Tag Archives: christianity

CCP Destroying All Religious Books, Especially Christian

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The Epoch times:

“As the communist regime is escalating its restrictions on religious publications, those in the printing industry are left in distress. A sales department manager in Luoyang City, Henan Province, told Bitter Winter in September 2020 that printing of religious materials, “especially Christian,” is not allowed.

Anyone who takes on such orders breaks the law and might be put into prison. This is the line that we absolutely can’t cross,” the manager said, according to the report.

The authorities also conduct thorough checks to make sure that the businesses are adhering to the rules.

“They checked my storehouse, scrutinized all records, and even looked at paper sheets on the floor, to see if they have prohibited content,” said a printing house manager in the same city.

“If any such content is found, I’ll be fined, or worse, my business will be closed. Any religious content makes the issue political, not religious. Although banners on the streets say people are allowed religious beliefs, the only faith they can practice freely is that in the Communist Party,” he added.

Galileo Goes To Jail and Other Myths……

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“Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science and Religion,” Ronald L. Numbers, Harvard University Press, Dec. 8, 2010

Review

An illuminating study of the relationship between science and religion…This book features the contributions of a team of 25 scholars that includes agnostics, atheists, and Christians. Their collective objective is to dispel the “hoary myths” of the supposedly bellicose relationship between religion and science. Readers will be fascinated by the evidence that for advocating Copernicanism, Galileo was not imprisoned (as commonly thought) but interrogated–albeit under the threat of torture–and set up in an apartment. Other misconceptions concern the connection between Darwinian thought and Nazi biology, Einstein’s belief in God, and Islam’s alleged hostility toward scientific enquiry. (C. Brian Smith Library Journal 2009-03-02)

 

Slandering Christianity: The “flat earth” lie

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Veritas.ucsb.org debunks the secular lie that the Medieval period was a dark age in which Christians believed the earth was flat:

A curious example of this mistreatment of the past for the purpose of slandering Christians is a widespread historical error, an error that the Historical Society of Britain some years back listed as number one in its short compendium of the ten most common historical illusions. It is the notion that people used to believe that the earth was flat–especially medieval Christians.

It must first be reiterated that with extraordinary few exceptions no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the earth was flat…….

A few–at least two and at most five–early Christian fathers denied the sphericity of earth by mistakenly taking passages such as Ps. 104:2-3 as geographical rather than metaphorical statements. On the other side tens of thousands of Christian theologians, poets, artists, and scientists took the spherical view throughout the early, medieval, and modern church. The point is that no educated person believed otherwise.Historians of science have been proving this point for at least 70 years (most recently Edward Grant, David Lindberg, Daniel Woodward, and Robert S. Westman), without making notable headway against the error. Schoolchildren in the US, Europe, and Japan are for the most part being taught the same old nonsense. How and why did this nonsense emerge?…………

No one before the 1830s believed that medieval people thought that the earth was flat.

The idea was established, almost contemporaneously, by a Frenchman and an American, between whom I have not been able to establish a connection, though they were both in Paris at the same time. One was Antoine-Jean Letronne (1787-1848), an academic of strong antireligious prejudices who had studied both geography and patristics and who cleverly drew upon both to misrepresent the church fathers and their medieval successors as believing in a flat earth, in his On the Cosmographical Ideas of the Church Fathers (1834). The American was no other than our beloved storyteller Washington Irving (1783-1859), who loved to write historical fiction under the guise of history………..

But now, why did the false accounts of Letronne and Irving become melded and then, as early as the 1860s, begin to be served up in schools and in schoolbooks as the solemn truth?

The answer is that the falsehood about the spherical earth became a colorful and unforgettable part of a larger falsehood: the falsehood of the eternal war between science (good) and religion (bad) throughout Western history. This vast web of falsehood was invented and propagated by the influential historian John Draper (1811-1882) and many prestigious followers, such as Andrew Dickson White (1832-1918), the president of Cornell University, who made sure that the false account was perpetrated in texts, encyclopedias, and even allegedly serious scholarship, down to the present day. A lively current version of the lie can be found in Daniel Boorstin’s The Discoverers, found in any bookshop or library.”

And why did these historians spread propaganda against Christianity?

It was in order to shore up the arguments of Darwinists  (with whom Darwin himself would have disagreed) against Christians.

It was to make Christians look stupid and opposed to science.

It was to falsely equate a non-existent “Christian” belief in a flat earth with anti- Darwinism so as to shame educated Christians into subscribing to the dogma of evolution, without fully grasping the import of what they were doing.

It was subversion of religion by stealth.

 

Proving the existence of Lord Krishna

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Indians are taught that Krishna was a myth and did not exist. This is the inevitable byproduct of an educational system and mentality put in place by the British empire. But things are changing. In response to the question of whether Krishna existed amateur historians are coming up with new evidence of the authentic nature of the Hindu scriptures:

“Most certainly, says Dr Manish Pandit, a nuclear medicine physician who teaches in the United Kingdom, proffering astronomical, archaeological, linguistic and oral evidences to make his case.

