Perspectives; Thoughts; Comments; Opinions; Discussions

Posts tagged ‘Evolution’

Why Are So Many Kids Rejecting Christianity? Look At Their Parents


COMMENTARY BY: PAMELA DANZIGER | MARCH 28, 2022

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/28/why-are-so-many-kids-rejecting-christianity-look-at-their-parents/

white church in a field

The education and scientific establishments have been co-conspirators in propagating their secular worldview and banishing the biblical one.

Author Pamela Danziger profile

PAMELA DANZIGER

MORE ARTICLES

The Cultural Research Center (CRC) is out with a new study comparing the number of American parents of children under age 13 who hold a biblical Christian worldview with those who adhere to competing secular alternatives. The results are a damning indictment of Americans’ rejection of or simple indifference to a biblical worldview.

Across all parents of pre-teens, only 2 percent hold a biblical worldview, which is defined as “consistently interpreting and responding to life situations based on biblical principles and teachings.” Those with a biblical worldview believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God containing all moral truths.

Among all respondents, other measured worldviews (such as secular humanism, nihilism, postmodernism, etc.) garnered even fewer adherents. Fully 94 percent subscribed to “a blending of multiple worldviews in which no single life philosophy is dominant.”

The needle scarcely moves for all self-identified Christians (not just pre-teen parents). Only 6 percent of them look at and interpret the world through a biblical lens; that number rises to 21 percent among those attending evangelical Protestant churches.

The fact that the biblical Christian worldview has become so insignificant in the culture should be of concern to all Americans because our country, including its governing principles and legal system, was based on our founders’ biblical worldview.

All around, we see the results of our abandonment of the biblical worldview. According to CRC research, more than half of the population accepts that truth is subjective.

Without objective truth, there is no way to determine what’s real and no moral absolutes to distinguish right from wrong. So we hear the popular “my truth” refrain as the justification for any idea or behavior depending upon what feels right at the time.

Why Worldview Matters

Professor Mikael Stenmark defines worldview as “beliefs, values, and attitudes that … constitute [people’s] basic understanding of (a) who they are, what the world is like, and what their place in it is, (b) what they should do to live a good and meaningful life, and (c) what they can say, know and rationally believe about these things.”

A dividing line between a secular and a biblical worldview is the belief in how the world came to exist. Secularists hold that reality consists entirely of physical matter and forces, which can only be explained through science. For the secularist, the Big Bang and Darwinian evolution explain how all things came to be.

Those with a biblical worldview believe in an all-encompassing divine mind — i.e., God — who rules over and maintains physical matter and forces. The theistic worldview is founded on the core belief that God exists and is the creator of all things.

It is easy to see why the biblical worldview is all but extinct in the culture. Every living generation — baby boomers, Gen X, millennials, and many of the silent generation (pre-1945) — has been educated predominantly in a secular or naturalistic worldview based on the prevailing science of the Big Bang and Darwinian evolution.

Science Declares God Is Dead

The only “official” science approved to be taught in the primary grades through post-graduate education is the anti-faith naturalistic one. It’s virtually illegal to teach anything that hints at creation science or intelligent design. The National Center for Science Education proudly displays ten major court cases, including a Supreme Court ruling, that essentially ban the teaching of intelligent design.

It’s not just the education system. Mathematician and philosopher William Dembski calls the scientific establishment’s approach to intelligent design a “zero-concession policy.”

For example, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) issued a statement claiming “There is no significant controversy within the scientific community about the validity of the theory of evolution. The current controversy surrounding the teaching of evolution is not a scientific one.”

Scientists and post-graduate students who dare to challenge naturalistic-science orthodoxy are subject to professional ridicule, or loss of jobs or research funds. Peer-review journals reject their submissions, as do scientific conferences and meetings.

It’s not in support of science that the establishment defends its official position so vehemently, but to protect its secular worldview. And the American Civil Liberties Union backs them up with legal firepower a detailed statement about why students must be protected against intelligent design at all costs.

