The Truth Emporium

There's no change like ... no change

2006-11-10T21:18:00.000-08:00

For those of you who are tired of the “do-nothing” Congress of recent years ... get ready for two more years of the same.

A major reason why the current Congress has been unable to pass much significant legislation is that Republicans – despite having the majority in both houses – haven’t had a big enough majority, particularly when it’s concerned breaking Democratic filibusters. The next Congress will face essentially the same situation, the only difference being the reversal of parties – Democrats, despite having the majority in both houses, won’t have a big enough majority, particularly should Republicans decide to filibuster. Furthermore, should Democrats be able to pass any legislation through Congress, they’ll have to convince the opposition’s leader, President Bush, to add his John Hancock to it. Good luck with that. I have a feeling that the president with the fewest vetoes in history will soon begin racking them up. Congress, of course, can override a presidential veto with a two-thirds supermajority ... but I’m not sure that two-thirds of Congress can agree on anything these days.

Then there’s the yet-to-be-named “new direction” for Iraq that Democrats have been touting. Right now it’s a toss-up for which thing is most mysterious: the secret at the heart of ABC’s hit drama Lost, or this “new direction” for Iraq. I’d love to comment on the Democrats’ plan for that transitioning country, and I will ... as soon as they get around to figuring it out.

So the net result of this election? A rearrangement of the major parties, but the same low level of efficiency; the replacing of the party of the flawed Iraq plan with the party of no Iraq plan; the downfall of a party that wasted its mandate and the revival of a party that won primarily by default.

Make no mistake: Democrats won this election because Republicans shot themselves in the foot, not because Democrats had better ideas (they had few ideas at all, actually). And the only mandate from the American people in this election is a yet-to-be-named change in Iraq, which hardly comprises a resounding call for broad-based change in our nation. Yes, I know that there was some squawking about recent Republican scandals, and I’m sure that most Americans agree with me when I say that I want to see a scandal-free government, but no one with intellectual honesty can look me in the eye and say that the Democratic Party is now or will be without scandal (think Harry Reid and William Jefferson, for starters). A new breeze blowing in Washington? No. Just the same breeze blowing over a different pile of garbage.

Rosie Fever

2006-09-22T19:14:00.000-07:00

True colors always show themselves sooner or later. Hollywood and the liberal media were brutal on Mel Gibson when he released “The Passion of the Christ,” yet these same liberal elite were silent after Rosie O’Donnell recently said on ABC’s “The View” that “radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America where we have separation of church and state.” Besides being woefully ignorant (like so many Americans) of the true meaning of the First Amendment, O’Donnell should be grateful that we “radical” Christians are not like radical Muslims; if we were, her house and ABC’s studios would be burned to the ground by now. The very fact that nothing like this has happened shows the fallacy of O’Donnell’s view.

Not to be left outdone, Augusta's Kennebec Journal, in its 9/21 editorial "Defense bill is no place for culture war," starts off with a reasonably well-argued point, but then shows its real agenda – opposition to Christianity – when it says that evangelical Christians “need to abandon their holy war, and stop holding military salaries hostage to their narrow interests.” Holy war? Hostage? I daresay that such language, if used in a similar way in reference to Muslims or some other religious minority, would spark riots and Liberal outrage. I also believe, however, that the KJ would not have used such language in reference to any other faith, preferring to leave such insults for us “radical” Christians to deal with. Sounds like Rosie Fever is spreading.

Shake This

2006-09-15T20:20:00.000-07:00

Testament and The Lucifer Gospel. What are they?

Simply the two latest novels that propose the possibility of “shaking the foundations” of Christianity.

Since the volume of recent “faith-shaking” novels about Christianity has now officially reached (according to this official) nauseating proportions, I’ll cut straight to the point: You want to talk faith-shaking? Then consider this:

* Mormonism: Founded by Joseph Smith, a convicted fraud.

* Scientology: Founded by L. Ron Hubbard, a science-fiction author.

* Islam: Founded by Mohammad, an attention-seeker who searched and searched before finally finding some people who would believe his newly-invented faith – a faith founded on the pagan moon-god Allah, one of many gods worshiped by Mohammad’s contemporaries. Oh – and one more note of possible interest ... Mohammad was about as warlike and bloodthirsty as today’s “radical” (i.e. true) Muslims.

There are other examples, I’m sure, but I trust that you catch my drift. So let’s cut it with the drama that Jesus might not be who Christians claim He is. Enough with the codes and secret societies and “long-lost secrets”; there are plenty of truly fraudulent religious figures, both historically and in today’s world – write a book about them.

Intelli-Gent

2006-09-14T08:43:00.000-07:00

So get this: Talk-radio host Lionel believes that it’s impossible to be a thinking person while at the same time believing in what the Bible says. I guess he also believes that people can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.

I’m also guessing that he’s never read anything by C.S. Lewis or the like. In case you don’t know who Lewis is – he wrote the best-selling children’s series The Chronicles of Narnia. Now before you go laughing at the idea of a children’s author being an intellectual giant, know this: The Chronicles of Narnia contains more food for thought than any other children’s book I’ve ever read (just one of the reasons why it’s one of the best-selling series of all time). And more importantly, Lewis (also the author of many nonfiction works) wrote Mere Christianity, both a giant and a classic in the field of Christian apologetics. In Mere Christianity, Lewis penned the most complete and orderly – and most mind-bending – explanation of Christianity I’ve ever come across. It’s so well-done, in fact – so adept at presenting Christianity as the purest and highest form of logic – that it makes one wonder how they ever overlooked such obvious truth.

