Sunday, March 30, 2014
Atheist Myth: "Jesus is not a historical figure" - Debunked by AGNOSTIC ...
Published on Apr 5, 2012
Some fundy atheists actually believe that Jesus never existed. Agnostic Bart D. Ehrman sets the record straight in his new book "Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth".
You may purchase the book here:
http://www.amazon.com/Did-Jesus-Exist...
Bart D. Ehrman (born 1955) is an American New Testament scholar, currently the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ehrman writes about the early Christians, using the term "proto-orthodox" to describe the Christian traditions that would later be defined as orthodox. He describes 1st- and 2nd-century Christians as not yet having a unified, orthodox tradition. He is the author of a number of books in this area, including Misquoting Jesus (2005), God's Problem (2008), and Jesus, Interrupted (2009).
In his books, he recounts his youthful enthusiasm as a born-again, fundamentalist Christian, certain that God had inspired the wording of the Bible and protected its texts from all error.[2] His graduate studies, however, eventually convinced him that one ought to acknowledge the contradictions in the biblical manuscripts rather than attempt to harmonize or reconcile discrepancies. He remained a liberal Christian for fifteen years but later became an agnostic after struggling with the philosophical problems of evil and suffering.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_D._...
You may purchase the book here:
http://www.amazon.com/Did-Jesus-Exist...
Bart D. Ehrman (born 1955) is an American New Testament scholar, currently the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ehrman writes about the early Christians, using the term "proto-orthodox" to describe the Christian traditions that would later be defined as orthodox. He describes 1st- and 2nd-century Christians as not yet having a unified, orthodox tradition. He is the author of a number of books in this area, including Misquoting Jesus (2005), God's Problem (2008), and Jesus, Interrupted (2009).
In his books, he recounts his youthful enthusiasm as a born-again, fundamentalist Christian, certain that God had inspired the wording of the Bible and protected its texts from all error.[2] His graduate studies, however, eventually convinced him that one ought to acknowledge the contradictions in the biblical manuscripts rather than attempt to harmonize or reconcile discrepancies. He remained a liberal Christian for fifteen years but later became an agnostic after struggling with the philosophical problems of evil and suffering.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_D._...
Category
Response to answers from an atheist about God
- "Atheism is an intellectual position."
- Atheist: Atheism means I hold no beliefs in god(s). Having not been convinced, for lack of evidence, I put back to you: would you describe the non-alchemist as taking an intellectual position? These are subcategories of skepticism, or simply not buying into certain popular opinions simply because they're popular."
- Response: Atheism is not only defined as someone who holds no beliefs (or lack of belief). It is also defined as someone who believes there is no God. Different atheists have different definitions. This particular atheist defines his own view. I can't help but wonder which definition of atheism is the right one considering that atheists don't always agree with each other on exactly what it is.
- Response: Is the non-alchemist rejecting alchemy because he believes it is an incorrect view of how things work since the evidence does not support it? If so, his position is that alchemy is false. Furthermore, if someone were to promote alchemy and the non-alchemist were to attempt to refute him, then the non-alchemist is revealing his beliefs based on his actions; namely, that alchemy does not work. Otherwise, why would he seek to speak against it? Furthermore, people behave in a manner consistent with what they believe, not what they don't believe.
- Response: Atheism is not just a lack of belief. It is a position that is held and revealed through actions. When an atheist says there is no evidence for God, or that the evidence is not convincing, then he is stating he has a position about God. It is not a lack of belief because it is a belief based on a reason. Lack of belief is best understood in the context of complete ignorance. You have lack of belief, or no belief in the existence of blornflakers if you don't know what they are and therefore cannot determine their existence or nonexistence. What is a blornflaker? I have no idea since I just made up the word. Therefore, I cannot have a belief or nonbelief in a blornflaker because it is undefined and therefore conceptually meaningless. However, if I were to define it as a blue topping for ice cream produced in a factory on the fourth-largest moon of Jupiter, then an intellectual determination about his existence can be made. Is it more logical to say that a person now "holds no belief" in blornflakers or simply believes that such a thing does not exist because there is no evidence for it? Furthermore, If I were to promote the existence of blornflakers and an a-blornflaker were to attempt to refute the evidence, he would be revealing his position that they don't exist since he's attempting to refute support for it. Again, actions are the result of beliefs, not lack of belief.
