Thanks to reliable farm club WorldNetDaily, we have another rookie wingnut to scout today: Meet Dr. Nancy Pearcey. Dr. Pearcey “is editor-at-large of The Pearcey Report,” which seems to be a sort of Huffington Post for people who’ve had a tamping rod blown through their left frontal lobe like Phineas Gage. A sample of articles gracing the front page at press time:
Prop 8 Ruling Could Criminalize Christianity, Leaders Warn
FAKE HOMELESS Rake in Thousands
Prop 8 judge called ‘tyrannical activist devoted to satisfying himself’
CAN Black People Think for Themselves?
‘Faggot’ Easy to Defend
So it’s not like they’re trying to push an agenda. Come one, come all; if you’ve got a pierced frontal lobe, whether from an industrial accident, or that lobotomy your parents were talked into when you were a rebellious teen, then you’re welcome at The Pearcey Report. By the way, when I say “Dr. Pearcey,” I’m following the form of address favored by Philadelphia Biblical University, Langhorne, Pennsylvania, in their press release announcing Pearcey’s appointment as “scholar for Worldview Studies at the Center for University Studies.”
Dr. Nancy R. Pearcey, Christian scholar, educator, author and speaker, has been named Scholar for Worldview Studies at the Center for University Studies at Philadelphia Biblical University.
Dr. Pearcey will teach, speak and write on the integration of Christian thought with scholarship and the application of Christian perspectives to the academy and across the culture.
The release wraps up with the good doctor’s academic credentials.
Pearcey earned a Distributed Studies Degree from Iowa State University and Master’s Degree in Biblical Studies from Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis. She then pursued graduate work in the history of philosophy at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto.
But it outran her.
In addition, she holds an Honorary Doctorate in Religious Education from PBU.
So PBU appointed Dr. Pearcey a scholar after appointing her a doctor. Now that’s the kind of vertical integration that would have made Andrew Carnegie blush. Meanwhile, her Wikipedia bio tells us that:
Pearcey is a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute‘s Center for Science and Culture, the center of the intelligent design movement. Pearcey has played a role in a number of controversies surrounding the institute’s campaign to challenge and ultimately unseat the teaching of evolution.
[She was] a contributing editor for the young-earth creationist Bible-Science Newsletter from 1977-1991
…which would suggest that, despite her honorary degree, she’s a moron. But hold on a second! According to Nancy’s much longer bio at The Pearcy Report, she was also:
Heralded as “one of the few female intellectuals in evangelicalism” (Evangelical Outpost), Nancy has ad- dressed staffers on Capitol Hill and at the White House; actors and screenwriters in Hollywood; sci- entists at labs such as Sandia and Los Alamos.
So even though she spent 14 years pushing the young-earth hypothesis, she’s not stupid enough to think the planet is 6000 years old. She thinks it’s more like 6 million years old, but just looks really good for its age.
Anyway, now that we’re acquainted with the Honorary Doctor’s bona fides, let’s see how a female intellectual handles those flesh-dissing queers:
After a chilly reception from the crowd during a two-night stand in Key West, Abbott and Costello stopped doing this version of their classic Vaudeville routine.
The ruling by Judge Vaughn Walker to strike down Proposition 8 raises a host of issues that go far beyond the California case. Especially troubling is Walker’s view of gender. His ruling makes the sweeping assertion that “gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage.”
However, “gender remains a part of this complete breakfast.”
This declaration is being quoted in astonishment for its sheer breathtaking exaggeration. Yet it reveals a pivotal element in the liberal view of human sexuality.
Liberal ethics is based on a fragmented view of the human being that pits biology against choice.
And biology hates choice! It was perfectly happy keeping the four piece bedroom set, but the studio audience kept yelling at biology to “take the curtain!” and then it turned out to be a years supply of Rice-A-Roni.
Its roots go back to the French philosopher Rene Descartes, who proposed that the body is a machine controlled by a completely separate thing called the mind. The ghost in the machine.
That’s why his Syfy show, Rene Descartes: Ghost Hunter! mostly consists of colonoscopy footage.
As philosopher Daniel Dennett explains, “Since Descartes in the 17th century we have had a vision of the self as a sort of immaterial ghost that owns and controls a body the way you own and control your car.”
Thanks to the sub-prime lending crisis, however, your body is worth a lot less than you paid for it, and some ghosts are just choosing to walk away from their mortgage.
In other words, the body is no longer regarded as an integral part of the human person but as sub-personal, functioning strictly on the level of biology and chemistry – almost like a possession that can be used to serve the self’s desires.
That’s the most the elaborate euphemism for masturbation I’ve ever seen.
This is the philosophy that underlies arguments for same-sex “marriage.” The assumption is that our bodies have nothing to do with our identity as persons. And that, therefore, anatomy can be overridden by sheer self-expressive choice.
You see, homosexuals? Your body isn’t gay; it’s just haunted by the ghost of Franklin Pangborn.
The denigration of physical anatomy does not stop with same-sex “marriage.” The cutting edge issue today is transgenderism, a movement that rejects the distinction between male and female itself as a mere social construction – and an oppressive one at that.
