Fight for Your Faith

Does your faith need strengthening? Are you confused and wondering if Jesus Christ is really "The Way, the Truth, and the Life?" "Fight for Your Faith" is a blog filled with interesting and thought provoking articles to help you find the answers you are seeking. Jesus said, "Seek and ye shall find." In Jeremiah we read, "Ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall seek for Me with all your heart." These articles and videos will help you in your search for the Truth.

Monday, September 12, 2016

What is your child’s authority? ‘Science’ camp undermines creation

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by Lita Cosner http://creation.com/ncse-child-authority?utm_media


Evolutionary teachers often use equivocation to indoctrinate unsuspecting students with the general theory of evolution (GTE).

Recently, the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) published a series of blogs1 about a science camp they held for children, and what they wrote could be instructive for creationist parents.

First, it should surprise precisely no one that the NCSE is openly evolutionist. What was surprising to me is that multiple creationist families allowed their 9-to-11-year-olds to be in such an environment where they would obviously face challenges from authoritative adults challenging what their parents had taught them. Clearly at some point children will face evolutionist tests to their faith, but a 9-year-old child will likely see an evolutionist Ph.D. geneticist as having great authority. And it has been shown multiple times that science organizations like the NCSE are not neutral regarding religion.
The fact that strawberries have DNA does not explain how such a complex code could arise from an unintelligent source.

Second, the evolutionary teaching at the camp was full of what we call ‘bait and switch’ argumentation. For instance, the blog2 talks about how the kids learned about DNA and evolution by extracting DNA from strawberries. Well, what those kids did was very interesting operational science. But the fact that strawberries have DNA does not explain how such a complex code could arise from an unintelligent source, or how mutations, which are errors in the copying process, could give rise to more complexity instead of simply breaking what already exists. In fact, the camp itself is a bit of a ‘bait and switch’, because it was called a ‘science’ camp, but it really turned out to be more of an ‘evolution’ camp.

Third, one of the most powerful tools the camp leaders used was insisting that the dialogue was always respectful, and this is something we can wholeheartedly agree with. We have always advocated for creationist students in public schools to always engage with their teachers in a respectful manner.
If you are a parent, what are you doing to ensure that when (not if) your children are presented with evolution, they’re standing strong on the authority of Scripture?

Fourth, evolutionist scientists were consistently presented as ‘authorities’ to the students to counter creationist objections.3 While it is tempting to dwell on the growing number of creationist scientists who have invented things like the gene gun and the MRI scanner, there is a more important lesson to parents: a warning to be careful with who is presented as an authority in your children’s lives. Scripture tells us to be respectful to and pray for our authorities, and while civil authorities are in view in that passage, we can see how that would apply to teachers and professors as well.

We have argued before that parents have the ultimate authority for managing their children’s education, and that is the case no matter what educational choices a family makes for their children. Biblically, the most important element of a child’s education is ensuring that they know Scripture and are encouraged to believe it in all areas of their life. Many parents feel overwhelmed when it comes to teaching their children about a biblical worldview, but the great news is that there are more resources teaching biblical creation than perhaps at any other time in history. For instance, Refuting Evolution 2 was written specifically to refute a book that NCSE sent out to every science teacher in America.

The people who ran this camp genuinely believe that it would be best if those creationist children believed in evolution. But biblically, it’s not their call. If you are a parent, what are you doing now to ensure that when (not if) your children are presented with evolution, they’re standing strong on the authority of Scripture?

Related Articles
Further Reading

References and notes
Schoerning, E., NCSE runs a camp: part 1, 27 July 2016, ncse.com/blog/2016/07/ncse-runs-camp-part-1-0018318.
Schoerning, E., NCSE runs a camp: part 2, 28 July 2016, ncse.com/blog/2016/07/ncse-runs-camp-part-2-0018319. 
Schoerning, E., NCSE runs a camp: part 3, 29 July 2016, ncse.com/blog/2016/07/ncse-runs-camp-part-3-0018320.

Mexicans March Against President’s Proposal to Allow Gay Marriage

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(Reuters) Tens of thousands of people across Mexico marched on Saturday to protest against gay marriage, challenging President Enrique Pena Nieto’s proposal to recognize same-sex marriage throughout the traditionally conservative country.

Dennis Edwards: Regardless of the opinions of the majority of the world's populations who believe marriage is between a man and a woman, our internationalist friends will push their gay marriage doctrine which also allows same-sex couples to adopt children. This is the point the hurts the most, allowing the poor innocents into the hands of the perverted. Mankind has gone completely crazy calling good-bad, and bad-good. Like the Bible indicates, our leaders are leading us away from the right and the good, all done in the name of "tolerance." The psalmist has warned us that every nation that forgets God and His commandments shall be turned into hell. And you wonder why the world is such a mess? We have forgotten our Maker.

Hillary Clinton’s health just became a real issue in the presidential campaign

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By Chris Cillizza, Washington Post, September 11, 2016

Hillary Clinton falling ill Sunday morning at a memorial service on the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks will catapult questions about her health from the ranks of conservative conspiracy theory to perhaps the central debate in the presidential race over the coming days.

“Secretary Clinton attended the September 11th Commemoration Ceremony for just an hour and thirty minutes this morning to pay her respects and greet some of the families of the fallen,” spokesman Nick Merrill said. “During the ceremony, she felt overheated, so departed to go to her daughter’s apartment and is feeling much better.”

What that statement leaves out is that a) it came 90 minutes after Clinton left the ceremony b) reporters–or even a reporter–were not allowed to follow her and c) the temperature in New York City at the time of Clinton’s overheating was in the low 80s. (A heat wave over the eastern United States broke last night/this morning.)

