Details of Yesterday's Foiled Clinton Hit Attempt

It's time for a little intelligence briefing. On what, exactly? A possible failed attempt on me on Friday, October 14, 2016 between approximately 10:15 AM and approximately 11:00 AM in southern Orange County, CA. My father, ex-CIA, ex-Mossad, 4th-degree blackbelt Cliff Strawn and I left home — father in the driver's seat, me riding shotgun — to make two stops: Southern California Skin and Laser in Laguna Niguel (corner of Pacific Park Drive and Aliso Creek Road), where my father needed skin biopsies done; and the Social Security office on Acero Road in Mission Viejo, where some business regarding health insurance benefits needed to get done.

The first stop took about 45 minutes, and my father decided to let me get breakfast at the Starbucks next door. Fine. It was when I was done, however, that something really strange happened: The *instant* I sent out a tweet regarding one of the Podesta emails suggesting that Podesta was the man who *carried out* a hit on Scalia, claiming that Podesta *is* the Clinton hitman in response to someone else claiming that he needed to watch his back, a man in a brown leather jacket stood up out of his seat inside the Starbucks, and I caught him out of the corner of my eye.

The instant I looked up at the man, however, he not only panicked, stepping backward about 6 feet, but he also slipped an object into the pocket of his brown leather coat that was black and looked suspicious. The manner in which he slipped it into his pocket was also suspicious — quickly and in a panic so as to hide it from me. The only reasonable conclusion one can draw from this pattern of behavior is that this man in the brown leather jacket had a weapon. When I got a closer look before darting out, however — the tall stature, tall face, gray hair, olive skin, and glasses — I knew that this has to have been either John Podesta himself or his identical twin (which he doesn't have one of). This was at about 10:30 AM.

Fast forward to about 11AM, and the setting is different: the SS office. When my father and I get there, I see this same tall man in the parking lot, speaking face-to-face with a short, blond-haired, round-faced, old woman wearing dark attire — a woman who looked just like Hillary Clinton. This time, they're both trying to hide each other from me, knowing that their plan had been foiled. That's when I stepped back and used my phone camera to attempt to take a picture of them, but before I could they were so panicked that they just ran into their cars and sped off.

Fast forward to last night, October 15, 2016, and there was an actual Clinton rally in San Francisco. They could therefore easily, easily have stopped in SoCal on the way there from somewhere else — this to me was probably the smoking gun, because now I have all the information I need to expose this view of the Clintons as cold-blooded killers to voters.

I can see that there may be a few Podesta lookalikes and a few Hillary lookalikes out there, but the odds of a mere Podesta lookalike in a conspiracy with a mere Hillary lookalike to attempt to kill someone — who, just the day before, was picking the perfect arguments to trap Hillary trolls into logical dilemmas on YouTube so as to shut them up — being anyone but Podesta and Hillary themselves are extremely, extremely low. It was obvious at that point that I had caught Hillary and Podesta in an attempted-murder-for-hire scheme red-handed.

This also gives some valuable information on their M.O., and how to beat them in their game: Their M.O. is to try to catch you purely by surprise. They're cowards: the instant you know what they're doing, they panic. That's why they don't want you to know what weapons they may have in their possession. That's why they deleted all those emails. It's because their biggest fear is getting caught trying to do things like this, so if their intended victims know what they're up to, it foils their whole operation. I therefore encourage this information to be spread to as many people as possible, knowing that this information is highly valuable to other potential targets.

Multiverse Guesswork is an Inadvertent Faith Leap

WARNING: The following are paragraphs, not individual sentences or phrases, and the whole paragraphs are what combine to provide context. Failure to include the surrounding contexts of quotes in your replies is quote mining.

Update 12/11/2016: Some atheists in response to this have resorted to appealing to the laws of quantum mechanics and general relativity to attempt to justify their claims about more than one universe existing. There are two problems with that: A, the laws of quantum mechanics govern how subatomic particles interact with each other. Subatomic particles cannot interact with each other if they don't exist, and before the universe existed, they didn't exist; if those subatomic particles don't exist outside space-time — which they don't — then quantum mechanics don't exist outside space-time either. B, the general theory of relativity depends on the existence of gravity, which in turn depends on the existence of mass and density, both of which also depend on the existence of matter — again, matter cannot exist outside the universe. Neither can time and neither can space. Without space, time, or matter existing, quantum mechanics and general relativity cannot exist either; therefore, trying to bring them up and claim that they're evidence of multiple universes existing is circular reasoning.

Also, smashing subatomic particles together in an accelerator like CERN's Large Hadron Collider destroys matter. It doesn't create matter, and it certainly doesn't create space or time. It emulates conditions in the first seconds of this universe's existence, sure, but it does so on an *extremely* small scale, and depends on space, time, and matter already existing in order to do so; therefore, appealing to these experiments and the data associated with them is also circular reasoning.

Original post continues below.

One thing that atheists seem to be very good at when arguing with intelligent Christians like Sean McDowell, Greg Koukl, J. Warner Wallace, and myself is finding ways to circumvent the cosmological argument. If space, time, and matter all had beginnings simultaneously, according to this argument, then the "uncaused first cause" must transcend space, transcend time, and not be made of matter — all three of which are attributes of the God of the Bible. Atheists often just avoid this argument, how exactly? By positing theories like the "multiverse" that on their own merits are even more impossible to prove absolutely — not just impossible to prove empirically but also impossible to prove forensically and archaeologically — than Christianity.

Right off the bat, there's a problem with calling the multiverse a "theory". A theory must be provable by definition. Is the multiverse provable? If it were, then it would be possible to travel physically from one universe to another and back and live to tell about it. That alone is physically impossible proof, why? Because even at the speed of light, our own universe takes *billions* of years to cross. How many years, therefore, would it take to travel from one universe to another if multiple universes exist? Trillions? The astronauts would be fossils by the time they got there — if it was even possible to leave this universe without the spacecraft self-destructing.

Self-destructing? How can that be, you may ask? Because all the constants within the confines of this universe are just perfect for matter to exist. The instant you step outside the universe and enter something else, you enter a place where matter cannot physically exist! What does a spacecraft, at that point, do? There's no forces outside space-time that can sustain matter, so immediately that presents an enigma if talked about from a purely materialistic standpoint. Put short, even if we could travel outside this universe, we might not make it to another universe (if such a thing exists at all) without first running into a complete space-time dead zone capable of destroying all matter at the subatomic level.

Is the multiverse theory still possible? Of course — it's a special case of the appeal to probability fallacy. Is it reasonable? Based on the Christian definition, yes, but based on the atheistic definition of reason, absolutely not. When people posit theories like the multiverse, what they're essentially doing is copping out. They're trying to replace God with some impersonal entity that not only is it physically impossible to obtain empirical support for — just as with the God of the Bible — but it's also physically impossible to forensically support, and, to add insult to injury, physically impossible to archaeologically support. If you have not only no empirical evidence but also no manuscripts or artifacts supporting a theory, then what you have is a theory that takes more faith to believe than Christianity — hence the title of Frank Turek's book, "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be An Atheist".

Fallacious Politics: 15 Common Logical Fallacies the Media Uses to Silence Us

When media anchors claim to be impartial, I always ask a very important question: Are they logically and intellectually honest with themselves? If there's anything that counts as evidence of bias, it's fallacious logic. If the media were truly unbiased as they claim to be, then they would know better than to commit these 15 egregious logical foibles, but do they refrain from doing so? The answer to this question may surprise you, and per my examinations, it's a big fat 'NO'.

1. Quote mining

In June 2015, now-President Donald Trump made a bunch of statistically valid remarks about illegal immigration: Despite liberal claims to the contrary, the ratio of criminals to good people is much higher among illegal immigrants than among both legal immigrants *and* people who stay in countries like Mexico (in particular, the 2014 BCS statistics showed that, while illegal immigrants made up about 4% of the American population, they committed more than a third of all violent crimes — 2015 and 2016 may be similar). How did Trump get painted as a racist, therefore? This is how: the media harped on "they're sending rapists… they're sending drug dealers…" while completely ignoring "and some, I assume, are good people". That last sentence is something called a context clue: it provides the entire context of what's being said. Quote mining is exactly this: placing quotes outside of their surrounding contexts and attacking people over them.

In another case of media quote mining, during his confirmation hearings, Attorney General Jeff Sessions was asked about whether or not he had any meetings with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak about the 2016 election specifically, and he answered "no." Fast forward to March 2017, and media outlets used this fallacy to make it seem like Al Franken was asking Sessions whether he ever met with the Russian ambassador, period, dropping the original 2016 election condition from Al Franken's question. In so doing, the media is in fact using quote mining to accuse Sessions of perjury on fallacious grounds — an accusation on fallacious grounds is a false accusation and therefore perjury in itself.

