2013 Was A Terrible Year for Evolution
This Christian College professor is depressed because while most Christian colleges are now quietly teaching evolution, “Evolution did not fare well in 2013.”

The year ended with the anti-evolution bookDarwin’s Doubt as Amazon’s top seller in the “Paleontology” category. The state of Texas spent much of the year trying to keep the country’s most respected high school biology text out of its public schools. And leading anti-evolutionist and Creation Museum curator Ken Ham made his annual announcement that the “final nail” had been pounded into the coffin of poor Darwin’s beleaguered theory of evolution.

Can I admit that I enjoyed this teacher’s misery?

On the same subject, here’s Al Mohler’s take on the clash of worldviews in the Ken Ham v Bill Nye debate.

Sex Education Videos Will Be Rated Following Parental Outcry
Starting later this month, the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) will decide whether school sex education videos should be rated PG. The decision follows a BBFC research report, which revealed that a growing number of parents are pulling children from sex education lessons.

America has harsher restrictions than roughly 130 other countries. Places allegedly more free than the U.S. include Serbia, Haiti, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo—not exactly traditional strongholds of democracy.

Sexual Freedom As A Secular Sacrament
Rod Dreher comments on the campaign to ban male circumcision in Scandanavia.

1. This illustrates that the claim frequently made by secular liberals that their worldview is values-neutral and therefore more just is a sham. It’s not that secular liberals are morally wrong in any of their particular claims, but only that they are wrong, and self-deceptive, to claim that their values are in any sense neutral.

2. It is telling that the reason the Scandinavian doctor gives for suppressing traditional Jewish and Muslim practice is that it stands to decrease sexual pleasure later in life….For many secular liberals, sexual freedom and pleasure is the summum bonum of life, and must be privileged above all else, including religious liberty.

3. If my country should ever threaten my right to practice the fundamentals of my religion as Scandinavian countries are threatening their Jewish and Muslim citizens, it will become my enemy. That will not mean civil war, as it once did in the US, but if a significant number of Americans come to think of their government as an enemy of their faith — and I think this day is coming, in my lifetime — we will be living in interesting times.

Cancer Tidal Wave Coming Warns WHO
The globe is facing a “tidal wave” of cancer, and restrictions on alcohol and sugar need to be considered, say World Health Organization scientists.

It predicts the number of cancer cases will reach 24 million a year by 2035, but half could be prevented.

The WHO said there was now a “real need” to focus on cancer prevention by tackling smoking, obesity and drinking. The WHO’s World Cancer Report 2014 said the major sources of preventable cancer included:

• Smoking
• Infections
• Alcohol
• Obesity and inactivity
• Radiation, both from the sun and medical scans
• Air pollution and other environmental factors
• Delayed parenthood, having fewer children and not breastfeeding

The World’s Smallest Engine Runs on an Atom
And if you need a bit of a “pick-me-up” after cancer, sexual freedom, and restrictions on religious freedom, marvel at this incredible illustration of Psalm 8 dominion.

Evangelicals: Alone and Exiled in Hollywood
A discussion of the double standards in Hollywood that led to banning Joni’s song from Oscar consideration. Considering the morals in the vast majority of Oscar winning films…

It’s almost funny to see how incensed the Academy can be and how finely wrought the ethical code of the left-leaning organization can be when it comes to evangelicals, a group they routine despise, ridicule, or reject outright.  All it takes is a mere whisper of sin exposed by some columnist, and a song about God is suddenly toxic, yanked from consideration for an award.

And how about this for a conclusion:

There is no use singing to the deaf. Especially when they are programmed not to hear anything but their own voices.

It turns that out that while students who major in a wide variety of professional fields out-earn their liberal arts peers at the outset, the liberal arts majors tend to pull ahead in later years.

How does he explain it?

The person who has mastered a particular market-driven skill of today is in a good position to profit in the short term, but given that we live in a highly dynamic society, the better long term investment is an education that equips the person to learn for the rest of his life.  The liberal arts, if taught well and approached with desire by the student, have the ability to unlock almost any subject the student wishes to learn for years to come.  If you understand how to think, how to draw lessons from past experience, how to write and speak, how to calculate, and how to put information through the kinds of tests which yield knowledge, then you have the tools you need.

Or to put it briefly: “You learn how to learn.”

