Positive Liberty

Check it out here. Money quote:

Brayton called that interpretation “profoundly contrary to the historical record.”

“John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison wrote the Federalist Papers to explain each and every provision of the Constitution to a population that was overwhelmingly Christian and convince them to vote for it. If they could have pointed to biblical sources for those provisions, that would have been a very powerful argument in favor of ratification. Yet not once is the Bible mentioned anywhere in those 85 essays. And not once, according to the notes of those in attendance, was the Bible ever referenced at the constitutional convention in Philadelphia to justify a concept or provision,” according to Brayton.

Joseph Priestley writes:

Let those then who are attached to the doctrine of the Trinity, try whether they cannot hit upon some method or other of reconciling a few particular texts, not only with common sense, but also with the general and the obvious tenour of the Scriptures themselves. In this they will, no doubt, find some difficulty at first, from the effect of early impressions, and association of ideas; but an attention to the true idiom of the scripture language, with such helps as they may easily find for the purpose, will satisfy them that the doctrine of the Trinity furnishes no proper clue to the right understanding of these texts, but will only serve to mislead them.

In the mean time, this doctrine of the Trinity wears so disagreeable an aspect, that I think every reasonable man must say with the excellent Archbishop Tillotson,* with respect to the Athanasian Creed, “I wish we were well rid of it.” This is not setting up reason against the Scriptures, but reconciling reason with the Scriptures, and the Scriptures with themselves. On any other scheme, they are irreconcileably at variance.

I opened a can of philosophical worms with the idea that infinite time, infinite rolls of the dice means human beings will eternally recur in an atheistic universe. Andrew Sullivan linked to it once and then revisited the issue today.

One of the most common criticisms is “we do not know if either space or time is in fact ‘infinite’” as one of Sullivan’s readers put it.

I agree with this and, personally, do NOT assume time is infinite on both ends. My atheist, astronomer, interlocutor does. Continue Reading »

I’ve been researching the religion of notable Founding Father William Livingston, a signer of the Constitution and former governor of New Jersey. In my last post on the matter, I noted Livingston slammed the Athanasian creed — the quintessential Trinitarian creed which the unitarians of America’s Founding era criticized.

Researching the matter further, I came across Livington’s personal Thirty Nine Articles on religion which again slammed the Athanasian creed (and thereby the Trinity). Those and Livington’s other writings found in the Independent Reflector can be found in this book. Continue Reading »

My co-blogger at Positive Liberty, D.A. Ridgely, was on top of this first.

Here is the New York Times story.

And here is Ed Brayton’s post with links to the Texas Freedom Network’s live blogging.

And here is John Fea’s post.

From the New York Times: Continue Reading »

A commenter named “Rap” — who apparently has Christian Nationalist sympathies — left the following comment at Positive Liberty:

Here’s a thought, why not let the founders speak for them selves? Why should one “expert” or another edit what they actually said? Oh, I know…because it doesn’t fit in the elitist progressive agenda. After all they know more about the founders than the founders did of themselves. For example George Washington said to his mother after a big battle at fort Necessity and a new appointment:”The God to whom you commended me, madam, when I set out upon a more perlious errand, defended me from harm, and I trust He will do so now. Do not you?” Oops! The ACLU is going to be all over him! Wait…he’s dead. So I guess they will just keep hiding what he and the other founders said from our children!

I responded, yes by all means, let the Founders speak for themselves. Not phony “experts” like David Barton or Peter Marshall. Or this commenter him or herself. The quotation s/he tried to pass is nowhere to be found in Washington’s official writings. Continue Reading »

Friend and co-blogger Jason Kuznicki was quoted in the Richmond Times-Dispatch on the Fred Phelps/hate speech case:

The only remaining rationale for censoring hate speech — or a similar incendiary expression of opinion, such as flag-burning — is that it inflicts emotional pain. But the Cato Institutes’ Jason Kuznicki makes quick work of this by asking a few simple questions: How are we supposed to measure emotional pain? If we could measure it, what level of pain would be sufficient to trigger punishment? If a news organization broadcasts a hateful message to Jews and gays simply by reporting on a demonstration by the WBC, then should the news organization also be held liable for damages? What else should we ban? Continue Reading »

Friend and blogbrother Ed Brayton appeared on the Rachel Maddow show to discuss the Rep. Stupak & “The Family” controversy.

I finally made my way over to the David Library in Washington’s Crossing (not too far from where I live). I think one reason why I haven’t been spending more time there is so much of what I am looking for is available online.

If you are looking for newish stuff, then copyright law prevents complete free access. However, given the late 18th, early 19th Century is “public domain,” the originals from that period are freely available.

For instance, at the library I found a letter from William Livingston, Governor of New Jersey (1776–1790) during the American Revolutionary War and a signer of the United States Constitution, where he seems to deny the Trinity to the very orthodox Jediah Morse. Continue Reading »

The three go together. The following is an email I sent to a member of a listserv I am on. (An 80 something fervent atheist with a PhD in astronomy from Harvard):

If time is infinite on both ends, then we have infinite rolls of the dice of probability. That means, however infinitesimally small the probabilities that brought “you” into existence, with enough rolls of dice, “you” will come into existence again, and again and again forever. And if time is infinite in reverse, “now” isn’t the only time “you” existed.

