The SUPREME Court - The Bigger Picture - Welcome to Totalitarianism

It has been an eventful week. First the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare. The same justice Roberts who earlier defied the argument of the measures supporters that the mandate did not amount to a tax and essentially rewrote the statute to make it a tax in order to uphold it (yes, it was that bad), was at it again.

This time, in spite of almost irrefutable evidence and plain logic based on the words of the law indicating that the Obamacare subsidies were to be provided by individual states, not the Federal Government, Justice Roberts found a way to stretch the meaning of "State" to include a nebulous "intent" that went beyond the wording, thus making the law valid. This massive usurpation of legislative authority relied on feeling over law and a basic denial that words have meaning at all, as Justice Scalia pointed out in a scathing dissent.

Then the Supremes ruled on same-sex marriage. Again the linguistic gymnastics required to manufacture a desired outcome was something the Court found a way to justify. Justice Scalia excoriated the line " "The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity."

What exactly does it mean, as a legal matter, to "define and express (one's) identity?" What are the limits on this right now that gender in society is defined entirely by one's "feelings"?

Rules for Radicals - The Progressive Playbook - Part 1

Subversion. From the World English Dictionary:

1. the act or an instance of subverting or overthrowing a legally constituted government, institution, etc
2. the state of being subverted; destruction or ruin
3. something that brings about an overthrow

A couple of years ago I became acutely aware of a character from the history of the political left named Saul Alinsky. He was a mentor to Hillary Clinton years ago. She wrote her thesis on him. Barack Obama has been praised by Alinsky's son as an exemplary practitioner of his father's methods and strategies. Alinsky's seminal tract "Rules for Radicals" is a stock training manual for leaders and activists in many labor unions. His name is becoming more well known, but not, I fear, well known enough. Alinsky was, if nothing else, subversive. I think it is necessary to unpack a bit of his ideology. Why? Because the political climate in our country has become utterly poisonous and increasingly dangerous. I believe the single most significant reason for the degeneration of our political system is Alinsky.

Naturalism - A Case in Missing the Point

My last post took issue with the apparent commitment to naturalism among theistic evolutionists. Shortly thereafter I ran across a vivid example of what naturalistic bias looks like.

Cornelius Hunter blogs at Darwin's God.    He quoted from a blurb at PBS regarding the Common Genetic Code.  The blurb, still on the PBS website, is from 2001 and shows evidence of being outdated.   The gist of Hunter's post is that how the evidence is presented shows a commitment to a viewpoint that completely colors the interpretation of the evidence.  He quotes from the PBS article, but I'll add a longer part of the article for context.

In essence, the PBS article is about a strain of yeast with a defective gene.  A human version of the gene was inserted into the yeast and the result was the repair of the defect.  This is touted as clear evidence of common ancestry.

Biologos and the Invisible Hand of God

Credit where credit is due, since coming under the direction of Deborah Haarsma, the Biologos.org website has managed tone down the rhetoric against its opponents, even if little has changed in the views presented there. Steven Meyer was recently given space to respond to his critics, and all in all I think the exchange was healthy.

Meyer’s main point in his response was that the folks at Biologos are committed to methodological naturalism and that is the primary thing that separates them from other theistic viewpoints. Evidence of both Biologos more conciliatory tone and commitment to naturalism are apparent in the statement quoted below. (More)

First, there is a general statement of belief in God as Creator, but coupled with a statement of belief in evolutionary science.

Steven Meyer Gets in a Word at Biologos

I've not been a fan of the website Biologos. Since Deborah Haarsma took over the site it has been a bit less strident in relegating all creationists and ID advocates as anti-science rubes.

Steven Meyer's second major ID book Darwin's Doubt got a fair amount of attention at the site, Several different contributors provided reviews of the book, starting here. Meyer was given opportunity to respond here.

It was a reasonably civil exchange and Meyer thanked the contributors for that. His take on the whole of the discussion is telling. " I—and many others—have long assumed that the debate between our two groups was mainly a scientific debate about the adequacy of contemporary evolutionary theory. Surprisingly, the reviews collectively have shown that the main disagreement between ID proponents and BioLogos is not scientific, but rather philosophical and methodological."

How to Start a Race War

The past few weeks have seen the rise of major protests of alleged mistreatment of black men by white cops.   At the forefront of all the protests is the charge that not only are the individual policemen guilty of singling out black men for no good reason, but that the entire “system” is racist.

Most white Americans bristle at the blanket accusation of systemic racism, but the anger, the rioting, the looting and finally the execution style shooting of two policemen sitting in a squad care that have followed the high profile cases in the news are demanding attention.  Unfortunately, the debate gets carried on without agreed upon definitions, making communication and resolution impossible.   This seems to be by design.

In postmodern academia language is viewed as a "mask to power".   So those who desire to obtain power need to control the language and make it serve a particular purpose because, in theory, that is what the ruling class has done.  The redefinition of the word “racist” is a chilling and Orwellian signpost toward a troubling future.

Postscript on Noah

I have been following a lot of the debate on the film "Noah" where critics like Dr. Brian Mattson, film maker Brian Godawa and others pan the film as decidedly divorced from the intent of the Biblical story.   In particular, the images that seem pulled directly from Gnostic ideas and Kaballah drive a lot of tit for tat arguments about the meaning of the film.

I guess I have to agree with Godawa and Mattson on this particular point - they are pointing to specifics in the film that seem to either contradict the Biblical text or subvert it with specific extrabiblical imagery and content one of the most obvious is naming a strange light-bearing metal after a prime text of Kaballah, the "ZOHAR".   The rebuttals all seem to say the same thing - yes those images are there, but they don't really mean anything negative.

Now this is a curious thing.  On what basis should any normal rational person believe that a filmmaker who stated that he drew on extra-biblical sources, who stated that he was making the "least Biblical" Biblical epic ever, who stated that environmental devastation was a key theme and who included specific Kaballah and gnostic imagery in the film did not intend those symbols to mean anything contrary to the admittedly sketchy Biblical text?   (more)