- Atheist: Atheism means I hold no beliefs in god(s). Having not been convinced, for lack of evidence, I put back to you: would you describe the non-alchemist as taking an intellectual position? These are subcategories of skepticism, or simply not buying into certain popular opinions simply because they're popular."
- "What reasons do you have for holding that position?"
- Atheist: Your question, properly worded, is "why do I doubt people's claims that their particular god exists?" Simply because there has never been a shred of evidence.
- Response: To say that there has never been a shred of evidence for the existence of a God cannot be logically defended since it would necessitate that the person know all evidences that have been presented at all times. This is not possible. So, to say "there has never been a shred of evidence" for God, is an indefensible position since it is asserting a universal negative.
- Atheist: Your question, properly worded, is "why do I doubt people's claims that their particular god exists?" Simply because there has never been a shred of evidence.
- "So, is there any reason/evidence for you holding your position that you defend? "
- Atheist: Again, doubting your god-claims does not mean that I need to provide evidence. It means that YOU do. Please stop attempting to turn the tables such that you do not hold the burden of proof. You do.
- Response: But, shouldn't a person have a rational justification for stating what he does; namely, that "there has never been a shred of evidence" for God?
- Response: The problem is that if the atheist believes there is no evidence for God's existence, it would be difficult to attempt to present any evidence to him at all. After all, his presupposition is that "there has never been a shred of evidence" presented. Undoubtedly, any evidence that might be presented for God would be evidence that must be dismissed because, as this atheist says "there has never been a shred of evidence" for God's existence. So essentially the atheist is saying he wants people to provide him with evidence but it doesn't matter what evidence they provide because he will dismiss it automatically - an action consistent with his belief that "there has never been a shred of evidence" for God's existence.
- Atheist: Again, doubting your god-claims does not mean that I need to provide evidence. It means that YOU do. Please stop attempting to turn the tables such that you do not hold the burden of proof. You do.
- "If you say that atheism needs no evidence or reason, then you are holding a position that has no evidence or rational basis? If so, then isn't that simply faith?"
- Atheist: See above regarding burden of proof. You are positing an unfalsifiable claim, providing no evidence, daring me to disprove it, and telling me that my doubt is an intellectual stance without evidence. Are you able to notice how, in the case of your god, you contort logic?
- Response: It is an unfalsifiable claim to assert that there has "never been a shred of evidence" for God when we consider that the atheist has essentially stated that all past evidences are invalid. This would mean that his position is an assumption that negates all arguments for God's existence (unless we posit future unknown evidences), an assumption that can't be disproven since he rejects all evidences for God's existence. How then can his position be proven to be false when his position rejects any evidence for God's existence automatically? He is being inconsistent.
- Atheist: See above regarding burden of proof. You are positing an unfalsifiable claim, providing no evidence, daring me to disprove it, and telling me that my doubt is an intellectual stance without evidence. Are you able to notice how, in the case of your god, you contort logic?
- "If you say that atheism needs no evidence to support it because it is a position about the lack of something,"
- Atheist: I hold no belief in god because no evidence has been presented. Please notice how this is not a "position" I take about the nature of the universe. That position is yours alone.
- Response: On the contrary. Your atheism is a position you take about the nature of the universe when you say you hold no belief in God; namely, that the universe is not a created thing. There are always ramifications to beliefs. Your arguments here are not consistent with "no belief." They're consistent with a belief that no God exists since you are making a statement that "there has never been a shred of evidence" for God's existence. The logical conclusion of your position is that God does not exist; hence, the no evidence. To say you hold no belief but also assert that no evidence has ever been a shred of evidence for God, are inconsistent. When a person says there is absolutely no evidence for something, the person is stating that something doesn't exist. Why? There can't be evidence for something that doesn't exist! His actions reveal his believes.
