Biology
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‘Last week, the Republican National Committee (RNC) announced the “Pride Coalition.” The coalition is a partnership with the “Log Cabin Republicans,” an organization that describes itself as “LGBT conservatives and straight allies who support fairness, freedom, and equality for all.”
Although many find the move disheartening, it will only shock those who haven’t been paying attention. Al Mohler has described the relationship between Republicans and evangelicals as a “marriage of convenience.” In this case, marriage is a particularly painful and ironic metaphor.
And to be clear, the convenience in this marriage goes both ways. For many within the RNC, evangelicals are just one of several voting blocs, albeit an important one. For many evangelicals, the Grand Old Party (GOP) is simply a better fit than the alternative, given their stance on social issues like abortion, gender, and religious freedom. And, some on both sides are taken in by what quirky French theologian Jacques Ellul called “the political illusion.”
When all problems and all solutions are reduced to politics, all hope rests in gaining political power. Thus, when it comes to engaging in politics, Christians must always work to keep straight what are the means and what are the ends. A decision to partner with an LGBTQ group only makes sense if the “end” is to regain political power. The same decision, however, makes no sense if power is only the means and something else, such as limited government, is the end.
The problem with this coalition isn’t that some in the LGBTQ camp wish to support a political party of limited government. That’s been true for a long time. In contemporary politics’ pragmatic exercise, it never hurts to have unexpected allies vote for your candidate. However, welcoming voters to a political party is different than creating an alliance with a group that hopes to advance its own goals within a political platform. This particular coalition signals a change in the GOP’s platform and party positions, as well as broader changes in what it means to be “conservative.”
A core element of the GOP platform has long been so-called “family values,” sardonic shorthand for the party’s often inconsistently expressed and lived-out traditional moral framework. Key to this framework is the centrality of the nuclear family, the notion that marriage between one man and one woman who stay married is not merely a social construct but essential for both a healthy society and the wellbeing of the next generation. Therefore, it is the government’s task to protect the family, not redefine or deconstruct it. The more the government protects the family, the more non-governmental entities are able to collectively secure the future.
But, moral consensus around the nuclear family is only possible if it rests on grounds other than government. That requires grounding truth itself in something outside the government. Today, however, ours is what Os Guinness calls a “cut flower society.” Though we still have the trappings of so-called “family values,” no shared moral foundation remains for it. The quest for freedom has devolved into a pursuit for radical autonomy, especially in sexual matters.
All of which brings us back to this “coalition.” The RNC is mistaken to think that it is possible to be fiscally or politically conservative without, on some level, being culturally conservative first. You can’t have limited government while at the same time embracing a movement wishing to deconstruct and redefine marriage and the family since only the family reliably produces citizens able to govern themselves.
Whenever family fails, the state is compelled to step in. America’s founders, even with all their flaws, understood this. John Adams said, “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our constitution as a whale goes through a net.”
Chuck Colson was fond of saying: “The Kingdom of God will never arrive on Air Force One.” We vote how we must and do what we can to love our neighbors in political ways, but we must not put our hope in candidates or parties as if political power for our party is the end. In a Christian view, political ends are never ultimate ends.
Christians must maintain a clear-headed vision of the importance of social issues in the public arena. That means determining what is true theologically, first, and then letting political chips fall where they may. As my friend, Focus on the Family president Jim Daly put it, “We must, lovingly and winsomely, never stop contending for the things that matter to God.” Family and marriage matter to God.’https://www.breakpoint.org/the-rncs-pride-coalition/
This is where we are today. When the truth is told but the left doesn’t like it then there MUST be an apology or you will be sorry! So ‘Actor Ingo Rademacher, who has starred in General Hospital since 1996, has apologised for a supposed transphobic tweet.
In reality, he tweeted support for biological reality and women’s rights but has been bullied into apologising for offending a bloke who appropriates womanhood.
He retweeted a comment and image made by Allie Beth Stuckey. It referred to Rachel Levine who is male and Virginia’s new Republican lieutenant governor Winsome Sears, a black conservative woman.
“Hello and welcome to ClownTown, where the dude on the left is an empowering woman, and the woman on the right is a white supremacist,’ Stuckey penned over a side-by-side image of the women.”
His General Hospital transgender co-star and trans supporters ripped into him and he made a video to apologise.
Seemingly in defense of the sentiment of his initial post, Ingo said in the video: ‘While it’s not okay to call a Black woman a white supremacist, I don’t think it’s okay either to call a transgender an empowered woman. Because where does that leave women? Women have fought so hard to get on a level playing field with men. They weren’t allowed to have anything back in the day. They were nothing. I don’t agree with that.’
The actor went on to add the he ‘wouldn’t refer to a transgender person as a dude, if they want to be called a she, that’s totally fine.’
Then, directly to his General Hospital colleague, he said: ‘Cassandra, I apologise to you sincerely. I think you’re an absolute talent and you’re very beautiful as well. I don’t think a transphobic man would say that. I think you’re absolutely gorgeous, I really do.’
Binary spokeswoman, Kirralie Smith, said this proves we are living in a clown world.
“Rachel Levine is a dude. He is male, every single cell in his body is male,” she said.
“The same goes for actor Cassandra James. He is male.”
“It is insane and offensive that a man feels forced to apologise for calling out the facts and stating that these men are not empowered women.
“It is disappointing that he apologised. Everyone, including celebrities, should be able to state the truth without being intimidated into submission.”’https://www.binary.org.au/actor_apologises_for_stating_the_truth?utm_campaign=2021_11_15_weekly_enews&utm_medium=email&utm_source=binary
Here in Australia we have some ‘Brilliant news: Senator Claire Chandler has announced she will be introducing a private members bill to get sex reintroduced into the Sex Discrimination Act. Staggeringly, the definitions of male and female were removed in 2013 leaving the Sex Discrimination Act impotent in promoting or protecting biological sex.
Disappointingly, Prime Minister Scott Morrison and the Minister for Women, Marise Payne, have refused to engage on this issue; they have ignored the pleas of thousands of Australians to reinstate legislation to protect girls and women from discrimination and disadvantage in sport, refuges, changerooms, prisons and a myriad of other female services and spaces.
Senator Claire Chandler is about to change all of that. The PM, the Minister for Women, and every other federal politician’s position on this issue will be exposed.
In an email sent out to supporters, Chandler announced her intention to legalise women’s rights.
For the past 18 months, you and I have been calling on Sport Australia to withdraw their misguided “inclusion” guidelines and acknowledge the importance of single-sex women’s sport.
Australians have had enough of ideologically driven bureaucrats claiming that women’s sport should be based on gender identity and not biological reality.
Our common sense position is backed by international sporting bodies, leading scientists from around the world, female athletes, parents, and coaches – and thousands of Australians like you who have signed my petition.
With your support, I’ve put a mountain of evidence in front of Sport Australia and the parliament, demonstrating unequivocally that it is neither fair nor safe for biological males to be allowed to compete against women.
Our concerns and the evidence have been ignored.
Sport Australia has made it clear they intend to ignore the latest research and that they will not, under any circumstances, change their guidelines unless the law changes.
So today, I am letting you know that I am drafting a bill to protect single-sex sport for women and girls in Australia.
I have started a process to amend the Sex Discrimination Act 1984, to ensure that women’s single-sex sport will once again be celebrated and encouraged in Australia.
The Sex Discrimination Act was always intended to provide for single-sex sport. But after changes made in 2013 by the former Labor Government, it’s now being used as a weapon to convince sporting organisations that they must base participation in sport on gender identity rather than sex – or risk being in breach of the law.
The senator is committed to ensuring that all sporting clubs have the legal right to rule that female sporting categories are for women and girls only. She will eliminate loopholes and work on ways to ensure transgender athletes can compete in a fair and safe way that does not put females at risk.
The media will not doubt either ignore or misrepresent the intentions of this bill. You can be sure that Coalition MPs and the opposition will be running scared, as they will either have to come out in support of the protection of women and girls, or risk being exposed as political ideologues if they oppose it.
Well done Senator Chandler, you have our whole-hearted support and commitment to work with you until the job is done.’https://www.binary.org.au/game_on?utm_campaign=2021_11_15_weekly_enews&utm_medium=email&utm_source=binary
1 Corinthians 15:22
“For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.”
‘If God created, but He did so by evolution, it means that there were many generations and billions of deaths before the first man appeared on the scene. Does Scripture say anything about this?
Indeed it does! In fact, the whole plan of salvation rests on the fact that there was no death before the first man. This truth is found throughout Scripture, but nowhere is it more clear than in 1 Corinthians 15:22. Here we read, “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.” This means that if death did not begin with, and because of, Adam’s sin, then by the same token no one is made alive in Christ. The way it is phrased in this passage, one depends on the other. If there were generations of death in the world before Adam, then death is not tied to Adam’s sin. And if death is not tied to Adam’s sin, then life is not tied to Christ.
In other words, if there were death before Adam and therefore generations before Adam, Christ’s work turns out to be of no effect. So you see, even evolution with God added to it questions the Bible’s message about the saving work of Christ.
The good news is that there is no fact that demands our rejection of God’s account of creation. No scientific fact has been established that forces us to reject what the Bible says about the first human beings or the origin of sin. There is no fact that has been established that rules out the Bible’s account of creation, the origin of sin, or death. These truths are fact and the foundation upon which the Gospel rests!’https://creationmoments.com/sermons/death-before-adam-2/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=death-before-adam-2&mc_cid=50714d658e&mc_eid=00c1dcff3c
The truth will get you cancelled on Twitter so it seems. When truth is cancelled lies become the norm.
‘The official Twitter account of Congressman Jim Banks (R-Ind.) was suspended for tweeting, “The title of first female four-star officer gets taken by a man” in reference to Rachel Levine, Biden’s assistant secretary for Health & Human Services (HHS), being sworn in as a four-star admiral of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps earlier this week.’https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2021/10/23/twitter-suspends-gop-congressman-for-saying-rachel-levine-is-a-man-n1526403?utm_source=pjmedia&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&bcid=5a05e186fc85b30f55c28204f849862c04192d97b134e516f76782809875c086&recip=26169367
It shouldn’t be a hard decision but it is for some even when the Scriptures explicitly say in Romans 1:21-27 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. 24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. 26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: 27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
God’s Word isn’t up for debate but for obedience! Nevertheless, ‘This week, North America’s oldest denomination will confront its gridlock over LGBTQ ordination and same-sex marriage. Votes cast in Tucson, Arizona, at the Reformed Church in America’s General Synod — delayed 16 months due to the pandemic — will chart the course for the already-splintering denomination.
In the past year, conservative factions have broken ties with the Reformed Church in America (RCA), with other churches threatening to follow. Delegates to the synod, which starts Thursday and will continue through Tuesday, will determine how the denomination might restructure to entice congregations to stay, if the church will establish an external mission organization and whether departing congregations can plan on taking their church buildings with them.
“At General Synod, delegates come from across the RCA to discern the mind of Christ together,” said Christina Tazelaar, RCA director of communications. “There are difficult decisions on the agenda, along with many things to celebrate, and we’re praying that the Holy Spirit guides every decision.”
The RCA is a historically Dutch Reformed denomination dating back to the 1620s, when New York was known as New Amsterdam. Today, the RCA has fewer than 200,000 members and 1,000 churches. While in theory RCA churches are united by their polity, history and Reformed convictions, they hold a range of political and theological beliefs.
The RCA isn’t the only Protestant denomination facing division over views on sexuality. Next year, the United Methodist Church is expected to vote on a proposal to split the denomination over the inclusion of LGBTQ members, and the RCA’s sister denomination, the Christian Reformed Church, will grapple with its contentious human sexuality report at its own synod.
“It’s a case study in how a church can or cannot navigate questions of identity, questions that are tense, matters of conflict,” said Matthew van Maastricht, pastor at Altamont Reformed Church in Altamont, New York. “We are just one part of a greater reshaping of the broader American Protestant landscape.”
According to the Rev. Dan Griswold, clerk of the RCA’s Holland Classis, the RCA debates involve specific questions: Can an RCA church host a wedding between a same-sex couple, and can an RCA minister officiate such a wedding? Can noncelibate gay people be elected as elders and deacons and ordained as ministers? While these questions are often framed as political, they are also theological.
“It’s really about how we view the Bible, how we understand God and the nature of the church,“ said the Rev. Lynn Japinga, professor of religion at RCA-affiliated Hope College. “It’s a fundamental difference in approach to the Christian faith that’s the source of all this. … Do you have more of a rule-based faith, or do you have a more grace-based faith?”
Ron Citlau, senior pastor of Calvary Church near Chicago, frames the question differently.
“I’ve dealt with same-sex attraction, and the issue for me and many of the people I know is, is it a thing for which Jesus Christ needs to come to redeem us, or is it a blessing he wants us to embrace?” said Citlau, who is married to a woman and whose church helped form the conservative non-RCA Kingdom Network. “If we get sin wrong, there are larger things at stake.”
The debate is also a question of polity. The RCA has a localized structure that gives classes — regional church groups — authority over matters such as discipline and ordination. While all RCA churches follow the Book of Church Order, they don’t have to follow the General Synod’s recommendations.
“There’s nothing in the Book of Church Order that says anything explicit about sexuality at all,” said David Komline, associate professor of church history at Western Theological Seminary. “The General Synod has repeatedly made statements that are more traditional in orientation about sexuality, but those are just statements. There are no mechanisms in place to hold people accountable to these statements.”
An ongoing question is whether the General Synod ought to be able to make dictates it can enforce. In recent years, conservative RCA members have pushed for General Synod to do just that. In 2016, the General Synod voted to amend the Book of Church Order to define marriage as between a woman and a man. However, the measure failed to win the necessary two-thirds approval from the classes.
“We found that the RCA is designed in such a way, intentionally or not, in which the vast majority cannot move to what they believe is right because there are just enough progressive classes that can veto,” said Citlau. According to Citlau, the two-thirds rule gives disproportionate power to classes with progressive views and fewer members. But progressive members argue the General Synod was never designed to issue top-down decisions in the first place.
In 2018, General Synod formed a team charged with discerning whether the RCA should stay together, restructure or separate. In their Vision 2020 Report, that team suggested a path involving all three avenues. First, the report recommends appointing a team for reorganizing classes by affinity rather than geography; churches would opt into classes and group themselves by shared values. The second proposal is to create an external RCA mission agency that would allow departing churches to continue supporting RCA’s global missions work. Third, the report recommends allowing a departing church to retain its property and assets.
These three proposals are scheduled to be debated on Saturday and require a simple majority of votes to pass — but the measures could be radically amended before then, and other overtures could be adopted as well.
Regardless of what happens at the General Synod, the RCA is already splitting. The Kingdom Network, an alliance currently composed of five churches in Indiana and Illinois, officially left the RCA on Sept. 9. The group was formerly an RCA classis that prioritized church planting.
“The RCA has this albatross around its neck, and historically it moves very slow,” said Citlau. “From our point of view, the house is burning. We can’t keep saying, we’re going to wait five more years and have a couple of committees. It’s already a bloody mess, and until you’re willing to get in there and make some choices, there’s no way through. And we did our best effort to make a way through.”
In May 2021, the Alliance of Reformed Churches was formed as an alternative to the RCA for conservative churches questioning their place in the denomination. According to their website, more than 125 churches have expressed interest in joining the alliance.
“The Alliance of Reformed Churches is praying with the RCA for the clear leading of God’s Spirit at its General Synod,” the Alliance said in a statement. “Our prayers will be with our brothers and sisters as they walk together through this significant moment in the RCA’s history.”
More departures are likely on the way. The 2020 Vision Report said: “We have informally learned of entire classes’ intention to exit the denomination in the near future.” These departures have been a long time coming; the RCA has been debating sexuality and LGBTQ inclusion since the 1970s.
“People on different sides of the spectrum have been fighting for about 40 years, and they’re sick of it,” said Komline. “They believe their fighting is impeding their mission. I think that’s the case on both sides. The liberals want to go pursue justice, as they define it, and the evangelicals want to share the gospel as they define that.”
According to Griswold, these divisions can be traced back even further. The RCA was originally formed by several waves of Dutch immigrants. Those in the earlier waves settled along the East Coast, where they eventually developed sensibilities that resembled those of their mainline peers, while migrants who came in the 19th century often settled further west. Today, the cultural and theological divides are still evident. All except five of the 44 churches listed as LGBTQ-affirming by Room for All — an LGBTQ-affirming network in the RCA — are in the Northeast.
“As America as a whole has shifted, the RCA has experienced some similar shifts,” said Komline. “Just as America now is very polarized, so is the RCA.”’https://julieroys.com/reformed-church-in-america-faces-rupture-lgbtq-gridlock/?mc_cid=2930a15c78&mc_eid=b13d34ad49
‘If human similarity to apes is evidence that an apelike creature evolved into man, why aren’t the vast differences between man and ape accepted as evidence that man did not descend from apes? The human nose is totally different from that of primates; man’s lips are formed differently; apes have thumbs on their feet, while men do not; man’s head is located at a different position on the spinal column, and human babies are far more dependent upon their mothers at birth than apes.
Even more physically perplexing is the fact that apes have a bone in the male’s reproductive organ, while the human male makes use of an incredibly complicated hydraulic system. How could anyone reasonably conclude that the bone in an ape’s reproductive organ slowly evolved into mankind’s complex hormonal/hydraulic mechanism by some step-at-a-time mutational process? If the bone disappeared before the human system was completely in place, the apelike creature would not be able to reproduce and survive. Since apes have no difficulty reproducing, why would the human hydraulic reproduction system have ever evolved?
Dr. John C. Whitcomb observed that “While the physical differences between man and primates are quite great, the spiritual/mental/linguistical/cultural differences are little short of infinite.” It is extremely poor and superficial science to conclude that some apelike creature evolved into mankind.’http://www.searchforthetruth.net/
Again Twitter is acting like a publisher for ‘Twitter temporarily suspended a Spanish politician last week, after he tweeted a man “cannot get pregnant” because he has “no womb or eggs.”
Although the post was scientifically accurate, Twitter suspended Francisco José Contreras’ account for 12 hours, according to Fox News.
The Vox Party politician shared the comment in response to an article about a biological female who identifies as male announcing she would be giving birth to a baby girl.’https://www.faithwire.com/2021/05/17/this-is-fascist-biology-twitter-suspends-politician-for-saying-men-cannot-get-pregnant/?utm_source=cbn&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=news-eu-faithwire&utm_content=20210517-2349404&inid=5f29ebc0-7f5b-eb11-b823-005056af0da1
Ephesians 2:8-9 “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: [it is] the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.”
Some people talk to their plants. But what do you say to a bacterium? Evidently the soybean plant knows just what to say to make bacteria its close friend and helper.
Symbiosis means a relationship between two different creatures in which they both help each other. Plants need nitrogen for healthy growth. However, while there is more than enough nitrogen in the air, plants normally can’t make use of that nitrogen. Legumes, like soybeans, link up with bacteria that are able to take nitrogen from the air and turn it into a form of nitrogen that plants, including the soybean, can use. In return, the plant creates a nice home for the bacteria in nodes in its roots and provides the bacteria with food.
The bacteria need a great deal of oxygen and energy to fix nitrogen into the soil. The oxygen is supplied by heme. If that name reminds you of the hemoglobin that carries oxygen in blood, you’re on the right track. That’s why the heme in the nodules turns them reddish. Who makes the heme, the soybean or the bacteria? When alone, neither creature has any heme. Researchers have learned that the plant performs the first part of the chemistry needed to make heme … and the bacterium finishes the job! The plant and the bacterium actually communicate chemically with each other so that production goes smoothly!
Communication between such different creatures, allowing them to perform sophisticated chemistry to improve both of their lives, shows how inadequate evolution is to explain life. This arrangement surely glorifies the Creator!’https://creationmoments.com/sermons/plant-and-bacteria-communicate-2/?mc_cid=01dea46de1&mc_eid=00c1dcff3c
whatyareckon 