CRU Information was Released by a Whistle-blower

This Wall Street Journal article suggests that the now-famous CRU data was released by a whistle-blower going by the acronym "FOI", which suggests "Freedom of Information", a critical aspect of the e-mails:

For anyone who doubts the power of the Internet to shine light on darkness, the news of the month is how digital technology helped uncover a secretive group of scientists who suppressed data, froze others out of the debate, and flouted freedom-of-information laws. Their behavior was brought to light when more than 1,000 emails,and some 3,500 additional files were published online, many of which boasted about how they suppressed hard questions about their data.


The emails, released by an apparent whistle-blower who used the name "FOI," were written by scientists at the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in England. Its scientists are high-profile campaigners for the theory of global warming.

Trust us, we're scientists.

The Telegraph points to the unraveling of the worst scandal in science since the Piltdown Man.

But the question which inevitably arises from this systematic refusal to release their data is – what is it that these scientists seem so anxious to hide? The second and most shocking revelation of the leaked documents is how they show the scientists trying to manipulate data through their tortuous computer programmes, always to point in only the one desired direction – to lower past temperatures and to "adjust" recent temperatures upwards, in order to convey the impression of an accelerated warming. This comes up so often (not least in the documents relating to computer data in the Harry Read Me file) that it becomes the most disturbing single element of the entire story. This is what Mr McIntyre caught Dr Hansen doing with his GISS temperature record last year (after which Hansen was forced to revise his record), and two further shocking examples have now come to light from Australia and New Zealand.


In each of these countries it has been possible for local scientists to compare the official temperature record with the original data on which it was supposedly based. In each case it is clear that the same trick has been played – to turn an essentially flat temperature chart into a graph which shows temperatures steadily rising. And in each case this manipulation was carried out under the influence of the CRU.

What is tragically evident from the Harry Read Me file is the picture it gives of the CRU scientists hopelessly at sea with the complex computer programmes they had devised to contort their data in the approved direction, more than once expressing their own desperation at how difficult it was to get the desired results.

East Anglia Admits Throwing Away Raw Climate Data

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.


The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.

The admission follows the leaking of a thousand private emails sent and received by Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director. In them he discusses thwarting climate sceptics seeking access to such data.


In a statement on its website, the CRU said: “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”

The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible.

Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, discovered data had been lost when he asked for original records. “The CRU is basically saying, ‘Trust us’. So much for settling questions and resolving debates with science,” he said.

Jones was not in charge of the CRU when the data were thrown away in the 1980s, a time when climate change was seen as a less pressing issue. The lost material was used to build the databases that have been his life’s work, showing how the world has warmed by 0.8C over the past 157 years.

He and his colleagues say this temperature rise is “unequivocally” linked to greenhouse gas emissions generated by humans. Their findings are one of the main pieces of evidence used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which says global warming is a threat to humanity.

Is that a weird coincidence or what?

The scientists say that they will throw away the raw data before complying with FOIA requests, and then, in response to an FOIA request, they say that the data has been thrown away.

Viscount Monckton on Global Warming

Monckton was Margaret Thatcher's Science Advisor.

In this one, Monckton points out that Al Gore won't debate him or take unscripted questions. 

Maybe because he is so ignorant that he thinks the interior of the Earth is several millions of degrees in temperature?



Check out the rest of the interview at Wintery Knight.

Religion of Peace Update

Muslim gunmen level church in Mosul.

Mosul (AsiaNews) – Explosive devices were detonated this morning at two Christian sites in Mosul, the Church of Saint Ephrem and the Mother House of the Dominican Sisters of Saint Catherine. At present, there are no reports about casualties but the church was entirely destroyed. The convent also suffered damages but it is not known how much. Christian sources in Mosul told AsiaNews that the “attack was like a Mafia warning”, a message to Christians “to get out of the city.”


At around 10 am, a commando of about ten gunmen stormed the Church of Saint Ephrem in the al-Jadida neighbourhood, in a new section of the city. Attackers told everyone inside to leave and then calmly proceeded to place explosives around the building. When they were set off the whole structure was levelled. The same thing happened to the Bishop’s Palace in December 2004.

According to early reports, no one among the faithful was hurt in the blast.

After the first operation, the attackers moved to the Mother House of the Dominican Sisters of Saint Catherine, where a second explosion was heard around 10.30 am. For the moment, there are no details about the damages inflicted on the building or any casualties among the nuns.

Sources in Mosul told AsiaNews that the attacks were the work “of a group of about ten people who acted calmly.”

The area is under the control of Sunni Arabs and had not seen any major act of violence until now.

“We received threats and episodes of intimidation but nothing major,” a Christian source said.

This morning’s attacks resemble “the series of attacks that hit Mosul’s Christian community in the past.”

Local sources suggest that Kurds might be involved in the action in order to get Christians out of the area and into the “Nineveh Plain.”

“There is a lot of fear among the people because those who carried out the attack acted unimpeded and without opposition,” the anonymous source said.

In fact, it is more than just fear. A sense of “anger and disillusionment against the local and national governments is growing. It is the latest attack and latest disillusionment for Christians who feel abandoned.” (DS)

[ Via the Western Confucian]

Trying Terrorists

Michael Gerson at the Washington Post notes that President Obama was not consulted by Attorney General Holder on the decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other terrorsts in New York:

Second, we have learned since the announcement that Holder apparently did not consult Obama before deciding to bring the Sept. 11 terrorists back to Ground Zero. No further evidence is necessary that Holder regards the war on terrorism as a law enforcement matter. In a decision with obvious national security implications, the attorney general consulted with neither the commander in chief nor the secretary of defense. He employed a process that might be more appropriately applied to the trial of a mafia kingpin or a serial killer.


And what a process. In an interview on Jim Lehrer’s NewsHour, Holder described consulting with Justice and Defense department prosecutors and staffers. The rest of the interview deserves to be quoted at length:

Lehrer: Did you run [the decision] by President Obama?

Holder: Just informed him of the decision….

Lehrer: So you just told him what your decision was; you didn’t say, “What do you think about it, Mr. President?”

Holder: Nope. Told him last night, or had relayed to him what I was going to do last night while he was on Air Force One on his way to Asia.

Lehrer: Did you talk to anybody outside the government?

Holder: I talked to my wife --

Lehrer: Yes? Okay.

Holder: -- about what she thought. And I actually talked to my brother, who’s a Port Authority police officer who served --

Lehrer: Oh, is that right? Yes.

Holder: -- in New York, New Jersey, and who lost friends and colleagues on 9/11 in the towers. And I talked to them about what -- was it appropriate to bring it in New York, the symbolic significance of it, the possibility of getting a good and fair, detached jury.

Yeah, okay. So Holder -- in making a decision about a leader from an international terrorist organization currently in combat with American troops abroad -- consulted with his wife and brother. And not, apparently, about the possibility of another attack on America, but about symbolism and jury selection. Do we have any reason to trust Holder’s strategic judgment on the nature of the global terrorist threat? Has he said or done anything recently to increase that trust?

 One terrorist attack in New York and Holder has to go.

Peggy Noonan is right: the Obama administration needs adult supervision.

