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From NARAL Pro-Choice America:
Dear John,

It is with mixed emotions that I write with news that, tonight, the House of Representatives passed the health-reform bill.

I am extremely disappointed to tell you that the final package includes the insulting, unworkable Nelson restriction on abortion coverage in the new system.

As you may recall, the Nelson language requires Americans in the new system to write two separate checks if the health plan they choose includes abortion coverage. This unacceptable bureaucratic stigmatization could cause insurance carriers to stop covering abortion care. This would represent a major setback, given that more than 85 percent of private plans cover this care for women today.

Despite this totally unacceptable anti-choice provision, reform will bring more than 30 million Americans into a system that includes affordable family-planning services and maternity care for women. It also outlaws some discriminatory insurance-industry practices that make health care more expensive for women. Improving women’s access to birth control and prenatal care and making reproductive-health care more affordable are also at the core of our mission.

Here at NARAL Pro-Choice America, we struggled with the dilemma of how to respond to a bill that included both positive and disappointing provisions for reproductive health. Ultimately, we determined that we could not endorse this bill due to the abortion-coverage restrictions. But, we also could not, in good conscience, call for the bill’s outright defeat and deny millions of American women the promise of better—although imperfect—health-care services that are an important part of our pro-choice values.

That these abortion-coverage restrictions remained in the bill is terrible news for all of us who believe that American women should not have to sacrifice their right to choose in order to gain ground in other areas of health care. It is an outrage that anti-choice politicians such as Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) and Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) used women’s reproductive health as a bargaining chip.

But, believe me when I say that Congress and the White House have not heard the last from us. NARAL Pro-Choice America does not accept this bill as the final word on how abortion coverage will be defined in the new health-care system. We are committed to finding opportunities to repeal dangerous and unacceptable restrictions as the new system takes shape.

Thank you for standing with us for so many months. We will keep fighting to elect pro-choice members who share our pro-choice values.

Nancy Keenan
President, NARAL Pro-Choice America

Today would be a good day to join and support an organization that supports women's reproductive health.

Thanks to all you agitators, sign holders, arm twisters and decent Americans....




...Minutes ago, the House passed the health care reform bill:

It will extend health insurance coverage to 32 million people who lack it, block insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing health conditions or capping their lifetime claims, and cut the federal budget deficit by approximately $138 billion over a decade and $1.2 trillion over twenty years.

Democrats compared its significance to the Civil Rights Act, and the legislation that created Social Security and Medicare. Its passage comes after decades of discussing how to fix a health care system everyone acknowledges to be broken....

....The bill passed in a 219 to 212 vote, with no support from Republicans....

....Cleveland's Dennis Kucinich also took heat for reversing previously announced opposition to the bill. He said he still has reservations, but hopes its adoption will enable passage of improved health care legislation in the future and "break the gridlock in Washington on economic issues, jobs, and housing issues."

It's a start in the compassionate direction.

My own blog is "neoorthodoxology." Check it out: http://neoorthodoxology.blogspot.com/

For anyone who is interested, this is what I believe:

read more

The LayMAN reports that Santa Barbara wants "more oversight."





What do they want oversight over?

Wild guess.

Go ahead.

Take one.

How about...

...gay marriage.

It seems the BFTSs (Busybodies, Fusspots, Tattletales, and Scolds) are in a terrible tizzy over the marriage between Craig Wiesner and Derrick Kikuchi. The wedding was held during the 2008 General Assembly at the More Light Presbyterians' Dinner.

(By the way, volunteers are needed for this year's MLP dinner and other festivities. We need something juicy for the BFTSs to fuss about two years from now.)

Anyway the Fusspots just couldn't bear it.


So (I mean, really!) they sent an overture to the General Assembly to stop it! Just stop it! No more gays getting married at General Assembly! No! No! No! Report somebody! We need oversight! Good Lord, Sweet Jesus we need oversight!

I thought I had the spiritual gift of paranoia. Read this:
The Presbytery of Santa Barbara respectfully overtures the 219th General Assembly (2010) to do the following:

1. Require events sponsored by PC(USA) aligned groups taking place at General Assembly or other General Assembly-sponsored gatherings to be evaluated by the Office of the General Assembly in advance of all General Assemblies or other General Assembly-sponsored events to assure that the activities of all PC(USA) aligned groups are conducted in a manner that honor the constitutional standards of the church.

2. Direct the Office of the General Assembly to establish a Board of Oversight and Review whose task will be to hold accountable any Presbyterian organization conducting its affairs or events in violation of current constitutional standards. We also advise that this board be available to receive complaints from commissioners at General Assembly.

