OK, today I decided to post this cute little video of
two-year-old twins reciting Psalm 23.
Just in case you can't understand them, here is Psalm 23
in the NIV, which is the version they are reciting from:
"The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside quiet waters; He restores my soul.
He guides me in paths of righteousness for His name's sake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for You are with me;
Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life;
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever."
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Taking the side of Science
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of the failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so-stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."
(Evolutionist Richard Lewontin in The New York Review, January, 1997, page 31)
(Evolutionist Richard Lewontin in The New York Review, January, 1997, page 31)
Monday, April 7, 2008
Survival of the sacred
"Why religion is winning
By Dinesh D'Souza
November 11, 2007
The vigorous, the healthy and the happy survive and multiply.
– Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species
Religion continues to grow worldwide, and atheists in America and the West are having a difficult time explaining why. These nonbelievers, most of them Darwinists, are convinced there must be some biological explanation for why, in every culture since the beginning of history, man has found and continues to find solace in religion. Biologist Richard Dawkins confesses that religion poses a “major puzzle to anyone who thinks in a Darwinian way.”
Here, from the evolutionary point of view, is the problem. Scholars such as anthropologist Scott Atran presume that religious beliefs are nothing more than illusions. Atran contends that religious belief requires taking “what is materially false to be true” and “what is materially true to be false.” For Atran and others, religion requires a commitment to “factually impossible worlds.” The question, then, is why would humans evolve in such a way that they come to believe in things that don't exist?
Philosopher Daniel Dennett states the problem clearly: “The ultimate measure of evolutionary value is fitness – the capacity to replicate more successfully than the competition does.” Yet on the face of it religion seems useless from an evolutionary point of view. It costs time and money, and it induces its members to make sacrifices that undermine their well-being for the benefit of others, sometimes total strangers.
Religious people build cathedrals and pyramids that have very little utility except as houses of worship and burial. The ancient Hebrews sacrificed their fattest calves to Yahweh, and even today people slaughter goats and chickens on altars. Religious people sometimes forgo certain foods; the cow is holy to the Hindus, and the pig unholy to the Muslims. Christians give tithes and financial offerings in church. The Jews keep holy the Sabbath, as Christians keep Sunday for church. Religious people recite prayers and go on pilgrimages. Some become missionaries or devote their lives to serving others. Some are even willing to die for their religious beliefs.
A critical question
The evolutionary biologist wonders: Why would evolved creatures like human beings bent on survival and reproduction do things that seem unrelated, even inimical, to those objectives? This is a critical question, not only because religion poses an intellectual dilemma for Darwinists, but also because Darwinists are hoping that by explaining the existence of religion they can expose its natural roots and undermine its supernatural authority. Biologist E.O. Wilson writes that “we have come to the crucial stage in the history of biology when religion itself is subject to the explanations of the natural sciences.” He expresses the hope that sometime soon “the final decisive edge enjoyed by scientific naturalism will come from its capacity to explain traditional religion, its chief competitor, as a wholly material phenomenon.”
So how far have these evolutionary theories progressed in accounting for the success of religion? In “The God Delusion” Dawkins writes, “The proximate cause of religion might be hyperactivity in a particular node of the brain.” He also speculates that “the idea of immortality survives and spreads because it caters to wishful thinking.” But it makes no evolutionary sense for minds to develop comforting beliefs that are evidently false. Explains cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker: “A freezing person finds no comfort in believing he is warm. A person face to face with a lion is not put at ease by the conviction that he is a rabbit.” Wishful thinking of this sort would quickly have become extinct as its practitioners froze or were eaten.
Yet Pinker's own solution to the problem is no better than that of Dawkins. He suggests there might be a “God module” in the brain that predisposes people to believe in the Almighty. Such a module, Pinker writes, might serve no survival purpose but could have evolved as a byproduct of other modules with evolutionary value. This is another way of saying there is no Darwinian explanation. After all, if a “God module” produces belief in God, how about a “Darwin module” that produces belief in evolution?
