The Wrong Dance

In a previous post, I talked about the 1857 Supreme Court decision concerning a slave named Dred Scott. It is known as Dred Scott v. Sandford (Wikipedia description HERE). Scott claimed:

his presence and residence in free territories required his emancipation. Scott's lawyers argued the same for Scott's wife, and further claimed that Eliza Scott's birth on a steamboat between a free state and a free territory had made her free upon birth.

Scott lost and the results can be read at the Wikipedia link above. Among them is the ruling that African-Americans could not ever be considered US citizens (since overruled by the 14th Amendment).

The ruling in this case is so bad that at first it deflects consideration of the argument. Scott's lawyers worked within the confines of the mindset of the day. Laws allowing slavery in some states were accepted, and in others they were not. The argument "danced" around these laws. The thinking was that because Scott resided in free territories for a time, he should be emancipated.

But this argument was wrong. Scott should have been freed from slavery because no one should have been a slave in the first place.

I think the same can be said for the situation in US classrooms and the way the theory of evolution is handled. We are making the wrong arguments and dancing the wrong dance. Though atheists may have their rights in the classroom, so do believers. No child should be made to answer to a government institution against his or her religious beliefs. The Intelligent Design movement tries to dance around the rules against teaching creationism in the classroom by saying it is OK to teach evolution as the working theory but we should be allowed to look at the weaknesses of it. Instead they should demand that Darwinian Evolution Theory not be forced upon children at all.

Though many scientists want Darwinian evolution to be their working theory, that does not mean they should enforce it upon everyone. Some scientific theories impinge on the religious beliefs of certain segments of the population. American scientists and educators may not want to trouble themselves with thinking of others, but they live in a country with many different kinds of religions and they need to face that fact. There are soldiers willing to die for the right of freedom in this country, and many of these soldiers have beliefs that are contrary to philosophical materialists. When one thinks of the toll taken by the efforts to correct the scourge of slavery, it is asking little of educators to make the effort to teach scientific methods in a way that does not impinge on individual beliefs. For believers, science is the study of designed physical entities.

The ID people should realize that for a believer, design doesn't have to be proven. It is already understood that God made everything. Science itself can be defined as the study of created physical entities. Science is how we learn about these entities.

A Creationist is someone who believes God created the world--not just someone who thinks He did it exactly 10,000 years ago. It is time to claim back the word "Creationist" for all believers and to unite for what is right.

Of course, Creationists also need to respect the rights of others. There has got to be some way we can work this out.

Oceana Fund-Raiser

My husband and I have only once gone to a Craft Fair to try to sell books. It was a long time ago and held at a Catholic Church yearly dinner. Tom had made wooden toys, which sold fairly well. As I remember, the book sales did not go as well. The good news is that our Muskegon County history museum has been a dependable source for book sales for my local historian husband. He wrote a novel set in our town in the olden days of the lumbering era, called Sawdust Fires.

I'm not a historian, although I appreciate history much more after being married to Tom. I set my fictional books in the present. My most recent, Unto Others, is in Orchard County, Michigan. This is a fictional name for Oceana County, which is just north of the one in which we live. (Unto Others is the book on the right in the picture.)

I worked in Oceana County for a time, and I found it a very beautiful place. It is on the shores of Lake Michigan, and has dune-filled beaches. It also has orchards further inland which are protected by the Lake in the spring (the trees are kept from budding too early and freezing by the lake water effect).

The towns of Oceana County are small, and the opportunities for selling my book there are rather few. Still, I'd like to give people a chance to buy a mystery book set in their own countryside (though all the names are fictional and not meant to portray any real persons). Then I found out about a Craft Fair that is going to be held at the Oceana Medical Care Facility, at 701 East Main Street. A map for the place can be seen HERE.

The contact person told me they had 300 people come last year. I have already reserved a spot for myself. I have always enjoyed going to the town and I look forward to my second Craft Fair sales experience. I'll be there Nov. 20, 2009, between 7:00 am (for early birds!) and 3:00 pm. If you are anywhere near Hart at that time, come on over!

Anniversary Flowers

It is an anniversary year for Charles Darwin. He was born 200 years ago this past February, and November is the 150th year since his book, Origin of Species, was published.

It is an anniversary year for me, too, although in a very different vein. I had wandered away from my childhood religion, Christianity, until January 1989.

I had been influenced by the atheism of the scientific scene, not just at my college but in the culture. In these mindsets, Darwin has played a great part. He sought to explain all of life by material, natural means, excluding all necessity for God. Also, I went through some personal traumatic experiences and did not believe a God would allow that much pain.

But, I was miserable without God, too. Atheism surely gave no comfort. And, though Christianity didn't always make sense, atheism made less sense.