“I used to think of Krishna is a part of Hindu myth and mythology. Imagine my surprise when I came across Dr Narhari Achar (a professor of physics at the University of Memphis, Tennessee, in the US) and his research in 2004 and 2005. He had done the dating of the Mahabharata war using astronomy. I immediately tried to corroborate all his research using the regular Planetarium software and I came to the same conclusions [as him],” Pandit says.

Which meant, he says, that what is taught in schools about Indian history is not correct?

The Great War between the Pandavas and the Kauravas took place in 3067 BC, the Pune-born Pandit, who did his MBBS from BJ Medical College there, says in his first documentary, Krishna: History or Myth?.

Pandit’s calculations say Krishna was born in 3112 BC, so must have been 54-55 years old at the time of the battle of Kurukshetra.

Pandit is also a distinguished astrologer, having written several books on the subject, and claims to have predicted that Sonia Gandhi would reject prime ministership, the exact time at which Shankaracharya Jayendra Saraswati would be released on bail and also the Kargil war.

Pandit, as the sutradhar of the documentary Krishna: History or Myth?, uses four pillars — archaeology, linguistics, what he calls the living tradition of India and astronomy to arrive at the circumstantial verdict that Krishna was indeed a living being, because Mahabharata and the battle of Kurukshetra indeed happened, and since Krishna was the pivot of the Armageddon, it is all true.

You are a specialist in nuclear medicine. What persuaded you to do a film on the history/myth of Krishna? You think there are too many who doubt? Is this a politico-religious message or a purely religious one?

We are always taught that Krishna is a part of Hindu myth and mythology. And this is exactly what I thought as well. But imagine my surprise when I came across Dr Narhari Achar (of the Department of Physics at the University of Memphis, Tennessee, in the US) and his research somewhere in 2004 and 2005. He had done the dating of the Mahabharata war using astronomy.

I immediately tried to corroborate all his research using the regular Planetarium software and I came to the same conclusions. This meant that what we are taught in schools about Indian history is not correct.

I also started wondering about why this should be so. I think that a mixture of the post-colonial need to conform to western ideas of Indian civilisation and an inability to stand up firmly to bizarre western ideas are to blame. Also, any attempt at a more impartial look at Indian history is given a saffron hue.

I decided that I could take this nonsense no more, and decided to make films to show educated Indians what their true heritage was. The pen is mightier than the sword is an old phrase but I thought of new one: Film is the new pen.

Any ideas I have will receive wide dissemination through this medium.

I wanted to present a true idea of Indian history unfettered by perception, which was truly scientific, not just somebody’s hypothesis coloured by their perceptions and prejudices.

Why not a documentary on Rama, who is more controversial in India today? Proof of his existence would certainly be more than welcome today…

A documentary on Rama is forthcoming in the future. But the immediate reason I deferred that project is the immense cost it would entail. Whereas research on Krishna and Mahabharata was present and ready to go.

Further more, Rama according to Indian thought, existed in the long hoary ancient past of Treta Yuga, where science finds it difficult to go.

There is a controversial point in your documentary where someone Isckon monk alludes to Krishna as being the father of Jesus. How can you say that since there is an age gap of roughly 3000 years between the two spiritual giants?

Is Krishna the spiritual father of Jesus? That is what the person who was training to be a Roman Catholic priest, and who now worships Krishna, asks. The answer comes within the field of comparative religion and theology.

The Biblical scriptures qualify Jesus as the son of God. Most Indians have no problems accepting this as Hindus are a naturally secular people. However, then the question that arises is, if Jesus is the son, then who is the Father or God Himself?

[Lila: The word secular in India means not-communal or not provoking religious animosities.]

Now, Biblical scriptures do not really give the answer except to say that the Father is all-powerful and omnipresent. Now, of course, we know that Jesus does not say that he is omnipresent or omnipotent.

[Lila: Jesus both says that he and his father are “one,” implying omniscience and also says at other times, “No man knoweth except the father,” implying limitation.]

Now, no scripture can live as an island, all by itself, and the Srimad Bhagavatam and other scriptures such as the Bramha Samhita all call Krishna as an all powerful, omnipresent being.

So, if we use these words of Bhagavatam, there can be no other truth, which means that Krishna is the father of all living creation.

But it does not mean that Jesus is not divine. Jesus is indeed divine. What I liked about the monks in my documentary is that they do not denigrate Jesus although they worship Krishna as God. They keep Jesus in their hearts, while worshipping Krishna. What could be more secular or more Christian?”

Virgin Birth – the product of Kriyashakthi

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UPDATE

The long excerpt I posted below, supposedly about a woman who had the experience of virgin birth, is intended to bolster my argument that such things have been recorded throughout history and that religious texts outside Christianity have described them.

However, I don’t subscribe to the author’s eco-feminism and gnosticism.  I should add that I’ve noticed not a few blogs recently that are essentially Gnostic, not Christian,  advocating radical celibacy. They might have been around all along, of course.

