Friday, September 2, 2011

Real Science


There is a common myth that 99.9% of people fall for in regards to Science. It is the difference between ‘observational’ science, and ‘historical’ science. The two are qualitatively and fundamentally different, and acceptance of this is critical.

‘Observational’ science is the real science, it is the science where you can actually test hypothesises like the spherical nature of earth for example. The object of this hypothesis is an extant factor, this means that we can go out and make verifiable measurements as to the nature of the earth. We can measure angles and actually fly totally around the longitude and latitude lines of the earth. This can be tested and verified both others at any later time.



But ‘historical’ science is qualitatively different. It is an interloper, it barely qualifies as science at all. This sounds harsh, radical and almost heretical to those who haven’t pondered the philosophy of science before.

The fact is that nothing in the past is verifiable, especially events that are prior to the historical record. How can we observe the emplacement of fossils to test the creation or evolution hypothesises? The deposition of fossils occurred in the past, and the past is a place that is impenetrable to observation. So if data is unobservable, then it isn’t verifiable and thus can not be considered science.

We can certainly speculate using the scientific method by examining data like fossils which themselves are extant and therefore verifiable. But any speculation as to the origins of the fossils is totally outside the realm of the scientific method.



The scientific method is only a very narrowly useful tool. It’s power as a explanatory device is prodigious when it is used appropriately within it’s purview, but we must be careful not to extend it’s use to outside natural bounds and try and use it like a omniscient fountain of knowledge.


Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Do Australians Want Gay Marriage?


I am bemused by the logic of a recent poll in Australia that was touted as evidence that Australians are in favour of Gay Marriage.



The Galaxy Poll asked the question whether ‘it was inevitable that Australian laws would be changed to allow same-sex marriage.
Apparently 75% of respondents said yes. But this isn’t what I am objecting to. What I object to is the conclusion that Gay Marriage advocates draw from this. They triumphantly claim that most Australians are in favour of Gay Marriage!



Just in case you fail to see the absurdity of this conclusion (which I didn’t pick up straight away either), I will explain using an analogy:



If a poll was conducted in Australia or America asking the question whether ‘it was inevitable that a terrorist attack would occur on your soil in the future’, I’m sure most people, if not all, would respond with ‘Yes’.

But does that mean we want it to happen? Or think it is a good thing? Of course not!



So neither is the conclusion true that Australians want Gay Marriage just because they think it is inevitable!

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Agnosticism: The most Egregious Form of Fence-Sitting


Wiki defines Agnosticism as “the view that certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable.



But how valid is this position really? Does anybody actually know for certain that God does or does not exist? I mean 100%. Can these people give compelling logical proofs or disproofs?



Not even the infamous anti-theist Richards Dawkins claims to know 100% that God does not exist. What about theists? I’m a devout Christian, but I can’t say that I know for sure. In fact if you press most Christians hard enough, they too will admit that they don’t know for certain.



This may surprise many atheists, and some Christian’s may recoil at the mere suggestion. But what we have to remember is that Christ never said that admission to Heaven requires certainty, in fact the totally opposite is true. Christ constantly stressed the importance of faith in the Salvation that is given by God (Matthew 25:21, Mark 5:2, Luke 5:20, Luke 7:50).

No demand was made for 100% certainty. How can anyone be 100% certain when our fallen, sinful existence is defined as being divorced from God’s presence?







So if both atheists and theists admittedly only hold their positions by faith, then where does this lead the agnostic? It seems as though it leaves him in an untenable intellectual position.

I can understand the agnostics who are genuinely perplexed and ambivalent as to the existence of God, but it is those agnostics that try and define Agnosticism as a legitimate belief system in itself that I find frustrating. It is a refusal to even genuinely debate the matter. It is a pusillanimous refusal to put ones neck on the line.

But what these types of agnostics don’t seem to realize is that their neck is on the line whether they like it or not. Either God exists or He doesn’t; when your last breath departs from your lungs, you will quickly find that there is no fence to sit on after all!


Saturday, May 28, 2011

Could Neanderthal be a highly intelligent, bipedal ape?


Being a Young Earth Creationist (YEC), I have tended to view Neanderthals as a highly diverged race of humans. There is very little evidence to suggest that they are anything other than this.

But one thing that I had never considered before, is the thesis explained by the author of this video; that the collection of skeletons known as Neanderthal were actually highly intelligent, bipedal apes.




Of course this would not be a surprising revelation to any evolutionist, but how would this fit into a YEC theory? The bottom line is that there is no reason why God would not have created a highly intelligent species of ape that fully aligns with what the author of the video describes. This animal would certainly have been given safe passage by Noah on the Ark during the Global Flood, and flourished afterwards in the frigid ice age continent of Europe.



The only thing in this video that I couldn’t take seriously was the claim that the vastly distinct Neanderthals were mating/raping human females resulting in healthy offspring.

If there is anything that we know for sure in biology it is that different types of animals that have been totally separated for tens, or hundreds, of thousands of years CAN NOT produce viable offspring. This just does not happen.

The reason why the author suggested that humans and Neanderthals have mated in the past is because that DNA of Neanderthals closely aligns with humans. This fact, coupled with their virtually identical physiology of modern human, is what leads YECs to assume that the two are only different races of humans.



So is he right? The only thing that we can know for certain is that nothing is certain! As contradictory as this sounds, it is true. Skeletons tell us very little about the functioning of the organism. The whole farce with the coelacanth should serve as an important lesson.



True or not, I can appreciate the author thinking outside the box. It is certainly a very exciting thesis!

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

'The Critical Decade’ Report

The first thing that startled me was the highly politicised nature of this report. It was written by a scientist with the aura of being a scientific report, but what I read in the report was a quasi-scientific document that had been totally white-washed and tainted with a heavy tarnish of semantic wordplay.
The most prominent example of this was the almost total absence of the term ‘global warming’, which had been exchanged for the term ‘climate change’. This has been a conspicuous tactical change recently in a desperate effort to give the moribund AGW (Anthropogenic global warming) theory some semblance of credibility.

Despite the superficial similarities between the two terms, there are substantial differences. The traditional term ‘global warming’ is self explanatory; the globe is proposed to be warming (the correct term iswhich emphasises the human factor of the alleged warming, but this is almost always shortened by dropping ‘anthropogenic’). But due to the significant credibility crises that the theory has had of late, this term has been dropped in favour of the term ‘climate change’.