Modern Pharaisaism - Calvinist Division

Alistair Begg - a pastor and broadcaster of "Truth for Life" - explains why he can't sign the Manhattan Declaration, notwithstanding his attendance at the conference that gave rise to the declaration:

Why then have I chosen not to append my name as one of the initial signers? Because of my convictions about the nature of the Gospel, and the importance of Christian co-belligerency being grounded in it. The activity of the Christian as a citizen engaging in co-belligerency over civic and moral issues is not the same as the declaration of Christians mutually recognizing the reality of each other’s faith. This is what I wrote to Chuck Colson:

“Thank you for sending me the amended document. I care deeply about these issues, but I cannot in conscience sign on with those with whom I have fundamental disagreements on the nature of the Gospel. (I just re-read Calvin in the Institutes, Book IV, section 18.)”

This particular section of Calvin’s Institutes provides us with his response to the Roman Catholic doctrine of the mass.

It was maintained at the meeting in New York that this document was not to be viewed as a product of ECT (Evangelicals and Catholics Together). However, in light of the evangelical leadership behind the declaration, it is hard not to take into consideration the most recent ECT paper on “The Blessed Virgin Mary in Christian Life and Faith”. In examining the place of Mary, the writers “acknowledge the primary authority of Holy Scripture.” This at least gives the impression of a concession to Roman Catholicism. Protestant theology affirms the sole authority of Scripture. Sadly contemporary evangelicalism seems little concerned with the solas of The Reformation and is therefore susceptible to initiatives, which make something other than the Gospel, the basis of unity and the focus of our declarations.

I am reminded in this connection of the declaration of Jude.

“Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.”

It is quite common for people to view The Reformation as simply a disagreement between two groups of men. The protestant martyrs and their monuments testify to the fact that they died, not on account of ecclesial differences, but because the issue was the way of salvation. (Interestingly, exactly the same was true of the Roman Catholic martyrs!)

Are we wise to lay aside crucial historical differences of eternal significance so as to secure temporal advantages? George Smeaton, in his classic work on the atonement observes, “To convert one sinner from his way is an event of greater importance than the deliverance of a whole kingdom from temporal evil.”

I do not believe it is possible to embrace the premises of ecumenical strategy and still draw the conclusions of evangelical orthodoxy.

In accord with others who have chosen not to sign, my reservation is not with the issues themselves, or in standing with others who share the same concerns, but it is in signing a declaration along with a group of leading churchmen, when I happen to believe that the teaching of some of their churches is in effect a denial of the biblical gospel. I wonder whether it might not have been more advantageous for evangelicals to unite on this matter, rather than seeking cooperation with segments from Rome, Eastern Orthodoxy and the Latter Day Saints. The necessary co-belligerence, as far as I’m concerned, can never be rooted in a Gospel other than that which has been given to us.

Here are some comments on his blog:

Alistair, I agree with you that the Roman Catholic Church isn't of Christ. However, I believe that all Christians should band together against this legislative onslaught! All churches, pulpits & preachers are under attack. If you don't believe that listen to some of your own preaching about the empty churches of Europe! Europe has become a mission field! The United States is next. Even Calvin fled to Switzerland rather than take up the struggle. Is this what we're supposed to do?

And:

While the patriotic side of me, which mourns the passing of our great nation's Judeo/Christian heritage, yearns to take action with those who share my political leanings, I must regroup and remember that God has already told us who we are to partner with, or not. We are not to be yoked together with unbelievers, which most certainly would include the Roman Catholic Church, who, by her own admission, has condemned Protestants as 'anathema'. What communion has light with darkness? None, no matter what that darkness is called. By signing that document, however politically beneficial it may seem, it would still be partnering with the aspostate Roman Catholic Church. The gospel must come first, before our political desires, and the true Church must never yoke herself to any other but Christ Himself.

This provides an interesting insight into a mindset that still exists.

This kind of Christian sectarian in-fighting has a long history.  In fact, this kind of thing led to the martyrdoms of St. Peter and St. Paul.  We can see this alluded to in the First Epistle of Clement:

But not to dwell upon ancient examples, let us come to the most recent spiritual heroes. Let us take the noble examples furnished in our own generation. Through envy and jealousy the greatest and most righteous pillars [of the church] have been persecuted and put to death. Let us set before our eyes the illustrious apostles. Peter, through unrighteous envy, endured not one or two, but numerous labours; and when he had at length suffered martyrdom, departed to the place of glory due to him. Owing to envy, Paul also obtained the reward of patient endurance, after being seven times thrown into captivity, compelled to flee, and stoned. After preaching both in the east and west, he gained the illustrious reputation due to his faith, having taught righteousness to the whole world, and come to the extreme limit of the west, and suffered martyrdom under the prefects. Thus was he removed from the world, and went into the holy place, having proved himself a striking example of patience.

Some scholars argue that this is a reference to the possibility that Peter and Paul were betrayed by Christian sects that were hostile to the church headed by Peter and Paul.

Christians clearly still have a lot of work to do in order to advance the message and reality of Christ's love, which involves the ideal of Christian unity.

Of Paradigm Shifts and Fraud

Vincent Gray explains how he knew that fraud was rampant in Climate Science:

In 1999, I had a stroke of luck. I asked one of the IPCC officials for the data from which one of their maps was compiled, and I received it. I wrote a paper analyzing the results and submitted it to Geophysical Research Letters. They just sat on it. I instead published it on John Daly’s website. Today, it is still the only paper recognized by Google on “Regional Temperature Change.”


I now know my paper was not critical enough, since we have proof that the basic data and its processing is far more dubious than I had envisaged.

I tried to update my paper and resubmit it. Nothing doing. Since the small group — revealed within the CRU emails — control most of the peer reviewers, very few peer reviewed papers which criticize that group are allowed to appear in the most prominent published literature which dominates the academic establishment.

I have only been able to find a place to release my criticisms on the internet, now the only realm where unfettered scientific discussion is possible.

Star Trek regularly presented a very popular model of how science advances. The episode would present a threat, scientists - well, Mr. Spock, or Scotty, or Bones - would start thinking about the problem, forty minutes later they would have a game-changing scientific advance and a fully operational critical test model for the theory.


This is how most people think science works. Scientists are compelled by the data to accept the theory and then the coldly and methodically designing their tests to prove or disprove the theory.

Unfortunately, this model is complete BS. Scientists are people with their own prejudices, hatreds, friendships and scores to settle. As Thomas Kuhn demonstrated in his "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", what often determines whether a given scientist will accept a given theory are non-scientific facts such as whether it fits a broader worldview accepted by the scientist, or whether the scientists has some personal allegiance to the proponent of the theory. Scientists are not “converted” by data or argument; they can be as willfully obstinate as anyone else.

As Kuhn pointed out by examining many historical examples of “paradigm shifts” between one scientific theory and another, it is generally the case that the paradigm shift cannot be said to occur until the adherents of the older, less successful paradigm have died off. Science advances death by death.

So the idea that all scientists accepted the AGW model within less than a decade was obvious BS, and it was obviously designed to promote an agenda that in some sense is related to how science may actually be done in our fallen world, but which is really secondary to the pursuit of the truth.

