Darwin’s “Well, Dress Me Up And Call Me Science!” Tour Comes To Canada

In comparison to it’s American release, the Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed movie which challenges the dogma of Darwinian evolution has come to Canada with less of a ripple but alongside the symbolic victory of Mark Steyn over the “BC Human Rights’ Tribunal” and its thought crimes division. Using the tried and true methods of decrying anything that deviates from the notion that all life magically appeared on the Earth at some unpredictable point in the past and then morphed into the species we see today, the Darwinian apologists attacked the movie as being too friendly to deism and discussing ideas that *aren’t real science*. The former argument is trivial, overly emotional and frankly not worth discussing and more than saying that Atheists are always going to hate every other religion out there since one of their key beliefs is that their faith is being held back by all the rest, even if they merely exist (the complex behind this is another blog for another day by another blogger).

As for the latter though, wouldn’t it be interesting if we, for one moment, got truly investigative and turned the tables on the all too comfortable Darwinians who have become yet another group to hijack our education system for their own self-preservation and motives? After all, in the noise of bitter reviews, intimidating threats and exhaustive and bewildered requests to anti-Darwinists to just shut up, I think the evolution debate has failed to examine a key component: whether the theory of Charles Darwin is truly something worth wasting time on in the science class to begin with. After all, a physicist who learns anything from F=MA to the hydrogen fusion reaction that is continually taking place at the centre of our sun to even string theory is able to take that knowledge and apply it to the benefit of mankind in a strictly physical sense. Even if the highly controversial string theory proves to be a dead end, what it would tell us about how elementary particles don’t interact would help us to zone in on other understandings and ultimately give us a better way to understand the very microscopic. In turn, that would allow us to apply our knowledge one day to advancements that might, for example, allow for microscopic computers that write data onto quarks, just as F=MA gave us the first building blocks we needed to put a man on the moon. Chemistry need only need mention of companies like DOW or Pfizer to prove its contribution to our modern society and even a late-comer to quantitative analysis, biology, will soon prove invaluable to an entire generation of baby-boomers who are in the midst of retiring from the workforce currently. In fact, the driving force behind science is not just getting to have a better understanding of the world around us, from the very small to the very large, but also being able to apply that knowledge in some fashion.

When it comes to the necessity to teach Darwinian evolution in a grade 7 classroom, or high school, or even university, what is the purpose? I mean, we can keep clubing each other over the head about how detrimental it is to society for the other side to get a voice in on the debate, but as I noted above, the debate always ends up in the realm of the meta-physical; things pertaining to the existence, or lack thereof, of God! Has evolution allowed us to come up with any great invention or advancement? Is it so essential to our understanding of biology or chemistry that twelve year-olds need to understand it if they are going to pass their high school biology or chemistry courses? Or are we all fooling ourselves here, using findings that more properly belong in the hit-or-miss fields of archeology and social science to indoctrinate young minds with what is practically nothing more than a contemporary, social statement?

The fact is that evolution is still very much stuck in in the past, and will continue to be until it can offer actual testifiable evidence of one species giving way to another over the course of two or more generations. It’s all about the findings in the dirt, the rock layers and the pretty pastel pictures that appear in text books. The funny thing about history is that as it becomes more remote, the possibilities of the imagination grow exponentially. It’s also the truth that if evolution was so essential for our children to learn, I should have never graduated from university, nor anyone else who currently walks to Earth and believes that evolution deserves a more skeptical analysis, since the understanding of that knowledge should have been essential in understanding everything from RNA-DNA reactions to the immune system. Evolution should have to be to biology what F=MA is to physics if the official story is to be believed, wherein a student that fails to acknowledge the very foundations cannot comprehend or excel while studying the more advanced topics.

So as Expelled comes out this weekend in a fraction of the theatres it did in the US back in April, you’ll probably see a few fireworks fly as the Darwinians campaign to remain the only kid on the block. What the movie will continue to do though is extend a debate that has lasted for over 150 years and certainly isn’t going away; a debate where a lot of questions could be and should be asked. Ultimately, the most dangerous of those question for Darwinians isn’t “Can you prove it?”, although they certainly hate that one. Rather, if they want to spend valuable class time teaching my son or daughter about their great theory about nothing, the worst thing they could hear back from my kid is “So what?” The runner up might sound something like “Why are you so concerned about us hearing from the competition?”

