These observations, reflections, and thoughts are shared with family and friends at this juncture in the hope that they may –hopefully help- many to re-assess, re-think, and possibly re-dedicate themselves to a more consistent, meaningful, and principled life that will lead to rebuilding our American society into a model that will be attractive enough to be desired and copied by people all over our world in the coming decades.
As we approach the end of the first decade of the third millennium A.D./C.A., a decade that was filled with human atrocities against fellow humans in the same country, region, continent, and world; it is time to learn from past mistakes, because we have been repeating such actions and behavior, especially during the past century/100 years now. Therefore, please bear with me as I share from a heart that is filled with care and love for my fellow humans (all of the about 6.5 billions currently living on planet Earth); believing that we can and must learn from past mistakes in order to have a better, more enjoyable, and meaningful life here on this earth -and beyond, for those who choose to believe in such existence.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Worry looks around,
sorry looks back, Faith looks
up."
Have faith, God
will honor it!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Are You Mature?
Maturity is the ability to control anger and settle differences without violence or destruction. Maturity is patience. It is the willingness to pass up immediate pleasure in favor of the long-term gain. Maturity is perseverance, the ability to sweat out a project or a situation in spite of heavy opposition and discouraging setbacks. Maturity is the capacity to face unpleasantness and frustration, discomfort and defeat, without complaint or collapse.
Maturity is humility. It is being big enough to say, “I was wrong.” And, when right, the mature person need not experience the satisfaction of saying, “I told you so.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Who I Am Makes a
Difference."
A teacher in
New
York
decided to honor each of her
seniors in High School by telling them the difference each of
them had made. She called each student to the front of the
class, one at a time. First, she told
each of them how they had made a difference to her, and the
class. Then she presented each of them with a blue ribbon,
imprinted with gold letters, which read, "Who I Am Makes a
Difference."
Afterwards, the
teacher decided to do a class project, to see what kind of
impact recognition would have on a Community. She gave each of
the students three more blue ribbons, and instructed them to
go out and spread this acknowledgment ceremony. Then they were
to follow up on the results, see who honored whom, and report
to the class in about a week.
One of the boys
in the class went to a junior executive in a nearby Company,
and honored him for helping him with his career planning. He
gave him a blue ribbon, and put it on his shirt.
Then he gave
him two extra ribbons and said, "We're doing a class project
on recognition, and we'd like for you to go out, find somebody
to honor, give them a blue ribbon, then give them the extra
blue ribbon so they can acknowledge a third person, to keep
this acknowledgment ceremony going. Then please report back to
me and tell me what
happened."
Later that day,
the junior executive went in to see his boss, who had been
noted, by the way, as being kind of a grouchy fellow. He sat
his boss down, and he told him that he deeply admired him for
being a creative genius. The boss seemed very surprised. The
junior executive asked him if he would accept the gift of the
blue ribbon, and would he give him
permission to put it on him. His surprised boss said, "Well,
sure." The junior executive took the blue ribbon and placed it
right on his boss's jacket, above his heart.
As he gave him
the last extra ribbon,! he said, "Would you take this extra
ribbon, and pass it on by honoring somebody else. The young
boy who first gave me the ribbons is doing a project in
school, and we want to keep this recognition ceremony going
and find out how it affects people."
That night, the
boss came home to his 14-year-old son, and sat him down. He
said, "The most incredible thing happened to me today. I was
in my office, and one of the junior executives came in and
told me he admired me, and gave me a blue ribbon for being a
creative genius.
Imagine! He thinks I am a
creative genius! Then he put a blue ribbon that says, "Who I Am Makes
a Difference", on my jacket above my heart. He gave me an extra
ribbon and asked me to find somebody else to honor. As I was
driving home tonight, I started thinking about whom I would
honor with this ribbon, and I thought about you. I want to
honor you.
