No Christians and persecuted minorities allowed By Abraham H. Miller, Washington Times

I just had to repost this article which is no longer available on the Net.

Standing before the cameras in Turkey, President Obama found his safe place to indict half his countrymen for raising the issue of religion in their concern over his plan to open America’s gates to tens of thousands of Muslim “refugees” from Syria. Subjecting refugees to a religious test runs counter to American values, said Mr. Obama.

The Harvard Law School graduate got it wrong, again. As Andrew McCarthy notes, the immigration law explicitly requires religious considerations. How could it do otherwise? Religion is a prime reason why people are persecuted and expelled from their homelands.

The Obama administration’s Department of State also considers religion. Syrian Muslims showing up at the border with Mexico are being welcomed, but Chaldean Christians fleeing the horror and brutality of the Islamic State are being incarcerated in a federal detention center outside of San Diego, and Yazidis are not even on the administration’s radar.

Chaldean Christians and Yazidis cannot get into the United Nations refugee camps and, consequently, are not certified as refugees. You cannot be a refugee unless you are certified, and the Muslims, who dominate the camps, do not want the Christians and Yazidis in the camps. Still, the Muslims prefer refuge in predominantly Christian countries. Moreover, Muslims perpetuate their persecution of Christians in resettlement centers in Europe.

When you belong to a triumphal religion, hypocrisy is not a concern.

Mr. Obama’s statements in Turkey display profound ignorance mixed with contemptible hubris. Neither the Chaldeans nor the Yazidis present a security threat. In fact, the local Chaldean community in Southern California is more than willing to sponsor their brethren and affirm that they are not a security threat. Their pleas have fallen on the administration’s deaf ears.

The Muslims, in contrast, present a proven security threat. While not all Muslims are terrorists, it is true that Muslims are responsible for most of the terror and war in the world. The Islamic State has openly boasted that it has thousands of fighters among the refugees, and at least one of the terrorists responsible for the recent carnage in Paris was a refugee who entered Europe through Greece on a false Syrian passport. To date, the Islamic State has not made idle threats.

The fatuous retort from progressives is that terrorists are more likely to come from Muslim communities already here than from refugees. As if that were truly comforting.

To this is added the typical liberal attempt to blame the victim. It is our marginalization of Muslims, we are told, that causes them to run to Syria and become terrorists. One wonders if the liberal explanation for rape is that by rejecting men, women marginalize them and damage their self-esteem, causing them to rape, just as Muslims are similarly pushed to become fighters for the Islamic State.
The former example is just as nonsensical as the latter. But in the liberal mind, it is the victims who are responsible for what befalls them when the perpetrators are members of protected classes.

The best way to understand the potential consequences of bringing tens of thousands of Muslim refugees into America is to look at the consequences of Muslim immigration in other societies. In Europe, Muslims have created parallel societies. The European dream of a pluralistic, integrative, multicultural society has become a nightmare. Multiculturalism is a failure, and some European politicians have directly said so.

Sweden has become the rape capital of Europe, and the government has pressured the Swedish media to hide the ethnicity of the Muslim rapists, a policy that exacerbates the situation. Reality is always assumed to be worse when it is hidden. A similar Muslim-based rape culture, some of it directed at infidels, took root in England, and authorities disgracefully covered it up for years for fear of being labeled Islamophobes.

Despite denials by politicians, both London and Paris have no-go and Shariah-compliant areas enforced by Muslim thugs who have decided that their beliefs supersede the law.
While not all Muslims support these affronts to humanity, community policies are set not by the majority but by organized and militant minorities. And in Muslim communities, while ordinary people are trying to rear families and survive economically, the active minorities are busy forcing their fundamentalist view on society.

The greatest threat to America will not be some terrorist event with mass casualties. It will come from what happens next. That will be a call for a state of siege and a security protocol that will fundamentally tilt the society’s perpetual balance between freedom and order toward order. 
Ironically, liberals who want both the resettlement of refugees, whom the FBI tells us cannot be vetted, and a more open society will find that the two aspirations are contradictory. Every democratic society that finds itself in a state of siege eventually tilts the balance of freedom and order toward order, and those changes, once made, are difficult to undo.

If terrorists and fundamentalist Muslims comprise, let us say, 5 percent of all Muslim refugees, does not our sense of compassion impel us to take that risk? Every person will answer that question in terms of his own value system, but I wonder what ordinary Parisians, especially those who lost loved ones, would say about that risk.

If Americans want to show compassion and concern for refugees who are truly being brutalized, whose religions are being extinguished, and are not designated as refugees,they might begin by expending energy to convince this administration to accept the Chaldean Christians and Yazidis. We can guarantee that they present not even a remote risk to the security of the nation.

• Abraham H. Miller is an emeritus professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati and a senior fellow with the Salomon Center for American Jewish Thought.

