Sunday, October 3, 2010

Luke Historians--The Past Is The Key To The Present




lukehistorians.com

Luke Historians is a project inspired by one of the fascinating anomalies of Scripture: a scientific Greek who wrote two books of the Bible.

Luke Historians is a website dedicated to trumping convention in two ways:

Our society governs by the doctrine that "the present is the key to the past," which was originally supposed to apply to only the scientific concept of uniformitarianism. But how often is the past viewed through the lens of the present throughout all culture? We must instead investigate the past to interpret the successes and failures of the present.

The Past is the Key to the Present. The Bible is necessarily respected in academic circles as the single most influential text in Western Civilization. But fundamental misunderstandings about this remarkable book exist because the Greek and Hebrew minds clash. Most residents of the Western World descend from the Greek (or Gentile) heritage of thought and thus have difficulty understanding the historical and prophetic narrative of the Hebrew Bible.

That is why Luke is a great starting point for common ground debate, because Luke himself was a Greek taking part in a very Hebrew happening. Luke Historians is intended to be a haven for all the nerdy Christians, Skeptics and any others interested in solving the Bible and its role in history to crawl out of their various gang slums on the internet and meet for intelligent problem-solving. A Meeting of the Greek and Hebrew Minds.

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Maher's Monkey Business: Academic Travesty and Religulous Obsession with O'Donnell

As science is increasingly politicized in the Delaware senate race, viewers have to wonder – what is a Darwinian skeptic, and is it safe to have one in Congress?

Last week, Bill Maher didn’t unearth an archived youthful indiscretion to make Christine O’Donnell the laughingstock of her critics. Rather, he insulted not only O’Donnell, but an untold number of citizens who question the scientific status quo.

“Evolution is a myth, and Darwin himself -” O’Donnell began to explain before being interrupted by Maher in a clip from 1998. “Evolution is a myth? Have you ever looked at a monkey?” was Maher’s comic rebuttal. We can cut him some slack since he was, after all, the comedian on the stage. But otherwise, a Creationist might as well attempt to refute an evolutionist by saying, “Creation is a myth? Have you ever looked at a DNA molecule?” It would be interesting to see which visual experience makes the more compelling argument.

I would probably be on Maher’s side in this argument if the people who had doubts about Evolution were only a bunch of backwoods hicks who had never seen a microscope before. But that in itself is a myth, because that simply isn’t the case. There are very serious, highly educated scientists that have realized certain facts in the natural world are not adding up in favor of the Darwinian tradition. Not all of them are Creationists, or even religious at all.

Contrary to the average media slant, it actually isn’t religion that is criticizing Darwin. Many dapper theologians have happily merged their belief in the Bible with belief in Evolution, and however soaring or sappy the result may be, it has earned them the highest approval rating Richard Dawkins can muster for a religion: Harmless. A serious Darwinian doubter is a different sort of person entirely – a seeker who looks beyond religious and professional boundaries.

Maher enjoys perpetuating the misconception that denial of Evolution is directly linked to unintelligence. It actually has nothing to do with basic intelligence. My Ivy League educated father has been disbelieving Darwinian evolution for decades - even while he would regularly take my siblings and me to the American Museum of Natural History and the Bronx Zoo.

It is also a misnomer to automatically label a person as “anti-science” just because he or she disbelieves the Darwinian extrapolation of macroevolution. All a Darwinian skeptic wants is every last iota of data spread upon the dissection table – no secrets, no cover-ups, no manipulation. Come to think of it, we could use a good dose of that mindset in Congress!

Even if Christine O’Donnell once confused carbon dating with potassium-argon dating (an unsurprising layperson’s mistake), at least she showed enough interest in the subject to investigate beyond the status quo. The awareness and consideration of more than one informed opinion is an appealing feature in a senatorial candidate.

O’Donnell said quizzically on Maher’s show, “Then why aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans?” However hastily formed that question may be, the “time did it!” sort of answer she was given was just as inadequate. A common atheist argument I’ve come across claims, “I looked up in the sky today and didn’t see God, and therefore He doesn’t exist.” That sounds remarkably naïve in my opinion, but Maher would probably consider it brilliant. Evolutionists say we can’t directly observe the macroevolution process, and Creationists say we can’t directly observe God, yet both say the handiwork of each is evident. That leaves us fairly even.