There is a strong radical celibacy movement that derides human sexuality, originating from Putin’s Russia (more on that later).

Caveat lector, as always.

ORIGINAL POST

The Virgin birth is the central mystery of Christianity, inseparable from the Cross and the Resurrection.

Nor -in a more generic form –  is it unique to Christianity.

From the pregnancy of Kunti with Karna (in Hinduism) to the birth of the Buddha from Maya, virgin birth has been described and sanctified across cultures.

Moreover, any study of yoga will tell you that such a thing is not an impossibility, within the frame of reference of yoga.

Shakti (energy) creates spontaneously, when the attention is powerful.

That observation is the basis for the popular “Law of Attraction” but it is a foundation of Hindu belief, finding its confirmation in Christian doctrine. On the other hand, Incarnation is denied both in Islam and  some forms of Judaism.

HInduism  affirms both incarnation (avatar) and the Trinity (the law of three – creation, preservation, and destruction).

One reason I came to Hinduism spontaneously while quite young and while in a thoroughly Christian atmosphere was my experience of Kriyashakthi, which until then I thought was my personal secret.

I experienced spontaneous precognitive experiences, as well as experiences of repeated synchronicity and “attraction,” which made me doubt the “scientism” around me.

The explanation for these experiences I found only in yoga texts, which is what drew me to a syncretist Hindu-Christian belief I retain to this day.

It was in Hinduism that I found the teaching that let me understand and accept the doctrines of Christianity unproblematically and without the sterile speculations of modern deist and atheist Christians like Tillich and Kung.

This understanding differs from the mainstream teachings of both Judaism and Judaism’s cousin, Islam.

More below about Kriyashakthi and Virgin Birth (I don’t subscribe to the blogger’s feminist theories):

“In the early 70’s I read and wrote a review for a book about the Ojibwa or Chippewa people. (Sorry, I can’t remember the title.) The author spent a decade re-searching oral stories from the Ojibwa’s old traditional speakers that existed before the coming of the Whiteman. One story was that wise-women of the tribe looked for certain young maidens that possessed grace, intelligence and compassion. Sometimes a candidate for conceiving and giving birth this way wouldn’t show up for a generation or two. Nevertheless, these wise-women kept an eagle-eye open for her. When found, men were not allowed to court her. When she reached the age of fertility, her first period, she was instructed to fast for several days and, if willing, was required to dance around a fire in a sacred women’s lodge built far away from the village. This ceremony occurred while she was ovulating. Ideally a state of bliss or ecstasy was reached during which, according to hidden wise women knowledge, it would be possible for her to conceive and give birth in the “old Way”. They also knew that a child born this way would be blessed with gifts of healing, clairvoyance or leadership. The Great Spirit would give to the child whatever tools the tribe might be in need of. I believe this is what happened among The Essenes along The Dead Sea over 2,000 years ago. Jesus was the result. It’s my guess that they planned it. Also, I might venture to say that this “old way” of conceiving and giving birth was considered a no-no during a time when patriarchy was firmly established. Was this why King Herod felt so threatened, enough to try and have all the new born males put to death in his kingdom?

It’s assumed that the law of parthenogenesis results in the birth of females only. This has been shown to occur in animal, insect and microscopic species but it may operate differently among humans, for there is a visionary power us humans possess. The Sanskrit term for it is Kriyashakti or, in short, Shakti; the mysterious power of thought which enables us to produce external, perceptible, phenomenal results by its own inherent energy. Any idea will manifest itself externally if one’s attention is deeply concentrated. If a woman envisions a boy it’s quite possible she will give birth to one. “In the Mother Cell begins all living things. The Creative Principle is feminine. The highest divine mystery is Brahamana, the feminine of Brahma.” (according to Hindu mythology) If I haven’t scared the reader off by dipping into religious lore, one might ask the biological reason for the presence of the hymen in women. I believe only one species of whale has a hymen but it is to keep sea-water out. Among us humans the hymen remains a “medical mystery”. Some folks think it’s there merely as fodder for comedians. Is it there because Nature, the great conservative, has a higher form of conception and birth in mind for women? One might also inquire about dermoid cysts—-or certain types of them.

