Sunday, September 21, 2008

LHC Helium Leak will Shut Collider Down for 2 Months


Scientific American, September 20, 2008 -

More glitches for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC): The same day operators announced that a 30-ton transformer that cools part of the particle smasher had broken within hours of the LHC's launch last week, a mishap yesterday resulted in "a large helium leak" into the collider's tunnel.

According to a press statement, "the most likely cause of the problem was a faulty electrical connection between two magnets, which probably melted at high current leading to mechanical failure."

No workers were at risk, according to CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which runs the LHC.

The leak means that the LHC will be down for at least two months, because workers must now warm up the faulty sector of the tunnel in order to repair it. The liquid helium is used to cool the LHC's magnets -- which guide protons and accelerate them so they can be smashed together -- down to within 1.9 kelvins (3.4 degrees Fahrenheit) of absolute zero.

For more on the LHC, see our in-depth report. It may be even longer now before we find out how long it takes the LHC to defrost a pizza.

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Image of one of the LHC's superconducting magnets superimposed on an aerial view of CERN's accelerator complex near Geneva with the path of the LHC marked in red, courtesy of CERN.

Parts of Liver Created using Umbilical Cord Stem Cells



Arlington, VA- Sept 19, 2008- Small sections of human liver have been created from umbilical cord stem cells, say scientists from Newcastle University, UK. The researchers say this technology could eventually be used to grow small livers that could be used for drug tests - doing away with the need for human volunteers to take risks. Earlier this year six volunteers became dangerously ill during a drug trial in the UK.

The scientists warned that it will be tens of years before we are anywhere near producing whole new livers for transplants. However, within the next 15 years, tiny livers could be produced and used for treating patients.

Team leaders, Dr. Nico Forraz and Prof. Colin McGuckin, have set up ConoStem, a company aimed at marketing their stem cell research results.

The researchers said they used a microgravity bioreactor, which creates a weightless environment, to grow liver tissue from stem cells.

Professor McGuckin said "We take the stem cells from the umbilical cord blood and make small mini-livers. We then give them to pharmaceutical companies and they can use them to test new drugs on. It could prevent the situation that happened earlier this year when those six patients had a massive reaction to the drugs they were testing."

This technology, if it really can replace human and animal testing, will be welcomed by people who are against using animals for testing drugs. Umbilical cord stem cell research is also a much more attractive prospect for those who are against using embryonic stem cells for research.


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CordStemCellResearch.com is committed to providing up-to-date information about cord blood stem cell science. We provide meaningful, peer-reviewed content to help you understand this novel area of medicine. Visit us at www.cordstemcellresearch.com.

Cord Stem Cell Research
1414 Glebe Road
Arlington, VA 22204
USA

Fireproof debuts September 26th - Watch the Trailer








Fireproof - The Movie - Coming September 26th

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Dr. R.C. Metcalf joins CrossExamined.org Team


Dr. R.C. Metcalf has joined the CrossExamined.org team.

Let's solve the 75% problem and reach our youth with the reasons they can confidently affirm their Christian faith in public. Please prayerfully consider inviting us to your church for a free seminar. Contact Dr. R.C. Metcalf at rcmetcalf@thinkagain.us after reading about our program.

3 out of 4 Christian teens walk away from the church after they leave home.

Dr. Frank Turek and the CrossExamined team are committed to reversing this alarming trend. Invite us to your campus and we'll present a dynamic interactive seminar that'll show you why Christianity is true and why it takes a lot more faith to be an atheist!

Consider these facts:

1) 75% of Christian youth leave the church after high school.
2) Intellectual skepticism is one of the major reasons they walk away.
3) Most Christian students are unequipped to resist rabidly anti-Christian college professors who are intent on converting their students to atheism.
4) College professors are five times more likely to identify themselves as atheists than the general public.
5) More than half of all college professors view evangelical Christian students unfavorably.
6) The “new atheists”—Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens—are writing books and are growing in popularity.

Christian youth in America are not being taught to cross examine the skeptical and atheistic views they encounter when they leave home. The good news is that we can do something about it! Browse the CrossExamined site for more information about how we're helping young people understand and defend why the Christian faith is true and reasonable, and how you can help.

“Dad, I’m not sure I believe in God anymore.”

