In arguing for the deity of Jesus Christ (i.e., that he is, in fact, God), many Christians will point to places in the Gospel accounts where Jesus is referred to as the Son of God. For example,

And Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, “Lord, save me.” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

– Matthew 14:28-33 ESV

or, more specific to the point,

Pilate went out again and said to them, “See, I am bringing him out to you that you may know that I find no guilt in him.” So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Behold the man!” When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, “Crucify him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him.” The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has made himself the Son of God.”

– John 19:4-7 ESV

Yet, when presenting these apologetic arguments, many times Christians will face the response that Jesus never claimed to be God but merely ‘the son of God’.

This, I think, is an unfortunate consequence of our current culture’s thinking (and, perhaps, most of Western culture). The mindset we are facing, and most times have ourselves, tends to see individuals rather than groups. When we meet someone who is introduced as so-and-so’s son we think along the lines of, “Oh, your name is Frank, and you’re John’s son.” Is it any surprise, then, that we have instances of surnames such as “Johnson”?

We do this all the time. “Hello Mary. Yes, I know your mother Kate, and don’t you have a daughter named Rebecca?” In such a dialogue, despite understanding the familial relationship between the mother – daughter – granddaughter, we assign (inadvertently, perhaps) more importance to the individuality of each person. Hence, the argument that if Jesus is the Son of God, then he is God, carries little weight with us.

However, this does not seem to be the case with the culture with which Jesus interacted. Consider this excerpt from the book of John,

The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.” Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken—do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” Again they sought to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands.

– John 10:31-39 ESV

Here we see that the Jews were ready to stone Jesus because, as they stated, “you, being a man, make yourself God.” In his response Jesus actually takes their charge and clarifies it so as to make it clear that, yes, he is in fact making himself out to be God. Note his reference back to his saying, “I am the Son of God”.

So, how does this all tie in with CS Lewis, Narnia, and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe?

At the beginning of chapter 2, just after the Faun (Mr. Tumnus) spots Lucy, we have the following,

“Good evening,” said Lucy. But the Faun was so busy picking up its parcels that at first it did not reply. When it had finished it made her a little bow.

“Good evening, good evening,” said the Faun. “Excuse me – I don’t want to be inquisitive – should I be right in thinking that you are a Daughter of Eve?”

“My name’s Lucy,” said she, not quite understanding him.

“But you are – forgive me – you are what they call a girl?” asked the Faun.

“Of course I’m a girl,” said Lucy.

“You are in fact Human?”

In these few short lines of text Lewis wonderfully parlays the aspects of cross-cultural issues in how we understand textual meaning. Notice how when the Faun asked “Are you a daughter of Eve?” he was asking if Lucy was “in fact Human”. Lucy, “not quite understanding him” (in true Western form), immediately looked to the individuality aspect of her status as the daughter of her mother – that they were two distinct, and therefore separate, persons. Luckily, the Faun understood this confusion on Lucy’s part and stepped her through the process, first by asking if she was “a girl”, and then asking his initial question in a point blank fashion: “You are in fact Human?”

The point here is that the title Daughter of Eve had nothing to do with the individuality of Lucy but everything to do with her being of the same species as Eve: Human. In like manner, when Jesus was referred to or claimed to be the Son of God it had everything to do with him being of the same “species” as his Father: God.

Good morning. It’s zero out here in the Chicago south suburbs … bracing is what that is.

1. The first sentence seems to be the hypothesis for what follows … do you think it’s true (in both respects … that is, it it true and does Mr Obama believe it to be true)?
2. A short film.
3. The patron saint of … what?
4. Gun run.
5. Doncha hate when that happens.
6. Better bike news.
7. So … when you consider that the left wants to put stiff restrictions on what is allowed in the Constitution … well, that doesn’t happen with other stuff like religion, the press, and speech (remember the Volokh series on speech on college campuses) Right? Oh, never mind.
   
