Hollywood and the Left--Part 2

I'm continuing a blog that reveals the left-leaning bias of Hollywood elites. No surprise there. Primetime Propaganda by Ben Shapiro is the source; he taped some interviews with Hollywood big shots. Let me share some additional accounts from these tapes.

One story has to do with Dwight Schultz, best known for his roles as Murdock in The A-Team and Barclay in Star Trek: The Next Generation. The late Bruce Paltrow knew that Schultz was a fan of President Ronald Reagan. When Schultz showed up to audition for St. Elsewhere, a show Paltrow produced, to read for the part of Fiscus, Paltrow told him: "There's not going to be a Reagan a--hole on this show!" The part went to Howie Mandel.

Another video Shapiro will release shortly has producer-director Nicholas Meyer being asked point-blank whether conservatives are discriminated against in Hollywood. "Well, I hope so," he answers. Meyer also admits his political agenda for The Day After, a TV movie he directed for ABC that was seen by 100 million people when it aired in 1983. "My private, grandiose notion was that this movie would unseat Ronald Reagan when he ran for re-election," Meyer says.

In another case we hear from Family Ties creator Gary David Goldberg. He explains how he tried to make Republican character Alex Keaton the bad guy but that actor Michael J. Fox was too lovable. Ironic that Fox later used his physical handicap to rally Democrats against Republicans.

There are two more comments that I found interesting and revealing. COPS creator John Langley says he’s partial to segments where white people are the criminals. Fred Silverman, the former head of ABC and later NBC, notes that “there’s only one perspective, and it’s a very progressive perspective” in TV comedy today. Don't you love the term "progressive" to denote lefties who won't tolerate dissent from their positions?

You may be wondering why these Hollywood elites revealed their biases so clearly in the videos. Shapiro said the executives felt comfortable talking about politics with him because they assumed, incorrectly, that he is on the left. He also says he didn’t disclose that he’d be releasing the tapes, but that his subjects have no reason to complain. “I asked them for permission to tape, and there’s no reasonable expectation of privacy when you’re being interviewed for a book,” he said.

The author's final comments are a perfect way to end this blog. “If they’re going to be shocked at something, it should be themselves, not me,” Shapiro said. “They should be shocked that opinion is so one-sided in Hollywood that it’s OK to say, ‘I’m fine with discrimination.’”

Hollywood and the Left

As if we needed proof, a new book is coming out in which TV executives admit that Hollywood pushes a liberal agenda. I'm not shocked--are you? But it's interesting that taped interviews accompany the book, (Primetime Propaganda by Ben Shapiro), so it'll be hard for these execs to say they were misquoted. I wanted to share some of these statements by the liberals, who always claim to be the tolerant ones. Here some are in no particular order.

In one video, Friends co-creator Marta Kauffman says that when she cast Candace Gingrich-Jones, half-sister of Republican former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, as the minister of a lesbian wedding, “There was a bit of ‘f--- you’ in it to the right wing.” Kauffman also acknowledges she “put together a staff of mostly liberal people,” which is another major point of Shapiro’s book: that conservatives aren’t welcome in Hollywood.

Maybe that’s because many liberals call them“idiots” and have “medieval minds.” At least that’s what Soap and Golden Girls creator Susan Harris thinks of TV’s conservative critics. However, the ranks of dumb right-wingers has dwindled, according to Harris, whose video has her saying: “At least, you know, we put Obama in office, and so people, I think, are getting – have gotten – a little bit smarter.”

Some of the videos have executives making rather obvious revelations. Larry Gelbart and Gene Reynolds talk about pacifist messages in M*A*S*H and MacGyver producer Vin Di Bona says anti-gun messages were a recurring theme in that show. But an additional video has Di Bona, who also created America’s Funniest Home Videos, becoming remarkably blunt about his approval of a lack of political diversity in Hollywood. When Shapiro asks what he thinks of conservative critics who say everyone in Hollywood is liberal, Di Bona responds: “I think it’s probably accurate, and I’m happy about it.”

Another video has Leonard Goldberg — who executive produces Blue Bloods for CBS and a few decades ago exec produced such hits as Fantasy Island, Charlie’s Angels and Starsky and Hutch — being very honest. He said liberalism in the TV industry is “100 percent dominant, and anyone who denies it is kidding, or not telling the truth.” Shapiro (the author of the book) asks if politics are a barrier to entry. “Absolutely,” Goldberg says.

