การสร้างรายได้จาก Adsense

การหาเงินด้วย Thai Adsense

2009-09-30T13:51:00.000+07:00

เครดิต by gatzaa
Thai adsense คืออะไร Google AdSense คือบริการจาก Google ที่ให้ผู้ที่มีเว็บไซต์ สามารถหารายได้โดยการนำ Code ที่ได้จากการสมัครเป็นสมาชิกของ Google มาใส่ไว้ที่เว็บไซต์ของตนเอง ซึ่ง Code นั้นจะเป็น โฆษณาที่ส่งมาจาก Google โดยโฆษณานั้น ๆ จะเป็นโฆษณาที่มีเนื้อหาสอดคล้องกับเนื้อหาของเว็บไซต์ของคุณ ตัวอย่างเช่นถ้าเว็บไซต์ของคุณเป็นเว็บไซต์ที่เกี่ยวกับการท่องเที่ยว โฆษณาที่ส่งมาจาก Google ก็อาจเป็นเว็บไซต์ที่เกี่ยวข้องกับ โรงแรม,สายการบิน เป็นต้นโฆษณาที่ส่งมาจาก Google นั้น ๆ มีทั้งแบบ Text ,รูปภาพ และมีหลายขนาด ให้คุณได้เลือก นอกจากนั้นยังสามารถเลือกรูปแบบสีได้ตามความต้องการ เพื่อความเหมาะสมกับเว็บไซต์ของคุณแล้วโฆษณาต่าง ๆ เหล่านั้นมาจากไหน ??? หลายคงอาจสงสัย โฆษณาต่าง ๆ เหล่านั้นมาจากการทำ Google Adwords ซึ่งเป็นอีกหนึ่งบริการของ Google ที่ให้ผู้ประกอบการต่าง ๆ ที่ต้องการขายสินค้าหรือบริการต่าง ๆ โฆษณาสินค้าของตนเอง ผ่าน Search Engine ของ google รวมถึงเว็บไซต์อื่นๆ ที่นำ Google Adsense ไปติด เพื่อให้โฆษณาของตนเองอยู่ในตำแหน่งที่เด่น (เมื่อ Search ใน Google) กว่าข้อมูลอื่นที่ได้ผลลัพท์จากการค้นหา

สรุปหลักการง่ายๆ : Google AdSense เป็นวิธีหาเงินง่ายๆ ด้วยเว็บไซต์/บล็อก โดยการนำโฆษณาที่ได้จาการสมัคร AdSense มาวางไว้ที่หน้าเว็บไซต์/บล็อกของคุณ เพื่อให้ผู้ชมเข้ามาดูหรือเข้ามาคลิก คุณก็ได้เงินทุกๆ ครั้งที่มีการคลิกโฆษณาหรือแสดงโฆษณานั้น แม้จะไม่มีการซื้อขายใดๆ เกิดขึ้นก็ตาม ยิ่งมีผู้เข้ามามากและคลิกที่โฆษณามาก คุณก็ได้เงินมากตามไปด้วย

หากคุณพร้อมที่จะเรียนรู้สิ่งใหม่ๆ ที่จะเปลี่ยนอนาคตคุณให้ดีขึ้น โดยที่
1. ไม่ต้องเสียค่าใช้จ่ายใดๆ ทั้งสิ้น
2. ไม่ต้องเสียเวลาเข้าอบรม
3. ไม่ต้องเสียค่ารถค่าเรือเดินทาง
4. ไม่ใช่การซื้อของ
5. ไม่ใช่การขายของ
6. ทุกขั้นตอนการทำฟรีหมด พร้อมคำแนะนำอย่างละเอียดยิบ ไม่มีกั๊ก ไม่มีหวงความรู้ เผยแพร่จากประสบการณ์ตรง
7. คุณเป็นเจ้าของ 100% (สามารถพัฒนาต่อไปได้เรื่อยๆ ตามความต้องการ)
8. สามารถพิสูจน์เห็นผลได้จริง ฯลฯ

คุณพร้อมกันแล้วหรือยัง ? ถ้าพร้อมแล้วลุยกันเลยย!!!

Step 1 : การสมัคร Gmail

2009-09-30T13:50:00.001+07:00

เครดิต by gatzaa
การสมัคร Gmail ไม่มีอะไรยุ่งยากนักแค่กรอกแบบฟอร์มเท่านั้น

1. คลิก >>> ที่นี่เพื่อสมัคร ที่นี่เพื่อสมัคร Gmail

2. จากนั้นคลิกที่ ลงทะเบียน Gmail (Sing Up For Gmail) จะปรากฎหน้าต่าง สร้างบัญชี

3. พิมพ์รายละเอียดตามที่ปรากฎให้ครบ (เป็นภาษาอังกฤษนะครับ)

First name : ชื่อใส่ชื่อเราลงไป

Last name : นามสกุลใส่นามสกุลเราลงไป

Desird Login Name : ชื่อการเข้าสู่ระบบที่ต้องการ

Check availability! : คลิกเพื่อตรวจสอบว่ามีผู้ใช้แล้วหรือยัง

Choos a password : รหัสผ่าน

Re-enter a password : กรอกรหัสผ่านอีกครั้ง

Security Question : เลือกคำถามที่ต้องการ

Answer : คำตอบ

Secondary email : เมล์สำรองเพื่อแจ้งปัญหา

Location : เลือกเป็น ราชอาณาจักรไทย

Thailand Word Verification : พิมพ์คำตามที่ปรากฎในรูปที่เห็น

4.คลิก I accept Create my account (ฉันยอมรับโปรดสร้างบัญชีของฉัน)

** Finished : เป็นอันเสร็จสิ้นการสมัคร Gmail ค่ะ **

Step 2 : การสมัคร Blogger

2009-09-30T13:40:00.001+07:00

เครดิต by gatzaa
ขั้นตอนการสมัคร Blog สิ่งสำคัญต้องสมัคร Gmail มาเรียบร้อยก่อนจึงจะสมัคร Blog ได้สะดวก

1. คลิก >>> ที่นี่เพื่อสมัคร Blogger

2.คลิกที่ >>> สร้างเว็บบล็อกของท่านเดี๋ยวนี้ แล้วจะปรากฏหน้าต่างข้อมูล

3. ให้ใส่รายละเอียดดังนี้

ที่อยู่อีเมล : ใส่ Gmail ที่ได้สมัครไว้จากบทเรียนที่แล้ว

Enter Password : ใส่รหัสผ่าน

พิมพ์รหัสผ่านอีกครั้ง : ใส่รหัสผ่านอีกครั้งให้เหมือนกัน

Display name : ตั้งชื่อที่จะให้แสดงตอนโพสเว็บบล็อก

การรับรองความถูกต้องของคำ : พิมพ์ตามอักษรที่ปรากฎให้ถูกต้อง

Acceptance for Terms : ติ๊กให้มีเครื่องหมายถูก

คลิก >>>>> ดำเนินต่อไป

5. จากนั้นจะเข้าสู่การเลือกแม่แบบว่า เราต้องการเว็บบล็อกรูปแบบไหน มีให้เลือกมากมายตามต้องการ เมื่อคลิกเลือกแล้ว คลิกที่ >>> ดำเนินต่อไป

6. เพียงแค่นี้ คุณก็สามารถมีเว็บบล็อกเป็นของตัวเองไว้ใช้งานสำหรับทำเงินได้แล้ว

Step 3 : วิธีใช้งาน Blogger สร้างเว็บบล็อก

2009-09-30T13:39:00.002+07:00

เครดิต by gatzaa
เราจะได้ศึกษาถึงวิธีการใช้งานเว็บบล็อกกันว่า วิธีการเพิ่มเนื้อหารายละเอียดเขาทำกันอย่างไร?

1. ให้เราคลิกที่ เริ่มต้นส่งบทความจะปรากฎหน้าต่างด้านล่าง ซึ่งจะให้เราใส่ข้อความ / รูปภาพ ตามความต้องการโดยการคลิกที่ สร้าง -ชื่อเรื่อง (คือหัวข้อเรื่องที่เราต้องการ) และมีพื้นที่สำหรับการใส่ข้อความ, รูปภาพเป็นต้น

2.หากใครที่ปิดขั้นตอนการทำงานไปแล้วจากบทที่ Step 2 แล้ว
ก็สามารถ Login เข้ามาใหม่โดย >>> คลิกที่นี่

3.ให้เราพิมพ์ E-mail ที่เราได้สมัครไว้กับ Gmail เช่น

-รหัสผู้ใช้ : xxxxxxxxx@gmail.com

-รหัสผ่าน : xxxxxxxxxxxx

4.จากนั้นคลิกที่ >>> ลงชื่อผู้ใช้งาน

ต่อมาเราจะมาดูวิธีการหาบทความ / รูปภาพมาใส่เว็บบล็อก
มา เริ่มสร้างสรรผลงานกันต่อครับ ในส่วนของการนำข้อความ/บทความมาใส่เว็บบล็อกของเรานั้น แนะนำให้ใช้เป็นภาษาอังกฤษก่อนนะครับ (เพื่อเอาเว็บบล็อกอันนี้ไปสมัคร AdSense ให้ผ่านก่อน เมื่อผ่านแล้วจะมาสร้างเว็บที่มีเนื้อหา ภาษาไทยก็ได้ครับ ย้ำว่า ครั้งแรกต้องเป็นภาษาอังกฤษให้ผ่านก่อน) ให้มีเนื้อหาพอสมควรเพราะว่าเราจะต้องใช้เว็บบล็อกอันนี้ในการขอสมัครใช้งาน จาก Google AdSense เพื่อที่จะนำโฆษณามาทำมาหากินได้

แหล่งรวบรวมบทความเนื้อหาภาษาอังกฤษฟรีๆ

1. http://www.goarticles.com/

2. http://www.contentmart.com/

3. http://www.superfeature.com/

4. http://www.freshcontent.net/

ต่อมาคือขั้นตอนการใส่บทความนะคับ
1.ให้ทำการคัดลอกเนื้อหาภาษาอังกฤษ มาวางไว้ในเว็บบล็อกของท่าน

2. เนื้อหาบทความในเว็บอย่างน้อยต้องไม่ต่ำกว่า 2 หน้ากระดาษ A4 เพื่อให้ทาง Google วิเคราะห์ เว็บไซต์ ถ้าเนื้อหาน้อยเกินไป อาจจะไม่ผ่าน เนื่องจากเป็นเว็บไม่ได้มาตรฐาน

3. ถ้าหากคุณใช้เว็บที่มีเนื้อหาเป็นภาษาไทย ณ ขณะนี้ ผมฟันธงได้เลยว่า จะสมัครไม่ผ่าน เนื่องจากทาง Google AdSense ยังไม่รองรับเว็บที่มีเนื้อหาภาษาไทยครับ แต่ถ้าเป็นเนื้อหาภาษาอังกฤษ และมีรายละเอียดมากพอสมควร ผมมั่นใจว่าต้องผ่านแน่นอนครับ

4.สิ่งสำคัญอีกประการหนึ่งที่ควรคำนึงถึง คือ แหล่งที่มาของเนื้อหา ให้เราบอกแหล่งที่มาด้วยจะดีมาก เป็นการให้เครดิตกับผู้เขียน

5.เมื่อได้เนื้อหาแล้ว ก็นำมาวางในพื้นที่สำหรับใส่เนื้อหา

วิธีการนำรูปภาพมาใส่เว็บบล็อกสามารถทำได้ดังนี้
1.คลิกที่ไอคอนรูปภาพเล็กๆ เมื่อนำเม้าส์ไปวางด้านบนจะขึ้นข้อความว่า เพิ่มรูปภาพ จากนั้นจะขึ้นหน้าต่างด้านการจัดตำแหน่งของรูปภาพ

2.จากนั้นคลิกที่ >>> Browse... เพื่อเลือกรูปภาพจากเครื่องคอมพิวเตอร์ของคุณ

3.คลิกที่รูปแบบ (จะให้จัดรูปภาพไว้ตำแหน่งไหน)

4.คลิกเครื่องหมายถูกที่ [ / ] ข้าพเจ้ายอมรับข้อกำหนดในการให้บริการ

5.คลิก >>> อัพโหลดรูปภาพ

6. เสร็จขึ้นตอนการอัพโหลดรูปภาพ คุณสามารถคลิกที่รูปภาพแล้วลากไปที่ๆคุณต้องการได้ครับ เว็บไซต์ของคุณก็จะมีทั้งข้อความและรูปภาพน่าสนใจมากยิ่งขึ้น

7.จากนั้นคลิกที่ >>> เผยแพร่ (ปุ่มแดงด้านล่าง) เพื่อเสร็จสิ้นการจัดทำเว็บบล็อก

เทคนิคเล็กน้อย
1. คลิกที่ >>> View Blog (ดูบล็อก) เพื่อตรวจดูเว็บบล็อกของเรา2.เครื่องมือต่างๆ ท่านสามารถศึกษาได้เพิ่มเติม เพราะว่าเป็นภาษาไทยหมด เพียงเท่านี้คุณก็ได้มีเว็บบล็อกเพื่อสมัครเป็นของตนเองแล้ว

3. คุณสามารถที่จะสร้างเว็บบล็อกได้ไม่จำกัดหน้า สามารถตั้งหัวข้อใหม่ได้ไม่จำกัด ดังนั้นคุณสามารถที่จะเพิ่มเนื้อหา รายละเอียดต่างๆ ให้กับเว็บบล็อกของคุณให้น่าสนใจได้ตลอดเวลา

**เป็นอย่างไรบ้างครับกับการเรียนรู้การสร้างเว็บบล็อก Blogger ไม่ยากอย่างที่คิดนะครับ ตอนนี้เรามีเครื่องมือที่จะเดินทางกันแล้ว**

Step 4 : การสมัคร Google Adsense

2009-09-30T13:34:00.001+07:00

เครดิต by gatzaa
ขั้นตอนการสมัคร Google AdSense
1.การสมัคร Google AdSense ดังที่เราได้แนะนำการสร้างเว็บบล็อกเป็นภาษาอังกฤษเรียบร้อยแล้ว

2.ในเว็บบล๊อค ให้คุณคริก สมัคร
Google AdSense
3.ให้ คริก >>> Sign up now (คือปุ่มการสมัครนั่นเอง)

4.จากนั้นให้ พิมพ์ข้อมูลต่างๆ ที่ทาง Google กำหนด โดยพิมพ์เป็นภาษาอังกฤษเท่านั้น ดังนี้

Website Information
- Website URL : [?] : ใส่ชื่อเว็บไซต์/บล็อกของคุณ เช่น : http://xxxxxxxxx.blogspot.com/
- Website language : เลือกภาษา ให้คุณเลือกเป็น : English - English

Contact Information
- Account type: [?] : เลือกประเภทของเว็บคุณ
(1.บุคคลธรรมดา : Individual)
(2.องค์กรธุรกิจ/บริษัท : Business)
- Country or territory : อยู่ในประเทศเลือก : ประเทศไทย
- Payee name : (full name) ชื่อผู้รับเงิน (ให้ใส่ทั้งชื่อ และนามสกุลของคุณ)
- Address line 1 : เลขที่ตั้ง ซอย ถนน
- Address line 2 (optional): แขวง/ตำบล
- City : เขต/อำเภอ
- State, province or region : จังหวัด
- Zip or postal code : รหัสไปรณีย์
- Phone : หมายเลขโทรศัพท์ เช่น 087-606-3510 ก็ใส่เป็น 66876063510
- Fax (optional) : หมายเลขโทรสาร (เว้นว่างไว้ก็ได้)

Product Selection
- AdSense for Content : ให้ทำเครื่องหมายถูก
- AdSense for Search : ให้ทำเครื่องหมายถูก
- Policies : ให้ทำเครื่องหมายถูก ทุกอัน (กฎเบื้องต้นของ AdSense)
- จะไม่คลิกโฆษณาบนเว็บของตัวเอง ให้คนอื่นคลิก
- ไม่วางโฆษณาในบริเวณกระตุ้นการคลิก เช่น Download
- ยินยอมที่จะให้สั่งจ่ายเช็คตามผู้รับด้านบน
- ไม่วางโฆษณาในเว็บไซต์ที่ไม่เหมาะสม เช่น ลามกอนาจาร เป็นต้น
- คุณได้อ่านตามข้อกำหนดใน Adsense Program Policy แล้ว

5.เมื่อกรอกข้อมูลเสร็จแล้ว ให้คลิกที่ >>> Submit Information

6.คลิกหัวข้อที่ 2 : I have an email address and password I already use.....

7.จากนั้นคลิกที่หัวข้อแรก : I'd like to use my existing Google Account for AdSense.

