Saturday Selections – July 24, 2021

Was Jesus copied from an Egyptian deity? (4 min) Christians are sometimes scared to investigate the outrageous claims against the Bible that are so prevalent on the Internet. We seem to think that the professional way they're being presented (maybe in a full-length documentary) means there must be something to do them. But don't be afraid, and don't be surprised to discover how little substance such claims have. Banning hate speech against animals – the next stupid thing? PETA wants us to stop using "anti-animal language" and they have some alternatives to propose. Instead of "bringing home the bacon" they want us to say "bringing home the bagels." And instead of "take the bull by the horns" they offer "take the flower by the thorns." What's funny about this – besides everything – is how easy it is to imagine this actually being taken seriously. Of course, such a change would be followed by – in ten, or maybe just five years' time – another group complaining about how PETA's substitutions are insensitive to the gluten-intolerant, and, even worse, to flowers. The loss of flight doesn't explain evolution (10-min read) Creationists know this world is broken, groaning and wearing out (Is. 51:6, Rom. 8:20-22). So we aren't surprised when species lose abilities such as the ability to fly – that's not evolution; that's devolution. School shutdowns highlighted that parents are the educators "Over the last decades, our societies haven’t spent a lot of time reflecting on the primacy of parents in their kids’ lives. Instead, the state has increasingly displaced many familial roles and acquired a taste for routinely leaving parents on the sidelines, particularly with respect to education. "Yet when government backed away and could no longer offer schooling, it sent kids home.... This isn’t shocking. And we wouldn’t have it any other way. None of us would have preferred instead to institutionalize our kids for a year or two in some alternative residential location to keep them 'safe' and ensure they continued their government-offered education." Why heaven on earth doesn't work (10-min read) In the US there have been at least 119 attempts to create utopian communities. Though this is a secular article, it shows that the reason these communes always fail is because they don't have a proper understanding of Man's fallen nature: "What utopian (and especially socialist) communities seek is essentially unachievable in light of human nature: They want a triumph of exhortation over incentive, of intentions over results, of wishful thinking over actual performance." The woke guide to gender (3 min) A satiric take with a serious point: the logic that claims there isn't a line dividing the sexes is the same logic that would say there isn't a line dividing people from dogs. ...