“Even the most wicked men sometimes tell the truth or reason correctly.”[1] If you are about to lose a debate, call your opponent a Nazi! Such a charge brings all subsequent argumentation to a screeching halt. Calling someone a racist is almost as effective. The reductio ad Hitlerum, as University of Chicago Professor Leo Strauss named the fallacy, takes the following form: “Adolf Hitler, or Nazis [...]
Millions of elementary school students have been taught that the first voyage of Columbus was conceived by the intrepid explorer to prove the earth was round. The story goes that the scientists and cartographers of the fifteenth century were still under the illusion that the earth was flat because that’s what the Bible taught. Religion was an impediment to scientific discovery. Columbus stood up t [...]
Most Americans, many of them Christians, have had their worldview shaped, for good or ill, by information gathered through pop culture channels. There is nothing new in this phenomenon. Like electricity that follows the path of least resistance, pop culture makes its way into our homes through easily digestible media like newspapers, comics, novels, radio, films, television, music, sports, graphic [...]
The new Superman movie comes to the big screen on June 28th as Superman Returns. Continuity has been established with the earlier movie version that saw Christopher Reeve play the title character by sticking with but enhancing the original musical score and using archival footage of Marlon Brando who played Jor-El, Superman’s father from Krypton. Superman is an American icon. He is probably one of [...]
For most clear thinking people, the story of Sodom in Genesis is a clear condemnation of homosexuality . Let’s look at the tra ditional interpretation for some background to the story. Two male visitors (actually “angels” who take on human form and act as God’s “messengers” of judgment and redemption: Gen. 18:22; 19:1) “came to Sodom in the evening as Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom.” Lot inv [...]
In an interview on CNN, Katharine Jefferts Schori, the new bishop of the Episcopal Church USA, had this to say when asked if she believed homosexuality is a sin. “I don’t believe so. I believe that God creates us with different gifts. Each one of us comes into this world with a different collection of things that challenge us and things that give us joy and allow us to bless the world around us,” [...]
Today’s entertainment, political, media, and religionist propagandists have, in the words of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “defined deviancy down” so that what was morally shocking twenty years ago is acceptable, or at least tolerated, behavior today. Robert Bork, no stranger to moral degradation, having been “Borked” on national television and entered the dictionary as a verb, explains the phenomenon: [...]
Archimedes (287–212 B.C.), the Greek mathematician and physicist who yelled “Eureka!” as he ran naked from his bathtub at the discovery of the principle of displacement (Archimedes’ Principle), once boasted that given the proper lever, and given a place to stand, he could “move the earth.” But upon what would Archimedes stand to accomplish such a feat? Certainly not on the earth itself. Archimedes [...]
One way to keep Christians out of the public arena, especially politics, is to claim that there is a separation between Church and State. The argument is based on the assumption that in biblical times Church and State were merged, and in modern times the First Amendment separates the two institutions. Supposedly, under biblical law, priests ruled over elders, judges, and kings. If this is the case [...]
Ann Coulter begins her book Godless: The Church of Liberalism with this opening salvo: “Liberals love to boast that they are not ‘religious,’ which is what one would expect to hear from the state-sanctioned religion. Of course liberalism is a religion. It has its own cosmology, its own miracles, its own beliefs in the supernatural, its own churches, its own priests, its own saints, its own total w [...]
David Brog has written Standing with Israel: Why Christians Support the Jewish State. The ten reviews I read on Amazon were quite favorable, and it is being advertised on WorldNetDaily. The fact that the Foreword was written by John Hagee, author of Jerusalem Countdown, From Daniel to Doomsday, Beginning of the End, and Final Dawn over Jerusalem, is a clear indication that the book’s thesis fits w [...]
Today’s beastly date—6–6–6—really isn’t. Our calendar is based on when Jesus was born. Most scholars believe our dating system is off by approximately five years because of certain miscalculations in determining the precise year Jesus was born. This means that the real June 6, 2006 happened about five years ago. Of course, there was a bigger 666 date: June 6, 666. Or was it really June 6, 661? All [...]
In my debate with Thomas Ice on May 26, 2006, on whether the Great Tribulation is past or future, I asked Ice to offer in evidence a single verse from Revelation that says there will be a seven-year tribulation period. Although there are lots of sevens in Revelation (the number appears more than fifty times), and lots of seven things, everything from seven churches (1:4), spirits (3:1), candlestic [...]
Sgt. Peter Damon, 33, a U.S. war veteran who lost both arms in Iraq, is suing Oscar-winning director Michael Moore for $85 million, saying television clips were used without his permission in the anti-war documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11” and gave a false impression that he opposed the war. I wish him well in his suit. Damon reminds me of Harold Russell’s character in the 1946 movie The Best Years of [...]
Nearly every social commentator appeals to the conservative Christian community to be tolerant of other religious traditions. After all, we live in a religiously pluralistic society. The assumption is that religion is a benign choice, little different from picking one car model over another. Therefore all religious traditions should be tolerated and accepted as valid expressions of faith. Of cours [...]
Comparing homosexuality with race and gender has become a culture-wide strategy of the homosexual lobby. Not even children are spared these tactics. Consider how homosexual propaganda is set forth in the world of comic books and the way the press handles the topic. In the March 1992 issue of Marvel’s Alpha Flight comic book series, Northstar, a former (fictional) Canadian Olympic athlete, decides [...]
Many who advocate keeping drugs illegal maintain that poverty and environmental conditions (e.g., neighborhood, quality of schools, intact family, etc.) often “force” people to make bad decisions. One comes away with the impression that only the poor and uneducated take drugs. But we know that this is not the case. People with fine educations and lots of money indulge in drug taking. “Ecstasy” is [...]
Now that The Da Vinci Code has had its opening weekend and the Bible is still intact, God is sovereign, and Jesus is Lord and Savior, it’s time to get back to business. The Da Vinci Code is a symptom of a greater problem. Worldviews are seen as vehicles for cultural transformation. Many in the entertainment field, for example, believe that they are the nation’s conscience and the only true guiding [...]
The Da Vinci Code has sold tens of millions of copies. It’s now in paperback and the movie hits the big screen tomorrow. Books about the book have been published as well as books against the book’s quirky theological and historical perspectives. Those ignorant of the Bible and history may be influenced by the supposed factual nature of the storyline. We shouldn’t be surprised at this since C [...]
If there is no final authority, then there can be no law that has legitimacy. “If there is no absolute moral standard,” Francis A. Schaeffer wrote, “then one cannot say in a final sense that anything is right or wrong. By absolute we mean that which applies [to all people], that which provides a final or ultimate standard. There must be an absolute if there are to be morals, and there must be an a [...]
