Kyrie Eleison

21 Radicals and Their Worldviews Ruling America From The Grave

2009-09-23T16:38:00.000-07:00

Grave Influence

In his new book, "Grave Influence", Brannon Howse reveals how the worldviews of 21 dead people are still influencing every aspect of American life and vying for the hearts and minds of adults and students. Whether we are discussing, law, science, economics, history, family, social issues, education or religion, the people and worldviews seeking to further their agenda in these disciplines are almost always connected back to four major forces:

Occultism/pagan spirituality,

The apostate church,

The educational establishment and

Government/corporations.

Through this book you will come to understand the oppositions worldview, heroes, goals, strategies, masking terms, networks and targets. Those who share the worldviews of these 21 enemies of our constitutional republic and Biblical worldview do not want their agenda and its consequences to be revealed to the American people. Above all, they do not want us to equip and train our children and grandchildren with a Biblical worldview by which to recognize, reject, and fight against their seductive and destructive lies. This book will equip you to do just that as Brannon gives specific and pro-active responses you can take to make this the finest hour for the American church.

Here is a preview 0f what Brannon Howse has to tells in his latest book:

Today's Pastors:

Most pastors, church staff, and Sunday school teachers are products of a secular school system that did not warn them about the worldviews of the influential people covered in this book. Schools, for the most part, promoted many of their ideas. Even pastors who attended seminary did not learn the significance of the competing worldviews and anti-biblical philosophies represented by such people, and most seminaries did not teach apologetics or a comprehensive Biblical worldview. Thus today, even most of America's conservative pastors are ill-equipped to protect their flock against the worldviews of these 21 radicals.

Fabian Socialism:

In the end, Fabian Socialists don't really want to own it if they can control it, and all they need to control it is a financial crisis that allows them to change laws, inflate the currency, and buy stock in corporations. Whether you call it nationalizing an industry or corporate fascism, the result is the same-the death of freedom and private property rights.

Joan Robinson, a Marxist economist who worked with Keynes, declared that "the differences between Marx and Keynes are only verbal." I contend that many elected officials at the state and federal level are Fabian socialists committed to bring about a social revolution in America by deliberately creating an environment in which chaos and crisis can flourish for the purpose of bigger government-and to move us toward globalism.

The Re-distribution of Wealth:

Until they can completely transform America into welfare-State Capitalism, politicians will take advantage of the wealth generated by capitalism to gain votes by redistributing it to the masses.

The Deconstructionists in the Culture and Within the Church:

Postmodernists seek to deconstruct western society by denying absolute truth even in the disciplines of reading and writing. Postmodernists within the American Church deconstruct Christianity-as did Kierkegaard-by proclaiming that the Bible is not the absolute, inerrant, divinely inspired Word of God. And the Emergent Church is gaining ground in spreading this false church.

There are other symptoms of deconstructionism as well. Deconstructionists tell us America was founded by rich, white men who wrote our founding documents in order to control the masses and implement an evil capitalist worldview by which to enrich themselves at the expense the majority. Many deconstructionists within the Church add that rich, white men also founded the Church as we know it and defended certain Biblical theology and doctrines in order to control and manipulate the masses while commercializing the Church for their own personal gain.

The Compromise of the Republican and Democratic Parties:

The leaders in the educational establishment, the apostate Church, occultism/pagan spirituality, or the government-corporate complex want the idea of social and spiritual evolution embraced worldwide in order to bring about their desired "new order" or "new world order." Secular humanist and Fabian Socialist Julian Huxley (brother of Aldous) was the First Director General of the United Nations Educational, Science, and Culture Organization (UNESCO). He explained, "The task is to help the emergence of a single world culture…"[1]
This "task" is even at work in America's political arena. Bill Clinton's mentor and former professor Carrol Quigley made this clear in his book, Tragedy and Hope:

The chief problem of American political life...has been how to make the two Congressional parties more national and international. The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can "throw the rascals out" at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.[2]

Sustainable Development:

The question for humanistic leaders as the world neared the 21st century was how to bring the worldviews, values, and agendas of the 21 people we examine in this book to reality through legislation, international treaties, agreements, and public policy. Their agenda could not be optional but compulsory, and it must be backed up with rewards for those who comply and punishment and reprisal for those who dissent. It must be international, not regional. So, after years of writing papers and holding conferences, the major world players-including America-met for the 1992 United Nation's Earth Summit in Brazil. The summit meeting crafted a laudable-sounding term to mask their real intentions. In true Orwellian style, "sustainable development" became the new buzzword.

The end game of sustainable development is global governance.

Soft Despotism:

Soft despotism often occurs because the people have forgotten-or never were educated-about the true purpose and intent of the law. When a people have become sufficiently ignorant and selfish, they vote for politicians who promise to offer them the government trough. Politicians gladly plunder some for the benefit of their special interest groups and voting blocs, all while taking advantage of constituents' ignorance and selfishness in order to garner still more power and control by making people more and more dependent upon them and the government.

Soft despotism is furthered through an incestuous and mutually beneficial relationship between judges and politicians to the detriment of freedom-loving people and their liberty and property. The welfare state in America has gone a long way toward encouraging people to vote themselves a raise by voting for politicians who promise the most government handouts.

Saul Alinsky, Hillary Clinton, President Obama, The Cloward-Piven Strategy and ACORN:

Class envy, race-baiting, anti-Christian bigotry, and redistribution of wealth describe the change for which Alinksy was calling.

Hillary Clinton wrote her senior thesis at Wellesley College on Alinsky's strategies. President Obama, while at Harvard, attended the Industrial Areas Foundation, a group founded by Alinsky, and when he returned to Chicago, Obama taught Saul Alinsky's worldview and strategies.

After studying Alinsky, for instance, Professor Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven wrote an article in the May 2, 1966, far-left magazine, The Nation. This husband-and-wife pair of radical socialists from Columbia University developed the Cloward-Piven Strategy, which advocates implementing socialism by swamping the welfare system of states as well as the federal government with new recipients.

Among their many accomplishments, Cloward and Piven inspired an activist named George Wiley to found a liberal organization that set in motion a startling chain reaction. Wiley's work influenced Wade Rathke who, along with Bill Ayers, as a member of the Radical Students for a Democratic Society. Rathke, in turn, started the now infamous ACORN.

The Two Tracks to Globalism:

There have been two tracks to globalism for many years-political and spiritual. Now the two tracks have become one as politicians use religion to promote globalism and religious leaders become partners with politicians and promote the United Nations.

Tony Blair, the former prime minister of Great Britain and member of the Fabian socialist Labor Party, is another example of a politician who uses the language of pagan spirituality. As he tours the world promoting the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, he has given numerous interviews about globalism and the need for the religions of the world to "come together."

Pastor Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, has also endorsed the Tony Blair Foundation and serves on his Advisory Board.

One Connection Between The Apostate Church and Big Government:

The pastors and authors of one of America's fastest growing spiritual movements, the Emergent Church, sing the praises of socialism. As I'll explain in more detail later, the Emergent Church champions the neo-Marxist call for a utopian society through spiritual evolution where good and evil merge to form a "better" third option. This idea derives from the belief system of philosophers such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and finds its contemporary manifestation in the "Third Way" movement of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. In the Third Way, capitalism, socialism, and communism merge to form a misanthropic combination of the three. Many republicans agree with this philosophy. This blending is now represented in the terms "the New World Order" and "the new enlightenment."

One-World Spirituality:

The three worldviews that are merging into a dominant new worldview embraced on a global scale include evolutionary humanism, Hindu pantheism, and occultism have merged to create a worldview I call One-World Spirituality. The theology of this worldview is pantheism; the philosophy is pagan spirituality; the biology is Darwinian evolution; the economic system is socialism, the politics is globalism, and the activism of this worldview is centered on radical environmentalism and political correctness (cultural Marxism). The goals of this One-World Spirituality are just what we've outlined before: a one-world government, one-world religion, and one-world economic system.

The social implications of pagan spirituality are stunning. If we are all one, no individual or nation should be better or worse off than anyone else, and thus the only acceptable economic worldview is socialism, the attempt to equalize the distribution of wealth.

European Christianity's Influence on America's Liberal Churches:

History screams that ideas have consequences, that worldview matters. Most Germans, including German Christians, willingly traveled the road to Hitler's hell, largely because they had lost the courage of their convictions. They had sold out to paganism, pragmatism, and a new gospel that promised everything and required nothing.

Does this not sound like churches, seminaries, Christian colleges, and some of the best-selling Christian authors in America? Wellhausen's liberal philosophy eventually jumped the ocean, became popular on the East Coast, and has spread throughout the United States. Many American Christians seem all too willing to go down a path that will surely lead to the destruction of a once great nation. Incredibly, many self-professing Christians are not just following but leading the way over the cliff.

A domineering false church is rising, largely due to pansies in the pulpit.

Cultural Marxism in America:

Cultural Marxism is what most Americans know only as "political correctness," but it is the worldview of today's professors, leading educators, members of the media, numerous self-professing Christians, and almost every politician. Political correctness is a speech code the cultural elite have forced on America to deny the existence of God and His authority in all areas of life. Words have meanings, and words that reflect absolute moral truth based on the character and nature of God are considered bigoted, intolerant, and politically incorrect.

One of the Consequences of America's Educational System:

In a sad irony, many retired teachers will experience first-hand the brutal, inhumane consequences of the worldview they inculcated into their pupils through situational ethics courses. Americans will not likely escape the consequences of their duplicity or apathy. Whether parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, elected officials, pastors, Sunday school teachers, journalists, butchers, bakers, or candlestick makers, they will find that Aristotle was correct when he said, "All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth."

Feminism:

Feminism has accomplished its goals-the destruction of the American family through the destruction of the father and the resulting the rise of the welfare state.

The bottom line is that feminism has been a tool of the humanists to destroy the family. Leading humanist Paul Kurtz said, "Humanism and feminism are inextricably interwoven."[3] Humanists and Communists have sought the destruction of the American family because they know that, for America, the family has been the instrument for passing on Christian values and a Biblical worldview-the source and foundation of our freedoms and Constitutional Republic.

Socialism:

Liberals can always claim they oppose injustice and cruelty, but no matter how pure their motives, socialism always ends in dehumanization. Human value is reduced to the level of whether individuals are productive or unproductive resources.

Government Sponsored Youth Volunteerism:

Throughout history, communist and Marxist leaders have declared that they need two things for a successful revolution. The first is some kind of crisis, such as a financial crisis, and the second is the youth of the middle class.

Mandatory volunteerism has a generational goal as well as the immediate plan to control American youth. It is looking for future leaders for the socialist, utopian regime. The GIVE Act includes funding for selected students to go on to an intensive training program conducted by Alinsky-like organizations, such as Public Allies(see chapter 20). This training lasts several months, and those involved are provided with healthcare, a stipend, and money for their education.

One of the leading goals of youth service is to brainwash students into the worldview of Saul Alinsky,(chapter 20) which includes pitting the Haves against the Have-nots in order to stir up a protest movement for the re-distribution of wealth.

A Nation That Murders Its Own Children Eventually Murders Itself:

What happened in Germany is now possible in America as the barrier of a Christian worldview has largely been removed from the American conscience. Just before he died, Dr. Leo Alexander, chief medical assistant to the prosecution at the Nuremberg trials, observed about the U. S., "It is much like Germany in the Twenties and Thirties. The barriers against killing are coming down."[4]

The foundation was laid for the slaughter of five million Jews and six million non-Jews not by the Nazi Party, but by the German parents of disabled German children and family members of the mentally ill and disturbed.

Hugh Gallagher confirms it "would be a mistake to call [the German euthanasia experience] a Nazi program. It was not. The program was conceived by physicians and operated by them. They did the killing."[5]

Keep in mind that this is German people killing German people through what they believed were "mercy killings."

