Last week the New York Times shared Diana Serafin’s justification for banning a mosque in Tennessee:

As a mother and a grandmother, I worry. I learned that in 20 years with the rate of the birth population, we will be overtaken by Islam, and their goal is to get people in Congress and the Supreme Court to see that Shariah is implemented. My children and grandchildren will have to live under that.

The newspaper didn’t share that according to two studies in 2008 (the American Religious Identification Survey and the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey), Muslims make up only 0.6% of the adult population of the United States. That’s approximately 1.8 million out of about 300 million Americans.

In order to get control of Congress and the Supreme Court, the United States will indeed have to “be overtaken by Islam,” with generously a majority and practically speaking a 60% supermajority in order to overturn the U.S. Constitution and implement Sharia law as Diana Serafin and her fellow anti-Islam protesters imagine. Diana Serafin says this will happen within the next 20 years, by 2030.

Is this at all a realistic expectation?

Right now, the annual population growth rate of the United States is 0.9%. The population growth rate of the world overall is 1.2%, and the population growth rate of the Islamic nation of Saudia Arabia is 2.0%. We could assume that American Muslims are like other Americans in their population growth rate, or like people in the world overall, or like their fellow Muslims in Saudia Arabia. But as the graph below shows, no matter which of these assumptions we make we end up with an American Muslim population in 2030 that is still a very, very small part of the overall American population:

Assuming that the U.S. population continues to grow along with the U.S. population of people who are Muslim, we shouldn’t see any earth-shattering change in the proportion of Muslims in the American population by 2030.

Actually, strike that: even if the U.S. population overall shrinks (which it has never done before) by the same amount that the American Muslim population grows, then the percentage of American Muslims will still be very, very small: in no numbers even remotely capable of taking over the Congress and the Supreme Court.

Even if you fall into some 1930s Germany-style propaganda mode regarding American Muslims and imagine them to be somehow reproducing like rats (or cockroaches, or whatever other offensive vermin reference you prefer) in basements and sewers across the nation, even if the American Muslim population grows by 20% each and every year while the population of the rest of the United States stays the same, even in that ridiculous scenario Muslims in America will only make up 25% of the U.S. population by 2030.

Conclusion: Diana Serafin and others who spout off about birth rates leading to an Islamic takeover of America are simply out of touch with reality.

In a country that respects fact, they’d have to come up with a new justification for banning religion. Is this a country that respects fact?

There’s been another explosion on another deepwater oil drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. We’ll learn more in the hours to come: it initially looks as though this rig wasn’t drilling at the time, making damage less extensive. Hopefully there is no loss of life.

This latest incident makes even less credible the insistence by former U.S. Senator and current oil industry lobbyist John Breaux that deep water drilling for oil is secure and safe:

Chris Matthews: So you‘re here to represent the oil companies, gentlemen. Now you have your chance. I want to know one thing. How can anybody defend BP or any company like it that gets all these red flags? And I‘m using “The Wall Street Journal,” not “The Daily Worker,” here as my source. Red flags—the cement wasn‘t ready. The drilling mud should have been put in, not seawater to counterforce the oil coming up and the gas coming up, red flag after red flag after red flag. They preceded ahead apparently to save money. Now we have 11 men dead and we have a catastrophe because of shortcuts to make money. How can the oil industry say now, Trust us, Senator Breaux?

Former Senator and current lobbyist John Breaux: Well… if you look back over the last 60 years, Chris, production in the Gulf of Mexico, you‘ve had over 40,000 wells drilled successfully with a minimum amount of damage to the environment, producing energy for this country. One mistake does not an industry make, and that‘s this unfortunate…

Chris Matthews: But it‘s destroyed the gulf, hasn‘t it?

John Breaux: Well, it hasn‘t yet. There‘s been a grave damage to it, and it can never happen again. But if you look at the past 60 years, we‘ve been producing down there successfully and safely.

