Illustrations

A University of Kansas course devoted to debunking creationism and intelligent design was canceled after the professor caused a furor by sending an e-mail mocking Christian fundamentalists.

Twenty-five students had enrolled in the course, “Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and Other Religious Mythologies,” which had been scheduled for the spring.

Professor Paul Mirecki, chairman of religious studies, canceled the class according to the university.

Sir Isaac Newton had a friend who was an atheist. The friend did not believe in God, but preferred to take the position that the universe just happened. One day the friend was visiting his learned colleague and Newton showed him a model of the solar system. The sun, the planets, and the moons were all in place. The sizes of the spheres were in proportion and the planets and the satellites revolved around the sun at their relative speeds. The friends admired the model. “It's intriguing,” he said, “who made it?”

“Nobody,” said Newton, “It just happened.”

George Bernard Shaw is perhaps most renowned as a free thinker and liberal philosopher. In his last writings we read, “The science to which I pinned my faith is bankrupt. Its counsels, which should have established the millennium, led, instead, directly to the suicide of Europe. I believed them once. In their name I helped to destroy the faith of millions of worshipers in the temples of a thousand creeds. And now they look at me and witness the great tragedy of an atheist who has lost his faith.” Nobody talks so constantly about God as those who insist that there is no God.

A man went to a barber shop to have his hair and his beard cut as always. He started to have a good conversation with the barber who attended him. They talked about many things and various subjects. Suddenly, they began to talk about God.

The barber said: “Look man, I don't believe that God exists as you say.”

“Why do you say that?” asked the client.

A young lady came home from a date looking rather sad. She told her mother, “Arthur proposed to me an hour ago.”

“Then why are you so sad?” her mother asked.

“Because he also told me he was an atheist. Mom, he doesn't even believe there's a hell.”

Her mother replied, “Marry him anyway. Between the two of us, we'll show him how wrong he is.”

Source: Unknown

The late Dawson Trotman, founder of the Navigators, was visiting Taiwan on one of his overseas trips. During the visit he hiked with a Taiwanese pastor back into one of the mountain villages to meet with some of the national Christians. The roads and trails were wet, and their shoes became very muddy. Later, someone asked this Taiwanese pastor what he remembered most about Dawson Trotman. Without hesitation the man replied, “He cleaned my shoes.”

Source: Unknown

“I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small taks as if they were great and noble.”—Helen Keller

The Gospel of John introduces Jesus as “the Word.” In Stanislas Dehaene’s book about the human brain, Reading In The Brain, he notes that the average English adult reader has 50,000 or more words stored in his mental dictionary. In a fraction of a second the brain matches the word being read with the memorized meaning of that word. The Apostle wasn’t privy to Dehaene’s research, yet he still seemed to understand that though there are many words, there is only one Word that translates to eternal life.

Source: In Other Words

Some people approach the extra mile with an attitude that makes you wonder if they just inadvertently missed the previous exit.

Source: In Other Words

The National Sleep Foundation says that about 70 million Americans operate on inadequate sleep at any given time. This fatigue results in a tremendous loss of productivity both on the job and at home. The average worker spends more than an hour per day doing nothing for their employer and costing American businesses over $4 billion a day.

Source: In Other Words