Tag Archive for: Terrell Clemmons

A Clarifying Journey of Intervention, Detox & Recovery

A Clarifying Journey of Intervention, Detox & Recovery

By Terrell Clemmons

Oh, joy, somebody selling something, I thought when my doorbell rang. It was getting dark, so I switched on the porch light before stepping out to a tall, spunky, clipboard-clutching brunette waiting ever so patiently for the homeowner to come to the door. Katie represented an organization that protected consumers from unreasonable utility charges, and she was collecting signatures on two bills pending in our state Senate. An admitted idealist, she was concerned about the “little old lady” who might lose her home if her power bills went up. She was also upset about corporate greed and believed that there was a need for more regulation. She became an activist because she cared about these matters.

I asked her if she had considered whether rising taxes might pose a threat to that little old lady. She answered honestly that she hadn’t. I wondered aloud about the possibility of regulator–regulatee collusion. She hadn’t thought about that either, but she did like the word “collusion.” We talked for something like 20 minutes.

I didn’t sign her petition or donate to the cause. But I did accept her literature and contact information. A quick visit to her organization’s website the next day turned up a job posting for a “Community Organizer Position” with the job description of educating, organizing, and empowering citizens in an exciting, progressive work environment. Applicants could apply for full-time work at $325+/week or part-time at $8/hour with opportunities for bonuses. Benefits included paid holidays, paid vacations, health insurance, and college credit.

I liked Katie. She was bright, confident, and to all appearances genuinely well-meaning. But I couldn’t help but wonder: Was she really an idealistic servant aiding the oppressed? Or was she the hired tool of a duplicitous political organization? She seemed to believe the former. I suspected the latter.

The Paradox of Progressivism

Katie is emblematic of many in her generation. She believes she’s doing good, but from all I could gather, she’s investing her precious young adult years working on the wrong side of progress. In his excellent primer, The KinderGarden of Eden: How the Modern Liberal Thinks, Evan Sayet analyzes the mentality driving the progressive agenda with surgical precision. There are “two kinds of Modern Liberals,” he writes, “the True Believer and his Mindless Foot Soldier.” There’s a difference between them, but, as he continues, “there is absolutely no difference between the two when it comes to the policies they support.” Sayet predicts that the Modern Liberal will at every turn side with the evil over the good, the wrong over the right, the lesser over, the better, the ugly over the beautiful, the vulgar over the refined, and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success. A quick visit to Katie’s Facebook page showed her to be an avid supporter of Planned Parenthood, along with Occupy Wall Street and a few other groups that fit this prediction to a tee, including one devoted solely to mocking Evangelical Christians.

I didn’t like applying Sayet’s terminology to Katie. To all appearances, she’s anything but mindless. But sadly, she fits the characteristics of the Mindless Foot Soldier. Even more sad, she’s like a lot of people I know, young and old, blithely carrying out, according to Sayet’s model, “the progressive agenda of destroying all that is good, right, and successful [about] Western Civilization.” And all in the name of good intentions. If it seems convoluted, that’s because it is. But what can be done?

Coming Alongside

Dr. Mike Adams, of the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, has produced an excellent example of how to go about engaging someone like Katie. Though more often known for biting sarcasm and barbed wit, with Letters to a Young Progressive: How to Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things You Don’t Understand, the professor provocateur takes on a markedly softer tone. At the center of the tale is Zach, a composite of countless bright students he’s known who enroll in universities but while there “become increasingly enraged at the world and disgusted with other people. This is unfortunate,” he observes, “because they are getting angry over things that aren’t even true.”

When Zach made a comment in class comparing TV personality Glenn Beck to serial murderer Charles Manson, Dr. Adams could have set the record straight right there on the spot. But he didn’t do that. Instead, he came alongside his student, so to speak, by means of a personal letter. “I haven’t written to scold you,” he starts off. “I don’t have the moral authority to do so. You see, I used to be like you. Let me explain.” Then, after telling Zach something of his personal backstory as a dysfunctional, angry pseudo-intellectual himself, he gets to the point.

Zach, you are so bright and have so much potential that I think it’s a shame you are so angry at such a young age. I also think it’s a shame because I know that so much of your anger stems from misinformation… If you’re interested, I’d be happy to write to you periodically over the summer to share some of what I learned on my journey from being a progressive atheist to becoming a conservative Christian.

Intellectual Detox

Then, over the course of 34 more letters brimming with factual data, watertight logic, common sense, and a generous sprinkling of stories from his own life, the teacher deconstructs for his protégé a plethora of progressive myths. He shows how the Social Security program disproportionately transfers income from the average black working man to his white counterpart, how race-based affirmative action hinders, rather than boosts, black upward mobility, and how campus speech codes, rather than helping the minorities they were enacted to “protect,” simply reinforce stereotypes of them as hypersensitive and emotionally volatile weaklings.

Although he foregoes the barbs, Adams’s wit is alive and well. In a letter called “Government Subsidies and Spousal Abuse,” he picks up on a common experience with a cell phone company. During his fifth visit to the store after four rate changes and four broken promises,

I lost my temper and let loose with something like the following: “You’re not really an Internet provider… You’re more like an abusive spouse. You treat me disrespectfully until I threaten to leave you, and then you promise to make things better. But they only get better for a while because you don’t change. You just lie to me to get me back because you can’t live without me.”

The story is comical because it’s so relatable, but “there is a serious point to be made here,” he continues.

When the government gets involved in trying to solve a problem, it invariably makes things worse. Your cell phone provider—my previous Internet provider—is subsidized by the federal government. For that one reason, and that one reason alone, you are unlikely to ever get good service from them. Because the federal government has built a safety net beneath it, it is not afraid of failing. That is why its employees behave so carelessly towards you… It’s basic human psychology.

Diagnosis: Statolatry

Much of what he relates to Zach is basic, but sadly, decades of progressive education have produced a preponderance of misguided Zachs and Katies, to whom, because they are unschooled in such basics, the government is, and always will be, all-benevolent. This is consistent with the progressive movement which, from the early years of the 20th century, has advanced on the premise that the government can and should solve every social and economic ill—that whatever the need of the day happens to be, the forces of an all-encompassing government should be retooled to meet it. In 1931 Fascist Italy, Pope Pius XI called this tendency “statolatry,” which literally means “worship of the state.” The idea is to look upon the state, rather than God, as the supreme benefactor.

Adams doesn’t use the same term, but he identifies this same inclination in academia. “In the so-called social sciences,” he tells Zach, “everything is a show. It is always a three-act play directed by progressive thinking. In the first act, man is born innocent. In the second act, man is corrupted by ‘society.’ In the third act, the progressive saves him.”

What has happened, in a century-long sleight of hand lost on most of us, is that the proper functions of politics and religion have been reversed. So today, having marginalized traditional religion, we find ourselves trying to achieve religious ends through political means. Witness Katie, for example, loving her (anonymous little old lady) neighbor via (paid) political activism, as if community organizing at $8/hour really qualifies as loving your neighbor.

But the thirsts of our souls will never be slaked by drinking from the fount of the fed. The state is ill-suited to fill the role of benefactor, and it is wholly incapable of ever being anyone’s savior. It’s no wonder so many activists are angry. They’re serving a false god, and false gods inevitably become cruel masters.

Recovery & Commission

Adams does a masterly job of unraveling the whole progressive ruse for Zach. Certainly, he educates Zach, causing him to reconsider his political views. Along the way, he also supplies him with bulletproof responses to some of the boilerplate invective progressive ideologues are sure to hurl at a defector. But more important, Adams draws the connection between one’s political affiliations and his underlying personal stance toward God, causing Zach to reconsider his commitment to his Maker. And gently, he points Zach back to the teachings of his upbringing.

What you learned in your father’s house might not be as enticing as some of the ideas you encounter in college. Indeed, the truth can sometimes seem like a rigid set of punitive commandments, but in reality, it is nothing less than a gift from God. It is His way of telling you what you really desire so that you can live a life that is worth living.

Helping Zach live a life worth living is the goal. “What I am asking you to do at this point is to take a definite stand on the side of the good, right, and true and against the ugliness that’s so apparent in some of the politics on our campus.” You’re ready for it, Adams seems to say, as Zach prepares to graduate. He has prepared his son in the faith for the fight worth having. I think I sense a gleam in his eye when he tells Zach, “I want you to become a lightning rod for the truth.”

As for me, I’ve learned a thing or two from reading over Dr. Adams’s shoulder. So if you’ll excuse me, I have a letter to write.

 

Terrell Clemmons is a freelance writer and blogger on apologetics and matters of faith.