8. More on the press here.
9. Profiling and the assault ban.
10. Apparently my notions of what is tactically suggested is outdated, but I’ll bet Mr Biden didn’t know that either. And I still contend a semi-auto shotgun in Sandy Hook wouldn’t have had a better outcome.
11. Corporate cash holding growth explained.
12. No. Duh. And the guy who ruled yes must be an idiot.
13. Remember the claims that Obama has reduced the deficit? … Not so you’d notice.
14. No names and why.
15. Why we don’t want Uncle Sam minding more of the store.
16. For the super bowl .. I really like Mr Arkush when he’s on the radio … he write pretty well too.
17. Snerk. (So … am I a terrible person ’cause I found that amusing)?
18. Chick-Fil-A and football.
19. From a communist on guns. And the left (TPM?) has been touting the “armed citizens” can’t stand up to modern trained soldiers. Right. That’s a straw man. But a politician has to go out in and face his public.

Maybe this is why I’ve not been blogging much. Well, it’s certainly a contributing factor.

The latest episode covers the fight of North Carolina pro-choicers against a license plate that advocates a choice, and a rundown of how well the Washington, DC gun ban reduced homicides (hint: it didn’t).

Click here for the show notes, links to articles mentioned, and ways to get your voice heard on the podcast. You can also listen to the show right on the page, or subscribe in iTunes, Stitcher or the Blubrry network.

Good morning.

1. Redemption and a Tolstoy masterwork.
2. Ms Austen.
3. Unicorns and the left’s energy policies.
4. Gun control and those far right nuts in, uhm, Massachusetts?
5. You know, ’cause we’re at war with them too.
6. History made simpler.
7. Our Administration’s financial shenanigans … or put simpler … making sure of your landing pad for after your time in office.
8. A man and his witness.
9. Underreported!? or just plain ghastly.
10. Why not to leave Afghanistan too quickly.
11. 6 scenarios.
12. A North American bishop installed.
13. From the sun-never-sets-on … to lack of pride as a method.
14. Well, the first step in letting history repeat is to insist that those circumstance were insane, senseless, and incomprehensible. And interesting tactic for a person who is claimed has a special ability to understand others.

Tens of thousands marched in a huge anti-abortion protest in Washington, DC. You’re forgiven if you didn’t know about it. ABC and CBS couldn’t be bothered to mention it at all. NBC gave all of it 15 seconds. But for less than 1,000 protestors who came out for more gun control, CBS managed to find time for them.

In print, the NY Times has ignored the march for the past 5 years, but this year, while it finally realized that something was happening, they managed to frame it just the way they wanted.

This year, the 40th anniversary of the March, the Times broke its streak with a so-so 815-word story by Ashley Parker that made the bottom of the front of the paper’s National section, on page 9.

What made the top of page 9? Here the Times showed some nerve, as religion reporter Laurie Goodstein’s used some liberal Catholic activists to chide pro-lifers supporters for not also being anti-gun It’s almost as if the paper acknowledged the march so as to be able to criticize it.

Oh, that liberal media.

Good morning.

1. Media bias … 1k people gather that’s news (if it’s a liberal cause) 500k gather … not news because it’s not a liberal cause.
2. Or maybe it’s not bias.
3. Not Carbon … whoops.
4. Police tech.
5. Deceit and election tactics.
6. What do you have to lose?
7. Government motors … not doing so well strategically speaking.
8. On safety netting.
9. Some notes on the much abused anthropic principle.
10. Newsflash, museums have been doing that for 40 years.
11. An accusation of liberal racism.
12. Apparently I’m ornery. Certainly there are day’s on which my girls would concur.
13. Pretzels in Congressional testimony.

Home School Edition (particulary for a couple of new homeschool moms I know)

Homeschooling and Socialization
Ah, yes. The question that won’t go away. From the post,

And lets face it — the “Lord of the Flies” social scene in most schoolyards never occurs anywhere else in life. I never encountered anything remotely resembling it in college, grad school or the work place. Women in groups may at times verge on being a bit “catty,” but maturity has deadened the sharper edges of the claws they may have had as schoolgirls. And besides, maturity works both ways — women have thicker skin than young girls.

