Would the Florida Personhood Amendment ban birth control?

The following person wrote to express her concern about the proposed Personhood Amendment:

I am very pro-life but I cannot in good conscience vote "yes" on this.

I take birth control for medical reasons. I have been married for over 11 years and want nothing more than to have a baby. However, due to medical problems beyond my control, I MUST take birth control to ensure I have a monthly menstrual cycle. If I don't take birth control, I do NOT get my period and have suffered from hemorrhaging that almost killed me, anemia, scar tissue build-up on my reproductive organs, etc.

If this group would at least eliminate the proposed ban on birth control from the language of the amendment, I would support it. However, as is, they do not have my support.

Posted by: Maureen on September 30, 2009 1:07 PM

The proposed ballot initiative defines a "person" and a "natural person" as a human being "from the beginning of the biological development."

The language of the amendment says nothing about birth control.

This is what this amendment will say when it is eventually passed:

The words “person” and “natural person” apply to all human beings, irrespective of age, race, health, function, condition of physical and/or mental dependency and/or disability, or method of reproduction, from the beginning of the biological development of that human being.

For information on how to download and circulate petitions go to http://personhoodfl.com/ On the petition form itself is the language of the amendment.

How did this "ban birth control" distortion get started in Florida? The media asked Dr. Patricia McEwen at a press conference in Tallahassee on September 11, 2009, if the amendment would ban abortifacient birth control because some think estrogen-based birth control pills work by causing an embryo not to implant in the wall of the mother's uterus. Dr. McEwen correctly explained that it would first need to be established which forms of birth control are abortifacient and which are contraceptive. As an experienced researcher with a PhD, Pat said she believes that this is far from a settled issue. The latter portion of the statement didn't make it into most news reports.

The next day we saw headlines around the state of Florida with this nonsense proclaiming that the amendment would "ban birth control" and grant human rights to a "fertilized egg." This was dishonest reporting and it even made many pro-life advocates confused about the amendment's language.

Obviously, if and when the abortifacient nature of certain types of chemical birth control can be demonstrated, there would need to be better and safer methods prescribed. In fact, the therapy Maureen is describing might be able to be done with progesterone, which does not affect implantation. On the other hand, estrogen is often used for contraception, but it may also affect implantation and cause spontaneous abortion.

Additional study and legislation would be needed to define legal contraception and hormonal therapy as methods that do not kill a human being. Such methods are already available that are much safer and more reliable than methods that may cause spontaneous abortion. Hormone replacement therapy for example is seldom prescribed now because of the complications involved. These dangers, mostly cardiovascular (heart attack or stroke) are also true of the "pill." It is simply not a "safe" method of contraception. In fact, natural methods are safer and more reliable if used correctly.

The language of the Personhood Amendment simply does not deal with this question. It just tells us what the legal definition of a "person" is.

Commentary

Most Americans would ban most abortion on demand because it is the killing of a human person. This is supported by biblical law, but even natural law supports this view. It has been demonstrated through intra-uterine photography, fetal photoscopy, and now with 3-D and 4-D ultrasound, that a "person" is a human being from the beginning of biological development.

A "person" is described in the United States Constitution and all state constitutions as having inalienable rights given to us by our Creator God. Still we needed an amendment to define blacks and minorities as "persons." Now we need to define all human beings as persons at their biological beginnings. And we must begin to do this state-by-state until enough states are on board to pass a federal Constitutional Amendment.

"All human beings are persons from the beginning of biological development."

Memorize that phrase and repeat it as often as possible!

It is a mistake to let the other side define the language of debate. We can win by emphasizing what most people in most states already believe -- that all human beings are persons at their biological beginnings. I am excited about Personhood because I believe that this is the way we will eventually win. But I am discouraged to see the language being shifted by the pro-aborts to emphasize "birth control" and "fertilized eggs" instead of keeping the emphasis on the definition of a "person."

An embryo is not a "fertilized egg." This is an oxymoron. An embryo is a tiny biologically developing human being. In any case, the language of the amendment speaks only about the beginning of biological development. It doesn't deal with questions about contraception, implantation and whether biological beginnings must be observed. The gist of the language must be interpreted to mean that when we are certain of biological beginnings, then this tiny human being must be considered a person.

It's simple language and that is the reason for the distortion. The pro-abortion media are the lap dogs of Planned Parenthood and NARAL. They get their talking points directly from them. They know our language is powerful and that is why they are trying to distort it. They know where the public is moving on the issue of developing human life.

And they know we will win with this language!

The way to begin to create a culture of life is to affirm the personhood of a human being from the beginning of biological development. Forget the "life begins at conception" or "life begins at fertilization" argument. Forget about "fertilized eggs." Forget discussions about abortifacient birth control. We can't legally determine the moment of conception for every individual -- at least not at this point in our scientific and medical knowledge. And if we could ever determine this, a law regulating abortion shortly after the moment of conception would continue to be almost unenforceable due to the lack of visible evidence in most cases.

While it is a biblical truth that life begins at conception, the civil law is constrained to operate on a much narrower parameter. And practically, elective abortions are never done until we know that life has begun -- at six weeks and later – long after the "little one" in the womb shows compelling signs of biological development. The issue of abortifacient birth control is another issue. RU-486 is another issue to be regulated by specific laws. It's related to the implications of such an amendment, but the amendment does not even address that idea. The amendment simply says that when we can discern the beginning of the biological development of a human being, then that is a "person" according to legal definitions.

It is an incremental step in that regard.

Feel free to use any or all of the above when countering this media myth. Please help us to circulate over a million of these petitions. We need over 600,000 valid signatures from registered voters to get this on the ballot. And be prepared to help us counter the distortions. There is a big fight coming! We pray it will have a peaceful outcome.

Personhood Florida - How to circulate ballot petitions

Cal and Corrie Zastrow train volunteers in Longwood, Florida.

Watch this video and then download a copy of the petition at:

http://personhoodfl.com/resource-kits/

1. Post this video on your web page or blog. (Get the code at YouTube.)

- or -

2. Forward the url to every pro-life Christian you know.

Let's get Personhood initiatives started in 35 states!

Senator Bob Smith endorses the Florida Personhood Amendment

This letter has been out for a few days, but it's the first time I've seen it. It's exciting, because as a former US Senator, Smith has the experience and the credibility to do well in the upcoming Senatorial race. Even if he doesn't win the primaries in a crowded Republican field, the significance of this is that it will force at least some of the other Republican candidates to support the initiative as well. This is really good news!

From: Senator Bob Smith bob_smith@bobsmithussenate.com
Subject: I Strongly Endorse the Personhood Amendment
Date: Wednesday, September 16, 2009, 1:20 PM

Fellow Members of Florida's Pro Life Community:

I wholeheartedly support the initiative for a Personhood Amendment to our state constitution. Not only does pro-life include protecting the unborn, but all people at every stage of their lives. Every individual has dignity and it is not the function of government to decide which lives have more value than others. You have my pledge that as your U.S. Senator I will pursue this at the federal level as vigorously as I led the fight to enact the Partial Birth Abortion Ban during my previous tenure in the U.S. Senate.

May God bless our efforts on this vital issue.

Senator Bob

--
Robert C. Smith
Former United States Senator (1991-2003); and
Candidate for United States Senate from Florida

This is an official communication authorized by Friends of Senator Bob Smith. Paid for by Friends of Senator Bob Smith. Not authorized by any other candidate committee or political action committee.

www.friendsofsenatorbobsmith.com

The Freudian Cult of Victimization

I was recently having a discussion with a young woman who was explaining how people like her had been victimized by a church denomination I used to be a member of 20 years ago. I am open to such discussions whenever I believe they can bring people toward reconciliation. In the course of the discussion, she made this intriguing statement. (Since it was posted on a public message board, I cite it here only for the purpose of showing an example of a common idea.)

Truth is objective, yes -- but postmodernism does contain in it this very real truth (which is, as far as I can see, it's only objective statement) -- that for humans, objectivity is a myth. Only God can be truly objective; only God can be the arbiter of truth. We humans are finite and fallible, and the kind of wisdom we are called to walk in is not the wisdom of objectivity -- because we are limited to our own heads, tied by our own cultures and experiences.

The postmodernist idea that we are too flawed to know truth is nonsense. We can't know all of God's truth obviously, but God gave His Word to us so we can know truth. Jesus prayed to the Father on our behalf:

"Sanctify them by your Word. Your Word is truth." - John 17:17

God enables us by the Holy Spirit to understand truth. Yes, we are limited by fallibility and sin. But truth is transcendent and objective and we can know it. However, I am glad for the recognition of postmodernism's inherent contradiction: If we still insist that objectivity is a myth, then we must at least admit that we can never be too sure about that!

Freudian Cultism and "Christian" Counseling

One of the most destructive postmodernists in history was Sigmund Freud. Likewise, one of the biggest problems in the church today is pastors who want to counsel church members along the lines of psychotherapy, rather than instructing them to obey what they already know God's Word says to do. Unfortunately, the philosophy of counseling that has come into the church is traced directly from Freudian psychoanalysis.

Sigmund Freud taught that there is an unconscious mind that is chaotic. There lies buried unresolved conflicts from our childhood that were constellated around one of three "psycho-sexual stages." With the exception of the "startling insight" that bad parents can cause problems for children even later in life, Freud was wrong about almost everything.

Freud was a buffoon.

His personal life showed that he cared only about himself and fulfilling his own need for carnal gratification. He taught that neurotics need to vent their repressed memories and that healing can come only through catharsis. This is completely wrong. In fact, the more we dwell on past hurts the more ingrained they become. Sometimes it helps people to have their feelings validated. "Of course you feel that way, you are right to feel that way! You would be crazy not to feel that way!" It feels like a relief to hear that, but it doesn't solve the problem ... ever.

No matter how much we vent our repressed feelings, this is not the way to heal inner emotional conflict. In fact, prior to Freud no one taught this. It's not biblical and it's never been proven that it can help to restore emotional and mental health. Almost all studies show that psychoanalysis does little more than make the patient dependent on it. At $100 an hour. What a racket!

Healing comes only through forgiveness and prayer.

Where does it say that in the Bible?

"And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil."

- Matthew 6:12-13

All of us deserve hell, so when we realize that we can forgive even as God forgives us, then that becomes a source of joy, healing -- and most importantly -- deliverance from evil. But if we keep talking about how much others hurt us, then we haven't really forgiven, nor have we accepted God's power to deliver us from evil.

If another Christian has hurt me, I believe in seeking justice through directly confronting the person who has sinned against me. If he refuses to repent, then I should go a second time with a witness. If he repents, I have won my brother. If he still refuses, then I can tell it to the church. Or I can just walk away from the conflict with a clear conscience (Matthew 18:15-17).

Whenever I have done the right thing in confrontation, God always has given me a sound mind about it in time. And whenever the person has refused to see his error, God has always brought providential sanctions on him further down the road. And whenever I have thought someone else wrongfully confronted me, I have stood my ground and God himself has shown who was right in the end.

God is great. God is good. God is just. In the grand scheme of things, if you just obey what He says, no one can ever rip you off.

We all need to be a bit more like Joseph and David and a lot less like Judah and Saul.

The problem is that we have this cult of victimization that teaches us that we need to dwell on our hurt, nurture it and then use it to validate our status as a loser. Somehow we think this makes us a winner. It's all Freudian nonsense and Christians should know better.

This cult of victimization has a very strong pull. People go on daytime television and spill their guts to an audience that only loathes and pities them. They think that by portraying themselves as losers that some type of justice will prevail. But the catharsis they experience as the American viewing public dines on their wretched bile makes them all the more loathsome.

Then Jerry Springer appears at the end of the show and says:

"Well, what did we learn today?"

We learned, Jerry, that a God-hating, womanizing coke-fiend from Austria named Sigmund Freud still has the ability to wreck havoc in American culture even though he's been dead for 70 years. And more tragically, the church is partly responsible.

"And God bless you, Jerry! See you next week!"

Frank Schaeffer, will you PLEASE shut up! (part 4)

Here is a great postmodernist quote by Frank Schaeffer from his blog:

While the term postmodernism is often used to describe an aesthetic, artistic worldview characterized by a distrust of theories and ideology, I think it usefully applies (or rather should apply) to the "certainties" on both sides in the religion vs. atheism debate.

Brilliant! In other words, "Postmodernism doesn't mean uncertainty; it means certainty." Or does it? One can never be too sure about these things!

In any case, one thing is certain, Frank Schaeffer has learned to use blogspot.com and since August has been blogging from his parents' basement. (Metaphorically speaking of course!)

In part two, of this series, I claimed that the best way to confront Frank Schaeffer's attacks on common sense is to realize that he's just another angry postmodernist. The way to counter him is to first realize that virtually everything he says is complete drivel.

It reminds me of the passage in Through The Looking Glass in which Alice is talking to Humpty Dumpty:

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master – that's all."
Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again.

Puzzled? That's exactly how I feel when reading or listening to Frank Schaeffer. I say: "But words mean things!" Franky Dumpty says: "No, they don't! They sneer whatever aesthetic I confuse they brrg snrffle!"

Ironically, after posting part two, in an episode of postmodernist doubt, I wondered if Frank Schaeffer himself has ever criticized existentialism and postmodernism as being an unviable philosophy, as his father, the late great Francis Schaeffer, had done so forcefully in How Should We Then Live? So I did a little research by reading his new blog.

Frank frequently quotes the 19th century philospoher Søren Kierkegaard, who was simultaneouly existentialist, neo-orthodox, postmodernist and humanist. One could sum up the entire philosophy of Kierkegaard as "uncertainty about God." Some of the most comic philosophical quotes of all time were offered by this crazy Dane. I say these are comic quotes, because they have the quality of sounding both obvious and profound, while really being nonsense. Kierkegard's philosophy is reminiscent of the "sound of one hand clapping" cliché of Zen Buddhism, which is meant to show that meaning comes only through accepting paradoxical truths. "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" the Zen master asks. It's a rhetorical question. In other words, "People who know, do not know; just as people who do not know, do not know."

I must find a truth that is true for me.

Irony is a qualification of subjectivity.

It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.

It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand.