Shapiro got another honest reply from Fred Pierce, the president of ABC in the 1980s who was instrumental in Disney’s acquisition of ESPN. After the author says, “It’s very difficult for people who are politically conservative to break in” to television, Pierce responds: “I can’t argue that point.” Those who don’t lean left, he says, “don’t promote it. It stays underground.”

Then there's House creator David Shore. He acknowledged that "there is an assumption in this town that everybody is on the left side of the spectrum, and that the few people on the right side, I think people look at them somewhat aghast, and I'm sure it doesn't help them."

Well, there are many more that I'll save for the next blog. Again, these are hardly revelations, but they come from those in the know. The smug and condescending comments are repulsive, especially considering these are the self-anointed tolerant ones. Are there ways we can limit our support for these left-wing factories?

Scary news about ObamaCare

OK, I'll admit that I was never in favor of ObamaCare. I was sad that the U.S. Congress backed such a scheme. But it's been eyeopening to see what has been reported lately about it. Reports are coming out that are devastating about the impact of this act.

The Wall Street Journal reports on a recent such study. It concluded up to 78 million Americans would lose their current health coverage as employers stopped offering insurance because of President Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

But I thought Obama had assured us this wouldn't happen. The report contradicted Mr. Obama's frequent pledge that under his reform, "if you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan."

This wasn't the only negative report. In May 2010, former Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin concluded that employers would drop coverage for about 35 million Americans because of ObamaCare. A month later, in June 2010, the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) came up with a far higher estimate--between 87 million to 117 million. And last November, an analyst told health-insurance company executives that 80 million to 100 million people might lose their employer-provided health insurance.

Why will this happen? It's so simple even I can understand the economics behind it. The Journal reports that, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation's Employer Health Benefits 2010 Annual Survey, the annual premium for an average policy last year was $5,049 for a single worker, with the company picking up roughly $4,150 and the employee the rest. For a family of four, the total cost was $13,770, with the company picking up $9,773.

Now let's see what happens when you factor in ObamaCare. Under its provisions, , businesses can stop providing health-care coverage, paying a $2,000 per-worker fine instead. For small businesses, the trade-off is even more attractive: They are given a pass on the first 50 workers.

Workers losing coverage will be moved into the "exchange," a government-run marketplace to buy health plans. Those whose insurance costs were more than a specified share of their income (9.5% in 2014) could get subsidies. The exchange starts in 2014 and is fully operational by 2016.

So it's pretty obvious what will happen. It will be extremely attractive for companies to dump the increasingly more expensive coverage and pay a lesser fine. There will be huge ramifications for the country's finances if more workers lose coverage than was estimated.

The original estimates were expensive enough under Obama's scheme. The CBO and the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation predicted that 24 million workers would be covered by the exchange. Of these, nine million to 11 million would lose their employer-provided coverage, offset by six million to seven million who would be getting employer-provided insurance, for a net of three million workers losing company-sponsored coverage. The CBO said the exchanges would cost $511 billion over ObamaCare's first decade.

But what if these recent estimates are closer to the truth with far more people dumped into the exchange than originally estimated? Costs from the increased subsidies will explode.

If between 78 million and 87 million people are moved into the exchange, the tab could more than triple. You do the math--$511 billion times 3. I'll wait . . . But it gets worse. If 117 million people were dumped into the exchange, ObamaCare would cost nearly $2 trillion more than expected in the first decade alone. Much of this extra expense would come from workers losing their employer-sponsored insurance.

It's one thing to merrily go along during great economic times, lavishing money here and there. But we don't live in such times. We are now, to our horror, finding out how harmful this measure is. More Americans are realizing that unless repealed, ObamaCare will sink America in a sea of red ink. This helps explain why the nation has turned so hard against it—and against its author whose slippery pledges so misled us. I don't plan on gloating. Instead, I will work hard to see this current administration does no more damage to our economy after 2012.

Recent articles in the news

A couple of items in the news caught my eye the other day. See what you think. I'll tell you at the end what connection these two articles have for me.


Item number one: the self-confidence of young people today. The Associated Press reports on a new survey that finds "college students and others their age are more self-centered--narcissistic, even--than past generations." That's hardly a surprise to me. Just last semester I had a student sitting in class, hiding behind a backpack, working his cell phone. His obvious message to me was simple: "What I'm doing is far more important than what you are talking about."


