Tag Archives: history

H5N1: Bird Flu

Why aren’t more people
concerned about bird flu?
I see news stories about it from time to time, but
they don’t seem to generate much buzz. This is a scary bug and the world isn’t ready
to deal with it
.

Once upon a time, influenza was a potentially deadly disease. It came and went like
the monsoon season, leaving devastation in its wake. Eventually, medical science
found a way to beat it. Now, for developed countries, it’s merely a nuisance. Few
people live in fear of flu season.

The time may be coming when we will fear again. Let’s hope we don’t have to tell
our grandchildren sad stories of how we survived the Great Bird Flu Pandemic and
of the friends and loved ones who didn’t.

Report: Flu pandemic could kill half million in U.S
U.N.: Bird flu at tipping point

The Trilemma: Useless

The so-called trilemma is a popular evangelism and apologetics crutch. As Josh McDowell puts, Jesus was either a liar, a lunatic, or Lord. The originator of the idea, C.S. Lewis, put it this way in Mere Christianity:

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of thing Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

I’m a big fan of Lewis and his writings were instrumental to my return to faith, but I cannot accept this argument. It is fallacious and essentially useless for converting a non-believer.

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Papal Designations

Paul McLachlan asks an interesting question: What’s in a name? Specifically, what’s in a pope’s name? It’ll be interesting to see what name the next pope chooses for himself. I’d like him to choose James. I don’t think there’s been a Pope James before.

“What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works? Can his faith save him? If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. But some one will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe — and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you shallow man, that faith apart from works is barren? Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by works, and the scripture was fulfilled which says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness’; and he was called the friend of God. You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone. And in the same way was not also Rahab the harlot justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way? For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so faith apart from works is dead. ” – James 2:14-26 RSV

Black Gold

Kenworth PilgrimageI wish people would stop whining about the cost of gasoline. Instead of complaining, we should stop buying gas-guzzling SUVs and other tank-like monstrosities, use public transportation more, and put pressure on auto manufacturers to make more fuel-efficient cars. The current price spike is very different from the 70s crisis. Back then, Americans used innovation – gasohol and fuel-efficient compacts – to break OPEC’s spirit. Today, people are buying SUVs and the like at high rates. It’s obvious that the high prices haven’t really hit people where it hurts. When people start trading in gas-guzzlers for efficient vehicles, I’ll believe that prices are high enough to worry about. Even then I’ll have little sympathy for drivers until they start pressuring Detroit to produce more efficient cars. So long as there’s demand for inefficient vehicles, auto makers will keep supplying them. Innovation is expensive and it won’t happen if there’s no demand for its fruits.


Pope John Paul II: A Legacy of Dignity

the pope wavingAs the pope lay
dying in his apartment, the 24-hour news machine buzzed with life throughout the
night. Nearly all seemed to spend a great deal of time discussing the years before
his health declined due to Parkinson’s Disease and other ailments. They showed video
and photographs of his youth, admired his athleticism, and marvelled at his boundless
energy. These things are good in their own right, but I think the media missed the
point.

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