YMCA A "Christian" Organization?

Yes, you might not believe it, but the YMCA stands for Young Men's Christian Association.

Chuck Colson brings out what many of us have observed in recent years about the YMCA: most of the time, people look at the YMCA and "just see a swim and gym."

Some are working to put the "C" back in the YMCA, which is what Colson's piece is about. I know at least two good folks in the Rapid City YMCA who have been earnestly working to do the same.

But it’s an uphill fight. At the YMCA convention, ideas like posting Bible verses on the wall or maintaining a prayer request box met with disapproval from many. Dick Blattner of the Hollywood, Florida, YMCA, complained, “I respect your religion. But when I see posters and placards on the wall that reflect Christian principles, I feel left out.... It offended me, and I don’t think it’s right for the Y.”

Only in today’s hypersensitive society could a leader in an organization with Christian in its name be offended by Christianity. But it reminds us what happens when Christians sell out our core principles and abandon our worldview for the sake of “success.”

The folks in the Rapid City YMCA that I mentioned face the same kind of resistance mentioned in Colson's piece.

Opponents of the "C" often cite inclusiveness and how that is somehow required for success. But as Colson's piece points out (from somebody who pointed it out a long time ago), "how is it successful to gain the world and lose your soul?"

War on Poverty Was a Failure

Why did Jesus tell us that we would always have poor people in society? Maybe because in this fallen world, there are always going to be people who find themselves in an unfortunate set of circumstances...and even more who make poor moral choices (drinking, gambling, poor work ethic, etc.) that have an effect on their economic well being.

Human Events features an excerpt from "Rebuilding America:"

From the moment the Great Society conceived of the War on Poverty, it was a bad idea to believe that we could eliminate poverty by allowing a government bureaucracy to distribute massive amounts of public money to the poor. In the antipoverty efforts of the last four decades, we have witnessed one of the largest income redistributions from the taxpayers to the poor that the world has ever seen. Still, we have not eliminated poverty. Why should we believe that continued or expanded, new, and "improved" government programs, spending more trillions of dollars, will ever achieve more?...

Perhaps President Reagan was right—if we do not reinforce family structures, we will never eliminate poverty. Maybe he was also right in arguing that government welfare programs actually destroy the family structures of those Americans remaining in poverty since the start of the Great Society. Reagan's vision was that no amount of dependence upon government bureaucracy could ever substitute for the fundamental values only a family can instill in a person.

You can keep handing a man a fish every day...or you can teach him to fish (how to make moral choices that are in his own self interest, instill a good work ethic, and then NOT MAKE IT EASY FOR HIM TO IGNORE ALL THIS).

Why does the Left insist on always falling back on the same old failed socialist ideas?

Acceptable Discrimination

Dr. Walter Williams has an interesting column today entitled "What's discrimination." Here are a few excerpts:

There's so much confusion and emotionalism about discrimination that I thought I'd take a stab at a dispassionate analysis. Discrimination is simply the act of choice. When we choose Bordeaux wine, we discriminate against Burgundy wine. When I married Mrs. Williams, I discriminated against other women. Even though I occasionally think about equal opportunity, Mrs. Williams demands continued discrimination...

I've sometimes asked students if they believe in equal opportunity in employment. Invariably, they answer yes. Then I ask them, when they graduate, whether they plan to give every employer an equal opportunity to hire them. Most often they answer no; they plan to discriminate against certain employers. Then I ask them, if they're not going to give every employer an equal opportunity to hire them, what's fair about requiring an employer to give them an equal opportunity to be hired?...

Common sense suggests that not all discrimination should be eliminated, so the question is, what kind of discrimination should be permitted? I'm guessing the answer depends on one's values for freedom of association, keeping in mind freedom of association implies freedom not to associate.

On a related topic, I've always wondered why liberals are so intolerant. After all, tolerance is one of their holy doctrines. Yet they continue to be so intolerant of my intolerance. Maybe tolerance doesn't extend to all things? And if not, why is intolerance of sin, error and evil wrong?

Bible Thumping Creationists Right Again

From the UK Telegraph:

A second study has concluded that Neanderthals were much more like modern humans than had been previously thought, after finds from one of the most famous palaeolithic sites in Europe were re-examined by Bristol University archaeologist, Prof Joao Zilhao, and his French colleagues.

Naw, really?

Creation scientists have long said that the Neanderthals were a part of the human family, one probably suffering from rickets or something like that.

How could those Bible-thumping creationists have figured this out before the enlightened evolutionists?

Why Pro-Lifers Sometimes Question Scientists (and Media)

The media told us a few weeks ago that embryonic stem cells could now be harvested for research without killing the embryos. This was hailed as a great thing, and I too was cautiously optimistic.

While I can't endorse creating life in the lab for research purposes, I might be able to go along with limited research on those human embryos that have already been created in fertility clinics, etc. and have not been adopted--so long as the sanctity and dignity of human life was not compromised. Contrary to what secularists think of a "Bible thumper" like me, I believe scientific advances are a good thing...as long as we retain our ethics and respect for life in the process.

But I was cautious because, well, I've been lied to before. Countless times. Both by scientists with an agenda and by "objective media" sources with an agenda.

Then when George Will said that the report wasn't true, that all 16 embryos in the experiement had been destroyed, of course the Leftist media pooh-poohed Will.

It now seems Will has been vindicated. From the Philadelphia Inquirer and Mercury News:

The California biotech company that grabbed headlines last week for sparing human embryos while creating precious stem cells in fact destroyed all 16 embryos used in the experiments.

and

Normally, embryonic stem cells are extracted when they briefly appear in a 5-day-old embryo, which has about 100 cells. This kills the embryo.

Lanza's team intervened earlier, dismantling eight- to 10-cell embryos, then signaling the individual cells to transform into stem cells. This transformation was a breakthrough, but it was highly inefficient: Of 91 individual cells, only two ultimately made new stem-cell colonies.

See why people who hold life to be sacred are inherently suspicious when new "breakthroughs" are hailed?

The report does go on to say

Here is where the paper turned speculative: The 16 dismantled embryos might have survived if only one or two of their eight cells had been removed.

Indeed, infertility clinics occasionally perform ``embryo biopsy'' on an eight-cell embryo to screen for genetic diseases before letting the embryo grow to about 100 cells, the size normally implanted in a womb.

The Nature paper showed a picture of a 100-cell embryo that Lanza's lab had biopsied at the eight-cell stage -- implying that it was part of the stem-cell experiments rather than separate, related research.

Lanza's team wrote that the paper shows that single cells ``can be used to establish human embryonic stem-cell lines using an approach that does not interfere with the developmental capacity of the parent embryo.''

Wednesday, Lanza said he saw no reason to explain that they had not actually used that approach on the embryos from which stem cells were generated.

It sounds like from this report that stem cells have been successfully harvested in fertility clinics. But I have to ask: if it's been done successfully in fertility clinics, why have research scientists not adopted this technique?

I have to ask myself, based on experience, are they lying to me here, too?