8.ใส่อีเมลและพาสเวิร์ด ของเรา (Gmail)

9. เป็นการแจ้งจาก Google AdSense ว่าจะให้ รอประมาณ 1-3 วัน เพื่อให้ทาง Google AdSense วิเคราะห์เว็บไซต์/บล็อกที่เราส่งไปสมัคร Google จะตอบกลับมาทางอีเมล์

ปล.ย้ำ ทาง Google จะวิเคราะห์ บล๊อกของเราประมาน 1-3 ดังนั้นให้เพื่อนๆคอยเช็ค Gmail ด้วยนะคับ

เมื่อ ทาง Google AdSense วิเคราะห์เว็บเราเสร็จแล้ว ก็จะแจ้งมาทางอีเมล เพื่อให้ยืนยันการมีตัวตนอีกครั้ง ให้เข้าไปดูที่อีเมลของเรา จะมีข้อความส่งมาจาก Google AdSense (ระยะเวลาในการส่งเมลมาประมาณ 1-3 วัน จากที่ได้สมัคร) ข้อความจะปรากฎด้านล่าง เป็นการแสดงความยินดี Welcome to Google AdSense

ให้คลิกที่ >> Visit https://www.google.com/adsense?hl=en US จากเมลของคุณ

จากนั้นคลิกเครื่องหมายถูกที่ [/] By Checking......I Accept และคลิกที่ I Accept ยอมรับ

หลังจากนั้น ให้ยืนยันข้อมูลทางภาษี
1. คลิกที่ หัวข้อ My Account

2. คลิกหัวข้อย่อย Tax Information และให้ทำเครื่องหมายที่วงกลม เลือก No และ กดปุ่ม Continue

3. หน้าถัดมา Do you have U.S. Activities related to you participation in AdSense? ให้เลือกNo และ กดปุ่ม Continue

4. หน้าถัดมา ให้ใส่ชื่อ - นามสกุลเป็นภาษาอังกฤษ ใน Signature of Publisher... และนี่ถือว่าเป็นลายเซ็นของคุณ และ กดปุ่ม >>> Submit information

5. เพียงเท่านี้ ก็ถือว่าได้ให้ข้อมูลเกี่ยวกับภาษีอย่างถูกต้องเรียบร้อยแล้ว

หลังจากนั้น ให้เลือกการรับเงินรายได้

1. คลิกที่ หัวข้อ My Account

2. คลิกหัวข้อย่อย Payment History

3. คลิกที่ Please select or verify a form of payment

4. ให้ทำเครื่องหมาย ที่วงกลม : Check - Standard Delivery และ กดปุ่ม Continue

5. ในหน้าถัดมา ให้เลือกสกุลเงินที่ต้องการ ให้เลือก Thai Baht (THB) และ กดปุ่ม Save change

**เพียงเท่านี้ คุณก็เป็น Publisher : ผู้เผยแพร่โฆษณาทางอินเทอร์เน็ต สามารถทำเงิน ด้วยการแสดงโฆษณา ด้วยธุรกิจของคุณเอง 100%**

Step 5 : นำโฆษณามาจาก Adsense

2009-09-30T13:30:00.001+07:00

เครดิต by gatzaa
วิธีนำ Code โฆษณามาจาก Google AdSense
1. หลังจากสมัคร Google AdSense ผ่านเรียบร้อยแล้ว ให้คุณ Login เข้า
Google AdSense
2. เมื่อ Login เข้า Google AdSense เป็นที่เรียบร้อยแล้วให้คลิกที่ AdSense Setup จะมี Ads (โฆษณา) ให้เลือก 3 รูปแบบ ดังนี้

(1.) AdSense for content : เป็นโฆษณาที่มีเนื้อหาสอดคล้องกับเว็บไซต์ ซึ่งแบ่งออก 2 ข้อย่อย ดังนี้

- Ad unit : สร้างโฆษณาแบบข้อความอย่างเดียว, สร้างโฆษณาแบบรูปภาพอย่างเดียว หรือ สร้างโฆษณาแบบข้อความสลับแบบรูปภาพก็ได้ โดยโฆษณานั้นจะมีเนื้อหาสอดคล้องกับเนื้อหาเว็บไซต์ของคุณ ในแต่ละหน้าเว็บเพจติดได้ 3 อัน

- Link unit : สร้างโฆษณาแบบลิงค์ ซึ่งลักษณะโฆษณาเหมือนลิงค์ หรือ หัวข้อของเว็บไซต์ ซึ่งโฆษณานั้นก็จะมีเนื้อหาสอดคล้องกับเนื้อหาเว็บไซต์ของคุณ เช่นกัน ในแต่ละหน้าเว็บเพจติดได้ 3 อัน

3. เมื่อเลือกได้แล้วว่าต้องการโฆษณาอันไหน จากนั้นกดที่ปุ่ม Continues >>

4. หน้าถัดมานี้ ให้เรากำหนด
- Format : ให้เลือกขนาดของโฆษณา - Colors : เป็นการปรับแต่งสีของโฆษณาให้เหมาะกับเว็บ/บล็อกของเรา - Corner Styles : เป็นการเลือกรอบโฆษณา เช่น กรอบสี่เหลี่ยม ฯลฯ เมื่อได้ตามต้องการแล้ว คลิกปุ่ม Continues >>>

5. จากนั้นจะเห็นแถบ Add new Channel เป็นการกำหนดว่าจะนำโฆษณาชุดนี้ไปติดที่เว็บไหน เพื่อที่จะรู้ว่าเว็บไหนทำเงิน
ในส่วนนี้จะเพิ่มหรือไม่เพิ่มก็ได้ ถ้าไม่ต้องการ ก็สามารถคลิก Contines >> ได้เลย
- เพียงเท่านี้เราก็จะได้โค๊ดโฆษณาทำเงินสำหรับติดที่เว็บ/บล็อกแล้วครับ
- ให้ คัดลอก(Copy) Code แล้วเปิดโปรแกรม Notepad (ซึ่งจะมีอยู่ทุกเครื่องไปที่ Start > Programs > Accessories > Notepad) จากนั้นให้ วาง(Paste) Code ใส่ในโปรแกรม Notepad และ Save เก็บไว้สามารถนำมาใช้ได้ทุกเวลาโดยไม่ต้องมาสร้างใหม่ครับ

(2.) AdSense for search : เป็นการสร้าง Code โฆษณา เพื่อจะได้กล่องสำหรับค้นหาเว็บไซต์ เป็นกล่องค้นหา สำหรับมาติดในเว็บไซต์ ซึ่งผู้เยี่ยมชมใช้ค้นหาเว็บไซต์ได้ทั่วโลก และยังใช้ในการค้นหาข้อมูลในเว็บไซต์ของคุณก็ได้ สามารถปรับแต่งกล่องค้นหาเว็บไซต์ ให้เข้ากับเว็บไซต์ของคุณได้อีกด้วย ในแต่ละหน้าเว็บเพจติดได้ 2 อัน มีขั้นตอนในการนำโค๊ดดังนี้
1. ไปที่ AdSense Setup

2. คลิกที่ AdSense for Search
จากนั้นจะพบกับ Search Type ซึ่งมีให้เลือก 2 อย่างคือ
- Google WebSearch :
- Google WebSearch + SiteSearch

3. สามารถเลือกได้ว่าจะให้ค้นหาจาก Google อย่างเดียว หรือให้ค้นหาในเว็บไซต์ของเราด้วย ถ้าต้องการให้ค้นหาในเว็บของเราด้วย ก็ให้ใส่ชื่อเว็บของเราลงไป

4. ในส่วนของ Search box style เป็นการปรับแต่ง Search Box ทดลองปรับดูนะครับให้เหมาะกับเว็บเรา

5. ต่อมาในส่วนของ Site language เป็นการเลือกภาษา ให้เลือกเป็น English

6. ในส่วนของ Opening of search results page เป็นการกำหนดว่า เมื่อคลิกค้นหาแล้ว จะให้แสดงในหน้าต่างเดียวกัน หรือเปิดเป็นหน้าใหม่
- ในส่วนของ Your site encoding เป็นการเลือกว่าเว็บของเรานั้นใช้รหัสแบบใด แนะนำให้เลือกเป็น Unicode (UTF-8) จากนั้นคลิก Contines>> คลิก Contines >>>
- เพียงเท่านี้เราก็ได้โค๊ดโฆษณาของกล่องค้นหา Search Box แล้วครับ

(3.) Referrals : เป็นโฆษณาเพื่อแนะนำบริการต่าง ๆ ของ Google
รายได้จากการแนะนำสินค้าและบริการของ Google มีให้เลือกมากมาย แต่ของ Google มีอยู่ 3 อันหลักๆ ดังนี้
- Google AdSense : แนะนำ AdSense ในแต่ละหน้าเว็บเพจติดได้ 1 อัน
- Google AdWords : แนะนำ AdWords ในแต่ละหน้าเว็บเพจติดได้ 1 อัน
- Firefox : แนะนำให้ดาวน์โหลด Firefox ในแต่ละหน้าเว็บเพจติดได้ 1 อัน

ขั้นตอนในการนำโค๊ดโฆษณามาใช้งาน
1. ไปที่ AdSense Setup

2. คลิกเลือที่ Referrals

3. จากนั้นจะเห็น All Product สินค้ามากมาย ซึ่งทุกตัวจะทำขั้นตอนเดี่ยวกัน ดังนั้นในที่นี้จะขอยกตัวอย่าง 1 สินค้า เป็น Firefox ก็แล้วกันนะครับ

- คลิกที่ View products (อยู่ต่อจาก Google Products >>> View Products) จะเห็นสินค้าอยู่ 3 ตัว ให้เลือกเอาว่าต้องการอันไหน เช่น ผมต้องการสินค้า Firefox ก็คลิกที่ Firefox plus Google Toolbar
- จากนั้นจะเห็นรูปแบบต่างๆ ขนาดต่างๆ ของสินค้า สามารถเลือกได้ตามต้องการครับ โดยคลิกให้มีเครื่องหมายถูกด้านหน้า
- จากนั้นคลิก Continues >>> (อยู่ด้านล่างสุด)
- เพียงเท่านี้ก็ได้โค๊ดสินค้า FireFox เพื่อทำเงินแล้ว

Step 6 : การติดโฆษณาลง Blog

2009-09-30T13:25:00.002+07:00

เครดิต by gatzaa
ในบทเรียนนี้ จะได้เรียนรู้วิธีนำ Code มาติดที่บล็อกของเรา เพื่อไม่เป็นการเสียเวลา เริ่มกันเลยค่า

1.Login เข้าไปที่ >>> Blogger.com

2.ใส่รหัสผู้ใช้อีเมลของคุณ xxxxxx@gmail.com และ รหัสผ่าน xxxxxxxxxx ของท่าน

3.จะปรากฎหน้าต่าง จัดการบล็อกของคุณ (Dashboard) ให้เราคลิกที่ >>> เลย์เอาต์(รูปแบบ)

4.จากนั้นคลิกที่ >>> เพิ่มองค์ประกอบของหน้า

5.จากนั้นคลิกที่ >>> HTML/จาวาสคริปต์

6.ให้นำ Code ที่ได้นำมาจาก AdSense นำมาใส่ที่กรอบเนื้อหา

7.จากนั้นคลิกที่ >>> จัดเก็บการปรับเปลี่ยน

8. จะเห็นแถบ HTML/จาวาสคริปต์ ที่เก็บโฆษณาอยู่ ซึ่งเราสามารถที่จะคลิกลากไปยังตำแหน่งที่ต้องการได้ คลิกซ้ายที่ HTML/จาวาสคริปต์ค้างไว้แล้วลากไปทางซ้าย ทางขวา ด้านบน หรือได้ล่างก็ได้ครับ

9.จากนั้นคลิกที่ >>> บันทึกข้อมูล >>> คลิกที่ >>> ดูบล็อก

**เพียงเท่านี้บล็อกของคุณก็มีโฆษณาเพื่อทำเงินให้คุณได้แล้ว**

Step 7 : การโปรโมท Blogger

2009-09-30T13:24:00.001+07:00

เครคิต by gatzaa
การโปรโมทเว็บบล็อกโดยการ แนะนำเว็บไซต์/บล็อกของเรากับ Search Engine นั่นเอง

แหล่งรวม Search Engine , Submit URL กับ Search Engine ชื่อดัง

http://www.google.com/addurl.html

http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html

http://search.msn.co.in/docs/submit.aspx

http://www.exactseek.com/add.html

http://www.look.com/remote/submiturl.asp

http://www.dmoz.org/add.html

http://www.altavista.com/addurl/default

http://www.alexa.com/support/get_archive.html

http://www.aesop.com/cgi-bin/aesopadd.cgi

http://www.exactseek.com/add.html

http://theyellowpages.com/ysubmit.htm

http://www.goguides.org/info/addurl.htm

http://www.netsearch.org/addurl.html

http://www.entireweb.com/addurl?page=basic

- รวม Search Engine กว่า 350 เว็บ >>> http://seo-promote.blogspot.com/

- แหล่งโปรโมทเว็บในไทย >>> http://www.bcoms.net/promoteweb/addweb.asp

- แหล่งโปรโมทเว็บต่างประเทศ >>> http://www.bcoms.net/eng_tipcomputer/addurl.asp

- เข้าไปโพสต์ข้อความตามเว็บบอร์ดต่างๆ พร้อมทิ้งที่อยู่ของเว็บไว้ด้วย (กลยุทธ์เอาเหยื่อไปล่อ)

- อีกวิธี ที่จะทำให้เว็บเป็นที่รู้จักด้วยการทำ E-mail List

- เล่น msn หรือ Yahoo Messenger หรือ Chat

- แลกลิงค์ (link)

** เมื่อคุณได้เดินทางมาถึงขั้นนี้แล้ว หมั่นโปรโมทเว็บไซต์ให้เป็นที่รู้จัก คงไม่นานจะมีรายได้จากธุรกิจ จับเสือมือเปล่านี้อย่างแน่นอน *-*

Step 8 : การตรวจเช็ครายได้ / รับเงิน

2009-09-30T13:08:00.005+07:00

เครดิต by gatzaa
การตรวจเช็ครายได้จะทำให้รู้ว่าแต่ละวันคุณทำเงินได้เท่าไรบ้าง

เมื่อเรา Login เข้า Google AdSense จะเห็นยอดเงินประจำวันของคุณ
Today's Earnings : $9999.00 คุณสามารถเลือกดูได้จาก View ว่า

- วันนี้คุณได้เท่าไหร่

- เมื่อว่านนี้ ได้เท่าไหร่

- 7 วันล่าสุดได้เท่าไหร่

- เดือนนี้ ได้เท่าไหร่

- เดือนล่าสุด ได้เท่าไหร่

- รวมทั้งหมดได้เท่าไหร่

Google จะจ่ายเงินให้คุณก็ต่อเมื่อคุณมีรายได้ครบ 100$ เมื่อคุณมีรายได้ 50$ ทาง Google จะส่ง PIN มาให้คุณ ทางจดหมาย ตามที่อยู่ที่ได้สมัครไว้ ดังนั้นให้ตรวจเช็คที่อยู่ของคุณให้ถูกต้องนะค่ะ ไม่ต้องกลัวว่าเขาจะไม่ส่งมา ระยะเวลาในการจัดส่งอยู่ประมาณ 3-4 สัปดาห์ แต่ของเรารอประมาณ 18 วัน

การกรอกข้อมูล PIN

1.ให้ Login เข้า Google AdSense จากนั้นจะเห็นข้อความ You payments are currently on hold.
Action is required to release payment Click here for details ให้คลิกที่ Click here for details

2.ที่ Required Action ให้คลิกที่ Please enter your PIN

3.ใส่หมายเลข PIN ของคุณ แล้วคลิก Submit PIN เสร็จสิ้นขั้นตอนการยืนยันการมีตัวตนเพื่อรับเงิน

4. จากนั้นเมื่อเราทำยอดถึง 100$ ทาง Google จะส่งเช็คมาให้รอสัก 1-3 สัปดาห์มาถึงเราให้คุณนำเช็คนั้น ไปขึ้นเงินที่ธนาคาร ถ้าคุณเลือกรับเงินเป็น Thai Baht คุณจะได้รับเช็คเร็วมากประมาณวันที่ 7 ก็จะได้รับเช็คแล้ว เช็คที่ส่งมาให้จะออกโดย ซิตี้แบงค์ สีลม นี่เองค่ะ

บท ความ : คุณชอบเลข 8 ไหมค่ะ ? เราคนนึงที่ชอบเลข 8 ค่ะ เพราะเวลามองแนวนอนก็จะเหมือนเครื่องหมาย Infinity ก็คือ ไม่มีวันสิ้นสุด แต่ถ้ามองแนวนอนก็จะเหมือนกับ ตุ๊กตาล้มลุกของญี่ปุ่น ซึ่งมีความหมายว่า ไม่ว่าจะล้มสักกี่ครั้งก็จะยังลุกขึ้นมาเหมือนเดิม.

