Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood could be in for some satisfaction after putting one of his paintings of the band up for sale for £300,000.
The rock ‘n’ roll legend’s painting of his band is 1.5 metres by two metres in size and on display at Castle Fine Art, at the ICC, in Birmingham City Centre.
The 66-year-old, who listens to Mozart at his easel and whose first love was art, took formal training at Ealing College of Art, London.
Star treatment: This painting by Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood of the band has gone on sale for £300,000
Talent: Ronnie Wood (in front of a previous painting he put on display) took formal training at Ealing College of Art in London
Wood said: ‘When I get inspired, I get almost possessed and I just have to paint.
‘There is no kind of therapy like the one you have from starting and seeing a picture through to the end.’
It was as a child Wood showed early signs of artistic skill.
At school, he was pulled out of science classes to paint murals. When he was 14, his music teacher paid him £4 for a snow scene.
Wood said: ‘My dad used to slave away all week for that. I gave half to my mum.’
‘He could have been a professional artist’: Beth McCarthy, gallery manager at Castle Fine Art at the ICC Birmingham, with some of Wood’s other works
I can get a lot of satisfaction: Prices for Wood’s Raw Instinct collection range from £1,500 for a signed limited edition print
Prices for Wood’s Raw Instinct collection range from £1,500 for a signed limited edition print.
Gallery manager Beth McCarthy said of the 40 original works, about 20 were still available.
She said the art gave an insight into Wood’s mind.
‘His life has been very well documented,’ she said. ‘He could have been a professional artist.
‘If you’re not necessarily a singer, but a musician, someone who creates music and writes songs, that gives people a sort of poetic sensibility.
Prolific: Gallery manager Beth McCarthy said of the 40 original works, about 20 were still available
‘They’re also, just by virtue of doing that, quite brave. It’s a similar thing with painting.’
The exhibition runs until August 9.
It will be followed by never-before-seen works by Bob Dylan in his Drawn Blank 2013 Collection. Beth said Dylan told the gallery he found art relaxing.
She said: ‘It’s physically hard work touring night after night.
‘For Ronnie Wood and Bob Dylan it’s almost like meditation making a drawing. Hours and hours go by without you noticing.’
One would think that the young people of the 1960’s thought little of death but is that true? The most successful song on the SGT PEPPER’S album was about the sudden death of a close friend and the album cover was pictured in front of a burial scene. Francis Schaeffer’s favorite album was SGT. […]
_________ I think it is revolutionary for a 18 year old Paul McCartney to write a song about an old person nearing death. This demonstrates that the Beatles did really think about the process of life and its challenges from birth to day in a complete way and the possible answer. Solomon does that too […]
_____________ Karlheinz Stockhausen was friends with both Lennon and McCartney and he influenced some of their music. Today we will take a close look at his music and his views and at some of the songs of the Beatles that he influenced. Dr. Francis Schaeffer: How Should We Then Live? Episode 9 (Promo Clip) […]
Mia and Prudence Farrow both joined the Beatles in their trip to India to check out Eastern Religions. Francis Schaeffer noted, ” The younger people and the older ones tried drug taking but then turned to the eastern religions. Both drugs and the eastern religions seek truth inside one’s own head, a negation of reason. […]
Dylan Thomas was included on SGT PEPPER’S cover because of words like this, “Too proud to cry, too frail to check the tears, And caught between two nights, blindness and death.” Francis Schaeffer noted: This is sensitivity crying out in darkness. But it is not mere emotion; the problem is not on this […]
John Lennon was writing about a drug trip when he wrote the song LUCY IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS and Paul later confirmed that many years later. Francis Schaeffer correctly noted that the Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper’s brought the message of drugs and Eastern Religion to the masses like no other means of communication could. Today […]
______________ Why was William S. Burroughs put on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band? Burroughs was challenging the norms of the 1960’s but at the same time he was like the Beatles in that he was also searching for values and he never found the solution. (In the last post in this […]
The Beatles were “inspired by the musique concrète of German composer and early electronic music pioneer Karlheinz Stockhausen…” as SCOTT THILL has asserted. Francis Schaeffer noted that ideas of “Non-resolution” and “Fragmentation” came down German and French streams with the influence of Beethoven’s last Quartets and then the influence of Debussy and later Schoenberg’s non-resolution which is in total contrast […]
It was the famous atheist Bertrand Russell who pointed out to Paul McCartney early on that the Beatles needed to bring more attention to the Vietnam war protests and Paul promptly went back to the group and reported Russell’s advice. We will take a closer look at some of Russell’s views and break them down […]
Francis Schaeffer correctly noted: In this flow there was also the period of psychedelic rock, an attempt to find this experience without drugs, by the use of a certain type of music. This was the period of the Beatles’ Revolver (1966) and Strawberry Fields Forever (1967). In the same period and in the same direction […]
I was really sad to read about Dr. Victor Stenger’s passing. He had some very lively debates with William Lane Craig but I remember him most for his writings from the 1990’s and that is when I first starting writing letters to him.
Following a career as a research scientist in the field of particle physics, Stenger was associated with New Atheism and he also authored popular science books. He published twelve books for general audiences on physics, quantum mechanics, cosmology, philosophy, religion, atheism, and pseudoscience, including the 2007 best-seller God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist. His final book was God and the Multiverse: Humanity’s Expanding View of the Cosmos (September 9, 2014). He was also a regular featured science columnist for the Huffington Post.[2]
He was a strong advocate for removing the influence of religion from scientific research, commercial activity, and the political decision process,[3] and he coined the popular phrase “Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings”.[4]
Victor J. Stenger was born on January 29, 1935 and raised in a working-class neighborhood of Bayonne, New Jersey. His father was a Lithuanian immigrant and his mother was the daughter of Hungarianimmigrants.[1] He died in August 2014 at the age of 79.[5]
Victor Stenger (1935-2014) – Arguing God from Natural Theology?
_____________________________
Is There a God? William Lane Craig vs. Victor J. Stenger
In the second video below in the 89th clip in this series are his words and my response is below them.
50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 1)
Another 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 2)
A Further 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 3)
On the video “Another 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 2),” and in the article, “Scientists and Religion,” 05/15/2012 12:07 pm, Victor Stenger noted:
Teams of scientists from three highly respected institutions — the Mayo Clinic and Harvard and Duke Universities — have performed carefully controlled experiments on the medical efficacy of blind, intercessory prayer and published their results in peer-reviewed journals. These experiments found no evidence that such prayers provide any health benefit. But, they could have.
Obviously they were hoping to demonstrate that God existed by showing that prayer worked, but it could have and the point is it could have. The people who say that science has nothing to say about God are just wrong. The theist God (Stenger defines this God as a God that acts in the world in contrast to the deist God that does not) should have been detected by now and that is the statement I tried to make and the proper position science should take, but we are ready to hear the evidence to the contrary.
Let me make two points concerning Dr. Stenger’s assertions above. First, back in the 1990’s I wrote 2 letters to Dr. Stenger and in those letters I provided him with evidence that shows that God has taken an active role in the historical events in the past. LET ME COMMEND DR. STENGER ON AN IMPORTANT PORTION OF HIS STATEMENT AND IT IS THIS PART, “The people who say that science has nothing to say about God are just wrong. The theist God (Stenger defines this God as a God that acts in the world in contrast to the deist God that does not) should have been detected by now and that is the statement I tried to make and the proper position science should take, but we are ready to hear the evidence to the contrary.” I TOOK STENGER AT HIS WORD AND PROVIDED HIM WITH PLENTY OF EVIDENCE AND AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST YOU WILL FIND EVEN MORE. Below are some of the type evidence that presented to Dr. Stenger in my numerous letters from the middle 1990’s until last year:
The Bible and Archaeology – Is the Bible from God? (Kyle Butt 42 min)
Second, there are such people as atheists. I made this point with him both in the 1990’s and in 2014 because I corresponded with him since he was on the board of an organization called CSICOP and I explain more in the letter below:
Letter below that I wrote to Dr. Stenger in 2014:
Dr. Victor Stenger, Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, University of Colorado, 914 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80302
June 19, 2014
Dear Dr. Stenger,
I watched your 49 minute talk on You Tube at an Unitarian Church and since I am an evangelical Christian I did not agree with a lot you had to say. However, you hit the nail on the head when you said evangelicals understand the conflict between Evolution and the Bible. I grew up in Memphis and was a member of Bellevue Baptist where Adrian Rogers was our pastor and he put it this way:
I reject evolution not only for logical reasons, and not only for moral reasons, but I reject evolution for theological reasons. Now, this may not apply to others, but friend, it applies to me, because the Bible doesn’t teach it, and I believe the Bible. And, you cannot have it both ways. There are some people who say, “Well, I believe the Bible, and I believe in evolution.” Well, you can try that if you want, but you have pudding between your ears. You can’t have it both ways.
H. G. Wells, the brilliant historian who wrote The Outlines of History, said this—and I quote: “If all animals and man evolved, then there were no first parents, and no Paradise, and no Fall. If there had been no Fall, then the entire historic fabric of Christianity, the story of the first sin, and the reason for the atonement, collapses like a house of cards.” H. G. Wells says—and, by the way, I don’t believe that he did believe in creation—but he said, “If there’s no creation, then you’ve ripped away the foundation of Christianity.”
Now, the Bible teaches that man was created by God and that he fell into sin. The evolutionist believes that he started in some primordial soup and has been coming up and up. And, these two ideas are diametrically opposed. What we call sin the evolutionist would just call a stumble up. And so, the evolutionist believes that all a man needs—he’s just going up and up, and better and better—he needs a boost from beneath. The Bible teaches he’s a sinner and needs a birth from above. And, these are both at heads, in collision.
__________________
Now on to the other topics I wanted to discuss with you today. I wanted to write you today for two reasons. First, is there a good chance that deep down in your conscience you have repressed the belief in your heart that God does exist and is there a possibility this deep belief of yours could be shown through a lie-detector? (Back in the late 1990’s I had the opportunity to correspond with over a dozen members of CSICOP on just this very issue.)
Second, I wanted to point out some scientific evidence that caused Antony Flew to switch from an atheist (as you are now) to a theist. Twenty years I had the opportunity to correspond with two individuals that were regarded as two of the most famous atheists of the 20th Century, Antony Flew and Carl Sagan. (I have enclosed some of those letters between us.) I had read the books and seen the films of the Christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer and he had discussed the works of both of these men. I sent both of these gentlemen philosophical arguments from Schaeffer in these letters and in the first letter I sent a cassette tape of my pastor’s sermon IS THE BIBLE TRUE? (CD is enclosed also.) You may have noticed in the news a few years ago that Antony Flew actually became a theist in 2004 and remained one until his death in 2010. Carl Sagan remained a skeptic until his dying day in 1996.
You will notice in the enclosed letter from June 1, 1994 that Dr. Flew commented, “Thank you for sending me the IS THE BIBLE TRUE? tape to which I have just listened with great interest and, I trust, profit.” It would be a great honor for me if you would take time and drop me a note and let me know what your reaction is to this same message.
I have a good friend who is a street preacher who preaches on the Santa Monica Promenade in California and during the Q/A sessions he does have lots of atheists that enjoy their time at the mic. When this happens he always quotes Romans 1:18-19 (Amplified Bible) ” For God’s wrath and indignation are revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who in their wickedness REPRESSandHINDER the truth and make it inoperative. For that which is KNOWN about God is EVIDENT to them andMADE PLAIN IN THEIR INNER CONSCIOUSNESS, because God has SHOWN IT TO THEM,”(emphasis mine). Then he tells the atheist that the atheist already knows that God exists but he has been suppressing that knowledge in unrighteousness. This usually infuriates the atheist.
My friend draws some large crowds at times and was thinking about setting up a lie detector test and see if atheists actually secretly believe in God. He discussed this project with me since he knew that I had done a lot of research on the idea about 20 years ago.
Nelson Price in THE EMMANUEL FACTOR (1987) tells the story about Brown Trucking Company in Georgia who used to give polygraph tests to their job applicants. However, in part of the test the operator asked, “Do you believe in God?” In every instance when a professing atheist answered “No,” the test showed the person to be lying. My pastor Adrian Rogers used to tell this same story to illustrate Romans 1:19 and it was his conclusion that “there is no such thing anywhere on earth as a true atheist. If a man says he doesn’t believe in God, then he is lying. God has put his moral consciousness into every man’s heart, and a man has to try to kick his conscience to death to say he doesn’t believe in God.”
It is true that polygraph tests for use in hiring were banned by Congress in 1988. Mr and Mrs Claude Brown on Aug 25, 1994 wrote me a letter confirming that over 15,000 applicants previous to 1988 had taken the polygraph test and EVERYTIME SOMEONE SAID THEY DID NOT BELIEVE IN GOD, THE MACHINE SAID THEY WERE LYING.
It had been difficult to catch up to the Browns. I had heard about them from Dr. Rogers’ sermon but I did not have enough information to locate them. Dr. Rogers referred me to Dr. Nelson Price and Dr. Price’s office told me that Claude Brown lived in Atlanta. After writing letters to all 9 of the entries for Claude Brown in the Atlanta telephone book, I finally got in touch with the Browns.
Adrian Rogers also pointed out that the Bible does not recognize the theoretical atheist. Psalms 14:1: The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.” Dr Rogers notes, “The fool is treating God like he would treat food he did not desire in a cafeteria line. ‘No broccoli for me!’ ” In other words, the fool just doesn’t want God in his life and is a practical atheist, but not a theoretical atheist. Charles Ryrie in the The Ryrie Study Bible came to the same conclusion on this verse.
Here are the conclusions of the experts I wrote in the secular world concerning the lie detector test and it’s ability to get at the truth:
Professor Frank Horvath of the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University has testified before Congress concerning the validity of the polygraph machine. He has stated on numerous occasions that “the evidence from those who have actually been affected by polygraph testing in the workplace is quite contrary to what has been expressed by critics. I give this evidence greater weight than I give to the most of the comments of critics” (letter to me dated October 6, 1994).
There was no better organization suited to investigate this claim concerning the lie detector test than the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). This organization changed their name to the Committe for Skeptical Inquiry in 2006. This organization includes anyone who wants to help debunk the whole ever-expanding gamut of misleading, outlandish, and fraudulent claims made in the name of science. I AM WRITING YOU TODAY BECAUSE YOU ARE ASSOCIATED WITH CSICOP.
I read The Skeptical Review(publication of CSICOP) for several years during the 90’s and I would write letters to these scientists about taking this project on and putting it to the test. Below are some of their responses (15 to 20 years old now):
1st Observation: Religious culture of USA could have influenced polygraph test results. ANTONY FLEW (formerly of Reading University in England, now deceased, in a letter to me dated 8-11-96) noted, “For all the evidence so far available seems to be of people from a culture in which people are either directly brought up to believe in the existence of God or at least are strongly even if only unconsciously influenced by those who do. Even if everyone from such a culture revealed unconscious belief, it would not really begin to show that — as Descartes maintained— the idea of God is so to speak the Creator’s trademark, stamped on human souls by their Creator at their creation.”
