Science vs. faith a needless conflict

The conflict between science and religion is senseless. It is based on fears and misunderstanding rather than on facts and moral wisdom. Despite the strong public interest in this topic, some people find it troubling when viewed from a religious perspective.

The universe had its beginning 13.77 billion years ago. The earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old, formed out of the stellar dust left from the formation of our sun. Water came to our planet with the help of comets and asteroids and chemical reactions over the next billions of years. Molecules combined together to form organic compounds. Simple single-cell life-forms began to develop 3.5 billion years ago. About 500 million years ago, an explosion of multi-cell life-forms developed, called the Cambrian Explosion. During this period, most major animal phyla appeared.

Scientists have estimated that the earliest known hominids branched off from their common ancestor with chimpanzees in Africa about 6 million years ago. Sometime around 2 million years ago, Homo sapiens evolved through a process of genetic mutation and natural selection. Somewhere 100,000 to 200,000 years ago, modern humans emerged and expanded out of Africa, moving to parts of the Middle East, Europe, and Asia.

Uneasy

I’m taking a break from watching the presidential news conference because I just can’t stand it anymore. This guy is crazy, or at least so odd mentally as to appear unstable. I don’t have a degree in psychiatry or psychology, but after more than 70 years of dealing with fellow humans, I get queasy listening to the man. His thought patterns are an embarrassment. His obsession with the past election is telling. His hatred of the press, crying “fake news” any time reporting doesn’t agree with his ideas, is petty. His need to retaliate against any perceived critic or challenge demonstrates a smallness of mind and heart that I find very unsettling. How easy it is to get under his skin. His ego is ill.

This is not the kind of person we need in the White House. This is not the sort of leader of the free world the whole planet needs right now.

It is more obvious every day that he is in waaay over his head. I can only hope that the other institutions of our nation hold him accountable and the fabric of our society doesn’t become yet more frayed.

The diet of Lent

March 1st marks the beginning of Lent, the 40-day period preceding Easter, when many Christians abstain from animal foods in remembrance of Jesus’ 40 days of fasting in the wilderness before launching his ministry.

The call to refrain from eating animals is as old as the Bible. In Genesis 1:29, God commands humans to eat only plants; then prophet Isaiah predicts that "none will hurt or destroy on God’s holy mountain."

A number of Christian leaders have followed the call, including Methodist founder John Wesley, Salvation Army founders William and Catherine Booth, Seventh-Day Adventist Church founder Ellen G. White, and prominent evangelical leader Franklin Graham.

A meat-free diet is not just about Christian devotion. Dozens of medical studies have linked consumption of animal products with elevated risk of heart failure, stroke, cancer, and other killer diseases. A United Nations report named meat production as the largest source of greenhouse gases and water pollution. Undercover investigations have documented farm animals being caged, crowded, mutilated, beaten, and shocked.

Lent offers a superb opportunity to honor Christ’s powerful message of compassion, but also to protect the health of our family and our planet Earth by adopting a meat-free diet.

More gridlock

We are faced with social, cultural, economic, racial, major domestic and foreign issues, immigration and a twenty trillion dollar debt, yet we are witnessing Democratic "resistance" over the President's cabinet nominees and a jeremiad for the sole purpose of ginning up and consolidating their base rather than performing their Congressional duties for the common good.

We have a hostile liberal Democratic party whose daily activities are poised to do all they can to destroy the Trump presidency in any and every way possible. Granted, President Trump's executive immigration order involving seven failed Muslim states was poorly conceived, and its rollout a debacle; however, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals violated both judicial precedent and the Constitution's separation of powers in its ruling against the President. They were totally ignorant of the fact that since 9/11 the Department of Homeland Security reported that some 60 individuals born in the seven countries on President Trump's list have been convicted of domestic terror-related crimes. This judicial overreach makes the Courts ultimate arbiters of American foreign policy.

Let us stop, take a deep breath and move forward; let us offer constructive dialogue in the public square rather than chimerical "resistance," otherwise if we can only discuss what they want and in their terms (left or right) we will achieve the goals of newspeak — a language designed to diminish range of thought and expression; let us offer what we are capable of, bipartisan solutions rather than political gridlock. "To err is human but to continue to {err} is is diabolic."

This story was originally published February 23, 2017 at 2:54 PM with the headline "Science vs. faith a needless conflict."