Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Unexpected criticism of the Mighty Men conference

The past Mighty Men conference organized by Angus Buchan as usual drew criticism from various angles, some expected, others totally surprising. His message is quite controversial in certain circles and one can expect criticism for his views on the family from the secular community and non-Abrahamic religions.

It is certainly understandable that in this day and age advocating the man as the head of the household attract criticism from non-Christians, it is even a healthy debate that I would love to get into in the near future, but that is not the issue I want to address today.

No, what I want to address is much more curious: criticism from Christian theologians and Bible scholars. Angus’ voice hadn’t even properly settled on Sunday before no less than two ladies with PhD’s in the field of theology took exception to his preaching. One contends that we cannot by default put the man at the head of the family in modern times, the other contends that Jesus taught us that men and women are equal and that that nullifies the man’s position as patriarch.

In the first instance, as soon as you start arguing from the “modern times” angle, you are no longer arguing from a Biblical perspective and therefore your theological credentials do not come into play. I would even go as far as to assert that it is downright dishonest to mention that you are a theological authority on Christian matters, but then proceed to argue from a secular perspective. Again, remember that I am not arguing for the merits of either moral code, I am just pointing out that you can’t call yourself one thing and then talk like another.

In the second instance, Jesus never taught us that His Father’s laws are null and void since He was born. He actually said that He did not come to change the law, but to fulfill it. It should also be noted that the New Testament is very clear on women’s role in the church and at home:

Titus 2:3-5[3]Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. [4]Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, [5]to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.

1 Corinthians 11:3But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.

1 Corinthians 14:33-35[33]For God is not a God of disorder but of peace. As in all the congregations of the saints, [34]women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. [35]If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.


(all passages quoted from the New International Version)

We must also recall what women did not do to minister when they accompanied Jesus. He did not choose women to be among the 12 apostles. He did not send women to teach, preach or heal. So far as we know He did not invite women to the last Supper in Matthew 26:20. When the great commission was given in Matthew 28:16-20, it was given to men. In brief, women did minister to Jesus and with Jesus, but never in a capacity of leadership or of authority such as teaching or preaching. It is also Ironic that by being a female theologian, the two ladies are already in contravention of the very teachings they claim to be authorities on.

Now, again I am not arguing for the merits of these teachings, I am merely arguing that if you are going to hold yourself up as a representative of the Christian church, you should be criticizing people based on what is actually written in the Bible. Otherwise you are not speaking as a learned member of the Church, but as a secularist, atheist or follower of a non-Abrahamic religion and you should present yourself as such.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Chalk up another one for the American Resistence

Someone once asked me what I thought was the definition of awesome. I believe I have found it in a speech by an American marine:



You just have to stand up and applaud when someone like this enters a room.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Why computer programmers don’t exist: a look at atheist reasoning

If one studies a computer program carefully, one sees that programs are merely made up of less complex parts, which in turn are made up of even less complex parts, etc.

A program, or “Application”, is nothing more than a collection of objects or “classes” that each perform a specialised role, ergo it “applies” its pre-defined capabilities.

the objects that the program consists of are in turn nothing more than a collection of properties and procedure, or “methods”, that perform certain tasks or stores and retrieves information.

Each property is made up of what is referred to as “primitive” types that are nothing more than pre-defined collections of memory address blocks and its functioning and available actions are pre-determined by hard and fast rules set out by the operating system or application framework. A method is nothing but an application and manipulation of theses “primitives” according to these set rules.

each primitive is expressed as a hexadecimal number which is nothing more than a shorthand notation of binary digits, ie 1’s and 0’s.

If we examine the oldest types of programs, called “procedural” programs, we notice that they consist of the same types of “primitives”, but lack the methods and properties we see in today’s programs. As we move forward in time, we see the appearance of subroutines, or “reusable” procedures, that formed the basis of what we today call “functions”. there is therefore a clear progression from these simple procedural programs to the object-oriented systems we have today. There is also strong evidence in the form of polymorphic viruses that suggest that a program can change its signature, or “footprint”, over time and without any intelligent interference, to match its environment’s demands more closely.

It is therefore quite idiotic to suggest that just because programs seem “smart” to us, they must have been created by some sort of “programmer”, because if we delve a bit deeper, programs are just a collection of 1’s and 0’s, or even more fundamentally just the absence or presence of an electric charge.