ที่มาของรายได้

2009-09-30T13:05:00.002+07:00

เครดิต by gatzaa
มีวิธีคำนวณรายได้ แบ่งออกเป็น 3 ประเภท ดังนี้
1.ผลตอบแทนจาก โฆษณาที่เกี่ยวข้องเนื้อหาของเว็บไซต์
2.ผลตอบแทนจาก การค้นหาเว็บไซต์
3.ผลตอบแทนจาก การแนะนำ

1.ผลตอบแทนจากโฆษณาที่เกี่ยวข้องเนื้อหาของเว็บไซต์ (AdSense for Content)
ผล ตอบแทนจากโฆษณาที่เกี่ยวข้องเนื้อหาของเว็บไซต์ เป็นผลตอบแทนจากโฆษณาที่มีเนื้อหาเกี่ยวข้องและกลมกลืนกับเนื้อหาในเว็บไซต์ เช่น เว็บไซต์เกี่ยวกับวิธีการหาเงินทางอินเทอร์เน็ต ก็จะมีโฆษณาที่เกี่ยวข้องกับรูปแบบการทำงานหาเงินทางอินเทอร์เน็ตก็คือ เว็บไซต์มีเนื้อหาเกี่ยวกับอะไรโฆษณาก็เป็นโฆษณาเหมือนกับเนื้อหาในเว็บไซต์ นั่นเอง

วิธีคำนวณผลตอบแทน
(1.) จ่ายผลตอบแทนเมื่อคลิก (Pay Per Click - PPC)
ผล ตอบแทนจากการคลิกโฆษณา เมื่อผู้เยี่ยมเว็บไซต์ได้คลิกที่โฆษณาของ Google ทำให้เว็บไซต์ได้รับผลตอบแทนทันทีเมื่อคลิก โดยแต่ละโฆษณาที่คลิกจะได้รับผลตอบแทนไม่แน่นอน ผลตอบแทนมาก หรือน้อย นั้นขึ้นอยู่กับผู้ที่ลงโฆษณากับ Google Adwords ว่าลงโฆษณาได้ในราคาที่สูง หรือต่ำ ถ้าหากลงโฆษณาในราคาสูงไว้ ผลตอบแทนจากคลิกโฆษณานั้นก็สูงตามไปด้วยเช่นกัน แต่ถ้าในทางกลับกัน ถ้าได้ลงโฆษณาในราคาต่ำ ผลตอบแทนจากคลิกโฆษณานั้นก็ย่อมได้น้อยด้วยเช่นกัน นั่นเอง

(2.) จ่ายผลตอบแทนเมื่อแสดงโฆษณา (Pay Per Impression - CPM)
ผล ตอบแทนเมื่อแสดงโฆษณา ทุกครั้งเมื่อมีผู้เยี่ยมชมเว็บไซต์ที่มีโฆษณาของ Google ก็จะเกิดรายได้จากการแสดงโฆษณา โดยมีเงื่อนไขอยู่ว่า จะนำมาคำนวณรายได้ก็ต่อเมื่อมีการแสดงโฆษณา ครบ 1,000 ครั้ง แต่จะต้องมีผู้เยี่ยมชมคลิกโฆษณาด้วย โดยไม่นับว่าจะมีคนคลิกกี่ครั้งก็ตาม หรือ ที่เรียกว่า Cost Per Thousand Impression (CPM)

สรุปรายได้จากการแสดงโฆษณานี้จะโดยมีหลักเกณฑ์ ดังนี้
(1.1) แสดงโฆษณา ครบ 1,000 ครั้ง
(1.2) ต้องมีผู้เยี่ยมชมคลิกโฆษณาด้วย ถ้าหากไม่มีผู้คลิกโฆษณาเลย รายได้นี้ก็ยังไม่คิดให้จนกว่าจะมีผู้เยี่ยมชมเว็บไซต์คลิกโฆษณาด้วยเท่า นั้น

2. ผลตอบแทนจาก.. การค้นหาเว็บไซต์ (AdSense for Search)
ค้น หาแล้วจะพบรายชื่อเว็บไซต์โฆษณาอยู่ในตำแหน่งสปอนเซอร์ ซึ่งอยู่ด้านบน และด้านล่างของหน้าผลลัพธ์ที่ได้ค้นหา ถ้าผู้เข้าชมคลิกโฆษณาในตำแหน่งดังกล่าว เว็บไซต์เราก็จะได้รับรายได้ มีตัวอย่างกล่องค้นหาเว็บไซต์ที่สามารถใช้งานได้จริง โดยผลตอบแทนก็คิดคำนวณเหมือนกับ ข้อ 1.1 และ ข้อ 1.2

3. รายได้ของโฆษณาจากการแนะนำบริการ (Referrals)
นอกจากนี้ Google AdSense ยังให้โอกาสการสร้างรายได้จากโฆษณา แบบแนะนำบริการต่างๆ ของ Google อีกด้วย ก็คือ เมื่อมีผู้เยี่ยมชมเว็บไซต์คลิกโฆษณาแนะนำบริการ และได้ใช้บริการนั้นๆ คุณก็ได้รับรายได้อีกด้วย ได้แก่

(1.) แนะนำสมัคร Google AdSense
คุณจะได้รับรายได้เมื่อมีคนมาลงทะเบียนเป็นสมาชิก Google AdSense โดยคลิกโฆษณาจากเว็บไซต์ของคุณ และผู้สมัครคนนั้น ทำรายได้เกิน $5 ภายใน 180 วัน นับจากวันสมัคร คุณก็จะได้รับ $5 ด้วยเช่นกัน และ ถ้าผู้สมัครคนนั้น ทำรายได้ครบ $100 ภายใน 180 วัน นับจากวันสมัคร คุณก็จะได้รับ $250 อีก ถ้าผู้สมัครคนนั้น ภายในช่วงระยะเวลา 180วัน หรือ ครึ่งปี

ถ้าคนที่สมัคร ผ่านจากการแนะนำของคุณ 25 คน แล้วทำได้เกิน $100 ภายใน 180 วัน นับจากวันสมัคร คุณจะได้รับโบนัส $2,000 (โดย bonus limit แค่ครั้งเดียวต่อ1ปี หรือหมายถึงถ้าเราหาได้ 50 คนแล้ว 50 คนทำได้หมดเราก็ได้ bonus แค่ 25คนแรกนั้น)

(2.) แนะนำสมัคร Google AdWords
คุณจะได้รายได้เมื่อมีคนมาลงทะเบียนเป็นสมาชิก เพื่อใช้บริการ Google AdWords โดยคลิกโฆษณาจากเว็บไซต์ของคุณ และผู้สมัครคนนั้น ใช้บริการของ Google AdWords $5 ภายใน 90 วัน นับจากวันสมัคร คุณจะรับรายได้ $5 และ ผู้สมัครคนนั้น ใช้บริการของ Google Adwords $100 ภายใน 90 วัน นับจากวันสมัคร คุณจะได้รับ $40 ถ้าภายในช่วงระยะเวลา 180 วัน หรือ ครึ่งปี

ถ้า คนที่สมัครผ่านการแนะนำของคุณ 20 คน ใช้บริการของ Google Adwords $100 ภายใน 180 วัน นับจากวันสมัคร คุณจะได้รับโบนัสจาก Google จำนวน $600 (โดย bonus limit แค่ครั้งเดียวต่อ1ปี หรือหมายถึง ถ้าเราหาได้ 40 คน แล้วใช้บริการของ Google Adwords ได้ตามเป้าทุกคน คุณจะรับได้โบนัส 20 คนเท่านั้น)

(3.) Firefox : ดาวน์โหลด ฟรี!
โปรแกรมท่องอินเตอร์เน็ตได้เร็วกว่า Internet Explorer และมีระบบรักษาความปลอดภัยที่ดีอีกด้วย
คุณ จะได้รายได้เมื่อมีคนมาคลิกโฆษณาจากเว็บไซต์ของคุณ และดาวน์โหลดโปรแกรมไปใช้ โดยจะต้องเป็นการดาวน์โหลดครั้งแรก ก็คือไม่เคยดาวน์โหลดโปรแกรมไปใช้มาก่อน ซึ่งทาง Google ก็จะมอบรายได้จากการแนะนำของคุณ จำนวน $1 ทันที

(4.) Google Apps
Google Apps คือระบบที่เหมาะสำหรับองค์กรธุรกิจ โรงเรียน มหาวิทยาลัย ซึ่งในระบบจะมีบริการต่างๆที่สมาชิกในกลุ่มใช้ได้ เช่น อีเมลล์ ระบบการการสนทนาผ่าน Instant Massaging ระบบปฎิทิน ที่ทุกคนสามารถเข้าไปใช่ร่วมกันได้ เพื่อเป็นการแลกเปลี่ยนความคิดเห็นต่างภายในสมาชิก ระบบทั้งหมด Google เป็นผู้ให้บริการ โดยที่คุณไม่ต้องลงทุนอุปกรณ์และค่าซอฟท์แวร์แต่อย่างใด รวมถึงไม่ต้องเสียค่าบำรุงรักษา

คุณ จะได้รับ $5 จากที่มีผู้สนใจคลิกโฆษณา Google Apps ผ่านเว็บไซด์ของคุณและได้ทำการลงทะเบียนอย่างเสร็จสมบูณณ์ อย่างไรก็ตามหากผู้ที่สนใจไม่ได้สมัคร Google Apps ทันทีก็ตามระบบจะเก็บขอมูลการคลิกโฆษณา Google Apps จากเว็บไซด์ของคุณต่ออีกเป็นเวลา 4 สัปดาห์ นั่นหมายถึงเขาอาจจะสมัครหลังจากนั้นก็ได้ แล้วคุณก็ยังได้รับรายได้อยู่

(5.) Google Checkout
Google Checkout คือระบบการจับจ่ายซื้อสินค้าที่สะดวก ปลอดภัยและรวดเร็ว ด้วยระบบการรับชำระของ Google Checkout คุณสามารถทำรายการสั่งซื้อและจ่ายค่าสินค้าตลอดจนตรวจสอบรายการ การสั่งซื้อหรือการจ่ายค่าสินค้าได้ด้วยตัวเองผ่านหน้าเว็บไซด์

คุณ จะได้รับ $1 ถ้ามีผู้ที่สมัครบัญชี Google Checkout ผ่านการแนะนำจากเว็บไซด์ของคุณ และได้ทำรายการสั่งซื้อสินค้าภายใน 90 วันและรายการทุกอย่างเสร็จสมบูรณ์จนการชำระค่าสินค้าเสร็จสิ้น โดยมูลค่าของสินค้าต้องมีมูลค่า $10 ขึ้นไป ก่อนที่รวมภาษีและค่าขนส่ง ภายใน 7 วัน

Developing Documentation During System Development

2009-09-29T10:49:00.003+07:00

by: Narain Balchandani

System documentation and user documentation are the two types of documents. System documentation is required for better understanding and maintenance of the application software. User documentation is designed to help the user operate the system. A good-quality document requires designing the documents, writing and editing the text, and testing them, and hence takes longer time for documentation. Lower-quality documentation can be produced faster. Nowadays online documentation is becoming more important compared to traditional paper-based manuals. Users are more familiar with paper-based documents and these are simpler to use. Although online documents require people to be familiar with additional software commands, searching for information is easier in online documents. These also enable the users to interact with the document.

There are mainly three types of user documentation: reference documents, procedure manuals and tutorials. Reference documents are used when the user needs to learn how to perform a specific function. Procedure manuals describe how to perform business tasks. Tutorials teach people how to use major components of the system.

Introduction

There are two types of documents.

System documentation is intended to help programmers and systems analysts understand the application software and enable them to build it or maintain it after the system is installed. System documentation is a by-product of the system analysis and design process, and is created as the project unfolds.

Each step and phase produce documents that are essential in understanding how the system is built or is to be built, and these documents are stored in the project binder(s).

User documentation (such as user’s manuals, training manuals and online help systems) is designed to help the user operate the system. Although most project teams expect users to have received training and read the user’s manuals before operating the system, unfortunately this is not always the case. It is more common today – especially in the case of commercial software packages for microcomputers – for users to begin the software without training or reading the user’s manual.

User documentation is often left until the end of the project, which is a dangerous strategy. Developing a good documentation takes longer than many people expect because it requires much more than simply writing a few pages.

Producing documentation requires designing the documents (whether paper or online), writing the text, editing them and testing them. For good-quality documentation, this process usually takes about 3 hours per paper page (single-spaced) for paper-based documentation or 2 hours per screen for online documentation.

Thus, a “simple” set of documentation such as a 20-page user’s manual and a set of 20 help screens take 100 hours. Of course, lower-quality documentation can be produced faster.

The time required to develop and test user documentation should be built into the project plan. Most organizations plan for documentation development to start once the interface design and program specifications are complete. The initial draft of documentation is usually scheduled for completion immediately after the unit tests are complete.

This reduces – but does not eliminate – the need for the documentation to be tested and revised before the acceptance tests is started.

Although paper-based manuals are still significant, online documentation is becoming more important. Paper-based documentation is simpler to use because it is more familiar to users, especially novices who have less computer experience; online documentation requires the users to learn one more set of commands. Paper-based documentation is also easier to flip through to gain a general understanding of its organization and topics, and can be used far away from the computer itself.

There are four key strengths of online documentation that all but guarantee that it will be the dominant format form for the next century. First, searching for information is often simpler (provided the help search index is well designed). The user can type in a variety of keywords to view information instantaneously, rather than having to search through the index or table of contents in a paper document. Second, the same information can be presented several times in many different formats, so that the user can find and read the information in the most informative way.

Third, online documentation enables the users to interact with the documentation. For example, it is possible to use links or “tool tips” (i.e., pop-up text) to explain unfamiliar terms, and programmers can write “show me” routines that demonstrate on the screen exactly what buttons to click and text to type. Finally, online documentation is significantly less expensive to distribute and keep up-to-date than paper documentation.

Types of Documentation

There are fundamentally three different types of user documentation: reference documents, procedure manuals and tutorials. Reference documents (also called the help system) are designed to be used when the user needs to learn how to perform a specific function (e.g., printing a monthly report, taking a customer order). Typically, people read reference information only after they have tried and failed to perform the function. Writing reference documentation requires special care because users are often impatient or frustrated when they begin to read them.

Procedure manuals describe how to perform business tasks (e.g., printing a monthly report, taking a customer order). Each item in the procedures manually guides the user through a task that requires several functions or steps in the system. Therefore, each entry is typically much longer than an entry in a reference document.

Tutorials teach people how to use major components of the system (e.g., an introduction to the basic operations of the system). Each entry in the tutorial is typically longer than the entities in procedure manuals and the entities are usually designed to be read in sequence, whereas entries in reference documents and procedure manuals are designed to be read individually.

Regardless of the type of user documentation, the overall process for developing it is similar to the process of developing interfaces. The developer first designs the general structure for the documentation and then develops the individual components within it.

Documentation and managing the documentation in company’s Intranet are critical for a company, and the resource spent on it is worthwhile. For more info on these topics and training refer to Business Analysis & Data Modeling Training Bangalore

Vocabulary

2007-11-07T17:41:00.001+07:00

Everywhere you look, yellow flags emblazoned with the Royal Emblem celebrating the 60th Anniversary of His Majesty’s accession to the throne flutter in the breeze. As a special tribune to His Majesty’s long reign, let’s learn more about the meaning of this symbol.

The Royal Emblem’s design and colors are not only striking to look at, but each item and color represents something.

His Majesty’s initials, Bhor Por Ror, boldly appear in a golden color that signifies Monday, His Majesty’s day of birth. The initials are trimmed in gold on a gold and blue background, the color of the Monarchy.

The initials are encircled by diamonds, which represents His Majesty’s entourage of wise men, important authors of the court, well-known craftsmen, important elephants, valiant soldiers, graceful ladies and courtiers. The initials and diamonds sit on the Noble Throne of Bhadrapith and under the Great Crown of Victory and the King’s Insignia.

Inserted in the backrest of the Noble Throne of Bhadapith are the Sword of Victory, the Royal Whisk, the Royal Sceptre and the Royal Fan Placed on a stand at the foot of the Noble Throne of Bhadapith are the Royal Slippers. These items complete the Royal Regalia.

Below the throne on pink ribbon trimmed with gold is the inscription: “The 60th Anniversary Celebration of His Majesty the King’s Accession to the Throne B.E.2549.” Attached to the left end of the ribbon is a white monkey and on the right is a Garuda with a white face and reddish-brown body.

The green-gold background represents the day of the birth of His Majesty and the fertility of the land.
Vocabulary
EMBLAZON (v):to decorate something with a design, symbol or words so the people will notice it easily

ACCESSION (n):

the act of becoming a ruler of a country

FLUTTER (v):

to move lightly and quickly; to make something move in this way

SOVEREIGN (n):

a king or queen

SEAL (n):

an official design or mark

ENTOURAGE (n):

a group of people who travel with an important person

COURTIER (n):

a person who is part of the court of a king or queen

INSIGNIA (n):

the symbol, badge or sign that shows somebody’s rank or that they are a member of a group or an organization
His Majesty King Bhumipol Adulyadej was crowned on Coronation Day, May 5, 1950. He had been officially named the new King on June 9 four years earlier.

On the day of his coronation, His Majesty made his first declaration, promising: “We will rule the nation justly for the benefit and happiness of the Siamese people.” It is a vow that he kept throughout the decades since.

From Day One

Many factors has to be taken onto consideration in choosing the most auspicious day for the coronation ceremony, Savet Thanapradit, adviser to the Bureau of the Royal Household, said that it was determined by Brahmin priests who studied the signs before announcing the date.

Holy Water

The ceremony was held at Paisarntaksin Royal Throne Hall, with the King seated on the octagonal Adthathit Utum Phonratcha-aat throne. During the ceremony, the chief Brahmin priest poured holy water brought from 18 major chedi located all over Thailand.

This water is first divided into eight pitchers, each placed at one of the angles of the eight-sided throne, with representatives of the population standing in attendances.

While seated, the King turned to receive water presented in small vessels from each of these pitchers. Once this procedures was completed, special holy water from Bangkok was poured, bringing the total to nine.

Royal Accessories

Next, the leader of the Brahmins presented the King with a nine-tiered umbrella, called Phra Maha Sawetta Chat in the Thai royal language. After receiving the umbrella, the King moved to Phatarabit Throne located in the different part of the Paisarntaksin Royal Throne Hall to receive the crown and the fove symbolic items of the Kutthaphan, the Royal Regalia.

The Bhramin priests presented the King with the Phra Maha Phichai Mongkut, the Great Crown of Victory; the Phra Saeng Khan Chaisri, the Sward of Victory; the Than Phrakon’ the Royal Sceptre; the Phra saw Chammari, the Royal Whisk; the Phad Wala Wit Chanee, the Royal fan; and the Chlong Phrabat, the Royal Slippers.

Upon receiving the Golden Crown, the King placed it on his head. The other items were set on a table next to the throne or handed to palace staff standing nearby. Each was presented to the King on a special tray called a phaan

A Vow to Rule

After the King received the Kutthaphan, the Brahmin priest spoke in an ancient Indian dialect, saying that all of the highest angels had now come together in the person if the new monarch. The preist then spoke the King’s full name.

The King then poured water from a small pitcher called the Thaksinothok and made the vow to rule with justice for the well-being of his people.

Vocabulary

DECLARATION (N):

a written or spoken statement, especially about what people feel or believe

VOW (v):

to make a formal and serious promise to do something

AUSPICIOUS (adj):

showing signs that something is likely to be successful in the future

OCTAGONAL (adj):

having a flat shpe with eight straight sides and eight angles

PITCHER (n):

a large container with a small opening and handles that is used for holding liquid

VESSEL (n):

a container used for holding liquids such as a bowl, cup, etc.

REGALIA (n):

the special clothes that are worn or objects that are carried at official ceremony

WHISK (n):

small brush consisting of a bunch of feathers, hair etc. tied to a handle

DIALECT (n):
the form of a language that is spoken in one area with grammar, word and pronunciation that may be different from the other forms of the same language
His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, on Monday 5 December, 1927, the third and the youngest child of Their Royal Highness Prince and Princess Mahidol of Songla.

The death of his elder brother King Ananda Mahidol in Bangkok on 9 June, 1946,changes the course of the 18-year-old Prince Bhumibol’s life completely, as the Law of Succession bestowed on Him the arduous challenge as King of Thailand.