Truth Will Come Out

Not all scientists are so didactic. But the “vital few” in control have effectively kept any serious discussion of intelligent design from the rest of the scientific community. However, when they are presented with evidence supporting intelligent design, many discover truth there.

That includes scientists like astronomer Allan Sandage, who studied under Edwin Hubble and continued his work after Hubble died. Sandage’s study of astronomy and astrophysics led him to conclude there is “evidence for what can only be described as a supernatural event,” or what he called a “creation event.”

Plenty of members in the scientific community see much to challenge in Darwinian doctrine. More than 1,000 academics and scientists have signed the Dissent from Darwinism petition stating, “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.”

The number of acclaimed scientists who challenge the establishment’s orthodoxy is growing thanks to the work of places like the Discovery Institute, the research arm of the Center for Science and Culture.

Rekindling the Discussion

The education and scientific establishments have become co-conspirators in propagating their secular worldview and banishing the biblical one. But there is hope. Belief in God “as described in the Bible” is still held by a 54 percent majority of Americans, according to a 2022 poll reported by The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd.

Noting that 72 percent of Americans agree the nation’s moral compass is “pointed in the wrong direction,” she writes, “As generations age and the push for secularism and the erasure of faith continues in American establishments such as public schools, younger people are losing spiritual influence and instruction, and with it their faith.”

That is the ultimate goal of our society’s ruling institutions, including government, education, science, medicine, and business. They are determined to wipe out faith by indoctrinating all into their secular worldview using the Big Bang and evolution as the cudgel.

So far, the scientific establishment has been successful in shutting down discussion that the Bible might be true from beginning to end. But continuing research in intelligent design and more scientists who question science’s naturalistic orthodoxy will arm the public with information to support the biblical worldview and loosen the stranglehold of the secular one on our youth and culture.

“Let there be light,” God said in Genesis 1:3. “And there was light.” Jesus said in John 8:32, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” That day isn’t here yet, but we pray it comes quickly.

Pamela Danziger is a market researcher specializing in the study of consumer behavior and motivation. Author of ten books, she shares insights as a senior contributor on Forbes.com. And as a Christian, she is co-founder of Faith Underground. She holds an M.L.S. from University of Maryland and B.A. in English Literature from Penn State.

Advertisement

Category:

Political, Spiritual

Tagged with:

This Physical Education Textbook Chapter on ‘Riflery’ will Blow a Liberal’s Mind


waving flagBy Gary DeMar July 19, 2016

URL of the original posting site: http://constitution.com/physical-education-textbook-chapter-riflery-will-blow-liberals-mind/
Hey Leftist

What’s happened in America with guns? Why is it that tens of thousands of high school students took riflery classes for decades and there was very little gun violence in the United States?

I came across a Physical Education textbook that included chapters on riflery and archery – implements that shoot pointy projectiles.

PE_Rifle_CoverThe book Physical Education for High School Students was originally published in 1955 with a revised edition in 1960 and a second edition published in 1970.

Here’s the opening paragraph from the chapter on “Riflery”:

“The United States of America was built, it is said, with three implements: the axe, the plow, and the rifle. The axe, in the hands of the stalwart pioneer, felled trees to clear the way for fields of grain. It also provided timber to build the houses, barns, and fences of our farms. The plow cut into the virgin soil of our foothills, plains, and prairies to grow the food for a young and hungry country. The rifle brought down the deer, bear, and other game to give the hardy frontiersman and his family food and clothing. It also stood as the only means of defense against his enemies, both savage and civilized.”

Throughout the chapter on Riflery there are very good instructions on how to use a rifle properly and safely. There’s even a picture of an “assault weapon.”

PE_Rifle_03

The chapter ends by declaring “Shooting is probably the safest of all sports. . . . By practicing a few simple rules every shooter can become a safe shooter.” This next sentence will make a liberal’s head explode: “One of the greatest sources of pride for the National Rifle Association is the splendid record in the safe handling of firearms set by their junior members.” The NRA is praised by a public school textbook!

