Dear Dr. Youkilis, With my deepest sympathies, I would like to offer my sincere condolences for the horrific, cold-blooded murder of your niece, even though you wrote that you aren't really interested in hearing them. As a free society, we have failed both our children and grandchildren, by neglecting to take action after tragic massacres at Columbine and Sandy Hook. Unfortunately, long after it has become necessary to take action, we continue to disagree about the solution, and what actually needs to be done. Your letter said: My family does not want your hopes and prayers. We want your action. Join us in fighting the NRA. Join us in deposing any politician who cares more about campaign contributions than my beautiful Jaime. Join us in supporting leaders who will bravely fight for our children's lives. It hasn't always been this way. During my childhood, I can only remember one mass shooting on a school campus: "Texas Tower Sniper" Charles Whitman. The media attributed his rampage on a brain tumor. Dr. Youkilis, I can certainly understand your heartfelt desire to see action taken so that tragedies like this should never happen again. However, the assumption on which your demand for action is based is not only impossible, it is also terribly misguided. You seem to have assumed that any scenario involving a civilian with a gun never has a positive outcome. Video evidence clearly demonstrates the opposite is true. The video below illustrates the importance of private gun ownership, when a civilian uses his personal firearm to save the life of a downed police … [Read more...]
Pre-birth memories
Karl Jung once wrote, "Religious experience is absolute. It is indisputable. You can only say that you have not had such an experience, and your opponent will say, "Sorry, I have." And there your discussion will come to an end." Therein lies the problem of dealing with any personal experience. Some people claim that they have seen a genuine extra-terrestrial creature; I have not. We might assume that person was simply mistaken, fooled by some sort of optical illusion. Or we might even assume intentional dishonesty. Perhaps mental illness best explains why this person believes he or she has seen an extraterrestrial. But what we absolutely cannot do is to claim with any conviction that this other person's experience was imaginary or a lie, unless we can prove it. Literally, if we weren't there to see for ourselves, how can we possibly claim to possess this knowledge? Some people might argue that it's logical to assume, or common sense to believe that there are no aliens in outer space because there is no evidence they exist. If behavior in the physical world was always logical and common sensical, computer programmers would never have to write code to handle exceptions. Fortunately, I can understand this phenomena all too well, because I have publicly confessed that I believe that I have personally experienced supernatural phenomena. I specifically referred to paranormal entities that one might describe as a ghost or a demon, depending on one's personal beliefs as to whether or not ghosts actually exist. Whatever "it" was, this invisible entity was intelligent … [Read more...]
Blind from birth
Author of the book What Happens When We Die?, Dr. Sam Parnia has conducted extensive research into the near death experience. Together with Dr. Pim van Lommel and Dr. Peter Fenwick, Parnia has studied patients who suffered from cardiac arrest and experienced clinical death in an attempt to scientifically obtain data about and study NDEs. Dr. Parnia said, "If you look through science what's amazing is the things that any group of scientists often believe has been completely black-and-white and completely correct -- if you look 50 years later, most if not all of them have been changed. And I think with this subject [the near death experience] as well, in the future we will find actually mind may be a separate scientific entity and can continue functioning after the end of life when the brain stops working. That will have huge implications for all of mankind, there's no doubt about it. It will revolutionize our old way of thinking and open up a whole new field of science that has as of yet been undiscovered." Speaking of "undiscovered" things that science cannot explain... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qX0zBUYLFs Vicki Noratuk was scared and confused. She could see the emergency room doctors working diligently to save their patient, badly injured in a car accident. She heard them say, "We can't bring her back" several times. She watched as the "crash cart" was brought in to try and save the body on the table. Vicki struggled to grasp what was happening. She couldn't believe what she was seeing. She couldn't believe she was seeing. Vicki explains, "I've … [Read more...]
Mocking atheism
I can't really say that I enjoyed writing this article, but I felt it was necessary, all the same. I don't want to sound smug or condescending while attacking the personal beliefs of another human being, but there are times when it simply can't be avoided. Nonfiction often requires a brutal honesty. The purpose of writing this isn't to irritate an atheist, but simply to demonstrate that such criticism is fairly easy to produce. Consider it proof of concept, if you will. It seems that too many atheists are convinced their worldview can't be mocked. As atheism becomes more popular worldwide and the internet offers some degree of anonymity, some atheists have become considerably more aggressive, and obnoxious. They are no longer satisfied with their atheism, and now gravitate toward anti-theism. For example, an atheist recently posted this rather inflammatory comment in the discussion group on Facebook associated with the Unbelievable? podcast, where topics about atheism and religion are being constantly discussed: As god, you get to screw up and theists get to apologize it away Now, the only apparent reason to post such an inane comment is to provoke an angry response from the theists that read it. The assertion wasn't particularly clever and didn't seem to merit a more serious response, but to let the author know that I had noticed his effort, my response employed sarcasm, using a cartoon... Another atheist then joined our conversation and (somewhat more eloquently than the first atheist) said: I realize that it is incredibly frustrating to have it … [Read more...]
A public service announcement for Dawg fans
I feel like I owe an apology to my fellow Dawg fans. If something I wrote or said in the aftermath of the national championship game caused anyone to think that the Dawgs were cheated out of a victory they deserved, that was my mistake. When I wrote that it was statistically unlikely that the officials at the national championship game would miss several calls that all hurt UGA and helped Alabama, my comment might have created the false impression that the officiating was to blame for Georgia losing the game. Without a doubt, there were clearly some bad officiating calls in the game, particularly in the 2nd half. However, I do not for a moment believe that the game was fixed or the officials had been bribed or Georgia was cheated out of victory, or any other such nonsense. Georgia lost the game, fair and square. Alabama outplayed us in the 2nd half, and overtime. Georgia had our chances to win, and simply didn't execute well enough on either side of the ball. Could the officials have done a better job? Of course they could have. But surely the officials can't be blamed for Alabama wide receiver Devonta Smith being wide open for a TD on 2nd-and-41 in overtime. The officials didn't force our offense to call too many running plays in the 4th quarter. Georgia had plenty of chances to win. Alabama executed when it mattered most. Our Dawgs didn't. Game over. After watching numerous replays of the "botched" calls, only one upsets me: the punch thrown by Mekhi Brown. The officials obviously saw the punch because they threw a flag for unsportsmanlike conduct, but … [Read more...]
