Raving Conservative

Still Alive

2008-08-27T20:46:00.004-08:00

Hello everybody,

This is just to let you know that I am still alive and well, and video blogging on YouTube. I had thought to maintain this blog as well, but it seems that I don't have the time to video blog AND do a written blog with everything else that's going on in my life.

My YouTube Channel is DanielLevesqe ( http://www.youtube.com/user/DanielLevesque ) and it is mostly about religion with some politics mixed in. I have become a warrior in the evolution/creation debate as well.

I would have been posting my videos here as well, but I could never get Blogger to take the embed from YouTube.

This has been good for me. My writing skills are quite good, but my verbal skills were always lacking. This has been a huge help in developing my public speaking ability.

Sorry to take so long to let you all know.

Congressional Rip-off

2007-05-22T20:45:00.000-08:00

Okay, SOMEONE was listening in when I called in to a radio show a month ago.

Illegal immigration was the topic. I called in and suggested that perhaps the only way to get anything done about illegal immigration was to make a bill that gave both sides everything they wanted so everyone could be pissed off about stuff they don't want being part of a bill that also did what they wanted. Now Congres has gone and done exactly that. It took tem 600 pages to outline what I could in 2 minutes of talking; but what else should we expect from a bunch of lawyers?

It will never pass, but it's valiant and thoroughly misguided effort.

Who says one man can't make a difference?

Tribute

2007-05-15T23:34:00.000-08:00

I have not been posting lately because I have been working hard on my book and all of my writing efforts have been directed there. However, something momentous and tragic has happened and I must say something about it.

Reverend Jerry Falwell has died.

This is a man who had many enemies, but that is to be expected when you stand up for what is right. The Bible says that darkness hides from the light. The way dark people hated the light that was Jerry Falwell proved it beyond any doubt. He said some stupid things, but we all do that from time to time. The only difference between this great man and the rest of us nobodies is that he had a national voice and vocal enemies who also had a national voice to attack him every time he put his foot in his mouth.

This man did more good in his lifetime than most thousand people will do combined. He was kind, honest, generous, driven, and always faithful to God. If everyone in the world shared these qualities all of the world's problems would be solved.

More than anything the Reverend Falwell would want to be remembered as a man of God. While he was a powerful political activist who is partly responsible for reshaping the political landscape in America, this was not his most importat work. It was his work in service to God that is his greatest legacy. He served as a role model for all mankind, and some people loved him for it, and some people hated him for it. My regular readers know what I think of people who hate what God calls good and what I think of people who love what God calls good, and I will not go into that here.

America lost a national treasure this day. Reverend Jerry Falwell, you will be sorely missed.

Let’s Talk Imus

2007-04-27T22:22:00.001-08:00

Okay, enough already. Don Imus was fired after making a bone-headed comment on the radio that two of the most notorious racists in America heard and made a stink over. To hear the hubbub you would think that his syndicate made a moral decision based upon the complaints of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton (Reverend omitted intentionally).

Not quite the case.

Imus wasn’t fired until AFTER his advertisers started to abandon him en masse. That makes this a financial decision, not a moral one.

Hey baby, it’s just business. I would have fired him too if the profits from his show dried up on me.

What blows my mind is the way radio people are going on about sponsor intimidation as if it were something new and that there is suddenly a grave threat to free speech on the radio that was never there before. The threat has always been there because there have always been people seeking to destroy radio and television personalities that they just don’t like.

Has everyone forgotten what happened to Dr. Laura’s television show?

You may recall that her television show was cancelled in spite of good ratings because a controversial group of people, homosexuals, who are a much smaller community than the black community, threatened to boycott the advertisers on her show.

This is old hat for libs that want to see conservatism silenced. The only real issue here is that conservatives have yet to use the same tactic effectively against liberals that we find offensive.

Remember the movement to boycott every sponsor of the gay pride convention in San Diego a few years back? Of course not, the only way you would have heard about it was to listen to Christian radio. Lack of media coverage marginalized an effort by a group of people who make up more than 60% of this country to erode sponsor support from the homosexual movement. Homosexuals, comprising a mere 2-3% of the American population successfully had Dr. Laura booted from television by doing the exact same thing, but with massive media coverage.

Kind of makes you think doesn’t it? Makes you think that maybe the media covered one while ignoring the other because they stand for the one and against the other.

Who says the media isn’t biased?

The Plot Thickens

2007-04-18T17:18:00.000-08:00

As I learn more about the Virginia Tech Gunman I begin to see more of his psyche that may shed light on what may have shaped him into a being capable of such evil.

In particular I am referring to his fictional writings.

As a writer of both fiction and nonfiction myself I know that authors frequently draw upon real life experiences to create their fictional stories. This guy had a common theme in his fictional writings: Boys being raped by older men.

This causes me to ask one very important question:

Who raped him as a boy?

Tragedy in Virginia

2007-04-17T08:25:00.001-08:00

Yesterday the worst mass murder by shooting on American soil in history was committed. 32 dead, including the murderer who shot himself at the end. Words cannot describe the horror of such a monstrous act committed anywhere, much less a school, in this case a university, a place where we expect our children to be safe and learn knowledge and skills they will need to have a successful future. Having the lives of children tragically cut short in such a manner and in such a place is heartbreaking.

I do not use profanity lightly, but some is coming. If you are easily offended do not read on.

The only mercy in this whole disgusting situation is that the sick fuck who committed this atrocity also killed himself, which saves us the trouble of having to kill him. I do not care who he is, what his ethnicity is, what his affiliations are, if he had mental health issues, or anything else. I only care that he murdered 31 innocent people. Such an act must be met with punishment by death. Unfortunately, the court system keeps death row inmates around sometimes for decades before finally meting out justice. The murderer took his own life at the end of his murderous spree, and that saved us the trouble of trying him in a court system that looks for any excuse to let sick bastards like this off the hook and to extend their lives when justice demands execution.

Some people are using this tragedy as an opportunity to call for greater gun control. I however, cannot help but wonder how many lives might have been saved if even 2% of the students in the classes he shot had been carrying concealed weapons and therefore been able to shoot back. What if someone in the first building had been armed and shot the murderer? Would that not have saved the lives of everyone who died in the second shooting?

Do not make the mistake of blaming the guns for this crime. If guns were not so tightly controlled someone might have had one and stopped this murder spree before it had the chance to reach its horrific conclusion.

Gun control, laws preventing guns from being carried on any school property, and other measures taken to prevent gun crime did not stop this shooting spree from happening, and they never do. If we start banning guns because of this then there will be more gun violence as the criminals who don’t respect any law, much les gun control laws, are able to wield guns illegally while the law abiding population is left defenseless. The proof is in, cities that have concealed carry have less crime than cities that ban it. Crime, especially gun crime, rises when guns are banned. Do not make the mistake of banning guns in the misguided belief that doing so makes it safer. The opposite is true.

If only some of the students in those classrooms were armed and could have shot back . . .

Hyppocrisy and Bigotry

2007-04-05T11:09:00.000-08:00

I took a break from blogging because there has been such a myriad of insanity inflicted upon America in the last month, largely by the Democrats in Congress, that if I were to write about it all I fear myhead would have exploded at the sheer absurdity that has been forced into reality against all logic, sense, morals, reason, and intelligence. However, something has come to my attention that stands out even in the midst of this insanisty.

Allow me to lay out the foundation before I tell you the actual event.

As everyone in the world who has access to information knows, America was attacked by terrorists. Subsequently, there have been bold attacks in Europe as well. Globally, there has been an uprise in terorism as a whole. The common thread in all of this terrorism is Islam.

Given this fact, it is reasonable that schools would conduct terrorist attack drills. How to react to Muslim terrorists engaging in their hell-born jihad is an excellent idea.

But this?

The following is part of a release from the American Center for Law and Justice:

A mock hostage-taking with staged - albeit terrifying - gunmen descending on a New Jersey high school as part of a drill occurred late last month. Who were the portrayed terrorists?CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIANS.

No other group in America would tolerate this kind of religious profiling! And we will not stand for it either. Please support our efforts to hold school officials accountable for their oppressive actions. Give your online gift of support right now.

Don't get me wrong, taking precautions over school violence is imperative. However, the Burlington Township school district went over the top ... and TOOK HOLY WEEK HOSTILITY TO A WHOLE NEW LEVEL.The school district decided that the group engaged in the hostage-taking activity was "right-wing fundamentalists" ... a group the school named the "New Crusaders" ... who do not believe in separation of church and state. This is unbelievable!In fact, the mock gunmen allegedly stormed the school and took students hostage, "seeking justice because the daughter of one member of the organization had been expelled for PRAYING BEFORE CLASS."

Let's inject some reality into this fantasy.

CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIANS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR EXACTLY ZERO OF THE TERRORISM IN THE WORLD!

How the people who concocted this drill ever thought that Christians are a greater threat than Muslims is so far outside of reality that I am forced to conclude that they are truly insane. Who blew up the world trade center? Apparently these folks think it was Christians who were offended by anti-Christian school policies. Who has been bombing and rioting in Europe over the slightest insult? Last I knew it was Muslims and only Muslims, but apparently these morons believe that they terrorists are Christians!

The School sweree taken over by liberals long ago, and places like New Jersey, Massachussetts, California, and other liberal states are more liberal than others. This event is proof of something people like me have been declaring for a long time:

Liberalism is Anti-Christian, and liberals want to see Christianity destroyed, villified, and demonized at any cost. They are doing this because they are offended by the fact that Christianity declares right and wrong in certain terms and warns of consequences for our actions. One of the hallmarks of liberalism is simple acceptance of almost any human behavior no matter how kooky or destructive, sometimes with the caveat of declaring that causing intentional harm is bad.

Because Islam is so insignificant in America they do not feel the need to be honest in their conversation and actions regarding it. It poses no threat to their personal desires at this time by virtue of the fact that Atheists outnumber Muslims here many times over in the U.S. However, to them Christianity is an imminent threat because Christians compose a large majority of America.

They fail to realize that the greatest force for good in the world is the Christian Church.

They fail to realize that the greatest forces for women's rights in the world have been Christianity, and Juadaism before that.

They fail to realize that Christianity created the free world.

They fail to realize that if Islam were as dominant in America as Chritisanity is that they would all be executed for crimes against Allah.

Things like this cause me to question the intelligence and sanity of people who actually buy into liberal doctrines. Ideology over fact seems to be the rule of modern liberalism, and it is, in my opinion, the greatest destructive force in America.

Random

2007-03-09T17:31:00.001-09:00

I went to see 300 with my wife today. It was beautiful, heartening, exciting, and tragic. Yet, at the end of the day it is not this spectacular movie that truly sticks out in my mind.

It is what happened after the movie.

While walking out I noticed someone abandon a video game he was playing. I took over as he walked out of the building. My wife was tolerant of my indulgence as I played. It was not long before a young man stepped out of the bathroom nearby and approached me. From his facial features and body I rightly guessed him to have Down Syndrome.

He tapped on my hand and sort of moaned at me. I thought maybe he wanted to play the game, so I offered it to him. Instead of taking over the game he tapped my hand again, moaned, and picked up the corner of his coat and showed it to me. Not understanding him I offered him the game again and told I did not understand him.

He repeated his sounds and gestures again. I held my hands up helplessly, unable to understand the sounds he was making.

I am still unsure what he wanted from me, but after thinking it over for several minutes after he walked away I came to the conclusion that he probably just wanted help zipping up his coat. I am saddened that I did not figure even this simple solution out before he gave up to seek help from someone else.

My heart aches for the plight of this young man. Unable to communicate effectively with the majority of us, reduced to vague sounds and gestures to communicate his every need. And equally so I ache for him because people like me are unable to truly understand him and meet his simple needs.

I finished my game, and as I turned to leave I realized what he may have been trying to tell me. Instead of simply leaving I went in the direction he did when he left me to see if he was still around and in need of help. I did not see him, and it is my hope that someone understood him and took care of his needs. I left then to go about my business, and still his face haunts me. That simple, innocent face of a young man in need but unable to tell me how to help him, and of my own inability understand him and help him.

There are those who consider such people to be unworthy of our help. These pitiless, dark souls have no place in a compassionate society such ours. They would see people disabled in this way tucked away, killed before birth, or simply abandoned. These, the least of us all deserve better than that. They deserve our compassion, our mercy, and our help however and whenever we can give it.

I do not think highly of social welfare programs for the able. I think that if you are able to work you should work, and if you will not work you should be allowed to wallow in poverty and hunger until you choose to work. It serves no one to allow the able to be lazy leeches on our compassion. However, people like this young man deserve all of the help we can give them. They are the unable, the ones social welfare should protect from cold, hunger, and nakedness. They are the ones the rest of us should spend time with from time to time to show them that they are not outcasts, but welcome members of our society and our families.

I say all of this not merely as an American. Belonging to a nation does not automatically create a compassionate heart in a man. I say it first and foremost as a Christian. One whose heart was turned this way by God Himself, and not by anything I learned in school, books, or television. One time long ago I was one of those who I now speak of with disdain. I was one who had no mercy in his heart for the least of us. It was the mercy of Jesus that changed my heart and gave me the compassion that drives me to write this tonight.

In the eyes of God the least of us are the most precious among us. It is they who keep an innocence the rest of lose at every earlier ages. These are the ones who remain blameless before the Lord simply because they cannot know any better. It is the rest of us who have filth souls that deserve the damnation of Hell and have no hope without Jesus.

These innocents are blessed in a way most of cannot appreciate. They are our very best because they show us what innocence is like. They show us what it is like to live with purity of purpose even when we err. They show us how to be happy with the simple things in life, and they openly express feelings most of us hide for the sake of appearances.

The least in this world shall be the greatest in the next. Any man who misguides an innocent is deserving of some of the greatest judgments of God Himself. Yes, these people deserve out mercy. Yes, one day they will be greater than most of us in Heaven. This is right. But for now, guard them, help them, and treasure them for what they are now.

Just . . . wow

2007-03-06T08:02:00.000-09:00

There was an assassination attempt against Vice President Dick Cheney last week. I waited to write about it because, despite the hugeness of this event, there is something even bigger to come out of it here at home.

Pure, venomous, liberal hatred.

The only reason such hatred fromliberals is news is because liberals have spent decades cultivating an image of compassion and love. If this was ever true, and it really is for some, then it has been changed. There is nowhere in America that I have encountered more hatred than among modern liberals. This istuation is an excellent example.

The liberal blogoshpere is riddled with sories and comments about how big a shame it is that the terrorists didn't succeed at murdering Dick Cheney.

What kind of sick, perverted "love and compassion" is this?

This is just another example of how liberals have developed into a movement that is, by and large, intolerant, bigoted, and even hateful. For all of their accusations levelled against the right, the vast majority seem to come from a twisted point of view that denies the truth in favor asuming a predisposed point. All it takes is to disagree and the liberals label you, call you names, and, of course, deny, deny, deny the truth. Which is proof that not only are liberals frequently hateful, they are bigoted, and ignorant too.

So keep on talking about how much you wish harm would come to those you disaagree with. Keep trying to intimidate conservative speakers whiel you attempt to shout them down. Keep calling people names just because you don't like what they say even though it is the truth. The more you keep it up the more conservatives you create.

Defending Obama

2007-02-28T22:35:00.000-09:00

While I do not support Barack Obama for President, for reasons of him being a liberal, I also do not support unnecessary mud-slinging to besmirch a man who, to date, has shown himself to be clean as far as politicians go.

One of the recent accusations leveled against him is that he belongs to a church that is a black separatist organization. I see no evidence that this is so.

Allow me to explain.

Yes his church is very ethnocentric toward black people. Yes it has a ten point manifesto emphasizing dedication to black people.

Yes, who really cares?

It is natural that an organization that is predominantly one ethnic group would gravitate toward a sort of ethnocentricity in its goals. So a predominantly black church emphasizing bringing black people up morally and socially is perfectly natural. I would expect something similar in any organization that is predominantly one ethnicity, especially is that ethnicity has an image problem. Yes, thanks to media emphasis on black crime, rap and hip-hop music, and other sources the black community has an undeserved image problem that is being exacerbated as youths actually adopt it in a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy. And no, it does not represent a majority of the Black community no matter what anyone may think.

However, there are real problems, just as every group has real problems. So I find it a good thing that there are churches that want to focus on fixing these problems. Barack Obama’s church happens to be one of them. Good.

As for charges of black separatism based on the fact that this church is focusing on supporting positive values and ethics in the Black community . . . whatever. The church is predominantly black, and this means that it is simply serving its constituency. This is natural. And I would much rather have churches promoting positive values to various groups of people that let the Godless secularists continue to promote their destructive form of values unchallenged.

On top of that, the values being promoted in this ten-point manifesto are good ones. If the word “black” was removed from the ten points it would be praised instead of criticized. It isn’t as if this is some pretend church built around anti-Christian hatred like the Westboro Baptist Church.

So to all the critics I say, shut up. If you want to criticize the man criticize his politics, positions, and personal actions if you can find cause to do so. But do not seek to destroy a church just because it focuses on its primary constituency as a means of going after a politician.

Unsurprising

2007-02-24T00:40:00.003-09:00

UPDATE: The man spoken of in this article is the same man who is resposible for the Virginia courts banning the use of internet filtering programs in public libraries which was supposed to protect children from porn and prevent perverts from using public libraries to access all kinds of porn, including child porn. Is it any wonder he wanted to make sure people had a place to go were they could anonymously access any perverted material their hearts may desire?

The former President of the Virginia chapter of the ACLU was arrested earlier on child pornography charges. U.S. authorities, in cooperation with international authorities confiscated this man’s computer which contained numerous videos of pre-pubescent girls being forcibly raped. Reports state that the abuse was severe, and that the girls were crying and screaming as they were raped.

This guy is sick, and I don’t mean that in the ACLU “he needs help” kind of sick, I mean sick as in “He and everyone who can be linked to this atrocity need to be done away with.” The rapists and the purveyors of this atrocity need to be hunted down and killed. All of the sick bastards who buy this filth need to go away forever and be glad they are not killed too. I’m thinking a small deserted island far away from humanity would be appropriate.

It was only a matter of time before a leader in the ACLU was busted on something like this. Thinking people could see it coming.

The ACLU has a long history of defending the so-called “rights” of degenerates of all stripes. They came to the rescue when women wanted the right to do illegal drugs while pregnant. They secured the right for hate groups to parade their hate in the streets for all to see. They are trying to create special rights for foreign terrorists under the Geneva Convention, which, I might add, expressly excludes terrorists and people like them. They defend the sickest pornography. They are even defending the North American Man-Boy Love association’s (NAMBLA) “right” to publish and distribute instructional materials on how to kidnap and rape children.

With a history like this it is unsurprising that the ACLU has attracted degenerates like this guy to work for them. With degenerates who acquire and use kiddie rape porn in positions of leadership in the ACLU it is unsurprising that the organization as a whole is willing to defend this crime against humanity.

There are people, especially the ACLU and its supporters who will claim that he is the exception, and he probably is. Most supporters of the ACLU are simply deceived or ignorant, not criminals. However, the link to personal behavior and chosen causes is one that is long-established. Now that there is proof of at least one leader in the ACLU, one who presumably supports all of the ACLU’s causes, I think it is time for a closer look at the leadership of that organization.

What I am suggesting is Bill Clinton style inquest. Since it is apparently okay for a liberal President to investigate and harass organizations he does not like or considers in opposition to him, then it equally okay for a more conservative President to do the same thing when an organization with the ACLU’s history starts having its leaders come up as pedophiles. Speaking as the devil’s advocate, the ACLU cannot afford to have corruption within the organization, so they should welcome a thorough investigation, complete with federal warrants into the lives of its leaders to ensure that they are not complicit with, or even participating in illegal activity. Air out the dirty laundry and eliminate the crooks. Those who remain are free to continue with their legal activities.

Naturally, the ACLU itself will oppose such an action, which I will choose to interpret as proof that the leaders and lawyers of that organization are, in fact, crooks or enabling crooks.

I don’t know if the ACLU attracts degenerates because it defends them, or if it defends degenerates because it is run by them, but I suspect that it is the latter based on who founded the ACLU and the stated goals of that organization to push America toward Soviet style communism. The claim that is not the goal anymore, but from what I see it is still actively working for that goal and many other equally disgusting goals as well.

Please visit the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) for an organization that is really doing what the ACLU pretends to do at http://www.aclj.org/ .

Also be sure to visit the excellent site Stop the ACLU at http://www.stoptheaclu.com/ for an excellent expository site about the ACLU’s abuse of America and defense of criminal activity.

Democrat’s Screwed-up Priorities

2007-02-19T16:30:00.001-09:00

The recently sworn–in Democrat controlled Congress, the same Congress that took the day off for the college football championship game, worked an extra day to try to force a treasonous resolution through the Senate FOR THE SECOND TIME! Fortunately, more intelligent and moral heads prevailed.

It is infinitely fascinating that the Democrats have as their top priority a non-binding resolution condemning sending reinforcements to our troops fighting a war in Iraq. They call it an “escalation”, President Bush calls it a “surge”, but in reality it is merely sending reinforcements into the war zone to bolster our troop strength to meet a new aspect of the mission in that country. It is a normal military tactic that has been used ever since war was invented, and the retarded Democrats in Congress oppose it because they are afraid it might work!

For years the Democrats were screaming that we needed more troops in Iraq. Now that the President has given what they asked for they want to condemn him, the troops, and the mission with a non-binding bolster enemy morale act! This is what is known as giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Such an action has always fallen under the legal term “treason”. Treason is punishable by death in case you didn’t know.

Not that I am suggesting that we execute more than half of Congress. I am simply pointing out the fact that what is being attempted by Democrats with a small amount of support from a vast minority of Republicans could be taken as criminal by people who are strictly by the book.

What about the budget deficit? What about saving Social Security? What about ax reform? What about border security and immigration reform? What about the thousands of other impactful bills that could be worked on right now? APPARENTLY NONE OF THEM ARE AS IMPORTANT TO DEMOCRATS AS UNDERMINING OUR TROOPS AND EMBOLDINING THE ENEMY SO THEY CAN TRY TO PROVE THEIR LIE ABOUT IRAQ BEING UNWINNABLE TO BE TRUE!

I’ll tell you why the Democrats oppose reinforcing our troops in Iraq. I’ll tell you why John Murtha is trying to sneak measures to defund the war and prevent new troop deployments into finance bills. It is because they are afraid that it might work and prove them all to be the hopeless, defeatist traitors that they are! As long as America loses this war they can proclaim their wisdom to the world and pretend to be the great peacemakers while they really enhance terrorism. But, if this war turns into a decisive victory then their lies will be exposed and they will be given over to the wrath of an American population that will feel betrayed and lied to.

Put simply, the Democrats have to make the U.S. lose this war or they stand to lose power for decades to come.

It is a sad state of affairs when people put personal power over what is good for America. It is even worse when doing so gets people killed like the actions of Democrats did in the Civil War, Korea, Vietnam, and now in Iraq as well. Democrats have a long history of trying to gain power by getting Americans killed. It is simply wrong, and it is utterly despicable.

Vanity Proven, and I am Satisfied

2007-02-15T17:28:00.000-09:00

This is a follow-up to the previous article The Vanity of the Specialty. My coursework has been reviewed by a nuetral professor. Based on the grading criteria set forth in the syllabus the grade that my professor set as an "F" is reccommended, upon thorough review, to be raised to a "B".

This is huge. It also proves my point about how the professor of that class was grading off personal bias and not quality of work. Dissenting viewpoints, no matter how justified, were being arbitarliy penalized. It is hyppocrisy to ask students to analyze events for themselves and then to hurt them if they reach conclusions you do not personally agree with unless those positions cannot be justified. This goes to prove that my positions were justified, and that I did an above average job in my historical analysis despite taking positions that were sometimes contrary to the instructors personal biases.

I remind you that I wrote from a perspective of trusting the source material and did not seek to put my own twist on history. At the same, this second opinion agreed with my professor that analysis is vital to history and must be reduced striclty to who, what, when, where, and how. He states, essentially, that the question of the why and the identification of bias in original sources is vital to the field of history. Now that it is not being used to bludgeon me into taking positions that the evidence I have seen does not support I can relax and conceed the point. However, I also maintain that the abuse of this principle is the chief source of historical confusion and modern lies about history. There is too much irresponsibilty through personal agendas to grant this principle sufficient trust to make it worthwhile for students.

Analysis is a wonderful thing in general. I spend a great dealof time analyzing things. I look at everything from many angles before making my decisions. But I have found that overanalysis is univesally bad, possible worse than no analysis at all. I also maintain my original point that history classes are not about creating an excersize in critical thinking or philosophy. History classes are a place to learn history itself. It is not inappropriate to ask students to analyze events, but it is inappropriate to ask students to analyze events then expect them all to reach the same conclusion as the professor. This creates an environment of scholastic intimidation and must be allowed to persist in any scholastic forum.

Pebble Creek Mine

2007-02-13T17:44:00.001-09:00

As a pro-business conservative and an honest, educated environmentalist I am expressing my opposition to the proposed Pebble Creek Mine in Alaska. This is both a pro-environment and pro-business position, though it is anti-mine. Here is how.

The mine is to be placed near Lake Iliamna, at the headwaters of the Bristol Bay Salmon fishery. It will drain the headwaters from Upper Talarik Creek and the Koktuli River, possibly drying these rivers, and at least drastically reducing the water volume they carry. These are all important salmon spawning and nursery habitats that would be negatively, possibly catastrophically affected by the drainage.

Mines use a lot of hazardous chemicals in the extraction and processing of ore, and they release a lot of hazardous chemicals from the Earth as a byproduct of mining. The hazard in this is demonstrated in numerous dead streams across America, as well as rivers and lakes where the fish are considered unsafe to eat due to heavy metal poisoning. By placing any metal mine at the headwaters of a delicate fish habitat it is possible to wipe out the entire salmon fishery and put many hardworking fisherman out of business. The damage done by these toxins could make the river uninhabitable to fish for decades.

A little mentioned fact regarding mining activities near rivers is the fine materials that go into the water and are considered non-hazardous rock. While these fine rock particles are 100% non-toxic they present a different problem. Natural silt is smooth, having been broken and worn down by natural processes. The fine particles produced by mining are sharp, and they literally shred the gills of fish, choking g them to death after enough damage has been done. The chance of these fine particles slashing the spawn rate of Bristol Bay Salmon is unacceptable. The probability of the fry and fingerlings being killed before they migrate to the ocean is also unacceptable.

The Bristol Bay salmon fishery is a vital Alaskan resource. It provides jobs, and it provides sustenance. The three ways that the proposed Pebble Creek Mine would damage this fishery would rob us all of this important resource. The risks are known, and they are unacceptable. The fact is that any one of these problems will damage and possibly destroy the local ecosystem. The fact is that all three will happen. There is no chance of these risks not happening. Every metal mine that I know of on a river has these problems.

It is also possible that the contamination of the river could affect the ocean fisheries I the nearby area as well. This makes the proposed Pebble Creek Mine even more unacceptable.

There are times when the environmental cost far outweighs the economic gain of human activity. These cases are all extreme cases with profound impacts on both man and wild. This is one of them.

Maybe Giuliani After All . . .

2007-02-12T14:02:00.001-09:00

I’m conflicted.

I have stridently opposed Rudy Giuliani for President for several years now. As much as I love his ability to manage taxes, empower law enforcement, his positions on foreign policy, and other important conservative issues, I have opposed him because I personally view him to be a social liberal and I do not trust him to appoint conservative judges. However, in his interviews as a candidate for President he came out on the right side of everything.

Most importantly he was very open about supporting Judges like Scalia, Robetrs, and Alito.

He supports the Second Amendment in a constructionist sense, but also supports the right of local legislatures to pass local laws to met local needs.

He specifically opposes homosexual marriage.

His position on abortion is acceptable. He expresses a personal moral opposition to abortion. Believes partial birth abortion should remain banned. Believes in parental notification prior to abortion with a judicial review available to victims of incest. And is willing, like any decent human being, to allow any abortion for lifesaving purposes. His position that abortion is a choice and should be left that way one I do not support, but is not automatically disqualifying for someone who is wiling to challenge the egregious abuses of abortion availability.

He has an acceptable, not perfect position on border security. A perfect solution will never pass Congress because of the weak-kneed Barbie-boys who are subjugating themselves to criminals. His ideas might pass, and they might even work in reality.

As long as he stands by his stated positions he could be one of the most wildly successful Presidents America has ever had, especially in light of the almost universal admiration Americans have for his achievements and leadership ability that would give him a mandate to govern that even the selfish narcissists on the liberal side of Congress cannot deny and expect to keep their jobs.

But I am not certain that I trust him to do what he says on the social issues because of his actions in New York.

Still . . . he has just managed to move into serious consideration. I shall have to watch him closely, but if he wants my vote over Mitt Romney he will have to work hard for it.

And if he maintains his current positions there is strong likelihood that I will vote for him over ANY Democrat, although I still like Bill Richardson quite a bit despite his opposition to the war in Iraq.

Homosexual Activists Showing Their True Colors . . . Again

2007-02-08T10:53:00.000-09:00

It is good to be proven right after the ignorant accuse you of deceit and bigotry.

I have said before that the leadership behind the homosexual rights movement is not interested in getting marriage rights for homosexuals so they can be like the rest of us, but rather that the goal of this part of the movement is to destroy marriage to make the rest of us more like them. Recent events in Washington prove openly what most in the homosexual rights movement only admit privately. That they really do want to see marriage ended.

Assaulting the family has been a hallmark of the homosexual rights movement for decades now. It’s part of the strategy to normalize homosexuality. Anything that makes the rest of us more like them helps their cause just as much as anything that makes them appear to be like the rest of us.

Here is the most recent assault on the family.

Homosexual activists have proposed legislation that places an undue burden on heterosexual couples who wish to marry. Here is a synopsis of the legislation:

Heterosexual couples may not marry unless they can prove their fertility. They must submit to fertility testing to establish their ability to have children. Upon marriage they must have a child within three years or the marriage will be annulled.

