A skeptical Christmas question

 It is, I believe Christian doctrine that Jesus was born of a virgin. But in Matthew the biblical text maintains not merely that Jesus was born of a virgin, but was prophesied to be so born. 

Matthew 1: 22-23, NIV

22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”[g] (which means “God with us”).

This is, of course, a quote from Isaiah 7: 14. There is some controversy as to whether the Hebrew word in the prophecy really means "virgin" or "young woman." But that is not my worry about the use of this. But that is not my concern. My concern is that it looks as is Matthew has ripped the Isaiah prophecy out of its context. The context is this: Pekah the King of Israel, and Rezin the king of Syria are threatening to attack Ahaz king of Judah. Ahaz is scared, and wants to go get protection from the Assyrians. Isaiah is telling Ahaz to trust God, not Nineveh, for protection against Pekah and Rezin, and tells him to look for a sign from God. The sign is supposed to be that a virgin or young woman (however you translate it) will conceive and bear a son, showing Ahaz that God is with us (and that he doesn't have to go do business with the stinking Assyrians (not nice people, by the way) to maintain the security of Judah. 

But if that's the sign Isaiah is talking about, then the birth of Jesus, which takes place several centuries after Ahaz is dead, doesn't do the job.  Ahaz needs a sign NOW that God is with us. So how is the Isaiah verse a prophecy of Jesus? 

What does the right to an opinion amount to?

 What does it mean to have a right to a belief or an opinion. Is part of the right to your opinion the right to express your opinion? If it doesn't involve this, then what kind of a right is it? What does such a right protect you from. If I have a right to life, then I have the right to be protected from someone else's attempt to take my life. No one has the power to take my opinion away from me by force, so what does a right to an opinion amount to? 

Homosexuality and the need for approval?

 One right that I believe sometimes get neglected is the right to disapprove of someone's conduct. I'm not particularly hostile to homosexuality but I fear that people in the LGBT community equate disapproval with some sort of assault or endangerment. (Microaggression?) Does my love life need everyone's approval?

Can we trust our elections?

 Well, it's either ballots or bullets. Here is an argument against excessive election skepticism. 

An atheistic justification for violence

 An atheistic argument for violence:

1) Atheism is true, and so obviously so that religious believers must be insane.

2) Insane people can do outrageous things.

3) The people who promulgate belief in God are putting other people's sanity in danger.

4) Even if we have to forcibly stop them from doing so, we can prevent them from leading other people on the road to insanity, and hence possibly outrageous actions.

5) Therefore, the use of force in the name of suppressing religion is justified.

What's wrong with this picture

 The Old Testament is loaded with death penalty offenses, though Christ said the only ones who could carry a death sentence against one adulteress in particular were ones who were without sin. (They were executing ONE person after catching her in the very act of adultery. What's wrong with this picture?)

Wokeness and nonsense

 A lot of nonsense comes out of an interest in being woke. Even more nonsense comes from the attempt to avoid wokeness at all costs.

Is it wrong to kill a vegetator?

  I have run this thought experiment on myself. Suppose human beings were such that when they died, their central nervous system shuta down first, leaving them to continue to exist in a vegetative state for nine month before their biological life expired. These "vegetators" just lie around taking up bed space unless, before they die, they give the hospital the right to give them a lethal injection and put an end to their continued existence as vegetators. (The vegetators invariably smell pretty awful, too). If I sign off on the lethal injection (which I think I would do in an instant), I can't see that I would be committing the sin of suicide. So I fail to see how ending the life of a human entity which has never experienced anything is somehow equivalent to ending the life of someone or something that is undergoing experiences, has hopes, desires, beliefs, and dreams, etc.

Can we stop inflation by not printing any more money?

 Not according to this. 

Hypocrisy

 Hypocrisy on the part of a speaker does nothing to invalidate the speaker's point. A chain-smoking doctor has every right to tell you to quit smoking.

Yet, in a lot of political discussion, if you criticize someone in the other party for doing something wrong, the defense is not "No that wasn't wrong," or "He didn't actually do (or say) that, but "Someone in your party did something just as bad, or worse." And the proper answer to that would have to be "So what."

Secular humanism

 Secular humanism

The belief that humanity is capable of morality and self-fulfillment without belief in God.

Secular humanism is comprehensive, touching every aspect of life including issues of values, meaning, and identity. Thus it is broader than atheism, which concerns only the nonexistence of god or the supernatural. Important as that may be, there’s a lot more to life … and secular humanism addresses it.

Secular humanism is nonreligious, espousing no belief in a realm or beings imagined to transcend ordinary experience.

Secular humanism is a lifestance, or what Council for Secular Humanism founder Paul Kurtz has termed a eupraxsophy: a body of principles suitable for orienting a complete human life. As a secular lifestance, secular humanism incorporates the Enlightenment principle of individualism, which celebrates emancipating the individual from traditional controls by family, church, and state, increasingly empowering each of us to set the terms of his or her own life.

https://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php/3260

Is this the reasonable conclusion if atheism is true? 

