Taxing Churches in the U.S.

More early signs of persecution of the church, this time in the United States... A pastor from Pennsylvania asks, "In our nation, under our Constitution, churches and other religious entities are exempt from taxation. So why was our church targeted?"

21 Ripple Brook Rd, Centermoreland

Tunkhannock, PA 18657

570.333.5185

Pastor James Howell

Ian Bonthron, Youth

Northmoreland Baptist Church

April, 2011

Dear Friends,

As the pastor of a small but vibrant church in Northeastern Pennsylvania, it has been my joy to serve my congregation and the Tunkhannock community for 28 years. We are a Bible-believing church, made up of people who love the Lord, and who are faithful, taxpaying citizens of the Commonwealth.

I am sure you can imagine my dismay when, to my surprise, I received a property tax bill from the county for a portion of our new church building. This was not right and so I went to the county commissioners to challenge this tax - to no avail.

As Christians, I understand that we are to "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's," but in our nation; under our Constitution; churches and other religious entities are exempt from taxation. So why was our church targeted?

I turned to a national legal ministry, but they were unable to help. Then someone told me about the Pennsylvania Family Institute and its Independence Law Center. I gave Attorney Randy Wenger a call, and he signed up to help us immediately. He tells me the law and precedent are on our side, and he has filed an appeal on our behalf.

I would ask you to pray for our case (which could ultimately impact many churches) and for the Pennsylvania Family Institute. We are benefiting from the hard work and expertise which I understand is made possible by generous gifts from people like you. Thank you, too, for helping!

I am grateful that the Independence Law Center was there when we needed them, and pray they continue to have the resources to help others facing similar challenges.

Yours in Christ,

Pastor James Howell

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Carbon 14 dates in ancient samples cluster around Noah's Flood

A comprehensive statistical analysis of radiocarbon dates for 93 totally different ancient samples gives surprising results. Instead of a variety of ages stretching all the way back to the limits of statistical error, the dates fit a bell curve that center on single point in time. This signature points to the Global Flood of Noah!

Selections from A Case of "Missing" Decay, An Analysis of C-14 Detected in Very Old Samples, by Rick Sanders.

(These selections by Marko Malyj are of the article published in Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal, Volume 47, Number 3, Winter 2011, to appear at http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/abstracts/Abstracts47-3.htm).

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Introduction

Radiocarbon (C-14) dating over the past thirty-some years has grown rapidly due to ultra-sensitive detection equipment known as accelerator mass spectrometry, or AMS. This instrument is capable of detecting minute amounts of radioactive elements present within samples. Many geologically ancient samples have been tested and appear to contain trace amounts of radiocarbon. C-14 has a half-life of only 5730 years, which means any carbon sample older than around 100,000 years before the present (YBP) should contain zero radiocarbon.

Creation scientists argue that the C-14 detected within these ancient samples is in fact intrinsic and provides evidence for a young earth. Criticisms of creation scientists argue that small amounts of background contamination occur in radiocarbon measurements.

Analysis of the Data

There has been to my knowledge no rigorous and systematic study of radiocarbon content in ancient samples done by the scientific community.

I have compiled a listing of radiocarbon measurements made on geologically ancient samples taken from results published in the literature. There were two sources for the radiocarbon data I used in producing this paper: two tables shown in Baumgardner (2005), including his summary of previously published results (pp. 596–597) and the RATE project results on coal (p. 605). The other source was a study by Snelling (2008).

I excluded from my study graphite and all diamond samples. Types of object that were included were coal, wood, shell, foraminifera, bone, fossils, and others. The available data from these 93 ancient samples that underwent AMS radiocarbon dating is shown in the age graph of Figure 3.

Figure 3. Histogram showing the “apparent” radiocarbon ages of the tested samples with a normal curve fitted to the data. The line shows how the apparent ages of the tested samples appear to conform to the normal distribution, the well known “bell curve.”

The average apparent age of the samples is 51,155 YBP (Years Before Present). This is not the “actual age” of each sample, it is the “radiocarbon age”. It is important to distinguish between the two.

Carbon 14 originates in the upper atmosphere as cosmic rays bombard nitrogen molecules and convert them to radioactive C-14, which can then be taken in by plants, absorbed into ocean water, or retained in the atmosphere. If any factor in C-14 production is changed, its level in the atmosphere also will change. For example, if the sun has a period of unusually high activity, it can shield the earth from the cosmic rays, thus lowering the amount of C-14 creation.

