Imago Dei

Time reports on a campaign among Evangelicals that seeks to refocus their engagement with the culture and also to present their beliefs in a more positive light.

Time quotes the campaign's statement of purpose, "The Imago Dei, or Image of God, pledge is simple: “I recognize that every human being, in and out of the womb, carries the image of God; without exception. Therefore, I will treat everyone with love and respect.”""

Now, as a Catholic, this really seems like a big so-what? Of course a Christian recognizes the inherent dignity of every human being from conception to natural death and recognizes his responsibility to God and to his fellow creature to treat him with love and respect. We often fail, but we ought never forget our responsibility exists.

During this week of the March for Life, I would expect Time to notice the explicit reference to "in and out of the womb."

Nah. Like clockwork, Time buried the Pro-Life lede two days before the March for Life.

TIME's headline is funny, really - but not in a good way:

The Imago Dei Campaign: Evangelical Groups Say Gays Made in God’s Image


Like it's breaking news, or something.

Because, of course, Evangelicals have always thought that every human being - except gays - were created in God's image. I'm trying to recall when Ken Ham or Jerry Falwell said, "Man was created on the 6th Day of Creation, out of mud, 10,000 years ago; except Gays. Gays evolved from monkeys in West Africa."

Apparently Time heard them say that somewhere. Maybe in a dream.

Seems like the Imago Dei Campaign recognizes the work cut out for it exemplified by Time's ignorant and biased vision of Evangelicals. Its list of objectives includes:

Enrich and redeem the narrative of American Evangelicalism by replacing the perceived image of an angry homogenous evangelical demographic that opposes everything to a convicted yet compassionate multi-ethnic kingdom culture community committed to sharing truth with love.

People are having similar difficulties with Pope Francis' efforts to evangelize folks like Time, its readers and  Elizabeth Dias, the author. So called 'liberal Catholics' and those ignorant of the teachings of the Church (like Time, et.al.) leapt at some of his comments as hints that he was open to changing Church doctrine on homosexual acts, divorce, birth control, etc.  and figured he misspoke or was throwing a bone to B16-philes when he said, "of course I'm a son of the Church" and that he affirms everything the Church teaches on those issues.

Perhaps this pictorial essay in The Week may help Time readers to understand how we can recognize a person as created in the image of God while he or she is attempting to obscure the Imago Dei.

God sees us as He created us, kind of like the picture on the left (Gen 1:27 So God made man in his own image, made him in the image of God. Man and woman both, he created them. 28 And God pronounced his blessing on them....31 And God saw all that he had made, and found it very good.)



Our own accretions to ourselves, when they diverge from God's design for us, may be colorful, entertaining, 'edgy', or whatever. We may think they are authentic expressions of who we think we really are. We may think they make us more happy.

But God sees us as we really are, as He created us. And He sees that all He has made is very good. The things we do to ourselves to alter that creation are not really improvements. They aren't beautiful, true and good.

Christianity demands that I recognize, love and respect the human person created in God's image beneath the caricature of a person as she represents herself in the picture on the right. I needn't love or respect the rib cage corset or skull headpiece. In fact, I ought, in a loving way, share with her that she would be more comfortable, more authentic and more truly happy being as God created her to be.

Nor does loving a person Imago Dei require me to love or respect his disfigurement of his sexuality, his responsibilities to the poor or to the defenseless. That is how I do my duty to my fellow man, created in God's image, and to God, Who created him.

ADDENDUM: Here is another example of the Imago Dei exposed and concealed.


Of course, Our Father sees us in our hearts, as we really are. I pray he doesn't see a made-up clown when He looks at me.

Death by a Thousand Cuts by Hanlon's Razor

This is the most confounding administration I have ever seen. Every indication leads to the conclusion that it's intentionally committed to the destruction of the remnants of Constitutional order that still flutter like tattered shreds from the bent and corroded flag pole of our body politic.

It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that nothing this administration has done has been to the benefit of the country, while nearly everything it has done has been to its detriment. Granted, some interest group, grievance mob or financial concern has benefited greatly from this or that particular policy. But it is clear that the General Welfare has suffered and continues to do so.

