Hit me with your best shot
In light of all the recent discussion in the Christianity and Yoga post, I wanted to start an on-topic post about the evidence for and against Christianity.
Any and all are welcome, make your best point in favor of your preferred worldview or take your best shot against another worldview.
This post is completely open for apologetics and attacks, just no references to yoga.
Civil Unions Between Mother / Daughter
The Times of London quotes a woman who is asking – why can’t I get a civil union with my daughter so that I could give her the financial benefits that I want to give her? Albert Mohler discusses it in his Nov 28 podcast (scan up to minute 11). The woman asks some good questions:
I’m pro civil partnerships for gays — but why can’t I sign up to one with my daughter?… If I were gay, I could pop into a lesbian dive, pick up a cute little chickie, install her in my home and then, giddy with optimism and desire, trot her off to the register office a month later and make her my civil partner. Romance aside, by doing so I would be protecting the person I love most from the potential for financial disarray that, quite sensibly, is a frequently given reason for wanting to do it at all.
Dangerous moral equivalence
Dr Giles Fraser, the vicar of Putney, wrote an opinion piece for the Guardian that moved forward the debate over homosexuality within the Anglican church until he essentially equated those opposed to a gay bishop with Muslim terrorists.
“Ridiculous” demonic ritual
An 18-year-old Chicago man was arrested for kidnapping two small children with plans to use at least one for a demonic ritual.
Best Movies You’ve Never Seen
- A Life Less Ordinary – ALLO is a stylish and strange romantic comedy with stellar performances from everyone, including Ewan McGregor, Cameron Diaz, Delroy Lindo, and Holly Hunter as the tobacco-chewing, tough-chick angel.
- Brainstorm - Brainstorm, starring Christopher Walken, Natalie Wood (her last movie), and Louise Fletcher (remember Kai Winn from DS9?), has both a fantastic screenplay and acting. Fletcher’s heart-attack scene is amazing and powerfully done, and this movie is just plain cool.
- The Cell – The Cell is visually stunning, and Vincent D’Onofrio’s villianous serial killer is masterful.
- Double Take – a light but intelligent and funny identity-switch comedy with Orlando Jones and Eddie Griffin – with some great music to boot.
- ExistenZ – This low budget David Cronenburg film asks the question, "What happens when you can’t tell the game world from the real world?" It’s got a little too many gratuitous squishy noises and grossness, but nice job by Jude Law, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and great cameo by Willem Defoe.
Evolution Contributes Nothing to Medicine
Answers in Genesis has a nice post today called Evolution and Medicine. The author makes some very nice points, though the article is too superficial and doesn’t address the many contentions that might arise in such a discussion – in particular, Ed (one of our commenters) keeps claiming that diabetes treatment came out of an evolutionary view. I’ll have to research that. However, this article is a nice starting point, and summarizes the main issues regarding evolution and medicine.
…not one example could be put forth of the need for evolution (or belief in its tenets) in order to practice modern medicine.
Preachers and Politics
Mark D. Roberts concludes a series on Politics and the Church today by examining whether pastors should speak about politics from the pulpit and whether should even be allowed to endorse specific candidates. The entire series is worth reading as Mark has been wrestling with some difficult issues on the church’s role in politics, tax-emempt implications and whether churches even need to be involved in politics or specific races.
Three tragic deaths
Today marks the 42nd anniversary of the deaths of three influential men: John F. Kennedy, C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley. While one is remembered more, the other two (through their writing) have impacted my life much more.
I just finished reading Huxley’s A Brave New World Revisited. The man was able to gore everyone ox in equal portions. He commented on the numerous dangers he saw in the world through both fantasy (Brave New World) and reality (Brave New World Revisited). The world needs more men like Huxley who can go after both sides and still keep their respect.
Today to honor and remember C.S. Lewis I will give you some recent stories on him and the upcoming The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. During this Thanksgiving season take some time to be thankful for the legacy of these three men.
Chronicles of Confusion
While several crew and cast members of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe were busy downplaying the Christian symbolism in the film, a special "super trailer" was being shown to evangelical Christian leaders at Focus on the Family’s Colorado Springs campus.
Will Disney be able to pull off the balancing act of wooing Christians back to the theaters while not alienating secular audiences?
