Why Muslims Convert to Christianity

Over at the Thinking Christian blog, Tom Gilson cites a survey of 750 former Muslims who converted to Christianity regarding the reasons for their conversions:

A survey of 750 Muslims who converted to Christianity seriously challenges Western assumptions about God's working in the world. The question was why they made the decision to convert. While not all the reasons given were unexpected for us who have a European cultural heritage, two of the top four certainly were.

The primary reason for converting, according to this survey, was lifestyles of Christians. (American Christians would do well to reflect on how that relates to research on how our lifestyles affect others.)

Fascinating, huh? The lifestyles of Christians overseas (I say "overseas" from the perspective of an American Christian) are so commendable and so loving, that they are cited as the number one reason for Muslims converting to Christianity. American Christians, and I suspect Christians in other Western countries would do well to take notes. Read the rest of the reasons these 750 former Muslims gave for their conversions here. Great find, Tom!

What Colleges Should Do For You

I was watching The Colbert Report recently, and the guest was a man from the Washington Monthly singing the praises of their new college guide as a superior alternative to the notorious and coveted US News and World Report's annual ranking of colleges. I had a lot of problems with what he was saying, so I did a Google search to find something online from the Washington Monthly about this new list of theirs. They say:

"The first question we asked was, what does America need from its universities? From this starting point, we came up with three central criteria: Universities should be engines of social mobility, they should produce the academic minds and scientific research that advance knowledge and drive economic growth, and they should inculcate and encourage an ethic of service. We designed our evaluation system accordingly."

Wrong. You miss the point. Everyone these days seems to miss the point, and it bothers and frustrates me to no end! Social mobility can be a wonderful thing, and it's certainly not a bad thing when a university can help people to climb the socioeconomic ladder. Driving economic growth doesn't hurt either. And few would disagree that serving others is one of humanity's highest callings. But universities should exist primarily for something else, something that's seldom considered or talked about.

"The School of Athens" - Something I painted about a month ago (Just kidding: it's by Raphael, but man, wouldn't it be so cool if I did paint that?)

Universities are institutions of higher learning, and their primary aim and purpose should be to create free, thinking individuals, not more efficient cogs in a giant economic machine. The Washington Monthly's boast that, "Other guides ask what colleges can do for you. We ask what are colleges doing for the country," is a blatant admission that their emphasis is not on the individual and what colleges can do to enrich, empower, and educate the individual, but to grease the axles and gears of the American economy and government. I still have difficulty coming to grips with it, but there can be no doubt any longer that America's universities suck.

What good is it to earn higher incomes so that you can buy the newest and nicest junk without the illumination of a liberal education to give you the cognitive tools to discern and know the truth about this universe you live in and your proper role in it as a human being? What good does it do to have more knowledge and scientific advancement when we squander it by using it to numb and destroy our own minds and souls with weapons of mass distraction and to bomb and destroy each other's bodies with weapons of mass destruction because we don't have an understanding of and appreciation for who we are and what we ought to be and ought not to be doing and what we ought to be and ought not to be living for? And what good is service without discernment and understanding? Hitler and Mussolini talked of service. We need to learn how to ask and to find the answers to the questions of who or what to serve, and how to serve, and why.

"Imagine, then, what would happen if thousands of schools were suddenly motivated to try to boost their scores on The Washington Monthly College Rankings. They'd start enrolling greater numbers of low-income students and putting great effort into ensuring that these students graduate. They'd encourage more of their students to join the Peace Corps or the military. They'd intensify their focus on producing more Ph.D. graduates in science and engineering. And as a result, we all would benefit from a wealthier, freer, more vibrant, and democratic country."

As a country full of people who have lost their belief in any kind of objective truth or any kind of objective morality; as a country facing the dissolution of the family; as a country numbed and distracted into quiet complacency about its future; as a country that is becoming increasingly apostate, as a country full of people who do not understand the proper role of government and do not fear the rapid erosion of their freedoms... higher incomes, more Ph.D. graduates in science and engineering, and more Peace Corps volunteers is not the remedy and will not save America. Universities should be beacons of light that create thinking, free individuals, not richer people with more talented skill sets attached to empty skulls and idle souls.

"The Triumph Of Light Over Darkness" - Something I-- yeah, I wish, right? It's by Franz von Matsch : )

Dumbledore Is Gay, Says J.K. Rowling

Just got an e-mail from my brother with a link to this article, which says:

NEW YORK (Oct. 20) - Harry Potter fans, the rumors are true: Albus Dumbledore, master wizard and Headmaster of Hogwarts, is gay. J.K. Rowling, author of the mega-selling fantasy series that ended last summer, outed the beloved character Friday night while appearing before a full house at Carnegie Hall.

