WorldNetDaily

According to WorldNetDaily, evolution is "an element of witchcraft" and Harry Potter is a clear and present danger to your children (WorldNetDaily refers to these children's books as being "pro-bigotry" and possibly leading to children practicing the occult). It's not unusual to go to this website and see a line such as this: "Liberals want mass starvation and human devastation."

Basically, WorldNetDaily is a news outlet for unhinged, angry and paranoid conservatives with little regard for facts or rational discussion.

If you don't believe me, then please take the time to read this WorldNetDaily article by Janet Folger. She writes it from the perspective of a prisoner in the future, who has been put in jail by Hillary Clinton simply for being a Christian.

Nov. 20, 2010

To the Resistance:

I'm writing this letter from prison, where I've been since the beginning of 2010. Since Hillary was elected in '08, Christian persecution in America has gotten even worse than we predicted. . . .

For a while now, as you might have guessed, WorldNetDaily has made it their mission to pass along any anti-Obama story it could, no matter how baseless and absurd. They first argued that Obama was a gay coke-fiend. That didn't pan out, as their career criminal source failed a polygraph test.

Next, they argued that Obama was planning to create a "massive but secret national police force that will be even bigger than the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force put together" (false), that his energy plan consisted of nothing more than tire inflation (false), that he supports cash reparations to blacks for slavery (false), etc.

Lately, WorldNetDaily has been promoting the myth that Barack Obama was born in Africa, and thus is ineligible to serve as the President of the United States. Their sources, as usual, are nutcases who have utterly failed to substantiate any of their claims.

These psychopaths will never rest.

UPDATE: As you might have guessed, college fail-out Rush Limbaugh frequently uses WorldNetDaily as a source. It's all a big crazy circle.

UPDATE II: They use actor Chuck Norris to argue against the scientific theory of evolution, for God's sake!

UPDATE III: WorldNetDaily recently settled a libel claim after baselessly asserting that an Al Gore supporter was "a suspected drug dealer."

UPDATE IV: My favorite WorldNetDaily headline is this: "Soy is Making Kids 'Gay' "

UPDATE V: Here is another actual WorldNetDaily headline: "Is Obama Devotee of Monkey-God Idol?"

Janet Folger's Paranoid Fantasy

Janet Folger has written a new column for WorldNetDaily. It takes the form of a hypothetical letter (in the year 2010) she is writing to "The Resistance" after having been imprisoned by President Hillary Clinton simply for being a Christian. Seriously.

To the Resistance:

I'm writing this letter from prison, where I've been since the beginning of 2010. Since Hillary was elected in '08, Christian persecution in America has gotten even worse than we predicted.

This woman is nuts.

Vox Day and Dinesh D'Souza

Dinesh D'Souza is out promoting his new book What's So Great About Christianity. As a result, we get to enjoy some really bad editorials and interviews. This is what Dinesh D'Souza had to say in a recent interview with Vox Day:

The first is a case that I try to make that Christianity is responsible for the core institutions and values that secular people, and even atheists, cherish. If you look at books by leading atheists and you make a list of the values that they care about, things like the right to individual defense, the notion of personal dignity, equality and respect for women, opposition to social hierarchy and slavery, compassion as a social value, the idea of self-government and representative government, and so forth, you'll see that many of these things came into the world because of Christianity.

Let's just examine really quickly what the Bible has to say about each of those "values that secular people, and even atheists, cherish."

(1) "the right to individual defense"

First off, this seems like a weird thing to include. I don't think that Christianity, or any philosophy, can claim to be the source of "respecting individual defense." It's really just something that's reflexive, and it's common in every society ever.

Nonetheless, the Bible has some counter-intuitive things to say on the subject:

"You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles."

[Matthew 5: 38-42]

(2) "the notion of personal dignity"

Again, is Dinesh claiming that Christianity is the source of "the notion of personal dignity"? This seems like another blatant case of over-reaching.

It's worth pointing out, however, that the Old Testament God all-too-frequently ordered his people to rape and kill innocent women and children. Here is one example:

Whoever is captured will be thrust through; all who are caught will fall by the sword. Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses will be looted and their wives ravished.

