Last Thursday, Keith Plummer of The Christian Mind offered up an excellent analysis of an article on Beliefnet by a new "religion" called Universism, in which the claim was made that several prominent world religions, including Christianity, are harmful because "they seek to impose their own version of moral certainty on others." Keith does a great job of pointing out the hypocrisy in that statement as the individual making the claims is attempting to do the same thing that he is criticizing.

Apparently, Mr. Vox thinks it's wrong to impose one's version of moral certainty on others. I wonder if he's certain about that. And if he is, how is what he and his fellow "believers" are doing different from the world religions they are protesting?"

Check out The Christian Mind for a good dose of intelligent, rational thinking.

Joe Carter, of Evangelical Outpost and the editor of World Mag blog, posted on the great apologetic argument that rationality is not rational from a naturalistic/materialistic framework:

Even if we assume that it is possible for nature to create something as inexplicably complex as human consciousness, we cannot assume that consciousness would be reliable. Nor can we consistently claim that human consciousness is both the chance outcome of blind, accidental causes and a reliable belief-forming apparatus by which we discern truths about the world. This conclusion appears rather straightforward and obvious. Yet some people, realizing that it undercuts a belief in materialism, refuse to accept this indubitable logic.

I completely agree with Joe's assessment that this argument is so straight-forward and simplistic, an inability to understand is tied closely to an emotional attachment to this particular worldview.

On Monday, Captain's Quarters tackled the issue involving moral relativism within the Catholic Church. The problem addressed is how Catholic heirarchy calls for confession of sin among their parishioners yet fails to adequately and directly address sin as sin within their own priesthood:

Where we have an issue is when the Church that teaches us this makes excuses for their own, and hides behind the psychobabble and moral relativism against which they inveigh in every other possible situation. That betrayal of their own doctrines appears hypocritical and oddly convenient, and strips the hierarchy of its moral standing to identify sin and demand repentance, both of its members and of society in general.

Read the full post here.

Just this morning, British blogger and friend, Peter Glover took the British MSM to task for their blatant anti-American and anti-Christian positions:

According to an American 'social scientist' belief in God in the USA and UK - which in both cases means primarily the members of the Christian church - are directly responsible for "higher rates of homicide, juvenile and adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion".

I applaud Peter for taking on an issue that is too absurd to warrant a reply, yet Peter responds not only with regret for a newspaper in his country making such absurd remarks, but also with a desire to find a way to lessen the British MSM's influence. Frankly, in my opinion, Peter's blog does a good job of providing an alternative on its own, evidenced by his growing readership and the excellent analysis and commentary he provides. Visit Peter's Wires From the Bunker.

Finally, for a new blog in the "personal thoughts" category, check out my friend, Rob Guilliam's new blog, Rob's Rambles. Rob started at Southern Seminary this semester where I recently graduated from. Stop in at Rob's and give him a nice welcome to the blogosphere.

Labels: David C. Price

The history of evolution litigation dates back to the famous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, in which Tennessee biology teacher John T. Scopes was fined $100 for violating a state law that forbade teaching evolution. The Tennessee Supreme Court reversed his conviction on the narrow ground that only a jury trial could impose a fine exceeding $50, and the law was repealed in 1967.

In 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned an Arkansas state law banning the teaching of evolution. And in 1987, it ruled that states may not require public schools to balance evolution lessons by teaching creationism.

NEW WINDSOR, New York (AP) -- A fired employee walked into a nail polish factory Monday and shot the co-owners and a manager in the head before killing himself, police said.

All three of the people shot by Victor M. Piazza survived, although one was critically injured.

Piazza was fired from Verla International after being arrested in 2004 on charges he had child pornography on his company computer. He was sentenced to 10 years probation, police said.

"I'm sure that he was upset at management," said Police Chief Michael Biasotti. "We don't know why this occurred."