After assuming the highest and most responsible position in the land, His Majesty decided to go back to university Switzerland, where He studied Political Science and Law in order to equip Himself properly for His duties ahead in Thailand.

His Majesty returned to Thailand for the Coronation Ceremony, which actually took place on 5 May, 1950, before heading back to university one last time to complete His studies. He returned to Thailand for good in 1951.

Thailand had only been a constitutional Monarch for 14 years when King Bhumibol Adulyadej ascended the throne, but He brought a new, contemporary attitude to the special role of Head of State. His Majesty’s perceptive and imaginative mind and an inborn sense of dedication, made Him relish the task of finding the true conditions His people were living in and devising ways to ease their burden. His sense of involvement is always so complete; He never rest until the job is done.

His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej, Rama IX, is known to his loyal subjects as “The Light of Thailand.” As a young prince who never expected to be King, His Majesty has displayed the most remarkable wisdom and innate talent for His Role. His Majesty has spent a lifetime traveling throughout His kingdom to visit His people, speak to them and most importantly listen to their needs. His dedication has earned His Majesty the King the love and respect of not only His people but people around the world. He is the inspiration that rouses the awareness of perseverance and participation at all levels of society.

PAY YOUR RESPECT

In celebration of the 60th anniversary of His Majesty the King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand’s accession to the throne, you can be sure there will be plenty of ways can show you your love to uor King.

WRIST BAND

King Power released one million yellow wristband with the message “Long Live the King” --these limited editions with serial numbers have all sold out.

Thailand Post has released an unlimited supply of yellow wristbands with the message ‘Rao Rak Nai Luang.”

The American School of Bangkok has released red’ white’ and blue wristbands with the message “The Father Who Only Builds.”

LIMITED LAPTOP

ASUS Tek Computer Thailand has created 999 limited-edition notebook.

ART EXHIBITION

Cotto is staging a contemporary art exhibition under the title “Inspired by the King.” on display at the gallery in Playground on Thonglor, are works of art from 33 domestic and international artists.

King Arts Exhibition has an exhibition also called “Inspired by His Majesty” displaying paintings and drawings by children inspired our beloved king, in the lobby if the Arnoma Hotel throughout June.

CAMPS

High school students are invited to join the “Good Morality” project at the Ministry of Education’s Moral Centre, in celebration of The King’s 60th Anniversary Accession to the Throne.

60 selected students have been invited to join the King’s Camp at the Sufficient Economic Learning Centre in Mae Rim, Chiang Mai to learn about His Majesty’s self-sufficient economy model.

Vocabulary

arduous (adj): tiring
to relish: to bo happy to do aomething; to love a challenge
burden (adj): weight; responsibility
innate (adj): inborn; natural to rouse: to awaken
perseverance (noun): determination

Creation & Marriage:the Original Water to Wine Technology by Lynn Hofland

2007-11-06T11:46:00.001+07:00

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” These are the introductory words to the Pentateuch. They provide both instruction and insight for many around the world. Seldom have they had so great an impact as when they were read by Frank Borman on Christmas Day as Apollo 8 looped around the moon. An inspiring message coming from three astronauts on board a lonely spacecraft 240,000 miles away. They found immense pleasure and awe in viewing the Earth with its distinct blue color. They had tasted of its goodness!

Earth is “The Blue Planet” and it has no equal. Scientifically it has the largest accumulation of water. Cosmologically it has the largest accumulation of life. The mission objective of Apollo 8 was to circle the moon and return to Earth for a water splash down of the fragile craft. The astronaut’s objective was to reunite friendships and accept a toast of earth’s fruit in celebration of their completed space journey. Both the scientific discoveries and the cosmological gratification embodied by such adventures find their fulfillment in the depths of humanity. The water and the “the fruit of the vine” proclaim life and love all the way back to “the beginning”.

In the second chapter of the book of John of the Holy Bible, is found the first of Jesus’ miracles where He turns water into wine at the celebration of a wedding. Not only was this a great assistance to the wedding party to extend the length of the ceremony, it also was the first demonstration of Christ’s divine power. When it was complete His disciples were compelled to acknowledge their belief in Jesus as He began his Earthly ministry. It is through the record of their eyewitness accounts, recorded in scripture, that all people today can know of the deity of God’s Emmanuel, Jesus the Christ.

The chemical composition of water is H2O. Wine is water with a high concentration of C6H12O6 sugar and an OH added to a portion of the sugar molecules to facilitate its fermentation. Scientifically, wine is water that has been converted from an abundant inorganic fluid to a specialized organic fluid. This remarkable conversion does not require any significant change in the hydrogen to oxygen ratio but it does require a 100% increase in the carbon atoms of the sugar molecules. It is this carbon bonding that makes it organic. This conversion only happens through the process of photosynthesis. Fermentation only happens with the passage of significant amounts of time. The making of sugar is monumental because everything living that does not possess the ability to convert water to sugar with the assimilation of carbon dioxide mush consume a life form that does possess this ability, in order to maintain a life existence. In other words, the plant kingdom provides the total sustenance for the animal kingdom. Planet Earth is the only known place where this miracle takes place.

The book of John is one of the most beloved accounts of the life of Jesus as he walked this earth. John begins his account of Jesus with the same words that the Old Testament begins with, “In the beginning. . . “ This statement establishes John as the only biblical writer who writes with authority to cover all of created time, from the beginning to the end, from Genesis to Revelation.

The marriage of Adam and Eve is physically completed in the Book of Genesis, chapter one, with the command to be “fruitful”. The marriage is spiritually completed through God’s ordination in chapter two. In the New Testament, the Apostle John looks at the glamour and content of a marriage, and includes how Jesus provided the remarkable “best wine” at its completion. Note that the name of the bride and groom are not mentioned. The institution of marriage was introduced by God in Genesis chapter 2, approved by Jesus in John chapter 2 and validated by Jesus in Matthew 19:4 and Mark 10:6. The validations of marriage include reference to “the beginning of creation” signifying that marriage is an essential ingredient of creation. This is understandable because the procreation of human offspring was to take place through ordained marriage. If humankind did not procreate then creation had no significance and no completion.

A deeper look at this wedding celebration brings out much symbolism that ties this miracle to the Genesis creation and ultimately to the Genesis ordination of marriage. Jesus was at the wedding with his mother and his disciples. He quickly establishes that He is the authority of both what He does and when He does it. The flow of time during the wedding is not recorded. The wedding appears to start on the third day after He called his first disciples. Jewish weddings can take several days before the groom consummates the marriage. Toward the end of the ceremony the time “was right” that Jesus gave the command for six stone jars to be filled with water. Because these stone jars were used for ceremonial washing, they would only be filled with pure water. Obediently they were filled to the brim. They were then presented to the Lord that He might proclaim what would be done next.

The filling of the six earthen jars to the brim is symbolic of the filling of the earth in six days. Each day of creation was full, nothing was left out and nothing needed to be added. The water in Genesis chapter 1and 2 is the central element. The Spirit hovered over it, the heavens divided it, the dry land was drawn out of it and it provided the mist and the streams so that the earth could produce “the fruit of the vine”.

The water in the ceremonial jars became the central element of the wedding as Jesus commanded that a portion of it be drawn out and taken to the “governor of the feast”. The governor was responsible for all events leading up to and including the consummation of the marriage. In the Genesis account God was the “governor”, assuring that those who bore His image would procreate, or His creation would be invalid.

The New Testament “governor of the feast” is the Greek word “apciTpikhinox”. It appears only three times in scripture and is the conjunction of three Greek words. The first word is “apxn” and is the word “beginning” as found in John 1:1 and Revelation 1:8. It denotes primary authority. The second word is “Tpia” and simply means three. The last word is “Klivw” and implies resting in a very relaxed position. The accepted translation is that at a Jewish wedding the “the primary authority does rest on three pillows”. Another possible reading of this word is “three primary authorities that are very relaxed”. This would be in complete agreement with the very first wedding that was preformed “In the beginning.” The triune God of Creation was resting as He sealed His creation with the marriage of the first man and woman. He blessed it and promised that the two individuals would become one flesh. Then God announced, “It is very good”. Jesus repeated this performance in John 2 and His Jewish disciples could not ignore God’s almighty work in their presence.

To grasp the grandeur of this miracle, the changing of water to wine, the focus is to acknowledge the changing of something inorganic to something organic. Not a small thing! The bonding of created carbon atoms to the existing hydrogen and oxygen atoms without the presence of either time or enzyme-catalyzing photosynthesis is the only creation “out-of-nothing” miracle that Jesus did. All other miracles that our Emmanuel did while in the flesh were either for “restoration” as in his many healings, “multiplication” as in his feeding of the people, or “glorification” as in raising some from the dead. No other miracle was destined to affirm His power of creation, as He had done “in the beginning”.

Creation and marriage are bound together inseparably. These two “absolutes” of human existence are the foundation for humankind to believe in the God of all Life. It is therefore not surprising that the Creator Himself chose the marriage of two humble servants, Mary and Joseph, to facilitate His entry into His created order that He might become the perfect redeemer of all that was created. We celebrate this event at Christmas. It was all done properly. It was all done gloriously!

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LYNN HOFLAND, B.S.E.E., is an Environmental Test Engineer at NASA Ames Research Center, Mountain View, California. He and his wife home-school their three children, and started "Stiffneck Ministries" five years ago to provide a library of creationist material to other homeschoolers.

Consider Creation... by Paul Abramson

2007-11-06T11:45:00.001+07:00

Consider Creation... for SKEPTICS

It is not unscientific to consider the possibility of a Master Designer behind the universe. It is completely natural to ponder our origins and destiny. We wouldn't be human if we didn't think about these things. Is there a Creator somewhere out there? What is "He" like? Is anything expected of us during this lifetime, i.e. during this time of learning and testing on Earth?

An “ant farm” - what if their scientists and philosophers got together and concurred that their ant farm is older than they remember and then in fact that it must have always been there, subsequent to an ancient "Big-ant-farm Bang". Of course, sigh, there are those ants (religious types) who wonder about the occasional appearance of the big giant head outside, and other unexplained phenomena, but they can be dismissed because the scientists all agree that their ant farm and in fact the entire universe around them must have just popped into existence all by itself. An ant farm is a finite world operating under mathematical and scientific laws which govern its physical properties. We know that it did not pop into orderly existence out of nothingness and for no reason, kind of like (creationists contend) our human world as a whole.

From science we know that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In other words, it is scientific to claim that you can’t get something from nothing, or stated differently that matter cannot be either created or destroyed. How then did all the matter in the universe come into existence in the first place? Is the Big Bang a logical, scientific presumption based upon this understanding of the universe’s laws? Scientifically speaking, you can’t get something from nothing for no reason. Order does not coalesce from disorder for no reason.

Let’s say that we come across a Japanese minivan in a parking lot. This object appears to be composed of interlocking parts, can move when pushed, and the windows roll up and down. But wait, scientists can prove that it all happened by “accident” because they were able to forge one that looks almost the same in a local factory lab. Obviously then the minivan came about by pure accident, or did it? Is life on Earth all that different from such a minivan? Well, life is more complex on an interlocking cellular parts level, and partially self healing, and reproduces “naturally selected” copies each generation down which are almost as good as predecessors, and can adapt to different environments ... i.e. thinking about it, Earth’s organic life is significantly more complex in design than a simplistic mechanical minivan! Life on Earth was all by chance?

We are told that recorded human history started around 4,000 years ago. In China, the Middle East, and Central America technical societies “suddenly” began recording their events from about that time. That time frame concurs with the Genesis Flood story, that mankind had to start over again from about 4,350 years ago. Did you know that there are actually over 250 independent histories or legends from around the world of a past great flood? These evidences combine well with the geologic layer data and the fossil record evidence to support creationist theory that there really was a recent global flood.

Design evidences a Designer. If single celled life on Earth is many times more complex than a new minivan with all the options then it is reasonable to consider the possibility that there is a Creator (or Designer) behind the universe. And remember, “you can’t get something from nothing.” The idea that our universe just popped into existence out of nothingness for no reason is one theory, but not necessarily the only one available for logical consideration.

Consider Creation... for BELIEVERS

Playing a board game can bring out the best and worst in children (...and even for some adults). Chance plays its part, purchase decisions can be regretted, and then there is the direct interaction between players. People get upset when they’re bankrupted and left with nothing, forced out of the game. The winner may be gleeful while holding all the money and property. But it’s all temporary; when the game is over each person can move on to other things. For believers, life on Earth is like this: temporary (John 5:24, I Cor. 15:20-22).

We know that we will someday have to answer to our Maker for what we’ve done during our lives here on Earth. Chance plays its part. We make decisions that we may later regret. But our lives here are only temporary. We can get upset at unfairness, at injustice, at humiliation - yet the game (so to speak) continues - it is our character development (Gal. 5:22-23), not our bank accounts and property, which will follow us into the next life.

It is fully possible for one to believe in evolution and still have accepted God’s forgiveness for sins due to Christ’s death on the Cross (John 3:16). But believers need to know that the theory of evolution stands in direct opposition to the foundation of fearing God. Besides the fact that there is still no scientific evidence supporting this theory, evolution in practice is a societal cancer leading to sin and death. Consider this: is it “survival of the fittest” when a powerful monopolist crushes a small, innovative company? When used as an excuse for dishonorable conduct, “evolution” is clearly a destructive force.

The Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy, I Tim. 6:20-21, “Oh Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane [and] vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: Which some professing have erred concerning the faith....” Temporal scientists (based upon the Greek Ptolemy model) used to believe that the Earth was at the center of the universe. Some believers also came to accept this theory, but they like the scientists, were wrong. Other scientists, in Europe’s Middle Ages, determined that the Earth must be flat. Those scientists were also wrong. (Note that all along Isaiah 40:22 mentions, “..the circle of the earth...”) The evidence which was propped up in both of these examples was inconclusive and eventually turned out to have been interpreted incorrectly. When the Bible and scientific theories are in conflict - just give the scientists more time, but don’t compromise God’s Word!

It has been approximately 175 generations since Noah’s family left the Ark at the end of the year long global Flood. Jesus said this about Noah (Luke 17:26-27), “And as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.” Jesus, the “last Adam” (I Cor. 15:45) paid the price for the first Adam’s initial sin which caused the first death. Genesis is as integral to the Bible’s message as a foundation is to a house. In Matt. 7:24-29, Jesus mentions the difference between a house built on sand with a house built upon a rock. Biblical faith rests upon a solid, historical foundation.

Do not be led astray by propped up “science” falsely so called. Pray about this and study as needed. Since our lives on Earth are temporary, we must labor to focus on spiritual concerns.. With Jews, St. Paul debated Scriptures, but with others he turned to logic, history, and reason. In Acts 17:18-31 he preached in Athens concerning God, the creator of all. This we must also do today! Please don’t stand “with science” and against God’s Word; instead - consider creation.

"Consider Creation" by Paul Abramson, Sept. 99, has been released to the Public Domain

Significant “Nothings” by John Verderame

2007-11-06T11:44:00.001+07:00

The question of extraterrestrial life has intrigued mankind for ages. More so in our day, however, as we have a better idea of the magnitude of the expanse of the universe. The common sentiment is that because the universe is so large, there simply must be other creatures, other civilizations, “out there.”
But there is more to it than that. The presupposition that life exists outside the earth’s protective shell stems not only from our seeming “insignificance” as a drop in the cosmic ocean, but is fueled by the evolutionary dogma that, if life evolved on earth, it must have evolved elsewhere, too. So there is now a frantic race toward the ultimate goal--contact with whatever civilization may have sent us a signal, or whomever might respond to our feeble efforts to send messages. Those efforts range from the bizarre plaque attached to a Voyager space vessel, which had recordings of such things as whale sounds and a baby crying on it and is now drifting in interstellar space in hopes “someone” will find it, to the current project “SETI@home” where the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence can be aided by your own computer screen saver program, as it sifts through recordings of space noise to detect an artificial signal (after earth noise interference is accounted for and subtracted) while you are busy doing other things. The incentive is that your computer has a one in umpteen trillion chance of being the one that will find the elusive signal, and you will go down in history as a footnote to the greatest discovery of all time.
Pretty exciting stuff! Especially if you have no hope. Especially if you believe we return to the dust and there is no afterlife. Or if you believe that all the answers to our problems are “out there” somewhere. Or if you think someone out there knows the secret to eternal life. The fountain of youth lies somewhere near the Pleiades--maybe. The Savior will send us a signal one day, and we’ll live happily ever after.

Will we? Let’s think through the ramifications of actually making “contact.”

First of all, scientists themselves are highly doubtful that we will receive such a signal in our lifetimes. Our technological capabilities have not yet reached the level where we can make an extensive sky search, and isolate the faintest signal with the absolute certainty that it is not a man-made aberration. Even SETI scientists do not believe we will make contact any time soon.

Secondly, suppose we did discover a new civilization. Would they be friendly? What has typically been the lesson of our own history? When a new civilization was discovered, the explorers came as--pick one: Conquerors, or Friends. If we are realistic, it should be evident to us that, if an advanced civilization did discover us, we would soon be enslaved--maybe they’d even dissect us in Science class and the like!

Finally, what is really the likelihood that a civilization went through all the evolutionary stages just like our own, then surpassed us on the evolution ladder, and now is looking to contact us to give us all the answers to our basic questions? Are we attempting to find “lower” beings so we can help them reach our level of progress? What is the basis for our belief that any beings whatsoever will be found?

Those of us who believe the Bible is God’s infallible word must ask ourselves if the question of life elsewhere in the universe is in fact addressed there. Or, are we doomed to speculation, and will we find ourselves with egg on our faces, as the church did when the geocentric universe was disproved? The Bible does in fact address the issue--circumstantially. But, let’s take a look first at the above case of geocentrism, because it does, in fact, impact on the current discussion.

A rather emphatic case is made by modern science that, because we are no longer at the center of the universe, it has now been demonstrated that we are insignificant nothings. Our world does not matter; our position does not matter; people do not matter. We are, to paraphrase Stephen Jay Gould, a lucky accident. One wonders if these scientists ever asked themselves, “If the universe is insignificant, and our galaxy even more insignificant, and our solar system and planet even more insignificant, and earth’s inhabitants still less significant, and I am only one six-billionth of that, then why should anyone even care what I have to say?!”