In the month of August 2008, the following were our five best-selling bumper stickers:

1. Librarians Against Palin bumper sticker
2. People With One House Against McCain bumper sticker
3. Republicans for Barack Obama bumper sticker
4. I Like Obama, But is America Ready for a President with Brains? bumper sticker
5. Hope, Not Fear: Obama 2008 bumper sticker

At the time, attention was riveted on the presidential contest between John McCain, Sarah Palin, Barack Obama and… that other guy, some Joe fella. But a year later, in the month of August 2009, attention had largely returned to policy topics; the following were our five best-selling bumper stickers:

1. I Support Healthcare Reform bumper sticker
2. O: The President bumper sticker
3. America for Health Care Reform bumper sticker
4. Vote No on 1 gay marriage bumper sticker
5. GOP Health Care Plan? Don’t Get Sick! bumper sticker

Fast forward to the month just passed, August 2010. In the list of our five top-selling bumper stickers this month, I see evidence of a turn away from policy thinking and a return to campaign thinking:

1. Barack Obama campaign bumper sticker
2. Just Say No to the Party of No anti-Republican bumper sticker
3. I Love America Too Much to Vote Republican bumper sticker
4. Thank Me, I Voted for Obama bumper sticker
5. Republicans Cut Veterans Benefits bumper sticker

Notably, there aren’t any specifically pro-Democrat bumper stickers in this latest set; sentiment is more anti-Republican. Also of notice is that none of the congressional campaign bumper stickers we offer make the top five either. Attention is already leaping local midterm 2010 elections to the national presidential re-election bid of Barack Obama in 2012.

People who say that hydraulic fracturing is safe and brings no risk of pollution need to pay attention to what’s happening outside of the town of Killdeer, North Dakota. A fracking operation there has caused an oil spill, with the drill site spewing a combination of oil, natural gas, and fracking chemicals. There are concerns that the pollution could infiltrate Killdeer’s supply of drinking water.

A similar fracking accident took place near Killdeer two years ago. That incident led to stricter regulations that were supposed to prevent another spill. Apparently, the regulations still weren’t enough to make hydraulic fracturing safe.

Elsewhere in the wonderful world of fossil fuels, India’s most visited beaches are now covered with tar balls as the result of an oil spill near Goa. The director of Tourism in the area says that there’s no reason for panic… so long as you can handle a beach made of asphalt, everything out to be just fine, right?

“Basing policy on emotion and hysteria and feelings is stupid and dishonest,” says Republican congressional candidate Earl Sholley, but Sholley himself has demonstrated that he is himself quite eager to exploit emotional panic in order to promote dishonest policies. In order to gain support for his congressional campaign, Sholley has been whipping up right wing Christian anger against those Americans who do not share their religious beliefs.

Yesterday, F.G. Fitzer noted the claim by Massachusetts 3rd district congressional candidate Michael Stopa that Barack Obama is an atheist. Right next door in the 4th congressional district, congressional candidate Sholley has joined in the conspiracy theory, declaring of Obama, “I believe in his heart of hearts he is a true Marxist, and Marxists are atheists.”

Of course, the U.S. Constitution declares such matters to be irrelevant: “No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” Sholley and Stopa seem all too happy to impose such a test, however, and seek to establish their own Christian status in the minds of voters by questioning Barack Obama’s Christianity. Sholley openly expresses his disdain for the Constitution’s system of democratically-established liberty. “The just laws of man derive from the natural laws of God. Our rights come from God. They do not come from the Government,” he says.

With their tactic of self-promotion through religious division, these politicians are inciting public anger against non-Christians, suggesting that it’s dangerous for non-Christians to be allowed equal participation in U.S. government. It’s not just atheists that are on the receiving end of this attack, of course. This summer has seen a surge in attacks, both verbal and physical, against American Muslims. Many are calling for Muslims to be exempted from the constitutional freedom of religion.

Earl Sholley has hopped on the anti-Muslim bandwagon. He writes of the Cordoba House Muslim community center in New York City, “This mosque, if built, will represent a symbolic victory for Islam over the West. We need to be realistic. Islam and Sharia Law are incompatible with America and our democratic institutions. They’re incompatible with our constitutional and republican form of government as well. This is another battle that we are engaged in, and a battle that the American people must win.”

Sholley’s campaign of scapegoating against Muslims and atheists is a reminder that when the freedom of religion of one cultural minority is threatened, the religious freedom of all minorities is made vulnerable. Atheists and Muslims have quite different beliefs about religion, but politically, they’re in the same boat.

“Them who pay the piper call the tune.”

Who does Representative Patrick Tiberi represent? Well, who’s paying the piper? The most frequent source of contributions to Pat Tiberi in the 2009-2010 election cycle is an energy corporation called American Electric Power. 48 contributions by the AEP political action committee and AEP employees have been registered with the Federal Election Commission through June 30, 2010.