This article was originally published at salvomag.com: http://bit.ly/2XJcvlG

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Cashed Out Feminism

Cashed Out: Feminism

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By Terrell Clemmons

The War Against Sexual Order Has Young Men in Full Retreat

Beware of the sperm-jacker, warns Dean Cardell on the men’s website AskMen.com. She’s “all about getting pregnant and not about being into you.” He identifies five types: (1) the Lesbian, who may at least do you the courtesy of asking for your contribution directly (the others go after it by stealth); (2) the Girl Running Out of Time and (3) the Trapster, both of whom are looking for a “just-add-water” family; (4) Miss Lonely, who needs someone to cling to; and (5) the angry Miss Independent, who nevertheless wants a little one to fill a void. All sperm-jackers have one thing in common: they need something they can only get from a man. Most any man will do.

Cardell’s post has all the class of a Bill Maher rerun, but it does expose a very serious threat to men, as psychologist and men’s advocate Helen Smith, Ph.D., documents in Men on Strike. Take the following cases of nonconsensual insemination: Nathaniel from California, age 15, had sex with 34-year-old Ricci, which, due to his age, was legally considered non-consensual. Emile from Louisiana was visiting his parents in the hospital when a nurse offered him oral sex if he wore a condom, which she conveniently offered to dispose of for him afterward. S. F. from Alabama passed out drunk at the home of a female friend and awoke undressed the following morning. In all three cases, including the one involving the minor, a woman got sperm and, nine months later, a child, and the man got ordered by a court of law to pay support for eighteen years.

Less devious, but similarly amiss, are those cases in which a man, having been betrayed by his wife or girlfriend, was nevertheless held financially responsible for a child genetically proven to be another man’s offspring. While not as sensational as sperm-jacking, it is another form of paternity extortion.

The Assault on Men

Paternity fraud is only one aspect of the larger, decades-long, feminist-incited assault on men to which Smith is attempting to draw public attention. While the feminist movement may originally have been about equal respect for both sexes, what it has morphed into, she argues, is a female privilege. From rape laws that empower women but not the men they may falsely accuse, to divorce laws tilted in favor of the wife, to the feminization of the U.S. education system, men have become the sex under the gun, while women enjoy the status of a protected class.

But unlike their mothers or grandmothers, men today are not taking to the streets burning their undergarments and shrieking demands (thank God). They’re doing just the opposite, which is far worse. They’re going on strike. The strike zones are manifold:

Higher Education. In addition to the enrollment imbalance, which is approaching a 60/40 ratio of women to men, college has become, in the words of one professor, “a hostile working environment [in which] males increasingly feel emasculated.” Smith quotes a student named John, who had this to say about his college experience: “I had already been cautious around women, having grown up with Tawana Brawley in my backyard and daily stories of sexual harassment; I played it safe and passive every time. But it doesn’t matter. The only way not to lose is to not play. So I’m out.”

Work, including community involvement. With higher female graduation rates and salaries, men today are falling behind their fathers economically and professionally. Consequently, their efforts to prove themselves worthy mates through hard work and higher earnings don’t win female attention the way they used to. Discouraged, too many retreat to a man cave, and inertia sets in from there.

Marriage. Marriage rates are down, and honest men opting out will tell you why. Smith cites a Rutgers University study of single heterosexual men which turned up the top reasons they hadn’t married. They can get sex and the companionship of cohabitation without marriage more easily than in times past, and they don’t want to open themselves up to the risk of divorce and financial loss. It really isn’t that complicated a decision. In fact, it’s often not an actual decision at all. It just happens.

Reasonable Reactions

But Smith cautions against any superficial conclusions that attribute all this to male immaturity, laziness, or plain sexual economics. While those things may figure in, the man-child label simply doesn’t stick to the men she actually hears from. On the contrary, she says men are “acting rationally in response to the lack of incentives today’s society offers them to be responsible fathers, husbands, and providers.” It isn’t an organized, or even a declared strike. It’s more of a reluctant retreat. Why should they do otherwise? Chris, a thirty-something single man, captured it: “There is nothing in it for me, no incentive and no reason.”

Ironically, feminist demands have had the effect of shrinking the pool of appealing marriage prospects. And scheming women have descended to the grossly abusive and socially malignant shenanigans of sperm-jacking and paternity seizure. Clearly, something has gone terribly wrong.

The Real Conflict

Smith offers men and their supporters two strategies for fighting back (her words). One is to “go, Galt,” a metaphor—taken from the 1957 Ayn Rand classic Atlas Shrugged—for withdrawing one’s labor from the marketplace to keep from being exploited. This is what some men are doing, as the trends indicate. The other strategy amounts to a counteroffensive deploying the same power plays the feminists have used: forming alliances and support groups, lobbying for legislative change, and, short of that, mocking or intimidating opponents.

Smith has written a very important book, and certainly, there’s a place for some of her suggestions. But there’s a shortcoming in both of her strategies in that they are founded on the premise that the main “war” is the one between the sexes. Going Galt is effectively capitulating, which is neither noble nor masculine while deploying counterstrikes is fighting women directly, which is worse. But the combatants in this “war” aren’t so much primary warriors as they are casualties. They—and the children caught in the fray—are collateral damage in a larger conflict: the war on basic sexual order.

Consulting the Past

There is a better way to win. In his article about sperm-jackers, Cardell advises, “Be prepared to draw the line regarding your involvement and your connection to her crazy a$$.” He’s warning men of the potential consequences of (pardon me) wanton ejaculation and advising them to set boundaries and take control of themselves for their own benefit. He doesn’t even mention the potential effects for her or for their potential offspring, which are incalculably profound. Before you get involved, he says, draw the lines. Aside from the crass wording, it’s decent advice.

Sometimes, as former police officer and author J. Warner Wallace has noted, the road to the future we want passes through the past we’ve forgotten. Wallace was writing about the importance of fathers with respect to crime prevention, but the same idea applies to the context in which a man becomes a father.

Once upon a time, there was a custom for drawing the lines in this area of life. Often marked by a special ceremony, it involved promises—promises so solemn they were made before God and witnesses. When kept, they assured the woman of a father for her children and gave the man a companion and progeny to work for and invest in. The result created the best guard against exploitation, both for them and for their offspring. They could cooperate rather than compete, exalt rather than exploit. For battle-weary men and women, there’s no better time than the present to consult the wisdom of the past.

 

Terrell Clemmons is a freelance writer and blogger on apologetics and matters of faith.

This article was originally published at salvomag.com: http://bit.ly/2OgDnpY

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Civilization & Its Malcontents

Civilization & Its Malcontents

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By Terrell Clemmons

How Soviet Disinformation Infected the West & What the West Can Do About It

On Tuesday, July 25, 1978, Romanian-born Ion Mihai Pacepa (‘e-YOHN MEE-hai pa-CHEP-a’) crossed the small outer lobby of the United States Embassy in Bonn, West Germany, and made his way toward the Marine officer standing guard, arms across his chest, at the door to the entrance. The son of a devout Christian mother, the intelligence veteran had sworn to himself upon being drafted into the Securitate (Romanian secret police) that he would never take part in a political killing. For 27 years he had lived with the running nightmare that, at some point, assassination orders would land on his plate. The previous Saturday, the dreaded moment had arrived.

Now was the time to break with the evil system that had controlled his entire adult life. In spite of his resolve, though, the physical steps were proving harder than the mental ones. Keeping his voice as low as possible, he spoke directly to the Marine. “I am a Soviet bloc two-star intelligence general, and I want to defect to the United States.”

Three days later, in the pre-dawn darkness of Friday, July 28, General Pacepa boarded a military plane at U.S. Rhein-Main Air Base, bound for Washington, D.C. Aside from the clothes he was wearing, his worldly possessions consisted of the paperwork confirming President Jimmy Carter’s approval of his request for political asylum, his passport, some personal notes, and a camera containing a few snapshots of his daughter. That night, after a very long first day in his newly adopted homeland, he fell to his knees and prayed aloud for the first time in more than 25 years. Exactly three months shy of his fiftieth birthday, he was a free man.

Disinformation: Deception as Strategic Policy

And an exceedingly grateful one. Coming to America to stay had been a lifelong dream of his. His hands may have been empty, but his head was crammed full of information of monumental importance to the West, and he was eager to share it. Hanging in his abandoned office back in Bucharest, there was a banner proclaiming, “CAPITALIST ESPIONAGE REPORTS HISTORY. WE MAKE IT.” To understand what the Soviets meant by that little epigram, one must understand the Russian “science” of dezinformatsiya, or disinformation—a foreign concept to well-meaning, free-world Westerners.

Lest we think that global warfare ended with World War II or that Western political liberty prevailed for good with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, General Pacepa would advise us to think again. The Soviet cancer of disinformation has metastasized across the globe, and recognizing and countering it is literally a matter of life and death, as the octogenarian—now an American citizen—shows in his latest book, Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism (WND Books, 2013), co-authored with law professor Ronald J. Rychlak.

