Please, Don't Insult My Intelligence

This afternoon I was looking through this month's issue of National Geographic Magazine and came across this:

The computer makes it hard to see, but just to the left of center in the photo is a little circle outlined with a dotted white line. That portion has been enlarged in the circle you see just right of center. According to the caption, that dark-colored smudge in the enlarged circle is a remnant of "feathers up to eight inches long". At top right you'll see an artist's concept of a tyrannosaur-like dinosaur covered in furry, fluffy feathers.
Now, first of all, while I am not a paleontologist and don't claim to have any kind of expertise in this field, I think I'm smart enough to recognize a fossilized feather when I see one.
This is a fossilized feather:

This is a fossilized feather:

Sorry, but I don't see any feathers in that NatGeo photo. Those smudges are far more likely to be collagen fibers, created during the decay process of the fossilized animal's body.

The brief writeup on the photo states that the feathers were "soft down (that) may have kept the animal toasty during a Cretaceous cold spell", not rigid feathers meant for flight. It describes the dinosaur as "a supersize chick".
I'm a little confused about the idea of "soft down" eight inches long, though. The closest thing I can think of to that is an ostrich's soft body feathers, which do get that long but would, one would think, show up in a fossil as more than a smudgy spot or two, and well enough to be defined under a term a bit more precise than "filaments" (the NatGeo writeup's word of choice).

I also have to wonder how this fits together with the new theory that dinosaurs' own methane emissions (i.e. burps and gas) caused global warming. (No, I'm not kidding. That is an actual theory, and you can even read about it in the LA Times here.) If dinosaurs went extinct during the global warming they caused between 161 and 145 million years ago, how did they have the time or foresight to evolve feathers for the Cretaceous cold spell 125 million years ago? And if they were adaptable enough to evolve feathers in time to keep from freezing to death, how did they manage to go extinct in the first place?
All that aside, the most glaring problem with the downy insulation theory is the fact that dinosaurs are reptiles and therefore, we can reasonably assume, cold blooded. If their bodies are not generating their own heat, a layer of insulation is totally pointless. If anything, it's going to have the opposite effect: keeping out the warmth that needs to be coming into the animal's body from outside.
Secondly, down only works as insulation if there is a course outer layer over it. Back to my ostrich illustration, you'll notice that an ostrich's feathers are all very soft and down-like. But the ostrich lives in the desert. The feathers help it keep cool, not warm. Even a goose-down sleeping bag is covered with an outer layer to hold the warmth in. Those of you who have raised chickens know that baby chicks (covered only with soft down) are extremely susceptible to even slightly cool temperatures, because they have no outer layer of feathers to hold in the warmth. Where is T-rex's outer layer? Shouldn't that be showing up in the fossil too?

I could go on. The entire writeup (less than half a page long) is so full of items and points I could challenge, but I'll stop here. I'm sure you all get the idea, though I would encourage every one of you to look up the article at your local library or online and see it for yourselves.
I would also encourage you to learn more about these so-called feathered dinosaurs scientists have found and touted as powerful evidence confirming evolution. Answers in Genesis has a fabulous article on the very dinosaur pictured above, explaining details about it with tremendous depth and clarity. Click Here to read AiG's article. Learn the truth about these controversial fossils, so that you can always be ready to give an answer for your faith when people question you or make false statements like this.
And lastly, don't be afraid to stand up and speak out about things like this. The propagation of evolution is dependent on intelligent people keeping their mouths shut and not asking too many tough and embarrassing questions because they don't want to challenge an 'expert' opinion. You may not be an 'expert', but the people who are learned from other experts, who learned from other experts, who learned from looking at fossils and making up theories. You're an intelligent human being who can see a fossil just as well as they can. Don't let them insult your intelligence by making you feel ignorant, and don't be afraid to respectfully challenge their expertise.

Don't be afraid to call a feather a feather, if indeed it is a feather. But don't be afraid to say it isn't a feather, if it isn't.

How Do You View Christian Ministry?

I've recently been giving a lot of thought to the way Christians in our culture have come to view the concept of Christian ministry, so I thought I'd share those thoughts with you. My main concern is that we have come to neglect many vitally important aspects of ministry as our understanding of its definition grows narrower and narrower.

I very frequently hear people say that "Your single years are a blessing because you have so much more time to serve God and be involved in ministry without the responsibility of a spouse and children".
While I agree that being single is a blessing in many ways, I take issue with the idea that a family somehow ties a person down and renders them unable to serve God. People who make statements like this are overlooking the fact that having a Christ-centered marriage and raising a family, instructing your children in godliness, is serving God. Especially so in the world we live in today.
Divorce rates have been climbing for years, even as marriage rates fall.
Christian children are not, by and large, being raised and trained to be strong soldiers of the faith or to be strong leaders of the next generation, and statistics show that by the time they reach middle school age, 2/3 of them will have turned their backs on the faith completely. Without these warriors and leaders of the faith, the next generation will perish spiritually.
Training children in godliness is the foundation of all other ministry. If we aren't doing that, everything else is for naught anyway.
Singles, don't let well-meaning people's attempts at encouragement twist your perception of what ministry and service to God are. Yes, you can serve as a single too. But your service will not stop once you marry and start a family. It is only beginning then.
Parents, don't let yourselves get caught in the trap of thinking that ministry is something separate from what you're doing, that just because you're not going on missions trips or preaching you're not serving God. Raise your family according to God's instructions. That is serving God.