My days are
hectic and when I come home, I do not pay a lot of attention
to you. Sometimes I scream at you for not getting good enough grades in
school, and for your bedroom being a mess. Somehow, tonight, I
just wanted to sit here and, well, just let you know that you
do make a difference to me. Besides your mother, you are the
most important person in my life. You're a great kid, and I
love you!"
The startled
boy started to sob and sob, and he could not stop crying. His
whole body shook. He looked up at his father and said through
his tears, "Dad, earlier tonight I sat in my room and wrote a
letter to you and Mom, explaining why I had took my life, and
I asked you to forgive me. I was going to commit suicide
tonight after you were asleep. I just did not
think that you cared at all. The letter is upstairs. I don't
think I need it after all." His father walked upstairs and
found a heartfelt letter full of anguish and pain. The boss
went back to work a changed man. He was no longer a grouch,
but made sure to let all of his employees know that they made
a difference. The junior executive helped
several other
young people with career planning, and never forgot to let
them know that they made a difference in his life...one being
the boss' son. In addition, the young boy and his classmates
learned a valuable lesson, "Who YOU are
does make a difference".
You are under
no obligation to pass this on to anyone.... not to two people,
or to two hundred. As far as I am concerned, you can forget it
and move o On the other hand, if you want, you could send it
to all of the people who mean something to you, or send it to
the one, two, or three people who mean the most.
On the other
hand, just smile and know that I think that YOU are important,
or you would not have received this in the first place. Who
you are does make a difference, and I wanted you to know
that.
Isn't this a
wonderful story? I'm passing the blue ribbon to you, for who
YOU are does make a difference, too. May GOD BLESS YOU. Have
an awesome day, and know that someone has thought about you
today!
A brief prayer
for today: Lord, Thank you for my friends and family who
really do make a difference to me. AMEN
Malachi 3:3 says: "He
will sit as a refiner and purifier of
silver."
This verse
puzzled some women in a Bible study and they wondered what
this statement meant
about the character and nature of God. One of the
women offered to find out the process of refining silver and
get back to the
group at their next Bible Study. That week, the woman
called a silversmith and made an appointment to watch him at work.
She didn't mention anything about the reason for her interest beyond her
curiosity about the process of refining Silver. As she watched
the silversmith, he held a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up.
He explained that in refining silver, one needed to hold the silver in the
middle of the fire where the flames were hottest as to burn away all the
impurities. The woman
thought about God holding us in such a hot spot; then she
thought again about the
verse that says: "He sits as a refiner and purifier of silver." She asked the
silversmith if it was true that he had to sit there the man answered that
yes, he not only had to sit there holding the silver, but he
had to keep his eyes on the silver the entire time it was in the fire. If the silver was left a moment too long in the flames, it would be
destroyed. The woman was
silent for a moment. Then she asked the silversmith, "How do you know when
the silver is fully refined?" He smiled at
her and answered, "Oh, that's easy -- when I see my image in it."
If today you
are feeling the heat of the fire , remember that God has his eye on you and
will keep watching you until He sees His image in you. Pass this on
right now. This very moment, someone needs to know that God is watching over
them. And, whatever
they're going through, they'll be a better person in the
end. "You can spend
life anyway you wish, but you can only spend it once."
A Tale of Two
Servants
Amazing Grace and
Breach
March 2, 2007
Last week on
"BreakPoint," we talked a lot about William Wilberforce, the
English parliamentarian who fought for the abolition of the
slave trade in
Great Britain
. The
marvelous new film about his life, Amazing Grace, beautifully
portrays a public servant whose Christian beliefs aligned with
his outward actions. His life was the epitome of integrity, an
example of an integrated
worldview.
Just before the debut of
Amazing Grace, another film about a public servant appeared in
theaters. The film is called Breach, and it tells the story of
Robert Hanssen, the man responsible for what some have called
the "greatest security breach in American history." Hanssen
was the FBI agent, you may remember, who sold secrets to the
Russians for twenty years until his arrest in February
2001.
