Piqued

In case you’re interested, I thought I’d share who I’m voting for this year and the reasons why.  For the lesser-known races, I mainly used the Dallas Morning News’ voter guide to decide, although I did look up the candidates’ website if I wanted more information.  Since I’m registered in the Brazos County, some of these picks are specific to that region.

President: Bob Barr (L).  If I wasn’t sure McCain was going to take Texas, I’d be voting for him instead since I do believe McCain to be a better choice than Obama (on purely ideological grounds).  However, since McCain is almost certainly going to win here (and if he doesn’t, he’d probably be so far behind nationally that Texas wouldn’t even matter), I’m voting for Barr because I tend to agree more with his positions than McCain’s and I want those ideas to get more recognition.  Barr is not likely to win anywhere, but if he gets more votes than is usual for a 3rd party and thus shows a growing movement among Americans toward traditional constitutional principles, then I’ll consider that a victory.

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As someone who uses his bicycle almost every day to travel to/from campus, I’d like to offer the following observations and recommendations to those who, as a bicyclist, I interact with while making my daily commute, regardless of whether you are a pedestrian, another bicyclist or driving a motor vehicle.

Pedestrians:

Generally speaking, it’d be best if you ignore us bicyclists, or at least pretend to ignore us.  When riding a bike, we are generally anticipating where pedestrians will be if they continue on their present course, not assuming they will stop to let us by.  Thus, stopping suddenly or taking a step “out of the way” when you see us is generally more hazardous than helpful, no matter your intentions.  If you are heading across my path, I will plan to either head you off enough so that I won’t hit you even if you continue along your present path, or I will plan to bike behind you.  If necessary, I will slow to allow you to pass.  But if you start across my path, see me, and then stop, I have to suddenly change my plans to take into account that you’re no longer going to be where I expected.

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I’m no financial guru and certainly don’t understand a lot of what could happen in Wall Street if the bailout does/doesn’t pass, but since I’ve been following this pretty closely of late, I figured I’d share what I’ve found and what I think of it all.

How We Got Here

Although it may not really affect what we and our lawmakers should be doing now, we absolutely need to consider how we got into this mess so we can avoid it in the future.  We also must be careful that, in our rush to do something, we don’t end up worsening or prolonging the underlying cause of the current credit crisis.  As usual, Ron Paul has some good comments regarding the causes, and makes a good argument for why no bailout is likely the best course of action in the long run.

At the heart of the current situation are the mortgage problems that have been surfacing for the past several months.  My dad sent me this cartoon, which effectively conveys the sequence of events which led to this.  Essentially, poor regulation from the government, corrupt and/or incompetent management of banks and lenders including Fannie May and Freddie Mac, and basic short-sightedness all around allowed lenders to approve loans for people who under “normal” circumstances would never have been able to get one.  The apparent lack of any significant consequences for this foolishness allowed it to continue and spread unabetted.

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Episode 5/8 in my defense of the Bible series is now online.

This one continues where the last left off, with a verse-by-verse breakdown of Genesis 1 and whether it is compatible with an old-earth understanding of creation.  I also discuss the flood and dinosaurs in light of this perspective.

As with the last episode, the conclusion that the Biblical creation and flood accounts were long and local, respectively, is not the traditional view that has long been held by Jews and Christians.  However, as I argue in this video, I do not believe that means the traditional view is necessarily accurate.  It’s not really wrong – after all, the critical points are unchanged (God created everything, and the flood restarted the human race).  But I think Christians do themselves a disservice (especially if they’re trying to minister to scientifically-minded non-Christians) by stubbornly holding to this tradition without considering whether the Bible is compatible with scientific discoveries.  This is my goal in this video: to explain an interpretation of Genesis that does not ignore the observable facts of science.  And remarkably, this interpretation of Genesis 1 in particular corroborates scientific theories quite well.

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I’ve just finished the fourth episode in my series on arguments and evidence for Christianity.  This is the first of two which may be somewhat controversial to Christians because I take an old-earth stance on creation.

I didn’t always hold this view.  When I began preparing this study, I did not believe life to be millions of years old and the most difficult part of my research was realizing that such a belief really was unscientific.  That’s not to say that I don’t think it’s possible that life and/or the universe is only 6-10,000 years old…God could have created it with the appearance of age.  But I no longer think that you can make such an argument based on science or observing the evidence in creation.  Thus, since I believe that Christianity is and should be consistent with history and observable facts, I now find myself in the “old-earth” camp.

So if you are skeptical about whether the Bible is consistent with a view of creation that essentially accepts the fossil record as accurate (along with conventional dating of millions+ of years), so was I.  I now believe that it is consistent, and this episode and the next will explain why.  I hope you find it interesting and that, if nothing else, it encourages you to more deeply explore these topics yourself.

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