The Crash of 2008 (2) :Peace Amidst the Storm

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The Crash of 2008 (2): Peace Amidst the Storm

As the worldwide financial crisis develops, one word keeps recurring: PANIC.

If not stated that strongly, the emotion millions now feel is variously called fear, anxiety, or worry, and it comes with scary questions: What is going to happen to me and my family? How will I have enough money to live on? Where will I live? Is my job safe? Can I get another job? What about retirement? Is all hope gone with the wind?

Without knowing the answer to any of those questions, I do know that we can live without fear. Indeed, we can have peace in the midst of this ferocious storm. How?

Reflect upon the past

How has my foolishness contributed to my current fear? Have I lived beyond my income, acquiring more than I could afford, going into debt, failing to save? Do I dwell in a house that is too big and too expensive? Am I driving a luxury car, wearing designer clothes, and surrounded by costly technical toys? Have I been eating out at too often, or taking vacations I can’t really afford?

Where have I set my hope for happiness and security? On my 401(K) plan? The fortunes of my company? My investments?

Have I neglected my family in the race to make money?

In my self-indulgence, have I been like the millions of others who have failed to remember the poor?

What about God? Where has He been on my list of priorities? Have I been “too busy” to read the Bible, pray, or go to church?

In short: What have I placed at the center of my life? Possessions, power, prestige, and pleasure, or people? Most of all, Have I sought happiness and fulfillment in this transitory world, or in knowing the Maker of the universe?

Rely on God

Now is the time to turn our trust from bankers, stock brokers, CEOs, union bosses, politicians (above all!), and anything that they can promise or provide. Nor can we put confidence in ourselves and our own intelligent choices – look where that has gotten us!

There is one upon whom we can rely, however: God. He has made the universe and everything in it, including us. He cares enough for us to have sent His Son Jesus to live, die, and rise from the dead in order that our folly, faults, and failures may be forgiven, and we can have friendship with God again.

Through Jesus, God the Father has told us to pray for our “daily bread,” has asserted that He knows our needs before we even ask, and has promised to provide for those who trust in Him (see Matthew 6:19-34, for example). We are of more value than the birds and the grass of the field, over whom He looks with watchful eye, and He will surely care for us as well as He cares for these little creatures.

He has ordered us to be content with what we have, and not to be greedy for more, but to believe His promise never to fail us or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5). Many times in the Bible, God has told us not to be afraid, but to trust in His loving care for those who love and believe in Him (See Psalms 23, 34, 37; Philippians 4:6-7; etc.).

Re-order our priorities

But there are conditions to meet if we are going to enjoying peace with God and serenity in the middle of financial turmoil.

Jesus says that we should “See first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these [material] things shall be added to you” (Matthew 6:33). That means to put God first in our lives – to read His Word daily, pray to Him often, worship Him in church, and follow His commands, relying on His strength to do so.

Conversely, we are urged not to lay up for ourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust corrupt and where thieves break in and steal, but to lay up treasures for ourselves in heaven, where nothing can touch them. How? By giving to the poor and to the work of the church and by placing our trust not in our own financial assets but in God’s provision.

We must have a “single” eye, focused on God’s Word and His will, not on the things of this world. Even as we work to provide for ourselves and our families, we should do so as unto God, serving Him as our ultimate Boss, seeking to glorify Him and to benefit others, not just to make a living (See Ephesians 4:28; 6:5-9). Since we can’t be loyal to more than one master at a time, Jesus warns us to serve God and not Mammon (the god of wealth and all it represents).

Now is the time to spend more time in Bible reading, meditation, and prayer, not less, as we listen not only to God’s promises to provide for us but also to His commands.

Maybe we need to turn off the TV and spend time with our family members and housemates; give away some of the stuff that fills our storage rooms; eat simply, and at home.

Reach out to others

Remember, you aren’t the only one in this mess! Literally billions of people are being stunned by daily news of default, bankruptcy, market declines, and lost jobs.

This would be a good time to extend a helping hand to those in greater need than we are; to ask our neighbors how they are doing; to pray for the poor, the confused, the desperate.

Rejoice!