In still another case of quote mining, Press Secretary Sean Spicer was asked a question about Russia's support for the Assad regime and how one convinces Putin not to support it. He answered that question with a context of using chemical weapons *in combat*, noting that no one in World War II — not even Hitler — used chemical weapons *in combat* against an enemy. The media takes this out of context to accuse Spicer of Holocaust denial, despite the fact that, A, the gas chambers contained hydrogen cyanide, which, although deadly, is far less deadly than the nerve agent Sarin, and B, a chemical weapon is a chemical dispersal device, not a gas chamber.

Why is quote mining number 1 on my list, you may ask? Because it applies to this blog post as well: *Any* quote of the following parts of this post that is in any way snipped and placed into a context different than that which its surrounding text already places it in will make you guilty of committing this fallacy.

2. Ad hominem

"Racist". "Nazi." "Sexist". "Extremist." "Homophobic". "Xenophobic". "Islamophobic". "Basket of deplorables". Should we go on? These have absolutely nothing to do with the topics, the ideas, the key problems that this country has faced which are now being fixed. Instead, they're all about attacking people personally. They're a distraction: instead of going after the issue, they're attacking a person's character directly and, emphasis on this, going off topic in the process. Yup, that's exactly what the definition of ad hominem is, and you wonder why in the world these people who claim to be the logical, reasonable ones are committing it.

3. Association fallacy

Just because someone supports an (allegedly) divisive candidate does not under any circumstances mean that the person in question is also divisive even by the same definition. Accusing people of being racist or sexist merely for associating with people, even if those people actually are, is called the association fallacy, and applying it towards people is ad hominem on top of the association fallacy. This is aside from the fact that when talking about Trump in particular, the alleged divisiveness is a false accusation that one needs to commit fallacy #1 in order to support.

4. False dichotomy

"I respect you as a human being, but don't agree with you on [name key issue]." "Homophobe!" "Transphobe!" "Islamophobe!" "Woman-hater!" "Violent Christian extremist!" "Evolution-hater!" (thank you, my good friend and mentor Sean McDowell, for that one). The assumption in this accusation is obvious: it's that anyone who disagrees with you hates you. Irony: notice how the person responded with name-calling? That makes the leftist twice as hateful as the conservative in this case. If calling someone a faggot or tranny on insufficiently informed, prejudicial grounds is hateful — and it is hateful indeed, even by my own conservative standards, especially given that I have been a victim of blatant lies about my sexuality based purely on looks (in one such instance back in 2013, one such liar had the nerve to call me a faggot simply because I had a pale yellow shirt on, despite the fact that that was actually my work uniform) myself — then calling someone a homophobe or transphobe is equally hateful. A false dichotomy, by definition, is assuming that there are only two options when there are in fact more than two. In this particular case, you have complete agreement at one end of the spectrum, total hate on the other, and tolerance in the middle — three options, not two.

A dichotomy, however, is only a fallacy if more than two options do exist and therefore it is false. Someone on Twitter tried to accuse me of committing this fallacy by arguing that claiming to be a feminist while doing nothing about women being oppressed under Sharia in the Middle East is hypocrisy, but in that case, there really are only two options, making this a true dichotomy, not a false one — failing to do homework on how many rights Islam gives to men and how many rights it denies women is in fact a fallacy (namely, circular reasoning) behind that accusation.

5. Poisoning the well

The fallacy of poisoning the well is a fallacy in which irrelevant (and abusive) information about an opponent is presented with intent to distract an audience. Since fallacy #1 (quote mining) is the fallacy that the media used to give people the impression of Trump being a racist, this fallacy was something that the media has been guilty of right from the get-go, and the "basket of deplorables" remark would also qualify as this. So, accusing Trump of committing a hasty generalization, are we? You're committing this fallacy by doing so.

6. No-true-Scotsman

This fallacy is something that secularists obsessively attack Christians over when they try to distance themselves from people who engage in violence in the name of Christianity (which, mind you, is at best Judaizing because A, none of the Old Testament punishments are ever repeated in the New Testament, which makes them descriptive of ancient Israel, not prescriptive for modern Christians, and B, it is completely contrary to the teachings not only of Jesus but of Paul, Peter, John, and all other New Testament writers as well). You'd think, therefore, that the Godless Left, which is loaded with far more atheists and agnostics than the right, would know better than to commit this fallacy, right? Wrong! When someone responds to issues like Islamic terrorism and illegal immigration with "not all Muslims are terrorists" or "not all Mexicans are drug dealers," respectively, they are doing exactly this: claiming to not be a true Scotsman. The statistical realities are that the majority of post-9/11 terrorists are Muslims and that the ratio of criminals to good people is higher among illegal immigrants than among legal immigrants, but leftists love to simply ignore statistics and reverse them thinking that we can take the bait. No, it won't work here.

7. Straw man

Before one attempts to smear an opponent for saying, doing, or wanting to do something, one must always ask oneself if that's exactly what that person said. Simply injecting words into an opponent's mouth without thinking — essentially lying about what an opponent says — is called creating a straw man, and it's a Logic 101 fallacy, as is most other stuff here. This is something that Trump himself actually took to Twitter to condemn, and rightfully so, because of just how fallacious it is.

8. Hasty generalization

This one is related to the false dichotomy and association fallacy, but worth noting. Yes, there are indeed some right-wing nutcases who are just as extreme as some factions of the left, and members of groups like the AoG and Westboro are denounced by the vast majority of us. Trump has denounced David Duke numerous times. He also denounced other members of the KKK that expressed support for him, and to boot, the KKK's main "Grand Dragon" ― Will Quigg ― endorsed Hillary for the presidency, which means that any KKK member who supports Trump is actually rebelling against his own hate group, which, it should be noted, was founded by a DNC delegate — Nathan Bedford Forrest — and initially was just as hateful toward white Republicans as it was toward blacks. Does the left care? Unfortunately not. They adhere to the blatantly fallacious view that adherents to these extreme factions somehow apply to the right wing as a whole, when they're really just the right wingtip feathers.

9. Ad populum (bandwagon fallacy)

Is it popular? Yes. Is it a good thing to believe? Not necessarily. When people fallaciously think that what's popular in parts of the country that have the highest population densities is what's right, they have committed this logical blunder. Back home in the UK, prior to colonizing what would eventually become the early United States, the Founding Fathers' ancestors were victims of so-called "parish pump politics" where small areas could use high population density to push local ideas on the rest of the country in a politically corrupt manner. The electoral college solves this problem by giving states with small populations a fair say in who gets elected, thus using geography as a "check and balance" if you will against small areas with high population densities and agendas that people in areas with less population density oppose. Electoral college abolitionism is therefore a commission of this fallacy, because without the electoral college we'd have the very "tyranny of the majority" that the Founding Fathers railed against.

10. Circular reasoning

When the left tries to attack us, do they even think about it? Unfortunately not. When the premise and conclusion are the exact same thing, that's called circular reasoning. Some examples are to the effect of "Christians are dumb, because… Christians are dumb," "DNA and homology point to Darwinism and not to OEC because… DNA and homology point to Darwinism," "Trump supporters are racist because… Trump supporters are racist", or, for an example that goes contrary to forensic evidence, "People who think Christianity is objectively true are closed minded… because <repeat>". Failure to use anything other than circular reasoning to defend a position makes you the closed-minded one.

11. Tu quoque

To be fair, this is something that, especially since the left began to claim the moral high ground in arguments, the right has been using equally as often as the left, but it should be noted that while the right has used it for just a few short years, the left has been using it for decades. Tu quoque is the appeal to hypocrisy fallacy ― also known as whataboutism, it's when someone is attacked personally for acting inconsistent with a judgment, and is thus, like poisoning the well, a specific variation of ad hominem. While it does indeed add a hypocrisy element on top of some evil and is therefore two evils on top of one another, hypocrisy is not a debunker. There are at least two recent examples of left-wing use of tu quoque.

One such example is the Left's most commonly used argument about Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch: they assume that Republican obstruction of Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland, back in 2016 justifies their obstruction of Gorsuch. News flash: Because A, the Dems were the first ones to obstruct SCOTUS nominees in the final year by Reagan and by Bush 43, and B, the entire argument is a fallacy, no it doesn't.

Another example of left-wing tu quoque is the "Buy American, Hire American" executive order. The left wing is claiming that almost all of Trump's memorabilia are made in China. Again, aside from the fact that this is a fallacy to begin with, as a businessman, memorabilia isn't even where most of Trump's money came from. The vast majority of his money came from writing books — on American soil — construction — on American soil — and, in the case of more than 80% of his wealth, buying and selling American real estate. Therefore, this second example is not only tu quoque but a red herring on top of that.