Such a perfect record of perfidy cannot be unintentional, can it?

But can we be sure that the administration is guilty of  deceitfulness; untrustworthiness.

synonyms:

treachery, duplicity, deceit, deceitfulness, disloyalty, infidelity,faithlessness, unfaithfulness, betrayal, treason, double-dealing,untrustworthiness, breach of trust;

I feel like we can.

But, is it possible that this is The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight on a gargantuan, whole-of-government level?

Before we leap on the crazy train of conspiracy theory, we should at least try to eliminate any more likely possibilities.

My first inclination is to assign the mal-government of the current regime to a gargantuan case of Groupthink among the Progressive/Liberal/Leftist "elite" operating in this country.

According to the Oregon State University web site on the subject, it appears so:

Groupthink occurs when a homogenous highly cohesive group is so concerned with maintaining unanimity that they fail to evaluate all their alternatives and options. Groupthink members see themselves as part of an in-group working against an outgroup opposed to their goals.

The symptoms are familiar to anyone following the antics of the current administration and its fellow travelers: 

To make groupthink testable, Irving Janis devised eight symptoms indicative of groupthink.

Type I: Overestimations of the group — its power and morality

• Illusions of invulnerability creating excessive optimism and encouraging risk taking.
• Unquestioned belief in the morality of the group, causing members to ignore the consequences of their actions.

Type II: Closed-mindedness

• Rationalizing warnings that might challenge the group's assumptions.
• Stereotyping those who are opposed to the group as weak, evil, biased, spiteful, impotent, or stupid.

Type III: Pressures toward uniformity

• Self-censorship of ideas that deviate from the apparent group consensus.
• Illusions of unanimity among group members, silence is viewed as agreement.
• Direct pressure to conform placed on any member who questions the group, couched in terms of "disloyalty"
• Mind guards— self-appointed members who shield the group from dissenting information.

And the outcomes also seem to fit Professor Irving Janis' observations:

Groupthink, resulting from the symptoms listed above, results in defective decision-making. That is, consensus-driven decisions are the result of the following practices of groupthinking

• Incomplete survey of alternatives
• Incomplete survey of objectives
• Failure to examine risks of preferred choice
• Failure to reevaluate previously rejected alternatives
• Poor information search
• Selection bias in collecting information
• Failure to work out contingency plans.

That's my working hypothesis. But there is another possibility: Stupidity.

Hanlon's Razor posits: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.


Are we experiencing massive stupidity at a cost of $1.1T per year in direct costs and who knows how much in indirect costs? But isn't the Administration filled with Distinguished Harvard graduates and high ranking government officials?

Yeah, so what? Not like a Harvard education equips them to identify the capital of Canada, or anything like that. The list of Harvard graduates also includes, Enron crook Jeffrey Skilling, a geneticist and child molester named W. French Anderson, and Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.), who was raided by the FBI in August and found to have $90,000 hidden in his freezer and the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, Class of 1962.

No, I'm afraid we have to seriously consider near universal stupidity within the Obama administration and among Progressive/Liberal/Leftists in general before we can leap to any conspiracy theories.

After all, "Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so."

Who to believe?

I love Real Clear Politics. The site allows me to very quickly get a sense of all sides of an issue as the news and commentary unfold. And, more often than not, their headlines almost alternate. And so you are likely to see:

Drafting Docs - Look for doctors to be conscripted to treat Medicare and Medicaid patients by Kevin D. Williamson writing in the National Review Online

juxtaposed with:

No, There Won’t Be a Doctor Shortage by Drs. of administration of medicine Scott Gottlieb and Ezekiel Emanuel writing in the New York Times

Who ya gonna believe most likely depends on where you stand on the political spectrum. The other guys are ideological jerks pushing an agenda. - either way.

In my case, I naturally think Williamson is one of the most insightful commentators on economic issues and Emanuel is a dyed in the wool Leftie who was involved in Obamacare from the beginning and has been a cheer leader for socialized medicine forever.

