7.27.2021

John Piper on Fundamentalists

20 Reasons I Don’t Take Potshots at Fundamentalists

  1. They are humble and respectful and courteous, and even funny (at least the ones I’ve met).
  2. They believe in truth.
  3. They believe that truth really matters.
  4. They believe that the Bible is true — all of it.
  5. They know that the Bible calls for some kind of separation from the world.
  6. They have backbone and are not prone to compromise principle.
  7. They put obedience to Jesus above the approval of man (even though they fall short, like others).
  8. They believe in hell and are loving enough to warn people about it.
  9. They believe in heaven and sing about how good it will be to go there.
  10. Their “social action” is helping the person next door (like Jesus), which doesn’t usually get written up in the newspaper.
  11. They tend to raise law-abiding, chaste children, in spite of the fact that Barna says evangelical kids in general don’t have any better track record than non-Christians.
  12. They resist trendiness.
  13. They don’t think too much is gained by sounding hip.
  14. They may not be hip, but they don’t go so far as to drive buggies or insist on typewriters.
  15. They still sing hymns.
  16. They are not breathless about being accepted in the scholarly guild.
  17. They give some contemporary plausibility to the New Testament claim that the church is “a pillar and buttress of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15).
  18. They are good for the rest of evangelicals because of all this.
  19. My dad was one.
  20. Everybody to my left thinks I am one. And there are a lot of people to my left.

Comment: Yet they take potshots at him

AT&T post spin off

AT&T: Under $29 To Get WarnerMedia Shares And Keep Legacy AT&T With Yield Is A Bargain

T is spinning off WarnerMedia and merging it with DISCA to form a new company. On T's website, it explicitly indicates, "AT&T's shareholders would receive stock representing 71% of the new company; Discovery shareholders would own 29% of the new company." It doesn't get clearer than this. Every shareholder of T will be receiving shares of the newly formed company once the transaction closes. The details that haven't been released are how many shares will exist and the ratio you would receive per share of T stock. Hypothetically, if the same amount of shares is issued that are outstanding for T, it would be a .71 for one share allocation.

7.12.2021

Sharpen your B.S. Detector: B.S.ers love to use anecdotal evidence.




Your B.S. Detector Is Rusty. Time to Sharpen It

Questions:

  1. It’s to your advantage to get them to clarify the claim, so ask: “Is what you are saying X?” When you ask people to clarify, they’ll often take a step back and think. And a lot of times, they’ll dial back their claim. So the first question is: “What? What are you saying?”
  2. “How? How do you know that’s true? How did you come to that conclusion?”
  3. “Have you ever considered any alternatives?” The reason for this question is that if they say no, you know they probably haven’t thought through the thing very well.
Look for what we call pseudo-profound, proverbial clichés. The statements that people use as if they are logic incarnate. “The grass is always greener on the other side.” Ask yourself if the person is using jargon. Or unclear language. Or platitudes like “it’s always darkest before the dawn.” These B.S. statements aren’t harmless. They imply what you should do in your decision-making. For example, what if you’re in a bad relationship and you’re being told to just hang on because it will get better. That can have a cost. One clue: These nonsensical, prescriptive statements are not always true. Often, there is another equally catchy proverb that disputes them. For example: “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” You also hear the opposite: “You’re never too old to learn.”

7.07.2021

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Thomas Sowell on Reparations


In Honor of Thomas Sowell’s 91st Birthday, Here Are His 25 Best Quotes 

  • “Anyone who wants reparations based on history will have to gerrymander history very carefully. Otherwise, practically everybody would owe reparations to practically everybody else.” 
  • “It is self-destructive for any society to create a situation where a baby who is born into the world today automatically has pre-existing grievances against another baby born at the same time, because of what their ancestors did centuries ago. It is hard enough to solve our own problems, without trying to solve our ancestors’ problems.”