Tonight I got sidetracked viewing YouTube postings of Richard Dawkins snappy responses to stupid questions and I discovered something. There is a huge discrepancy between the number of people looking for comfort from the Christian Evangelical viewpoint and the Christians looking for a way to dispute and embarrass Atheists. Search for 'Dawkins' and look at the view counts of some of his snippets of videos answering questions about God. One for a speech he gave at a women's college near Liberty University had well over a million views! The question an audience member posed was "What if you are wrong?". By contrast the number of views of Christian originated videos refuting atheism were lucky to earn 25,000 views!
What does this say? It says that Christians are making a huge difference because if their arrows weren't hitting their mark in day to day life the atheists would never need to seek the balm of videos of Dawkins making smartypants, shallow, Biblically illiterate comedy answers. Answers always followed with tons of laughter from audiences with itching ears.
The sad part is if the scene was traded; if the audience were filled with Christians and Dawkins or another leading atheist were at the podium there would be sincere concern for souls to be won and that's serious business. We wouldn't laugh at atheists and make fun of them and minimize them and trivialize them and marginalize them.
The issue in our society was well defined in a recent newsletter from the Ravi Zacharias International ministry:
"In fact, long before theology was ushered out of the public square, out of politics, economics, and the sciences, it was considered to be the highest science, the study of the rational Mind behind our own rational minds. It was the discipline that made sense of every other discipline, the subject that united every subject. Such a perspective is inherently foreign to the contemporary mindset. But it cannot be shooed away like a meddling religion or deferred like an unwanted question without dismissing some sense of cohesion—and without dismissing Christ himself. His very life is a refutation of compartmentalized thought, belief, and action. His cross was neither public nor private; it spanned both, and every century following its own." (Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia. )
The real answer that Mr. Richard Dawkins should have given the student is "If I'm wrong then I will be eternally separated from the creator I thought didn't exist. I will be sent to a place where my sins will be played back to me forever and I will be tormented forever and long for a single drop of water and I will want to warn everyone of this place." That would've been the braver more intellectual more scholarly researched answer but he's a naughty little smart-mouthed boy. He gets paid to help fellow atheists feel good about themselves and make Christians appear like foolish half-wits. Check it out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mmskXXetcg
Probably his most embarrassing remark is his statement that because the questioner is American she is Christian and that if she were from India she would be Hindu. I felt sorry for his ignorance and I wish there was something I could do for him.
YouTube is all about entertainment and the true intellectual thermometer of our country and our world is read by just scanning down a few comments. Vocabularies are so limited that very soon you find yourself descending into a middle school toilet stall range of intellect. I say this because of view counts. They are like an unofficial poll of what interests our students, what interests our public, and where their focus is.
Richard Dawkins is afraid to read the book of Ecclesiastes because it would be too threatening so how could he ever make it to Acts Chapter 9? God only knows because to Him all things are possible.
Here is another intellectually embarassing video. When people produce dialogue like this I just can't bear to hear it all because it reveals so much ignorance. It takes a lifetime to clear up those questions with real answers that God gave us thousands of years ago and this poor fellow doesn't have a lifetime left. But look it earned 5 million views! Compare that to videos from the evangelical point of view. Lucky to get 2,000 views.
It isn't circular logic to go to ancient scriptures to look for answers to modern questions. If I were asked for the phone number of the nearest Dominoes Pizza I might go to Superpages.com. You ask me "How do you know that number is for Dominoes Pizza?" I tell you "Because Superpages.com told me so."
There are a few things atheists can't explain away and Nick Vujicic is one of them. I don't think the Randolph-Macon Women's college would ever invite him to speak. There just isn't enough intellectual bravery there.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Physics and Creation Theory
Magnetic monopole experiment at CERN could rewrite laws of physics
(PhysOrg.com) -- An experiment led by a University of Alberta researcher, at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, could dramatically change our concepts of basic physics, revolutionize our understanding of the Universe and could eventually lead to technologies in future generations that right now only exist in science fiction.
In this article please play the animation embedded in it. A well done animation that reveals ideas that are difficult to grasp for those that are visual learners. This isn't a blog entry about me but I am mostly a visual learner however I can take words and form visuals but it is not a strong point. When it came time to study 20th century physics in my degree courses particle physics was the most difficult for me. To imagine spins and momentums and visualize theories of magnetism in substances from equations and variables was darn near impossible and my grades weren't stellar. But I digressed.
Scientists, at least ones primarily in modern times, do not believe anything until it is proven to them in hard numbers, lots of photos and evidence of the kind you see discussed in the animation. In rare cases you catch scientists starting out with a conclusion, working to arrive at said conclusion just so they can earn the grants and finances for their work. Who likes unemployment right? Such was the case of global warming theory and that whole debacle.