So let others admire and extol him who claims to be able to comprehend Christianity. . . . I regard it then as a plain duty to admit that one neither can nor shall comprehend it.

William Blake: "Christ in the Sepulchre, Guarded by Angels"

Both Blake and Kierkegaard emphasized the belief that fear and anxiety come from not recognizing the tension of opposite forces. In Blake's case, this idea took the form of a Neo-Gnostic dualism.

Thus Kierkegaard represents the erupting existential angst among 19th century thinkers who feverishly sought out truth and meaning, but were never content with biblical truth and historic Christian orthodoxy as a source and thereby missed the forest for the trees.

Of course, not everything Kierkegaard said was wrong and it is subject to interpretation. If understood in a Christian context, Kierkegaard's idea of a "leap of faith" has some antecedents among the writings of the Church Fathers. But to understand Frank Schaeffer, one must understand that he -- like Kierkegard, Karl Barth, Albert Schweitzer, and Rudolph Bultmann before him -- is self-consciously neo-orthodox. The term, neo-orthodoxy is somewhat misleading in that it isn't a "new orthodoxy," but a mid-20th century revision of the Historical Critical method espoused by the liberal theologians 50 to 100 years prior to that.

Today Frank has ventured to express his admiration of Kierkegard and Barth. Don't be surprised that if tomorrow you hear him echoing Bishop Shelby Spong and John Dominic Crossan. He's an iconclast who has taken to disagreeing with anyone who stands for certainty and objective truth. His mode of operation is first contradiction and then affirmation in the next breath. In this way, he is impossible to pin down.

The promo to his new book says:

Frank Schaeffer has a problem with Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Dennett, and the rest of the New Atheists — the self-anointed “Brights.” He also has a problem with the Rick Warrens and Tim LaHayes of the world. The problem is that he doesn’t see much of a difference between the two camps. As Schaeffer puts it, they “often share the same fallacy: truth claims that reek of false certainties. I believe that there is an alternative that actually matches the way life is lived rather than how we usually talk about belief.”

I too have a problem with Dawkins, Hitchens, Warren and LaHaye. But it isn't because they speak of certainties. On the contrary, it is because Dawkins and Hitchens are postmodernist atheists reveling in ad hominems designed to provoke an emotional response and making all sorts of illogical appeals. On the other hand, Warren and LaHaye, while being orthodox in the essentials, have spouted all sorts of bizzare minor heresies in their best-selling books. It's not an issue of "certainty" being false in and of itself, but of them being certain of their error.

Frank Schaeffer is criticizing these men not for merely being wrong. He is essentially saying that anyone who thinks he is absolutely right about something is wrong. And that is one thing he is absolutely sure about.

If everything I've written here only makes your head spin. Don't worry, it's a sign that you are sane. The point to remember is that Frank Schaeffer, supposedly a one-time champion of Reformed Orthodoxy, has succumbed to Gnostic dualism. He's adopted an elitist attitude that sneers at every Christian who grasps at the fixed anchor of biblical truth.

In part five, we'll look at whether Frank Schaeffer ever even understood Reformed theology to begin with.

Don't be fooled by Obamacare, it includes abortion!

I am on the NARAL Pro-Choice America email list because I like to see what they are thinking. As McArthur said, "Know your enemy."

This is from today.

Anti-choice politicians have drawn a line in the sand: they won't be happy until women who now have private insurance coverage for abortion lose it in the new health-care system. The stakes for women could not be higher in the health-care debate.

That's why we're meeting with key lawmakers all day today to drive the point home—and making sure that anti-choice legislators don't succeed in banning private insurance companies from covering abortion care in a reformed health-care system.

So according to NARAL, if Obamacare passes with a public option, then your tax dollars will pay for abortion. Commentators on the left have called us liars for saying the public option includes abortion, but when Nancy Keenan writes that they are making sure "anti-choice legislators don't succeed in banning abortion in a reformed health-care system," then we know that it is part of the public option. They know it is and want to save it.

Don't be fooled by the distinction between public and private. If healthcare stays in the hands of private companies then we still have a choice of what type of plan we pay into. If it becomes "public" (i.e, socialized) then you will pay for abortions.

Call your congressman and senators and do the opposite of what Nancy Keenan of NARAL says to do! And feel free to foreward this message to everyone you know.

- Jay Rogers
www.forerunner.com/blog

Franky Schaeffer, will you PLEASE shut up! (part 3)

What to say about the murder of pro-life activist James Pouillon?

Mark Browne, M.Ed, a speech-language pathologist from Melbourne, Florida offered this expert comment: "Frank Schaeffer's hateful demonizing speech against pro-lifers has created a culture where such things can occur, with little fanfare from the media."

Sal Lonberg, an ornithologist from Palm Bay, Florida said, "Like the vast majority of pro-life advocates, Jim was non-violent and never condoned violence. The great irony here is that the same people who rushed to canonize Tiller the Killer have remained deafeningly silent and have even celebrated the death of this gentle soul."

Carol Matthews, a scientist at Kennedy Space Center, was a bit more austere: "'Where do we go from here?' As Dr. Martin Luther King once said: 'When our days become dreary with low hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. Let us realize that William Cullen Bryant is right: "Truth crushed to earth will rise again." Let us go out realizing that the Bible is right: "Be not deceived, God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." This is our hope for the future, and with this faith we will be able to sing in some not too distant tomorrow with a cosmic past tense, "We have overcome, we have overcome, deep in my heart, I did believe we would overcome."'"

In my last post, I pointed out the number of pro-abortion related homicides is huge. It's not surprising that a profession that makes it's living from legalized child murder has a huge number of homicide convictions among its practitioners.

There have been other pro-lifers besides Pouillon who have been murdered as well. It's usually a blip on the radar screen of liberal journalism so most people don't know about this.

Huntsville, Alabama — In 1993, pro-abortion activist Eileen Orstein Janezic murdered pro-life activist minister and radio talk show host Jerry Simon in Huntsville, Alabama. After killing Simon, she held police at bay with a pistol for six hours while spouting quotes from Anton LaVey's "Satanic Bible." In October 1994, a jury found her guilty of murder, and she was sentenced to life in prison.

Monterey, Tennessee - On the morning of October 19, 1998, pro-abortionist Byron Looper, a Monterey, Tennessee county property assessor running against pro-life state Senator Tommy Burks, shot Burks in the left eye with a large-caliber handgun near a pumpkin patch where he planned to take schoolchildren on a hayride that same day. A witness said that Looper told him after the murder that "I did it, man, I did it! I killed that dude!" In 2000, Looper was convicted and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole.

Owosso, Michigan - James Pouillon, 63, was killed Friday morning while protesting across the street from a high school in Owosso, about 70 miles northwest of Detroit. Pouillon was in his usual spot holding a sign that pictured a chubby-cheeked baby with the word "LIFE" on one side and an image of an aborted fetus with the word "ABORTION" on the other. Authorities allege Harlan Drake, 33, of Owosso pulled up to Pouillon in a truck and opened fire. Prosecutors say Pouillon's methods irritated Drake, particularly when used near the high school. Drake also is accused of killing a local business owner earlier that day.

These are just three of over 95 convicted homicides committed in pro-abortion related incidents. The full list is found at Human Life International's pro-abortion violence Web site at http://www.abortionviolence.com/. This Web site shows detailed state-by-state and city-by-city documentation of more than 8,000 incidents of pro-abortion violence and lawbreaking.

In contrast, there have been nine homicides committed in anti-abortion related incidents: four doctors and five abortion clinic workers.

People on both sides of the debate are trying to argue that these were mentally unbalanced people whose actions do not represent the advocacy of either pro-life or abortion rights. For the sake of non-argument, I agree with that statement.

But where do we go from here?

From 1993 to 2000, I lived in and later owned a house directly across the street from one of America's most notorious abortion clinics, Aware Woman Center for Choice. The trustee of the property prior to my purchase was the National Director of Operation Rescue, Keith Tucci.

Keith once told me that before he got involved in Operation Rescue in the late 1980s, he confronted its founder Randall Terry with a serious question, "Do you think it is possible that anyone could die as a result of direct action against abortion clinics?" Randall said without hesitation that it would likely happen. The Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s was a peaceful movement, he reasoned, which encouraged direct action similar to that of Operation Rescue. Numerous arrests occurred. Yet although it is known for being a peaceful protest movement, many deaths on either side occurred as tensions rose and even the peaceful protesters sometimes broke with the pledge to non-violence advocated by Dr. Martin Luther King. In addition, 40 Civil Rights advocates were murdered.

This memorial in Montgomery, Alabama is dedicated to the 40 Civil Rights advocates were murdered including Dr. King.

Not many people know this, but Operation Rescue, and the various pro-life resistance movements that still go on today at abortion clinics, have formed the largest civil disobedience (we prefer the term "biblical obedience") movement in history. I was arrested five times from 1989 to 1996. I know other pro-lifers with dozens of arrests for their peaceful protest of child killing. In all there have been over 75,000 pro-life activists arrested for their peaceful resistance to child killing. In all that confrontation, it is amazing that more people have not been killed.

In the time that I lived across from Aware Woman until now, I have known of many pro-lifers who have received death threats and others who have been attacked, such as Patte Smith who made this video of a doctor who assailed her while she was sidewalk counseling at Orlando Women's Center.



Those holding pro-life signs along US Highway 1 often had oncoming cars swerve in their direction honking their horns at them. My property was vandalized several times.

What do we expect? We are in a war. We strive to use prayer and the preaching of the Gospel as the weapons of our warfare. But occasionally this real spiritual war is going to spill over into physical violence, which is always detrimental to the pro-life cause no matter who is harmed. The great irony is that there have been far many more murders, acts of violence and other illegal acts by pro-abortionists. But the media won't cover it because it rocks their worldview.

Into the fray steps Frank Schaeffer.

And when you look at what happened to Dr. Tiller, there's a direct line connecting the rhetoric that I was part of as a young man and this murder. And so people like me are responsible for what we said and what we did and the way we raised the temperature on this debate out of all bounds. And so when O'Reilly talks about the fact that these people of the far left are against Fox or against him or trying to muzzle debate, he's telling a lie.

I am not a member of the far right. Until I voted for Barack Obama in the last election I was a lifelong Republican and I am still pro-life. I also believe abortion should be legal, but I agree with Barack Obama when he says we ought to find ways to help women, help children, give contraceptives, sex education to lessen the number of abortions. I think abortion is a tragedy. But I also think that pretending that you can call abortion murder and Tiller the baby killer, etc., etc., etc. and that these words don't have an impact is crazy. So this is what helps unhinge a society, talking like that. And I apologize and I will apologize again. I am sorry for what I did.

Question:-- When Frank Schaefer says that pro-lifers who call abortion "murder" are "unhinged" and "responsible" for Tiller's death, can we also draw a direct line between those angry words and the death of our gentle friend, James Pouillon?

Question:-- When Frank Schaeffer says, "I am still pro-life" what does that mean? Does it mean that he dislikes abortion because it is messy and distasteful? Or does he oppose abortion because it is the wanton taking of an innocent baby boy or girl in violation of God's commandment, "You shall not murder"?

In the next installment of "Frank Schaeffer, will you PLEASE shut up?" I'll examine the discontinuity of Franks' so-called "pro-life" stance and explain further why he really needs to shut up.

A list of 95 convicted homicides by abortion doctors and pro-abortion advocates

Here's interesting trivia question:

Q:-- Not counting legal abortions, which legal profession has the highest per capita homicide rate committed by its full-time practitioners?

A:-- Abortion doctors.

If you care at all about the abortion issue, you already know about the pro-life activist who was killed by a pro-abortion advocate. It's not the only incident.

In 1993, pro-abortion activist Eileen Orstein Janezic murdered 51-year old pro-life activist minister and radio talk show host Jerry Simon. After killing Simon, she held police at bay with a pistol for six hours while spouting quotes from Anton LaVey's "Satanic Bible." On October 27, 1994, a jury found her guilty of murder and sentenced her to life in prison. During trial, she admitted that she had shot Simon to prove her love of Satan.

World Magazine, September 18, 1993; "Pro-Life Leader, Pastor Murdered by Avowed Satanist."

This and the recent murder are two of the most outrageous examples. But there have been other murders committed by abortionists. The number of homicides per capita in the US is less 1 in 20,000 per year -- or 1 in 2000 in the past 20 years. But according to the following, the number of homicides committed by abortionists and pro-abortion advocates (of born people) is 95. If there has been an abortion doctor for every abortion clinic that has ever existed in America (about 2000 -- and I think that is a high estimate) then that would make the homicide rate among abortion doctors much higher than the per capita homicide rate for all Americans. I'll leave it to someone else to do the math (the list includes both abortion advocates and doctors) but even a rough crunching of the following data shows it is no contest as to which profession commits the most convicted homicides.

This list of 95 murders is from Human Life International's pro-abortion violence Web site at www.abortionviolence.com. This Web site shows detailed state-by-state and city-by-city documentation of more than 8,000 incidents of pro-abortion violence and lawbreaking.