2nd Observation: Polygraph Machines do not work.JOHN R. COLE,anthropologist, editor, National Center for Science Education, Dr. WOLF RODER, professor of Geography, University of Cincinnati, Dr. SUSAN BLACKMORE,Dept of Psychology, University of the West of England, Dr. CHRISTOPHER C. FRENCH, Psychology Dept, Goldsmith’s College, University of London, Dr.WALTER F. ROWE, The George Washington University, Dept of Forensic Sciences, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
3rd Observation: The sample size probably was not large enough to apply statistical inference. (These gentlemen made the following assertion before I received the letter back from Claude Brown that revealed that the sample size was over 15,000.) JOHN GEOHEGAN, Chairman of New Mexicans for Science and Reason, Dr. WOLF RODER, and Dr WALTER F. ROWE (in a letter dated July 12, 1994) stated, “The polygraph operator for Brown Trucking Company has probably examined only a few hundred or a few thousand job applicants. I would surmise that only a very small number of these were actually atheists. It seems a statistically insignificant (and distinctly nonrandom) sampling of the 5 billion human beings currently inhabiting the earth. Dr. Nelson Price also seems to be impugning the integrity of anyone who claims to be an atheist in a rather underhanded fashion.”
4th Observation: The question (Do you believe in God?) was out of place and it surprised the applicants. THOMAS GILOVICH, psychologist, Cornell Univ., Dr. ZEN FAULKES, professor of Biology, University of Victoria (Canada), ROBERT CRAIG, Head of Indiana Skeptics Organization, Dr. WALTER ROWE,
5th Observation: Proof that everyone believes in God’s existence does not prove that God does in fact exist. PAUL QUINCEY, Nathional Physical Laboratory,(England), Dr. CLAUDIO BENSKI, Schneider Electric, CFEPP, (France),
6th Observation: Both the courts and Congress recognize that lie-detectors don’t work and that is why they were banned in 1988. (Governments and the military still use them.)
Dr WALTER ROWE, KATHLEEN M. DILLION, professor of Psychology, Western New England College.
7th Observation:This information concerning Claude Brown’s claim has been passed on to us via a tv preacher and eveybody knows that they are untrustworthy– look at their history. WOLF RODER.
______________
Solomon wisely noted in Ecclesiastes 3:11 “God has planted eternity in the heart of men…” (Living Bible). No wonder Bertrand Russell wrote in his autobiography, “It is odd, isn’t it? I feel passionately for this world and many things and people in it, and yet…what is it all? There must be something more important, one feels, though I don’t believe there is. I am haunted. Some ghosts, for some extra mundane regions, seem always trying to tell me something that I am to repeat to the world, but I cannot understand that message.”
Gene Emery, science writer for Providence Journal-Bulletin is a past winner of the CSICOP “Responsibility in Journalism Award” and he had the best suggestion of all when he suggested, “Actually, if you want to make a good case about whether Romans 1:19 is true, arrange to have a polygraph operator (preferably an atheist or agnostic) brought to the next CSICOP meeting. (I’m not a member of CSICOP, by the way, so I can’t give you an official invitation or anything.) If none of the folks at that meeting can convince the machine that they truly believe in God, maybe there is, in fact, an innate willingness to believe in God.”
DO YOU HAVE ANY REACTIONS TO ADD TO THESE 7 OBSERVATIONS THAT I GOT 15 YEARS AGO? Thank you again for your time and I know how busy you are.
Below is a piece of that evidence given by Francis Schaeffer concerning the accuracy of the Bible.
TRUTH AND HISTORY (chapter 5 of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?, under footnote #95)
Two things should be mentioned about the time of Moses in Old Testament history.
First, consider the archaeological evidence that relates to the period. True, it is not of the same explicitness that we have found, say, in relation to the existence of Ahab or Jehu or Jehoiakim. We have no inscription from Egypt which refers to Moses being taken out of the bulrushes and removed from the waterproof basket his mother had made him. But this does not mean that the Book of Exodus is a fictitious account, as some critics has suggested. Some say it is simply an idealized reading-back into history by the Jews under the later monarchy. There is not a reason why these “books of Moses,” as they are called, should not be treated as history, just as we have been forced to treat the Books of Kings and Chronicles dating 500 years later.
There is ample evidence about the building projects of the Egyptian kings, and the evidence we have fits well with Exodus. There are scenes of brick-making (for example, Theban Tomb 100 of Rekhmire). Contemporary parchments and papyri tell of production targets which had to be met. One speaks of a satisfied official report of his men as “making their quota of bricks daily” (Papyrus Anastasi III vso, p.3, in the British Museum. Also Louvre Leather Roll in the Louvre, Paris, col ii, mentions quotes of bricks and “taskmasters”). Actual bricks found show signs of straw which had to be mixed in with the clay, just as Exodus says. This matter of bricks and straw is further affirmed by the record that one despairing official complained, “There are no men to make bricks nor straw in my area.”
We know from contemporary discoveries that Semites were found at all levels of Egypt’s cosmopolitan society. (Brooklyn Museum, New York, no. 35, 1446. Papyrus Brooklyn). There is nothing strange therefore about Joseph’s becoming so important in the pharaoh’s court.
The store cities of Pithom and Raamses (Rameses) mentioned in Exodus 1:11 are well known in Egyptian inscriptions. Raamses was actually in the east-Delta capital, Pi-Ramses (near Goshen), where the Israelites would have had ample experience of agriculture. Thus, the references to agriculture found in the law of Moses would not have been strange to the Israelites even though they were in the desert at the time the law was given. Certainly there is no reason to say, as some critics do, that these sections on agriculture were an indication of a reading-back from a latter period when the Jews were settled in Canaan.
The form of the covenant made at Sinai has remarkable parallels with the covenant forms of other people at that time. (On covenants and parties to a treaty, the Louvre; and Treaty Tablet from Boghaz Koi (i.e., Hittite) in Turkey, Museum of Archaeology in Istanbul.) The covenant form at Sinai resembles just as the forms of letter writings of the first century after Christ (the types of introductions and greetings) are reflected in the letters of the apostles in the New Testament, it is not surprising to find the covenant form of the second millennium before Christ reflected in what occurred at Mount Sinai. God has always spoken to people within the culture of their time, which does not mean that God’s communication is limited by that culture. It is God’s communication but within the forms appropriate to the time.
The Pentateuch tells us that Moses led the Israelites up the east side of the Dead Sea after their long stay in the desert. There they encountered the hostile kingdom of Moab. We have firsthand evidence for the existence of this kingdom of Moab–contrary to what has been said by critical scholars who have denied the existence of Moab at this time. It can be found in a war scene from a temple at Luxor (Al Uqsor). This commemorates a victory by Ramses II over the Moabite nation at Batora (Luxor Temple, Egypt).
Also the definite presence of the Israelites in west Palestine (Canaan) no later than the end of the thirteenth century B.C. is attested by a victory stela of Pharaoh Merenptah (son and successor of Ramses II) to commemorate his victory over Libya (Israel Stela, Cairo Museum, no. 34025). In it he mentions his previous success in Canaan against Aschalon, Gize, Yenom, and Israel; hence there can be no doubt the nation of Israel was in existence at the latest by this time of approximately 1220 B.C. This is not to say it could not have been earlier, but it cannot be later than this date.
The Moabite Stone was discovered by by Klein 1868 BC at the ancient city of Dibon.
Before it could be fully documented, Muslims had smashed it to pieces because they superstitiously thought the black basalt stone had magical powers to protect their granaries. The Black stone in the Kabba at Mecca is a meteorite thought to have similar qualities which Muslims on their Hajj constantly kiss as they make their 7 counter-clockwise circles around the Black stone. (They only thought there were seven planets in 640 AD.)
Only a fraction was found and put back together. It is presently housed in the Louvre in Paris, France.
The story on the Moabite Stone is a spectacular proof that the Bible is true history as told in 2 Kings 1:1; 3:4-27 “Now Mesha king of Moab was a sheep breeder, and used to pay the king of Israel 100,000 lambs and the wool of 100,000 rams.”2 Ki 3:4
Mesha King of Moab, wrote the Moabite stone in about 900 BC.
The Stele is the oldest known evidence of the Tetragrammaton YHWH (Yahweh) as the personal name God revealed to Moses. It also references the tribe of Gad. It also references two known kings from the Bible: Omri the king of Israel and Mesha King of Moab. It also harmonizes with the Bible in that the King of Moab paid tribute to Omri. There are also references to building many cisterns for water which is possibly a reference to the miracle of water God used to defeat the Moabites.
Translation of the Moabite Stone: “I am Mesha, the son of Kemoš-yatti, the king of Moab, from Dibon. My father was king over Moab for thirty years, and I was king after my father. And in Karchoh I made this high place for Kemoš […] because he has delivered me from all kings, and because he has made me look down on all my enemies. Omri was the king of Israel, and he oppressed Moab for many days, for Kemoš was angry with his land. And his son succeeded him, and he said -he too- “I will oppress Moab!” In my days he did so, but I looked down on him and on his house, and Israel has gone to ruin, yes, it has gone to ruin for ever! Omri had taken possession of the whole land of Medeba (Madaba) and he lived there in his days and half the days of his son, forty years, but Kemoš restored it in my days. And I built Baal Meon, and I made in it a water reservoir, and I built Kiriathaim. And the men of Gad lived in the land of Ataroth from ancient times, and the king of Israel built Ataroth for himself, and I fought against the city, and I captured, and I killed all the people from the city as a sacrifice for Kemoš and for Moab, and I brought back the fire-hearth of his Uncle from there, and I hauled it before the face of Kemoš in Kerioth, and I made the men of Sharon live there, as well as the men of Maharith. And Kemoš said to me: “Go, take Nebo from Israel!” And I went in the night, and I fought against it from the break of dawn until noon, and I took it, and I killed its whole population, seven thousand male citizens and aliens, female citizens and aliens, and servant girls; for I had put it to the ban of Aštar Kemoš. And from there, I took the vessels of YHWH, and I hauled them before the face of Kemoš. And the king of Israel had built Jahaz, and he stayed there during his campaigns against me, and Kemoš drove him away before my face, and I took two hundred men from Moab, all its division, and I led it up to Jahaz. And I have taken it in order to add it to Dibon. I have built Karchoh, the wall of the woods and the wall of the citadel, and I have built its gates, and I have built its towers, and I have built the house of the king, and I have made the double reservoir for the spring, in the innermost of the city. Now, there was no cistern in the innermost of the city, in Karchoh, and I said to all the people: “Make, each one of you, a cistern in his house.” And I cut out the moat for Karchoh by means of prisoners from Israel. I have built Aroer, and I made the military road in the Arnon. I have built Beth Bamoth, for it had been destroyed. I have built Bezer, for it lay in ruins. And the men of Dibon stood in battle-order, for all Dibon, they were in subjection. And I am the king over hundreds in the towns which I have added to the land. And I have built the House of Medeba and the House of Diblathaim, and the House of Baal Meon, and I brought there […] the flocks of the land. And Horonaim, there lived […]. And Kemoš said to me: “Go down, fight against Horonaim!” I went down […] and Kemoš restored it in my days. And […] from there […] And I […]”
The Merneptah Stele has long been touted as the earliest extrabiblical reference to Israel.* The ancient Egyptian inscription dates to about 1205 B.C.E. and recounts the military conquests of the pharaoh Merneptah. Near the bottom of the hieroglyphic inscription, a people called “Israel” is said to have been wiped out by the conquering pharaoh. This has been used by some experts as evidence of the ethnogenesis of Israel around that time.
But a new publication by Egyptologists and Biblical scholars Manfred Görg, Peter van der Veen and Christoffer Theis suggests that there may be an even earlier reference to Israel in the Egyptian record. Manfred Görg discovered a broken statue pedestal containing hieroglyphic name-rings in the Egyptian Museum of Berlin and, after studying it with colleagues Peter van der Veen and Christoffer Theis, they suggest that one of the name-rings should be read as “Israel.” Not all scholars agree with their reading because of slight differences in spelling, but Görg, van der Veen and Theis offer strong arguments, including supportive parallels in the Merneptah Stele itself. This newly rediscovered inscription is dated to around 1400 B.C.E.—about 200 years earlier than the Merneptah Stele. If Görg, van der Veen and Theis are right, their discovery will shed important light on the beginnings of ancient Israel.
As the point where three of the world’s major religions converge, Israel’s history is one of the richest and most complex in the world. Sift through the archaeology and history of this ancient land in the free eBookIsrael: An Archaeological Journey, and get a view of these significant Biblical sites through an archaeologist’s lens.
For more about the discovery of a possible first mention of Israel before the Merneptah Stele by scholars Manfred Görg, Peter van der Veen and Christoffer Theis, see “When Did Ancient Israel Begin?” in Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 2012.
The John Lennon and the Beatles really were on a long search for meaning and fulfillment in their lives just like King Solomon did in the Book of Ecclesiastes. Solomon looked into learning (1:12-18, 2:12-17), laughter, ladies, luxuries, and liquor (2:1-2, 8, 10, 11), and labor (2:4-6, 18-20). He fount that without God in the picture all […]
______________ George Harrison Swears & Insults Paul and Yoko Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds- The Beatles The Beatles: I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time listening to the Beatles and talking […]
The Beatles in a press conference after their Return from the USA Uploaded on Nov 29, 2010 The Beatles in a press conference after their Return from the USA. The Beatles: I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis […]
__________________ Beatles 1966 Last interview I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time listening to the Beatles and talking and writing about them and their impact on the culture of the 1960’s. In this […]
_______________ The Beatles documentary || A Long and Winding Road || Episode 5 (This video discusses Stg. Pepper’s creation I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time listening to the Beatles and talking and writing about […]
_______________ Francis Schaeffer pictured below: _____________________ I have included the 27 minute episode THE AGE OF NONREASON by Francis Schaeffer. In that video Schaeffer noted, ” Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band…for a time it became the rallying cry for young people throughout the world. It expressed the essence of their lives, thoughts and their feelings.” How Should […]
Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 1 ___________________________________ Today I will answer the simple question: IS IT POSSIBLE TO BE AN OPTIMISTIC SECULAR HUMANIST THAT DOES NOT BELIEVE IN GOD OR AN AFTERLIFE? This question has been around for a long time and you can go back to the 19th century and read this same […]
____________________________________ Francis Schaeffer pictured below: __________ Francis Schaeffer has written extensively on art and culture spanning the last 2000years and here are some posts I have done on this subject before : Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 10 “Final Choices” , episode 9 “The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence”, episode 8 […]
Love and Death [Woody Allen] – What if there is no God? [PL] ___________ _______________ How Should We then Live Episode 7 small (Age of Nonreason) #02 How Should We Then Live? (Promo Clip) Dr. Francis Schaeffer 10 Worldview and Truth Two Minute Warning: How Then Should We Live?: Francis Schaeffer at 100 Francis Schaeffer […]
___________________________________ Francis Schaeffer pictured below: ____________________________ Francis Schaeffer “BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY” Whatever…HTTHR Dr. Francis schaeffer – The flow of Materialism(from Part 4 of Whatever happened to human race?) Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical flow of Truth & History (intro) Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical Flow of History & Truth (1) Dr. Francis Schaeffer […]
Contemporary post-modern critics (including President Obama) who assert that America is not a Christian nation always refrain from offering any definition of what the term “Christian nation” means. So what is an accurate definition of that term as demonstrated by the American experience?
