Reason #1 why I will not be voting for Barack Obama

Reason #1: Senator Obama is radically pro-abortion, so much so that he opposed legislation to protect babies who are born alive during a botched abortion. I'm talking here about babies who have already been born, who are fully outside their mother's womb, who are breathing, crying, and struggling for life -- and who sadly had often been left to die in the absence of legal protection.

Terry Jeffrey at Cybercast News Service presents some details:

Obama Is the Most Pro-Abortion Candidate Ever

He is so pro-abortion that he refused as an Illinois state senator to support legislation to protect babies who survived late-term abortions because he did not want to concede -- as he explained in a cold-blooded speech on the Illinois Senate floor -- that these babies, fully outside their mothers' wombs, with their hearts beating and lungs heaving, were in fact "persons." . . .

State and federal versions of this bill became an issue earlier this decade because of "induced labor abortion." This is usually performed on a baby with Down's Syndrome or another problem discovered on the cusp of viability. A doctor medicates the mother to cause premature labor. Babies surviving labor are left untreated to die.

Jill Stanek, who was a nurse at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Ill., testified in the U.S. Congress in 2000 and 2001 about how "induced labor abortions" were handled at her hospital.

"One night," she said in testimony entered into the Congressional Record, "a nursing co-worker was taking an aborted Down's Syndrome baby who was born alive to our Soiled Utility Room because his parents did not want to hold him, and she did not have the time to hold him. I couldn't bear the thought of this suffering child lying alone in a Soiled Utility Room, so I cradled and rocked him for the 45 minutes that he lived." . . .

Stanek testified about these bills in the Illinois Senate Judiciary Committee, where Obama served. She told me this week he was "unfazed" by her story of holding the baby who survived an induced labor abortion.

On the Illinois Senate floor, Obama was the only senator to speak against the baby-protecting bills. He voted "present" on each, effectively the same as a "no." . . .

The article goes on to explain how a similar bill passed the U.S. Senate (which Obama was not yet a member of at that time) by a vote of 98-0. Therefore, one could draw the conclusion that Obama's opposition to the essentially equivalent bill at the state level makes him more radically pro-abortion than just about any other member of the U.S. Senate.

Terry Jeffrey also has a follow-up piece here:

More on Obama and Babies Born Alive

As if we needed further proof of media bias...

Zombietime.com has published this excellent essay on the many fraudulent photos of the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict which have recently been published by Reuters and other mainstream media outlets.  (Warning:  The essay contains at least two potentially disturbing photos showing dead bodies.)  Apparently, the number and types of fraudulent photos go far beyond the one digitally-manipulated smoke photo that has received the most publicity.  If you have any doubt whatsoever about the existence of bias in mainstream media outlets such as Reuters, I highly recommend that you read this essay.

Also, zombietime.com is the same website that several months ago ran this excellent pictorial account of the West Coast Walk for Life in San Francisco, which illustrates the stark difference in attitudes and tactics between the pro-life and pro-abortion demonstrators.  (Warning:  A few of the pictures contain mildly disturbing images and/or explicit language.)

"Imposing Our Beliefs"

I recently found this excellent article by Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk.  For those who aren't familiar with his name, Fr. Pacholczyk (or Fr. Tad, as he is often called by people -- like me -- who have trouble pronouncing his last name) is a Catholic priest with a doctorate in neuroscience, and he is the director of education for the National Catholic Bioethics Center.  He is also an expert on the moral and ethical issues involved in embryonic stem cell research.  In the article I linked, Fr. Tad gives a great rebuttal to the common argument that we should not legislate against embryonic stem cell research (or abortion, or euthanasia, etc.), because to do so would be to "impose our beliefs" on others.  Here is part of Fr. Tad's response:

Recently I was asked to speak in Virginia at legislative hearings about embryonic stem cell research. After I gave my testimony, one of the senators asked a pointed question. "Father Tad, by arguing against embryonic stem cell research, don't you see how you are trying to impose your beliefs on others, and shouldn't we as elected lawmakers avoid imposing a narrow religious view on the rest of society?" The senator's question was an example of the fuzzy thinking that has become commonplace in recent years within many state legislatures and among many lawmakers.

