Recent Comments

1. about 13 years ago on Non Sequitur

   Please note that every statement you make here is an opinion that you expect everyone readily to accept accept as unquestionable fact. If I blindly accept what you say to be true, that is “faith.” It’s more than a bit ironic that you expect us to accept your opinion as fact while excoriating “religion” for doing the same thing. Your “anti-religion” has some significantly religious overtones.

2. about 13 years ago on Non Sequitur

   I would humbly submit that no common scientific mean of measurement or calculation is able to take supernatural activity into consideration in order to arrive at a conclusion. Here’s a very simplistic example:

   Think of a large, open field with which you ar very familiar. You know that there are no trees in that field. You drove by that field yesterday and saw no trees. Today you drive by and see a 150’ oak tree with a circumference approaching 15’ in the middle of the field. You stop and investigate. There is absolutely no evidence of transplantation. You call a botanist and report the mystery. The tree’s growth rings indicate that this tree experienced all the known seasonal climatological fluxuations in that geographic area for the past 150 years. In short, your botanist reports that all the empirical evidence points to that tree having grown from an acorn in that exact spot for the past 150 years. You know that the tree was not in the middle of th at field yesterday, but cannot convince the botanist of that fact becaue his scientific formulae don’t allow for such events to occur. You are at an impasse. The scientist looks at his evidence and says, “You’re a kook.”.

   Scientific formulae and algorithms do not allow for supernatural activity, and are based on assumptions, the greatest of which, “everything that exists originated from nothing and developed from the most basic forms of matter.”. Since all the calculations are based on that and similar assumptions, the figures and resulting conclusions arising from any question of origin cannot, by design, take into consideration the possibility that anything in the biological world might have been created in a mature state. Thus we are back to our botanist. The “facts” point to one conclusion, but your experience points to another. That, I submit, is the difference between science and faith.

3. about 13 years ago on Non Sequitur

   Thank you for the polite, adult and thoughtful conversation. Rhetoric is much too easy and accepted these days, especially on the net…..in response….

   I must admit that my understanding of Orthodox theology is rather superficial. I have read Timothy Ware’s “The Orthodox Church” and have attended exactly one Orthodox service in my life.

   As you have surmised, I do hold to the WCF and, in general, the tenets of the Reformation of the 16th century. That said, I think it critically important for all "true believers’ to acknowledge that, being fallible human beings, it is impossible for any of us to have 100% perfect theology. By definition then, that leaves all of us short of the mark. What do we do with that? What stopped me in my tracks is the concept of divine sovereignty. If God is the supreme creator and Lord of the universe, then he must be omniscient and omnipotent and may do what he pleases. “Knowing” God, as you point out, appears to be the whole intent of God’s revelation to man as well as the incarnation of Christ.

   How do we know God? By the revelation he left for us. I’m sure you are quite well-versed in the arguments of Sola Scriptura, so I will not delve into that here. I find the claims of Sola Scriputra (and the other “solas”) compelling, especially the concept that I, in and of myself, can do nothing to appease God, let alone win his favor. It must be Christ and his righteousness imputed to me simply by his good pleasure, and made evident to my psyche by work of the Holy Spirit, vice any work of my own intellect to achieve even a modicum of godliness.

   Cheers!

4. about 13 years ago on Non Sequitur

   “Society has the ability to determine right and wrong,”? The Holocaust, Stalin’s purges, the Mao’s Cultural Revolution, the Czarist Pogroms, the invasion of Iraq were all “legal” according to the law of the day. I don’t think you are claiming to believe that as long as a law is recognized as such by those in political power it is, by definition, just and “right,” are you?

   If I own a restaurant in Virginia, where I live and I permit smoking in my establishment, I will incur a fine from the state. It’s my business, why am I punished for allowing my customers to do something in my restaurant that they have every right to do in their front yards, or in their own homes? I say that law is unjust and wrong. Personally, I find being around smokers physically uncomfortable, but as a businessman why does the state have a say?

