Chick-fil-A: Serving Chicken, Not Acting Like One

Chick-fil-A: Good food, good values. (Courtesy Chick-fil-A)

I’ve known for a while that Chick-fil-A is a Christian company, but I just caught up with this most recent bit of news: President and chief operating office Dan Cathy, son of company founder and chairman Truett Cathy, said that same-sex marriage is a bad idea:

“I think we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say, ‘We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage.’ I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to define what marriage is about.”

Responding to backlash from LGBT groups regarding prior comments and the company’s history of giving to pro-traditional-marriage groups, Dan Cathy had this to say:

“Well, guilty as charged. We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that…we know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles.”

Dan Cathy is absolutely right, and the people upset with him are torqued only because they can’t stand the slightest opposition—especially from a mainstream entity—to their destructive desires. Sorry (not really), but you won’t get a stamp of approval from Chick-fil-A, or from me.

In conclusion: Eat mor chikin.

Miami Heat Championship Spells Doom

So yesterday was V-H Day (victory for the Heat), which means it was also V-D Day—no, I’m not talking about venereal disease, I’m talking about the victory of doom.

Those black Heat (not talking race here), with their black uniforms and their triumvirate of evil, and the fruition of the diabolical Pat Riley’s diabolical plan—let’s not forget, Celtics fans, that this is a LAKER who fashioned this wretched Cerberus of South Beach. There’s a ton of irony there, and I hope it’s not lost on you.

Life involves certain “days of dread”—the death of loved ones, Obama being elected (sorry, libs), Obama being re-elected (sorry again). LeBron finally winning a title, and this Miami Heat team winning a title, was/is one of those days.

Perhaps worse than that, though, is that—and I’m having trouble even admitting this to myself—I’m actually started to … ohmygosh, I can’t believe it … have some sort of … sympathetic feelings toward LeBron.

Oh gosh, I can’t take this.

I’m being serious. I think I’ll never have any positive feelings for DWade (dirty louse) or for RuPaul, I mean, Bosh, but LeBron … I don’t know; I’m not becoming a fan, per se—I’m NEVER jumping on any LeBron or Heat bandwagon—and I still believe he’s got quite a bit of growing up to do (though he’s done some already), but I think I’m developing … gosh, this is how Dr. Jekyll must have felt right before his transformation … a grudging respect for LeBron.

I went through something similar with Jordan after his career. I couldn’t stand that guy, his smugness and how the refs (read: Stern) let him get away with so much, but looking back on his career, I can’t deny his awesome level of play.

Same with LeBron. “King” James? Sorry, but that’s a Bible translation. And as Dirty Harry said, “You’re a legend in your own mind.” Anointing himself king and messiah and all that before he ever even donned an NBA uniform, surrounding himself with the consummate bunch of yes-men—I absolutely LOATHE all of that. Talk about an entitled, spoiled, pampered prima donna.

Except he’s not selfish on the court. Not now, anyway. And of course, I don’t want players to be selfish, yet I feel like, with LeBron’s slow but nonetheless evident maturing, I’m losing something important, something crucial to my well-being: a sports figure to loathe with every fiber of my being. The good news, though, is that I still have that villain in DWade, and I still refuse to go so far as to root for LeBron (unless he ends up a Celtic some day).

But gosh, this is killing me. As I said, I want players to be unselfish, and as a Christian I don’t want to hold someone’s mistakes, someone’s past, against them, but I’m losing my evil binky. I’m like Player X trying in vain to draw an open-court charge on LeBron—I’m being steamrolled by his basketball prowess, and I don’t want to be, and I hate it, and I’m shouting at the officials to give me a bleepin’ call (like Derek Fisher must have felt last night) … but I can’t help it.

Somebody hold me.

As an interesting side note, I was just looking through the dictionary, checking the spelling of “prima donna,” when I came across this:

primal scream therapyn (1971) : psychotherapy in which the patient recalls and reenacts a particularly disturbing past experience usu. occurring early in life and expresses normally repressed anger or frustration esp. through spontaneous and unrestrained screams, hysteria, or violence — called also primal therapy

So that explains Bosh.