Interestingly, another aspect of the Kuhn model has comes into play with the exposure of the CRU’s fraudulent and illegal approach to science. Kuhn postulated that paradigm shifts occur when scientists are faced with anomalies that are not easily explained by the existing scientific worldview. When this happens, scientists will generally engage in one of two strategies. One strategy is to design ad hoc fixes to maintain the existing paradigm, building epicycles into the Ptolemaic model, for example. The other strategy is to chuck the old system and think outside the box. Most science is “normal science” of the former kind.

What we are suddenly seeing is a number of anomalies that are unexplained by the AGW model. Not only the lack of warming over the last decade, but in a host of other areas, individual scientists and reports are providing data that doesn’t fit within the AGW paradigm. What this suggests is that AGW theory is about to suffer the same crisis that eliminated phlogiston theory and the Ptolemaic Earth-centered solar system.
 

Science is based on Openness and the Ability to Replicate Results.

Well, we now know that the Climate Scientists were suppressing data, and based on the computer codes of their data it seems that they couldn't replicate their own results.

This is not, sadly, all that unusual. Simply put, scientists aren’t software engineers. They don’t keep their code in nice packages and they tend to use whatever language they’re comfortable with. Even if they were taught to keep good research notes in the past, it’s not unusual for things to get sloppy later. But put this in the context of what else we know from the CRU data dump:

1. They didn’t want to release their data or code, and they particularly weren’t interested in releasing any intermediate steps that would help someone else

2. They clearly have some history of massaging the data — hell, practically water-boarding the data — to get it to fit their other results. Results they can no longer even replicate on their own systems.

3. They had successfully managed to restrict peer review to what we might call the “RealClimate clique” — the small group of true believers they knew could be trusted to say the right things.

As a result, it looks like they found themselves trapped. They had the big research organizations, the big grants — and when they found themselves challenged, they discovered they’d built their conclusions on fine beach sand.

But the tide was coming in.

Pondering Angels Dancing on the Head of a Pin

Victor Reppert asks "If God used an evolutionary process to create us, why did he do it that way?"


My response:

This argument is taken from James Blish's "A Case of Conscience."

Did Adam have a navel?

One could easily say, "of course not." The navel is the evidence of a particular human's human past, namely having had a mother, which Adam lacked.

Yet, all of the great artists have painted Adam with a navel. Are they wrong?

Maybe not. Adam was an archetype and prototype of the human being. Moreover, Adam was created with all proper human perfections and traits. Human beings have mothers as a trait and perfection that is properly due to the condition of being human. Therefore, in some sense, an Adam without a navel would have been less human than his descendants. Similarly, having a navel would have been fitting since it would have gestured at the fact that it is part of human beings to have a past, a past that included having a mother.

Likewise, if God created the world from scratch, then it would have been fitting for God to have given the world a past, because things that have no past are less perfect than things that have a past.

Of course, it would have been even more fitting, perhaps, for a thing to have a past, rather than the semblance of a past.

Under either hypothesis, evolution is fitting because it provides the natural past, a history, which makes a thing more perfect than something that lacks a history.

Blish, an atheist who seemed to know his St. Thomas, put the following into the mouth of his fictional Jesuit priest, who is confronted with an world that seems to confirm atheism, after explaing why the great artists were right to show Adam with a navel:

"What does that prove?" Cleaver said.

"That the geological record, and recapitulation too, do not necessarily prove the descent of man. Given my initial axiom, which is that God created everything from scratch, it's perfectly logical that he should have given Adam a navel, Earth a geological record, and the embryo the process of recapitulation. None these need indicate a real past; all might be there becasue the creations involved would have been imperfect otherwise."

A Case of Conscience (Del Rey, 1958) p. 95.

Update:  On the other hand, it seems that there are some who know that Adam and Eve did not have navels.  This article by Al Maxey at Grace Centered Magazine does a good job of rehearsing the navel/no navel debate, and even starts with my "angels dancing on the head of a pin" gibe, but concludes:

It is my firm conviction that to suggest God created Adam and Eve with navels is to suggest He is the creator of a grand deception, and I simply am unwilling to make such an assertion about my God. The Scriptures inform us that the created universe declares the glory and majesty of our God; it is a powerful witness to who and what He is. But, if the testimony of most every aspect of our universe is a LIE, then what does that say about the One who created it?! An atheist in England wrote the following to a Christian who was advocating the "Appearance of History/Age" theory, "Would you really have us believe in an alleged divine being that behaves that way?!" This person has a very good point. Do we really want to proclaim such a God to unbelievers?! If He has intentionally deceived us in some areas, then why not in others?!


It is my conviction He has not deceived us at all. Did Adam and Eve have a navel? NO, they did not! I can say this confidently not because I have special knowledge of the nature of Adam and Eve, but because I have special knowledge of the One who created Adam and Eve. The inspired Scriptures have revealed our Creator to us, and He is not a God who sets out to create a deception, an illusion, an appearance which is completely contrary to the truth. One could never trust such a God.

One must be impressed by Mr. Markey's ability to discern the status of our first parents' navels. 

I don't necessarily disagree with his concerns, although I think that a world with a history is more perfect world than one without, which is one reason why I think that evolution isn't a "set up."

It seems like a lot may be riding on this bit of seemingly silly theological speculation.

Second Update:  There may be a theological problem with Mr. Markey's analysis.  Specifically, if there is evidence of evolution, and it is fake evidence, and God didn't fake it, then who did?

The answer to that question would gesture at some power other than God with the ability to create.  That insinuation is the core of Manicheanism, which posited two creative powers, one which literally created the natural world.

In fact, that insight is the conflict that drives Blish's book.

Sacrificing Religions

"Hindu sacrifice of 250,000 animals begins."

This story puts me in mind of Julian the Apostate - who attempted to undermine Christianity and return the Roman Empire to its traditional Pagan religious traditions.  An essential part of this restoration included a devotion to animal sacrifice, such that Julian the Apostate was also called Julian the Apostate, and he was often described as being covered with the gore of the multitude of animals that he sacrificed to his pagan gods.

The article descrives the festival to the Hindu Goddess Goddhimai as follows:

The world's biggest animal sacrifice began in Nepal today with the killing of the first of more than 250,000 animals as part of a Hindu festival in the village of Bariyapur, near the border with India.


The event, which happens every five years, began with the decapitation of thousands of buffalo, killed in honour of Gadhimai, a Hindu goddess of power.

With up to a million worshippers on the roads near the festival grounds, this year's fair seems more popular than ever, despite vocal protests from animals rights groups who have called for it to be banned. "It is the traditional way, " explained 45-year old Manoj Shah, a Nepali driver who has been attending the event since he was six, "If we want anything, and we come here with an offering to the goddess, within five years all our dreams will be fulfilled." .

Crowds thronged the roads and camped out in the open, wrapped in blankets against the cool mist. The festivities included a ferris wheel, fortune-telling robots and stalls broadcasting music and offering tea and sugary snacks.

As dawn broke, the fair officially opened with the sacrifice of two rats, two pigeons, a pig, a lamb and a rooster in the main temple, to cheers of "Long live Gadhimai" from spectators pushing against each other for a better view.

