It doesn’t take a genius to see that morally, the world is in collapse. I received an email message today from singer/songwriter Keith and Kristyn Getty, asking those on their mailing list to pray. Apparently North Ireland is on the verge of legalizing abortion, and the Getty’s are heartbroken that this evil has come to their homeland.
I understand what they’re feeling. But as I read the appeal for prayer regarding this matter, I couldn’t help but think of Romans 1, the last 13 verses, and the progression of evil God said was taking place.
So this afternoon I opened another email that was just as disheartening because it contained an article about the connection between some scientific communities and accused pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who hung himself in prison in August while awaiting trial. Apparently Epstein was rich, hobnobbed with the famous (a documentary just came out about his connection to Prince Andrew and accusations that he was on the receiving end of Epstein’s involvement in sex-trafficking), and made his money, or a good part of it, by the sex-traffic “trade.”
As if that’s not bad enough, Epstein was generous with his ill-gotten gains. He donated to a couple universities, specifically to scientific programs, to the degree that some noted scientists have either been forced out of their positions or left willingly because they didn’t want to be associated with a program that was funded heavily by a sex-trafficker. Of course discussion and debate also ensued. What made it possible for someone so corrupt to have the access and influence over scientists for so long? Was it the gender imbalance in the science programs or something else?
Pressure to raise money for research, the allure of unrestricted donations for novel ideas and the aura of star scholars may have contributed to decisions that in retrospect look tawdry. Faculty members described responses ranging from horrified reactions to arguments that tainted money could be used to promote social good through research. (The Washington Post)
What has come out of this scandal rather clearly is how the scientific community works. So much research depends on funding, and funding depends on approval. From the same Washington Post article:
Technology scholar danah boyd chose to talk about Epstein last week when she was given an award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
“I am here today in-no-small-part because I benefited from the generosity of men who tolerated and, in effect, enabled unethical, immoral, and criminal men,” boyd said.
“Many of us are aghast to learn that a pedophile had this much influence in tech, science, and academia, but so many more people face the personal and professional harm of exclusion . . . (emphasis added)
In order to get approval for research projects, a scientist has to be part of the “in crowd.”
Scientists, especially scientists in academia, are uniquely vulnerable to professional destruction if they stray from the herd. Their life hangs on peer-review. Just look at the vituperation — the ostracism, ridicule, and even hate — rained upon Mike Behe or Jonathan Wells or Guillermo Gonzalez or Bill Dembski or Richard Sternberg or any of the other courageous scientists who had the integrity to question the Darwinian “consensus.”
As the Epstein scandal shows with striking clarity, dissent on matters of importance is forbidden in the scientific community. Scientists will engage in or tolerate all manner of lie and vice to protect their careers. They “go along to get along.” They join the consensus that Jeffrey Epstein is a wonderful patron and his money is untainted, just as they join the consensus that Darwinian evolution is a “fact.” Many — perhaps even most — do not do it because they believe it. They do it for professional survival. (“Jeffrey Epstein and the Silence of the Scientists”)
Which brings me back to Romans 1. The first component the passage identifies in a slide into depraved thinking is a suppression of the truth, followed by things like not honoring God or giving Him thanks, worshiping and serving the creature rather than the Creator, exchanging the natural function for that which is unnatural (I know this is generally believed to be a sexual thing, but I couldn’t help but wonder if it didn’t also include mothers killing their babies), and ultimately refusing to acknowledge God any longer.
All those steps lead to unmitigated evil as listed in the next verses. I don’t think there’s a single one of these that isn’t in the news on a fairly regular basis:
being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful
So you have people hating on Judge Tammy Kemp and even one group bringing charges of misconduct, because she showed compassion to a convicted murderer. In fact, she was taking her cue from the victim’s brother who forgave the guilty defendant and told her to turn her life over to Christ. She told the judge she didn’t know how, that she didn’t know if God could forgive her, that she didn’t even have a Bible to try and find out the answers. That’s when the judge retreated to her chambers and brought out her own personal Bible which she gave to the defendant, now convicted criminal.
