The following prayer from the Talmud:

When R. Sheshet would sit fasting, after he had said his prayer, he would say this: “Lord of the ages, it is perfectly obvious to you that, when the house of the sanctuary stood, a person who had sinned would make an offering. And of that offering the priests would offer up only the fat and blood, yet atonement would be attained for that person. Now I have sat in a fast, and so my fat and blood have become less. May it be pleasing before you that my fat and blood that have become less be received as if I had offered them up before you on the altar and so be reconciled with me.”

The Babylonian Talmud: Berakoth 17A

…and also the following:

As has been taught on Tannaite authority:
“And he shall lay his hand upon the head of the burnt-offering, and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him” (Lev. 1:4): does the atonement come about in consequence of the laying on of hands? And is it not the fact that the atonement comes about only because of the blood rite, as it is said, “For it is the blood that makes atonement by reason of the life” (Lev. 17:11)? So what purpose is served when Scripture states, “And he shall lay his hand upon the head of the burnt-offering, and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him” (Lev. 1:4)? It is to show that if the owner regarded the laying on of hands as the mere afterthought of the religious duty of making the offering, Scripture regards him as though he did not make atonement, even though he did make atonement [Sifra VI.V.4].

The Babylonian Talmud: Yoma 5A

How often it is said, by anti-missionary Jews these days, that Leviticus 17:11 is not applicable to atonement since its immediate context relates to dietary laws, but here, and in many other cases, we can see that the Talmud agrees with this interpretation. It is also clear from Rabbi Sheshet’s prayer that 1) atonement was through sacrifice and 2) there is but only a (faint) hope that fasting could serve the same purpose due to the decrease in body fat & blood during this time.

Notice also how some of the most orthodox Jews (also particularly popular among Kabbalist Jews) realise the need for sacrificial atonement – as made clear by the practice called Kapparot. The last picture is also interesting in terms of “original sin” … which is not typically a traditional Jewish view – why is atonement necessary for the baby then?

Kapparot:

A Jewish ritual practised by some Jews on the eve of Yom Kippur. The person swings a live chicken over one’s head three times, symbolically transferring one’s sins to the chicken. The chicken is then slaughtered and donated to the poor for consumption at the pre-fast meal.

The following quite from Chabad.org, an authoritative site, in the opinion of most religious Jews today, that doesn’t want to fully commit to the practice, but doesn’t fully condemn it either. Note the highlights – the fact that sacrifices are really only a symbol or shadow, as taught in the B’rit Hadasha – more typically known as the New Testament (actually ‘New Covenant’) scriptures. The emphasis on teshuvah (repentance), is obviously true & fully shared & underlined in the New Covenant scriptures as well.

The Mystical Origins

The origins of kapores are unclear. The influence of Kabbalah gave the custom much of its mystical aura. There is some opinion that kapores is related to the use of a scapegoat in Temple times on which the High Priest (Kohen Gadol) placed the sins of the Children of Israel before sending the goat out to its death. The reality is that there is no magic in kapores which transfers a person’s sins to the chicken. Even in the days of the Temple, sins were not magically transferred to an animal. The entire purpose of kapores is to create an experience that inspires a person to teshuvah , that is to return to G-d and to repent. All the sacrifices — and chickens — in the world will not result in forgiveness, unless teshuvah takes place.

The death of the righteous atones!

“Really? No, that’s just a Christian teaching”, you say. Not so. Dig deeper, and you’ll see that it is a thoroughly Jewish concept. For more info on this (and a bigger view on the image below) see this site.

Are you prepared to reject the death of the only righteous
person that ever lived & can atone for your sin?

• Israel is only 1/6 of 1% of the landmass of the Middle East.
• Israel is roughly half the size of Lake Michigan.
• The Sea of Galilee, at 695 ft. below sea level, is the lowest freshwater lake in the world.
• The Dead Sea is the lowest surface point on earth, at about 1,373 feet below sea level.
• Israel is the only nation in the world that entered the 21st century with a net gain in its number of trees.
• Jericho is the oldest continuously inhabited town in the world.
• The Mount of Olives in Jerusalem is the oldest, continually used cemetery in the world.

Demographics:

• Israel’s population is half the size of Metro New York City.
• Israel has only 2% of the population of the Middle East.
• Israel has the highest ratio of university degrees per capita in the world.
• Israel produces more scientific papers per capita than any other nation in the world – by a large margin.
• Israel has the highest number of scientists and technicians per capita in the world – by a large margin.
• Israel has the highest number of engineers per capita in the world.
• Israel has the highest number of PhD’s per capita in the world.
• Israel has the highest number of physicians per capita in the world.
• Israel has the largest percentage of its workforce employed in technical professions in the world.
• Israel is the largest immigrant-absorbing nation in the world, per capita.
• Israel is the only country in the Middle East where the Christian population has grown over the last 50 years.
• Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Christians, Muslims and Jews are all free to vote.
• Israel is the only country in the Middle East where women enjoy full political rights.

Economics:

• Israel has the largest number of startup companies per capita in the world.
• Israel is the world’s largest wholesale diamond center, finally surpassing Antwerp in the 1970′s. Most of the cut & polished diamonds in the world come from Israel.
• Israel has the largest number of NASDAQ listed companies outside of the US and Canada.
• Israel was the first country to have a free trade agreement with the United States.
• Apart from the Silicon Valley, Israel has the highest concentration of hi-tech companies in the world.
• The cell phone was developed in Israel at Motorola’s largest development center.
• The Voice Mail technology was developed in Israel.
• In the early 80′s, IBM chose an Israeli-designed computer chip as the brains for its first personal computers.
• The first anti-virus software for computers was developed in Israel in 1979.
• Most of the Windows NT and XP operating systems were developed in Israel by Microsoft.
• Both the Pentium-4 and Centrino processors were entirely designed, developed and produced in Israel.
• The Pentium MMX Chip technology was designed in Israel at Intel.
• Israel has the highest number of home computers per capita in the world.
• The technology for the AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ was developed in 1996 by 4 young Israelis.
• Israel was the first Middle Eastern country to launch a satellite, the Ofek 1, on September 19, 1988.

Culture:

• Hebrew is the only case of a dead national language being revived in all of world history. Hebrew had not been spoken as a native tongue by anyone for centuries. Today it is the native tongue of millions of people.
• Israel has more museums per capita than any other nation in the world.
• Israel has more orchestras per capita than any other nation in the world.
• Israel publishes more books per capita than any other nation in the world.
• Israel publishes more books translated from other languages than any other nation in the world.
• Israel reads more books per capita than any other nation in the world.
• The most independent and free Arabic press in the Middle East is in Israel.

Military/Security:

• Israel has the largest fleet of F-16 aircraft outside of the US.
• Israel has the world’s most impenetrable airline security.
• Israel spends more money per capita on its own protection than any country in the world.

Other:

• Israel’s dairy cows are the most productive dairy cows in the world. They average 25,432 pounds of milk per cow per year, compared to just 18,747 pounds from American cows; 17,085 from Canadian cows; 13,778 from European Union cows; 10,207 from Australian cows; and 6,600 from Chinese cows.
• Israel has more in-vitro fertilization per capita than anywhere in the world, and it’s free.
• Israelis, per capita, are the world’s biggest consumers of fruits and vegetables.
• Of the 175 UN Security Council resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed against Israel. Of the 690 UN General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990, 429 were directed against Israel.

The Israeli economy and stock market are surging, despite growing regional tension and instability. On Wednesday, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange closed one point below a record high. Today, the market formally hit a new record and is up 130% since November 2008 and 11% for the year.  ”The Israeli economy grew by 7.8% in the fourth quarter of 2010, according to figures released Sunday by the Central Bureau of Statistics,” reports Ynet News. “This is … Read More

via Joel C. Rosenberg’s Blog

According to Dr. Vinegar, Israel has the second-biggest oil shale deposits in the world, outside the United States. “We estimate that there are the equivalent of 250 billion barrels of oil there. To put that in context, there are proven reserves of 260 billion barrels of oil in Saudi Arabia.” he told The Times.

The punch line to a joke that’s been told by generation of Jews soon will need to be changed.

“Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!” This joke was made famous by Golda Meir, the former prime minister of Israel, and for many years held a lot of truth. The lack of oil and natural gas is seen as one of the main reasons Israel has become one of the world’s leaders in technology, green energy and health science.

But with the recent findings of the Tamar and Leviathan natural gas reserves off its waters, Israel has a future as an energy independent country. By why stop there? Some believe that Israel could become one of the world’s leading oil producers.

Such is the plan of Harold Vinegar and his colleagues. Dr. Vinegar, the former chief scientist of Royal Dutch Shell, and current chief scientist at Israel Energy Initiatives (IEI), believes that with Israel’s oil shale deposits, this could be reality.

IEI is working on an ambitious project to extract oil and natural gas from oil shale from a 238 sq km area off the Shfela Basin, southwest of Jerusalem.

As the price of conventional sources of petroleum has risen, oil shale has gained attention as an energy source, and as a way for some areas to secure independence from external suppliers of energy. However, oil shale mining does raise a number of environmental concerns due to it being very water intensive, and a high producer of greenhouse gas emissions. China has a well established oil shale industry and Brazil, Germany and Russia also utilize oil shale.

IEI claims that its technique will be cleaner than those currently being used because the oil will be separated from the shale rock up to 300 meters beneath the ground, therefore greatly minimizing the amount of water being consumed.

According to Dr. Vinegar, Israel has the second-biggest oil shale deposits in the world, outside the United States. “We estimate that there are the equivalent of 250 billion barrels of oil there. To put that in context, there are proven reserves of 260 billion barrels of oil in Saudi Arabia.” he told The Times.

Once operational, IEI estimates that the cost of production of shale oil would be between $34-40 per barrel. This would make it comparable to the current price of $30-40 per barrel for deepwater oilfield and cheaper than Canadian sand oil and crude oil extracted from the Arctic.

The expectations of Tamar and Leviathan have already given Israel a very positive outlook. Should IEI’s claims turn to reality, Israel would become one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

From ynetnews.