The Cowardice of Wendy Davis
Jonah Goldberg writes:

Tom Bevan of RealClearPolitics slammed Davis for being “too cowardly to give a straight answer, let alone a thoughtful one, to a straightforward question that goes to the heart of a matter she has made the signature issue of her political life.”

I agree. But Davis is merely at the forefront of the cowardice epidemic. On the anniversary of Roe v. Wade earlier this month, President Obama couldn’t bring himself to say the word “abortion,” preferring instead virtually every poll-tested buzzword. Indeed, in all of the “war on women” noise, abortion is almost always wrapped in the velvety euphemisms of “women’s health” and “reproductive choice.”

France’s Future at Risk From Unnatural Families, Say Protestors
This appeared in the UK’s premier left-leaning newspaper, which explains the left-leaning angle to the story, but good to see even the French rising up.

Amazon Plunges Into Christian Publishing
The data must look good for Christian books.

The Abortion Rate Hits 30-Year Low
The US abortion rate fell by 13 percent from 2008 to 2011, and reached the lowest rate since abortion was made legal in 1973.

Amoebas are puny, stupid blobs, so scientists were surprised to learn that they contain 200 times more DNA than Einstein did. Because amoebas are made of just one cell, researchers assumed they would be simpler than humans genetically. Plus, amoebas date back farther in time than humans, and simplicity is considered an attribute of primitive beings. It just didn’t make sense.

This article goes on to explain:

Before the advent of rapid, accurate, and inexpensive DNA sequencing technology in the early 2000s, biologists guessed that genes would provide more evidence for increasing complexity in evolution. Simple, early organisms would have fewer genes than complex ones, they predicted, just as a blueprint of Dorothy’s cottage in Kansas would be less complicated than one for the Emerald City. Instead, their assumptions of increasing complexity began to fall apart. First to go was an easy definition of how complexity manifested itself. After all, amoebas had huge genomes. Now, DNA analyses are rearranging evolutionary trees, suggesting that the arrow scientists envisioned between simplicity and complexity actually spins like a weather vane caught in a tornado.

So, no hope of the sinking theory being abandoned, of course. But the deck chairs are certainly being rearranged.

What Every Christian Should Know About Income Inequality
The Income inequality argument is not easy to oppose. It seems so plausible and “fair.” Joe Carter comes to our aid with ten points that every Christian should arm themselves with:

1. Incomes are measured in money — and money is not wealth.
2. The existence of income inequality is generally a sign of a fair distribution of incomes.
3. Both low and high rates of income inequality can be signs of unfairness.
4. Income inequality is not the same as economic inequality
5. Measures of income inequality are meaningless because incomes are not zero-sum
6. Income inequality and poverty are separate issues.
7. No one in America is really concerned about absolute income inequality.
8. Discussions of income inequality are almost always about redistribution of income.
9. The only real threat caused by income inequality are problems caused by envy
10. The focus on income inequality is at best, useless, and, at worst, immoral.

No Women Don’t Make Less Money Than Men
Here’s a fascinating article exposing the spurious gender wage gap statistic that President Obama used in his State of the Union address. “Today,” he said, “women make up about half our workforce. But they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it’s an embarrassment.”

What is wrong and embarrassing is the President of the United States reciting a massively discredited factoid. The 23-cent gender pay gap is simply the difference between the average earnings of all men and women working full-time. It does not account for differences in occupations, positions, education, job tenure, or hours worked per week. When all these relevant factors are taken into consideration, the wage gap narrows to about five cents. And no one knows if the five cents is a result of discrimination or some other subtle, hard-to-measure difference between male and female workers.

This article demonstrates that much of the difference can be explained by the choice of majors at college:

Here is a list of the ten most remunerative majors compiled by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Men overwhelmingly outnumber women in all but one of them:

1.   Petroleum Engineering: 87% male
2.   Pharmacy Pharmaceutical Sciences and Administration: 48% male
3.   Mathematics and Computer Science: 67% male
4.   Aerospace Engineering: 88% male
5.   Chemical Engineering: 72% male
6.   Electrical Engineering: 89% male
7.   Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering: 97% male
8.   Mechanical Engineering: 90% male
9.   Metallurgical Engineering: 83% male
10. Mining and Mineral Engineering: 90% male

And here are the 10 least remunerative majors—where women prevail in nine out of ten:

1.  Counseling Psychology: 74% female
2.  Early Childhood Education: 97% female
3.  Theology and Religious Vocations: 34% female
4.  Human Services and Community Organization: 81% female
5.  Social Work: 88% female
6.  Drama and Theater Arts: 60% female
7.   Studio Arts: 66% female
8.   Communication Disorders Sciences and Services: 94% female
9.   Visual and Performing Arts: 77% female
10. Health and Medical Preparatory Programs: 55% female

1. Corruption: Defined as those actions by government agents that sell what they do not have a right to sell, such as subsidies, preferential regulations and others, which disproportionally affects the poor.

