"Merry Christmas" from Discovery Channel

The Discovery Channel, TLC, National Geographic Channel, and others have been getting into the Christmas spirit, as they usually do this time of year.

They basically run two types of shows. The first is "historical" accounts of the "real" story of Jesus. You see, everything you have been taught, everything in the Bible is not true. Miracles have simple explanations. Jesus isn't who he said he was. Jesus isn't who his contemporaries said he was. Jesus is not who millions have believed he was for thousands of years. All that is based on silly, unscientific fiction. The show will set all of that straight with theories from modern-day sages solidly arguing how their thoughts trump the collected ignorance of millions of Christians throughout the ages.

The other type of show is the fanciful evolutio-drama. It is a sort of a day-in-the-life of a theoretical animal in a theoretical environment at a theoretical time interacting with a supporting cast of other theoretical animals. I say theoretical, but it is solidly based on information gleaned from a fossil tooth. I saw the stunning computer graphics, so I know its true.

It's great that they have a solid scientific view of the world, instead of all that imaginary Christian stuff.

It's their small way of saying Merry Christmas. Peace on Mother Earth, good will to the highest order of evolved primate.

"Average" Does Not Make Right

If one person tells you that 1+1 is 3, and another person tells you that 1+1 is 4, does that mean that 1+1 is really 3.5? That is the average answer. It is the "middle of the road" position.

That may sound like a silly illustration, but it is not unlike the straddling that moderates try to do every day. They will stake out a position of compromise between the two prevailing positions and declare themselves "uniters", "reasonable people", and the like. They use attacks coming equally from both sides to verify their position at the center.

But what good is it to be at the center? It has nothing to do with being right. It is simply the average position. There is no belief at the heart of it. It is a political play to try to please everyone and stand for nothing. It is gutless. It is also senseless, because it does not account for the fact that one (or both) of the prevailing opinions could be wrong.

The average of two wrong answers is a wrong answer. If one answer is right and one is wrong, an intelligent person will disregard the wrong answer and stick with the right one, not average in the wrong answer to make the wrong people more agreeable.

The unending cry of the self-described centrist is "extreme", a label they apply to anyone who does not adopt their averaging formula. In our silly mathematic example, those who claim 1+1 is 3 would be on one extreme. Those who claim it is 4 would be on the other.

But the fact is, the person claiming "3" is not only not extreme, but in fact does not go far enough.

We cannot build consensus by rallying around the average, but by uniting around the correct answer. Perhaps 1+1 is actually 2.

Where Have All the Hobbits Gone?

I saw a bumper sticker that gave me a laugh: "Frodo Failed. Bush Got the Ring." The sad thing is that the person sporting the bumper sticker, and perhaps the manufacturer of it, seemed to miss the real point of the Ring of Power message from The Lord of the Rings. You see, the person had another bumper sticker, one advocating John Kerry for President.

The problem is not that the wrong person got the ring. The problem is the ring. Specifically the corrupting power of the ring. Power corrupts. That problem cannot be solved by the acquisition of the ring by anyone clamoring for it.

We need a Hobbit. We need someone willing to carry the ring with the only purpose of destroying it. Such a person, just as in The Lord of the Rings, is hard to find. And with the "gimme" attitude of many Americans, that person would probably never be allowed to take the ring. Because people don't think the ring is the problem. People think ultimate power is fine, as long as their guy is the one who wields it.

Free credit report

As part of an amendment to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, you are now able to receive a free copy of your credit report. Each of the nationwide consumer reporting companies – Equifax, Experian and TransUnion are required to provide you with a free copy of your credit report, at your request, once every 12 months. The three companies have set-up three ways through which you can order your free credit report:

1. Visit annualcreditreport.com
2. Call toll-free: 1-877-322-8228
3. Mail a completed Annual Credit Report Request Form (available at annualcreditreport.com) to:
   Annual Credit Report Request Service
   P.O. Box 105281
   Atlanta, GA 30348-5281

Knee-jerk Anti-Americanism

Sometimes I am amazed at how anti-American some Americans can be.

I was having a conversation with the lady that runs the local shipping store. We got talking about how it is difficult to ship to various countries for different reasons. Shipping to Africa she said, was almost pointless because of the corruption. I related a situation that I heard from a friend in Africa about the bribes that it took to get anything done.

