MIKE writes:

Maybe it’s a sign of a deep spiritual deficit, but I’ve never understood the point of view that the idea of a universe created by God is mutually exclusive to the idea of biological evolution. For the people who strictly put their belief in evolution, the theory isn’t and never will be broad enough to rule out a divinely created world or a personally interested God. The people that strictly put their belief in creationism overlook the fact that evolutionary theory has been accurate enough to make useful predictions about the world we live in. I’d be interested to read your thoughts on how and if it’s possible to reconcile the two opposing points of view.

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  Sicut cervus desiderat ad fontes aquarum, ita desiderat anima mea ad te, Deus. As a hart longs for the flowing streams, so longs my soul for thee, O God. ---- Psalm 42: 1

FRED OWENS writes:

Some of her views might coincide with what you advocate, but I doubt that you approve of her presentation.

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SVEN writes:

Thank you for your thought-provoking blog. It has been great reading looking through your archives after recently discovering your blog.

I was thinking today about how the 1950s are the benchmark years for many conservatives. It is natural, given that the ’50s preceded America’s most disastrous decade, and are remembered fondly as the last time America was “normal.” However, it seems probable that many of the sicknesses that would boil to the surface in the ’60s had their beginnings in the decade of “wholesome Americaness.” Perhaps conservatives should not idolize that decade so much, and should find a new era as an anchor point to represent a healthy traditional society. (more…)

  EMILY L. writes: FROM The Telegraph: Two young girls born through an informal sperm donation deal between a gay couple and a lesbian couple have been scarred for life by a bitter six-year feud after their two fathers and two mothers fell out, a judge has warned. Imagine that.

DON VINCENZO writes:

I would embark on a fool’s errand to repeat the details of the ongoing saga of the decline of the U.S. military academies, but my naiveté allows me to think that sanity will ultimately prevail. That hope of a change for the better dimmed recently when Prof. Bruce Fleming, the Naval Academy’s curmudgeon, revealed that he was once again threatened with expulsion from his 27-year teaching position because of his “insensitivity.”

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  W. W. writes: As a huge admirer of your blog, I write regarding a news event you might have missed. Netherlands is one of the most 'advanced' euthanasia-friendly societies in the world. We had a health minister in the 1990s, Els Borst, whose foremost goal in office was to legalize euthanasia, Europe's first major law permitting euthanasia. Upon succeeding she exclaimed, "Het is volbracht," or "It is done," the last words of Jesus on the cross. Perhaps it was a Freudian slip, perhaps a calculated jab at the moral convictions of those Christians who had been apposing her endeavours. On February the 10th of this year, Ms. Borst was discovered dead in the garage of her villa residence and appeared to have been bludgeoned to death. From The Week: [She] had spent a happy day out in Amsterdam on Saturday 8 February with her 17-year-old grand-daughter. “She was in good spirits, apparently.” On her return to Bilthoven, she picked up her car at the station and drove home. She had just driven into the garage and got out of the car when she was hit by someone who had evidently been waiting in the dark. The assailant struck with astonishing violence, caving in her skull with one blow. Her body was not found until Monday evening. The investigation is still ongoing but she seems to have fallen foul of a burglar. A Protestant minister who subsequently dared to raise the issue of  'Divine…

A READER writes:

I wanted you to know I was rather relieved when you were unable to post for a few days. It meant I no longer had an excuse to ignore my daily household obligations. And now, much to my dismay (and much to my glee), you have resumed posting. I suppose the laundry will have to wait another day. I have been a silent lurker for several months and have been immensely enjoying myself. You bring grace, clarity, intellect and wisdom to the blogosphere. Thank you from a young, often disheveled, homeschooling, Catholic mother of four small boys.

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SOCIALISTS don’t think much of housewives. Why should they? Housewives don’t do much for the cause. The worker bee can be raised in an institution.

Last week, Chairman Obama, promoting the Marxist scheme of cheap daycare for all, said:

“Moms and dads deserve a great place to drop their kids off every day that doesn’t cost them an arm and a leg. We need better child care, day care, early child education policies.”

Doesn’t it make you cringe to hear a politician refer to grown men and women as “moms and dads?” He added:

“Sometimes, someone, usually Mom, leaves the workplace to stay home with the kids, which then leaves her earning a lower wage for the rest of her life as a result. That’s not a choice we want Americans to make.”

No president, I believe, has ever so baldly endorsed feminist thinking on the vocation of housewife. Socialists collectivize homes. That’s what they do. They also promise things they can’t possibly deliver. Quality daycare is an oxymoron. Though it can never be delivered, it can always be dreamed of, to the point of actually believing that parents have the right to someone else raising their children cheaply.

American presidents did not always think so little of those who personally raise the next generation in their homes. Theodore Roosevelt, speaking in 1905, said: (more…)

THIS $100,000 bronze sculpture of a “real” British family was unveiled this week in front of the Library of Birmingham. The models were two single women with their sons. Gillian Wearing, the artist, says, “A nuclear family is one reality but it is one of many and this work celebrates the idea that what constitutes a family should not be fixed.” This bleak portrait of two haggard zombies doesn’t seem to succeed in celebrating anything. But perhaps their haggardness is seen as heroic.