Accordingly, “you” have always existed and always will.

Some might think this kind of question is inappropriate for a libertarian blog, and it’s certainly well outside the bounds of my competency, but it’s such an intriguing question that I just have to make my own rambling (as usual) and feeble (definitely unusual) attempt* to address it.

The con argument is made by commentor JamesK:**

Such god hypotheses are carefully designed to prevent falsification, but that means these hypothetical gods are observationally equivalent to no god. Occam’s Razor leads a rationalist to not believe in something unless doing so adds explanatory power to one’s model of the universe. Even if such a god did exist (and naturally there no way to prove otherwise) no one is justified in believing it.

Continue Reading »

According to orthodox definitions no. City Journal profiles the anti-Rev. Jesse Jackson. They note:

Take Peterson’s vision of restoring the lost black family, which is unflinchingly religious and traditional. “There is a spiritual order to life that was ordained by God,” he tells me. “And that order is God in Christ, Christ in man, man over woman, woman over children. And it’s not an ego trip, it’s just a spiritual order, that men are subject to Christ and women are subject to men.”

At this point on the interview tape, you can hear me start to stammer hilariously. I don’t agree with everything he says, but. . . . And yet, at the same time I’m stammering, several thoughts crowd in on me. First, Peterson’s traditionalism is only an echo of Paul’s advice to married couples in Ephesians, not to mention John Milton’s deathless description of Adam and Eve: “He for God only; she for God in him.”

Milton, purportedly an “Arian,” may not have been a Christian according to this understanding either. Continue Reading »

107.9 WFSI Annapolis, the local Family Radio station, has begun predicting the apocalypse, along with the rest of Family Radio Worldwide. It’s even on their website:

THE END OF THE WORLD IS ALMOST HERE!
HOLY GOD WILL BRING JUDGMENT DAY ON
MAY 21, 2011

Happily there’s still plenty of time to go get some popcorn.

Family Radio has always intrigued me. Aside from programs like the utterly incoherent “Beyond Intelligent Design” — you really should listen to it sometime, as a reminder that “beyond” can run in any direction — Family Radio has always had what is to my knowledge a unique theology. It holds that the “Church Age” has recently ended, circa 1994, and now none of the churches anywhere in the world teach the true doctrine anymore. The one source for true doctrine remains, as always, the Bible, and now only — you guessed it — now only Family Radio Worldwide still stands with the Bible.

The Church Age ended in 1994, so you get no benefits at all from going to a church. Now it’s just you, your radio, and Harold Camping, who is predicting the apocalypse in short order. (Before you ask: Yes, he has been wrong before about this sort of thing.)

Here’s how Family Radio explains it:

For most of the years of its existence, Family Radio served as a great help in building up local churches that were reasonably faithful to the Bible. This was so because the Bible indicated that the local congregations were a divine institution made up of those who adhered to the teachings of the Bible. These local churches were divinely mandated to send the Gospel into all of the world.

At Family Radio, we emphatically teach that the whole Bible is the Word of God. We believe that, in the original languages in which the Bible was written, every Word was from the mouth of God, and consequently, is never to be altered and must be obeyed. The Bible alone, and in its entirety, is the Word of God. Therefore, we reject the phenomena of tongues, visions, voices, etc., as having any part in the true Gospel since the Scriptures have been completed.

On Family Radio we clearly teach the Biblical truth that all mankind are sinners and, therefore, are subject to God’s righteous wrath. We further teach the sad truth that because man by nature is spiritually dead, he will not and cannot come to God on God’s terms. However, God in His wonderful love has chosen a people for Himself for whom the Lord Jesus Christ did all the work necessary to save them. In God’s own timetable He applies the Word of God to their hearts and saves them. This is the Bible’s grand message of salvation that Family Radio wishes to send to every nation of the world.

In its intense study of the Bible ,Family Radio has discovered that a great amount of Biblical evidence points to the all-important fact that the world has come very close to its end. It has also discovered from carefully studying the Bible that, in a sense, this end of the world judgment has already begun, because judgment must begin with the house of God (I Peter 4:17, Hebrews 10:30).

Therefore, now that we have learned from the Bible that God’s judgment is upon the house of God, which are the local congregations, we are now compelled to teach the Biblical truth that God has shifted the final task of world evangelism to individual Christians who are outside of a local congregation. In obedience to these Biblical teachings, Family Radio, which is completely outside of any church institution, and which is supported and administered by individual believers, does teach that today, as we are heading for the end of this world’s existence, we should not be a part of a local church.

However, we do emphatically teach the Biblical truth that God is still adding to His eternal Church. This eternal Church consists of people all over the world whom God has planned to save as they come under the hearing of the true Gospel.

