Reasonable Kansans

The Origin of Earth's Radioactivity

2010-12-29T13:46:00.018-06:00

Walt Brown, Ph.D., has added an important new chapter to his online book where he offers his theory on "The Origin of Earth's Radioactivity". Brown bases his theories on scientific evidence as well as biblical history. This particular chapter is something that he's worked on for more than a decade. From a young earth perspective, not only does this chapter explain the errors behind radiometric dating and why radiometric dates give old ages, it shows the gigantic power of the flood and some of its dramatic human consequences.

In more than thirty ways, the chapter tests and contrasts Brown's theory with the standard explanation. You can read the new chapter beginning here.

A few young earth creationists have made great efforts to explain these old radiometric ages. Their study produced many contradictions and failed to answer the key questions that needed to be answered. The voluminous final report concluded that some strange, unknown physics was involved or that God performed a miracle. Of course, God has performed miracles, but unless the Bible specifically mentions them, miracles should not be invoked to solve our scientific problems.

In the Beginning, Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood

Trash Mountain Project

2010-12-19T19:08:00.004-06:00

For those of you looking for a holiday charity, please consider giving to the Trash Mountain Project.

Trash Mountain Project - Trashed in Cambodia from Trash Mountain on Vimeo.

You can find much more information on the project here. Brett Durbin spoke about this project at our church today. You can hear his first hand account at this link under the sermon audio dated 12/19/10.

2010-12-08T11:55:00.004-06:00

A couple friends of mine made a great observation after viewing the second video above:

Macie: The line to see Jesus was at 1:38 in the video. Jesus ain't in a plastic manger.

Boone: Macie, I agree with your observation about it being at 1:38 in the video. The line to see Jesus was the line of homeless people and people in need at the Soup Kitchen, waiting for their needs to be met by Christians who have Jesus living in them.

In fact, a Soup Kitchen is probably just where Jesus would have been, serving the poor and hanging out with them, rather than at White-Person-Mall with Becky Kelley (the singer).

It's too bad that Becky Kelley, the adorable white kid who keeps disappearing, and the director were too busy complaining about no lines to see Jesus that they didn't actually see where it really was.

If you watch, Becky Kelley just walks right by the Soup Kitchen and keeps on singing about "Where's the Line to See Jesus?" Right infront of you, you idiot!!! Quit singing and look to your left!!!

Joy Behar & friends are absolute idiots

2010-11-21T10:30:00.004-06:00

Sorry, but that had to be said...

Read why. Be sure to peruse through the comments.

It's Official

2010-10-28T14:47:00.000-05:00

Liberalism is a genetic defect...;P

The First Cell

2010-09-15T10:07:00.016-05:00

[Repost from 1/8/08]

If, despite virtually impossible odds, proteins arose by chance processes, there is not the remotest reason to believe they could ever form a membrane-encased, self-reproducing, self-repairing, metabolizing, living cell.a There is no evidence that any stable states exist between the assumed formation of proteins and the formation of the first living cells. No scientist has ever demonstrated that this fantastic jump in complexity could have happened—even if the entire universe had been filled with proteins.b Link

[click to youtube for full scale video]

Living cells contain thousands of different chemicals, some acidic, others basic. Many chemicals would react with others were it not for an intricate system of chemical barriers and buffers. If living things evolved, these barriers and buffers must also have evolved—but at just the right time to prevent harmful chemical reactions. How could such precise, seemingly coordinated, virtually miraculous events have happened for each of millions of species?a

All living organisms are maintained by thousands of chemical pathways, each involving a long series of complex chemical reactions. For example, the clotting of blood, which involves 20–30 steps, is absolutely vital to healing a wound. However, clotting could be fatal if it happened inside the body. Omitting one of the many steps, inserting an unwanted step, or altering the timing of a step would probably cause death. If one thing goes wrong, all the earlier marvelous steps that worked flawlessly were in vain.Link

Here is part of the biochemistry of a single human cell:

Bear in mind that in Darwin's day, Ernst Haeckel refered to the cell as "a simple little lump of albuminous combination of carbon."

Guess he was wrong...

2010-09-12T23:19:00.002-05:00

"The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator... There is something in the depths of our souls which tells us that the world may be more than a mere combination of events."

- Dr. Louis Pasteur, 1822—1895

"40"

2010-09-12T00:14:00.003-05:00

"I often wonder why their religiosity isn't as annoying as it is with many other christians. Maybe it's because they don't want you so desperately to be someone you're not. They don't use their music as a means for any evangelistic goals. They just testify how they see the world and who they are without trying to hide their own doubts and self-contradictions. I guess that's what makes them authentic and convincing to me." ~writer of quote unknown~

Christian Apologetics

2010-08-31T08:58:00.003-05:00

Ran across an interesting website for Christian apologetics HERE....enjoy.

Fine Tuning of the Universe

2010-08-31T07:51:00.003-05:00

FROM HERE

The Big Bang
The Big Bang theory states that the universe arose from a singularity of virtually no size, which gave rise to the dimensions of space and time, in addition to all matter and energy. At the beginning of the Big Bang, the four fundamental forces began to separate from each other. Early in its history (10-36 to 10-32 seconds), the universe underwent a period of short, but dramatic, hyper-inflationary expansion. The cause of this inflation is unknown, but was required for life to be possible in the universe.

Excess quarks
Quarks and antiquarks combined to annihilate each other. Originally, it was expected that the ratio of quarks and antiquarks to be exactly equal to one, since neither would be expected to have been produced in preference to the other. If the ratio were exactly equal to one, the universe would have consisted solely of energy - not very conducive to the existence of life. However, recent research showed that the charge–parity violation could have resulted naturally given the three known masses of quark families.1 However, this just pushes fine tuning a level down to ask why quarks display the masses they have. Those masses must be fine tuned in order to achieve a universe that contains any matter at all.

Large, just right-sized universe
Even so, the universe is enormous compared to the size of our Solar System. Isn't the immense size of the universe evidence that humans are really insignificant, contradicting the idea that a God concerned with humanity created the universe? It turns out that the universe could not have been much smaller than it is in order for nuclear fusion to have occurred during the first 3 minutes after the Big Bang. Without this brief period of nucleosynthesis, the early universe would have consisted entirely of hydrogen.2 Likewise, the universe could not have been much larger than it is, or life would not have been possible. If the universe were just one part in 1059 larger,3 the universe would have collapsed before life was possible. Since there are only 1080 baryons in the universe, this means that an addition of just 1021 baryons (about the mass of a grain of sand) would have made life impossible. The universe is exactly the size it must be for life to exist at all.

Early evolution of the universe
Cosmologists assume that the universe could have evolved in any of a number of ways, and that the process is entirely random. Based upon this assumption, nearly all possible universes would consist solely of thermal radiation (no matter). Of the tiny subset of universes that would contain matter, a small subset would be similar to ours. A very small subset of those would have originated through inflationary conditions. Therefore, universes that are conducive to life "are almost always created by fluctuations into the[se] 'miraculous' states," according to atheist cosmologist Dr. L. Dyson.4

Just right laws of physics
The laws of physics must have values very close to those observed or the universe does not work "well enough" to support life. What happens when we vary the constants? The strong nuclear force (which holds atoms together) has a value such that when the two hydrogen atoms fuse, 0.7% of the mass is converted into energy. If the value were 0.6% then a proton could not bond to a neutron, and the universe would consist only of hydrogen. If the value were 0.8%, then fusion would happen so readily that no hydrogen would have survived from the Big Bang. Other constants must be fine-tuned to an even more stringent degree. The cosmic microwave background varies by one part in 100,000. If this factor were slightly smaller, the universe would exist only as a collection of diffuse gas, since no stars or galaxies could ever form. If this factor were slightly larger, the universe would consist solely of large black holes. Likewise, the ratio of electrons to protons cannot vary by more than 1 part in 1037 or else electromagnetic interactions would prevent chemical reactions. In addition, if the ratio of the electromagnetic force constant to the gravitational constant were greater by more than 1 part in 1040, then electromagnetism would dominate gravity, preventing the formation of stars and galaxies. If the expansion rate of universe were 1 part in 1055 less than what it is, then the universe would have already collapsed. The most recently discovered physical law, the cosmological constant or dark energy, is the closest to zero of all the physical constants. In fact, a change of only 1 part in 10120 would completely negate the effect.

Universal probability bounds
"Unlikely things happen all the time." This is the mantra of the anti-design movement. However, there is an absolute physical limit for improbable events to happen in our universe. The universe contains only 1080 baryons and has only been around for 13.7 billion years (1018 sec). Since the smallest unit of time is Planck time (10-45 sec),5 the lowest probability event that can ever happen in the history of the universe is:

1080 x 1018 x 1045 =10143

So, although it would be possible that one or two constants might require unusual fine-tuning by chance, it would be virtually impossible that all of them would require such fine-tuning. Some physicists have indicated that any of a number of different physical laws would be compatible with our present universe. However, it is not just the current state of the universe that must be compatible with the physical laws. Even more stringent are the initial conditions of the universe, since even minor deviations would have completely disrupted the process. For example, adding a grain of sand to the weight of the universe now would have no effect. However, adding even this small amount of weight at the beginning of the universe would have resulted in its collapse early in its history.

What do cosmologists say?
Even though many atheists would like to dismiss such evidence of design, cosmologists know better, and have made statements such as the following, which reveal the depth of the problem for the atheistic worldview:

*"This type of universe, however, seems to require a degree of fine-tuning of the initial conditions that is in apparent conflict with 'common wisdom'."6

*"Polarization is predicted. It's been detected and it's in line with theoretical predictions. We're stuck with this preposterous universe."7

*"In all of these worlds statistically miraculous (but not impossible) events would be necessary to assemble and preserve the fragile nuclei that would ordinarily be destroyed by the higher temperatures. However, although each of the corresponding histories is extremely unlikely, there are so many more of them than those that evolve without "miracles," that they would vastly dominate the livable universes that would be created by Poincare recurrences. We are forced to conclude that in a recurrent world like de Sitter space our universe would be extraordinarily unlikely."8

MORE HERE

The Origin of the Grand Canyon

2010-07-27T14:52:00.021-05:00

We have several friends visiting the Grand Canyon this summer. It's such an exciting trip, and really makes you ponder the origin of this great canyon.

There are several interesting theories as to how the Grand Canyon was formed, but one that I find fascinating because of it's attention to detail is the theory that Dr. Walt Brown has postulated.

Walt Brown has written the book, In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood, which is now on it's 8th Edition. This is a book that provides a thought provoking and richly detailed theory on many aspects of our origins. Brown's hydroplate theory covers a major portion of the book, and more recently he's provided a detailed explanation as to how the Grand Canyon may have been formed. You can find his entire book on line at this link. Note the table of contents on the left column of that link.

If you are interested in his theory on the Grand Canyon, it starts here, but a better understanding of his hydroplate theory is helpful when considering the information provided on the Grand Canyon.

Another option is to view Mike Snavely's recent DVD endeavor Grand Canyon: The Puzzle on the Plateau. He covers Brown's theory and compares it with other popular theories.

