Yearly Archives: 2011

99th anniversary of Milton Friedman’s birth (Part 20) (“Free to Choose” episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 6of 7)

November 3, 2011 – 12:07 am

Milton Friedman was born on July 31, 1912 and he died November 16, 2006. I started posting tributes of him on July 31 and I hope to continue them until his 100th birthday. Here is another tribute below:

worked pretty well for a whole generation. Now anything that works well for a whole generation isn’t entirely bad. From the fact __ from that fact, and the undeniable fact that things are working poorly now, are we to conclude that the Keynesian sort of mixed regulation was wrong __
FRIEDMAN: Yes.
LEKACHMAN: __ or alternatively that we need still more regulation. That’s my conclusion, I might say.
FRIEDMAN: You want the right people manipulating the leaders. But go back. Memory smooths things out. If you really look at that 25_year period you’re talking about, it was not a period of stability; it was a period that was punctuated by the very sharp inflation of the Korean War. It was a period that was punctuated by three recessions in the course of about eight years in the fifties and early sixties. It was a period in which you had a __ inflation really starting to go from creeping to running, in the latter sixties. It was a period which laid the ground work for the kind of situation in which we are now, where you have both higher unemployment and higher inflation. It was __
TEMIN: I don’t think that followed. I mean there were these movements, as we say, but they weren’t the movements like the 1930s. There was a recession in ’58, yes.
FRIEDMAN: I agree.
TEMIN: We all called it a recession. We all worried about it and so on, but it was a small thing, little potatoes.
FRIEDMAN: The same thing was true in earlier periods between The Great Depression. If you take the area between the great depression in the United States of the 1870s and the 1890s, again you had a period like that. If you take it between The Great Depression of the 1890s and World War I, with a minor __ with one minor exception, it was similar to that. So that what you have, and this is a historical fact, is that except for the great depressions, all of which are linked to monetary collapses and to governmental involvement, in the interim period, the society has been reasonably stable.
MCKENZIE: Haven’t we reached the stage, incidentally, where we need not again see anything like the great depression. You say recessions, yes; but it bears no relationship to what we knew __
FRIEDMAN: No.
MCKENZIE: __ in the thirties. Have we solved that problem now? People are deeply __
JAY: No, we haven’t. Because I think the seeds of it remain there. I don’t agree with Professor Lekachman that everything was __ I don’t want to misparaphrase him __ but did pretty well until 1973 and then it suddenly all went wrong. It seems to me that the seeds of the subsequent instability, stagflation, were there before. That each time round the economic cycle inflation went a little faster. Each time around the economic cycle unemployment tended to be a bit higher. But this brings me to what is my disagreement with Professor Friedman. I agree with him that government has failed to correct, and is bound to fail to correct that instability. I do not agree with him that it is the root cause of that instability or simply removing or containing the government will remove that instability. Because his constitution, and I agree with all the things he wants to put into it, but I want to put more into it, leaves big capital entirely free to operate. Now he doesn’t mind that. In response to big capital, you are bound to get __ as a simple, natural reaction __ big labor. He doesn’t mind that. He’s quite happy with that. But my contention is that once you have big labor, you have a way of setting rewards in society, not only by trade unions, but through all sorts of other processes whereby groups get together in order to exploit the political process and legal rights, and to protect themselves from competition, in which, inevitably, people set rewards above what economists call the “market clearing price” for labor. They set levels of rewards which make it impossible that everybody should be employed and you therefore have a built-in tendency to high unemployment. If governments react to that on the Keynesian pattern by trying to inject spending which will enable these people to be employed, then I agree with Professor Friedman that all you get is faster and faster inflation, and that if you like, is caused by the government. But the government is a proximate cause of an original instability that is already there. And there’s nothing in Professor Friedman’s constitution which would correct that inherent, if you like, contradiction or flaw in classical western political economy.
FRIEDMAN: Do you deny, Peter __
MCKENZIE: Let me get the reaction to that __
FRIEDMAN: __no, I want to ask just one question of Peter. Do you deny that big government plays a large part in the rise of big capital and big labor?
JAY: I think they’re interactive. I once said big capital causes big labor, causes big government, causes big failure. That is the tragic story, in my opinion, of the 20th century.
FRIEDMAN: And what about if you start that __
JAY: We have to unravel that.
FRIEDMAN: __ if you start that route with big government. Will it be wrong? Big government causes big capital, causes big labor, causes big failure?
JAY: I don’t think historically that’s what happened. But you and I are agreed, we don’t want big government.
FRIEDMAN: That’s right.
JAY: What we’re disagreed about is what else we need.
LEKACHMAN: I think something is seriously wrong with a beautiful system which develops this big, clumsy, aggressive government, huge corporations, with more influence over their markets than is desirable from the standpoint of free competitive theory, trade unions, which at least according to some opinions, have a similarly malignant influence on their markets. There must be something radically flawed with the capitalist system which allows these institutional developments. This doesn’t alarm me because I’m a socialist, but I would __ I would readily __
FRIEDMAN: There must be something radically wrong with socialist philosophy which allows the __ extraordinary __ the much worse developments that have occurred, wherever there has been any real significant attempt to put a thoroughgoing socialism into practice.
LEKACHMAN: Socialism is a word of many meanings.
MCKENZIE: Now I think we might easily get into a quite serious debate on that point.
VOICE OFF SCREEN: Right.
JAY: I think it’s possible to note in passing that they may both be right.
MCKENZIE: Yes.
JAY: That conventional capitalism, conventional socialism, as conceived in the 20th century, are both wrong and that the polarization of the debate between those simple two alternatives greatly impoverishes the real range of political-economic choices which modern societies have.
FRIEDMAN: But what has happened? Over and over again one claim after another for the kind of socialism __ this kind of socialism or that kind of socialism __ has turned to ashes. And each time the answer has come, “Oh well, it was a wrong brand of socialism that was adopted, or the wrong people were running it.”
VOICE OFF SCREEN: But you’re saying __
JAY: You’re arguing with yourself when you’re saying __
FRIEDMAN: No I’m not.
JAY: The Federal Reserve in 1929 failed to do the right thing. It was the wrong brand of government.
FRIEDMAN: It was the wrong brand, absolutely, but what I’m saying is something different. I can at least point to examples in history of systems of capitalist systems in which the government had a fairly limited role, not my ideal government. Many things, doing many things I would not want it to do. But I’m going to point to such examples over long stretches of history in __ which have been relatively successful. Where the major achievements of humankind, not merely in economics, but in all other areas, have largely arisen. It is very difficult to point to any similar examples __
TEMIN: But then you are pointing back __
FRIEDMAN: __ of where big government has achieved such success.
TEMIN: But you said before you didn’t like to go back. You’re now talking about going back.
FRIEDMAN: No, no. I didn’t say I didn’t like to go back.
TEMIN: They took place in different times.
FRIEDMAN: What I said is going back or forward is irrelevant. What we want to do is __
TEMIN: But it’s not irrelevant to this discussion __
FRIEDMAN: __ the right thing wherever it comes from.
TEMIN: __ because as Bob Lekachman said earlier, things have increased in scale, and the scale of business and increased, and you were saying just before, big government, big labor, big industry, big firms go together, and you didn’t accept it before, when Bob said you’ll accept it now from here.
FRIEDMAN: No, no. I don’t accept it. What I accept is that big government is a major factor promoting big labor and big capital. I did not accept that in the absence of big government you would have the big capital and big labor that worries him.
By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Milton Friedman | Comments (0)

Cook: Republicans in trouble in Arkansas?

November 2, 2011 – 8:09 am

Jason Tolbert and Michael Cook comment on politics in Arkansas

If you read Michael Cook today then you would think that the Republicans are in big trouble in Arkansas. It is true that some are thinking about throwing their hat in the ring against Rick Crawford, but I think he will defeat all comers. (Max Brantley has also pointed out that the Democrats have chosen to target this seat by running advertisements against Crawford.)