See, I will stir up against them the Medes, who do not care for silver and have no delight in gold.

Their bows will strike down the young men; they will have no mercy on infants nor will they look with compassion on children.

[Isaiah 13:15-18]

(3) "equality and respect for women"

Is Dinesh really going to make the argument that Christianity is the source of equality and respect for women? Here are just two samples of what the Bible says about equality for women:

women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.

[1 Corinthians 14:34-35]

For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.

Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.

[Ephesians 5:23-25]

(4) "opposition to social hierarchy and slavery"

Whoa, there. Really?

"You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor."

[Exodus 20:17]

"If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, 21 but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property."

[Exodus 21:20]

"Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh."

[1 Peter 2:18]

(5) "compassion as a social value"

Another case of some really amazing over-reaching. As if nobody thought of compassion as a social value before Christianity.

(6) "the idea of self-government and representative government"

You're kidding me, right? The idea undeniably pre-dates Christianity. This argument is simply a bad one.

It's one thing to say that some of these things were incorporated into Christianity somehow. It's quite another to claim (as Dinesh the exaggerator does), that Christianity is the source of all these wonderful things (and, as a consequence, that Atheists should be thanking Christians).

I'm glad that modern Christians and atheists (and lots of other people who don't fall into either of those categories) value these things today (sometimes in spite of what the Bible said 2000 years ago). But it really frustrates me when people like Dinesh D'Souza try to claim that their philosophy is the originator of all these values. It's a claim that's easily disproven, yet all-too-frequently made.

WND: WTF?

WorldNetDaily is a news resource for crazy people. Observe the following:



When you click on the link, this is what you find:


Since when is evolution an "element of Witchcraft"?

WorldNetDaily Exclusive: There Were Racist Democrats 100 Years Ago!

This just in: Abraham Lincoln was a Republican! Wow!

FOX News on Kathy Griffin

Comedian Kathy Griffin recently won an Emmy Award, and then made the following comments:

A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus...
Hell has frozen over. Suck it Jesus, this award is my god now!

It was a joke about how some people use the podium to exploit their religion. Sort of like how boxers will go on and on after a fight about how God and Jesus had helped them to win. I didn't think it was terribly funny, but I saw what she was doing. It wasn't hateful, and it didn't imply that Christians in general are bad people. It was simply an innocuous joke.

Anyway, there were complaints and her comments were ultimately scrubbed from the TV broadcast.

But even this was not enough for the Catholic League's Bill Donohue, who went on the network news circuit to denounce the comments. On CNN, he claimed that Griffin's remarks were "worse than racism." Huh?

FOX News Religion Correspondent Lauren Green, however, had an even more bizarre and convoluted argument:

I want to actually show you that, in fact, Kathy Griffin is wrong. Jesus had everything to do with her winning that award. And here's the reasoning.

Jesus died on a cross 2,000 years ago. His dying words were, "Forgive them Father for they know not what they do." He died and they buried him in a rock cut tomb. Three days later, as the Bible says, he rose from the dead. That day is what Christians celebrate as Easter.

After the resurrection, Christianity began to take off like wildfire, spreading from the Middle East northward to Europe and westward into Ethiopia. In 300 A.D. Emperor Constantine accepted Christianity and it beccame the religion of Europe. Rome soon became the seat of the faith. After several years of human failings, the church went through conflicts and quite a few unbiblical years — the crusades and the inquisition to name just two. Out of that came the Reformation — the reforming of the Church, sort of a back-to-basics Bible and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Out of the Reformation emerged a vision of law by Samuel Rutherford, called Lex is Rex, Law is King. From that, others devised a secular version that is used to help lay the foundation of government for a new land called America. Ninety-four percent of America's founding era documents mention the Bible; 34 percent quote the Bible directly. The idea of bringing unity to the universal is a particularly Biblical concept.

The freedoms we enjoy in this country to speak freely and to live freely are directly related to that man who died on a cross 2,000 years ago.

There are so, so many things wrong here. But as a preliminary matter, let's take a look at what the Bible says about free speech:

anyone who blasphemes the name of the LORD must be put to death. The entire assembly must stone him. Whether an alien or native-born, when he blasphemes the Name, he must be put to death.

