EARLY REVIEW OF 'THE LION, THE WITCH & THE WARDROBE'

Barbara Nicolosi has seen a preview of the new Lewis movie from Disney.

Worried yet?

Okay, she says don't worry:

But best of all, contrary to Peter Jackson's agenda-aversion manhandling of Tolkien's classic, here, the tone of LW&W is as close to the book as probably could have been achieved. All the lines the Christians are worrying about are in there. All the scenes you want to see are here and lovingly rendered. So everybody can relax and get ready to enjoy, and we can all take the Wonderful World of Disney back into our hearts -- and save the studio for 2005! Truly, our forgiveness is completely saving...

People particularly want to know if Aslan comes off as a Christ-figure, or just some warm and fuzzy magic lion. Well, I personally cried every moment Aslan was on the screen. But then, I walked in with my character development done by my Jesus thing. I so wanted to be Lucy and Susan, with their heads resting on his body on the stone table. I wonder if people who don't love Jesus will feel the same? So, I am going to say that Aslan is absolutely discernible as a figure of Jesus -- for those who have eyes to see.

To my wife and me who are debating whether to take our five year old daughter to see it she says this:

There was a discussion afterward as to what ages of children could see the film. People were saying 8 year olds could handle it fine. I agree. But I also think littler kids should go. I never buy into this idiocy that we are supposed to protect kids from our own faith story. I remember folks saying that about Prince of Egypt - that the scenes of the Israelites in slavery were too impressive for young kids. To borrow from Anne Lamott, I think this kind of weak-kneed semsitivity makes "Jesus want to go lap gin out of the cat bowl." The vision of Aslan getting shaved and killed is no harder to take than Jesus being scourged and crucified. A generation of children protected from these things breeds a generation of little unmotivated narcissists.

Bring your kids to see The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe! Bring them again! On opening weekend! This movie is deep magic.

Did I mention she likes it?

ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE SILLY ONLINE QUIZES...

You are a Social Conservative (35% permissive) and an... Economic Conservative (65% permissive) You are best described as a: Republican Link: The Politics Test on OkCupid Free Online Dating Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Mine turned out frighteningly like Jordana's.

CREATION AND FALSE CHOICE

In an article on a creationist trip and an evolutionist trip down the Grand Canyon those loveable guys at the NYT give us this:

For Mr. Vail and 29 guests on his Canyon Ministries trip, this was vacation as religious pilgrimage, an expedition in search of evidence that God created the earth in six days 6,000 years ago, just as Scripture says. [emphasis mine, nac]

Um, you got a verse on that 6,000 year thing? No painting with broad strokes there.

SUMMARY GRAPHIC OF THE INTELLIGENT DESIGN TRIAL...
...from The Onion.

A BAD BET

In an inexplicable lapse of judgment, an Irish bookmaker decided to run a billboard ad campaign showing Jesus gambling. They've now pulled the ads:

Ireland's largest bookmaker, Paddy Power PLC, withdrew a billboard campaign Wednesday that portrayed Jesus and his disciples at the Last Supper table — and playing poker and roulette alongside the slogan, "There's a place for fun and games."

The Dublin-based company was responding to legal threats from Ireland's Advertising Standards Authority, which reported receiving scores of complaints from the public in this predominantly Roman Catholic country.

At all 89 locations across Dublin, the offending billboards were replaced Wednesday with new Paddy Power ads that said: "There's a place for fun and games. Apparently this isn't it."

Frank Goodman, chief executive of the Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland, said Paddy Power had breached its guidelines for taste, decency and religion. "This apparently has caused widespread offense," he said.

Apparently so.

I wonder if it would have been okay if He was shown playing bingo...

HARRIET MIERS CONVERSION

Without reference to the wisdom of President Bush's latest choice for the Supreme Court, the New York Times points us to the watershed moment in her life:

By 1979, Harriet E. Miers, then in her mid-30's, had accomplished what some people take a lifetime to achieve. She was a partner at Locke Purnell Boren Laney & Neely, one of the most prestigious law firms in the South, with an office on the 35th floor of the Republic National Bank Tower in downtown Dallas.

But she still felt something was missing in her life, and it was after a series of long discussions - rambling conversations about family and religion and other matters that typically stretched from early evening into the night - with Nathan L. Hecht, a junior colleague at the law firm, that she made a decision that many of the people around her say changed her life.

"She decided that she wanted faith to be a bigger part of her life," Justice Hecht, who now serves on the Texas Supreme Court, said in an interview. "One evening she called me to her office and said she was ready to make a commitment" to accept Jesus Christ as her savior and be born again, he said. He walked down the hallway from his office to hers, and there amid the legal briefs and court papers, Ms. Miers and Justice Hecht "prayed and talked," he said.

She was baptized not long after that, at the Valley View Christian Church.

It was a pivotal personal transformation for the woman now named for a seat on the United States Supreme Court, not entirely unlike that experienced by President Bush and others in the Texas political and business establishment of that time.

Ms. Miers, born Roman Catholic, became an evangelical Christian and began identifying more with Republicans than with the Democrats who had long held sway over Texas politics. She joined the missions committee of her church, which is against legalized abortion, and friends and colleagues say she rarely looked back at her past as a Democrat.

It's an intriguing story. Although one must wonder why it had no impact on her decision to head the Texas Lottery Board.

IMPROPER INFLUENCE...FROM THE BIBLE

The Supreme Court refused to review a Colorado ruling that threw out a death sentence because the jury was unduly influenced by the Bible:

The justices declined to review a Colorado Supreme Court ruling that imposed a sentence of life imprisonment for Robert Harlan because jurors brought a Bible into the jury room and discussed the passage about an "eye for eye, tooth for tooth."

Without comment or recorded dissent, the nation's top court rejected an appeal by Colorado prosecutors who argued the introduction of the Bible into death penalty jury deliberations did not automatically violate the defendant's constitutional right to a fair trial.

Harlan was convicted and sentenced to death in 1995 for the kidnapping, rape and murder of a cocktail waitress who was on her way home from work at a casino. He also was convicted of shooting another woman who had given the waitress a ride.

According to the evidence, jurors brought a Bible, a Bible index and hand-written notes containing the location of passages into the jury room to share with another juror.

One passage stated: "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, as he has caused disfigurement of a man, so shall it be done to him. And whoever kills an animal shall restore it, but whoever kills a man shall be put to death."

A trial judge overturned the death sentence after concluding that a reasonable possibility existed that use of the Bible would influence a typical juror to vote for the death penalty.

The Colorado Supreme Court agreed. "We can no longer say that Harlan's death sentence was not influenced by passion, prejudice or some other arbitrary factor," it ruled.

From a state's rights standpoint I can't much argue with their refusal to review it, but the court is awfully quick to support imaginary "rights" and awfully quick to pass over religious rights.

'RELIGION? HOW DARE YOU!'

Included in yet another even-handed (cough, cough) New York Times article on evolution, religion and Intelligent Design was this interesting exchange between an attorney and a former member of the Dover (Pa.) School Board:

Under cross-examination by Patrick Gillen, a soft-spoken defense lawyer, Mrs. Brown was asked whether she recalled visiting the home of a board member and admiring a carving of the Last Supper.

"The Lord's Last Supper, yes sir," Mrs. Brown said. "I had never seen such a beautiful carving."

But she said she did not feel comfortable when the board member asked her if she was a born-again Christian. She also said she felt disturbed when another board member, who was among those most insistent about teaching creationism, drove her home from a meeting and asked the same question.

Suddenly, his manner changing, Mr. Gillen pounced: these were Mrs. Brown's friends, she was in their homes, in their cars, and she found it offensive to be asked about religion?

"Yes, I do, and I still do, sir," she said.

A bite in his voice, Mr. Gillen asked if she thought religion should not be discussed at all.

"I wouldn't presume to discuss religion within normal circumstances," she said, "except within my own family."

Mrs. Brown and her husband quit the board the night members voted 6 to 3 for intelligent design.

Okaaay. Talk about driving religion from the public sphere. Apparently some believe it should largely be driven from the private sphere as well. As those who support Intelligent Design in schools are continually portrayed as extremist kooks, we need to take note there is at the very least another form of kookery in opposition to all things religious.

ANCIENT ITHACA FOUND?

An amateur archaeologist claims to have found the ancient island home of Odysseus:

Homer’s legendary hero Odysseus wandered for 10 years in search of his island kingdom, Ithaca. Now, a British amateur archaeologist claims to have ended the ancient quest to locate the land described in “The Odyssey.”

Although the western Greek island of Ithaki is generally accepted as the Homeric site, scholars have long been troubled by a mismatch between its location and geography and those of the Ithaca described by Ancient Greece’s greatest poet.