In 2010 the Republicans barely had over 50 candidates running for the 100 state house seats and they won 87% of those races were they had candidates. This year it is very easy for Republicans to get candidates.

The key to predicting the outcome of the 2012 elections is looking at the polls that show that people in Arkansas would rather be associated with Republicans than Democrats. This is the first time in the history of Arkansas that has been true.

Last week on Arkansas Week in Review on PBS, the three pundits said that it is true that Arkansas Democrats have to dig themselves out of a hole because Obama will be on the same ticket in 2012. However, they pointed to the fact that the Republican House in Washington is very unpopular too and the Republicans have to dig themselves out of a hole too.

I have only response to that silly statement. Look at what Arkansas voters did in 2010. They must identify with those “crazy Republicans” in Washington who want to cut spending because they voted to put more of them in office than ever before, electing 75% Republicans in our house delegation to Washington for the first time ever.

Below is from Red Arkansas Blog:

It Was One Year Ago Today…

November 2, 2011

By

…and Arkansas Republicans taught the band to play a whole new type of music.

You say you want a revolution?

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Jason Tolbert | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Dr. Bergman: “Evolution teaches that the living world has no plan or purpose except survival”(Section A of Part 2 of series on Evolution)

November 2, 2011 – 12:50 am

Dr. Bergman: “Evolution teaches that the living world has no plan or purpose except survival”(Section A of Part 2 of series on Evolution)

The Long War against God-Henry Morris, part 2 of 6

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Is there any purpose in life? Evolution is clear on this point. I have included the first portion of the article by Dr. Jerry Bergman who I have corresponded with in the past.

Darwinism: Survival without Purpose

by Jerry Bergman, Ph.D. *

Humans have always wondered about the meaning of life…life has no higher purpose than to perpetuate the survival of DNA…life has no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.1 –Richard Dawkins

Evolution is “deceptively simple yet utterly profound in its implications,”2 the first of which is that living creatures “differ from one another, and those variations arise at random, without a plan or purpose.”3 Evolution must be without plan or purpose because its core tenet is the natural selection of the fittest, produced by random copying errors called mutations. Darwin “was keenly aware that admitting any purposefulness whatsoever to the question of the origin of species would put his theory of natural selection on a very slippery slope.”4 Pulitzer Prize author Edward Humes wrote that the fact of evolution was obvious but “few could see it, so trapped were they by the human…desire to find design and purpose in the world.” He concluded:

Darwin’s brilliance was in seeing beyond the appearance of design, and understanding the purposeless, merciless process of natural selection, of life and death in the wild, and how it culled all but the most successful organisms from the tree of life, thereby creating the illusion that a master intellect had designed the world. But close inspection of the watchlike “perfection” of honeybees’ combs or ant trails…reveals that they are a product of random, repetitive, unconscious behaviors, not conscious design.5

The fact that evolution teaches that life has no purpose beyond perpetuating its own survival is not lost on teachers. One testified that teaching evolution “impacted their consciences” because it moved teachers away from the “idea that they were born for a purpose… something completely counter to their mindset and beliefs.”6

In a study on why children resist accepting evolution, Yale psychologists Bloom and Weisberg concluded that the evolutionary way of viewing the world, which the authors call “promiscuous teleology,” makes it difficult for them to accept evolution. Children “naturally see the world in terms of design and purpose.”7 The ultimate purposelessness of evolution, and thus of the life that it produces, was eloquently expressed by Professor Lawrence Krauss as follows: “We’re just a bit of pollution…. If you got rid of us…the universe would be largely the same. We’re completely irrelevant.”8

The Textbooks

To determine what schools are teaching about religious questions such as the purpose of life, I surveyed current science textbooks and found that they tend to teach the view that evolution is both nihilistic and atheistic. One of today’s most widely-used textbooks stated that “evolution works without either plan or purpose…. Evolution is random and undirected.”9 Another text by the same authors added that Darwin knew his theory “required believing in philosophical materialism, the conviction that matter is the stuff of all existence and that all mental and spiritual phenomena are its byproducts.” The authors continued:

Darwinian evolution was not only purposeless but also heartless–a process in which…nature ruthlessly eliminates the unfit. Suddenly, humanity was reduced to just one more species in a world that cared nothing for us. The great human mind was no more than a mass of evolving neurons. Worst of all, there was no divine plan to guide us.10

Another text taught that humans are just “a tiny, largely fortuitous, and late-arising twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life” and the belief that a “progressive, guiding force, consistently pushing evolution to move in a single direction” is now known to be “misguided.”11 Many texts teach that evolution is purposeless and has no goal except to achieve brute survival: the “idea that evolution is not directed towards a final goal or state has been more difficult for many people to accept than the process of evolution itself.”12 One major text openly teaches that humans were created by a blind, deaf, and dumb watchmaker–namely natural selection, which is “totally blind to the future.”

Humans…came from the same evolutionary source as every other species. It is natural selection of selfish genes that has given us our bodies and our brains…. Natural selection…explains…the whole of life, the diversity of life, the complexity of life, |and| the apparent design in life.”13

The Implications

Many texts are very open about the implications of Darwinism for theism. One teaches that Darwin’s immeasurably important contribution to science was to show that, despite life’s apparent evidence of design and purpose, mechanistic causes explain all biological phenomena. The text adds that by coupling “undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous.”14 The author concludes by noting that “it was Darwin’s theory of Evolution that provided a crucial plank to the platform of mechanisms and materialism…that has been the stage of most western thought.”15 Another text even stated directly that humans were created by a random process, not a loving, purposeful God, and:

The real difficulty in accepting Darwin’s theory has always been that it seems to diminish our significance…. |Evolution| asked us to accept the proposition that, like all other organisms, we too are the products of a random process that, as far as science can show, we are not created for any special purpose or as part of any universal design.16

These texts are all clearly teaching religious ideas, not science. An excellent example is a text that openly ruled out not only theistic evolution, but any role for God in nature, and demonstrated that Darwinism threatened theism by showing that humans and all life “could be explained by natural selection without the intervention of a god.” Evolutionary “randomness and uncertainty had replaced a deity having conscious, purposeful, human characteristics.”

The Darwinian view that… present-type organisms were not created spontaneously but formed in a succession of selective events that occurred in the past, contradicted the common religious view that there could be no design, biological or otherwise, without an intelligent designer…. In this scheme a god of design and purpose is not necessary…. Religion has been bolstered by… the comforting idea that humanity was created in the image of a god to rule over the world and its creatures. Religion provided emotional solace, a set of ethical and moral values…. Nevertheless, faith in religious dogma has been eroded by natural explanations of its mysteries…. The positions of the creationists and the scientific world appear irreconcilable.”17

Darwin himself taught a totally atheistic, naturalistic view of origins. He even once said, “I would give nothing for the theory of natural selection if it requires miraculous additions at any one stage of descent.”18 John Alcock, an evolutionary biologist, therefore concluded that “we exist solely to propagate the genes within us.”19

Leading Darwin scholar Janet Browne makes it very clear that Darwin’s goal was the “arduous task of reorienting the way Victorians looked at nature.” To do this Darwin had to convince the world that “ideas about a benevolent, nearly perfect natural world” and those that believe “beauty was given to things for a purpose, were wrong–that the idea of a loving God who created all living things and brought men and women into existence was…a fable.”