Disinformation is not synonymous with misinformation. If Russian sources had fabricated a story and published it through their own outlets, that would be misinformation, and Westerners would rightly have read it through a skeptical filter. If, however, the same information appeared in Western media and was attributed to Western sources, that would be disinformation. In both cases, it reduces to flat-out lying, but in the latter case, the credibility of the lie—and therefore its power—is substantially greater.

Codified in highly classified training manuals, disinformation was, for the Soviet-bloc countries, a carefully planned and strategically executed “science.” By 1950, Joseph Stalin, Supreme Dictator of the USSR and de facto head of roughly a third of the world’s population, faced a strong post-war alliance between the U.S. and Western Europe. He knew he didn’t have the military or economic strength to break that bond, but he was also a bad loser, unable to coexist contentedly with the free West. So he reverted to the older, low-tech weaponry of lies and emotional manipulation.

He appointed Andrey Vishinsky as Minister of Foreign Affairs and charged him with turning European sentiments against America. (Vishinsky would accomplish this by accusing America of harboring Zionism—more on that in a moment.) Then he dispatched Aleksandr Panyushkin to Washington, D.C., as Soviet Ambassador to the U.S. Panyushkin’s main task was to foster the creation of peace movements in America (because, if you can seduce your enemy into laying down his arms, he and everything behind him will all be yours). The goals were to divide the West and to vilify and weaken America, the strongest of the Western nations.

This was the strategy with which the Cold War was prosecuted from Moscow. Stalin called it World War III. It was a war of ideas—an intelligence war in which more people worked in disinformation than in the Soviet army and defense industry combined.

But unlike Western intelligence services, Soviet-bloc espionage was not designed to obtain factual information or analyze the enemy. The purpose of foreign intelligence for the Soviets was to spread information—false information, usually aimed at accomplishing one of three objectives: (1) to polish a Communist leader’s image, (2) to hide Communist crimes, or (3) to frame and slander an enemy—usually America, the Church, or later, Israel. Very often, disinformation involved rewriting history, retrofitting what has beento make it accord with whatever best furthered the objectives of the current regime. Thus, there were “few things more difficult for Russian and Western historians,” Pacepa and Rychlak note wryly, “than to predict Russia’s past.”

Only in a world of deceit is the past unpredictable. But this is what was meant by the pithy assertion, WE MAKE HISTORY.

Truth as Counter-Strategy

Disinformation amounted to deception as national policy. Of course, this was never publicly announced by the Kremlin, and by and large, Western leaders were oblivious to the sheer cunning of it. President Truman did know, however, that Stalin intended to expand territorial control. Truman also believed that the “force of imperialistic communism” could only be stopped “through a concerted religious effort,” one that would place the superiority and strength of “truth and freedom” before the peoples of the world. In this way, Truman reasoned, Soviet falsehoods would be overcome by the “plain, simple, unvarnished truth.”

And so he launched his “Campaign of Truth” in 1950, which he rightly saw as “a struggle, above all else, for the minds of men.” He asked Pope Pius XII, who had proven himself a strong moral ally in the face of Nazism, for help, and a cooperative, free-world counteroffensive began, which gave birth to the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and Radio Liberation (later, Radio Liberty). The Vatican acquired a large tract of land north of Rome for a new broadcasting center, and in 1957 it went into operation. Soon after that, Vatican Radio, which had helped the resistance oppose the Nazis during World War II, became another high-powered voice of truth, countering the lies of Communism in 47 languages.

“Blow Up That Whole W-w-wasps N-n-nest”

Quantifying the full return on this kind of a political-global investment is humanly impossible, but the ramifications with respect to Pacepa alone would prove profound, as the broadcasting center would play a role in his defection. The target of the long-dreaded assassination order that prompted him to defect in 1978 was Noel Bernard, the director of Radio Free Europe’s Romanian program. “I w-w-want Noel k-k-killed,” Romanian “President” Nicolae Ceausescu had whispered in his ear on July 22, 1978. “And a few days later,” he had continued, “blow up that whole w-w-wasps n-n-nest.” The “wasp’s nest” was the Munich headquarters of Radio Free Europe, from which Bernard had been blackening Ceausescu’s carefully crafted image. So Bernard had to go, “Death to truth-tellers” being the primal instinct of a dictator.

But out of conscience, as we have seen, Pacepa sought asylum in the U.S. rather than complying with the order. Indeed, far wider consequences were yet to unfold. In 1987, with the encouragement of his American patriot wife Mary Lou, and after overcoming obstacles to publication erected by the Carter administration, Pacepa published his first book, Red Horizons: The True Story of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu’s Crimes, Lifestyle and Corruption. (At the time, America and the West were fawning over Ceausescu—the strategic result of a successful disinformation campaign out of Moscow.) In 1988, Red Horizonswas serialized over Radio Free Europe, and the following year, both Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu were executed by the Romanian people after a trial in which the charges had come nearly word-for-word out of Red Horizons.

At the risk of sounding like an infomercial, (But wait!) there’s more. During this time also, two congressmen handed a copy of Red Horizons to President Reagan, to whom it became “my bible for dealing with dictators.” By 1990, the Berlin Wall had come down, and the entire Soviet edifice would soon follow.

The Empire Strikes Back

Of course, this was a cataclysmic collapse with far-reaching implications, prompting justifiable celebrations worldwide. But the evil designs on the West had gone to seed, and whole KGB-launched or KGB-commandeered organizations based on falsehood had put down roots and taken on pernicious lives of their own.

The most virulent strain to emerge thus far has come out of the Middle East. On April 16, 2004, Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris appeared on Palestinian TV and, pounding his fist in the air, cried out, “It is World Zionism that manipulates U.S. decision-making by remote control.” How did he know this? This “World Zionism” had been exposed, he said, by Roger Garoudy, a former French Communist convert to Islam, who had learned of it from reading The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

This, too, is the fruit of a disinformation campaign—Operation “SIG,” which involved disseminating into the Islamic world hundreds of thousands of Arabic translations of the Protocols—a known Russian forgery saying that the Jews planned to take over the world. (Protocols had also, incidentally, been the basis for much of Hitler’s Mein Kampf.) Pacepa was personally involved in distributing it, along with “documentary” material “proving” the U.S. to be the Jews’ Zionist accomplice. Lest this sound too far-fetched to be believed by peaceable Westerners, Pacepa scrupulously details the machinations and chain reactions from Moscow to a plethora of leftist peace movements, liberation ideologues, and Islamic jihadists.

Plain Truth: Still the Best Defense

Disinformation can be tough reading. The darkness of the evil it exposes assaults the psyche, but the onslaught is mitigated by the unfolding revelation of how plain, unvarnished truth did illuminate the darkness and out-endure the lies. Pacepa’s own story of redemption, the collapse of the USSR, and the enduring light of the Catholic Church—these all bear witness that truth and virtue ultimately prevail and that the campaign of truth is still the best hope in the face of evil empires and their lies.

 

Terrell Clemmons is a freelance writer and blogger on apologetics and matters of faith.

This article was originally published at salvomag.com: http://bit.ly/2T1ClTz

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Why Premium Sex Is Your Best Bet for Relational Success

Why Premium Sex Is Your Best Bet for Relational Success

By Terrell Clemmons

Last December, television talk-show host Meredith Vieira invited relationship expert Siggy Flicker onto her show as part of her “Ultimate Relationship Gift Guide,” to help her female audience answer the big holiday question, “What do I get him?” “It should be about ‘from the heart’ and it should be a thoughtful thing,” Siggy said right off the bat. So, what was the recommended from-the-heart, thoughtful thing for the relationship of a few weeks to three months in? “You’re starting to get to know each other… I always say, lingerie, pajamas—or, I love Hanky Panky underwear,” she said, holding up a pair of black and red g-string panties.

“But wait,” Meredith feigned objection, “that’s a suggestive thing, isn’t it?”

“Ya know, in the beginning of a relationship, what are you doing a lot of?” Siggy shot back, still holding up the panties. “You’re getting to know each other!” she semi-barked in a New Jersey beat. Like, Who hasn’t gotten the memo that morals are just, so… passé?

Isn’t it strange that something as intimate and private as sex has become, at least in the eyes of some, the fulcrum around which all relational life seems to turn? Or not turn. Take reactions to Lolo Jones for example, the rags-to-riches track and field star whose intention to save sex for marriage drew more coverage than her athletic success. “Lolo Jones should’ve had sex before that race,” was one of the tamer digs fired her way, “because #SexisforWinners.”

Sex may well be for winners, but before making a definitive statement out of that, the smart single would do well to figure out which game she (or he) is trying to win.