It's also very curious that Green would use Samuel Rutherford, of all people, to make her point about speaking freely. When Michael Servetus was burnt alive for heresy, Rutherford wholeheartedly endorsed the punishment:

It was justice, not cruelty, yea mercy to the Church of God, to take away the life of Servetus, who used such spirituall and diabolick cruelty to many thousand soules, whom he did pervert, and by his Booke, does yet lead into perdition.

Let's also ignore the silliness and twisted logic of Green's argument ("Jesus died, some people followed his philosophy, some guy said that the law is important, our country values the law, therefore Jesus is responsible for freedoms not found anywhere in the Bible"). What I'd like to focus on instead is Green's percentages claim. It's a meme straight from the pages of David Barton, and has been used by the likes of TV's Chuck Norris (Walker: Texas Ranger) as well. Here is what Chuck Norris said at WorldNetDaily:

94 percent of the period's documents were based on the Bible, with 34 percent of the contents being direct citations from the Bible. The Scripture was the bedrock and blueprint of our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, academic arenas and heritage until the last quarter of a century.

The 34 percent claim comes from a man named Donald Luntz. The 94 percent claim is pure Barton.

But let's look at what Donald Luntz had to say about his own findings:

"...From Table 1 we can see that the biblical tradition is most prominent among the citations. Anyone familiar with the literature will know that most of these citations come from sermons reprinted as pamphlets; hundreds of sermons were reprinted during the era, amounting to at least 10% of all pamphlets published. These reprinted sermons accounted for almost three-fourths of the biblical citations..."

3/4 of the Bible citations are from reprints of sermons. These are not the writings of the Founding Fathers, as Green and Norris would like you to believe, and they really have nothing to do with how our government was established. If you discount the printed sermons, then quotes from the Whigs become more numerous.

Luntz goes on (via Ed Brayton):

The Bible's prominence disappears, which is not surprising since the debate centered upon specific institutions about which the Bible has little to say. The Anti-Federalists do drag it in with respect to basic principles of government, but the Federalists' inclination to Enlightenment rationalism is most evident here in their failure to consider the Bible relevant.

Basically, he took the exact opposite position from Green/Barton/Norris. If anyone in this era cited the Bible (aside from the sermons), it was most likely the Anti-Federalists who very much disliked the absence of God and religion in the new Constitution. One Anti-Federalist wrote that it would be a mistake to ratify a document that makes no mention of God whatsoever, citing the Bible in the process: "Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee"

Chris Rodda at Talk to Action then goes on to explore the second claim:

That explains the 34%, but what about Norris's even more far-fetched claim that 94% of the documents of the period were based on the Bible? Well, that one comes from one of David Barton's videos. I don't have the video here to refer to, but from what I recall, Barton somehow concluded from his own study that 60% of the documents of the period were based on the Bible, and then added the 34% from Lutz's study, or something to that effect, ending up with a total of 94%.

Chris Rodda talks more about this meme here, and how it is being promoted for public school curricula.

Roy Moore on the Constitution

Ex-Judge Roy Moore (he was fired for refusing a court order to take down a 2.6-ton monument to the ten commandments, which he had erected at his courthouse in Alabama immediately after election) will be participating in an upcoming Republican "Values Voter" debate, presumably as a questioner. In anticipation of that event, Moore has written a horrible op-ed column for WorldNetDaily, claiming that the Constituion (which makes no mention of God whatsoever) is not a secular document.

Moore begins:

Dr. Benjamin Franklin, a prominent leader at the Constitutional Convention, not only called for prayer during the deliberations, but also later stated that he had "so much faith in the general government of the world by Providence, that [he could] hardly conceive a transaction of such momentous importance [as the Constitution] to pass without being in some degree influenced, guided and governed by that omnipotent, omnipresent and beneficent Ruler, in whom all inferior spirits live and move and have their being."

