Articles: Psychological Warfare for Consevatives

Articles: Psychological Warfare for Consevatives

December 24, 2015

Psychological Warfare for Consevatives

By William A. Levinson

How do grossly unqualified individuals like Barack Obama become President of the United States? Why is the Second Amendment under continual attack? The root cause is, in both cases, conservatives’ failure to understand psychological warfare and failure to understand the concept of the Propaganda Man.

Colonel Paul M. A. Linebarger's classic, Psychological Warfare, defined the Propaganda Man as the "lowest-common-denominator of a man who can be reached by enemy propaganda and by yours." Linebarger then adds the need to understand the Propaganda Man's mentality, fears, and aspirations.

Make up the prewar life of the Propaganda Man. …What kinds of things did he like? What prejudices was he apt to have? What kind of gossip did he receive and pass along? What kind of words disgusted him? What kind of patriotic appeal made him do things? What did he think of your country before the war?

The Republican Party and the National Rifle Association both seem to omit this basic and vital first step of successful public relations. Consider for example the numerous responses to my American Thinker article, “The Felon in the White House.” Examples include:

• "Who would prosecute the president for any crimes? The Department of Justice. Who owns the Department of Justice? President Obama."
• "No one will ever care about this, ever" (in all caps).
• "His worshippers wouldn't care if he was caught robbing a Brinks' truck."

What all fail to understand is that the article was not directed to:

1. The Justice Department
2. The big city urban Democrats who would probably vote for the head of ISIS if he ran for office with a D after his name. We will not, as the commentator said, change their minds.
3. Rural, Southern, and Mountain State Republicans who will vote for whomever the Republicans nominate. We do not need to change their minds.

The article's Propaganda Man is the swing voter, the independent voter who holds the balance of power in almost every national election. We won't convince the Obama Democrats and we don't need to convince the solid Republicans, but if we can persuade the independent voters, we win. The independent voter is proud of thinking for himself or herself, and generally takes the time to gather the facts. If the facts show, as they do, that Barack Obama gained his position through the commission of a felony, and was apparently given the kind of pass that an ordinary citizen could never expect, these voters will turn against him and anybody associated with him.

The Propaganda Man is Our Friend

It is absolutely vital, though, that we be sure of our facts before we present them to the Propaganda Man. Trust is the foundation of effective psychological warfare and, the instant we lie to the Propaganda Man, we will rightfully lose his trust. Consider for example these potential attacks on Obama.

1. The fact that the Obama Administration did not allow consideration of pro-ISIS social media postings makes Obama the "third San Bernardino shooter."
   • I was actually preparing side by side photos of Tashfeen Malik, Syed Farook, and Barack Obama for this purpose when I discovered that, contrary to the original story, Malik had not posted publicly visible pro-ISIS messages on Facebook. We cannot therefore blame the Obama Administration for failure to act on Malik's social media activities, although the act of Islamist violence still says a lot about the DHS vetting process as a whole.
2. The rumor that Obama is not a U.S. citizen is at best not provable, and has in fact been discredited. "In 1961, birth notices for Barack Obama were published in both the Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin on August 13 and 14, 1961, respectively, listing the home address of Obama's parents as 6085 Kalanianaole Highway in Honolulu."
3. "Obama is a Muslim."
   • There is nothing wrong with being a Muslim as long one does not belong to the subset of Muslims (aka Islamists) who believe they have an Allah-given right to hurt infidels, including the wrong kinds of Muslims. This argument does little more than reinforce the other side's denunciation of our side as Islamophobic, as in prejudiced against all Muslims rather than those who engage in easily identifiable problem behaviors.
   • A Muslim would have probably not worshiped in a Trinity United Church of Christ. We can however cite repeatedly Jeremiah Wright's racist sermons, and his blood libel of Israel and the United States for purportedly developing an "ethnic bomb" and the AIDS virus respectively. To this we can add the racist quotes (with page numbers) from Obama's Dreams From My Father, and Michelle Obama's racist thesis from Princeton. The racist content of the latter can be verified from the original, and it shows clearly that Michelle Obama cannot be First Lady for all Americans. The inarguable truth is on our side, so why tout a dubious rumor?

A Weak Argument is Worse than No Argument

The latest rumor that Michelle Obama is actually a man is totally counterproductive, and General Patton made that clear more than 70 years ago. Patton said that it is worse than useless to fire a rifle at a tank because (1) it wastes ammunition and (2) it tells the tank crew that you don't have an antitank weapon because you would have otherwise used it. A weak argument is therefore worse than no argument. There are enough things genuinely wrong with Barack and Michelle Obama that we don't need the kind of material that might come from the Jeff Rense Show.

We can also win the Propaganda Man's support by proving that the enemy has lied to him. The anti-Second Amendment Million Mom March, for example, engaged in fraudulent fundraising practices by (1) lying to its donors about firearm misuse killing 12 or 13 children a day, and (2) concealing from its donors its plans to divert 501(c)(3) tax exempt money to Democratic political campaigns.

The Second Amendment's Propaganda Man (or Woman)

Second Amendment advocates make the similar mistake of talking about "our Second Amendment rights." The nation's 100 million or so law-abiding firearm owners should already be on our side. If they are not, we need to prove to them with the enemy's own words that the enemy is indeed after their sporting firearms as well as so-called "assault weapons."

The swing voter who does not own firearms does not, however, care about "our" Second Amendment rights. A woman who has been indoctrinated by Michael Bloomberg's lies via Everytown for Gun Safety is quite likely to take the position, "Your rights end where my safety and that of my children begins." This Bloomberg video, for example, shows a domestic abuser breaking in a woman's door to take her child, and then shooting her when she tries to resist. We need to address our arguments to the Propaganda Woman whom this Yellow Press-style video may have terrified into voting Obama Democrat, and not to people who are already on our side.

If the video is not copyrighted, or if "fair use" could include modification for educational purposes, I would do the following. When the abuser kicks the door in, stop the video and point out that this is the video's sole useful learning opportunity. I learned at a defensive gun class at Luzerne County Community College (LCCC) that a home invader can kick your door in more rapidly than he can open it with a key, let alone a lock pick. I therefore installed a strike plate that screws into the wall studs, and also a Nightlock security device. This protects the prospective home invader too because, if he doesn't get into the house, the person inside is probably not justified in using deadly force on him. If he continues to try to break in, the police can read him his rights when they arrive.

Next we deal with the home invader's gun by pointing out that, unless he is attacking somebody like Cynthia Rothrock or Ronda Rousey, his superior weight and upper body strength create a disparity of force situation in which he is a deadly threat even without a weapon. This means he can beat her to death or strangle her with his empty hands, and then abduct or kill her children after she is dead or too badly hurt to protect them. Disparity of force justifies her use of a firearm against him but, if Obama Democrats like Hillary Clinton, Andrew Cuomo, Michael Bloomberg, and Dannel Malloy get their way, she won't have a firearm. Underscore the issue of "authority without responsibility or accountability" because crime victims cannot sue government officials the way a victim of gross medical malpractice can sue a quack -- and make no mistake, Clinton, Bloomberg, Cuomo, and Malloy are quacks when it comes to public safety.

