that the issue is not wholly one-sided. Many partisans of differing views, we find, feel some disquiet, some unease when confronting what’s behind the opposing arguments. (This is partly why such confrontations are avoided.) And the issue surely touches on deep questions: What are our responses to one another? Should we permit the state to intrude into the most intimate and personal aspects of our lives? Where are the boundaries of freedom? What does it mean to be human?
Of the many actual points of view, it is widely held–especially in the media, which rarely have the time or the inclination to make fine distinctions–that there are only two: “pro-choice” and “pro-life.” This is what the two principal warring camps like to call themselves, and that’s what we’ll call them here. In the simplest characterization, a pro-choicer would hold that the decision to abort a pregnancy is to be made only by the woman; the state has no right to interfere. And a pro-lifer would hold that, from the moment of conception, the embryo or fetus is alive; that this life imposes on us a moral obligation to preserve it; and that abortion is tantamount to murder. Both names–pro-choice and pro-life–were picked with an eye toward influencing those whose minds are not yet made up: Few people wish to be counted either as being against freedom of choice or as opposed to life. Indeed, freedom and life are two of our most cherished values, and here they seem to be in fundamental conflict.
Let’s consider these two absolutist positions in turn. A newborn baby is surely the same being it was just before birth. There ‘s good evidence that a late-term fetus responds to sound–including music, but especially its mother’s voice. It can suck its thumb or do a somersault. Occasionally, it generates adult brain-wave patterns. Some people claim to remember being born, or even the uterine environment. Perhaps there is thought in the womb. It’s hard to maintain that a transformation to full personhood happens abruptly at the moment of birth. Why, then, should it be murder to kill an infant the day after it was born but not the day before?
As a practical matter, this isn’t very important: Less than 1 percent of all tabulated abortions in the United States are listed in the last three months of pregnancy (and, on closer investigation, most such reports turn out to be due to miscarriage or miscalculation). But third-trimester abortions provide a test of the limits of the pro-choice point of view. Does a woman’s “innate right to control her own body” encompass the right to kill a near-term fetus who is, for all intents and purposes, identical to a newborn child?
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End of Sagan Excerpt
When I was in high school the book and film series named WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? came out and it featured Doctor C. Everett Koop and Francis Schaeffer and they looked at the issues of abortion, infanticide, and youth euthanasia and they looked at comments from such scholars as Peter Singer and James D. Watson.

C. Everett Koop pictured above and Peter Singer below

Peter Singer, an endowed chair at Princeton’s Center for Human Values, said, “Killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all.”

In May 1973, James D. Watson, the Nobel Prize laureate who discovered the double helix of DNA, granted an interview to Prism magazine, then a publication of the American Medical Association. Time later reported the interview to the general public, quoting Watson as having said, “If a child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice only a few are given under the present system. The doctor could allow the child to die if the parents so choose and save a lot of misery and suffering. I believe this view is the only rational, compassionate attitude to have.”

On August 30, 1995 I mailed a letter to Carl Sagan that probably prompted this discussion on abortion and it enclosed a lengthy story from Adrian Rogers about an abortion case in Pine Bluff, Arkansas that almost became an infanticide case:
An excerpt from the Sunday morning message (11-6-83) by Adrian Rogers in Memphis, TN.
I want to tell you that secular humanism and so-called abortion rights are inseparably linked together. We have been taught that our bodies and our children are the products of the evolutionary process, and so therefore human life may not be all that valuable to begin with. We have come today to where it is legal and even considered to be a good thing to put little babies to death…15 million little babies put to death since 1973 because of this philosophy of Secular Humanism.
How did the court make that type of decision? You would think it would be so obvious. You can’t do that! You can’t kill little babies! Why? Because the Bible says! Friend, they don’t give a hoot what the Bible says! There used to be a time when they talked about what the Bible says because there was a time that we as a nation had a constitution that was based in the Judeo-Christian ethic, but today if we say “The Bible says” or “God says “Separation of Church and State. Don’t tell us what the Bible says or what God says. We will tell you what we think!” Therefore, they look at the situation and they decide if it is right or wrong purely on the humanistic philosophy that right and wrong are relative and the situation says what is right or what is wrong.
This little girl just 19 years old went into the doctor’s office and he examined her. He said, “We can take take of you.” He gave her an injection in her arm that was to cause her to go into labor and to get rid of that protoplasm, that feud, that little mass that was in her, but she wasn’t prepared for the sound she was about to hear. It was a little baby crying. That little baby weighed 13 ounces. His hand the size of my thumbnail. You know what the doctor did. The doctor put that little baby in a grocery sack and gave it to Maria’s two friends who were with her in that doctor office and Said, “It will stop making those noises after a while.”

(Adrian Rogers pictured above)


They took that grocery sack and Maria home and one hour passed and two hours passed and that baby was still crying and panting for his life in that grocery sack. They took that little baby down to the hospital there in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and they called an obstetrician and he called a pediatrician and they called nurses and they began to work on that little baby. Today that baby is alive and well and healthy, that little mass of protoplasm. That little thing that wasn’t a human being is alive and well. I want to tell you they spent $150,000 to save the life of that baby. NOW CAN YOU EXPLAIN TO ME HOW THEY CAN SPEND $150,000 TO SAVE THE LIFE OF SOMETHING THAT SOMEBODY WAS PAYING ANOTHER DOCTOR TO TAKE THE LIFE OF? The same life!!! Are you going to tell me that is not a baby? Are you going to tell me that if that baby had been put to death it would not have been murder? You will never convince me of that. What has happened to us in America? We have been sold a bill of goods by the Secular Humanists!

Carl Sagan asked, “Does a woman’s “innate right to control her own body” encompass the right to kill a near-term fetus who is, for all intents and purposes, identical to a newborn child?”
This message “A Christian Manifesto” was given in 1982 by the late Christian Philosopher Francis Schaeffer when he was age 70 at D. James Kennedy’s Corral Ridge Presbyterian Church.
Listen to this important message where Dr. Schaeffer says it is the duty of Christians to disobey the government when it comes in conflict with God’s laws. So many have misinterpreted Romans 13 to mean unconditional obedience to the state. When the state promotes an evil agenda and anti-Christian statues we must obey God rather than men. Acts
I use to watch James Kennedy preach from his TV pulpit with great delight in the 1980’s. Both of these men are gone to be with the Lord now. We need new Christian leaders to rise up in their stead.
To view Part 2 See Francis Schaeffer Lecture- Christian Manifesto Pt 2 of 2 video
The religious and political freedom’s we enjoy as Americans was based on the Bible and the legacy of the Reformation according to Francis Schaeffer. These freedoms will continue to diminish as we cast off the authority of Holy Scripture.
In public schools there is no other view of reality but that final reality is shaped by chance.
