Conservapedia:Andy Schlafly, Renaissance Man

This Conservapedia-related article is of largely historical interest and is no longer the focus of RationalWiki today. Conservapedia (and religious fundamentalism to an extent) was a major focal point in the early history of RationalWiki, but long ago ceased coming up with new ways to appall and amuse. Our energies are now spent debunking other, fresher examples of pseudoscientific claims, authoritarianism, and deceit. For RationalWiki's less ancient content, try the Best of RationalWiki.

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“”We're not fooled by liberal ....

“”No one disputes ....

“”No one can deny that ....

“”Surely you don't doubt that.

“”I've taken and excelled in upperclass statistics courses.

“”There's no denying a correlation between the separation of church and state and slavery.

“”I do know, with 95% certainty, what your positions are on classroom prayer and evolution. The 95% confidence level is all that science requires.

“”The odds against a Muslim converting to Christianity ... are greater than 100 to 1.

“”I doubt you've taken half the statistics courses that I have.

We at Rationalwiki never cease to be amazed at the many fields in which Andy Schlafly displays world-class expertise. We would never have guessed that such wisdom and genius could be possessed by someone whose career consists of being legal counsel for an extremist medical group.

This wisdom seems to have evolved been created slowly. For example, he gave no early indications of his expertise in microbiology. But he suddenly discovered this expertise when Richard Lenski published a paper.

Andy frequently shows his expertise in "debates", typically on his own talk page or on article talk pages, in which he takes on all comers. Sometimes many people take turns trying to talk sense to him.

Watching one of these "debates" is a little like watching a simultaneous chess match. Sometimes a chess grandmaster will hold an exhibition in which he or she takes on a dozen or so people in simultaneous chess games, walking from one table to another making his or her move in each game. There is a difference, though. In the chess exhibitions, the chess grandmaster typically wins all of the games. In his debates, Andy invariably loses to everyone.

In some cases the count of the number of opponents may have been made more difficult because of the creation of duplicate accounts to evade Andy's actions of upsetting the chessboard blocking trolls. But we take the position that, if he upsets the board and scatters the pieces, and then someone sits down at the same table, resets the board, and begins to play, that counts as a new game, whether it was the same person or not. Another thing that sometimes makes counting the number of opponents difficult to determine is that Andy and his minions sometimes burn the evidence, deleting opponents' moves. We have attempted to look through page histories to counteract this.

Note: We do not count as "opponents" people who simply wandalized the page. The author of this page does not endorse wandalism.

A common occurrence in these tournaments is the presence of actual experts in the field. This shouldn't really be surprising—when you set up an open wiki, you're bound to get experts dropping by from time to time. This phenomenon occurs repeatedly in the tournaments shown here, from statistical methodology to experimental microbiology to the mechanism of scientific peer review. But those experts (many of them liberals, we suspect) are no match for Andy.

Andy Schlafly -- psychic / medium / seer

This seems to have been one of his first forays into intellectual stardom. Compared with his later achievements it may seem rather trivial, but it was clearly a portent of things to come. He tangled with 9 opponents, losing to all of them of course.

Andy gets into a pickle over the question of whether Benjamin Franklin was a deist. He seems to be able to make deductions about all sorts of things about a person from reading their views on the deism question.

What a deist is, and whether Ben Franklin was one, aren't really important here. As is so often the case at CP, the actual subject matter takes a back seat to the political point being made.

At one point in the debate, he even issued statements about one of his opponents parents' political views, contradicting that person's own statements. Alas, we can no longer find that particular tidbit.

See the debate page on the topic here and the chess tournaments here, here, and here. Not all of the games involve Ben Franklin.

Some choice moves:

• "The insistence on liberals describing Franklin as a deist continues to amaze me. I'll bet the correlation between those who insist Franklin was a deist and liberals is nearly 100%."

• "Let me guess: do both of you oppose prayer in the classrooms of public schools? Enough said."

• "If you're opposed to prayer in the classroom, then there is over a 90% chance that (1) you'll insist that Franklin was a deist and (2) you believe in evolution. That extraordinary correlation suggests that the facts are irrelevant." [With Andy, facts are often irrelevant.]