Euthanasia was thought to be a blessing and a merciful act that was reserved for "true" Germans. That is until a few years after the German euthanasia program was established. World War II had begun and all needed resources were needed to fund the war. Jews who had been denied a "mercy death" were now going to be exterminated by what the German people and doctors had created.

The German people learned that selfishness and moral relativism laid the foundation for the slaughter of more than 11 million people. What has America's slaughter of 50 million unborn babies laid the foundation for?

Ideas have consequences, and once a nation becomes willing to murder its own children, the people will eventually murder each other. Fully nationalized healthcare in America will ultimately bring with it the euthanization of seniors who supported abortion on demand or the right to die. The right to die is becoming the duty to die.

The ACLU:

In concluding this review of the Roger Baldwin's legacy, I'll add that-besides fronting for communism, undermining American ideals, and crusading relentlessly against the freedoms we hold dear-the organization also shows a vile level of bad taste in the causes it celebrates. In 1978, the ACLU rabidly defended "the right of American Nazis to march through a predominantly Jewish suburb of Chicago."[6]

So may I submit to you my suggestion for an alternate name to go with the initials ACLU? It may help you remember the organization's real agenda: American Communist and Leftist Union.

Click here to order your copy of Grave Influence today:
http://www.worldviewweekend.com/secure/store/product.php?ProductID=1044

To schedule Brannon Howse for a radio or television interview on his new book, please e-mail us at: interviews@worldviewweekend.com

Here is the list of twenty-one for which Brannon has dug up worldview facts you must know and prepare to oppose: Saul Alinsky, Karl Marx, John Dewey, John Maynard Keynes, Aldous Huxley, Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Margaret Sanger, William James, Alice Bailey, Helen Schucman, Sigmund Freud, Alfred Kinsey, Benjamin Bloom, B.F. Skinner, The Frankfurt School, Soren Kierkegaard, Julius Wellhausen, Christopher Columbus Langdell, Betty Friedan and Roger Baldwin

Bangs Have Bangers, Rigs Have Riggers, and Information Has An Informer

2009-09-02T18:13:00.000-07:00

In celebration of the 150th anniversary of Darwin's "Origin of the Species", the Living Waters ministry has produced a special edition of the book. A special campaign is planned to distribute the book, FREE, on college campuses on November 29th, 2009. The intro to that special edition is posted here.

Understanding Six Worldviews that Rule the World*

2009-08-29T10:15:00.000-07:00

By Dr. David Noebel

President, Summit Ministries

Back in the early 1990s, Dr. James Dobson and Gary Bauer sought to identify what they saw happening to Christian young people in the United States. Their conclusion was that "nothing short of a great Civil War of Values rages today throughout North America. Two sides with vastly differing and incompatible worldviews are locked in a bitter conflict that permeates every level of society."[i] The war, as Dobson and Bauer put it, is a struggle "for the hearts and minds of people. It is a war over ideas."[ii]

On one side is the Christian worldview, the foundation of Western civilization. On the other side are five worldviews: Islam, Secular Humanism, Marxism, Cosmic Humanism, and Postmodernism. While these worldviews don't agree in every detail, they unanimously concur on one point-their opposition to biblical Christianity.

As in any war, there are casualties, and anti-Christian ideas are taking their toll. Recent surveys indicate that up to 59 percent of "born again" college students drop out of that category by their senior year.[iii] According to George Barna's research, nine out of ten "born again" adults do not have a biblical worldview. To effectively engage this battle of ideas, Christians must have an understanding of the times and "know what [they] ought to do" (1 Chronicles 12:32).

What is a Worldview?

Everyone bases his or her decisions and actions on a worldview. We may not be able to articulate our worldview, and our worldview may be inconsistent, but we all have one. So the question is; what is a worldview?

A worldview is "an interpretive framework"[iv]-much like a pair of glasses-through which you view everything. It refers to any set of ideas, beliefs, or values that provide a framework or map to help you understand God, the world, and your relationship to God and the world. Specifically, a worldview contains a particular perspective regarding at least each of the following ten disciplines: theology, philosophy, ethics, biology, psychology, sociology, law, politics, economics, and history.[v]

This article summarizes the six worldviews that currently exert the most influence over the whole world. Other worldviews exist, but they wield much less influence. For example, Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, or Shintoism may profoundly influence some Eastern countries, but hardly sway the entire world. The major ideas and belief systems controlling the world, and especially the West, are contained in the following six worldviews.

The Christian Worldview

Many people, including many Christians, do not realize that the Bible addresses all ten disciplines of a worldview. Christianity is the embodiment of Christ's claim that He is "the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6). When we say, "This is the Christian way," we mean this is the way Christ would have us approach life and the world. It is no small matter to think and act as Christ instructs.

America has been described as a Christian nation. However, America-along with the rest of Western Civilization-has turned away from its intellectual, cultural and religious heritage. Almost thirty years ago, Christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer noted America's drift toward secularism as a failure of Christians "to see that all of this [cultural and social breakdown] has come about due to a shift in world view-that is, through a fundamental change in the overall way people think and view the world and life as a whole."[vi]

The study of worldviews in general, and the Christian worldview in particular, is a wake-up call for everyone. A country seeking to promote human rights (including the right to be born), liberty, and the common good must adhere to the only worldview that can account for our existence and dignity. We contend that human dignity comes from the fact that human beings are created in the image of God, a uniquely biblical perspective. Abandoning this perspective has dire consequences, considering the rise in abortions, homosexual practices, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, embryonic stem cell research, and the move toward human cloning.

The Islamic Worldview

It is estimated there are 1.3 billion followers of Islam.[vii] In recent years, the Islamic worldview has been growing exponentially in numbers, power, and influence, and, therefore, is worthy of our study. As one article headlined, "The future belongs to Islam,"[viii] providing added incentive to understand its beliefs and goals.

Writing in The Sword of the Prophet, commentator and international political consultant, Serge Trifkovic, explains that "Islam is not a 'mere' religion; it is a complete way of life, an all-embracing social, political and legal system that breeds a worldview peculiar to itself."[ix]

Christianity and Islam have some teachings in common, including belief in a personal God, creation of the material universe, angels, immortality of the soul, heaven, hell, and judgment of sin. Likewise, Muslims accept Jesus as a prophet (one of many), his virgin birth, physical ascension, second coming, miracles, and messiahship.[x]

The major differences between Christianity and Islam is Islam's rejection of the biblical Trinitarian God and the death of Jesus for the sins of the world. Muslims likewise reject Jesus' physical resurrection from the dead and his claim to be the Son of God.

Another major difference between the founder of Christianity and the founder of Islam is that the Bible describes Jesus as living a sinless life while the traditions of Islam depict Muhammad having many flaws. "Muhammad's practice and constant encouragement of bloodshed," writes Trifkovic, "are unique in the history of religions. Murder, pillage, rape, and more murder are in the Koran and in the Traditions."[xi] Furthermore, Muhammad's life "seems to have impressed his followers with a profound belief in the value of bloodshed as opening the gates of Paradise."[xii] Thus, the history of Islam from 622 A.D. to the present has been a history of violence, submission, and war toward infidels (non-Muslims).

For many Muslims, one of Mohammad's most important legacies is to see the world as a conflict between the Land of Peace (Dar al-Islam) and the Land of War (Dar al-Harb). On the other hand, there are a number of Muslims, particularly those living in Western democracies, who do not believe the Koran's violent passages regarding killing infidels and Islam's violent history should be applied literally today.[xiii] Yet, in either case, Islam is a worldview with which Christians must contend.

The Secular Humanist Worldview

Secular Humanism refers primarily to the ideas and beliefs outlined in the Humanist Manifestoes of 1933, 1973, and 2000. Secular Humanism is the dominant worldview on the majority of colleges and universities throughout all Western nations. It has also made gains in many Christian colleges and universities, especially in the areas of biology, sociology, law, politics, and history.

Secular Humanists recognize the classroom as a powerful incubator for indoctrinating students into their worldview. Operating under the educational buzzword "liberalism," a Secular Humanist agenda controls the curriculum in America's public schools thanks to the National Education Association, the National Academy of Sciences, and a host of foundations, including the Ford Foundation.

Christians considering a college education must be well versed in the Secular Humanistic worldview or risk losing their own Christian perspective by default. In her book Walking Away From the Faith, Ruth Tucker, a professor at Calvin Seminary, makes it clear that Christian students are walking away from their faith because of Secular Humanist teaching.

The ideas of Humanism have gained prominent influence throughout modern society. B.F. Skinner, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and Erich Fromm, all former "Humanists of the Year," have powerfully affected the discipline of psychology. Scientists such as the late Carl Sagan, another "Humanist of the Year," preached his Humanism on a widely heralded television and high school curriculum series. More recently, the outspoken atheist and Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins has gained much attention through a number of popular books on evolution and, of course, his 2006 best-seller, The God Delusion. Clearly, Humanists are willing to support their worldview-often more faithfully than Christians. For these and other reasons, we must give the Secular Humanist worldview close attention.

The Marxist Worldview

Marxism is a militantly atheistic, materialistic worldview. It has developed a perspective regarding each of the ten disciplines-usually in great detail. Based on the writings of Karl Marx in the late 1800s, Marxism has taken on some new looks in recent years-including debasing culture as a form of revolutionary activity.[xiv] The latest Communist Manifesto, titled Empire, was published in 2000 by Harvard University Press. Marx's presence continues to be felt around the world.

Marxism predominates on many American university campuses. Recruited as college students in the 1950s and '60s, many Marxist "radicals" earned PhDs and are now the tenured faculty on many campuses. "With a few notable exceptions," says former Yale professor Roger Kimball, "our most prestigious liberal arts colleges and universities have installed the entire radical menu at the center of their humanities curriculum at both the undergraduate and the graduate level."[xv] U. S. News and World Report published a lengthy article in 2003 entitled "Where Marxism Lives Today," which states, "Marxism is so entrenched in courses ranging from literature to anthropology… that today's students are virtually bathed in Marx's ideas."[xvi]

The "radical menu" Kimball referred to includes a large serving of economic determinism. According to Karl Marx, the key problem with capitalism is that it breeds exploitation. Therefore, capitalism must be replaced with a more humane economic system, one that abolishes free markets (private property and the free and peaceful exchange of goods and services) and replaces it with a government-controlled economy.

Marx's economic ideas and political policy go hand in hand. A Marxist style communism controls a large number of nations around the world, and traveling under the name of "social democracy," a Marxist inspired political philosophy has engulfed Western European nations. Further, many South American countries have also taken a Marxist turn in recent years, and many think that the current administration and congress of the United States is quickly taking America down the same socialist road.[xvii]

In addition, some Christian groups have attempted to combine their Christianity with Marx's ideas of social equality. Because of the prevalence and subversive nature of Marxism, Christians must be aware of the goals of Marxist-thinking professors, politicians, and theologians.

The Cosmic Humanist Worldview

The Cosmic Humanist worldview consists of two interrelated spiritual movements. One is known as the New Age Movement (NAM), and the other is neo-paganism, which includes occult practices, Native American spiritism, and Wicca.