McCain offers money to the auto sector

John McCain has offered to throw $300 million as a prize to whoever can develop an electric car battery that can reduce our dependence on oil. This is a ridiculous subsidy.

McCain said such a device should deliver power at 30 percent of current costs and have “the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars.”

If the battery actually works, the savings in gasoline should be enough incentive to the customer. This proposed $300 million prize is just a subsidy from the poor, i.e., people who can not afford the car, transferred to the rich, i.e., people who can afford the car plus benefit from the gasoline savings.

The cynic in me tells me that this magical electric battery has already been invented.

Who Do High Gas Taxes Hurt the Most?

Remember these statistics:

As would be expected, people earning $80,000 a year or more are cutting back the least (37 per cent) on daily driving and taking fewest steps (36 per cent) to increase gas mileage in cars.

Conversely, more than two-thirds (69 per cent) of drivers earning less than $20,000 a year said they’re cutting back on daily driving, while 64 per cent were trying to increase gas mileage in their cars.

Meanwhile, two-fifths of drivers in the lower middle income range of $20,000 to $40,000 said they’re more frequently turning to other means of travel than their car - the highest among various income groups.

When they start trying to tell you that high gas prices don’t hurt the poor, remember these statistics.  When they start saying that only the rich will be hurt because they drive hummers, remember this.

Any action by any party to raise gas prices hurts the poor.  Do not let them tell you any different.

BREAKING: Environmentalists Suggest Young Death To Children As Way To Save Planet

I just got wind of a story today about how the state-run Australian Broadcasting Corporation (the Auzzie equivalent of the CBC) has put together a site that targets children and asks them to answer some questions that calculates when they should die in order to save the Earth from supposed environmental havoc. The ironically named Planet Slayer site told me upon my visit that I should’ve died back when I was just over eight years old; with my carbon usage just a couple of tonnes above the “Average Aussie pig”’s, it’s fair to suggest that this site is rigged to lead children to believe that any human that lives beyond early adolescence is a drain on the planet and implicitly a legitimate candidate to die.

The very fact that this site is designed for children makes what would be an outrageous site even worse, especially when you consider that your carbon-fattened pig explodes into a pile of blood at the end of the quiz(see image). It is also the latest evidence that the movement spearheading the climate change cause simply does not value human life and in fact sees each human as a virus leeching off the planet’s life source.

When you throw in the comments by a Elizabeth May confidante earlier this year that it would’ve been less tragic for seal hunters in Newfoundland to die and another story from Australia that I reported on earlier this year in which a doctor down under wants to tax families for every precious child they bring into the world, a clear pattern starts to emerge among those for whom the Earth is of chief importance. I don’t suppose that the original claim by environmentalists that we had to protect the planet for future generations of children holds much water anymore as they either want to tax said children out of existence or blow up the ones that slip through anyway when they reach age 8. Let’s just hope for everyone involved at the ABC that no child decides to be a good little trooper and take one for the Earth!

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If you want to contact the ABC about this travesty, you can do so using their online form.

(welcome Newswatch readers!)

Good Riddance to Proposed New Copyright Laws

While I admit i haven’t read the specific legislation it looks like Bill C-60 the Conservative’s controversial bill on copyright is either going to be left to die by government, or it will be defeated in the House. Which from my assessment is a very good thing.

HOWARD KNOPF in the Hill Times states the ill-advised bill would:

Put digital locks on our computers, cellphones, iPods, other gadgets and tools, and, ultimately, our culture and make it an infringement and maybe even a criminal offence to try to circumvent the sometimes malignant and much-maligned technology known as Digital Rights Management (DRM) and Technical Protection Measures (TPMs).[...]

Make it possible for the big four foreign record companies to sue ordinary Canadians whom they suspect of file sharing. [...]

Head on over to Digital-Copyright.ca for more details on why this Bill is a bad idea.

