Welcome to the beginning of the first work week in March: it’s Monday, March 3, 2025, and National Cold Cuts Day. Here’s a huge (3+ pounds) sub from Chicago, and not far from me (I’ve never been there):
It’s also 33 Flavors Day, celebrating Baskin-Robbins, Moscow Mule Day (a great drink), Canadian Bacon Day, National Mulled Wine Day, Shrove Monday, World Wildlife Day, Cream Bun Day in Iceland, and National Soup it Forward Day, whose meaning I don’t know. But remember this?
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 3 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Israel has halted aid to Gaza after the terrorist group has refused to extend the first phase of the cease-fire (Hamas is demanding that Israel remove its troops from the border with Egypt, which are used for smuggling weapons and material).
Israel said Sunday it would not allow any more goods to enter Gaza over what it called Hamas’s refusal to accept a proposal to extend the expiring initial stage of the ceasefire and hostage release deal, and threatened “additional consequences” and a return to war.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government said the move had rock-solid backing from US President Donald Trump’s White House, even as Jerusalem appeared to back away from its previous agreement with Hamas to negotiate a second phase of the ceasefire during which additional hostages would be released and Israel would fully withdraw from Gaza.
“With the end of phase one of the hostage deal and in light of Hamas’s refusal to accept the [US special envoy Steve] Witkoff outline for continuing talks – to which Israel agreed – Prime Minister Netanyahu has decided that, as of this morning, all entry of goods and supplies into the Gaza Strip will cease,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement Sunday morning.
Israel said Sunday it would not allow any more goods to enter Gaza over what it called Hamas’s refusal to accept a proposal to extend the expiring initial stage of the ceasefire and hostage release deal, and threatened “additional consequences” and a return to war.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government said the move had rock-solid backing from US President Donald Trump’s White House, even as Jerusalem appeared to back away from its previous agreement with Hamas to negotiate a second phase of the ceasefire during which additional hostages would be released and Israel would fully withdraw from Gaza.
“With the end of phase one of the hostage deal and in light of Hamas’s refusal to accept the [US special envoy Steve] Witkoff outline for continuing talks – to which Israel agreed – Prime Minister Netanyahu has decided that, as of this morning, all entry of goods and supplies into the Gaza Strip will cease,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement Sunday morning.
“Israel will not allow a ceasefire without the release of our hostages,” the PMO added, threatening “further consequences” if Hamas continues to say no to the proposal.
It later denied a report in Arabic-language media that Netanyahu had dispatched a delegation to Egypt for talks.
Netanyahu also claimed at his weekly cabinet meeting that Hamas is diverting aid entering the Strip for its own use.
“Hamas is currently taking control of all supplies and goods sent to the Gaza Strip. It is abusing the Gazan population who are trying to receive the aid, it is shooting at them, and is turning humanitarian aid into a terrorist budget directed against us,” he said.
According to the Kan public broadcaster, Israel believes enough aid has entered the enclave in recent weeks to last Gaza for several months. Jerusalem has questioned the veracity of reports of famine in the enclave over the course of the war, which has been blamed on a lack of sufficient aid flowing into the Strip via Israel-controlled border crossings.
. . . Under the ceasefire outline agreed to by Israel and Hamas on January 19, the remaining living hostages were to be released during the second stage of the deal, during which the IDF would complete a full withdrawal from Gaza. A third stage is also planned, during which the bodies of hostages held by Gazan terror groups would be released, the war would end, and the reconstruction of Gaza would begin.
The U.S. is endorsing Israel’s actions, even though the world will soon begin baying that Gazans are starving (that’s always been untrue) and even though Hamas takes most of the aid. Unless you lack neurons, you’ll realize that Hamas will never agree to let all the living hostages go, as they are the ticket to their continuing in power. With no living hostages, there’s little impetus for Israel to allow Hamas to continue to rule, which they’ve said is intolerable—and it is. My prediction is that this will be drawn out considerably, but eventually the war will resume.
*As reader Jez comments, and as reported in the Guardian, “Rather bizarre, but it looks like the British prime minister and the monarchy are trying to undermine the official invitation for a state visit that Keir Starmer extended to Trump on Thursday by pre-emptively hosting Zelenskyy”:
King Charles will hold an official audience at Sandringham with the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday as the UK and EU demonstrate their “unwavering” support after his humiliation at the hands of Donald Trump and JD Vance in the White House.