12. False equivalence

When equating something or someone with something or someone else, factors like order of magnitude in the case of something or political positions in the case of someone always matter. Failure to take into account every single detail of every single thing that you equate is called false equivalence. An example of this is when you equate something like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill with a small leak in a car's oil tank. While they both are examples of uncontrolled release of oil, one clearly releases more oil than the other. What, meanwhile, is a political example of this fallacy? That's right, the Trump vs. Hitler comparisons that the left makes. Why? Because Nazism is for big government, while Trump, with the glaring exception of building the wall, is for small government. Nazism is for abortion (Harvest of Hate pp. 273-274) while the Trump administration, along with Trump since 2011, is against abortion. Nazism is for increasing welfare; Trump is for a decrease in dependence on welfare. Nazism is for economic tyranny; Trump is for economic freedom. Failure to take all of these factors into account is, yes, false equivalence.

13. Historian's fallacy

When examining past events, always, always make sure to examine them assuming an attitude toward them that is similar to the general population at that specific time period. Failure to do this ― and instead assuming that a person of the past had the same perspective as the modern analyst ― is called the historian's fallacy. An example of this is when people are quick to call fascism right-wing. According to modern standards (which were mostly a result of partisan blame-shifting), it is to a degree (particularly on only three issues ― homosexuality, traditionalism, and nationalism ― and nothing else), but according to the standards of the Art Deco era when SJW politics was only embraced by Communist regimes like post-revolution Russia, and fiscally even by today's standards (like Nazism, fascism is also big government), it was as left-wing of a policy as you could get. While Hitler couldn't care less about anyone but himself, Mussolini and FDR, especially in the early 1930s, mutually admired each other ― Mussolini called FDR "one of us" as he read a book by FDR, a book in which he specifically cited Italian fascism as the model on which to base American progressivism. Now of course, European politics were still different than American politics at the time ― to Europeans, it would definitely have been considered a far-right position, but in 1930s American politics, the only issues that the Democratic and Republican parties disagreed on were fiscal ones ― both parties were socially conservative, yet one (namely, the New Deal Democrats) was more fiscally liberal than the other. Failure to examine history in the same light as contemporaries examined it makes you doomed to repeat it.

14. Slippery slope

If there is any fallacy that serves as the sole justification for nearly all the evil that the left commits ― the riots, the vandalism, the assault, and in some cases, even murder ― it's this fallacy. Groups like ANTIFA base all of their violence on the assumption, in turn based on previous fallacies on this list, that Trump will someday use government force on them. When someone inherently assumes that the path Trump is taking this country on is a bad one with no proof, that's called the slippery slope fallacy. It is in a way related to the hasty generalization ― it's a hasty generalization of future events, based on a small sample of current events.

15. Appeal to emotion

Ah, here we come to the mother of all left-wing fallacies. An appeal to emotion is when someone disregards facts or statistics and assumes that people might get hurt feelings, which therefore must have priority. Oh, wait, you didn't know that was a fallacy, did you? Well, it is. When people put feelings above facts in political debate, they are creating a political environment that stifles agendas for the sake of not "offending" people. Use of this fallacy creates an environment in which no one can get anything done. It creates a political environment in which all politicians dwell on the minutiae while neglecting the weightier matters of the law that they were voted in to enforce. Such is the environment that, thankfully, now-President Trump is destroying, replacing it with one that once again puts logic, reason, and (as agreed by both conservatives and leftists) facts above baseless emotions. This return to placing reason and logic above baseless emotions is exactly what "Making America Great Again" is all about.

Debunking the Anti-Trump Rhetoric of our Enemies

WARNING: The following are paragraphs, not individual sentences or phrases. Picking them apart and responding to individual phrases outside of their whole-paragraph contexts is quote mining.

Where are the accusations of racism from before Trump's presidential campaign began? From 2014? From 2013? 2012? 2011? 2010 or earlier? If there's an article PUBLISHED BEFORE June 2015 accusing Trump of racism, then I want to see it, because all accusations "going back decades" of racism have been raised ex post facto. If ex post facto laws are unconstitutional, then so are ex post facto accusations unconstitutional.

About the Central Park Five: The people involved weren't exonerated until 2002. Could Trump have known in 1989 that all of the people in that case were innocent of all charges? Absolutely not. Granted, he shouldn't have jumped to conclusions about it, but if these people were on death row as long as most are today, then they likely would have been on death row long enough to get exonerated for it before the government got a chance to kill them. Moreover, since 1989, forensic technology has greatly improved to say the least. We have more powerful microscopes. We have more accurate means of collecting DNA that can go almost completely undetected to would-be murderers. We have better training for police detectives in detecting the smallest of small samples. Comparing 1989 with 2016 on accuracy of finding out who's guilty and who's innocent is committing the historian's fallacy.

Now, about that wall, which seems to be the main talking point for those accusations of racism — why is it that Mexico can secure its southern border with Guatemala, and that's not racist, yet it's racist for us to secure our southern border? That's a plank in the Mexican government's eye. Tear down all fortifications ― fences, walls, everything ― on your southern border, Enrique, and then we'll reconsider our southern border wall. Don't even think about citing Snopes on their denial of the existence of the Mexico-Guatemala barrier either, because its staff are Hillary donors and therefore biased. The point isn't whether or not a wall across the Mexican-Guatemalan border already exists, the point is whether or not Mexicans are calling for one to exist, and according to a very popular Mexican newspaper, yes they are:

http://www.elmanana.com/sialmurofronterizo%E2%80%A6peroenelsurdemexico-3351816.html

Translation: "Yes to the border wall… but in Mexico's South." And, to translate the subtitle, using my 3 years of Spanish class and 9 years of experience communicating in Spanish: "In the southeast of Mexico there are two borders: one with Guatemala and one with Belize that don't bring benefits; on the contrary, only problems are induced because those crossings are being used for a new invasion: one of Central Americans using our country to cross into the United States."

The alleged hasty generalizations of all Mexicans as rapists, meanwhile, stopped a year ago. Give me one instance from March 2016 or later in which Trump hastily generalized all Mexicans as rapists or as drug dealers and then we'll talk, because if you still believe that 13 months after he said it, then you're believing old news, for one. Two, what exactly did Trump conclude that paragraph with? "And some, I assume — some are good people." Leaving that sentence out of a Trump quote is also quote mining, which means that whoever is making that charge is making it on a fallacious premise.

Finally, if you go to accuse Trump of being a hypocrite, perhaps you should look at your own candidate and, *especially*, her VP pick first. Tim Kaine claims to be a Catholic. Hillary claims to be a Methodist. On abortion, both the Catholic and Methodist churches use the Bible's position as their own, and the Bible's position is staunchly pro-life (if you attempt to quote a single Bible verse to support a pro-abortion view without also quoting everything else around it, then you're quote mining). What, meanwhile, do Hillary and Kaine both support? The self-refuting lie that is moral relativism: if it's immoral to impose morality, then it's also immoral to impose the moral claim that morality shouldn't be imposed — that entire view is false by its own standard. They think they can have their cake and eat it too on this issue by claiming to be Christian and for abortion at the same time, which is an act of blatant hypocrisy. That is a plank in Hillary's eye (and Kaine's eye) that must also be addressed before they can go on to accuse us of anything.

What happens when politics and self-refuting ideas collide

In July, I published a post to this blog pointing out that many of the claims that atheists make don't even meet their own standards. To review that post, those claims are "there is no truth" (that claim can't be true either if that's the case), "all truth is scientific" (that claim is philosophical and therefore false by its own standard), "all truth/morality is relative/subjective" (that statement claims to be true not only for the claimant but also for opponents, making it false by its own standard), "Christians are hypocrites" (A, hasty generalization, B, tu quoque, and C, anyone who tries to arbitrarily make up a standard oneself has the burden of living up to it; if they don't, then they're also hypocrites), and "you shouldn't judge" (A, that statement is a judgment, and B, quoting Matthew 7:1 without also quoting Matthew 7:2-5 at the same time is quote mining). It's the number 3 self-refuting statement — "all truth/morality is relative/subjective" — however, that even some presidential candidates still don't see the problem with.

Who can't see this problem? Hillary Clinton, that's who, and her vice-presidential pick Tim Kaine is just as bad when it comes to failure to call this self-refuting idea — and the self-refuting statement that accompanies it — out for what it is: false by its own standard. It's almost hilarious, really, that Tim Kaine hasn't been excommunicated from the Catholic Church over his relativism regarding abortion in particular, why? He claims that abortion is bad for him and his family but also claims to not care what others who might support abortion think about it. Blatant lie: because moral relativism is self-refuting and therefore false, the only thing that can be true in this regard is a moral absolute, which means that it's either good or evil. Since the Catholic and Methodist Churches, for that matter, both consider abortion to be an absolute evil, both Kaine and Hillary should be excommunicated from their said churches, at the very least.

Ah, but Trump is also an abortionist, you claim, right? For two reasons, that's a false claim: A, just because someone claimed to support abortion 16 years ago doesn't mean that claim is up-to-date (that's a fallacy called slothful induction), and B, there was reportedly a change in his position in 2011 when a friend of his wanted to abort his wife's child only to not go through with it, then seriously regret the contemplation once he met his own child face to face. Further, the Republican candidate for VP — Mike Pence — has a record as governor of Indiana that is about as pro-life as any candidate can possibly get on this matter — he reportedly used state *executive orders* to strip Planned Parenthood of all Indiana state tax funds, and as a result multiple abortion clinics in Indiana are closing down. As VP under Trump and as Senate President, Pence would likely use his Congressional powers to push acts into law that take his actions against PP in Indiana to the national level.

