There is no shortage of ex-elders, behelites, ex-circuit overseers on this forum that continue to spout their hatred for christians, even as they did while leading their former adherents down the same path. The new religion for these preachers of paradise, is Materialism. In their view, SCIENCE is the arbitrator of TRUTH. it is a worldview known as Materialism.
For them, anyone who has had a firsthand encounter with God, through a vision, being carried away in the spirit, or spoken in the language of angels is merely mistaken. Yet, these encounters with God constitute first hand testimony. The changed lives for the better after a person exchanges his life for the life of Christ is just an accident, pure chance, not reliable. Yet, their "scientific" sources of knowledge are supposedly beyond reproach, beyond question, totally unable to be understood by mere mortals without a Phd.
This post is directed toward that mindset, and not toward anyone in particular. Just a friendly, but firm push-back at Materialism.
So, do you know CRAP? - The Center for Research in Applied Phrenology.
This was a bogus research facility thought up by Philip Davis, a graduate student at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who got a nonsensical computer-generated paper accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
So, I ask - if a student can get a CRAP paper published that, since it is "peer reviewed", will be fawned over by the purveyors of Materialism as "new light"; what are the odds that other "scientists" can produce other unfounded papers that support the views of those that fund their research? (pay their checks)
Global Warming
Recently, we all just witnessed a dramatic GLOBAL HOAX where certain scientists wrote published articles supposedly documenting global warming when in fact their private emails indicated that they "cooked the books" to satisfy their funders wishes.
And previous to this, there was the Tobacco research hoax:
The tobacco industry set up numerous "front companies" to do certain tasks, one of which was to fund scientific studies that did not look for a relationship between tobacco and lung cancer. They spent scores of millions of dollars funding these studies.
- "Since 1954, one of CTR's [Council for Tobacco Research - U.S.A., Inc.] principal activities has been to fund scientific research by independent scientists through its grant-in-aid program, under the supervision of its Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) supplemented on occasion by research contracts. CTR itself has not conducted any scientific research. Through this research program, from 1954 through 1996 CTR has provided approximately $282 million to fund over 1,500 research projects by approximately 1,100 independent scientists.
The researchers who have received CTR grant funding have been affiliated with approximately 300 medical schools, universities, hospitals and other research institutions, including such prestigious institutions as Harvard Medical School, Yale School of Medicine, Stanford University, numerous institutions in the University of California system, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, the University of Chicago Medical Center, the Scripps Research Institute, the Mayo Clinic and the Salk Institute. The researchers who have received this funding have not been employees of the tobacco companies or CTR. CTR's grantees have included many distinguished scientists, three of whom have won Nobel Prizes." http://www.rkmc.com/tobacco.order91097.asp
Now explain something to me. If a group of high school students with a phone book can scientifically prove there is a relationship between tobacco and lung cancer, emphysema, etc., how is it possible that 1,500 research projects, done over a period of 42 years, by researchers at 300 prestigious medical schools, etc. had not been able to find a relationship between tobacco products and lung cancer, emphysema, etc.!!!
The answer is that in order to obtain funding, they knew they had better not find a relationship! The rules of getting research money are very simple. You ascertain who you are getting paid by, you ascertain what they what you to publish, then you accept their money and do a study which does not double-cross them. Otherwise, your "research" money dries up real fast.
Interesting isn't it?