To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Take me to your leader
From: bpr-list@philologos.org("Moza")
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2000 08:55:49 -0400

Take me to your leader

Tom Willis is one of American creation science's movers
and shakers. He heads the Creation Science Association for
Mid-America and masterminded the recent school science
curriculum controversy in Kansas, where students will no
longer be tested on evolution. Today, he believes the Bible
to be God's literal words and says scientists believe in
evolution for political reasons. But as a young man Willis
was an atheist and trained in the hard sciences. Bob Holmes
asked him how he ended up on the road to Damascus

How did you come to reject evolution?

I was not a Christian--I didn't know Christianity from the
sole of my foot. But I became a creationist--an anti-
evolutionist Christian--by a series of, some would say,
unusual events. One was a traumatic personal event that
caused me to rethink the meaning of life and to seek other
solutions from the lifestyle I was living.

But my conversion was probably more inspired by reading
Darwin, and other popularisers of evolution than by reading
creationist writings. Because I had studied hard sciences,
been a high-school debater, and taken courses in logic, I
realised the absurd reasoning that lay behind
evolutionists' arguments and was very powerfully struck
that a theory with so little sound reasoning behind it
could be so widely accepted among a group of people that
calls itself the scientific community.

Do I take it that no evidence on Earth will lead you to
change your mind about evolution?

I have answered the question before at the local atheist
club by holding up my pocket comb and saying, "Instead of
telling me stories about a time in the past about which you
have no knowledge, just show me one complex system ever
formed by random processes." All complex systems owe their
existence to acts of creation involving planning and work
by one or more intelligent beings. I have made this
challenge hundreds of times: show me one complex system.
It's obvious that complex systems from 747s to coffee cups
are created.

Does it bother you that so few scientists agree with you?

It doesn't disturb me at all. It is not surprising to me
that most scientists don't believe the obvious. Jesus told
us that the world would hate us. This notion that
Christianity was ever popular in the world is just myth.
The scientific method in our culture is a political
venture. I believe that the political forces of history
tend to dominate cultural thought and they tend to drive
out non-believers.

If you ask most scientists, they wouldn't say they believe
in evolution for political reasons

Oh, of course not. Whatever your religion is, you don't
believe that you arrived at it by a silly method. Generally
you believe you have made a sound decision. But because a
majority disagree with me doesn't tell me anything about
truth. The majority has throughout history believed silly
things.

What harm do you think has resulted from the spread of
evolutionary thought?

When I began studying evolution it was obvious that it had
been a major rationale for a dominant world view. [During
the 20th century] two-thirds of the world's people were
living in evolutionist states--that is, where evolution is
the historical myth that is recognised as official truth in
the state. Having lived through that and known many people
who lived in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Hungary and
Poland, I realised that evolution as a life philosophy had
been empirically tested by our culture and found to be
wanting.

Hasn't Christianity also led to abuses?

You can argue that the Inquisition and the Crusades came
from Christianity. But you cannot defend either from
Scripture. But you can easily defend Nazi and Communist
behaviour from evolutionary theory. Certainly, before
Hitler started shooting at Joe Stalin you would not have
found many people defending an anti-Hitler view, even in
the great bastion of freedom in the United States. That's
important. It's important to realise that was a scientific
view. Hitler's views were argued to be scientific by many
men on every side of the pond, and they managed to carry
the day in Eastern Europe. If you recall, Hitler walked
into Austria without firing a shot. That's how popular his
views were. It is not just an idle notion that men will
believe things that are silly and call them scientific.

Why did you write recently: "Wherever evolutionists have
taken over, 'evolutionary Christians' have joined Hitler
and Stalin in killing Christians"?

Yes. Not all of them, but some have. Absolutely. You had
to be an evolutionist to be a Nazi--that was the state
doctrine--but many of them thought they were Christians.

Are you saying that belief in evolution leads humans to
commit evil crimes?

I want to be precise about it. Evolution is not the cause
of evil in man. There is no hint either in empirical
science or in Christianity that evolution is the cause of
evil in man, but it is an incredibly successful rationale
for evil. It's one of the best-crafted apologetic systems
for evil that I've seen in history. It also produces a
mindset that if you believe evolution you can't possibly
believe very strongly in a tremendous value associated with
individual human life--or any other life, for that matter.

Why do you think God created Darwin?

God specifically said those who refuse to love truth, he
will give them a spirit of delusion and cause them to
believe a lie. I think Darwin was designed to give the
world something to believe. Any child who has read On the
Origin of Species can see that he didn't have a case. I
read it when I was a virtual unbeliever and I just filled
the margins with unutterable phrases at my shock that such
silly reasoning and non-reasoning could be accepted and
called science.

Why are so many other Christians--Catholics and
Protestants--perfectly at ease with evolution?

You can sit in a garage all day and call yourself a car,
but that doesn't make you one nor does it make your
pronouncements about either cars or garages scientifically
accurate.

It sounds like you're saying that mainstream Christians
are false Christians.

