Dr Felix Konotey-Ahulu, M.D. (Lond.), FRCP, DTMH, is one of Ghana’s top scientists (now living in the UK), and one of the world’s leading experts in sickle-cell anemia. He has lectured all around the world, published numerous papers, treated several thousand sickle-cell patients, and wrote a major 643-page text, The Sickle Cell Disease Patient.1
Dr Konotey-Ahulu is married to Rosemary, and their marriage celebrant was the great physician turned expository preacher Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones.
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At a creationist conference in the UK (April 2006), I had the honour of meeting Dr Felix Konotey-Ahulu (pictured).
Sickle cell anemia
Dr Konotey-Ahulu’s speciality is a serious, chronic and painful blood disorder called sickle-cell anemia, which is supposed to be proof positive of Darwinian evolution. He explains:
‘It is caused by inheriting—from both parents—a defect in the instructions which code for the production of hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying pigment in red blood cells. Inheriting the defect from just one parent is “silent”, and produces no disease whatever, but may pass on the genes to their offspring. Such “carriers”, such as my mother, do not know they are carrying anything until their blood is tested.
‘Under certain conditions (like lack of oxygen) the double inherited defect deforms the red cell to change from round to “sickle” shape. These mis-shapen cells can block the smaller blood vessels, depriving tissues and organs of oxygen. However, sufferers have done very well with proper treatment, becoming doctors, lawyers etc.
‘Since all of us must have two genes for any of our characteristics (one from father, the other from mother), it is quite common for one parent (like my maternal grandmother) to give a good hemoglobin gene to one child, while the other (my maternal grandfather) gives a sickle hemoglobin gene to the same child.
‘That was how my mother became a sickle carrier. She in turn had 11 children, and must give just one (not both) of her genes to each child, so she passed on five sickle genes and six ‘normal’ genes to us, with our father also donating half his hemoglobin genes to make us end up with “pairs” of genes. It is important to realise that traits like my mother are not half sick because they are carrying one defective and one good gene. Indeed, they are not sick at all from “sickling”. Rather, in a malarious environment, they have been proven healthier than those without any sickle cells at all.’
So why is this such a Darwinian poster-child? Dr K-A answers:
‘The sickled hemoglobin is less appetizing for the malarial parasite, so carriers are less likely to develop malaria, which is often fatal. People who have both the sickle gene and the “good” gene (heterozygosity is the technical term) will have the benefit of suffering neither from sickle-cell anemia nor dying from malaria in childhood. They are therefore more likely to pass on their genes to the next generation than those with both of the “good” genes. Thus the sickle gene is much commoner in malaria-infested places, especially in Africa. This phenomenon is known in evolutionary circles as “balanced polymorphism”.’
But does this mean that Darwinian evolution is a fact? Dr Konotey-Ahulu firmly rejects this. ‘Observing selection/adaptation involving a mutation (an inherited random change or defect)’, he said, ‘does not indicate that the more complicated forms seen today arose from simpler forms traced back ultimately to one-cell organisms.’
He had no dispute that ‘natural selection plays a part in maintaining a higher frequency of this carrier state. If you are resistant to malaria, you are more likely to survive to pass on your genes.’
Demonstrating natural selection does not demonstrate that ‘upward evolution’ is a fact, yet many schoolchildren are taught this as a ‘proof’ of evolution.—Dr Felix Konotey-Ahulu
However, he cautions, ‘Demonstrating natural selection does not demonstrate that “upward evolution” is a fact, yet many schoolchildren are taught this as a “proof” of evolution.’ He pointed out that ‘the sickle-cell gene is still a defect, not an increase in complexity or an improvement in function which is being selected for’. And he pointed out the unhappy downside, that ‘having more carriers of the sickle-cell genes results in more people suffering from this terrible disease.’
Is Darwinism helpful for research?
Despite the lack of evidence, evolutionary propaganda claims that all science would return to the (non-existent) ‘Dark Ages’ without evolution. But real scientists such as Dr K-A say that science would be far better served by scientists working on ‘factual lines rather than theoretical evolutionary concepts.’
In his speciality, he proposes that the focus on Darwinism may have caused scientists to overlook a more fruitful line of enquiry, namely the fact that polygyny (having more than one wife) was common in indigenous African and Islamic populations.2
He backed this up by research into his own family tree over the past three centuries, since there is both sickle-cell anemia and polygyny in his own ancestry.3
This required knowledge of the specific names that African tribes had for the disease, long before it was first described in the USA in 1910. Dr K-A says that ‘this exercise in genetic genealogy, rare in medical archives’, enabled him to invent the Male Procreative Superiority Index (MPSI) to provide a mathematical basis for the sickle gene frequency. This research was published as the ‘African Viewpoint’ in an International Symposium on The Human Genome Diversity Project in 1999.4
[Ed. note: see also Dr K-A’s earlier Creation magazine article Sickle-cell anemia does not prove evolution!]
Language studies
However, despite Dr K-A’s work in sickle-cell disease, he says that the greatest of all his discoveries is ‘the quantification of the pitches found in African Tonal Languages, which has not been described before.’ This enabled him to develop a method for writing African tonal languages.5 Dr K-A argues that the perfect mid-pitch of an African tribe, required to understand the language, including a 3-semitone gap, defies Darwinian evolutionary explanation.
Christian faith
Dr Konotey-Ahulu is an outspoken Christian, and has ably defended his faith in the Ghanaian Times and the British Medical Journal.6 But it was not always so. Like many people with church upbringings, he had wrongly thought he was saved, thinking that he had been ‘born a Christian’. A pastor’s son, he was even General Secretary of the SCM (Student Christian Movement), but he says he was not truly converted till 8 pm, Friday 24 October 1952:
‘I was reading the day’s Scripture portion in the Gospel of Matthew, which said that the Lord Jesus did not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. I was stung! Surely, HE did not come for me, because I was not a sinner; certainly not as bad as So-and-so, or So-and-so … .’
So Dr K-A came to realize that ‘the One who made the diagnosis of “Sin” in me (and I thoroughly agree with that diagnosis), is so holy that the only just punishment would be my total banishment out of His sight.’
Yet, at Calvary, Jesus made ‘the reverse transfer of righteousness to me the sinner. Not only are my filthy rags of Sin placed on the Lord Jesus Christ and punished on Him (as prophesied long ago in Isaiah 53), but also the Lord’s beautiful robe of righteousness is transferred to me the moment I believe on Him.’
But is Christianity merely a Western tradition?
‘Africans often tell me that I should have nothing to do with Christianity because it is a European religion,’ said Dr K-A. But, he says:
‘I take it upon myself to educate them. First, I tell them the Lord Jesus learnt to walk, not on the continent of Europe, but in Mizraim (Egypt), in Africa. Secondly, when the Ethiopian eunuch, Chancellor of the Exchequer of Queen Candace, became a Christian while reading the prophet Isaiah chapter 53, and Philip helped him to understand what he was reading, the natives of the British Isles were only just in the process of being educated by the Romans to read and write. So let nobody tell you that the Gospel of The Lord Jesus Christ is a European invention.’
Furthermore, he pointed out that it was Christian conviction that overthrew the slave trade. Dr K-A points out:
‘John Newton (1725–1807) was a nominal Christian, and captain of a slave ship, and threw those who were sick overboard to perish in the sea. Very wicked, he was. But then John Newton was convicted of sin. He heard this Good News that though God hated his sin, He loved the sinner (John 3:14–16). Newton repented, understood the meaning of Grace, became a leading anti-slavery activist, and wrote this hymn: “Amazing grace! How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see.”’ [Ed. note: see also Anti-slavery activist William Wilberforce: Christian hero]
How does Creation impact the Gospel?
Many preachers claim that creation is a mere side issue. But Dr K-A pointed out that it is crucial:
‘The baby whose birth we celebrate at Christmas is the Creator of the world! See John 1:1–5, especially v. 3: “All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.” The world, you see, is no cosmic accident. This world was created by the Triune God, and through this Lord Jesus, who was born in Bethlehem.’
But are the details of creation important? ‘So why did Jesus have to be born?’ asked Dr K-A. He answered his own question:
‘The world God created was perfect, flawless, and sinless. Adam and Eve knew God intimately in the Garden of Eden. But then came the Fall, when God’s arch-enemy the Devil, Satan, Lucifer, the Deceiver, deceived our ancestors and spiritual representatives, Adam and Eve, who were then thrown out of Paradise and lost the knowledge of God and forfeited communion with The Creator.’
