[Yet another rejected piece for American Thinker. There is one editor there who seems to hate everything I write. Luck of the draw, I guess. Or...dare I say it? This one might not be as good as my other work. I'll let you decide, except I've added a few lines in this piece to juice it up. See Dr. Strangelove for more details.] In 1980 when I was only twenty years old, I saw Being There for the first time and thought I was watching one of the most brilliant satires ever conceived. Peter Sellers starred in the film as Chance the Gardener, a barely functional illiterate with a talent for pruning roses and not much else. Chance learns everything he knows by watching television, which meant he knows practically nothing. The film begins with Chance living at the estate of a wealthy benefactor who dies and leaves Chance homeless. Suddenly thrust into the real world for the first time, Chance wanders the streets of the Capitol and finds himself reduced to begging complete strangers to feed him but then a minor accident dramatically changes his fortune. A limousine chauffeuring around the wife of one of the most powerful men in Washington accidentally backs into Chance (who was distracted by watching himself on television) injuring his knee and the next thing we know, Chance is living in the home of an even wealthier benefactor, Ben Rand (played by Melvyn Douglas), and through Rand, gains access to the very highest levels of government. Even his name was the result of a miscommunication: when Chance identifies himself as “Chance the gardener”, Eve Rand (Shirley … [Read more...]
The God Conclusion officially available July 7th
Sorry if you've seen this announcement once before, but when I changed name servers at the host of my website, I lost the content of a couple of previous posts, and this was one of them. The God Conclusion will be officially made available for sale on July 7th, although the book can be preordered currently through Amazon. The back cover reads: "A POWERFUL RESPONSE TO RICHARD DAWKINS In his sensational international bestseller, The God Delusion, author Richard Dawkins attempts to demonstrate the supreme improbability of the existence of a supreme being by using arguments based in science and almost succeeds. Almost. Now in his book The God Conclusion, author John L. Leonard takes a closer look at the same scientific evidence but adds a logical perspective to reach a surprisingly different result -- the probability that some sort of supreme being exists is extremely likely, a claim well-supported by scientific evidence. After going through The God Delusion chapter by chapter and point by point to rebut the arguments of Dawkins, Leonard presents his own unique interpretation of what the scientific evidence really tells us and challenges all of us to examine our beliefs, no matter what beliefs we may currently hold." Even if you don't like Richard Dawkins or care about his arguments against religion, you'll want to see the evidence to which I refer before dismissing it. The book is obviously available for Kindle, but every other format, including print, will be available on July 7th. Below you can watch the first "book blurb" trailer. … [Read more...]
The Way of the Cell
Professor Franklin Harold of Colorado State University, described as "one of the world's most respected microbiologists" has included some fascinating observations in his book The Way of the Cell on the subject of abiogenesis. The mini-reviews on his book's back cover lend some credibility to the claim about Dr. Harold's professional credentials, one being written by renowned biologist Lynn Margulis, who said, "Witty and erudite, this scientific book hails as a literary achievement.Comprehensive and up to date, Franklin Harold traces the roots--historical, thermodynamic, and biochemical--of today's biological revolution." His chapter titled "Searching for the beginning" is so remarkable, it seems prudent to start at the beginning. Dr. Franklin writes, "Of all the unsolved mysteries remaining in science, the most consequential may be the origin of life. This opinion is bound to strike many readers as overblown, to put it mildly. Should we not rank the Big Bang, life in the cosmos, and the nature of consciousness on at least an equal plane? My reason for placing the origin of life at the top of the agenda is that resolution of this question is required in order to anchor living organisms securely in the real world of matter and energy, and thus relieve the lingering anxiety as to whether we have read nature's book correctly. Creation myths lie at the heart of all human cultures, and science is no exception; until we know where we come from, we do not know who we are. The origin of life is a stubborn problem, with no solution in sight. There is indeed a large and … [Read more...]
The Watchmaker Analogy: a slight return
I am something of an advocate for William Paley's famous (but admittedly flawed and allegedly "debunked") Watchmaker analogy, as this previous article titled "A Blind Rock Maker?" should establish. As my previous article stipulates, the problem with the analogy is not natural selection, or that the idea of design is nothing more than a beguiling illusion, but in the mistaken notion that the rock itself might have always existed. We now know (or think we know) our universe had a beginning, and the rock simply couldn't have existed forever. Even the rock had an origin. By Tony Freeth - Original publication: The Antikythera Mechanism Research ProjectImmediate The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36445604 Today we have a new hypothetical scenario: what if we stumble across a stone in the forest (or, in the case, at the bottom of the ocean) that on closer inspection, appears to have sophisticated wheels and machinery for some strange, unknown purpose? The image above is a computer-generated replica of the back panel of the Antikythera device, discovered by sponge divers in a rock found among wreckage from a shipwreck located offshore from the Greek island Antikthera in 1900. The mechanism is truly extraordinary, and appears to have been designed to track (among other things) the Metonic cycle, a period of every nineteen years during which the reoccur at the same time of year, and the movement of the five known planets at the time. The inner workings are composed of at least 30 gears with a precise number of … [Read more...]
The problem with pterosaurs
According to The Science TM pterosaurs (allegedly) lived between 228 and 66 million years ago. Does the existence of pterosaur fossils prove that Science is true, and the Bible is false? After all, a literal interpretation of the Bible suggests the Earth is young, between 6,000 to 10,000 years old. This number is achieved by adding together the chronological age of every named generation beginning with Adam through Jesus, plus another 2,000 or so years. Of course, the Bible also says that 1,000 years is like a single day to God, so there might be some wiggle room. But 4 billion years versus 10,000? That’s a lot of wiggle room. However, the preferred method used to date rocks that are allegedly millions of years old is radiometric dating, which is notoriously unreliable means of dating. This fact was proved by dating rocks known to have been produced by the Mt. Saint Helen’s eruption in 1980 as being between 350,000 and 2.8 million years old. Oddly enough, the argument against using radiometric dating is that the age of the sample tested was known, which made the test invalid. Knowing the age of the rock is what made the test interesting. If the only way to get “accurate” readings from a rock is to not know the age of that rock, the results of the test are based on a guess. Then there is the problem of soft tissue being found in dinosaur bones. In 2005 paleontologist Mary Schweitzer made international headlines when she announced the discovery of collagen fibers in the fossilized bones of a young Tyrannosaurus Rex. Schweitzer nearly lost her job for … [Read more...]