- Response: Why would an atheist state there is no evidence for God and then retreat to something like "I lack belief in it" or say "I hold no belief in it"? It seems more logical to say that the atheist realizes his positive assertion that there is no God is not defensible and therefore must retreat to the idea of "lack of belief in God" while at the same time attempting to disprove God's existence - an action based on belief, not non-belief. Again, we behave based upon what we believe, not based on what we don't believe.
- Atheist: I hold no belief in god because no evidence has been presented. Please notice how this is not a "position" I take about the nature of the universe. That position is yours alone.
- "then do you have other positions you hold based upon lack of evidence...like say, screaming blue ants? Do you hold the position that they do not exist or that you lack belief in them, too? "
- Atheist: I'm much more fascinated with what information is actually available. The scientific study of the cosmos, for instance, if exponentially more fascinating than religious pondering about the cosmos. Your question seems to be, "what else don't you believe in?" The answer is, whatever lacks evidence. This does not mean I cannot imagine impossible or unlikely phenomena. I can and do, whenever I'm feeling artistically creative.
- Response: See point 5 response.
- Atheist: I'm much more fascinated with what information is actually available. The scientific study of the cosmos, for instance, if exponentially more fascinating than religious pondering about the cosmos. Your question seems to be, "what else don't you believe in?" The answer is, whatever lacks evidence. This does not mean I cannot imagine impossible or unlikely phenomena. I can and do, whenever I'm feeling artistically creative.
- "Furthermore, obtaining evidence for God would be quite a bit of a challenge for me,"
- Atheist: Yes, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That which can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.
- Response: How do you know it is true that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"? Isn't that claim itself extraordinary? How do you test and demonstrate that such a statement is valid? Furthermore, it is a subjective statement. What is extraordinary evidence for one person might not be extraordinary evidence for another. Also, what would qualify as extraordinary evidence? What criteria would you use to determine what is extraordinary evidence? Also, an extraordinary claim for one person might not be an extraordinary claim for another. What would qualify as an extraordinary claim? What criteria would you use to determine what an extraordinary claim is? If atheists want to be logical, then let the logic apply to them as well. Defend your assertion logically. Simply offering a sound-bite as somehow repudiating God's evidence just won't work.
- Atheist: Yes, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That which can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.
http://carm.org/response-answers-atheist
Did Justice Kagan embarrass herself during the Hobby Lobby oral arguments?
If Betsey McCaughey is correct (and I bet she is, because she has not only read the entire ObamaCare bill, she has written a book about it), Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan publicly humiliated herself during the oral arguments on theHobby Lobby case, revealing that she either did not read the law, or failed to comprehend it if she did so.
Writing in the New York Sun, McCaughey lays out what is wrong with the Justice’s declaration about Obamacare: she asserted that the statute itself mandates provision of birth control.
Writing in the New York Sun, McCaughey lays out what is wrong with the Justice’s declaration about Obamacare: she asserted that the statute itself mandates provision of birth control.
Not one word in the Affordable Care Actguarantees health plans will cover birth control products. There is no right. President Obama and his Secretary of Health and Human Services added that requirement by regulation. Women have a constitutionally protected right to use birth control, but nothing guarantees that they can get it from an employer.It was shocking to hear Justice Kagan make the same spurious claim — that women are entitled to employer provided contraceptives — during oral argument: “Congress has made a judgment and Congress has given a statutory entitlement and that entitlement is to women and includes contraceptive coverage.” Wrong, Justice Kagan. Did you also forgo reading the law, like most members of Congress?The distinction between a regulation and a law is no small matter. As Hobby Lobby’s lawyer stressed in his closing statement, a statute, in this case Congress’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, trumps a regulation.
Kagan’s mistake, if that’s what it was, goes to the heart of a serious contemporary problem: the proliferation of bureaucratic regulation carrying the force of law, wholly produced not by legislation, but by bureaucrats.