The world…steeped in moral meaning which helped mankind seek out higher goals in life, was not Darwin’s. Darwin’s view of nature was dark–black…. Where most men and women generally believed in some kind of design in nature–some kind of plan and order–and felt a deep-seated, mostly inexpressible belief that their existence had meaning, Darwin wanted them to see all life as empty of any divine purpose.20

Darwin knew how difficult it was to abandon such a view, but realized that for evolution to work, nature must ultimately be “governed entirely by chance.” Browne concludes:

The pleasant outward face of nature was precisely that–only an outward face. Underneath was perpetual struggle, species against species, individual against individual. Life was ruled by death…destruction was the key to reproductive success. All the theological meaning was thus stripped out by Darwin and replaced by the concept of competition. All the telos, the purpose, on which natural theologians based their ideas of perfect adaptation was redirected into Malthusian–Darwinian–struggle. What most people saw as God-given design he saw as mere adaptations to circumstance, adaptations that were meaningless except for the way in which they helped an animal or plant to survive.21

Neo-Darwinist Richard Dawkins recognized the purposelessness of such a system:

In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.22

How widely is this view held by scientists? One study of 149 leading biologists found that 89.9 percent believed that evolution has no ultimate purpose or goal except survival, and we are just a cosmic accident existing at the whim of time and chance. A mere six percent believed that evolution has a purpose.23 Almost all of those who believed that evolution had no purpose were atheists. This is only one example that Sommers and Rosenberg call the “destructive power of Darwinian theory.”24

References

  1. Scheff, Liam. 2007. The Dawkins Delusion. Salvo, 2:94.
  2. Humes, Edward. 2007. Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America’s Soul. New York: Ecco, 119.
  3. Ibid, 119.
  4. Turner, J. Scott. 2007. The Tinkerer’s Accomplice: How Design Emerges from Life Itself. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 206.
  5. Humes, Monkey Girl, 119.
  6. Ibid, 172.
  7. Bloom, Paul and Deena Skolnick Weisberg. 2007. Childhood Origins to Adult Resistance to Science. Science, 316:996.
  8. Panek, Richard. 2007. Out There. New York Times Magazine, 56.
  9. Miller, Kenneth R. and Joseph S. Levine. Biology. 1998. Fourth Edition, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 658, emphasis in original.
  10. Levine, Joseph S. and Kenneth R. Miller 1994. Biology: Discovering Life. Second Edition, Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 161, emphasis in original.
  11. Raven, Peter H. and George B. Johnson. 2002. Biology. Sixth Edition, Boston, MA: McGraw Hill, 16, 443.
  12. Purves, William K., David Sadava, Gordon H. Orians, and H. Craig Keller. 2001. Life: The Science of Biology. Sixth Edition, Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates; W.H. Freeman, 3.
  13. Interview with Richard Dawkins in Campbell, Neil A., Jane B. Reece, and Lawrence G. Mitchell. 1999. Biology. Fifth Edition, Menlo Park, CA: Addison Wesley Longman, 412-413.
  14. Futuyma, Douglas J. 1998. Evolutionary Biology. Third Edition, Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, 5.
  15. Ibid, 5.
  16. Curtis, Helena and N. Sue Barnes. 1981. Invitation to Biology. Third Edition, New York, NY: Worth, 475.
  17. Strickberger, Monroe. 2000. Evolution. Third Edition, Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett, 70-71.
  18. Darwin, Francis (editor). 1888. The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin. London: John Murray, 210.
  19. Alcock, John. 1998. Animal Behavior: An Evolutionary Approach. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, 16, 609.
  20. Browne, Janet. 1995. Charles Darwin: Voyaging, A Biography. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 542.
  21. Ibid, 542.
  22. Dawkins, Richard. 1995. River Out of Eden. New York: Basic Books, 133.
  23. Graffin, Gregory W. 2004. Evolution, Monism, Atheism, and the Naturalist World-View. Ithaca, NY: Polypterus Press, 42.
  24. Sommers, Tamler and Alex Rosenberg. 2003. Darwin’s Nihilistic Idea: Evolution and the Meaningless of Life. Biology and Philosophy, 18:653.

* Dr. Bergman is Professor of Biology at Northwest State College in Ohio.

Cite this article: Bergman, J. 2007. Darwinism: Survival without Purpose. Acts & Facts. 36 (11): 10.

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Comments (0)

“Woody Wednesday” Allen on the meaning of life (part 2)jh65

November 2, 2011 – 12:35 am
September 3, 2011 · 5:16 PM

Woody Allen on the Emptiness of Life

In the final scene of Manhattan, Woody Allen’s character, Isaac, is lying on the sofa with a microphone and a tape-recorder, dictating to himself an idea for a short story. It will be about “people in Manhattan,” he says, “who are constantly creating these real unnecessary, neurotic problems for themselves” because they cannot bear to confront the “more unsolvable, terrible problems about the universe.” In an attempt to keep it optimistic, he begins by asking himself the question, “Why is life worth living?” He gives it some thought. “That’s a very good question,” he says, “There are certain things, I guess, that make it worthwhile.” And then the list begins: Groucho Marx, Willie Mays, the second movement of Mozart’s ‘Jupiter Symphony,’ Louis Armstrong’s recording of Potato Head Blues, “Swedish movies, naturally,” Flaubert’s Sentimental Education, Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, “those incredible apples and pears by Cézanne, the crabs at Sam Wo’s . . . Tracy’s face.”

This list acts as an important hinge in the film’s narrative, the point at which Isaac suddenly becomes aware of his feelings for Tracy and resolves to go after her. But within this list there is also something greater being communicated, something which, I believe, can be described as the central subject of nearly every Woody Allen film, or, perhaps, what compels him to make films in the first place. Isaac is conveying here a belief in the sheer power of art, its ability to provide a sense of worth to an otherwise empty existence. Art, Woody Allen seems to be saying, is the only valuable response – or the only conceivable response – to the dreadful human predicament as he sees it.

~ ~ ~

“My relationship with death remains the same: I’m strongly against it.”

~ ~ ~

Recently, at the Cannes Film Festival, Woody Allen was asked about what motivates him. He simply laughed and said, “Fear is what drives me.” Work, for Allen, is a wonderful distraction from the “terrible truth” – the ostensible meaninglessness of life, the apparent futility of all human endeavour, the inevitability of sickness, the unescapable prognosis of death. Film-making, like the “unnecessay, neurotic problems” dreamt up by the characters in Isaac’s short story, diverts Allen’s attention away from this reality, from the fear that presents itself when he stops to think about the fact that eventually everybody dies, “the sun burns out, and the earth is gone, and . . . all the stars, all the planets, the entire universe, goes, disappears.” So this fear is the reason for his prolificity, the impulse behind all of his artistic achievements. Manhattan, Annie Hall, Hannah and Her Sisters, Sleeper all came about, first of all, as distractions, projects that prevented him from having to “sit in a chair and think about what a terrible situation all human beings are in.”

I believe that there is a lot of truth in Woody Allen’s perspective. We distract ourselves constantly, we refuse to think about the meaning of our existence, we skirt around the inevitable. Certainly – and he acknowledges this – Allen is not the first person to have hit upon this truth. It has been recognised by such thinkers as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, Sartre, the Buddha and the writer of Ecclesiastes. And Allen knows, too, that one cannot live in perpetual awareness of this fact. Such a life would be crippling torment. Indeed, it is this very torment that Tolstoy found himself in after having realised that there was “nothing ahead other than deception of life and of happiness, and the reality of suffering and death: of complete annihilation.” After realising, in other words, the sheer absurdness of human existence, the meaninglessness of life without God. In his Confession he writes:

My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink and sleep and I could not help breathing, eating, drinking and sleeping; but there was no life in me because I had no desires whose gratification I would have deemed it reasonable to fulfil. If I wanted something I knew in advance that whether or not I satisfied my desire nothing would come of it.

One cannot live like this, says Woody Allen. One must provide oneself with necessary delusions in order to carry oneself through life. He remarks that it is in fact only those people whom he calls “self-deluded” that seem to find any kind of real satisfaction in living, any peace or enjoyment. These people can say, “Well, my priest, or my rabbi tells me everthing’s going to be all right,” and they find their answers in what he calls “magical solutions.” This recourse to the “magical” he dismisses as nonsense.

It is worth comparing Woody Allen’s pessimistic agnosticism with the utopian atheism of someone like Richard Dawkins. Evidently, the former worldview is entirely consistent with non-belief in God, whereas the latter is not. In fact, it is unfounded, false. Dawkins removes God from the picture entirely, yet clings persistently to a belief in life’s meaning, grounding this meaning, it appears, in natural selection. There is a contradiction in Dawkins’ thought: on the one hand, he claims that science “can tell us why we are here, tell us the purpose of human existence,” yet, on the other, he insists on characterising natural selection itself as a blind mechanism, containing “no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pointless indifference.”