When Rights Aren’t Rights Anymore…

On the two sides of the Atlantic Ocean this past week the world was introduced to two different debates over the role that human rights play in our society. Over in Europe, the European Court of Human Rights has agreed to hear the case of a British woman who wants to adopt a 26-year old chimp and would require the homonid to legally be declared a human being in order to do so. In essence, this is the latest volley fired off in Europe by a movement that wants to extend human rights to other species. More locally, the York University Federation of Students (YFS) passed a motion that would ban all non-religious clubs from holding pro-life views on campus. When asked to justify her decision, motion sponsor Gilary Massa responded by saying that every group against abortion was “sexist” and should be suppressed for going against our long-held norm (leave it to a 20-year old to think that a decision made in 1988 is long held…). The two might not seem very related, but they are, and are in fact the latest example of how the secularist, anti-family agenda that Western nations have been engaging in over the past 50 years is starting to chew itself up.

First, to understand the blatant hypocrasy and moral inconsistency (or “intellectual dishonesty”, as our seculatarian friends like to say) of the YFS, you need not read the pages of the National Post, Michael Coren’s column, or the Blogging Tories; just head on over to the Federation’s website, where a big red button titled “Denial of Free Speech at McMaster” which links to this — a letter attacking McMaster for banning “Israel Apartheid Week”. That’s right, the YFS which is making national headlines this month for trying to oppress diverse views on its campus, was the same group that was also making headlines back in March for vigorously defending a campaign that wasn’t just about free speech but was also known for a history of violence and harassment of an prominent ethnic group on campus.

This inconsistency might go a long way to explain why, in the months and years ahead, when Canada starts to examine whether a primitive primate can “argue” for human rights, the YFS will probably be there, strongly backing the cause and at the same time oppressing groups which speak out for unborn humans which can also not speak in a court of law but can, unlike chimps, meet the biological argument for species validation in that all non-genetically defective fetuses have the capability of breeding with humans and producing sustainable, fruitful offspring. Save the primates, scourge the people, as it were. Don’t expect facts to get in the way of York’s student leaders or their cheerleaders on The Left as the entire abortion argument for them has long been one about passion and emotion, but not much beyond the principle that guilt-free sexual incidents should be an absolute right that trumps all others.

Their argument, founded around the reality that men can walk away from affairs without the risk of pregnancy while women cannot, betrays this in that their natural conclusion is that women should have the freedoms that men do in this regard, instead of examining whether men should have the responsibilities that women do for a pregnancy instead. Nor does the rights and realities of the growing child become a discussion point during this whole debate either. Wouldn’t you expect more from scholars, charged with examining all aspects of the issue at hand?

Update:Steyn’s insight into the future of abortion, and a small tip ‘o’ hat to the York affair…

Dion’s Carbon Tax: As Neutral As The CBC…

A lot of talk has been had about the politically suicidal aspect of Stephane Dion’s rumoured crusade to introduce a carbon tax into the federal tax structure. We’re told it’s good policy, but bad politics and even some conservatives are reluctant to disagree with that statement given that a carbon tax can be crafted out as a consumption tax that would allow people to save money instead of having the taxman gouge them before they even see the paycheque.

A fundamental component of the debate has been ignored so far though and that is whether a tax on the sixth element of the periodic table is really such a good idea after all. For example, I relayed a report late last year on how an obsessive academic from Australia proposed the sick ideal of putting a carbon tax on each baby born into the world and a yearly tax on children for the first years of their lives. As we have our national government apologizing for the Chinese head tax of almost 100 years ago, calling the practice a shameful blemish from our past, eco-liberals are gearing up to add a tax that doesn’t discriminate on race necessarily but on simply existing. The professor was never quite clear on what would happen if families either refused or could not afford to pay the tax, although he was certainly joyous in announcing how this would effectively womens’ (and mens’) right to chose to have their babies (something liberals often love to do except when they know the choice will result in one less life in the world).