SEEKING HAPPINESS IN THE WRONG PLACES

Cosmetic surgery is booming but not self-acceptance. According to Richard J. Poupard, a board-certified oral and maxillofacial surgeon, the real problem is not cosmetic but psychic:

·       So has the increase in cosmetic surgery that we have seen resulted in an increase in personal happiness? Not according to the available evidence. A recent study in Clinical Psychology Review compared college students from 1939 and 2007. The study showed a six-time increase in the number of students showing symptoms of depression and “anxiety and unrealistic optimism” in 2009 as compared to the students during the Great Depression era. Although there are no doubt a great many variables other than cosmetic surgery that influence such a large increase in depression, the evidence isolating cosmetic surgery is no more favorable. One study showed ten years after having a breast augmentation, there was a threefold increase in the number of suicides compared to women who did not have breast augmentation surgery. A review study from 2004 looked at psychological outcomes for patients who were seeking cosmetic surgery. They found that patients who were young, had unrealistic expectations, had a minimal deformity, had previous surgeries, were motivated by relationship issues, or had a history of depression or anxiety disorders were far more likely to feel worse after having cosmetic surgery. (Christian Research Journal)

From where then does self-acceptance come? To some extent, it comes from the family. However, many of us continue to struggle with self-contempt, even when coming from nurturing families.

I too was always looking for a “cosmetic” alteration, even though the change I sought wasn’t external. I had tried all sorts of therapies to change who I was into somebody more acceptable, more likeable. However, each attempt left me in greater despair.

It was only after I came to the assurance that God totally accepted me that I could begin to accept myself. The Apostle Paul also understood this and therefore prayed that we:

·       May have strength to comprehend… and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:18-19)

Knowing this has given me the confidence and self-acceptance that I had lacked.

CONFIRMATION BIAS: EMBRACING ONLY THOSE FACTS THAT SUPPORT OUR WORLDVIEW

Here is how I responded to an atheist accusing me of bias:

You are right. I am governed by my presuppositions and biases. I just find it hard to believe:

1.     That everything jumped into existence uncaused out of nothing.

2.     That proteins and DNA simply self-constructed.

3.     That Darwinian gradualism can account for new organs.

4.     That the cell with all of its incredible machinery just appeared.

5.     That life is just a matter of materials coming together.

6.     That we don't have freewill.

7.     That consciousness is just a product of matter.

8.     That the Laws of science were produced by a big explosion

9.     That our universe is just one out of an infinite number of universes - a devise to explain fine-tuning.

10. That morality is just something we invent.

11.  That logic and reason just happened without a design and a grand purpose.

Sorry, I just don’t and can’t share your faith!

ARE ORGANS IRREDUCIBLY COMPLEX, THEREBY DEFYING DARWINIAN GRADUALISM?

Irreducible complexity is a theory that argues in favor of an intelligent Designer by showing that random mutation and natural selection are unable to account for new organs or structures. Evolution must take place step-by-step and each step must confer a survival advantage. However, to confer this advantage, many new genes must be simultaneously in place to produce any beneficial structure. Richard Kleiss provides the example of blood clotting as an irreducibly complex process:

• Bleeding must be stopped. While the scab is forming…the blood below is making a completely different kind of clot out of blood platelets and protein…Your body increases the flow of blood enriched with white blood cells. These cells not only search out and kill germs, but clean the wound of damaged cellular tissues. Skins cells start to increase the rate at which they make new cells in order to bridge the cut with new skin. Underneath…cells called fibroblasts fill the wound to strengthen the tender new tissue, and then contract to pull the wound closed. Finally, blood vessels and nerves complete their repairs as the fibroblasts position themselves along the lines of stress to prevent further damage.” (A Closer Look at the Evidence)

Without any one of these processes, any cut could cause death. In fact, any structure is irreducibly complex. Atheist Richard Dawkins admits that:

• The creationists are right that, if genuinely irreducible complexity could be properly demonstrated, it would wreck Darwin’s theory. (The God Delusion, 125)

Darwin himself said as much:

• “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find no such case.”

Is there any evidence that new organs arise through “slight modifications?” Casey Luskin cites the late biologist, Lynn Margulis, member of the National Academy of Sciences: "new mutations don't create new species; they create offspring that are impaired.” She further explained in a 2011 interview:

• [N]eo-Darwinists say that new species emerge when mutations occur and modify an organism. I was taught over and over again that the accumulation of random mutations led to evolutionary change-led to new species. I believed it until I looked for evidence.

Is there any evidence? Apparently none! John C. Lennox quotes several evolutionists to this effect:

• John Maynard Smith, E. Szathmary: “There is no theoretical reason that would permit us to expect that evolutionary lines would increase in complexity with time; there is also no empirical evidence that this happens.” (God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God, 107)

• Siegfried Scherer: “In the whole experimentally accessible domain of microevolution (including research in artificial breeding and in species formation), all variations have certainly remained within the confines of basic types.” ()

• Cell biologist E.J. Ambrose of the University of London argued that it is unlikely that fewer than five genes could ever be involved in the formation of even the simplest new structure, previously unknown in the organism. He then points out that only one in 1,000 mutations is non-deleterious, so that the chance of five non-deleterious mutations [the minimum necessary for any new function] occurring is 1 in a million billion replications.