Contrary to what critics imply, a Christian nation is not one in which all citizens are Christians, or the laws require everyone to adhere to Christian theology, or all leaders are Christians, or any other such superficial measurement. As Supreme Court Justice David Brewer (1837-1910) explained:
[I]n what sense can [America] be called a Christian nation? Not in the sense that Christianity is the established religion or that the people are in any manner compelled to support it. On the contrary, the Constitution specifically provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Neither is it Christian in the sense that all its citizens are either in fact or name Christians. On the contrary, all religions have free scope within our borders. Numbers of our people profess other religions, and many reject all. Nor is it Christian in the sense that a profession of Christianity is a condition of holding office or otherwise engaging in public service, or essential to recognition either politically or socially. In fact, the government as a legal organization is independent of all religions. Nevertheless, we constantly speak of this republic as a Christian nation – in fact, as the leading Christian nation of the world. 8
So, if being a Christian nation is not based on any of the above criterion, then what makes America a Christian nation? According to Justice Brewer, America was “of all the nations in the world . . . most justly called a Christian nation” because Christianity “has so largely shaped and molded it.” 9
Constitutional law professor Edward Mansfield (1801-1880) similarly acknowledged:
In every country, the morals of a people – whatever they may be – take their form and spirit from their religion. For example, the marriage of brothers and sisters was permitted among the Egyptians because such had been the precedent set by their gods, Isis and Osiris. So, too, the classic nations celebrated the drunken rites of Bacchus. Thus, too, the Turk has become lazy and inert because dependent upon Fate, as taught by the Koran. And when in recent times there arose a nation [i.e., France] whose philosophers [e.g. Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Helvetius, etc.] discovered there was no God and no religion, the nation was thrown into that dismal case in which there was no law and no morals. . . . In the United States, Christianity is the original, spontaneous, and national religion. 10
Founding Father and U. S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall agreed:
[W]ith us, Christianity and religion are identified. It would be strange, indeed, if with such a people our institutions did not presuppose Christianity and did not often refer to it and exhibit relations with it. 11
Christianity is the religion that shaped America and made her what she is today. In fact, historically speaking, it can be irrefutably demonstrated that Biblical Christianity in America produced many of the cherished traditions still enjoyed today, including:
A republican rather than a theocratic form of government;
The institutional separation of church and state (as opposed to today’s enforced institutional secularization of church and state);
Protection for religious toleration and the rights of conscience;
A distinction between theology and behavior, thus allowing the incorporation into public policy of religious principles that promote good behavior but which do not enforce theological tenets (examples of this would include religious teachings such as the Good Samaritan, The Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, etc., all of which promote positive civil behavior but do not impose ecclesiastical rites); and
A free-market approach to religion, thus ensuring religious diversity.
Consequently, a Christian nation as demonstrated by the American experience is a nation founded upon Christian and Biblical principles, whose values, society, and institutions have largely been shaped by those principles. This definition was reaffirmed by American legal scholars and historians for generations 12 but is widely ignored by today’s revisionists.
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 for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. There have […]
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]
President Obama Speaks at The Ohio State University Commencement Ceremony Published on May 5, 2013 President Obama delivers the commencement address at The Ohio State University. May 5, 2013. You can learn a lot about what President Obama thinks the founding fathers were all about from his recent speech at Ohio State. May 7, 2013, […]
Dr. C. Everett Koop with Bill Graham. Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 4) THE BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY Published on Oct 7, 2012 by AdamMetropolis The 45 minute video above is from the film series created from Francis Schaeffer’s book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” with Dr. C. Everett Koop. This […]
America’s Founding Fathers Deist or Christian? – David Barton 4/6 There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at […]
3 Of 5 / The Bible’s Influence In America / American Heritage Series / David Barton There were 55 gentlemen who put together the constitution and their church affliation is of public record. Greg Koukl notes: Members of the Constitutional Convention, the most influential group of men shaping the political foundations of our nation, were […]
I do not think that John Quincy Adams was a founding father in the same sense that his father was. However, I do think he was involved in the early days of our government working with many of the founding fathers. Michele Bachmann got into another history-related tussle on ABC’s “Good Morning America” today, standing […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
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 […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 4) THE BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY Published on Oct 7, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ____________ The 45 minute video above is from the film series created from Francis Schaeffer’s book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” with Dr. C. Everett Koop. This book really helped develop my political […]
I never knew Peter Singer could run so fast. The controversial bioethicist is originally from Australia, and I hear that they breed some good sprinters over there. Still, I was very surprised to see a man who has devoted decades to formulating some very controversial views run so desperately away from them. This was precisely what Singer did when I debated him on December 3 on the campus where he currently teaches, Princeton University.
My first debate against Singer was at Biola University in Los Angeles several months ago. There the organizers came up with the resolution, “God: Yes or No.” In my opening statement I suggested that Singer was a perfect illustration of what you get when you reject God and attempt to construct ethics on a purely secular, Darwinian foundation. Singer’s atheism, I suggested, is the primary foundation of his advocacy of infanticide, euthanasia, and animal rights.
Somewhat to my surprise, Singer announced to the largely Christian audience that he was not there to debate his views on infanticide and euthanasia. Rather, he said, he had come to debate whether God existed or not. For Singer, the existence of pain and suffering in the world was enough to show God’s non-existence.
I countered that the existence of pain and suffering raised no questions about the existence of God, only about the nature of God. Imagine if I had a father whom I always considered to be kind, generous, and loving. Then I encounter a tragedy and my father does not help. It would make no sense for me to say, “Since you have acted contrary to my previous assessment of your character, therefore I conclude that you do not exist.”
I met Singer on his chosen territory because I wanted the Biola debate to be a real engagement, not a case of two ships passing in the night. Even so, I sought a second opportunity to take on Singer’s controversial positions. Here, after all, is a man who has publicly said that even infants have no rights for some 27 days after they are born. According to Singer, these infants can be killed during that time if they are felt to be an inconvenience or burden to their parents or society.
When Singer agreed to another debate, this time on his home campus of Princeton, I proposed the topic, “Can We Have Morality Without God?” Here, I thought, was a direct opportunity to link God with morality and to show what happens when a thinker like Singer seeks to formulate an entirely secular morality. Singer readily agreed to the subject. Moreover, as a defender of the resolution, he agreed to go first.
The debate, sponsored by the Christian Union and the Fixed Point Foundation, was held in a stately auditorium in Alexander Hall on the Princeton campus. Some 800 people—around 650 of them Princeton undergraduates—were in eager attendance. The atmosphere in the room was electric. The debate had been promoted in extravagant terms as a clash of heavyweights.
Yet once again Singer began his speech by announcing that he had no intention of defending his positions on the taking of human life. In fact, he said that people who had come to hear him defend such positions could leave and go home. Singer argued that even if his views were terrible, it would not follow that atheism was terrible. He offered a strange analogy. Osama Bin Laden is a Muslim, and his views can be considered dangerous, but it doesn’t follow that Islam itself is dangerous. Having compared himself to Bin Laden, Singer did not seem to be off to a very good start.
This time I refused to play Singer’s game and permit him to duck his outrageous views. “Peter Singer is reluctant, perhaps understandably, to discuss his positions,” I began. “Therefore it will be my task to discuss them.” My argument was that when we think of secularism, we think of Europe or perhaps of the American Northeast. But the values of America and Europe—even secular values—are decisively shaped by Christianity. Many of the new atheists, I suggested, want to get rid of Christianity but keep core Christian values. Richard Dawkins has even identified himself as a “cultural Christian.”
This, I said, is what makes Singer different. He is an honest atheist in that he recognizes that you can’t have Christian morality without its transcendent foundation. I identified Singer with the philosopher Nietzsche’s project to go beyond the “death of God” and eradicate all Christian values—including equal dignity and the preciousness of human life—from the West.
Singer, I said, is an advocate of comprehensive secularism. To discover the consequences of this secularism, I said, we must look to twentieth-century regimes that have actively sought to get rid of God and Christianity. Specifically, the Communist regimes of Stalin, Mao, and the Nazi regime provide the clearest indication of what truly God-free societies look like.
I noted that some of Singer’s critics had accused him of being a Nazi and Singer himself writes that he is frequently prevented from speaking in Germany. Singer has vociferously protested the equation of his views with those of the Nazis, and I said he was right to make this distinction. After all, I pointed out, the Nazis favored state-sponsored genocide while Singer advocated free market homicide.
Remarkably Singer’s only defense against this argument was to point out that he had lost some of his relatives in the Holocaust, and to note that religious as well as atheist regimes had committed historical atrocities. Not once did Singer attempt to defend his shocking views. Nor did he contest the Darwinian and atheist foundation for those views. Instead, Singer went right back to the problem of pain and suffering. A just and compassionate God, he said, would never permit such disasters as earthquakes, hurricanes and cancer. Consequently there is no good God presiding over human affairs. Therefore if we are going to have morality we will have to develop morality without God.
I am giving only an abbreviated account of what was, from start to finish, a lively and wide-ranging debate. Audience applause for me was tepid in the beginning—no surprise, since I was on Singer’s home turf—but grew louder throughout the evening. This suggested that I had gained ground in a generally hostile setting. Even so, Singer emailed me after the debate to say that his philosophy students considered him the winner. I resisted the temptation to ask him to take another poll after he had handed out his semester grades.
I regard Singer and Christopher Hitchens as two of the most effective advocates of atheism in the United States, and perhaps anywhere. In Britain, of course, there is Richard Dawkins. I like to debate these men in order to show that theism in general, and Christianity in particular, can withstand the best that the opposition has to offer.
Hitchens, to his credit, is always ready to rumble. Dawkins, however, has shown himself to be a coward by refusing to defend his aggressively-articulated views in open debate. And now Singer has twice shown up at debates with his running shoes on. So with Dawkins hiding under his desk and Singer sprinting for cover, is modern atheism losing its nerve?
Dr. Francis Schaeffer: Whatever Happened to the Human Race Episode 1 ABORTION
Published on Jan 10, 2015
Whatever Happened to the Human Race?
Abortion
Dr. Francis Schaeffer
Dr. Francis schaeffer – The flow of Materialism(from Part 4 of Whatever happened to human race?)
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical flow of Truth & History (intro)
Francis Schaeffer predicted July 21, 2015 would come when the video “Second Planned Parenthood Senior Executive Haggles Over Baby Parts Prices, Changes Abortion Methods” would be released!!!! Al Mohler wrote the article ,”FIRST-PERSON: They indeed were prophetic,” Jan 29, 2004, and in this great article he noted: . “We stand today on the edge of a […]
I just wanted to note that I have spoken on the phone several times and corresponded with Dr. Paul D. Simmons who is very much pro-choice. (He is quoted in the article below.) He actually helped me write an article to submit to Americans United for the Separation of Church and State back in the […]
On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said: …Please click on this URL http://vimeo.com/26991975 and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them. Harry Kroto _________________ Below you have picture of 1996 Chemistry Nobel Prize Winner Dr. […]
_______________________ Very good article on Francis Schaeffer. Tom Wolfe. Peter Singer!! Presuppositional Life and Learning Posted on November 19, 2013 by Dr. Steven Garber Francis Schaeffer. Tom Wolfe. Peter Singer. I spent the morning with the Capitol Fellows thinking about these three men, and their ideas. The first one I studied and studied with many […]
The Staple Singers Part 1 click to enlarge Mavis Staples From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Mavis Staples Staples performing in Brooklyn, New York in 2007 Background information Birth name Mavis Staples Born July 10, 1939 (age 74) Origin Chicago, Illinois, U.S. Genres Rhythm and blues, soul, gospel […]
Francis Schaeffer noted, “In this flow there was also the period of psychedelic rock, an attempt to find this experience without drugs, by the use of a certain type of music. This was the period of the Beatles’ Revolver (1966) and Strawberry Fields Forever (1967)…The psychedelic began with their records REVOLVER, STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER, AND […]
The Staple Singers Part 1 Mavis Staples to give concert at Christ Church in Little Rock Posted by Lindsey Millar on Fri, Sep 6, 2013 at 2:48 PM click to enlarge Whoa. One of the greatest soul divas OF ALL TIME is coming to Little Rock next month. Christ Church Little Rock is hosting Mavis […]
In my last post I demonstrated that George Bernard Shaw was a vocal communist and that probably had a lot to do with his inclusion on the cover of SGT PEPPER’S but today I will look more into more this great playwright’s views. Did you know that Shaw wrote the play that MY FAIR LADY […]
Transcript and Video of Francis Schaeffer speech in 1983 on the word “Evangelical” _____________ SOUNDWORD LABRI CONFERENCE VIDEO – Names and Issues – Francis A. Schaeffer Published on Apr 20, 2014 This video is from the 1983 L’Abri Conference in Atlanta. The full lecture with Q&A time has been included. The lecture was also previously […]
Surgeon General of the United States In office January 21, 1982 – October 1, 1989 President Ronald Reagan George H. W. Bush Francis Schaeffer Founder of the L’Abri community Born Francis August Schaeffer January 30, 1912 Died May 15, 1984 (aged 72) I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are […]
My good friend Rev. Sherwood Haisty Jr. and I used to discuss which men were the ones who really influenced our lives and Adrian Rogers had influenced us both more than anybody else. During the 1990′s I actually made it a practice to write famous atheists and scientists that were mentioned by Adrian Rogers and […]
A Head Full of Dreams is the seventh studio album by British rock band Coldplay. It was released on 4 December 2015 by Parlophone and Atlantic Records.[1] It is the second album by the band in North America under Atlantic, after Coldplay were transferred from Capitol Records America in 2013.