Looking up dermoid cysts in Chambers Medical Dictionary, under Medio-logical Records, one finds; “dermoid cystic growths; embryonic growths or tumor-like formations found in women which are of congenital origin, containing evidence of being dejecta membra, or the remains of pregnant growths, in the embryonic fetal period of gestation, somewhat akin to the primary state of being with child.” Some of these dermoid cysts, sometimes mistaken by surgeons for tumors, but really are embryos, are similar in all respects to the products of female gestation, containing bones, hair, teeth, flesh, glands, portions of the scalp, face, eyes, ribs,—–in short, all the organs of the human body—what else could they be but virgin embryos in the process of development? The following is from a recent news item (as of Oct.’09) : A dermoid cyst, also known as benign cystic teratoma, which develops “from germ cells which are primitive cells that are capable of producing eggs and all human tissues,” Dr. Judith Reichman says on MSNBC’s Web site, www.msnbc.msn.com. “A dermoid cyst is formed if the germ cells multiply bizarrely without fertilization, forming an encapsulated tumor that contains hair, sebaceous or oil materials, cartilage, bone, neural tissue and teeth.”
In a lecture delivered before the New York Academy of Medicine in 1933, on “Immaculate Conception—a Scientific Possibility”, Dr. Walter Timme, eminent endocrinologist, presented evidence to prove that Immaculate Conception is physiologically possible. The parovarium of the female reproductive organs, he claims, in some cases can produce living spermatozoa capable of impregnating eggs in the same body, causing them to develop without male fertilization.
They’ve been known to appear in young girls from 8 to 16 that have their hymens intact. Unbeknownst to them, one of their eggs had parthenogenetically been fertilized and then had stopped developing and, typically getting trapped in their fallopian tube, had to be removed, as the failed embryo had become toxic. There is reason to believe that parthenogenesis was the primordial form of re-production for all life, while sexual generation (epigenesist) arose later as a result of inferior environmental and nutritive conditions resulting in diminished fertility. In other words, males develop in order to insure the survival of the species. [Lila You could also say that sex developed after the Fall, which created an “inferior environmental and nutritive condition….”]

Anthropoid apes, our closest biological cousins, have a monthly period while in captivity and on a artificial diet.

[Lila: By restricting the diet, for instance, menstruation can be controlled.]

“When returned to their natural habitat and diet they will bleed in the Spring and Fall like most mammals. Back in 1969 I used to live at Hippocrates Health Institute, in Boston, where everyone drank wheatgrass juice, ate raw sprouts, fruits, nuts and vegetables and nothing else. That means, no bread, grains, meats, or dairy products. The root philosophy at Hippocrates is that “Life Comes Only From Life”. After a month or two on this living food diet some women would have their periods lessen in the amount of blood-loss; and the overall discomfort and cramps they usually experience practically vanished. One woman in particular, who I got to know as a sister, lost her period completely and enjoyed total health. I also met several women who experienced extended fasts of one month or more. They had no periods as well. It’s also quite common that many women athletes lose their periods. Non-menstruating women, providing they are on a (super)-natural diet, faithfully practicing yoga or getting lots of vigorous exercise, like women athletes, enjoy a superior, overall health with a robust vitality. They’re able to re-absorb vitamins, minerals and hormones otherwise lost during menstruation. I should say that women on a normal, civilized diet should have their period. This is nature’s way of cleaning house. We can’t all be raw-fooders. Frankly, most of us can’t even imagine wanting to be a super-natural-health-nut. I do not encourage going in this raw-food direction unless one truly studies the subject in depth with experienced teachers. A commitment to this lifestyle is taxing—-at least until one eliminates the accumulations of a toxic, civilized diet. There are artistic depictions of Mary standing on the Crescent Moon. Did our ancestors know that women had to rise above the moon (menstruation) in order to immaculately conceive? Indeed it seems obvious, from what we’ve observed thus far, that a clean, living food diet is necessary for eliminating wasteful monthly menstruation and is the foundation for the process of parthenogenesis. Part of the condition required for a virgin birth is alkalinity. A proper raw-food diet alkalizes the blood. In a way we are like alkaline batteries—80% alkaline, 20% acid—which allows us to hold our life-force completely. If this balance is upset, as in a “civilized” diet, the life-force fails to fill the body and illness results.

It’s obvious that the human race is over-sexed. The earth has amassed way too many bodies that don’t know how to get along with each other and are straining the earth’s resources.

[Lila: Here the author’s eco-feminism is unnecessarily tacked on.]

This is old news. But sex is beautiful and deemed necessary by almost everyone I know. I’m the last person to say it is wrong or evil. Still, 50% of marriages end in divorce. Think of rape, disease, un-planned pregnancies, over-population and the endless battle of the sexes. Oh well, we must pay the fiddler for our modern lifestyles. I do. In almost every culture on earth and in almost every major religion stories of The Virgin Birth abide. The following is an old Fijian legend: “There was a great chief in Tonga who had an exceedingly beautiful daughter. He hid her from the eyes of men, for he had never seen one worthy to be her husband. Down on the sea-beach he built a fence, thick, strong and high. Here she used to bathe after which it was her custom to lie down for a time upon the clean white sand within the fence, that she might rest a while, and that her body might dry. So it came to pass that the Sun looked down upon her, and saw her and loved her; and in the course of time a child was born to her, whose name she called Sun-child”.

Film to expose abortionist Kermit Gosnell’s serial infanticide

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UPDATE

A conservative site has a list of other abortion facilities guilty of negligence, showing that the Gosnell case is not an outlier. This is the ugly, brutalizing industry that abortion activists try to prettify with touchy-feely movies.