And let’s not forget the Founders. They were a regular parliament of owls ... and many of them were also decidedly Christian (Patrick Henry, John Jay and Samuel Adams, just to name a few). Go a bit farther down the line and you find people like Abraham Lincoln, who once said, “I believe the Bible is the best gift God has ever given to man. All the good from the Savior of the world is communicated to us through this book.” And yet this blockhead somehow came up with the Emancipation Proclamation. Go figure.

And since Lionel seems to specifically think that scientific pursuits and Bible-believing faith can’t go together, I also feel compelled to point out those scientific imbeciles Galileo Galilei and Antony von Leeweunhook. Christians are often criticized as being of the “Earth is flat” variety, yet Galileo was a strong proponent of the Copernican System – the belief that the planets revolved around the sun (not vice-versa), which we now know to be true. This is the same Galileo, by the way, who said, “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect intended us to forgo their use.” Sounds downright Ive League-ish, doesn’t it, Lionel?

I want to say here that Lionel truly is an intelligent guy – I know this from having listened to him dozens of times. He suffers, however, from a problem that is all too common in today’s America: egocentrism.

Much like those in medieval times who insisted that the universe must revolve around Earth, Lionel insists that everything revolves around his opinion and his desires – or in your case, your opinion and desires. According to Lionel, if there’s a God, His opinion doesn’t matter much, if it all, and you’re crazy for consulting with Him on how to live your life. But on that day when Lionel, like each of us, stands before God ... well, that’s one situation that Lionel won’t be able to talk his way out of.

Truth – It's a Fact

2006-05-22T11:41:00.000-07:00

Truth simply is. Truth doesn’t come undone because someone disagrees with it, and truth doesn’t become false because someone says it’s false. We now know that the Earth is round; people used to think it was flat. Did their misinformed opinion change the truth? Did the Earth stop being round and become flat because people said it was flat? No. They were just plain wrong. Period. End of story.

Now some people might say that the physical world has its facts but that the moral, spiritual, philosophical world doesn’t. But it does. It has to. There either is a God or there isn’t. And if He exists, He either loves us or hates us. He either created us or He didn’t. There either is a true, absolute moral standard or there isn’t. If this weren’t the case -- if there were no moral, spiritual, philosophical facts -- then all of life would be a crapshoot – no one would ever have the right to question another’s actions or accuse them of wrongdoing, for there could be no true wrongdoing, only a difference of opinion. I know that some people like to say and believe that each person “defines his own truth.” But that’s an intellectually-dishonest possibility. We are each human; we each live on the same planet in the same universe under the same natural laws; we each enter the world in the same fashion (physical birth) and leave the world in the same fashion (physical death). How, then, can you say that your truth is different than mine? Your experience is different, yes; your way of interpreting the evidence may be different, sure. But if you interpret things wrongly, you have not changed the truth. You are just plain wrong. Period. End of story.

Cracking the Code

2006-05-22T11:39:00.000-07:00

I agree that some of the reaction to both the movie and book versions of “The DaVinci Code” are overreactions. Yet some of it is not.

In this age of sound bites and half-truths (we used to call them lies), the American public, for all it’s potential, has grown lazy and ignorant. People tend to believe everything they see on TV, everything they read in the papers; they do little, if any, research for themselves. This is why, if you go by only what you see in the mainstream media, you likely think that not a single good thing has happened in Iraq during the last three years. But I digress.

Consider, for example, the issue of evolution. I work at a newspaper, and I can tell you with 100% confidence that every story on archaeology written by The Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times is written with the built-in assumption that evolution is a proven fact, as concrete as the sidewalks under pedestrians’ feet. A judge in this country has even ruled that science textbooks can’t even have a simple one-paragraph disclaimer reminding readers that evolution is a theory. And to correct a colleague, the evolution assumption of these news stories is not the product of individuals quoted in the stories (although it’s true that the quotees are always – I repeat: ALWAYS – in favor of evolution). No, the assumption is the product of the reporters; each and every one of them engages in bad journalism by first presuming a theory to be fact, then writing that “fact” into the story, and never – I repeat: NEVER – including opposing viewpoints.

Or consider abortion. How many stories do you ever read in the newspaper about women who had abortions and now suffer because of it? Who experience deep shame and regret? Who would tell others to avoid making the same mistake ... that is, if anyone from the mainstream media would actually take the time to interview them? But no. All you hear about are the glories of abortion, as trumpeted by Planned Parenthood and other such propaganda machines.

So how does this relate to “The DaVinci Code”? Well, I’ll give you a local example, which probably is true in your area, as well: Walk into the neighborhood Barnes & Noble bookstore and you can observe three noteworthy things: A large table full of DaVinci Code products (some of these, I concede, are anti-DaVinci Code, thought not most); an entire rack of anti-Biblical Jesus books on audio (conveniently located next to the checkout line); and the distinct absence of any strong up-front showing by orthodox Christian products (for these, you need to go to a far corner of the store, where other customers likely won’t be bothered by any proselytizing). And what stories make the papers? Ones about Magdalene theology, abusive priests, and the heretical Gospel of Judas; none, for example, about the great efforts by Christian child-assist groups Compassion International, WorldVision, and Franklin Graham’s Samaritan’s Purse.

But the DaVinci Code’s Sir Leigh Teabing may have said it best – and hung himself, as well as his author – when he said (my paraphrase), “The mind sees what it wants to see.” I’ve come to the following conclusion: Those who want to believe the true (Biblical) account of Jesus will believe, no matter how much junk is thrown at them, and those who don’t want to believe will never believe, even if all such controversial material was kept hidden from them, even if Jesus Himself stood in front of them, in the flesh. These people will always have a ready excuse.