Here are the specifics about this survey. Researchers found that a larger percentage of incoming college freshmen rated themselves as "above average'' in several categories compared with college freshmen who were surveyed in the 1960s. When it came to social self-confidence, about half of freshmen questioned in 2009 said they were above average, compared with fewer than a third in 1966. Meanwhile, 60 percent in 2009 rated their intellectual self-confidence as above average, compared with 39 percent in 1966, the first year the survey was given.


That's really sad. So many of these people are not getting a good education, but they don't recognize this. Part of it is their fault, but I blame the society for much of this attitude. We tell the young people over and over how great they are so we don't hurt their self-esteem. We say they just aren't good at math, that it's a built-in problem rather than a lack of discipline. We don't require them to tackle difficult things. We keep them living in an warm-and-fuzzy adolescent world where they reinforce each other's values.


The second article had to do with a national union leader's comments. Remember how the left chastised the conservatives for tough language? Remember how liberals clucked about the violent rhetoric that needed to be toned down, forgetting all the venom that had spewed from the left? Here's another case where the hypocrisy just smacks one between the eyes. It was reported that a national union leader went nuclear on Gov. Chris Christie, calling him a Nazi over and over, according to Newark's Star-Ledger . The following message was delivered: "Welcome to Nazi Germany," Christopher Shelton, a top official at the Communication Workers of America, told thousands of protesters today outside the Statehouse in Trenton, the capital of New Jersey. "The first thing that the Nazis and Adolf Hitler did was go after the unions." So I guess this man didn't get the memo that pleaded for political rhetoric to be calmed down. Can we all agree that politics is a tough business and that nobody has the moral high ground here?


Is there a connection for these two newspaper accounts? I suggest liberal attitudes are on display here. They have done a poor job with our schools in the first case since they are the ones who urge sensitivity rather than results. In the Trenton affair, we see the vaunted sensitivity voiced by the liberals doesn't apply to those they disagree with.

Some good news on the energy front

A recent article in The Wall Street Journal entitled "America Needs the Shale Revolution" gave me some needed good news. So much negative information has been out there regarding our future energy situation, with claims that we are running out of everything and must depend on costly new green energy. Well, that's not true. The U.S. is on the verge of an industrial renaissance if—and here's the catch with the Obama administration in place—policy makers don't foul it up by restricting the ability of drillers to use the technology that's making a renaissance possible: hydraulic fracturing.

There is already a shale drilling boom now underway in Texas, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma and other states. It is creating jobs right now (unlike the pie-in-the-sky green energy plans), slashing natural-gas prices, and spurring billions of dollars of investment in new production capacity for critical commodities like steel and petrochemicals. And again, unlike green energy claims that never seem to materialize, it's actually accomplishing more energy independence by spurring a huge increase in domestic oil production, which has been falling steadily since the 1970s.

Of course, the greens who believe in their vision of a future America powered by wind (mostly their hot air), aren't going along with this process. Despite the myriad benefits of the low-cost hydrocarbons that are now being produced thanks to hydraulic fracturing, many on the left are hyping the possible dangers of the process, which uses high-pressure pumps to force water, sand and chemicals into shale formations. Doing so fractures the formation and allows the extraction of natural gas or petroleum.

I'm sure many people assume this is a new, risky, untried process since they haven't heard about it before. But that's not the case. Hydraulic fracturing is not a new technology. In fact, it has been used more than one million times in the U.S. over the past 60 years, according to the Journal.

Still, environmental activists are hoping to ban the process or have it regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Opponents claim the process can harm groundwater. But the Journal points out that drinking-water aquifers are separated by as much as two miles of impermeable rock from the shales that are being targeted by the fracturing process.

Despite the opposition, some of America's biggest industrial companies are enthusiastic about the merits of natural gas. For example, the CEO of U.S. Steel, told the Journal writer in an interview that the shale revolution is "the first bit of good news in U.S. manufacturing in two decades." Another CEO said that "we could change the entire manufacturing base in the U.S. if we just embrace what's happening in natural gas." That's quite a declaration, one that we should take seriously.

