January 28, 2007 by Dr. Mc.

Though Mel Gibson was ignored at the Oscars in 2004, it is obvious he was not ignored at the box office. Movies such as The Passion and Lord of the Rings awakened the movie industry to the neglected Moral Market. Now they are flooding the theaters with quality the likes of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and One Night with the King. Soon we will see Amazing Grace and The Last Sin Eater. Such public heavy weights as Chuck Colson and  Cal Thomas are telling Evangelicals to go support these products. I hope that support is there, but going to the movies should not become a new Christian obligation. I hope Hollywood allows for the gradual shifting of a culture that has for more than a generation been taught to find entertainment elsewhere.

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January 25, 2007 by Dr. Mc.

“Perhaps materialism was liberating philosophy when the need was to escape from dogmas of religion, but today materialism itself is the dogma from which the mind needs to escape. A rule that materialism should be professed regardless of the evidence … is he equivalent of a rule that science may not contradict the teachings of a church …”

(emphasis in the original) Phillip E. Johnson, 1998, Objections Sustained: Subversive Essays on Evolution, Law & Culture, Page 56.

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January 18, 2007 by Dr. Mc.

Access Excellence seeks to appeal to home schoolers, yet it is limited to a belief system that most home schoolers will reject. It is indeed an excellent way to access science news for young (and older) readers, but I also find it to contain excellent examples of evolutionary blinders in its Science News. In an article entitled, “Ancient Swarm of Locusts Made Trans-Atlantic Trip” it states that researchers have long wondered whether Schistocerca (grasshoppers) originated in North America or Africa, but recent mtDNA tests strongly suggest it originated in Africa. So far, so good. But the mtDNA consistency in America suggests that it was only one migration, and the conclusion is that the migration took place between three and five million years ago. The article says they are willing to believe this happened back then because a swarm of these locusts (grasshoppers) is documented to have made the 5,000 kilometer trek from Africa to the Caribbean in 1988. If they are willing to believe that it happened one time 5 million years ago because it happened in 1988, why would they not suspect it happened a few times in between? Or perhaps one time more recently than 3 million years ago? Because mtDNA research has been defined in such a way that millions of years are necessary to explain the variations that we find within the same genus. I do not intend this blog to delve heavily into apologetics, but I do want to point out that cultural world views can blind us from what would otherwise be obvious.As a side note, I find it interesting that even though they make an appeal to home schoolers, Access Excellence has chosen a name that, when run together in a web address, creates a word that will be blocked by most web blockers, sure to be installed by many home school parents.

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January 15, 2007 by Dr. Mc.

January 16 is officially Religious Freedom Day for the United States. Why the United States? Even though many different faiths were in America at its beginning, the Bible furnished the most common foundation for thought, and the Bible says religion is a personal choice. Though we are admonished in the Bible to choose salvation, Christ told His disciples to simply walk away if a person chooses otherwise. This is not so for other religions texts, such as Sura 9:5 of the Koran, where followers are told to take harsher action on the infidel who refuses to follow. Religious tolerance is a Christian concept.

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January 12, 2007 by Dr. Mc.

Thomas Henry Huxley coined the word “agnostic” to explain his position on the existence of God. The Greek origins of the word literally mean, “I don’t know.” The term has worked its way into all of science, but science as taught in today’s public classrooms is not agnostic. “I don’t know” should include “open to evidence either way.” The prohibition of evidence that God MIGHT exist is proof that a system is not agnostic, but at best atheistic. “I don’t know” would indeed be agnostic, and represent honest science. To say, “I don’t WANT to know” is more fitting to atheism, and would not be honest science. But when public school teachers are prohibited from allowing students to consider all scientific evidence, and in fact are steered to believe there is no other evidence, we have moved beyond the dishonest science of “I don’t want to know,” to , “I don’t want YOU to know.” You think of a term for that.

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January 5, 2007 by Dr. Mc.

Some parents think because they place their children into private Christian schools or teach them in home school arrangements that they have sufficiently protected their off-spring from the “world,” and can ignore the culture wars others face. Please consider that the University of California system (10 very prestigious universities) recently decided that coursework completed using science and history books by such rogue publishers as A Beka and Bob Jones were unacceptable as college prerequisites. Does that affect Alabamians? The lawsuit is still in the courts. I recently had a conversation with a high school science teacher in rural Alabama who bragged, “I believe the Bible, and I teach whatever I want to in my science class.” He sees no reason to get involved in politics, or even learn what is legal or illegal. Christians who think they are safe from the world because they are currently allowed to do their own thing are about as safe as a kid hiding in a cardbord box on an interstate. They just haven’t been hit yet. Ignorance is bliss only for a little while. It’s everybody’s world problem.

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