Apparently such a display of compassion and mercy is something to rise up against, at least in the eyes of some. Which only serves as evidence of the slide into wickedness brought on by the depraved mind God has given humanity over to. We earned it and now we are reaping the horrendous results of society without God. Christian compassion is a thing to “investigate” and murder is to be put in place by an edict from government. All the while sex-traffickers and pedophiles can move amongst those who are supposed to be thinkers and influence them with their wealth.
The capper, of course, to the Romans 1 list is the final verse declaring that people not only do the same, but also give hearty approval of people who practice such things.
None of this is good news, but the truth of Romans 1 is followed by the truth of Romans 5 and 6, even 7, and especially of 8: “There is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” There is a way to escape this mess!
![PowerElementsCharacterDevelopment[1000][1]](https://rebeccaluellamiller.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/powerelementscharacterdevelopment10001.jpg?w=205)
A Christian Worldview of Fiction 
So what this is old news Becky. Very few scientists are corrupted by private donated money just as any other people in society such as judges, policemen, politicians, unions, bankers and Church leaders because most of them are genuinely honest.
I have to ask how a wealthy paedophile can convince 97% scientists how to be motivated one way or another in biological evolution considering it appears to you to have a connection.
On a more relevant issue, how can a paedophile have influence on condoning his sexual deviancy through any scientific issues when everything published in creditable science papers is restricted by peer reviews? This is exactly why peer reviews are in place, so that no rubbish is promoted as genuine scientific research and all the checks and balances are in place.
The gender balance may have been an issue, but how does this corrupt science and peer reviews or have anything to do with Darwin? The Washington Post mostly indicates the indignation and outrage with resignations but not a mention of the fields of science where Epstein had direct personal influence.
Somehow and someway creationist people have a knack of turning everything into all of scientific research being at the mercy of corruption and that evolutionary principles and Darwin were all part of this corruption, this is merely a ridiculous conspiracy theory.
What is worse you believe the rubbish from Evolution News written by a faithful Intelligent Design proponent. Let me again point out that about 97% of what is believed to be at least 6-7 million scientists and Engineers in the US believe in the biological evolutionary principles, this leaves creation and intelligent design only as pseudo-science.
Written in 2015 a Pew Research Center report, 73 percent of American adults younger than 30 expressed some sort of belief in evolution, a jump from 61 percent in 2009.
Give up your conspiracy theories Becky, evolution is a fact and getting stronger by the year. Beyond biology, evolution is supported by and makes sense of findings in geology, paleontology, isotope chemistry, biomedicine, and other fields.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Steve, you missed the point! I’m not saying that this one evil man has tainted all of science because he hob-nobbed with them. I’m saying that he could, that they were willing to take his money, that some still defend the decision to do so, reveals something about the SYSTEM—the very “peer review” system you love so much, that you think keeps science pure. Obviously, it does not! If you can’t see that, you are only proving that you are blinded by your own god.
And truth is not up for a vote. Who cares what “73 percent of American adults” believe if they are wrong. I mean, we’ve had lynch mobs and wars and riots because a majority of a town or country or community wanted something. Did not make them right!
I have no conspiracy theory, Steve. You’re the own who continues to ascribe false motives and errant beliefs to what I’ve said. Things like, I don’t believe in science. That stuff is just bogus. Not true. A false narrative. I don’t believe in a conspiracy theory regarding Darwin. I don’t have to. He didn’t make any secret about his motives for thinking up the theory of evolution. I’m sorry you can’t see what I’m really saying here.
Becky
LikeLike
“the very “peer review” system you love so much, that you think keeps science pure. Obviously, it does not!”
The peer review is basically an advanced quality control system as much as anything. Everything must have been covered, this has to be the standard. Science either pure or not, does not declare they have found absolute proof or unmovable facts, unlike religions scientific findings can be adjusted, changed or reversed to encompass the up to date information.