Yes, I said, Rejoice! There’s something good about times like these. People come together. Old values are revived. The really important things return to their proper place in our hearts. Most of all, God has “room” to work, now that we really need Him. When the Israelites were between Pharaoh’s chariots and the Red Sea, God told them to stand aside and watch Him work a mighty deliverance for them.

In fact, most of the miracles in the Bible took place when people were at their wit’s end, with no resources, nothing to turn to – except God! That’s when He has a chance to demonstrate both His power and His love.

Maybe something good will come out of this awful Crash of 2008.

The Crash of 2008 ( Part One)

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The Crash of 2008 (Part One)

We are in the mist of an almost unprecedented financial crash. Though others have preceded it throughout history (including the Tulip Bubble in Holland, the 19^th – century Panics in America, and the Great Depression), this one seems about to dwarf all others. The enormous amounts of money involved, the global scope of the crisis, and the numbers of people and companies already affected, or likely to be so, surpass anything we have seen before.

In this article and one to follow, I propose to look briefly at the causes and possible consequences of this disaster, and then to suggest some ways to cope with the troubles that are beginning to befall us.

Causes

Any event as vast as this one must have multiple, and complex, causes. Not being an expert, I can only list a few of the more obvious ones:

- Greed, arrogance, and fraud in the business, and especially, banking sector.

The collapse of Enron some years ago alerted us to the widespread use of dishonest accounting procedures in many of America’s greatest corporations. Now we are finding out just how endemic this corruption has been. Balance sheets have been rendered meaningless by inflated numbers and “notional values” that hide massive exposure to unbacked obligations. Not only so, but CEOs and CFOs have led their firms into crooked policies of various sorts, including drawing upon pension funds to finance operations.

Meanwhile, financial whiz kids have developed investment “instruments” that resemble a Ponzi scheme or a casino more than a rational strategy to steward other people’s money and make a decent profit for oneself. Greed and pride have created the derivatives monster that threatens to devour us.

On the train a couple of weeks ago, I sat next to a lady whose son-in-law works for a hedge firm. This young man describes his colleagues in the field as “incredibly arrogant.” The son of another friend of mine has a boss who made one billion dollars last year; his own income exceeds a million dollars.

According to some analysts, there is evidence that the precious metals markets are manipulated, with the full knowledge of those who are supposed to prevent such abuses. Only time will tell if that charge is true.

- Government intervention in markets

Beginning with the Clinton administration, the U.S. Government put enormous pressure upon banks to extend loans to people with poor credit, thus sowing the seeds of the devastating melt-down in sub-prime mortgages. The semi-governmental behemoths, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, were given advantages that effectively skewed the housing market and contributed greatly to the current crisis, with the encouragement of the government. (We shall not discuss what appear to have been criminal acts by the executives of these highly-regulated companies.)

The Federal Reserve Bank, nominally independent of the U.S. Government but in fact a close partner with the Treasury (as recent events have shown), allowed first the dot.com and then the housing bubbles to expand by creating easy credit and huge increases in the money supply.

In the past year, the Fed and now the Treasury, abetted by Congress, have alternately bailed out failing enterprises and allowed others to collapse, creating uncertainty among investors and great doubts as to the fairness and competence of those making decisions. The 700-billion dollar rescue plan, which the markets declared virtually dead-on-arrival, will haunt us for years to come by multiplying both government debt and intervention into the private sector. More of the same comes from Washington with each successive lurch towards virtual integration of the state and the private sector.

- Corporate and private debt

One common theme runs throughout almost every news analysis of the crisis: Debt. Companies and households cannot pay their debts.

Most people may not know that such reliance upon borrowing is relatively recent in American history, only beginning in the first decades of the 20^th century. People used to save and then use cash; now they spend and rely on credit. We are thus all caught in the web of debt.

“The borrower is the lender’s slave,” says the Bible – a sober fact of which we are now becoming painfully aware.

- Covetousness

Much of this comes from our self-indulgence and covetousness. We are not content with what we have, and put our future in hock to purchase present pleasure.

Consequences

- Economic collapse, accompanied by massive unemployment, seems unavoidable.

- Millions have lost their savings for the future; retirement has become a forgotten dream.

