An Argument that Changed my Mind... Because of its Badness

The death penalty has always been a tough call for me.  Sometime years I have supported it, and sometimes I have objected to it.  I see arguments on both sides.  Recently, I am opposed, but, a friend just pointed me to an anti-death penalty essay that was so bad, it may just have converted me back in favor of capital punishment.

The argument intended to oppose the death penalty went like this:

1. "Sure, the Old Testament prescribes death for anyone who commits per-meditated murder. But it doesn’t stop there. The Hebrew Scriptures also prescribe the death penalty for kidnapping (Exodus 21:16), bestiality (Exodus 22:12), rape (Deuteronomy 22:24), making a sacrifice to a false god (Exodus 22:20), adultery (Leviticus 20:10), ... and premarital sex (Deuteronomy 22:13-21). A priest was instructed to burn his daughter alive if she was guilty of prostitution (Leviticus 21:9)..." 
2. "For example, what of the command in Deuteronomy 17:6 that someone could only be put to death on the evidence of two or three witnesses? Why don’t pro-death penalty advocates who ground their thinking in the Old Testament also require this provision before they support an execution? And what about the fact that in most of these cases a monetary substitute was allowed if the offender agreed to it? My pro-death penalty friends can’t seem to give me a clear answer on this."
3. "Jesus said, “You have heard that it was taught, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”  In one swift and startling statement, Jesus took a hammer to the lex talionis—the basis for capital punishment in the Hebrew Scriptures—and gave those who would follow after him a new way to live."

Let me summarize:

1. There are lots of Death penalties in the Old Testament.
2. The Old Testament had rules for administering the Death Penalty.
3. Jesus said not to take personal revenge if someone slaps you... and somehow thereby negates ALL the Jewish Law!"

So, if I follow the logic:

1. G^d once gave authority to man to execute lots of Capital punishment, ...
2.  if certain requirements were met.  
3. Jesus somehow allegedly negated that with a command on how we personally deal with personal offenses.  But Jesus also said, ^"17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. ¹⁸ For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." Matt 5:17-18.  Plus there are lots of places where Jesus supported the Scriptures (The Old Testament WAS The Scriptures!).

 Don't misunderstand.  Salvation of our soul is by Grace alone, not by keeping the Law!  But if G^d, who is immutable, inerrantly  (i.e. He cannot err and "changing His mind" is impossible when you are creator of time) said that the death penalty is fine for many situations under the right requirements, where is OUR argument?  How can we argue?

Some friends argue that the Old Testament was like a "first draft" and G^d learned a lot dealing with those pesky Israelis.  The New Testament completely replaced the Old, and so thereby The L^rd G^d, Creator of the Heavens and the Earth, has wised up over time.  I won't extend this lengthy post by explaining everything wrong with that argument, but I will say the bad argument in the essay gave me a new outlook favoring the death penalty - it is G^d-given, and should be administered according to G^d-imposed requirements.

Thanks Mr. Essayist, I am now firmly pro-death-penalty with requirements!

Road Kill- a new Variation

I have written before about my penchant for picking up trash on University and church grounds, but I have not confessed to another pickup habit:  road kill.

Yes, I pick up road kill-- that is, those things that i find in the road that kill tires.  I blame Dr. Matt Green for this. Many a time I am happily peddling down the road on my bike when I spy, with my little eye, a screw, nail, or piece of sharp metal.   Matt always picked these up, and he inspired me.  On my bike, I am typically 5-15 yards past the object before I realize what it was and stop.  This slows me quite a bit, but my conscience is a bit over-sensitve, so I stop, back up and try to determine waht I saw and where it was.

Today in the 3 brief miles from my office to home I found three road kills:

It is a small thing I do, but if I save a tire or two it is worth the time and effort I guess.

It is not a small thing to share Christ with people, and if we do it, we may save a soul or two.

Hard to beat that return on a little time and effort.

Perils of Predicting the Future!!

Predicting the future is a challenging task.  When you get it right, few will notice...BUT if you get it wrong, everyone seems to remember.  Well maybe not everyone.

Behold the coming apocalypse as predicted on and around Earth Day, 1970:

1. "Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind."  — Harvard biologist George Wal
2. "Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years." — Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich
3. "Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born… [By 1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s." — Paul Ehrlich (Bing Professor of Population Studies in the department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University and president of Stanford's Center for Conservation Biology)
4. "Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions…. By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine." — North Texas State University professor Peter Gunter
5. "In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution… by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half." — Life magazine
6. "Air pollution...is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone." — Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich
7. "By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate… that there won't be any more crude oil. You'll drive up to the pump and say, ‘Fill 'er up, buddy,' and he'll say, ‘I am very sorry, there isn't any.'" — UC Davis Ecologist Kenneth Watt
8. "[One] theory assumes that the earth's cloud cover will continue to thicken as more dust, fumes, and water vapor are belched into the atmosphere by industrial smokestacks and jet planes. Screened from the sun's heat, the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born." — Newsweek magazine
9. "The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age." — Kenneth Watt (http://www.freedomworks.org/content/13-worst-predictions-made-earth-day-1970; accessed 5-5-14).

 See what I mean?  Notice how many of these were made by PROFESSORS?  To be fair, I am guessing that many of their other predictions were found to be true, or at least partially true.


“When the word of the prophet shall come to pass, then shall the prophet be known, that the Lord hath truly sent him.” Jeremiah 28:9.