Also, enough with the claim that "it's a danger to women's health" to have a pro-life position! For starters, there's a difference between caring about both the life of the mother and the life of the unborn child vs. caring about the life of the mother at the expense of the life of the unborn child. "The unborn child is just part of the mother" you claim? According to the science of genetics, that's a lie. If that claim were true, then the DNA of the unborn child would be 100% identical to the DNA of the mother. That's not the case. Instead, the instant a sperm enters an egg, the DNA of both fuse together. The result? A genetically distinct cell that is genetically programmed, genetically wired, genetically predestined to grow into an embryo, a fetus, and then, finally, a child outside the womb. To jump to the conclusion that an unborn child is a part of the mother's body simply because of the location inside the womb is to flat-out deny science, and to say "it's my choice to abort" is again an act of believing the self-refuting lie that is moral relativism.

No one that tries to bring self-refuting ideas to Washington belongs in the White House. Claiming to be Christian means refraining from "nullifying the word of God" for the sake of anything else. The Pharisees, according to Jesus (Mark 7:13), "nullified the word of God" for the sake of tradition. The misnomered "Democrats", meanwhile, do the same thing: they "nullify the word of God" for the sake of moral relativism. Either they're pro-life Christians, pro-abortion atheists, or hypocrites. They can't have their cake and eat it too.

Calling ANY Field of Science 'Settled' while Claiming to be a Beacon of Reason at the Same Time is Hypocrisy

WARNING: The following is an essay, not individual sentences and not individual paragraphs. Quoting part of this work without also quoting the surrounding context ― the context that is the whole thing ― is quote mining.

It's almost laughable, the nerve that some scientists, particularly those that are also atheists, have. They claim to be beacons of reason. They claim to be rational. They go on to claim that all who don't agree with them and their opinions about Christianity must be deluded simply because they're not 100% materialistic. They group Christianity together with other religions that bear far more radical ideologies, then commit the hasty generalization of assuming that anyone who is against, for example, abortion or homosexuality is just as evil as Muslim terrorists. There's an irony in this, however: What about their own science communities? Is there discrimination there too?

Notice the standard that these accusations imply: Don't stop thinking. Always make absolutely certain to examine every piece of evidence closely. Never jump to any conclusion. This is a standard in which absolute certainty about any field of science is impossible. Do the scientists themselves do this? Do they refrain from jumping to conclusions? Do they keep thinking about everything without stopping their thoughts about anything? Do they explore every possible explanation, regardless of consensus about the evidence that they find, or do they shove all of that evidence through some materialistic worldview filter?

Ah, the answer is the latter. "[Darwinism] is a fact" they claim. "The science is settled." "There is no other possible cause for life than a naturalistic one." This is doing precisely the very thing ― namely, stifling thoughts that they disagree with ― that they accuse us of. Although I do kind of agree with them based on the fact that it's a consequence of the deadly sin that is greed, climate change is also a field of science that people pull this trick on. Same thing when it comes to other modes of politically and (ir)religiously motivated science, like science that pertains to homosexuality for instance. A consensus is NOT an objective truth! It's an opinion of a multitude of intelligent people, sure, but without God, an opinion is an opinion regardless of how many people hold it.

Moreover, if only science yielded truth as atheists claim, then guess what? The claim in and of itself would be false by its own definition. The claim that "all truth is scientific" isn't scientific, it's philosophical. I'm always willing to go back to the Craig v. Atkins (1998) debate on this issue: we have a case in which Peter Atkins claimed that science is the only thing that yields truth, and what is William Lane Craig's response? You cannot use the scientific method to prove math, nor can you use it to prove philosophy, nor can you use it to prove history… most importantly, you cannot use science to prove science itself, why? Because the mathematical formulas that science depends on must simply be assumed true in order for science to even be conducted!

So, without much further ado, it's hypocrisy to be skeptical about everything without also being skeptical about skepticism itself. Whenever you exempt a claim or view from its own standard, what you get is a breeding ground for hypocrisy, and unfortunately, that's exactly what the nature of most of these charges is.

The Apologetics of 'Bel and the Dragon'

Is Christian apologetics really 'tyranny of the experts'? Some lay believers seem to think so. They cherry-pick 2 Timothy 3:16 while at the same time ignoring 1 Peter 3:15. That aside, what exactly did the oldest of patriarchs use to defend their views? Did they resort to apologetics as often as we did? As Bill Dyer points out, even Abraham did, by believing that if God can create everything from nothing, then He can also raise Isaac from the dead — granted, Abraham also is told by God not to go through with the sacrifice. Now this is a trivial example, but is it the only one?

In fact, no — at least not if you look to deuterocanonical and/or apocryphal sources. The book of Daniel as we know it — at least the book of Daniel as Protestant Christians (including Lutherans like myself) know it — is not the same book of Daniel that adherents of Catholicism, Greek Orthodoxy, Russian Orthodoxy, and Coptic Orthodoxy know. Why? Because the Hebrew Bible was canonicalized by three different groups of Jews which each canonicalized it in their own entirely different ways.

These three versions of the Tanakh are called, by scholars, the Egyptian, Palestinian, and Babylonian traditions. The version that is present in most Protestant Bibles is the Babylonian one, which is also the one that most modern Jews have in their canons. The Palestinian version, meanwhile, is the one that the Ethiopian Church uses, and the Egyptian version is the one that the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches use. It's in this version of the book of Daniel — particularly the end of it — where things get interesting. It's a story of an idol — Bel/Marduk — and a dragon-like beast, and how Daniel proves both of these to be false.

First, we have the Bel idol. This bronze statue is given food, and it disappears the next day, and Darius the Mede is portrayed in this epilogue as begging the question about this idol's nature, that the idol must be eating the offerings. So, Daniel pours ashes on the temple floor one day. Then, the next morning, footprints in the ashes leading to a secret door are discovered, proving that the idol's own priests are taking the food to a secret area to trick everyone. Then the people see that this idol — the one that Darius the Mede is the most devoted to, mind you — is no more than a fraud, and his theory is debunked.

The next one is of the dragon-like creature, which Darius the Mede claims must be divine because it does eat and drink. So, what does Daniel do? Poison it. He gives it food that has been contaminated with a poison that, when the dragon ate it, would give off enough gas to make the dragon's stomach explode. The dragon eats it, bursts open, dies, and what does Daniel tell Darius the Mede? Because it's not immortal, then it's not divine either. This version then goes on to say that it's for this offense — killing the dragon — that Daniel is thrown into the lions' den.

Notice how in this account, Daniel doesn't just simply assert that Babylonian idolatry is fake. He goes on to provide evidence proving the Babylonians wrong about what it is they're worshipping. That's apologetics, is it not? So, we have Abraham, we have Daniel… why should our faith be any different? We have a whole wealth of arguments at our disposal to debunk worldviews like atheism that present a similar threat to Christianity today, so why not use them the same way the patriarchs did? I for one would rather just get with the program and follow in these patriarchs' and other apolosists' footsteps.

Distinguishing Between Biological and Psychological Transgenderism

WARNING: The following are paragraphs, not individual sentences. Picking those paragraphs apart and responding to single sentences while ignoring the rest of the paragraphs is quote mining, and, therefore, fallacious.

In the history of the church, no issue has resulted in more hatred, not only from the church but also of it, than those which are LGBT-related. Just three months ago, Target made highly controversial headlines, how? By removing gender signs from bathrooms simply to support a small minority of the population, one that insists that they are female when really male, or vice versa. Why is it that people would insist this, however? Is it scientific or deluded? Is gender based on chromosomes or on thoughts?

There are, in fact, some extremely rare biological exceptions to the gender issue. One, XX male syndrome, is a genetic disorder in which someone has sex organs that are clearly male but at the same time has two X chromosomes ― thus, genetically female despite masculine anatomy. Another, complete androgen insensitivity syndrome, is a disorder in which someone who has both an X and Y chromosome ― that is, genetically male ― is neurologically insensitive to testosterone and hormones structurally similar to it, resulting in anatomic femininity. These cases are, however, extremely rare ― only 4.5 per 100,000 in the XXMS case, and similar numbers in the cases of CAIS and XYGD. How many people who claim to be transgender actually have these disorders?

Considering that only about 0.7% of the population is transgender, it seems like it's a very high percentage at first. 9 per 100,000 (provided that the figures for XXMS and CAIS are identical), however, is only 0.00009, or 0.009% of the population. What percentage of that 0.7% is this value, therefore? Divide 0.009 by 0.7, and you end up with approximately 0.013% of the transgender community. 0.013% of 0.7% of the population, based on these estimates, is truly, biologically transgender.