Breach opens with a scene
of Hanssen in church praying the rosary; it closes with him
asking for prayer. Like Wilberforce, Hanssen seems to be a man
of deep religious convictions. He was a Roman Catholic, a
member of Opus Dei, a devoted father and husband, and—to all
appearances—a true patriot. A Washington Post review noted:
"Hanssen would duck out of work early so he could attend
antiabortion rallies."
But unlike Wilberforce,
it appears that Hanssen's inner convictions had little impact
on his outward behavior. Hanssen was a sexual deviant who,
without his wife's knowledge, distributed films of their
marital encounters across the Internet. He was a traitor who
did not bat an eyelash at betraying three American agents who
were killed due to his actions.
Hanssen's story is a
cautionary tale of the dangers of failing to combine orthodoxy
(that is, right belief) with orthopraxy (that is, right
action). Biographer David A. Vise says about Hanssen, "He was
a compartmentalizer. How else could he be married and a father
and go to church every day and, at the same time, commit
treason?"
So we have in Amazing
Grace, on the one hand, and Breach, on the other, a contrast
between integrity and compartmentalization. One life shows the
fruit of right belief translated into right action, while the
other shows how compartmentalized sin does not stay
compartmentalized for long; it spreads like
gangrene.
God demands our whole
hearts. He wants our beliefs and actions in alignment. That's
why Wilberforce was so adamant, warning us against
counterfeits of real
Christianity.
Wilberforce wrote the
following: "If the affections of the soul are not supremely
fixed on God, and if our dominant desire and primary goal is
not to possess God's favor and to promote His glory, then we
are traitors in revolt against our lawful Sovereign. . .
.Whether we are the slaves of avarice, sensuality, amusement,
sloth, or the devotees of ambition, taste, or fashion, we
alike estrange ourselves from the dominion of our rightful
Sovereign."
Breach is rated PG-13 for
some mild obscenity and adult situations. If you do choose to
see it, however, see Amazing Grace soon after. The
juxtaposition of Hanssen and Wilberforce will startle you.
Unlike Hanssen, Wilberforce knew that real Christianity puts
beliefs into action—and that any failure to live our Christian
convictions is an intolerable breach of trust with our
rightful Sovereign.
Thirty Pints of
Blood
A Contrast in
Worldviews
March 6, 2007
What difference does a
worldview make? Around the world, we are seeing the clash of
civilizations in action. In recent days, that clash has given
us a story of life, and stories of
death.
In
Baghdad
yesterday, a terrorist blew himself up with a car bomb,
killing at least twenty-eight people and wounding dozens more.
One witness told the Associated Press that pieces of human
flesh were scattered all around the
marketplace.
In
Afghanistan
last
month, another terrorist blew himself up near a crowd gathered
for a ceremony to open a hospital emergency ward. A few days
later, a Sunni Muslim blew herself up and forty others at a
college in
Baghdad.
In all three cases,
Muslims blew up Muslims. The response of
Europe
and the Muslim world to the
stories of death? Outrage? No. Silence. Did the Western press
condemn them? No.
Last week, another story
was told on NBC News—this time, a riveting story of
life.
NBC has been running a
gripping series on the emergency military triage facilities in
Iraq
. Last
Thursday, NBC showed wounded Iraqi insurgents being brought to
Camp
Speicher
near Tikrit.
Two of them had been caught placing an explosive device on a
nearby road, intending to kill Americans, when a
U.S.
helicopter
opened fire on them.
The
U.S.
medical team
moved heaven and earth to save their lives. One insurgent,
however, was not going to survive unless he got thirty pints
of blood.
But the base was low on
blood. The call went out for volunteer donors; minutes later,
dozens of G.I.s had lined up.
At the head of the line
was a battle-hardened soldier named Brian Suam. Asked if it
mattered that his blood was going to an insurgent, he smiled
and said, no—"A human life is a human
life."