WASHINGTON - Whatever the reasons, residents of heavily Republican Texas seemed to get better treatment from the government during Hurricane Rita than the mostly black, poor and Democratic victims of Katrina in Louisiana. The issue of race is likely to linger in the aftermath of the two big storms.

Government mistakes in the first storm, including failure to provide a means of evacuation for tens of thousands of New Orleans residents stranded in flooding low-lying areas, exposed racial and social fault lines.

These divides may be reinforced, rather than diminished, by the government's far more robust response to Hurricane Rita.

Labels: David C. Price

Pearcey points to the words of Francis Schaeffer in addressing this issue. Schaeffer claimed that the reason the Christian, biblical worldview has largely lost its place in the public square is not because people have disproved Christianity or that there are issues to which Christianity cannot address, but because Christians “tend to see things in ‘bits and pieces.’ We worry about things like family breakdown, violence in schools, immoral entertainment, abortion and bioethics—a wide array of

It is one thing to examine and point out these various social issues, as I have done many times on this blog. If, however, people are going to understand the falsehoods involved with these social issues (which are merely symptoms of the real problem), it must be done by taking advantage of opportunities to explain the underlying worldview issues that lead to these problems. If you say you have a biblical worldview, it is important for you to take it upon yourself to understand what that means and how to address it with those who may be asking. If, on the other hand, you adhere to another worldview, I would challenge you to examine how your worldview addresses those issues I listed earlier. Questions related to origins (where did we come from), how one makes sense (no pun intended) of rationality, love, altruism, self-sacrifice, and freedom of choice. Why are some people “good” and some people “bad”? I dare say that if, at any point, your worldview cannot legitimately address these without having to deviate from the core tenets of your worldview system, it’s time to cash in for a new one, because yours can’t hold water.

Labels: David C. Price

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The newest acolyte at a temple on an outlying South Korea island is a dog who has learned to sit, stay and perform Buddhist prayer rituals alongside the monks.

Monks at Buljang Temple on Chindo island off the southwest coast said the stray called "Hama" now joined them at prayer.

Hama -- Korean for hippopotamus -- follows monks into the temple and bows in the same manner for prayer, a temple official said. Some local Buddhists, who believe in reincarnation, are wondering what Hama may have been in a past life. [Full story]

Labels: David C. Price

"U.S. District Judge Nanette Laughery (search) said the civil liability language 'threatens an immediate chilling effect on all abortion counseling within Missouri and nearby states,' in part because the language is too vague to know what actions could be targeted."

"I can tell you we are absolutely ecstatic," clinic administrator Michelle Collins said. "We will be providing surgeries on Monday and it will be business as usual."

Labels: David C. Price

LibriVox is a hope, an experiment, and a question: can the net harness a bunch of volunteers to help bring books in the public domain to life through podcasting? That is, totally free audiobooks from the public domain

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Doctors working in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans killed critically ill patients rather than leaving them to die in agony as they evacuated hospitals, The Mail on Sunday can reveal [sic]. With gangs of rapists and looters rampaging through wards in the flooded city, senior doctors took the harrowing decision to give massive overdoses of morphine to those they believed could not make it out alive. In an extraordinary interview with The Mail on Sunday, one New Orleans doctor told how she 'prayed for God to have mercy on her soul' after she ignored every tenet of medical ethics and ended the lives of patients she had earlier fought to save.

The doctor said: "I didn't know if I was doing the right thing. But I did not have time. I had to make snap decisions, under the most appalling circumstances, and I did what I thought was right. "I injected morphine into those patients who were dying and in agony. If the first dose was not enough, I gave a double dose. And at night I prayed to God to have mercy on my soul."

The doctor, who finally fled her hospital late last week in fear of being murdered by the armed looters, said: "This was not murder, this was compassion. They would have been dead within hours, if not days. We did not put people down. What we did was give comfort to the end.

Labels: David C. Price

Please read this.