Likewise, public television gives us many things that we like culturally but so much of it is mere propaganda shaped by a humanistic world and life view.
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I was able to watch Francis Schaeffer deliver a speech on a book he wrote called “A Christian Manifesto” and I heard him in several interviews on it in 1981 and 1982. I listened with great interest since I also read that book over and over again. Below is a portion of one of Schaeffer’s talks on a crucial subject that is very important today too.
A great talk by Francis Schaeffer:A Christian Manifesto
by Dr. Francis A. SchaefferThis address was delivered by the late Dr. Schaeffer in 1982 at the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It is based on one of his books, which bears the same title._________
Infanticide and youth enthansia ———So what we find then, is that the medical profession has largely changed — not all doctors. I’m sure there are doctors here in the audience who feel very, very differently, who feel indeed that human life is important and you wouldn’t take it, easily, wantonly. But, in general, we must say (and all you have to do is look at the TV programs), all you have to do is hear about the increased talk about allowing the Mongoloid child — the child with Down’s Syndrome — to starve to death if it’s born this way. Increasingly, we find on every side the medical profession has changed its views.
The view now is, “Is this life worth saving?”I look at you… You’re an older congregation than I am usually used to speaking to. You’d better think, because — this — means — you! It does not stop with abortion and infanticide. It stops at the question, “What about the old person? Is he worth hanging on to?” Should we, as they are doing in England in this awful organization, EXIT, teach older people to commit suicide? Should we help them get rid of them because they are an economic burden, a nuisance? I want to tell you, once you begin chipping away the medical profession…
The intrinsic value of the human life is founded upon the Judeo-Christian concept that man is unique because he is made in the image of God, and not because he is well, strong, a consumer, a sex object or any other thing. That is where whatever compassion this country has is, and certainly it is far from perfect and has never been perfect. Nor out of the Reformation has there been a Golden Age, but whatever compassion there has ever been, it is rooted in the fact that our culture knows that man is unique, is made in the image of God. Take it away, and I just say gently, the stopper is out of the bathtub for all human life.

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Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband. Now I wanted to make some comments concerning our shared Christian faith. I respect you for putting your faith in Christ for your eternal life. I am pleading to you on the basis of the Bible to please review your religious views concerning abortion. It was the Bible that caused the abolition movement of the 1800’s and it also was the basis for Martin Luther King’s movement for civil rights and it also is the basis for recognizing the unborn children.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733,
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–
14 A wise woman builds her home,
but a foolish woman tears it down with her own hands.
2 Those who follow the right path fear the Lord;
those who take the wrong path despise him.
3 A fool’s proud talk becomes a rod that beats him,
but the words of the wise keep them safe.
4 Without oxen a stable stays clean,
but you need a strong ox for a large harvest.
5 An honest witness does not lie;
a false witness breathes lies.
6 A mocker seeks wisdom and never finds it,
but knowledge comes easily to those with understanding.
7 Stay away from fools,
for you won’t find knowledge on their lips.
8 The prudent understand where they are going,
but fools deceive themselves.
9 Fools make fun of guilt,
but the godly acknowledge it and seek reconciliation.
10 Each heart knows its own bitterness,
and no one else can fully share its joy.
11 The house of the wicked will be destroyed,
but the tent of the godly will flourish.
12 There is a path before each person that seems right,
but it ends in death.
13 Laughter can conceal a heavy heart,
but when the laughter ends, the grief remains.
14 Backsliders get what they deserve;
good people receive their reward.
15 Only simpletons believe everything they’re told!
The prudent carefully consider their steps.
16 The wise are cautious[a] and avoid danger;
fools plunge ahead with reckless confidence.
17 Short-tempered people do foolish things,
and schemers are hated.
18 Simpletons are clothed with foolishness,[b]
but the prudent are crowned with knowledge.
19 Evil people will bow before good people;
the wicked will bow at the gates of the godly.
20 The poor are despised even by their neighbors,
while the rich have many “friends.”
21 It is a sin to belittle one’s neighbor;
blessed are those who help the poor.
22 If you plan to do evil, you will be lost;
if you plan to do good, you will receive unfailing love and faithfulness.
23 Work brings profit,
but mere talk leads to poverty!
24 Wealth is a crown for the wise;
the effort of fools yields only foolishness.
25 A truthful witness saves lives,
but a false witness is a traitor.
26 Those who fear the Lord are secure;
he will be a refuge for their children.
27 Fear of the Lord is a life-giving fountain;
it offers escape from the snares of death.
28 A growing population is a king’s glory;
a prince without subjects has nothing.
29 People with understanding control their anger;
a hot temper shows great foolishness.
30 A peaceful heart leads to a healthy body;
jealousy is like cancer in the bones.
31 Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker,
but helping the poor honors him.
32 The wicked are crushed by disaster,
but the godly have a refuge when they die.
33 Wisdom is enshrined in an understanding heart;
wisdom is not[c] found among fools.
34 Godliness makes a nation great,
but sin is a disgrace to any people.
35 A king rejoices in wise servants
but is angry with those who disgrace him.
Friends Proverbs 17:17 #2059
We are grateful for the opportunity to provide this outline produced from a sermon preached by Adrian Rogers while serving as pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee.
This outline is intended for your personal, non-commercial use.
In order to ensure our ability to be good stewards of Adrian Rogers’ messages, Love Worth Finding has reserved all rights to this content.
Except for your personal, non-commercial use and except for brief quotations in printed reviews, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means —electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other— without the prior permission of the publisher.
Copyright ©2021 Love Worth Finding Ministries, Inc.
FRIENDS | PROVERBS 17:17 | #2059
1) INTRODUCTION
a) Teenagersaremoreaffectedbyfriendsthanalmostanythingelse,including
sometimes parents and pastors combined.
b) Thedeepestneedofallofus,whetheryoungorold,isforenduring
friendships.
i) The deepest longing of the human heart is for a friend who loves us.
(1) Someone we can share with and commune with.
(2) Someone who truly understands our deepest needs, highest
aspirations and our worst fears.
c) Atruefriendisagreattreasure,butthewrongkindoffriendisthegreatest
danger that a teenager can possibly have.
d) Proverbs17:17
e) Today’smessagewillexplaintwodifferentcategoriesoffriends,three
different categories of teenagers, and will give practical advice to parents as they help their children choose friends wisely.
2) TWOCATEGORIESOFFRIENDS
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Copyright ©2021 Love Worth Finding Ministries, Inc.
a) b)
c)
d)
e) f)
Wehavecasualfriendsthatweministerto.
i) We all have casual friends.
ii) Theseareacquaintancesthatincludeunsavedfriends. Weneedtomakeacquaintanceswiththeunsaved.
i) The Lord Jesus did.
(1) Luke 7:34
(a) Jesus was crucified for being a friend to sinners.