- Government intervention and control have drastically altered the nature of our political and economic system. A Republican President signed the rescue plan, despite his avowed free-market convictions. Actually, he had earlier significantly raised the government’s profile by the prescription-supplement to Medicare, along with the No Child Left Behind legislation for education, not to mention the Patriot Act. The Federal government now has full legal powers to act in peacetime (war not having been formally declared) that exceed even those used by Lincoln, Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt.

Both presidential candidates have enunciated policies that will increase government participation – and control – in the economy. One of them has proposed measures that many economists believe will kill hopes for recovery and lead to a great reduction in almost everyone’s living standard. His anti-capitalist rhetoric at times has resembled that of the ruler of Venezuela.

Therefore, regardless of which man wins the presidency, we can expect more government intervention in the nation’s economy. Ironically, at a time when nominally “Communist” China has done its best to promote a free market economy, and has thereby lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in just a few short decades, the United States appears to be going the way of proven failure.

One consequence of America’s financial fall has been a rapid loss of worldwide influence. The U.S. military has begun to find expensive weapons programs hard to fund, and will soon be hard pressed to pay its troops. The U.S. dollar may lose its position as the world’s reserve currency. U.S. hegemony is a thing of the past. Humiliation is upon us, big time.

Cure

There is no cure. At least, not for the next five, ten, or twenty years. We are in this for the long haul. The Wall Street Journal opined recently that we are in a secular bear market that could last as long as 14 years.

If you have any money left, I recommend that you follow the advice of Martin Weiss in the Safe Money Report (I have no connections with Weiss, but have found him and his team very accurate over the past decade.).

In the next part of this article, I shall offer suggestions on how to cope with this crisis, and how we may enjoy inner peace in the midst of the storm.

The End of the American Empire

The End of the American Empire

For once I agree with the president of Iran, whose name I still can’t pronounce correctly.

At the United Nations General Assembly yesterday, he declared that America’s “empire” was “near the end of its road.” He cited the difficulties of American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, but there are other reasons for our country’s imminent demise as the “world’s only superpower.”

Aside from the growing number of unfriendly governments around us (Venezuela, Cuba, and Bolivia; Russia; Iran; North Korea, to name only a few; China could be added to the list without too much provocation), we face an internal financial calamity of catastrophic proportions.

No matter what the currently-proposed bailout turns out to be, or how happily Wall Street will greet its announcement, it will fail in its purpose. Nothing can stave off the collapse of the huge derivatives market, not to mention the “lesser” crises which have prompted drastic government action.

For more on this, see the blog I posted earlier (http://wrightdoyle.wordpress.com/category/money/) and the long essay, “Tsunami Coming?” I wrote in February, 2007 (http://www.chinainst.org/en/articles/personal-reflections/tsunami-coming.php).

What to do?

There is still time to take some moves to protect your assets. For advice which has been very sound so far, go to the Weiss Safe Money Report. (I have no financial connection to Weiss’s organization; I have only used their recommendations to manage my sister’s funds.)

For deeper peace, turn to the Lord, who alone gave calm our hearts and supply our every need (Psalm 23; Matthew 6:33; Philippians 4:6-7).

A work of grace and beauty

Leighton Ford’s The Attentive Life is a work of grace and beauty, well worth multiple slow and attentive readings.

Coming from the mind and heart of a very wise man, this slender volume is redolent with truth and love. It’s the kind of book that probably could only have been written by an older person, but that deserves careful consideration by people of all ages, especially young men!

Seventy-six-year-old Ford, a former world-trotting evangelist, recently a trainer and mentor of younger leaders, has stepped into the role of “artist of the soul and a friend on the journey.” As an artist with words, he surely succeeds, with elegant, even poetic prose laced with pithy nuggets of his own and apt quotations from a wide array of skilled authors. Rarely has a Christian leader with such a well-earned reputation for character and spirituality revealed so much of his own weakness and shortcomings. One thinks of St. Augustine’s Confessions.

As the back cover says, “Distractions and fear and busyness were keeping Leighton Ford from seeing God’s work in an around him. So he began a journey of longing and looking for God. And it started with paying attention.”

Under the rubric of “attention,” Ford includes concepts like listening, alertness, and the contemplative life. Chapter One, “Paying Attention,” would have been, as the saying goes, worth the price of the whole book, for it highlights how critical is attentiveness for finding “the way to clarity of heart,” which is “the path to seeing God.”

