May 7, 2010

MacArthur on Naturalism

One of those "must read" articles...

Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit
("Out of Nothing, Nothing Comes")

Either there is a God who created the universe and sovereignly rules His creation, or everything was caused by blind chance. The two ideas are mutually exclusive. If God rules, there’s no room for chance. Make chance the cause of the universe, and you have effectively done away with God.

But again, chance is not a force. Chance cannot make anything happen. Chance is nothing. It simply does not exist. And therefore it has no power to do anything. It cannot be the cause of any effect. It is an imaginary hocus–pocus. It is contrary to every law of science, every principle of logic, and every intuition of sheer common sense.

Nonetheless, the absurdity of naturalism goes largely unchallenged today in universities and colleges. Turn on the Discovery Channel or pick up an issue of National Geographic and you are likely to be exposed to the assumption that chance exists as a force—as if mere chance spontaneously generated everything in the universe.

So many immense and intricate wonders could not exist without a Designer. There’s only one possible explanation for it all, and that is the creative power of an all–wise God. He created and sustains the universe, and He gives meaning to it. And without Him, there is ultimately no meaning in anything. Without Him, we are left with only the notion that everything emerged from nothing without a cause and without any reason. Without Him, we are stuck with that absurd formula of the evolutionist: Nothing times nobody equals everything.
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May 6, 2010

Careful what you ask for

Those Democrats. They just bring a smile to my face every day. Guess I should consider it a good use of my tax money. Unfortunately I don't...

Documents Reveal AT&T, Verizon, Others, Thought About Dropping Employer-sponsored Benefits
In the days after President Obama signed the bill on March 24, a number of companies announced big write downs due to some fiscal changes it ushered in. The legislation eliminated a company's right to deduct the federal retiree drug-benefit subsidy from their corporate taxes. That reduced projected revenue. As a result, AT&T (T, Fortune 500) and Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500) took well-publicized charges of around $1 billion. The announcements greatly annoyed Representative Henry Waxman, who accused the companies of using the big numbers to exaggerate health care reform's burden on employers. Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, demanded that they turn over their confidential memos, and summoned their top executives for hearings. But Waxman didn't simply request documents related to the write down issue. He wanted every document the companies created that discussed what the bill would do to their most uncontrollable expense: healthcare costs. The request yielded 1,100 pages of documents from four major employers: AT&T, Verizon, Caterpillar and Deere (DE, Fortune 500). No sooner did the Democrats on the Energy Committee read them than they abruptly cancelled the hearings.
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The shame of the American flag

It gets worse every year. People no longer have any idea of what stands behind the American flag and that's thanks to our liberal academia and press. The blood, sweat and tears of many patriots and defenders has been forgotten, replaced with the notion that the US of A is a criminal nation who has much to be ashamed of. This was most recently headlined when our Armed Forces were not allowed to raise Old Glory while providing aid and relief in Haiti. And now comes this story right from the front lines of education. Sad to say it's probably just one of many every day...

Students Kicked Off Campus For Wearing American Flag Tees
On any other day at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, Daniel Galli and his four friends would not even be noticed for wearing T-shirts with the American flag. But Cinco de Mayo is not any typical day especially on a campus with a large Mexican American student population. Galli says he and his friends were sitting at a table during brunch break when the vice principal asked two of the boys to remove American flag bandannas that they wearing on their heads and for the others to turn their American flag T-shirts inside out. When they refused, the boys were ordered to go to the principal's office. "They said we could wear it on any other day," Daniel Galli said, "but today is sensitive to Mexican-Americans because it's supposed to be their holiday so we were not allowed to wear it today." The boys said the administrators called their T-shirts "incendiary" that would lead to fights on campus.
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You reap what you sow

Japan's Children Population At New Record Low
Japan had fewer youngsters celebrating Children's Day for the 29th straight year Wednesday, highlighting concerns that the country may face difficulty finding enough workers and taxpayers to support a rapidly aging population. The number of children under age 15 as of April has fallen to 16.9 million, down 190,000 from a year earlier, according to an annual report published by the Ministry of Internal Affairs to mark the national holiday. The proportion of children in Japan has also kept declining for 36 straight years to about 13 percent of the country's population of 127 million. The elderly population is rapidly swelling. The number of those aged 65 or older has grown to 23 percent of Japan's population from about 5 percent 60 years ago and is still on the rise. Children accounted for more than one-third of the national population in 1950.
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