I can imagine a rainbow of responses relating to bad governments, underdeveloped countries, greed, etc. But her response was astounding. She said "We know where they learned that."

You learn something every day. I would have thought that Africans would be responsible for corruption in Africa. Silly me. It is obviously America (and maybe England) that has corrupted the world. Had westerners never colonized Africa, they would have never conceived of the very idea of corruption. Perhaps there was a Ministry of Corruption official responsible for teaching the necessary level of corruption to utopian natives.

The Right to Kill

There is a case coming up before the Supreme Court which again brings the issue of euthanasia to the forefront of national discussion. (Why won't this issue die?!)

Step one is to clarify some terminology. The issue is often framed as the "right to die". I submit that is deceptive. Everyone has the right the die. It is a natural process that we will all be faced with at some point. There is no law that makes it illegal for anyone to die.

What people are actually advocating is not the "right to die", but rather the "right to kill".

We seldom have honest discussions about issues in this country. Honest discussion must start with calling something what it is. That will certainly not be happening in this case. Watch the media. They will try to deflect the issue and frame it as a right to die as a matter of course.

Remember, he who defines the terms wins the debate. Then ask yourself if the media is biased. Then remember, you have the right to kill the mainstream media and go somewhere honest for your news and opinion. Try WorldNetDaily.com.

New Political Goals

I have a modest proposal for choosing our leaders:

1. Avoid electing Democrats

2. Avoid electing Republicans

Litmus Test

"In my interviews with any judge, I never ask them their personal views on abortion." George W. Bush

Replace "abortion" with "slavery" to see how stupid that comment is. If he doesn't ask questions about such fundamental issues of how a person views the world, how can he ever trust them with such a position?

Bush is accepting the idea that abortion cannot be used as a litmus test. Of course, it is used as a litmus test: No judge is allowed to express opposition to abortion. That is why he said what he did. By accepting that assertion, he can never win.

Litmus paper is used to detect the presence of an acid or base capable of burning. Abortion certainly burns, at a rate of about 3000 lives per day. It would be wise to use a litmus test to keep clear of danger.

Father Government Knows Best

There was a terrible boat accident in New York and many people died.

Probe: Tour Boat Didn't Have Required Crew (link no longer available)

As with every disaster in this country, people immediately start blaming. The title of the article suggests a mentality far to prevalent: that government knows how to do everything. Implicit in the title is the implication that if only people had done things the government's way, everyone would have lived happily ever after.

That kind of attitude is insulting. But people will buy it. People will make a big deal about it. And in the end, there will probably be a host of new laws put into place the help people live in peace and harmony, if they would only listen to their all-knowing Father Government.

How You Know You are Watching A Sci-Fi Movie

It turns out that Sci-Fi is not the most creative of genre's. There are several ways to tell you are watching a Sci-Fi movie:

6. There is a woman in command, or desiring to be.

5. There is a human-alien baby on the way.

4. The technical expert is a handicapped black guy.

3. The enemy first appears to be some hideous creature that was the result of experimentation, but in the end, the true enemy is corporate greed.

2. At the end of the show, there are only two survivors, a man and a woman, who started out at each other's throats, but are now romantically involved.

1. There is some actor who used to be famous working with a bunch of bad actors you have never heard of before.

Lowest Price Guarantee

You've heard those stupid commercials, "We will beat our competition's price or it's free!"

It is usually some loud-mouthed cheesy local merchant who is so overly excited about his product that he should be restrained and medicated. So, most of us just probably tune it out.

But if you stop and think about it for a second it becomes even more stupid (or is that stupider?).

Does anyone actually think they could get something free? "Our price is $100. Our competitor is selling it for $99. We can't afford to sell it for $99, so we have to give it away free." Yeah...right.

The Trouble with Precedent

In the debate surrounding the appointment of Roberts to the Supreme Court, there is a lot said about precedent. Indeed, it seems to be one of the fundamental arguments any time the courts come up in discussion.

The basic idea is that judges should respect the rulings of previous judges to help provide continuity of law and apply the law similarly to different cases. That all sounds good, except that precedent has been raised to such a level that it is treated as law itself.