Still, the question raised by the Darwinists is not a foolish one. Biologists such as Dawkins and Wilson say there simply must be some natural and evolutionary explanation for the universality and persistence of religious belief, and they are right. There is such an explanation, and as a religious believer I am happy to provide one.
Two creation stories
The Rev. Randy Alcorn, founder of Eternal Perspective Ministries in Oregon, sometimes presents his audiences with two creation stories and asks them whether it matters which one is true. In the secular account, “You are the descendant of a tiny cell of primordial protoplasm washed up on an empty beach three-and-a-half-billion years ago. You are the blind and arbitrary product of time, chance and natural forces. You are a mere grab-bag of atomic particles, a conglomeration of genetic substance. You exist on a tiny planet in a minute solar system in an empty corner of a meaningless universe. You are a purely biological entity, different only in degree but not in kind from a microbe, virus or amoeba. You have no essence beyond your body, and at death you will cease to exist entirely. In short, you came from nothing and are going nowhere.”
In the Christian view, by contrast, “You are the special creation of a good and all-powerful God. You are created in his image, with capacities to think, feel and worship that set you above all other life forms. You differ from the animals not simply in degree but in kind. Not only is your kind unique, but you are unique among your kind. Your creator loves you so much and so intensely desires your companionship and affection that he has a perfect plan for your life. In addition, God gave the life of his only Son that you might spend eternity with him. If you are willing to accept the gift of salvation, you can become a child of God.”
Now imagine two groups of people – let's call them the Secular Tribe and the Religious Tribe – who subscribe to these two world views. Which of the two tribes is more likely to survive, prosper and multiply? The Religious Tribe is made up of people who have an animating sense of purpose. The Secular Tribe is made up of people who are not sure why they exist at all. The Religious Tribe is composed of individuals who view their every thought and action as consequential. The Secular Tribe is made up of matter that cannot explain why it is able to think at all.
Should evolutionists such as Dennett, Dawkins, Pinker and Wilson be surprised, then, to see that religious tribes are flourishing? Throughout the world, religious groups attract astounding numbers of followers and religious people are showing their confidence in their way of life and in the future by having more children. Despite the sales figures of atheist best-sellers, atheism remains a minority lifestyle and the largest atheist organizations have only a few thousand members.
The important point is not just that atheism is unable to compete with religion in attracting followers, but also that the lifestyle of practical atheism seems to produce listless tribes that cannot even reproduce themselves. Sociologists Pippa Norris and Ron Inglehart note that many richer, more secular countries are “producing only about half as many children as would be needed to replace the adult population” while many poorer, more religious countries are “producing two or three times as many children as would be needed to replace the adult population.” The consequence, so predictable that one might almost call it a law, is that “the religious population is growing fast, while the secular number is shrinking.”
Country by country
Russia is one of the most atheist countries in the world and abortions there out-number live births by a 2-to-1 ratio. Russia's birthrate has fallen so low that the nation is now losing 700,000 people a year. Japan, perhaps the most secular country in Asia, is also on a kind of population diet: its 130 million people are expected to drop to around 100 million in the next few decades. Canada, Australia and New Zealand find themselves in a similar predicament.
Then there is Europe. The most secular continent on the globe is decadent in the quite literal sense that its population is rapidly shrinking. Birthrates are abysmally low in France, Italy, Spain, the Czech Republic and Sweden. The nations of Western Europe today show some of the lowest birthrates ever recorded, and Eastern European birthrates are comparably low. Historians have noted that Europe is suffering the most sustained reduction in its population since the Black Death in the 14th century, when one in three Europeans succumbed to the plague. Lacking the strong religious identity that once characterized Christendom, atheist Europe seems to be a civilization on its way out. The philosopher Nietzsche predicted that European decadence would produce a miserable “last man” devoid of any purpose beyond making life comfortable and making provision for regular fornication. Well, Nietzsche's “last man” is finally here, and his name is Sven.
Eric Kaufmann has noted that in America, where high levels of immigration have helped to compensate for falling native birthrates, birthrates among religious people are nearly twice as high as those for secular people. This trend has also been noticed in Europe. What this means is that, by a kind of natural selection, the West is likely to evolve in a more religious direction.
