DARWINIAN INQUISITION OPERATING WITHIN NASA
David Coppedge, an employee of NASA, has filed suit over action taken against him for discussing intelligent design with other employees. Coppedge, an information technology specialist and system administrator, was demoted from a high-level job because he distributed DVDs explaining intelligent design (“NASA Threatened by Talk of Intelligence,” OneNewsNow, April 22, 2010).
He was accused of “creating a hostile work environment” for simply offering DVDs to fellow employees in a non-coercive manner. NASA claims the ID material is “religious,” which it isn’t, but even if Coppedge were promoting a six-day Biblical creation, NASA would be wrong and foolish in harassing him.
There is nothing unscientific or non-intellectual about looking at the universe to see if it fits the Bible’s clear predictions. Further, NASA has a short memory. The head of its vaunted Apollo moon program stated publicly that the universe gives evidence of intelligent design. Wernher von Braun, director of the Marshall Space Flight Center and the chief architect of the Saturn V launch vehicle, considered it unscientific to rule out a Creator just because we can’t “test” him scientifically. Von Braun published an article entitled “My Faith: A Space-age Scientist Tells Why He Must Believe in God.” This appeared in the American Weekly, February 10, 1963, and was republished in many other newspapers. He wrote, “As we learn more and more about nature, we become more deeply impressed and humbled by its orderliness and unerring perfection.”
In 1972 von Braun wrote to the California State Board of Education, urging the inclusion of intelligent design theories into the public school classrooms. He said, “... the scientific method does not allow us to exclude data which lead to the conclusion that the universe, life and man are based on design. To be forced to believe only one conclusion--that everything in the universe happened by chance--would violate the very objectivity of science itself. ... We in NASA were often asked what the real reason was for the amazing string of successes we had with our Apollo flights to the Moon. I think the only honest answer we could give was that we tried to never overlook anything. It is in that same sense of scientific honesty that I endorse the presentation of alternative theories for the origin of the universe, life and man in the science classroom. It would be an error to overlook the possibility that the universe was planned rather than happened by chance.
Because of Darwinism’s elitist mentality and fear of challenge, the wise counsel of the world’s top rocket scientist was ignored and “intelligent design” was banned. This is not science; it is an inquisition.
TEENAGER SUES MOTHER FOR “HACKING INTO HIS FACEBOOK ACCOUNT”
Denise New of Arkadelphia, Arkansas, is being sued by her 16-year-old son for allegedly “hacking his Facebook account” and posting slanderous information about his personal life. The mom says there was no “hacking,” because she browsed her son’s Facebook account when he left it open on her computer (“Son Files Harassment Charges,” KATV-TV, Little Rock, April 7, 2010).
She was disturbed by the things he was posting, such as describing how he drove home recklessly one night at 95 mph because he was upset with a girl. The mom said the “slander” mentioned in the lawsuit was actually concerns that she posted and online conversations she had with her son and his friends. In spite of the silliness of the accusation, Mrs. New has been charged with “harassment” and will have to defend herself in court on May 12. She says that she is going to fight the charge because she was in her legal rights as a parent to monitor her son’s behavior. She told KATV-TV, “Oh yea, I’m going to fight it. If I have to go even higher up, I’m going to. I’m not gonna let this rest. I think this could be a precedent-setting moment for parents.”
It is a sad day in America when a mother has to defend herself in court for disciplining a child. If the TV news report is correct, the “harassment” going on in this case is the harassment of a mother by a rebellious son and by a foolish prosecutor.
EX-MUSLIM GIRL FIGHTING DEPORTATION
The following is excerpted from “Ohio Christian Convert Fights to Stay in US,” AP, April 5, 2010: “A teenage girl who converted to Christianity and ran away from home is being blocked by her Muslim parents from fighting the possibility of deportation, her attorney told a judge Monday in an ongoing custody dispute. Rifqa Bary, 17, who fled home last year and stayed with a Florida minister whom she met on Facebook, is an illegal immigrant and does not want to be returned to her native Sri Lanka because she fears being harmed or killed by Muslim extremists.
Her attorney, Angela Lloyd, asked a judge to sign an order stating that reunification with her parents is not possible by her 18th birthday in August. The order would allow Bary, who is in foster care, to apply for special immigration status without her parents' consent. Omar Tarazi, an attorney for the parents, objected, telling the judge that he had been unaware of Bary's separate maneuver to apply to an immigration court. He said the parents previously filed an immigration application for the whole family.
Franklin County Juvenile Court Judge Elizabeth Gill declined to issue the order without first holding a hearing next month. She also declined to remove a gag order that prevents attorneys from discussing the case publicly. Bary and her parents, Mohamed and Aysha Bary, have agreed to follow a counseling plan drawn up by a county child welfare agency to try to resolve the family's conflict. It requires both sides to work with individual counselors and to try to attend joint counseling. But a face-to-face meeting remains unlikely any time soon.”
