Mmmmm . . . Oreos . . . and Intelligent Design?

As usual, philosophy has some fancy terms to describe simple concepts.  Things are caused by agents or events.  The 10th domino falls because of the event preceding it (the 9th domino falling), but the first domino fell because an agent pushed it over.

Ignoring agent causation is a problem for Darwinists.  We use the inference of agent causation — or design – all day, every day.  The classic “watch on the beach” illustration is just one of countless examples one could use.  If you find a watch on a beach you infer that someone dropped it, not that it came into being by an infinitely long series of random events.  Crime investigations assume agent causation.  And on and on.

Greg Koukl makes this distinction in his essay on Oreos & Origins:

Now to give you an illustration about how the game is fixed by the courts and by the educational system and by the scientific community, I have suggested what I have called the Oreo Experiment. You go to your chemistry teacher and ask if he is able to look at a solution and describe, based on his scientific testing, what is in the solution and how the solution, the precipitate, came to be. The precipitate is the heavy stuff that falls out, precipitates in the solution. In a beaker, for example. It seems that someone who is well-versed in the area of chemistry and well-versed in the area of physics can look and measure and test and describe what happened in a simple kind of thing.

Your chemist teacher takes the challenge and you say, “Okay, I’m going to put out a beaker full of stuff. There you see it, and now I’m covering it. Tomorrow we’ll uncover it and you’ll see something that has precipitated. Then it is your job to figure out how that happened.” Sure. Fair enough. I know science. I know the laws of chemistry. We’ll do it.

However, just before the chemist comes into the room the next morning to begin his experiments to look and observe the precipitate and begin to measure it to solve the problem, you lift the cover on the beaker and drop in an Oreo cookie. He walks in, you remove the cover to the beaker, and there is this discolored solution, but clearly visible is this rapidly decaying Oreo cookie. Very obvious. You can still see the word “Oreo” on it. And you say, “Okay, now using the laws of physics and chemistry, explain to me how that Oreo cookie got there.” And he says, “Wait a minute, it’s obvious that someone put it there because Oreo cookies don’t just manufacture themselves out of nowhere in the middle of a beaker. You are playing a trick on me. Someone dropped it in there.” And then you say, “Foul. You’ve broken the rules. You’ve inferred an outside agent here. You’re not being scientific. It’s your job to be a scientist. This is a chemistry lab. Let’s stick with science. You are obliged to come up with some kind of explanation limited to the laws of chemistry and physics and time plus chance to explain how that Oreo cookie got there in the last twelve hours.” Now, he would be hard pressed to do so. Why? Because it was put there. You know it was. The evidence indicates it was. There was an agent that caused that, but the rules have restricted him from concluding what it obvious in the circumstances.

As Koukl points out, Intelligent Design isn’t a “God of the gaps” argument where we fill in the unknown with God.  Many times agent causation is the most likely and obvious answer, but scientists use a “science of the gaps” fallacy.  Their blind faith in science leads them to assume that “science” will explain it later.

But in this case, agent causation is a perfectly reasonable explanation for the “gap” of how the Oreo got there.  The materialists — who ignore agent causation when it is convenient — have a gap, but we don’t.  In the same way, when you examine the complexity and fine-tuning of the universe, DNA, etc., along with the simple logic of the “first cause” argument, it is perfectly reasonable to infer a designer.

I saw this with a conservation I observed years ago.  One friend was making a case for Intelligent Design and the flaws of Darwinism to another friend, who is an atheist.  The atheist couldn’t refute a single point, but merely reiterated his faith that science would figure it out later.

Are Darwinists remorseful about their “junk DNA” errors?

Image via Wikipedia

Many Darwinists thought that DNA contained “junk,” and they used this “fact” as part of their mockery of Intelligent Design (ID).  It turns out that DNA wasn’t junky after all — just as ID would have predicted.  And these same Darwinists pretend that ID gets in the way of scientific progress.

Read this quote carefully.  It is by Skeptic Magazine publisher Michael Shermer and it was written only 5 years ago.

We have to wonder why the Intelligent Designer added to our genome junk DNA, repeated copies of useless DNA, orphan genes, tandem repeats, and pseudogenes, none of which are involved directly in the making of a human being. In fact, of the entire human genome, it appears that only a tiny percentage is actively involved in useful protein production, It looks as though Rather than being intelligently designed, the human genome looks more and more like a mosaic of mutations, fragment copies, borrowed sequences, and discarded strings of DNA that were jerry-built over millions of years of evolution.