According to the New York Times, several universities now offer separate bathrooms, housing and sports teams for transgender students who do not identify themselves as either male or female. Some schools no longer require students to check male or female on their health forms. Instead, they are asked to “describe yourgender identity history.”‘ In other words: Which genders have you been over the course of your lifetime?
This opens many new opportunities for the makers of romantic comedies. Instead of having to engineer patently artificial devices to keep a couple apart (she’s getting married — to another man! He’s just gotten circumcised at age 30 and can’t use his penis for 90 days or he’ll void the warranty!), writers can just keep the characters out of gender sync for the first two acts:
HARRY: And it’s not because I’m lonely, and it’s not because it’s New Year’s Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.
SALLY: Well that’s great, but as of the first of the year, I’m reclassified as neuter.
Gender has become a postmodern concept – fluid, free-floating, completely detached from physical anatomy.
Apparently, gender has become Slimer from Ghost Busters.
“What we have here is what we call a non-repeating phantasm, or a class-5 free roaming gender. Real nasty one too.”
Several states have already passed laws mandating that schools and workplaces accommodate transgenders, and supporters are pushing hard for the same laws at the national level. In 2007, California passed a law requiring schools to permit transgender students to use the restroom or locker room of their preferred gender, regardless of their anatomical sex.
This is shocking, and an outrage! Unless you follow Dr. Pearcey’s link, in which case you’ll see that the law actually just adds gender identity to the state’s non-discrimination law. But hey, if an idiot like Janet Folger could get away with lying about a similar law in Colorado, then surely “a scholar for Worldview Studies at the Center for University Studies,” can pull off a little legislation legerdemain.
The new law redefines sex as socially constructed gender: “Gender means sex and includes a person’s gender identity and genderrelated appearance and behavior whether or not stereotypically associated with the person’s assigned sex at birth.”
As an intellectual and an expert in young-Earth issues, Dr. Pearcey believes that gender is determined by genitals, because they both start with “gen.” Also, she rejects the notion that gender dysphoria is a serious problem deserving of legislative attention, when Congress still hasn’t dealt with the threat of pteranodons plucking us from our yards and carrying us off to their high, rocky aeries.
Note the assumption that your sex is “assigned” to you, as though it were purely arbitrary instead of an anatomical fact.
Assigned sexing is too rigid for me. I prefer festival gender.
The law is being used to impose a secular liberal worldview that dismisses physical anatomy as insignificant, inconsequential and completely irrelevant to gender identity.
As I show in “” this represents a devastatingly disrespectful view of the physical body. It alienates people from their own bodies, treating anatomy as having no intrinsic dignity. No dignity is accorded to the unique capabilities inherent in being male or female.
Yes, but as long as we’re bringing Descartes into the conversation, let’s not forget that in The Description of the Human Body (1647), he wrote that “neither the manroot and its fecund spheres, nor the feminine cleft possess an innate dignity in and of themselves, unless they happen to be wearing spats.”
Ironically, Christians are often dismissed as prudes and Puritans because of their “repressive” sexual morality – and yet the Christian worldview actually affirms a much higher view of the body than the liberal, utilitarian view. It offers the radically positive affirmation that the material world was created by God, that it will ultimately be made whole by God and that God was actually incarnated (made flesh) in a human body.
So stop getting married, homos! It’s causing confusion, and now Jesus doesn’t know what restroom to use.
In the ancient world, these claims were so astonishing that the Gnostics rejected them, and tried to turn Jesus into an avatar who only appeared to have a human body. They could not accept the idea of a Creator who celebrates our material, biological, sexual nature.
I’m predicting the next sentence will be a link to Nancy’s Jesus/Judas slash fiction.
Today’s liberal elites such as Judge Walker may pose as enlightened liberators, but in fact they are secular Gnostics, treating physical anatomy as having no intrinsic dignity or purpose. In an unexpected twist of history, it is once again Christians who are defending a high and holistic view of the human person.
I don’t know, Nance. You guys have had some luck with using “judicial activism” as a rallying cry, but I don’t really see “secular Gnostics” sweeping the nation. Maybe you should just stick to defending “faggot.”
“…As an intellectual and an expert in young-Earth issues, Dr. Pearcey believes that gender is determined by genitals, because they both start with ‘gen.’….”
Holy crap, this changes everything. In a general way, you could claim that any generous gentleman from Genoa is a genuine genetic genius, generating a whole new genre of gentility that may require the summoning of gendarmes and a fast train to Geneva. For a convention. A Geneva convention.
There is entirely too much emphasis on genitalia. Can we not take a moment now and then to sip iced tea and play bridge, with our zippers zipped and our dresses arranged prettily over our laps and covering our knees? Like we used to do in the olden days before there were “homosexual” people, or people who simply stubbornly refuse to look at what’s betwixt their nether appendages to get a darn clue?
Also, can someone please tell Mr. and Mrs. Duggar that God doesn’t really want them to either stop making babies or use birth control, that He just wants them to stop with the fucking already?
PS: Scott, has anyone mentioned lately that you are a genius OMG no no no! that you are a really really smart person?
Left by Larkspur on August 17th, 2010