A famous theorist and atheist once said "We don't believe in God because we don't want anyone meddling in our sex life." That really gets straight to the point; although it is a bit broader than that it still is valid. If anyone out there can tell me who said that please leave a comment because I don't recall.
Note how the beginning of the animation starts out with the conclusion that the universe starts out with a big bang and it isn't attributed to any deity or anything of the sort. Just 'bang' there it is. All work after that is working up stream to support that conclusion. A conclusion that itself was a matter of heated discussion in my lifetime. Apparently there is enough evidence for Big Bang theory of origin that scientists everywhere have come out of the closet and bravely mention it as in this case.
Suppose we had a piece of pottery that represented our universe and all the matter in it. A fictitious, superior race of scientists one day picked up this pottery and began asking themselves how the pottery came about. A leading scientist of this race stated "This thing came about suddenly by itself behaving according to the substance that makes it. They photographed it and observed that it was built with rings. "Rings made of what?", they asked. So they begin by cutting it in half and observing a cross section then they break a piece off and grind it up and look at the pieces microscopically. They blast it with fire and lasers and study light spectra to classify what it is made of. Then this race of superior beings write a report, the summary of which I found and copied below...
"This thing which we have named "bowl" came about suddenly and evolved over a period of trillions of years. Bowl formed according to the manner in which the substances behave when they come in close proximity to one another. Briefly the list of substances are dry powders mixed with water. We found trace elements of minerals that added color to the element silica including iron, boron, copper, carbon, nitrogen, zinc, sulfur and aluminum-oxide. Water came into contact with some elements and the elements began exerting attractive forces which morphed into coiled compounds. The coils or ropes of compounds began circling and sticking to one another and as rotational energy was lost the coils became tighter until you have one end smaller than the other end. Our statistical theoretician estimates a one in a trillion chance that the correct amount of electricity zapped this bowl while it was in a cloud of trace elements giving it the color and pattern we see. "
A scientist not affiliated with their group named 'Reveileb' writes a response. I found it and it is printed below.
"I too examined the object and I agree it should be called 'bowl' however I disagree with its origin. I believe that nothing is made that does not have both a maker and a purpose. It was made from coils of clay formed by hands, stacked on top of one another, smoothed over by hands using water then fired in an oven to maintain its shape. I turned the bowl over and found etchings of a kind I cannot interpret other than they are in a pattern that suggest the bowl was etched by the finger of its creator. The creator has a name and here I have a photo of the etching below. Other than that I understand all the other points my fellow scientists were making and I agree with the list of substances and compounds the 'bowl' is made of. However I do not agree with how it was made. But this has not stopped me from my research only taken me beyond the research of my fellow scientists because I started with a different conclusion of how bowl came into existence.
The conclusion of this matter is that saving face is the most important thing for all people including scientists who are, after all, just like you and I. Scientists do not like to face the possibility of being close to the discussion of believing in God because to do so would admit that there is a being out there more intelligent and more powerful than themselves. This is a trait that is programmed into us and was responsible for the fall from grace the archangel Lucifer experienced. It is the reason for the fall from grace of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. To this day we still make that same mistake.
(PhysOrg.com) -- An experiment led by a University of Alberta researcher, at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, could dramatically change our concepts of basic physics, revolutionize our understanding of the Universe and could eventually lead to technologies in future generations that right now only exist in science fiction.
In this article please play the animation embedded in it. A well done animation that reveals ideas that are difficult to grasp for those that are visual learners. This isn't a blog entry about me but I am mostly a visual learner however I can take words and form visuals but it is not a strong point. When it came time to study 20th century physics in my degree courses particle physics was the most difficult for me. To imagine spins and momentums and visualize theories of magnetism in substances from equations and variables was darn near impossible and my grades weren't stellar. But I digressed.
Scientists, at least ones primarily in modern times, do not believe anything until it is proven to them in hard numbers, lots of photos and evidence of the kind you see discussed in the animation. In rare cases you catch scientists starting out with a conclusion, working to arrive at said conclusion just so they can earn the grants and finances for their work. Who likes unemployment right? Such was the case of global warming theory and that whole debacle.
A famous theorist and atheist once said "We don't believe in God because we don't want anyone meddling in our sex life." That really gets straight to the point; although it is a bit broader than that it still is valid. If anyone out there can tell me who said that please leave a comment because I don't recall.
