Category: Cognitive Clarity

Cognitive Clarity–The Remnant: That evangelical need to feel picked-on and special

"Cognitive Clarity" blog posts are about cultivating a culture of thoughtful and informed discourse. They encourage readers to think deeply, question boldly, and approach the world with an open yet discerning mind.

Here’s the link to this article.

Funny how the remnant looks just like all the other power-hungry, privilege-grabbing hypocrites we’ve ever seen in evangelicalism

Avatar photoby CAPTAIN CASSIDY NOV 21, 2023

Overview:

In Christianese, ‘the remnant’ is a term to indicate the truest of all true Christians: themselves, of course. Other Christians, even other evangelicals, are fakers who are going to Hell. Only the remnant gets a free pass to Heaven.

Reading Time: 14 MINUTES

Avery important evangelical belief centers on the idea of the remnant. No, it’s not a horror movie title—though it very well could be in this case. Rather, it’s the belief that the very truest of all true-blue evangelicals constitute a tiny, utterly embattled and persecuted subset of Christians. Let’s unpack this belief and see where it comes from, how evangelicals use it, and why it means so much to them.

(In the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, “the Remnant” and “Remnant Theology” take on special meaning (archive). Here, we use the term in the evangelical sense.)

Christianese 101: The remnant

The concept of the remnant is upper-level Christianese. It’s an Extremely Important Word for evangelicals that relates to something they hold especially dear: themselves.

In the real world, a remnant in general is whatever’s left over after something has taken everything else away. So a small bit of cooking oil might be the remnant after the rest has been used. The word can also refer to a bit of unsold matter from a larger whole, like cloth or carpeting.

‘Remnant’ is an Extremely Important Word for evangelicals. It relates to something they hold especially dear: themselves.

The Old Testament generally uses the real-world sense of the word:

“But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.” [Genesis 45:7, spoken by Joseph to his brothers]

. . . [the locust] has eaten the remnant of that which is escaped, which is left to you from the hail, and it has eaten every tree which is springing out of the field for you . . . [Exodus 10:5, spoken by Moses to the Pharaoh]

And the remnant of the meat offering shall be Aaron’s and his sons’: it is a thing most holy of the offerings of the LORD made by fire. [Leviticus 2:3, referring to offerings]

And the priest shall make an atonement for him as touching his sin that he hath sinned in one of these, and it shall be forgiven him: and the remnant shall be the priest’s, as a meat offering. [Leviticus 5:13, referring to animals sacrificed as sin offerings]

Occasionally, we’ll see the evangelical sense of the word used, like one of their favorite passages in Isaiah 10:20-22:

On that day the remnant of Israel and the survivors of the house of Jacob will no longer depend on him who struck them, but they will truly rely on the LORD, the Holy One of Israel. A remnant will return, a remnant of Jacob will return to the Mighty God. Though your people, O Israel, be like the sand of the sea, only a remnant will return.

In the New Testament, though, we see this sense of remnant almost exclusively:

And the remnant [of invited guests] took his servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them. [Matthew 22:6, the Parable of the Banquet]

“Lord, they have killed Your prophets and torn down Your altars. I am the only one left, and they are seeking my life as well?” And what was the divine reply to him? “I have reserved for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” In the same way, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. [Romans 11:3-5; divine reply refers to 1 Kings 19:18]

And the same hour was there a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell, and in the earthquake were slain of men seven thousand: and the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven. [Revelation 11:13]

As you can see, it’s a whole thing in Christianity, particularly for evangelical culture warriors. If you see a church called “Remnant,” like the one started by weird fundie weight-loss guru Gwen Shamblin (archive), you can be absolutely assured that it’s an evangelical church whose members are way into the culture wars.

The remnant in the wild

Evangelicals take this remnant stuff very seriously. To them, it means more than being the leftovers or the last bit unused. It’s more about being the only real true believers out of all the rest of the fakey-fake pseudo-believers.

For example, a Calvinist church in Tacoma exhorts its congregation to “think like a Remnant”:

To consider oneself part of the remnant today sounds and feels proud and conceited. To declare oneself part of the faithful minority as opposed to being lumped with the unfaithful majority smacks of arrogance. We remind ourselves it is God who gets to dole out labels.“Thinking Like a Remnant” (archive)

But weirdly, it’s this god’s self-appointed spokespeople who actually do the doling-out. Nobody’s ever heard their god say a thing, most especially including his own followers!

This doling-out isn’t just a fun, overly-flattering little descriptor, either. It’s a statement of condemnation of all other flavors of Christianity and all Christians who disagree with these folks. Out of every single flavor of Christianity over its almost-2000-year-long history, these particular Christians are the only ones who finally got Jesusing right.

“Jesus is so lucky to have us!”

“Thinking like a Remnant” also involves feeling super-duper-persecuted for such superior Jesusing, as this church’s site reminds the flocks:

Outnumbered? Scorned? Misunderstood? Disliked? Yes, we are. But we have been redeemed.“Thinking Like a Remnant” (archive)

That’s not why people “scorn” these Christians, of course, nor why they “dislike” them. Their imaginary redemption has nothing to do with that. However, it’s clearly much more comfortable to pin the tail on a strawman than consider the boorish and cruel behavior that actually constitutes the reasons for society’s reactions to them.

The remnant: The best of the best of the BEST, SIR! With honors!