Mama Grizzlies & Pink Elephants

2010-07-08T20:23:00.003-05:00

Meyer: Believing Life's 'Signature in the Cell'

2010-06-19T14:45:00.001-05:00

HT: Evolution News & Views

Quotes

2010-05-15T19:14:00.002-05:00

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."

"The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

1. From bondage to spiritual faith;
2. From spiritual faith to great courage;
3. From courage to liberty;
4. From liberty to abundance;
5. From abundance to complacency;
6. From complacency to apathy;
7. From apathy to dependence;
8. From dependence back into bondage "

Alexander Tytler, 1787

America is at number 7...

Halliburton gets another sweetheart deal

2010-05-08T21:45:00.003-05:00

“I will finally end the abuse of no-bid contracts once and for all. The days of sweetheart deals for Halliburton will be over when I’m in the White House.”

-Barrack Obama, Oct 2, 2008

Sigh....

More promises broken. Today, it was announced that KBR (a subsidiary of Halliburton) received a $586 million dollar no-bid contract.

Argggghhh...

Letting off steam....

2010-05-05T22:56:00.006-05:00

Okay, I know I *really* shouldn't post this video for *numerous* reasons, but I can't help myself. I'm gonna do it anyway...

[WARNING: PROFANITY AHEAD]

DISCLAIMER: By showing this video, I'm NOT advocating for the "F*#kers" to really jump....just sayin'. Although, this line from the song ====> "You're good at stealin' and you're good at liein'... let's see how good you are at flyin'" <==== had me rolling.

HT: Vox Day

The Evolution of Sexual Reproduction

2010-05-05T10:20:00.001-05:00

[Repost from 1/08]

The notion of common descent seems so simple and matter of fact when described in the just-so stories we find in the media and mainstream scientific journals. Yet, to this day, we can’t even provide decent empirical evidence (29 lame) for macroevolution actually occurring, much less find an example of an organism, through positive mutation, co-evolving with a partner in forming an entirely new way in which to copulate.

Just a small example of the vastly different and complex systems of reproduction:

For the movement of animals and plants from an aquatic to a terrestrial environment, the method of fertilization had to be changed. With plants, sperms are carried in pollen to the flower so that fertilization will occur internally. Earthworms gametes are exchanged when bodies are joined in a wet environment. Other invertebrates like terrestrial mollusks are hermaphroditic. Internal fertilization is the method that is evolved in most other animals. In birds and some reptiles there is a cloacae or receiving chamber for sperms and there is usually a small penis. Rattlesnakes have a forked penis and can mate with more than one female at a time. In mammals and some invertebrates like insects and spiders there is a intermittent organ (penis) that is inserted into the female. Internal fertilization therefore occurs in a liquid environment.

Now to the human penis. You have brought up the dreaded "why" question. I get these from my students all the time. We cannot answer "why" questions directly. All we can say is that the penis is like it is because, through the evolutionary process it has developed in the way that works best. (The "why" question is the only question in science that we can answer by saying "Because, that's why” ). The size of the penis is related to the size of the animal and the position of the female organs. (The penis of the blue whale is 5 meters (16 feet)long.)

As to the "active" male role in reproduction I am up in the air. The fact that some mammals like cats and dogs have a estrous cycle with the female receptive to the male only a few days out of the month obviously has a survival value. Why we do not is a mystery except that sex in humans has emotional rewards and with cats and dogs it is a rape.

The highly complex sexual reproductive systems we observe in nature need a better explanation than “because, that’s why”. When I‘ve questioned in the past as to how male and female reproductive systems co-evolved (morphed so precisely), I‘ve been told, “When you say morph so precisely you imply you believe that there was a plan that had to be followed. There is not.” Obviously, in regard to evolution, there is no “plan” to follow. The co-evolution of male and female evolving these highly complex systems occurred just "because they did" (like everything else). The personal credulity of evolutionists is just so overwhelming that it boggles the mind.

Consider the genitalia of various waterfowl:

From the article:

"So, the twists in the oviduct appear designed to exclude the opposing twists of the male phallus. It's an exquisite anti-lock-and-key system."

The number of sacs and spirals in the reproductive tract of various female waterfowl correlates strongly with the length of the male phallus. Comparing the phallus size and oviduct shape in 14 different species of ducks and geese, the authors show that the genitalia of males and females have dynamically co-evolved with one another.

There’s that dratted word design again, but not to worry, there are unlimited just-so stories that one can consider in order to try to simplify the vast complexity of these reproductive systems that evolved through the evolutionary process. It’s not a stretch to consider the microevolutionary means in which organisms adapt within their species, but really stepping back and considering this all occurring from that first spark of life is asking far too much from matter alone.

Casey Luskin recently linked to a portion of Getting the Facts Straight: A Viewer’s Guide to PBS’s Evolution which is relative to this topic. Episode 5: "Why Sex" starts on pg. 69 of that document, and it's a very interesting read.

Oh, and here’s a little just-so story that I wrote a while back in regard to sexual reproduction and the Big O.

Enjoy...maybe I’ll submit it for peer review.

Early Man - The Fossil Record

2010-04-18T14:32:00.013-05:00

[The following is a repost from 2007. My son was asking me some questions about human evolution, and this post came to mind.]

[Better view of the chart here.]

I count a total of approx. 1,140 individuals represented in the hominid fossil record. The chart provides the hypothesized lines of human evolution from 5 million years ago to the present. So over a period of 5 million years, we have 1,140 examples of early man. Stunning [please note the sarcasm].

The site also provides this information:

Hominid fossil remains are precious. Complete skeletons are extraordinarily rare before recent times. Teeth and lower jaws, and the facial and upper cranial bones of the skull, are the most common fossils to survive from any period. Skulls are almost never found intact but must be reconstructed from fragments. Thigh bones are next most often retrieved, while remains of the feet, hands, pelvis or spine are extremely rare.

In other words, most of the "individuals" on the list are represented by skull fragments or a few bones, and in worse case scenarios a few teeth.

You can visit Talkorigins to take a gander at the list of the most "Prominent Hominid Fossils" that have been discovered. Read it carefully to get a feel for the type of bone fragments these discoveries are based upon.

Also consider the hoaxes or errors made when paleoanthropologists have become a bit eager to make a monumental find:

Piltdown Man
Nebraska Man
Homo Habilis
The Misconception about Homo rudolfensis
Homo erectus
Neanderthals: Their Anatomy and Culture
Leakey and his transitionals
Australopithecus/'Lucy'
Israeli researchers: 'Lucy' is not direct ancestor of humans

Here's a picture of 'Lucy' and Donald Johanson:

Lucy is one of the most complete fossil finds we have that supposedly tells a story about our ancient ancestors. Unfortunately, from the article linked above, we are told that Lucy has lost her status as one of our direct ancestors.

Personally, it appears to me that there is next to no evidence that these bone fragments provide any proof whatsoever that the fossil record supports the assumption of ape to man transitionals.

Consider the range of human variability in the world today. We obviously have a variety of characteristics that make us simliar but different. But, does human variability support the notion of common descent? Do the skull fragments that have been pieced together portray a transition between ape and man, or do the fossil finds merely belong to either a particular species of ape or a human rather than a "missing link"? Below are examples of *real* people that portray vast differences in human characteristics. If their remaining fossils are discovered thousands of years from now, do you think scientists might incorrectly consider them transitional forms or missing links?

Obviously, most of the information we gather in regard to early man is based on speculation and assumption as written history is virtually non-existent until approx. 7BC.

Talkorigins mentions that...

One sometimes reads that all hominid fossils could fit in a coffin, or on a table, or a billiard table. That is a misleading image, as there are now thousands of hominid fossils. They are however mostly fragmentary, often consisting of single bones or isolated teeth. Complete skulls and skeletons are rare.

Hmmmm....maybe we'd need two coffins? hehe. Considering the fact that most of the fragments are very small, I think that might be a safe bet.

I'll end my post with this quote from Gereth Nelson (Wall Street Journal Dec. 9, 1986):

We've got to have some ancestors. We'll pick those. Why? Because we know they have to be there, and these are the best candidates. That's by and large the way it has worked. I am not exaggerating.

Letterman Interviews a Tea-Party Leader

2010-04-01T17:06:00.003-05:00

Yeah, those tea-partiers are real wack jobs.

I think this interview proves otherwise.

If I had a dollar...

2010-03-23T21:44:00.006-05:00

...for every time I've been given one the following worthless/emotional responses when debating evolution/ID, I'd be a wealthy woman...

Check out the credits. Many of the quotes were picked up from PZ's minions...lolz.

Hitler finds out KU lost to UNI

2010-03-23T20:37:00.000-05:00

"This is a big fu#*ing deal"

2010-03-23T12:30:00.009-05:00

Whoops! Um...Biden, ya got an open mic there. lolz

Let's hope for the millions who think this bill is what Obama has promised it to be, that this really is a "big fu#*ing deal". My guess is that they are going to be very disappointed in the long run. One thing I do know is that, with the signing of this bill, the *working* middle class gets "fu#*cked" again...

Health Care Reform Bill Passes

2010-03-22T16:09:00.008-05:00

Joy! Now I'll get a $2,500 reduction on my health premiums!(not)

Well, obviously Obama will now be a one termer, and Democrats will be toast in November. This is not a bill that the American people wanted.

Hehe

2010-03-20T14:19:00.001-05:00

A Doctor Savages His Cousin Barack's Reform Plan

2010-03-12T09:23:00.003-06:00

Dr. Wolf is a radiologist here in Kansas, and he evidently is not fond of his cousin's health care reform plan...

Obamacare proponents would have us believe that we will add 30 million patients to the system without adding providers, we will see no decline in the quality of care for the millions of Americans currently happy with the system, and -if you act now!- we will save money in the process. But why stop there? Why not promise it will no longer rain on weekends and every day will be a great hair day?

America has the finest health care delivery system in the world. Let's not forget that and put it at risk in the name of reform. Desperate souls across the globe flock to our shores and cross our borders every day to seek our care. Why? Our system provides cures while the government-run systems from which they flee do not. Compare Europe's common cancer mortality rates to America's: breast cancer - 52 percent higher in Germany and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom; prostate cancer - a staggering 604 percent higher in the United Kingdom and 457 percent higher in Norway; colon cancer - 40 percent higher in the United Kingdom.

Look closer at the United Kingdom. Britain's higher cancer mortality rate results in 25,000 more cancer deaths per year compared to a similar population size in the United States. But because the U.S. population is roughly five times larger than the United Kingdom's, that would translate into 125,000 unnecessary American cancer deaths every year. This is more than all the mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, cousins and children in Topeka, Kan. And keep in mind, these numbers are for cancer alone. America also has better survival rates for other major killers, such as heart attacks and strokes. Whatever we do, let us not surrender the great gains we have made. First, do no harm. Lives are at stake.

---

The justification for Obamacare has been to control costs, but the problem is there is little in Obamacare that will do that. Instead, there are provisions that will ration care and artificially set price. This is a confusion of costs and price.