Then we support this position with real-world examples such as this one from FrontSight. Both involve home security videos of actual home invasion crimes. In the first part at about 1:10, a mother is beaten almost to death (by an unarmed male assailant) in her own home. In the second, three home invaders, one with a handgun, kick in the door of another woman's home. They get an unpleasant surprise in the form of a rifle, and a warning shot convinces them to flee. This is the only part with which I disagree. First, if you are not justified in shooting your assailant (as this woman was clearly justified), you are not justified in shooting at all. Second, a warning shot wastes a cartridge and gives the aggressor time to kill you. The incident still ended well for the homeowner, though, as it would not have done had she lived in a gun-free paradise like Cuomoland or Bloombergland.

Here is yet another genuine news story in which a mother tried to hide her child and herself from a home invader, but he found them anyway. That was when she emptied a 5-round .38 revolver at him, but did not hurt him badly enough to prevent him from fleeing (or, had he chosen to do so, killing her anyway). This says plenty about proposals to limit magazine capacities; unless you are using a caliber that starts with .4, you may well have to hit your assailant 10 or more times to stop him. Thomas Lifson's Go ahead #BlackLivesMatter: Make my Day features a video of a man who could have been Barack Obama's brother (re: Obama's statement that Trayvon Martin could have been his son) punching a police officer in the face and then shooting him with a .357 Magnum. The officer's return fire with 14 rounds of 45-caliber ACP failed to drop the aggressor, which underscores the fact that Andrew Cuomo is simply not competent to tell anybody what kind of firearm he or she "needs" for self-protection.

In any event, though, when we give the Propaganda Woman enough real world examples of defensive gun use, as well as information on where she can learn to use firearms safely and effectively, she is likely to take the position, "Your snake oil gun control ideology ends where my safety and that of my children begins."

William A. Levinson is the author of several books on business management including content on organizational psychology, as well as manufacturing productivity and quality.

How do grossly unqualified individuals like Barack Obama become President of the United States? Why is the Second Amendment under continual attack? The root cause is, in both cases, conservatives’ failure to understand psychological warfare and failure to understand the concept of the Propaganda Man.

Colonel Paul M. A. Linebarger's classic, Psychological Warfare, defined the Propaganda Man as the "lowest-common-denominator of a man who can be reached by enemy propaganda and by yours." Linebarger then adds the need to understand the Propaganda Man's mentality, fears, and aspirations.

Make up the prewar life of the Propaganda Man. …What kinds of things did he like? What prejudices was he apt to have? What kind of gossip did he receive and pass along? What kind of words disgusted him? What kind of patriotic appeal made him do things? What did he think of your country before the war?

The Republican Party and the National Rifle Association both seem to omit this basic and vital first step of successful public relations. Consider for example the numerous responses to my American Thinker article, “The Felon in the White House.” Examples include:

• "Who would prosecute the president for any crimes? The Department of Justice. Who owns the Department of Justice? President Obama."
• "No one will ever care about this, ever" (in all caps).
• "His worshippers wouldn't care if he was caught robbing a Brinks' truck."

What all fail to understand is that the article was not directed to:

1. The Justice Department
2. The big city urban Democrats who would probably vote for the head of ISIS if he ran for office with a D after his name. We will not, as the commentator said, change their minds.
3. Rural, Southern, and Mountain State Republicans who will vote for whomever the Republicans nominate. We do not need to change their minds.

The article's Propaganda Man is the swing voter, the independent voter who holds the balance of power in almost every national election. We won't convince the Obama Democrats and we don't need to convince the solid Republicans, but if we can persuade the independent voters, we win. The independent voter is proud of thinking for himself or herself, and generally takes the time to gather the facts. If the facts show, as they do, that Barack Obama gained his position through the commission of a felony, and was apparently given the kind of pass that an ordinary citizen could never expect, these voters will turn against him and anybody associated with him.

The Propaganda Man is Our Friend

It is absolutely vital, though, that we be sure of our facts before we present them to the Propaganda Man. Trust is the foundation of effective psychological warfare and, the instant we lie to the Propaganda Man, we will rightfully lose his trust. Consider for example these potential attacks on Obama.

1. The fact that the Obama Administration did not allow consideration of pro-ISIS social media postings makes Obama the "third San Bernardino shooter."
   • I was actually preparing side by side photos of Tashfeen Malik, Syed Farook, and Barack Obama for this purpose when I discovered that, contrary to the original story, Malik had not posted publicly visible pro-ISIS messages on Facebook. We cannot therefore blame the Obama Administration for failure to act on Malik's social media activities, although the act of Islamist violence still says a lot about the DHS vetting process as a whole.
2. The rumor that Obama is not a U.S. citizen is at best not provable, and has in fact been discredited. "In 1961, birth notices for Barack Obama were published in both the Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin on August 13 and 14, 1961, respectively, listing the home address of Obama's parents as 6085 Kalanianaole Highway in Honolulu."
3. "Obama is a Muslim."
   • There is nothing wrong with being a Muslim as long one does not belong to the subset of Muslims (aka Islamists) who believe they have an Allah-given right to hurt infidels, including the wrong kinds of Muslims. This argument does little more than reinforce the other side's denunciation of our side as Islamophobic, as in prejudiced against all Muslims rather than those who engage in easily identifiable problem behaviors.
   • A Muslim would have probably not worshiped in a Trinity United Church of Christ. We can however cite repeatedly Jeremiah Wright's racist sermons, and his blood libel of Israel and the United States for purportedly developing an "ethnic bomb" and the AIDS virus respectively. To this we can add the racist quotes (with page numbers) from Obama's Dreams From My Father, and Michelle Obama's racist thesis from Princeton. The racist content of the latter can be verified from the original, and it shows clearly that Michelle Obama cannot be First Lady for all Americans. The inarguable truth is on our side, so why tout a dubious rumor?

A Weak Argument is Worse than No Argument

The latest rumor that Michelle Obama is actually a man is totally counterproductive, and General Patton made that clear more than 70 years ago. Patton said that it is worse than useless to fire a rifle at a tank because (1) it wastes ammunition and (2) it tells the tank crew that you don't have an antitank weapon because you would have otherwise used it. A weak argument is therefore worse than no argument. There are enough things genuinely wrong with Barack and Michelle Obama that we don't need the kind of material that might come from the Jeff Rense Show.

We can also win the Propaganda Man's support by proving that the enemy has lied to him. The anti-Second Amendment Million Mom March, for example, engaged in fraudulent fundraising practices by (1) lying to its donors about firearm misuse killing 12 or 13 children a day, and (2) concealing from its donors its plans to divert 501(c)(3) tax exempt money to Democratic political campaigns.