The Economics of Sex

The Austin Institute for the Study of Family and Culture, a research group specializing in family, sexuality, and social structures, took a rigorous look at today’s romantic landscape, and condensed what they found into a brilliant, ten-minute video titled, “The Economics of Sex.” It looks at sex as an exchange that goes something like this: Historically, the woman has been the gatekeeper for sex in a relationship. Will the man have to pay her a few compliments to get sex? Or take her on a certain number of dates? Or will he have to pay the premium—a lifetime commitment of all he is and has? She sets the price.

But the rise of feminism and contraceptive use upset that market equilibrium. It lowered the cost of sex by reducing the likelihood of pregnancy, and gradually the supply of women settling for sex at a reduced rate increased. Men in turn, taking the path of least resistance, went in droves for low-cost sex, rather than paying the premium. This split the mating market into two sub-markets: one where people go for sex, and another where people seek marriage. The former is more male-heavy, while the latter leans female.

This split market altered the woman’s gatekeeping function. It became easier for her to secure a mate in the short term because men looking for sex outnumber available women. But the reverse is true for women seeking marriage. Because, in that market, men, being in shorter supply, have the upper hand.

The Feminist Who Says, “Settle!”

This disappointing reality hits home especially hard for the aging woman who wants a family. In her 2010 book Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough, Lori Gottlieb, a 40-something single mother (by sperm donation) thoughtfully reflected on, not her unmet fill of sex, but her unmet longing for marriage and family. “Do it [settle] young,” she writes, rather than holding out for Mr. Perfect.

Of course, we’d be loath to admit it in this day and age, but ask any soul-baring 40-year-old single heterosexual woman what she most longs for in life, and she probably won’t tell you it’s a better career or a smaller waistline or a bigger apartment. Most likely, she’ll say that what she really wants is a husband (and, by extension, a child) … in reality, we aren’t fish who can do without a bicycle, we’re women who want a traditional family.

Her argument met with, shall we say, mixed reviews, though her counsel seemed to be offered in all sincerity.

Solutions That Satisfy

And given current market conditions, it seems fitting. Strictly speaking, the market solution for women would be for them to band together to raise the price of sex. This would call men back to a higher standard, thereby improving relational prospects for all.

Yes, all. In the latest National Marriage Project report, titled “What Happens in Vegas Doesn’t Always Stay in Vegas,” researchers Scott Stanley and Galena Rhoades found that the way couples conduct their sex lives before marriage has a bearing on their future happiness. About 90 percent of couples have sex before marriage, they reported, but those who do so only with their future spouse have better odds for marriage stability than those who play the market first.

In other words, sexual monogamy is a pretty good plan for winning at relationships, if what you ultimately want is marriage and potential family. Admittedly, it’s not the way to “win” if sex is all you’re after. Since the odds are against finding success at both, the wise single will consider early on, Which one do I want? and choose a course of action accordingly.

Getting to Know Each Other: The Premium Way

Chelsea and Mark got married last summer at age 21. They’d been dating since their freshman year of high school. And while they didn’t make a big, public deal about it, most of the friends and family at their wedding knew they had waited.

They, too, drew attention for making a counter-cultural choice. Sometimes there was ridicule, which hurt. But the thing that surprised them most was not the ridicule, but the way some of their peers seemed not even to have categories of thought by which to conceive of such a relationship (What? Well … why?).

“They have sex right from the start, and then they have to learn how to communicate with each other,” Chelsea said. “If they don’t have sex in four days, it’s like the biggest nightmare to them. And it’s a nightmare because they feel like they don’t have the relationship when there’s no sex because that’s all the relationship’s based on.”

She finds that really sad. “It’s as if they can’t even talk to each other. All they seem to know how to do is have sex. Then they get bored and move on to the next relationship.” For her, waiting prioritized the relationship over sex so that the friendship could mature and develop a life of its own, without sex being the center of it. Since the wedding, the sex “has been nice, but we have so much more besides that. Other couples are missing out on so much more that there is.”

We should pity Ms. Flicker for confusing cursory sex with “getting to know each other.”

Know Your Power

In financial terms, to corner, a market is to get sufficient control of an asset to manipulate the price. Casual sex surrenders control and gives everything away dirt-cheap. The smart woman (and man) who wants a sex life that is thoughtful and satisfies longings will retain control of her assets until the set price—the premium—has been paid. “The Economics of Sex” video concludes, “For a woman to know what she wants in a relationship, and to signal it clearly… this is her power in the economy.” It’s also the most winning strategy for achieving sexual and relational success.

 

Terrell Clemmons is a freelance writer and blogger on apologetics and matters of faith.

This article was originally published at salvomag.com: http://bit.ly/2WdB7TJ

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Phelim McAleer & Ann McElhinney_ Journalists Worthy of the Name

Phelim McAleer & Ann McElhinney: Journalists Worthy of the Name

By Terrell Clemmons

Phelim McAleer was in Pennsylvania in early 2013 doing a series of screenings of his film FrackNation. As he often did when travelling, he checked the local paper for interesting court cases underway, and a case concerning a doctor in Philadelphia caught his attention. And so it happened that on one of his days off, he walked into the courtroom where abortionist Kermit Gosnell was standing trial for a slew of charges including (but not limited to) murder, infanticide, and multiple violations of state abortion law.

Phelim McAleer & Ann McElhinney_ Journalists Worthy of the Name

Phelim had seen a lot in his twenty-five years in journalism (he started his career in a part of Northern Ireland known as “Bandit Country”), but the evidence he saw that day in Room 304 of the Philadelphia Justice Center surpassed anything he’d previously encountered. The photos displayed up on a big screen—pictures of well-formed babies, some of whose necks had been snipped with scissors after live birth—were more horrific than anything he’d ever seen. All of this was shocking in itself, but what was even more astounding to him as a journalist was that the press gallery behind him was completely empty. There were no national journalists covering this case. Not one. How could this be?

He returned home to Los Angeles and told his journalist partner and wife, Ann McElhinney, that he had found the next project they would work on. At first, Ann wanted nothing to do with it. This subject was foreign territory for them, way outside their wheelhouse. Besides, both she and Phelim had always considered themselves neutral on abortion. Why venture into such a hornet’s nest?

Phelim ordered the court transcripts anyway, and Ann read them. Afterward, she agreed, Yes, they would make this film. It was more than an assent or a shared inclination. It was a conviction. Here was information of significant public interest, and it was shameful that no one was putting it out. A film about this had to be made; therefore, they would make it.

Truth-Telling in the Public Interest

It would be a controversial undertaking, but Phelim and Ann were no strangers to covering controversy. Both natives of Ireland, they had started out as print journalists, but then moved into filmmaking. For one of their early productions, The Search for Tristan’s Mum, Ann went undercover to infiltrate a corrupt baby trafficking ring in Indonesia. As a result of her investigation, Tristan was returned to his natural mother, and the baby sellers were put in prison.

While they were living in Romania in the early 2000s, an uproar arose about a gold mine in Transylvania called the RosË›ia Montana˘ă Project. They watched as Western environmentalists and activist groups like Greenpeace came in with their agendas, talking for the locals as if the locals couldn’t speak for themselves. Worse, the media were not reporting the truth of the matter—that the vast majority of the locals very much wanted the mine.

The RosË›ia Montana˘ăsituation provoked a kind of conversion moment for them on two levels. They saw that (1) capitalism was the economic system best suited to lift people out of poverty, and (2) mainstream journalism was not only doing a shoddy job of reporting the truth, but at some point it was downright corrupt, in that the narrative of the outside environmentalists was being reported rather than the actual truth on the ground. So in 2006, they released Mine Your Own Business, which told the truth about the mining village and also examined other mining projects in the developing world that were under threat of opposition from powerful outside interests.

Continuing with the theme of Big Environmentalism and the effect it can have on impoverished communities, in 2009 they produced Not Evil Just Wrong, which examined and critiqued hysteria about global warming. Then, in 2013, came FrackNation, for which Phelim faced threats, cops, and bogus lawsuits to tell the stories of rural Americans whose livelihoods stood at risk because of misinformation about hydraulic fracking.

And so, while on the surface the trial of an abortion doctor appeared to be a change of direction, at a more basic level, it was a continuation of the journalistic duty to report facts and stories mainstream journalism was misreporting, or in the case of Gosnell, outright ignoring.

Accidental Discovery

Ironically, the abortion “House of Horrors,” as the Philadelphia Women’s Medical Society at 3801 Lancaster Avenue came to be known, was also discovered quite by accident. Kermit Gosnell had been under investigation for running an illegal prescription drug racket in early 2010, when Tosha Lewis, an informant recruited from Gosnell’s clinic staff, casually mentioned an Asian woman who had died at the clinic a few months back. Something about her death, Tosha said, “just wasn’t right.” The narcotics investigator went to look up the police report, but there was none. This puzzle led to more questions, then to search warrants, and then ultimately to a coordinated raid that included narcotics investigators, the Pennsylvania Departments of State and Health, the Federal Drug Enforcement Agency, and the FBI—all told, a raid of more than twenty participants.