Via Who believed in the myth of junk DNA? – Michael Shermer, for one

That is just another in a long line of evolutionary fairy tales.  This false belief system dominates education, politics, science and fake Christian churches.  Get informed and stop letting them get away with bad science.

Do you think their bias could be leading them to be wrong on anything else?  Will Shermer et al apologize for hindering science with their false beliefs?  Do they have any shame?

Another evolutionary bedtime story

This is a classic example of the kind of just-so stories you get from Darwinian evolutionists.

This guy knows exactly what happened early in the history of life on Earth …  Except that he doesn’t. In “Slaves to evolution,” (ABC Science 06/09/2011) Bernie Hobbs explains it all for you:

“Two billion-odd years ago, one of the most important meals in history took place. One bacterium swallowed another one. But instead of being digested, the swallowee survived. And it kept doing what it had always done: using oxygen to rip apart food molecules, and then using the energy released to make ATP. So the bacteria that did the swallowing suddenly had this little lump inside it that leaked ATP, which the swallower could use to power its own cellular reactions. It was a match made in thermodynamic heaven.

And this crazy hybrid was the great (x10n) grandmother cell that all eukaryotic cells evolved from. The mitochondria in your cells, mine and every plant, animal and fungi on the planet are descendents of that meal. It’s like slavery, but with benefits.”

. . .

Okay, Bernie, so … we know it happened this way because …

“There’s no single piece of killer evidence that proves the case for the bacterial origins of mitochondria and chloroplasts, …”

And people like this are the ones trying to say that Intelligent Design isn’t science but that their views are.  They’d rather nod their heads at tautological bedtime stories like that rather than study something like Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design by Stephen C. Meyer.

Remember, this is the worldview that dominates education, media and politics.  Don’t be taken in by the hoax.

Expelled!, the sequel

This case was destined to be another example of the egregious abuses of academic freedom documented by Ben Stein in Expelled!, but this one turned out a little better.  See Journal Apologizes and Pays $10,000 After Censoring Article for a very important post on what is still going on in scientific circles.

These violations are so destructive, because the same bullying / cowardice you see in evolution debates has proved equally successful (read: lucrative) in the Global Warming / Global Climate Change scam.

Some snippets:

In one of their favorite soundbytes, members of the Darwin lobby like to assert that intelligent design scientists do not publish peer-reviewed research. That claim is manifestly false. But the fact that intelligent design scholars do publish peer-reviewed articles is no thanks to Darwinists, many of whom do their best to ensure that peer-reviewed articles by intelligent design scientists never see the light of day.

Witness the brazen censorship earlier this year of an article by University of Texas, El Paso mathematics professor Granville Sewell, author of the book In the Beginning and Other Essays on Intelligent Design. Sewell’s article critical of Neo-Darwinism (“A Second Look at the Second Law”) was both peer-reviewed and accepted for publication by the journal Applied Mathematics Letters. That is, the article was accepted for publication until a Darwinist blogger who describes himself as an “opinionated computer science geek” wrote the journal editor to denounce the article, and the editor decided to pull Sewell’s article in violation of his journal’s own professional standards.

The publisher of Applied Mathematics Letters(Elsevier, the international science publisher) has now agreed to issue a public statement apologizing to Dr. Sewell as well as to pay $10,000 in attorney’s fees.

. . .

Lepiscopo points out that in retracting Sewell’s article, Applied Mathematics Letters “effectively accepted the unsubstantiated word and unsupported opinion of an inconsequential blogger, with little or unknown academic background beyond a self-professed public acknowledgment that he was a ‘computer science grad’ and whose only known writings are self-posted blogs about movies, comics, and fantasy computer games.” This blogger’s unsupported opinion “trumped the views of an author who is a well respected mathematician with a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Purdue University; a fully-tenured Professor of Mathematics at the University of Texas–El Paso; an author of three books on numerical analysis and 40 articles published in respected journals; and a highly sought-after and frequent lecturer world-wide on mathematics and science.”

This is the type of pathetic bullying (on the part of the Darwin crowd) and cowardice (on the part of the journalists) that is rampant in science:

After Dr. Sewell’s article was pulled, Darwinian zealots crowed about their achievement and maliciously speculated that the article was withdrawn because it wasn’t really peer-reviewed or because it was somehow substandard. The journal, meanwhile, left Dr. Sewell to twist in the wind, seemingly endorsing the Darwinists’ smears. The journal editor Dr. Rodin wrote a groveling letter to the Darwinist blogger who complained to him in which he agreed that publishing Sewell’s article would involve “impropriety.” Rodin further apologized “for our erroneous judgement in even considering this paper for publication.”