An atheist claims to not see enough evidence for God’s existence, and a non-Darwinist claims to not see enough evidence for the Darwinian concept of macroevolution. For some inhuman reason, the act of not being convinced is upheld as brilliant in the former case, but considered brain dead in the latter case. That is an academic tragedy.

History education is rife with reinterpretation of solid artifacts and writings made by people of the past. Even President Obama twice omitted “Creator” within one week when referencing the famous statement inscribed in the Declaration of Independence that people are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” Ironically, that Creator-acknowledging statement was written by Thomas Jefferson, atheists’ favorite and most exploited Founding Father.

Perpetual attempts to seize the red pen and infuse new controversies into established pages of history and literature is bewildering, but nevertheless welcomed. Yet the one field that actually thrives most off of new observation and ideas – science – is the one subject where thinking outside of the politically correct box is forbidden. Why?

Many fail to understand or share my convictions about academic freedom. This frustrated me deeply until it dawned on me recently: How could they understand when so few have experienced the level of educational independence that I have had?

I come from an academic family. My grandfather studied botany at Cornell, and later became President of the University of Alabama. He also personally knows evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson. I was raised in a household with shelves full of materials by both Evolutionists and Creationists. My bedroom and schoolroom were occupied by National Geographic and Scientific American issues way before Answers magazine was in print. Henry M. Morris’ The Genesis Record resides in the family library along with an astronomy book that claims to recite the universe’s first three minutes of existence after the Big Bang.

My high school science textbooks were very committed to the scientific method, offering differing hypotheses and theories next to the currently known data of every major topic. One of the greatest impressions left on me from that curriculum was the way the text candidly admitted that science is such an expanding field that many things I learned in it might be outdated in a few years. By the way, those high school textbooks were written by a scientist who believes the Earth is young not for theological reasons, but solely because he thinks the data we have today shows strong evidence for a young Earth.

When I began taking science classes at a state university, I experienced academic confinement for the first time in my life. The college textbooks that I was issued said the very same things my high school textbooks said in the beginning - that science can never ultimately prove anything, that the ability to be disproved through test or observation is key to a good scientific theory, and that the textbook would mention disagreements among scientists and where intriguing questions remain in the field. Though I thoroughly enjoyed the subject I was studying, I was disappointed - yet not surprised - that the college textbook failed to keep its promises.

The increasingly politicized nature of the science debate is highlighted in this Delaware election. Democratic candidate Chris Coons cast in a negative light O’Donnell’s supposed desire to see public schools teach Creationism. To be honest, this characterization is a rather pointless diversion in the debate over science education.

There is no need for science classes to open with a narrative of the universe being brought into existence, such as what is found in Genesis. Historical documentation belongs in history class. Science education should consist of instruction in the scientific method and observation of data. If schools would even teach Darwinian evolution in its entirety - facts and failures, warts and all - we would possibly see a vastly more independent electorate infused with new enthusiasm for inquiring about the natural world.

Would there not be outrage if every political science and economics class forced students to study the system and predictions of only capitalism or only socialism instead of both? Would there not be suspicion of an elitist agenda at play if such were the case and no criticism of the predominant theory was allowed? Why, therefore, is this very thing happening in the field that is supposed to be the most open minded and expansive of all - science?

If you can’t take criticism of your ideas, then you do not need to be working in science or government. Perhaps there is a comfortable, mindless religion out there that will suit you well instead.

(Originally posted at The Washington Times Communities).

Theodore Shoebat sermon




Click here to listen to Theodore Shoebat's sermon in Reno, Nevada. Please be sure to click on "Evening Service - Ted Shoebat, Son of Walid Shoebat"

There Must Be So Much More…

by Amanda Read

Than what this era suggests!

Not to land in the middle of an abstract notion, mind you. That is not my intention at all. But I was once again brought to the awareness of “What the world expects” vs. “What GOD commands” in my own life.

Jennie Chancey made an elegant – albeit crucial point in a Letter that Rachel forwarded to me (”Letter” sounds more classic than article):

God’s Word is so rich and His ways so rewarding! We should always turn to the Bible (both “old” and “new” testaments!) to find out what the Lord would have us do. Unfortunately, too many modern Christians look everywhere else for answers before turning to the Word (just look at all the “Christian” psychology and counseling books in Christian bookstores).

