Obama and Star Wars

One of the best youtube videos I've seen all week:



But you'll want to go ahead and skip the part after the star wars video as it is kind of dry and a waste of time.

Why Believe in God?

There's a new ad campaign out for the Christmas Holidays geared at making Humanists and Atheists feel less "alone" during a time of one of the largest worldwide yearly religious celebrations. An ad in the Washington, D.C. area will be run that says "why believe in God? Be good for goodness sake?". Read more about the article here

The ad itself is just like most postmodern thought: self-defeating. It says to be "good" but how is one to gauge what is "good" without some sort of objective moral standard? Codes of morality are drawn in every culture from some sort of religious convictions, not exclusive to Christianity of course.

At the creation of the world, God said that His work was "good" and set the standard that only He can name what is good, and what He creates is good. After the fall of man, only Christ was able to be "good" as a human and has since given us the ability to be "good" because of His goodness. If you don't believe any of that, you may follow a different religion, but if you follow no religion and claim to be Atheist, a question arises of how to determine what is "good".

Whenever man does "what is right in his own eyes" (Judges 21:25) there is a departure from what is truly good - just look at the Garden of Eden. So to attempt to just be "good" based on one's own understanding of the world and speculation drawn from emotions evoked by one's worldview is to do exactly "what is right in one's own eyes".

Why do Atheists have problems with holidays? Because deep in their heart they know that there is something outside of them that holds answers unknown to all of mankind (Rom 1:18-21), and Holidays are a loud reminder of the truth they attempt to supress.

Freedom is slipping away...

Some people say that homosexuality, if it is genetic, should "die out" naturally. After all, it would be difficult for homosexual people to pass on the gene, as it takes male and female to reproduce. Regardless of whether it will die out in the long run (which of course we know it won't - it's been around since the earliest history), we can see that public schools (your tax dollars at work) are encouraging children to "embrace gayness" in a whole new way.

Here are two examples:
1. The well-known "David Parker" story - a man is imprisoned and his child is beaten at school because of his stand against homosexuality.
2. Schools are making KINDERGARTEN students sign a "gay acceptance" commitment!

It is very good to teach children not to respond hatefully or violently to ANY person they encounter, as everyone should learn to respond to others in love. However, there is a major problem with what is happening in the public schools now.

The school is infringing upon the parents' rights to decide what and when to teach their children, as well as denying religious freedom to disagree with a lifestyle based on personal faith values. By deciding that a four to five year old child has to sign a document committing to not using "anti-homosexual" language says that this child is not allowed the FREEDOM OF SPEECH to express his opposition to homosexuality, should he hold such a view. Furthermore, a child that young has no view about homosexuality and shouldn't be taught such things.

This is child molestation, to teach a young and innocent 4 year old mind about sexual intercourse. He or she at that age is still grasping some vague concepts about life and food and words, and to plunge the young mind into the depths of sexuality is mental abuse. Even a child living with a homosexual couple is probably not seeing what takes place in the bedroom, and has no need to. Should the parents of these children decide to begin discussing matters of sex with their children is up to the parents, but absolutely is beyond the rights of the public school system.

This is a case where the tax payers' dollars are going to work against the tax payers' freedom. It's a shame that it would come to this, but to see a man imprisoned because he does not believe homosexuality is right is a sad picture of the communist direction our country is heading. To see a child beaten by his peers because his father does not condone homosexuality is no different than the days when a person was beaten for being homosexual. The news would actually cover the story if the child was beaten because his father was homosexual, and the case would not rest until there was retribution.

The Queer Bible Commentary (actual name)

A friend of mine brought to my attention this Bible commentary, called the "Queer Bible Commentary" (official title). Amazon.com's description of the book includes the following:

Contributors draw on feminist, queer, deconstructionist, utopian theories, the social sciences and historical-critical discourses. The focus is both how reading from lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender perspectives affect the reading and interpretation of biblical texts

One thing worth noting - how one reads or interprets something does not directly affect the truthfulness of the sentences that are included therein. For example, if on a bright, sunny Wednesday, one reads the sentence "today it is raining" from a weather report written on a rainy Tuesday, he or she may think "hey this is wrong! It's not raining today!" But it does not mean that it did not rain Tuesday. The individual's worldview-influenced evaluation of the weather report does not affect the factual nature of the report itself, and the same should be applied to other readings. It does not matter what side of the issue you stand on - the fact is that the Bible has an intended meaning, it's not just a story book with some fun stuff and whacky, vague theories - it actually has an intended truth in each part. No one should approach it with the mentality that one reading is right for one person, but another completely opposing reading is right for the other. In other words, someone is right, and someone is wrong, and in order to receive a more accurate reading, it should always be read in context.

On a side note, the commentary is apparently from a day before the term "queer" was used most often in a derogatory sense, which is why a book that is very "PC" is also ironically very non-PC in its language.