If you live in Ohio, you may be asking whether these 48 contributions mean something significant or are just a matter of chance. After all, the most noticeable building in downtown Columbus (just south of Tiberi’s district) is the American Electric Power Building, which at night changes the color of its lighting from red to green to blue. Apart from the AEP PAC contributions, couldn’t these just be the random contributions of AEP employees? Is this really a coordinated effort?

Look at the following three graphs and answer that question for yourself.

The contributions of AEP and AEP employees are heavily clustered by date.

Only two AEP contributors to Pat Tiberi are regular employees. The remainder are AEP executives or the AEP Political Action Committee.

The amount of the checks written to the Tiberi campaign is abnormally uniform. The chance of so many contributors just randomly writing checks for $150 is remote, suggesting some sort of coordination.

American Electric Power is playing the piper. And Pat Tiberi is playing the tune:

In fact, within that budget is something called “cap-and-trade.” It is an energy issue to deal with the issue of global warming. But in Ohio, what it will do is devastate our already ailing economy. It will cause people to leave and businesses to leave. In fact, within my district, there is a municipal power company…

Michael Stopa, who is campaigning to replace James McGovern as the U.S. Representative for the 3rd congressional district in Massachusetts, refuses to throw in his lot with those Republicans who claim that Barack Obama is a Muslim.

Instead, Stopa asserts that President Obama is an atheist. “I actually don’t think Barack Obama is a Muslim. I think he is a nonbeliever,” Stopa told a reporter. What evidence did Stopa have for Obama’s atheism? Obama and his family have been attending Christian worship services for years, after all.

Stopa admitted that he didn’t have any evidence for Obama’s atheism. He just believed in it, because of clues such as Obama’s stands on political issues. Stopa explained, “I have no specific evidence, but I think he’s sympathetic to anybody who is opposed to America and American values.”

Being sympathetic to people who are opposed to “American values” is a sign that someone is an atheist? Does that make Osama Bin Laden an atheist, Mr. Stopa?

I have no specific evidence, but I believe that Mike Stopa has been sniffing glue.

Postscript: For just a second, let’s indulge in Stopa’s fantasy in which Barack Obama, who has expanded George W. Bush’s office of faith-based initiatives, is an atheist. So what if Obama was an atheist? The Constitution of the United States of America makes it clear that Obama’s religious identity is supposed to have nothing at all to do with his standing as President. It’s in Article VI, as plain as day: “No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

Why is Michael Stopa ignorant of the Constitution? It’s the foundational document of “American values”, after all, and if Stopa is sympathetic to those who oppose Article VI’s ban on religious tests for public office, why that would make him…

On the subject of jobs, congressman Patrick Tiberi likes to talk tough, declaring over and over again what Congress must do to bring jobs back to America:

Jobs, not health care, should be the focus of Congress and the president, U.S. Rep. Pat Tiberi (R-Genoa Township) told the Westerville Area Chamber of Commerce Tuesday.

“That’s where the focus should be — jobs and the economy,” Tiberi said.

As I’ve been saying our focus in Congress should be on creating an environment friendly to job-creation.

Yes, Pat Tiberi can shove out news releases with the best of them. But the sticky bit is that Tiberi belongs to the very body he says must move into action. Pat Tiberi could help remedy what he says is Congress’ woeful inaction on American jobs by putting down the mike and picking up a pen. Instead of simply complaining that the Congress isn’t doing what he’d like, Pat Tiberi could do what members of Congress usually do when they see a problem: introduce a bill to resolve that problem.

In the 111th Congress of 2009-2010, has Pat Tiberi introduced any bill with any focus whatsoever on jobs? No.
Has Pat Tiberi introduced any amendment or even symbolic resolution with any focus whatsoever on jobs? No.
Has Tiberi even introduced any bill or amendment or resolution that could create (as he put it) “an environment friendly to job creation”? No.
Heck, has Tiberi even created any budget earmarks that would direct money to his district to create jobs there? No.

Pat Tiberi has introduced seven bills to the U.S. Congress since he was last elected. Five of these are entirely symbolic bills that don’t accomplish anything, but only make declarations (like Tiberi’s declaration that “jobs should be the focus of Congress”): to celebrate an Antarctic treaty forged 50 years ago, to congratulate a local soccer team for winning a game, to rename a post office, to name September “Brain Aneurysm Month”, and to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the use of telescopes for astronomy. Two bills introduced by Pat Tiberi since he last got elected accomplish something: one bill would give one particular family an immigration exemption, and another would review unidentified corpses to determine their veteran status.

