Someone who reads my articles at American Thinker wrote an email asking for my thoughts on the subject of honor. Where should I begin? And what should I say? The dictionary defines honor as having a good reputation, or a showing of (usually) merited respect. Of course, the Bible tells us in the Old Testament that we should honor God and honor our father and mother, but 1 Peter 2:17 goes further and says we should honor everyone. Personally, I'm big on honoring the service of our military, police, firefighters, doctors, hospital workers, hospice workers, waiters and waitresses, and basically anyone else who serves the community--if someone is wearing a uniform, I always say thank you to them. During my youth I was taught to live by the adage if you can't say something nice about somebody, don't say anything at all. This presents a bit of a problem because Jimmy Carter recently died. We're both from Georgia, and I believe we should never speak ill of the dead. If I had to only write about his career as a politician, I wouldn't have anything to write. Jimmy Carter was our 39th President, and I vividly remember his brief tenure in the White House. All I can and will say about his presidency was that it wasn't brief enough. The word "malaise" perfectly describes my life as a teenager during the Carter years in the White House. As I began to research Carter's life, looking for some nice things to say about him, unfortunately I found more people with negative things to say about our late former president, some of which I didn't know or didn't remember, such … [Read more...]
Matthew and baby Jesus
Thirty five years ago in July, our son was born. We named him Matthew, which means "gift from God." In 1990, there were four babies born in our church congregation in short order. All of them were boys, and they were named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The parents of these children, including my wife and me, had no idea the other parents were having boys or what they planned to name them. Even more amazing, the boys were born in "Gospel" order, which required Luke to be born prematurely. What are the odds that four babies would be born in the same congregation, and that they would be named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and born in order, with no girls or boys with other names born in between? The math is quite complicated. Of course, if you knew the child would be male and had to be named either Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, then the math can be relatively easy and simple enough. It's four factorial, or twenty-four different possible combinations, which equates to roughly a four percent probability that given the option of only four names to choose from, the likelihood that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John would be chosen in that exact order versus let's say Mark, Matthew, John, and Luke, for example. But how do we calculate the odds that no other children named Alvin or Sally or Mary (or Mohammed) would be born in the congregation during that same time? I suppose it could be calculated, in theory--we'd have to find out how many families were in the congregation at that time, and of that number, calculate how many of them were of "child-bearing" age. Difficult, … [Read more...]
Why you should NEVER buy an insurance policy from Progressive
I'll admit that I should have known better. Several years ago my son purchased a comprehensive auto policy from Progressive Insurance. It didn't end well for him. You know the company -- they saturate the air waves with their advertisements featuring Flo the lead insurance agent, Jamie the comic relief guy, and a regular cast of characters working hard to convince you to buy an insurance policy from them. Their ads emphasize how much money you can save with gimmicks such as the "Name Your Price" tool, where you tell them how much you can afford to pay for insurance coverage. What the ads fail to tell the buyer is that Progressive screws their policy holders when it comes time to pay a claim. Like I said, my son bought a comprehensive policy for his car. The word comprehensive has a special meaning: includes all or everything. You can buy liability insurance that only pays for the other driver's car in the event of an accident and doesn't pay for damages to your own car, or you can buy collision insurance, that pays for both cars in an accident. Comprehensive insurance is supposed to be the "kitchen sink" of insurance policies and include uninsured motorist as well as liability and collision. However, when another driver forced my son off the road and it totaled his car, Progressive refused to pay. Why? According to the claims adjuster, comprehensive coverage doesn't include collision insurance. Which is insane. My son lost ten thousand dollars he couldn't afford to lose. It was a terrible experience and I felt bad for my son. And in retrospect, I had … [Read more...]
Fred Hoyle and the probability of God
[I wrote this for publication at American Thinker but it was rejected so I published it myself.] The probability that a supernatural God exists is extremely high. We can be confident because this conclusion is based on the best scientific evidence currently available. Sir Fred Hoyle Our universe hasn’t always existed. We can believe this is true because scientists have observed redshift (the phenomena where objects in the universe are moving apart at an accelerating speed) and discovered cosmic microwave background radiation, establishing the facts that our universe is expanding from an origin where no planets, galaxies, or even atoms existed. This singularity is popularly known as The Big Bang Theory. Physicist Fred Hoyle coined that phrase on March 28, 1949, to mock the concept of a universe with an origin while it was still only a hypothesis. He believed in an eternal or “steady state” universe because Hoyle was a brilliant scientist but also an atheist, and he recognized the problems caused by a universe that hadn’t always existed. A universe that had been literally created from nothing. Hoyle might have been our most brilliant scientist of the previous century. He formulated the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis and co-authored the famous B2FH paper, which asserted that complex chemical elements were produced by nuclear fusion reactions that took place inside of stars. He studied the carbon-12 atom and predicted if the anthropic principle (a concept stating the universe’s observable properties must be such that they allow for the existence of … [Read more...]
