Clinton and Textbooks. The Monica Lewinsky/Bill Clinton scandal is not so far back that most of us cannot remember it (1998-1999), but the most recent group of history books hardly mention it. Impeachment is discussed and passing reference is made to Clinton, but the affair is washed off as something about which congress was divided and no further discussion is involved. Our society's inability to have any consistent or absolute moral values seems to have rubbed off on those writing history, so kids will not even know that what happened was something most Americans considered wrong at the time that it happened.

--Source: Ben Feller, Associated Press, USA Today, December 28, 2005, page 5A.

Atheists and Petitions. In the American Atheist magazine (July 2006, page 8), Ellen Johnson, the president of American Atheist, has an interesting article about the FCC petitions dating back to the 1960s and 70s. What she shows is that rumors in the religious community have produced avalanches of letters protesting things that in fact never happened, and then she bemoans the fact that atheists cannot get significant numbers of signatures on any petition. The bottom line for those of you who read this journal is that we should never send a letter about something until we know that our information is correct. Let us say it again--there are no petitions by atheists to get religious programming off of television.

Pop Music and Sex. Most of us can remember our parents complaining about our teenage music. Sometimes the complaint may have been valid, but usually it was just a generation gap issue which had little consequence. A recent study by researchers for the Rand Corporation of modern pop music is showing there is a definite effect of the explicitly sexual lyrics in modern pop music. The study involves 1461 adolescents and was carried on over a three year period. Of the teens listening to explicit pop music, 51% started having sex within two years as opposed to 29% who didn't listen to it. Steven Martino who was involved in the study said "hip-hop and modern pop portray boys as shallow and sexually insatiable and girls as willing sex objects. We think that really lowers kids' inhibitions, and makes them less thoughtful about their sexual decisions."

--Source: The Week, August 25, 2006, page 21.

Stem Cell Update. New information about stem cells is flowing at an incredible rate. The more data becomes available, the more obvious it is that trying to justify using aborted babies to get stem cell materials is irresponsible. In Scientific American (July 2006, page 53), there is a research article titled "Stem Cells: The Real Culprits in Cancer?" The study has shown that stem cells have been identified as cause agents in leukemia, breast cancer, multiple myeloma, brain cancer, and prostate cancer. These are not stem cells that man introduced, but natural stem cells which because they do not have a genetic program as to what they are to be, end up being tumors.

Citizen (September 2006, page 6) reports on other examples of positive uses of adult stem cells. They include research studies which show: Stem cells taken from adult blood can become liver and nerve cells. Muscle stem cells have the capacity to turn into blood stem cells. Nasal stem cells can develop into heart, liver, kidney, muscle, brain, and nerve cells. Pancreatic stem cells can change into muscle cells, neurons, and insulin-producing cells. Cells from scalp tissue can change into neural, bone, and cartilage cells. Bone marrow stem cells transplanted into the pancreas can morph into insulin-producing beta islet cells, which have the potential to treat diabetes. Bone marrow cells also have helped repair damaged heart muscle. Injections of cord blood stem cells into 9-year-old twins with cerebral palsy increased their ability to speak, decreased their leg cramps, and allowed them to sit up unassisted.

Out of the Body Explained. For at least fifty years there have been reports in the media about people having "out of the body" experiences in which they seem to float out of their bodies and observe what is going on around them. Most of these claims have also reported people going to a bright light and being very much at peace. While such reports are helpful in reducing the fear of death, they are contrary to what the Bible describes and have a tendency to put the whole process of dying on a rather universal religious base. In Brain Work: The Neuroscience Newsletter, a publication of the Dana Foundation (July/August 2006, pages 5), is a report that tells of research showing that there are natural explanations of functions in the brain which result in such experiences. The temporoparietal junction which controls our sense of balance, seems to be involved. It is an error to ascribe brain functions to spiritual events, and the out of the body experience appears to be on its way to an explanation that puts the experience on a brain response basis.

Mary Magdalene Nonsense. One of the things that frequently happens to us in the twenty-first century is that the absence of information in the Bible is looked upon as a license to promote anything the mind can imagine. This not only generates a lot of religions and religious denominations that attempt to claim connections to Christianity, but it allows biblical minimalists and atheists to give portrayals of biblical stories in bizarre ways. In the last year we have seen a number of examples of that, and probably the most publicized is Mary Magdalene. The Da Vinci Code is probably the first example of this which comes to mind, Smithsonian magazine (June 2006), Newsweek (May 29, 2006), and National Geographic (May 2006) have all jumped on this process. While the National Geographic article focuses primarily on the Judas gospel, the other magazines are less subtle with titles like "Who Was Mary Magdalene" and "An Inconvenient Woman."