This tendency will likely accelerate if Western societies continue to import immigrants from more religious societies, whether they are Christian or Muslim. Thus we can expect even the most secular regions of the world, through the sheer logic of demography, to become less secular over time.
In previous decades, scholars have tried to give a purely economic explanation for demographic trends. The general idea was that population was a function of affluence. Sociologists noted that as people and countries became richer, they had fewer children. Presumably, primitive societies needed children to help in the fields, and more prosperous societies no longer did. Poor people were also believed to have more children because sex provided one of their only means of recreation. Moreover, poor people are often ignorant about birth control or don't have access to it. From this perspective, large families were explained as a phenomenon of poverty and ignorance.
The economic explanation is partly true, but it falls short of the full picture. Poor people reproduce at higher rates despite having access to birth control and movie tickets; it turns out they generally want larger families. Sure, they are more economically dependent on their children, but on the other hand rich people can afford more children. Wealthy people in America today tend to have one child or none, but wealthy families in the past tended to have three or more children. The real difference is not merely in the level of income, it is that in the past children were valued as gifts from God, and traditional cultures still view them that way.
Muslim countries, with their oil revenues, are by no means the poorest in the world and yet they have among the highest birth rates. Practicing Catholics, orthodox Jews, Mormons and evangelical Protestants are by no means the poorest groups in America, and yet they have large families. Clearly, religious factors are at work here. The declining birthrates in the West as a whole are, in considerable part, due to secularization. The religious motive for childbearing has been greatly attenuated, and children are now viewed by many people as instruments of self-gratification. The old biblical principle was “Be fruitful and multiply.” The new one is “Have as many children as will enhance your lifestyle.”
False prophets
The economic forecasters of the disappearance of religion have proven themselves to be false prophets. Not only is religion thriving, it is thriving because it helps people adapt and survive in the world. In his book “Darwin's Cathedral,” evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson argues that religion provides something that secular society doesn't: a vision of transcendent purpose. Consequently, religious people develop a zest for life that is, in a sense, unnatural. They exhibit a hopefulness about the future that may exceed what is warranted by how the world is going. And they forge principles of morality and charity that simply make their group more cohesive, adaptive and successful than groups whose members lack this binding and elevating force.
My conclusion is that it is not religion but atheism that requires a Darwinian explanation. It seems perplexing why nature would breed a group of people who see no higher purpose to life or the universe. Here is where the biological expertise of Dawkins, Pinker and Wilson could prove illuminating. Maybe they can turn their Darwinian lens on themselves and help us understand how atheism, like the human tailbone and the panda's thumb, somehow survived as an evolutionary leftover of our primitive past.
D'Souza's new book, “What's So Great About Christianity,” is published by Regnery. Website: dineshdsouza.com. Email: dineshjdsouza@aol.com."
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20071111/news_mz1e11dsouza.html
By Dinesh D'Souza
November 11, 2007
The vigorous, the healthy and the happy survive and multiply.
– Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species
Religion continues to grow worldwide, and atheists in America and the West are having a difficult time explaining why. These nonbelievers, most of them Darwinists, are convinced there must be some biological explanation for why, in every culture since the beginning of history, man has found and continues to find solace in religion. Biologist Richard Dawkins confesses that religion poses a “major puzzle to anyone who thinks in a Darwinian way.”
Here, from the evolutionary point of view, is the problem. Scholars such as anthropologist Scott Atran presume that religious beliefs are nothing more than illusions. Atran contends that religious belief requires taking “what is materially false to be true” and “what is materially true to be false.” For Atran and others, religion requires a commitment to “factually impossible worlds.” The question, then, is why would humans evolve in such a way that they come to believe in things that don't exist?
Philosopher Daniel Dennett states the problem clearly: “The ultimate measure of evolutionary value is fitness – the capacity to replicate more successfully than the competition does.” Yet on the face of it religion seems useless from an evolutionary point of view. It costs time and money, and it induces its members to make sacrifices that undermine their well-being for the benefit of others, sometimes total strangers.