The issue is not only the safe handling of firearms but the character of the person handling a firearm. Moral relativism cropped-george-washington-regarding-2nd-amandment.jpgis the operational worldview of the day. Everything is up for grabs. It’s OK to kill unborn babies, redefine marriage, and even change your sex. In fact, you don’t even have to change your sex; you can just declare yourself to be whatever sex you want. It’s topsy-turvy morality, and if you say so, then you’re a racist and a homophobe who does not have the right to express your opinion.

Bill Nye “The Science Guy” and resident Village Atheist recently said that death is the end of everything. This means there is no Ultimate Judge of our deeds in this life. So what is the moral objection to killing someone? Who says anything is ultimately morally wrong? No atheist can account for objective morality. 

There was a time when people believed that one day they would be judged for the deeds done in this life. God was considered to be “the Supreme Judge of the world.” Thomas Jefferson wrote the following in a letter to Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse Monticello in 1822:

“The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man.

1. That there is one only God, and he all perfect.

2. That there is a future state of rewards and punishments.

3. That to love God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself, is the sum of religion.

Not anymore. Even the views of Thomas “Separation of Church and State” Jefferson would not be welcome in our nation’s government schools. Evolutionary atheism is the operating religion of our nation’s elites and the institutions they control. This new religion promotes “survival of the fittest,” “nature, red in tooth and claw,” with the benefits of rape thrown in for good progressive measure.

Evolutionary atheism is the operating religion of our nation’s elites and the institutions they control. This new religion promotes “survival of the fittest,” “nature, red in tooth and claw,” with the benefits of rape thrown in for good progressive measure.Partyof Deceit Spin and Lies

Barbara Reynolds, former columnist for USA Today, writes about the effect of evolutionary dogmatism in our nation’s schools:

“Prohibiting the teaching of creationism in favor of evolution creates an atheistic, belligerent tone that might explain why our kids sometimes perform like Godzilla instead of children made in the image of God.

“While evolution teaches that we are accidents or freaks of nature, creationism shows humankind as the offspring of a divine Creator. There are rules to follow which govern not only our time on Earth, but also our afterlife.

* * * * *

“If evolution is forced on our kids, we shouldn’t be perplexed when they beat on their chests or, worse yet, beat on each other and their teachers.”1

Reynolds’s comments are reminiscent of what C.S. Lewis wrote: “We make men without chests and we expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and we are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”2 We strip men and women of the certainty that they are created in the image of God, and we are surprised when they act like the beasts of the field.

  1. Barbara Reynolds, “If your kids go ape in school, you’ll know why,” USA Today (August 27, 1993), 11A. ↩
  2. C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: Macmillan, [1947] 1972), 35. ↩

fight Picture1 true battle In God We Trust freedom combo 2

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

No Need to Fret over Global Warming – We Will Just Evolve


waving flagJanuary 15, 2016By

URL of the original posting site: http://commonconstitutionalist.com/current-events/no-need-to-fret-over-global-warming-we-will-just-evolve
hysteria

“We’ve got to accelerate the transition away from dirty energy. Rather than subsidize the past, we should invest in the future especially in communities that rely on fossil fuels. That’s why I’m going to push to change the way we manage our oil and coal resources, so that they better reflect the costs they impose on taxpayers and our planet.” That’s what the president exclaimed in his dog and pony show Tuesday night.dangerously delisional

But really, is it already too late for that? Americans have been told that global warming will surely cause worldwide drought. At the same time it will cause massive coastal flooding due to melting of all the ice over the entire globe. Even the ice in your freezer will melt.

I suppose then, for those living along the coast it will get really wet and those inland, assuming there is any inland, there will be barren conditions, not to mention packing more and more people into an ever-shrinking land mass– so I guess its pick your poison. This is what the so-called global warming experts tell us.