I then met my future husband. He is a wonderful man and brought me to his Catholic Church. It exuded a warmth and acceptance I had not experienced before. This was also true at a Christian organization with which I volunteered and eventually became employed for a time. I came back to my original faith, which I appreciated at a different level than I did as a child. I realized that pain need not be permanent. It can be healed through God's love. Pain teaches us the divisions between good and evil and helps us appreciate that on the other hand, life itself is a wonderful blessing.

I have one Christmas cactus which has coral-color flowers and I like it very much. But I also wanted one with pink flowers, though I didn't want to spend the money. Then last Christmas my mother gave me a little one someone had given to her. It had about 3 branches and no flowers. I said I'd like it and have been looking forward to seeing the color. I thought I'd have to wait until Christmas to find out.

But now both my Christmas cactuses are blooming early this year! And the little one is pink!

Christmas cactuses are like anniversary flowers. They are special in that they bloom at the time of wonderful celebration every year--the time of our Savior's birth. And I celebrate the year, twenty years ago, when I returned to the Lord through faith in Jesus Christ.

Learn from Mistakes

Recently I wrote about Fr. Robert Spitzer, a priest and physicist who is trying to bring science and religion together. He was in a conference at the John Paul II Center for the New Evangelization in Denver, CO, reported by the Catholic News Agency HERE. The point in my previous post was that not everyone believes in God even though they know the science.

But, Fr. Spitzer makes a different point which is just as important. Not everyone knows the science. One should at least have the chance to make up one's own mind about whether DNA, proteins, the cell, and life itself could have come about by chance, and that is not happening. Amazingly in this day and age, science is being censored.

I had a very nice presentation last week about Intelligent Design Theory to about 50 persons. These people heard privileged information. They heard the numbers for the improbabilities of the origins of life. They heard what high school and even college students don't. And even Christian college students don't hear the facts though they point to God!

These students will have to seek out their own facts. And they can find them. The internet will have them. There are books (also censored!) that have them. The latest, bound to be great book about them is by Stephen Meyer, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperCollins Publishers, 2009). The book is very readable for anyone who has the desire and patience to try to learn.

Many Christians in the scientific community do not seem to want to admit that God may have created life directly. They are embarrassed by the history of the Galileo affair, where the Church denied for centuries the centrality of the Sun in our Solar System. They forget that the ancient scientific community put the Earth in the center just as well as the Church. The Church reacted against this scientific novelty as well as their own ideas of doctrine.

The Church, which includes all Christians, must learn from mistakes, to not inhibit learning. To stifle facts is to deny that reason and faith go hand in hand.

Once a Week

It has been over one and one half years since I started this blog. I had a lot on my mind and I laid it out twice a week since then with only a few weeks off here and there for vacation. I took a week off last week and I am now going to "downsize" to one post per week on Tuesdays.

The experience has been fun and very much a learning one. I appreciate professional writers much more than I did. I feel I've written many of my posts in haste, and did not express them as clearly as I should have. I now know some of the challenges of putting ideas forth and getting facts right. Even with only two posts a week, I put in a lot of time for research. Yet I think my own posts give new ideas and fresh outlooks.

Blogging is a very important tool in our world now for the regular guy to be able to express him/her-self, previously often rejected by commercial publishers who think primarily of the bottom line. Ironically, it's the thinking of profit that motivates these publishers to market sucessfully, which I don't. So the limitations in blogging are not so much from expression but of being heard by more than a few people. But I know from the comments I've received that I've had the opportunity to share, and I'm very happy for that.

Now I'd like to use some of the research I've been doing for a book on Intelligent Design Theory. Though I'll probably use some of the things I've already written, it will be in a more organized, compact form. Though I've self-published a few fiction books I've written, I'd like to submit this one to a commercial publisher. I know I could not distribute any book like this very widely on my own. I know it's hard to get published in the industry, but it doesn't happen if you don't try.

Blogging is a wonderful way to express frustrations and offer suggestions that might make a difference. I am thankful for the opportunity and hope to continue. Once a week, that is, one week at a time.

Moore's Capitalism

We went and saw Michael Moore's new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, over the weekend. His website is HERE and gives links to his movies. The main premise is that most of Americans (99%) have been robbed by the richest Americans (1%). This, he portrays, has been mostly by corporate greed and not only evasion of taxes by the wealthy but by theft of taxpayer money through last year's government bailout.

Moore is probably right about many things, but as an AP article relates, he could have improved his movie by giving a wider, more nuanced picture. For one thing, he wants Americans to protest and even rebel against financial institutions, but a great many Americans are tied to these, not only through corporate America in employment but in their retirement funds. An estimated 50 million have 401(k)'s. In some ways, they want these companies to gain, gain, gain. How can they rebel? (2019 Update: previous links to AP article and 401(k) data are no longer accessible.)