• "I stated your position correctly: you oppose classroom prayer. This isn't complicated, and on Conservapedia we are not fooled by liberal denial."

• "Virtually every single person who believes in evolution also opposes classroom prayer."

• "If you believe in evolution, then the odds are over 90% that you oppose classroom prayer."

• "I do know, with 95% certainty, what your positions are on classroom prayer and evolution. The 95% confidence level is all that science requires. I know your positions with greater certainty than I know what the weather will be like tomorrow."

(We never said that he is an expert meteorologist)

Note the "95%" quote, and the statement that that is "all that science requires". His peculiar views on statistics and science will crop up in later tournaments. By the way, this statement may have been Andy's first use of the "95%" number that figures so prominently in Schlafly statistics.

Tournament score: Andy 0, opponents 9.

Andy Schlafly -- theologian / bible scholar

Andy's search for "liberal bias" that has crept into the human narrative goes back thousands of years. He wrote an essay attacking part of the Holy Bible (John 7:53-8:11) for its "liberal message". This is the extremely famous "let him who is without sin himself cast the first stone" passage.

Now there is indeed controversy over this passage (and many others) in the Bible. But Andy gives the whole thing his typical spin.

The chess tournament is on the talk page here.

Some choice moves:

• "the Gospel of John was vandalized by the liberal adulteress story"

• "The story has unmistakable liberal overtones and that is a 'reason for doubting that it contains a true narration.' "

• "The adulteress story is an anti-Christian act of vandalism to the Bible, one that should be 'reverted' so that others are not misled by it."

Revert the Bible? Sorry to break it to you, but the Holy Bible is not a wiki. And if it were, you really wouldn't want to tangle with the chief sysop.

Tournament score: Andy 0, opponents 8.

Andy Schlafly -- epidemiologist / medical statistician (vaccines/autism)

As general counsel for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Andy is of course deeply involved in the vaccine/autism debate.

The chess tournament is here and here.

Some choice moves:

• "It's amazing how uncritically you accept and repeat information that (a) is implausible, (b) ...."

• "Folks, the vaccine-autism link has been published in peer review journals and confirmed by thousands of parents."

• "You sound like an apologist for the tobacco companies, claiming lack of direct proof that the carcinogens in cigarettes cause cancer."

• "The article is flat-out wrong."

Tournament score: Andy 0, opponents 7.

Andy Schlafly -- epidemiologist / medical statistician (Hollywood/breast cancer)

This one's a doozy. Andy noticed an uncanny statistical correlation between being a female "Hollywood type" and contracting breast cancer. He seemed to claim that the incidence rate was 5 to 10 times normal! His near-complete ignorance of the most elementary facts of probability, statistics, experimental protocols, and gathering data is here for all to see. Many people attempted to tutor him on these topics, to no avail. His methodology seemed to amount to perusing the Internet Movie Data Base web site, looking for cases. The discussion is here. You can look at the article page too; both pages are amazingly stupid.

There was the usual amount of Burning the Evidence on the talk page, of course, generally done by Andy's minions, so he wouldn't get his fastidious fingers dirty. Some of the burned evidence included some raw data that someone tried to put in in order to help with the analysis.

One of the people attempting to tutor him gave a brief explanation of the Chi-square test and its use, including a few equations.

Some choice moves:

• [after the Chi-square explanation] "Your symbols add nothing here."

• "You have free will to reject logic."

• "Bongabill, you're clueless. [....] I doubt you've taken half the statistics courses that I have. You have typical liberal style in trying to intimidate."

• This resulted in the rejoinder "Mr.Schlafly, actually, I am a professional statistician with both graduate and post-graduate degrees in the subject, and also a 34 year professional career as a statistician working for the official statistics bureau of a major nation." [Ouch!]

[Someone else then called Andy out on having touted his credentials in the "half the statistics courses that I have" comment. Andy then accused Bongabill of having engaged in "credential bullying", a term which he made up, and then, 3 minutes later, made a Conservapedia entry for.]

• "We don't fall for the unproven claims of credentials here."

• "Folks, your objections are incoherent."

• "Those who don't have an open mind about a glaring 5-10x increase in breast cancer incidence in the Hollywood community ..."