As one example, consider the implications of Obamacare's financial penalty aimed at your doctor if he seeks the expert care he has determined you need. If your doctor is in the top 10 percent of primary care physicians who refer patients to specialists most frequently - no matter how valid the reasons - he will face a 5 percent penalty on all their Medicare reimbursements for the entire year. This scheme is specifically designed to deny you the chance to see a specialist. Each year, the insidious nature of that arbitrary 10 percent rule will make things even worse as 100 percent of doctors try to stay off that list. Many doctors will try to avoid the sickest patients, and others will simply refuse to accept Medicare. Already, 42 percent of doctors have chosen that route, and it will get worse. Your mother's shiny government-issued Medicare health card is meaningless without doctors who will accept it.

Obamacare will further diminish access to health care by lowering reimbursements for medical care without regard to the costs of that care. Price controls have failed spectacularly wherever they've been tried. They have turned neighborhoods into slums and have caused supply chains to dry up when producers can no longer profit from providing their goods. Remember the Carter-era gas lines? Medical care is not immune from this economic reality. We cannot hope that our best and brightest will pursue a career in medicine, setting aside years of their lives - for me, 13 years of school and training - to enter a field that might not even pay for the student loans it took to get there.

---

One of America's founding principles is our trust in the people and their economic freedom to rule their own lives. We should decouple health insurance from employers and empower patients to be consumers once again. Allow them to determine the insurance plan that best meets their families' needs and which company will provide it. This will unleash a wave of competition that will drive costs down in a way that price controls never have. Eliminate the artificial state boundary rules that protect insurance companies from true competition and watch as voters demand that their state insurance commissioners get the heck out of the way. Innovative companies will drive down costs similar to how Geico and Progressive have worked for automobile insurance. And it won't cost taxpayers a trillion dollars in the process.

This free-market approach has worked for everything from high-definition TVs to breakfast cereals, but will it work for medicine? It already is. Take Lasik eye surgery, for example. Because patients are allowed to be informed consumers and can shop anywhere, doctors work hard for their business. Services, availability and expertise have all increased, and costs have decreased. Should consumers demand it, insurance companies - now answerable to you rather than your employer - would cover it.

Palin on Leno

2010-03-03T15:32:00.001-06:00

Atheists are finally starting to see the light...

2010-02-25T10:53:00.004-06:00

"One sees, even without God, how this Darwinian story could turn out to be radically wrong." ~Jerry Fodor (atheist)

The next book on my reading list is What Darwin Got Wrong.

An interview with Fodor can be found at Salon.com.

Are there any grown ups in Washington?

2010-02-24T11:59:00.005-06:00

Both the Republicans and the Democrats suck. We need to clean out congress and start over.

Trig bashers

2010-02-18T15:13:00.015-06:00

It would seem that the Palins will have to grow accustomed to the Trig bashing that seems to occur on a regular basis anymore. It's pretty apparent that this tactic is used by comedians, talk show hosts, etc. just for the spotlight. As we all know, nothing is off limits to Bill Maher, and he tore open the fresh wound right after the South Park incident.

Sigh.

Amazing what people will do to get attention. Anyway, I thought I'd post some adorable pictures of Trig, and thank the good Lord that Sarah didn't abort this precious little guy. He's a blessing in more ways than one.

HT

What a little sweetie. It brings out the mama bear in me...I'd like to take a few swats at 'ol Maher myself.

Weatherization Program

2010-02-18T07:29:00.051-06:00

As long time readers know, Mr. FtK owned his own business designing, renovating and building homes for about 11 years. When the housing market crashed, we closed shop. He worked for a landscaping company for about a year and a half, but he was just recently laid off from that job because of lack of work. So, for the past couple months he's been out looking for jobs again. He has a degree in architecture, but there are virtually no architecture firms hiring in our city or the surrounding cities. One owner of a firm from Kansas City actually took the time to respond to him personally rather than through an agency. He told him that this is the worst job market he's seen in 30 years, and he's trying his best just to keep the limited staff he has. He was very kind and even wished Mr. FtK God's blessings with his job search.

Anyway, several months ago, a friend approached us about Obama's weatherization program. He had heard that there was a lot of money being put into this program and wondered if Mr. FtK would be interested in working with him on weatherizing homes. We gave it some thought and looked at the application to get started. He would have to pay for some training and then apparently he'd be working on weatherizing homes here in Topeka. After some thought, we decided that we weren't ready to take a chance on this stimulus supported endeavour. There were just too many questions as to exactly how it worked or how many homes he'd be able to weatherize, etc. Long term, it didn't seem the way to go.

Well, I'm glad we passed up on the program. We've already been burned once due to the poorly managed political decisions that caused the housing market crash. Now it seems the weatherization program is turning into a fiasco as well.

Who could forget the $5 billion in Obama administration stimulus money that was going to rapidly create nearly 90,000 green jobs across the country in these tough economic times and make so many thousands of homes all snuggy and warm and energy-efficient these very snowy days?

Well, a new report due out this morning will show the $5-billion program is so riddled with drafts that so far it's weatherized only about 9,000 homes.

Based on the initial Obama-Biden program promise that it would create 87,000 new jobs its first year, that would be about 10 jobs for each home weatherized so far. Makes for pretty crowded doorways.

ABC News reports that the General Accountability Office will declare today that the Energy Department has fallen woefully behind -- about 98.5% behind -- the 593,000 homes it initially predicted would be weatherized in the Recovery Act's very first, very chilly year.

...

The Energy folks did tell ABC they've so far spent $522 million Recovery Act dollars on the program. Which works out to, let's see, about $57,362 worth of very expensive weatherstripping for each home fixed up so far.

Seems about right for a federal program.

I do have some good news though. Mr. FtK did find a job last week with a company out of Kansas City that renovates apartment complexes in KC and surrounding cities. The travel is kind of a bugger atm, but that should change in a few months as they will be working on a project here in Topeka for about a year.

I had hopes that maybe the economy was taking a turn as he was finally able to find a job after sending out many, many applications and resumes. But, it seems this company has down sized tremendously as well, and the only reason the opening came up was because a random drug test had been given. Apparently several people were given their pink slips after the results of those tests came back. Oops. Well, Mr. FtK is glad to be working again, but my thoughts and prayers go out to those who lost their jobs due to that testing. Hopefully, they will find new employment soon.

Toooooo funny

2010-02-17T15:49:00.008-06:00

Via The Gateway Pundit

Remember this one?

Sarah fires back at the media...hehe.

Seems the hand is quite a bit less obvious than those damn teleprompters...

A Philosophical Declaration of War

2010-02-16T12:35:00.025-06:00

Okay, this is interesting...

(CNSNews.com) - The nation's top conservative leaders will gather Wednesday at Collingwood in Alexandria, Va.—a property that was once the site of George Washington’s River Farm—to sign a document organizers are calling the Mount Vernon Statement. It is designed to signal that a united and resurgent conservative movement is declaring philosophical war against the big government and moral relativism advanced by the nation’s liberal cultural, academic and political establishments.

I like it. A revolution of sorts has already begun with the tea party movement. War is the last thing I want unless it's an intellectual one. Let the fight begin.

“In recent decades, America’s principles have been undermined and redefined in our culture, our universities and our politics,” says an excerpt from the statement. “The self-evident truths of 1776 have been supplanted by the notion that no such truths exist. The federal government today ignores the limits of the Constitution, which is increasingly dismissed as obsolete and irrelevant.

Speaking of our universities and redefining culture, let's certainly hope there are few professors as vulgar and motivated by hate as PZ Myers who teaches at the University of Minnesota. His daily rants regarding anything that resembles religion are downright scary at times. After reading the post I linked to from his blog (which is full of his own twisted conclusions about how the incident might have gone down), think about the fact that for years before, during and after the signing of the Constitution, the Bible was a mainstay in education. Today, many of our liberal universities and professors would like it banned from the classroom unless it's referred to as mythical insanity.

It's time for a revolution...I agree. We need to get back to our roots and take heed to the plans that the Founding Fathers laid out for us.

PS: We should let Palin loose on PZ and his choice of descriptions for those he disagrees with..."retrograde retard", "dumb-ass", "bible-thumper", "red-necked ignorant parents", "idiots", etc., etc.. This coming from a supposed professional tenured college professor.

Ut Oh...

2010-02-14T18:45:00.003-06:00

Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995

and...

PRUDEN: The red-hot scam unravels

Birds did ~NOT~ descend from dinosaurs

2010-02-14T10:04:00.008-06:00

The latest....

"We're finally breaking out of the conventional wisdom of the last 20 years, which insisted that birds evolved from dinosaurs and that the debate is all over and done with," Ruben said. "This issue isn't resolved at all. There are just too many inconsistencies with the idea that birds had dinosaur ancestors, and this newest study adds to that."

Mmmhmmm...you don't say.

Related posts:

The Dinosaur/Bird Connection
More Dino to Bird BS
Another Strike Against Dino to Bird Evolution
Another Interesting Dino Find

Ken Miller Lecture Guide

2010-02-12T15:05:00.011-06:00

For years I've wondered how Ken Miller is able to live with himself as he spreads misinformation about Intelligent Design all over the country. I've been to one of his lectures that was scheduled here in Kansas a few years ago. The rhetoric was laughable, but very persuasive for those who haven't done their homework. For a time, I had hope that Miller wasn't deliberately spreading misinformation...perhaps he just wasn't listening when ID supporters rightly corrected him? But, I've keep up with his performances since the lecture I attended, and he never changes his tune even though there is no doubt whatsoever that he is aware of the truth.

Casey Luskin has written a series of posts at EN&V that address Miller's vast array of deceit. The articles can be found here: Truth or Dare: A Lecture Guide to the Anti-Intelligent Design Claims by Dr. Kenneth Miller.

If you ever have the chance to attend one of Miller's lectures, be sure to take this lecture guide along with you, and share the link with those around you so they are better equipped to be objective about design rather than completely disregard it due to Miller's rhetoric.

Snowmageddon = Global Warming

2010-02-12T12:08:00.032-06:00

Yeah, you've all heard it for the past couple weeks. All of the snow that much of the nation is experiencing is, of course, due to global warming. Mmhmmm....whatever the inclement weather is, it's blamed on global warming.

HT

Climate change runs in cycles...always has, always will. While I do believe we need to take care of our planet, I don't believe we should allow the government to hold us over the fire to establish the extreme measures they want to enforce over a controversial issue that is so poorly supported by scientific evidence.

The New York Times article I linked to above claims that...

But Dr. Masters also said that government and academic studies had consistently predicted an increasing frequency of just these kinds of record-setting storms, because warmer air carries more moisture.

But, as NewsBusters reminds us...

By now, we're all familiar with the global warmists' attempt to explain away the record-breaking mid-Atlantic blizzards. Take this, for example, from the New York Times [emphasis added]:

"government and academic studies had consistently predicted an increasing frequency of just these kinds of record-setting storms, because warmer air carries more moisture."