Coldplay began working on A Head Full of Dreams in the summer of 2014 while they were promoting their sixth album Ghost Stories. In an interview with Radio 2 DJ Jo Whileyin December 2014, bassist Guy Berryman and guitarist Jonny Buckland gave a hint as to the difference between A Head Full of Dreams and its predecessor – Buckland called it the “night to the day”, comparing the style of Ghost Stories to the expected uplifting theme of A Head Full of Dreams. Frontman Chris Martin hinted at the style of the album by saying that the band was trying to make something colourful and uplifting. He also stated that it would be something to “shuffle your feet” to.
On 26 September 2015, the band performed at the Global Citizen Festival 2015 in New York City, playing a six-song set, including a new song called “Amazing Day”.[5] The band’s producer Rik Simpson confirmed that the song would be on the new album.[6]
The album has been produced by Rik Simpson (the band’s longterm collaborator) and Norwegian duo Stargate (Tor Hermansen and Mikkel Eriksen). Mixing duties were carried out predominately by Rik Simpson. Stargate executive produced the album. The album has a very electronic rock sound with neon soul vocal strategy from Chris Martin.
Compared to the sparse tour dates of the Ghost Stories era, Coldplay are expected to announce a larger global tour, resembling rather the Mylo Xyloto Tour than the Ghost Stories Tour, to promote both A Head Full of Dreams and Ghost Stories. It is rumoured that the band will perform in locations such as India and South America[7] – more specifically, they are rumoured to tour Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Colombia in the first half of 2016.[8] They have since confirmed that pre-production on the tour has started and that the official tour is planned to start next year.[7] In 20 November 2015, they announced the A Head Full of Dreams Tour, with shows inSouth America starting at 31 March 2016, Buenos Aires and a European leg is also announced for summer 2016. They will play in Peru for the first time, on April 5th, 2016.
Around 30 October 2015, anonymous posters were pinned up on the London Underground showing a geometric pattern, known as the Flower of Life, along with a note “December 4”.[9][10][11][12][13] Coldplay fans claimed that the symbol resembled the design on a T-shirt worn by Coldplay frontman Chris Martin at the Global Citizen Festival in New York. On 2 November, Coldplay posted the same piece of artwork as an animated GIF on their Twitter account, seemingly confirming that it would be the album cover and 4 December was the album’s release date.[11] One day later, they published another animated image of which the former was a detailed view.[citation needed]
At the Global Citizen Festival in New York, they performed a six song setlist, which concluded with the live debut of their new song, “Amazing Day”. They also ended up playing it during the encore of TFI Friday, where they also gave the live debut of “Adventure of a Lifetime“. They concluded their TFI performance with “Amazing Day”, “Clocks” and “A Sky Full of Stars“. During their exclusive concert at the Belasco Theater in Los Angeles, they performed 4 songs from the new album including previously played songs “Adventure of a Lifetime” and “Amazing Day” as well as the live debut of songs “A Head Full of Dreams” and “Up&Up.” On November 24th, Coldplay started releasing 10-15 second snippets of each song on the new album via Instagram in an hourly interval.[14]
“Everglow” was released as the first and only promotional single from the album on November 26, 2015. The song was premiered by Zane Lowe on his radio show Beats 1.[16]
A Head Full of Dreams has received mixed reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received a score of 57 out of 100, indicating “mixed or average” reviews from 11 critics.[24]
“Kaleidoscope” contains elements of the poem “The Guesthouse” written by Jellaludin Rumi, and elements of “Amazing Grace” (written by John Newton and performed by Barack Obama).
_________ Coldplay – Midnight At the bottom of this post are links to other articles about the spiritual implications of some Coldplay songs. Midnight (Coldplay song) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia “Midnight” Song by Coldplay Recorded 2013 at The Bakery and The Beehive (London, England) Genre Ambient, experimental rock,electronic[1] Label Parlophone, Atlantic Writer Guy Berryman, Jonny Buckland, Will Champion, Jon Hopkins, Chris Martin Producer […]
These are some of the most popular posts in the last 30 days about the spiritual quest of Chris Martin of Coldplay that can be found on http://www.thedailyhatch.org: Chris Martin of Coldplay unknowingly lives out his childhood Christian beliefs (Part 3 of notes from June 23, 2012 Dallas Coldplay Concert, Martin left Christianity because of […]
_________________________ (If you want to check out other posts I have done about about Steve Jobs:Some say Steve Jobs was an atheist , Steve Jobs and Adoption , What is the eternal impact of Steve Jobs’ life? ,Steve Jobs versus President Obama: Who created more jobs? ,Steve Jobs’ view of death and what the Bible has to say about it ,8 things you might not know about […]
Coldplay Live 2003 Backstage Chris Martin revealed in his interview with Howard Stern that he was rasied an evangelical Christian but he has left the church. I believe that many words that he puts in his songs today are generated from the deep seated Christian beliefs from his childhood that find their way out in […]
I wrote this article a couple of years ago. Are Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin looking for Spiritual Answers? Just like King Solomon’s predicament in the Book of Ecclesiastes, both of these individuals are very wealthy, famous, and successful, but they still are seeking satisfying answers to life’s greatest questions even though it seems […]
Coldplay seeks to corner the market on earnest and expressive rock music that currently appeals to wide audiences Here is an article I wrote a couple of years ago about Chris Martin’s view of hell. He says he does not believe in it but for some reason he writes a song that teaches that it […]
Views:2 By waymedia Coldplay Coldplay – Life In Technicolor ii Back in 2008 I wrote a paper on the spiritual themes of Coldplay’s album Viva La Vida and I predicted this spiritual search would continue in the future. Below is the second part of the paper, “Coldplay’s latest musical lyrics indicate a Spiritual Search for the […]
[This essay first appeared in Books and Culture: A Christian Review (Mar./Apr. 2001): 18-21]
What shaped the life of the man who today is the symbol of evil and brutality, but who in the 1930s was cheered by millions of Germans, most of whom claimed to be Christians? What lay at the roots of Hitler’s character and world view? This question has intrigued millions, and oceans of ink have been spilled to provide explanations, but still there are no simple answers.
My own research into the impact of Darwinian ethics on German thought in the pre-Nazi era and its ultimate influence on Hitler’s ideology led me in the summer of 1999 to the resort Herrsching on beautiful Ammersee, just a 44-minute train trip from Munich, Hitler’s early headquarters, where he began his drive to power in early 1919 when he joined the fledgling German Workers’ Party, soon renamed the National Socialist German Workers’ Party and nicknamed the Nazi Party. (About the same distance from Munich in a different direction is Dachau, site of the Nazi’s first concentration camp, which I likewise visited). Herrsching was the home of the physician Alfred Ploetz, the founding father of the race hygiene or eugenics movement in Germany, whose goal was to improve human heredity by rationally controlling reproduction. When I visited Herrsching, Ploetz’s 87-year old son, Wilfried Ploetz, was still living in the medieval manor house bought by his father, who conducted scientific experiments on heredity there. Ploetz was no Hitler, of course. He experimented on rabbits, not on humans.
On a gray day in June I arrived in Herrsching to examine the correspondence and papers of Alfred Ploetz. After Herr Ploetz graciously picked me up at the train station, I cautiously asked harmless questions about his father. Uncertain about how he viewed his father and the movement he led, especially because of Nazi connections, I proceeded gingerly. However, Herr Ploetz unabashedly introduced the topic of Nazism, relating to me several stories about the Nazi period involving his father or him. While admitting that his father made some mistakes, he clearly tried to distance his father and other leading eugenicists–many of whom he knew personally from their frequent visits with his father–from the Nazis and Nazi racism.
Probably neither Ploetz nor most other German eugenicists would have perpetrated the evil deeds we associate with Hitler, especially the Holocaust. Ploetz even opposed the Nazis before they came to power, according to his son, and based on what I know from other sources, this is credible. However, ideas have consequences, and Ploetz’s ideas, blended with those of other eugenicists and racists into a coherent Nazi program, had disastrous consequences once they were implemented by a strong-willed leader with both the political power and a cadre of like-minded assistants to carry them out.
The Nazi eugenics program began in earnest in January 1934 when a law requiring sterilization for persons with congenital illnesses went into effect. Since this promised to fulfill the goals for which Ploetz had struggled and sacrificed, it wooed Ploetz away from his disapproval of Nazism. However, compulsory sterilization was only the first step for the Nazis. Later they would implement more radical eugenics measures in their “euthanasia” program, murdering about 70,000 mentally and physically handicapped people in 1939-41. And “euthanasia” was once again only a preliminary step toward the ultimate program of racist eugenics–the Holocaust. This was the slippery slope with a vengeance.
Because of his evil deeds, it’s not surprising that in the 1940s some viewed Hitler as the Antichrist. Daniel’s prophecy seemed fulfilled: “A king shall arise, having fierce features, who understands sinister schemes. His power shall be mighty, but not by his own power; he shall destroy fearfully, and shall prosper and thrive; he shall destroy the mighty and also the holy people [the Jews]. Through his cunning he shall cause deceit to prosper under his rule; and he shall exalt himself in his heart. He shall destroy many in their prosperity.” (Daniel 8:23-24). Of course, Hitler wasn’t THE Antichrist, but the evil he perpetrated was born out of an anti-Christian world view.
Those wanting to know how Hitler became so evil should place at the top of their reading list Brigitte Hamann’s Hitler’s Vienna and Ian Kershaw’s magisterial two-volume biography, Hitler. These two excellent new works on Hitler poignantly provide insight into the background, ideas, and context that made Hitler possible. Both provide a detailed portrait of Hitler’s political, social, and intellectual milieu.
Since she focuses primarily on Hitler’s formative years as an 18 to 24 year old in Vienna (1908-1913), Hamann’s work examines how and to what extent the Viennese environment shaped Hitler’s world view and political program. She deftly weaves together Hitler’s biography with a history of Vienna during his stay there, but always with an eye on the city as Hitler experienced it. The Vienna she portrays is quite different from the modernist Fin-de-Siecle Viennadescribed in Carl Schorske’s path-breaking cultural history. Hamann is fully aware of the importance of modernism in Viennese culture, but she rightly argues from the outset that this was not Hitler’s milieu. Hitler wasn’t moved–except maybe to disgust–at the work of Freud or modernist artists. But he did eagerly follow the political developments in the Viennese press, and Hamann’s work provides considerable insight into the way Hitler perceived the political process and parties in Vienna.
One gains, for instance, considerable insight into Hitler’s contempt for the parliamentary system from Hamann’s engaging description of the Austrian parliament, which Hitler visited repeatedly during his first year or two in Vienna. The Austrian parliament was often paralyzed by ethnic rivalries, which regularly produced filibusters (in a variety of languages from the multi-ethnic empire, but with no translators), as well as raucous and outrageous use of noisemakers to kill debate on contentious bills. All too often ethnic hostilities spilled over into fisticuffs on the floor of parliament.
Hamann and Kershaw both argue that Hitler had a consistent–albeit pernicious–world view. At the center of that world view was the notion that history consists of a Darwinian struggle for existence between races, and the Aryan (i.e., Germanic) race has been and still is of supreme importance as the highest race, the only race capable of creating advanced culture. For Hitler human progress depended on two factors: 1) strengthening the Aryan race through eugenics measures; and 2) winning the struggle against the non-Aryan races (necessitating a strong military). Hamann astutely observes that for Hitler, “the individual has no value other than being part of a people and a race and to help secure their survival in the battle against other peoples and races.” (p. 235)
Hamann provides numerous examples to show how pervasive Aryan racism and eugenics were in the Viennese press. Because it was so widespread it’s impossible to point to any one racial thinker, such as Adolf Lanz von Liebenfels, asThe Man Who Gave Hitler His Ideas, as Wilfried Daim has argued. Hamann’s approach is commonsensical, admitting that Hitler likely read Lanz’s periodical, Ostara, but asserting that Hitler’s Aryan racism bears even more the stamp of Guido von List, the mystical writer who first introduced the swastika into Aryan racist circles. The leader of the intensely nationalistic Pan-German movement in Austria, Georg von Schönerer, also strongly influenced Hitler, who adopted the Heil greeting from him. Schönerer not only embraced racial anti-Semitism, but also promoted eugenics.
Hitler usually adopted his ideas from journalists and popularizers, some of them rather crass or even hare-brained. However, I question Hamann’s assertion that the theories Hitler preferred were “not in agreement with academic science but were the products of the idiosyncratic thought processes of private scholars who were full of contempt for established scientists.” (233) This is only partly true. List, Lanz, and Schönerer, to be sure, were outsiders to academe. However, bizarre as it may seem, many of Hitler’s racial ideas weren’t at all foreign to academic scientific discourse, even if they weren’t accepted universally. Biology, anthropology, and medicine in German-speaking lands were saturated with eugenics and racism, sometimes even anti-Semitic Aryan racism very similar to Hitler’s.
Hitler’s world view was diametrically opposed to Christianity, for which Hitler had nothing but contempt. Hitler never attended church in Vienna, and some sources note that his greatest enemy–besides Marxists–was the Jesuits. One anonymous eyewitness reported that “Hitler said [c. 1912] the biggest evil for the German people was accepting Christian humility.” (p. 250) Even though in Mein Kampf Hitler criticized Schönerer’s anti-Catholic Los-von-Rom (Free from Rome) movement, during his time in Vienna Hitler was sympathetic to it. Hitler recognized that Schönerer’s position had been a public relations fiasco, and thus a political blunder, so later he always shied away from publicly criticizing the Christian churches, despite his personal antipathy toward them.
Neither Hamann nor Kershaw pay any attention to occult influence on Hitler, and with good cause. Despite the mystical inclinations of some of the Viennese anti-Semites who influenced him (List and Liebenfels) and the neo-pagan tendencies of some of his entourage (Himmler, for instance), Hitler had little or no interest in mystical and supernatural teachings or experiences. Privately he was contemptuous of Himmler’s attempts to revive ancient German pagan rites. Alan Bullock, in one of the best scholarly Hitler biographies to precede Kershaw’s, is probably close to the truth in labeling Hitler a materialist who spurned belief in anything supernatural, despite his occasional vague rhetoric about Providence.
Hamann helps clear up a number of myths about Hitler’s early development, but the only really significant revelation concerns Hitler’s anti-Semitism during his time in Vienna. Hitler claimed in Mein Kampf that he became devoted to anti-Semitism while in Vienna, and although historians are incredulous about Hitler’s “reminiscences,” most have accepted this, since it seems so plausible. Vienna was a cesspool of anti-Semitism in the early twentieth century. The incredibly popular mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger, used anti-Semitic propaganda to further his political career, the Pan-German press (which Hitler read) was spewing forth anti-Semitism, and Vienna had a much larger and more visible Jewish population than any major German city. Interestingly, however, only one source from his Vienna days reports that Hitler was anti-Semitic at all and several vociferously deny it.