But does where we are really determine who or what we are?? If you have a child, is that child only important when he is in the very center of your home, or are you concerned for him no matter where he is? If he goes to a friend’s house, does that change who he is? Does it change his relationship to you? Of course not! And neither does it matter where we are in the universe. The Bible says God created man in His image, and that mankind is very important to Him! He created us to love Him, worship Him, know Him, and be with Him. But our sin has separated us from him. We might as well be floating out in the middle of nowhere if we have no relationship with our Creator. But we do! If the sin that separates us from Him has been forgiven, we have a renewed relationship with Him. If not, we are, in fact, doomed to a purposeless existence.

So, no, our location in the universe really is not important in itself. Rather, our relationship with God is what is important. But what about ET? Yes, in fact there are extraterrestrial beings in the Bible. They are called angels and demons. And they have tremendous influence over our activities and world events. They are, however, beings--not flying saucers or any such apparition. When they appear in Scripture, it is always in the form of a created being--either a person or, in the case of demon possession, possibly an animal (like pigs, for example). It may be, however, that demonic activity is behind so-called sightings of UFO’s or abductions by aliens. Why? Because anything that draws us away from God and His truth, that entices us to hope in anything other than Jesus Christ, or that leads us to search for answers as to our origins and destiny elsewhere besides God’s word, is satanic.

Thus, as far as any humanoid beings inhabiting the universe, we would have to answer an unequivocal NO. The reasons? First, the Bible says God created the universe and all that is in it in six days. So, the universe did not evolve. Second, on the sixth day, God reached the pinnacle of His work--He created man and woman and said that we are in His image. How does that truth impact the question at hand? If we are in His image, the only “higher intelligence” in the universe could be God Himself. Is it not ironic that the first sin to enter the universe was Lucifer’s rebellious desire to usurp God’s authority, and the first sin Satan used to tempt man was that if man just simply would ignore God’s command not to eat the forbidden fruit, man would “be like God?” We are not satisfied with being “just” humans. We want to be super humans--like gods. We want to hear from advanced civilizations, not just anyone.

The Bible clearly indicates that Earth was chosen--for reasons only God knows--to be a proving ground for His created beings. We were given freedom of choice. Had we obeyed God, the entire universe would have been opened up to us to discover and enjoy the rest of His creation. That’s why He created it all--for US! God did not need anything. He is self-sufficient. But true love must express itself, and God wanted to express His love by creating and then sharing that creation with other beings in His image who could enjoy it. By trying to steal God’s position as Father from Him, we lost our position as His children, and became instead children of rebellion. Our original position can only be restored through Jesus Christ. Why? Because, just as God made all the other rules that govern creation, He decreed that the penalty for sin had to be paid by one perfect man’s blood, and that was the God-man, Christ Jesus. God loved His creation so much that He himself was willing to pay the price to bring us back to Him.

If you are looking for answers from outer space, they are there for the asking. God sent His living Word--Jesus, and His written word, the Bible, from Heaven, so that we might one day be in Heaven with Him by believing what He tells us--to trust Christ for our salvation. Millions or even billions of dollars will be spent; countless hours of work and research will be performed; hopes and dreams will be built and shattered looking for evolutionary answers to life’s basic questions. Even if Satan comes up with a trick so deceptive that many will be fooled into believing we have made “contact” with an advanced civilization, don’t be taken in. The savior is not “out there.” He is right beside you, waiting for you to hear His voice. If you have already believed, then you know the Savior is inside your heart and soul. Don’t you be fooled either. Stand up for God’s word! Tell the world that God created the cosmos in six days, and that He is great enough to have done so! Tell them mankind is important and that they are not monkeys’ uncles who will return to cosmic dust--accidents of materialistic caprice. Tell them about the hope that is within you, and that you found that hope not by looking to the farthest depths of space, but rather by looking toward your inmost being, and discovering the emptiness there that could only be filled by the love of God.

A Study on Biblical Belief in Creation by Erik Gislén

2007-11-06T11:43:00.001+07:00

13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. 15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

This is a wonderful hymn to Christ. You can feel Paul's inspiration in his praise of the Savior. It is wonderful to glimpse the greatness of the mystery of Christ. How we would like to join more and more in this song of praise with our faith, with our words and our lives!

Anybody can realize that what stands written in this piece of scripture is closely linked together with the doctrine of God creating through His Son. Even more how intensely and even literally it is linked to the story of the Creation in Genesis you can not clearly understand until you realize that the writer was an Israelite, that he spoke from a Jewish education in interpreting the Bible, and that he was thinking in Hebrew even when he was writing in Greek.

He expected that those who would expound his words would understand his intentions and perspective:

Verse 15:
He is the image of the invisible God...
In Genesis 1:27 it stands written:
God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him...
God's own image was the Son.
Words for meditation:
No one has ever seen God, but the only begotten Son who is at the Father's side, has made him known, John 1:18.
This is the image we have of God, the image that has been portrayed before our eyes — Jesus Christ as crucified, (Gal.1:3).

Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?… Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's (Mark 12:16-17).

It is very important that it is the same Image as once in the act of creation that now in redemption shall 'coin' us. For God wants once more to make us images of God. It is not a foreign God, that intervenes in our world in order to rescue us from the dominion of darkness, it is the Creator of all mankind. He comes to his fallen creation, with redemption and restoration. He came to that which was his own (John 1:11).

The First Article of Faith is the foundational basis for The Second Article. What God has done for our redemption and salvation is of the same purpose as that of God's first creating all that there is. God of Creation and God of Redemption are not two different Gods, but He is one and the same God. He is the good God!
In the times of the old Church this was an extraordinary important point of doctrine. For the so called gnostic sects at times influenced the Church. The gnostics, for example Marcion, meant that the God whom had created matter was an evil God and that there had come to the world a good God of salvation to rescue us (= our fettered souls) from matter and body. The Savior they recognized therefore was understood to be a foreign God. The Second Article of Faith was, so to say, hanging loose in the air. It had for them no foundation upon The First Article, i.e. matter and body they regarded as something evil, that should not be saved, but that man should be saved from them.
When Christian people in our days believe in the theory of evolution, there appear some similarities to these marcionism beliefs with regard to their view of creation. For according to the theory of evolution man has come up from an evolution in which the "struggle for existence" and the stronger one's victory over the weaker is meant to have been the law of life from the beginning of the world. And as a man thinks the beginning to have been, so becomes the continuation — and the end! It does not matter, how romantically, respectfully and beautifully they try to picture evolution in films about nature. The consequences of a belief in such a beginning will show up sooner or later. The 'God' of evolutionary creation is (comparitively speaking) from a Christian ethical point of view 'an evil God of creation'. A Paradise (as described in Genesis) in the beginning could obviously not have existed. Sin and death must have been there from the beginning. A Fall could never have been. Realize what this means. See the mystery of this wickedness working secretly to break down faith and human dignity.

In such a faith system Christian moral law, human dignity, charity and salvation becomes totally foreign and unrealistic. And the thought of God as judging you for sin and as claiming anything good seems meaningless. For hasn't he himself created you as you are now?

Christ's sacrifice of himself and his act of redemption and my repentance, salvation and the last judgment — The Second and The Third Articles — really all become meaningless in that system. Christ then, as recognized by the Christian faith would in such circumstances surely not be the true image of the invisible God.

Some in fact have drawn the logical moral conclusions. For ordinary people the conclusions are not consciously drawn; but unconsciously they have absorbed arguments against repentance and a new life. Many Christians as well are influenced by evolutionary assumptions. Their Christan faith then has a gnostic touch, it becomes something mainly 'experienced', 'felt', 'religious' — outside the 'real' world. So we get difficulties in intellectually arguing for the existence of the Christian Creator and for living a respectable life according to God's commandments.

We get a better starting-point, when we listen to sober scientific analysis against faith in evolutionism and instead let this foundation present an alternative logical interpretation of the many fossils resulting from the Great Flood; and when we thus proclaim Christ, creation's Savior, He is the image of the invisible God!

In verse 15 it is also said about Christ:
…the firstborn over all creation.
In the Greek original text there is no 'over'. It stands written: …all creation's firstborn.
It is also possible to translate the words:
…every creation's firstborn.
(Greek: protótokos páses ktíseos).

This does not mean that Christ is a created being or a part of God's creation. 'The firstborn of the creation' is a phrase that describes the glory of our Savior.

Remember the importance of the rights of the firstborn in the story of Jacob and Esau (Gen. 27 etc.). Think upon the genealogical tables (Gen. 5 etc.). The firstborn was not only the person that inherited external things. A much more important aspect was that the firstborn was the person to be the bearer of the line of election, pointing forward till Christ. The firstborn is a prophetic word for Messiah!

Esau was not interested in the spiritual aspect of the rights of the firstborn. He was thinking according to the flesh: He was the first born! But God had given the promise to Jacob. God had elected Jacob before the twins were born. And now when Isaac, their father, evidently had forgotten Gods word about whom God wanted as the bearer of the spiritual tradition, both mother Rebecca and Jacob lost a bit of their trust in God. And so much later went wrong in the family. They all sinned and they severly damaged their relations with one another. And Jacob had to suffer the consequences of his deceit! But God, of course, kept His promise.

Jesus Christ is all creation's firstborn. He is the Person in God through whom God created the world — the good, sin free creation, described in the Biblical story of Creation. He is the one who has the right over everything and who fulfills everything, Col.1:15-16: …the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created… all things were created by him and for him.

Christ is also — as the words are translated — the firstborn of every creation of God: He is not only The Firstborn of the creation of this universe, but also The Firstborn of the invisible world of thrones and powers and rulers and authorities as are created by him and for him.

And He is The Firstborn of the redemption. God's work of salvation is done through the same Person as the one through whom God made the original creation of earth. He redeems, renews, recreates this fallen creation. Therefore it stands written that Christ is The Firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have supremacy (Col.1:18).

In vers 18 we read that Christ is the head, the beginning and has the supremacy (this last word is in the original simply 'the first').

The allusion to the story of Creation is still evident in modern translations when Christ here is called the beginning. The story of creation begins with the phrase: (Genesis 1:1) In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

However there is a much richer and more intensive allusion to the story of creation than that which is possible to see in our translations.

In order to understand Paul's idea it is not enough to read the original Greek. Paul must have thought in Hebrew, though he was writing in Greek. If we translate these key words into Hebrew, we can immediately see, that Paul must have had Genesis 1:1 in his thoughts:

You should be able to se, that the three Hebrew words in the third column has the same word-stem. The stem consists in this transcription of the two consonants R and SH. The vowels o, e and i together with the endings -ith and -on are forming new words from the stem.

There is a fine logic in this word-formation. The head normally comes forth first, when someone is born. Head is also a word for leader. He comes first. The one who is the head therefore is the beginning too.

The Apostle Paul here gives us a deeper interpretation of The Beginning. We usually think it means the beginning of time. But the apostle reads it as a name of Christ. Christ is mentioned first of all in the Bible. His name is the first word, that is born, from God's lips, when God begins to speak to us about the background of the salvation history. For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks (Matth. 12:34). God's heart is overflowing by love to the Son. See, how God loves his Son! This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased (Matth. 3:17). His name is the first word in God's word. It is actually possible to state this as the first word in the Bible, not the second word, for in the Hebrew the words 'In the beginning' are really combined into only one word.

We have often read the interpretation of John about Christ as the Creator's Word (In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… The Word became flesh… , John 1:1 etc.). But the New Testament doctrine about Christ is still greater in its interpretation of Genesis, chapter 1.

The teaching about Christ as The Beginning you can also find in the Apostle John's scriptures. John is using exactly the same reference words in the Greek version as does Paul. In Revelation 3:14 Christ says: These things says the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God.

He really is the Beginning of the creation: He is the Beginning of the story of the creation of God. It may well be that there are other instances where the Bible uses the word beginning with an underlying allusion and in the sense of The story of creation — Genesis 1, and as a name of Christ.

Remember also the names Alpha and Omega — The Beginning and The End - The First and The Last, used about God and His Son.

Christ is holding everything from the beginning to the end in His hands. It is Him (from the beginning) whom we are longing to see in the future:

Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him… I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord. … Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades. (Revelation 1:7-8, 17-18. Compare Rev.21:6 and 22:13.) What a wonderful end there can be for us, if we begin in Jesus!

God has given to His Son the first place everywhere. The apostle praises Him rejoicing. So we too may show him our love and praise him with our faith, with our words and with our lives!

"A Study on Biblical Belief in Creation", by Erik Gislén, © 1999

"Mission Impossible: the Monarch Butterfly" by Ron Lyttle

2007-11-06T11:42:00.001+07:00

The monarch butterfly, scientific name Danous plexippus, is a large, orange-and-black butterfly, common to much of North America. It is famous for its annual migrations to and from wintering grounds in Mexico and California, see National Geographic, vol. 150, no. 2, August 1976.
The monarch starts life as an egg laid by the adult female on a leaf of the common milkweed plant, Asclepias syriaca. It is about the size of the head of a pin. When the egg hatches 3 to 12 days later, the tiny yellow-, white-, and black-striped worm-like larva, or caterpillar, has eight pairs of stubby legs for crawling about, and mouth parts designed for chewing leaves, which it does, voraciously. But only the leaves of the milkweed; no other plant will do. Now the milkweed has a white, sticky sap that is highly toxic to other animals, but does not affect the caterpillar at all, except to make his body, in turn, highly toxic to predators like birds that might like to eat the caterpillar for breakfast. And the birds, being no bird-brains, know to leave him alone.

As the caterpillar eats and eats, it grows. Soon it gets too large for its skin, so the skin splits and out crawls the caterpillar with a new and larger skin with room to grow. For about two weeks this is what the caterpillar does: eats leaves, grows, sheds its skin, eats more leaves, grows more, sheds its skin. It will do this five times.

Finally it stops eating, finds a protected spot, hangs upside-down, spins a silk attachment, and sheds its skin one more time. But this time what emerges from the old skin is not a larger caterpillar, but a compact package with no legs and no eyes, and no visible body parts, called a pupa, encased in a chrysalis. It is not multi-colored like the caterpillar, but is bright green with golden-yellow spots.

No further movement is observed, but inside there is much movement. The heart still beats, but the rest of the internal organs resemble green jelly, as the entire mass reshapes itself into a completely different creature. The green color darkens, turns brown. To an uninformed observer, the package may appear dead. But gradually the color modifies as the chrysalis turns clear, and orange and black areas can be seen, the colors of the adult butterfly.

Finally, after about two weeks, the chrysalis splits open, and an adult butterfly emerges. It has six long legs, a mouth that is a long coiled-tube proboscis used for reaching into flowers to drink nectar, and two pairs of shriveled wings that rapidly expand as fluid from the body is pumped into their veins. As they expand, the butterfly slowly fans them back and forth with newly-acquired flight muscles until they are dry, so that the fully-extended wings are stiff, ready for flight.

Soon the butterfly flits off into the sky, and may be found in someone's flower garden, drinking nectar with its uncoiled proboscis, or flying overhead looking for a mate to start the whole cycle all over again.

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Your assignment as an evolutionist, should you accept, is to explain HOW the above transformation could POSSIBLY have developed by accident, by a collection of genetic mistakes, with NO PURPOSE, NO INTELLIGENCE involved, guided only by survival of the fittest, as some primitive creature without wings gradually evolved into a flying butterfly.

Which stages of the above process, called complete metamorphosis, can you put off for a while because those accidents haven't occurred yet? If even one enzyme is missing, how does the egg-to-larva-to-pupa-to-adult transformation happen? It must all be present and functional, in the right timing and sequence, or the creature dies. It all works, or none of it works.

But don't give me some "just-so" story; I want scientifically-feasible explanations that a geneticist wouldn't laugh at as ridiculous. And don't call it "Nature's miracle", unless you are willing to acknowledge intelligent, creative design in the god you call Nature. ...This article will NOT self-destruct.

"12 Quotes by Leading Evolutionists"Edited by Paul Abramson

2007-11-06T11:40:00.001+07:00

Evolution is science? It is admittedly unobservable, lacking fossil evidence, dependent upon scientific consensus, and essentially a belief system about past life on Earth. The following 12 quotes are from leading and well known scientists and researchers. A larger work with 130 similar quotes is available: "The Revised Quote Book", edited by Dr. A. Snelling, PhD, pub. by: Creation Science Foundation, Australia

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"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution."
Stephen Jay Gould (Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University), "Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?" Paleobiology, vol. 6(1), January 1980, p. 127

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"Contrary to what most scientists write, the fossil record does not support the Darwinian theory of evolution because it is this theory (there are several) which we use to interpret the fossil record. By doing so we are guilty of circular reasoning if we then say the fossil record supports this theory."

Ronald R. West, PhD (paleoecology and geology) (Assistant Professor of Paleobiology at Kansas State University), "Paleoecology and uniformitarianism". Compass, vol. 45, May 1968, p. 216

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"The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable with the chance that 'a tornado sweeping through a junk yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein'."

Sir Fred Hoyle (English astronomer, Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge University), as quoted in "Hoyle on Evolution". Nature, vol. 294, 12 Nov. 1981, p. 105

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"Echoing the criticism made of his father's habilis skulls, he added that Lucy's skull was so incomplete that most of it was 'imagination made of plaster of Paris', thus making it impossible to draw any firm conclusion about what species she belonged to."

Referring to comments made by Richard Leakey (Director of National Museums of Kenya) in The Weekend Australian, 7-8 May 1983, Magazine, p. 3

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"The entire hominid collection known today would barely cover a billiard table, ... the collection is so tantalizingly incomplete, and the specimens themselves often so fragmented and inconclusive, that more can be said about what is missing than about what is present. ...but ever since Darwin's work inspired the notion that fossils linking modern man and extinct ancestor would provide the most convincing proof of human evolution, preconceptions have led evidence by the nose in the study of fossil man."