The author wants to help us be “clear at the center” (his preferred rendering of “pure in heart”) “and so with true attentiveness ‘to see God in all things, and all things in God.’” Such a quality mirrors the nature of God himself, who is a “Father who watches with careful attention.” After all, God is love, and “love is focused attention.”

By contrast, we learn how deadly distraction and inattention can be, not only in our relations with those around us, but in knowing either ourselves or God. “Perhaps inattentiveness is our greatest sin – not only against [God] but against ourselves.”

How, then, do we overcome inattention? Ford follows the “hours” of the monastic rule to paint a portrait of a life which stops, looks, and listens seven times a day. Each of these “hours” is related to a time of day, a state of mind, and a phase in our journey through life, until death itself approaches.

I am hard pressed to describe either the loveliness of this book or the depth and relevance of its central message as the theme unfolds and develops with a remarkably organic flow. A banquet of gourmet delights, pleasing to the palate, delightful to the eyes, and nourishing to the soul. A diamond with dozens of facets, each reflecting and refracting light in dazzling variety. A tapestry of rich colors of every hue, complex but coherent. A bouquet of flowers. A symphony of ideas and images, with theme and variation, ending in a quiet but deeply moving climax.

But I cannot do justice to the variegated richness of Leighton Ford’s style or the content of this highly-autobiographical guide to the attentive – and finally contented – life. You must read it for yourself. Soon. Repeatedly. Attentively.

Come Home, Son

Come Home, Son

You’ve wandered long enough, far enough. It’s time to come home.

Have you found what you sought?

What was it, anyway?

What drew you away from your Father’s house?

What induced you to demand what was “yours,” as if you had earned it by your own hard labor, or deserved the patrimony that would come to you by my free gift?

What lured you away from my steady love, my protection, provision and care?

Did you want to make a name for yourself – like the builders of Babel?

Did you think that the delights of this ephemeral world satisfy the hunger and thirst of your immortal soul?

Or were you just restless, driven, impelled to leave me, launch out on your own, perhaps even find yourself somewhere else?

Are you content? Happy?

How well do your erstwhile “friends” now like – not to mention love – you, now that your resources are expended and you have nothing left to give them?

Did you find what you were looking for in these companions in comfort, comrades in carousing, cohorts in crime?

You’re starving, I know, longing to eat one of the husks you feed the unclean swine of your stingy boss.

But would they stop the gnawing in your stomach?

You are coming to yourself; I see it from afar.

You know what I have to offer you, but you don’t know (yet) that it is yours to have – for free.

You are on the road, walking, now running.

I see your anxious look, know your doubting heart – will your Father yet take you back?

Your longing meets mine. I cast off my dignity and race towards you, arms outstretched.

“I am not worthy…”

“Hush, child. You are home. I am yours.

Welcome home, son.”

On reading Leighton Ford’s The Attentive Life.

God’s Enfolding Love

God’s Enfolding Love

Yesterday as I was lying in the hammock my wife and daughter gave me for my birthday last year, I reflected on a passage from Julian of Norwich which I had just read on the love of God. I realized that I don’t just ponder the love of God very often. Earlier in the day, I had been reminded by Leighton Ford’s The Attentive Life to slow down and reflect on God, his Word, and his ways with us.

So, I thought about God’s love for a few minutes, and something new to me (though probably not to you) came to my mind.

Christians believe that God grants his pardoning love to us, forgiving all our sins by imputing them to Christ and transferring the righteousness of Christ to us (Romans 3:21-26; 5:6-11; etc.).

We also know that God’s love is transforming: As we consider what he has done for us, we are moved to imitate his kindness to others (John 13:34; Ephesians 5:1-12).

But what I saw yesterday is that God embraces us with an enfolding love. AS we trust in Christ, we enter into such a close relationship with him that the Bible says we are in some way in Christ (John 15:5; 17:21; Ephesians 1:3,4,6, etc.).

Now, since Jesus is in the “bosom” of the Father (John 1:18), indeed “in” the Father (John 17:17:21), and since we are spiritually alive in Christ, raised up with him, and in the heavenly places with him (Ephesians 2:5-6), we are also spiritually “in” the Father – that is, we are as close to him as we can be.