• "The rates of breast cancer by age in the general population are well-known, and the rates in Hollywood are 5-10x times higher."

• "Looking at the data from a small population of successful, performing female pop singers, who number no more than 100, the rate of young breast cancer is astounding and many times, even orders of magnitude [Wow!], higher than the rate in the general population. It's unmistakable."

• "That is all the more amusing when one realizes that there is a fundamental reason why Hollywood types must have higher breast cancer incidence than the general public." [He never explains what that "fundamental reason" is.]

• "If none of the above naysayers are even willing to figure out why Hollywood types are expected to have higher incidence of breast cancer without even having to look at any data [emphasis added], then I'm wasting my time on this page."

Tournament score: Andy 0, opponents 34. Yes, 34.

Andy Schlafly -- academic credentials expert

For some unfathomable reason, Andy doesn't seem to respect Richard Dawkins' academic credentials. The fact that Mr. Dawkins is widely published in the field of evolution can't possibly be related to this, because all sensible people accept evolution.

The first section of CP's article about Mr. Dawkins, here, is a broadside against his academic credentials, claiming, among other things, that his post at Oxford University, Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, was "a donated one, and is not a normal professorship", that the post may not have been "granted according to normal academic procedures", that he "bypass[ed] the peer review promotion process customarily required before receiving the title of 'professor'", and that "The title 'professor' is misleading, if not fraudulent".

Andy of course was severely taken to task on the talk page for this, and it led to a storm that would only die down when the Richard Lenski debacle eclipsed it. The talk page needed five archives to handle the mess! The tournament seemed endless—it went on for well over a year. Andy took it into the usual distractions of school prayer and abortion, of course, and various minutiae were discussed at extreme length:

• the Oxford University academic calendar
• the semantics of "chair" vs. "professorship"
• whether a "museum is 'an integral part of' a university"
• a search of the Oxford University gazette for how they use certain words
• various email messages to and from Oxford

Some choice moves, among an enormous number that just went on and on and on:

• "It's amusing how you won't admit that you oppose (censor) classroom prayer."

• "Nearly all of the most productive scientists in history were Christian." [Dawkins is an atheist.]

• "Your edit was a liberal distortion of the facts in order to make an atheist look like more of an expert than he really is."

Tournament score: Andy 0, opponents 37. The 37 doesn't do justice to how incredibly protracted the debate was, since a small number of the participants argued with Andy for many months.

Andy Schlafly -- psychiatrist

The causative effect of liberalism on mental illness had escaped the psychology/psychiatry community until Andy's penetrating insights came to bear on the subject. Andy's page on this is here. This is officially a "mystery page", in the category of "mysteries", so the subject might reasonably be expected to be something which people could debate and contribute to. But a quick look at the page and its talk page shows that only one view is tolerated, and other views are often burned. (In fact, the entire article page appears to have been deep-burned at one point.)

The page is remarkably rambling and aimless, even by Conservapedia standards. It states that "Mental illness has increased on college campuses", without postulating a causal connection with anything. It says that "Public schools educate 89% of Americans, and '[t]he incidence that a teen will have depression some time in their adolescence is higher, felt to be at least one out of four." Depression rate is higher? Higher than what? Higher than 89%? Is 89% "felt to be at least one in four"? Really? Are you sure about your arithmetic? Or is this just your "feeling"?

The page states that "Medical professionals emphasize that they do not know what causes mental illness. Accordingly, they cannot rule out that liberal indoctrination is a contributing factor." Uhhh, yeah. Way to go, Andy.

Some choice moves:

• "Liberals tend to be fatter that [sic] conservatives".

• "He typifies the kind of logical contradiction pushed so often by liberals."

• "I'm sure lots of studies confirm that prayer is good for mental health. Have you looked yet? It's obvious."

• "Did you happen to notice that the word count on your edit above is "666"? Ridicule will get you ... nowhere. Godspeed." [The count was actually 119.]

Tournament score: Andy 0, opponents 17.