Moral relativism usually includes three claims: That morality is first of all changeable; secondly, subjective; and third, individual. That it is relative first to changing times; you can’t turn back the clock. Secondly, to what we subjectively think or feel; there is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so. And thirdly, to individuals; different strokes for different folks. Moral absolutism claims that there are moral principles that are unchangeable, objective, and universal.

Here, two contributions to this topic are presented, that of Dr Peter Kreeft and the following video by Dr William Lane Craig.

Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day defined a good society as one that makes it easy for you to be good. Correlatively, a free society is one that makes it easy to be free. To be free, and to live freely, is to live spiritually, because only spirit is free—matter is not. To live spiritually is to live morally. The two essential properties of spirit that distinguish it from matter are intellect and will—the capacity for knowledge and moral choice. The ideals of truth and goodness. The most radical threat to living morally today is the loss of moral principles.

Moral practice has always been difficult for fallen humanity, but at least there was always the lighthouse of moral principles, no matter how stormy the sea of moral practice got. But today, with the majority of our mind-molders, in formal education, or informal education—that is, media—the light is gone. Morality is a fog of feelings. That is why to them, as Chesterton said, “Morality is always dreadfully complicated to a man who has lost all his principles.” Principles mean moral absolutes. Unchanging rocks beneath the changing waves of feelings and practices. Moral relativism is a philosophy that denies moral absolutes. That thought to me is the prime suspect—public enemy number one. The philosophy that has extinguished the light in the minds of our teachers, and then their students, and eventually, if not reversed, will extinguish our whole civilization. Therefore, I want not just to present a strong case against moral relativism, but to refute it, to unmask it, to strip it naked, to humiliate it, to shame it, to give it the wallop it deserves, as they say in Texas, America’s good neighbour to the south.

How important is the issue? The issue of moral relativism is merely the single most important issue of our age, for no society in all of human history has ever survived without rejecting the philosophy that I am about to refute. There has never been a society of relativists. Therefore, our society will do one of three things: either disprove one of the most universally established laws of all history; or repent of its relativism and survive; or persist in its relativism and perish.

How important is the issue? C.S. Lewis says, in The Poison of Subjectivism, that relativism “will certainly end our species and damn our souls.” Please remember that Oxonians are not given to exaggeration. Why does he say “damn our souls?” Because Lewis is a Christian, and he does not disagree with the fundamental teaching of his master, Christ, and all the prophets in the Jewish tradition, that salvation presupposes repentance, and repentance presupposes an objectively real moral law. Moral relativism eliminates that law, thus trivializes repentance, thus imperils salvation.

Why does he say, “end our species,” and not just modern Western civilization? Because the entire human species is becoming increasingly Westernized and relativized. It is ironic that America, the primary source of relativism in the world today, is also the world’s most religious nation. This is ironic because religion is to relativism what Dr. Van Helsing is to Count Dracula. Within America, the strongest opposition to relativism comes from the churches. Yet a still further irony, according to the most recent polls, Catholics are as relativistic, both in behavior and in belief, as non-Catholics. Sixty-two percent of Evangelicals say they disbelieve in any absolute or unchanging truths, and American Jews are significantly more relativistic and more secular than Gentiles. Only Orthodox Jews, the Eastern Orthodox, and Fundamentalists seem to be resisting the culture, but not by converting it, but by withdrawing from it. And that includes most Muslims, except for the tiny minority who terrorize it. When Pat Buchanan told us in 1992 that we were in a culture war, all the media laughed, sneered, and barked at him. Today, everyone knows he was right, and the culture war is most essentially about this issue.

See the links below for further detail on this argument against moral relativism.

1. Argument for Relativism:  Psychological
2. Argument for Relativism:  Cultural
3. Argument for Relativism:  Social Conditioning
4. Argument for Relativism:  Freedom
5. Argument for Relativism:  Tolerance
6. Argument for Relativism:  Situations

7. Argument for Absolutism:  Consequences
8. Argument for Absolutism:  Tradition
9. Argument for Absolutism:  Moral Experience
10. Argument for Absolutism:  Ad Hominem
11. Argument for Absolutism:  Moral Language

Postscript: Cause and Cure

High-Speed Geology : Violent Seismic Activity Tearing Africa in Two

By Axel Bojanowski

The fissures began appearing years ago. But in recent months, seismic activity has accelerated in northeastern Africa as the continent breaks apart in slow motion. Researchers say that lava in the region is consistent with magma normally seen on the sea floor — and that water will ultimately cover the desert.

Cynthia Ebinger, a geologist from the University of Rochester in New York, could hardly believe what the caller from the deserts of Ethiopia was saying. It was an employee at a mineralogy company — and he reported that the famous Erta Ale volcano in northeastern Ethiopia was erupting. Ebinger, who has studied the volcano for years, was taken aback. The volcano’s crater had always been filled with a bubbling soup of silver-black lava, but it had been decades since its last eruption.

The call came last November. And Ebinger immediately flew to Ethiopia with some fellow researchers. “The volcano was bubbling over; flaming-red lava was shooting up into the sky,” Ebinger told SPIEGEL ONLINE.

The earth is in upheaval in northeastern Africa, and the region is changing quickly. The desert floor is quaking and splitting open, volcanoes are boiling over, and seawaters are encroaching upon the land. Africa, researchers are certain, is splitting apart at a rate rarely seen in geology.

The first fracture appeared millions of years ago, resulting in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The second fracture, stretching south from Ethiopia to Mozambique, is known as the Great Rift Valley, and it is lined with several volcanoes. Millions of years from now, it too will be filled with seawater.

Could Go Quickly

But in the Danakil Depression, in the northern part of the valley, the ocean could arrive much sooner. There, low, 25 meter (82 foot) hills are the only thing holding back the waters of the Red Sea. The land behind them has already dropped dozens of meters from previous levels and white salt deposits on the desert floor testify to past encroachments of the sea. But lava soon choked off its access.

For now, no one can really say when the sea will finally flood the desert. But when it does, it could go quickly. “The hills could sink in a matter of days,” Tim Wright, a fellow at the University of Leeds’ School of Earth and Environment, said at a recent conference hosted by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco.

In the last five years, the geologic transformation of northeastern Africa has “accelerated dramatically,” says Wright. Indeed, the process is going much faster than many had anticipated. In recent years, geologists had measured just a few millimeters of movement each year. “But now the earth is opening up by the meter,” says Loraine Field, a scholar at the University of Bristol who also attended the conference.

Earth tremors cause deep fissures to form in the desert floor and the ground in East Africa is shattering like broken glass. Researchers in the Gulf of Tadjoura, which juts into Djibouti from the Gulf of Aden, have recently registered a barrage of seismic shocks. “The quakes are happening on the mid-ocean ridge,” Ebinger reports.

Shifting Tectonic Plates

Lava gushes out of fissures in these underwater mountain ranges to constantly create new earth crust — when it hardens, it becomes part of the sea floor. As the magma surges upward, it spreads the ocean floor on both sides, shifting tectonic plates and causing tremors.

In recent months, the quaking in the Gulf of Tadjoura has been getting closer and closer to the coastline. As Ebinger explains, the splitting of the ocean floor will gradually extend to dry land. This is already the case along some fault lines in the Ethiopian desert, creating a geological spectacle that can otherwise only be witnessed deep below the surface of the ocean.

Even the pattern of earthquakes supports the conclusion that the desert landscape is transforming into a deep seafloor, according to a recent article in the Journal of Geophysical Research published by Zhaohui Yang and Wang-Ping Chen, two geologists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The researchers have recorded several strong earthquakes at a shallow depth in northeastern Africa similar to ones that are otherwise only seen on mid-ocean ridges far out at sea.

In recent months, researchers have also recorded an up-tick in volcanic activity. Indeed, geologists have discovered volcanic eruptions near the earth’s surface at 22 places in the Afar Triangle in northeastern Africa. Magma has caused fissures up to eight meters (26 feet) wide to open up in the ground, reports Derek Keir from the University of Leeds. While most of the magma remains beneath the surface, in places like Erta Ale it has made its way above ground.

An Ocean Without Water

Scientists have also noted that the kind of magma bubbling up in the region is the type otherwise only seen spewing forth from mid-ocean ridges deep below the water’s surface. One of its signature characteristics is a low proportion of silicic acid. The magma coming out of Erta Ale has the same chemical composition as the kind that emerges from deep-sea volcanoes. The entire region increasingly resembles an ocean floor — one without water.

The new burst in activity began in 2005, when a 60-kilometer-long fissure suddenly formed in the Afar Depression. Since then, roughly 3.5 cubic kilometers of magma have gushed forth, according to Tim Wright — enough to cover the entire area of London to an average person’s height.

From a geological perspective, the speed with which the magma is pushing forth is astonishing. It has been channeling its way through the rock below the earth’s surface at speeds of up to 30 meters per minute, reports Eric Jacques from the Institute of Earth Physics of Paris. Satellite measurements attest to the consequences: In one 200-kilometer stretch welling up with magma, the ground looks like asphalt on a hot summer day. Magma is also pooling up under the Dabbahu Volcano in northern Ethiopia, Lorraine Field reported in San Francisco.

Continuing to Expand

The satellite data has also shown that a much larger area has been scarred by fissures than previously assumed, says Keir. Subterranean currents of magma are also causing ground temperatures to spike in eastern Egypt, a team of geologists from Egypt’s National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics recently reported in Seismological Research Letters. At the AGU conference, Columbia University’s James Gaherty reported that magma eruptions have ripped a 17-kilometer gash into the desert floor in the northern part of Malawi and that the lateral pressure they have exerted has even lifted the surrounding earth up to 50 centimeters (20 inches) in places.

The most violent upsurge of magma in recent years, though, happened in an unexpected place. In May 2009, a subterranean volcano erupted in Saudi Arabia. A strong earthquake with a magnitude of 5.7 accompanied by tens of thousands of milder tremors forced 30,000 to seek shelter. Magma spewed out of the ground in an area about the size of Berlin and Hamburg combined, Sigurjon Jonsson from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology reported at the AGU meeting. The fact that the eruption took place almost 200 kilometers (124 miles) away from the fault line in North Africa “surprised all of us,” says Cynthia Ebinger. And the world’s largest geological construction site continues to expand. Loraine Field confirms that more and more magna is pushing its way to the earth’s surface, adding that: “The magma chamber is reloading.”