No, I didn't say that. Many are false Christians. They can
also be mistaken. You don't believe everything that a
Christian says. Why should I? Evolution has to stand on
either the scientific evidence or the scriptural evidence.
I've maintained in this conversation it cannot stand on the
scientific evidence and I don't have to maintain that it
can't stand on the scriptural evidence.

You virtually never hear a Christian defend evolutionism
from the Bible. This tends to make me a little bit
suspicious. I find that most of them are not interested in
the Bible. They're interested in Christianity as a nice way
to bring up kids or some other such idea. Christianity,
like evolution, is a truth statement about the history and
purpose of the Universe.

Do you think Christians who believe in evolution are evil?

I didn't say that.

I know you didn't say that, I'm asking you do you believe
that?

I believe that Christians or anybody who teaches evolution
as science is likely to be causing harm. I'd have to say
yes, some of them are evil. I would have no way of
estimating what percentage are evil and what percentage are
mistaken. I'm not God and I'm incapable of looking in the
heart of man.

You say you're not anti-science, yet why do you reject the
scientific consensus on the age of the Earth?

I have researched the methods by which we have determined
or pretended to determine the age of the Earth. I haven't
found one that works. I find that they work only by
selectively discarding the dates that we don't believe or
that don't fit our belief system. I don't believe that we
have developed a method that we can even test. When you go
into a grocery store and they claim that your meat weighs 5
pounds, there's a guy that comes in there every month with
a standard 5-pound weight. I've asked many a geologist,
"Where's your standard one- million-year-old rock?" They
don't have one and they can't possibly have one.

Isn't that a bit glib?

Everyone chuckles and says that's just rhetoric. No, it's
not rhetoric--they have no way of testing whether or not
this is true. Incidentally, the same is true in a court of
law. Every courtroom is about an event in the past. We
can't agree on whether O. J. Simpson killed his ex-wife and
yet we pretend we know what dinosaurs had for breakfast 100
million years ago.

Where--apart from the Bible--do you get the idea that
dinosaurs survived long after most scientists say they
became extinct?

The word dinosaur is only 150 years old, but descriptions
and pictures and sculpture and art of large reptiles is in
every culture. The head of the Chinese museum of natural
history stated in the last decade that dragons are not a
part of Chinese mythology, they're a part of Chinese
history. What's he talking about? He's talking about large
reptiles. If you just look at ancient cultures they all
teach the same thing. The Bible teaches that large reptiles
existed in the time of Job. Behemoth and Leviathan, large
beasts from the book of Job, clearly are dinosaurs. When
the people who produced the King James Bible translated it
they had no idea what he was talking about, so they didn't
give them any English words. They translated them into
other words. Since then we've dug up creatures that fit
those models.

How should science be taught in schools?

There is no such thing as education without religion. When
you teach someone from ages 5 to 18, you're going to make a
religious impression, even if it is the false notion that
you can make a significant contribution to their life needs
without mentioning religion. That is in itself a religious
position.

If I had any agenda that I would defend, it would be the
idea that scientific theories ought not to be taught in
such a way as to require the student to affirm them.
Students shouldn't be required to believe scientific
theories. They're something you learn about, but you don't
have to believe them. And you shouldn't censor evidence
that might put any theory in an unfortunate light. [Right
now] you can talk about evidence for an old Earth, but it
is a fact that our opponents scream in livid anger at the
evidence that points the other way.

Just for the record, do you believe the Sun goes around
the Earth or the Earth goes around the Sun?

I'm sure your readers will love this, but I don't know.
Every physicist who's looked at it seriously has realised
that we don't know for sure.

From New Scientist magazine, 22 April 2000.

http://www.newscientist.com/nl/0422/willis.html

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========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Too Busy to Pray? Call Sinbusters
From: bpr-list@philologos.org("Moza")
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2000 09:17:48 -0400

Wednesday April 19 10:34 AM ET

 Too Busy to Pray? Call Sinbusters

MILAN, Italy (Reuters) - An Italian housewife has gone into the prayer
business to rescue the souls of people whose daily grind leaves no time to
attend to their own salvation.

For 3,000 lire ($1.50) Monica Ballinari, 26, will say a prayer for a lost relative
or perform the sign of the cross once a day.

The new ``Paradise'' agency which she has started running from her home in
Varese, northern Italy, has a list of tariffs that go up to 50,000 lire for a rosary
sequence of five prayers.

For a more personal service, Ballinari will recite a prayer in your home for
25,000 lire, excluding travel costs.

``Life has become so frantic that people don't have time to do anything
beyond work or family. That's why people have stopped praying even though
they feel a spiritual need to do so,'' the mother and former actress told Il
Giorno daily.

To drum up clients, the Paradise agency's brochure exhorts its readers to
remember they only have one soul. ``If you don't have time to save it, call
me; I'll take care of it.''

The sinbuster service is already having some success in Catholic Italy.
About 30 people have turned to professional prayer including two ``well-
known people,'' Ballinari said.