The New Age Movement mixes ancient Eastern religions (especially Hinduism and Zen Buddhism) with a touch of other religious traditions, adds a smattering of scientific jargon, and imports the newly baked concoction into mainstream America. "The New Age," explains researcher Johanna Michaelsen, "is the ultimate eclectic religion of self: Whatever you decide is right for you is what's right, as long as you don't get narrow-minded and exclusive about it."[xviii]

The assumption that truth resides within each individual, however, becomes the cornerstone for a worldview. Granting oneself the power to discern all truth is a facet of theology, and this theology has ramifications that many members of the New Age movement have already discovered. Marilyn Ferguson, author of The Aquarian Conspiracy (a book referred to as "The New Age watershed classic"), says the movement ushers in a "new mind-the ascendance of a startling worldview."[xix]

This worldview is summed up by Jonathan Adolph: "In its broadest sense, New Age thinking can be characterized as a form of utopianism, the desire to create a better society, a 'New Age' in which humanity lives in harmony with itself, nature, and the cosmos."[xx]

While New Age believers make no serious distinctions between religions, considering that all are ultimately the same, John P. Newport explains that "neopagans generally believe that they are practicing an ancient folk religion, whether as a survival or a revival. Thus, being focused on the pagan religions of the past, they are not particularly interested in a New Age of the future."[xxi]

Through best-selling books and popular television shows and movies,[xxii] the Cosmic Humanist worldview is gaining converts in the West and around the world. Malachi Martin lists dozens of organizations that are either New Age or sympathetic to Cosmic Humanist views. Clearly, Cosmic Humanism, a transplant from the East, is a growing presence throughout the Western hemisphere.

the Postmodern Worldview

Forced to face the inhumanity, destruction, and horror brought about by the Third Reich and the Soviet Gulag during the first half of the 20th century, a substantial group of Enlightenment humanists and neo-Marxists abandoned their worldview to create one they believed more fitting with reality, resulting in the Postmodern turn. By the 1980's, Postmodern professors were making significant inroads in humanities and social science departments around the world.

Christian philosopher J.P. Moreland notes that Postmodernism refers to a philosophical approach primarily in the area of epistemology, or what counts as knowledge or truth. Broadly speaking, Moreland says "Postmodernism represents a form of cultural relativism about such things as truth, reality, reason, values, linguistic meaning, the 'self' and other notions."[xxiii]

Though Postmodernism comes in many forms, there are three unifying values: (1) a commitment to relativism; (2) an opposition to metanarratives, or totalizing explanations of reality that are true for all people of all cultures; and (3) the idea of culturally created realities. Each of these commitments are designed to deny that there is a worldview or belief system that can be considered absolute Truth.

Postmodernism's most effective methodological tool, one used extensively in university modern language departments, is known as Deconstruction, which means (1) that words do not represent reality, and (2) that concepts expressed in sentences in any language are arbitrary.

Some Postmodernists go so far as to deconstruct humanity itself. Thus, along with the death of God, truth, and reason, humanity is also obliterated. Paul Kugler notes the ironic twist: "Today, it is the speaking subject who declared God dead one hundred years ago whose very existence is now being called into question."[xxiv]

To complicate matters even further, we must acknowledge that there even exists a variety of Postmodernism called "Christian Postmodernism."[xxv] Such is the essence of mainstream Postmodernism-a worldview that claims there are no worldviews. This "anti-worldview" worldview is one that certainly demands the attention of thoughtful Christians.

Conclusion

We cannot overstate the significance of these five anti-Christian worldviews. The basis for much of what is taught in the public classroom today comes from Secular, Marxist, Cosmic Humanist, and Postmodern thinking and takes on a variety of labels: liberalism, multiculturalism, political correctness, deconstructionism, or self-esteem education. Or, as is often the case, the labels are dropped and courses are taught from anti-Christian assumptions without students being told which worldview is being expressed. Neutrality in education is a myth.

The first chapter of the Book of Daniel explains how Daniel and his friends prepared themselves to survive and flourish amid the clash of worldviews of their day. We believe that Christian young people equipped with a comprehensive knowledge and understanding of the Christian worldview and its rivals can become "Daniels" who will not stand on the sidelines, but will participate in the great collision of worldviews in the twenty-first century.

Society will flourish in the light of truth only when the emphasis shifts back to a Christian perspective. This dramatic shift in emphasis can be brought about through the leadership of thousands of informed, confident Christian students who think deeply and broadly from a well-honed biblical worldview and emerge as leaders in education, business, science, and government.

Our desire to bring about this shift in emphasis is the fundamental reason Summit Ministries produces curricula and resources for Christian schools and homeschool families (primary, middle, and secondary), presents in-service worldview training for teachers across the U.S. and around the world, and provides worldview conferences for students and adults. Information is available at www.summit.org.

About the Author:

Dr. David A. Noebel is founder and president of Summit Ministries and edits and writes Summit's monthly publication, The Journal. Dr. Noebel has been a college professor, college president, and candidate for the U.S. Congress. Dr. Noebel has a B.A. from Hope College in Holland, a M.A. from the University of Tulsa, and was a Ph.D. candidate in Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin. He is an Author, Editor, Public Speaker, and Ordained Minister. Dr. Noebel is recognized as an expert on worldview analysis and the decline of morality and spirituality in Western Civilization. His most popular works include Understanding the Times: The Collision of Today's Worldviews, which sold over 500,000 copies, and Clergy in the Classroom: the Religion of Secular Humanism (co-authored with Kevin Bywater and J.F. Baldwin). He and his wife Alice live in Manitou Springs, CO and have two children and five grandchildren.

*This article is taken from the introductory chapter of David A. Noebel, Understanding the Times, 2nd Ed., (Summit Press: Manitou Springs, CO, 2006). Understanding the Times is a landmark text that provides a comprehensive comparison of the six worldviews discussed in this article and can be purchased at www.summit.org. Portions of the original text has been edited and re-written by Chuck Edwards for the purposes of this article.

ENDNOTES:

Why is Evolution Believed in More Firmly than the Evidence Warrents?

2009-08-17T12:41:00.000-07:00

by J.P. Moreland

... Scientific naturalism includes three claims;

First, scientific knowledge is vastly superior to all other forms of knowledge.

Second, the scientifically authorized story of how all things came about revolves around the atomic theory of matter and evolutionary theory. According to the atomic theory of matter, all chemical change is the result of the rearrangement of tiny little parts — protons, neutrons and electrons. According to evolutionary theory, random mutations are largely responsible for providing an organism with a change in characteristics; some of those changes provide the organism with a survival advantage over other members of its species; as a result, the organism's new traits eventually become the norm for all members of the species. The important thing about naturalism's second claim is that its creation story is a purely mechanical, physical story with no need or room for miraculous divine activity.

Third, the picture of reality that results from this creation story (which is, in turn, the only story alleged to have the support of scientific ways of knowing) is physicalism: the belief that the physical, material cosmos is all there is, was or ever will be.

It is important to note the relationship between these three claims: Most naturalists believe that the physical cosmos is all there is, was or ever will be because their creation story allows no room for miraculous divine activity. And most naturalists believe in a creation story with no room for divine activity because

(a) their theory of knowledge says that it's irrational to believe in things that can't be tested scientifically with the five senses, and

(b) because they believe that divine activity can't be so tested. Thus most naturalists believe Claim Three because they believe Claim Two, and they believe Claim Two because they believe Claim One.

Curiously, naturalism's theory of knowledge (i.e., Claim One, according to which a belief is rational only if it is scientifically testable) is not itself scientifically testable. Thus the naturalist's theory of knowledge fails to pass its own standard of acceptability and refutes itself. But this leaves many naturalists without any basis for believing Claim Two and, therefore, without any basis for believing Claim Three either.

With this background in mind, let us recall that our present question is not about the scientific evidence for evolution. I think this evidence is quite meager. In any case, even if we grant (for the sake of argument) that there is a decent amount of evidence for evolution, the degree of certainty claimed on its behalf and the widespread negative attitude toward creationists are quite beyond what is warranted by the evidence alone. What is going on here?

First, the widely accepted intellectual authority of science, coupled with the belief that Intelligent Design theory is religion (rather than science) means that evolution is the only view of the origins of life that can claim the backing of reason. In our empirically oriented culture, science (and science alone) has unqualified intellectual acceptance. On the evening news, when a scientist makes a pronouncement about what causes obesity, crime, or anything else, he/she is taken to speak as our culture's sole authority on the issue at hand. When was the last time you saw a theologian, philosopher or humanities professor consulted as an intellectual leader in the culture?

All supposedly extra-scientific beliefs must move to the back of the bus and are relegated to the level of private, subjective opinion. Now, if two scientific theories are competing for allegiance, then most intellectuals, at least in principle, would be open to all evidence relevant to the issue. But what happens if one of two rival theories is considered scientific and the other is not? If we abandon the scientific theory in favor of the non-scientific one, given the sole intellectual authority of science, this is tantamount to abandoning reason itself. Because many think that Intelligent Design theory is religion masquerading as science, the creation/evolution debate turns into a controversy that pits reason against pure subjective belief and opinion. In the infamous creation-science trial in Little Rock, Ark., in December 1981, creation science was ruled out of public schools, not because of the weak evidence for it, but because it was judged religion and not science. Today, in the state of California, you cannot discuss creationist theories in science class for the same reason.

Space forbids me to present reasons why almost all philosophers of science, atheist and Christian alike, agree that creation science is at least a science, and not a religious view, regardless of what is to be said about the empirical evidence for or against it. I have presented these arguments in The Creation Hypothesis (InterVarsity, 1994) and in Christianity and the Nature of Science (Baker, 1989). Suffice it to say that philosophical naturalists currently set the rules for what counts as science. The bottom line is this: Philosophical naturalism is used to argue that evolution is science and Intelligent Design theory "merely" religion, and it is used to argue that reason and rationality are to be identified with science. Thus, the empirical evidence for or against evolution is just not the issue when it comes to explaining why so many give the theory unqualified allegiance.

There is a second reason for the current over-belief in evolution: Evolution functions as a myth for secularists. By "myth" I do not mean something false (though I believe evolution to be that) but, rather, a story of who we are and how we got here that serves as a guide for life. Evolutionist Richard Dawkins said that evolution made the world safe for atheists because it supposedly did away with the design argument for God's existence. In graduate school, I once had a professor say that evolution was a view he embraced religiously because it implied for him that he could do anything he wanted. Why? Given that there is no God and that evolution is how we got here, there is no set purpose for life, no objective right and wrong, no punishment after death, so one can live for himself in this life anyway he wants. Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer made the same statement on national TV. Dahmer said that naturalistic evolution implied that we all came from slime and will return to slime. So why should he resist deeply felt tendencies to kill, given that we have no objective purpose or value and there is no punishment after death? I am not here arguing that secularists cannot find grounds for objective purpose and value in their naturalistic worldview, though I believe that to be the case. I am simply pointing out that evolution functions as an egoistic myth for many intellectuals who have absolutized freedom, understood as the right to do anything one wants. Philosophical naturalists want evolution to be true because it provides justification for their lifestyle choices.

For these two reasons — the identification of evolution as the only option on origins that claims the support of reason, and the function of evolution as a convenient myth for a secular lifestyle — the widespread over-commitment to evolution is not primarily a matter of evidence. This is why people react to Intelligent Design theory with hatred, disgust, and loathing instead of respond to creationist arguments with calm, open-minded counter arguments. This situation is tragic because it has produced a cultural logjam in which philosophical naturalism is sustained as our source of cultural authority, protected from serious intellectual criticism and scrutiny.

For Christians — especially those sympathetic towards or embracing theistic evolution — there is a lesson to be learned from all this and an application to be followed. The lesson is this: The debate about creation and evolution is not primarily one about how to interpret certain passages in Genesis, though it is that. Rather, it is primarily about the adequacy of philosophical naturalism as a worldview and the sole authority of science, an authority that relegates religion to private opinion and presuppositional faith. The application is this: Believers owe it to themselves and the Church to read works that present well-reasoned alternatives to evolution and to keep an eye on the broader implications of taking theistic evolution as a via media. If what I have argued is true, the acceptance of evolution is not primarily due to empirical evidence, and evolutionary theory (in both its theistic and atheistic varieties) lacks the evidential grounding that warrants adjusting one's view of creation to harmonize with evolution. And theistic evolution may well be inadequate to stop our collective avalanche toward a thoroughly naturalistic culture.

Still, you may think that, given enough time, evolution will be able to explain everything about the origin and nature of living things. In my next article on naturalism, I will show that, however successful evolution becomes in explaining the origin and nature of animal and human bodies, it will never be able to explain the origin and nature of animal/human consciousness and the souls that contain it.