ORIGINAL POST

A film-maker couple is intent on exposing the murderous career of Kermit Gosnell, the millionaire African-American Philadelphia abortionist who was found guilty of severing the spines of new-born babies whom he had failed to successfully abort. It has been called the most important story not being covered by the major media in America:

“It has been described as one of the most important stories never told: the case of Kermit Gosnell, an abortion doctor some believe killed thousands of babies over the span of three decades.

From the 1970s to early 2010, the sign on Gosnell’s West Philadelphia clinic read “Women’s Medical Society.” But in 2010, after investigating claims of an illegal prescription drug operation, federal agents discovered what they call a “house of horrors.”

Three years later, a jury found Gosnell guilty on three counts of murder for killing babies that were born alive. He was also convicted of manslaughter in the death of a 41-year-old Bhutanese immigrant who died from a botched abortion while under his care.”

Trying to work up funding for their project, the film-makers, Anne McElhinney and her husband Phelim McAleer, ran into problems with the supposedly independent crowd-sourcing site, Kickstarter, which they believe tried to censor the project.

Heritage.org reports that Gosnell  killed at least a hundred babies and it published gruesome photos of the body parts stored in the clinic:

Abortion doctor's 'house of horrors'

Gosnell’s assistants (including a 15 year old)  were untrained, but participated in the procedures and prescribed medicine; Gosnell’s instruments were rusty and old and the clinic was filthy.

“This case is about a doctor who killed babies … What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable, babies in the third trimester of pregnancy – and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors …. Over the years, many people came to know that something was going on here. But no one put a stop to it.”

This was the number of reporters at this trial:

bench

This is the grand jury report on Gosnell’s house of horrors.

Some excerpts:

“Mrs. Mongar was just one of many patients victimized by Gosnell’s depravity. There were scores more. At least one other mother died following an abortion in which Gosnell punctured her uterus and then sent her home. He left an arm and a leg of a partially aborted fetus in the womb of another woman, and then told her he did not need to see her when she became sick days later, having developed a temperature of 106 degrees. He perforated bowels, cervixes, and uteruses. He left women sterile. He also killed live, viable, moving, breathing, crying babies. He killed them by cutting their spinal cords after their mothers had delivered them after receiving excessive amounts of medication designed to induce active labor. This report documents multiple murders of viable babies. The evidence makes a compelling case that many others were murdered.”

According to the report, Gosnell made $10-15,000 every night from a few hours of work.

Even more damning was his attitude:

“Gosnell routinely cracked jokes about babies whose necks he had just slit. He treated his patients with condescension – slapping them, providing abysmal care, and often refusing even to see or talk to them – unless they were Caucasian, or had money.”

Gosnell’s procedures were performed on babies that had been delivered, were viable, and  exhibited pain.

“After the baby was expelled, Cross noticed that he was breathing, though not for long. After about 10 to 20 seconds, while the mother was asleep, “the doctor just slit the neck,” said Cross. Gosnell put the boy’s body in a shoebox. Cross described the baby as so big that his feet and arms hung out over the sides of the container. Cross said that she saw the baby move after his neck was cut, and after the doctor placed it in the shoebox. Gosnell told her, “it’s the baby’s reflexes. It’s  not really moving.”

Gosnell crushed the skulls of babies that had been delivered and were viable:

“Under further questioning, Massof acknowledged that Gosnell and he almost al
ways cut the spinal cords, and sometimes suctioned skulls as well, after the babies were fully expelled by their mothers, when there was clearly no need or medical reason to collapse the skull. Tina Baldwin’s testimony also made it clear that Gosnell was not cutting spinal  cords, crushing babies’ skulls, or suctioning in order to allow the head to pass through the cervix. Even while claiming that Gosnell sometimes suctioned a fetus’s skull in order to
get  it through the birth canal, her description of his technique belied her claim: She said
that he would “crack” the neck after the head was out – when only the baby’s torso was
still inside the mother – and then suction the brain matter out.”

Her killed several of the women who came to him with over-dosages and bad medication, and, at least in one case, refrained from doing anything to reverse his actions:

“After returning several minutes later with the medicine case, however, Gosnell did not use any of the drugs in it to try to save Mrs. Mongar’ s life. O’Neill said that she tried to use the defibrillator “paddles” to revive Mrs. Mongar, but that they did not work. Still no one called 911. Even though an overdose was immediately suspected as the cause of Mrs. Mongar’s cardiac arrest, O’Neill testified that Gosnell instructed her not to administer Narcan, a drug that could have reversed the effects of the Demerol. She said that Gosnell told her it would not work on Demerol – which is not true according to the toxicology expert who appeared before the Grand Jury. O’Neill testified that Gosnell took the time to look through the case of medicines and that he was “thrilled” to find it was up-to-date. This is puzzling, since he seemed to have no intent of actually using the drugs to try to save Mrs. Mongar.”

In 2013, Population Research Institute reported on the suppressed story and blamed ideology for the media silence:

“The mainstream media has done an excellent job of completely ignoring the trial of Kermit Gosnell. As everyone knows by now, Gosnell was the Philadelphia abortionist famous for “snipping the spines” of newborns who happened to survive his efforts to abort them.