Thus there are a number of ways to fit this age within a young-earth paradigm. The simplest is to infer that the C-14/C-12 ratio was much lower in the past relative to today’s value. Plants and animals that were buried and preserved in the Flood sediments would therefore, when they died, begin with much lower C-14/C-12 ratios than is the case today. Reasons for lower C-14/C-12 ratio before the Flood could include a larger biomass exchanging with the atmosphere or a lower rate of C-14 production, perhaps due to a stronger magnetic field.

The Age Graph is a Bell Curve, which Points to a Single Historical Event (the Flood?)

What is of greatest significance is that the ages of the samples tested can be approximated by the normal distribution, the well known “bell curve”. This implies that all of the samples date to the same geological time. This suggests a single event when all of the given samples were isolated from the carbon cycle. Remember, the 93 samples represent many different sample types, dating to many different geologic time periods and analyzed in different laboratories — but all date to a single event. This is consistent with the young-earth creationist expectation that all of these samples date to the time of the Flood.

A word of caution. As noted above, no systematic analysis of radiocarbon in ancient geologic samples has been done to date, of which I am aware. My conclusion is reasonable but not exhaustive. This being said, the radiocarbon dating is still on the side of the creationist, and should be regarded a friend rather than a foe in the study of young-earth geology.

Summary and Conclusion

To clarify, this study does not rule out any trace of contamination in the samples tested. I suggest that an intensive research initiative could address the problem of contamination and intrinsic radiocarbon by testing across different sample types and ages, pre-test treatment regimens, and laboratories and then carefully analyzing the results. Unfortunately, this expensive solution will probably be necessary for the true nature of radiocarbon content and contamination in very old samples to be resolved in a satisfactory way for most people.

Radiocarbon dating is just one more demonstration that true science will always align with a proper understanding of God’s Word. Scientific study results and statistical reports always have a capacity for error, while the Bible is not subject to error when its message is understood correctly.

References (selected)

Baumgardner, J. 2005. C-14 Evidence for a recent global flood and a young earth. In Vardiman, L., A. Snelling, and E. Chaffin (editors), Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth, Vol. 2, pp. 587–630. Institute
for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA and Creation Research Society, Chino
Valley, AZ.

Snelling, A. 2008. Radiocarbon ages for fossil ammonites and wood in cretaceous strata near Redding, California. Answers Research Journal 1(1):128–144. http://www.answersingenesis.org/contents/379/Radiocarbon_Ammonites_Wood.pdf (as of June 4, 2010).

Between Two Tigers

When Vietnam opened up partially in the early 1990's, we met a grandmother (63 years old) who had just been released from prison. She had spent a year there for holding a Christian meeting in her village, where there was no church. Even with heavy shackles on here legs, Mrs. Fo Thi Manh witnessed to others around her. When the police finally returned her to her village, they gave her a microphone and insisted that she publicly deny her faith.

Standing before hundreds in her village, she refused to recant and instead took the opportunity to declare her faith. She told us, "Just like shaving a tiger's hair doesn't do away with its stripes, so I am still a Christian. I still have meetings in my house; now there are more than a dozen."

Her story is told in the VOM book Between Two Tigers: Testimonies of Vietnamese Christians.

This Easter we remember that our Savior, in his last days on earth, set his face toward Jerusalem and remained committed to the will of the Father - we are thankful for the family of believers who demonstrate that commitment today.

(from Voice of the Martyrs, April 2011)

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Pornography Epidemic Now Among Women as well as Men

Increasing numbers of women admit to being hooked on internet porn. Why is this happening, and where are they finding help?



"I remember the feeling of being sucked in, really wanting that two-minute fix, that numbness I got when I used porn," says Caroline. "I was stressed out, and I risked being late for my interview, but I pressed play anyway and fast-forwarded it to the bit I wanted. It took two minutes." But the relief was to be short-lived. "Afterwards I just hated myself for giving in and getting off on images that treated women like pieces of meat. But I kept going back."
 
