In recent days, there have been a few sporadic reports about dogs’ possibly infallible ability to detect breast cancer with their noses.
 
It’s early yet. No doubt it would take years of massive studies before anyone in the healthcare industry would admit creation’s superiority over man-made technologies. And considering what’s at stake for those already invested in this discipline, it’s possible that we’ll never hear much more about it. After all, the BBC reported on this amazing canine capability over three years ago, and the corporate media haven’t exactly been jumping up and down about it.
 
And so we wait. But in the meantime, I find statements like this very curious: “The technique is simple, non-invasive and cheap, and may revolutionise cancer detection in countries where mammograms are hard to come by.”
 
“In countries where mammograms are hard to come by”?
 
But according to the specialists at Susan G. Komen, mammography demonstrates a sensitivity of only about 84% for detecting breast cancer. And its  specificity is relatively low; if you’re a woman who’s been faithfully following the experts’ recommendations for 10 years or more, your chances of experiencing a false-positive result is 50-60%. Which means that many obedient women end up experiencing unnecessary anxiety and follow-up testing over the course of their lives.
 
So if these phenomenal canine results are borne out, why wouldn’t you make 100% accurate doggie detection available everywhere, not just where mammograms are “hard to come by”?
 
I wonder, too, about our spending priorities.
 
These days, breast cancer research is a multi-billion-dollar industry; in the U.S. alone, the federal government’s National Cancer Institute spends far more investigating breast cancer than it does on any other form of the disease – even though colorectal, lung and pancreatic cancer each kill more Americans than breast cancer does. Why are we not putting that money into evaluating dogs’ utility for early detection and treatment monitoring for all kinds of cancer?

Could this emphasis on man-made technologies possibly be because only dog breeders and trainers stand to make money on canine detection?
 
Or because the cancer industry has already invested billions in equipment that would have to be chucked if dogs proved superior?
 
Or perhaps it’s because only God would get the glory for this remarkable canine-olfactory invention; and these days, only a minority of the “experts” even believe in Him.

In 2012, a former palliative caregiver published The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing. The book is still selling extremely well, and not just from the New Age & Spirituality shelf. Perhaps the wish list of those who've died in her presence helps to explain its enduring popularity: 
 
1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. 

2. I wish I didn't work so hard.

3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

“Life is a choice,” the author has said. "It is YOUR life. Choose consciously, choose wisely, choose honestly. Choose happiness.”
 
So that’s what it’s all about?

But what if she and her readers are missing the elephant in the living room?

What if regrets such as these change dramatically one minute after death?

Too bad we can’t ask the philosophers who contributed to this list. 

Oh, but wait: we do have the testimony of the rich man in Luke 16. His priorities certainly underwent a radical transformation after he'd left this life behind.
 
Wonder what would happen if someone made it a point to read Luke 16 to the dying before they "slipped the surly bonds of earth"? Might they be a little less interested in the relative happiness of their lives, and a little more interested in where they'll be spending eternity?     

Dear professing Christian,
 
Once again, you have tried to set me straight on the character of God. You have let me know that He is nothing but love; that He adores just about everyone, regardless of belief or lifestyle, because after all He made each of us just the way we are; and that your take on Him is uniquely valid, because He told you these things personally, as opposed to those of us who believe that ancient and obsolete tome known as the Bible.  
 
And that, as usual, is the end of the conversation. You have no interest in discussing the matter further.  
 
Which makes me really sad, because it makes God sad. It is His will, you see, for “all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4). He is in fact “longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).
 
But I know this is irrelevant to you, as a scripture-free theologian. So let's instead delve more deeply into your worldview.  How do you answer questions like these? 

• Why is there suffering in the world? Is this God of yours unaware of it, not being truly omniscient? Is He unconcerned about it, not really being love? Or is He incapable of stopping it, being a power or two short of true omnipotence?

 

• If the Bible’s moral dictates can be safely ignored, then who decides what’s right and what’s wrong? You? Your friends? Your political allies and heroes? Or is it just a subjective free-for-all, wherein we each get to decide for ourselves what’s right or wrong based on our deepest thoughts?

 

• If so, what happens when your idea of “right” conflicts with someone else’s?

 

• If Jesus' atonement for man's sin applies to all without regard to our relationship with Him – if in fact we can deny Him entirely and still go to heaven – then can we just go on rampantly breaking His law? Do we even have to be kind to one another? Are adultery, murder, theft and idolatry among the acts that are perfectly okay with Him? If not, where is one to draw the line?

