Tag Archives: Media

Videos

What is intelligent design? What is capitalism?

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Two new books have just come out by two of my favorite people in the whole world:

  • Stephen C. Meyer (Ph.D from Cambridge University)
  • Jay W. Richards (Ph.D from Princeton University).

Meyer’s book is about intelligent design, and Richards’ book is about capitalism. Let’s take a look.

What is intelligent design?

To understand what intelligent design is, you can watch two DVDs that are now online at Youtube. Both videos are by Illustra Media.

Here are the 2 playlists:

I give these videos my highest recommendation. If you have not seen them, you must see them.

Stephen C. Meyer’s new book

The new book by Stephen C. Meyer is called “Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design”. It is being published by Harper-Collins.

Signature in the Cell
Signature in the Cell

Here is the blurb:

Meyer tells the story of the successive attempts to solve this mystery of DNA and argues that fundamental objections now exist to the adequacy of all purely naturalistic or materialistic theories. The book then proposes a radical alternative based upon developments in molecular biology and the information sciences: it proposes the design hypothesis as the best explanation for the origin of the information necessary to produce the first life.

SIGNATURE IN THE CELL will not merely provide a critique of evolutionary theories. It also shows that, based on our uniform and repeated experience-the basis of all scientific reasoning about the past-there is a strong positive case for intelligent design. From our experience we know that intelligence alone produces large amounts of information. Thus, the book shows that the argument for intelligent design from DNA is not based on ignorance or a desire to “give up on science,” but instead upon just the opposite: our growing scientific knowledge of the inner workings of the cell and our experience-based knowledge of the cause-and-effect structure of the world. For just this reason the argument for design can be formulated as a rigorous and positive scientific argument-specifically one called “an inference to the best explanation.” The book shows, ironically, that the argument for intelligent design from DNA is based on the same method of scientific reasoning that Darwin himself used.

I pre-ordered mine! You can see Stephen Meyer debating against Skeptic magazine’s editor Michael Shermer here.

Now let’s turn to Jay W. Richards’ book.

What is capitalism?

To understand what capitalism is, you can watch this lecture entitled “Money, Greed and God: Why Capitalism is the Solution and Not the Problem” by Jay W. Richards, delivered at the Heritage Foundation think tank, and televised by C-SPAN2. The book has the same title, and is published by Harper-Collins.

Money, Greed and God
Money, Greed and God

Here is the blurb:

Does capitalism promote greed? Can a person follow Jesus’s call to love others and also support capitalism? Was our recent economic crisis caused by flaws inherent to our free market system? Jay Richards presents a new approach to capitalism, revealing how it’s fully consistent with Jesus’s teachings and the Christian tradition, while also showing why this system is our best bet for renewed economic vigor.

The church is bombarded with two competing messages about money and capitalism:

  • wealth is bad and causes much of the world’s suffering
  • wealth is good and God wants you to prosper and be rich

Richards exposes these myths, and other common misconceptions about capitalism, and reveals the surprising ways that capitalism is, in fact, the best system to respond to the biblical mandates of alleviating poverty and protecting the environment. Money, Greed, and God equips readers to take practical steps in their own lives to conduct business, worship God, and serve others without falling into the “prosperity gospel” trap.

I can hardly wait to get my copy!

If you can’t see the Richards video, here is an audio lecture by Jay Richards on the “Myths Christians Believe about Wealth and Poverty“. Also, why not check out this series of 4 sermons by Wayne Grudem on the relationship between Christianity and economics? (a PDF outline is here)

News

Michelle Malkin asks: Is an abortionist worth more than a military recruiter?

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Michelle Malkin
Michelle Malkin

My friend Andrew drew my attention to Michelle Malkin’s most recent column. It’s a must-read!

Michelle starts by talking about two murders that occurred at almost the same time. Which one was more important to Obama and the left-wing media, and why?

She writes:

When a right-wing Christian vigilante kills, millions of fingers pull the trigger. When a left-wing Muslim vigilante kills, he kills alone. These are the instantly ossifying narratives in the Sunday shooting death of Kansas late-term abortionist George Tiller versus the Monday shootings of two Arkansas military recruiters.