Take the Roe vs. Wade decision, for example. It is often referred to as "the law of the land" or "settled law." In fact, it is not law at all. It is merely a court decision. The court cannot legitimately make law. So they play a semantic game and call it "precedent." Then they proceed to treat the precedent as the law of the land. If we had treated precedent so highly in the past, slavery would never have been abolished, since there was a Supreme Court decision validating it as legal.

The latest tactic of those who would transform our culture is to say that any judge that would go against precedent is an "activist judge" "legislating from the bench", a definition that is 180° from reality. Their oath is to the Constitution, the law, not to precedents of other men. By doing this, they have not just raised precedent to the level of law, but have actually superseded law with precedent. In such a world, the only true law is written as opinions from the bench.

A precedent is only as good as the logic in the original decision. And since the logic of so many court decisions are upside-down from the laws they claim to interpret, there needs to be a lot more questioning of those precedents. We need to return the law to the highest point.

Precedents must be evaluated in the light of the law, not the other way around.

Interpreting the Bible "literally"

What is the proper way to interpret the Bible? People often refer to interpreting it "literally" as the only way to properly believe it. But many things can be true but not literal (e.g. simile, analogy, hyperbole). The proper way to interpret something is not literal, but rather, the way the author intended it. To know that, you must look at context. You must know the intended audience. It also helps to know what you can about the author.

Reading Between the Fossil Lines (scroll down on the page, there are many articles)
By Gleason L. Archer

But a true and proper belief in the inerrancy of Scripture involves neither a literal nor a figurative rule of interpretation. What it does require is a belief in whatever the biblical author (human and divine) actually meant by the words he used.

An absolute literalism would, for example, commit us to the proposition that in Matthew 19:24 (and parallel passages) Christ actually meant to teach that a camel could go through the eye of a needle. But it is abundantly clear that Christ was simply using the familiar rhetorical figure of hyperbole in order to emphasize how difficult it is spiritually for a rich man (because of his pride in his material wealth) to come to repentance and saving faith in God. To construe that passage literally would amount to blatant heresy, or at least a perversity that has nothing to do with orthodoxy. Or again, when Jesus said to the multitude that challenged Him to work some miracle, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19), they grievously erred when they interpreted His remarks literally. John 2:21 goes on to explain that Jesus did not mean this prediction literally but spiritually: “But He was speaking about the temple of His body. Therefore when He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He said this, and they believed the Scripture.” In this case, then, literal interpretation was dead wrong because that was not what Jesus meant by the language He used; He was actually referring to the far greater miracle of His bodily resurrection.

An accurate interpretation of scripture means reading as the author intended, getting into the mind of the author as much as possible. Since God is the author, we must approach it with great humility and a teachable attitude, seeking to truly understand what He is saying, not bringing to it our own agenda.

Finding Noah's Ark

I just caught a few minutes of a show on the History Channel called "The Search for Noah's Ark". I didn't even see enough of it to know what the claim may have been. Dozens of people have searched for the Ark over the years. Although there have been a lot of claims, speculations, and of course a conspiracy theory or two, there is as yet no ark.

So the question remains, can/will we ever find Noah's Ark?

No way. And here is why.
1. Most people look for it on Mount Ararat and haven't found it. In fact, the Bible says that the ark came to rest on "the mountains of Ararat" (Gen 8:4), referring to the entire range, which is a huge area.
2. The mountain range is covered with snow and glaciers which move constantly. Anything that was there would have been torn to pieces by glacial movement a long time ago.
3. The most compelling reason for not finding it is from Hugh Ross's "The Genesis Question" (1). After the flood, everthing was destroyed, so they needed to rebuild. The ark would have been a ready supply of high-quality wood, already cut and ready to use. It is almost inconceivable that they would not have torn it apart to start building houses, barns, fences, and everthing else they needed to get civilization going again.

Of course, God could have preserved the ark and they could find the it tommorow, proving me completely wrong. To which I would say, He is God and I am not.

Reference 1 "The Genesis Question", Dr. Hugh Ross, Chapter 19, "The Search for Noah's Ark", pp 165-166

I've Got Some Good News and it's Bad News

With all the good economic news, what is a liberal newspaper to do?

Simple, phrase the good news in such a way that it sounds bad. Thus, this article from today's AP:

The story is about more people having and keeping jobs, but they make it sound like just the reverse.

