Crystal Cathedral files for chapter 11

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From here:

Crystal Cathedral Ministries, an Orange County landmark and megachurch founded by television evangelist Robert H. Schuller, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Monday morning.

The cathedral owes about about $7.5 million to unsecured creditors. The bankruptcy filing seeks court protection from its creditors.

In a statement issued Monday, Senior Pastor Sheila Schuller Coleman said the bankruptcy filing was a necessity because a “small number of creditors chose to file lawsuits and obtained writ of attachment.”

She said the cathedral also had no choice because a committee of creditors decided not to extend a moratorium to allow continued talks about a payment plan.

“For these reasons, the Ministry now finds it necessary to seek the protection of a Chapter 11,” she said.

The Cathedral, which has been a landmark and a tourist attraction with its glistening glass tower, is now faced with $55 million in debt because of the economy and dwindling contributions.

I visited the Crystal Cathedral a few times many years ago when attending conferences in Anaheim. The preaching polluted the Gospel with pop-psychology and I find few things more off-putting than the “Gospel of Positiveness and Success”. Nevertheless, while not surprised that the Success Gospel hasn’t even worked for Robert Schuller, I’m sorry to see it in such straits  .

Atheist morality: shallowness redefined

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Atheist, Sam Harris has written a book explaining how science, not religion, should be the basis for morality.

From here:

His long-awaited new book, “The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values,” deals head-on with issues that many atheistic thinkers have been skirting for years. If religion is so bad, where should humans look for a moral authority? The answer, for Harris, is science. Harris defines morality as anything related to the “well-being of conscious creatures.” Since many scientific findings have implications for how to maximize well-being, Harris believes scientists should be authorities on moral issues. As Harris sees it, scientists not only have every right to make moral arguments, but should be the authorities of the moral realm.

Harris has put forward a crassly tautological argument for basing morality on science.

It’s all very well for him to define morality as “anything related to the “well-being of conscious creatures”, but where does that come from if not from a sense of “ought” which science cannot explain?

Harris, in starting from the assumption that when our conscience – natural law – tells us that we ought to care about the well-being of our fellow man, has already presupposed a ready-formed morality that was not derived scientifically – a moral law expounded by that which he so despises: religion. In Christianity’s case: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.

Christianity, if true, is entitled to tell us that we should care about the well-being of concious creatures (Matt 7:12); science, true or not, isn’t.

R.I.P. Benoit B. Mandelbrot

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From here:

Benoit B. Mandelbrot, a maverick mathematician who developed an innovative theory of roughness and applied it to physics, biology, finance and many other fields, died Thursday in Cambridge, Mass. He was 85.

His death was caused by pancreatic cancer, his wife, Aliette, said. He had lived in Cambridge.

Mandelbrot coined the term “fractal” to refer to a new class of mathematical shapes whose uneven contours could mimic the irregularities found in nature.

“Applied mathematics had been concentrating for a century on phenomena which were smooth, but many things were not like that: the more you blew them up with a microscope the more complexity you found,” said David Mumford, a professor of mathematics at Brown University. “He was one of the primary people who realized these were legitimate objects of study.”

Mandelbrot worked at IBM for a number of years and proved – contrary to my suspicion when I worked there – that the computer company is not able to squash the original thought out of absolutely everyone.

US general against repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"

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From here:

WASHINGTON — As many as 95 percent of Marines would be uncomfortable serving alongside openly gay troops, the retiring commandant of the Marine Corps told Fox News in an exclusive interview.

Gen. James Conway told Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin that a majority of his men and women think a repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy barring gays from serving openly will be problematic, so he has to believe that, too.

“When we take a survey of our Marines, by and large, they say that they are concerned that it will cause potential problems with regard to their order and discipline — that it will impact their sense of unit cohesion,” Conway said.

Gen. Conway was the first member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to speak out against a repeal earlier this year after Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen publicly endorsed President Obama’s desire to change the law.

The percentage of homosexuals in the military is in the “low single digits”, so why is this policy being repealed? Because it “infringes on fundamental rights”? – then why join the military; there is nothing quite as right infringing as being shot at by inconsiderate enemies. To make 3% of the military comfortable while making 90% uncomfortable? Because it has been illegal for the last 17 years and someone has just noticed? For the application of that elusive commodity, fairness?

Or to make the military compliant with the psychoses of our homosexualised culture?