Keir Starmer will also host European heads of government and the leaders of Canada and Turkey at a special defence summit aimed at presenting a united front on the Ukraine crisis.
On arrival in Downing Street for a meeting with Starmer on Saturday night, just 24 hours after Trump and his vice-president Vance subjected him to a 10-minute tirade in the Oval Office, Zelenskyy said he was “very happy” that the king had agreed to the meeting.
The offer of a royal audience was seen at Westminster as a deliberate move to give the Ukrainian president equal treatment to Trump, who was presented during his meeting at the White House on Wednesday by Starmer with an invitation to a second state visit to the UK, including a meeting with King Charles.
Last night there were reports that the UK would show further solidarity by unlocking billions of pounds of frozen Russian assets to Ukraine. The Sunday Times claimed Rachel Reeves would divert money earmarked for green investment in the UK to the defence industry. It would be the first time that money from frozen Russian assets would contribute towards military spending.
The irate exchanges between Trump and Vance, on the US side, and Zelenskyy, which led to the Ukrainian president being told to leave the White House before any formal talks took place, led to fears among European and other world leaders of irreparable damage to the western alliance, and to the hopes of peace in Ukraine’s war with Russia. At today’s defence summit, which demonstrates the increasingly central role being played by the UK in Europe’s defence and security, Starmer will be clear that Europe must stand united against President Putin.
I’m especially heartened that King Charles, though he has little power, encouraged this move. The Brits are acting like menschen, while Trump and Vance, osculating Putin’s rump, look like dopes. I’m not sure what Trump intended to accomplish by humiliating Zelensky in public, but he gained nothing from it. This shows more clearly than ever how much he’s sundered America from its allies, but the one problem is that the U.S. alone can’t support Ukraine if it continues to fight rather than take Trump’s rotten offer.
*The NYT is flogging Christianity again, this time giving Nicholas Wolterstorff a theologian and philosopher of religion, a Q&A in which he discusses his faith with religionist Peter Wehner. (Wolterstorff’s son was killed in a mountain-climbing accident at age 25, which surely motivated his answer to the first question (in bold; Wolterstorff answers are in plain text).
A two-part question, and I’ll start with this one. Throughout your career, you’ve obviously heard a lot of philosophical debates about Christianity, about belief in God. What do you believe is the strongest philosophical case against Christianity, and what’s your response to it?
I suppose the most powerful case against Christianity is the problem of evil. And that’s a serious problem for all human beings — Christians, non-Christians. My view on that has come to be something like this: A classic view was that God makes everything happen, and Augustine’s view was that evil in the world was sort of like dissonance in a fugue of Johann Sebastian Bach. It has to be there. It plays a significant role in the whole, entire composition.
I’ve long been impressed by the early-20th-century writings of Karl Barth on God and evil, and what Barth highlights in Christian Scripture is just a note of a battle going on. What the New Testament writers called the principalities and powers. God’s not doing everything, but there’s something mysterious — Barth uses the German term for “nothingness” — that’s abroad in the world. Other writers in Scripture call it Satan. And so what strikes me, Pete, as a deep theme in Christian Scripture is that God is dismayed, not displeased, but dismayed by some of the things that happened in human affairs.
I guess in a way, the Book of Job probably answers that question.
Exactly, exactly.
This is why theology is a useless discipline, for there is no observation so at variance with their notions of God that can’t be rationalized away. In this case, evil is due to “Satan,” though Wolsterstorff won’t say he accepts it. He uses the euphemism “there’s something mysterious that’s abroad in the world.” Apparently God is not omnipotent, and perhaps Satan killed Wolterstorff’s son. (That’s glib, but Wolterstorff himself has pondered that enigmatic event.)
Job doesn’t get an answer from God other than: Look at all I’ve created and who I am. Now, the second part of the question. What do you think is the strongest argument, philosophically or otherwise, for Christianity? To put it another way, on what basis are you a Christian? Is it rooted in your philosophical outlook? Is it aesthetics? Is it both? Is it something else?
It’s not arguments. The traditional view — well, the traditional view of the 17th, 18th, 19th or early 20th centuries — was that to be a responsible religious believer, one had to have arguments. That has come under heavy philosophical attack over the last 40 years. And I think that very few philosophers would hold that position anymore. For me, there are two things, and they’re not arguments. They’re more like experience or reflection or something like that.