Andy Schlafly -- mathematics educator

Andy's expertise in mathematics has of course been chronicled at length elsewhere, in Conservapedia:Conservapedian mathematics. Our purpose here is just to bring attention to the places where he debates the people who occasionally attempt to point out flaws in his arguments. The principal areas of disagreement are complex numbers (where Andy holds an astonishingly backward animosity), the axiom of choice, and proof by contradiction (a staple of mathematics for 2300 years.)

Andy has been trying, for well over a year now, to put together a "critical thinking in math" course, but has been stymied in his attempts to find people to assist him in teaching it, or even to get them to stop making fun of his bizarre notions.

Andy's bizarre notions, particularly about complex numbers, are scattered throughout Conservapedia. But there are a few places, noted here, where he has particularly held forth:

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

Some choice moves:

• "Liberals prefer instead to claim that mathematicians today are smarter than the devoutly Christian mathematicians like Bernhard Riemann and Carl Gauss."

• "Complex analysis has some inherent assumptions, and the concept of 'elementary proof' recognizes as much."

• "Some mathematicians do falsely pretend there is no such thing as an "elementary proof," and some liberal blogs have ridiculed me for claiming otherwise."

• "When resorting to proof by contradiction, it is impossible to know if the result is due to the falsehood of the proposition or an undetected contradiction in the math itself."

• "In light of Godel's revelation that math may contain a contradiction, proofs by contradiction are particularly disfavored. One can never know logically whether the proof simply stumbled into an underlying contradiction in the math, rather than proving the proposition." [The subject matter of the Gödel incompleteness theorem is rather esoteric. Suffice it to say Andy has muddled the thinking in amazing ways.]

• "Proof by contradiction was disfavored, for obvious reasons, by many mathematicians as recently as 30 years ago. That you're completely unaware of it merely underscores the need for this course."

Tournament score, just on the pages listed above: Andy 0, opponents 14.

Andy Schlafly -- microbiologist

This is the mother of all tournaments (so far, as of September 2008.) It's still unfolding, so there may be many more games to be lost. We're having a hard time keeping count. Please bear with us.

The whole affair has been recounted in detail here at RationalWiki in Lenski affair. Refer to that page for detailed discussion of the subject matter.

The fervor with which Andy has pursued this can only be explained by the awakening of an astonishing interest in the biological sciences in general, and experimental microbiology in particular. We are fortunate that Dr. Lenski's paper awakened this latent interest. It would be sad indeed if the only expression of Andy's biology expertise had been his pronouncements on the incidence of breast cancer among show business personalities.

Experimental microbiology is an exacting and difficult science to master, requiring, as it does, expertise in the underlying biochemistry, experimental technique, and biological statistics. Fortunately for all of us, Andy's expertise in these areas is supreme.

Here's what happened: In June 2008, Richard Lenski published a paper on microbiology. It related to E. coli bacteria evolving an ability to digest citrate, or something like that. The research was interesting and important to workers in the field, and, of course, can only be understood in the context of evolution. But that's no problem, because everyone accepts evolution.

Prior to that time, no one had any idea what a fervent interest in microbiology had been smoldering in Andy's brain, waiting to come out. But come out it did. He somehow divined that Dr. Lenski's research was, at best, flawed, and most likely fraudulent. We don't know why Andy singled out this particular bit of research for his scorn. Because it relates to evolution? Impossible; every passably literate person accepts evolution. Andy must just have an astonishing ability to spot scientific fraud.

Andy's pursuit of this issue is, by far, the most extensive of his many glorious achievements on Conservapedia. It involved letters to Dr. Lenski, letters to the editors at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), threats to contact federal funding agencies, and the creation of a number of article pages on talk pages:

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]

Many people attempted to school Andy in the many subfields of study that go into the subject of Dr. Lenski's paper, including such esoteric things as the Z-transform and how one takes data relating to bacteria cultures. But they were no match for Andy's superior intellect. Toward the end of this, arguments were coming in so fast that Andy had to issue a rule that only "substantive" comments would be permitted, while others would be reverted. The argument then veered off into the subject of Andy's bizarre interpretation of what "substantive" means. There's just no end of amusement. By the way, it's not clear that Andy ever actually read the paper. At one point he admitted to having "skimmed" it.

Some choice moves:

• "StatsMsn, have you ever read a scientific paper?"

• "It's a waste of time arguing with a closed mind." [An interesting dangling participle!]