Whilst I do not share Woody Allen’s agnostic belief, I can respect his consistency, his willingness to acknowledge an existence without God for what it really is: “a grim, painful, nightmarish, meaningless experience.” His worldview follows naturally from what Heidegger termed the state of human “abandonment,” the absence of God in all human affairs. Dawkins’ worldview, on the other hand, does not . . . It is an embarrassing mishmash of strict empricist and naturalistic belief with what really amounts to a kind of foggy mysticism, a belief system according to which human beings can create for themselves an objective purpose. What he fails to realise is that this purpose is nothing more than a delusion, a mere appearance of purpose. It might get us up in the morning, but, once again, it is no more real than the manufactured neurotic problems of Isaac’s characters.

~ ~ ~

“It is impossible to experience one’s death objectively and still carry a tune.”

~ ~ ~

Let us return to Woody Allen’s seemingly affirmative opinion of art, as exemplified in the final scene of Manhattan. Given his lifelong insistence on the belief that human existence is “a big, meaningless thing,” how are we to make sense of Isaac’s list? Is it really possible to reconcile Woody Allen’s adament nihilism with his invocation of the power of art, its ability to stand firm in the face of such a terrible truth? The point to be made, I believe, is a very subtle one. In that same interview at Cannes, Woody Allen talks about the role of the artist as he sees it. The artist, essentially, must respond to the question that Isaac poses, “Why is life worth living?” Faced with the emptiness of life, she must try to “figure out – knowing that it’s true . . . knowing the worst – why it’s still worthwhile.” Allen is not, I believe, claiming that art can provide objective meaning to life. Such an assertion would conflict with his unswerving pessimism. Instead, he is saying that the essence of art, what animates it, what inspires it to flourish, is a courageous struggle against this “terrible truth.” The artist, he says, must confront the futility of life, look at it in the face, embrace it in all of its hopelessness and despair, and provide humanity with an honest reply. The question, then, is not, ‘Can Woody Allen justify his belief in an objective meaning as embodied in art?’ I do not think that he believes in an objective meaning, a necessary purpose for human existence. Rather, the question becomes, ‘Is it possible for the artist to look squarely at the human predicament and supply humanity with a worthwhile answer?’

This, I want to say, is still not possible. As we have seen with the example of Tolstoy, one cannot live one’s life in a full awareness of its futility, of the imminence of death, of the falsity of one’s happiness, and yet carry on as normal. One would end up utterly debilitated. And if this is indeed how artists have been living for centuries, confronting the inevitable, facing the dismal truth, then art itself becomes an inexplicable phenomenon.

~ ~ ~

“On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily lying down.”

~ ~ ~

The answer is not to appeal to art as something that can provide human existence with objective meaning. Such a ‘faith in art’ would merely beg the question, ‘But why is art so special?’ How can art, if viewed as just another custom, an event within the world, give purpose and value to human life? It remains to be explained how that which is within the world can provide meaning for that which is within the world. Meaning, I believe, can only come from without, from that which transcends the world, and yet instills human existence with significance and worth. It is the purpose of art to direct us to this very transcendence, the ground of being itself. The same higher power, in fact, that Woody Allen – perhaps rightly! – dismisses as “nonsense” in its rigid, institutional form.

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Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop were prophetic (jh29) What Ever Happened to the Human Race? I recently heard this Breakpoint Commentary by Chuck Colson and it just reminded me of how prophetic Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop were in the late 1970′s with their book and film series “Whatever happened to the human […]

“Woody Wednesday” Allen is searching for satisfaction in wrong place jh17

Coldplay – 42 Live Coldplay perform on the french television channel W9. In 1992 Woody Allen took up with one of his adopted kids and lived in with her. He was given over to the pursuit of pleasure. Actually he has made that a major focus of his life. In the latter part of his […]

“Woody Wednesday” Allen realizes if God doesn’t exist then all is meaningless (jh 15)

The Bible and Archaeology (1/5) The Bible maintains several characteristics that prove it is from God. One of those is the fact that the Bible is accurate in every one of its details. The field of archaeology brings to light this amazing accuracy. _________________________- I want to make two points today. 1. There is no […]

“Woody Wednesday” How Allen’s film “Crimes and Misdemeanors makes the point that hell is necessary (jh 14)

Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 1 Adrian Rogers – Crossing God’s Deadline Part 2 Jason Tolbert provided this recent video from Mike Huckabee: John Brummett in his article “Huckabee speaks for bad guy below,” Arkansas News Bureau, May 5, 2011 had to say: Are we supposed to understand and accept that Mike Huckabee is […]

Agnostic Allen notes, “The people who successfully delude themselves seem happier than the people who can’t” (Woody Wednesday Part 5)

Woody Allen interviews Billy Graham on Religion This article below makes we think of the lady tied to the Railroad in the Schaeffer video. Dr. Francis schaeffer – The flow of Materialism (Modern man sees no hope for the future and has deluded himself by appealing to nonreason to stay sane. Look at the example […]

A review of Woody Allen’s latest movie “Midnight in Paris” (Woody Wednesday Part 4)

Midnight in Paris Not Dove Family Approved Theatrical Release: 6/10/2011 Reviewer: Edwin L. Carpenter Source: Theater Writer: Woody Allen Producer: Letty Aronson Director: Woody Allen Genre: Comedy Runtime: 100 min. MPAA Rating: PG-13 Starring: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Kurt Fuller, Kathy Bates Synopsis: Midnight in Paris is a romantic comedy that follows a family travelling […]

Woody Allen films and the issue of guilt (Woody Wednesday Part 3)

Woody Allen and the Abandonment of Guilt Dr. Marc T. Newman : AgapePress Print In considering filmmaking as a pure visual art form, Woody Allen would have to be considered a master of the medium. From his humble beginnings as a comedy writer and filmmaker, he has emerged as a major influential force in Hollywood. […]

According to Woody Allen Life is meaningless (Woody Wednesday Part 2)

Woody Allen, the film writer, director, and actor, has consistently populated his scripts with characters who exchange dialogue concerning meaning and purpose. In Hannah and Her Sisters a character named Mickey says, “Do you realize what a thread were all hanging by? Can you understand how meaningless everything is? Everything. I gotta get some answers.”{7} […]

“Woody Wednesday” Part 1 starts today, Complete listing of all posts on the historical people mentioned in “Midnight in Paris”

I have gone to see Woody Allen’s latest movie “Midnight in Paris” three times and taken lots of notes during the films. I have attempted since June 12th when I first started posting to give a historical rundown on every person mentioned in the film. Below are the results of my study. I welcome any […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

99th anniversary of Milton Friedman’s birth (Part 19) (“Free to Choose” episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 5 of 7)

November 2, 2011 – 12:06 am

Milton Friedman was born on July 31, 1912 and he died November 16, 2006. I started posting tributes of him on July 31 and I hope to continue them until his 100th birthday. Here is another tribute below:

MCKENZIE: Ah, well, that’s not on our agenda actually. (Laughter)
VOICE OFF SCREEN: Why not?
MCKENZIE: I boldly repeat the question, though, the expectation having been __ having been raised in the public mind, can you reverse this process where government is expected to produce the happy result?
LEKACHMAN: Oh, no way. And it would be very foolish of the public which is on the whole more sensible than academic, to come to this conclusion. They look around them, what do they see? They see a whole collection of visible hands attached to EXXON, other large corporations. These are not small, independent competitors jostling with each other for the patronage of the public. These are large organizations, with substantial influence on their markets. Government’s interference, clumsy as it often is, is an almost unavoidable response to the very visible manipulations of large organizations.
FRIEDMAN: If there again, you’re an academic, we’re talking about fact in history. Now the history is that the growth of government has not been as a result of the things you’re pointing out. It isn’t the large corporations. It isn’t the large unions. It isn’t the technological development that has produced the major growth of government. The major growth of government in our time has come in the redistributive area. It’s come in the area of designing programs which take from some people and give to others. We’re not going to go into those here, because we discuss those in our next two programs which deal with exactly the question of whether the government intervention that was stimulated by The Great Depression has been a success or a failure. But to your point, the grounds that you give for greater government intervention have almost nothing whatsoever to do with the actual factual growth of government. Now at the end of the war, immediately after World War II, it was thought that government was going to get involved, especially in Britain, in France, in central economic planning on a large scale.
JAY: Partly because of the war experience, too, when government was very much involved.
FRIEDMAN: Partly.
MCKENZIE: In Germany and Japan as well.
FRIEDMAN: Germany and Japan as well, it was a war. It created a myth just as the, as The Great Depression created myth.
MCKENZIE: Or rather reinforced the myth of government responsibility.
FRIEDMAN: Yes, but it created a different myth. This is a subject we don’t discuss much in the film. We’ve discussed it in a book that we’re bringing out with the same title to go along with it but __ but the great, but the great myth that was created by the war, was the myth that government was inefficient. And it was.
MCKENZIE: We won the war.
FRIEDMAN: For wartime purposes in, at least in Britain and the United States. It wasn’t so inefficient in Germany and the losing countries. But why is that a myth? It was a myth because it is one thing for government to plan and to control an economy for a single overriding objective. One solitary objective __ win the war. It’s a very different thing for government to control the economy for the many numerous tastes of all us, of a very large number of people in a complex world. And I __ you ask the question of whether people’s opinions can be changed.
MCKENZIE: Yes.
FRIEDMAN: I can’t change their opinions. You can’t change their opinions, but experience is changing their opinions. Is there anybody, anywhere now who believes that government is an efficient way to run an industrial enterprise?
JAY: I think your question, can you get the genie back into the bottle, is a very important one. It is undoubtedly true that in democratic countries there will be a public urge expressed through the political process, for something to be done about anything that seems to be wrong. The one thing that inhibits that is the belief that it can’t be done. There is not politically expressed desire for the government to do something about the weather because it is widely believed that the government does not control the weather. It was widely believed under the gold standard and pre-Keynes that there was nothing the government could do about the kind of economic traits I call in depressions that we had before that time. Since then it is very widely believed, Milton may believe, I may believe wrongly, but nonetheless, it’s very widely believed that is now a manageable thing, and therefore the demand is expressed that unemployment should not rise too high, inflation should not rise too high, and so forth.
MCKENZIE: That we keep a war on want or a war on poverty.
JAY: If you believe, as Milton does, and on this issue I agree with him, that in fact government cannot handle this issue, and you want to get that genie back into the bottle, you can’t simply do it by authorities, or pundits, or academics, or others saying, “Here is a new rule. The government will do nothing. It will not intervene; it will not perform, but will just be a simple monetary rule.” You’ve got politically to persuade people that this is part of a system which they can understand, which will, in fact, deliver for them the minimal economic objectives that they have, which are basically high employment __ high employment and stability of prices, and one of two other things. Now in order to do that you’ve got to describe a political economic system which will in fact deliver that result. And they will not believe, and in my opinion they will rightfully not believe, that simply going back to where we were, or where we imagined that we were in 1930 or 1870, by withdrawing the government form the game and doing nothing else, will produce that result. And they’re right not to believe it.
TEMIN: The kind of pristine view that you appear to be putting up of no government isn’t really a consistent view because if you __
FRIEDMAN: I’m not putting up a view of no government. I’m putting up a view of a limited government. Limited __
TEMIN: Just how do you, how do you impose the limit?
FRIEDMAN: Note __ note that today the budget of HEW is one-and-a-half times the whole defense budget. That is not where the major growth of government has come. Whether we spend too little of too much on the military is very a arguable issue which I’m not competent to discuss.
TEMIN: Okay.
FRIEDMAN: But it is not the cutting edge of the dispute that we’re engaged in. That cutting edge is on all these other functions which government has increasingly taken on its shoulders.
TEMIN: Yes, but the question __
VON HOFFMAN: How do you get from here to there?
FRIEDMAN: By persuading people to do it, and by doing it gradually. You do not get it overnight. CAB was a very, very persuasive element on __ on getting rid of one branch of regulation. The failure of government to produce the full employment and the stable prices that was promised is another. You know what is __ who are we kidding? Is there anybody around any more who really believes that government knows how to prevent by its present methods inflation or unemployment? We’ve had increasing inflation. We’ve had increasing unemployment. Not only in the United States __
VON HOFFMAN: Well we __ we know that this government doesn’t __
VOICE OFF SCREEN: Wait, wait.
LEKACHMAN: It seems to me that we’re talking about at least four kinds of government intervention of different popularity among the public. One is redistributive __ via the Social Security System and so on __ and lots of that is popular. Welfare is unpopular, but Social Security is quite popular. Medicare has a mixed reputation, Medicaid a bad reputation. The redistributive system is a mixed bag from the public’s standpoint. Another kind of intervention deals with unemployment; a third kind deals with prices; and a fourth kind deals with regulation. Now, again, there is a cry about regulation which itself breaks down, it seems to me, into two parts: Partly a safety kind of thing, partly an economic kind of thing. I doubt that the public is prepared, for example, to eliminate the Food and Drug Administration.
FRIEDMAN: Take the way of trying to smooth out the business cycle.
LEKACHMAN: All right, now wait on that. I think that the record of doing this, in its clumsy way, Republicans, Democrats, assorted administrations in England and elsewhere, between 1945 and 1973 was quite good. Average unemployment during this considerable span of years was lower than had been probably in any previous spell of modern economic history. Inflation was not a persistent problem in this. Now I would say, putting the claim at a very modest one, that Keynesian intervention, if we use that as a label,
By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Milton Friedman | Comments (0)

My four favorite movies that James Garner starred in!!!!

November 1, 2011 – 12:38 pm

I have always loved James Garner and especially in the Rockford Files TV series that ran from 1974-1980.

James Garner 1928-2014

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  • “The Rockford Files”

    James Garner as private eye Jim Rockford in the series “The Rockford Files” (1974-80), and returned to the character in several TV movies in the 1990s.

    Garner won the first of his two Emmy Awards for “Rockford Files,” and received 12 other acting Emmy nominations.

    CREDIT: NBC

  • ______________________________

My four favorite movies that James Garner starred in are these four below:

James Garner 1928-2014

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  • “Support Your Local Gunfighter”

    James Garner and Jack Elam returned in 1970 with the comedy “Support Your Local Gunfighter,” co-starring Suzanne Pleshette.

    CREDIT: United Artists

James Garner 1928-2014

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  • “Support Your Local Sheriff”

    Joan Hackett and James Garner in the western comedy, “Support Your Local Sheriff” (1969).

    CREDIT: United Artists

James Garner 1928-2014

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  • “The Great Escape”

    James Garner (as “The Scrounger”) and Donald Pleasance (“The Forger”) take part in a daring break from a World War II prisoner of war camp, in the 1963 adventure, “The Great Escape.”

    CREDIT: United Artists

James Garner 1928-2014

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  • “Darby’s Rangers”

    James Garner starred in the 1958 World War II actioner “Darby’s Ranger,” directed by William Wellman.

    CREDIT: Warner Brothers

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James Garner 1928-2014

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  • SAG Lifetime Achievement

    Actor James Garner, pictured at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank in January 2005.

    James Garner 1928-2014

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    • “The Notebook”

      James Garner and Gena Rowlands in “The Notebook” (2004). Garner received a SAG Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as an elderly man relating the tale of a wartime romance.

    James Garner 1928-2014

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    • “Space Cowboys”

      Tommy Lee Jones, Clint Eastwood, James Garner and Donald Sutherland are the aging pilots who will save the world in the 20o0 sci-fi flick, “Space Cowboys.”

      CREDIT: Warner Brothers

    • James Garner 1928-2014

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      • Commercials

        In the late 1970s and early ’80s, Garner teamed up with Mariette Hartley in a series of popular TV commercials for Polaroid cameras. Their comfortable banter led many to believe they were actually married.