Of Mermaids and Men

Look, Ma! No feet! … (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Animal Planet recently aired a program called Mermaids: The Body Found, presenting as a documentary what belongs in the realm of the imagination. From an Answers in Genesis article on the program:

Mermaids advanced an idea known as the “aquatic ape hypothesis” (AAH), called the “aquatic ape theory” in the program. First proposed by a German pathologist in 1942, the idea has been met with much skepticism in the scientific community, although it is supported by a respectable number of laypeople. This view claims that our alleged ancestors went through a watery stage in our evolutionary development where, according to the show, “our ability to walk fully upright first evolved, wading in the shallows where food was easily found.” Our supposed ape-like ancestors started living near the oceans, and the narrator informs viewers that “this is where our advanced intelligence began to develop” thanks to the “brain-building nutrients” like iodine and fatty acids so abundant in the shellfish gathered there. Due to earthquakes and volcanic activity along the coasts, “some of our ancestors pulled back, heading inland, [but] others did not . . . If our distant ancestors spent time living in the sea, is it possible that one group split off from the rest? And rather than retreating from the water, did they go deeper in?”

Utterly ridiculous. Anyone who follows my blog knows of my disagreement with evolutionary theory, and what these people are proposing just further illustrates the problem: They’re saying that because a group of people took to living near the water, and spending a lot of time in the water hunting food, their DNA produced a series of mutations whereby each person’s two legs became one scaly, fishlike appendage complete with fins. This, of course, is on top of the presumption that merpeople ever existed.

As the above excerpt points out, most of the scientific community (to its credit) is skeptical about the alleged “human-merman” connection, but the truth is that the entire evolutionary paradigm* is just as ludicrous as any man-merman hypothesis: something (the universe) coming from nothing, without any outside help; life coming from nonlife, without any outside help; the development of single-celled organisms into ever-more-complex life forms, all the way up to the uber-complex human being, by a process (mutation) that doesn’t add novel genetic information but instead degrades and destroys much of what’s already there, causing a loss in genetic information. All of these things defy basic principles of logic; you can’t bring matter into existence (creation ex nihilo), and you can’t create life, and you can’t build ever-more-complex structures using material that’s continuously breaking down.

Unless, of course, you’re God. He can bring a universe into existence. He can bring life into being. He can animate earthen sculptures with souls, each one a fully formed original, and sustain them through numerous genetic breakdowns and environmental decay.

And He can bring us to our final, perfect, eternal home, beyond the reach of all trouble.

* By evolutionary paradigm, I mean not only the theory of evolution—which is limited to biological lifeforms and the genetic changes associated with them—but also the typical evolutionist/atheist beliefs about the origins of life and the universe.

Pedophiles Trying to Ride Homosexuals’ Coattails

People such as myself and my wife have insisted for quite some time that not only are the goals of the homosexual lobby (e.g., same-sex “marriage”) wrong in and of themselves, but that, if approved, they would have harmful corollaries including (but not limited to) the acceptance of pedophilia. Many proponents of the homosexual agenda said we were barking mad, that such a terrible thing would never happen. Guess what?

We were right. They were wrong.

As this article describes in painstaking, horrifying detail, several … what shall I call them? … “adult lovers of children” are clamoring to receive the same legal and societal recognition (read: approval) that same-sex relationships are more and more receiving. Supporters of so-called “adult-minor” relationships (who like to call themselves “minor-attracted” people) insist that their attractions and desires are simply another “alternative lifestyle” or “sexual orientation” that cannot be helped and should not be hindered. As if that weren’t bad enough, the oh-so-trendy American Psychiatric Association is actually considering a proposal for a new, molester-friendly definition of pedophilia. It would not surprise or shock me in the least if the APA accepted this new definition, considering it long ago (1973) removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders and in 1998 issued a report stating “that the ‘negative potential’ of adult sex with children was ‘overstated’ and that ‘the vast majority of both men and women reported no negative sexual effects from childhood sexual abuse experiences.”

First of all, I can point to plenty of people who clearly are suffering negative sexual effects from childhood sexual abuse experiences. Secondly, however—and this is a case of me hating being right—these “minor-attracted” people have a valid point of logic on their side.

