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Archive for the ‘Religion’

Dershowitz on the Darwin Darrow Defended

November 09, 2011 By: John Kindley Category: Alan Dershowitz, Clarence Darrow, Evolution, Jeff Gamso, Mike Cernovich, Religion

Check out this eye-opening essay by Alan Dershowitz (H/T Evolution News & Views) at the website of a new movie about the Scopes Monkey Trial, “alleged,” starring Brian Dennehy as Clarence Darrow and Fred Thompson as William Jennings Bryan. As Dershowitz shows, the textbook from which John Scopes was accused of teaching, Hunter’s Civic Biology, was replete with racism and eugenic advocacy.

On a related note, Jeff Gamso credits Mike at Crime & Federalism with having the best tag line in the whole blogosphere:

Because everything I was ever told was a lie.

Honor Where Honor Is Due

November 04, 2011 By: John Kindley Category: Honor, Jeff Gamso, Judges, Religion, Vincent Bugliosi

Probably the craziest thing I do on this blog, and the thing most likely to get me disbarred, is openly criticize judges. A couple friends and family members have wondered at some of the things I’ve written, and wondered if I wasn’t scared that a judge might read them. Despite the modest readership of this blog indicated by sitemeter, a couple local attorneys have randomly mentioned to me that they read the blog, and complimented me on it. I have to assume it’s likely that others in the local legal community, including possibly some judges I appear before, have read it, and aren’t amused. This realization no doubt contributes to the generalized sense of estrangement and alienation I noted in my previous post.

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When does a lawyer who represents himself not have a fool for a client?

October 15, 2011 By: John Kindley Category: Admission & Discipline of Attorneys, Bryan Brown, Religion

When the underlying issue is his own sanity, and when he himself is Exhibit A in support thereof.

The denial of Bryan Brown’s application for admission to the Indiana Bar was nothing but tyranny, and leads me to assume that I myself am practicing law on borrowed time. I’ve met Bryan, and he’s far fitter than I to practice law.

Please pray for Bryan as he argues his case to the Seventh Circuit next Thursday at 11:30 a.m. EST.

“The fanatical atheists . . . are creatures who – in their grudge against traditional religion as the ‘opium of the masses’ – cannot hear the music of the spheres.” – Albert Einstein

October 10, 2011 By: John Kindley Category: Religion

Marc Randazza, in his inimitable style, says that “[i]f you believe in a magic space zombie Jew, you’re not rational enough to be president,” but opines that Albert Einstein would have been qualified to run things. So what did Einstein believe? In an interview shortly after his 50th birthday, Einstein answered:

To what extent are you influenced by Christianity? “As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene.”

You accept the historical existence of Jesus? “Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.”

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Giving the devil his due

October 06, 2011 By: John Kindley Category: Clarence Darrow, Determinism, Henry George, Religion

I’ve been reading Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned (2011), by John A. Farrell. Here’s a couple excerpts from the first few chapters which particularly spoke to me.

From Chapter 2 (“Chicago”):

George Schilling was a prominent trade unionist when he encountered Darrow at a gathering of freethinkers. The other speakers had gone too far in mocking the ministry of Jesus Christ, and Darrow “jumped in, and with a ten-minute speech defended the carpenter’s son of Judea with such a sympathetic, persuasive voice that I fell in love with him,” Schilling recalled. “We became fast friends.”

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Fundamentalists are not “True Believers”

September 01, 2011 By: John Kindley Category: Religion

According to the last verse of the last Gospel:

And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.

The Good Book

August 31, 2011 By: John Kindley Category: Norm Pattis, Religion

Norm Pattis has a reflective post up today that reveals a lot about his personal story, and the place of the Bible in that story, that I didn’t know before. Norm’s post concludes:

Michelle Bachmann is a true believer. For a time, I wanted to be just like her. But I lost my faith. It broke my heart, and this heartbreak makes me wary of those who wave their faith as a rallying banner. If God is there, He most certainly is silent. The Bible doesn’t speak; we read it, and find in it those truths that serve our interests. That’s a long way from grace abounding.

For my part, I mark reading the following passage in The Brothers Karamazov, while stationed at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard during my first year in the Navy, as the “first time in my life I consciously received the seed of God’s word in my heart”:

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And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God.

August 17, 2011 By: John Kindley Category: John Regan, Religion, Tony Serra

Scott Greenfield, in the course of trying to kick the ass of John Regan (aka Strike Lawyer, fka Atticus), opines:

Nuthouses are full of people who believe they are saviors, if only they can nail themselves to a cross. . . .

None is the gravest injustice ever, except perhaps the Holocaust.

