We don’t just support them with our mouths but with our money as well. 🙂
http://www.hydratinghumanity.com/
http://www.zaowater.com
ALPHA INVENTIONS http://alphainventions.com ALPHAINVENTIONS
Archive for Darwin
Ben Stein, Bueller…Bueller
Ben Stein's eXpelled *CLICK IMAGE* to go to the site
a trailer for Ben’s movie eXpelled and below it is a cool letter.
and a cool letter from Ben:
Herewith a few confessions from my beating heart :
I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important?
I don’t know who Lindsay Lohan is either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise ‘s wife. Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I am a subversive? Maybe, but I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are. If this is what it means to be no longer young. It’s not so bad.
Next confession : I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don’t feel threatened. I don’t feel discriminated against. That’s what they are : Christmas trees. It doesn’t bother me a bit when people say, “Merry Christmas” to me. I don’t think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn’t bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a creche, it’s just as fine with me, as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away. I don’t like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don’t think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians.
I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can’t find it in the Constitution, and I don’t like it being shoved down my throat. Or maybe I can put it another way : where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren’t allowed to worship God as we understand Him? I guess that’s a sign that I’m getting old, too.
But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to. In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different : This is not intended to be a joke; it’s not funny, it’s intended to get you thinking. Billy Graham ‘s daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her “How could God let something like this Happen?” (regarding Katrina ) Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, “I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we’ve been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?”
In light of recent events, terrorists attacks, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O’Hare (she was murdered, her body found recently) complained she didn’t want prayer in our schools, and we said OK. Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school .. the Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK. Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn’t spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem ( Dr. Spock ‘s son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he’s talking about. And we said OK. Now we’re asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don’t know right from wrong, and why it doesn’t bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.
Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with “WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.” Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world’s going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. Funny how you can send ‘jokes’ through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace. Are you laughing?
Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you’re not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it. Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us. Pass it on if you think it has merit. If not then just discard it… no one will know you did. But, if you discard this thought process, don’t sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in.
My Best Regards .. honestly and respectfully,
Ben Stein
and his website:
The Contrasting Religions of Creation and Evolution
Contrasting Religions
The Contrasting Religions of Creation and Evolution
by John D. Morris, Ph.D.*
The often-asked question “Do you believe in evolution?” expects the answer “Of course!” Don’t only ignorant yokels have any doubt? But polls consistently reveal that a great majority of Americans do not believe in the evolution of all life forms from a common ancestor. Why isn’t evolution something you can know for sure, not just something in which you can believe?
As always, it helps to define terms. First, evolution is the “descent from a common ancestor” model, the idea that all of life came from more primitive forms. Humankind came from an ape-like ancestor that came up through the mammals from an original rodent-like creature. All mammals came from early reptiles and amphibians, which all came from fish. And the fish came from some marine invertebrate like a snail or starfish, which had still earlier evolved from single-celled life.
Thus, a more revealing question might be “Do you believe your ancestors were fish, as evolution teaches?” Or, “Are you a mutated rodent-like creature?” Fewer people would be inclined to answer, “Yes!” Despite several generations now of aggressive evolution-only teaching in the public school classroom, most people just know that they didn’t come from a fish or a rodent or a starfish. They can choose to believe they have an animal ancestry, but few do. It just isn’t believable. Thankfully, it isn’t the only alternative explanation for origins, and the other is not only more believable, it’s more appealing.
Dr. Michael Ruse, perhaps the most eloquent spokesman for evolution today, has admitted:
Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion–a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint…the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.1
Christianity has its God and its revealed truth. It tells us our origins, who we are, where we came from, the meaning of life, and where we’re going after we die. It tells us how to live and how to make life decisions along the way. Created in the image of God, we have great worth in His eyes, and great standing before Him as we appropriate His gift of redemption, a great destiny to perform on earth, and life with our loving and righteous Creator/Savior after death.
Evolution answers these same questions differently. We are and come from the universe’s chemicals that have self-organized into unlikely forms over eons of time. Single-celled life transformed itself into higher forms until finally the human animal came along. As higher animals, we have incorporated animal behavior into societal norms and even “religious” beliefs. The only true meaning to life is survival and reproduction, and life’s highest goal is to pass on one’s genes more efficiently than others. After life, we simply cease to exist.
As Dr. Ruse explains, “Evolution is a religion,” and not a science at all. It might be best understood as a worldview, a way of thinking and making sense of the world around us. Some, such as Eugenie Scott, have called this worldview “philosophical materialism,” a religious claim of naturalism that holds that nature is all there is. There is no supernatural Being who has ever interfered with the natural order of things. Surely this is a religious claim regarding all of reality.
And surely it’s not the only or the best such claim. As constitutional attorney Wendell Bird has pointed out: “Evolution is at least as religious as creation, and creation is at least as scientific as evolution.” Creation is also more believable.
Reference
- Ruse, Michael. Saving Darwinism from the Darwinians. National Post, May 13, 2000, B-3.
* Dr. Morris is President of the Institute for Creation Research.
Cite this article: Morris, J. 2008. The Contrasting Religions of Creation and Evolution. Acts & Facts. 37 (11): 13.
This article was originally published November, 2008. “The Contrasting Religions of Creation and Evolution”, Institute for Creation Research, http://www.icr.org/article/4157/ (accessed October 31, 2008).
Nature Screams
The Great Smoky Montains
“Nature is too thin a screen; the glory of the omnipresent God bursts through everywhere.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
“People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass by themselves without wondering.” –St. Augustine
“The Fool hath said in his heart, ‘There is no God.” Psalm 14:1
“To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.” –Charles Darwin (Origin of Species, chapter “Difficulties”)
A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell. –C.S. Lewis
As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene….No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life. –Albert Einstein, physicist and atheist (1879-1955)
I am an historian, I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history. –H.G. Wells
Jesus of Nazareth, without money and arms, conquered more millions than Alexander the Great, Caesar, Mohammed, and Napoleon; without science and learning, he shed more light on things human and divine than all philosophers and scholars combined; without the eloquence of school, he spoke such words of life as were never spoken before or since,
Big Sur, California
and produced effects which lie beyond the reach of orator or poet; without writing a single line, he set more pens in motion, and furnished themes for more sermons, orations, discussions, learned volumes, works of art, and songs of praise than the whole army of great men of ancient and modern times. –Philip Schaff
I know men and I tell you that Jesus Christ is no mere man. Between Him and every other person in the world there is no possible term of comparison. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have founded empires. But on what did we rest the creation of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded His empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for Him. –Napoleon Bonaparte
A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.—C.S. Lewis
Earth From Space
Socrates taught for 40 years, Plato for 50, Aristotle for 40, and Jesus for only 3. Yet the influence of Christ’s 3-year ministry infinitely transcends the impact left by the combined 130 years of teaching from these men who were among the greatest philosophers of all antiquity.
The Bible is no mere book, but a Living Creature, with a power that conquers all that oppose it. –Napoleon Bonaparte
Another century and there will not be a Bible on earth! –Voltaire (1694-1778)
The French philosopher Voltaire, a skeptic who destroyed the faith of many people, boasted that within 100 years of his death, the Bible would disappear from the face of the earth. Voltaire died in 1728, but the Bible lives on. The irony of history is that 50 years after his death, the Geneva Bible Society moved into his former house and used his printing presses to print thousands of Bibles. —Ray Comfort
Voltaire criticized the Bible, but now everyone reads the Bible and no one reads Voltaire. –Unknown
You Don't Have To Be Crazy 