Therearecertaincasualfriendsthatwearetohave.
i) As Christians, we are to be the salt of the Earth.
ii) Wearetobeseparate,butseparationisnotisolation.
(1) We’re to be separated from the sin but not the sinner.
iii) We are to have these casual friends so that we can bring them to Christ. 1Corinthians9:20-23
i) The Apostle Paul is saying in this passage that he knew how to
accommodate unsaved people without making them angry and without compromising his convictions.
(1) This does not mean that those casual friends are to become intimate
friends.
(2) This does not mean that we are to have fellowship with them so that
they are to become our companions. 2Corinthians6:14,17-18
i) The word for “fellowship” in this passage means “intimacy.”
ii) Wearenottohavefellowshipandcommunionwithunsavedpeople. With casual friends, we are making friends for Jesus.
i) Accommodation without compromise
ii) Weinvitethemtochurch.
iii) We show love and friendship.
FRIENDS | PROVERBS 17:17 | #2059
iv) But we have no communion, fellowship or intimacy with casual friends. g) Therearecasualfriendswhomwewitnessto,andthenthereareintimate
friends that we fellowship with.
i) Parents should know who their children’s intimate friends are.
(1) Children will be made or broken by their companions. h) Proverbs13:20
i) This passage is not referring to casual acquaintances but is talking about companionship and fellowship.
ii) Ifwehaveungodlypeopleforourcompanions,thenwewillbedestroyed. i) 2 Samuel 13:1-29, 2 Samuel 18:9
i) This is one of the saddest stories in the Bible.
ii) Thiswholetragic,sordidmessbeganbecauseAmnonhadafriend.
(1) Amnon’s friend made a devilish suggestion. j) We will be like our friends.
i) It is not uncommon for teenagers to begin drug habits or drinking because of a friend.
ii) Kidsgethookedonpornographybecausetheywereatsomeone’shouse watching R-rated or X-rated movies.
k) Parentscanevaluatethespiritualconditionoftheirchildrenbytheirfriends.
i) Kids who don’t want to serve God will find other kids just like them.
ii) Godlykidswillalsofindoneanother.
iii) You can learn the spiritual state of your children by watching their
friends.
(1) Listen to their conversation.
(2) See how they are dressed.
(3) Pay attention to the music they listen to.
3) THREECATEGORIESOFYOUNGPEOPLE(PROVERBS1:20-22) a) Proverbs1:20-22
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Copyright ©2021 Love Worth Finding Ministries, Inc.
b)
i) This passage contains the three categories of young people. ii) Everyteenagerisinoneofthesecategories. Thefirstcategoryisthesimple.
i) If your child is simple, it does not mean that he isn’t intelligent or smart.
ii) Theword“simple”means“open.”
iii) Proverbs 1:22
(1) The simple one loves simplicity.
(a) This means that he loves the easy way.
(b) He wants to go through life without any restraint or discipline.
iv) The simple also lacks understanding.
(1) Proverbs 9:1-4
v) A simple person is easily led into sin and error.
(1) Proverbs 14:15
(2) If the simple does not believe God’s Word, then he will believe
anything.
FRIENDS | PROVERBS 17:17 | #2059
(a) He will believe Madison Avenue. (b) He will believe false cults.
(c) He will believe sinful friends.
(d) The simple is living in danger.
vi) By nature, all teenagers are simple.
vii) Proverbs 22:3
viii) Simple teenagers think that they are indestructible.
ix) Being simple doesn’t mean that they don’t have character, but they just
don’t understand until they get wisdom from God.
c) Everyteenagerstartsoutassimple,buthecanbecomeascorner.
i) Proverbs 1:22
(1) The simple one loves simplicity, but the scorner delights in scorning.
(a) The scorner has a warped character.
(b) He’s an evil person.
ii) Youcan’ttellhimanything.
(1) You can instruct the simple, but you can’t instruct the scorner.
(2) Proverbs 13:1
iii) He refuses instructions, and he despises godly people.
iv) Proverbs 15:12
(1) Rebuke a scorner, and he will insult you to your face.
v) Proverbs 9:7-8
vi) Proverbs 13:1
vii) Proverbs 13:13
(1) This is referring to everlasting destruction.
viii) A synonym for “scorner” is “smart-aleck.”
d) Thethirdcategoryisthefool.
i) Proverbs 1:22
(1) Fools hate knowledge.
ii) Proverbs1:7
iii) A fool will ridicule righteousness.
(1) Proverbs 14:9
(2) He will laugh at ungodliness, such as immorality, homosexuality,
drunkenness, etc.
iv) He rejoices in sin.
(1) Proverbs 15:21
(2) His moral sense has been perverted.
(a) He doesn’t know the difference between right and wrong.
(b) Isaiah 5:20
v) Proverbs 26:11
vi) Proverbs 17:10
vii) His heart is hard, his conscience is seared, and his mind is defiled. (1) Punishment will not change him.
(2) His moral sensibilities have been destroyed.
viii) Don’t let your children hang around scorners or fools.
PAGE 4 Copyright ©2021 Love Worth Finding Ministries, Inc.
FRIENDS | PROVERBS 17:17 | #2059
4) WHATCANPARENTSDOTOHELPTHEIRCHILDREN?
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a)
Helpthemunderstandthedangersthatareinvolved. i) They do not understand the dangers.
ii) Proverbs19:25
(1) Young people do not see the consequences of sin because we have so dumbed down those consequences.
(2) Young people need to understand that there are consequences to sin. iii) Parents should take their children to the rescue mission so that they can
see the other side of addictions.
(1) The advertising that kids see for alcoholic beverages will never show
this other side.
iv) Your children need to understand that sin has repercussions. Carefullyguardtheircompany.
i) Proverbs 13:20
ii) Proverbs22:10
iii) Don’t allow your kids to hang around a scorner or fool.
iv) Parents should meet any boy who wants to date their daughter. Teachthemtheimportanceoftheirchoices.
i) Life is the sum total of our choices.
ii) Everychoicechangesus.
iii) We are free to choose, but we’re not free to choose the consequences of
our choice.
(1) After we choose, then our choice chooses for us. Helpyourchildrenselecttheirfriends.
i) One of the best things you can do is to make your home the most fun
place in town.
ii) Haveyourchildrenandtheirfriendsinyourhomesothatyoucanwatch
them and see what they’re like. Refusetohonorfools.
i) Proverbs 26:1
(1) Don’t get your entertainment from a fool.
ii) Don’tletyourchildrengotoconcertsorotherentertainmentvenues
where they will be entertained by those who have set themselves against
God and against wisdom.
There are additional things that parents need to do:
i) Have a positive attitude.
(1) Don’t talk down to your kids. (a) Words can hurt children.
(2) Don’t use words that belittle or put them down.
(3) Use words that build them up.
ii) Learntolistentothem.
iii) Try to see life from their point of view.