2. Cronyism: This is similar to corruption but usually “legal.”

3. Regulatory barriers: This is in the form of high capital requirements, mountains of red tape, and exorbitant license fees, especially in the areas where the poor enter the market.

4. Government schools:  In “This Wonderful Tree,” James Tooley, of the E.G. West Centre, documents how in several nations the poor prefer to send their children to humble, but more efficient, private schools. Nobel Laureate Gary Becker, of the Becker Friedman Institute, argues that a big improvement in high school graduation rates would reduce inequality of earnings.

5. Monetary Policy: Ralph Benko, a Forbes.com contributor, recently wrote a column on inequality where he took as a given that major players in the banking sector were being unjustly enriched by the current monetary policy.

Meanwhile, at the Acton Institute Blog, Elise Hilton says the the current administration’s preoccupation with income inequality is really about stirring up and exploiting envy. There are some powerful quotes in this piece. For example, this extract from a short story by Kurt Vonnegut.

THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

Marijuana Use During Pregnancy Affects Baby’s Brains
President Obama and some of our politicians are going to have a lot to answer for. Pictures of giggling grannies munching away on pot cookies is what they and the media want you to see. It’s all such a laugh, isn’t it. What they don’t show you are the psychiatric wards full of ex-pot users. And now science is beginning to explain why:

Using marijuana during pregnancy could affect a baby’s brain development by interfering with how brain cells are wired, a new study in mice and human tissue suggests.

Researchers studied marijuana’s effects on mice and brain tissue from human fetuses, and found that the active ingredient in marijuana, THC, interferes with the formation of connections between nerve cells in the cerebral cortex, the part of the brain responsible for higher thinking skills and forming memories.

The effects of prenatal marijuana exposure could even last into adulthood. The drug could have direct effects, or it could sensitize the brain to future drug exposure or neuropsychiatric illnesses.

Men are More Forgetful than Women
No, really.

This feels a bit like self-flagellation (I imagine), but men, at least we have a new excuse (“Science made me do it”):

Men are frequently accused of forgetting birthdays, wedding anniversaries, and even something as simple as taking the trash out. But they have developed this stigma for a reason, a new study suggest – it found that men are more forgetful than women, regardless of their age.

The research team, led by Prof. Jostein Holmen of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, published the study findings in the journal BMC Psychology.

• Overall, the researchers found that memory problems increased with age. But in all age groups, men reported more memory problems than women.
• Furthermore, the investigators were surprised to find that younger men forget just as much as older men.

• More than 84 percent of today’s 27-year-olds have some college education. Only a third have a bachelor’s degree.
• Asians are far more likely to have a bachelor’s degree than blacks, Hispanics, or whites.
• Of those sophomores who expected to eventually earn a bachelor’s degree, only 34 percent did it.
• About half of today’s 27-year-olds borrowed students loans.
• Since Obama came into office, 40 percent have spent some time unemployed.
• One in ten say they have already fulfilled their career goals.
• They were more likely to be living with their parents than with roommates.
•  28.2 percent were married in 2012 and 30.9 percent were living with a significant other. The majority of bachelor’s degree holders, however, reported they were still single.

Goldie Hawn: Troubles of Young Stars Like Justin Bieber Heartbreaking
“Mindfulness.” Mark that word, you’re going to hear a lot of it in coming years.

Speaking to the World Economic Forum in Davos, actress Goldie Hawn says world leaders are discovering how “mindfulness” helps with stress — but that she despairs at seeing young stars like Justin Bieber struggling to deal with fame.

She led a session on the power of neuroscience and mindfulness to “change the world.”

Hawn said when she started her foundation 12 years ago, mindfulness had been a “what is that” concept, but she was optimistic that was changing.