        CREDIT: Polaroid

    • James Garner 1928-2014

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      • “Tank”

        James Garner in the 1984 comedy, “Tank.”

        CREDIT: Universal Pictures

    • James Garner 1928-2014

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      • “Murphy’s Romance”

        James Garner received his first and only Oscar nomination for Best Actor for the 1985 romantic comedy “Murphy’s Romance,” playing a pharmacist whose courting of a divorced mother (Sally Field) is interrupted by the return of her ex-husband (Brian Kerwin).

        CREDIT: Columbia PIctures

    • James Garner 1928-2014

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      • “My Fellow Americans”

        Ex-presidents Jack Lemmon and James Garner confer with sitting president Dan Aykroyd in the comedy “My Fellow Americans” (1996).

        CREDIT: Warner Brothers

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    • “8 Simple Rules”

      In 2003, following the death of John Ritter, Garner joined the cast of Ritter’s TV series “8 Simple Rules,” playing the grandfather of Kaley Cuoco.

      CREDIT: ABC

James Garner 1928-2014

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  • “Marlowe”

    As Raymond Chandler’s private eye Philip Marlowe, James Garner knew when to get the draw on Bruce Lee, in “Marlowe” (1969).

    CREDIT: MGM

Book review: ‘The Garner Files’

At 83, James Garner pulls no punches in this candid account of his acting care

By Mary McNamara, Los Angeles TimesNovember 1, 2011

Many actors have breathed life into a memorable or even iconic role but only a few are capable of reconstructing an archetype. In “Maverick” and then again “The Rockford Files,” James Garner stepped into two of TV’s most calcified genres — the western and the detective series — and set a new standard that others have been chasing down since. Bret Maverick and Jim Rockford were different in many ways — Maverick was a fast-talking con man in the Old West, Rockford a modern L.A. private investigator with motivation issues — but they shared an important trait: They were reluctant heroes. Each would much rather wisecrack his way out of a jam, but if you pushed him hard enough, you would invariably find yourself counting angels on the ceiling.

So it’s not surprising that it’s taken Garner, now 83, this long to write a memoir. But having made up his mind to write it, with the help of Jon Winokur, Garner follows his own heroic dictum: Plenty of self-deprecating, humor, a general air of live-and-let-live, but when it comes down to it, no pulled punches.

For Garner fans, “The Garner Files” is catnip; Winokur perfectly captures and sustains the actor’s voice, which includes a penchant for digression, intentional understatement and occasional declarations of war (against bullies; against studio bookkeeping; against certain directors, certain actors and certain studio heads). For industry aficionados, it is a candid accounting, sometimes literally, of a process that is too often over-glamorized and under-chronicled. Two of the most fascinating chapters involve his suits against Universal over syndication of “The Rockford Files” and a description of the physical damage caused by being an action star (he eventually had to have both knees replaced).

For the rest of the world, including and especially those too young to remember even “The Rockford Files,” Garner’s memoir offers a rare glimpse of a certain type of man, an archetype in itself. In her introduction, Julie Andrews describes Garner as a “man’s man,” but that has too brutish a connotation. Garner, like his characters, is first and foremost a gentleman, the sort who lives by a personal code that preaches patience and tolerance, up to a point. “When I’m pushed, I shove,” Garner writes, quoting one of his own characters, Murphy Jones of the movie “Murphy’s Romance.”

There are more than a few fistfights in “The Garner Files,” as well as thrown furniture and golf clubs, but usually there’s a reason, as when costar Tony Franciosa actually punched stuntmen during fight scenes: “… he kept doing it despite my warnings to stop … so I had to pop him one.”

Garner comes by his voice and his persona naturally enough. Born James Baumgarner in Norman, Okla., he lost his mother when he was 4; he and his two brothers were split up among relatives. The Baumgarners survived the Depression better than many Oklahomans, but when James’ father, Weldon, remarried and reunited the family, the result was disaster. Weldon drank and his new wife Wilma beat the children viciously. Finally, James fought back. The marriage fell apart, but Weldon left again. James was 14.

After working a series of jobs, he joined the Merchant Marine; undone by chronic seasickness, he headed to California to live with his aunt, Grace Baumgarner, and enrolled at Hollywood High, where he was recommended for a Jantzen bathing suit ad. “I wasn’t interested until I heard they were paying $25 an hour. That was more than the principal made!” He was soon kicked out of high school (“There was a slight problem: I never went to classes”), drafted into the Army and headed to Korea, where he was wounded twice and developed an antiwar mentality that would later make Charlie Madison, the dog robber in “The Americanization of Emily,” his favorite role.

Garner became an actor the old-fashioned way — a soda jerk he met while working at a Shell station once told him that with his good looks he could be a big star. By the time Garner returned from Korea, that soda jerk was a stage producer, who quickly gave him a non-speaking role in the stage production of “The Caine Mutiny Court Martial.” There, Garner sat as part of the jury, night after night watching Henry Fonda and learning how to act.

“The Garner Files” tells the story of Garner’s career with many entertaining backstage stories and Garner’s opinion of his luminous costars, but the kid who survived his own childhood is always present and accounted for. After falling in love with Lois, his wife of 55 years, at first sight and marrying her almost as quickly, he accepted a contract with Warner Bros. at a less than commensurate salary because he had a family to support.

That contract took him off the big screen and into “Maverick,” a move he was not thrilled with, partly because it was so ill paid. When it became a hit, he dug his heels in and after he was laid off because a writers strike shut down production on “Maverick,” he dug them in further. He and his lawyer, a young man by the name of Frank Wells (who would eventually run Disney), sued Warner Bros. for breach of contract. The judge ruled in his favor and despite all the predictably dire warnings, he did work, and sue, in this town again.

Garner is a self-described curmudgeon and there are times when “The Garner Files” wobbles dangerously toward the querulous. But it never topples because he is unfailingly candid about his own desires — which are to make money and do the roles he believes he is best suited to do.

By those standards, he is a wildly successful man, and by more ephemeral ones as well. Thirty pages at the end of the book are titled “Outtakes” and filled with anecdotes, memories and testimonials from Garner’s friends, family and colleagues, including Lauren Bacall, Doris Day, James Woods and David Chase (who got his start on “The Rockford Files”). Although there is an air of Tom Sawyer creeping back to hear his own funeral about this chapter, it is a fine, frank and fun collection.

More than that, it provides proof that the man the reader has just spent several hours listening to does actually exist outside his own narrative. Just in case you were wondering. Like James Garner knew you were.

mary.mcmamara@latimes.com

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Tagged | Comments (0)

THREE TELLING ARGUMENTS AGAINST EVOLUTION by Adrian Rogers (Part 1 of series on Evolution)jh57

November 1, 2011 – 12:43 am

The Long War against God-Henry Morris, part 1 of 6

Uploaded by on Aug 30, 2010

http://www.icr.org/
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http://www.fliptheworldupsidedown.com/blog

_____________________________________

Photo of Pastor Adrian Rogers Memorial Tribute

Do you think the theory of evolution is true? Check out this short article by Adrian Rogers:

“O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: which some professing have erred concerning the faith. Grace be with thee. Amen” (1 Tim. 6:20-21).

One of the most important questions to face our generation is this: “Are human beings simply the product of millions of years of mindless, evolutionary mutations and adaptations, or are we the creation of an infinitely wise, powerful, and loving God?”

The answer to that question is critical. Why? Because it determines your attitude toward God in heaven and mankind on earth. The debate over human origin is one of the most critical issues of our times.

THE DAMAGE OF EVOLTION

It’s hard to measure the enormous damage inflicted by Darwinian evolution, the teaching that life arose from a spontaneous spark in a pond of primordial ooze. The amazing thing is that influential scientists themselves are now denying Darwin’s theory as impossible. Yet its destructive effects remain.