###

Well, homeschooled kids ARE NOT well socialized
Depending on how you define “well socialized.” From the post,

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but there’s nothing “normal” about our kids. Your homeschooled child is odd compared to the schooled population because they have not experienced ongoing school-based socialization and standardization.

When you consider that the homeschooled population makes up only 3-6% of the entire school-going population, you may begin to understand just how different your kids are or will be.

###

Does Homeschooling threaten public school systems?
From Glenn Reynolds,

Traditional public schools haven’t changed much for decades (and to the extent they have, they’ve mostly gotten worse). But the rest of the world has changed a lot. The public who eagerly purchased Henry Ford’s Model T (available in any color you want, so long as it’s black!) now lives in a world where almost everything is infinitely customized and customizable. That makes one-size-fits-all education, run on a Fordist model itself, look like a bad deal.

###

Homeschooling: resistance is futile
From The Atlantic, even “progressives” have been smitten with the allure of homeschooling.

So we are making a different choice. Sure, we have philo­sophical reasons. Some of the parents in our circle are “unschoolers,” convinced that early education should follow a child’s interests and initiatives rather than shape them. Some of us aspire to offer something like a classical education: logic and rhetoric, mythology, Latin. Most of us are put off by the public schools’ emphasis on standardized tests and their scant attention to the visual arts, music, religion, and foreign languages.

###

Your homeschooled teen will be better prepared for college
Due to their lack of socialization skills, no doubt. From the article,

They’re also better socialized than most high school students, says Joe Kelly, an author and parenting expert who home-schooled his twin daughters.

“I know that sounds counterintuitive because they’re not around dozens or hundreds of other kids every day, but I would argue that’s why they’re better socialized,” Kelly says. “Many home-schoolers play on athletic teams, but they’re also interactive with students of different ages.”

Home-schooled students often spend less time in class, Kelly says, giving them more opportunity to get out into the world and engage with adults and teens alike.

Good morning.

1. Some history.
2. Assault weapons for which the left wants no state controls.
3. Heh.  Oh, and heh.
4. Not noticing that Texas gun violence is lower than Chicago’s, which has some of the most stringent gun laws in the country.
5. Slipping off the White House talking points.
6. The oldest (working) computer.
7. Better than gun control, gun advice.
8. Obama’s shower bully and race.
9. ’cause Mr Biden thinks a double-ought 10 gauge pump action would have done lots lots less damage in Sandy Hook.
10. Apparently all you have to do is change the name of your gun to be legal if you’re a manufacturer.
11. And … an assault weapon ban and Sandy Hook? No effect at all. No such weapon was used. Oops.
12. “He can see the other side” … does anyone have smidge of evidence to back that up? Or is just like the “he’s really smart” … with no evidence claim?
13. Graft is profitable. Always has been.
14. More State stupidity.
15. On a statement made at the inaugural address.
16. Inclusion.

Good morning.

1. Confused about the nature of religion, worship is public and communal.
   
2. Speaking of confused, one school is quite so.
3. Mandates.
4. (not) acting alone.
5. Cultural movement, regress or progress (or even sustainable)?
6. A boy to note.
7. Drunk drivings vs suicides.
8. Noting silliness on the gun control front.
9. Lies of 2012, some of the more notable noted.
10. At this point … does it matter (if we were shown to be inexperienced stupid boobs), well maybe maybe not, but shouting doesn’t prove anything?
11. For those who reject, … uhm, genetics.
12. Der Speigel and climate change.
13. The “assault weapon ban” and Sandy Hook.

