The UmBlog

I am an american evangelical raised in the fundamentalist strain of the faith. I had the book, The Fundamentals , for awhile, but I never read it. Lately, some of the sacred cows I used to defend vigorously, have lost their luster. This isn't new for me. I no longer think, like I told a poor girl in my high school youth group that listening to Pink Floyd means no salvation for her soul. I am an idiot. Now I like Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, too. But I elevated chaff to wheat. Miscellany to necessary. Dust to Must. Like then, so now, things I presumed gold looks more like pyrite. I don't like feeling foolish. But I am a fool, and, I feel I need to document my change in thinking. I do think I'm really learning to trust God's constant refrain in the Bible, "Fear not." There are three issues I've stopped fearing. Number One: When I went to the Christian liberal arts college my freshman year, I was somewhat scandalized, really scandalized, but then really lib...

Darwin's Ghosts is like a walk through a garden where one stops at the prettiest flowers then flits to other ones down the path. It's enjoyable and a pleasant way to spend an afternoon, but it's not strenuous. The sub-title of the book is "The secret history of evolution ." I thought I would learn more than I did about Darwin's forerunners, which is not to say I didn't learn, but not as much as I expected. Stott expanded on Darwin's own afterword in his later editions of The Origin of Species , which is included as an appendix in this book, cherry-picking eleven or twelve from his list. Between Aristotle and Wallace, I learned about Jahiz in Baghdad, Leonardo DaVinci , the salons of Paris, a couple odd balls, including a guy in Kentucky. I'm fond of history and biographies, so a series of biographies in a large history, was a delight for me. But with only 400 pages to work in, the depths of the biographies are adequate but not great. In the ...

This is not the first book I've attempted by C. John Collins , but at least I finished this one. It is not that his books are bad, it's that they are like pound cake , too rich. Pound cake has a pound of butter and a pound of sugar to go with a pound of eggs and a pound of flour. Too much of something that rich makes me sick. I need to eat it in small portions when its richness can be appreciated. Normally, I can digest in a night or two a book just over 150 pages. Collins's book did not let me do that. I had to put the book down and process after every few subsections in his chapters. Part of the reason I chose to study for a degree in biology was that even as a boy, I was really concerned with the challenge Darwin presents to those who would take Genesis as a somewhat reliable guide to the earth's and life's origins. He writes partly in response to Francis Collins and the work of the group Biologos which seeks to harmonize origins science with Christianity. C. J...

Stephen Meyer hopes this book has the impact that Darwin's Origin of Species has had on the world. I don't think Signature in the Cell stands alone in the way Origin does, but in concert with all the other books ( Darwin's Black Box by Behe) from practicing scientist supporting Intelligent Design, it is a major player. Will intelligent design be the next scientific revolution as Kuhn describes them ? I hope so. Scientifically, Meyer's arguments are tight, but the philosophical hurdle may be too much for predominantly agnostic and atheistic scientific high priesthood. According to one worldview, mind is the primary or ultimate reality. On this view, material reality either issues from a preexisting mind, or it is shaped by a preexistent intelligence, or both. Mind, not matter, is, therefore, the prime or ultimate reality - the entity from which everything else comes, or at least the entity with the capacity to shape the material world. Plato, Aristotle, the Roman Stoic...

I read a good book, recently sent to me for review by Thomas Nelson, called The Search for God and Guinness: A biography of the beer that changed the world by Stephen Mansfield. His purpose for writing the book is best summed up at the end in the bibliography. Mansfield writes, ...my purpose has been simply to describe the faith and generosity of Guinness. Details of brewing, controversies over geneaologies, and gossip about the Guinness elite I have left to others. pp. 265-6 The reader learns plenty about the beer brewers in the family but also about the clergy branch and the banking branch. We don't learn as much about the banking/political branch, but we learn so much about the clergy branch. One Guinness in particular stands out because of his enormous influence on the religious revivals of the 1800's. Mansfield asserts that Henry Grattan Guinness was a contemporary of D.L. Moody and as effective, if not more so, than Moody in winning souls to Christ. He and his wife ...

Nazi propaganda film arguing against violating the law of natural selection and letting the disabled suffer its consequences. Unlike Hitler, however, Jesus wants us to care for the least of these. HT: Evolution News and Views update: From Uncommon Descent , more context... If we look specifically at the history of the euthanasia movement, just about all historians who have examined it admit that Darwinism and eugenics played a key role in undermining the Judeo-Christian sanctity-of-life ethic. The first person in Germany to promote killing the disabled was the biologist Ernst Haeckel, the leading nineteenth-century German Darwinist. Almost all early proponents of euthanasia—not only in Germany, but also in Britain and the United States—were avid Darwinists who claimed that Darwinism supported their ideology, as Ian Dowbiggin, Nick Kemp, Udo Benzenhöfer, and many other historians have clearly demonstrated. Hans-Walter Schmuhl, a German historian who is an expert on the Nazi euthanasia p...

