[Author's note: this article was originally published several years ago when I wrote as the Atlanta Creationism Examiner at Examiner.com. The article's original contents have not been edited, requiring a correction: the tilma was not weaved from cotton, but agave plant fiber. As I say below, I'm not Catholic. I don't need for this story to be true; I merely find the alleged details fascinating. Strangely enough, my atheist friends seem to desperately need the story to be false.] I present the following information for your cogitation acknowledging that it is anecdotal in nature, but included there are some very interesting claims made by scientists involved in the story. In the spirit of full disclosure, I confess that I’ve never been to Mexico to personally examine the tilma of Juan Diego. Given the current climate and tendency of drug cartels to shoot or chop of the heads of people, I don’t consider it a tourist friendly travel destination. Therefore, I have planned no trips for the purposes of conducting a personal examination. Besides, we’ve firmly and cheerfully established my lack of credentials in certain natural sciences and my aversion to microscopes and lab coats. My primary source of information for this story of Juan Diego’s tilma came from a book titled Divine Interventions by Dan Millman and Doug Childers. Internet sources appear to confirm much of the information that I found in their book. Juan Diego’s story begins on Saturday, December 9th, 1531 -- the day Catholics celebrate as the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. It is believed to … [Read more...]
The childish atheism of Richard Carrier
Dr. Richard Carrier has a PhD in ancient history from Columbia University, but he might be best known for his zealous evangelism for atheism. Dr. Carrier is a historian, not a scientist, yet he is unafraid to wander away from the focus of his professional training to offer opinions on diverse subjects ranging from theology to cosmology and the origin of the universe, or his apparently uninformed thoughts on the chemistry necessary for the origin of life. In a relatively short (11+ minute) video seen by clicking on this link, Dr. Carrier enumerates the following four points to explain why he's not a Christian. His reasons are: God is silent. According to Richard Carrier, God doesn't exist because no messages from this deity have been universally communicated so that every human on earth has a fundamental understanding of what God wants and doesn't want us to do. Dr. Carrier says, "In every culture everywhere, God's gospel would have been preached to them by God Himself, he wouldn't need intermediaries. So we'd be able to confirm, yes, there's this guy called God somewhere, who's giving us all the same information, and we we would what that information is, and we would all still have the freedom to reject that message, or not care about it or whatever, but we would all agree on what that message was, there wouldn't be disagreements on it." Obviously, Dr. Carrier rejects the Bible as being the word of God, in spite of the fact there are (allegedly) 300 specific Old Testament prophesies that were reportedly fulfilled by the life, crucifixion, and resurrection … [Read more...]
Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution
Once upon a time, I wrote online for Examiner.com as the Atlanta Creationism Examiner. Now that all the links to my work have been disabled and can no longer be found on their website, I've decided to republish some of the better material here on my own website, since I wrote it and own the content of the article. The title of the article has not been changed. The links in the originally published post have been deleted, however, since most of them were no longer functional. I think it's information worth sharing again... They say you can’t judge a good book by its cover. Apparently you can’t always tell from the title, either. Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution (edited by Paul S. Moorhead and Martin M. Kaplan) didn’t look like riveting material on first glance. Once I started reading, it proved difficult to put down. The premise for the book was rather interesting. In the mid 1960s, four mathematicians were attending a friendly picnic hosted by Kaplan and a fellow biologist. During their lunch a rather spirited discussion of evolution theory spontaneously erupted. The biologists proposed a more formally organized showdown with the four mathematicians at a later date. After negotiating their reprieve, they recruited a pair of prominent advocates of evolution theory: Sir Peter Medawar and Dr. Ernst Mayr. Medawar chaired the symposium. If the reader wonders how the meeting went, perhaps biologist Kaplan’s rather peevish preface gives some indication. He mischievously quoted a pair of mathematicians (speaking ill … [Read more...]
Truth
Quid est veritas? Perhaps the most provocative question of all time translates from Latin into English to query, "What is truth?" According to John 18:38, Pontius Pilate asked this of Jesus prior to his crucifixion. Some people believe that Jesus was only a man. Others believe Jesus never even existed. And there are also people like me believe the story told in the Gospel of John is basically accurate, and that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah and Son of God. Now I can confess that I believe the previous statement is true, but I can't claim to know it is true. Get the difference? Not everyone believes that Shakespeare wrote his own plays. A movie called Anonymous asserted that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, wrote and published those famous plays like Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet using the pseudonym of William Shakespeare. Francis Bacon and Christopher Marlowe have also been credited with the work of William Shakespeare, but there is no way to conclusively prove beyond all reasonable doubt that William Shakespeare did not write his own material. We might even be able to back up our speculation with tantalizing bits of evidence, but we cannot establish something as a fact when we don't have proof. However, every person on Earth believes they possess absolute knowledge when in fact, we all have beliefs based on reasonable assumptions. Beliefs that are easily confused and twisted to the point where something probably real, or true has been accepted as a false, or a forgery...for example, the Shroud of Turin. Quid est veritas? What is truth? Is the … [Read more...]
The courage of Devon Gales
Sympathy is defined as feeling sorrow for the misfortunes of someone else. Empathy means you can literally understand, or at least to some degree share their experience. This post will be very short and to the point, because I can only type with one hand at the moment. My left arm is temporarily useless. I had elbow surgery this morning, and my anesthesiologist put a nerve block on my dominant arm. Probably until tomorrow, I won't be able to feel anything or use my left hand, a very strange experience that once again has reminded me of Devon Gales. Please forgive any typos or unclear thoughts expressed by my currently drug-impaired brain. The loss of use of my arm is a very strange sensation, yet in my case it will be temporary. When this wears off I expect to welcome pain as the indicator my body wants to heal itself and didn't enjoy this morning's experience. My arm may be hurting right now, but I don't care. In case you forgot or didn't know, wide receiver Devon Gales was paralyzed last year while blocking on a kickoff return during a game between the Southern University Jaguars and the University of Georgia Bulldogs, in Sanford Stadium. However, for young Mr. Gales, full recovery will take much, much longer, He's made tremendous progress that has been reported in the news, but there is a long way to go for a complete recovery, and the restoration of full use of his extremities. Usually when I write about a tragedy, typically a request that people contribute financially will accompany my shameless attempt to pull on your heart strings. Perhaps the … [Read more...]