John Reader (photo-journalist and author of "Missing Links"), "Whatever happened to Zinjanthropus?" New Scientist, 26 March 1981, p. 802

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"A five million-year-old piece of bone that was thought to be a collarbone of a humanlike creature is actually part of a dolphin rib, ...He [Dr. T. White] puts the incident on par with two other embarrassing [sic] faux pas by fossil hunters: Hesperopithecus, the fossil pig's tooth that was cited as evidence of very early man in North America, and Eoanthropus or 'Piltdown Man,' the jaw of an orangutan and the skull of a modern human that were claimed to be the 'earliest Englishman'.

"The problem with a lot of anthropologists is that they want so much to find a hominid that any scrap of bone becomes a hominid bone.'"

Dr. Tim White (anthropologist, University of California, Berkeley). As quoted by Ian Anderson "Hominoid collarbone exposed as dolphin's rib", in New Scientist, 28 April 1983, p. 199

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"We add that it would be all too easy to object that mutations have no evolutionary effect because they are eliminated by natural selection. Lethal mutations (the worst kind) are effectively eliminated, but others persist as alleles. ...Mutants are present within every population, from bacteria to man. There can be no doubt about it. But for the evolutionist, the essential lies elsewhere: in the fact that mutations do not coincide with evolution."

Pierre-Paul Grassé (University of Paris and past-President, French Academie des Sciences) in Evolution of Living Organisms, Academic Press, New York, 1977, p. 88

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"The essence of Darwinism lies in a single phrase: natural selection is the creative force of evolutionary change. No one denies that natural selection will play a negative role in eliminating the unfit. Darwinian theories require that it create the fit as well."

Stephen Jay Gould (Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University), "The return of hopeful monsters". Natural History, vol. LXXXVI(6), June-Jule 1977, p. 28

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"And in man is a three-pound brain which, as far as we know, is the most complex and orderly arrangement of matter in the universe."

Dr. Isaac Asimov (biochemist; was a Professor at Boston University School of Medicine; internationally known author), "In the game of energy and thermodynamics you can't even break even.". Smithsonian Institute Journal, June 1970, p. 10

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"Why do geologists and archeologists still spend their scarce money on costly radiocarbon determinations? They do so because occasional dates appear to be useful. While the method cannot be counted on to give good, unequivocal results, the number do impress people, and save them the trouble of thinking excessively. Expressed in what look like precise calendar years, figures seem somehow better ... 'Absolute' dates determined by a laboratory carry a lot of weight, and are extremely helpful in bolstering weak arguments.

"No matter how 'useful' it is, though, the radiocarbon method is still not capable of yielding accurate and reliable results. There are gross discrepancies, the chronology is uneven and relative, and the accepted dates are actually selected dates. This whole bless thing is nothing but 13th-century alchemy, and it all depends upon which funny paper you read."

Robert E. Lee, "Radiocarbon: ages in error". Anthropological Journal of Canada, vol.19(3), 1981, pp.9-29. Reprinted in the Creation Research Society Quarterly, vol. 19(2), September 1982, pp. 117-127 (quotes from pp. 123 and 125)

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"The intelligent layman has long suspected circular reasoning in the use of rocks to date fossils and fossils to date rocks. The geologist has never bothered to think of a good reply, feeling that explanations are not worth the trouble as long as the work brings results. This is supposed to be hard-headed pragmatism."

J. E. O'Rourks, "Pragmatism versus materialism in stratigraphy". American Journal of Science, vol. 276, January 1976, p. 47

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"Scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life are great con-men, and the story they are telling may be the greatest hoax ever. In explaining evolution, we do not have one iota of fact."

Dr. T. N. Tahmisian (Atomic Energy Commission, USA) in "The Fresno Bee", August 20, 1959. As quoted by N. J. Mitchell, Evolution and the Emperor's New Clothes, Roydon Publications, UK, 1983, title page.

"Could Life 'Just Happen'?"by Ron Lyttle

2007-11-06T11:39:00.003+07:00

THE STORY
Millions of years ago, evolutionists will tell you, many chemicals were swirling around in lifeless seas (or ponds, or puddles) here on earth. Methane gas was in the atmosphere being bombarded with cosmic rays from outer space, and powerful lightning bolts arced through the skies, lighting up the desolate landscape. Given enough time, cosmic rays, and lightning bolts, a "primordial soup" gradually formed which contained amino acids. These in turn got hooked together to form simple proteins, the "building blocks" of life. At some point these proteins happened to get connected in just the right way, and a threshold was crossed: the proteins started reproducing themselves, and simple life was "born".

During uncounted eons, this simple life gradually became more and more complex as chance modifications of the original proteins combined with external conditions of moisture, temperature, food supply, etc., to eventually produce all the varied and complex life forms inhabiting first the oceans, then the land, and finally the air, that we see today. Homo sapiens is seen as the topmost branch in the evolutionary tree of life, but the tree is still growing, and who knows what the next branches will look like?

REALITY CHECK
While the above is an interesting story, and variations of it (with many imaginative details added) are taught in most schools and universities around the world as the scientific explanation for the origin and development of life, more and more people are asking, "Is that really how we came to be? Do those people who call themselves scientists really know what they are talking about?" After all, nobody was around millions of years ago to watch the stirring of the primordial soup, or to see the first fish crawl out onto land, or to see the first winged creature take to the air in powered flight. The story of evolution is a pretty one, but is it supported by the facts?

RNA & DNA
Every living thing, from the most simple virus to the most complex animal, contains in its cells very complex compounds called nucleic acid . There are two forms, called ribonucleic acid (RNA) and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Viruses contain only one or the other, but cells contain both. While RNA controls protein production, DNA is the main component in chromosomes, which provide the blueprint or pattern of heredity. Every time a cell divides into two, the RNA in the cell body and the DNA in the nucleus must be exactly copied, with one copy going with each cell. DNA is an incredibly complex molecule, resembling a long ladder that has been twisted into a spiral. The sides of the ladder are made up of compounds called phosphates and sugars , while the "rungs" are composed of two of four possible bases in all the possible combinations. The exact make-up and order of "rungs" varies from one kind of living thing to another. Each DNA "ladder" has about 20,000 "rungs", and each chromosome contains many thousands of DNA molecules. RNA has a similar structure, but the sugar is different, and one of the four bases is also different.

Since it is the chromosomal DNA (and in some cases RNA) that provides the blueprint for each cell and individual, if any of the thousands of rungs gets damaged, or if different combinations get substituted in the copy, that cell will be defective. Contrary to popular belief, most changes in the DNA structure (mutations) at best weaken, and at worst kill the cell. Only a very few are neutral, and beneficial changes are virtually non-existent. To produce a healthy, fully-functional individual, each copy of DNA and RNA must be identical to the original, down to the last "rung".

THE POINT
That such complexity could arise from "primordial soup" by random-chance chemical reactions is statistically, bio-chemically, and thermodynamically impossible. 1) There are too many connections in a DNA molecule to ever occur by chance, no matter how long you allow. 2) When biochemists have managed to produce simple amino acids in simulated "soup", it was by carefully controlling the conditions; there was nothing "random" or "chance" about the process, and the leap from simple amino acids to a DNA molecule is astronomical . 3) The second law of thermodynamics says that order moves toward disorder, and complex moves toward simple (not the other way around), unless acted upon by a higher force . Lightning bolts (the supposed driving force behind the chemical reactions) are actually great randomizers. The notion that anything as complex as a DNA molecule could arise by accident is therefore a non-scientific absurdity!

YEAH, BUT...
For the sake of discussion, suppose that a strand of DNA did somehow come together, and suppose further that thousands united to form a functional chromosome, and many chromosomes all joined forces (and no lightning bolt blasted the whole collection apart). You still only have a blueprint, a list of instructions telling how to make a living organism. It takes a living cell to use that blueprint, but it takes that blueprint to make a living cell. (To this seeming paradox evolutionists can only mumble, "it must have happened somehow . Life exists, doesn't it?")

AN EXAMPLE
I work in a manufacturing plant. We buy raw iron and brass castings that our machine shop turns into finished parts that our assemblers put together to make pumps. The machinist gets a blueprint created by the Engineering Department that shows all the dimensions of the finished part, and special instructions like how smooth a surface has to be, what thread size for tapped holes, "start machining here," etc. You can lay that blueprint on a raw casting and watch it for a billion years and it won't make a finished part. But the machinist picks it up, puts the casting in his machine, and when he is done a part is ready for use. He needs the blueprint to tell him how to make the part, and the blueprint is worthless without the machine and operator. So it is with DNA and living cells. Each needs the other to function, and together they can make new cells.

IN CONCLUSION
Far from being a logical, scientific, provable explanation of the origin and development of life on earth, Evolution appears to be a belief system held to with as much religious faith as any other creed, with the added difficulty of being contrary to known facts. To believe in evolution, a "scientist" must throw out the scientific method, suspend his common sense, and twist or ignore the facts. That so many continue to do so, and belittle those who dare to challenge their belief, shows the strength of their faith. Far from being open-minded seekers of truth, evolutionists appear to be closed-minded, dogmatic "defenders of the faith". Did life "just happen"? What do you think?

"COULD LIFE 'JUST HAPPEN'?" is by Ron Lyttle

"Creationism FAQ" by Paul Abramson

2007-11-06T11:37:00.001+07:00

A wide variety of questions are sent in each week.
It is our hope that this FAQ will answer the common
questions and challenges that you may have.

Are you insane?

Hmmm ... hard to tell.

How can you be so ignorant?

Have we met before? Remember that it's a person on the other end when making a (forgive me, but) ignorant statement about one of us being ignorant or stupid, please.

Isn't the crux of creationism: "God said it, I believe it, that settles it."?

For some folks it is, yes. But in turn couldn't one state that for most people the crux of evolutionism is: "Scientists said it, I believe it, that settles it."?

When will you stop "standing against science"?

When will you stop - beating your wife? In other words the very question implies something which is not true. Sometimes the minority of scientific, reasonable persons proposing a theory are the ones later proven correct. We don't "stand against science" in the first place.

Please recall that the founders of modern science were all creationists, such as Newton, Kepler, Pascal, Boyle, Galileo and many others. Their understanding that there is a logical, Divine Creator gave them the foundation to look for the natural laws of His creation, and to try to think His thoughts after Him. We do the same today as we recognize that we live in a logically designed universe. The idea that what we see around us happened to explode itself (Big Bang) via random chance? Creationists, standing with science, would contend that the evidence strongly suggests otherwise.

What about the dinosaurs?

Simply put, they lived concurrent with man down through the thousands of years of our existence, and they appear to have gone mostly extinct prior to our modern era. Remember that the word "dinosaur" is only about 160 years old. Legends of dangerous reptilian creatures (a.k.a. dragons) have been passed down to us from our ancestors across Europe, from China and the rest of Asia, all over the Americas (North, South & Central), and they're remembered in Africa too. Why should all of these legends/histories (spanning all inhabited continents, mind you!) be trivialized and discounted just to give credence to the temporary theory of evolution? It is important in science to separate the evidence from the interpretation. The evidence is that there have been these large dangerous reptilian creatures. We have bones, recorded history and footprints; we have strong evidence. The interpretation (or belief) that they all died off millions and millions of years ago is in dispute between creationists and evolutionists. And numerous stories in recorded human history of being killed by dragons/dinosaurs and of us banding together to kill them in return (among other important evidence) is clearly on our side ... as creation theory grows stronger each year.

Didn't the dinosaurs go extinct 65 million years ago?

There is good evidence that the Earth is only thousands of years old. In BOOKS, see Dr. Ackerman's It's a Young World After All. The "65 million years" is a recent mental invention. Evolution provides a mental hiding place from our powerful Creator. Evolution claims (theologically) that our God is weak or non-existent. Right? Think about what evolution claims about our origins. Dragons (per the previous FAQ answer) were seen and sometimes fought by our ancestors on all inhabited continents. Our ancestors were honest in recording sightings of large dangerous reptilian creatures. They lived concurrent with man. Humans saw dinosaurs. Sure, stories later became embellished, but the germ of truth that humans and dinosaurs (dragons) lived at the same time remains accurate. They lived in different places ... but at the same time - until the dinosaurs were mostly driven to extinction. (There are still a few living dinos out there, by the way.)

4004 B.C. ... you can't be serious!!

There are actually several different versions of what is called "creation science." Some creationists bend strongly towards accepting most of the evolutionary interpretations but stop at the point of life falling together all by itself in the first place. These creationists argue for an "initial cause" (or "First Cause"), i.e. that "Someone" ... catalyzed early events and then evolution was the process used by this "God" after that. From www.creationism.org we link to a few of those sites, if you're interested. But other creationists, like those contributing to this web site have continued learning ... and have come to the understanding (or belief, if one prefers) that there really is no good scientific evidence supporting evolutionism at all; and there is no way that the Earth could be over 10,000 years old. This is complicated, but many of these "young earth creationists" really do believe that 4004 B.C. is probably pretty close to the original creation date. I know that this sounds utterly laughable to those who believe that the radioactive dating methods actually work, sorry.

40 Days and 40 Nights, really?

Actually, in Genesis, chapter 7 it states that the waters rose higher in respect to the land for 150 days, and went down for the subsequent 150 days. The total time of the Great Flood was about 1 year in length from when Noah's family entered till they left the Ark. That's what it has always clearly stated. Period. But it also appears to have rained pretty darned hard for the first 40 days and nights of this pivotal time (and there were strong winds, Gen. 8:1). There is clearly no evidence that rain caused the Flood and modern creationists have never contended this. Forgive me here, but only evolutionists keep this false notion propped up in order to openly distain creation theory including the Flood.

How could Noah's Ark have possibly held all of the species of big animals in the world!

The largest dragon (i.e. dinosaur) eggs that we've found to date are about the size of a football. One could fit, for example, a dozen brachiosaurus eggs in the trunk of a car, with room to spare! This also means that recently hatched dragons were not very large. Noah's mission was to preserve each kind of animal. You don't need to find the biggest of each kind. And you don't need each sub-divided species either. Did you know that most modern dog breeds are less than 100 years old? 2 healthy young mutts could preserve the genome of the entire "dog kind" of animals. The Bible uses the word "kind" for the different types of life forms. Horses and zebras can (and have) physically mated producing viable offspring; so have tigers and lions, indicating that they (according to creation theory) probably respectively diverged from the same original stock. Dogs and wolves (though considered quite different by humans today) probably originated from their same "kind" too. There are a few large animals (when fully grown) of course: giraffes, elephants, and T-rexes among them. But the average animal size is about sheep size, i.e. the 3-story Ark was plenty large enough to handle the variety of animal kinds plus lots of food for them. Speciation could descend again from original healthy "mutt" stock to start with. Thinking scientifically about this, it shows incredible variable design, huh?

Even if the whole atmosphere was 100% saturated with moisture and began raining there wouldn't be enough water to cover the continents! The Flood was impossible, admit it!

This is a common charge and relates to the answer given two questions above. The Genesis account of the Flood appears to be only what Noah saw, and may not be a full picture of all the catalyzing events. There is no mention of ice at all, we do know that the waters rising (for the first 150 days) was concurrent with the initiation of the 40 days of rain and also that the fountains of the deep broke up, which is an intriguing statement. Rain did not cause the Flood, but this symptom of the cataclysm also began at about the same time.

Salt water washing over the continents would have destroyed all of the plants anyway, right?

Have you ever added sugar to your coffee but forgotten to stir it? What did it taste like? Before the Flood the oceans "hadn't been stirred" yet. The oceans may not have been very saturated with minerals prior to the Great Flood when waters violently washed over the land masses. And we know that natural whole plant seeds (not narrow hybrids, which are much weaker health wise, just like the aforementioned split out dog breeds) are hardy and can tumble around, surviving for even months suspended in and transported by water. But from the fossil record it does look like some plant types (and many ocean creatures) did not survive the Flood and the adjustments needed for the colder environments on Earth afterwards. Cattails, for example, used to grow up to 60 feet tall in the former time, but the remnant we see today barely grow over 3 feet tall. The modern world is but a remnant of what was before.

Wasn't the Flood of Noah just a regional flood?

Impossible. Some contend this today, but Genesis is clear that God intended to flood all land; all humans, animals and birds not on the Ark would be drowned. An average human can walk at 3 MPH, correct? Over 10 hours one could then walk about 30 miles (50 km). In 100 days of walking like this it would be possible to actually walk a few thousand miles, right? (Think of American pioneers in their wagon trains, crossing North America by walking and driving their wagons westward over the course of one long season.) If God was going to send a "regional flood" then why didn't He have Noah build a "Noah's Wagon" instead? Noah could have just moved a few valleys over to escape such a regional flood. Geologically, we see deep sedimentary layers covering every continent. Most sediments are laid down by water. Deep uniformly thick layers extending laterally over hundreds of square miles indicates a one-time past event using tremendous depositional processes that we do not see in action today. Such deep layers, interspersed with coal and oil reserves (crushed former life) are on all continents, all indicating a global flood.

The Flood was a global one. It has been remembered in legends/histories from around the world, not just in the Hebrew account. What is your ultimate foundation for truth? Is it "science, falsely so-called" following the trends and beliefs of the temporary consensus?, or is it the Word of God, with the recognition that the majority of scientists are sometimes wrong...? For over 1,000 years, from Ptolemy to Galileo scientists were wrong in thinking that the universe revolved around the Earth, correct? Galileo's persecution by the Church stemmed from their support of (what they thought was) "science" taught by the scientists of the day. Church leaders supported their peers over the upstart Galileo who proposed that the Greek scientist and mathematician Ptolemy's theory (from over 1,000 years prior) may be incorrect. "Trust the majority of scientists"? for they must be right...? No, sometimes the majority is wrong. They were wrong when they contended that the whole universe revolved around the Earth and there is good evidence that they are wrong today in proposing that we are but a cosmic accident that exploded out of nothingness for no reason. Just a statistical happening with no God to answer to, so live your life for the here and now; humans make the rules; human consensus is the ultimate authority.

