The headline reads "Controversial Ga. billboards link abortion, race". In the article by Errin Harris of the Associated Press we find that there is a "Too Many Aborted" billboard campaign in Atlanta by Georgia Right to Life. The campaign is aimed at reducing abortions within the black community.
The article itself exposes Harris' views on abortion. The group producing the billboards is referred to as "anti-abortion". Now they are, and on the surface this may seem innocuous, but it is a psychological ploy. People are naturally suspicious of any group that is "anti" and Harris could have easily referred to Georgia Right to Life as being "pro-life". One never hears of those in favor of abortion being referred to as "anti-life", it is always "pro-choice".
One has to wonder what is controversial about the campaign? Are people who tell the truth and bring that truth before the public the ones causing controversy or is the controversy caused by those who do not want the truth to be told?
Planned Parenthood of Georgia spokesman Leola Reis says that "The language in the billboard is using messages of fear and shame to target women of color" and then parrots the party line euphemism that the only way to stop abortions is to provide "quality, affordable health care" to women. This is the same as saying that the only way to stop abortions is to make them widely available.
The PR problem that Planned Parenthood has is that the billboards expose the truth. Planned Parenthood was founded by the noted racist Margaret Sanger. Sanger was a promoter of eugenics and abortion to reduce the numbers of what she considered to be inferior races, notably blacks. Today in this country, black women make up 13% of the population, yet have 35% of the abortions. The great majority of Planned Parenthood abortion mills are in black neighborhoods. So the evidence is there that the abortion industry targets blacks.
Imagine the audacity of pro-life blacks opposing a disproportionate killing of their unborn. Where is the controversy in that?
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
A scientist comes to Christ
The drumbeat of modernists is that science and religion are incompatible, that only science deals with reality and religion is relegated to the realm of the subjective with no basis in fact.
Well, enter Francis Collins, MD, PhD, former director of the US Human Genome Project. Collins has an amazing testimony of how science led him to Christ. He was raised in a non-Christian home and declared himself an atheist in college, having little tolerance for belief in God. He had developed a belief that science held all the answers regarding ultimate "truth".
It was only after Collins began his pursuit of a medical degree, because of his interest in DNA and RNA, that his worldview began to change. One day, an elderly patient with heart disease shared her deep faith in God with him and asked him "What do you believe"? From her innocent question, Collins realized that up to that point, he had rejected God because of intellectual dishonesty. After all, a scientist is supposed to consider the evidence before rejecting a conclusion and he had never investigated the possibility that Christianity might be true.
Expecting an investigation of the rational basis of faith to shore up his atheism, he began to study world religions. It was then that a pastor gave him a copy of C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity. Lewis, who had once been an atheist himself, presented powerful, logical arguments for the existence of God. A major premise that got to Collins was the idea that we all have an intuitive sense of right and wrong that spans all cultures. This idea could have no basis in evolution, a philosophy embracing survival of the fittest. This Moral Law was a signpost, potential evidence of a Law Giver.
Another signpost for Collins was the fact that the physical laws of the universe could be expressed in simple, beautiful mathematics. And what about the characteristics of our universe, with fifteen constants that determine the behavior of electromagnetism, the strong and weak nuclear forces, the gravitational force perfectly calibrated to make complexity possible. Any minuscule change in these characteristics would be catastrophic. The implication of design was overpowering.
The more Collins investigated, the more he accepted God's existence and the more he despaired in being so far away from God's plan. His despair was resolved when he met the person of Jesus Christ and his promise of forgiveness. In his twenty seventh year, Collins yielded his life to Christ while hiking in the Pacific Northwest. He states that, in 30 years, he has found no conflicts between what he knows as a scientist and what he believes as a follower of Jesus Christ.
Collins work in DNA has only strengthened his belief in Christ. DNA is the instruction book for all living things. It is a marvelous code made up of a double helix, carrying information in a digital code consisting of chemical bases that scientists have labeled A,C, G, and T. It is arranged in base pairs, that, if read aloud without stopping, it take 31 years to read it. Scientist have now completed the sequence of all 3.1 billion letters of this human instruction book and Collins believes that anything this complex could have never risen purely by chance. It points to an intelligence which he believes is the God revealed in Scripture.
So, far from being in conflict with Christianity, Collins believes that science confirms that our universe was made by an intelligent God of order who established fixed physical laws that are ours to discover.
The heavens surely declare the glory of God and life at the sub-cellular level clearly reveals His handwork.