The term ‘climate change’ is also self explanatory. But what is it’s relevance to AGW? Well, nothing! The climate always changes naturally from day to day; month to month; year to year and decade to decade. So while you can dispute the implications of the term ‘global warming’, you obviously cannot dispute the fact that the climate changes from day to day.

So here we have a political ploy to exchange a disputable term with an indisputable term with the intention of having the credibility of the fact that the ‘climate changes’ credited to the idea of AGW; a very deceptive and subtle ruse.

Such semantic ploys result in painfully asinine reading and nonsensical predictions as vague as this one:

“what we can say with certainty is that rainfall patterns will change as a result of climate change and often in unpredictable ways, creating large risks for water availability” pg 22.

Who would have thought that you could be certain about rainfall patterns being unpredictable, and will change as a result of the climate changing? What an epiphany!!!

The second thing to startle me, and the most egregious, was the almost total absence of an address of the main criticisms of AGW. This is highly significant because it reduces the credibility of the report to almost zero. For a report that is clamed to settle the scientific debate, this is appalling, and it goes to show how desperate the AGW proponents are that they have no other recourse than to ignore the powerful evidence against it.

This is no more obvious as when the report addresses the ‘climategate’ event. The author of this report merely mentions it as being an event in which somebody hacked the computers of scientists. The author simply ignores the fraud and prodigious data manipulation by the UN Climate Panel of scientists that the leaked documents and emails revealed.

The third thing that should give any critical reader pause for thought, is prominent use of terms such as "semi-empirical" and "significant uncertainties". The frequent use of these words and others synonymous terms really emphasises why the public has trouble accepting various pontificating by politicians that “the science is settled”.

Fourthly, whenever Antarctica is mentioned, the author is always careful to omit any reference to East Antarctica. Whenever he mentions Antarctica as a whole, he is sure to word it so as to only refer to the Western portion of Antarctica.

This is because, while Western Antarctica is indeed experiencing temperature rises and ice sheet loss, it has always been known but seldom mentioned that the Eastern portion of Antarctica – which is four times the size of Western Antarctica - is actually getting colder and forming thicker ice, and in amounts that actually offset that which is being lost on the other portion of the continent! This important fact is almost always omitted by AGW proponents. This is especially seen in this report where the author has gone out of his ways to give the strong impression Antarctica as a whole is warming and losing ice, when this is most certainly not true.

Having read this newest report that is claimed to settle the debate on human caused global warming, I am more unconvinced than ever. It is quite evident that this whole report is an egregious piece of political propaganda, NOT impartial science that it claims to be.

You can find 'The Critical Decade' report at this website.


For further information on the evidence against anthropogenic global warming.

Sunday, May 22, 2011

The secular case against same-sex marriage

I just found this great article titled “The Secular CaseAgainst Same-Sex Marriage”. Of course I don’t agree with the author with a few points, him being an atheist and I being a theist and all. But I fully agree with the general argument that he outlines.

Here are a few choice quotes:



At the most basic level, our survival as a species requires the coming together of male and female gametes.



“In human societies the way this essential union is symbolised is in the institution of marriage. This is how the centrality of the male-female partnership is celebrated in our culture and, in a non-religious sense, it is sacred; that is to say, heterosexuality is so important to our survival, so fundamental to the continuation of the species, that we have an ingrained sense that marriage as a heterosexual union should not be tampered with.”



“In a just society, no-one should withhold such privileges from a person or a couple simply on the grounds of their sexual orientation. But to solve this problem by introducing same-sex marriage is to strip marriage of its deep meaning as a symbol of the male-female union that it is quintessentially a part of nearly all animal life, including human life, on this planet, and to pare it down to the status of a civil union, a merely legal arrangement. This is why I feel queasy about the idea of same-sex marriage. It is achieving equality for some by taking something important away from many others, and that, I think, is not just. The just way to give equality to homosexuals is to acknowledge their relationships in civil, unions which give them the recognition and legal rights they want and deserve”



“But we must also recognise that there is a sense in which homosexual partnerships are not the same as heterosexual ones and this difference should also be celebrated.



“I sometimes think that some members of the homosexual community are playing a game of “Let’s Pretend” – “Let’s pretend we’re heterosexual”: Heterosexual couples have children, so let’s get ourselves a baby. Heterosexual couples get married, so let’s get ourselves married. This seems to me to be at one level a denial of one’s homosexuality, of what makes homosexuality unique. Freedom is not the ability to become like other people, freedom is the ability to become more fully yourself! Isn’t this what “Gay Pride” means. There is no pride in making believe you are just like everyone else.”

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Darwinism a la Geocentrism



In a strange case of history repeating, the whole debate about origins seems to quite neatly align with another old debate about nature; the workings of the solar system.







Aristotle’s geocentric model of the universe was rather simplistic in that it assumed that all the celestial bodies moved in a uniform circular path around earth. While the retrograde motions of the planets were certainly known to Aristotle, he had no way to incorporate it into his model.

It wasn’t until Apollonius and Hipparchus came on the scene that the idea of epicycles was injected into Aristotle’s model to make it fit the actual observations. When Ptolemy came along, he took the idea of epicycles to a whole new level, compounding epicycles upon epicycles in a desperate effort to make the Aristotelian model fit observations.



It wasn’t until Copernicus and Kepler finally came upon the scene that the whole Aristotelian system was thrown out in favor of a totally new, and far more accurate, model; heliocentrism.





We can see in this whole narrative some quite striking parallels with the current debate over origins:

Darwin’s evolutionary model of the origins of the species is rather simplistic in that it assumes that all species evolved from one common ancestor by only a natural process. While problems were well known to Darwin such as a lack of model for the origin of the first life-form; lack of transitional fossils; and known limits to genetic change in breeding, he had no way to incorporate these into his model.

Intelligent Designist’s eventually came on the scene and injected the ‘god of the gaps’ idea into Darwinism in a desperate effort to make the Darwinian model fit observations.



It wasn’t until Henry M. Morris and John C. Whitcomb Jr. finally came on the scene that the whole Darwinian system was thrown out in favour of the new, and far more accurate model of Biblical Creationism (or Young Earth Creationism).






