The spiritual side of health from a solid foundation of creation teaching.
Remembering Law Professor Phillip E. Johnson (1940-2019): The Man Who “Lit the Match” for Intelligent Design
Law Professor Phillip Johnson passed away on November 2, 2019 at the age of 79. I became aware of Professor Johnson in 1991 with the publication of his book, Darwin on Trial. Johnson's book was highly controversial, and changed American culture. In the early 1990s when he wrote this book, it was career suicide for anyone in academia to take a position against Darwinian evolution, and most of the criticisms of Darwin were found in religious circles under the teaching of "Creationism." It took a law professor like Phillip Johnson, who was not part of the field of biology or other natural sciences, to write a scholarly critique of Darwin's theories without the threat of censorship, loss of funding, or losing tenure at a major U.S. University. As a law professor at the prestigious University of California Berkeley, his voice demanded to be heard, as he took a legal approach to examine the evidence of Darwin's theories. Many believe that his foundational book, Darwin on Trial, was the beginning of the modern day "Intelligent Design" movement. Intelligent Design separates itself from "Creationism" as it looks at the scientific evidence in the field of origins, and draws conclusions based on the scientific evidence, without relying on any religious teachings. It concludes that the science points to an intelligent design in nature, and leaves the question of "who" the designer is to religion.
Diarrhea and the Appendix are Signs of Intelligent Design
In my new book, Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose, I argue that the synergistic action of diarrhea and the appendix provides a strong case for foresight and thus for intelligent design. Jerry Coyne, writing at Why Evolution Is True, has responded. For that I am grateful. See, “ID craziness: Diarrhea and the appendix are signs of intelligent design.” I wish, enthusiastically, to reply. The subject under discussion is so-called vestigial organs, specifically the appendix. For decades we were told that — due to evolution — our body includes organs that have lost their functions and are therefore in the process of being eliminated. Dr. Coyne adds that some of those condemned organs, by accidently finding other functions, may get lucky enough to escape extinction. This is possible, I agree. The “vestigial organs” are taken as strong evidence for evolution and against ID. After all, an intelligent designer would have no use for useless organs. With that I also agree. However, we must let the data speak. When we do, learning more about the physiology of our body, we find that “vestigial organs” have amazing functions after all.
Doctor Under Investigation Could Lose License to Practice Medicine for Praying with Some Patients
A doctor in the UK is being investigated by the General Medical Council (GMC) because a complaint was made against him for praying with his patients. Dr. Richard Scott is a General Practitioner at Bethesda Medical Centre in Margate, Kent. Dr. Scott states that he only prays with about one out of every 40 patients, and that he always asks for their permission first. Of those he asks, about 90% accept, and the ones who do not, he respects their right to refuse. The complaint to the General Medical Council was allegedly not made by any of his patients, but by an "acquaintance" of one of his patients, who then worked with The National Secular Society (NSS) to lodge the complaint. The NSS allegedly wrote that a "highly vulnerable patient" was uneasy with the use of prayer during a consultation. NSS chief executive Stephen Evans reportedly confirmed that the complaint came from someone known to the patient rather than the patient themselves.
Canada Court Forces Doctors to Euthanize and Perform Abortions
Here’s the story: The Canadian Charter (Constitution) guarantees “freedom of conscience and religion” — a stronger and more explicit protection of religious liberty than our First Amendment. After the Supreme Court created a right to euthanasia, Ontario passed a law requiring doctors to kill legally eligible patients who want to die or provide an “effective referral” if they have moral objections — i.e., procure a doctor known by the dissenter to be willing to euthanize patients. Catholic and other religious doctors sued to enforce their Charter liberties. Referring equals complicity, the doctors argued, and thus the law forces them to violate their religious beliefs and consciences. In one of the world’s most important “medical conscience” rulings, a trial judge admitted the doctors’ Charter rights were indeed infringed. But he ruled that a right (nowhere mentioned in the Charter) to “equal and equitable access” to legal and government-funded medical interventions trumped doctors’ freedom of religion. Now a Court of Appeals has affirmed, ruling that doctors must not only euthanize or refer, but also abort or refer, and provide any other controversial legal service that a patient might want or refer — their religious freedoms or moral consciences be damned.