Another example of a simplified idea is that of people being "hypnotized" into believing that Capitalism is good. The hypnotizers are the rich who have made it, making the others think it is OK because they themselves may someday be rich. But Moore claims the rich never intended to share. This strikes one as a conspiracy theory, and Capitalism in actuality seems much more individualistic. Moore is correct in pointing unashamedly to the sin of greed (he even interviews priests). But anyone who lusts for money and the power it gives them has the same problem. The rich are only the ones who actually made it (although perhaps have unique skills which should be used for the greater good).

At least Moore is willing to bring these problems into the open. Americans have been victimized, there is no doubt. The pictures of blighted neighborhoods are very sad, and one wonders how we could have sunk so low. And yet, laborers have struggled throughout history, being slaves, serfs, peasants, and eventually workers at the whims of industrialists known as robber barons (Wikipedia description HERE), such as John Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. Greed seems to be a sad part of human nature.

Moore does make a point about our attitudes concerning Capitalism. Too many people, and as far as I can tell this includes many Christians, hold this economic system so important that they put it before God's ways, or at least appear that way. Certain TV money talk-show hosts come to mind as an example. Christ has said we can't serve both God and money, as in Matthew 6 in the Bible (NABRE)). Thus, I think, we get to the deeper nature of what is wrong. The bigger priority is not in rebelling to get a bigger piece of the pie, but in making God's way first in our lives.

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I won't be posting next week because I have to prepare for a speaking engagement concerning Intelligent Design Theory. I've also just started volunteering again for English as a Second Language, and that will involve preparation and meeting time. That's the beauty of a blog--we can make our own rules. Hope to meet you here again in a few weeks!

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Image from http://www.free-clipart.net/ . (2019 Update: image link no longer accessible.)

Proof of God

I've been writing about the progress of science and how it has replaced some of the ideas of the ancient philosophers. Yet the Church believes God is accessible to humans through reason. That is still true, but I think science is changing the details of how He is found through reason. Aristotle thought the universe was eternal. Now there is evidence of a Big Bang, which means there was a beginning to the universe. Aristotle promoted the idea of "spontaneous generation," in which living things continually arise from non-living. Biologist Louis Pasteur in the 1800's proved that life now comes only from other life (Wikipedia biography HERE).

Our new findings of cell complexity and specificity point to a Creator. Anyone who knows the details of the cell and the vast numbers involved in the improbability that it would form by chance should surely recognize that only an intelligence could make such a thing.

A recent article about Fr. Robert Spitzer, "New astrophysical discoveries leave little to no room for Atheism," Catholic News Agency, Sept. 30, 2009, reports on a conference at the John Paul II Center for the New Evangelization in Denver, CO.  Fr. Spitzer brings the latest in cosmology to religious people to show how science and theology can fit together. He speaks about the amazing fine-tuning of the universe, and how in many ways it may not have formed the way it has.

Yet, at the bottom of the CNA article about Fr. Spitzer are comments which various persons have left, and they show that these commenters do not accept what Fr. Spitzer is saying. They give alternate theories which include infinite universes, so that ours is nothing special. They mock the priest's reasoning. (2019 Update: the article is still accessible but the comments are no longer there.)

This mindset is common in our day and is very telling. The point I have been trying to make in the last few posts is that proof of God in scientific terms does not get to the very bottom of belief. The Apostle Paul wrote of the problems even in his day,

20 Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made. As a result, they have no excuse;
21 for although they knew God they did not accord him glory as God or give him thanks. Instead, they became vain in their reasoning, and their senseless minds were darkened.

Romans 1 (NABRE).

The people to whom Paul refers made false idols from wood and stone and worshiped them. In our day the falsehood is in a mindset that puts materialism as the base of being and scientific research as the only answer to life's questions. Yet Paul's words are as true today as they were then when it comes to the rejection of God by some people. It is interesting that Paul states in verse 21, "although they knew Him." We may think that disbelief comes from not knowing, but Paul does not think so. There is something else going on, and the word "vain" describes their reasoning. Eventually, their minds were darkened, and things went downhill from there.

As I said in a previous post, faith is a gift from God. It is a precious gift, and I believe He gives Christians important roles in the process of bringing more persons to Himself. Some people have come to faith by perceiving the wonders of nature, and that is fine. But I don't think the wonders of nature are going to convince everyone. In that case, Christians can pray for unbelievers and share what Christ has done for us in our lives and our hearts. God has many facets, and we should try to learn more about them ourselves as we help others understand.