My friend never thought he would hear those words. After all, he’s a well-known pastor with a large church and an international ministry. Yet, after just one year of college, his own daughter doubted nearly everything he tried to instill in her for eighteen years. “I now realize that I didn’t do a good job showing her why Christianity is true,” he told me. “Now, it might be too late.”

He’s not the only parent or pastor who’s failed to provide sound answers to young people. There are plenty of examples:

1) Anna, a pastor’s daughter, became an agnostic at UNC Chapel Hill.
2) Steve, son of a famous Christian, renounced biblical morality at Elon.
3) John, a high school worker for Campus Crusade, became an atheist after reading a Richard Dawkins’ book on atheism.
In fact, the problem is at epidemic levels — 75% of young adults raised in a Christian home leave the church after they leave the home. Think about that — on average, three out of every four kids attending your youth group won’t be attending any church a few years from now.

-- Frank Turek, CrossExamined.org Founder & President

Are You Paying for Atheism?

"Children spend the majority of their waking hours in school. Parents invest a good portion of their life savings in college education and entrust their offspring to people who are supposed to educate them. Isn’t it wonderful that educators have figured out a way to make parents the instruments of their own undoing? Isn’t it brilliant that they have persuaded Christian moms and dads to finance the destruction of their own beliefs and values? Who said atheists aren’t clever?" -- Dinesh D'Souza, What's So Great About Christianity, 2007

Why are they leaving?

Some think church is irrelevant. Others, out on their own for the first time, are attracted by all the world has to offer and put God on the back burner. Yet many leave because they’ve come to doubt Christianity. In fact, intellectual skepticism is a major reason cited by those who have left.

We can lay the blame for much of this on ourselves — that is, on the church. While there are notable exceptions, most American churches over-emphasize emotion and ignore the biblical commands to develop the mind (1 Pet 3:15, 2 Cor. 10:5). In other words, we’re doing a great job performing for our youth with skits, bands and videos, but a terrible job informing them with logic, truth, and a Christian worldview. We’ve failed to recognize that what we win them with we win them to. If we win them with emotion, we win them to emotion.

Now, I don’t want to discount the importance of emotion. If the Bible is true (as we show in the seminar), then God does want us to love Him with all of our hearts. But He also wants us to love Him with our minds (Mt. 22:37). Christians don't get Brownie points for being stupid! We're supposed to know what we believe and why we believe it. And for good reason — emotion alone is not enough to protect Christian students at college or make them bold witnesses for those they meet. If they arrive at college with nothing more than good sentimental feelings about Christ, they are easy prey for anti-Christian professors and a campus environment intent on undermining their faith.

Our mission at CrossExamined.org is to equip high school and college students to know why Christianity is true, how to defend it, and how to refute those who try to corrupt them.

Please browse the CrossExamined site to see how we are doing that and how you can help. Thanks!

-- Dr. Frank Turek, CrossExamined.org Founder & President

Sunday, September 14, 2008

The Shack by William P. Young: A Review


William P. Young’s novel The Shack is creating quite a stir in the Christian community. If you haven’t heard of it, odds are you will. The Shack is a story about love and forgiveness that will resonate with many readers. Anyone who has experienced a deep personal tragedy can find solace in its pages. However, The Shack offers its readers a view of the triune Godhead that strays from the truth of Scripture, leaving the reader with false hopes and a distorted vision of the Trinity.

The Shack is a novel that tells the story of a man named Mackenzie (Mack) who has lost a daughter to a serial rapist and murderer. The girl’s belongings, along with blood stains, are found in a shack deep in the forest. Presumably, the shack is the place the girl met her demise. Mack is summoned to the shack when he finds an unmarked letter in his mailbox, which is signed simply “Papa.”

If you are familiar with the book, you may have already heard that God (“Papa”) appears to Mack in the form of a large, African-American woman. While visiting the shack, Mack also meets Jesus, appropriately cast as a Middle Eastern man, and the Holy Spirit, represented by a woman named Sarayu, the Sanskrit word for “wind.”

The author explains why he uses an African-American woman to represent God, when he puts these words into God’s mouth: “Mackenzie, I am neither male nor female, even though both genders are derived from my nature. If I choose to appear to you as a man or a woman, it’s because I love you. For me to appear to you as a woman and suggest that you call me Papa is simply to mix metaphors, to help you keep from falling so easily back into your religious conditioning.”