How does this process, which produces natural gas or petroleum, help change our "entire manufacturing base"? Here's one example from the Journal. In March, Nucor, America's biggest steel producer, broke ground on a new $750 million direct-reduced-iron (DRI) plant in Louisiana. The plant's key commodity is low-cost natural gas, which will be superheated and then mixed with iron ore pellets and scrap in a furnace. The DRI process allows companies to produce about the same amount of steel with about a quarter of the capital they'd need to build a conventional integrated steel plant. And they can produce that steel with lower carbon-dioxide emissions because they are replacing metallurgical coal with methane. Nucor may ultimately invest $3 billion in Louisiana on plants that could create as many as 1,000 permanent, high-paying jobs. Meanwhile, U.S. Steel may soon build a DRI plant of its own. Sounds good to me.

Here's another example of this process helping our economy. Thanks to hydraulic fracturing, U.S. drillers are producing lots of ethane and propane, which are key feedstocks for the petrochemical sector. Last October, Chevron Phillips Chemical Company announced plans to build a new plant in Baytown, Texas that will provide components for the production of polyethylene, a plastic resin used to make milk jugs and beverage containers. A few months later, the company said it was examining the feasibility of building a major petrochemical plant on the Gulf Coast.

How about other examples? In April, Dow Chemical announced plant expansions at several facilities in Louisiana and Texas, including construction of a new ethylene plant on the Gulf Coast that will begin operating in 2017 and a new propylene production facility that will begin operating by 2015. Dow's reason for the expansions: "competitively priced ethane and propane feedstocks." And last week Shell announced that it is developing plans to build a large ethylene plant in the Appalachian region. Ethylene and propylene are building blocks for a wide variety of consumer products including plastics, fibers and lubricants.

Of course, the drilling industry itself is creating jobs. Over the past 12 months, some 48,000 people were hired in Pennsylvania by companies working in the Marcellus Shale, a massive deposit that underlies several Eastern states, including Pennsylvania and New York. A new study by Tim Considine, an energy economist at the University of Wyoming, estimates that drilling in this area could add as many as 15,000 new jobs to the New York economy by 2015. The study also estimated that shale drilling in New York could add some $1.7 billion to the state's economy by 2015 and increase the state's tax revenue by more than $200 million.

Our oil production has been helped by this process. Hydraulic fracturing is unlocking huge quantities of oil from shale. In March, domestic crude production was 5.63 million barrels per day, the highest level since 2003. Amazingly, production is rising despite the Obama administration's de facto moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. And shale oil production will likely continue rising from deposits like the Bakken Shale in North Dakota, where state officials are predicting output will hit 700,000 barrels per day by 2018, double the state's current production.

So what's the bottom line here? America needs cheap, abundant and reliable sources of energy to keep a vibrant industrial base. The shale revolution now underway is terrific news. I hope we continue to develop this technology despite the attempts of the greens to send us back to pre-technological dreamland.

Defense spending and the Obama adminstration

I have been reading about Robert Gates, our Secretary of Defense, who will be stepping down this month after four-plus years at the Pentagon. He has been warning about our reckless plans to cut defense severely, considering what a dangerous world we are in.


Back in the 90s, we thought threats were disappearing to our national interests. As a result, the Clinton administration decided to cash in the Cold War peace dividend. Of course, we soon found out that bad ideas and dictators didn't end in 1989.


Many Americans assume we spend way too much on defense. It usual is the first target of budget cutbacks. But in historical terms, the U.S. spends relatively little on defense today, even after the post-9/11 buildup. This year's $530 billion budget accounts for 3.5% of GDP, 4.5% when the costs of the Afghan and Iraq wars are included. That seems like a lot to us, but we have to know what the spending was like in other times as a percent of GDP. The U.S. spent, on average, 7.5% of GDP on defense throughout the Cold War, and 6.2% at the height of the Reagan buildup in 1986.


But on coming into office, the Obama Administration decided on new priorities. And defense wasn't one of them. The money went instead to new European-sized entitlements, starting with $2.6 trillion for ObamaCare. The White House proposed a $553 billion defense budget for 2012, $13 billion below what it projected last year. Through 2016, the Pentagon will see virtually zero growth in spending and will have to whittle down the Army and Marine Corps by 47,000 troops. The White House originally wanted deeper savings of up to $150 billion.