In the same post Greenfield references an exchange he had in 2009 with Regan, then commenting under the handle “John R.,” on Greenfield’s blog. Coincidentally, back in 2009 I wrote a post here describing an earlier exchange between Greenfield and the same “John R.” on Greenfield’s blog.

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“Thou art the I in Me”

August 07, 2011 By: John Kindley Category: Ioz, Religion

I got in a religious debate of sorts in the comment thread on this post by IOZ, whose commentariat is comprised of commenters who, like IOZ himself, are in the main extremely clever and educated atheistic anarchists. There is an historic and understandable connection between anarchism and atheism (despite the fact that the founder of Stoicism, Zeno of Citium, who taught that the deity is an immortal and perfect living being and the providential “father of all,” is also regarded as the father of anarchism). Anarchism by definition means without rulers, and so would seem naturally inclined to reject the existence of a God whom we should obey and acknowledge as our Lord.

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True Religion, in a Nutshell

August 03, 2011 By: John Kindley Category: Religion

What makes a Christian a Christian? Following the commandments of Jesus Christ. And what, according to Jesus Christ himself, is the greatest commandment, on which all of the law and prophets are based? To love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul; and your neighbor as your self. And what element of this greatest of commandments is its practical starting point? The denial and suppression of the overweening Self, of everything in us which is not God.

Observe that this greatest of commandments demands of us nothing more than Justice founded in Truth. Observe also the Liberty of a soul which through Truth has overcome the fear / wrath / despair which necessarily sprouts from Self-regard and Self-concern. It may be that we doubt the very existence of God, but only through living in accordance with the Truth about our selves may we hope to learn the Truth about God.

Observe, finally, that we need not believe anything about Jesus Christ to see the Truth in and obey this greatest of commandments.

“How’d you get your doctorate without reading Eckhart?”

August 03, 2011 By: John Kindley Category: Religion

It appears that what Tim Robbins’ Guardian Angel said Eckhart said wasn’t an exact quotation, but a fair paraphrase of Eckhart’s teachings, adapted to explain the devils Robbins encounters in the horror movie (Jacob’s Ladder) from which this clip is taken. Here’s a sermon Eckhart actually did preach.

Not in any historic Faith

August 02, 2011 By: John Kindley Category: Religion

[Love-2.1-80] Again, here you see, where and how you are to seek your Salvation, not in taking up your traveling Staff, or crossing the Seas to find out a new Luther or a new Calvin, to clothe yourself with their Opinions. No. The Oracle is at Home, that always and only speaks the Truth to you, because nothing is your Truth, but that Good and that Evil which is yours within you. For Salvation or Damnation is no outward Thing, that is brought into you from without, but is only That which springs up within you, as the Birth and State of your own Life. What you are in yourself, what is doing in yourself, is all that can be either your Salvation or Damnation.

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“Avenge not yourselves, for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I Will repay, saith the Lord.”

August 02, 2011 By: John Kindley Category: Albert Jay Nock, Aldous Huxley, Religion

I don’t mean to get all religious on all y’all. My old blog explicitly tied religion of a certain stripe to libertarianism, and this new blog was meant to drop the religious emphasis of that blog in favor of a focus on “the philosophy and practice of law and liberty.” But I still regard “religion,” properly understood, as inextricably bound up with the quest for liberty, in the soul and in society.

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Hell and Heaven

August 02, 2011 By: John Kindley Category: Religion

From The Spirit of Love, by William Law:

[Love-2.1-45] The Scripture saith, “We are not sufficient of ourselves to think a good Thought.” If so, then we cannot be chargeable with not thinking, and willing that which is good, but upon this Supposition, that there is always a supernatural Power within us, ready and able to help us to the Good which we cannot have from ourselves.

[Love-2.1-46] The Difference then of a good and a bad Man does not lie in this, that the one wills that which is good, and the other does not, but solely in this, that the one concurs with the living inspiring Spirit of God within him and the other resists it, and is and can be only chargeable with Evil, because he resists it.

[Love-2.1-47] Therefore whether you consider that which is good or bad in a Man, they equally prove the perpetual Indwelling and Operation of the Spirit of God within us, since we can only be bad by resisting, as we are good by yielding to the Spirit of God; both which equally suppose a perpetual Operation of the Spirit of God within us.