(1) Kids today are facing things that their parents never had to face.
b)
c)
d)
e)
f)
FRIENDS | PROVERBS 17:17 | #2059
iv) Be gentle with them.
(1) Psalm 18:35
(2) Fathers whose children adore them are strong and wise, but gentle.
(a) They are not harsh, and they don’t yell. v) Learn to touch and hug your teenager.
(1) Learn to show non-verbal expression.
(2) Be gentle with your kids. vi) Be transparent.
(1) Let them know your faults.
(a) They already know that you’re not perfect.
(2) Your kids don’t necessarily want you to be perfect; they just don’t want you to be a phony.
vii) Be available to your kids.
(1) A lack of a close relationship with a father is one of the biggest factors
to encouraging promiscuity in young girls, even more so than poverty. (a) Promiscuity is much less likely when there is a close relationship to
the father.
5) CONCLUSION
a) Itisokaytohavecasualfriendships.
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Copyright ©2021 Love Worth Finding Ministries, Inc.
b) c)
d)
e) f)
g) h)
i) Invite them to church.
ii) Befriendly.
iii) Go out to eat together after the church service.
iv) But your teenagers should not make these kids their companions.
(1) Proverbs 13:20
Atruefriendissomeonewhoisfaithful.
i) Proverbs 17:17 Atruefriendissomeonewhoencouragesyouandmakesyoubetter.
i) They will sharpen you.
ii) Proverbs27:17 Oneofthemarksastowhetherornotyourfriendisatrue,godlyfriendis are you a better person for having been with that friend, or is he or she a better person for having been with you?
i) A true friend will challenge you.
ii) Proverbs27:6
Chooseyourfriendscarefully.
One of the greatest joys of your life or one of the greatest disappointments will be your friends. Thereisonefriendwhostickscloserthanabrother,andHisnameisJesus. i) Proverbs 18:24
ii) He’stheonewhowillguideyoutotherightfriendships. DoyouknowJesuspersonally?Ifnot,youcanpraytoHimtodaybyasking Him to come into your life.
FRIENDS | PROVERBS 17:17 | #2059
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Copyright ©2021 Love Worth Finding Ministries, Inc.
i)
Call upon Jesus today. Repent (turn) from your sins, and turn to Jesus. Ask Him to forgive you of your sins, and acknowledge Him as Lord of your life.
i) Romans 3:23
ii) Romans10:9-10
iii) Romans 10:13
iv) Acts 16:31
v) John 3:16
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When the Commerce Department announced in February that the United States had a record trade deficit for 2021, I shared this video to help make the point that those trade numbers were that year’s “least important economic news.”
The main thing to understand is that a trade deficit is simply the flip side of an investment surplus.
When Americans use dollars to buy goods from other nations, those dollars are only valuable to foreigners
because they can use them to buy things from America.
In many cases, they buy American goods and services. But they also use many of those dollars to invest in the U.S. economy.
That’s generally a positive thing. It’s a vote of confidence about America’s economic future.
Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe shares my viewpoint. He recently opined on this issue, echoing the important insight about the link between trade flows and investment flows.
The US trade deficit hit an all-time high in March, widening to nearly $110 billion as the nation imported considerably more goods than it exported. That can’t be good, right? Actually, it’s fine. …It’s not an indication of actual economic weakness. …Quite the contrary: All things being equal, imports are usually evidence of economic vitality and success.
…The dollars Americans spend on imports aren’t “lost.” They are exchanged for desirable and affordable goods, services, parts, and commodities that strengthen Americans’ economy while elevating their US lifestyle. Better still, those dollars then come back to the United States, where they are used to invest in American assets or buy American exports, creating even more value and putting even more Americans to work. …a trade “deficit” isn’t a debt we owe. It is an accounting entry that tells us how much more we were enriched by foreigners than they were by us. ..the US economy has some real problems. Happily, the trade deficit isn’t one of them. Imports are good. And more imports? They’re good too.
This does not mean, however, that everyone is a winner.
As I explain in this video, jobs are destroyed when there is trade between nations. But I also point out that jobs are destroyed by trade inside a nation’s borders.
That’s bad news for workers in sectors that are dying (such as typewriter makers after personal computers hit the market).
What’s important is whether the new jobs that are created
exceed the number of jobs that are lost.
This is what is called “creative destruction.” It’s painful, but it is why we are much richer today than we were in the past.
The good news is that this usually happens…at least if politicians resist the temptation to over-tax, over-spend, and over-regulate.
The bottom line is that free trade is much better for long-run prosperity than protectionism.
Unless, of course, you think it’s a good idea to copy the policies of Herbert Hoover.
March 19, 2016 by Dan Mitchell
John Cowperthwaite deserves a lot of credit for Hong Kong’s prosperity. As a British appointee, he took a hands-off policy and allowed the colony’s economy to thrive. He didn’t even want the government to collect statistics since that would give interventionists data that might be used to argue for interventionism.
I have mixed feelings about that approach. I constantly use statistics because they so often show that free markets and small government produce the best outcomes. I even use data to show that Hong Kong’s economy should be emulated.
On the other hand, there are some statistics that cause a lot of mischief.
I’ve argued, for instance, that we should focus on how national prosperity is generated (gross domestic income) rather than how it is allocated (gross domestic product).
If we changed the focus to GDI, the debate would more naturally focus on pro-growth policies to boost wages, small business income, and corporate profits rather than the misguided policies (such asKeynesian economics) that are enabled by a focus on GDP.
That being said, there’s a good argument that the worst government statistic is the “trade deficit.”
This is a very destructive piece of data because people instinctively assume a “deficit” is bad. Yet I have a trade deficit every year with my local grocery store. I’m always buying things from them and they never buy anything from me. Does that mean I’m a “loser”? Of course not. Voluntary exchange, by definition, means that both parties gain from any transaction. And this principle applies when voluntary exchange occurs across national borders.
Moreover, people oftentimes don’t realize that the necessary and automatic flip side of a “trade deficit” is a “capital surplus.” In other words, when foreign companies acquire dollars by selling to American consumers, they frequently decide that investing in the American economy is the best use of that money. And the huge amount of investment from overseas is a sign of comparative prosperity and vitality, not a sign of weakness.
And for any readers who nonetheless think protectionism might be a good idea, I challenge them to answer these eight questions.
I’m confident that both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders wouldn’t be able to successfully answer any of them. Yet it appears they’ve gained some traction with voters by calling for protectionism.
That’s quite unfortunate. If the pro-trade policy consensus in America breaks down, that would create dangerous opportunities for politicians and bureaucrats to rig the game in favor of special interests while also imposing higher costs of taxpayers and consumers.
Let’s dig into the issue.
In a column for the Wall Street Journal, Mort Kondracke and Matthew Slaughter combine to produce a strong defense of trade.