The overturning of the Aristotelian model in favour of heliocentrism was a long drawn out and tortured affair. The stalwarts of the old model simply didn’t want to let it go and thus admit that they were totally wrong. They used every tactic in the book to stall the rise of the new model, even the highest powers in the land resorted to ‘roughhousing’ tactics.

It took the compounding of evidence and the slow dying off of the ‘old guard’ before the revolution truly took over.



The same is certainly true of today’s origins debate. The adherents of the old Darwinian model of origins are just as stubborn and dogmatic as the old geocentrists. Darwinists are demoting or sacking those in academic circles who disagree with them, even resorting to the courts in a desperate attempt to stall the rise of Biblical creationism.

But just as the ‘old guard’ was unable to stem the rise of revolutionary heliocentrism, the evidence against evolution is mounting, the evolutionary dogmatists are aging and the tide is inexorably turning in favour of the new revolution; Young-Earth Biblical Creationism.


Friday, May 6, 2011

Breaking The Spell, by Daniel Dannett

Unlike the arrogant and aggressive approach of most militant atheists, Dennett’s approach to critiquing religion is quite diplomatic and respectful. He seems to be aware that to address religious folk in an arrogant and haughty manner is to alienate the religious reader straight away.



So rather than verbally bashing the religious reader into submission, Dennett strives to convince the reader instead. This was quite refreshing.





To a large degree he is successful in departing from the traditional approach of the new atheists. There were very few times that I found myself rolling my eyes in reaction to the typical atheist drivel that is found in abundance in Dawkins and Hitchens works. But Dennett seemed to have set the bar a bit higher.





Despite the refreshingly tactful approach that Dennett took, he still managed to fall into some of the same old traps.

One of the usual dirty tricks that other militant atheist authors are guilty of is overstating the validity of evolution. In attempting to reject the need for a creator in nature, these new age atheists tend to greatly exaggerate how valid the theory of evolution actually is.

And Dennett is no less guilty of this. At one point he actually says that “Evolution is about as well established as the fact that water is H2O.” Suffice it to say, that water is in existence right now so we can put it to the test, and then retest it, at any time. The evolution of life through common descent on the other hand, is something that is alleged to happen in the deep past. And as such, can not be observed, and therefore can not be scientifically tested. No event of prehistory can ever be as scientifically established as water is H2O.



Another dirty trick – or maybe wilful ignorance – is his comment that there are no reputable scientists who reject evolution. This old canard can easily be rejected by noting the large lists of scientists who do unashamedly reject evolution. Lists, such as from Creation Ministries International or the Discovery institute, amply testify to this fact. These lists not only include hundreds of reputable scientists, but also include many dozens of science Professors of secular universities.



After admitting that certain religious aspects can have very good influences on people (something that almost all new-age atheists are loathed to do), Dennett seems obliged to offset this fact with the comment that atheists too could be better people than religious people. What is his reasoning for this? Well, he says that no survey has shown otherwise! Apparently, the moon is populated by pink elephants too, well no evidence has proven otherwise!



Dennett makes the claim that morals need to be grounded in reason, not blind faith. But, he says, blind faith is reasonable when we trust the source.

He then goes on to criticize Christians for having blind faith, but he somehow misses the point that Christians trust their source, just as his criteria demands! Christians trust that our omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent God is worthy of trusting over the fallible reasoning of man.

So in areas such as homosexuality, where God’s command conflict with man reasoning, Christians trust God, by virtue of his omniscience, that God would know. But human reasoning on the other hand, is based on a very poor understanding of the functioning of the human mind and sexuality. Because of this, human reasoning is always being revised and changed.

So when the two collide, Christians always place human reasoning in a subservient position to God’s reasoning.



Dennett makes the point that Christians need to make religion less of a “sacred cow”, and more like a “worthy alternative”. I have no doubt that this would be a virtuous exercise. Christianity could gain a lot from a critical examination, and a subsequent purge of all the dross that has infected it from the wider society over history.

But one must not make the mistake of rejecting religion outright simply because it contains a few faults.

Ultimately, if Christianity is the one true religion, then it will emerge from such a purge much stronger. But for this to happen it must cease compromising itself with the amoral tendencies of wider society, such as with evolution. The strength of Christianity is only in it’s whole form. As soon as Christianities protective shell of inerrancy is breached with the corrupting influence of compromise, it’s integrity rapidly fails and it is deformed into a feeble false religion. Such a religion is easily killed off.



Dennett opines that there is no reason why the materialist would be less caring or less moral than a theist. While this is undoubtedly true, the simple fact is that there is no reason why the materialist should, or even has to be, moral or caring.

For a materialist to be caring and moral is to embrace traits that are entirely superfluous to existence. Atheists can only hold on to these virtues as a mere matter of opinion, because in a materialistic world there are no transcendent morals or values.

It is only those materialists who have had a moral upbringing who continue to hold on to these values.



But what of those children, typically of today, who have not had such a privileged virtuous upbringing? Many of these children have not had these virtues installed in them during their formative years, and see no reason to adopt them later on in life. For them the questions are: Why stay faithful to a monogamous life when you can sleep with whoever you want to? Why donate to charity when you can spend the money getting drunk. Why be kind to a stranger when it makes you late for a movie?

Being caring and moral are just useless excesses in a materialist universe.



Dennett counters the claim that religion, if it has evolved, must be beneficial. After all, evolution is meant to eliminate harmful traits, and only perpetuate the beneficial ones.

He provides the analogy that tobacco isn’t good for us, yet it survives just fine. So he reasons that traits that have a negative effect on us, can still evolve. Thus religion could still have evolved even if it is bad for us.

The fault in this analogy is in the fact that tobacco’s existence is totally independent of humans existence, religion is not. The fact that tobacco is harmful to humans has no effect at all on it’s survival. Tobacco would still evolve regardless of it’s effect on humans.

Religion, on the other hand, is an idea that only exists in the minds of humanity. Therefore if religion was bad for humanity, then evolution would have had eliminated it from the human mind a long time ago. And because religion doesn’t exist outside the human mind, when it is eliminated from the human mind, it is eliminated from existence totally.

Thus, it is still true that if religion really was bad for humans then evolution definitely would have eliminated it.