Oxford University’s David Ferguson predicts a considerable increase in volcanic eruptions and earthquakes in the region over the next decade. They will, he says, “become of increasingly large magnitude.”

Source article here.

TEL AVIV—Two years ago, Ratio Oil Exploration LP, an energy firm here, employed five people and was worth about half a million dollars.

Today it sits at the center of a gas bonanza that has investors, international oil companies, Israeli politicians and even Hezbollah, Israel’s sworn enemy, clamoring for a piece of the action.

Ratio’s market capitalization now approaches $1 billion. The rally at Ratio is thanks to the company’s 15% stake in a giant offshore gas field called Leviathan, operated by Houston-based Noble Energy Inc.

On Wednesday, the frenzy got fresh fuel: Noble confirmed its earlier estimates that the field contains 16 trillion cubic feet of gas—making it the world’s biggest deepwater gas find in a decade, with enough reserves to supply Israel’s gas needs for 100 years.

It’s a story that just keeps getting more and more interesting over the past few years, because larger and larger fields of petroleum keep getting discovered.

• August 18, 2010: BIBLE PROPHECY UPDATE: 1.5 BILLION BARRELS OF OIL DISCOVERED IN ISRAEL
• May 15, 2010: U.S. GOVERNMENT REPORT: ISRAEL HAS 122 TRILLION CUBIC FEET OF NATURAL GAS OFFSHORE
• August 19, 2009: ISRAELI NATURAL GAS DISCOVERY PROVES LARGER THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT
• January 18, 2009: BIBLE PROPHECY UPDATE: Israel discovers “inconceivably huge quantities” of natural gas reserves off Haifa

The non-fiction book, Epicenter, published in 2006 (and the updated and expanded Epicenter 2.0 edition that was published in 2008) , included a chapter entitled, “Future Headline: Israel Discovers Massive Reserves of Oil, Gas.” The chapter described a trail of prophetic clues found in the Hebrew Scriptures that some believe indicate that in the “last days” the nation of Israel will be blessed by discovering huge reserves of petroleum that will make Israel quite wealthy. Those clues suggest Israel will be able to “dip his foot in oil” and draw “oil from the flinty rock.” The Jewish people will find ”hidden treasures in the sand” and an “abundance of the seas.” This newfound wealth in the last days will certainly be a blessing for Israel, but it will also draw enemies and may very well help trigger the ”War of Gog and Magog” when the nations ask the leaders of the Russian-Iranian alliance that comes against the Jewish state, “Have you come to capture spoil [from Israel]? Have you assembled your [military forces] to seize plunder, to carry away silver and gold….to capture a great spoil?”

The trail of clues can be found in the following Bible verses:

• Genesis 49:1
• Genesis 49:25
• Deuteronomy 33:13
• Deuteronomy 33:19
• Deuteronomy 33:24
• Deuteronomy 32:12-13
• Isaiah 45:3
• Ezekiel 38:8-13

Are such prophecies now coming to pass?

Sources:
http://flashtrafficblog.wordpress.com
http://online.wsj.com

“A powerful riposte to atheist mockery and cocksure science, and to the sort of philosophy that surrenders to them. David Berlinski proceeds reasonably and calmly to challenge recent scientific theorizing and to expose the unreason from which it presumes to criticize religion.”
—Harvey Mansfield, Professor of Government, Harvard University

Militant atheism is on the rise. Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens have dominated bestseller lists with books denigrating religious belief as dangerous foolishness. And these authors are merely the leading edge of a far larger movement–one that now includes much of the scientific community.

“The attack on traditional religious thought,” writes David Berlinski in The Devil’s Delusion, “marks the consolidation in our time of science as the single system of belief in which rational men and women might place their faith, and if not their faith, then certainly their devotion.”

A secular Jew, Berlinski nonetheless delivers a biting defense of religious thought. An acclaimed author who has spent his career writing about mathematics and the sciences, he turns the scientific community’s cherished skepticism back on itself, daring to ask and answer some rather embarrassing questions:

Has anyone provided a proof of God’s inexistence?
Not even close.

Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here?
Not even close.

Have the sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life?
Not even close.

Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought?
Close enough.

Has rationalism in moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral?
Not close enough.

Has secularism in the terrible twentieth century been a force for good?
Not even close to being close.

Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy of thought and opinion within the sciences?
Close enough.

Does anything in the sciences or in their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational?
Not even ballpark.

Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt?
Dead on.

Berlinski does not dismiss the achievements of western science. The great physical theories, he observes, are among the treasures of the human race. But they do nothing to answer the questions that religion asks, and they fail to offer a coherent description of the cosmos or the methods by which it might be investigated.

This book explores the limits of science and the pretensions of those who insist it can be–indeed must be–the ultimate touchstone for understanding our world and ourselves.

David Berlinski is an American educator and author of several books on mathematics. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University and was later a postdoctoral fellow in mathematics and molecular biology at Columbia University. He has authored works on systems analysis, differential topology, theoretical biology, analytic philosophy, and the philosophy of mathematics, as well as three novels. He has also taught philosophy, mathematics and English at Stanford, Rutgers, the City University of New York and the Université de Paris. In addition, he has held research fellowships at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria and the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques.

In light of a widening range of threats to Israel’s security, for the first time a group of senior Israeli generals has come together to outline the basic principles of a defence policy – rooted in a consensus spanning past and present Israeli governments – which is focused on Israel maintaining defensible borders. The crisis over the Hamas flotilla to Gaza illustrates how some of Israel’s critical alliances in the Middle East are changing, especially its relationship with Turkey, and the importance of designing a defence policy that takes into account the uncertainties that Israel faces with many of its neighbours. Recent events only underscore that it is critical for Israel to preserve the principle of defending itself by itself.

Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport is only 6 miles from the West Bank, putting it into range for indirect fire, explains Vice Admiral Brian Peterman, U.S. Coast Guard (ret.) and even shoulder-fired missiles can bring down an airplane.

Download executive summary PDF
Download the full study PDF (4Mb)

The book argues for a roughly 10%/90% nature/nurture effect in homosexuality while asserting that any genetic effect is very indirect eg: any physical characteristic making a person feel gender-atypical. The book shows that homosexual orientation is not biologically driven or fixed but that change toward heterosexuality frequently occurs naturally without any therapeutic interventions. It contains arguments not found elsewhere. Using orthodox science and summarising over 10,000 scientific publications and papers, it is nevertheless very accessible to the average reader.

The book is available for free (or to purchase) online at http://mygenes.co.nz

Contents:

Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1. Can genes create sexual preferences?
Chapter 2. The genetic implications of SSA population percentage
Chapter 3. Are heterosexuals born that way?
Chapter 4. How strong are our instincts?
Chapter 5. What produces the sexual identity of intersexes?
Chapter 6. What do different cultures tell us about homosexuality?
Chapter 7. Pre-natal hormones? Stress? Immune attack?
Chapter 8. Are brains gay?
Chapter 9. The “discovery” of the “gay gene”
Chapter 10. Twin Studies: the strongest evidence
Chapter 11. Path Analysis – social factors do lead to homosexuality?
Chapter 12. Can sexual orientation change?
Summary
Index

The simple and honest answer is “No”. Television is not good for babies or young children at all. It doesn’t matter what’s on, even if it’s a special dvd you spent your hard-earned money on. A whole series of scientific research projects confirms this for us. Sorry folks, that’s the ugly truth.

What do the scientists say?

The University of Washington studied more than 1000 families and reported that for every hour that infants of 8 – 16 months watched dvds such as “Baby Einstein” and “Brainy Baby”, they understood 6-8 fewer words than other babies who were not exposed to such dvds (Associations between Media Viewing and Language Development in Children under Age 2 years – The Journal of Pediatrics, V151, Issue 4, Pgs 364-368). Interestingly, Disney, who own Baby Einstein, is now offering refunds to disgruntled US parents.

A study from Seattle examined more than 2500 children younger than 36 months, and found that for every hour of television watched daily, the risk of attention problems at age seven increased nearly 10 percent. They were more likely to be confused, impulsive, restless or obsessive about things in their lives – the problems were similar to symptoms of ADHD. (Attention-Deficit Risk Linked to Young Kids’ TV Time, Seattle Times, 5 April 2004)

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no TV before the age of two years and that children over two years be limited to one to two hours per day of educational material on TV. (Eh-Oh! Pediatricians Ban TV for Toddlers, David Burke www.whitedot.org)

In August 2009, France’s broadcasting authority banned the airing of TV shows aimed at children under three, after French psychologists found that: “Television viewing hurts the development of children under three years old and poses a certain number of risks, encouraging passivity, slow language acquisition, over-excitedness, troubles with sleep and concentration, as well as dependence on screens.” (France Pulls Plug on TV Shows Aimed at Babies, CBC News, Wed Aug 20 2008)

Why does television have such a negative effect on children during the early years?

As adults, we can watch something on television and give it meaning – this is primarily because our brains are already wired. We have real life experiences behind us, we understand language and we have a frame of reference to draw from.

Young children, however, are especially vulnerable to the negative effects of television because a young child’s brain is being wired at a rate of half a million brain cell connections per second…(The Baby Brain-Drain, The Times, 1 Nov 2007, Dr Miriam Stoppard). The experiences that your child is having is literally shaping his brain, and the more often he uses certain pathways, the more ‘hardwired’ those neural pathways become.

Young children simply stare at the rapidly changing scenes and take in the noises without any understanding whatsoever. We know this for a fact because scientists using Positron Imaging Technology can see inside a young child’s brain when they’re watching television. They have discovered that only the visual and listening areas of the child’s brain is stimulated, while the areas of the brain used for communicating, learning, thinking, memorising, expressing personality and fine tuning social behaviour remain inactive and completely un-stimulated during television-time.

In stark contrast, when a parent reads to a child and plays various games with him, his brain lights up like a Christmas tree as links are rapidly formed between all the regions of the brain. For example, when you show your child a picture of a dog and explain how the dog jumps and barks, he has to use various parts of his brain to form a mental picture of this through his imagination – when he watches television, the work of understanding and imagining is literally stolen away from his young developing brain, and along with that, the brain development that could’ve taken place is also snatched away. This arguably makes television one of the greatest and most silent thieves in the modern child’s world.