Actually, they are both right, sort of.

Williamson points to the laws of supply and demand. They're straightforward and pretty much undeniable.

"The economics is pretty straightforward. Higher prices for medical services are built into the Obamacare model: If you inject a ton of money ... into the demand side of the equation but do little or nothing on the supply side, then you expect higher prices as an expanding river of money chases an amount of goods that is not expanding at the same rate, or that is in some cases fixed or even declining.higher demand + limited supply = higher prices."

"The Obamacare price-fixing authority, the Independent Payment Advisory Board, is explicitly charged with reducing Medicare spending, but it is also legally forbidden to do so by reducing benefits, which leaves physicians’ compensation as pretty much the only meaningful source of cuts. So while higher demand + limited supply = higher prices, higher demand + limited supply + price controls = shortages."

And Emanuel really doesn't deny that there will be a shortage of doctors. What he actually says is that it doesn't matter:

"IN just over a decade the United States will need 130,000 more doctors than medical schools are producing. So says the Association of American Medical Colleges, which warns of a doctor shortage that will drive up wait times, shorten office visits and make it harder for Americans to access the care they need.

"he road to Obamacare has seen its share of speed bumps, as well as big potholes. But a physician shortage is unlikely to be one of its roadblocks."

So, there will be a shortage of doctors, as Williamson points out and Emanuel - - quibbles and obfuscates and changes the subject.

So, when is a shortage not a shortage?

Well, says Emanuel, look at Massachusetts, " Appointment wait times for family physicians, internists, pediatricians, obstetricians and gynecologists, and even specialists like cardiologists, have bounced around since but have not APPRECIABLY INCREASED overall" (emphasis mine)

Williamson made a similar observation: "Massachusetts discovered as much when, after it enacted its state-level version of the ACA, waiting times to see doctors increased dramatically and many physicians simply refused to participate in the program."

A shortage isn't a shortage when it isn't an appreciable shortage. Thanks Zeke!

"Research" also "suggests" that you can get by just fine with less actual treatment: "Research on radiation treatments for breast cancer suggests that 15 treatments can be just as effective as the traditional 30 treatments. Likewise, one larger dose of radiation can be as good at relieving pain from bone metastases as five to 10 separate, smaller treatments."

So, if you aren't given as many appointments, you won't have to wait for as many appointments. Less care means less waiting! Thanks again  Zeke!

Dr. Emanuel doesn't see a doctor shortage, but an opportunity! "The opportunity exists to deliver more services and care with fewer physicians" ... because there are fewer physicians available? Isn't that sort of the actual definition of a 'doctor shortage? Yeah, but its not a bug, its a feature of the New Health Care Paradise! Thanks once again Zeke!

But how can we grasp this golden opportunity to deliver more services with fewer physicians?

"Other medical personnel can also expand the reach of physicians to care for a larger population. Nurse practitioners, health aides, pharmacists, dietitians, psychologists and others already care for patients in numerous ways, and their roles should expand in the future."

Williamson agrees, sort of, with this too: "Allowing a larger role for nurse practitioners and other non-physician specialists is a good idea in and of itself, and would have been worthwhile in the absence of Obamacare — if you want prices to go down, expand the supply."

Unfortunately, he isn't following unicorns to Candy Mountain, so he is a little less sanguine about how far this can go.


"But short of a radical deregulation of medical practice (which would have to happen state by state), it is not going to be sufficient to reverse the trends set into motion by the ACA, especially given that so much Medicare compensation is tied to physician-delivered services."

California just changed the law to make abortions by unlicensed non-physicians perfectly legal. Can open heart surgery be far behind? Physicians, we don't need no stinkin' physicians!

But, some things really do have to be done by actual doctors, and as Williamson pointed out, there won't be enough of them who are able to afford to accept government mandated Dollar Store reimbursements. 

"So we can either let spending skyrocket and have patients see their doctors, or we can control spending and endure the wrath of Medicare and Medicaid patients who have health-care coverage in theory but limited access to medical care in reality."