UPDATE: You can view the propsed legislation at the website of the actual authors of the bill at http://www.wa-doma.org/ This is a homosexual/homosexual sympathetic activist group in Washington.

This is motivated purely out of spite by the homosexual activist group that has proposed. They are bitter that the honest argument that marriage is about families, primarily the bearing and raising of children resonates with not only the 98% of America that is heterosexual, but also many courts. This legislation is designed to denigrate marriage and eliminate it entirely over time.

Allow me to demonstrate the logical and moral idiocy of this proposed legislation.

1: It unfairly discriminates against women. Since men remain fertile much later in life than women do, it places an unfair burden on women who wish to marry, or remarry late in life. A man can find a younger woman of childbearing age and get married, but a woman cannot do the same thing.

2: It unfairly discriminates against single parents. Single parents may wish to marry, but may not have desire or the means to support additional children in three years. While marriage in this case is proven to be beneficial to both the single parent and all children, this legislation would ban such a family from forming. A single parent marrying provides the two parent household that is proven to be the best possible situation for the healthy development of children, but this legislation would prevent this family from forming.

3: Infertility is not what it once was. My wife and I are an infertile couple, but we have a child that is biologically our own. Set aside the many miraculous births of children to supposedly infertile couples and take a look at modern medicine. In-vitro fertilization is a blessing that has allowed many infertile couples to have their own children. But it is also expensive and does not always work. We went through three rounds of in-vitro before it finally succeeded. The first round was within two years of marriage. The second round was just before out fifth anniversary. The final round that finally succeeded was a few months later. We had our son just less than a month after our sixth anniversary. Under this law we would have been banned from marrying each other, and even we did slip through the system we would have been forced to divorce after three years because we did not have the money at the time to perform rapidly repeated rounds of in-vitro fertilization. There is no such recourse for homosexuals.

4: Point 3 proves how this proposed legislation also discriminates against the poor.

5: It ignores the historical morality of marriage. The three religions that comprise some 70% of the planet all teach their followers that sex is reserved for marriage alone. This places a moral burden on the vast majority of heterosexuals that most homosexuals do not share for two reasons. The first is that homosexuality itself is a violation of all three of these major religions, so any homosexual behavior from a follower of these religions is already morally wrong. The second is that most homosexuals feel no need whatsoever to restrain their sexual behavior prior to marriage while a full quarter of Americans, oversexed as we are, actually only have one sexual partner for their entire lives. The average American heterosexual has a total of 4 sexual partners in a lifetime, including those who have multiple marriages. The average homosexual has 50 (Correction: The original number of 90 was a typo. The 9 in adjacent to the 5 on the number pad. I missed the original typo.) sexual partners in a lifetime. This figure is skewed because male homosexuals have exponentially more sexual partners than female homosexuals. However, the average lesbian still has notably more sexual partners than the average heterosexual.

6: It ignores that the debate over homosexual marriage is, at its core, both social and moral. It has nothing at all to do with the legal system for most heterosexuals, but everything to do with the legal system for homosexuals because it is the only place where they have the ability to overcome popular opinion and moral consensus.

7: It ignores the historically proven fact that heterosexual marriage stabilizes society with or without children. By seeking to end marriage this legislation is guaranteed to have a destabilizing on America. There is no correlation between homosexual marriage and societal stabilization. In fact, current indicators show that homosexual marriage, including homosexual “civil unions” may actually have a destabilizing effect on society.

8: When the sponsors of a bill say things like “Let’s see how they like getting a taste of their own medicine.” It proves beyond all reasonable doubt that this legislation is nothing more than a revenge bill designed to hurt all heterosexuals. It is an intimidation tactic, and it will not work. Homosexuals may be able to intimidate Hollywood and Democrat politicians, but it cannot intimidate the entire heterosexual community.

Who Didn’t See This Coming?

2007-01-25T09:27:00.000-09:00

Predictably, Hezbollah has engaged in a violent effort to force a coup in Lebanon. Their desire for power has caused them to foment riots. People have been killed. Property has been destroyed. All in an effort to force new elections during a time when Hezbollah believes it could gain power so they can enforce their version of Muslim rule on that country.

As much as I love to be an “I told you so” I did not bother to write about this imminent occurrence after the war with Israel because it was, and remains my opinion that a blind monkey could have seen this coming. No matter what a terrorist group does to try to “legitimize” itself it will always be a violent, oppressive, and evil movement at heart. All who try to deal with these people rationally or compassionately are doomed fools who will be stabbed in the back at the earliest opportunity by these same fiends who lie when they say they want peace and “negotiations.”

Naturally, liberals and the U.N. will continue to believe that these fiends can be dealt with as if they were human beings and not devils in human guise. In time, these fools will regret their stupidity.

16 Days and Counting

2007-01-21T10:59:00.000-09:00

It has been 16 days since I was hung up on by a representatve of the National Republican Congressional Committee for asking a simple question. I have made several calls to headquarters. I have left mesages. The only time I reached a human being he told me he was teh wrong one to speak to, transferred me, and I wound up leaving a voicemail.

I know I am only one of millions of Republicans, and probably a million members of the NRCC. But how many of them are calling the main office during the off-season? An dont' give me that crap abou being short-staffed again!

The Vanity of the Specialty

2007-01-10T01:21:00.000-09:00

I recently completed a rather disastrous history course. I say disastrous because I took it expecting to learn history, and the instructor taught it expecting to teach critical thinking.

Do I even need to begin to say the ways this created conflict in this class?

However, this post is not about my perceived injustices, deceptions, or inconsistencies in the class. It is about they way the instructor reinforced the idea that people get very vain about fields of study that they spend a great deal of time in.

Take, for example, the following statement, which amuses me to no end: The study of history is not memorizing stale and dated paradigms, names, dates and places. The study of history is one of the richest endeavors in academia. No where else can information be gathered, verified, examined and considered with the benefit of hindsight.

Before I begin my critical analysis, let me remind you that this instructor seems to consider himself to be a great logical thinker, so great, in fact, that if anyone comes to a different conclusion than he does from looking at the same materials the other person is not thinking hard or clearly enough, and he was rabid regarding spelling and grammar.

“No where,” perhaps he meant “nowhere” “else can information be gathered, verified, examined [,] and considered with the benefit of hindsight.” Is that so? Allow me to do an ever so brief examination of several fields of study and determine if this statement is true, or simply the vain hogwash of someone who elevates his own field of study while demeaning others.

1 - Biology: The study of biology, interestingly enough, includes a great deal of research and experimentation conducted in the past that is still built upon to this very day. Technically, a discovery made yesterday is in the past and is now available for study with some degree of hindsight. Also, unlike history, which can only prove what, where, and how while historians around the globe fight over the why, biology is able to verify past results with current experiments, and also to verify current results with the results of past experiments. While there is always some room for interpretation of the data, properly done biology is constantly self correcting. It’s a beautiful thing.

2 - Geology: The study of geology is embedded in the past. While it is not history in the classical sense, it is still a form of history; it’s the history of the Earth rather than the history of humanity. Almost all of the data gathered is studying the past and almost all of it is examined not only with the benefit of hindsight, but there are very clear relations and distinctions that are not possible to be muddled by some eyewitness in times past telling a lie that may or may not be verifiable as a lie.

3 – Paleontology: Studying fossils. That’s all hindsight.

4 – Astronomy: Interestingly enough, due to the speed of light and the vast distances between stars, the study of astronomy is actually a study of the history of the Universe, with all of the same benefits and restrictions as geology, especially in the field of astro-geology.

5 – Literature: Hindsight and modern relevance are essential to the modern understanding of the classics. Shakespeare, Byron, Poe, Shelly, Stoker, Dickens, and others wrapped moral and cultural messages into their writings as they entertained us and provides a peek into the minds of people in the past. Their relevance today is wrapped up in how people can still relate to their work. We are able to study them, not just as stories and poems, but to look at their literary devices, imagery, and speech patterns, allowing us to gain a historical perspective on literature and the legacy great authors and poets have carved out to this very day.

6 – Art: Almost identical to literature, just in pictures and sculpture rather than words.

7 - Mathematics: The current level of mathematical understanding is built upon thousands of years of constant calculations, formulae, and even mathematical debate. Not only does it have what may be the richest and most detailed history of any area of study, but all of mathematical history can be examined, verified, and tested as both a modern exercise and a look in the past from the modern perspective. It is also the only field of study where the conclusions that are drawn are so solid that they can be called fact in every instance. 2+2 always equals 4, but in history who plus how does always equal why, and if you believe this particular individual, none of the whys are completely trustworthy anyway.

I shall stop here. The point is that everything has a past or looks into the past whether it is the study of history or a more functional study. That past can always be examined with the benefit of hindsight as well. Human history does not hold the sole patent on this process.

In this instructor’s obsession with trying to criticize the why, he has lost sight of the who, how, where, and when without which, there would be no why to search for. “history is not what you write. Why because no one has the absolute end on what fact is true, false, twisted, used for agenda. A student, a reader any average person cannot simply read one text and say it is so all facts are known - biases permiate all works - including original source material.” (Note that this is unchanged from the original, grammatical errors and misspellings are all original. I remind you that this professor was obsessive about spelling and grammar. Would you trust his assessment of your grammar?) Again we see evidence of personal vanity getting in the way of facts. History is what happened, where it happened, and who was involved first and foremost because these are the only three of the four aspects of history that can be verified beyond reasonable dispute. Did the holocaust happen? Yes. Did George Washington have a habit of sodomizing elephants? No. The why is the debatable part that employs many historians today, and they are all arguing over whose idea of why is better, more reliable, or more eloquent. The reason is because the facts of history are known. We have dug so deeply into it that only Archaeology, another of the grand hard sciences, is digging up a significant number of new facts to be examined.

“biases permiate all works - including original source material” has anyone stopped to consider that these biases in the original source material are valid historical facts that indicate the depth and complexity of why something happened? Might this not indicate that the constant arguing about why just might be pointless since every reason that can be found is, in fact, part of the why? Naturally, this is far too simple a concept for the sophisticated mind of the serious scholar. Biases are the same as lies and must be weeded out or modified into non-bias. Whatever.

It seems that history has lost itself, or, at least, the historians have. “Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it” is absolutely true. Even the most casual observer can see that when racial hatred became institutionalized in Germany it resulted in the holocaust. If you do not know this then you risk repeating that cycle in your own home. Why the racial hatred was institutionalized is a fascinating study that has not been fully settled, and never will be in all likelihood. Thank God we don’t need to figure out the why in order to understand the what and the how so we can avoid committing the same atrocities ourselves. And if the why is so full of lies and inaccuracies that it can never be settled then perhaps we should let the historians argue it out while the rest of us learn the reliable part of history. Nah, the why can be found, the real problem is that there are vain historians who are going around trying to divine great secrets under the assumptions that history is a giant pack of lies that needs to be untangled.

Preliminary Presidential Match-ups

2007-01-07T18:06:00.000-09:00

Based on the current field of Presidential hopefuls, this is how I intend to vote depending on who wins the nominations. In all match-ups the Republican is first and the Democrat is second.

McCain : Clinton = McCain
McCain : Obama = McCain
McCain : Richardson = Richardson
McCain : Vilsack = ?
McCain : Gore = McCain
McCain : Edwards = McCain

Guilianni : Clinton = Guilianni
Guilianni : Obama = Obama
Guilianni : Richardson = Richardson
Guilianni : Vilsack = Vilsack
Guilianni : Gore = ?
Guilianni : Edwards = ?

Romney : Clinton = Romney
Romney : Obama = Romney
Romney : Richardson = Romney
Romney : Vilsack = Romney
Romney : Gore = Romney
Romney : Edwards = Romney

At this point all other probable candidates are inconsequential. While this may change as the election looms nearer, the actual possible match-ups when the dust settles are the ones I have listed. The Republican field is definitely narrower than the Democrat field, largely because of a lack of realistic alternatives to the three men I have mentioned, at least, alternatives who will run for Presient in '08. The Field of Democrats is wide open, and out of what is sure to be many challengers, the candidates that I have listed here are proabably more likely to win the nomination than any others who may or may not have declared an intent to run yet. Yes, I left John Kerry out on purpose because there is no way he can win a second nomination by the Democrats after the way he let them down, grasping defeat from the jaws of what could have been an easy victory in '06. His blunders as a candidate galvanized the Republicans in a way that only Hillary Clinton can hope to exceed.

I will update this list if it becomes neccessary, but probably not before the nominees have been chosen. I know politics wel enough to decide who I intend to vote for before I hear most of the potential Presidential candidates open thei mouths. See, I know their records and their personal beliefs.

What the Heck?

2007-01-05T13:37:00.000-09:00

This is interesting. I had a representative of the National Republican Congressional Committee call me just a few moments ago and ask me to renew my membership. Naturally, I said I would. Then I asked her if she could answer a question that has been nagging me since November. I asked if she knew whether the Powers that be in the Republican Party interpereted the recent loss of Congress as a call to return to our conservative roots, or if they thought it meant the repulican was not centrist or liberal enough.

She hung up on me.

Huh?

I just told her I was going to pay the NRCC money to have my membership renewed, but I was curious about the strategy, and rather than take my money she hung up! Goodness gracious, what kind of way is that to treat your supporters? It's crap like this that has me wanting desperately to be or find the next great conservative leader in the Republican party. I am too young and inexperienced to be that personally, so for now I am desperately hoping the party faithful have the foresight to nominate Mitt Romney for President.

The Execution of Saddam Hussein

2007-01-03T23:18:00.000-09:00

The time has come and Saddam Hussein has been executed, and a video of his last moments has been plastered all over the news and the internet.

I have been following this since the day Saddam’s appeal failed and he was ordered to be executed. Here are my observations.

Saddam Hussein was a monster who deserved to die, no doubt about that. But There were some highly revealing things that came out in his last days. The first observation I made was that as his death loomed nearer he seemed to remember what it was that first drove him into the political arena. He remembered the love he once had for his country and the dreams he had of making Iraq a great nation before this dream was lost in a lust for power and lasting personal fame and glory. Basically, it seems that Saddam fell prey to the corruption of power, admittedly, very quickly, and he lost his former vision in the tumult of holding powerful positions. This is a common trap that many politicians and other leaders fall into. The big difference between Saddam and many other leaders of nations is that he had complete control over everything. He was despotic dictator, while most of the politicians and leaders in the world have strong restrictions on their power through the structure of the government or military. Absolute power may or may not corrupt more than great power that falls short of absolute, but it does allow much greater freedom to exercise that corruption without anything to stop the individual.

The second observation is that Saddam Hussein was able to face death with dignity. I automatically gain some respect for anyone who, once convicted and sentenced for his crimes is able to accept death and take his punishment like a man rather than whining and crying all the way to the gallows, electric chair, injection table, gas chamber, or whatever other means of execution in being performed. Indeed, the only one in the video of the execution who seemed to have any composure was Saddam. However, while I personally consider unprofessional, unnecessary, and simply immature to taunt and insult a condemned man as he is about to be executed, I must admit that I am not surprised that this happened. Historically, whenever a murderer or other egregious criminal has been executed the audience and even the executioner have taunted and insulted the condemned during the execution. While we have moved away from this for the most part here in the U.S. it must be noted that this happened here for centuries as well. In the end, while I understand that people are upset that Saddam was not given a dignified execution I find myself unmoved by the conduct of his executioners.

Finally, I noted my own reactions and emotions the whole situation. I am satisfied that justice ha been meted out in a properly swift manner and that Saddam Hussein finally got the punishment he so greatly deserved. I also find that I have no happiness that this happened, and that my one wish in this whole situation is that someone had been allowed to speak to Saddam about the Forgiveness that was available to him in Jesus Christ so that he did not have to burn in Hell for his crimes if would but repent and submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in his heart. If this did happen he certainly did not accept this ministry because he carried a copy of the Koran, a book he didn’t exactly obey, to his execution. By my estimation, under Islam he was definitely less than 51% good and was doomed to hell by his own religion and the only chance he had was to come to Christ. Some of you may wonder why I would want to give such a horrible man the chance to be saved after all he has done. I answer thusly: “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that none may perish, but have everlasting life.” This includes such monsters as Saddam Hussein, Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and even Mao. I want to everyone given the chance to be redeemed by Jesus, no matter how horrific their crimes may be because the punishment for sin is the same for everyone. The punishment is eternity in Hell, and the only way to escape is through forgiveness in Jesus Christ. It may be weird that I think murderers, rapists, and child molesters should die while being given every chance to come to Jesus before their execution, but the one is the necessary just punishment for an action while the other is the necessary duty to try to save every soul from eternal punishment. Does mean I am conflicted in any way about the execution of Saddam Hussein? Not at all. He murdered hundreds of thousands of people and death was the only proper punishment for such a crime.

Good riddance Saddam Hussein. It’s a shame you lost yourself in power, and it’s an even bigger shame that you must now pay for your crimes for all eternity when you had a way out. At least you faced death with courage and dignity, and that, at least, is worth something.

Baby Pictures

2006-12-22T00:13:00.000-09:00

Here he is, my son!

As you can see, all of his good looks come from his mother :)

Baby Soon

2006-12-14T21:07:00.000-09:00

24 hours in . . . wife still in labor . . . baby will probably arrive at an ungodly hour tomorrow morning . . . so tired . . . pictures of my newborn son in next post.

Raving Conservative Radio 3

2006-12-11T21:40:00.000-09:00

This week's broadcast is a response to questions about my view about the war situation and what I would do to win the war in Iraq.

http://media.switchpod.com/users/dmoray1/RavingConservativeRadio3.mp3

or you can stream it at:

http://www.switchpod.com/p6069.html

It is a 15 minute program.

Your input is greatly appreciated.

Raving Conservative Radio 2

2006-12-07T10:59:00.000-09:00

This was supposed to be the intervew with Dr. Phat Tony . . . however, the recording was corrupted during the session. I have sent the recording to a professional who checked it out and told me that it was so far gone that it would take days, and thousands of dollars to salvage the interview. Therefore, I shall have to do it again, but first I shall find a more reliable program for 2-way recordings so this does not happen again.

This week is about how the media is a military weapon.

http://www.switchpod.com/users/dmoray1/RavingConservativeRadiopsyops.mp3

For a swifter download simply go to www.switchpod.com and search Raving Conservative Radio. This will stream the webcast immediately and allow you to vote on the quality of the show.

Loser Dems

2006-12-06T08:30:00.000-09:00

I just watched an interview with Senator Barbra Boxer on Fox News. She was talking about the Iraq Investigative Committee’s report. In short, she interpreted it as a vindication of every defeatist thing the Democrats have been saying from the beginning.

Boxer: I think the Iraqis need to show us that they want freedom and democracy as much as we want them to have it.

This statement, more than any other is infuriating to me. What this retard is saying is that the overwhelming voter turnout, despite the overwhelming numbers flocking to join the Iraqi police and military every day, despite the cooperation of the general population in our efforts to put the insurrection, in spite of all this she is not convinced that the Iraqis want to be free. How stupid can one person be?

The Iraq Investigative Committee’s report appears to be all about getting out and rejects anything resembling a victory. The Democrats are crowing about this “vindication” of their defeatist rhetoric that is emboldening all of our enemies around the world. This is not good.

If any of you care to follow the history of our enemies since this war began it is important to note that the vast majority of our enemies have either revealed themselves or grown so bold as to be outright defiant only since the Democrats began actively seeking to undermine the war in Iraq. The Terrorists running the insurgency tell their people to keep fighting because America has lost the will to fight, and this is based entirely off of the statements made by Democrats and other liberals.

In case any of you did not notice, the violence in Iraq has not abated one bit since the Democrats won Congress. The violence got worse just before our elections in an effort to get the people who have been staunchly supporting our military out of power so that the people the terrorists view as too weak to continue fighting will take power and bring our troops home in shame and defeat. At least, that is what some terrorists were saying. The violence will continue unabated now because the terrorists see the election as a sign that victory is within their grasp. We, the American people have vindicated their view of us as weaklings with no will to fight.

Politicians like Barbra Boxer are showing them that they can win the war here in the U.S. even as they die at a ratio of 25/1 or more.

Think on that.

Raving Conservative Radio

2006-11-28T23:32:00.000-09:00

This is my very first attempt at a webcast. This is an MP3 file so it can be strreeamed, downloded, or saved to an MP3 player. This broadcast showed me just how difficult it is to do even a 28 minute monologue. Those radio hosts have some serious ability. One quick apology, if I seem to ramble a bit, forgive me, future broadcasts will be better organized. I am just so excited I had to get this one out this week.

http://www.switchpod.com/users/dmoray1/RavingConservativeRadio1.mp3

Your feedback is greatly apreciated.

Tune in next week Wednesday when I interview Dr. Phat Tony about the Big Box o' Porn campaign to send spank mags to the troops in Iraq.

Fathers are Vital

2006-11-25T15:01:00.000-09:00

The following information is from the website www.childrensjustice.org

Effects of Fatherlessness (US Data)

1) BEHAVIORAL DISORDERS/ RUNAWAYS/ HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUTS/CHEMICAL ABUSERS/ SUICIDES

85% of all children that exhibit behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes (Source: Center for Disease Control)
90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes (Source: U.S. D.H.H.S., Bureau of the Census)
71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes (Source: National Principals Association Report on the State of High Schools.)
75% of all adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers come from fatherless homes (Source: Rainbows for all God's Children.)
63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes (Source: U.S. D.H.H.S., Bureau of the Census)

2) JUVENILE DELINQUENCY/ CRIME/ GANGS

80% of rapists motivated with displaced anger come from fatherless homes (Source: Criminal Justice & Behavior, Vol 14, p. 403-26, 1978)
70% of juveniles in state-operated institutions come from fatherless homes (Source: U.S. Dept. of Justice, Special Report, Sept 1988)
85% of all youths sitting in prisons grew up in a fatherless home (Source: Fulton Co. Georgia jail populations, Texas Dept. of Corrections 1992)
California has the nation's highest juvenile incarceration rate and the nation's highest juvenile unemployment rate. Vincent Schiraldi, Executive Director, Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, "What Hallinan's Victory Means," San Francisco Chronicle (12/28/95).
These statistics translate to mean that children from a fatherless home are:
5 times more likely to commit suicide.
32 times more likely to run away.
20 times more likely to have behavioral disorders.
14 times more likely to commit rape
9 times more likely to drop out of high school.
10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances.
9 times more likely to end up in a state-operated institution.
20 times more likely to end up in prison.
Juveniles have become the driving force behind the nation's alarming increases in violent crime, with juvenile arrests for murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault growing sharply in the past decade as pistols and drugs became more available, and expected to continue at the same alarming rate during the next decade. "Justice Dept. Issues Scary Report on Juvenile Crime," San Francisco Chronicle (9/8/95). "Crime Wave Forecast With Teenager Boom," San Francisco Chronicle (2/15/95).
Criminal behavior experts and social scientists are finding intriguing evidence that the epidemic of youth violence and gangs is related to the breakdown of the two-parent family. "New Evidence That Quayle Was Right: Young Offenders Tell What Went Wrong at Home," San Francisco Chronicle (12/9/94).

3) TEENAGE PREGNANCY

"Daughters of single parents are 53% more likely to marry as teenagers, 164% more likely to have a premarital birth, and 92% more likely to dissolve their own marriages. All these intergenerational consequences of single motherhood increase the likelihood of chronic welfare dependency." Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Atlantic Monthly (April 1993).
Daughters of single parents are 2.1 times more likely to have children during their teenage years than are daughters from intact families. The Good Family Man, David Blankenhorn.
71% of teenage pregnancies are to children of single parents. U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services.

4) CHILD ABUSE

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services states that there were more than 1,000,000 documented child abuse cases in 1990. In 1983, it found that 60% of perpetrators were women with sole custody. Shared parenting can significantly reduce the stress associated with sole custody, and reduce the isolation of children in abusive situations by allowing both parents' to monitor the children's health and welfare and to protect them.

5) POVERTY

"The National Fatherhood Institute reports that 18 million children live in single-parent homes. Nearly 75% of American children living in single-parent families will experience poverty before they turn 11. Only 20% in two-parent families will experience poverty." Melinda Sacks, "Fatherhood in the 90's: Kids of absent fathers more "at risk"," San Jose Mercury News (10/29/95).
"The feminization of poverty is linked to the feminization of custody, as well as linked to lower earnings for women. Greater opportunity for education and jobs through shared parenting can help break the cycle." David Levy, Ed., The Best Parent is Both Parents (1993).
While this comes as absolutely no surprise to me, it is certainly shocking information to the legions of people who want to believe that single parent families typically healthy, fathers are not a necessity, and women are capable of being both mother and father o their children.

While am still of the opinion that father is easier to replace than a mother, I have always believed that a man is an essential part of the family unit. The fact is that children need fathers for numerous reasons. Boys need to learn how to treat women from how their fathers treat their mothers. Girls need to learn how a man who loves them will treat them from how their fathers treat them. Children learn respect from fathers and love from mothers. The total list with explanation could fill a book, and is actually the subject of several books.

Fathers excel at discipline, protection, and provision. Mothers excel at loving, nurturing, and teaching. While both can teach what the other teaches, neither can do it as well the gender that is hard-wired by God and nature to do it by nature. Both roles are absolutely vital. While these roles differ, to claim that one is more important than the other is folly, and to claim that women can fill the male role and that men can fill the female role equally is a demonstrable fallacy.

This entire situation is a potent argument in favor of traditional families, and against all of the following:

Divorce
Abandonment
Fornication
Adultery
Homosexual marriage
Homosexual adoption
Single parent adoption
Artificial insemination for singles
Anything else that results in children being raised by single gender parent households

Naturally, I am, and always have been opposed to everything on this list. I support traditional families and traditional family values. I think men who make babies and run away are scum. I think men who abandon their families are scum. I think that all children are so precious that they deserve both a mommy and a daddy and anything that robs them of this should be fought.

Men, stay with your families. Do not make babies out of wedlock, and if you do get a woman pregnant you must do the honorable thing and marry that lady, treat her in the most loving way imaginable, and raise that baby. Do not abandon your families. Do not seek divorce unless your wife is an adulteress. Men, we hold the cure to many of society’s ills. We must all stand for families, stand for children, and raise up a generation of men and women who are better adjusted and healthier than many of us had the opportunity to become. We can stop the destruction of civilization just by being loving, dutiful, and faithful husbands and fathers. Now do your part.

Proof That I am Right About the Gay Marriage Agenda

2006-11-22T07:45:00.000-09:00

For those of you who have been swearing that all of the dire consequences of homosexual marriage are nothing more than the paranoid rantings of a Christian bigot, I present the following form the website BeyondMarriage.org, the website of a group of homosexual activists seking homosexual marriage . . . and more.