On the other end of the age spectrum though, Stephane Dion’s carbon tax threatens the well-being of our society. While details haven’t been offered by many pundits so far, I’m sure more than a few of them have been sharing my imagination of a Conservative attack ad picturing an elderly old lady, huddled in the corner of a dark, snow-squalling room; as the picture pans out from the detailed sadness of this lonely old woman, a caption will read something to the effect that the retired lady wouldn’t afford heat because that nasty Scrooge of a Liberal, Stephane Dion, is taxing coal so high that she can’t afford to keep warm this Christmas/winter. Whether or not we end up seeing an ad like this run, the fact still remains that some fixed-income Canadians will be hit hard by a carbon tax, often in the case where they slaved away their whole lives under an income tax system that punished them when they were making more money. Now they wouldn’t make as much, which should reduce their burden under income tax, but would be sideswiped by the Dion carbon tax at a time in their lives where going out to make more money simply wouldn’t be an option.

Finally, we have to realize just what a ridiculous notion it is for the Liberals to propose that a carbon tax would be tax neutral. Take the mathematical equation ax + by + cz = 100, where a, b, and c are the percentages of total tax that three hypothetical taxpayers, x, y, and z, would pay into the system. If a tax shift were truly neutral (and Canadians have good reason to believe that no political party that proposes a new tax will EVER deliver on the neutrality promise), that 100 would have to stay the same since it represents 100% of the taxes the government collects now.

On the one hand, it may go down for x because he doesn’t buy as much carbon in a year, but z’s burden might go up because she lives on a rural farm where oil heating and a truck are the necessities of a farmer, not the luxury that we might think. Will *big oil* account for some of the z’s out there who will see their tax bill increase? Most definately, but who do you think will pay for it in the end? The fat cat execs who The Left is always telling us about, or the common Canadian who goes to fill up at the pump?

On the other hand, we have to ask just why the Liberal spin doctors are already playing up the tax neutral element of such a carbon tax? After all, either the government isn’t going to be collecting the same amount of money because carbon usage will go down (in which case, we have to ask how Dion plans to fund his national daycare and other new spending projects), or they will and we will be essentially using the same amount of carbon. Thinking further, what isn’t carbon out there? Bread? Wrong. Clothes? Try again. Wood? Look elsewhere. In fact, the only things I can think of off the top of my head are computer chips and software programmes that are downloaded off the internet. Not exactly the bare necessities but I’m sure the tech industry is already thrilled that our government already presumes that we’re pirates and thieves every time we buy a CD/DVD and is itching to get into the flash drive market as well (think of it as a silicon tax — maybe we should just harmonize it with Dion’s carbon tax and have a tax on all IV A elements!).

Ultimately though, if the Liberals are willing to fight for this one in an election, I say go for it. After all, it wouldn’t take long for someone to point out the obvious: if all this environmental posturing we’re doing now is meant to save the Earth and, ultimately, our existence as a species, why would we impose a tax that would be so destructive both to our children and our elderly? Isn’t the point about making our quality of life better? And once the debate is framed that way, Dion’s already ill-advised plan will be toast and we won’t have to hear any more about eco-radicalism, or at least until the summer of 2024 when we have a couple more days over 30 than usual!

GTA IV, Morality Tale?

Once and a while, the mainstream media picks up and follows the release of a particular video game because of its impact on society. Such is the case with any entry of the Grand Theft Auto series. IV, which is actually the eighth title of the popular anti-hero series, was released at the end of April and went on to break all the records the previously existed for first week sales. Listening into Z103 on the way to work on launch day, the morning crew found some bright light who camped out all night and, when interviewed, said he didn’t care too much for many of the new features that the game introduces, “I just want to shot people!” And so begins the controversy again where the game will be blamed for every homiside, shooting and violent crime on this side of November while the supporters of the series will do themselves no favours like the young man Z103 talked to just by acting like the thugs that the game portrays.

As a Christian, I won’t ever own the game and highly doubt whether I’ll ever play a friend’s copy, although GTA IV did strike up some curiosity last week when speaking to one of my gaming friends who holds no allegiances to God but is pretty observant. He mentioned that the game, with fancy next-gen graphics and a deeper, longer story was different than its predecessors since, in this new, more detailed version, the wounds you inflicted were actually graphic and not fuzzy, pixilated renditions; the game code was more realistic so that people didn’t just keel over and die but actually begged for their lives, cried out in agony and added a sense of victimhood that never existed before; and the game was more open-box (a challenge given the freedom this game gave you before) where as the anti-hero, you are now charged with making moral decisions as you go about your life of crime and immorality.