Therefore, Family Radio continues to send the true Gospel throughout the world by shortwave radio, by A.M. and F.M. radio, by the Internet, by satellite broadcasting, by T.V., and by printed materials. Its constant theme is the encouragement of people to carefully read the Bible, praying for obedience to the Word of God.

A convenient conclusion for a Christian radio network to reach. Don’t give to your churches. Give to… us!

I’m just hoping that the post-2011 format of 107.9 is something I like, wacky Christian fundamentalism most definitely included.

In my post on the propriety of laughing at parodies of religion, I may have had this on the back of my mind as the kernel of truth being parodied. However, the story is no laughing matter.

As Megan Dunham writes:

When my first child was born, a woman I had known many years handed me a book. She told me it would be helpful as I raised my daughter as it had helped her train her own kids. That book? To Train Up a Child, by Michael and Debi Pearl.

She quotes from the book: Continue Reading »

The Westboro Baptist Church are for real. As bad as they make conservative Christians (almost all of whom want nothing to do with them) look, they are for real (and they protest at funerals) and hence merit being discussed.

But this site — as far as I understand — is not real, but a parody.

I admit, at first read, I found much of what I read funny (like I do Fred Phelps). But if it’s not real, is it ethical to poke fun or is it like a minstrel show for evangelicals?

This is what I’m talking about:

Yesterday my wife was cooking dinner as usual. When the dinner was ready I went to call my younger son but when I opened the door he sat naked on his bed masturbating over a pornographic magazine! Of course I gave him a hard beating and made him pray to the LORD until bedtime. Me and my wife are in shock, I have beaten my sons all their lives but sometimes they don’t seem to understand the will of God. I am very concerned about this and I simply don’t know what to do. I have always given them a daily spanking before bedtime but I feel like they need more beatings so they can seriously feel God’s anger. Should I beat them more often or is there a better way to make them understand?

With the answer:

As it stands, he is on his way to an eternity of searing pain being burned in hell. Do whatever you think it takes to get that sin out. No beating you can do will be as bad as what God has in store for kids who don’t get the devil off their privates.

Over the past several months I’ve been reading Fred Clark’s critique of the Left Behind series, by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, on Slacktivist (and don’t we all wish we’d thought of that pun?). It’s slow going because he has literally hundreds of posts devoted to it (and here’s a handy index to all of them). I’ve enjoyed them for many reasons. Clark’s an excellent writer (unlike LaHaye and Jenkins), often laugh-out-loud funny, and has great insights into just why these books are more of a crap-fest than any randomly chosen set of Harlequin romances. Like this:

While trying to find some way home from the airport, Rayford Steele checks his mail and finds an in-joke between the book’s co-authors:

Besides a pile of the usual junk, he found a padded envelope from his home address. Irene had taken to mailing him little surprises lately, the result of a marriage book she had been urging him to read. …

That’s probably a reference to one of these books by Tim LaHaye. He’s written several books on the subject, which is interesting coming from a man whose own key to marital bliss was to convince his wife to get a job 3,000 miles away.

Continue Reading »

The culprits are Tim Pawlenty, governor of Minnesota, Dan Kennedy, assistant professor of journalism at Northeastern University, and David Limbaugh, writer, author, attorney, and brother of Rush.

First, at CPAC, Pawlenty declared: Continue Reading »

At American Creation, Tom Van Dyke has a post that features a letter of WILLIAM E. CHANNING, Minister of the Church of Christ in Federal Street, Boston (one of the most notable American Unitarians of that era) to TO THE REV. SAMUEL C. THACHER, circa 1815.

The perennial question is whether “unitarianism” (the name of the theology) or “Unitarianism” (the name of the Churches) qualifies as “Christianity” as it claimed it did.

From Rev. Channing’s letter, what it isn’t: Continue Reading »

During America’s Founding era, and today, “Christianity” and “Deism” didn’t have univocal meanings, part of what makes the “Christian Nation” debate tough but interesting.

A friend emailed arguing for a broader definition of “Deism.” Indeed, scholars have used terms like “warm Deism,” or “Providential Deism” to describe the religion of Washington, Franklin, etc.

Thomas Jefferson, from what little he wrote on Deism, seemed to endorse a very broad understanding of Deism, that is belief in one God. He wrote of the “Deism” of the Jews.

In an 1803 letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, Jefferson wrote: Continue Reading »

At American Creation, Tom Van Dyke asks them. Of them:

—And the old standby, What is “Christian?” Can you be “Christian” if you believe the Bible is the direct Word of God? If you believe Jesus is the Messiah, although not the Second Person of the Holy Trinity?
—And who decides the answer to this question? Trinitarian clergy? Theologians? Sociologists? Historians?

—Was there a God of the Founding?
—Was His name Providence?
—Is this “theism,” or is “theism” just a slippery term for what is the uniquely monotheistic, providential Creator-God who endowed men with certain unalienable rights, one who is unmistakably “Judeo-Christian,” at least compared to all of man’s other gods?
—What might Judeo-Christian mean? Anything? Everybody seems to know what it means, so does that mean anything?

Continue Reading »