. . .

By issuing this statement, Applied Mathematics Letters is essentially admitting that it trashed its own professional standards by what it did. According to the journal’s editorial policies, acceptance of an article cannot be rescinded once an author has been notified of its acceptance, and accepted articles are supposed to be withdrawn only “under exceptional circumstances” such as fraud, errors, ethics violations, and the like.

“None of these circumstances even remotely occurred with respect to the withdrawal of Dr. Sewell’s paper,” said Mr. Lepiscopo.

Sadly, the kind of successful bullying by Darwinists that was documented in Expelled! leads to this sort of abuse:

One can sympathize with the editor’s situation. Perhaps he heard about what happened toevolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg at the Smithsonian after he allowed a peer-reviewed article favorable to intelligent design to be published in the biology journal he edited.

If there is a “war on science” today, it’s not being waged by the critics of Darwinism or supporters of intelligent design. It’s being waged by Darwinian fundamentalists who are attempting to prevent any voices except their own from being heard in the scientific community. They seem willing to do virtually anything to silence their critics–from denying them tenure, to preventing them from being hired, to engaging in cyber attacks, to censoring peer-reviewed articles by scholars with whom they disagree. Italan geneticist Guiseppe Sermonti has remarked that “Darwinism… is the ‘politically correct’ of science.” How right he is.

Dear Darwinists: You are bullies and cowards.  You know it.  We know it.  If you were confident in your views you wouldn’t have to resort / succumb to such behavior.

And the Global Warming / Global Climate Change lobby is no different.  Just follow the money.

And be sure to see the Wintery Knight’s sendup of cowards A. C. Grayling and Richard Dawkins, who come up with the lamest of lame excuses to avoid debating William Lane Craig.

—–

Here’s a clip describing the Expelled! movie:

How caterpillars and butterflies mock the Darwinists

One of the most common things we learned about as kids should still fascinate us, and remind us of how exquisitely and beautifully God designed his creation.

Hat tip: Wintery Knight

It is no wonder that even with the pro-Darwin education / media / politics echo chamber we live in that 90% of people still believe there is a God (regardless of how badly they misunderstand him and still rebel against him).

Romans 1:18-20 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

Clairvoyant Darwinists don’t even need to read Intelligent Design books to “review” them

See ID critics do not read ID books before reviewing them « Wintery Knight.  Those are book “no-views,” not book reviews.  This reminds me of how the Darwin fans will rush to Amazon to give one star to books like Stephen Meyers’ Signature in the Cell when they obviously haven’t read it.  You’d think their transparent dishonesty would embarrass them, but apparently they haven’t evolved to hold that sort of morality.  I was very disappointed that someone from Forbes would be so sloppy.  Their editorial content is usually held to much higher standards.

My guess is that they know if they actually read the books they’d have to respond to the arguments, and not their straw-man versions of what Intelligent Design is.

“As a friend of ours puts it, Jonathan Wells’s The Myth of Junk DNA is in the process of being “Ayala’ed.” To “Ayala” a book is to attack it in review without having bothered to read or even read much about it, simply on the basis of what you think it probably says given your uninformed preconceptions about the author. The term comes from the wonderful instance where distinguished biologist Francisco Ayala pompously “reviewed” Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell for the Biologos Foundation website while giving clear evidence of not having cracked the book open or even looked at the table of contents.

Thus we have several posts from University of Toronto biochemist Larry Moran, criticizing Myth while being totally open about not having read it first. Moran wrote no fewer than four posts on the book in this fashion, claiming as an excuse that Myth would not be published in Canada until May 31. (In fact, the book was available for purchase from Amazon since early May.) And now, as Casey already noted, we have Forbes science writer John Farrell, citing Moran as his source — a “double Ayala,” so to speak, where you attack a book without reading it citing as justification a review by someone else who also hasn’t read it.

Farrell thinks the myth of junk DNA is itself a myth — that “scientists never dismissed junk DNA in the literature.” In other words, Wells has set up a straw man. Of course, not having looked at the book, Farrell can’t have consulted Dr. Wells’s fifty pages of notes documenting his argument. The notes may be downloaded for free here. (Also available in Canada.)”

So this is what criticism of intelligent design amounts to… denouncing a book before reading it.

Read the whole post.