The Second Amendment's Propaganda Man (or Woman)

Second Amendment advocates make the similar mistake of talking about "our Second Amendment rights." The nation's 100 million or so law-abiding firearm owners should already be on our side. If they are not, we need to prove to them with the enemy's own words that the enemy is indeed after their sporting firearms as well as so-called "assault weapons."

The swing voter who does not own firearms does not, however, care about "our" Second Amendment rights. A woman who has been indoctrinated by Michael Bloomberg's lies via Everytown for Gun Safety is quite likely to take the position, "Your rights end where my safety and that of my children begins." This Bloomberg video, for example, shows a domestic abuser breaking in a woman's door to take her child, and then shooting her when she tries to resist. We need to address our arguments to the Propaganda Woman whom this Yellow Press-style video may have terrified into voting Obama Democrat, and not to people who are already on our side.

If the video is not copyrighted, or if "fair use" could include modification for educational purposes, I would do the following. When the abuser kicks the door in, stop the video and point out that this is the video's sole useful learning opportunity. I learned at a defensive gun class at Luzerne County Community College (LCCC) that a home invader can kick your door in more rapidly than he can open it with a key, let alone a lock pick. I therefore installed a strike plate that screws into the wall studs, and also a Nightlock security device. This protects the prospective home invader too because, if he doesn't get into the house, the person inside is probably not justified in using deadly force on him. If he continues to try to break in, the police can read him his rights when they arrive.

Next we deal with the home invader's gun by pointing out that, unless he is attacking somebody like Cynthia Rothrock or Ronda Rousey, his superior weight and upper body strength create a disparity of force situation in which he is a deadly threat even without a weapon. This means he can beat her to death or strangle her with his empty hands, and then abduct or kill her children after she is dead or too badly hurt to protect them. Disparity of force justifies her use of a firearm against him but, if Obama Democrats like Hillary Clinton, Andrew Cuomo, Michael Bloomberg, and Dannel Malloy get their way, she won't have a firearm. Underscore the issue of "authority without responsibility or accountability" because crime victims cannot sue government officials the way a victim of gross medical malpractice can sue a quack -- and make no mistake, Clinton, Bloomberg, Cuomo, and Malloy are quacks when it comes to public safety.

Then we support this position with real-world examples such as this one from FrontSight. Both involve home security videos of actual home invasion crimes. In the first part at about 1:10, a mother is beaten almost to death (by an unarmed male assailant) in her own home. In the second, three home invaders, one with a handgun, kick in the door of another woman's home. They get an unpleasant surprise in the form of a rifle, and a warning shot convinces them to flee. This is the only part with which I disagree. First, if you are not justified in shooting your assailant (as this woman was clearly justified), you are not justified in shooting at all. Second, a warning shot wastes a cartridge and gives the aggressor time to kill you. The incident still ended well for the homeowner, though, as it would not have done had she lived in a gun-free paradise like Cuomoland or Bloombergland.

Here is yet another genuine news story in which a mother tried to hide her child and herself from a home invader, but he found them anyway. That was when she emptied a 5-round .38 revolver at him, but did not hurt him badly enough to prevent him from fleeing (or, had he chosen to do so, killing her anyway). This says plenty about proposals to limit magazine capacities; unless you are using a caliber that starts with .4, you may well have to hit your assailant 10 or more times to stop him. Thomas Lifson's Go ahead #BlackLivesMatter: Make my Day features a video of a man who could have been Barack Obama's brother (re: Obama's statement that Trayvon Martin could have been his son) punching a police officer in the face and then shooting him with a .357 Magnum. The officer's return fire with 14 rounds of 45-caliber ACP failed to drop the aggressor, which underscores the fact that Andrew Cuomo is simply not competent to tell anybody what kind of firearm he or she "needs" for self-protection.

In any event, though, when we give the Propaganda Woman enough real world examples of defensive gun use, as well as information on where she can learn to use firearms safely and effectively, she is likely to take the position, "Your snake oil gun control ideology ends where my safety and that of my children begins."

William A. Levinson is the author of several books on business management including content on organizational psychology, as well as manufacturing productivity and quality.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/12/psychological_warfare_for_consevatives.html#ixzz3vE1LIQFV
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Is the God of Muhammad the Father of Jesus? | Christianity Today

Is the God of Muhammad the Father of Jesus? | Christianity Today

Good Question

Zurijeta / Shutterstock

Is the God of Muhammad the Father of Jesus?

The answer to this question reveals the heart of our faith.

Timothy George/ February 4, 2002

All of us
are much more aware of Islam since September 11. If we did not know it
before, we know now that more than 1 billion people on Earth, about one
of every six people, are Muslims. In the United States alone, according
to Muslim leaders, there are more than 6 million Muslims, a little less
than half the size of our nation's largest Protestant denomination, the
Southern Baptist Convention (at 15 million). Social scientists who count
religious adherents, however, place the number of American Muslims much
lower, somewhere between 1.8 million and 2.8 million. This more
realistic figure falls in the same range as the Assemblies of God or the
Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. In any case, the faith is growing
exponentially in some parts of the country. Today in my hometown of
Birmingham, Alabama, which some call the buckle of the Bible belt, there
are several mosques and a thriving Muslim community.

We've also been reminded that Islam, along with Judaism and
Christianity, is one of the three monotheistic faiths. Some take that
fact and assume that all three faiths are just one great religion, or
three equally valid pathways to the same God.

But at this historical moment, when Islam is in our consciousness as
never before, we need to look at that claim more closely, especially in
regard to Islam. One of the better ways to get at an answer is to focus
the question like this: Is the Father of Jesus the God of Muhammad? And
what difference does the answer make?

What We Share

These three great religions share a number of important traits not
shared, for example, by Eastern religions such as Buddhism,
Confucianism, Hinduism, and Taoism. Even within these agreements,
however, we find significant differences.

First, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are historical religions.
Each claims that God has acted decisively in human history. When they
say this divine action occurred varies significantly. In Judaism it is
the Exodus, God's delivery of his people from slavery in Egypt ("Let my
people go"). For Christianity it is the Incarnation ("the Word was made
flesh and dwelt among us"). For Islam it is the beginning of the latest
and final revelation, as Muslims see it, with the prophet Muhammad, who
was born in 570 in the city of Mecca and died in 632. Furthermore, Islam
adopts essential historical figures from both Judaism and Christianity.
Moses was a prophet of God, Muslims say, who gave the law of God. Jesus
was a friend of God. But when Jesus referred to the Father sending
another Counselor, "who will teach you all things and will remind you of
everything I have said to you" (John 14:26), Muslims believe Jesus was
talking not about the Holy Spirit but about Muhammad.

