The Patriot Act scares the living shit out of me. Here’s an example why it does: Mom Says Patriot Act Stripped Son of Due Process. Basically, it gives government the ability to supersede your INALIENABLE rights as declared in the Constitution based on the government’s own arbitrary whims. As this poor mother and son found out the hard way, far from making America safer, the Patriot Act puts America at the risk of the kinds of fascism and tyranny that have held sway over the rest of the world since the beginning of human history. Even YOU could be taken in the middle of the night and held hostage indefinitely by your own government without the ability to defend your innocence.
Watching The Constitution Burn
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Mit The Destroyer Says:
How was the constitution violated? The FBI handed the mother a Search Warrant (Amendment 4). The probable cause was, "the tenth-grade home-schooler is being held on a criminal complaint that he made a bomb threat from his home on the night of Feb. 15.".
Seems pretty thin on details, due to the gag order. And a gag order can only exist if there is some so of trial taking place, Which tells me the Kid dose have some sort of trial to prove/dis-prove his innocence. So is there some additional info you have about this case that shed more light? As far as I can tell from the editorial, due-processes has been followed.
—Mit
slaveofone Says:
Well, it seems the complaint of the mother is that she is unable to get her son released from custody as well as being unable to contest claims against her son, which is a violation of due process and haebus corpus. Remember, you are innocent until proven guilty–not the other way around. A warrant to search or a claim of some kind of criminal violation do not give the government the right to hold someone as long as they wish and/or refuse to allow a person the ability to seek a trial to face and defend themselves against their charges within a reasonable amount of time.
This kind of gag order, unfortunately, is one of the typical ones which increased dramatically after Patriot Act expansion called a National Security Letter–an administrative subpoena that the FBI can issue without court approval that requires no probable cause and has no judicial oversight. To see how and why this violates the Constitution, see the following link: http://www.rbs2.com/NSL.pdf
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Rick Penner Says:
Slaveofone,
Caught your stimulating website and thought I’d say a few words. But you don’t allow comments in your “Bias” section… so… I’ll just send this in on your latest Digest bit… hope you don’t mind.
In your article “Genesis: Fact or Fiction?” you imply the Reformers conceived of sola scriptura as a theological principle situating the scriptures in a category separate from (and opposite to) reason. Yes (I know) you said some Christians, not the Reformers themselves, do this in response to liberal “deconstructionism.” Still, I want to make a defense of the Reformers, here, because I think it strengthens your case.
You said: “One of the goods that Liberalism brought to the table was an insistence on the primacy of human reason. Instead of placing scripture up front on its stage of truth as Sola Scriptura would have it, Liberalism placed human reason in the form of historical-critical investigation. The Reformers had said scripture was the norm that cannot be normed — that it judged all things but itself could not be judged. And so Christians faithful to their theological heritage when faced with this ‘deconstructionism’ embraced instead a faith separated from reason.”
But the Reformers did NOT see sola scriptura as opposing reason. Rather, they saw both sola scriptura and reason as being unified in an opposition to church tradition and ecclesiastical authority. Reason was the handmaiden of scriptural study and made it possible. The problem, as the Reformers saw it, was not that scripture should merit our support because this would be a stand of faith over reason but that not enough people consulted and researched scripture directly using their reason (instead of reliance on church authorities) in the first place.
Take a look at Martin Luther’s conclusion in his address to the Diet of Worms in 1520:
“If, then, I am not convinced by proof from Holy Scripture, or by cogent reasons, if I am not satisfied by the very text I have cited, and if my judgment is not in this way brought into subjection to God’s word, I neither can nor will retract anything; for it can not be right for a Christian to speak against his country. I stand here and can say no more. God help me. Amen.” [From: http://www.bartleby.com/268/7/8.html
Now, the liberals started applying university learning to the scriptures back in the late 19th century with the “higher criticism” coming out of the German schools — and this was an application of reason — but they also brought a slew of new intuitive assumptions with them that became a part of the culture of twentieth-century modernism. These new ideas may have seemed refreshing as an antidote to fundamentalist literalism but they were not necessarily pure reason. They had an agenda.
I got the idea about Luther and reason from an interesting intellectual — Vishal Mangalwadi, a Christian Indian philosopher. His website:
http://www.vishalmangalwadi.com/vkmWebSite/index.php
On his home page is a small tag — “spiritual journey” — which will give you his bio at:
http://www.vishalmangalwadi.com/vkmWebSite/index.php#
Mangalwadi is strong on the idea of support for reason and sees it as an important ingredient of the West’s foundation — even as central to the Judeo-Christian heritage. He also has views similar to yours in that he sees the Bible’s description of the flaws of Israel’s history as a sign of genuine narrative.
He’s written a number of books about India, the missionary movement, the New Age, and so on. But it’s his two CD lecture-series that are especially wonderful. Both deal with the effect of the Bible on Western Civilization. The series are in two packages: The Book of the Millennium — and — Must the Sun Set on the West? They can be found for sale on his website.
But there’s a way to simply play the unedited versions of these lectures for free at the MacLaurin Institute website.