It should be deeply shocking and embarrassing if a sitting Supreme Court Justice confused bureaucratic regulation for actual statutory language. A former Harvard Law School professor, and dean, no less. One of the reasons we venerate the Supreme Court is that the justices are expected to immerse themselves in the cases, and ponder them deeply.
Fortunately, there will be ample opportunity, as the Justices draft their thoughts on the case and send them to one another, for Kagan’s apparent error to be pointed out – no doubt in a collegial manner – by her colleagues.
As Betsey McCaughey posits, it looks a lot like the errant Justice got her information from Democrat “war on women:” talking points, not from legal scholarship. It’s the sort of error Professor Kagan might have given a student an “F” for making.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/03/did_justice_kagan_embarrass_herself_during_the_hobby_lobby_oral_arguments.html
Progressivism vs. the Pursuit of Happiness
Self-interest is good -- not because it "raises the general standard of living" or "makes workers more productive." If it did neither of these things, it would still be good for a more fundamental reason, namely that it is the proper motivation of our nature as human beings. In short, self-interest is moral.
Most public discussion today, however, occurs within the moral paradigm established by our universal progressive indoctrination. Even principled people who wish to defend liberty often find themselves in muddled and unwinnable debates, having unwittingly accepted progressive moral premises.
The progressive paradigm is diffuse and sophisticated, but it may be summarized in one thought, namely that individuals exist for the State, rather than the State for individuals. This is not a new idea, on its face; what is new is that this idea, which used to be called tyranny, has been recast as morality. An alliance of serious thinkers and clever subversives has fundamentally shifted the burden of proof in moral matters to favor the presumption of collective authority over every aspect of life. This deep-seated principle reduces everyone who has not radically purged himself of it to the Pyrrhic position of arguing that the slackening of government control is justifiable because it will benefit the State in some way -- defending freedom as a more efficient way of achieving tyrannical goals, rather than as our birthright.
Understanding precisely how the burden of moral proof was shifted, and how this shift has distorted political debate, is essential to any hope of eventually regaining a proper perspective.
An intellectual tradition developed in earliest modernity framed our epoch's basic political question as, in effect, "Why do free men need a government?" Hence the famous "state of nature" theories, the vocabulary of "natural rights" and "social contracts," and the gradual establishment of the principles of limited government.
Today, progressivism, having fed mankind through its educational, artistic, and bureaucratic meat-grinder, has supplanted modernity's basic political question with a new one: "Why does a government need free men?"
The first question arose from the premise that individual humans and their needs are natural and primary, such that superimpositions of collective authority upon social relations are justified only insofar as these help to advance our rational, pre-governmental ends. The second question, which is implicit in all contemporary politics, arises from the premise that the collective is the primary reality, such that any freedoms individuals are permitted to enjoy are justified only insofar as they serve the collective's ends, as defined by the State.
How did civilization achieve this complete metaphysical and moral reversal, from the presumed priority of the concrete rational individual to the presumed priority of an abstraction, "society"?
It was the revolutionary German philosophers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries -- Kant, Fichte, Hegel -- followed by their critics and intellectual heirs, from Schopenhauer to Marx, who developed the soul-obliterating theories that have eroded modernity. The moral ground of their corruptive influence was the view that self-interest, meaning nothing less than the pursuit of happiness, is intrinsically immoral and slavish, while true freedom entails the submission of one's life to the interests of the collective, i.e., to the State.
This historic turn from the individual as source of any possible collective to the collective as source of whatever is permitted to remain of the individual came into full bloom in Kant's ethics.
Eighteenth century thought was shaken by the perceived implications of Newtonian physics: if the new scientific materialism is truly comprehensive -- if mechanistic nature is all there is -- then man too must be reducible to the cause-effect laws of science. But this, it was feared, would mean the end of all dreams of human uniqueness, rendering moral freedom a mere delusional perception of our place in nature's causal chain.