In Canada, Medical Doctors Killed Thousands in 2018
Canadian doctors committed thousands of homicides in 2018. According to an interim report published by the government, in the first ten months of last year, doctors lethally injected 2,613 patients (with one assisted suicide) — and that doesn’t include the homicides committed by doctors in Quebec, Northwest Territories, Yukon, and Nunavut. The report says that about 1.12 percent of all Canadian deaths were caused by euthanasia, a number that is increasing every year. No wonder. Efforts are increasing to normalize lethal injection as a way of death — and soon we are likely to see the killable caste expanded in Canada to include children, people whose deaths are not “foreseeable,” those with dementia who asked to be killed in an advance directive, and perhaps, the mentally ill (as happens regularly in the Netherlands and Belgium). If 1.12 percent of our deaths in the U.S. were doctor-homicides, it would amount to nearly 30,000. These statistics are stark, but they don’t tell the whole story. Because these radical policies have only been in effect for a relatively short time, we don’t yet know the moral costs of allowing doctors to kill sick patients or assist their suicides.
Devolution Is Natural, Evolution Is Not
It is really not necessary to be a biochemist or a paleontologist to understand the main issue in the debate between Darwinism and intelligent design. That is because it is a very simple principle, as I keep emphasizing: natural (unintelligent) causes do not create order (or information). They destroy it. While every other natural process tends to turn order into disorder, Darwinists have always believed that natural selection is the one unintelligent process in the universe that can create spectacular order out of disorder. So I feel vindicated by Michael Behe’s new book, Darwin Devolves, which disputes this belief, and argues that despite all the claims about the creative powers of natural selection, it has never actually been observed to produce anything new and complex, only “devolution.”
Southern Baptist Church: Leader in Foster Care and Adoption – Home to Pedophiles
Southern Baptists are the largest Protestant Christian denomination in the U.S., numbering more than 47,000 churches with over 15 million church members. Only the Catholic Church has more members in the U.S. As with the Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is an integral part of the American foster care and adoption system. Due to its size, one could say the American foster care system would be severely crippled without the involvement of the SBC, which partners with many local organizations across the U.S. to provide foster care and adoption services, primarily through its North American Mission Board, and its "Send Relief" program. We have documented very clearly here at Health Impact News that the foster care system in the U.S. is a billion dollar child trafficking system, and over 85% of child sex trafficking victims are under the control of Child "Protective" Services who take children out of their homes and place them into foster care or with adoptive parents. When Lisa Wheeler wrote an article for the National Review last year titled “Pro-Life Should Include Foster Care, Too,” criticizing American churches for not participating more in state-sponsored foster care programs, we wrote our rebuttal asking why the church would participate in such an evil program? Sadly, as we have previously reported about the Catholic Church and Independent Baptist Churches, child sex abuse by pastors and youth leaders is widespread among Southern Baptists also. A six month investigation by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News has found widespread child sex abuse by over 220 Southern Baptist leaders against more than 700 victims since 1998. And these are just the cases that have reached the courts and are a matter of public record. How many others have been covered up and never been reported?
Darwin Devolves: The New Science About DNA That Challenges Evolution
While Stephen Colbert has called Michael J. Behe the “Father of Intelligent Design,” Behe’s arguments have been called, “close to heretical” by the New York Times Book Review, and Richard Dawkins has publicly taken him to task for his “maverick” views. Wherever he goes, Behe makes waves, but has remained singularly focused on doing rigorous scientific analysis that points to controversial but incredible results that other scientists won’t touch. Twenty years after publishing his seminal work, Darwin’s Black Box (over 250,000 copies sold), Behe shows that new scientific discoveries point to a stunning fact: Darwin’s mechanism works by a process of devolution, not evolution. On the surface, evolution can help make something look and act different, but it doesn’t have the ability to build or create anything at the genetic level. Critically analyzing the latest research, Behe gives a sweeping tour of how modern theories of evolution fall short and how the devolving nature of Darwin’s mechanism limits them even further. If we are to get a satisfactory answer to how the most complex, stunning life-forms arose, it’s time to acknowledge the conclusion that only an intelligent mind could have designed life.
Where Is Christmas Hope in the Shadow of CPS Darkness?
Christmas is an especially hard day for families who have been separated by Child Protective Services and family courts. How can Christmas possibly be "merry" when that which means the most - the children, or in some cases the elderly parents - are not there? The laughter and wonder of Christmas is missing, and their hearts have been shattered. My heart has been very heavy this Christmas as I carry so many hurting families in my heart. It is hard to see hope and remember joy when there is so much evil in the world, but as I woke up this morning, I was reminded that Hope didn't come two thousand years ago as a blazing warrior on a white horse bringing victory. He came as a tiny baby. Yet He represented in human form all the love and promises and hope of God. I am reminded that, even in the midst of deep sorrow and desperation, the true message of Christmas is that "Hope" has been born. This season is a timeless marker that, no matter how dark and hopeless it may seem, there is still a light that shines in the darkness.