People might ask, ‘Do you still believe this Sunday school nonsense?’ ‘This is no nonsense,’ Dr K-A affirmed.
He explained:
‘Nothing makes sense of life as I know it—wars, rumours of wars, strife (domestic and international), wickedness, injustice, sin and its consequences, pain and suffering, disease (hereditary and acquired)—until I see it through the history of perfect Creation, the Fall and its terrible consequences, the promise of God not only to undo the damage Satan has wrought, but also to restore man’s communion with Himself through His Son who would become Incarnate (God becoming Man).
‘The Son, unlike Adam and Eve, would perfectly obey God’s laws. He would satisfy the full justice of God (which Adam and Eve could not do), and pay the eternal punishment for sin, so that those offspring of rebellious Adam who believe on Him would not perish, but have eternal life.
‘And He proved all this by His glorious Resurrection. Frankly, if I did not believe all this, I would find it impossible to get a satisfactory explanation for life after death.’
The Republic of Ghana is named after kings known as the ‘Ghana’ who ruled in West Africa from the 4th to the 13th centuries AD. Ghana is today part of the British Commonwealth.
When I first met Dr Konotey-Ahulu, it was after a talk where I had cited the great preacher Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899–1981) as pointing out that Christianity depends on historical facts, including Eden, the Flood and Babel.1 Dr K-A informed me that Dr MLJ was the one who had married him and his wife (pictured). He added, ‘While other evangelicals were hesitating about Adam and Eve, saying “it is not really necessary to bring them in to tell someone he/she is a sinner, because they already know they are sinners”, Dr Lloyd-Jones would always start with Adam and Eve.’ Later, Dr K-A had the honour of being the only person that Dr MLJ ‘gave 200 of his sermons to, to take to Africa when I was leaving London with my family after post-graduate studies.’
Dr K-A said, ‘I loved going to hear Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones, previously a cardiologist at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, but who now preached powerful sermons at Westminster Chapel, near Buckingham Palace.’ In 1957, he brought a colleague, the sceptical Brian Williams, along. Afterwards, ‘Brian said to me: “Felix, Dr Lloyd-Jones said all that needed to be done for my salvation has been done. Is it true?” “Yes,” I said’, and Brian gave himself to the Lord Jesus Christ. He went on to become Professor of Epidemiological Medicine in the Universities of Sheffield and Nottingham. In 2005, Dr Williams was ill, and requested a particular tape-recorded sermon of Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones (far right, Mrs Lloyd-Jones on left). While listening to it, Brian Williams passed from time into eternity.’2
Konotey-Ahulu, F., Historicity of The Lord Jesus Christ (2): Significance of Easter; Ghanaian Times, Saturday 8 April 2006, p. 6, www.newtimesonline.com.
References and notes
Macmillan, ISBN 0333-39239-6, 1991; Tetteh-A’Domeno Co., Watford, UK, ISBN 0-9515442-2-5, 1996. Return to text.
Bonney, G.E. and Konotey-Ahulu, F.I.D., Polygamy and genetic equilibrium, Nature265(5589):46–47, 6 January 1977; Konotey-Ahulu, F.I.D., Maintenance of high sickling rate in Africa—role of polygamy, The Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 73(1):19–21, January 1970; Konotey-Ahulu, F.I.D., Male procreative superiority index (MPSI): the missing coefficient in African anthropogenetics, British Medical Journal281(6256): 1700–1702, 20–27 December 1980. Return to text.
www.konotey-ahulu.com/images/generation.jpg: Dr K-A explains: ‘I traced, name by name, generation by generation, back to ad 1670 of my ancestors and their phenotype. Anyone in my genealogical tree where I marked ‘R’ is rheumatic, meaning two abnormal genes.’ Return to text.
Konotey-Ahulu, F.I.D., The human genome diversity project: Cogitations of an African Native, Politics and the Life Sciences 18(2):317–322, September 1999. Return to text.
Mother Tongue—Introducing The Tadka Phonation Technique For Speaking An African Tonal Language: Krobo/Dangme-Ga of South-East Ghana, Watford, UK, 2001. Return to text.
Thus Dr K-A is staunchly pro-life, so has strongly denounced selective abortion of sickle-cell babies. Return to text.
This article was written before we knew more about the complexity and functionality of what was once called Junk DNA but it is still a great read and another reason to just walk away from Darwinism and begin accepting a created Universe.
The argument from probability that life could not form by natural processes but must have been created is sometimes acknowledged by evolutionists as a strong argument.1 The probability of the chance formation of a hypothetical functional ‘simple’ cell, given all the ingredients, is acknowledged2 to be worse than 1 in 1057800. This is a chance of 1 in a number with 57,800 zeros. It would take 11 full pages of magazine type to print this number. To try to put this in perspective, there are about 1080 (a number with 80 zeros) electrons in the universe. Even if every electron in our universe were another universe the same size as ours that would ‘only’ amount to 10160 electrons.
These numbers defy our ability to comprehend their size. Fred Hoyle, British mathematician and astronomer, used analogies to try to convey the immensity of the problem. For example, Hoyle said the probability of the formation of just one of the many proteins on which life depends is comparable to that of the solar system packed full of blind people randomly shuffling Rubik’s cubes all arriving at the solution at the same time3—and this is the chance of getting only one of the 400 or more proteins of the hypothetical minimum cell proposed by the evolutionists (real world ‘simple’ bacteria have about 2,000 proteins and are incredibly complex). As Hoyle points out, the program of the cell, encoded on the DNA, is also needed. In other words, life could not form by natural (random) processes.
Evolutionists often try to bluff their way out of this problem by using analogies to argue that improbable things happen every day, so why should the naturalistic origin of life be considered impossible? For example, they say the odds of winning the lottery are pretty remote, but someone wins it every week. Or, the chances of getting the particular arrangement of cards obtained by shuffling a deck is remote, but a rare combination happens every time the cards are shuffled. Or the arrangement of the sand grains in a pile of sand obtained by randomly pouring the sand is extremely complex, but this complex and improbable arrangement did occur as a result of random processes. Or the exact combination and arrangement of people walking across a busy city street is highly improbable, but such improbable arrangements happen all the time. So they argue from these analogies to try to dilute the force of this powerful argument for creation.
You probably realize there is something illogical about this line of argument. But what is it?
In all the analogies cited above, there has to be an outcome. Someone has to win the lottery. There will be an arrangement of cards. There will be a pile of sand. There will be people walking across the busy street. By contrast, in the processes by which life is supposed to have formed, there need not necessarily be an outcome. Indeed the probabilities argue against any outcome. That is the whole point of the argument. But then the evolutionist may counter that it did happen because we are here! This is circular reasoning at its worst.
Note several other things about these analogies:
Creationists do not argue that life is merely complex, but that it is ordered in such a way as to defy a natural explanation. The order in the proteins and DNA of living things is independent of the properties of the chemicals of which they consist—unlike an ice crystal where the structure results from the properties of the water molecule. The order in living things parallels that in printed books where the information is not contained in the ink, or even in the letters, but in the complex arrangement of letters which make up words, words which make up sentences, sentences which make up paragraphs, paragraphs which make up chapters and chapters which make up books. These components of written language respectively parallel the nucleic acid bases, codons, genes, operons, chromosomes and genomes which make up the genetic programs of living cells.
The order in living things shows they are the product of intelligence. The result of the lottery draw is clearly the result of a random selection—unless family members of the lottery supervisor consistently win! Then we would conclude that the draw has not been random—it is not the result of a random process, but the result of an intelligent agent.
The arrangement of cards resulting from shuffling would not normally suggest anything other than a random process. However, if all the cards were ordered by their suits from lowest to highest, we would logically conclude that an intelligent agent arranged them (or ‘stacked the deck’ in card-playing parlance) because such an arrangement is highly unlikely from genuine shuffling—a random, non-intelligent process.
The arrangement of the sand grains in a pile would not normally suggest it resulted from intelligent activity rather than natural processes. However, if all the sand grains were lined up in single file, or were in a neat rectangle, we would attribute this to an intelligent agent, or a machine made by an intelligent agent, as this would not be likely from a natural process.