Consider this image: God the Father enjoys unbroken intimacy with God the Son through God the Holy Spirit. Those who fully trust in Christ are God’s beloved children also (Ephesians 5:1), and brought into this eternal loving relationship. God has, as it were, brought us into his divine embrace, surrounding us with his infinite love, enfolding us in the everlasting arms.

Stop for a moment, as I did yesterday, and imagine the rest, the comfort, the security, the peace of being thus enfolded in God’s gentle, powerful, and loving embrace.

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Total Health?

How To Resolve 7 Deadly Stresses: A Health Manual for All Nations. Oak Brook, Illinois: Institute in Basic Life Principles, 2008.

Carefully reading and then applying the principles in this book would prevent a great deal of disease and even bring healing to those already afflicted with major illnesses.

The inside title page adds, and Discover Five Causes off all Diseases, which might seem to be an arrogant claim, but is supported by a great deal of evidence, both from science and from the Bible. Though the author is not named, Bill Gothard’s fingerprints appear on almost every page.

The book begins with a definition of “total health”” not perfect health, but “the ability to fulfill the purposes for which God created you.” We are told that “total health involves a restored relationship with God and the accompanying signs of joy, freedom, and inward peace.”

Next comes a series of chapters on the five factors that determine health, which are: what we think; what we say; what we do; what we eat; what we inherit. Each of these then receives detailed treatment, with a description of how they affect our physical health and how they can be adjusted to foster physical and mental well-being.

“The disease crisis of modern medicine” is that we rely too much on drugs, all of which have toxic side effects. Covering symptoms with unnecessary pharmaceutical intake, we set ourselves up on a “course of increasing drugs and diseases.”

After an explanation of the harmful effects of stress on the body, we read in the body of the work how to “resolve” the seven major stressors in life: anger, guilt, sexual lust, bitterness, greed, fear, and envy.

More specifically, the writers claim that anger affects the cardiovascular system; guilt affects the nervous system; lust affects the endocrine system; bitterness the digestive system, greed the immune system, fear the respiratory system, and envy the musculoskeletal system.

Extensive references to medical literature back these diagnoses, which were apparently contributed by C. Stephen Paine Jr., M.D., who is thanked for his extensive role in the production of book.

Fundamentally, however, the starting point for each analysis is the Bible, which turns out to contain far more specific references to the relationship of mind and body than most of us would think.

At the beginning of each chapter on the various stressors, we learn how we try to hide or deny their presence in our lives. “I am not bitter… I am just deeply hurt.” On the other side of the page are ways in which we reveal express what would otherwise remain hidden. Bitterness, for example, may come out as “harsh, vitriolic speech, being very easily offended, being extremely judgmental, hard facial features,” and other manifestations of a festering wound.

After diagnosis comes a prescription for healing, based on the Bible and illustrated by vignettes of people who have found freedom by carrying out biblical instructions.

I was amazed at just how intensely practical information was packed into this slender volume, and how much wisdom is contained in a very brief compass. The reader will find step-by-step guidelines on how to “have a courageous conversation” and “how to transform lust into the dynamic of genuine love,” for example.

Some of the aphorisms bear careful pondering:

“To love someone is to understand him.” “One of the greatest gifts we can give a neighbor is a listening heart.” “It is not wrong to desire greatness. It is wrong to strive for it in our own way.” “The truest test of being a servant is how we respond when we are treated like one!” “Love is not an emotion but a choice we make based on God’s will. “Love can always wait to give. However, lust can never wait to get.”

Because of my profound admiration for the value of this beautifully-produced, lavishly-illustrated guidebook to health, I hesitate to make any criticisms. No human production is perfect, however, and How to Resolve 7 Deadly Stresses has a few that should be mentioned.

Though in general I found the interpretation of the Bible adequate, a few sections seemed to stretch the original intent of the biblical passage quoted. “Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48) probably means that we are to evince kindness to all sorts of people, even those who are unlovely. Instead, it is somehow made to support the otherwise helpful concept that we should be sincere and enthusiastic in the way we greet people!

Indeed, one of the main criticisms leveled against Gothard over the past several decades has been his propensity for forced interpretations of the Bible. Perhaps he would benefit from more input from biblical scholars.