Religious people build cathedrals and pyramids that have very little utility except as houses of worship and burial. The ancient Hebrews sacrificed their fattest calves to Yahweh, and even today people slaughter goats and chickens on altars. Religious people sometimes forgo certain foods; the cow is holy to the Hindus, and the pig unholy to the Muslims. Christians give tithes and financial offerings in church. The Jews keep holy the Sabbath, as Christians keep Sunday for church. Religious people recite prayers and go on pilgrimages. Some become missionaries or devote their lives to serving others. Some are even willing to die for their religious beliefs.
A critical question
The evolutionary biologist wonders: Why would evolved creatures like human beings bent on survival and reproduction do things that seem unrelated, even inimical, to those objectives? This is a critical question, not only because religion poses an intellectual dilemma for Darwinists, but also because Darwinists are hoping that by explaining the existence of religion they can expose its natural roots and undermine its supernatural authority. Biologist E.O. Wilson writes that “we have come to the crucial stage in the history of biology when religion itself is subject to the explanations of the natural sciences.” He expresses the hope that sometime soon “the final decisive edge enjoyed by scientific naturalism will come from its capacity to explain traditional religion, its chief competitor, as a wholly material phenomenon.”
So how far have these evolutionary theories progressed in accounting for the success of religion? In “The God Delusion” Dawkins writes, “The proximate cause of religion might be hyperactivity in a particular node of the brain.” He also speculates that “the idea of immortality survives and spreads because it caters to wishful thinking.” But it makes no evolutionary sense for minds to develop comforting beliefs that are evidently false. Explains cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker: “A freezing person finds no comfort in believing he is warm. A person face to face with a lion is not put at ease by the conviction that he is a rabbit.” Wishful thinking of this sort would quickly have become extinct as its practitioners froze or were eaten.
Yet Pinker's own solution to the problem is no better than that of Dawkins. He suggests there might be a “God module” in the brain that predisposes people to believe in the Almighty. Such a module, Pinker writes, might serve no survival purpose but could have evolved as a byproduct of other modules with evolutionary value. This is another way of saying there is no Darwinian explanation. After all, if a “God module” produces belief in God, how about a “Darwin module” that produces belief in evolution?
Still, the question raised by the Darwinists is not a foolish one. Biologists such as Dawkins and Wilson say there simply must be some natural and evolutionary explanation for the universality and persistence of religious belief, and they are right. There is such an explanation, and as a religious believer I am happy to provide one.
Two creation stories
The Rev. Randy Alcorn, founder of Eternal Perspective Ministries in Oregon, sometimes presents his audiences with two creation stories and asks them whether it matters which one is true. In the secular account, “You are the descendant of a tiny cell of primordial protoplasm washed up on an empty beach three-and-a-half-billion years ago. You are the blind and arbitrary product of time, chance and natural forces. You are a mere grab-bag of atomic particles, a conglomeration of genetic substance. You exist on a tiny planet in a minute solar system in an empty corner of a meaningless universe. You are a purely biological entity, different only in degree but not in kind from a microbe, virus or amoeba. You have no essence beyond your body, and at death you will cease to exist entirely. In short, you came from nothing and are going nowhere.”
In the Christian view, by contrast, “You are the special creation of a good and all-powerful God. You are created in his image, with capacities to think, feel and worship that set you above all other life forms. You differ from the animals not simply in degree but in kind. Not only is your kind unique, but you are unique among your kind. Your creator loves you so much and so intensely desires your companionship and affection that he has a perfect plan for your life. In addition, God gave the life of his only Son that you might spend eternity with him. If you are willing to accept the gift of salvation, you can become a child of God.”
Now imagine two groups of people – let's call them the Secular Tribe and the Religious Tribe – who subscribe to these two world views. Which of the two tribes is more likely to survive, prosper and multiply? The Religious Tribe is made up of people who have an animating sense of purpose. The Secular Tribe is made up of people who are not sure why they exist at all. The Religious Tribe is composed of individuals who view their every thought and action as consequential. The Secular Tribe is made up of matter that cannot explain why it is able to think at all.