What about the other 0.687%? Are they rational or deluded? Psychological studies seem to suggest the latter. Back in April when the whole debate over Target's decision was going on, psychologists managed to perform brain scans of transgender people and compared them to brain scans of people who are of the opposite sex. What they found was that the transgender brainwave patterns seemed to match with the gender with which they identified. The conclusion that the article drew, however, was that the people were not deluded, that they were in fact opposite genders trapped in the wrong body. However, is there another explanation? In fact, there is. Scientists did similar brain scans of people who look at porn, and what they found was that people actually think they're having sex when they look at it. In the same way, wouldn't it make sense that people who think that they're something they aren't, if they think about it long enough, may just end up becoming something they aren't, psychologically? If you're deluded when you do drugs and deluded when you look at porn, then you're also deluded if you think you're not what you are biologically. The scientists who conducted this study completely ignored these precedents suggesting that thoughts can physically alter the structure of one's brain — ignoring precedents is just as un-scientific as ignoring science in general.

So, based on this evidence, are we to sacrifice the rights of the majority to support the rights of a minority as small as 0.7%? Doing so is tyranny of a minority. By trying to support 0.7% of the population, Target is offending 50% of the population at the same time, why? Because it opens up a security hole. Now, all a male pedophile has to do is say "I feel like a woman" to get into a women's restroom, and he'll be able to do all kinds of evils to women and girls who are already in there. Why not just add a third restroom with an "Other" sign on it, a lockable door, and no stalls? From a privacy standpoint, it actually makes even more sense ― just lock the door to the whole restroom and you'll have even more privacy than those who use the stalls. No, instead, they would rather use the bathrooms with less privacy in the name of equality, twisting the definition of "equality" in an Orwellian manner. Hopefully Target learns lessons from the resulting boycott that I happen to be participating in; if not, then shareholder action to oust the current CEO must be taken.

Why I Am A Christian and Not An Atheist: The Historical/Legal Method

Disclaimer: The following are paragraphs and not individual sentences; therefore, it is a fallacy (namely, quote mining) to snip phrases and/or sentences out of the paragraphs in question and refute them individually. Paragraphs must be intact in order for any refutations to be valid. Also, the topic of this blog post is the veracity of the New Testament as a document. Any attempt to snub the gospel writers by speculating on whatever personal motives that they may have had — someone did this before and I deleted the comment in question — is ad hominem directed at the gospel writers and therefore also fallacious. Likewise, ad hominem directed at anyone I cite in this blog post as a source and/or inspiration is still ad hominem and therefore still a fallacy. Finally, this blog post is cumulative in nature — if you think that these points do not add up when in fact they do, then that is also the quote mining fallacy.

Is the Bible really accurate in its claims? I mean, as a middle schooler (and on the fine line between Christianity and atheism at the time), I had quite a few doubts about its reasonability.  It wasn't until 9th grade (2007-08) that the first of those doubts began to get debunked, and it wasn't until I learned the historical-legal method in my third full year of college (2014-15) that I began to really see how accurate the claims in the Bible are, since that's when Biola professor and bestselling author Sean McDowell first showed up at my church and used the same method to prove the Bible accurate in its claims. Since then, he has shown up two other times and Greg Koukl has shown up once, each time adding more ammunition to this arsenal. This post, therefore, is dedicated to going through how I got to that conclusion in detail.

Let's start with the Honesty Test: The claims that women are the first ones to discover the empty tomb (in ancient Israelite culture, women's testimonies were seen as completely worthless — that's obviously not the case in 21st century American or European cultures, but it would be an instance of the historian's fallacy to project 21st century American cultural values onto a story that takes place in 1st century Israel), that one of the Apostles denied Jesus three times, that, in the OT, an Israelite soldier by the name of Achan steals an offering during the Conquest and provokes God's anger as a result, and that the writers of Exodus claim that their ancestors were slaves (the chronology and archaeology are different topics altogether, but one should also take note that all who conclude that the Exodus did not happen do so because they all look in the wrong chronological period) all fall under the criterion of embarrassment. Further, the introductory statements to certain Gospels, like that of Luke for example, that don't claim to have been written by an apostle make claims that the writers *investigated* all the content available to them, using Roman forensics methods, not unlike what J. Warner Wallace did back in 1996. Conclusion: not only do the Gospel writers claim to care about truth, but the entire Bible is *loaded* with embarrassing admissions that serve to back that claim up — lying to make oneself look bad is completely unreasonable from the perspective of any ordinary human being.

Some cop out of the embarrassing admissions argument by claiming that these embarrassing details were carefully crafted to fool people into believing a fictional story as fact — the only being with even remotely enough omniscience and foresight to be capable of seeing this cop-out coming 2000 years in advance would be none other than God Himself. This argument inherently assumes that the Gospel writers were omniscient — if they weren't, then they would be incapable of tackling future objections that they never heard before. Either the Gospel writers were themselves omniscient — which is a logical impossibility given how clueless they portray themselves to be in their own works — or the Gospels are actually honest narratives and not fabrications.

Ah, but wait, were they actually written by the Apostles or are they all forgeries, as some people love to claim when presented with the above? That's where the Telephone Test comes in. For the New Testament alone, we've got close to 24,000 copies or portions (not counting mummy mask teardowns, which are making that number even higher still), not to mention a time gap of only between 25 and 50 years in the case of the Rylands Papyrus P52, and in the case of the 1st century Mark fragment obtained from a mummy mask teardown, less than 40 years. I have decided to come up with a formula to compare this to other sources:

V = (N1/G1)/(N2/G2)

where V = veracity, N1 = Biblical number of manuscripts, G1 = Biblical time gap, N2 = number of manuscripts for another source, and G2 = time gap for another source.

Apply that formula to Cicero, where the earliest manuscript dates to AD 400 and there are only 15 manuscripts available, and we have a situation in which the New Testament is (24000/50)/(15/400) = 480/0.0375 = 12,800 times more reliable than Cicero. Try to use Sallust and it gets even worse: we've got 20 manuscripts — slightly more than Cicero, sure — but the earliest manuscript is from — wait for it — the 10th century AD! We're talking a *quadruple-digit* time gap in Sallust's case, which would make Sallust and Tacitus tied at 1,000 years removed with only 20 manuscripts. This results in a situation in which the New Testament is (24000/50)/(20/1000) = 480/0.02 = 24,000 times more reliable than both Tacitus and Sallust, and this is based on the most conservative estimate possible. What about Caesar's own works, that he himself allegedly wrote? We've only got 10 manuscripts in that case and also a time gap of 1,000 years, making the case for the historicity of Jesus 48,000 times stronger than the case for the historicity of Caesar if self-published sources are preferred. Plato? Even worse: Try 1,200 years removed and only 7 manuscripts available. Thucydides? 1,300 years removed and only 8 manuscripts to choose from. Suetonius? 800 years removed, only 8 manuscripts to choose from. Even the Iliad, which is already in second place to the Bible with regard to this test, only has 1,757 manuscripts available and a time gap of 500 years! So, does one affirm the historicity of Jesus, doubt the historicity of both Caesar and Jesus, or is he or she a hypocrite? Because these numbers are incriminating evidence that affirming the historicity of Caesar while at the same time doubting the historicity of Jesus is hypocrisy.

Ah, but how different are the manuscripts from one copy to the next? Well, sure, there are hundreds of thousands of differences, but 80% of them have to do with spelling and another 19% with grammar. That leaves only 1% variation with anything more than 1 sentence long, and of that, 0% has anything to do with any essential doctrine. Spelling and grammar have absolutely nothing to do with validity — anyone who has ever used the term "grammar Nazi" is a hypocrite if they go on to apply "grammar Nazi" standards to the Bible as a veracity marker.

Even after all this, you cannot necessarily get a complete historical account if there's no corroboration from other sources. Is there? Time to test it. It's funny, really, that Tacitus, whom we know almost everything about ancient Rome from, despite being hostile towards Christians and despite epically failing the telephone test in comparison to the NT, happens to make the assumption that Jesus was indeed historical (see Annals 15.44.3). Tacitus certainly does not assume other radical claims like those mentioned in the Bible, but he does indeed assume that Jesus existed — why? Same thing with Josephus (Antiquities 8.3.3), a Jewish religious leader, who goes even deeper still (some claims may have been edited in by Christian scribes, but only a minority of them). Pliny (Letters 10.96-97), despite being given orders to persecute Christians, also makes a claim — the claim that the earliest believers worshipped Jesus "like a God" — that just assumes that this Jesus whom they worship actually existed.