Second, these three religions are textual (we might say scriptural).
They have holy books. In Judaism it is the Hebrew Bible, consisting of
the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. For Christianity it is the
Bible, both the Old and New Testaments. For Islam it's the Qur'an. But
the way in which the Qur'an functions in Islam is radically different
from the way the Bible functions in Christianity.

The Qur'an was given, so Muslims believe, by the angel Gabriel to the
prophet Muhammad over a period of 23 years. It was revealed in Arabic, a
direct, divine transcript of a book in heaven. Thus the Qur'an is a
divine book. In fact, in some ways, Muslims view the Qur'an as
Christians see Jesus Christ: the express image of God, the Word of God.
This fact is so important that early Muslims believed, and orthodox
Muslim scholars still believe, that the Qur'an cannot be translated. It has
been translated, of course, but those translations are not considered
authoritative. It must remain in the language of revelation, the
language in which it was given, to remain a true revelation for Muslims.

Certain Christian groups throughout history have made a similar claim
about the Bible. The Greek Orthodox say that the Septuagint, the Greek
version, is the only divinely inspired translation of the Word of God.
For many centuries, Roman Catholics held that only the Bible in Latin
had that kind of authority. That's no longer true for Roman Catholics.
And indeed, some conservative Protestants say only the King James
Version has authority.

But all three of these are distortions of the Christian understanding
of Holy Scripture. Christians believe that the Bible can be translated
into any human language. Why? Because the gospel itself is
culture-permeable. The Bible, as the revealed Word, has come to us in
Greek and Hebrew, the privileged languages of inspiration. But we can
translate and transmit it to all people groups, no matter their
language, because Christianity says that the gospel we proclaim is
world-embracing, as limitless as the gracious love of the Creator.

Finally, these three great religions are all teleological.
They have a purpose, a goal. They are headed somewhere. They do not say
that life is cyclical, going over and over the same experiences we have
known. They do not accept reincarnation. History had a beginning, and
God intervened in it in a certain way and guides it toward an appointed
climax. Naturally, each has its own understanding of what that future
will look like, but all agree that a divine future awaits us.

No Easy Ecumenism

In this post-September 11 world, when we yearn more than ever for the
unity of all peoples, we need to think about what we hold in common. We
can cooperate with Muslims and Jews in many crucial areas, especially
regarding issues that touch on the dignity of human life and the
sanctity of the family (British Muslims, for example, were the first
religious people to publicly protest abortion on demand in England). But
we must not be lulled into an easygoing ecumenism that would amalgamate
all faiths into a homogenized whole. The two problems with such
amalgamation are these: (1) It is a distortion; we simply do not share
the most essential things. (2) It is a sign of disrespect; it fails to
take seriously what each religion claims to be ultimate truth.

Among the many distinctive truths Christians proclaim, and one that
sets us apart from Islam, is this: God, the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, is a God who has forever known himself as the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Spirit. This is the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. This is
something that all orthodox Christians believe—Greek Orthodox
Christians, Roman Catholic Christians, evangelical Protestant
Christians, and many others. It is at the heart of the distinctive
message we proclaim and what sets us apart most dramatically from Islam.

Sadly, the doctrine of the Trinity may be the most neglected doctrine
we hold. We are baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the
Holy Spirit. We often hear that wonderful Pauline benediction at the end
of 2 Corinthians, "May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love
of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." The
Trinity is essential to our statements of faith, our creeds, and our
confessions. Yet we neglect it.

Why? Partly because we cannot understand it or explain it. Partly
because we forget why it's important. It's one of those things we have
to check off on our list of beliefs, but it doesn't deeply inform our
faith. It's not something that we wake up every day and go to our knees
with in prayer. And so we tend to shove it to the side—until we find
ourselves in a discussion with a Muslim who says to us, "Oh, you
Christians claim to believe in one God, but really you believe in three
gods."

In fact, the Qur'an itself declares in Surah 5:73 (see also 4:171) that
Christians believe in three gods, and that this is blasphemy against
Allah. Islam arose in the Christian era, when theologians and laity
still hotly debated the great Trinitarian formulas. Some Christians were
teaching heretical notions of the Trinity in Mecca, where Muhammad
lived. One such heresy claimed something like this: God has a wife named
Mary, with whom he had intercourse, resulting in Jesus.

This is the distortion of the doctrine of the Trinity that Muhammad
heard. He assumed, as do many others who call Christians "tri-theists,"
that this is what we believe and teach. He may have rejected a
distortion, but Muslims reject the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity as
well. And with that, they forsake Christians' conceptual framework for
understanding the story of Jesus as the story of God. What does the
Bible teach about this matter that we say is such a dividing point with
Islam?

One God

We begin with the confession that God is One. This goes back to Deuteronomy 6:4, the famous Shema:
"Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one." It is repeated
throughout the Old Testament. Jesus quotes it in the New Testament as
the first and greatest of all the commandments in Mark 12:29: "You shall
love the Lord your God; the Lord is One. Love the Lord with all your
heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your
strength." Jesus believed that. He taught that. It is foundational to
the Christian faith.

How did this belief arise within the faith of Israel? It arose over
against polytheism, which was rampant in the ancient world. It was a
world in which nature—animals, trees, rivers—was regarded as divine or
at least inhabited by divinities. Out of this arose the tradition of
idolatry, against which the Old Testament prophets blasted again and
again with furious power. (Muhammad too was moved by a similar concern
when he destroyed the idols of Mecca, and taught his followers, "There
is no God but Allah.")

At the same time, there are already hints in the Old Testament that God
is more complex. Just as we have foreshadowing of the Messiah, so too
in the Old Testament we have foreshadowing of the Holy Trinity.

It is there at the Creation. In the beginning, God created by speaking his word. Genesis 1:2 also notes that the ruach,
the Spirit of God, hovered over the face of the waters. When Christians
read that passage in the light of Jesus Christ, they see there a hint
of the Trinity. It is not spelled out in clarity and fullness. It took
time in God's unfolding of revelation to achieve that clarity. Not until
Jesus Christ himself came, in fact, were we able to understand it. But
it is foreshadowed there nonetheless.

Or take another example, from Proverbs. Again and again, it speaks
about God's wisdom. It says that wisdom created all things (Prov. 3:19),
treating wisdom as a personification of God himself. In the New
Testament, we find that Wisdom is one of the proper names of Jesus
Christ. Jesus has been "made unto us wisdom" (1 Cor. 1:30, KJV).

Then there are all those amazing theophanies and Christophanies. Jacob
wrestled all night with an angel, and he said the next day as he limped
along the river Jabbok, "I have seen the face of God" (Gen. 32:30, KJV).
It was not an incarnation but a revelation of the true God. Or consider
Nebuchadnezzar looking into the fiery furnace. He sees a fourth man
along with the three Hebrew children walking loose in the flames, one
who "looks like a son of the gods" (Dan. 3:25, NIV; the KJV is more
directly Christological, translating it as "as though he were the Son of
God"). These are foreshadowings in the Old Testament, but none of them
compromise the fundamental unity of God.