Famous evangelical leader A.W. Tozer (1897-1963) had much the same things to say about the notion of the remnant some years ago:

I am alarmed because it has been true since Pentecost that such a vast number of people who call themselves Christians-the overwhelming majority-are nominal, and only a remnant is saved.“The Remnant. Who are they? Are you part of the Remnant?” (archive)

Tozer didn’t like knowing that many Christians felt perfectly peaceful about their faith. To him, that meant they were fakey-fake fake Christians, not the real true believers who were really going to Heaven after death:

Either we take ourselves for granted and have a sham peace or we get disturbed and then we pray through and find true peace. Most believers take themselves for granted and have a false peace. If they did what the Bible taught, they would be bothered and alarmed about themselves and would go to God with an open Bible and let the Bible cut them to pieces and put them together again, then give them peace. And the peace they had when they had been chopped to pieces by the Holy Spirit and the Sword of the Spirit-that peace, then, is a legitimate peace. [. . .]

So at the second coming of Christ, it will be as it was in the days of Noah; and in those days, Noah, the eighth person, was saved by water, by the ark. The rest of the population drowned.“The Remnant. Who are they? Are you part of the Remnant?” (archive)

Even the comments sound like people who take themselves entirely too seriously and think entirely too much of themselves.

It all reminds me of that hilarious scene from Men in Black, where Jay is trying to work out the purpose of a big meeting:

YouTube video

At least “Captain America over here” had objective reasons for thinking so highly of himself. As a group, evangelicals have none. But somehow, they think even more highly of themselves.

The weighty implications of being part of this glorious remnant

“Thinking like a Remnant” involves being part of the evangelical culture wars, according to Crosswalk:

One of the things we must be aware of is that if you are in Christ you are part of the present day remnant. Jesus calls you salt and one of the functions of salt is to preserve, which is what the remnant does. We are called to preserve God’s standard in the earth regardless of what we see happening in our society.“What Does Remnant Mean in the Bible?” (archive)

It’s also yet another way for Christians to lord their superior Jesusing over others. Over and over again, we see Christians using “the remnant” (archive) to refer to themselves as the real-deal true Christians—while slamming all other kinds of Christians as fakes who are doomed to Hell for their insufficient, incorrect Jesusing:

Today the church serves as God’s chosen people.[citation needed] And like the children of Israel, the church has become a sinful nation, comprised of believers laden with iniquity. They are a seed of evildoers, with children who are corrupter. They have forsaken the Lord and have provoked the Holy One unto anger. [citation needed] They have gone away backward. But despite the state of the church, God has once again left a small remnant.[citation needed] A remnant that is far from perfect, but a remnant that trust God.[citation needed]“Who is God’s remnant?” (archive)

And, amusingly enough, we also see Christians policing each other’s use of the word itself:

Claiming to be the remnant is a sign of arrogance. To excuse a church’s lack of growth on being a remnant is to claim that we are more right than others. [. . .]

You are not part of the remnant because you have stricter standards than the bigger church across town. You are not a part of the remnant because you are more separated than other churches.“Are We the Remnant?” (archive)

Of course, as that last quote illustrates, being part of the remnant implies a serious obligation to recruit more people into the fold:

This is your message, the vital message, and if you won’t carry it, who will?

We will carry it. We the few, the remnant, the believing church of Philadelphia in the time of the lukewarm church of Laodicea.“A Message to the Remnant of Believers in the World Today” (archive)

Other Christians lean hard on this concept to frighten believers about the Endtimes:

In this generation, we’ve seen the final jubilee that will happen in our generation. The next one to take place during a feast will happen in 500 years. We have seen the last one. Therefore, we are the remnant generation. We are the generation that have seen Matthew 24 to come to pass, the rebirth of Israel, Daniel 12:4 come to pass, we have seen technology and science increase. Most of the people don’t know the times we are living in. Only a remnant does. Why? Because they can read the signs. When you know why these signs are happening, you will have peace and no fear because you know our redemption draws near.“End Times Chosen Remnant” (archive)

As you might already have noticed, Calvinists seem particularly enamored of remnant ideology:

The elect are not many but few—only a remnant. Jesus said, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to [eternal] destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matt. 7:13–14). And Paul said, “Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: ‘Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea, only the remnant will be saved’” (Rom. 9:27). We are the remnant; we are not many.“Jesus Prays for Us” (archive)

Using remnant ideology to feel persecuted

One of the weirdest ideas to come out of evangelicalism is the notion that “the world,” meaning everybody but their own narrowly-defined tribe of real true Christians, despises the remnant and wishes to oppress and persecute everyone within it. In reality, if evangelicals actually reliably did even a tenth of what Jesus commanded his followers to do and consistently refrained from doing even a fraction of the stuff he ordered them not to do, nobody’d ever have any problem with them.

But where’s the fun in being kind, respectful, and charitable? In comforting the grieving, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked? Where are the sadistic thrills in turning the other cheek, giving everything you have to the poor, giving someone the shirt off your back when they ask for your coat, and treating everyone, including your worst enemies, with kindness and love? What power accrues while accepting whatever horrible things someone else wants to do to you, and enduring it with nothing but smiles and blessings on your lips?

And if you’re not swanning around ostentatiously Jesusing at everyone, how will they even know you’re Jesus’ very special prettiest princess?

No, anyone involved in modern evangelicalism isn’t there to do all that boring stuff, nor to refrain from doing the gratifying stuff that really revs their motors. They’re there to get a free ticket out of Hell—and to mistreat others with Jesus’ permission.