So more snow fell from Philly to DC because the temperatures were warmer than normal during the blizzards? That got me wondering: just what were the temperatures in DC on the snow days, and how do they compare to the norm? And guess what?

DC has been hit by three major snowstorms this winter: 16.4 inches on December 18–19, 18.0 inches on February 5–6, and about 12 inches on February 10.

Let's compare DC's actual temps with normal temps for those days...Read more here.

Sen. Jim DeMint twittered the other day that D.C. snow will continue 'until Al Gore cries uncle'. Hee Hee. And, Senator Inhofe's family built an igloo for Gore. He ought to move in asap because his personal use of energy is off the charts comparatively speaking. Practice what you preach Al, and move into that igloo the Senator so kindly built for you.

Global Warming BS

2010-01-19T09:28:00.003-06:00

*eyes rolling*

Global warming is dead...

HT: Vox Day

Origins

2010-01-18T10:08:00.007-06:00

Our Pastor started a new lecture series yesterday, and to my surprise it was titled "Origins"...YaY! So, for the next several Sundays we'll be overviewing Genesis 1-11.

If you'd like to hear the first lecture in this series, you can listen here.

I have two teenage boys who don't usually get too excited about much...especially church sermons...hehe. But, as we left the church yesterday, my youngest (7th grade) piped up, "Mom, I loved that sermon...it really got me thinking". Okay, so comments like that kinda make my day..:) My eldest is in 9th grade and studying cells, DNA, etc. at the moment. It's fun to share what I'm learning from Meyer's book, Signature in the Cell, with him. The church lecture series, his biology class, and my current reading endeavour all seem to overlap atm. Kinda fun.

Stephen Meyer Debates Peter Atkins

2010-01-16T23:19:00.006-06:00

A radio debate between Signature in the Cell author Stephen Meyer and Oxford University chemist and “new atheist” Peter Atkins can be found here.

Stephen Meyer does an *outstanding* job of debating Atkins in this hour long exchange. I had a few giggles over Atkins predictable rhetoric.

For Christmas, Santa brought me a copy of Meyer's new book, Signature in the Cell. I am enjoying this book like no other. Be sure to pick up a copy.

Brrrrrrrr....it's cold in Kansas

2010-01-05T09:18:00.001-06:00

Here's one for the WTF File

2009-12-23T07:39:00.004-06:00

Obama's Christmas tree is adorned with an ornament of Mao. Are you serious? The Dood responsible for the deaths of 50 to 80 million of his countrymen? Sheesh. There is also an autographed ornament of legendary transvestite Hedda Lettuce. And, what tree wouldn't be complete without Obama's mug superimposed onto Mt. Rushmore.

GADS...unbelievable.

Still one of my favorite Christmas tunes....

2009-12-18T17:18:00.002-06:00

It's a Climategate Christmas

2009-12-18T16:19:00.002-06:00

Bahahahahahahahaha...!!!!111!!!1!

HT: Evolution News and Views

Sarah Palin weighs in on Global Warming

2009-12-09T10:20:00.003-06:00

Palin's article on Copenhagen's political science is spot on.

Read it.

Also, here is an article that portrays the impact that Palin is having on Americans...even her advesaries.

More on Climate Gate

2009-12-09T09:00:00.016-06:00

Michael Egnor at Evolution News and Views has been covering the climate warming circus. His posts have been very informative and his touch of sarcasm quite entertaining considering the inanity of the situation...

Houston, They Have a Problem

U.N. Population Fund: Genocide Helps Prevent Global Warming

Note to Sheril Kirshenbaum: "Scientists staying on message" is the problem, not the solution

New Zealand Climate Scientists Faked Data, Too

John Holdren and ClimateGate: a Perfect Storm of Eco-Science Fraud

Climategate: Follow the Money

The Decline They Hid: the Deleted Portion of the Briffa Reconstruction

Atlantic Monthly on Climate Science: "The Stink of Intellectual Corruption is Overpowering"

Global Warming Will "Wipe Out Billions"

Oops. They Dumped the Original Data. You'll Just Have to Take Their Word for It.

You can find further articles at Evolution News and Views.

Global Warming's latest....Climategate

2009-12-03T10:55:00.024-06:00

A *must see* documentary about the global warming controversy...

Find relevant articles below:

Hal Lewis Resignation from the APS

Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'?

The Great British Climate Fraud

Global Warming with the Lid Off

Obama's Science Czar John Holdren involved in
unwinding "Climategate" scandal

Scientist in climate change 'cover-up' storm told to quit

Hiding Evidence on Global Warming

Viscount Monckton on Climategate: ‘They Are Criminals’ (PJM Exclusive)

Emails Damning To CRU Head, Phil Jones

Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation

Climate Change Data Dumped

Green Totalitarianism

Taking the Private Jet to Copenhagen

Mark Steyn: Cooking the books on climate

UK climate scientist (Phil Jones) to temporarily step down

Penn State will investigate 'Climategate'

CLIMATE CHANGE 'FRAUD'

Climategate: Science Is Dying

Do Smoking Guns Cause Global Warming, Too?

The Climate Science Isn't Settled

Global warming controversy reaches NASA climate data

Denmark Rife with CO2 Fraud

How Climategate killed faith in the media

Mann now turns on Jones

THIS is a link to a site that has all of the emails uncovered in climategate.

World misled over Himalayan glacier meltdown

UN wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters

Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn't been verified

Scientists in stolen e-mail scandal hid climate data

Strange case of moving weather posts and a scientist under siege

Dutch Point Out New Mistakes in U.N. Climate Report

Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995

World may not be warming, say scientists

PRUDEN: The red-hot scam unravels

Warming meltdown

The continuing climate meltdown

What to say to a global warming alarmist

A View from Alaska

2009-11-29T14:06:00.007-06:00

A wonderful review of Sarah Palin's accomplishments as Governor of Alaska can be found in an email that was written and circulated by Dewey Whetsell. It can be read in two parts below:

Part I

Part II

And the People's Cube has a hilarious fact check of Palin's book. Enjoy...

Going Rogue

2009-11-27T20:02:00.020-06:00

I broke down and bought the book today, and I'm already thoroughly enjoying it.

UPDATE: Once I started reading, I was unable to put the book down...simply riveting. I had it finished in two days. Sarah has put together a marvelous, inspirational, upbeat biography that also shows her endearing sense of humor and tenacity to stay the path of integrity when so many other politicians cave to political corruption.

About half way through, ever the skeptic, I started surfing the net for fact checkers on the publication, but found that relatively very little has been challenged. Some of the issues with the book can be written off after actually reading it, others would require Sarah to address particular issues. But, honestly, after reading this book, her accomplishments so strongly overpower the few questionable issues that have been released about her bio.

Truth be told, this past year has been a struggle both financially and mentally for our family due to the recession. Sarah has me fired up again...I'm not content to cry in my soup anymore. Time to stand up, brush off, and get it in gear. The economic collapse isn't the fault of one particular political group, but something that both liberals and conservatives have contributed to. It's due, in large part, to corruption within our government as well as a government that has becoming increasingly toooo involved in our lives. It's also our duty to become more involved and aware of governmental issues rather than sit back and let the powers that be run our lives while believing we can't make a difference. We CAN.

I had my doubts about Sarah due to the intense negative media coverage about her, but, in the book, she has systematically ruled out every one of the bogus claims that were made about her, and she does it with a smile. Gotta appreciate that.

The book is a *must* read for everyone...

Dawkins chooses Christian cuties for his Ad

2009-11-25T10:03:00.005-06:00

The two children chosen to front Richard Dawkins’s latest assault on God could not look more free of the misery he associates with religious baggage. With the slogan “Please don’t label me. Let me grow up and choose for myself”, the youngsters with broad grins seem to be the perfect advertisement for the new atheism being promoted by Professor Dawkins and the British Humanist Association.

Except that they are about as far from atheism as it is possible to be. The Times can reveal that Charlotte, 8, and Ollie, 7, are from one of the country’s most devout Christian families.

Their father, Brad Mason, is something of a celebrity within evangelical circles as the drummer for the popular Christian musician Noel Richards. Now a web designer and photographer, Mr Mason has been supplementing his income for years by providing photographs to agencies who sell them on to newspapers and advertising campaigns.

He said: “It is quite funny, because obviously they were searching for images of children that looked happy and free. They happened to choose children who are Christian. It is ironic. The humanists obviously did not know the background of these children.”

He said that the children’s Christianity had shone through. “Obviously there is something in their faces which is different. So they judged that they were happy and free without knowing that they are Christians. That is quite a compliment. I reckon it shows we have brought up our children in a good way and that they are happy.”

Gerald Coates, the leader of the Pioneer network of churches, which Mr Mason and his family used to attend before they moved to Dorset, said: “I think it is hilarious that the happy and liberated children on the atheist poster are in fact Christian.”

The British Humanist Association said that it did not matter whether the children were Christians. “That’s one of the points of our campaign,” said Andrew Copson, the association’s education director. “People who criticise us for saying that children raised in religious families won’t be happy, or that no child should have any contact with religion, should take the time to read the adverts.

More HERE.

Amazingly, SNL nails it...

2009-11-24T08:51:00.002-06:00

The Wilding of Sarah Palin

2009-11-24T08:24:00.010-06:00

Is it true that the left is the way to lean when one is anxious to further women's rights? We've seen that is not the case when it comes to the left's actions toward Sarah Palin. Their true colors have come out in spades.

Here is an article for thought written by a women who has broken away from the Democrats...

Like most feminists, it was a no brainer to become a Democrat. Liberal men, not conservatives, were the ones devoted to women's issues. They marched at my side in support of abortion rights. They were enthusiastic about women succeeding in the workplace.

As time went on, I had many experiences that should have made me rethink my certainty. But I remained nestled in cognitive dissonance -- therapy jargon for not wanting to see what I didn't want to see.

One clue: the miscreants who were brutalizing me didn't exactly look Reagan-esque. In middle and high schools, they were minority kids enraged about forced busing. On the streets of New York City and Berkeley, they were derelicts and hoodlums.

Another red flag: while liberal men did indeed hold up those picket signs, they didn't do anything else to protect me. In fact, their social programs enabled bad behavior and bred chaos in urban America. And when I was accosted by thugs, those leftist men were missing in action.

What else should have tipped me off? Perhaps the fact that so many men in ultra left Berkeley are sleaze bags. Rarely a week goes by that I don't hear stories from my young female clients about middle aged men preying on them. With the rationale of moral relativism, these creeps feel they can do anything they please.

...

Then along came Sarah, and the attacks became particularly heinous. And I realized something even more chilling about the Left. Leftists not only sacrifice and disrespect women.

It's far worse than that: many are perpetuators.

The Left's behavior towards Palin is not politics as usual. By their laser focus on her body and her sexuality, leftists are defiling her.

They are wilding her. And they do this with the full knowledge and complicity of the White House.

The Left has declared war on Palin because she threatens their existence. Democrats need women dependent and scared so that women, like blacks, will vote for liberals.