It was a good thing that Gates helped fight off some of these ideas. But he was unable to get any share of the stimulus. Instead, he has cut or killed some $350 billion worth of weapon programs. He told his four service chiefs last August to find $100 billion in savings. The White House came back and asked for another $78 billion. Last year, Mr. Gates said that the Pentagon needs 2%-3% real budget growth merely to sustain what it's doing now, but it could make do with 1%. The White House gave him 0%.


Defense money has focused on the demands of today's wars over hypothetical conflicts of tomorrow. This has distracted from budgeting to address the rise of China and perhaps of regional powers like a nuclear Iran that will shape the security future. I'm especially concerned about Iran and its capacity to stir up trouble in the Middle East. The decision to stop producing the F-22 fighter and to kill several promising missile defense programs may come back to haunt the U.S.


Liberals always think you can balance the budget by cutting defense way back. Not true. Gates noted that if the defense budget was cut by 10%, "which would be catastrophic in terms of force structure, that's $55 billion out of a $1.4 trillion deficit. We are not the problem." Good point.


Thanks to FDR and the New Deal, entitlements got their start, and Obama is happily increasing their weight in the budget. Under current projections, entitlements will eat up 10.8% of GDP by 2020, while defense spending goes down to 2.7%. The Wall Street Journal reports that if current trends continue, those entitlements (Medicare, Social Security, etc.) will consume all tax revenues by 2052.


Take a look at Europe, which headed down this same path years ago. Today it spends just 1.7% of GDP on defense. They can get away with this since the nations there can relax and depend on us to protect them. But what happens when we weaken our defense? Who do we look to for protection? China? I don't think so. It all comes down to the need for a strong economy, one that is able to generate enough money for defense and internal improvements. Here's where Obama's administration is a disaster. His fiscal policies leave us with no money for either. He needs to find a new job in 2012.

A look at Israel and the Palestinians

I recently read an article by Michael Brown on townhall.com, attempting to clarify the situation in the Middle East regarding Israel and Palestine. Considering how emotional this issue is, I think it's worthwhile to go through the five points he made.

1. There is no such thing as a historic “Palestinian people” living in the Middle East. It's true there have been Arabs living in the land of Palestine for centuries. But here's the key point--at no time before 1967 did these Arabs identify themselves as “Palestinians,” nor did they seek to achieve any kind of statehood there. So this is a made-up name for political purposes. In addition, before 1967, there was no such thing as Arab, Palestinian nationalism and no attempt to develop the territory as a homeland for the Arabs who lived there. The conclusion? The concept of a Palestinian people is a modern invention, and it is part of the anti-Israel propaganda machine without any basis in fact.

2. There were anti-Jewish intifadas in Palestine two decades before the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. There is a fantasy being sold about the peaceful coexistence of Jews and Arabs before the state of Israel was formed. The reality is far different-- as Jews began to return to their one and only ancestral homeland in the late 19th century, hostilities began to rise among their Arab neighbors, despite the fact that there was more than enough room for both. By the way, the Jews paid for the land; they did not steal or wrench it away through warfare. By the 1920’s, radical Muslim leaders like Haj Amin Al-Husseini, who later backed Adolph Hitler, were organizing intifadas against the Jewish population, with many Jewish lives lost. And what helped fuel this hostility was the anti-Jewish sentiment found in the Koran and early Muslim traditions. Post-1948 Jew-hatred simply built on centuries of Islamic anti-Semitism.

3. Jewish refugees fleeing from Muslim and Arab countries were absorbed by Israel after 1948; Arab refugees fleeing from Israel after 1948 were not absorbed by Muslim and Arab countries. With their huge size, it would have been easy for Arab countries to absorb the approximately 600,000 Arab refugees who fled Israel in 1948 when war was declared on Israel by five neighboring Arab nations. To this day, these refugees are not welcomed by other Arab states. These states want this problem to stay on the front burner as a way to avoid fixing their own problems and showing what failures modern Arab states are. How did Israel do with this same refugee problem? The tiny nation absorbed roughly 800,000 Jewish refugees that had to flee from Muslim nations after 1948.

4. Only one side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is truly committed to peaceful co-existence. Michael Brown, the author of this article, says there is an common expression that sums this up: If the Palestinians put down their weapons, there would be no more war, but if the Israelis put down their weapons, there would be no more Israel. He cautions the reader that we shouldn't believe all Palestinians are warmongers and all Israelis are doves. But "the vast majority of Israelis are not driven by a radical ideology that calls for the extermination of their Arab neighbors, nor are they teaching their children songs about the virtues of religious martyrdom." Good point.

