7 things @ 9 o’clock (9.20)

7 things @ 9 o’clock (9.20) September 20, 2013

1. Eshet Chayil. Here are two remembrances of two remarkable women I had never heard of before: Sunila Abeysekera and Marillia Hinds.

2. Cool Papa Bell was so fast, it was said, that he once hit a line drive up the middle that knocked him unconscious as he was rounding second base. Billy Hamilton is faster than Cool Papa Bell. The only question is whether or not he’ll be able to hit any line drives up the middle.

3. The importance of the NALT Christians Project has just been confirmed: Professional homophobes Matt Barber and Peter LaBarbera denounce those involved in the project as “liberal so-called Christians” who are really “apostates.” That’s a necessary attack for folks like Barber and LaB. The dozens of Christian testimonies collected by the project disprove the false claim of a “moral monopoly” that is the only basis for their purported credibility. They have no choice, then, but to insist that none of those Christians bearing witness is really a real, true Christian. RTCs may want to join them in denouncing such “apostasy,” but if you’re a Christian who doesn’t insist that Matt Barber and Peter LaBarbera represent the only valid, authentic form of Christianity, then you should consider adding your testimony to the growing chorus challenging their claim to a moral monopoly.

4. And if you remember, then follow.

5. Matthew Hagee says that the Navy Yard shootings are a sign of the End Times. But then, for folks like Hagee, Billy Hamilton stealing four bases is a sign of the End Times. The U.S. bombing Syria would have been a sign of the End Times, and the U.S. not bombing Syria is also a sign of the End Times. For Hagee, everything is a sign of the End Times. Miley Cyrus twerking is a sign of the End Times. So are Goat Week, Slim-Fast’s new ad campaign, drunken moose, the decline in America’s teen-pregnancy rate and the brain-eating amoebas found in Louisiana’s drinking-water supply.

6. TexasTexasTexasTexasTexasTexasTexasTexasTexas.

7. Joel Duff is a patient guy who demonstrates a gentle, pastoral concern for young-Earth creationists while simultaneously destroying their anti-science ideology with the patient application of evidence, facts and your own two eyes. His post on “Inverted Valleys: A Question of Age” is effective not just because he shows how these flat-topped hills in Utah demonstrate that the Earth is billions of years old, but also because he gently explains, in detail, why the creationists’ preferred methods to try to explain away such evidence for an ancient Earth won’t work in this case:

Young-Earth creationists … would explain the 15,000 feet of fossil-bearing sediments as the result of a global flood but then the other historical events we have witness of would need to have occurred in post-flood times. Why? because all these features could not have been produced simultaneously. Geological features are the result of a series of events not a single event. Valleys would have to be incised prior to volcanic eruptions. The part that really is difficult to explain then becomes the erosion of hundreds of feet of sediments after these eruptions. Young-Earth creationists usually want to explain vast amounts of erosion as the result of waters receding after the flood but in this case they would have already used up this explanation when they try to explain how there would have been valleys for the lava to fill in the first place.

Duff also notes that “Mars may have inverted valleys” like those in Utah and, well, Noah’s flood is a bit of a stretch for explaining those.


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