One is Creation. We now know that, as opposed to the Greeks, who thought that things had always been this way, they haven’t always been this way, that there was a Big Bang. And so that obviously invites the question: There has to have been some sort of existence or being before — “before” is the right word — this Big Bang. There’s always been existence, never just nothingness. And the biblical word for that is “Creation,” of course. It’s not quite an argument, I guess, but it’s reflection on the very existence of this world of ours.
And the second part of it for me is the Resurrection of Christ. If there had not been a Resurrection, I think it would have been plausible to view Christ as a really extraordinary, exceptional prophet. But the Resurrection tells us something more was at stake, that he’s not just one among other prophets. And I find the New Testament accounts compelling. So it’s Creation and Resurrection. Those two were my anchors for my Christian faith.’
There’s not much to say here save Wolsterstorff’s apparent ignorance of physics (there was no “time” before the Big Bang and, at any rate, if God created time, who created God?) As for the Resurrection, well, the theologian just swallows the New Testament whole.
Wolterstorff also makes some of the science-related arguments for God used by Ross Douthat in his recent book:
. . . . more specifically, we philosophers don’t have a good account of consciousness. We recognize that there is such a thing as consciousness. But what is it? It remains a philosophical mystery. For me, another mystery that, so far as I can see, evolutionary accounts don’t explain is the fact that we human beings can engage, do engage, in abstract reasoning, mathematics of an extraordinarily complicated sort, which plays no evolutionary role. They don’t help to get water or grow oats or anything like that.
Consciousness and this extraordinary ability to engage in purely abstract, mathematical, logical, philosophical thought other than just pragmatic reasoning, which enables you to get food or clothes or something like that — it’s those remarkable features that materialist accounts can’t deal with.
These are of course god-of-the-gaps arguments, and scientists have dealt with them using “materialistic accounts”. These apologists just don’t realize that once you’ve evolved a big brain and can live in small groups with other humans, you can do a lot of other stuff as epiphenomena. After all, humans painted on caves early in our evolution; did God give us artistic abilities, too?
*Yesterday I wrote about how the Maine legislature had both censured and censored one of its members, Rep. Laurel Libby, for posting photos of a trans-identified male teenager on the podium after having won a girls’ athletic event, The editorial board of the WSJ notes, correctly, that this kind of behavior is going to cost Democrats elections. It’s clear that Libby was silenced for her sentiments, not posting the picture. (The excuse was that she photographed a teen, but it seems the teen was willing to be photographed, and this is not illegal.
If Democrats want to know why so many voters abandoned them in November, they could take a gander at the progressive meltdown in Maine. On Tuesday the Maine House of Representatives voted to censure Republican Rep. Laurel Libby for posting photos of a transgender high school athlete on Facebook.
The teenager, who previously competed in boys’ track and field, switched to compete in the girls’ pole vault this year, winning the class B state championship. “This is outrageous and unfair to the many female athletes who work every day to succeed in their respective sports,” Ms. Libby wrote on Facebook.
Cue full-on progressive derangement. Lawmakers voted 75-70 to formally reprimand Ms. Libby. The censure means she isn’t allowed to speak or vote in the Legislature unless she apologizes. She has said she will not.
Under the Maine constitution, expelling a member requires a two-thirds majority, but state lawmakers have used the censure as a backdoor to silence Ms. Libby by a simple majority vote. Trying to speak in her own defense during the Maine House Resolution to censure her, Rep. Libby was repeatedly interrupted by other members challenging her remarks. She later posted her remarks on Facebook.
The progressive left claims she was “doxxing” a minor by posting the photo. But a state champion athlete has no reasonable expectation of privacy after winning a high-profile championship. Taking pictures of such victories and distributing them in the press or internet is routine. No law prohibits what Ms. Libby did, which is free political speech. Her post didn’t attack the athlete. It simply reposted the champion’s picture and noted that the same athlete had placed fifth in the men’s competition in a previous year.
The Legislature’s censure of Ms. Libby also deprives her of the right to vote on legislation, which in turn disenfranchises her constituents by denying them representation. What’s to stop the majority party from censuring any problematic lawmaker to make sure legislation passes? Democrats should be considering whether they really want to go down the road of regulating posts on social media.
. . . Republicans prospered politically in 2024 by campaigning on the unfairness of forcing girls to compete against testosterone-loaded transgender athletes. Now, to dodge a debate over their policy, Maine Democrats abuse their power by silencing a duly elected dissenter. They’ve learned nothing from defeat.