Good morning

1. On abortion and ethics.
2. Optimism?
3. A day remembered.
4. Regulatory silliness down under.
5. So, explain why a gun like this needs tighter regulations.
6. And a hammerless single action.
7. I’m not seeing the coming revolution notion.
8. Snerk.
9. Blind spots.
10. Signing up and is the question of “who” is the Executive relevant?
11. Ethics and God.
12. As the US moves to “more corruption” … another state struggles with fighting its own.
13. Is there a crisis?

Lots of silliness has ensued in the weeks following the shooting in Newton, CT. Gun advocates suggest putting TSA-like agents in every school (as if schools aren’t expensive enough), gun control advocates suggest restricting “assault weapons” (a fictional category for semi-automatic rifles) and “high capacity magazines” (as if the 1-2 seconds to swap magazines would really make a difference) and basically making it far harder to obtain guns (against for example, peer reviewed academic studies showing that the elasticity to gun availability is .1 to .3 out of the 50-60 gun related deaths per 10k people per year.  As much posturing as we have on this matter, if the time the President and his Renfieldian co-conspirator Biden have wasted giving speeches on gun control more children have died in auto accidents than did in the incident they pretend is motivating their interest in gun control. But do they go after drivers and car safety? Nope. Read the rest of this entry

Forty years and 50 million lives ago, Roe v Wade was decided, and the Supreme Court federalized all state abortion laws, by somehow finding a right to kill your unborn child in the Constitution. Justice Byron White said as much in his dissent.

I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court’s judgment. The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant women and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes. The upshot is that the people and the legislatures of the 50 States are constitutionally disentitled to weigh the relative importance of the continued existence and development of the fetus, on the one hand, against a spectrum of possible impacts on the woman, on the other hand. As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court.

Fifty million children. If they had died from gunshots, the Left would realize the tragedy. As it it, it’s just "choice".

Woo Hoo! I’m back.

1. Cool … because they are rare, perhaps in a post-WW-II northern Europe?
2. Now the left will get to disavow Mr Silver.
3. Silliness north of the border.
4. Treaties can do that? And … hierarchy and the Constitution.
5. Occasionally we need to actually overcome that temptation, that’s the rub.
6. I wonder if there is a reasoned argument against chivalry and good manners.
7. Mr Morsi forgets evolution puts him in the same bucket.
8. How liberal or moderate?
9. Rhetoric examined. And what the President doesn’t want you to do, he wants it the other way round.
10. Dan Simmons (in his Illium/Olympus books) argued that androids were in Homer’s Iliad. Hephaestus constructed them to assist him.
11. Ethics meets economics … or does it?
12. Perhaps a better start for a discussion about dignity and human life than abortion.
13. Predictions.
14. Drugs in the modern world.

In many of the debates / flat-out-arguments regarding gun control, recently, it’s been interesting to see how some anti-2nd Amendment folk trot out the notion that gun owners who claim self defense as the basis for their right to own firearms must have some gender inferiority complex. What are you compensating for?, is the Dr. Phil-ish question that explains what these misguided gun owners are suffering from. Essentially, advocates of gun control claim that the supposed need for having firearms is inexorably linked to the fabrication of an essence, be it ever so false, of manhood.

Maybe they have a point. If I own firearms for self / family defense then what exactly am I compensating for? Well, I’ll tell you what:

Among other things, I’m compensating for the 6′-4″, 225 pound, 25 year-old thug who, after breaking into my home, would not think twice about shooting me in the head (or stabbing me or clubbing me) regardless of whether I was armed or complied with his demands. I’m compensating for the multiple assailants who, after training in prison*, would not think twice about slitting my throat, raping my family, and then strangling them to death. I’m compensating for the inevitability of civil unrest given a natural or man-made disaster in the metropolitan area I live in. And I’m compensating for the sheep-like mentality you display, insuring that your such departures from reality will not inhibit my right to defend the lives of those I hold dear to my heart.