5. The current uprisings throughout the Muslim and Arab world today remind us that Israel cannot fairly be blamed for all the tension and conflicts in the region. If Israel disappeared, the Arab world would not be a peaceful place. As an example, Brown cites the constant disputes between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. He notes that in 1980, Abd Alhalim Khaddam, then Syria’s Foreign Minister, admitted, “If we look at a map of the Arab Homeland, we can hardly find two countries without conflict. . . . We can hardly find two countries which are not either in a state of war or on the road to war.”

Let me close with a powerful quotation from the article: "Certainly, there are many obstacles that stand in the way of a true peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, and the road ahead is fraught with uncertainty, but it would be a good starting point if we replaced myths and emotional arguments with facts." Isn't that true of so much we argue about?

Final ways to judge between religions and worldviews

In previous blogs I have discussed a couple of ways a person can judge religions to see which one would be the best. The first way was to look at the factual evidence (manuscripts, history, archaeology, anthropology, founders of each religion). The second way was to examine each set of beliefs for logical inconsistencies. For this blog I would like to examine a final two areas -- religions as they deal with ethics/human nature and the satisfaction they can bring.

Some religions are simply weaker when it comes to ethics and human nature. Think about Eastern religions with their focus on karma compared to Christianity. Under the concept of karma, a person suffers because of past-life sins, so he/she must work out and pay for these moral shortcomings. If you see somebody suffering, just keep going and don't interfere with his/her karma. Christianity, on the other hand, from its very beginning was focused on helping the poor, the needy, the sufferers. The Roman world was amazed and impressed at how early Christians took care of those unwanted by their society. I don't think there is any doubt that the Christian system is superior here in its care for other humans.

Christianity strikes me as the best religion when it comes to understanding human nature. For example, it is the only religion that understands the weaknesses of humanity. Why do I say that? Christianity is the only one not based on works. All others tell their adherents to complete task after task, which leads to frustration and feelings of guilt or inadequacy. None of us can live up to the standards and requirements other religions burden us with. In addition, it's only Christianity that says humans are a mixture of good and evil. This belief explains the wonderful things we can do as well as the horrific deeds that we can inflict on each other. It explains our low self-esteem since we are honest with ourselves and know our shortcomings, no matter what sort of face we put on for the rest of the world. It also explains why we feel guilty.

Christianity is also superior for the way it deals with morality. Unlike other religions and cults, Christianity says morality is from God. Standards of right/wrong are outside us rather than made up by us as we go along. This is far more satisfying and saves us from the trap of relativism in which each person generates his/her own set of principles, a recipe for anarchy, frustration, and social upheaval.

Finally, a fourth way to judge religions has to do with subjective satisfaction. For example, we can live the Christian life -- we eliminate guilt and the sense of frustration when we fall short of ethical and moral standards. Compare this to other religions -- we can't live Christian Science (we know death is real), Scientology (it's a fantasy based on money), Eastern religions (all is maya, an illusion??), Mormonism (no factual basis). In addition, Christianity provides a sense of awe. Consider some of its claims -- God is a three-personed being, He created all out of nothing, He came to earth for us, He rose from the dead, He cares about each one of us. Christianity also satisfies in the things it declares to be real -- miracles, resurrection, prayer, existence of the soul. It explains many things--pleasures that never totally satisfy, our refusal to be amoral, and our longings for truth and beauty.

One other thing about Christianity that is satisfying is how it unites the two-story house modern man lives in. There is a lower story in which humans are told the only thing that counts is science and facts. So here dwells the idea of people as machines/products of mindless evolution. This level says there is no point to life. So we can't really live there. Instead, people escape to a second story where meaning, freedom, values, ethics, and wishes exist. People who have ignored Christianity have been trying to live in this schizophrenic way. But the Christian faith says we can have it all and integrate both stories due to the existence of a God who cared enough to come into our world and save us from ourselves.

So when someone says we can't judge between religions, let him/her know there are several ways--how the religions correspond to reality, whether they are logically consistent, what they say about ethics and human nature, and whether they are satisfying to us in deep ways. I never wanted to be part of a religion because it "resonated" with me. I wanted to follow a religion that was true.