On the topic of religious education in schools, I was very surprised to see that Dennett departs from the standard antireligious dogma of the other militant atheists who demand that religion should be totally wiped from schools. In contrast to this draconian position, Dennett believes that more religion should be taught in schools.

He believes that students should be taught about all religions, not just the one that they have been brought up in. While it is somewhat impractical to teach students all religions, I think that in the multicultural society that we live in today, it would be highly beneficial to teach about the most prevalent ones.



He also believes that, contrary to the absurd claims of the likes of Dawkins and Hitchens, that parents should teach their children whatever they want – within reason- as long as it doesn’t “close their minds through fear and hatred or disable them from inquiry.”





Overall this book was a refreshingly diplomatic break from the usual antireligious diatribe of the new atheists. Dennett’s exploration into “religion as a natural phenomenon” was quite genuine and thought provoking. But it’s major downfall was that it is quite boring. Something about Dennett’s writing style left me rather flat and unenthused, which is quite odd for an antireligious book. Something about the book just didn’t flow as well as Dawkins or Hitchens books, I can’t quite pin down what it is though. Maybe a provocative and aggressive style is what keeps the readers attention?



So based on the content of the book I would give four stars, but on style two. This leaves an average of three stars.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Is the Threat of Tyranny Over?


Western democracies have been constructed in a specific manner so as to safeguard the rise of tyrannies through government. We see in America and Australia that the government and the judicial system has been split up into vastly different pieces so that all power can not be wielded by only one person or group. This was specifically done so as to prevent tyranny.
We witnessed in Nazi Germany the cost of having insufficient safe guards in place, which resulted in the infamous atrocities that stained the 20th century in blood.

But in the last few decades there has been a concerted move within these two countries to largely amalgamate these various levels into the federal level. The impetus for this has come from the desire to minimise the waste of money in funding these different levels, as well as fast-tracking progress that tends to get caught up in the many different levels of red tape.

As honest as these reasons are, they tend to forget the actual purpose that the splitting up of power into different tiers was done for. It was specifically designed to prevent tyrannical persons or parties from not just rising to power, but in exercising it on everyone, everywhere.
But one may object that surely in this day and age such tyranny is a thing of the past so we can safely amalgamate all the tiers of government without fear of history repeating.

While it is tempting to think that such barbarous people and parties don’t exist in our ‘modern’ Western world of today, such thinking is rather dangerously naive.
I can think of two specific groups of people here in Australia that would take advantage of such an amalgamated government and rule like tyrants; moderate/radical Islam, and the radical-liberal Greens.

Radical Islam is quite explicit in it’s intentions of installing Sharia law in Australia. While the radical elements are currently few, moderate Islam is breeding more. But what’s even more worrying is that even moderate Muslims harbour, or at least are sympathetic, to the installation of Sharia law.
If moderate-radical Islam gained the controls of a vastly strengthened and amalgamated federal government, tyranny is almost certain to follow.

The Green party and it’s sympathisers are also on the ascendency here in Australia.
They, rather like the nascent Nazi party, are quite duplicitous with their policies. They present themselves to the public as a mainstream and credible alternative (again like the Nazi party), yet they harbour some pretty scary policies that are only ever revealed furtively once they have the power to instigate them. Policies promoting feticide, infanticide and senicide are their most insidious, not to mention the fact that they are generally regarded as narrow-minded economic vandals.
But what makes the Greens the greater threat is the Nazi-like duplicity that they employ to gain power. This has been proven a number of times recently where they have tried, and sometimes succeeded, in sneaking through outrageous bills when they know that it would never succeed if the bills were honestly proffered.
The enormous lust for power that these two groups have is only matched by the radial nature of their ideologies. The thing that makes them so dangerous is that their ideologies are very inconspicuous. It is hard for the ordinary, busy voter to see behind the façade.


So in conclusion, having multiple levels of power may be costly, but they are extraordinarily important in preventing these groups with radical ideologies from sneaking into power, and if they do, then their actions are largely mitigated by the multiple governmental bulwarks.

Saturday, April 30, 2011

Ideologies and Morality

Crimes and atrocities are committed by those of all beliefs. In the great struggle between Christianity and atheism each has blood on it’s hands, though it is clear that atheist inspired ideologies have caused far more causalities in one century than religious conflict has in the whole history of humanity. But this isn’t the topic of this post. Instead I want to discuss the distinction that separates the two.



When a Christian gives alms; cares for the vulnerable; is patient or humble, he is practicing the moral principles that are commanded of him by his ideology. Conversely when he murders; steals from; rapes or slanders somebody, he is violating the clear moral principles of his ideology. There is a transcendental moral code that he believes he is held accountable to.



The atheist on the other hand, has no obligation or responsibility to do either good or bad. When God is eliminated from one’s ideology, morality goes with it too. If an atheist gives alms or cares for the sick, it is of his own personal volition. He may think it is his moral obligation, but this is just his personal opinion. He has no objective reason to do so.

Similarly, his raping of the child next door, is just as much his moral obligation. Both are morally equal actions. He is in perfect harmony with his amoral atheist ideology. He can rape or care; assault or mend; steal or give alms, no particular action by a mere human ‘bag of carbon atoms’ has any more moral significance then the action of a particular cloud of stellar dust. At least a cloud of stellar dust doesn’t have the arrogance and audacity to claim that the actions of his particular arrangement of up-quarks and down-quarks is any more significant than the human atheist’s mix of quarks! He is at least a humble bag of quarks!



Thus when a Christian rapes someone, he is in clear violation of his ideology. But when an atheist does the same, he is in perfect harmony with his own ideology.



Atheism, when taken to it’s logical conclusion, is absurd. As Calvin (in the cartoon above) found out the hard way!

Friday, April 29, 2011

Monogamy vs Sexual Liberty




Sexual liberty is the most obvious vice today. It is assumed through apathy alone that no harm can come, and only pleasure will be obtained, from liberal sexual activity.



Yet in contrast to this, no one would argue against the intuitive fact that the human spirit only finds peace in monogamous habitation. One finds the most satisfaction and fulfilment is in giving oneself to only one other. We naturally pine for subservience of another, and in turn to be subservient to them. Monogamous sexuality is the greatest expression of this. Why else would such pain and grief be felt in the wake infidelity?