After reading briefly from the final book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," she took questions from audience members.

She was asked by one young fan whether Dumbledore finds "true love."

"Dumbledore is gay," the author responded to gasps and applause.

Whoa... some folks are really, really going to be pissed.

----------
UPDATE:

My brother is hardly an ultra-conservative Christian who opposes Harry Potter on the grounds that it promotes witchcraft (rather, he's an avid fan), but he called me just now to follow up on his e-mail and tell me how annoyed he is with Rowling, because he believes she is simply doing this for publicity. And he gave me another slant on the issue: gay activists might be angry by Rowling's revelation, because of how she answered the question which inspired it.

I mean think about it. Someone asks, "Does Dumbledore find true love?" And she doesn't say "yes" or "no." Instead, her answer is that he's gay, which could be taken to imply that gay people can't find true love. Fascinating little development in the world of Harry Potter, ay?

How Times Have Changed

Found this very astute quote over at Crusader Rabbit:

"If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today." -Thomas Sowell

Thanks for that, KG.

The Real Threat to Our Freedoms and Our Future

It has been a while since I've read something that I agreed with as emphatically as this, regarding the difference between Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World:

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.

As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

(Read the whole article... it's good!)

My heart raced as I read this, excited to read such a clear understanding of the problem and chilled to the bone that this understanding shows how big the problem is and how deep it goes. In my teens, I liked 1984 a lot more than Brave New World. The drama and "scariness" of it all was so much more appealing to me. I might need to go rummaging and dust off my copy of Brave New World to give it a fresh read.

I suppose that it's very possible that as it was once said of the end of the world (by whom, I cannot remember) the end of our freedoms won't come with a bang but with a whimper.

John Mayer Endorses Ron Paul

...sort of.

Watch this:




"Ron Paul... not RuPaul."

"Read the Constitution! There's a lot of healing in there."

Whether serious, playing it up for the cameras, or just a little tipsy, John Mayer is correct that Ron Paul is all about the freedom and the Constitution.

And the Ron Paul Revolution is all about the love.

Sex, Nazi, Burrito: Which Countries Google What?

According to statistics provided by Google:

Internet users in Egypt, India and Turkey are the world's most frequent searchers for Web sites using the keyword "sex" on Google search engines

Fascinating. The very conservative and Islamic country of Egypt is among the three most frequent searchers of the keyword "sex" on Google. Feel free to run with that, but I'm not feeling particularly analytical or witty at the moment.

Which three countries are the most frequent searchers of the keyword "Jihad?"

"Jihad" - Morocco, Indonesia, Pakistan

There's no doubting the power of the Internet in both spreading and assaulting freedom.

What do people search in the West?

"Hangover" - Ireland, United Kingdom, United States

LOL, Ireland would. And the UK and US being right there behind it... not really a surprise.

Read the top countries for other search terms. Via: The DrudgeReport

Fake Smiles Hard To Spot

Try this quick test from the BBC. It's fascinating.

You look at several people smiling, some of whom are genuinely smiling and others of whom are faking it, then you guess which smiles are real and which are fake. I got just over 50% correct.

Apparently it's very hard for people to spot fake smiles, which means even if you're not feeling it, faking a smile can help create more good will and connectivity among you and your peers.

Give it a shot. When they flash you back a real smile, your fake one just might melt into a genuine one too and everyone wins! : D

Apple Inc. Kowtows To Global Warming Scare

My father and I have sparred back and forth over whether or not Apple's products are better than PCs and whether or not they're worth their price, and although I currently use a PC, I have defended Apple products to him as being of very high quality and value.

Today he sent me this e-mail:

--------------------

Sent: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 1:07 pm
Subject: Rotten Apples

http://michellemalkin.com/2007/10/13/apple-worships-at-the-eco-temple-of-al-gore/

--------------------

I absolutely don't understand why Apple, the "Google boys," Microsoft, and many other such upstarts that went from nobodies to wildly successful companies are such socialists, militant environmentalists, and adherents to other scary and irrational "-isms." It just doesn't add up to me.

My e-mail response to my father:

--------------------

Check mate.

As much as iLike their products, iMight not be buying any now.

--------------------

I can only conclude as Michelle Malkin did....

Sigh.

Faith, Hope, and Love

Writes St. Paul to the Church in Corinth:

Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking,
it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts,
always hopes, always perseveres.

...

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.