Didn't the Scopes Trial in 1925 (a.k.a. the Monkey Trial) show that evolution had won and creation lost - big time!

That's what the liberal media and Hollywood have consistently reported since then.

Why are you intolerant of the beliefs of others?

I link to and report on both sides of this important issue ... unlike ... the liberal media and Hollywood down through the years.

You flat-earth-creationists make me sick!

This one isn't a question, per se, but versions of this kind of comment are common. Usually they seem to come from young people who want creationists (or anyone else who disagrees with them on about anything, actually) put in their place. Oh, to be young again! :-)

You know, one thing I've freely stated before skeptical groups is that even if they completely disagree with my conclusions please consider the evidence on its merits. The folks who postulate the best new theories 10 or 20 years from now are those who can also include evidence that's quietly disregarded by the experts of this generation because the data doesn't fit their theories (see the next question below).

Radioactive dating proves that creationism couldn't have happened, right?

Creationists stand on the side of testable-repeatable science. Ahem, again, creationists are the ones standing on the side of science. Evolutionists quietly disregard science when convenient! Rocks do not come with dates stamped on them, nor has anyone witnessed them aging over (the believed) millions of years. Radiometric dating is one-third fact and two-thirds assumption, and it is unreproducible. Lava flows occuring in recorded historic times have dated radiometrically at millions of years old. This does not give us confidence in the current guesstimates of the earth's allegedly long age.

There is discernable carbon on and near many fossilized dragon bones. (By current evolutionary theory these bones must be at least 65 million years old, correct?) Creationists scrape some carbon off and periodically send samples to labs for (C14) dating; the results show the dinosaur-associated carbon to be a maximum of only thousands of years old. Science triumphs. Evolutionists have been known to fly into a rage when creationists later publish just where the dated carbon came from. A different example is the new lava dome on Mount St. Helens. It is barely 20 years old, but radioactive dating (K-Ar) shows that it is 1 million years old! ...Something is very, very wrong here. Pompeii and Hawaii also have historical volcanic flows that prove K-Ar dating does not work worth beans. Yet evolution's high priests cling to such believed ancient dates since there is no other purported "evidence" that will give them an Earth that's over 10,000 years old. All major rivers and waterfalls show the Earth to be only thousands of years old. The myth-ions of years simply never happened. This is science; testable-repeatable science we're talking about. These tests ... can be repeated, hint, hint.

What about the fossil record?

The "creationists best friend" (i.e. the fossil record) still shows a distinct lack of transitional forms. Sure, every generation of evolutionists have a few new ones, but none of them have stood the test of time so far. Lately they're trying real-hard-like to claim that "dinosaurs grew feathers" to validate temporary evolutionary theory. This will fall flat too. Wait and see. (They have good artists though, don't they?) They've got great illustrations of "probable" interim forms, without the slightest bit of scientific evidence to back them up. It's sad what they're doing to the children with such propaganda.

Human (hominid) evolution is a FACT! Admit it!

Humans alive today vary in cranial capacity from about 700 cc to 2200 cc, with no relation of brain size to intelligence. (The average is about 1300 to 1350 cc; i.e. cubic centimeters.) I used to live in Tokyo, Japan for 5 years. Their average "brain size" is much smaller than mine (as a tall Caucasian) but I can assure you that the Japanese are very smart people. If we look at computers, one could argue that circuits that are closer together are more efficient and faster, ... so a smaller brain size may not necessarily be a disadvantage, correct? When evolutionists line up old mute skulls from smaller to larger (and purposefully hide the found ancient skulls that are larger than today's average) they make false assumptions linking brain size to intelligence - neglecting reason! Plus their radioactive dating methods don't work in the first place (as stated above), so they have no idea how old each skull is in the first place.

Excuse me, but what happens to the bones of a person who doesn't get enough calcium in their diet? Or if they were lacking copper, for example, it would detrimentally affect brain development. If, in past times, many peoples only ate local foods ... (stay with me here) and the local soil in different places had a lack of selinium, or magnesium, or iron, or any number of other trace minerals ... then this would affect each person and animal in the respective area over generations, correct? When we come along now and look at the hominid fossils left behind let's consider all of the logical scientific possibilities (including potentially inbred defects), and not just use a selected dishonest evolutionary sampling of the literally thousands of found hominid remains (hiding or ignoring the vast majority of them!) in order to try to publicize and endow temporary evolutionary theory with credibility - in other words, they are proclaiming evolution at all costs in spite of the fossil evidence. There will be a high cost to us if we let them continue to deceive the public with false, doctored evidence. The fossil record (i.e. the creationist's best friend) shows that each kind has always varied within each kind, which is evidence of tremendously wise design.

What does evolution do? (Yes, I'm asking YOU a serious question!) It fills a need for our origins. It is not testable-repeatable. And when creationists show that evolution stands against scientific evidence the evolutionists get angry. Angry? Excuse me? I thought this was "science" ... the free exchange of ideas and evidence and all. We're threatening their religion. Who are we as humans? Why are we here? Where will we go? 3.5 billion base pairs for human DNA. Wow! I don't have enough faith to believe in random chance for our origins. This is different ... different than other kinds of science, isn't it?

Doesn't everyone know that "creation science" is an oxymoron?

This is the ultimate ancient history we're talking about - our origins. This makes it a contentious issue that touches us each deeply. Very deeply indeed and this makes it threatening. It is unlike other kinds of science. If there is a God out there who both created us and claims the right to judge us after this life, after this time of learning and testing, then we're mad fools if we stand strong against reality, close our collective eyes and proclaim en masse that His existence must not be. We are afterall small, finite creatures bound to a soft bluish marble in space that's off to one side of a particular galaxy; limited to only 5 senses too. And some of our "smartest" people, proclaiming themselves to be wise, assume that all that is must answer to our finite understanding or else it can't exist? "Evolutionary science" with its attendant hubris may very well be an oxymoron, but not the term "creation science" which recognizes firstly that we and our simple understanding are not at the center of all that is.

Creationists don't publish for scientific peer review, proving that they're not doing good science, right?

Well ... it is awfully convenient that the same ivory tower guardians who reject disapproved manuscripts turn right around and then blame creationists for not being allowed to publish quality research in their scientific publications.

Dr. Henry Morris of the Institute for Creation Research has pointed out that there are many creationist scientists working in industry or health professions, but that anti-creationist bias has become so intense in academia that no one can speak or write openly against evolutionism without being ostracized or fired. Peer review under peer pressure while in competition for respect and career advancement has its limitations. Evolutionists have decided that there is no "God" (none of any consequence) to answer to which means that human consensus is the highest state for discerning truth. How could any evolution-teaching professor break ranks and hope to keep his or her job? Breaking with such a (non-God-fearing) consensus makes one, by definition, wrong; understand that with no "God" to answer to the corruption will grow stronger unless broken from the outside (not unlike a corrupt city police department, political regime, or false religion's heirarchy).

The respected Creation Research Society currently has about 600 members, all of whom have advanced degrees in science. Many of these have published fine scientific articles. The CRS also publishes a regular scientific journal and a bi-monthly newsletter featuring a variety of science-based articles.

Evolution is science; creationism is religion

This statement of belief by scoffers is common. I usually respond only briefly to such offhand remarks. But here I'll mention that evolution is a believed process to explain our origins. In thousands of years of human farming and ranching it has never been recorded as occurring. There are still no bona fide transitional fossils; not a single one. The believed radioactive dating methods for postulating millions ("myth"-ions) of years do not stand up to testable-repeatable scientific scrutiny. And sometimes ...I'll admit here ... I like to alter the usual debate wording, for effect. I'll discuss instead the debate between "creation science vs. the religion of evolution." Macro-evolution (from molecules to man, automatically over time) is strongly believed by its adherents but it is not the only theory in town.

What is the difference between macro-evolution and micro-evolution?

Macro-evolution is the theory that one kind of life form can become another kind given enough time and chance. Micro-evolution however is the observed biological process showing descendants that are similar to (but clearly not clones of) their ancestors. (Isn't it astounding that the Creator built in such automatic adjustability within each kind!) A child usually inherits visible traits from both parents, etc. Micro-evolution is scientific. This is the way our Creator designed life to be, various speciation could occur within each preset "kind" of life form. Watch carefully--when evolutionists offer their proofs of believed macroevolution, it is ALWAYS instances of microevolution that they cite, hoping that you won't notice the difference. Mendel's laws of genetics show us why microevolution does not lead to macroevolution.

...There are many more questions and variations of questions and challenges that people ask. Hopefully this FAQ will answer some of the questions that you may have thought of concerning this important subject. If you're a God fearing person, please pray about your understanding of this foundational issue. After checking out both sides - you may come to an entirely different conclusion, but please at least consider the possibility that the reason we've written and posted all of this information on this web page is that we hope it will be edifying and informative for you.

======

At the time of the Fall, when Adam and Eve sinned we lost direct contact with our Maker. This was about 6,000 years ago. In the intervening generations it has been a struggle to preserve and pass on our place in the universe and how to get back into a right place with Him. As our ancestors diverged after the Flood they passed on preserved history variations including over 250 still remembered accounts of the Flood! No culture's history claims to go back further than about 5,000 years. All over the world this is so. Yet, over the past 200 years there has been a growing push by "advanced modern man" to completely forget what's left of our true ancient history of only thousands of years in total, to be replaced by the mythical "millions" of supposed years, that we are cosmic accidents and for us to stand together against our Maker. "Aliens" (i.e. fallen angels; the familiar spirits or false gods of old in new disguises) will soon be able to step in to complete the coming anti-history falsehood. Please don't fall for the spiritual deception of evolution and all of the things that belief in evolution then leads to.

I'll close this with a prayer that even atheists and anti-theists can pray in a quiet, sincere way: "Creator, if You are there and if You can hear me, please help me." Just take that first step. We're not alone in the universe.

"Bats and Evolution" by Ron Lyttle

2007-11-06T10:18:00.001+07:00

Have you ever gazed up into the sky on a warm summer's evening as darkness was enveloping the land, and seen flying creatures darting and swooping through the air? Birds, you thought at first, but as you watched, there was a fluttering, twisting, dropping motion to their flight that wasn't right for birds. Bats! you suddenly realized. And you were either pleased at the chance to observe them in action, or a little frightened as myths of Dracula and vampires, coupled with concerns about rabies, came to mind.
Through the ages, bats have been the stuff of myths and legends, misunderstood and feared. But what are bats, and where did they come from?

WHAT ARE BATS?
Bats are mammals. They are covered with fur, give live birth, and nurse their pups with nipples located on the sides, under their wings. But what makes them unique among mammals is the fact that not only are they perfectly designed for hanging upside-down, like the sloth, but they can also fly. They are the only flying mammal. Flying squirrels and flying lemurs can only glide; only bats actively fly.

Bats are not rodents, although many people think of them as mice with wings, and indeed, the members of the genus Myotis (including the common Little Brown Bat, Myotis lucifugus) are called mouse-eared bats. But they only have one pup per year (a few have twins or up to four), and live twelve toothirty or more years, depending on the species. Bats are so unique that they have been placed in their own order, Order Chiroptera, meaning "hand-wing". As the name implies, their wing consists of an arm that ends in a wrist with a thumb and four separate fingers which are webbed with skin, and form the ribs of the wing. By contrast, a bird's wing possesses a greatly-reduced number of "finger" bones. When bats aren't flying they fold their fingers back along their forearms out of the way. While the thumbs of most insect-eating bats who catch their prey on the wing are small and weak, the big fruit-eating bats called flying foxes (because of their fox-like or dog-like face) have very long and strong thumbs with curved "thumbnails" like claws, which they use for climbing around in trees and gripping fruit. Bat fingers have the same number of bones ours do, but they are proportionately much longer. The last bone of the "middle" finger of the Rodrigues bat (Pteropus rodricencis), for example, is actually folded behind the elbow when at rest. Look at your fingers and forearm; try to fold your fingers down against your arm, and try to imagine your fingers extending past your elbow. But don't forget to leave your thumb extending forward for gripping and climbing. Then there is the webbing that connects all the fingers except the thumb, and extends all the way along the arm and body to the ankle, and in most species continues to envelop all or part of the tail. When bats extend their fingers and arms, their wings are ready for flight. By shaping their "hands" they control the shape of their wings. Slow-motion photography (National Geographic Video) has actually shown insect bats scooping up insects in their wings and tail membranes, transferring them to their mouths in mid-flight. Truly they are unique mammals.

The order is broken down into two sub-orders, Megachiroptera, the "big bats", and Microchiroptera, the "little bats". All the insect bats are microbats; the old-world fruit bats, the flying foxes, are megabats. All the rest are in one or the other, mainly according to their size. The system breaks down, however, since some micros, like the little Jamaican fruit bat (Artibeus jamaicencis), eat fruit, and one flying fox, the Queensland blossom bat (Syconycteris australis), weighs only half an ounce.

EVOLUTIONARY ORIGINS
Since most bats eat insects, evolutionists have traditionally taught that bats evolved from primitive insectivores, as did shrews, moles, etc. Fruit-eaters merely modified their diet due to ecological pressures.

Then in the early '80s J. D. Smith (Smith pp. 347-365) suggested that megabats and microbats evolved separately, because there are many physiological differences between the two other than just size. Microbats have a complicated shoulder joint and a claw only on the thumb, for example, while megabats have a simple shoulder joint but a claw on both the thumb and first finger. Micros use echo-location, while macros mainly rely on their keen eyesight. Micro teeth are designed for prey, while mega teeth grind plant parts. Megabats can live only in the tropics, needing a year-round food supply; many microbats have the ability to hibernate through cold winters.

In 1986 Dr. John Pettigrew further proposed that flying foxes most closely resemble primates (Pettigrew p. 1), and that along with flying lemurs who also have their own order but don't actually fly, they share a common ancestor with the primates.

He based his conclusions on research that showed that primates have unique neural pathways in the brain, having to do with vision, and that these pathways were so unique that it was thought that they distinguish primates from non-primates. Dr. Pettigrew discovered that all flying foxes also have them, including the little blossom bat mentioned above, but that no microbats do. As the flying lemurs also have these pathways, he proposed that they are really all primates, sharing a common ancestor, and that powered flight in bats evolved a second time, later in evolutionary history, only coincidentally resembling that of microbats.

Since then, however, other researchers have challenged his "two-origins" idea (Gibbons p. 34). Studies with mitochondrial DNA have shown that all bats are closely related, and separate from primates. Also, there is a muscle complex in the wings of all bats that is different from birds and all gliding mammals.

Rather than saying that all the similar adaptations necessary for powered flight evolved separately in the two groups of bats, the alternative explanation is that it is actually the similar neural pathways, associated with visual acuity, that arose independently in flying foxes, flying lemurs, and primates, as all rely on their vision to find food. The microbats, in contrast, rely mostly on their hearing in echo-locating, and never developed these pathways.

EVIDENCE
In trying to understand the origins of bats, researchers can study living animals, but nobody was around millions of years ago to observe the formation of bats, so they have to rely on fossils to supply the evidence of what they propose. What, then, is the evidence? What do the fossils say? In Bioscience, May 1992, we find this quote:
"Unfortunately, the fossils available only complicate matters. They do not represent transitional morphology between quadrupedal (four-footed) animals and flying bats, and they represent animals nearly as specialized as their modern relatives" (Thewessin p. 340).

And in Bats: A Natural History, John Hill says almost the same thing:
"...all fossil bats, even the oldest, are clearly fully-developed bats and so they shed little light on the transition from their terrestrial ancestor" (Hill p. 33).

The oldest known skeleton, supposedly 60 million years old (Wilson p. 79), is a fully-formed bat which apparently could echo-locate (UCMP Berkeley).

When you ask an evolutionist to show you the ancestor of a bat, he will, in all likelihood (as does the ZooBooks volume on "Bats"), show you a mythical creature with elongated limbs connected by stretched skin gliding from branch to branch like a modern flying squirrel. It will have paws on all four limbs, and may be seen perching on a branch with skin folds hanging down (Wood and Rink, p. 6). What the evolutionist will not show you is any kind of transition between paws used for standing and running, and hand-wings used for flying. He won't show you because there is no fossil of such a creature, and he can't imagine what one would look like. He also can't explain how "survival of the fittest" would produce it. At some point elongating front toes would interfere with quadrupedal (four-footed) movement long before they could become the ribs of functional wings. And why and how upside-down? Birds perch very well right-side up. How does "survival of the fittest" turn an animal upside down, with all the physiological changes necessary for maintaining that position? Try swallowing while hanging upside-down. And what happens to your blood after a while? Yet bats eat, sleep, and mate upside down, and many also give birth in that position.

MECHANISMS OF EVOLUTION
"Survival of the fittest" is half of the standard answer when evolutionists are asked about the mechanisms of evolution. They will point to examples like Darwin's famous finches, or bacteria that become immune to antibiotics used against them. But are these examples of evolution, or of selective breeding? Is there any new information present?

In 1859 Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species, in which he presented his concept of the evolutionary development of species, based in part on his observations on the Galapagos Islands. There he observed that while there were finches on all the islands, similar to finches on the mainland of South America, the birds on each island differed in bill shape (corresponding to different diet) and in coloration, both from each other and from the "parent" form on the mainland. Similar differences were observed with species of tortoises and lizards found on the islands (Darwin p. vi). Although he admitted that fossil evidence did not support his ideas (Darwin pp 272-3, 423), Darwin postulated that the same pressures that produced such variation in birds could also account for the larger differences between species, families, and orders, and that all must have evolved from a common ancestor by an accumulation of many small changes sometime in the distant past. Most modern evolutionary thinking "evolved" from these early observations and thoughts.