• "Perhaps he [SMaines] could tell us which journals he does peer review for so that others can have a healthy skepticism about claims made in them. Of course, SMaines is unlikely to disclose the names of those journals."

[This was in reply to user 'SMaines' pointing out that "I have published in many medical journals and actively peer review for 2 of them. This is how it works in the field of science. Being a lawyer, Mr. Schlafly may not be familiar with the practice."]

• "The experts on Christianity are overwhelmingly in agreement: Jesus rose from the dead. Yet I expect that you don't accept that expert view. Meanwhile, you seem to accept the "expert" view of Lenski about statistics despite his having, as far as I can tell, no expertise in that subject."

• "I've taken and excelled in upperclass statistics courses, and there were not biology students, college or graduate, in them. If Lenski has expertise in statistics then let's see it. His own "biographical sketch" doesn't even disclose what his undergraduate major was at Oberlin or what his PhD concentration at the University of North Carolina were in." [Andy would never engage in credential bullying, would he?]

Tournament score: Andy 0, opponents 93.

Andy Schlafly -- historian

Andy demonstrates two remarkable abilities in the field of history.

First, is Andy's astonishing knowledge of every field of human history. He repeatedly proves his superhuman capacity to not only write intellectually rigorous and scholarly insightful summaries of the major themes of human history on every continent and in every society, but also, when questioned, to pluck the truth out of the vast library of his mind with which to refute any and all objectors. This is inherently related, of course, to Andy's psychic abilities - while we mere mortals must rely on documentary evidence, archaeological findings, and the best theories we can come up with at the moment to fill in the (exceptionally large) missing material, Andy has extra-sensory perception which allows him to peer back through the mists of time.

Second - a consequence of this psychic power - is Andy's ability to know that every historian has a liberal bias, and that every history book is furthering the homosexual abortionist agenda. Anyone with a Habilitation, Chair, Doctorate (of Letters or of Philosophy), Master's (of Philosophy or of Arts), Bachelor's, College-level qualification, School-level qualification, infant-school education, or abilit to read Dr Seuss, is a liberal trying to push feminazism upon the perhaps 0.000001% percent of the current human population who are white, Anglophonic, fundamentalist Protestant Christian, socio-politically conservative, Republican, overweight weirdos currently residing within one young country on Earth's surface.

Consequently, His Most Divine Majesty Andrew Schlafly, Lord High Ruler of the Conservapedian Imperium, has oh-so-graciously written his magnum opus. A collection of shitty, half-baked drivel which reads as though it was written by a lobotomised meerkat.

Below are just a few of the truly stunning insights from the world's greatest historian:

• "There is no reliable evidence of man existing before 3500 B.C"

• "History books speculate at length about “prehistory”, which predates writing. But there is no reliable evidence to support this speculation, and not worth spending time on."

• "The biblical account of the Flood is at Genesis 5-8, describing an ark having reasonable dimensions similar to modern ocean steamships."

• "The Hebrew Exodus occurred under Ramses II."

• "Egypt’s complex, picture-based language probably hindered its growth. The picture-based language was not as easy to use as the alphabet-based Phoenician language later adopted by the Greeks and Romans. How would one express Christian concepts like salvation, faith, hope and redemption? It seems impossible."

• "Peoples who only had primitive languages were easily conquered by groups that had more powerful languages."

• "Had Christ come into this world in 2000 or 1000 B.C., would there have been a language powerful enough to express His ideas? Probably not."

• "Mail was carried by couriers on the Royal Road, and it was a Greek historian (not the U.S. Postal Service) who described the couriers."

• "The Greeks founded an Academy, considered to be the first university ever founded in the world. In a sense, homeschoolers today are emulating the Academy."

• "King Xerxes I held what might be called a “Miss Persia” beauty contest."

• "Age itself is greatly honored in Chinese culture, unlike Christianity."

• "The Silk Road was influential from 150 B.C. to A.D. 900. Perhaps one might compare its enormous influence to the internet today!"

• "As long as something can be improved and developed further, there may not be any reason to publish it prematurely (hint hint, Andy)."

• "Pontius Pilate, like most Romans, had no understanding or appreciation of the concept of objective truth."