The arrangement of people crossing a busy street would not normally suggest anything other than a random process. However, if all the people were ordered from shortest to tallest, or some other ordered arrangement, we would suspect that an intelligent agent was responsible for putting them in this order—that it did not result from chance. If 20 people were arranged from shortest to tallest, the odds of this happening by chance are less than one in a billion, billion (1018), so it would be reasonable to conclude that such an ordered arrangement was not due to chance whereas there would be nothing to suggest intelligent involvement if there was no meaningful pattern to the arrangement of people.
Many scientists today claim that an invisible ‘intelligent cause’ is outside the realm of ‘real’ science. These scientists have redefined science as naturalism (nature is all there is). However, scientists recognise the evidence for an invisible intelligent agent when it suits them. For example, forensic science determines if past events were the result of accident or plan and purpose (‘Who done it?’). The Piltdown ape-man fraud was discovered, after some 40 years and numerous postgraduate research theses, when researchers had the opportunity to examine the original bones and not just replicas, and they noticed file marks on the teeth.4 Such marks do not happen by natural processes and the researchers recognised the involvement of a human (intelligent) agent—a hoaxer.
Likewise, United States taxpayers are spending millions of dollars yearly in funding the Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence (SETI). If those listening hear a radio signal with random noise, it is clearly the product of a natural process, but if there is a pattern such as ‘dah-dah-dah-dit-dit-dit-dah-dah-dah’, it will be hailed as evidence for an intelligent, although invisible, source.
If such evidence indicates an intelligent source then surely the incredible amount of information on the DNA in living things, equivalent to a library of a thousand 500-page books in a human being,5 shouts Creation by a Creator! The more we know about the biochemical workings of living cells, the stronger the evidence becomes for the intimate involvement of a creator. We are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made and no amount of illogical and irrelevant analogy will counter the clear evidence for this.
Larry Norman is sometimes credited with beginning Christian Rock Music. That is not necessarily so, since Petra and Randy Stonehill were contemporaries and Norman Greenbaum had written a kind of a Christian Rock song...no one can say if he really deserves the credit for creating the genre, but he certainly gave it a kick in the butt! Meanwhile Phil Keaggy played with Glass Harp as a teenager in Carnegie Hall but he turned towards God music.
Once these pioneering artists found that there was a generation of Christians who also were connected to rock music then Petra and White Heart and other early bands suddenly were joined by hundreds of newcomers. Phil Keaggy and Bob Hartmann and Rex Carroll and Dennis Cameron (of Angelica) and Tony Palacios (Guardian) were among the best guitarists in the world but they were making Christian music. Unfortunately most of the recordings of acts from the 70's up to early 90's were youtubed from analog sources and are rather low tech. This is a kind of reminiscence of the days of Christian Rock.
Christian music veteran Larry Norman, a pioneer in the American Contemporary Christian Music scene, passed away at the weekend after a long battle with heart problems. He was 60.
Norman is credited as being the first musican to combine rock music with Christian lyrics and was affectionately known as the Father of Christian Rock. Norman quickly found himself blacklisted by churches and Christian music stores for being too radical and hard to handle.
This changed years later as a new generation of Contemporary Christian musicians such as Randy Stonehill and Keith Green emerged inspired by Larry's love for sinners, unchurched people and his stand for the things Jesus stood for.
Video: Larry Norman performing 'Why should the devil have all the good music?'
This is what his band sounded like back in the day...
Actually, Larry Norman began his "big time" music career touring with Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin as part of The People after having played locally and regionally with other groups. He got his own recording contract but his Christian convictions got in the way. So he ran away from the music world and began living on the streets of Hollywood witnessing to people and sometimes playing and singing for them as well.
Around the time of the first video, Larry Norman came to the Alivefest in Ohio, a weeklong camping and concerts and seminars that was held close to Massilon, Ohio, of NFL fame. Thousands of people poured into the campgrounds, and among them were me and my youth group. We set up a camper van and four big tents and an awning and settled in. It turned out that we would hear the testimonies of two former secular rockers, Phil Keaggy and Larry Norman, and also hear the very last concert by Phil's old band, Glass Harp, with all the original members. It was also one of the last concerts for DC Talk as they were in the process of splitting and other very popular groups like Skillet and Third Day played there. Many times there were at least three things happening at once, with seminars and two stages for concerts set up, plus a waterpark and basketball courts and a big lake. I had to be sure to enforce a "buddy system" so that every teen had at least one other group member with him or her no matter what. We didn't lose anybody, in fact we managed to inherit a "stray" teenage boy and a couple of college guys who wanted to share our awning and throw some food into the kitty in exchange.
I'll never forget those few days. One thing that stand out in my mind is the sorrow you saw in Larry Norman's eyes as he talked about Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. He did say he was inspired to write, "Why Don't You Look Into Jesus" after a short conversation with Janis at the end of which he told her she'd die if she didn't stop drinking. Both Joplin and Hendrix were dead within a couple of years of that tour.
Larry Norman was all set up to be successful in music but he ran off and lived on practically nothing because he thought it was what God wanted him to do. So one day Larry was praying and he believed God asked him why he wasn't singing for Him anymore? So Larry began working on rock operas and records and moved from project to project, label to label, never really being concerned about making money but just seeking to do what God wanted him to do. Some would say he wasted an enormous talent, others would say that his work paved the way for a new generation of Christian rockers to come along and become popular, sometimes even wildly popular, like Jars of Clay:
The once-popular genre Christian rock has pretty much died. Then again rock in general has been replaced by a more pop style of music along with rap and various indie emo and punk and etc. stuff.
I like this version of one of Larry's songs by Holy Soldier:
Or this one by Geoff Moore and The Distance from the 80's with Larry Norman showing up at the end.
Actually Geoff Moore was better in the 90's:
Here is Phil Keaggy a few years after turning to Christian rock:
Phil Keaggy from 2009:
Cool how he makes every sound and records portions of it before your eyes and crafts it all together. He did that back at Alivefest as well. Very cool!
Phil Keaggy and Glass Harp in 1972.
I will share a few youtubes I can find of some of my favorite God Rockers of the past after this one. Those who try to understand me should know this. I wear a ring around my finger and I have a heart that is stamped "Jesus." I have vowed to be faithful to my wife and my family as best I can and especially I am determined to be faithful to my God. Simple as that.
Whitecross. Rex Carroll could SHRED! They weren't just rockers, they also went on mission trips.
White Heart. Another group I propagandized teenagers with. I loved taking my youth group to concerts to sing along and get excited and camping to build relationships and teamwork and sometimes random dumb things like long-distance water balloon toss and that kind of thing.
Guardian was a remarkably talented band who sang in English in the States and in Spanish when they toured farther south.
They did some recording in lowtech surroundings!
The Newsboys: I think we went to three or four of their concerts.
The last of the classic group with Peter Furler. Now they are fronted by Michael Tait of the late, lamented DC Talk.
hb says, "I've never met a Christian who claims to have a moral high ground." Then Radar says, "Christianity has a valid claim to moral superiority by having the absolutes as defined by the Creator."
There is a clear difference between claiming that I am morally superior as opposed to saying that Christianity is morally superior. I am unable to live up to the absolutes established by God so therefore I am morally inferior to the standards of God. This is why we turn to Christ, because we cannot meet God's standards but Jesus was able to meet them and also pay the price for my failures. So I will say Christ is morally superior but not me.
Then DeB says, "Yes, we Christians have the moral high ground and that is why the God haters are mad and want to destroy the ideals of marriage and family." So either hb was talking out of his backside or he's never met Radar and Deb. Hmmm... what could the answer be?
The answer is not so hard to comprehend. Christians understand and accept the moral absolutes set by God, so we "have the moral high ground" in that we have moral absolutes. Atheists have no absolutes at all.
Not surprisingly, I think Jon summed up the ridiculously hypocritical position of hb the best when he posted this, "Ask yourself this: if you don't believe that you as a Christian are morally superior to atheists, then why do you even bother to claim that atheists (or members of any other identifiable group) have no moral code? Why does it matter to you? There's no logical reason for you to care about the morality if people you've never met and never will, and will never interact with in any way ... unless you actually do think that alleged lack of morals makes them inferior, and you can use that 'fact' to lift your own social status."
So wrong! If I do not point out to Woolf that he is missing out on the concept of God and also point it out to the world in general, then I am failing to do my duty to both Woolf and the world. It is a matter of warning you that God is and does have absolute morality. It is a matter of prompting you to consider that concept because you may one day decide to actually think on it and maybe even think on it seriously. I do not compare myself morally to you or Woolf because I do not believe in either comparative or situational morality. You guys are going down a dark road at night and the bridge is out and I might be the only sign between the river and you.