BEYOND SAME-SEX MARRIAGE A NEW STRATEGIC VISION FOR ALL OURFAMILIES & RELATIONSHIPS
July 26, 2006
We, the undersigned – lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) and allied activists, scholars, educators, writers, artists, lawyers, journalists, and community organizers – seek to offer friends and colleagues everywhere a new vision for securing governmental and private institutional recognition of diverse kinds of partnerships, households, kinship relationships and families. In so doing, we hope to move beyond the narrow confines of marriage politics as they exist in the United States today.
We seek access to a flexible set of economic benefits and options regardless of sexual orientation, race, gender/gender identity, class, or citizenship status.
We reflect and honor the diverse ways in which people find and practice love, form relationships, create communities and networks of caring and support, establish households, bring families into being, and build innovative structures to support and sustain community.
In offering this vision, we declare ourselves to be part of an interdependent, global community. We stand with people of every racial, gender and sexual identity, in the United States and throughout the world, who are working day-to-day – often in harsh political and economic circumstances – to resist the structural violence of poverty, racism, misogyny, war, and repression, and to build an unshakeable foundation of social and economic justice for all, from which authentic peace and recognition of global human rights can at long last emerge.
Why the LGBT Movement Needs a New Strategic Vision
Household & Family Diversity is Already the Norm
The struggle for same-sex marriage rights is only one part of a larger effort to strengthen the security and stability of diverse households and families. LGBT communities have ample reason to recognize that families and relationships know no borders and will never slot narrowly into a single existing template.
All families, relationships, and households struggling for stability and economic security will be helped by separating basic forms of legal and economic recognition from the requirement of marital and conjugal relationship.
U.S. Census findings tell us that a majority of people, whatever their sexual and gender identities, do not live in traditional nuclear families. Recognizing the diverse households that already are the norm in this country is simply a matter of expanding upon the various forms of legal recognition that already are available. The LGBT movement has played an instrumental role in creating and advocating for domestic partnerships, second parent adoptions, reciprocal beneficiary arrangements, joint tenancy/home-ownership contracts, health care proxies, powers of attorney, and other mechanisms that help provide stability and security for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and heterosexual individuals and families. During the height of the AIDS epidemic, our communities formed support systems and constructed new kinds of families and partnerships in the face of devastating crisis and heartbreak. Both our communities and our HIV organizations recognized, respected, and fought for the rights of non-traditionally constructed families and non-conventional partnerships. Moreover, the transgender and bisexual movements, so often historically left behind or left out by the larger lesbian and gay movement, have powerfully challenged legal constructions of relationship and fought for social, legal, and economic recognition of partnerships, households, and families, which include members who shatter the narrow confines of gender conformity.
To have our government define as “legitimate families” only those households with couples in conjugal relationships does a tremendous disservice to the many other ways in which people actually construct their families, kinship networks, households, and relationships. For example, who among us seriously will argue that the following kinds of households are less socially, economically, and spiritually worthy?
· Senior citizens living together, serving as each other’s caregivers, partners, and/or constructed families
· Adult children living with and caring for their parents
· Grandparents and other family members raising their children’s (and/or a relative’s) children
· Committed, loving households in which there is more than one conjugal partner
· Blended families
· Single parent households
· Extended families (especially in particular immigrant populations) living under one roof, whose members care for one another
· Queer couples who decide to jointly create and raise a child with another queer person or couple, in two households
· Close friends and siblings who live together in long-term, committed, non-conjugal relationships, serving as each other’s primary support and caregivers
· Care-giving and partnership relationships that have been developed to provide support systems to those living with HIV/AIDS
Marriage is not the only worthy form of family or relationship, and it should not be legally and economically privileged above all others. While we honor those for whom marriage is the most meaningful personal – for some, also a deeply spiritual – choice, we believe that many other kinds of kinship relationship, households, and families must also be accorded recognition.
An Increasing Number of Households & Families Face Economic Stress
Our strategies must speak not only to the fears, but also the hopes, of millions of people in this country – LGBT people and others – who are justifiably afraid and anxious about their own economic futures.
Poverty and economic hardship are widespread and increasing. Corporate greed, draconian tax cuts and breaks for the wealthy, and the increasing shift of public funds from human needs into militarism, policing, and prison construction are producing ever-greater wealth and income gaps between the rich and the poor, in this country and throughout the world. In the United States, more and more individuals and families (disproportionately people of color and single-parent families headed by women) are experiencing the violence of poverty. Millions of people are without health care, decent housing, or enough to eat. We believe an LGBT vision for the future ought to accurately reflect what is happening throughout this country. People are forming unique unions and relationships that allow them to survive and create the communities and partnerships that mirror their circumstances, needs, and hopes. While many in the LGBT community call for legal recognition of same-sex marriage, many others – heterosexual and/or LGBT – are shaping for themselves the relationships, unions, and informal kinship systems that validate and support their daily lives, the lives they are actually living, regardless of what direction the current ideological winds might be blowing.
The Right’s “Marriage Movement” is Much Broader than Same-Sex Marriage
LGBT movement strategies must be sufficiently prophetic, visionary, creative, and practical to counter the right’s powerful and effective use of “wedge” politics – the strategic marketing of fear and resentment that pits one group against another.
Right-wing strategists do not merely oppose same-sex marriage as a stand-alone issue. The entire legal framework of civil rights for all people is under assault by the Right, coded not only in terms of sexuality, but also in terms of race, gender, class, and citizenship status. The Right’s anti-LGBT position is only a small part of a much broader conservative agenda of coercive, patriarchal marriage promotion that plays out in any number of civic arenas in a variety of ways – all of which disproportionately impact poor, immigrant, and people-of-color communities. The purpose is not only to enforce narrow, heterosexist definitions of marriage and coerce conformity, but also to slash to the bone governmental funding for a wide array of family programs, including childcare, healthcare and reproductive services, and nutrition, and transfer responsibility for financial survival to families themselves.
Moreover, as we all know, the Right has successfully embedded “stealth” language into many anti-LGBT marriage amendments and initiatives, creating a framework for dismantling domestic partner benefit plans and other forms of household recognition (for queers and heterosexual people alike). Movement resources are drained by defensive struggles to address the Right’s issue-by-issue assaults. Our strategies must engage these issues head-on, for the long term, from a position of vision and strength.
“Yes!” to Caring Civil Society and “No!” to the Right’s Push for Privatization
Winning marriage equality in order to access our partners’ benefits makes little sense if the benefits that we seek are being shredded.
At the same time same-sex marriage advocates promote marriage equality as a way for same-sex couples and their families to secure Social Security survivor and other marriage-related benefits, the Right has mounted a long-term strategic battle to dismantle all public service and benefit programs and civic values that were established beginning in the 1930s, initially as a response to widening poverty and the Great Depression. The push to privatize Social Security and many other human needs benefits, programs, and resources that serve as lifelines for many, married or not, is at the center of this attack. In fact, all but the most privileged households and families are in jeopardy as a result of a wholesale right-wing assault on funding for human needs, including Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, HIV-AIDS research and treatment, public education, affordable housing, and more.
This bad news is further complicated by a segment of LGBT movement strategy that focuses on same-sex marriage as a stand-alone issue. Should this strategy succeed, many individuals and households in LGBT communities will be unable to access benefits and support opportunities that they need because those benefits will only be available through marriage, if they remain available at all. Many transgender, gender queer, and other gender-nonconforming people will be especially vulnerable, as will seniors. For example, an estimated 70-80% of LGBT elders live as single people, yet they need many of the health care, disability, and survivorship benefits now provided through partnerships only when the partners are legally married.
Rather than focus on same-sex marriage rights as the only strategy, we believe the LGBT movement should reinforce the idea that marriage should be one of many avenues through which households, families, partners, and kinship relationships can gain access to the support of a caring civil society.
The Longing for Community and Connectedness
We believe LGBT movement strategies must not only democratize recognition and benefits but also speak to the widespread hunger for authentic and just community.
So many people in our society and throughout the world long for a sense of caring community and connectedness, and for the ability to have a decent standard of living and pursue meaningful lives free from the threat of violence and intimidation. We seek to create a movement that addresses this longing.
So many of us long for communities in which there is systemic affirmation, valuing, and nurturing of difference, and in which conformity to a narrow and restricting vision is never demanded as the price of admission to caring civil society. Our vision is the creation of communities in which we are encouraged to explore the widest range of non-exploitive, non-abusive possibilities in love, gender, desire and sex – and in the creation of new forms of constructed families without fear that this searching will potentially forfeit for us our right to be honored and valued within our communities and in the wider world. Many of us, too, across all identities, yearn for an end to repressive attempts to control our personal lives. For LGBT and queer communities, this longing has special significance.
We who have signed this statement believe it is essential to work for the creation of public arenas and spaces in which we are free to embrace all of who we are, repudiate the right-wing demonizing of LGBT sexuality and assaults upon queer culture, openly engage issues of desire and longing, and affirm, in the context of caring community, the complexities and richness of gender and sexual diversity. However we choose to live, there must be a legitimate place for us.
The Principles at the Heart of Our Vision
We, the undersigned, suggest that strategies rooted in the following principles are urgently needed:
Ø Recognition and respect for our chosen relationships, in their many forms
Ø Legal recognition for a wide range of relationships, households, and families, and for the children in all of those households and families, including same-sex marriage, domestic partner benefits, second-parent adoptions, and others
Ø The means to care for one another and those we love
Ø The separation of benefits and recognition from marital status, citizenship status, and the requirement that “legitimate” relationships be conjugal
Ø Separation of church and state in all matters, including regulation and recognition of relationships, households, and families
Ø Access for all to vital government support programs, including but not limited to: affordable and adequate health care, affordable housing, a secure and enhanced Social Security system, genuine disaster recovery assistance, welfare for the poor
Ø Freedom from a narrow definition of our sexual lives and gender choices, identities, and expression
Ø Recognition of interdependence as a civic principle and practical affirmation of the importance of joining with others (who may or may not be LGBT) who also face opposition to their household and family compositions, including old people, immigrant communities, single parents, battered women, prisoners and former prisoners, people with disabilities, and poor people
We must ensure that our strategies do not help create or strengthen the legal framework for gutting domestic partnerships (LGBT and heterosexual) for those who prefer this or another option to marriage, reciprocal beneficiary agreements, and more. LGBT movement strategies must never secure privilege for some while at the same time foreclosing options for many. Our strategies should expand the current terms of debate, not reinforce them.
A Winnable Strategy
No movement thrives without the critical capacity to imagine what is possible.
Our call for an inclusive new civic commitment to the recognition and well-being of diverse households and families is neither utopian nor unrealistic. To those who argue that marriage equality must take strategic precedence over the need for relationship recognition for other kinds of partnerships, households, and families, we note that same-sex marriage (or close approximations thereof) were approved in Canada and other countries only after civic commitments to universal or widely available healthcare and other such benefits. In addition, in the United States, a strategy that links same-sex partner rights with a broader vision is beginning to influence some statewide campaigns to defeat same-sex marriage initiatives.
A Vision for All Our Families and Relationships is Already Inspiring Positive Change
We offer a few examples of the ways in which an inclusive vision, such as we propose, can promote practical, progressive change and open up new opportunities for strategic bridge-building.
· Canada
Canada has taken significant steps in recent years toward legally recognizing the equal value of the ways in which people construct their families and relationships that fulfill critical social functions (such as parenting, assumption of economic support, provision of support for aging and infirm persons, and more).
o In the 1990s, two constitutional cases heard by that country’s Supreme Court extended specific rights and responsibilities of marriage to both opposite-sex and same-sex couples. Canada’s federal Modernization of Benefits and Obligation Act (2000) then virtually erased the legal distinction between marital and non-marital conjugal relationships.
o In 2001, in consideration of its mandate to “consider measures that will make the legal system more efficient, economical, accessible, and just,” the Law Commission of Canada released a report, Beyond Conjugality, calling for fundamental revisions in the law to honor and support all caring and interdependent personal adult relationships, regardless of whether or not the relationships are conjugal in nature.
· Arizona
The Arizona Together Coalition (www.aztogether.org) is currently running a broad, multi-constituency campaign that emphasizes how the proposed constitutional amendment to “protect marriage” will affect not just same-sex couples but also seniors, survivors of domestic violence, unmarried heterosexual couples, adopted children and the business community. The Arizona Coalition highlights the probability that the amendment will eliminate domestic partnership recognition, by both government and businesses. They also point out that DOMA supporters are the same forces that wanted to keep cohabitation a crime. As a result of the Coalition’s efforts, support for the constitutional amendment declined sharply in polls (from 49% to 33%) in the course of a few months (May 2005 - September 2005). Accordingly, should the amendment make it onto the November 2006 ballot, Arizona is poised to become the first state to reject a state anti-gay constitutional marriage amendment in the voting booth. We suggest that the LGBT movement pay close attention to the way that activists in Arizona frame their campaign to be about protecting a variety of different family arrangements.
· South Carolina
The South Carolina Equality Coalition (www.scequality.org) is fighting a proposed constitutional amendment with an organizing effort emphasizing “Fairness for All Families.” This coalition is not only focused on LGBT-headed families, but is also intentionally building relationships with a broad multi-constituency base of immigrant communities, elders, survivors of domestic violence, unmarried heterosexual couples, adopted children, families of prisoners, and more. As we write this statement, the Coalition’s efforts to work in this broader way are being further strengthened by emphasis on the message that “Families have no borders. We all belong.”
· Utah
In September 2005, Salt Lake City Mayor Ross Anderson signed an Executive Order enabling city employees to obtain health insurance benefits for their “domestic partners.” A few months later, trumping the executive order, the Salt Lake City Council enacted an ordinance allowing city employees to identify an “adult designee” who would be entitled to health insurance benefits in conjunction with the benefits provided to the employee. The requirements included living with the employee for more than a year, being at least 18 years old, and being economically dependent or interdependent. Benefits extend to children of the adult designee as well. While an employee’s same-sex or opposite-sex partner could qualify, this definition is broad enough to encompass many other household configurations. The ordinance has survived both a veto by the Mayor (who wanted to provide benefits only to “spousal like” relationships) and a lawsuit launched by anti-gay groups. The judge who ruled in the lawsuit wrote that “single employees may have relationships outside of marriage, whether motivated by family feeling, emotional attachment or practical considerations, which draw on their resources to provide the necessaries of life, including health care.” We advocate close attention to such efforts to provide material support for the widest possible range of household formations.
We offer these four examples to show that there are ways of moving forward with a strategic vision that is broader than same-sex marriage, and encompassing of all our families and relationships. Different regions of our country will require different strategies, but we can, and must, keep central to our work the idea that all family forms must be protected – not just because it is the right thing to do, but also because it is the strategic and winnable way to move forward.
A Bold, New Vision Will Speak to Many Who are Not Already With Us
At a time when an ethos of narrow self-interest and exclusion of difference is ascendant, and when the Right asserts a scarcity of human rights and social and economic goods, this new vision holds long-term potential for creating powerful and vibrant new relationships, coalitions, and alliances across constituencies – communities of color, immigrant communities, LGBT and queer communities, senior citizens, single-parent families, the working poor, and more –hit hard by the greed and inhumanity of the Right’s economic and political agendas.
At a time when the conservative movement is generating an agenda of fear, retrenchment, and opposition to the very idea of a caring society, we need to claim the deepest possibilities for interdependent social relationships and human expression. We must dare to dream the world that we need, the world that has room for us all, even as we also do the painstaking work of crafting the practical strategies that will address the realities of our daily lives. The LGBT movement has a history of being diligent and creative in protecting our families. Now, more than ever, is the time to continue to find new ways of defending all our families, and to fight to make same-sex marriage just one option on a menu of choices that people have about the way they construct their lives.
We invite friends everywhere to join us in ensuring that there is room, recognition, and practical support for us all, as we dream together a new future where all people will truly be free.

So, at least parts of the homosexual community freely admit to the desire to wipe out the family as we know it and turn mariage into a mad free-for-all just like I have been telling you all for two years now. And you should know that the court battles tomake this list has already begun because there is now a movement to use the courts to legalize polygamy the same way the courts are being used in an attempt to legalize homosexual marriage. Which, you may recall, I told you would be the first of the additions to this movement.

Chew on this for a bit and think hard before you call me paranoid for talking about the homosexual activist community trying to destroy the family.

My Favorite Conversion Story

2006-11-20T23:17:00.000-09:00

With so many to choose from one might think that it would be hard to choose a favorite conversion story, but this one was remarkably easy.

My favorite conversion story is that of David Berkowitz, AKA: The Son of Sam.

For those of you who do not who the Son of Sam is, he is a serial killer from New York whose reign of terror had women dying their hair black to avoid being targeted for murder because he preferred to murder light haired women. Once he was caught he was easily convicted and sentenced to life in prison without possibility of payroll. So, true to liberal ideals, we have a man in prison for life whose proper punishment was death.

Still, this is a case where it worked out in a weird sort of way.

Initially David Berkowitz was a vile terror in prison. After a copious amount of extreme violence and terrorizing of both prisoners and guards he was given a new nickname “David Bezerkowitz”, and transferred to a supermax prison where he now spends most of his time in solitary confinement.

Eventually, a Christian missionary began to minister to David Berkowitz through a prison ministry program. This man, with love and patience, eventually got through to Sam and he eventually came to Christ.

The change couldn’t have been more dramatic.

Remember, David Berkowitz was never in any danger of being executed, and he has no possibility of payroll. There is no manipulative reason for him to pretend to have been converted.

I think the prison guards who have known him a long time put it best when they say that he is not even close to the same David Berzerkowitz from Tsing Tsing. They state plainly that everything about him right down the look in his eyes has changed. He is no longer violent. He no longer bears the familiar crazed look. He no longer spews hatred, especially the hatred toward women that he used to rant on about steadily. His conversation has changed. And, most importantly, he is genuinely repentant of his past.

I remind you that he has nothing at all in this world to gain from this.

I first learned of this when I listened in on a special on Christian Radio where David was being interviewed about his transformation in Christ. It was the first I had heard though t had been several years. The mainstream media did not consider this transformation to be news even though David started taking every opportunity to give interviews t share the good news. He even allowed himself to speak freely and remorsefully about his violent past, which, through the magic of editing, was distilled down to omit everything of consequence and simply present the details of the murders by his words along with the usual condemning voice-overs. After a few years of this he quit giving any interviews where he talked about his famous serial killings because he was tired of the sensationalist focus of the reporters omitting everything that he considered vitally important, specifically, his change and remorse, and his apologies to the families of his victims. He now only speaks of his conversion and life since in interviews, and the mainstream media has lost all interest in him, much to detriment of everyone. Now only a few people go to perform interviews with him, mostly Christian ministers who want everyone to see that even the worst monsters can be transformed into the likeness of Christ. That the worst humanity has to offer is not beyond the saving grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

This is also why David Berkowitz’s conversion is my favorite. It proves what I have been saying most of my life that no one is beyond salvation, and that even Hitler, had he come to Christ before he died (which he did not) would be in Heaven right now.

This is too much for many people to stomach. Many people will never forgive such evils by such beasts of men and refuse to believe that God could forgive them either. Some Christians even believe that some sins cannot be washed away by the Blood of Jesus. Many non-Christians see the fact of forgiveness of even the worst among us as sheer nonsense. Some people are even hostile toward Christianity specifically because we believe that even such beasts can be saved up to just before death, but that people who are far better than they are doomed simply because they refused to acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus Christ in their lives and in this world. “Where is the fairness?” they ask, “Where is the Justice?”

The fairness and the justice are found in John 3:16

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son that whosever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.”

I think that David Berkowitz is a beautiful picture of the absolute truth of this Biblical passage.

Racist Voters?

2006-11-13T20:55:00.000-09:00

After Alan Colmes claimed that the only reason Bob Corker beat Harold Ford Jr. for senate in Tennessee was because 33% of people responded that race had something to do with their vote, implying, of course, that it was white racism that was the primary cause for Bob Corker’s victory, I decided to do a little test.

Being a guy who occasionally gets a wild itch he just HAS to scratch, I performed a a brief survey.

In Maryland Michael Steel, the black candidate, lost. Maryland has a very high black population. So here is what I did to see if racism was involved in his loss.

I pulled up the online white pages and did a little survey. I randomly called some people until I spoke to 20 people who actually voted. HOWEVER! There is a fun twist to this. I only called people with one of two last names. I called people named Black, who in my experience are usually white, and I called people named White, who, in my experience, are usually black.

Here are the results:

Out of 10 Whites (blacks?) 4 said race was important to them when they voted.
Out of 10 Blacks (whites?) 2 said race was important to them when the voted.

Average is 30% took race into consideration with Whites (blacks?) showing a greater tendency toward racism while voting than Blacks (whites?).

So, next time some liberal wants to claim that white racism is keeping minorities down I suggest you remember that racism goes both ways.

Thisisanentertainmentsurveyandnotascientificsurveyandtheresultsshouldnotbeconsideredrepresentativeofthepopulationofmarylandasawhole.

Midterm Election Results 2006

2006-11-09T00:18:00.000-09:00

After careful review of the close Senate and House Races I have discovered something VERY interesting.

In almost every case the vote that went to conservative third party candidates was more than sufficient to take the victory away from the Republican Candidate and give it to the Democrat.

Consider the following three examples:

Virginia:
Jim Webb = 1,172,541 votes
George Allen = 1,165,324 votes
Glenda Parker (Independent Grassroots, a conservative) = 26,102 votes

Jim Webb won by 7,217 votes. That is just under 19,000 votes less than the third party candidate siphoned off from George Allen.

Missouri:
Claire McCaskill = 1,028,920 votes
Jim Talent = 987,383 votes
Frank Gilmour (Libertarian) = 47,007 votes

Without the Libertarian candidate Jim Talent would have had 1,034,390 votes, more than enough to win in Missouri.

Montana:
John Tester = 198,302 votes
Conrad Burns = 195,455 votes
Stan Jones (Libertarian) = 10,324 votes

Stan Jones’ 10,324 conservative votes are plenty to bring Conrad Burns above the 198,302 vote John Tester received over 7,400 to spare.

So, Democrats across the nation, be sure to send your thanks to the various conservative third party candidates who handed the Senate to you as well as giving you a larger majority in the House than you would have otherwise had.

This I also an indicator of the people’s frustration with the apparent abandonment of many of the conservative principles the voters expected out of the Republican party. This is further evidenced by the fact that the vast majority of new Democrats coming into office are conservative Democrats, in some cases actually more conservative than the Republicans they replaced.

Of course, this totally screws the Democrats in 2008. The various committee chairs in the house and Senate are going to be the ultra liberal old guard, and they will be forced to address their constituents demands over that of the new Representatives and Senators. Specifically, there will be a deluge of investigations, the will be impeachment proceeding with no factual basis to support the charges, there will be even greater obstructionism, and it will all be hailed by the mainstream media as good for the American people and that there will be sudden reports about how our economy, which is somehow supposed to be dismal despite all time low unemployment, record high stocks, record high home ownership, record earnings, savings, and investments by ordinary Americans, and one of the most vigorously growing economy’s in the world. In spite of all this, we are supposed to be in dire straits right now, but be aware that the media will soon start to trumpet these facts that were caused by Republicans as great achievements by the Democrats . . . and some people will actually believe it despite all of the facts being to the contrary.

However, the disingenuousness of the media as well as the wacky behavior the ultra left will have forced upon them by their screaming constituencies will soon tire the American people of Democrat antics. This victory virtually guarantees that the Democrats will lose the presidential bid in 2008, as well lose the Senate in 2008. It also guarantees that their numbers in the House will be diminished as some of them are replaced, and as a few freshman congressmen get fed up and switch sides, but they will probably retain the House until they let the tax breaks expire in 2010, when they will get swept out of office on a wave of voter anger at the sudden pinch to their wallets.

Also, the Republicans have been chastened by their base. This will force them to evaluate their actions and return to the principles they were voted into to office to protect, and it will result in a freshly invigorated and potent Republican party.

In short, when one takes the long view, this election is not quite what it appears to be. By losing now the 2008 election has been saved for conservatives. And we will just get more dominant from there.

So, enjoy your victory while it lasts Dems, because you will assuredly destroy yourselves.

Ted Haggard

2006-11-05T14:23:00.000-09:00

This is a very difficult piece for me to write. I know Pastor Ted Haggard. I was a member of his church, New Life, in Colorado Springs for the last 2 years I lived there. I have spoken with him personally. I have shook his hand. I have hugged him. All on numerous occasions. My church belongs to the National Association of Evangelicals. This hits me very hard.

Today, Pastor Ted as he is known to his church confessed that the allegations of purchasing drugs and gay sex with a male prostitute are true. I had hoped that it was all a lie from a homosexual who hated Pastor Ted and what he stood for, as is often the case in situations like this, but it is not so this time. Pastor Ted has declared himself to be a deceiver and admitted his sin and betrayal of the church.

I have been perusing the articles written about Pastor Ted and looking over the comments people have been leaving behind for a few days now. Most of what I see are 2 extremes of wrongness. The first one that I shall address is the extreme of “So what?”

A get over it attitude is wrong in this case. Pastor Ted has been doing wrong for a long time now, and he has been living as a hypocrite. Words cannot express my personal disappointment in this. It is the deception more than the male prostitute and closeted homosexuality that bother me the most. For one to stand before men as a man of God and publicly fight against the very sin he was secretly engaged in is . . . painful.

People often fight the hardest against the evil that affects them the most. For Pastor Ted this was homosexuality. Unfortunately, now that his secret has been revealed much of his work has been destroyed. It will take a great deal of effort to repair the damage he has done.

On the plus side he has confessed his sin openly, admittedly, it was under duress, but he did. He has also been penitent, resigned his leadership positions in the church, and is working through his problems. What many people do not understand, or choose to ignore is that homosexuality is a sin problem. The good news about all of this is that Pastor Ted has been forced to face his sin, and is now seeking help. Now that he is seeking help he will finally overcome his lifelong struggle. By facing shame in this life he is being spared in the next. What greater proof is there of God’s mercy other than the death of Christ is there?

On the other extreme is the crowing, the bile, the hatred that is being spewed at Pastor Ted by . . . homosexuals and their allies. You would think that the homosexual community would be happy to have the chance to include one of their greatest foes as one of their own, that they might welcome him with open arms. This, as is typically the case, is not true at all. The mockery being heaped upon Pastor Ted by homosexuals is disgusting, beyond mere humor it s filled with hate and vengeance. The homosexual community is screaming about how Pastor Ted should be made an outcast for his hypocrisy and how he should be condemned by all men.

To mock another for the same evil you perform is the purest form of hypocrisy, and by their behavior the homosexual community is now guilty of the same hypocrisy they hate Pastor Ted for engaging in.

The people who are treating Pastor Ted with love and forgiveness are the Christians. Yes, some are infuriated by feelings of betrayal. But most are simply saddened and want nothing more than to see him get the help e needs. And he is getting it already. Members of the Christian community, mostly ones closest to Pastor Ted are giving him counsel, praying with him, and praying for him. He is being treated with love and being brought up out of his sin so that he can live a free life. He is being helped to a life that is free of the shame he has borne for so many years, and a life that is free of the deception he has been enslaved to for so very long. You want to know what it means to love a sinner? Look at how Christian leaders are treating Pastor Ted. His sin and betrayal are horrific, but he is not being excommunicated for it, he is being helped into the fullness of life and truth and into a right relationship with God.

This is in stark contrast to the godless and the homosexuals who appear to want to see Pastor Ted lynched. Words cannot express how very glad I am that they are being disappointed by the Christian community at large. To them I say, you have no idea about what it means to be a Christian.

I speak out against homosexuality a lot. I believe it is evil because the Bible calls it evil in both the Old and the New Testaments. It is beyond reasonable dispute that homosexuality is a sin, as is adultery and fornication, both of which I also make a habit of speaking against. Yet I, who have been accused of preaching hate just like everyone else who speaks out against homosexuality is accused of preaching hate, am not the one who is behaving hatefully toward Pastor Ted right now. It is the ones who have been accusing me of hate that are being the hateful ones right now, and they are foul hypocrites for it.

Homosexuals want to be accepted, but they behave hatefully toward closet and recovered homosexuals as well toward those who openly oppose the homosexual agenda. Christian want to have homosexuality recognized for what it is, a choice and an addiction, and prevent it from being legitimized as if it were skin color or gender, and we are kind and forgiving to homosexuals while opposing their sin.

If nothing else, Pastor Ted’s situation has enabled the world to see the stark difference between we Christians and the homosexual movement, and to understand that it is not we who are the hateful ones.

There is something to be admired in this though. One of the first things that came to my mind when this all got started was the situation that Jesse Jackson found himself in a few years ago. So let us compare the two situations and see who is the better man.

Both men were exposed as sexual sinners, Jesse Jackson committed adultery, Ted Haggard committed homosexual adultery. HOWEVER! Jesse Jackson denied, denied, denied, then accused the people who outed his behavior and made it well known of racism. Ted Haggard took responsibility for his actions (after a few days) and is seeking help and healing.

Jesse Jackson still calls himself Reverend and leads his numerous organizations, claiming to be a righteous man of God. Ted Haggard has resigned form all church leadership as the Bible commands. He is contrite and humbled, and acknowledges his sin in its entirety (hopefully).

Jesse Jackson screamed “Racist!”, but I have yet to hear Ted Haggard scream “Homophobe!”

One man is repentant for his sin and shall be saved by the mercy of God. The other is not and is in dire peril.

It took far more courage for Ted Haggard to do what he is doing than it takes to deny and accuse the way so many others have done and do to this day. I admire this courage and pray for God’s healing hand on Pastor Ted and his family, and I pray for wisdom and protection for the next leader of New Life Church and the National Association of Evangelicals.

All glory to God in His great love and mercy. All praise to God in His holy righteousness. May He keep and bless Pastor Ted Haggard, and bring him healing and grace eternal. Amen.

Benchmark

2006-10-19T20:05:00.000-08:00

The DOW closed over 12,000 points today for the first time in history.

Let’s examine why this really matters, shall we?

I recall years of Democrats whining that the economy was a mess because the stock market had not broken its previous high mark under the Clinton administration, which was before the market went into decline, surprise surprise, during the Clinton administration. They blamed it all on President Bush of course. And they claimed that President Bush’s fiscal policies were a disaster and the nation needed a Democrat to run the country so we could recover fiscally.

We re-elected President Bush, giving him the time necessary to see the fruits of his fiscal labors come about while he was still serving and no one else could claim credit for his success. And he is, in fact, a fiscal success. Unemployment is low, the markets are strong, income is up, home ownership is up, and the economy is growing at a swifter pace than our population. Put simply, President Bush appears to have made all the right fiscal moves, with the support of the Republicans and almost uniform opposition from the Democrats in Congress.

Wait a minute . . . Could it be that conservatives were right and liberals were wrong, again?

WHAT A SHOCKER! (Is my sarcasm obvious enough for you?)

Put simply, we would not be where we are if the Democrats had their way. Remember that it was the Democrats who opposed every last bit of fiscal legislation that resulted in our very strong economy. Now that I have put that in your mind I want to remind who is blathering on about Iraq being a failure before we are even finished there with the war. And now I want to remind you that it was Democrats who both started, and lost the Vietnam war. It was also Democrats who refused to let the US and our allies win the Korean war, resulting in the North Korean menace we have today.

Democrats have sucked at war since World War Two ended. Democrats have sucked at economics since JFK died. And Democrats have sucked at civil rights since Bobby Kennedy died. They do not deserve to run our country and any clear thinking American who is honest with himself can see this fact to be true.

North Korean Nukes

2006-10-16T22:46:00.000-08:00

This article is hardly timely, but I had to wait until I handled my own emotions to be able to write it sensibly.

I must admit that my first reaction to the news that North Korea had successfully tested a nuclear bomb was a desire to nuke Pyongyang, the North Korean central military command structure, and whatever area Kim Jong Il happened to be staying in at the moment. This is how strongly I feel about madmen getting their hands on this most horrific of weapons.

My next reaction was one of outrage; outrage at my own country for even allowing North Korea to exist. If we had done our job properly in the Korean War and simply destroyed the communists as we were poised, ready, and able to do rather than splitting up Korea between democracy and communism this problem would never have occurred. If Bill Clinton hadn’t given nuclear reactors and plutonium to the North Koreans they would not have had the materials they needed to develop a nuclear bomb. If President Bush had gone after North Korea rather than Iraq there is a strong chance that Korea be both whole and democratic once again. I have never met a people who so longed to be reunited wit their brothers as the South Koreans, and I have never heard of a people in this day that long for freedom more than the North Koreans.

Now . . . my desire: my determination to see the north and south reunited is stronger than ever, and I am willing to see it through by any means reasonable. I think of the poor, innocent people being starved to death, imprisoned without cause, tortured for having a religion of any kind, and then I see a nuclear test, and think about the money it takes to develop the nuke, and I am outraged at the needles waste of human life in the mad effort to create a tool of death. I cannot reconcile such actions in my own mind because what is done to the North Korean people is so reprehensible it is nearly incomprehensible to me. When your people are starving the last thing a leader should be doing is spending nearly every bit of money and food the nation has on maintaining an oversized military and developing the most horrendous tools of war possible.