The Book of the Millennium lectures are called the “Heretics Series” at:
http://www.maclaurin.org/mp3_group.php?type=The+Heretics+Series
Must the Sun Set on the West? lectures are at:
http://www.maclaurin.org/lectures_2007-2008.php
Rick Penner
Burbank, CA
slaveofone Says:
“In your article “Genesis: Fact or Fiction?” you imply the Reformers conceived of sola scriptura as a theological principle situating the scriptures in a category separate from (and opposite to) reason.”
My implication was not that the Reformers conceived of sola scriptura as separate from and opposite to reason, but existing on a place on the stage of truth opposite to that of Liberalism—meaning, whereas Liberalism made reason the ultimate authority and would have scripture behind it as its “hand-maiden”, Sola Scriptura made the text the ultimate authority and put reason behind it as its “hand-maiden.”
“But the Reformers did NOT see sola scriptura as opposing reason.”
I never said they did. The fact that Sola Scriptura arose in opposition to reason is something they never realized.
“Reason was the handmaiden of scriptural study and made it possible.”
Right. This is opposite the liberal stance in which scripture is the handmaiden of reason. The difference is that one places reason at the forefront of truth and judgment whereas the other places scripture there. In Liberalism, scripture is not the ultimate judge of reason, rather it is judged by it. This was impossible for Sola Scriptura which said scripture was the norm that cannot be normed.
“The problem, as the Reformers saw it, was not that scripture should merit our support because this would be a stand of faith over reason but that not enough people consulted and researched scripture directly using their reason (instead of reliance on church authorities) in the first place.”
You’re right. I never said that it was. The Reformers believed because of their reason that the church had erred. But this belief was based on an acceptance of scriptural authority and scriptural identity (Sola Scriptura) which was an a priori belief existing before and above reason. Of course they didn’t think that Sola Scriptura was opposite or opposed to reason, unfortunately, it was. The belief that Scripture was the norm that cannot be normed or the final and ultimate arbiter of truth (Sola Scriptura) was not arrived at on the basis of reason, but rather on the basis of an a priori leap of faith apart from reason. They, of course, did not realize this because they took it as given that the Scripture was what they believed it was. If it was otherwise, they would not have existed as Reformers. It was only because they believed scripture to be a certain way that they proceeded forth as they did. But that foundation of their belief was not based on reason. No Reformer said or could have said (for it is a self-defeating principle of reason), “I’m going to show historically that the scriptures are above historical judgment and are the final arbiter of historical judgment.” Kinda like saying I’m going to use a circle to prove that circles don’t exist. Yet this is the basic underlying foundation of the Reformation’s entire belief system—that what scripture has to say is the Truth no matter what we might find in the world that says otherwise—most especially the Catholic church.
“Take a look at Martin Luther’s conclusion in his address to the Diet of Worms in 1520”
I am intimately familiar with Luther’s concluding address. Although I think Luther was more a person possessed by demons than a person possessed by knowledge, this is one of a few things he said that I have myself pointed to time and time again. Luther was making a stance because of his reason that could have sent his immortal soul to eternal hellfire (as far as he knew). And I cannot help but stand next to him in that act and applaud him for his courage and conviction. However, Luther made this decision because of an a priori belief in the ultimate and final authority of scripture. That belief was not made because of reason, but was the unquestioned assumption or preconception upon which he based the rest of his faith. It was only because he believed the scripture to be the ultimate and final authority or the judge that cannot be judged that he was able to stand against the church and say what he had to say about it. He used his reason to approach the scriptures and come to those conclusions, but he had not used his reason to come to the conclusion of Sola Scriptura. Sola Scriptura was the required assumption of the Reformation that could not be questioned or shown wrong rationally because upon it and by it, all else was judged. The Reformation’s Latin definition of Sola Scriptura: norma normans sed non normata – which translated means the standard, judgment, or authority against which there is no standard, judgment, or authority. The Reformers did not come to this belief (and could not have come to this belief since it is self-defeating) based on reason (because it requires scripture to stand above reason’s ability to judge it), but only on an a priori leap of faith apart from reason. They, of course, never realized this. And I never said they did realize it. They were consistent in their beliefs insofar as their foundation allowed them to operate, but they did not question the foundation of those beliefs. Had they done so, they would have ceased to be Reformers.
slaveofone Says:
BTW, the reason why I had to write about this at the intro to my article was because the purpose of my article was to judge Genesis against history and reason and to thereby come to a conclusion about its veracity. Sola Scriptura forbids this. Because scripture is the norm that cannot be normed according to Sola Scriptura, Genesis must be believed to be Truth at the very beginning. The only questions one can then bring to the text are what kind of truth is this truth, not whether it is truth or not. My article is directly antithetical to Reformation Christianity because it does not accept the a priori belief outside of reason of Sola Scriptura.
Also, at the time I wrote the article, I was under the assumption that myth was opposed to truth (kinda like how I used to believe, in the same vein, in the duality of natural and supernatural). I am no longer in that same place and have realized that a lot of truth if not most truth is actually myth (and that the division between natural and supernatural is a false distinction).