So in the end, I say: Bring all the junk into the Light. The Bible, God’s Word, says that it will stand forever and everything else (including all false doctrines) will pass away, and that the products of darkness cannot survive long once exposed to the Light. So let’s have a discussion about this particular doctrine (Magdalene theology, the Gnostic gospels, etc.). After all, it’s not often these days that we get to talk legally about Jesus on such a large public stage.

DaVinci DeCeit

2006-05-22T11:37:00.000-07:00

The May 5 Kennebec Journal illustrates the hoopla surrounding “The DaVinci Code.” A column by Jim Brunelle makes an interesting point. So does a KJ editorial – if, in fact, this editorial is an honest assessment of the situation, and I’m not sure that it is. The editorial states, essentially, that those who have genuine faith will never be shaken from it, and I agree. But there’s a problem hidden in there. To paraphrase a colleague, only the most naïve would believe the claims found in “The DaVinci Code,” or let those claims sway them from the truth about Jesus Christ – but the sad fact is that there are many people in today’s America who actually are that naïve when it comes to the Bible and what it says about Jesus. We now have at least two generations in this country that, unlike previous American generations, were not raised on the Bible. They don’t experience the Bible in school; they don’t experience it in church – either because they go to liberal churches that distort the Bible or don’t even crack it open, or because they don’t go to church at all; and they are increasingly experiencing less and less of it in the public realm because of the rampant Jesusphobia that is running amuck in our country. Hence, the editorial, when stating that there’s no cause for alarm from such things as “The DaVinci Code,” is speaking either from the viewpoint of uninformed naivety, or with the deliberate intent of leading people farther down the slippery slope away from truth.

Homo Creativus

2006-05-22T11:27:00.000-07:00

Evolution. It’s all around us ... right? Well, look again.

Observe your fellow homo sapiens, and it won’t take long to discover that we are a creative breed. We’re always making things, inventing things, improving things (this last one, I admit, is in many cases debatable, but I trust that you get the point). In other words, the products of human ingenuity are made, not evolved – they didn’t get there on their own; we made them and put them there. Take a look around you: roads, street signs, traffic lights, buildings, houses, bridges, dams, governments, entertainment – these things did not evolve in the Darwinian sense of the word. Whenever any one of us looks at any of these objects, we know that they didn’t get there on their own; we know that somebody put them there. If evolution were true, then, wouldn’t it be the driving force in all of existence, not just part of existence? Wouldn’t it effect not only the nonhuman realm, but the human realm as well (i.e., the products of our hands)? I believe so, but this is clearly not the case; we don’t evolve things, we make them. Why is that?

According to the Bible, humans – and only humans – are made in God’s image. And since God is creative, therefore we are creative. You see in humans a real creativity, a real spark of life, that no other breed has. Take a look at the rest of the natural world. Ants build colonies, yes; beavers build dams and bees build hives. But they’ve been building them the same way for thousands of years, as long as they have existed. They don’t change. Why? Because they’re programmed, because they have no free will – because they’re not made in God’s image. They’re beautiful yes, but still different. Humans, on the other hand, have progressed, in many ways, over time: we have better technology than what we had 500 or 1000 years ago; we have more dependable means of transportation, faster forms of communication, improved medical care. If evolution were true, why then isn’t there at least one other creature, out of the millions that exist in the world, with a level of intelligence comparable to ours? Why are we the only species with a real creativity, a real spark of life? And consider the full implication of evolution being true, if it were: there would either be no God, or else He would be just as much a product of evolution as we, and therefore as fallible as we, and therefore really not of much use. And there would also be no true, absolute moral standard, which brings me back to a previous argument – none of us would have the right to define anything as right or wrong, good or bad, and we should consider any form of government to be both a farce and an oppressive thing.

The Abortion Distortion, Part III

2006-02-26T11:30:00.000-08:00

Perhaps the silliest thing concerning abortion, if any aspect of it can be called silly, is that the current debate over it’s constitutionality is built on the wrong starting point.

In Roe, the Supreme Court decided that the Constitution provides for a woman’s right to an abortion. Were they right? Well, yes and no. Amendment 10 to the Constitution, in laymen’s terms, says that any power not specifically granted to the government by the Constitution, nor prohibited to the states, is to be left to the states to decide as they will. Now, if you read the Constitution, and also take into consideration the priorities of the Founders, as well as the time in which they lived, it’s clear that the document ignores the issues of health care and sexuality in general, abortion in particular, in regard to both the government and the states, and that it does so because these issues weren’t critical in the process of forming our republic. Since that is the case, then according to the Tenth Amendment, these issues should be left to the states to decide. That means that each state, by referendum or through its elected representatives at the state and/or national levels, should have the opportunity to decide the issue of abortion for itself. But the Supreme Court, in its Roe decision, denied us this opportunity. Even though I disagree with abortion, I recognize that every person in every state should have a right to weigh in on this matter – does have a right under a properly interpreted Constitution. That being said, it’s true that women do have a right to an abortion – if the majority of people in their state take that side of the issue. If, however, the majority in that state opposes abortion, then women in that state do not have that right.

You see, there’s a great difference between saying that the Constitution allows for something, and saying that the Constitution prohibits the disallowing of that thing. That’s the mistake the Supreme Court made in Roe – they were right to say that abortion could be allowed, but they were wrong to say that it had to be allowed, that it cannot be disallowed. According to the Tenth Amendment, it’s up to the people to decide the issue, and they can decide in either direction. In fact, the very phrase upon which abortion is constitutionally justified – “no one shall be deprived of life, liberty or property” – also gives constitutional justification to the banning of abortion. The problem is, people either ignore or are unaware of the rest of that phrase. Here it is in full: “No one shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law” (italics mine). Did you see that? Amazing. People can be deprived of life, liberty or property if there is due process of law. And this happens all the time in our society. For example, we’re deprived of the liberty to legally drive 100 miles an hour on our public roads. You or I may disagree with this law, but it came about fair and square – through due process of law. Likewise, women can be denied, through due process of law, the right to an abortion.