Oh and Deb, am I to assume that because you don't believe in the easter bunny, you "hate" him? What about the tooth fairy? Or Thor, or Mormon Jesus, for that matter? Maybe we should refer to you and your hubby as "Zeus haters"? Sounds pretty stupid, right? Obviously one doesn't have to hate something to not believe it.
I don't believe in the Evolution Fairy, either. Jesus is a historical character so anyone who knows history knows that Jesus existed. Atheopaths are people who hate God because they do not like the idea that there is a superior being to whom they must eventually report. It is simple human nature. God is the boss. You do not want a boss? Then you hate the concept of God.
Speaking of god and hating, though, any chance you can tell me what his problem is with Japanese people, right now? I mean you've likely heard something similar before but here is a quote from Greek philosopher Epicurus that I feel sums things up nicely, "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?"
You can find a Greek philosopher for just about any concept. "There is a spill in the Greek Philosopher's aisle!" You are going to ask this in another way later so the answer is a bit farther down.
Me? I think that I prefer Socrates as presented by Plato to an Epicurean.
Cheers, - Canucklehead.
Um, not sure where this discussion seemed to take a swan dive, but I'll do my best to answer honestly and see what happens. "What it boils down to is that Christians have been given specific rules to follow; i.e. the Ten Commandments. Yet one doesn't have to look far to find Christians who have no problem lying, cheating, stealing, etc... Isn't that hypocrisy to those who are not Christian?"
What is actually true is that, when Christians lie or steal or cheat they are aware of doing wrong and are not comfortable with it. Habitual sinning either drives Christians towards repentance or drives them away from Christianity so they are not continually reminded of their sins. Sinning and hypocrisy have different definitions. Hypocrisy is from the Greek meaning "to wear a mask" so a hypocrite isn't someone who sins and realizes it, he is someone who sins and hides it or denies it.
Yes, anonymous, that is hypocrisy. "It really is fun to watch you two claim to be deep thinkers, and then miss points like this time after time."
Actually, you are missing the point. By what moral code are you saying that lying and cheating and stealing are wrong? If you are not willing to accede to God's moral code and if you believe that man is here by blind chance for no particular purpose then who are you to point fingers and say that somebody else is conducting themselves incorrectly? By what right do you judge the actions of others? Answer that question before you put your foot in your mouth.
Well for one, I never claimed to be a deep thinker, though most who know me say I am. Second, I have no idea what point you're trying to make as I haven't claimed to be morally superior so I fail to see why this is directed at me. It seems your bone of contention is with a Christian claiming to be morally superior and then sinning like all get out. I don't disagree with that so I'm not sure what else to say. Though I would add that simply meeting a Christian who sins doesn't make them a hypocrite, unless you're referring to the "holier than thou" judgemental types and again, I wouldn't disagree.
Highboy and I are on the same page here. When I first became a Christian I soon went to a seminary that was full of legalistic pharisitical types, people who put on a good front but were actually quite comfortable sinners behind the scenes. It was a huge downer to me when I discovered that all these people who were in leadership were skimming money from the till, taking kickbacks, having affairs with their secretaries or teachers having affairs with students...legalism tends to lead to an emphasis on the external appearance instead of the internal thoughts and intents of the heart.
" Ask yourself this: if you don't believe that you as a Christian are morally superior to atheists, then why do you even bother to claim that atheists (or members of any other identifiable group) have no moral code?" Again Jon, I have to ask, is this directed at me or radar? I can't speak for radar but I can't recall ever claiming that an atheist had no moral code. Obviously the code is up to the individual atheist, like you Jon may feel abortion is wrong and anonymous whatsit may not. (I just picked something off the top of my head I'm not sure what you believe) But I never said an atheist has no moral code or can't live morally. The difference is God sets my standard for moral living and the atheist sets his/her own standard, usually according to their perception of humanistic morality.
Right. So what I am saying is that an atheist does not recognize absolutes and has no absolute moral code. When they borrow from God's moral code I sometimes ask them to explain where they get their code from. An atheist might have his own moral code and that is fine, but it is not supported by any authority. I'll say again, its not that Christianity teaches that we Christians are better than everyone else, being a Christian if being forgiven. Completely. Making Jesus Lord of your life means yes, following a standard Christ has set rather than culture or humanism or what have you. This doesn't make me "better" than you, because trust me, I suck at it. Its not about a list of rights and wrongs, its about a devotion to Jesus. That isn't to say I excuse my sin or don't try not to sin, but that simply Jesus paid the penalty for those sins, and His presence in my life helps me work at being a better person. As I said before, my Christianity does not make me better than you, but it makes me better than who I was, and that is what matters to me.
Well said! Jesus in my life has made a me who is a lot better than the me I was and has therefore made life better for my entire family.
Jon says "The trick, of course, is to determine which actions truly are detrimental to society, and which ones aren't." The trick???? Figuring out what actions are detrimental to society a trick????? I think you should get more sleep you are sounding very silly. The simplest idea of all and the one that gets every God hater the maddest is: Sex outside of marriage is detrimental to society. This destroys people at the very foundation of their being.
Right! If there is no sex outside of marriage there is no adultery, no STD transmission, no AIDS, no teenage pregnancies and et cetera. It is sickening to see society changing to the point that we have people coming in to grade school to teach kids about having sex both homo and heterosexual versions. Not teaching them to abstain but teaching them how to have sex!
Canucklehead: the third option is that I didn't realise until now that radar was claiming a moral superiority. Another option is that you're so quick to jump on highboy that in all your pathetic excitement you missed an opportunity to actually read everything posted and draw a conclusion from there. "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?" Yeah that's one of the oldest and frankly most debunked lines of logic in apologetic history, small wonder you quoted it.
First, the questions assume God has done nothing in the past nor will do anything in the future to address the problem. As someone once said of this very issue, "its an incomplete framing of the issue". Second, you could just as easily flip it and say, how can an all powerful God, completely good, allow good to happen to bad people? How come that doesn't get asked? The whole idea of just assuming an infinite all powerful being operating within and without a naturalist framework isn't doing anything because our finite human brains have a limited sense of good and evil doesn't make it true. The question is just silly.
We will say more on that but it is kind of funny to see an atheist take God's opinion of what is good and evil and then try to use it to judge the Judge.
As Highboy said, Christianity has made me a better me, albeit not a perfect one. Again, I am saying that God has the high moral ground and has set absolutes. Atheists reject God and his absolutes, so they have no finite absolutes for morality. Therefore atheists either borrow from God when it pleases them or depend upon their own finite brains to determine right and wrong.
The Creator of all things has set a moral code in place. That moral code is superior to the situational ethics of an unbeliever or dissident. That should be clear. Highboy and Debbie and I are not perfect and we are not claiming to be. We are all saying in differing ways that God's absolutes are perfect. When imperfect people depend on God, they will be better than they were beforehand. So, relative to the man I was, Christ in me has made me better. I compare myself to Christ, see my shortcomings and try to be more like Him. I do not compare myself to Highboy or to Woolf in this way. Christ sets the standard.
hb, I will grant that you have written some fairly thoughtful stuff in this thread (you even admit to being an angry guy - gasp!). That said, I'm no dummy. Do you really expect me to believe that this is the very first time you have heard/read Radar claim moral superiority over atheists? Because he does it all the time. He also asserts moral superiority over Muslims, Darwinists, homosexuals, Evolution-believing christians, etc. etc. etc. I say its just a case of selective listening on your part. I mean, if you've missed Radar's assertions, why would I believe that you haven't missed them in all/most of the interactions with the christians you've met. Go ahead, ask your christian friends if they think they are morally supeior to atheists. I bet I know their answer.
Oh and relative to your assertion that you have never claimed that "an atheist has no moral code or can't live morally", I'm almost positive that you have. That said I don't have time to search for it. You know you've made some claims about atheists and morality, and I know semantics are very important to you, so can you fill us in on what those thoughts were? Or are you saying you've been completely silent on the topic of atheism and morals? Also, you say, "The difference is God sets my standard for moral living and the atheist sets his/her own standard, usually according to their perception of humanistic morality." Now, you've been in this long enough to understand that almost every christian had a different interpretation of god's "standards", right? I mean, even you and Radar can't agree on some of the basics. So really, what's the difference between a christian's attempted interpretation of some loose guidelines and an atheist's. Also, we even know your "rules" better than you do.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2010/0928/In-US-atheists-know-religion-better-than-believers.-Is-that-bad
That link includes a wide variety of non=Christians into the set named Christian and also reveals a sad lack of Bible study in the old demoninations and the emergent chuches.