However, the implication of this passage is that there is something inherently wrong with religious conditioning, which derives from Scripture and denotes God in the masculine. If God’s word can refer to Him as “Abba, Father” how can the author so cavalierly toss Scripture aside and put words in God’s mouth?

And this is, in large part, one of my major concerns about The Shack. Many who read this review will claim that the book is only a work of fiction and the author should be allowed to articulate his ideas freely and without constraint. Yet, by putting “his ideas” in God’s mouth he distorts God’s truth to the wrong ends. “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine… they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.” (2 Timothy 4:3-4) A synonym for “fables” is “fiction.”

The cover of the book contains an accolade from Eugene Peterson, author of The Message, a paraphrase version of the Bible. Peterson claims, “This book has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress did for his. It’s that good!” Yet, a book that puts words into God’s mouth, especially words that do not square with revealed Scripture, hardly approaches the brilliance of Bunyan’s allegorical novel.

On page 99, Papa tells Mack, “When we three spoke ourself into human existence as the Son of God, we became fully human.” Yet God, the Father, never became human, neither did the Holy Spirit. Only Jesus became fully human.

The author not only presumes to put words into God’s mouth, but God is also misrepresented in other ways. On page 95, Mack asks Papa how he/she can know how he really feels. “Papa didn’t answer, only looked down at their hands. His gaze followed hers and for the first time Mack noticed the scars in her wrists, like those he now assumed Jesus also had on his.” Yet, in John 4:24 we read the words of the real Jesus, who claims, “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” God, the Father, never became flesh, except perhaps in Mormon heterodoxy. And God certainly wouldn’t have borne the marks of crucifixion, a penalty Jesus paid fully to God.

My primary concern in The Shack creeps in initially on page 110, where Jesus states, “I am the best way any human can relate to Papa or Sarayu. To see me is to see them. The love you sense from me is no different from how they love you. And believe me, Papa and Sarayu are just as real as I am, though as you’ve seen in far different ways.” Note that Jesus says, “I am the best way…” The designation “best” implies that there are “other” ways, perhaps not as optimal, but other ways to come to know God. Contrast this with the words of Jesus in the gospel of John, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one cometh unto the father, but by me.” (John 14:6)

This same problem becomes even more explicit in Chapter 12, page 182, where Jesus says, “Those who love me come from every system that exists. They were Buddhists or Mormons, Baptists or Muslims, Democrats, Republicans and many who don’t vote or are not part of any Sunday morning or religious institutions. I have followers who were murderers and many who were self-righteous. Some are bankers and bookies, Americans and Iraqis, Jews and Palestinians. I have no desire to make them Christian, but I do want to join them in their transformation into sons and daughters of my Papa, into my brothers and sisters, into my Beloved.” Mack then asks, “Does that mean that all roads will lead to you?” Jesus replies, “Not at all. Most roads don’t lead anywhere. What it does mean is that I will travel any road to find you.”

Consider the words of the real Jesus:

“And he said unto another, ‘Follow me.’ But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. But he said unto him, ‘Leave the dead to bury their own dead; but go thou and publish abroad the kingdom of God.’ And another also said, I will follow thee, Lord; but first suffer me to bid farewell to them that are at my house. But Jesus said unto him, ‘No man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.’” (Luke 9:59-62)

A Christian is a follower of Jesus Christ. For Jesus to say “I have no desire to make them Christian” is to distort the very plain teaching of Scripture. If the author only wished to teach that the “church universal” is not contained within the confines of a single denomination, and had stopped prior to that sentence, I would have agreed. Many Christians were Buddhists, Mormons or Muslims, but are no longer bound to such worldly institutions by virtue of their Christianity. “For the Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost.” (Luke 19:10)

I had the pleasure of listening to the audio version of The Shack and I must admit the narrator was wonderful. After the conclusion of the book, my version included an interview with the author, in which William P. Young, who prefers the name Paul, insisted that he did not intend to teach Universalism. Yet, a long time friend of his, James B. DeYoung, Th.D., professor of New Testament Language and Literature at Western Seminary in Portland, OR, offers a different perspective. DeYoung insists that Paul embraced Christian Universalism, also known as Universal Reconciliation, about four years ago. Universal Reconciliation “asserts that love is the supreme attribute of God that trumps all others. His love reaches beyond the grave to save all those who refuse Christ throughout their lifetimes.” This sort of universalism is identical to that espoused by the Universalist Church in America that joined with the American Unitarian Association in 1961 to form the Unitarian Universalist Association. As one raised in the Unitarian Universalist Church, who has studied the Bible extensively, I can assure you that Paul Young’s doctrinal understanding of orthodox Christianity is deficient. You can read James B. DeYoung’s review of The Shack, however, please note that it is in PDF format. If necessary, you can download the free Adobe Acrobat Reader 9.