I have never seen a more
dramatic example of worldviews in contrast, nor have I been
prouder of an American G.I. On one hand, we have the horrors
of a civilization that values death—even the death of its own
children—if by killing them they can hurt the infidels. On the
other side, we have a story that makes us realize just how
deeply embedded within American life is our Judeo-Christian
heritage. This heritage teaches that human life is sacred—even
the life of an enemy who falls into our
hands.
These stories make
nonsense of the claim that there is no real difference between
Christianity and Islam. The clash of civilizations is not only
about a fundamental difference between ways of viewing God,
reality, life, and life's meaning; it's also about good versus
evil, life versus death.
Of course, this doesn't
apply to peace-loving Muslims, but to the radicals now surging
in the Arab world.
It's time for the West to
wake up. As Thomas Friedman of the New York Times put it last
week, there is no accepted source of Arab-Muslim authority
today for peace-loving Muslims "to anchor their souls in." We
need, Friedman writes, "a counter-terrorism strategy that
delegitimizes suicide bombers." But that will happen only when
Muslim leaders condemn violence.
Friedman is right. We
ignore the horrors of radical Islam to our peril. If we do
nothing, in time, the stories of life will be overwhelmed by
the stories of death.
Busting on
One
The Dark Side of
Population Control
March 7, 2007
According to its
Academy of Social
Sciences
,
China
"suffers from
the world's most severe brain drain." Approximately two-thirds
of the Chinese who have studied abroad in the past two decades
did not return home.
The BBC offered many
possible explanations for this drain: the lack of
opportunities at home; a lack of freedom, especially after
Tiananmen Square
, and a
preference for the Western
"lifestyle."
One factor that was not
mentioned but should have been was a concern about spending
the rest of your life alone.
According to
China
's State
Population and Family Planning Commission, "by 2020 some 30
million Chinese men will not be able to find wives." If these
thirty million men were a country, they would be one of the
forty most-populous countries in the
world.
This inability to find
wives, in the commission's words, "may lead to social
instability." I guess it will. According to Constance Kong, a
consultant in
Shanghai
, "given that
understatement is a characteristic of the Chinese Government
when it discusses national problems, this means that it is
[really] alarmed."
The government has only
itself to blame. The looming imbalance between men and women
of marriageable age is the completely foreseeable result of
China
's "one-child"
policy. Limited to one child in "a country where daughters are
unwanted," many Chinese families, especially in rural areas,
made sure—even by infanticide—that the one child born was a
boy.
As a result, in parts of
China
, there are
130 males for every 100 females. Government attempts to end
sex selection, such as prohibiting doctors from revealing the
sex of unborn children, have failed: Families regularly bribe
doctors.
This demographic
imbalance has created a new market: kidnapping young girls
from other parts
Asia
, not
for the sex trade, but to provide
wives.
Given the role that
marriage and family plays in socializing males and the trouble
that young unmarried men have historically created, it is
little wonder that
Beijing
is alarmed. But
that's not the only problem caused by the "one-child"
policy.
It "has also created the
world's fastest aging population."
China
's population
is stabilizing, but, thanks to the "one-child" policy, it is
replacing working-age adults with those over sixty. The
result: a demographic "Titanic gunning for the iceberg,"
according to Kong.
This iceberg has raised
many concerns among foreign investors. They are no longer
putting all their eggs in the Chinese basket. As Kong puts it,
it is no longer "
China
or bust," but "if only
China
, bust." This
diversion of funds threatens
China
's ability to
provide jobs for the tens of millions moving into its cities
in search of work.
Given
China
's history,
its leaders are right to be alarmed about the possible impact
its demographics will have on "social
stability."
China
is not the only place where
demographic trends are frightening: 3,500 miles away in
Tehran
, demographics have
officials worried, and because they are worried, we need to be
worried, as well. I will tell you more about this
tomorrow.
China
, having chosen "lifestyle" over life
itself, is going to find out how costly that preference really
was—and provide an object lesson to those of us in the West
who are facing birthrate declines of our
own.