I am finally ready to continue my genocide and tyrant reading by touching the 3rd rail of Nazi Germany and Hitler. At the library I picked up the abridged version of this classic, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny , Abridged Edition, Alan Bullock, Harper Perennial, 1991, originally written in 1962. This particular quote stood out to me in light of the all the press Ben Stein's documentary, Expelled is generating. Not only does Stein embarrass the Darwinian thought police of academia, but he also draws a connection between Darwinism and Hitler's " final solution ". I don't know if anyone bloviating over this accusation has actually read Hitler's propaganda piece, My Struggle, or Mein Kampf . I haven't either. but this biography quotes from it not knowing that a documentary in 2008 would make such accusations. So consider this quote in the context of Hitler's anti-Semitism. Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, “The idea of struggle is as old as life itself, for life is...

These posts appear in the shared feeds section all week here at the Umblog. Remember this post, Thank God for Mitt Romney ? Well Fox news had 21 questions on Mormonism for the LDS to answer. And now the apologists are creating a midrash on those answers. Evidence Ministries  chimes in.  Parchment and Pen blogger Rob Bowman also. Don't forget Mormon Coffee (did you catch the entendre there?). James White digs the details and goes in depth. Bonus: How about the LDS revelation reversing its racist stance on blacks in the priesthood. Now it's being discussed on the Sunday morning political shows, see the Acton blog . Just because you are born-again, and not a Mormon, doesn't mean you won't fall under the sway of bad leadership. My friends offer some organizational psychology in a post called Reality and Good Leadership . Some people may perceive homeschoolers as cultists. They aren't usually. Check out this family of 10 . Read this interview with the YWAM Arvada dir...

Since not every reader visits this blog and notices the shared feeds section at the top, I'd like to share some of my favorites of the past week. Sunday 1-At An Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution , Steve Martin attempts to define the nuances of the word "evolution" to his fellow Christians. He begins Much of the confusion in the evolution debate lies in the meaning of the word “evolution”. Since it can have several different meanings, and even the scientific definition of evolution can include several distinct components, it is not surprising that many confusing and confused arguments are articulated. Certainly the conversation is very difficult when conversation partners discussing evolution do not share the same definition, conflate several of the definitions, or elevate one component of evolution to be descriptive of the whole. Monday 2-At Evolution News and Views , Catholic evolution proponent and professor at Brown U. Ken Miller is challenged for claiming to much. Th...

I enjoy the work of Intelligent Design folks, but I also appreciate this philosophical tweak of them by analogy... Once again, the proposed material mechanisms of meteorology might be adequate for making extremely short-term predictions. But the inability of atmohsphereic scientists to make accurate long-term predictions based on these mechanisms clearly demonstrates that natural processes alone are incapable of producing complex weather systems. Anything more than about 15 days out has all of the marks of being designed by an intelligent agency. Astronomers don’t seem to have a problem making long-term predictions based on the known laws of nature. In fact, I have a program on my computer called Starry Night that can determine, with absolute precision, the exact location of any heavenly body at any point in time - backwards or forwards! And not just natural objects like planets and moons, but man-made satellites as well. But the long-term behavior of earth’s atmosphere, on the ...

from the point n astute reader noted that a Darwinist proponent would respond with their standard mantra, "absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence,” while holding that, in regards to God, “absence of evidence IS evidence of absence.” He’s quite right, as I’ve found in a number of dialogues with materialists. When I point out their little double standard the fun begins.

forget labradoodles, how about cogs and dats and kuppies and pittens? click the title for the article... Brazilian student Cassia Aparecida de Souza, 18, claims her cat's offspring has been born with dog traits last Friday, three months after mating with a neighbour's dog in the Brazilian city of Passo Fundo. so if this isn't a hoax...who benefits more from this genetics violation? the creationists or the evolutionists? IT IS A HOAX!

quotes at the Evangelical Outpost All traits in existence across the entire animal and vegetable kingdoms get the same seven word explanation: Whatever needs an explanation "arose by accident and was selected for." How did the elephant get its trunk? It ABAAWSF. How did ants appear? They ABAAWSF. How did the leopard get its spots? ABAAWSF. Etcetera, ad infinitum. -- Tom Bethell summing up the "faith" of neo-Darwinists. °°°°°° Being hostile to virginity is the ultimate misogyny. It means sneering at the innocence of children, and laughing at women who want sex to mean something more than just a hookup. -- Wendy Shalit, quoted in Rachel Kramer Bussel's Village Voice column, "Like a Virgin: The Case Against Having Sex." (HT: The Dawn Patrol )