The sculpture in front of the $188 million new library is a way of saying, “Even though we built this egotistic monstrosity, we are the people, we love the people.”

Interestingly, the women who posed for the statue were mixed race, but Wearing chose to portray them as white.

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IN THE previous discussion about fathers setting limits for their daughters, James F. writes:

Most of the females I’ve met have a tendency to blame anyone except themselves, and especially men. Feminists in particular are somewhat comical in their constant complaining and blaming of men, never quite clever enough to realize that in doing this they are passing all the responsibility to the man. Then they ignorantly complain about men having all the authority. These Jezebels are caught in their own paradox. This is why they are almost always miserable: they insist on having (or usurping) complete control over everything, but when something goes wrong they won’t take the blame – so they never improve and the situation never improves. The unfortunate men in relationships with these women often endure such a battery of constant psychological abuse that they lose their identities and become passive and useless, often turning to drug abuse or defiling themselves in various ways. I have seen this happen to a number of close friends.

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PETER writes:

When you think for a time about Darwinian assertions on life formation, one rather simple aspect gets overlooked. Primarily, any so called mutations would have to be either produced, or be chromosome compatible, in both male and female organisms simultaneously to ensure the transmission and fusion of genetic information.

Other than viruses and other micro-organisms all life is heterogeneous. That random variation and natural selection some how coordinated DNA modification simultaneously in two sexually distinct life forms is just absurd. The ontological question of how beings came into existence as two distinct sexual entities with compatible reproductive ability and in proximity of one another to start reproduction is even more ludicrous.

Genetic research seems to confirm the statement in Genesis, “according to its kind.” Or perhaps we’re just not sophisticated enough to be agnostic.

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  [UPDATE, NOV. 1: More comments have finally been posted in the previous discussion.] I HAVE more comments to post in the previous discussion. I hope to return to blogging this afternoon. I had to travel out of town to take care of a relative who is sick and have not had any time at my computer since yesterday.

KARL D. writes:

This charming photo from a group called “Blue Nation Review” has been making the rounds on Facebook. A man purporting to be a “Feminist Father” is wearing a T-shirt that lays out the “rules” for dating his daughter. The punch line (if you want to call it that) is that there are no rules! Her body, her choice. With fathers like that, who needs enemies?

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  LACONIA Public Library in Laconia, New Hampshire is housed in one the many beautiful American public library buildings built in the 19th and early 20th centuries, at a time when the acts of thinking and reading were still considered inherently ennobling. The building, so different from the functional and non-ornamental modern library, speaks of its lofty purpose. This is democracy offset by aristocratic principles. The building is open to all and yet does not pander to the masses. Here a blogger reminisces about childhood days spent in the library.  It was less than 100 years old when I was little but it looked like an old fairy castle, and it felt magical, with its spires and turrets.  Opening the front doors led you to the main reading room, where old men sat with their papers.  The librarian there smiled at us as we passed her on our way to the children's room.  [...] On the way home, our car could have passed by an entire road-side circus and we wouldn't have noticed; our minds were already too far away, engrossed in whatever we were reading.  The car was absolutely silent, like its own library. I don't remember a time when I didn't know that library.  I grew up there. And even though I live in New York City, with its gorgeous Beaux-Arts library and its huge central Brooklyn library, none of that can ever top my memories of the Laconia…

THE end of white rule in South Africa has been a spectacular disaster for black South Africans and white Afrikaners. The soccer star Senzo Meyiwa is the latest victim of gun violence there. He was killed during a robbery.

More than 17,000 people were murdered in South Africa from April 2013 to March 2014, an increase of 800 deaths from the previous year.  The Western world deserves to share in the blame for these deaths, which were overwhelmingly committed by blacks. The West bullied South Africa relentlessly to abandon apartheid.

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  MR. BERGOGLIO speaks on evolution. As usual, he specializes in contradictions and incoherence. God creates all things and yet he is not magic. God directed biological change and yet gave "autonomy" to beings. Evolution (popularly understood as the appearance of life forms through random mutation) is "not inconsistent with the notion of creation." Let me suggest that this confusion is intentional. I have highlighted the remarks that support the Darwinian mechanistic view: "When we read in Genesis the story of Creation we risk imagining that God was a magician, complete with a magic wand that make everything. But (this) is not so. He created beings and let them develop in accordance with the internal laws that He has given to each one, because they emerged (or developed) themselves; they arrived themselves at (their) own fullness. He gave autonomy to the beings of the universe at the same time in which he assured them of his continued presence, giving the beings to all reality. Thus, the creation has been going on for centuries, millennia and millennia until it became what we know today, because God is not a demiurge or a wizard, but the Creator who gives being to all entities. The beginning of the world is not the work of the chaos that has another of its origin, but is derived directly from a supreme Principle that creates with love. The Big Bang, which today stands at the origin of…