Pedophilia Crimes Against Children Inside and Outside the Church – Time to Acknowledge the Child Sex Trafficking Problem
Earlier this year Health Impact News investigative reporter John P. Thomas began a series of articles on child sex trafficking within the Roman Catholic Church. Other Christians who are not part of the Catholic Church might be tempted to believe that such horrible crimes could never happen in their particular church or denomination. However, the Star Telegram in Fort Worth, Texas has recently published a series of articles covering an 8-month investigation in the Independent Fundamental Baptist Churches across the U.S. showing that sexual abuse against children has been rampant and covered up for years. Churches, both Catholic and non-Catholic Christian churches, are a huge part of the child sex trafficking problem in the U.S. These religious institutions receive significant government funding for foster care and adoption services, which we have reported for years now is a Child Trafficking multi-billion dollar business employing hundreds of thousands of people. Church-sponsored organizations, most also receiving significant government funds, are necessary for the State to continue taking children away from parents and putting them into the lucrative foster care and adoption system. As we have investigated the problem of child sex trafficking, we have discovered that the problem reaches to the most elite members of society, and that they depend upon the public not understanding what is happening, or minimizing it and excusing most reports as "Conspiracy theories." In response to this problem, we recently covered the meeting earlier this year in Westminster, London by The International Tribunal for Natural Justice (ITNJ), as the court convened over a 3-day period to launch their Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Human Trafficking and Child Sex Abuse. Therefore, in the third installment of John P. Thomas' investigative reports into child sex trafficking, we seek to help the public understand the full scope of this horrific problem. This problem will continue to exist until enough people in the public wake up and decide something needs to be done to stop these horrible crimes against our most vulnerable citizens: children.
800K Children in the U.S. Missing Each Year – International Tribunal Exposes Pedophilia Problem – Victims Testify of Child Sex Trafficking and Satanic Ritual Abuse
800,000 children a year in the United States go missing, many of them being sexually trafficked through pedophilia networks where the children suffer unimaginable horrors such as Satanic ritual abuse. This number is comprised of documented cases of children gone missing, and does not include children who are born and bred into pedophilia networks and have no birth certificates, or undocumented immigrant children who come across the borders. Worldwide, the number is close to 8 million children missing and being sexually trafficked. Such is the scope of the problem that was reported earlier this year (2018) in Westminster, London by The International Tribunal for Natural Justice (ITNJ), as the court convened over a 3-day period to launch their Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Human Trafficking and Child Sex Abuse. The Judicial Commission is comprised of world leaders who have been involved in fighting child sex trafficking for years, and includes intelligence officers, politicians, legal scholars, and many others. The International Tribunal was formed because most of the world's government bodies today have been corrupted and no longer represent the people, but instead private corporate interests, and as such, justice is seldom found in most government judicial courts around the world today to stop such a heinous crime as child sex trafficking.
Fake News vs. Faith News: How Biblical Principles Can Expose the Truth through Investigative Journalism
Journalists, particularly those who do investigative reporting, tend to annoy people in powerful positions. Some people might think that Christians are supposed to be soft and acquiescent rather than muckrakers who hold the powerful to account. But what I do as an investigative reporter is consistent with what the Bible teaches. The mission statement of ProPublica, my employer, says we want to use the “moral force of investigative journalism to spur reform.” If you go through my work, you may sense a bit of “moral force.” The Bible teaches that people are made in the image of God and that each human life holds incredible value. So when I learned that medical mistakes are one of the leading causes of death in America, I called attention to the problem. The Apostle Paul points out that God comforts us so that we can be a comfort to others. So since 2012 I’ve moderated the ProPublica Patient Safety Facebook group, so people who have been harmed by medical care have a place to turn. The Bible rebukes deception and unfair practices. I’ve shown how our nation’s health care system is rife with schemes that are unfair to patients. The biblical mandate is to tell the truth. But some conservative Christians don’t seem to understand that. I started out in the Christian media and had run-ins with editors because of my interest in reporting about Christian leaders, even if it made them look bad. Administrators recently censored student journalists at Liberty University, a conservative Christian institution, for, in their view, making the school look bad. But God calls us to publish the truth, not propaganda. The biblical prophets were the moral conscience of God’s people. Today, in a nonreligious sense, journalists are the moral conscience of the wider culture.
