Tag Archives: Stephen

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

Canada seeks to sell government-run firms

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My Canadian friends are telling me that Prime Minister Stephen Harper is under fire for offering 9.5 billion dollars to GM. I tell them, who cares? Canada is 10% the size of the USA, so that would be 95 billion for us. I still believe in Harper, and in any case, he already expressed that his preference would be to let the companies go bankrupt.

But let’s take a look at the latest news from Canada. In Canada, they have corporations that are owned by the government called Crown corporations. Some of them are losing money. So what does Harper want to do about that?

Check out this story from the National Post. (H/T My friend Andrew, the perfect father)

The federal Department of Finance has flagged several prominent Crown corporations as “not self-sustaining,” including the CBC, VIA Rail and the National Arts Centre, and has identified them as entities that could be sold as part of the government’s asset review, newly released documents show.

…Finance Department documents, obtained by Canwest News Service under the Access to Information Act… reveal that the government will consider privatizing Crown corporations that require public subsidies to stay afloat.

“The reviews will also examine other holdings in which the government competes directly with private enterprises, earn income from property or performs a commercial activity,” states a Finance briefing note dated Dec. 2, 2008. “It includes Crown corporations that are not self-sustaining even though they are of a commercial nature.”

In the briefing note, the Finance Department identifies nine Crown corporations that fall in that category, including Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., the CBC and VIA Rail.

CBC is their NPR/PBS and Via Rail is their AMTRAK. Harper is taking a lot of heat right now because he is running a 50 billion dollar deficit. That’s chump change compared to our nearly 2 trillion dollar deficit this year alone, with no end in sight. Not only that, but Heritage Foundation reports that Obama’s calling up the mayor of Detroit and reassuring him that GM will not move their headquarters to Warren, from Detroit.

More Harper