ANDERSON: In November 1999, Pasadena abortionist Kevin Paul Anderson strangled his business partner, neonatologist Dr. Deepti Gupta, a mother of two young children who was expecting her third. They were involved in an extramarital affair, and she was carrying his baby. Anderson was arrested by the police when a passerby noticed him pushing Gupta's Mercedes off a 450-foot cliff in the San Gabriel Mountains, after dousing her with gasoline, to make it appear that she had been killed in an accident. He confessed to Gupta's murder. In December 2000, Anderson was convicted of second-degree murder by a Pasadena jury (Los Angeles, California).
#
BALDWIN: Michael Paul Baldwin, 21, had a 15-year-old girlfriend, Amanda Lynn Hanson, who was four months pregnant with his baby. He lured Amanda Lynn into a secluded area, and killed her by jamming a branch an inch in diameter down her throat with such force that her tongue was nearly torn loose. Several of her teeth were also broken out. Baldwin then jammed sticks into her other body orifices, one 10 inches inside her body. After he strangled her, Baldwin beat her and crushed her skull with a 30-pound rock. Baldwin was charged with first-degree murder, rape, and several other felonies. He confessed and, in November 2002, he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. Sheriff John Anderson called the killing "the most vicious I've seen in my 30 years in law enforcement" (Colorado Springs, Colorado).
*
BARREIRO: Abortionist Hipolito Barreiro was charged with manslaughter for the January 1983 death of Shirley Payne. Barreiro had previously killed at least three other women with his "safe and legal" abortions, including Ruth Montero in August 1979; Maura Morales in May 1981; and Marta Baptiste in December 1982 (Miami, Florida).
*
BENJAMIN: Abortionist David Benjamin killed Guadalupe Negron, a mother of four, in July 1993. During the abortion, he lacerated Negron's cervix and punctured her uterus, causing severe bleeding. Then the abortionist abandoned her. Negron's autopsy report attributed her death to massive bleeding causing shock and cardiac arrest. Benjamin was indicted and convicted on murder charges due to "depraved indifference to human life" (New York, New York).
*
BENSON: 16-year-old Vanessa Youngbear of Weatherford, Oklahoma, was 7 months pregnant by her boyfriend, Trevor Wayne Benson, who did not want the baby. So Benson and one of his friends took Vanessa for a little ride. They took her to a deserted field, shot her in the head, and pushed her body into a ditch. Police arrested Benson and his friend the next day and charged them both with first-degree murder for the 2002 killing (Weatherford, Oklahoma).
*
BICKHAM: Abortionist Arnold Bickham aborted Sylvia J. Moore in December 1986, using first-trimester techniques for a second-trimester pregnancy. He lacerated her internal organs so badly that she collapsed. Bickham called her "lazy" and ejected her from his abortion mill. Moore then bled to death. The postmortem report stressed "gross negligence and abandonment on the part of the original treating physician. In consideration of the above, the manner of death is determined to be homicide" (Chicago, Illinois).
*
BISHOP: Richard Bishop's ex-girlfriend, Tiffany Watkins, was nearly seven months pregnant, and he was not happy about it at all. So, on March 30, 2004, he awakened Tiffany, saying that he wanted to talk to her about her pregnancy. Then he repeatedly stabbed her in the chest, back and arms. Tiffany was rushed to a hospital, where she lost her viable preborn baby. Bishop was charged with murder and attempted murder for his attack (Richmond, Indiana).
*
BISKIND: In April 1998, Phoenix abortionist John Biskind aborted Louann Herron's 26-week-old preborn child, then left the abortion mill while she bled to death. In February 2001, a jury found Biskind guilty of manslaughter and clinic administrator Carol Stuart-Schadoff guilty of negligent homicide in the Herron case (Phoenix, Arizona).
*
BOLER: DeShone Boler was married, but was committing adultery with Emily Garrison, who was pregnant with his child. His wife, Crystal Michele, was understandably unhappy with this cheating, so she decided to take action. She went to Garrison's home, beat her up with a gun, bit her severely on the shoulder, stabbed her in the neck with a knife, and finally shot her five times (Brazoria, Texas).
*
BOYD: 29-year-old Mark Boyd of St. Louis hired Malik J. Nettles to do a little job for him. His 15-year-old girlfriend, Kyunia Taylor, was pregnant with his child, and he did not want the child. So Nettles murdered Kyunia as she rode home on a school bus in February 1996. He boarded the bus and began firing, killing Kyunia and her preborn baby, named Diamond, who was delivered by Caesarean section three months premature. The baby lived for 23 days but died. Nettles also shot the bus driver, Richard Lanman, three times, but he survived. Boyd was arrested after being indicted on murder charges in both deaths (St. Louis, Missouri).
*
BROWN: On January 22, 1999, the 26th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, pro-abortionist Eric Laquinne Brown of Pontotoc, Mississippi strangled to death his pregnant ex-girlfriend Shorlonda Moore and left the bodies of Moore and her preborn child in a burned-out car in Memphis, Tennessee. In November 1999, Brown received a life sentence for the murder of Moore and a concurrent 20-year manslaughter sentence for the killing of her preborn child after pleading guilty to the charges (Memphis, Tennessee).
#
BULLOCK, ERIK: Erik Bullock of Little Rock, Arkansas, wanted his girlfriend, Shawana Pace to have an abortion. She refused, so he hired three thugs to kick her repeatedly in the belly and kill her full-term preborn baby. Pace pleaded for her baby's life as she was kicked, choked and punched on August 26, 1999. One of the attackers told her "Your baby is dying tonight." Pace had to have her spleen removed, and also suffered a broken left wrist, black eye and bruised face. Bullock and the three thugs were charged with capital murder in the first test of Arkansas' new Fetal Protection Law. A jury convicted Bullock of capital murder (Little Rock, Arkansas).
*
BULLOCK, MATTHEW: Matthew Bullock strangled his girlfriend to death. She was six months pregnant and he did not want his baby. So he decided to abort both her and her preborn child. He then tied up her body and hid her in a closet (Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania).
*
BUNYARD: Jerry and Elaine Bunyard had been married for three years, and Elaine was ecstatic that she was about a week away from delivering their first child, a little girl, in 1979. But Jerry Bunyard wasn't as excited. He was carrying on an adulterous affair with a Tracy woman and thought his wife would "take him for everything he had" if he divorced her, a witness said. So Bunyard approached a biker-type boyhood friend, Earlin Popham, and offered him $1,000 to kill his wife. When Elaine Bunyard was alone in the kitchen, Popham broke an iron skillet on her skull. He then shot her in the head with a shotgun and tried to make the crime look like both a robbery and a suicide (Stockton, California).
*
CALAC: On February 15, 2004, Andre F. Calac shot his pregnant girlfriend, Marlene J. Magee, in the head. He was charged with murder (San Diego, California).
#
CANO: Gilberto Cano's live-in girlfriend, Martha Isela Moreno, was nearly seven months pregnant, and was looking forward to having her little girl. But Cano was not quite so happy about it, so he decided to abort both her and her preborn child. In April 2002, he stabbed her several times in the abdomen with a long kitchen knife and then strangled her to death. Cano was arrested that night, jailed, and charged with two counts of murder (San Francisco, California).
*
CARLOS: Kansas City, Missouri abortionist Lynn D. Weller was shot to death in his home in September 1973 by two masked gunmen who were hired by rival abortionist William Carlos. Carlos was angry that Weller was having an affair with his ex-wife (Kansas City, Missouri).
*
CARRUTH: Carolina Panthers football player Rae Carruth's girlfriend, Cherica Adams, was eight months pregnant. He did not want to pay child support, and demanded that she have an abortion, but she refused. So he hired a hit man to shoot Adams. Carruth and three accomplices laid a trap, and Carruth helped close it by blocking Adams' car so another man could pull alongside and shoot her. In March 2001, Michael Kennedy pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Adams' death. The triggerman, Van Brett Watkins, also confessed (Charlotte, North Carolina).
*
COOPER: Abortionist Boyd Cooper performed a 23-week abortion on a 2-pound, 2-ounce infant boy, who gasped and attempted to breathe after he was aborted. Cooper made no efforts to revive or help the little one because his parents wanted him dead. So the little baby was placed in a utility room used as an infant morgue. Cooper instructed a nurse, "Leave the baby there -- it will die." The nurse testified that the infant was still gasping in the closet when she returned to work 12 hours later (New York, New York).
*
DAVIS, TERRANCE: Sonya Hayes was just days away from giving birth to a full-term 7-pound boy when her boyfriend, Terrance Davis of Toledo, Ohio, gunned her down in her car as she waited to pick up her 5-year-old son. Davis was wearing a Halloween mask to impede identification, and shot Sonya six times in the belly and upper torso, emptying his revolver. Prosecutors said it was obvious that the shooter was aiming for Sonya's belly in an attempt to kill their unborn child. Davis was charged with three counts of aggravated murder for shooting and killing Hayes and her unborn child (Toledo, Ohio).
#
DAVIS, WILLIAM: Matthew Elliott and William Davis of Magnolia, Arkansas, dug a grave for 15-year old Brittni Pater, who was 12 weeks pregnant. Then they lured her into the woods and bludgeoned her repeatedly with a long, heavy metal bar wrapped with heavy tape around one end, as though the person who wielded it wanted to make sure he was able to get a good grip. Then they ran her down with their car and dumped her battered body in an old gravel pit. Elliott immediately bragged to his friends about how he had killed Brittni. Elliott and Davis were both charged with capital murder after giving statements in which Brittni's pregnancy was cited as the reason she was killed. On November 2, 2000, a Columbia County jury found Davis guilty of capital murder for his part in the fatal beating (Magnolia, Arkansas).
*
DEHENRE: Jackson, Mississippi abortionist Malachi Dehenre, primary abortionist at the New Women's Clinic abortion mill, was tried and convicted in April 1998 for murdering his wife, Nyesha Dehenre, who worked with him (Jackson, Mississippi).
*
DRAGIN: Notorious Chicago abortion mill owner Kenneth "The Creep" Yellen literally died in the gutter after his gangland-style execution in November 1979, from five shots in the head as he walked to work. The primary suspect was Robin Dragin, a professional burglar with mob connections, who organized a Chicago abortion clinic that had been in competition with Yellin's operation. Before abortion was legalized, Dragin was a principal in the operation of an illegal abortion ring in the north-west suburbs (Chicago, Illinois).
*
EASON: Marc Eason was a vocal pro-abortionist who worked at the Dadeland abortion clinic in Miami. He was sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole for the ax-murders of his two roommates. Eason claimed the murders were "justifiable homicide" because the roommates had "complained about his sloppiness." He also stabbed his abortionist mother, Betty Eason, in the neck with a steak knife (Miami, Florida).
*
EDELIN: In January of 1975, Boston abortionist Kenneth Edelin aborted a live and viable baby boy and then deliberately smothered him. He was subsequently convicted of manslaughter, but the conviction was overturned because of improper jury instructions (Boston, Massachusetts).
*
FOAT: In 1965, Ginny Foat, president of the California chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW), bludgeoned Argentine businessman Moises Chayo to death with a tire iron outside a bar, and murdered San Francisco hotel employee Donald Fitting after picking him up in a bar (San Francisco, California).
#
FOUNTAIN: Ex-convict Tony Fountain had an affair with 17-year-old Chavanna Prather, a high school junior, and she became pregnant by him. He did not want the baby, and, in April 2001, he shot Chavanna in the stomach, abdomen and hand, then strangled her and repeatedly stabbed her in a crime so vicious that it shocked even hardened investigators. Fountain was charged with first-degree murder and the intentional killing of an unborn child (Chicago, Illinois).
*
FRANKLIN: In February 1980, abortionist James Franklin killed Betty Jane Zellers Damato during a botched criminal abortion and was sentenced to three years for manslaughter (Denver, Colorado).
*
GANDOTRA: San Diego abortionist Suresh Gandotra killed Magdalena Orteg Rodrigues during a botched abortion in December 1994. Gandotra fled the country to his homeland of India before authorities could formally charge him with an upgraded charge of murder (San Diego, California).
#
GOINS: Even by pro-abortion standards, this case is grisly in the extreme, and perfectly illustrates the vile and murderous nature of anti-life thinking. 22-year-old Glenn Isaac Goins confessed to murdering 24-year-old Amanda Wood of Johnson City, who was at least four months pregnant, in January 2004, after police told him they had found her body in the basement of his mother's house. An investigator testified that Goins said "I did it. I killed her." Goins said he had seen Amanda, watched her a couple of times, and wondered what it would be like to kill her. Goins testified that he said "And I said "I'm going to kill you." She said "Please don't" or something like that, and I smacked her in the face and told her to shut up. She was sitting on the bed, and I took a towel and started choking her with the towel. I kept on choking her until she died." Goins then told how he stuffed Amanda's body in a sleeping bag and moved her to the basement, and then tried to clean up the scene. Goins then wrapped her body in plastic and duct tape. He said "I never felt bad about what I have done. Whenever I let her in my car, I knew I was going to kill her and nothing would stop me." Goins was charged with first-degree murder in Amanda's death. But hers was not the only murder he confessed to. On January 12, 2004, Goins was indicted in Louisville, Kentucky, on charges of murder, first-degree rape and first-degree robbery in the 1999 slaying of country singer Melissa Januskevicius, 20, of Stevens Point. He was also charged in two other cases of the murder of women. When questioned about one of his murders, Goins admitted that he "liked killing people." According to police investigators, at no time did Goins show a scrap of remorse for any of his murders (Johnson City, Tennessee).
*
GRATTON: Edward Gratton, 34, of London, Ontario, raped 16-year old Glenda Tedball repeatedly, and she became pregnant. When her pregnancy became known, Gratton grabbed Glenda and held her down while her own mother, Norma Poore, forcibly aborted her. Glenda died soon after (London, Ontario, Canada).
*
GREEN: On January 3, 2004, Lawrence Green savagely beat his pregnant girlfriend, 21-year-old Rashawn Peterson. He kicked her twice in the abdomen and then beat her with a broomstick and his fists at their home, causing her to go into premature labor at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. Medical examiner Dr. Michael Graham said that the beating resulted in bleeding behind the placenta, resulting in the baby's premature birth. He ruled the death a homicide. Rashawn named her dead baby "Rosie" (St. Louis, Missouri).
*