U.S. Jobless Claims Tumble to 328,000
By JEANNINE AVERSA, Associated Press Writer

May I humbly suggest some alternatives, which the writer must have accidentally overlooked:

More People Working

People Have Jobs

Job Growth is Picking Up

Bush is Not Evil After All

Military Draft and Diversity in the Military

Democrat Charles Rangle has been making a lot of noise this year about instituting a military draft. One of his main points is that the military is made up mostly of low income and minorities. Rangle advocates a draft because he wants to send "rich kids" and specifically, the sons and daughters of his fellow Senators and Congressmen, to the front line.

It turns out that the military is a fairly good representative cross-section of the country both economically and racially.

There is, however, one major way in which the military does not represent a cross-section of America: political party. The vast majority of those who voluntarily serve in the military are Republicans.

So, it turns out Charles Rangle may be right, with one small modification: Draft Democrats!

Cell Phone Silliness

I'd never be a member of a club that would have me as a member.
- Groucho Marx

There are millions of phones in the Verizon "In" network. All of them can call my phone number for free any time of day. Mine is not one of them. I cannot call my own number to check my voicemail without being charged for airtime.

I can check my voicemail free from millions of Verizon phones. I can check my voicemail free from millions of landline phones. My wife and I can use each others phones to check our own voicemail. Checking from my own phone costs me airtime. That is silly.

It's doubly silly when you realize that to chat with another Verizon customer, there are two of us using cell phone channels. For me to check my voicemail would take half the resources.

I am a member of a club with millions of others, but not myself.

More on 3/5 of a Person

There is a great article on the founders and slavery which you can find on David Barton's Wallbuilders site here. There are a lot of other great articles on his site too, check it out.

Here is an excerpt:
The three-fifths clause was not a measurement of human worth; rather, it was an anti-slavery provision to limit the political power of slavery’s proponents. By including only three-fifths of the total number of slaves in the congressional calculations, Southern States were actually being denied additional pro-slavery representatives in Congress. Based on the clear records of the Constitutional Convention, two prominent professors explain the meaning of the three-fifths clause:

[T]he Constitution allowed Southern States to count three-fifths of their slaves toward the population that would determine numbers of representatives in the federal legislature. This clause is often singled out today as a sign of black dehumanization: they are only three-fifths human. But the provision applied to slaves, not blacks. That meant that free blacks–and there were many, North as well as South–counted the same as whites. More important, the fact that slaves were counted at all was a concession to slave owners. Southerners would have been glad to count their slaves as whole persons. It was the Northerners who did not want them counted, for why should the South be rewarded with more representatives, the more slaves they held? ³⁵ THOMAS WEST

It was slavery’s opponents who succeeded in restricting the political power of the South by allowing them to count only three-fifths of their slave population in determining the number of congressional representatives. The three-fifths of a vote provision applied only to slaves, not to free blacks in either the North or South. ³⁶ WALTER WILLIAMS (emphasis added)

Why do revisionists so often abuse and misportray the three-fifths clause? Professor Walter Williams (himself an African-American) suggested:
Politicians, news media, college professors and leftists of other stripes are selling us lies and propaganda. To lay the groundwork for their increasingly successful attack on our Constitution, they must demean and criticize its authors. As Senator Joe Biden demonstrated during the Clarence Thomas hearings, the framers’ ideas about natural law must be trivialized or they must be seen as racists.

"Intelligent Falling"

Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory
The Onion is always good for a laugh.

The Onion is a parody site, so is always to be taken lightly. But as with any good humor, it works best when there is some element of truth in it.

In this case, the "truth" is the anti-scientific perception of Christians. It is unfortunate and inaccurate for Christians to be labeled as anti-science. It is interesting to note that the science The Onion chose to parody, gravitation, was developed by Sir Isaac Newton... a devout Christian.

Many of the best scientists in history were Christians. The scientific method itself grew out of a Christian understanding that the universe is rational and behaves in predictable ways, in opposition to the pagan view of seeing gods everywhere controlling the world at their whim.

Of course, there are always Luddites and flat-earther's, but they can be found in all corners, and they certainly don't define the sum of Christian thinking.