Oringinal article

Exomethodological Science

2009-04-13T10:30:00.000-07:00

By Vox Day

I thought this extended comment by Post-secular merited a post of its own:

"As an evangelical Christian who has practiced science at the highest levels, I’m very ambivalent about the alleged decline of scientists’ trustworthiness. Since I don’t believe science is the ultimate way of knowing about the world, I applaud the demotion of scientists from their undeserved position as the modern day arbiters of ultimate truth.

At the same time, I shudder at the fact that something like a 3rd of the population of the world’s only superpower believe the earth is only 10,000 years old, and that scientists only believe otherwise so they can force our children to learn about evolution, which will, of course, turn them into atheists. I’d like to think we’re increasingly rejecting knowledge handed down from on high because we’re thinking more critically about the alleged objectivity of science. But I’m afraid the main driver of this distrust is less rational, and therefore, more harmful than good. I’d like to think Americans increasingly distrust scientists because our increasingly sophisticated epistemology requires us to. However, the lamentable reality is that most Americans distrust science for mostly bad reasons including misunderstanding how science really works, unnecessary religious prejudices, rare but highly publicized cases of fraud, and science’s arrogant and offensive self-appointed ambassadors (Dawkins et al.). Influential leaders from both Science and Faith have drawn lines in the sand that they shouldn’t have. And the voices of those who wear both hats in good conscience are unfortunately drowned out by the mobs on either side, both foaming at the mouth. People should be properly skeptical about scientists’ biases and other human failings. They should not, however, use these as excuses to deny the reality of verifiable facts.

In regards to the role of consensus and the scientific method in the actual practice of science, I refer interested parties to Thomas Kuhn’s work. Having read Kuhn’s work and that of his critics, in my opinion, his description is by far the most accurate portrayal of how science actually works. There are episodes in the development of science that don’t fit his description very well, but the majority of science history bears out his arguments admirably well and much better than those of his detractors. At the risk of oversimplification, let me briefly summarize for those who are unfamiliar with Kuhn. As you have accurately pointed out, the scientific method isn’t hard to understand. However, science doesn’t work by the scientific method, at least not the one most people think of when they hear the term. Undergraduate textbooks tell the new initiate that if the data don’t support the hypothesis, the hypothesis must be thrown out. But up on the 6th floor where science is really occurring, the first time this happens, it is not the hypothesis but the data that is immediately thrown out, and the experiment is repeated. This problematic piece of data will remain an irrelevant artifact of a botched experiment until it pops up repeatedly and simply refuses to go away. Then, and only then, does a scientist even begin to question his hypothesis, and even then only very cautiously. Only after the data is found by other labs using other equipment/techniques will the scientific community even begin to acknowledge that an anomaly to the hypothesis has been found. But even then, the hypothesis is not discarded. The hypothesis will generally only be discarded after an alternative, competing hypothesis that explains at least as much of the total data in the field has been formulated. The hypotheses then duel it out, and eventually, the community of scientists decides which hypothesis will carry them into future investigations.

Now all of this may sound “unscientific”, but it appears so only if one tries to impose the textbook version of science onto the actual thing. It may also seem that all of this bias results in lots of wasted time and decreases the efficiency of scientific progress. However, it is precisely the opposite. Science progresses as fast as it does precisely because it is driven by paradigms. A paradigm provides a scientist with the confidence she needs to expend the enormous resources necessary to perform experiments that by sheer probability are almost certain to fail. My own analogy might help illustrate Kuhn’s ideas.

Imagine you’re standing in an Olympic-sized pool of water you can’t see through trying to find 10 red objects on the bottom of the pool. These are the major pieces of data that confirm your developing scientific model. Unawares to you, one of the red objects is attached to a blue object, and your scientific model cannot account for blue objects of any kind. Imagine further that each reach of your hand into the water costs you a year of your life. Your task is to find all the red objects that will firmly establish your scientific model before you die so you can claim the model as your own, give it your name or the name of your favorite video game (which scientists love to do) cure some diseases, and maybe win a Nobel prize. Obviously, you’d want to find the object in as few attempts as possible. In the absence of any a priori information, the objects you search for are distributed randomly. Your situation is hopeless without a map of where in the water to look. That map is the rough equivalent of a scientific paradigm. A paradigm tells you where to look in the water. It gives you the confidence you need to thrust your hand in the water over and over, giving a year of your life each time.

Now imagine the pool has several other ambitious scientists like you. If you all operate on the same paradigm, the objects will be found much faster than if you were all operating on different paradigms. And most importantly, the blue object, the one that will call the model into question, will be found faster too. That’s what paradigms do, and they do it very successfully 90% of the time. Most of the major breakthroughs in science have come when a prevailing paradigm has been used so successfully and explored so thoroughly that its inevitable limitations are exposed. Far from being an irrational process, following a paradigm is a highly rational process. In fact, doing science without a paradigm represents a much more random process. I experienced much of this process firsthand as a contributor to a paradigm-changing study published in Science in 2006. (Exploiting the reversibility of natural product glycosyltransferase-catalyzed reactions, Zhang CS, Griffith BR, et al., SCIENCE, Volume 313, Issue: 5791, Pages: 1291-1294.) At the risk of appearing to brag, this paper now has 6x the average number of citations for a Science paper. In other words, our study changed the way others in our field thought about their science, and when they went looking where we told them to, the red objects were where we predicted they’d be.

My larger point is that consensus does and should play a huge role in the progress of science. Anyone who argues that working within a consensus is unscientific most likely has never done any real science. Scientists’ description of the world only changes in fundamental ways rarely, but it has happened many times, and will probably happen many more times. That doesn’t mean science isn’t scientific. It does mean that it is not a thoroughly rational process, because as Kuhn points out, the winner in a paradigm competition is not always chosen for rational reasons. Scientists are people and prefer paradigms for subjective reasons of beauty, elegance, and simplicity, which are all in the eye of the beholder. But neither is science thoroughly irrational. It is a human endeavor to gain understanding of the world that differs in some fundamental ways from other types of learning but is similar in many fundamental ways too. I hope this helps some of the contributors to this thread understand a) that scientists work 90% of the time within a consensus, b) a bit more about why scientists work within paradigms and c) how scientists can change the way they describe the world in fundamental ways without being unscientific."

I quite appreciate this informative lecture on real science from a real scientist. However, I note that according to Post-secular, scientists are commonly operating outside the bounds of the scientific method for perfectly reasonable and pragmatic reasons. I think that's completely acceptable, as results are the main object of scientific research, after all. But here's the problem with this exo-methodological science. If scientists are NOT genuinely operating by the pure scientific method which the science fetishists so regularly hold over everyone's heads, then they have absolutely no right to claim that they doing so. They especially have no right to hide behind what could fairly be described as a Noble Lie in order to discredit other forms of non-science or to grant a false imprimatur to their own efforts.

This is precisely why I believe it is so necessary to distinguish between the three aspects of science; science: the knowledge base, science: the method, and science: the profession. It is absurd to speak of consensus with regards to the method just as it makes little sense to talk about the progress of the profession. It is ironic indeed that a profession devoted to detail should be so careless when it comes to describing itself and its activities; one might reasonably conclude that this carelessness, combined with what appears to be somewhat of a Noble Lie, is at least in part due to a general awareness that its secular priesthood status might be in jeopardy should the public ever come to a sufficient understanding of the way in which the profession operates and protects what it perceives as its turf.

The issue here is not if science is irrational or not, but rather, if activities outside the direct application of the scientific method are science or not. If they are, then it is obvious that the legitimacy objections to describing a wide variety fields, including mathematics, intelligent design, evolution, sociology, and even economics, as non-scientific really needs to be reconsidered.

Social Justice or Hatred?

2009-04-03T10:27:00.000-07:00

The Art and Science of Making Evil Look Good

By Rebecca Hagelin

"Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy."
- Psalm 82:3

"To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice."
- Proverbs 21:3
--------------------------

What beautiful scripture verses. The Bible is filled with verses that call on us to do all in our power as individuals to fight what is unjust and to show His mercy on the oppressed, down-trodden and broken-hearted.

But it is in such powerful callings that appeal to what is highest and best in us that the forces of evil often insidiously weave in their lies and hatred, perverting the meaning of the lovely words. Satan doesn't usually come to us through red cloak and dagger with flaming horns and hatred spewing from his mouth. He most often takes on the form, as the Bible warns us, of an "angel of light".

The latest such successful attempt to spread hatred and violence has been to take that wonderful call to "justice" and insert one word in front of it that makes it "better" - as in, "social justice".

The Left has long been a master of the use of verbiage and language. Who could be against "choice", for instance? We all want more "choices" right? The reality is that the attractive word of "choice" was cleverly chosen to hide the ugliness of what the choice is about - allowing mothers to freely kill their pre-born babies. (Watch for decent Americans everywhere to be swept up in the coming months - without ever critically thinking about it - into supporting one of President Obama's favorite government decrees, the 'Freedom of Choice Act", which would wipe out all parental notification, parental consent and informed consent laws passed on the state level.) It's so much easier in this busy world to just nod in agreement to lovely sounding terms than it is to painfully look beyond the headlines and clever jargon and discover the demons underneath the pretty packaging. After all, if you find evil....then you have to stop and fight it, right? Most prefer the peaceful life of ignorance.

David Kupelian, managing editor of WorldNetDaily.com, wrote one of the best books I've ever seen on how the Left uses clever wording and deceptive language to market their socialist ideas. It's a must-read for anyone scratching their heads over how those who believe in traditional Judeo-Christian values seem to always be playing catch-up in the war of ideas. In "The Marketing of Evil" , Kupelian painstakingly documents the process and practices the Left has mastered to dupe good Americans into carrying the poisonous waters of socialism, immorality and...just plain evil.

Which brings me back to the now popular term, "social justice". The combination of these words makes one feel so good. But it's time to pull back the curtain and find out what the term has come to mean, how it has been able to gain such massive popularity, and who is behind it.

Can you say, "William Ayers"?

Yes, that William Ayers. The same guy that planted bombs in the Pentagon and US Capitol as part of his efforts to use hatred and violence to overthrow the free-market system and replace it with a socialist one through his now infamous organization, "Weather Underground". Government officials basically botched the investigation against him through the improper collection of evidence and Ayers walked away from his terrorist activities a free man. Later he proudly exclaimed, "Guilty as hell. Free as a bird."

Knowing that decent Americans were growing weary of the radical protests by liberals in the 60's and 70's, Ayers cleverly decided to adopt a new tactic for the spreading of his socialist agenda: use the massive government education system. Ayers knew that 89 percent of America's children are educated in the government schools. He knew that parents are often all-too-willing to just hand their kids over to "professional educators" eight hours a day without ever bothering to read their textbooks. He knew that many of the people who go into education do so with altruistic motives, and that if you capture them as young adults in education colleges you can easily warp their thinking. He knew that the teacher's union (NEA) is an incredibly left-leaning organization that pressures all teachers to follow the "status quo". He knew how easy it is to manipulate the hearts and minds of boys and girls who will be in the system the majority of their waking hours throughout their formative years. Yes, the path was very clear: systematically indoctrinate teachers through educational training programs and the books you give them, and you can use them to then produce an army of young men and women to carry forth revolution in just one generation. So, as Phyllis Schlafly documents in The Phyllis Schlafly Report, (available at www.eagleforum.org ), "Ayers enrolled in Columbia Teachers College where he picked up a Ph.D., and emerged as a Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago." Since then, his influence in education has been remarkable - which of course, has made him incredibly influential in the culture at large, and especially among today's young adults - without their even knowing it. The Manhattan Institute's Sol Stern has said that William Ayers is one of the leaders in "bringing radical social-justice teaching into our public school classrooms."

The 2008 election saw that the young people in Evangelical churches had been duped by the teaching of Ayers' and company brand of "social justice". A whopping 32 percent of 18-29 year-old evangelicals voted for Barak Obama even though he advocates abortion on demand, including the killing of babies who have survived botched abortions. What was the attraction? Many of them listed Obama's concern for "social justice" as the reason for supporting the Senator who would-be savior. Among all 18-29 year-old voters, 2008 post-elections surveys reveal that a full 70 percent of them favor expanding the role of government and want the federal government to be more active.