Moore fails to mention that, once Franklin requested an opening prayer, his request was not granted. According to Franklin, "The convention, except three or four persons, thought prayers unnecessary."Also, Franklin was a deist ("I soon became a thorough Deist") who did not believe in free will. It seems that all he is saying here is that Providence (a commonly used deist term) had guided the actions at the Constitutional Convention. In fact, in the very same document Moore cites, Franklin made sure to include this disclaimer: "I beg I may not be understood to infer, that our General Convention was divinely inspired, when it form'd the new federal Constitution."

Moore continues:

John Adams, Washington's successor to the presidency, aptly observed, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." Adams recognized that our Constitution would not work unless we retained moral and religious principles. Were Adams with us today he would be among the first to question presidential candidates on their moral and religious views of God's sovereignty over the government.

I don't know that Adams would "be among the first to question presidential candidates on their... religious views," given that the Constitution itself says "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." As far as "God's sovereignty over the government," Adams also signed the following document (the Treaty of Tripoli) into law:

As the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims] … it is declared … that no pretext arising from religious opinion shall ever product an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries. … The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation.

Moore then makes the following claim:

"The recognition of the sovereignty of God is an essential prerequisite for liberty."

No, it's not. This is actually the part that bothered me the most. It's one thing to say, as the Founding Fathers did, that religion generally fosters morality (don't kill, don't steal, etc.). It's quite another to say that only religious people believe these things. Moore seems convinced that belief in God is absolutely necessary in order to value liberty and morality, which is simply not true. Thomas Jefferson acknowledged as much when he wrote:

If we did a good act merely from the love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? It is idle to say, as some do, that no such thing exists. We have the same evidence of the fact as of most of those we act on, to wit: their own affirmations, and their reasonings in support of them. I have observed, indeed, generally, that while in Protestant countries the defections from the Platonic Christianity of the priests is to Deism, in Catholic countries they are to Atheism. Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Holbach, Condorcet, are known to have been among the most virtuous of men. Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than love of God.

He also wrote that "our civil rights have no dependance on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry."

Asserting that morality is exclusively religious does nothing but divide people. I expect that this debate (which will include questions from Weyrich and Schlafly) will devolve into a "holier than thou" contest, which ultimately leaves out 15% of the population.

There are a few other things in Moore's column that bother me, but I won't take the time to go through them all. I think that this quote from John Adams is an appropriate place to end:

"Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society"

Vox Day on Evolution and Communism

Musician Theodore Beale (a.k.a. Vox Day) has a ridiculous column up at Worldnetdaily in which he attempts to argue that evolutionary theory inevitably leads to Communism, or is responsible for all the mass-murder under the Soviet Union, or something like that.

"I am content to demonstrate that Darwinism was, and is, a core element of Marxist ideology. "

First off, let's get something straight. Marx's Communist Manifesto was first published in 1848. Darwin's Origin of Species was published in 1859. The core of Communist economic theory was already there before Darwin came along, so it's hard (if not impossible) to argue that evolutionary theory was responsible for this.

The column continues with garbage like this:

"Devious evolutionists have been quick to exploit this general ignorance in an attempt to distance Darwin and his theory of evolution from the crimes of the communist killers of the previous century... these atheists and evolutionists frantically attempt to scrub and scrub away at the historical record, desperate to wash the blood of tens of millions off the hands of their stained ideologies."

Sure, guy. Perhaps you can explain how exactly the theory of evolution is responsible for "the blood of tens of millions."

Theodore tries to support his position by quoting Trotsky:

Pedants think the dialectic is an idle play of the mind. In reality it only reproduces the process of evolution, which lives and moves by way of contradictions.

– Leon Trotsky, introduction to "The History of the Russian Revolution, Volume Two"

Is this your best material? What Trotsky is saying here is that there is a parallel between "natural selection" on the one hand, and a method of discussion called "dialectics" on the other. Dialectics is defined as "The art or practice of arriving at the truth by the exchange of logical arguments." Sort of a "survival of the fittest" of ideas. It's a method we still use in our Democracies, and is far from being exclusively Communistic (let alone "responsible for the blood of tens of millions").

Let's see how else Theodore supports his argument:

"in a collection of his 1958 speeches published by the Red Guard entitled "Long Live Mao Zedong Thought", Mao praised 26 men he considered to have demonstrated a fearless intellectual spirit in advancing human knowledge. The only three westerners he saw fit to name were Marx, Lenin and Darwin."