Robert Bittlestone, a management consultant, said Thursday that the peninsula of Paliki on the Ionian island of Cephallonia, near Ithaki, was the most likely location for Odysseus’ homeland. He said geological and historic evidence suggested that Paliki used to form a separate island before earthquakes and landslides filled in a narrow sea channel dividing it from Cephallonia.

Some scholars are backing the theory. It's interesting how reliable many of these ancient documents are.

HOW MANY EDITORS DID THIS PASS THROUGH?

From today's Corrections at the New York Times:

The About New York column yesterday, about an imagined conversation with God at a Manhattan diner, referred incorrectly to the Bible to which the thickness of the menu was likened. It is the King James Version, not St. James.

Oh my.

(Thanks to the guys at Power Line for this one.)

BUCKLEY, FREE SPEECH, DARTMOUTH & CHARACTER

The new president of the Dartmouth Student Assembly made a surprising, but unsurprisingly unpopular, statement recently:

What happened was a convocation welcoming the freshman class to Dartmouth College. The student president traditionally speaks at these convocations, and this time it was the young man from Louisville, Ky., who uttered what turned out to be an inflammatory couple of sentences. He told the freshmen that the mere imparting of knowledge is less than what a college education should seek to do for students. The development of character is the higher goal.

"Character," said [Noah] Riner, "has a lot to do with sacrifice, laying our personal interests down for something bigger. The best example of this is Jesus. ... He knew the right thing to do. He knew the cost would be agonizing torture and death. He did it anyway. That's character."

Of course, the Ivy Leaguers weren't going to let that pass:

That violation of secularist decorum brought on great indignation. A petition drive against the young student body president is contemplated. A vice president of the Student Assembly wrote to him, "I consider your choice of topic for the convocation speech reprehensible and an abuse of power. You embarrass the organization, you embarrass yourself." A sophisticated defense was tendered by a Jewish student who wrote, "Many of us in the Dartmouth community proudly disagree with that and other aspects of Riner's religious beliefs, but our disagreements do not give us the right to limit his speech."

Mr. Buckley finds a connection with Mr. Riner's reception at Dartmouth and the current attacks on Intelligent Design:

The planted axiom being encouraged by the secular community is that an acknowledgment of biological evolution not only acquiesces in scientific certitudes, it cannot coexist with any thought of intelligent design. And this is true no matter how many metaphors are introduced ("We don't mean Noah actually got all living creatures into an ark ...") to concede the morganatic difference between intelligent design and Darwinian evolution.

Anyone can have free speech...as long as you agree with the right people, which happens to be the secular left.

Some words for preachers:

[Y]ou can mark it down: God will hide from you much of your fruit. You will see enough to be assured of its blessing, but not so much as to think you could live without it. For God aims to exalt Himself, not the preacher, in this affair of preaching.

From John Piper's The Supremacy of God in Preaching, p. 23.

'SCOPES II'

Some are calling the showdown over Intelligent Design and evolution in Dover, Pa Scopes II. After the Dover school board voted to allow presentation of alternative explanations to evolution a group of parents has sued:

With the new political empowerment of religious conservatives, challenges to evolution are popping up with greater frequency in schools, courts and legislatures. But the Dover case, which begins Monday in Federal District Court in Harrisburg, is the first direct challenge to a school district that has tried to mandate the teaching of intelligent design.

What happens here could influence communities across the country that are considering whether to teach intelligent design in the public schools, and the case, regardless of the verdict, could end up before the Supreme Court.

Dover, a rural, mostly blue-collar community of 22,000 that is 20 miles south of Harrisburg, had school board members willing to go to the mat over issue. But people here are well aware that they are only the excuse for a much larger showdown in the culture wars.

"It was just our school board making one small decision," Mrs. Hied said, "but it was just received with such an uproar."

The way our courts are I don't expect ID to do too well in the suit. But perhaps it will continue to be a wakeup call for those who are tired of being pushed around by the ACLU and their allies.

SOBRAN ON KIRK

Joseph Sobran remembers Russell Kirk. That's always a good thing to do.

'SETTLED PRECEPTS OF SCIENCE'

Just what are those? Why anything scientists say they are, of course. Well, until someone disproves them. But in the meantime you are not allowed to question them especially if you're [shudder]religious[/shudder]. Museums, challenged by creationists, are fighting back:

Lenore Durkee, a retired biology professor, was volunteering as a docent at the Museum of the Earth here when she was confronted by a group of seven or eight people, creationists eager to challenge the museum exhibitions on evolution.

They peppered Dr. Durkee with questions about everything from techniques for dating fossils to the second law of thermodynamics, their queries coming so thick and fast that she found it hard to reply.

After about 45 minutes, "I told them I needed to take a break," she recalled. "My mouth was dry."

That encounter and others like it provided the impetus for a training session here in August. Dr. Durkee and scores of other volunteers and staff members from the museum and elsewhere crowded into a meeting room to hear advice from the museum director, Warren D. Allmon, on ways to deal with visitors who reject settled precepts of science on religious grounds.[emphasis added, nac]

So the troops are being trained on how to deal with those pesky and oh so unreasonable creationists. A pamphlet has even been written:

When talking to visitors about evolution, the pamphlet advises, "don't avoid using the word." Rehearse answers to frequently asked questions, because "you'll be more comfortable when you sound like you know what you're talking about."

Indeed.

PAUL WAS THERE
(and some guy named Alexander, too)

Archaeologists are finally getting around to excavating the ancient city of Patara:Now, after literally centuries of neglect, teams of Turkish and German archaeologists have been working under the hot sun of this small Mediterranean seacoast town, uncovering some of its treasures.

Among them, liberated from the many hundreds of truckloads of sand that covered it, is the actual Parliament building where the elected representatives of the Lycian League met. It has rows of stone seats arranged in a semicircle, like the chambers of the U.S. Congress.

Its stone-vaulted main entrances are intact, and so is the thronelike perch where the elected Lyciarch, the effective president of the League, sat.
Fun stuff.

LOADED QUESTIONS

I was looking over the Pew Trust's recent poll on American views of religion, particularly the questions relating to evolution. Here's their box:



Now as it's worded, I would have a hard time choosing the pro-creation/non-evolution option. Has life continued on earth in its present form since the beginning of time? Could anyone really answer 'yes' to that?

First, of course, you have all the extinct species, including dinosaurs. Well, that's a pretty big change. Then you also have various micro-evolutionary changes. When we talk about humans, for example, one who holds to a Biblical understanding of creation would have to see the division of humans into distinct genetic races (I realize this can be a fluid thing, but people from Norway don't look like people from China who don't look like people from Nigeria) as a micro-evolutionary development that differs from life in Eden. Recognizing the reality of that as well as other micro-evolutionary changes (dogs into distinct breeds, etc.) does not mean an endorsement of Darwinian evolution, but neither does it mean that life has continued unchanged since the beginning of time. What this shows more than anything else is the prevailing caricature of those who don't endorse Darwinian evolution even from places like the Pew Trust.

Write better questions and get more accurate results.

HOME-CHURCHED KIDS?

The Onion has discovered a new trend that hits close to home here in Alabama,the rise of home-churched kids:

BIRMINGHAM, AL—A new trend in the religious upbringing of children has recently emerged in the heart of the Bible Belt. "Home-churching," the individual, family-based worship of Jesus Christ, is steadily gaining in popularity, as more parents seek an alternative to what they consider the overly humanist content of organized worship.

Norville Tucker, who moved his family to the woods outside Shelby, AL in 1998 to "escape the damaging cultural influences of urban Mobile," is widely credited with pioneering the home-churching movement. Tucker said he was inspired to home-church when his 10-year-old son Macon returned from Sunday school singing a lighthearted song about Zacchaeus, a tax collector befriended by Christ, and then later recited the parable of the Good Samaritan.

"I couldn't believe that the liberal elite had infiltrated even the study of our Holy Scriptures," Tucker said. "It was bad enough that my youngsters were being taught evolution in public schools, but when I discovered they were learning to embrace foreigners and Big Government in Sunday school, I drew the line."

It sounds that the need is dire, indeed...

[Thanks to Sean for the tip.]

BUY THE TEN COMMANDMENTS...ON EBAY

A Ten Commandments display ordered removed by a Federal court is for sale on ebay:

Thou shalt not bid less than $52,000.

That's how much Ten Commandments-Georgia would like to raise for the controversial Decalogue that was ordered removed this summer from a breezeway in the Barrow County Courthouse in Winder. The plaque is now up for auction on eBay.

The group, a nonprofit committed to putting replicas of the tablets from Mount Sinai on public buildings throughout the state, opened bidding Sunday evening. By Monday afternoon, the plaque had attracted 41 bids with the latest at more than $1,500. Bidding closes on Sept. 21.