A strong, self sufficient woman, Palin eschews their protection. Drop her off in the Alaskan bush, and she'll survive just fine, thank you very much. Palin doesn't need or want anything from liberals, not hate crimes legislation that coddles her, not abortion, which she abhors.

Palin is a woman of deep and abiding faith. She takes no marching orders from messiah like wannabes, like Obama.

And so the Left must try to destroy her. And they are doing this in the most malicious of ways:

By symbolically raping her.

Just like a perpetuator, they dehumanize her by objectifying her body. They undress her with their eyes.

They turn her into a piece of ass.

Liberals do this by calling her a c___t, ogling her legs, demeaning her with names like "sexy flight attendant," and "Trailer Park Barbie," and exposing her flesh on the cover of Newsweek.

And from The Atlantic Magazine's Andrew Sullivan: "Sarah Palin's vagina is the font of all evil in the galaxy."

Nothing is off limits, not actress Sandra Bernhard's wish that Palin be gang raped or the sexualizing of Palin's daughters.

Sarah Palin book signing

2009-11-23T08:22:00.001-06:00

I guess she has more than a few fans...

...and her her poll numbers aren't looking too shabby either.

Stephen Meyer on the Dennis Miller Show

2009-11-18T20:03:00.001-06:00

Listen to it HERE.

Climate change belief given same legal status as religion

2009-11-06T13:04:00.010-06:00

This is priceless...

An executive has won the right to sue his employer on the basis that he was unfairly dismissed for his green views after a judge ruled that environmentalism had the same weight in law as religious and philosophical beliefs.

In a landmark ruling, Mr Justice Michael Burton said that "a belief in man-made climate change ... is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief Regulations".

The ruling could open the door for employees to sue their companies for failing to account for their green lifestyles, such as providing recycling facilities or offering low-carbon travel.

Eh...the global warming hysteria is going down just like Darwin's materialistic just so stories about origins. I've talked to several hard core liberals who are *quickly* backing away from their previous support for Al Gore's money making endeavor.

John McWhorter vs Michael Behe on Bloggingheads

2009-08-28T15:19:00.003-05:00

2009-08-10T13:18:00.001-05:00

Health Care fiasco

2009-08-03T08:19:00.003-05:00

Looks like our former governor, Kathleen Sebilius, is having a bit of a hard time selling Obamacare...

Yikes

Ron Numbers / Paul Nelson on Bloggingheads

2009-07-27T09:47:00.000-05:00

Signature in the Cell

2009-06-24T14:03:00.004-05:00

The latest in the recent onslaught of books attacking bold, purely materialistic philosophy and science is a book titled Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, written by Stephen Meyer.

Be sure to order your copy of Signature in the Cell ASAP!

Another Documentary Questioning Evolution

2009-06-22T20:00:00.006-05:00

Expelled laid the ground work, and now it looks like there will be more of these type of documentaries to follow.

The Voyage that Shook the World will be coming to the cinema in the near future. Be sure to check out the website for further information.

HT: Uncommon Descent

Evolution would take a Miracle

2009-06-22T19:48:00.002-05:00

HT: bornagain77 @ UD

The Creation Museum

2009-06-17T12:09:00.005-05:00

All of my nieces and nephews attend private schools (we're the black sheep in the family with our two boys going the public school route). Four of them attend a Latin school where they do fairly extensive travel throughout the school year...some outstanding historical field trips. On their way to Virginia a few weeks ago, they stopped at the Creation Museum in Kentucky. I just found out about this stop the other day, and I've been promised pictures of the museum, so hopefully, I'll print some of them at some point in time.

Bill Maher a little out of character

2009-06-16T12:54:00.004-05:00

Seems he's not thrilled with the Obama reality television the current administration has goin' on...

PS: More reality TV from the White House. After reading that, it's pretty obvious that Rush Limbaugh isn't the only instigator of divisiveness in this country. Obama seems to be taking the lead in that department. Not allowing opposing views in regard to sharing his health care plans during their TV coverage is going to cause turmoil.

No more Letterman

2009-06-13T10:16:00.005-05:00

I'll be thrilled to death when the guy retires.

What the media has done to Sarah Palin and her family over the past 10 months is disgusting, and Letterman is pathetic beyond belief.

The Dinosaur / Bird Connection

2009-06-12T15:15:00.013-05:00

...and the walls keep a tumblin' down....

Discovery Raises New Doubts About Dinosaur-bird Links

ScienceDaily (June 9, 2009) — Researchers at Oregon State University have made a fundamental new discovery about how birds breathe and have a lung capacity that allows for flight – and the finding means it's unlikely that birds descended from any known theropod dinosaurs.

The conclusions add to other evolving evidence that may finally force many paleontologists to reconsider their long-held belief that modern birds are the direct descendants of ancient, meat-eating dinosaurs, OSU researchers say.

"It's really kind of amazing that after centuries of studying birds and flight we still didn't understand a basic aspect of bird biology," said John Ruben, an OSU professor of zoology. "This discovery probably means that birds evolved on a parallel path alongside dinosaurs, starting that process before most dinosaur species even existed."

...

The implication, the researchers said, is that birds almost certainly did not descend from theropod dinosaurs, such as tyrannosaurus or allosaurus. The findings add to a growing body of evidence in the past two decades that challenge some of the most widely-held beliefs about animal evolution.

"For one thing, birds are found earlier in the fossil record than the dinosaurs they are supposed to have descended from," Ruben said. "That's a pretty serious problem, and there are other inconsistencies with the bird-from-dinosaur theories.

"But one of the primary reasons many scientists kept pointing to birds as having descended from dinosaurs was similarities in their lungs," Ruben said. "However, theropod dinosaurs had a moving femur and therefore could not have had a lung that worked like that in birds. Their abdominal air sac, if they had one, would have collapsed. That undercuts a critical piece of supporting evidence for the dinosaur-bird link.

"A velociraptor did not just sprout feathers at some point and fly off into the sunset," Ruben said.

The newest findings, the researchers said, are more consistent with birds having evolved separately from dinosaurs and developing their own unique characteristics, including feathers, wings and a unique lung and locomotion system.

OH, BUT WAIT...GOTTA GET THIS IN SO WE DON'T CREATE A STIR!!!!!

"We aren't suggesting that dinosaurs and birds may not have had a common ancestor somewhere in the distant past," Quick said. "That's quite possible and is routinely found in evolution. It just seems pretty clear now that birds were evolving all along on their own and did not descend directly from the theropod dinosaurs, which lived many millions of years later."

*eyes rolling*

Of course, as we all know...

"Frankly, there's a lot of museum politics involved in this, a lot of careers committed to a particular point of view even if new scientific evidence raises questions," Ruben said.

We'll just have to be paitent...one day things will definently take a turn in the right direction.

HT: Voxy

Related posts:

More Bird to Dino BS
Another Strike against Dino to Bird Evolution
Early History of Birds more Diverse than Once Thought
Another Interesting Dino Find

George Tiller

2009-05-31T16:32:00.012-05:00

Some freaking idiot just shot and killed George Tiller this morning....in church no less.

Simply unbelievable....

Yes, what Tiller has done over the years is horrifically wrong. Deep down, even liberal minded pro abortion folks know that. You don't rip babies in their 6th month of gestation from their mother's womb. But, the moronic fool who took Tiller's life just made the worst possible move ever for pro lifers.

*Shakes head in complete disbelief*

PS: According to this link, it appears that Tiller performed 1,436 abortions after 22 weeks from 1998 to 2001 alone. Here's a picture of an aborted fetus at 24 weeks. If that isn't considered hard core murder, I don't know what is.

He's been in practice since the early 70's. I can't imagine and don't want to know the number of babies he killed during his career. It boggles the mind that our former Governor, Kathleen Sebelius, and other far left Kansans vilified Phil Kline for taking Tiller to task for the murders he committed.

Guy Walks Into a Bar and Thinks He's a Chimpanzee: The Unbearable Lightness of Chimp-Human Genome Similarity

2009-05-16T18:09:00.004-05:00

This post at Evolution News and Views, written by the infamous Richard Sternberg, is just too enjoyable not to pass on...:)

TEXAS ROCKS!!!

2009-03-27T16:05:00.001-05:00

Huge win in Texas for scientific integrity!!!

Happy Birthday Darwin

2009-02-11T11:44:00.010-06:00

ALL HAIL CHARLES DARWIN!!!

Some sciency types will be offering their worship and praise to the Almighty Darwin today.

I, OTOH, agree with David Warren of the Ottawa Citizen....

But "Darwinism" survives, especially in the English-speaking world, not as a quaint historical theory, but rather as a cosmological doctrine. The hard-core Darwinist is a "religious atheist," whose faith in the non-existence of God is anchored in the unshakable conviction that everything in this world that looks designed and purposeful will eventually be explained by random, gradual, purely "natural" (as opposed to supernatural) processes. And he defends himself by the method of the hedgehog: for when attacked he rolls up into an impregnably tautological ball.

Oh, and btw...

ID is winning big time in the public square. Screw the hardcore Darwin lover scientists...it won't always be the case that we continue to teach an ideology in the science classroom. Hopefully, at some point in time, much of Darwin's legacy will be shoved over into the philosophy classroom.

The latest Zogby poll (January), linked to above, shows that 78% of US voters favor teaching both strengths and weaknesses of evolution.

FAR OUT!

For regular readers...if you're still out there, let me assure you that I haven't given up the fight! My laptop has been revived, and I'm still at it...stronger than ever, but I've found an alternate venue. Hopefully, I'll get back to blogging at some point, though I can't say I haven't enjoyed the break. I still keep up with all the pertinent blogs and forums.

Keep up the fight! Looks like the numbers are leaning our way!!!!!!

PS: Casey Luskin from the Discovery Institute had a great opinion piece in the US News & World Report.

Be sure to read Uncommon Descent and Evolution News and Views to keep up to date with what is happening in the ID/Evo debates.

Nature's 15 "Evolutionary Gems"

2009-01-07T10:58:00.023-06:00

From here:

Jan 2, 2009 — Like a showcase of pearl-handled revolvers, an armory of evidences Nature calls “Darwin’s Gems” have been exhibited to warn creationists that Darwin Day will be defended next month with a show of force. The authors, Henry Gee (former editor of Nature), Rory Howlett and Philip Campbell have made their 15 Evolutionary Gems freely available “and encourage its free dissemination.” Why? “Given that the concepts and realities of Darwinian evolution are still challenged, albeit rarely by biologists, a succinct briefing on why evolution by natural selection is an empirically validated principle is useful for people to have to hand.” This collected ammunition, they feel, demonstrates the “breadth, depth and power of evolutionary thinking.”

Their list includes 5 evidences from paleontology, 6 from ecology, and 4 from genetics and molecular biology (see Commentary for items on the list). The outline is followed by summary arguments for each “gem” of evidence for Darwinian evolution.

What matters on a pistol is not how pretty the handle looks but what it’s loaded with, and whether it will work without backfiring. To shoot down the creationist challengers riding into town, this trio of self-appointed sheriffs needs to stop polishing the handles and demonstrate their marksmanship. Better a slingshot that can hit its mark than a pearl-handled hunk of dead iron.