I'm glad you've gotten better as a person (or at least you feel you did, although I have to say, I suspect the "internet Tim" before god is A LOT like the current "internet Tim"). That said, I would interpret the situation differently, and say that you've matured and that you can go ahead and credit YOURSELF for that improvement. Sure the bible may have helped you realize some things, but the same thing would likely happen if you read a bunch of Tony Robbins books.
Now to your bible college "debunking" of the quote I provided, what do your comments say about prayer? Isn't prayer then simply "assuming an infinite all powerful being operating within and without a naturalist framework..." is going to do or not do something because somebody asked/prayed for it? Especially when as you assert that "... our finite human brains have a limited sense of good and evil"? Why do you think this by the way? Could it be due to the nastiness contained in the bible? Is that why you give god a pass for calling for the killing of adulterers, or mouthy children? You know, because we just don't understand him? This argument ends up with you sounding like an abused spouse.
The above is one of those Adam Sandler rants. Did you just say all that ridiculous garbage in one internet breath? What a rambling incoherent set of assertions and accusations bereft of reasoning. Let's start with the concept that Christians depend on the righteousness of Christ to bring them into relationship with God and that prayer is a conversation with God and His people. Just because you cannot comprehend a relationship with God doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Furthermore, your complete and utter ignorance concerning the Law as characterized by your accusations about "adulterers" and "mouthy children" tells me that you do not understand the books you are referencing. The five books that start the Old Testament are books of history. The Law was given to the Children of Israel in covenant and it was setting behavioral expectations at a time when the "morality" of the time in the region was up for grabs to say the least. Go ahead and enumerate for me the number of times in the Bible that you can find children or adulterers being stoned to death.
Oh and good question "How CAN an all powerful God, completely good, allow good to happen to bad people?" You have an answer for this one? - Canucklehead.
Did you ever take a philosophy class at all? If you have established a set of absolutes that sets the standard for "good" and "evil" then I have yet to see it. But assuming that you have a measuring stick for right and wrong? God had given us a world in which no bad happened to anyone. Adam and Eve lived in that world. But he also gave us the power to choose individual actions. If we do not have the power to choose, then we are robots. God didn't create a Universe to keep robots, He did it to contain fully functional individuals with the ability to create and think and hypothesize and fantasize and organize and work in tandem with others or alone. He made us to be able to think rather than just react. But that also made us able to choose to disobey. When God told Adam and Eve to not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, that was the one thing they were told they could not do. Of course they did it. Satan convinced them to "be as God" by knowing good and evil. But man was not meant to be a judge. The downfall was that our innocence was gone and every action we take can be right or wrong and much of what we wish to do is selfish and wrong. So what would you have God do? We are the ones who decided to take on the ability to know right from wrong and so we brought sin into the world. Do you want God to take life over and make us all do right things so we are all robots? Do you want him to take over and have supernatural control of all processes, miraculously stopping any hurricanes or earthquakes, thus taking over every action and occurrence? Either you want God to turn us all into marionettes and turn the entire Universe into his own personal toy or you have to accept the concept that beings with free will in a Universe that operates logically will have to deal with the evil of selfish mankind and the consequences of the outworking of physical laws.
Oh and Radar, FYI, the golden rule concept predates christianity. If anyone was "borrowing", it was your god (or more precisely, the men who created him). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Rule - Canucklehead.
That last one is a classic epic fail. All of these cultures mentioned in that ludicrous article were established after the Tower of Babel. Ancient history and genealogies reveal that these civilizations all were descended from the family of Noah, who knew God and God's laws as given to Adam and Eve in the Garden after the fall. There were no remnants of the pre-Flood civilization, but the people who left the Ark had the knowledge to quickly rebuild great civilizations, quickly performing engineering marvels such as the Pyramids that we still admire today.
We can be sure that Noah and his family could read and write and that all people had one common language until after Babel. The basis of God's law was known to all, but some cultures left God behind when they left Babel behind and the concept of God and the history of mankind became warped and twisted and Chinese telephoned...and yet virtually every culture on Earth mentions a flood and a Creator God and many if not all of the names of the men who left the Ark. God established the Law and the Golden Rule is simply a man-made simplification of the teachings of Christ and the Bible. The Golden Rule is inferior to the Law in authority and certainly not in keeping with what Jesus Christ was actually teaching.
Jesus Christ came to the Jews who were under the Law of God. He preached the Law to them, not just the letter of the Law but also the intent. He taught them that adultery was wrong but beyond that concept was the assertion that even considering it was also wrong! Jesus was preaching the Law to people under the Law so they could clearly see that they did not and could not keep it. At this time the Jews were still giving blood sacrifices for sins at the Temple according to the Law but these sacrifices had been going on for centuries and had never provided a solution for the problem of sin. Jesus provided the solution. But the Sermon on the Mount, for instance, is not actually such good news because not one of us can always do what Jesus urged us to do. You see, we sin because we are sinners by nature. Jesus not only didn't sin but he took the penalty for all the sins of mankind and became The Blood Sacrifice, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world for us all at the cross. He then rose again from the dead as the victorious Messiah who reclaimed the authority over the Earth and over death.
I was a sinner by nature and choice but I did come to believe in Christ in this way: I understood that Jesus Christ did not sin and that He died for my sins in my place. I understood that Jesus was God allowing Himself to be limited by a material existence, the Son of God, come to undo what Adam had done. When I trusted Christ and traded my sins for His sacrifice then suddenly a change took place inside of me. I now know that I was born again at that moment, that my dead spirit was brought to life by the Spirit of Christ.
Now people had been telling me over and over for years that Jesus Saves and that I had to be born again to know God and avoid hell. It seemed simplistic and I just ignored those people. I was looking for the great secret to the meaning of life. I sought it through philosophy, through drugs, through meditation, through hedonism, by whatever means I could. I read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" before Phil Jackson even heard of the book. No explanation for life and existence was satisfactory and so I had decided to just live for the moment and for my own pleasure.
But God didn't give up on me. He kept on seeking to catch my attention and one thing worked. My wife, who had been transformed after having our first child from a loving, fun person into a ranting shrew and I was about to seek a female upgrade via adultery and then probably divorce. But she "got saved" and was radically transformed. Suddenly the shrew was Snow White and I was being treated like a prince! Did God do that to her? So I saw that she had truly been changed and when the pastor of that church came to talk with me I, for once, listened with at least one ear opened.
I was a sinner
Jesus died for my sins
If I asked Him to take my sins and come into my heart, He would do it and I would become born again
He would work on me from the inside out.
Jesus has been working on me from the inside out ever since. What I would like would be for all of you to allow God to catch your attention long enough to truly consider the Jesus Gift. Once you put your pride all the way down and admit that you have absolutely no power to save yourself, you will be able to hear from God and give Him a chance to convince you.
God didn't make me perfect. Debbie isn't perfect. Highboy isn't perfect. But we are already judged righteous and worthy in the sight of God because Jesus took our place and our judgment and has provided us with an eternal life with God. We are hemmed in by a material world for now. But once we escape the bonds of this life we will live in a form in which we can see God in all his Glory. You see, when God makes a human life He makes something supernatural, a self that will never end. Do you want your never end to be with peace and joy and God or do you want it in solitary torment with no hope of deliverance?
Why do Darwinists always fail to accept the challenge to present actual evidence in court for their hypothesis? Because they do not have it. In fact, I can keep God basically on the sidelines and allow a completely evidence-based discussion concerning Darwinism tear it limb from limb:
How did life begin? Where did the first cell come from? Questions that have plagued scientists for centuries remain unanswered today, but recent scientific discoveries are leading modern scientists to explore the theory of intelligent design as a better explanation for the complexity of life and the universe.
In four television episodes of the John Ankerberg Show broadcast across the US and over 200 nations worldwide, Dr. John Ankerberg interviewed Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, author of the groundbreaking bookSignature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design. The series will begin broadcasting on April 3 at 5:30pm EDT on the Daystar Network and on April 10 at 9:30pm EDT on the INSP Network.