"We've been told it could raise as high as $20,000, if not $40,000," said Mike Griffin, executive director of Ten Commandments-Georgia....

The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit in 2003 to get the plaque removed. In July, Senior U.S. District Court Judge William C. O'Kelley ordered the plaque taken down. The county complied and decided not to appeal.

Now I confess I'm interested that they are 'putting replicas of the tablets from Mount Sinai on public buildings'. Just exactly what are they basing these 'replicas' on--the tablets Charleton Heston had?

EPISCOPALIANS 'KISSING JUDASES'

Episcopalian author Os Guinness has blasted his co-religionists as 'kissing Judases':

Christian apologist and author Dr. Os Guinness blasted the Episcopal Church telling several hundred persons at a Kairos Awards dinner that among mainline denominations it was the worst and most extreme capitulation to the spirit of the age in its abject surrender to the sexual mores of the modern world.

Calling them “kissing Judases” (from Soren Kierkegaard) -- followers of Jesus betray him with an interpretation. Guinness ripped the ECUSA saying, "we have seen a troubling growth of those who bend every nerve to reach successive generations of the cultured despisers of the Gospel: and then join them and become like them and no longer faithful to Jesus Christ. Some have surrendered to Enlightenment ideas, and become skeptics about God’s sovereignty, or skeptics about human sin, or skeptics about the possibility of the supernatural and any world beyond the here and now."

Guinness, an Episcopalian who attends The Falls Church in Northern Virginia, said that at one level, the result was an Alice in Wonderland church in which Christian leaders now openly deny what all Christians have believed and many have died to defend; Christian leaders who celebrate what their faith once castigated; Christian leaders who advance views closer to their foes than to their founder; and Christian leaders who deny the faith, but stay on shamelessly as leaders of the faith they deny.

Well, can't say I can argue with him.

Quote of the day:

"don't make it illegal for us to look at your underage daughters and then dress your underage daughters up like whores for us to look at."

What some fathers let their daughters wear is beyond me. Fathers (they're guys, remember?) really ought to know better.

HOMOSEXUAL 'MARRIAGE' TERMINATED IN CALIFORNIA

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will veto a 'gay' 'marriage' bill in California:

Schwarzenegger said the legislation, given final approval Tuesday by lawmakers, would conflict with the intent of voters when they approved an initiative five years ago. Proposition 22 was placed on the ballot to prevent California from recognizing same-sex marriages performed in other states or countries.

“We cannot have a system where the people vote and the Legislature derails that vote,” the governor’s press secretary, Margita Thompson, said in a statement. “Out of respect for the will of the people, the governor will veto (the bill).”

Proposition 22 stated that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” The bill to be vetoed by Schwarzenegger would have defined marriage as a civil contract between “two persons.”

I was somewhat amused by the next line in the article:

In Massachusetts, recognition of gay marriages came through a court ruling.

Well of course it did.

JUST TO BE SURE

Time was when you simply had to take someone's word if they told you that a child was yours--but no more! Now you can get a home DNA test in order to confirm that nagging question of paternity. That golddigger won't pull the wool over your eyes!

Yes, this is what our Jerry Springer society has come to. How do I know about the wonderful world of home DNA testing? Apparently there is enough of a demand for it that they're running radio spots for them. The one I heard begins the same way this post does (minus the golddigger line). *sigh*

PRIORITIES, UM, STRAIGHT

As the storms of life arise, one can still focus on the important things:

Amid the tragedy, about two dozen people gathered in the French Quarter for the Decadence Parade, an annual Labor Day gay celebration. Matt Menold, 23, a street musician wearing a sombrero and a guitar slung over his back, said: "It's New Orleans, man. We're going to celebrate."

Decadence, indeed.

THINKING OF BEAUVOIR

In the midst of human misery it is often the loss of a symbol that speaks the strongest. According to reports Beauvoir the Biloxi retirement home of Jefferson Davis has been reduced to rubble and a frame, the Presidential library gutted. The home needs friends more than ever.

On my one trip to Biloxi several years ago I remember how proudly it stood looking out over the Gulf coast in stark contrast to the floating casino just down the coastal road. Let us hope at least as much attention is paid to its restoration as is to rebuilding those casinos.

ABSTINENCE HURTS AIDS FIGHT?

According to the good *cough* folks at the United Nations the focus on abstinence by the US hurts the fight against AIDS:

The U.S. government's emphasis on abstinence-only programs to prevent AIDS is hobbling Africa's battle against the pandemic by downplaying the role of condoms, a senior U.N. official said on Monday.

Stephen Lewis, the U.N. secretary general's special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, said fundamentalist Christian ideology was driving Washington's AIDS assistance program known as PEPFAR with disastrous results, including condom shortages in Uganda....

Many health experts say condoms are the most effective bulwark against AIDS.

Really? I'd be willing to take my odds using abstinence against your odds using condoms with HIV infected partners any day.

I KNEW IT!

A new study has found that coffee is one of the best sources of healthy antioxidants: Coffee not only helps clear the mind and perk up the energy, it also provides more healthful antioxidants than any other food or beverage in the American diet, according to a study released Sunday....

The findings by Joe A. Vinson, a chemistry professor at the University of Scranton, in Pennsylvania, give a healthy boost to the warming beverage.

“The point is, people are getting the most antioxidants from beverages, as opposed to what you might think,” Vinson said in a telephone interview.
On cup #2 right now. (I know, I know--call me a health nut.)

CHURCH SHORTS?

What kind of shorts should I wear to work? Why, the same ones I wear to church, of course:

Just as one of the hottest summers in years started to sizzle, a Peoria, Ill.-based insurer took a bold step for a conservative company in a staid industry: It let its employees wear shorts to the office.

Not just any shorts on any day, mind you. They must be the type worn to church or the boss' barbecue, according to RLI Corp. Vice President Mike Quine, and the temperature has to be at least 90. [emphasis added, nac]

Ah. I see.

NEWSWEEK GOES IN SEARCH OF THE SPIRITUAL

You'll be surprised to find that a lot of people America are not only spiritual, but even religious. You can even take a poll on your spirituality.

DARWINISTS & ID @ THE TIMES: PART DEUX

Apparently the Times is doing a series on Intelligent Design. Take a look at In Explaining Life's Complexity, Darwinists and Doubters Clash.

BACKGROUND ON THE ID AGENDA

The New York Times has a fairly interesting (and lengthy) background article on the Discovery Institute, the organization behind the 'teach the controversy' movement in public schools recently endorsed by President Bush: Politicized Scholars Put Evolution on the Defensive. The Times clearly is no fan of the group, but the article is, for them, pretty even-handed.

NO KORAN IN COURTROOMS IN CAROLINA

A North Carolina judge has said no to the Koran in North Carolina courts:

Chief District Court Judge Joseph Turner says taking an oath on the Koran is not allowed by North Carolina state law, which specifies that witnesses shall place their hands on the “holy scriptures,” which he interprets as the Christian Bible.

“We’ve been doing it that way for 200 years,” he said. “Until the legislature changes that law, I believe I have to do what I’ve been told to do in the statutes.”

But the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the American Civil Liberties Union are challenging the Guilford County Courts.

“This was the first time that we had a judge … going on record and stating unilaterally what is a holy scripture and what is not — what we believe to be a violation of the establishment clause,” said Arsalan Iftikhar of CAIR.

Their case is solid, according to one Duke University law professor.

“I have absolutely no doubt that higher courts, if it gets there, will say that persons of Muslim faith can swear on a Koran rather than a Christian Bible,” said Erwin Chemerinsky. “The case law is so clear here that a person doesn’t even have to swear on a Bible to be a witness so long as they’re willing to promise to tell the truth.”

I'm Judge Turner's ruling won't last long.

THE SMITHSONIAN IN THE TRENCHES ON EVOLUTION

The Smithsonian says no open discourse here:

Evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg made a fateful decision a year ago.

As editor of the hitherto obscure Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, Sternberg decided to publish a paper making the case for "intelligent design," a controversial theory that holds that the machinery of life is so complex as to require the hand -- subtle or not -- of an intelligent creator.

Within hours of publication, senior scientists at the Smithsonian Institution -- which has helped fund and run the journal -- lashed out at Sternberg as a shoddy scientist and a closet Bible thumper.

"They were saying I accepted money under the table, that I was a crypto-priest, that I was a sleeper cell operative for the creationists," said Steinberg, 42 , who is a Smithsonian research associate. "I was basically run out of there."

An independent agency has come to the same conclusion, accusing top scientists at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History of retaliating against Sternberg by investigating his religion and smearing him as a "creationist."