Kant's famous solution, crystallized in his "categorical imperative," was that the only way to perceive ourselves as free, rather than as part of a mechanistic nature, would be to reject all motives of individual interest in favor of obedience to universalizable moral maxims. That is, we must obey "rational" rules of behavior formed independently of contextual considerations, which means independently of any concern for our own happiness.
To clarify: moral choice, classically understood, is in most cases grounded in the practical conditions of men's lives, requiring the combination of well-formed character and mature practical reasoning, i.e., virtue, to find and pursue the "golden mean" as defined by the particular situation and human nature. Thus virtue is not only consistent with, but the realization of, our desire for well-being or happiness, properly understood. To live virtuously is to pursue the good -- the naturally desirable -- through choices made in accordance with our circumstances and the nature of a rational animal, which, in turn, is to be happy.
This formula is detailed in the most influential of all moral treatises, Aristotle'sNicomachean Ethics, but its foundation -- that man is the happiness-seeking animal -- may easily be traced backward through earlier moral thought, from Socrates to Democritus to Pythagoras, and forward through the medieval Christian philosophers, the Enlightenment rationalists and empiricists, and indeed through any moral philosophy worthy of the name.
Kant categorically rejected this conception of virtue grounded in the natural desire for happiness -- the desire to feel "complete" or "perfectly alive" -- in favor of a demand for duty and obedience without regard for the contextual deliberation that reveals genuine virtue. That is, he demanded that men deny their quest for thegood-for-them in favor of his abstract "good" -- the universalizable maxim -- which was explicitlynot the good for any individual human being per se, but rather the means of silencing all self-interested motivation. It followed that all action undertaken as a means to individual well-being should be regarded as not only outside the realm of legitimate moral reasoning, but in fact a countervailing motive which must be eliminated from moral thought. In other words, according to Kantianism, the desire for happiness -- previously seen as nature's defining moral motive -- is at best morally irrelevant, at worst a hindrance to pure morality. (Kant's own account of happiness is notoriously confused, trivializing, and contradictory, presumably because he wished to remove it from the realm of moral ends, but could not see how to deny its value altogether.)
The liberal Kant's most influential student, the authoritarian Fichte, drew out the full implications of Kant's ethics, applying to practical politics what Kant had left largely theoretical. Fichte, arguably the first true progressive in the precise sense, objected to Kant's concern with saving human dignity and free will, regarding this as an illegitimate throwback to the old morality of self-interest which, on consistently Kantian terms, must be obliterated. Declaring free will the enemy of true morality, and prescribing its eradication as the primary function of education, Fichte advocated obedience to social duty for its own sake, and specifically the submission of individual conscience to the collective. The State would supplant the traditional religious role of a transcendent being, replacing God with a new heaven on Earth, alternately defined by Fichte as "the nation," "Germany," and "the future."
Paradoxically, the spiritual life of modern freedom was all but over even as the fullest practical realization of that life, America, was still in its infancy. The first nation to make "the pursuit of happiness" an explicit founding principle -- a pithy expression of the link between moral and political freedom -- would be forced to grow up in a world in which that pursuit had just been declared illegitimate and immoral by the leading intellectuals. Modernity's true vanguard and bright hope was suddenly branded hopelessly backward and superficial, clinging to an antiquated moral perspective that placed "mere" individual well-being above the good of the State.
From here it was a short step to the development of nineteenth century socialism and communism -- Kant's Perpetual Peace laid the UN's spiritual foundation, and Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation were already calling for compulsory indoctrination against private conscience and property. Among the nineteenth century European and North American intellectual elite, schooled in the fashionable new German philosophies, often studying at German universities, the idea that morality entailed the rejection of all motives of self-interest spread like a brushfire. This rejection of the search for personal happiness -- the core of proper moral thought -- appeals to spiteful intellectuals and power-hungry political operators alike, as it belittles all human hopes or motives that might be recalcitrant to artificially imposed grand designs of one kind or another. Paternalistic despotism and theoretical assaults on all notions of government rooted in natural freedom were the bread and butter of "advanced" Western thinking throughout the nineteenth century, provided the impetus behind the totalitarian atrocities of the twentieth, and form the essence of establishment politics today.