Hamann takes the side of the deniers, especially in light of the amicable relationship Hitler had with several Jews during his stay in Vienna. She admits that Hitler studied anti-Semitism in Vienna, but she argues that anti-Semitism did not become an integral part of his world view until later (by 1919 at latest, when we have his first recorded anti-Semitic utterance). Whether Hitler converted to anti-Semitism during or after his Vienna years, there can be little doubt that Viennese anti-Semitism was a crucial factor influencing him in that direction.
Reconstructing Hitler’s years in Vienna is a daunting task, as the sources are few and some are questionable or worse. Hamann shows considerable skill in analyzing the main eyewitness sources we have, for she doesn’t take any of them at face value, but assiduously tests them against each other and against a wealth of knowledge she has gleaned from other sources. She points out mistakes even in the ones she considers basically reliable (like Hitler’s roommate August Kubizek), while dismissing some as totally worthless (such as Josef Greiner). Her analysis of the sources is itself a major contribution to historiography on Hitler, and her work will be indispensable to future biographers and historians.
I only hope that if a new edition comes out it will be edited better than this one. There are numerous troublesome errors, some in translation (usually minor, like Double Alliance instead of Dual Alliance), some in footnote numbering (esp. ch. 7), and more substantively the repeated confusion of Joseph II and Franz Joseph II on pp. 112-13.
Kershaw’s biography is likewise a major contribution to historiography, and it will probably become the standard biography of Hitler for many years to come. Kershaw’s many years of research on Hitler and the Nazi era bear rich fruit in this masterful portrayal of Germany’s Führer. For Kershaw, unlike Hamann, Hitler’s environment is not merely a source for his political and social views during his formative years. Rather Kershaw is convinced that political and social structures remained important influences on Hitler’s actions throughout his entire life. It’s rather ironic that someone who forthrightly argues against the force of personality in history would so painstakingly analyze one man. Kershaw admits his discomfort with the genre of biography, but that hasn’t deterred him from producing a first-rate biographical study.
Kershaw continually reminds us that Hitler was being acted upon just as much or more than he was acting. Hitler’s ascent to power wasn’t through a triumph of the will, but was rather a product of political and economic forces over which Hitler had little control. Even after coming to power, most concrete programs were undertaken without his initiative and often without his knowledge by underlings trying to “work towards the Führer”–which Kershaw sees as the key to understanding Nazi rule. However, if Germans during Nazi rule were “working towards the Führer,” then Hitler’s views were ultimately decisive, whether or not he made all the specific decisions.
It seems to me there is sometimes tension between Kershaw’s description of Hitler and his interpretation of that description. Kershaw is aware of that tension, asserting in his preface that Hitler “is one of the few individuals of whom it can be said with absolute certainty: without him, the course of history would have been different.” (xx) Later in the preface, however, Kershaw balances this by claiming, “To explain his power, therefore, we must look in the first instance to others, not to Hitler himself.” (xxvi) Kershaw’s juggling act between these two poles may confuse some readers, but I found it stimulating and believe it makes his account more true to historical reality.
When Kershaw explains particular important events in Hitler’s life, he emphasizes Hitler’s lack of control over events. For example, the failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 was driven not so much by Hitler as by developments in the Bavarian government, in Hitler’s co-conspirators on the nationalist Right, and pressure from his own stormtroopers (SA). As so often in Hitler’s life, he resisted making decisions until he had to, but once his hand was forced, he acted ruthlessly. Kershaw sees this pattern repeated again and again in Hitler’s life–pressed by outward circumstances, crises, and his own party, he would finally act after long hesitation. All too often, he would act on misinformation provided him by his Nazi colleagues. One blatant example was his ruthless executions without trial of SA leader Ernst Röhm and others in late June and early July 1934, when Hitler was convinced they were conspiring against him. No such conspiracy was underway, but Röhm’s rivals in the Nazi Party–principally Goebbels and Himmler–manufactured evidence to get rid of the troublesome SA leader.
So what produced Hitler and gave him the impetus to become dictator of Germany? Kershaw sees World War I and its aftermath as being decisive in shaping both Hitler and the German people so they would be receptive to Hitler. He agrees with Hamann that, despite the influence of Vienna, Hitler’s world view was still forming after leaving Vienna. In addition to lacking evidence of his anti-Semitism in Vienna, Kershaw points out that his army comrades also had no idea he was anti-Semitic. A few aspects of his world view, such as the importance of living space in the east, were added in the early 1920s.
Kershaw believes defeat and revolutionary turbulence in Germany (especially Munich) between November 1918 and May 1919 were decisive in preparing the ground for Hitler. To offset leftist influence in German politics and society, the German army set up propaganda units to indoctrinate the troops. Hitler became a star performer in one of these units and thus found his niche as a political speaker. His army propaganda unit sent Hitler to attend a beer-hall meeting of the tiny German Workers’ Party, which he transformed into a party devoted to him. Without the war and subsequent defeat, Hitler would likely have remained a loner, an unemployed wannabe artist wandering aimlessly through Munich’s crowded streets.
Without the disastrous defeat of World War I the German people would not have listened to the ravings of Hitler, either. But his intense nationalism, anti-Bolshevism, and anti-Semitism found fertile soil in a nation feeling oppressed by the Versailles Treaty and reparations. His pledge to make Germany great again resonated especially with the nationalist Right. Not everyone on the Right liked Hitler; some even despised him. But in the final analysis, it was the nationalist Right who brought Hitler to power in two ways. First of all, Hitler drew away most of the nationalist voters from other parties during the Great Depression in 1930-32. But Hitler’s popularity with the masses, which never won him more than about a third of the votes, was insufficient to catapult him to power. Right-wing nationalist politicians, such as Franz von Papen, who had already partly subverted the Weimar constitution, wanted to use Hitler’s clout in parliament to replace the Weimar constitution with a right-wing authoritarian regime. They thought they could manipulate Hitler and keep control for themselves, but Hitler outmaneuvered them and dominated the new regime.
Kershaw ends the first volume of his biography with Hitler riding the crest of popularity from his remilitarization campaign. In a dramatic move to shore up his sagging popularity in Germany he flouted the Versailles Treaty in March 1936 by remilitarizing the Rhineland region. With each success Hitler’s self-confidence was growing, and Kershaw believes that by this point Hitler considered himself infallible. Those warning him against his risky foreign policy ventures had proven themselves timid, and his foreign opponents were spineless.
Very few in 1936 had an inkling of the misery that would come to Germany and indeed the entire world through Hitler, which Kershaw thoroughly describes in the second volume, when he covers World War II and the Holocaust. Why did so few heed the warnings of Hitler’s opponents? Even General Ludendorff, who had earlier joined forces with Hitler for the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, vainly warned President Hindenburg in 1933: “I solemnly prophesy that this accursed man will cast our Reich into the abyss and bring our nation to inconceivable misery. Future generations will damn you in your grave for what you have done.” (I, 427) Except for some leftists and Jews, however, most Germans ignored the warning signs. Their willingness to tolerate Hitler’s initial program of political oppression, because it was directed primarily against leftists, made them defenseless once the oppression widened to include Jews, Gypsies, the handicapped, and even Christian clergy.
If Hitler had died in 1938, Kershaw claims, he would probably have gone down in history as a great German leader. No moral opprobrium would be attached to his name. Germans might have regarded him as another Bismarck. The full malevolent potential of Hitler’s regime would only manifest itself with the outbreak of World War II, especially in 1941 when he launched his war of annihilation against what he considered the twin evils of the world–Bolshevism and the Jews.
Germans made Hitler possible, but they were not privy to his ultimate plans. Both at home and abroad many misread his intentions, supposing that he was merely trying to throw off the shackles of the Versailles Treaty and return Germany to its pre-World War I status. They did not take into account the fanatical devotion of Hitler to his world view, which “saw racial struggle and the survival of the fittest as the key determinants in human history.” (II, xxvii) Again and again during the war, Hitler justified his aggression–especially against the Soviet Union–with Social Darwinist arguments, claiming that the war was a struggle for existence that would decide the fate of the Aryan race. They must either triumph or perish.
Since he considered Jews the archenemy of Aryans, often describing them as disease-causing bacillus, they were the special targets of his wrath. His irrational fixation on Jews and their alleged conspiracy to dominate the world conjured up in his mind the most bizarre associations. Not only were Jewish communists masterminding the Bolshevik takeover of Europe, but Jewish capitalists were the driving force behind Churchill and Roosevelt. His fear of a fifth column of Jews in Germany and German-occupied territories, together with his desire to open up more living space (Lebensraum) for Germans in Eastern Europe, helped accelerate plans to exterminate the Jews.
Kershaw argues, however, that although Hitler’s ultimate goal was extermination of the Jews, he did not have concrete plans for it even after the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Indeed, Hitler never really planned it at all. The death camps came about more spontaneously, driven by events and by lower-level Nazi leaders. But Kershaw by no means exonerates Hitler; he clearly argues that without Hitler there would have been no genocide. His underlings were “working towards the Führer,” knowing that he approved of their genocidal policies. Kershaw probably minimizes Hitler’s role in the planning and direction of the Holocaust too much, and I’m even less convinced by his downplaying of Himmler’s role in its planning.
So, to return to our original question, what accounts for the intensity of evil in Hitler and his Nazi regime? Is it a manifestation of human depravity lurking inside us all, or perhaps an outburst of the human lust for power that we all share? I don’t deny that these factors played an important role, and in fact, I wonder if we are often too quick to distance ourselves from Hitler, Stalin, and other ogres of their ilk, as though WE would never–even with unlimited power at our disposal–oppress or harm a fellow human being. Many “ordinary Germans” (and even many foreigners) assisted Hitler, after all, in carrying out his atrocities. He didn’t act alone, as Kershaw continually reminds us.
But there are, of course, other factors to consider in explaining Hitler’s evil. First of all, Hitler embraced a world view that denied any personal God or transcendent moral standards. Rather the cosmos and human history were products of an impersonal Fate, Providence or Destiny, which were synonymous with natural laws. The emptiness of the cosmos was reflected in his personal life, for Kershaw points out that Hitler had no real friendships or close relationships with anyone, not even his mistress Eva Braun. He refused to marry (until the day before he committed suicide) because of his devotion to the German people, but for him the German people was always an abstraction. Even during the war, he never visited hospitals or injured troops or bombed cities. He lacked all empathy with real people, and he even criticized those who allowed sympathy to influence their political decisions.
Secondly, since Hitler believed that nothing exists beyond nature, he tried to find his purpose in life in obeying the iron laws of nature. Darwinian biology was especially significant in this regard, as he tried to apply its lessons to politics and society. Darwinism–especially forms of it often disparagingly called Social Darwinism today–taught him that life is a constant struggle for existence leading to biological progress. Hitler embraced eugenics and racial extermination of allegedly inferior races as means to improve the human species and foster progress.
Finally, while spurning traditional moral standards, Hitler exalted evolution itself to the status of a moral absolute–everything that advances evolution is morally good and everything that hinders it is immoral. Since he viewed the Aryan race as the most advanced race on the earth, indeed the only race capable of creating civilization and a higher culture, this came to mean that whatever promotes the expansion of the Aryan race was good and whatever hindered their expansion was evil. Hitler sincerely believed that his policies and decisions were good and beneficial. His pursuit of a “noble ideal” to benefit abstract humanity in a universe without God, without morality, and without human rights, produced intense suffering, horror, and destruction for real people.
As the war that he launched–allegedly to benefit his people–turned into defeat, Hitler never came to grips with reality. He persisted almost to the end to believe that somehow the war could be won, that through his strength of will he could turn back the combined strength of the Soviet Union, the United States, and the British Empire arrayed against him. Any general telling him otherwise or advocating retreat he sacked. To the bitter end he refused to admit any fault, fuming that Germany’s defeat had been brought on by the treachery, betrayal, and incompetence of his army staff. It’s almost incomprehensible, but true, that throughout his career and even in his final testament Hitler expected to go down in the pages of history as a great hero. Such is the delusion of wickedness.
On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said: …Please click on this URL http://vimeo.com/26991975 and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them. Harry Kroto ____________________ Below you have picture of 1996 Chemistry Nobel Prize Winner […]
On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said: …Please click on this URL http://vimeo.com/26991975 and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them. Harry Kroto _________________ Below you have picture of Dr. Harry Kroto: ____________ Dawkins […]
On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said: …Please click on this URL http://vimeo.com/26991975 and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them. Harry Kroto _________________ Fig 9. The Sussex team from left: (back) Ala’a Abdul Sada […]
On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said: …Please click on this URL http://vimeo.com/26991975 and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them. Harry Kroto ____________________ Below you have picture of 1996 Chemistry Nobel Prize Winner […]
On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said: …Please click on this URL http://vimeo.com/26991975 and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them. Harry Kroto ____________________ Below you have picture of 1996 Chemistry Nobel Prize Winner Dr. […]
On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said: …Please click on this URL http://vimeo.com/26991975 and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them. Harry Kroto _________________ Below you have picture of 1996 Chemistry Nobel Prize Winner […]
The Beatles were “inspired by the musique concrète of German composer and early electronic music pioneer Karlheinz Stockhausen…” as SCOTT THILL has asserted. Francis Schaeffer noted that ideas of “Non-resolution” and “Fragmentation” came down German and French streams with the influence of Beethoven’s last Quartets and then the influence of Debussy and later Schoenberg’s non-resolution which is in total contrast […]
_______ On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said: …Please click on this URL http://vimeo.com/26991975 and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them. Harry Kroto _________________ Below you have picture of 1996 Chemistry Nobel Prize […]
On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said: …Please click on this URL http://vimeo.com/26991975 and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them. Harry Kroto ____________________ Below you have picture of 1996 Chemistry Nobel Prize Winner Dr. […]
On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said: …Please click on this URL http://vimeo.com/26991975 and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them. Harry Kroto _________________ Below you have picture of 1996 Chemistry Nobel Prize Winner Dr. […]
“When it comes to feelings, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.”(1) That is the moral bottom line for Ingrid Newkirk, founder and director of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (or PETA). I intend to discuss in these pages the contentious issue of animal rights; yet for Ms. Newkirk the issue is settled: a boy has no more (and no less) rights than a rat.
Almost every week there is a story in the media about a research project stopped by an animal rights group, a protest against women wearing furs, a laboratory bombed by a militant animal rights activist, or a media figure protesting the conditions of animals on factory farms. What are all these protests about, and how should a Bible-believing Christian approach these issues? That is our subject in this pamphlet.