GREGG: Raymond Gregg's live-in girlfriend, Angela Russell, was pregnant, and he was not happy about it. So he solved his `problem' in the most direct manner possible. He admitted to police that he killed Angela, and then buried her body in woods off Statem Gap Road in Hamblen County. In October 2003, Gregg pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was given the maximum possible sentence, 25 years in prison without parole (Morristown, Tennessee).
*
GWYNNE: Abortionist John Gwynne was convicted of the first-degree murder of his nineteen-year-old girlfriend (Los Angeles, California).
*
HAMILTON, JOHN: Prominent Oklahoma City abortionist John Baxter Hamilton was having an affair with a topless dancer he had aborted, and his wife was considering leaving him. On Valentine's Day 2001, Hamilton choked his wife with a necktie, beat her over the head with a heavy blunt object hard enough to smash a hole in her skull, and then slammed her face repeatedly onto the floor. In December 2001, a jury convicted Hamilton of murdering his wife. Amazingly, pro-abortionists tried to get all charges dropped against Hamilton by sending death threats to at least three news agencies, District Attorney Wes Lane and state witnesses against Hamilton. Even more incredibly, Hamilton's lawyer said that police should be investigating local pro-lifers as suspects in the murder, not the abortionist! (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma)
*
HAMILTON, MICHAEL: In November 1981, 27-year-old Michael Hamilton gunned down his pregnant wife Gwendolyn with a shotgun on a rural road near Fresno. Her preborn child was killed in the assault as well. Then he tried to collect on her $100,000 life insurance policy. In 1982, he was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death (Fresno, California).
*
HANNA: Abortionist Alicia Ruiz Hanna was convicted in 1994 of second-degree murder after Angela Sanchez, a mother of four, died at Hanna's abortion mill. Hanna tried to stuff Angela's body into the trunk of a car in order to dump her body across the border in Tijuana, Mexico. Hanna was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison for murder (Los Angeles, California).
*
HAWKINS: Leah Hawkins of Lamar, Kansas, testified that her husband Jason beat her with a log from a woodpile while she was pregnant and after she refused to have an abortion. Her 10-month-old daughter witnessed the beating. Her son was born three months premature as a result of the beating and died December 26, 1999, at a Kansas City hospital. Jason Hawkins was charged with second-degree murder (Lamar, Missouri).
*
HERRERA: Carlos Herrera and Brenda Chavez were having an affair, and Chavez became pregnant. Herrera did not want the child, so he solved the problem in the most efficient way possible. In February 2001, Herrera and Chavez met for one of their late-afternoon trysts at the Southern Ute Sand and Gravel pit. Herrera beat Chavez to death and disposed of her body and vehicle by running the vehicle off a steep embankment into a grove of trees (Durango, Colorado).
#
HOHBERGER: Henry C. Hohberger III of Philadelphia found out that his pregnant girlfriend, Diane Grant, was carrying a baby girl, and he was upset about this because, as he told a maternity nurse, "I already have a daughter. ... It's supposed to be a damn boy." He also did not feel like paying child support, so he repeatedly tried to get Diane to have an abortion, but she refused every time. In November 2001, when the baby girl -- named Nicole -- was just seven weeks old, Hohberger beat and shook his little girl so severely that she suffered skull and rib fractures, and died five days later. Among Nicole's injuries were four broken ribs that were healing. The little baby girl also had eleven newly broken ribs, two fractures to her skull, and multiple hemorrhages to her head and eyes, the coroner's report stated. In November 2001, Hohberger was charged with capital murder and criminal homicide (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).
*
HOLLIMAN: High school student Tanika Fox of Greensboro, North Carolina, was pregnant by her boyfriend Shawn Kristopher Holliman. He did not want to be a father, and demanded she get an abortion. She refused. So, on December 14, 1999, he shot her twice in the head at point-blank range. He was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. In 2000, the students at Tanika's high school dedicated their yearbook in her name (Greensboro, North Carolina).
*
HURD: Lorie Renee Hurd gave birth to full-term twin baby girls in the bathroom of her home. Then she stuffed them into a plastic bag, cinched it closed, and abandoned her dying babies. Hurd had had previous several abortions (Los Angeles, California).
#
IDELFONSO: On January 5, 2004, Antonio Dejesus Idelfonso and Eliseo Marcelino-Quintero were driving their pickup truck past a woman walking on the road when she fell down next to them. They stopped to see if they had hit her. 32-year-old Tracy Owen, who was so heavily pregnant she might have even been in labor at the time, was lying on the road, crying for help. Idelfonso told police that he responded, "Here's your help," and shot her five times in the upper body. One of the bullets struck her preborn child. Metro police detective Robert Swisher said "In my 22 years on the job, I have never seen anyone executed, and I mean executed, because someone thought they had hit the person with a vehicle. It sickens me." Both men were charged with murder (Nashville, Tennessee).
*
JANEZIC: In 1993, pro-abortion activist Eileen Orstein Janezic murdered pro-life activist minister and radio talk show host Jerry Simon in Huntsville, Alabama. After killing Simon, she held police at bay with a pistol for six hours while spouting quotes from Anton LaVey's "Satanic Bible." In October 1994, a jury found her guilty of murder, and she was sentenced to life in prison (Huntsville, Alabama).
*
JOHNSON, COLEMAN: Tammy Lynn Baker of Charlottesville, Virginia, was eight months pregnant by her boyfriend, Coleman L. "Mike" Johnson Jr. The only problem was that he did not want the baby to be born. He had demanded that Tammy Lynn have an abortion, but she had refused. So he planted a pipe bomb on the sidewalk outside Tammy Lynn's apartment. She picked it up, it exploded, and both she and her near-term preborn baby were killed instantly. In May 2001, Johnson was convicted of capital murder (Charlottesville, Virginia).
#
JOHNSON, RICHARD: Deborah Denise Randall was eight months pregnant by her boyfriend Richard Johnson and was happily awaiting the birth of her child. The only problem was a major one -- Johnson was 18 years older than her and did not want his baby. He beat her up repeatedly, at one point squeezing her as hard as he could to induce miscarriage. When repeated beatings did not cause her to lose her baby, he emptied his pistol into her, firing bullets into her head, neck and chest (Richmond, Virginia).
*
KARMAN: Harvey Karman of Los Angeles, the developer of the menstrual extraction technique of early abortion, had a three-page police record, including an arrest for murder in the death of an abortion client (Los Angeles, California).
*
KEEBLE: Sundance Medicinehorn Keeble was living with his 20-year-old sister and his 21-year-old girlfriend, who was four to five months pregnant. On November 21, 2003, Keeble deliberately stabbed his girlfriend in the stomach and savagely beat his own sister. He punched her in the mouth so hard she lost several teeth, and his girlfriend's preborn baby died as a result of his attack, although the girlfriend survived. Keeble was charged with fetal homicide, three counts of aggravated assault and simple assault. Brown County prosecutor Mark McNeary said "This was a heinous act. The defendant intentionally stabbed the woman in the stomach, causing the death of the unborn child" (Aberdeen, South Dakota).
*
KETCHUM: When New York legalized abortion on demand in 1970, abortionist Jesse Ketchum immediately set up shop in a Buffalo motel suite and began performing late-term abortions. Soon after, Ketchum was convicted of criminally negligent homicide after killing Margaret Louise Smith. A pathologist determined that Margaret bled to death from "laceration of the entire length of the cervix, lower segment of the uterus, and the broad ligament" (Buffalo, New York).
*
KLVANA: In 1989, Los Angeles abortionist Milos Klvana was sentenced to 53 years in prison after being found guilty of the intentional murder of eight newborn babies and the stillbirth of another infant (Los Angeles, California).
*
LAUFE: Abortionist Leonard Laufe aborted the 32-week pregnancy of a woman who falsely claimed that she had been raped. The prostaglandin abortion resulted in the baby being born alive. He then allowed the fully viable baby to die. The entire episode, including closeups of the baby gasping and kicking, was filmed for "educational purposes" (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania).
#
LAGRONE: Pro-abortionist Edward Lewis LaGrone had repeatedly molested ten-year-old Shakeisha Lloyd, and she learned that she was 17 weeks pregnant. He offered to pay $1,500 for her to get an abortion, because he wanted to cover up his sexual abuse. She did not get the abortion, so LaGrone decided to abort not only the preborn baby, but Shakeisha's entire family. LaGrone went to Shakeisha's home and shot her uncle. Then he opened fire on two elderly women, Zenobia Anderson, 83, and Caola Lloyd, 76, who was blind and bedridden with cancer, killing them both. Shakeisha paused to pick up her 19-month-old sister and shield her behind some boxes. She was shouting to her mother to hide when LaGrone walked up to her and shot her in the head, killing her instantly. LaGrone was convicted of multiple counts of capital murder and was sentenced to death (Fort Worth, Texas).
*
LEACH: On January 18, 2004, Dan Leach murdered his 19-year-old girlfriend, Ashley Nicole Wilson, who was pregnant with his child. He strangled her and hung her body in her apartment. Her mother discovered her body, and the medical examiner ruled her death a suicide. Leach left a letter written by Ashley near her body, which said that she was despondent because she was pregnant and the father did not want to help raise the child. This was intended to make people think she had killed herself. After seeing Mel Gibson's film "The Passion of the Christ" on March 7, 2004, Leach felt severe remorse for his murder, and confessed to it. He said that he killed Ashley because she was pregnant with his child and he did not want to be involved with her anymore or care for their child. Leach said "And so, after watching that movie, I was very emotional, and so I thought about the things I had done." Leach was charged with murder after his confession (Houston, Texas).
*
LETOUR: Michael Letour's live-in girlfriend, Jenny McMechan, was 36 weeks pregnant with his preborn child. She was just two weeks away from delivering a healthy baby boy. On New Year's Eve of 2001, Latour brutally shot her in the head and neck as she stood outside a friend's home in Plainfield (Plainfield, Connecticut).
#
LINGLE: On January 19, 1999, Harold R. Lingle and two of his friends drove to the home of 36-year-old Erin Vanderhoef, who was just days away from giving birth. Lingle drove Erin to a nearby grocery store to buy donuts with food stamps. While they were gone, Lingle's friends strangled Erin's children, eight-year old Darlene, ten-year old Chris, and eleven-year-old Jimmy. When Lingle brought Erin back to her home, the three strangled her with an electrical cord as well, and her full-term preborn baby died as a result. One of Lingle's friends kicked Erin in the head so hard that he had a limp for several days. This was the worst mass murder in the history of Springfield, Missouri. Lingle was convicted on five counts of first-degree murder (Springfield, Missouri).
*
LOOPER: Pro-abortionist Byron Looper, a Monterey, Tennessee county property assessor running against pro-life state Senator Tommy Burks, shot Burks in the left eye with a large-caliber handgun near a pumpkin patch where he planned to take schoolchildren on a hayride that same day. A witness said that Looper told him after the murder that "I did it, man, I did it! I killed that dude!" (Monterey, Tennessee).
*
LUSTER: On January 28, 2003, Aaron Luster and his girlfriend, Christine Karcher, who was seven months pregnant, began arguing in his car as they drove down a road near the Pittsburgh International Airport. Luster attempted to strangle Christine, then pushed her out of the moving vehicle. She fell to the pavement, and was immediately struck by a following car. When police officers arrived at the scene, they found Christine's mangled body. During Luster's trial, jurors heard Christine's frantic cell phone call for help just nine minutes before she died. Luster's voice, encouraging her to jump from the moving car, was clearly audible. On March 26, 2004, a jury found Luster guilty of two counts of murder, one for Christine and one for her viable preborn baby (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania).
*
MACGUIRE: Roger MacGuire shot his ex-wife, Susan MacGuire, to death in January 2001. He was angry about her pregnancy by her fiance and deliberately aimed at her unborn child. He was tried and convicted of two counts of murder (Salt Lake City, Utah).
*
MARSHALL: Tjane Charmeise Marshall's girlfriend, Shameka Fludd, was already the mother of two children, and was four to five months pregnant with his child. Marshall did not want his baby. He said that the unborn child would "ruin his life" and that "he was going to do something about it." He certainly followed up on his threat. In May 2003, Marshall borrowed a rental car from a friend, drove to Fludd's apartment, where he shot her in the head, killing her instantly (Baltimore, Maryland).
*
MCBEATH: Roger Lee McBeath killed his former girlfriend, Ashley Lyons, who was 5-1/2 months pregnant with a preborn baby boy she had already named Landon. He shot her in the head three times with a handgun to make absolutely sure she was dead. Ashley kept a journal for her little boy. On October 31, 2003, she wrote "Your father wanted me to have an abortion. Your father told me he was going to commit suicide, that you would ruin his life." McBeath was charged with first-degree murder (Lexington, Kentucky).
#
MCGRORY: Michael G. McGrory and Matthew Eshbach had committed many acts of armed robbery, and operated an armed robbery "ring." In November 2002, McGrory and Eshbach went to the home of Kerry Schadler, 21, and his 20-year-old wife, Katherine, who was 20 weeks pregnant, in order to threaten them, because they knew about the robbery gang. McGrory and Eshbach tied up the Schadlers and forced them at knifepoint into McGrory's vehicle. After driving some distance, McGrory pulled Kerry Schadler out of the car and squeezed his neck until "his body went limp," Carroll said. Returning to the car, McGrory began to look for a place to unload the body. He stopped the car, put his arm around Katherine Schadler and started to strangle her; Eshbach finished murdering her. Then they dumped the bodies in Tow Path Park in East Coventry Township (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).
*
MELNICK: In May 1990, abortionist Joseph Melnick was convicted of allowing a viable and healthy 32-week baby girl, who weighed 3 pounds and 9 ounces, to die by ordering `no care' to be given her after she survived his botched third-trimester abortion attempt. The aborted girl was only 13 years old (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).
*
MESHACK: Teshibra Bell, who was only 15 years old, met a man at a convenience store in Southern Dallas. The man, pro-abortionist Shannon Meshack, was 25 years old. She eventually began to have sex with him. In June 2003, Teshibra was five months pregnant with Meshack's baby. She was looking forward to having the child, but Meshack did not want a child. So he strangled Teshibra. He then dragged her body into his back yard, piled up some debris, and tried to burn her (Dallas, Texas).