Democrats have learned nothing. They need to stop doubling down on the stuff that cost them the election, and they need to stop pushing biological men to compete against biological women. Most Americans recognize the palpable unfairness of that stand.
*As I write this on Sunday afternoon, I am aware that the Oscar awards are tonight, and I’m also aware that I won’t be watching them. But the WaPo has two of its writers predict which movie will win Best Picture, and then opine on what is the real best picture. (They also do this for every year since 1974):
2024:
- Nominees: Anora, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Dune: Part Two, Emilia Pérez, I’m Still Here, Nickel Boys, The Substance, Wicked
- Best picture winner: TBD
- The actual best picture: A split decision!
Dan Zak: “The Brutalist” proves one thing above all else: No film should ever cost more than $10 million. This 3.5-hour historical epic was filmed on the cheap, but the results are magnificent. A world-building movie about how we build worlds, and about what we destroy in the process, with a career-best performance by Adrien Brody — all buoyed by a sublime score by Daniel Blumberg.
Amy Argetsinger: “A Complete Unknown” pulled off multiple magic tricks as a biopic that avoided the usual biopic cringe and actually made a lot of money. Most miraculously, it enthralled (rather than ticked off) a righteous nation of Dylan fans — even though everyone knows that it was at a concert in Manchester, not the Newport Folk Festival, where an audience member shouted, “Judas!”
I’ve watched only two of these (“Anora” and “A Complete Unknown”), and while I found them both creditable films, I found neither of them to be a world beater. I was not enthralled by the Dylan movie, though I was impressed by Chalamet’s ability to play and sing like Dylan, a skill he taught himself over five years. “The Brutalist” will be the next film I watch, though I just watched a nominee for Best Animated Feature: “Flow“. Of course it’s about a cat, but there are no words in the movie, and no humans, just animal noises. (The cat gets involved with a group of friends that include a bird, a capybara, a ring-tailed lemur, and and even a d*g. Nevertheless, this post-apocalyptic movie is mesmerizing, and good for both adults and kids. The ending is quite discombobulating. See it!
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has a philosophical question:
Hili: What is happiness?Andrzej: An exceptionally high level of satisfaction with the present moment.
In Polish:
Hili: Co to jest szczęście?Ja: Nadzwyczajnie wysoki poziom zadowolenia z chwili obecnej.
*******************
From Cat Memes:
From Things with Faces, a “stretching fondue squirrel”:
From the 2025 Darwin Awards!!!/Epic Fails!!!:
This post by Masih can’t be embedded (obscenity??), so I’m posting a screenshot:
From Malgozata: the benighted thugs shut down an event that attempted to produce DIALOGUE between Israeli and Iranian students. Jebus!
Does King’s College London want to be known for thugs shrieking for terror and wrecking events they dislike? For that is just what happened to an Israeli-Iranian dialogue meeting last night. If they’re students, expel them, quickly. If not, bar them from campus, permanently. Act! pic.twitter.com/HykyyJnk4Z
— habibi (@habibi_uk) February 28, 2025
From Barry: Weird behavior from a whitish wolf. Look at them choppers!
I've never seen a wolf be silly 😅😅
— amazingnature ☘️ (@amazingnature.bsky.social) 2025-03-02T03:47:22.949Z
From Malcolm; a Facebook video of cats imitating people. I am truly stunned!
From my feed, a helpful goose trying to rescue a stuck goat:
The goose trying to help??? Oh my heart 🥹🥰 pic.twitter.com/De9H5F4s3T
— why you should have an animal (@ShouldHaveAnima) March 1, 2025
From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:
Murdered in the gas chamber upon arriving at Auschwitz. This French Jewish girl was only eight years old.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-03-03T10:31:56.423Z
Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, some ancient but lovely and largely intact teacups:
Something lovely for the weekend! Marvellous Minoan cups known as Kamares Ware. They look so modern, yet they were made by Bronze Age potters about 3,800 years ago!Heraklion Archaeological Museum, Crete. 📷 by me#Archaeology
— Alison Fisk (@alisonfisk.bsky.social) 2025-03-01T11:07:19.265Z
Narwhals! (But I can’t find any video from the drone.)
Drone captures narwhals using their tusks to explore, forage and playwww.eurekalert.org/news-release…
— Roger Highfield (@rogerhighfield.bsky.social) 2025-03-02T07:28:58.979Z
“I suppose the most powerful case against Christianity is the problem of evil.”