What I and my wife and other social conservatives have argued is that if homosexuals are granted various “rights” (such as being allowed to “marry”), then there is no logical defense against other deviant behaviors being legitimized and legalized and granted approval: if you’re going to redefine marriage in one way, you absolutely cannot argue against redefining it in a host of other ways as well—to do so would be hypocritical and inconsistent. If you’re going to allow same-sex “marriage,” then logic dictates that polygamists, pedophiles, bestialists, and incestuists also should be allowed to “marry.”

“Poppycock,” said the homosexuals. “That’s just an excuse to deny us our rights. That would never happen.” No? Well, it’s in the process of happening right now. You know, 50 or 60 years ago, I’m sure that no one, not even the most hopeful homosexual or pessimistic conservative, could have guessed that 50 or 60 years later they’d be witnessing governmental, societal, and (in some cases) even religious approval of homosexual relationships. Yet they are. So do you really think that, in another 50 or 60 years, we couldn’t possibly be witnessing governmental, societal, and (in some cases) even religious approval of pedophilic relationships?

You’d better think again.

Green Lantern Goes Gay … Yay (Not)

The latest victim of the homosexual agenda. … (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So the Green Lantern, or at least one iteration of him, is homosexual. This was the top-trending item on Yahoo most of today, and I’m sure that some people are ecstatic about the Lantern’s coming-out party, but this is utterly ridiculous.

Yes, superhero stories can and do relate to real life, but this is beyond the pale. As an adult fan of comic books, I don’t want to open one and see the Lantern’s latest hunk of burnin’ love, and I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to see that when I was a kid devouring all the comic books I could get my hands on. This isn’t something we should be exposing children to, and if homosexual adults want their own superhero, they’re free to invent one.

I’m not even a DC guy, and I have no personal investment in any Green Lantern series, but I feel that the typical superhero comic should be a place of escapism and adventure, a place where truth and morality win out—certainly not home to the liberal homosexual agenda. And this doesn’t even work internally in the comic-book universe, because (and I’m not being hateful when I say this) what villain is going to be scared of a homosexual superhero? Aren’t they all just going to mock him? I can see them all doubling over in derisive laughter, the entire situation breaking down into farce.

Anyway, I guess this is just another instance of a deviant superminority (2-4% of the population) and its supporters trying to make its chosen lifestyle seem normal and acceptable. In my universe, it will never be either of those things.

Massachusetts Court Deals Another Blow to Real Marriage

Per Yahoo’s Liz Goodwin:

On Thursday, a federal appeals court in Boston ruled that the government’s ban on gay marriage, called the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), violates the Constitution and should be struck down.

The court’s reasoning? Again, per Goodwin:

The First Circuit Court found that the federal government does not have a right to interfere in states’ definition of marriage, but stopped short of arguing that gay people have a constitutionally protected right to legal marriage. The case is likely to be taken up by the Supreme Court.

I agree with the federalist approach that most matters should be left up to state and local governments … but this principle, for the most part, was thrown out the window long ago. For decades the courts have been giving the federal government more and more power, so I find it … convenient … that in this instance, of all times, a court should suddenly place high value once again on states’ rights. But of course, this court is in Massachusetts, which was the first state to recognize same-sex “marriage.” Something smells funny, and it ain’t the watah in Boston Hahbah.

And for the record, I support DOMA; there is no “constitutionally guaranteed right” to same-sex marriage.

Fact vs. Feeling

Emotions: Not what the Truth is about. … (Photo credit: Łukasz Strachanowski)

In at least one crucial way, religion is no different from any other aspect of life: You need to be wary of emotions.

Emotion has its place, in religion and in the rest of life: family celebrations and other festive occasions are times to crank up the fun factor; funerals and memorials are times for grieving and mourning; Halloween is a time to indulge a healthy amount of suspense. Emotions, however, have a downside: there’s always the danger of letting your feelings dictate your actions, in spite of any factual information telling you otherwise. If I’m wronged in some way (whether the wrong is real or perceived), I may feel like hauling off and smacking someone—but doing that could get me in a lot of hot water.

