The Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe, New Mexico was constructed in 1878. However, French architect Projectus Mouly died unexpectedly before a staircase could be completed to the choir loft twenty feet above the floor. That was a big problem because nobody else knew how to make a way up there. Local builders suggested using a long ladder to reach the choir loft, but the nuns responsible for Loretto Chapel weren't interested in climbing a ladder while wearing a habit. Allegedly the Sisters of Loretto had consulted with every builder in the area to find someone suitable to complete the project, but no one proposed a workable solution given the confined spaces involved and didn't require a ladder. Legend has it that the nuns then prayed a special prayer called a novena for nine straight days to St. Joseph (the patron saint of carpenters) and on the final day of the prayer, a mysterious man rode out of the desert on a donkey, offering to build the staircase on one condition -- no one could watch him work. Several months later, the project was completed, and as the story goes, that mysterious carpenter vanished as quickly as he appeared, without accepting any payment for his labor or the materials used to construct this architectural masterpiece. However, if a story sounds a little too good to be true, it's probably been embellished. While it is often difficult to separate fact from fiction, the documented facts include an entry in a nun's daybook dating back to 1881 claims that a man named Rochas was paid for wood. We might reasonably assume the wood purchased was used to … [Read more...]
Did Egypt Warn Israel Before the Attack?
I'll be brutally honest -- I really hate the question. I wasn't the first one to ask that question, though, and I also intend to answer it. Fire and smoke rise after an Israeli air strike targeted the National Bank on Gaza City, on October 8, 2023. Israel, reeling from the deadliest attack on its territory in half a century, formally declared war on Hamas Sunday as the conflict's death toll neared 1,000 after the Palestinian militant group launched a massive surprise assault from Gaza. (Photo by Ahmed ZAKOUT / AFP) To me, the idea is preposterous...that the Israeli government knew in advance that last Saturday, more than one thousand Palestinian terrorists would invade their country from the Gaza Strip with their objective being to rape and murder hundreds of Israeli civilians. What sort of immoral monster would you have to be to know something like that was coming and deliberately choose to allow it to happen? I can think of a few people who might do something like that but they were vicious dictators like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao, not the leaders of a free world nation. It's a stupid question. It presumes that leaders of a country selected by free and fair elections could deliberately ignore verified and actionable information about a pending attack merely to give themselves an excuse to retaliate afterward. Similar claims have been made about Roosevelt and Pearl Harbor, but why blame a horrific attack on a conspiracy when simple incompetence might be an equally reasonable argument? Historian Craig Shirley didn't blame FDR. He attributed the … [Read more...]
Did the Exodus actually happen?
Some people (atheists, primarily) like to argue that the nation of Israel's exodus from Egypt as described in the Bible was a myth that never happened. Their position is frequently agreed with by a number of mainstream scholars and archaeologists who argue the Bible does not contain accurate history. These critics argue that insufficient evidence exists that an entire nation of nomadic people occupied an Egyptian desert thousands of years ago, even though some experts claim to have found solid evidence of a massive escape from Egypt by the Israelites. Ipuwer 344 By Unknown – Creator - tAFJ_SPMRYyDLQ at Google Cultural Institute maximum zoom level, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24140447 However, in the Dutch Museum of National Antiquities in Leiden, Netherlands, there is part of an Egyptian manuscript written on papyrus during the period when the Exodus allegedly occurred that appears to provide external confirmation of the ten plagues mentioned in the Bible. Officially known as Ipuwer 344, the fragment is written in ancient Egyptian hieratic script and is believed to date no earlier than 1250 B.C. but the text on the papyrus itself is believed to be much older, possibly dating as far back as between 1850 - 1450 B.C. The Exodus as described in the Bible is believed to have taken place between 1300 B.C. and 1200 B.C. All that is required to believe Ipuwer 344 and the book of Exodus are describing the same events is to allow for the possibility Ipuwer could be describing contemporary, not historical events. Once that is done, the two … [Read more...]
The arrogance of atheism
Not all atheists are arrogant. Some of them are like my friend The Faithiest Atheist -- honest seekers of truth, and with a sense of humor. The more "normal" the atheist is, the more likely that person will be to sincerely engage in serious conversation with someone who doesn't share their existing worldview. When I speak of the arrogance of atheism, I'm primarily talking about the academic types. For example, Richard Dawkins once famously said that he would refuse to debate Dr. William Lane Craig because "it would look good on his CV (curriculum vitae), but not so good on mine." Never mind the fact Dr. Craig would probably eat him alive in a formal debate. As Sam Harris famously quipped, Dr. Craig has put the fear of God into more than one atheist. Even so, if Dawkins will not even condescend to speak with one of the most famous and well-respected Christian apologists in the world, what chance would I have of gaining an audience with the (self-) esteemed biologist? The correct answer is, none whatsoever. Never in a million years would a man like Richard Dawkins deem any opinion I might wish to share with him as being worthy of his time. In his mind, he occupies a different stratum in society, one where intelligence and academic credentials are carefully vetted before entry is allowed. My personal thoughts and opinions are literally beneath a man of his stature. As a result, I've never made a concerted effort to communicate with Mr. Dawkins, other than perhaps a random email or two over the years, but none written with the expectation that he would … [Read more...]
The myopia of materialism
In order to believe in strict materialism, which is a variant of atheism, you simply can't believe in reality as a whole. If you are a strict materialist, you must reject any evidence of a spirit, or soul. Therefore, phenomena like corroborated veridical NDE events must either be explained away or simply denied to be real, no matter how compelling that evidence might be. The material brain and spiritual mind must be deemed inseparable because the alternative smacks of religious implications. You can only acknowledge that subset of reality that confirms to your existing worldview, which can never hope to explain the sum total of reality without requiring the abandonment of logic and reason when it comes to the best explanation for a given event. No matter how implausible, luck must always be the default answer to every question in an unplanned universe, whether the question is regarding the origin of the universe, the origin of life, or the origin of intelligence. If properly understood, atheism is the same thing as nihilism. Our bodies are nothing more than organic bags of chemicals that code for protein, and our thoughts are delusions produced by chemical reactions. If there is no God, and therefore no objective source for intelligence, then intelligence must be assumed to have arisen from unintelligent sources. If strict materialism, or monism, is true, then there is no rational explanation for the intelligence being used to convey these ideas. If the universe has no purpose, the only reason we can say the universe exists is luck. We cannot invoke some "laws … [Read more...]
