About the Creation Museum

The Creation Museum will proclaim to the world that the Bible is the supreme authority in all matters of faith and practice and in every area it touches on. This “walk through history” museum will be a wonderful alternative to the evolutionary natural history museums that are turning countless minds against the gospel of Christ and the authority of the Scripture.

LOCATION: The Creation Museum is currently under construction in Petersburg, Kentucky, USA.
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ENSI/SENSI Papers & Articles:Ans. to J. Wells’ 10 Questions

Responses to Jonathan Wells’ “Ten Questions to Ask Your Biology Teacher”
From the National Center for Science Education
Defending the Teaching of Evolution in the Public Schools

Jonathan Wells, the author of Icons of Evolution, composed “Ten questions to ask your biology teacher about evolution”, based on the anti-evolutionary claims he makes in his book. However, many of Wells’ claims are incorrect or misleading; Icons of Evolution and “Ten questions…” are intended only to create unwarranted doubt in students’ minds about the validity of evolution as good science.

[mjh: follow the closest link above for responses to those questions.]

ABQjournal: AP Members Confer Honors on Journal

The Albuquerque Journal took first-place honors for science writing, columns and sports writing in the New Mexico Associated Press Managing Editors annual contest.

Awards for excellence in news coverage for 2004 were given in three circulation divisions for newspapers in New Mexico, as well as those along the state borders that receive the New Mexico state AP wire.

Longtime Journal writer John Fleck swept all three places for science writing. …

Science Writing? 1. Albuquerque Journal, Landfill debate deadlocked, John Fleck. 2. Albuquerque Journal, Changing landscape, John Fleck. 3. Albuquerque Journal, Larger brains, longer lives, John Fleck.

But this is not the first time Fleck has been recognized. See mjh’s Blog: A Man of Science.

Recently I locked horns with an ornery Vulcan. That made me nostalgic for the gentler tussle John and I had. See mjh’s Blog: Balance — who cares about fair. (That seems like ages ago — it was 8 months.) mjh

I stumbled upon this show Thursday night at 11:30pm on PBS:
Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria | Where America Meets the World.

It was very interesting to hear 3 Muslims discussing the rights of women in Islam. Guests were Afeefa Syeed, who founded the Al-Fatih Academy, a Muslim school in Northern Virginia, and Irshad Manji, author of The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim?s Call for Reform in Her Faith. Manji has appeared on NOW.

Here in New Mexico, the show repeats at 5pm Friday on KNME Channel 5. However, it is also available on the Web (link above). The rest of the show is worthwhile, but this discussion of gender and religion is at the beginning and lasts 13 minutes. [Kudos for having transcripts and video available for free.]

You will see two women who seem so different and get a sense of a struggle for common ground over their shared faith. mjh

Here’s a snippet from the transcript (linked):

Show 4 Transcript | Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria

Irshad Manji: I find this very exciting because there?s a diversity of opinion and viewpoints among Muslim women and they?re going to be you know contesting one another which is in my view one of the things that needs to happen if we?re going to see the Islamic world as much more diverse than monolithic in the way that it has been for the last many, many generations. …

Fareed Zakaria: When people listen to you Irshad, I think there?s a tendency to wonder are you telling Americans what they want to hear.

Irshad Manji: [Laughs]

Fareed Zakaria: That is to say this sounds very comforting. Are you really a Muslim in that sense?

Irshad Manji: Well to many people I am not really a Muslim; that?s fine. I can tell you that you know I?ve done enough of my homework to know that when the first dissidents within Islam emerged from the woodwork only 100 years after Islam was established they, too, were accused not just of being real Muslims–or sorry–of not being real Muslims, but they were also accused of being in the pay of the Jews, and all kinds of conspiracy theories that still persist to this day. The thing though, Fareed, and I speak from hard experience here is that I know that the emerging generation of Muslims–not just in North America, but around the world, is desperate for debate and discussion–so much so that this was the number one reason that I had the emotional commitment and not just the intellectual commitment to write a book called The Trouble with Islam Today.

Fareed Zakaria: Is she a real Muslim?

Afeefa Syeed: Well only she and only God knows and that?s–that?s the essence of what being a Muslim is that you know the responsibilities between yourself and your creator. But I?d like to speak to the issue of representation and authenticity.

