Love Truth Blog

According to lore, P.T. Barnum often displayed the Fiji Mermaid as a sideshow attraction, which was really the torso of a Monkey stitched together with the tail of a fish. Yet, this curiosity attracted great crowds and many traveling entertainers have since duplicated the stunt. This is certainly a fitting illustration for describing Dawkins’ recent lecture hosted by the Center for Ethics and Religion at Queens University in Charlotte. The event certainly unveiled the grandeur of Darwin’s Rottweiler’s oratory skills; however, just as those who believed the Fiji Mermaid exhibit to be the carcass of an actual living creature reminds us that there may be some truth to the adage “there’s a sucker born every minute,” one is to be discerning with what Dawkins’ hocks as facts for evolution. The evening’s lecture was divided into two parts: the first was Dawkins’ reading selections from his latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution (Note the title hearkens to a tagli...

An argument raised by Muslims to support their belief that Jesus was a prophet of God, yet not divine, is the incident of the cursing of the fig tree in Mark 11. The Muslim reasons that the fact that “it was not the season for figs” (v. 13b) indicates that Jesus demonstrated ignorance in trying to find fruit on a tree when every one else understood it was the wrong time of year to go fig picking. (Of course, the an atheist, Buddhist, Hindu, Jew, or any other belief system that denies the deity of Jesus Christ could raise the very same argument and this is not exclusive to Islam.) Did Jesus make a mistake? Not! Jesus’ cursing of the fig tree demonstrates the very opposite! It presents Jesus having a sophisticated intellect, which revealed a person deeply rooted in the Old Testament, who possessed a prerequisite knowledge of facts only available through divine revelation. The fig trees in Palestine bear leaves in March and are accompanied by small edible knobs called taksh (c.f. Stephen...

After seeing Zombieland , here's how I would rate this horror flick: Gross-out factor: 10 Scare factor: 1 Laugh Factor: 10 Originality: 4 - There are a few things that remind me of Shaun of the Dead Social Message: Nothing deep like one gets with George A. Romero. Zombieland is about the idea that some rules can be changed, like forget about "don't be a hero," and kill a 1000 zombies to win the totally unattainable girl, or enjoy the little things in life like killing a 1000 zombies to get a twinkie. Why? Because you're no better than a mindless zombie if you don't. Well, that's all I got to say about that.

Today a colleague passed on Richard Dawkins’ Newsweek article wherein “Darwin’s rottweiler” went on another tirade against creationists. [1] As recent research on the Cambrian fossil records has hammered in the last nail in the coffin of Darwinian evolution, one of the last bad ideas of the nineteenth century that wreaked havoc in the twentieth century (another being Marxism), the rant is understandable. What is Dawkins’ response to the proposition that the fossil record in general and the Cambrian fossil record in particular fails to support the Darwinian model, he just pontificates, “We don’t need fossils in order to demonstrate that evolution is a fact. The evidence for evolution would be entirely secure even if not a single corpse had ever fossilized. It is a bonus that we do actually have rich seams of fossils to mine, and more are discovered every day.” Is not he just saying, “Don’t get bogged down with the facts, just believe me.” Dawkins’ then brings up some analogy of a baron...

As I was going about my daily work routine, it came to my attention that this year the Jewish Holy Day of Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) falls on September 27, 2009. It is an observation of God’s commandment that “On exactly the tenth day of this seventh month is the day of atonement; it shall be a holy convocation for you, and you shall humble your so11uls and present an offering by fire to the Lord” (Lev. 23:26-27, NASB). It was a day set aside in for the children of Israel to make animal sacrifices to atone for the sins they had committed (Lev. 16:29-34). The Old Testament sacrifice, with a priest making a bloody animal sacrifice to cleanse a person from the sins they have committed before a holy God was one of the defining characteristics of the ancient worship of Israel. The ancient Hebrew experienced the consequences of sin. They understood the bitterness of sin heaped upon them, having survived slavery under a cruel Pharaoh, who placed them into hard labor and sent midwives execu...

A hot newsflash item of late has been a series of controversial videos posted on biggoverment.com created by activist filmmaker James O’Keefe, which allegedly unveil corruption within the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). [1] The videos have O’Keefe and Hannah Giles (a college student) poising as a pimp and prostitute, and entering into select ACORN offices to receive aid in purchasing a house for the purposes of running a brothel with undocumented alien child prostitutes, and ACORN workers apparently offering advise in how they should go about doing it. O’Keefe’s exposé did reach the eyes and ears of lawmakers, and the House and Senate voted to de-fund ACORN. (For many of my conservative Republican friends, in a serendipitous way this proven that every grey cloud has a silver lining, as the decision to cut funds to ACORN is a plus for those who don’t like big government—not necessarily my politics, but I’m just saying….) ACORN’s response was multifa...

A couple of months ago, I picked up a copy of The Francis Schaeffer Trilogy , which contains The God Who is There , Escape from Reason , and He is There and He is Not Silent , in a single volume. Reading through Schaeffer’s 1970s classic He is There and He is Not Silent , which explores the philosophical arenas of metaphysics, morals, and epistemology, particularly that there is a difference in our understanding the world in light of the reality of God being there and not silent, I came across the most haunting statement in his section on morality, wherein he contended that those who hold to an impersonal beginning, whether modern science, or neo-orthodox theology, one must face the inevitable problem of there being no basis for any moral absolutes. Picking up on Marshall McLuhan’s point that democracy is finished, Schaeffer writes: There is coming a time in the global village (not far ahead, in the area of electronics) where we will be able to wire everybody up to a giant computer, an...