3. Direct that after a process of review is completed, a violation of the church’s standards of behavior or Constitution shall result in the denial of the privilege of exhibiting at future General Assembly-sponsored meetings and events. Such violation shall also result in denied access to commissioner’s mailboxes at future General Assemblies.

4. Advocate that a process of recourse be established for organizations charged with such violations. In order to be reinstated, the organization so charged would be required to go through an appeal process. The Office of the General Assembly would form a committee of the most recent General Assembly commissioners to hear appeals. This committee would be composed of a theologically balanced group within the denomination.Obviously, it isn't enough to file a complaint if a rule was allegedly broken. What do you do if no one agrees with you and consequently the baddies do not receive the spanking you think they deserve?

If you are a BFTS you need to know everything everyone is going to do in advance just in case something might be done that might make some BFTSs think it might be wrong.

God I love the LayMAN.

Don't you just want to cuddle them?

It will happen some time.

Maybe tonight. No number 16 seed has ever beaten a number 1 seed in the NCAA men's basketball tournament. If any team can do it, the ETSU Bucs can. They have come close on a number of occasions of achieving the upset of all time.


Tonight the Bucs are the underdogs as they take on the Kentucky Wildcats. The game starts at 7:15 on CBS. From the Johnson City Press:
The Bucs (20-14) are certainly battling tall odds in their ninth trip to the NCAAs. The Wildcats average 6-foot-7 per man — they’re the tallest team in the country — and have already rolled to 32 wins and the Southeastern Conference championship. They are also the youngest team in the field, with five freshmen on the roster and three who are prime-time guys. That includes point guard John Wall, the SEC player of the year, and DeMarcus Cousins, the 6-11, 270-pound man-child. The odds of the Bucs winning this game are about the same as Glenn Beck saying something intelligent. But there is always hope...

Go Bucs!

The youth took in over $4000 from their auction and dinner. Enough to send them for a week to the Appalachia Service Project.

From June 13-20 ten youth and four adults will be going somewhere in Appalachia to make homes safer, drier, and warmer.

Here are some pics from last year's trip to Mingo County, West Virginia.




Meanwhile, I will still be trying to get that whipped cream off my face.

Yes, people paid cash to pie the pastor.

Proving that I will do darn near anything for $25.

First Presbyterian Church of Elizabethton is excited to present Sara Grey and Kieron Means in concert, Tuesday, March 23rd at 7:30.

Sara and Kieron will provide a night of traditional and acoustic music from the British Isles to Appalachia.

"Sara Grey is one of that rare breed of singers who have been involved with traditional music over many years and absorbed its vital essence. In Sara's performance, the art of the singer and that of the story teller merge to produce a web of tales and songs capable of transporting an audience from the concert hall or club room to the intimacy of a kitchen fire side." --Brian Peters

I am really looking forward to this! Hope to see you!

Kieron has such a tremendous passion when he sings, it goes right to the very core of himself, he's totally immersed the songs. He is a terrific performer on account of just that passion. His voice is especially striking, achieving the rare combination of a high lonesome edge with a warm richness of timbre, and it has a power to move the listener that few of his generation can match. His guitar playing is unconventional, its spareness a mile away from any notion of fancy picking, but it's highly effective, while his stage presence is charismatic, yet laid-back. His songs range from old-time, through the blues - which he sings with startling conviction - to the work of tradition-influenced songwriters, and his own compositions have people, who know a good song when they hear one, nodding in approval.
--Living TraditionCheck out some sample recordings including one for Easter.

Tickets are only $10 at the door.

If you are anywhere near our mountain make you sure you come and bring your friends!

Lost and Found
John Shuck

First Presbyterian Church
Elizabethton, Tennessee

March 14, 2010
Fourth Sunday in Lent

Joshua 5:9-12
Luke 15:11-32

We are coming to the end of our creativity.

That is not true at all. What I mean is that we have been exploring the path of creativity during Winter, and Spring is coming. We will begin exploring another of the four paths of Creation Spirituality.

Creation Spirituality is a term coined by theologian Matthew Fox but it refers to a way of looking at life that is quite ancient. An aspect of Creation Spirituality is to approach Life (or "God" if you prefer) through four vias.

How do we become authentic? How do we in the words of the story the Velveteen Rabbit, become real?

Traditional mystical Christianity has given us a three-fold path of purgation, illumination, and union.