“I don’t believe in a conspiracy theory regarding Darwin. I don’t have to. He didn’t make any secret about his motives for thinking up the theory of evolution.”
I am really interested in what you mean about Darwin’s motives and that he simply thought evolution theory up, can you please explain?
LikeLike
Again, Steve, you’re missing the point. The people at MIT and Harvard were essentially bought! There’s nothing pure about that. The quote I gave from that one woman said a scientist has to be noticed to get the grants and the articles in the “right” journals, and the way to be noticed is to be in the in-crowd of scientists, the group that went to the home of the pedophile and sex trafficker. In other words, NO. A hundred times, NO. Science and scientists are just as open to corruption as any other person, any other field. I am so surprised that you can’t see this.
As to Darwin’s motives, I apparently misspoke by saying that they were clearly known. A little research shows he lost a daughter to illness when she was only 10 or so, and shortly after, he stopped going to church. He purposefully worked with scientists who were free of the strictures of religion, and some twenty years later wrote ‘he “had no intention to write atheistically.” But, he went on, “I cannot see as plainly as others do … evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to be too much misery in the world.” ‘ Even the title, “Origins” is a negation of God’s originating life. A smidgen of logic says that Darwin went looking for an alternative to God creating and ordering the world because he wanted to explain the suffering he and his family had experienced. Of course I could be wrong, but I know many others who use evolution as a god substitute.
Becky
LikeLike
Of course anyone can be corrupted and many of the scientific people such as those involved with drug producing companies are prime targets because of the huge billion dollar markets.
The peer review process like any other can be and often has been corrupted, however the real test of real science is when it has been investigated for many decades by hundreds of scientists worldwide and is accepted by over 90% of the worlds scientists suggests that it cannot be faked, such as biological evolution and climate change.
“A smidgen of logic says that Darwin went looking for an alternative to God creating and ordering the world because he wanted to explain the suffering he and his family had experienced.”
Alfred Russel Wallace, another British naturalist, had come to the conclusion that living things evolve by 1855. Wallace was a co-discoverer of the evolutionary theory even though Darwin has gotten most of the credit. Darwin had come to the same conclusion many years earlier and they published a paper together in 1858.
What is more Darwin had 10 children and 2 died under 10 from infectious diseases, something very common in those days before modern medicines. After his daughters death at 10 years of age Darwin feared that they might have inherited weaknesses from inbreeding due to the close family ties he shared with his wife and cousin, Emma Wedgwood. (Wikipedia)
I do not think your smidgen of logic has any credibility and I think you read a scientific conspiracy against Christians into anything that is not hinged on God Becky.
LikeLike
Steve, you are making things up to think I believe a scientific conspiracy. I do know people have motives. If a person believed God created, he might want to investigate how, but to leave Him out, a person like Darwin would have to already have reason to do so, taken the culture in which he lived.
And nobody said anything about scientific data being faked. I don’t know where you got that idea. I’ve said over and over and over again that what I object to are the conclusions of scientific research that arrives at a godless existence. The fact that we have this debate, that so much of the science YOU reject is still science but science that concludes in a different place from what you believe, shows that there isn’t only one perspective that you can arrive at from the facts.
Becky
Becky
LikeLike
Darwin lived in a culture of strong Christian religious belief.
On the Origin of Species reflects theological views. Though he thought of religion as a tribal survival strategy, Darwin still believed that God was the ultimate lawgiver, and later recollected that at the time he was convinced of the existence of God as a First Cause and deserved to be called a theist. (Wikipedia)
I think that maybe you should drop the false Darwin information Becky, do you hear this stuff from your Christian friends?
“If a person believed God created, he might want to investigate how”
How can anyone investigate God, Satan, angels and spirits?