 
The thing is, no human being has ever been able to come up with coherent, consistent and non-contradictory answers to such questions simply by thinking about them, or by listening for voices from heaven. There is in fact only one source that does answer them all coherently, consistently and without contradiction, and that’s the Bible.
 
Which leads me to a number of things I’m dying to ask you:

• What if you’re wrong?

 

• What if you must indeed be born again to see heaven (see e.g. John 3:3)?

 

• What if there really is no salvation apart from repenting of what God defines as sin (see e.g. Luke 3:3)?

 

• What if your denial of Jesus as He revealed Himself really will result in His denial of you before the Father (see e.g. Matthew 10:33)?

 

• Are you so sure of what you believe that you’re ready to persuade a holy God that He should let you into His heaven for all eternity?

 
I’d love to hear your answers to all these questions. I’m not trying to win an argument here; my sole motive is to persuade you to hear the gospel gladly, and to become heaven-bound through repentance and trust in the Savior.  
 
Sincerely,
Kitty

We’ve been hearing it for years: Evolution is fact, not theory, and all real scientists believe it.
 
Set aside for the moment the reality that evolution is about as far from fact as east is from west; a little objective study of known scientific truths makes this clear. What I find most fascinating is the idea that the majority of the world’s scientists allegedly believe this unproven theory to be fact. How can that be?
 
Dr. Jerry Bergman explained it all some years ago with the publication of The Slaughter of the Dissidents: The Shocking Truth about Killing the Careers of Darwin Doubters (Leafcutter Press, 2008). In that landmark volume, he showed how the scientific establishment, particularly in academia, systematically derails the career of scientists and Ph.D. candidates who dare to question the truth of Darwinian evolution.
 
But Dr. Bergman did not call it a day when he released Slaughter for publication. He continued to amass evidence that these were far from isolated incidents. In the process, he collected many more stories of anti-creationist persecution, the most egregious of which he has presented in Silencing the Darwin Skeptics: The War Against Theists (Leafcutter Press, 2016).
 
Volume II in this eye-opening series of exposés, Silencing the Darwin Skeptics makes it clear that this is a problem that is not going away.  
 
One reason: the increasingly angry anti-creationist voices in the mass, specialized and social media. In Silencing the Darwin Skeptics, Dr. Bergman exposes some of the most damaging and subtle of these assaults. For instance, he shows how even prestigious periodicals such as Scientific American routinely classify Intelligent Design views as “religious” while calling evolutionary ideas “scientific” – this, in spite of the fact that Darwinism by definition eschews the scientific method.
 
Worse, the author demonstrates how many in the media openly mock creationists, sometimes using terms such as “dangerous” without any explanation – the implication being that none is needed. Equally perplexing, many equate Intelligent Design with flat-earthism, a ridiculous charge, given the fact that the earth is a sphere was first revealed in the Bible (see Isaiah 40:22, written in the 7th century B.C.).
 
But that’s just the start for readers of Silencing the Darwin Skeptics. Dr. Bergman also covers such topics as the failure of organizations from the ACLU to the AAUP to defend victims of anti-creationist discrimination, and the ongoing campaigns against Darwin skeptics conducted by various universities. He also describes a number of specific cases in riveting detail.
 
For me, however, the most gripping section in this book is Dr. Bergman’s blow-by-blow comparison of the current persecution of Darwin doubters with the early stages of Nazi anti-Semitism.
 
“The intense dislike, ridicule, and contempt shown to Jews in Nazi Germany is well-documented and well-known,” he writes. “A very similar kind of scorn is currently being expressed against Darwin skeptics.” He proceeds to outline the six major steps leading up to the Holocaust – verbal attacks, propaganda, termination of careers, ghettoization, concentration camp internment and killing in the Holocaust – and details how Darwin skeptics now find themselves in a variation on stage four, intellectual ghettoization.
 
This is a warning that should be taken very seriously. Dr. Bergman is no newcomer to the subject; he has written extensively on Nazi Germany, particularly on the role that Darwinian thought played in the horrors of that era. (See, for example, his book Hitler and the Nazi Darwinian Worldview.)
 
Silencing the Darwin Skeptics is a critically important book – one that deserves serious study by anyone who is concerned about the future of this nation and its children. I recommend it highly.