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel, which was established to protect federal employees from reprisals, examined e-mail traffic from these scientists and noted that "retaliation came in many forms . . . misinformation was disseminated through the Smithsonian Institution and to outside sources. The allegations against you were later determined to be false."

Ah, smears against dissenters. Investigating someone's religious beliefs. Reprisals from a govermental agency. No, Establishment Science isn't afraid of the free exchange of ideas at all.

[Thanks to ol' Wild Bill yet again.]

Update: COTB examines the cycle of attack and deny employed by the Scientific Establishment.

More at NRO.

IT'S ALL IN WHO WRITES THE HEADLINE

From the Sydney Morning HeraldLife's origin: Darwinism fights it out with dogma. I sure am glad that Darwinists aren't dogmatic.

FARRIS CALLED OUT OVER BAPTISM

Self-noted attorney and president of his very own college (Patrick Henry College Farris U.) Michael P. Farris has been challenged by the Purcellville Church of Christ to a doctrinal debate on the issue of baptism. Apparently they sent this letter (in pdf format) to Farris, whose college debate team even beat Oxford. Surely he could handle a bunch of heretics, but I guess he's too busy enforcing non-disclosure agreements.

By the way, I thought this headline captured the Hunley situation well: Christian College Fires Man For Being a Christian.

(Again, thanks to theosebes reader Wild Bill.)

WELL, SCIENTISTS DO BELIEVE IN GOD AFTER ALL

But a recent study has shown more social scientists than natural scientists believe in God:

About two-thirds of scientists believe in God, according to a new survey that uncovered stark differences based on the type of research they do.

The study, along with another one released in June, would appear to debunk the oft-held notion that science is incompatible with religion.

Those in the social sciences are more likely to believe in God and attend religious services than researchers in the natural sciences, the study found.

The opposite had been expected.

Nearly 38 percent of natural scientists -- people in disciplines like physics, chemistry and biology -- said they do not believe in God. Only 31 percent of the social scientists do not believe....

Some stand-out stats: 41 percent of the biologists don't believe, while that figure is just 27 percent among political scientists.

In separate work at the University of Chicago, released in June, 76 percent of doctors said they believed in God and 59 percent believe in some sort of afterlife.

Yes, like those doing the study I would have expected the opposite, too.

RUSH, HOMOSEXUALITY, CHOICE AND MORALITY

While at my desk last week I had Rush Limbaugh on in the background when I noticed he was talking to a caller about homosexuality and civil rights. While opposing the radical homosexual rights agenda it seems that Rush has made a critical concession on the issue. Rush began by saying hardly anyone he knows believes homosexuality is a choice. Of course, that recalls Pauline Kael's reaction to Richard Nixon's 1972 victory over George McGovern "How can that be? No one I know voted for Nixon." That simply says a great deal about who you know rather than what the majority of people believe (and especially what might actually be true). Rush was saying in a diplomatic way, he doesn't believe it's a choice, either. He then extrapolated to say that something that isn't a choice couldn't really be categorized as moral or immoral.

What this line of reasoning masks is a critical distinction that the homosexual rights lobby has long sought to blur. Homosexuality, they wish us to accept, is what you are, not what you do. Now, do some people have a proclivity that causes homosexual behavior to be a temptation? Possibly. I couldn't really argue it either way.

Now, do some people have a proclivity that causes drunkenness to be a temptation? I would say that's probably the case. We open the door to a nature vs. nurture argument, of course, but that's not what I'm interested in here. It is generally accepted societally--and based on Biblical strictures, morally--that drunkenness is not desirable. Is drunkenness a choice? Sure. If you don't want to be drunk, don't drink. Do some people struggle with this more than others? For whatever reason, yes, some clearly do. Now think, what do you struggle with in your life that others you know may not struggle with?

Let us return to homosexuality. Obviously it is a genuine temptation for many people. But again, each of us struggles to bring various areas of our life in line with that perfect Image of God, Christ. That one can stop practicing homosexuality is quite clear, just as one can stop practicing any other form of sexual immorality such as run of the mill fornication or adultery. What do we say to the philanderer who must move from woman to woman because one woman--his wife--simply is not satisfying to him? Well, we tell him he must stop such behavior. In 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 Paul addresses those in Corinth who had given up various sins:

9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals,

10 nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.

11 Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.

All of these--and I've highlighted some we have discussed here--are actions one chooses to engage in. Through Jesus Christ we can choose not to.

But, we hear, what about those who have sexual desires that can only be fulfilled through homosexual behavior? Well, what about them? I suppose they will have to have those desires left unfulfilled (Matthew 19:12). I'm not talking about trying to convert them into a happily married man or woman. Perhaps they will never have that, but we must get beyond defining our identity solely by our sexuality. But there are advantages to remaining unmarried as Paul discusses in 1 Corinthians 7:32-35.

Some teachings are hard, and do require the sacrifice of unchecked sensual pleasures. But our Creator has both a perfect understanding of his Creation and of His own holy nature, which from the beginning we are expected to reflect. We are unqualified to question Him on either.

POOL OF SILOAM FOUND

"The man who is called Jesus made clay, and anointed my eyes, and said to me, 'Go to Siloam and wash'; so I went away and washed, and I received sight." (John 9:11)

Workers in Jerusalem have accidentally uncovered the Biblical pool of Siloam:

Workers repairing a sewage pipe in the Old City of Jerusalem have discovered the biblical Pool of Siloam, a freshwater reservoir that was a major gathering place for ancient Jews making religious pilgrimages to the city and the reputed site where Jesus cured a man blind from birth, according to the Gospel of John.

The pool was fed by the now famous Hezekiah's Tunnel and is "a much grander affair" than archeologists previously believed, with three tiers of stone stairs allowing easy access to the water, said Hershel Shanks, editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review, which reported the find Monday.

"Scholars have said that there wasn't a Pool of Siloam and that John was using a religious conceit" to illustrate a point, said New Testament scholar James H. Charlesworth of the Princeton Theological Seminary. "Now we have found the Pool of Siloam … exactly where John said it was."

A gospel that was thought to be "pure theology is now shown to be grounded in history," he said.

And how about that.

PATRICK HENRY COLLEGE FARRIS U. GOES BALLISTIC OVER...BAPTISM?

Jeremy Hunley thought he had a job in a great place, lots of religious people committed to Christ who were focused on teaching home schooled kids. He found out otherwise when he was fired by President Michael P. Farris of Patrick Henry College for inviting these religious people to the church he attends. You see the catch is, Hunley and other members at the Purcellville Church of Christ believe that baptism is essential for salvation. President Farris was unwilling to agree to disagree:

College administrators told Hunley, a member of the Church of Christ, that the belief put him at odds with the school's statement of faith, which he was required to sign before taking the job. According to the 10-point document, salvation is found only through faith in Jesus Christ.

Patrick Henry was founded in 2000 to be an Ivy League-type college aimed at attracting academically gifted home-schoolers. The school's president talks unabashedly of birthing a new generation of conservative leaders who will reclaim the country from years of liberal sway. It is a bold mission that has attracted national attention....

The college's president and founder, Michael P. Farris -- a lawyer, home-schooling advocate and Baptist minister -- insisted that the opposite is true. He said Hunley's forced resignation is proof that the school will not compromise on the fundamental religious beliefs that drive its mission and ultimately will determine its success.

"One of the most common questions I'm asked as I promote the college to people is, 'How are you going to prevent Patrick Henry from becoming like Harvard, which started off as a strong Christian school and look at it today?' " he said. "I think for better or for worse, the battle with Jeremy Hunley was one of our first tests of whether we're going to stick to what we believe or not."

Of course, I'm one of those crazies who attends a church of Christ as well--and while there's no exact wording in the article--but I think could agree to a statement that "salvation is found only through faith in Jesus Christ" (hey, I'll sign up for John 3:16 if Mr. Farris will go along with Acts 2:38, Mark 16:16, 1 Peter 3:21, oh, and James 2:24). Apparently Mr. Hunley felt he could sign such a statement as well:

Hunley said the wording of the school's statement could be interpreted to encompass his views. Administrators disagreed.

So, apparently we have Patrick Henry Baptist College. That's fine, but it also seems that while Patrick Henry isn't really interested in employing Mr. Hunley, they are quite willing to take the money of those who attend churches of Christ. You see, Mr. Farris not only fired Mr. Hunley, but he took him to court as well:

At Hunley's court hearing, Farris read letters from members of the [I assume, Mr. Hunley's-nac] church, who wrote to say they were withholding support from the college based on the librarian's allegations.

You see, Mr. Hunley was forced to sign a confidentiality agreement in order to receive needed severance pay. Farris contended that Hunley broke the agreement, and used the letters from members of churches of Christ withholding support to prove it! You wouldn't think he would want their tainted money. Next thing they might be just like Harvard, you know.

