Post-Christian America; Putting Infants "Down Like Dogs"...more

Post-Christian America: Gullible, Intolerant, and Superstitious    In some secular progressive circles, a certain myth persists. If you defeat the forces of traditional Christianity — you know, the rubes and fools who believe the Bible is the Word of God — then you’ll make way for a more enlightened, rational, and humane nation and world. In other words, the alternative to religion is reason, and reason is mankind’s great liberating force.

Although I’ve heard some variation on this argument countless times, as I grew older I noticed something odd. Many of the best-educated and least-religious people I knew weren’t all that reasonable. They held to downright irrational views about reality. I remember an elite-educated secular friend in Philadelphia who scoffed at my wife’s Christian faith; this friend was also convinced that her child had an “indigo aura” that imbued him with special gifts. I recall conversations with Harvard Law School classmates who laughed at the New Testament but thought reincarnation was “cool.” And how can I forget the strange sight of Harvard students walking in and out of the neighborhood witchcraft store?...

Putting Infants "Down Like Dogs"
We should empathize with Comstock in his grief. But emotion must not tempt us to reject the venerable principles of human exceptionalism. Babies—even those with dire prospects—are precious human beings whose lives have intrinsic dignity and inherent moral value beyond that of any nonhuman.

Acceptance of Comstock’s premise—that parents should kill babies who are “likely to die”—would be culturally catastrophic. It would lead to the legalization of murder. At Nuremberg, the German infanticide program was deemed a crime against humanity. Let’s not abandon that wisdom.

The death of his son is not the only motive driving Comstock’s advocacy. Comstock is a moral philosopher who rejects human exceptionalism and embraces animal rights and transhumanism... First Things

The Life of Charlie Gard: Whose Decision is it Anyway?  ...With bureaucratic control at the center of any socialized healthcare system, treatment decisions made by the “system” are based on saving money. This is done through rationing care, finite resource allocation, and service restrictions rather than a patient-centered collaborative effort between provider and patient. According to a 2014 U.K. survey, the use of processes like referral management and treatment limits within the N.H.S. have increased the degree to which British physicians feel rationing has negatively impacted their ability to effectively practice.

Forms of socialized healthcare, where decisions about who to treat, when to treat, and the degree of care received, hasn’t been the answer for Charlie Gard or for his parents. It isn’t the answer for the U.S. healthcare system either. Heaven forbid you are ever faced with a medical life-or-death decision as serious as Charlie’s. But if you are, shouldn’t the decision be yours?...

Our Cultural Waterloo 
Tradition ascribes to the Duke of Wellington the saying that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. Today, I suspect the cultural Battle of Waterloo will be won—or lost—on the campuses of Christian colleges, and that in two ways.

The first way is obvious. The expansion of the scope of Title IX legislation by the Obama administration makes colleges that hold to traditional Christian moral positions on homosexuality and transgenderism vulnerable to loss of government funding and to damaging legal actions. We might add the related matter of accreditation: Failure to conform to Title IX will be punished with notations and probable loss of accreditation. Perhaps even more deadly than these threats is the role of the NCAA, as schools that are not “friendly” to LGBTQI students will find that they are unable to compete in sporting events. Sadly, while the choice between sport and one’s faith should not merit a second thought, I expect that this will be the point at which many colleges crack...

Evidence of Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem unearthed in City of David ... Less than one week before Tisha B’Av, the Israel Antiquities Authority presented further evidence of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, unearthed during excavations at the Jerusalem Walls National Park in the City of David...


So sweet....