Two major errors were incorporated into the senator's question. First, the senator failed to recognize the fact that law is fundamentally about imposing somebody's views on somebody else. Imposition is the name of the game. It is the very nature of law to impose particular views on people who don't want to have those views imposed on them. Car thieves don't want laws imposed on them which prohibit stealing. Drug dealers don't want laws imposed on them which make it illegal to sell drugs. Yet our lawmakers are elected precisely to craft and impose such laws all the time. So the question is not whether we will impose something on somebody. The question is instead whether whatever is going to be imposed by the force of law is reasonable, just, and good for society and its members.

The second logical mistake the senator made was to suppose that because religion happens to hold a particular viewpoint, that implies that such a viewpoint should never be considered by lawmakers or enacted into law....

Click here to read the rest of the article.

The Media on Religion

Terry Mattingly wrote an interesting column recently about the way that mainstream media reporters, even religion reporters, often simply don't understand religion, which leads them to report inaccurately on religious topics. Here's an excerpt:

Picture this scene. A flock of Pentecostal Christians has gathered at the U.S. Capitol for yet another prayer rally about sex, abortion, family values and the public square.

"At times, the mood turned hostile toward the lawmakers in the stately white building behind the stage," wrote The Washington Post in its coverage of the event. Then, without explanation, the story offered this on-stage quotation from a religious broadcaster: "Let's pray that God will slay everyone in the Capitol."

Slay what? Clearly, the reporters didn't know about the experience that Pentecostal Christians call being "slain in the Holy Spirit," in which they believe they are transformed by a surge of God's power. The result was a journalistic train wreck that ended up in the book The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect.

"The problem," wrote authors Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, "was that the reporters didn't know, didn't have any Pentecostals in the newsroom to ask, and was perhaps too anxious for a 'holy s---' story to double-check with someone afterward whether the broadcaster was really advocating the murder of the entire Congress." This mistake made "a strong case for the need for humility" at the news desk, they said.

Let me say "amen" to that, speaking as a journalism professor and as a religion-beat veteran who has winced in recent decades when reading these kinds of corrections (including a few of my own).

Truth is, far too many journalists veer into mental ditches when asked to cover events and trends rooted in religion. That's bad news when it comes time for serious, accurate coverage of a variety of stories that ordinary readers care about — from trends in Hollywood to debates about free speech in schools, from "sectarian" bloodbaths in Iraq to hard data linking what happens in pews to what happens in ballot boxes.

Click here for the full article: The Media, God, and Gaffes

I think that the problem identified in this article is actually symptomatic of a larger problem with the mainstream media, which is that they often don't seem to be all that knowledgeable about any advanced topic, whether it is religion, science, law, or whatever. I notice this myself, any time that the media reports on a topic that I happen to know a lot about. I find that it is not uncommon at all for the media simply to get facts wrong, and to perpetuate a distorted view of certain topics. And I don't think that this always or even usually means that they are biased, but rather that when it comes to many advanced topics, they sometimes just don't adequately understand what they are talking about. But maybe I'm just too much of a perfectionist -- I'd be interested to know if people besides me have noticed this same phenomenon.

Debunking "The Da Vinci Code" - Part 2

I really didn't want to post any further on "The Da Vinci Code", but I recently came across the following excellent web site which debunks the novel's many inaccurate historical claims:

History vs. The Da Vinci Code

While this site presents much of the same information as the articles I linked in my previous post, Debunking "The Da Vinci Code", one major difference is that the material on this site was written by a history buff who happens to be an atheist. Therefore, people who might suspect Christian "Da Vinci Code" debunkers of being biased may be more willing to accept the information presented on this site, since it comes from a non-Christian perspective. Here is some information on the site's author and on why he created the site (taken from the site's "Author" page):

As a regular contributor to various online fora on history, I soon began to see the impact this novel was having on peoples' perceptions of history. I saw people making claims about the Gnostic gospels, early Christianity, the Emperor Constantine, the Knights Templar and Jesus which were not supported by the historical evidence but came directly from their reading of this novel. Eventually I got tired of repeating myself in countering these claims and decided that an online resource comparing the assertions in the novel to the evidence could be a useful project.

