Richard Dawkins, a "Cultural Christian"

Richard Dawkins, one of the so-called “four horsemen” of the New Atheists and longtime implacable foe of Christianity, made a fascinating confession to host Rachel Johnson of LBCNews. The Oxford biologist and author of The God Delusion, expressed concern after seeing Islamic Ramadan lights on a street that once featured Easter lights.

I call myself a cultural Christian. I’m not a believer, but there’s a distinction between being a believing Christian and being a cultural Christian. … I love hymns and Christmas carols, and I sort of feel at home in the Christian ethos. … We [in the U.K.] are a “Christian country” in that sense. Dawkins then told Johnson that he’s “horrified” to see Islamic holidays and mosques taking the place of Christian feasts and cathedrals in Europe. If I had to choose between Christianity and Islam, I’d choose Christianity every single time. It seems to me to be a fundamentally decent religion in a way that I think Islam is not. A torrent of interesting and often funny reactions followed the interview. Rod Dreher pointed out that for Dawkins to claim he likes cathedrals and Christmas carols but is glad church attendance is declining is like saying he enjoys eating but is glad his country’s farms are closing. Writer Henry George remarked that “Rebuilding [civilization] means accepting the source, not the effect, of Christianity.” He then quoted historian of philosophy Remi Brague who said, “We owe European civilization to people who believed in Christ, not to people who believed in Christianity.” Another posted on X that Dawkins’ desire for a Christian society without allegiance to Christ is a “hydroponic Christian culture that doesn’t actually have its roots down in that dirty soil of actual belief in God.”   Perhaps the best response was from historian Tom Holland, also not a Christian but who has long made the case that Christianity is responsible for the freedoms, science, and belief in human rights that made the West. He has also argued that even militant atheism, enlightenment, and progressive politics are ultimately garbled echoes of a biblical story in which “a people walking in darkness see a great light.” Holland wrote:   [S]ecularism & Dawkins’ own brand of evangelical atheism are both expressions of a specifically Christian culture—as Dawkins himself, sitting on the branch he’s been sawing through and gazing nervously at the ground far below, seems to have begun to realise. They’re all right, of course. Dawkins’ comments were a tacit admission that, for decades now, he has been wrong to claim that science and secularism are the source of all that’s good in Western culture. In fact, it is the worldview centered on a God who became man and died on a cross because He “so loved the world” that is the source of hospitals, churches, esteem for women and children, human rights, and even the music, art, and culture that Dawkins cherishes. For one of the world’s most outspoken God-haters to realize this is quite remarkable. Still, there would be none of the fruits of Christianity without its roots, specifically the essential beliefs in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth; Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, our Lord; and the rest. Another Oxford professor, C.S. Lewis pointed this out in the 1940s in The Screwtape Letters. Lewis wrote, “Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of Heaven as a short cut to the nearest chemist’s shop.” Lewis knew, better than Dawkins, that God will not be used as a means to an end. He is the end. Of course, this isn’t the end of Dawkins’ journey. Given the things he’s said lately, Christians should be quicker to pray for him than to say, “I told you so.” Pray that God, in His kindness, would open the eyes of Dawkins as He did for Saul of Tarsus. Perhaps, he too, will be confronted by a Savior who asks, “why are you persecuting me?” Even more, we should pray that this atheist’s candid admissions are a wake-up call to a Western world who wants to feast at Christ’s table without bowing at His feet. The God who raised Jesus from the dead is more than capable of reviving a secular society.   Breakpoint

The Desecration of Easter

"On Good Friday, President Biden declared Easter Sunday as “Transgender Day of Visibility.” Though he must have known the outrage that would follow, his defenders were quick to note that March 31 has been recognized in this way for over a decade and just happened this year to coincide with Easter. 

"Thus, they argued, Christians should not take offense that our “devoutly Catholic” president would desecrate this day recognized as sacred by millions for over two thousand years. 

"This, in spite of the fact that two dozen other made-up days (not to mention three different months!) are marked on our calendars in recognition of the growing list of sexual identifications."

