Update: Obama Picked Rick Warren to Participate in Inauguration

Barack Obama has come under fire for inviting Pastor Rick Warren to speak during the inauguration. Warren will be delivering the Invocation. I am amazed at how the same people who will accuse Christians of being intolerant and close-minded are so violently opposed against the Christian worldview. People who are for gay marriage are infuriated that Warren will be allowed to speak because Warren is against gay marriage and abortion. Why would that be? If America is supposed to provide freedom of expression, then why can't people like Warren be allowed to speak? Just because I disagree with you doesn't mean you should shut up. They act like they can't stand to hear anything contrary to what they have convinced themselves is right. Chances are he would not even bring up either abortion or gay marriage during the inauguration...it would be inappropriate in that context.

Thankfully, I like to see that Obama is not going to let these "supporters" push him around. I foound an article online in which he defended his decision. In a calm, well-reasoned manner he told them how it was going to be and that he was going to remain consistent.

Obama replied, "let me start by talking about my own views. I think that it is no secret that I am a fierce advocate for equality for gay and lesbian Americans. It is something that I have been consistent on, and something that I contend -- intend to continue to be consistent on during my presidency.

What I've also said is that it is important for America to come together, even though we may have disagreements on certain social issues. And I would note that a couple of years ago, I was invited to Rick Warren's church to speak, despite his awareness that I held views that were entirely contrary to his when it came to gay and lesbian rights, when it came to issues like abortion. Nevertheless, I had an opportunity to speak. And that dialogue, I think, is part of what my campaign's been all about; that we're not going to agree on every single issue, but what we have to do is to be able to create an atmosphere when we -- where we can disagree without being disagreeable and then focus on those things that we hold in common as Americans.

"So Rick Warren has been invited to speak. Dr. Joseph Lowery, who has deeply contrasting views to Rick Warren on a whole host of issues, is also speaking. During the course of the entire inaugural festivities, there are going to be a wide range of viewpoints that are presented. And that's how it should be, because that's what America's about. That's part of the magic of this country, is that we are diverse and noisy and opinionated. And so, you know, that's the spirit in which, you know, we have put together what I think will be a terrific inauguration. And that's, hopefully, going to be a spirit that carries over into my administration."

After I read this, I gained even more respect for the man. We need someone to regain credibility and honor for the office of the President of the United States. Looks like Barack Obama is off to a good start.

Here is a video of the above comments:

Unfair Criticism

I have recently come across a video where Pastor Rick Warren is criticized for telling an audience of unbelievers that people should not worry about pleasing themselves but work to improve the lives of people around us. The critic is upset because Pastor Warren did not tell them that they need to be saved and give their lives over to Christ. The video is just a clip. I don't know if that he did or did not tell them about sin and the need for repentance but I know for sure that in his book Purpose Driven Life, Warren does talk about sin and the need for repentance. This I am sure about. I don't think that there is anything wrong in telling unbelievers to find out what God has purposed for them. I mean what higher purpose does God have but for us to trust Jesus and be saved from our sins. Warren is trying to inspire a world that denies the need of God to search for him. We know that if people search for God he will show them Jesus for only through Jesus will we reach our full potential and fulfill God's purposes for us.

This Is Separation of Church and State?

I just heard about a Muslim woman, named Lisa Valentine, who was arrested in a suburb of Atlanta, GA because she would not remove her head dress before entering the court room. She was sentenced to 10 days in jail for contempt of court. She said that she feels like her civil and human rights were violated because her religion dictates that she keeps her head covered.

I have found two articles on the incident. The first one is from the Associated Press and from Muslim Matters. It's interesting to see what information is shared and what isn't. They both explain and agree about the facts. The Muslim writer believes that the woman and all Muslims have been slighted and that they must push for the right to practice their religion. The Associated Press article tells us that when the bailiff told Valentine that she could not go into the court, she explained that she has been in court with the scarf before. She turned to leave and "uttered an expletive". At the point she was arrested and sentenced. Now, I understand that she was angry. However had she not cursed the bailiff, she probably would not have been arrested.

