PayPal recently changed their terms and conditions (explained here, though the link will go out of date), allowing them to forbid use of PayPal on any site that has "activities that relate to transactions involving ... the promotion of ... forms of intolerance that is (sic.) discriminatory".
That's all. No mention of what areas you can or can't discriminate (definition: apply a difference) in.
In other words, it's an ultimate "anything we dislike" clause. Some years ago I was reading an article on the absurd number of new laws passed in the UK in recent decades, and the surprisingly enormous number of things that are actually illegal. The article (in a secular newspaper) was about how the general principle that laws should have a reasonable correspondence to peoples' sense of right and wrong, or that the law should be easy to discover, had been broken. Tyrants everywhere love to make everything illegal... and then enforce that law arbitrarily to favour their friends and hurt their enemies.
Adam Ford has written here recently about the kind of power that Facebook and Google have (and use) to enforce their founders' Californian world-view, and suppress Christian or conservative ideas. Their algorithms and procedures are not neutral, but written in lines with their founders' ideas about what ideas should be promoted, and which should not be promoted. It seems that PayPal have decided to get in on the same game. They've introduced a catch-all clause that could be used to render just about any idea they choose to take exception to as out-of-court... but which is so broad that it couldn't possibly be used consistently. It rules out "discrimination", without limits. But all of life involves discriminating... hopefully, between things that are right or wise, and things that are wrong or foolish, and choosing the former. You can't live life well without discerning the difference and making a choice.
To take a real-world example.... if a pro-life group, campaigning to protect unborn lives, has complaints filed against it for being "anti-women" or "anti-freedom" (which is what the current lying propaganda says), and another pro-abortion group has a complaint filed against it for being discriminatory against unborn lives... then if PayPal follow the route of Facebook and Google, the outcome will be easy to predict. The current "progressive" ideology promoted in Silicon Valley says that to forbid the "right" to end an unborn life is discrimination against women..... but that Christian viewpoints that want to protect lives are discriminatory, even hate-filled (and yes, they also added a clause to forbid that in vague and general terms too). Christians are not tolerated; they are banned, for intolerance.
We now await to see what happens next, and if the outcome is any difference to how things have been with Google and Facebook.
Wednesday, 27 June 2018
Friday, 22 June 2018
Systematic ignorance - by design
Modern government-run education in the West or influenced by the West teaches people what to think, not how to think.
But as Patrick Deneen, via Justin Taylor, points out at the link below, it's worse than that. The selection of "what to think" deliberately overlooks the history of our civilisation. It is systematically absent.
That's very handy if you want people to uncritically believe a set of new ideas and prefer those new ideas not to receive much scrutiny and opposition.
That's not a conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theories are plots carried out in secret that only those with privileged access to secret information can know about. The content of government-run education is a public fact, available to the observation of anyone who is concerned.
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/systemic-ignorance-feature-not-bug-modern-education/
In other news, the UK government wants all home educators to register with them, so that it can check up on the standards involved in what they're doing.... https://mailchi.mp/christian/home-education-consultation-speak-out-to-protect-the-role-of-parents ... it'd be funny if it weren't so serious.
But as Patrick Deneen, via Justin Taylor, points out at the link below, it's worse than that. The selection of "what to think" deliberately overlooks the history of our civilisation. It is systematically absent.
That's very handy if you want people to uncritically believe a set of new ideas and prefer those new ideas not to receive much scrutiny and opposition.
That's not a conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theories are plots carried out in secret that only those with privileged access to secret information can know about. The content of government-run education is a public fact, available to the observation of anyone who is concerned.
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/systemic-ignorance-feature-not-bug-modern-education/
In other news, the UK government wants all home educators to register with them, so that it can check up on the standards involved in what they're doing.... https://mailchi.mp/christian/home-education-consultation-speak-out-to-protect-the-role-of-parents ... it'd be funny if it weren't so serious.
Tuesday, 22 May 2018
"If I say I am a woman, I am a woman"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/05/22/labour-allows-male-activist-stand-womens-officer-identifies/
David Lewis, a Labour activist, told the Spectator he identifies as a woman "on Wednesdays, between 6.50am when my alarm goes off and around midnight when I go to bed."
"If I say I’m a woman, I’m a woman."
I don't know if he's serious, or if he's a subversive aiming to expose the intellectual vacuity of modern gender ideology, by a kind of reductio ad absurdum. And that's the point... we've now reached the stage where it could be either of those things, and nobody would know the difference. They might be doing it for the comedy value, or in deadly earnestness, and if you want to be popular with the "progressive" crowd, then you'd better not laugh before you've made sure of which.
In the article, one person quoted correctly notes "It is already making the sex category of woman meaningless."
Precisely. If femininity is whatever anyone, anywhere cares to define it as, then femininity is nothing. If detached from biology, from bodily integrity, from all the years of life experience from the womb until adulthood, from the differing ways in which you relate to those who are not female and to those who are female... then femininity does not have anything substantial left to grasp.
On this one, you either have to have your cake, or eat it. You can't have both. Femininity is a real, objective and wonderful thing created by God with a glorious purpose... or, it's nothing. Choose, and don't be mealy-mouthed about it.
Same with "gay" marriage. If marriage is just what a majority of MPs prefer at any one moment to write on some parchment that it is, and if they have the power to change their minds on that whenever the wind changes direction, then it is nothing.
Transexual activists, and homosexual activists, are not creating something new of value; they destroy it. They trade off the value attached to the concept attached to the word "marriage" or "woman" - and then hollow out the meaning from it, replacing it with something different. Something like David Lewis. But only on Wednesdays.