For instance, if man is an accident of nature, then there is no fixed standard of right and wrong. So what the Bible calls sexual perversion is now a “lifestyle.” And a human life can be readily destroyed, whether in the womb or partially delivered.

Worst of all, evolution has helped destroy belief in God for millions. Denying biblical creation, evolutionists have “changed the truth of God into a lie” (Romans 1:25).

Should we be surprised that euthanasia is gaining widespread acceptance in our society or that the tide of abortion cannot be turned? Is it any wonder that sexual perversion is received as a valid alternative lifestyle? We have taught our children that they are just another species of animal – and they are finally beginning to act like animals! And our children and grandchildren are still being fed this lie today.

THE DECEIT OF EVOLUTION

What is behind this whole idea of evolution? Why is it such an emotional issue? Why can’t the world simply agree that there is no creation without a Creator, and out of nothing, nothing comes?

Humanist Aldous Huxley expressed the answer to those questions in his book, Ends and Means. Huxley said he and his contemporaries did not want government or morality. So they chose evolution in order to shut the mouths of those who believe in special creation.

For more than 100 years, the evolutionists have succeeded in convincing people that evolution is the only logical, scientific, and intelligent theory of human origin.

But this campaign has been carried out amid deceit and slight of hand on the part of many evolutionists. We’ve all seen the creative drawings of supposed ancestors of mankind, built on a few teeth or a piece of a skull. And the fossil hoaxes perpetrated over the last century are well known.

No wonder in his book Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth, the Swedish embryologist, Soren Lovtrup, suggests that he believes that some day Darwinism “will be ranked the greatest deceit in the history of science.”

THE DEFEAT OF EVOLUTION

Despite its lack of credible evidence, evolution holds sway in our schools, the courts, and the public mind. What can we do?

We can preach, teach and defend the truth! We can set our children free from the devil’s lies by giving them the Truth of God’s Word (John 8:32) And we can point lost, confused and dying souls to Him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life!

______________

Dr. Rogers on Evolution

 

With the steadfast support of friends like you, Love Worth Finding will continue to hold high the banner of Jesus Christ.

THREE TELLING ARGUMENTS AGAINST EVOLUTION

1. The fossil record. Not only is the so-called missing link still missing, all of the transitional life forms so crucial to evolutionary theory are missing from the fossil record. There are thousands of missing links, not one!
2. The second law of thermodynamics. This law states that energy is winding down and that matter left to itself tends toward chaos and randomness, not greater organization and complexity. Evolution demands exactly the opposite process, which is observed nowhere in nature.

Dr. George Wald of Harvard:

“When it comes to the origin of life, we have only two possibilities as to how life arose. One is spontaneous generation arising to evolution; the other is a supernatural creative act of God. There is no third possibility…Spontaneous generation was scientifically disproved one hundred years ago by Louis Pasteur, Spellanzani, Reddy and others. That leads us scientifically to only one possible conclusion — that life arose as a supernatural creative act of God…I will not accept that philosophically because I do not want to believe in God. Therefore, I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation arising to evolution.” – Scientific American, August, 1954.

3. The origin of life. Evolution offers no answers to the origin of life. It simply pushes the question farther back in time, back to some primordial event in space or an act of spontaneous generation in which life simply sprang from nothing.

________________________________

I actually had the chance to correspond with George Wald twice before his death. He wrote me two letters and in the first one he suggested that he was just using hyperbole when he made the assertion that is quoted by Dr. Rogers. He also suggested the religion of Buddhism although he said he was not a Buddhist himself, but he thought that would be closest to the truth which he thought was atheism.

During the 1990’s I actually made it a practice to write famous atheists and scientists that were mentioned by Adrian Rogers and Francis Schaeffer and challenge them with the evidence for the Bible’s historicity and the claims of the gospel. Usually I would send them a cassette tape of Adrian Rogers’ messages “6 reasons I know the Bible is True,” “The Final Judgement,” “Who is Jesus?” and the message by Bill Elliff, “How to get a pure heart.” I would also send them printed material from the works of Francis Schaeffer and a personal apologetic letter from me addressing some of the issues in their work.

 The famous atheist Antony Flew was actually took the time to listen to several of these messages and he wrote me back in the mid 1990’s several times. Carl Sagan wrote me back in Dec of 1995  and he passed away about a year later.

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Comments (0)

“Tip Tuesday” Advice to Gene Simmons part 17

November 1, 2011 – 12:17 am

Shannon Tweed

I really hope that Gene Simmons and his wife Shannon Tweed really do have a successful marriage that lasts forever. However, when people live together statistics show it is usually an uphill battle to have a marriage that lasts. Take Kim Kardashian for instance.

Here is an article that I found helpful below:

Cohabitation Confusion: What does the Bible say?

By Hal Lane – Aug 9, 2007 – 76 –   Email

The fact that many couples live together without the legal commitment of marriage surprises few in our morally dysfunctional society. What is surprising is the number of professing Christians who choose to live together without the benefit of marriage.

Churches and families are increasingly faced with the question of how to respond to these individuals who believe their personal commitments to one another are morally equivalent to legal marriage.

Every moral issue is fundamentally a biblical issue. Genesis 2:18-25 describes marriage as a divine institution. God presented Adam with Eve and established the first marriage.

Genesis 2:24 is the basis for all future marriages: “This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh.” When Jesus was asked about grounds for divorce, He quoted this verse with regard to a legal, binding marriage relationship (Matt. 19:5).

When God revealed the law to Moses on Mount Sinai, there were many regulations regarding marriage. A man who seduced a virgin and had sexual relations with her before marriage was required to pay the father of the girl and was required to marry her if the father permitted (Ex. 22:16). Sexual relations with a virgin betrothed to another resulted in death by stoning of both parties (Deut. 22:23-24). These laws revealed the importance of marriage and the sin of premarital sex.

Malachi 2:13-16 speaks against the abandonment of wives by husbands. They are accused of breaking faith and abandoning their marriage covenants (v. 14). God’s intention was that sexual relationships between a man and a woman should occur only after a legal covenant was established. The covenant was to provide security and a formal obligation that could not be easily abandoned. Governmental regulation of marriage recognizes the importance of protecting the rights of marriage partners and children.

The New Testament also forbids sexual relations outside marriage. Hebrews 13:4 commands everyone to honor the institution of marriage. In 1 Timothy 4:3, Paul warned that a sign of the end times would be an abandonment of the divine institution of marriage.

Despite the arguments of some, the odds of a successful marriage do not increase because a couple lives together before marriage. In fact, studies reveal the opposite is true.

Where do professing Christian couples find justification for living together without marriage? Their own desires and an immoral culture provide support, but God’s Word is neither vague nor confusing on this point: A personal commitment between a man and woman is not the moral equivalent of a biblical marriage.

Weekend to Remember-Family Life…Fireproof your marriage

 

Tim Hawkins 70’s music in 6 minutes

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

99th anniversary of Milton Friedman’s birth (Part 18) (“Free to Choose” episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 4 of 7)

November 1, 2011 – 12:05 am

Milton Friedman was born on July 31, 1912 and he died November 16, 2006. I started posting tributes of him on July 31 and I hope to continue them until his 100th birthday. Here is another tribute below:

The massive growth of central government that started after the depression has continued ever since. If anything, it has even speeded up in recent years. Each year there are more buildings in Washington occupied by more bureaucrats administering more laws. The Great Depression persuaded the public that private enterprise was a fundamentally unstable system. That the depression represented a failure of free market capitalism, that the government had to step in to perform the essential function of stabilizing the economy, of providing security for its citizens. The widespread acceptance of these views, sparked the enormous growth in the power of government that has occurred in the decade since and that is still going on. We now know as many economists knew then that the truth about the depression was very different. The depression was produced or at the very least, made far worse by perverse monetary policies followed by the U.S. authorities.
Far from being a failure of free market capitalism, the depression was a failure of government. Unfortunately, that failure did not end with The Great Depression. Ever since, government has been attempting to fine tune the economy. In practice, just as during the depression, far from promoting stability, the government has itself, been the major single source of instability.
DISCUSSION
Participants: Robert McKenzie, Moderator; Milton Friedman; Robert Lekachman, Professor of Economics, City University, New York; Nicholas Von Hoffman, Syndicated Columnist; Peter Temin, Professor of Economics, MIT; Peter Jay, British Ambassador to the United States, 1977_1979
MCKENZIE: And now we join the invited guests here at the University of Chicago, as they discuss Friedman’s interpretation of those events and their implications for today.
LEKACHMAN: The 1929 crash, the succeeding calamities, were not the first of their kind. Capitalism has been subject to severe depressions since the beginning of the industrial revolution. This was the first time, however, government tried to intervene seriously. It did it very badly. The lesson I would draw is a very simple one: Government is unavoidable; the expectations of the public are proper; government ought to do better oddly enough the government did do better until very, very recently. Until, I would say, October 1973, even, government did reasonably well in fulfilling the expectations of the public. I’m an unrepentant proponent of government intervention, intelligent government intervention. But I would describe much of the intervention which has followed the great 1929 crash as quite intelligent.
MCKENZIE: Let’s take a further look, though, at this argument that just as during the depression, far from promoting stability, the government has itself been the major single source of instability.
VON HOFFMAN: I_I don’t think there is any stability this side of the graveyard. I mean, I think __ I don’t think it matters what system you’re working under, you are not going to __ you are not going to have a level and hold it under any system with living human beings.
TEMIN: Governments are larger now and therefore more of a source of an influence for good and for bad. And I think like Mr. Von Hoffman that you can’t get perfect stability, given that you’re going to have governments, given that there are legitimate functions of governments, there are also risks in having the government be as active as it is.
MCKENZIE: Peter Jay.
JAY: I think that government is a god that has failed. I think that we have too much of it and need less of it. I think it has failed to prevent both the modern forms of economic instability and the prewar ones. I do not, however, think that government is the original or primary source of that instability, and I do not think that simply getting rid of the government, or greatly reducing it, which I’m in favor of, will, by itself, remove the instability.
LEKACHMAN: I would put it this way: There was __ there was a great economist, with a suitably esoteric doctrine, which could nevertheless be translated as Dr. Friedman did in the film, into simple English, at the same time as there was the widespread hardship of The Great Depression and the natural yearning of human beings not to repeat anything like it. So you have a coincidence of an appropriate theory, with an appropriate public sentiment, and I suppose the symbol in the United States was the passage of 1946 of the Employment Act of that year. Which, it was a weak measure, but it was nevertheless a public declaration of an obligation of government to do something about employment, and economic prosperity, and a good thing, too.
MCKENZIE: Now that’s the __ really the crux of the matter. Do you agree it was a good thing too, that obligation was accepted by government at that stage?
JAY: I think it’s very important here to distinguish two completely different issues. There is the rather narrow issue as to whether Keynes was right or wrong in believing that you could stabilize the economy with regard to really one essential variable _ unemployment _ by a certain technique which he talked about. We may now think that he was wrong, but that’s a quite separate issue from the broad political philosophical issue associated with socialism, associated with social democrats, and many other so-called left wing political thinkers, that the duty of government, so far as it can, is to concern itself not only with defense and law and order and the traditional things, but also with the social welfare and the economic welfare of a society. Now that’s a broad philosophical __
MCKENZIE: Is that a disaster, as Milton seemed to be implying, or was it a good and helpful, useful thing to happen?
JAY: Well, that is one of the great __ perhaps the greatest of all debates in political philosophy, as to whether or not it is right or is not right to believe that a society, collectively, should concern itself with these things and has the right, having concerned itself, through law and through government and in other ways, to move to try to correct these things.
VON HOFFMAN: Well I just __ it seems to me that Americans have believed that for the last century. I mean William McKinley ran on the slogan of a full dinner pail, so that the notion that this is a government responsibility for prosperity dates from the 1930’s I think is erroneous. What I wonder about after having seen that film is this: We have in 1929 __ we have the man who could have saved it dead two years and in 1946 we’ve got the man who might have saved it dying. So what I have to ask is: Are we doomed to find out the right answer only too late? Is it possible that our __
TEMIN: Or should we just look for somebody who’s recently died.
VON HOFFMAN: Exactly. Rummage the morgues. (Laughter)
MCKENZIE: Well, you asked the question __
FRIEDMAN: No, and I think the question is a very different one. And it goes to much of the discussion to this point. Everybody looks for the right man. You say, “Government __
VON HOFFMAN: You brought’em up.
FRIEDMAN: Those men at that time. Quite right. But a system which depends on the right man is a bad system. The Federal Reserve was a bad system because it depended on the right man working it. The idea of demand management, of the kind of thing we’re talking about where Keynes’ death mattered, was a bad system because it depended on a particular man working it. The notion that the problem that Bob Lekachman brought up, that the problem is not the government interferes, but it does it unintelligently, is again a demand for the right man, the man on the white horse who will know what to do. My whole view is very different. It is that it’s the system that’s wrong, and that we’ve got to have a system that the right way to accomplish these objectives is to have a system which doesn’t depend on whether you happen to have the right man pushing the buttons at the right time.
TEMIN: The problem is somebody has to __
FRIEDMAN: Which relies on the __ on establishing a framework within which an invisible hand, within which the activities of people all over are jointly to produce the kind of result. It won’t produce perfect stability; but it’ll produce a far higher degree of stability, a far greater level of freedom, and a far greater level of prosperity than the kind of thing we’ve had with these governmental interventions.
TEMIN: Somebody still has to design the system. You can’t take the people out of it entirely.
FRIEDMAN: Of course.
TEMIN: Unless you’re in the grave as it says.
FRIEDMAN: Of course, but the __ that doesn’t __
TEMIN: But the question is __ I mean it’s said that generals always fight the last war. How do we know that the system won’t fight the last war? We probably won’t have another depression exactly like 1929 to ’33.
MCKENZIE: But, but __
TEMIN: But that doesn’t say we won’t have another depression or another stagflation or another crisis of some other source.
MCKENZIE: But is this process reversible? Because you argued that the public, having been appalled by The Great Depression, in effect demanded of government that they accept responsibility for wellbeing of the economy, for management of the society and so on. Now, that expectation having been raised, can it be reversed?
VON HOFFMAN: Let me answer a question you didn’t ask and say that it seems to me that what we’re getting here is the question of sort of social astrophysics. And that is, do we have an unseen hand, or are we on the war star where we are trying to design a computer that is going to take care of the navigation of this thing. In other words, it seems to me that’s our central question. Is there a mechanism that you can put right in the center of the spaceship that will operate regardless of who is the captain on the quarterdeck at any one moment in time? I don’t think that’s an economic question. I think that’s a question that goes to religion.
By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Milton Friedman | Comments (0)

New song released by Amy Winehouse

October 31, 2011 – 4:41 pm

I have posted a lot about Amy before.

Despite her death in July, Amy Winehouse will be releasing a new album: “Lioness: Hidden Treasures” this year.

This is not a posthumous album of unheard hits. The only new song will be “Between the Cheats,” recorded for her third album, which she did not survive to finish.
Amy Winehouse (Shaun Curry /AFP/Getty Images)

If not to gain access to new material, what exactly is the point of demanding an encore from the departed?

There is the money (there is always money) and it’s not insignificant: Tupac released more albums after his death than he did during his lifetime, as did Notorious B.I.G. Michael Jackson has earned over half a billion dollars since his death in 2009 — yes, that is billion with a “b.” In the year he died, he sold 8.3 million albums.

Like all commerce, though, this exchange is two-sided: someone else wants to sell it, but they wouldn’t even bother unless we did not want to buy it.

Denial is famously the first stage of grief; we’re supposed to move on down the five-stage trail to acceptance. But en masse, we never seem to get beyond stage one when it comes to our pop heroes. Perhaps it’s that we can’t believe that even extraordinary talent has an expiration date. We don’t know how to say goodbye, so we just keep bringing the artists we love out of the ultimate retirement.

_________________

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By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)