Should evolutionists such as Dennett, Dawkins, Pinker and Wilson be surprised, then, to see that religious tribes are flourishing? Throughout the world, religious groups attract astounding numbers of followers and religious people are showing their confidence in their way of life and in the future by having more children. Despite the sales figures of atheist best-sellers, atheism remains a minority lifestyle and the largest atheist organizations have only a few thousand members.
The important point is not just that atheism is unable to compete with religion in attracting followers, but also that the lifestyle of practical atheism seems to produce listless tribes that cannot even reproduce themselves. Sociologists Pippa Norris and Ron Inglehart note that many richer, more secular countries are “producing only about half as many children as would be needed to replace the adult population” while many poorer, more religious countries are “producing two or three times as many children as would be needed to replace the adult population.” The consequence, so predictable that one might almost call it a law, is that “the religious population is growing fast, while the secular number is shrinking.”
Country by country
Russia is one of the most atheist countries in the world and abortions there out-number live births by a 2-to-1 ratio. Russia's birthrate has fallen so low that the nation is now losing 700,000 people a year. Japan, perhaps the most secular country in Asia, is also on a kind of population diet: its 130 million people are expected to drop to around 100 million in the next few decades. Canada, Australia and New Zealand find themselves in a similar predicament.
Then there is Europe. The most secular continent on the globe is decadent in the quite literal sense that its population is rapidly shrinking. Birthrates are abysmally low in France, Italy, Spain, the Czech Republic and Sweden. The nations of Western Europe today show some of the lowest birthrates ever recorded, and Eastern European birthrates are comparably low. Historians have noted that Europe is suffering the most sustained reduction in its population since the Black Death in the 14th century, when one in three Europeans succumbed to the plague. Lacking the strong religious identity that once characterized Christendom, atheist Europe seems to be a civilization on its way out. The philosopher Nietzsche predicted that European decadence would produce a miserable “last man” devoid of any purpose beyond making life comfortable and making provision for regular fornication. Well, Nietzsche's “last man” is finally here, and his name is Sven.
Eric Kaufmann has noted that in America, where high levels of immigration have helped to compensate for falling native birthrates, birthrates among religious people are nearly twice as high as those for secular people. This trend has also been noticed in Europe. What this means is that, by a kind of natural selection, the West is likely to evolve in a more religious direction.
This tendency will likely accelerate if Western societies continue to import immigrants from more religious societies, whether they are Christian or Muslim. Thus we can expect even the most secular regions of the world, through the sheer logic of demography, to become less secular over time.
In previous decades, scholars have tried to give a purely economic explanation for demographic trends. The general idea was that population was a function of affluence. Sociologists noted that as people and countries became richer, they had fewer children. Presumably, primitive societies needed children to help in the fields, and more prosperous societies no longer did. Poor people were also believed to have more children because sex provided one of their only means of recreation. Moreover, poor people are often ignorant about birth control or don't have access to it. From this perspective, large families were explained as a phenomenon of poverty and ignorance.
The economic explanation is partly true, but it falls short of the full picture. Poor people reproduce at higher rates despite having access to birth control and movie tickets; it turns out they generally want larger families. Sure, they are more economically dependent on their children, but on the other hand rich people can afford more children. Wealthy people in America today tend to have one child or none, but wealthy families in the past tended to have three or more children. The real difference is not merely in the level of income, it is that in the past children were valued as gifts from God, and traditional cultures still view them that way.
Muslim countries, with their oil revenues, are by no means the poorest in the world and yet they have among the highest birth rates. Practicing Catholics, orthodox Jews, Mormons and evangelical Protestants are by no means the poorest groups in America, and yet they have large families. Clearly, religious factors are at work here. The declining birthrates in the West as a whole are, in considerable part, due to secularization. The religious motive for childbearing has been greatly attenuated, and children are now viewed by many people as instruments of self-gratification. The old biblical principle was “Be fruitful and multiply.” The new one is “Have as many children as will enhance your lifestyle.”