Enough
Like most people, I struggle with materialism. It’s easy to do in today’s culture that endlessly markets the latest and greatest things to us. But I recently came across a post at Attention Span that really convicted me in this area. He made an especially good point in answering the question of whether we deserve more than we have:
On Stem Cells, Liberals Lack Ethical Caution
Slate magazine (which has really good podcasts) has a nice article entitled Technical Knockout: The overconfidence of stem-cell liberals. Nice to see a more liberal publication recognizing such craziness, not just newsbusters ;) Here’s some nice quotes:
I’ve always liked Jews and liberals because they tend to prefer questions to answers. But maybe this is why I sometimes find myself leaning the other way on stem cells. On this issue, it’s the liberals who act as though they have the answers, possibly because they have the upper hand. To begin with, they have business on their side, and they swing that ax with all the shame of a clear-cutter.
And part of it is that Zoloth and other liberal evangelists for stem-cell research mirror the certainty of the Christian right just a little too well.
The article’s author also has an interesting book I want to check out – Bearing Right – How Conservatives Won the Abortion War.
NBC’s terrorists and murderers
In NBC’s new Pentagon drama, E-Ring, a group of religious fundamentalists take over another religion’s house of worship, holding those inside hostage. We have seen this countless times, especially in Muslim nations, where Islamic terrorist go into Christian churches and schools and start killing everyone they see.
However, NBC decided not to have that kind of “ripped from the headlines” show, but rather have the victims be a mosque full of Muslims and the terrorist be right-wing Christian militia.
Why Do Tempers Flare Regarding Evolution?
Scott Adams has been asking some non-committal questions regarding ID on his blog, and has been vociferously attacked, mostly by evolutionists, for bringing up his honest questions. By his own admission, he is being misquoted and misrepresented, which is leading him to believe that such people are not credible. I agree.
But the question arises in my mind, why do people get so hot about this? Even me, I get pissed off, and tend to use derogatory adjectives (arrogant, idiotic, illogical) when describing my ideological adversaries. Why?
Scott Adams on Intelligent Design
Interestinly, Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, has his own blog and has two lengthy posts on Intelligent Design. They are a humorous read, and not what you might expect.
I fully expected to validate my preconceived notion that the Darwinists had a mountain of credible evidence and the Intelligent Design folks were creationist kooks disguising themselves as scientists. That’s the way the media paints it. I had no reason to believe otherwise. The truth is a lot more interesting.
Parents have “no … right” to their children
Since many of our readers are against mandating that school children be exposed to things contrary to the values of their family in the case of intelligent design, I suppose the same people would take a similar stance on sex surveys for 6-year-olds.
“Follow your leaders, but first follow your God”
China’s state-run churches are losing out to and sometimes joining forces with the vast network or underground churches in the communist nation. The Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association and the Three-Selves Patriotic Movement, the state run Catholic and Protestant church, were created to stem the growth of underground Christianity, but it has done little to slow down the explosive movement. Cai Laiyi, whose son was arrested for printing Bibles, said, “We are simple people, but we do know this: In the Bible, it says follow your leaders, but first follow your God.”
Who’s the real Plame leaker?
Sorry to disappoint the liberals, but it ain’t Rove and it ain’t even Libby. Watergate journalistic icon, Bob Woodward said that he learned about Plame two months before Libby supposedly outed Joseph Wilson’s wif from someone not named Karl Rove or Scotter Libby.
Whining Pandas and Secular Fundmentalists
OMG (pun intended), the whining over ID is hurting my ears.
ID is not important because it purports to be science – what is worth noting is that something as simplistic as ID can sway the minds of the public.
Why is that significant? While evolutionary scientists and other pseudo-philosophers opine at the gullibility of the public, what they are missing is this – macro evolution is not science, and even the uneducated public sees this. ID is just the rumbling of increasing doubts in the silly evolutionary assumptions, now spreading to the edumacated.
The unscientific pro-choice position
In virtually every current debate, religious people are portrayed as being at odds with science. Whether it is intelligent design, the existence of miracles or even the need for God, those who hold to the possibility of a supernatural occurance are ridiculed by many as being contrary to the real world of science.
I will save those debates for another day, but one area where the religious position is clearly the most scientific is the pro-life position.