They walked into a veritable waking nightmare. A cat had the run of the place, and the stench of cat feces, urine, and formaldehyde hung in the air. There was blood on the floor, urine on the stairs, and piles of trash everywhere. The chairs, blankets, and all surfaces were drowning in cat hair, and the medical equipment was unsanitary, outdated, rusty, and lying haphazardly about the place in varying states of disrepair.

The more they looked around, the worse it got. A metal cupboard housed jars of severed baby feet. Refrigerators and freezers scattered throughout the cobbled-together maze of a building held more bloody fetal remains—they were stuffed into used water jugs, milk jugs, cat-food containers, plastic bags, and Minute Maid juice bottles. The basement housed -fetal remains stacked to the ceiling.

It was the stuff of horror movies, but this was no Hollywood set. This was real life. Semiconscious women moaned in the waiting room, while none of the post-op patients were hooked up to any kind of monitoring device. Two were bleeding heavily and in such distress that paramedics were called, only to discover that the emergency exit door had been padlocked shut, and no one could find a key. Meanwhile, Gosnell wanted to do an abortion while the investigators went about their work. When he finished, he sat down at his desk wearing torn, bloody surgical gloves and ate his dinner, gesturing with his chopsticks while answering investigators’ questions.

Clearly the team had stumbled onto a crime scene that went beyond drug running and one suspicious death.

Documenting an American Tragedy

In the end, the wheels of the Pennsylvania justice system consigned Kermit Gosnell to life in prison without parole. The challenge for Phelim and Ann became how to tactfully but truthfully document the manifold unsettling realities of this case.

Thorough professionals, they interviewed officials from the local police, the DEA, the FBI, and state oversight boards, along with clinic staff and former patients. Ultimately, Ann decided to write a book about the case, in addition to making the film. “It’s disturbing that this story isn’t widely known,” she explained. And there were aspects of the case that wouldn’t end up in the movie, but that should be recorded. “People should know these things,” she said, her Irish brogue accentuating the conviction.

The result is Gosnell, The Untold Story of America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer, a page-turning journalistic account of the case, which has to be read to be believed. Just when you think it can’t get any worse, it does. Along the way, Ann exposes failure after appalling failure, unflinchingly naming names of officials whose responsibility it was to enforce the law or to ensure that medical standards safeguarding women and children were maintained, but who ignored clear warning signs, looked the other way, or blatantly ignored the law. Local and national media did no better.

She candidly admits it was hard:

Reading the testimony and sifting through the evidence in the case in the research for this book and for writing the script of the movie has been brutal. I have wept at my computer. I have said the Our Father sitting at my desk. I am no holy roller—I hadn’t prayed in years—but at times when I was confronted with the worst of this story I didn’t know what else to do.

More Conversion Moments

Until Gosnell, she found prolife activists distasteful—too earnest, too religious, maybe even manipulative. Back off with your scary pictures, she thought, I’m sure they’ve been photo-shopped anyway. After learning of the Gosnell case, though, everything changed. The images shown in the courtroom were not from activists. They were from police detectives, medical examiners, and employees of the Gosnell clinic testifying under oath.

Similarly, the voices in her book and in the film are not pro-life voices. The most powerful testimonies in the trial, Ann said, were those of the abortion doctors themselves when describing what constituted “a good, legal abortion.” Nearly everyone on the jury was pro-choice at the outset, but some let out audible gasps as an expert witness abortionist explained in detail what she did. Nor was it just Phelim, Ann, and jury members who would reexamine their views. “Prosecutors, several journalists, and even Gosnell’s own lawyer ultimately experienced changes of heart and mind,” Ann wrote.

“Basically, once you find out the truth about abortion, you drop the pro-choice easy narrative very quickly,” says Phelim. “Abortion is like an article of faith for some people, you know? They don’t think about it, but they just are pro-abortion. I’ll tell you, their faith was shattered. Everyone’s faith was shattered.”

Changing people’s minds, though, is not what they set out to do. “They used to say in journalism, if you want to send a message, go to Western Union,” Phelim says. “We didn’t go into this to send a message. We went in to tell the truth.” And so, when it comes to Gosnell, “our message to pro-life and pro-choice people is, find out the truth. Make an informed decision. Because when you find out the truth about abortion as a pro-choice person, it will rattle your confidence in your pro-choice position. And that’s exactly what journalism should be about.”

Both Phelim and Ann hope that through their book and film, people will find out the truth, and that something like Gosnell’s clinic will never happen again. “The truth is very, very important,” Phelim says, “and the truth will set you free. That’s what I want.”

 

Terrell Clemmons is a freelance writer and blogger on apologetics and matters of faith.

This article was originally published at salvomag.com: http://bit.ly/2AwiyRL

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Whirled Views

Whirled Views

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By Terrell Clemmons

A Framework for Mapping Reality & Engaging Ideological Confusion.

“Science is more than a body of knowledge. It’s a way of thinking,” said Carl Sagan in the last interview he gave before his death in 1996 at age 62. Sagan and Charlie Rose were discussing Sagan’s last book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, and the danger that America’s deficiency in basic science posed for future generations. People in positions of power, they agreed, as well as the electorates who put them there must have a correct understanding of “the way the universe really is” and not be informed by doctrines that “make us feel good.” “If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true,” Sagan stressed, “then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along.” The upshot of it all was that science, rather than demons or doctrines, must be the “candle” that lights our way to the future.

Sagan is best known as the author and host of the 1980 PBS series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which was the most widely watched PBS series of the 1980s. His legacy lives on in the 2014 Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, which aimed to capture for a new generation the “spirit of the original Cosmos,” according to host Neil deGrasse Tyson. Building on the popularity of the original, Tyson explained, the 21st-century remake would “present science in a way that has meaning to you, that could influence your conduct as a citizen of the nation and of the world—especially of the world.”

Salvo readers should be familiar with the concept of agenda-driven science, and to those who listen with an ear to discern it, it’s clear that Sagan, Rose, and Tyson are using science as they understand it to advance an agenda—to influence the way people think, with the aim of changing their behavior. This is the stuff of propaganda, and like most propaganda, Cosmos served up a slickly produced package of truths, half-truths, and subtle lies, skillfully laced with running undercurrents of moralistic appeals to emotion.

How does one respond to wholesale agendas like this without coming off as an abject contrarian? Try the worldview reset.

Worldview Reset

In How Now Shall We Live? (1999), Nancy Pearcey and Charles Colson laid out a framework for worldview analysis that can be applied to any narrative, idea, or agenda that comes ambling along. Here’s how it goes: Any worldview must provide an answer to three questions:

Who am I, and where did I come from? This is the question of origins.

What is wrong with the world? This is the question of the problem.

How can it be fixed? This is the question of the remedy.

Put through this filter, Christianity can answer each question in one word: Creation, fall, and redemption. God, sin, and Christ or the cross would work equally well. The point is not to nail down precise terminology, but to sketch out the main points on the biblical map of reality. Christianity is not just a relationship with Jesus, or adherence to a set of doctrines or rules, or association with a religious institution. Those things may have their place, but it’s more than that. Christianity is a full-orbed, comprehensive worldview that puts forth testable truth claims about all of reality.

The same framework, then, can serve as a test for coolly analyzing alternative worldviews. All agendas operate according to some worldview, and our first objective in the face of one should be to identify it. In the case of Sagan and Tyson, this is straightforward. They’re scientific naturalists. But even if we didn’t know that, we could figure it out from the grandiose opening to the original Cosmos, where Sagan intoned, “The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.” From there, given the title of his book and his discussion with Rose, we can see that the problem they diagnose in the world stems from authorities and doctrines that are unscientific. Following through, the remedy they prescribe is for people to question those authorities, reject those doctrines, and think “scientifically,” just like they do.

Popularized through folksy celebrities like Tyson and Bill Nye “the Science Guy,” this materialistic narrative, along with its socio-moral dictates, is just one of the subliminal narratives that have become deeply entrenched in our culture.

First Things First: The Question of Origins

In practice, worldviews tend to bleed together, but the most prevalent ones in the developed world today are: scientific naturalism, which says that God is effectively nonexistent; postmodernism, which says that the question of God is unanswerable or irrelevant because cultures make up their own stories; pantheism, which identifies God with nature or the universe and then sees in nature a myriad of non-transcendent deities; and Judeo-Christianity, which says that there is one transcendent God who created the universe and everything in it.

It is supremely important to note that, of these, the Judeo-Christian worldview is the only one that is actually theistic. It alone, along with its offshoot Islam, answers the question of origins with a self-existing God. All the others are non-theistic. They amount to some form of philosophical naturalism and then try to explain all of reality, including human history, behavior, and culture, within those limits.