This issue is especially of concern in the area of religious belief, perhaps primarily because a good chunk of the subject matter deals with things not physically evident or empirically verifiable. That doesn’t mean, though, that there isn’t a set of facts regarding the spiritual realm. Consider it logically:

• Either there is a spiritual realm, or there isn’t; it can’t be both.
• Either there’s one God, multiple gods, or no gods; it can be only one of these options.
• If there is a God, He either cares about us or He doesn’t; it can’t be both.

And so forth.

Many people like to say that politics and religion are strictly a matter of opinion, but that’s false. I won’t comment on politics here, but religion, as I began to demonstrate in the above examples, has a set of facts about it, just like any other subject in human experience. So whatever you decide to follow or not follow as far as spirituality/religion/faith is not simply a matter of personal preference or a case of “what’s true for you isn’t true for me”; there’s a set of spiritual facts, and only one faith system, at most, can be correct on the most crucial points. A simple side-by-side comparison of the major doctrines of the various religions confirms this: Christianity and Islam and Mormonism and Scientology and Buddhism are all at odds with each other on major points of doctrine, so common sense says that only one of them, at most, could be right.

Many people, unfortunately, don’t like to bother with the facts, but instead like to go with whatever “feels right,” whatever system tells them what they want to hear. Case in point: Mormons and the “burning in the bosom.” Mormons like to tell people to ask God if the Book of Mormon is true, and that if you do this, you’ll experience a pleasant physical sensation in your chest—this “burning in the bosom”—signifying God’s affirmative answer. Not only is the power of suggestion in play here, but people are giving zero consideration to whatever facts are involved.

And in the case of Mormonism and other non-Christian religions, some of the facts being ignored or missed are downright absurd, making one wonder how these religions ever got any followers. Why does anyone subscribe to Mormonism when its founder’s lifelong pattern of fraudulent behavior is a matter of public record? Why does anyone follow Scientology when its inventor was a science fiction author? Why does anyone follow Islam when its founder was nothing more than an attention-seeking warmonger with an inferiority complex?

Really? You trust these guys? These facts don’t matter to you? Does a “burning in the bosom” or some other emotional experience outweigh the truth?

Even more unfortunately, some Christians groups fall for this same thing. I’m reminded of all those charismatic preachers who make a habit of getting the crowd worked up and emphatically push on the foreheads of their congregants, who seem to always faint and end up needing to be dragged offstage. I’m also reminded of megapreacher Joel Osteen, who always has a smile plastered on his face, apparently never having had a bad day in his life. His church is the biggest in America—and it’s no wonder, because the only thing his congregants ever hear is “the positive motivational speech”; you’ll never walk out of one of his services feeling anything but elated, believing that a material and financial windfall is just around the corner.

And don’t even get me started on “the Holy Ghost laughter.”

There is much to enjoy about God, and a relationship with Him certainly involves some pleasant emotions, but emotions aren’t the be-all and end-all—God, the Truth, is.

The Absurdity of Evolutionary Thought

Anti-evolution car in Athens, Georgia. … (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I believe in creationism, not evolution, so of course there are many things about evolution I find absurd, but perhaps most absurd are the origins arguments evolutionists propose.

To begin at the broadest point, evolution posits that somehow something came from nothing—literally. Somehow, according to the theory, the universe exploded into existence where there previously had been not just a void (which is something), but nothing at all, no material existence. To narrow things a bit more, evolution says life sprang from nonlife, that a pool of chemicals (and who knows where those came from) produced some sort of reaction that in turn produced the first living organism, like Frankenstein’s monster rising from a pile of lifeless, stitched-together body parts.

Something from nothing. Life from nonlife. Without any outside assistance or intervention.

Completely absurd.

But it gets even better. I’ll presume, for the sake of argument, that this primordial soup of chemicals did produce the first living organism, some sort of single-celled creature. This life form would have to be self-replicating, which is reasonable (such organisms exist today), but where would it get the genetic information to produce anything but more single-celled organisms like itself? Did random mutations produce new information? Impossible; mutations do not produce new info—in fact, any mutations would result only in a loss of genetic information, so the only thing the single-celled organism could produce would be more versions of itself, and genetically degraded ones at that. Thus, without outside assistance or intervention, no new information would be available, which means no other life forms could ever have arisen.