What is Ayers brand of "social justice" that now permeates our schools and society at large? It is a perversion of what Scripture calls for. If you read his text books and those of his compatriots, you know that he uses the term to call for overthrowing the free-market system - which affords equal opportunity for everyone - and replacing it with a system that forces the "redistribution of wealth" - and he's not afraid to use violence, hatred and class warfare to do it. He believes that America as a nation is today unjust and oppressive. He freely admits that he is a "communist street fighter". His courses, recommended books (such as Queering Elementary Education) and theories are now widely adopted at teacher's colleges around the country. Part of Ayer's success has been to first teach such messages of hatred and racism in inner-city schools. But like everything else from the spread of violent rap music, to the "gangsta clothing" styles and the attitudes that go with them, to the problems of out of wedlock sex and pregnancy, when you take advantage of disadvantaged kids and feed the problems, those ills eventually spread into the suburban communities as well. (Star Parker, the founder of CURE - the Coalition for Urban Renewal and Education www.urbanCURE.org ,is an expert on the subject of how "The legacy of American socialism is our blighted inner-cities, dysfunctional inner-city schools, and broken black families." She has also writes and speaks extensively on how such problems eventually spread throughout all of American culture.)

So, the next time you hear the phrase, "social justice", take time to question the one who is using it, and challenge them to read some of the resources I have mentioned above. Maybe their motives are pure and they are using the word "justice" in its classic, biblical sense. But chances are they have no idea that the vision of justice that has taken their hearts captive was perpetrated by a terrorist who is using their good will to spread his hatred and to bring forth a more authoritative government where the individual is held captive to a few elitists with ultimate power.

Rebecca Hagelin is a media commentator, public speaker on family and the culture, and the author of, "Home Invasion: Protecting Your Family in a Culture That's Gone Stark Raving Mad."

Political Correctness Is Cultural Marxism

2009-04-03T09:47:00.000-07:00

Brannon reveals five national consequences that come to a nation that continually rejects God. America is experiencing all five of these consequences now. Brannon also reveals how these five national consequences are being manifested through three worldview growing trends- Political Correctness, which is Cultural Marxism, pagan spirituality, and what Brannon calls One World Spirituality.

Political Correctness Is Cultural Marxism

By Brannon Howse

Many of those who follow One-World Spirituality and pagan spirituality are committed to the economic policies of socialism, and the economic system that is based not only on the re-distribution of wealth but on the confiscation of private property as well. The author of the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx called for a powerful central government, a punitive progressive income tax system, the merging of education with industrial production, the elimination of a free press, and much more. Sadly, Marxism is alive and well in America, but this destructive worldview has been hidden from most Americans under terms that mask the reality of what is going on.

When you hear "political correctness," what comes to mind? Informed, discerning, and insightful individuals immediately think of such PC words as tolerance, diversity, multiculturalism, and feminism. But what do these words really mean?

Tolerance means that one person never expresses a judgment about someone else's ideas, beliefs, and values from a worldview of absolute truth. Tolerance demands that you not only accept the other worldview but that you value their worldview-unless, of course, their worldview is Biblical Christianity. Tolerance is very intolerant of Bible-minded Christians.

Diversity or sensitivity training is about the normalization of the homosexual lifestyle.

Multiculturalism is not the study of many cultures but the criticism of the Western Culture and its founding worldview of Christianity. Multiculturalism also desires to destroy patriotism.

Feminism is not about equal rights for women but about the destruction of a patriarchal society in favor of a matriarchal society. In other words, the goal of feminism is the destruction of the family by eliminating the husband and father as the provider, protector, and principled leader of his home. Think of fathers like Charles Ingalls from Little House on the Prairie, John Walton from The Waltons, and Ward Cleaver from Leave It to Beaver. Each of these television programs presented the father in an accurate portrayal of what American society at one time expected and loved about the patriarch of the family. A father who did not shape and encourage his children to embrace and live out a Christian worldview through their characters and life choices was looked down upon by society as being a dead-beat, a drunkard, an immoral reprobate, or slothful.

Today, society no longer has these high expectations or the shunning of men who are not principled and present fathers. Look at today's television programs where the father is often not even in the picture, and, if he is, he is not a principled leader of his home who seeks to disciple his children in truth and right living. Often the father is the whipping boy of the program, the stooge that the children treat with extreme disrespect.

Feminism has accomplished its ultimate goal-the destruction of the American family through the destruction of the father and, thus, the rise of the welfare state.

Political correctness is all about creating chaos by destroying the American family, replacing the role of the father with the role of the state, normalizing sexual perversion, and ridiculing traditional morals and virtues that stem from Christianity.

The PC crowd uses this chaos to justify more government. Political correctness is really a masking term for cultural Marxism. An all-powerful and intrusive government that robs you of your freedoms is the ultimate goal of what you may know only as political correctness.

People laugh about political correctness as if it is some kind of joke, but losing your freedom of religion, freedom of speech, property rights, and parental authority is no laughing matter. Thought control is not funny, and many Christians have been prosecuted under state hate-crime laws for sharing the gospel and for publicly speaking out against homosexuality. If you doubt me, then you should order Worldview Weekend's DVD, "The Criminalization of Christianity," which documents many such cases. It is available from our online bookstore at www.worldviewweekend.com

Marxists have used the term political correctness for at least 80 years to hide the worldview of cultural Marxism. In 1923, a group of German intellectuals started what has become known as the Frankfurt School. The writings of the Frankfurt School faculty and their disciples are abundant, and their goal could be summed up as the eradication of Christianity from the culture.

By eradicating Christianity not only would the family fall and the church become impotent, but capitalism and the free enterprise system that was birthed out of the Protestant Reformation would be destroyed.

In 1933, when the Nazis came to power in Germany, many members of the Frankfurt School conveniently found refuge in America at the invitation of Secular Humanist John Dewey, who was on staff at Columbia University in New York. Dewey is best known as the father of modern education in America, honorary president of the National Education Association, and co-author of the Humanist Manifesto I.

Dewey saw the opportunity to place these German Marxists at leading colleges and universities around the country. Dewey and his friends specifically targeted the institutions of education and media as the means by which to inculcate their worldview into millions of Americans and eventually into American culture.

Dewey had help from Edward R. Murrow in spreading these German Marxists around the nation. In 1934, at the age of 26, Murrow became the Assistant Secretary of the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced German Scholars. A few years earlier, in 1932, Murrow had become the Assistant Director of the Institute of International Education, which was established through a grant from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Murrow was hired by Stephen Duggan, the director of IIE who advised the Soviet government on issues related to their workers' colleges. Duggan was a crusader for the Communist agenda.

Murrow also joined the American Russian Institute, which had been founded with the help of John Dewey. The Institute sponsored lectures from individuals such as Anna Louise Strong, a well-known journalist who wrote books defending the Soviet system.

Murrow eventually went to work for CBS, where he became the famed newscaster. Murrow is perhaps best known for using his broadcasts to destroy U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, who was investigating the infiltration of Communists into education, media, and Hollywood. McCarthy had personality quirks that made him an easy target for marginalization, yet many experts now admit that McCarthy was correct in his view that Communists had infiltrated American education and the media. Of course, Murrow knew this to be true because he assisted in bringing many of these Marxists to America and dropping them into influential positions. To the discerning and informed American it becomes clear why Murrow was out to destroy McCarthy before he could uncover the anti-American agenda of Dewey, Murrow, and their friends.

One of the men whom Murrow brought to America from the Frankfurt School was Herbert Marcuse. The phrase "make love, not war" that was shouted during the counter-culture revolution of the 1960s was coined by Marcuse. The student rebels of the 1960s implemented the strategies laid out by Marcuse in his writings. Marcuse was greatly influenced by the writings of Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci.

The student leaders of the 1960s were encouraged by Marcuse's cultural revolution statements such as:

One can rightfully speak of a cultural revolution, since the protest is directed toward the whole cultural establishment; including the morality of existing society….there is one thing we can say with complete assurance. The traditional idea of revolution and the traditional strategy of revolution has ended. These ideas are old-fashioned…what we must undertake is a type of diffuse and dispersed disintegration of the system."

Many of the anti-American, flag burning, pot-smoking, pagan spiritualists of the counter cultural revolution are now college and university presidents, professors, and American textbook authors.

T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr. wrote in a research paper entitled "Political Correctness in Higher Education" that:

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the Politically Correct assault on the curriculum is that it has occurred at many of America's elite universities. Take, for example, the case of Stanford University, an institution that has long played a leadership role in American higher education. Stanford eliminated its long-standing Western civilization requirement in 1988 and replaced it with a multicultural program known as "Cultures, Ideas, and Values." Under this new program, freshman at Stanford can just as easily study Marxist revolutionaries in Central America as they can Plato, Shakespeare or Newton. Because elite institutions such as Stanford set an example for the rest of American higher education, other universities eagerly adopt these devastating assaults on the curriculum. This "trickle-down" effect will have a long-lasting impact on the way future generations of Americans will be educated. One distinguished scholar recently lamented that "higher education is increasingly about acquiring attitudes and opinions that one puts on like a uniform."

The best way to combat political correctness is to expose it for what it really is-Cultural Marxism. Equally important in defeating this anti-Christian, anti-American worldview is to not comply with its mandates. Call homosexuality what it is-sin. Expose feminism for what it is-anti-family, anti-father. Expose tolerance as moral relativism and intolerance toward those who don't conform to their dictates of tolerance. Expose sensitivity training as an attempt to destroy freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Point out to your family and friends the consequences that cultural Marxism has had and is having on our faith, families, and freedoms.

Unless you desire to live in a country where the middle class has been destroyed and we are under the tyrannical thumb of a small group of cultural elitists who control every aspect of your life, then you had better speak up. Nothing is more powerful than the truth, and nothing scares the elitists more than their worldview and agenda being exposed for what it really seeks to accomplish.

This article represents some of the information presented in Brannon's new DVD, Three Worldviews Seeking To Destroy Your Faith, Family and Freedoms.

Ravi Zachrias Interview with Kirk Cameron

2009-02-03T08:34:00.000-08:00

"Is it alright to pay taxes to Ceasar?"

"Who's image is on the coin?"

"Caesar's."

"Then give to Caesar that which is Caesars, and give to God that which is God's." Now, who's image is on you?"

Ravi Zacharias to speak in Costa Mesa January 16th, 2009

2009-01-05T10:34:00.000-08:00

Ravi Zacharias will be speaking at Costa Mesa Calvary Chapel on Friday, Jan. 16, 2009. There is no cost and childcare will be provided, but pre-registration is required.

Dr. Zacharias, an expert in the disciplines of comparative religions, cults, and philosophy, is an Apologist who speaks to packed lecture halls in secular institutions all over the world, notably Harvard, Princeton, and Oxford University and has direct contact with key leaders, senators, congressmen, and governors who consult him on an ongoing basis. He has addressed writers of the peace accord in South Africa, the president's cabinet and parliament in Peru, and military officers at the Lenin Military Academy and the Center for Geopolitical Strategy in Moscow.

How Elementary School Literature Molds Childrens' Minds

2008-10-01T09:40:00.000-07:00

All civilizations have agreed: education ought to nurture in the child a love of the good; admiration of the excellent and beautiful; faithfulness to the truth; and also children should be taught to disapprove of the false, the shoddy, the unworthy. The aim of true education is not only that children learn to spell and calculate and become physically strong. It is, above all, that young people should become courageous, generous, steady, and capable of discrimination in a good sense, that is, able to judge what is more worthy and what is less worthy of the esteem of a mature human being. - Dale J. Nelson

MEN WITHOUT CHESTS - abridged - by C.S. Lewis

...Gaius and Titius quote the well-known story of Coleridge at the waterfall. ...there were two tourists present: that one called it 'sublime' and the other 'pretty'; and that Coleridge mentally endorsed the first judgement and rejected the second with disgust...the conclusion: We appear to be saying something very important about something: and actually we are only saying something about our own feelings.'