Here is my question: Where does "Separation of Church and State" begin? Where does it end? What I'm getting at is that right now prayer in public school is illegal under certain circumstances. Why is a teacher leading a Christian prayer in a school wrong, yet it's a human right for a woman to keep her head covered when everyone else in the court have to take their head gear off? I'm not saying that keeping the head gear on is wrong. I just wanna know why is one a right and the other isn't. I would like more information on this case. Could a Jewish man keep his head covering for religious reasons in the same court room? If so, the Valentine was being treated unfairly. I think that stinks. But if it is the policy that no one wears head gear than that changes things. This is a tough question. Is it a human right to be allowed to practice your religion despite the rest of society. It seems like America and Europe have become increasingly secular and Christianity is being relegated to second-class status. However, Islam seems to be protected. I think it's out of fear. In America, most people seem willing to allow Muslims a lot of latitude, after-all they think that if we don't they will be violent. On the other hand, society thinks that Christians are doormats and know that we are not supposed to be violent. They expect Muslims to be confrontational and violent. Not all Muslims are violent but is a stereotype.

Heroes: The Recruit

As I have already written, the last part volume 3 of Heroes just aired in North America. Volume 4: "Fugitives" will not start until February 2009. When I heard this I was vary, very upset because I want to know what will happen next. Fortunately, God, in his infinite forebearance and mercy, has moved upon the hearts and minds of the people who run NBC and make the series to give us another webisode series to tie us over until February. Here is the first part:

Bible GIS Using Goggle Earth

I have used the KML files for Genesis and Exodus and loaded them into Google Earth to get the following movies. The GIS data is from Bible Geocoding.

Ultimate Disrespect

Okay, I came home from church and was greeted with news that I never thought I would hear: The President of the United States was assaulted...with shoes!!! You can't make this stuff up! George Bush made a surprise visit to Iraq today. What amazed me was that I'm sure it was just politics. He was saying "Look, I made Iraq so safe I can visit." Bush refuses to admit that invading Iraq was a mistake. For an Iraqi journalist to throw his shoes at Bush ans shout "Here is your farewell kiss, you dog!", you have to admit that he must not like Bush very much. Added to the fact that in Islamic culture, hitting a person with your shoe is a high insult...akin to slapping someone upside the face with an empty glove in medieval and classical Europe or giving someone "the finger" today in American culture. It shows complete disrespect. I don't know how we should respond. But I don't think that this is something we can ignore. This is not just a slight against Bush but against the Presidency and America. I'm not happy about it at all.

Family Portraits 12-13-2008

My wife and I took Makayla out to make family portraits. I thought I would post them below. I love the technology that allows you to post your pictures in a virtual gallery. You may have to download the latest plugins for your browser to see this but it's cool to see.

Latin Comedy's "300" Spoof

I saw one of the most funniest parodies I have ever seen on YouTube. It made me fall out laughing.




I have to say that it not only perfectly reminds me of the movie "300" but also comments on the immigration problems of the United States. "Tonight! We dine in....San Diego!"

Wolverine Trailer

Here is the trailer playing in front of the 2008 version of the "The Day The Earth Stood Still".

Biblical Geography

One of the best apologetics (defense of the truth) for the Bible is the fact that as near as anyone can tell the places it describes actually existed or exists the way the Bible says it did. Since the Bible is real and tells things that actually happens a great deal can be better understood by looking at the geography it describes. It used to be that you would need to use books that had to be constantly updated as new information is learned but now the Internet and Google's mapping technologies you can study Biblical geography very, very easily. I found this site called BibleMap.org and it is a Biblical Geographic Information System (GIS) where you choose a book and chapter into a search field and each point mentioned in the passage you referenced is displayed on a map and the passage is displayed. It's great. It leverages GoogleMaps and is a great tool and based on Sattllight data.

Another great tool I found is a site called Bible Geocoding. Geocoding is a technique used in GIS where locations and data about that location is assigned to its appropriate coordinates on a map. I did a lot of that in my first job when I finished college. Now it has been done just about every single identifiable location found in the Bible. If a Biblical location is unidentifiable it is only because after so many centuries, we can't find it any more. This site does show us that there are many location where we know where they are now. This site also leverages GoogleMaps, but it also allows you to download Kmz files that are input files for GoogleEarth. Why is that awesome? Glad you asked. KML files are XML files that contain geographic information. The files can be loaded in GoogleMaps and GoogleEarth. GoogleEarth is a 3D mapping system. With it, you can look at Biblical locations in beautiful 3D and even fly over and through those locals as if you were in an airplane. Excited yet? Bible Geocoding also allows you to view or download the data by books of the Bible or all the data in one file.

The one drawback for both tools is that you have to have a live internet connection to use them.

