I've never liked to fight with people. To be perfectly honest, I don't think I've thrown a punch in anger since my junior year in high school, more than forty years ago. It isn't my natural instinct to start an argument. I've only had one formal debate in my entire life, and it wasn't my idea in the first place. By the same token, I'm not afraid of a challenge, or to defend my personal beliefs. My opponent on that momentous occasion was a former president of American Atheists, a guy named Ed Buckner. He proposed our debate only a couple of months before my book Counterargument for God was published, so I saw his challenge as an opportunity to test the substance of that argument. Personally, I liked Ed. If he ever wants a rematch, I'd only have two conditions: I don't want to argue cherrypicked verses from the Bible all night, and a second debate should be held on Ed's home turf, the normal meeting place for freethinkers in the Atlanta area. I've come to believe there are two kinds of atheists -- the kind that hate Christianity and religion in general (anti-theists), versus others who also don't believe in a supernatural God, but without the latent hostility toward people with religious beliefs. A handful of my virtual friends on Facebook are the latter variety of atheist, and those are some of the friendships I value the most. Recently one atheist friend took the time to send me this message: After years of (dogmatically) thinking creationists as ignorant/dogmatic etc. (much like many feel about atheists), you are the one who has taught me otherwise. I'm glad you … [Read more...]
A Brief Glimpse Of Life After The Apocalypse
Armageddon. The Apocalypse. Christians have heard these words occasionally uttered since they were children. Most of them know those words are typically associated with the Book of Revelations. However, prophesies of the end of days can be found in practically every religion. Even non-religious people (including Hollywood) have some doomsday cataclysmic scenario conceptualized that involve zombies or radioactive mutants, but the common theme of every scenario where life as we currently know it ceases to exist, and we might eventually “devolve” into some primitive, subhuman species. You know, like zombies…or Antifa people. There are a number of scenarios by which the end of the world might come, including nuclear war and natural disasters. After my experiences of the past several days, my personal preference would be that in any apocalyptic scenario, our current location would be the initial point of impact, in order to put my family and me immediately out of our misery. To be brutally honest, we would not make very good doomsday survivors. Here, this journal written over the past week ought to prove my point… Day 1 (9/11) Time: Approximately 2:15 p.m. Log Entry: We lose (gasp!) electricity and Internet service. It’s okay, though. We’ve lost power before. The longest previous outage in this current house was almost eight hours – to the point we’d begun to get irritable and had to go out for dinner. Oh, well. Could be worse. It could be raining. Oh yeah, it is raining. As I like to say, suck it up, buttercup. Time: Approximately 8:15 p.m. Log Entry: … [Read more...]
Bacteria and the Origin of Life, by Landon Freeman
[Editorial note: Landon Freeman is one of my bright young internet friends. He wrote this very compelling essay on a subject that interests me quite a bit, and gave me permission to share it here.] AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY: Landon Freeman is a native Georgian who currently studies psychology at Georgia Southwestern State University. He has been interested in the creation-evolution debate for several years now and runs the Facebook group “Evidence for Creation”, which discusses a variety of topics related to creationism and evolution. When not discussing the topic of creation online, Landon can usually be found writing, listening to music, or playing video games. When discussing the hypothesis of abiogenesis, I'm astounded to see that many atheists and evolutionists act as if it's a given that life evolved through purely naturalistic processes, and that life wouldn't have much trouble getting started. There are several issues with abiogenesis, though the one I'm going to discuss is the problem of not only functional, operating organisms arising from non-living matter, but intelligence arising as well. Indeed, even allegedly simple bacteria display intelligence and foresight. An article from NewScientist states and provides evidence that microbes can communicate with each other, make decisions, form communities, and even accelerate mutations to gain new abilities. https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17390-why-microbes-are-smarter-than-you-thought/ The issue here is bacteria have been living since not long after life began. Life allegedly began around at least 3.5 … [Read more...]
Good news and bad news
I always like to get the bad news out of the way first. I'm not going to be writing as often here at my own website, Southern Prose. However, the good news is that I am still writing online, more than ever -- but now I actually get paid something for it. My new gig is freelance writer for TheResurgent.com, a website owned by conservative radio host Erick Erickson. But don't blame him for anything I write. They pretty much allow me to just do what I've been doing here, without earning income. If you're interested, you can find my new articles here. … [Read more...]
An open letter to the evolutionary biologist
Dear Mr. or Ms. Evolutionary Biologist, Thank you in advance for your time, of which I hope not to waste too much. If you happen to be an ursinologist, your assistance will be especially welcome. Before I start, I think it it is only fair that you know the audience. I should properly identify myself as a Christian, so that you will be aware of the possibility my confirmation bias (which I believe everyone has) could unduly affect my interpretation of published scientific evidence. I also believe in supernatural creation, because I am well aware that life cannot evolve until it exists. However, I typically describe myself as theist-agnostic. By that, I simply mean that I believe in the Judeo-Christian supernatural creator God called Yahweh, and I also believe that Jesus was the promised, crucified, and resurrected Messiah. That's the "theist" part of the descriptor. On the other hand, I also realize that I actually don't know very much when it comes to answering the existential questions. That's the reason for the "agnostic" qualifier...I can't even claim that my beliefs constitute knowledge, because sometimes beliefs turn out to be wrong. Pleading agnosticism is admitting to ignorance. My desire to become less ignorant is the reason for writing you this letter. So without further ado, please allow me to get right to the crux of what I want to know: what special characteristics of any two species of bears makes it necessary for them to be classified as more than one species? After all, there are five billion or so humans on earth, all properly … [Read more...]