At least, that’s how things should be, but the high court’s flawed logic and misinterpretation of the Constitution have short-circuited this option. And unfortunately, the Roe distortion lives on in the minds of many – most, I daresay. People are, in one sense, debating the wrong question: While I agree that the question of abortion’s rightness or wrongness is the chief moral concern, the question we should be pressing, from a Constitutional perspective, is whether the banning of abortion, as well as the allowance of it, is constitutional, and the answer to that is “yes.”

The Abortion Distortion, Part II

2006-02-26T11:29:00.000-08:00

So yes, the Supreme Court supremely botched this issue from the beginning. And Thomasson made the biggest botch of all when he decided that scientific and legal standards are more important than religious standards. I quote now the last paragraph of his column: “Doctors and pharmacists who form associations based on religious convictions seem beholden to standards other than science and the care of all patients required by their oath.” Why yes, Mr. Thomasson, they are bound to standards other than science and the Hippocratic oath, higher standards, and this is as it should be, especially since the morning-after pill has nothing to do with saving a mother’s life. It’s not like there’s a woman on the floor bleeding to death and the pharmacist is ignoring her. The morning-after pill amounts to a contraceptive version of elective surgery, and elective surgery is voluntary – it does not involve a life-or-death situation for the patient, therefore the doctor or pharmacist is under no obligation to assist, especially if they have religious or personal convictions regarding that particular situation. Don’t believe me? Read on.

Mr. Thomasson is keen on quoting the Hippocratic oath, declaring that any doctor or pharmacist, because they have taken this oath, is obligated to help any person at any time in any situation, regardless of religious or personal conviction. Well, I’d never read the Hippocratic oath, so I decided to check it out, and this is what I found: There are two versions, the classical and the modern, and both of them serve to shoot down Mr. Thomasson’s arguments.

First, the modern version. It states that “I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures which are required” (italics mine). Someone seeking the abortion pill isn’t sick; they have no disease, they have no illness. This version also states: “Above all, I must not play at God.” To me, this means that it’s God’s right, not ours, to determine the beginning and ending of our lives. Of course, Thomasson plays liberal advocate by saying, “When does life begin? No one seems to know for certain. Legal authorities have been arguing this question forever and some standards have been established for judging criminal cases.” Again, Mr. Thomasson has things backwards when determining who is the proper authority and whose standards are the right ones. Here he argues that legal authorities have established some standards, but why do legal authorities rate so high in this situation? They’re specialty is law, not morality, theology or science, which are the three most important factors in this case. That’s why the three-trimester system for determining when abortions are legally OK is wrong – it was instituted by a Supreme Court judge. How bloody foolish is that? And I’ll correct Mr. Thomasson by stating that some of us do know for certain when life begins – at conception. Many disagree with this, but think about it this way: If it takes the union of a sperm and an egg for human life to happen (as all doctors and scientists will confirm), then does it not make sense that life begins when that union takes place? Every auto-racing fan knows that the green flag must drop in order for a race to start, so it would be foolish to say that the dropping of the green flag does not constitute the start of the race. The race certainly doesn’t start before the flag drops, and once the cars have taken off, the race has clearly begun – you can’t begin a race that is already in progress.

So it is with human life. Once the sperm and egg are together, the process has started. It didn’t start before the union of sperm and egg, and to say that it doesn’t start until it’s already been going for six months is just plain foolishness, denying reality. You can’t start something that’s already begun. At that point you can only stop it, and that’s just what abortion does.

Concerning the classical version, things get even worse for Thomasson’s arguments. Listen to this blunt language (which should also strike fear into the hearts of euthanasia advocates): “I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.”

Wow. Can’t get more direct than that, can you? And to top it all off, both versions speak about a doctor using his best judgment. So if the abortion pill goes against a pharmacist’s or doctor’s best judgment, it is not only his right but his duty to not go against that judgment, for that is what he is swearing.

The Abortion Distortion, Part I

2006-02-26T11:27:00.000-08:00

The Supreme Court announced on Feb. 21 that it will take up the issue of partial-birth abortion – otherwise known by the politically correct phrase ‘late-term abortion’ (kinda hides the ugly truth, doesn’t it?) – and this couldn’t have happened at a better time.

While abortion is one of the most heated topics of debate in our country, it’s also one of the most misunderstood, with many people – especially abortion proponents – being woefully ignorant of the misapplied logic behind Roe v. Wade. Roe, of course, is the landmark 1973 decision that not only declared abortion to be legal, but a fundamental constitutional right that cannot be denied. This decision can be summed up in three words: Just plain wrong. And when I say “wrong,” I don’t just mean from a moral standpoint, but also from a legal standpoint: Roe doesn’t have a legality to stand on. For a fuller analysis of the sheer legal lunacy of this decision, see Mark Levin’s Men In Black; but for now, I ask that you hear me out, because what I’m about to say won’t be pointed out in most mainstream news sources.

Out of all the individual aspects comprising the abortion debate, the thing that sticks in my craw most painfully on the moral side of the issue is the often-voiced notion of “the health of the mother.” Thanks largely to Sandra “I’m a liberal in conservatives’ clothing” Day O’Connor, it’s nearly entrenched in legal minds and the public’s mind that any restriction on abortion must always allow this exception: that an abortion must be allowed to take place if the health of the mother is in jeopardy. Now, I’m going to give you three seconds to figure out the one absurdity inherent in that principle. Ready? Go. One … two … three. Did you get it? Well, hopefully you did, but just in case you didn’t: Why is it that proponents view the mother’s health as more important than the child’s? No wonder we can’t convince people that abortion is wrong; they think that the only person who matters in this situation is the mother. Why? Why is that? Tell me, if you please, because I want to know. On tonight’s CBS evening news, Eve Gartner of Planned Parenthood said that the mother’s health is paramount. Really? I’ll say it again – why is that? Why isn’t the baby’s health, the baby’s life, paramount? I don’t mean to sound cruel, but sometimes it’s nature’s course that the mother dies in childbirth – with humans as well as the animal kingdom. She dies so that the child gets to live. It seems selfish to me that the mother – someone who’s already had a chance to live – would prevent her child from getting to enjoy the same opportunity. It makes no sense to me; there are two people involved, but apparently only one who counts.

