Sleepy Old Bear Diaries

Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori says it’s “heresy” to believe that an individual can be saved through a sinner’s prayer of repentance.

 

 

In her opening address to the church’s General Conference in California, Jefferts Schori called that “the great Western heresy: that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God.”
    

The presiding bishop said that view is “caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus.”

 

According to Schori, it is heresy to believe that an individual’s prayer can achieve a saving relationship with God. “That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy.”

 

Here.

I really would like to see Stillman devote his intellectual pursuits to such courses.

Here.

A year ago the biggest issue in education after budgets was whether “Intelligent Design” should be taught in the nation’s schools. Opponents called it a form of “creationism” and the press dubbed the ensuing legal battle as the biggest clash between faith and science since the Scopes Monkey Trial. In a stinging rebuke to the religious right, a Pennsylvania judge ruled that “Intelligent Design” had no place in classrooms because it was “a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory,” thus violating the separation of church and state.  

Yet at that very moment professors in American universities were teaching a form of secular creationism as contrary to the findings of modern science as the Biblical claim that the God had made the world in seven days. 

The name of this theory is “social constructionism,” and its churches are Women’s Studies departments situated in universities across the United States. The feminist theory of social construction maintains that the differences between men and women – apart from obvious anatomical ones — are not biologically determined but are created by a patriarchal social structure that is designed by men to oppress women. It is “patriarchal society” that turns naturally bi-sexual infants into male and female personalities by conditioning them from birth to adopt gender roles –  the one aggressive, masculine and destined to command, the other passive, feminine and slated to obey.  

From the Confession of a Savoyard Vicar (embedded in Bk 4 of the Emile):

   I conceived that the weakness of the human understanding was the first cause of the prodigious variety I found in their sentiments, and that pride was the second. We have no standard with which to measure this immense machine; we cannot calculate its various relations; we neither know the first cause nor the final effects; we are ignorant even of ourselves; we neither know our own nature nor principle of action; nay, we hardly know whether man be a simple or compound being. Impenetrable mysteries surround us on every side; they extend beyond the region of sense; we imagine ourselves possessed of understanding to penetrate them, and we have only imagination. Every one strikes out a way of his own across this imaginary world; but no one knows whether it will lead him to the point he aims at. We are yet desirous to penetrate, to know, everything. The only thing we know not is to contentedly remain ignorant of what it is impossible for us to know. We had much rather determine at random, and believe the thing which is not, than to confess that none of us is capable of seeing the thing that is. Being ourselves but a small part of that great whole, whose limits surpass our most extensive views, and concerning which its creator leaves us to make our idle conjectures, we are vain enough to decide what that whole is in itself, and what we are in relation to it.

   But were the philosophers in a situation to discover the truth, which of them would be interested in so doing? Each knows very well that his system is no better founded that the systems of others; he defends it, nevertheless, because it is his own. There is not one of them, who, really knowing truth from falsehood, would not prefer the latter, if of his own invention, to the former, discovered by any one else. Where is the philosopher who would not readily deceive mankind, to increase his own reputation? Where is he who secretly proposes any other object than that of distinguishing himself from the rest of mankind? Provided he raises himself above the vulgar, and carries away the prize of fame from his competitors, what doth he require more? The most essential point is to think differently from the rest of the world. Among believers he is an atheist, and among atheists he affects to be a believer.

Here. And that goes not just for philosophers.

Just found this interesting publication, thanks to David Virtue.

I have been having pertinent thoughts for a long time … Would it not be better to keep one’s shoulder to the wheel as long as one has mental and physical health sufficient to the task? Not a matter of making money but of using one’s abilities for some purpose greater than one’s own leisure.

Here is the essay, Rethinking Retirement.

As part of the Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund (PWRDF) – the bastion of Anglican Marxist chic – Fred Hiltz is peddling Primate’s Blend Fair Trade Coffee. On first blush one might be tempted to rejoice that Hiltz has given up on theology – as it has given up on him – and gone into the more honest occupation of coffee planting, preferably near some remote and humid Colombian rain forest where he would be free to meditate on his minuscule carbon footprint. No such luck; this is more about Fair Trade than coffee.