Purgation is letting go of worry or sin.
Illumination is receiving the divine light or salvation.
Union is empowering the self, taking ownership, becoming holy.

Fox added a path and shifted the image from climbing a ladder to dancing a spiral.

How do we become real? He invites us to think of four vias or paths.

We can think of them as the journey of the heart. In his book Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality, he describes the four paths in this way:

1. The heart of exaltation, awe, wonder, and delight (Via Positiva)
2. The heart of silence, letting go, suffering, sorrow, grieving, and “roaring” (Aquinas’s word) (Via Negativa)
3. The heart of passion for creativity, co-creating, birthing, life and power in all its forms: the art of empowerment. (Via Creativa)
4. The heart that is compassion: moral outrage at injustice that leads to the passionate work of justice making and healing and the heart-work that celebration entails and demands. (Via Transformativa) p. 29
   

I have been playing with and celebrating one path with each season of the year. During the Winter we have been exploring the via creativa in sermons and in worship. I have been trying to look at the scripture readings through this lens.

The via creativa is again, to quote Matthew Fox,
“the heart of passion for creativity, cocreating, birthing, life and power in all its forms: the art of empowerment.”How might that path, that way of looking at life and acting with life give juice to our reading of this very familiar parable of the man who had two sons, not only a “prodigal” son?

Traditionally, this story has been one of fall and repentance. The younger son, the prodigal son, is the sinner who finally hits bottom, comes to his senses and comes home to the father who, ready to forgive, welcomes him with a fatted calf.
Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling,
Calling for you and for me;
See, on the portals He’s waiting and watching,
Watching for you and for me.

Come home, come home,
You who are weary, come home;
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
Calling, O sinner, come home!Some of you may remember singing that song in church. I do. I also remember as a kid hearing many testimonies that at times detailed the dissolute living of the prodigal in the sinner’s own life. Then the testifying sinner found Jesus or Jesus found them and we heard the story of repentance, forgiveness, and union with the Father.

That is how this parable has been read and how the Christian life was thought to be lived.

But there wasn’t much for the rest of us who didn’t have those dramatic stories and were sitting in church like the elder son behaving ourselves in the first place.

In this reading, the elder son’s story is an uncomfortable add-on. He is the grumpy do-gooder who should just lighten up. But really, after you have been saved and been given the ring, robe, and calf, the rest is a bit anti-climactic.

If that is the extent of the spiritual path what do you do with the rest of your life? You could rinse and repeat. Go do a bunch of sinning again just because making up with Jesus feels so good. Or you could sit there in your smugness like the other son and with a scolding and knowing look welcome the other sinners home.





Bernard Brandon Scott has been helpful with this parable in his book Re-imagine the World: An Introduction to the Parables of Jesus.





That is a great title. Re-imagine is the work of creativity. Creating images and using our imaginations is what creativity is all about.

The parables of Jesus become not allegories for how to get to heaven but pushes, pokes, and prods to inspire us to think differently, to imagine differently, to change our script so that we might live differently as individuals and as a human community.

These parables are creative stories to inspire creativity.

Creativity is perhaps the best thing we have going for us in a time of change. Our Thursday reading group is reading a sober book. Dianne Dumanoski, The End of the Long Summer: Why We Must Remake Our Civilization to Survive a Volatile Earth. She writes what really is needed at this time of change. She quotes C.S. Holling:
Do not try to plan the details…the only way to approach such a period, in which uncertainty is high and one cannot predict what the future holds, is not to predict, but to experiment and act inventively and exuberantly via diverse adventures in living.” P. 213We need to get some background on this parable. The eldest son received 2/3 of the inheritance. The rest of the sons split the remaining 1/3. Usually this meant that the eldest would buy out the others and they would have to find some other way of making a living.

The Father would be a fool to give his inheritance away before his death. The word translated "property" is bios or life. The younger son is asking for his father’s life, as if he were dead to him. The Father, out of character for a traditional Father, does it. The Father seems to be shirking his role. He is careless and allows his youngest son to disrespect him.

The younger son parties. Dissolute living says the text. Blows it all. Then he despises his own religion by living with pigs. While he is at the bottom, he doesn’t repent, he calculates.
Even my Father’s servants have food to eat. He dreams up a story that he hopes will fly and heads home.

The Father when he sees him, again acts out of character for the Father. He runs which is a shaming thing to do. Embraces him, kisses him, and doesn’t even let him make his rehearsed speech. No questions asked. No justice meted.

Instead he gives him a ring, robe, sandals, and kills calf so the whole village will have a feast. He is restored as son not as servant.