In the year and a half on which I worked on the text of this site, many books have been published and even more online articles and sites have appeared tackling much of the same material. Most of these, however, were written from a Christian perspective and I felt a similar resource which looked at the novel's claims with a purely non-Christian, historical eye would still be a valid contribution. The release of the Ron Howard film version of the book in May 2006, with its attendant condemnations by various Christian figures, added to my feeling that the web needed a non-Christian resource which could not be accused of religious bias.

Another thing that makes this site different from the articles I linked previously is the approach it takes in organizing the information. In the "Chapters" section of the site, the author gives a chapter-by-chapter refutation of Dan Brown's various historical claims, using direct quotes from the book, with each quote followed by the real historical facts. This method of organizing the information gives the impression that none of Brown's claims are left unanswered, and it also has the advantage that the reader can easily see exactly what the novel says regarding each particular historical claim.

Also the site's author has a good essay on why he is bothering to debunk a work of fiction; here is part of what he says on this topic:

The marketing of The Da Vinci Code capitalised not only on its thriller plot and its puzzles, but also on the idea that it was well researched and that its background was entirely factual. Many early reviewers accepted this marketing hype without question. The Boston Globe called it 'a delightful display of erudition', the Rocky Mountain News said it 'manages to both entertain and educate simultaneously', The Mystery Reader said it incorporates 'massive amounts of historical and academic information', Publisher's Weekly called it 'exhaustively researched' and the Chicago Tribune enthused that it contained 'several doctorates' worth of fascinating history and learned speculation.'

In a similar way, readers and fans were soon enthusiastically declaring Brown's research impeccable and the 'history' they learned from the novel eye-opening and astounding. A review on Amazon.com has a reader from New York proclaim 'the research is correct. The historical events and people explored in the book are real' . Readers' reviews on Amazon and other bookseller sites talked repeatedly about the solid research, the 'amazing facts' and the ground breaking historical insights of the novel, with many talking almost reverently about how it changed their view of history.

Recent surveys of readers' attitudes to the historical information confirm that a large proportion of them accept Dan Brown's information almost without question. On June 23rd 2005 the National Geographic Society released a survey of readers of The Da Vinci Code which revealed 32% of 1005 readers agreed with the novel's claim that Jesus founded a 'bloodline' which is protected by a secret society to this day. In May 2006 the British pollster Opinion Research Business conducted a similar survey, finding that out of 1000 people surveyed, 60% of readers of the novel believed Jesus had a child by Mary Magdalene, as opposed to 30% of people who had not read the book.

The evidence is clear that many people are not simply reading The Da Vinci Code as merely fiction, but are taking its claims as being well researched, historical and factual.

The only disadvantages of the site that I can see are that the information does not (yet) contain footnotes or references, that several of the pages (such as the bibliography and the topic index) are still under construction, and that the author occasionally demonstrates a slight bias against Christian beliefs.

In conclusion, I strongly recommend this site for anyone who is looking for a good historical analysis of the claims in "The Da Vinci Code". Here's the link again, in case you missed it at the top of this post: History vs. The Da Vinci Code

Bishop Roche on the new Mass translation

For my Catholics readers -- all one or two of you ;-) -- I would like to point out the following address to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops by Bishop Arthur Roche of Leeds (in Great Britain):