(See also: Permission slips.)

They’ve declared themselves the best, truest, most incredibly Jesusy Jesusers who ever Jesused the Jesus-Jesus. Along with that declaration, they’ve also decided all other Christians are fakers and the outside world hates them jus’ fer’ bein’ KRIS-chin.

The stage is set for them to assume that literally any pushback at all to any of their control-grabs is actually persecution of the most shocking and egregious kind. Because obviously, fakers and heathens totally hate and fear the purity and godliness of the remnant. Gosh, they’re just far too divine to handle!

Sidebar: The Spiritual Ruler strikes again

Way back in college, I was a sprightly, bright-eyed Pentecostal lass. I had a lot of friends on-campus from a number of different evangelical groups. And because I thought Pentecostals were the remnant, I regarded every one of them as well-meaning but missing the mark (archive), to use the Christianese.

For one thing, every one of them was a Trinitarian. Pentecostals rejected the Trinity, instead embracing Oneness Theology. Back then, my tribe considered Trinitarianism a filthy papist doctrine that incorporated paganism into the one true monotheistic faith.

Only the remnant understood and embraced Oneness. And spoke in tongues just like on the Day of Pentecost in the Book of Acts. And maintained a ferocious separation from the outside world’s secular ways. Etc., etc., etc.

Truly, Jesus was so lucky to have us!

The funny thing, though, is that it’s almost impossible for one Christian to persuade another that they’re dead wrong about a major doctrinal belief. They can both swear up and down that they only want to believe what’s correct and most Jesusy, and they can both pray the same prayers and study the exact same Bible verses. But they’ll only see their own beliefs confirmed and other beliefs disavowed.

Even those papist Trinitarian pagans had entire books full of reasons to reject Oneness Theology, just as Pentecostals did to debunk Trinitarianism.

I came out of Christianity with a real affection for mockingly calling particularly-pompous Trinitarians heretics. But really, every Christian who’s ever lived is a heretic to some other Christian somewhere. There’s no way to win this squabble because there’s no consistent objective standard with which Christians may compare themselves. The Bible is a laughably poor resource in that respect; its many verses can be twisted and turned to suit any interpretation imaginable—as my college friends and I discovered many, many times.

The problems with declaring themselves the prettiest, most important princesses at the ball

We’ve already seen one Christian leader chide his flocks for using remnant ideology to excuse their lack of recruitment success. We’ve also already seen another Christian leader preen and strut about how it’s totally not arrogant at all to declare oneself as the remnant. No, not at all—if he does say so himself!

It’s not just arrogant, though. It’s not just a tidy excuse, either, for a small church’s congregation size.

Posing as the realest, truest Christians ever, the only ones who are actually going to Heaven, has a marked effect on those claiming it. Remnant ideology becomes a satisfying narrative for them. The flocks greedily consume it—and then use it to rationalize their control-lust and tribalistic impulses.

That’s how Mike Johnson, the new extremely evangelical Speaker of the House, can say with such conviction (archive) that the literal only reason why his tribe’s power is being curtailed is because everybody just hates them and persecutes them fer jus’ bein’ KRISchin. I’ll bet you just about anything that the guy thinks he and his like-minded tribemates constitute the remnant.

(Author’s note: Suddenly intrigued by this idea, I went a-searching. And yes. According to Rolling Stone (archive), Mike Johnson sure does think that: “He speaks at length about a devoted Christian “remnant” — or keepers of the true faith — who can help save America from retribution.” If you’re wondering, saving America means evangelicals fully controlling Americans’ lives, Handmaid style. It’s alarming to hear Johnson further claiming (archive) that the separation of church and state is a “misnomer.”)

It’s funny to watch these Christians get mad when nobody else honors them as the pretty princesses they think they truly are.

The politics of the remnant

Once Christians declare themselves the best of the best of the best, SIR, with honors, then they start to look at everyone else as poor widdle heathens in need of fixing up, people far too stupid and naughty to know what’s best for themselves, who need Designated Adults to step in and force them onto the right path (through actual enslavement if need be, according to Pastor Joe Morecraft in 2013), who most of all might not even be fully human or experience normal human emotions due to their lack of correct Jesusing. They use their self-declared label as a rationalization for trying to rob others of their rights.

History is replete with examples of what happens when this process is allowed to go too far. From slavery to the war crimes Japan committed against the people they called “logs,” from separate-but-equal laws to the designation of women as men’s property, nothing but harm and cruelty comes of such thinking.

Members of such a declared superior group invariably start mistreating the ones they consider inferior. And the people they mistreat usually have no recourse whatsoever, and no hope of finding justice in a system dominated by that superior group.

That’s why Paige Patterson lost his cushy seminary presidency in 2018: He systematically silenced sex-assault victims to protect the reputation of his school, and he told female domestic violence victims to meekly endure that abuse so their husbands would get convicted (ashamed, but in a really Jesusy way) enough to stop and become real true Christians at last.

Of course, the rest of that tribe still honors him as a great man and inspirational leader who got rousted unfairly out of his powerful position by lesser Christians who couldn’t understand his Jesus-osity. And boy oh boy, do they ever hate the guy who succeeded him!

The remnant might not actually be in churches anymore

Ten years ago, evangelicals gloated about the relatively faster decline of mainline and progressive churches. It’d never be them, they sneered, since they were so incredibly Jesusy that Jesus would always bless them with growth.