For the Sake of the
Planet?
Anti-Natalism in
America
March 9, 2007
Joan Blades describes
herself as, among other things, a "nature lover" and a
"mother." She is also a co-founder of the liberal activist
group MoveOn.org and a regular contributor to the liberal blog
The Huffington Post.
In a recent post, Blades
wrote about an article she read in her local paper. It
described a group that supports the kind of measures Blades
expected liberals like Huffington Post readers to support:
health care for children, "fair wages," and flexible work
schedules for moms.
What Blades found
surprising were some of the comments that came into the
paper's website. One person "reasoned" that if he has to pay
$25 for a dog license, why should parents expect help when
they "choose" to have kids. Another commenter simply wrote,
"Can't feed 'em, don't breed
'em."
Of course, this is the
Internet we're talking about. Still, Blades felt compelled to
refute the erroneous assumption underlying those comments,
that "choosing to have a child is purely an individual act"
and not "a contribution to society as a
whole."
Their response to
Blades's response was—what else?—more of the same. A "chunk of
the replies" objected "to contributing to the wellbeing of
children" because they did not want to "reward or encourage"
"indiscriminate breeders."
To be fair, many of the
replies were supportive of Blades's views. Still, there were
enough people using terms like breed and critters, terms
normally associated with animals, to prompt Blades to write
another article.
This anti-natalism is not
limited to liberals. A few years ago, at a dinner I attended,
a conservative Christian advocated sterilizing poor women as a
solution to welfare dependency. And today, leading
immigration-reform groups have links to zero-population growth
advocates.
The divide is not between
Republican and Democrats or liberals and conservatives—it's
between those who regard children as a blessing and those who
view them as, at best, a burden.
While Blades is right
when she says that plain selfishness accounts for some of the
hostility to families with children, there is something else
at work here as well. As Catholic writer Erin Manning says,
the belief that growth in human population should be
controlled is "an important tenet of mainstream
environmentalism."
Environmentalists agree
that "there are too many people on the earth," and that
repairing environmental damage requires "aggressive measures
to limit and restrict human
population."
In contrast to the
Christian idea of stewardship, which "wishes to conserve and
protect the natural resources of the planet for the sake of
future generations," this viewpoint "wishes to eliminate
future generations for the sake of the
planet."
This is only one example
of the cultural message today driven home to Americans: that
is, that large, or even medium-sized, families are an
impediment to the good life. Even if the kids are not yours,
their existence will have a negative impact on you—whether
it's higher taxes or global
warming.
Blades was rightly
disturbed by the sentiments expressed, but she should not have
been surprised—not in a culture where being a "nature lover"
and a "mom" is viewed as a contradiction in
terms.
Bank
Account
A 92-year-old,
small-framed, well-poised and proud man, who is fully dressed
each morning by eight o'clock, with his hair fashionably
coifed and shaved perfectly, even though he is legally blind,
moved to a nursing home today. His wife of 70 years recently
passed away, making the move necessary.
After many
hours of waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing home,
he smiled sweetly when told his room was ready. As he
maneuvered his walker to the elevator, I provided a visual
description of his tiny room, including the eyelet sheets that
had been hung on his window. "I love it," he
stated with the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old having just
been presented with a new puppy. "Mr. Jones, you
haven't seen the room; just wait.""That doesn't
have anything to do with it," he replied. "Happiness is
something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like my room
or not doesn't depend on how the furniture is arranged ...
it's how I arrange my mind. I already decided to love it. "It's a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have a
choice; I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I
have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or get out
of bed and be thankful for the ones that do.
Each day is a
gift, and as long as my eyes open, I'll focus on the new day
and all the happy memories I've stored away Just for this time
in my life.
Old age is like
a bank account. You withdraw from what you've put in.
So, my advice
to you would be to deposit a lot of happiness in the bank
account of memories! Thank you for your part in filling my
Memory bank. I am still depositing."