Wendy Wright schools Richard Dawkins

UPDATE 2: Here are special articles that visitors should enjoy: The Atheist’s Dilemma and To the atheists who judge God.  Also see Simple Yet Powerful Apologetics for additional examples of our facts and logic..  Oh, and everything else on this blog!  And if you love or hate my blog, you will really love or hate the Wintery Knight blog, so definitely don’t miss that!

And definitely don’t miss Evolutionist: Let’s Admit it, We Don’t Fully Understand How Evolution Works.

Also, I continue to get unproductive comments making it obvious that this post wasn’t read.  If it is apparent from future comments that you haven’t read it then they won’t be approved.

For example, I concede that Wright isn’t a good scientist or debater, yet no one notices that.  They ignore the challenge to explain why Dawkins says he won’t debate leaders in the field then debates an easy target like Wright.  They ignore his errors on “junk DNA.”  They ignore his ghoulish and creepy views on infanticide, abortion and adultery.  And so on.  

Oh, and if you are an atheist, please own it and don’t lie and pretend to be a pro-evolution Christian.  Busted!

UPDATE: Hello visitors!  I hope you enjoy this post and come back regularly.  If you go to the main page you can subscribe via email in the upper right hand corner.  You are welcome to comment, but please read the entire post and stick to the topics here.  It isn’t productive to just leave hostile sound bites. Please read the most recent comments for examples.  The most amusing thing is that I realized the original video link no longer exists yet people are leaving nasty comments as if they watched it.  Please be sure to read this post about historical facts and our logical conclusions from them before telling us how we are anti-logic, brainwashed, etc.

I’m disappointed that people continue to comment with fact-free Darwinian cheer-leading and ignore specific points about the errors of Dawkins and other evolutionists on things like “junk DNA.”  Do the commenters not know about those?  If not, why weren’t they aware?  

And how about Dawkins’ repugnant and inconsistent beliefs on infanticide and adultery, or his refusal to debate scientists and philosophers who are much more skilled than Wright?

It seems like these people have been brainwashed by the education, mainstream media and entertainment establishments and are not thinking critically.  If we supposedly evolved to believe lies about religion then how can you be sure you didn’t evolve to believe lies about evolution?

—–

ORIGINAL POST

Richard Dawkins has long insisted that he won’t debate creationists because it would elevate them more than him and other such excuses.  But he apparently found a creationist he wasn’t scared of debating (apparently the guy who won’t debate “creationists” spent an hour with her!).  This is too bad, because now he’ll never dare to debate someone like Stephen Meyer or William Lane Craig (even atheists have mocked him for that bit of cowardice).  If a non-scientist / non-philosopher like Wright can show how ridiculous his views are then the scientists and philosophers would eat his lunch.  Is she a good scientist or debater?  Not at all, but he is worse.

Hat tip: Ray Comfort

He disingenuously tries to write off the Haeckel’s embryo fraud as a “Victorian mistake,” when he knows it lasted over a century in our country’s textbooks.  That is deception, and people with the truth on their side and who are confident in their views don’t need that.

When she pointed out the obvious, namely that DNA shows commonality and is not necessarily proof of evolution, he immediately launched into his personal attacks about hidden agendas and rejection of science.  Hmmmm . . . if hidden agendas are possible, perhaps he has one?  Oh yes, he does: His rationalizes that his brand of evolution makes it possible to be an intellectually satisfied atheist — even though evolution can’t explain the origin of the universe, how life came from non-life and more.  His desperation to rationalize his rebellion against God leads him to ignore vast amounts of evidence.

Speaking of rejecting science, it is too bad she didn’t ask him to share his views on “junk DNA.”  I wonder if he is remorseful about being so forceful just a few years ago about how it is evidence for evolution.  Turns out it wasn’t junk after all — just like Intelligent Design would have predicted.  That sound you hear in the background is the New Atheists scrambling to pretend that the fact that DNA does’t have “junk” is evidence for their side instead of an embarrassing mistake they made.

I also wonder if he even knows about front-loaded DNA and how that doesn’t fit the Darwinian model.

She nails him on who really wants to present all the evidence.  She shows the logical conclusions of the Darwinian worldview and he attributes that to the Victorians as well (wow, what an awful age!).  Richard seems to have grasped that it is always nice to have a scapegoat.  It is right out of Leviticus 16!  But if his worldview is true, there is no reason for him to criticize the Victorians or anyone else.  Blind, purposeless evolution must have made them do it.  What else could have caused it?

And don’t forget that Richard Dawkins defends the moral goodness of infanticide and adultery.  Wouldn’t you love to be his child or spouse?  At least he was (temporarily) consistent with his worldview, even though he hides it at other times.

