Tag Archives: Report

Podcasts

How corroborative near-death experiences falsify atheism

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Over at Apologetics 315, Brian Auten has linked to this podcast from Dr. Gary Habermas. The lecture was delivered to the students and faculty at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo in 2003.

Habermas goes through several examples of corroborative near-death experiences written up in peer-reviewed medical journals. This is scary! And if it’s true that we have non-physical minds that can exist outside the body, then materialism is false, and atheism is disproved again.

The MP3 podcast is here. (72 minutes)

There are two cases that you should really know about, and you can read about them in this London Times article.

Excerpt:

There are thousands of reports of OBEs but the two most famous cases are Pam Reynolds and Maria’s Tennis Shoe. Reynolds, an American singer, watched and later reported on with remarkable accuracy the top of her own skull being removed by surgeons before she moved into a bright glowing realm. But it was Reynolds’s account of the surgical implements used and the words spoken in the theatre that make the case so intriguing.

Maria, meanwhile, underwent cardiac arrest in 1977. She floated out of her body, drifted round the hospital and noticed a tennis shoe on a window sill. It was later found to be exactly where she said it was. The shoe was said to be invisible from the ground and not in any location where Maria could have seen it. Such stories suggest that OBEs should be scientifically verifiable.

Sleep tight, atheists! I’m sure there’s nothing to these stories… nothing at all!

Mu hu ha ha haaaaa!

Note: I would not use this argument in a debate. But I do find it interesting and I am open-minded. I haven’t decided whether these are real or not, although I am a substance dualist and believe in a real non-material soul that survives the body. If anyone has a solid NDE story, send it to me.

News

The Democrats make war on science to protect their faith-based policies

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Did everyone hear about how the EPA, (a government agency), suppressed a report questioning global warming? Basically, the Democrats wanted to pass the cap-and-trade bill without facing any criticism of their faith in man-made global warming. So they told Carlin not to publish his report or speak about it to anyone. Alan Carlin went ahead and released the report to CEI anyway. And now he tells the whole story in the WSJ.

In the Wall Street Journal. (H/T CEI)

Mr. Carlin and a colleague presented a 98-page analysis arguing the agency should take another look, as the science behind man-made global warming is inconclusive at best. The analysis noted that global temperatures were on a downward trend. It pointed out problems with climate models. It highlighted new research that contradicts apocalyptic scenarios. “We believe our concerns and reservations are sufficiently important to warrant a serious review of the science by EPA,” the report read.

The response to Mr. Carlin was an email from his boss, Al McGartland, forbidding him from “any direct communication” with anyone outside of his office with regard to his analysis. When Mr. Carlin tried again to disseminate his analysis, Mr. McGartland decreed: “The administrator and the administration have decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision. . . . I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office.” (Emphasis added.)

Mr. McGartland blasted yet another email: “With the endangerment finding nearly final, you need to move on to other issues and subjects. I don’t want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research etc, at least until we see what EPA is going to do with Climate.” Ideology? Nope, not here. Just us science folk. Honest.

The emails were unearthed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Republican officials are calling for an investigation; House Energy Committee ranking member Joe Barton sent a letter with pointed questions to Mrs. Jackson, which she’s yet to answer. The EPA has issued defensive statements, claiming Mr. Carlin wasn’t ignored. But there is no getting around that the Obama administration has flouted its own promises of transparency.

In case you missed it, CEI wrote a lot more about the Democrats’ war on science here and here.

I blogged previously about how the Democrats undermine science in the university with their affirmative action policies, and how they insist on spending money on unproven ESCR, when ASCR has all the proven cures.

News

Indian government says sex education promotes promiscuity

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Story from Life Site News.

Excerpt:

The Indian government has rejected western-style sex education programs, saying they do nothing to solve the problem of teenage pregnancy but only exacerbate the problem by promoting sexual promiscuity.

A government report on the matter was issued in response to a citizen-launched petition against a decision by the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) to start sex-education in schools. The program had been touted as a means of preventing the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. Materials for teachers and facilitators in India included explicit details about “alternative methods” of sex, including anal and oral sex, presented as a means of avoiding AIDS.

According to the government, the curriculum prepared with material from UNICEF, had “shocked the consciences” of the country and was described as “quite frightening.” If implemented, the report said, it would “promote promiscuity of the worst kind.” The report was issued in March by a committee of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian Parliament, and says that the introduction of sex education in India’s schools should at least be delayed until the issue has been fully debated in public.

Here is my post regarding homosexual sex education for kindergarten students in the USA. Here is another post about Alberta’s proposed Bill 44 which allows parents to opt their children out of sex education.