“so much of the science YOU reject is still science but science that concludes in a different place from what you believe”
The science of something can be investigated, it can be identified, it’s origins found, it’s effect on people and environment, experimented with and tested a hundred times etc. It does not simply come down to a discussion like creationism or intelligent design where nothing can be examined that identifies who, what and where this creator exists, anyone can claim the planet was created by any method such as the supernatural and by whatever gods they like, the aliens, some superpower created by the cosmos or whatever you like.
Inserting God into real science is also not actually real science Becky it is far to limited. The only place in science Christianity features is in studies revolving around neuroscience, this is because this is the only place where someone praying to God causes a process in the brain that can be identified.
LikeLike
Darwin maybe wanted to still call himself a theist, said that he believed God was the law giver, because he did live in a religious day. His actions and his conclusions belie his words. He stopped going to church, even though his wife and kids still attended. He was a troubled soul when his favorite child died–of a disease he thought to be genetic. He wanted to make sense of life and He didn’t look to God. He looked to his own way of viewing the world.
“How can anyone investigate God, Satan, angels and spirits?” Through Bible reading and prayer. In his culture, he would have known he could search the scriptures for his answers. He clearly had an investigative mind, so why did He leave God out if he believed in Him?
“It does not simply come down to a discussion like creationism or intelligent design where nothing can be examined” You are not accurately portraying what creation scientists do. But I’m not surprised since you dismiss them without reading them (like you have the Bible) because you’ve already judged them wanting. I’ve read far more factual study from Creation scientists than in any article you’ve linked to, Steve.
“Inserting God” is just as “real” as scientists who say they don’t know how the universe started. Seriously, Steve, do you think science answers all the metaphysical questions people have? Where did we come from? Why are we here? What is our destiny? Do we live for eternity? Science can’t answer any of those, any more than it can answer questions about the unrepeatable event of the beginning of all things. I don’t understand why you think science can do so much more than what it claims to do.
Becky
LikeLike
The Epstein scandal is revolting and by no means isolated.
However, there are plenty of other evils that abound which go unreported or are somehow justified, and /or whitewashed.
Consider Phillip May, husband of former UK Prime Minister Theresa May and the conflict of interest regarding his involvement with arms manufacture and the bombing of Syria.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/disgusting-conflict-of-interest-theresa-mays-husbands-investment-firm-made-a-financial-killing-from-the-bombing-of-syria/5636632
And as Steve points out, your apparent crusade against evolution in favour of Creationism and ID is becoming ever more untenable, especially when one considers the current position of someone like Stephen Meyer.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I have no crusade. I’m sorry if you think that.
I don’t know anything about Stephen Meyer. I had not heard of him until I read the review that prompted my earlier post. If he’s done something despicable, it wouldn’t be the first time that someone who says he believes in God has done so. I have no reason to believe he is a Christian and so I hold him to no Christ-like standard of conduct.
But I agree with you that we could go to a number of “industries” and find the kind of corruption that was recently uncovered about MIT and Harvard. I started to say something about the US government and the whole system of lobbying, because I see that as nothing more than legalized bribery, but I didn’t want to lose focus. The point of the post is in the first and last paragraphs. The world is experiencing moral collapse and there is a way of escape from this mess.
Becky
LikeLike
I am not saying Meyer has done anything despicable,
I said he was disingenuous for finally coming clean after championing ID and now stating he believes Yahweh is the creator responsible for the universe.
Morality is purely subjective, but religion has always got a lot to answer for in this regard.
BTW, are you going to offer an answer regarding supposed evidence of dinosaurs and humans co existing?
After all, it is all part and parcel of YEC.
LikeLike
“I don’t understand why you think science can do so much more than what it claims to do.”
It is a very simple answer Becky, and I think you already know what it is without being aware of it.
The whole of our lives comes down to what when and why things happens to us and the quality of our life on planet Earth, and at the most extreme level our ultimate survival.