I have criticized the communists and the North Korean government in particular for years now. There is nothing, NOTHING redeeming about the leadership in that nation. The time is swiftly passing where we can fix the mistakes of the past and reunite Korea as a single peaceful nation. If we delay action much longer then North Korea will have the ability to nuke Seoul, and much of South Korea in retaliation if we finish our duty and kick the mad commies out of that country for the sake of lasting peace. The current leadership of North Korea is so . . . insane, inhuman, unbalanced, despicable, murderous, vile, and numerous other foul adjectives that it is a threat to everyone, and most especially our allies in South Korea and Japan. One because the communist north lusts after the land, farms, and industry of South Korea, and the other because of the deep abiding hatred many Koreans still hold for Japan due to the Japanese enslavement of all of Korea in the first half of the 20th century.

Reasonably speaking, the only true obstacle to a free and united Korea is China, and China simply supports North Korea because North Korea is a communist nation just like China. But while China has been altering itself from pure communism to a simple tyranny, with all the benefits (when compared to pure communism) it entails, North Korea is still as degenerate and enslaved as ever, and they are losing the support of the Chinese.

Ideally we could convince the Chinese to participate in a full embargo of North Korea and starve the fat leaders of that nation until they feel the same plight they have inflicted upon their people and are forced to crawl to the US and beg for aid with the promise to meet any condition we set, which would of course, be the dismantling of the government and military and the unconditional surrender to and reunion with South Korea. More likely North Korea would respond by invading South Korea, which would force the world to smash them into submission and forcibly dismantle the North Korean government and finally reunite north and south into the one nation they ought to be.

As of now the UN has declared sanctions against North Korea, and if the past is any indicator the North Korean government will flourish and continue to grow fat while the people suffer even more and the UN does nothing at all to fix it. It is the way of the UN to talk much, sanction often, and ultimately do nothing of any real consequence. I hope and pray that this time I am wrong.

What must be done is clear. North Korea must cease to exist. The real question is: what is the best way to do it?

Foley Scum

2006-10-08T15:05:00.000-08:00

I have said it before, and I shall say it again. Child predators must die.

Congressman Foley has been exposed a child predator. His homosexuality does not matter any more than it would matter if he were a heterosexual. What matters is that he has been exposed as an active pedophile. He has been exposed as a man who attempts to use the naiveté of youth to gratify his sick sexual desires. Such behavior cannot be allowed in our world, much less our leadership.

Anyone, Republican, Democrat, or otherwise who knew of this and kept it hidden for even one day is a collaborator in this atrocity and must be justly punished.

This said; let me look at this situation and the past.

Currently, there is some evidence that people on both sides of the political aisle knew about Congressman Foley was using his position to access and seduce, or attempt to seduce teenage boys. Everyone who knew and did nothing, whether it was to protect congressional seats, or to wait for the most advantageous moment to release the information is guilty of aiding abetting this criminal. Every last one of them should be jailed.

However, if the past is any indication, there is no chance of this happening.

Long enough ago for the general public to have forgotten, Democrat Congressman Gerry Studds was convicted of raping a teenage boy while serving as a US Congressman. In a perfect world this crime would have been punished with death for the child rapist. Instead, the Democrats decided to do almost nothing, until Republican Newt Gingrich made a stink about the lack of action. The end result was that Congressman Studds was censured. At his censure hearing he actually had the GALL to turn his back on the congressional leadership in defiance, and was actually applauded for his “bravery”. Not only was he allowed to continue to serve in the Congress after this, but he was actually left in prominent positions of leadership for the remainder of his time in the Congress. This was done, of course, through a vote by the Democrats in the Congress over the intervening years. In fact, House Minority Speaker Nancy Pelosi was so outraged by this man’s crime that she voted for Congressman Studds to be in his leadership position at least 5 times following this incident.

I am not justifying anyone who commits an atrocity upon our children. What I am doing is pointing out that our leadership on both sides of the political aisle are corrupt and degenerate to varying degrees. At one time this disgusting fact convinced me to remain apolitical. In recent years it has motivated me to work for change. I want to see every corrupt and dishonest politician in America removed from office. I don’t care whether these people are Republicans, Democrats, Conservatives, Liberals, or something else. What I care about is fixing a system that is breaking, and getting people into office who will at least TRY to do the right thing, and who will not compromise their stated morals for either money or political expediency.

I know I am just beating my head against a wall by working for such a change. But it is work that MUST be done, and perhaps, given time, enough people will join me to make this dream a reality.

The Man of Faith I Most Admire

2006-10-01T23:00:00.000-08:00

I know what you are thinking. I shall name some famous evangelist, perhaps a well known preacher, or a close personal friend. And you are wrong.

The man of faith who I admire the most is an unknown. In many ways, he is even unknown to me as I have only spoken to him twice and I do not know his name. But let me tell you why it is him that I admire most.

He is a young man, and he is mentally retarded with some apparent minor physical handicap. Every time I am in church I see him there. Every time I see him he is filled with joy. When he dances as he sings hymns badly out of tune and frequently with incoherent words I know that out of everyone there, his joy in the Lord, his outright enthusiasm is guaranteed to be genuine.

I have seen many people in my life who sing and dance, even who go so far as to run up to the front of the church and dance for all to see, only to see them be harsh and Godless in their personal lives. I have seen the grandstanders who make a great outward show of faith in front of the many, only to be degenerate or cruel in private. These Pharisees managed at one time to cause me to question God Himself, and to view all Christians with suspicion, thinking, wondering if anyone’s faith were really true, even as I struggled to keep my own.

In the childlike faith of this very special young man I see a pure soul. I see one who loves God and never finds any need to question to question faith. I see someone whose outward enthusiasm is a true reflection of his heart, and not just a show to make people think he is faithful.

He reminds of the time Jesus took a child upon his lap and admonished His disciples to have the faith of a child, and warned them that any who cause a child to stray are promised the harshest of judgments. Sometimes I fear for him. I worry that in his childlike trust that one day someone with ill intentions may seek to steal his faith. It is partly motivated by own selfishness though. The joy and encouragement I get from his faith are of incalculable value to me, even as his faith is of eternal value to him.

Though he does not know it he has taught me valuable lessons. I once struggled with the idea of whether a child who is diagnosed with a major crippling disorder should be aborted before birth. I was convinced that I could never live with such a handicap from a child of my own. From this young man I have learned that even people who have a severe enough handicap that they can never be independent are precious. I have learned that I have the ability to empathize with and even love such a person. I have learned that God does not forsake even those whom most of humanity would abandon.

I do not know him well. I have only ever spoken to him twice, and to my shame I cannot remember his name. Truth be told, as much as I admire him for his pure faith, I do not know how to relate to him as a person, and that is my own failing. It is my prayer this day that I may one day be able offer myself to him and others like in full and true friendship without the social difficulty I have now. For I know that it is people exactly like him who are the most treasured of God in this world.

Conspiracy Theories

2006-09-25T18:52:00.000-08:00

It seems like every time a major event happens some group of kooks has to concoct a wild conspiracy theory and find any amount of flimsy, circumstantial, and questionable evidence it can to promote and support it. There are people who believe the following list of conspiracies: 1- Marilyn Monroe was murdered by the Secret Service on the orders of a jealous Jacqueline Kennedy. 2- JFK was killed by the CIA. 3- Alger Hiss was an innocent stooge that was set up as a fall guy by Joseph McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover to create the Red Scare. 4- Man never landed on the moon. 5- Man did land on the moon, and it turned out to be a giant alien observation post. 6- Intelligent life from other worlds has nothing better to do than shove probes up the behinds of every human they can possibly abduct before wiping their memories clean and returning them to Earth. 7- Marriage was invented to oppress women. 8- The Twin Towers were destroyed by the US government to boost President Bush’s poll numbers.

All of these are patently ridiculous, and all of them have been packaged and repackaged to create and maintain a cult following of people who have a natural distrust of the government. They are nothing more than manipulative exploits designed to make money for a specific few who are only to happy to profit from the gullibility and suspicion of their fellow man.

The one about the Twin Towers being destroyed by the US government is particularly appalling because it takes the worst act of terrorism in all of history, and redirects the blame form the Muslim Terrorists who have admitted to planning and carrying out this vile act to President George W. Bush in a transparent effort to make political gains at the expense of America as a whole. I have followed the logic the conspiracy theorists use, and every last bit of it is readily explainable by physics, chemistry, basic logic, and a little bit of examination of the rest of the facts.

One such theory is the Thermite was used to melt the iron structure of the World Trade Center. Thermite burns hot enough to melt iron and steel, and it would explain what appeared to be molten metal running from one of the towers. There are two other explanations though. 1: The molten metal could easily have been lead piping or tin, both of which are present in most large buildings. 2: Combine burning jet fuel, which burns so hot water actually feeds the fire, with iron and aluminum, and you could potentially have a chemical reaction he would create some amount of thermite. Other considerations when dealing with chemistry are the thousands of other chemical compounds that would be fueling the fire. In chemistry, and combustion is a chemical reaction, there are several types of reactions. I shall use unofficial terms for simplicity’s sake. There is the basic single compound reaction. This is always predictable. But there are several ways a multiple compound reaction could work. The first is that they do nothing to each other and react independently. The second is that they could interfere with each other and actually reduce the violence of the reaction. The third is that they can add a portion of their energy to the reaction up to each other’s full amount. In this situation 2+2 can equal anything from 2.1 to 4. The final is a multiplying effect. This is a particularly hazardous reaction type because 2+2 will generally equal 5, 6, 8, or even 10.
So, what are the odds that say . . Zinc and magnesium, both highly flammable metals with a low flash point compared to their burning temperature were present in large quantities in the WTC? The odds are 100% that they were present in alloy form, which could have been broken down by vigorous thermal reactions around them.

What about the explosions people heard before the WTC actually collapsed? Any large cracking sound coming from such a large structure would make a booming sound. So if any of the structural support was failing for any reason prior to the collapse, which absolutely HAD to happen or there would not have been any collapse, it would be heard as an explosion despite the lack of any explosive being used.

Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg. The point is that every bit of evidence of “evidence” the wacko conspiracy theorists point to is entirely too easy to explain in non-conspiratorial thinking. I understand that not everyone actually paid attention in school, so not everyone has a grasp of the basic concepts that I have presented here, so I can excuse the ignorant for acting ignorantly. The people I have a real problem with are the ones who should know better and selfishly, irresponsibly, propagate a lie for self gain. These people are the ones the ignorant point to as experts in most cases, and this exploitation of the ignorant is inexcusable.

Papal Truth and the Muslims that Prove it

2006-09-18T20:44:00.000-08:00

The Pope is being threatened with murder for quoting a 14th century text about Islam in an academic setting. The Text basically said that Islam is violent and relies on violence to spread, and that the teachings of Mohammad that created this violence are an abomination. The Muslim riots, murders, and threats of murder that followed this quote prove it to be true.

Islam calls itself a religion of peace, and yet it is by far the most violent religion on the planet today. Muslims the world over are actively engaging in mass intimidation by riots, threats of violence, terrorism, and oppression, all while claiming to be seeking peaceful resolutions to their own violence. Pardon me if this strikes me as nothing but hypocrisy and lies.

A classic example of this is Yasser Arafat’s famous speech in which he stated “We want peace! We want peace! We want peace!” and followed it up with violent acts against Israel. Some talk of peace while they actively engage in violence. Some talk of violence and act on it. Some are not personally violent, but praise violence and incite others to be violent. A minority are genuinely peaceful from all that I can see.

Governments across the globe are allowing Muslims to violate their laws with impunity because they fear that if they enforce the same regulations on them that they enforce on everyone else that the local Muslim population will rise up and murder people, assault people, and destroy property. This fear is, in my opinion, exactly why they should be dealt with MORE harshly than normal people.

The current battle cry of Islam is “death to all who insult Islam and the Prophet!” Okay then, try this on for size:

Islam is the Devil’s religion and all Muslims will join their prophet in Hell for eternal torture along with their master, Satan. Mohammad was nothing more than a demon possessed madman bent on military conquest and the murder of those who insulted him in his lifetime. All of his followers are following Satan and they will be justly punished.

And here is the best part: If you kill, or attempt to kill me you are proving me right. I dare you to prove me wrong.

But, if you do attempt to prove me right you should know that I am armed and I am a crack shot. Also, my bullets and knife are coated with pig’s blood. Come on and get it.

Heavy Questions

2006-09-17T21:03:00.000-08:00

What do you do when the world is against you?
When all you do is wrong no matter how right it is?
When every lie told about you is seen as true?
When your enemies increase despite your best intentions?

Do you capitulate and seek to appease them all?
Do you do your best to make the whole world happy?
Giving in to demand after demand no matter how unreasonable?
And ignore the effects on your home as it turns rundown and shabby?

Do you fight everyone everywhere they hide?
With words and weapons, making war on them all?
Justifying yourself saying “This we cannot abide”?
While really justifying your enemies one and all?

Maybe you can seek a middle ground?
Ignoring some, working with others, and making war on the last?
Working with the grim knowledge that there will always be enemies around?
Hoping that the world fins a new enemy fast?

But when the world is against you is any answer right?
Can any course set the matter straight?
Or will all you do be a simple and futile fight?
Any hope of peace being nothing more than a lure or bait?

5 Years Later

2006-09-10T22:48:00.000-08:00

It has been five years since the United States came under attack on our home soil for the first time World War Two, and the first time we have been attacked on the mainland since Mexican American War. On this day most people are giving tributes to the people who died on that fateful day, and for those who have sacrificed themselves in the cause of justice and freedom since then. Therefore, I am going to give a tribute to something else.

On this day, the fifth anniversary of the September 11th attacks, I am mourning the loss of unity.

For a brief shining moment after we were attacked where we live, work, play, love, and die, we forgot about power. We stopped caring about who ran what where. We were one in nation and spirit. We truly were the UNITED States of America.

The partisanship that has always disgusted me in politics vanished. For the first time in my lifetime our political leaders stopped playing with the nation, they stopped jerking the American people around, and they actually did their sworn duty. Their duty is not to fight with each other, sabotage the opposing party by any means necessary to gain power, and to serve the interests of small groups of donors. Their duty is to uphold and defend the Constitution, and this Nation as a whole. Their job is to look to the people who elected them for guidance, listen to experts, and carefully guide this country down a path that is neither liberal nor conservative, but rather, one that is good, wholesome, and serves the greater good in spite of personal prejudices.

Many people are fond of pointing out how our founders fought for years over the form this nation should take. They point out that this dissent was essential to building our nation into what it is today. Unfortunately, they ignore the most vital aspect of this prolonged debate: it was not a debate designed to garner power for any political party. This debate was motivated entirely by the unified desire and purpose of our forefathers to create a free, stable, and unified nation. They shared a common cause, and it was selflessness that drove them to spend years working without pay to exchange ideas, discuss the merits and drawbacks of the ideas, and ultimately reach a compromise that formed the basis of a nation and government that has become the envy of the world, and the one they seek to either copy, or rival.

Our current leaders do not have the spirit of our forefathers. Look to either side of the aisle and you will see that most of them are consumed in the power struggle and have lost sight of the greater good. Each side is so hell-bent on getting its own specific agenda passed with as few concessions as possible that just a few short years after we briefly found our unity that we had lost . . .we now find ourselves more divided than ever.

Each side is constantly spinning everything to make itself look good and make the other side look bad in comparison. As politicians vie for both personal and party power they are ripping our nation apart in a firestorm of deceit that has become so muddled that each and every piece of information we receive must be carefully sifted for the truth lest we ourselves become the unwitting pawns in a struggle that contrary to our own best interests.

I long for those days, brief as they were when our politicians were able to set aside their personal and party agendas and guide our country down the path they knew to be necessary. I long for the days when we were allowed to be proud of our country rather than being forced to make excuses for it due to our leader’s ineptitude and lust for power on both sides of the aisle.

February 20th 2003, or a day extremely close to that was the day I became a Republican. Until that day I was a registered independent. I was an independent because I believed then as I believe now. I believe that partisanship is destroying this country more surely than any external force could ever hope to. I also believe that this partisanship has become so out of control and destructive that I am force to choose sides, and therefore I must choose the side that most closely resembles what I believe to be right and true. I do this in the hopes that somehow, someday, by working within the broken system I may one day be able to mend it. I hope to one day be able to shatter the partisanship and remind America of what I means to be united in purpose while differing in ideas of how to accomplish that purpose. I hope to remind politicians of what it means to serve others and not to serve themselves by serving donors and prominent individuals.

For a brief moment in time we remember what it was to be just this way. The true tragedy of this is not that it took the murder of thousands of our countrymen to remind of this, but rather that we forgot it again so soon. This is the true lesson of 9/11, not that there are people out there that are determined to destroy us, we already knew that. The true lesson is what it means to be unified, and that unity is easy to lose when selfish men and women are in control.

God help us f we do not find this unity again.

The Winds of Change in Alaska

2006-09-04T22:15:00.000-08:00

This is going to be a VERY bad year for Republicans in Alaska.

As if Frank Murkowski's own botched term as governor, a term executed so badly that as the incumbent he came in THIRD in the Republican primaries, defeated by a one term small town mayor who garnered over 50% of the vote, and by a little known businessman from Fairbanks who garnered around 35% of the vote. As if this wasn't bad enough, widespread corruption among Republicans in the state senate, a thing long suspected, has been confirmed as several top Republicans had thier offices raided by the FBI on charges of accepting bribes and corruption.

Alaskans are nothing if not independent, and trust trumps all party loyalties. This year the Republicans have come out dirty, and it is unlikely that the Republicans will recover this election. I expect a sweeping victory by the Democrats in both the State House and Senate, and fromer (Democrat) Governor Tony Knowles, who is the Democrat's candidate for Governor, is poised to retake the Governorship.

Among the casualties is the now former heir apparrent to Senator Ted Stevens in the US Senate, his son Ben Stevens. Long known to be at least slightly shady, he is the most prominent Republican to come under investigation, and the one everyone beleves is most likely to go to prison for corruption. In my own personal analysis, the most likely man to replace Ted Stevens in the Senate is now Tony Knowles, and I do not like it one bit. While he may have a reputation for social conservatism and fiscal liberalism, I do not believe that any Democrat can be a social conservative and succeed on the national scene. This is why the Democrats have turned so wildly to the left, and why those who do not go that far are being defeated in the primaries, like soon to be former Senator Joe Lieberman.

Alaska will be fine, this state is so conservative that many of us say the difference between a liberal and a conservative is the size of his concealed firearm. But having a Democrat poised to enter the national scene, with a Republican senator (Lisa Murkowski) who is admittedly working from a weak position in this state due to her father poised to be the next senior Senator for Alaska, well . . . it does not bode well for America at all.

Excerpt From my New Book: Reality Check: Chapter on Governments

2006-08-27T11:08:00.000-08:00

Here is one fourth of the chapter on government systems in my new book of politics and philosophy. I would love some feedback.

Government has been both a boon and a plague to mankind ever since localized human populations have grown large enough to require them. A look at all existing government systems reveals three essential government archetypes that all existing governments are founded on. These government types are Democracy, Monarchy, and Dictatorships. Many people include a fourth type: a Tyranny. However, I do not include this as an individual governmental type because all of the governmental types I have listed have the potential to be tyrannous. A close inspection reveals that all three government types have their good and bad points.

Democracy is the currently favored governmental type of freedom loving people everywhere, and for good reason. Whether a representative democracy, true democracy, or parliamentary democracy, it gives the people the greatest possible chance to effect and guide their nation along the paths they see most fit. Out of all possible government types this is the only one that truly gives power to the people. Many others have claimed to give power to the people, but all have proven themselves to give power only to the one, or at best, the very few elite.

Democracies, more than any other type of government, reveal the true heart of the people. The people will only vote for leaders that they trust to enforce their will and follow their vision. This is always a good thing for everyone for two primary reasons. First is that as long as the elected representatives are doing what they are expected to do the people are generally content and are happy to let the government do its job with minimal interference. This is an excellent situation for domestic tranquility. Second is that other nations around the world are given an opportunity to see the hearts of the people in their most naked form.

People often make the mistake of believing that if the people are given a voice that the will always choose peace and freedom. This is patently untrue. In Palestine Hamas was elected into power by an overwhelming majority. Hamas exists for one reason: to murder Israelis and keep murdering them until there are no more Jews in Israel and all of Israel is placed under Islamic rule. The Fatah party had the same exact vision, but it failed to deliver on its promise, so it was replaced with an even more extreme terrorist group as the ruling faction in Palestine.

The reason this is all good news is that it bares the soul of the Palestinian people to the world in all its dark and twisted glory for the entire world to see for the very first time. No longer are we left to speculate that if only the people were given a voice that they may choose peace over terror. Now we know beyond all doubt that the Palestinian people want war, they want terror, and they want it now. Now we have the privilege of adjusting our own behavior toward them according to the truth as has been revealed by the people of Palestine.

Of course, only the foolish and the ignorant failed to se this outcome from miles away. History is riddled with people electing representatives who advocated violence, oppression, and even open war. Winston Churchill became the Prime Minister of Great Brittan because he advocated war with the Nazis rather than a peaceful surrender. George W. Bush was elected President of the United States for a second term because the people trusted him to continue and manage the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan more than they wanted John Kerry to put an end to the whole thing. Racist whites used to elect prominent members of the Ku Klux Klan to the US Congress because they wanted to continue to oppress blacks.

Knowing this to be true it is pure foolishness to assume that giving people a free democracy and allowing the self rule it creates is a magical formula for peace. The only guarantee democracy gives is the guarantee that the people will elect representatives who share their vision for their country. God help us if that vision is evil.

Democracies must, and do enact systems of checks and balances. Without these checks and balances every democracy degrades and ultimately becomes a dictatorship. To keep power in the hands of the people there must be a system in lace to prevent one or a few people from seizing power and overthrowing the government from within. There are two vital branches that absolutely must be in place. There must a legislative branch of government, and there must be an independent judicial branch of government. An executive branch has proven to be successful, but is not absolutely mandatory.

Regardless of any promises made in the Constitution of a democracy, or any government type, if the judiciary is not empowered to enforce the Constitution as well as the laws then there is an unhealthy imbalance in the government which will ultimately result in every right of the people being stripped away and it will become a tyranny.

A natural consequence of an independent judiciary is the unfortunate tendency of some judges to become drunk on power and unaccountability and to start inserting personal views and wishes into constitutional rulings. There should be a system in place for the swift removal of judges who do this because they always wind up undermining the constitution by single-handedly changing it to suit their own personal desires.

Such a system would have to be very strict and subject to much review before it could be enforced because of the tendency of the politicians to simply remove judges they do not like. It must be a difficult system, but it must be in place and it must be used.

A prime example of this problem is the Kelo decision made by the US Supreme Court. There is a clear right to property listed n the US Constitution, however, Kelo is in direct violation of this right because it enables the government to seize personal property, not for government use, but for transfer to other private parties the government would rather have occupying that property.

This violation of the US Constitution is possible because the checks on the judicial system are very weak. While there is a process for impeaching judges it is only used to impeach judges who commit felonies. All else is left to Constitutional amendments, which cannot possibly happen in response to every single court ruling that violates the Constitution. There must be a carefully implemented system in place to remove judges who issue rulings that are in clear violation of the Constitution or else the Judges will rule any way they want to regardless of the law itself, and regardless of the Constitution. The US Constitution allows for such a system, but it has never been put in place and used. As a result there are five judges sitting on the US Supreme Court who should be removed for violating their sworn oath to uphold and defend the Constitution by declaring government seizure of private land for unlawful transfer to another private entity is actually lawful.

As people who live in long established now know, there is a peculiar drawback to democracy. The drawback is what happens when people realize that that they can vote entitlements to themselves through their elected representatives.

Let’s face it. We all like to get something for nothing. Some of us rely on getting something for nothing just to survive. So when we hear a politician promising to give more of what we want the temptation to put that person into power is very strong. As we get more entitlements, we get lazier, and we want more entitlements, so we vote for even more people who promise us even more. Given time we grow accustomed to these new entitlements and grow lazier and demand even more. It’s a vicious circle, and one that has annoyed fiscal conservatives ever since it was first realized.

The natural result of this entitlement voting a greater financial burden on the government, which in turn puts a greater financial burden on the productive members of that society. It also drives national debt upwards at an alarming as expensive social programs become even more expensive, new expensive social programs are created, and people start voting against the taxes necessary to maintain them all. Why vote against the taxes? Because we all hate to have our hard earned money taken away from us and placing a greater financial burden on ourselves. This creates another vicious circle where the people in a democracy vote to get more, but not to give more in order to properly finance what they want to get.

In the end one of two things must break: the expensive social programs, or the budget. A society can survive having government charity removed because people are often remarkably generous with their money when they have it to give away privately. However, a society cannot survive an overwhelming burden of debt. History has shown that nations that go too far into debt have always collapsed.

Another common idea shared by people in Democratic societies is that they are “free” and that other governments must be replaced with democracies in order to “free” the people. This comes from a belief that democracy is somehow inherently superior to other forms of government. While democracy is frequently better than certain other governments, it is not always the case.

Democracies have a tendency to become overly bureaucratic and cumbersome. They become slow to respond because the channels set up to handle problems become ridiculously long and ridiculously choked with red tape. Every inch of red tape clogging the system was put there in response to problems in the past as an attempt to fix it. The result is that the problem may or may nit actually be fixed, but the process becomes more cumbersome. Red tape is rarely ever removed once it is put in place. In a democracy it is far easier to enact rules, regulation, and create positions and responsibilities than it is to remove them. Creating looks responsive and responsible to the voting public, undoing means admitting a mistake and possibly undermining the people’s trust and confidence in the abilities of their leaders.

Of course, an overburdened, overly cumbersome bureaucratic system also makes the people unhappy as it winds up putting an undue burden on them. However, it is an interesting phenomenon that it is frequently safer for a representative to leave the bureaucracy alone than to try to streamline it. This is because the people know that the red tape is there for a reason, they may not know or remember the reason, but they know that it probably was put in place to fix a problem that they wanted fixed.

Democracy is easily the most complex governmental system in existence today. With its ever changing body of politicians, ever increasing regulation, and vital system of checks and balances, without which any democracy will fail, it is a huge undertaking for any nation to perform.
Democracies are based on trust. As long as the people trust their democracy to look out for them they allow the democracy to continue. However, when trust is lost the people either vote in a new group of people or they revolt and install a new government system. We have seen this happen time and time again, and in every instance so far the democracy has been replaced with a dictatorship.

This One's So Juicy I Just Could't Contain Myself

2006-08-22T19:15:00.000-08:00

Okay, this is not what I promised, bu it's early, which makes this a bonus and the promised article will be here Monday.

Has anyone else been wonderinwhy we haven't been hearing about the Massachusetts gay marriage ordeal lately? I believe I know why.

A friend of mine from Massachusetts has just informed me that the Massachusetts Supreme Court was overruled by the people. That's right. We aren;t hearing more about it because the voters said the court was wrong.

This is unverified, and it is just the word of one Massachusetts man, but it does explain things. It also begs another question: Why didn't the news report it?

Why indeed. Why wouldn't the liberal media tell everyone that Masachusetts, the same state that requires parents to sign a contract stating that their children will not engage in discrimination against homosexuals, they can discriminate against everyone apparently, only discrimination against homosexuals is banned by the contract, voted down gay marriage? Could it be, oh, I dunno . . . liberal bias? Methinks it might!

The court decision was monumental, it was trumpeted nonstop for months, and this vote was equally monumental because it it struck down the monumental decision and established that the true power still belongs to the voter when the voter cares enough to go out and vote. As such it should have been blasted acros the airwaves for all to see and hear. Instead, it was allowed topass unnoticed. Such is the nature of the information system that seeks to influence and change American thought and attitudes. It's a tragedy.

Of course, my friend could have simply ben full of it too. If anyone can verify this one way or the other I am open to the full facts. I for one, am simply voicing my thoughts right now.

Excuses

2006-08-21T07:53:00.000-08:00

I have been offline for quite some time now, and I think I owe everyone an explanation. Therefore, I shall lay out every excuse for my (temporary) inactivity.

1: I have been getting started in a new carreer in the insurance business as an AFLAC representative, which has required me to do a great deal of studying.

2: I have returned to college to finish off the last few classes I need in order to get my Bachelor's Degree. I shall be done no later than December.

3: I have been caring for my wife and preparing my home for our son's arrival in December.

4: I have been working a new book. It is my first work of nonfiction and was inspired by blogging. I figured that if I can spend all that time researching and writing for a blog then I could do it, write some more in-depth essays than people generally read on blogs, and possibly get it published.

5: I found myself getting so incredibly wrapped up in staying current and analyzing everything that I decided it would be best for me if I took an extended break from blogging anyway. I am not Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity. I do not make my living this way (even though I would LOVE to do what they do), and I am still (in my opinion) fairly new to such activities.

Finally, until at least January I shall be blogging once weekly. My new posts will be going up every Monday, if something comes up and I simply cannot restrain myself there will be other articles popping up here and there, but Monday will be the day for new articles as a general rule. As you can see form the list posted above, I have very good reasons for scaling back my blogging activities.

I want to apologize to all of my regular readers for not posting this sooner and for the reduction in articles that will remain for several more months. My next article (to be posted next Monday) will be an excerpt from my new book so you can all get a taste of it. I shall actually post several excerpts over the coming months because I truly do value the feedback of my readers.

I also want to thank you all for your concern. It warms my heart to know you care enough to keep checking back and posting your speculation as to my fate. :)

This said, God bless you all and thank you for your continued readership.

I'll be Back

2006-07-06T08:04:00.000-08:00

I am going on vacation for about 2 weeks. There will be no new posts until July 20th.

Evidence that Dinosaurs and Man Coexisted, or of Something Else?

2006-06-27T12:11:00.000-08:00

I recently read a fascinating book called “Secrets of the Ica Stones and Nazca Lines” by Dr. Dennis Swift. What it presents is very compelling, though I am not yet totally sure what to make of it.

First the criticism that must come. It is obviously a self-published book as no publishing company would allow errors like “astronauts” being misspelled “astronaughts” every time astronauts are mentioned, which is at least 20 times. There are other misspellings and words that have been mashed together due to a missing space. Given that, feel free to make what you will of the book. My pet theory is that no major publishing would tough it because of the nature of the material inside. What it contains would be considered by many to absolute quackery.