Our current neglect of Law

July 17, 2011 By: John Kindley Category: Albert Jay Nock, Aldous Huxley, David Gross, Henry David Thoreau, Religion, Tony Serra

To me, the fundamental truths of anarchism have become blindingly self-evident: The politicians and lawyers who make, interpret and enforce “the laws” are, on average and as a class, less honorable, wise and just than are people in general. The State is designed, not to protect and serve, but to steal from the poor and give to the rich. The State has no moral authority. There is no law other than the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God. The State is in its essence an usurper and an imposter. We are morally obligated to obey only those of its “laws” which happen to plagiarize the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God, and are morally obligated to disobey those of its “laws” which violate the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.

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“Goshen College has never been anti-American.”

June 12, 2011 By: John Kindley Category: David Gross, Religion, Self-Defense

“You could argue that the degree to which Mennonites today, perhaps more often today, critique U.S. government policy than, say, may have been the case in 1910, a hundred years ago, is evidence that Mennonites feel more of an interest in and a responsibility for their country.”

So says Steve Nolt, professor of Mennonite history at Goshen College, as quoted in an Elkhart Truth article about the college’s reversal last week of its decision last March to begin playing an instrumental version of the Star Spangled Banner before sporting events. Before that, the college didn’t play the national anthem at all, and it’s now resuming that policy. (However, although the college has now stopped playing the “Star Spangled Banner,” it apparently still flies the Star Spangled Banner.)

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My Opinion of the Indiana Supreme Court’s Opinion of Tyrus Coleman

May 20, 2011 By: John Kindley Category: Castle Doctrine, Freedom of Speech, Judges, Religion, Tyrus Coleman

I borrow the words of a commenter on a local story about the Indiana Supreme Court’s reversal of the Indiana Court of Appeals’ reversal of an innocent man’s attempted murder conviction and 45 year sentence, who writes:

First and foremost I know none of the individuals nor any of their family members involved in this. Having only followed coverage of this trial by this media. This is one of those traits of our court system that continues to perplex me. The Indiana Court of Appeals after careful consideration appeared to side with argument presented on behalf of Tyrus Coleman. The Indiana Supreme Court upon review of essentially the same evidence in turn rendered decision in total opposition to the lower court findings. Keep in mind, aside from the local trials these findings were not rendered by empaneled novice jurors. We as society are to then believe justice has truly been served in spite of the contradictions presented by our own court system.

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“Doubting” Thomases: the Apostle, Jefferson, and me

March 20, 2011 By: John Kindley Category: Admission & Discipline of Attorneys, Bryan Brown, Leo Tolstoy, Norm Pattis, Religion, Thomas Jefferson

Recently I described myself as a “Christian Deist” in a comment on this interesting blog, written by a lawyer who was denied admission to the Indiana bar by the Indiana Supreme Court apparently because of a legal philosophy similar to my own and his purported resistance to and criticism of the psychological evaluation of his sanity required by the Board of Bar Examiners because of the fact that years before his application for admission he had been arrested several times for protesting at abortion clinics and had refused to pay an unconstitutional civil judgment for attorney fees against him related to such protests. (Norm Pattis writes today regarding the disbarment of F. Lee Bailey and the fact that judges rather than juries decide such questions: “Deciding whether an aggressive, and often controversial, lawyer should remain at the bar is not a decision I would trust to a judge, ever.”)

What I mean by describing myself as a Christian Deist is illuminated by the following two articles, my discovery of which online was prompted by my discovery in a bookstore yesterday of Tolstoy’s The Gospel in Brief:

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Summa

January 18, 2011 By: John Kindley Category: Anarchists, Henry George, Jeff Gamso, Martin Luther King Jr., Religion

In his post about the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., titled Because We’re All In It Together, Jeff Gamso quotes an excerpt from John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, in which Tom Joad is talking with his mother:

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Jesus Christ Superlawyer

December 25, 2010 By: John Kindley Category: Religion

The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

“No one, sir,” she said.

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

-John 8:3-11, via Mark Bennett.

One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

-Matthew 22:35-40.

And when the Pharisees had demanded of Him when the Kingdom of God should come, He answered them and said, “The Kingdom of God cometh not with outward show.

Neither shall they say, `Lo, it is here!’ or `Lo, it is there!’ For behold, the Kingdom of God is within you.”

-Luke 17:20-21.

IMHO, Jesus is evidently not only a Superlawyer but an Anarch.

Thank you Jesus! Happy Birthday!

  • "[T]here is just nothing wrong with telling the American people the truth." - Allen v. United States

  • Lysander Spooner

    Henry George

    Harriet Tubman

    Sitting Bull

    Angelus Silesius

    Smedley Butler

    Rose Wilder Lane

    Albert Jay Nock

    Dora Marsden

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    Henry David Thoreau

    John Brown

    Karl Hess

    Levi Coffin

    Max Stirner

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