In the interviews Dr. Meyer explains how even Charles Darwin, in his book The Origin of Species, admitted he did not know how the first cell came into being, or how life came to be.
Scientists in Darwin's day thought the cell was a simple glob of plasm, but today we have discovered that the cell is an almost unimaginably complex system of molecular machines and rich in digital code.
Where did this high-tech in low life come from? Ankerberg and Meyer explore the mystery surrounding this question, which Meyer calls the DNA enigma. Click on the links below to watch full episodes of the show online!
Week 1: Every person's body consists of over a trillion cells. Almost every one of these cells includes a DNA molecule. What is DNA? Why is it so special? What does it do? Where did the digital code embedded in DNA originate? Why does the specified information in DNA point to a designing intelligence?
Week 2: As scientific technology has progressed, scientists have realized the cell is more and more complex. According to Microsoft's Bill Gates, the DNA within each cell is far more complex than any computer software ever created. Where did the coded information within DNA come from? What naturalistic theories have been proposed? What is the possibility of the precise genetic information in DNA evolving by chance?
Week 3: In addition to chance, scientists have offered other answers to the origin of the precise genetic information found in DNA. Why is it that natural selection, self-organizing natural laws, or some combination of these with chance cannot explain where the information originated? We'll also see why DNA exhibits signs of a designing intelligence.
Week 4: What is the scientific theory of Intelligent Design (ID)? Is ID true science or just religion masquerading as science? We'll also answer the objections to ID such as, "Is ID just an argument from ignorance?" ("We don't know what the naturalistic causes are right now for the origin of life.") We'll also see why ID is based on scientific reasoning but may have larger religious implications.
PS - it appears you have to register on the site to see the first video. If you read my blog on IE, you should be able to see weeks 2-4 without registration. If you want to see what Stephen C. Meyer videos are available online...
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I can bolster the ID findings with scripture that helps make the case for a Creator God. But notice that we can keep God out of the discussion and allow forensics to pinpoint the absolute requirement for a Creator?
He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete. The Great Gatsby Chapter 6, Gatsby on his first kiss with Daisy.
Do you remember the first real kiss of your life? I don't necessarily mean the first "french kiss" per se, but rather a kiss that seemed to be more than simply a kiss?
An embarrassing moment from my childhood - It was the sixth grade dance. Us boys hung out on one side of the gymnasium. The girls were on the other side of the gym. Some of them danced to some of the songs but not one of us boys dared be the first to ask a girl to dance, lest we get relentlessly teased by the other guys or, even worse, GET TURNED DOWN! Unthinkable! I was plastered to the sidelines with the others, even though my fifth-grade girlfriend, Susan, might have been glad to say yes if I had asked. But I wasn't going to risk being first.
There was a lottery set up by the French teacher in which random names would be drawn to pair up the boys and girls for a dance. Unbeknownst to us boys, the teacher and the girls had colluded to allow some of the girls to chose their dance partners and I wound up paired with Sherry. The music began playing - a slow song - and I had to take her in my arms and dance with her pressed close to me. I was entirely intoxicated by the smell of her perfume and her hair, the feel of her head against my chest, my hand was overjoyed to find and slightly caress the small of her back. I don't remember the song. But I do remember literally falling into a state of awestruck awakening of new feelings and urges so that, when the music stopped, I didn't. I kept dancing with Sherry when everyone else stopped.
"The music stopped!" She informed my closest ear and I found, to my horror, that everyone was watching us and, as my stupor became apparent, a horse laugh from all filled the gym. I became red as a ripe cherry. Now I could have said something smooth, like, "Dancing with you needs no music." Or maybe "You are all the music I need." But I said this: "Oh!" I hustled back to the sidelines to endure several minutes of razzing and a few jealous questions about how it felt to dance with Sherry. Sherry was the sixth grade equivalent of "hot." I had no idea she had been interested in me and I was far too embarrassed to get anywhere near her the rest of the night.
Later in high school I had my first kiss real french kiss with a pretty girl I really liked a lot and it seemed like time stopped while she and I lived in the fantasy world of love and joy contained in a seeking, yearning kiss. I thought that was the real thing.
But then I actually "fell in love" and I knew better. I understood the words written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. A kiss that promised eternal devotion and a merging of self with self that left us both breathless with surprise and awe and wonder, a kiss that moved the world around us and made the rest of the world inconsequential in comparison to a true love.
What I wanted and expected was to enter into the world of a song popular during my grade school days -
Then I Kissed Her
Well, I walked up to her
And I asked her if she wanted to dance
She looked awful nice and so I hoped
She might take a chance
When we danced I held her tight
Then I walked her home that night
And all the stars were shining bright
And then I kissed her
Each time I saw her
I couldn't wait to see her again
I wanted to let her know
That I was more than a friend
I didn't know just what to do
And so I whispered I love you
And she said that she loved me too
And then I kissed her
I kissed her in a way
That I'd never kissed a girl before
I kissed her in a way
That I hope she liked for evermore
I knew that she was mine
So I gave her all the love that I had
Then one day she'll take me home
To meet her mom and her dad
Then I asked her to be my bride
And always be right by my side
I felt so happy that I almost cried
And then I kissed her
I thought and hoped that life was like that and that our love would be forever. Being in love would make it all work. We'd have our picket fence and a little house and raise little miniatures of us and...but love isn't magic and strong feelings alone do not love make nor preserve it. I was not ready for such a commitment at age 21 and life is way more complicated than a Beach Boys song. I was raised at a time when the Summer of Love and Woodstock and the Love The One You're With philosophy had changed the morality of my generation. Because I had not accepted the moral absolutes of the previous generation, the formula didn't work for me. Rolling stones don't stay put in a rock garden.
Thankfully one great love isn't necessarily all you get in this life. I got another chance and I didn't blow that one! Anyway, the most common theme of novels and stories is the search for and the finding or losing of love. Boy meets girl, boy wins girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back in the end. That storyline and spinoffs from that storyline is the primary story that writers of fiction use, more than warfare or rebellion or any other subject..
"And they lived happily ever after." From Adam and Eve until today it is the very core of the human experience.
An old-fashioned love story as played out by a couple of celebrities.
The artist is Josh Kelley, a former college golfer who realized that music was in his blood (his brother is a successful musician also). The woman in the video is his wife of three year-plus years, actress Katherine Heigl by stage name, with whom they share an adopted daughter and a life. The two met during the taping of this music video! They do make a being a couple look good. Now imagine how hard it is to manage a marriage and a home life when you are a music star who must tour and your wife is an actress? But I do know they got something started right, as quoted from wikipedia:
During a taping of Live With Regis and Kelly, Heigl stated that she and Kelley chose not to live together before they were married, saying, "I think I just wanted to save something for the actual marriage... I wanted there to be something to make the actual marriage different than the dating or the courtship."
Grey's Anatomy star Katherine Heigl and her boyfriend, musician Josh Kelley, are engaged, their reps confirm exclusively to PEOPLE.
No wedding date has been set.
The couple met last year when Heigl, 27, appeared in a video for Kelley's song "Only You."
"At the end of the shoot, I said, 'You're gonna go eat dinner with us, and you can't say no,' " Kelley, 25, said in October. "So we ate, drank and just started hanging out after that."
(Later, Kelley arranged to propose marriage to his "Katie" by arranging to have dinner in the somewhat dingy apartment location where the "Only You" video was filmed and, after she said yes, they actually strolled out together on that same stretch of beach you see at the video's end. He apparently had to pay off the stoners who lived there to go away for a day or two. A hundred bucks to set up a perfect proposal? Not bad.)
Music is still part of their relationship: Kelley wrote a tune, "Katie's Song," for Heigl. "There is really nothing more romantic than that," Heigl told PEOPLE in December. "It was one of the most thrilling and romantic things that I've ever experienced, and it makes me really like him bad."
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"Like him bad" must be Heigl for "love" as they apparently have a successful marriage going. I hope it will be one that lasts. Famous people tend to not connect the dots concerning relationships, tending to live in an alternate reality in which they are treated as royalty and both doted upon and constantly hounded by fans and bloodsuckers. I hope this couple makes it work!