And did I say two? I should have said three. Yes, that’s right, don’t forget about the father. Yeah, yeah, spew all the liberal lines you want – “It’s the woman’s body; it’s her right to decide” – but it takes two to tango, so it should take two to decide. The child is half his, after all.

Some more ridiculousness for you to chew on (and maybe choke on), this from a Dan K. Thomasson column that appeared in the Sunday, Feb. 12, edition of the Kennebec Journal (Augusta, Maine). The background of the situation is this: Wal-Mart has refused to sell the morning-after abortion pill and is now being pressured to reverse its position. In his column, Thomasson rails against Wal-Mart’s anti-pill stance, stating that the company is not only undermining patients’ rights, but also putting people’s lives in jeopardy.

My first question for Thomasson is this: Why do you make this sound like a life-threatening situation for the mother? She’s not going to die if she doesn’t get the morning-after pill. On the other hand, if she does get ahold of the pill, the baby will die. Call it another case of screwed-up, “me first” ethics.

My next point of contention is this: Just because something is legal doesn’t mean that everyone has to like it – and it doesn’t mean that every business has to sell it. Free enterprise dictates that a company can sell any product it wants, so long as the product is legal. But nowhere does free enterprise – or the law, for that matter – dictate that a company must sell every legal product. Wal-Mart doesn’t sell cars, after all, even though they’re legal. Maybe we should force every Wal-Mart store to open a showroom. Or maybe we should force health-food stores to sell cigarettes.

Furthermore – and of much greater import, in my opinion – to force a pharmacist to dispense a medication that violates his religious beliefs (such as the morning-after pill) is a clear case of forcing him to go against the religious doctrine of his choice, which is a true violation of the First Amendment’s oft-misinterpreted free-exercise clause. Our Constitution grants religious freedom a much higher priority than health care – in fact, our Constitution doesn’t even mention health care, while it places religious freedom in the forefront of the Bill of Rights, which I can only presume means that the Founders viewed religious freedom – along with freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom to peaceably assemble – as being of the utmost importance. Abortion, on the other hand, is based on a so-called “right to privacy” (established in the Supreme Court’s 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut decision), a right based on one word – “liberty” – found in the phrase “life, liberty, or property” of the 5^th and 14^th amendments – amendments, by the way, that were intended, respectively, to protect people accused of crimes, and to ensure the rights of the newly freed slaves – both having nothing to do with privacy, sexuality or abortion.

Ignoring the Pink Elephant

2006-02-26T11:24:00.000-08:00

One of the chief arguments by evolutionists against intelligent design is that it’s not scientific. By why is that? Why do they consider it “unscientific”? After all, evolutionists and IDers are dealing with essentially the same body of information, the same set of known facts. And they are both conducting valid field research (observation) and labwork. So how can the one be “scientific” but not the other?

The obvious, and correct, answer – according to evolutionists – is that ID is unscientific because it involves the supernatural (some sort of creator/designer). This fact, according to evolutionists, goes against established “scientific standards” and offends the dignity of science. But I disagree on two counts.

First, it needs to be understood that evolution, depending on just how you look at it, is either atheistic or agnostic (agnostic, says an evolutionist acquaintance of mine). But according to the arguments I laid out in The Big Lie, both atheism and agnosticism are religions just as much as creationism/Christianity, and therefore, because they address the concept of God in some way, shape or form, they bring some sort of supernatural factor into the picture. Now, since both basic groups (evolutionists and creationists) are working from the same body of available scientific data, and since you can’t physically see evolution any more than you can physically see God, it logically follows that evolutionists are taking as much a leap of faith as creationists, only in a different direction. It takes as much faith to believe in evolution as it does to believe in creation.

If evolutionists would only take the time to consider, in detail, the arguments set forth by creationists (such as those of Ralph Muncaster in Dismantling Evolution), they would have the chance to see that IDers are indeed utilizing scientific methods, working with scientific data, and using visible results to support an invisible conclusion – all of this in much the same way that evolutionists are.

The second count on which I disagree has to do with the Creator Himself. I agree that it’s possible, though unlikely, to explain everything in naturalistic terms only, even creation. Some creationists may think this sounds treasonous or even blasphemous, but consider this: When God created matter, He created natural things (like cells) and natural processes (like photosynthesis), so those natural things can be explained in naturalistic terms – but only to a point: The matter and the natural processes were still created, so the Creator cannot be left out of the equation.

And that is precisely my point. If God created everything, then not only must the supernatural be given due consideration in naturalistic discussions (since the natural depends on the supernatural for its existence), but it must be recognized that God Himself stands atop the mountain as the ultimate scientist. And if God is the ultimate scientist, how can involving Him in the discussion be considered unscientific? You can explain to me the process of photosynthesis in naturalistic terms if you want, but if God created the plant matter in which photosynthesis occurs, you can’t ignore His involvement in the situation.