John Stonestreet

~~~~~~~~

The White House did not mention the "Transgender Day of Visibility" on any Spanish language accounts. Its all been just another display of selective pandering and political hypocrisy by the Biden Administration.

Hope for the environment

Seven years ago, the news was grim. National Geographic headlined that “Half of the Great Barrier Reef Is Dead” due to climate change. The Guardian solemnly pronounced, “Great Barrier Reef at ‘Terminal Stage.’” The Washington Post agreed: “The Great Barrier Reef Is Dying.”

By now, given the alarm in those headlines, Australia’s most famous natural treasure is surely lost, isn’t it? 

 

Well, no. According to an Australian Institute of Marine Science report from last summer, “the Reef has rebounded.” After successive years of cooler temperatures brought by La Niña, “hard corals have recovered significant ground,” the report said, reaching “record high levels in 2022 across two-thirds of the reef.”

 

Despite the many funerals held by media outlets for the world’s largest living structure, the report marveled at the Reef’s “impressive ability to recover from widespread disturbances.” Though scientists cautioned that the coral isn’t in the clear yet, it is still very much alive.

 

Life endures. Life recovers. Life is like that

Supreme Court Victory for Voters on Trump Ballot Issue

The left is presently engaged in the psychology of projection as a method of distraction.  Projection is the process of displacing one's feelings onto a different person. The left plans the end of democracy, therefore they claim Republicans are doing it.  Witness the absurd claims about January 6, 2021 and how widely the left is casting their net.   

~~~~~~~~

From Judicial Watch

The United States Supreme Court’s ruling allowing Donald Trump’s name to appear on the 2024 Colorado primary ballot made a powerful and unified statement against the brazen, unconstitutional coup by leftists against the constitutional rights of tens of millions of Americans.

And, thankfully, a Supreme Court majority seems prepared to stop any shady Biden administration, judicial and leftist congressional efforts to overturn a Trump victory based upon false allegations of insurrection.

In January, we filed an amici curiae (friend of the court) brief along with the Allied Educational Foundation (AEF) in support of former President Donald Trump in his challenge to the Colorado Supreme Court’s unprecedented decision to remove him from the state’s 2024 presidential primary ballot (Donald J. Trump v. Norma Anderson et al. (No. 23-719)).

We and AEF argued that, if the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling was allowed to stand, presidential and other federal elections would be thrown into chaos:

In a basically standardless legal discussion, charges of insurrection can be leveled by imaginative partisans on the basis of many different kinds of inflammatory political actions or speech. Consider:

1.      Vice President Kamala Harris promoted a bail fund that helped to free “those protesting on the ground in Minnesota” in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. The protests in 20 states following that murder were among the costliest in U.S. history, persisting in some cities for months, and resulting in at least 25 deaths. Protesters attacked federal property and set fire to a federal courthouse. Protests also caused President Trump to evacuate the White House to a secure underground location, as rioters assaulted police officers outside the White House gates.

2.      Discussing an anticipated abortion ruling, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told a rally on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court on March 5, 2020, “I want to tell you Gorsuch. I want to tell you Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” His comments were reproved by the Chief Justice of this Court as “dangerous.” Two years later a man was arrested for threatening behavior directed at Justice Kavanaugh.

3.      Recently a number of Republican officials have proposed retaliating for the instant lawsuit by seeking to remove President Biden from their state ballots for abetting an “invasion of eight million” at the southern border of the United States.

4.      On June 10, 2017, Sen. Bernie Sanders called President Trump “the worst and most dangerous president in the history of our country.” Four days later, one of his supporters opened fire on congressional Republicans at a baseball practice, wounding four, including Rep. Steve Scalise.

All of these facts are fodder for interested partisans seeking to disqualify opposing candidates. If the nation does go “down that path,” presidential elections in the United States will become a more ugly business. Legal maneuvers to remove President Trump from the ballots of various states, and the retaliatory maneuvers they provoke, will create a new, anti-democratic front in the partisan wars. To be blunt, “blue states” will apply Section 3 to harass “red” candidates, while “red states” will apply that provision to harass “blue” candidates.

***

The losers in this process, as here, will be the voters.

 

Record employment?

Lower unemployment rate?  The unemployment rate is a political figure that gets "adjusted" by politicians, usually to make them look better or make their rivals look worse.  

So when Mr Biden and the Democrats claim they have created "more jobs than ever" they are lying.

There is a another, more accurate, way to measure employment, published by the US Labor department.  Is called the civilian labor force participation rate.  It is a measure of how many people are seeking to be employed, or have jobs... i.e. How many people are participating in the jobs market.  According to that measure, fewer people, as a percentage of the population are employed or seeking employment.

https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm

(Blogger refused to publish this item when it was submitted March 6)