Reflections From a Murky Pond

In America Baptists – especially Southern Baptists with their evangelical traditions – have gotten a bad name among many religions and even other sects of Christianity. While much of this dislike is well-deserved, the Baptists have had amongst their number some great and wise theologians and philosophers. Below are some words of wisdom from one of them:

There is a certain view of God and nature and man and the world in the background of our faith. But Christianity is a historical religion, and a religion of experience. It is grounded in facts. The Christian worldview rests upon these facts.

From the fact that other religions, including Judaism, have in them the idea of sacrifice and propitiation, it is concluded by some that it must be a false idea. Fundamentally this assumes that everything in the non-Christian religions must be wholly false. Is it not far more likely that a universal religious idea has in it an element of truth than that its universality is a mark of its falsity? Christianity purified and fulfilled all religious ideas of human beings, emptied them of their transient and superficial meanings, and revealed their true inward meaning. The atonement of Christ in a very special manner does this. In it God appears in Christ, not as a distant, implacable and angry being, requiring a satisfaction for sin which humans cannot supply. Jesus himself, as holy and loving and yearning to save humanity, provides the satisfaction.

— E.Y. Mullins
4th President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Obviously as a Pagan I have a theological difference of opinion with Rev. Dr. E.Y. Mullins’ assertion that “Christianity purified and fulfilled all religious ideas of human beings, emptied them of their transient and superficial meanings, and revealed their true inward meaning,” but his wisdom in knowing and saying aloud that universally held religious and moral concepts are more likely to be true than false and that things outside of the Christian faith are not inherently wrong just for being outside the Christian faith is profound.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, is – perhaps in a fit of decompensation –  stridently and shamelessly demanding that a significant fraction of the proposed Stimulus Package be given over to abortion clinics run by population control organizations.

Don’t Let Them Breed

Rep. Pelosi says that it is necessary to subsidize these organizations with US tax dollars because  the US needs to rebuild its economy by limiting the population of those poor people who are a burden on the state.

There’s a word that defines this sort of social engineering, a word laden a great deal of evil  – eugenics.

Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children’s health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those – one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.

— Rep. Nancy Pelosi
This Week with George Stephanopoulos

“Family Planning” covers a bit more than just the contraception that Pelosi mentions though. It also covers abortion. And when you combine the two with subsidies based on social engineering principles, you are endorsing eugenics in America. Of course eugenics has a fairly long history America, and it has always been entangled with population control and family planning groups. In fact most of the modern family planning groups and abortion clinics derived from the American Eugenic Movement.

These groups are, of course, the ones that Pelosi is beholden to and the ones she demands that vast sums of US tax dollars be given to. This is unsurprising since Rep. Pelosi’s former Deputy Chief of Staff was none other than Cecile Richards, the current President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.

Planned Parenthood evolved out of the American Eugenics Movement as it was adhered to by its founder, Margaret Sanger. Both Sanger and her organization, Planned Parenthood, focus on Negative Eugenics. Negative eugenics is the attempt to improve society by lowering the fertility among the genetically disadvantaged. Methods for this include abortions, sterilization, and other methods of family planning.

So far, so good – or at least not entirely bad or evil. Encouraging or making it easier for people with severe genetic conditions not to pass those damaging traits to the next generation has a certain logic and benefit. Of course this wasn’t the sole focus of Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood and similar organizations, and apparently Rep. Pelosi. The focus is, and has always been, on reducing the number of “undesirables” in American society.

In Sanger’s own words:

Organized charity itself is the symptom of a malignant social disease. Those vast, complex, interrelated organizations aiming to control and to diminish the spread of misery and destitution and all the menacing evils that spring out of this sinisterly fertile soil, are the surest sign that our civilization has bred, is breeding and perpetuating constantly increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents and dependents.

~*~

It [charity] encourages the healthier and more normal sections of the world to shoulder the burden of unthinking and indiscriminate fecundity of others; which brings with it, as I think the reader must agree, a dead weight of human waste. Instead of decreasing and aiming to eliminate the stocks that are most detrimental to the future of the race and the world, it tends to render them to a menacing degree dominant.

~*~

The most serious charge that can be brought against modern “benevolence” is that it encourages the perpetuation of defectives, delinquents and dependents. These are the most dangerous elements in the world community, the most devastating curse on human progress and expression.

— Margaret Sanger,
The Pivot of Civilization

Reading Sanger’s writings and listening to Pelosi’s mouthings is enough to raise the hackles of any reasonable and right-thinking American, even those who follow the beliefs of the Pro-Choice / Pro-Abortion side of American reproductive politics.

Perhaps it’s past time to apply something akin to negative eugenics to the US House of Representatives. 😉

Euthyphro is one of the Greek philosopher Plato’s early dialogues, dated to around or soon after 399 BCE. In it the Greek philosopher Socrates and Euthyphro, a man known for being a theologian, attempt to arrive at an acceptable definition of piety.

One of the key points in the Euthyphro dialog is called the Euthyphro Dilemma:

Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?

For the followers of the Abrahamic Religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) this normally translates into – on the occasions when it is debated by the theologians – the question of whether something is commanded by their God because it is moral, or is it moral because it is commanded by their God.

