News Snippets From All Beats

An Ohio school teacher ordered to remove a tapestry of the Ten Commandments from his classroom complied, but refuses to obey an order to remove his Bible from off his desk. Science teacher John Freshwater has taught for 20 years, but has never taught from, or preached out of, his Bible to students. He contends that he is being unfairly discriminated against in what amounts to viewpoint discrimination and infringement on his sincerely held religious beliefs.

Dave Daubenmire of Pass The Salt Ministries is a spokesman for Freshwater, and he made this timely observation:

Please notice that the attack on religious freedom in America is on Christianity. No one is trying to silence the religious freedom of Muslims or atheists or humanists. Quite the contrary. We are told to ‘understand’ Muslims, to be sensitive to the atheists and to tolerate the humanists and their various denominations of ‘isms’ (environmentalism, feminism, secularism, socialism, communism), which we teach openly in our schools. ¹

Students at the school are responding to the religious persecution by supporting the popular teacher. They are using cell phones, the internet, and other means to organize a “take-your-Bible-to-school day.”²

Notes:

^1. World Net Daily, “Students proclaim ‘take-your-Bible’ day Rally in support of teacher ordered to hide Good Book,“

April 18, 2008. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=61903

^2. Alexander J. Sheffrin, “Ohio Teacher Refuses to Remove Bible From Classroom,” Christian Post,April 18, 2008.

http://www.christianpost.com/article/20080418/32015_Ohio_Teacher_

Refuses_to_Remove_Bible_From_Classroom.htm

Ben Stein’s film “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” set for release April 18, is not a case made for the creation of man, or even for intelligent design. Its focus is the persecution educators and scientists are subjected to for challenging the theory of evolution. The film is the result of interviews conducted over a period of two years with more than 150 educators and scientists who doubt the theory is an explanation for the origin of life. The film also contains interviews with leading proponents of the theory that include Richard Dawkins. As the title of the film implies, rigorous and open examination of the evidence used to support natural selection is considered unacceptable, and in many instances it brings retaliation and ruined careers.

Nevertheless, the number of scientists who have weighed the evidence and found it wanting, and are willing to go public, continues to grow. Since 2001, over 700 scientists have singed the “Scientific Dissent from Darwinism” list proclaiming they are “skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life.”¹

As the Darwinian Evolution unravels under scientific scrutiny, Walt Ruloff, Executive Producer of “Expelled,” observes that the only thing holding it together is “politics”.² In the world of research grants, text book publishers, and careers that’s easy to appreciate, but there is another aspect of Darwinian Evolution that has become a gigantic leap of blind faith exhibiting something on the order of a religious adherence. And that places the theory where it belongs, and where it is most easily dispatched. Take for example how it is addressed in this section from the feature article “Immediate Man” running on The Bible Beats; which shows various ways the Bible defeats the theory:

Evolving Inanimate Objects: A Standard the Theory Cannot Meet

The foregoing verse [Gen. 1:26] presenting the creation of man as man is not an anomaly. There are no less than eight verses in the first two chapters of Genesis that demand immediate man in order to be intelligible to the text (i.e. Gen. 1:26, 27; 2:3, 7, 8, 15, 16), and if only one of them should be chosen for memories sake it would have to be this one:

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul (Gen 2:7).

At one time, and in one instance, man was fully formed up to his nostrils before he had any life in him at all-no living cells struggling for survival, no grotesque mutating and mindless devouring as protoplasm. God completely formed him out to the dust of the ground and then breathed into him the breath of life, and by miraculous means man became a living soul; not an intermediate soul, not half a soul, but a living human soul in its entirety starting life in the image of God. The scriptures give us an unmistakable assurance of a straight forward and literal account of creation for fowl, animals, and man; and they may even provide us with something more.³

The article does provide more by use of unique illustrations, and seemingly unrelated characters like Jonah, to show God’s creation of mankind is a literal account in Genesis. The treatment is both good study for the faithful, and particularly useful to dispel the idea that the Bible is harmonious with evolution as the mechanism God used in creating life.

Notes:

^1. Troy Anderson, “Ben Stein Makes His Case for Doubting Darwin,” Daily News, April 5, 2008.

^2. Ibid.

^3. David Dansker, “Immediate Man,” The Bible Beats.com, February 16, 2008.

This just in: Guillermo Gonzalez, author of The Privileged Planet, has been denied his appeal for tenure at Iowa State University, and has 20 days to appeal. This story is a must read, if for no other reason than to see an example of why we no longer call it “higher” education:

“[Gonzalez] is very creative, intelligent and knowledgeable, highly productive scientifically and an excellent teacher,” wrote John Hauptman, a colleague to the ID advocate, in an editorial. “An assistant professor at a university has every right to pursue whatever investigations he or she so chooses to investigate. There must be no bounds, no restrictions and no penalties for research of any kind.

“[But] intelligent design is not even a theory. It has not made its first prediction, nor suffered its first test by measurement. Its proponents can call it anything they like, but it is not science,” added Hauptman. “It is purely a question of what is science and what is not, and a physics department is not obligated to support notions that do not even begin to meet scientific standards.”

This out of the same mouth, at the same time!

David Dansker

See the story at: Christian Post.com

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