Monday, August 3, 2009

Why they will win back America



Totally effing awesome.

Monday, July 6, 2009

We need a slight change of mindset

Be honest with yourself: If you ahve ever found a wallet lying around in public, obviously accidentally seperated from its owner by the laws of physics and gracity (ergo the poor guy dropped it), you have taken great pains to to return it, or to hand it to an authority figure, but only after helping yourself to the cash inside.

You try to rationalise this behaviour to yourself by reasoning that "he will be glad to get his credit cards/driver's licence back, so he won't miss his cash all that much, and besides, it could have been much worse. And waht's the chance of me getting a financial reward for my good deed?"

But in actual fact, the money is not your's to begin with. The owner of said wallet is under no obligation to fork over his hard-earned cash. Yes, it is an unwritten rule that you hand over ten percent of the money in the wallet to the good samaritan, but there is no pressure to abide by it. It is still theft, even if you don't get caught. Even if the man earns more in a month than your entire household earns in a year, it still does not change the fact that you are stealing.

We are living in a society where we are brought up to believe that we are somehow "entitled" to certain things. And I am not referring to natural laws like "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", but to concepts like the unfair redistribution of wealth, rewards for doing what is expected of you and punishing people for being successful.

We have lost our sense of hard work. History teaches us that each and every single time a people become self-righteous, it is only a few short years until they are wiped from the face of the earth. This has happened to both the best and worst peoples ever, and we are no different: Rome, Ancient Greece, Persia, Egypt, even Biblical Israel.

A close friend has moved to Australia to make a better life for his family. He told me this sobering account:
He filled up his car at a self-serve gas station. when he entered the shop to pay for the gas, he asked the shopkeeper/owner how he could be sure that someone wouldn't drive off without paying, because it surely seems easy. The man's reply: "why would you want to do something like that?". Makes you think about how we look at the world...

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

A [not so] small victory for Pretoria

AfriForum wins Tshwane battle

In which Afriforum bitch-slapped a very deserving SABC for behaving like a d00s:

"Pretoria - Civil rights movement AfriForum on Tuesday said it welcomed the ruling by the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa (BCCSA) over its complaint against the SABC.

AfriForum had complained to the BCCSA that the public broadcaster referred to Pretoria as Tshwane in television news bulletins.

"The ruling is a victory for all the people in the country who promote mutual respect among communities," said AfriForum chief executive officer Kallie Kriel.

The BCCSA has found that Tshwane has not been registered as a place name on the official database of the South Africa Geographical Names System. It also found that no legal basis existed upon which the city may be referred to as Tshwane.

AfriForum based its complaint on the fact that no other cities were called by their municipal names.

Kriel said the SABC would not be fined, and the commission was not imposing any action - unless the use of Tshwane when referring to Pretoria was repeated.

"The ruling stands. Should the SABC continue referring to Pretoria as Tshwane, they will be liable to a fine," he said."

Hats off to Afriforum for exposing the SABC's masters' utter disregard for the law and the contempt with which it views the very people who built the offices they dictate their vitriol from.

Let's hope they can keep this momentum going and achieve the really, extremely important victories like the right to an own education body and the right to hold views different from the mainstream.

The SABC was so obviously wrong in its conduct that it is actually surprising that the case carried on as long as it did. What worries me though is the thought that there might be numerous more cases of this misconduct that no-one has picked up on.

You don't have to like our funny accent or our conservative views, but you have to admit that we are formidable when we take the time to apply ourselves.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Suggested reading for all budding philosophers

I picked up a fresh copy of the English translation of Plato's "The Republic" last week. I am in the mood to write down a short opinion piece as I finish the chapters and have chewed them a bit.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

WTF moment of the week

In November 2008 a Dutch journalist, Joanie de Rijke, was abducted by Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. She was held captive, raped repeatedly, and released after six days for a ransom of 100,000 euros ($137,000). After her ordeal, she acknowledged that her captors "did horrible things to me," but added in several media interviews "They also respected me," and emphasized "They are not monsters."
Seriously, is this woman for real?

