8 airports, 6 different lodgings, 4 countries, 6 flights - and lots and lots of impressions and memories; that is what I am keepeing myself occupied these days, sorting my photos and starting work on the videos after traveling to Florida and Mexico. The pictures, though in an unorganized mixture, can already be seen here:
florida.sveana.com
So dig in if you will :)
The rest will come, as the time permits. Blessings!
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Monday, February 09, 2009
Interesting article
Charles Darwin zealots have made science a substitute religion
Christopher Booker is troubled by the fervour surrounding the 200-year anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth.
As councils ran out of the grit they had failed to stockpile because they fell for the Government line that climate change made it unnecessary, Britain was last week doubly-carpeted, partly by snow, partly by a blizzard of tributes to Charles Darwin. What did these have in common? In contrast to the centenary of Darwin’s death 26 years ago, what has been noticeable about this homage, not least on the BBC, is how relentlessly reverential it has been.
One would never have guessed from the adulation heaped on the great man by the likes of Sir David Attenborough that there is something very odd about Darwin’s theory. He did not, of course, originate the idea that life on earth had evolved. This notion went back to the ancient Greeks, and was accepted by many of Darwin’s predecessors, including his own grandfather Erasmus. The novelty of Darwin’s thesis was his claim that evolution could be explained solely by the process of natural selection, whereby an infinite series of minute variations gradually turned one form of life into another.
One great stumbling block to his argument is that evolution has repeatedly taken place in leaps forward so sudden and so complex that they could not possibly have been accounted for by the gradual process he suggested - “the Cambrian explosion" of new life forms, the complexities of the eye, the post-Cretaceous explosion of mammals. Again and again some new development emerged which required a whole mass of interdependent changes to take place simultaneously, such as the transformation of reptiles into feathered, hollow-boned and warm-blooded birds.
Years ago, a good illustration of this was Attenborough himself claiming to 'prove’ Darwin’s theory by showing us a mouse and a bat, explaining how one evolved into the other. He seemed oblivious to the obvious point that, as the mouse’s forelegs evolved by minute variations to wings, there must have been a long period when the creature, no longer with properly functioning legs but as yet unable to fly, was much less 'adapted to survive’ than it had been before.
As even Darwin himself acknowledged, these jumps in the story might have seemed to render his thesis â absurd’. He might therefore have recognised that some other critically important but unknown factor seemed to be at work, an â organising power’ which had allowed these otherwise inexplicable leaps to take place. But so possessed was he by the simplicity of his theory that, brushing such difficulties aside, he made a leap of faith that it must be right, regardless of the evidence. In this he has been followed by generations of 'Darwinians’ who have found his theory so beguiling that, like him, they have refused to recognise how much it cannot explain.
What is fascinating about the Darwinians is their inability to accept just how much they do not know. Armoured in their certainty that they have all the answers when they so obviously don’t, neo-Darwinians such as Richard Dawkins rest their beliefs just as much on an unscientific leap of faith as the â Creationists’ they so fanatically affect to despise. It is revealing how they dismissively try to equate all those scientists who argue for 'intelligent design' with Biblical fundamentalists, as their only way to cope with questions they cannot answer.
Something strikingly similar has been taking place over the belief that the world is dangerously warming, due to the rise in man-made CO2. For a time the believers in this theory seemed to have the evidence on their side, as CO2 levels and temperatures rose in apparent harmony. But lately all sorts of evidence has been put forward by serious scientists to suggest that this theory is seriously flawed, not least the fact that recently falling temperatures were not predicted by any of those computer models on which the advocates of global warming rest their beliefs.
It becomes increasingly obvious that, like the Darwinians, the warming supporters are so convinced by the simplicity of their theory that they are unable to recognise how much they do not know - and like the Darwinians their response has been to become ever more fanatically intolerant of anyone who dares question their dogma. This might not matter so much if they hadn’t, on the basis of their faith, persuaded so many of the world’s politicians to propose measures which threaten to inflict a real economic disaster on the world.
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Saturday, February 07, 2009
Friday, February 06, 2009
When Unclothed Is Unfitting: Thoughts on Selling with Sex
John Piper
Jonathan Edwards once said that godly people can, as it were, smell the depravity of an act before they can explain why it evil. There is a spiritual sense that something is amiss. It does not fit in a world permeated with God.
Ephesians 5:3 says that some things "are not fitting" among saints." "Fitting-ness" is not always easy to justify with arguments. You discern it before you can defend it. That's good, because we have to make hundreds of choices every day with no time for extended reflection.
But from time to time we need to pause and give rational, biblical expression why something is not fitting. Some years ago I came to that point when, week after week, a local newspaper put scantily clad women on the second page of Section A in order to sell underclothes. I wrote a letter to the paper with nine reasons why they should stop using this kind of advertising.
Perhaps my reflections will help you deal with the hundreds of abuses of God's good gift of sexuality in our culture. Here is what I wrote.
As a 14-year subscriber and reader of the [name of paper omitted], I am writing to express the persuasion that your sexually explicit ads that often turn up in Section A are increasingly offensive and socially irresponsible. I mean that the effectiveness of catching people's attention by picturing a woman in her underclothes does not justify the ads. The detrimental effects of such mercenary misuse of the female body are not insignificant. The harm I have in mind is described in the following nine persuasions.
1. This woman could not go out in public dressed like that without being shamed or being mentally aberrant. Yet you thrust her out, even in front of those of us who feel shame for her.
2. This portrayal of a woman sitting in her underclothes at a table with a cup of tea disposes men to think of women not as persons but mainly in terms of their bodies. It stimulates young boys to dwell on unclothed women's bodies and thus lames their ability to deal with women as dignified persons. I have four sons.
3. The ad stimulates sexual desire which in thousands of men has no legitimate or wholesome outlet through marriage. In other words, it feeds a corporate, community lust that bears no good fruit outside marriage, but in fact many ills.
4. The ad makes sensibilities callous so that fewer and fewer offenses against good taste feel unacceptable, which spells the collapse of precious and delicate aspects of personhood and relationships.
5. The ad makes thousands of women subconsciously measure their attractiveness and worth by the standard of rarefied, unrealistic models, leading to an unhealthy and discouraging preoccupation with outward looks.
6. The ad feeds the prurient fantasies of ordinary men, lodging a sexual image in their minds for the day which can rob them of the ability to think about things greater and nobler than skin.
7. The ad condones the proclivity of males to mentally unclothe women by reminding them what they would see if they did, and by suggesting that there are women who want to be publicly unclothed in this way. This reminder and this suggestion support habits and stereotypes that weaken personal virtue and jeopardize decorous relationships.
8. The ad encourages young girls to put excessive focus on their bodies and how they will be looked at, adding to the epidemic of depression and eating disorders.
9. The ad contributes to dissatisfaction in men whose wives can't produce that body and thus adds to the instability of marriages and homes.
I realize that the bottom line is big bucks for page two, and lots of attention for [name of department store omitted]. But please know that at least one assessment of your standards of fitness for print is that it is part of a tragic loss of modesty and decency that may, for now, feel like mature liberation, but in generations to come will reap a whirlwind of misery for all of us.
From John Piper, A Godward Life, published by Multnomah Books.
By John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: www.desiringGod.org. Email: mail@desiringGod.org. Toll Free: 1.888.346.4700.
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