Science is at the forefront of all of this, we only survive as we do because of science, we only have a longer and a most pain free life than ever before because of science. Life and death is dictated by scientific processes and technology either from medical techniques or our demise from weapons of mass destruction. Science has explained every destructive natural event, the basic workings of our most complex human brains and science is putting humans into space and eventually onto many other planets.
All this is scientific, the computers, phones and all aspects of travel are some items that effects every one of our lives in drastic measures. Whatever science cannot answer right now is besides the point because through trial and error, investigation and experimentation they will have it on the road to accomplishment at the end of the day and whatever the results they will have an effect on all of our lives in one way or another. Climate change for example is becoming the greatest challenge for science and all humans.
Compare this with all the religious dogma on the planet past and present used to explain natural events and issues generated by prayers and miracles. Ideologies such as political, social or religious has far less impact on modern daily life like science does. All these ideologies are based on human emotional mechanisms that may guide many people’s lives often in a suppressive, happy or in a spiritual manner, however nothing can come close to what science is and what it has achieved rightly or wrongly for mankind.
LikeLike
Funny huh? Christians worship a god who ordered his followers to rip the fetuses out of the wombs of pregnant women, which? Is abortion.
God supposedly drowned the whole world and killed fetuses in the wombs of pregnant women and that? Is abortion.
Christians? Have committed untold abortions when they slaughtered Pagans, Native Americans, Jews and other pregnant women in their forced conversion programs and in their worst case of mass genocide in recorded human history against us Native Americans.
Christians in fact? Are responsible for 70% of abortions performed. In other words? Statistics prove that 70% of all abortions are performed on women who call themselves Christians.
Oh and each day? 12,000 infants, toddlers and children? Die horrifying deaths from starvation and other things.
But abortion is evil huh?
LikeLike
Well, I think it’s important to point out that “Christians” didn’t do any of the things you are talking about. There WERE no Christians then.
Be that as it may, God was dealing with people from His vantage point of omniscience, justice, and righteousness. He knows, even in the womb, who will accept Him as sovereign Lord and who will reject Him. I think it’s a bit prideful for us to say, No, no. WE need to see how they’d turn out before we approve or disapprove of what God ruled.
Because God is sovereign, I have no problem letting Him make the hard call. And what’s more, no matter how badly I feel knowing that there are people who have and will face His wrath, His judgment, He feels so much more than I. After all, He knows those people, not just by name. He knows all about them. He cares what happens to them. But He is righteous and just. It’s not righteous or just to let abusers continue to abuse, to let parents raise up another whole generation of terrorists. At some point God says, That’s enough. Since you haven’t stopped or changed, I’ll stop you.
I’d like to know what statistics you’re using. I’ve never seen any data of that sort. And of course there are professing “Christians” who have abortions. Doesn’t mean they are Christians. But I suppose there are Christians we do have abortions. I know there are lots of women who had abortions before they became Christians, and they have found forgiveness for that sin just like for every other sin.
Yes, abortion IS evil. Back when women began advocating for legalized abortion, they claimed that only wanted children would be born and abortion would end abuse and even the too many mouths to feed, problem. Guess what? Not even close. If anything, we have seen a rise in those problems.
Kind of odd that there are no atheist homes for single moms or support for pregnant girls who decide to carry their baby to term. There are lots of Christian groups that do that. But the only answer atheists seem to have is, Kill that thing.
Becky
LikeLike
Becky I must ask, If you can justify God in the Old Testament ripping out fetuses etc because he knows they would not accept him, would it not make sense to believe God is allowing abortion in the modern world because he knows already that those fetuses will turn into people that will not accept him?
I guess that could be the same reason all other kids die young.
“But the only answer atheists seem to have is, Kill that thing.”