This problem is particularly acute with Christian women, since feminism has slowly but surely crept into the church and stolen our hearts while we were not feeding them with God’s precepts and commands.

So many families believe that a young woman, like a young man, is “free and independent” at age 18 or age 21 and should leave home to strike out on her own. This is in total opposition to God’s teachings…I have had time to really dive into the Word and find what God requires of the Christian woman. I do not claim to understand it perfectly, but I do encourage you to hold fast to what God tells us to do. His Word is true and pure, and we cannot go wrong if we follow Him! Starting in the Pentateuch (Genesis through Deuteronomy), we see that God made woman for man. As much as the feminists hate the idea, it is true. Conversely, man was made to protect, cherish and nourish the woman.

Men who are not doing that and are not loving their wives as Christ loved the church are covenant-breakers. Women who refuse to stay home and obey their fathers or husbands are also covenant-breakers. They are inverting God’s created order, which is God-Man-Woman-Animals. Today we have Animals-Woman-Man-God. Just take a look at what our society holds dear and who gets the most press time! Christians must strive to return to God’s created order…

…Moving on to the books of the law, we see in the case laws (these are the laws which tell us how to live the ten commandments) that God puts a daughter under her father’s protection. He is to help her to remain pure until marriage. He is to guard her from all the “Mr. Wrongs” in the world while she waits for Mr. Right. The whole purpose of the “bride price” and the bride’s dowry was not to sell women like cattle—as feminists like to assert—but to show how valuable a godly daughter is and to protect her in case her husband turns out to be a dud (heaven forbid).

The bride price (one year’s wages) and the daughter’s dowry (whatever her family gave her) were hers alone. The husband could not touch that money! Isn’t that something? It was hers to invest and use as she saw fit. What an amazing principle! This is how the Proverbs 31 woman could “consider a field and buy it” and use her own earnings to plant a vineyard.

Your father is your covenantal head. He is your covering. Christ is over him, and you are under both. My husband, in the same manner, is my covering. I am protected as long as I remain under his authority. Modern women chafe at the command that wives “obey their husbands,” because they want to maintain their own autonomy. This is incompatible with the Christian worldview. “He who would be greatest among you must be servant of all!”…

…Moving on to the books of the law, we see in the case laws (these are the laws which tell us how to live the ten commandments) that God puts a daughter under her father’s protection. He is to help her to remain pure until marriage.
He is to guard her from all the “Mr. Wrongs” in the world while she waits for Mr. Right. The whole purpose of the “bride price” and the bride’s dowry was not to sell women like cattle—as feminists like to assert—but to show how valuable a godly daughter is and to protect her in case her husband turns out to be a dud (heaven forbid).

The bride price (one year’s wages) and the daughter’s dowry (whatever her family gave her) were hers alone. The husband could not touch that money! Isn’t that something? It was hers to invest and use as she saw fit. What an amazing principle! This is how the Proverbs 31 woman could “consider a field and buy it” and use her own earnings to plant a vineyard.

Your father is your covenantal head. He is your covering. Christ is over him, and you are under both. My husband, in the same manner, is my covering. I am protected as long as I remain under his authority. Modern women chafe at the command that wives “obey their husbands,” because they want to maintain their own autonomy. This is incompatible with the Christian worldview. “He who would be greatest among you must be servant of all!”



So what does the single girl do? Scripture tells us that sons leave, but daughters are given. Daughters do not go out into the world to seek their place in it. They are to serve at home and sit in discipleship at the feet of older women and their own parents. Only older, “true” widows who have lived godly lives are given authority to maintain their own households, but younger widows are to return to their father’s house until they marry again (if ever—see Leviticus 22:13). Unmarried girls are to remain virtuous and to serve their father’s household.

I do not at all mean to imply that women should be uneducated, ignorant and unwise. The women hailed in the Bible as examples for us were exceedingly wise, clever, intelligent, capable and quick-witted. The single girl is not to sit around waiting for Mr. Right. She is to study to become Mrs. Right…Daughters need to be taught how to add to the riches of their father’s household as a preparation for enriching their own future homes.

