It's not difficult to find tons of dirt on the guy. Just type his name and "adulterer", or his name and "communist", or his name and "plagiarist", into a search engine. If you think these are all internet fables, rest assured that snopes is not exactly a bastion of right-wing extremism. It's especially problematic that he clung to the title Reverend throughout his public life. Palling around with communists and whores is not a lifestyle worthy of being revered. But he was an excellent speaker (even though some of his speeches had plenty of borrowed thoughts and words).
I would suggest that today be called Racial Equality Day instead, but where's the equality when the only reasons that his dirt is swept under the rug are that he's Black and martyred? Where's the equality when we have Black History Month every February, but no Asian History Month? Where's the equality when the only reasons that Barack H. Obama will rise to the pinnacle of temporal power tomorrow are that he's Black and a good speaker (who also happens to borrow thoughts and words from others' speeches)?
Monday, January 19, 2009
Saturday, January 17, 2009
No Sweat
A few animals have limited ability to prevent a rise in body temperature by evaporative cooling through sweat secretion. Since evolutionists insist that monkeys and men are closely related, surely they exhibit similar sweat-cooling characteristics, right? The monkey has virtually no ability to cool itself with sweat. Other animals? Cats have a slight ability; dogs greater but still slight. Horses have more ability to sweat, though their sweating is tied to exertion rather than body temperature. Only humans use sweat glands to such an extent to cool off.
Sweat glands are incredibly complex, and if they are the products of evolution, then no doubt the ability to sweat must be indicative of how closely species are related to each other. So horses are our nearest relatives, not monkeys. I'm sure he would agree. And he would tell you about it until his voice became hoarse.
Sweat glands are incredibly complex, and if they are the products of evolution, then no doubt the ability to sweat must be indicative of how closely species are related to each other. So horses are our nearest relatives, not monkeys. I'm sure he would agree. And he would tell you about it until his voice became hoarse.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Retirement? There's Too Much Work To Do
Most people retire to take it easy. Most people fill their quotas for adventure with movies, amusement parks, games, and tourism. Most people try to keep the needs of humanity from getting too close. I hope to persuade you to "retire" to a life of adventure while serving humanity.
I will be eligible to retire in about four and a half years (I'll be 53). At that time, my wife and I will take our meager savings and small pension to the Philippines. (If we were to stay here, we wouldn't be able financially to retire yet. In that Third-World economy, we'll be living well.) We'll devote our lives to the welfare of poor children. Startling fact: 50% of the population in the Philippines is age 16 or younger. With the poverty, domestic violence, neglect, and child-labor abuse in that nation of 80 million, there's a lot of need.
Don't praise us for any perceived altruism--imitate us! Ask God to show you a need in a Third-World country that you can get passionate about.
Many of you have job-related retirement benefits waiting for you in the future. Others have savings and investments prepared. Why retire here and barely get by, playing games and rocking your chair every day, when you can live well and do good in Mexico or Liberia or the Philippines?
OK, I understand that this is not for everyone. But I hope I planted a seed in at least one person who will go and change lives in a far land.
I will be eligible to retire in about four and a half years (I'll be 53). At that time, my wife and I will take our meager savings and small pension to the Philippines. (If we were to stay here, we wouldn't be able financially to retire yet. In that Third-World economy, we'll be living well.) We'll devote our lives to the welfare of poor children. Startling fact: 50% of the population in the Philippines is age 16 or younger. With the poverty, domestic violence, neglect, and child-labor abuse in that nation of 80 million, there's a lot of need.
Don't praise us for any perceived altruism--imitate us! Ask God to show you a need in a Third-World country that you can get passionate about.
Many of you have job-related retirement benefits waiting for you in the future. Others have savings and investments prepared. Why retire here and barely get by, playing games and rocking your chair every day, when you can live well and do good in Mexico or Liberia or the Philippines?