So what does Farris (I hate to associate an honorable man like the actual Patrick Henry with these actions) get out of this other than stroking his ego? Possibly not what he wants, which is mainstream acceptance:

Farris's school needs acceptance from the mainstream halls of power if it is to fulfill its ambitious agenda, said Mark J. Rozell, a political science professor at George Mason University. That is what the school risks when it engages in a public doctrinal dispute with a former employee, said Rozell, who wrote a book on the religious right in Virginia, devoting a chapter to Farris's unsuccessful run for lieutenant governor in 1993.

"He's been very open about his goal to make this institution politically powerful," Rozell said of Farris. "If he wants the place to be a more powerful player, it has to be a little more open. It's hard to broaden the reach and the political impact by taking a very narrow line theologically."

Some years ago I spoke with my friend and home schooling guru Martin Cothran about the need for higher education for home schooled kids, something that understood their goals and priorities. One would hope that Patrick Henry College might have been such a place, but I know of at least three homeschooled kids whose father will see to it that they don't go to Farris U.

[Some Wilder Thoughts on the issue.]

KING DAVID'S PALACE FOUND?

Perhaps. An Israeli archaelogist is making claims:

An Israeli archaeologist says she has uncovered in East Jerusalem what may be the fabled palace of the biblical King David. Her work has been sponsored by a conservative Israeli research institute and financed by an American Jewish investment banker who would like to prove that Jerusalem was indeed the capital of the Jewish kingdom described in the Bible.

We shall see what becomes of it. The usual crowd of Biblical skeptics are, well, skeptical.

[Thanks to Ferrell Jenkins for the link.]

'DA VINCI CODE' GOES TOP SECRET

The Ron Howard led filming of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code has gone top secret:

"Da Vinci," set for release in May, is shaping up as one of the movie world's more complicated exercises - so much so that Sony has dropped a scrim of secrecy over the affair, refusing to discuss anything but the barest details. The script has been closely controlled. Outsiders have been banned from the set. And those associated with the film have had to sign confidentiality agreements.

"There isn't a hidden agenda, there isn't any secrecy, it's just because it's so well known," said Geoffrey Ammer, Sony's president of worldwide marketing, explaining the low profile. "They've got a job to do to make the movie. It was easier for everybody to just go make the movie."

But executives and others connected with the project acknowledge that their silence is also a measure of concern about the potentially incendiary nature of the subject matter. The book, which is fiction, takes aim at central Christian dogma, claiming that Jesus had a child with Mary Magdalene, who was meant to be his true heir. It alleges an enormous coverup by the Roman Catholic Church, which, according to the book, usurped Mary's place in favor of a male-oriented hierarchy that has suppressed what Mr. Brown calls the "sacred feminine."

Now what on earth would these good folks have to hide?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MOLLY KATHERINE



Daughter number two turned three years old on Sunday. That's her hamming it up with the birthday cake her mom made her, complete with edible baby Moses in the bulrushes. (She has a baby doll she dubbed 'Baby Moses'.) She was thrilled to be able to eat baby Moses's head.

Monday night will be the first night with no pacifier. We'll see how that goes.

BUSH ON I.D.

President Bush commented yesterday that 'Intelligent Design' should be taught in schools as a competing theory to Darwinian evolution.

Predictably, the faux sophisticates expressed shock:

These comments drew sharp criticism yesterday from opponents of the theory, who said there is no scientific evidence to support it and no educational basis for teaching it.

Much of the scientific establishment says that intelligent design is not a tested scientific theory but a cleverly marketed effort to introduce religious -- especially Christian -- thinking to students. Opponents say that church groups and other interest groups are pursuing political channels instead of first building support through traditional scientific review.

Those on the 'blogosphere' were outraged as well.

There has been these much fuss and bluster in some time. I'm glad to see it.

FORCING THEIR HAND

In a brilliant stroke, the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Publis Schools has persuaded the school board of Odessa, TX to begin a new course on the Bible:

The council calls its course a nonsectarian historical and literary survey class within constitutional guidelines requiring the separation of church and state.

But a growing chorus of critics says the course, taught by local teachers trained by the council, conceals a religious agenda. The critics say it ignores evolution in favor of creationism and gives credence to dubious assertions that the Constitution is based on the Scriptures, and that "documented research through NASA" backs the biblical account of the sun standing still.

In the latest salvo, the Texas Freedom Network, an advocacy group for religious freedom, has called a news conference for Monday to release a study that finds the national council's course to be "an error-riddled Bible curriculum that attempts to persuade students and teachers to adopt views that are held primarily within conservative Protestant circles."

Very upset about it all is the oh so outraged and sophisticated looking Prof. David Newman (he's a genuine English teacher at Odessa College--smile for the camera!):

But in Odessa, where the school board has not decided on a curriculum, a parent said he found the course's syllabus unacceptably sectarian. He has been waging his own campaign for additional information on where it is being taught.

"Someone is being disingenuous; I'd like to know who," said the parent, David Newman, an associate professor of English at Odessa College who has made a page-by-page analysis of the 270-page syllabus and sent e-mail messages to nearly all 1,034 school districts in Texas.

Ah, disingenous. Not something the left that has sought to banish any mention of religion from public life in the name of "religious freedom" would know anything about.

Maybe if some of these kids actually had a class on the Bible they might have a vague clue what the majority of Western literature and art is about.

THAT JEWISH CATACOMB IN ROME

Dutch scholars have dated a Jewish catacomb earlier than its more famous Christian counterparts:

A Jewish catacomb in Rome predates its Christian counterparts by at least 100 years, indicating burial in the city's sprawling underground cemeteries may not have begun as a Christian practice, according to a study published Wednesday.
Scholars have long believed that early Christians were the first to bury their dead in Roman catacombs. But Dutch experts from Utrecht University who dated organic material from a Jewish catacomb in the city say it appears that early Christians inherited the practice from Jews.

But--stop the presses!--there seems to be some sort of link between Judaism and early Christianity:

The findings, published in the journal Nature, would further illustrate links between early Christian culture and Judaism....

[Leonard Victor] Rutgers said his research may provide further evidence of the influence Judaism had on early Christianity.

"The extent to which Christianity has Jewish roots is a very widespread debate today and this research adds a new element to the discussion," he said.

Well, it is interesting, but is it really that shocking?

[Thanks to lovely and talented theosebes reader Jordana for the link.]

FOR AS LONG AS WE BOTH SHALL FEEL LIKE IT

'Till Death Do Us Part' is on its way out of many modern wedding 'vows':

Vows like "For as long as we continue to love each other," "For as long as our love shall last" and "Until our time together is over" are increasingly replacing the traditional to-the-grave vow — a switch that some call realistic and others call a recipe for failure.

"We're hearing that a lot — 'as long as our love shall last.' I personally think it's quite a statement on today's times — people know the odds of divorce," said New Jersey wedding expert Sharon Naylor (search), author of "Your Special Wedding Vows," who adds that the rephrasing is also part of a more general trend toward personalizing vows.

Not to fear, however. People are still taking their wedding vows...um...seriously. They just want to save on therapy bills:

Naylor said killing the "death vow" doesn't mean that people don't take their marriage promises seriously. Quite the contrary.

"People understand that anything can happen in life, and you don't make a promise you can't keep. When people get divorced, they mourn the fact that they said ''til death do us part' — you didn't keep your word in church (if they had a church wedding). Some people are in therapy because they promised ‘til death do us part' — it is the sticking point in the healing of a broken marriage. The wording can give you a stigma of personal failure."

Oh, dear--personal failure! Well changing the wording will make all that go away.

LOVELY (NO, REALLY)

While surfing about looking for material for an upcoming (perhaps I should say looming) lesson on Joseph I came across these wonderful illustrations by Tamar Messer. She beautifully illustrates Ruth, Joseph and other events of the Old Testament (aka, TANAKH). Go admire and buy a print. I hope to sometime before long myself.

OH, JOY--MORE 'RELIGION' ON NETWORK TV

NBC is now trying their hand at a religiously oriented television show. The Book of Daniel will be a mid-season replacement series this coming season, and it ain't pretty:

The NBC network, eager for new hits to reverse a ratings slump, said on Friday it has given a mid-season 2005-06 commitment to a new drama titled "The Book of Daniel," depicting Christ as a contemporary confidant to a pill-popping priest.

The series stars Aidan Quinn ("Legends of the Fall") as conflicted Episcopal minister and family man, the Rev. Daniel Webster, and Oscar-winner Ellen Burstyn as his bishop.

And what sort of character will "Jesus" be?
[NBC President Kevin] Reilly has said NBC's development of the show was inspired in part by the success of religion-themed novels like the "Left Behind" series and Mel Gibson's movie "The Passion of the Christ."