False prophets
The economic forecasters of the disappearance of religion have proven themselves to be false prophets. Not only is religion thriving, it is thriving because it helps people adapt and survive in the world. In his book “Darwin's Cathedral,” evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson argues that religion provides something that secular society doesn't: a vision of transcendent purpose. Consequently, religious people develop a zest for life that is, in a sense, unnatural. They exhibit a hopefulness about the future that may exceed what is warranted by how the world is going. And they forge principles of morality and charity that simply make their group more cohesive, adaptive and successful than groups whose members lack this binding and elevating force.
My conclusion is that it is not religion but atheism that requires a Darwinian explanation. It seems perplexing why nature would breed a group of people who see no higher purpose to life or the universe. Here is where the biological expertise of Dawkins, Pinker and Wilson could prove illuminating. Maybe they can turn their Darwinian lens on themselves and help us understand how atheism, like the human tailbone and the panda's thumb, somehow survived as an evolutionary leftover of our primitive past.
D'Souza's new book, “What's So Great About Christianity,” is published by Regnery. Website: dineshdsouza.com. Email: dineshjdsouza@aol.com."
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20071111/news_mz1e11dsouza.html
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Friday, April 4, 2008
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Lee Strobel's Testimony
This is a short summary of Lee Strobel's testimony. He is a former atheist, lawyer and award-winning legal editor of the Chicago Tribune who decided to use his legal and journalistic training to investigate the claims of Christianity and see if there was any credibility to it. He decided to do what he did at the Chicago Tribune, which was to check out stories to see if they were true. He decided to look at both sides, as well as looking at other world religions. In addition, he looked at some of the most brilliant legal minds of history; for example, Simon Greenleaf of Harvard, and Sir Lionel Luckhoo, of whom the Guinness Book of World Records describes as the most successful lawyer in the history of the world (he had more murder trials won in a row than any other defense attorney in history). These men were brilliant people who applied the laws of evidence to the resurrection accounts and walked away convinced that they are true. After almost 2 years of intense investigation, Lee concluded that the evidence overwhelmingly supported the claims of Christianity.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Gay Activists Risk Your Life. Tolerate It!
By Matt Barber
Friday, March 28, 2008
"Modern science sometimes serves to validate timeless Biblical truths (not that objective truth needs validating). Romans 6:23 contains two such truths. It provides flip sides to a priceless coin, offering us both a blunt warning and an enduring promise: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Far too often we toss this coin, gambling heads-or-tails with our own best interests. We all sin, but because Christ willingly paid the penalty — suffering death on the cross in our stead — we are redeemed. We need only believe in Him and the gift of eternal life is ours. We can confess our sins, repent (which includes making every effort not to repeat those sins) and move on.
Still, there are those who prefer the tarnished side of the coin to the polished, those who, with haughty hearts and sardonic “pride,” willfully choose sin over Christ; death over life.
It’s a self-evident reality which is bolstered by medical science, but Scripture additionally reminds us in both the Old and New Testaments that those who choose to engage in homosexual conduct do so at their own peril.
Consider Romans 1:26-27 (NIV), which a presidential candidate recently referred to as an “obscure passage in Romans”: “Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.”
It’s sad when people yield to disordered sexual temptations that can literally kill them spiritually, emotionally and physically. Nobody with any compassion enjoys watching others “[receive] in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.” But a corollary to free will is living (or dying) with the choices we’ve made.
That said, it’s an entirely different proposition when bad behaviors place others at risk. This should not — and must not — be “tolerated.”
Current U.S. health regulations prohibit men who have sex with men (MSM) from donating blood. Studies conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) categorically confirm that if MSM were permitted to give blood, the general population would be placed at risk.
According to the FDA, MSM “have an HIV prevalence 60 times higher than the general population, 800 times higher than first time blood donors and 8,000 times higher than repeat blood donors (American Red Cross).
“[MSM] also have an increased risk of having other infections that can be transmitted to others by blood transfusion. For example, infection with the Hepatitis B virus is about 5-6 times more common, and Hepatitis C virus infections are about 2 times more common in [MSM] than in the general population,” according to the FDA.
A recent CDC study rocked the homosexual community in finding that although MSM comprise only one-to-two percent of the population, they account for an epidemic 64 percent of all syphilis cases.