For a good dose of science from an informed Christian thinker, check out Hugh Ross at Reasons to Believe.

3/5 of a Person

People often misunderstand the thinking behind the way slaves were to be counted as 3/5 of a person (from Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution).

It is used to show that the founders saw blacks as inferior. In reality, it was a PRO-freedom position.

There were many in this country that wanted to abolish slavery at the time the Constitution was written. In fact, over 80% of the founding fathers were active abolishonists. Representation in the House of Representatives is determined by population. The greater the population, the greater the influence in the Congress. By counting slaves as just 3/5 of a person for census purposes, the slave states would have less influence and slavery might be abolished.

It was not meant to say that slaves were worth less than a full person in human terms. It was not about treating blacks as 3/5 of a person, just counting them that way to help work toward their freedom.

Israel's withdrawal

Apparently the trouble with the middle east is that Muslims have only 99.9% of the land in the region. Israel capitulates again, offering land for peace that will never come. Hammas today declared that they had driven Israel out of Gaza. Playing into the hands of terrorists will not bring peace. It is a sad day. Israeli's are being "ethnically cleansed" from their own land, the only kind of ethnic cleansing that will be tolerated in this backward world.

The irony is that non-Israeli's have always been welcome in Israel, and have profitted greatly along with Israeli's under the most free government in the area. On the other hand, according to Palistinian leaders, not a single Israeli will be welcome in Gaza. Does that sound like people who wish to live in peace?

Anti-Christian "Science"

Is anyone else annoyed by these shows? I love Discovery, TLC, and National Geographic channel, but it seems they feel a constant responsibility to disconnect people from any remaining faith they may have by offering a constant stream of shows about "the science of" this or that Bible story. You know the ones, "Who is the Real Jesus?", "The True Story of Noah's Flood", "Why the Bible Sucks and Evolution Rules".

Here is the general formula: lay out the story (more or less) the way the Bible says it. Then begin picking apart the story. Don't be actually hostile toward the Bible, make it more along the lines of "we can't really be sure since it was so long ago and many people differ on the interpretation of the text". With the Bible sufficiently discredited, the next step is to start to spin a yarn about what really happened. There will be elements similar to the Bible story, but the message is clear: the scientific story is the real one and the Bible was embelishing. When done, it is clear that the Bible text which has endured thousands of years is a vague interpretation of the true story, which you have just seen, with fancy computer graphics and a deep-voiced, intellectual commentator who's meer mention of a fact ensures its authenticity.

One example was a show about "What did Jesus Really Look Like". It showed, of course, the blond-haired blue eyed Jesus famous from so many pictures. Everyone knows that Jews don't look like that, and the Bible certainly doesn't describe Him in that way, so it was a bit of a straw man. Nevertheless, it was at the very least a dig at white Christians, the opportunity for which is never to be missed. While the story is unfolding, they show a skull that was dug up and apparently dated to around the time of Jesus. Periodically, we get a glimpse at the face being reconstructed in clay by a forensic artist. At the end of the show, they reveal his face with the deep-voiced narrator (I think it sounded like Avery Brooks, Captain Sisko from ST:DS9) leaves us with the leading question "Is this what Jesus Looked Like?"

So basically, if you dig up an old skull of some unknown guy and slap some clay on it, you can show people "What Jesus Really Looked Like" in distinction to the laughable Bible, which apparently says he was Norwegian.

Is anyone else tired of this sort of thing being passed of as "science"?

Great book deal

www.BookCloseOuts.com has some great deals on books. They have a very large political section, from which I just made a purchase. It will provide me with more reading than I can get to for some time. Here are some of the deals I picked up:
Treason by Ann Coulter, hardcover for $6.99
The Death of the West by Pat Buchanan for $1.49
Fighting Terrorism by Benjamin Netanyahu for $4.99
Ten Things You Can't Say in America by Larry Elder, hardcover for $3.99 (softcover available for $2).
Showdown by Larry Elder, hardcover for $3.00
Slouching Towards Gamorrah by Robert Bork for $4.99
The Politics of Bad Faith by David Horowitz for $3.49

For about $30 (nearly the cover price of Treason alone) I have enough material to make me mad at liberals for years to come!

Kickoff

Ok. I'm publishing. Now we will see if I have anything useful to say.