Yesterday, while visiting another friend, I got a chance to see the game in action by watching a mission through which the hero, Neco, was sent to kill the biker-boyfriend of the mob boss’s daughter. The mob boss, my other friend observed while we were chatting, was messed up — there was a strong correlation between his drug habits and the deteriorating relationships he had with friends, family and *business colleagues*. Later on, during online mode, the game spit out “player 1 2nd amendmented player 2″ after the former shot and killed the latter in an airport. It seemed to me like the rumours of hidden messages in this game were true, even to the point where I now wouldn’t be surprised if I was told that Nico could get STDs from some of his dating activities that take place in the game (and which caused the infamous “Hot Coffee” affair in the last GTA game). Could it be that publisher Rockstar games is actually trying to explain to young and impressionable gamers that bad choices in life have consequences?

While it’s still a little premature to say, it might also be suggested that just by striving to give gamers that more realistic experience — right down to going to a bar to play pool — Rockstar is inadvertently making its games so life-like that the ugly side of crime, promiscuity and general ungodliness are all seeping out of the woodwork. If it is this intense, the publisher of GTA IV might have also found a way to reach out to a demographic law enforcement, governments and churches have struggled decades to make contact with. Ironically, Rockstar’s realism might just have the unintended consequences of making the acronym GTA a cultural fossil, given enough upgrades to gaming hardware.

Abortion Insight From An Unlikely Source

As longtime readers know, I’m no fan of Marc Emery, the self-styled “prince of pot”. Emery has built an entire career around avoiding personal responsibility and so I was quite surprised when I found his article on the Western Standard website to be so well-written and at the same time so personal. Unlike every other “why I had an abortion” article that I’ve read in the past two decades, Emery’s was detailed and honest; I still don’t agree with him but I’m also admiring his intellectual honesty in admitting what he got himself involved in thirty years ago.

If you scroll through the article (and just a warning, there is vulgarity used), you’ll find that he doesn’t mince words when talking about how the actual abortion procedure “killed” the unborn child or how he doesn’t skim over the details of his then-girlfriend’s painful day in a London hospital executing her control over her own bodily functions. In fact, I figure that if Emery’s piece were published in something like, say, the Toronto Star or the Globe, there’d be letters of protest screaming about not needing to know the ugly science behind abortion so long as it works — ignorance is bliss to the nth degree.

Of course, I think Emery is closer to the heart of the abortion issue than he knows when he questions whether sending literally hundreds of thousands of men and women to prison for murder (a scenario that would have to occur if we pursued every woman who had an abortion and every husband/boyfriend/fling who was an accessory); it’s true that if we did that we would have an amazingly guilty society. However, while I respect and understand where Emery is coming from on this one (he is, after all, the man who wants to overcome narcotics laws by viral marketing), I doubt our society would be nearly as nice if we didn’t pursue a society just as infiltrated with thieves; there is a reason we have justice systems in civilized societies.

Furthermore Emery’s admission that something died in the womb of his girlfriend 20 weeks after it came to be there is revealing in itself and a mature observation that many today are simply not capable of making. It is, for me, the thing Emery writes that is only trumped in significance by the bit Emery writes on having to name his dead child Ben.

When I read that part, I honestly got thinking and I wonder just how many abortions would go through in Canada if we made the mother give her “collection of cells” a name before the little bundle is escorted out of her. I don’t think that it will stop more abortions because people feel it is wrong, but rather because those who would find the simple act too much to bear wouldn’t be convinced that it was undoubtedly right. And that, my friends, makes the notion all the more significant when we realize that choices are the domain of adults, and not children who want to play grown-up.

New Evolutionary Ancestor Discovered!

Finally, the proof that I’ve been looking for all along. Why didn’t you atheist dudes tell me about this? After all, isn’t this specimen the sort of definitive and uncompromising link that has long been touted as the object which separated the educated and enlightened from the ignorant and self-deceiving. Consider me ignorant no longer!

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