…the four leading presidential candidates…oppose the U.S. ratifying the Trans-Pacific Partnership. All four demonize trade the same way. …Where is the leader with the courage to tell the truth? To say that trade made this nation great, and that trade barriers will destroy far more jobs than they can ever “save.” …America’s exporters and importers are among the country’s most dynamic companies, paying their workers about 15%-20% more than workers earn elsewhere in the economy. The overall gains are large. Trade and related activities—spurred by accords such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, or Nafta, have boosted annual U.S. income today by about 10 percentage points of GDP relative to what it would have been otherwise. This translates into an aggregate gain of about $1.8 trillion in 2015—thousands of dollars per U.S. household every year. …creative destruction—the movement of people and capital from weaker businesses to stronger ones and new opportunities—is how many of the gains from trade arise. …For generations, American presidents of both parties have spoken about the benefits of trade. “Economic isolation and political leadership are wholly incompatible,” warned John Kennedy. “A creative, competitive America is the answer to a changing world,” said Ronald Reagan. “We should always remember: protectionism is destructionism.”
By the way, I think Kondracke and Slaughter paint with too broad a brush. Both Cruz and Clinton are far less protectionist than Trump and Sanders. Though the authors are correct in noting that they’ve been reluctant (especially in the case of Clinton) to vigorously defend free trade.
The great legal scholar Richard Epstein (also my former debating partner) writesabout the dangers of protectionism.
There are of course major difference between the insidious Trump and buffoonish Sanders. …Still, the real selling point of each boils down to one issue: In the indecorous language of the pollster, Pat Caddell, Americans feel “they have been screwed” by free trade. …free trade is in retreat as protectionism becomes the common thread across the both political parties. It is as though the economic unwisdom of the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act is back.
Richard makes a very important point that politicians often support protectionism in an attempt to hide the damage they do with other misguided policies.
Free trade offers an uncompromising indictment of, and a powerful corrective for, America’s unsound economic policies. …the reason that local businesses outsource from the United States is the same reason why foreign businesses are reluctant to expand operations here. Our regulatory and labor environment is hostile to economic growth and there are no signs of that abating anytime soon. …the steady decline in freedom and productivity inside the United States has continued apace. Ironically, the strong likelihood that the next American president will expand protectionist practices will only make matters worse: firms, both foreign and domestic, are more reluctant to invest in the United States…free trade gives the federal government and the individual states strong incentives to clean up their act so that they can once again be attractive to foreign investment.
My buddy Ross Kaminsky explains in the American Spectator that free trade is good because it is part of the competitive process that boosts living standards, particularly for the poor.
…in trade, as in any economic endeavor, there are losers in the short run. Capitalism is, after all, fundamentally a system of creative destruction. But if there is any area of agreement among economists of all political stripes…it is that free trade provides large net benefits to the societies that engage in it, even if other nations do not lower trade barriers to the same degree. Furthermore, the benefits of trade accrue in large measure to the lower economic echelons of society in an extension of Schumpeter’s profound observation that “the capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within the reach of factory girls in return for steadily decreasing amounts of effort.”
And Ross echoes Richard Epstein’s point about the real problem being anti-growth policies that make America less competitive.
Trade is complex and like all complex things politicians will dumb it down in a way that benefits them, generally by lying to the public and creating a frothy anger against those “damn furiners” instead of pointing fingers at the true culprits: unions, regulators, and politicians of all stripes.
Ross and Richard are right. If politicians really want more jobs in America, they should be adopting policies to boost U.S. competitiveness.
And we don’t need giant steps. Yes, a flat tax would be great, but even incremental reforms such as a lower corporate tax rate or the right tax treatment of business investment would yield big dividends.
Let’s add a few more voices to the discussion.
In an editorial, the Wall Street Journal debunks Donald Trump’s protectionist tirade against China.
The real-estate developer recently added Japan to his most-wanted list of job killers… “They’re killing us. You know what we sell to Japan? Practically nothing.” Is $116 billion worth of annual goods and services exports to Japan practically nothing? Japan is the fourth largest U.S. export market in goods after Canada, Mexico and China. …The best way to boost American exports is to remove trade barriers with new trade agreements. U.S. farm producers would particularly benefit from the Trans-Pacific Partnership with Japan and 10 other countries. Japanese tariffs on beef would fall to 9% in the 16th year of the deal from 38.5% while the 20% tariff on ground pork would be eliminated in six years. Japan’s 21.3% levy on poultry and eggs would be abolished in six to 13 years.
Writing for the Washington Post, David Ignatius defends trade in general and trade agreements in particular.
…the revolt against free trade that has captured both parties could do the most long-term damage. …there’s strong evidence that trade has benefited the U.S. economy and created whole new industries in which the United States is dominant. That’s the essence of the “creative destruction” that makes a market economy so potent: It relentlessly pushes innovation and change. …The bipartisan protectionism of Trump and Sanders has focused its attacks on the Trans-Pacific Partnership… Robert Z. Lawrence and Tyler Moran estimate that between 2017 and 2026, when TPP would have its major impact, the costs to displaced workers would be 6 percent of the benefits to the economy — or an 18-to-1 benefit-to-cost ratio. …David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson…noted that the pact would promote trade in knowledge industries where the United States has a big advantage and that “killing the TPP would do little to bring factory work back to America.”
Ignatius also makes a very important observation that protectionists want us to be scared of nations that have much bigger problems than the United States.
Trump, the businessman, seems weirdly out of touch with real economic trends. He speaks of Japan as though it were an economic powerhouse, when it has actually suffered a two-decades-long slump; he describes a surging China, when the numbers show its growth is sagging.
Amen. Japan has huge problems and China still has quite a way to go before it becomes a developed nation.
Let’s close with some good news. Politicians may be engaging in anti-trade demagoguery, and there may be some voters that are motivated by hostility to voluntary exchange, but that doesn’t mean the protectionists have won.
Indeed, pro-trade sentiment has never been higher by some measures. Here’s some amazingly positive polling data from Gallup.
P.S. One final point. The growing burden of government spending and taxation since World War II have been very unfortunate, but the good news is that we have strong evidence that the economic damage of worsening fiscal policy has been offset by the economic gains from trade liberalization. It would be tragic to see that reversed.
P.P.S. Fans of Richard Epstein may enjoy this video of him reminiscing about Barack Obama’s undistinguished tenure at the University of Chicago Law School, as well asthis video of him dismantling George Soros in a debate that took place at Cato.