And Matt Foreman, outgoing Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, further shocked his fellow “gay” activists by admitting, “HIV is a Gay Disease.”
Although the risks extend far beyond potential HIV infection, the FDA notes, “All donated blood is tested for HIV, but the virus can go undetected until the immune system has produced a testable amount of antibodies.” This would pose a “small but definite increased risk to people who receive blood transfusions if the policy were changed.”
But risking lives is apparently of little concern to radical homosexual activists such as Joe Solmonese, president of the so-called “Human Rights Campaign” (HRC), the nation’s largest and most radical homosexual pressure group.
Solmonese recently placed politics over science, falsely declaring this commonsense public health precaution to be “discriminatory.” He has called for the ban to be lifted, with the wildly irresponsible claim that, “[T]here is no medical or scientific rationale for this discriminatory policy.”
In light of the irrefutable medical data, Solmonese’s demand is not only reckless, it’s incredibly dangerous. Unfortunately, it’s a common demand among his fellow extremists.
In South Africa, militant homosexual activists have been “protesting” by deliberately and surreptitiously violating that nation’s blood ban, aiming to flood blood banks with 70,000 units. Who knows how much blood has been contaminated or how many innocent people have been infected. This isn’t a protest; it’s an act of violence.
In recent days, Oklahoma State Rep. Sally Kern has been viciously attacked and ruthlessly maligned, even receiving death threats, for saying publicly that “the homosexual agenda is destroying the nation.” She even went so far as to say that, in her estimation, homosexual behaviors and “gay” activism pose a greater threat than terrorism.
Reasonable people can debate that opinion, but the actions of “gay” activists in South Africa provide one example among many which would seem to illustrate her point. To intentionally and surreptitiously defy valid health and safety regulations — very likely contaminating the blood supply and infecting untold numbers of innocent people — sounds an awful lot like terrorism to me.
Sally Kern can rest her case, but Joe Solmonese still has a big hole from which to dig himself. With his blunder, he has severely damaged his own credibility and has caused a tremendous setback to the radical movement he leads (a good thing, really).
It’s unconscionable that he would place a deceptive and dangerous political agenda above the health and well-being of American men, women and children. Homosexual activists who disingenuously cry out for “equal rights” should put the “rights” of others to be safe and healthy above their own selfish political ambitions.
Critical U.S. health regulations must not be ignored — or done away with — simply to further some twisted notion of “tolerance” and “diversity” or so that a small minority of people can feel better about the aberrant lifestyle choices they’ve made.
Intravenous drug users are also prohibited from giving blood, but no one in his right mind would demand that addicts be permitted to donate. It’s not because of who they are, it’s because of what they do. The aforementioned studies, and many others like them, prove that, like intravenous drug use, male-male anal sodomy is extremely high-risk behavior.
As I’ve often said, unnatural behaviors beget natural consequences. Regrettably, harmful and often deadly infectious disease can be just one of them."
Matt Barber is one of the "like-minded men" with Concerned Women for America and serves as CWA's policy director for cultural issues.
(Original article is here)
Friday, March 28, 2008
"Modern science sometimes serves to validate timeless Biblical truths (not that objective truth needs validating). Romans 6:23 contains two such truths. It provides flip sides to a priceless coin, offering us both a blunt warning and an enduring promise: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Far too often we toss this coin, gambling heads-or-tails with our own best interests. We all sin, but because Christ willingly paid the penalty — suffering death on the cross in our stead — we are redeemed. We need only believe in Him and the gift of eternal life is ours. We can confess our sins, repent (which includes making every effort not to repeat those sins) and move on.
Still, there are those who prefer the tarnished side of the coin to the polished, those who, with haughty hearts and sardonic “pride,” willfully choose sin over Christ; death over life.
It’s a self-evident reality which is bolstered by medical science, but Scripture additionally reminds us in both the Old and New Testaments that those who choose to engage in homosexual conduct do so at their own peril.
Consider Romans 1:26-27 (NIV), which a presidential candidate recently referred to as an “obscure passage in Romans”: “Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.”