“It’s extraordinary that this Davos this year seems to be centered a lot around the brain, a lot around stress reduction, mindfulness, all of these areas,” she said.

They’re all coming out of the closet now, it’s like they’ve all been meditating — so many of them — for 20 years and so forth. So it’s beginning to happen — mindful leadership.”

Hawn explained how she believed a healthy mind could lead to healthy decision making.

“When the brain is silent, the executive function, which is this part of the brain that makes decisions can work much better. So when you get quiet you make better decisions, you’re also more rested — you’re not as reactive,” she said.

“So it’s actually great for the economy, great for our leadership and our thought leaders.”

Alone, Yet Not Alone
David Brooks believes that there is a yawning gap between the way many believers experience faith and the way that faith is presented to the world. It’s cause?

There is a strong vein of hostility against orthodox religious believers in America today, especially among the young. When secular or mostly secular people are asked by researchers to give their impression of the devoutly faithful, whether Jewish, Christian or other, the words that come up commonly include “judgmental,” “hypocritical,” “old-fashioned” and “out of touch.”

Sadly, the rest of the article is a real hodge-podge of meanderings, where Brooks basically argues that the less certain faith is, the more attractive it is. So, believers, if you want to make your faith more compelling, try to a believe a bit less!

The Disney Channel Debuts its First Ever Same Sex Couple
You probably don’t want to click on this. Just be aware of it and watch out for Good Luck Charlie.

ACLU Accuses Louisiana School of Religious Harassment
The American Civil Liberties Union is suing a school board in Louisiana, alleging officials at one of its schools harassed a sixth-grader because of his Buddhist faith and that the district routinely pushes Christian beliefs.

Just listen to the cruel and heartless things this school does:

The lawsuit said Roark has “repeatedly taught students that the earth was created by God 6,000 years ago, that evolution is ‘impossible’ and that the Bible is ’100 percent true.’

Beyond that, according to the complaint, the school regularly incorporates official Christian prayer into class and school events and scrolls Bible verses on an electronic marquee in front of the school that greets students as they enter the building.

A Definition of Secular Fundamentalism
In the light of the ACLU action Rod Dreher quotes Erin Manning’s definition of secular fundamentalism. Make sure you click on over there for some devastatingly clear and incisive analysis. A quick summary:

–One’s religious beliefs are a sort of personal hobby, like following sports or taking part in amateur theater, with one major difference: following sports or partaking in theater are things the state is inclined to approve of, but religious beliefs are a somewhat undesirable quality for a good citizen.

–The good citizen should differentiate between religions which encourage good citizenship (such as those faiths which help hand out condoms to homeless prostitutes, say) and those which do not.

–It is a given that “bad” religions have never done any good. Christianity is foremost among the “bad” religions, but there are others–however, political correctness may require the secularist to pretend that those other religions aren’t really bad at times.

–Concepts like the separation of church and state mean, to a fundamentalist, that no church should ever be allowed to interfere in secular matters; however, it is necessary for the state to interfere in church matters all the time.

–The Bill of Rights must be understood in a secular fundamentalist construct. Not only must a teacher in a public school classroom not *teach* her religious beliefs, but her freedom of speech must be denied to her from the moment she sets foot on the school campus until the moment she leaves it.

–Finally, no state institution, entity, or enterprise can be tainted by any suspicion that it ever approves of any religion at all. The secular fundamentalist insists that the only proper attitude to have toward religion is disapproval.

So here’s the question for everyone watching the Grammys and wondering what God really thinks about all of this spectacle. Are you going to believe in the God of the Bible and His way of salvation? Or are you going to trust yourself to the god of “same love.” The god of “same love” says no repentance and no savior is required. That god approves you just the way you are. The God of the Bible says you need repentance and salvation. That God will save you just the way you are. And He will take you to Himself and remake you into the image of His own dear son (Rom. 8:29). But you must repent, and you must believe.

In the wake of the Grammys, the big question is not what you thought of Macklemore. The big question is which God you will believe in. The false god of “same love,” or the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ? Which one will you choose?