OK, I understand that this is not for everyone. But I hope I planted a seed in at least one person who will go and change lives in a far land.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
The Man Of Sorrows
For those who went to church at Christmas after missing every service since the previous Christmas, please allow me to reflect on the meaninglessness of Christmas without Resurrection Day, a.k.a. Easter.
Mel Gibson went to great pains in researching Biblical narratives and ancient Roman culture to accurately portray the arrest, trial, scourging, and crucifixion of Jesus Christ. One cannot watch The Passion of the Christ without being awestruck at the amount of physical suffering the Lord endured, and many have come to appreciate him all the more for being willing to go through that for our sake. I do find one fault with the film, however. I wish Gibson had done more to show how much Christ suffered. Let me explain: I believe that the physical pain that Gibson portrayed in Passion was only a fraction of what Jesus endured. Besides the whipping, the beatings, the crown of thorns, the dehydration, the sleep deprivation, etc., the one who had never sinned became sin. The Bible's 2 Corinthians 5:21 tells us:
God made him who had no sin to become sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
We might have difficulty comprehending the dreadful nature of this punishment because we haven't experienced anything like it. Perhaps I can illustrate it: Imagine a child born with no immune system, who has to live his entire life in a totally sanitary environment. One day someone abducts him and throws him into a huge septic tank to drown. This analogy falls short in that having a deficient immune system is a dire weakness, while being immaculately holy is an incredible strength, but it's the best I can come up with to illustrate the extremes of cleanliness and filth.
Perhaps the worst thing Jesus had to suffer was being rejected by his Father. Again, we can't fully understand this. We have never loved anyone as much as Jesus loves his Father, and we have never been so inseparable from anyone for immeasurable eons of time. One of the few personal complaints ever uttered by Jesus was regarding his anguish of soul from being abandoned by his Father. The Father had to turn his back on the Son because he had become sin for our sake. This reveals God's intense hatred of sin, which makes our Lord's intense love for sinners like us so amazing. This love explains why Jesus left the glory of Heaven to suffer what he did. Do you love him? Enough to walk with him every day, no, every moment? After all, just going to church once a year is weak.
Mel Gibson went to great pains in researching Biblical narratives and ancient Roman culture to accurately portray the arrest, trial, scourging, and crucifixion of Jesus Christ. One cannot watch The Passion of the Christ without being awestruck at the amount of physical suffering the Lord endured, and many have come to appreciate him all the more for being willing to go through that for our sake. I do find one fault with the film, however. I wish Gibson had done more to show how much Christ suffered. Let me explain: I believe that the physical pain that Gibson portrayed in Passion was only a fraction of what Jesus endured. Besides the whipping, the beatings, the crown of thorns, the dehydration, the sleep deprivation, etc., the one who had never sinned became sin. The Bible's 2 Corinthians 5:21 tells us:
God made him who had no sin to become sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
We might have difficulty comprehending the dreadful nature of this punishment because we haven't experienced anything like it. Perhaps I can illustrate it: Imagine a child born with no immune system, who has to live his entire life in a totally sanitary environment. One day someone abducts him and throws him into a huge septic tank to drown. This analogy falls short in that having a deficient immune system is a dire weakness, while being immaculately holy is an incredible strength, but it's the best I can come up with to illustrate the extremes of cleanliness and filth.
Perhaps the worst thing Jesus had to suffer was being rejected by his Father. Again, we can't fully understand this. We have never loved anyone as much as Jesus loves his Father, and we have never been so inseparable from anyone for immeasurable eons of time. One of the few personal complaints ever uttered by Jesus was regarding his anguish of soul from being abandoned by his Father. The Father had to turn his back on the Son because he had become sin for our sake. This reveals God's intense hatred of sin, which makes our Lord's intense love for sinners like us so amazing. This love explains why Jesus left the glory of Heaven to suffer what he did. Do you love him? Enough to walk with him every day, no, every moment? After all, just going to church once a year is weak.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
On the Origin of Species
Yes, I borrowed the title for this post from Darwin's seminal tome, but I'm going to do what Darwin didn't: pontificate on the origin of the first specie. The origin of life. The pertinent facts:
1) Whether creationist or evolutionist, we all know that at some time in history, biological life arose from non-living matter.