She later left her daughter’s apartment, saying she was “feeling great” and waving at the crowd, per the Associated Press.

Whether Clinton likes it or not, her “overheating” episode comes at a very bad time for her campaign. Thanks to the likes of Rudy Giuliani and a small but vocal element of the Republican base, talk of her health had been bubbling over the past week–triggered by a coughing episode she experienced during a Labor Day rally.

That talk was largely confined to Republicans convinced that Clinton has long been hiding some sort of serious illness. I wrote dismissively of that conspiracy theory in this space last week, noting that Clinton had been given an entirely clean bill of health by her doctors after an episode in which she fainted, suffered a concussion and then was found to have a blood clot in late 2012 and early 2013.

Coughing, I wrote, is simply not evidence enough of any sort of major illness that Clinton is assumed to be hiding. Neither, of course, is feeling “overheated.” But those two things happening within six days of each other to a candidate who is 68 years old makes talk of Clinton’s health no longer just the stuff of conspiracy theorists.

Whereas Clinton and her campaign could laugh off questions about her health before today, the “overheating” episode makes it almost impossible for them to do so. Not only has it come at a time when there was growing chatter–with very little evidence–that her health was a problem but it also happened at a 9/11 memorial event–an incredibly high-profile moment with lots and lots of cameras and reporters around.

Her campaign may well try to dismiss this story as nothing more than an isolated incident, meaning nothing. (Democrats were already pushing the story of George W. Bush fainting in 2002 after choking on a pretzel, via Twitter.)

But the issue is that Clinton kept reporters totally in the dark for 90 minutes after her abrupt departure from the 9/11 memorial service for a health-related matter. No reporter was allowed to follow her. (Clinton has resisted a protective pool for coverage because Donald Trump refuses to participate in one.) This is, yet again, the Clinton campaign asking everyone to just trust it. She got overheated! But she’s fine now!

Clinton may well be totally fine–and I certainly hope she is. But we are 58 days away from choosing the person who will lead the country for the next four years, and she is one of the two candidates with a real chance of winning. Taking the Clinton team’s word for it on her health–in light of the episode on Sunday morning–is no longer enough. Reasonable people can–and will–have real questions about her health.

Sunday morning changed the conversation in the race about Clinton’s health. Or rather it will force Clinton to have a conversation about her health in the race.

Clinton’s ‘deplorables’ remark sums up a deplorable election season

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By Dan Balz, Washington Post, September 10, 2016

If Campaign 2016 needed some shorthand to capture the way many Americans see the competition between the two major-party candidates, Hillary Clinton may have unintentionally supplied it this weekend. For much of the electorate, this could be remembered as a deplorable election.

Candidates are often stamped by seemingly offhand statements. Mitt Romney never escaped his “47 percent” comment in 2012, and President Obama found the same when he said many culturally conservative voters “cling” to their guns and religion. Donald Trump has a laundry list of them. After Friday, Clinton now has hers to regret.

Clinton stumbled as Romney and Obama did, seemingly with her guard down and before the friendliest of audiences, an LGBT fundraiser in New York. If there isn’t a page in campaign manuals labeled “Beware of Fundraisers,” there should be. It’s where mistakes are easily made and not so easily undone.

Unlike Romney and Obama, Clinton spoke at a fundraiser that was open to the media, which should have made her more careful. Although she has said similar things in the past, she clearly went further than before, raising the question of whether this was intentional.

Here’s what she said that caused the uproar: “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the ‘basket of deplorables.’ Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic–you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that, and he has lifted them up.”

She went on to talk about others who support Trump, saying they are worthy of empathy and understanding. She described them as people who feel “that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re desperate for change.”

That latter characterization aptly captures an important part of the dynamic of the 2016 campaign, and it is one important reason Trump became the Republican nominee and remains competitive in the general election. But Clinton so muddied the focus on the grievances of many Americans who feel left behind with the first part of what she said that she has landed on the defensive, and understandably so.

The word “deplorable” no doubt captures how many Americans see the overall competition between Clinton and Trump. Last week’s 50-state survey by The Washington Post and SurveyMonkey underscored the concerns that voters have about both major-party candidates. Nationally, 55 percent of registered voters say Clinton would threaten the country’s well-being, while 61 percent say Trump would threaten the country’s well-being. Overall, 95 percent say either Trump or Clinton–or both–would do so.

These attitudes come after a campaign of insults and petty, personal attacks as well as a clash over some of the most fundamental questions facing the country. This is a campaign that could be about big issues but instead often has been fought at the most base level.

Clinton has sought to make Trump an unacceptable candidate, arguing that his temperament and views should disqualify him in the eyes of a majority of voters. Those attacks have been tough and relentless and unsurprising.

Why Clinton concluded there was something to be gained by shifting her focus from Trump to some of his supporters with her shorthand characterization is inexplicable. Attacking symptoms is one thing, but branding an entire class of voters is another, as Romney and Obama learned.

This was a self-inflicted wound. Her supporters might cheer her, and those at the fundraiser laughed as she made her comment. Ultimately it might have little effect on the polls. But it is a damaging moment that Republicans will use to sow even more distrust about her candidacy.

Eventually, one of these two candidates will be elected president. Unifying the country will be exceedingly difficult, to say the least. Clinton has talked about wanting to find common ground with Republicans where possible. She also has been urged repeatedly to find a more positive message, to give people an affirmative reason to vote for her.

In her Saturday statement, Clinton focused again on Americans left out or left behind and said, “I’m determined to bring our country together.” But her comments Friday have provided her opponents with fresh ammunition to distrust her desire to work across party lines and could cause them to resist those overtures in the future. If she becomes president, she has made the job of governing all the more difficult.

Sunday, September 11, 2016

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

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