That smugness sure didn’t last. As it turned out, their rigid authoritarianism only held down a few extra butts in pews (BIPs, a measure of evangelical power) for a few extra years. Their rigid authoritarianism had made church membership seem a lot less optional than it really was. As the decline continued, year after year, even the most devoted evangelical BIPs realized that they could leave, and there was just nothing whatsoever that their church leaders could really do about it.

That’s when evangelicals’ decline began to keep up with and sometimes even outpace that of other flavors of Christianity.

Oh, I mean those leaders could write angry blog posts and books (archive) about their congregations quietly melting out “the back door.” Of course, the advice to church leaders was—and still is—always to drill down harder on authoritarian demands (archive) to make membership feel less optional. But in terms of real-world Christian love retaliation, most of those leaving were generally safe for the first time in modern American history.

And, too, those leaders could write angry blog posts and books about how the remaining BIPs were the remnant, the truest of all true Christians, the realest-deal of everyone, while the departing members were the fakey-fake “Cultural Christian” fakers (archive) that everyone was happy to see leave.

But sooner or later, even the BIPs had to question that wisdom. It sure seemed like the people leaving had been extremely devoted. Many of those who’d left were happy to say exactly that. (You can often find them commenting on blog posts discussing that exact situation.) They became churchless believers, Christians who’d left church culture behind because it had first left them behind.

And now, the prettiest of the prettiest princesses!

The most arrogant evangelicals seem now to consider themselves the remnant of the remnant. Out of an already small number of pretty princesses, they’re the very prettiest of the pretty. As one pastor preached in 2015 on YouTube,

Within the remnant there is even those numbers that are even fewer.

So a remnant in the natural means a small portion of the original. Say you are making a dress. Those offshoots are a remnant of the original fabric that you’re using to make that dress. But here, we see God is saying ‘remnant of the remnant’. What is happening here?

See, the mark of a wise church is not how many people go to that church, but how many people fear the LORD and live differently as a result of being in that church. [. . .]

Are you the remnant of the remnant? He is coming back for the remnant of the remnant!“THE REMNANT OF THE REMNANT – PST ROBERT CLANCY” 2015, about 2:50-5:00

Strangely enough, though, this remnant of the remnant always looks like the usual grabby, power-maddened hypocrites we’ve always seen. Calling themselves lofty things doesn’t change who they are. It just makes them look worse. Calling themselves something even loftier only makes things even worse.

What’s next? The remnant of the remnant of the remnant, with honors, sir?

(Don’t ever think that we’ve hit rock bottom with evangelicals. They’ve always got a burning desire to dig ever-deeper. Sooner or later, that phrase will become evangelical reality.)

These remnant evangelicals don’t realize something important, though

If today’s evangelicals are what Jesus really wants, he’s welcome to them. I don’t believe an afterlife exists, but if Heaven did exist it sure wouldn’t be paradise with the remnant of the remnant there.

As for me, I’d rather be part of the vibrant, ever-unfurling tapestry of the human experience than a little piece cut off from it. I want to plunge into those colors, revel in the stitchery, glory in the smooth imperfect perfection of each hand-made stitch. I want to be part and parcel of the tapestry, to be part of the human situation, to be here now. That’s what I want: to mindfully watch its creation and add to it in any way that I can. However its last stitches get added, I want to be part of the whole.

For years now, it has astonished me that evangelicals can look at that tapestry, turn their noses up at it, and insist that they’re separate from it and far better than it could ever be. They’ve been making their own burlap abomination of a fake tapestry for years. They call this fake substitute perfect and praise it nonstop, while the real one flows behind them and past them and beyond them.

It’s just so picayune, so small, so petty. It’s looking at the glorious universe, its billions of years, the Laniakea supercluster, the filament threads flowing through the entire cosmos, and knowing that on a tiny sun-blasted, parched bit of rock, a Johnny-come-lately desert godling has ordered his tiny, ants-to-an-ant mortal followers not to get overly familiar with their own genitals for the 70 years or so that they’ll be alive.

The remnant are welcome to their Jesus, just as he’s welcome to them. I’d rather have reality. On this lovely Thanksgiving week, I’m thankful that so too, it seems, do growing numbers of other folks.

Cognitive Clarity–Abortion travel bans: Coming soon to a red state near you?

"Cognitive Clarity" blog posts are about cultivating a culture of thoughtful and informed discourse. They encourage readers to think deeply, question boldly, and approach the world with an open yet discerning mind.

Here’s the link to this article.

Avatar photoby ADAM LEE NOV 27, 2023

A tattered American flag behind a barbed-wire fence | Abortion travel bans: Coming soon to a red state near you?
Credit: Pixabay

Overview:

Despite one stinging defeat after another, religious conservatives keep trying to outlaw abortion—now, by making it illegal to travel out of red states to places where it’s legal.

Reading Time: 6 MINUTES

Abortion is a losing issue for Republicans.

The evidence is beyond a reasonable doubt. In election after election, they’ve been slapped down.

Kansas voted down an abortion ban. Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s support for a “reasonable” 15-week ban cost him the Virginia legislature. Gov. Andy Beshear won reelection in Kentucky with a devastating ad about how his opponent would have forced a pre-teen girl raped by her stepfather to give birth. The people of Ohio passed a constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights, infuriating the state’s Republican legislators (who’ve already announced they intend to try to nullify the will of their own voters—more on this soon, no doubt).