The schoolboy who reads this passage in The Green Book will believe two propositions: firstly, that all sentences containing a predicate of value are statements about the emotional state of the speaker, and secondly, that all such statements are unimportant.

... No schoolboy will be able to resist the suggestion brought to bear upon him by that word only. I do not mean, of course, that he will make any conscious inference from what he reads to a general philosophical theory that all values are subjective and trivial. The very power of Gaius and Titius depends on the fact that they are dealing with a boy: a boy who thinks he is 'doing' his 'English prep' and has no notion that ethics, theology, and politics are all at stake. It is not a theory they put into his mind, but an assumption, which ten years hence, its origin forgotten and its presence unconscious, will condition him to take one side in a controversy which he has never recognized as a controversy at all. The authors themselves, I suspect, hardly know what they are doing to the boy, and he cannot know what is being done to him.

Before considering the philosophical credentials of the position which Gaius and Titius have adopted about value, I should like to show its practical results on the educational procedure. In their fourth chapter they quote a silly advertisement... If Gaius and Titius were to teach their readers (as they promised to do) the art of English composition, it was their business to put this advertisement side by side with passages from great writers in which the very emotion is well expressed, and then show where the difference lies. ... Gaius and Titius have given their schoolboy readers no faintest help to its discovery.

From this passage the schoolboy will learn about literature precisely nothing. What he will learn quickly enough, and perhaps indelibly, is the belief that all emotions aroused by local association are in themselves contrary to reason and contemptible. He will have no notion that there are two ways of being immune to such an advertisement—that it falls equally flat on those who are above it and those who are below it, on the man of real sensibility and on the mere trousered ape who has never been able to conceive the Atlantic as anything more than so many million tons of cold salt water. There are two men to whom we offer in vain a false leading article on patriotism and honour: one is the coward, the other is the honourable and patriotic man. None of this is brought before the schoolboy's mind. On the contrary, he is encouraged to reject the lure of the 'Western Ocean' on the very dangerous ground that in so doing he will prove himself a knowing fellow who can't be bubbled out of his cash. ...

(In a different book about animal psychology) He contents himself with explaining that horses are not, secundum litteram, interested in colonial expansion. This piece of information is really all that his pupils get from him. Why the composition before them is bad, when others that lie open to the same charge are good, they do not hear. Much less do they learn of the two classes of men who are, respectively, above and below the danger of such writing—the man who really knows horses and really loves them, not with anthropomorphic illusions, but with ordinate love, and the irredeemable urban blockhead to whom a horse is merely an old-fashioned means of transport. Some pleasure in their own ponies and dogs they will have lost; some incentive to cruelty or neglect they will have received; some pleasure in their own knowingness will have entered their minds. That is their day's lesson in English, though of English they have learned nothing. Another little portion of the human heritage has been quietly taken from them before they were old enough to understand.

I have hitherto been assuming that such teachers as Gaius and Titius do not fully realize what they are doing and do not intend the far-reaching consequences it will actually have. 'Trousered apes' and the 'urban blockheads' may be precisely the kind of man they really wish to produce. ...

They may really hold that the ordinary human feelings about the past or animals or large waterfalls are contrary to reason and contemptible and ought to be eradicated. They may be intending to make a clean sweep of traditional values and start with a new set which is a philosophical and not a literary position. In filling their book with it they have been unjust to the parent or headmaster who buys it and who has got the work of amateur philosophers where he expected the work of professional grammarians. A man would be annoyed if his son returned from the dentist with his teeth untouched and his head crammed with the dentist's obiter dicta on bimetallism or the Baconian theory.

Gaius and Titius ... have learned from tradition that youth is sentimental—and they conclude that the best thing they can do is to fortify the minds of young people against emotion. My own experience as a teacher tells an opposite tale. For every one pupil who needs to be guarded from a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes. For famished nature will be avenged and a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head.

Gaius and Titius may be perfectly ready to admit that a good education should build some sentiments while destroying others. ...

...Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought.12 When the age for reflective thought comes, the pupil who has been thus trained in 'ordinate affections' or 'just sentiments' will easily find the first principles in Ethics; but to the corrupt man they will never be visible at all and he can make no progress in that science....

...Some of the accounts of it which I have quoted will seem, perhaps, to many of you merely quaint or even magical. But what is common to them all is something we cannot neglect. It is the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are. Those who know the Tao can hold that to call children delightful or old men venerable is not simply to record a psychological fact about our own parental or filial emotions at the moment, but to recognize a quality which demands a certain response from us whether we make it or not. I myself do not enjoy the society of small children: because I speak from within the Tao I recognize this as a defect in myself—just as a man may have to recognize that he is tone deaf or colour blind. And because our approvals and disapprovals are thus recognitions of objective value or responses to an objective order, therefore emotional states can be in harmony with reason (when we feel liking for what ought to be approved) or out of harmony with reason (when we perceive that liking is due but cannot feel it). No emotion is, in itself, a judgement; in that sense all emotions and sentiments are alogical. But they can be reasonable or unreasonable as they conform to Reason or fail to conform. The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it.

...If they embark on this course the difference between the old and the new education ...The new deals with them more as the poultry-keeper deals with young birds— making them thus or thus for purposes of which the birds know nothing. The old was—men transmitting manhood to men; the new is merely propaganda.

Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism. I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite sceptical about ethics, but bred to believe that 'a gentleman does not cheat', than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers....

The head rules the belly through the chest—the seat, as Alanus tells us, of Magnanimity,21 of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments. ...

The operation of The Green Book and its kind is to produce what may be called Men without Chests. It is an outrage that they should be commonly spoken of as Intellectuals. This gives them the chance to say that he who attacks them attacks Intelligence. It is not so. They are not distinguished from other men by any unusual skill in finding truth nor any virginal ardour to pursue her. Indeed it would be strange if they were: a persevering devotion to truth, a nice sense of intellectual honour, cannot be long maintained without the aid of a sentiment which Gaius and Titius could debunk as easily as any other. It is not excess of thought but defect of fertile and generous emotion that marks them out. Their heads are no bigger than the ordinary: it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so.

And all the time—such is the tragi-comedy of our situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more 'drive', or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or 'creativity'. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.(Complete Essay)

What's So Bad About Multiculturalism?

2008-09-29T12:13:00.000-07:00

- by Stephen Douglas

"A. B. Caneday's Attack on Multiculturalism

In a recent article which appeared in a 2007 volume of The Christian Research Journal, Dr. A. B. Caneday, Professor of New Testament Studies and Biblical Theology at Northwestern College, took on the prevailing view of multiculturalism or "diversity."

Dr. Caneday sources the roots of the multicultural movement in the literary deconstruction theory of Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucalt. This theory reduces all other theories and worldviews to socio-political conflict and attempts to level the power-scales within academia, politics, religion, etc. , so that the "oppressed" have the same voice as the "oppressor." What actually occurs is postmodernism, a worldview marked by subjectivism and spin. Caneday quotes J.P. Moreland,

[In the] postmodernist view, there is no such thing as objective reality, truth, value, reason, and so forth. All these are social constructions, creations of linguistic practice. . . [T]ruth is simply a contingent creation of language which expresses customs, emotions, and values embedded in a community’s linguistic practices.

Therefore, there can be no viable truth claim that corresponds to reality. Any attempt to base a claim upon facts or certainty are instantly deemed invalid. Truth, rather, is personal and based on whatever appeals to the self. There is no need to be accurate or to have any basic belief deeper or stronger than emotion.

Further, political, religious, and social arguments (as race considerations certainly encompass) are reduced to the same subjective emotionalism and thus to spin, the art of turning a perspective away from objective fact and toward subjective "meaning."

Caneday sees within this system a "new orthodoxy," those who aim this ever-changing metamorphic beast toward their own desires. Of them he writes,

Multiculturalists, in their moral crusade, consequently erase necessary and proper distinctions between right and wrong or good and evil and replace these categories with proper and improper or appropriate and inappropriate. Their new morality defines as inappropriate and worthy of severe censure anyone or anything that endeavors to impede their righteous cause.

This redefinition of morality pertaining to race labels as racist any form of identification of differences, particularly by any individual who might be identified as part of the "oppression." Caneday argues that this actually trivializes real racism because it equates things like lynching with things like esteem for an individual or a community that happen to be of a different race. The only authority that can be appealed to, set by the multiculturalists, is political correctness. This slippery idea dictates which actions or words are proper. It also dictates which individuals can use them.

This is a whole new morality, decidedly post- and anti-Christian in its spirit and scope. Caneday rightly implies a malevolent undercurrent to the system.

Multiculturalism is a seductive philosophical vision of and for the world that recruits its unsuspecting advocates by the power of language as it exploits language as power. It powerfully allures with its speech code of virtuous‐sounding political correctness. It infiltrates the lexicon of any religious belief system, and in the process it imperceptibly transmogrifies religious expressions and belief systems, including Christianity, to adjust to its values, virtues, and message. It seduces many to suppose that its suppression of ill‐mannered speech with “political correctness” is of a piece with Christian virtue and compatible with the Christian gospel.

His conclusion is that we must accept people of diversity, but with that term clearly defined and based on Christian principles. We must not give preferential or protective treatment to any specific person or group, according to James 2:9. This will lead to conflict in both the public and private sectors, but we must hold to biblical (and therefore also correspondence) understandings of truth, language, and relationships."

Why’s and How’s of Teaching Christian Worldview

2008-09-23T16:09:00.000-07:00

by Bayard Taylor

From the top of Sarangkot hill in Pokhara, Nepal, it is possible to catch a 180-degree panorama of the dramatic snow-covered peaks of the Himalayan Mountains, including the stunning “fishtail” peak of Annapurna II. A guide took me there a few years ago. With the entire white-capped range stretched out across the valley before us, he exclaimed, “J—- C—–!” This kid, who probably believed in many spirits according to Tibetan Buddhism, learned from secularized English-speaking foreigners that the Lord’s name is an especially powerful swear word (or magic word!) you use when you see something amazing.

But you don’t have to go to Pokhara for that. Whether we like it or not, we’ve got plenty of spirits and gods, miscommunication about Christian faith, and power-word cussing right here in our increasingly pluralistic and postmodern culture. If our churches don’t effectively teach people how to recognize these different worldviews and how to communicate the Gospel “into” these worldviews, we’re abdicating our responsibility.

How we fall short – Here are five common ways the Church is coming up short in this task:

1. The subject of worldviews is barely even a blip on most churches’ radar screens. Meanwhile, church members are swamped by an insanely intense anti-biblical indoctrination from education, entertainment, arts, and the media. If the idea of “worldview” is considered at all, it often is viewed as an impractical, over-intellectual, esoteric head trip, too vague to be useful for discipleship or evangelism.

2. We opt for doing Christianity in an echo chamber. We like being with “our kind of people” and “talking Christian shop,” insulating ourselves from people who don’t think and talk like us. We haven’t bothered to develop a vocabulary for genuine engagement with people who don’t share our basic assumptions and therefore have difficulty engaging in and sustaining conversations. When we happen to come across people who have completely different worldviews from our own, we either have nothing to say or talk “at” them with Christian truths rather than first finding common ground with them as human beings. We come off as odd, isolated, and out of touch with real life. Unfortunately, much of our marginalization in the culture is self-inflicted.

3. We project Christian faith as small-minded and parochial, whereas the core biblical worldview is actually much more flexible than many Christians make it out to be. While some churches and other groups manage to recognize the importance of worldview and attempt to address the subject, too often the core biblical/Christian worldview gets hijacked by other agendas. Add-ons like Christian sub-group cultural practices, denominational special pleading, and assumptions about political, social, and even scientific issues get the whole process off track. As a result, the “biblical worldview” gets too tightly identified with “our sub-group’s interpretation.”