"Rent-A-Negro"

I just read an insightful and humorous post about how Black people are being invited to attend rich people's parties. I think everyone should read it.

http://blacksnob.blogspot.com/2008/12/damali-ayos-vision-finally-becomes.html

A Possible Explanation for Genesis 1:6-8

At my church's Bible Study we have been looking at Genesis again. Chapter 1, verses 6-8 has gotten my attention:

And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. God called the expanse "sky." And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.

The question that came up for me is that the Bible says that God made the sky separate water from water. The water underneath the sky was gathered into "seas" (vs 9 and 10)

And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground "land," and the gathered waters he called "seas." And God saw that it was good.

What about the water above the sky. We know that this water comes into play during the 40 days/nights flood of Noah's day. Genesis 7:11-12 says:

In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.

But before the flood where was this water? I read a paper back in 2002 that attempted to address this problem and it tried to equate Neanderthals with the Nephilim from Genesis 6. I'll save the Neanderthal question for another post. However, I think the article did make a good stab at explaining what the Bible means about "water" above the sky. The theory set forth was that it was a giant ice sheet in orbit around the earth - a canopy. It was further theorized that the this canopy of ice shielded the earth from a lot more cosmic radiation than what is filtered out today. This would not only explain where the water that flooded the earth came from, but also why before the flood people aged extremely more slowly than after the flood.

I don't think the answer is a canopy, but a ring - like the rings around Saturn. Some astronauts and scientist report a faint ring even today. Saturn's and Uranus' rings are made of mostly ice, dust, and rocks. If the earth had a ring, and if were mostly ice, it could more than explain where some of the flood waters came from. This isn't something scientist agree on. Some who do hypothesize a ring, think it was only temporary and was formed from a meteor impact hitting the earth and tossing debris into orbit. Another theory was that a small comet could have gotten too close to the earth's gravitational field, broke into pieces and formed a temporary ring. Don't forget an object orbiting another is just caught in is gravitational field and is slowly falling into it.
Eventually, both theories end with the contents of the ring burning up in earth's atmosphere.

It's just a theory. But whether or not you reject the idea that a ring of ice used to encircle the earth, there is good evidence that there was a ring of some kind that affected the climate and life on the earth at some point in the past.

There is such a thing as several invisible rings that circle the earth. The earth has a core of mostly made of iron and nickel. This make the earth attractive to charged particles like electrons. This is why we "ground" electrical systems by running a wire to the ground. What we have is a spinning, hunking-huge charged-metallic sphere which gives rise to the earth's magnetic field called our magnetosphere. This field is not just fun to play with - magnetizing smaller pieces of metal to make toys, speakers, microphones, and what-not, but it also helps protects us from cosmic radiation and high-energy radiations that would be deadly to life on earth. God knew what he was doing.


References to look at:
Would a Saturn-like ring system around planet Earth remain stable?
The earth's ring
Running Rings Around Earth
Rings around Earth shaped past climate: study
Can Planet Earth Ever Have Rings?
Does the Earth have rings?
Magnetosphere

Our Son

Well, God is blessing my wife and I with a new bouncing baby boy! It was confirmed yesterday when Mitsouky took her ultrasound. I thought I would share his first pictures! I would have done the same with my daughter's ultrasounds but I did not have a blog then. So permit me this indulgence. I thank God so much. I only desire that my children love God and dedicate their lives to His service. Name? Oh, his name will be Matthias Ezekiel McElhaney. Here is a little special way to show his first pictures.

Herose Webisode Series 1: Destiny

Well the webisode series called Destiny, set in the the same world as the Heroes television series is now complete. I have created a playlist that contains all 4 episodes. Enjoy them below.



Also it has been announce that to fill in the gap left between Volumes 3 and 4 in the main series, another webisode series starts December 15, 2oo8 called The Recruit. Here is a promo for the series below.

SNL: Finally Parodys Obama

I was reading the Black Snob blog and it was brought to my attention that Saturday Night Live has finally made a joke on Obama. They did it by using the one quality that makes it extremely hard to make fun of him: his unflappability. It's extremely difficult to make fun of someone who's feathers are hard to ruffle.

"A Day That Will Live On In Infamy"

On December 7, 1941 Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. It's one of the watershed events in History that defined and affected everything that came after it. My paternal grandmother had a cousin that was stationed there during the attack. When he was ordered to stay at his post on steel-hulled ship, risking his life, his feet were badly burned yet his life was spared. When he was later sent back home to Georgia, he was given special shoes that he had to wear until his feet healed. He was persecuted and mistreated by white people when he returned to Georgia. They ridiculed him because of his shoes. There were many American heroes that day at Pearl Harbor. Some of them were African-American. At that time the Navy and the rest of the American military was segregated and although they never experienced the freedom they fought for, African-American soldiers and sailors still fought for America.