Shoving your religion down someone's throat

 We often hear the statement "Don't force your religious views on me?" What would constitute forcing your views on others. I take it no one can force another person to worship at their church. So, what would "forcing" amount to, exactly? Can some shove their atheism down your throat, for example.

How do people get rich?

 

This cartoon was clearly not created by a conservative. 

What if you can't decide about God?

 WHAT IF YOU CAN'T DECIDE ABOUT GOD

What if you think about theism and atheism, and just can't decide which one is true based on the evidence? You can

a) Not decide. But then if you have to make decisions which are based on whether or not you believe in God, what do you do? Sleep in on Sunday, or go to church? (Or maybe you try a synagogue, mosque, or church on even weeks, and stay away on odd ones).

b) Disbelieve. Believe only what you can prove. (Can I prove that I am not a brain in a vat being given my experiences by aliens?)

c) Believe. Theism has higher payoffs, so if you can't decide, bet on God. (This is Pascal's solution.)

Brain death, brain birth, and abortion

 Pro-choicers believe that even though a human fetus is species member, it lacks those characteristic that endow it with a right to life. One argument is that fetuses do not have functional brains until very late on, and therefore have not experienced anything. You can either see life as the career of a biological entity--that begins at conception. Or you can see it as a series of experiences or mental occurrences, and that doesn't begin until late in pregnancy. At the end of life we think of a person as dead (and therefore lacking a right to life), once the brain has died, even if there is some biological function still going on. So, at the beginning of life, when there is some biological functioning going on it's life has started even though it doesn't have a functioning brain? (If I only had a........) Mind you this may not be the last word on the abortion issue. But it does make it difficult to see how the same level of heinousness attaches to abortions (at least before brain development) that attaches to infanticide. In my view the lack of a developed brain is a morally relevant difference even if you believe, as I do, that abortion inflicts a significant loss and requires a high standard of justification.

Does the Steele Dossier explain the Mueller Investigation?

 No. 

What are the core claims of critical race theory?

This is from Education Week. 

Critical race theory is an academic concept that is more than 40 years old. The core idea is that race is a social construct, and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies.

The basic tenets of critical race theory, or CRT, emerged out of a framework for legal analysis in the late 1970s and early 1980s created by legal scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado, among others.

A good example is when, in the 1930s, government officials literally drew lines around areas deemed poor financial risks, often explicitly due to the racial composition of inhabitants. Banks subsequently refused to offer mortgages to Black people in those areas.

https://www.edweek.org/leadership/what-is-critical-race-theory-and-why-is-it-under-attack/2021/05

That's it. It is true that people go from the idea that racism can be systemic and institutional to other kinds of conclusions, but this part of it seems to be just true. Racism is not just individual, and not a matter of being a bigot. The idea is that just going color-blind is an insufficient response to the problems posed by racism. If  you don't use the n-word, you don't support segregation, you have friends in minority groups, etc., you can still be supporting institutionalized racism. 

It doesn't seem to be adequate to answer the problem of racism by saying "We're all  individuals," while denying racial identity.  If all you need for critical race theory is to deny individualist race theory, count me in. Objectionable conclusions might spin out from critical race theory, but this is not a reason to deny the central claim. 

Facts and ideology

 There are no right-wing facts and left-wing facts, there are just, well, facts. Alternative facts are what is known in logic as falsehoods. 

C. Everett Koop, an icon of the pro-life movement, who was Reagan's Surgeon General, remembered this when he refused to state that getting an abortion is traumatizing to the women who get them. 

People on both sides of the political aisle can learn from his example. 

Here. 

Is it necessary for a superintendent of public instruction to learn how to read?

 You would think so. Tom Horne, who actually held the position a few years ago, is running for the post again in the State of Arizona on the Republican ticket. His principal campaign is directed against Critical Race Theory and the 1619 project which emphasizes the history of slavery in America. 

Here is what Horne says that the 1619 project asserts: 

1. The American revolution was not fought for life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but because American slave owners feared a threat of abolition by the British authorities.

Here is what Nikole Hannah-Jones actually says:

Conveniently left out of our founding mythology is the fact that one of the primary reasons some of the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery. By 1776, Britain had grown deeply conflicted over its role in the barbaric institution that had reshaped the Western Hemisphere. In London, there were growing calls to abolish the slave trade. This would have upended the economy of the colonies, in both the North and the South. The wealth and prominence that allowed Jefferson, at just 33, and the other founding fathers to believe they could successfully break off from one of the mightiest empires in the world came from the dizzying profits generated by chattel slavery. In other words, we may never have revolted against Britain if some of the founders had not understood that slavery empowered them to do so; nor if they had not believed that independence was required in order to ensure that slavery would continue. It is not incidental that 10 of this nation’s first 12 presidents were enslavers, and some might argue that this nation was founded not as a democracy but as a slavocracy.

This doesn't actually say that the Founders were PRIMARILY motivated by the preservation of slavery. 

Underpopulation

 

u  In most societies historically people have been concerned about underpopulating since people historically depended upon children (particularly males) to take care of them in their old age, and because a strong male population was needed to protect the people from attack and to do the manual labor needed to keep everyone fed. Underpopulation, not overpopulation, was feared.