Medicalized Homicide: Euthanasia’s Moral Abyss
Belgium legalized lethal-jab euthanasia in 2002. Since that time, medicalized homicide has grown increasingly radical. Now, MercatorNet has published a story based on a translation of the “Belgium Federal Commission on the Control and Evaluation of Euthanasia” — the nation’s official report on patient-killing by doctors. It makes for very chilling reading.
Child Murder or “Euthanasia”? Belgium Legalizes Physician-Assisted Suicide for All Ages – 3 Minor Children Die
A report published earlier this month (July, 2018) by Belgium's Federal Commission for Euthanasia Control and Evaluation states that doctors assisted with the "suicides" of three minor children since the country's parliament voted to lift age restrictions on euthanasia. The minors were 9, 11 and 17 years old, according to the report. Their conditions ranged from muscular dystrophy to brain tumors to cystic fibrosis. The conditions of all three were determined to be terminal, and euthanasia was approved unanimously by the Belgium's euthanasia committee. In 2017, a doctor resigned from Belgium's euthanasia commission, alleging that the committee had euthanized a demented patient who had not formally requested to die. This begs the question, can a minor child, especially a handicapped one, be expected to make such an important decision as to end one's own life? Or are these "physician-assisted" suicides simply a way to murder children who are deemed not useful to society?
A Young Child’s Intuitive Belief in a Creator/Designer is Only Removed by Indoctrination
Young children perceive intuitively that the world is designed. In 1929, child psychologist Jean Piaget called children “artificialists” who tend to regard everything as “the product of human creation.” Piaget’s claim that young children’s minds are not sophisticated enough to distinguish between human and nonhuman causes was controversial, and subsequent studies have shown that he was wrong. Yet he was right in saying that children start out with the intuition that the natural world was made for a purpose. In 2004, child psychologist Deborah Kelemen suggested that young children are thus “intuitive theists” who are “disposed to view natural phenomena as resulting from nonhuman design.” By the time they are adolescents, many children have suppressed their intuition of design. This suppression is largely due to influences from the community, especially from parents and teachers striving to acculturate children to a secular society, often in the name of “scientific literacy.” “Intervention” usually refers to an action taken to help someone give up an abnormal addiction. For these psychologists, however, it means convincing children to give up a normal intuition. Thus education becomes indoctrination.
Were Nazis More Tolerant of Down Syndrome than Some European Countries Today?
Richard Dawkins lashed out at Pope Francis for the latter’s comparing modern eugenic efforts to Nazi precedents that sought to “create a pure race.” Dawkins fumed, “Abortion to avoid birth defects is not about eugenics. It’s about the avoidance of individual human suffering.” The Daily Wire observes: As noted by LifeNews, the “human suffering” that Dawkins refers to here is disingenuous, considering that many parents of Down children report loving their children and having much joy in their family. Dawkins advised such families to just “Abort it and try again” in 2014 when one Twitter follower asked what to do about her Down syndrome diagnosed baby. “It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice,” he said. The atheist lamenting about what’s “immoral” makes little sense. In Denmark, only four Down syndrome babies were born in 2016. In the neighboring country of Iceland, the eradication of Down syndrome babies has reached near 100%. France has gotten in on the race, too; most recently, the country banned a television commercial featuring Down syndrome children because it upset the mothers who previously aborted them.
Politicians: The Worst Kind of People to Run the Government
In the new political science that developed in the Progressive Era, study of what constitutes wise opinion was dropped. The new political scientist was to abandon the supposedly played out mines of political theory. Progress, you would have thought as an intellectual in that period, must proceed on “scientific” principles. Max Weber’s “fact/value” distinction meant that facts alone could be submitted to scientific inquiry, while issues of right and wrong (“values”) could be examined only from outside their own assumptions. Here, then, is partly where we get our present day intellectual prejudice against crediting what politicians say they are doing and our constant suspicion that the real truth must be something else. It arose in Germany as an element of the “science of the state” (Statswissenschaft) and the “general theory of the state” (Allgemeine Staatslehere). And it fit well with the new science of politics, Politische Wissenschaft. With the new method, known states were compared historically, with perfection of the state as the goal. In the latter half of the 19th century, these ideas entered the United States in the heads of young Americans who, lacking domestic graduate schools in public law, embarked on studies in Germany. In time the concept of eugenics gained force in the Second Reich — decades before the Nazis employed it. When, in 1904, the German Empire exterminated almost the whole race of native Hereros in German Southwest Africa, it was publicly justified in terms of Darwinism. There were few protests. A generation earlier, the first American convert to Teutonic ideas of political science and the founder of its U.S. version was John W. Burgess. Dazzled by what he found in Germany, Burgess, back home, proclaimed the ultimate end of the state to be “the perfection of humanity; the civilization of the world; the perfect development of human reason, and its attainment to universal command over individualism; the apotheosis of man.” German-trained instructors, helped shape the America field of political science over the next generation. From political science at Johns Hopkins, meanwhile, came a number of historicist scholars, including Woodrow Wilson. We can chart the Progressive Era from the 1880s because of the work of Wilson. In America today, Darwinism’s triumph in something called “political science” continues to batter at the philosophical foundations of republican government.
