It's also more than a bit embarrassing in light of the Fort Hood shooting, and makes MSNBC look a bit racist. They're going out and digging up kooks of one skin colour while going out of their way to ignore or excuse kooks of another. I'm less concerned about kooks that I have to go looking for than I am about ones that come looking for me. They whitewashed the Reverend Wright story too, didn't they?



I don't know about Limbaugh or Beck personally (neither one graduated college, did they?). But all the demographic studies I've heard seem to think Limbaugh's audience is of better than average education. Does Schaeffer cite any new studies, or is this just "Danailov Talk"?

I was kvetching the other day about the whole "Talking to Idiots" concept, and what you just said is interesting. If you're an idiot, you will be insulted rather than persuaded by this article. So, that means it's a poor article, right?

Anyway, to continue with my kvetch from the other day, we cater to idiots far too much as it is. We put out a stream of online polls that send readers the message that their uninformed opinions are every bit as good as informed ones. We interview men on the street to ask them if juries that spent weeks hearing a case that they themselves know almost nothing about made the right decision. We fire city officials for using the word "niggardly" because an idiot might mistake it for a racial epithet. 10 years ago everyone in the news was talking as though the 21st century began in 2000 because idiots couldn't understand why it really began in 2001.

Too often, it seems that these talking to idiots primers are never intended to persuade anyone in the first place, only to have a laugh at their expense. That's not necessarily bad, I like sites like darwinawards.com as well as the next guy. But if one carries it too far, they can desensitize themselves to the point that they unthinkingly pigeonhole any dissenting viewpoint as idiotic, and so become idiots themselves. You say that this very story is itself full of strawmen and faulty assumptions, so I wonder if the author's own brain is beginning to atrophy from spending too much time laughing at idiots, and not enough time forcing himself to challenge his own thinking.

In his following *excellent* commentary, Ron Graham reminds all of us who are truly saved, born-again believers in our Lord Jesus Christ that we have *nothing to fear*, even as we see this old present Earthly mortal world deteriorating in these end times before the Rapture of the Church of Jesus Christ: -- "Perplexity, Despair, and Hope."


Chess Fan

CRYPTO 5

As Schaeffer says, Altering the village to suit the village idiot.

It could be. The author over-generalizes to simplify things. No sense ruining the rhythm of a perfectly good rant by pausing after every phrase to interject exceptions or modifiers.

The more I consider your point, the better I like it. Just because he's speaking information that in general we could agree with does not make him insightful or an intelligent person. It isn't so much the conclusions but the process by which he arrives at his conclusions.

Last week in class we discussed feelings and science. One conclusion was that just because you "feel" something to be right, and it does turn out to be right, does not mean you're knowledgable or more insightful. The same thinking flaws that led you to use feelings to decide the truth of the matter, rather than evidence, will be the same thinking flaws that can just as easily lead you to the wrong conclusion.

Re: cryptogram. If that last word is a book of the Bible that narrows it down to about 8 books, two of which have repeating letters so that's about 6.

Heh. Got it. Defying her husband and not wanting to be oogled by drunks, she was replaced.

I switched over to the American Standard. The King James version had the word "shew" in it, which I thought people would assume was "show" and end up confused. Even the person's name could be confusing. I once knew a woman who had the same first name, which is why I used it, but it's not a common name, and one of the letters in it doesn't appear anywhere else in the message. Does giving the book of the Bible that it's from make it too easy? The one before this was from III John, which I thought would either confuse people or make it too easy.

I find it makes it too easy. III John leaps out at you if you know the books of the Bible. This one had 6 possibilities. That was narrowed down to two when you realize that the 3rd to 5th letters are also words in their own right, and which appear in the puzzle. Once you know the book then you also know what words may appear. Incidentally, I was ready for "shew" as I thought it might be KJV.

You can always leave the book in. If someone wants more of a challenge they can ignore the book. I used to do that with quotes. I'd ignore the author's name in case it was easily recognizable.

I had the opportunity to hear Frank talk at my Church several years ago and enjoyed it very much. We had him speak about his conversion from the Evangelical world to Orthodoxy. His coming from one of the most, using his words from the youtube video, "Cult Like" up bringing one could imagine, to the ancient faith of Orthodoxy, make me believe that anyone can be convinced that what they believe can be questioned.

Here is a link to an interview he gave about the similarities among all fundamentalist, whether Christian, Atheist, Agnostic, etc. Link

I thought is was interesting the it wasn't so much problems with his religious beliefs or the wonders of a new religion that started his conversion, but his love of Art. So you never know what may plant the seed of change in someones heart or mind.

Mark.