Meanwhile, after the party the elder son who has been working comes in from the field finds out what is happening and is angry. He insults his Father by refusing to go to the party. The penalty for disrespecting his father in this traditional society is death.

But the Father again rather than fulfill his role as Father pleads with his elder son. Again, shaming. He again sacrifices his male honor.

We have two sons and a Father. The youngest is home celebrating. The oldest refuses to celebrate even though he has all the property. They are operating under the codes. Honor and shame. Property and duty.

It is a male story. It is a man story. The only one who consistently refuses to be a man is the Father. He continues to act not out of concern for his life, his estate, his duty, and his honor, but instead out of compassion and mercy.

Ultimately, he hopes that his two sons will see themselves as brothers.

What happens next?

What happens when the Father dies?

This is how Bernard Brandon Scott closes his commentary on the parable:
So what happens next? The audience is perhaps asked to imagine a third act. Soon the father will die. Then what? If the sons continue on with their established scripts, they are headed for a collision. One will kill the other. Or they can follow the father’s script and surrender their male honor and keep on welcoming, accepting, and being with the other. They have a choice between being lost or found, dead or alive. P. 83This parable is open ended as are many of the parables of Jesus. We don’t know what will happen. The ending is not satisfactory. The ending is up to us.

This is our story of life on Earth. While the parable lives in a world of male codes, scripts, honor, inheritance, duty, and property that prevents human beings from seeing each other as human beings, as brothers and sisters, we as well have codes and scripts.

The parable invites us to examine our entitlements, expectations, and patterns to which we cling. Are we so tied to a script, a code, a system of honor and shame and entitlement that we are killing each other and Earth for it?

This story of a Father and his two sons is a story familiar in the Bible.

Cain and Abel.
Ishmael and Isaac.
Jacob and Esau.
Joseph and his brothers.

Brothers can end up killing each other. This is the script. You kill for your honor. You kill for property. You kill for security. You kill to right wrongs.

Jesus tells this parable to invite us to change the script. Can we be foolish enough as the father in the story is foolish enough to say that the entitlements, grudges, wrongs real and perceived, are not enough to keep us from seeing each other as beloved?

Perhaps the way of the foolish father is the way of wisdom.

Can we be foolish enough to recognize that our codes, our boundaries, our allegiances, our creeds, our national pride, our way of life can be changed so that all can live?

Can we be foolish enough to come to our senses and share one Earth as one family and with joy and courage change our script?

Can we be foolish enough to become real?

That choice is ours today.

Dinner at 7 pm and Dancing for Peace at 7:45 for Presbyterian Student Fellowship!!

Here is the deal:

From the beginning of time, sacred movement, song and story have brought people together - at times of seasonal ceremony and celebration, as part of everyday life and life passages, in daily renewal and meditation. The Dances of Universal Peace are part of this timeless tradition of sacred movement, song and story.

The Dances of Universal Peace are simple, meditative, joyous, multi-cultural circle dances that use sacred phrases, chants, music and movements from the many spiritual traditions of the earth to touch the spiritual essence within ourselves and recognize it in others. Building on the work begun by Samuel L. Lewis in the 1960s, they promote peace and integration within individuals and understanding and connection within groups worldwide. There are no performers nor audience: new arrivals and old hands form the circle as everyone sings and dances together.

Dr. Rebecca Nunley will direct the dances at the Pres House tonight! Join us!

One of my peeps wrote this great letter in the Elizabethton Star:
Editor:

On insurance I want a plan just like the U.S. Congress has. Currently, 47 million Americans are without health insurance, resulting in 45,000 deaths/year. Medical debt has caused 700,000 bankruptcies.

The United States has the worst record of civilized nations in caring for the health of its citizens and we pay more than any other nation.

One exception to the rule is the elite of our U.S. Congress. They voted in their own coverage, have a good choice of plans, cover spouses and family, qualify as soon as they take the oath through retirement and 50 percent of the premiums are picked up by us the taxpayer! Yet, health care for U.S. citizens is called "socialized medicine." Their plan, the VA, Medicare and Social Security, are government run plans and I don't know anyone willing to give up those benefits. Double standard here? The health reform bill gives uninsured people the same private insurance choices Congress gets, but apparently, what's good for the goose isn't good enough for the American people.

It enrages me as it should every American! Change does not happen unless we initiate it. Complacency doesn't cut it. Call all of our Tennessee representatives at 1-800-828-0498 this week and demand the same coverage choices they have. The vote is soon.