"The main obstacle to reducing Medicare and Medicaid spending is the fact that physicians have a choice about whether to participate in the programs. In the long run, the fact that physicians have a choice about whom they see and where they practice is the most significant challenge to the full implementation of Obamacare. The logical thing — politically and economically — is to eliminate that choice. You don’t have to formally nationalize the health-care industry; you just nationalize 40 percent of each physician’s practice and call it his “fair share.”"

But, it won't be all bad news, "Obamacare will almost certainly intensify that trend, producing a surplus of specialists such as cosmetic surgeons even as the nation experiences a shortage of primary-care physicians. The legacy of Democratic health-care reform very well may turn out to be cheaper boob jobs, a fitting comeuppance for the boobs who put this program in place and the boobs who elected them."

Thanks Zeke! You boob.

Statistics::Math::Logic::Truth or not

Statistics is a branch of Mathematics, which is a form of Logic. So, something that is shown statistically is logically true, which makes it a solid fact, right?

Well, no. That's faulty logic.

We all know the quip: "there are lies, damned lies and statistics." Statisics are useful to liars and politicians (but I repeat myself) because the impart a scientific and rational patina to the liar's lie.

In the case of scientificy lies, statistics are useful tools to give the apperance of scientific fact to the opinions of the theorizer.

Such is the case in this article by Tomas Rees,a medical writer by profession who blogs and writes articles for Humanist publications. So, his theory going in is that the one thing that cannot cause people to believe in God is evidence of His existence.

In this blog post, "Is education the main reason why some countries are less religious?" PhD Rees probably thinks so going in. He read a study by another PhD, Claude Braun, who no doubt started with the premonition that more educated people like himself are less prone to believe in 'gods'.

And how else would a smarty PhD try to prove what he believes to be true: that smart people are atheists and atheist are smart?

"[He] approached this problem basically by pulling together a vast mound of information, and then engaging in a kind of statistical fishing expedition to see what bites."

That reminds me of those charlatains who try to foist "Bible Codes" on their faithful.

A Million Deaths is an Infographic

I came across an interesting post on an interesting web page today. Wait but why  answers questions the authors find interesting using entertaining and informative infographics.

A recent article, The Death Toll Comparison Breakdown addressed "the actual numbers of people that died in key moments throughout history." The author used circles of varying sizes to illustrate the relative death toll of events in recent and not so recent history.

Death Toll

It's interesting, well written and provided a few surprises. For instance, I had no idea that the 2010 earthquake in Haiti resulted in 316K deaths. Or that Pol Pot's Communist genocide in Cambodia killed as many people in only four years as were killed in 200 years of war between Christendom and Islam during the Crusades.

There is one death toll missing, and I wondered where it would stack up along side these other well-known deadly events.

There were roughly 1.2 million abortions performed in 2008

More than 40 million abortions are performed worldwide each year. 

From 1973 through 2008, nearly 50 million legal abortions have occurred in the U.S.

There have been an estimated 1,308, 051,000 abortions worldwide since 1980.

Veteran's Day Aftermath

Been a while since my last post. Life and Facebook have sucked out time for more lengthy reflections.

However, the occasion of Veteran's Day has also brought together three articles that deserve greater analysis in juxtaposition.

Exhibit 1: Hagel Says Cuts to Pay and Benefits are Needed

There are a few things I know about Chuck Hagel: 1) He is a Viet Nam Veteran of not particularly distinguished service. 2) He was a undistinguished senator. During his confirmation hearings his colleagues questioned his intellectual capacity to perform the duties of Secretary of Defense. 3) He replaced Leon Panetta; who, although a former Clinton tool, appeared to take his responsibilities seriously.

From these facts, I quickly determined that Hagel had neither the capacity nor the inclination to do anything but to carry out Obama's instructions to "Fundamentally Transform" the U.S. Military.

Thus, we read this oxymoron: "Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel warned Tuesday that troops and their families will be asked to sacrifice on pay and benefits to preserve readiness in an era of tighter budgets."