Another misconception I often see in Christian circles is that there are only a small handful of vocations that can be considered ministry.
My late grandfather often pointed out that twelve of his sixteen grandchildren and grandchildren-in-law were in full-time ministry, occasionally alluding to his disappointment with the four who weren't. I was one of the latter.
Don't get me wrong - I adored my grandfather - but his perception of 'ministry' was too narrow. In his mind, if you weren't a pastor, a professor at a Bible college, a missionary, or the wife of one of those, you weren't 'in the ministry'.
But, as I often told him when he brought it up, I know I am doing what God wants me to do, I strive (even if I don't always succeed) to make Christ the focus of every aspect of my life, and I share my faith with others every chance I get. I consider my life to be full-time ministry for that reason. As the Bible says, if the whole body were the ear, how would we smell? If the whole body were the eye, how would we hear? 
If all of Christ's sheep were pastors, who would they shepherd?
Don't let your view of what Christian ministry is become too narrow. I've heard pastors weeping over how few people commit themselves to full-time ministry, when right in front of them sit families who have dedicated their lives to raising godly children, to training the next generation of faith warriors, to sharing the gospel with people they meet in their day-to-day life.
God hasn't called all of us to be pastors or missionaries. He's called some of us to be construction workers. He's called some of us to be doctors. He's called some of us to be home-school moms. He's called some of us to be writers.
And if we do what He has called us to do while striving to make Him the center of every aspect of our lives, we are serving Him. That is ministry.

Your thoughts?

The Resurrection and the Wardrobe - "There are only 3 possibilities."

"Logic!" said the Professor half to himself. "Why don't they teach logic at these schools? There are only three possibilities. Either your sister is telling lies, or she is mad, or she is telling the truth. You know she doesn't tell lies and it is obvious that she is not mad. For the moment then and until any further evidence turns up, we must assume that she is telling the truth."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Over the last couple of weeks my Sunday School teacher, Dave, has been talking about apologetics; specifically, evidence for the resurrection. This week's discussion focused on the five hundred+ people who saw Jesus following His resurrection, before His ascension.
Skeptics are willing to concede the fact that the disciples and others did have some kind of experience with someone they believed to be Jesus, after He had been killed. However, they don't consider the accounts to be accurate.
Dave pointed out that there are only three possibilities concerning the encounters people claimed to have had with Jesus after His death:

1. Everyone who claimed to have seen Jesus was lying.

2. Everyone who believed they had seen Jesus was either hallucinating or dreaming.

3. The people who said they had seen Jesus were telling the truth.

The notion that these people were all lying makes no sense. Look at the political scandals and cover-ups throughout history. There is always a leak somewhere. Humans are simply not good at keeping secrets under any circumstances - let alone when they're being hunted and tortured and killed as the early Christians were. If the encounters with Jesus were lies, someone would have spilled the beans.

The idea that all 500 people were hallucinating or dreaming also makes no sense. One night, a few years ago, my dad and I both dreamed that our great-aunt had passed away. It was kind of spooky, both of us dreaming the same thing on the same night. But, even though the basic dream was the same, the details were all different. And it was only two of us, not five hundred. No way are five hundred people all going to have the exact same dream or hallucination where all the details agree.

So logically, Dave concluded, we have to assume that the early Christians were telling the truth.

Hmm... I thought. I've heard that somewhere before!
While it's a well-known fact that C.S. Lewis was a theologian and apologist in addition to being a writer, we don't always notice how one bleeds into another. The Professor's conclusion that Lucy is telling the truth about finding a magical country inside a wardrobe is an essential part of the story, forcing Peter and Susan to consider for the first time the possibility of something they regarded as incredible. But it's also an example of great apologetics, a lesson to be learned.
Peter and Susan still weren't convinced by the irrefutable logic of the Professor's argument, and all the evidence and logic in the world isn't going to convince someone who isn't willing to accept the resurrection. That's the job of the Holy Spirit.
Aslan eventually convinced Peter and Susan by letting them through the wardrobe into Narnia. The Professor didn't have to convince them that it was real. He simply told them what he knew, and let Aslan do the rest. Our job isn't to convince an unbeliever, it's simply to tell them what we know and let the Holy Spirit show them the way through the wardrobe door, if they're willing to be shown.
For me, it's lessons like this - gems embedded so deeply into the story that they often go unnoticed - that set a truly great work of Christian fiction apart. For me, whose writing role model is C.S.Lewis, it's awesome to be able to see his beliefs and apologetics techniques at work even in his fiction, and it's my hope that my own writing will be influenced and sculpted by my faith in the way Lewis' was.
And the next time someone asks me how I know the resurrection really happened, I might just have to casually sit back and say "That is a point which certainly deserves considerations; very careful considerations..." (I wonder if I could pull it off without a British accent!)
Afterwards, I'll make myself a cup of tea and muse about "What do they teach them at these schools?"

What do you think sets a great work of fiction apart from the pack?
Do you have a writing role model?