Marie Pendzich
HamptonThanks, Marie! Here are some ways to contact your congresspeople.

As noted a couple of days ago, my laptop is misbehaving. As a result, I've spent a lot of time -- writing time -- backing up files in case this is a sickness unto death. Backing up files reminds me of one of the Platonic dialogues about writing. I don't recall which dialogue -- Phaedrus perhaps -- but the conversation concerns the notion that writing is a secondary and thus lesser form of Christian Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05404166082971649728noreply@blogger.com2

The piece I wrote for People of Faith for Equality Virginia responding to Attorney General Cuccinelli's recent actions ran today as an op-ed in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. By this evening I've only received two e-mail condemnations, neither of which was particularly interesting or creative. Times have changed. Ten years ago I was forced to resign a church in Pittsburgh after preaching a sermon Christian Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05404166082971649728noreply@blogger.com2

Thanks to the Elizabethton Star for including this in Friday's paper!



First Presbyterian Church will host a live and silent auction on Sunday, March 14, beginning at noon. The auction is being held to raise funds for the church's upcoming youth mission trip through Appalachia Service Project.

This event is open to the public. The auction will include a week's use of a Myrtle Beach condo, massage therapy, advanced math and science tutoring, landscaping services, tickets to the Johnson City Community Theater, and much more.

These and many more items available for auction can be seen in the Auction Catalog.

For more information, contact John at First Presbyterian Church, 543-7737.All are welcome!

A few weeks ago President Obama had a health care reform conference with Democrats and Republicans to try to reach a bipartisan consensus on a health care reform bill.

read more

Glenn Beck's recent theological musings resulted in the creation of a Facebook event for this weekend, Worship at a Social Justice Loving Church.

As of this posting, the event has 2,273 confirmed guests as well as links and wall posts to social justice lovin' congregations. It would be a helpful resource if these congregations were listed by location.

But the point is to get out, support, and encourage faith communities in regards to social, economic, and ecological justice. Beck's Christianity is loud, brash, and tone-deaf, but it isn't the only kind...not by a long shot.

If you do decide to go to a social justice loving church this weekend, make sure you set your clock ahead.


Otherwise...

...it is so embarrassing.

The curly haired boy pictured further down has infected me with his cold.Some strange viral thing infected my laptop yesterday.Everything put together falls apart.One could go lots of places from there, but my head is stuffed with anything but thought today so I'm just going to leave at that.All the king's horses and all the king's men cannot but this back together again.Christian Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05404166082971649728noreply@blogger.com0

I am proud of Constance McMillen and ashamed of the adults in her community. From today's Johnson City Press:

JACKSON, Miss. — Constance McMillen didn’t believe her Mississippi school district would really call off her senior prom rather than allow her to show up with her girlfriend and wear a tuxedo.

On Thursday, a day after the Itawamba County school board did just that, the 18-year-old lesbian high school senior reluctantly returned to campus to some unfriendly looks, she said.

“Somebody said, ’Thanks for ruining my senior year.”’ McMillen said.

The district announced Wednesday it wouldn’t host the April 2 prom. The decision came after the American Civil Liberties Union demanded that officials change a policy banning samesex prom dates because it violated students’ rights. And the ACLU said the district not letting McMillen wear a tuxedo violated her free expression rights....

....Same-sex prom dates and crossdressing are new issues for many high schools around the country, said Daryl Presgraves, a spokesman for GLSEN: Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, a Washington-based advocacy group.

“A lot of schools actually react rather than do the research and find out what the rights of these students are,” said Presgraves, who was preparing to facilitate a discussion about anti-gay bullying at a National Association of Secondary School Principals meeting.

U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., said a bill he’s introduced in Congress would protect students such as McMillen. Polis said the measure would make it illegal to discriminate against gay and lesbian school students. He said his bill is modeled after similar laws in at least 10 states.

“This situation with the prom is a perfect example of why we need to protect students from discrimination. In this case it’s a prom. It other cases, it’s getting beaten up or killed,” Polis said.

Polis said he was “dismayed” by the school board’s action.

“They ruined the prom, not only for this young woman, but for all of the straight kids at the school,” he said.

The school district had said it hoped a privately sponsored prom could be held. McMillen said if that happens, she’s sure she’ll be excluded.

The Middle East Study Committee has released its report, Breaking Down the Walls that you can download in pdf. On their website, you can read the report in sections as well as read a number of other resources including member bios and a timeline of their work.

This report will be acted upon at the 2010 General Assembly in July.