Christians, like Muslims, affirm the oneness of God, but they
understand that oneness not in mathematical terms (as a unit) but in
interpersonal terms (as a unity of relationship).

Allah Became Flesh?

This distinction leads us to the most basic and distinctive Christian
belief: Jesus is Lord. The Old Testament confession is "God is one." The
New Testament affirmation is "Jesus is Lord," declaring the deity of
Jesus Christ. It's not a coincidence that two key books of the Bible
start by using the same phrase:

Genesis 1:1: "In the beginning God created. … " God spoke, and worlds that were not came into being.

John 1:1: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning." This beginning
antedates the Incarnation. It goes beyond and before even the Creation.
It is a beginning before all other beginnings. The Greek is simple: en arche, in the primordial first principle of all things and all times, in the beginning that we can speak of as eternity—in this beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and (literally) "God was the Word." In Greek that expression is pros ton theon (face to face with God).

In John 1:18, which closes John's prologue, we read, "No one has ever
seen God, but God, the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has
made him known" (NIV). That translation is just too weak. Here the KJV
gets closest to the original sense when it says Jesus was "in the bosom
of the Father."

"At the Father's side"? You can go to a ball game, and somebody sits
alongside you. That's a chum, that's a friend. This is not the phrase
used here. The one "who is in the bosom of the Father"—that connotes an
intimacy, a relationship, a unity that "alongside of" comes nowhere
close to. This God, the One who was with God, face to face with God, in
the bosom of the Father from all eternity—this One has made him known to
us.

In verse 14 is the linchpin of this whole passage. This one verse, more
than any other, summarizes the Christian faith. The Word that was in
the beginning with God, that was face to face with God, that was in the
bosom of the Father, this "Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (and
we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father),
full of grace and full of truth" (KJV).

This is what Christianity teaches: God Almighty, the one and only Allah (Allah
is simply the Arabic word for "God"), took upon himself humanity. But
not just humanity. Some translations read, "And the Word became a human
being." That's too weak. It's not deep or strong enough. No, the Word
became flesh.

Flesh is different from human being.
Flesh is that part of our human reality that is most vulnerable, that
gets sick. It gets tired. It experiences decay and death. But this is
the stupendous claim the Bible makes, and if you don't feel the absolute
horrible force of this statement, you'll never understand why orthodox
Islam finds Christianity so abhorrent: Allah became flesh. This is a
blasphemous thought to orthodox Muslims. But it's a remarkable claim
that Christianity makes.

How does this relate to the Trinity? People ask why God made the world.
Some believe he was lonely and decided that he needed something to
love, so he created the world. Some people preach that, and it's well
meant, but it is heretical.

God was never lonely. The doctrine of the Trinity says that within the
being of God from all eternity there has always existed this bond of
relationship—Father and Son and Holy Spirit, the bond of love and
unity—so God never was lonely. There has always been in the being of God
a reciprocity, a mutuality, and a dynamism of relationship, of
community, of love.

Several radical implications proceed from this. One of them—a rather
humbling one—is that we are not necessary. We are utterly unessential.
God could get along quite well without us. It doesn't boost our
self-esteem to say that, but it's true. If God had never created the
world, or indeed, if God had never redeemed the world, God would not be
any less God. He does not need us to fulfill some inner inadequacy in
his own being.

Paradoxically, this truth makes the Good News good. God has chosen
to love us, out of his own free will. He decided deliberately not to
remain a divine cocoon within himself. Instead, he chose to make a world
apart from himself, to become a part of it and take upon himself the
burden of loving it back to himself—because he wanted to, not because he
lacked something in himself.

This is the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the Good News that
we have to proclaim: the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is not
a unit. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is not a monad, a
sterile one-thing that exists apart from a relationship, but has a
dynamic relationship of love and reciprocity within his own being—and
that as a relational being he has reached out to us in love.

Many are familiar with George Eliot's character, Silas Marner.
Everybody thought he was poor, but he was rich. He was a miser. He kept
gold coins in a chest under his bed. And every night, before he went to
sleep, he'd take out his gold coins, count them, stroke them, and admire
them. Then he'd put them back under his bed. He never spent one. Some
people think of God that way: He hoards all his power, all his might.
He's a miser god—a Silas Marner god. This is not the God of the Bible.
The God of the Bible is a God of utter graciousness and love, who
chooses to come into our world and to experience what we have
experienced—our alienation and estrangement—and do everything necessary
to redeem and love that world back to himself.

Personal Spirit

Some people think that in the Old Testament we have God the Father, in
the New Testament God puts on the mask of the Son, and now, in the age
of the church, we have the Holy Spirit. The technical name for that
heresy is modalism, and it's widespread among Christian
believers. No, the Trinity is not three different masks that God wears
at different times in salvation history. From all eternity, before there
was a world, before there was anything else, God, the Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit, was—is—in a bond of love and unity and reciprocity and
community that exceeds our ability to comprehend and describe.

These first two Christian affirmations—God is one, and Jesus is
Lord—have been denied and doubted and fought over by Christian
theologians. In the second century, a heretic named Marcion was
excommunicated from the church. Marcion said, in effect, I like the
God of Jesus. He's a God of love; he's a God of mercy, a God of
tenderness. But I don't like the God of the Old Testament. He's a mean
God. He's a mad God. He's a God of war and violence. So Marcion cut the Old Testament out of the Bible. But the church said, No, we're not going down that road.
It was perhaps the single most important decision made in the history
of Christian doctrine—to say that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ is the God of Israel, the God of the Old Testament, to affirm
that there is a fundamental connection between creation and redemption.

The divine lordship and the deity of Jesus Christ were denied in the
fourth century by a man named Arius. He was sincere. He was well read.
He did not deny that the Bible was true. But he said, Jesus Christ is a creature. He's higher than any other creature. But he is not God.
Arius denied that Jesus was the same essence, the same fundamental
reality, as God. At the Council of Nicea, the church had to say, No, we can't go that way either.
The one we adore and worship and love in Jesus our Redeemer is of the
same essence as the Father. We're not talking about two different gods.
We're talking about the one God, but the one God who has forever known
himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This says to us that the
fundamental reality of God is relationship—it's community. If we can
ever grasp that, we'll understand what our fundamental differences are
with Islam.

The third central Christian affirmation is that the Holy Spirit is
personal. This affirmation also has had a divisive history. About 70
years after the Council of Nicea, some people said they would go along
with God the Father and God the Son, but they could not affirm that the
Holy Spirit is God—that was just too much for them. They claimed that
the Holy Spirit is a force, an energy, a power, but not God. Over
against these people, who were known as the Spirit-fighters (because
they fought against the deity of the Holy Spirit), the church declared
that God is one in essence, and three in person—Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit.