#
MINERD: In January 1999, Joseph P. Minerd firebombed Deana Mitts' Connellsville townhouse, which killed Mitts, her 3-year-old daughter Kayla, and her unborn child. He did this since co-workers refused to help him use a stun gun to shock Deana into a miscarriage of his child. Witnesses heard Deana screaming in agony after the explosion, and saw her engulfed in flames "like a human torch." Three-year-old Kayla was so badly burned in the fire that her bones fractured from the heat. United States District Attorney Leo Dillon said "It's hard to imagine more anguish than Deana and Kayla Mitts endured before they died." Minerd was sentenced to life in prison for the murders and was prosecuted under the same law used to convict Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania).
*
MONTALVO: Abortionist Angel Acevado Montalvo killed at least two women during the time period 1984-1988 and was prosecuted for one of the botched abortions. The day after he was found guilty in trial, he was back scheduling illegal abortions for women in Puerto Rico (San Juan, Puerto Rico).
*
MYERS, CALVIN: On December 3, 1994, Calvin Shane Myers, his pregnant ex-girlfriend, Irene Christensen, and another man, Steven Paul Howard, were driving toward Park City shortly after midnight in heavy snow. They came upon an unplowed road, and the three got out and walked toward Rockport Reservoir State Park. Myers and Christensen embraced, and then Myers stabbed her at least 12 times with a rusty 4 1/2-inch hunting blade. The two men then left the area, leaving Christensen in a snowbank. Her frozen body was found by a snowmobiler two weeks later. Myers confessed to the crime and was charged with two counts of murder. In February 1996, pled guilty to one count of capital murder (Salt Lake City, Utah).
*
MYERS, TIFANY: On January 20, 2000, Tifany Ann Myers, who was baby-sitting for 21-month-old Joel Vasquez, shook him and slammed him to the floor, causing his death, when he would not stop crying. Myers was charged with first-degree murder. She filed a notice of diminished responsibility, alleging that an abortion she had had just two days before the incident exacerbated her preexisting depression. As a result, her mental state was "greatly compromised" (Des Moines, Iowa).
#
NIEVES: After mailing suicide notes to both of her ex-husbands, Sandi Dawn Nieves told her four young daughters that they were going to sleep in the kitchen in a kind of "slumber party." She bedded the girls down comfortably. Then Nieves, who had just had an abortion, set fires at several points throughout the house to make sure that her little daughters could not escape. All of them burned to death in the fire (Los Angeles, California).
*
PARR: LaMarr Parr of Massillon, Ohio, was charged with the September 16, 2000 fatal stabbing of his ex-girlfriend, Jean K. Toles, and the killing of her 2-1/2-month-old preborn child. She wanted the baby and he wanted her to get an abortion. After he killed her, Parr dumped her body in a ditch (Canton, Ohio).
*
PECK: In October 1995, Joseph Peck beat and murdered his 25-year-old wife Jennifer, who was four months pregnant, because she refused to have an abortion. He stuffed her body into the trunk of her car at the Clique Lounge on North Dale Mabry. Homicide detective Greg Stout said that "We believe that because his wife had become pregnant and would not get an abortion, that he began making threats to her." He was indicted on first-degree murder charges by a Hillsborough County grand jury (Tampa/St. Petersburg, Florida).
*
PERRY: Jake Perry and his girlfriend, Patricia Smith, were expecting a child. In November 2002, Perry grabbed Patricia by her hair, slapped her, punched her and jabbed her in the stomach, head, arms and legs. He threw her into a box of plates, and both her legs began to bleed from cuts she received. Perry finally agreed to take her to the hospital to treat her injuries, but first he demonstrated his touching concern for her safety by forcing her to drive him to his mother's house, where he stole an amplifier. Then he had her drive him across town so he could sell it and buy crack cocaine. Smith miscarried, and the next day Perry was charged with the reckless homicide of an unborn child, among many other charges (Milwaukee, Wisconsin).
*
PINKSTON: On December 18, 2003, James "Herc" Pinkston beat up his pregnant girlfriend Toni Koonce at his apartment. Five days after the beating, doctors at Magee Women's Hospital in Pittsburgh performed emergency surgery on Toni, because the embryonic membranes had ruptured and the leaking fluid could have resulted in a fatal infection which might have killed her. Her preborn baby died during the surgery. Pinkston was charged with criminal homicide for the attack (Pittsburgh, Pennsyvania).
*
PONDER: Jerold L. Ponder and Zaneta Browne were carrying on an affair, and Browne was 14 to 15 weeks pregnant with boy and girl twins by Ponder. Ponder urged Browne to get an abortion, but she refused. So, on July 14, 2002, Ponder and his wife Keya shot Browne, a 29-year-old Rochester mother of three, in the face and back of the head on land owned by Jerold Ponder's family in rural Orleans County (Rochester, New York).
*
REYNOLDS: Oklahoma City Abortionist Joe Bills Reynolds performed breast implants, a hysterectomy, and numerous liposuction procedures on his wife. He tried to collect $500,000 on his wife's life insurance after she bled to death after he opened a two-foot long incision in her abdomen, ostensibly for liposuction, on September 7, 1989. Reynolds would not allow paramedics to aid her until he had finished stapling the huge incision. He told his wife's father that she was assisting in surgery and just "fell dead." The abortionist was found guilty of second-degree manslaughter. The punishment the abortionist received for carelessly killing his own wife? A one dollar fine! (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma).
*
RINGER: Tony Ringer's girlfriend, Cassandra Betts, was pregnant by him, and he did not want the baby because he wanted to marry another woman. So, in December 2000, he shot her in the head as she sat in her car, killing her and her 6-week old preborn child, with Betts' seven-year-old daughter watching from the back seat. Ringer pleaded guilty to two counts of voluntary manslaughter (Cincinnati, Ohio).
*
RIVERA: Lawrence Rivera of Barstow, California, killed his pregnant girlfriend, Kristina Garcia, in May 2002. Rivera had a previous manslaughter conviction on his record, and was also implicated but never charged in the manslaughter death of his live-in girlfriend's daughter in Germany in 1998. His former wife testified that "if I didn't get an abortion that he would pull it out of my stomach." Rivera is still at large (Barstow, California).
*
ROBINSON: 38-year old Kevin Robinson repeatedly stabbed and killed 15-year-old Daphne Sulk in November 1997 because he had gotten her pregnant, and she refused to get an abortion. Authorities found Sulk's frozen body at a highway rest stop. In December 1998, Robinson was convicted of murder (Laramie, Wyoming).
*
SHERMAN: Abortionist Robert Sherman killed 16-year old Carmen Rita McDowell by intentionally performing an incomplete second-trimester abortion upon her in March 1975, so he could collect additional fees. The girl collapsed and was taken to a hospital, where emergency treatment removed a mangled preborn child. She died the next day from a septic abortion. The abortionist was paroled after 22 months in prison. His indictment said that he had a "malicious interest in making more money, cutting his costs and saving his time in disregard for the life and health of his patients." After he was paroled, he began doing abortions again in Massachusetts and Virginia (Washington, D.C.).
*
SHOWERY: During an April 1984 abortion, Raymond Showery tore Mickey Apodaca's uterus and severed her uterine artery. She hemorrhaged for two hours before Showery would allow her transfer to a nearby hospital. She bled to death during emergency surgery to remove her uterus. The abortionist was indicted for manslaughter. Amazingly, while Showery was in jail, six pro-abortion women protested in Showery's defense outside the courthouse, asserting that Showery "is a good man who helps the poor." He performed this abortion while still on bail pending appeal of his conviction for murder in the case of a late-term aborted baby (weighing five pounds) who survived his 1979 abortion attempt. Showery deliberately drowned the viable baby. Showery was convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Showery is an Adolph Hitler aficionado who owns an arsenal of guns and reads voraciously about Hitler. Showery said that "Hitler was one of the most misunderstood men in history. He was really a great man" (El Paso, Texas).
*
SMITH, ALFRED: A jury found pro-abortionist Alfred E. Smith guilty of second-degree murder in the death of his ex-girlfriend Denna Moody. Smith killed Moody in April 1997 because she refused to abort their preborn child. Her charred body was found in her burned car near the Van Nuys Amtrak station (Los Angeles, California).
*
SMITH, NATHANIEL: Nathaniel Dee Smith killed his 21-week pregnant girlfriend Lorena Rivera because she refused to have an abortion and he didn't want to pay child support. He beat her and shot her twice, then buried her body in a garbage bag in a shallow grave. Smith was charged with first-degree murder in Rivera's death and manslaughter in the death of their unborn child. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma).
#
STEELE: Sean Steele had impregnated his 15-year old girlfriend, Barbara Watkins, and she was seven months pregnant. Steele pressured her to have an abortion, but she refused. So Steele told Barbara that they were going to buy baby clothes. Instead, he lured her to a wooded area, smashed her with a rock, stabbed her repeatedly with a broken beer bottle, and finally strangled her and left her body in the woods. He confessed to the killing after construction workers found Watkins' decomposed body in a wooded ravine (Cincinnati, Ohio).
*
STEIR: Abortionist Bruce Steir was charged with murder after Sharon Hamptlon bled to death after Steir ignored her perforated uterus during a December 1996 abortion. Showing a callous and total disregard for the safety of women, pro-abortionists raised money for Steir's defense on the Internet, encouraged their friends to put pressure on elected officials and the California Medical Board, and urged the Riverside County prosecutor to drop the charges (Los Angeles, California).
*
STUART: Jerry Lynn Stuart and his live-in girlfriend, April Renee Greer, were expecting a baby. In fact, April was eight and a half months pregnant, and just days away from delivering her child. But Stuart did not want the child. So he solved his problem by beating April to death, chopping up her body, and stuffing the pieces of her and her near-term preborn baby into a trash can sealed with duct tape (Burlington, North Carolina).
*
TAN YEN: In January 1989, abortionist Connie Tan Yen was charged with infanticide after allowing a third-trimester aborted baby to die of deliberate neglect (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).
*
TARVER: Paul A. Tarver II's girlfriend, Keisha Lewis, was three months pregnant with his preborn child, which he did not want. So he hired a gunman to shoot Keisha dead. The gunman deliberately aimed for Keisha's abdoment, but failed to kill her, although her preborn baby died in the attack. In July 2002, Tarver was indicted by a grand jury and was charged with complicity to commit aggravated murder. The gunman was charged with aggravated murder (Canton, Ohio).
*
THOMAS: Ronnie Thomas beat his pregnant girlfriend with a steering wheel security locking device and then threw the screaming woman from an overpass onto an expressway. She was immediately killed, either by the impact of dropping onto the pavement, or by one of several vehicles that struck her -- including a semi truck (Crown Point, Indiana).
*
UNKNOWN ABORTIONIST: Nurse witnesses testified that an unnamed abortionist from San Vicente Hospital, California, aborted a 7-month old preborn baby live. Some time later, he noticed that the baby was still moving, and drowned the little child in a vat of formaldehyde (Los Angeles, California).
*
VILLAGOMEZ: In October 2002, after an argument in which he demanded that she have an abortion, Jesus Villagomez stabbed his pregnant girlfriend in the stomach. The stab wound resulted in the death of her 18-week-old unborn child (Las Vegas, Nevada).
*
WADDILL: In March 1977, abortionist William Waddill, Jr. committed a third-trimester abortion saline abortion and delivered alive a viable baby girl, whom he then strangled to death. This was the second time he had been charged with infanticide (Los Angeles, California).
#
WALRADT: In September 1999, Brodie Edric Walradt raped, tortured and murdered Beth Kennard, who was near-term and had already named her preborn baby Alexis Ann. She had refused his demands to have an abortion. He suffocated her and bludgeoned her with a log. Wadradt received a life sentence for his crimes (Seattle, Washington).
#
WARD: Lavern Ward of Chicago was upset that his girlfriend Debra Evans was pregnant with his child and would not consent to getting an abortion. So, in November 1995, he shot her in the head and killed her. Then he stabbed Evan's ten-year old daughter in the neck and killed her. Finally, he hacked the unborn child out of Debra's body. He then abducted her seven-year old son Joshua and stabbed him to death. Ward was convicted of three counts of murder, two counts of kidnaping and one of armed robbery for looting the home (Chicago, Illinois).
#
WIEDEMAN: 16-year old Stephanie Nicole Burnett of Athens, Georgia, told her boyfriend, Matthew John Wiedeman, that she was pregnant. He demanded that she have an abortion, and she refused. So, in April 2002, Wiedeman attacked her from behind with a heavy solid steel barbell, while a friend, Raymond Soto, stabbed her with a long-bladed knife. Deputy Coroner Grover Tuten said "I think it's one of the most gruesome [murders] I've ever seen." A Richmond County grand jury indicted Wiedeman and Soto on charges of malice murder (Athens, Georgia).
*
WILCOTT: On June 8, 2002, at a graduation party, pro-abortionist Corinne Wilcott sneaked up behind Sheena Carson, who was 15 weeks pregnant, dragged her to the ground by her hair, punched her in the face, and kicked her repeatedly in the side, shouting "I hope the bastard dies! I told you I was going to get you for sleeping with Kareem!" [Wilcott's husband]. An autopsy revealed that Sheena's unborn child died four days later from blunt-force trauma to the mother's placenta. During the trial, medical experts testified that Sheena's unborn child suffocated in her womb because a blow broke the life-giving bloodlines that connected the child to his mother. Wilcott was found guilty of third-degree murder (Erie, Pennsylvania).
#
WILSON: Pro-abortionist Garrett Wilson began to sexually molest 12-year-old Debbie Oliver, and emotionally browbeat her into having at least four abortions before she was 15 years old. He finally married her in 1980 when she could not have another abortion because she was too far along. Baby Brandi Jean was born shortly after the marriage. Wilson took out extensive life insurance policies on the baby girl and then smothered her to death when she was just two months old. He took the resulting $40,000 settlement and bought a brand-new Pontiac Trans Am. Wilson married Missy Anastasi in March 1986, and, in March 1987, they had a child, Garrett Michael. Wilson bought $150,000 of life insurance on the five-month-old baby and then smothered him to death. In July 1999, a jury took just two hours to find him guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Garrett Michael, and he received a sentence of life in prison without parole (Washington, DC).