Then there is this recent anti-science gem by Dawkins:

With respect to those meanings of ‘human’ that are relevant to the morality of abortion, any fetus is less human than an adult pig.

Dawkins and most pro-abortion people ignore the scientific fact (and basic common sense) that a new human being is created at fertilization.  How anti-science can you get to disagree with all the mainstream embryology textbooks?  And he’s a biologist!

As always, remember that:

1. Darwinian evolution has huge issues scientifically speaking, but even if it was true it wouldn’t prove atheism true.  That’s because it doesn’t explain how the universe came into existence, how life came from non-life, and how to ground things like morality.  These are enormous issues that Darwinism doesn’t and will never address.

2. Darwinian evolution has huge issues scientifically speaking, but even if it was true it would select for survival, not truth.  Darwinists have no reason for confidence that their evolution resulted in them being able to discern the truth.  If believing lies helped the species survive better — including lies about evolution — then that’s what would happen.

3. Darwinian evolution has huge issues scientifically speaking, but even if it is true it is 100.00% responsible for my conversion from atheism to Christianity, based on my belief in the evidence that Jesus lived, died and rose again for my sins.  So don’t be mad at me for believing in God, be mad at your beloved Darwinian evolution.  (Thanks, btw, as I wouldn’t trade the joy and peace of being a Christian for anything.)

4. Atheism has no logical explanation for Christianity, but Christianity knows why atheists are the way they are.  Romans 1:18-20 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

5. You don’t get to unilaterally set the terms and conditions with God any more than you do with your parents, employer or teachers.  If you think you get to sit in judgment of the creator of the universe then you are being foolish.

6. We have great evidence for the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.  Eternity is a long time.  Repent, believe and bask in God’s grace while you can!  If you come to him on his terms He will adopt you, forgive all your sins and grant you an eternity with him in Heaven.  If not, you will spend an eternity in Hell.  Your pride will vanish in the instant that you die and realize that your rebellion against your creator has bought you nothing of value in this life and nothing but torment forever.  All the pleasure of sins that you thought a God-free universe would bring will leave you empty and worse off.

But God loves to forgive, so turn to him while there is still time.  Find a good, Bible-believing church and study the Bible carefully as much as possible.  Do it while you still have time.  You can take the punishment for your countless sins, or trust in the Savior that died in your place to accomplish what you never could.  

How Richard Dawkins’ (ir-)religion hinders scientific progress

See Jonathan Wells on his book, The Myth of Junk DNA – yes, it is a Darwinist myth and he nails it as such.  As I read the article I thought of how bias can get in the way of scientific discoveries.

The conventional wisdom is that religion and science are at odds or are at least “non-overlapping magesteria.”  Philosophical naturalists like to posit that religion impedes scientific progress.  That is a false dilemma, of course, because the notion that God is orderly and that we can think his thoughts after him drove early science and is still logical.

But look what happens when atheistic assumptions get in the way of science:

“The amount of DNA in organisms,” neo-Darwinist Richard Dawkins wrote in 1976, “is more than is strictly necessary for building them: A large fraction of the DNA is never translated into protein. From the point of view of the individual organism this seems paradoxical. If the ‘purpose’ of DNA is to supervise the building of bodies, it is surprising to find a large quantity of DNA which does no such thing. Biologists are racking their brains trying to think what useful task this apparently surplus DNA is doing. But from the point of view of the selfish genes themselves, there is no paradox. The true ‘purpose’ of DNA is to survive, no more and no less. The simplest way to explain the surplus DNA is to suppose that it is a parasite, or at best a harmless but useless passenger, hitching a ride in the survival machines created by the other DNA.” (The Selfish Gene, p. 47)

Dawkins’ worldview caused him and many others to “know” that this must have been “junk” DNA. Who knows how many important scientific advancements were delayed because of bias like this? Christians know that there are natural and supernatural forces in the world, and that the composition of the universe screams out design. Even Dawkins concedes that it appears to be designed.

More from the link:

Collins also wrote that intelligent design is a “God of the gaps” position that is doomed to collapse with further advances in science (p. 193). But Collins has it exactly backwards: He and other promoters of the myth of junk DNA have put their faith in a “Darwin of the gaps” argument that must now retreat in the face of new advances in genome research.

Truly open-minded scientists wouldn’t assume that the “junk” DNA was evolutionary baggage.  They would have considered that perhaps it had another function put there by an intelligent designer.

Scientific progress can be negatively impacted by bad philosophy — just not always the kind people assume.  How many other discoveries are hindered by the false Darwinian worldview?