This means that every organism will probably die before it adds a new organ! But evolutionists assure us that, eventually, they will come up with a solution.

THANKSGIVING AND OUR MODERN TOWER OF BABEL

The once great USA is becoming a modern-day Tower of Babel. The common glue that had once held us together as a nation has been systematically attacked.  Instead of a common Babelian language – it had been removed and the people separated into their own ethnic groups - which had held together the people of Babel, now, it is the Constitution and the First Amendment that are in jeopardy.

My wife and I like to see the 5^th Avenue, NYC Christmas displays. However, these have been replaced by allegedly inoffensive Santas and snowflakes, leaving us offended.

Today, my wife wanted Thanksgiving to be a special day in observance of our shared history, which had once united Americans. However, as hard as she tried to find programming on TV which would retell the story, she could only find references to turkeys, stuffing, and cranberries. Likewise, Christmas has succumbed to superficialities of gifts and Christmas trees. (Subsequently, she did find on CBN an inspiring account of the Indian Squanto and his pivotal role in the first Thanksgiving.)

However, the effects of the eradication of our common glue can be seen in many areas of life. The hatred is bubbling to the surface like inflammable methane gas from septic tanks. Meanwhile, the culture wars are being pursued relentlessly. For example, the ACLU brought charges against Jones County, NC commissioners for praying to Jesus before each meeting.

• According to the [ACLU], the prayers “are explicitly sectarian and favor only one religion, Christianity”…The ACLU’s field office in Raleigh sent a letter to Jones County commissioners April 3, writing the commissioners’ invocation prayer “should not demonstrate a preference for one particular sect or creed.”

“Jesus” has become the one unutterable word in a country whose Declaration of Independence recognizes that the God of the Bible is the one and only source for our “unalienable rights.”

The ACLU charge is based on the erroneous assumption that by eliminating religion from the public sphere, it would now become neutral, assessable, and pleasing to all. This, of course, is highly disingenuous. By eliminating God, another religion quickly and automatically fills the void. If God and faith can no longer be invoked, then only the opposite beliefs – atheism, secular humanism, multi-culturalism, materialism, naturalism, moral relativism, and permissiveness – are allowed to dominate the public arena. Ironically, by appealing to a distorted understanding of the “separation between church and state” – the “establishment clause”- secularism and atheism have now become our state established, sanctioned and supported religion! However, this remains an unspoken secret among the elite – that they equally violate the “separation clause” by establishing the religion of secularism.

More recently, The American Family Association reported on November 10 that:

• The Office for Civil Rights in President Barack Obama's Department of Education (DOE) has determined that a Chicago area high school must leave the choice to openly use the girls' locker room up to a 15 year-old student who has male genitalia, but self-identifies as a girl.

Why should this one boy’s choice to be a girl undermine the rights of everyone else?

Here is a statement from a spokesperson at the DOE:

• "Unfortunately, Township High School District 211 is not following the law because the district continues to deny a female student the right to use the girls' locker room."

Why coerce the entire school district (and subsequently the nation) to conform to federal guidelines? It seems apparent that they are guided by a new religion that requires the elimination of any sexual distinctions and sexual taboos and the promotion of any and every sexual choice, no matter how self-destructive. And they are determined to impose their religious values on the rest of the nation. Meanwhile, they justify these intrusions on the basis of “equality” and “fairness.”

However, there is nothing fair about:

1. The Fed militantly and unnecessarily imposing their values/religion on everyone else.

2. Placing the choice of one above the valid desires of everyone and calling it “equality.”

3. Making the entire school conform to the choice of one and arguing that this is fair and just.

Democracy should respect diversity instead of needlessly imposing one religion and practice upon all. Consistent with this, it should respect the decisions of local governments. However, the thrust of modern secularism is to impose a single secular religion at the expense of traditional values.

Those who were building the Tower of Babel had a similar quest – to undertake a common goal of a common religion to forge unity:

• They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar.  Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth." (Genesis 11:3-4)

They didn’t want to be scattered, and therefore wanted to build “a tower that reaches to the heavens.” This would give them unity and solidarity, a common faith “that reaches to the heavens.” This would give them “a name [significance and worthiness] for ourselves.”

Ironically, it was this very endeavor, the imposition of uniformity, which brought about the very thing that they had feared – dispersion.

I ask secularists if there is anything that we can learn from the past – principles that had once made this nation into a great civilization. They uniformly answer, “No!” Instead, they have placed their faith in their ideals and values. However, these have been tried by almost every revolutionary movement and have been found wanting and at the cost of millions of lives.