Tiller’s suspected murderer, Scott Roeder, was white, Christian, anti-government, and anti-abortion. The gunman in the military recruiting center attack, Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad, was black, a Muslim convert, anti-military, and anti-American. Both crimes are despicable, cowardly acts of domestic terrorism. But the disparate treatment of the two brutal cases by both the White House and the media is striking.

In the column Michelle notes the following differences between the two stories:

  • Obama issued a statement condemning the murderer of the abortionist, but not the murder of the military recruiters
  • The Justice Department dispatched federal marshals to protect abortion clinics, not military recruitment offices
  • The left-wing media labeled the murderer of the abortion doctor a terrorist, not the murderer of the military recruiters
  • The left-wing media blamed conservative media for one murder, but militant Islam was not blamed for the other murders

Michelle asks what Obama had to say about the deaths of two of our brave soldiers:

…President Obama said nothing. The Justice Department was mum. And so were the legions of finger-pointing pundits happily convicting the pro-life movement and every right-leaning writer on the planet of contributing to the murder of George Tiller. Obama’s omission, it should be noted, comes just a few weeks after he failed to mention the Bronx jihadi plot to bomb synagogues and a National Guard airbase during his speech on homeland security.

She goes on to catalog some more incidents showing where the real threat of domestic terrorism lies. Most of them I had never even heard of. It just goes to show you that some victims are more equal than others, especially when you are trying to squash down the good and lift up the evil – so that the distinctions that make people able to judge others will be demolished. Abortion good, patriotism bad. Feminism good, military service bad.

Watch this video with Evan Sayet and you’ll learn how the secular-left thinks.

Another video by Evan Sayet is linked here.

We need to understand how it has become possible for the secular-left to be viewed as “moral” while faithful conservatives are viewed as “immoral”. One worldview views the universe as an accident and human rights as fictions. The other believes that God grounds human rights and that every person has a purpose that makes them valuable: to know God.

UPDATE: Nice Deb says that the anti-war left is to blame for the death of the military recruiters. Turnabout is fair play. She has a lot more at that link, too.


Podcasts

Hugh Hewitt demolishes MSNBC’s Larry O’Donnell

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I was browsing over at my buddy Muddling’s blog and I found this amazing story. (He finds, without fail, the best stories!)

Hugh Hewitt does a great interview, the best in the business. He’s interviewed tons of people in the mainstream media over the years. This time, he interviews Larry O’Donnell. This is a must listen. I feel like I should put in a policy on the blog that no citations of left-wing journalists will be permitted.

Excerpt:

HH: What was the last book you read about terrorism?

LO’D: The last…I don’t think I’ve read a book about terrorism.

HH: Ever?

LO’D: No.

HH: About al Qaeda?

LO’D: No.

HH: About…how about the mullahs in Iran?

LO’D: No.

HH: I’m just stunned.

LO’D: Well, I’ll tell you, I’ve read Bob Woodward’s books about the accounts inside the Bush administration from what they were doing from the day they got sworn in, okay?

HH: You’ve never read a book about terrorism?

LO’D: There is no, there is absolutely no evidence, and I defy you today, Hugh,

HH: Larry, you’ve never read a book about terrorism?

LO’D: I defy you to point to me, point to me a citation of one memo or one meeting that Dick Cheney was in where he says anything about al Qaeda.

HH: Larry, I’ve got to go lie down. I really do. Do you think you’re a well-informed MSNBC, by MSNBC standards, do you think you’re above the grade of people on that network?

LO’D: That’s a trick question, Hugh.

Good Lord, it’s his job to know about these things. Where is he getting his news stories? Daily Kos? Firedog Lake? Feministing?

Now Hugh asks him to substantiate an assertion that he made:

HH: You said people have been prosecuted for exactly this. Did you mean for waterboarding?

LO’D: Yeah.

HH: Who?

LO’D: Well, we’ve done it, you know, this country has prosecuted that, that, torture method before.

HH: When?

LO’D: Um, I don’t know, what’s…I think it is was…umm, I don’t know. I…you know, I’ve…I know that we’ve done it, and I don’t have the research in front of me as to exactly when we’ve prosecuted who for it and which conflict.

Hot Air has a link to the transcript and MP3 podcast.

The Media Research Center has some admissions about media bias from the lefties themselves.