• "[Emperor] Diocletian also imposed wage and price controls to halt inflation. That economic regulation, which almost always fails, is still attempted by modern rulers, such as the United States President during World War II and even President Nixon in the early 1970s."

• "Gnostics would also edit out passages from accepted Gospels if they felt it could not be proven...Gnosticism...persists to this day in attempts to pick and choose from the New Testament."

• "The Huns were so barbaric that they did not use fire, and would simply eat raw or semi-raw meat that they found in dead animals."

• "Diocletian’s economic policies were dreadful, imposing price controls and ordering people to stay in their current jobs. Emperors spent lavishly on themselves and other friends and the currency suffered from inflation that accompanies overspending by government. Like modern governments, the Roman emperors produced cheap coins when they needed money, thereby causing inflation."

• "The morality of the Roman people was in complete decline. It was like everyone now spending hours each day watching murder on television, except it was real then. Nothing gets done, and what the people are watching becomes increasingly immoral."

• "[There was] mostly quiet religious activity between A.D. 500 and 1500."

• "While Muslim terrorist acts against defenseless Jewish civilians are common, there are almost never similar acts of terrorist by Jewish people against innocent Muslim civilians."

• "The most famous Muslim in the western world has been Muhammad Ali."

• "The word “Slav” comes from same word root as the word “slave”."

• "In this respects [feudalism] was like a version of multilevel systems of marketing used today (like Amway): everyone earns a share of workers he recruits to work for him, and those workers in turn have an incentive to recruit more workers."

• "On the humorous side, it became popular to use battering rams and catapults in warfare."

• "The entire concept of "customer service" and "the customer is always right" can be traced to the chivalry developed under feudalism."

• "Feudalism had much that many people miss today. For example, people worked close to home, and there was no commuting or traveling to a job. No one was "laid off" by a big company then and left without work. Communities were strong and people defended each other against foreign enemies. Families stayed close together. Perhaps the roots of homeschooling are in feudalism!"

• "Communism, which did not develop until the 20th century, is the exact opposite of chivalry."

• "The world’s first psychological novel, “The Tale of Genji,” was written in the 1000s by Lady Murasaki about Japanese culture during the Heian period (794-1185). This was a period of great style in Japan with its center at the capital at Heian, where Kyoto is today. Recently, in 1997, Kyoto became known as the place where many nations attempted to limit the alleged global warming through the “Kyoto Treaty” for reducing factory and car emissions, which the United States never ratified."

• "The Incas had very few skilled artisans."

• "Critics claim that the Christian crusaders massacred the inhabitants of Jerusalem in the process. But it was a huge military victory."

• "Some Christians fully defend the Crusades, and proudly compare the United States’ invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq to a modern version of the Crusades."

• "The region of Russia is known as the Khanate of the Golden Horde."

• "Each time an intense wind that the Japanese call the “kamikaze” turned back the Mongols. It was not until World War II that a larger seaborne invasion of Japan was attempted."

• "Inflation (weakening of the money) destroyed the Mongol empire, just as it destroyed so many other empires and countries. The rulers kept printing more money and its value kept declining, until businessmen did not want to use it anymore."

• "[Saint] Anselm [of Canterbury] also had a tremendous logical argument for why Christ must exist. In the feudalism of Anselm’s day, the severity of a crime and amount of satisfaction required of the offender varied depending on who the victim was. Someone who committed a crime against the king would require more satisfaction or payment by the criminal after he was caught than a similar crime against a peasant. Similar rules exist today, where a crime against the president is far more serious than a similar crime against an ordinary citizen. Anselm wrote a paper entitled “Cur Deus homo?” (“Why Did God Become Man?”), in which he explained that finite man could never satisfy a crime or sin against the infinite God. Only an infinite man (Christ) could provide full satisfaction because the victim of the crime or sin was the infinite God. Hence the existence of Christ is essential."

• "Thomas Aquinas is further known for his famous observation that the devil cannot withstand mockery. Mockery can be useful in defeating a bad idea or temptation."

• "Technological advancements flourishing in Europe (such as the printing press) were not received well in dar-al Islam (lands under Islamic control). These factors, combined with prolonged periods of warfare eventually led to the downfall of the Islamic empires."