The state health authorities ignored his clinic for 17 long years. Then one of his patients died from a drug overdose. At long last, the authorities decided to come in and take a look around.

They were horrified by what they found. There was blood and animal feces everywhere and the stench of urine filled the air. Jars filled with the severed feet of babies lined the shelves, ghoulish “trophies” of Gosnell’s grisly work.

Then, when the investigators attempted to check the medical licenses of Gosnell’s employees, whom he referred to as his fellow “doctors,” they found that they had none. They were practicing medicine without a license.

After Gosnell’s arrest became public, present and past workers in his abortion mill began to come forward with their own stories. They spoke of babies crying after being born alive, only to be silenced by Gosnell’s scissors. They spoke of having to wrap up these tiny corpses in tissue and throw them in a deep freeze.

This trial should be making the headlines in every major paper, and be leading the news broadcasts each night. Every other mass murder story in America ignites a media frenzy, after all. Yet Gosnell’s trial has been greeted by silence. The national media is doing its best to pretend it doesn’t exist.

One Washington Post blog writer explains the lack of coverage in an article entitled Why Kermit Gosnell hasn’t been on page one: “I say we didn’t write more because the only abortion story most outlets ever cover in the news pages is every single threat or perceived threat to abortion rights. In fact, that is so fixed a view of what constitutes coverage of that issue that it’s genuinely hard, I think, for many journalists to see a story outside that paradigm as news.”

Again, a post on HuffPost Live echoed this sentiment: “For what it’s worth, I do think that those of us on the left have made a decision not to cover this trial because we worry that it’ll compromise abortion rights. Whether you agree with abortion or not, I do think there’s a direct connection between the media’s failure to cover this and our own political commitments on the left. I think it’s a bad idea, I think it’s dangerous, but I think that’s the way it is.” In other words, the mainstream media, predominantly leftist, sees this case as detrimental to abortion “rights”, so they ignore abortion wrongs.”

Many pro-life activists believe Gosnell is only the tip of the iceberg:

“Prosecutors say Gosnell routinely cut live babies in the back of the neck to sever their spines. Pro-abortion groups have suggested Gosnell’s alleged murder of live children is the exception in the abortion industry.

But a video released by the pro-life group Live Action shows Washington, D.C., abortion doctor Cesare Santangelo telling a 24-weeks pregnant woman he will not give medical care to a baby born alive.”

Priapus: The God of Modernity

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Update: Again, the needful clarification:

I don’t support Esolen’s position on gay marriage, just because I agree with the accuracy of his exposition of Christian doctrine.

In contrast to Esolen, I fully support the right of homosexuals to marry and adopt children and raise their own children in any way they want.

I go even farther.

I think polygamists, poly-amorists, and every other bi- or trans group should be free to form their own types of marriages/group couplings…or unions… and create churches that agree with them, if they want to.

But I do object to attempts to rewrite traditional Christian teaching to make it approve these practices and I affirm my right to state that those unions are not consonant with the traditional teaching of Christianity or the major religious traditions.

Apparently, in some circles, that still makes me a “bigot” and “hater.”

One thing is true. I am bigoted in favor of truthful statements and I hate falsification of history and mendacious media campaigns.

ORIGINAL POST

I just discovered an interesting conservative Christian magazine – Touchstone, which claims to be a defense of “mere Christianity” – C. S. Lewis’ term for unadorned traditional Christian teaching.  An article there argues that the real god behind the “environmental feminism or eco-feminism” of the New World Order is not the goddess Gaia, as its naive proponents believe, but the God Priapus.

Anthony Esolen on the real god behind Gaia – Priapus:

“We may never budge one inch on what is essential. We will not tell a lie, even to please the world and win us the accolades of faculty bishops and historians everywhere. We will not move.

In our day, the issue is not Christology. We’re not so sophisticated in our heresies. The issue is sex. We’re encouraged to pretend that the child-making act is not essentially ordered to child-making. We must pretend that it’s only the friction of erogenous flesh. We must pretend that a man can be made into a woman by a saw and a trowel, and a woman into a man by pinning the tail on the donkey, or by just thinking it is so. We must pretend that a child in the womb is just some stuff or other. We must pretend that boys and girls do not deserve a married father and mother, promised to one another for life. If we are Christian, we must say to Christ, “Thus far and no farther! You can have all the world, but these few inches are mine.”

Demands of the New Religion

Now let us be quite clear. We have not chosen this fight. The new religion has come to us, and it demands total submission. It demands that we cease to worship God, and that we cease to tell the truth. We have come to the cleft in the road, what Lewis called the great divorce. God will, if we allow him, heal our evil ways; Jesus came to call sinners. But God can no more accept evil in his household than he can cease to be God. He is holy. He will wash our grubby robes white in his blood, but Truth cannot lie. He cannot declare the unclean to be clean. He can only make it clean by his grace.