Super Chicken

Super Chicken

Now, for those poor saps living inland it will be difficult to plant and grow crops. Subsistence will be very limited as crops wither away. And with dwindling land mass, overcrowding or overpopulation will be the unfortunate result. Add to the dwindling land mass the fact that humans seem to be getting larger and taller with each passing generation. What ever are we to do? Just accept extinction?

Worry not, for the Darwinians are here to save us with one of the latest evolutionary theories on just how we solve the coming overpopulation crisis.

Dutch artist, Arne Hendriks claims the planet’s growing population will become a real problem. This pace he says, like do other overpopulationists, is unsustainable. He tells us that, “For much of the history of humankind, bigger has been better. As our ancestors got taller, they became faster and stronger, giving them the ability to better hunt food and avoid predators. But in a world where we no longer need to fight for our meals, our height offers no real advantage – being tall is no longer a desired result in an age of increasing scarcity.” He points to a study in Nature which “claims human actions are now changing the planet producing a new geological epoch, in which humans are causing widespread damage to the planet.”definetly

And his answer to solving this new geological epoch is, “if we could shrink our size down to just 50cm, we would need only two to five per cent of the resources required by an average-sized human.” 50cm is about 20 inches, or, as Hendriks puts it, about the size of a chicken.REALLY

Of course we can no longer leave something so pressing to natural evolution. No, we’ll have to tweak it by cooking up “some type of elixir that will slow growth. Another way to do this would be to tweak our DNA.”

Okay, so the inland problem is solved. We’ll all be the size of chickens. Hopefully we won’t also taste like chicken or that may Aquamancause us problems dealing with our pets.

What about the coastal flooding problem? Does anyone know how long chicken people may float? There’s no need to find out because “Global warming could cause humans to develop webbed feet, cat’s eyes and gills.”

Dr Matthew Skinner, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Kent in merry old England is definitely a scientist and definitely not a kook. He expects humans “would develop webbed hands [and feet] and eyes like those of cats to help us see in the poor lighting conditions underwater and an extra translucent eyelid to protect the eyes from water. We would also retain a layer of baby fat into adulthood as an insulator for spending long periods submerged. Regular foraging in shallow waters could lead us to develop ‘gills’ to help us breathe, extracting oxygen from the water and delivering it to the bloodstream.”What did you say 06.jpg

So there you have it. All is not lost. Now it’s just a matter of deciding which species you prefer – Chicken-man or Aqua-man. But choose wisely. I’m guessing that once you transform into a tiny Chicken-man, there’s no going back.

And don’t even get me started on inter-species hook-ups. What would an Aqua-Chicken look like? This is what passes for real science. These people are nuts!

