Alright folks, ready to get pissed off?

TJM Author Luci has a problem. Her son received a letter last week, saying he would be deported for lacking moral character. Evidence? After registering for selective service, political campaigners mistakenly explained that he was allowed to vote in a local election because he had registered for selective service.

This young man lacks moral character because a political campaigner told him he could vote, election officials allowed him to vote, and he informed INS officials that he had voted.

Yes, he made a mistake, but it was a mistake that other people had a duty prevent. The campaigner should have known that resident aliens were not authorized to vote, and should not have pressed him into doing so. Election officials should have informed him at the polls that he was not allowed to vote because he was not yet a citizen.

The 26th amendment states that all citizens, 18 years or older, are granted the right to vote. This amendment was passed in 1971. It was proposed because the draft age was 18, but the voting age in some states was 21. People who were not politically represented were drafted and ordered to fight.

Now, this young man, who registered for selective service and could be called to fight and die for the United States, is not only denied the right to vote, he is also facing deportation.

There is nothing fair at all about this deportation.

Luci and her husband have been in the US about 10 years, and are naturalized citizens.

From Luci’s Stumbleupon Blog

I need your help PLEASE.

Last week my son received a letter stating that he does not have the moral character to become a citizen. He will be deported back to South Africa because he unknowingly voted in a local election illegally.

We have until January 7, 2008 to appeal.

My family has been in this country for 10 years. My husband and I are citizens. As required by law, my son registered for Selective Service when he turned 18.

Shortly thereafter, he ran across a group of campaigners registering students to vote in the upcoming elections. They promised him that since he was registered for Selective Service, he was eligible to vote. This was not true.

At our family’s citizenship interviews, our son’s application was rejected after he volunteered the information that he had voted in an election. That he freely volunteered the information shows that he had no intention to defraud the government or anyone. Our many letters to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services have met with no reply. We have met with our local congressman with no result.

Part of the reasoning behind the 26th amendment of the U.S. Constitution in 1970 was that citizens who could be drafted to fight in a die for the U.S. should be able to determine its direction by voting. Can’t this logic be extrapolated to include forgiveness for unintentional transgressions that hurt no one?

We will present this petition to our senator and the INS. If you feel in your heart that you can support us, please sign this Petition.

~ lu

If anyone has any suggestions for us, please please email me ASAP. We need all the help we can get.

Email: Lucecorner[at]gmail[dot]com

Thank you tonyfor24, for the help in setting it up.

Thanks Xin and Digi for helping to write it.

Thanks for the idea, Antidotes.

Thank you in advance.

I am dying inside.

More details coming, so check back often. I’m looking for various places you can register your opinion, but for right now, the ACLU, Congress, and your local news outlets are good starting points. Make sure you sign Luci’s petition! If you have any suggestions or want to assist, either leave comments to this article or write Luci directly at lucecorner(at)gmail(dot)com or myself at rivalarrival(at)thejesusmyth(dot)com.

This is part of a series debunking Lee Strobel’s video, “Case for a Creator”. View the rest of the series here:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

Behe’s is credited as the creator of the Irreducible Complexity argument. He brings up the Bacterial Flagellum as an example - The wikipedia article on Irreducible Complexity (which cites a total of 67 non-wikipedia sources) cites 6 separate documents as evidence that the parts of the flagellum have other purposes within the bacterium. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to discover the various tasks the parts of a flagellum can perform.

The mousetrap argument for irreducible complexity is similarly debunked: A common mousetrap can be reduced to a catch, a spring, a hammer, a holding bar, and a platform. Each of these parts existed long before the modern mousetrap existed, and served numerous roles in other, earlier devices. Not one of these parts was specifically created for the sole purpose of catching mice. All of them were adapted from previous components, and have since been specialized to their current purpose.

At 6:30, the narrator quotes Darwin as he stated the criteria necessary to falsify evolution:

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.

As the individual parts of these “irreducibly complex” devices perform functions themselves, it is not only possible but exceedingly likely that these devices could form from these parts and thus be subject to the laws of natural selection.