That’s all Patrick Tiberi has to his name in the 111th Congress. For a time when so many residents in his district are losing their jobs, Pat Tiberi is writing bills to commemorate telescope usage, rename post offices and recall the glory days of South Pole diplomacy. Although he chastises everybody else in Congress for failing to do anything about American jobs, he doesn’t lift a finger to solve the problem himself.

In this year’s race for Ohio’s 12th District seat in Congress, Democratic challenger Paula Brooks has received more in campaign contributions from the people of Ohio ($723,795) than Republican incumbent Patrick Tiberi has ($712,701).

In total campaign dollars, however, Pat Tiberi holds an immense advantage, with a warchest of $2,118,311. Paula Brooks has only $994,336 at her disposal. This is a decisive imbalance that could decide the race.

The difference: Pat Tiberi has collected $1,198,022 in PAC contributions from corporate entities. Paula Brooks has collected just $158,074 in PAC contributions. If money is a determinative factor in this race, Pat Tiberi will likely win due to his advantage in attracting the investment of corporate interests.

In Ohio, a Tea Party group, the Freedom Institute of Erie County has been sending out an ideological purity test to candidates for political office. The Freedom Institute is far from the sort of independence that Tea Party activists have claimed in the past. In order to become members of the group, people are required to take an oath developed by top level Republican operatives Oliver North and James Dobson. The Freedom Institute’s ideology certainly isn’t developed by grassroots activists.

The particular items on the institute’s ideological purity test seem designed more to cater to the Republican Party’s powerful constituencies than to promote a consistent belief system. The group’s inconsistencies are in especially high relief when it comes to the issue of voting.

When it comes to voting by members of labor unions, the Freedom Institute demands that candidates oppose a card check, claiming that such checks are an unfair method of intimidation. The ideological test challenges candidates to “oppose card check for voting to implement a Union as this could give unions an unfair intimidation tactic”.

When it comes to voting in public elections, however, the Freedom Institute performs an about face, demanding that card check take place before people are allowed to vote. The Institute’s candidate test demands that, “a photo ID should always be required to vote”. Fears of voter intimidation suddenly evaporate in this case.

So, does this “Tea Party” group support card check for voting or not? It depends upon which way the winds of convenience are blowing.

It was less than six months ago that the bodies of dead coal miners were pulled from Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine. Back then, coal executives promised they’d work to ensure greater coal mine safety.

Now, those executives are orchestrating a September demonstration against regulation of coal mines. Their group, “Faces Of Coal”, doesn’t come from the grassroots. It’s organized by the well-paid financial elites in the coal industry’s corporate offices, by people who keep their collars pearly white while profiting from the labors of the people digging coal underground and blasting the tops off the Appalachian Mountains above ground.

The supposed ordinary people that Faces Of Coal claims as its supporters are, in fact, models for stock photo companies.

Glenn Beck wants to be taken seriously as an activist, so he used his immense financial fortune to manufacture a rally in Washington D.C. at which he babbled incoherently for hours about “honor”. Whoop-tee-doo.

The photograph below shows what an activist with guts looks like. For the last 15 hours, a set of Greenpeace protesters have been hanging about 50 feet above the frigid Arctic seas underneath the Stena Don offshore drilling rig in the waters between Greenland and Canada.

I respect the courage of these protesters, but the most effective activism isn’t about showboating. It’s about making the change you really want to see in the world.

The purpose of the Stena Don protest is to prevent the rig from finding oil until the ice of the chilly waters starts to make it impossible for the rig to continue its work. But then, in order to make their way the long way up to Baffin Bay, the Greenpeace protesters burned a large amount of oil. They paid oil companies to drill that oil so that they could protest against drilling oil. The protest provides courageous images, but it doesn’t make much sense.

If you want to make a real difference, instead of just adopting a heroic pose, here’s what you can do tomorrow: Take the train to work instead of driving. Walk or bike to work, if you can. Consolidate the trips in which you need to use a car. Carpool. Stay home instead of going out to be entertained.

Sure, you can’t do it every day, but if enough Americans take these actions just a little bit more than they already do, they will shut down an offshore drilling rig. New offshore drilling operations can only continue for as long as they’re profitable, and they won’t be profitable if there’s a glut of oil.