definetly Ponzi Scheme In God We Trust freedom combo 2

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Creation verses Evolution


Creation vs. Evolution
The Basics Explained
Why Should Christians believe in Creation?
We believe in creation, first of all, not because of scientific evidence, but because of our faith in Jesus Christ and in His Word the Bible. The Lord Jesus is revealed in the Bible to be the Creator of all things (John 1:3, Hebrews 1:1-3), and He is for Christians the Lord of all and the Head over all things, including science (Acts 10:36, Ephesians 1:22). Our Head has said something about science in John 5:45-47, namely this: If we believe in Jesus Christ, then we must believe Moses’ writings. What did Moses write about first of all? He wrote about the creation of all things by God. So we judge science by the Bible and not the other way around. “We walk by faith, not by sight.” (I Corinthians 5:7)
God has given us Scientific Evidence for Creation
Since the beginning all men have been without excuse if they have not acknowledged the Creator God, for the evidence is all around them in the created world (Romans 1:19-20). And modern science has revealed a vast web of evidence which supports the biblical record of creation. Let us think first about the logic of the scientific argument for creation.
The Logic of the Scientific case for Creation
Creation is by definition a divine miracle, an act of God which is outside of and above the physical laws He has established in the world. Therefore, scientists who believe in creation do not try to devise theories to explain how God created, for human beings cannot understand how God created. On the other hand, evolutionary scientists say that they are devising theories to explain the evolution of all life and that they are discovering natural processes or mechanisms which can evolve new plants and animals. So we say to them, “The burden of proof is on you. Come on, now, give us theories which really explain evolution, and show us the natural mechanisms or processes which can produce new designs and evolve new plants and animals.”
Has evolutionary theory really explained evolution? No. Have they discovered any mechanism or process of genetics which can evolve anything really new. No, they have not. And, as long as this failure of evolutionary science continues, divine special creation continues to be an intellectually and scientifically viable belief for anybody, including scientists, to hold.
A Brief Look at the Evidence
The Fossil Evidence. Evolution is supposed to be a process of change. If some ancient species of worm or other creature without a backbone slowly changed into a vertebrate fish with a backbone, there should be a series of intermediate fossil species which document that actual process of change. These intermediate fossil forms are totally absent from the fossil record. Prof. Alfred Romer at Harvard University wrote that this evolution from invertebrate to vertebrate must have required 100 million years for which we do not have the fossil evidence. Prof. Stephen Stanley of Johns Hopkins University wrote in 1979 that the known fossil record provides not a single example of a series of fossils which prove that a process of evolution really took place to produce a new kind of creature.
These systematic gaps in the fossil record mean that every basic type of plant or animal seems to appear suddenly in the fossil-bearing rocks. The fossils speak of sudden appearance of the kinds, not the slow, gradual change of one kind into another kind. But this fossil evidence appears more in agreement with special creation than with evolution, doesn’t it?
Biological Design. Nature is rich everywhere with biological designs which defy evolutionary explanation. Secular scientists, when pressed, have to admit that they cannot offer testable or even plausible explanations for the origin of biodesigns. For just one example, consider the little intestinal microbe, Escherichia coli. Each tiny single-celled microbe propels itself around with six corkscrew propellers which are connected by universal joints to six constant torque, variable speed, reversible rotary motors!
Evolutionary scientists have not the slightest idea how this complex assembly of complex, interdependent parts could have evolved. Yet, they believe it happened. They have faith in dumb atoms. Faith in the Creator God is far superior.
Genetics: For thousands of years intelligent humans have been selectively breeding plants and animals to develop varieties which are of special value to man. So there are 150 varieties of dogs, scores of varieties of roses, many different varieties of cattle and sheep, of apples and potatoes, etc. But they are still dogs, roses, cattle, sheep, apples and potatoes. There is much variation under artificial selection. Also, there is much variation in nature in the wild. But the changes are always limited. Genetics teaches that there are barriers through which genetic change cannot go. Species of plants and animals exist in groups of species which are separated from all other such groups. And this is just what the Bible teaches in Genesis 1 where Moses tells us that God created the “kinds” of plants and animals to reproduce each one “after its own

Watch ‘Evolution vs. God’ – A new movie from the producers of the Award-winning ‘Genius’!

www.EvolutionVsGod.com

Category:

Spiritual

Tagged with:

It Takes More Faith to Believe in Evolution that Creation


Journalist Virginia Heffernan Admits She’s a Creationist and Drives Evolutionists Crazy

by http://politicaloutcast.com/2013/07/journalist-virginia-heffernan-admits-shes-a-creationist-and-drives-evolutionists-crazy/#ixzz2ZFDJOQps

In the midst of the George Zimmerman “not guilty” verdict, rioting, beatings, threats of violence, calls for “checking your white privilege,” and demands that we “give money to the Dream Defenders, to the Urban League, to the Southern Poverty Law Center … because racism is a natural disaster just like hurricanes and bombings and shootings are,” there’s a story going around about  journalist Virginia Heffernan who admits she’s a creationist.