This book discusses something known as the Ica Stones, and it does so critically, but favorably. For those of you who are going to instantly declare the following information as being nothing more than a desperate move by a Christian apologist I have the following to reveal: the author of this book was an Atheist and Evolutionist until his thorough professional study of the Ica Stones convinced him that religion must be right.

The author, as I mentioned, is a credentialed archaeologist. He has dedicated years to studying the Ica Stones and working to either prove or disprove them. Here is the conclusion based upon proper scientific study: Some are real, some are obvious fakes.

Among all the conspiracy theory style information about government cover ups and museums keeping stones and pottery with dinosaurs, men on hang gliders, and performing advanced surgery in boxes in the storage room is some far more interesting and substantive information.

First, there is a criticism that no carved stones have ever been found by actual archaeological expeditions. The author demonstrates this to be utterly false with his accounting of post dig literature from other archaeologists who have found such stones on their digs, as well an eyewitness account of carved stones being removed form an ancient grave. He gives the date and publication of these properly conducted digs in his book. So the argument that all carved stones must be fake because only the Juaceros find them is proven to be false.

Second is the criticism that the controversy of the stones is because of depictions of extinct fish, but that the depictions are so stylized that it takes a stretch of the imagination to conclude that man actually interacted with said fish. This is simply preposterous. The controversy is because of the depictions of dinosaurs that have been shown to be totally accurate even to the most recent discoveries about such things as how the tail is held, the back plate and tail spike placement of Stegosaurus, and other depictions that are true on every stone whose age has been verified as ancient, meaning at least 300 years, before the discovery of dinosaurs. There are pictures of men riding and hunting dinosaurs. There are also depictions of heart surgery, cesarean sections, organ transplants, and brain surgery. To date the methods that have been criticized as impossible are being shown to work, such as the use of acupuncture needles to deaden the pain of a c-section operation. Therefore, any claim that the stones are meaningless because it is just stylized fish is demonstrably ridiculous.

It turns out that there is also ancient pottery of verified age, 500-1200 years old, that depicts these same images, and some of it is on display in museums, but with the controversial images turned toward the walls.

Full color photographs of these stones and pottery are in the book.

The Museum of Dr. Javier Cabrera contains the vast majority of the Ica Stones that are available for public viewing. Before his death he allowed the stones to be tested at random to prove or disprove their age as being too old for the modern counterfeiters. His stones were tested on their own, as well compared to known counterfeits made by known counterfeiters. The results were that Dr. Cabrera’s stones bore no resemblance to any counterfeits and that they are at least old enough to have developed a natural patina, and yes, the patinas were proven to be from natural aging and not the result of such techniques as leaving the stones in a chicken coop for a month or rubbing mud and dung into them then baking them. The compositions of each these counterfeiting methods and the actual patinas on Dr. Cabrera’s stones were completely dissimilar. Another important note: there are no known counterfeits larger than a football, but Dr. Cabrera’s collection contains stones so large they must be lifted with a crane.

In a totally different part of the world, at the Temple of Ta Prohm, there is a gigantic carved boulder that hasa stegosaurus on it. This carving has baffled scientists for years, and the only two explanations offered are that either the artist actually saw a stegosaurus, or he has somehow able to reconstruct an accurate picture of one from a jumbled skeleton typical of what is found on Paleontological digs. They also claim that primitive man did not have the technical expertise to perform such reconstructions that are still being revised today.

Based off this information I have come to the conclusion that there are 2 possible explanations. The first is that we need to get over our self indulgent pride and acknowledge that man has had the ability to figure out the same stuff we are figuring out now for thousands of years. If people were performing advanced surgery in South America 1,000 years ago then I think it can safely be said that they may have had the curiosity and expertise to reconstruct a dinosaur skeleton that they excavated. This is sure to be a shot to the pride of modern scientists, which would explain why they would rather deny the stones and pottery even exist than seek to explain them. The second is that these images were entirely based on real life images and experience. If this is true then man and dinosaurs actually did coexist at some point, which is another good reason for scientists to pretend the stones and pottery don’t exist rather than trying to explain them. Personally, I am open to either explanation and am hesitant to draw any definite conclusions based solely upon these stones and pottery.

An interesting recent discovery actually lends credence to the second explanation though. We have recently discovered a T-Rex skeleton with marrow in the bones and flesh and skin still attached that has not rotted away or been fossilized at all. Preliminary testing indicates that the DNA may even be viable though so far there is degradation. Naturally, scientists are now looking at our understanding of decay rather than our understanding of history.

I propose that any of you out there perform the following experiment.

Take a pot, a washcloth, a steady heat source, and regular tap water. Fill the pot with tap water. Boil it. Add the washcloth. Keep the pot at least ¾ full at all times. In 2-5 years depending on the mineral content of your tap water you will have an honest to goodness fossilized washcloth on your hands.

The results of this experiment are compelling not in that it has any bearing on decay, but in that it may present us with a new understanding of the fossilization process. I find it equally compelling that there has been no further study on fossilization based upon the results of this experiment. It seems to show that in the presence of evaporating or percolating water that fossilization may actually happen in a few years rather than over thousands or millions of years. This may explain the intact soft tissues of the T-Rex that has recently been discovered. Combine these two things with the Ica Stones and pottery as well as the carving at the Temple of Ta Prohm and you have a reasonable case for a young Earth that may be thousands rather than billions of years old. If dinosaurs and man actually did coexist then evolution is proven false beyond all reasonable doubt and no amount of arguing can continue to fool people.

Naturally, there will be absolutely no scientific inquiry into any of this. Seriously, could you imagine how the world would be turned on it’s head if scientists actually gave proper study to this issue and *GASP* proved that it is possible that that dinosaurs only went extinct in the lat thousand years or so? Everything we know about astronomy and geology would be called into question. How could the universe appear so old and yet our tools for measuring it be so wrong? How could we mistake fossils a few thousand years old for being 65 million old or more? Is radiation dating even accurate? What assumptions have we been operating off of that gave us this false data? How did all of these layers of rock develop if not over hundreds of millions of years? How did the Grand Canyon get dug if the world is so young?

As you can see, the scientific confusion would be immense, and much of or knowledge would suddenly be called into serious question. And, of course, religious folks of all types would be trumpeting their various stories of Creation, much to the chagrin of Atheist scientists.

Me? I don’t see the problem. Science is simply an inquiry into the way the natural world works. If this universe was created to appear to be a certain age why should it bother me? If dinosaurs and man coexisted how does this affect medicine and technology? It doesn’t. It only affect our understanding of the history of the world, and evolution specifically. If other branches of science required evolution to be true in order to work then maybe I might be concerned. However, medicine works regardless of evolution. Surgery works regardless of evolution. Drugs work regardlss of evolution. What is a virus develops a slight change to its protein coat that makes it immune to current drugs? What id a bacterium does something similar? Simple. We find a new drug to kill it just like we always have. What about or understanding of genetic ancestry? Does genetic ancestry matter outside of each species? It seems to me to be a waste of time and money trying to determine is 6 different types of mosquitoes all came from a single proto-mosquito species millions of years ago. Just know them now so we can know which ones carry which diseases and how to kill them effectively. If the world is only a few thousand years old then evolution has not had time to cause any new species to appear and they have no common ancestor anyway.

Perhaps my attitude toward all of this is rather cavalier. It just seems to e that truth is more important than appearances. I want to know what ALL the evidence indicates. If selective evidence indicates evolution, and elective evidence indicate Creation, what does it indicate when you combine the whole mess? I shudder to say it, but might it actually indicate Intelligent Design? Or perhaps the combination simply wrecks evolution? Based upon the evidence I have a hard time seeing God eliminated from the equation at all.

So, who here is willing to actually study ALL the evidence without a specific agenda in mind? I don’t qualify. I want to see Creation supported as bad some of my readers want to see Evolution supported. A neutral party might actually say that there is some indication that either may be true and give an impartial study. For that we need a true Agnostic, not an Atheist or an Atheist claiming to be an Agnostic, and not a deeply religious person like myself. A true Agnostic would fit the bill, someone who simply doesn’t know and is open to anything. Good luck finding one who can’t be influenced by either side of the argument though. Money doesn’t talk, it screams these days.

Book Sales

2006-06-26T08:27:00.000-08:00

Here is a fascinating tidbit.

The New York Times, THE list to make for book sales, THE authoritative tracking method of how well a book does as compared to other books does not track sales of books through Christian stores.

Sounds a lot like anti-Christian bias to me.

Christian book stores sell a huge volume of books, movies, and CD's. Almost every one of them is like a mini Banes and Noble or Borders book store, and there are thousands of them spread across the US. Many books that get no coverage i the mainstream press get HUGE exposure to the cgristian community, and these books wind up having a majority of thier sales through Christian book stores.

Take Frank Peretti for example. He sells as many books as Dean Koontz, but he has never been on the New York Times bestseller list because almost all of his sales are through Christian outlets. The Left Behind series has sold enough books on a steady basis to dominate the New york Times bestseller list with every release, but by being gypped of at least 20% of it's sales the remarkable success of this series is able to be reduced in the view of the public.

Just some food for thought.

Potpourri

2006-06-21T20:56:00.000-08:00

Multiple subjects this time.

1: We now have proof that we did, in fact, find WMD’s in Iraq. In a recently declassified DOD document we are told that we have found stores of chemical weapons including Sarin and Mustard Gas shells. We are also told that this is just a sample of what we have found. On a personal note, this report is fully in line with what my fellow soldiers were telling me while I was still in the Army. They kept saying that the line that we did not find WMD’s was bullspit and that the only reason it wasn’t in the news was because we were finding them in small amounts scattered across the country rather than in a single massive cache.

In the kind of stupidity I have been bothered by, George Bush has not bothered to use the truth to silence his critics, preferring for some inexplicable reason to let people scream lies about him, his administration, or military, and the war in Iraq without countering with the proof that would expose them all as weak kneed defeatists who are just undermining America in a desperate bid to gain personal power. If I were President I would be everywhere with this news, with the incontrovertible proof of Saddam Hussein’s dealings with Al Qaeda, and every other bit of proof that exposes the lies of the political left in this country.

2: The UN has recently voted to allow commercial whaling. Ignoring the lessons of the past that whales do not reproduce at a rate that allows a sustainable commercial harvest the UN, in its typical retarded and careless manner has voted to allow commercial whaling again. The US opposed the measure which was supported by China and Denmark. This is a sad day for conservationists, real environmentalists, and environut activists as well. The only question that remains is whether the UN will see the error of its way in this instance before the species that are now allowed to be commercially harvested are depleted beyond recovery. Judging by the UN’s record, I doubt it.

3: San Francisco. Enough said.

4: The ACLU opposes a so called “Church” protesting outside the funerals of homosexuals and AIDS victims. However, they support these same nut cases protesting outside military funerals chanting the same anti-homosexual hate. Apparently the ACLU only supports free speech as long as it directed at people the ACLU hates.

5: On the same note, the ACLU supports suppressing the free speech rights of private citizens as long as these citizens are talking about Jesus. They are fully behind a Nevada school that cut the mic when their valedictorian, a student whose right to speak about religion is protected free speech under existing law as interpreted by the courts mentioned Jesus. Their claim? A Communist argument that this independent citizen, not under government employment is actually an agent of the state. Remember, Communism calss every private citizen an agent of the state. And people say the ACLU has abandoned its Communist roots. What a laugh!

6: Frank Murkowski, despite common belief, has done exactly what I predicted. He is running for reelection as Governor of Alaska. The election just got nasty, and I cannot be in it. It is a bittersweet day for me. On the one hand I am once again proven right about the course of politics. I swear I could have a successful career as a campaign manager or political strategist. On the other hand, I am unable to put it to work the way I had hoped this election cycle. I so could have won . . .

Update on the Biggest Tard in America

2006-06-19T08:21:00.000-08:00

Those of you who have been reading this blog for awhile may remeber a contentious piece I wrote declaring Michael Newdow to be the biggest tard in America shortly after he launched his lawsuit to have "In God We Trust" removed from our currency. Well, here is an email I recieved from the American Center for Law and Justice, an activist group that I am a card carrying member of.

"Dear Daniel,

Before I share our upcoming broadcast schedule, I have a significant VICTORY to report ...

A federal district court in Sacramento, California, has dismissed the lawsuit filed by Michael Newdow challenging the constitutionality of our National Motto, ''In God We Trust.''

We filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case on behalf of our members and 47 members of Congress in support of the federal government's request to dismiss the suit. (And we stand ready if this decision is appealed.)

Thank you to all of our ACLJ members who supported our efforts ... this is your victory!"

As you can see, this case was so ridiculous it couldn't even get traction in the most liberal, anti-Christian court district in the USA. I wonder how much money Michael Newdow wasted on this ridiculous lawsuit?

For additional information on The ACLJ please click the link in my sidebar under Worthy Organizations.

An Atheist Quickie

2006-06-13T08:16:00.000-08:00

No true Atheist is hostile to the Bible, or to religion in general. A true Atheist simply doesn't care. Hostile Atheists believe in God, the know He exists, and they hate him, so they are not actually Atheists.

Also, I have recently found out there is a registered Atheist Church that is recognized by the US Spreme Court as a legitimate church. This means that every Seperation of Church and State case that has resulted in the removal of a religious symbol or statement is a government endorsement of the Atheist Church and is a violation of Seperation and Church and State. Oh! The delicious irony! I think I shall have to seek to exploit this through the courts. Anyone feel like joionin gme in a clas action lawsuit demanding the natonwide restoration of all religiious symbols that hev been removed from public areas based on this argument?

Goodbye and Good Riddance!

2006-06-08T09:04:00.000-08:00

Al-Zarqawi’s dead today, doo-dah, doo-dah! Al-Zarqawi’s dead today oh doo-dah-day! The terrorist is dead! The terrorist is dead! Al-Zarqawi’s dead today oh doo-dah-daaaaaaay!

In case you didn’t notice, I am very pleased to announce the death of the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi! The man who has led the so-called insurgency, which has always been nothing more than a terrorist campaign led by this puke has lost its leader. Now to see if cutting off the head kills this beast, or if, like the hydra it, grows a new head to replace the old one.

At the very minimum this victory should give the terrorists pause and suck some of the fervor out of them. Make them less willing to fight. As long as their leader has been able to elude US forces they have been able to ignore their own horrific losses in the hopes that those who come after may yet succeed. Now, with no leader, and no known heir apparent, they will be splintered, leaderless, and disheartened. Some will look to Bin-Laden, but they will be disappointed. He is on the run and not in Iraq. If he goes to Iraq he will met the same fate as Al-Zarqawi did.

It was a bombing that got him. Not a roadside bomb or other IED, but a real bomb. A good old-fashioned aerial dropped manufactured in the good old USA bomb. The man who can now be linked to the deaths over 2,000 American military men and women has now joined the tens of thousands of insurgents and terrorists who have died under his command.

Today is also a great day for the people of Iraq. Right now they have an opportunity to seize control of their national situation and put down the insurgency once and for all with the help of the US. They can take advantage of the internal chaos within the insurgency and fracture it to a point that it can never recover. This done, they will finally know both peace and democracy. They will be able to walk down their streets, go to their schools, go to work, meet, greet, and enjoy life without the worry of some terrorist blowing himself up in their midst. They have this opportunity right now, and if they are wise they will take it.

For the US this means we are one step closer to both reducing our manpower in Iraq to close to nil and focusing more on the hunt for Bin Laden, or we are one step closer to invading Iran and doing everything we have just done in Iraq all over again. Truth be told I can live with either option since both of them probably need to happen whether anyone wants them to or not.

Politically this is a significant event. If it works out in such a way that the insurgency dies down significantly or dies out altogether Iraq will be an indisputable victory, and all the talk about quagmires and failure will be proven utterly false, and those who have been making such negative claims will become the objects of ridicule and distrust. I can live with this. It has always been my position that the people who have been actively undermining the war effort here at home have been simply trying to advance their own political careers at the cost of American lives overseas. The constant rhetoric about Iraq being a failure and the need to turn it into another Vietnam by quitting are enemies of America in my opinion. I say this because such an action would prove to the terrorists that we are weak with no stomach for a fight, and the WILL start attacking our homeland in droves. Our sticking out to final victory is the only way to win this thing in the long term. Today, we may have just hit the catalyst that speeds victory along. Only time will tell.

A Rare Venting

2006-06-07T09:24:00.000-08:00

There is something I have been holding in for awhile now while I was waiting for this problem to be fixed. It has not. Oddly enough, what I am about to say is going both please and annoy both my conservative and my liberal readers to varying degrees.

I have a problem with President Bush

It is not that I no longer like him. IT is not that I am against the war. And it is not that I no longer support him for the most part. I just have a problem right now that has not resolved itself yet.

President Bush seems to have lost the will to fight. He spent his first time fighting and getting things done in an admirable fashion. He was shaping up to be one of our greatest Presidents of all time. However, His second term is not progressing so well. I have two specific complaints.

The first is that he seems to have had his spirit broken by the failure of his attempt to bring some desperately needed reforms to Social Security. This failure, thanks entirely to the raw, hostile partisanship of the Democrats has doomed Social security to ultimate collapse. It will go bankrupt and it will leave our elderly starving and homeless as a result. Way to go Dems. Since this failure President Bush has gone from a strong and confident leader to a timid man who makes every step tentatively, always worried that his next move will meet the same fate as Social Security Reform. As a result not much is actually getting done right now as The Democrats continue their strategy of Screw America Over as Much as Possible and Blame the Republicans to Get Back Power for the Democrats. Such partisanship is probably the worst problem in US politics today. I, for one, am sick of it while also being driven deeper into it by the sheer insanity of the situation.

The second complaint I have is that President Bush is simply pathetic when it comes to border security. He is toeing the line of national self destruction every time he comes out in favor of illegal aliens. Don’t get me wrong, I am for LEGAL immigration. I think it should be easier, take less time, and be more affordable. I also think that there are some common sense reforms that are needed in order to improve the quality of our immigrants, such as restricting the family spillover to spouse and children only rather than allowing it to bring the entire extended family of an immigrant to the US. I think our Amnesty program should be extended to allow refugees from Communist nations to arrive here without having to worry about being sent back to their old country where they will assuredly be persecuted, and possibly imprisoned or even killed for running away. And I think that we need to provide strict enforcement of every anti-illegal immigration law on the books. Take away every incentive for sneaking in here and they will stop coming. President Bush apparently favors open borders and millions of illegals over doing what is actually in our best interests. On this issue he sounds just like a Democrat.

Well. That felt good to get out.

Oh, and for the record, I would still have President Bush over almost any Democrat I can think of. The only Democrat I can fully support is Zell Miller. Two others I may be able to support are Bill Richardson and Joe Lieberman. But with all of them I have serious concerns about their potential Judicial appointments.

A Question

2006-06-06T08:35:00.000-08:00

Is there any way that past human cultures coud have had knowledge similar to our own in regards to dinosaurs? I am not speaking hypothetically, but inactual reality. Did even the more advanced cultures of the past have the knowledge of dinosaurs to be able to present pictures that are physiologically accurate about dinosaurs?

This is just a debate question. I am genuinely curious to see ehat my readers think. I will not be participatiing in this debate personally.

The Numbers Game and Claims to Legitimacy

2006-06-02T14:27:00.000-08:00

Some interesting factoids. With all of the various religions out there claiming to be the fastest growing religion in the world, which one is correct?

Islam claims to be the fastest growing, and by sheer numbers this is true, but it is not completely accurate.

Hasidic Judaism does not claim to be the fastest growing, but it is the fastest growing religion in the world based on growth percentage. The number of Hasidic Jews is doubling every 6 years. No other religion in the world is matching this feat.

Mormonism claims to be the fastest growing religion in the world, and it is the fastest growing by numbers in terms of converts. When the frantic breeding pace of the Muslim world is removed from the equation, the Mormons are outstripping the Muslims.

So, depending on how you measure growth, we have 3 different fastest growing religions in the world.

Don’t you just love statistics?

A Guess Too Far

2006-06-01T07:49:00.000-08:00

It's Wednesday, and this week, instead of my usual evolution post I am posting a semi-related article on paleontology. Stuff like this makes me just sorta sigh and shake my head in disbelief at the simple-minded irresponsibility of it all.

As a lover of science, good science, I tend to be a bit perturbed when I encounter stories like this.

A 41 foot carnivorous dinosaur, named Mapusaurus roseae has been discovered. It is thought to be a pack hunter that took down large suarpods. All of this is based off of the discovery a single, 100 million year old 3 ft long shinbone.

Note that all of this information has somehow been gleaned from a single shinbone.

I repeat, all this from one shinbone.

WHAT THE HELL?

When exactly did responsibility and science part company? This kind of irresponsible jumping to conclusions is becoming all too common.

Let’s assume for a moment that this bone is in fact, definitely a shinbone. This seems like a realistic thing to do because we are pretty good at identifying bone types. Where does all the rest of that come from?

How do we know that shinbone is even from a theropod if we have nothing else? Is it not possible that it is from a four legged dinosaur?

If it is from a two legged dinosaur, how do we know it was a carnivore instead of a very large two legged herbivore like the various duckbilled dinosaurs? We have found no teeth or skull structures.

And where the hell does this hunt in pack bit come from? Yes there were large suarpods in the same area, but this does not mean that any carnivores were busy hunting them in packs? Is there even one carnivore alive that hunts full grown elephants in packs? No. Therefore we have evidence in nature that we can observe that says that enormous size like the great suarpods had can be an effective defensive measure that eradicates predation on adults. We have absolutely no evidence of pack behavior in this new dinosaur. We have nothing but one shinbone.

As much as my imagination likes to be able to create images of a possible past, I don’t see anything of sufficient quality here to make any such speculations and call it science. How trained scientists can is a mystery to me.

One thing I do know for certain. If they ever find a similar shinbone, and a nearby skull of appropriate size has the broad, flat teeth of an herbivore there will be some seriously embarrassed storytellers, I mean scientists.

UPDATE:

Once in a great while I manage to go off half cocked. After reviewing more information about the dinosaur in this article I must admit that this was one such time.

Based upon a full review of the evidence I have to make an amendment to my initial assesment. It turns out that the size if the dinosaur was detrmined by the bone in question, but there were other bones at the site that were used to make the other determinations. Most importantly, there were skull and jaw fragments as well at least one tooth recovered from the site that provides more than ample evidence suggesting this dinosaur was indeed a carnivore.

Also, the supposed pack behavior was based upon the the fact that the toes of 7 distinct inviduals were discovered on the exact same site as the very first bone. The scientists who evaluated the evidence took it to mean that Mapusaurus Rosae was a pack hunter that took down prey much larger than itself. They are entitled to their professional opinion, however, it only took a few seconds to concoct other explanations that are equally valid based upon the evidence that was found. They are as follows:

1- There were so many remains in such a small place because ancient terain features were favorable to these animals dying there, such a pitfall or narrow ledge and it indicates nothing about the behavior of this animal.

2- Mapusaurus Rosae was a migratory hunter, and this was the nesting grounds. What was uncovered was a place used by many of this animal over generations due certain favorable conditions at the time. It did not hunt in packs, but chose this are to nest because of the young Saurpods recently hatched. Being a solitary hunter such abundant, and easy to kill prey would be a fantastic food source for a growing family.

3- The dinosaur may have hunted animals smaller than itself in a solitary fasion in the pattern of most large predators. The number of individuals found in this one spot are a concidence resulting from an abundamce of the animal in the are over the span of the species existence.

4- Many males of carnivourous animals will prey upon the young of thier own species in order to eliminate the offspring of the competition. It is possible that the younger individuals are there as a result of such predation at a lair or nest. The larger specimens are potentially the remains of mortally wounded males who were attacked by infuriated mothers, or possibly the remains of mothers who died atthe nest from mortal wounds.

5- In nature, sometimes even solitary aminals have an event that brings many of them together at one time. One fine example is deer in rut. A male will gather a herd of females temporarily for breeding pourposes. this could have been once such harem that was beset by a majar calamity resltin in the deat of most or all of the individuals i the group.

All of these alternatives are equally viable based upon the evidence on hand. The way scientists have jumped to conclusion sabout the behavior of a dinosaur we still know practically nothing about is irresponsible. There is no need to go beyond the fact and start teling stories just because you don;t have enough evidence to prove yourself right or wrong. The scientists who made all of these iresponsible assumptions regarding the behavior of this animal are still irresponsible storytellers, they just made up thier stories with a little more evidence than I initally knew about.

The Truth Giver

2006-05-26T15:47:00.000-08:00

An interesting phenomenon has been occurring steadily that I have observed throughout my life. There are certain things, certain truths that even all but the purest of relativists call true without a second thought. Some of the truths are that rape is wrong, murder is wrong, pedophilia is wrong, and that anything that causes undue or unjust harm to another person is wrong. People that engage in activities along these lines are dismissed as evil and sick.

An interesting thing about truth, in order for it to be true it must be universally true. Otherwise it is not truth, but merely relative to circumstances. Anything that is relative is subject to change, and is therefore not truth because it is not constant.

So where does this truth come from? One look at man says that it cannot possibly come from us. Man is inconstant, and the mind and morals of man are subject to constant change and even corruption, such when illness sets in. Societal morals change dramatically over the course of time. For example, if a US soldier were to rape an enemy civilian today he would be court marshaled with a maximum penalty of death. However, during the US Civil War the Union code of conduct actually permitted the rape of enemy civilians, as long as a woman was not raped in front of her children. On a similar note, during this same period horse thieves were typically hanged, today such a thief would serve only a short jail term is he went to jail at all. In various societies around the world homosexuality has gone from wrong, to acceptable, to wrong, to widespread, to acceptable, to wrong, and so-on for thousands of years. Men can’t seem to make up their minds about whether it is right or wrong.

This said, humanity is not a trustworthy source of truth, and cannot be the truth giver. Mankind is simply too inconstant.

And what if there were no universal truths? What if there really were no such thing as truth and all is simply relative? Then all would be a lie, and not one thing humanity engaged in would be trustworthy, and there would be no sufficient moral compass to base laws upon. Prime examples of what happens when universal truth is removed from the equation can be found in the crimes of any despot who claims to be highest authority and answers to no one, not even God. The actions of these despots are appalling.

So if there must be truth, then there must be a truth giver. Since man is too inconsistent to be the source of truth, and nature is not a being in and of itself that is capable of giving moral truths, we are left with only remaining possible source of truth. That source is God.

God is the only eternal, unchangeable, incorruptible being in existence, which is what gives Him the unique qualification to be a giver of universal truth. These truths are self evident in the hearts, words, and actions of sane men. Even among men (and women) who ignore parts of the truth, other parts are so ingrained they cannot possibly ignore them, such as the examples I first gave in this article.

The existence of truth is, to my way of thinking, the first proof of God Himself.

Dismembering Evolution 8: Avida

2006-05-24T10:03:00.000-08:00

In this world of technology no theory would be complete without computer models being used to demonstrate the feasibility of the theory. In other words, program in the parameters of the theory and see what you get. If the simulation supports the theory you are good.

There is one problem though with any computer simulation. It simulates the parameters that are plugged in whether they happened in real life or not. When these parameters are based on massive amounts of assumptions that are not supported by laboratory experiments the program is running entirely off guesses. Even complete fabrications can be programmed into a simulation as any video game proves.

One example of just such a flawed computer program was one Richard Dawkins ran to show that random mutation in the early world could have resulted in the swift changes that are observed in the Cambrian. He selected a verse from Shakespeare, programmed in 27 variables, the alphabet plus a space, and had the simulation randomly change each slot. By randomly I mean random slots and random result. In just forty five generations the selected verse was completed to 100% accuracy. Subsequent runs showed an 80% likelihood of achieving the same result within forty five generations. Pretty spectacular huh?

There is just one teeny-tiny, huge, massive, glaring, fatal flaw to this program.

He programmed it to lock in the letters when the right one fell into place.

That’s right. Once a desired mutation was achieved he removed an essential variable, the possibility of losing the mutation. As both scientists and lay persons here have stated often, evolution is not a one way process. All is capable of being changed in such a way as to advance, or to regress. But don’t take my word for it, just the comments and links left in the discussion of previous articles in this series.

According to evolutionary theory there is no such thing as a locked in change. What is beneficial one generation may be fatal the next due to environmental changes. A mutation may or may not be passed on to future generations. A mutation may or not be repaired by the DNA as it happens, or the mutated cell may simply be attacked and destroyed by the organism’s immune system. What’s more, is the mutation even possible to pass on? Most are not transferable to future generations because the germ cells are not the cells that are mutated. This, of course, does not apply to binary fission such as in bacteria, or to viruses. So Richard Dawkins programmed a fatally flawed simulation to prove a point he could not make honestly. Bad scientists! Bad! No treat for you!

A much more important, and also much newer computer simulation is called Avida. This computer program is truly fascinating.

It has gone through several revisions until it is now the most exciting bit of research simulation for studying evolution there is. Initially, with the parameters being exactly what evolutionary theory states it had the problem of actually wiping out biological diversity. Then I was altered to reward any change whatsoever, and that solved the problem of destroying diversity, resulting in a rich environment of simulated organisms, but also not achieving this result in the time allowed by geologic history.

This problem demonstrates a weakness in evolutionary theory every time someone says that evolution is not random, but sequential. In sequential evolution the number of generation the simulation needed to produce a diversity resembling the Cambrian too until past the modern day. True to Darwinist fashion, rather than looking at evolution for the problem, the programmer looked at the program’s parameters. After much tweaking he decided to bombard the earliest simulated life forms with incredible doses of simulated radiation. This produced a random mutation rate sufficient to produce the appropriate diversity of life in the appropriate time.

Amazing huh?

But there are a few problems.