Wrong. The most powerful case against christianity and other religions is a total lack of evidence.
Right. The problem of evil is the most powerful case against a Trump presidency.
No, it’s no problem at all for the non-religious.
PS: Starship 8 launch currently scheduled for today, 5:30 CST, 23:30 GMT.
Thanks Coel. Residents of Caribbean islands under its flight path should shelter in place. Wonder if FAA or ICAO has put out a notice to the airlines of possible interruptions if Ship 8 follows same nominal trajectory as the ill-fated Starship 7.
I will be watching on space.com which should also give mission updates throughout the day at their website
https://www.space.com/news/live/spacex-starship-missions-updates
I think that FAA “notice to airmen” advisories are routine for such launches, and were issued for flight 7, so I expect they will have been this time. 🙂
The NOTAM’s for previous flights only cover the immediate volume of the Boca Chica launchsite. I do not know how you could close such a volume of airspace as the full trajectory. I do not know, but think that these flights are at a more southerly angle so that they can drop the Ship into the Indian Ocean compared with launches from the Cape to ISS which are basically over the North Atlantic and in orbit in 8-10 minutes.
I had never really thought about this problem until the Ship7 RUD last month. But it really mucked up a bunch of air traffic transiting the Caribbean for 90 minutes or so. I mean think about it: we know what a bird strike can do to an airliner just taking off at a couple of hundred mph. Think about hitting a chunk of stainless steel at over 500mph. I think that creating a debris field is how some missile interceptors work. I am a big supporter of SpaceX, but Musk cannot use the entire world as his toilet.
I’m no expert on this, but according to people who claim to know (such as here), there was a “closed” NOTAM for the immediate launch site, and a “warning” NOTAM for more of the flight path, and the debris was within the latter area, and things seem to have proceeded as they should.
Thanks for the link, but amy gives a nice theoretical summary (consider a spherical elephant). The reality was that the debris, not the explosion was the real danger. The debris cascaded for a long time over a significantly loosely defined area. Airliners over the oceanic regions do not carry unlimited fuel and cannot simply hold for an undetermined time. There are limited alternative fields they can go to. While each player may have made the proper notifications, listening to the real time atc audio from those hours, this was not as nice as amy makes it out to be.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
If there be such a thing as truth, it must infallibly be struck out by the collision of mind with mind. -William Godwin, philosopher and novelist (3 Mar 1756-1836)
“Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.”
-Blaise Pascal, Pensées
sec. SECTION XIV: APPENDIX: POLEMICAL FRAGMENTS, no. 864
17th c., posthumous, (1670 2nd. ed.)
ccel.org/ccel/pascal/pensees/pensees.xv.html
BTW “Pascal’s Wager” is supposed to be in that^^^
That wolf is in heat. Presumably the poster of the video has never had a dog.
That’s what I thought too. I said to myself “Look at the girl, she’s ‘presenting’ “.
The strongest case against Christianity is not the “problem of evil.” The strongest case is that Christianity is in the business of making claims about the nature of the world and the universe that aren’t true.
Accepting “I don’t know” as an answer to certain questions.
As somebody somewhere once said: “Everything in the Bible was once thought to be literally true, until it was shown NOT to be true. Then it became a metaphor.
I think nearly all of the “cats imitating people” clips are AI (altered or created) fakes. Only a few look plausible to me.
Don’t think it’s all, but there are definitely some. (Iv’e seen compilations of the same videos.) Someone with the expertise and time could probably uncover the originals, compare, and give a definitive answer, but soon we’ll have to be applying scrutiny to all public figures and politicians.
With President Trump (apparently) being OK with that AI Truth Social video of him on the beach with Elon, and the Gaza resort, it’s going to be hard to to determine sanctioned v satire.
Our host will be pleased to learn that “Flow” won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film.
Yes, with the only other possible win that I thought was deserved being Mikey Madison for Best Actress.
SEE FLOW!
Yes! And preferably with your cat. Mine was fascinated.
This may be the Narwhale footage in question. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoTjLIN67Bw
and
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1350499592613235
I remember reading that they could use their tusks to probe the bottom for buried prey, but here they apparently can use it to stun fishes in open water.
Israel has just called up 400,000 reservists – I read lately (no back up, maybe a rumor?). If so.. they’re not doing it for fun.
