Posts Tagged ‘datechguy's magnificent seven’

Why Agnostics Hate Prayers

Posted: February 1, 2020 by ng36b in Uncategorized
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What people would pay for prayers, from PNAS study by Linda Thunström and Shiri Noy.

Would you pay someone to pray for you? That was the focus of a recently published study, which asked this very question to almost 500 people in the wake of Hurricane Florence. The study separated Christians from atheist/agnostic people, and presented each person with the option to pay for prayers and/or thoughts from different people. On average, Christians would pay more for prayers, and specifically from prayers from a priest, while atheists and agnostics would pay for Christians to NOT pray for them.

While we might comically imply there is a new income source for priests, the paying to not pray is disturbing and highlights two issues. First, atheists don’t believe in the power of prayer. While that’s not a surprise in itself, it does mean we (specifically Catholics) have done a terrible job advertising how prayer works. The second, and more troubling side, is it highlights that atheists and agnostics simply don’t like Christian people.

Contrary to what the media would tell you, prayer does in fact change things. The Catholic Church has been rigorously testing for miracles, and especially for medical miracles (the ones most people think of), most don’t survive scrutiny. For the Catholic Church to declare a miracle, prayers have to be offered to one Saint or person, the condition has to have no chance of healing on its own, and the condition must quickly be cured (as in, it can’t take a long time to heal). A good recent example was the miraculous curing of Dafne Gutierrez, who prayed to St. Charbel and had her sight restored.

I bring examples of these up with my friends who are agnostic, and it surprises them, which means that Catholic media is failing to promote these instances. How do we not have a repository of images, miracle stories and the like? How do we not have social media accounts pushing these stories out for the world to read? Catholic miracles are called out in our Catechism to inspire us, and yet we act like the man who buried his master’s talents. Given the prevalence of platforms like Twitter and Facebook, this is inexcusable.

Worse still is the image that agnostic people have of Christians in general. Ask an agnostic person what their image of a Christian is, and you will likely get some flinching. The media has been bashing Christianity forever, and while Christians might ignore it, the effects are playing out now. More people than ever are identifying as atheist or agnostic, and worse, more agnostic people say they won’t associate with Christians. This, despite the fact that many of the same people know lots of good Christians that they see every day. We are, again, poorly advertising ourselves and our lives, allowing the media to make us out to be the boogey man for atheists and agnostics everywhere.

Christianity, and specifically Catholicism, can in fact die out if we don’t fight for it. The media will gladly hide our miracle stories so that prayers become nothing more than good thoughts in most people’s minds. Worse still, the media will continue to incite violence against Catholics, like the attack on St Patrick’s Cathedral in 1989. It’s not enough for us to live good lives, but we must also show those that have no faith that our lives are worth living.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, the Catholic Church, or any other government or non-government agency.

Licensing Laws do far more harm than good

Posted: January 30, 2020 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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Licensing laws, and similar regulations, are a product of the progressive era which began around 1913.  These laws are meant to protect society as a whole, and individuals in particular.  A careful study of these laws will demonstrate that they have produced far more negative effects than positive effects.   This is explained in great detail in the Mises Institute article The Deception behind Government Licensing Laws

The primary justification for these licensing laws and regulations is:

One of the favorite arguments for licensing laws and other types of quality standards is that governments must “protect” consumers by insuring that workers and businesses sell goods and services of the highest quality.

There is one great flaw in that argument:

The answer, of course, is that “quality” is a highly elastic and relative term and is decided by the consumers in their free actions in the marketplace. The consumers decide according to their own tastes and interests, and particularly according to the price they wish to pay for the service.

Individuals are far better than a government bureaucracy, especially a gargantuan one at the federal level, at determining what constitutes a quality product.  Word of mouth and other forms of reviews by actual customers is a far better way of regulating the quality of products.  When potential customers hear that a product is no good or harmful then they won’t buy it resulting in the company losing money and possibly going out of business.

Licensing laws most always limit competition which is why they are championed by established large businesses.  That is why they spend so much money lobbying for them.

How much these requirements are designed to “protect” the health of the public, and how much to restrict competition, may be gauged from the fact that giving medical advice free without a license is rarely a legal offense. Only the sale of medical advice requires a license. Since someone may be injured as much, if not more, by free medical advice than by purchased advice, the major purpose of the regulation is clearly to restrict competition rather than to safeguard the public

Regulations meant to ensure quality products quite often stifle innovation.

Other quality standards in production have an even more injurious effect. They impose governmental definitions of products and require businesses to hew to the specifications laid down by these definitions. Thus, the government defines “bread” as being of a certain composition. This is supposed to be a safeguard against “adulteration,” but in fact it prohibits improvement. If the government defines a product in a certain way, it prohibits change.