Tron: A Metaphor for Christ

I recently had the chance to see the movie Tron on the G4 Network. It's part of their "Movies that Don't Suck" series. Although Tron was released in 1982, it still holds up well, extremely well. I'm going to write this as if you have seen it already. It's the first movie I remember in where a person enters into a computer generated world inside a computer. Long before the characters in Matrix, Flynn played by Jeff Bridges was digitized into a computer and saved the digital world populated by "programs". Each program was represented by an actor wearing clothes that light up. I still think they look cool. Further, each programs looks like the human character that wrote it. A couple of days after seeing the film again, I realized that it is a great metaphor for Jesus. Like Flynn entered into his own creation and "sacrificed" himself to distract the mainframe so Tron could destroy it, Jesus entered our dimension...his creation, becoming like us so he could die in our place to pay the debts we have incurred for the sins we have committed, that we do commit, and that we will commit. This is the gospel in a nutshell.


Tron - Movie Trailer - The most amazing bloopers are here

Here is a clip for you...one of my favorite scenes, followed by a flash game base on that scene.




The game:

Heroes: Destiny Part 4

Here is the fourth webisode. It's called "Escape". Next week I will post a playlist containing all the episodes.

Heroes Destiny Part 3

The third part of the webisode series is called "Capture"

Pangea - Biblical Evidence

I'm not sure how much anyone really stops to consider how much the Bible and science really line up. A lot of people think that there is only geological "evidence" of evolution and in no way do geology supports anything in the Bible. Of course this is wrong. Ever looked at the Atlantic Coasts of the African and South American continents? They look like fit together like pieces of a puzzle because they do. Genesis 1:9-10 says:

And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so. God called the dry ground "land," and the gathered waters he called "seas." And God saw that it was good.

From this verse we notice what seems to be a contradiction. The Bible says all the seas were gathered in one place and so was dry ground. Today we know that this is not the case. We have six continents completely surrounded by water. I don't include Europe as a single continent because it's not surrounded by water. Therefore either the Bible is wrong or at one time all the continents were actually one continent and some how they broke apart into separate pieces and moved into their present positions. Crazy? For years some folks thought it was crazy. The answer to the puzzle is amazing. We have a scientific that has been around for many, many years: Platetechtonics (see picture on the right). Our planet is not static at all. The land masses are sitting on a molten rock and they surf the surface of it like surf boards on water. The original continent referred to as "Pangea" (a possible picture is on the left) broke up into separate pieces and moved apart from one another. Today these land masses are still moving. When one techtonic plate hits another or moves pass another we get earthquakes, mountains, and volcanoes. For example, I live in California. The reason why we have earthquakes is that almost half of California is on the Pacific Ocean plate and the other is on the North American plate. Where the two plates meet, is where the San Andreas fault is. It almost runs the entire length of the state. The plates are slipping past one another. When the plates move relative to one another. we have eathquakes and the distance between Los Angeles and San Francisco is actually getting smaller very, very slower. When we have large, powerful earthquakes, earthquake faults move a lot and very quickly - an inch is a far distance for a fault to move. It is important to also realize that what seems like contiguous plates are not. For example the North American plate, has other faults and fissures. For example, both the Mississippi River and New York City sit on faults...they just haven't moved in centuries. This means that when they do move they will be large and destructive earthquakes. I've heard that the last time there was a major eathquake in the vicinity of the Mississippi River, the river flowed backwards! Also India is sometimes called a "sub-continent" because it's on a different plate than Asia. At one point that plate hit the Eurasian plate and thus creating the Himalayan mountain range. And the Pacific plate and the North America plate colliding created the Rocky Mountain rage.

I know what some people my choose to argue: If here were people on the earth at the time that Pangea broke up, why doesn't the Bible mention it? The Bible does in Genesis 10:25 which says

Two sons were born to Eber: One was named Peleg, because in his time the earth was divided; his brother was named Joktan.

In Hebrew the word translated divided is related to the name "Peleg".I believe that when the Bible mentions that "the earth was divided" its is referring to the super continent began splitting into multiple continents. There is no reason to think that continental drift has ever moved faster than it does today but there is no reason to think that it could not move quickly. The continents are still moving. the Atlantic Ocean is getting bigger and the Pacific is getting smaller...almost immeasureably slowly. Below is a graphic of what some scientist think the break up of Pangea may have looked like if you sped it up and looked at it from orbit.