Reading and interacting with your child gives him language (scientific research proves that spoken language on TV is just ‘white noise’ for your child, without any meaning). In addition, when you’re interacting with your child you can read his emotions and respond appropriately, giving a little more attention to an area he doesn’t quite understand or laughing at the parts that he finds amusing (television cannot do this).

As adults, we often use television as a relaxation tool, ‘spacing out’ in front of our television sets after a stressful or busy day, and many adults find that it helps them to fall asleep. For young children, the rapidly changing scenes and noise is so mesmerising, it can actually be equated to ‘baby crack cocaine’.

Watching television literally rewires a child’s brain during the early years – the result is a child whose brain is so used to side-stepping the language and thinking areas that it becomes the default setting of that child’s brain to react to information without understanding – not only when they’re watching television, but in the real world as well.

The result is child who literally looks without ‘seeing’ and hears without ‘listening’.

OK – so what if your child has already been exposed to large amounts of television?

As quoted by a writer for The Times, Dr Martin Ward-Platt believes, “of course, the thing that really makes a difference for a baby is interaction with a caregiver and there is nothing we can invent as a people substitute. But if a child watches some TV and is exposed to people for the rest of the time, they will do fine. What we don’t know is where the limit is, where you start to hold children back.”

In real life, if you have a strong immune system, your body can fight off small viral attacks, and if you exercise everyday you can indulge in that piece of chocolate cake without fear of putting on too much weight. Similarly, if your baby receives large amounts of loving one-on-one interaction and stimulation from the important people in her life, her brain will be more densely wired and therefore will be more resilient to the impact of short periods of television watching.

As a parent I didn’t understand the effects of television on my young baby, and knowing what I know now, I will make wiser choices. If you enjoy some ‘me-time’ or a cup of coffee while your young child is watching television in the morning or evening, it is not the end of the world. As long as you don’t for one second believe it is actually good for them in any way. Keep in mind that you need to ensure a healthy balance by giving your young child as much individual attention as possible, whenever you can. We literally have to counter-act the negative effects of television-viewing with the positive effects of large amounts of one-on-one interaction.

This is a copy of the article originally posted at http://practicaprogram.blogspot.com/2010/10/television-great-thief.html

Mass Marriage in Gaza:

Debate on child marriage in Yemen:

Extracts from two videos below:

Pro-Hamas Broadcast:

Non-translated video footage:

Today, Dylan Lovan of the Associated Press titled his story, “Southern Baptist Leader on Yoga: Not Christianity.” Well here is the appropriate next headline: “Christian Concerns About Yoga: Not News.” You would think that Christians had never asked the question before. To Lovan’s credit, he framed his story on the controversy that followed my original article, published back on September 20, “The Subtle Body — Should Christians Practice Yoga?.”

Lovan documents the controversy and quotes me as saying: “I’m really surprised by the depth of the commitment to yoga found on the part of many who identify as Christians.” Well, double or triple that now.

Here are the lessons I have learned thus far from the controversy:

1. I have received hundreds of emails and comments against my article from those identifying as Christians. Not one–not a single one–has addressed the theological and biblical issues. There is not even a single protest communication offering a theological argument.

2. Evidently, the statistics reported by the yoga community are right. This is a female dominated field of activity. More than 90 percent of the protest communications come from women.

3. Sadly, almost every protest email makes my point better than I ever could myself. I have heard endless claims that there is no incompatibility between yoga and Christianity because it makes people feel better, it helps spirituality, it is a better way to know God, etc. There is no embarrassment on the part of these hundreds of email writers that they are replacing biblical Christianity with a religion of their own invention.

4. The kind of thinking represented by this avalanche of emails is perfectly illustrated by the comments of Stephanie Dillon, a local yoga instructor here in Louisville who attends the best-known church in our area:

Stephanie Dillon, who has injected Christian themes into her studio in Louisville, said yoga brought her closer to her Christian faith, which had faded after college and service in the Army.

“What I found is that it opened my spirit, it renewed my spirituality,” Dillon said. “That happened first and then I went back to church.” Dillon attends Southeast Christian Church in Louisville and says many evangelical Christians from the church attend her yoga classes.

She said she prayed on the question of whether to mix yoga and Christianity before opening her studio, PM Yoga, where she discusses her relationship with Jesus during classes.

“My objection (to Mohler’s view) personally is that I feel that yoga enhances a person’s spirituality,” Dillon said. “I don’t like to look at religion from a law standpoint but a relationship standpoint, a relationship with Jesus Christ specifically.”

Now, in fairness to Ms. Dillon, she might have said or have meant to say more than is reported here, but taking her comments at face value, we see Exhibit A of the problem. She comments that yoga “renewed my spirituality,” with no reference to anything remotely Christian and Gospel-centered about this renewal. She insists that yoga “enhances a person’s spirituality” without any recognition that this is not what biblical Christianity is all about. But, she prayed before deciding “to mix yoga and Christianity,” so everything must be just fine.

5. I have heard from a myriad of Christians who insist that their practice of yoga involves absolutely no meditation, no spiritual direction, no inward concentration, and no thought element. Well, if so, you are simply not practicing yoga. You may be twisting yourselves into pretzels or grasshoppers, but if there is no meditation or direction of consciousness, you are not practicing yoga, you are simply performing a physical exercise. Don’t call it yoga.

6. We are in worse shape than we thought. I have heard from a myriad of souls who have called me insane, incompetent, stupid, vile, fundamentalist, and perverted. Some others are best left unrepeated. These souls claim to be Christian, but offer no biblical argument nor do they even acknowledge the basic fact that yoga, as a spiritual practice, runs directly counter to the spiritual counsel of the Bible. Instead, I have been treated to arguments like these. From a “devoted Southern Baptist church member who resents your ignorance”: I get much more out of yoga and meditation than I ever get out of a sermon in church. From “a Christian who goes to church every service”: My favorite image I use in yoga is that of Jesus assuming a perfect yoga position in the garden of Gethsemane as he prays. And, to cap it all off: How do we know that the apostles and early Christian guys did not use yoga to commune with Jesus after he left?

My email box is filling back up as we speak. This is going to be a very long day.

The book has been well-received and made the list of “Top Ten Best Selling Science Books of 2009″ at Amazon.com. According to the Discovery Institute, by November 2009 the book had entered its fifth printing.

The book was endorsed by scientists such as Philip Skell, J. Scott Turner, Alistair Noble and Edward Peltzer, and received a favorable review from philosopher Thomas Nagel, in The Times, who wrote that “Signature in the Cell…is a detailed account of the problem of how life came into existence from lifeless matter – something that had to happen before the process of biological evolution could begin … Meyer is a Christian, but atheists, and theists who believe God never intervenes in the natural world, will be instructed by his careful presentation of this fiendishly difficult problem.” The book also received a favorable review in TELICOM, “The Journal of the International Society of Philosophical Enquiry.”

When Thomas Nagel submitted the book as his contribution to the “2009 Books of the Year” supplement for The Times, many in the philosophical and scientific community responded negatively to his recommendation. Specifically, Stephen Fletcher, chemist at Loughborough University, wrote in The Times Literary Supplement, Nagel is “promoting the book to the rest of us using statements that are factually incorrect.” Fletcher explained “Natural selection is in fact a chemical process as well as a biological process, and it was operating for about half a billion years before the earliest cellular life forms appear in the fossil record.” In another publication, Fletcher wrote that “I am afraid that reality has overtaken Meyer’s book and its flawed reasoning” in pointing out scientific problems with Meyer’s work by citing how RNA “survived and evolved into our own human protein-making factory, and continues to make our fingers and toes.”. Meyer responded to Fletcher’s criticisms of the book via an unpublished letter to The Times Literary Supplement that was posted on Meyer’s website, stating that “To support his claim that scientific developments have ‘overtaken Meyer’s book,’ Fletcher cites, first, a scientific study by chemists Matthew Powner, Beatrice Gerland and John Sutherland of the University of Manchester. This study does partially address one, though only one, of the many outstanding difficulties associated with the RNA world scenario, the most popular current theory of the undirected chemical evolution of life. Starting with several simple chemical compounds, Powner and colleagues successfully synthesized a pyrimidine ribonucleotide, one of the building blocks of the RNA molecule. Nevertheless, this work does nothing to address the much more acute problem of explaining how the nucleotide bases in DNA or RNA acquired their specific information-rich arrangements, which is the central topic of my book.”

In May 2010, the Discovery Institute, which is directed by Meyer, released a free 105 page eBook titled Signature of Controversy: Responses to Critics of Signature in the Cell with chapters by Discovery Institute fellows David Berlinski, David Klinghoffer, Casey Luskin, Stephen C. Meyer, Paul Nelson, Jay Richards and Richard Sternberg.

Debate with Michael Shermer dealing with objections to intelligent design, the existence of design in nature & “Who designed the designer?”

For more information about the book, further reviews & related debates go to http://www.signatureinthecell.com.

The Pilgrim’s Progress was written during Bunyan’s imprisonment for violations of the Conventicle Act, which prohibited the holding of religious services outside the auspices of the established Church of England.

Pilgrim’s Progress is ranked #9 on Amazon in classic British literature at the time of this writing. It received a 5 star rating from 87% of readers.

The “Anti-Dust Agreement” can be downloaded here.

Here’s a preview of a recent movie that may appeal more to those that struggle to start a new book. The book has much more detail & should still be well worth the read.

We Don’t Need A “Great Awakening” — We Need A Rude Awakening!

Has the Church fallen asleep in the enemy’s lap?

For years we have preached a defective message—and now we have a defective Church. This unsettling book challenges us to ask ourselves what kind of born-again experience we have had if it calls for almost no personal sacrifice, produces virtually no separation from the world, and breeds practically no hatred of sin.

Read this book and find out just how saved we are. It will create in you the desire to live a life truly dedicated to God. It is time for a rude awakening!

The “Anti-Dust Agreement” can be downloaded here.