We can stop the expansion of offshore drilling if we have the modest courage to make small sacrifices in our lives. Do you care that much?

I’ve been told by a believer in the divinity of Jesus Christ that Lee Strobel’s book The Case for Christ was so compelling that it converted her to Christianity by its sheer rational force. I’ve committed to read the book cover-to-cover and evaluate it according to its rationality — that is, according to the quality of its logic and the quality of its evidence.

So far, I’ve noticed that while Strobel disdains hypothetical appeals to academic authority when they are used to bolster the case for atheism, at the same time he himself deploys an appeal to academic authority to bolster his claim that Jesus Christ is the divine son of God. This conflict plays out in the very first chapter over two adjacent pages.

Let’s look further. Also in his introduction, Lee Strobel lays out the standard by which he’d like you to evaluate his book: pretend you’re a juror and his book is a trial:

In this quest for truth, I’ve used my experience as a legal affairs journalist to look at numerous categories of proof — eyewitness evidence, documentary evidence, corroborating evidence, rebuttal evidence, scientific evidence, psychological evidence, and, yes, even fingerprint evidence (that sounds intriguing, doesn’t it?).

These are the same classifications that you’d encounter in a courtroom. And maybe taking a legal perspective is the best way to envision this process — with you in the role of a juror.

If you were selected for a jury in a real trial, you would be asked to affirm up front that you haven’t formed any preconceptions about the case. You would be required to vow that you would be open-minded and fair, drawing your conclusions based on the weight of the facts and not on your whims or prejudices. You would be urged to thoughtfully consider the credibility of the witnesses, carefully sift the testimony, and rigorously subject the evidence to your common sense and logic. I’m asking you to do the same thing while reading this book.

Ultimately it’s the responsibility of jurors to reach a verdict. That doesn’t mean they have one-hundred-percent certainty, because we can’t have absolute proof about anything in life. In a trial, jurors are asked to weigh the evidence and come to the best possible conclusion. In other words, harkening back to the James Dixon case, which scenario fits the facts most snugly?

That’s your task.

Why quest for truth by trial? Why not some other way?

Strobel’s first problem in this passage is that he simply asserts, rather than demonstrating, that the “quest for truth” is best served by a trial. Why should we establish truth by jury trial?

That’s not a rhetorical question. I’d actually like you to tell me in the comments section why you think truth is best established by jury trial. I don’t believe it is the best method for establishing truth. Here’s why:

1. As Strobel notes, the only people qualified to be jurors in trials are those who swear they have no preconceptions about the case. If we really are to use the model of a trial for establishing truth in Strobel’s book, then that would make the vast majority of Americans ineligible to read it, since the vast majority of Americans will have previously encountered the story of Jesus Christ and formed some sort of judgment regarding the story’s veracity. They’d be rejected as jurors in the trial, and if we take Strobel seriously they shouldn’t be picking up his book.

2. Jury trials consider whether people should be punished for socially-defined crimes of which they’re accused. But the story of Jesus Christ is not being accused of murder or any other crime, and it is not proposed that the story of Jesus Christ be imprisoned or executed. Lee Strobel is wondering whether the story of Jesus Christ’s divinity is true or not. It’s a completely sort of question than the sort of question assessed in jury trials.

3. Trials aren’t about the “quest for truth,” because trials are not about truth. In regard to the accused, trials are about justice, a process for deciding what to do with people who may or may not have done wrong. The process of justice openly accepts that its outcome will often result in punishment of those who in truth have done no wrong, and will often result in a lack of punishment for those who in truth have done wrong. Worse, trials are competitions in which the two legal teams are ethically required to be uninterested in establishing truth. Their job is to be biased, to tell part and only part of a story, which ever part will make jurors feel that the accused is guilty (or not guilty, as the case may be). Especially when a judge fails to set high-quality ground rules, whichever side tells the better story wins. In laying out his “quest for truth” as a jury trial, Strobel fits himself into the role of a partial and biased storyteller.

The problem isn’t only that the “quest for truth” regarding the story of a divine Jesus Christ doesn’t fit the structure of a jury trial. The problem is also that Lee Strobel completely fails to consider other possible ways of “questing for truth,” which include:

Comparative analysis
Literary analysis
Philosophical examination
Scientific experimentation
Statistical analysis

Each suggests a different method of inquiry and each suggests a different criterion for accepting or rejecting a claim. Strobel doesn’t justify the use of a trial method, and he doesn’t reject the use of other methods. That’s not satisfactory to me.