New Documentary “Human Zoos” Shows How African People Were Brought to the U.S. and Displayed in Cages as Less Than Human
When one thinks of the concept of "eugenics" most people think back to the atrocities of Nazi Germany and the genocide of ethnic cleansing during the Hitler regime. What most Americans do not realize is that the "scientific" field of study known as "eugenics" originated in the United States, being inspired by Darwinian evolution, and is responsible for terrible social and racial injustices here in the U.S. before Hitler's atrocities that occurred during WWII. And the "scientific" field of eugenics is still alive and well today, even though the term "eugenics" is no longer popular. Part of America's dark eugenics past is the story of how indigenous African people were kidnapped from their villages in the early 1900s and brought to America as "freaks," displayed as "missing links" to Darwin's theory of human evolution, and displayed to the public in cages at Public Fairs and Zoos. The Discovery Institute has produced a new documentary about this dark period of America's past called "Human Zoos." Here is a synopsis: "In September 1906, nearly a quarter of a million people flocked to the Bronx Zoo in New York City. Many came for a startling new exhibit in the Zoo’s Monkey House. But it wasn’t a monkey they came to see. It was a man. His name was Ota Benga. A pygmy from the African Congo, Ota Benga was exhibited in a cage along with monkeys. Benga was not alone. He was one of literally thousands of indigenous peoples who were put on public display throughout America in the early twentieth century. Often touted as “missing links” between man and apes and as examples of the “lower” stages of human evolution, these native peoples were harassed, demeaned, and jeered at. Their public display was arranged with the enthusiastic support of the most elite members of the scientific community, and it was promoted uncritically by America’s leading newspapers. Human Zoos tells the horrifying story of this effort to dehumanize entire classes of people in the name of science."
What Does it Mean to be a “Christian”?
The name “Christian” carries a wide range of meaning and understanding today, as it has throughout history. It is obviously related to “Christ,” which is from the Greek translation of the Hebrew word for “Messiah,” and refers to the person of Jesus Christ. A general definition of “Christian” then would be someone who follows the teachings or doctrine of Jesus Christ. The teachings of Jesus Christ are contained in the Bible, but how they are understood and what kind of people should bear the name “Christian” is highly debatable, and by no means universally accepted or understood. It is interesting to note that the followers of Jesus during his lifetime on earth and shortly after did not refer to themselves as “Christians.”
What This Homeless Woman Taught Me About Life Today
It was the day before Christmas Eve, and as I drove to a city where I was to meet my sons for lunch, it was hard to find a parking spot, as so many people were out and about on the last shopping day before Christmas. Everyone seemed to be in a good mood in this upscale downtown area where I was meeting my sons for lunch. Many were dressed in their holiday best, and there were families everyone; children giddy with glee as they undoubtedly were looking forward to opening presents soon. Since I had to park quite far away from the restaurant where I was to meet my sons, I had a few blocks to walk. At one corner, a woman who was sitting down by herself and talking caught my eye for just a moment. She was on the other side of the street, so I did not get a close look at her. "Why is she talking when she is all alone?," I quickly thought, but I was late for lunch and I pushed the thought to the back of my mind thinking "she probably has an earbud on and is talking on the phone to someone." Later, as we were finishing up our lunch on a table that was outside in front of the restaurant (the restaurant was very busy, and the only table available was outdoors as it was quite cold out), a woman walked by that caught my eye. She was not neat - she was dirty, carrying a backpack, smoking a small stub of a cigarette that I guessed someone had discarded, and had multiple layers of clothing and jackets on, well worn and dirty. I later learned she was in her mid 40s, but she looked older than that. She noticed me looking at her, and said to me: "God bless you! Jesus has redeemed me, and God is the God of second chances." I replied: "Amen! He certainly is the God of second chances. God bless you too." We began a short conversation, and I was waiting for and expecting the imminent request for money - but it never came.