In the main event, 250 appointed residents with traditional kukri knives began their task of decapitating more than 10,000 buffalo in a dusty enclosure guarded by high walls and armed police.

Frightened calves galloped around in vain as the men, wearing red bandanas and armbands, pursued them and chopped off their heads. Banned from entering the animal pen, hundreds of visitors scrambled up the three-metre walls to catch a glimpse of the carnage.

The dead beasts will be sold to companies who will profit from the sale of the meat, bones and hide. Organisers will funnel the proceeds into development of the area, including the temple upkeep.

On the eve of the event, protesters made a final plea to organisers by cracking open coconuts in a nearby temple as a symbolic sacrifice. "It is cruel and inhumane. We've always been a superstitious country, but I don't think sacrifice has to be part of the Hindu religion," said the protest organiser, Pramada Shah

The campaign has the support of the French actor Brigitte Bardot, who has petitioned the Nepalese prime minister, Madhav Kumar Nepal, about the issue. But the government, which donated £36,500 to the event, has shown no sign of discontinuing the centuries-old tradition. An attempt by the previous government to cut the budget for animal sacrifice provoked street protests.


Chandan Dev Chaudhary, a Hindu priest, said he was pleased with the festival's high turnout and insisted tradition had to be kept. "The goddess needs blood," he said. "Then that person can make his wishes come true."

I find this interesting as a practical example of the world from which Christianity emerged.

Talented people with too much time on their hands



And

Manhattan Declaration

Let's mark this as a hopeful sign.  A group of Catholic, Evangelical and Orthodox leaders have signed a document defining their common cause on issues pertaining to life, marriage and religious liberty.

The Declaration appears to do more than provide talking points; it seems to commit the signatory to action:

As Christians, we take seriously the Biblical admonition to respect and obey those in authority. We believe in law and in the rule of law. We recognize the duty to comply with laws whether we happen to like them or not, unless the laws are gravely unjust or require those subject to them to do something unjust or otherwise immoral. The biblical purpose of law is to preserve order and serve justice and the common good; yet laws that are unjust—and especially laws that purport to compel citizens to do what is unjust—undermine the common good, rather than serve it.


Going back to the earliest days of the church, Christians have refused to compromise their proclamation of the gospel. In Acts 4, Peter and John were ordered to stop preaching. Their answer was, “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.” Through the centuries, Christianity has taught that civil disobedience is not only permitted, but sometimes required. There is no more eloquent defense of the rights and duties of religious conscience than the one offered by Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Writing from an explicitly Christian perspective, and citing Christian writers such as Augustine and Aquinas, King taught that just laws elevate and ennoble human beings because they are rooted in the moral law whose ultimate source is God Himself. Unjust laws degrade human beings. Inasmuch as they can claim no authority beyond sheer human will, they lack any power to bind in conscience. King’s willingness to go to jail, rather than comply with legal injustice, was exemplary and inspiring.

Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s.

Interesting, and potentially prophetic.
 
Of course, on the Truly Reformed side, there are the usual group of pharisees who are worried about ritual pollution of the True Gospel by association with the unclean.
 
James MacArthur explains why he is not signing:
 

• Although I obviously agree with the document’s opposition to same-sex marriage, abortion, and other key moral problems threatening our culture, the document falls far short of identifying the one true and ultimate remedy for all of humanity’s moral ills: the gospel. The gospel is barely mentioned in the Declaration. At one point the statement rightly acknowledges, “It is our duty to proclaim the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in its fullness, both in season and out of season”—and then adds an encouraging wish: “May God help us not to fail in that duty.” Yet the gospel itself is nowhere presented (much less explained) in the document or any of the accompanying literature. Indeed, that would be a practical impossibility because of the contradictory views held by the broad range of signatories regarding what the gospel teaches and what it means to be a Christian.

Which makes the perfect the enemy of the good.

MacArthur also writes:

• Instead of acknowledging the true depth of our differences, the implicit assumption (from the start of the document until its final paragraph) is that Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Protestant Evangelicals and others all share a common faith in and a common commitment to the gospel’s essential claims. The document repeatedly employs expressions like “we [and] our fellow believers”; “As Christians, we . . .”; and “we claim the heritage of . . . Christians.” That seriously muddles the lines of demarcation between authentic biblical Christianity and various apostate traditions.

Apostate traditions.  Check.

James White offers this:

There is no question that all believers need to think seriously about the issues raised by this declaration. But what is the only solution to these issues? Is the solution to be found in presenting a unified front that implicitly says "the gospel does not unite us, but that is not important enough to divide us"? I do not think so. What is the only power given to the church to change hearts and minds? United political power? Or the gospel that is trampled under foot by every Roman Catholic priest when he "re-presents" the sacrifice of Christ upon the Roman altar, pretending to be a priest, an "alter Christus"? Am I glad when a Roman clergyman calls abortion murder? Of course. But it exhibits a real confusion, and not a small amount of cowardice, it seems, to stop identifying the man's false gospel and false teaching simply because you are glad to have a few more on the "right" side of a vitally important social issue.

Frank Turk at First Things' Evangel blog refuses to sign because, inter alia:

we have obscured the necessary and central fact of the Gospel by overlooking the irreconcilable differences between “Evangelicals”, “Roman Catholics”, and “Orthodox” by calling all of these groups “believers” in a rather indiscriminate way. I’ve said it elsewhere, so it should be no surprise when I say it here that I am sure there are Catholics who are saved, and likewise for the occasional Eastern Orthodox you may run into who exercises an Evangelical (large “E” intended) understanding of Jesus and the consequences of Him; but to throw out the wide blanket and just call all of these groups “Christian” in an overly-broad sociological sense, and to call all of them “believers” in the sense required to make the rest of the reasoning in this document is much. It makes the distinction between “belief” and “unbelief” such a fuzzy line that I doubt anyone signing this document actually means what they have said here.

Reading this puts me in the same boat as Joe Carter's "Confession of the Confused" at Evangel:

I’ll give you one recurring, though nonspecific, example. I often read a lot of vague musing about Gospel and Law. Gospel, in these posts, is an ill-defined term that represents all that is good and holy. If you have the Gospel then you have everything and are doing it right since you’re not really doing anything at all (Jesus does all the work).

I agree. What is this Gospel that motivates these people?

Is it Christ's answer to the blind and the crippled?  Did Jesus preach to them of their need to repent and leave them blind and crippled?  Did he heal them, and affirm them in their sin?

Obviously, He addressed both their physical and spiritual needs.

When the faithful ask to be thrown a rope to hold onto the Christian moral tradition they have been given, what is wrong with throwing them a rope, rather than a series of lecture notes on the distinction between the law and the gospel? 

We are, after all, incarnated spiritual beings who have to live in this world while we are trying to transcend it.