A very bold list of statements even in familiar “contemporary” Christian ground, isn’t it? Does that seem to rouse in some female minds faulty visions of imprisonment or boredom? If so, I am probably a pitiful sight to many of you.
“My situation had, in certain ways, more freedom than that of most people, and in certain other ways, much less…”
Yes, surely, I must look like I’m “trapped” at home all day. But I feel so liberated! Why? Only by the grace of CHRIST – which I sometimes think that the majority ignores. (To complete the above quote) “…No, I decided, these discussions would have value and interest only for myself.” - Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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The War On Absolute Truth







BY Theodore Shoebat

“There are no moral absolutes,” the foolish told the wise.

“Are you absolutely sure?” replied the wise.

Marriage being only “between a man and a woman” is an absolute. It can never be between a man and a horse or a tree, or between the sun and the moon, a mare and a stallion, chicken and rooster or rooster with rooster.

But the attack on Proposition 8 has nothing to do with the left’s love for homosexuals and everything to do with eroding the absolutes set in our Constitution. Altering the U.S Constitution is the only way for socialism to prevail in the U.S. Socialists like Elena Kagan plays with the First amendment, attacking that moral absolute and said to redefine it as depending “upon a categorical balancing of the value of the speech against its societal costs.”

These “societal costs”, spell socialism and nothing more. History tells us that by altering “absolutes” the Left replaced individualism (which works) with collectivism (which doesn’t).

Perhaps a little history can help us understand the likes of Kagan and Judge Vaughn Walker overturning Prop 8. Collectivism stems from positivism–founded by French philosopher Auguste Comte (19th century).

Positivism says that human experience is the supreme criterion of human knowledge, denies the existence of a personal God and takes humanity, “the great being”, as the object of its veneration in order to elevate man over God. Comte’s positivism was derived from Henri de Saint-Simon, a utopian ideologue who was the influence to none other then Karl Marx’s socialism.

In his Essay on the Science of Man (1813) Saint-Simon explained that every field of knowledge moved successively from a conjectural to a “positive” stage, and that the sciences reached this stage in a definite order, Physiology had now moved into a positive stage, just as astrology, and alchemy had previously given way to astronomy and chemistry. Now the science of man must move towards the positive stage and completely reorganize all human institutions. (1)

Aguste Comte perpetuated the search for a science of society through a three-stage theory of progress, which he derived from Saint-Simon in 1822. Thus the idea that truth is not absolute but historical became popularized during the nineteenth-century and is realized not in “individual thought” but in “social action” collectively.

It was Saint-Simon’s followers in the 1830s that first gave widespread use not only to the word “socialism,” but also—”socialize,” “socialization,” and socializing the interments of labor. (2) Comte’s influence by Saint-Simon explains why he rejected divine human rights: “Social positivism only accepts duties, for all and towards all…Any human right is therefore as absurd and immoral. Since there are no divine rights anymore, this concept must therefore disappear completely…” (3)

Later, positivism would now submerge itself with the coming of Darwinian evolution. And since mankind evolves, morality must also evolve with it, and instead of all men are created equal we have Charles’s Darwin’s doctrine: “Any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well developed…as in man.”

It was evolutionist Herbert Spencer who first coined the phrase “Survival of the fittest” that intended to link darwinism and positivism together. Spencer believed that because human nature can improve and change, then, scientific‚ including moral and political views must change with it, that ethics “have to be considered as parts of the phenomena of life at large. We have to deal with man as a product of evolution, with society as a product of evolution, and with moral phenomena as products of evolution.” (4)

Thus, Spencer believed in the redefining of nations’ constitutions: “All evil results from the non-adaptation of constitution to conditions. This is true of everything that lives.”(5)

The final point in evolution according to Spencer was to see a progression to “perfect man in the perfect society.” Positivism quickly sprung on its way to America, a land whose constitution is disdained and in need of an altercation. Under positivism, judges were to guide both the evolution of law and the Constitution. By these, the views of the Founding Fathers are hampering the progressing evolution of society.

But if darwinian evolution is a science as claimed, why does it always have to leap onto ethics and morality?

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Friday, October 1, 2010

CNN fires host Rick Sanchez over controversial remarks




By Michael Calderone


CNN host Rick Sanchez came under fire Friday after making controversial remarks the previous day on a satellite radio show.
Sanchez called out Comedy Central host Jon Stewart as a "bigot" for mocking him, and complained that Jews — like Stewart — don't face discrimination. He also suggested that CNN, and perhaps the media industry more broadly, is run by Jews and elitists who look down on Hispanics like himself.
Clearly, those comments didn't sit well with the network, which put out a terse statement around 6 p.m. Friday.
"Rick Sanchez is no longer with the company," the CNN statement read. "We thank Rick for his years of service and we wish him well."