In 1975 Australian Peter Singer wrote a book whose title was to become the banner of a new movement: Animal Liberation. This book laid the foundation for most of the discussion since 1975, but it also set the tone of that discussion as specifically anti-Christian. Singer is quite clear about his distaste for Christianity: “It can no longer be maintained by anyone but a religious fanatic that man is the special darling of the universe, or that animals were created to provide us with food, or that we have divine authority over them, and divine permission to kill them.”(2)
By using the echoes of specific passages from the Bible and claiming that only a “religious fanatic” could still believe them, Singer is making clear not only that his view is not based on anything resembling a biblical world view, but that, in fact, the Bible is the root of much of the problem.
It was Peter Singer’s book that also made popular the rather ponderous term “speciesism.” He writes of this as, “a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species.”(3) Singer says speciesism is just as bad as sexism or racism.
So what does “speciesism” really mean? If you think it’s acceptable to test a medicine on laboratory animals before giving that medicine to a sick child or a cancer patient fighting for life, then you, too, are a speciesist. If you believe it is all right to eat meat or fish or shrimp, you are clearly a speciesist, just as guilty as someone who thinks that slavery is an acceptable way to treat another human being, according to Singer and others in the animal rights movement.
Why should Christians even bother to think about issues like animal rights when people are not even treated as well as animals in places like Bosnia or Iraq or many inner cities? Christians need to be actively involved in speaking out and acting clearly on this issue because the very definitions of humanity, of human dignity, and human responsibility are being rapidly reconstructed and any hint of man as created in the image of God or of a God who creates and gives value is seen as “speciesist” and dangerous.
Are We the Creation’s Keeper?
The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them…. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. That’s how God describes His coming kingdom in Isaiah 11.
Clearly God is concerned for all the animals He has created, and they will share a future, a non-violent future, with us. But what of today? How does God intend us to treat animals now?
The animal liberation movement opposes favoring humans over other animals. “Speciesism,” they say, is treating humans as if they were more valuable than other animals. What does the Bible say?
God, in Genesis, tells us we have a responsibility as stewards to care for His creation. We are God’s representatives on earth, but we are not Lords of the earth. In Proverbs Solomon says that “a righteous man cares for the needs of his animal” (Prov. 12:10). It is a mark of righteousness that we give animals the care they need. But at the same time we must understand that both we and the rest of creation have value because a sovereign God created us and gave us value because He cares about us. Our value comes from God and not ourselves.
Our concern for animals does not mean we should give up the Bible’s insistence that we are unique in all of God’s creation because we bear His image, or that we should immediately eliminate all use of animals for any purpose and live resolutely vegetarian lives. What place, then, should animals have? In Matthew 12:11-12 Jesus berates the Pharisees’ willingness to help an animal on the Sabbath but not a human.
If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.
Jesus’ point is clear: we should have compassion on animals in trouble, but have even more compassion for human beings, because they are “much more valuable” than sheep! But Christians sometimes show little compassion for either.
As Christians we have often not lived up to our responsibilities to animals as creations of God. Frequently we have acted as if all animals are here only for our use, to do with whatever we wanted. We have taken God’s statement in Genesis 1:28, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth,” as giving us the right of despots, not the responsibilities of stewards. As Christians we have not set an example for the world of valuing the rest of creation because it belongs to God, and we have often abused the creation with no sense of damaging a creation that is not our own.
Next, we will look at what happens when people who deny God try to find an adequate basis on which to build value for themselves or animals, and how far into dangerous territory this can lead them.
From Animal Rights to Abortion: A Small Step from Man to Animal
“Six million Jews died in concentration camps, but six billion broiler chickens will die this year in slaughterhouses.”(4) This is how Ms. Newkirk of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sums up her outrage at the killing of animals. What happens when well- meaning people try to give animals value without God? Ms. Newkirk may think she has improved our view of chickens by comparing them to Jews who were killed in concentration camps. But actually she only trivializes one of the most brutish examples of evil in our century. In her view numbers are everything; if more chickens than people were killed, then poultry farming is worse than Nazi Germany.
What is the foundation of Ms. Newkirk’s sense of value? She speaks of Peter Singer’s book, Animal Liberation, as “the Bible of the animal-rights movement.” Singer develops a purely utilitarian view of the greatest good for the greatest number of beings that can experience pain. For Singer there can be no God over creation. He almost sarcastically says: “The Bible tells us that God made man in His own image. We may regard this as man making God in his own image.”(5) So Singer turns to evolution to consider how we are related to other creatures.
Singer believes the evolutionary history of humans and other animals, particularly mammals, makes our central nervous system and theirs very similar. His conclusion? That many animals must feel pain like we do. Since we have no basis, in his view, to see humans as any different from other animals, if it is bad to do something to another pain-feeling human being, then it is wrong to do it to any other pain-feeling animal. The logic is simple, but it leads to just the kinds of confusion that cannot separate Jews dying in gas ovens from chickens dying in processing plants.
Where does a view like this ultimately lead? Singer willingly points the way in its application to new-born children. Writing for physicians in the journal Pediatrics, he shows how his ethic applies to humans,
Once the religious mumbo jumbo surrounding the term “human” has been stripped away…we will not regard as sacrosanct the life of each and every member of our species, no matter how limited its capacity for intelligent or even conscious life may be.(6)
With chilling clarity, Singer says that once we come to his position of valuing a life only if it meets certain requirements, it is much easier to take the life, not only of the unborn, but of those who have a “low quality of life.” He argues for the right to take the lives of new-born children who do not have certain capacities for “intelligent or even conscious life.” Singer concludes:
If we can put aside the obsolete and erroneous notion of the sanctity of all human life,…it will be possible to approach these difficult decisions of life and death with the ethical sensitivity that each case demands, rather than with a blindness to individual differences.7
In other words, if a baby does not measure up to Singer’s standards, it is not kept alive. The values of animal rights, applied to people, lead coldly to abortion and euthanasia.
While there are many areas where Christians might disagree with the animal rights movement, one might well ask, Have we Christians lived up to the responsibilities God gave us towards animals?
Are Farm Animals Just Machines?
After the Flood, God tells Noah: “Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.” God also makes a covenant, not only with Noah, but “with every living creature that was with you–the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you–every living creature on earth” (Gen. 9:3, 10).
So, while there is no question that God has given us permission to eat meat, we must also remember that we are moving towards a kingdom in which, as we saw in Isaiah 11, all of creation will live at peace with one another. So what should we be doing now, as we await perfection?
We have already looked at problems with the animal rights position. On the other hand, there are some uses of animals that should cause Christians significant concern.
One of the great changes in Western economies has been the change from the small family farm to the huge “agribusiness.” With this change has come not only increased production and lower food prices, but the treatment of animals as machines and land as a commodity. One area where animal rights activists have done commendable work is in showing the appalling conditions under which most farm animals now live.
Chickens live in battery cages that, on average, allow them only 36 to 48 square inches. This means that two chickens live in less space than a page of paper. Generally four or five chickens share a cage, so that they must almost physically live on top of each other. Does this sound like what Solomon means when he said that “a righteous man cares for the needs of his animal”?
As one other example, pigs too are treated as machines to produce food. The United States Department of Agriculture tells farmers: “If the sow is considered a pig manufacturing unit, then improved management…will result in more pigs weaned per sow per year.” This is surely not man acting as a good steward of created beings that belong to God. The decline of any belief in God has been accompanied by a decline in any attempt to treat animals on farms as anything other than “manufacturing units” to be treated in whatever way will cause them to produce the most.
If we truly believe what the Psalmist says, that “The earth is the LORD’s and all it contains” (Ps. 24:1), then we must not accept how those who do not believe this have acted. While we are directly given permission in Scripture to eat meat, it might well make a great difference in how animals are treated if Christians choose not to buy from those meat producers who do not tend to their animals as if they really did belong to God.
In the same way that if we believe in the sanctity of human life we must stand against abortion, so too, if we believe that “the earth is the LORD’s” then we must consider whether we can support those who do not treat animals as animals but only as “manufacturing units.”
I want to conclude this discussion with some suggestions about how we can both uphold the uniqueness of humans and stand against the mistreatment of God’s creation.
Recovering the Creation as Compassionate Stewards
I have pointed out the disturbing consequences of abandoning the biblical view that humans are created in the image of God. As theologian and social critic Richard John Neuhaus perceptively puts it: “The campaign against `speciesism’ is a campaign against the singularity of human dignity and, therefore, of human responsibility…. The hope for a more humane world, including the more humane treatment of animals, is premised upon what [animal rights activists] deny.”(8)
If we are merely animals, we have no reason to be less species- ist than other animals. Dogs show no concern for the welfare of cats. If we are moral in a way that other animals cannot be, then we are both different from other animals and responsible to God for that difference. Because we have a spiritual aspect that no other animal shares, what the Bible calls the “image of God,” we also have a responsibility to care for what God has entrusted to us. How should we live out that responsibility?
First, we must live in obedience to Jesus Christ. It was Jesus who reminded us that God clothes even the grass as an example of His care for all His creation. We need to demonstrate in our actions and in how we teach our children that we, too, consider all of God’s creation as something that shows His glory.
Secondly, we must consider what our own role is as God’s stewards. Just as not all are called to give their lives in vocational missionary service, so, too, not all are called to be full-time activists for better treatment of God’s creation. But we are all called to be missionaries, and we are all called to be stewards and not spoilers of the natural world.
Medical research and experiments on animals provide an excellent place for Christians to be proactive. Animals must be humanely treated, but at the same time we have much to learn about the treatment of cancer, diseases of the nervous system, and the management of serious injuries from animal experiments. If a cure for AIDS or any one of a number of genetic diseases is to be found, it should first be tested on animals. However, just as on farms, we have a duty as stewards to see that animals are treated with the respect due them as part of God’s creation. Like Jesus, who regarded helping the sheep out of the well as more important than keeping the Sabbath, so too we must speak out strongly for the humane treatment of animals whenever they are used by humans.
We have been given the right and the responsibility to rule over the earth by its Owner, God. Once Christians led in this area, starting the whole movement for the humane treatment of animals. Now we have little to say to our culture about real stewardship. We must read our Bibles carefully and prayerfully consider how God would have us help recover His creation. Animals may not have rights, but we as Christians clearly have responsibilities to them.
As Christians we must stand for man as created in the image of God and His creation as a reflection of His glory. Let us say with the Psalmist: “How many are your works, O LORD! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures” (Ps. 104:24).
1. Ingrid Newkirk cited in Charles Oliver, “Liberation Zoology,” Reason (June 1990), p. 22.
2. Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (New York: Avon Books, 1975), p. 215.
3. Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, new revised ed. (New York: Avon Books, 1990) p. 6.
4. “Liberation Zoology,” p. 26.
5. Animal Liberation, new rev. ed., p. 187.
6. Peter Singer, “Sanctity of Life or Quality of Life,” Pediatrics (July 1983), pp. 128-29. (Cited in Francis Schaeffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster.)
7. Ibid.
8. Richard John Neuhaus, “Animal Lib,” Christianity Today, 18 June 1990, p. 20.
Published on Jan 10, 2015
Whatever Happened to the Human Race?
Abortion
Dr. Francis Schaeffer
Dr. Francis schaeffer – The flow of Materialism(from Part 4 of Whatever happened to human race?)
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical flow of Truth & History (intro)
Francis Schaeffer predicted July 21, 2015 would come when the video “Second Planned Parenthood Senior Executive Haggles Over Baby Parts Prices, Changes Abortion Methods” would be released!!!! Al Mohler wrote the article ,”FIRST-PERSON: They indeed were prophetic,” Jan 29, 2004, and in this great article he noted: . “We stand today on the edge of a […]
I just wanted to note that I have spoken on the phone several times and corresponded with Dr. Paul D. Simmons who is very much pro-choice. (He is quoted in the article below.) He actually helped me write an article to submit to Americans United for the Separation of Church and State back in the […]
On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said: …Please click on this URL http://vimeo.com/26991975 and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them. Harry Kroto _________________ Below you have picture of 1996 Chemistry Nobel Prize Winner Dr. […]
_______________________ Very good article on Francis Schaeffer. Tom Wolfe. Peter Singer!! Presuppositional Life and Learning Posted on November 19, 2013 by Dr. Steven Garber Francis Schaeffer. Tom Wolfe. Peter Singer. I spent the morning with the Capitol Fellows thinking about these three men, and their ideas. The first one I studied and studied with many […]
The Staple Singers Part 1 click to enlarge Mavis Staples From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Mavis Staples Staples performing in Brooklyn, New York in 2007 Background information Birth name Mavis Staples Born July 10, 1939 (age 74) Origin Chicago, Illinois, U.S. Genres Rhythm and blues, soul, gospel […]
Francis Schaeffer noted, “In this flow there was also the period of psychedelic rock, an attempt to find this experience without drugs, by the use of a certain type of music. This was the period of the Beatles’ Revolver (1966) and Strawberry Fields Forever (1967)…The psychedelic began with their records REVOLVER, STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER, AND […]
The Staple Singers Part 1 Mavis Staples to give concert at Christ Church in Little Rock Posted by Lindsey Millar on Fri, Sep 6, 2013 at 2:48 PM click to enlarge Whoa. One of the greatest soul divas OF ALL TIME is coming to Little Rock next month. Christ Church Little Rock is hosting Mavis […]
In my last post I demonstrated that George Bernard Shaw was a vocal communist and that probably had a lot to do with his inclusion on the cover of SGT PEPPER’S but today I will look more into more this great playwright’s views. Did you know that Shaw wrote the play that MY FAIR LADY […]
Transcript and Video of Francis Schaeffer speech in 1983 on the word “Evangelical” _____________ SOUNDWORD LABRI CONFERENCE VIDEO – Names and Issues – Francis A. Schaeffer Published on Apr 20, 2014 This video is from the 1983 L’Abri Conference in Atlanta. The full lecture with Q&A time has been included. The lecture was also previously […]
Surgeon General of the United States In office January 21, 1982 – October 1, 1989 President Ronald Reagan George H. W. Bush Francis Schaeffer Founder of the L’Abri community Born Francis August Schaeffer January 30, 1912 Died May 15, 1984 (aged 72) I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are […]
My good friend Rev. Sherwood Haisty Jr. and I used to discuss which men were the ones who really influenced our lives and Adrian Rogers had influenced us both more than anybody else. During the 1990′s I actually made it a practice to write famous atheists and scientists that were mentioned by Adrian Rogers and […]
I meet with the young adult group on Friday nights for more targeted discussions. One of the things that Tammy and I have come to realize is that a lot of young adults do not see the value of gleaning wisdom from helpful folks who have come in generations before them. C.S. Lewis calls this “chronological snobbery.”
So, we have begun a series with our group called “Books You Should Have in Your Library.” We started with Francis Schaeffer’s “How Should We Then Live?” The plan is kick it off here and then work backwards. Although, I plan to get to some stuff from James White, who is certainly not backwards, except for the kilt, and Dan Phillips, who does have somewhat of an obsession with the band Chicago. But, alas, even Schaeffer had his knickers.