I have had small doses of fame from being a singer, all in the past now. It was fun to have someone come up to you at dinner and say, "Aren't you the guy who...?" or even have someone ask you to autograph something!(Yep, that happened on board a cruise ship back in 2005 or so. But that only happened to me maybe ten or twelve times in my life. A few times during my singing career and a few times on board that ship because I won a karaoke contest and wound up singing with the ship's band every night). I cannot imagine it happening a dozen times a day. It would quickly turn from kind of nice to exceedingly dreary. Famous people are hounded and feted. If you are a famous guy, women will be throwing themselves at you...which is why marriage needs to be something two people work at and, in the case of Josh and Katie, they must have to guard it and keep it private and of highest priority lest it goes all Tiger Woods...
Fortunately (for all concerned), my meager season of fame is past and my wife and I live in the real world. In some ways we are a 21st Century couple. We met online (Christian Cafe) at a Christian dating site and exchanged emails and phone calls before meeting. We met in late summer and married before the year was out. We just knew. In doing so we brought four kids and two kids into one family and they all liked the idea. Now we share two sons-in-law and three grandchildren and a bunch of "Godkids" together. A blended family whose parental units met online? Very 21st Century!
But we are also very traditional. Our first night together was our wedding night. We have had fewer fights than we have had years of marriage. My wife is like my gift from God!
We belong to a church where we are part of the ministry and most of our friends are from our church family and friends we have made in Christian circles down through the years. Some of our friends are missionaries now. Many of the kids I have taught have grown up and married and started families. Our own children have all made it to at least 18 years old so our season of parenting is largely over...except me, my wife and my oldest son all work in the youth ministry with high school kids. So I have signed on to being a perpetual parent of sorts. There is a teenager who is about to ring the doorbell and hang out for awhile with me and Debbie and Rob. One of our main concerns is to instill the traditional values into this generation before they leave the nest and fly off into the cold, cruel world.
Most marriages are not famous, but the institution of marriage is...people have been joining as couples since the world began. The reason that marriage is apparently being attacked? Not for any good reason, but rather as a means of promoting the agenda of a small group of sexual dissidents who hate the Judeo-Christian ethic upon which American Society was founded and wish to attack it at every hand. Darwinism erodes faith in God. Social Darwinism leads to millions of murdered babies and tacit racism and class-ism. GLSEN and NAMBLA want to break down all sexual mores and taboos so that they can have adults "marry" children, those of the same sex, animals and what have you. Really, the push to destroy marriage is energized by pedophiles, for both GLSEN and NAMBLA seek to promote juvenile sexual activity. Do you really want your children "marrying" promiscuous adults? Because that is the stated goal of NAMBLA and GLSEN's unstated agenda as well. Kill off marriage and sexual restraints will soon be destroyed as well. The old guy across the street is NOT going to have sex with my children or my dogs! We cannot allow this stuff to happen.
Dave Miller wrote this in 2003 (From Apologetics Press):
Since its inception, the United States of America has been a country whose Founding Fathers recognized the need for God in public life, and the need for Bible principles of morality to govern and structure American society. Our Founding Fathers recognized that if our country ever strayed significantly away from these foundational moral, spiritual, and ethical principles, we would be doomed as a nation. For 150 years, our society recognized the importance of what some are calling the “traditional family,” i.e., a husband and a wife who marry for life and rear their children together. Divorce was almost unheard of in this country. When it did occur, it was regarded as deviant behavior. Family disruption in the form of separation, divorce, and out-of-wedlock birth were kept to a minimum by strong religious, social, and even legal sanctions. Immediately after World War II, most American children grew up in a family with both biological parents who were married to each other.
This state of affairs held sway up through the 1940s and 1950s. In fact, disruption of the traditional American family reached a historic low in the 1950s and early 1960s. But then something happened (see Whitehead, 1993). Beginning in about 1965, the divorce rate suddenly skyrocketed, more than doubling over the next fifteen years. By 1974, divorce passed death as the leading cause of family breakup. By 1980, only fifty percent of children could expect to spend their entire childhood with both their parents. Now half of all marriages end in divorce. Every year a million children go through divorce or separation, and almost as many more are born out of wedlock. People who remarry after divorce are more likely to break up than couples in first marriages. The same is true for couples who just live together.
Overall child well-being has declined, despite a decrease in the number of children per family, an increase in the educational level of parents, and historically high levels of public spending. The teen suicide has more than tripled. Juvenile crime has increased and become more violent. School performance has continued to decline. Some sociologists are now recognizing the incredibly harmful effect these circumstances are having on our country and the homes of America. They are beginning to realize the relationship between family structure and declining child well-being. Some are even admitting that the social arrangement that has proved most successful in ensuring the physical survival and promoting the social development of the child is the family unit of the biological mother and father.
But our society as a whole has been slow to see family disruption as a severe national problem. Why? A fundamental shift has occurred in our culture with reference to religious and moral value. Much of our society has jettisoned the Bible as the absolute standard of behavior. The Bible is no longer considered to be the authoritative regulator of daily living. Many, perhaps most, Americans no longer feel that divorce is wrong. “Irreconcilable differences” and “incompatibility” are seen as perfectly legitimate reasons for divorce—flying directly in the face of Bible teaching. Many Americans no longer feel that a couple simply living together without marriage is morally wrong. By the mid-1970s, three-fourths of Americans said that it is not morally wrong for a woman to have a child outside marriage.
We could debate the causes of this basic cultural shifting. I would argue that the influence of evolution and humanism in our educational system, the impact of feminism, the increased participation of women in the work force to the neglect of their children, the widespread prosperity that we enjoy as a nation (causing us to forget God and to indulge ourselves)—these and other factors have contributed to our moral decline. Hollywood, television, and the cinema have unquestionably glamorized, defended, and promoted divorce, premarital sex, unwed motherhood, abortion, and the use of alcohol, filthy language, and many other immoral behaviors.
Ironically—and tragically—the media have been working overtime to discredit the married, two-parent family by playing up instances of incest, violence, and abuse. If a family has religious inclinations, its members are depicted on programs as weirdos and deviants. In fact, it is surely disgusting to the sensibilities of the morally upright that what was once mainstream and normal (i.e., the religious, church-going, two-parent family) is being demonized and ridiculed, while behavior that once was considered deviant, reprehensible, and immoral is paraded before society—on TV, in the news, and in the courts—as the social norm. Anyone who lifts a finger to speak against such immorality is berated as “homophobic,” “prejudiced,” “judgmental,” “mean-spirited,” and guilty of a “hate crime.”
Two illustrations of the undermining of the marriage relationship as God intended are the recent decisions regarding homosexuality by the United States Supreme Court and the Episcopal Church. By a 62-45 vote, the Episcopal House of Bishops elected the denomination’s first homosexual bishop on August 5, 2003 (see Duin, 2003). Only days earlier, the Supreme Court ruled that sodomy laws are unconstitutional—even though sodomy was treated as a criminal offense in all of the original thirteen colonies and eventually every one of the fifty states (see Robinson, 2003; “Sodomy Laws,” 2003). Sadly, a generation has arisen who simply does not share the values of its parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. Sexual fidelity, lifelong marriage, and parenthood are simply no longer held up as worthwhile personal goals.
"The clear-cut restraints and distinctions between right and wrong so typical of American culture in the past have been systematically dismantled. Relativism has taken the place of objective, absolute truth."
All of this self-centeredness has taken its greatest toll on the children. The erosion of basic moral values in exchange for pluralism, the growing tolerance of moral and ethical diversity, the shifting of emphasis to choice, freedom, and self-expression, have all inflicted great damage on marriage and the family—especially the children. The fuller body of empirical research now documents a number of startling conclusions:
Divorce almost always brings a decline in the standard of living for the mother and children, plus a dependence on welfare; children in single-parent homes are far more likely to propagate the same behavior.
Children never fully recover from divorce. Five, ten, fifteen years after a divorce, the children suffer from depression, under-achievement, and ultimately, their own troubled relationships.
Young adults from disrupted families are nearly twice as likely as those from intact families to receive psychological help.
Children in disrupted families are nearly twice as likely as those in intact families to drop out of high school. Those who remain in school show significant differences in educational attainment from those children who grow up in intact families.
Remarriage does not reproduce nor restore the intact family structure. The latest research confirms that stepparents cannot replace the original home.
For children whose parents divorced, the risk of divorce is two to three times greater than it is for children from married parent families.
These findings—and many others—underscore the importance of both a mother and a father in fostering the emotional well-being of children. But even more far-reaching effects have been documented—effects that impact society at large beyond the confines of the family. Authorities now are beginning to admit that a central cause of our most pressing social problems (i.e., poverty, crime, and school performance) is the breakup of the traditional American family.