Address to the US Bishops' Conference by Bishop Arthur Roche

Bishop Roche is the head of the recently reconstituted International Committee on English Translations (ICEL), which is overseeing revisions in the English translation of the Mass, which is used by Latin-rite Catholic parishes in all of the world's English-speaking countries. For those who have not followed this Mass translation issue over the past few years, the basic background is that the translation which we currently use was put together rather hastily, and in many places it gives a very loose translation of the standard Latin text of the Mass. Moreover, the current translation makes it harder to see the links between the Bible and the Mass, by failing to translate references to Biblical passages in the same way that the Biblical passages themselves are commonly translated. And furthermore, many people (myself included) think that the current translation is "tone-deaf" in that it sounds rather mundane and banal, rather than sounding poetic and dignified. To remedy these problems, a new (and evidently much improved) translation has been in the works for several years now, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops should be voting very soon on whether to accept it or reject it.

The address by Bishop Roche contains some great insights into the many issues involved, and his address should be of interest to Catholics who want to know what types of changes we might expect in the wording of the Mass in the not-too-distant future, and what the reasoning is for these changes. (However, for my non-Catholic readers, you probably won't find much of interest here.)

Here's the link one more time:
Address to the US Bishops' Conference by Bishop Arthur Roche

(I'd like to credit the Ignatius Insight Scoop blog for making me aware of this story.)

UPDATE: Apparently the U.S. bishops have already voted to accept the revised translation. This is great news for English-speaking Catholics, in my opinion. It easily could be several more years before the new translation actually gets implemented, but this is a key step in that direction.

SECOND UPDATE: More information on the new translation and on the U.S. bishops' vote can be found here, here, and here. Apparently, the U.S. bishops have added a list of requested changes or "adaptations" to the translation, subject to approval by the Vatican. There doesn't seem to be much solid information yet on exactly what these changes are, but it at least appears that they are minor, and that the proposed translation is largely unchanged.

MORE UPDATES: Here is a good article from OpinionJournal.com that gives a brief overview of the current situation regarding the English translation of the Mass. Also, Fr. Stephanos has a couple of excellent examples on his blog (here and here) of just how inaccurate and inadequate the current translation is.

Media coverage of "The Passion" and "The Da Vinci Code"

Roughly two years ago, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ presented an orthodox, traditional Christian view of Jesus.  This year, Ron Howard's The Da Vinci Code presents a radically different view of Jesus and of Christianity. Both movies were the subject of much hype and controversy prior to their releases, and both movies made big bucks at the box office.  Given these facts, it would be reasonable to expect that media outlets with no bias either for or against Christianity would give roughly equivalent coverage to both movies, right?  So was this true of the major U.S. TV networks?  Did they give roughly equivalent coverage to both The Passion and The Da Vinci Code?  Not even close, say the folks at the Media Research Center, and they have the research to back it up....

"The Trashing of the Christ": Executive Summary
"The Trashing of the Christ": Full Report

So does this report indicate that there is some level of anti-Christian bias in the news divisions at ABC, NBC, and CBS?  I'll report, and let you decide. ;-)

Bernie Miklasz on Babe Ruth

St. Louis sports columnist Bernie Miklasz recently wrote this column about how even though Babe Ruth is now #3 on the all-time home run list, a great case can still be made for considering him the best baseball player ever. In particular, Miklasz rightly points out that in addition to being arguably the best hitter in the history of the game, Ruth also had the start of a great pitching career before he gave up pitching to concentrate on hitting. In fact, it's very possible that he could have gone to the Hall of Fame based only on his pitching, if he had remained a pitcher for his entire career. Here are some specific numbers as given by Miklasz:

Ruth still endures as the greatest player in baseball history, period. He hit 714 homers, drove in 2,217 runs and batted .342. As a pitcher he went 94-46 with a 2.28 ERA and 17 shutouts and was 3-0 with an 0.87 ERA in the World Series. Until a modern slugger steps onto the mound to win 94 games, there's no discussion about who's No. 1. Ruth even outpitched the immortal Walter Johnson in head-to-head matchups, going 6-1.