P.S. Sorry, I couldn't get the link to work, here is the embeded URL for those interested in watching. <embed src="http://blip.tv/play/gdElgaz5PQI" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="480" height="345" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed>

and here is the web page the video is on. Frank Schaeffer its the one from GRITtv

If you see why it wouldn't work, please let me know, and I'll fix the link.

I heard Bill Bennett's radio show in the car this morning, and he was interviewing one of those Moderate Muslims that we often hear about but rarely hear from. I didn't catch his name at the time (they mentioned it but not clearly, and didn't spell it), but a little Guessing and Googling has shown that it was Zuhdi Jasser, and that he heads a place called the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (http://www.aifdemocracy.org). Never heard of him before, don't know much about him now, but honestly, he made a good impression in the short time I heard. Anybody know more about him?

One thing that made a good impression is that it was suggested by one caller that it's the extremist terrorist types who are the "real" Muslims and people like Jasser who are the oddballs. Granted, it may have been a planted question, but if so, it was one he didn't mind dealing with. He didn't blow his stack, and answered pretty calmly that he felt that the Prophet himself was a good and ethical man.

[SIDE NOTE: And there may be something to be said for that view. I've been re-reading the Islam chapter of my college Comparative Religions textbook with the idea of posting some of it here. One thing I picked up from it is that, although the position of women in Islam often seems low, that it was a lot lower in pre-Islamic Arabia. Apparently before this time, female babies were often murdered at birth by parents wanting a son, but Muhammad himself is supposed to have outlawed the practice.]


One of my own misgivings about "Moderate Muslims" has been the belief that, although none of them would practice terrorism themselves, few of them would actively side against a fellow Muslim either, under any circumstances. Jasser's site doesn't give you that feeling. Looking at some of the stuff here, you definitely get the idea that he would side with a non-Muslim over a Muslim as a matter of principle, if the circumstances warranted it. He seems good at it. Almost TOO good, in fact. Here are a few things I saw on his news page:



It's pretty rare, outside of American Republicans and Democrats, to find people THAT willing to go against their own ethnic group! (I like it, but the phrase "Too good to be true" suggests itself. I've got the feeling that the US media, always patronizing towards minorities, would be unable to accept such a thing, and so either ignore Jasser entirely, or, after telling us for so long that most Muslims don't agree with terrorism, flip-flop and dismiss him as not being a real Muslim... because he's so hard on terrorism! ).

I did a little hunting for him on Wiki. He has no entry but his name did turn up in an entry about the computer game Little Big Planet:


If this guy understands that, then he's definitely someone we should hear more from. Oddly enough, I'm not sure I agree with him, though. This incident involved a game with music and words from the Koran that was patched to remove the lyrics when someone complained that it may be offensive to Muslims. I'm not sure I agree that a company patching its own game in response to consumer complaints is censorship. Censorship is when the government makes them do it. Maybe if the Catholics stood up and withheld their buying dollars a bit more often, people wouldn't feel so free to bash them.

But in any case, this part was quite impressive:

Muslim Group Condemns LBP Censorship

Jasser refused to express an opinion on the game without seeing it first! (Geez, you don't see that much any more! ).

[SIDE NOTE: Case in point: I saw a bit of Fox last night. O'Reilly was talking to some Quinn woman over the issue of whether Major Hasan should be considered a "Muslim Terrorist". She eventually, reluctantly, conceded that he should be. Ralph Nader was on a few minutes later, and O'Reilly tried to discuss the same thing, but Nader just reserved judgment and said we'll see. And I think that's the smart thing to do in a case where we've already gotten so much misinformation. Remember, we were told at first that Hasan was suffering from combat stress and was dead, then later that he'd never actually been deployed at all, and was still alive. As long as the whole thing isn't swept under the rug, we don't need to reach a final answer just yet. (And personally, I question whether Hasan's action was terrorism, on the technical grounds that his attack was against a military target rather than a civilian one. Treason, perhaps).]


Anyway, there seems to be a lot to like about this guy. My only misgiving is that this American Islamic Center for Democracy, at first sight at least, seems to be more about Democracy than it is about Islam. He's willing to denounce "Bad Islam" and that's great, but I also want to hear more about the "Good Islam" he recommends in its place. Because he doesn't just need to convince me to like him, he also needs to convince his fellow Muslims to do the same. I'd like to know more. I've heard (second hand; I don't really KNOW anything) that there are some pretty blatantly anti-Semitic utterances in the Quran and some of the hadiths, and would be interested to see what they are and what he makes of them.

Well, all that I have to say here is that that *possible* fact is of **very little comfort** to the Muslim women who have to wear a completely head-to-toe, stifling hot, body-covering burka whenever they are out walking around in public in 100+ degree weather.


Chess Fan