Above is an early 19th century, stained-glass window at Christ Church in Oxford by Edward Burne-Jones. It depicts what I am guessing are the four cardinal virtues of Justice, Fortitude, Prudence, and Temperance, being supported by their ultimate foundation, the three Theological Virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love. You can read their latin names at the bottom of each window, with Love (or caritas) in the middle, as central to them all.

I would that I had Faith in great measure,
That fearing not the waves, I'd walk to Him,
Christ's gift of Faith, a Heavenly Treasure,
I'd walk upon the wings of Seraphim.

And Hope, art thou a curse that from a box
flew out to soothe and numb the race of men?
No! Thou art the assurance of the Life,
Restoring us to wholeness once again.

Caritas, the essence of our Father,
You pour from Heaven's goblet up above,
Drowning me, that I may rise up and live,
Sealed in Heaven's unoriginate Love.

-W. E. Messamore

On Objectivity in Partisan Politics

Tonight I've been going through and rereading posts from an old message board I used to run back in high school (which I plan to delete before going to bed), and I stumbled across something that I had written on a discussion thread about George W. Bush on April 13, 2004, and I just had to share it:

"I think every Democrat should be forced to read a book entitled "George W. Bush isn't a Facist, Nazi, Puritanical, Homophobic, Hate-mongering bigot". And by the same token, every Republican should be forced to read a book entitled "Bill Clinton is not the bastard offspring of a profane sexual union between Joseph Stalin and Satan incarnate". Your overly emotional and somewhat unobjective statements are a little childish. Please drop all the melodramatics."

I definitely wrote with a lot more "oomph" back in high school than I do now. I've mellowed out a little bit, and in some ways it's good that I lost some of that fire, but boy did I laugh hard when I read that paragraph tonight!

The West's Values Are Better

Or at least, that is the subject of a recent Intelligence2 debate in London, whose resolution is:

We should not be reluctant to assert the superiority of Western values.

The audience vote was 465 to 264 in favor of the motion. Writes one of the speakers at the debate:

Recognition of the superiority of our values is made with people’s feet every day in the one-way human migration to the West. It is an admission which many make in private. But we seem to have become so comfortable with our rights that we no longer acknowledge their superiority, or the superiority of the values which gave them life.

Even a couple of generations ago, assertion of the superiority of Western values — the rule of law, parliamentary democracy, equalities, freedoms of expression and conscience — was uncontentious. But we have become morally lazy. If other people live under tyranny, then who are we to ‘impose’ democracy on them? If others live in benighted societies in which half their population can be treated as chattel, then why should we disturb them? Like the multicultural edifice before it, this genuine prejudice — the refusal to discern or assert moral difference — is finally collapsing. It must do, when reality comes a-knocking.

(Read the whole article.)

(Listen to the debate.)

For my part, I agreed with some of what was said on both sides, and I particularly agree with a comment made by one of the audience members near the end that he believed a better wording of the resolution would be:

We should not be reluctant to assert the superiority of liberal values (which he means in the classical sense of the word), which have been both held and violated by people in the West and in the East. I would support such a resolution.

But the debate is an excellent one, and if you get some free time, give it a listen. If you don't have some spare time, give it a listen while folding laundry or preparing a meal (like I did). It's really worth the time.

Atlas Shrugged Turns 50

Happy Birthday!

Whether you end up agreeing with or disagreeing with its main premise, the book is an excellent read. I read it in highschool and all my friends were astonished that I was carrying around and reading this book the size of a Bible just for my private fun and edification and not as part of a school assignment. It was worth the read.

I first heard about Ayn Rand from my highschool debate coach. She had no clue that reading both Rand's fiction and non-fiction would become an obsession for me (especially after I learned that 2112, one of my favorite Rush albums was based off of Ayn Rand's novella, Anthem) I was told by several conservative people I knew that Ayn Rand was a crazy liberal and not to give her too much thought. I was told by "liberals" that Ayn Rand was a heartless and egotistical conservative. Naturally, I had to figure out who this woman was and what she was saying that was pissing so many people off.

Having turned 50 years old, I encourage you to check out the original New York Times review of the book back in '57. Or read a NYT article about Atlas Shrugged from last month. The National Review also did a story on the book's anniversary. And obviously, I couldn't conclude this post without linking you to an article by the Ayn Rand Institute on the influence of Atlas Shrugged.

A Correction

I said in my last post of Ron Paul that:

"He voted against authorizing President Bush to take our troops to Iraq (even Obama and Hillary can't claim as much)."

A friend of mine from Knoxville pointed out that Obama has been against the war from the beginning, and that he didn't vote against authorizing Bush to take the troops to Iraq because he couldn't have as he did not hold office in the U.S. Senate at the time that this legislation came to a vote. This is true, and I stand corrected. I definitely don't want to mislead anyone with any false information, so I'm posting this retraction just hours after hearing from my friend. Thanks, Nick!