HT: Cindy Swanson

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Journalists who are long on opinions and short on knowledge have no idea what is involved in moving hundreds of tons of relief supplies into an area the size of England in which power lines are down, telecommunications are out, no gasoline is available, bridges are damaged, roads and airports are covered with debris, and apparently have little interest in finding out.

So they libel as a "national disgrace" the most monumental and successful disaster relief operation in world history.

The entire article by Kelly is worth reading as he quotes a former Air Force logistics officer who puts this particular logistical nightmare into perspective:

We do not yet have teleporter or replicator technology like you saw on 'Star Trek' in college between hookah hits and waiting to pick up your worthless communications degree while the grown-ups actually engaged in the recovery effort were studying engineering.

"The United States military can wipe out the Taliban and the Iraqi Republican Guard far more swiftly than they can bring 3 million Swanson dinners to an underwater city through an area the size of Great Britain which has no power, no working ports or airports, and a devastated and impassable road network.

"You cannot speed recovery and relief efforts up by prepositioning assets (in the affected areas) since the assets are endangered by the very storm which destroyed the region.

The fact is, nobody, from the governors of LA or MS, to the mayor of New Orleans, to the leaders within the federal government, wanted to see a single soul die in this storm. Much has been done by all involved and I think that is commendable. Certainly, those in authority will be able to think of things they wish they would have done differently, but that is always the case when tragedy strikes, regardless of who is in charge, their political affiliation, race, national origin, gender...you get the picture.

I'm sure there is plenty of blame to go around, as well, as mistakes seemed to have been made in just about every area. There must be accounting of what is happening so the same mistakes will not be made again. It must, however, be done free of personal or political agendas.

Labels: David C. Price

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I want to talk to you not as the Chairman of the Democratic Party, but as an American. Last week, we witnessed tremendous acts of courage and heroism, of people coming together, opening their hearts to one another trying to reach out and help one another. That was America at its best.

But that's not all we saw. We saw people desperately trying to survive in conditions we could not imagine in an American city.

As survivors are evacuated, order is restored, the water slowly begins to recede, and we sort through the rubble, we must also begin to come to terms with the ugly truth that skin color, age and economics played a deadly role in who survived and who did not.

Nah, nice try, Howie, but you were absolutely talking to that group as the Chairman of the Democratic Party. You were shamelessly playing politics with a national, non-partisan tragedy, doing your best to win the support and votes of the largest black religious denomination in America. And how best to do that? By using race to win 'em over. To say that so many died because they were black.

I love Power Line Blogger John Hinderaker's response to Howard's diatribe:

Note how Dean seamlessly merges age, income and race. Age could have been correlated, to some degree, with the death toll, in that elderly people might have had more trouble obeying the mandatory evacuation order, and the local authorities failed to provide buses or other means of transportation to escape the city before the hurricane struck. Likewise, perhaps, with income. But race? There isn't a scrap of evidence that race had anything to do with it. What is Dean trying to imply? That the Louisiana authorities kicked black people off buses? Barricaded the streets and stopped black people from driving out of town? Is he saying that National Guard helicopters flew over black people on rooftops and rescued white people or Hispanics or Asians instead?

Labels: David C. Price

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It is racist to call American citizens refugees," the Rev. Jesse Jackson said, visiting the Houston Astrodome on Monday. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus have expressed similar sentiments.

That is one of the most ridiculous things I've heard in a long time and now everyone from the media to the President is buying into it. Frankly, I'm a bit confused as to how those not involved in the hurricane's aftermath can be using a racial slur when referring to those who had to escape from their homes in order to seek

It is a bit disingenuous for those who continue to complain about racial divisions to habitually segment us along racial divides in every circumstance. Are we all Americans in this together or aren't we? One very ignorant and perhaps bigotted journalist makes an inane remark about a black man "looting" and a white man "looking for food" and that is taken to be the attitude of a nation. Most Americans don't see things that way and that shouldn't be projected upon us. Most of us saw many different colors of faces on the news cast of people trying to seek

Labels: David C. Price

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