COWS ABSOLVED OF CAUSING GLOBAL WARMING
The global warming myth was taken to new heights of silliness with the doctrine that it is partly caused by cattle gas emissions. Vegetarian environmental activists such as former Beattle Paul McCartney urged people to stop eating meat in order to save the planet. A new study published in Nature magazine debunks this. The study of cattle grazing on the grasslands of China found that the balance of nature is maintained because grazed grass produces less nitrous oxide, another so-called “greenhouse gas.”
Dr. Klaus Butterbach-Bahl, who carried out the study, says, “It’s been generally assumed that if you increase livestock numbers you get a rise in emissions of nitrous oxide. This is not the case.” He said the study shows that grazing livestock is “not always bad for global warming” (“Cows Absolved,” London Telegraph, April 8, 2010). God instructed Noah and his sons that they could eat meat (Genesis 9:1-3), and this divine law has never been abrogated. Modern science has accomplished some wonderful things, but scientists are not gods. There is far more that scientists do NOT know than that which they do know.
- IT IS WELL WITH MY SOUL
“Most people are familiar with the story behind the much-loved hymn ‘It Is Well With My Soul.’ As has been told many times, Horatio Spafford, a successful Chicago lawyer was taking his wife and three daughters overseas for some much needed rest and relaxation. At the last minute. business prevented him from going, so he sent his wife and children ahead, promising that he would follow as soon as he could. Spafford was a friend of D.L. Moody and supported his work and they were going to Europe because they knew Moody would be there that fall. In the middle of the ocean, their ship, the Ville Du Havre, was rammed by another ship and quickly sunk. All four of their daughters were lost and the wife was found unconscious floating on a piece of debris. She was rescued, and upon reaching the other side, cabled back to her husband, ‘Saved Alone.’
But what few know is that that is only the beginning of the heartaches suffered by the Spaffords and that their faith in Christ continued unwavering. The reason they were taking the trip in 1873 was because of the great Chicago fire of 1871. They lost a considerable fortune in real estate as a result of the fire and poured their lives into helping others through that difficult time. Emotionally and physically drained, they were to set sail for rest when they lost their children. They were beginning to rebuild their lives when they lost another son to pneumonia. At that point, the church they had helped build removed them from membership believing that secret sin was to blame for God’s heavy hand upon them.
Having lost five children, their wealth, and now their church and friends, they decided to move to Jerusalem to begin life anew. In Jerusalem they founded what became known as the ‘American Colony.’ It was a haven for Christians to come and live a simple Christian life, having all things in common, and to minister to those around them. Their influence was responsible for Muslims and others turning to Christ in the forsaken city of Jerusalem of that day. Spafford wrote many other hymns and treatises including a booklet entitled ‘Twenty Reasons for Believing the Coming of the Lord is Nigh.’ Trusting in Christ carried the Spafford family through some of the darkest hours imaginable. Through their suffering, they have joined a great crowd of witnesses who testify that the Lord will never leave us or forsake us. ‘Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come/ Let this blest assurance control/ That Christ has regarded my helpless estate/ And hath shed His own blood for my soul.”
- DO WE NEED TO FIND NOAH’S ARK?
“John Warwick Montgomery is convinced that world evangelism would be greatly simplified if we could just discover the Ark. ... But is not the Bible entirely trustworthy as it now stands, in its clear witness to the geographical universality of the Flood and the historical reality of Noah’s Ark? Did not our Lord explain that, ‘If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead” (Luke 16:31 KJV)? Would those who now reject the authority of God’s Word truly acknowledge it from their hearts if the remains of the Ark were to be discovered? Have relics from the Bible lands ever produced saving faith?” The answer, of course, is no, for the simple reason that “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17).
- FAMOUS ATHEIST SAYS THE WORLD MIGHT HAVE BEEN DESIGNED BY ALIENS
In an interview with Ben Stein in the documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, the self-proclaimed atheist Richard Dawkins admits that there might be “intelligent design.” Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, is an atheist on a pathetic rampage against the Almighty. He calls the God of the Bible “the most unpleasant character in all fiction” and a “capriciously malevolent bully.”
Ben Stein asked Dawkins, “Who did create the heavens and the earth? How did it start?” Dawkins replied, “No one knows how it started. We know the kind of event it must have been for the origin of life. It was the origin of the first self-replicating molecule.” Stein asked, “What do you think is the possibility that intelligent design might turn out to be the answer to some issues in genetics?” To this Dawkins gave the following amazing reply: “It could be that at some earlier time somewhere in the universe a civilization evolved by, probably some kind of Darwinian means, to a very, very high level of technology and designed the form of life they seeded on to this planet. That is a possibility and an intriguing possibility, and I suppose it is possible that you might find evidence for that if you look at the details of biochemistry and molecular biology you might find a signature of some sort of designer. And that designer could well be a higher intelligence from elsewhere in the universe. That higher intelligence would itself have had to have come about by some ultimately explicable process. It couldn’t have just jumped into existence spontaneously.”
So Richard Dawkins admits that life couldn’t have just jumped into existence, that there is evidence for an intelligent designer, but since he has rejected the God of the Bible, he launches out into the never-never land of “aliens.” And this is the same man that mocks those who believe in God. No man is blinder than he who will not see. “Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts” (2 Peter 3:3).
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