P.S. This topic always reminds me of a funny bit in an episode of The Simpsons where Lisa finds a phony fossil of what appears to be an angel.  The episode cleverly skewered both sides of the debate – though mostly against Christians. (Sadly, this is one of the last episodes Phil Hartman did before he was killed. He played the attorney Lionel Hutz).  I loved this line from the judge presiding over the trial:

As for science versus religion, I’m issuing a restraining order: Religion must stay 500 yards from science at all times.

If only the (ir-)religious bias of Dawkins et al had a restraining order against it!

“Junk” DNA: Not so junky after all

The non-protein coding portion of DNA was thought for decades to be “junk” DNA, a useless by-product of Darwinian evolution.  Turns out that was wrong.  Really, really, very wrong.  See New book: Junk DNA junked … in favour of what? | Uncommon Descent.

The last sentence is a great response to those claiming that “God wouldn’t create things this way.”

Junk DNA was one of those ideas that just had to be true. Genome mapper and NIH head Francis Collins saw it as a slam dunk for his beloved Darwinism in his first book, The Language of God, (“Darwin’s theory predicts … That is exactly what is observed”) but seems to have changed his tune in his second, The Language of Life.

I’ll be interviewing Wells on the book next week, but in the meantime, two questions occur to me: To what extent did Darwinism cause the myth to be retained longer than it otherwise would be? Given that Darwinists must now be in search of another guiding myth, any idea out there which one it will be?

Now, one prediction:

Darwinists who used to point to all the alleged junk in DNA, as Collins did, will resort – seeing anything they don’t like – to saying God wouldn’t have done it that way” implying that, unlike the rest of us, they are on familiar terms with God, and cold take over the desk themselves on his lunch break, with no interruption in service.

Roundup

U.S. appeals court: schools cannot ‘stifle criticism of homosexuality’ – some rare good news regarding the freedom of speech and freedom of religion.  Hope it doesn’t get overturned!

—

Why Is That Christian Dressed Up Like a Psychic? – great article about decision making and the will of God and how sloppy some Christians get when it comes to rationalizing decisions.  From the intro:

This is a pandemic problem in evangelical churches. How many times have you heard someone say, “God told me,” “God lead me,” “God laid it on my heart,” etc? One would think that these individuals heard the audible voice of God; but no, they base their statements on their feelings: a liver quiver, a gut assumption, butterflies, etc. The problem is that there is nowhere in the Bible where God spoke to anyone through their feelings… not one example. So, whenever these Christians make these statements, they have noauthority or example in Scripture to prove that God is speaking to them. They thus are playing the psychic.

—

Francis Collins Changes His Tune On “Junk DNA” – Hmmmm.  Turns out that “junk” DNA isn’t so junky after all.  Actually, we’ve known that for some time, but I’m glad to see Collins acknowledge it.  I hope he reconsiders his oxymoronic theistic evolution as well.  People like him are useful tools for the Darwinist crowd.  Just watch the movie  Expelled! and see how they patronize those who try to rationalize that God guided Darwinian evolution.

—

Question: How Can We Know One Belief Selected for By Evolution is Superior to Another?

. . .

Theist:  Let me get this straight.  According to you, religious belief has at least two characterizes:  (1) it is false; and (2) evolution selected for it.

EM [looking a little pale now, because he’s just figured out where this is going]:  Correct.

Theist:  You believe the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis [NDS] is true.

EM:  Of course.

Theist:  How do you know your belief in NDS is not another false belief that evolution has selected for?

. . .

—

Don’t buy the lie that because Texas has lower ACT/SAT scores than Wisconsin that a lack of unionized teachers is the reason.  First, the money quote:

To recap: white students in Texas perform better than white students in Wisconsin, black students in Texas perform better than black students in Wisconsin, Hispanic students in Texas perform better than Hispanic students in Wisconsin

Now, a little more background.

The point being, I suppose, is that unionized teachers stand as a thin chalk-stained line keeping Wisconsin from descending into the dystopian non-union educational hellscape of Texas. Interesting, if it wasn’t complete bullshit.

As a son of Iowa, I’m no stranger to bragging about my home state’s ranking on various standardized test. Like Wisconsin we Iowans usually rank near the top of the heap on average ACT/SAT scores. We are usually joined there by Minnesota, Nebraska, and the various Dakotas; Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire…

… beginning to see a pattern? Perhaps because a state’s “average ACT/SAT” is, for all intents and purposes, a proxy for the percent of white people who live there. In fact, the lion’s share of state-to-state variance in test scores is accounted for by differences in ethnic composition. Minority students – regardless of state residence – tend to score lower than white students on standardized test, and the higher the proportion of minority students in a state the lower its overall test scores tend to be.