Well, enter Francis Collins, MD, PhD, former director of the US Human Genome Project. Collins has an amazing testimony of how science led him to Christ. He was raised in a non-Christian home and declared himself an atheist in college, having little tolerance for belief in God. He had developed a belief that science held all the answers regarding ultimate "truth".
It was only after Collins began his pursuit of a medical degree, because of his interest in DNA and RNA, that his worldview began to change. One day, an elderly patient with heart disease shared her deep faith in God with him and asked him "What do you believe"? From her innocent question, Collins realized that up to that point, he had rejected God because of intellectual dishonesty. After all, a scientist is supposed to consider the evidence before rejecting a conclusion and he had never investigated the possibility that Christianity might be true.
Expecting an investigation of the rational basis of faith to shore up his atheism, he began to study world religions. It was then that a pastor gave him a copy of C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity. Lewis, who had once been an atheist himself, presented powerful, logical arguments for the existence of God. A major premise that got to Collins was the idea that we all have an intuitive sense of right and wrong that spans all cultures. This idea could have no basis in evolution, a philosophy embracing survival of the fittest. This Moral Law was a signpost, potential evidence of a Law Giver.
Another signpost for Collins was the fact that the physical laws of the universe could be expressed in simple, beautiful mathematics. And what about the characteristics of our universe, with fifteen constants that determine the behavior of electromagnetism, the strong and weak nuclear forces, the gravitational force perfectly calibrated to make complexity possible. Any minuscule change in these characteristics would be catastrophic. The implication of design was overpowering.
The more Collins investigated, the more he accepted God's existence and the more he despaired in being so far away from God's plan. His despair was resolved when he met the person of Jesus Christ and his promise of forgiveness. In his twenty seventh year, Collins yielded his life to Christ while hiking in the Pacific Northwest. He states that, in 30 years, he has found no conflicts between what he knows as a scientist and what he believes as a follower of Jesus Christ.
Collins work in DNA has only strengthened his belief in Christ. DNA is the instruction book for all living things. It is a marvelous code made up of a double helix, carrying information in a digital code consisting of chemical bases that scientists have labeled A,C, G, and T. It is arranged in base pairs, that, if read aloud without stopping, it take 31 years to read it. Scientist have now completed the sequence of all 3.1 billion letters of this human instruction book and Collins believes that anything this complex could have never risen purely by chance. It points to an intelligence which he believes is the God revealed in Scripture.
So, far from being in conflict with Christianity, Collins believes that science confirms that our universe was made by an intelligent God of order who established fixed physical laws that are ours to discover.
The heavens surely declare the glory of God and life at the sub-cellular level clearly reveals His handwork.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Don't ask, Don't tell
Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that ending the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military would be the right thing to do.
Now I served in the military for twenty-three years, retiring after a squadron command, and one thing I know is that the further up the ladder one climbs in his military career, the more political the environment. This is especially true after an individual starts pinning on stars and finds himself in Washington. In giving his testimony, I can assure you that Admiral Mullen was speaking as a politician, parroting the position of those in the administration, and not as a warrior concerned with the welfare of his men.
Admiral Mullen stated in his testimony that the policy now in place is forcing young men and women to lie about who they are in order to serve. He could not be more wrong. Columnists Clarence Page unknowingly framed the argument when he stated that men and women should be punished for what they do, not who they are. The current policy has nothing to do with forcing anyone to lie about who they are, but has everything to do with forbearance in letting them conceal what they do. What they do is rightfully viewed as a perversion by most of their fellow soldiers.
Whether one believes in evolutionism or creation, the human body is designed to perform a certain way. No one would observe someone sniffing cocaine and conclude that the nose was designed for the purpose of ingesting cocaine into the lungs. By the same token, no one would align two naked humans of the same sex and conclude that they were designed to fit together sexually. In both cases, the acts would be a perversion of purpose. Homosexual behavior is banned because it’s immoral, as Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Peter Pace said before he was shown the door for violating political correctness. The discrimination is based on actions, not inherited traits.
As for media treatment of this issue, G.K. Chesterton had it exactly right when he said: “Men always attempt to avoid condemning a thing upon merely moral grounds. ….modern journalism has a standing fear. It will call the action anything else – mad, bestial, vulgar, idiotic, rather than call it sinful.” Unsurprisingly journalists have jumped on the civil rights bandwagon, snatching numbers involving homosexuals who serve and those who are separated out of thin air to support their case, despite the fact that there is not one scintilla of evidence to show that homosexuality is genetic.