Some will be turned off by another of Gothard’s trademarks: A “simple recipe” approach to resolving complex and sometimes chronic problems. One could get the impression that it’s just a matter of going through a checklist of recommended activities, and everything will be fine. For some reason, this doesn’t bother me, perhaps because I think there is the principles are so true, and most of the application of them so helpful, that a great deal of benefit really would come from following the author’s advice.

More difficult for me to understand were the ways in which a biblical principle is linked with a “resulting quality.” “Go the Second Mile” will produce deference; “Observe Communion” (the Lord’s Supper) will result in thoroughness. And so forth. I found this to be the only really jarring feature of an what is basically an extremely helpful treatise on total health.

Overall, however, I would strongly recommend How to Resolve 7 Deadly Stresses. It deserves repeated and thoughtful reading, and forms a good complement to my The Lord’s Healing Words, available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and AuthorHouse.

You may obtain this book from the Institute of Basic Life Principles http://store.iblp.org/products/rsds/.

G. Wright Doyle

EXPELLED: Evolutionary Ignorance

EXPELLED: Evolutionary Ignorance

The other night I saw “EXPELLED,” a documentary by Ben Stein that exposes a serious crisis in American society: The denial of freedom of speech to those who question evolutionism.

“EXPELLED” features interviews with university professors and others who have lost their jobs because they dared to suggest that perhaps Darwinian evolutionary theory does not adequately explain the origin and complexities of life on this planet. Even worse, some of them mentioned the forbidden term “intelligent design” in articles or lectures, thus signing their own career death warrant.

Not one of these people espoused creationism; none of them even suggested that evolutionary theory not be taught in public schools. They only wanted freedom to discuss different points of view.

That, they discovered, will not be allowed by Big Science.

Himself a Jew, Stein was led to consider some curious and rather scary links between belief in Darwinism and the eugenics movement, which led directly to the Holocaust. Though he makes it very clear that holding to Darwinian evolutionism does not automatically lead to killing off undesirables, Stein’s interviews demonstrated the well-known fact that Hitler was a fanatical follower of Darwin, and used Darwinian theory to justify eliminating the insane, deformed, and otherwise “unworthy” people from society. The same was true of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao Zedong, by the way.

Stein also interviewed eminent Darwinists at length. Allowing them to speak for themselves in answer to his questions, he let them show how irrational is their resistance to dialogue and how inaccurate are their characterizations of those who believe in intelligent design.

One common statement is that no reputable scientist could ever question the “fact” of evolution of all life from the simple to complex by random, impersonal processes.

But Stein found a number of people with one or more doctorates in science and/or mathematics who had serious doubts about the scientific basis for evolutionary theory. It seems that real evidence is lacking for the belief (and it is a belief) that all life comes from some original “simple” cell that somehow mutated into the plants and animals populating the globe today.

When pressed really hard, one evolutionist posited the possibility (he had no proof) that it all started with something piggy-backing on crystals. Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, said – sit down and try to be calm –that perhaps life on earth came from a superior race on another planet who had evolved to a higher intelligence and then had “seeded” the Earth with the original life forms. This is science?

As it happens, I ran into the problems with evolutionism a long time ago, so I asked a friend who worked at the prestigious Cold Spring Harbor laboratory. “Of course,” he replied, “all serious scientists know that evolutionary theory lacks sufficient evidence.”

“So,” I queried, “why don’t they tell us the truth?”

“Because the only alternative is creation, and we can’t believe that!”

My curiosity piqued by his admission of the lack of proof for macro-evolution, I have read a number of books and articles over the years. Thus, I was not surprised when I recognized a couple of the people whom Stein interviewed, including William Dembski, who has been called “the Isaac Newton of information science,” and who holds two doctoral degrees, and the eminent German-born Jewish mathematician, David Berlinski.

If you want to follow this up, I recommend the following volumes, written for non-scientists like myself:

Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, by Michael Denton, an evolutionist who is alarmed by recent findings that undercut evolutionary theory.

Darwin’s Black Box, by Michael Behe, who maintains that Darwin simply could not know how “irreducibly complex” even the simplest cell is, making natural selection over long periods of time virtually impossible.

Darwin on Trial, by Phillip Johnson, a professor of law at Berkeley, who used the normal rules of evidence to evaluate the claims of evolutionary theory and found them almost without basis.

Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? by Jonathan Wells (who also has two doctoral degrees), which examines the most commonly cited instances of development from one species to another and shows that they are all either fraudulent or lacking any foundation in fact.

I haven’t finished William Dembski’s Intelligent Design yet, but it looks pretty good.

Note: Not one of these people argues for young earth creationism.

But you might want to look at Faith, Form, and Time, by Harvard Ph.D. Kurt Patrick Wise. A student of one of the most eminent Darwinists of the 20^th century, Stephen Gould, Wise actually thinks that the Genesis account of a six-day creation makes better sense scientifically than does the evolutionary model.

One caveat about “EXPELLED”: Stein is pretty angry about the suppression of evidence and the silencing of people who dare to challenge the status quo, so this documentary, though very well done, comes across as pretty stark and black and white. But then that’s how the dogmatic evolutionists portray the conflict between evolutionism and intelligent design, so maybe Stein is simply telling it as it is.

Harvard Healthy Diet

Harvard’s Healthy Diet

As I was cleaning out the garage the other day, I came across a back issue of one of my two favorite health magazines, Bottom Line Health. (I’ll introduce the other one next time.)

Anyway, their lead article was responding to the then-new USDA Food Guide Pyramid which, like its predecessors, reflects the food industry’s influence, and thus emphasizes meat and dairy products.[1]

The independent researchers at Harvard School of Public Health came up with another Healthy Eating Pyramid, radically different from the government one, but fully in line with all that I have been reading on this subject for more than thirty years (not that I am an expert; I am just saying I was not surprised by their findings).

To be brief: If you want to avoid unnecessary illnesses, such as cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, follow the guidelines below:

Make whole-grain foods the basis of your diet at each meal. That’s whole wheat bread, “brown” rice, and other whole grains. NO white rice or bread or pasta made with white flour.

Surprisingly, the other half of the bottom layer of the “pyramid” should consist of plant oils, “Including olive, canola, soy, corn, sunflower, peanut and other vegetable oils.”

Next come vegetables “in abundance” and fruits “2-3 times” a day.

Third from the bottom are nuts and legumes (peas and beans of all sorts), also to be eaten two or three times a day.

Fish, poultry and eggs may be consumed “0 –2 times” a day according to these Harvard researchers.

Finally, they advise that red meat, butter, as well as white rice, white bread, potatoes, pasta and sweets should be used “sparingly.”

To put it another way: If you want to die a slow, painful, and expensive death, or drop dead suddenly from a heart attack, have your full of red meat, milk, butter, white bread and pasta, topped off with lots of delicious desserts.

At least that’s what unbiased scientists at our top university have found, long after hundreds of other studies had come to similar conclusions.

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[1] “Harvard’s New Healthy Eating Plan,” Bottom Line Health, Volume 19, Number 7, July, 2005, pages 1-3. To subscribe, go to BLHealth@Boardroom.com.

Kentucky Derby 2008 (2): Sudden Death

Sudden Death

Having overcome great odds to earn second place at the Kentucky Derby, the filly Eight Belles suddenly collapsed after the race and had to be put down by the veterinarian.

No one could have foreseen this tragic end to a great performance. Her jockey had no cause to be concerned for her health as he galloped her around the track with the other horses after they had all crossed the finish line. She had run strong, and seemed fine.

With no warning, however, she acted a bit strange and then fell down. With both her ankles broken and no way of standing up to be taken off the field in an ambulance, she had to be euthanized immediately.

Elation turned to intense for her jockey, trainer, owners, and many in the stands.

What a precipitous fall from glory to grief! How unexpected it all was.

Earlier in the day, I had been reminded of the imminence of death when I called a friend who’s dying of a virulent cancer.

“I have two weeks to go,” he said firmly, though with a hacking cough. “It came on quickly in January. I’ve done my best to put my affairs in order, and now I’m about ready to go.”

He’s a strong Christian, with a firm hope in the resurrection from the dead for all believers, so I could detect no self-pity or fear in his voice. On the contrary, he offered me counsel:

“Put your affairs in order!” he urged. “This thing came on me suddenly and left me little time to prepare. Put your affairs in order!”

The sudden demise of Eight Belles later that afternoon pressed home the point. Life is short, and could end at any time. Are we ready?