Taking Chance

Last night I watched "Taking Chance", a film that follows Marine Corps Officer Mike Strobl as he escorts the body of Private First Class Chance Phelps back to his parents. In the film, officer Strobl meets several people with very different outlooks on life, from a carefree college girl to another Marine officer who is escorting his brother's body home, and it is very thought provoking to see their different reactions to Strobl and the duty he is carrying out. It is good, in the midst of our political battles, to take a step back to remember the men and women who have put themselves in harms way so that we can be free. Thank you, all of you in the Military for waht you do. God bless America, and God bless her Armed Forces.

Foreign Invasion

Recently Justice Ginsberg on the U.S. Supreme court has spoken a great deal about using citing foreign law in U.S. Courts. This has upset many people, and rightly so. There are two major problems with using foreign laws to strike down U.S. Laws. The first is the fact that foreign law is incredibly diverse; who decides what foreign laws we are going to use? The second is that given the diversity of foreign law, almost any american law can be view as 'out of step with the rest of the world'.
When Justice Ginsberg expresses her belief that we should look abroad and 'listen' more to what other courts have to say, does she mean to concider all courts equaly? Is she as open to the various branches of Muslim law which strip women of many rights Ginsber herself worked hard to promote as she is to the more liberal European laws? I certainly hope not, and I seriously doubt that she does. But if she does not, then how does she or anyone else determine which foreign laws should be used as precident and which ones should not?
The answer, sadly, is that judges like Justice Ginsberg pick and choose what laws they like and which ones they do not like. But why? If judges are there to uphold the constitution and to serve as a brake on progress as the Founders clearly intended, why do judges on many of the nation's courts feel the need to reference foreign law? It may be because Justice Ginsberg and other judges like her (such as former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor) want to refasion the American legal structure in a manner more pleasing to themselves, and they are too impatient to wait for the political process to grant them the results they desire.
If foreign law becomes a dominant source for precedent in the U.S. Judges who wish to legislate from the bench will have almost unlimited power; for any decision they wish to hand down they can find some foreign law that will lend some shadow of credence to what they want.

A Case of Mistaken Identity

If you listen to most scientists, the war between Science and Religion has been long and bitter, though Science seems to be gaining the upper hand. Even many christians speak of the war between Science and Religion and its effect upon our lives. As Judge Benton Eskew once told me, 'I can win any argument if you let me define the terms'. In talking about Science vs. Religion we have allowed Humanists to define the terms. We can argue all day whether science and Religion are opposed (they are not), but the war between Science and Religion should be called the war between Humanism and Theism.
When an atheist speak of Science vs. Religion, what he is saying and what people are hearing is 'Rational Analysis' vs. 'Irrational Faith'. That's kind of like labeling the sides in a criminal trial the Guilty and the Innocent, you cede the debate before you begin.
Evolution did not arise from someone looking at the evidence and saying 'Wow, this must have come about by chance'. Evolution arrose when Darwin attempted to explain everything without god....which is the first point in The Humanist Manifesto III:

Knowledge of the world is derived by observation, experimentation, and rational analysis. Humanists find that science is the best method for determining this knowledge as well as for solving problems and developing beneficial technologies. We also recognize the value of new departures in thought, the arts, and inner experience—each subject to analysis by critical intelligence.

Evolution and naturalism are subsets of Humanism, just as Creation and Supernaturalism are subsets of Christianity.
Humanism is not somehow more rational, more tolerant, more helpful than Theism. It begins with the assumption that there is nothing in the world besides matter and then proceeds to prove that by using purely material proofs. It is like the man who steps into the room and proclaims “There is nothing in here that I cannot see!” and then proceeds to prove it by looking around the room.
If Christians want to have a prayer of winning the war between Theism and Humanism, we must define the terms correctly or we risk being counted out before we get into the ring.

Cliff Hanging Is Bad for Joints

A lot of stuff I have read on writing fiction stresses the need to keep the reader in suspense; one book I read went so far as to say that every chapter should end with a cliff hanger. Talk about a stressful read. But seriously, is there that much need to keep readers in that much suspense? Don't get me wrong, cliff hangers have their place, but to have a calamity befall every five pages does seem a bit overdone.
In my experience, most books that are written this way are lacking in quality and make up for lack of substance with an abundance of suspense. This tendency is seen with glaring clearness in books that form a series. An author addicted to tension and cliff hangers tends to have one unresolved tragedy every chapter, and ends the book with the most colossal and demanding cliff hanger of the book...so you will come back and buy his next novel. In the Jane Austen novels, every chapter does not end with one of her characters in an unresolved situation that threatens dire consequences, the main theme of the books carries you along, it is concern with the over all point of the plot that holds your interest, even if you have read the book or know the story by heart. If you look at the Harry Potter books (I'm not promoting J.K. Rowling's books here or trying to start a big discussion about them...maybe in another post. I am just trying to make a point about the way they are plotted.) the problem of the entire series is Voldemort and how to get rid of him. Each book ended with another of Voldemort's plots foiled or stalled (at increased cost to Harry as the series progressed) and most of the threads tied up. We did not put the book down wondering if Harry or a close friend was going to die within the next five minutes, though we knew that danger was there and the main problem was unresolved, but there was no pressing problem that demanded immediate attention.
So for those of you who are writers: don't leave us hanging over cliffs all the time...It is very discomfiting.

Evolution Is On Hold

Apparently today's horses are not evolving as they should, at least according to this article at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,518641,00.html . Despite the collosal ammount of money spent on breeding faster horses isn't helping a whole lot.

"Evidence from the Triple Crown races suggests that the process of
selective breeding of thoroughbreds (as practiced in the U.S.) is incapable of
producing a substantially faster horse," Denny writes. "Despite the efforts of
the breeders, speeds are not increasing, and current attempts to breed
faster horses may instead be producing horses that are more fragile."

Despite all the talk about how evolution is a fact and not a theory, this might suggest otherwise, and I wonder how many other studies or facts like this are known?
This flies squarely in the face of evolution, which claims that Selection, Natural or otherwise, can lead from organism B to organism A+.