It does go beyond mere existence, however. Extra-biblical sources also corroborate the Bible's claims that the crucifixion of Jesus was an actual historical event (Thallus, Pliny), that there was darkness during the crucifixion (Thallus, Phlegon), that the crucifixion occurred in Judea during the reign of Tiberius and the governorship of Pontius Pilate (Tacitus, Josephus), that the Jewish religious leaders played a role in the crucifixion of Jesus (Mara Bar-Serapion, Josephus), that the crucifixion occurred on the day before Passover (Talmud), that many prophecies by Jesus we're fulfilled (Phlegon), that the first Christians believed that Jesus is God (Pliny the Younger), that the first Christians upheld a high moral code (Pliny the Younger), that the first Christians met regularly to worship Jesus (Pliny the Younger), that Jews were expelled from Rome by Emperor Claudius (Suetonius), that the earliest Christians were willing to die for their beliefs (Suetonius), that Jesus' teachings included teachings about repentance and about the kingdom of God (Lucian of Samosata), that Jesus' earthly father was a carpenter (Celsus), that Jesus possessed unique powers (Celsus), and, last but certainly not least, that Jesus claimed to be God (Celsus). That is a very exhaustive list, and if you notice, it is a list that is wholly consistent with claims made not only in the Gospels but also the Epistles.

So, honesty test — pass, telephone test — EPIC pass, corroboration test — pass. If the Bible passes all these tests, then it must be true, and if it is true, then all the claims within must be true, and if all claims within the Bible are true, then Christianity itself is true. The lesson I learned, however, is this: Although we Christians must be ready to defend our faith and make sure people know that the "blind faith" charge is patently false, unbelief based on circular reasoning is just as irrational and fallacious as belief based on circular reasoning ― it is just as irrational to assert that "the Bible cannot be accurate no matter how much evidence exists in this blog post because there is no God because <repeat>" as it is to assert that "the Bible is true because it says that it is true because <repeat>". One needs to examine (and cross-examine) both sides before taking a side.

Exodus Evidence, Part 2: The Biblical Connection to Lower Egyptian Dynasties XIV and XV

In my previous post, I made a rather strong case against the habit of looking for Exodus evidence in the wrong time period. Towards the end of the post, however, is a claim that refers to Khamudi as being the Exodus Pharaoh, as opposed to someone from Dynasties XIII (Rohl) or XIX (mainstream). Little do people realize, however, that the archaeological pattern from Avaris and other associated sites matches much more closely with the chronology of the lower kingdom of Divided Egypt than anything else. So, I'm using this post as an explanation for why I personally think that the Lower Egyptian dynasties are far more important, Biblically speaking, than the dynasties from Upper Egypt or from a unified Egypt.

A very important discovery was indeed made, right at the beginning of the earliest possible Avaris settlement. A Syrian-style house, very similar to the kind of house that Abraham, Isaac, and/or Jacob would have built in their hometown of Harran, Syria, was found at this location, and was subsequently flattened. On top of this flattened house, a palace was constructed. This palace was huge. It contained courtyards, speech chambers, a robing room, a front entrance with 12 pillars supporting it, and a garden in the back containing 12 tombs. Note this interesting pattern of 12's here: There was only one Semitic culture at this time, bar none, that considered 12 to be a number of cultural significance, and that culture was ancient Israel.

The one tidbit that *really* gets interesting, however, is that one of these 12 tombs behind this Avaris palace was shaped like a pyramid. Extremely unusual, why? Because only Pharaohs and queens had pyramid tombs at this time — not even viziers had pyramid tombs! Imhotep certainly didn't. Neither did any other highly important vizier in ancient Egypt, before this period or after. The person buried in this tomb, however, was a foreigner. His cult statue shows him with red hair (!), yellow skin (!), a throwstick (!) across his shoulder, and painted to look like he's wearing a multi-colored coat(!). Either this is indeed Joseph himself, or his career is identical to Joseph's.

The Pharaoh who was ruling at the exact same time that this palace and tombs were constructed in Avaris was Amenemhat III. His statue is a much more drab complexion compared to Joseph's: he's depicted with ears turned out so as to listen to people's concerns, and with a facial expression that is much more indicative of worry than of prosperity. It was during his reign that "Bahr Yussef" — the "Waterway of Joseph" — was constructed to divert half the water from the Nile into the Faiyum, a marshy lake that was used to grow crops like rice and wheat during times of plenty. Making it bigger means it's possible to grow more, and according to the Bible, Joseph interpreted the dreams of Amenemhat as seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine, correct? During a time of drought (definitely a famine-causing phenomenon) on the Nile, the Faiyum would have still been large enough to hold water for much longer than 7 years.

After Amenemhat III, however, something really interesting happens: One kingdom becomes two. Dynasty XIII (the one that Amenemhat was a member of) rules Upper Egypt, and a brand new Dynasty XIV — Joseph's dynasty — rules Lower Egypt. Amenemhat was probably *so* impressed with Joseph's famine-foiling tactics that he decides to give half of his kingdom to Joseph and his descendants as a gift — the fact that he's buried in a pyramid tomb, the *only* vizier throughout Egyptian history to do so, seems to suggest exactly this.

But wait, what about the "Pharaoh who knew not Joseph"? Skip forward about 200 years to the reign of Upper Egyptian pharaoh Djedneferre Dedumose II. During his reign, Egypt goes from two peacefully coexisting kingdoms — Upper and Lower — to civil war. How did this happen? Right around this time, Dynasty XIV is replaced with Dynasty XV. A coup d'état occurs in Lower Egypt, and this new dynasty, instead of being friendly to the Upper kings, is hostile to them. How did this happen? The most likely possibility is that a dissident within Upper Egypt opposed to the way Dynasty XIII was allowing these people to live within Egyptian borders decided to flee from Upper Egypt to Lower Egypt, then assassinate the last Dynasty XIV king, take over, and enslave the people for nationalistic reasons, which were the ones that the Bible mentions. This founder of Dynasty XV was Sheshi, and the last king in Dynasty XV was Khamudi.

Making Khamudi the Pharaoh who confronted Moses (and, by extension, Apepi II as the Pharaoh that instituted the drowning policy and whose daughter adopted Moses, according to Exodus 2:23) would make perfect sense from a standpoint of how this powerful Lower Kingdom was able to get overrun and how this bloody civil war ended so abruptly: The plagues and the Red Sea crossing would mean that Khamudi would suffer the loss of his slave force, the loss of his crops, the loss of his firstborn, and the loss of his army. The Exodus would weaken the Lower Kingdom, sure, but the Upper Kingdom? The Upper Egyptians would be saying "You know this Lower king, Khamudi? His slave force is free, his army is under the Red Sea, and all his firstborn are dead — here's an opportunity for us to take him out." Right after the Exodus, this is exactly what happens: Khamudi is killed by an Upper Egyptian Pharaoh by the name of Ahmose I, who conquers the now largely abandoned Lower Egypt and founds the reunified New Kingdom on top of the Lower Kingdom's plagued, pillaged, abandoned, tattered ruins. This could be why we have yet to discover a Dynasty XV mummy.

Exodus Evidence, Part 1: The Absurdity of Hollywood's Flawed Biblical Chronology

Why is it that some people make claims that there "was no Exodus"? If there is archaeological evidence, where is it? When does it date to? This last question, little do people realize, is the only one that deniers get wrong. On Saturday, April 16, 2016, two days after my 23rd birthday which happened to also be the day when the mocked incident occurred, there was an SNL skit that simply reinforces this problem. It was a mockery of Soros-funded RINO John Kasich and how he linked the Passover and Last Supper together. Apparently the woman — would have to look her up to find out her name — who was hosting this SNL episode used chronological snobbery to deny that Jesus' last supper was indeed a Passover Seder celebration and accuse Kasich of "fanfictioning" Jesus into the Passover. Accusations aside, when did this SNL host claim that the first Passover occurred? "Around 1300 BC", right? Wrong!

This is based on Exodus 1:11, which makes a mention of (Pi-)Ramses as the city that the Israelites built. This city only has a brief history, archaeologists claim. The question is, is this an anachronism or a hard marker? Genesis 47:11 also makes a similar claim — the "land of Ramses" was also mentioned hundreds of years before the city existed as the place where Joseph's family settled. So, is Genesis 47:11 an anachronism, is Exodus 1:11 an anachronism, or are both of them anachronisms? Not only is this a problem in the Bible, but also in Egyptian chronology — Ramses' son, Merneptah, made a record of a battle in which Israel was mentioned as having an already established political presence, and a century before Ramses, Amenhotep III also made a stele (called the Berlin Pedestal after the museum that it's currently stored in) recognizing Israel as already existing. Moreover, the city was only known by that name — Ramses — for that short period, but Pi-Ramses is itself built on top of a much older city. Unlike Pi-Ramses, where there are in fact no Asiatic (Semitic) settlements at all, this older city is loaded with artifacts that are clearly Semitic in origin. What exactly is the name of this older city that Ramses II himself named "Pi-Ramesse" happens to be built right on top of? Avaris.