Remember the
five simple rules to be happy:
1. Free your
heart from hatred.
2. Free your
mind from worries.
3 Live simply.
4. Give
more.
5. Expect
less.
Pass this
message to 7 people except me.. You will receive a miracle
tomorrow.
Now, STOP! Did
you hear what I just said. Make a deposit in the Bank
Account.
So send it
right now!
Legal
Fictions
Creating Parents with a
Judicial Magic Wand
February 27,
2007
Isabella
Miller-Jenkins is only four years old, but she is at the
center of one of the most important legal battles of our time.
A judge will soon decide whether a woman with no biological or
adoptive ties to Isabella can legally be declared her
mother.It sounds
incredible, but it is the logical result of where our
anything-goes society has been leading us all these years.
As the
Washington
Post reports,
Isabella was conceived via artificial insemination while her
mother, Lisa Miller, was in a same-sex civil union with Janet
Jenkins. But later the civil union fell apart. Lisa took
Isabella and left
Vermont
for
Virginia
. She also returned
to the Christian faith of her childhood and became "determined
to 'leave the [lesbian] lifestyle'." That meant that she no
longer considered Janet to be Isabella's parent.
But in our
reckless pursuit of getting whatever we want at all costs, our
nation has begun interpreting the law in a way that reinforces
all the fictions that Lisa Miller no longer believes.
The subhead in
the Post article says it all: "Janet Jenkins and Lisa Miller
got hitched and had a baby together." Together? Anybody who
knows anything about biology knows that's impossible. But
that's just how the courts are looking at it. As a judge in
the case told Janet Jenkins's lawyer, Janet (the lesbian
partner) "without question is presumed to be the natural
parent . . . by the basis of the civil union." So in the
court's eyes, Isabella is the child of two women, something
biologically impossible.
How is it
possible that laws and court procedures could have become so
dangerously fantasy-based? Actually, we should not be
surprised. Many modern parents have unwittingly been
collaborating with the process for years. The Washington Post
tells us how Judge Cohen explained it: "Consider the situation
of a heterosexual couple in which an infertile husband agrees
for his wife to be artificially inseminated with donor sperm."
In such a case, the judge stated, the husband would be
presumed to have parental rights even though someone else had
actually fathered the child.
It all ties
together. Heterosexual couples have tacitly approved this
practice of including a silent third partner in a marriage to
produce a child. And then it makes it very difficult to cry
foul when homosexuals do the same thing.
Isabella's
plight shows us the tragic consequences of rejecting the
biblical view of marriage, which provides for one man and one
woman in the union to raise the child. Sure, there are
extraordinary circumstances, and adoption is possible. But the
norm is the norm, and the law has always recognized the
natural moral order.
If Janet
Jenkins wins her case—which may go all the way to the U.S.
Supreme Court—Isabella may be taken from her biological mother
to live with a woman she barely remembers. And not only
Isabella; many other children would also be threatened by this
waving of the judicial magic wand to produce legal parents out
of nowhere.
I urge you to
visit our blog at thepoint.breakpoint.org to read more about
this important story. We need to see how our attitude of "I
can do anything I want, and it won't hurt anybody" has led to
a situation that could hurt families everywhere.
The Transhuman
Future
Longing to Forget
February 26,
2007
Note: This
commentary was delivered by Prison Fellowship President Mark
Earley.
In the movie
Johnny Mnemonic, the protagonist is a "data trafficker" with a
hard drive device implanted right in his brain. While the
implant "enhances" his life by allowing him to make a good
living, this "enhancement" costs him his childhood memories,
which leaves him distant and aloof—in other words, not quite
human.
While the story
is science-fiction, the scenario it describes may soon become
science fact.
That's what
renowned computer scientist Ray Kurzweil believes. In a recent
interview in Hemispheres magazine, Kurzweil predicted that
within our lifetimes, human-machine "hybrids" will become
commonplace. Within twenty
years, he says, we will have "nonbiological machine
intelligence" that is "more powerful than biological
intelligence."