So far, Sanchez hasn't spoken out about the explosive interview Thursday on "Stand Up! with Pete Dominick." On the radio show, the now-former CNN star didn't just make a single impolitic statement, but spoke at length — for roughly 20 minutes — about Stewart and a media world he believes to be filled with "elite Northeast liberals" who consider Hispanic journalists "second tier." Sanchez is a Cuban-American.

He specifically called out Stewart as someone with "a white liberal establishment point-of-view" who "can't relate to a guy like me." Also, Sanchez claimed that Stewart is "upset that someone of my ilk is at, almost, his level."
Sanchez also has yet to address the controversy via Twitter, where he is a frequent user. He even made the social media platform a signature part of his afternoon show, "Rick's List." Sanchez didn't appear on his 3 p.m. show on Friday, but CNN's public relations department put out word that he was going to be at a book signing at the CNN Center in Atlanta. It's unclear whether he attended it.

Sanchez joined CNN in 2004 after working as an anchor in Miami. Prior to that, Sanchez worked as a correspondent at MSNBC, providing breaking news updates at CNBC, and at other local stations.
CNN plans to air "CNN Newsroom" in the "Rick's List" time slot, weekdays from 3 to 5 p.m.

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LINK

THE MYTH OF THE CATHOLIC HITLER




By Theodore Shoebat



RICHARD DAWKINS: Hitler by the way was a Roman Catholic.


BILL O’REILLY: He never was. He was raised in that home. He rejected it early on.


RICHARD DAWKINS: We can dispute that.



Dawkins would search for a label anywhere he could find one since Hitler officially was an altar boy during his childhood. But using partial fact is misleading since there is ample evidence of Hitler’s new birth into what is termed Positive Christianity. When historians scratched beneath Hitler’s ‘Positive Christian’ label, his testimony went as follows: “I regard Christianity as the most fatal, seductive lie that has ever existed.” 1

Shouldn’t Hitler’s own testimony suffice? Hitler sounded more like Richard Dawkins who sermonized his mantra with continual condemnations of God in the Bible as being a “malignant infection” and like Karl Marx’s “religion is the opium of the people.” Hitler was hardly like Catholic ‘Bill O’Reilly’ and aligned more with Dawkins; he “accepted evolution much as we today accept Einsteinian relativity.” 2

So why does the left accuse Hitler of being Catholic? Leftists avoid the stigma caused by the Nazi leftist views by steering Nazism and its toxic waste off-course to the far right. That way, Catholics and Evangelicals can be transformed and driven into the ‘extremist’ camp. Jesus became the new Joseph Goebbels since He sends unrepentant sinners to a worse inferno than Auschwitz. The “new Nazis” would stand daily Nuremberg trials as a result. Yahweh would become the new Hitler who is, as Dawkins put it: “Jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

So, according to progressives, Hitler, history’s leading tyrant at first was labeled as God. By the time everyone recognized that he was a tyrant— God was labeled as ‘a Hitler’!

Neronic progressives are true to their Neronian faith; with superb eloquence and skill, they transfer their sins to the very victims whom their ill devised plans destroy. British political philosopher John Gray in his article Don’t Write Off Religion Just Yet stated: “atheism was—according to the founders of the Soviet state, and in fact—always an integral part of the Communist project. Despite the vehement denials of Dawkins and Hitchens, terror in Communist Russia—and Mao’s China—was also meant to bring about a utopian society in which religion would no longer exist.” If the left is correct, where are Hitler’s enforcements of prayer and teaching the Bible in classrooms? What we find in Nazi text books contradicts what the revisionists claim, even breaking all Ten Commandments: “The teaching of mercy and love of one’s neighbor is foreign to the German race and the Sermon on the Mount is according to Nordic sentiment an ethic for cowards and idiots.” 3

When it comes to the issue of Hitler’s spiritual views, he was far more interested in eastern and Nordic religions. Hitler described Confucius, Buddha, and Muhammad as providers of “spiritual sustenance.” 4


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