PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk rather famously once said, “A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy”, but she was absolutely wrong. The truth is that a rat is vermin, and a pig could be dinner. A dog might be a boy’s best friend, but they are obviously different species, rather easy to tell apart. Don't get me wrong...I love my dogs, very much. They are my furry babies. Truthfully, I wouldn’t even think twice about risking my own life by running into traffic to save one of them from an oncoming car. In fact, there’s precedent for my saying so. Not long ago I foolishly ran onto a major highway near my house and nearly got myself killed, trying to save someone else’s dog that had escaped from under their fence. The story had a happy ending that day. They don’t always end that way. We both were lucky, the dog and me. I was acting purely on altruistic instinct, a natural reaction that a guy like Jerry Coyne might mistake for goodness. Nevertheless, if the choice is between saving either a dog or a child, the human life comes first in my mind. That’s also an instinctive decision, a no-brainer. In my world, God gave mankind dominion over all other animals. That means we have a tremendous responsibility to act as good stewards. In the world I prefer, it’s okay to kill a cow or chicken--as long as you eat it. It’s even okay to make clothing from the animal’s hide, so nothing is wasted. While doing so, we should most certainly give thanks to its Creator for the sacrifice of the animal for food and clothing, for the life we used to help sustain ours. However, in … [Read more...]
An open letter to Dr. Jerry Coyne
Dear Dr. Coyne, I’ll do my best to get right to the point. Your reputation as one of the world’s foremost experts on speciation theory precedes you. You are a well respected scientist and educator. I am but a student of those fields in science necessary for any attempt to answer my existential questions. Although I’ve been called a teacher, my background is not in education. By profession, I’m an author, certainly not a scientist. My strong preference is for writing detective novels. However, in the spirit of full disclosure, I should divulge that my most recent book, published this past Easter Sunday, has the title Counterargument for God. I should probably also mention that your advocacy of naturalistic evolution is one of the arguments that I endeavored to counter and defeat in my book. I meant no disrespect. It just happens that I have very good reasons for believing that you're wrong to assume that supernatural intelligence played no role in your existence or mine. Now, I’ve read Why Evolution is True, but I cheerfully admit that I don’t yet quite understand the biological processes allegedly at work. I still have a few questions about your specific field of expertise, if you’ll be good enough to answer them. Your USA Today article written not too long ago asserting that you can be good without God gives me some hope that you will cooperate, even though I suspect David Berlinski may have doubts. If I never ask my questions, you won't have the opportunity to respond if you so choose. True, you have expressed some disdain for creationists in … [Read more...]