Irshad Manji: And I don?t represent–I don?t represent; I represent myself–no one else.
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Seat at the Table
Women in Congress/Parliament
Saudi Arabia: 0%
Iran: 4%
Pakistan: 21%
Iraq: 31%
US: 15%
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[If you enjoy programming like this, please be sure to read Republican Broadcasting Corporation by Ari Berman]

Faith and the filibuster fight By Melissa Rogers

The press release for the event states that certain judicial nominees are being opposed “because they are people of faith and moral conviction.” It labels a broad range of court decisions as “liberal, anti-Christian dogma,” claiming that “activist courts … have been quietly working under the veil of the judiciary, like thieves in the night, to rob us of our Christian heritage and our religious freedoms.” In sum, the release says that “we must stop this unprecedented filibuster of people of faith.”

Thus, according to supporters of this agenda, including one of the foremost leaders in Congress, anyone who has a different view of the Constitution is an advocate of “liberal, anti-Christian dogma.” Anyone who takes a contrary position on Senate rules of procedure is hostile to faith. End of story.

It’s time to tell the truth. [keep reading]

Another chance to learn more about Jack Abramoff, a conservative Republican lobbyist-scoundrel and friend of Tom DeLay’s.

Albuquerque Journal readers should note that only the first half of this article appeared in our paper. mjh

Lobbyist Target of Several Investigations By NANCY BENAC, Associated Press Writer

It was the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 that brought Abramoff back to Washington, where lobbying firms were looking to strengthen their GOP connections.

Abramoff’s Republican credentials and long ties to Reed and Norquist, head of the conservative Americans for Tax Reform, made him a natural; now, all three are under the microscope of congressional investigators.

Marshall Wittman, a one-time conservative activist who now works for the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, sees Abramoff’s rise and fall as emblematic of what he believes has happened to the conservative movement overall.

“Many other Reagan conservatives came to Washington with the stars of the revolution in their eyes and they ended up with very fat wallets in their back pockets,” he said. “They came to do good and they ended up doing very, very well.”

mjh’s Dump Bush weBlog: We will continue to fight for the truth.

“Isn’t it true that instead of fixing airline security, port security, mass transportation, local response, and securing loose nukes and biological components, we spent billions on starting a war with Iraq—a nation that had nothing to do with 9/11? And, instead of capturing Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan, we captured Saddam Hussein in Iraq with no weapons of mass destruction? Isn’t it true that because of our invasion of Iraq terrorist recruitment for Al Qaeda has soared, making us even less safe than we were before the Iraq war? Remember that we were supposed to go to war in Iraq to eliminate a real threat. Isn’t it true that now because of our foreign policy in Iraq, we have only created a real threat to the world’s security and ours? Isn’t it true that instead of successfully prosecuting Al Qaeda terrorists and bringing them to justice, all we hear about is torturing ‘enemy combatants’ and detaining them indefinitely–a concept far removed from the American ideal of justice? Isn’t it true that instead of opening up government to restore trust and faith, we created the Patriot Act? And, isn’t it true that instead of pursuing alternative energy resources to decrease our dependency on foreign oil, we invaded oil-rich countries and passed no alternative energy legislation in the meantime?

“Why do we accept these choices? Why do we condone a government that uses over-classification to obfuscate such choices? …

“We–the American public–find ourselves adrift and overwhelmed. Pre-occupied with fear, we fail to unearth the truth or understand what choices we should or can make to effectively make our world safer. We are simply told that this is our ‘new norm.’ …

“Alarmingly, we accept all of this in the name of our ‘ongoing fight against the enemy.’ But, with a timeless, faceless, nameless and stateless enemy, when will our ‘fight’ ever end so we can return to our sensibilities and the truth? How can we ever define what success or victory might ever mean? …

“How can we trust a Congress that holds hearings on steroids in baseball and yet does not want to find out why our FAA received 52 warnings about hijackings in the summer of 2001? … How do we trust a Congress willing to work through a Sunday night on the Shiavo debate yet unwilling to hold public hearings on the ‘dead wrong’ intelligence that brought us to war in Iraq? …

“We will continue to fight for the truth. … And, respectfully, our hope is that in future years this award might be rendered obsolete. Simply because there will be no need to bestow an award or any special status onto a truth-seeker because truth-seekers will have become our new norm.” — Kristin Breitweiser, accepting one of the second-annual Ron Ridenhour Awards [read her whole speech]

Fortunately, blogging raises IQ almost as much as coffee! mjh

CNN.com – E-mail hurts IQ more than pot – Apr 22, 2005

LONDON, England — Workers distracted by phone calls, e-mails and text messages suffer a greater loss of IQ than a person smoking marijuana, a British study shows.

The constant interruptions reduce productivity and leave people feeling tired and lethargic, according to a survey carried out by TNS Research and commissioned by Hewlett Packard.

[via dangerousmeta!]