10 Facts About Infidelity
A few rather predictable “facts” – infidelity gene, evolutionary biology, blah de blah. But a few real shockers too:

• Approximately 93.1% of women and 91.8% of men marry by age 49.
• 20 to 40% of heterosexual American married men and 20 to 25% of heterosexual American married women will also have an extramarital affair during their lifetime.
• One thing is clear: infidelity is a worldwide phenomenon that occurs with remarkable regularity, despite near universal disapproval of this behavior.
• Mate poaching is a pronounced trend. 60% of men and 53% of women admitted to “mate poaching,” trying to woo an individual away from a committed relationship to begin a relationship with them instead.
• Among individuals engaging in infidelity in one study, 56% of men and 34% of women rated their marriage as “happy” or “very happy.”

A few facts we won’t hear or read about of course – like it’s a sin. Like the destruction of families. Like STD’s. Not exactly TED talk material that, is it?

Religious Difference, Not Ideology, Will Fuel This Century’s Battles
Who said that? Sounds like Osama’s replacement, doesn’t it. Wrong. It’s Tony Blair, ex Prime Minister of Great Britain. And he even names Islam, well, a perversion of Islam, as the main culprit. Though, of course, he rushes to add “there are also many examples the world over where Muslims are the victims of religiously motivated violence from those of other religious faiths.”

But this is still a rare moment of honesty and (relatively) plain speaking from an influential world leader. If the atheists were wrong in the past about “Religion is the cause of all wars,” looks like they’ll be right for the next while.

Mr Blair continues to believe that more education, democracy, and tolerance will win the day. In God’s good providence, these means may serve to restrain some of the evil some of the time. But there’s only one effective way to end the wars of false religion, and it’s the true religion of Jesus Christ, spread with with the spiritual weapons of prayer, preaching, witnessing, and love.

Eastern Europe’s Christian Reawakening
Definition of “Christian” here is too broad for me, but still, there’s some encouraging news in this article.

While many academics speak of Europe as a uniform secularized continent, two decades after the collapse of Communism it is more accurate, if still too simple, to speak of two Europes: a West that has largely abandoned its religious roots, and an East that is rediscovering its heritage.

Let’s hope and pray that they continue beyond medieval roots and get all the way back to the pure roots of New Testament Christianity.

First was Jennifer Kulynych, a Washington lawyer writing in the New York Times, about the difficult of Owning up to Being a Home Schooling Parent, especially in the legal circles in which she moves.

Then Rod Dreher, reflecting on Kulynych’s post, called on parents to Come out of the Home Schooling Closet.

Gracy Olmstead does so but explains Why it’s so hard to Come out of the Homeschool Closet and closes with:

Homeschooling is not for everyone. But neither should it be the leprosy of the educational world. Its practitioners should be judged on their merits and manners, and its benefits and disadvantages should be weighed fairly, as with any other institution.

Getting Poor Kids Through College
50 college presidents and officials from states, industry and nonprofits recently attended a day-long meeting at the White House to find new ways to promote success among low-income students.

• Of top-performing high school students who hail from the bottom half of the income distribution, fewer than half go on to receive post-secondary degrees.
• Colleges pursue racial diversity more than socioeconomic diversity because racial diversity is much more visible, and socioeconomic diversity is much more expensive to address because you have to provide financial aid.
• Sometimes simple techniques — such as waiving application fees — can make a big difference in terms of student enrollment and eventual success.
• A Stanford University study found that simply providing low-income students who are top achievers with basic information about colleges not only led more of them to apply but also was associated with higher graduation rates.
• Children with two biological parents are more likely to attend college…than those with a stepparent or no parent.
• Children from intact homes receive significantly more financial support in covering college expenses.
• Having no father (i.e., [being from] a mother-only household) reduces support much more than having no mother (a father-only household).

Save up to Marry? Or Marry to Save up?
When cohabiting couples were asked about why they were not transitioning to marriage, 72% gave economic reasons.

• One-third of their respondents indicated that ‘the money needed to be in place’ before getting married.
• One-fifth of respondents wanted to have enough money for a ‘real’ wedding before tying the knot (average cost $23,000+)
• Respondents also said that better employment prospects were a prerequisite for marriage, especially for the man
• Some individuals suggested that a combination of goals like completing education and steady work were needed before considering marriage.

Andrew Cherlin, professor of public policy at Johns Hopkins University argues that marriage has become as a capstone.

Young adults are marrying after achieving educational goals, establishing a career and reaching financial stability rather than building a life around marriage. The capstone understanding of marriage puts matrimony out of reach for some working and lower middle class individuals who view improved fiscal status as the admission requirement.