Are they giving up? No.

Despite these blistering rebukes from voters, Republican politicians refuse to relent. They’re preparing an even more draconian set of laws to strip reproductive freedom away from the American people.

The right to travel

So far, America’s federalist structure has kept the full weight of abortion bans from crashing down on women. While red states seized on their chance to outlaw or heavily restrict abortion, most blue states have protected and expanded abortion rights. People in red states who need an abortion can travel to the nearest safe haven (assuming, of course, that they have the money, the resources and the time). In fact, U.S. abortion rates have increased since the Dobbs decision.

Religious conservatives in red states are disgruntled by this, and they’re trying to stop it. They can’t control what blue states do—but they want to make it illegal to travel out of state to get an abortion, and prosecute those who help women do this.

For example, in Alabama:

Alabama’s Republican attorney general said in a court filing that he has the right to prosecute people who make travel arrangements for pregnant women to have out-of-state abortions.

In a court filing Monday, attorneys for Attorney General Steve Marshall wrote that providing transportation for women in Alabama to leave the state to get an abortion could amount to a “criminal conspiracy.”“Alabama attorney general says he has right to prosecute people who facilitate travel for out-of-state abortions.” Andy Rose, CNN, 31 August 2023.

And in Texas:

Commissioners in Lubbock County, Texas, on Monday voted to outlaw the act of transporting another person along their roads for an abortion, part of a strategy by conservative activists to further restrict abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

The move makes Lubbock the biggest jurisdiction yet to pass such a restriction on abortion-related transportation since the June 2022 end of Roe, which had granted a nationwide right to abortion. Six cities and counties in Texas have passed the bans, out of nine that have considered them.

A few hours north, the Amarillo City Council on Tuesday will weigh its own law, which could lead to a future council or city-wide vote.

Lubbock and Amarillo are both traversed by major highways that connect Texas, which has one of the country’s most stringent abortion laws, to neighboring New Mexico, where abortion is legal.“Fight over Texas anti-abortion transport bans reaches biggest battlegrounds yet.” Julia Harte, Reuters, 24 October 2023.

In Missouri, too, an anti-abortion travel ban has been proposed by state lawmakers. Idaho has made it a crime—”abortion trafficking”—to take a minor out of state for an abortion.

The logic, such as it is, of these religious conservatives is that abortion is illegal in their states, and even if the act itself occurs where it’s legal, traveling out of state constitutes the crime of “conspiracy to obtain an abortion”. Thus, they believe they can criminally prosecute both women who get an abortion and anyone who helps them travel to do so.

States’ rights

If these anti-abortion travel bans are allowed to stand by the courts, the result will be national chaos. It would be a backdoor for each state to enforce its policy preferences on all the others.

What if a red state decided to outlaw gambling, and sought to arrest people who go on a weekend trip to Las Vegas? Could Utah, a famously dry state, ban alcohol and prosecute people who crossed state lines to go to a bar, for “conspiring” to obtain booze? Could enthusiastic book-banning states like Texas make it illegal to read books on their blacklists, even in a library in another state?

It works the other way, too. What about anti-gun blue states? Could California, New York or Illinois outlaw firearms and make it illegal to travel on state roads to go to an out-of-state shooting range?

Historically informed readers will notice a parallel. Southern apologists claim the U.S. Civil War was fought to protect “states’ rights”, but in fact, the opposite is true. The slaveholding states wanted to enforce their beliefs on all states, whatever the people in those other states thought about it.

They tried to achieve this with laws such as the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which decreed that an enslaved person who escaped and made it to a free state didn’t become free. On the contrary, it (attempted to) require people in free states to help capture the runaways and return them to slavery.

These laws stirred up massive outrage from people in the North, who resented being told that they had to enforce an oppressive legal regime they didn’t vote for or agree with. It was one of the major sources of enmity that led into the Civil War.

How would you enforce a travel ban?

For all the yelling they do about freedom, anti-abortion conservatives are eagerly starting down a short path to dictatorship. To prevent women from traveling out of state for an abortion would require a truly dystopian apparatus of surveillance and control.

Every red state would have to become a mini-Gilead, with checkpoints at every airport, harbor and interstate road. They’d have to hire an army of brownshirts to detain and interrogate women about where they were going and why (or, in the most nightmarish scenario, forcibly administer pregnancy tests), and force them to go home if their answers weren’t convincing enough.

Anyone who could get pregnant would be under perpetual house arrest. They’d be unable to set foot on any public sidewalk or road without a pass from a husband or an employer. No airline or taxi or bus company would be willing to transport them, for fear of prosecution. It would be a theocratic prison state like Saudi Arabia or the Taliban.

The good news—such as it is—is that it doesn’t seem Republicans have any plans to do this. At least for the time being, that would be too intrusive and extreme even for them to swallow.

Instead, it’s more likely that travel bans will be used as a tool of fear and arbitrary enforcement. They’ll make examples of a few cases that come to their attention, mostly poor and minority women turned in by jealous ex-partners or controlling relatives, while the rich and the well-connected get off lightly.

There’s historical precedent for that. It’s exactly how the nineteenth-century Comstock Act was enforced:

The Comstock Act had sweeping potential when it passed in 1873, able to be interpreted to cover information, drugs, and devices related to abortion or contraception, as well as anything else deemed obscene. But in the 19th and early 20th centuries, law-enforcement officers and postal inspectors didn’t have access to the reams of digital data available today. Catching those who published newsletters or put information on the outside of an envelope was easy; most people sending abortion or contraception materials quickly learned to use sealed envelopes. And to open an envelope, investigators needed a warrant.