Note how the beginning of the animation starts out with the conclusion that the universe starts out with a big bang and it isn't attributed to any deity or anything of the sort. Just 'bang' there it is. All work after that is working up stream to support that conclusion. A conclusion that itself was a matter of heated discussion in my lifetime. Apparently there is enough evidence for Big Bang theory of origin that scientists everywhere have come out of the closet and bravely mention it as in this case.
"This thing which we have named "bowl" came about suddenly and evolved over a period of trillions of years. Bowl formed according to the manner in which the substances behave when they come in close proximity to one another. Briefly the list of substances are dry powders mixed with water. We found trace elements of minerals that added color to the element silica including iron, boron, copper, carbon, nitrogen, zinc, sulfur and aluminum-oxide. Water came into contact with some elements and the elements began exerting attractive forces which morphed into coiled compounds. The coils or ropes of compounds began circling and sticking to one another and as rotational energy was lost the coils became tighter until you have one end smaller than the other end. Our statistical theoretician estimates a one in a trillion chance that the correct amount of electricity zapped this bowl while it was in a cloud of trace elements giving it the color and pattern we see. "
A scientist not affiliated with their group named 'Reveileb' writes a response. I found it and it is printed below.
"I too examined the object and I agree it should be called 'bowl' however I disagree with its origin. I believe that nothing is made that does not have both a maker and a purpose. It was made from coils of clay formed by hands, stacked on top of one another, smoothed over by hands using water then fired in an oven to maintain its shape. I turned the bowl over and found etchings of a kind I cannot interpret other than they are in a pattern that suggest the bowl was etched by the finger of its creator. The creator has a name and here I have a photo of the etching below. Other than that I understand all the other points my fellow scientists were making and I agree with the list of substances and compounds the 'bowl' is made of. However I do not agree with how it was made. But this has not stopped me from my research only taken me beyond the research of my fellow scientists because I started with a different conclusion of how bowl came into existence.
The conclusion of this matter is that saving face is the most important thing for all people including scientists who are, after all, just like you and I. Scientists do not like to face the possibility of being close to the discussion of believing in God because to do so would admit that there is a being out there more intelligent and more powerful than themselves. This is a trait that is programmed into us and was responsible for the fall from grace the archangel Lucifer experienced. It is the reason for the fall from grace of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. To this day we still make that same mistake.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Scams! - or How to Handle Internet Scams the Christian Evangelical Wacko Way
Once in a rare while I get an email out of the blue like the image I've posted above. If this doesn't jump out at you as a scam then you probably can't spell the brand of car you drive. Let's go through this point by point. Just reading the company name in the From: field is a tipoff so obvious I didn't even highlight it.
- Employers almost always know what sex you are and put a 'Mr. Meyer' so this tells me this scam is using an email robot and firing out perhaps thousands of emails using placeholders. "Hello name," etc.
- Secondly this woman, if it is human, makes no attempt at hiding a foreign origin. Not as suspicous as it once was but is a clue to be added to others.
- There is no specific job title for this woman. This is so 'duh' that it makes me resort to slang. Next it mentions Yahoo!HotJobs which is a common search engine that I do not use...it is naive and all but a useless waste of time.
- She says that I'm qualified for the position of Finance Manager. Oh I'm so impressed with that compliment I'll jump right on it. Not! This is an insult to Finance Managers everywhere because if my credentials were even slightly perused it would be obvious I'm a geek and you shouldn't let me anywhere near money...too few decimal places and it confuses me.
- Point 5 is only something a geek would catch. Spam filters and the like are trying to be avoided here by placing a period in between the 'o' and the 'b. This is done twice so it is no accident. When you break up keywords a simple filter will miss it and probably not mark it as possible spam, such as mine did. I use the Thunderbird email client and Verizon's junk mail resources.
So what do we do with this scam email? We can delete it. We can open it as long as we have virus software running. We can become a Finance Manager and launder money for commies overseas. We can mutter a bad word and list it in our junk folder for future filtering. We can report the scam to proper authorities. When you get this type of email you can safely assume proper authorities have already been notified and that this email you got is the result of their ineffectual efforts.
There is one other option. We can recognize that behind every scam is a person and that person might not know Jesus. By the way these email addresses might even have been an identity theft. Still there is a person somewhere along the way even if it is an FBI agent. So below is my example of a response to scams. You can safely click on the link it goes to a Christian ministry website.
I have received your information for the position of Finance Manager. At this time I am not qualified to fill such an esteemed position and so I will have to ask for my removal from your email list.
Life?? offered to you.
Sincerely,
Wade Meyer
Warm and sunny Florida
If a person clicks the link it takes them to EE Prison Ministries International to the exact page that walks you through the ?? steps to salvation. So I can either be a son of thunder about it all or I can be constructive. I finally decided to be constructive and I hope you do too!
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