Please note: this has nothing to do with innate ability or aptitude. Quite to the contrary, I believe the test gap between minority students and white students can be attributed to differences in socioeconomic status. And poverty. And yes, racism. And yes, family structure. Whatever combination of reasons, the gap exists, and it’s mathematical sophistry to compare the combined average test scores in a state like Wisconsin (4% black, 4% Hispanic) with a state like Texas (12% black, 30% Hispanic).

—

Ann Coulter has a great summary of public sector unions.

As Obama rakes in historic campaign contributions from Wall Street money, liberals claim Republicans are beholden to “the rich.” However that may be, it is far more true, and far less remarked upon, that the Democratic Party is the party of public sector unions.

And now, the nation watches helplessly as public sector unions and their Democratic allies say to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker: Nice state you got there, governor. Be a shame if something bad happened to it.

For Democrats, the purpose of government is to generously provide jobs for people who otherwise couldn’t be hired — because their skills, attitude or sense of entitlement are considered undesirable in the private sector. And no, I’m not just talking about Barack Obama.

Democrats use taxpayer money to fund a government jobs program, impoverishing the middle class and harming the people allegedly helped by the programs — but creating a vast class of voters who owe their jobs to the Democrats.

This is a system designed to ratchet up costs. Look at the history of every entity where public employees have unionized, and you will find that not only are government workers paid more, but there are also a lot more of them doing a lot less useful work.

—

Kline accuses KS Supreme Court of obstructing justice to protect Tiller, Planned Parenthood – a serious miscarriage of justice is playing out in Kansas.  Lots of things haven’t been investigated:

What also came out during the trial was what the Supreme Court has never investigated to this day. While it desperately attempts to find unethical behavior on Kline’s part, it ignores actual potential violations of law on the part of state officials and abortion clinics (aside from illegal abortions and rape cover-ups):

1. Opening Kline’s mail, a federal offense: Documents Kline never requested but were sent to him at an incorrect address after he left the DA’s office and then returned, were opened by either the DA or AG and are currently being used against him in the ethics case.

2. Someone in AG Morrison’s office made a cd of all Kline’s abortion files and left it, along with some spreadsheets, on the desk of Tiller’s attorney, who kept them for over a year.

3. The Supreme Court ordered Kline to hand over all information he had obtained to AG Morrison on PPs nationwide.  This included evidence in prosecutions against PP in Ohio, videotapes from Lila Rose’s 1st video investigation of PP nationwide, and the names of PP employees who came forward to Kline from clinics around the country. Kline testified this prompted some of his sources to threaten litigation against him. But most importantly, “I’ve been told all that information was then turned over to attorneys for abortion clinics.”

—

Is Planned Parenthood still racist? You decide.  Their founder sure was.  The rate of abortions in the black community is 3x that of whites, and the taxpayer-funded abortions they lust after will make that ratio higher.

1926: Margarat Sanger gives a lecture to the women’s auxiliary of the Klu Klux Klan

—

Technorati Tags: Religion,Christianity,politics,pro-life

Roundup

The Detroit News Continues Misinformation Campaign Over Stem Cell Research – great points by Stephen.  The media continually – and presumably deliberately – gets it wrong on stem cells.  Adult stem cell research doesn’t kill innocent human beings, so the many findings from them are attributed to generic “stem cell” research.  That way, the embryonic stem cell research (the kind that destroys human beings in the process) gets a halo effect.  That’s just one of many tricks they use to conflate the two and avoid the hard truths: Adult stem cells have resulted in many great findings without destroying human beings, while embryonic stem cells kill humans and have not had success.

—

Good points by Ray Comfort about a dying atheist (presumably Christopher Hitchens, but they apply to anyone in that situation) – Christianity doesn’t need “trophy converts.”  We’ve got all we need to share the truth of Jesus.  I hope Hitchens and many others have authentic conversions, but not so we can wave it at atheists as some sort of proof point.  The proof is that Jesus rose from the dead.

—

Turns out the firebomber of Democrat Russ Carnahan’s office was an ex-campaign worker and not a Republican or (gasp!) a Tea Partier.  The guilty party had a history of harassing Tea Party activists.  Anyone care to speculate if the media attention would have been different had the roles been reversed?

—

James Cameron, Mega-Climate Creationist, Chickens Out On Debate – yep.  What’s new?