But anti-vice crusaders found two ways around this problem. First, they tapped into a network of tipsters and detectives—people who deceived potential abortion providers, pretending to be patients or their loved ones to gather evidence for potential prosecutions. Anthony Comstock, a former dry-goods salesman and anti-vice activist who lobbied for the law named after him (and who became a special agent for the U.S. Postal Service in enforcing the act), perfected the art of decoy letters and disguises, looking for evidence that could be turned over to postal inspectors or police.

Second, they relied on personal vendettas and animosities: angry ex-lovers, controlling husbands, business rivals, and others who used the law for their own ends. Countless people weaponized the law in their own personal conflicts. Victorians who sent “vinegar valentines,” cards that insulted or humiliated their targets, were turned in for Comstock violations. So were men who harassed women, a flirting couple who arranged potential rendezvous, and wives who wrote angry letters to their husbands’ mistresses.“Harsh Anti-abortion Laws Are Not Empty Threats.” Mary Ziegler, The Atlantic, 10 November 2023.

Of course, this is bad enough. And if Republicans were able to achieve that much, we can be sure it wouldn’t stop there. Contrary to the soothing lies of politicians like Glenn Youngkin about compromise, every victory only emboldens them to demand more. The once-unthinkable has already become routine in America, and their fanaticism for more and harsher restrictions on women has only grown.

Cognitive Clarity–Reality Check: What Must Be the Case if Christianity is True?

"Cognitive Clarity" blog posts are about cultivating a culture of thoughtful and informed discourse. They encourage readers to think deeply, question boldly, and approach the world with an open yet discerning mind.

Here’s the link to this article.

By John W. Loftus at 11/27/2023

In 2011 I did a series of posts called “Reality Check: What Must Be the Case if Christianity is True?”  I put some of them in the third chapter in  The End of Christianity, and the first chapter in God and Horrendous Suffering.

Below I’ve put together thirty of them that most Christians agree on and why they are all improbable:

1) There must be a God who is a simple being yet made up of three inexplicable persons existing forever outside of time without a beginning, who therefore never learned anything new, never took a risk, never made a decision, never disagreed within the Godhead, and never had a prior moment to freely choose his own nature.

2) There must be a personal non-embodied omnipresent God who created the physical universe ex-nihilo in the first moment of time who will subsequently forever experience a sequence of events in time.3) There must exist a perfectly good, omnipotent God, who created a perfectly good universe out of a desire/need to glorify himself by rewarding in heaven the few human beings who just got lucky to believe by being born at the right time and place, and who will condemn to hell those who do not believe.

4) That the highest created being, known as Satan or the Devil, led an angelic rebellion against an omnipotent omniscient omnibenelovent omnipresent God, and expected to win–which makes Satan out to be pure evil and dumber than a box of rocks.

5) That there was a first human pair (Adam & Eve) who so grievously sinned against God when tested that all of the rest of us are being punished for it (including animals), even though no one but the first human pair deserved to be punished. If it’s argued that all of us deserve to be punished because we all would have sinned, then the test was a sham. For only if some of us would not have sinned can the test be considered a fair one. But if some of us would not have sinned under the same initial conditions then there are people who are being punished for something they never would have done.

6) That although there are many other similar mythological stories told in Ancient Near Eastern Literature that pre-date what we read in the Bible, the stories in the Bible are about real events and real people.

7) That although we see completely different perspectives and evolving theologies in the Bible, including many things that are barbaric and superstitious to the core, it was authored by one divine mind.

8) That when it comes to verifiable matters of historical fact (like the Exodus, the extent of the reign of David, Luke’s reported world-wide census, etc) the Biblical stories are disconfirmed by evidence to the contrary as fairy tales, but when it comes to supernatural claims of miracles that cannot be verified like a virgin birth and resurrection from the grave, the Bible reports true historical facts.

9) That although a great number of miracles were claimed to have happened in the different superstitious cultures of the ancient world, only the ones in the Bible actually happened as claimed.

10) That an omniscient God could not foresee that his revealed will in the Bible would lead believers to commit such atrocities against others that reasonable people would conclude there is no divine mind behind the Bible. I call this The Problem of Miscommunication.

11) That God created human beings with rational minds that require evidence before they accept something, and yet this same God does not provide enough evidence but asks them to have faith instead.

12) That although people around the world are raised in different cultures to believe in their particular god(s) there is only one God and he will judge all people based upon whether or not they believe Jesus is Lord.

13) That Jesus fulfilled Old Testament prophecy even though there is not one passage in the Old Testament that is specifically fulfilled in his life, death, and resurrection that can legitimately be understood as a prophecy and singularly points to Jesus as the Messiah using today’s historical-grammatical hermeneutical method.

14) That although there were many false virgin birth claims about famous people (like Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Plato) mythical heroes (like Mithra, Hercules) and savior gods (like Krishna, Osiris, Dionysus) in the ancient world, Jesus was really born of a virgin.

15) That while there is no rational explanation for how a person can be 100% man and 100% God, and although ancient pagan superstitious people believed this can take place (Acts 14:11-12; 28:6), Jesus was incarnate God in the flesh.