The trio, unfortunately, loaded their chambers with blanks. Nobody cares about microevolution. That is accepted by even young-earth creationists. They’ve got to demonstrate that Charlie’s silver bullet, natural selection, can get out of the chamber with sufficient wallop to do more than tickle the creationists and make them laugh. His takeover of the town rested on the ability of his newfangled ideas to create new genetic information, structure and function. Charlie’s imagined ancestor of all life had no wings, teeth, legs, or brains. Can his mechanism of random mutation and natural selection, with no purpose or designing intelligence, get from slimy sea to Henry Gee? Let’s see.

The bad sheriffs best beware of backfires, or circular reasoning (i.e., using “evolutionary thinking” to argue for evolution as fact). They wanted to demonstrate the “breadth, depth and power of evolutionary thinking,” they said. Well, guess what. There’s something with even more breadth, depth and power than that: imagination. Take that up in the saloon, guys; it doesn’t belong in a scientific showdown. Show us your firepower.

1. Whale evolution: See our entries from 12/20/2007 and 05/28/2002 as an antidote to their bluffing and exaggeration about Thewissen’s alleged “great transformation.” Even they admitted at the end that his study “demonstrates the existence of potential transition forms in the fossil record,” not actual transitional forms, like the 50,000 David Berlinski estimated would be required to turn a cow into a whale. Then they bluffed that “many other examples could have been highlighted,” and distracted the reader’s attention to futureware: “there is every reason to think that many others await discovery,” they said. This was a major problem in Darwin’s time. How many more centuries do we have to wait?

2. Tetrapod evolution: They rehashed Tiktaalik as if it is problem-free. Find a dozen refutations by searching on the word Tiktaalik in the search bar above. How convinced should we be when they say that it represents “the stage before tetrapods evolved, and shows how the fossil record throws up surprises, albeit ones that are entirely compatible with evolutionary thinking”? This only makes sense if you already believe in evolution. If you are wowed by circular reasoning, wave your tetrapods.

3. Evolution of feathers: They argue from Archaeopteryx (with a historical plaudit to Thomas Huxley for his speculation about bird evolution), Sinosauropteryx (search on this word for 5 entries), and Epidexipteryx (10/22/2008) that feathers preceded flight. Again, this only makes sense if you already worship Darwin. Their closing statement is so bizarre, it wins Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week and a new cartoon by Brett Miller (click on the Tweety Bird). Watch for the glorification of Darwinian speculation, the big lie about feathered dinosaurs being “discovered,” and the miracle-working power of evolution personified:

Palaeontologists are now beginning to think that their speculations weren’t nearly wild enough, and that feathers were indeed quite common in dinosaurs.

The discovery of feathered dinosaurs not only vindicated the idea of transitional forms, but also showed that evolution has a way of coming up with a dazzling variety of solutions when we had no idea that there were even problems. Flight could have been no more than an additional opportunity that presented itself to creatures already clothed in feathers.

The leap of faith in that sentence is breathtaking. There are so many adaptations required for flight, to glibly say that an opportunity presents itself and it happens exceeds the faith of a creationist by orders of magnitude. Want to try out their explanation? Stand at the top of a skyscraper. Put on a Big Bird costume. An opportunity for flight presents itself....

4. Teeth: Microevolution; irrelevant. This gem is only a short, sweet anecdote about a lady scientist inspired by Darwin. It ends with a plaudit for evo-devo.

5. Vertebrate skeleton: This is a bizarre concoction of recapitulation theory, speculation, circular reasoning and imposing Darwin on the data in the absence of evidence. They pretend this helps doctors understand “several developmental disorders in humans,” as if evolution had anything to do with it. Creationists believe that we have skeletal similarities to our fellow vertebrates; so what? Circular argument; irrelevant.

6. Speciation: More stickleback fish propaganda (search on stickleback in the search bar above). Microevolution; irrelevant.

7. Lizards: Microevolution; irrelevant.

8. Co-evolution: A so-called evolutionary arms race between water fleas and parasites that infect them. Both species remain what they were; no new organs or new genetic information. Microevolution; irrelevant.

9. Bird dispersal: This is about gene flow in one species of bird. Microevolution; irrelevant.

10. Guppies: An argument for “frequency-dependent survival” in genetic polymorphisms of one species of guppy. Microevolution; irrelevant.

11. Evolutionary history matters: This entry assumes evolution to prove evolution. Circular reasoning; irrelevant. The authors talk about “evolution’s breathtaking solution” to a feeding problem in moray eels. No transitional forms mentioned, nor any mechanism for producing this “innovation” – just the assumption that Darwin did it somehow. They opened, “Evolution is often thought to be about finding optimal solutions to the problems that life throws up. But natural selection can only work with the materials at hand – materials that are themselves the results of many millions of years of evolutionary history.” Is restating their belief with sufficient chutzpah supposed to convince a doubter?

12. Galapagos Finches: Good grief. For them to keep tossing up this discredited story and thinking that an admitted case of microevolution that oscillates beak size with climate by a few millimeters is going to convince the rest of us that humans have bacteria ancestors, it’s no showdown at all. “The study shows how biologists are going beyond the mere documentation of evolutionary change to identify the underlying molecular mechanisms,” they said. Well, fine. The history of alchemy motivated many new techniques that later helped chemists.

13. Microevolution meets macroevolution: All right, folks, here it is: the rubber meets the road. This must be a good one. Ready? “We can infer from the fossil record that larger species-to-species changes, or macroevolution, also occur,” they said, ignoring the Cambrian explosion, “but they are naturally harder to observe in action.” Enter Sean Carroll (the one at Howard Hughes Medical Institute) demonstrating spots on the wings of one species of fruit fly. Whoa, that’s rich. It gets worse. The story revolves around considering some genes and transcription factors evolutionarily “ancient” and “ancestral.” They just can’t quit their drunken-sailor walk of circular reasoning. “This shows that a gene involved in one process can be co-opted for another, in principle driving macroevolutionary change.”

14. Toxin resistance: A mutation breaks the gate that would otherwise allow a toxin to enter, in two different kinds of animals. So evolution breaks things. And your point is?

15. Variation vs stability: Let’s see if they saved their best for last. Nope; foul. They have just inserted teleology back into evolution, committing the very infraction Darwin declared a mortal sin.

Species can remain mostly unchanged for millions of years, long enough for us to pick up their traces in the fossil record. But they change, too, and often very suddenly. This has led some to wonder whether species – usually those developing along specific tracks – store the potential for sudden change under the hood, unleashing a flood of otherwise hidden variation at times of environmental stress – variation on which selection can act.

They call this phenomenon of stored variation “evolutionary capacitance”. Giving something a name is not an argument. Need we remind the gunslinger trio that capacitors are built by intelligent engineers? This argument does not rule out a Creator planning in some adaptability and robustness to his intelligently-designed creations – organisms that must survive a dynamic environment. The creationists demand their gems back.

Notice the reliance of this argument on punctuated equilibria, Stephen Jay Gould’s pet theory on why the evidence for evolution is missing. You would think they would not entertain such anti-gradualist heresies for Darwin Day (read what one Darwinist thinks about Gould in the 12/19/2008 entry, bullet 2). You would think also that this trio would not be handing their ammunition to the creationists to use against them.

Creationists really don’t mind the arsenal. They will let the Darwinists shoot a thousand pearl-handled hunks of dead iron loaded with blanks all they want. They’re still comin’ to save the town from the crooked sheriffs holding the citizens hostage.

Exercise: Explain why “evolutionary thinking” is an oxymoron.

My Laptop Finally Bit the Dust

2008-11-29T12:31:00.002-06:00

Bummer...

Well, it looks like my blogging days have come to an end. The 'ol laptop took it's last dying breath late last night. A new one is just not in the budget at the moment, so Reasonable Kansans will be signing off indefinitely.

Hopefully one day I'll be back...

Thanks for reading, and I've thoroughly enjoyed the discussions and the comments. It's been a blast.

All the best....

~FtK

World Aids Day

2008-11-28T10:46:00.007-06:00

December 1st has been designated as World Aids Day for bloggers. The badge on the right column of my blog provides tons of information about how you can get involved.

If you're a member of Second Life, a new island has been created where participants in the event will help educate the public about the disease in efforts to decrease the spread of AIDS/HIV. On the 1st, there will be an entire day of activities to attend.

Worldwide, an estimated 33 million people are living with HIV. In the United States, an estimated one million Americans are living with HIV.

Please join us in educating the public about AIDS/HIV on December 1st!!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

2008-11-27T08:44:00.002-06:00

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the lands! Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into God's presence with singing! Know that the Lord is God! It is he that made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him, bless his name! For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures for ever, and his faithfulness to all generations.

~Psalm 100

Yeah....well, okay, this is kinda true....

2008-11-25T10:41:00.002-06:00

He is hawt...I'll give him that. Let's just hope Mr. Hawt doesn't sink the ship.

Good grief...

2008-11-25T10:29:00.002-06:00

What's Thanksgiving without Pilgrims and Indians. Ridiculous.

The Country is Screwed...

2008-11-25T10:14:00.005-06:00

Read more.

Waaaaaahhhhhh!!!!! Is it a helpless feeling or what?

We're never going to sell that house we still have sitting on the market ravaging our finances. Our realtor told me that none of the comparable homes in our immediate area have sold in the last 6 months.

Just freaking great....

Here we walked the conservative walk for our entire lives....no debts (other than our house)...playing it safe, and now when we'd like to help our kids with a college education soon, we'll be in debt up to our asses.

UGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

Christians and Gays Behaving Badly

2008-11-24T12:57:00.014-06:00

This gal is spot on in regard to the fallout following the Prop8 vote...

Reportedly the Christians met once a week to pray and sing on the public corner. Whether they’re hoping to “straighten out” gays or simply trying to facilitate encounters with Christ is unclear, but their method is problematic; it’s not how Jesus would do it.

Jesus went to the people he wanted to meet and he ate with them — or served them. He fellowshipped and got to know the community in personal and intimate ways. He attracted them with his love and his stability. He didn’t stand around singing hymns and praying for them, which might have seemed both separatist and condescending — and therefore off-putting — to the very people he hoped to engage.

The Christians may have unintentionally come off as condescending. We may presume that they would not want a crowd of gays meeting on their curb each week to proselytize. As a Catholic I would take issue with other Christians, no matter how well-intentioned, standing at the curb praying for my redemption based solely upon their knowledge not of me, but of my habits or my religion. Their singing songs for my salvation would come off as sitting in judgment of me. Even if that’s not how they meant it.

You can read the author's views about the Gay community and their behavior at the same link. I'd rather focus on the Christian perspective for a moment...or at least my personal thoughts.

This issue creates such volatile responses that it's heart breaking at times, and extremely frustrating at others. There is also such hypocrisy boiling from both sides of the debate. One side cries intolerance never looking back to discern their own intolerance of other groups. Regardless, there are no easy answers in this decision.