Thanks to www.moonbattery.com

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Ironic quote of the day

You wouldn't be able to tell my stance on economics yet so I'll give you a very brief overview: keynesians are stupid and Austrians rule. Herewith the ironic quote of the day as found on Vox Day's blog:
"It is astonishing what foolish things one can temporarily believe if one thinks too long alone, particularly in economics...."
- John Maynard Keynes

I cringed.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

The sport of Christian bashing

As always, some random act of senseless violence is used by the liberal idiocracy to bash Christianity:

Which is why something like Angus Buchan Mighty Men Conferences are problematic. To justify male domination using the Bible in a country like this is a potentially lethal exercise. There is too much rage and psychic toxicity around for him to simplify things this way. Buchan cannot possibly address the complexities many of[sic] men in this country sit with and reinforcing their dominance in a context such as the one we are faced with is irresponsible.

Daily we read about men who murder their children and their spouses, men who rape their girlfriend’s babies as an act of revenge, men who try to beat their women into submission. The horrors are endless and what makes it worse is that men seem to feel entitled to do so. Culture and religion and the attitudes towards women that are stubbornly embedded in these two constructions or understandings of the world are the biggest threat to women in this country.

Now, it takes a bit of a stretch of the imagination to arrive at the conclusion that because some poor girl was raped and sodomised, her attacker must have been an Angus Buchan supporter, (gasp) even worse: a Christian! Or at least, this is what the article seems to allude to.

Now, I don't know what church the poor woman was forced to attend as a child, but as far as I know, it is drilled into your head by the Dominee or the Pastor from the age of around three years that you must be chivalrous at all times when it comes to girls and women. This includes opening doors for them, walking through the mud so that she can go around, getting up when one enters the room, putting out your cigarette (if you are dumb enough to smoke in the first place). Our fathers took an even more practical approach when they schooled us in
  • Doing what your mother tells you
  • Not talking back to her
  • Washing your own dishes
  • Letting your sister(s) use the bathroom first
  • Treating your girlfriend like a precious jewel
  • Not raising your voice at her in anger
  • Not raising your hand at her
  • Not playing on her emotions
  • generally not behaving like a jerk around women
And as far as I am aware, this is the same conclusion Angus Buchan also arrives at. Nowhere does he or the religion I adhere to suggest that you are allowed to maltreat the fairer sex, especially not the ones that brighten up your life.

If anything, these savages need more of God in their life if they are to ever turn into the gentlemen they are required to be.

Also, having a hierarchical structure in itself is not the problem, the problem is in the abuse of power. The alternative flat structure that the writer proposes is also in itself not wrong per se, it is again the application, or more honestly the "human factor", that lends it its dirty hue. Post-modern society would have us believe that the structures that have served us so well for at least the last two millennia are suddenly to blame for our current predicament, when in fact, it is the deviant nature of us humans that seems to always find ways to manipulate the system to its advantage.

There is no social structure or philosophy yet invented that would successfully defend us against our own moral shortcomings and to blame our woes on religion is nothing but a red herring. Not even when God was among the Isrealites did they abstain from their sinful ways, vis murder, theft, adultery.

But modern society has a new idea which I sarcastically colloquialise as "micro management", or, as it is more generally known: ubiquitous invasion of privacy by the government. In this model, we have no privacy and how we should act and what we should love and hate are dictated by faceless entities behind heavy wooden doors. "If only we had no religion", "If only we could all get along", "If only there were no rich and poor", "If only we had no racism", "If only we stopped burning fossil fuels", etc are all calls that we hear more and more each day, but the problem is that the people that are supposed to pass down this legislation are just that, mere people. They can just as easily, if not more so, succumb to their own twisted ideas of what their "perfect society" should look like.

Pol Pot, Kim Jong Il, Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong were all powerful leaders who outlawed all religion and dismantled the patriarchal structures of their countries, but far from creating the amazing Utopias they envisioned, they created shitholes.

You see, we humans are biologically programmed to take up a place in a chain of command. We yearn for it, even if not consciously and we are at our most sadistic not when we are following or giving orders, but when we have too much freedom and too little guidance. Religion is the best foundation from which we can derive our moral compass and find work for idle hands. Because without religion, ther is no measure of what is morally justifiable and what is not and I am more than willing to argue this with anyone who disagrees with me.