Thinking to Believe

Ravi Zacharias tells the story of a trial in which a lawyer was defending a pornographer of the basest sorts.  The lawyer asked the plaintiff, “Have you ever gone into an art gallery?”  The plaintiff responded, “Yes.”  The lawyer continued, “Have you paid to go into that art gallery?”  Again the plaintiff responded, “Yes.”  “Were there paintings of naked people in that art gallery?”, the lawyer asked.  “Yes,” the plaintiff responded.  “So why do you call that art, but Playboy pornography?”  The plaintiff did not have a response.

Have you ever wondered what the difference is between a piece of art featuring nude figures, and pornography?  Is there a difference?

In A Pilgrim’s Regress, C.S. Lewis wrote about a man who ordered milk and eggs from a waiter in a restaurant.  After tasting the milk he commented to the waiter that it was delicious.  The waiter replied, “Milk is only the secretion of a cow, just like urine and feces.”  After eating the eggs he commented on the tastiness of the eggs.  Again the waiter responded that eggs are only a by-product of a chicken.  After thinking about the waiter’s comment for a moment the man responded, “You lie.  You don’t know the difference between what nature has meant for nourishment, and what it meant for garbage.”

Ravi Zacharias notes that while both art and pornography utilize nude figures, the purpose/motives for portraying the naked body are definitively distinct.  Pornography utilizes nude figures for the pure purpose of stimulating the baser instincts of individuals; instincts that will not be satisfied by that alone.  Art, on the other hand, utilizes nude figures for the purpose of highlighting the beauty of man.  While pornography engenders lust, art engenders admiration for the glory and beauty of the human body, and thus the glory of its Maker.

In the UK, grandparents have had their grandchildren forcibly removed from the home by social services because they were deemed too old and too sick to care for them.  They are only 59 and 46 years old, and suffer from angina and diabetes.  Unless there is more to the story, I fail to see how this warrants the children being removed from the home, and being put up for adoption.  There are times to remove children from a home, but this doesn’t seem to be one of them.  It scares me to know that a democratic government can wield this kind of power and get away with it.  I hope the people of the UK rise up against it.  

HT: Melinda Penner

England’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has asked the media not to report on the findings of a government study related to diapers.  Apparently England has been pushing parents to use reusable diapers rather than disposable ones, to lessen their “carbon footprint” in the fight against global warming.  But the report found that the carbon footprint from disposable diapers is less than reusable diapers.  You would think that those who claim to be responding to the evidence of global warming would respond to this evidence as well, and tell people to use disposable diapers.  You would be wrong.  When the evidence is against you, I guess the appropriate response is to be against the evidence.

Here is your chance to talk about whatever you want to talk about.  Speak your mind in the comments section.  Or maybe suggest a topic you would like me to cover in a future post.  It’s open mic.

This is a sad commentary on our times.  A man bludgeons another man with a hammer, while 10 bystanders do nothing.  This is nothing short of shameful and inhuman.

It pays to shop around for books, rather than just ordering everything through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or CBD (Amazon is almost always cheaper than B&N BTW). I mentioned KIMbooks.org a few days ago for discount books. Their prices are so good that they even beat Amazon’s sale prices by a few bucks.

But there are other ways to find good deals on books. For instance, at Amazon has books you can buy through their site that are cheaper than the list price. The way to find it is to save the books you want to the cart, then access your cart, and hit the “save for later” button next to each book. This will move the book to the bottom of the page, and a new field will appear showing you cheaper prices for the book from Amazon sellers. Sometimes the price isn’t much different, but sometimes it is. For example, Dethroning Jesus was $15 new from Amazon, but I bought a nearly-new copy for $1.35!

My best advice, though, would be to go to bookfinder.com. Bookfinder searches for new and used books. You can save a bundle. The only potential drawback is that to get the best deal you will probably have to order through several different book distributors. That might increase your postage, but you can measure this. They include the price of postage in their quote.

To show you how much you can save, I looked up six books I want to buy at Amazon. The total cost was $123 (shipping was free). Between using bookfinder and the “discount” Amazon section, however, I was able to buy those same books for $80. That’s a 35% savings. It takes a little more time and hassle, but it’s well worth it.

Does anyone else have any boo-buying tips they would like to share?

I received an email ad from KIMBooks, purportedly the worlds largest non-profit bookstore. I haven’t actually purchased anything from them yet, so I cannot vouch for their service, but I checked their prices on some books I’ve been looking to get, and they are cheaper than Amazon. They claim to offer books 40% off retail. It’s worth checking out.

There’s a great video on global warming over at What You Ought to Know. It’s both balanced and funny.

A disgusting news story broke recently about a man in Austria who began raping his daughter at age 11, then locked her in the cellar beneath his house at the age of 18 (faking a letter from her saying she ran away to join a religious cult), holding her there for 24 years filled with more sexual abuse, fathering seven children with her in the process. He raised three of those children with his unsuspecting wife, one died, and the other three were raised in the cellar with their mother, never seeing the light of day.

This moral monster was finally caught. And what is he facing as punishment? 15 puny years in prison! That is the max he can get under Austrian law. Personally, I am outraged and sickened over this! How can a man who sexually abuses his own daughter for more than three decades, imprisons her and three of his incestuous children, only get 15 years for this crime? Is that the price of his crimes? What a cheapening of human value. At the very least he should have to spend as many years in jail as his daughter faced in the jail of his cellar. Unbelievable!

I guess this goes to show why divine justice is required. Human justice is imperfect. In this case, however, it is glaringly imperfect.

Many of us spend a lot of time commuting. What better way to pass the time than listen to some great teaching, or discussions on matters related to Christian truth. There is a wealth of free audio resources on the web from top-notch thinkers that will help think more clearly about issues of truth. Here are some I would recommend:

Apologetics
Stand to Reason radio
Stand to Reason podcasts
William Lane Craig
Apologetics.com

Theology
Converse With Scholars
Southern Bapist Theological Seminary lecture series

Mix
Veritas Forum
Breakpoint

I guarantee that your mind will be stimulated, or your money back!

If you are like me, you can’t help but to stare at those who look and dress anti-socially. You know, piercings in unimaginable places, hair styles that require enormous amounts of creativity and hairspray, or clothes that even fashion designers would not sport on the runway. What do you say if you get caught staring, and the person says to you, “What are you looking at?” I’ve come up with a little line: “If you want to look different from everyone else in society, don’t be surprised when everyone else in society looks at you differently.”

The Fertility Institutes of Los Angeles not only performs embryonic sex selection, but advertises it. Babies…custom ordered. I thought this sort of thing was illegal in this country, but apparently not.

It’s been awhile since I posted pics of my little angel. Sareya is 7 1/2 months old now, and owns my heart!

I have never really discussed my website on this blog before, so for those of you who are not aware of it, I am co-founder and contributing author to The Institute for Biblical Studies. We recently passed the 1/4 million visitors mark! If you haven’t checked out the site before, I invite you to do so. Tell your friends about it too.

Some of the readers of this blog post anonymously. Some do so by choice, while others do so because they do not have a blog id that comes with having your own blog account with blogger.com.

If you want to reveal your identity in a particular comment (I would prefer that you do), you can do so without opening a blogger.com account. The easiest way is to finish your comment with your name. The other way is to select the “other” option under “Choose an identity.” You will see this right below the text box in the comments section. If you select “other” you can type in the name you want to appear at the top of your comment.

A thought struck me the other day. There are certain scents we associate with femininity, and we call them perfumes. Men like the smell of these scents. They are pleasing to the nose. Some can even arouse a male’s sexual desires. As much as men like the smell of these scents they would never think of wearing them themselves. They are “only for women.”

There are other scents we associate with masculinity, and we call them colognes. Females like the smell of these scents. They are pleasing to the nose. Some can even arouse a female’s sexual desires. As much as women like the smell of these scents they would never think of wearing them themselves. They are “only for men.” While there are some scents that are uni-sex (meaning they appeal to members of both sexes), most fall into one of the categories described above.

My question is whether the association of certain smells with certain genders is culturally learned or innate. Do other cultures associate the same smells with the same gender? Is it universal, or local? Could men wear Channel in Africa and feel manly? Would women be attracted by the scent? Do certain scents tend to attract men everywhere, and certain scents tend to attract women everywhere, or do certain scents attract different sexes in different cultures? Is our gender-smell association learned or built into us?