What Bible verses do we have regarding the chronology of the Exodus, that are in fact far more explicit references than Exodus 1:11, and may in fact point to Avaris as the site of this reference? For starters, we've got 1 Kings 6:1. According to this passage, it was 480 years since the Israelites "came out of Egypt", emphasis on "came", that Solomon started building his temple, which was built in 966 BC according to the chronology that most scholars use. In the original Hebrew, that word is "יָצָא", which is a word that is translated in other parts of the Bible (like Exodus 23:16 for example) as an ending or a completion — in this case, the completion of the Exodus journey. This likely means, therefore, that the conquest of the Promised Land occurred 480 years before about 970 BC, which would be about 1450 BC.

Ah, but the year of the conquest wasn't the first time that the Israelites reached the Jordan, according to Numbers 14:33. No, they first got to the Jordan 40 years before that, when, what happened? Instead of conquering the Promised Land, they see the walls of these fortified cities — Jericho, Hebron, Hazor, etc. — and grumble in fear, flee, and wander the deserts for those 40 years. 40 years before 1450 BC would mean that this event occurred around 1490 BC.

This, then, raises another question: How long did it take for the Israelites to get to the Jordan River in the first place, before grumbling in fear and coming back? According to Exodus 16:35, the time it took to go from the Red Sea, to the Ten Commandments sermon, to the "manna" and quail in the deserts, to the "border with Canaan" that would have been understood as the Jordan River to these people before grumbling, cowering, and making a go-around, was a total of, that's right, another 40 years. Start at 1490 BC and go back an additional 40 years from there, and what you end up at is a very significant year indeed: 1530 BC.

This late 16th century BC date marks a time that's just as important in Egyptian chronology as it is in Biblical chronology: it's the end of the Hyksos Period. Yes, that's right, the Hyksos, a people who brought countless artifacts of Semitic origin into Egypt, and the Israelites are one and the same people according to this reference. The ideas that the events occurred in 1300 (or 1250) BC, and that Ramses II was the Exodus Pharaoh when Khamudi is a far more likely candidate, are ideas that therefore must die. They're based on very "flimsy" Biblical indicators, according to Trinity University Professor John Bimson, despite the existence of far more explicit references to other periods, including the three I gave here that combine to point a finger directly at Avaris as being the site of the Biblical Goshen. But no, in Hollywood, this chronology-denying ignorance still abounds, unfortunately.

"You Cannot Do Them All At The Same Time": Why Moral Relativism is Self-Refuting

Ever get into a debate in which the only response out of someone who finds out that you're Christian is "LOL" or something similar? I have, many times. Atheists claim to be intelligent. They claim to know everything, yet what is coming out of their mouths or off their fingers? Numerous capitalization, punctuation, and spelling errors, for one, and for two, profanity, ad lapidem, ad hominem, proof by assertion, and other grave logical fallacies, regardless of whether the logical fallacies in question are inside the context of the discussion or in a discussion with an entirely unrelated topic.

The issue, they claim, is "Who are you to force your opinion on us?" If it's an opinion, then why are they even bothering with it? The only possible way to remain truly neutral is to simply stay out of all positions, period. Claiming to be neutral is one thing, but the minute anyone attempts to persuade anyone to take any position, regardless of whether the position in question is political, (ir)religious, (a)theological, cultural, or even scientific, the claims of "neutrality" refute themselves. A classic example of this is a former president of Planned Parenthood, who once claimed that "teaching morality does not mean imposing my moral views on others". She then, in blatant violation of her own claim, went on to lobby the government to silence the pro-life crowd. There's a word for this: It's called hypocrisy.

Notice that there's also an irony in the very claim being made? The claim that "you shouldn't impose your moral views on others" is inherently an objectivistic claim. In order for it to even be made, one needs to contradict his or her own view, then get back to it. It's as if so-called "relativists" are hiding objectivism in a closet and only want to use it when they feel it supports them; no different, for the record, from the claim that "there is no truth" which would in itself be false if its premise were true.

That claim is not the only objectivistic claim raised by them, however: What about the so-called "problem" of evil, or, to put it more plainly, the evil dilemma? If there's a good and powerful God, they say, then why does evil exist? Notice how they have to make an assumption that there is indeed evil in the world. What does relativism claim? It claims that there are just different points of view on what is good and what is bad. This reduces the very topic of this dilemma ― evil ― to an undefined variable. Evil can only exist if there's a standard of good to hold someone's actions to. Therefore, the skeptics who bring this issue up have a dilemma of their own:

• If moral objectivism is true, then evil has only one definition and therefore does indeed exist
• If moral relativism is true, then evil is undefined, and if evil is undefined, then everything is good and evil is impossible

This is also true for religious pluralism. As some of you probably know, Professor Greg Koukl, president of Stand to Reason, spoke at my church just three weeks ago on this very issue, and some of what Greg taught has greatly influenced this blog post. My notes from that very discussion are here for those who might want to read them. He puts this plainly: "When you die, you either go to heaven or hell, or lie in the grave, or go to 'astro worlds', or get reincarnated, but you cannot do them all at the same time. All religions cannot be true because they have contradictory truth claims."

On this day, Good Friday, March 25, A.D. 2016, my thoughts, prayers, and logic all go out to those who still insist on believing this flawed content, even as I grow in my faith and put it into practice by posting stuff like this. It's sad, really: some have become so hostile to even the remotest possibility that Christianity might be true that, instead of investigating their objections as J. Warner Wallace, Josh McDowell, C.S. Lewis, and, yes, I did (had some doubts as a middle schooler that I chose to investigate while in high school), they choose to raise stuff like this that takes "unreasonable" to an even greater low than the low that they claim Christianity is at, not even realizing how unreasonable their objections actually are.

Biological Evidence of the Need for a Savior, Part 1: The Fight-or-Flight Response

One of the most common questions raised by atheists, and I have seen this raised countless times, to be fair, is the question of why a good God would send people to Hell. This question fails to take into account that all 7 billion people on this planet, not to mention billions of ancient people to boot, are in rebellion against God by nature, for starters — people who rebel get separated, that sounds like a natural consequence to me. In response to this assertion, one atheist on YouTube replied that he thought we were good, and not evil, by nature, at which point I had to give him a little history lesson. There are in fact several biological factors that are evil by nature, and the one I'll be covering in this post — the fight-or-flight response — is the beginning of a multi-part series on biological evidence explaining why we need a savior.

Has anyone reading this ever gotten this sudden urge to lash out in anger when a certain trigger is flipped? When provoked in a certain manner? When physically attacked, to want to just attack in return? I confess, even I have in the past, to my (and this is a serious understatement) ultimate regret. When certain triggers are tripped, the adrenal glands release large amounts of epinephrine. Heart rate increases. Breathing rate skyrockets. The person quivers. At this point, he or she has only two natural, biological instincts: lash out in anger, or be a coward, run away, and let sloth take over. This, by definition, is the fight-or-flight response.

Note how anger and sloth — the products of this biological reflex — are two of the Seven Deadly Sins. What did Jesus preach on the Sermon on the Mount about this matter? He told us to love (!) our enemies, to, "when slapped on one cheek, turn the other", and to keep going the extra mile. Doing all this means suppressing this response that is hard-coded into not only human beings but also into animals of all sorts. Without divine intervention, suppression of the fight-or-flight response is physically impossible.

This, therefore, brings us to the ultimate reason why we must believe to be saved from eternal separation: it's just one of several pieces of evidence (others of which will be covered in other posts in this series) that human beings, all 7 billion of them, are evil by nature. And if we're evil by nature, then it's only by acceptance of the gift of substitutionary atonement that we can possibly get out of this.

Since it is physically impossible for us to suppress this reflex, we have Jesus, who *never* used it on another human being — even when threatened with crucifixion — and became the ultimate sacrifice, as God incarnate, to atone for these natural-yet-sinful instincts, to pay for them so we don't have to. Stay tuned, because every Thursday from now until March 3, another member of this series will be posted.

AQAP Stronghold Becomes Tropical Cyclone Magnet: More Divine Retribution?

Cyclone Chapala was, once again, a storm for the record books, to say the least. In the western hemisphere, this behemoth would be called a Category 4 hurricane, but this cyclone formed not in the Atlantic… or the eastern Pacific… or the western Pacific (where they're called typhoons)… but in the Indian Ocean. Not unprecedented if it happened in the Bay of Bengal, but in the Arabian Sea? Yup, that's precisely where this monster formed. Also not unprecedented, but most storms there end up either being fish storms or making landfall in western India. Where exactly was the landfall location of this beast, by stark contrast? The typically extremely arid city of Al-Mukalla, Yemen.

Cyclone Chapala as it approached the Yemeni coast on All Saints' Day, 2015. Two days later, on the day immediately following All Souls' Day, this beast would hammer the city of al-Mukalla, occupied by AQAP throughout much of 2015, with hurricane-force winds, storm surge, and a decade of rain in less than 24 hours, causing a flood of biblical proportions.

