![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-122208.jpg" ““Article”) Every Christmas season we will hear the inevitable revisionist version of the Christmas story. Jesse Jackson was the first to turn Joseph and Mary into a “homeless couple” when he claimed that Christmas “is not about Santa Claus and ‘Jingle Bells’ and [...]
![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-120908.jpg" ““Article”) One way to change worldview perceptions is to keep people ignorant. The public schools have done a great job in shifting worldview thinking from theism to humanism right under the noses of parents who extol the virtues of America’s government education system. Consider how t [...]
![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-120908-b.jpg" ““Article”) Efforts to erase God from America’s collective memory will have to include a number of official documents signed by some of our founding fathers, including John Hancock and James Madison. On March 16, 1776, “by order of Congress” a “day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer” [...]
A story is told that during the days of the Cold War a two-car automobile race took place between the United States and the former Soviet Union. An American newspaper reporter described the result of the race this way: “American car beats out Soviet competitor.” The Russian newspaper reported the same automotive contest from a slightly different perspective: “Soviet car finishes second; American c [...]
![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-102008.jpg" ““Article”) Hermeneutics, the science and skill of interpretation, is most often applied to the Bible. But hermeneutics can be applied to any written document. For example, the Constitution is a piece of literature that requires interpretive skill to determine its meaning. I was reminde [...]
![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/artice-image-093008.jpg" ““Article”) The new 580,000-square-foot, $621 million Visitor’s Center is already embroiled in controversy. It seems that the illustrious planners wanted to avoid controversy by leaving out the content of America’s rich Christian heritage but had no problem including “photographs of Eart [...]
The American Civil Liberties Union is asking the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to stop Cobb County, Georgia, from opening its meetings with prayers that mention Jesus or use other “sectarian” references, claiming the invocations represent government favoritism of Christianity. The simple solution is for any Christian who is called on to open a meeting with prayer to end it with these simple w [...]
Everyone likes a good conspiracy. Conspiracies explain a complicated world. Probably the most infamous example of a manufactured conspiracy in order to explain the emergence of disorder in the world is The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion that circulated widely in the 1920s and 1930s. The documents that make up The Protocols are said to have been written by unnamed Jewish “elders” who atten [...]
The 105 colonists and seamen who set sail from England and settled in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607 carried the Geneva Bible with them. The copious notes of this refugee translation, while identifying the existing papal government as the biblical antichrist, saw beyond its own generation to a more glorious future. Keep in mind that the editors of the Geneva notes believed that antichrist was a past [...]
It’s been said that you can tell a book by its cover. You can also tell a book by those who endorse it. Consider Alan Dershowitz’s Blasphemy: How the Religious Right is Hijacking our Declaration of Independence.[1] The book is endorsed by at least two high-profile published atheists (Steven Pinker and Sam Harris), the president of the ACLU (Nadine Strossen, who speaks to atheist groups and may be [...]
Have you ever been in a debate with someone who asks for evidence for this or that particular issue, and after giving the evidence it is dismissed as not being relevant? Facts do not speak for themselves. “Facts do not come with interpretation tags, telling us how to view them. . . . Both sides haggle over the facts. Both sides search for new facts to add to their arsenals. Both sides raise accusa [...]
One of the arguments made by yesterday’s Tar-Baby emailer that while the words separation of church and state do not appear in the Constitution “the concept clearly does.” If the concept is there, then why didn’t the founders phrase the constitution to fit the concept? The concept of “separation of church and state” is older than the Constitution, was not invented by Thomas Jefferson, and is a lon [...]
As you can imagine, I get lots of emails. I try to answer most of them as soon as I get them. Some emails take a little more time. Every once in a while I get what I call a “Tar-Baby”[1] email. Once you respond to a “Tar-Baby” email, there is no way to extricate yourself from it. No matter what evidence you offer in response, the emailer, instead of answering the evidence, brings up another line o [...]
George Washington Next on Professor Geoffrey Stone’s list of historical witnesses is George Washington. During the War for Independence, Washington wrote the following to Brig. General Thomas Nelson: “The Hand of providence has been so conspicuous in all this, that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked, that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations. [...]
Professor Stone centers his analysis of what he conceives to be the “distorted version of history that has become part of the conventional wisdom of American politics in recent years”[1] on the religious views of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, George Washington, and Thomas Paine, so that’s where I’ll concentrate my efforts. Keep in mind, however, that America’s founding rests on [...]
It’s been said (by me) that two half-truths don’t make the whole truth. Geoffrey Stone’s response to Mitt Romney’s “religious assurance” speech begins by stating that it “called to mind a disturbingly distorted version of history that has become part of the conventional wisdom of American politics in recent years."[1] If there was ever a distorted version of American history, it’s Professor S [...]
In yesterday’s article, I pointed out that the record of history has been used, manipulated, and even forged to manufacture results in order to support a questionable paradigm. This is most evident in the area of the sciences. The Copernican Revolution and the Galileo affair are two of the major pillars holding up the science versus religion scam. (In reality it’s scientism versus religion.) A hel [...]
I received an email from a professor at a Bible college that got me thinking about how bogus, or revisionist, history: (1) is used to make points of fact, (2) exposes how we naively accept a point of historical assertion when referenced by an “expert” or a person of noted authority, (3) shows how immune we are to the impact that events and statements about the past have been used to fool millions [...]
Thankfully, I’ve never had to hire a lawyer except to close several real estate deals. But if I ever need a lawyer, I will do a lot of background checking. The first thing I would look for is how well he knows his subject matter. Lawyers tend to specialize. That’s what makes them good at their job. They deal with the same type of cases over and over again. They become experts in a narrow field of [...]
The modern-day image of Thomas Jefferson as a social and political liberal would be shattered after a single reading of his Bill for Proportioning Crimes and Punishments. Capital punishment is maintained for murder and treason while rescinded for all other crimes. Even so, other crimes receive some rather harsh and politically incorrect penalties. Consider these examples: “If any person commit pet [...]