As for the inevitable historical lag between the evolution of the leading thinkers and that of the "masses" or "folk," this can be traced in the gradual implementation of the true progressive society envisioned by the academic and political forerunners. Universal government schooling, the most indispensable step, came early, modeled on the original Prussian schools inspired by Fichte. From there, the marginalization of the family's role in child development (the early public school advocates' primary goal), the diminution of the distinction between male and female (gradually transforming nature's complementary parts into spiritually uniform "workers"), and the withering of religious belief in favor of the deification of government, proceeded apace.
Psychologically, the rejection of the ethics of happiness in favor of "disinterested" self-abnegation diminished and denatured our species, producing the moral split personality that has ravaged modern society -- sentimental collectivism crossed with nihilistic self-seeking.
Faulty theory cannot change nature. Humans must and will continue to pursue their self-preservation and self-development. However, due to the universal slander of individual happiness as an immature or immoral motive, men have been left with no education grounded in reason and nature to guide their pursuit of the good. The political result of this moral dissonance is today's mainstream: greedy, gluttonous, irrational pleasure-seekers who are also easy dupes for every charismatic rabble-rouser who rallies their nihilistic sentimentality against "the wealthy," "the uncompassionate," and those with "more than their fair share."
German academia's poisonous assault on individualism and the ethics of personal happiness (i.e., virtue) quickly infected every organ of modernity, from the spires of the ivory tower to the floorboards of the one-room schoolhouse. The moral tenets of German idealist and post-idealist philosophies -- from Kant and Fichte through Marx and Engels and on to the Frankfurt School -- have become the defining beliefs of the late modern world:
- The individual is merely an illusory facet of the collective.
- Self-interest, meaning concern with one's own well-being, is immoral.
- The pursuit of one's own happiness is petty and superficial.
- Submitting one's mind to the collective will is true morality.
- The future belongs to those who accept the trajectory of History, which is progressively dissolving all distinctions between nations, between men, between man and woman, adult and child, reason and feeling, as we flow together in History's current toward a kaleidoscopic dream of collective self-creation, guided by the unlimited State.
Contrary to the more impatient German thugs, such as Fichte and Marx, the pluralistic forms of progressive authoritarianism have generally proved the most durable means of embedding collectivist ideals within a society. This is perhaps due to democratic man's endless genius for prettifying Hell with decorous chains and scented flames. Thus "the rule of the people," filtered through the prism of collectivist ethics, becomes the presumption of every man to a legitimate claim on the life, time, and labor of every other man.
This is the mechanism whereby Tocqueville's "soft despotism" has been realized on a global scale. The mechanism has two sides or phases. The famous side is what we call the entitlement mentality, which, simply stated, is the presumption that all members of the collective own all others, and may therefore demand things from them coercively.
The equally important flipside, however, is the presumption that all men areowned by the collective, and must therefore pay tribute to the beast in order to be considered worthy of living. This side's function, from the point of view of the progressives who carefully cultivate it, is to reinforce the ethics of self-negation by entrenching the social rule of submission to the State, whereby anyone who resists his proper role as servant of the collective, i.e., of the government, must be ostracized as "selfish," and punished and/or re-educated.
This leads us back to where we came in: until we understand and reject this entire ethical framework -- the German philosophy that has become the moral background music of our civilization -- the proper argument for freedom can never be made. If we accept the premise that the pursuit of happiness is immoral (indistinguishable from "greed") then we are reduced to the apologetic, self-defeating argument that some partial freedom ought to be tolerated as the most effective way to produce the prosperity that sustains authoritarian rule. Would today's Chinese Communist Party disagree?
Let's return to the only argument worthy of the subject: Individuals are metaphysically and morally prior to collectives. Happiness is our proper moral motivation. The free man does not have to justify himself to the State; the State has to justify itself to the free man. These are the premises we have inherited from our tradition and from our nature, though we now grope for them with difficulty through the smog of despotic philosophy that dominates our world.