In 2016-2017 Morgan Freeman hosted a National Geographic series on religion called The Story of God, in which he traveled the world asking people of different faiths how they viewed death, evil, the afterlife, and other matters related to religion. The series was visually stunning, but its name is actually a misnomer. It was really a “story of a man”— a professed atheist attempting to explain the panoply of human experience within the confines of naturalism. Freeman’s worldview governed his interpretation of all the incoming data, and viewers who don’t understand that at the outset will likely find the series confusing.

Worldview and Ideologies

The concept of worldview is closely related to the concept of ideology, but the two are not quite the same thing. Every ideology is born of a worldview, but not every worldview is an ideology. Dictionary.com defines ideology as a body of doctrine, myth, or belief that guides an individual, group, or movement, together with a socio-political plan and devices for implementing it. In simpler terms, an ideology is an idea that has been elevated to worldview status and then activated into an agenda.

Let’s look at a few ideologies that are dominant today and identify the worldview behind them. Broadly speaking, environmentalism is an ideology that begins with philosophical naturalism, diagnoses the problem in the world as human mismanagement of the earth’s resources, and then prescribes changes to resource management, usually to be implemented by the government. Marxism, too, begins with naturalism, but it diagnoses the problem in terms of some kind of inequality between people groups. From there, it prescribes as the remedy some form of equalization, also usually to be implemented by the government.

Sexual ideologies grew out of Freud’s naturalism-based diagnosis that human problems stem from sexual repression, and they accordingly prescribe a remedy of casting off restraint. And, for an example of how ideologies bleed together, LGBT demands for “equality” effectively fuse the Freudian and Marxian diagnoses of the problem and then demand equalization for “sexual minorities” with respect to such social benefits as moral approval and state-endorsed marriage.

Interrogating the Disconnect

When one is confronted with a pre-assembled agenda masquerading as a good idea, applying the three-point worldview framework will facilitate dialogue in a way that clarifies, rather than clouds, the conflict. The framework does this by keeping attention on the incoming worldview and examining its truth claims. To use Sagan’s terminology, we interrogate it —Where is this idea coming from? What unstated presuppositions lie behind it?—with the goal of mapping the worldview disconnect and then peacefully shifting the discussion to the actual point of contention.

This can revolutionize a conflict in two ways. First, it draws all ideas out into the open. I was recently invited to participate in an informal roundtable discussion with Ben, a college student majoring in philosophy. When asked about my worldview, I answered within the three-point framework: God, sin, Christ. He liked that structure and used it to articulate his worldview as well: evolution, dogma, better science education—right in line with the Sagan-Tyson synthesis. Then he elaborated. Scientists aren’t doing enough to educate the public about what they know, he said, particularly with respect to the beginning of the universe and the origin of the first living things.

Now, if you’ve been reading Salvo for any length of time, you know why scientists aren’t providing these explanations. It’s because they don’t exist. And our discussion exposed this and other gaping holes in Ben’sworldview that are being filled with a materialistic version of faith.

Second, a worldview reset can reorient a potentially contentious dialogue. With most conflicts regarding secular ideologies, the disconnect is, at root, a clash between the theistic and non-theistic foundations. This can be the case even if both sides are invoking biblical imagery.

For example, sexual ideologies are often pushed with slogans like, “Jesus would accept gays and transgenders.” That may be true, but if Jesus is going to be invoked, then it’s fair and intellectually honest to redirect the discussion to the question of worldview foundation. If the Judeo-Christian God created humanity male and female and instituted marriage, then certain implications for sexuality follow from that. If not, then anything goes.

The relevant point for discussion would be, Which worldview foundation are we starting from? Is it Christian theism? Or is it some form of philosophical naturalism? If naturalism, then moral dictates based on what Jesus may or may not have done are irrelevant. Furthermore (and worse for the naturalist), in naturalism, morality is an ungrounded, arbitrary chimera. Whenever possible, then, ideologues, whether sexual, environmental or otherwise, should be pressed to grapple with the full implications of their worldview foundation. This is not rhetorical tit for tat. Wisely executed, it’s an act of Christian love.

Practical Peacemaking

Another entrenched narrative out there says that truth claims are the source of human conflict. But a worldview reset can actually be a move toward peace. Family counselor Beverly Buncher created a communication strategy for families of addicts called BALM—Be A Loving Mirror. It involves remaining calm in heated situations and, as lovingly as possible, reflecting back your opponent’s thoughts and emotions. The objective is to stay in the relationship, grounded in your own reasoned composure, in hopes of serving over time as a peacemaking, transformative presence for your loved one.

Both the worldview filter and the BALM approach are powerful aids for remapping ideological impasses and bridging relational divides. More important, they provide a setting for illuminating truth.

 

Terrell Clemmons is a freelance writer and blogger on apologetics and matters of faith.

This article was originally published at salvomag.com: http://bit.ly/2zJGiBe

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The Darwin Tales

The Darwin Tales

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By Terrell Clemmons

It’s Time to Remit Darwinian Storytelling to the Annals of History.

Stephen Meyer was a young geophysicist working in the oil industry in Dallas, Texas, in 1985 when he saw that an interesting science conference was coming to town and he decided to drop in. During a panel discussion on the origin of the first living things, Charles Thaxton, a highly credentialed chemist, noted that the information stored in DNA could not be explained by chemical evolutionary processes. This was generally known already and uncontroversial. But Thaxton ventured a step further by suggesting that the information could point to an intelligent cause. This was a reasonable inference, Thaxton said because, in our regular human experience, we know that information is typically attributable to intelligent causes.

This struck Meyer as both intuitive and plausible. But what really piqued his interest was the heated reaction of some of the other scientists at this suggestion. They got really personal. Some criticized Thaxton’s intellect; others, his motives, as if he’d broken some unwritten convention. What was with all this emotion? Meyer wondered. He’d always thought scientists were objective professionals who coolly looked at data and followed the evidence. This was an interesting problem.

The encounter led to some follow-up discussions with Thaxton and a burning new question, which Meyer would take with him to Cambridge University a year later: Could this idea of intelligence—or intelligent design—be made into a rigorous scientific argument?

But during his first year there, an after-lecture social gathering brought home a sobering reality. Everyone at Cambridge was openly atheistic. In fact, atheism was so preemptively the assumed worldview that theism was not even on the table. Meyer not only believed in God; he was a Christian. Clearly, this could be a lonely work environment, and the widespread atheism around him could present obstacles to collaborations on this question. But he took heart in remembering the great scientists of history whose science had been specifically driven by their Christian worldview.

The Closed Darwinian Circle

Science writer Tom Bethell, who had arrived at sister university Oxford about twenty-five years prior, experienced a similarly disappointing revelation. He’d arrived at Oxford “naively imagining that philosophy taught us the meaning of life.” It didn’t.

But Bethell later came to see its usefulness. Many problems in philosophy had flourished, he discovered, because the words used to formulate theories weren’t clearly defined. Sometimes, he further realized, the vagaries seemed to be intentional. Bethell would go on to a long career as a philosophically astute journalist, brilliantly clarifying and parsing some of the most crucial enigmas of public life and history.

Case in point: Charles Darwin’s central postulate said that the diversity of biological life on earth could be explained by natural selection operating on random variations. Herbert Spencer, a contemporary of Darwin, summarized this notion as “survival of the fittest.” The phrase stuck, and today, Darwin’s postulate reigns as the grand unifying theory of established science.

But was there an inherent problem with it, philosophically, from the very start? “Doubts about evolution first arose in my mind when I looked at the title page of The Origin of Species,” Bethell wrote.

I read, and then reread that page:

On the Origin of Species

by Means of Natural Selection

or the

preservation of favoured races

in the struggle for life

by Charles Darwin, M.A.

1859

The words ‘preservation’ and ‘favoured’ stood out. Was there any way of knowing what ‘races’ (meaning species, or individual variants) were favored other than by looking to see which ones were in fact preserved?

This was no pedantic quibble. For if there truly is no way of determining what is “fit” other than by seeing what survives, then Darwin was arguing in a self-confirming circle: the survival of the survivors. In rhetorical terms, this is what’s called a tautology—a statement that is true by definition, due to the construction of the language by which it is expressed. In effect, Darwin’s proposed mechanism—natural selection—rested on the observation that, “Survivors survive.” To which any clear-thinking middle-school student might say, “Well, duh.”

Curating History

Beginning with this observation, Bethell’s latest book examines the dialogue that has taken place among scientists since the publication of The Origin. But rather than giving us a chronological point-counterpoint synopsis of it, Bethell presents a kind of “tour” of the topics over which the debate has been hashed out—the “rooms,” if you will, of the 150-plus-year-old house of Darwin: common descent, natural selection, the fossil record, information theory, evolutionary psychology, artificial intelligence, the growing intelligent design movement, and more.