As described by Smith and his team, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism consists of beliefs like these:

1. “A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.”

2. “God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.”

3. “The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.”

4. “God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.”

5. “Good people go to heaven when they die.”

These recent studies testify to the fruit that decades of a consumer-driven, therapy mentality have brought into our churches.  Dr. Michael Brown’s books, How Saved Are We and The End of the American Gospel Enterprise, point to a very similar attitude that was already entrenched in the American Church over twenty years ago:

The American Church at the end of the twentieth century is experiencing a crisis. For years we have preached a cheap gospel and peddled a soft Savior. We have taught salvation without self-denial and the crown without the cross. We have catered to the unsaved and compromised with the world. Now we are paying the price.  (How Saved Are We.)

Our contemporary gospel has bred complacency instead of compassion, success instead of sacrifice, prestige instead of prayer.  We no longer ask what we can do for Him, but rather what He can do for us.  (American Gospel Enterprise.)

Dean says there are four things that deeply religious teenagers, whose faith affects their day to day lives have in common:

Dean says committed Christian teens share four traits: They have a personal story about God they can share, a deep connection to a faith community, a sense of purpose and a sense of hope about their future.

Recapturing a passionate, articulate faith in teenagers and young people requires not simply a new “method” to reach them, but rather a revitalization of faith and devotion in the day-to-day living of adults.  According to Dean,

Since the religious and spiritual choices of American teenagers echo, with astonishing clarity, the religious and spiritual choices of the adults who love them, lackadaisical faith is not young people’s issues, but yours… So we must assume that solution lies…in modeling the kind of mature, passionate faith we say we want young people to have… We have successfully convinced teenagers that religious participation is important for moral formation and for making nice people… Yet these young people possess no real commitment to or excitement about religious faith.

What is the one thing that truly differentiates faith from religion?  Dean says this:

Faith is a matter of desire, a desire for God and and a desire to love others in Christ’s name…Love gives Christianity its purpose and meaning.  Religion functions as an organized expression of belief… Yet Christianity has always been more of a trust-walk than a belief system…Faith depends on who we follow, and that depends on who we love.

John Wesley, whom Dean quotes, experienced in his own life a time when he called himself “almost a Christian,” while living with the same kind of approach many do today:

I did…good to all men; constantly and carefully using all the public and all the private means of grace…and…doing all this in sincerity… Yet my own conscience beareth me witness in the Holy Ghost, that all this time I was but almost a Christian... The great question of all, then, still remains.  Is the love of God shed abroad in your heart?  Can you cry out, “My God, and my All”?… Is he your glory, your delight, your crown of rejoicing?

Another crucial question is this: how can we experience this passionate love of God if we have not seen the man Jesus tortured, bleeding, dying, and abandoned because of the depths of sin in our own hearts?  The only true knowledge of the incredible love of God that evokes such devotion can come through a changed heart which has been wrung by a deep conviction of sin and repentance, and has seen the cost God afflicted on Himself in order to rescue us from the power of sin and bring us into fellowship with Himself.

Dr. Michael Brown reviewed the first few chapters of Almost Christian on his Line of Fire Radio show, and here is a quote from his closing remarks:

We are fundamentally off: with much of our preaching, with much of our emphasis…we’ve been in the wrong direction for years. We have soft-peddled the gospel, we have by-passed the cross.  We haven’t preached a faith which is glorious and wonderful, and a savior who is so extraordinary, who delivers us from a wrath which is so terrible, that we JOYFULLY give up everything to have Him!

Changed hearts in the church as a whole is the only way to see the transformation that so many adults in the church have said they desire to see in their children, as Dr. Brown stated in The Jesus Manifesto:

The dawning of the 21st century finds the church of America in a moral and spiritual crisis. Decades of self-centered living and worldliness have taken their toll. Years of compromise and toothless gospel preaching have had their effect. And now we have reached the moment of truth: Either we wake up, stand up, speak up, and act up, or we run the risk of becoming a mere historic curiosity, an irrelevant religious sideshow, an entertaining, harmless spectacle. Something must change, and it must change now. There is no other choice.

Original review here.

“Solutions suggested [...] included [...] rewarding families for raising children.” Note that “falling fertility” is also explicitly mentioned below.

Human interference in fertility rates has caused this problem & yet again, the man-made solution is sub-optimal at best & completely in the wrong direction at worst.

Also see this post for some non-intuitive information on this topic: Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth… (Gen 1:28)

Early retirement hinders global growth – expert

Nov 26 2002 12:43

Singapore – Allowing people to work longer instead of making them retire would help solve declining global growth, an expert said in a Singapore report on Tuesday.

“We need to abandon the notion that people have to retire at a certain age,” The Business Times quoted Richard Jackson, from the US Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), as saying.

“There is a misconception that the productivity declines for older workers,” Jackson said.

While it is true for some blue-collar workers, it is not true for “knowledge workers,” he stressed.

If developing nations fail to confront their ageing challenge, East Asia faces a future of slower growth, widespread capital shortages, declining export markets and rising protectionism, Jackson said at a forum here.

A CSIS projection said falling fertility and rising longevity could increase the proportion of the developed world’s population aged 65 and above to 27% by 2050, up from 15% in 2000.

The projected percentage of population aged 65 and above for the developing world is 14% in 2050 from 6% in 2000.

Solutions suggested by Jackson included the scaling back of public pension schemes, encouraging later retirement and rewarding families for raising children. – Sapa-DPA

http://www.fin24.com/Economy/Early-retirement-hinders-global-growth-expert-20021126

“There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains.” – Mark 13:8

Experts: ‘Big One’ could come soon…

2010-08-21 11:01

Los Angeles – Strong earthquakes along the San Andreas fault in southern California are more frequent than previously thought, so the dreaded “Big One” could be just around the corner, US researchers said Friday in a study.

University of California at Irvine and Arizona State University scientists examined the geological record stretching back 700 years along the fault line 160km northwest of Los Angeles.

They found that strong earthquakes – between 6.5 and 7.9 magnitude – shook the area every 45-144 years, instead of the previously established 250-400 years.

Since the last big 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck southern California in 1857, or 153 years ago, scientists believe the next “Big One” could happen at any time.

The scientists on Friday provided an abstract of their study, which will be published in full in the September 1 issue of the magazine Geology.

“What we know is for the last 700 years, earthquakes on the southern San Andreas fault have been much more frequent than everyone thought,” said the study’s lead author Sinan Akciz.

“Data presented here contradict previously published reports,” he added.

People urged to take precautions

With 37 million people living in southern California, chiefly in the cities of Los Angeles, San Diego and Anaheim, a major earthquake could kill between 2 000 and 50 000 people and cause billions of dollars in damage, scientists said.

UCI seismologist Lisa Grant Ludwig, the study’s chief investigator, said people in the area should already be taking precautions.

“There are storm clouds gathered on the horizon. Does that mean it’s definitely going to rain? No, but when you have that many clouds, you think, I’m going to take my umbrella with me today.’ That’s what this research does: It gives us a chance to prepare,” she said.

For individuals, that means having ample water and other supplies on hand, safeguarding possessions in advance, and establishing family emergency plans.

For regulators, Ludwig advocates new policies requiring earthquake risk signs on unsafe buildings and forcing inspectors in home-sale transactions to disclose degrees of risk.

Some things, she added however, remain unpredictable, especially Los Angeles’ troublesome highway grid, which in the best of times gets hopelessly choked in traffic.

Ludwig said the new data “puts the exclamation point” on the need for state residents and policymakers to be prepared.

- AFP

From www.bilderbergmeetings.org:

“The 58th Bilderberg Meeting will be held in Sitges, Spain 3 – 6 June 2010. The Conference will deal mainly with Financial Reform, Security, Cyber Technology, Energy, Pakistan, Afghanistan, World Food Problem, Global Cooling, Social Networking, Medical Science, EU-US relations. Approximately 130 participants will attend of whom about two-thirds come from Europe and the balance from North America. About one-third is from government and politics, and two-thirds are from finance, industry, labor, education, and communications.”

The ‘reach of influence’ these meetings have can be judged by the attendance list:

List of Participants

On a visit to Chile, Bertone, dubbed the Deputy Pope, also said Pope Benedict would soon take more surprising initiatives regarding the sex abuse scandal but did not elaborate.

“Many psychologists and psychiatrists have shown that there is no link between celibacy and pedophilia but many others have shown, I have recently been told, that there is a relationship between homosexuality and pedophilia,” he told a news conference in Santiago.

“This pathology is one that touches all categories of people, and priests to a lesser degree in percentage terms,” he said. “The behavior of the priests in this case, the negative behavior, is very serious, is scandalous.”

Bertone’s visit to Chile comes as the Catholic Church has been buffeted by scandals concerning sexual abuse of children — most of them boys — by priests. There also have been allegations of cover-ups and even that the Pope mishandled cases when he was a bishop in Germany and a Vatican official before his election in 2005.

Original article at Reuters.