Allow me to conclude with a breath of fresh moral air from beyond that smog:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/03/progressivism_vs_the_pursuit_of_happiness.htmlTherefore the last and perfect happiness, which we await in the life to come, consists entirely in contemplation [of the divine essence]. But imperfect happiness, such as can be had here, consists first and principally, in an activity of the practical intellect directing human actions and passions.... [Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Treatise on the Last End, Question 3]
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
MSNBC is in serious trouble
This is the story of MSNBC in a nutshell: It rose to prominence on its criticism of George W. Bush, peaked during Barack Obama's historic 2008 campaign, and, by criticizing Republicans and championing liberal causes, sustained its viewership in the years that followed.
Until now.
MSNBC suffered harder loses in 2013 -- in terms of both viewership and revenue -- than either of its competitors at Fox News and CNN, according to Nielsen data featured in a new Pew Research report. Prime-time viewership declined by a staggering 24 percent (nearly twice the loss sustained by CNN and four-times that sustained by Fox News). Daytime viewership fell by 15 percent, even as it rose at both of the other networks.
On the revenue side, MSNBC was projected to decline by 2 percent, while both CNN and Fox News were projected to experience growth of 2 percent and 5 percent, respectively. MSNBC was expected to bring in $475 million in revenue: less than half what CNN will make and roughly one-quarter of what Fox News will make.
Conventional wisdom has it that cable news doesn't have much of a future: The audience is old and getting older, the television landscape is growing more and more fractured, appointment viewing is becoming a thing of the past, etc. Certainly, every cable news network lost viewers last year. But this version of events often ignores the incredible revenue gains made each year by Fox News (like a rocket) and CNN (far more gradual, but we're still talking billions).
MSNBC isn't seeing that growth, and it's not clear how it will. In a world where liberals wanted to be outraged by George Bush every night, or celebrate the rise of Barack Obama, MSNBC had a theory of the case. But now Obama's presidency has turned into a slog, and MSNBC isn't compelling. Prime time is just hours of what often seems like feigned outrage. And the daytime strategy -- giving shows to kids in their 20s and 30s, in an apparent bid to reach the youths -- is comically bad, and rendered absurd at every commercial break when the catheter ads come on.
2016 will help MSNBC, as it will help all cable news networks, but that's not a long-term business strategy. The network needs to figure out what it's going to do in the off years. There are a few powerful brands that are worth maintaining -- Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Morning Joe -- but the rest is in need of a restart.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/03/msnbc-is-in-serious-trouble-185770.html
Monday, March 24, 2014
When trying to impart truth on obama lovers, facts that substantiate our position, generate the most ridiculous responses.
1) they spin the issue to a personal attack on the messenger
2) they become emotional and begin to lie
3) they stick their fingers in their ears and refuse to hear
2) they become emotional and begin to lie
3) they stick their fingers in their ears and refuse to hear
Very juvenile… As I recall, that was the behavior of children on the playground in elementary school days.
The democratic party knows this.
This is why the dumbing down of American citizens is priority number one with enemies of our Constitutional Republic.
Clueless people are easy targets of the government. Targets of a corrupt government quickly become enslaved to the government through socialist programs.
In the 20th century, 170 million people were annihilated by their own governments AFTER BEING DISARMED.
Do you understand now, why the corrupt leaders in our federal government are so eager to disarm, dumb down, brainwash our youth, and offer to be the answer to all problems of American citizens?
If you can’t see it, hear it, or comprehend it, then you are part of the problem, rather than the solution.
If you are part of the problem, then you are the enemy of the Constitutional Republic.
Ignorance is no excuse.
Get educated with the TRUTH and get liberated from the abusive strong arm of our out of control government.
Read more at http://janmorganmedia.com/2014/03/na-na-nanana-cant-hear/#LiIv1TveHMzIDhy6.99
Nothing new same old story same old song and dance, MSNBC thinks that everone should worship Obama as a God "the feeling or expression of reverence and adoration for a deity,
The feeling or expression of reverence and adoration for a deity.