Since the 1991 Tailhook incident, women have moved into roles that were traditionally off limits and the results have been a degradation of combat effectiveness. Discounting the loss of manpower due to pregnancy, the biggest problem that the services face today is fraternization between the sexes within the chain of command and the inevitable resentment due to favoritism. Politicians have turned the military into a social experiment, forcing men and women to serve for extended periods in close proximity in the intense environment of deployment, expecting no fall out. It hasn’t worked. The military has its hands full dealing with this issue , but as always, it has adapted and overcome. Now the campaign is to throw another social experiment with a sexual component into the equation.
Surveys show a majority of service personnel oppose lifting the ban, and at least 10 percent say they would not re-enlist. More than 1,150 retired generals and admirals have signed a letter opposing this radical change. They know that currently our military is the finest in the world, and anything that even hints of detracting from its effectiveness should be rejected out of hand. Serving one’s country is a privilege, not a right.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Obama's New Deal
President Obama recently submitted a 3.8 billion dollar budget to Congress which includes $100 billion for job stimulus programs. This is on top of the nearly $800 billion that he set aside for creating jobs several months ago. Added to the $700 billion that George Bush provided for bailouts in the TARP program, the government has now spent or will spend $1.6 trillion in efforts to save the economy. As the great Yogi Berra once said, "Its deja vu all over again". We as a nation have been down this road before.
FDR's administration tried the same thing and for years was given credit for bringing the economy out of the Great Depression. It was a myth. The New Deal worsened the situation. One year after the stock market crash of 1929, the unemployment rate stood at 5%. One year after the Hoover-FDR New Deal went into effect, the unemployment rate was 15%. In May of 1939, it stood at 20%, prompting Henry Morgenthou, Secretary of the Treasury to complain, "We have tried spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.....We have never made good on our promises.....I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started.....And an enormous debt to boot!".
The fact is, that every federal dollar that goes into creating jobs takes money out of the private sector, reduces spending by consumers and lessens the creation of jobs in the private sector. Most economists are now convinced that if government had just gotten out of the way and let the economy correct itself that recovery would have occurred years earlier.
Another downside to the New Deal was that once he had brought about massive unemployment, FDR found it necessary to raise taxes to astronomical levels to pay for all of his federal programs. The top marginal tax rate became 79%, then 90%, which discouraged investors who had already been crowded from access to funds due to massive government borrowing. If the present economy ever starts a recovery, look for the Democrats to enact massive tax increases on the "rich" to pay the expenses of the "poor".
The current so-called stimulus package is nothing more than an updated version of FDR's New Deal, only worse in that it is not designed to stimulate anything, only to give away money that the government doesn't have in order to curry political favor.
The Dutch theologian, Abraham Kuyper, developed the idea of sphere sovereignty. What that means in this case is that God has granted a sphere of control to government and a sphere of control to the private sector. When government steps out of its rightful sphere and meddles in the private sector, disastrous results are sure to follow because it violates the Divine order. All I know is that unemployment was below 8% before the stimulus and now is at 10% and not forecast to come below that for the foreseeable future. Go figure.
FDR's administration tried the same thing and for years was given credit for bringing the economy out of the Great Depression. It was a myth. The New Deal worsened the situation. One year after the stock market crash of 1929, the unemployment rate stood at 5%. One year after the Hoover-FDR New Deal went into effect, the unemployment rate was 15%. In May of 1939, it stood at 20%, prompting Henry Morgenthou, Secretary of the Treasury to complain, "We have tried spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.....We have never made good on our promises.....I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started.....And an enormous debt to boot!".
The fact is, that every federal dollar that goes into creating jobs takes money out of the private sector, reduces spending by consumers and lessens the creation of jobs in the private sector. Most economists are now convinced that if government had just gotten out of the way and let the economy correct itself that recovery would have occurred years earlier.
Another downside to the New Deal was that once he had brought about massive unemployment, FDR found it necessary to raise taxes to astronomical levels to pay for all of his federal programs. The top marginal tax rate became 79%, then 90%, which discouraged investors who had already been crowded from access to funds due to massive government borrowing. If the present economy ever starts a recovery, look for the Democrats to enact massive tax increases on the "rich" to pay the expenses of the "poor".
The current so-called stimulus package is nothing more than an updated version of FDR's New Deal, only worse in that it is not designed to stimulate anything, only to give away money that the government doesn't have in order to curry political favor.
The Dutch theologian, Abraham Kuyper, developed the idea of sphere sovereignty. What that means in this case is that God has granted a sphere of control to government and a sphere of control to the private sector. When government steps out of its rightful sphere and meddles in the private sector, disastrous results are sure to follow because it violates the Divine order. All I know is that unemployment was below 8% before the stimulus and now is at 10% and not forecast to come below that for the foreseeable future. Go figure.
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