Introducing The Primate’s Blend – a uniquely blended, shade-grown, organic, Fair Trade coffee. Shade-grown coffees trees are grown under a shade canopy that is made up of a variety of trees; there are often companion plantings of tropical fruit trees. This means the plantations use a minimum of water and support local and migrating bird populations. These coffees are certified organic.

Is Hiltz striking a blow for justice as I am sure he would like us to think, or is this an elitist liberal decoy, requiring no effort, and having little effect other than soothing  the delicate consciences of effete coffee swilling bishops?

The rest is here.

… on The Idea File: 

It is very disturbing that academics today think that they should act as censors for what students are exposed to. This reflects, in my view, extreme professional misconduct. How will critical thought be encouraged and ideas challenged and improved if opposing viewpoints are not analyzed?

So … if you visit my web site, and find some info on homosex that is not what you have heard before …

DO NOT WRITE TO ME TO TELL ME TO REMOVE IT. OR ANYTHING ELSE.

Why? Because you deserve to be informed and challenged.

What was your first clue?

It is, as they say, a paradox. A conundrum. A set of ironic and clashing notions that lead us to believe that during the quiet times of summer a wave of silliness splashes the public square and makes people behave in a decidedly wet manner.

Such as those individuals, often rich and famous, who do not believe in the power of prayer and do not pray, suddenly announcing to the world that they will pray for Michael Jackson.

People who do not believe in the existence of the soul, suddenly declaring that they hope so very much that Jackson’s soul is in the heaven in which they similarly do not believe. Bubbles the chimpanzee was unavailable for comment, but clerics Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton were on the scene rather quickly — which is odd in that they are usually only concerned with black people.

Barack Obama claims to very much believe in prayer, the eternal soul and heaven but while he found time to celebrate Gay Pride Week, he was too busy to make the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington.

Here. Thank you, Michael.

The press for tolerance education for homosexuality in classrooms is driven by the desire to provide safe, learning-friendly environments for all students. The program of education is based on the testimony of teachers that intimidation of children with same-sex attractions is rampant in schools, and prejudice against gay people is strong enough to keep teachers from “coming out.”

 

However, a Philadelphia psychiatrist told The Bulletinthat many of the conceptions that drive the push for curricula that endorse a homosexual lifestyle have no basis in scientific findings.

Dr. Rick Fitzgibbons is the director of the Institute for Marital Healing in West Conshohocken and has worked with thousands of patients over the past 30 years. He has lectured at the International Institute for Culture on identifying and resolving emotional conflicts in children. Dr. Fitzgibbons said that there is ample evidence to show that homosexual relationships are not on par with heterosexual ones.

“People are being taught through media and government that there is no difference between the homosexual lifestyle and the heterosexual lifestyle,” said Dr. Fitzgibbons. But he said there is no scientific evidence to support that message.

Dr. Fitzgibbons and other psychiatric researchers from the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) compiled information from various scientific studies on homosexuality to debunk unscientific claims about homosexual relationships.

“Homosexual relationships are abusive between 35 and 55 percent of the time,” said Dr. Fitzgibbons. “Heterosexual relationships have about 7 percent abuse.”

Here.

So whose OX will GORE a MORON ?

“Harder to kill than a vampire.” That is what the sociologist Joel Best calls a bad statistic. But, as I have discovered over the years, among false statistics the hardest of all to slay are those promoted by feminist professors. Consider what happened recently when I sent an e-mail message to the Berkeley law professor Nancy K.D. Lemon pointing out that the highly praised textbook that she edited,Domestic Violence Law (second edition, Thomson/West, 2005), contained errors.

Her reply began:

“I appreciate and share your concern for veracity in all of our scholarship. However, I would expect a colleague who is genuinely concerned about such matters to contact me directly and give me a chance to respond before launching a public attack on me and my work, and then contacting me after the fact.”

Here. Thanks to a Fascist Femme Fatale.

here is Stompin’ Tom.

And it is time once again for … The Lion Sleeps Tonight.