Mud in the Road

2006-02-16T19:20:00.000-08:00

As they proceeded from the mouth of God and traveled down the road towards their appointed places in the future, the promises of God left a trail, traces of themselves, like when a truck has gone through a mud puddle and then driven down the road, leaving wet, muddy tracks along the dry pavement. We who are on the Earth live between the two locations – between the time in eternity past when God made and sent forth His promises, and the time in the future (either near of far) when the promises will become manifest in our lives, though we can’t see them now. What we have to do is pick up the trail. Hebrews 11:1, in the New King James Version, says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Here faith is described as “substance” and “evidence.” First, the substance: The promises of God, which are in the future somewhere, are the “things hoped for” spoken about in Hebrews 11:1 – not “hoped for” in the modern sense, as in “I don’t know if it will happen, but I want it to – I hope it does,” but in the divine sense that it is a guarantee, so that when you are “hoping for” something, you are actually “looking for” it, expecting it to happen at any time. Now, as I said before, when the promises traveled away from God and out into a future time, they left a trail, similar to muddy tires on dry pavement. Well it is easy enough to see the substance that those muddy tires leave behind. It is also easy enough to reach down and pick up that substance; it takes hardly any effort at all. It also takes little effort to believe that the muddy truck is somewhere down the road. Well, that’s how simple faith is – or at least, that’s how simple it’s supposed to be. You believe in God (it’s very hard not to; such disbelief would be like looking at the mud on the road and saying that no truck has passed through), and if you read the Bible, you can see the many wonderful promises of God, so all that’s left for you to do is to reach down with near-effortlessness and pick up the substance, the residue, that the promises have left behind as they journeyed from God, because the substance left behind by the unseen things (the things hoped for) is faith, and when you pick up the faith, you are holding in your hands the evidence of things not seen, just as if you were holding the muddy evidence of the unseen truck. The substance left behind is faith, and faith is the evidence. This is what the Bible is getting at when it talks about childlike faith, and how we must come to God with only this kind of faith – as adults, we tend to complicate things, but it’s really as simple as seeing mud in the road and realizing that something has passed through.

Devolution

2006-02-15T21:09:00.000-08:00

You know, it’s ironic that the proponents of evolution just keep devolving. They’re scared, running back into the hills from which we supposedly crawled (or was it “slithered”?). The only thing that seems to be evolving is their fear of serious debate on the issue, a fear that’s now manifesting itself more and more as a tragic comedy.

Regarding the evolution-creationism-intelligent-design debate, and how it should be handled in public schools, evolution supporters contend that intelligent design isn’t “scientific,” but merely repackaged religion – although they allow that intelligent design could be taught in other types of classes (e.g., religion or social studies).

Well, they’ve already proved themselves wrong on that point. Back during the first part of January, a group of parents sued a California school district, accusing it of violating church-state separation because it offered an elective philosophy course about intelligent design titled “Philosophy of Design.” Consider that. It was a philosophy course, not a science class. And it was elective, meaning voluntary. Are these parents saying that it’s wrong to teach philosophy in philosophy class? That offering kids a choice is tyrannical, somehow forcing them towards religion (Christianity in particular)? Well, as much fun as I’m having with the obvious absurdities, the real motive of the parents is serious: They want God, and everything to do with Him – religion, Jesus, Christianity, creationism – out of our schools. Period.

And the spineless school-district officials caved, halting the course and saying that they would never again offer a class “that promotes or endorses creationism, creation science or intelligent design.” You mean that even if science someday proves the existence of an intelligent creator, this school district still won’t endorse such a view. Yup. Apparently so.

This case is not only a violation of free-speech and religion rights, it’s also a violation of freedom of thought. Proponents of evolution don’t want opposing ideas even whispered under the school roof, which is both lame and sad. Supporters of ID and creationism are routinely accused of hiding behind science, trying to “sneak” religious belief into schools. Well, I’d say that evolution proponents are the ones hiding. They’re always preaching that they seek the truth, the facts, about the world and the universe in which we live, yet if a supernatural designer had anything at all to do with the existence of this world and universe, anything at all, then evolutionists are choosing to ignore one whole half of the equation – the unseen half.

But doesn’t science claim to deal only with what is seen, what is observable, not the philosophical? That’s what it claims, but they’ve shown their deceit on that point as well.

Consider the following quote from a pro-evolution Sacramento Bee editorial of August 2005: “Science can only deal with what is observable. It is not equipped to deal with ultimate questions and divine intervention, nor does it claim to.” Sounds fair enough, but in reality, the writer of this editorial is either ignorant or a liar. First, he states that science isn’t equipped to deal with ultimate questions – questions, in my opinion, like “Where did we come from?” – yet this is precisely the ultimate question that science attempts to answer with its theory of evolution, which states (and here I speak in general laymen’s terms) that all life forms can be traced back to a pool of primordial soup that somehow caused life to spring forth (I’m still waiting for evolutionists to explain where this primordial soup got its genetic instructions).

He also states that science can only deal with what is observable. Why, then, is science delving into the unobservable? For that is precisely what it does when it expounds its theory of evolution. It takes at least as much faith to believe in evolution as it does to believe in a Creator, and evolution does as much work “filling in the gaps” as creationism is accused of doing. You don’t believe so? What would you call it, then, when an evolutionist is presented with two sets of similar-yet-different bones, one set a bit older than the other, and concludes that the older morphed into the younger – a conclusion reached because he simply presumes that this thing called evolution is real and was the cause? I call that “filling in the gaps,” the very thing creationists are accused of doing. After all, where’s the lab work, the reliable, reproducible results – derived from experimentation – that prove that macroevolution (the changing of one species into another) is even possible, much less probable? In all the reading I’ve done on the creation/evolution debate, I’ve yet to see one example of evolutionists supporting their theory by means of the accepted scientific method. In my mind, all of this adds up to making evolution no less religious than creationism, and no more scientific. Evolution, in the end, boils down to a form of atheism, or at least agnosticism, with its followers believing whatever the priesthood of secular science tells them, their faith resting in the words published in science journals.