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000419/od/prayer_1.html

Link via:
http://www.newsviewtoday.com

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========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Spitting bear keeps people safe from evil spirits
From: bpr-list@philologos.org
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2000 12:12:01 -0500

via: Real World News (http://www.realworldnews.net)

SPITTING BEAR KEEPS PEOPLE SAFE FROM EVIL SPIRITS
People in India are queuing up to be blessed by a bear which spits on
holy objects. Crowds in Tirukazhukundram, near Chennai, are flocking
to
the town's temple and paying to have a "thayathu" or talisman put in
the
animal's mouth. The bear's owner makes it perform a few tricks and
then
puts the objects on its tongue one at a time. After a few seconds the
bear spits each one out and they are handed over to a buyer for around
15 rupees each - about 20p. Each talisman is supposed to safeguard the
carrier from evil, according to the India Express.

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_2164.html

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========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Imagine that...an earthquake felt in VERMONT...
From: bpr-list@philologos.org("Shophar_Sho_Good")
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2000 12:15:13 -0500

What could be going on in Vermont...MMMMMMM....

-----Original Message-----
From: PRESGRAVE@neis.cr.usgs.gov [mailto:PRESGRAVE@neis.cr.usgs.gov]
Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2000 5:31 AM
To: bigquake@gldmutt.cr.usgs.gov
Subject: EQ MAG 3.7 NEW YORK

    U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY NATIONAL EARTHQUAKE INFORMATION CENTER
                    World Data Center A for Seismology

    Reply to: sedas@ghtmail.cr.usgs.gov (internet)
              sedas@neisb.cr.usgs.gov (internet - alternate)

The following is from the United States Geological Survey, National
Earthquake Information Center: Preliminary hypocenter for
earthquake of 2000 Apr 20, NEW YORK: latitude 44.0 degrees north,
longitude 74.3 degrees west, origin time 08 46 54.0 utc, depth
shallow, magnitude 3.7 mbLg. The earthquake was felt in eastern New
York and at Montpelier, Vermont. There have been no reports of
damage. This is located in the same general area as a magnitude 5.1
earthquake on October 7, 1983, that caused minor damage and was felt
in 12 U.S. states and 2 Canadian provinces.

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========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - The Internet's open-source patron saint?
From: bpr-list@philologos.org("Moza")
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2000 14:16:12 -0400

The Internet's open-source patron saint

UNLIKE the well-established rules for beatification and
canonisation, the allocation of patron saints to particular
activities is somewhat haphazard. Only in a handful of
cases have patron saints been officially denominated by the
pope. St Clare of Assisi, who was said to have been able to
see and hear distant events, was declared patron saint of
television in 1958; and the Archangel Gabriel was made
patron saint of telecommunications in 1921. Thus saints who
lived many centuries ago became associated with rather more
modern inventions.

The vast majority of patron saints, however, are linked to
their various trades, activities or professions by nothing
more than tradition derived from stories associated with
their lives. In some cases, these traditions have been
extended to embrace new technologies. Joseph of Cupertino,
for example, who lived in the 17th century, became the
patron saint of aviators and astronauts because he was said
to have levitated during worship. Similarly, there are
patron saints for photographers, motorcyclists and
radiologists.

The rise of the Internet has produced a number of
candidates to be its users' patron saint. The Internet is
a potent tool when it comes to spreading the word and
stirring up support for a particular cause. But it is also
a place where half-truths can quickly assume the status of
fact -- as in the case of St Isidore, who is the subject of
much online rumour.

St Isidore was born in Seville in the sixth century, and
compiled a 20-volume encyclopedia-like reference work,
called "The Etymologies", which covered a wide range of
religious and secular topics. It was, say his supporters,
an early example of a database of categorised (if
unreliable) knowledge. That makes Isidore the ideal
candidate for patron saint of the Internet.

Not everybody agrees. The followers of San Pedro Regalado,
a 15th-century Spanish priest, believe that the
Internet's defining quality is its ability to annihilate
distance, rather than its dubious usefulness as a
reference work. San Pedro was said to have appeared in two
places at once, and was also renowned as a navigator. This,
say his fans, makes him a better choice. Also nominated is
Santa Tecla, a Catalan religious figure said to be able to
help those suffering from computer problems.

The Vatican has not yet pronounced on any of these
candidates as the Internet's patron saint, despite
numerous reports claiming that St Isidore has been
officially chosen. But, given that most patron saints have
never been formally appointed either, St Isidore's lack
of official credentials does not necessarily matter. If
enough Internet users adopt him as their patron saint, that
will in effect constitute a tradition that needs no ruling
from Rome.

Such an approach to choosing a patron saint would,
moreover, be in keeping with the way things are done on the
Internet, where protocols and standards are not imposed
from the top down by a governing body, but left to arise
spontaneously. Often, several competing solutions to a
particular problem are proposed simultaneously. But if
enough people support a particular standard (such as HTTP,
the protocol that underlies the World Wide Web) it assumes
official status.

So which would-be patron saint has the most support
online? A quick poll using the AltaVista search engine to
count web-page references to the candidates suggests that
St Isidore has a clear lead, with 800 or so
references -- ten times as many as San Pedro or Santa Tecla.
But will St Isidore's appeal extend beyond the early
adopters? Remember, Netscape's browser once had an 80%
market share, too.

http://www.economist.com/editorial/freeforall/current/st1872.html

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