Not true it is government agencies that support young mothers in Australia, tax funded by both religious people and atheists. Of course the Catholic church has fought against sex education and the use of birth control for decades that obviously does not help the problem.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Isn’t it interesting all the passes they give to their god and his evil he perpetrates? Their god orders his followers to smash the bodies of infants and children against rocks and murder them, and? That is ok. Or god orders his followers to rip the fetuses out of the wombs of pregnant women and? That is ok. Or god commits mass genocide against the human race, killing innocent fetuses, infants and children for the acts of adults and? We are not only supposed to think this is right, but hey, not judge their god for doing this, but accept that their god is going to judge us. Now how is he even worthy to judge us in the first place? Why? Because Abrahamists say so? And what right do they have in telling us? WE cannot judge their god? Who gave him a freaking pass not to be judged? I think if some being is going to judge me? I do not think that being should be responsible for mass genocides and slaughter of innocent children.
And what about that god of theirs forcing parents to eat their own children? Yeah, we are supposed to call a being such as this just? Merciful? Loving of children? Yeah right, who are the Christians trying to kid. Or how about a god who sicks 2 she bears on 42 kids to have them ripped to shreds and eaten simply because they called one of his prophets a bald head? REALLY? That shows such a merciful god huh? Yeah, I guess my idea of sending them to bed without matzos and taking away their draddle for a week would be a little more merciful to those kids than having two bears maul them to death. I mean come the hell on, how DARE you proclaim this being as merciful and just for actions and acts like these? These are not the actions of a just, loving, merciful god but the actions of a monster.
And this is why? Christians are as much a bunch of hypocrites just like the god they worship.
LikeLike
Reblogged this on Atheist Militants Rising and commented:
Funny huh? Christians worship a god who ordered his followers to rip the fetuses out of the wombs of pregnant women, which? Is abortion.
God supposedly drowned the whole world and killed fetuses in the wombs of pregnant women and that? Is abortion.
Christians? Have committed untold abortions when they slaughtered Pagans, Native Americans, Jews and other pregnant women in their forced conversion programs and in their worst case of mass genocide in recorded human history against us Native Americans.
Christians in fact? Are responsible for 70% of abortions performed. In other words? Statistics prove that 70% of all abortions are performed on women who call themselves Christians.
Oh and each day? 12,000 infants, toddlers and children? Die horrifying deaths from starvation and other things.
But abortion is evil huh?
LikeLike
Really? All of us atheists just want to kill that thing huh? You actually believe that all atheists are behind abortions huh? Typical of Christians to say what you have said. I am pro-choice. I believe it is none of my damn business what a woman does to her body. Just because I am pro-choice does NOT=pro-abortion. But to get into this? Then Christians? CANNOT HAVE IT BOTH DAMN WAYS. They cannot demand an end to abortion while demanding that our public schools be invaded with their Christian abstinence only sex education for our students. Christians out there screaming against birth control? Should shut their mouths, because it is the use of birth control? That prevents unwanted pregnancies that leads to abortions. And then? 12,000 children die EACH DAY from mostly? STARVATION, so how is that not murder? That is even more brutal a death than a zygot getting aborted is it not? Sounds like you Christians have absolutely no problem forcing women to bring infants into the world but do not give a damn that 12,000 infants and children die each damn day due to mostly starvation huh?
But the truth is? YOUR GOD commanded abortions in the bible. YOUR GOD committed abortions in the bible. Christians have committed abortions, far too many of them in their Forced Conversion programs of the Pagans, Native Americans and others, against Jews when Christians slaughtered whole towns of Jews. Against their own fellow Christians in their Christian wars. Against those they declared as witches and heretics during their Christian Protestant and Catholic Inquisitions.
Now, you claim that this was all done in the bible before Christians showed up huh? Well this is the same god you all worship, whether he is of the Old Testament or the New Testament? It is the SAME GOD. And this same god? ORDERED HIS FOLLOWERS TO COMMIT ABORTIONS, AND COMMITTED ABORTIONS HIMSELF, so? YOU cannot disclude what your god did in the OT nor can you Christians can actually justify you saying your god is AGAINST abortion when there are far too many examples in the OT? Where abortions is committed by gods followers, on the commands of god, and god himself committing abortions.
LikeLiked by 1 person