“A natural disaster is turning into a humanitarian catastrophe of genuinely epic proportions in significant part because of the malign neglect of the regime. I would be amazed if there hadn’t been about 100,000 who had died already … what’s more, hundreds of thousands more are at risk.” – British Foreign Secretary David Miliband

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Southern Baptists are moving to respond in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, which struck Myanmar, a country in Southeast Asia also known as Burma, early May 3 with winds of up to 120 mph.

The storm knocked out electricity in Yangon, the country’s largest city, and left hundreds of thousands of people homeless, according to the Associated Press. The death toll was estimated at 4,000, with another 3,000 missing, but the country’s foreign minister warned the toll could reach more than 10,000 in low-lying areas, where the storm’s impact was most intense.

Baptist Global Response and its local partners in Myanmar are trying to get an on-ground assessment of the situation, but the massive disruption of communications and travel ports is making that difficult, said Jeff Palmer, executive director of Baptist Global Response. Stringent rules placed upon foreigners by the military government also complicate matters.

“At this time, BGR is doing all it can to assess and respond to this urgent need,” Palmer said. “We have made initial contact with some on-ground partners and have readied funds to be used for food, shelter and other emergency needs.

“It looks, however, as if it will be a few days before we can get government permission and resources in place to respond in an adequate manner,” Palmer added. “This seems to be a pattern that all relief and development agencies are experiencing at this point.”

“Please pray for the people of Myanmar and those who are suffering. Pray also that we will find ways to get to the people in need in a timely manner.”

 

After you’ve seen the movie, you’ll need the book!

If Expelled left you with any doubts whether intelligent design is a scientific hypothesis, and not a religious dogma, as its detractors claim, then you need to do a little reading. (Sorry. I understand. It’s just not on youtube yet.)

Intelligent Design 101 places the scientific debate over intelligent design and “unintelligent evolution” in the context of the struggle for hearts and minds going on in our society, according to William Dembski, who wrote the foreword to the book. ID luminaries such as Phillip Johnson and Michael Behe contributed chapters that deal with the complete range of issues, from thoughts on the nature of science and the implications of Darwinism for the law to the evidence for design and Darwinism’s inability to explain how nature’s complexity can be explained by mere chance and time.

The leading edge of virtually every field of science has produced evidence that the world is too complex and too finely tuned to be an accident. The universe was designed by an intelligence far beyond that of Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Carl Sagan, or Richard Dawkins – who once declared, “The illusion of purpose is so powerful that biologists use the assumption of good design as a working tool.”

If design is such an effective tool for scientific inquiry, and if it is so obvious there is purpose in nature, what would lead one to conclude it is an illusion? Perhaps the problem isn’t so much illusion as delusion … an anti-God delusion.

Try to talk with someone who places blind faith in Darwinism to get them off the hook about the reality of God, and you’ll get a lot of heat and light – derision and abuse. And you’ll also get smoke – a barrage of arcane factoids that supposedly demonstrate that neo-Darwinist macroevolution can explain not only the origin of the species but its development as well. The truth, however, is that all the Darwinists can offer is examples of change within a species. There is no evidence of transition from one species to another. And even more significantly, they can offer no explanation for the origin of life and intellect.

The preface to Intelligent Design 101 offers this perspective:

People should have the good sense to know when a viewpoint is being forced due to lack of evidence.

One fascinating aspect of the current debate is that many leading Darwinists behave more like the stereotypical “fundamentalists” than do the religious “fundamentalists” they oppose. They imagine zealots who seek to censor the teaching of evolution on purely religious grounds. In the secular academy, questioning of the neo-Darwinian creation account usually is not tolerated. Establishment opposition to any alternative supposition to neo-Darwinian evolution is as voracious as that encountered by Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) when he published his arguments for a Copernican, sun-centered solar system. People on all sides of the macroevolution debate see the important worldview implications in the balance.

Because of its intolderance to dissent, academia generally has a “pro-Darwin-only” approach to origins. Wearing philosophical blinders, Darwinists commonly proclaim in a self-contradictory fashion that intelligent design is both false and unfalsifiable. Evolution, they say, is the only possible answer, and this is infallible fact.

Those with an open mind see the issue differently. Intelligent design is a fresh, and compelling, alternative to the tired arguments of Darwinism.

 Intelligent Design 101 will give you reasons to embrace intelligent design as a reasonable alternative to blind adherence to Darwinist dogma.

Cross-posted at CounterCulture.

One of the choice ironies of American pop culture is that some of the loudest critics of religious dogma are themselves ferociously dogmatic.

Ben Stein has done the world a great favor with his new movie, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which exposes the Inquisition being conducted on American university campuses against heretics who dare question the doctrine of Darwinian infallibility. Snotty intellectuals sniff with disdain at us rubes in fly-over country who cling to religion and guns because we can’t comprehend complicated socio-scientific realities. The truth is, they are the ones who are allowing a religious dogma – atheistic materialism – to blind them to the scientific evidence that reality is too complex and too finely tuned to be the result of an accident.

Expelled opens this evening, though it won’t be in a theater near you if the Crusaders have their way. But do whatever it takes to find a theater where it is showing. And take a professor with you.