The liberal disdain for Virginia Heffernan is thicker than quick-drying cement. Here’s just one example, written by Laura Helmuth at Slate:

“This is all just to say that I am trying to sympathize, I really am, with Virginia Heffernan. Heffernan is a writer for Yahoo News, formerly of the New York Times and formerly-formerly a TV critic for Slate. Last week she published an essay in which she revealed that she is a creationist. I’m not exaggerating. The essay is titled ‘Why I’m a Creationist,’ and she wrote: ‘Also, at heart, I am a creationist. There, I said it.’”

The article drips with disdain but does not offer a single verifiable scientific fact supporting how nothing became something.

Evolutionists can ridicule all they want (it’s all they have left), but they can’t prove that inorganic matter evolved into organic matter that evolved into the complex life forms we are and see around us. Evolutionists can’t get from atoms to people. It’s even worse for them since they can’t account for the original matter or the organized information necessary to organize the matter.

To believe in evolution is to believe in magic — literally. At least stage and street magicians start with a deck of cards, a coin, or a rabbit. Magicians can’t really make something appear out of thin air. But that’s exactly what evolutionists claim for evolution. When I say exactly, I mean exactly. Here’s an example found in the prestigious Scientific American:

“It is virtually impossible to imagine how a cell’s machines, which are mostly protein-based catalysts called enzymes, could have formed spontaneously as life first arose from nonliving matter around 3.7 billion years ago.”[1]

It’s impossible to imagine because it’s impossible, but that’s what evolutionists believe. One of the first scientific truths a biology student learns is that spontaneous generation is not science, and yet in order to be an evolutionist, you must believe in it even though it’s contrary to logic, experience, and experimentation.

Did you notice that the authors describe cells as “machines”? When has a machine ever spontaneously come into existence? Never! “But there was this time 3.7 billion years ago. . . .”

Helmuth writes, “Whatever levels of analysis you care to use, from molecular to planetary, they all mutually reinforce the discovery that all living things evolve through a process of natural selection. Absolutely nothing in the 154 years since Origin was published has undermined the theory.” “Absolutely nothing”? Do I detect a hint of desperation and fear?

OK, Laura, like you, I started with the molecular. Using observation (no one was around 3.7 billion years ago and no one has seen nothing become something) and experimentation (no one has been able to produce life in the lab), demonstrate to us how evolution took place. Don’t theorize. Don’t assert. Don’t propagandize. Show us. You can’t and neither can Richard Dawkins or any other evolutionist living or dead.

Read more:

Why I’m a creationist

Virginia Heffernan, Yahoo News

July 11, 2013 // http://news.yahoo.com/why-im-a-creationist-141907217.html
In this May 2013 photo provided by Google, a giant tortoise crawls along the path near Googler Karin Tuxen­Bettman while she collects imagery with the Street View Trekker in Galapaguera, a tortoise breeding center, which is managed by the Galapagos National Park Service, in Ecuador. Few have laid eyes on many of the volcanic islands of the Galapagos archipelago that remain closed to tourists. But soon the curious will be able to explore these places that inspired Charles Darwin's theory of evolution from their computers or mobile devices. Google Maps sent crews armed with backpack-mounted Street View cameras and underwater gear to the Galapagos, and will be bringing the islands' natural wonders to the Internet. (AP Photo/Google)
> In this May 2013 photo provided by Google, a giant tortoise crawls along the path near Googler Karin …

As a child I fell in love with technology, but I have to admit I never fell in love with science. I kept hoping that messing around with Macs and Atari and eventually the Internet would nudge me closer to caring about the periodic table, Louis Pasteur and the double-blind studies that now seem to stand for science. As it was, I only cared about the double-blind studies that told me what I wanted to hear—that potatoes are good for you or that people of my height are generally happy—and I liked the phrase “double-blind” when it was on my side because it meant “true” and “take that.”

