Missed the Misanthropes Hiding Behind Malthusianism

Dennis Prager wrote a column today, Why Are Atheist Books Best Sellers?.

Among the reasons he stated, he did not mention the haters of humanity.

The radical environmental movement has provided the misanthropes the perfect place to disguise their hatred. They do it under the cover of the "moral" authority asserted by Neo-Malthusianic movements like that foisted by the Global Warming crisis mongers.

I've made the case for this connection many times. Notably here and here. I've tried to get Mr. Prager to acknowledge the threat before. But for some unfathomable reason he chooses to miss it, not discuss it in depth. He even outright evaded it as can be heard here. Notice in that clip how he shunted all of the death worship onto the shoulders of radical Islam and let the radical Left slip by unscathed.

At the core of the Judeo-Christian branch of theology is the conviction that innocent people (like children in the womb) must not be sacrificed to whatever human fear or true-believer movement demands it.

It should thus come as no surprise that because of this protective covenant with their God that observant Christians and Jews -- and their rights to be safe with their thinking -- are being targeted.

It is not hard to see that we are in the middle stages of gradually having Christianity deemed intolerable by authorities with the mind-altering intolerance that these anti-theists (with whom Mr. Prager slammed all atheists with the title of his column) are advancing. The final stage, for which they are clearly aiming, is the status of the church depicted in the Orwellian dsytopia of the novel 1984: a distant memory.

Bottom line: It should be no surprise that Malthusian misanthropes and radical environmentalists, including some of the GW true-believers, would be prevalent at the same time as the popularity of these books. Mr. Prager failed to include them.

George W Bush Gets One Right

I'm going to get hell for this.

I have been so disappointed with our president, and I've been exceptionally dismissive lately of him (on the verge of outright despising him).

So I felt I had to given him some support where it was due. No halfway measures today. Those innumerable other things of his I dislike will simply wait for another day. Still, please pray that he won't betray me and those like me now that we've chosen to defend him in this: his stand against federal funding of embryonic stem cell research .

This time I think he will stand his ground (although I suspect his stand on amnesty could undermine his stand on this. If it does, I think he will indeed be damned.)

Even as embryonic stem cell research seems less and less useful, this doesn't stop the death cultists in the Left and in establishment media (forgive the redundancy) from acting as if all medical advancement will come to a grinding halt.

I personally think that the death cultists know how ugly they are to most Americans. Partial birth abortion and their despicable stand on it has put quite a distance between them and even partially decent human beings, let alone the vast majority of Americans. So this apparent non-wasteful use of either aborted embryos, or those eggs that may be fertilized in a dish, would make them seem heroic. And Establishment media has done its best to reestablish that illusion.

I have always like Michael J. Fox. And I am sad that he has Parkinson's Disease. I lost my Dad's mother and two of my Mom's brothers to it; and my Dad's sister suffers from it now. But the research will not "provide cures." The best anyone could legitimately say was that it "might provide" cures. (I can hear those few charging me with nitpicking again. Well, you guys can go to hell. Get off my blog.) And the brouhaha is only about fed funding. He's not tried to pass legislation to stop the practice, something quite a few in the country would be happy to see, Christian or not.

President Bush's statement that ending human life in order to preserve human life is unethical was once not a controversial statement. One didn't need to be a believer to accept that. (I'm not and I accept the premise as the civilizing one that was once simply stated as "to seek to err on the side of preserving innocent life.") But that doesn't stop the death cultists and their useful idiots from saying Bush has no right inserting his beliefs into his decisions.

Oh, he should insert their beliefs and then they'd be O.K. with him? Yeah. Right.

Look. Let me summarize. They believe that the embryo is insufficiently human to be protected. Fine. But it's only a belief. They could be wrong.

Unharmed, with normal intercourse leading to pregnancy and then, excepting for miscarriage, when left to grow it is a baby. But saying "it isn't in any way human" greatly relieves guilty consciences. And there are plenty of those not-dead-yet consciences; and the death cultists know it. So many in fact that it is illegal in some places to tell an abortion candidate that they may come to regret their decision to abort.

But facts like that have to be outlawed. Don't you people recognize fascism when it passes laws like that? (See? There's the education issue again. Thanks Bushie for you enlarging the Dept of Ed instead of putting a stake through its heart. Oops. I thought I would not to do that. Oh well. Shoot me.)