• "When the Bantu language collided with Arabic, the result was the Swahili for the peoples of east Africa."

• "[In Iron Age West Africa] Slaves were the only type of private property that existed, so personal wealth depended on how many slaves one owned."

• "The Hawaiian islands in the middle of the Pacific are so far away that they are not typically part of Oceania, and the distance was too far to establish trade until European sailors arrived."

• "Women during the Renaissance were celebrated for their beauty, but were not expected to be educated."

• "But many historians are hostile to Christianity, and they do not want to credit Christianity for the stunning achievements of the Renaissance. Accordingly, they claim that the Renaissance embraced “humanism”, which favored the capacity of man to reason and think for himself without reliance on Christianity. There is no single definition for “humanism”, and the philosophical term was not used during the Renaissance. But any view that looks to “humans” as the sole source of value can be called “humanist"."

• "There was nothing at all anti-religious or humanist about the Renaissance. Perhaps 90% of more of its achievements were inspired by Christian beliefs and faith."

• "the greatest works were by devout Christians like Isaac Newton and Louis Pasteur."

• "the claim that humanism was part of the Renaissance is anti-Christian historical revisionism (an alteration of history for improper purposes)."

• "Historians debate today whether Luther’s anti-Semitic (anti-Jewish) writings were responsible, directly or indirectly, for the Holocaust by the Germans in World War II."

• "Is the Anglican Church, which has 73 million adherents, properly called “Protestant"?"

• "Nearly every Founder of the United States was Protestant."

• "Today Spain is virtually 100% Catholic in name only, and is one of the few countries that has legalized gay marriage. Its economy is socialistic, a mere shell of the mighty empire that it was in the 1500s."

• "The competition between Catholics and Protestants may have some benefits. In modern times the Catholic Church was the original leader against abortion, with the Protestants eventually agreeing. Protestant evangelicals have been the leaders against teaching evolution (e.g, the American William Jennings Bryan in the 1920s). In the papal encyclical “Humani Generis” (1950), the Catholic Church prohibited teaching evolution contrary to the biblical Adam, but Catholic schools routinely teach evolution anyway. However, recent signs suggest a Catholic shift against evolution. Most Christians oppose same-sex marriage and agree on most social issues. Protestants are on average wealthier than Catholics and tend to support free enterprise more, and evangelical Protestants are often more vocal on social issues. Catholics generally prohibit divorce, while Protestants allow it. American Protestants tend to oppose immigration more than Catholics do, while Catholics tend to oppose the death penalty more than Protestants do. Perhaps the competition makes everyone try harder."

• "On September 11, 1683, Muslims made a second major attempt to conquer Europe...Some have observed that the "9/11" massacre in New York City was on the anniversary of this day."

• "To this day many feel that the King James Bible is the finest English translation available, despite the antiquity of some of its terminology. It is free from modern translation biases that hide the existence and wrath of Hell, for example."" (So why the Conservative Bible Project, Andy?)

• "English uses a writing system that has some relation between sounds and symbols as opposed to a purely ideographic system."

• "English enjoys a powerful pipe-like quality, such that one phrase can be cut and pasted to another phrase with ease."

• "[Christopher] Columbus did not attend formal school, just as homeschoolers do not today. Columbus at all times was a devout Christian."

• "Bartholomew de Las Casas, sent sensational descriptions to the Spanish government of the supposed atrocities committed against the “patient, meek and peaceful” natives by the Spanish conquistadors, whom he described as “cruel tigers, wolves and lions.” Although some of what Las Casas said was true, historical research has proved most of it to be false and exaggerated."

• "in Africa the population growth almost cancelled out population losses caused by the slave trade."

• "Galileo was not as bright as Kepler or Copernicus, and was a bit of an entertaining showman who made a lively party guest."

• "Then there was Sir Isaac Newton, who after Jesus Christ was perhaps the most influential man who ever lived. If Newton were alive today, then he would be described as a Christian fundamentalist."

• "The United States Constitution (1787) gave the world a masterful design for government."

• "Most revolutions simply replace one form of dictatorship with another. The shining exception was the American Revolution."

