Dear Dr. Coyne, I’ll do my best to get right to the point. Your reputation as one of the world’s foremost experts on speciation theory precedes you. You are a well respected scientist and educator. I am but a student of those fields in science necessary for any attempt to answer my existential questions. Although I’ve been called a teacher, my background is not in education. By profession, I’m an author, certainly not a scientist. My strong preference is for writing detective novels. However, in the spirit of full disclosure, I should divulge that my most recent book, published this past Easter Sunday, has the title Counterargument for God. I should probably also mention that your advocacy of naturalistic evolution is one of the arguments that I endeavored to counter and defeat in my book. I meant no disrespect. It just happens that I have very good reasons for believing that you're wrong to assume that supernatural intelligence played no role in your existence or mine. Now, I’ve read Why Evolution is True, but I cheerfully admit that I don’t yet quite understand the biological processes allegedly at work. I still have a few questions about your specific field of expertise, if you’ll be good enough to answer them. Your USA Today article written not too long ago asserting that you can be good without God gives me some hope that you will cooperate, even though I suspect David Berlinski may have doubts. If I never ask my questions, you won't have the opportunity to respond if you so choose. True, you have expressed some disdain for creationists in … [Read more...]
Archives for 2013
Kermit Gosnell’s House of Horrors
Life imitates art. After writing Secondhand Sight, I worried about the extreme nature of the violence in the plot of my second novel. I wondered if some of the most gruesome passages in the book might alienate fans of Coastal Empire. It never occurred to me that the evening news might actually suppress a far more sinister story than I could ever imagine being able to tell. Of course, the media could tell this disturbing story if they only reported the truth, the sordid details in the trial of abortion specialist Dr. Kermit Gosnell. The details are so bad that I'm tempted to suggest if you're squeamish to stop reading, but I think this is important information that everyone should know. The benefit mitigates the cost. But let me get right to the point. If these charges are true, Hannibal Lecter had nothing on this guy. The contents of Dr. Gosnell’s Philadelphia abortion clinic make Jaime Gumb’s torture chamber in Silence of the Lambs sound relatively tame, almost pleasant in comparison. Kirsten Powers wrote horrific tales in USA Today, of barbarous beheadings and baby feet kept in jars, like macabre souvenirs collected by a deranged serial killer. Most troubling is the fact that her story isn’t fiction. This butcher called a doctor apparently did all these things, and much, much worse. According to reports of court testimony, this was a man who casually joked that one baby he’d just murdered was so big he could “walk me to the bus stop.” Words can’t begin to describe the nausea and revulsion I felt after reading what this miserable excuse for … [Read more...]
Counterargument for God
Counterargument for God was officially published on Easter Sunday, 2013. It is currently available on Amazon and at Smashwords. The print version will be available soon. We are currently waiting to review the proof copy. The ebook versions were released late Sunday after a long and arduous weekend of formatting by my wonderful wife, who also happens to be my publisher. In the credits, three important contributors were not properly acknowledged. It is time to remedy that oversight. First, I would like to specifically thank my friends Fred Kohn and Bill Wassner, who both slogged their way through an early, very difficult-to-read rough draft and offered valuable advice. The contributions of Bill and Fred were crucial and significantly improved the final version of the manuscript. Mea culpa. And of course, special thanks are owed to my lovely and talented wife Lisa, editor and publisher extraordinaire. Publishing this nearly 500 page book for me was most certainly a labor of love. She strongly prefers editing my "Rocky Leonard" detective novels. After all, novels don't require footnotes. … [Read more...]
The rapid decline of American education
Traditional American values are under attack. It's an inside job, by our education system. When Texas mom Kara Sands checked her son's quiz about the 9/11 terrorist attacks, she discovered that he had "correctly" answered one particular multiple-choice question asking why the United States might be a target for terrorism. He chose "decisions made in the U.S. have had negative effects on people elsewhere" as his answer -- because that is precisely what he'd been taught by an "educational" video shown in his class. Kara became outraged when she learned the depths to which this program works to shape the personalities and undermine the traditional values of her children rather than educating them. Bravely she has launched a one-woman campaign now gaining national attention as she exposes the truth about this curriculum called CSCOPE, an ultra-liberal ideology disguised as elementary school material. Unfortunately, the problem isn't limited to Texas, or elementary schools. The entire American education system has been infected by liberalism. Yale recently hosted a workshop that gave students "sensitivity training" to incest and bestiality. How could anyone justify of the most disgusting, aberrant behavior known to man be taught at Yale, for God's sake? In fairness, it wasn't a class, just a weekend workshop. And Allegheny College hosted a sex and masturbation workshop inside their chapel, of all places. But at Yale? Even the Ivy League has been infected by poison ivy. A professor at Florida Atlantic University just created a great deal of controversy with a … [Read more...]
Misinformation
I don't care who you are, or how smart you are. Someone, somewhere, has lied to you. We've all fallen prey to misinformation. Furthermore, we've all been guilty of spreading lies as a result, intentionally or not. Of course, I am not immune. Two quick personal examples: not long ago, I posted a link on Facebook to a fake website called www.obamaphone.net. Also, a while back I wrote an erroneous article for Examiner.com, repeating the urban legend that a Jewish rabbi in Israel had ordered a dog to be stoned to death. In both cases, a couple of my intrepid friends were kind enough to come to my rescue, pointing out what soon became obvious to me. I had fallen for a hoax. And in both instances, I probably should have known better. The "Obama" phone fake website was sort of a dead giveaway because of the suffix. Official government websites end with ".gov" extensions. Years ago, I had learned that lesson the hard way. I once typed "whitehouse.com" instead of "whitehouse.gov" while at work and found myself staring at a hardcore porn website--I distinctly remember my ears burning with embarrassment, and how I couldn't close that browser window fast enough. Yet somehow, I forgot that lesson when I saw the fake "Obama phone" website, and took the bait hook, line, and sinker. My problem was gullibility--the fake site simply reinforced information I already accepted as true. Unfortunately, I am not alone. We all tend to give a lot more credence to information that reinforces our personal worldview than we give information that contradicts … [Read more...]
