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From Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of. Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. A large amount of change in our cultivated plants, thus slowly and unconsciously accumulated, explains, as I believe, the well-known fact, that in a vast number of cases we cannot recognise, and therefore do not know, the wild parent-stocks of the plants which have been longest cultivated in our flower and kitchen gardens. If it has taken centuries or thousands of years to improve or modify most of our plants up to their present standard of usefulness to man, we can understand how it is that neither Australia, the Cape of Good Hope, nor any other region inhabited by quite uncivilised man, has afforded us a single plant worth culture. It is not that these countries, so rich in species, do not by a strange chance possess the aboriginal stocks of any useful plants, but that the native plants have not been improved by continued selection up to a standard of perfection comparable with that given to the plants in countries anciently civilised. ...

In a recent interview Oprah Winfrey explained her views on children. While explaining the strict rules of the household, her father – not knowing his daughter was pregnant – declared, “I would rather see a daughter of mine floating down the Cumberland River than to bring shame on this family and the indecency of an illegitimate child.” Fearful, Winfrey thought, “Before the baby was born, I’m going to have to kill myself,” adding she did “stupid things like drinking detergent and all that kind of crazy stuff that you do when you’re trying to get attention, when you’re really just trying to cry for help.” ...

In a recent Baptist Press article titled “When people criticize church leadership”, Thom Rainer took on the task of addressing why it is that The level and frequency of criticisms toward pastors and other leaders has increased significantly in the past several years. Thom’s observations begin with: First, the standards of church membership have been low in many churches for many years. As a consequence our churches have more and more unregenerate members. Frankly, I would be not be surprised if some of the most vitriolic criticisms come from those who are not Christians. ...

Preamble Quite a while ago I contributed a post titled “Coherent, Consistent, and Livable” to a series titled “Is Christianity is True” organized by Brian Auten. Shortly after the compiled book was published, Luke Muehlhauser announced his intentions to publish a rebuttal to each essay in the “Is Christianity is True?” series in a “Why Christianity is False” series of his own. This is part 5 of a 5 part series intended to address Luke’s post, “Christianity is Incoherent”. ...

Preamble Quite a while ago I contributed a post titled “Coherent, Consistent, and Livable” to a series titled “Is Christianity is True” organized by Brian Auten. Shortly after the compiled book was published, Luke Muehlhauser announced his intentions to publish a rebuttal to each essay in the “Is Christianity is True?” series in a “Why Christianity is False” series of his own. This is part 4 of a 5 part series intended to address Luke’s post, “Christianity is Incoherent”. ...

If you suppose that you are nothing more than the molecules that make you up, then the only thing you can own are molecules. However that poses a problem since our bodies are constantly changing out molecules. In fact, 98% of the molecules in our bodies are replaced yearly. There is not a core of molecules that persists, so the best we can say is that we are only leasing the molecules of our physical bodies. So when we talk about moral obligation, it seems dubious to center it on a physical object since that object does not persist. The molecules that made up Jeffery Dahmer when he killed all his victims did not make him up 2 years hence, so should we have released him since his “bad” molecules were now dissipated? ...

Preamble Quite a while ago I contributed a post titled “Coherent, Consistent, and Livable” to a series titled “Is Christianity is True” organized by Brian Auten. Shortly after the compiled book was published, Luke Muehlhauser announced his intentions to publish a rebuttal to each essay in the “Is Christianity is True?” series in a “Why Christianity is False” series of his own. This is part 3 of a 5 part series intended to address Luke’s post, “Christianity is Incoherent”. ...

Preamble Quite a while ago I contributed a post titled “Coherent, Consistent, and Livable” to a series titled “Is Christianity is True” organized by Brian Auten. Shortly after the compiled book was published, Luke Muehlhauser announced his intentions to publish a rebuttal to each essay in the “Is Christianity is True?” series in a “Why Christianity is False” series of his own. This is part 2 of a 5 part series intended to address Luke’s post, “Christianity is Incoherent”. ...

Quite a while ago I contributed a post titled “Coherent, Consistent, and Livable” to a series titled “Is Christianity is True” organized by Brian Auten. Shortly after the compiled book was published, Luke Muehlhauser announced his intentions to publish a rebuttal to each essay in the “Is Christianity is True?” series in a “Why Christianity is False” series of his own. Well, it seems that Luke finally got around to writing a response to my post titled “Christianity is Incoherent”. I’m glad to see Luke’s response, I was afraid for a while that it would never materialize! ...

In order to learn and use Greek alphabet, you’ll need to have a suitable Greek font installed on your system. Here are a few resources to hopefully point you in the right direction: How to Read, Write, Print and Email in Greek Greek Fonts (Unicode) Ancient Greek font Unicode specification for Greek language (technical) Bible Greek and Hebrew Fonts More Unicode Greek fonts More Greek fonts I have seen some fonts that do not conform to the Unicode standard and the result is that anything done in that font is completely unusable by anyone without the font. So it is important that you pay attention to whether the font you are using for Greek conforms to the Unicode standard or not. ...