Miklasz also makes an interesting point about how Babe Ruth's home run totals compared to other baseball players of his day:

No one can equal Ruth's historical impact. He changed the game. He took baseball out of the dead-ball era, the slap-hit mentality, and introduced the bombast of the home run into the culture, for better and for worse.

Put it this way: When Ruth hit 59 homers in 1921, the figure represented 12.3 percent of the league total. Last season 2,437 homers were hit in the American League, meaning that a slugger would have to hit about 300 homers to net 12.3 percent of the league total.

To baseball fans, none of this is new information. But it's interesting to reflect on just how great a player Babe Ruth was, and how he left a huge and permanent mark on the game of baseball.

Why are Christians so worked up about "The Da Vinci Code"?

...After all, don't they understand that it's just a novel (or just a movie)? These are common questions in response to Christian reactions to "The Da Vinci Code", and they are understandable questions. In answer to these questions, I would say that the problem is that many people who read this novel are in fact believing its outlandish historical claims, as evidenced by this recent article from the London Telegraph newspaper. Here are some relevant (and somewhat disconcerting) quotes from the article:

Two thirds of Britons who have read Dan Brown's thriller believe that Jesus fathered a child with Mary Magdalene, a claim rejected as baseless by historians and Bible scholars.

Those who have read it are also four times as likely to think that the conservative Roman Catholic organisation Opus Dei, whose members include the Cabinet minister Ruth Kelly, is a murderous sect.

Seventeen per cent of readers are convinced that the lay group, whose founder was canonised by the late Pope John Paul II, has ordered or carried out a murder, compared with four per cent of those who have not read the book.

The poll has shocked Church leaders who have mounted a massive campaign to debunk The Da Vinci Code in advance of the release of the Hollywood film version this week. The findings suggest that the book has significantly shifted attitudes towards traditional Christianity and will fuel fears that people increasingly prefer to believe in conspiracy theories that taint the Church rather than historical evidence.

Of course, I think that these numbers say more about widespread historical illiteracy, inherent biases toward Christianity and the Catholic Church, and a general willingness to believe in conspiracy theories, than they say about "The Da Vinci Code" itself. But still, these numbers give a very good indication as to why many serious Christians are not willing to ignore the impact of "The Da Vinci Code" based on the fact that it's "just fiction".

Archbishop of San Francisco on "The Da Vinci Code"

San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer recently wrote a great article on "The Da Vinci Code", though the title of the article could have been better. Here is the link:

"How Dark the Con of Dan"

I like the article for several reasons. For starters, I like that he quotes Mark Twain a couple of times. I'm a big fan Mark Twain, and the quote at the beginning of the article ("A lie is halfway round the world while the truth is still putting its boots on") is very appropriate to the whole Da Vinci Code phenomenon.

But mostly I like the article because he gives a very readable and even-handed explanation of just exactly why this book and movie are offensive to Catholics, and what the real truth is behind several of Dan Brown's historical claims.

(Hat tip to "The Da Vinci Hoax" blog for the link to this article.)

Speaking of recent columns by great economists...

... Thomas Sowell's most recent column, "Is Thinking Obsolete?", is a must-read for anyone following the media hype over what can be done about high gas prices. Sowell points out that the oil companies are an easy scapegoat, but that putting some actual thought into the issue reveals a different picture.

Walter Williams on the virtues of not caring

The latest weekly column by economist Walter Williams, called Caring vs. Uncaring, gives a brief but helpful reminder of how economics really works. While one must be careful not to conclude from this piece that there is little or no value in caring and selflessness, Williams makes some good basic points, particularly about the positive role of profits in our economy.

Debunking "The Da Vinci Code"

With the movie version of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code set to hit theaters later this month, I figured it that this would be a good time to link to some information about this novel. First, I should state that I haven't read the novel. However, I have read enough about it to know that it bashes Christianity, and particularly the Catholic Church, and that it does so by portraying a wildly inaccurate version of Christian history. It also appears that some readers of the novel are buying into Dan Brown's bizarre historical claims, and accepting them as an accurate portrayal of history. For this reason, I think that there is legitimate value in debunking the historical myths perpetuated by this novel. In fact, many entire books, web sites, and blogs have been devoted to this exact purpose.