Caroline is not alone. While it's accepted that women are watching – and enjoying – porn more and more, it's less recognised that some are also finding it hard to stop. At Quit Porn Addiction, the UK's main porn counselling service, almost one in three clients are women struggling with their own porn use, says founder and counsellor Jason Dean. Two years ago, there were none.While more than six out of 10 women say they view web porn, one study in 2006 by the Internet Filter Review found that 17% of women describe themselves as "addicted".
 
There is little difference in the way the genders become hooked, says Jason. There is the same pattern of exposure, addiction, and desensitisation to increasingly hardcore images. The main contrast between male and female porn addicts is how much more guilty women feel. "Porn addiction is seen as a man's problem – and therefore not acceptable for women," says Dean. "There's a real sense among women that it's bad, dirty, wrong and they're often unable to get beyond that."
 
The first support group in the US run for women by women was founded by Crystal Renaud, who also wrote a new book on women's addiction to porn, called Dirty Girls Come Clean.
 
A committed Christian, she first came across porn at the age of 11 in a magazine that belonged to her brother, and was addicted for eight years before she got her wake-up call when she arranged an anonymous hook-up with a man she met over the net. Renaud recalls: "I had no friends. No passions. I had one mission and purpose in my life: pornography. Any way I could find it, I would. It didn't matter where I was or what I was doing. Home, school, my friend's houses, summer camp and yes, even church: my addiction came too.
 
As a trained counsellor, Renaud now calls women's addiction to pornography "widespread and silent". In almost every case, the women she meets believe they are the only ones ever to have struggled with the issue. "Porn and sexual addiction has always been referred to as a man's problem," says Renaud. "But for women it's an unspoken struggle. We have to give them the opportunity to say: 'Me too.'"

(for more see Tanith Carey, Why more and more women are using pornography, Guardian.co.uk, April 7, 2011)

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Insects in Darwin's Ointment, by Frank Sherwin

Crickets have always been crickets.

Arthropods, like all other creatures, validate the creation model by appearing suddenly and completely in the fossil record in a most un-Darwinian manner.¹ A recent discovery of a fossil in Brazil has frustrated evolutionists by being a 100-percent cricket that “has undergone very little evolutionary change since the Early Cretaceous Period.”² Evolution means change, but “100 million years” of stasis hardly validates evolutionary theory.

The phylum Arthropoda is composed of creatures that have paired, jointed appendages and a chitinous (nitrogen-containing polysaccharide) exoskeleton. It is the largest group of animals in God’s creation and includes the crustaceans (lobsters, crabs) and insects. This fossil shows that crickets have always been crickets.

600 generations of fruit flies show not the slightest signs of evolution.

A laboratory insect used for over a century by geneticists is the fruit fly.³ In 2010, researchers reported in the evolutionary journal Nature the results of 600 generations of artificial selection on this creature.⁴ They were hoping to document beneficial mutations becoming fixed in the fruit fly population. But intelligent agents with plenty of research money and time, working under conditions that would evidently favor upward, onward evolution, could not document beneficial mutations. In fact, the opposite occurred with the flies undergoing “reverse evolution”! In addition, the mystical process of natural selection was conspicuously absent.

Pesticide resistant bed bugs are still bed bugs.

Do bed bug survival tactics show that they evolved from an entirely different creature, or are bed bugs just adapting? The latter is a more scientific interpretation, considering they are still the same species of ectoparasite. In Evolution Under the Microscope, David Swift ably discusses an insect’s ability to develop resistance to pesticides⁵—an ability that has nothing to do with Darwin’s “descent with modification.”

(excerpted from Frank Sherwin, Insects in Darwin's Ointment Acts & Facts April 2011, Institute for Creation Research)

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References (selected)

1. Sherwin, F. 2005. Butterflies vs. Macroevolution. Acts & Facts. 34 (2).

2. Yates, D. Rare insect fossil reveals 100 million years of evolutionary stasis. University of Illinois press release, February 3, 2011.

3. Sherwin, F. 2006. Fruit Flies in the Face of Macroevolution. Acts & Facts. 35 (1).

4. Burke, M. K. et al. 2010. Genome-wide analysis of a long-term evolution experiment with Drosophila. Nature. 467 (7315): 587-590.

5. Swift, D. W. 2002. Evolution Under the Microscope. Stirling, UK: Leighton Press, 236-239.