MInTheGap

Harnessing the Power of the Sun

One of the things that I admire most about God’s Creation is how limitless it is in the power that it can supply. The fact that the power of a Hurricane is so many more times more powerful than that of our atomic bombs. And how power can be derived from the sun, wind and other sources– sources that are renewable.

If we could figure out how to properly harness the power of the things that God has so richly blessed us with we could improve our way of life and be good caretakers of His Creation.

To that end, the U.S. Department of Energy and BP sponsor the BP Solar Decathlon every other year to build solar powered houses. They select 20 university teams from around the world, and they are tasked with creating completely solar powered houses.

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Green Eggs and Ken Ham

I can remember the first time that I met Ken Ham.  His son and I were classmates in the same major at Bob Jones University.  We graduated together, so when we went to get pictures with the faculty heads in our group, we naturally ended up in the same place.  So, I shook his hand and got a photo with him.  Little did I understand who he was.

At that time I should have known his name, and his organization.  It wouldn’t be long until I was reading a lot from Answers In Genesis and learning a lot about Creation Research.

Now, everyone knows him, and they’re even making poems up about him spoofing Dr. Seuss:

I do not like green eggs.
But, I love Ken Ham, I do.
I do not like green eggs here or there.
But, I love Ken Ham anywhere!
I do not like green eggs in a box, with a fox,
In a house, with a mouse.
Green eggs make me sick just to see ‘em.
But, I love Ken Ham and his (His) museum!

But seriously, what they are doing at the Creation Museum is a great testimony to the Bible and to Jesus Christ.  We need to begin at Genesis to teach people about a great God that created all things and loved us enough to send His Son to die for us.

Will the Bible Be Taught in Georgia Schools?

This past Sunday evening we watched a sermon from Ken Ham of Answers In Genesis.  One of his central arguments for the need to defend the Bible “from the very first verse” is because we are living in a society that no longer has the Bible as a familiar frame of reference.  The number of children today that don’t know who Cain was, what Jesus did, and even who wrote the Ten Commandments are increasing.

But it’s not just the Creationists that are seeing this as a problem.  Some secularists and historians view this as a problem, but not for the same reason. 

Supporters say fully understanding history, literature and political science — from the writings of Martin Luther King Jr. to the war in Iraq — requires knowledge of the Bible.

“I don’t think you can understand Shakespeare, that you can understand a great deal of literary allusions or that you can understand a great deal of Western civilization without understanding the role of the Bible,” said Pennock, a former Western civilization teacher.

The reason why schools are so hesitant goes back to the fallacious Separation of Church and State.  Schools are afraid of the lawsuits that will be brought, even though the Supreme Court and the local legislature have given the green light to teaching the Bible as literature.

The question is, should Christians support this?

On the one hand, anything that presents the Bible to people should be something we desire.  The Bible can stand on its own, it does not return void, and the more people know about the basic stories the less we have to do in witnessing to get people to understand the concept of a Creator God.  In essence, if people are instructed on what the Bible says about sin, death, and history, even though they may not believe it, you have a common starting point.

Conversely, If the Bible is presented by someone that does not agree with its teachings, the entire time could be taken up with exploring alleged contradictions.  I’ve seen this at work in a recent issue of Newsweek where the front page advertised a discussion between Rick Warren and Sam Harris.  What was sad was the fact that there was this huge introduction that basically cast the belief of God as an improvable belief, and evolutionism as fact.

But it went further than that.  The article before was about the Geico caveman.  It referenced Evolution as truth.  The one a little further about Will Smith being the most popular actor started with a reference to Stephen Gould’s explanation of evolutionary change over time.  The whole issue reflected evolution as truth from cover to cover, but paid lip service in one part of the article (the discussion itself) to being balanced.  It placed more criticism on the Christian.

The point is, I’m not sure if teaching the Bible in schools is a good thing if it’s not in a spiritual context.  God can use it, but it also means that people could use the opportunity to bash it.

Scientists Wonder, Christians Worship

There was an article on Global Warming that reminded me a lot of the Creation / Evolution debate. What I found interesting is that this man rightly illustrated that consensus is more important than fact in the scientific community. You see, we live in a world of influence and many voices– that and one that doesn’t know the difference between causation and relation. Scientists hold firmly to both Global Warming and Evolution and though they claim to be truth seekers, they are rather story tellers out to make sure theirs is the only one heard.

In both cases, there is tremendous information that the scientists might be wrong. And yet anyone who says such is a pariah, is maligned, and their credentials are threatened.

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Should We Be Surprised?

The title of this image is “Ancient calculator was 1,000 yrs ahead of its time.” Why this is fascinating to me is that the only reason this comes as a surprise to the scientists and historians is that (as they hint to in the title) they don’t expect people to be that smart at that point in time.

As a rule of thumb, humanity has to be continually getting better– be it physically, mentally or otherwise– since that is the template that modern science works from. See, according to them, we all started out with monkey brains and got progressively smarter (to the point that we no longer need God, since we now know everything!).

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A Father’s Responsibility - God Told Adam…

I was talking a couple of weekends ago with a friend, and the discussion turned to Creation, the Fall, and other related issues and it caused me to think more about just how much responsibility God gave to man and just why Paul laid so much at the father’s feet in a family. I’d like to take this opportunity to look through some Bible passages with you and see just what fathers and husbands have to be responsible for. Just so you know how we’ll go about this study, I’m going to do searches for fathers and husbands in the Bible and then address passages that talk about a father’s or husband’s responsibility.

I do want to start out with the one that got me going, just to get you thinking.

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Robot shopping carts follow you around

It’s amazing where your mind can take you. Gregory Garcia didn’t like the fact that a shopping cart kept bumping into his heels when driven by his sister, so he invented a robotic shopping cart that can follow you around and slow down when you need to fill it.

Others created robots that could walk around a room balancing a ping pong ball, one that would play basketball with a ping pong ball, ones that play poker, that can tell color blind people what color a stop light is, and ones that can act as submarines.

Isn’t it amazing the minds that God has given us. We create like He creates. We apply inginuity that He gave us. He truly is an awesome God.

Al, Do You Cause Global Warming?

Al Gore’s movie, which we discussed at length, has been making converts across the nation. Tom Brokaw came out talking about it. John Kerry has tried to adopt it. And it’s pretty easy to see why with the weather we’ve been having.

But does Gore really believe what he’s saying? Does he really believe that Earth is in the balance, that we cause this to happen, and that we should take drastic measures?

Al Gore has spoken: The world must embrace a “carbon-neutral lifestyle.” To do otherwise, he says, will result in a cataclysmic catastrophe. “Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb,” warns the website for his film, An Inconvenient Truth. “We have just 10 years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tailspin.”

According to record, Gore is doing very little to show leadership in this area. He has not signed up for green energy (from windmills or other renewable sources). He owns stock in petroleum companies. He flies around in jets to premieres (of course he buys credits– or Paramount buys credits to do this.

The issue here is not simply Gore’s hypocrisy; it’s a question of credibility. If he genuinely believes the apocalyptic vision he has put forth and calls for radical changes in the way other people live, why hasn’t he made any radical change in his life? Giving up the zinc mine or one of his homes is not asking much, given that he wants the rest of us to radically change our lives.