I try NOT to make predictions at all, for as James 4 tells us clearly, "¹³ Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” ¹⁴ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. ¹⁵ Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” ¹⁶ As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil."

To Quote Forest Gump, "and that's all I am going to say about that."

Another Graduation... with special meaning!

Yesterday I went to another UA graduation.  I would estimate I have been to about 40 of these over my 30 years.  But this one was special.

Well, they are all special for somebody, but this one was different.  Here are some differences:

1. First graduation where I left early.
2. First graduation with 7 Ph.D.s hooded from our KIN department.
3. First graduation for one of my students who took a job and had to go through 5-6 rewrites of her dissertation.
4. First graduation for one of my Ph.D. students whose timing was terrifically bad.  He came into our program at just the wrong time.

All these firsts made this a great day.  Earning a Ph.D. requires a long academic effort.  There is a lot of work done.  I had taught all the exercise science students in class.  I had sat on 4 of the 5 dissertations.  I had seen some of these students frustrated almost to the breaking point.  Thanks be to G^d that I can write that "almost".

Most things that are worthwhile take time and effort.  Patience is a necessity, as is hard work.

But eventually the victory is won.

In our relationship with G^d, we enter into the relationship by G^d's grace alone.  But growing in our faith is a lot like earning a Ph.D. in Christianity.  It's not theoretical, it must be lived out, it must be practiced. Patience is a necessity, as is hard work.  Most things that are worthwhile take time and effort.

And Thanks be to G^d, our victory has already been won.... not by us, but by the Christ!

Spring Kites

Every spring I look for kites.  Kites really mark the true arrival of spring.

No not that kind of kite, the hawk kind of kite.  Though those other kind of kites are spring harbingers too, especially in a few countries like Afghanistan.  I recall being on the lookout for kites in Afghanistan, and not being disappointed.  But I digress...

If you will look outside this spring, keep an eye skyward for Mississippi kites.  They are very pretty birds as they soar effortlessly through the sky.   They don't show up around here until spring.  By late fall they will be migrated elsewhere.  You will see them perched on occasion, if you pay close attention. They look like pigeons, only sleeker, and with an attitude.  In flight their tail is squared off.

In Africa, the yellow-billed kite was the spring kite.  They were much larger than the Mississippi version, and much more common.

Birds are Marvelous creatures.  When G^d allowed birds to "evolve" he had a LOT of changes to make to land-dwellers, and many of these had to come simultaneously (another reason I can't accept evolution as a scientific hypothesis).  A bird must be light, with good endurance, and they have a one-way pass-trhough respiratory system (in contrast to our in-and-out respiration).

Next time you see a bird, kite or otherwise, recognize G^d's invisible attributes.

Romans 1: 20²⁰ For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

Who's Afraid of a Little Weather?

Me, and several million of our neighbors.

On the evening of 27 April 2011, a very strong tornado leveled a path of destruction across our town and other parts of Alabama.  About 42 lives were lost, including several students at the U of AL.

Last Friday we were advised that severe weather was coming to a location near us...maybe even to us.  Sure enough, that has happened.  All afternoon we have watched a Birmingham weather man, the most famous in our state, talk about tornadoes, wall clouds, and "inflow".

A lot of colleges and schools have already closed, and they canceled an exam at UA tonight.

We have seen tornadoes with our own eyes.  Worse, we have seen the destruction of tornadoes with our own eyes and up close.  Weather kills, and already two have died in Northern Alabama.

Tornadoes are dangerous, they are unpredictable.  You can die in a hurry, and they don't discriminate. To summarize, during tornado season you can die without warning.  But this is true for the rest of the year also.  Life is not guaranteed for anyone.

Weather is real, it is tangible, it is visible.

I marvel at how my pagan friends can shake their fist at G^d, even whilst facing tornadoes. 

They are very brave.

They are very stupid.

It is appointed to man once to die... and after that the judgement. Hebrews 9:27.

But me, I need not fear.  Not because I am brave, but because I fully trust in the provision of the Christ.

Ahhhhhh, sweet.

Ideas and Things

In my life I have had a lot of good ideas.  Many years ago, long before the days of ScentLok and those companies, I was doing an experiment in the lab.  One of my friends, a colleague, named Wojtek, was walking on a treadmill sweating for 4 hours.  As he walked, the rubber boots he was wearing wore out and began leaking sweat.  Yep, it was just that hot.

Once that rubber barrier was breached, the odor was horrific.  What struck me most was that BEFORE that point, we hadn't smelled at thing. I realized at that moment that the activated charcoal that composed the US Air Force chemical defense suit Wojtek was wearing was absorbing all the odor. 

Who cares?

Deer hunters care.  Deer are best able to detect hunters because we humans stink.  Wearing charcoal is a way to defeat the deer's sensitive nose, and this has become a multi-million dollar business.

How much money did I make from my discovery?  Guess.

I also invented, rather than discovered, a wearable ice cooling and drinking vest.  In industry, keeping cool in very hot situations is an issue of safety as well as productivity.  One way of doing this is to use ice vests that melt and cool.  However, wearing a vest full of melted water means lugging around a lot of extra weight.  I had a prototype built of a vest that you could drink.  Cooling plus drink!  When we began researching to file a patent, low and behold, these have been invented already.

There are other ideas that haven't gone anywhere, but there's still another idea.  Take a look and see if you can figure out what this is, and what the most recent idea is.

Anyone recognize this, or have any idea what we are in the process of creating?

Sorry, I can't tell you what it is... just in case it works and hasn't been invented already.