To give oneself in sex to only one person is the greatest expression of love. Therefore to give oneself to many is to diminish the love one has to give, even in a future monogamous relationship. Sexual liberty degrades the power and effect of monogamy. Monogamy is never as strong as when lovers have only given themselves to each other.



The ideal of sexual liberty, even through indirect social influence from the media, degrades the potency of monogamy, which in turn engenders the idea of sexual liberty, which then further degrades the potency of monogamy, and on and on in a vicious circle. In the end, the mind of the sexual libertarian, monogamy becomes worthless and untenable.







Instead if one believes the truth that monogamy is sexually sufficient, as our spirit tells us, then both the spirit and the body will be fulfilled. As opposed to sexual liberty, where only the body is sexually fulfilled, and only temporarily anyway.



It seems to me that the spiritual desire for sexual monogamy should take precedence over the bodily lust for unrestrained sexuality. One should fight against the body’s extra-monogamous impulses because of the knowledge that monogamy does suffice, and is actually the more fulfilling when more perfectly practiced.





http://www.crosswalk.com/family/marriage/marriage-and-the-virtue-of-loyalty-1414150.html



http://www.forgottenvirtue.com/


Tuesday, April 26, 2011

The God Delusion


Having read The God Delusion this second time, I have come to appreciate much of what he says. While there is no doubt that much of the content is intellectual drivel, most of his criticisms of the church hit the nail on the head. The God Delusion to me seemed to act as a very efficient ‘Occam’s’ razor to various religions, and various practices within religions. I really think that if the Christian church implemented this razor to their theology and to their general practices, they would come out much stronger and fitter as a result. Though this is certainly not Dawkins intention!



The thing that shocked me the most was how surprisingly short on scientific evidence it was, while being long on speculation. Page and page went by where Dawkins indulged in fantastic speculation as to the origin and possible Darwinian reason for religion, yet he never substantiated any of his arguments with anything remotely resembling empirical data. It is for this reason alone that religious people can simply ignore this book and it’s claims, because they are nothing more than spectacular speculation.



Most people seem to think that this book is an argument against the existence of a god, specifically the Christian God. This is certainly how it is portrayed. Yet this couldn’t be further from the truth.

The basic argument that Dawkins uses against the existence of God falls in to the trap of the Genetic Fallacy; the denigration of the origin of an idea or the people who believe it, does not disprove it’s existence. For example, if I were to call Dawkins and imbecile, this wouldn’t invalidate his arguments. It may or may not be true, but it has no impact on his actual arguments.



Dawkins quite rightly bemoans the ill that religious people cause, but wrongly assumes that just because some religious people do bad things, that God mustn’t exist.

The second argument that falls into the Genetic Fallacy is Dawkins’ attempt to explain the belief in God as being just a delusion in the human’s brain. But yet again, speculating as to the workings of the human mind doesn’t even begin to address the actual existence of God Himself.



The main bone that I have to pick with Dawkins is his extreme intolerance towards those who disagree with him. He seems to be a hardcore anti-pluralist. He seems totally unwilling to even consider the idea of just living with people who disagree with his own worldview.

In critiquing religion, his chosen method is to throw the baby out with the bath water. He isn’t interested in live alongside even the many religions which shun all forms of violence. Instead he tarnishes all religions with the dirtiest brush that he could find, and proclaims that even the most benignly pacifist religions must be eliminated. This type of dogmatic intolerance sadly reminds me of the oppression techniques of communist China and Russia where everybody who disagreed with the rulership was systematically eradicated. Dawkins rhetoric is shockingly similar to this horrible time in history.



It is disconcerting that this book is in the hands of the pleb. While I recommend it to those who are properly educated in religion (specifically Protestants), ‘The God Delusion’ is a dangerous propaganda tool in the hands of those people whose only real knowledge of religion is from these types of biased books. These people are totally unable to critically evaluate Dawkins claims, and balance them against what the Bible really teaches.



As a Protestant young earth creationist, I found that virtually no criticism of Dawkins was applicable to my worldview. I could almost feel the bullets rapidly bounding off of me!

Virtually all of his attacks were directed against various Catholic doctrines and practices which clearly don’t apply to Protestants.

His other major point of attack was against the various inconsistencies that arise by trying to amalgamate belief in God with the theory of evolution- and again, none of this applies to the YEC worldview.

For me, I came out the other end of this book smiling. Dawkins razor was only ever directed at the dross that prevents Christianity being a credible alternative to atheism. If you eliminate all that Dawkins recommends, you get YEC; a worldview tempered in the crucible of Dawkins vociferous attacks; a worldview, by virtue of Dawkins tempering, that is immune to all weapons that he has in his arsenal.

Friday, April 15, 2011

The Bible like a Jigsaw Puzzle

The Bible like a Jigsaw Puzzle



Christians are constantly bombarded with challenges from critics who claim that the Christian religion is nothing more than a delusion. They say that there are many inconsistencies, contradictions and faux pas which are consistent with Christianity being a manmade phenomenon.

Making sense of such a manmade religion would be like trying to piece together a puzzle that is made up of pieces that are from many different puzzles; they just won’t form a coherent whole.



But I have found that these criticisms are merely superficial challenges, and when you set your mind to investigating them, all the alleged incongruent pieces tend to eventually fall quite neatly into place.



The cynical atheist when he looks at the Bible, sees a huge pile of puzzle pieces jumbled together. He nonchalantly picks up a few random pieces but can’t make them fit together. He does this a few more times then just gives up. The cynic, being overawed by the complexity and the fact that he has never done a puzzle before, simply throws his hands in the air and claims that the pieces simply can’t be put together.



But the Christian has faith that the Bible is true and does make sense, he knows that you just have to work a bit harder at it, just like a 5000 piece jigsaw puzzle. The complexity of the puzzle means that it is not just going to fit together easily in a short amount of time, you have to have patience and dedication in sitting down to analyse and try different combinations of pieces. But eventually the whole puzzle starts to come together, piece by piece, cluster by cluster, into an intricate and complex, but stunningly beautiful and rewarding apogee.  



And this is certainly true of the Bible and Christianity, the more that I have been challenged by often abusive critics, and the more that I have researched and pondered the problems, the better the alleged inconsistencies fit together. Things like the alleged contradictions between Old Testament Law and the New, or the faux pas cruelties of the Old Testament; you just have to look a bit deeper and try a bit harder.