It’s sad when people yield to disordered sexual temptations that can literally kill them spiritually, emotionally and physically. Nobody with any compassion enjoys watching others “[receive] in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.” But a corollary to free will is living (or dying) with the choices we’ve made.
That said, it’s an entirely different proposition when bad behaviors place others at risk. This should not — and must not — be “tolerated.”
Current U.S. health regulations prohibit men who have sex with men (MSM) from donating blood. Studies conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) categorically confirm that if MSM were permitted to give blood, the general population would be placed at risk.
According to the FDA, MSM “have an HIV prevalence 60 times higher than the general population, 800 times higher than first time blood donors and 8,000 times higher than repeat blood donors (American Red Cross).
“[MSM] also have an increased risk of having other infections that can be transmitted to others by blood transfusion. For example, infection with the Hepatitis B virus is about 5-6 times more common, and Hepatitis C virus infections are about 2 times more common in [MSM] than in the general population,” according to the FDA.
A recent CDC study rocked the homosexual community in finding that although MSM comprise only one-to-two percent of the population, they account for an epidemic 64 percent of all syphilis cases.
And Matt Foreman, outgoing Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, further shocked his fellow “gay” activists by admitting, “HIV is a Gay Disease.”
Although the risks extend far beyond potential HIV infection, the FDA notes, “All donated blood is tested for HIV, but the virus can go undetected until the immune system has produced a testable amount of antibodies.” This would pose a “small but definite increased risk to people who receive blood transfusions if the policy were changed.”
But risking lives is apparently of little concern to radical homosexual activists such as Joe Solmonese, president of the so-called “Human Rights Campaign” (HRC), the nation’s largest and most radical homosexual pressure group.
Solmonese recently placed politics over science, falsely declaring this commonsense public health precaution to be “discriminatory.” He has called for the ban to be lifted, with the wildly irresponsible claim that, “[T]here is no medical or scientific rationale for this discriminatory policy.”
In light of the irrefutable medical data, Solmonese’s demand is not only reckless, it’s incredibly dangerous. Unfortunately, it’s a common demand among his fellow extremists.
In South Africa, militant homosexual activists have been “protesting” by deliberately and surreptitiously violating that nation’s blood ban, aiming to flood blood banks with 70,000 units. Who knows how much blood has been contaminated or how many innocent people have been infected. This isn’t a protest; it’s an act of violence.
In recent days, Oklahoma State Rep. Sally Kern has been viciously attacked and ruthlessly maligned, even receiving death threats, for saying publicly that “the homosexual agenda is destroying the nation.” She even went so far as to say that, in her estimation, homosexual behaviors and “gay” activism pose a greater threat than terrorism.
Reasonable people can debate that opinion, but the actions of “gay” activists in South Africa provide one example among many which would seem to illustrate her point. To intentionally and surreptitiously defy valid health and safety regulations — very likely contaminating the blood supply and infecting untold numbers of innocent people — sounds an awful lot like terrorism to me.
Sally Kern can rest her case, but Joe Solmonese still has a big hole from which to dig himself. With his blunder, he has severely damaged his own credibility and has caused a tremendous setback to the radical movement he leads (a good thing, really).
It’s unconscionable that he would place a deceptive and dangerous political agenda above the health and well-being of American men, women and children. Homosexual activists who disingenuously cry out for “equal rights” should put the “rights” of others to be safe and healthy above their own selfish political ambitions.
Critical U.S. health regulations must not be ignored — or done away with — simply to further some twisted notion of “tolerance” and “diversity” or so that a small minority of people can feel better about the aberrant lifestyle choices they’ve made.
Intravenous drug users are also prohibited from giving blood, but no one in his right mind would demand that addicts be permitted to donate. It’s not because of who they are, it’s because of what they do. The aforementioned studies, and many others like them, prove that, like intravenous drug use, male-male anal sodomy is extremely high-risk behavior.
As I’ve often said, unnatural behaviors beget natural consequences. Regrettably, harmful and often deadly infectious disease can be just one of them."
Matt Barber is one of the "like-minded men" with Concerned Women for America and serves as CWA's policy director for cultural issues.
(Original article is here)
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