The upshot of it all is captured in his title: Darwin’s House of Cards: A Journalist’s Odyssey Through the Darwin Debates. Darwinism is an idea past its prime, he concludes, one whose collapse is inevitable and is in fact already demonstrably underway.

Examining a Theory and Its Theorist

He states that forthrightly, but also backs it up with characteristically sound logic—examining, like a museum curator, Darwin’s various claims in light of both mounting new evidence against them and the ongoing lack of evidence supporting them. Room by room, he shows how evolutionary theory today is being propped up by logical fallacies, bogus claims, and outdated empirical evidence that has all but disintegrated under the weight of new discoveries.

In addition to covering the high points of the scientific discussion, Bethell also delves into the man Darwin as he revealed himself through his personal writings. While Darwin was in his own right a legitimate scientist, his theorizing was influenced, inordinately as it turns out, by three ideas of his day: Malthusian economics, Progress, and philosophical materialism.

  • Malthusian Math: Political economist Thomas Malthus had speculated that when population growth outstrips food supply, then death by starvation would result in some sectors of society but not others. Darwin had read Malthus, and he simply transferred the calculus of overpopulation to the plant and animal kingdom. “It at once struck me that under these circumstances favorable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. The result would be the formation of new species.” Darwin had no evidence of the formation of any new species, though. That was pure extrapolation.
  • Progress: Capitalized to denote the philosophy as it existed in his day, “Progress” was the reigning metanarrative in post-Enlightenment England, the all-encompassing, assumed a trajectory of reality. It was “as difficult for him to escape as the air he breathed,” wrote Bethell, and Darwin was a confirmed believer. The word “evolution” doesn’t actually appear in The Origin. He referred rather to improvement, progress, and perfection, in the end, writing that “all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection.”
  • Materialism: Darwin himself was a full-blown materialist, but he avoided outwardly confessing the extent of his belief. He’d worked out his theory by 1837, but didn’t go public with it for more than twenty years, partly because the 1830s climate of opinion was highly unfavorable to materialism. Even at publication in 1859, he still didn’t deploy it consistently in The Origin, but rather strategically and progressively invoked it over the course of six editions.

Darwin’s metaphysical outlook was not a deduction from his science, though, but was influenced by his theology. He raised theological issues in several of his writings, and Bethell devotes an entire chapter to his evolving religious views. Two points are worth mentioning here. In his autobiography, Darwin mentioned being “heartily laughed at” for quoting the Bible while on the H.M.S. Beagle. We can only speculate about the psychological effect of this incident, but it obviously affected him enough to write about it forty years later. Afterward, he reconsidered the Bible’s place in his view of the world and concluded it was “no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian.”

In addition, like many in insulated societies, he took issue with God over the problem of evil and suffering, ultimately deciding that the concept of an all-loving and all-powerful God could not be reconciled with the reality of misery in the world. “Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete.”

More a product of their theorist and the zeitgeist, then, than of science, Darwin’s postulates found easy acceptance among an elite intelligentsia predisposed to believe in materialism and Progress. Sadly, liberal clergy went along without objection or concern.

Straightening Out Bad Philosophy

Molecular biologist Jonathan Wells concurs with Bethell that Darwinian evolution is one long argument bolstering an a priori metaphysics. In Zombie Science: More Icons of Evolution, he gives three common definitions of science: (1) empirical science is the enterprise of seeking truth by formulating hypotheses and testing them against evidence; (2) technological science comprises the advances that have enriched modern life; and (3) establishment science consists of professionals conducting research. These can all be legitimate uses of the word.

In addition, though, he notes, some people have come to define science as (4) the enterprise of providing natural explanations for everything. But this would more accurately be called methodological naturalism. And while it is true that the methods of empirical science limit the causal explanations, it can confirm or disconfirm to the material realm, to go further and assume that only material causes exist is to assume an unstated claim about metaphysical reality. Furthermore, to do so and call it science constitutes fraud.

Metaphysical Storytelling & the Judgment of History

Fraud aside, it also compromises science. When priority is given to proposing and defending materialistic explanations over following the evidence, materialistic philosophy is running the show. Where this happens (and it does), Wells calls it zombie science. “Evolution is a materialistic story,” he writes, “and since the materialistic story trumps the evidence, it is zombie science.”

Listen to biologist-turned-filmmaker Randy Olsen’s explanation for why he knowingly passed off falsehood in his 2007 film Flock of Dodos: The Evolution-Intelligent Design Circus: “Scientists must realize that science is a narrative process, that narrative is story; therefore science needs story.” This is stunning! What Olson is saying here is that metaphysical storytelling should override accuracy in science reporting.

Returning to Meyer at Cambridge, during his first year, he was granted a second telling revelation when his supervisor offered some unsolicited advice. “Everyone here is bluffing,” the kindly old school don said. “And if you’re to succeed, you must learn to bluff too.”

Fortunately, Meyer opted for personal integrity and legitimate science over bluffing and storytelling and then left it to others to sort things out. Imagine the exhibit in some future Museum of Science and History: Everyone believed the Darwinists, boys, and girls until a few brave scientists concerned with data and following evidence came along and called their bluff.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a science story worth telling.

 

Terrell Clemmons is a freelance writer and blogger on apologetics and matters of faith.

This article was originally published at salvomag.com: http://bit.ly/2z72XqW

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A Quantum Christian

Un cristiano cuántico

By Terrell Clemmons

The man to whom science proved religion

Dennis Garvin grew up the second of three sons born into a Norman Rockwell-infused environment in the Berkshire Mountains of upstate New York. After graduating as valedictorian of his class from the Citadel Military College in South Carolina, he went on to graduate with honors from the VCU School of Medicine in Virginia and served thirteen years in the U.S. Air Force. By the time he reached his mid-30s, he had achieved every one of his life goals. He had raised a family with children he loved. He was a successful doctor doing well in Roanoke, Virginia. And, to his delight, he had earned a good four-year degree that certified him as a smart kid. So why, after having accomplished so much, did he feel so empty?

It was not depression; his life was full and active. No, his existential weariness was like that of Alexander the Great, who looked over the vastness of his domain and wept because there were no more worlds to conquer. And when he looked inside himself, he saw a life in black and white. On the other hand, his then wife seemed to have access to a joy that he did not possess. He thought she had colour in her life. What was behind this?

Having been raised in a Unitarian Universalist home, Dennis was a staunch atheist. But, having adopted his mother’s liberal feminist ethic, which held tolerance to be a supreme virtue, he had no particular hostility toward Christianity. So, with an appearance of open-mindedness, the rational scientist in him became curious.

This was, philosophically speaking, new territory for him. But the time had come. As a lifelong devotee of Darwin, he had begun to realize that there were many cracks in Darwin’s theories, chiefly that of altruism, as he saw it. He could explain any human behavior except that, and he could not shake that uneasiness. Worse still, he had begun to realize that he had long parroted the phrase “science denies religion,” but had never questioned it. This was utterly and utterly embarrassing for a man who considered himself a scientist.

So he began to honestly re-examine his hypotheses. The main one he had accepted a priori  was atheism. Okay, he said, let’s say there is a God. How could he have done all that he did? Since the Bible, the book of Christianity, was the first thing he had discarded, that was where he turned in his search for answers.

A dangerous book

As he read on, he became increasingly astonished to discover that the Bible – the book he had dismissed as a stupid fairy tale – was probably one of the most accurate books on quantum physics he had ever come across. This was not quite what he had expected, and as a knowledgeable expert in modern physics, it began to turn his entire epistemological orientation on its head. Dennis had long been fascinated with the study of light, and he believed that the quantum physics of light accurately explained the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. This brought him to his knees.

There was also an evangelistic element at work during this time. His wife had introduced him to some people who were part of the Campus Crusade for Christ. Now Dennis had an arsenal of sharp verbal missiles designed to destroy belief in God or revealed religion in any form. He was not your run-of-the-mill, friendly atheist, but a predator, the kind of atheist no Christian parent wants their children to be friends with when they go off to college. He delighted in destroying the faith of poor, miserable souls, and with his scientific credentials and the academic degree to back them up, he was pretty good at it.

But the good people at Campus Crusade for Christ met his childish attacks like brave soldiers. He raised one objection.  “But what about Christ?” someone would say. He raised another.  “But what about Christ?”  He ranted and raved about Isis and Osiris and the mythological figure of Christ who is reborn every winter and how Christianity was just mythology writ large. They listened patiently. And then they came back with, “  Okay, but what about the God who loves you?”  Finally, he ran out of arguments. Science brought him to his knees. Through Campus Crusade, he became a new creature in Christ.