I assume that other people love science and technology, since the fields are often lumped together, but I rarely meet people like that. Technology people are trippy; our minds are blown by the romance of telecom. At the same time, the people I know who consider themselves scientists by nature seem to be super-skeptical types who can be counted on to denigrate religion, fear climate change and think most people—most Americans—are dopey sheep who believe in angels and know nothing about all the gross carbon they trail, like “Pig-Pen.”

I like most people. I don’t fear environmental apocalypse. And I don’t hate religion. Those scientists no doubt see me as a dopey sheep who believes in angels and is carbon-ignorant. I have to say that they may be right.

In the hazy Instagram picture I have in my mind of the mechanisms that animate my ingenious smartphone—a picture that slips in and out of focus, and one I constantly revise—it might as well be angels. At the same time, I have read and heard brilliantly serpentine arguments for and against fracking, not to mention for and against cities and coal and paper (it sidelines carbon and decomposes! it is toxic industrial waste!), and I still don’t know right from wrong when it comes to carbon. All I know is one side of these debates seems maybe slightly more bloodthirsty and opportunistic than the other—but now I can’t remember which one.

Also, at heart, I am a creationist. There, I said it. At least you, dear readers, won’t now storm out of a restaurant like the last person I admitted that to. In New York City saying you’re a creationist is like confessing you think Ahmadinejad has a couple of good points. Maybe I’m the only creationist I know.

This is how I came to it. Like many people, I heard no end of Bible stories as a kid, but in the 1970s in New England they always came with the caveat that they were metaphors. So I read the metaphors of Genesis and Exodus and was amused and bugged and uplifted and moved by them. And then I guess I wanted to know the truth of how the world began, so I was handed the Big Bang. That wasn’t a metaphor, but it wasn’t fact either. It was something called a hypothesis. And it was only a sentence. I was amused and moved, but considerably less amused and moved by the character-free Big Bang story (“something exploded”) than by the twisted and picturesque misadventures of Eve and Adam and Cain and Abel and Abraham.

Later I read Thomas Malthus’ “Essay on the Principle of Population” and “The Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin, as well as probably a dozen books about evolution and atheism, from Stephen Jay Gould to Sam Harris.

The Darwin, with good reason, stuck with me. Though it’s sometimes poetic, “The Origin of Species” has an enchantingly arid English tone to it; this somber tone was part of a deliberate effort to mark it as science and not science fiction—the “Star Trek” of its time. The book also alights on a tautology that, like all tautologies, is gloriously unimpeachable: Whatever survives survives.

But I still wasn’t sure why a book that never directly touches on human evolution, much less the idea of God, was seen as having unseated the story of creation. In short, “The Origin of Species” is not its own creation story. And while the fact that it stints on metaphor—so as to avoid being like H.G. Wells—neither is it bedrock fact. It’s another hypothesis.

Cut to now. I still read and read and listen and listen. And I have never found a more compelling story of our origins than the ones that involve God. The evolutionary psychologists with their just-so stories for everything (“You use a portable Kindle charger because mothers in the primordial forest gathered ginseng”) have become more contradictory than Leviticus. Did you all see that ev-psych now says it’s women who are naturally not monogamous, in spite of the same folks telling us for decades that women are desperate to secure resources for their kids so they frantically sustain wedlock with a rich silverback who will keep them in cashmere?

Sigh. When a social science, made up entirely of observations and hypotheses, tells us first that men are polygamous and women homebodies, and then that men are monogamous and women gallivanters—and, what’s more builds far-fetched protocols of dating and courtship and marriage and divorce around these notions—maybe it’s time to retire the whole approach.

All the while, the first books of the Bible are still hanging around. I guess I don’t “believe” that the world was created in a few days, but what do I know? Seems as plausible (to me) as theoretical astrophysics, and it’s certainly a livelier tale. As “Life of Pi” author Yann Martel once put it, summarizing his page-turner novel: “1) Life is a story. 2) You can choose your story. 3) A story with God is the better story.”