Regulations imposed by government bureaucracies stifle private sector innovation for the following reason:

A change, to be accepted by consumers, has to be an improvement, either absolutely or in the form of a lower price. Yet it may take a long time, if not forever, to persuade the government bureaucracy to change the requirements. In the meantime, competition is injured, and technological improvements are blocked.

Licensing laws make it difficult for individuals to find jobs in a particular field. Take hair dressers for instance. It takes a lot of schooling to become a hair dresser, approximately 1500 hours.. Is it all necessary? The same holds true for many fields.

Here is the proper free market solution to low quality or harmful products and services:

In the free economy, there would be ample means to obtain redress for direct injuries or fraudulent “adulteration.” No system of government “standards” or army of administrative inspectors is necessary. If a man is sold adulterated food, then clearly the seller has committed fraud, violating his contract to sell the food. Thus, if A sells B breakfast food, and it turns out to be straw, A has committed an illegal act of fraud by telling B he is selling him food while actually selling straw. This is punishable in the courts under “libertarian law,” i.e., the legal code of the free society that would prohibit all invasions of persons and property.

Licensing laws and government regulations have affected me personally in a very negative way.  For the past several years I have been attempting to raise money to open a nano brewery.  I have created and perfected a large number of recipes that rival the best craft breweries.  Because of government interference the start up costs for this type of brewery is many times higher than what they should be.  The approval process for opening a brewery is about one year.  The beginning step is establishing a location before you begin the licensing procedure.   That means you have to rent or buy a location, before you begin the paperwork.  That is a whole year you have to pay rent when you are not taking in any money, and there is a good chance you could get turned down at the end.  Before federal government regulation put a stop to this, many started a brewery in their kitchen, then opened an actual brewery after they sold enough beer to afford this.  Because of the nature of beer it is a product that it is virtually impossible to make someone sick if you brew bad quality beer.  It is very expensive to outfit a startup brewery to meet federal standards, standards imposed by bureaucrats rather than brewers, There was no need for this change except to limit competition.

Hey Hey Ho Ho this Cultural Marxism has got to go

Posted: January 23, 2020 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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Political correctness and social justice are both designed by the political left to dismantle all of the institutions that built the United States into the freest and most prosperous nation that ever existed.  Both of these darlings of the left, which have been embraced by the modern Democrat Party, are based on the philosophies of Karl Marx.  His philosophies have now been applied to all aspects of culture rather than economics.  The Marxist roots of these leftist philosophies is explained in great detail in this American Thinker article Economic vs. Cultural Marxism: The Most Important Distinction

In this quote the author explains the roots of economic Marxism. 

As Marx phrased it in Das Kapital, “[i]n order to establish equality, we must first establish inequality” (1).  By finding the inequalities of the world, the Marxist can then begin eliminating the obstacles that impede equality.  The more of these sources of inequality the Marxist eliminates, the closer we move to an equitable socialist utopia.  This is why Marx was so adamant about abolishing certain fixtures of society.

Among the ills of society perpetuating inequality that need abolition, according to Marx, were history, private property, the family, eternal truths, nations and borders, and religion (2).  By destroying these sources of inequality, the Marxist is one step closer to the equitable world the Marxist knows is possible.  Marx believed that economic issues are the driving force of conflict in the world (3).  Eliminating class structure was the central goal of Marx’s Communist Manifesto.

It is obvious if you’ve studied the cultural wars that have been raging in the United States over the past few decades, which are all about implementing political correctness and social justice, the goals of Cultural Marxism are the same as Economic Marxism.

One person was most responsible for the transition from Economic Marxism to Cultural Marxism.  That person was at the Frankurt School.

György Lukács, is credited as the first person to advocate for the application of Marx’s economic principles to cultural struggles: “he justified culture to the Marxists by showing how to condemn it in Marxist terms.

Like Economic Marxism, Cultural Marxism is all about the destruction of the individual

The modern social justice advocate uses the abolition of individuality as a tool to strip human beings of their individuality and bifurcate society.  A bifurcation is a logical fallacy where a person makes things one or another, with no area in between.  For example, a bifurcation would be the faulty assumption of saying a person is either a Trump-supporter or a Hillary-supporter.  What about those who like Bernie Sanders or Ted Cruz?  What about those who like both Trump and Hillary?  What about those who like neither?

For Marx, his bifurcation was the bourgeois versus the proletariat.  You were either a rich person or a working stiff.  There was no in between.  For the social justice warrior, you are either privileged or oppressed. 