First, such a high radiation level is shown to prevent abiogenesis by the destruction of amino acids and proteins. Second, it is shown not to mutate cells, but to kill them. Third, eve if something were to evade the death trap of light it would be shielded form the mutating effects of the radiation. Third, assuming something survived completely unshielded and was randomly mutated, and successive generations continued the trend for a hundred million years or so, this destroys the notion that evolution is not random. It actually reduces the soft definition of evolution that is becoming fashionable, “The change in the frequency of alleles” to bull-spit because evolution absolutely required massive random mutation to do anything to begin with. It takes early evolution completely out of the soft definitions, and even takes it out of the idea of natural selection in the classical sense because extreme mutation is not compatible with that theory.

Scientists studying evolution are going nuts, absolutely raving about Avida. Never mind that the parameters it requires to operate according to evolutionary theory are actually in conflict with evolutionary theory. Never mind that the source of the conflict is the generally acknowledged problem of UV radiation of the kind required in this simulation is simply lethal to life rather than mutating it into many forms. It is the first computer program to successfully produce a model of evolution based entirely on random changes supported by a reward (a simulated environmental factor, actually, it is more food).

What about it’s failures? What about its failure to punish the occasional change with a reduction in food, reduced viability, or even death? What about the lethality of the early parameters? What about the way it actually decimates the concept of evolution NOT being random? What about the conditions of early evolution being completely destructive to abiogenist as well? None of this matters because it provides a computer model that works.

More importantly to the skeptic, what about the parameters of the program in the first place?

This program follows a lot of assumptions, just like evolutionary theory itself. And just like evolutionary theory, this program has its serious flaws when compared to reality. To my way of thinking, the vital change that was needed to the early environment, which is generally considered to be a reasonably accurate simulation of the early Earth, and is also a set of conditions that would wipe out all life and pre-life, actually provides AGAINST evolution and abiogenesis. Without abiogenesis evolution cannot happen. If early life is destroyed by radiation the evolution cannot happen. Current laboratory experiments show that the radiation levels that are simulated absolutely destroy all life and pre-life. Lesser radiation does not provide the required mutation levels to form the diversity of life in the required geologic time. These basic incompatibilities only seem to bother skeptics, like myself, and not the highly educated scientists who should be able to look at this and see the exact same issues.

So, what do I think about computer simulations? I think they are proven to be a powerful tool for demonstrating what will happen within a given set of parameters. I think that if the parameters are demonstrably good then the tool is good. I think that if the set of parameters is questionable then the tool is not much good at all, and only shows an unrealistic simulation of what the programmer wishes were true.

And, no, there is no computer simulation to date that provides a working model of evolution under realistic circumstances.

Christian Response to the Oregon University Cartoons Defaming Jesus

2006-05-22T08:33:00.000-08:00

In a unified burst of outrage, Christians around the world are staging violent protests over the depictions of Jesus in a University of Oregon student publication. There is violence in the streets, burning, looting, and some people have already been beaten nearly to death.

“This outrage cannot be tolerated!” said one Christian while waving a sign that read “Bomb UO! Their blood is on their hands!”

“It’s time to show those heathens what it means to insult our Lord!” said another Christian who had his six-year-old daughter helping him hold a very large that read “If you think 9/11 was bas just wait until you see what’s coming!”

Other signs and shouted slogans included “The apocalypse is now, and we are the tools of God’s wrath!” “Death to everyone at UO!” “Burn them now and for eternity!” “Death to all pagans!” “Hell awaits you!” and, my favorite, “Think Muslim terrorism is bad? You aint seen nothing yet!”

Acts of violence and vandalism were slowed slightly because the rioters would frequently stop and scream “Praise Jesus!” with a wild look in their eyes and broad geatures to emphasize it.

All of this outrage has been sparked by the publication of cartons depicting Jesus as a homosexual, terrorist, and a fraud in a UO student publication.

University of Oregon President Dave Frohnmayer had this to say. “I understand the outrage of Christians at the publication of these cartoons. I have ordered all remaining copies of the Insurgent rounded up for disposal and the staff of that publication are currently being reprimanded. There may be expulsions.”

The French Ambassador said “The French government does not blame the Christians for the violence in our streets. We understand that they are disenfranchised and that such outrage to such horrible pictures is only natural to people in their situation.” He also swore that France would “do everything possible to satisfy the demands of the Christian rioters.”

A UN spokesman declared “These pictures of Jesus are not acceptable. Such an attack on the founder of the world’s largest religion cannot be tolerated. The Un wishes to express it’s sympathies to the Christians and we are currently looking at ways to satisfy their demands and stop the violence.”

Okay, now for the real scoop. It has been months since these cartoons were published, they are known about pretty much everywhere in the world now, and there has been absolutely no violence, rioting, or other criminal acts of intimidation engaged in by the Christian community. Letters have been written, a few small, peaceful protests have been staged, and that’s about it.

The first portion of this article is not actually fiction though. Simply replace every instance of the words “Christian” and “Jesus” with “Muslim” and “Mohammad”, switch the University of Oregon for Denmark and you have what actually happened when Muslims faced the same situation. The difference in conduct between the followers of Jesus and the followers of Mohammad is as different as night and day.

When I look at individuals and groups of people I look to their actions to see if they are acting on Godly or demonic impulses. Godly impulses are love, patience, peace, generosity, and so forth. Demonic impulses are violence, murder, hatred, and other basic evils. My opinion of people is shaped largely by the spiritual influences I see coming through their actions. It is such actions that cause me to have a very high regard for most Christians, and a very low regard for most Muslims. I have called Allah a demon in the past, and this position is based on the actions of his followers.

Truth be told, we are very unlikely to see how the global community would react if Christians started acting like Muslims, but I suspect we would not be treated with such generosity. Rather, I suspect we would be universally denounced, and our religion might even get banned in some countries.

So, where do I stand on this whole UO cartoon thing? My stance is that I expect it because it is simply more of the same old typical assaults on my religion that are so common that I have a hard time understanding how these cartoons are even able to draw attention. With “art” like a cross floating in a jar of urine, Mary mother of God covered in elephant dung, and innumerable other foul and degrading depictions of Christianity flooding the art world I have grown rather numb to it. Assaulting Christianity seems to be a popular activity among certain groups, and artists are one of those groups. Truth be told, I fully expect this trend to grow and become so common it may even become fashionable in the mainstream. I wonder how long until we see models walking down the runway wearing crowns of thorns with the thorns shaped to look like devil horns. I wonder how long until speaking about Christian morals starts getting banned as hate speech in some countries. Not long I suspect.

The Ultimate Futility of the Good Fight

2006-05-16T21:18:00.000-08:00

I am taking a break from evolution this week to discuss current events as they relate to Christian theology.

I have been thinking a great deal about the culture war in America, and even across the world. This subject has occupied much of my mind for several years now, and after these years of studying current events, politics, and the Bible I have reached a conclusion.

Traditionalists and conservatives like myself are doomed to lose.

How can I say such a thing? How can a man who fights for good conservative, traditional, Christian values admit defeat long before the war will be over?

I say it because the Bible predicts it.

Prophesy is an often overlooked aspect of Biblical study, mostly because is a preacher discusses it on Sunday when there are many newcomers to church and non-Christian visitors it is very easy to sound wacky and drive people away. If a preacher spends a great deal of time discussing the prophesies of the Bible and the terrible destruction followed by glorious redemption that they predict it is frequently seen as fear mongering due to the destruction and Hellfire involved. Such a thing is not generally constructive to outsiders and newcomers to the faith. Hence, almost all of the Sunday efforts are focused on God’s love, redemption, holiness, and Biblical principals of living.

Personally, I have been drawn to Biblical prophesy from a young age, and have a particular fondness for the apocalyptic books of Daniel and Revelation. There are many other prophesies spread throughout the Bible, including a few made by Jesus Himself, and of these most have already been fulfilled, and the ones that have not yet come to full fruition are mostly, if not entirely the ones that signal the end of the world as we know it. This is one major reason that many Christians are convinced that we are living in or very near to the end times at this moment.

So what does this have to do with the culture wars and the impending victory of the radical liberals and socialists?

Put simply, these radicals are pushing for an agenda that is nearly identical to the situation man be in when the final judgments are ultimately unleashed upon the world.

Jesus said that God would hand men over to unnatural (sexual) desires. Homosexuality is now an in-your-face fact of life, and is slowly growing from a rare aberration to what will ultimately be commonplace. The final thing homosexuality and bisexuality need to be allowed to grow to the status of commonplace is some form of official sanction. That official sanction is marriage. Some countries have already made homosexual marriage the law of the land. To fulfill the prophesy that men, meaning mankind, would be handed over to unnatural sexual desires for the destruction of their bodies sexual aberrations like homosexuality, bisexuality, incest, and bestiality must become commonplace, possibly even the rule. I can foresee (logically, not as a prophet, I am not a prophet and never claim to be one) a time when Bisexuality is actually considered the norm, and various sexual triads, quads, or even bigger multiple sexual partner relationships, trysts, and affairs are just the way people conduct their sexual affairs, and heterosexual monogamy will become rare and seen as strange. The event that will almost certainly unleash this upon the world is homosexual marriage. Once homosexual marriage is legal I would be surprised if the situation I have described above takes 40 years to be a fact. I might even hazard to say it could happen in 30 years or less. SO I must extend a grudging congratulations to the homosexual activists on their impending victory. You will get everything you want and more, the Bible says so.

The Bible predicts that women would stop caring about their children. To my way of thinking there is nothing les loving than killing your own child. Enter abortion. Will it go away in America? Never. Actually, while we may manage to restrict some forms of abortion it will almost certainly remain pretty much an on demand business and it will be made ever more available worldwide with fewer restrictions. I would extend a grudging congratulations on the future victory of the abortionists, but that victory is already early complete.

A one world government WILL happen. Though I personally despise the UN and see it as an utterly useless and hopelessly corrupt body, it represents a growing movement to the impending one world government. The instruction starting to be put on schoolchildren that is inducting them to the idea of being citizens of a unified world rather than of an individual country will spell the end of widespread resistance to a single global government in 30 to 40 years. I would be surprised if it took longer than that. And it absolutely MUST happen for the Antichrist to be able to become the one leader of the entire world. If there is no one world government, how can the Antichrist rule the world? It will not happen by force but by diplomacy according to the Bible, so there must already be a world government in place. So, a grudging congratulations must be extended to the UN for its future success in becoming the sovereign governing body for the whole world. If it is not the UN it will be another world body. The Bible says so.

Christianity will become more persecuted, more hidden from view as time goes on. None of the evils that men will bring to the world will be allowed to happen without resistance as long as Christianity has a strong public voice. Right now there is a movement to silence Christianity in the public square and to remove all public reminders of Christianity from public view. Eventually this movement to suppress Christianity will succeed, and during the time of the Antichrist’s rule that silence will be turned to such persecution that the punishment for being a Christian will be death by beheading. So, a grudging congratulations must be extended to the Atheists for their impending victory. They will get everything they want and more as far as suppressing Christianity is concerned. Once again, the Bible says so.

Today we can see how values the world over are being convoluted, evil is being considered good, and good is being considered evil. The usual terms that is used to describe people who stand by what is good are bigot, ignorant, old fashioned, repressive, mean, and any other of a myriad of generally demeaning terms that the radicals and liberals use to describe everyone who stands by what is right according to God. It’s bothersome, but its okay, the Bible says this twisting of human values is going to happen.

Before any of you who actually want to see what I have described come to fruition break out the Champaign in celebration of someone who opposes you saying that his religion predicts total victory for you I suggest you consider the following.

All of this and more is prophesied to happen for the sole purpose of preparing the world for the final judgment, the ultimate wrath of the Lord God before He finally kicks all sin and all unredeemed sinners out of the world and casts them into the eternal torment of Hell. These victories for the radicals are simply preparing the world for the apocalypse itself.

So why bother to fight it? I fight it because it is the right thing for me to do as a Christian. It is my God-given duty to tell the truth so that any who will hear it and believe have the chance to do so. It s my God-given duty to tell the truth so that any who hear it but do not believe remember it when the events recorded in the Books of Daniel and Revelation come to pass, and maybe, just maybe, some of them will come to believe and be redeemed even in the darkest time the world will ever see.

Still, it is tiring. It is draining to watch events unfold that I desperately want to stop, but also know that nothing will stop them. It is draining to tell people the truth of the situation and to speak what is right knowing that the very people I a want most desperately to reach are simply going to reject what I am saying anyway. Still, I do it because it is the right thing to do.

If it were up to me none of the things I have said here in this article would come true. Christians would win the culture war handily, there would be worldwide revival, and we would enter a golden age unlike any the world has ever known to date. It will not happen though. Instead I and all others who fight beside me will lose this fight in the most complete sense of the word. The world will enter the darkest times it has ever known and will ever know. But, Jesus Christ will return, reclaim the world for Himself, kick all evil out of it, and then we will enter a golden age far greater than the one we would have if I had my way in the current culture war. And this golden age under the rulership of Jesus will last an eternity, after a slight hiccup at the end of the first thousand years when God will unleash Satan upon the Earth one last time for the final battle.

So enjoy your victory while it lasts you radicals. It will be short lived and it will be very traumatic for you. As for me and my ilk, we shall rest in the victory to come after yours.

Dismembering Evolution 7: Feathered Dinosaurs

2006-05-10T08:17:00.000-08:00

Am I the only one who has noticed that every relatively small carnivorous dinosaur that is discovered these days is automatically assumed to have had feathers?

Take Bambiraptor for example. With no evidence to run with save for some similarities an bone structure between Bambiraptor and Archaeopteryx many artist’s renditions of it, most notably the sculpture made of it for the conference where the dinosaur was officially presented to the public, showed it bearing either feathers or hair-like projections assumed to be the precursor to feathers.

More recently a couple of small dinosaurs were discovered in China, once again assumed to have feathers for some reason. It should be noted that there have also been frauds regarding feather imprints found with dinosaur skeletons, all of which were immediately accepted and highly publicized until the fraud was exposed by a skeptic.

However, there is one very important creature to note that appears to represent a transition from dinosaurs to bird. It is Archaeopteryx.

The classic logical timeline that has been presented to students has bird-like dinosaurs preceding Archaeopteryx as a necessity to the development of this remarkable creature. The fact is that these birdlike dinosaurs appeared tens of millions of years after Archaeopteryx went extinct. Classically, it is taught that birds then arose from Archaeopteryx, with the most dinosaur-like ones coming first and advancing to modern birds. The actual timeline runs something more like this. Archaeopteryx – 10-15 million year gap – birds that survived until the end of the dinosaur age – another class of birds the lasted only a very short time – birdlike dinosaurs – a series of four classes of now extinct birds – modern birds appearing while the birdlike dinosaurs still roamed the Earth. This defies the necessary evolutionary development requirements by having Archaeopteryx predate the dinosaurs that should be its ancestors. It also fudges evolutionary theory by having actual birds appear before the supposed precursors to Archaeopteryx. It also does not fill the gap of millions of years between Archaeopteryx and birds. So evolutionary theory appears to be quite flawed as far as the fossil record goes.

It could be stated that there were divergent lines of evolution leading to similar development among birds and dinosaurs arising independently. First I want to challenge anyone to actually prove that this happened. Second, I want to point out the obvious flaw in this interpretation. This leaves no evolutionary precursors to Archaeopteryx, making it a random aberration of nature with no discernable source. It also eliminates all birdlike dinosaurs from the evolutionary mix because we are forced to conclude that since Archaeopteryx is not descended from them, and that birds themselves predate them, hey are nothing more than an evolutionary dead end. It also does not account for the multimillion year gap in the fossil record between Archaeopteryx and the first birds.

Now for some more personal musings on the whole subject of Archaeopteryx.

This beautiful fossil does share many characteristics of birds and dinosaurs. I will happily grant that. But this does not necessarily mean it is the ancestor of birds. For an example of this problem I shall turn to a more modern creature the Platypus.

The Platypus shares some remarkable similarities to both mammals and birds. It has hair and mammaries, but it also lays eggs and has a bill like a duck. By using the logic of the evolutionist this creature must represent a link of mammals descending from birds, or of birds descending from mammals. It has shared features, so it MUST be a transitional species. In fact, I am willing to bet that evolutionists 100,000,000 years from now will find platypus fossils and declare them to be the missing link between birds and mammals and something or the other.

Today, no scientist is using the platypus to try to prove that birds are descended from mammals, or that mammals are descended from birds, but it should only make sense to make this argument if you are a Darwinist. I mean, shared features prove common descent right? Mixed features prove ancestry, right? Also, isn’t hair supposed to have preceded feathers anyway? Aren’t feathers just modified hairs? That means evolutionary theory should stop looking for dinosaurs as the transition to birds and start looking to the tiny primitive mammals that lived during the age of the dinosaurs. After all, nobody is claiming that mammals evolved from dinosaurs; there is just no fossil evidence to support this.

So to the Darwinist I say, is the Platypus a transitional species between birds and mammals or not? Do the shared features prove that birds and mammals are interrelated to the point of having split from each other at some point? And if so, doesn’t this eliminate archaeopteryx as a missing link/transitional species? And most importantly, why aren’t the Darwinists asking these questions themselves? Why do people like me have to point them out?

The simple lack of reason, the inability to see and address problems with evolution is, to me, a sign of a weak secular mind. To accept a theory without question is to take it on faith. To fail to look critically at an assertion to evaluate how true it is is gullibility. I remember being taught the classic timeline of Birdlike dinosaurs to archaeopteryx to birds in school and books all the way up to a couple years when I bought my most recent book on dinosaurs. The fact that the timeline is off according to the fossil record causes serious harm to the credibility of all who teach this false timeline. The failure to address this problem openly to a critical public shows fear, fear of reducing people’s faith in evolution.

Dismembering Evolution 6: Math

2006-05-03T08:12:00.000-08:00

Math is almost universally considered to be the one thing that take a theory and actually prove it well enough to make it a law. It is also the tool most commonly used to determine if theories are even remotely possible, probable, or incredibly likely to be true. Science loves math for these specific reasons.

Yep science loves math for these reasons, but evolution hates math for the same reasons.

Mathematically speaking, anything that has 1 out of 10 to the 50th power of probability is considered impossible. I have heard it go as low as to the 1 chance out of 10 to the 46th power, and as high as 1 chance in 10 to the 62nd power. For the sake of argument let’s use the one that grants the greatest range of possibility, 1 times 10 to the 62nd power. For those of you who are unfamiliar with scientific notation, this number is this big: 1 chance in 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000. Any chance smaller than this is impossible.

Francis Crick, an Atheist and by no means a creationist or intelligent design supporter, a Nobel laureate for his work with James Watson in discovering the DNA helix did the following lesser known work. Inspired by the incredible intricacy of DNA and the amazing complexity of a single cell he set about working out the math to determine the probability of a single cell arising by mere chance. After much work that has been rechecked by mathematicians many times, he came up with a probability of 1 chance in 10 to the 200 power. For a better visual this number is this big: 1 chance in 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000. That is the odds of a single cell coming about by mere chance. As you can see, this is far beyond the upper limits of possibility. And that number is twice as big as the biggest named number, a 1 with 100 zeroes after it, called a Google (sound familiar? Tasty tidbit: According to Google there are 24,430,000,000 web sites with the letter a in them. This obviously does not include any websites in any language that does not use the letter A, but it’s a big number, and a tiny one compared to the numbers we are using here.). It is important to mote that every 0 at the end of a number makes the new number 10 times bigger than the last one. So 10 to the 63rd power is actually 10X less likely than the upper limits of impossible at 10 to the 62nd power.

As I understand it, Crick solved his dilemma with evolution by deciding that life on Earth must have extraterrestrial origins. That Earth was “seeded” somehow by life elsewhere in the universe. While it is tempting to attack the obvious logical fallacies in this type of thinking I shall spare him the humiliation as no serious scientist is willing to step up and support the idea that life on Earth is actual alien in nature.

Fred Hoyle came up with even more unlikely results of 1 chance in 10 to the 40,000. I’m just mentioning this as a side note since Crick’s work is damning enough on it’s own without being so easily attacked as an inflated number.

Given this, it is important to note that this work inspired another evolutionist to look into the odds of a creature as complex as a human coming about from pure chance from non-life through evolution in the entire time the universe has been around. Ted Holden found that the chances of humanity evolving from non-life are 1 chance in 10 to the 167,896th power. This is such an astronomically large number that it rivals the number of particles that can be found in entire universe.

So what do Darwinists do in the face of good math damning their pet theory? They make ridiculous statements like the following: Ted's sample calculation of the odds is invalid, because it presumes a simplest-replicator many orders of magnitude larger than abiogeneticists propose, and treats individual events as independent, which no abiogeneticist proposes. In short, those odds are a straw man (Wayne Throop).

Ah, I see. So the odds of a process happening at all are meaningless because, as you can see by the life all around you, it must have happened no matter what the odds are, so quit muddying up the waters with facts. All we have to do say it' actually easier. All we have to do is say that even simpler proteins are needed than we used to say. All we have to do is say that the smallest replicators are easier to have happen and that suddenly validates the idea that all of these simple replicators actually came together, formed a more complex replicator, then formed a living cell, and then tat cell evolved into the incredible diversity of life that has covered the Earth at various times throughout history. Who cares about the odds of all this stuff actually happening, as long as we can say that the simplest self replicating molecule isn’t quite as improbable as an entire human?

Even in this series, Darwinists have repeatedly made the claim relevant data is meaningless simply because the waters can be muddied enough to allow for reinterpretation of the data. This is, in my opinion, both sloppy and dishonest. It is also remarkably common when evolution is involved (and other politicized issues like climate change), and remarkably uncommon when ideology is left out of science. Can you imagine a doctor saying that a verified case of HIV isn't really HIV because this particular strain of HIV seems to replicate at a slightly faster rate in this patient, so it MUST be a new virus. How long before this man gets tossed out of medicine for incompetence?

Further delving into the math shows that out of the known amino acids there are 10 to the 390 possible proteins that can be made. However, out of this only 2 x 10 to the12th power are usable for life. the rest is unusable gibberish in living organisms, and by the simple lack of their use in living structures, it can be reasonably assumed that the inclusion of these 10 to the 378th power proteins is fatal in life. This reasonably explains why no new phyla have emerged following any of the great extinctions. Everything that can be used to make life was already being used, all else is dross. Why does this matter? Well, if so many proteins are available, how many unusable proteins are self replicating? I would assume none, but I also know of no proteins that are viable for life that are purely self replicating, though there may be a few. But even if we assume that out of the 2 x 10 to the 12th power proteins that life uses every one is capable of self replication (they are not, but let’s just go crazy here for a second) what mechanism would attract all of these proteins together to form a living cell? There is no answer to this question to date, and since the exceedingly generous conditions I have allowed are not reality, an answer is unlikely to be forthcoming. Even so, toss in just one fatal protein, and the entire project gets dead. All replication ceases to be.

There was a conference in England some years back where a bunch of biologists and mathematicians got together to try to prove the mathematical probability of evolution. It broke down into pure bickering and has never been repeated. This happened because every model the evolutionary biologists presented, when it was calculated out, was mathematically impossible. Even on repeated rechecks, and these mathematicians were not a bunch of Creationists or intelligent designers just out to destroy evolution, the math kept showing that every scenario, every theory, every mechanism, was simply impossible. Not one part of evolution help up to the math. So what happened? The Biologists kept telling the mathematicians that they were wrong and the math was wrong because evolution happened, it's just a fact. The mathematicians did many rechecks and concluded that the math was absolutely correct and that there is no way evolution could have happened; there had to be another answer, or another mechanism. So what did the biologists do? They continued to insist the math was wrong because the existence of life proves evolution happened. Very rational and mature of them I'm sure.

This event is not very well publicized. It is not well publicized because it casts doubt on evolution, and the only other theories besides evolution that are known today are ones that involve a God or godlike being making life. Since modern science has chosen to be antithetical to religion this is an unacceptable consequence. Amazingly, in their frantic defense of evolution, the Darwinists continue to refuse to even look for other answers. Is there another answer out there that does not include God? I don’t think so. But then I don’t know everything. There may well be another answer out there, and all research into finding it is being stifled by this idiotic insistence that evolution must be correct despite the obvious errors in the theory, the hostile math, and every other problem with the theory of evolution. Science is supposed to be self correcting, but how can it correct itself when it blinds itself to correction, or even additional possibilities?

In the realm of evolution this problem is purely theological. The Atheists need something to cling to that they use to say God does not need to exist. It is the justification they need to continue in their non-belief. That’s all fine and dandy, but don’t go trying to pass it off as science. Call it what it is. Call it your religion. It already has a name. It’s called Darwinism.

I'm Baaaack

2006-04-29T09:42:00.000-08:00

I apologize for my temporary absence. My CPU was fried and I needed to replace it. I was unable to access the internet, save anything, and a myriad of othe essential tasks until the CPU was replaced. Iwill begin my normal blogging schedule again on Wednesday with the next installment of Dismembering Evolution.

Dismembering Evolution 5: Let’s Talk Species

2006-04-19T00:28:00.000-08:00

At first, I was inclined to write this article much in the same vein as the chapter on Darwin’s Finches in Icons of Evolution. Then I realized that I could have so much more fun if I broadened the spectrum.

Let us start with the basic definition of a species. A species is comprised of any population of organisms that can breed and produce fertile offspring. Okay. Good to know.

Now let us look ever so briefly at Darwin’s Finches. There are 14 different species of Darwin’s Finches listed in taxonomy, however, due the interbreedability of many of these species, if we were to apply the definition of a species we are actually left with only 6 species of finches. At best, 8 of them are merely subspecies with a particular genetic trait within the species more dominant in the local population. Interbreeding produces finches that primarily demonstrate whatever the genetically dominant trait within the species is. With the usual variation between extremes according to predictable percentages over generation. If this well mixed population were transplanted to a new area with unique condition, whatever traits that are already found within the species are best suited to the local environment will become dominant in the local population, however, it is not a genetic change that results in a new species, or could realistically be expected to produce a new species, and since the genetic material was already there it is not even a mutation, only a shift of dominance of a preexisting trait.

So, is this evolution in action? Does this qualify this population of birds as a new species?

Let us examine the second question first. I say no. Not only do I say no, I say it is sloppy science by bad scientists who are overeager to have their names attached to the discovery of a new species.

Why do I say this?

Let us look at humans. There are several races of humans all determined by dominant traits in localized populations that were largely cut off from each other for at least a few thousand years. We have Caucasians, Asians, Blacks, Latinos, and Arabs to name a majority. Since beak structure is used to determine different species among Darwin’s Finches I think it is important to examine the beak structure of humans and see if we can a\call all of these different races different species. The Caucasian nose is generally narrow and of moderate length. The Black nose is generally wide and short. The Arab nose is generally wide and long. The Asian nose is generally short and of moderate width. The Latino nose is generally in the middle of the road in all aspects, but bears a strong resemblance to the Caucasian nose. The nasal structure was selected by the heat and moisture conditions of a particular geographic location over thousands of years. So if we apply the same logic to humanity as we have to Darwin’s Finches we are forced to conclude that every one of these ethnic groups of Homo Sapiens is actually a separate species and should have separate species names. At this point we just have to decide which species are the true humans so that species can feel free to subjugate the other hominid species as les than human. I’m sure the racists will love this.

We can justify the argument that every race of human is actually a different species by noting variations in color, skin thickness, eye shape, brow shape, mouth shape, and other less obvious traits that are more dominant in one race over another. If it works for finches it works for humans, right?

No serious scientist is going to suggest that every race of humanity is actually a separate species. He would get laughed right out of his field. Given this, why is the same discipline not applied when classifying other animals?

The definition of a species presents us with a very interesting case in the canine family. Wolves, Canis Lupus, dogs, Canis Domesticus, and coyotes, Canus Latrans are accepted as different species. However, it has been shown that each of the different species is capable of breeding and producing a fertile hybrid. That means that by a strict application f the rule of species, the rule that says any population of organisms that can breed and produce fertile offspring is the species, wolves, dogs, and coyotes are actually the same species, only with certain traits more exaggerated than others in each population.

How can this be? Just look at all the variation in dogs. Through selective breeding, mankind has been able to produce a wide variety of breeds in a very short time. Had these different breeds been selected for by nature rather than man, and then been isolated long enough to create enough social distance between the breeds to cause them to be disinclined to interbreed, they would be instantly declared to be entirely different species. Even if they were not disinclined to interbreed, and they hybridized readily, the behavior of scientists in regards to Darwin’s Finches would likely have these same scientists declaring every bred of dog to be a distinct species.

So, what happens if you simply take some of every breed of dog in the world and let them interbreed for a few generations? Given enough generations of total interbreeding I would hazard to say we would get a dog that is extremely similar to a wolf, not exact mind you as some wolf traits have almost certainly been bred out of dogs in their entirety, but VERY similar.

So, what was the point of all this? The point is simply to demonstrate that scientists, in their over eagerness to try to show evolution in action are jumping ahead of the actual evidence. We have yet to see any of what could be far more appropriately be called sub-speciation result in anything that is truly a new species according to the definition of a species. We do see a great deal of change followed by a complete reversal back to the way things were in natural populations on a regular basis tough. Going back to Darwin’s finches we have studies that showed that changes in food availability result in rapid changes in the dominant beak structure in a local population, and that it reverts to the old dominant beak structure just as fast when the food availability returns to what it once was. This is not evolution despite the fact that Darwinists are saying that evolution goes both ways nowadays. When the net change over time equals zero that means there is no evolution. Going one step further, if the number of actual new species created by this cycle is zero then there is no evolution.

The quickest way to try to show speciation in by forcing “natural” selection on bacterial cultures under controlled conditions. So far all that has been shown is that some minor alteration is gene dominance are created, only to have everything revert to normal almost as soon as the original conditions are restored. This is not the creation of a new species through natural selection, nor is it the creation through altering the dominance of alleles in a population. It is not evolution in any way because it fails to produce a new species. It can be theorized that given enough time it might possibly produce a new species, but this flies in the face of current explanations regarding the Cambrian Explosion and what has been called “Instant Evolution” in some circles, or more commonly, the theory that states that evolution need not be gradual, but can make sudden massive leaps without transition. This unfounded theory is nothing more than an attempt to cover the lack of transitional species in the fossil record, and it is readily accepted by many Darwinists. More on this to come in a future article.