Listen to Ben Stein talk about the movie.

Find a theater showing “Expelled.”

Read what William Dembski thinks about “Expelled.”

Lee Strobel explains why “Expelled” is a big deal.

“to secure a better future for our country by changing our punitive tax system, standing firm for the sanctity of life and traditional marriage, protecting our borders and giving our veterans the blood-bought benefits they deserve”

About your gayness and my perspective on it as a Christian who tries to take all the Bible seriously, including the passages that say God forbids homosexual behavior:

– Isn’t there a difference between my accepting a person as a beloved child of God and my approving of everything he says, does, or believes?

– Do you approve of everything your frends say, do, or believe?

– If we have to meet that standard for acceptance, how are any of us ever going to have any friends?

– You say I’m judgmental because I disapprove of what you say, do, or believe. How is your disapproval of my disapproval any less judgmental?

– If we can’t listen to those who disagree or disapprove, and honestly consider for a moment whether they might be right, what hope is there for making this a better world?

– If all we have to stand on is our own opinion, how can we say anything is right and just? Or evil and unjust?

– I look to the Bible as an objective standard for determining what is right and just. What objective standard for values do you have?

– Even if you think I’m narrow-minded and judgmental, can we still be frends?

Coming May 3! VeggieTales: Lessons From The Sock Drawer — A Collection of Veggie Shorts and Briefs.

Fifteen Veggie video shorts woven into one 75-minute DVD. Bonus features include segments from the NBC Saturday morning programming on DVD for the first time.

(Yes, the kids are grown and gone … well, mostly. And I still prefer a diet of Veggies to the nonsense all of America hyperventilates over. Sorry, dear. Even Star Trek reruns are better than Dancing with the Apprentice Idols in Hell’s Kitchen, or whatever it’s called.)

Pre-order at Amazon.com here.

My son has a friend staying with us for a few days who describes herself as a pagan. She wouldn’t accept our invitation to attend church with us on Easter morning because of that belief. As a result, he didn’t attend either.

So I’ve been thinking about paganism today.

If I understand it correctly, that word can mean lots of different things to different people. I think that people in America today who choose that label to describe their religious convictions would generally believe that the Divine is in nature, that all things are indwelled by the Divine or are an expression of it. Most might limit that to all living things; some see the Divine in any material thing.

If I remember my Dark Ages college education correctly, we divided paganism into polytheism (many gods), pantheism (the spirit of all living things together compose the Universal Divine), and panentheism (the Universal Divine also is beyond the material world).

I suppose today’s pagans would be about as diverse as a paleopaganism like Hinduism, so I don’t want to give anyone a hard time about their paganism based my lack of understanding. These days, religious beliefs are collected, much like platefuls at a potluck. Something look good to you? Add a spoonful. When you reach the end of the table, what you have may not look very attractive or make any sense from a dietetic perspective, but you’ve got exactly what you wanted.

In fact, I guess that’s what perplexes me most about paganism: How is it you decided to believe what you believe?

I can’t see what would persuade a person to hold a pagan belief system and practice its rituals, other than finding it attractive. Is there evidence of any kind that leads a person to reach the conclusion that God is within us all? What more is there to it than deciding to hold an opinion?

And is there anything that makes it a better opinion than any other religious notion any other person might cook up in a fevered imagination? Perhaps someone out there can help me sort this out.

I don’t suppose it matters to me what someone else believes, as long as they don’t claim their beliefs are actually true, for themselves or anyone else. Beliefs based on opinion aren’t even true for the people who believe them; they are merely believed. There is no such thing as private truth. To claim a belief is true, you have to be able to demonstrate it is true. To say “it’s true for me” is to say less than nothing.

There is one, and only one, system of religious and moral truth that can be proven true beyond a reasonable doubt.

Our world is full of arguments. We don’t seem to handle disagreement very well any more. I’m not sure any generation ever really has. But a lot of folks today seem to think that people with the most serious of disagreements somehow can “agree to disagree.”

In response to that old saw, Beth Newman, professor of theology and ethics at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, has an excellent word:

“The draw of this statement is that we do not want others to force their beliefs on us. And yet, in practice, “to agree to disagree” typically means that we’re going to table questions of truth, or relegate them to the private, non-public sphere.

“A philosopher colleague of mine tells his students at the beginning of each semester: “We’re not going to agree to disagree. We’re just going to disagree.” He means by this that we’re going to keep the public conversation going because a truth is at stake. …

“Disagreement can be a form of care. Conflict can be consistent with charity. The kind of love Paul refers to in 1 Corinthians 13 is agape, love of the other that goes beyond expectation of return. Agape includes love of enemy; it rests on the assumption that we will have adversaries. It cannot therefore mean that such love is ultimately for the purpose of simply “getting along.”

“You can’t have love without truth. The kind of love that Paul refers to is grounded in and made possible by a particular way of life. Such a way is centered on the faithful worship of God in Christ through the Spirit. Love and truth are not our possessions to be coercively defended but gifts to be received and graciously shared.”

The rest of Beth’s essay is posted over at CounterCulture.

You can all turn off your TVs and forget about network “news.” The Onion News Network is all you really need to watch.

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early