"Daniel," however, is a far cry from "Passion" or the conventional Easter-season TV specials that portray Christ in a biblical context. According to NBC promotional materials, the Jesus character on "Daniel" is depicted as a "contemporary, cool" figure who appears only to the minister.
A Jesus that Hollywood thinks is "cool". And the hits just keep on coming in the wake of "The Passion," but, of course, none of them actually try to do what "The Passion" did. Mel Gibson approached the Biblical account and the Person of Jesus with respect and faithfulness to the Biblical account. The tv networks, instead, want Jesus to be "cool". It's Lot in a pirate ship all over again.

IS DAN BROWN 'BONKERS'?

Yeah, probably so. But he's doing a good job of keeping the pot stirred in view of the Da Vinci Code's movie release next year, so maybe he's just crazy like a fox. It seems Brown is standing by his claimthat Jesus was married with children:

AUTHOR Dan Brown is set to reignite controversy over his besteller The Da Vinci Code today, by defending claims he makes in the book that Jesus Christ married and had a child.
In a rare television interview to be broadcast tonight on the National Geographic Channel, Brown reaffirms his “belief” in book’s key theory – that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and their French-born child started a blood line stretching to the present day. Critics have denounced the new claims as “bonkers”.

The Da Vinci Code, first published in 2003, has sparked worldwide religious debate. The quasi-historical thriller claims Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting The Last Supper holds the key to the Holy Grail. According to the book, the Grail is not a chalice, as traditionally believed, but Mary Magdalene.

It alleges Jesus and Mary married and had a child and that their bloodline survives to this day – a secret kept by the Catholic Church.

And how are those claims being substantiated?

Film makers tried to find the sources from which Brown said he gleaned the information to compile his theory. However, they noted that some of the claims were not supported by historians, theologians or in academic works.

Huh. How about that?

LEVITICUS FRAGEMENTS FOUND

Dead Sea Scrolls watch out! Two Leviticus scroll fragments have come to light after being purchased by a scholar from a Bedouin:

A secretive encounter with a Bedouin in a desert valley led to the discovery of two fragments from a nearly 2,000-year-old parchment scroll - the first such finding in decades, an Israeli archaeologist said Friday.
The finding has given rise to hope that the Judean Desert may yield more treasures, said Professor Chanan Eshel, an archaeologist from Tel Aviv's Bar Ilan University.

The two small pieces of brown animal skin, inscribed in Hebrew with verses from the Book of Leviticus, are from "refugee" caves in Nachal Arugot, a canyon near the Dead Sea where Jews hid from the Romans in the second century, Eshel said in an interview with the Associated Press.

Tests are being conducted to verify authenticity, and you can be sure that the search is on for more of them.

CATHOLICS BACKING OFF EVOLUTION?

A cardinal viewed as an ally of evolutionary theory appears to be backing off:

An influential cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, which has long been regarded as an ally of the theory of evolution, is now suggesting that belief in evolution as accepted by science today may be incompatible with Catholic faith.

The cardinal, Christoph Schönborn, archbishop of Vienna, a theologian who is close to Pope Benedict XVI, staked out his position in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on Thursday, writing, "Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not."

In a telephone interview from a monastery in Austria, where he was on retreat, the cardinal said that his essay had not been approved by the Vatican, but that two or three weeks before Pope Benedict XVI's election in April, he spoke with the pope, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, about the church's position on evolution. "I said I would like to have a more explicit statement about that, and he encouraged me to go on," said Cardinal Schönborn.

He said that he had been "angry" for years about writers and theologians, many Catholics, who he said had "misrepresented" the church's position as endorsing the idea of evolution as a random process.

Of course, no one who holds to a Biblical understanding of Creation could in any way endorse a theory that proposes "an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection". If man was created in the image of God, he could not have been so created randomly. To imagine that God rolled the dice with His fingers crossed that man might turn out to reflect His nature is ludicrous on its face.

Of course, the random nature of evolution is a key tenent of the theory. Once you remove that one begins to question what the need for Darwinism is in the first place. Then it is realized that Darwinian evolution is not a scientific choice, but rather a philosophical one. And that's what has the evolutionists nervous.

NEW MEANING TO 'CHURCH DISCIPLINE'

Don't miss Bible class in Australia:

THE brutal beating left her with deep purple bruises all over her body but a priest and two Bible studies teachers claim they were just trying to "help" the girl realise she should go to church.


Chi Yeong Yun, 37, a priest at Chatswood's Open Door Church, and Bible studies teachers James Kang, 21, and Tom Chae-Young Lee, 22, pleaded guilty in the NSW District Court yesterday to assaulting Angela Kim on July 8 last year.

The court heard the three men beat Ms Kim, who was 19 at the time of the attack, for a "lengthy" period of time at a Bobbin Head park after dark.


Giving evidence with the aid of an interpreter, church elder Ken An said he has realised that beating as a form of "discipline" was wrong in Australia.


"I did not know how different the law was here and in Korea. I know know that it was wrong," he said.

Hmmm. Somehow it doesn't seem like what Jesus would do.

FROM THE 'BETTER LATE THAN NEVER' FILE

On this day in history in 1456 Joan of Arc was acquitted of heresy. Of course, she had been executed on May 30, 1431.

FROM THE 'WHY AM I NOT SHOCKED' FILE...

The United Church of Christ has voted overwhelmingly to endorse same-sex 'marriage'.

In other news, the sun rose in the east this morning...

THE TWELVE COMMANDMENTS?

In what apparently passes for insightful religious commentary, Allan Sloan (who studied the Bible in Hebrew) isn't sure how many commandmentsthere are:

You may think that the Supreme Court ruled last week that the state of Texas could continue to display a Ten Commandments monolith on its capitol grounds in Austin. But you'd be wrong. Look at the monolith—you can find it at tspb.state.tx.us/spb/gallery/monulist/10.htm—and you'll notice that it doesn't contain 10 commandments. It has 11. And if you count "I am the Lord thy God" as a commandment, which Jews do but Christians don't, the Supreme Court has approved a Twelve Commandments monolith, rather than the traditional Decalogue.

This monolith, sponsored by the Fraternal Order of Eagles, was part of a PR campaign for "The Ten Commandments," Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 Biblical epic starring Charlton Heston. Yes, the Supreme Court was ruling on the legality of a Hollywood promotion. The Eagles' grand secretary, Bob Wahls, explained to me last week that the text is a compromise drawn up by Jewish and Christian clergy to respect everyone's beliefs. So rather than bearing Ten Commandments that are the Word of God, the monolith bears 11 or 12 commandments that are the Word of a Committee.

Now this, really, could be the basis for at least an amusing column. But no, the good Mr. Sloan (who studied the Bible in Hebrew) sees it as Meaningful:

But while it's one thing to be in favor of ethics and morality in public life, it's a whole different thing to think—as I suspect most Americans do—that there is one single Decalogue. The complex textual history of the Commandments suggests that the more you study the Bible, the less certain you become of your ability to divine the precise Word of God. That's a useful lesson in this divided time.

Actually, I imagine just the opposite is the case. Throw a Bible at a complete novice and it's likely he'll have an understandably difficult time figuring out a Biblical timeline, understanding many of the cultural settings and grasping the symbolism. But I also think that the big picture can be grasped pretty quickly.

At any rate, the column all hinges on the fact that--you see--there really are (you may not have known this) two Decalogues in the Old Testament:

Most public displays of the Ten Commandments, including the ones in Texas and Kentucky that the Supreme Court dealt with, are based on Exodus 20, verses 2-14, where God speaks directly to the Israelites. But if you grew up as I did, studying the Bible in its original Hebrew, you know that there's a second, equally valid version in Deuteronomy 5:6-18. And the two versions differ. In Exodus, God says to remember the Sabbath because he created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. In Deuteronomy, Moses recounts that God told the Israelites to observe the Sabbath because the Lord liberated them from Egyptian bondage. So which is it? The traditional Jewish answer is that God uttered both versions simultaneously, but fallible human ears heard it two separate ways. So how can you post one version or the other and declare it the Ineffable Word of God? You can't.[Bold added, nac, italics are Mr. Sloan's]

This is what passes for penetrating Biblical insight these days? You may have noticed that Mr. Sloan studied the Bible in Hebrew, which apparently gives one the ability to count to two. In every copy and version of the Old Testament I have the Ten Commandments is listed in both places. I've been able to count them every time. And if the use of "remember" one place and "observe" in another is a crisis of faith for Mr. Sloane then I have some insight into why he's having a hard time "divin[ing] the precise Word of God."