"the worship of God"
| synonyms: | reverence, veneration, adoration, glorification, glory, exaltation |
Conservatives don’t oppose President Barack Obama because they dislike his policies. They oppose the president because they “hate” him, or so say a lot of people on MSNBC.
“Right-wingers,” MSNBC hosts and guests argue, don’t really oppose NSA spying, the IRS’ admitted practice of targeting conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status or the millions and millions of dollars that have been wasted on taxpayer-funded green energy boondoggles.
No, according to MSNBC speakers, conservatives oppose Obama because they just hate him.
In fact, according to host Chris Matthews, it sometimes seems like they hate Obama more than they hate Al Qaeda. And for host Al Sharpton, who has a penchant for repeating back the president’s exact words, conservatives “hate” for Obama is a fact of life.
If this all sounds familiar, it should. The network has been running with this argument for quite some time, as you can see in the following video from the Washington Free Beacon:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/03/24/msnbc-hosts-guests-convinced-conservatives-hate-obama-and-heres-a-video-showing-a-lot-of-people-at-the-network-saying-it/
Thursday, March 6, 2014
'The New Atheism' by Richard Dawkins, AAI 2007
Uploaded on Nov 10, 2009
*** This is NOT the new talk from AAI 2009, this is from 2007. I just wanted to get it up on our youtube channel. - Josh
Richard Dawkins talks about "The New Atheism" at the AAI 2007 Conference in Washington, D.C.
Richard Dawkins talks about "The New Atheism" at the AAI 2007 Conference in Washington, D.C.
Is faith the enemy? A revealing look at the tenets of New Atheism.
February 22, 2010
There is a movement in this country called NewAtheism. This movement is more aggressive and anti-Christianity than atheists have ever been before. Even atheists argue about the beliefs and methods of the New Atheists.
There is a movement in this country called NewAtheism. This movement is more aggressive and anti-Christianity than atheists have ever been before. Even atheists argue about the beliefs and methods of the New Atheists.
In order to understand what New Atheists believe, I paraphrase below Andrew Brown's 6 tenets of the philosophy, which are found in his popular internet article The New Atheism, a definition and a quiz. He distills these tenets from the writings of New Atheists Robert L. Park, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris. New Atheists believe. . .
1) Faith is something the ignorant depend on, and it is a form of denial. Faith is held by those who don't want to see the evidence of something to the contrary. Faith is superstition.
2) Science can prove whether or not God exists. It is the only way to know.
3) Science is the opposite of Faith, and, because Science is rational, it will bring enlightenment.
4) Rationalism and Science are so superior to Faith, Faith will lose in any contest. Society would be better if we jettison Faith for Reason. We would get along, too, if we throw out religion. (My note: This last point is reflected in the song Imagine, by John Lennon).
5) Religion's true nature is rage, no matter what form it takes. Fundamentalists and Islam may be obviously outrageous, but more mainstream forms of religion are also dangerous.
6) Faith, as defined as religious and superstitious, is the enemy. It is dangerous, and those with Reason must struggle against it. The outcome of this war against Faith will determine the future of mankind.
They also have changed the definition of atheist. The old atheists simply denied the existence of God. "There is no God." The New Atheists say they do not believe in God. The distinction is small, but to them, it is everything. God cannot be proved by science, they say, and superstitious Faith is the enemy.
You may have noticed, atheists are getting proactive with their beliefs. Bus ads and billboard advertising are just two examples of the effects of this philosophy.
The New Atheists are so proactive and passionate, some say they have tremendous faith in not having faith.
You would expect that Christians would resist this movement, but humanists and other atheists are hesitant when it comes to New Atheism too. Secular Humanist Examiner Paul Fidalgo writes in his articleDistortions of the New Atheists prevent substantive debate about their impact about how the debate over whether to accept the tenets and "instigator position" is causing a rift among secularists.
It's an interesting turn, and, in a future post, I will examine the Christian response to atheists and this new movement.
http://www.examiner.com/article/is-faith-the-enemy-a-revealing-look-at-the-tenets-of-new-atheism
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
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