Amongst polytheists – with the rare exception of myself – the question rarely arises do to our multiplicity of deities with possibly conflicting directives and our lack of requirement for- or belief in their omniscience or infallibility.

I can’t speak to whether or not the Sikhs have the Euthyphro Dilemma often or not. They’re monotheists, but their view of their God is vastly different from most other faiths.

In any case though, it’s an interesting debate. Is the God(s) the creator or legislator of morality, or is the God(s) the enforcer of a morality that originate from separately Divine will?

Terry “Terrible” Tate aka Lester Speight is a washed-up ex-NFL linebacker who made some commercials for Reebok based on his violent character. The commercials did very poorly on-air, but were popular internet downloads from the Reebok website.

Terry Tate is back in the limelight again. He’s made not one but two new videos wherein he assaults Gov. Sarah Palin while she is talking to Katie Couric.

The Left like this filth:

Terry Tate: Reading Is Fundemental

…And this filth:

Terry Tate: From Russia With Love

This racist, misogynist filth was published on Oct 16th, 2008. I waited until today – the 23rd – to post about it because I wanted to first see what the reactions to the videos would be. Those reactions turned out to be quite disheartening – but on hindsight, not in the least bit unexpected.

The Left thinks it’s hilariously funny to watch a giant Black man assault and smash a White woman to the ground and then berate her as she lays there wounded. In their twisted minds Black-on-White interracial violence is funny. To them it’s only racist when the subject is White-on-Black violence. Apparently they also think that any and all assaults on women are funny. The Left’s treatment of both Sen. Hillary Clinton and Gov. Sarah Palin make the assertion very clear and apparent.

Neither CBS nor Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign have denounced Terry Tate’s vileness. Both Obama and his media surrogates have failed to report on it at all. I sincerely doubt the situation would be the same if it was a series of videos showing Sen. Obama being assaulted by a large White man.

The elections are only a few days away. Please think about this. When you cast your vote for President, you are not just electing a President; you are voting in agreement with that candidate’s supporters. Are the people who think these videos are funny the ones you want to empower?

What is the point of the United States having laws and codified punishments for transgressions of the laws if the courts refuse to enforce them?

What is most likely to soon happen is beyond belief and should be beyond America’s countenance.

SURRY, Va (AP):

Former NFL quarterback Michael Vick plans to plead guilty to state dogfighting charges, a step that could allow him to qualify for an early release from federal prison and into a halfway house, court papers show.

In a motion filed Oct. 15 in Surry County Circuit Court, Vick’s attorneys asked to have him enter his plea by video teleconference. A hearing on the motion is scheduled for Oct. 30, Surry County Circuit Court administrator Sally Neblett said Tuesday.

The court papers note that allowing Vick to appear on two-way video would save the government the considerable expense of transporting him from prison in Leavenworth, Kan., to Surry County. His guilty plea would also allow him to pursue a halfway house program.

Under federal rules, Vick is ineligible to be released to a Residential Re-entry Center in the federal system until any pending charges against him are resolved.

In a statement, Vick attorneys Billy Martin and Lawrence Woodward said their client “is committed to taking responsibility for his actions. He is hopeful that, through this motion, the trial court will allow him to finally resolve these matters and put the charges behind him so that he can begin to focus on his future and to prepare to be reunited with his family.”

The plea deal, if approved, also would satisfy the county’s need to hold him accountable for the grisly crimes he bankrolled and participated in at a rural house he owned there.

“I’m not trying to make him suffer,” Commonwealth’s Attorney Gerald Poindexter said in a telephone interview. “I’m just trying to make him account for what he’s done.”

Vick pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy charges tied to the dogfighting operation last summer and is serving a 23-month term. Three convicted co-defendants also face local charges. The U.S. Bureau of Prisons lists Vick’s projected release date as July 20, 2009.

Vick will have three years of federal probation upon his release from prison, and the deal offered by Poindexter would tack on an unspecified jail sentence, which would be suspended, and an additional year of probation in the county, he said.

Poindexter said he’s not sure how quickly the judge would rule on the motion.

If permitted by a judge, Vick’s video participation in the plea hearing would not be the first time he has participated electronically. Prison officials in Kansas have allowed the former Atlanta Falcons star to listen via telephone line to each of his several bankruptcy hearings in recent months.

— Hank Kurz Jr.
Associated Press sports writer, Richmond, VA.

How else can this obscenity be described other than as a complete betrayal of justice? Has America reached the point of depravity that vile, subhuman ghetto thugs like Sick Vick are to be coddled because they can play a sport? Does anyone actually think something like Sick Vick can be rehabilitated?

Some Americans felt that Sick Vick should have been executed for his gross and heinous crimes. Instead it looks like Vick will get some of the remainder of his 23-month federal sentence commuted to a halfway house program, and will not spend one lone day in a Virginia prison for his dogfighting crimes.

A little reminder of Michael “Sick” Vick’s crimes:

If Attorney Gerald Poindexter perpetrates this obscenity and allows this subhuman thug to walk free, I hope that some right thinking Americans who remember Justice and realize the Law no longer supports it find Sick Vick one fine day or night and do the right thing.