In the end, when you have studied the Bible and all the criticisms charged against it, you see that it is entirely consistent, not just within itself, but with the world around us. It is no wonder why Christianity has been such a powerful force for so long; it just makes so much sense!




Tuesday, April 5, 2011

The Secular State and Religion in the Classroom


It is a common claim charged against creationists that they want their theory of creationism taught in schools. This then, it is claimed by creationist’s critics, would violate the main premise of the secular state; the separation of church and state, or the favouring or discrimination against any one particular religion.

But it seems to me that the very action of forbidding creationism from even discussion in the classroom is itself such a violation. It also seems that forcing evolutionism down the throats to teachers and students is also a violation because the state is choosing which worldview is or isn’t to be taught.

Casey Luskin explains all this in the article linked to below, here is a brief excerpt:




A “Supreme Court decision described the rule that “government should not prefer one religion to another” as “a principle at the heart of the Establishment Clause.”8 Yet it is this very principle that some latter-day defenders of Darwin would disregard in their zealous advocacy for evolution education.



“In the public controversy over evolution, the common stereotype holds that Darwin’s defenders are the ones guarding public school curricula against unconstitutional entanglement with religion. The evidence cited in this Article shows this stereotype is wrong: Zeal for Darwin causes his latter-day defenders to encourage public schools to attack, inhibit, oppose, and disapprove of purported religious views that dissent from evolution, and to prefer both theistic and non-theistic religious viewpoints that support evolution. The hypocrisy of the evolution lobby is untenable, for it will lead to violations of the U.S. Supreme Court’s unequivocal ban on “denominational preference” in public schools.”


To set the record straight, creationists aren’t concerned with making teachers teach creationism in the classroom. Making teachers, who have a very poor grasp of creationism, teach creationism would more than likely do far more harm than good.

Instead what creationists would rather see in the science classroom is that both teachers and students be able to discuss, without fear of chastisement, any theory of origins like creationism as long as the questions and answers are scientifically orientated.

But unfortunately at the moment there are so many cases where students are ridiculed by their teachers for raising such honest questions, and even teachers are sacked or demoted for not adhering to the hardnosed evolutionary dogma.



It is truly a sad day when free inquiry in our education centres is so severely restricted. It reminds me of the type of intellectual control that Soviet Russia had on it’s places of learning.



ZEAL FOR DARWIN’S HOUSE CONSUMES THEM:
HOW SUPPORTERS OF EVOLUTION ENCOURAGE VIOLATIONS OF THE ESTABLISHMENT CLAUSE

By Casey Luskin

Friday, March 25, 2011

Atheism, Creationism and a Conflict of Interest

Atheistic naturalists are inherently incapable of critiquing any theory which presupposes miraculous events. This is for the same reason of judicial 'conflict of interest'.






Suppose an accused man was brought before a judge who was his father. If the judge insisted on presiding over the accused he would be forced to step down from the case because of an obvious conflict of interest. The reason this is so is because the accused is likely to be benefited by the judge’s predisposition towards favouring him due to their special relationship. Thus, the judge has an ineradicable favouring towards the accused, therefore the outcome is quite likely to be skewed.

The same is true of atheistic naturalists who wish to pass judgement over creationism.





The most foundation axiom for the atheist is that supernatural events do not exist, and as such the ‘supernatural’ is totally excluded from even consideration. This means that their starting assumption - there is no supernatural events – conflicts with the task at hand - critiquing creationism - because creationism presupposes supernatural events as an axiom of it's model of origins.





The fact that the atheist has an ineradicable disposition against creationism means that his conclusion will be highly skewed; the atheist has a substantial conflict of interest when discussing creationism.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Revolutionary Christianity


I am halfway through ‘Atheist Delusions’ by D. B. Hart, and WOW! I love his writing style, those I think most people would find it a little verbose. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve had to reach for my dictionary!



It is a superb refutation of the fabricated history that so many atheist authors feel forced to employ to find something to criticise Christianity with.



But on another level, it is quite good for illuminating the reader about just how radical and emancipatory Christianity was to the ancient world. We in the modern world have largely become blind to just how great Christianity is. Modern critics take the New Testament and nitpick grievances from it and claim that it is an inferior form of ethics compared to the modern Western ethics. But they err by forgetting that the modern Western society that they so cherish is a direct product of that same Christian ethic!!!



The Christian ethic of equality, freedom and rights for all humans was so revolutionary that it basically turned the old pagan order and it’s ethic on it’s head.

We tend to think that the Christian ethic is not particularly special in light of our society’s current ethic. But what Christianity’s critics, and Christians themselves, forget is that the Christian ethic that was taught by Christ is actually the most radical ethic ever invented, and the fact that this revolutionary ethic was born in a pagan society that was so directly contrasted to it goes to show it's Devine originality in my opinion.





For me, the fact that it is only societies which have been built upon Christianity which produce ideals such as liberty, freedom of speech and egalitarianism, is proof enough of the superiority of the Christian worldview.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Alien Autopsy

I have recently been given a whole pile of videos, from a guy at work, of the UFO/Alien phenomena. Currently I’m part way through the fabled ‘Alien Autopsy’ video. And I must say it is very convincing!




So what is so convincing about the Alien Autopsy video? Let me just say that if this is a hoax -which the amazing human ingenuity is fully capable of achieving- it is a bloody good one!

• The external appearance of the body is very life like, despite the grainy and monotone nature of the film.

• The hands and feet have six digits, as opposed to our five

• Blood seeps from the pathologist’s incisions. Not so much as to mimic a still-pumping heart, but just enough as to indicate the presence of a fluid below the external surface

• One knee joint is slightly flexed by the pathologist which indicated that the body isn’t one solid fabricated block. I would expect rigor-mortis to have stiffened the body, but hey, I would also expect that extraterrestrial bodies would behave differently to ours!

• The skin, when peeled back, behaves as I would expect from a real organism





One thing that annoyed me was that whenever the camera went in for a close-up, the video went all blurry, which totally negated the purpose of getting the camera up close in the first place. Maybe this was to hide the less-than-convincing details of the hoax close up. Either that or camera operator was a trainee or just really drunk.



I kept expecting the thing to jump up and scare the hair off me, as so often happens in every alien autopsy scene in the movies! But alas, it was totally inanimate (phew!).