—

Sponge Bob’s Your Uncle! – One more reason to put those “monkeys are X% similar to humans” stories in perspective.

The news is out: sea sponges share almost 70 percent of human genes.

—

If people want to debate the morality or effectiveness of the Iraq war I can understand that.  But too often numbers are made up on the fly and the is used as a scapegoat for anything.  If you want facts about what the Iraq war really cost (hint: not $3 trillion), read this.  Obama’s stimulus package cost $100 billion more than the whole war.

Aren’t these also the same folks who tell us how well JFK and LBJ ran the economy back in the roaring ’60s? During the eight years of 1961-69, 46% of all federal spending was on national defense. During President Bush’s eight years, defense spending did not even average 20% of federal outlays. Under JFK/LBJ, defense spending was 8%-9% of GDP. Under Bush, it was about 4%.

—

Technorati Tags: Religion,Christianity,politics,pro-life

Roundup

—

Praying the scriptures is a great idea.  If you aren’t sure what to pray you have 31,173 verses pre-approved by God.  Check out Alysa’s post about praying 1 Peter 5.

—

Question: Is the intent of the DNC to replace black voters with Hispanic ones, as low-information pets of the party? Interesting analysis by Hillbuzz.

In 2008, Donna Brazile famously declared, during the presidential primaries, that the DNC no longer needed blue collar workers,  rural voters, senior citizens, or gay and Jewish voters, because the coalition they were building of blacks, college-aged first time voters, Hispanics, and women were enough to win national elections.  No one else need apply.

We wonder if Brazile’s candor didn’t leave out part of what’s going on — and that’s actually the DNC’s abandonment of blacks completely, replacing them as pets and dependents with newly imported Mexicans.

. . .

We’ve long believed that Liberal-controlled public schools in cities like Chicago are deliberately kept so terrible that black students never learn the social, academic, or life skills to succeed in life — and are instead kept dependent on the government for their welfare.

—

New DNA Damage Repair Mechanism Must Have Arisen Early — the workings of DNA are endlessly fascinating, and typically make a mockery of neo-Darwinian evolution.

This conclusion that complexity comes early is often forced on evolutionists, in spite of the evolutionary expectations to the contrary.

—

Here’s something not to get excited about — the alleged discovery of Noah’s ark.

If it is the Ark, may it wake up the biblical sceptics . . . And if this is just another hoax, it’s no big deal. My salvation isn’t dependent on (or in need of) scientific confirmation of incidents in the Bible, but on my relationship with God. His reality confirms His Word.

—

Bonus graph:

Roundup

Junk DNA – the real story — interesting read about how “junk DNA” isn’t junky at all and how evolutionists viewed it as proof of evolution both when it was considered junk and now that it isn’t.  Convenient, eh?

—

The ACLU’s concerns about privacy seem to vary with who is in the White House.

—

Wait, Obama used to claim that they weren’t aiming at universal health care.  He must have been misquoted here.  But you can totally trust him that his Executive Order about abortions will stand.

—

The Left’s shrill cries about potential violence and alleged racist comments (still no evidence, BTW) are really tiresome.  Both sides have freaks, but the media reporting is hopelessly one sided.  Bart Stupak had plenty of threats when he was pretending to be on the pro-life side, but those weren’t widely reported.  Read the link for many more examples.

—

Planned Parenthood hates black people

Roundup

Polar bears are not vanishing – it is just another part of the ClimateGate lies. 

—

One more time, people: President Obama did not inherit all this deficit.  Congress  — you know, the group that Obama was a member of – passed the 2008 budget.

—

Good reminder about not using the Lord’s name in vain by saying, “The Lord moved me to tell you…”  People use God’s name vainly when they over-spiritualize things. Saying, “God told me . . .” puts the burden of proof on the listener when it should be on the hearer.  If you use that line with me it better be followed by a Bible verse.
—

Cowardly Richard Dawkins explains why he won’t debate William Lane Craig – Sadly, the uninformed audience clapped at his response. 

—

Evolutionary theory wrong  — again – Science Daily reports that there is no such thing as Junk RNA « Wintery Knight.

—

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

Seven minute preview of the upcoming movie. 

The more I thought about this situation, the more I wondered why we tolerate free speech in every other area of this society, but not here.

What makes this situation so different?  In my experience, people who are confident in their ideas are not afraid of criticism.  So that tells me that Darwinists are afraid. 

. . .

But if you do leave, will anyone be left to fight this battle?  Anyone?  Anyone?

Ben Stein