This would be an excellent document to study for an education class in your congregation or a book study group. These folks have put forth a great deal of effort.

I am proud of my denomination for taking on this issue and speaking boldly if controversially regarding issues of power, justice, and peace.

The following letter to the editor is a response to the response to the response to my recent Evolution Sunday sermon and article.

A creationist has words for my apostate church! Woot!

It is the latest in the evolution/creationist smackdown in Elizabethton, Tennessee! From today's letter to the editor section in the Elizabethton Star:
Editor:
I would like to respond to Amy Williams' editorial printed in the March 9, 2010 edition of the Star regarding Evolution Sunday at First Presbyterian Church. First I would like to state that it is not my intention to attack Ms. Williams nor the church she attends. But the Bible warns that in the last days that there will be apostate churches. An apostate church is one that has fallen away from the teachings of our God of the Bible.

I have studied creation science for nearly 20 years, so I feel qualified to speak on the subject. First, evolution is only a theory, not a fact as Ms. Williams claims. Secondly, much of science is interpretation. Case in point, ever watch an episode of CSI? A half a dozen investigators (using proven science) can investigate a crime scene and come up with a half a dozen theories as to what happened, but only one is correct.

In the limited space I have here I can't go into much detail, but I will present my case against evolution:

1. Transitional forms -- formerly called "missing links," but scientists didn't want to admit there was anything missing in their theory of evolution so they changed the name to transitional forms. Not a single fossil of any transitional form has ever been found. The Bible clearly states each animal was created after its own kind (species) and that's still what we have today. There are no half & half (nor any other ratio) creatures in existence today nor evidence that they lived in the past.

2. Nebraska Man -- from a single tooth found in Nebraska a whole new species of prehistoric man was created by scientists. Nebraska Man made it into school textbooks. The tooth turned out to be not from a human, but that of a pig!

3. Piltdown Man -- a hoax. Another prehistoric species of man created by scientists. Turned out to be a human skull matched to a jaw bone of an ape. Again, it made it into school textbooks.

4. Brontosaurus -- the most famous of all dinosaurs never existed, even though a skeleton of one sat in the New York Museum of Natural History for over 50 years. Turned out that the brontosaurus is actually an apatosaurus with the head of a camarasaurus.

5. Paluxy Riverbed Fossil -- a fossil found near Glen Rose, Texas has dinosaur and human footprints together side-by-side fossilized in the same layer of mud. But how can that be? Evolution says dinosaurs lived millions and millions of years before man....did they? Not according to this scientific proof.

6. Global warming -- now called "climate change" due to recent cold winters. It was only about 20 years ago that scientists were warning of a new ice age coming on the horizon. Now our Chicken Little scientists claim we'll all be swimming in a few years because the ice caps are melting. Well, which is it? Didn't I just recently hear climate scientists were falsifying records to "prove" climate change. Why would they do that? Well, think about it. No climate change -- no climate change funding -- hence no job.

Just because a person puts on a white lab coat, doesn't mean he's telling you the truth. Scientists are human. Humans lie, cheat, steal and make mistakes. The same science that "proves" evolution is the same science that also proves the Bible -- not that it needs proving. By the way, nothing in the Bible has ever been disproved by science.

Evolution is the biggest lie ever perpetuated on mankind by Satan. Our society today is brainwashed in evolution by the schools and by the media. There is good creation science out there; it's just hard to find as evolutionists try to suppress it through coercion and academic blackmail. Science is science -- as I said in the beginning, it's all in how you interpret it.

In closing, I personally prefer to put my faith in creation (God) rather than evolution (man). Quite frankly, I think it takes more faith to believe in evolution than it does creation once you really know the facts. Ms. Williams, I encourage you to do your own research if you really want to know the truth. May I suggest the book: "The Lie... Evolution" by Ken Ham. A good resource for creation materials is: Institute for Creation Research, P.O. Box 2667, El Cajon, CA 92021-0667 or you can find them on the web at http://www.icr.org/.
Richard Bradley
ElizabethtonSigh.

Now before we run off screaming into the darkness, we have to take a breath. One cannot understand the true believer. One can only marvel. Having people write this kind of stuff in the newspaper is in the long run, a good thing. Controversy moves understanding ahead.





Helpful in this quest is the latest book by Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show On Earth. This book will fall on Mr. Bradley's deaf ears as Dawkins is certainly one of Satan's minions.





However, for those who truly are interested in understanding the scientific evidence for evolution, this book is a big help. Here is a preview: