Our Stuff is Here!

The last few days have been very exciting for us. The stuff we won in the Panasonic contest arrived and we have spent lots of time playing with it all. It definitely seemed like Christmas as we spent the day trying to put things together, played with our new toys and stepped over piles of boxes and styrofoam. The kids are really enjoying the HD video camera and still camera. We were given 9 memory cards - several with 4 gigs of memory - and we have used them all! With our new TV we can stick the SD card right in and watch our HD home movies. One of the things we got is even our own green screen, so the kids are excited to do a weather map and special effects. I am excited to have my own laptop!

Greg Harper (see http://www.harpervision.com/) is coming next Wednesday to train us in how to get the most from all these products. He was originally coming this Friday, but his plans changed. I'm glad to have more time to clean house before he comes and more time to use the products so we know what questions to ask.

Terry and I are really trying to make the most of this opportunity with the kids. We have even been asking ourselves - what does it mean spiritually to be "high definition?" When you think of high definition, you think of a picture that is really clear and really "real." You must be receiving a high definition signal which requires lots of band width. I often feel like I am receiving signals from the Lord with a measly antenna and broadcasting his love to others in fuzzy black and white.

It is getting late, so that's a spiritual as I'll get for the night. Here are some pictures of our adventure.

Our stuff arrived on Tuesday morning . . .

We had lots of fun opening boxes

The boys are excited about the Blu Ray DVDs we got. We watched Pirates of the Carribean in high definition surround sound last night. It's not my favorite movie by any means, but it had lots of action and noise!

Today we decorated the driveway and our neighbor, Bob, took Terry up in his small plane to take video. Noah went along for his first plane ride. Since Terry didn't have his reading glasses, he couldn't focus. All the circling trying to take video while focusing made him sick. He has gone to bed early.

My Turn

It has been interesting reading all the family reviews on this movie. Terry, Rebecca and I finally got a chance to see it on Friday night, and now I’m wanting to chime in.

First of all, I should say that I recognize that I am neither a scientist nor a philosopher, so I am simply writing from the viewpoint of someone who has followed the politics of this debate with much interest for over twenty-five years. I actually wrote my high school research paper on the subject and entitled it “Academic Freedom.”

Perhaps because of this more political point of view, I didn’t go to the movie expecting lots of scientific content. I think the point of the movie was not to support ID itself but to reveal the lack of freedom on this issue in the scientific culture – particularly academia. I actually see the film as having three main messages with which I agree wholeheartedly:

1. There is a lack of freedom in discussing ID or the problems with evolution. There may be a shouting match in the popular literature, but there is no shouting match in academia because one side is muzzled.

2. Belief in naturalistic evolution leads to atheism. It obviously does not make everyone an atheist, but the connection is there. Stein gave several examples of this. I can also give several examples of folks I know, plus I can attest to my own struggle in this area.

3. The theory of evolution has social implications. That’s the main reason I care about this issue and think others should as well. Our society is reaping the benefits of a population that has been educated to think that there is not a God or that He is irrelevant. The de-valuing of human life is a natural outcome of an unquestioned belief in evolution. It may not always present itself in as extreme of a fashion as what the Nazis did, but I think we can all see the connection. Stein himself said several times that not all evolutionists were Nazis. He was simply trying to show that this subject does make a difference in human behavior!


I don’t know what the outcome of the film will be. Perhaps it will just make evolutionists mad. At least it will be better-received from an actor like Ben Stein than it would be from an evangelical. It’s hard to see how this movie could result in less freedom than we have now because right now we have next to none.

And I just don’t buy that we can’t discuss ID because it’s not science. Lots of things are discussed in school science classes like birth control (a social issue) or the latest current events. Some times classes are even let out for a pep rally (gasp!). Why can’t ID be discussed even one day of the school year? If not actually discussing ID, why can’t problems in the evolutionary theory be pointed out without someone fearing they will lose their job? Why do Christians in scientific fields feel like they have to keep their mouth shut on this? Isn’t it just a bit ridiculous?

If this theory didn’t make any difference as to how people lived their lives (like most of the scientific theories we take for granted), then we could just let it go. But this one matters! Christians who don’t speak out (especially those who are respected scientists) share some culpability in the descent of our culture into atheism.

Collision!

Last Tuesday night (after dark), the boys were playing "Capture the Flag" with some friends who were visiting from out of town. Then Nathan came running in with blood flowing down his face saying "Noah bit me!"

I'm thinking "Wow! He must have bit you hard! And why would he bite you on the forehead??"

Then Noah comes in with half of a permanent tooth missing. Fortunately, he just missed severing the nerve, so he was not in much pain.

The boys simply collided in the dark. Noah was coming from uphill - otherwise it would have been pretty hard for his tooth to be on the same level as Nathan's forehead.

We used superglue and butterfly bandages to fix Nathan (the cut was quite deep), and our dentist fixed Noah. Noah will have to have a crown on this tooth when he is an adult, and it may require being fixed several times before then.

Nathan did not want to have his picture taken, but I thought the event was too "classic" to go undocumented.