And yet, research has also found that marriage provides large economic advantages, for example, “married couples seem to build more wealth on average than singles or cohabiting couples.” And of course, there are other advantages too:

Even though marriages are not guaranteed to last, healthy marriage relationships do promote human flourishing. Marriage successfully integrates emotional intimacy, parental responsibility and economic cooperation into committed, permanent union.

The Most Godly and Most Godless Cities in America
A recent study by Barna and the American Bible Society used the criteria of Bible-mindedness to measure the most and least godly cities in the USA. The study defined “Bible-mindedness” as a combination of how often respondents read the Bible and how accurate they think the Bible is. “Respondents who report reading the bible within the past seven days and who agree strongly in the accuracy of the Bible are classified as ‘Bible Minded,’ says the study’s methodology.”

• The two least “Bible-minded” cities in the United States are Providence, R.I., and New Bedford, Mass.
• The most “Bible-minded” city is Chattanooga.

Or maybe the residents of Providence and New Bedford are simply the most honest!

The most challenging line in the research was “The study found an inverse relationship between population density and Bible friendliness.”

18 Photos That Will Make you Wonder if the Earth is Real
Awe-inspiring views of our beautiful world. Feast your eyes!

With even more states considering full legalization, 2014 could end up as a banner year for pot. In Alaska — where possession of less than four ounces and personal cultivation has been already been decriminalized — residents will likely have the chance to vote on an initiative that would regulate and tax marijuana and allow for the opening of recreational cannabis shops. A poll from last year showed 60 percent of the state’s residents support full legalization. In Oregon, voters are also expected to consider legalizing the substance, just two years after a similar initiative failed in a statewide vote. As with the 49th state, a poll taken last year in Oregon showed strong support for legalization.

Campaigners though have their sights set upon  already pot-friendly California, with its population of nearly 40 million. If California legalized marijuana, then roughly one in five Americans would live in a recreational-use state.

But, as this article demonstrates, we could just as easily call this A Banner Year for Schizophrenia.

Here are some of the findings overlooked by Obama and the Colorado legislature. A 2013 study in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry reported that people using marijuana were at a significantly higher risk for a diagnosis of schizophrenia later in life. In the 2013 Schizophrenia Bulletin, a study found that long-term teenage use of cannabis caused structural changes in the brain similar to those with schizophrenia, and the participants studied suffered irreversible short-term memory loss. The EPA 2013: 21st European Congress of Psychiatry links marijuana use with schizophrenia and other severe psychiatric problems.

My wife, who is a medical doctor, used to work in a hospital psychiatric ward and found that the vast majority of patients had experimented with marijuana in their teens. Just a coincidence?

The Religious Right is Finished: So What’s Next for Social Conservatives
Damon Linker, no friend of evangelical Christianity, calls us to dance on the grave of the religious right. He says that “the movement that re-elected George W. Bush and reached its peak of influence with the federal intervention in the sensational right-to-die case of Terri Schiavo — is finished.”

Causes? He lists

• The right’s widespread disappointment with the legacy of the Bush years across a range of areas, including fiscal, foreign, and social policy;
• The shift of the national GOP toward economic libertarianism in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008
• The election of Barack Obama
• The rise of the Tea Party
• The passage of health care reform
• A dramatic and rapid shift in the culture, especially among the young, away from politicized religion and toward the acceptance of gay marriage.

Linker says we are now reduced to simply playing defense.

No longer portraying themselves as the nation’s “Moral Majority,” they’re now focused on the much more modest task of protecting themselves from state-mandated secularism. Where they once tried to ban gay marriage in the Constitution, now they fight to ensure that the government will allow conservatives to pass on their anti-homosexual beliefs in their own homes, churches, and schools.

He sees four possible options for the “remnant” as the movement gradually dies and disappears:

1. A stepping back from national ambitions across a range of issues to a narrower emphasis on state-level initiatives that restrict access to abortion.
2. The younger generation forms a new national political movement around a broader cluster of concerns like economic stewardship and environmental sustainability.
3. Withdraw from politics altogether,
4. Disenchanted by both the American political system and the increasingly secular drift of American culture, they could turn outward focusing on Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East. Call it the globalization of the culture war.