The point of this article is simply to point out some of the scientifically bad decisions that have been made regarding the search for evidence in favor of evolution, and some of the simple contradictions science has caused for itself by this correctable mistake that is being left uncorrected. It is ridiculous just as ridiculous to say that there are 14 different species of Darwin’s Finches as it is to say that every race of human is actually a different species. Dogs, wolves, and coyotes might be more appropriately called the same species but different subspecies (this bit of taxonomy predates evolution and has nothing to do with the Darwinists). In truth, either the definition of a species must be drastically changed, or our entire taxonomic classification system needs to be reworked. No matter which it is that finally occurs, it will not change the fact that we have yet to see any net change in existing species under any natural circumstances, and we have not been able to produce any net change in the lab that survives a return to natural condition or has resulted in any new species. Darwinists point to this evidence and see evolution. I look at it and see no net change, and therefore, no evidence for evolution.

Good News!

2006-04-15T15:44:00.000-08:00

I have just one thing to say right now.

My wife is pregnant.

It took 5 years, 3 rounds of invitro, and $30,000, but we are finally going to have children of our own. Yes, you heard right, children. Early tests indicate that she is carrying twins or more.

I couldn't happier.

We have it rough on the child front. first finding out that we could not have children naturally. Then a failed round of invitro, then a miraculous pregnancy that turned out to be ectopic anyway, then a round of invitro that suceeded at first, but not really. It was just a chemical pregnancy and we lost the baby. Now, finally, a confirmed pregnancy with 2 or more babies. we transferred 3 embryos, and one looked like it might twin, so we have 2-4 coming. We are going from childless to a full house in 9 months! It's gonna be great!

Yes, I know it will also be expensive and sleepless, but it will be worth it.

Dissappointment

2006-04-13T09:03:00.000-08:00

It turns out I must wait until the next election to run for governor of Alaska. The Division of Election sdid not catch this, but a review of the Alaska State Constitution reveled that any resident must be a resident for at least 7 years before being eligible to serve as Governore. I have been in Alaska half that time.

I have folded my campaign, not too big a chore since it was only just getting started, and filed my contacts for next time. I'm not sure which position I shall run for next. In the next three years there is a Congressional seat, Senate seat, Mayoral elction, and another Governor's election. All positions I have mention are state, not national seats. Which one I go for is to be determined enitirely by who is erving where at the time. At this time I am inclined to go for Mayor, but everything else is still an option.

The supporters I had already drummed up were dissappointed, maybe even more dissappointed than I am. There is so much to do, so mych good to do for the state. I will try again later.

Dismembering Evolution 4: Embryonic Proof

2006-04-11T23:36:00.000-08:00

The time has come to leave the realm of theory and speculation for awhile and dig into the so-called “proof” that evolution is true. I have asserted all along that much of the “proof” of evolution is simply wrong for one reason or another. I shall start pointing them out.

Perhaps the most familiar proof of evolution lies in the realm of embryology. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this term, embryology is the study of embryos. Evolution does, and has always maintained that proof of common ancestry in all vertebrates is found in the very earliest stages of development. The original claim, and the claim that is still most commonly found in school textbooks is that if you compare any two vertebrate embryos at the earliest stages of development they will be very similar and grow steadily less similar as they develop. This sounds fine and well, but is it true?

To look at the drawings we are all familiar with, a drawn picture known a Haeckel’s Embryos, this assertion seem to be true. But is it?

No. Haeckel’s Embryos are pure scientific fraud.

Allow me explain.

First and foremost it must be noted that the so-called first stage of development as it is presented in this drawing is, in fact, NOT the first stage of development for any of the creatures represented in the drawing. The first stage, obviously, is the fertilized egg, which typically bears a relatively strong resemblance among all species since it is merely a different sized egg combined with a single sperm. However, once the fertilized eggs begin to develop they immediately diverge in appearance. The first phase is called cleavage. Comparing the five classes of vertebrates that Haeckel used (There are seven classes of vertebrates, but the last two, jawless fish and cartilaginous fish were so divergent in embryonic development that he did not include them in his drawings.) there is almost no resemblance between them at this stage. The same is true at the end of cleavage when the appearance of the embryos is even more divergent, and also at the stage Gastrulation when even an amateur embryologist can see that the embryos are not from similar species at all. Only after all of this do we get to what Haeckel called “the first stage of development”.

But surely, they embryos must resemble each other at this stage, right? Wrong!

Haeckel faked his drawings. He exaggerated similarities and minimized differences between the embryos to create “proof” that embryology supported Darwin’s theory of evolution when, in fact, the opposite is true. A comparison of Haeckel’s drawings to photographs taken of these creatures at this stage of development shows that while there are some minor similarities, there a re enormous differences as well that cause none of the embryos to resemble each other very strongly at all. Consider the ribbed tadpole appearance presented in the famous drawings that supposedly represents every animal depicted. Now picture the following: A fish at this stage of development looks like an earthworm wrapped around a giant egg yolk. A frog at this stage looks like a butterfly pupae. A reptile actually does resemble a tadpole if you stretch your imagination enough. A bird most closely resembles . . . well, for lack of a good comparison in real life I am forced to resort to Hollywood, it looks like the embryonic form of the creature in the movie “Alien” more than anything else I can think of. A human embryo at this stage looks like . . . well, I really can’t think of any good comparisons. To see a fine comparison of these differences reference figures 5-1 p 83, 5-2 p93, and 5-3 p 95 of Icons of evolution.

This brings up another point. We have actual photographs of embryonic development, nice new ones in full color or grayscale, whatever floats your boat. Why are we using 130 year-old drawings in the first place? Oh yeah, because the photos will not match the text of any textbook claiming that embryos of the different classes of vertebrates bear a strong resemblance to each other.

Surely this is not right. Surely this is just an oversight on the part of the textbook writers, right? Wrong again!

While some textbook writers really are unaware of the developments in embryology, after all, nobody can be expected to know EVERYTHING in any given field of study, there is just too much information, others have willfully, have knowingly misrepresented the facts. Take renowned biologist and renowned Darwinist/evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould for example, the man who is famous for his bulldoggish defense of evolution in the face of theological ignorance. (Sarcasm here folks) He knew since at least 1977 that “Haeckel had exaggerated the similarities by idealizations and omissions. He also, in some cases – in a procedure that can only be called fraudulent - simply copied the same figure over and over again.” Natural History Magazine, March 2000. Well, that is refreshing honesty from someone in the academic community. Furthermore, he has acknowledged that the scientific community has known about this fraud for over 100 years, and has allowed it to continue, himself among them.

Yes, you read that right. Scientists have known about this fraud from the very beginning. Haeckel was a known huckster in the scientific community, and accusations of fraud plagued his career, not just in embryology, but many other aspects of biology as well. Yet, for some reason this shyster’s drawings are still used to “prove” evolutionary theory to this day.

100 years folks. Not quite the amount of time Ptolemy’s calculations and drawings of the geocentric universe were accepted as the truth, but long enough to be corrected if conscientious scientists cared to conduct honest science and advance real research. This is especially true when you consider that we have made more scientific advances in the last 100 years than in the previous 10,000 combined. Indeed, this massive scientific cover-up has set the field of embryology back almost 100 years. And people say evolution is a necessary foundational theory of science. In embryology, at least, it has been a setback, not a benefit.

Thre IS good news for Darwinists. The array of species on this planet is so vast that if you cherry pick enough you can produce a set of 5 embryos, one from each of the vertebrate classes represented in the original drawings Haeckel conjured up, that do bear a strong enough resemblance to each other that you can use them to try to prove that embryology supports evolution. All you have to do is ignore every other species on the face of the planet and the first four stages of development on you will be golden.

I have been harping a bit on the subject of EARLIEST stages of development in this article, and there is a reason for it. A part of Darwin’s theory of evolution that has not seen much if any change is the following: He claimed that all vertebrate embryos resemble each other most closely at the earliest stages of development. The fact is that they are wildly divergent at the earliest stages of development, grow to some slight, though not very good resemblance, and then diverge again. Once again, the theory of evolution is just plain wrong.

The Racist in Congress

2006-04-10T09:39:00.000-08:00

The time has come to write about Cynthia McKinney.

I have been holding off on blogging about her for one reason. I wanted to see just how far she and her allies would go in this fiasco before I said anything about it. Put simply, I wanted to see just how badly she would hang herself. She did not disappoint me.

There are several overriding factors in this woman’s behavior. First and foremost is an unhealthy amount of pride and arrogance. Second is her own apparent racism. Third is the apparent racism of the staffers she chooses to surround herself with.

The proof of pride and arrogance starts with the incident itself. She refused to obey the rules of her own workplace and wear the proper identification. By her own words she expected, nay, demanded that all of the capitol cops who guarded her building recognize her by face. When one cop who did not recognize her by face asked her to stop and show her ID she ignored him. Then, when he did his job and stopped her she turned around and slugged him.

I will elaborate more on this momentarily. Point two is so inextricably linked to point one they must both be addressed at once

Her apparent racism is made obvious in her own comments after the incident. She instinctively brought up charges of racism against a cop who was just doing his job, the job of ensuring that people like her can go to work every day without fear of getting blown up, shot, or stabbed. She utterly ignored the fact that she had violated safety rules that she may well have had a part in making, and that she had no problem with as long they only applied to people other than herself.

Even her so-called apology was empty. She took no responsibility for punching a cop for no good reason. She only stated that she regretted the incident ever happened. Oh, I’m sure she does. It has exposed her as unfit to serve in the Congress. It is unlikely that she will be elected ever again.

Okay, let’s examine this, shall we?

Cynthia McKinney is a product of the civil rights movement, but it seems that she has ignored the good lessons and adopted every possible error one could derive from it. She still believes that white on black racism is rampant throughout America. Not true at all. It is still rampant in some specific communities, usually the occasional small town where the KKK still holds influence, but it is not a national epidemic. Her demand that she be known and admitted to the capitol by face recognition is an obvious indicator of insecurity, ego, and racist fears. It shows that she still believes that white people think all black people look alike, and she desperately wants to be the special one that mean ol’ whitey knows by her looks. Her own racism is apparent in the simple fact that she instinctively brought up racist charges against a cop who was just doing his job. I know I said this once already, but it bears repeating. It bears repeating because Cynthia McKinney is not the only person in the black community to do this.

Let’s examine her allies and staff now shall we? Al Sharpton, one of the biggest racists in America, a man whose words betray a deep hatred for white people immediately jumped on the Cynthia McKinney bandwagon when she leveled charges of racism against this cop. This man is every sensible people don’t want to be. He is a racist demagogue who has made a large fortune by feeding and playing off of the fears of the black community, constantly telling them that whitey is out to get them. He works hard to develop a mindset in black people of being entitled to special pay and privileges from the government for the sins of slavery that over 600,000 Americans died to stop.

Her staff is an interesting crew as well. I listened to a story on national radio about a man who called Cynthia McKinney’s office to try to persuade her to stop misbehaving towards this cop. The woman who answered the phone was quite rude, she kept cutting him off with snide remarks, the most telling of which was the following exchange: Caller – You can’t honestly expect every cop there to recognize every person in Congress by the way they look. Staffer – Oh, so we all look alike, is that it? And then she hung up on him. This arrogant, racist Congresswoman has surrounded herself with equally arrogant, racist toadies who most certainly feed her racism and arrogance. The man who told the story did not have any accent in particular, and he spoke normal English, so there was no way to tell his race over the phone. This staffer just assumed that he must be white and accused him of racism for trying to talk some sense into this whole mess. One is left to assume that if sounded black to this staffer she would not have been so rude, or maybe she would have simply accused him of being an Uncle Tom instead. That’s a common tactic black racists use against other black people who do not agree with them.

If this were an isolated incident it would be more amusing than disturbing. The silly Congresswoman who is entirely too full of herself and has managed to doom her own political prospects. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

I have spoken to several businessmen in several states who have expressed concerns about hiring Black people for the following reason: they are afraid that if a black employee violates company policy/mistreats a customer/is a slacker/etc that they will be unable to fire this person without getting sued and accused of firing the employee for racial rather than performance reasons. Every one f these businessmen has a story to tell about someone they know who had exactly that happen to them, and they talk about how expensive it is to fight such a frivolous lawsuit while the fired employee has a pro-bono civil rights attorney working for him.

Other situations are like the following story about a Colorado school district.

There is a woman working in the district administrative office who is lazy, does her job poorly when she bothers to do it at all, and who intimidates the other employees. By all rights this woman should have been fired long ago, but she has been retained. Why you ask? Whenever a supervisor or manager speaks to her about these problems she immediately accuses them of picking on her because she is black, gets extremely upset, and makes veiled threats about legal action being taken against the school. The end result is that all of the other staffers are working in a hostile environment created by this woman, many of them are afraid to even talk to her, and that other people must do her job for her while she spends her day malingering and drawing a paycheck.

Interestingly enough, it is not white people who are the victims of this attitude, this behavior so much as it is black people who are the victims. This utter lunacy intimidates employers from the outset and is costing black people jobs. This loss of employability caused by this behavior serves to keep the entire black community down.

It didn’t used to be this way. It used to be that Black people were among the most industrious, desirable employees one could hope for. The only thing stopping black people from moving up in the world was racial hatred. Now, thanks to the people like Cynthia McKinney who have a warped sense of entitlement and racial outrage thanks to people like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and Louis Farrakhan who are creating a new stereotype of the angry black racist Black employability has dropped somewhat. These people are doing a massive disservice to the vast majority of sane, hard working folks in the black community. Their constant loud outrage, their rhetoric about how black people are being persecuted, their admonitions to sue if they get fired or sometimes just plain not hired are serving to create a national environment of intimidation that does nobody any good.

The good news is the large number of black people who reject this whole situation entirely and are simply living out their everyday lives the way everyone else does. No sense of unearned entitlement. No racial outrage simmering just under the surface at all times. No desire to sue people for their own errors. None of the bad things demonstrated by Cynthia McKinney and her ilk. This is a growing majority, and it will be a great day in America when the Cynthia McKinneys of the world are silenced by a black majority that demands better of its people.

A Fascinating Development on the Campaign Front

2006-04-06T19:45:00.000-08:00

This is important, so the next Chapter of The Journey will be put up Saturday instead of Friday.

Something happened today that I never dreamed would happen in a million years, and it has to do with the very first person who volunteered to work on my campaign for Governor of Alaska. This is going to shock the heck out of my regular readers.

I had a man volunteer to act my campaign treasurer. I will withhold his name in this post because I do not know if he would want it plastered on the internet for all to see. It’s not the fact that he volunteered that is so fascinating, it his background and who he is that is truly ironic for me.

He is a 24 year survivor of aids who is a homosexual and a Jehovah’s Witness.

When we were talking about his desire to volunteer and he revealed this I thought it was vital to inform him that I did not approve of the homosexual lifestyle and asked if that would be a problem for him. His answer amazed me.

He said, and this is condensed paraphrase, “I believe that people can be born gay, but the Bible says we should not act on it. I have not lived like a gay man since I caught AIDS. My Church, the Jehovah’s Witnesses are very critical of Homosexuality, so your disapproval doesn’t bother me.” He went on to explain that he caught AIDS as a result of an accidental needle stick back in the mid-80’s when he was working as an EMT, told about his volunteerism in the local AIDS support center, and so-on.

Now, some of my regular readers are certainly expecting to hear that I turned his offer to volunteer down outright. I did not. I accepted his offer.

How can I do this after I have been so critical of homosexuality you ask? Simple; and it is something I have been saying all along. Believing that an action is wrong does not equate to hatred or devaluing of persons. He has some bookkeeping background. He wants to work for me as a volunteer. He knows where I stand on Homosexuality and it has not deterred him. Why would I not accept his offer?

The best part is that this is my first chance to learn about the AIDS epidemic from someone who has been affected by it. Most of us never meet someone we know for a fact has AIDS. This man is able to give me information from the inside about the problems and concerns facing the portion of the population that is suffering from AIDS. As someone who wants to be President one day this understanding is vital to helping shape a policy that may one day help to wipe AIDS off the face of the planet.

All of this is a bit mind-blowing to me. But in all honesty, I am kind of glad that I have the opportunity to work with somebody like this man. I can learn so much. On top of that, this situation was an in my face test of my character. When faced with such a man as this would I behave the way I have been saying people would behave, or would I turn as harsh towards the man as I am to the action.

By the grace of God I have done the right thing, and I am pleased.

Delayed

2006-04-04T23:42:00.000-08:00

This week's edition of Dismembering Evolution has been pushed back to next week due to me spreading myself too thin this week to have time to finish writing it.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Burn Baby Burn!

2006-04-04T08:09:00.000-08:00

Zacharias Moussaui is eligible to receive the only worldly justice that fits his crimes. The jury has decided he is eligible for the death penalty.

Considering that his actions enabled the worst mass murder in American history to be carried out I have decided to propose some alternative means of executing him that are more suited to man of his distinction than mere lethal injection. I also suggest that all of the following be televised live on pay-per-view.

Be aware that this is not a serious post, and that everything I am going to suggest violates our Constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

1: Burn him at the stake. (Hey, how many people were burned to death in the twin towers?)

2: Lock him a sealed room filled with 1,000 starving rats.

3: Saw his head off with a butter knife.

4: Seal off a minefield and force him to traverse it until he finally blows himself up. Take bets on how long he lasts.

5: Toss him a pool filled with hungry piranha.

6: Cut him to pieces on body part at a time, starting with the removal of body parts that won’t kill him, like the eyes, nose, ears, fingers, and toes. Be sure to cauterize them with a red hot iron to keep him from bleeding to death.

8: Have him drawn and quartered.

9: Put him in a pit and let everyone who lost a loved a loved one on 9/11 to throw a rock at him.

10: Tie him to the spokes of a large wheel. Sink the lower 1/3 of that wheel in water. Spin it until he gets so worn out he drowns.

11: Tie him to the bumper of a car and drag him.

12: Keelhaul him . . . twice.

13: Tie him up and give him lashes with a bullwhip until he dies.

14: Skin him alive.

14: Back on whips, we could flay him to death with a cat o nine tails.
15: Force him to drink Draino.

16: Sew his eyes open, tie him to a rack, and lay him out in the Arizona sun until he is dead. Leave him there. Do not bury him. The animals will dispose of his corpse.

17: Give him a full blood transfusion using pig’s blood. (Pig blood contamination is supposed to prevent a Muslim from entering paradise.)

18: Come to think of it, inject him with pig’s blood no matter how we kill him.

19: Also, when he is dead, cremate his body. This is another Muslim taboo that supposedly messes with eternity.

20: This does not matter for Mousaui, but we could take so much of the fight out of the insurgents in Iraq if we just started coating our bullets with pig’s blood. It would steal the will to fight from the martyr wannabes because getting shot with one of those bullets would, according to their beliefs, stop them from entering paradise and getting their 72 virgins.

Well, that felt good.

Dismembering Evolution 3: Origins

2006-03-29T00:00:00.000-09:00

“There are only two possibilities as to how life arose. One is spontaneous generation arising to evolution; the other is a supernatural creative act of God. There is no third possibility. Spontaneous generation, that life arose from non-living matter was scientifically disproved 120 years ago by Louis Pasteur and others. That leaves us with the only possible conclusion that life arose as a supernatural creative act of God. I will not accept that philosophically because I do not want to believe in God. Therefore, I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible; spontaneous generation arising to evolution"

George Wald, 1954. The Origin of Life. Scientific American August: 44-53.

“When you eliminate the impossible whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

Sherlock Holmes

One of the nasty sticking points for evolution has been how life has come about from non-life. To date, despite millions of dollars spent on research into the origins of life, no answer has yet been found.

It is an acknowledged fact that in order for evolution to even have a chance to start life must already be around. It is also an acknowledged fact that “the spark of life” remains an utter mystery to the scientific community. It is also somewhat acknowledged, at least among scientists who are being intellectually honest with themselves, that to remove the divine from the process of life, you must make the conscious decision to believe in a theory that has been disproved again and again, a theory that actually has its roots in religion, from a time before science was very well developed, the theory of spontaneous generation.

Yes, there are experiments that have shown the under certain conditions the simplest amino acids can be formed by random chance. However, there has been no evidence found, in the lab or in nature, that these simple amino acids manage to randomly find each other, and then bond to each other in the appropriately complex molecules that consist the most basic blocks of life, ad then after all of this has been done, spontaneously start working in such a way as to be “living”. There are also some serious flaws in the experiments that I know of that have shown that amino acids can form randomly in nature.

I am talking, of course, about the famous Miller-Urey experiment. This experiment, and the repetitions of it have demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that given a strongly reducing environment of hydrogen, methane, ammonia, and water vapor, combined with electricity can randomly produce some simple amino acids. This experiment relies on an oxygen poor environment in order for it to be anything like proof of the possibility of random chance producing just the right random assortment of amino acids to create the protein building blocks of life. While the dominant theory of the Earth’s primitive atmosphere was one that consisted almost entirely of the aforementioned components this experiment could have been considered said proof.

One problem; that was not the Earth’s primitive atmosphere.

Geological studies of sedimentary rock going back before the accepted origin of life demonstrates an atmosphere less like the one used in the Miller-Urey experiment, and more like the one we have today.

Wait a minute. Let me get this straight. Recent geological evidence is showing a popular theory that produced a Nobel Prize winning experiment to be, shall we say, less than accurate? It would seem so.

Let us assume for a moment that the amino acids that were produced in the experiment predate not just life, but also the oxygen rich atmosphere. That would mean that the amino acids would have to be stable enough to remain intact in large enough numbers to find each other, combine, and make life millions of years after they were first formed. For many molecules this is a reasonable model, but not for the amino acids produced in the experiment. The amino acids produced in the Miller-Urey experiment break down very rapidly in an oxidizing environment, which geology has shown existed long before any life we have yet discovered ever appeared on this world.

This is a very brief synopsis of a subject that has filled far more space than I can reasonably take here. Hopefully, I have presented enough to give a clear picture of a simple scientific truth. That truth is that this thing that we have been taught as proof of evolution, as proof of an evolutionary source of life, is simply not true.

Given the importance of this information you might think that school textbooks would be updated with it in order to ensure the most accurate education possible. However, as of 2003 the college textbook I used on my oceanography class was still using the disproved model of the Earth’s primitive atmosphere, and teaching it as fact before going into the Miller-Urey experiment, as well an experiment by Linus Pauling that was along similar lines. I consider this to be a disgusting bit of miseducation. How can a responsible, respected scientist write a textbook that was deceitful about such an important piece of geologic history? There are only two ways. The first, and most common, is ignorance. There is so much to keep up with in any scientific field that it can be difficult, even for insiders, to keep up with it all. The second, and much more disturbing, is willful deception.

Still, all of this is not enough. It is not enough because the whole discussion becomes moot in the absence of matter and energy. The bigger question becomes; where did the matter come form anyway?

The most popular scientific theory is the Big Bang. In my last post I have allowed for the Big Bang to be true. Therefore, let’s assume the Big Bang is true. Let’s assume that all of the matter in the universe was once contained in an infinitely dense quantum anomaly that exploded, spewing forth matter and energy that ultimately formed the universe we know today.

Some call this science. I call it a description of a Creation event.

Why?

Ask yourself this. Where did the quantum anomaly come from in the first place?

The fact is that science has shown all matter and energy, including the quanta that comprise it, cannot be created or destroyed. It must exist in this universe in an eternal state. It will never go away, and no new matter will ever be made. Okay . . . then where did the Big Bang come from?

Here is where I am going to really annoy some people and use what they will call a “God in the gaps” argument. However, since we have already established that the creation of matter violates the laws of nature the only logical answer remains that something more powerful than the universe, something that is eternal, self sustaining, and incredibly powerful must have created said matter in order for the Big bang to have occurred. Going one step further, for the law of entropy to be violated to create the complexity of life out of the simplicity of non-life, there must also be something that does not need to obey entropy. I will avoid talking in depth about the spark of life, not because I think science will ever find the answer, but because it will prove to be too much God for some people to handle.

There are theories about matter being rifted in from other dimensions, and that is how we got the matter for the Big Bang. It does not solve the origins of the matter in the other dimension. There was even a big deal when one physicist suggested that maybe we CAN getter matter from absolute nothingness. This made a splash for a short time before being dismissed as ridiculous.

The simple fact is that for all of this to have started the known laws of nature must be violated.

Even if I were to grant some measure of truth to evolution, the spark of life is a creation event that is outside the realm of possibility in nature. The electrochemical reaction that make even the simplest of cells work cannot start on their own. If they did then we should have observed, at some point, a dead bacterium jump starting itself in the presence of the nutrients it needs to conduct life processes. An experiment where bacteria were starved to death, then bathed in food should have produced at least one bacterium restored to life. It should be easy if it were possible, even a small culture contains millions of bacteria. A few years of attempts should produce at least one bacteria restored to life.

It has never happened because it is not possible. It has never been funded because the scientific knows the experiment is both futile and ludicrous.

Such an experiment will fail in the presence of electricity to jump start the cells too. It is an impossible endeavor.

Anyone care to try it?

WTF?

2006-03-27T08:53:00.000-09:00

From the news:

China is now using body parts from executed prisoners to make cosmetics!

Lets take a moment to ignore the obvious potential health issues involved with applying redered human body fluids to your face and look at a bigger issue.

THIS IS A COMMIE MONSTROSITY!

The very idea of killing people for cosmetics (yes, I know they were executed as criminals, but don't think for a second that this wont increase the number of executions) is probably the worst human rights atrocity in the world today. There isn't even an ideology driving this crap! It's all about money! This is worse than slavery. At least slaves are valued for their lives, this degrades humanity to a whole new level.

I have already filled in my family on this issue and we are all boycotting Chinese, and non-Chinese owned but made in China cosmetics for life. Well, the women are, men in my family aren't fancy enough to wear makeup. I encourage you all to do the same. The unfortunate thing is that so much of everything is made in China that it may not be possible to boycott everything Chinese, but I intend to try damnit!

An Abortion Quickie

2006-03-24T18:43:00.000-09:00

One of the most common arguments hear from supporters of abortion is that there is no such medical procedure as "partial birth abortion".

Well, then you won't mind if we ban them, will you?

Dismembering Evolution 2: Billions of Years of History

2006-03-22T07:31:00.000-09:00

One of the things at the core of the debate between evolution and religious creationism is the very obvious geologic history of the world, nay, the universe that makes the idea of a six day creation look absolutely ludicrous.

Let’s examine this a bit, shall we?

On the one hand, we have a universe that displays all the signs of being something along the lines 15-20 billion years old, and an Earth that is about 4 billion years old. This is all detectable through various means of radiology and thermography as well as other forms of detection and mathematical extrapolation. For the sake of this series I will consider math to be a most reliable source of data. Score one for evolution. If the universe and the Earth are so incredibly old then the Biblical idea of a six day creation culminating in the creation of man must be ludicrous. The argument ends there.

That is, of course, unless there are alternatives.

The typical creationist argument is that all was created at a point of age. There is no mention of Adam being born, but rather made as a mature adult. If this is the case then an all-powerful God could most certainly create a universe that appears to be about 16 billion ears old, and a world that appears to be about 4 billion years old, and could have even placed the fossils in the rocks just for us to discover and wonder at. While this is possible, as a Christian I find it to be somewhat perverse, but only because I find it hard to believe that God would willfully create a world, a universe that is deceptive enough to fool people into disbelief in Him. That would be such a cruel joke. Score two for evolution.

Enter Einstein.

We are all familiar with Einstein’s general theory of relativity, and many of are also familiar with his special theory of relativity. At this point it is important to note that these theories have been so well proven that they are now considered to be scientific laws, now referred to as the laws of relativity, just as Newton’s laws of physics are natural laws. Relativity is considered proven beyond reasonable dispute. You gotta love physics, it is the one branch of science that works so intimately with math that it produces laws rather than and endless parade of theories with no laws in sight.

Part of the law of relativity states that time is itself, a relative thing, shaped by mass and speed. Every grade school science class that teaches astronomy uses this fact to give a demonstration of how increased speed slows the passage of time for the object in motion. The law of relativity shows that if one can achieve light speed that time will effectively stand still for the object in motion at said speed.

So how does any of this matter to the age of the age of the universe?

The Big Bang, the most accepted theory for the origin of the universe states that all of the matter and energy in the universe was contained in an infinitely dense quantum anomaly that basically exploded, spewing forth all of the matter and energy in the universe. The origin of this anomaly notwithstanding, I can accept this as a legitimate theory as demonstrated by the data we have available. Score three for evolution.

But does evolution really have a 3-0 score versus creation right now?

I’ll be the first to say that creationists such as myself are prone to producing easy theological answers to every question regardless of the scientific evidence. After all, with an all powerful God, nothing is beyond the realm of possibility. But I, for one, have always held firm to the belief that God created all things within the constructs of the natural laws He created. I have said since the age of fourteen that God created the universe, created this world within a construct of natural laws that we could understand, and with that understanding marvel at His creation.

So how does all of this mesh?

The law of relativity shows us that the billions of years between the big bang, AKA the creation of the universe, and the rise of man, and the six day creation are actually one and the same.

Huh?

As I mentioned earlier, time is distorted by mass and speed. At the very moment of the big bang all of the matter (mass) in the universe was still very close together, and moving very fast, starting at near the speed of light, and eventually slowing down, not to mention spreading out, to the speed and dimensions of the universe today. Basically proving, according to proven natural law, that the flow of time has NOT been constant throughout all of history. Indeed, time as we perceive it now progressed at a MUCH slower rate early on in the age of the universe than it does now.

Using the data we have regarding the current state of the universe and the widely accepted change in density, speed, and temperature of the universe over the around 16 billion years it has been around the law of relativity shows us something that is most fascinating.

One the first day God said “let there be light”. This first day can be shown to be the big bang event itself. Te law of relativity shows us that this first day took approximately 8 billion years in the current flow of time as we perceive it today. Note that day one equals 8 billion years in the literal sense. The one day and about 8 billion years are BOTH true.

On day 2 God separated the “firmament” from the “waters”. It is during this approximately 4 billion year period that the galaxies began to form, stars condensed, burned, exploded, recondensed, and at some point the Sun formed. It is quite probable that some stars formed prior to the aggregation of galaxies, and the resulting supernovae were critical in shaping the universe as we know it today. Mathematics and physics show us, through the law of relativity, that this 4 billion years took 1 day in the current flow of time as we perceive it today.

On the third day God separated the waters from land (continents and oceans) and life appeared first in the oceans, then on dry land. This one day encompasses some 2 billion years, during which time life did indeed first appear in the oceans as is proven by the fossil record, the later appeared, initially in plant form on the land. Once again, proven by the fossil record. Notice that time is slowing down exponentially and this approximately 2 billion years took one day in the modern flow of time.

At this point things seem to get a little confusing because the development of everything seems to take a colossal step backwards when God “places the sun and the moon and the stars in the heavens”. However, geology has shown us that Earth’s primitive atmosphere was once far more dense than it is today. Indeed, it was dense enough that the source of light may have been indistinguishable, leaving only the greater, and the lesser lights without visible form or substance in the sky above the Earth. It is during this day, this billion or so years where the atmosphere thinned out enough to become transparent, finally allowing the life the Earth contained to see the individual sun, moon, and stars for what they truly are. No longer was the sky simply “the greater and the lesser lights”. So, day four and around a billion or so years, once again, as proven by relativity, are one and the same.

Day five of the Bible saw the appearance of an explosion of aquatic animal life. Interestingly enough, this is also shown by the fossil record as more complex aquatic creatures appeared close to a billion years ago where before there had been primarily algae and bacteria. Also on this day winged animals and reptiles first appeared. Now when people think about winged animals the generally think birds, but according to the geological record the first winged animals were actually insects. This one day lasted about half a billion years in the current flow of time.

We finally arrive at day six, which saw all of the rest of the animal kingdom explode into its massive variety (specification), and finish up with the development of man. This 250 million year period of time encompasses the entire reign of the dinosaurs, their eventual extinction, the rise of mammals, and, finally the rise of man. All of this is recorded as day six in the Bible, and, oddly enough, the two varying times have been shown by the law of relativity to be one and the same.

This is only a very brief overview of a more complex set of equations that have been proven to be mathematically sound. For a more in depth study I recommend reading Genesis and the Big Bang, and also The Science of God, both by Gerald Schroeder.

The most interesting thing about this situation is not that it is mathematically correct according to the accepted laws of physics, but rather the reaction of people who are opposed to the idea of creation. It didn’t take long after this information was published for people to start modifying the age of the universe. By simply saying that the universe is actually closer to the high end of the estimated age rather then the age range this theory encompasses people have been able to say that none of what I have just put forth is valid because it presupposes a universe that probably isn’t really young enough to fit this model. Note that the data itself has not changed in any significant way, only the way that certain people choose to interpret it. By reinterpreting existing info to mean something other than what is has been accepted to mean a person can alter any situation just enough to favor one theory over another. For the purposes of this argument I am going to stick by the classically, and still generally, though not universally accepted view the universe is somewhere in the range of 15-20 billion years old. This range, while huge, is a reasonable range due to the fact that despite our best detection efforts we can still only extrapolate the approximate age of the universe without actually pining it down. It also factors in the uncertainty inherent in measuring such vast expanses of time.

What I have just put forth here is an Intelligent Design argument. While I am no supporter of ID over Creation, it is the scientific and intellectual efforts of ID advocates who actually providing most of the science that shows how God created everything within the laws of nature as we have been able to determine them. It is fascinating and compelling information. Bear in mind though, that not all ID advocates are religious at all, while not all Evolution advocates are Atheists. ID has managed to get caught n the middle of two ideological sides of a debate, the stridently Creationist, and the stridently Darwinist. Two groups of people who are willing to back their own pet theories on the origins of life, the universe, and everything no matter what scientific evidence may be brought up to show that the truth may be slightly different than the understanding these people have.

I rather like this part of the intelligent design argument because it presents the full merger of what we can measure through science, and the full measure of Biblical teaching, and it shows how the two are one and the same. Here, at least, we have a glimpse of a truth that does not require science and religion to be antagonists the way they have been since evolution was first proposed by Darwin, indeed, on many other topics for far longer prior to evolution. It shows what I have been saying for years, that God created all that is within a construct that we can understand through science is true. Why have I been saying this for years, even before I ever found such scientific evidence to back this claim? It’s simple. I love science almost as much as I love God. Both provide the answers to parts of life, and I have simply never been able to tell myself that one could possibly invalidate the other. This, as you may have guessed, is what first motivated to look into the subject of evolution. I have heard so many ideological arguments from people stating that evolution removes the need for a Creator God, and so religion is a pointless fairytale because we have a natural answer for life that it caused me to question whether evolution was truly science, or theology.

More on every aspect to come in later installments.

Impeachment

2006-03-21T08:02:00.000-09:00

The hypocrisy of the American left is once again raising itself up for all to see, and of course, there is a disturbing amount of support for it.

I am talking, of course, about the ever more frequently voiced desire of the Democrats to impeach President Bush for listening in on phone calls that foreign terrorists have made to persons within the US, all done without warrants. While this might be considered a crime if the actual targets were Americans and not foreign enemies of the US who are bent on killing us all this view might have a leg to stand on, but considering what the program actually it is nothing more than the mad rantings of power hungry people who are bitter over the loss of the control they once had over the Union.

But why do I call it hypocrisy?

When Bill Clinton obstructed justice and committed perjury it was many of these same people who were making excuses for him and were calling the Republican effort to impeach him nothing but a bunch of grandstanding designed to make the President look bad. Well, Clinton sure didn’t need the Republicans to do that for him, he did it quite well himself. His was the most scandal-ridden presidency in a long time, if not of all time. Put simply, the Democrats readily supported a man who was a known criminal, as well as a man who allegedly committed fraud and rape. A man who was a known philanderer. A man who used the IRS to intimidate his opponents. A man who did so more, so much worse than authorizing a wiretapping program that targets foreign terrorists in an effort to keep them from killing us here at home.

The truly stupid thing is that if President Bush had never authorized this wiretapping program, and the terrorists successfully attacked us and killed a bunch of people again the way they did on 9/11, these same Democrats would be screaming that the President is incompetent because he did not go far enough to protect the American people, and he needs to be impeached for it. Don’t bother denying this point. Anyone with even the most passing knowledge of politics knows this is true.

So I see a horde of liberals frothing at the mouth looking for any excuse to try to destroy a remarkably successful, though overly secretive President. It seems like the ones in the know are terrified that President Bush will get credit for the good things he has done rather than a Democrat who follows after him. What’s worse (for them) is the possibility that if they don’t do everything in their power to make America tired of Republican leadership then the republicans will get credit for all the good things that have been done instead of the Democrats. They are, of course, only too happy to credit Republicans with anything bad they can think of. If the President and the Republican party in general are allowed to stay be in power when we pull out of Iraq, when people realize that the economy is incredibly good, when people realize that education really is improving, when people notice that women and minorities are succeeding in steadily greater numbers, then the Democrats stand to lose power for the next 50 years. This is the one thing that terrifies them more than anything else because they want to control the country. This is partisanship at it purest, it is why I was a registered independent with absolutely NO party affiliation until 2001 when I became a Republican so I could effectively oppose the Democrats and actually stand a chance of making a difference politically. This is what happens when a political party becomes more concerned with power than with taking care of the nation.

This hypocritical, power-mad behavior will doom the Democrats if it continues. Their lack of rational responses to some very legitimate mistakes made by the Bush administration and by the Republican controlled Congress will cost them in the 2006 elections. This behavior will cause them to fail where they should have been able to succeed easily.

Personally, I’m just disgusted by it all.

A Fresh Start

2006-03-20T07:45:00.000-09:00

Today I begin training for my new job. After a long and arduous serch I have found employment, and I have done it before the Army stopped paying me.

In my search I took the advice of one of my brothers. I prayed the prayer "Lord, open the doors you want opened, and close the doors you want closed." I did so often. I was seriously disappointed for quite some time as interviews that went very well failed to produce employment. Finally, I had an interview where the manager hired me on the spot.

It is a sales job, and while some sales jobs, like telemarketing, are easy to get, this manager had been interviewing people for 5 weeks without hiring anyone. Naturally, I took the job, and no, it's NOT telemarketing. Could me and this job be a match made in Heaven? I hope so.

Still, I begin my new carreer in sales with some trepidation. I also begin it knowing that I need to keep looking because the sales project will only be in the area for another 4 months or so. I told the manager up front that I won't become a traveling salesman because I will not live away from my wife. I told her the Army had already taken me away from my wife enough and I didn't want to keep doing that. She hired me anyway.

I also begin my new job with a sense of calm, the kind that can be called a calm in a storm. I have peace about taking this job, and have a sense that it will provide for my family despite being straight commission.

On the political side of the fence, there are a LOT of forms that need to be filled out to run for public office. There are also a staggering number of conditional forms. Like almos every government entity, this is an overly complex process. I'm sure it's just that way to discourage newcomers from challenging incumbents. After all, if you make something difficult enough you WILL drive some people away. I want this too bad to be frightened off by mere paperwork.

My family has concerns, naturally. Political candidates tend to get smeared and slandered by the opposition, and they want to protect me from that. I am tougher than that though. I can thank my former stepmother for her abuse in this situation. After what I lived through as a child I doubt there is anything some politician can say that will hurt me. My skin is quite thick in this area.

My family also asks me two questions. First is "What if you lose horribly?". To this I say "That's okay. The odds are against me and I know it." Second is "Okay, but what if you win? Can you do the job?" To this I say, "Yes. It won't be easy, but I can do it."

Finally, my wife in California for our third round of fertility treatment. If this time fails we cannot afford to try again. The last time we did this she had a positive prgnancy test, only to have the pregnancy fail 2 weeks later. It was heartbreaking. This time, Lord willing, we will finally produce a child. however, if the Lord does not choose to bless us in this endeavor we plan on adopting. We plan on adopting no matter what actually, we just really want a child of our own first.

Goodness. There is a lot going on in my life right now. This is why my posting has been reduced, why I have not been visiting other blogs very much, and why this will continue for some time to come. The oly days I can guarantee new posts are Wednesday and Friday. There will continue to be no weekend posts. Monday, Tueday, and Thursday will be patchy.

I apologize to all of my readers for the reduction in content. I apologize to all of my allies in the blog world for not visiting thier sites more often. It is my hope that this flurry of activity will be temporary and I will soon be able to post at least once a day and visit other blogs with more regularity. However, the campaign will put a serious damper on that for as long as it lasts. Even this pre-campaign phase I am in is rather involved. It will either end with the September primaries, or the November general election. Then, Lord willing, I will be dealing with all the joys and trials of a newborn in the house shortly thereafter. Of course, there is always the chance of flameout early in the campaign, which would free a lot of time much sooner. I really hope this doesn't happen.

Dismembering Evolution: Part 1 Darwin, Scientist or Philosopher?

2006-03-15T06:38:00.000-09:00

I want to begin this series by talking about one of the most brilliant men, one the greatest thinkers in all of human history. I want to begin by talking about Aristotle.

For those who do not already know, Aristotle was the result of two generations of great minds being taught by other great minds. Socrates’ greatest student was Plato. Plato’s greatest student was Aristotle. As a side note, Aristotle’s greatest student was Alexander the Great himself. All of these men have shaped the world; have influenced mankind to this day. Aristotle though, he held sway over the thoughts and beliefs of humanity in a way rarely matched, and even more rarely exceeded in all of human history.

Allow me to explain.

Aristotle was both a moral, and a natural philosopher. His moral philosophy, however, while his greatest feat of his day, pales in comparison to his natural philosophy for influence throughout history. His moral philosophy was adopted in full by Alexander the Great, and ceased to be the ruling philosophy of civilized Europe with the eventual rise of Christianity, but his natural philosophy shaped the sciences for about 1,500 years.

Aristotle proposed that the most perfect of all shapes was the sphere. His reasons have filled entire treatises and I will not go into them here. As such, he reasoned that the entire universe must be comprised of ever widening spheres reaching out into infinity with Earth, this most perfect of worlds, at its very center.

This idea was not only adopted in Aristotle’s day, but remained the only accepted view of the universe until Galileo eventually proved him wrong at great personal risk and persecution.

So how did he come to this conclusion?

Aristotle, like most philosophers, looked to the natural world for answers to the deep mysteries of the universe, much the way scientists do to this day, only without the benefit of structured experimentation. Observation, he believed, would provide the clues that, once reasoned out, would provide the answers being sought. So what did he observe?

Aristotle observed the movement of the heavens from a geocentric point of view. He saw the sun, the moon, and the stars all rise in the east and set in the west every day without fail. He observed the perfection of the sphere, and the remarkable perfect beauty of the natural world. Form these observations he drew an important conclusion.

The Earth is the center of the universe, and the sun and the moon and the stars all rotate around it in perfect circles along their designated astral spheres.

Ridiculous? To our scientifically enlightened minds, of course! However, without the benefit of the information we have today it was the only logical conclusion that most people could possibly conceive of, and it was latched onto and not let go by any willing means.

This was natural philosophy at its finest. Raw observation of nature, combined with reasoning to draw conclusions about the world and the universe. Unfortunately, the observations were never truly tested for over a millennia.

So what happened in the intervening 1,500 or so years?

This philosophy was initially accepted as the only reasonable norm. then the scientific method was developed and mathematics advanced, and the answer of the Earth being the center of a geocentric universe arranged in perfect spheres needed to be proven through science and math, and for several hundred years both science and math “proved” this to be true.

Huh?

As is human nature, the majority of men who tested this theory were out to prove what they already believed to be true. Those who did otherwise, well . . . they were generally killed, and their efforts were summarily tossed out as discredited, disproved, and even heretical. In hindsight, we now know that these divergent thinkers were more right tan wrong, but at the time what they said was so outrageous it could not possibly be true.

Ptolemy was a great mathematician and astronomer who is most known for being the one who was supposed to have settled the issue of how the geocentric universe works once and for all. He began with some comparatively simple math derived from his observations that predicted the movement of astral bodies more perfectly than ever before. It took years, but the predictions based on his math came to grow more and more unreliable, so he reworked the math into a massively complex beast that ultimately solved most of the problems his initial calculations had. His model was so effective that it was considered the final scientific and mathematic proof that was needed to place the Earth squarely at the center of all creation.

Unfortunately, even these calculations eventually became less accurate predictors, and new answers were again sought.

In brief, there was a series of discoveries that ultimately led to Galileo proving once and for all that the Earth is NOT the center of the universe, and our knowledge has only grown from there.

So, how does this relate to evolution?

Like Aristotle, Darwin possessed a great analytical mind. He was truly a mental giant, and no sensible person would say otherwise. Also, like Aristotle, Darwin was a student of the natural world, observing the world and reasoning based on his observations. And, like Aristotle, Darwin never put his greatest concepts through the rigors of the scientific method.

Upon reading The Origin of the Species, one cannot help but be impressed by the genius, the sheer eloquence of it. Darwin managed to take his observations of the world ranging from geology to biology and put them together in a highly reasoned out fashion to create one of the greatest theories of all time: Evolution.

His logic, based on his observations is unimpeachable, but was also completely untested. Exactly like Aristotle’s theory of a geocentric universe. Also, like Aristotle’s theory of a geocentric universe, evolution has had its rabid supporters who have set out to “prove” it by all possible means. I shall discuss this “proof” in future installments of this series. Also, like Aristotle’s theory of a geocentric universe, the opponents of evolution suffer ridicule and persecution, albeit, evolution’s opponents suffer by having their funding removed while those who opposed Aristotle’s theory suffered by having their heads removed.

The problem both theories share is that at the time of their publication they were utterly untested, but were still presented as scientific fact. Just as Aristotle knew very little about the true workings of the cosmos, Darwin knew nothing at all about genetics, very little about the scientific method, and even acknowledged holes geology/paleontology left in his theory.

Unlike Aristotle, who claimed to have all the proof that was needed to support his theory, Darwin promoted his theory as truth while openly stating that his proof was inconclusive due to a lack of knowledge, be it his own, or that of all of humanity at the time. Darwin justified this move by stating that he was certain that future scientific discoveries would fill in the gaps in such a way as to prove him right.

In all fairness, this did seem to be the case for a long time.

Unfortunately for Darwin, just like what happened to Aristotle, the initial scientific “proof” appears to be unraveling in the face of an expanded scientific base of knowledge and understanding. The answers Darwin drew using the same methods of natural philosophers like Aristotle, while brilliant, were, and remained flawed. Evolution, as it was put forth by Darwin, was not science at all, but natural philosophy, just like the theory of the geocentric universe Aristotle promoted. There is no trace of the scientific method, no experimentation, no mathematics, nothing contained within The Origin of the Species that even hints at evolution being put the tiniest rigors of actual science. Had evolution been presented today in its original form no scientific journal, no publisher of the sciences would have accepted it for publication.

Darwin was no scientist. He was natural philosopher, possibly of comparable brilliance to Aristotle. His greatest theory was a philosophical work that science has tried to wrap itself around, just like Aristotle’s theory of the geocentric universe.

The Tax Curse

2006-03-09T11:23:00.000-09:00

Every schoolchild knows the old phrase “No taxation without representation!” It is the mantra shouted by our forefathers as they set our great nation on the path to independence. It is the war cry our first brave soldiers fought by, and the cause those courageous men died for. Is it any wonder then, that taxes remain a pivotal point in the America of today?

Tax issues surround nearly every election. Politicians promise all manner of tax reform and relief to a hopeful nation waiting for that wonderful day when every man and woman can keep a greater portion of his or her hard-earned money. But rather than relief, Americans stand helplessly by as taxes grow and eat up a greater portion of our paychecks.

This brings us to a vital issue. Not any lack of representation as we have more and bigger taxes levied against us year after year. The issue is how our representatives are actually representing our best interests and managing our many tax dollars.

Most Americans have no idea how the three months pay we give the government every year is actually used. We share vague ideas of unknown billions going to national defense, law enforcement, wildlife preservation, and government bureaus that supposedly provide us with essential services. While this is absolutely true, hundreds of millions, and possibly billions of tax dollars are wasted every year on projects and services that do not serve our national interests, but only serve a select few with the money and power to influence our elected representatives.

Take the milk-buying program for example. The federal government placed what is known as a price floor on milk. This price floor is actually higher than the price/demand ratio and so people buy less milk because it costs too much. This would hurt America’s dairy farmers very much because they wouldn’t be able to sell all of their milk, but good old Uncle Sam has stepped in with a milk buying program where the government buys up all of the milk that the dairy farmers can’t sell. Naturally, the dairy take advantage of this by raising as many cattle as possible and producing as much milk as possible because they know the government will purchase all the excess milk. Naturally, dairy farmers have become quite wealthy as a result, but the rest of America suffers as we pay high prices for milk, and our hard earned tax dollars are spent on the extra milk that we refuse to buy. What does the government do with all this milk you ask? Well, now you know where government cheese comes from.

Two more famous wasteful programs are the tea-tasting program and the sugar program. The tea tasting is just one nice, old man who samples all the shipments of tea that come into America . . . and the bureau of dozens of supervisors, managers, and quality control experts that oversee this one man. Fortunately, after years of waste, this program has finally been ended. The sugar program is a government agency that keeps all foreign sugar out of the United States in an effort to keep the price of sugar artificially high. The result of this is that not only must we pay more for our sugar than the rest of the world, but we also pay the government to do this to us.

There are dozens, if not hundreds of other such wasteful programs that eat up our taxes and do us no good of any kind, yet our elected representatives refuse to do away with them. This is exactly the kind of robbery that our forefathers fought and died to stop, and we now sit idly by and let it continue on with little more than a grumble. I do not advocate the elimination of taxes, taxes are essential to fund an effective government and an effective law enforcement and national defense system, but I do not advocate our tax money being wasted on useless and harmful programs while our essential services are underfunded.

Our forefathers succeeded in getting taxation with representation, now it up to us to make sure that our representatives are responsible with the taxes we pay.

Introduction to the Series “Dismembering Evolution”

2006-03-08T10:06:00.000-09:00

This is not the official start to the entirely too-long awaited series I have been preparing on evolution, it is just an introduction of what to expect, and the only place I plan on listing my sources, so pay attention because I do not intend to quibble over which book said what later.

This series will be presented in a reasonably logical order, starting with a discussion of Darwin and the origin of his theory of evolution. There will then be a jump back in time to the Big Bang, which I will not dispute in this series, and have actually come to support through my research, but in a different way and reason than most of you might expect. I will also discuss the conditions and probabilities of life.

Next will follow a point by point discussion on the proof of evolution. I will be presenting 2 views, the simple critique of what is supposed to prove the theory, and also the Intelligent Design position regarding evolution. I am not a supporter of ID as I am a Creationist, but there are some extremely compelling arguments within ID that have at least as much merit as anything Darwinian Evolution has to say, so I shall cover this topic as well.

At various points I intend to discuss probabilities as they have been shown according to physicists and mathematicians. I will discuss some physics as well as biology. There will be some philosophy. And some of what I have to say will be very familiar to people currently embroiled in the evolution debate, and I hope some of it will be new. I shall endeavor to remain logical in all aspects of my presentation and debate, but there will be the occasional “God in the gaps” argument, I just plan on presenting it with the most reasonable evidence possible.

My sources are as follows: The Science of God by Gerald Schroeder. Genesis and the Big Bang by Gerald Schroeder. Icons of evolution by Jonathan Wells. The Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin. Darwin’s Black Box by Michael Behe. My college astronomy textbook is still missing from the move, but I still have my notes and will be using them. I shall also be running off memory from years of indoctrination into evolution throughout my schooling.

I doubt that I shall be as eloquent or persuasive as the authors of these books. I am simply trying to present the disparate arguments in a single forum.

I want to go over the rules for debate in this series because I know that, given the chance, any one debate can go so far off topic as to become irrelevant to the posting at hand. All debate MUST be on the topic covered that week. If I am talking about dinosaurs I don’t want to debate about embryology. All topics will be covered at some point, and if I overlook anything, don’t worry, at the end I will have an open posting for anything that I neglected to discuss in this series. Also, all arguments based on lawyers and judges will be laughed at and mocked without mercy. This is about science. Stick with the science and the math as they are the ONLY relevant tools in a scientific debate. Where theology enters, and it WILL enter, then that opens up theology for that debate. When philosophy is used, it opens up philosophy. But it only opens up those subjects as far as they are relevant to the actual post. It is my desire to see the debate remain civil enough that profanity, personal attacks on debaters, and general rudeness do not enter. Please do try to remain civil despite the obvious controversy and strong feelings involved in such a debate.

This said, I look forward to next Wednesday and finally getting this thing started.

The Oscars

2006-03-07T08:42:00.000-09:00

Sunday night marked this year’s Oscars, and I did not watch them live because I figured the outcome was predetermined, and the Hollywood elites would all go straight for the obvious favorite among the artsy types at every opportunity. I was wrong.

Looking over the results I was pleased to note that the truly deserving film did, in fact, win the award for Best Picture. Crash was easily the best, most deserving movie among the nominees, and the Academy surprised me by actually siding with me on this picture. To be fair, I must confess I did not watch Brokeback Mountain, and it was more than just the pro-homosexual theme, it was also the fact that the previews made it look like a sappy chick flick, only with the slightly nauseating twist of being made for homosexuals. Munich pissed me off by being sympathetic to terrorists while hinting at anti-Semitism, and the other two I never heard of.

Best Director went to Ang Lee for Brokeback mountain, and from all I have heard, including from people who hated the movie, he really did deserve it. I am happy Spielberg didn’t win for Munich. Still, Crash was so impressive I would have liked to see it win here as well.

Best Original Screenplay went to Crash, while Best Adapted Screenplay went to Brokeback Mountain. Truthfully, I have no idea what the difference is between an original and an adapted screenplay. Both are writing awards for the script, and neither of the winners was competing against the other in either category. However, since I choose class and tension over sappy any day of the week, I would have liked to see The Constant Gardener take the award for Adapted Screenplay, whatever that is.

The Best actress category had controversy because Felicity Huffman was nominated for her role in Transamerica, a movie about a transsexual that nobody outside of San Francisco apparently heard of before the Oscar nominees were announced. Fortunately, Reese Witherspoon deservedly won the award for her excellent performance in the biopic “Walk the Line”. Whether you are a Johnny Cash fan or not, I recommend you see this truly excellent movie about the life of a great American musician.

Cinematography went to Memoirs of a Geisha, as did Art Direction, and Costume design. Truthfully, this movie could have won Best Picture and Best Director as well as far I am concerned. It is a virtually flawless movie in every respect, but it was not nominated for those categories for some reason. Too bad.

The Chronicles of Narnia won Best Makeup, and while I love this movie, I really think Memoirs of A Geisha should have won this one.

King Kong swept every other technical award, and it really deserved it. The movie was a fantastical feast of special effects blended with a beefed up, expanded and improved story of King Kong.

Best Original Song, predictably, went to Hustle and Flow, a movie that, in my opinion, has as its greatest distinction the rare uplifting message of rising above street life. This is rare because it is a “ghetto” type movie, most of which portray an inescapable world of drugs and violence.

Best original score went to Brokeback Mountain. Okay . . . I never saw the movie, nor have I heard the soundtrack, although the fact that any movie could have beaten BOTH Memoirs of a Geisha and Pride and Prejudice is rather shocking to me. Both movies have truly great classical soundtracks.

Best Documentary went to March of the Penguins, which is surprising only in that the award actually went to a documentary people have heard of for once. Although it didn’t win, I do want to see Darwin’s Nightmare. I have never heard of it before, and the title may be misleading, but the title does pique my interest.

Everyone, including myself, were absolutely certain the acting awards were all going to go Brokeback Mountain, not just because the actors truly did a fine job by all accounts, but also because there are three ways for an actor virtually guarantee a win in an acting category. 1 – Play someone with cancer. 2 – Play a homosexual. 3 – Be real pretty, and play a role where you must be truly ugly. Heck, Charlize Theron combined 2 and 3 and won easily. Tom Hanks won his first Oscar, and a new career in drama for his role as a homosexual AIDS victim in Philadelphia. These 3 rules are true winners. Not this year. This year Rachel Weisz won Best Supporting Actress for her role in The Constant Gardener. Best Supporting Actor went to George Clooney for Syriana. Best Actor went to Phillip Seymour Hofman for his role in Capote. And I have already discusses Best Actress earlier.

Finally, in a year of, mostly, disappointing animated films, Wallace and Grommit won an easy victory for Best Animated Film.

There are a few other awards for shorts, but since I don’t care about those awards I will not discuss them here.

In a way, I am very relieved that Brokeback Mountain did not sweep every award it was nominated for. The buzz of the nation was that it was a shoe-in for everything because it was such a pro-homosexual romance/drama, just what the Hollywood elites have been waiting for. Had it won so conclusively it would have demonstrated beyond all doubt what Hollywood stands for in the social and artistic sense. By going by actual merit rather than by favored theme the Academy has shown that it still has a way to go before it becomes a merely ideological foray into the art world. To me at least, it is a comforting thought. Also, now I feel like an idiot for missing out on seeing Jon Stewart host the awards. I really wanted to see that.

YAY!

2006-03-02T07:37:00.000-09:00

Good news! I found my missing books yesterday. Expect the first installment of my series on evolution 2 Wednesdays from today.

Unusual, To Say the Least

2006-03-01T10:31:00.000-09:00

Am I the only one who is struck by the way that every Bush hater also hates Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense? Can anyone think of government functionary other than John Edgar Hoover who has been the target of so much Hatred? John Ashcroft was hated by the liberals, but not nearly so much as Donald Rumsfeld.

It seems to me that Donald Rumsfeld, to be referred to simply as Rumsfeld from here on out, is the target of so much hatred simply because he has been tasked by the President with managing the military during wartime. We are fighting a war. Somebody has to run it. The President has chosen Rumsfeld. And now, he is one of the most hated people (by liberals) in America. Why? SOMEBODY has to do his job.

Truthfully, I don’t think it matters who the Secretary of Defense is, as long as that person is working for this President during this war he will be despised by the liberals. It is a blind, ideological hatred that has nothing to do with what is right or reasonable. The liberals just want to froth at the mouth for some reason.

John Edgar Hoover was hated by liberals in his day for his work protecting the US from the Communist threat. It is well known that Communists had heavily infiltrated the Democratic Party, and all levels of government under Democratic administrations at the time. Further proof can be seen in all of the Socialist ideology rampaging through the Democrats to this day.

For this vital work, liberals have lied, calling him a cross-dressing homosexual, a provably false claim, and one started as the typical liberal tactic of “discredit through name-calling”. A childish tactic to be sure, but a common liberal tactic nonetheless.

The cemetery the John Edgar Hoover is buried in has been fenced in and opened up dogs as a free-run park of sorts. People bring their dogs there every day to let them run free in a vast, beautifully manicured field. They also frequently take their dogs to John Edgar Hoover’s grave and have the dog urinate on the gravesite. The grave was fenced off some time back due to vandalism, but these liberals still have their dogs piss as close as they can to the grave itself. This, and the vandalism of John Edgar Hoover’s grave are symptomatic of the ability of liberals to hate forever without forgiveness for imagined wrongs. The man has been dead, what, 50 years? GET OVER IT! What he did for this country is far greater and more vital thing then any liberal I can think of with the exceptions of FDR who led us through WWII and the Depression, and JFK after he got behind the Civil Rights movement. Are there any conservative busy defacing their graves for doing such great and vital services to our country?

This mentality of hate from the liberals is getting tiresome, but is unlikely to go away. It is also a big reason why the liberals are unlikely to gain power in the government again at this time despite the blunders and disappointments of the current batch of Republicans. Their hatred is alienating not just conservatives, but the moderates who are the ones who actually decide elections.