16) That while the results of science are assured when it comes to chemistry, physics, meteorology, mechanics, forensic science, medical science, rocket science, computer science, and so forth, when it comes to evolutionary science that shows all present life forms have common ancestors, or when science tells us that dead bodies do not arise from the grave because total cell necrosis is irreversible, the results of science are wrong because the Bible says otherwise.

17) That although there is no rational explanation for why Jesus had to die on the cross to atone for our sins, his death atoned for our sins.

18) That although historical reconstructions of the past are are notoriously difficult because they depend on the poor evidence of history, and even though historians must assess that evidence by assuming a natural explanation for it, and even though historical evidence can never establish how to view that evidence, the Christian faith can be established historically anyway. My argument is that when it comes to miraculous claims, yesterday’s evidence no longer can hold water for me, for in order to see it as evidence, I must already believe in the framework that allows me to see it as evidence. In other words, in order to see yesterday’s evidence as evidence for me, I must already believe the Christian framework that allows me to see yesterday’s evidence as evidence for Christianity.

19) That although there is no cogent theodicy that can explain why there is such ubiquitous and massive human and animal suffering if a perfectly good omnipotent God exists, God is perfectly good and omnipotent anyway.

20) That while scientific tests on petitionary prayers have produced at best negligible results and at worst completely falsified them, God answers these kinds of prayers anyway.

21) That even though Christianity shows evidence that it is nothing but a cultural by-product of human invention there is a divine mind behind it anyway.

22) That Jesus is the Son of God even though the textual evidence in the New Testament conclusively shows that the founder of the Jesus cult was a failed apocalyptic prophet who prophesied that the eschaton would take place in his generation, which would involve a total cosmic catastrophe after which God inaugurates a literal kingdom on earth with the “Son of Man” reigning from Jerusalem over the nations.

23) That although there can be no moral justification for the sufferings of animals in this created world, a perfectly good God created this world anyway. We don’t even see God’s care for the lower animals in his supposed revealed word, which is described in Psalm 119 as his “perfect will.” Think otherwise? Then read what I wrote here.

24) That although the only method we have for determining the truth in factual matters is methodological naturalism, which assumes a natural explanation for any phenomena, and although this method is the hallmark of the sciences, the phenomena of the Bible can be exempted from this method as applied through Biblical Criticism, and believed anyway.

25) That although God’s supposed revelation in the canonical Bible is indistinguishable from the musings of an ancient, barbaric, superstitious people, the Bible is the word of God. As SilverBullet recently said: “…the lord doesn’t work in mysterious ways, but in ways that are indistinguishable from his non-existence. It seems to me that there is nothing in the Christian scriptures, no sentence, paragraph, or idea, that couldn’t be anything more than the product of the humans alive at the time that the apparently divinely inspired scriptures and ideas were “revealed”. Sure, its possible for a god to reveal himself in an inspired book, and throughout history, in ways that are indistinguishable from the work of human minds and human minds alone. But how probable does that seem to you?”

26) That although it’s claimed God got the attention of Abraham, Moses, the Pharaoh, Gideon, Mary, Joseph, and Saul (who became Paul) and that he knows how to get the attention of anyone and everyone, there is no objective evidence he’s trying to get the attention of the billions of people who don’t believe. In fact, Christians are much more concerned than God is that non-believers are converted. Just compare the lengths to which Christians will go in order to convert non-believers, with a God who has the means to convert everyone and yet does nothing to help them do this. If you say God is helping to convert non-believers then tell us how to objectively know God is actually doing this.

27) Christianity is a faith that must dismiss the tragedy of death. It does not matter who dies, or how many, or what the circumstances are when people die. It could be the death of a mother whose baby depends upon her for milk. It could be a pandemic like cholera that decimated parts of the world in 1918, or the more than 23,000 children who die every single day from starvation. These deaths could be by suffocation, drowning, a drive-by shooting, or being burned to death. It doesn’t matter. God is good. Death doesn’t matter. People die all of the time. In order to justify God’s goodness Christianity minimizes the value of human life. It is a pro-death faith, plain and simple.

28) That God’s punishments are good, right, and just, even though it means sinners are thrust into a surprisingly dangerous world, and in death will be blindsided by an eternal punishment in hell, which is “Christianity’s most damnable doctrine.” In this world how do you think human beings first learned that venomous creatures like certain kinds of spiders, snakes, ants or scorpions could kill us? People/children had to die, lots of them. How do you think human beings first learned that polluted water or lead poisoning could kill us? Again, people/children had to die, lots of them. It was inevitable since God never told us what to avoid in order to stay alive. We had to learn these kinds of things firsthand. The same thing can be said for hell. People do not know their choices will send them to an eternal punishment in hell. For if we knew this, and if it was possible not to sin at all, we wouldn’t sin. Do you doubt this? Then consider that if you knew with certainty that by crossing a line drawn in the sand you would get beaten to a pulp by a biker gang, you would not do it!

29) When believers like Christians or Muslims contend their faiths are based on reason, one may simply object that this can’t be so because their god in fact doesn’t allow it. Using reason to arrive at any other belief than the correct one will earn you an eternity in hell. Thus, reason is an evil to be avoided….Blind, unquestioning, and unexamined belief is what the theist’s retributive god truly desires, not a belief grounded in reason. And yet they maintain Christianity is reasonable.