Another way to judge between religions and worldviews

For the last couple of blogs, I have been discussing several ways we can judge between various religions, contrary to what relativists believe. Last time I completed the first way to judge -- the factual evidence. This time I'd like us to consider a second way to compare religions, which is to see how logically consistent each one is.

Let's start with deism, so popular back in the 1700s (think Jefferson) but still around today. This is the idea that God created everything, but he left us on our own. Its motto could be taken from Alexander Pope: "Whatever is, is right." Things are determined, no miracles happen. But let's consider some of the logical problems here. This belief system says we have no free will. The simple common sense tells us that cannot be the case--we know we make choices each day. Secondly, this system says we know certain things about God, but how is this possible if there is no revelation?

Now let's consider naturalism, the idea that there is no God, nature is everything. This system of belief makes us nothing but thinking machines. Here's the problem -- If we are only thinking machines, how can we trust our thoughts enough to believe that naturalism is true? Secondly, much like deism, this system says we have no free will. Here's another problem -- how do we get morality in such a system? In other words, how do ethics ("ought") come from "is"? Do molecules generate morality? I don't think so.

Then there's nihilism. If all is useless, why do nihilists believe their thinking and philosophy have substance and value? After all, everything is pointless except what these people tell us -- you see the contradiction there? Also, consider modern art, which often has nihilism at its core. But the artists must think this art has value and meaning, which contradicts nihilism.

What about Eastern religions? They also suffer from contradictory ideas. For example, if all is one as they teach, why do we have individual souls that get reincarnated? Practitioners refuse to follow logical rules, claiming these are just Western ideas. But logic has no cultural boundaries. Another set of problems concerns karma. Who or what works out our karma since there is no personal God overseeing everything? If we are paying off our karma, why don't we remember our past lives? It seems like we are doomed to repeat our failures under this system.

New Age beliefs share much with their Eastern counterparts, so some of the same logical concerns will be repeated. But there are other concerns too. For example, if the self is both universe and the universe-maker as New Agers claim, how can there be an occult that they get in touch with through channeling? Doesn't that suggest another world beyond their reach? If we are divine as they say, why is there human evil? How is it that an impersonal force created personal beings? If we all create our own reality, why do we all share the same reality?

Another popular belief system today falls under the general term postmodernism. Again, it has logical problems. If we make up our own reality as postmodernists claim, why did they write books? After all, nobody would understand what they were trying to communicate if their system is true. If all utterances are a power play as claimed, then that utterance is a power play and we can ignore it. If we are only the product of the blind forces of nature and society, then so is our view that we are only the product of the blind forces of nature and society, so we can ignore it. Postmodernists says we cannot trust human reason, but they prove this theory using human reason.

Let's consider Christian Science. If sickness is an illusion, why do practitioners try to heal Christian Scientists? If "man is incapable of sin, sickness, and death" (as Christian Scientists claim), why do people die? If our physical senses do not tell us the truth about the material world, how can we trust them when we read Mary Baker Eddy's book?

Let's end with a brief look at two other religions today regarding logical consistency. Mormonism gives us what they claim is an objective way to determine truth: a subjective burning in the bosom. Mormons seem to think we will all get the same result because their faith is true, but obviously this is not the case. Jehovah's Witnesses have had to deal with changes in their doctrinal positions over the years. One way they have done that is to claim that the change came from new light given to them by God. But how can new light come from God if it can change?

Of course, this was a quick tour through various religions. If you take the time to examine their key beliefs, you will see many more examples of logical inconsistencies.

But what about Christianity? Charges have been made that it too is logically inconsistent for the doctrine of the Trinity. But notice that Christians do not say we believe in three gods and one god. Instead, we say God is one being who expresses himself in three persons. This doctrine goes beyond reason but not against reason. It certainly is a mystery of the Christian faith, but it is the logical conclusion of two biblical truths -- there is one God, and there are three distinct persons who are God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Again, this is a subject that requires further examination, but look into it for yourself--you'll see that the Trinity solves problems rather than creates problems.

There is obviously much more that could be said here, so I hope you check it out for yourself. You can examine various worldviews and religions for inconsistencies in their beliefs. When you do, I hope you see the superiority of the Christian perspective.