This advance
will leave us with only one choice: to merge with the
technology. By 2035, Kurzweil claims, "you will be
hard-pressed to find a human who doesn't have substantial
nonbiological thinking processes inside his body." We will
combine the "power of human intelligence" with the "strengths
of computer intelligence: speed, storage, and memory," he
says.
Before we all
line up to get our "upgrades," though, I would like to point
out a few problems with Kurzweil's scenario. First, he is
almost certainly underestimating the difficulty of the task he
describes. Ever-more sophisticated mathematical "models" and
"simulations" are not the same thing as "reverse engineering
the human brain."
This kind of
underestimation is not new. People my age grew up believing
that by the twenty-first century flying cars would be
commonplace. Every vision of the not-too-distant future
included them. Yet, it's 2007, and flying cars are nowhere in
sight. The
difficulties in designing and building a flying car are
child's play compared to the kind of "hybrid" Kurzweil
describes. We know how powered flight works—we know little
about the workings of the brain and even less about human
consciousness.
But even if we
can do it, that still leaves the question, "Should we do it?"
Philosopher Peter Augustine Lawler has written that for many
Americans, the pursuit of happiness increasingly means
rejecting "the bodies they have been given by nature."
Or, to be more
precise, we reject the limitations associated with these
bodies. In a culture where plastic surgery is commonplace,
even among teenagers, it is no surprise that the idea of
computer-like recall is attractive.
But, as Lawler
reminds us, such enhancements come at a price. Our
limitations, including our mortality, are the source of much
of what is distinctly human. Art, philosophy, morality all
spring from our coming to grips with our limitations. Take
them away, and the result is not utopia, but perhaps a numbed
dispiritedness.
In addition,
the human capacity to forget—or, at least, to blur our
memories—makes things like forgiveness and simple coping
possible. Would you want to remember everything that ever
happened to you with machine-like recall and speed? Would you
want every bad experience to be as vivid as when it happened?
I don't think I would. Yet, that is what a hybridized future
would hold in store.
Happily, there
is still time to raise the important questions that the
techno-utopians will not or cannot—before we all wish we were
able to forget.
Woodward displays this passion for
truth-telling yet again in his marvelous new book, Darwin
Strikes Back: Defending the Science of Intelligent Design.
What Woodward wrote about just a few years ago is even truer
today. Amid a firestorm of criticism and abuse from committed
Darwinists, the intelligent design movement continues to press
forward, gaining scientific credibility and even grudging
respect from some evolutionists. But as Woodward shows,
there's still a long way to go.
Because the more respect intelligent design
gains, the more alarmed the Darwinists become. Their thinking
goes something like this: It's one thing for those religious
people to talk about a creator God—that's religion; but now
they are talking about science—so, they figure, "Let's label
it religion." Woodward writes, "These sentiments were echoed
in public declarations, verbally and in print, by Darwinian
defenders, warning . . . that Intelligent Design is religion,
not science . . . This statement," Woodward continues,
"emerged as the number-one talking point for Intelligent
Design opponents [over the last few years]."
The idea makes for a great sound bite, as the
popular press is well aware. But it has no ground to stand on,
and that's becoming increasingly obvious if you spend any
amount of time researching the issue. Intelligent design
theorists come from all backgrounds and creeds; some of them
aren't "religious" at all. What they have in common is what
Woodward calls a "scientific paradigm" that allows for design
in any natural mechanism that can't be explained simply by
chance or purely natural causes. His meticulously researched
book clearly explains the scientific reasoning behind this
paradigm.
Ironically, it's the anti-intelligent design
forces that are fully committed to a religious dogma—a dogma
whose foundation is starting to show dangerous cracks. Their
religion is materialism, and some of them even admit it, like
Harvard geneticist Richard Lowentin. Woodward quotes him as
saying: "We take the side of science in spite of the patent
absurdity of some of its constructs . . . because we have a
prior commitment, a commitment to materialism."