Frank Schaeffer, will you PLEASE shut up! (part 2)

In a response to my last blog entry on Facebook, a friend asks:

Q:-- It looks like to me that each person has just resorted to demeaning the others and calling names. Is this what we have come to?

A:-- A polemic is a harsh, strongly worded response to an entrenched viewpoint. It’s sometimes used as a way of eliciting a response when an opponent will not offer a defense. A polemic is meant to stir controversy and get others to think about an issue they would rather accommodate or sweep under the rug. There is a time for tactful wisdom and tender love when dealing with Christians who have erred. But there is also a time to attack aggressively, because it is the only course that is left when compassion and understanding have failed to curb abuse and error.

For instance, Paul writes of the Judaizers, those who taught that converts from Gentile paganism still needed to be circumcised in order to partake of Jesus Christ’s New Covenant: "I could wish that those who trouble you would even cut themselves off!" (Galatians 5:14). Here Paul makes a play on words saying that those who are behind the circumcision controversy ought to go the whole way and be done with it. In other words, “Go castrate yourself!” Paul doesn’t mean it literally, but he is using a clever pun. To be “cut off” in Greek (and English) is a way of saying to be “shut up.” He also recognizes that it is a waste of time trying to persuade some people. They just need to be cut off. It was not “unloving” for Paul to take this hard stance against heresy because he was protecting the peace and sanctity of young lambs who otherwise would be savaged by wolves if their error was allowed to roam free among the churches of Galatia.

Paul warns in the next breath about divisions. “But if you bite and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another!” (Galatians 5:15). One could be misled by this. If Paul wants unity in the church, then why does he use such rough language to describe the Judaizers? Isn’t this fostering disunity? First, Paul had already spent enough time confronting these people. Second, doctrine offends; orthodoxy divides. Today’s pietistic Christians often want doctrinal orthodoxy without offense or division – but ironically, this is what doctrine is meant to do. Truth is the dividing line against all that is false. On the other hand, we can have tremendous doctrinal unity and covenant love with other Christians if we simply focus on creedal orthodoxy as we discuss our differences. As you may not know, I’ve written on this in my e-book, Why Creeds and Confessions?

Irenaeus, Tertullian and Martin Luther were just a few of the most notorious Christian polemicists in confronting heresy. Much of their harsher language is actually satire and parody. It’s meant to be tongue in cheek. But it is only funny if you understand the specific references, such as when Irenaeus in the second century catalogs the pantheon of Gnostic “aeons” with the names: Gourd, Utter-Emptiness, Cucumber, Melon. This is more along the lines of a Monty Python sketch than what is found in the usual patristic apology – if you get the joke, that is.

This tactic is often misunderstood by today’s Christians. For instance, I found myself in tears of laughter reading Gary North’s paper aloud to friends when it first came out. It’s so funny because it is so true. However, I am sure many found it harsh and offensive. Likewise, today’s Neo-Gnostics tend to portray Ireneaus as an intolerant boor. However, I like to think that Paul, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Luther and their ilk were a barrel of laughs to be around, unless you were promoting heresy in their church, that is.

When Gary first published his position paper on blasphemy excoriating the younger Schaeffer for his idiocy, Frank was still sought after as a speaker raising money for crisis pregnancy centers. (I am sure he still advocates CPCs, but I don’t know how many pro-lifers would want to hear him now.) I remember thinking back in the early 1990s that it was okay for Frank to raise funds to help save babies, despite his defection from Protestantism to Eastern Orthodoxy. I too wondered if maybe Gary was being a bit too harsh even if it was in good fun. Now that Frank argues for legalized abortion and homosexual marriage, I think it was right on the mark. It’s merely the weakness of his deficient theology brought to a rigorously logical conclusion. Thankfully, most Christians are not that consistent. I’ll comment more on that in part three.

Polemics is also good for provoking a first stage of dialog. It is in one sense “guerilla warfare” that is meant to flush out and identify the enemy in order to engage him in a thesis-antithesis debate. I don’t expect to actually flush out Frank Schaeffer himself. He has bigger fish to fry than to deal with the likes of me. (But who knows?) What I hope to do is to categorize and critique his most egregious errors. And since there is nothing new under the sun, the reader will see that the same errors are repeated by other religious liberals such as Tony Campolo, Jim Wallis, Bill Hybels and Bill Moyers. Such postmodernist errors are also endemic in the Contemplative/Emerging Church movement.

Ironically, Frank Schaeffer's entire style continues to be polemics. He often doesn't know what he is talking about – and as the son of a famous theologian he has no excuse for his ignorance. In part three, I’ll outline some of Frank’s fallacies, which are all the more outrageous once you understand that he was steeped in doctrinal orthodoxy for many years.

Is Frank Schaeffer really a danger to anyone but himself?

Although few conservative Christians at this point take Frank Schaeffer seriously, there is the danger that some will give credence to his renunciation of his conservative political activism because it is coupled with the accusation that his parents, Francis and Edith Schaeffer, were insane, dysfunctional, abusive hypocrites.

I am also persuaded that Frank doesn’t mean a lot of what he says to be taken seriously. He is just trying to rile us up. And it’s always done with a condescending postmodernist know-it-all sneer. His first line of argument is ad hominem, strawman fallacy, and non-sequitur. Unfortunately, his arrogance is mistaken for real conviction by sympathetic listeners on the left. They erroneously believe he is a voice of reason crying in the evangelical wilderness, a true convert to progressive thought, one whom Jesus would approve. He complains that few on the left understand the Christian right. Only he does, because he was one of them. In fact, he helped found the Christian Right, he claims. Then he proceeds to get it all wrong. As Gary North points out, this was unnerving even when he was supposedly “on our side.” It is better in one way that he is attacking us now instead, because he is a buffoon.

The way that Frank defends himself to sympathetic listeners is to retreat into theoretical pluralism, which is that Kantian abomination that proposes that since the universe is chaotic by nature and our minds ill-equipped to know truth, then all knowledge is at best a theory or a model, but we can never know anything to be absolutely true. Theoretical pluralism is something that Frank Schaeffer would deny, but the self-deception of the human heart is something no man can fathom. Consider the following points.

First, instead of giving a reasoned rebuttal to evangelical theology and politics, he attacks the character flaws of his well-known family and acquaintances (even though these are unquantifiable, i.e., his parents were “crazy,” Billy Graham is a “weird” man, etc.) as if this negates their positions. Anyone who knows anything about theology, philosophy or history can see that he is factually challenged. He simply makes things up as he goes along regardless of how wrong it is. If this is not purposeful, then he is just stupid. And since Frank is reputedly quite brilliant, then he must be doing it on purpose or else he's psychologically unbalanced. Or perhaps both?

Second, Frank writes a character assassination of his deceased father and 95-year-old mother Edith, who once confessed to Os Guiness that she even doesn't read her son’s writings anymore because it just makes her cry. Think about it: Would you attack your mother in a book while admitting that she prayed for you every day of your life since you were born? Frank dishonors his parents by portraying them in their most dysfunctional moments. He defends it by saying in effect, “We are all dysfunctional. I am just doing Christians a service by helping them see it.”

Third, Frank claims in an interview with the Rutherford Institute that those who were there know his charges about his parents being abusive toward each are true.

Living in the community of L’Abri with people in our house and other workers coming and going, there are plenty of people walking around the world today who either heard or saw things that would make them draw that conclusion. That was actually not much of a secret.

It’s easy enough to rebut him as Os Guiness does in a 2008 Christianity Today article.

I challenge this central charge of Frank's with everything in me. I and many of my closest friends, who knew the Schaeffers well, are certain beyond a shadow of doubt that they would challenge it too. Defenders of truth to others, Francis and Edith Schaeffer were people of truth themselves. For six years I was as close to Frank as anyone outside his own family, and probably closer than many in his family. I was his best man at his wedding.

Os Guiness counters by saying in effect, “I was there. I was one of Frank’s mentors. And I know he is lying.” And then he gives a quantifiable example of one of his lies.

… he bucked at all formal education and serious tutoring, and his claim that he then received a "'great books' British university-level literature course" comes as quite a surprise to his tutor.

Fourth, when Frank loses ground due to confounding facts, he resorts to values-relativism. He'll go on TV and defend same sex marriage. Then he’ll defend his stance later in another interview saying that homosexuals who want to be married are no worse than adulterers who want to stay in the ministry.

How do we respond?

The best way to deal with such relativism is to be irreverent, sarcastic and mocking. To Frank, the gift of language is a weapon by which to deliver an impressive front of intellectualism. In reality, it is just a smokescreen. There is little of real substance behind it. He attacks for no reason, retreats for a few months or a few years, then appears again to change subject just to keep attacking. He is the perpetual guerilla, never able to form a lasting front of resistance. And most of the time, it’s difficult to see who he is fighting. Perhaps he is really fighting himself?

If someone, such as Os Guiness, points out proof that Frank is a hypocrite for accusing the Christian right for lying when he's a liar, he already has a retort handy, “Well, we’re all hypocrites.” Then he’ll say that there is no sin that is worse than any other, pride, lust, sodomy, adultery and fornication are all equally bad.

Well, no we're not all hypocrites. We are not all liars either. It’s true that we are all sinners, but all sin is not equally bad. This is due to a faulty interpretation of James 2:10.

“For the person who keeps all of the laws except one is as guilty as a person who has broken all of God’s laws.”

The point here of course is that since no one has kept the whole law, no one can be justified by the law. We are justified by faith; but “faith without works is dead” (James 2:20). In other words, it is not true faith if on one hand we continue to justify ourselves by the law, or if we use grace as an excuse to continue in sin. The meaning is here not that all sin is equally bad. There are no “Christian homosexuals; Christian abortionists; Christian fornicators,” etc. Christians are sinners saved by grace.

“But those who practice such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:21).

Of course, Frank is only a relativist when he's defending his point of view against reason, evidence and logic. You can’t really ever win an argument with a relativist. All you can do is expose his worldview as nonsense. My goal here isn’t to portray the man as a traitor to the pro-life movement or to vilify him. The goal is to show the danger of his way of thinking because it is all too readily swallowed by a weak American Christian culture that is easily seduced by postmodernism in the form of irrational appeals to emotion.

I believe that Frank still cares more about the abortion issue than most Christians. It affects him on a deeply emotional level, but he is completely unprincipled. He says he is pro-life, but then says abortion should be legal. He holds forth the pro-choice apologetic of the Clintons: Abortion is a necessary evil; so let’s work to make it safe, legal and rare. He honestly believes that by attacking the pro-life movement’s errors (and I actually agree with some of what he says) he can gain the trust of the left and persuade them to be more reasonable in order to moderate their pro-abortion stance.

What we’ve tried up until now hasn’t worked, he reasons. It is now time to try finding common ground with the pro-choice advocates. Abortion is always going to be legal, so let’s work with the abortion advocates to reduce the number of abortions.

So he is seeking dialogue with the left to try to do some good. But in every case, finding common ground with the death industry is a false premise. He is actually sniping at his allies and comforting the enemy. And the moment he stands for truth his newfound friends will turn on him.

To court liberal commentators such as Rachel Maddow as though she were a sister in the Lord is abominable. Maddow openly mocks everything that is good and holy with a wry smirk out of one side of her face. In fact, he speaks to her as though she were more of a true Christian than those who actively oppose abortion. If Frank Schaeffer’s attempt to speak as an authority on moral issues on the Rachel Maddow show wasn’t so scarily bizarre and surreal, it would be funny. In fact, it should be seen as a new genre of political theater, that of “comic treachery.”

The best defense against this error is a good offense. You don't win by dialoging with these people. You win by attacking their nonsense aggressively with scorn and mockery. And that is what I intend to do.

Frank Schaeffer, will you PLEASE shut up! (part 1)

One of my favorite polemics of all time is a piece by Dr. Gary North, Franky Schaeffer, Please Shut Up! (no copyright; reprint anywhere), a March 1992 postion paper on blasphemy published by the Institute for Christian Economics (ICE). You won't find the PDF file easily on a Google search, so I've posted the correct link above.

In the paper, Gary takes issue with Franky Schaeffer’s bad theology. Schaeffer apparently was appalled at the wares being hawked by Christian t-shirt companies at a book-sellers conference he attended. According to Franky (who now goes by just “Frank”) those who produce these schlocky evangelical icons are somehow guilty of "blasphemy." Gary North, in his inimitable style, takes Frank to the woodshed. The writings of his father, Dr. Francis Schaeffer, were that of a momumental genius who made an important early contribution to both the burgeoning Christian Reconstructionist movement and the so-called "Religious Right." Gary rightly points out though that Schaeffer Sr. stopped short of being postmillennial and theonomic. Further, the publishers of Schaeffer's complete theological works edited out some of his Calvinistic doctrines that they thought would be distasteful to their readers. (But this is just a rough and dirty synopsis of the paper. To read it all, follow the above link.)

Frank Schaeffer is a product of this inconsistent theology. Afraid to go "too far" into the austerity of Puritanism, he swung toward Eastern Orthodoxy around 1990. Now 20 years later, he's done another about face and has even renounced his father's pro-life views. He states that he’s personally against abortion, but it should be legal. We recently saw him on the Rachel Maddow show, claiming, “And when you look at what happened to Dr. Tiller, there is a direct line connecting the rhetoric that I was part of as a young man, and this murder.”

On his website, he substitutes personal attacks for reasoned argument. Those who oppose government imposed health care are "the gun-toting fringe." He speaks with mock authority on the motivation of pro-life movement as a "psychological sickness that is the basis of the Religious right's power to delude other people who are also needy and unstable."

He’s now making the news talk show rounds in an attempt to promote his new book claiming that we who work to repeal Roe v. Wade are evil Pharisees – even while he pontificates on why Roe was a bad decision. To those who admire his father’s legacy, seeing Frank the younger go through such convolutions is not only infuriating, but also dizzying.

I'll comment more on this in part 2, but here is a snippet from Gary North. Reading this, keep in mind that it was written prior to Frank Schaeffer’s slide into complete apostasy. It turns out that Gary North is a prophet.

In the fall of 1984, Franky cancelled all his future Christian audience speaking engagements, and he disbanded his own Christian Activist tabloid newspaper a few months later. He sold the tabloid’s mailing list and then disappeared from the evangelical scene. For a while, anyway. Franky simply could not sustain the theological battle without the inspiring presence of his father and without biblical law.

He goes away periodically, but he refuses to stay away. This is our problem. He has nothing positive to show for the last fifteen years of his on-again, off-again tantrums, nothing of quality to bring to the table, no published theory of Christian aesthetics, no plan of action, and no money. But he reappears periodically to perform his routine, which can be best described as whining for artistic relevance. Each performance gets more frivolous, and each one is directed not at the increasingly decadent humanist culture of our day, but at the tentative steps of evangelicals to respond, a century late, to the enormous threat of a now visibly debauched humanism.