David Lewis, a Labour activist, told the Spectator he identifies as a woman "on Wednesdays, between 6.50am when my alarm goes off and around midnight when I go to bed."
"If I say I’m a woman, I’m a woman."
I don't know if he's serious, or if he's a subversive aiming to expose the intellectual vacuity of modern gender ideology, by a kind of reductio ad absurdum. And that's the point... we've now reached the stage where it could be either of those things, and nobody would know the difference. They might be doing it for the comedy value, or in deadly earnestness, and if you want to be popular with the "progressive" crowd, then you'd better not laugh before you've made sure of which.
In the article, one person quoted correctly notes "It is already making the sex category of woman meaningless."
Precisely. If femininity is whatever anyone, anywhere cares to define it as, then femininity is nothing. If detached from biology, from bodily integrity, from all the years of life experience from the womb until adulthood, from the differing ways in which you relate to those who are not female and to those who are female... then femininity does not have anything substantial left to grasp.
On this one, you either have to have your cake, or eat it. You can't have both. Femininity is a real, objective and wonderful thing created by God with a glorious purpose... or, it's nothing. Choose, and don't be mealy-mouthed about it.
Same with "gay" marriage. If marriage is just what a majority of MPs prefer at any one moment to write on some parchment that it is, and if they have the power to change their minds on that whenever the wind changes direction, then it is nothing.
Transexual activists, and homosexual activists, are not creating something new of value; they destroy it. They trade off the value attached to the concept attached to the word "marriage" or "woman" - and then hollow out the meaning from it, replacing it with something different. Something like David Lewis. But only on Wednesdays.
Sunday, 20 May 2018
"If I had known grandchildren were this much fun..."
What the world considers the greatest blessings, is not what the Bible considers the greatest blessings. And vice-versa.
I was looking for things to illustrate the blessing described in Psalm 127:6 - "May you see your children's children".
This one surely takes some sort of prize: "If I had known grandchildren were this much fun I would have had them first."
I was looking for things to illustrate the blessing described in Psalm 127:6 - "May you see your children's children".
This one surely takes some sort of prize: "If I had known grandchildren were this much fun I would have had them first."
Friday, 13 April 2018
It's not our goal to avoid tears, because Jesus will wipe them away
"He
will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more,
neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the
former things have passed away." - Revelation 21:4
We, followers of Jesus, spend far too much time trying to avoid ever having to shed any tears, feel any pain, get too near to any mourning. We don't want to be vulnerable, we don't want to be defeated, we don't want to be broken and needing to be re-made. But there's no need. Jesus will comfort those who need to be comforted, with the comfort that only he can bring. So why should we fear being vulnerable, and getting into the situations, for his sake, where we end up experiencing the death that is in this world because of sin, and crying many tears?
Surely there will be some who stand before him on the last day, and he has to say to them "Every time that I invited you to join me, the Man of Sorrows, in my tears, you said 'no'. And thereby you witnessed plainly to the world that you were not one of mine. You had no tears, and I have no ministry towards you to wipe any away. Now go aware from me, you who would never weep over sin, over this broken fallen world, over what you faced for my sake - go into the place where there is weeping for evermore, and nobody to comfort."
Would you be one of those? Or one of those whose tears the Son of God himself wipes away, when he makes all things new?
We, followers of Jesus, spend far too much time trying to avoid ever having to shed any tears, feel any pain, get too near to any mourning. We don't want to be vulnerable, we don't want to be defeated, we don't want to be broken and needing to be re-made. But there's no need. Jesus will comfort those who need to be comforted, with the comfort that only he can bring. So why should we fear being vulnerable, and getting into the situations, for his sake, where we end up experiencing the death that is in this world because of sin, and crying many tears?
Surely there will be some who stand before him on the last day, and he has to say to them "Every time that I invited you to join me, the Man of Sorrows, in my tears, you said 'no'. And thereby you witnessed plainly to the world that you were not one of mine. You had no tears, and I have no ministry towards you to wipe any away. Now go aware from me, you who would never weep over sin, over this broken fallen world, over what you faced for my sake - go into the place where there is weeping for evermore, and nobody to comfort."
Would you be one of those? Or one of those whose tears the Son of God himself wipes away, when he makes all things new?
Tuesday, 10 April 2018
20 years today
Devizes, Wiltshire, 8.22 a.m. Friday April 10th, 1998. Here goes!
Twenty years ago today. I still thank God for the memories and things learned through that amazing day/night. There's still been nothing like the remotest chance of repeating it, and I still count the cause of that - serving Jesus Christ, and all the responsibilities and blessings (hello family!) it's brought that have taken me away from many things I'd have chosen to do if my life was my own - as infinitely worth it!
Westminster Bridge, London, 7.14 a.m. Saturday April 11th. We've done it, we've done it!
Twenty years ago today. I still thank God for the memories and things learned through that amazing day/night. There's still been nothing like the remotest chance of repeating it, and I still count the cause of that - serving Jesus Christ, and all the responsibilities and blessings (hello family!) it's brought that have taken me away from many things I'd have chosen to do if my life was my own - as infinitely worth it!
Monday, 2 April 2018
Arnauld Beltrame was a disciple of Christ
The French policeman who gave his life to save a hostage in recent weeks
- Arnaud Beltrame - had recently come to Christ. I hadn't learnt that
from the previous coverage I'd read.
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2018/03/peter-hitchens-why-did-french-hero-arnaud-bertrame-give-his-life-to-save-others-christianity.html
- Arnaud Beltrame - had recently come to Christ. I hadn't learnt that
from the previous coverage I'd read.
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2018/03/peter-hitchens-why-did-french-hero-arnaud-bertrame-give-his-life-to-save-others-christianity.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