The latest episode of the hit series “Devolution” appeared in today’s newspapers (Wednesday, 2.15.06). According to an Associated Press report: “The Ohio school board voted Tuesday to eliminate a passage in the state’s science standards that critics said opened the door to the teaching of intelligent design. The Ohio Board of Education decided 11-4 to delete material encouraging students to seek evidence for and against evolution.”

To put that in laymen’s terms, the Ohio Board of Education believes that its dangerous for kids to think. They’re downright petrified of it. “Gee,” said the critics one morning when the thought of the horrific possibility struck them, “if these kids start investigating for themselves, they might discover that evolution isn’t true!”

That’s right, folks. And there’s more. According to the AP story, “the 2002 science standards said students should be able to ‘describe how scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory.’” To me, that sounds like a good thing – encouraging students to keep abreast of the latest scientific happenings. Heck, it even leaves room for evolutionists to strengthen their position. But of course, it also left room for evolution to be disproved by students’ investigation, so in spite of the fact that the standards included a disclaimer stating that the teaching of intelligent design was not required, critics got scared when they realized that ID could possibly be taught.

So let’s see … where does that leave us? Oh yeah. Not only is ID banned from science class, it’s also banned from “other” types of classes like philosophy, and now scientists and educators don’t even want students to think critically. Yeah, I’d say that evolutionists know they’re in trouble.

Listen, I understand that science must deal with theories in order to discover facts, but why is it, pray tell, that evolution is the only scientific theory that has entered the public consciousness in a large way, the only scientific theory that is well-known amongst the general populace? Could it be because it does, in fact, deal with ultimate questions, and because its proponents – the enemies of true faith – don’t want the true answers to be known? Why else would science claim to deal only with “hard, observable facts,” and yet put forth a theory that has no hard, observable evidence?

Folks, I’ll put it to you straight and simple: This is part of an assault on God, and on people’s right to know and serve Him. The parents in California, the Ohio Board of Education, and the politically-correct paranoids in this country – along with many other liberals – want a God-free America. They want God out of schools, out of government, out of the workplace, out of the public square. If that’s how you feel, move to China. They’d love to have you. As for America, God is here to stay.

Blow Up the Outside World

2006-02-10T11:13:00.000-08:00

There was a time in this country when there was only one world – the planet Earth, and we lived in it. Seed was sown in the spring, the shoots were nurtured throughout the summer, the full-grown crops were harvested in the fall, and the canned goods derived from these crops helped families survive the winter, at the end of which they would do it all over again. Some people, of course, dealt more with livestock. Same basic scenario, though. All of it depended on getting the right weather – just enough rain, just enough sunshine, no drought, no bad frosts before the fall harvest, no severe or dragged-out winters that would kill animals and hold up spring planting.

The real kicker here, in case you hadn’t guessed it, is that you can’t depend on the weather. People knew that; they knew what they were up against, and they knew that they couldn’t conquer the situation on their own. But they also lived in a time – and this would probably be 75 years ago and earlier – when the largest number of people had a firm reliance on God. They knew that they were at the mercy of the world in which they lived, and that they couldn’t control that world – but they also knew that the world was at the mercy of the One who created it, so therefore they placed their trust in Him, and also gave the credit to Him.

Today, though, there exists another world, an outside world of our own invention. This world – we’ll simply call it “modern technology” – has a lot of plusses: time-saving devices and faster communication come to mind. But it also has a lot of negatives: we take the time saved and fill it with unnecessary busywork, thus not really saving any time, and the faster and easier communication hasn’t really brought us closer together or dispelled the feelings of isolation and loneliness that many people experience. Most significant, however, is that this outside world in which we largely now live has become a grand illusion for us, and a great drug as well. We retreat into our cyberworld of email, chat rooms, word processing programs and spreadsheets; we busy ourselves in the technoland of household gadgets and virtual-reality gimmicks. We think we are safe. Deep down, I believe, most of us know that we’re not, but it’s easier and more comfortable to go along with the ruse. We think that technology (nee science) will solve our every problem. We believe that it’s the answer to everything. It medicates our fears, makes us feel comfortably numb. It puts us in control of our world.

And that’s when the hurricane strikes. Or the earthquake, or the tornado. Or the monsoon, or the eruption, or the tsunami. And that’s when our technology shuts down, the outside world blows up, and we find out (or are roughly reminded) that we’re not in control, after all. We find ourselves thrust into the strange world of reality, needing to get the spring crops in the ground but having not the slightest idea how to do it. Or maybe we do know how, or have a hunch at least, but we’re afraid to do it. We’re scared to give up the control that we never had. We’re scared to let go of the illusion, our security blanket.

A couple of weeks ago I was at the office (I work at a newspaper) when something happened and we lost electricity. For 45 minutes we went without. Thankfully I had a magazine and some sunlight by which to read, but I looked around at the others in the newsroom a couple of times, and what I saw spoke volumes. Everything in our building was dependent on electricity, which meant that we could do no work for the time being. A few of my co-workers whiled away the minutes chatting, but several others sat unmoving in the dimness, uttering and doing little or nothing. Now, maybe some of them were taking advantage of the rare opportunity for quiet solitude, but judging by the time in which we live – a time when silence is as rare as gold, a time when society treats rest and reflection as something akin to a crime – my best educated guess (and an accurate one, I believe) is that most of these quiet ones, and maybe even some of the chatters, had no idea what to do with themselves during that time. “Rest? Quiet? Slow down or even (oh, horrors!) stop for a few minutes? What are you talking about? We don’t know how to do that!”