4. We expect a non-questioning, anti-intellectual, childish Sunday school faith to compete in the rough-and-tumble marketplace of ideas. We give platitudes like “stay committed,” “read your Bible,” “go to church,” and “stay away from anything illegal, immoral, and fattening” – reducing everything to a matter of one’s personal discipline and faithfulness. We make hardly any concessions to the tough worldview questions people might bring to the table. A full biblical understanding of who we are requires attention to our minds, too. Jesus said we are to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind.

5. We neglect to acknowledge that the deepest, most difficult questions people have about Christian faith are generally issues of worldview. If churches persist in answering preset questions that only people in their denomination care about, then they’re not adequately equipping the saints for the work of ministry in the world.

Benefits of teaching about worldviewsInstead of ignoring or avoiding the challenge of worldviews, let’s meet it head-on. The other worldviews aren’t going away anytime soon (unless the Lord returns), and it’s time we prepare our people for upcoming cross-worldview encounters. I’m not saying we need to turn everybody into world-class apologists – but at least let’s try to give our people a decent running start.

Knowing about worldviews is good for the whole church – from teenagers to the elderly. It’s especially important for young people just before college and in college who are being or will be exposed to all these “new” ideas (which are just warmed-over tweaks on the various worldviews) for the first time. Whether old or young, if you’re at the center of the intellectual and cultural storm, knowing worldview basics will be relevant.

Several weeks ago, I spoke to a campus minister at Cal-Poly San Luis Obispo. He used to teach a worldview orientation course to first-year students at a well-known Christian college. His opinion was that the term “biblical worldview” had become a buzzword – it was generally assumed that if you taught Bible and Christian theology, automatically students were being taught the biblical worldview. He found, however, that when kids heard the word worldview, many just pushed the snooze button in their minds.

They were missing out on the many benefits of understanding worldviews, which include:

Increased empathy: Knowing worldviews helps you to “walk in the other guy’s shoes.” It moves you out of the Christian echo chamber.

Improved listening skills: Knowing worldviews helps you really hear what other people are saying.

Better conversations: Knowing worldviews gives you the confidence and ability to talk with absolutely anyone, no matter where they’re coming from.

Genuine tolerance: Knowing worldviews helps you appreciate our common life with people from all over the worldview map; you value people more as made in the image of God, even if they don’t believe in God.

More effective communication: Knowing worldviews aids you in getting your ideas across better.

Better friendships: Knowing worldviews improves your ability to draw people out and share yourself.

The greatest benefit of knowing worldviews is that it gets you more excited about Jesus! It’s not just a head trip. It’s a spiritual process of deepening your walk with Jesus, asking God for wisdom (James 1:5), allowing the Holy Spirit to lead and guide in your development of discernment, and in discovering afresh our supernatural, mountain-moving, freeing, healing, miracle-working God. Knowing how the biblical worldview compares and contrasts with the others will help you develop a much deeper appreciation for just how good the Good News is.

Bayard Taylor is the author of Blah, Blah, Blah: Making Sense of the World's Spiritual Chatter and The Late Great Ape Debate. If you'd like copies of Blah, Blah, Blah you can buy them directly from the author by going to blahblahbook.com, clicking on "book me" and finding the "contact me" under "book me links." Quantity discounts are also available.

"Rebirth" Explained

2008-09-11T21:07:00.000-07:00

"A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh." - Ezekiel 36:26

Rebirth in Scripture is found in John 3:1-21:

1 "There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: 2 The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. 3 Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

4 Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born? 5 Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. 8 The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.

9 Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? 10 Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things? 11 Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness. 12 If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? 13 And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven. 14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: 15 That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God." -KJV

This free audio by Dr. John Piper gives the best commentary explanation I have ever heard on "Rebirth".

In Luke 11, Jesus states the following: 9 And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. 10 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. 11 If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? 12 Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? 13 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?

Charles Finney, a good example of a brilliant mind untainted by TV and internet, wrote this sermon in the 1800's on the Holy Spirit that you can listen to. Finney (1792–1875), often called "America's foremost revivalist," was a major leader of the Second Great Awakening in America that had a profound impact on the history of the United States.

True Happiness

2008-09-08T22:19:00.000-07:00

Jesus did not come to make bad people good; He came to make dead people live. -Ravi Zacharias

by J.P. Moreland

Just after Jesus told his disciples who he was and what path lay before Him, He gave them — and us — the key to human prosperity.

If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for my sake shall find it. For what will a man be profited, if he gains the whole world, and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? (Matthew 16:24-26)

Christ invites us to follow Him, but warns that losing our lives is the first step. It's an invitation to happiness. But what exactly is happiness, and how do we obtain it?

According to ancient thought, happiness is a life well lived, a life that manifests wisdom, kindness and goodness. For the ancients, the happy life — the life we should dream about — is a life of virtue and character. Not only did Plato, Aristotle, the Church Fathers and medieval theologians embrace this definition, but Moses, Solomon and (most importantly) Jesus did, too. Sadly their understanding is widely displaced by the contemporary understanding of happiness defined as pleasure and satisfaction, a subjective emotional state associated with fleeting, egocentric feelings.

Consider the differences:

Contemporary Understanding

Happiness is:

Pleasure and satisfaction
An intense feeling
Dependent on external circumstances
Transitory and fleeting
Addictive and enslaving
Irrelevant to one's identity, doesn't color the rest of life and creates false/empty self
Achieved by self-absorbed narcissism; success produces a celebrity

Classical Understanding

Happiness is:

Virtue and character
A settled tone
Depends on internal state; springs from within
Fixed and stable
Empowering and liberating
Integrated with one's identity, colors rest of life and creates true/fulfilled self
Achieved by self-denying apprenticeship to Jesus; success produces a hero

How can we be certain Jesus is inviting us to a classical understanding of happiness in Matthew 16:24-26? He isn't talking about going to heaven rather than hell, nor is He telling his followers how to avoid premature death. Where Matthew writes, "what will a man be profited, if he gains the whole world, and forfeits his soul" (emphasis added), Luke clarifies Jesus' teaching by replacing "his soul" with the word "himself" (Luke 9:25). The issue is finding one's self vs. losing one's self. More specifically, to find one's self is to find out how life ought to look like and learn to live that way; it's to become like Jesus, with character that manifests the fruit of the Spirit and the radical nature of Kingdom living; it's to find out God's purposes for one's life and to fulfill those purposes in a Christ-honoring way.

Eternal life as defined in the New Testament is also about having a new kind of life, a new quality of life so distinct that those without it can, in a real sense, be called dead. It's life lived the way we were made to function, a life of virtue, character and well being lived for the Lord Jesus.

We were meant to live dramatic lives of goodness, truth and beauty. We're called to be dramatic in the "little" details of our "ordinary" lives, for even little details and ordinary activities become big and extra-ordinary in the light of true happiness. Such a life makes the presence or absence of contemporary happiness simply beside the point and not worth worrying about.

Self-denial doesn't mean living without money, goods, recognition or any of the things that bring pleasure and satisfaction, but it implies that these things can't be your goal. Neither does self-denial require putting yourself down or disliking yourself. Jesus said, "Take up your cross." Taking up your cross means refusing to be your own central concern. It means living for God's Kingdom, finding your place in His unfolding plan and playing your role well. Taking up your cross means giving your life to others for Christ.

A Critical Choice

The classical and contemporary notions of happiness produce radically different kinds of people. It's here that the difference between the two shakes us to the core and demands we make a lifestyle choice. This choice is as important as any we will ever make.

If we aim our lives at pleasure and satisfaction (see row one), we'll spend all our time looking inside ourselves, constantly taking our happiness temperatures. Our activities and relationships will become means to our own feelings, ceasing to serve anything higher or other than ourselves. This sort of life leads to narcissism.

If, on the other hand, virtue and godly character are our goals, we will learn to see ourselves in light of a larger cause — the outworking of God's plan in history. We'll be preoccupied with finding our role in that cause and playing it well. We'll passionately see life's activities as occasions to draw near to God and become more like Him. We'll hunger to become people who make life better for those around us. Our long-term focus will be on giving ourselves to others for Christ.

It's critical that we understand the nature of Jesus' assertion that we only gain our lives when we lose them for His sake. Jesus isn't commanding us to do anything. He's simply describing reality. He's accurately characterizing the way we're made, telling us how we prosper (or perish) as image-bearers of God. His assertion is like saying "If you want to be fit, you've got to exercise." This isn't a recommendation; exercise isn't one among many ways to get in shape. This is an accurate description of fitness. Being rooted in reality, it describes the path you have to take if you want to be fit.

If you want to be a fit person, exercise isn't optional; if you want to be a happy person, denying yourself for Christ isn't optional. And this isn't true simply for believers. It's true for all of us, whether we believe it or not.

As secular scholar John Gardner acknowledged, "Existence is a strange bargain. Life owes us little; we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose."1 If you want to flourish as a friend, you need to concentrate on others. You'll be lonely if you spend all your time trying to convince people that you're really cool, worthy of their focused attention.

Similarly, if you want to flourish as a person, you must deny yourself for Christ's sake. Only by taking this path — only by rejecting the contemporary notion of happiness — will you find true happiness.

JP Moreland is an outstanding and brilliant Philosopher and Christian; there are audios of his lectures posted here including one specifically on "Happiness".

The Letter of the Law Killeth

2008-08-29T11:59:00.000-07:00

http://view.break.com/530439 - Watch more free videos

2 Corinthians 3:4 And such trust have we through Christ to God-ward: 5 Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God; 6 Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.

7 But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away: 8 How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious? 9 For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory. - KJV

Santa Barbara Christian Olympic Swimmer Thanks 15 Years of Coaches

2008-08-28T10:42:00.000-07:00

Local Christian, Mark Warkentin, represented the USA in the Olympic 10K Men's Swimming event. He has journaled his experience for us on his blog.

"This is a fine blog by an Olympian not many folks have heard of --yet. In a very classy move, Warkentin posts the names of his coaches going back 15 years. There's such a line of coaches behind every Olympian, stretching down to the littlest of leagues and most obscure of competitions. Hats off to all of them, as well as those who never coached a future Olympian but who treated all of their athletes as though they might be, for their millions of hours of unselfish effort to raise up young people of courage and character." - Hugh Hewitt

The Truth Project - Christian worldview tour

2008-08-28T06:56:00.000-07:00

"Do you really believe that what you believe is really real?"

Have you, as a Christian, been taken captive by the culture?

If you ever get the chance to take the Truth Project's Christian worldview tour, take it. I have been taking the tour with a wonderful group in Oxnard and just finished tour 5 on science. This is so foundational, I wish I had this information when I was a kid.

Tour 9, in its entirety, is posted at DefendTruth.org:

The State:Whose Law?-Dr.Del Tackett

Does man’s law trump God’s law?
Why is the king eating grass?
Delegation of authority.
Bearing the sword.
The state as savior?

For information on the entire 12 tour program, visit TheTruthproject.org

Why Homeschool?

2008-08-25T19:26:00.000-07:00

This is the workshop that launched the Christian home schooling movements in the United States, Canada, Mexico & Australia. Over 180,000 families attended The Basic Home Schooling Workshop from 1981 to 1995. It also helped to establish Christian Home School Associations in 35 states and provinces.

TOPICS:

1. Why Home School?

2. The Battle for Your Child

3. Child Training God's Way

4. How to Do a Great Job

5. Delight-Directed Studies

6. The Battle for Your Rights

7. Teaching History in the Home

8. Home School Hazards

You can listen to chapter 1 on Why Homeschool? free online. I saw Harris lecture and that finalized our decision to homeschool ...along with a letter from the school gently telling us that social life in middle school was going to be, how should we say, "different" from the grade school our 5th grader was attending. The dowload sample above is well worth listening to.