[flv:https://anglicansamizdat.net/wordpress/videos/Marines_Chief_Warns_Most_Are_Uncomfortable_Serving_With_Openly_Gay_Troops_bitrate_1.flv 600 380]

Double, double toil and trouble in Moose Jaw

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From here:

It was not long after sending out the fall issue of its newsletter announcing a Halloween fundraiser that the Western Development Museum in Moose Jaw started receiving complaints; pastors came to the museum in person, emails and phone calls rolled in and concerns from church groups and community members were expressed to politicians saying the planned séance and ghost walk was “inviting evil” into the community….

“The feeling was expressed that by doing an event like this we were inviting evil to our facility and our community,” said Katherine Fitton, manager of the museum.

“That we would be opening Pandora’s Box, so to speak. These folk felt quite strongly that there was no way to avoid evil when engaging in these things, that there was no such thing as being light-hearted about it; that we’re looking for trouble.”….

Hired to host the event was Jeff Richards, a 25-year-old Regina showman inspired by David Copperfield. He said part of the controversy over the show is that it was scheduled in a place that receives public money; but mostly he put it down to a local church group using it as an “opportunity to grandstand.”

“I knew there would be some push-back from the religious community,” Mr. Richards said yesterday of the Moose Jaw booking. “But I’ve never had a mass outcry like this before.”

“I understand people having this fear of things they don’t understand. People have great concern over evil forces being unleashed but that stems from them not understanding what we were doing,” he said.

In our preposterously value-levelled culture where witches routinely demand equal time, it’s not particularly surprising that when Christian pastors act in a way that is consistent with their beliefs, their stand is met with astonishment and condescension.

The pastors’ resistance to holding a séance – mock or not – is not so much an example of “people having this fear of things they don’t understand” but people refusing to countenance things that they understand only too well: if evil forces exist – I don’t see how anyone who is a Christian could think they don’t – why engage in practices that seek to consult them, even if it’s in “fun”?

It’s Jeff Richards who lacks understanding

US Bishops march for open borders – but not for Anglicans

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From here:

The Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops has called for a halt to the enforcement of US immigration laws, calling upon Episcopalians to join with other members of the religious left in “actively protesting” racial stereotyping and demand a halt to “practices that treat undocumented workers as criminals.”

In a pastoral letter and discussion paper released at the close of their Sept 16-21 meeting in Phoenix, the bishops said the starting point for a debate on illegal immigration begins with “an obligation to advocate for every undocumented worker as already being a citizen of God’s reign on earth and one for whom Christ died.”

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It’s a little ironic that US Bishops are all for open borders in the secular realm, but when it comes to open borders for Anglicans it is quite another matter:

Schori told the press that she found the cross-border interventions “painful and destructive.” She said, “It destroys pastoral relationships….It does spiritual violence to vowed relationships.”

Having rejected Canada, the UN is preparing for Aliens

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Since Canada won’t join in with the ubiquitous excoriation of Israel that now seems to be a condition of sitting on the ludicrously named UN Security Council, Canada will not be allowed a seat. Not to worry, the UN is, instead, preparing for an invasion of aliens – an activity more in keeping with its view of pressing exigencies that Arab dictatorships are unlikely to object to:

We Earthlings are poorly prepared to respond should there be contact from aliens, according to the director of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA).  “Statistically, extraterrestrial life is a possibility,” Malaysian astrophysicist, Mazlan Othman, told journalists in New York, where she is attending a General Assembly meeting on cooperation in the peaceful use of outer space.

Othman says solar systems of planets around stars are constantly being discovered and when considering the billions of stars in space, “we could find life,” though when discussing extraterrestrial life, it is “not always green aliens with large lovely eyes, but most likely bacteria.”

The UN is blissfully unaware that they are already among us:

White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett apologises to the gay community

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From here:

White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett  apologized to the gay community Thursday after she referred to homosexuality as a “lifestyle choice” during a discussion about the wave of recent teen suicides.

“I meant no disrespect to the LGBT community, and I apologize to any who have taken offense at my poor choice of words,” Jarrett said in a written statement.

Perish the though of showing disrespect to anyone; that would never do.

Of course, by making this – undoubtedly, Inquisition-coerced – politically correct recantation, Valerie Jarrett has shown disrespect for those who have chosen to be gay and are proud of it.

All of which goes to show that anyone saying anything about anyone who is gay will sooner or later be made to regret it by the 21st century manners-nouveau Gestapo.