The wider war must begin – no country can live in peace with Hamas next door and the death toll will be huge for Pals. “Humanitarian” wars are for wars not facing such evil so deeply embedded in a culture.
Onwards Israeli heroes.
D.A.
NYC
my latest article (reposted here, republished variously)
https://democracychronicles.org/so-what-of-gaza-trumps-plan-and-some-context/
Hamas are scum. I hope Israel can get back the other hostages somehow.
Glad to see the U.K. stepping up.
Russia’s GDP is smaller than Canada’s — look it up. You’ve got this, Europeans!
By wanting to extend phase 1, Israel seems to be breaking the agreement, and has changed strategy in an effort to get more hostages back sooner. We’ll see if halting aid to Gaza will help. The world will whine about this, but what does Israel have to lose in the court of public opinion? Not much. Hamas is not signaling that it will cede power in Gaza, so they, too, don’t seem to be seriously interested in phase 2. My biggest concern at the moment is President Trump’s volatility. So far he is indicating strong support for Israel. But he can turn on a dime.
I agree that Israel shouldn’t assume Trump’s continuing support.
It’s still unclear why Trump is siding with Russia. I’ve seen theories based on Zelenskyy offending him earlier. But even if that were true Trump shouldn’t doom an entire country based on that.
Perhaps Netanyahu knows how to handle him. But it may not always be Netanyahu in the future.
Trump can turn on a dime – it is why I didn’t vote for him. But at the moment, and pre-ty consistently he’s been pro-Israel.
He is at the moment and Israel is smartly taking advantage of that. I’m not sure how my fellow Zionists dis Biden all the time – he was excellent for Israel while pretending to hew a middle path. But Trump is better.
As for what Ireland, my own stupid Aussies, Norway or Spain think – who gives a crap? They don’t live there – their skin in the game is zero and thus their motions and objections and whines are worthless.
The hostages must be returned – period. Or not… and the utter destruction of Gaza must commence.
Israelis, and middling westerners with the luxury of distance, now have to be convinced about the true intentions of the Pal Movement. They’ve been telling us for decades and now have shown us exactly how and why they operate.
So the time has come to eliminate them.
D.A.
NYC
I have seen FP commentators comparing Zelensky educating Trump to Netanyahu educating Obama. But was Netanyahu correct in doing so and for the same reasons as Zelensky? The reason being they are both dealing with murderous opponents who’s words have no value?
Also Lech Walesa sent a letter to Trump comparing trump’s treatment of Zelensky to former Communist courts. And our new Secretary of Defense has halted all Pentagon cyber operations against Russia.
I believe there are a number of good folks who, while misguided, subscribe on some level or another to Christianity; however, I wonder how many truly believe? I’ve yet to know a single one who suffered death, as some in the past, due to their belief. Also, I know of very few, if any, who practice Christianity as outlined in the New Testament – this includes regarding the subject of apologetics, for there is no need to make a case. Christians find individuals to defend their faith for them, those who can set forth a somewhat cogent argument, yet this practice flies in the face of the comment “[n]ow faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). There is no need for logic or for rational thinking, as faith is supposed to provide the substance and evidence. Ought to be case closed for a believer.
As for the problem of evil, again, consider the following from their holy writ: “For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory” (I Corinthians 15:53, 54). Of course, death was brought on by evil (eating forbidden fruit, thereby disobeying the command of deity). Point is, regardless of what evil happens in this life, none of it matters if you make it to the good place in the next life.
I don’t buy it, but I’m just sayin’….
“My prediction is that this will be drawn out considerably, but eventually the war will resume.”
Agreed. If Hamas was smart, they would trade the hostages for safe passage out of Gaza (to Egypt? to Qatar?). Since when has Hamas shown any smarts?
Were they smart (and secular) like the PLO in Lebanon in 83 they would have done that Frank. Make a deal and decamp – then to Tunis – now to Qatar.
But it isn’t smart or not-smart. Hamas are motivated by a higher power and paradise. There’s really no negotiating with religious fanatics. There’s only one option to dealing with them if Israel is to survive and it ain’t pretty.
D.A.
NYC
https://democracychronicles.org/so-what-of-gaza-trumps-plan-and-some-context/
Sadly, you are probably correct
If the Democrats were smart, they would trade a ban on male athletes in female high school sports, for blurring out the picture of the male athlete in question. However, this is a moral issue. TWAW is a holy religious mantra.