The fallacy with Behe’s argument can be demonstrated by applying it to ANY complex part of an organism. For example: “Before there was a liver, there was no liver, thus anything that required a liver could not have existed. Therefore the liver and everything that required the liver must have been simultaneously created. ”

Behe himself denies this logic - he is on record in support of evolution, but believes that the earliest organisms must have been created.

At 7:30, we move on to DNA, and discussion with Stephen Meyer. Nothing all that controversial through the end of part 5, just a couple unfounded claims that Evolutionary theory cannot survive the information age.

This is part of a series debunking Lee Strobel’s video, “Case for a Creator”. View the rest of the series here:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

Part 3

At 2:50, Craig states the “Kalam Cosmological Argument”:
1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

The problem is that at 1:44, Craig himself said that time came into existence with the rest of the universe!

Let me explain why this is a problem: The universe has existed as long as time has existed: Time came into existence with the universe. Nothing can occur “before” the universe existed, because “before” depends on time. Without time, there can be no “before”.

Time is a VERY complicated subject when we start talking about physics. Take three synchronized atomic clocks. Put one on a plane flying east around the globe, put one on a plane going west around the globe, and leave on at the airport. When you bring all three clocks back together after their journey, they will differ by specific, tiny fractions of a second, due to the phenomenon known as Relativity. As you approach the speed of light, time slows down for you while it continues normally for everyone else. But you don’t experience it slowing down: from your standpoint, everyone else would appear to be speeding up. Gravity also has an inverse effect on time, and if we’re assuming a singularity approaching infinite density, we can assume that the passage of time would approach zero.

A physicist has few problems with the “variable” nature of time. I can’t say the same about the average philosopher or layperson. I don’t know enough to speak very intelligently on the subject, but I do know that a philosophy that ignores these facts is, at best, incomplete, and at worst, completely wrong. The Kalam Argument ignores this fact, so we cannot rely on it without further scrutiny.

5:10 or so, another short break, and we move into an interview with Robin Collins (Philosopher with degrees in mathematics and physics)

Collins’ first argument is that the laws of physics are “balanced on a razor’s edge” and that if these laws were ANY different, life would be impossible.

Douglas Adams offered a simple challenge to this:

imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’

The puddle formed in the way it did because of the nature of the hole. Similarly, life formed the way it did because of the nature of the environment. Evolutionary processes pressure creatures into adapting to the environment, not surviving in spite of it. If the environment changes significantly, those creatures that cannot survive in the new environment die off, while those that can adapt will thrive. If the change isn’t enough to kill off less adapted organisms, it is insignificant with respect to those organisms.

The rest of part 3 reiterates this argument from improbability.

This is part of a series debunking Lee Strobel’s video, “Case for a Creator”. View the rest of the series here:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

Chris commented on this post, and recommended Lee Strobel’s “Case for a Creator” as something a “truth loving person” should read or watch. He claimed: “You will see proofs of God’s hand in creation that no scientist or Darwinist can explain away.”

I’ll take that challenge!

I located Strobel’s video on Youtube in 6 parts, and I’ve written rebuttals for each of Strobel’s major arguments. The 6 parts into which it was cut do not line up with the transitions as Strobel intended. I’ve included an embedded video and my arguments against the contents of that video in each post.

Before we start watching, let me point out that Darwin’s theory and modern evolutionary theory are not exactly equivalent. Many parts of Darwin’s original theory have been discredited, and later discoveries have expanded other parts of his theory far more than Darwin ever predicted. Darwin may have originated evolutionary theory, but it is in the same manner as Ford originated the automotive industry. Ford would probably be lost inside a modern vehicle with all its switches, buttons, knobs, glowing indicators, and computerization. Similarly, Darwin would be quite surprised about certain aspects of modern evolutionary theory.

The intro is 8 minutes of part 1, and can be skipped without missing Strobel’s arguments. Stanley Miller’s old experiment about building amino acids is mentioned, and we discover that Strobel’s motivation was to understand positive changes in his wife, which she attributes to God after her “conversion” from agnosticism to Christianity.

At about 8:30, Stanley Miller’s experiment - which built amino acids from hydrogen, methane, ammonia, and water, is allegedly discredited because science no longer thinks that these elements and compounds were predominant in the atmosphere.

Hydrogen is H2, and can be readily extracted from other compounds through chemical or electrical interactions. Ammonia is NH3 - nitrogen currently makes up 70% of our atmosphere, and to the best of my knowledge, nitrogen has always been the predominant atmospheric gas. Methane is CH4. Carbon is found in just about everything on the planet, and water is H20.

What we can conclude from Miller’s experiment is that amino acids can be built without a purpose, and without design. Miller could not predict the exact types of amino acids that would be built, nor could he predict how those acids would subsequently interact. Wells statement about the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere narrows the possible locations as to where amino acids could have developed as in Miller’s experiment, but it does not refute that conditions can occur where amino acids develop without a conscious effort to create them. That the experiment failed using the alternative gases mentioned is immaterial: it merely indicates that life could not have originated in this manner above the Earth’s Surface. As far as I know, no significant scientific body presents “flying” as the initial state of life on earth, deferring to either inland swamps, littoral areas, deep-ocean volcanic vents, or even the open ocean.

Jonathan Wells, credited as “Biologist, Discovery Institute” is hardly an objective party. In his book, “Why I went for a Second Ph.D”, Wells writes:

Father’s [Sun Myung Moon’s] words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism, just as many of my fellow Unificationists had already devoted their lives to destroying Marxism. When Father chose me (along with about a dozen other seminary graduates) to enter a Ph.D. program in 1978, I welcomed the opportunity to prepare myself for battle.

TJM is “passing the plate” for the Fallen Patriots fund, a charitable organization that supports the families of deceased veterans. There’s still a couple weeks left in our fund drive, so if the families of our fighting men and women deserve a few of your hard earned dollars (and you want to make it known that Atheists aren’t the cold, heartless bastards we’re portrayed as) please click the widget and send in some cash. We’ll be collecting until the 15th.

Who would YOU like to support? What under-appreciated group deserves a break?

The Red Cross comes to my mind immediately: Find a disaster, big or small, and the betting man says the Red Cross is the first major support organization on scene.

I also support the ACLU, EFF, IAFF, and FOP.

But, I’m asking YOU! Big or small, national or local, let us know!

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observations and analysis, when you find anything that agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it. - Siddhartha Gautama, (The Buddha)

This is the Buddhism I admire. Not the other type that requires reverence of “holy” objects and a strict regimen of worship.

A 14-year-old boy, Dennis Lindberg, killed himself under the instructions of a sadistic cult. This action was blessed by Skagit County (Washington) Superior Court Judge, John Meyer, who prohibited the State of Washington from interfering in the youth’s suicide pact.

Unfortunately, no criminal action will be brought against either the “Cult” or Judge Meyer, because the “Cult” is the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the method of suicide the youth chose was to refuse treatment that would have given him a 70% chance of survival.

TJM author Luci recently wrote about another senseless death associated with Jehovah’s Witness prohibition on accepting blood transfusions.

Basically, JWs are prohibited from consuming the blood of an animal. “Church” leaders decided that hospital patients can be fed intravenously, a blood transfusion is food.

What?

TJM reader Jerry Jones (his link) commented:

Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse to acknowledge that when human blood is transfused into their body’s circulatory system that the transfused human blood remains to be human blood and continues to function as human blood. Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse to acknowledge that if blood is eaten, then the ingested blood enters the body’s digestive system, where the blood would be treated by the body exactly the same as it would treat a hotdog, a potato chip, or any other food item.

Before you start thinking that I’m singling out JW’s, remember that MANY religions/dogmatic beliefs require the individual to harm himself/herself in the name of worship and/or conformity. Judaism (and others) requires the partial amputation of male genitalia. Sects of Islam require adherents to flog and/or lacerate themselves as a part of their worship. (Check out “Ashoura”) Female Genital Mutilation is still widely practiced in several locations around the world. Foot Binding, an old Chinese custom, has crippled millions of women.

Dogmatism turns otherwise rational people into lemmings. Religion is the single largest source of Dogmatism. Religion is also the most “Protected” in its application. Without Religion to back up this boy’s decision, his parents would have been brought up on child endangerment charges, he would be declared a ward of the court, and his doctors would be ordered to begin treatment.

Read more:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/11/religion_kills.php
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/11/29/jehovahs.witness.ap/index.html