Suggested organizations that publish or host good apologetics resources: (click links on image below)

About The Film

Demographic Winter: the decline of the human family explores the severe economic and social consequences of family decline and plummeting birthrates worldwide. In Demographic Winter scholars from many backgrounds give economic, social scientific, demographic and historic context to population decline and the impact families have on the strength and stability of society. The film’s fast moving and artistic style highlights the research of economists (including a Nobel laureate), demographers, social scientists, and authors in an impactful way.
These experts show how a strong foundation of human capital is needed by every economy. The development of this human capital is more dependent upon the families from which they are derived than by any other institution. From their research these scholars illustrate the necessity of building strong moral and social capital, best accomplished within the family setting, as a basis for this human capital.
They also illuminate how the support of family is crucial in the development of skills and education. Stable societies and economies are centered upon these vital elements. Demographic Winter reveals how, popular myth notwithstanding, birthrates have been falling dramatically over the past 40 years and how much of the world now has birthrates well below replacement levels. Some countries have begun to depopulate, and will soon begin to feel the crunch of a contracting economy. The population of the world, these experts tell us, particularly in developing countries, is aging. The baby-boom generation is reaching retirement and will need to be supported by the generations that succeeded them, all of which have had fewer and fewer children. This means fewer and fewer workers paying into the social security, medical and welfare systems of the world. Economies will be strained and governments will slow bleed as relative production dwindles and tax revenues decrease.
The film exposes how many developed countries with below replacement fertility have looked to immigration to help bolster the diminished labour force. This increased immigration, almost exclusively coming from developing countries, has begun to change the social and political landscape in the host countries. This out-migration has begun to drain labour from developing countries, stunting the growth of their economies. What’s more, these experts tell us, because it so often means the separation of family members, usually the father, it is causing increased social problems and birthrates falling at a faster rate than did those for the developed countries.
Demographic Winter: the decline of the human family is the first of two films addressing this topic. This first film features interviews with many distinguished scholars including Gary Becker, Ph.D, University of Chicago, Nobel Prize in Economics, 1992; Phil Longman, Schwartz Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation and author of “The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity And What to Do About It”; Nicholas Eberstadt, Ph.D., political economy and government, Harvard University, Henry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy, American Enterprise Institute; Victor Medkov, Professor, Department of Sociology, Moscow Lomonosov State University, co-author of “Population: An Encyclopedic Dictionary”; Steve Nock, Ph.D, Commonwealth Professor, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Marriage Matters project, University of Virginia; Kay Hymowitz, William E. Simon Fellow, Manhattan Institute, Contributing Editor, City Journal; Linda Waite, Ph.D. Lucy Flower Professor in Urban Sociology, University of Chicago, Director, Center on Aging at N.O.R.C.; Alban d’Entremont, Ph.D, Chair, Dept of Geography, Professor Economic and Human Geography, University of Navarra, Spain.

Note that the author of this blog doesn’t benefit in any way from these DVD sales.

A key verse modified in the NWT, mentioned above, is John 1:1. Note the exegetical analysis of the Greek (words should be read in the order of the numbers shown to understand the Greek word order). The NWT contains an inserted “a” in “…the Word was a God”. Many translations also shown below to illustrate the error.

Introduction – Watchtower Theology…

• Jehovah’s Witness’ Beliefs video
• Jehovah’s Witnesses in a nutshell video
• Jehovah’s Witnesses’ History video
• Is the Jehovah’s Witness religion Christian? video

Doctrinal Comparison Chart

Regarding Jehovah’s Witnesses

• If you are a Jehovah’s Witness, please read this first video
• Jehovah’s Witnesses are really “Watchtowerites.” video
• Questions for Jehovah’s Witnesses video
• Has the Jehovah’s Witness’ god performed the greatest act of love? video
• Response to “Has the Jehovah’s Witness’ god performed the greatest act of love?”

Issues and Answers

• Responding to the Jehovah’s Witness attacks on the deity of Christ
• Responding to the Jehovah’s Witness attacks on the Bible
• A Biblical Response to Jehovah’s Witnesses
• The Lord’s Supper and the 144,000 Anointed Class of Jehovah’s Witnesses
• 1914 A.D., 607 B.C., 586 B.C. and the Jehovah’s Witnesses
• Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mental Health
• The Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Resurrection of Jesus
• Is the Jehovah’s Witnesses Organization the “faithful and discreet slave?”
• Do Annihilation and Resurrection Make Sense?
• Does the Watchtower say the Bible teaches the Trinity?
• A Test: Do you have the True Jesus?

Problems in the Watchtower Organization

• Jehovah’s Witnesses and their many false prophecies
• Jehovah’s Witness doctrine is not from the Bible alone
• Contradictions in Watchtower Literature
• Salvation according to the Watchtower Organization, Part 1
• Salvation according to the Watchtower Organization, Part 2

Jehovah’s Witness attacks on Jesus

• If Jesus is God, then who did He pray to?
• If Jesus is God, then why did not know the time of His return?
• If Jesus is God, why did He say the Father was greater than He?
• Did Jesus rise from the dead in the same body He died in?
• Did Jesus die on a stake or a cross?

Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Bible

• Bad translations of the Jehovah’s Witness Bible
• The New World Translation and “Proskuneo” (worship)

Bible Verses Examined

• 1 Chronicles 29:20, is Jesus worshipped the same way David was?
• Isaiah 40:3; Mal. 3:1; Matt. 3:3, Prepare the way of the Lord.
• John 1:1, “The word was a god.”
• John 5:18, “…making Himself equal with God.”
• John 5:30-32, “By Myself I can do nothing.”
• John 8:58, “Before Abraham came into existence, I have been.”
• John 8:58 and 10:30-33, “I am.”
• John 10:30-33, What made the Jews want to kill Jesus?
• John 14:28, “The Father is greater than I.”
• John 17:3, “The only true God.”
• 1 Cor. 1:2, Call upon the name of the Lord Jesus
• Col. 1:15, “firstborn of all creation”
• Col. 1:16-17 – “…all [other] things were created by him…”
• Heb. 1:6, “Let the angels do obeisance to him.”
• Heb. 1:8 and Psalm 45:6, “God is thy throne.”

Interesting Quotes from Watchtower Literature

• Does the Watchtower organization control the JW’s thinking?
• Regarding the Watchtower Organization and Salvation
• The Watchtower Organization points to itself as the truth.
• Regarding the Trinity, Jesus, Adam, and the immortality of the soul

Documentation from Jehovah’s Witness Literature

• Regarding the faithful and discreet slave
  • Charles Taze Russell is the faithful and discreet slave
  • Charles Taze Russell never claimed to be the faithful and discreet slave
  • Watchtower Organization is faithful and discreet slave
  • The faithful and discreet slave is the anointed overseers of the Watchtower Org.
• Regarding Jesus
  • Jesus is present since 1874
  • Jesus is Abaddon and Apollyon the Destroyer
  • Jesus mediates only for 144,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses
  • Jesus became the Christ at His baptism
• Regarding Salvation
  • Four requirements for salvation in Watchtower Organization
  • The Jehovah’s Witness must do God’s the rest of his life to be saved
  • A Jehovah’s Witness must become worthy of salvation
    
• Regarding sin
  • The impulse to sin is in the blood
• Regarding the Jehovah’s Witnesses and their Organization
  • The Jehovah’s Witness Organization is the prophet of God
  • Knowing the Bible is possible only through Jehovah’s Witness organization
  • Watchtower is necessary to understand the Bible
  • The Jehovah’s Witnesses are the Christ
• Regarding opposers and apostates
  • Opposers of true worship are skilled at deception
  • Have no dealings with apostates

Evangelism Tracts

• The Warning Tract

Other websites on the Jehovah’s Witnesses

• Witness Inc.
• Jehovah’s Witnesses Experts.com
• Free Minds

Debate

• Go to the CARM Jehovah’s Witnesses Debate Board

Note the great city, on seven hills, with clear influence over the rulers of the earth (more clearly in past, but also still today), and the controlling role she (the city) plays:
“The woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth. … Here is the mind which hath wisdom: The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sitteth” (Revelation 17:18,9).
…see ‘The Seven hills of Rome’, also, the Catholic Encyclopedia states: “It is within the city of Rome, called the city of seven hills, that the entire area of Vatican State proper is now confined” (The Catholic Encyclopedia, Thomas Nelson, 1976)

In accepting Roman Catholic doctrine today, you should consider why more people were willing to die (Rev 17:6 And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus) rather than subject to the will and heresies of the Roman Church (the ‘Inquisitions‘ Roman, Medieval, and Spanish – in Spain alone more than 3 million were killed) and this is why the ‘Protestant Reformation’ was necessary. Is the ‘new’ Roman Catholic Church different than it was back then? Not really – the ‘objectionable fundamentals’ remained as can be verified by the ‘anathemas‘ of the Second Vatican Council.

Several severe problems can be highlighted in the core Roman Catholic belief system e.g. the eucharist, purgatory and indulgences. Some lesser known examples:

• “The infallibility of the Pope” which each Catholic has to believe in but is denied by some of the popes themselves for example Pope Adrian VI, 1523: ” It is beyond question that the pope can err even in matters touching the faith. He does this when he teaches heresy by his own judgement or decretal. In truth, many Roman Pontiffs (popes) were heretics.”
• “Apostolic Succession”. This claims biblical succession from Peter in the Bible to the current pope, where, in reality no record of a pope in Rome can be found in the first few centuries. The Vatican offers a list of popes from Peter, but the list has been disproven a few times resulting in a few ‘official lists’ that now conflict with each other.

Protestant Reformation

See also: History of Protestantism

The Protestant Reformation was a movement in the 16th century to reform the Catholic Church in Western Europe.

Many western Christians were troubled by what they saw as “false doctrines” and malpractices within the Catholic Church, particularly involving the teaching and sale of indulgences . Another major contention was the tremendous corruption within Church’s hierarchy, all the way up to the Bishop of Rome, who appointed individuals to various positions within the Church (bishop, cardinal, etc.) on the basis of financial contributions.

In 1517, Martin Luther published his 95 Theses On the Power of Indulgences criticizing the Church, including its practice of selling indulgences. Church beliefs and practices under attack by Protestant reformers included purgatory, particular judgment, devotion to Mary , the intercession of the saints, most of the sacraments, and the authority of the Pope.

The Protestant zeal for translating the Bible and getting it into the hands of the laity was empowered by the invention of movable type which advanced the culture of Biblical literacy.

The most important traditions to emerge directly from the reformation were the Lutheran tradition, the Reformed/Calvinist/Presbyterian tradition, and the Anabaptist tradition. The Protestant Reformation is also referred to as the “Protestant Revolution”, “Protestant Revolt”, and “Lutheran Reformation.”

Sola scriptura

Sola scriptura (Latin ablative, “by scripture alone”) is the assertion that the Bible as God’s written word is self-authenticating, clear (perspicuous) to the rational reader, its own interpreter (“Scripture interprets Scripture”), and sufficient of itself to be the only source of Christian doctrine.

Sola scriptura was a foundational doctrinal principle of the Protestant Reformation held by the reformer Martin Luther and is a definitive principle of Protestants today (see Five solas)

Sola scriptura may be contrasted with Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox teaching, in which the Bible must be interpreted by church teaching, by considering the Bible in the context of Sacred Tradition.

