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Pix title: Sunset Planet Earth, NASA, Expedition 15 crew
 
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Firefox tip #2
There is a useful Firefox addon called Auto Context. At least, I find it useful.  It automatically brings up the context menu when any text is selected.  Usually, I select text because I want to copy it.  So, I need the context menu. 

It does present with one annoyance, but I can live with it.  If you are selecting text in a BLOG post to create a link, you don't need the context menu.  But, of course, you get it.  However, you may proceed just as if it hadn't come up and all will be well.
No Hits - Hit me
 
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Bible readers

According to a Harris poll, as reported in the Christian Post the Bible is on the top of our top ten reading list.


Regardless of which demographic group they belong to – male-female, Republican-Democrat or old-young – Americans named the Bible as their favorite book of all time, according to a recent nationwide poll.

In addition to being the number one book overall, the Holy Book also came in first across the board when comparing different demographic groups – gender, race/ethnicity, generation, political party, region, education – according to the Harris Poll released on Monday.


My poll questions are
1.  Are you engaged in reading the Bible?
2.  If so, how often
3.  And, if so, do you allow what you learn to change the way you think or live?



 
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Big Bang Baloney

Over at Rational Christianity the Big Bang rears its head:

The God-debate is riddled with false presumptions, faulty assumptions and logical leaps. Perhaps the greatest of all of these logical leaps is found in a nearly unchallenged on – the Bang Theory. Yes, the theory itself is challenged often, but one of its assumptions isn’t.


The Big Bang Theory is simple. It’s the idea that we see radiation residue all across the galaxies of the Universe, all equally spread out, evidence of an explosion. This evidence, coupled with the fact that the Universe is expanding, and therefore was once “smaller” provides adequate evidence to consider a theory of two points: First, all matter was once in a tightly held ball which could only be “undone” by a cosmic “explosion”. Second, that the universe as we know it was caused by a very different existence.


Scientists now generally reject the old theory that the Universe has “just always been here”. They now agree that there had to be a start, of sorts. Before the Big Bang, they say, there simply wasn’t. Nothing existed.


Don’t worry; I won’t be going into the cliché argument here that, “Aha! There was nothing! So nothing happened!” While I think that, properly constructed, this is a great argument, I’ll be focusing on something else in this article. If you want to see that argument explained, just read the Uncaused Cause article. Instead, let’s take a different approach to the discussion, for the sake of understanding it better, and considering all potential sides of the issue. My argument is simple:

Why do we assume that the Big Bang was the cause? This simple question is the summary of an argument, a challenge that cannot be met. Scientists have absolutely no way even theoretically possible to say that the Big Bang was the first cause. They simply argue that it was a cause.


Click on Rational Christianity above and read the rest of this. (Note that their “uncaused cause” link is broken, but can be found here.)

 
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Evolution -- 5 Things You Should Know
OK, I admit it.  I copied this from Rational Christianity.  They sort of give permission in the last paragraph.

May 1, 2008

“Evolution” is a word I never planned on using on Rational Christianity, given that I feel that “Evolution” has stolen the stage in the God debate, and it shouldn’t have. However, with the “Expelled” movie that recently came out, Evolution is against thrust into the spotlight, with both sides arguing from flawed positions.

Let’s look at five things everyone should know about evolution.


5. Some Evolution Happens

Admit it. Christian or non-Christian, we know it’s true. Things change. Natural selection occurs. It’s part of science. Sound like I’ve converted? Don’t worry I haven’t. But honesty forces me to admit this.


4. It’s “Just” a Theory

And that’s okay. Gravity is just a theory. A theory is not a weak argument. Arguing this point against an Evolutionist simply makes the YEC movement look bad. We have better arguments than “it’s just a theory!”


3. Common Descent Can’t Be Proven

The idea that all animals formulated from the same organism is simply unprovable. This is especially true of plants and animals. It’s also a souped up version of “Goddidit”. If two things are similar, and another thing is later discovered that looks like both, does this mean they evolved from each other?


2. Evolution Is Vague

We don’t know exactly what a “species” is. That’s kind of important. Even Darwin said, “I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given for the sake of convenience to a set of individuals closely resembling each other.”

“Closely resembling each other”? That’s helpful.


1. Can’t be Falsified

This is actually a huge gaping hole in Evolution theory. For a theory to be scientific, it has to be falsifiable. This is what the atheists say at least. “You can’t say Goddidit! That isn’t unprovable! All of reality could have been formulated by a pink, invisible unicorn last night, that erased all the evidence! See? You can’t prove that’s not true. It has to be falsifiable.”

Let’s pretend that’s right. That, unfortunately, destroys Evolution as being scientifically viable. Evolution is, in the rudest sense, a “natural-selection-didit” theory. The evolutionist sees similarities and concludes that they evolved.

But wait. How can we know that it isn’t true? Simple, the Evolutionists say. Just show us a species that couldn’t have evolved. Oops. That’s just it:


You can’t prove that a species couldn’t have evolved, because that would require knowing every theoretically possible prior existence of the species. This means that Evolution can’t be proven wrong. This means it fails a basic test for being considered scientific. Oops.


Evolution isn’t falsifiable. It’s just a souped up version of “Goddidit”. And it’s unprovable. And vague. We know that some evolution happens, we just don’t know if all Evolution happens. And ardently arguing that is nothing short of blind faith.


Remember that Rational Christianity doesn't have the budget for huge advertisement campaigns, and relies on nearly all of its traffic through "word-of-blog". Feel free to blog this article and others on the site.

 
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Firefox tips #1

Did you know that you can set Firefox on startup to load either your home page, or to show your windows and tabs from your last session? The advantage to to latter, of course, is that it restores the state of your session when you last closed Firefox. And you can get to your chosen home page anytime by clicking on the home page icon in the tool bar.


Here's how: On the tool bar click Tools-->Options and then select the Main tab. Then in the Startup Bar choose "Show my windows and tabs from last time." (This will not effect your home page choice.) Its done.


Also, you may have more than one home page.  Just separate them with the bar symbol: |.  It is an upper case backslash, \, on my keyboard, but it is in different places on different keyboards. When you go to your home page(s) all of them will be loaded in different tabs.

 
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