Don’t you just love it when the world predicts the death of Christianity. It’s such a ripe opportunity for God to work and get all the glory. Why not take this article and spread it before God, Hezekiah-like and pray:

“Open Your eyes, O Lord, and see; and hear the words of Damon Linker, which he has sent to reproach the living God. Truly, Lord, the kings of Media have laid waste the nations and their lands, and have cast their gods into the fire; for they were not gods, but the work of men’s hands—wood and stone. Therefore they destroyed them. Now therefore, O Lord our God, I pray, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You are the Lord God, You alone” (paraphrase of 2 Kings 19:15-19).

Only One Question: What is Marriage?
Ryan Anderson’s clear and courageous testimony to the Indiana Judiciary Committee. You can read his testimony here.

MYTH ONE: Poor countries are doomed to stay poor.
They’re really not. Incomes and other measures of human welfare are rising almost everywhere—including Africa.

MYTH TWO: Foreign aid is a big waste.
Actually, it is a phenomenal investment. Foreign aid doesn’t just save lives; it also lays the groundwork for lasting, long-term economic progress.

MYTH THREE: Saving lives leads to overpopulation.
Anxiety about the size of the world population has a dangerous tendency to override concern for the human beings who make up that population. When more children survive, parents decide to have smaller families. This pattern of falling death rates followed by falling birthrates applies for the vast majority of the world.

85 Richest People Own As Much as Bottom Half of the Population
Meanwhile at the opposite end of the scale, a new report says that “the 85 richest people on earth have the same amount of wealth as the bottom half of the population.”

We’re going to hear a lot about income inequality over the next two years – looks like the Democrats are going to run on this – so we might as well know the facts:

• The richest 1% of the population owns about 46% of global wealth.
• The richest 1% had $110 trillion in wealth — 65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the population
• That bottom half of the population owned about $1.7 trillion, or about 0.7% of the world’s wealth (the same amount as owned by the 85 richest people).
• The percentage of income held by the richest 1% in the U.S. has grown by nearly 150% since 1980.
• The top 1% in the USA has received 95% of wealth created since 2009, while the bottom 90% of Americans have become poorer.

Does all this really matter? Well, according to the World Economic Forum, “widening income inequality was the risk most likely to cause serious damage in the next decade,” and “President Obama recently called the expanding gap between rich and poor a bigger threat to the U.S. economy than the budget deficit.”

Personally, I believe the greater danger comes from the envy and anger that politicians will stir up by using these figures not to help the poor but simply to win votes.

MTV Reduces Teen Pregnancy
Not a headline you’d expect to read is it? TV has been rightly blamed over the years for increasing promiscuity and teen pregnancy. But if it’s so influential, why not turn it to good? That’s what seems to have happened (unintentionally) in areas where MTV’s 16 And Pregnant has been broadcast.

The authors found that the show “led to more searches and tweets regarding birth control and abortion, and ultimately led to a 5.7 percent reduction in teen births in the 18 months following its introduction. This accounts for around one-third of the overall decline in teen births in the United States during that period.”

5.7% may not sound like a lot but it means thousands of fewer teen births per year. The teen birth rate in the U.S. decreased 25 percent between 2007 and 2011, and the preliminary data for 2012 shows that teen births are at a record low.

The Second Machine Age
Despite widespread talk of worldwide economic stagnation due to demographics, globalization, and a slowdown in technological innovation, two professors from MIT have come forward to claim that “the global economy is on the cusp of a dramatic growth spurt driven by smart machines that finally take full advantage of advances in computer processing, artificial intelligence, networked communication and the digitization of just about everything.”

Their optimism springs from the idea of exponential growth — in the computing power of machines, in the amount of digital information that is being created and in the number of relatively cheap devices that are continually talking to each other.

To illustrate the point, Brynjolfsson and McAfee cite the example of Instagram and Kodak. Instagram is a simple app that has allowed more than 130 million people to share some 16 billion photos. Within 15 months of its founding, Instagram was sold to Facebook — a company with 1 billion users — for $1 billion. It was only a few months later that Kodak, the Instagram of its day, declared bankruptcy. The authors use this little vignette to illustrate two points. The first is to point out that the market value of Facebook/Instagram is now several times the value of Eastman Kodak at its peak, creating, by their calculation, seven billionaires, each of whom has a net worth 10 times greater than George Eastman ever had. Such is the “bounty” of the second machine age.