Ironically, Franky’s father was the primary public literary figure in the appearance of the Christian cultural resistance movement. But Franky spends his time these days battling what he regards as the Philistines of fundamentalism rather than the Assyrians of humanism. Fundamentalists do not meet his standards, he tells us. Not his theological standards – he has none to speak of – but his artistic standards.

This, from a washed-up producer-director of an R-rated teenage violence film. “Physician, heal thyself!”

Freddy and Franky

There is a stupid horror movie series, enormously profitable, called Nightmare on Elm Street. The character of the series, Freddy Krueger, is like Dracula: he keeps rising from the dead. He has a shriveled up face and wears gloves with long metal blades. The advertising for each sequel announces, “He’s back!” Freddy Kruezer reminds me of Franky Schaeffer. We think he has gone, but he keeps coming back.

I think of Freddy’s long, blade-like fingers. I think of Franky, always ready to point the finger. Yet when I visualize Franky as Freddy, it is always with his “pointing finger” firmly implanted in his right nostril. “Look at me, look at me, everyone; see how outrageous I can be this week!” No matter whose reputation suffers.

There comes a time for Christian social commentators to discuss theology. Franky refuses. There also comes a time for Christians to grow up. Franky refuses. For years, Franky Schaeffer has been playing the role of Young Turk. He is not aging gracefully.

Francis Schaeffer was a serious man who devoted his life to evangelism. His son has devoted his life to whining. Even when he is on the right side of an issue, he whines. Francis Schaeffer was a self-taught, self-disciplined scholar, not a Young Turk with bad manners. I do not recall that he ever called a fellow Christian a blasphemer.

Franky Schaeffer has capitalized on his father’s name and reputation for over fifteen years, squandering a valuable legacy. He has little spiritual or intellectual capital remaining. It is time for him to go out and look for a job.

In the 1960’s, liberal talk show host David Suskind bored America weekly with his five-hour interview shows on late night television. A humorist wrote a song about him: “David Suskind, Please Shut Up.” Someone needs to write one for Franky Schaeffer. It needn’t be funny.

I think I can at least give it a shot:

Sung to the Beatles’: Obla Dee Obla Da

Franky throws a tantrum in the marketplace
Says his father’s writings are a sham
Franky says to Rachel, “Girl I like your face.
Thanks for the free promotion, Maddow ma’am!”

Please shut up, please shut up, please shut up! NOW!
Franky Schaeffer, please shut up!

And so on. Maybe someone who is good at this sort of thing can help.

Where did Cain and Seth get their wives?

A reader writes:

Dear Mr. Jay Rogers,

I have a question on ethics that I am hoping that you can clarify for me. The question is on sexual ethics and is in reference to incest. Could you explain to me how we as Christians can claim a universal and absolute standard of morality in the realm of sexual ethics when God created both male and female and there was interbreeding between direct family members until the prohibition later in the Law of Moses? How can we claim that moral absolutes are universal, abstract and invariant and an extension of God's character when this prohibited sexual practice was the original design for God’s created order?

From looking at the situation throughout the whole of creation and salvation-history, and considering the fall of mankind into sin, I understand that it is sin that has corrupted the practice of any and all sexual acts. Thus, it would not be God’s standard that has changed but rather, the standard of a fallen world that has changed. Just like in pre-fall where mankind was naked and not ashamed, it would be the same for sexual ethical practices. Am I on the right track here and could you please give me your opinion and wisdom on this topic if you get the chance? Any help in this area would be greatly appreciated. May the Lord Jesus Christ bless you and yours always.

- J.K.

Dear Mr. J.K.,

Incest between brother and sister, and one's parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc., is prohibited by the law of Moses. This prohibition also included in-laws in all but one case, that of a brother marrying his deceased brother's wife.*

Marriage between first cousins is allowed.

However, it is implied in scripture that Seth and Cain married one of the daughters of Adam. Obviously that would be their sister. The Bible account says Adam became father to "sons and daughters."

"And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years and and he begot sons and daughters" (Genesis 5:4).

The Bible further tells us that Eve was the mother of all living people. So it was a natural sister.

There are two ways of looking at this. Both ways include your point of view.

1. The sin of incest is a product of the Fall of Adam.

We are all products of a sinful man and carry original sin. The consequence is that all of Adam's grandchildren were conceived in the sin of incest.

"And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth" (Genesis 5:3).

Even as Seth was in Adam’s fallen image and likeness, so also are every one of us. We are all sons and daughters of Adam, born in sin even as Adam was fallen. It is redundant to say it, but every person since then has been born in Enosh's image and likeness (Seth's son) who himself was a product of incest.

This sin would have produced a curse on all mankind, just as the Moabites and Ammonites were accursed due to an incestuous beginning between Lot and his daughters.

However, the curse can be reversed after several generations of continued obedience to God's moral law. Let's not forget that Jesus himself was a product of incest (Tamar and Judah). He was also the product of a Gentile (Ruth and Boaz); a prostitute (Rahab and Salmon); and adultery (Bathsheba and David). Thus Jesus' genealogy mentions only four women. These were four unions that, according to the law, were not supposed to happen. I believe these marriages are purposefully listed to show that redemption occurs after several generations. The curse is lifted eventually. This is meant to be a type of the curse of original sin being destroyed once and for all by Christ.

One solution to the problem is to admit unlawful incest with the union of Adam's children and that it was part of the curse. But the debt of sin has been redeemed by Christ.

We could also conculde that since many years passed between Cain's birth and the arrival of Seth's first child, Enosh, that Seth could have married one of Cain's descendants.

"And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. After he begot Seth, the days of Adam were eight hundred years; and he had sons and daughters. So all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died. Seth lived one hundred and five years, and begot Enosh" (Genesis 5:3-6).

Genesis records that 235 years passed between the creation of Adam and the birth of Enosh. Genesis does not record how old Cain was when he had his first son. However, if Cain was born early on in this chronology and began having children at a young age, then even though Cain was forced to marry his sister as a result of the Fall, Seth would have had had the opportunity to marry a grand-grand-niece, a relative further removed than a first cousin, a union not prohibited later on by the law of Moses. One could argue that the line of Cain was much more prolific than the line of Seth in light of the fact that only eight righteous people from Seth's line, Noah's family, survived the Flood. It is not impossible that the curse of incest affected only the line of Cain.

In contradiction to this, Jewish folklore preserved in the apocryphal Book of Jublilees (which is not to be considered inspired or inerrant) tells us that each patriarch in the line of Adam took a sister to be his wife until the fifth generation of Mahalalel when men began marrying their cousins and distant relatives.

2. The prohibition against incest occurred only after the days of the Flood.

The law against incest was not originally instituted by Moses. We see that even before Moses, Abraham deceived Pharaoh into thinking that Sarah was his sister, and therefore could not be his wife. So we know that by Abraham's deception, marriage with an immediate sibling was unlawful even prior to Moses. We also see Judah recognizing his sin when he discovered that he had committed incest with his daughter-in-law, Tamar.

It is possible that this covenantal shift took place only after the days of Noah. That would not be unprecedented, since there are several provisions of the law that changed after the Flood. When Cain slew Abel, God did not allow him to be found and killed (Genesis 4:15). However after the Flood, God did not allow a murderer to go unpunished by execution (Genesis 9:6). Prior to the Flood men were vegetarians (Genesis 1:29). After the Flood they are given the flesh of clean animals to eat and enmity between man and beast was established by God himself (Genesis 9:1-3).

If the laws concerning homicide and the relationship between men and animals changed after the Flood. It is therefore logical that the relationships between family members may also have been changed. Just as the laws concerning what foods we may eat have become more liberal -- for example we are no longer constrained not to eat unclean animals under the New Covenant -- the laws governing marriage have become more strict.

Prior to the Flood the gene pool would have been much more divergent than it is today. For example, I had a discussion with an atheist recently about Neanderthal man. Some scientists claim that recent DNA studies show that Neanderthal was not an ancestor of modern man. I argued that nothing would preclude him from being a descendant of Adam, a subspecies of Homo sapiens whose line was cut off. It is conceivable that there were many other varieties of man prior to the Flood that were far more diverse than today.

I've also had atheists argue that this union of Seth and his sister would have been impossible since it would have resulted in a human race with massive birth defects; that the gene pool from two people wasn't large enough to account for the diversity we see today; and so on. But we can assume that the genetic information in Adam and Eve was capable of producing a much more diverse population than exists today, because after the time of Noah, all humanity was reduced to the genes of just six people. Noah's grandchildren would have had only the opportunity to marry their cousins. Since the gene pool became more limited, the marriage between brother and sister suddenly would have had a more negative effect and therefore was prohibited.

We might also look at "sin" from a practical point of view. The Bible says all unrighteousness is sin (1 John 5:17). According to Strong's, the word "unrighteousness" in Greek is adikia:—(legal) injustice (properly the quality, by implication the act); moral wrongfulness (of character, life or act):—iniquity, unjust, unrighteousness, wrong. So the word "unrighteousness" simply means something that is not right for us.

Why is sin not right? The legalistic way of looking at it is that God arbitrarily decided that certain behaviors are sinful and therefore wherever there is a law against something, there is sin; and wherever the law is silent there is no sin. Nothing could be further from the truth. Sin is unrighteous because it results in death. And there are many things that are obviously sinful that are not mentioned in the Bible. These can be derived from principles in the Bible, but there is no law prohibiting them.

For instance, many people think it is lawful to be addicted to tobacco, to gamble, to smoke marijuana, and to commit abortion because these things are not specifically prohibited by civil law or by biblical law. I would argue that all of these are sinful because they each lead to death.

However, if something does not result in death, it is not sin. For instance, it would be unlawful to jump off a cliff because you would die, and God forbids homicide. However, to jump off a cliff with a parachute would not be unlawful, foolish perhaps, but not a violation of the sixth commandment necessarily. In the same way incest between a brother and a sister would not be unlawful if there is no natural harm done -- if it did not result in death. Since there was no harm done to the human race by the union of Seth and his sister, then there was no sin involved.

I hope that answers your question.

* This isn't meant to open a can of worms, but theonomists also ought to explain why the Levirite marriage is no longer in effect. Among the Hebrews marriage with a brother's widow was forbidden as a general rule (Leviticus 18:16; 20:21), but was regarded as obligatory (Deuteronomy 25:5,6) when there was no male offspring, and when the two brothers had been dwelling on the same family estate. (This is actually an easy one.)

The Ten Commandments of Obama

Now President Obama has even gone so far as to accuse his opponents of breaking God's commandments! While recently addressing a group of faith-based leaders, President Obama said:

There's been a lot of misinformation about this debate and there's some folks who are frankly bearing false witness.

Here now are the Ten Commandments of Obamacare:

The Ten Commandments According to Obama

By Patriot Update

© 2009 The Patriot Update.

Feel free to circulate this article, but please link and give credit to: The Patriot Update

After observing Obama on the campaign trail and during his first six months in office, we have concluded that our President lives and governs according to his own set of “Ten Commandments.” They’re certainly NOT the Ten Commandments you learned in Sunday School. In fact, many are the direct opposite! To prove that our conclusions are correct, you will find a link to source documentation for each commandment on the Patriot Update web site.

I. Thou shalt have no God in America, except for me. For we are no longer a Christian nation and, after all, I am the chosen One. (And like God, I do not have a birth certificate.) SOURCE

II. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, unless it is my face carved on Mt. Rushmore. SOURCE

III. Thou shalt not utter my middle name in vain (or in public). Only I can say Barack Hussein Obama. SOURCE

IV. Remember tax day, April 15th, to keep it holy. SOURCE

V. Honour thy father and thy mother until they are too old and sick to care for. They will cost our public-funded health-care system too much money. SOURCE

VI. Thou shalt not kill, unless you have an unwanted, unborn baby. For it would be an abomination to punish your daughter with a baby. SOURCE

VII. Thou shalt not commit adultery if you are conservative or a Republican. Liberals and Democrats are hereby forgiven for all of their infidelity and immorality, but the careers of conservatives will be forever destroyed. SOURCE

VIII. Thou shalt not steal, until you’ve been elected to public office. Only then is it acceptable to take money from hard-working, successful citizens and give it to those who do not work, illegal immigrants, or those who do not have the motivation to better their own lives. SOURCE

IX. Thou shalt not discriminate against thy neighbor unless they are conservative, Caucasian, or Christian. SOURCE

X. Thou shalt not covet because it is simply unnecessary. I will place such a heavy tax burden on those that have achieved the American Dream that, by the end of my term as President, nobody will have any wealth or material goods left for you to covet. SOURCE

What is postmodernism?

Postmodernism is a separate but similar philosophy to modern atheism. In fact, postmodernism as a philosophy is inherently difficult to nail down. If we take the broadest possible definition of postmodernism, then it can be applied to modern atheism – especially the pop-atheism that is promoted among young adherents.

Modernism was a 20th century movement whose proponents felt the traditional forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life were becoming outdated. Postmodernists have gone a step further in the rejection of traditional philosophy begun by the materialists, existentialists and modernists by also rejecting anything that resembles a traditional belief system.

Postmodernism is a philosophy that emerged from the 1960s characterized by experimental thought that is not bound by absolutes. Postmodernism can be seen as a spin-off philosophy from earlier materialism propounded by Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche and Marx. It can also be seen as a form of existentialism, essentially an attitude of liberation from traditional philosophy. Postmodernism rejects outward reality as meaningless and absurd, preferring the reality of the inward experience.

Most young postmodernists don’t know what the word means and are epistemologically unaware that this is their worldview. It’s seeped into their consciousness through their miseducation in our failing socialist government schools, their insipid reliance on the vapid Internet and cable-television media to provide them with all knowledge, and the banal cult-hero worship of their atheist gurus.

Atheists see themselves as being rationalists. In reality, they are the most irrational people I've ever encountered. There are the several related ironies here.

1. They claim to love reason and logic, but are unreasonable and overly emotional.
2. They claim that Christians cling to blind faith, and yet their propagation of lunatic conspiracy theories is endless.
3. They are obsessed with logical fallacies, but don’t know what a logical fallacy is and commit them constantly.
4. They claim to respect research and authority, but don’t have a clue on how to do proper research and will abandon a debate when faced with solid scholarship that refutes them.
5. They start endless arguments, but quickly change the topic when they have no rebuttal and resort to ad hominems and strawman arguments when they have no other place to run to.