The Bible speaks of the Holy Spirit as a person. He baptizes (1 Cor.
12); he can be grieved (Eph. 4); he groans (Rom. 8). These are things a
person does, and the Holy Spirit is a person and in relation to the
Father and Son—yet one God, forever and ever.

Space constraints preclude saying much more about the place of the Holy
Spirit in the Trinity. The larger point here is simply this: God does
not exist alone—"the alone with the alone" as Arius referred to his
god—but rather exists in community, in love, in reciprocity and
mutuality. It is this God who has, of his own free will, opened his
heart to this world he has made, and who invites us to know him, to love
him, and to respond to him. He is a relational God.

Affirming The Mystery

Ultimately, we have to admit that the Trinity is a mystery. Even in eternity, we will never comprehend it. But we are called to affirm it and believe it. And we are called to hold it without compromise in a world of religious pluralism.

Let's go back to our question: Is the Father of Jesus the God of
Muhammad? The answer is surely Yes and No. Yes, in the sense that the
Father of Jesus is the only God there is. He is the Creator and
Sovereign Lord of Muhammad, Buddha, Confucius, of every person who has
ever lived. He is the one before whom all shall one day bow (Phil.
2:5-11). Christians and Muslims can together affirm many important
truths about this great God—his oneness, eternity, power, majesty. As
the Qur'an puts it, he is "the Living, the Everlasting, the All-High,
the All-Glorious" (2:256).

But the answer is also No, for Muslim theology rejects the divinity of
Christ and the personhood of the Holy Spirit—both essential components
of the Christian understanding of God. No devout Muslim can call the God
of Muhammad "Father," for this, to their mind, would compromise divine
transcendence. But no faithful Christian can refuse to confess, with joy
and confidence, "I believe in God the Father. … Almighty!" Apart from
the Incarnation and the Trinity, it is possible to know that God is, but not who God is.

Long ago, Gregory of Nyssa put it this way: "It is not the vastness of
the heavens and the bright shining of the constellations, the order of
the universe, and the unbroken administration over all existence, that
so manifestly displays the transcendent power of God as his
condescension to the weakness of our human nature, in the way sublimity
is seen in lowliness."

This does not mean that we should condemn every Muslim believer as an idolater (see "Does God Hear Muslims' Prayers?").
And we are wise to remember that sometimes the best way to address
these issues is to move from theological abstraction to story. I've
found one story from Richard Selzer's Mortal Lessons, as good as any:

I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face postoperative,
her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve,
the one to the muscles of the mouth, has been severed. She will be thus
from now on. The surgeon had followed with religious fervor the curve of
her flesh; I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her
cheek, I had to cut that little nerve.

Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the
bed, and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated
from me. Who are they, I ask myself, he and this wry-mouth that I have
made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously, greedily? The
young woman speaks.

"Will my mouth always be like this?" she asks. "Yes," I say, "it will. It is because the nerve was cut."

She nods, and is silent. But the young man smiles. "I like it," he says. "It is kind of cute."

All at once, I know who he is. I understand, and I lower my gaze. One
is not bold in an encounter with a god. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her
crooked mouth, and I [am] so close I can see how he twists his own lips
to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works.

Isn't that what the Christian God is about? God was in Christ, reaching
out to us in love, accommodating himself to our condition, to save us.

This is what we are about as ambassadors of Christ and his gospel: to
go into the world, into the prisons, into the barrios and the ghettos
and wherever it is that human beings exist in alienation and separation
from God, and to tell them that the relational God is reaching out to
us, and that the kiss still works.

Timothy George is a CT executive editor and dean of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University. This article is adapted from his forthcoming book Is the Father of Jesus the God of Muhammad? (Zondervan, Spring 2002).

Copyright © 2002 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

No, Christians and Muslims do not worship the same God

No, Christians and Muslims do not worship the same God

 
Here's the point: The God of the Bible has a Son. The god of Islam does not.

---

Wheaton College, the leading evangelical institution of higher learning in the United States, has been embroiled in a recent controversy
over a hijab-wearing associate professor of political science. Dr.
Larycia Hawkins, who also happens to be a fan of the whole Black Lives
Matter movement, is wearing a hijab during the Christmas season in
"solidarity" with her Muslim "brothers and sisters," because Christians
and Muslims "worship the same God."



Wheaton has suspended Dr. Hawkins,
certainly the minimum it could do, pending a further investigation. The
College has issued a mushily worded statement defending the school's
evangelical statement of faith, but avoiding dealing directly with the
question at issue.


The
school criticizes Dr. Hawkins for a lack of "theological clarity," and
refers vaguely to differences of opinion about "the nature of God"
between Islam and Christianity, but does not answer the question Dr.
Hawkins has raised: do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?


As I have written before, there is a clear, straightforward answer to this question:


Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God? The answer is an
unequivocal and unambiguous "No." Muslims themselves will confirm this
to you if you know the questions to ask.


We can stipulate that "Allah" is the generic word for "God" in
Arabic, just as "El" and "Elohim" are in Hebrew and "theos" is in Greek.
Thus there are many Christians in the Arabic-speaking world who refer
to the God of the Bible as "Allah," and who use it in phrases such as
"Inshallah," which means "God willing."


(It's worth noting in passing that the highest court in Malaysia recently ruled that Muslims and Muslims alone are permitted to use the word "Allah.")


But generic words for God, because they are generic, can be used to
refer to a multiplicity of gods. So the term must be narrowed down. If
someone uses a generic word for "God," the follow-up question must be
asked, "Which 'god' are you referring to?"


In New Testament times, where Greek was the lingua franca of the
civilized world, there was a virtually unlimited pantheon of both Greek
and Roman "gods," all of whom were identified using the generic term
"theos." (As you might guess, we get our word "theology" from this
word.)


So when the apostles needed to make sure their readers knew which God
they were talking about when they used the word "theos," and that they
were referring to none of the Roman and Greek gods, they added a clear
qualifier. They referred to the true and living God as "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Ephesians 1:3; 2 Corinthians 1:3; Colossians 1:3; 2 Peter 1:3).


It was their way of saying, "Look, the God I am referring to here is
not Zeus, or Jupiter, or Hermes, or Mercury, or Neptune, or Diana or
Aphrodite. The God I am talking about is the God who is the Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ."


Jesus, according to the New Testament, is the unique, one and only
begotten Son of God. (We can become sons of God by adoption, but he is
the Son of God by his very nature.)


Here is the point: The God of the Bible has a Son. The god of Islam does not.


In fact, Muslims in 2008 hung a large banner
in front of the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth stating flatly
that Allah has no son, and quoting a passage from the Qur'an as proof: "He begetteth not, nor is begotten, and there is none like unto him" (Surah 112:1-4).