To encourage others to read some of these great works, I plan on posting some of the notes and quotes from our discussions under the category, oddly enough, Books You Should Have in Your Library. I trust that these will be helpful as an incentive to read the book, of course. If you would like to add some additional things that strike you in each chapter, please feel free to post them in the comment section.
Here are some of the things we discussed that were in Chapter 1.
Francis Schaeffer and Presuppositions
The book begins with this statement:
Francis Schaeffer | This Bread Always
There is a flow to history and culture. This flow is rooted and has its wellspring in the thoughts of people. People are unique in the inner life of the mind—what they are in their thought-world determines how they act. This is true of their value systems and it is true of their creativity. It is true of their corporate actions, such as political decisions, and it is true of their personal lives. The results of their thought-world flow through their fingers or from their tongues into the external world. This is true of Michelangelo’s chisel, and it is true of a dictator’s sword.
These basic starting points of understanding reality are called, “presuppositions.”
People have presuppositions, and they will live more consistently on the basis of these presuppositions than even they themselves may realize…Their presuppositions also provide the basis for their values and therefore the basis for their decisions.
Schaeffer defines presuppositions as “the basic way an individual looks at life, his basic world-view, the grid through which he sees the world.”
When it comes down to it, there are really only three ways that the thinkers of the past have posited that we can know reality. What we perceive through our senses; what we can reason from the inside out; and, what we can know because we have been told by someone outside of us who is trustworthy.
Paul said it this way:
But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”— these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. (1 Corinthians 2:9–10, ESV)
Everyone has a worldview, an ultimate grid through which they understand reality. “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,” may be called in our day “empiricism” – reality is perceived by what is observed. We pile up pieces of data, “particulars” as Aristotle called them, and draw conclusions to make a unified whole. But, it fails. We cannot observe everything because we are limited creatures. That last piece of data might change the whole conclusion.
“Nor the heart of man imagined” may be called “rationalism,” or deriving a unified whole starting from the inside and reasoning out. “I think, therefore I am.” DeCartes posited. But, doesn’t everyone start from a different spot internally? Isn’t everyone flawed in their beginning?
There needs to be a Perfect Perceiver of reality, and their needs to be a Perfect starting point for reason. Paul points to the only viable source of knowing when he says, “these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.”
All worldviews are designed to answer three basic questions:
1) What is real? The Theory of Reality (metaphysics)2) How do I know? The Theory of Knowledge (epistemology)3) How should I live? The Theory of Ethics (morality)
Schaeffer begins to demonstrate his thesis that “the inner thought-world determines the outward action” by looking at ancient Rome.
The Presuppositions of Rome
What caused Rome to fall? It wasn’t the barbarian attacks. It was that it rotted from the inside out.
In many ways Rome was great, but it had no real answers to the basic problems that all humanity faces.
The gods of Rome were glorified human beings. Petty, selfish, and without ultimate authority.
These gods depended on the society which had made them, and when this society collapsed the gods tumbled with it.
Is that not the way with any authority structure that depends upon humanity? Is that not true of the state as well? Fickle, changing, and ultimately unsupported. With Rome, each faction vied for its own special interest. Nothing was accomplished in the Roman Senate because Senators were only concerned with enlarging their power and perks of office. Chaos ruled the streets of Rome and Romans traded their freedoms as citizens for the security of subjugation. Ultimately, they worshipped Caesar and the genius of Rome. However, this ultimate authority was also finite and fickle as Caesar ultimately began to be ruled by the polls of his day.
Schaeffer contrasts the weakness of Rome and its worldview with the strength of Christianity and its worldview. Christianity survived intense persecution and the pressures of a cruel state power because Christian thought was not dependent upon the subjective wants of the culture. Christian thought is dependent upon objective truth, that of the revelation of God in Scripture.
The parallels to Rome and our current day are striking, there is no doubt. The solution is also striking. The Western church longs to be a power base in the secular political scene, to be accepted in the ever-godless culture. To do so, the Church must abandon her dependence upon objective truth and subject herself to the whims of the public. That has never ended well.
_______________________________________________
프란시스 쉐퍼 – 그러면 우리는 어떻게 살 것인가 introduction (Episode 1)
How Should We then Live Episode 7 small (Age of Nonreason)
#02 How Should We Then Live? (Promo Clip) Dr. Francis Schaeffer
The clip above is from episode 9 THE AGE OF PERSONAL PEACE AND AFFLUENCE
10 Worldview and Truth
In above clip Schaeffer quotes Paul’s speech in Greece from Romans 1 (from Episode FINAL CHOICES)
Two Minute Warning: How Then Should We Live?: Francis Schaeffer at 100
A Christian Manifesto Francis Schaeffer
Francis Schaeffer “BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY” Whatever…HTTHR
______________ The Beatles documentary || A Long and Winding Road || Episode 5 (This video discusses Stg. Pepper’s creation I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time listening to the Beatles and talking and writing […]
_______________________ When I’m Sixty-Four- The Beatles The Beatles first radio interview (10/27/1962) Published on Mar 3, 2013 The Beatles (John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr) with Monty Lister at their first radio interview, 27 October 1962. Before their fourth and final live appearance at the Hulme Hall in Birkenhead, The Beatles recorded […]
Great Album I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time listening to the Beatles and talking and writing about them and their impact on the culture of the 1960’s. In this series we have […]
________________ _____________________________ Francis Schaeffer pictured below: ______________ I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970’s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer makes three key points concerning the Reformation: “1. Erasmian Christian humanism rejected by Farel. 2. Bible gives needed answers not only as to how to be right […]
How Should We Then Live? outline Episode VII – The Age of Non Reason ____________________ Episode 8: The Age Of Fragmentation Published on Jul 24, 2012 Dr. Schaeffer’s sweeping epic on the rise and decline of Western thought and Culture _______________________ I love the works of Francis Schaeffer and I have been on the internet […]
___________________________________ 프란시스 쉐퍼 – 그러면 우리는 어떻게 살 것인가 introduction (Episode 1) How Should We then Live Episode 7 small (Age of Nonreason) #02 How Should We Then Live? (Promo Clip) Dr. Francis Schaeffer The clip above is from episode 9 THE AGE OF PERSONAL PEACE AND AFFLUENCE 10 Worldview and Truth In above clip […]
Open letter to President Obama (Part 491) (Emailed to White House on 5-3-13.) 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 for trying to get […]
__________________ Francis Schaeffer pictured below: _______________- I want to make two points today. First, Greg Koukl has rightly noted that the nudity of a ten year old girl in the art of Robert Mapplethorpe is not defensible, and it demonstrates where our culture is morally. It the same place morally where Rome was 2000 years […]
Review of Francis Schaeffer’s book and film series “How should we then live?” by Douglas Groothuis, Ph.D. Episode VII – The Age of Non Reason ____________________ Episode 8: The Age Of Fragmentation Published on Jul 24, 2012 Dr. Schaeffer’s sweeping epic on the rise and decline of Western thought and Culture _______________________ I love the […]
Francis Schaeffer Whatever Happened to the Human Race (Episode 1) ABORTION This essay below is worth the read. Schaeffer, Francis – “Francis Schaeffer and the Pro-Life Movement” [How Should We Then Live?, Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, A Christian Manifesto] Editor note: <p> </p> [The following essay explores the role that Francis Schaeffer played […]
How Should We Then Live? outline Episode VII – The Age of Non Reason ____________________ Episode 8: The Age Of Fragmentation Published on Jul 24, 2012 Dr. Schaeffer’s sweeping epic on the rise and decline of Western thought and Culture _______________________ I love the works of Francis Schaeffer and I have been on the internet […]
Review of Francis Schaeffer’s book and film series “How should we then live?” by Douglas Groothuis, Ph.D. How Should We then Live Episode 7 small (Age of Nonreason) #02 How Should We Then Live? (Promo Clip) Dr. Francis Schaeffer The clip above is from episode 9 THE AGE OF PERSONAL PEACE AND AFFLUENCE 10 Worldview […]
How Should We Then Live 4-1 I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970’s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer makes three key points concerning the Reformation: “1. Erasmian Christian humanism rejected by Farel. 2. Bible gives needed answers not only as to how to be right with […]
I have written about Obamacare over and over again on this blog. Dan Mitchell has shared many funny cartoons about Obamacare too. Milton Friedman has spoken out about government healthcare many times in the past and his film series FREE TO CHOOSE is on You Tube and I encourage you to watch it. It is clear that the federal government debt is growing so much that it is endangering us because if things keep going like they are now we will not have any money left for the national defense because we are so far in debt as a nation.
The other day I came across a superb article by economist and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman on how to cure health care (H/TSwiss Economist who originally linked to the article, and who posted a comment about it on Enjoyment and Contemplation). The article is somewhat long but definitely worth reading, especially in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling on the Patient Neglect and Unaffordable Care Act (known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in Newspeak, or as “Obamacare”). The government naturally ignored all of Friedman’s advice in the Patient Neglect and Unaffordable Care Act, and Friedman hints at why the government’s health care reform will fail (despite the fact that Friedman died even before “Obamacare” was written).
First, Friedman explains why health insurance — unlike many other forms of insurance — is bought through one’s employer:
We have become so accustomed to employer-provided medical care that we regard it as part of the natural order. Yet it is thoroughly illogical. Why single out medical care? Food is more essential to life than medical care. Why not exempt the cost of food from taxes if provided by the employer? Why not return to the much-reviled company store when workers were in effect paid in kind rather than in cash?
The revival of the company store for medicine has less to do with logic than pure chance. It is a wonderful example of how one bad government policy leads to another. During World War II, the government financed much wartime spending by printing money while, at the same time, imposing wage and price controls. The resulting repressed inflation produced shortages of many goods and services, including labor. Firms competing to acquire labor at government-controlled wages started to offer medical care as a fringe benefit. That benefit proved particularly attractive to workers and spread rapidly.
Initially, employers did not report the value of the fringe benefit to the Internal Revenue Service as part of their workers’ wages. It took some time before the IRS realized what was going on. When it did, it issued regulations requiring employers to include the value of medical care as part of reported employees’ wages. By this time, workers had become accustomed to the tax exemption of that particular fringe benefit and made a big fuss. Congress responded by legislating that medical care provided by employers should be tax-exempt.
I had always wondered why health insurance was bought through one’s employer. It is indeed “thoroughly illogical”. Next, Friedman explains that the meaning of insurance has undergone a drastic change in the context of health insurance:
Employer financing of medical care has caused the term insurance to acquire a rather different meaning in medicine than in most other contexts. We generally rely on insurance to protect us against events that are highly unlikely to occur but that involve large losses if they do occur—major catastrophes, not minor, regularly recurring expenses. We insure our houses against loss from fire, not against the cost of having to cut the lawn. We insure our cars against liability to others or major damage, not against having to pay for gasoline. Yet in medicine, it has become common to rely on insurance to pay for regular medical examinations and often for prescriptions.
This is exactly what I was explaining in my argument against health insurance mandates. The problem with using insurance to cover regular medical expenses like examinations is that a third party (the insurance company or government) needlessly interferes with normal economic transactions between caregiver and patient, and the patient has no incentive to pay attention to costs since the insurance company is paying for the care (i.e. the costs are hidden from the patient). As Friedman puts it:
Third-party payment has required the bureaucratization of medical care and, in the process, has changed the character of the relation between physicians (or other caregivers) and patients. A medical transaction is not simply between a caregiver and a patient; it has to be approved as “covered” by a bureaucrat and the appropriate payment authorized. The patient—the recipient of the medical care—has little or no incentive to be concerned about the cost since it’s somebody else’s money. The caregiver has become, in effect, an employee of the insurance company or, in the case of Medicare and Medicaid, of the government. The patient is no longer the one, and the only one, the caregiver has to serve. An inescapable result is that the interest of the patient is often in direct conflict with the interest of the caregiver’s ultimate employer. That has been manifest in public dissatisfaction with the increasingly impersonal character of medical care.
This system results in high costs for health care due to the fact that
nobody spends somebody else’s money as wisely or as frugally as he spends his own.
This principle is the ultimate basis for conservative arguments against such heavy government involvement as created and perpetuated in the most recent health care reform — government cannot and does not spend money as wisely or frugally on health care as patients themselves, who are also most familiar with their health care needs.
Friedman gives a solution to reducing the high cost of health care:
A cure requires reversing course, reprivatizing medical care by eliminating most third-party payment, and restoring the role of insurance to providing protection against major medical catastrophes.
The ideal way to do that would be to reverse past actions: repeal the tax exemption of employer-provided medical care; terminate Medicare and Medicaid; deregulate most insurance; and restrict the role of the government, preferably state and local rather than federal, to financing care for the hard cases. However, the vested interests that have grown up around the existing system, and the tyranny of the status quo, clearly make that solution not feasible politically.
Note that Friedman’s solution does call for some government involvement, particularly for the “hard cases” (individuals with pre-existing conditions, the poor, etc.). The conservative approach to health care does not mean the poor and unhealthy must be neglected or that government has no role in health care — despite what many leftists think and would have you believe — but it does limit the government to its proper role.
A politically feasible approach to Friedman’s solution (that actually exists to some degree already) is a medical savings account:
A medical savings account enables individuals to deposit tax-free funds in an account usable only for medical expense, provided they have a high-deductible insurance policy that limits the maximum out-of-pocket expense…it eliminates third-party payment except for major medical expenses and is thus a movement very much in the right direction. By extending tax exemption to all medical expenses whether paid by the employer or not, it eliminates the present bias in favor of employer-provided medical care.
This solution not only restores the true meaning of health insurance as insurance against major, unexpected, and catastrophic health expenses, but it weakens the current model of employer-based health insurance. With employers paying less for high deductible health insurance plans than for low deductible plans, employees can receive more of their compensation in the form of wages rather than health insurance. Cash is more flexible than insurance, so employees can choose to either spend their extra wages on health care (their out-of-pocket expenses would be higher) or on whatever else they want to spend it on (for example, if they are healthy and don’t need much health care).
Given the clear benefits of medical savings accounts, can you guess what the Patient Neglect and Unaffordable Care Act does? Although the law does allow such accounts, it restricts what they can be used to purchase (non-prescription medications cannot be paid for with funds from such accounts) and limits the amount of tax-free contributions that can be made to the accounts.
For completeness, Friedman does briefly mention the leftist approach to health care and its benefits and drawbacks:
In terms of holding down cost, one-payer directly administered government systems, such as exist in Canada and Great Britain, have a real advantage over our mixed system. As the direct purchaser of all or nearly all medical services, they are in a monopoly position in hiring physicians and can hold down their remuneration, so that physicians earn much less in those countries than in the United States. In addition, they can ration care more directly—at the cost of long waiting lists and much dissatisfaction.