This is done by several dubious techniques. One is to not consider the source of the information one is reporting. The Judas gospel, for example, is authored by a gnostic group that was opposed to every principle Jesus taught. Documents exist showing that the early Church fought against gnostic teaching and that their concept of who and what Jesus was is totally opposed to the Bible. This is not an unbiased source, and in fact has no credibility as far as the teachings of Jesus are concerned. Ancient art works are frequently used as sources for articles about Mary Magdalene, but artists have their own misconceptions and motives and are not valid sources of information. Even ancient Roman Catholic sources of information are not reliable, as the Catholic Church has relied upon oral tradition for much of its information, and again human sources can be misled or misunderstood.

The bottom line is that Mary Magdalene appears one time prior to the crucifixion of Jesus in Luke 8:2 where she is cured of a possession. There are many biblical reasons to question that the sinful woman of Luke 7 is Mary. She is one of many women present at the crucifixion and resurrection and plays an important role after the resurrection. There is no biblical evidence of any special relationship between Mary Magdalene and Jesus--just a lot of tabloid-type speculation.

Red Rain in India. In the summer of 2001, a mysterious blood colored rain fell sporadically in India in the state of Kerala. Analysis of the rainwater shows that it contains red colored cell-like structures about 10 microns in diameter which do reproduce in the laboratory. We are seeing claims of aliens, government eradication campaigns, secret war toxins, etc., in a variety of publications. Popular Science (June 2006, page 31) recently had an article on it. The fact is that we do not know what produced the red rain; we know that this is not an uncommon event. The wind pattern at that time of year comes from the Arabian peninsula toward India. There are any number of things that can be in that dust--fungi, algae, animal remains etc. I can remember being in Terra Haute, Indiana, and seeing frogs and fish falling out of a clear sky to the ground--from a tornado that had gone through some time earlier. This is not a huge mystery of intergalactic proportions. It is simply an interesting meteorological process with biological connections.

Girl Brain Studies Support Biblical View. Feminists, gay activists, and gender change proponents are having problems with new studies which compare the brains of women and men and find that there are significant differences. Neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine has been a leader in this research that strongly suggests that there are differences in the design and function of the brain that cause men and women to be different in the way the two sexes act and feel. The brain design includes the chemicals that are secreted to cause things like PMS, and the size of different sections of the brain are related to those things that distinguish males from females. The idea that there is a "gay gene" does not stand in this new data, because a wide range of genetic characteristics are involved. The Bible is clear that God designed man and woman to be able to become "one flesh" and we now understand that a number of structures in the body and the brain are involved in the differences in the sexes.

--Source: Newsweek, July 31, 2006, pages 46.

Islamic Reformation. Turkish religious authorities have announced they are purging the Hadiths of statements that treat women as being inferior to men. The Hadiths are traditional sayings and writings from Islamic Sharia Law that take material from the Koran and teach it to Muslim lay people. When we have discussed why we promote Christianity in this journal rather than other understandings of God, we have pointed out that violence and the denigration of women are two of the main reasons why the Koran does not measure up to the teachings of Jesus. The Hadiths being revised have statements like "The best of women are those who are like sheep" and "If a husband's body is covered with pus and his wife licks it clean, she still won't have paid her dues." This kind of teaching combined with the defamation of women by the practice of polygamy make up a part of the reasons why we maintain the teachings of Jesus Christ are superior to that of Muhammad. We have studies comparing teachings in the Koran with those of Christianity and the Bible. If you would like copies of these studies, send to the address below a self-addressed envelope with 41 cents in postage and we will send them to you. Here are links to PDF copies of these studies:  Comparisons,  Difficulties, and Scientific Accuracies and Checkability of the Bible.

--Source: The Week, July 28, 2006, page 6.

Available: For many years we have bound the articles from this journal into books we call Evidences of God. These books start in 1972, and volume 10 is now available for 2004-2006. Previously these books have been bound. Since we are no longer able to print and bind ourselves, the cost for volume 10 would be prohibitively high so it has been left unbound on 8½-by-11-inch paper to save money. All eight books are available for $25 (Volumes 1-3 have been combined; volume 10 is unbound), or any one of the books is available for $4.00. We also have a free year-end report for the year 2006 available upon request. An index of articles for this year is also available upon request. You can send your order or request to:

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6/14/2007