Being a devout Christian, I naturally believe that there are simply no intelligent extraterrestrial life forms, period. But that is not to say I am hopelessly biased and incapable of rational critique of the phenomena, like so many of the so-called ‘sceptical’ scientists that are interviewed in such videos. These people are so hopelessly blinded by their own ideology and arrogance that they can’t even address the phenomena without working themselves up into a childishly arrogant hissy-fit. The opinions of these types of so-called ‘scientists’ can legitimately be rejected out of hand as nothing more than pathetically myopic bigotry.





My opinion: FAKE (but a very good one!)

Friday, March 11, 2011

Science and the Bible

I’ve just received a first edition of “Science and the Bible: or, The Mosaic Creation and Modern Discoveries”, by Rev. Herbert W. Morris, 1871. As the description below states, Morris advocates a ‘Ruin-Reconstruction’ type exegesis of Genesis.

I’m looking forward to seeing what differences exist, if any, between this old form of secular-compromising, and that which more modern compromisers propound.



Morris believed in a six day creation long after Darwin and anthropologists began to find evidence of mankind living longer ago than previously believed. He believed in an old universe but a young humanity and a literal deluge, like many of the 19th century Christians.


His literal view of the Bible was undiminished. He wrote:


"Few readers need be informed that the theory has been advanced, that these days were not literal days, but immensely long periods. Much ingenuity and learning have been exercised in attempts to make the Divine Record countenance this idea. While we regard the great facts of geology as being established by proofs second only to the mathematical demonstrations of astronomy, yet we are constrained to say, that the method pursued to establish this interpretation does not appear to us to be plain and fair dealing with the Word of God but rather a "torturing of the Book of Life out of its proper meaning." If the first chapter of Genesis can be made to mean what these theories express, other portions of Scripture can, with equal ease, be made to mean almost anything that the whim of man may desire, or his imagination invent. Here the point to be decided is, not what this Scripture can be made to mean, but what does it mean what idea was it intended to convey? We believe that it means literal and natural days, for the following reasons:……. "(Morris, 1871, p. 80)”

Saturday, March 5, 2011

YEC, ID and the God of the Gaps

Atheist Fairytales

The ‘God of the Gaps’ idea (hereafter abbreviated as gotg) is commonly used as a disparaging epithet against anyone who denies that only natural causes have been in effect in the universe’s history. Wikipedia defines it as:

a view of God as existing in the "gaps" or aspects of reality that are currently unexplained by scientific knowledge, or that otherwise lack a plausible natural explanation….a tendency to postulate acts of God to explain phenomena for which science has yet to give a satisfactory account.[Emphasis added]




I will ignore the non-sequitur logical fallacy of the gotg argument that, just because you can imagine a plausible natural explanation for an event in the past doesn’t mean that it actually occurred that way. Instead I want to focus on it’s common application to the two worldviews of Young Earth Creationism (YEC) and the Intelligent Design movement (ID).

It seems to me that the idea of filling the explanatory gaps in the naturalist theory of origins with ‘god did it’ is most applicable to ID. To explain why this is so, a brief explanation of what ID is, is necessary. Wikipedia defines ID as the:

proposition that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.

This means that ID basically accepts every single part of the atheistic model of evolutionary origins, except where atheistic evolution fails to explain how something happened, like the commonly cite bacterial flagellum. So whenever naturalism fails to provide a plausible explanation of how something could have occurred naturally, ID says “god did it” (or to be more accurate: “a designer did it”). So we see that the definition of what ID is, inherently includes the essential logic of the ‘God of the Gaps’ idea.





YEC on the other hand, rejects all forms of evolution (be it atheistic, theistic, deistic etc) totally and utterly. YEC has a totally different model for the origin of life. It completely rejects the idea that all life has commonly descent from bacteria via any form of evolution. YEC rejects the theory that all life has a common ancestry as merely a figment of the imagination, and as a false interpretation of the empirical data that the earth’s rocks provide.
I would consider YEC immune from the gotg allegation, as opposed to ID (or any other variation of theistic naturalism), because YEC doesn’t actually attempt to insert supernaturalism in the gaps of the atheistic framework, but inserts supernaturalism in place of the whole atheistic framework itself!
Thus, if the YEC theory rejects the actual whole fractured framework of evolution, than any accusation that the YEC theory is a gotg type theory is inapplicable since the YEC model rejects the actual framework and thus the gaps that gotg thinking is employed to plug.
Because of this rejection of the atheistic evolution of all species, and the rejection of the corollary gaps in the model that ID tries to fill, YEC is free to interpret nature through supernatural means, immune to the gotg epithet.


It is for this reason that YEC avoids the whole gotg trap that ID inherently falls head-first into.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Interpreting Scripture

It is generally agreed by laymen and Biblical scholars alike that the best way to interpret the meaning of Scripture is to compare it to itself (that is, cross-referencing with itself), and that a good rule is that the Bible should be taken as literal unless it obviously means otherwise, as is obviously the case with Psalms or Revelations.


Yet when the topic of Creation and the Flood is discussed, the rules suddenly change and we are told that Scripture should also be interpreted by "science" whenever the two disagree.



Essentially what is implied-consciously or not- is that the Christian worldview is to be subordinate to all other worldviews, particularly the currently reigning secular worldview. Whenever there is a disagreement between these two, the Bible is always the one that is reinterpreted. It is claimed that the “science” of the secular worldview is the acme of human knowledge and as such all other forms of knowledge must be subservient.



But what is meant by the term 'science'? It seems that the two terms ‘science’ and ‘naturalistic evolution’ are used synonymously. It is certainly true that most of the public have the fallacious impression that ‘science’ inherently means naturalistic evolution to the exclusion of all other worldviews such as YEC, OLC, theistic evolution etc. And vice versa it is believed that naturalistic evolution has exclusive rights over the term ‘science’, to the exclusion of all other worldviews (Hence why so many religious people feel compelled to reject all ‘science’ outright; they wrongly think that in order to reject evolution they must also reject ‘science’).

Science certainly is a powerful explanatory tool for acquiring knowledge. Therefore because naturalistic evolution claims exclusive rights over ‘science’ it is wrongly assumed that ‘naturalistic evolution’ must similarly be regarded as just as powerful and authoritative by synonymous association alone. Thus, it is claimed that the philosophical worldview of naturalism must be the rule to which all other worldviews conform.

