My computer is running a fever. The central processor overheats and shuts the system down. After a day of emails with the support center, and then a phone call of which only half the time was on hold, they admitted that the probable causes are under warranty. So I sit…
A few months ago I stumbled on a preacher on television. The reason I stopped to listen was that on the screen he was scrolling through a litany of famous scientists, their fields and contributions, and noting that each was a Great Christian. Then the preacher–I don’t know who he was, sorry–ended his litany by making the claim that science and religion are inextricably linked, that they must have each other to work, that there is no dispute between them–
–and that evolution is wrong.
This was a week after I listened to an NPR interview with Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania in which he made the claim that it is vital to settle this question of where “we” (meaning humans) came from because if evolution is true, then we would have no basis for morality.
This is one of the most perverse false syllogisms I have ever heard, and it baffles me no end. Underlying it is the assumption that morality only ever comes from a supernatural source, that without a deity we are too dumb, puerile, self-serving, and just plain hopeless to ever do anything right–for ourselves on anyone else. (The Erik Von Danniken theory of moral provenance.) That atheists are a priori immoral and that evolutionists, who reject special creation, are necessarily atheists, and therefore, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, likewise immoral. They can’t help it. They have no god giving them direction.
A minute of clear thought shows how this is substantively untrue. …
I recently heard a preacher describing what heaven will be like. He said, enticingly, that heaven will be a place where there will be no sin: no envy, no lust, no anger, no pride, no scorn, no competition, etc. It got me thinking: exactly what is left of a human…
Here's how it went. Worth a look and a laugh.
Last night, my local PBS station aired a 'Frontline' program, called "The Lost Year in Iraq," about the Bush Administration's handling of the Iraq occupation. Among other things, it confirms that Americans who sought civilian jobs to help rebuild Iraq were asked questions such as whether or not they had…