April 1--Atheist Day?

No doubt about it: there are many absolutely brilliant atheists. And there are lots of absolutely brilliant Christians. So we have extremely intelligent folks who have diametrically opposed beliefs. How can this be?

What causes atheism?
I believe God intentionally arranged things so that the scientific, historical, and philosophical evidence alone would be less than overwhelming to prove his existence and his authority. You have to want, to seek, to love ultimate truth, regardless of the consequences, to find it. Fortunately, God promises that those who seek him wholeheartedly will find him. Unfortunately, most folks don't want him, because they love sin and/or they think they know best how to live their lives (pride). To illustrate:
--Sir Julian Huxley, nicknamed "Darwin's Bulldog", was asked why the scientific community quickly embraced evolution, and he candidly responded, "I suppose the reason we leaped at The Origin of Species was because the idea of God interfered with our sexual mores."
--Jesus Christ once rebuked the religious leaders who rejected him because of their pride: "How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another, and you do not want the glory that comes from God?" You have to humble yourself to receive glory from God.

Who has more credibility?
The atheist scholar gathers facts to bolster his position, as does the Christian scholar. But I believe that the atheist has some credibility problems. First, he doesn't believe in an all-seeing Judge, so he has no motivation except pure altruism to honestly search for and propagate truth, and no human is constantly altruistic. In fact, I think Christians are far more likely to act altruistically. Second, when an atheist confidently asserts that he knows there is nothing in the universe except matter and energy (as Carl Sagan did shortly before he met his Maker), he probably hasn't inspected the entire universe to see if this is true. It's like saying, "I've never met a blue-eyed African American, so there are none." Those who have met blue-eyed African Americans, like I have, will disagree, but the doubter may keep doubting.

When the Bible says,
The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God,"
it's not speaking of a lack of intelligence. The Hebrew word translated "fool" here has a moral connotation, as in acting or believing foolishly.
Happy April Fool's Day to you all.

I Almost Wet My Pants!

Once every month or two, someone at the office I work at finds a scorpion creeping around inside the building (we're literally at the edge of the desert). Usually they're tiny, but the other day a big specimen was discovered--stretched out, nearly five inches (30 cm). I asked the finder if I could have it, to make it into a decoration. I took it home and dumped it into a bucket of water to drown it. Two hours later, I took it out, put it into a big dog food bowl we don't use any more, and I began to shape it into a cool pose while it was still flexible. Several minutes of handling later, it was ready, so I carefully took the bowl into the garage to let it dry there for a couple of days. Ten minutes later, my son Isaac wanted to see it. We went into the garage...to find it walking around! I nearly wet my pants.
I now know just a wee bit of how the apostles must have felt when seeing the risen Christ!
Anyway, it's very dead now (I put it in the water for three days), and when it dries, I'll cover it with about ten coats of clear lacquer spray paint. I'll have a decoration and a conversation piece.

Rabid Rants

I'm weary of what seems like bi-weekly local news stories in which a dog has killed or maimed a person, and invariably at the time of the report the beast "is being quarantined". Why isn't the worthless monster dead already?

I'm weary of animal charities appealing for money. With all of the human need on this planet, I'm baffled and annoyed that anyone would consider the Humane Society or the World Wildlife Fund more deserving of donations than organizations that help people.

I'm weary of folks who love animals way too much.

What caused the meltdown?

The ignorance displayed by Chris Matthews and his collection of "experts" on this weekend's show is shocking and disturbing. I'm not going to discuss their Limbaugh comments--Rush is usually right, but he's too mean-spirited and boastful for me. I'm referring to their repeated, unanimous, confident assertions that, in this economic crisis, it is oh-so-obvious that capitalism has failed us. Months ago I considered writing about the cause of the meltdown, but I thought the truth was at least out there and fairly commonly known, even if some socialists were scrambling to distort it. Judging from Matthews' misinformation, I may have been wrong. For the truth behind the housing bubble bursting, which was the first domino to fall, here is an excellent history. And here is Fox News' summary. And here is a microcosm of the government's wrong priorities.
I'm no TV pundit--I'm just a nobody in flyover country--but I know better than to automatically trust what comes across the TV. Capitalism works just fine. Government intruding where it shouldn't--liberalism--is what has failed us.

Tax Cheat Tim Geithner’s History Of Incompetence

Guest blogger Ed Morrissey from HotAir.com:

Remember when the Obama administration and its allies in Congress urged the confirmation of Tim Geithner despite his tax problems? They claimed that Geithner was “uniquely qualified” to lead the nation out of an economic collapse, and that no other candidate could possibly replace Geithner. Former Australian prime minister Paul Keating must have thought the Democrats and American media had discovered a completely different Tim Geithner than the one he knew:

If anyone in the US media had thought to ask a former Australian prime minister for his assessment, they would have heard a different view. And they would not have been so surprised at Geithner’s performance since.

In a speech to a closed gathering at the Lowy Institute in Sydney on Thursday, Paul Keating gave a starkly different account of Geithner’s record in handling the Asian crisis: “Tim Geithner was the Treasury line officer who wrote the IMF [International Monetary Fund] program for Indonesia in 1997-98, which was to apply current account solutions to a capital account crisis.”

In other words, Geithner fundamentally misdiagnosed the problem. And his misdiagnosis led to a dreadfully wrong prescription.

In fact, Geithner bungled the job so badly that Asian nations still refuse to “stick their head in the IMF noose,” as Keating puts it. Despite 7% compound growth over several years afterwards, Indonesia still couldn’t get itself out of the hole Geithner dug for them. Soeharto lost power, and countries like China paid attention. Instead of working more cooperatively, China built up big reserves, creating a debt imbalance that helped make the current financial crisis much worse than it might have been.

Geithner’s performance since his confirmation hasn’t surprised Keating at all. The dithering on bank issues has left the US with few realistic options outside of nationalization on some scale. The vacillation and fumbled rollouts of economic policy have left the markets with no confidence at all in his leadership, leading to a flight from capital investment clearly shown in the stock market performance of the last few weeks. Keating understands that lack of confidence from his own experiences with Geithner, but the US has just begun to figure out Geithner’s incompetence.

That sound you hear from down under? Laughter at the gullibility of Congress and the media in buying the argument that a man who couldn’t figure out his own taxes had the only qualifications for handling American economic policy. Our mainstream media never reported on this botch-up until it was far too late to do anything about it.