Month: February 2005

Friday afternoon Debbie, me, Kendra, Jeremiah and one of Kendra’s friends jumped into the car for a last minute trip to Austin. My niece was playing in the high school basketball playoffs, and Kendra’s softball game had been cancelled. A mad dash when school let out got us to the game just at tip off. On the way home everyone, (except for yours truly), slept. (By the way, Heather’s team won, and made it to the state quarterfinals before losing yesterday).

The trip to Austin seemed much quicker than the long road home that night. Partly because we were fresh, but mostly because a good portion of the journey was taken up with a rather challenging conversation we had.

Continue reading “Christian Ethics” →

There is a simple mathematical principle that children learn early on in their education, as they are taught “sets” of numbers.

Simply, we could state that one set of numbers would be all “positive, whole” numbers. The set would be described in the following manner:

{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,…}

Within that set of whole numbers, we could have a subset of all odd whole numbers that have a positive value. Described as:

{1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,…}

Other similar sets could be represented in similar ways. Continue reading “Sets and Subsets” →

“Atlanta – A federal judge on Thursday ordered a suburban Atlanta school system to remove stickers from its high school biology textbooks that call evolution ‘theory, not a fact,’ saying the disclaimers are an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.

“‘By denigrating evolution, the School Board appears to be endorsing the well-known prevailing alternative theory, creationism or variations thereof, even though the sticker does not specifically reference any alternative theories,’ U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper said.

“The stickers were put inside the books’ front covers by Cobb County public school officials in 2002. They state: ‘This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.'”

The Indianapolis Star [January 14, 2005]

Analysis:

The preceding article is yet another indication of the active antagonism modern culture expresses toward the faith the Christian holds dear.

Continue reading “Evolution Stickers Must Go” →

In our last article we indicated that at certain times God’s commands are general in their nature. Such generic authority allows room to exercise discretion.

For example, in Matthew 28:19-20, Jesus gave his disciples instructions, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” The command to “Go”, given by Jesus, is generic in nature. Jesus did not specify the means of going, so the disciples had discretion in fulfilling the command. These areas of discretion can be categorized as expediencies. Continue reading “Expediency” →

“The scientist who attracted the world’s attention by cloning Dolly the sheep is taking another major step for medical research: cloning human embryos and extracting stem cells to try to unravel the mysteries of muscle-wasting illnesses such as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

“Ian Wilmut, who led the team that created Dolly at Scotland’s Roslin Institute in 1996, was granted a cloning license Tuesday by British regulators to study how nerve cells go awry to cause motor-neuron diseases.

“The experiments do not involve creating cloned babies, but the license has nonetheless stirred fresh controversy over the issue and prompted abortion foes and other biological conservatives to condemn the decision.”

Thomas Wagner
The Associated Press
Fort Worth Star Telegram, Wednesday, February 9, 2005

Analysis:

Embryo: 1. a. An organism in its early stages of development, especially before it has reached a distinctively recognizable form. b. An organism at any time before full development, birth, or hatching. 2. a. The fertilized egg of a vertebrate animal following cleavage. b. In humans, the prefetal product of conception from implantation through the eighth week of development. (Dictionary.com)

Continue reading “License to Clone Human Granted” →

A study of authority reveals that it can be categorized in two ways, Generic authority, and Specific authority.
By Generic we mean “general, opposite to specific” (Webster’s). So, Generic authority is inclusive. It includes all the methods or ways in which the thing authorized may be accomplished.

In contrast, by Specific we mean “precisely formulated or restricted; specifying or explicit” (Websters). So, Specific authority is exclusive. It only includes that which is expressly stated or specified.

On the surface, this may seem to be rather confusing. In reality it is a matter of simple common sense, and can readily be determined. Continue reading “Generic and Specific Authority” →

We have asserted that Bible Authority can be established from the written scriptures in three ways: Expressed Statement, Approved Example, and Necessary Inference. In this article we deal with the third means, Necessary Inference.

The concept is ridiculed by many as being a legalistic, and humanly devised means of establishing authority. We will show from scripture that this is not so. However, to begin, let’s note that we often learn things by inference. Continue reading “Necessary Inference” →