30) The Christian thinks there is an objective absolute morality that stems from their perfectly good God, which is both eternal and unchangeable. But the morality we find in the Bible is something quite different than what they claim. Morality has evolved. What we find in the Bible is not something we would expect from a perfectly good God, but Christians believe there is a perfectly good God anyway. So Christians must choose, either 1) hold to a philosopher’s god divorced from the historical realities of the Bible, or 2) continue to worship a moral monster.

Cognitive Clarity: Debunking Common Logical Fallacies: Navigating the Maze of Mis-Reasoning

In the quiet of my early morning, often accompanied by the gentle scratching of my pencil in the Pencil Pit, I find myself reflecting on the myriad ways our thinking can go astray. Today, I want to delve into a topic that’s crucial for anyone striving for the clarity of thought – logical fallacies.

Logical fallacies are like traps in reasoning: deceptive and often misleading. They’re errors in reasoning that can invalidate an argument, yet they’re persuasive enough to often go unnoticed. Understanding and identifying these fallacies is vital for anyone engaged in critical thinking and rational discourse.

Let’s explore some common ones:

  1. Ad Hominem (Attack on the Person): This fallacy occurs when an argument is rebutted by attacking the character, motive, or other attributes of the person making the argument, rather than addressing the substance of the argument itself. For example, “You can’t trust John’s opinion on environmental policy; he’s a high school dropout.”
  2. Straw Man: Here, someone’s argument is misrepresented to make it easier to attack. Instead of dealing with the actual issue, the arguer invents a weaker version of it and attacks that. Imagine debating school funding and someone says, “My opponent wants to shut down all public schools,” which is a gross misrepresentation of the original argument.
  3. Appeal to Ignorance (Argumentum ad Ignorantiam): This fallacy asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false (or vice versa). For instance, “No one has ever proven that extraterrestrial life doesn’t exist, so it must exist.”
  4. False Dilemma (Either/Or Fallacy): This involves presenting two opposing options as the only possibilities, when in fact more possibilities exist. “You’re either with us, or you’re against us.”
  5. Slippery Slope: This is a fallacy of causation where one assumes that a very minor action will lead to significant and often disastrous outcomes. “If we allow students to redo this test, next they’ll want to redo every assignment, and then they’ll expect to pass the course without doing any work.”
  6. Circular Reasoning (Begging the Question): This occurs when the conclusion of an argument is used as a premise of the same argument. For example, “The Bible is true, so you should not doubt the Word of God.”
  7. Appeal to Authority (Argumentum ad Verecundiam): This fallacy happens when an argument is deemed true or false based on the authority of the subject, rather than the merits of the argument itself. “Well, if Einstein said it, it must be true.”

Recognizing these fallacies is the first step in clearing the fog in the landscape of debate and discussion. In our daily lives, especially in an era dominated by information overload, the ability to discern flawed arguments is not just an academic skill but a necessity.

As we navigate through complex discussions and debates, let’s arm ourselves with the tools of critical thinking. Let’s not fall prey to the seductive simplicity of flawed reasoning. Our pursuit of truth in The Pencil Driven Life demands no less.

Here are examples of logical fallacies from various articles:

Ad Hominem Fallacy:

  1. A Checkered Past: Voters dismiss a politician’s road safety campaign because he lied in the past, not considering the current campaign’s merits.
  2. Driving to Work: A doctor is deemed incompetent in his profession because he was seen driving badly, which is unrelated to his professional skills.
  3. They Must Have Done It!: Students accuse two classmates of theft because they are always late, not based on evidence related to the theft.

Straw Man Fallacy:

  1. Career Advice: At a high school graduation, a speaker presents only two career options: get an office job or end up homeless, ignoring the myriad of other career paths available.
  2. Climate Change: An argument is made that we must switch solely to solar energy to combat climate change, excluding other viable green energy options.
  3. Relationship Dispute: A girlfriend accuses her boyfriend of never wanting to go out because he doesn’t want to eat out one night, misrepresenting his stance.

Appeal to Ignorance Fallacy:

  1. Ghosts and Science: The claim that ghosts exist because science cannot prove that they don’t is an appeal to ignorance, as it relies on the absence of evidence as proof of existence.
  2. Holiday Time!: Jared suggests they can afford a vacation because his partner cannot prove they cannot afford it, shifting the burden of proof.
  3. No News is Good News: A tour guide assumes he is good at his job because he hasn’t received any complaints, without presenting positive evidence of his competence.

False Dilemma Fallacy:

  1. Eat Your Veggies: The argument is made that if you’re not a vegetarian, you must hate animals, presenting only two extreme positions on a complex issue.
  2. The Big Scoop: A rookie journalist is told he must follow the rules of advertising or leave journalism, suggesting only two career paths within the field.
  3. You Are Either With Me or Against Me: An army sergeant tells troops there are only allies or enemies, neglecting the possibility of neutrality.

Slippery Slope Fallacy:

  1. Lowering the Voting Age: Arguing that lowering the voting age to 17 will lead to babies voting extrapolates to an absurdity without evidence.
  2. Soothing a Crying Baby: The claim that picking up a crying baby leads to severe attachment issues assumes a direct and extreme causation without evidence.
  3. New Laws Lead to Lost Freedom: The assertion that any restriction on freedom of speech will lead to a totalitarian state is a slippery slope without causal evidence.

These examples illustrate how logical fallacies can appear in arguments and discussions, demonstrating the importance of analyzing and questioning the underlying assumptions and logic.