Blowback: How Pederasty became Uncool Again

Mary Eberstadt at First Things explains the unlikely phenomenon of the connection between anti-catholic liberals taking the high ground led to the freshening of the moral sense against pedophilia.:

After documenting the trend toward a social sanctioning of sex-with-children, Eberstadt notes how Roman Polanski was tossed to the wolves, which is particularly odd since his crime was given a slap on the wrist back in the 1970s.  She then connects the dots:

In a fascinating bit of moral jujitsu, the scandals helped in a second way to repair the preexisting public consensus against sex with minors. Naturally enough, throughout the scandals and beyond, the spectacle of priests committing crimes proved irresistible to the people who already hate the Catholic Church. Also attracted by the fray were other, more refined souls who simply wish the Church ill as a matter of habit because they want it to conform more to what they mean by Catholic. And so, throughout the scandals, both subsets of Church detractors—non-Catholic anti-Catholics and anti-Church-hierarchy Catholics—took every opportunity to excoriate the institution and claim the moral high ground for themselves.


There was plenty of high ground for them to claim. Some Church officials stupidly played ostrich about the scandals. Others formally or informally cooperated in the evil of the crimes. With so much blame to go around, critics from all directions could hardly be faulted for turning the scandals into an opportunity to air every other grievance they harbored about Christianity—most especially, about its traditional teachings on sexual morality.

Yet this hate-fest on the Catholic Church in the name of the priest–boy scandals, rollicking though it was for some, came with blowback: It prospectively cast all those enlightened people into a new role as defenders of the young and innocent. In other words, it logically created a whole new class of anti-pederasts. And since the Church’s harshest critics are, generally speaking, the same sort of enlightened folks from whom pedophilia chic had floated up, there lurked in all of this a contradiction. After all, one could either point to the grave moral wrong of what the offending priests had done— or one could minimize the suffering of the victims, as apologists for pedophilia had been doing before the scandals broke. But one could not plausibly do both any more, at least not in public. And so, in a way that could not have been predicted, but that is obviously all to the good, the priest scandals made it impossible to take that kinder, gentler look at the question of sex with youngsters that some salonistes of a few years back had been venturing.

Good can can come from evil.

Retreat from Reason

The Anglican Mainstream on Archbishop Rowan's recent advice that Catholicism should modeled itself upon Anglicanism.

Because that model has shown itself to be so very succesful of late.

The Fifth Estate is the Readership


The MSM is attempting to ignore "Climategate" but the readers won't let them.

Hide the Decline


Catchy!

Nothing says "Celebrate the Birth of the Prince of Peace" like Santa Claus on a Carpet-Bombing Mission


Here is the link.

For Some People it is Always the 19th Century

Francis Beckwith linked this series of talks by Pastor Tony Bartolucci that critique Beckwith's book on his return to Catholicism, "Return to Rome."  Beckwith is very charitable in saying that he is honored by the attention paid to his work, even thought the attention is critical.

Pastor Bartolucci begins his talk with this story from a slightly older pastor, the late Dr. Greg Bahnsen as a way of setting up what he sees is the problem. Pastor Bartolucci observes:

During his introduction Dr. Bahnsen states:

I am going to preach a sermon to you . . . that in all honesty I never in all my life thought that I would do. I cannot imagine needing to preach this sermon. But I must. . . . I must preach, and others as well must preach, about a problem we are facing in our day and age that really is quite unexpected.

I grew up in a Roman Catholic community. . . . The vast majority of people around me who were religious . . . were not very much Evangelical Bible-believing Christians, they were Roman Catholics. . . . I knew what it meant for them to fornicate, to swear, to be drunk, to go to confession, have their mass, and to repeat it week after week after week. I knew what it was for them to adore Mary, to learn in their Missals how to pray to her. . . .

I didn't think people found Roman Catholic theology all that credible. When I saw people changing religiously it was in two ways as, I grew up. They either were converted--they left the Roman Catholic way of looking at things, or paganism, and came into the church of Jesus Christ believing that their sins were forgiven by the grace of God through the intercession of Jesus Christ and his substitutionary atonement--they either became converted and Christians as we understand that born-again experience, or they left the Catholic Church and became even more pagan.

The problem according to Pastor Bartolucci pace Dr. Bahnsen is the inexplicable and mysterious phenomenon of apparently normal Protestants exchanging their living faith for the dead faith of Catholicism, filled as it is with unregenerate sinners of the kind that Dr. Bahnsen, and it seems Pastor Bartolucci, grew up with.

To which I noted in Beckwith's comments, "Wow!"  You just don't expec that kind of screed to be actually uttered by people living today.

Which lead commenter "Paul" to post: 

Peter, I have listened to all of part 1. I'm looking at the transcript now and I'm having trouble finding the "anti-catholic diatribe". Maybe you could provide an example or perhaps define "anti-catholic diatribe"?

To which I responded, after picking out some of the obvious statements made by Pastor Bartolucci (in italics):

With all due respect, are you serious?

I hate to say this , but if a person can't see that Pastor Baroloucci's plays on classic Anti-Catholic tropes, that person needs to take the beam out of hi own eye before ever complaining about the mote in his neighbor's eye.

The difference between playing the bigot card and making a non-bigoted, reasoned argument for the superiority of one system over another in general turns on the extent to which one makes an appeal to the themes and tropes of bigotry. Such tropes are invariably used to trigger sub-rational emotional responses of agreement rather than to advance a reasoned argument. We know, for example, that one such silly anti-catholic trope among Protestants is the notion that Catholicism is a dead religion of works. Protestants have essentially read Catholics into the role of Jewish legalism in their misreading of Paul.

So, not even dealing with Pastor Bartoloucci’s many strawmen arguments, but focusing on his use of subrational tropes that appeal to traditions of Protestant bigotry, we see:

(Quoting Dr. Bahnsen:) I knew what it meant for them to fornicate, to swear, to be drunk, to go to confession, have their mass, and to repeat it week after week after week.


Now, isn’t that a classic? Those Catholics, drinking and fornicating all week – unlike the upscale and well-behaved Protestants – only to go to confession on Saturday, just to start over again like the foreign riff-raff that they are.

Because, obviously, no properly American Protestant would ever fornicate and drink during the week.

Come one, this one goes back to the 19th Century. I’m amazed that it is still being recycled in the 21st. It’s such a cliché that it is painful to read.

This isn’t quoting Father Flannery over a drink at the local bar.

I’m sorry was that an Irish priest? Drinking? At a bar?

How like them Irish Catholics with their weekly fornicating and drinking.

Because, again, we know that a good reformed Presbyterian would never go to a bar for a drink.

But them Irish with their priests, you know how they are.

Seriously?

In fact, as a new Christian I held the Roman Catholic Church in contempt. Not the rank and file of the people mind you, but the system and those that promoted it. I looked at it as a false religion that promised heaven but delivered hell.


Yup, he’s got no problem with the rank and file, except for their weekly fornicating and drinking and going for drinks with Father Flannigan at the local bar to talk about Nostra Aetate.

But, heck, it’s not anything that having the “true gospel” won’t fix, because no one with the “true gospel” ever goes out and drinks or fornicates because all saved Protestants are going to Heaven and never misbehave.


So sorry, Francis, they could not have stayed within the stench of dead religiosity, and those that go back to that prove that they were not regenerate in the first place.

Right, so those like me are just plain idiots who can’t smell the stench of dead religiosity. How weird that I don’t find it dead.