Will someone please explain to the Honorable Mr. Hagel that shredding pay and benefits affects morale, recruiting, retention - all of which are instrumental to... readiness?

"We will need to place more of an emphasis on civilian instruments of power," Hagel said.

Yeah, that worked so well for Jimmy Carter, and has really done outstanding things for the U.S. ability to positively influence events around the globe under Jimmy II. Benghazi is a great example. Syria is another. I could go on, but it seems like Chuck, Barry and Valerie are the only ones who don't get it.

The degree of difficulty in the task increased exponentially under the budget cuts, Hagel said. The Defense Department is "currently facing sequester-level cuts on the order of $500 billion over 10 years. This is in addition to the ten-year, $487 billion reduction in DoD's budget that is already underway."

I'd like to give Chuckie credit that this is merely the normal DoD ante into budget negotiations. But there is no report in the article that he is asking for relief, or that the inevitable damage to readiness will affect National Security. It could be that he doesn't get it. But I think his handlers have no desire to adequately fund our Military.

Exhibit 2: While Chuckie was telling current and future Servicemen that they and their families were about to take it in the shorts - take one for the Boeing, Lockheed, General Dynamics, team, that is; his boss was telling us how much he values the service of our Veterans:

"here at Arlington, and Section 60, we’ve ensured that you can continue to bring the small mementos of your love and affection to the final resting place of these American heroes."

Wow. That's some commitment. But that's not all!

"we join as one people to honor a debt we can never fully repay."

What debt cannot be repaid by a government that feels free to spend $1T more than it collects in taxes, that has no compunction to running up $17T in debt for things it thinks are important? According to Chuckie Hagel, it isn't important enough to spend money on adequate pay and benefits.

"In the life of our nation, across every generation, there are those who stand apart.  They step up, they raise their hands, they take that oath.  They put on the uniform and they put their lives on the line.  They do this so that the rest of us might live in a country and a world that is safer, freer, and more just.  This is the gift they’ve given us.  This is the debt that we owe them."

Oh. Sorry. This platitude is, well, lame. It could describe Barney Fife, or a bus driver, or the guy who feeds the lions at the zoo. Barry really can't relate to the men and women who commit themselves, for four years of forty, to the defense of their country; who accept the demanding training, deployments, deprivations, discipline, and danger. He said if he had a son, he'd look like Trayvon. More likely than any son of Barry's would ever look like Micheaux Sanders, who was awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in Iraq. 

"And that’s why, as Commander-in-Chief, I’m going to keep making sure we’re providing unprecedented support to our veterans."

And that's why he's kept Eric Shinseki as head of the VA despite his presiding over the abject failure of the VA to improve its automation systems or to solve the growing backlog of Veterans' cases. You want unprecedented support? You want VA health care that is above average? You got it. Because for those of us who are ineligible to be maltreated by the VA, Obama promises,

"that veterans not covered by the VA can secure quality, affordable health insurance."

Feeling the love, Vets? As the news brings daily reports of the collapse of Obamacare under its own mal-design, mis-management and ill-conception, this line of the president's is more of a threat than a promise.

So, Hagel promises to cut pay and benefits for those serving in the Military while Obama promises to inflict Obamacare on Veterans. Some thanks.

Actually, Obama never thanked Veterans on Veteran's day. Do a word find on the transcript of his speach and discover that the word "thank" is used four times: He thanks the sycophants and props trucked in for the benefit of the TV cameras twice at the beginning of his speech. He thanks Eric (black beret, tanks are archaic, ballooning VA backlog) Shinseki and he thanks his audience once again at the end.

But then, that is actually to be expected that he would refrain from thanking Veterans. Justin Doolittle (fitting name) writes in the Progressive magazine, The Nation:  

Stop thanking the troops for me: No, they don’t “protect our freedoms!”

Well, apparently Obama and his administration have taken Doolittle's advice.

Do people really believe this s#!+?

I mistook a link to an article by Roger Simon of Politico for Roger L. Simon of PJ Media. My mistake. It turned out to be a stream of Liberal talking points and out right lies, but I repeat myself.