Is Strobel the judge, the prosecution or the defense?

In a jury trial, there are two sides: the prosecution and the defense. Then there’s the judge, who presides over the courtroom, and the jury, who collectively issue a verdict.

If Lee Strobel is presenting The Case for Christ, we know he isn’t the jury: he’s told us that we, the readers, are the jury. Well, then, is Strobel adopting the role of a judge, the prosecution or the defense?

Strobel can’t be a judge, at least not a good judge. In jury trials, a judge who has an interest in the outcome of the case must recuse himself or herself. Lee Strobel has an interest in the outcome of the case. He’s a pastor, preacher and Christian apologetic author. Strobel’s on Team Divine Jesus. Strobel must recuse himself. Strobel cannot be the judge.

Strobel must be playing the role of the prosecution or the defense, but which one? The job of the prosecution is to tell a story of guilt; the job of the prosecution is to tell a not guilty story. Again we encounter the problem that the jury trial template doesn’t fit: you can’t say that the story of a divine Jesus is either guilty or not guilty, because a story isn’t a possibly criminal or even loosely offending entity. Strobel’s self-appointed task doesn’t match the task of either side of a jury trial in this regard.

We could consider another difference between the prosecution and the defense: standard for victory. The prosecution must demonstrate its case beyond a reasonable doubt. The defense, on the other hand, doesn’t have to demonstrate any case at all. To be victorious, the defense must only demonstrate that there is considerable doubt in the prosecution’s case. Strobel’s trying to prove something, not to make us doubt something. In this regard, Strobel is acting the part of the prosecutor.

If Strobel’s a prosecutor, he’s a slick and somewhat shady one judging by his in-trial conduct. Before he calls any witnesses, Strobel’s trying to change the standard of a jury trial to his side’s benefit. Let’s revisit his introduction:

Ultimately it’s the responsibility of jurors to reach a verdict. That doesn’t mean they have one-hundred-percent certainty, because we can’t have absolute proof about anything in life. In a trial, jurors are asked to weigh the evidence and come to the best possible conclusion. In other words, harkening back to the James Dixon case, which scenario fits the facts most snugly?

That’s your task.

But it’s not a jury’s task to “come to the best possible conclusion” or to judge “which scenario fits the facts most snugly.” It’s a jury’s task to determine whether the prosecution’s case has been established beyond a reasonable doubt. If any reasonable doubt in the prosecution’s case has been established, then the decision must go to the defense.

If this is a trial, declare a mistrial: the judge is asleep and the defense rests offstage

The way that slick and shady prosecutors are countered in court is by the objection and countervailing argument of the defense team and the presiding presence of a judge. Where’s the judge? Hypothetically, this role could be carried out by an editor or publisher, but the editor and publisher of The Case for Christ is Zondervan books, a company that declares its mission “To be the leader in Christian communications meeting the needs of people with resources that glorify Jesus Christ and promote biblical principles.” Zondervan will not be a fair judge. There is no person acting as judge in the “jury trial” of The Case for Christ.

There is also no defense team. Throughout his book, as we will see, he makes multiple references to skeptics and doubters in the divinity of Jesus, but he never lets them fully speak for or justify themselves. Instead, he only brings them up to dismiss them for his own reasons, without rebuttal. This is the job of a prosecutor in cross-examination. The job of a defense team is to act independently of the prosecution, to call its own witnesses, to ask its own questions and in so doing to argue its own case (that for reasonable doubt). Where is the exercise of a full-throated defense in this book? Nowhere.

Without a judge and without a defense, you have nothing but a kangaroo court.

Conclusion
Author Lee Strobel wants us to read The Case for Christ as a jury trial and either accept or reject the divinity of Jesus Christ as a result of his jury trial, but he provides no reason for us to accept that a jury trial is the best method to pursue a “quest for truth.” Besides, if Lee Strobel really wants us to think of his book as a jury trial, then there are a number of counts on which he fails to follow a jury trial’s process. If we really want to take Lee Strobel at his word when he sets the standard for The Case for Christ, we ought to declare the book a mistrial.

The minimum wage is not set to automatically increase with inflation.

Campaign contribution limits to politicians are indexed to increase with inflation.

Priorities.