After All Science Has Done For Us, Why Do Believers Seem Ungrateful?

2008-08-18T12:11:00.000-07:00

The God of the Gaps
by David Berlinski 2008

The idea that human beings have been endowed with powers and properties not found elsewhere in the animal kingdom - or, so far we can tell, in the universe-arises from a simple impulse: just look around. It is an impulse that handily survives the fraternal invitation to consider the great apes. The apes are, after all, behind the bars of their cages, and we are not. Eager for the experiments to begin, they are also impatient for their food to be served, and they seem impatient for little else. After undergoing years of punishing trials at the hands of determined clinicians, a few have been taught the rudiments of various primitive symbol systems. Having been given the gift of language, they have nothing to say. When two simian prodigies meet, they fling their placards at each other.

More is expected, but more is rarely forthcominging. Experiments-and they are exquisite-conducted by Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth indicate that like other mammals, baboons have a rich inner world. Simian social structures are often intricate. Chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas reason; they form plans; they have preferences; they are cunning; they have passions and desires; and they suffer. In much of this, we see ourselves. But beyond what we have in common with the apes, we have nothing in common, and while the similarities are interesting, the differences are profound.

If human beings are as human beings think they are, then questions arise about what they are, and so do responses. These responses are ancient. They have arisen spontaneously in every culture. They have seemed to men and women the obvious conclusions to be drawn from just looking around. Accordingly, an enormous amount of intellectual effort has been invested in persuading men and women not to look around.

"With all deference to the sensibilities of religious people, the idea that man was created in the image of God can surely be put aside." Thus Nature magazine in a recent editorial. As for those unwilling to put their "sensibilities" aside, the scientific community has concluded that they are afflicted by a form of intellectual ingratitude. After all, the same editorial insists, "The idea that human minds are the product of evolution is unassailable fact."

It is remarkable how widespread our ingratitude really is, and also how far back it goes. read more

Scientists Dissent from Darwinism

2008-08-17T21:28:00.000-07:00

"Darwin’s theory of evolution is the great white elephant of contemporary thought. It is large, almost completely useless, and the object of superstitious awe."
Dr. David Berlinski, Ph.D Philosophy

Check out this site on what many scientists, at great professional risk, are willing to publicly state about what they really think of Darwinism.

Excellent Advice From Thomas Jefferson On Religious Education For Non-Believers

2008-08-04T11:18:00.000-07:00

Advice given by Thomas Jefferson in a letter to his nephew Peter Carr regarding education in religion:

"4. Religion. Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object. In the first place, divest yourself of all bias in favor of novelty & singularity of opinion. Indulge them in any other subject rather than that of religion. It is too important, and the consequences of error may be too serious.

On the other hand, shake off all the fears & servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

You will naturally examine first, the religion of your own country. Read the Bible, then as you would read Livy or Tacitus. The facts which are within the ordinary course of nature, you will believe on the authority of the writer, as you do those of the same kind in Livy & Tacitus. The testimony of the writer weighs in their favor, in one scale, and their not being against the laws of nature, does not weigh against them. But those facts in the Bible which contradict the laws of nature, must be examined with more care, and under a variety of faces. Here you must recur to the pretensions of the writer to inspiration from God. Examine upon what evidence his pretensions are founded, and whether that evidence is so strong, as that its falsehood would be more improbable than a change in the laws of nature, in the case he relates.

For example, in the book of Joshua, we are told, the sun stood still several hours. Were we to read that fact in Livy or Tacitus, we should class it with their showers of blood, speaking of statues, beasts, &c. But it is said, that the writer of that book was inspired. Examine, therefore, candidly, what evidence there is of his having been inspired. The pretension is entitled to your inquiry, because millions believe it.

On the other hand, you are astronomer enough to know how contrary it is to the law of nature that a body revolving on its axis, as the earth does, should have stopped, should not, by that sudden stoppage, have prostrated animals, trees, buildings, and should after a certain time gave resumed its revolution, & that without a second general prostration. Is this arrest of the earth's motion, or the evidence which affirms it, most within the law of probabilities?

You will next read the New Testament. It is the history of a personage called Jesus. Keep in your eye the opposite pretensions: 1, of those who say he was begotten by God, born of a virgin, suspended & reversed the laws of nature at will, & ascended bodily into heaven; and 2, of those who say he was a man of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, enthusiastic mind, who set out without pretensions to divinity, ended in believing them, and was punished capitally for sedition, by being gibbeted, according to the Roman law, which punished the first commission of that offence by whipping, & the second by exile, or death in fureâ. See this law in the Digest Lib. 48. tit. 19. §. 28. 3. & Lipsius Lib 2. de cruce. cap. 2. These questions are examined in the books I have mentioned under the head of religion, & several others. They will assist you in your inquiries, but keep your reason firmly on the watch in reading them all.

Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you. If you find reason to believe there is a God, a consciousness that you are acting under his eye, & that he approves you, will be a vast additional incitement; if that there be a future state, the hope of a happy existence in that increases the appetite to deserve it; if that Jesus was also a God, you will be comforted by a belief of his aid and love.

In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable, not for the rightness, but uprightness of the decision.

I forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us, to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists. Because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration, as much as the others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, and not by the reason of those ecclesiastics. Most of these are lost. There are some, however, still extant, collected by Fabricius, which I will endeavor to get & send you." - Thomas Jefferson

The Dire Importance of the Christian Mind:

2008-07-04T11:39:00.000-07:00

Moreland Addresses Kingdom Triangle Themes to Apologetics Students - post from Kindom Triangle Forum
La Mirada, CA - Every year, graduate students in apologetics come from around the country in order to congregate at Biola University. These graduate students do not fit your typical profile: many of them are full-time career professionals with families, often established in their life vocations, but wanting to enrich their life by graduate work in Christian apologetics.With these students, JP lectured on the meaning and importance of the reality of the Kingdom of God for apologetics work:

"I defined the Kingdom as the realm within which God's will is carried out (the laws of nature and the hearts of those yielded to the King). I argued that the purpose of history is to bring honor to God by the progressive formation of a voluntary community of people, under the King, who exhibit the relations that obtain among the members of the Trinity and who co-labor with God forever to produce goodness, truth and beauty. I claimed that this is the meaning of our own individual lives. I then drew out the power aspect of the Kingdom and talked about healing prayer. Many came to me with the report that they had already read Kingdom Triangle with great benefit. Several students got copies. I am observing that the book is having precisely the sort of transformational influence on readers I had hoped." - JP Moreland

Western society is in crisis, the result of our culture's embrace of naturalism and postmodernism. At the same time, the biblical worldview has been pushed to the margins. Christians have been strongly influenced by these trends, with the result that the personal lives of Christians often reflect the surrounding culture more than the way of Christ, and the church's transforming influence on society has waned.

In Kingdom Triangle, J.P. Moreland issues a call to recapture the drama and power of kingdom living. He examines and provides a penetrating critique of these worldviews and shows how they have ushered in the current societal crisis. He then lays out a strategy for the Christian community to regain the potency of kingdom life and influence in the world. Drawing insights from the early church, he outlines three essential ingredients of this revolution:

Recovery of the Christian mind
Renovation of Christian spirituality
Restoration of the power of the Holy Spirit

Read an excerpt

Dr. Moreland has so much good stuff out there I am putting up a couple links that I hope you consider taking the time to check out. The audios are well worth putting into a format whereby you can listen to them in your car.

Book/Article links:

Churches That Develope A Christian Mind
Articles
Book Summaries and quotes
Moreland Books on Amazon

Audio lectures and interviews:
Lecture and interview audios
Veritas Forum audios
Anaheim Vineyard Lecture Series
Kingdom Triangle Forum

Christ and Culture Audio Lectures

All Things Are Better In Koine

2008-07-04T11:28:00.000-07:00

The Mockingbird blog has been kind enough to provides some explanations of the video:
"Koine was the Greek language spoken and written in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, and it's the language in which the New Testament scriptures were originally written.

Exegetical means of or pertaining to critical interpretation of a text.

En arche en ho logos, kai ho logos eh pros ton theon, kai theon en ho logos is John 1:1 in koine.

ti legeis en koine means literally, "What do you say in koine?"

Donald A. (D. A.) Carson, Daniel Wallace, and William D. Mounce (mentioned in the rap sequence) are prominent New Testament scholars. I wonder if any of these gentlemen ever thought they would some day be rapped about?

And finally, the whole "l'eggo my eggo" thing, explained by the man himself...

Scott Yoshikawa (Ph.D. in New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School under D. A. Carson), teaches Greek at Biola University in La Mirada, CA, and is the professor who is briefly featured in the video several times.

Per Dr. Yoshikawa:

"Legomai ego" comes from a joke I tell my 3rd semester Greek classes as a reinforcement of the Voice of the Greek verb. I ask the class, "How do you say, 'I myself say to myself' in Koine?" The 'I say' is "lego" but 'to myself' reflects the middle voice (reflexive), hence, "legomai" (1st singular present middle indicative). "I myself" is emphatic represented by the extra "ego" at the end. In the video I write it on the board. Class dismissed!"

2008-07-04T10:53:00.001-07:00

'God is the all sufficient explanation, the eternal rapture glimpsed in every Archimedean cry of eureka' - Bernard Lonergan

Notable Discoveries;

Time frame, Passage & Year the Bible told us before science did:

Hygiene/hand washing 19th century Leviticus 15:13 1405 BC
Germs in porous containers 19th century Leviticus 6:28, 11:33 1405 BC
Germs in clothes 19th century Leviticus 11:25 1405 BC
Bleeding is deadly 19th century Genesis 9:4 PRE 1445 BC
Spherical earth 8th century Isaiah 40:22 740-680 BC
Ocean hot springs 1977 Job 30:8 pre-exilic-pre 580 BC
What Light is Still unknown Job 38:19 pre-exilic-pre 580 BC
2nd Law of Thermodynamics/Entropy 1850 Psalms 102:26 pre-exilic-pre 580 BC
Cholera 1830 Deuteronomy 23:13 1405 BC
Matter made up of microscopic parts 20th century Romans 1:20 55 AD
Quantity of Stars post Hubble Hebrews 11:12 60s AD
Dinosaurs 1841 Job 40:17 pre-exilic-pre 580 BC
Time has a beginning 1993 II Timothy 1:9 62-63 AD
Fission 1932 II Peter 3:10 63-64 AD
Ocean mountains 1950s Jonah 2:5-6 760 BC
Pure water/water cycle/distillation 100 BC Eccles 1:7, Job 36:27 935 BC
Jet stream mid 1700's Eccles 1:6 935 BC
Cause of wind Not dated Job 38:24 pre-exilic-pre 580 BC
Ocean current 1845 Isaiah 43:16, Psalms 8:8 740-680 BC
Circumcision 19th century Genesis 17:11 PRE 1445 BC
Coagulation in newborns 20th century Gen 17:12, Luke 1:59 PRE 1445 BC
Cholesterol 1985 Lev 7:23 1405 BC
No one has special access to truth Still widely unknown Romans 1:22 55 AD
Babies are born liars 2007 Psalms 58:3 pre-exilic-pre 580 BC
The Scientific Method 17th century I Thessalonians 5:12 50-51AD
Moral shift w/Near Death experience Still unknown John 3:3 80-90 AD

For Those Who Love Science & Missed the Chris Tomlin Tour

2008-07-04T08:59:00.001-07:00

"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands." -Psalms 19:1

You may have heard of the message Lou Giglio gave during Chris Tomlin's "How Great is our God Tour". He began by expanding our idea of how great God is by showing us the vastness of the distance of the Whirlpool Galaxy and the Celestial Cross at its center. Next, he spoke about how vast the sizes of heavenly bodies in space are. He ended telling us about the protein Laminin.

If you liked the videos, here are some photos of the same:

Whirlpool Galaxy Cross
Scale Comparison
Laminin - microscopic photo
Hubble Pictures