Just to make sure that my words above are not misunderstood, the major problem I see with this book is not that its author disagrees with Christian ideas. Rather, the problem is that Brown claims to have based his book on extensive research, and yet he gets his facts (regarding history, art, religion, geography, etc.) hopelessly wrong, again and again. The following two-part essay by Carl Olson and Sandra Miesel provides a well-researched and well-documented antidote to these errors in The Da Vinci Code:

"Planet Envoy" Critique of The Da Vinci Code, Part 1
"Planet Envoy" Critique of The Da Vinci Code, Part 2

These same authors have also written a book called The Da Vinci Hoax, which is basically an expansion of the above essay. You can read some lengthy excerpts from this book at the following link, though obviously it will have some overlap with the essay linked above:

Exposing the Errors in the Da Vinci Code

Finally, for those who would say, "why make such a big deal about a novel, after all, it's just fiction!", Carl Olson has a great response in the following article:

The "It's Just Fiction!" Doctrine

How to Interpret the Creation Account in Genesis?

I have seen many discussions and debates among Christians over how to interpret the creation account in the first chapter of the book of Genesis (and to be honest, I've participated in a few such discussions myself). Some contend that the creation account in Genesis tells us that the world was created in six literal days. Others say that the six days are symbolic, and not meant to be interpreted literally, and that therefore the creation of the world may have taken much longer than six days. The question of how to square the interpretation of Genesis with modern scientific theories and discoveries is usually raised as well, since modern science seems to rule out the possibility of a recent, literal six-day creation.

Well, a few months ago, I read a great series of posts on this topic on Jimmy Akin's blog. Jimmy Akin is a Catholic apologist who is very well-read and knowledgeable in areas such as moral theology, ancient languages, and Biblical scholarship. He is a also a very clear thinker who backs up his claims with detailed documentation and sound logic.

In this series of posts, Jimmy considers the pros and cons of five different possible interpretations of the creation account in Genesis, based on the following criteria:

The question I'm asking is: "Given what the text says, how likely is it that this is the correct interpretation of the text?" . . . My interest is in figuring out what the text most likely means taken on its own terms, not trying to harmonize it with modern science.

I found Jimmy's conclusions to be very interesting, and perhaps slightly surprising. Admittedly his conclusions are just his own opinion, but he makes some convincing arguments. Here is a link to the entire series of posts on a single page:

Genesis One

Or here are separate links, in order, for each post:

1. Interpreting Genesis One
2. The Day-Age Interpretation
3. The Revelatory Day Interpretation
4. The Gap Interpretation
5. The Ordinary Day Interpretation
6. The Framework Interpretation

The Plight of Iraq's Christians

I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other about whether we did the right thing by going to war in Iraq in order to depose Saddam Hussein. I tend to think that it was the right choice, given what we knew at the time -- or at least I can sympathize with the reasoning behind the decision. However, the decision to go to war is not one that can or should be taken lightly, and ultimately I don't think that I have enough information to have made that call. But this story about the grave difficulties facing Christians in Iraq gives me great cause for concern over how things are going in Iraq currently.

It doesn't surprise me that Christians are being persecuted in a predominantly Muslim country -- such persecutions unfortunately seem to be quite common in predominantly Muslim countries. However, it seems that the U.S. could and should be doing more about this problem, considering the role we are taking in rebuilding Iraq as a supposedly democratic and free nation. I certainly hope that we are in fact doing more than the article implies.

Also, it seems a bit strange to me that both the mainstream (i.e., liberal-leaning) media and the conservative media have been largely silent on this issue -- perhaps because the former tends to be less than sympathetic toward Christians, and because the latter may be hesitant to report anything that makes our war (or post-war) effort look bad. (But this is just my own speculation.)