SURFIN' FOR THE LORD

Make sure you bring your laptop next time you go to services in Cardiff, Wales, which now has wi-fi for parishioners:

Last rites administered via e-mail? Donations to the collection plate made through PayPal? It doesn't sound that far-fetched when you consider what's happening at St. John's Church in Cardiff, Wales.

The church has installed wireless Internet access so worshippers can surf the Web and check their e-mail while singing praises to the Almighty.

The Rev. Keith Kimber, a computer buff, said he hopes the high-speed connection will encourage more business types to join his flock and to linger in the peace of the sanctuary.

He said people inside the church had been unable to access the city's wireless services because of its 4-foot-thick walls.

Kimber said that turning high-tech is a natural reaction to changing times.

"Why is this more interesting than a church having electricity or a telephone or sewers?" he asked. "It's another piece of infrastructure appropriate and useful to the times we live in."

You'll keep 'em with what you draw 'em with.

BRIT KIDS GET TO 'KNOW ISLAM'

Unsure if it comes with a secret decoder ring, but Great Britain's Dept. of Education is supplying students with "Know Islam" Kits:A British council has presented resource packs covering the basic teachings of Islam to primary schools across the London borough of Harrow in an effort to provide a better understanding of the Muslim faith, according to a local daily.

“The new resources will help school staff further develop their approach to high quality teaching of Islam — a religion that is far too often misunderstood,” the Harrow Times Monday, June 27, quoted as saying Councilor Navin Shah, leader of Harrow borough Council, which has become the first to fully fund the teaching of Islam in primary schools.

The resource packs include books, artifacts, CDs, videos and teaching aids covering the basic Muslim beliefs and practices through interactive class projects. Resources for secondary schools are also being developed and will be available to schools across the borough, according to the paper.

The packs for primary schools were produced by the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), in partnership with the Department of Education and Skills.
Great! Most Brits don't know anything about Christianity, either. Can we start putting "Know Christ" kits together now?

DANGER: PRACTICAL PREACHING

Lee Eclov has some excellent thoughts on modern fallacies of preaching, and the value of exposing listeners not only to the point, but also how you got there:

Picture a wilderness. A pioneer carves out a path, chopping away brush, felling trees, marking the way to a new outpost. As years pass, that path is traveled a thousand times till it becomes a wide, paved road. From it, other trails branch off, leading to other new outposts. Trails intersect, becoming crossroads. More outposts become towns. More trails become roads. More links are made till what was once wilderness is civilized.

Preaching is the work of spiritually civilizing the minds of Christian disciples. Preaching—especially expository preaching—cuts truth trails in the minds of our listeners. Our task is not only to display God's "point," but to instill God's logic—how he gets to that point.

For example, we do not simply preach the conclusion of 1 Corinthians 13—that "the greatest of these is love"—but we move people through the dimensions and definitions of love in that great chapter. We show that Paul intended such love be not only at weddings but also at church meetings as well. In other words, we not only establish the outpost—"the greatest of these is love"—but the truth trail as well.

Preaching, ultimately, needs to be an attempt to map the mind of God as revealed in His word. Sometimes the purpose of a sermon may be no more than that, but as our goal is to be conformed to the image of Christ each new understanding brings us that much closer.

SHELBY FOOTE, RIP
1916-2005

THOMAS D. CLARK, RIP
1903-2005

SCIENTOLOGY CRUISE'N

The press is all abuzz about Scientology as its poster boy Tom Cruise promotes his new movie and his new engagement (and his attacks on Brooke Shields). Here's a bit about Scientology's practices:

At first blush, Scientology resembles other New Age spiritual practices. The initiate starts with a process of "auditing," which is cross between an interview and confession employing a rudimentary lie detector. The idea is to learn about, target, and shed negative forces — the reactive mind — said to blunt potential. For a regular person, the first step might be a free stress test administered at a public booth in a shopping mall or Grand Central Station.

A Scientologist who is in the beginning stages of auditing — the stage Katie Holmes is reportedly in at this point — would be considered a "pre-clear." If she persists through these lower levels, which address career and other earthly struggles, she will reach the state of “clear.”

Once “clear,” Scientologists work on more otherworldly concerns through a series of levels starting with "Operating Thetan 1." It is only at this point that Scientologists can begin receiving knowledge of confidential teachings of Scientology. Cruise, said to be an OT6, and Travolta — reportedly OT7 — are well into this realm.

Among the secrets revealed to adherents who reach the OT3 level is the incident that led to the current evils of the Earth. In leaked documents now posted on the Internet, this incident started with a galactic shake-up 75 million years ago, when an alien ruler sent billions of subjects to this planet to solve an overpopulation problem. These "thetan" souls dispersed and invaded humans. Scientology is the means through which one's Body Thetans (BTs) are purged.

Ooookaaay.

For some interesting--well, as long as "interesting" means freako scary--insight into Tom Cruise using Scientology as a dating service, see what happened to Scarlett Johanssen. And just where was Katie Holmes for those two weeks?

Yeah, all that's normal...

NO MINIS AT BOMBAY U.

Bombay University (I was just by there a couple of weeks ago) is banning mini skirts to stop rape:

An Indian university plans to ban women from wearing mini skirts, tight tops and shorts, saying this will help prevent rape.
Bombay University officials say they would prefer to see women students in a traditional salwar-kameez -- a loose tunic top worn over baggy trousers -- with no deep neckline.

"An attire should be such that it should not be offensive or cause distraction to fellow students and lecturers," Vice Chancellor Vijay Khole told reporters.

Students are unconvinced:

Students have criticised the proposal saying it is not the answer to preventing rape.

"We are not children who should be told what we can and cannot wear," said a 19-year-old management studies student, Alka Mehta. "Rape is not related to what the victim wears but what is in the mind of the rapist."

Yes, it's the rare college age male who will be convinced that no mini-skirts is a good idea. Of course, having students--male and female--attired in a non-distracting fashion is only sensible in a learning environment anyway.

ANGLICANS: AMERICANS & CANADIANS OUTED

North American churches have been voted out over Bishop Gene Robinson:

The American and Canadian Churches have been excluded from one of the Anglican Communion's top bodies after refusing to change their views on homosexuality.
The policy-making Anglican Consultative Council voted them out for three years over their willingness to ordain gay clergy and bless gay relationships.

The ordination in the US of openly-gay Gene Robinson as a bishop has been threatening to split the communion.

The North American Churches refused to back down at a meeting in Nottingham.

The Anglican Consultative Council - which is regarded as relatively liberal - voted by 30 to 28 to call upon the Churches to withdraw voluntarily from its meetings for three years.

So, what happens after the three years?

GOD-FEARING DOCTORS

A new study has found that most U.S. doctors believe in God:

A survey examining religion in medicine found that most U.S. doctors believe in God and an afterlife — a surprising degree of spirituality in a science-based field, researchers say.

In the survey of 1,044 doctors nationwide, 76 percent said they believe in God, 59 percent said they believe in some sort of afterlife, and 55 percent said their religious beliefs influence how they practice medicine.

"We were surprised to find that physicians were as religious as they apparently are," said Dr. Farr Curlin, a researcher at the University of Chicago's MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics.

Not too surprising, I don't think.

THE HEADLINE SAYS IT ALL

According to a headline writer of what is supposed to be an actual news story, "US radicals blow their tops over volcano movie as Darwinism debate rages". Who are these "US radicals"? Why anyone who might dare oppose Darwinian hegemony:

Culture wars raging in the United States are reaping new victims as monster-screen IMAX cinemas and top museums are dragged into the fierce debate over the origin of life.

Pressure from ultraconservative religious groups has prompted some theaters equipped with the high quality panoramic IMAX screens to cancel showings of several movies which refer to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

Some politically powerful religious groups dismiss the theory, despite its widespread acceptance throughout the rest of the world.

Now if that's a value-free straight news story then I'll eat my much needed hat: "radicals" and "ultraconservative"? What about "secularists" and "ultraliberals"? No, no of course not. The Darwinists are squirming.

[Why, they must have had andy write that headline...]

EXPLAIN YOURSELVES

Anglican leaders want to know how a homosexual can lead the American Episcopal Church:

Anglican leaders are set to hear why the American arm of the Church decided to ordain an openly gay bishop - a move that almost split the worldwide Church.
The Primate of the US Anglican Church, Frank Griswold, is to deliver a report on the ordination of Gene Robinson.

Last year the Windsor Report sought an explanation into how a person in a same sex relationship could lead Anglicans....

In March this year the US Anglican Church, in a move to halt a slide towards a formal split, said it would not appoint new bishops or bless same-sex relationships for at least one year.

There are enough Anglicans (and American Episcopalians) outraged over this that their fellowship will be irrevocably split.

YEAH, WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL?