Category:

Spiritual

Tagged with:

White House Petition to Ban Creationism Gathering Steam


http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/06/21/White-House-Petition-To-Ban-Creationism-Gathering-Steam

by Wynton Hall

A White House petition to ban the teaching of creationism and Intelligent Design in American classrooms has garnered 23,715 signatures in one week.

  “Both of these so-called ‘theories’ have no basis in scientific fact, and have absolutely zero evidence pointing towards these conjectures. These types of loopholes in our education are partially to blame for our dangerously low student performances in math and science,” reads the petition created by someone listed as A.J. of Vienna, Virginia. “Therefore, we petition the Obama Administration to ban the teachings of these conjectures that contradict Evolution.”

The petition must receive 100,000 signatures by July 15 to guaranteed a response by the Obama Administration.

 In an interview with the Christian Post, Ken Ham, the president of a creationist organization named Answers in Genesis, said the White House petition is just one more example of the growing intolerance against Christians.

 “This anti-creationist petition is yet another example of the intolerance of evolutionist activists” who do not “want to see any challenge to their deeply held secularist worldview,” said Ham.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Atheist Monument Opposes Ten Commandments with no Alternative


http://politicaloutcast.com/2013/06/atheist-monument-opposes-ten-commandments-with-no-alternative/#ixzz2Wb8b8RLA

The courtyard outside the Bradford County Courthouse in north Florida will include quotations from Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Madalyn Murray O’Hair, the founder of American Atheists. It will also include a list of Old Testament punishments that mandate the death penalty. The atheist monument will stand next to a copy of the Ten Commandments.

Atheists have no moral standing in critiquing any moral law system. Atheism cannot account for morality. Morality is not a thing. It is not made up of atoms. Morality cannot be derived from the stuff of the cosmos or extracted from our DNA. As a result, atheists can’t argue against murder, genocide, rape, theft, or any other moral aversion. In fact, the category “morality” does not exist in a matter-only worldview.

Atheists have put together the “enjoy yourself” campaign. Here’s there logic:There's No God_enjoy Self

There’s No God. So Stop Worrying and Enjoy Yourself.

What if people enjoy killing, raping, stealing, and eating people?

If there were a set of commandments that said, “Thou shalt not drive red cars,” “Thou shalt not live in four-side houses,” and “Thou shalt not hop, skip, and jump,” there is nothing within atheism that could fundamentally raise an objection.

Arthur Leff (1935–1981), who taught law at Yale Law School, concluded that, given atheistic assumptions, no way to prove that “any particular act, no matter how horrible, is normatively wrong.” Leff stated:

“I will put the current situation as sharply as possible: there is today no way of ‘proving’ that napalming babies is bad except by asserting it (in a louder and louder voice), or by defining it as so, early in one’s game, and then later slipping it through, in a whisper, as a conclusion.”[1]

In Leff’s analysis, “‘good’ becomes just a function of nosecounting.”[2] Was he exaggerating? I don’t think so. Look around us. Where is an absolute moral standard to be found? If you say religion, you’ll never be hired by a major university or sit on the Supreme Court.

Many don’t remember how then-Senator Joe Biden grilled Clarence Thomas on his belief in Natural Law. Thomas knew that any dialog with Biden over the idea that there is a God-given law would have doomed his nomination. Thomas was smart to let Biden ramble and get his analysis of Natural Law wrong, and impossible to account for, given evolutionary assumptions which America’s new religion.

But it’s worse than that for the atheist. There is no basis for the categories “good” and “evil” in a matter-only cosmos. Anything that’s left of the idea of fixed moral laws is an illusion that will soon fade as our nation becomes consistent with what it has mandated from the courts and taught in our schools.

The acceptance of the atheist monument by civil officials and the courts as somehow being equal to the Ten Commandments is a prime indicator that secularism is on its death bed. Let’s pray that we all don’t end up there with them.

Category:

Spiritual

Tagged with:

Tag Cloud

%d bloggers like this: