South Carolina: Here We Go Again!

If you follow South Carolina politics at all, you know they can be bizarre.  We’re famous for it.

Well, here we go again.

For my non-South Carolina readers, a quick recap:  I live in the congressional district (gerrymandered to a bright red) where the governor recently appointed our Rep. Tim Scott to fill a vacant Senate seat.

That left Scott’s seat open, and 16 people filed for the job, 14 of them Republicans.  When the Republican primary’s vote was counted, the leading candidate had 37 percent of the vote, and his closest opponent only had about a  third as many -- 13 percent.  

That’s where the here-we-go-again comes in. The leading candidate was our former governor, Mark Sanford -- yes, that Mark Sanford, the one who told us he was going hiking on the Appalachian Trail when in fact he was flying to Argentina to see his girlfriend.  He even tried to send us taxpayers the bill. 

He betrayed his wife, his family, his friends, his office and his constituents -- including me.  And although he wasn’t charged with a crime, he was forced to pay the highest fine for ethical violations in the history of South Carolina.

He has apologized, but his apology rings hollow, as if he’s sorry he got caught, not sorry he cheated us.  For instance, after he decided to run for Congress, he had the gall to ask his ex-wife -- the one he had just divorced so he could marry his Argentine woman --  to run his campaign.  (She declined.) 

And yet, more than a third of those who voted in the Republican primary trust him to be their congressman.

Amazing.

-Skip

Did Nostradamus Nail It?

In 1990, when I was religion editor of The (Charleston, S.C.) News and Courier, I wrote a column about a researcher who compared Nostradamus’ quatrains with history and wrote what he thought Nostradamus saw coming. 

The researcher, Rene Noorbergan, foresaw the future from the time Nostradamus wrote, around 1550, until Noorbergan wrote, in 1982, with astonishing accuracy. 

But matching the quatrains with history is easy when you have 20-20 hindsight.  My column was based on how accurately Noorbergan’s interpretations matched history from the time Noorbergan wrote until the time I wrote -- eight years. 

The result:  He nailed it again.  He foresaw distinguished advances in communications and travel in air, on land, on sea and under the sea. 

But what about his accuracy for the period between that 1990 column and today? 

You judge.  But as you read, remember that Nostradamus wrote long before the United States, the Soviet Union or Communism even existed; and that Noorbergen wrote at a time when Communism was rising, and the United States and the USSR were locked in a cold war.  Here’s Nostradamus’ final predictions, written 460 years ago and interpreted 30 years ago:   

In the 1990s, rising demands for consumer goods, combined with a resurgence of nationalism among minorities, will force the Stalinist dictators from power.  A new form of government will evolve that will be Communist in name only.

The West, led by the United States, will align itself with that new government, which will unbalance the world politically.  Soon China will align itself with Middle Eastern governments, thus splitting the world into two alliances.  

Those two alliances will meet in World War III, which Nostradamus refers to as Armageddon, the final war between Good and Evil. 

The quatrains end after the 21st Century begins.   

-Skip

Prejudice Blocks Scientific Research

The great majority of scientists  (including Dr. Richard Dawkins, of whom I wrote yesterday)  say they are skeptics.  They are not.   It’s true they are skeptical, and often downright hostile, about anything that smacks of religion, mysticism or spirituality.  But they will readily accept as fact almost any unproven materialistic explanation. 

They won’t even look at evidence that challenges their prejudices.  Like Dr. Dawkins, whose knowledge of Christianity seems to go only fundamentalist deep, it’s easier to ridicule than to research.    

One scientist who is willing to look is Dr. Mario Beauregard, a world-renowned neuroscientist at the University of Montreal.  

In his book “The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul,”
Beauregard writes:  “Humans, it turns out, can communicate with others without contacting them (telepathy) and move matter without touching it (telekinesis), such as influencing the diffraction pattern of a beam of light -- consistently above statistical chance. ... (This) pattern has persisted for decades.”  

He also writes that there is plenty of evidence that shows near-death experiences are exactly what they appear to be. 

So why won’t scientists like Dawkins look at the evidence -- including the evidence that God is real -- before they reject it?

Beauregard’s answer is that most scientists are materialists, not skeptics at all, and so anything that indicates humans might be more than biological automatons (“meat puppets”), or that otherworld explanations of some phenomena might be real, could shatter some of their most cherished dogmas.  

And so, because of their prejudices, some of humanity’s most important questions go unanswered -- even unstudied.  Is there a God? Is there a soul? Are the brain and mind separate or are they one?

Progress will be made only when scientists examine all evidence honestly, even when it points to conclusions they abhor.  

-Skip

Atheist Star Shows His Ignorance  

My hometown of Charleston was treated recently to a public conversation between Dr. Richard Dawkins, arguably the world’s most famous atheist, and Dr. Herb Silverman, inarguably South Carolina’s most famous atheist.    

Dr. Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist who has authored 11 best-selling books on atheism, and Dr. Silverman is a retired mathematics professor who founded the Secular Coalition for America.

I could not attend the interview with Dawkins because I was with my grandsons that night, but from what I read in the newspaper account -- and it mirrored what I have read in his books -- the man does not know what he’s talking about.

I feel qualified to say that because I spent 20 years researching Jesus of Nazareth up close up and personal before I wrote The Gospel of Yeshua, and the Jesus I found was nothing like the Jesus Dawkins ridiculed. 

For example, Dawkins found it “an astonishing idea that the only reason you are good is because you’re frightened of the great camera in the sky.”   That would astonish most Christians, too (fundamentalists excepted).  Jesus spent his entire career teaching people to love, never to fear, and I defy Dawkins to show otherwise.

Dawkins also wondered how anybody could believe Jesus actually turned water into wine.  Well, Dick, most Christians would agree with you. They don’t believe that either. That story only occurs in the Book of John, which was never intended to be taken as fact.  Matthew, Mark and Luke tell the facts of Jesus’ life; John focuses on truth, and as a result most scholars agree it is a classic of spiritual writing.  The fact that Dawkins apparently doesn’t know that displays his ignorance. 

I promised to keep this blog under 300 words, so I’ll continue this tomorrow.

-Skip

Sequestration Gets Personal 

It’s a given that capitalism could not exist without unemployed people.  Where else could businesses get employees?  Thus, sad but true, capitalism rests squarely on the shoulders of unemployed people.

That may be a necessary evil of capitalism on the big stage, but inside the homes of many poor young mothers and their babies nowadays, sequestration is making it personal.  Here’s why:

One of the first non-military groups to feel the sequestration cuts has been young mothers who live in poverty.  Until sequestration started, they were getting help from the government under a program that provided formula for their babies.

But tea partiers insist that the richest among us must be protected from paying more taxes, regardless of consequences.  And since the Tea Party has become the tail that wags the dog in the Republican-controlled House, we have sequestration.  

And so, in a very real sense, the very poorest among us are forced to give up food for their babies so that the very richest among us won’t have to pay more taxes.  

All this comes at a time when, ever since we went over the cliff in 2008, the richest have been getting richer while the poor and the middle class have been getting poorer -- or, at best, stagnating.  

I don’t understand how tea partiers can live with themselves.

-Skip