What is even more startling is the fact that as an institution, marriage has lost much of its legal, religious, and social meaning and authority. For most of American history, marriage was one of the most important rites of passage in life. But now, marriage has lost much of its role and significance as a rite of passage. Sex is increasingly detached from the promise or expectation of marriage. Cohabitation is emerging as a significant experience for young adults. It is now replacing marriage as the first living together union. It is estimated that a quarter of unmarried women between the ages of 25 and 39 are currently living with a partner, and about half have lived at some time with an unmarried partner. Referring to this state of affairs as “the deinstitutionalization of marriage,” researchers at the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University concluded: “Taken together, the marriage indicators do not argue for optimism about a quick or widespread comeback of marriage. Persistent long-term trends suggest a steady weakening of marriage as a lasting union, a major stage in the adult life course, and as the primary institution governing childbearing and parenthood” (Popenoe and Whitehead, 1999).
Make no mistake: the social science evidence clearly documents the fact that the breakdown of the traditional two-parent, biological husband-wife family is a major factor contributing to the overall moral, religious, and ethical decline of our country. The social fabric of American civilization is literally tearing apart. The social arrangement that has proved most successful in ensuring the physical survival, and promoting the social development, of the child is the family unit of the biological mother and father. America is in deep trouble.
Our society is not likely to solve these massive problems. The liberal elite has been operating with great vigor for over forty years to push our country into “value neutrality” and “political correctness.” The clear-cut restraints and distinctions between right and wrong so typical of American culture in the past have been systematically dismantled. Relativism has taken the place of objective, absolute truth. The glorification of the individual has encouraged people to determine for themselves right and wrong—rather than looking outside themselves to the Transcendent Creator of the Universe. Consequently, whatever the individual feels is right is sanctioned as right—at least for that individual. The absolute standard of moral value and human behavior—that previously governed our nation—has been successfully supplanted. Subjectivity reigns supreme, and God has been effectively severed from human culture. “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:12).
GOD’S VIEW OF THE MATTER
The fact remains that there is a God in heaven (Daniel 2:28). God has spoken to the human race through His written Word, i.e., the Bible. In that inspired communication, He has designated the structure of society. He created male and female with the intention for one man to marry one woman for life (Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:4-6). Here is the foundational building block of humanity. That is His simple will on the matter. He hates divorce (Malachi 2:16). The only way He permits divorce is if one marriage partner divorces the other marriage partner for the one reason that the marriage partner has committed fornication, i.e., illicit sexual intercourse. Upon that basis alone, God allows the innocent partner to put away that unfaithful mate and form a second marriage (Matthew 19:3-9).
God intended for the husband and wife to produce children who, in turn, are to receive nurturing and care from their parents in a stable, loving home (Ephesians 6:1-4; Colossians 3:18-21). In this divinely ordained institution of the home, God intended that children receive the necessary instruction and training to prepare them to be productive, honest, God-fearing, hard-working citizens of their country. The home was designed by God to impart to each succeeding generation proper religious, moral, and social principles that would in turn make their nation strong and virtuous. The Bible is filled with references to the essential ingredients of healthy family life (e.g., Deuteronomy 4:7-9; 6:1-9; 11:18-21; 32:46-47; Psalm 127; Proverbs 5:15-20; 6:20-35; 11:29; 12:4; 14:1; 15:25,27; 17:1,13; 31:10-31), including proper parenting skills (Proverbs 13:24; 19:18; 22:15; 23:13-14; 29:15,17; Ephesians 6:1-4).
CONCLUSION
How simple! The solution to the confusion and corruption that has gripped American civilization is simple—if hearts are humbly yielded to the will of God. If we could get our families back on track according to God’s will, we could get our nation back on track. It starts with you and me. We must believe in, affirm to others, and conform ourselves to the sacredness of marriage.
So this is an old article and some of the links may not work. In 2003 Miller clearly saw the path the country was taking. We are another 8 years down the road and it is worse than ever! The attack on the nuclear family shows up in poor education, bad behavior, higher incidence of drug and alcohol abuse, teenage pregnancy and STDs, suicides...our children are paying the price as deviant adults do whatever they can to tear down marriage. We even have a chief executive who has instructed his administration not to defend the laws of the land - the DOMA lawsuits filed by the radical deviants will not be challenged by the representative of the President? I thought he was sworn to defend the Constitution and the law? Pathetic.
Another aspect to the attack on marriage is the emergence of the Super State and Gendercide- take for instance, Communist China:
Historian Niall Ferguson reminds us that Ernest Hemingway once penned a collection of short stories entitled Men Without Women. The stories are haunting, demonstrating the brutality that comes to men without the presence of women — and especially without the companionship of wives.
He recalls the Hemingway collection in order to underline what is at stake in the growing global threat of missing girls and women. The global gender gap in favor of males is a reversion of the natural pattern. How did it happen? By the widespread practice of aborting and killing baby girls — what is rightly called “gendercide.”
As Ferguson explains, “The mystery is partly explicable in terms of economics. In many Asian societies, girls are less well looked after than boys because they are economically undervalued.”
Years ago, economist Amartya Sen put the number of missing girls and women at 100 million worldwide. As Ferguson argues, that number is surely far larger now.
Consider the scale of the problem:
In China today, according to American Enterprise Institute demographer Nicholas Eberstadt, there are about 123 male children for every 100 females up to the age of 4, a far higher imbalance than 50 years ago, when the figure was 106. In Jiangxi, Guangdong, Hainan, and Anhui provinces, baby boys outnumber baby girls by 30 percent or more. This means that by the time today’s Chinese newborns reach adulthood, there will be a chronic shortage of potential spouses. According to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, one in five young men will be brideless. Within the age group 20 to 39, there will be 22 million more men than women. Imagine 10 cities the size of Houston populated exclusively by young males.
Ten cities the size of Houston? This staggers the imagination!
Ferguson warns that this gender imbalance has led in the past to outbreaks of expansionism and imperialism. Others have more directly warned of militarism and violence from China’s young men who have no prospects of marriage and a normal family life. These young men are described as China’s “broken branches.” There are millions of these young men in India, as well.
We must look beyond these warnings and see the even larger horror — the tragedy of young girls, aborted and murdered just because they are girls. This, among other vital reasons, is why even the earliest Christians understood abortion to be such a horrific evil. Given the reality of human sinfulness, we now compound abortion with infanticide and gendercide. Is this of interest only to historians and economists?
What happens when there are MILLIONS of young men with no chance of finding a mate? Do they fall prey to sexual deviancy? Will they become the point of a spear pointed at other countries, an army of soldiers with no family to leave behind? Will they rebel and turn to crime and anarchy, or will they subject themselves to a perceived groupthink goal greater than themselves as a propagandized mass of automatons? They have no chance at an ordinary life. When man cannot have a life, he is more likely to be motivated to take yours away from you...Genocide, gendercide, sexual deviancy being enforced by law on free society? It cannot end well. This is the fruit of society separated from God. This is what man looks like when God is not respected and obeyed. Is it any wonder that God wiped mankind from the face of the planet once before? How long before He cannot tolerate these crimes against humanity foisted upon humanity?
To take away the moral absolutes brings about the worst consequences. Hundreds of millions of unborn babies slaughtered by evil adults will weigh down the balance scale of justice on the side of destruction for those responsible. All forms of Social Darwinism and Humanism lead inevitably to the same end, the complete destruction of morality leads to the destruction of society and real freedom for the vast majority of mankind is lost. We are sliding back towards the time of a ruling elite and teeming masses of serfs. What do you think life in China is like for the average young man? God help you if you are a girl growing in your mother's womb, there is a pair of forceps and a knife and a suction tube coming for you! Pedophilia and Gendercide.
How could I take us from a love story to a horror story? More to come...
I make a living selling IT software and hardware and services but I would rather take a year off and finish writing my two novels. Not enough time! I do have the best wife in the world, several awesome kids, a few dogs, far too many bills and a few more pounds than I had back in my playing days.
The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity. Francis Maitland Balfour
The ultimate determinate in the struggle now going on for the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas – a trial of spiritual resolve; the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish and the ideas to which we are dedicated — Ronald Reagan
Please email radarbinder@comcast.net to contact me professionally. I consult and sell software, hardware and services to companies, organizations and government entities throughout North America.
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