A violent man conquered by God

In the United States, it is extremely rare for someone to come to the Christian faith after the age of 35. And for someone to do so carrying the burden of science on their shoulders is almost impossible. But that is what happened to Dennis Garvin. All this happened almost thirty years ago, and since then, some things in his life have not changed all that much. He is still a family man, although two grandchildren have been added to the mix. He is still a doctor, although medicine on the mission field has been added to the schedule. And he is still a thoroughbred scientist who applies the concordant aspects of scientific knowledge to biblical concepts, and has begun writing and teaching to disseminate the findings.

There is one other thing that has not changed. The good doctor still loves a good argument. Never one to do anything halfway, the “smart boy” who has now fully graduated as a healthy intellectual Christian humbly compares himself to the apostle Paul, who had a confrontational style when he was Saul of Tarsus, and who then went on to preach the gospel in an equally confrontational tone. But, just as Paul went on to preach the faith he once sought to destroy, Dennis delights in destroying the faith he once preached, and aspires to be the kind of Christian that atheist professors and materialistic scientists do not want their students to know.

“I have a wipe-out mentality,” he says of them – not the run-of-the-mill atheists, for whom he feels a brotherly sympathy, but the wise guys who are profiteers and predators who consider themselves intellectually superior in order to destroy them. He certainly recognizes the command to love our enemies, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into playing nice with people who aren’t.

“I know these SOBs because I was one of them. And I know what makes them think. I have street credibility. And I can tell you, based on my credentials and my study, that anyone who retains a belief in atheism is an idiot . And they have the right to be idiots, but they should not dress themselves in intellectual property.”

“The great secret of atheists, the great fear of all atheists, is that they will be seen as intellectually stupid in front of their contemporaries. They don’t care if you pull down their pants in front of a bunch of religious Neanderthals or people they can label as such. But if you can go into their caves and, in front of their contemporaries, pull down their pants, you’ve done something. That’s what I want to do.”

It’s not about winning a fight. It’s about exposing and smothering a predator that’s coming to kill.

A violent man conquered by God

André Trocmé was a Huguenot pastor in the French mountain village of Le Chambon when Germany invaded France in 1940. When it came to war, Trocmé was a noncombatant pacifist. But when the Nazis demanded oaths of loyalty and complicity in the deportation of Jews, he openly defied them. “We have Jews and we will not hand them over,” he declared in an open letter to the Vichy minister sent to Le Chambon in 1942. A man who knew which war was worth dying for, he was often described as a violent vaincu par Dieu  – a violent conquered by God. “The curse on him who began with gentleness,” the pastor wrote in his diary, “will end in dismay and cowardice, and he will never set foot in the great liberating current of Christianity.”

Like Pastor Trocmé, Dr. Garvin is by profession a servant of healing. And like him, he knows which battle is worth firing a bullet into. That is why, for the sake of a generation subjugated by arrogant SOBs with big egos and pompous academic degrees, he stands ready and eager to enter the ring and do violence for the sake of truth.

 

Terrell Clemmons is a freelance writer and blogger who writes about apologetics and matters of faith.

Original Blog: http://bit.ly/2JPbdQz

Translated by Natalia Armando

Edited by Maria Andreina Cerrada

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Where the Evidence Led Me

Where the Evidence Led Me

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By Terrell Clemmons

A Review of Heretic: One Scientist’s Journey from Darwin to Design, by Matti Leisola & Jonathan

As a student beginning his scientific studies in 1966, Finnish biochemist Matti Leisola used to laugh at Christians who “placed God in the gaps of scientific knowledge,” as the criticism often went. As he saw it, those people lacked the patience and level-headedness that he possessed.

After hearing Francis Schaeffer speak in 1972, though, he realized his concept of truth was naïve. He bought several of Schaeffer’s books and began to study philosophy, a subject he had previously considered of little value. At some point, he realized the god-of-the-gaps criticism cut both ways since a functional atheist could also insert a pat explanation into any knowledge gap. He also came to see another problem that the god-of-the-gaps criticism obscured: materialists seemed to think the proverbial knowledge gap was ever-shrinking, but in practice, the more scientists learned about the natural world, the more they found new and unexpected mysteries opening up. More important, the materialist argument for allowing only material explanations simply presupposed that only material causes exist. What if that presupposition was wrong?

By the mid-1970s, his doubts had become a conviction. “Scientists have no materialist explanation for the origin and complexity of life,” he wrote. “The confident bluffing of the dogmatic materialists notwithstanding, they weren’t even close.” Experimental science, he concluded, seems to point in a different direction.

A quintessential scientist’s memoir, Heretic: One Scientist’s Journey from Darwin to Design contains Leisola’s reflections on both developments in science (including biology, paleontology, genetics, information theory, and ID) and his “long and painstaking” voyage from the naturalistic evolutionary faith to dissent from Darwin. Heretic also details some of the evasions, hatred, suspicions, contempt, fears, power games, and persecutions that unfortunately mark the life of an open Darwin skeptic. And remarkably, it manages to do so with a subtle wit both sharp enough to poke fun at the contortions of materialism and shrewd enough to note the gravely consequential nature of what’s at stake.

Various chapters focus on experiences in academia (“I long ago had come to see that those bent on intimidation think nothing of shutting down debates and marginalizing scientists while paying lip service to the value of academic freedom”); encounters with publishers and broadcaster bias (“unconscious religiosity is all too common in the science community, and the broadcast media ensure that it’s presented as scientific fact day after day”); and “rationalists” behaving irrationally (“Bullies for Darwin; Actually, Several Bullies for Darwin”).

One especially compelling chapter is “The Church Evolves,” which deals with not only the Finnish Lutheran Church’s abject capitulation to Darwinism but also its active opposition to material that challenges Darwin. Even as literature critical of Darwin was forbidden on pain of punishment within Finland’s Soviet bloc neighbors, inside free Finland, church leaders were willfully suppressing the same information. This chapter speaks of trends to which Christians in America should pay attention.

“Criticism of evolutionary theory is a stressful hobby,” observed one reporter about Leisola. “On the other hand,” Leisola responded, “life as a dissenter is rich and exciting.” For the uncertain, he offers a modest invitation:

Take at least that first step on the journey that I began so many decades ago as a young, slightly arrogant scientist committed to modern evolutionary theory. That first step is a modest one, a step through the door of a paradigm and onto an open path whose end point I was unsure of. The first step was the decision simply to follow the evidence wherever it led.

Science- and truth-lovers might also find a delightful first step in Heretic.

—For more about Matti Leisola, see Minority Reporter: A Finnish Bioengineer Touches the Third Rail by Denyse O’Leary.

 

Terrell Clemmons is a freelance writer and blogger on apologetics and matters of faith.

This article was originally published at salvomag.com: http://bit.ly/2Ads4sY

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Science And Imperialism

Science And Imperialism

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By Terrell Clemmons

The Wall Street Journal commissioned Richard Dawkins and Karen Armstrong to respond independently to the question, “Where does evolution leave God?” Their answers became an article in the Life & Style section called Man vs. God.

Richard Dawkins said of Darwinian evolution, “We know, as certainly as we know anything in science, that this is the process that has generated life on our own planet.” Evolution, Dawkins concluded with his characteristic wit, is God’s “pink slip.” In other words, since science says Evolution is, we say God isn’t. (I discussed Dawkins’s argument for the non-existence of God in an earlier Salvo article.)

Karen Armstrong’s response was more artistic. She spoke of two complementary ways of arriving at truth, which the Greeks called mythos and logos, both of which were recognized by scholars as legitimate. Logos was reason, logic, intellect. But logos alone couldn’t speak to the deep question human beings ask like, What is the meaning of life? and, Why do bad things happen to good people? For that, she said, people turned to mythos – stories, regardless of whether or not they were true, that helped us make sense out of the difficulties of life. They were therapeutic. We could think of them as an early form of psychology.

“Religion was not supposed to provide explanations that lay within the competence of reason but to help us live creatively with realities for which there are no easy solutions and find an interior haven of peace; today, however, many have opted for unsustainable certainty instead. But can we respond religiously to evolutionary theory? Can we use it to recover a more authentic notion of God?

Darwin made it clear [that] we cannot regard God simply as a divine personality, who single-handedly created the world. This could direct our attention away from the idols of certainty and back to the ‘God beyond God.’ The best theology is a spiritual exercise, akin to poetry.”

Not only is the veracity of any religious story irrelevant, she seems to be saying, it is incorrect to believe any account concerning God as objectively true. To do so is to construct an idol of certainty. How do we know that? Because of the certainty of Darwinian evolution.

Her response, at bottom, isn’t much different from the atheist’s. Evolution is. God isn’t. But some of us like to imagine that he is.

Notice the source Dawkins and Armstrong consult for certain truth: Science. Why? Because Science proclaims what is.

The questions I’m pondering and posing are (1) At what point do the proclamations of science become imperialistic? and (2) At what point does an appropriate respect for science morph into worship?

 

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2w17uJN

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