The new religion of sex requires us to take down the Cross and erect something else. We must not do so. It requires us to abandon our fellow men to lusts that destroy the common good, as even sociologists, often the slow kids on the block, have begun to see. We must not do so. It requires us to subject our bodies to the phantasms of homeless postmodern man. We must not do so. It requires us to avert our eyes as our little brothers and sisters are dismembered. We must not do so. It requires us to wink as the minds of children are subjected to confusion in order to ratify the choices of adults. We must not do so. It requires us to subordinate political liberty to sexual license. We must not do so.

It requires us to spit upon the Cross, to sink our fingers in the blood of innocent children, to harden our hearts against the crushed lives of brothers and sisters who learn to their dismay that Priapus is a stupid and stupefying idol. It requires us to like ourselves rather than love our neighbors. It requires us to tell a deadly lie.

Raise One Sword

We must not do so. We shall not do so. Truth is truth to the end of time. Even if the battle appears lost, let each Christian raise one sword at least against the lie. Even if the fight is fierce, the warfare long, let each Christian remember that our Captain triumphed in and through the hour of his utter defeat upon Calvary. We set our faces like flint. While there is breath in our lungs and blood in our hearts, we will not cease to tell the truth, and we will not bend one inch in homage to the idol.

The Lord does not require that we win. He requires that we be steadfast. The battle is not ours but his. Yet let us not suppose that we are doomed to lose this fight. The gates of hell are not iron; the gates of hell are straw. For a vanguard has gone before us that our opponents cannot see, whose very existence they do not suspect. It is that great cloud of witnesses—and they are armed in the full array of God.”

Vox Day: the gloves are off in America (note added)

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NOTE ADDED:

I  don’t endorse Vox Day’s point about Christians “inventing” the Crusades and the Inquisition. A lot more was going on in both historical events, but that’s for another post.

UPDATE:

Oh…oh. This is the brouhaha that got VDay purged from his position. Apparently, he got into a verbal duel with one Ms. Jemisin, about the purpose of self-defense laws in the US.

Ms. Jemisin, probably a knee-jerk leftist on such issues,  made a snide remark that provoked Day’s undoubtedly racialist rant:

Guns, she said, exist so that people like Beale (whites) can “just shoot people like me , without consequence, as long as they feel threatened by my presence.”

This run-of-the-mill articulation of a leftist bromide was apparently too much for Vox, who came unhinged and did his bit to get the boot from Science Fiction Writers of America…(he called her a “savage” and compared the IQ of her tribe unfavorably to the IQ of his).

Oh dear. Childish and offensive. But all day long English teachers teach texts, written in cold-blood, printed, and distributed to minor children, that make far more offensive statements, and it’s called “English Literature.”

Should we boot out half of our academic texts to save someone’s hurt feelings?

Or should Ms. Jemisin learn the art of racial riposte well enough that no one would dare trifle with her?

With black writing and art celebrated everywhere, it’s time for an accomplished professional to be able to shrug off that kind of thing, instead of calling for purges.  Thought-control is the last thing any writer should urge, for whatever reason, at this stage of the game.

ORIGINAL POST

From the comments on a post by VoxDay, a writer who has joined the list of “purged” bloggers on the net:

“Bigot, homophobe, racist,”- the words have been used up. All you had was shaming language and polite enemies. Now you have neither.”

And more here from Vox, the “brutalist”…

(Repeat: I do not endorse Vox Day’s views in toto, nor do I share his Arianism or his beliefs about genetics or cultural history):

“This is for the benefit of all the logical slowpokes. It is logic so basic that even those who are intellectually limited to the rhetorical level should be able to follow it:

  • If you have the right to demand that I bake you a cake, then I have the right to force you to attend church, mosque, or synagogue.
  • If you have the right to fire me because you don’t like my political position on the legality of homogamy, I have the right to fire you because I don’t like your political position on the legality of homosexuality.
  • If you have the right to deny me access to the news media because I don’t believe in climate change, I have the right to deny you access to the media because you don’t believe in God.

If atheists truly want a power struggle for the right to be intolerant, Christians will eventually engage and win. Because we will die before we will give up our beliefs and you will not. We invented the Crusade and the Inquisition, two institutions so historically intimidating that atheists still shiver and tell each other scary stories about them centuries after the event.

We will revive them before we will abandon our faith. And while we would prefer to live with both Christian and traditional Constitutional values, if we are forced to choose between the two, we will choose the former without even thinking twice.”

Western Churches Funding Conversions, Terrorism, Secession

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Bharatabharati.wordpress.com reports on the Indian government’s crack-down on foreign funding of NGOs engaged in subversive politics:

“The latest report of the Home Ministry showed that more than Rs 10,000 crore was sent to India during 2009-2010, mostly from the USA and Europe to NGOs in India.

[Lila: 1 crore is 10 million rupees, which is $1590.584 million (or approximately $1.5 billion) at an exchange rate of 62.87 rupees to a dollar, calculated at this forex site.

“The report says that while it is not proper to make sweeping generalisations, it is necessary to note that the NGO sector in India is vulnerable to the risks of money laundering and terrorist financing……..