It is for this reason alone that the Biblical account of origins is demanded by secularists to be subservient and must genuflect to their own worldview of naturalistic evolution.





What secularists are erroneously claiming is that any Biblical idea that conflicts with science is wrong.

But what they really mean is that any Biblical idea that conflicts with their philosophy of naturalism is wrong! It has NOTHING to do with science at all!



But what mus be remembered is that science is rather like statistics; you can pick or ignore whatever pieces of science that you like to suit whatever worldview you like; YEC, OEC, IDism, theistic evolution, deistic evolution, atheistic evolution etc, the fact is that ALL worldviews have some sort of science behind them.



So in the end we see that scientific evidence actually does comport with Scripture-rather; it is only the philosophical worldview of naturalistic evolution that does not fit with Scripture. And considering that it was originally designed to oppose the Biblical model, the fact that the two conflict should come as no surprise to anyone.

The conflict is not between ‘science’ vs the Bible at all. Instead the real conflict is between the worldviews of naturalism vs the Bible, as well as between naturalistic science vs Biblical science.



So what Christians are actually doing when trying to compromise the Bible with evolution is making the Bible subservient to the most popular worldview of today in a vain attempt to avoid embarrassment in the face of ungodly man, rather than being concerned with truth in the face of God.



Should the perspicacious Word of God really be subservient to the capricious vogue of man?

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

A Letter Sent to My Local Member for Parliament

Hello,

I am quite concerned in hearing about the Federal Parliament’s intentions in allowing homosexual couples to marry, giving the same status to homosexual unions as heterosexual unions. This incidentally, and most importantly, legitimises the rescinding of the right that children have always had to the psychological necessity of both a mother and a father.





What I see as the problem here, is that for proper psychological development in children, they need to have both feminine and masculine roll models in the same house. Preadolescent humans have been designed to develop under certain strict biological conditions, and having the feminine and masculine influences of both the mother and a father one is one of the most important.

I do not for a minute, think that anyone would seriously assert that a parental couple of the same sex would be in any way equal to a heterosexual couple in providing distinct feminine and masculine attributes to a child’s development. Be it male or female children, both sexes need close feminine and masculine influences. Even a male or female roll model ‘popping around’, or taking the child of a homosexual couple out fishing or shopping could never replace the 24hour attentive support and influence that a heterosexual couple will inherently provide.



I fear that two parents of the same sex could easily lead to some form of psychological imbalances in the delicate mind of a developing child. We are talking about the psychological wellbeing of the most vulnerable people in our society. At the very least the Government needs to conduct thorough research to make sure that legitimising homosexual marriage doesn’t also legitimise a detrimental environment for so many children. It would be quite irresponsible to make such an extraordinary decision with such far-reaching consequences based on whim.





While the rights of a homosexual couple to some form of legalized cohabitation must certainly be taken into account, the wellbeing of a child’s development must be paramount, above and beyond the desires of the parents.

This is true not just in the case of homosexual couples, but also other forms of cohabitation such as polygamy and bigamy. These other forms of cohabitation are not sanctioned by the state for a very good reason; they are detrimental to the most vulnerable people in the ‘family’; the children.

If the Government can, in anyway, prevent any child growing up in such a poor psychological environment, then it most certainly should, especially when it can do so in such a basic way as prohibiting homosexuals, polygamists and bigamists from marriage.



While I do disagree with homosexuality as such, I am by no means homophobic. I have close family members who are gay and we get on extremely well, so one could not dismiss my opinions as mere homophobic bigotry.

As I see it, this proposed legislation or law will result in children growing up in conditions that are unnecessarily detrimental to the child’s psychological development. This I believe is unacceptable.



Regards,

Timothy





P.S. Below is a link to an article that I found quite informative. I highly recommend that you take a look:



http://www.jubileecentre.org/resources/the_causes_of_homosexuality_what_science_tells_us

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Man and Dinosaurs Together?

Can you spot the Dinosaur in this ancient carving?
One contentious facet of Young Earth Creationism is the belief that humans walked the earth with dinosaurs only 4000 years ago.



This belief is rubbished by evolutionists because it is in complete contradiction with their own beliefs. They believe that dinosaurs ceased to exist over 65 million years ago.

They come to this conclusion because their interpretation of the earth’s rocks shows no fossilised dinosaurs which is dated by radiometric dating methods to be younger than 65 million years.

The dating methods that produce these dates are not the topic of this particular article, and have been adequately refuted many times by others.



The reason why this logic is fundamentally flawed is that it relies on the absence of evidence, rather than the presence of evidence. This is a logical fallacy called an Argument from Ignorance.





Even if we accept their false dates for the sake of the argument (which I will for this article), the absence of fossils from a certain period of hypothetical time does not mean that that particular animal did not live at that particular time.

Three basic ways that a species of animal could be alive and not leave fossils is if 1) it moved to an environment where the fossilization process just didn’t occur. 2) a species population size temporarily and dramatically decreased to a size where fossilization would never occur. Or 3) we just haven’t found any fossils yet! Remember that palaeontologists have only dug a few miniscule little holes when compared to the vast volumes of fossil-laden soils of the earth’s surface.



But what is even more significant is that even according to the evolutionist’s own models, it is incontrovertibly accepted that species routinely lived for vast amounts of time without ever leaving even a hint of fossil evidence!
Some gaps are so large that when put in context of the whole fossil record, the gaps turn into vast chasms, some as large as three quarters of the whole fossil record!





The fact is that, even assuming the corrupt radiometric dates of the theory of evolution for arguments sake, if the fossil record fails to record the existence of a species for such vast amounts of time, then how can we trust the alleged finely graduated sequence of evolution that is claimed of the fossil record?

Similarly, how can we really trust that dinosaurs haven’t been on earth in the last 65 million years (assuming the evolutionist’s theory) based on an absence of fossils, when other species are claimed by evolutionists to live for hundreds of millions of years without leaving any fossil evidence at all???







So when all this is combined with the corrupt dates ascribed to the fossils, we have even more reason to disregard the alleged evolutionary history as nothing more than dubious speculation.

And no amount of dubious speculation, no matter how frequently and dogmatically parroted, will ever match the veracity of the clear and omniscient word of God.