Hey, I guess I’m one of those weekly fornicating, drinking and swearing guys.

The American Episcopal Church is to Rome what marijuana is to heroin. It serves as a nice stepping stone to a greater high (or a greater evil)

Nothing hateful, bigoted or anti-catholic in that analogy.

You have to admire Pastor Bartoloucci's willingness to smear the the Episcopalians with the anti-catholic brush.


Regarding the singer Dion’s return to Catholicism: I sat there staring at the computer in dismay. I literally felt the blood run from my face. How could he do such a thing?

Perhaps, Dion maturely found a more complete truth in the Catholic Church?

Nah, that's not possible. The answer must be that Dion's been perverted by Satan, like all those "rank and file" Catholics, with their weekly drinking and fornicating and confessions, but likes the rank and file.

At some point it all begins to sound like the Left who will describe American soldiers as rapists and murderers, but will always emphasize that they "support the troops."

No one was more key in that regard than a man that I would later weep over (along with his wife) for his defection to Roman Catholicism.

And that wasn’t when he was a child. But, then, who can blame him when his former church leader starts to run around with drinkers and fornicators.

Hey, what was wrong with Pastor Bartoloucci if he only learned that one of his major supporters had never been regenerated until after that man had left for Catholicism. What if everyone in his congregation is like this man and isn't entirely regenerated?
 
Cue spooky music.


There is no life-saving Gospel in Rome!

That simply hasn’t been my experience, but what do I know, I'm Catholic and so by definition part of that weekly drinking and fornicating and confessing crowd that takes the old Irish priest out to get bombed.

Hey, and I'm Irish also, so obviously I'm an alcoholic.

I've jokingly stated that Pope Benedict should award him a plenary indulgence for what he has done to advance the Church's efforts to bring Protestants "back home to Rome!"

Stop it, Pastor, you're killing me!

There's nothing that doesn't bring a bunch of 17th Century Protestants a good belly-laugh like an indulgence joke.

These are all very, very old anti-catholic tropes. I have no problem with anyone celebrating the strengths of Protestantism. Give me a few seconds and I could dash out my paean of praise to Protestantism. But this one sided appeal to the popular prejudice of Protestants is unchristian to say the least.

Paul, of course, could not see why these statements weren't merely fair and true expressions of plain-to-see facts.  So, I explained, and then Paul wanted to bring up ghastly things said by Catholics, to which I asked if that made it "all good" for Pastor Bartolucci to say.  On reflection, I guess this means that Paul is able to spot bigotry when he wants.

Anyhow, for a ride through the 19th Century, take a look at the comments, particularly when the uber-Calvinist shock cadre arrive.

Local News

SEIU seems to have engaged in a campaign of intimidation and fraud in a a Fresno union election.

Hiding the Decline

Watt's Up With That? explains how "Mike's Nature Trick" was used to hide the fact that a statistical trend shows climate averages declining at the end of the 20th Century.

All the news that's fit to spike

The mainstream media is trying to spike the greatest science scandal in the history of the world.

Fact Check this one

Ruh, roh, Shaggy...it looks like it's OK for the Left to actually tell jokes against Obama.

"Will you kiss me?"

"Will you take me out to a dinner and a movie?"

"Do I look like Mrs. Obama?"

The Kennedy Mystique - 1 part heresy, another part arrrogance, and a whole bunch of sub-room temperature IQ.

Kudo's to Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin for prohibiting Representative Patrick Kennedy from taking Communion on the basis of Kennedy's unflagging support for the slaughter of the innocent.

Apparently, this prohibition happened in early 2007 as part of confidential and private communications between Kennedy and the Bishop, which Kennedy has chosen to disclose.

The news report from AFP "helpfully" advises:

Communion is a church ritual that involves the sharing of bread and wine meant to represent the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

Well, no.  It's not "meant to represent" the body and blood of Jesus Christ. According to Catholic docrine, Communion actually involves the real body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ.

But it would probably be too much to expect a journalist to actually research the subject before misinforming millions of people.

Correction: Canon Lawyer Ed Peters points out that Kennedy has not been barred from Communion, he has been asked to refrain from Communion.

So, scientists normally shred documents when served with a Freedom of Information Request?????


I thought that was the kind of thing that Mafia did.

The spin on Globalwarmingate is that the hacked e-mails are simply a case of letting outsiders see how the scientific sausage is made, which is inherently never pretty.

According to the pro-Global Warming apologetics site, Real Climate:

Instead, there is a peek into how scientists actually interact and the conflicts show that the community is a far cry from the monolith that is sometimes imagined. People working constructively to improve joint publications; scientists who are friendly and agree on many of the big picture issues, disagreeing at times about details and engaging in ‘robust’ discussions; Scientists expressing frustration at the misrepresentation of their work in politicized arenas and complaining when media reports get it wrong; Scientists resenting the time they have to take out of their research to deal with over-hyped nonsense. None of this should be shocking.

Let's stipulate that people are people and scientists are people and can be pettty and driven by their personal agendas.

Isn't that the point? Particularly when we keep hearing that "the science on AGW is settled"? Isn't it important to have full disclosure as a device to correct against individual bias and group prejudice? Science is supposed to be about sharing data and subjecting the data to critical evaluation.

Also, Real Climate's argument is tendentious. The hacked e-mails talk about a plan to destroy data, rather than complying with Freedom of Information requests. That is what corrupt corporations do when they know they've done something wrong. It's a crime, and it is shocking that supposedly ethical scientists would contemplate committing such a crime.

Real Climate also writes:

It’s obvious that the noise-generating components of the blogosphere will generate a lot of noise about this. but it’s important to remember that science doesn’t work because people are polite at all times. Gravity isn’t a useful theory because Newton was a nice person. QED isn’t powerful because Feynman was respectful of other people around him. Science works because different groups go about trying to find the best approximations of the truth, and are generally very competitive about that. That the same scientists can still all agree on the wording of an IPCC chapter for instance is thus even more remarkable.

So, we are supposed to trust climate scientists who can't explain why, you know, the world isn't getting warmer because physicists get such amazingly precise results?????

Also, I'm not aware of Feynman contemplating an illegal destruction of data.

Perhaps, when Real Climate is done spinning, it can show us the data for that claim.

Assuming no one has destroyed it.

"That thumping sound you hear is the Los Angeles Times moving the goal posts in the global warming debate."

Candance Moore at Newsbusters writes:

Because, according to the Times, the fight to stop possibly nonexistent global warming would be about saving the economy:

But advocates of action to curb global warming dismiss those claims, and political leaders and analysts say the Senate bill to limit greenhouse gas emissions will sink or swim based on economics, not science.

"The scientists are going to fight about this for decades," said Robert Dillon, a spokesman for Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, one of several Senate Republicans who say they are open to some form of a climate bill. "We should be doing something to curb our emissions that would not harm the economy, and would in fact boost the economy," he said.

So the Times believed in doing something about emissions whether or not we knew that they were harmful. It was suddenly okay for the science to remain unsettled, and in fact, the Senate was encouraged to limit greenhouse gases even if science was unable to prove a connection between carbon dioxide emissions and temperature.