2) We have known from the time of Pasteur that life cannot naturally, spontaneously arise from non-living matter.
3) Therefore, life arising from non-living matter must have occurred outside of the laws of nature, or supernaturally.
Some evolutionists, most notably Richard Dawkins, try to avoid this logic by claiming that life on Earth was seeded by extraterrestrials. However, this only pushes the origin of biological life farther back. It still originated somewhere.
To those who would turn this logical progression back at me and ask about the origin of the Creator's life, I would remind you that I am discussing the origin of biological life. Since God is, by definition, above the laws of nature, one cannot use science to discuss the possibilities of whether he has an origin or is eternal. That discussion is for theologians and philosophers.
If Darwin and Pasteur were contemporaries, why did the scientific community rush to embrace Darwin's theory while seemingly ignoring Pasteur's conclusions? I think Sir Julian Huxley (nicknamed "Darwin's bulldog" because he was the leading evolutionist of his day), when asked this question, may have said it best:
"I suppose the reason that we all jumped at The Origin (of Species) was that the idea of God interfered with our sexual mores."
Now that we have dispensed with the supposedly spontaneous generation of life, we can critique the things that Darwin covered.
Because of the limited technology of his time, Darwin thought that the mechanics of biology were far simpler than they actually are. For example, he thought that cells were not much more than blobs of goo. We now know that cells can be more complex than the computer you're using now. I do not doubt that if Darwin knew what we now know about this complexity, and the irreducible nature of much of the complexity in nature, he would have never considered macro-evolution to be possible.
Additionally, Darwin wrote that he was confident that paleontology--a science still in its infancy in his day--would one day provide millions of fossils of creatures in transitional stages of evolving from one species to another. These are still missing.
Also missing is common sense from much of the scientific community today. If a blue-collar, college non-grad like me could figure this out, why can't they?
This simple article is only food for thought. Please read the linked web pages for more information.
1) Whether creationist or evolutionist, we all know that at some time in history, biological life arose from non-living matter.
2) We have known from the time of Pasteur that life cannot naturally, spontaneously arise from non-living matter.
3) Therefore, life arising from non-living matter must have occurred outside of the laws of nature, or supernaturally.
Some evolutionists, most notably Richard Dawkins, try to avoid this logic by claiming that life on Earth was seeded by extraterrestrials. However, this only pushes the origin of biological life farther back. It still originated somewhere.
To those who would turn this logical progression back at me and ask about the origin of the Creator's life, I would remind you that I am discussing the origin of biological life. Since God is, by definition, above the laws of nature, one cannot use science to discuss the possibilities of whether he has an origin or is eternal. That discussion is for theologians and philosophers.
If Darwin and Pasteur were contemporaries, why did the scientific community rush to embrace Darwin's theory while seemingly ignoring Pasteur's conclusions? I think Sir Julian Huxley (nicknamed "Darwin's bulldog" because he was the leading evolutionist of his day), when asked this question, may have said it best:
"I suppose the reason that we all jumped at The Origin (of Species) was that the idea of God interfered with our sexual mores."
Now that we have dispensed with the supposedly spontaneous generation of life, we can critique the things that Darwin covered.
Because of the limited technology of his time, Darwin thought that the mechanics of biology were far simpler than they actually are. For example, he thought that cells were not much more than blobs of goo. We now know that cells can be more complex than the computer you're using now. I do not doubt that if Darwin knew what we now know about this complexity, and the irreducible nature of much of the complexity in nature, he would have never considered macro-evolution to be possible.
Additionally, Darwin wrote that he was confident that paleontology--a science still in its infancy in his day--would one day provide millions of fossils of creatures in transitional stages of evolving from one species to another. These are still missing.
Also missing is common sense from much of the scientific community today. If a blue-collar, college non-grad like me could figure this out, why can't they?
This simple article is only food for thought. Please read the linked web pages for more information.
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