Well, he's being honest, at least. But who is
it now who's confusing science and religion?
Suggest the presence of something outside of
and greater than the universe we know, and Darwinists get all
but hysterical. Take the case of researcher Richard Sternberg.
He isn't even an intelligent design advocate himself, but when
he dared to publish a peer-reviewed article on intelligent
design in his scientific journal, the Darwinists acted more
like Grand Inquisitors than scientists, cutting off his access
to research and trying to limit his academic freedom.
In light of such nonsense, the continuing
quest of intelligent design theorists is all the more
intriguing and admirable. As Woodward points out, this
criticism is even cause for gratitude, because it is leading
many intelligent design theorists to be more thorough in their
research and to sharpen their arguments.
Patriot Vol.
07 No. 01 Digest | 05 January 2007
Today, 174
years hence, additional generations and countless American
Patriots have left to us “a noble inheritance, bought by their
toils, and sufferings, and blood...” They did so in defense of
a sacred trust—American liberty—which is uniquely ours. That
trust’s Founders wrote eloquently about the necessary
qualifications of their posterity, those charged with
extending liberty to the next generation.
Every day that
we share the name “American” should be a day of thanksgiving,
and we should not for one solitary second, amid the political
rancor, lose sight of all that is good and right with our
great nation.
When it comes to
controlling alcoholism among the homeless, one Seattle group
is charting new territory. Last December, the Downtown
Emergency Services Center opened a highly controversial
facility, known as 1811 Eastlake, in order to house
seventy-five of the city's most inebriated homeless. Taxpayers
had grown weary of shelling out up to $50,000 a year per
homeless citizen to pay for visits to the emergency room,
jail, and recovery facilities. So, the city decided to
redirect some of its funds—over $11 million to be exact—toward
permanent housing for these hard-core alcoholics.
But here's the
catch—residents are allowed to drink to their heart's content!
While 1811 does not discourage sobriety, it does not require
its residents to enroll in any sort of recovery program. Bill
Hobson, the program's executive director, says that the
community needs to face the so-called "fact" that the most
chronically intoxicated will likely remain that way. Hobson
offers an example of a resident who was drunk ten minutes
after spending sixty days in a detox facility. Referring to
the worst drunks like this, he says, "Once you're an
alcoholic, you're always an alcoholic."
Well, the reasoning goes,
if an alcoholic can't change, instead of racking up taxpayer
dollars to pay for jail cells and treatment, why not fund less
expensive housing? Just keep them off the
streets.
It might be cheaper, but
it's also immoral. You see, the idea that people can't change
is the result of a naturalistic, deterministic worldview. If
people are truly the result of random evolution and their
environment, and only the fit can survive, then indeed,
homeless drunks don't have a chance. Give them a bottle, wish
them well, and just keep them out of trouble.
But Christians know
better. In thirty years of prison ministry, I've witnessed
time and time again the transformation of the most
incorrigibly hardened criminals imaginable—drug addicts and
alcoholics among them. And believe me, it costs taxpayers far
less to promote the transformation of prisoners than to simply
warehouse them and hope they won't return to a life of crime.
That's why six states have now welcomed the InnerChange
Freedom Initiative® (or IFI), a faith-based program launched
by Prison Fellowship, which has proven to drastically reduce
recidivism among prisoners.
Ironically, as many of you
know, a federal judge has ordered the IFI program in Iowa shut
down, charging that it violates the separation of church and
state—this, while taxpayers in Washington state are financing
a homeless shelter that practically enables addictive behavior
all to save, so they say, a few dollars.
But so much more is at
stake than taxpayer dollars. Hope is. The director of 1811
Eastlake says that we need to face the reality that some
people will never change. Well, he's wrong. Any society that
just writes off a class of persons can someday put groups of
people gently to sleep. The Nazis proved that so.