In the meantime, let’s take a look at some stories which illustrate that there are many women who seem to have taken to “compensation”, regardless of whether they suffer from the gender-complex issues that gun grabber psychoanalysts say they do. And, as a sidenote, notice that not all defensive gun uses (DGUs) involved actually firing the weapon.

15 Million women “pack heat” in the US

And that was in 2011. From the article,

One mother named Elena who lives in Roseburg, Ore., explains how her job as a 911 dispatcher led her to overcome the discomfort she felt about owning a gun.

“Dealing with the calls that we field on a daily basis made me really aware of what people are capable of doing,” Elena writes. “I’m a single mom and I’ve got two kids, so I feel like if I’m ever put in a situation where I need to protect them, I’d prefer to have a gun.

Gun-toting Grandma pulls handgun on two men who tried to rob her

More women using guns for fun and protection

From the article,

Several factors are driving women to the gun range, experts say.

“The first and foremost reason is women no longer want to feel vulnerable,” Parsons says. “They want to feel responsible for their own personal safety and the safety of their families. Just by their physical size, the perpetrator is going to be bigger and stronger. A firearm is the great equalizer.”

More and more women…

From the article,

To those who say guns are masculine, Ellanson says, “It would depend on how you define femininity. I think a capable woman is the most feminine expression of power that there is.”

15 year-old girl scares burglars (note – plural) with dad’s… gun

From the article,

Officials said a teen in Texas City was alone when a pair of intruders broke into her family’s house, but she turned the tables on the suspects by grabbing her father’s handgun.

911 is a joke

In Detroit. From the article,

The people of Detroit are taking no prisoners.

Justifiable homicide in the city shot up 79 percent in 2011 from the previous year, as citizens in the long-suffering city armed themselves and took matters into their own hands. The local rate of self-defense killings now stands 2,200 percent above the national average. Residents, unable to rely on a dwindling police force to keep them safe, are fighting back against the criminal scourge on their own. And they’re offering no apologies.

More women…

From the article,

More women throughout the United States are buying guns and learning how to use them. And we’re finding that to be true in South Dakota. In fact, a 2011 Gallup Poll found that 43% of women say there’s a gun in their home. KSFY’s Courtney Zieller is finding out why numbers are at a new high.

21 year-old woman shoots and kills intruder who kicked in her door

Oh, and at least one of the intruders was armed with a gun. From the article,

Tweets sent from the official Dallas Police Department Twitter account said two suspects kicked in the door of the home at about 11:30 a.m. The resident was alone upstairs and heard the noise. She confronted the two burglars as they ascended the stairs and shot at them several times.

The two ran out the front door and one collapsed from a gunshot wound. Police later recovered a gun at the scene, “indicating at least one of the suspects was armed.” Nobody has been identified.

12 year-old girl shoots intruder

Yeah, this one kicked his way in as well. From the article,

A 12-year-old girl took matters into her own hands during a home invasion in southeast Oklahoma.

It happened on Wednesday when the girl was home alone. She told police a stranger rang the doorbell, then went around to the back door and kicked it in. She called her mom, Debra St. Clair, who told her to get the family gun, hide in a closet and call 911.

* Not based on my own knowledge but as related by a retired LA County Sheriff and a current LAPD Police Officer.

Good, well, whatever … day/night what have you.

1. Dignity and value of human life ontological not a constituent property, e.g., you are “human” if you posses particular virtues and not if you don’t.  This is the central basis for anti-abortion ethics. If you resist that notion, read Ms Delsol’s book on those forgotten 20th century lessons.
2. My daughter, now a senior, very much was saddened that “woods 3” was dropped because of lack of interest at her school.
3. Political squabbles.
4. A book.
5. Except that it’s not true. Watch “The Island”, asceticism is a virtue and don’t you forget it.
6. Thick and thin thinking.
7. The criminal set thanks you for identifying the vulnerable for future rapes, home invasions, and other mayhem.
8. The real reason for not-disarmament. And another reason.
9. Ms Biel was quite funny.
10. And I’ll leave y’all in the mud.