This bifurcation fallacy has been spread by our education system, Hollywood, and news media.  It now effects all aspects of our culture.  I have encountered this many times when I debate liberals on social media.  It is not much fun to be accused of supporting child molestation because I don’t embrace transgenderism, or being accused of supporting slavery because I embrace the Constitution.

You can see from this next quote why abolishing individualism is so important to Cultural Marxism.

Social justice is not just about living individuals involved in the current world; rather, it is about abstractions, generalizations, and the past.  Sowell explained that “cosmic justice must be hand-made by holders of power who impose their own decision on how these flesh-and-blood individuals should be categorized into abstraction, and how these abstractions should then be forcibly configured to fit the vision of the power-holders”

The social justice–Marxist strips the individual of individuality and then turns the person into an abstraction.  If a human being is an individual, then we can be held accountable only for our own actions; we cannot be held accountable for the actions of another person, let alone the actions of a group of people who lived and died long before our time.  If we are not individuals, then we can be turned into abstractions.  As abstractions, we can then be blamed for the actions of others who classify as members of these abstractions.  Those in power are the ones dictating the terms of these abstractions.

For an example of this, take race relations.  If I am an individual, I had nothing to do with slavery, Jim Crow, waging war with the American Indians, or anyone who did anything hundreds of years before I was born.  However, if my individuality is abolished, I am not a unique individual with specific characteristics.  I can be broken down into an abstraction designated by those in power. Individualism is something I embrace with every fiber of my being. 

I rage at the destruction of individualism that is at the heart of political correctness, social justice, and all other leftist philosophies.  Writing articles such as this is my way of fighting back

Report from Louisiana: Reading List

Posted: January 20, 2020 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – It seems like January lasts forever, but one thing these long, cold months are good for is to catch up on some reading. My reading tastes range far and wide, and I tend to binge read when I discover an author new to me that I enjoy. I’ll generally read almost anything, from chick-lit to serious non-fiction. I’m not a big fan of fantasy.

I did read, and loved, Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus a while back, and now that her long awaited second book is out, The Starless Sea, I picked it up, but I couldn’t get into it. I’m going to try again, maybe in the spring. It’s getting nice reviews, but just was not resonating with me at the time.

I’ve been on an Elizabeth Strout binge; I loved Olive Kitteridge, so when Olive, Again came out, I snapped it up and loved it. I relate to Olive. The older I get, I seem to get crankier. Cantankerous. I’m not as bristly as Olive, but I can relate. And now that I’ve seen the HBO adaptation of Olive Kittridge, I can’t help but see Frances McDormand as I read. Such fun! Now I’m on to My Name is Lucy Barton, also by Strout, and am enjoying that. Strout is sort of like a female version of Fredrik Backman, to me. Both authors are so adept at character development and in creating characters we become sympathetic to even though we may not want to.

In that same way, consider Steph Post’s final book in her Judah Cannon series, Holding Smoke. Post is an author who should be on your radar and who is not as well known right now as she will be.  Her Judah Cannon series has been referred to as “grit-lit” as a nod to its gritty, Florida noir setting and characters, some of whom are truly inspirational in their evil deeds. I received an ARC of Smoke a few weeks ago – its release date is next week, and I immediately jumped in and could not put it down. I would recommend reading the first two books in the series so that you are more invested in this one, plus, the story arc is fabulous. Post is a versatile writer and her last novel, Miraculum, might be my favorite of her works; that’s hard to say because I dearly love the Judah Cannon series.  Miraculum can hold its own with Night Circus any day, all day long.

In the non-fiction realm, I’ve recently finished Sarah Broom’s The Yellow House, which is a memoir about growing up in New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina, and the aftermath. It is more than a story about her family and Katrina, however. It reminds you that so many people around us are living lives that are ignored and unseen, forgotten, misunderstood. Broom’s skill in wrapping complicated themes around her family’s little yellow house is what makes her the gifted writer she is.

I just finished reading The Silent Patient, the much acclaimed new book by Alex Michaelides. It was a page-turner, and I couldn’t put it down, but in the end, I felt manipulated. I’m not sure how to explain that without spoilers, but let me just say the book was a good read, I enjoyed it, but the ending left me irritated. I’m not sorry I read it, and I’ll read this author again, but ….  I guess the last time I felt irritated by the conclusion of a book was Stephen King’s Elevation. I don’t want to give spoilers on that either, but at the end of Elevation, let’s just say there was a lot of profanity involved on my part and a huge reluctance to contribute to King’s bank account any further.

Next on my reading list is American Dirt. What are you reading? Give me some recommendations!

Pat Austin blogs at And So it Goes in Shreveport and is the author of Cane River Bohemia: Cammie Henry and her Circle at Melrose Plantation. Follow her on Instagram @patbecker25 and Twitter @paustin110.

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