Contrast this with this declaration from the gospel of John: "And the
Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as
of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14, NASB).


And again we read in John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life."


The plain declaration of Christianity, then, is that Jesus is the
eternally begotten Son of the true and living God. There never was a
time, not even in eternity past, when he was not the Son of God.


But Islam, on the other hand, flatly denies that Allah has a son at
all. "He begetteth not, nor is begotten." In fact, believing that God
has a begotten Son will get you stoned to death in many parts of the
Muslim world.


On top of all this, and of particular offense to orthodox Muslims, is
the fact that Christians worship Jesus himself as God as the second
member of the Trinity. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:3). Muslims are
horrified at the thought that Jesus could be worshipped as God and
consider such a belief as blasphemy worthy of death.


So, do Christians and Muslims worship the same God? Absolutely and unequivocally not. If you doubt me, ask a Muslim.

---

Bryan Fischer hosts "Focal Point with Bryan Fischer" every weekday on AFR Talk (American Family Radio) from 1:00 - 3:00 p.m. (Central).


This column is printed with permission. Opinions
expressed in 'Perspectives' columns published by OneNewsNow.com are the
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organization(s) quoted therein, and do not necessarily represent those
of the staff or management of, or advertisers who support the American
Family News Network, OneNewsNow.com, our parent organization or its
other affiliates.

 

Here's the TRUE History of Islam's Violence | The Federalist Papers

Here's the TRUE History of Islam's Violence | The Federalist Papers

Here’s the TRUE Non-Politically Correct History of Islam’s Violence

By Russ Hepler

 



We have ISIS loyalists gunning down innocent French and American citizens.


We have a President sending his Attorney General out to warn Americans to stifle their Free Speech rights.


We have a shadowy American Muslim advocacy group blaming American citizens for bringing radical Islamic terrorism on ourselves.


But here is the unvarnished truth about Islam’s history of rape,
murder, torture, and slavery – all done in the name of being true to the
Muslim faith.

 
The American Thinker has complied the facts from the past:

When one thinks of mass murder, Hitler comes to mind. If
not Hitler, then Tojo, Stalin, or Mao. Credit is given to the
20th-century totalitarians as the worst species of tyranny to have ever
arisen. However, the alarming truth is that Islam has killed more than
any of these, and may surpass all of them combined in numbers and
cruelty.


The enormity of the slaughters of the “religion of peace” are so far
beyond comprehension that even honest historians overlook the scale.
When one looks beyond our myopic focus, Islam is the greatest killing
machine in the history of mankind, bar none.

This is a very strong statement to make.  But just look at the facts as The American Thinker presents them:

The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. — Will Durant, as quoted on Daniel Pipes site.


Conservative estimates place the number at 80 million dead Indians.


According to some calculations, the Indian (subcontinent) population
decreased by 80 million between 1000 (conquest of Afghanistan) and 1525
(end of Delhi Sultanate). — Koenrad Elst as quoted on Daniel Pipes site


80 Million?! The conquistadors’ crimes pale into insignificance at
that number. No wonder Hitler admired Islam as a fighting religion. He
stood in awe of Islam, whose butchery even he did not surpass.

 
Over 110 Million Blacks were killed by Islam.


… a minumum of 28 Million African were enslaved in the Muslim Middle
East. Since, at least, 80 percent of those captured by Muslim slave
traders were calculated to have died before reaching the slave market,
it is believed that the death toll from 1400 years of Arab and Muslim
slave raids into Africa could have been as high as 112 Millions. When
added to the number of those sold in the slave markets, the total number
of African victims of the trans-Saharan and East African slave trade
could be significantly higher than 140 Million people. — John
Allembillah Azumah, author of The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A
Quest for Inter-religious Dialogue

Guess we won’t be hearing this anytime soon from Rev. Al and Minister Farrakhan.


But The American Thinker is not finished:

Add just those two numbers alone together, and Islam has
surpassed the victims of 20th-century totalitarianism. However, it does
not end there. Add the millions who died at the hand of Muslims in the
Sudan in our lifetime.


Much of Islamic slavery was sexual in nature, with a preference for
women. Those men who were captured were castrated. The mulatto children
of the women were often killed, which explains why Islam was not
demographically shifted towards the black race, unlike slaves in the
West, who bore children to breed a mestizo class. Add in those dead
children; and we arrive at well over 200 million.

 
We know that over 1 million Europeans were enslaved by Barbary Pirates. How many died is anybody’s guess.


…for the 250 years between 1530 and 1780, the figure could easily have been as high as 1,250,000 – BBC


In the Middle Ages…


…many slaves were passed through Armenia and were castrated there to
fill the Muslim demand for eunuchs. — Slavery in Early Medieval Europe.


The same practice ran through Islamic Spain. North Europeans captured
from raids up to Iceland, or purchased, were butchered in the
castratoriums of Iberia. Many died from the operations that ran for
centuries.


Don’t forget the 1.5 million Armenian Christians killed by the Turks during WWI.

And these are certainly not all of those slaughtered by Islam throughout the world in history.


The American Thinker grapples with a total number:

Add this all up. The African victims. The Indian victims.
The European victims. Add in the Armenian genocide. Then add in the
lesser known, but no doubt quite large number of victims of Eastern
Asia. Add in the jihad committed by Muslims against China, which was
invaded in 651 AD. Add in the Crimean Khanate predations on the Slavs,
especially their women.


Though the numbers are not clear, what is obvious is that Islam is
the greatest murder machine in history bar none, possibly exceeding 250
million dead. Possibly one-third to one-half or more of all those killed
by war or slavery in history can be traced to Islam; and this is just a
cursory examination.


Now consider the over 125 Million women today who have been genitally
mutilated for Islamic honor’s sake. In spite of what apologists tell
you, the practice is almost totally confined to Islamic areas.

As President Obama speaks to the nation Sunday night, it is doubtful he will cite any of these historical facts.


It seems his criticism of religion is limited to Christianity and Judaism.











Please share these truths to all you know. The national media has not
given up on the propaganda that Islam is a “religion of peace.”


Of course, they also thought the old Communist Soviet Union was THE model of government as well!

Greenpeace Co-Founder Patrick Moore: Skeptics Are The New 'Thin Green Line'

Greenpeace Co-Founder Patrick Moore: Skeptics Are The New ‘Thin Green Line’

 

by James Delingpole5 Dec 2015

 

I have just got back from the Climate Change conference in Paris.

No, not the Green McJob (TM) creation scheme being hosted by the
United Nations at Le Bourget for the benefit of 40,000 troughers,
kleptocrats, island nation guilt trippers, activists, bureaucrats,
apparatchiks, junk-scientists, one world government freaks,
environmental lawyers, corporate rent-seekers, teat-suckers and other
assorted eco-fascist protozoa.