I’ve been reading the book of Job, and I came across a verse today that confused me at first: “He seals the hand of every man, that all men may know His work” (Job 37:7, New King James Version). “He” refers to God, and the passage including verse 7 deals with the mightiness of God – in particular, His control over nature and what He does with it. Anyway, my Bible has a footnote for this verse, and this is what it says: “Men cease their work in the face of God’s elements” (“elements” referring to rain, snow, etc.). When I read that, something clicked in my mind. I thought back to the times I’ve spent mowing lawns during the last decade – specifically, the times when I had to cease work because of rain. The memory of those times reminded me that no matter what I do, or what we humans do collectively, we can’t prevent the illusion from being shattered, we can’t keep our made-up, rickety technoworld from crumbling around us at some point. Which means, of course, that we can’t forever ignore God. We can’t keep pretending that He’s not there, or that He’s there but secondary to the world we’ve invented. We need to recognize that in spite of whatever advances we’ve made, we’ve also retreated – and in the most important of things, no less. We can’t control our world, and we can’t hide from God – nor does He want us to. He wants us to blow up that outside world and get a taste of the real thing: Him. And since that false world is going to collapse at some point anyway, why delay the inevitable? Blow up your outside world today, and start depending on the Dependable One.

The Great Lie

2006-02-07T20:50:00.000-08:00

America has been taken in by an ingenious but evil plan. The scheme itself, and the revelation of learning about it, are simply amazing to me. It is The Great Lie, and it consists of two parts: 1.) the false interpretation of “separation of church and state,” and 2.) the false estimation of what constitutes “religion” and “being religious.”

While it’s true that the phrase “separation of church and state” doesn’t exist in the Constitution (it was in a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to a church group), the principle does indeed exist in the First Amendment. Now before my fellow Christians and conservatives roast me for being blasphemous, let me explain: First, here is what the First Amendment says concerning religion: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The first part of that sentence is called “the establishment clause,” and the second part is called “the free exercise clause.” To put them into laymen’s terms, the first part means that government can’t have an official religion and force people to follow it, and the second part means that the government can’t prevent a person from following whatever religion he chooses. This is the true meaning of “separation of church and state,” and Christians shouldn’t be scared by that idea; in fact, they should embrace it, because Jesus didn’t force anyone to follow Him, or forcibly prohibit anyone from following other beliefs, and we Christians aren’t to force anyone either, so why should we want or expect the government to? However – and this is where I stand wholeheartedly with my Christian brothers and sisters – the courts and many others in society have mistakenly interpreted “separation of church and state” to mean that government and religion can’t have any dealings with each other. At all. Period. This idea is wrong, and the reason why can be explained by another principle: “force vs. endorse.”

The true meaning of the establishment clause is that government can’t force anyone to believe a certain way, but nowhere does the Constitution say that government can’t endorse a certain religion. Consider the following example: The courts have ruled that if a governmental entity -- a town government, let’s say -- wants to display a Nativity scene, which of course represents Christianity, the scene must also include elements representing other beliefs -- a Santa Claus representing secular humanism, for example. Such a decision by the courts is based on the erroneous interpretation of the Constitution -- that endorsing a particular belief is the same as forcing. But let’s consider this case in light of the correct interpretation of the Constitution: If a town government chooses to set up an unadulterated Nativity scene, is it violating the establishment clause by forcing people to believe in Christianity? No. Is it violating the free exercise clause by prohibiting anyone from following any other belief system? No. Then the town government has done nothing unconstitutional. That is, it hasn’t forced anybody to do anything, it has merely endorsed what it thinks is right, and other people can agree or disagree as they will. That is democracy, after all.

Of course, such religious endorsement is committed every single day by every single government official. Yes, it’s true. Don’t believe me? I’m not surprised; the reason you don’t believe me, if in fact you don’t, is due to the second part of The Great Lie: the wrong idea about what constitutes “religion” and “being religious.”

The same people who walk around carrying the club of “false separation of church and state” are also wearing the cloak of “nonreligion.” Leaning upon their false notion of separation for legitimacy in their argument, they publicly cringe and sometimes even vehemently protest when “religious” people make a concerted effort to influence policy based on their “religious” beliefs, but what many people don’t realize is that everyone is religious. That’s right. You see, what the “false separation” people want you to think is that only those belonging to an organized religion are “religious,” and therefore, if you don’t belong to an organized religion, you certainly can’t be guilty of mixing religion and politics. But here’s the rub: Even if you don’t subscribe to an organized religion, you still have beliefs of some kind, so those beliefs are your religion. Even if you merely believe in some vague supreme power in the universe, and that the most important thing in life is being a “good person” and doing “good things” (please see secular humanism), then that is your religion. Or if you believe that animals are divine beings or that trees can talk, then that’s your religion. The point is, everybody has beliefs, therefore everybody is religious, and whatever a person’s beliefs are will lead them, on a daily basis, to endorse actions that are based on those beliefs.

Do you see the great deception? Those who aren’t “religious” (that is, those who don’t belong to an organized religion) are able to promote and enact policies based on their beliefs because they don’t appear “religious” (even though they really are), but as soon as someone “religious” (that is, someone who follows an organized religion) speaks out, they are beaten mercilessly with the club of “false separation of church and state” carried by those seemingly “unreligious” people (though they prefer to not call themselves “unreligious,” but “unbiased” or “objective” – or “nonreligious”). The result is that “people of faith” – especially Christians – get flogged every time they try to get involved, while the seemingly religiously-benign people have their way with the world. And do you now see why I describe them as wearing a cloak and carrying a club? Because, even though they truly are religious, they hide behind a screen of “nonreligiosity” and then, when the “religious” person pipes up, they whip out the club of “false separation” and beat him over the head with it.