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Milton Friedman’s FREE TO CHOOSE “The Tyranny of Control” Transcript and Video (60 Minutes) In 1980 I read the book FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman and it really enlightened me a tremendous amount. I suggest checking out these episodes and transcripts of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and […]
In 1980 I read the book FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman and it really enlightened me a tremendous amount. I suggest checking out these episodes and transcripts of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and “What is wrong with our schools?” and “Created Equal” and From Cradle to Grave, […]
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In 1980 I read the book FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman and it really enlightened me a tremendous amount. I suggest checking out these episodes and transcripts of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and “What is wrong with our schools?” and “Created Equal” and From Cradle to Grave, […]
In 1980 I read the book FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman and it really enlightened me a tremendous amount. I suggest checking out these episodes and transcripts of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and “What is wrong with our schools?” and “Created Equal” and From Cradle to Grave, […]
In 1980 I read the book FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman and it really enlightened me a tremendous amount. I suggest checking out these episodes and transcripts of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and “What is wrong with our schools?” and “Created Equal” and From Cradle to Grave, […]
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Open letter to President Obama (Part 654) (Emailed to White House on July 22, 2013) President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you […]
Open letter to President Obama (Part 650) (Emailed to White House on July 22, 2013) President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you […]
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13 A wise child accepts a parent’s discipline;[a]
a mocker refuses to listen to correction.
2 Wise words will win you a good meal,
but treacherous people have an appetite for violence.
3 Those who control their tongue will have a long life;
opening your mouth can ruin everything.
4 Lazy people want much but get little,
but those who work hard will prosper.
5 The godly hate lies;
the wicked cause shame and disgrace.
6 Godliness guards the path of the blameless,
but the evil are misled by sin.
7 Some who are poor pretend to be rich;
others who are rich pretend to be poor.
8 The rich can pay a ransom for their lives,
but the poor won’t even get threatened.
9 The life of the godly is full of light and joy,
but the light of the wicked will be snuffed out.
10 Pride leads to conflict;
those who take advice are wise.
11 Wealth from get-rich-quick schemes quickly disappears;
wealth from hard work grows over time.
12 Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life.
13 People who despise advice are asking for trouble;
those who respect a command will succeed.
14 The instruction of the wise is like a life-giving fountain;
those who accept it avoid the snares of death.
15 A person with good sense is respected;
a treacherous person is headed for destruction.[b]
16 Wise people think before they act;
fools don’t—and even brag about their foolishness.
17 An unreliable messenger stumbles into trouble,
but a reliable messenger brings healing.
18 If you ignore criticism, you will end in poverty and disgrace;
if you accept correction, you will be honored.
19 It is pleasant to see dreams come true,
but fools refuse to turn from evil to attain them.
20 Walk with the wise and become wise;
associate with fools and get in trouble.
21 Trouble chases sinners,
while blessings reward the righteous.
22 Good people leave an inheritance to their grandchildren,
but the sinner’s wealth passes to the godly.
23 A poor person’s farm may produce much food,
but injustice sweeps it all away.
24 Those who spare the rod of discipline hate their children.
Those who love their children care enough to discipline them.
25 The godly eat to their hearts’ content,
but the belly of the wicked goes hungry.
We’re a little more than a month into a new year, so it’s a good time to take a spiritual inventory. As a Christian, you love Jesus Christ, you thank Him for His sacrifice for you, and you want to please Him. When you have someone in your life you deeply love, you want to find out their likes and dislikes and please them with what they really like. If you find out there’s something your loved one actually hates, you try to steer clear of that!
Are you aware that there are things God actually hates? “Oh,” you say, “but God is a God of love! Surely He doesn’t hate…” Listen to Proverbs 6:16-19.
These six things doth the Lord hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.
That’s quite an inventory. And at the top of these seven worst-of-the-worst traits is pride.
Pride is effective because it is deceptive. The more you have, the less you think you have it. Do you have a problem with pride? If your answer is yes, this study may be for you; but if your answer is no, there’s no doubt about it: this study is definitely for you!
Real pride — sinful, destructive pride — is a declaration of independence. It says, “God, I am self‑sufficient. I have everything I need. Your services are no longer required.” The truth is, we are in no way self‑sufficient.
Here are some perils of pride:
Pride Provokes Deity — Pride angers God. Proverbs 16:5 reads, “Every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord.” Can you imagine being an abomination to the Lord? Why does God feel this way about pride? It caused Lucifer to fall from heaven (Isaiah 14:12-14). Pride made the devil what he is. Pride ruined the entire human race when the devil baited Eve (Genesis 3:1-7). Satan does the same thing today when he tempts us—he appeals to our pride.
Pride Proves Depravity —Some people avoid the notable sins: they don’t “smoke, drink, chew, or run with those who do.” They feel proud of themselves! They fall into the sin worse than all of these. Proverbs 16:5 uses the phrase “proud in heart.”Pride never reaches the hands or feet. It resides within the heart. It is there from birth.
Pride Promotes Dissension — At the root of every quarrel, conflict, battle, and war is the sin of pride. Proverbs 13:10 says, “Only by pride cometh contention.” The next argument we hear, the next church that divides, the next divorce that destroys a home — we will know what is at the root in someone’s heart.
Pride Promotes Dishonor — Jesus said, “And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted”(Matthew 23:12). The way up is always down. Satan fell because he said, “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God” (Isaiah 14:13). He sought honor and dishonored himself.
How opposite was the attitude of our Lord Jesus Christ! He said, “I will descend.” Though He was God, He didn’t clutch at His divine rights. Instead He humbled Himself, and so God exalted Him. (Philippians 2:6‑11).
Here’s a quick test. Give yourself a good reality check:
· Are you irritated when you are corrected for a mistake?
· Do you find yourself accepting praise for things over which you have no control?
· Do you tend to forget Who blessed you with talents and abilities?
· When you make a mistake, are you quick with an alibi?
· Is everything someone else’s fault?
· When there is a personal conflict, are you quick to tell yourself you can get along without that person?
· Are you prone to think you can go it alone?
· Is it difficult for you to take advice? Are you extremely reluctant to seek it?
· Do you have an ungrateful spirit toward what God has given you and a bitterness about what you think you deserve?
· Is your life marked by a sense of competition? Do you measure success by victories over other people?
Do you see in yourself an independence from God and a sense of self‑sufficiency? It’s a recipe for disaster.
Pride Precedes Destruction — “The Lord will destroy the house of the proud” (Proverbs 15:25). When we’re ruled by pride, we’re taking a stand against God. Left unchecked, we can become hardened to pride and deaf to God’s calling us to repentance. Pride will eventually destroy us.There is no better day than today take a pride inventory, repent, humble yourself, and admit your total dependence upon God.
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I have read articles for years from Dan Barker, but recently I just finished the book Barker wrote entitled LIFE DRIVEN PURPOSE which was prompted by Rick Warren’s book PURPOSE DRIVEN LIFE which I also read several years ago.
Dan Barker is the Co-President of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, And co-host of Freethought Radio and co-founder of The Clergy Project.
On March 19, 2022, I got an email back from Dan Barker that said:
Thanks for the insights.
