Politician's money

Apparently Biden has given more more than 0.5% of his income to charity over the last 10 yeras. Last year was his most generous year - $1000 to charity. I give more than that and he makes 12x as much money as me. Obama gave ~5% the last couple years once they started making some money. Before that it wan't much because they still had debt and apparently couldn't afford to give much away. This kind of solidifies for me how politicians aren't really Christians. Come on, they are the half-ass people who go to church for tradition or social reasons. All this makes the Clintons seems really generous - they gave ~10% of their massive incomes away since the presidency.

Of course, McCain is hard to compare since his wife is worth so much. He gave ~20% of his income away the last couple years but he and his wife file separate returns and his wife is worth ~$100 million. It still looks a lot better than a grand though.

Biola ID

I went to a Biola event with Hugh Ross' Reasons to Believe showing a Docudrama "Dual Revelation" with a Q&A session afterward. I thought Dual Revelation sucked and the Q&A was lame, but I got to talk to Dr. Bloom for a bit afterward. The film and Reasons to Believe like the "old-earth creationism" or as I think of it "progressive creationism," meaning the creation account speaks of long periods of time instead of days. They say they have a good balance between science and the Bible - 6-day creationism regards the Bible too high against science and evolution regards science too high against the Bible. This is a good talking point and would convince the masses but is intellectually empty political crap. I was the only one laughing when he said that though.

I came out of the event believing more strongly in theistic evolution. Of course they think the creation account is historical narrative which I don't, so evolution isn't really an option for them. But the underlying antipathy toward theistic evolution is how that belief could be abused. The main arguments are that it could lead to a deistic God or one can have too low a view of the Bible. Apparently the famous theistic evolutionists are deists. In talking to Dr. Bloom I got somewhat frustrated because he said that theistic evolution as I veiw it is fine but most theistic evolutionists (at least the popular ones) don't have the moderate view I do. Of course the entire theme of the night had a very low view of evolution as all Christian events do. This actually miffed me a bit. It seems our goal is no longer truth but only truth that is not easily abused. We have become fascist in allowing only certain views to be considered, and with this mindset of course old earth creationsim is the most likely. The thing I love most about Christianity is our love for truth and use of common sense, but in this arena that's forgotten in favor of intellectual fascism. I consider myself a theistic evolutionist partly out of spite.

Biden on abortion

So 2 weeks ago Pelosi was on Meet the Press and Biden was on last week. I thought Pelosi sucked and Biden did ok. However, on the abortion thing they both made some mistakes. Pelosi said the Catholic Church's position was always been quenstioned and people give differing opinions on the church. I think she cited Augustine and Biden cited Aquinas. Woops! There was a big backlash on that of course. The Church's position is clear, but some (especially half-ass) Catholics that believe differently.

Biden believes that life begins at birth but he doesn't want to impose his views on others. I don't understand this. We impose our moral beliefs on others all the time in government; it seems a baby's life is important enough for us to do it here too.

Joe Biden

I learned this week that Joe Biden has a net worth of ~$100,000, one of the lowest in the Senate. He has been a senator for 25 years and makes $300,000+ per year. I don't understand how he can only be worth that little. He's 65 years old - no wonder he's so interested in keeping social security well funded b/c he's going to be dependent on it! He has a mortgage and loans for his kids college and such - why doesn't he listen to Dave Ramsey and pay those off? Some have said that this goes against the elitist attack from McCain's campaign. Perhaps they should attack him on how he's a bad money manager.