Although Martin Luther did not break with all of the doctrinal problems present in the original Roman Catholic Church, most of which are still present today (see indulgences still offered by Pope and related news coverage), he triggered the reformation that purged itself from many problems through the ‘ Sola scriptura’ principle.

The numbers were far more than the handful of therapists assigned to deal with them could cope with. In the end only 162 out of 4,459 callers were given advice before the system was shut down.

Andreas Zimmer, head of the project in the Bishopric of Trier, admitted that he wasn’t prepared for ‘that kind of an onslaught.’ The hotline is the Church’s attempt to win back trust in the face of an escalating abuse scandal that threates the papacy of German-born Pontiff Benedict XVI in Rome.”

See full article here.

…one of the errors of Rome. The effect of the non-biblical commitment to priestly celibacy.

More details on the heresies of Rome:

In this book, 50 scientists explain their reasons for this choice. All the contributors have an earned doctorate from a state-recognized university in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, South Africa, or Germany. They include university professors and researchers, geologists, zoologists, biologists, botanists, physicists, chemists, mathematicians, medical researchers, and engineers.” – John F. Ashton, PhD

Read the full book online here.
Filed under: Apologetics, Creation, Science Tagged: Books ]]> http://apologeticsetc.wordpress.com/2010/03/29/creation-in-six-days-50-phds/feed/ 2 admin image0034 http://apologeticsetc.wordpress.com/2010/03/29/symbolism-in-eu/ http://apologeticsetc.wordpress.com/2010/03/29/symbolism-in-eu/#comments Mon, 29 Mar 2010 15:36:25 +0000 Servant http://apologeticsetc.wordpress.com/?p=222 ]]> I heard of this symbolism in the EU and wanted to find some images to see for myself. I found a few articles that discuss the topic in some detail (I could not say if I fully agree with them), but just looking at the pictures reveals some of Revelation already.

(Rev 17:7 KJV) And the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou marvel? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carrieth her…

2002 2 Euro coin

1996 5 Euro coin

1992 German Ecu coin

Stamp

1948 German 5 mark note

German phone card

Cover of May 2000 Der Spiegel magazine

Time magazine’s United Europe

Sculpture outside the Council of Ministers Office in Brussels, Belgium

The Unfinished Tower

(note that the construction of the building is complete, but is designed to look incomplete)

The flag of the European Union (EU)

Above is an illustration of the one of the buildings of the European Parliament in Strasbourg France, the Louise Weiss Building, which includes a tower that appears to be unfinished. Below on the left is a painting done in 1563 of the Tower of Babel, by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, a Flemish Northern Renaissance Painter. Below on the right is a poster produced by the European Union symbolically depicting their mission. It combines the 12 stars of the EU flag with the rebuilding of the tower of Babel with the motto Europe: Many Tongues One Voice. Note also that the stars are shown as inverted pentagrams, an occult symbol for Satan.

The tower of the Louise Weiss Building (shown below), although it looks unfinished, was designed with the expressed purpose of resembling the tower of Babel as depicted in Brueghel’s painting!

Translation A:

“And Pilate also wrote a tablet and placed it on his gallows. And thus it was written, This is Yeshua, the Natzrati, king of the Jews. And many of the Judeans read this board because the place at which Yeshua was crucified was near the city, and it was written in Hebrew, in Greek, in Latin. And the Chief Cohanim said to Pilate, ‘Do not write that he is king of the Jews, but that he said, I am king of the Jews’, Pilate said, What I have written, I have written.” (HRV John 19:19-22)

Translation B:

“And Pilate wrote a title too, and put it on the stake, and it was written: Y’SHUA OF NATSARETH, THE SOVEREIGN OF THE YEHUDIM. Many of the Yehudim therefore read this title, for the place where Y’shua was impaled was near the city, and it was written in Hebrew, in Greek, in Roman. So the chief priests of the Yehudim said to Pilate "Do not write, ‘Sovereign of the Yehudim,’ but, ‘He said, "I am Sovereign of the Yehudim."’" Pilate answered, "What I have written , I have written." (ISR Yohanan 19:19-22)

Pilate refused to revise the epitaph he had composed. This may have more significance than is apparent in our English translations. The Hebrew epitaph is shown below (Hebrew is read from right to left):

• Does psychology prove effective in research (National Science Foundation study – 80 researchers over 3 years) or does it do more harm that good?
• Are there any new problems today, compared to biblical times, that would need new solutions that psychology provide?
• Direct daemon influence admitted by one of the ‘fathers of psychology’ in one of his greatest works.
• Is is wise to administer drugs, which we do not fully comprehend the effects of to the brain that we not even closely comprehend the operation of?
• What is the implication, in terms of ‘free will’ if we are not at fault for what we do, but are compelled to – as many psychological diagnoses claim?
• Holistic medicine – medicine for body, mind and spirit? What chemicals would heal your spiritual problems?
• Of ‘issues and tissues’ – can you you treat ‘issues’ by treating ’tissues’?

Php 4:6,7 Be anxious about nothing, but in everything by prayer and by petition with thanksgivings, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

“And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.”

Acts 4:12 – New American Standard Bible

Quote from ‘www.catholicfirst.com’:
A magnificent assurance of salvation is Our Lady’s Brown Scapular. One of the great mysteries of our time is that the great majority of Catholics either ignore or have forgotten the Blessed Virgin Mary’s promise that “whoever dies wearing this (Scapular) shall not suffer eternal fire.” She further says: “Wear it devoutly and perseveringly. It is my garment. To be clothed in it means you are continually thinking of me, and I in turn, am always thinking of you and helping you to secure eternal life.”

During the Scapular Anniversary celebration in Rome, Pope Pius XII told a very large audience to wear the brown Scapular as a sign of consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Our Lady asked for this consecration in the last apparition at Fatima, when She appeared as Our Lady of Mount Carmel, holding the Brown Scapular out to the whole world. It was her last loving appeal to souls to wear her Scapular as a sign of Consecration to her Immaculate Heart.

From Wikipedia:
The earliest form of the Scapular promise states simply that wearers of the brown scapular, the Carmelite habit, will be saved. In the first place this meant Carmelite religious who remained faithful to their vocation. Later the small Brown Scapular became popular with the laity as a sacramental.

The nature of the spiritual help associated with the Brown Scapular came to be described in greater detail and specificity. A traditional formulation of the Scapular Promise is “Take this Scapular. Whosoever dies wearing it shall not suffer eternal fire. It shall be a sign of salvation, a protection in danger and pledge of peace.”

At times the scapular has been preached as an easy way to heaven,which has led to criticism of the devotion.

Why is reasoning about why people believe what they do frowned upon? Is it reasonable to believe whatever is classified as church doctrine without questioning anything? What would then make one religion different to another, if none of them can stand up to careful scrutiny?

1 Pet 3:15 … always be ready to defend your confidence in God when anyone asks you to explain it. However, make your defense with gentleness and respect.

Relating to evolution…
- Evolution requires that the information encoded in DNA originated from matter, though Einstein agreed that “there is no way that matter can produce information”.
- Evolution requires millions of intermediary fossils (showing a ‘change in progress’ of e.g. a species without an eye and eventually with the newly evolved eye) to exist, but none has ever been found.

…do you think it’s because children’s Bibles (i.e. the most common Bible versions with Ark illustrations in them) look like this? How credible do children, seeing this, think the Ark is, as a historic reality once they grow up?

Try this for size. It’s a real-size version of the Ark currently (as of March 2010) under construction. It’s planned to be completed & showcased at the 2010 Summer Olympics in London.

Some other ideas of the scale of the ark…

Download the review of this massively popular (and subverting) book here: The_Shack_Review.pdf

…you may find it gives some new perspective on this over-hyped politically loaded topic.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/21/sea-level-geoscience-retract-siddall

Oops! There go another two bricks, tumbling out of the IPCC wall of deceit on man-made global warming – there is not a lot left now; even the Berlin Wall (to which the AGW construct is ideologically allied) has survived better. Unhappily for Al, Phil, Michael, George and the rest of the scare-mongers, these two discredited components are among the most totemic in the AGW religion.

Firstly, a new study, funded by Nasa (which may be feeling the need to rehabilitate itself post-Climategate) has revealed that the ridiculous claim in the notorious IPCC 2007 report that up to 40 per cent of the Amazon rainforest could be drastically affected by even a small reduction in rainfall caused by climate change, so that the trees would be replaced by tropical grassland, is utter nonsense. That assertion has already been exposed as derived from a single report by the environmentalist lobby group WWF.

Now Dr Jose Marengo, a climate scientist with the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research and himself a member of the IPCC, says: “The way the WWF report calculated this 40 per cent was totally wrong, while (the new) calculations are by far more reliable and correct.” These calculations were done by researchers at Boston University and were published in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters. They used satellite data to study the drought of 2005, when rainfall fell to the lowest in living memory, and found that the rainforest suffered no significant effects.

So, the rainforest scare, like the Himalayan glaciers panic, is garbage. A further encouraging feature of this development is that genuine scientists are increasingly becoming emboldened to challenge the IPCC’s junk science: the Academy is beginning to reassert its integrity. AGW without withered rainforests is Hamlet without the prince. It was one of those emotive claims much invoked by priggish children in the voice-overs of nanny-state “green” commercials, lecturing their elders on the stewardship of the planet.

An even bigger tear-jerker was the plight of polar bears, bolstered by carefully cropped photographs of lonely bears stranded on fast-melting icebergs, doomed to extinction. That is the second brick that has fallen out of the IPCC wall. The official legend is that polar bears are threatened with extinction by global warming. The IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group, which has bought into global warming in a big way, has claimed that, of the 19 sub-populations of polar bears (13 of them in Canada, home to 60 per cent of polar bears), eight are declining, three are stable, one is increasing and there is insufficient data on the remaining seven.

Of the eight allegedly declining populations, two of them, including Baffin Bay, are non-contentious: sceptics concede that the two sub-populations, representing 16.4 per cent of the bear population, are declining – but in both regions the temperatures have actually fallen, so warming is an irrelevant issue. H Sterling Burnett, senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, has pointed out that in two regions where the population is growing – the Bering Strait and the Chukchi Sea – air temperatures have risen. So polar bears appear to thrive on warming – as scientists claim they did during the Mediaeval Warm Period 1,000 years ago and the Holocene Climate Optimum 5,000-9,000 years ago.