Evolutionists often enjoy mocking Biblical, creationist thinking, but if God is God, He can do anything. More to the point, He can do all the things that atheistic, evolutionary thinking can’t account for: create something out of nothing, create life from nonlife, and create all the basic kinds of creatures, each kind independent of the others but with enough built-in genetic flexibility to produce the great variety of species we see in the world today.

Obama Now Says He Favors Same-Sex ‘Marriage’

Shocking. As though he never really held this position until now.

It seems to me that he was “against” it during the last election only because it made him seem less radical and slightly more palatable to some voters, but now that he’s stunk it up for nearly four years and really needs the support of his restless liberal base more than ever, he’s dropped the facade. In an interview with ABC News’s Robin Roberts, the great one had this to say:

“I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.” (editing mistakes theirs, not mine)

I’d like you to focus on some key words and phrases from that quote: “incredibly committed” and “raising kids.” What Obama’s doing here is something I’ve seen lots of homosexual advocates do: telling you a sob story to divert attention from the real issue—that homosexuality is wrong. “These two men (or two women) are loving, and committed, and even raising kids—you don’t want to break that up, do you?” Oh, nooo, why would I want to break up something that should never have been in the first place? Let’s try applying this liberal (il)logic to other, similar situations (something liberals hate to do):

“This man and these three women are loving, and committed, and even raising kids—you don’t want to break that up, do you?”

Or how about this:

“This 30-year-old woman and this 16-year-old boy are in a loving, committed relationship—you don’t want to break that up, do you?”

But they never think of that stuff. To begin with, they never even stop to consider whether homosexuality is right, and then they never look any farther down the slippery moral slope—no farther than their libido and political fortunes currently dictate. So now President LGBT GLSEN PFLAG Lambda Legal (oops) Obama has publicly, officially, unfortunately declared war on traditional marriage. Just another reason to vote him out in November.

North Carolina, Colorado Strike Back at Homosexual Agenda

What God intended. … (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The citizens of North Carolina dealt the homosexual movement a severe setback Tuesday, voting by an overwhelming 61 to 39 percent to pass a constitutional amendment banning same-sex “marriage” and legal recognition of unmarried couples by state and local authorities.

This is fantastic news. North Carolina becomes the last state in the South and the 31st overall to add a marriage amendment to its constitution, in the process sending a strong message to this country’s liberal factions that there are still plenty of us who want to see real marriage preserved.

In related news, a bill that would’ve allowed same-sex couples to form civil unions died in the Colorado House on Tuesday when what was essentially a Republican filibuster used up what time remained before the 2012 legislative session came to a close.

This was an extra-good piece of news, because civil unions are often viewed as an easier-to-acquire alternative or even precursor to same-sex “marriage”—the lesser of two evils, so to speak—so preventing them from happening pushes the possibility of same-sex “marriage” even further away.

I’m sure the homosexual lobby won’t back down or stop trying to force us all to accept the perversion it touts, and we’ll probably be hammered with stories of how these measures will “keep homosexual couples apart” or “keep them from visiting each other in the hospital,” but these are red herrings. Homosexuals still have the same civil (political) rights as the rest of us, they can still live the lifestyle they’ve always lived, and a simple will guarantees the desired transfer of monies, properties, and other possessions to one’s “partner.” As for hospital visits, I think that’s an overblown issue, not frequently encountered, that can usually be worked out within the family; this country certainly doesn’t need another case of the will of a very few being dictated to the vast majority, i.e. (absence of) prayer in schools.

Besides all that, this issue generally isn’t about any of those things; it’s about a relatively small group of people practicing a deviant lifestyle who aren’t content to just live their lives according to their morally wrong choices, but want the rest of us—individuals, governments, churches, everyone—to validate and legitimize something we have a real problem with. Sorry (not really), but that’s not gonna happen.

People such as me, of course, will be demonized by the Left for this stance, but I know who I am: I respect homosexual people as fellow humans made in the image of God, no less valuable than anyone else, and I respect their right to decide the course of their lives. That said, there’s still such a thing as absolute right and wrong (as defined by the only One whose definition matters), and homosexuality is one of the many wrong behaviors humans engage in. As such, I can’t support or agree with it.