But I do want to say that, while Obama did not support the war, he currently supports a phased withdrawal from Iraq now that we're there (as does Hillary). I stand in support of Ron Paul's "let's just get them all home right now" mentality, which I'll explain in detail sometime very soon. I haven't said a whole lot on Iraq over the past couple years of this blog, but sometime over the coming days, I'll post an in depth analysis of the war over there with my take on things. In the meantime, I'm going to keep posts short and sweet for a couple days, hoping that we can discuss Ron Paul a little more in the comment thread on my previous post.

My 2008 Pick for President

Ever since I began to view public policy in terms of liberty and the proper role of government, I have disavowed and not supported any candidate or hopeful for the office of president in either of America's two major parties, because not one has yet convinced me that he or she is genuinely interested in implementing policies informed by a philosophy of liberty... until now.

I am endorsing Ron Paul's campaign for President in 2008. He is running for the Republican nomination, but make no mistake, he is unlike any Republican or Democrat out there. He believes in liberty and the Constitution. He voted against authorizing President Bush to take our troops to Iraq (even Obama and Hillary can't claim as much). He believes in a non-interventionist foreign policy and as our Founding Fathers did, he wishes to remain uninvolved in foreign entanglements. He wants to leave the UN and NAFTA. He wants to abolish the IRS completely and thereby remove the Federal Income Tax. He wants to cut Federal spending and slash several government programs that waste our money on needless bureaucracy.

He supports gun rights. He supports secure borders. Instead of foreign military adventures that never end, he wants to use the muscle of our government to keep our borders and country safe. He wants to abolish the Patriot Act. He is a man of his word, who does exactly what he says he'll do. He's voted against more legislation as a congressman than any other legislator that currently holds office in D.C. He's been married to the same woman for fifty years and has five children and several grandchildren. He has voted against regulating the Internet. He has never voted to raise taxes. He is a man of character and honesty, who answers questions directly and truthfully. I support Ron Paul for President in 2008.

He spoke at a rally yesterday here in Nashville at the War Memorial Auditorium. So my friends Ben, Daniel, and I went out to support him.

We came prepared. That's Ben on the left, Daniel in the center, and me on the right:

The turnout was great:

And apparently libertarians don't care much about reversing the stereotype that they're kind of weird:



Daniel on the left this time, me in the center, and Ben on the right. I slapped mine on the back of my car as soon as the rally was over. I also got a yard sign to put out front of my apartment. Ben posed next to it for a picture:



Several people commented on his t-shirt, which we made the night before from a "Vote for Pedro" t-shirt, and several even wanted to take pictures of it. So we went ahead and made the design available on my Cafepress store. All proceeds from sales of this design will be donated to the Ron Paul campaign.

I encourage you to Google Ron Paul, to Youtube him, to browse his website... to do as much reading up on him as you can. Then vote for him! We must get Ron Paul the nomination from the Republican party. That's the tricky part. I believe that if we can get him the nomination, he will be our next president. If you're in a state with open primaries, you don't even have to register as a Republican to vote for him.

Ron Paul for President in 2008!

Hope for America:

"Ron Paul Slaying the IRS."

Ron Paul

Posting has been pretty light the past couple days as I have been busy with various things, one of which is getting people to go to the rally tommorrow, where Ron Paul will be speaking here in Nashville at The War Memorial Auditorium. I'm very excited to hear him speak:

Warning: You might get addicted

Blogger has released a new toy: a page that updates every second in real time with photos that people are posting to their blogs. If you see one that intrigues you, you can click on it, and it will take you to the blog where it was posted. It's really fascinating to see what people are uploading all over the world. It's also hard to stop watching (for me anyway), so only check it out when you've got some free time. Enjoy : )

The iRack Problem

Ben showed this to me, saying that it is the only funny MadTV sketch he'd ever seen. That statement would apply to me as well, and I must say that for the only MadTV sketch to ever make me laugh, this one is really funny:



It's a shame that such a funny idea was acted out by sucky MadTV actors. The impression of Steve Jobs could have been way funnier. Like here for example (don't worry that the first ten seconds is distorted, it goes away):



...captured his mannerisms perfectly.

Muslim Sitcom: Aliens in America

There's a new sitcom coming out soon about a Muslim foreign exchange student's experiences in America, and it's pretty un-PC. It's called Aliens in America. Check out this preview:



It was definitely worth a chuckle, but any bets on how many seasons it will last before the writers run out of ethnic jokes and the show tanks?