5. about 13 years ago on [Deleted]

   I think we are in agreement. Claiming to do something in the name of a cause does not necessarily validate or invalidate the cause itself. Most of the items you mention were the result of power grabs by those with influence who rallied the masses to their cause with an emotionally moving sales pitch…no different than any political commercial today. Imperfect people are going to make mistakes, and when you have the ability to raise and deploy armies, the chances of catastrophic mistakes increase significantly.

   But I reiterate that an act in the name of a cause does not necessarily validate or invalidate the cause itself. In order to make the judgement, you must have a standard against which to judge the cause. If no absolute standard exists, then there can be no true, objective validation, and anything goes. Even the most virulent atheists don’t want to live in a world like that – thus their dilemma: Without an absolute authority, absolute morality is impossible to obtain. One day you buy your bread in a Jewish bakery, the next day you are cheering as the baker and his family being shoved into a boxcar headed for an extermination camp. If we think we’ve overcome that human weakness we are fooling ourselves.

6. about 13 years ago on Non Sequitur

   If that is a sincere question, I would ask you to first read the Westminster Confession of Faith in its entirety and then comment on whether or not you think the authors had any illusion as to who the supreme authority in the universe is. If you read the original version, you will find a severe anti-Catholic theme, as their position was that the Pope inappropriately assumed authority reserved solely for Christ.

   I think I concur with your underlying thesis that man cannot get earthly authority perfect, but I submit that acknowledging a perfect, supreme Creator God, at the very least, gives society a position from which to form a common morality. Despite the errors that Christians have made through the centuries, and I admit they are legion, it can be quite well argued that without the rise of Christianity the concept of human equality would be unheard of. The New Testament is chalk full of teaching that in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, male or female, slave or free. All are equivalent in God’s eyes. Children are addressed directly as sentient beings with wills and given direction, as are parents – to not exasperate their children but to raise them well. Before this, children had no more rights than slaves. The Bible does teach different roles for different people, but not different statuses. Those who argue via rhetoric rather than logic treat those concepts as equivalent. They are not. A quarterback has a different role than a linebacker, but their status as team members is the same. Just an example.

7. about 13 years ago on Non Sequitur

   Ah, yes….the “Religion Haters” are in the house. Let’s consider some of the most prominent atheists of the 20th Century…Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Kim, Pot…lovely men who worked out their atheistic philosophies to their logical ends – “for all intent and purposes, I am god!”

   Darwinist philosophy provides so much more hope! Bullying, for example, is a natural progression of Darwinism in our day. Weak, undeserving kids in school (as judged by those with power – at least on the playground, bus stop, etc.) are beaten into submission and if they end up committing suicide, the gene pool has been improved and some competition for resources has been eliminated.

   So I’ll ask you “religion haters” why you get up in arms about bullying and teen suicide. With no absolute authority in your universe there can be no common morality. If you really hold to all of us being nothing but accidents of evolution, why do you care if weak ones get weeded out? Why does life have any meaning to you at all? In the scope of billions and billions of years, what difference does it make is you or anyone else dies at 15 or 105? It’s all meaningless.

   Most “egotheists” (I am my own god – I am my own absolute authority) cannot live out their own philosophy to its logical conclusion, because it is almost universally hateful. It moves very quickly to genocide, eugenics, etc.

   Atheism is mankind’s greatest threat because it makes man the absolute authority and we have proven time and time again that we are our own worst enemy.

8. almost 14 years ago on Doonesbury

   It is just patently unfair to other comic strip artists that current world events have played right into Gary Trudeau’s hands. He really couldn’t have orchestrated things any better….hey….wait a minute…I smell a conspiracy here!

9. almost 15 years ago on Non Sequitur

   Victoria’s expression in panel 3 could mean so many things - all of them apropos. Hilarious story line, Wiley. Well done!

10. almost 15 years ago on Non Sequitur

    Perhaps the funniest one-panel comic I’ve ever seen. Well said, Mary & great contest, Wiley. My wife laughed just as hard as I did.

    What’s next???