Warmists contest the Chukchi Sea claim, insisting the population there is declining, though they concede illegal hunting by Russians is a factor. Closer reading of their literature, however, reveals some interesting semantics. For example, the Southern Beaufort Sea is listed as an area of decline, on the basis of a fall in cub survival rates and a reduction in the weight and skull size of adult males, which was also observed elsewhere, prior to population decline. So this is a prediction rather than an accomplished fact – just like global warming itself.

The bottom line is the actual statistics, conceded even by warmists: since 1970 the world’s polar bear population has “declined” from 5,000 to 25,000. Some of us would term that a quintupling, but obviously we do not share the same mathematical skills as those who predicted the imminent loss of the Himalayan glaciers. The IPCC and the whole scam it promotes is now irreversibly on the slide. If you have no devastated rainforests and those pesky polar bears keep on doing what polar bears do on cold Arctic nights, you have lost the schoolchildren – and they were almost the last supporters of man-made global warming.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/100030204/climategate-two-more-bricks-fall-out-of-the-ipcc-wall-of-deceit-rainforests-and-polar-bears/

31,486 scientists have signed this petition, including 9,029 with PhDs.

Petition project volunteers evaluate each signer’s credentials & verify signer identities. Signatures are paper-based, not electronic.

http://www.petitionproject.org/

Some extracts from a recent Gallup poll:

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2010/02/climate-chief-yvo-de-boer-resi.html

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/02/18/climate-official-yvo-boer-resigning/

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2010/02/16/another-ipcc-error-antarctic-sea-ice-increase-underestimated-by-50/#more-410

Some of the headlines in major media, that probably didn’t make it to “top stories”…

Fewer Americans worry about global warming and believe it’s real

Americans are increasingly less worried about global warming and less convinced its effects……

3/11/2010 USA Today

Three States Sue EPA Over Global Warming Ruling

The EPA, which is threatening to regulate carbon emissions if Congress won’t, …

3/8/2010 Fox News

You Can Call Him Al … But Al Won’t Call You Back

Al Gore won a Nobel Prize and an Oscar for his film, An Inconvenient Truth. But in the last three months…

2/26/2010 Fox News

Texas, Skeptics Seek Court Review of EPA’s ‘Endangerment’ Finding

The state of Texas and a coalition of free-market and global warming……

2/16/2010 New York Times

Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995

There has been no global warming since 1995 …

2/15/2010 Mail Online

World May Not Be Warming, Say Scientists

The United Nations climate panel faces a new challenge from scientists casting doubt……

2/15/2010 Fox News

Series of missteps by climate scientists threatens climate-change agenda

With its 2007 report declaring that the "warming of the climate system is unequivocal," the U.N….

2/15/2010 Washington Post

Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling

Twelve-month long drop in world temperatures wipes out a century of warming …

2/15/2010 Daily Tech

Blizzards heat up warming debate

In Washington, even a snowstorm is a political event….

2/12/2010 Washington Times

It’ll Snow in DC Until Al Gore Cries "Uncle": Sen. DeMint

If the world’s getting warmer, then shouldn’t snowstorms be passé?…

2/10/2010 NBC News

Another Blizzard: What Happened to Global Warming?

As the blizzard-bound residents of the mid-Atlantic region……

2/10/2010 Time

RFK, Jr. 15 months ago: Global warming means no snow or cold in DC

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who flies around on private planes so as to tell larger numbers of……

2/9/2010 Prison Planet

The great global warming collapse

In 2007, the most comprehensive report to date on global warming……

2/9/2010 Prison Planet

Did EPA check global-warming claims?

Congressmen challenge warning over greenhouse gases……

2/5/2010 WorldNet Daily

Global Warming Makes the Case Against Global Government

The utterly baseless case for “global warming” is melting a lot faster than the glaciers in India’s Himalayas which, by the way, are not melting…

2/3/2010 Canada Free Press

Osama bin Laden enters global warming debate

Osama bin Laden surprisingly appeared to enter the debate on climate change……

1/29/2010 Telegraph

30 Years of Global Cooling Are Coming, Leading Scientist Says

From Miami to Maine, Savannah to Seattle, America is caught in an icy grip that one of the U.N.’s top global warming proponents says could mark the beginning of a mini ice age….

1/11/2010 Fox News

Climategate goes SERIAL: now the Russians confirm that UK climate scientists manipulated data to exaggerate global warming

Climategate just got much, much bigger. And all thanks to the Russians who, with perfect timing, dropped this bombshell just as the world’s leaders are gathering in Copenhagen to discuss ways of carbon-taxing us all back to the dark ages….

12/17/2009 Telegraph

Climate talks deadlocked as clashes erupt outside

Danish police fired pepper spray and beat protesters with batons outside the U.N. climate conference on Wednesday, as disputes inside left major issues unresolved just two days before world leaders hope to sign a historic agreement to fight global warming…

12/16/2009 Southern California Public Radio

Inconvenient truth for Al Gore as his North Pole sums don’t add up

There are many kinds of truth. Al Gore was poleaxed by an inconvenient one yesterday….

12/15/2009 Times Online

Man-made global warming is a fraud, scam and a lie

No need for President Obama to go to Copenhagen to force Americans to pay more in taxes to support the fraudulent theory of man-made global warming. …

12/11/2009 Village News

After climate talks, scientists worry about enforcement

COPENHAGEN — Ray Weiss looks at the chanting protesters, harried delegates and the 20,000 other people gathered here for a global warming summit and wonders: What’s the fuss all about?…

12/11/2009 USA Today

Population control called key to deal

COPENHAGEN: Population and climate change are intertwined but the population issue has remained a blind spot when countries discuss ways to mitigate climate change and slow down global warming, according to Zhao Baige, vice-minister of National Population and Family Planning Commission of China (NPFPC) …

12/10/2009 China Daily

The real inconvenient truth

The "inconvenient truth" overhanging the UN’s Copenhagen conference is not that the climate is warming or cooling, but that humans are overpopulating the world. Read more: http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=2314438#ixzz0ZK1ZG2Su The Financial Post is now on Facebook. Join our fan community today. …

12/10/2009 Financial Post

Met Office to re-examine 160 years of climate data

The Met Office plans to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by leaked e-mails. …

12/8/2009 WorldNet Daily

Saudi Arabia calls for ‘climategate’ investigation

COPENHAGEN — Saudi Arabia called for an independent investigation into “climategate” Monday, warning that the scandal over stolen e-mails threatened to undermine the global-warming negotiations beginning here….

12/7/2009 Politico

UN climate chief: hacked e-mails are damaging

COPENHAGEN (AP) – The world is entering talks on a new climate pact with unprecendented unity and leaders must seize the moment to create a turning point in the battle against global warming, the U.N.’s top climate official said Sunday. …

12/6/2009 Breitbart

Lord Monckton Thrashes DeSmog Blog Editor in High-Profile Global Warming Debate

Lord Christopher Monckton is a global warming expert…

12/1/2009 Heartland

Gore: U.S. Climate Bill Will Help Bring About ‘Global Governance’

The tens of billions of dollars per year could be generated by a global tax…

12/1/2009 Climate Depot

Climate-cult con is hard to ‘bear’

When did global warming turn into a forced religion?…

12/1/2009 NYPost

Gibbs: ‘No dispute’ on global warming

31,000 scientists have signed a petition challenging man-made global warming…

12/1/2009 WorldNet Daily

Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’?

In the run up to Copenhagen, we will see more and more exaggerated stories…

11/24/2009 London Telegraph

Poll: Americans’ belief in global warming cools

Only 57 percent believe there is strong scientific evidence the Earth has gotten hotter…

10/23/2009 Atlanta Journal-Constitution

To Cut Global Warming, Swedes Study Their Plates

The global warming hoax is getting out of hand……

10/23/2009 NYTimes

What happened to global warming?

For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures…

10/12/2009 BBC

“This e-mail is sent on the Terms and Conditions that can be accessed by Clicking on this link http://www.vodacom.co.za/legal/email.jsp "

Ever since its development in the 1940s, radiocarbon dating has been a vital tool for historians and paleontologists trying to pinpoint the ages of everything from ancient animal bones to prehistoric human settlements to Egyptian mummies. By measuring the decay of the natural radioactive isotope carbon 14, which almost all organisms ingest while they are alive, scientists can estimate how long it has been since an animal or plant died.

But those estimates, while valuable, are also known to be somewhat uncertain. Last week geologists at the Lamont-Doherty Geological Laboratory in – Palisades, N.Y., offered firm evidence of just how uncertain. Writing in Nature, they showed that some radiocarbon dates may be off by as much as 3,500 years — possibly enough to force a change in current thinking on such important questions as exactly when humans first reached the Americas.

The technique the geologists used was based on another sort of radioactive decay. Organisms contain traces of uranium, which degrades into thorium. The rate of decay is known, and by measuring the relative amounts of the two substances in a sample, age can be accurately calculated.

In this case, samples came from a coral reef off Barbados. Carbon 14 and uranium-thorium dating largely agreed for pieces of coral up to about 9,000 years old. But for older pieces the findings diverged, with a maximum disparity of 3,500 years for coral about 20,000 years old.

Why did the scientists assume that the uranium-thorium tests were right and the carbon 14 tests wrong? For one thing, the carbon datings pointed to the strange conclusion that ice ages, thought to be related to changes in the earth’s orbit around the sun, have mysteriously lagged behind those changes by a few thousand years. But uranium-thorium dating shows no such lag. Moreover, carbon 14 levels in the air — and thus the amount ingested by organisms — are known to vary over time, and that can affect the results of carbon dating.

Uranium-thorium has another advantage besides accuracy: it can be used to date objects up to 500,000 years old, while carbon 14 is good for only a few tens of thousands of years at best. The one drawback of the uranium-thorium technique is that it is useful mostly for marine animals and plants; uranium is more common in seawater than on the surface of the land. Scientists will no doubt continue to use all possible dating methods in the quest to construct an ever more accurate chronology of the earth’s history.

Read more at Time.com – Science