My perspective is that God has allowed us free will to make the decision to follow his advice and live life according to the way He created us to live, or we can live according to our own will. I don't think He meant for Christians to coerce or force others to live according to God's plan.

That being said, I think it is everyone's right to vote in the way in which they feel they are lead in relationship to their worldview or religious beliefs. I don't think that the gay community should coerce Christians into voting for gay marriage by demanding that they are intolerant if they don't comply.

I don't have a problem with civil unions allowing homosexuals legal rights that married couples have, but I would vote against gay marriage because I believe marriage is reserved for a man and woman. Though I wouldn't picket, engage in a sing-in, or throw a raging hissy fit in attempt to coerce others to do the same.

Again, it's a matter of free will, IMHO.

The part of her article that really hit home with me is where she explains that Christ met, ate and communed with those whose worldviews were in conflict with his own. Actually, guys like Oleg, Rob and a few others take this approach when they come to my blog and chat in a respectful manner. Rather than scream and rant on and on about IDist views from the familiarity and comfort of their own side, they reach out and attempt to actually try to converse with me on my turf without being total jerks. Though we may never agree on anything, it certainly helps me learn to respect them if not their position. I just think that in so many of these controversial topics, there is too much preaching to the choir. Granted, there are times when you have to walk away, but if people can just *try* to understand each other better, it certainly helps ease the hatred and misunderstanding.

Just my 2 cents.

Actually it's Joy Behar who is "demented"

2008-11-21T17:38:00.005-06:00

What a loon....she states that home schooled children are "demented".

Far from it, luv. I cannot tell you how impressed I am with some of the home school mothers who blog about what they are teaching their children. These gals have it going on! I ran across a whole slew of them about a year ago, and I just couldn't believe all the stuff they crammed into each day. Studies are showing that home schoolers are passing up their public school peers.

Side note: How in the bloody hell do you suppose Elisabeth Hasselbeck puts up with those other three far left liberal lunatics day in and day out???! Lord, I can't even watch them let alone imagine having to sit at that table with them everyday...gag.

To a good cause...

2008-11-21T12:57:00.002-06:00

I just bought some more shoes. It looks like they're a little behind in their goal, so how about helping them out by donating another $5 or so??

Sigh.....

2008-11-21T11:57:00.006-06:00

I really, really hope this is a fabrication. If anyone can provide more information about this incident, please do.

A New York man is linking the suicide of his 22-year-old son, a military veteran who had bright prospects in college, to the anti-Christian book "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins after a college professor challenged the son to read it.

"Three people told us he had taken a biology class and was doing well in it, but other students and the professor were really challenging my son, his faith. They didn't like him as a Republican, as a Christian, and as a conservative who believed in intelligent design," the grief-stricken father, Keith Kilgore, told WND about his son, Jesse.

"This professor either assigned him to read or challenged him to read a book, 'The God Delusion,' by Richard Dawkins," he said.

...

"He was pretty much an atheist, with no belief in the existence of God (in any form) or an afterlife or even in the concept of right or wrong," the relative wrote. "I remember him telling me that he thought that murder wasn't wrong per se, but he would never do it because of the social consequences - that was all there was - just social consequences.

"He mentioned the book he had been reading 'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins and how it along with the science classes he had take[n] had eroded his faith. Jesse was always great about defending his beliefs, but somehow, the professors and the book had presented him information that he found to be irrefutable. He had not talked … about it because he was afraid of how you might react. ... and that he knew most of your defenses of Christianity because he himself used them often. Maybe he had used them against his professors and had the ideas shot down."

He then explained to Jesse his own personal journey of seeking "other explanations of God's existence" and told of his ultimate return.

"I told him it was my relationship with God, not my knowledge of Him that brought me back to my faith. No one convinced me with facts. ... it was a matter of the heart."

That last paragraph irritates me to no end. *This* is why it is so important for students to understand that there *are* apologetic arguments that support their religious faith and utterly demolish the BS being pushed on them by atheist evangelists like Dawkins.

"Academic freedom" in the secular universities means nothing. True academic freedom would mean that ID and arguments against the ridiculous claims made by naturalists would be allowed in the classrooms as well. The liberal bozos running our universities provide little balance these days when presenting evolutionary "facts". AND, if professors are going to suggest books like the God Delusion, they should also suggest books refuting that BS....like Vox's The Irrational Atheist or any number of other outstanding books along the same line.

Students are impressionable during their college years, and it's a shame that only one worldview is allowed in the classrooms of our college campuses.

HT: Vox

The Academic Freedom Petition

2008-11-19T12:44:00.009-06:00

SIGN IT please!

Also, please note that while Darwin enthusiasts will be hallowing his name on his 200th birthday (Feb. 12, 2009), the rest of us will be celebrating Academic Freedom Day by speaking out against censorship and standing up for freedom of speech by defending the right to debate the evidence for and against evolution.

Students are encouraged to participate in the Academic Freedom on Evolution Video and Essay Contest with a grand prize of $500. Read more about what you can do to help with Academic Freedom Day!

The Undoing of my Man

2008-11-18T20:38:00.008-06:00

OMG, I hope my husband never discovers that these little critters exist. They are the spit and image of a Furby!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with my husband's dire fear of Furbies, you can read about it here.

Your "God View"...it drives everything

2008-11-17T20:00:00.001-06:00

Our Pastor has engaged us in a thought provoking sermon series for the past three weeks. The title of the series is "God View", and he's been lecturing on why our view of God affects how we live our lives and the decisions we make. It's been an interesting series for me because it touches on so many things that I've discussed with theists, atheists and agnostics on line.

The first week of the series covered how our view of God affects our lives regardless of whether we believe or don't believe in an ultimate creator. The second week's lecture was on the resurrection of Christ and it's importance to the Christian belief system. This past Sunday's message was on the topic of exclusivity and Christianity.

I think this message also relates to ID in a way....it's my belief that our philosophical or religious worldview affects how we reason through the design concept as well as the evolutionary paradigm. Both the philosophical naturalist and the theist come to the table with a priori assumptions about the OOL, and it affects how they look at the scientific evidence. Both views rely on faith to a degree. I highly recommend listening to this series if you can find some spare time to do so.

We've been attending this particular church for the past few years, and from the start I knew it was the place for us. It's a non denominational church, which I think is becoming more attractive to many folks. The divisive nature of various Christian denominations is a turn off at times, and much of it could be so easily avoided, IMHO. Our Pastor is very well read, and he takes an intellectual approach to the Christian faith. He also stresses how important it is to strive to live an *authentic* Christian lifestyle. Difficult to do for sure, but it's a well sought goal.

The series of messages can be found at this link...weeks 11/2, 11/9, and 11/16.

He did mistakenly attribute the wrong author to a book he mentioned in yesterday's message...see if you can catch it! It's a book *all* of my readers should be familiar with.

Love Dave Matthews

2008-11-15T15:48:00.002-06:00

Atheist Bus Campaign

2008-11-14T10:51:00.003-06:00

Fox news seems to get a kick out of it....

Excellent Review of "The Irrational Atheist"

2008-11-14T08:10:00.008-06:00

Thanks to Old Coot, you can read this review of Vox Day's, The Irrational Atheist.

In The Irrational Atheist, WorldNetDaily.com columnist Vox Day uses logic and facts (not theology) to refute the "unholy trinity" of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. What makes Day's book entertaining is his exuberant language -- the rhetorical fireworks with which he takes on the new atheists. High spirits and clever phrasing provoke continual chuckles, as for example when he remarks that not since the craze for Marx and Freud "has there been so much enthusiasm about the non-existence of God," and that this new evangelism is directed at "atheists whose lack of faith is weak." He employs mock praise, too, as in, "Hitchens and Dawkins became atheists after long and exhaustive rational inquiries into the existence of God, both at the age of nine." Yet the humor doesn't get in the way of subtle analysis, for he lays bare Dawkins's "incessant shell games," Harris's "exercises in self-parody," and Hitchens's "epic feat of intellectual self-evisceration."

Day divides atheists into high-church and low-church varieties. The "unholy trinity" belong to the high-church type -- i.e., they are university men who hate religion and demand that others enlist in their "anti-theist jihads." The low-church atheists describe themselves simply as of "no religion." In reply to the high-church boast that atheists are more moral than theists, Day points out that, while it is true that high-church atheists comprised only two-tenths of one percent of the criminals imprisoned in England and Wales in the year 2000, the low-church type made up 31.6 percent. Measured against their ratio in the overall population, this meant that atheists were four times more likely to go to jail for crimes than Christians. This is a sample of how Day explodes the false claims of the new atheists.

Perhaps the most engaging chapters in this book are those about war. The high-church atheists assert that religion causes war, but Day proves otherwise. He shows that over the past 232 years, 671,070 American soldiers have died in 17 wars, of which only one-half of one percent can reasonably be attributed to religion. This amounts to the deaths of 14 soldiers per year. Turning next to the Encyclopedia of Wars compiled by C. Phillips and A. Axelrod, Day examines 1,763 wars fought from 2325 B.C. to modern times. Of these wars, only 123 can reasonably be attributed to religion -- 6.92 percent of those recorded. Since half of these religious wars were waged by Muslims, this means that, apart from Islam, the world's religions are responsible for only 3.35 percent of all wars. "The historical evidence is conclusive," Day concludes. "Religion is not a primary cause of war."

Here is yet another glimpse of how Day uses facts to confute the "unholy trinity." Whereas Dawkins declares that atheists have the highest regard for works of art and architecture and not one of them in the world who would "bulldoze" places like Mecca, Chartres, or York Minster, Day replies with staggering evidence that atheists are far more likely than theists to destroy the landmarks of civilization, as when they razed 41,000 of the 48,000 churches in Russia, and 7,000 of the monasteries in Tibet.

Although Day is an evangelical, he is remarkably sympathetic to Catholics, who are usually the chief targets of atheists. Day scoffs at the way Dawkins, in the space of a couple of pages, dismisses the 3,000-page Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas: He says that Dawkins waved "a dead chicken over the keyboard" and tried to make readers believe he had "seriously considered" the Summa and found it "wanting." Day also thinks it unfair that the Spanish Inquisition is ballyhooed as the high point of human wickedness. He points out that the Great Leap Forward and the Holocaust, both caused by atheists, resulted in 43 million and 6 million deaths respectively, whereas the Spanish Inquisition resulted in 3,230 deaths in three and a half centuries. And then, in the single year of 1936, Spanish atheists murdered 6,832 members of the Catholic clergy -- "more than twice the number of the victims of 345 years of inquisition." Summing up, Day reveals that 52 atheist rulers in the 20th century, from 1917 to 2007, were responsible for a body count of around 148 million dead -- "three times more than all the human beings killed by war, civil war and individual crime in the entire 20th century." And so it turns out that "the average atheist crime against humanity" is "18.3 million percent worse than the very worst depredation committed by Christians." To support these powerful refutations, Day offers footnotes on virtually every page.