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Sarah Palin and National Security




John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as a running mate has brought hope to many who understand our most important issue: national security. There are many others who dread the possibility that Palin may one day become the first female U.S. president… aside from Hillary Clinton, who undoubtedly loathes the idea. After all, that was supposed to be her title.


Even as vice president, Sarah Palin will undoubtedly have a tremendous role in foreign affairs. Sam Harris, atheist author of Letter to a Christian Nation and The End of Faith writes: “McCain not only has thrown all sensible concerns about good governance aside merely to pander to a sliver of female and masses of conservative Christian voters, he has turned this period of American history into an episode of high-stakes reality television: Don’t look now, but our cousin Sarah just became leader of the free world! Tune in next week and watch her get sassy with Pakistan!


Harris’ assumption that Palin is nothing more than a “girl next door” is amazingly naïve. Nothing could be further from the truth. Those who dread Palin fail to comprehend the nature of our national security issues. Liberals suggest that those in the Middle East hate us for many reasons. Let’s look at a few.


From an article submitted by Linden on DanielPipes.org: “Muslims dream of a lost empire and see the wealth the West enjoys. They blame the West for their poverty.”


From Reader’s Digest: “There is a vast American imperial presence in the Muslim world… But this hatred of America should be seen for what it is: a scapegoat for the ills of an Islamic world in the throes of a deep, historic crisis. The dream of modernity in the Arab heartland of Islam has been thwarted.”


A very common misconception as to why we are hated by the Arab world is articulated clearly by one blogger: “Unless I'm mistaken, Bush invaded Iraq under the premise that Saddam had WMD's, when in reality it was to protect Israel and secure the oil fields so Halliburton could build a pipeline from Iraq to Kuwait. Now all of Islam hates us.” Yes, you are mistaken.


One website lists 87 things the U.S. has done wrong that have led to Middle Eastern animosity toward America. (http://www.isometry.com/usahate.html)


One blogger even suggests the Middle East hates us because we’re too fat! “The Middle East doesn't hate us because George Carlin dropped the F-bomb one too many times. No they hate us because we have become a nation of couch potatoes. It's true, there is an epidemic spreading across this country and pretty soon the new fashion statement will be WIDE LOAD printed on the back of a pair of Daisy Dukes.” Okay, he must be kidding... right?


Liberal pundit Andrew Sullivan, whom Sam Harris “debated” several months back on Beliefnet.com, suggests that “With Sarah Palin, America has taken one very large leap toward a completely theocratic politics.” Yet this is hardly accurate. The personal beliefs of one member of the Executive Branch of the U.S. government do not override the U.S. Constitution, under a system of checks and balances in which Congress carries the biggest stick. (One could hardly call the Harris-Sullivan dialogue a “debate” since Sullivan also did not accurately represent the majority view of evangelical Christians. He and Harris had far too much in common. )


Ultimately, the fundamental reason that Muslims in Arab countries hate America is not that they desire what the West has. They despise Western decadence. The fundamental reason Muslims hate America is that their holy book, the Qur’an, teaches that they are to seek the creation of a worldwide caliphate, a theocratic governing body ruled by Shari’a Law. Radically consistent Muslims, who strictly adhere to Qur’anic teachings, desire not only a “completely theocratic politics,” but also one that is completely unknown to most people in the West, especially Barack Obama and Joe Biden.


The Islamic doctrine of taqiyyah allows Muslims to practice deception and to outright lie if their end goal is the furtherance of Islam. This is especially true amongst the Shiite Muslims of Iran. What does this suggest regarding Barack Obama’s plan to unconditionally sit down with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Will Mahmoud negotiate a peaceful arrangement with America, the country his hero and mentor, Ayatollah Khomeini, dubbed “the Great Satan”? Will Mahmoud suddenly recant his threats to destroy Israel and America when he sees Barack smiling at him across the diplomacy table? Think again.


Sarah Palin may not yet fathom the depths of Islamic deception, but her Christian background will offer her a greater understanding of the challenges we have ahead of us.
by RC Metcalf