And:

When scientific findings were there to warn that global warming would kill the planet, the Times was quick to support it; when science was later found to be riddled with tricks that tainted its credibility, climate legislation was suddenly all about fixing the economy.

Science Scandal

Pajama Media observes:

Late on the night of of November 19, news broke on PJM and elsewhere that a large amount of data had been stolen from one of the major climate research institutions by an unknown hacker and made available on the Internet. The institution is the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit, home institution for Dr Phil Jones and one of the world’s centers of research into anthropogenic global warming (AGW), or “climate change.”

• The hackers released about 172 megabytes of data, and we can be sure examining it closely will take some time. But after a few days, certain things are beginning to become clear.

• The data appears to be largely, perhaps entirely, authentic.

• The emails are incendiary.

The implications shake the scientific basis for AGW, and the scientific reputations of some of AGW’s major proponents, to their roots

Let’s look at the files and emails first. (For a running list of the interesting emails, see Bishop Hill’s list.) As I wrote earlier, you have to be really careful with this sort of thing, because it would only require salting a few really inflammatory fakes through a collection of otherwise real emails to make a convincing hoax (think Rathergate.) But since the data first came out, a number of the emails have been corroborated by recipients, and none of them have been refuted. So, at least tentatively, I think we need to accept them as authentic.

And:

If we do accept them as authentic, though, they truly are incendiary. They appear to reveal not one, not two, but three real scandals, of increasing importance.

• The emails suggest the authors co-operated covertly to ensure that only papers favorable to CO2-forced AGW were published, and that editors and journals publishing contrary papers were punished. They also attempted to “discipline” scientists and journalists who published skeptical information.

See for example emails 1047388489, 1256765544, 1255352257, 1051190249, 1210367056, 1249503274, 1054756929, 1106322460, and 1132094873. Also see email 1139521913, in which the author discusses how the comments at RealClimate.org are moderated to prevent skeptical or critical comments from being published. RealClimate advertises itself as a scientific blog that attempts to present the “real case” for AGW.

• The emails suggest that the authors manipulated and “massaged” the data to strengthen the case in favor of unprecedented CO2-forced AGW, and to suppress their own data if it called AGW into question.

See for example emails 0938018124, 0843161829, 0939154709 (and the graphic here), and 0942777075 (and the discussion here).

• The emails suggest that the authors co-operated (perhaps the word is “conspired”) to prevent data from being made available to other researchers through either data archiving requests or through the Freedom of Information Acts of both the U.S. and the UK.

 See for example emails 1106338806, 1228330629, 1212063122, 1210367056, and 1107454306 (again!).

 

Email 1107454306 is particularly interesting. In it, Dr Jones writes:

 

The two MMs [McKittrick and McIntyre] have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.

 What makes this interesting is that the CRU, in later years, announced that they had “inadvertently deleted” their raw data when they responded to an FOIA request from … McIntyre.

And:

Now, I’ve purposefully not included much of the text from these emails, both for reasons of space and because I want people to read them for themselves. But, at least on this first look, it appears that the three scandals are:

Here is the Bishop Hill post that provides links to the e-mails themselves.

But, really, there is no secret here - punishing political opponents, suppressing information, coordinating a political game have clearly been going on for years, backed by the willingness of those involved to open their eyes in wide innocence and say, "but, but, but we're scientists."

• First, a real attempt by a small group of scientists to subvert the peer-review process and suppress dissenting voices. (For another look at this, by a respected climate scientist who was one of the targets, see these posts on Roger Pielke Sr.’s blog.) This is at best massively unethical.

• Second, a willingness to manipulate the data to make a political case. This is certainly misconduct and possibly scientific fraud. This, if it proves true, should make these scientists subject to strong disciplinary action, even termination of their tenured positions.

• Third, what gives every appearance of an actual conspiracy to prevent data from being released as required by the Freedom of Information Acts in the US and UK. If this is proven true, that is a federal crime.

This e-mail is and the illustration of what they are talking about is precious:

Because we wouldn't want the real data to get in the way of an interpretation.



 

Long story short: Pro-Global Warming Scientists have been lying and suppressing contrary data

Because that's the way science is done.

Apparently, the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University has been hacked with the result that e-mails of leading pro-AGW scientists being released to the public.

Among the e-mails released are candid discussions by pro-AGW scientists admitting that they have no explanation for the absence of any warming during the last decade.

But by all means let's cripple the economy because there is A Concensus Among Scientists.

Remember, we can trust scientists in a politically charged area where careers and funding are dependent on there actually being a crisis, because physics gets such amazingly accurate results.

Everyone must Serve Baal

Sen. Reid’s Government-Run Health Plan Requires a Monthly Abortion Fee

New Lutheran body to form after gay pastor vote.

The Lutherans follow the example set by the Episcopalians.

Father Barron on "2012"

This is a very interesting review of Roland Emmerich's latest effort in destroying the world.  It is also very useful since it provides a forewarning that the 2012 is deeply anti-religious and anti-catholic.

Father Barron points out that Emmerich does not miss an opportunity to kill off any character who has the temerity to pray.  For example, the President is cut off in the middle of reciting the 23rd Psalm.  Catholics are likewise exterminated in what Father Barron refers to as the high point of anti-catholicism in the movies by being crushed by St. Peter's Basilica while - you guessed it - praying.

Emmerich is deliberately crafted 2012 to communicate his opposition to "organized religion":

But Emmerich acolytes need not fear that the film-maker is pulling his punches on 2012, which arrives in UK cinemas on 13 November. The movie depicts a global doomsday event supposedly predicted by the Mayans more than a thousand years ago – in order to highlight his opposition to organised religion, the director decided to use CGI to destroy the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro instead. For good measure, he also blew up the Sistine chapel and St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, plus, on a secular note, the White House (again).

Of course, Emmerich's opposition to "organized religion" is mixed with prudence when it comes to Islam, because, ya know, Rome doesn't issue fatwas, unlike Islam:

"I wanted to do that, I have to admit," Emmerich told scifiwire.com. "But my co-writer Harald [Kloser] said I will not have a fatwa on my head because of a movie. And he was right.

This sneak attack on Christianity is part of the passive-aggressive approach of Hollywood.  This summer's "The Invention of Lying" was also a long pro-atheist screed that pretended that the pro-atheist message inserted by the atheist writer was somehow irrelevant to the movie and didn't really need to be mentioned to those who might buy tickets to the mislabeled movie.

Father Barron says "don't go see this boring movie."

Are Catholics Creationists?

Wintery Knight Sent me this link.

George Sim Johnston's advice is "Catholics should take their cue from the Magisterium: Welcome the genuine discoveries of modern science while casting a skeptical eye on evolutionary "science" that for philosophical reasons dispenses with a Creator and treats man as a thing."

While allowing for the possibility of evolution, neither pope has issued a free pass to evolutionary materialism. The Church has nothing to fear from legitimate science, but is wary of materialist philosophies tricked up as science -- which is what Darwinism often amounts to. In Truth and Tolerance, Benedict complains that evolutionists often trespass their legitimate bounds by making sweeping metaphysical claims. As a result, the educated public has the vague impression that "evolution" explains everything. Why, it even explains Darwinists whose purpose in life is to explain that the universe has no purpose.