The reason why this government approach to health care leads to rationing and long wait times is, of course, explained by basic economics:
Legislation cannot repeal the nonlegislated law of demand and supply: the lower the price, the greater the quantity demanded; at a zero price, the quantity demanded becomes infinite. Some method of rationing must be substituted for price, which invariably means administrative rationing.
With artificially low prices due to insurance mandates (like the “free contraceptives” mandate) demand rises and the low or zero price product is over-utilized. Furthermore, although the government can use its monopoly position to hold down physicians’ compensation, doing so reduces supply in a system of rising demand so that even more rationing is required. There are obvious reasons why monopolies should be avoided, so the leftist desire for a government monopoly (which, unlike a private monopoly, also has the authority of law and armed force to coerce) is “thoroughly illogical”.
Developing a good system of health care is certainly a difficult problem that requires much serious thought and debate, especially when dealing with the “hard cases” like the poor and individuals with pre-existing medical conditions. Both the left and the right have solutions to this problem, although as Milton Friedman has shown the left’s solution has serious logical and practical conflicts with the laws of economics. The conservative approach outlined by Friedman, on the other hand, takes into account the laws of economics and gives patients the power to choose how best to spend their money — on health care as well as other expenses — rather than impose an “individual mandate” tax.
__________ Enzi statement on the Supreme Court’s King Vs. Burwell decision 5 Takeaways From Today’s Supreme Court Ruling on Obamacare Wicker Comments on King v Burwell Supreme Court Decision Senator Lankford Discusses the King v. Burwell Supreme Court Decision Congressman Steve King Response to SCOTUS King v. Burwell Ruling Obamacare and the Odious Anti-Constitutionalism of […]
Open letter to President Obama (Part 718) (Emailed to White House on 6-25-13.) 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 for trying to get […]
______ Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose (1980), episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 1 The Region – Banking and Policy Issues Magazine – Interview with Milton Friedman June 1992 In his new book, Money Mischief, economist Milton Friedman compares inflation to alcoholism; blames the rise of Chinese communism, in large part, on an […]
______ Milton Friedman – A Conversation On Minimum Wage Milton Friedman Interview Milton Friedman is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Chicago and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.Dr. Friedman received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize for Economic Science. Member of the research staff of the National Bureau of Economic Research from 1937 […]
________ Milton Friedman on Donahue – 1979 Uploaded on Aug 26, 2009 Dr. Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate, promoting “Free to Choose” on the show Donahue. Walter E. Williams: Milton Friedman was an economist’s economist Print Font [+] [-] Leave a comment » By Walter E. Williams Published: Wednesday, Dec. 6 2006 12:00 a.m. MST Walter […]
_______ José Niño José Niño is a graduate student based in Santiago, Chile. A citizen of the world, he has lived in Venezuela, Colombia, and the United States. He is currently an international research analyst with the Acton Circle of Chile. Follow@JoseAlNino. 40 Years Later: Milton Friedman’s Legacy in Chile “Chilean Miracle” Struck a Blow […]
____ Milton Friedman – The Negative Income Tax The Conservative Case for a Guaranteed Basic Income NOAH GORDON AUG 6, 2014 Creating a wage floor is an effective way to fight poverty—and it would reduce government spending and intrusion. Swiss backers of a minimum income spread out coins in Bern. Denis Balibouse/Reuters Last week, my […]
________________ Which Fed Bill Would Milton Friedman Have Liked? Posted on March 10, 2015by John Taylor Writing last week on the Cato at Liberty blog, Steve Hanke argued that Milton Friedman would have supported the “Audit the Fed” bill recently introduced in the Senate. Steve’s reasoning is based on Friedman’s 1962 essay “Should there be an […]
A great speech below: Here are the myths:Robber Baron Myth, The Cause of Great Depression Myth, The Demand for Government Service Myth, The Free Lunch Smith, and The Robin Hood Myth. 1) the Robber Baron Myth, 2) the Great Depression Myth, 3) the Demand for Government Service Myth, 4) the Free Lunch Myth, and 5) […]
_______________ FEATURED ARTICLE | SEPTEMBER 4, 2006 An Interview with Milton Friedman Milton Friedman* I recently sat down with Milton Friedman, a few days before his 94th birthday, to discuss the impact of two of his most important contributions to economics and liberty: A Monetary History of the United States, 1870-1960 [co-written] with Anna Schwartz, […]
Milton Friedman on Self-Interest and the Profit Motive 1of2 Milton Friedman on Self-Interest and the Profit Motive 2of2 The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits by Milton FriedmanThe New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970. Copyright @ 1970 by The New York Times Company. When I hear businessmen speak eloquently about the […]
____________ Levin on Milton Friedman: ‘One Thing to Have Free Immigration to Jobs, Another for Welfare’ By Michael Morris | January 16, 2015 | 5:12 PM EST During his show on January 15, 2015, Nationally syndicated radio host Mark Levin recalled the famed economist Milton Friedman and explored an important reason why open immigration, despite […]
What are the consequences of accepting euthanasia? According to a Dutch study investigating the effects in Holland, where euthanasia is tolerated while not strictly legal, it was found that in a single year there were more than 2,700 reported euthanasia deaths. Over 50% of these were involuntary, i.e. the patient was not given a choice.2
Francis Schaeffer “BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY” Whatever…HTTHR
Euthanasia is one of the most critical issues ever to face Western society. This can be seen as a logical consequence of the acceptance of evolution as truth and, therefore, the rejection of God’s authority in the Bible. With belief in evolution, the absolutes of God’s Word are lost and hence right and wrong become a matter of individual opinion. After all, if we have all evolved, we are the only ones who can decide what is right and no one else can tell us what to do. However, the Bible is not silent on the issue of euthanasia and we find in His Word the foundation for defending the value of human life.
Perhaps the most common misunderstanding in the debate about euthanasia concerns what euthanasia actually is. Euthanasia is not the turning off of machines in intensive care units which may be artificially prolonging the dying process. Euthanasia is the direct act of killing a patient, e.g. by lethal injection. Thus, to avoid confusion, it is better described as patient-killing. If a respirator is finally turned off on which a patient depends, the direct intent may not be to kill that patient, because if they were to live, then no more would need to be done. However with euthanasia, if the first dose of toxic ‘medication’ was not sufficient to ‘terminate’ the patient, then higher and higher doses would be given until the patient was dead.
Evolution has played a major role in paving the way for the acceptance of euthanasia. Evolution reduces humans to the level of animals, making it just as acceptable to put down a human as put down a dog. Many evolutionists advocate euthanasia as a wonderful means to rid us of unwanted burdens. Such opinions lead to the belief that killing a severely handicapped child is ultimately no different to killing a pig.1 Since there is no God, there is no intrinsic value to human beings and therefore nothing wrong with killing a child who has Down’s syndrome (a tragedy that already happens with abortion). Sadly, such opinions have wide acceptance by ethics committees deciding the fate of thousands of defenceless newborn children in our hospitals.
What are the consequences of accepting euthanasia? According to a Dutch study investigating the effects in Holland, where euthanasia is tolerated while not strictly legal, it was found that in a single year there were more than 2,700 reported euthanasia deaths. Over 50% of these were involuntary, i.e. the patient was not given a choice.2 In one case, an elderly lady required admission to hospital for her illness, but feared that she would be euthanased if she was admitted. Her physician assured her that he would take personal responsibility to see that this would not happen. However, having returned after a day absent from the hospital the physician found that the bed was occupied by another patient. Upon inquiry to the doctor in charge he found that the patient was killed because they needed the bed!3 If involuntary euthanasia is occurring in a country where euthanasia is not even legal, one can easily foresee the horrible results of legalising euthanasia.
Every day in our hospitals, decisions are made concerning patients’ lives. Should this patient be treated for his renal failure? Should that patient be resuscitated if she suffered a heart attack? Should this patient receive any treatment at all, or should even food and water be withdrawn from this patient because he has dementia? More and more doctors are deciding whether or not to treat patients on the basis of whether they believe the patient’s life is worth living, not on the basis of their intrinsic value as human beings.
What does the Bible have to say about euthanasia? In 2 Samuel 1:1–16 we read the account where an Amalekite claimed to have committed euthanasia on Saul.4 Instead of praising the act of killing Saul as merciful and kind, David calls for the man to be executed because of his not being afraid to destroy the Lord’s anointed. In fact, God has ‘anointed’ all life as sacred: Genesis 9:6 says, ‘Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.’ Thus only God, not any man, has the right to take away life, except where God has delegated that authority.5 If God has given life, man has no right to take it away, not even his own. Euthanasia therefore violates God’s holy law and will bring God’s judgment upon any society permitting it.
When people are sick, especially when they are terminally ill, they may at times want to die. But in almost all circumstances such feelings are a reflection of an underlying depression or a response to isolation or loneliness or pain, all of which have solutions other than killing the patient. It is only in very rare circumstances that pain cannot be adequately relieved.
Thus, requests for euthanasia are very often a cry for help and should not be taken at face value. Often the initial shock of the diagnosis and the fear of the disease process may be overwhelming. To offer lethal injection as a solution to these problems robs these people of the chance to deal with their new life situation and brings a terrible burden of guilt to their families.
According to my cancer-specialist colleagues, suicide is extremely rare in cancer patients. Dutch cancer specialist Zybigniew Zylicz says that of the 100 or so dying cancer patients who asked him for euthanasia (out of some 400), 98% changed their mind after adequate counselling and skilled pain relief.6 Euthanasia is certainly an easier and cheaper alternative to providing proper palliative care. Our governments and health systems should be concentrating on addressing the underlying issues leading to the desire to die, rather than legislate to permit the killing of the sick.
In Nazi Germany, once evolution was accepted as ‘state truth’, social Darwinism in the form of euthanasia was implemented—first on the terminally ill, then on the disabled and the elderly—those who were ‘burdens to society’—and finally on six million Jews and minority groups such as gypsies. In the same way, once euthanasia is legalised, our belief in evolution and false confidence in the opinions of men will likely carry it through society until death is not just a ‘right’, but a regimen. The vulnerable elderly, whose families have something to gain from their relative’s death, would have no protection against this evil because they are unable to fend for themselves. The right to die can easily become a duty to die, as already many are unwanted burdens under the current system.
The drastic erosion of the Christian basis for society is the logical consequence of the church’s failure to make a stand against evolution. Deny Genesis, and there is no reason for believing that man was made in God’s image. We, who should be ‘salt and light’ in our culture, will be held even more responsible if we remain silent about the dangers of euthanasia whenever evolutionists are agitating for its legalization.
Chan Perry, M.B., B.S., is completing specialist training in the areas of anesthetics and intensive care medicine through the Royal Melbourne Hospital in Melbourne, Victoria.
Help keep these daily articles coming. Support AiG.
Footnotes
Peter Singer, an internationally renowned ethics philosopher, wrote, ‘Whatever the future holds, it is likely to prove impossible to restore in full the sanctity of life view. The philosophical foundations of this view have been knocked asunder. We can no longer base our ethics on the idea that human beings are a special form of creation, made in the image of God, singled out from all other animals, and alone possessing an immortal soul. Homo sapiens endows its life with some unique, almost infinite value?’ Pediatrics, ‘Sanctity of life or quality of life?’, 72(1):128–9, July, 1983. Back
Address by Mr Charles Frances, Queen’s Counsel Barrister, for ‘Trust Palliative Care Not Euthanasia’ Moonee Valley Race Course Conference Room, November 21, 1996. Back
Francis Schaeffer predicted July 21, 2015 would come when the video “Second Planned Parenthood Senior Executive Haggles Over Baby Parts Prices, Changes Abortion Methods” would be released!!!! Al Mohler wrote the article ,”FIRST-PERSON: They indeed were prophetic,” Jan 29, 2004, and in this great article he noted: . “We stand today on the edge of a […]
I just wanted to note that I have spoken on the phone several times and corresponded with Dr. Paul D. Simmons who is very much pro-choice. (He is quoted in the article below.) He actually helped me write an article to submit to Americans United for the Separation of Church and State back in the […]
On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said: …Please click on this URL http://vimeo.com/26991975 and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them. Harry Kroto _________________ Below you have picture of 1996 Chemistry Nobel Prize Winner Dr. […]
_______________________ Very good article on Francis Schaeffer. Tom Wolfe. Peter Singer!! Presuppositional Life and Learning Posted on November 19, 2013 by Dr. Steven Garber Francis Schaeffer. Tom Wolfe. Peter Singer. I spent the morning with the Capitol Fellows thinking about these three men, and their ideas. The first one I studied and studied with many […]
The Staple Singers Part 1 click to enlarge Mavis Staples From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Mavis Staples Staples performing in Brooklyn, New York in 2007 Background information Birth name Mavis Staples Born July 10, 1939 (age 74) Origin Chicago, Illinois, U.S. Genres Rhythm and blues, soul, gospel […]
Francis Schaeffer noted, “In this flow there was also the period of psychedelic rock, an attempt to find this experience without drugs, by the use of a certain type of music. This was the period of the Beatles’ Revolver (1966) and Strawberry Fields Forever (1967)…The psychedelic began with their records REVOLVER, STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER, AND […]
The Staple Singers Part 1 Mavis Staples to give concert at Christ Church in Little Rock Posted by Lindsey Millar on Fri, Sep 6, 2013 at 2:48 PM click to enlarge Whoa. One of the greatest soul divas OF ALL TIME is coming to Little Rock next month. Christ Church Little Rock is hosting Mavis […]
In my last post I demonstrated that George Bernard Shaw was a vocal communist and that probably had a lot to do with his inclusion on the cover of SGT PEPPER’S but today I will look more into more this great playwright’s views. Did you know that Shaw wrote the play that MY FAIR LADY […]
Transcript and Video of Francis Schaeffer speech in 1983 on the word “Evangelical” _____________ SOUNDWORD LABRI CONFERENCE VIDEO – Names and Issues – Francis A. Schaeffer Published on Apr 20, 2014 This video is from the 1983 L’Abri Conference in Atlanta. The full lecture with Q&A time has been included. The lecture was also previously […]
Surgeon General of the United States In office January 21, 1982 – October 1, 1989 President Ronald Reagan George H. W. Bush Francis Schaeffer Founder of the L’Abri community Born Francis August Schaeffer January 30, 1912 Died May 15, 1984 (aged 72) I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are […]
My good friend Rev. Sherwood Haisty Jr. and I used to discuss which men were the ones who really influenced our lives and Adrian Rogers had influenced us both more than anybody else. During the 1990′s I actually made it a practice to write famous atheists and scientists that were mentioned by Adrian Rogers and […]
The Daily Hatch 