Morality, Religion & Philosophy: January 2007 Archives
Colonel Brian Fields who recently believed he had seen alien spacecraft is now convinced that the lights he saw in the sky were simply flares on parachutes. The most annoying part of the story is the connection made between UFOs and Jesus Christ's second coming.
"I did not know that such 'parachute flares' existed and never considered the possibility," Col. Fields told WND upon learning the reason behind the mysterious lights. "I am grateful, however, that the truth has been determined and those that may have been disturbed by this event will be able to rest."Fields, a Christian who originally speculated his sighting might have had something to do with End Time prophecies from the Bible, still wants people to remain vigilant.
"Because this event was explained does not change the fact that we live in perilous times – and we must still be awake, alert, and know that a great deception is still coming."
There is, of course, deception all around us, but people should be comforted to know that there will be no ambiguity when Christ actually returns.
Luke 17:22-27Then he [Jesus] said to his disciples, "The time is coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. Men will tell you, 'There he is!' or 'Here he is!' Do not go running off after them. For the Son of Man in his day will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other. But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.
"Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all."
When Christ returns his coming will be like lightning that flashes across the sky from one end to the other -- that is, everyone in the world will know it immediately. As in Noah's day most of us may not be expecting it, but once it happens none will fail to notice.
Patton Dodd explains why praying for a parking spot completely misses the point, of both God and prayer.
There are single moms or dads with three kids and bags of groceries, elderly men with oxygen tanks to push across icy lots, people recovering from surgery who aren’t advised to be out of doors in the first place—and maybe, just maybe, God hears their cries for parking spaces close to the front door of Target, or the P.O., or their urban dwelling. Maybe he even provides those spaces from time to time, caring for sparrows as he does.But as supplication goes, praying for parking is, for those who pray, a mark of shame. It’s on par with praying that The Gap has the right size jeans or that your TiVo’s hard drive doesn’t crash during "Grey's Anatomy." It’s a prayer of tedium—for those too bored to pray for things that matter. It’s a prayer of luxury—for that blessed 1% whose wealth can put them in a car and give them cause to drive to the tony shopping district where parking is the only scarcity.
And, of course, a God who will provide a parking spot for the devout but not a cure for cancer is a twisted God indeed.
Sam Schulman has written an essay about the rudeness of modern atheist evangelists who act as if no one else throughout all history has wrestled with the questions they claim to have answered.
What is new about the new atheists? It's not their arguments. Spend as much time as you like with a pile of the recent anti-religion books, but you won't encounter a single point you didn't hear in your freshman dormitory. It's their tone that is novel. Belief, in their eyes, is not just misguided but contemptible, the product of provincial minds, the mark of people who need to be told how to think and how to vote--both of which, the new atheists assure us, they do in lockstep with the pope and Jerry Falwell.For them, belief in God is beyond childish, it is unsuitable for children. Today's atheists are particularly disgusted by the religious training of young people--which Dr. Dawkins calls "a form of child abuse." He even floats the idea that the state should intervene to protect children from their parents' religious beliefs.
For the new atheists, believing in God is a form of stupidity, which sets off their own intelligence. They write as if they were the first to discover that biblical miracles are improbable, that Parson Weems was a fabulist, that religion is full of superstition. They write as if great minds had never before wrestled with the big questions of creation, moral law and the contending versions of revealed truth. They argue as if these questions are easily answered by their own blunt materialism. Most of all, they assume that no intelligent, reflective person could ever defend religion rather than dismiss it. The reviewer of Dr. Dawkins's volume in a recent New York Review of Books noted his unwillingness to take theology seriously, a starting point for any considered debate over religion.
Quite apropos... purportedly rational atheists might want to consider their delivery methods.