Have you read my book Life Driven Purpose? To say there is no purpose OF life is not to say there is no purpose IN life. Life is immensely meaningful when you stop looking for external purpose.
Ukraine … we’ll, we can no longer blame Russian aggression on “godless communism.” The Russian church, as far as I know, has not denounced the war.
db
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In the next few weeks I will be discussing the book LIFE DRIVEN PURPOSE which I did enjoy reading. Here is an assertion that Barker makes that I want to discuss:
Of course, democracy is no guarantee of morality. If a majority of people in a state lacking constitutional rights and liberties are theocratic, for example, they could vote to limit freedoms—they could use democracy to destroy democracy—not with the intention of minimizing real harm but to protect themselves from the manufactured harm of having their religious opinions challenged. That is why I think the best hope, the only hope, for a peaceful world is secular government.
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Christianity was the target of Richard Dawkins in THE GOD DELUSION but now Dawkins has woke up and seen that Christianity is not the religion to be feared, but Islam is!!!
I wanted to share with you a correspondence I had with Dr. Nicolaas Bloembergen of Harvard. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1981 and was born in Dordrecht, the Netherlands on March 11, 1920. He spent the last two years of World War II hiding from the Nazis. I found his story very interesting.
In his September 6, 1995 letter to me he wrote:
Less zealotry and more compassion for those who have different concepts of the world from yours would help make this world more livable.
__________
(I sent him a document from April 10, 1994 which has been updated below)
Is it legitimate to condemn religion for historical atrocities? First we had better examine the facts.I got a call from a gentleman from San Francisco who was exorcised about Christian missionaries going into foreign lands. Then he started talking about not only the destruction of indigenous beliefs, but also the destruction of missionaries. That’s what he wanted to see happen. He also said that Christians and religious groups are responsible for the greatest massacres of history. It turns out he was quite supportive of Wicca and indigenous religions which worship the Mother Earth force, Gaia. This is essentially the basic foundation for witchcraft and I made a comment then that this was basically what he was talking about.
But a couple of the things that he said were a challenge to me. Not only did he assert that historically missionaries have destroyed cultures and indigenous religions at the point of a gun, but also Christian and religion were responsible for most of the bloodshed in the world, or the great majority of it. I’ve heard this claim before. I wanted to respond with more detail because I’m sure you’ve heard these things as well.
I have a tactic that I employ in situations like this that is called “Just the Facts, Ma’am.” In other words, there are times when you’re faced with objections to Christianity or your point of view that really fail with an accurate assessment of the facts. There are people who make accusations and assertions that are empirically false. This is one of them.
The assertion is that religion has caused most of the killing and bloodshed in the world. The greatest atrocities committed against man were done in the name of God.
Before I get to the particular facts, there is more than just a factual problem here. There is a theoretical problem as well and I tried to make the point that we must distinguish between what an individual or group of people do and what the code that they allegedly follow actually asserts. The fact is that there are people who do things consistently that are inconsistent with the code that they allegedly follow. But often times when that happens, especially where religion is concerned, the finger is pointed not at the individual who is choosing to do something barbaric, but at the code he claims to represent. The only time it’s legitimate to point to the code as the source of barbarism is if the code is, in fact, the source of barbarism. People object to a religion that used barbaric means to spread the faith. But one can only use that as an objection against the religion if it’s the religion itself that asserts that one must do it this way, as opposed to people who try to promote the spread of the religion in a forceful fashion in contradiction to what the religion actually teaches.
It’s my understanding that much of Islam has been spread by the edge of the sword. That isn’t because Muslim advocates were particularly violent. It’s because their religion actually advocates this kind of thing. The difference between that and Christianity is that when Christianity was spread by the edge of the sword it was done so in contradistinction to the actually teachings of Christianity. This is when individual people who claim to be Christians actually did things that were inconsistent with their faith.
I’ve had some people that have told me when I’ve brought this up, “That’s not a fair defense. You can’t simply say that those people who committed the Crusades or the Inquisition or the witch burnings weren’t real Christians. That’s illegitimate.” My response is, why? We know what a real Christian is. A real Christian is someone who believes particular things and lives a particular kind of lifestyle. John makes it clear that those who consistently live unrighteously are ipso facto by definition not part of the faith. So why is it illegitimate for me to look at people who claim to be Christians, yet live unrighteous lives, and promote genocide to say that these people aren’t living consistently with the text, therefore you can’t really call them Christians. I think that’s legitimate.
For example, no one would fault the Hippocratic Oath, which is a very rigid standard of conduct for physicians, just because there are doctors who don’t keep it. We wouldn’t say there’s something wrong with the oath, the code that they allegedly follow. We’d say there was something wrong with the individuals who don’t live up to the ideals of that code. That is the case frequently where people waving the Bible in one hand are also waving a bloody sword in the other. The two are inconsistent. So it’s not fair or reasonable to fault the Bible when the person who’s waving the sword is doing things that are contradictory to what the Bible teaches ought to be done.
So that’s the first important thing to remember when you face an objection like this. Distinguish between what a person does and what the code they claim to follow actually asserts. Christianity is one thing, and if we’re going to fault Christianity we must fault its teachings and not fault it because there are people who say they are Christians but then live a life that is totally morally divergent from what Christianity actually teaches.
As I said earlier, this kind of objection falls when you employ a tactic I call “Just the Facts, Ma’am,” and I’d like to give you some of those facts. My assertion as I responded to the gentleman who called last week was simply this, it is true that there are Christians who do evil things. Even take people’s lives. This is an indication that these people aren’t truly Christians, but it may be true also that people with the right heart, but the wrong head do things that are inappropriate, like I think might have been the case in the Salem Witch Trials.
My basic case is that religion doesn’t promote this kind of thing; it’s the exception to the rule. The rule actually is that when we remove God from the equation, when we act and live as if we have no one to answer to but ourselves, and if there is not God, then the rule of law is social Darwinism–the strong rule the weak. We’ll find that, quite to the contrary, it is not Christianity and the belief in the God of the Bible that results in carnage and genocide. But it’s when people reject the God of the Bible that we are most vulnerable to those kinds of things that we see in history that are the radical and gross destruction of human lives.
Now for the facts.
Let’s take the Salem Witchcraft Trials. Apparently, between June and September of 1692 five men and fourteen women were eventually convicted and hanged because English law called for the death penalty for witchcraft (which, incidentally, was the same as the Old Testament). During this time there were over 150 others that were imprisoned. Things finally ended in September 1692 when Governor William Phipps dissolved the court because his wife had been accused. He said enough of this insanity. It was the colony’s leading minister, by the way, who finally ended the witch hunt in 1693 and those that remained in prison were released. The judge that was presiding over the trials publicly confessed his guilt in 1697. By the way , it’s interesting to note that this particular judge was very concerned about the plight of the American Indian and was opposed to slavery. These are views that don’t sit well with the common caricature of the radical Puritans in the witch hunt. In 1711 the colonies legislatures made reparation to the heirs of the victims. They annulled the convictions.