• "A “revolution” is itself a controversial idea, and has little or no basis in Christianity....such revolts remained rare or non-existent for over 1600 years."

• "Some of the French declarations [of the Rights of Man] seem silly."

• "The Directory picked a young, highly successful military genius named Napoleon to lead the French army. The very next day Napoleon seized all power in France as its dictator."

• "the French Revolution unleashed an hostility towards Christianity that continues to this day in France. Islam has recently risen in power there."

• "[In the eighteenth century] Man felt more confidence in controlling natural resources like oil and gas fields, and enjoyed exploiting nature for profit."

• "If you are a businessman or investor, then you love the industrial revolution because it enables you to make money without being a farmer, and gives you access to all sorts of goods and products that might not otherwise be available, such as computers."

• "In England and Germany, people who believed in Darwin’s theory of evolution felt a racial superiority and sought conquest (survival-of-the-fittest) to force other races into submission."

• "Under utilitarianism there is no Christian morality, and it is replaced by comparing benefits versus costs. Under this view government should experiment on embryonic stem cells today if benefits are greater than costs."

• "Darwin’s own family considered him to be a disgrace, and felt that way even before he failed at an attempt to become a doctor. His father later sought for him to become an Anglican parson (pastor), but Darwin abandoned the Christian faith instead. He was unable to earn a degree in science and he struggled in scientific subjects such as physics (and math)."

• "Darwin had not observed any transitional forms (fossils reflecting evolution between species), and he said his theory would fail if no transitional forms were found. None were ever found, but his theory is still taught anyway for political reasons."

• "Today Darwin’s theory is most popular among people who, like Darwin himself, have some superficial education in science without any depth of study or insight. Darwin’s theory ignores the vast beauty in the world; Darwin’s theory is based only on functionality, without any recognition of artistic design."

• "the Darwinists engaged in racial cleansing and experimentation to “perfect” the Aryan race under Adolf Hitler."

• "The horrific wars of the 20th century, employing shockingly brutal tactics, were encouraged by a belief in survival-of-the-fittest among humans."

• "England was the strongest nation in the world at the time of Darwin, but its embrace of forms of socialism and evolution weakened it dramatically."

• "It was collective bargaining in the late 1900s that helped enable American baseball players to increase their salaries to astronomical levels."

• "Other social reforms in the late 1800s included “free” public education in Western Europe, Japan and the United States (you might disagree whether public schools qualify as a “reform”)."

• "The many different ethnic groups and languages spoken in Africa also made it difficult for the continent to unify and defend itself."

• "In the 1800s, the powerful Europeans and even the Russians took on the Islamic powers."

• "Japan has a military culture that seemed invincible until the United States dropped two atom bombs on it in August 1945....But by 1637, the spread of Christianity in Japan caused a retaliation and persecution of Christians. Japan then closed its doors to the West and kept only one port, Nagasaki (hit with an atom bomb in 1945)."

• "The weather seasons are the opposite in South America from the United States, enabling us to purchase fresh fruit in the wintertime from South American countries such as Chile."

• "Today Panama allows communist China to run the canal, making many wonder if the United States would even be able to use it in wartime."

• "The two nations have a friendly rivalry in cricket, which is the British counterpart of American baseball."

• "The [Filipino] insurgents were brutal and unrelenting in their tactics and the American commanders concluded that they simply had to kill them all to suppress the rebellion, which the Americans did, causing some criticism back in the United States. But the Philippines are probably a free and Christian nation today as a result of that decision not to let the insurgents take control of it."

• "Therefore one powerful group of three nations (Germany, Italy and Austria-Hungary), known as the Triple Alliance, stood against another powerful group of three nations (Britain, France and Russia), known as the Triple Entente. It was like one football team standing on a field opposite another football team, with both teams fully suited up. It doesn’t take much for someone to shout, “let’s play,” and the battle will begin."

• "By 1914, leaders in both Germany on one side and Britain on the other had embraced concepts of survival-of-the-fittest, and many educated people felt that war was an essential part of the improvement of the human race. Let the stronger race win, according to this theory."

• "In detail, the first year of the [First World] war finished with terrible casualties but no knock-out punches."

• More (unfortunately) to come...