The report, approved by Union Home Secretary R.K. Singh in January 2012, revealed that major donors from abroad and receivers in India are Christian Missionaries and Church-sponsored NGOs.

“The list of foreign donors is topped by the Gospel For Asia Inc of the USA (Rs 232.71 crore) followed by Fundacion Vicente Ferrer, Barcelona, Spain (Rs 228.60 crore) and the World Vision Global Centre of the USA (Rs 197.62 crore),” said the report of Home Ministry on foreign contribution and regulation for the period of year 2009-2010.

These three are evangelical organisations. The fourth largest donor, Compassion International, is also from the US (Rs131.57 core) and belongs to the same category.

The India Today, in its story ‘Freelancers of God – Independent churches mushroom across India attracting foreign funds’ (published on 9 May 2011) has given an account of Indian Christian missionaries who are propelling their ‘work’ to convert Hindus to Christianity with the help of foreign funds.

The India Today story says that, “The preachers are not trained in theology. They often play with the sentiments of people and lure them with incentives and create communal tension. Most new pastors work among Dalits in the region. They also widely use faith-healing methods, which are not popular among mainstream churches. Political parties such as the Congress and the Akali Dal have refused to make conversions a controversy and the VHP and Bajrang Dal have accused both parties of playing to the Christian vote bank.”

Senior French journalist and writer Francois Gautier reveals in his article that, “The foreign funds sent for Gospel cause has a huge but obscure impact. Out of seven states in North East India four have absolute control of the Church. Most of the North East subversive groups / Terrorist outfits including Maoists have definite connection with Evangelical groups. 45% of non-Arab foreign funds coming to India are utilized through Churches for conversion and camouflaging services, while 40% Arab foreign funds are coming to boost up Jihad and Islamic services. Christian Fathers and nuns are living most lavish life in India by utilizing the money collected from overseas in the name of service to the poor people of the third world.”

Francois Gautier has busted the myths of the so-called ‘social and human rights activists like Medha Patkar.

In his article ‘The Truth about Medha Patkar’, Gautier has given a reference of letter of Dr Urmilaben Patel, member of the Congress Working Committee, written to Shri Pranab Mukherjee, Minister for External Affairs.

Patel wrote that, “You are kindly aware, that Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) headed by Medha Patkar is actively involved in opposing all hydro projects in India. I have recently received material which I find quite disturbing. I specifically draw your attention into the message of Ms. Patkar using the words of “pressurizing the UPA government”, and “honouring” a Supreme Court Judge for a favourable verdict, as is explicit in the emails.”

Gautier gives details of exchange of confidential emails between Patkar and Patrick McCully, ex-Director, International Rivers Network (IRN) based at Berkeley (United States). This mail conversation exposes how Patkar ‘reports’ to Patrick every details of the case and which Judge ‘favoured’ her and should be ‘honored”….

…Teesta SetalvadIt is always demanded to inspect the income source of the infamous Teesta Setalvad and her NGO ‘Citizen for Justice and Peace’. Teesta Setalvad is always been in clouds of mystery for her activities and how she raised funds for her NGO and how does she managed expenses of providing legal help and from which source, she got money to lure witnesses for the cases against Narendra Modi in Gujarat riots. Her bank statements with specific details are out suggesting how Setalvad allegedly used money to buy witnesses and how through manipulative activities, false submission before different probe panels and courts were allegedly filed. Again the pointer turns to the source of foreign funds. But no one wants make understand the fact.

No scope for Indian Media to escape in case of foreign funding issue. Gospels of Charity in Spain, Southern Baptist Church, World Christian Council, St. Peters Pontifical Church, Melbourne, Joshua Society, Berne, Switzerland are some of the sponsors which funds major Indian Media which ‘speaks for’ secularism and human rights in India.

The analysis of the Home Ministry’s 42-page report shows that 14,233 NGOs received foreign contribution of Rs 10,337.59 crore. The biggest fund inflow to NGOs has come from the USA (Rs 3,105.73 crore) followed by Germany (Rs 1,046.30 crore) and the UK (Rs 1,038.68 crore). These three countries have topped in the donors’ list of Home Ministry for many years.

As per the report, most the funding has been generated from Christian missionaries of USA, Germany and UK and the donor missionaries have also formed their Indian subsidiaries. The other toppers come from Italy (Rs 583.47 crore), the Netherlands (Rs 509.46 crore), Spain (Rs 437.25 crore) Switzerland (Rs 302.06 crore), Canada (Rs 297.98 crore), France (Rs 189.12 crore) and Australia (Rs 148.28). The eleventh big donor to Indian NGOs is from UAE with Rs 133.15 crore.

World Vision Chennai According to MHA figures, the funding for Christian mission agencies has shown a regular increase. Also, over 80 percent of the voluntary organisations receiving foreign funds are Christian Mission agencies. “The highest amount of foreign contribution was received by the World Vision of India, Chennai, Tamil Nadu (Rs 208.94 crore).”