I guess the point is that there was a witch hunt. It was based on theological reasons, but it wasn’t to the extent that is usually claimed. I think last week the caller said it was millions and millions that were burned at the stake as witches. It certainly wasn’t the case in this country. It seemed that the witch hunt was a result of theological misapplication and the people who were involved were penitent. The whole witch hunt lasted only a year. Sixteen people were hanged in New England for witchcraft prior to 1692. In the 1692 witch hunt nineteen were executed. So you’ve got thirty-five people. One hundred fifty imprisoned. This is not at all to diminish or minimize the impact of the American witch hunts which resulted in thirty-five deaths. But thirty-five is not millions. It is not hundreds of thousands. It’s not even hundreds. It’s thirty-five. This was not genocide.
Now in Europe it was a little different. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for practicing witchcraft in 1431. Over a period of 300 years, from 1484 to 1782, the Christian church put to death 300,000 women accused of witchcraft, about 1000 per year. Again, I don’t want to minimize the impact of 1000 lives lost a year, but here we’re talking about a much, much smaller number over a long period of time than what has been claimed in the past.
In America we’re talking thirty-five people. In Europe over 300 years, we’re talking about 300,000. Not millions. The sources here are World Book Encyclopedia and Encyclopedia Americana. You can also read in Newsweek, August 31, 1992. I was accused of being a liar last week. I’m trying to give you the facts from reputable sources that show that the accusations from last week aren’t accurate.
There were two Inquisitions. One of them began right around the end of the first millennium in 1017. It began as an attempt to root out heretics and occurred chiefly in France, Germany, Italy and Spain. The Spanish Inquisition followed in the fourteenth century and was much bloodier. It began as a feudal aristocracy which forced religious values on society. Jews were caught in the middle of this and many of them were killed. About 2000 executions took place. The Inquisition that took place at the turn of the millennium, less than that. So we’re talking about thousands of people, not millions.
There were actually seven different Crusades and tens of thousands died in them. Most of them were a misdirected attempt to free the Holy Land. Some weren’t quite like that. There were some positive aspects to them, but they were basically an atrocity over a couple hundred years. The worst was the Children’s Crusade. All of the children who went to fight died along the way. Some were shipwrecked and the rest were taken into slavery in Egypt.
A blight on Christianity? Certainty. Something wrong? Dismally wrong. A tragedy? Of course. Millions and millions of people killed? No. The numbers are tragic, but pale in comparison to the statistics of what non-religion criminals have committed.
My point is not that Christians or religions people aren’t to vulnerable to terrible crimes. Certainly they are. But it is not religion that produces these things; it is the denial of Biblical religion that generally leads to this kind of things. The statistics that are the result of irreligious genocide stagger the imagination.
My source is The Guinness Book of World Records. Look up the category “Judicial” and under the subject of “Crimes: Mass Killings,” the greatest massacre ever imputed by the government of one sovereign against the government of another is 26.3 million Chinese during the regime of Mao Tse Tung between the years of 1949 and May 1965. The Walker Report published by the U.S. Senate Committee of the Judiciary in July 1971 placed the parameters of the total death toll in China since 1949 between 32 and 61.7 million people. An estimate of 63.7 million was published by Figaromagazine on November 5, 1978.
In the U.S.S.R. the Nobel Prize winner, Alexander Solzhenitsyn estimates the loss of life from state repression and terrorism from October 1917 to December 1959 under Lenin and Stalin and Khrushchev at 66.7 million.
Finally, in Cambodia (and this was close to me because I lived in Thailand in 1982 working with the broken pieces of the Cambodian holocaust from 1975 to 1979) “as a percentage of a nation’s total population, the worst genocide appears to be that in Cambodia, formerly Kampuchea. According to the Khmer Rouge foreign minister, more than one third of the eight million Khmer were killed between April 17, 1975 and January 1979. One third of the entire country was put to death under the rule of Pol Pott, the founder of the Communist Part of Kampuchea. During that time towns, money and property were abolished. Economic execution by bayonet and club introduced for such offenses as falling asleep during the day, asking to too many questions, playing non-communist music, being old and feeble, being the offspring of an undesirable, or being too well educated. In fact, deaths in the Tuol Sleng interrogation center in Pnom Penh, which is the capitol of Kampuchea, reached 582 in a day.”
Then in Chinese history of the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries there were three periods of wholesale massacre. The numbers of victims attributed to these events are assertions rather than reliable estimates. The figures put on the Mongolian invasion of northern China form 1210 to 1219 and from 1311 to 1340 are both on the order of 35 million people. While the number of victims of bandit leader Chang Hsien-chung, known as the Yellow Tiger, from 1643 to 1647 in the Siechuan province has been put at 40 million people
China under Mao Tse Tung, 26.3 million Chinese. According the Walker Report, 63.7 million over the whole period of time of the Communist revolution in China. Solzhenitsyn says the Soviet Union put to death 66.7 million people. Kampuchea destroyed one third of their entire population of eight million Cambodians. The Chinese at two different times in medieval history, somewhere in the vicinity of 35 million and 40 million people. Ladies and gentlemen, make note that these deaths were the result of organizations or points of view or ideologies that had left God out of the equation. None of these involve religion. And all but the very last actually assert atheism.
It seems to me that my colleague Dennis Prager’s illustration cannot be improved upon to show the self-evident capability of Biblical religion to restrain evil. He asks this in this illustration. If you were walking down a dark street at night in the center of Los Angeles and you saw ten young men walking towards you, would you feel more comfortable if you knew that they had just come from a Bible class? Of course, the answer is certainly you would. That demonstrates that religion, and Biblical religion in particular, is a mitigator of evil in the world.
It is true that it’s possible that religion can produce evil, and generally when we look closer at the detail it produces evil because the individual people are actually living in a rejection of the tenants of Christianity and a rejection of the God that they are supposed to be following. So it can produce it, but the historical fact is that outright rejection of God and institutionalizing of atheism actually does produce evil on incredible levels. We’re talking about tens of millions of people a result of the rejection of God.
—
Francis Schaeffer

Take a look at this piece of evidence from the book WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? by Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop at this link!
How Should We Then Live | Season 1 | Episode 7 | The Age of Non-Reason
How Should We Then Live | Season 1 | Episode 8 | The Age of Fragmentation
Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 1 | Abortion of the Human…
Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 4 | The Basis for Human D…
1984 SOUNDWORD LABRI CONFERENCE VIDEO – Q&A With Francis & Edith Schaefer

FERNAND LÉGER (1881-1955)
A pure cubist painter during his early decades, Leger was increasingly attracted to the world of machinery and movement, creating works such as “The Discs” (1918).
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