When you look at the actual source, you see that Mao also mentions Confucious and the inventor of the sleeping pill (who was also a Westerner). Mao did not go through this list to catalogue those whose ideas he had drawn upon, but rather: "My purpose in citing so many examples is to show that the young people must surpass the old and the less educated can excel the more educated." So still, there is no real support for Theodore's claim that "Darwinism was, and is, a core element of Marxist ideology."

He continues:

"the direct link between Darwin and communism is less well understood"

Yet Theodore does not explain this link in his entire article. All he seems to be saying is that belief in Darwinian evolutionary theory contributed to the philosophical materialism of several Communist leaders (through the process of dialectics, which they certainly used). Nothing is offered to suggest that evolutionary theory itself contributed to the complex non-competitve economic ideologies of early Communists (which pre-dated Darwin), nor that it was essential to any of the totalitarian techniques used to implement those policies.

In fact, the scientific theory of evolution was explicitly appropriated by the diametrically opposed viewpoint. The self-proclaimed "Social Darwinsts" held an exactly opposite ideology, stressing unrestrained Capitalism whereby the strong survived (economically) and the weak perished. Theodore offers no similar material in his Darwin-Marxism argument. Just vague mentions of "materialism" and gratuitous jabs at atheism:

"The atheism of communist killers such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Choibalsan and dozens of other mass-murderous rulers is unquestionable. Explaining how their atheism was the causal factor of their lethal actions is a matter I shall address in detail at a later date."

At a later date, Theodore continues to state that:

"every single major Communist not only subscribed to Darwinist evolution but considered Darwin to be second only to Hegel as a pre-Marxist socialist figure."

This comment ignores the fact that Darwin was not a "pre-Marxist" at all, as well as that the fact that Stalin (the most murderous of all Communist leaders) did not subscribe to Darwinian evolution. Stalin was actually vehemently opposed to our modern evolutionary theory. He banned the teaching of it, and banned all research that even hinted at implicit support of the concept. Some were even executed for this reason. In its place, Stalin appointed the insane, anti-evolutionary Trofim Lysenko.

In the end, it appears that Theodore's argument boils down to something like this: (1) Darwin's evolutionary theory led to broader acceptance of philosophical materialism; (2) Communists also subscribed to materialism (through dialectics), and some cited evolutionary theory as buttressing that position; therefore, (3) evolutionary theory is responsible for all the crimes committed by Communists. It's a ridiculous argument, and deserves nothing but contempt.

Chuck Norris

Chuck Norris, weighing in on evolution:

"here's what I really think about the theory of evolution: It's not real. It is not the way we got here. In fact, the life you see on this planet is really just a list of creatures God has allowed to live. We are not creations of random chance. We are not accidents. There is a God, a Creator, who made you and me. We were made in His image, which separates us from all other creatures."

Ann Coulter Weighs In On Global Warming

Ann Coulter, pictured right, recently wrote a column for WorldNetDaily about global warming where she accuses people other than herself of being hysterical and hyping catastrophe. Somewhat ironically, she seems to believe that taking steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will lead to a horrible catastrophe:

• "Liberals want mass starvation and human devastation"
• "They want us to starve the productive sector of fossil fuel and allow the world's factories to grind to a halt. This means an end to material growth and a cataclysmic reduction in wealth"
• "When are liberals going to break the news to their friends in Darfur that they all have to starve to death to save the planet?"
• "To say we need to reduce our energy consumption is like saying we need to reduce our oxygen consumption"
• "Liberals have always had a thing about eliminating humans"
• "If we have to live in a pure "natural" environment like the Indians, then our entire transcontinental nation can only support about 1 million human beings. Sorry, fellas – 299 million of you are going to have to go"
• "The entire fuel-guzzling, tacky, beer-drinking, NASCAR-watching middle class with their over-large families will simply have to die."

But my favorite part of this article is where she refers to Hitler and Stalin as liberals:

"Liberals have always had a thing about eliminating humans. Stalin wanted to eliminate the kulaks and Ukrainians, vegetarian atheist Adolf Hitler wanted to eliminate the Jews"