Rather, I mean the Paris Climate Challenge, a tiny three-day event
being hosted in the centre of town by retired Church of England vicar
Philip Foster and a tall blogger called Roger ‘Tallbloke’ for a ragtag
group of – at best – 40 climate skeptics.


I was tempted to take a photo of them for this article. But I decided it would play right into the enemy’s hands.


Empty chairs and mostly grey-haired men with wild eyes and a
mad-professor demeanour: it would have confirmed everything the greenies
like to claim about climate “deniers” – that they’re old to the point
of being senile, eccentric to the point of insanity and so out of touch
with reality that no one wants to hear what they want to say anyway.


And you know what? If I were in the unfortunate position of having no
scientific arguments left to support my case that’s exactly the kind of
sad and desperate smear job I’d resort to as well.


Probably, I’d add that “deniers” smell of wee-wee (or poo-poo, if I
really wanted to drive the point home); and, if at all possible, I’d try
to follow the example of luminaries like President Obama,

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

16%

and the Prince of Wales and hint gently that these disgusting people
were also kinda, sorta responsible for the Paris massacre and the San
Bernardino massacre because by denying the reality of man-made global
warming they helped cause the alleged “drought” in the Middle East which drove thousands of law-abiding, peace-loving Muslims straight into the arms of Islamic State.
Luckily for me, though, I’m not in that unfortunate position. Rather
I’m on the side of the argument which has pretty much everything going
for it: the science, the economics, the moral high ground, the
intellectual credibility, the wit, charm and tell-it-like-it-is
fearlessness…


But, yes, most of all what we have on my side of the argument are the facts.


There were lots of these at the Paris Climate Challenge conference –
the kind of hard, verifiable scientific ones which simply weren’t
available to the people up the road at the COP21 event.


Facts like:


The lack of observational evidence for “man-made” global warming


The 19-year “pause” in global warming which none of the alarmists’ models predicted.


The increasingly strong evidence to suggest that the sun – and solar
cycles – are a far more significant (and woefully underacknowledged)
driver of climate change than the trace gas CO2


Presenting these facts was an array of erudite figures – some of
them, amateur enthusiasts like blogger Donna Laframboise, long-range
weather forecaster Piers Corbyn (brother of Labour leader Jeremy,
recently shown telling it like it is on to Andrew Neil on the BBC One This Week programme)
and blogger Roger “Tallbloke” Tattersall; some of them distinguished
academics, such as marine geologist Bob Carter and IPCC lead author and
sea level expert Nils-Axel Mörner.


I grant you, apart from Laframboise, none of them is ever likely to
win a beauty contest. But if you ever had to put them in a debate with
anyone on the other side of the argument – Michael Mann, James Hansen,
David Suzuki, Al Gore, whoever – they would win hands down on points
simply because (and this really can’t be stressed often enough) the
alarmists have no points. None. The science abandoned them years ago
which is why now they’re so painfully, pitifully reliant on closed
events like COP21.


The COP series of conferences (staged once a year in a variety of exotic locations)
are a giant bubble inside which only true believers are allowed. That’s
why people like me don’t get press passes. (The official reason given
was that, due to the increased security following the Paris terror
attacks they’d had to reduce their press quota.) The UN doesn’t want
cheeky little boys pointing out that the climate Emperor is wearing no clothes.  All
it wants is more tax, more regulation, more wealth redistribution
and more global governance of the kind envisaged by the (recently
deceased) Canadian Marxist and one world government enthusiast Maurice Strong when he launched the first major climate summit (and Agenda 21) in Rio in 1992.


What’s particularly absurd about this leftist conspiracy is that it
is currently doing the exact opposite of the things left-wing people
profess to care about: it is enriching crony capitalist fat cats at the
expense of the world’s poor.


There are numerous examples of this in this week’s superb Spectator cover story by Matt Ridley entitled The Green Blob: Who Will Protect The Victims of Environmentalism?


Here’s a taste:

We’ve diverted 40 per cent of America’s maize crop to
feeding cars instead of people, thus driving up the price of food
worldwide, a move which according to one study killed about 192,000 poor
people in 2010 alone, and continues to affect nutrition worldwide.
We’ve restricted aid funding for fossil-fuelled power stations in
developing countries, leaving many people who would otherwise have had
access to electricity mired in darkness and cooking over wood-fires —
the biggest environmental cause of ill health, responsible for more than
three million deaths every year.


Closer to home, by pushing up energy prices with climate policies,
we’ve contributed to the loss of jobs of steelworkers in Redcar and
Scunthorpe, and of aluminium workers in Northumberland (where I live and
where coal from under my land has supplied the now-closed Lynemouth
smelter — whose power station announced this week that it will reopen as
a ‘biomass’ plant, that is to say burning wood from American forests,
producing more carbon dioxide per unit of energy and at twice the price
of coal). We’ve also worsened fuel poverty among the poor and elderly
and we’ve damaged air quality in cities. These human costs are not
imaginary or theoretical: they are real.

Even if you believe that “global warming” is real, in other words,
the hugely damaging effects of policies being introduced to counter it
are more real still.


Not many greenies get this. But one who does is a man who has about
as much environmental credibility as anyone alive: Greenpeace co-founder
Patrick Moore.


Greenpeace hates it when you mention Moore because he has since gone to what it considers the dark side.
But you only have to look at this glorious gallery of pictures of Moore
in his green radical youth. He was the real deal – sitting astride baby
fur seals in an (unsuccessful) bid to stop them being clubbed to death,
fearlessly steering his rubber inflatable boat into the path of Russian
whaling shifts, narrowly missing being blown up when French
intelligence agents sank the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland
harbour, New Zealand.

The Greenpeace crew on the first voyage to protest US H-Bomb testing in Alaska 1971. Patrick is under the “P”.

The reason Moore left Greenpeace was because he realised that, like
the environmental movement generally, it had strayed so far from its
original ideals.

“As we moved along the “peace” disappeared and the “green” was all there was left.”

Crew around galley table. Patrick is on the right , 1971

They had turned into “eco fascists” – a term which, oddly enough, was
invented by another of Greenpeace’s co-founders Bob Hunter.

Returning home after whale campaign in 1975. Patrick is on the left driving.

Moore was another of the speakers at the Paris Climate Challenge
conference. He recalled how, in the early days of Greenpeace, when
trying to save whales, stop nuclear testing and industrial pollution was
a minority activity for a few long-haired hippies, Bob Hunter used to
refer to their tiny group of campaigners as “the thin green line.”

Plotting the position of the Russian factory whaling fleet in 1977

But things have changed a lot since then. The good guys these days,
Moore noted, aren’t to be found among the 40,000 eco-fascist zealots at
the COP21 conference but rather among the handful of climate skeptics
who have braved obloquy, loss of income and career death to speak the
truth about “climate change.”


Moore looked at his rag-taggle audience of grey-haired professors and wild-eyed sceptics and said:


“You are the thin green line now.”