The "unholy trinity" are fond of saying that religion and science are incompatible, but Day shows that they have been compatible for centuries, both before and after the Galileo incident, which he sees as exaggerated by the Church's enemies. The enemies of religion prefer to forget that, in 1794, revolutionary atheists inspired by the Enlightenment beheaded Antoine Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry.

Today, atheists are raising fears that mankind faces extinction unless religion is abolished, but Day replies that it is science that has put mankind in such danger. Men thrived with religion for 12,000 years, but they "may not survive four hundred years of science." Though science has been around for only three percent of the time that religion has, it has produced a "panoply of mortal dangers," including designer diseases and weapons of mass destruction.

Ironically, for all their supposed reliance on reason, the new atheists believe in improbable things like "multiple universes." Day observes that this is "an utterly non-scientific theory invented solely to get around the problem of the anthropic principle." Faced with the unwelcome fact that there are 128 fortuitous coincidences in the fundamental constants of physics, which suggests that the existence of life is no accident, atheists postulate "a potentially infinite number of universes" just so "our wildly improbable universe" can be found to be "mathematically probable." Here again, they use a double standard -- the multiverse theory is just as "unfalsifiable" as the "God Hypothesis," and far "more improbable."

Vox Day wisely concludes that there is no proof at all that a society can be established and survive on "an atheist foundation," while there is "a fair amount of evidence to the contrary."

If you don't want to go out and purchase the book, you can read it in it's entirety at this link. Vox put the book on-line as soon as it hit the book stores....very nice of him, IMHO.

Five Questions for Atheists

2008-11-12T10:25:00.000-06:00

Silence to Be Deafening as Left Stops Yelling

2008-11-11T10:06:00.002-06:00

Now that the far left has taken virtually everything in this election, they won't be left with much to bitch about. This article is too funny...

Conservatives for reasons too numerous to mention are depressed, but there are some bright spots.

Consider:

Will there be protests now at the White House? Against whom will college students spill their venom? Will they become well-mannered now and proceed to the White House respectfully, like ladies and gentlemen?

And what about their professors? How will they invigorate their class discussions centered on the eternal verities regarding race-class-gender without the jumping-off point about the Bush regime? What about training teachers in social justice? How will education schools train teachers to make their charges aware of the social injustice poisoning this country that emanates straight from the Capitol? Toward what power will students be taught to apply their “critical thinking” skills? Will the hegemony be dissolved, thereby ending 95% of the scholarship now produced?

What about creative writing forums? What will be the subject of poetry now? Can the resident long-haired creative writing professor introducing the poets at a reading say only good things about the president without getting boring? How will students prop up their self-esteem without asserting their intellectual superiority to the president of the United States? What outrages will students dramatize in plays? What about interpretive dances? How will over-mascara-ed, banjo-playing girl bands gain their creds of bravery without saying from a foreign stage that they are “ashamed” to be from the same state as their president?

What will happen to calendar manufacturers who rely on secretaries in humanities departments to display their keen wit by positioning the “Bushism-A-Day” calendars toward every student seeking a drop/add slip? What will professors post outside their office doors? Can they keep their “U.S. Out of Iraq Now” posters up? And what will they write their scholarly papers on? Once wealth is redistributed by a black president who is a favorite of feminists, what will be the focus of their papers? What will happen to the scholarly publishing industry? What about the bumper sticker business? What kinds of stickers will replace those festooning bumpers in faculty parking lots across the nation about a village in Texas missing its “idiot”?

What about the pundits? We all know that agreeable copy does not sell. So where will they get their raw material?

I'm sure they'll find something to moan about....

Of Ice Fish and Pocket Mice

2008-11-10T11:03:00.019-06:00

Looks like Sean Carroll is still going strong with his ice fish lecture. I attended a similar lecture of his at Kansas State University back in March of '07. My review of the lecture can be found at this link.

This recent reviewer seems to have come away with thoughts similar to my own...

Carroll's argument against design eschewed the real question of how genes came into existence through natural processes. There are no grounds for assuming that the processes through which genes might degrade are the same processes through which they could be built up (Ref 1). In simple terms, genes are long stretches of DNA that carry the information necessary to code for the production of functional proteins. Intelligent design theorists claim that a piece-meal assembly of information-rich genes using the basic building blocks of DNA exceeds the capacities of Darwinian selection and is better explained by appealing to the activity of an intelligent agent (Refs 3,4). If anything, this very principle should have been Carroll's first point of contention if he was to say anything against ID. From a philosophical perspective the possibility remains that a designer may have supplied an organism with more genetic information than may have been needed for life- what one may call an "all the options, all the bells and whistles" approach. Such a designer could have been interested in placing non-functional genes in the genome for a future role in his or her design. We all install software into our computers that may not be operational until some later date when we finally choose to use it. Computers can now be accurately scheduled to start a process at a specified instant in the future, similarly to the programming of a recording on a video-recorder.

One may rightly ask what evidence Carroll could furnish to support the premise that non-functional genes were necessarily derived from functional counterparts found elsewhere in nature. Indeed empirical evidence in support of an evolutionary continuum was severely lacking throughout the presentation.

Ice Fish and Pocket Mice seem to be the best examples Darwinist can come up with for evolution as their lectures never seem to evolve past micro evolutionary examples for the theory. Eugenie Scott uses the simplistic example of the pocket mouse as well...lecture review can be found here.

Their theory (at the macro level) is based primarily on historical inference, which basically means they come in with a priori assumptions and are hardened against the concept of design. They simply cannot accept that there are *no* significant examples of empirical evidence supporting the macro evolutionary changes they claim are fact beyond question.

More about these micro/macro evolutionary changes at this link.

50,000 Pairs of Shoes in 50 Days challenge

2008-11-10T07:00:00.001-06:00

Maci told me about a great way to give poverty a swift kick by helping with a charity drive to raise money for 50,000 pairs of shoes for the needy. Soles4Souls is launching this new campaign.

What a great idea!!

The challenge is to raise enough money to purchase 50,000 pairs of shoes in 50 days.

Only $5 buys 2 pairs of shoes!

Anyone who donates will be entered to win a trip to Mexico to personally deliver their shoes to someone who has never had shoes before, tying together the virtual world with the real world.

So, please donate $5 (or more!) to help with this campaign. You can do so at this site. It's super easy to do...only took me about a minute.

Even you folks who read my blog and cringe at my every word can help with this one. We can work together for once!!

No reason really...

2008-11-08T09:01:00.002-06:00

...just another of my favorites.

It was also Meghan McCain's final campaign song of the day. She did a wonderful job with her blog throughout the campaign. It was great to see all the up close and personal photos of their journey. She's a bright kid with a promising future.

Media finally asking questions??? LOL!

2008-11-07T12:04:00.003-06:00

"We don't know much about Barack Obama." lol...do tell.

I guess we'll be finding out real soon now....

eyes rolling

2008-11-07T09:06:00.002-06:00

And, he picks Rahmbo for chief of staff...

Way to go there, Obama....sheesh.

It should be a *very* interesting four years...

Humans are inherently religious beings...

2008-11-07T08:51:00.004-06:00

...we were created that way.

Michael Critchon passed away recently. One of his thought provoking articles can be found here:

I studied anthropology in college, and one of the things I learned was that certain human social structures always reappear. They can’t be eliminated from society. One of those structures is religion. Today it is said we live in a secular society in which many people—the best people, the most enlightened people—do not believe in any religion. But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.

Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it’s a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.

There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.

Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday—these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don’t want to talk anybody out of them, as I don’t want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don’t want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can’t talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.

And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren’t necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It’s about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.

Am I exaggerating to make a point? I am afraid not. Because we know a lot more about the world than we did forty or fifty years ago. And what we know now is not so supportive of certain core environmental myths, yet the myths do not die. Let’s examine some of those beliefs.

"Humans are inherently religious beings, created to be in relationship with God - and if they reject God, they don't stop being religious; they simply find some other ultimate principle upon which to base their lives."

~Nancy Pearcey

HT: Davescot

So much for Bipartianship

2008-11-07T07:49:00.002-06:00

They're ready to can Lieberman for not walking the party line.

My guess is that all this talk about bipartianship coming from Obama is probably a load of bull.

Not a good start...

Buck up McCain supporters...

2008-11-05T10:21:00.003-06:00

Thought it was a good day to resurrect this one...

That's right...go out and hug an Obama supporter today....*wink*

It's all good....

2008-11-04T23:50:00.003-06:00

...let's just hope he is who he says he is. He'll have his work cut out for him in gaining my trust. I would love for the US to be less divided, which he says is his goal, so I hope he will be able to achieve it. That will be no small task...

Congratulations President Obama, and God bless.

Go Vote!!!

2008-11-04T07:40:00.005-06:00

See ya at the polls!

Ummm.....

2008-11-03T19:31:00.009-06:00

"I won't have to worry about putting gas in my car, I won't have to worry about paying my mortgage."

?????

Yikes. Hopefully, those sentiments were merely due to overexposure to the Messiah. After she comes down from her little encounter with the Obonga, perhaps she should try a few hits of reality.

The probability of life appearing spontaneously ...

2008-11-03T17:26:00.007-06:00

...is nearly infintesimal.

A generation or more ago a profound disservice was done to popular thought by the notion that a horde of monkeys thumping away on typewriters could eventually arrive at the plays of Shakespeare. This idea is wrong, so wrong that one has to wonder how it came to be broadcast so widely. The answer I think is that scientists wanted to believe that anything at all, even the origin of life, could happen by chance, if only chance operated on a big enough scale. This is the obvious error, for the whole Universe observed by astronomers would not be remotely large enough to hold the horde of monkeys needed to write even one scene from one Shakespeare play, or to hold their typewriters, and certainly not the wastepaper baskets needed for throwing out the volumes of rubbish which the monkeys would type. The striking point is that the only practicable way for the Universe to produce the plays of Shakespeare was through the existence of life producing Shakespeare himself.

Despite this, the entire structure of orthodox biology still holds that life arose at random. Yet as biochemists discover more and more about the awesome complexity of life, it is apparent that the chances of it originating by accident are so minute that they can be completely ruled out. Life cannot have arisen by chance.

....

The probability of life appearing spontaneously on Earth is so small that it is very
difficult to grasp without comparing it with something more familiar. Imagine a
blindfolded person trying to solve the recently fashionable Rubik cube. Since he can't see the results of his moves, they must all be at random. He has no way of knowing whether he is getting nearer the solution or whether he is scrambling the cube still further. One would be inclined to say that moving the faces at random would "never" achieve a solution. Strictly speaking, "never" is wrong, however. If our blindfolded subject were to make one random move every second, it would take him on average three hundred times the age of the Earth, 1,350 billion years, to solve the cube. The chance against each move producing perfect colour matching for all the cube's faces is about 50,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1.

These odds are roughly the same as you could give to the idea of just one of our body's proteins having evolved randomly, by chance. However, we use about 200,000 types of protein in our cells. If the odds against the random creation of one protein are the same as those against a random solution of the Rubik cube, then the odds against the random creation of all 200,000 are almost unimaginably vast.

Much more to consider at this link.

Related: The Anthropic Principle