The devastation (and devastation potential) was certainly hard to underestimate, that's for sure. Tropical cyclones not only bring fierce winds and city-busting storm surge with them, but also typically dump double-digit rainfall wherever they make landfall. This area, however, typically gets less than 2 inches of rain per year. The soil there is very much like Arizona's as a result: extremely impervious to water. When it rains in the desert, it floods, and when the desert gets a decade worth of rain in less than 24 hours, it floods big time. As if that deluge wasn't enough, guess what? Another tropical depression just formed, and is forecast to hit the same area as another hurricane-strength storm in the next week or two (Update: this one has been given the name Megh).

Making matters worse, the country has been in a civil war for decades. While the government has tried to keep the country in order, Islamist groups like Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) have tried to tear Yemen apart. So, without much further ado, what city is AQAP's de facto capital? Al-Mukalla. This arid city turned tropical cyclone magnet is also a city that such notorious terrorists as Nasir al-Wuhayshi, founder of the AQAP branch, and Nasser bin Ali al-Ansi, commander of the two men who perpetrated the Charlie Hebdo shooting, called (and their group still calls) home.

In October 2014, I wrote and published another post that makes a hard case about areas where persecution of Christians takes place and how natural disasters are often precariously timed to coincide with days following Jewish and Christian holidays. Cyclone Chapala made landfall on November 3. November 2 is All Souls' Day — or "la Día de los Muertos" in Spanish — and at least in the Catholic Church is a very, *very* important holiday. Could Cyclone Chapala be yet another example — in addition to the AD 79 Vesuvius eruption and 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake/tsunami 1-2 punch — of this kind of divine retribution at work?

The interpretation of this is up to the reader, but it definitely makes sense. Av 10, December 26, and November 3 are all days immediately following important Jewish (Tisha b'Av) and Christian (Christmas, All Souls' Day) holidays, to be sure. Although A.D. 79, 2004, and 2015 are all worlds apart in a historical context, these disasters IMO are a reminder of who's in charge here.

Dolores Deluge: Rare July Precipitation Event with an El Niño Fueled Tropical Connection

19 July 2015. For the past two days, conditions have seemingly gone topsy-turvy for some here in Southern California during what is typically the driest month of the year. An Angels game had to be cancelled due to "inclement weather" for the first time since 1995. Two formerly raging wildfires, including one that scorched 20 cars on the 15 freeway, are now 100% contained thanks to extremely high humidity and rare July rainfall. People in an assisted living community had to evacuate, not due to fire, but due to flash flooding ― and this is in July, when average annual precipitation is only 0.02 of an inch. People have been quick to directly blame El Niño, but in actuality, it's really only indirectly related.

Hurricane Dolores as a Category 4 storm Wednesday evening, hammering Socorro Island. Eventually, after dissipating over cooler waters, this system shot a plume of moisture up the coast as a tropical storm, then made landfall in SoCal as a remnant low

The real source of this rare July bonus moisture was, yes, that's right, former Category 4 Hurricane Dolores. On Wednesday, Socorro Island, a volcanic island about 200 miles southwest of Cabo San Lucas that contains a Mexican naval base, got hammered by sustained winds clocking in at 130mph, coupled with a 15-foot storm surge and horizontal rain, all from this beast. After that, the storm began to move into cooler waters and, naturally, weaken... ah, but slowly. Dolores remained a weak tropical storm as far north as Vizcaíno ― rare for July ― and produced tropical storm force winds even after becoming post-tropical, as far north as San Clemente Island. The result? A boatload of tropical moisture streaming over Southern California during what is usually the driest month of the year.

El Niño years tend to make this more likely to happen, for several reasons. One is the weakening and/or reversal of the trade winds. Normally, they blow from east to west ― that is typically why hurricanes also move in that direction. When the trades weaken or reverse, westward movement slows. Second is the large-scale collapse of blocking patterns that typically dominate over much of the North Pacific during the summer months. This allows low pressure systems to form in the North Pacific even during the dry season ― troughs that can grab tropical cyclones and pull them north. Third, with the resulting overall lack of upwelling, waters immediately off the California and South American coasts become much warmer than normal, giving tropical cyclones more overall fuel that can sustain them further from the tropics than usual. All of these factors put together can cause some rather interesting effects as the hurricane season in the eastern Pacific basin (which happens to be the very source of the wind shear that suppresses Atlantic activity) rolls on up.

Although this kind of situation is definitely the first of its kind for July in the known historical record, it's not the first of its kind period. In September 1997, for example, moisture from Hurricane Linda ― which currently holds the record for strongest in Eastern Pacific history, although probably not for long ― streamed across California, causing torrential rains and even hail the size of golf balls in some locations. That same year, moisture from the much weaker Hurricane Nora also managed to cause some interesting totals, especially in the Inland Empire, where flooding was rampant. Going further back into history, one of these eastern Pacific behemoths made landfall in Long Beach as a strong tropical storm back in 1939 ― also an El Niño year ― and even further back, in 1858 — again, El Niño — a Category 1 hurricane brought 85mph sustained winds and 10 feet of storm surge to San Diego.

Given how many impacts we've had already ― heck, even way back in May and early June we had some remnant moisture from Hurricane Blanca as well ― it shudders me to think of possible impacts later in this season, including possible repeats of the 1939 and/or 1858 events, given that 2015 accumulated cyclone energy is already ahead of 1997 levels. Although, I for one would definitely take a direct hit from a tropical cyclone as an added bonus on top of already extreme winter El Niño impacts over this drought any day… catch-22, I guess. These are definitely exciting times indeed.

July 2015 ENSO update: Equatorial anomalies, WWB's continue to ramp up

If I haven't been posting much to this blog in recent weeks/months, I apologize. Part of the reason has been my exceptionally high Twitter activity… ah, and activity there tends to be a distraction. Anyhow, I've been using a myriad of tools to track this pending El Niño event – everything from retweets, to WWB time-lon forecasts, to surface current anomalies, to observed SST anomalies, to SST anomaly forecasts, and all of them are beyond impressive.

SST anomalies: Exceptionally impressive to say the least

My last update (in May) showed a marginally warm strip along the equator. Now, however, it's July. What do we have here? Well…

Compare that to May, and clearly it's a sign that this event is, hands-down, the strongest since 1997. Do SST anomalies alone tell the whole story? Of course not, but it goes to show just how impressive this event is, with more WWB's and downwelling Kelvin waves (next paragraphs) on the way. What makes this map clearly differ from 2014 (especially) is the Banda Sea cold pool: it forces high pressure over Indonesia, thus keeping the atmospheric response locked in place.

Westerly trades: Cross-equatorial tropical cyclones, redux

You may recall that what initially kickstarted this event was a pair of tropical cyclones on both sides of the equator at the same longitude back in March: Cyclone Pam (yes, that's right, that monster, the one that ended up being a direct hit on Vanuatu, completely obliterating heavily populated portions of the island) on one side of the equator, and Tropical Storm Bavi (which never made it to typhoon status) on the other. Fast-forward to July 1 Australian time (technically late June 30 in California) and that exact same thing happened again: TS Chan-hom on one side of the equator, Cyclone Raquel (also a TS when the Saffir-Simpson Scale is applied) on the other. Although Cyclone Raquel was clearly weaker than Pam, it was still paired with another cyclone on the opposite side of the equator. When this occurs, it's like a WWB pitching machine: winds rotate counterclockwise north of the equator, clockwise south of it, and between the two, winds have only one way to blow: from W. Here:

As you can clearly see, what we're looking at is easily the most powerful westerly wind burst since March, and moreover, when Raquel dissipated, the Southern Hemisphere Booster followed right behind. Now, there's a pressure gradient of high in W, low in E, which can keep that WWB progressing further E. In ~5 days, this westerly wind burst could reach the far E Pacific, where more hurricanes (starting with Dolores) should form. For a review: the word "typhoon" is only used W of the date line; E of it, they're still hurricanes.

Kelvin waves: 3 and counting

You may recall that the April/May Kelvin wave was set off by the westerly wind burst induced by the Pam/Bavi cross-equatorial pair. However, the May westerly wind burst set off a second downwelling Kelvin wave. While the Kelvin wave in April only contained small patches of +6°C anomalies at depth, this one brought with it anomalies at depth of +6°C across the board, with patchy +7°C T-Depth anomalies. Then, Chan-hom and Raquel pitched in, and the result was a third Kelvin wave. Although it doesn't look too impressive at the moment, it's very fast-moving: in just a matter of, like, 3 days, it's gone from 165°E to the date line, and the WWB that spawned it continues to move east as well. On top of that, there's now a strong MJO superimposed on top of the Niño signal, adding to those westerly anomalies, and as mentioned above, there's also anomalous cooling of the Banda Sea helping to lock that signal in place.

Conclusion

So, we've got everything coupled… it's just a waiting game now. Let's see how strong this event gets, shall we? It would definitely mean the world to us in CA, especially in conjunction with cooling AMO, since cool Atlantic in general tends to want to shift the storm track south, and with the Hudson Bay now also heating up with warm anomalies, blocking should reposition over Canada… everything looks to be coming together. Everyone, this is going to be a wild ride.