These are all part of a pattern of mock dialogue I’ve noticed when dealing with atheists on the Internet.

“You need to read some books” and “You need to do some research,” are common replies. Despite the fact that I have read some books and not only do research, but teach it as part of a graduation requirement, these young postmodernists haven’t read any books. They’ve watched a video such as Zeitgeist that references amateur sources that borrow ideas from each other and recycle these same silly arguments over and over.

Accusations of “lying” and “dishonesty” are also common. They reject that ultimate truth actually exists, but assume someone is knowingly lying when they simply disagree or hold to opposing presuppositions. There are frequent incidents of “begging the question” or assuming their conclusion within the premise to the argument. In short, it’s difficult to argue with someone who says that you need to “do some critical thinking” who himself hasn’t learned to think critically.

I’ve come to the conclusion several times that it is a bad idea to begin a dialogue with these people. After viewing some of the nasty web wars among atheists themselves, I realized that the goal can never be to prove something to be true with these people. Only Christian compassion can be a motivating factor,

A while back I had an interesting commenter named “Thomas” on one of my YouTube vlogs, who succinctly hit the nail of the postmodernist syndrome on its head. I wrote Thomas and told him I had a difficult time defining postmodernism. I wanted to study it in order to devise a strategy to poke holes through the arguments of these “20-something” postmodernists.

I replied:

Thanks for your comments on postmodernism. I am looking for a way to be more articulate on this topic. Most of the atheists who respond to my vlogs are thoroughly postmodern. They proclaim themselves as a voice of reason, but are most unreasonable and anti-rational. I try to explain to them that they are motivated by emotion and then use cynicism (not true skepticism) they have heard elsewhere with no real critical thinking on their own. But for some reason postmodernism is hard for me to pin down. Maybe because it is so irrational? Do you know of any good resources on this that would help me to study it.

I copy here Thomas’ first reply, which is obviously written off-the-cuff, but is useful and could become a blueprint for dealing with postmodernism if it were to be developed. What he describes here is not simply just a way of dealing with atheists, but all liberals, some neo-conservatives, and especially liberal theology in the guise of popular Christian movements, including everything from the Jesus Seminar to the Emerging Church movement.

I’ve edited and rearranged the material in a few places. At the end is a reading list of books I’d never heard of. In return, I suggested that he read Van Til and Bahnsen, whom he had never heard of. I always find it interesting when I discover people who come to the exact same conclusions I do on esoteric subjects using a completely different road map.

What is Postmodernism?

1. Anti-Reason - The very nature of Postmodernism is anti-reason. They make lots of claims yet cannot live up to them because it's a cult of ignorance. I'm not kidding. It's really that bad.

Postmodernism abandoned reason for "feeling" which is why their first line of argument is ad hominem, strawman fallacies, and non-sequiturs. Unfortunately for their cause, their arrogance makes them believe they are the voice of reason.

2. Anti-Realism - They choose faith over truth. A useful historical example is that the grand failure of Marx is found in his claim that Marxism is a "scientific socialism" whereby he laid bare four predictions. He was wrong in each case. Marx was a buffoon. He said Marxism was scientific yet Hegel denied reason for spirit (feeling) and evidence for faith. Marxism is based on an anti-realist, anti-reason philosophy.

The very nature of Postmodernism, going all the way back to Rousseau, denies the achievements of the Enlightenment. This is why every Leftist revolution has failed. To the Left, they've chosen to use feelings and faith to guide their economic and moral principles since the French Revolution. Ancient Christians knew that this wouldn't work. Jesus said, "My kingship is not of this world; if my kingship were of this world, my servants would fight." There was a strong case in Christian morals for Reason. Of course, as much criticism as the Left heaps upon Christians, I was surprised myself when I found the contrary to be true (I was studying Islam and comparing it to Christianity and Judaism). Christian scholars from the beginning believed in moral judgment through Reason. This is echoed in Cicero (more clearly I'd say) and predated by the Greeks.

Why morals? To the Postmodern collectivist (followers of Rousseau and Kant), morals are only valid when we all reach a consensus (a democratic majority or a collective will). This is a logical fallacy. Morals are often taught as lessons. Why? The purpose of morals are to instill us with the judgment to determine the better behavior.

Therefore, it's fallacious to suggest that we can change the outcome of a behavior simply by agreeing that it's good (argumentum ad populus). And this is why all collectivist societies are the worst human rights violators. Because morals are based on whim rather than principles. It suggests that if we get enough people to agree that misogyny is good, slavery is good, homophobia is good (all hypersensitive leftist subjects) then the nature of collectivist morals, or morals by consensus demands it to be true. Typically, I'll trick them (because they're arrogant) by pretending to agree that morals are based on consensus. I'll say it and nod my head (it's an old trick to gain trust through body language). Then I'll prove it wrong. The disconnect with morals and principles and the Postmodern Left is found in their unhealthy obsession with collectivism, Nietzsche in particular. Everything was reduced to "values."

Values are another sticking point for the Postmodernist. To drive something home I'll remind him, ad nauseum, "Those are your values, not mine. That's what you do. That's what you love. Not me." To the Postmodernist, they believe (again wrongly) that values are a social construct (BTW, if anyone ever says “social construct” you can pretty much call that nonsense). They say this because they're anti-realist. Divorcing from both reason and reality the Postmodernists are morally bankrupt. Morals require us to discriminate, to choose the better of available options based on principles and evidence. The Postmodernist denies that either are valid. To the Postmodernist then, all behaviors have equal outcomes (I point this out just to get them to scratch their heads). Because without reason or the mind being able to reliably and accurately interpret the world then all behavior is mere chance. I'm just as likely to get hit crossing the street with my eyes closed then looking both ways. Which brings us to relativism.

The most pernicious feature of Postmodernism, and the one that sends real scientists on the warpath, is relativism. The Postmodernist, denying reason and evidence, also categorically denies that any truth can be found. It's interesting to note that Jews and Christians both believed (Christians more so) that God created the Universe with immutable laws, so perfect that God could not break them. This is why Muhammed said, "the Jews have fettered Allah." To the Muslims, Allah can do anything, including be wildly inconsistent. To the Christians and Jews this was not so. The Laws of Nature are immutable, therefore, it's possible to discover and interpret them. Human beings are imperfect but the universe is not. Thus the Western World was ready to embark on a journey of scientific discovery with Jews and Christians leading the way. To the Postmodernist, however, the universe itself is a matter of opinion. This is the most baffling but if you read all of their literature you'll find evidence time and again they believe that reality is a matter of opinion. This is why you'll state a fact and they'll say, "That's your opinion." This is the slipperiest and most intellectually detrimental characteristic of Postmodern anti-rationalism. It can destroy a person's ability to function in modern society. Interestingly enough, their collectivist interpretation (that is, cultural or group awareness suggests that reality is a social construct) is also found in Islam. Another oppressive, totalitarian, murderous ideology that explicitly states (like Rousseau to Marcuse) anyone who does not convert is either killed or subjugated. That's collectivism for you. The ways I've found to deal with relativism is to be irreverent, sarcastic and mocking.

To the Postmodernist, language is not a form of communication, but a weapon to deliver intellectual force (whatever that means). The Postmodernist will attack for no reason, then change subjects just to keep attacking. When they're losing ground they'll resort to value-relativism or what Eagleton would call theoretical pluralism. An example would be if you said, "You're indoctrinated," they'll say "We're all indoctrinated." Well, not we're all not indoctrinated. But they say that because in a relativist world, there is no right or wrong and everything meets in between. Of course, it's only relativist when they're losing an argument. So I point this out. I make it explicit. I'll tell them straight up they're retreating into theoretical pluralism. Invariably, because these elitists are impressed with obscurantism, they'll ask, "What's that?" Then I'll tell them, correct them, and continue with reason, evidence and logic.

If there is a rule #1, I guess it would have to be - never initiate the conversation. The reason is because talking to a Postmodern self-defeatist is a waste of time. If they initiate the conversation it's because they have a grievance to monger. It means they care because their feelings are being broadcast. Use that. Then challenge their knowledge about it. For some reason, I have yet to know why, but these Postmodernists tend to crumble when you give names and dates to support your arguments. I think it's because they're just a bunch of name-droppers. They don't know Oedipus from Homer. They learned him from Freud. Use specifics and remind them they're wrong and they don't know. They need to be broken down shotgun style and stuffed with double-ought. The only thing they have is faith, break it.

Reading List

Here's a list of books I've read to understand Postmodernism (Read in this order):

1. Higher Superstition - by Levitt and Gross - this is the book that started it all. The Postmodern Left failed to gain ground in the hard sciences during the communist revolutions at various colleges (a strategy developed by Marcuse). They did manage to dominate the humanities (much to my dismay). After years of establishing hegemony (a Postmodern watchword) they sought to expand their sphere of influence. These frauds met began meeting fierce resistance. It started with this book.

2. The Sokal Hoax anthology - this isn't exactly the best book but there are so many essays to explicate it helps you develop an instinct for their nonsense. Spoiler Alert!! Sokal wrote an essay that was utter nonsense. You might say, "So what?" which would be very Postmodern, but only the thesis was Alan's. The rest of the essay was quotes from Leftist luminaries. In other words, they can't even understand each other.

3. Fashionable Nonsense - by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont - the best part for non-scientists (like myself) are the intermezzo chapters which breakdown the nonsense into logic for laymen, explain their faults, exposing their frauds, and illustrating their fallacies.

4. Liberal Fascism - by Jonah Goldberg - not a great piece of scholarly work but it familiarizes you with the various political movements, philosophers, and movers-n-shakers of the Left that were Fascists. What this book lacks is a strong voice to carry its message. What it has is a plethora of quotes from Fascists and the Leftists today whose own politics are indistinguishable.

5. Explaining Postmodernism - by Stephen Hicks - Easily the strongest work to date. Hicks tracts a philosophic line from Rousseau to Rorty, explaining their various assertions, their weaknesses, and why successors were desperately needed. Hicks book is remarkably lucid, candid, and funny. More importantly, it's brutally honest. Postmodernists are in serious denial and Hicks throws it in their face. He explains why they choose the tactics you've described (though, if you've read everything up to this you'll have figured it out for yourself anyway). The most compelling features of this book are the three theses, which are laid bare, then thoroughly supported, and cogently argued. This is a MUST!

Enjoy your readings,
Thomas

P.S. The best book to explain the descent into ignorance (though not entirely Postmodern but the Western World as a whole) is The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom, Hating Whitey by David Horowitz and Illiberal Education by Dinesh Desouza are good companion pieces.

What percentage of the world is atheist?

There are numerous takes on this. Some will say there are more atheists than we imagine because in strongly Muslim and Catholic countries, atheists are ostracized and won't publicly announce their views. On the other hand, over one-third of the world was raised under atheistic communism in the past century. Religion was discouraged and believers were persecuted. All things being equal, the common survey number of 2 to 3 percent seems about right.

It also depends on how you define the term. An atheist believes there is no God. But many people who are not traditionally religious believe in a higher power or a spiritual force of some type. If we extend the definition to those who have no opinion, who lack belief, or who have no religion, the number is obviously much higher.

A 2005 survey published in the Encyclopædia Britannica found that the non-religious made up about 11.9 percent of the world's population, and atheists about 2.3 percent. It's reasonable to suppose that there is a gray area between these two groups with some non-religious people claiming to be atheists and vice versa.

Further, in some cultures, such as in Russia and Scandinavia, it is considered impolite to be "aggressive" in sharing your inner thoughts, beliefs and emotions. Those surveyed might tend to shun the question by simply claiming no religion.

Atheists often like to point out that in these countries, which they consider to be much more civilized and advanced than the rest of the world, the number of atheists is thought by some to be more than half of the population. These are mainly northern European countries, such as Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, France, Estonia and Germany.

A few Asian countries such as South Korea and Japan are cited too, however, the religions of Buddhism and Shintoism do not worship God or gods, so those surveyed cannot be compared culturally to the atheists in the west. The same is true with communist countries such as Russia and Vietnam where atheism was enforced even to the point of imprisonment and death. So it's even more surprising that Cuba and China, which are among the worst offenders in persecuting believers, have only a 7 and 8 percent atheist population respectively.

Europe is an anomaly though with its high atheist population. I've often wondered why northern Europe is so Godless. I suspect there is a factor that most people don't realize: government enforced tithing.

In many European countries, there is a national church and the tithe is essentially another tax. There is a clause in the law that allows people who are not members of the national church to opt out. If you were born in the country, whether you were baptized or not, the government counts you as a national church member. Unless you declare yourself to be a member of another religious group not supported by the government or a non-member, this is another socialist tax levied on your income. Lutheran Church members in Germany, for instance, have the ability to opt out by literally declaring themselves to be apostate.

So in fact, the world atheist population numbers are skewed as the result of a tax dodge.

If we look at Sweden for example, there are surveys stating that atheists make-up 85 percent of the population. I've found that unbelievable, and perhaps there is one reason to think it's not really true. According to the Wikipedia entry on the tithe:

Until the year 2000, Sweden had a mandatory church tax to be paid if one did belong to the Church of Sweden which had been funneling about $500 million annually to the church. Because of change in legislation, the tax was withdrawn in year 2000. However, the Swedish government has agreed to continue collecting from individual taxpayers the annual payment that has always gone to the church. But now the tax will be an optional checkoff box on the tax return.

In most of these European countries with a high atheist population, there is a state Church and tithing is compulsory. Anyone who wants to stop paying tithes has to declare in writing, in a local court or registry, that they are leaving the Church. They are then crossed off the Church registers and can no longer receive the sacraments. The tithe is less than the biblical ten percent in each of these countries varying between 1 to 9 percent.

When we contrast that with the United States, we see that there has never been a compulsory tithe. In contrast, churches here thrive in comparison to Europe. In addition, the tithe is tax-exempt and income tax deductible. It could be argued that socialism and civil government enforced tithing weakens the people's faith; while voluntary giving strengthens it.

Give, and it will be given to you. They will pour into your lap a good measure--pressed down, shaken together, and running over. For by your standard of measure it will be measured to you in return.

- Luke 6:28