Russell Shorto at the good ol' New York Times wonders What's Their Real Problem With Gay Marriage?. Subtitled "It's the Gay Part" the existence of the article is an interesting study in bicoastal liberalism. We could just as easily ask: Why Don't They Understand the Problem With "Gay" "Marriage"?

Shorto comes to a shocking discovery:

But as I learned spending time among the cultural conservatives who are leading the anti-gay-marriage charge, they have their own reasons for doing so, which are based on their reading of the Bible, their views about both homosexuality and the institution of marriage and the political force behind the issue.

We need an in-depth NYT Magazine article to tell us this? Again we have proof that organs such as the Times aren't impartial observers, but players who are writing to their audience largely composed of homosexual "marriage" supporters. Those who defend the institution of marriage as understood for millennia somehow become the obstructionist curiosities to be studied.

SOUTHERN BAPTISTS IN THE 'DOLDRUMS'

Southern Baptist leader Bobby Welch says his denomination is in the doldrums:

The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s biggest Protestant denomination and the largest gathering of evangelical Christians in the world, is in the “doldrums” and faces a challenge to determine whether it is on the right path, its leader said Thursday.

The convention’s president, the Rev. Bobby Welch of First Baptist Church in Daytona Beach, Fla., also said that a resolution decrying immorality in American public schools was likely to be debated at next week’s annual gathering in Nashville, Tenn., but that it would be wrong for Southern Baptists to withdraw their children from public classrooms.

Certainly you're not hearing the same amount of buzz from the Baptist convention that you were a few years ago.

EUREKA!

Archimedes is speaking again with the help of X-rays:

Archimedes' amazingly advanced ideas have been lost and found several times throughout the ages. Now scientists are employing modern technology—including X-ray fluorescence at SLAC's Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL)—to completely read the Archimedes Palimpsest, the only source for at least two previously unknown treatises thought out by Archimedes in the third century B.C....

The palimpsest is a 1,000-year-old parchment made of goatskin containing Archimedes' work as laboriously copied down by a 10th century scribe. Two centuries later, with parchment harder to come by, the ink was erased with a weak acid (like lemon juice) and scraped off with a pumice stone, and the parchment was written on again to make a prayer book.

One of the most intractable problems was seeing the original ink on four pages that had been painted over with Byzantine religious images, which turned out to be 20th century forgeries intended to increase the value of the prayer book.

An X-ray system recently showed it was possible to penetrate the paintings. At SSRL, the assembled team practically jumped with excitement as the original writing beneath one painting was unveiled on the computer screens. Archimedes' hidden text deals with floating bodies and the equilibrium of planes.

The successful use of this and similar technologies will help recover innumerable ancient texts, Biblical manuscripts included.

THE END OF DARWINISM?

George Crispin reviews Jonathan Wells' Icons of Evolution, and it looks like it's worth reading:

Marxism has been proven a mistake. Freud’s psychoanalysis didn’t work. Now there is an argument that the speed of light is not a constant. Science changes positions all the time but Darwinism doesn’t budge. Anyone questioning it is instantly classified as a nut case, or if a scientist, one who can forget about establishment funding. Why is this? The system normally works well and, and except for Darwinism, science has accommodated much. Maybe it is because the "Darwinian high priesthood" stands to lose too much that they are allowed to get away with it. Then again, maybe they enjoy browbeating Christians (which is foolish, plenty of Christians have accommodated Darwinian beliefs) and they have hung in for a long time.

Like much of the rest of discredited 19th Century dogma, Darwinism, too, is headed for the dustbin of history.

DATE PALM FROM BIBLICAL TIME SPROUTS

Scientiests have germinated a 2,000 year old date seed:

Israeli doctors and scientists have succeeded in germinating a date seed nearly 2,000 years old.

The seed, nicknamed Methuselah, was taken from an excavation at Masada, the cliff fortress where, in A.D. 73, 960 Jewish zealots died by their own hand, rather than surrender to a Roman assault. The point is to find out what was so exceptional about the original date palm of Judea, much praised in the Bible and the Koran for its shade, food, beauty and medicinal qualities, but long ago destroyed by the crusaders.

"The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree," says Psalm 92. "They shall still bring forth fruit in old age. They shall be fat and flourishing."

Well, we'll see. Dr. Sarah Sallon, who runs a project on medicinal plants of the Middle East, notes that the date palm in ancient times symbolized the tree of life. But Dr. Elaine Solowey, who germinated the seed and is growing it in quarantine, says plants grown from ancient seeds "usually keel over and die soon," having used most of their nutrients in remaining alive.

The plant is now 11.8 inches tall and has produced seven leaves, one of which was removed for DNA testing. Radiocarbon dating in Switzerland on a snip of the seed showed it to be 1,990 years old, plus or minus 50 years. So the date seed dates from 35 B.C. to A.D. 65, just before the famed Roman siege.

Three date seeds were taken from Level 34 of the Masada dig. They were found in a storeroom, and are presumably from dates eaten by the defenders, Dr. Sallon says.

Grow, baby, grow!

THIS HAS MY MOM WORRIED...

It's a good thing she didn't see this before I went to India:

Angry Hindu youths beat three American missionaries and tried to kidnap one as they held a bible studies class in Bombay, police said on Monday.

About 30 or 40 men attacked the three, part of a group of eight, on Saturday night because they thought the missionaries were trying to convert Hindus in the Indian financial capital.

The three were treated for bruises and cuts at a hospital but were not seriously injured, police said.

Not pretty, but I think generally if you're careful about what you're doing and where you're doing it things will be fine. I met with no hostility at all during my time in Hyderabad.

MARK YOUR CALENDARS NOW...

The initial movie trailer for The Da Vinci Code is out. The movie release is scheduled for May 19, 2006, Tom Hanks starring, Ron Howard directing.

Et tu, Opie?

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

With those rowdy non-evolutionist types making noise the National Academies is fighting back:

The National Academies, the flagship of U.S. science, said Friday it had set up a Web site to battle attempts to portray evolution as mere speculation about how life developed on Earth.

The Web site carries links to various reports on evolution, which some U.S. religious groups want to be taught in schools only if their own views of a divine creator get equal credence.

"The theory of evolution is one of science's most robust theories, and the National Academies have long supported the position that evolution be taught as a central element in any science education program," the Academies said in a statement.

And just who is this National Academies?

The National Academies is an independent organization that routinely provides guidance on scientific, medical and engineering questions to the federal government and other groups that may ask them.

And who is it that asked them, anyway?

Contra the NA, but the barbarians aren't at the gate: they're defending their hegemony.

CHRISTIAN CRACKDOWN IN RUSSIA

Gone are the days of the Bible being used to teach English in Moscow's schools. The Putin administration now is teaming with the Russian Orthodox Church to tighten the screws on Evangelicals:

Dozens of evangelical believers stood stunned on Tverskaya Ploshchad across from City Hall, their protest banners lying in police vans, their pastor being carted off to a holding cell.

"This time it was pretty," Yelena Purshaga said last Thursday. Her husband, Alexander Purshaga, is the pastor of the Emmanuel church.

"You should have seen the way it was yesterday," she said on June 2.

The church had sought -- and thought it received -- permission to hold a weeklong demonstration across from City Hall over the loss of land that it had hoped to use to build a house of worship.

Independent Christian groups are seen as impossible to manage and subversively Western by both a repressive government and a fearful state church. While those who seek religious liberty in Russia will suffer during these times, it is also the case that Christianity flourishes under just such circumstances.

JET LAG, ANYONE?

Well, I'm back from my trip to India after about 20 hours in the air. India is 10 1/2 hours ahead of US Central time (daylight savings), and I had just gotten pretty well adjusted to the time schedule over there...just in time to leave and be completely thrown off here.

More about the trip soon, and maybe we can even try posting a few pictures.

NEW THOUGHTS ON THE DEATH OF JESUS

A new theory has been proposed for the medical reasons for Jesus' death:

An Israeli researcher has challenged the popular belief that Jesus died of blood loss on the cross, saying he probably succumbed to a sometimes fatal disorder now associated with long-haul air travel.

Professor Benjamin Brenner wrote in The Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis that Jesus’ death, traditionally believed to have occurred 3 to 6 hours after crucifixion began, was probably caused by a blood clot that reached his lungs.

Such pulmonary embolisms, leading to sudden death, can stem from immobilization, multiple trauma and dehydration, said Brenner, a researcher at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa.

“This fits well with Jesus’ condition and actually was in all likelihood the major cause of death by crucifixion,” he wrote in the article, based on religious and medical texts.

Of course, with so much trauma involved it's impossible to speak to the issue conclusively. All we can safely say is that what killed Jesus was crucifixion. More importantly, what killed Jesus was my sins.