So he should insert their belief, that the embryo isn't human, so let's exploit it. And then they'll like Bush? Hardly. Like me they don't like him for other reasons. Our other reasons are different.

Congratulations President Bush. You got one right. Let's hope your trying to ram amnesty down our throats doesn't lose you the veto overriding ability you had before you betrayed our borders. (Oops).

God Asked Abraham To OFFER Isaac, Nothing More

Since I wrote At the Core of the Judeo-Christian Ethos: What Animates Its Critics last summer, it became one of my most hit upon pieces. All that interest led me to become even more aware of the many ways Genesis 22 is interpreted. I prove how much of it is blatant misinterpretation.

The Reason For This Essay
Of all the misinterpretations, I think there is one most damaging, most slanderous.

In numerous places I found serious people asserting variations of the opposite of what God intended. I am not going to link to them. They already get too much attention. It should be needless to say that I am strongly at odds with these other people.

It is clear that scripture, in Genesis 22, in all that followed in scripture, and from much that preceded it, that God did not demand Abraham kill Isaac in sacrifice. (Nor was Abraham eager to do so, perhaps the second most damaging misinterpretation.)

Reading What Has Been Written
It clearly says that God asks Abraham to offer Isaac at the place of sacrifice. I am sure there are some who will try to get off the hook by charging me with nitpicking. To them, well, you can go to Hell.

To the rest of you, you should rightly be asking: "So why the offer?"

The Purpose of Life
The purpose of the offering was to demonstrate to the world how the God of Abraham (not Abraham's god), The Creator of the universe, was different from other gods. Look.

The Creator made existence itself. He made life and death. He gives life to all and then reclaims all eventually. He does not need puny men to put to death others -- especially innocent human beings -- for Him. (As I wrote in my prior essay, men too easily kill other men for their own "reasons," fears and hatreds.)

For all life, for whatever lifespan one is given, is supposed to be a blessing and to a purpose. And the purpose may stand as a blessing to other men, as a temporal angel, and as a testament to God. (Those who live for any length of time in great pain and disability is another issue entirely. Certainly such a state is nothing to be wished for. I'm willing to explore this at another time. For now my position is that the occasional awful state of existence still does not make all existence any less of an overall blessing. That is, unless one hates existence itself. People who hate in that manner do indeed exist. They may arise from anywhere in the people. Maybe they are another form of birth defect. They make war with God in every generation.)

The Key Point Of The Offering
Abraham and Isaac would go through the formality of making such an offer for a purpose. The formality had to be in the manner familiar to those who so practiced to the other blood demanding gods of the ancient world.

For, in that way, it could then not be said that Abraham was less willing, less god-fearing, than the other practitioners. And it gave the God of Abraham the opportunity to specifically deny such an offer. The formality offered to Him the opportunity to show that the slaying of innocent human life is not required by Him.

Yes, there are other things implied with the offering. And The Covenant followed from it. But what I have just written is what the central reason for the offering appears to me to be.

My understanding is supported thus:

• It is consistent with the idea of an all powerful Creator.
• It is consistent with the idea of justice and charity that is the basis of all The Law.

Be it the Christian or Jewish interpretations of the laws, the central theme remains, and that stems from what I think is the correct interpretation of the offering in Genesis 22. The strong have an obligation to protect the weak; to prevent the weak from being forced to sacrifice themselves to cover the failings of the strong.

What prompted this essay
As I stated at the top, the hits to my old essay led me to discover many interpretations of Genesis 22. Quite a lot of that was so at odds with the whole context of scripture that to ascribe simple error to all of it stretches credulity to the breaking point. Without doubt some of it is deliberate misinterpretation. Animosity towards religion, and hate for the Judeo-Christian ethic in particular, is probably what drives it. Is it a sign of willing acceptance that so many repeat the wrong interpretations without looking deeper into their accuracy? Well, dear Reader, since you have gotten this far, it looks like you must be a blessed exception. I hope I may have made clearer what the decent explanation to this passage must be. I hope I have made it easier for the faithful to battle their detractors. Please drop me a line if I have.

But more importantly, if you did find that this was helpful, then I pray you help spread this explanation so that it reaches people both who have been misled and those who would otherwise be misled. Silence serves the detractors.

I challenge anyone to demonstrate how this interpretation of Genesis 22 is wrong.