Benedict reminds us that there are fundamental questions that science in principle cannot answer. Such as: Why is there something rather than nothing? As G. K. Chesterton, an astute observer of the evolution wars, remarked: "Nobody can imagine how nothing could turn into something. Nobody can get an inch nearer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else."

Apart from the origin of the universe, there are two other ontological leaps that elude scientific explanation. First, the origin of life: Life only seems to come from life. Second, the human person: How could a purely "natural" process produce a creature so unlike anything else in nature? Mankind did not need the ability to write Hamlet or compose Don Giovanni in order to compete with the apes.

While aspects of evolutionary theory are certainly open to criticism, I don't think a conference of Christian scholars who read Genesis as a textbook in geology is very helpful. One could argue that there is not a single scientific datum anywhere in Scripture -- for the simple reason that the sacred writers had no notion of science in the modern sense. Whenever I encounter a creationist, I like to ask how we can see the Milky Way if the universe is only a few thousand years old. The response, needless to say, is wonderfully baroque.

No less a magisterial source than St. Augustine issued a similar prudential recommendation:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion. [1 Timothy 1.7]

On the Literal Meaning of Genesis.

Update:

From the comments, the passage in Humani Generis is

36. For these reasons the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter - for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God.

And:

37. When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.

Getting  Scrod in Boston

My dad just sent me a list of Boston distinctives, including:

How to say these Massachusetts city names correctly:


**Say it wrong, be shunned**
Worcester : Wuhsta (or Wistah)
Gloucester : Glawsta
Leicester Lesta
Woburn: Wooban
Dedham : Dead-um
Revere: Re -vee-ah
Quincy: Quinzee
Tewksbury : Tooks berry
Leominster : Lemin-sta
Peabody: Pee-ba-dee
Waltham : Walth-ham
Chatham: Chaddum
Samoset: Sam-oh-set or Sum-aw-set but nevah Summerset!

My mom always insisted on the proper pronunciation of her hometown, "Quincy."

One brought back some memories:

Bostonians.. ..think that there are only 25 letters in the alphabet (no R's)

except in "idea".

I remember being in First or Second Grade in Oak Harbor, Washington and not being able to understand why I was being marked down for mispelling "idear", when it was so clearly pronounced that way.  It wasn't until a college linguistics class that I learned that was a marker for the Boston dialectic, where I lived around the ages of three to four.

So far from God, so close to the Estados Unidas

Mary O'Grady of the Wall Street Journal interviews Honduran Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga and reports a somewhat different view than that of the American Left:

Even though the church backed the decision by Congress to depose Mr. Zelaya, the cardinal insists that from the start it has tried to promote peace. "In our communiqué immediately following the event," he explains, "we were saying this was a constitutional removal of the president, and that we have to learn from the mistakes, and we were calling for the reconciliation of the country. That's all that we did, but that very same day we were blamed as golpistas, golpistas."


Mr. Zelaya's supporters have put pressure on the church, but despite "constant death threats" the cardinal says he has received, he has not changed his position. In October, he says, all 11 members of the bishops' conference "made another statement calling for nonviolence and reconciliation."

Cardinal Rodríguez also feels strongly that Mr. Zelaya should not return to power. "I believe that a person who has been acting as he did no longer has the moral authority to be the president of the nation," he tells me.

Cardinal Rodríguez is a respected national figure and his words carry weight. Yet he emphasizes that the church has not become involved in the political process surrounding Mr. Zelaya's fate, and for good reason. "There are many people who are zelayistas in good faith because he was promising a lot of things to the poor. I have to be a bridge of unity for all."

That hasn't been so easy, because the cardinal also has a responsibility to care for his flock. And he believes that allowing the president to trample the constitution would be bad for the nation.

And:

Cardinal Rodríguez sees the rule of law as an important link to development. "The key is to assure justice," he says, "because if you don't have legal security, you are not going to invest. Investment is very important. With investments there are more jobs for our people."


Speaking of investors, the cardinal says, "of course they are not all saints," and human rights must be protected. "But what should we do without those jobs?" he asks. Then he adds, "Maquilas [assembly plants] are especially important for women, because their jobs have been a source of dignity. When they earn their own money they are no longer slaves to the macho man in their lives, who often is not even their husband."

It is interesting that the Cardinal should see the importance of investment and economic development as a source of relief for the poor when so many politicians don't.

Democracy's Watchdog

According to Mark Steyn:

If you wonder why American newspapering is dying, consider this sign-off:


AP writers Matt Apuzzo, Sharon Theimer, Tom Raum, Rita Beamish, Beth Fouhy, H. Josef Hebert, Justin D. Pritchard, Garance Burke, Dan Joling and Lewis Shaine contributed to this report.

Wow. That's ten "AP writers" plus Calvin Woodward, the AP writer whose twinkling pen honed the above contributions into the turgid sludge of the actual report. That's 11 writers for a 695-word report. What on? Obamacare? The Iranian nuke program? The upcoming trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

No, the Associated Press assigned 11 writers to "fact-check" Sarah Palin's new book, and in return the 11 fact-checkers triumphantly unearthed six errors. That's 1.8333333 writers for each error. What earth-shattering misstatements did they uncover for this impressive investment? Stand well back:

PALIN: Says she made frugality a point when traveling on state business as Alaska governor, asking "only" for reasonably priced rooms and not "often" going for the "high-end, robe-and-slippers" hotels.

THE FACTS: Although she usually opted for less-pricey hotels while governor, Palin and daughter Bristol stayed five days and four nights at the $707.29-per-night Essex House luxury hotel (robes and slippers come standard)...

That looks like AP paid 1.8333333 fact-checkers to agree with Mrs Palin: She says she didn't "often" go for "high-end" hotels; they say she "usually opted for less-pricey hotels". That's gonna make one must-see edition of "Point/Counterpoint".

Or is AP arguing "four nights" counts as "often"? Is that the point? AP assigned 11 reporters to demonstrate that four is a large number?

Powerline looks at the lame fact-checks and observes:

It appears to be a tribute to the factual accuracy of Palin's book that eleven hostile AP reporters can't come up with anything better than this.


It's funny how the press fact-checks some things but not others. Here is just one of thousands of examples one could cite: John Kerry, arguing for the cap-and-tax bill that he co-sponsored with Barbara Boxer (these are two of the least intelligent legislators of modern times, by the way), claimed that "over the last eight years, emissions in the United States of America in greenhouse gases went up four times faster than in the 1990s." This is a typical example of a "fact" that John Kerry just made up. In fact, carbon emissions rose much faster in the 1990s than over the last eight years:

Why is this Idiot Bowing?

The LA Times asks "how low will he go?" and observes that:

"Very low bows like this are a sign of great respect and deference to a superior."

This is simply basic. 

America's civic faith is that all men are created equal.

Americans don't bow to royalty.

We didn't dip the flag to Hitler. We don't dip the flag.

Our president is not the social inferior anyone.

So, why is Obama bowing to the Emperor of Japan?

Dick Cheney shows how an American greets royalty.