Unfortunately, another famous set of observations was not published until 1866, seven years later. That's when Gregor Mendel reported his observations and experiments with the color of pea flowers (World Book Encyclopedia vol. 9 p 202). He had noted that peas in his garden had either red or white flowers, and discovered that by carefully controlling the source of pollination, he could produce peas with only white or only red flowers, or those with a mixture of the two, and that there was a regular and predictable pattern from one generation to the next. I said "unfortunately" because before this the mechanism of heredity was not understood, and people thought that characteristics acquired by one animal or plant could be passed on to its offspring, and no one knew why a red-flowered pea plant could produce peas that would have either red or white flowers (World Book Encyclopedia, vol. 9 p. 208, vol. 13, p. 398). Indeed, it was not until 1900 that the importance of Mendel's work was understood, and the concepts applied to other characteristics in both plants and animals, giving rise to the modern science of genetics. Had Darwin known about genes and chromosomes and how they affect heredity, he might have realized that as Mendel could selectively produce all red-flowered peas or all white-flowered, so "natural selection" produced finches with different bill shapes and colorations. The potential for different shapes and colors was present in the original population, and no real change or "mutation" had occurred. What Darwin saw as different species may in fact have been no more than the extreme variation between a great Dane and a Chihuahua (both are dogs) or between a miniature horse and a Clydesdale (both are horses). These extremes, while seemingly "obviously" different species altogether, are in fact genetically (if not mechanically) capable of interbreeding and producing viable offspring.

So it is with the bacteria. In any "normal" population there are a few individuals who will survive drugs that will kill all the others. When only these are left to reproduce you wind up with a new population of drug-resistant bacteria, but no mutation has occurred, contrary to popular literature (Wieland p.11).

In all these examples, there has been no gain in genetic material, no increase in information. As peas that produce only red or only white flowers have lost the gene that codes for the other color, so the birds with short heavy beaks have lost the ability to produce long, slender ones, and the bacteria have lost potential that they once had. If environmental circumstances change, they are now less adaptable, not more. Evolution, on the other hand, requires a gain in information to produce new species. Otherwise amoebas remain amoebas, fish remain fish, and bats came from other bats.

"Mutation" is the other half of the standard explanation for evolution. It is assumed that over countless generations, mistakes occur in the genetic code, producing new characteristics, and that, given enough time and mistakes, a new species results. But is this good science, or wishful thinking?

Every living thing, from the most simple virus to the most complex animal, contains in its cells very complex compounds called nucleic acid. There are two forms, called ribonucleic acid (RNA) and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) (World Book Encyclopedia vol. 14 pp. 602-603). Viruses contain only one or the other, but cells contain both. While RNA controls protein production, DNA is the main component in chromosomes, which provide the blueprint or pattern of heredity. Every time a cell divides into two, the RNA in the cell body and the DNA in the nucleus must be exactly copied, with one copy going with each cell. DNA is an incredibly complex molecule, resembling a long ladder that has been twisted into a spiral. The sides of the ladder are made up of compounds called phosphates and sugars, while the "rungs" are composed of two of four possible bases in all the possible combinations. The exact make-up and order of "rungs" varies from one kind of living thing to another. Each DNA "ladder" has about 20,000 "rungs", and each chromosome contains many thousands of DNA molecules. RNA has a similar structure, but the sugar is different, and one of the four bases is also different.

Since it is the chromosomal DNA (and in some cases RNA) that provides the blueprint for each cell and individual, if any of the thousands of rungs gets damaged, or if different combinations get substituted in the copy, that cell will be defective. Contrary to popular belief, most changes in the DNA structure (mutations) at best weaken, and at worst kill the cell. Only a very few are neutral, and beneficial changes are virtually non-existent (Sunderland pp 142-143). To produce a healthy, fully-functional individual, each copy of DNA and RNA must be identical to the original, down to the last "rung". "Weakened scales" in dinosaurs cannot logically and scientifically mutate into wondrously-complicated bird feathers, for example; far too much genetic information would need to be added to accomplish that, and mutations do not add information (Sunderland p 154). In a few rare instances, there has been a mutation that allows a bacterium to avoid the effects of an antibiotic, but only because the mutation blocked a normal function of which the drug was designed to take advantage (Wieland p. 12); again, this represents a loss of information, not a gain.

Thus "survival of the fittest" and "mutations" cannot logically produce the fully-functional hand-wing found in even the oldest known bat fossils, no matter how much time is allowed, but Darwin did not understand that. He blindly assumed just such a development, saying "Nor can I see any insuperable difficulty" (Darwin, p. 142) in getting from a gliding animal to a bat by many small steps, not understanding just how preposterous they are in the light of modern understanding of genetics and DNA.

THE ALTERNATIVE
A far simpler explanation is that bats, like cars and planes, are the product of very careful, intelligent design; all the varied shapes and features equip different bats to function in different ecological niches. All the anatomical details necessary to fly and to hang upside down have been thought of and "programmed" into the genetic code. Bat feet are totally relaxed when they are hanging (Dr. Blair Csuti, personal communication, October 17,1998), requiring effort to let go; how did that "evolve"? Bracken Cave, in south-central Texas, is home to some 20 million Mexican free-tail bats (McCracken pp 67-68). Each bat has to recognize the echo of its own call in the middle of millions of other echoes to avoid collisions and find its way. How did that ability develop through chance mutations?

The problem with accepting intelligent design is not that it is unscientific; as has already been discussed, it is evolution that is in fact unscientific in its suppositions. No, the real problem is that if you accept intelligent design, then you have to have a designer. Determining the nature and identity of that Designer gets into the realm of religion, and if there really is a Designer, then maybe the Bible is true when it talks about a God that claims to have created the universe and all that is in it, and maybe people have some accountability to that Creator. To many people, scientists and lay people alike, that accountability is unacceptable, unthinkable. There must therefore be an explanation that does not require a Creator (and they will go to great lengths, twist and ignore the facts, to come up with such an explanation). That is the real problem with accepting design rather than chance evolution, regardless of what the facts seem to indicate. In fact, several honest scientists insist that the facts do show evidence of intelligent design (see Dr. Michael Behe, Darwin's Black Box, and Dr. Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, just to name two with books; there are many more).

Astronomers are spending millions of dollars building and using huge radio-telescopes to search for non-random radio signals from outer space. It is believed that a non-random, orderly sequence would be a sign of intelligence "out there", because it couldn't happen by chance stellar activity. But when molecular biologists turn their microscopes to the study of DNA molecules, the incredible non-random sequences they observe are seen as only chance accidents. Does this make sense? Is this scientific?

At the conclusion of his book, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, Denton sums it up like this:

"...no one has ever observed the interconnecting continuum of functional forms [Darwin's many small steps] linking all known past and present species of life. The concept of the continuity of nature has existed in the mind of man, never in the facts of nature. In a very real sense, therefore, advocacy of the doctrine of continuity has always necessitated a retreat from pure empiricism, and contrary to what is widely assumed by evolutionary biologists today, it has always been the anti-evolutionists, not the evolutionists, in the scientific community who have stuck rigidly to the facts and adhered to a more strictly empirical approach" (Denton pp.353-354).

Did bats just evolve, or were they intelligently designed? Think about it. Be honest.

REFERENCES

Behe, Michael (1996). Darwin's Black Box: the Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, The Free Press, New York, N.Y.
Darwin, Charles (1872, reprint 1963). On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, 6th ed. (with new preface), The Heritage Press, New York, N.Y.
Denton, Michael (1986). Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, Adler & Adler, Bethesda, Maryland.
Gibbons, Ann (1992). Is "Flying Primate" Hypothesis Headed for a Crash Landing? Science, Apr. 3, v. 256 n. 5053, p. 34.
Hill, John E., and James D. Smith (1984). Bats: A Natural History, University of Texas Press, Austin.
McCracken, Gary F., and Mary K. Gustin (1987). Batmom's Daily Nightmare, Natural History, Oct., v. 96 n. 10, pp. 66-73.
National Geographic Society (1973). Strange Creatures of the Night [Video].
Pettigrew, Dr. John D. (1986). Are Flying Foxes Really Primates? Bats, Jun. v. 3 n. 2, pp. 1-2.
Smith, J. D., and G. Madkour (1980). Penial Morphology and the Question of Chiropteran Phylogeny, Proceedings of the 5th International Bat Research Conference, Texas Tech Press, pp. 347-365.
Sunderland, Luther D. (1988). Darwin's Enigma, 4th Ed., Master Book Publishers, Santee, CA.
Thewissen, J. G. M., and S. K. Babcock (1992). The Origin of Flight in Bats, BioScience, May, v. 42 n. 5, pp. 340-345.
UCMP Berkeley (1999). Chiroptera: Fossil Record. [On-Line]. Available: http://www.UCMP.Berkeley.EDU/mammal/eutheria/chirofr.html.
Wilson, Don E. (1997). Bats in Question, Smithsonian Institute Press, Washington D. C.
Wood, Linda C. and Deane Rink (1994). ZooBooks: "Bats". California: Wildlife Education Ltd.
World Book Encyclopedia (1999). Heredity, v. 9 pp. 200-210.
World Book Encyclopedia (1999). Mendel, Gregor Johann, v. 13 p. 398.
World Book Encyclopedia (1999). Nucleic Acid, v. 14, pp. 602-603.

"Bats and Evolution" is Copyright 1999, by Ron Lyttle

Giraffes:Animals that Stand Out in a Crowd

2007-11-06T10:16:00.001+07:00

Giraffes truly do stand out in a crowd. At the zoo or in their natural habitat of Central Africa, they tower above other beasts, and are the second largest land animals alive today (the African elephant is the largest). The length of the giraffe's neck has intrigued observers down through the years. 'How did the giraffe get its long neck?', some ask.

On witnessing a 3-meter (10 foot) shoulder high giraff stretch its 2.5 meter (8 foot) neck to its limit, and then add almost another foot with its long grasping tongue for that seemingly out-of-reach branch high in an acacia tree, some might believe that the stretching process drove the growth process for the giraffe's neck. But really, is a giraffe capable of adding anything to its stature?

If one feature did change, would it not affect the whole? Let's consider the giraffe.

The giraffe is a mammal, therefore much of its anatomy is similar to that of other mammals. Like most other mammals, the giraffe has seven neck bones. What if it did not nave seven bones between the shoulders and the base of the skull? Man's short neck supports a perfectly balanced head in the erect posture with very little effort. The giraffe's huge head must be held aloft at all times. When standing, nearly half of its approximately 225-kilogram (500 pound) neck muscles are in tension. The amount of muscle required is directly related to the number of joints that must be supported. Reducing the joints to just two, at the skull and at the chest, would reduce the weight considerably and require less energy for survival. If the shortage of food drove the neck to change, would not the number of neck bones and joints be changeable also by such evolutionary processes? Of course the problem with this design would be a loss of flexibility, and would severely increase breakability if the giraffe received a blow to the head or neck.

In the same respect, having a megajointed neck would require the exact opposite - greater energy use and greater muscle mass to be supported. This would cause the giraffe's centre of gravity to shift ahead of the front legs when the head is extended straight forward, causing the hind legs to come off the ground - assuming the front legs were strong enough. Seven neck bones is excellent design.

With the head being so high in the air, the huge heart of the giraffe must be capable of delivering sufficient oxygenrich blood three meters (10 feet) up to the brain. This would be a problem (involving too high blood pressure) when the giraffe was head-down drinking water, were it not for a unique collection of reinforced artery walls, by-pass and antipooling valves, a web of small blood vessels (the rete mirabile, or 'marvelous net')' and pressure-sensing signals that keep adequate blood flow to the brain at just the right pressure. Even to those who consider this as just 'adaptation to high gravitational pressures in its cardiovascular system', the giraffe is unique.'
Equally marvelous is the fact the blood does not pool in the legs, and a giraffe does not bleed profusely if cut on the leg. The secret lies in an extremely tough skin and an inner fascia that prevents blood pooling. This skin combination has been studied extensively by NASA scientists in their development of gravity-suits for astronauts. Equally helpful to prevent profuse bleeding is that all arteries and veins in the giraffe's legs are very internal.

The capillaries that reach the surface are extremely small, and the red blood cells are about one-third the size of their human counterparts, making capillary passage possible. It quickly becomes apparent that these unique facets of the giraffe are all interactive and interdependent with its long neck.

But there's more. The smaller red blood cells allow for more surface area and a higher and faster absorption of oxygen into the blood. This helps to retain adequate oxygen to all extremities, including the head.

The lungs work in conjunction with the heart to supply the giraffe with the necessary oxygen, but in a way that is unique to the giraffe. The giraffe's lungs are eight times the size of those of humans, and its respiratory rate is about one-third that of humans. Breathing more slowly is necessary in order to exchange the required large volume of air without causing windburn to the giraffe's rippled 3.6 meters (12 feet) of trachea. When the animal takes in a fresh breath, the oxygen-depleted previous breath cannot be totally expelled. For the giraffe this problem is compounded by the long trachea that will retain more dead air than man can inhale in one breath. There must be enough lung volume to make this 'bad air' a small percentage of the total. This is a physics problem that the giraffe has solved.

BIRTH OF GIRAFFE

To add to the wonder, the birth of a newborn giraffe seals the case for intelligent design. The new calf drops into life from 1.5 meters (five feet) up, as the mother is incapable of comfortably squatting to the ground, and to lie down during birth would be a sure invitation for a lion or other predator to attack the mother. As in all mammals, the head is disproportionately large compared to the rest of the body at birth, and it becomes a challenge to pass it down the birth canal.

The baby giraffe has the added challenge of having a very fragile long neck attaching it to the rest of its 70-kilogram (150-pound) newborn body. If the head came out first, the neck would surely break when the rest of the body fell on top of it. If the head came out last, the neck would surely break as the body weight attempted to jerk the head out of the mother. Such an apparent impasse is solved by the rear hips being much smaller than the front shoulders, and the neck is just long enough to allow the head to pass through the birth canal resting on the rear hips. The front feet exit first to break the fall on the rest of the animal. The head is supported and cushioned by the rear hips, and the neck is pliable, allowing a sharp bend around the front shoulders.

This is a perfect exit, that would be impossible in any other combination or with any other new length of neck. Within minutes the new calf is gracefully standing between the mother's legs. From birth to adulthood in just four years, the neck grows from being one-sixth to one-third of the giraffe's total height. Such growth is required for the animal to overcome its leg height and to bend to get a drink of water. The calf's first year of food is almost exclusively its mother's rich milk, which can be reached easily.

Ecologically, the giraffe is perfectly matched to its environment. There is need of a tree trimmer to keep the fast-growing shade trees from overshadowing the ground and killing the muchneeded grass that provides food for the other savanna animals. There is also need of a sentinel that can see above the tall grass and observe the movements of the predator cats. The giraffe is not only tall enough for this, but has excellent eyesight and a curious disposition. After warning other animals with several swishes of the tail, the giraffe boldly strides out of harm's way. The great body height, tough skin layers, deadly rear hoof kick, and long, rapid stride make the adult giraffe an undesirable prey for any carnivore.'

To suggest that all of this could have evolved in one class of animal, lacking any conceivable close relatives, and becoming so developed solely due to a supposed lack of food at ground level, is preposterous. Should not others which feed at ground level, being vulnerable to big cats, and being bombarded by the same cosmic radiation, have achieved a more giraffe-like stature?

Interestingly, there are others that do feed from trees. The gerenuk gazelle of Africa has the longest neck in the family of gazelles, has a long tongue, and eats leaves from trees while standing on its hind legs. The markhor goat of Afghanistan climbs trees as high as 25 feet to eat leaves from trees. Other mammals do desire the leaves of trees but none of them will ever become giraffes, and the giraffe most certainly did not come from any other 'less-than-giraffe' animal.

'We cannot know that conditions were the same in the past, but the "need to survive by reaching ever higher for food" is, like so many Darwinian explanations of its kind, little more than a post hoc speculation."' The fossil record confirms this, and the unique and marvelous design seen in this animal verifies it. The praise, glory and honour goes to the giraffe's Creator.

References

1. Percival Davis and Dean H. Kenyon, Of Pandas and People, Haughton Publishing Company, Dallas (Texas), 1989, p. 71.

2. Alan R. Hargens, Developmental Adaptations to Gravity/Cardiovascular Adaptations to Gravity in the Giraffe, Life Sciences Division, NASA Ames Research Center (California), 1994, p. 12.

3. Helen Roney Sattler, Giraffes, the Sentinels of the Savannas, Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Books, New York, 1979, p. 22.

4. Francis Hitching, The Neck of the Giraffe, Where Darwin Went Wrong, Ticknor and Fields, New York, 1982, p. 179.

Piltdown Chicken' — Another Evolutionary Hoax

2007-11-06T10:14:00.001+07:00

In 1999, National Geographic published a photograph of a creature which "proved" that birds evolved from dinosaurs. Named Archaeoraptor, it was discovered in China and trumpeted as "a true missing link in the complex chain that connects dinosaurs to birds" (Sloan 100). The photograph displayed a creature "[w]ith arms of a primitive bird and the tail of a dinosaur" (Ibid.), accompanied by statements like, "It's a missing link between terrestrial dinosaurs and birds that could actually fly" (Ibid.), and "This fossil is perhaps the best evidence since Archaeopteryx that birds did, in fact, evolve from certain types of carnivorous dinosaurs [dromaeosaurs]" (Ibid. 101).

In the Letters to the Editor of the March 2000 issue, however, paleontologist Xu Xing (Chinese Academy of Sciences) wrote that "Archaeoraptor appears to be composed of a dromaeosaur tail and a bird body." When investigative reporter Lewis Simons delved into the hoax, he uncovered

a tale of misguided secrecy and misplaced confidence, of rampant egos clashing, self-aggrandizement, wishful thinking, naive assumptions, human error, stubbornness, manipulation, backbiting, lying, corruption, and, most of all, abysmal communication (Simons 128).

A Chinese farmer had glued two separate fossils together and sold "it" to a fossil dealer who "acknowledged that he often sold 'composites'" (Ibid. 129). It found its way to Stephen Czerkas, a dinosaur enthusiast with no scientific qualifications, who contacted paleontologist Philip Currie. Simons wrote, "Currie was so distracted by other commitments around the world that he gave the Archaeoraptor project short shrift" (Ibid. 130).

Currie had reservations about the fossil, but neglected to inform Christopher Sloan, who wrote the 1999 article. Simons called this "a most damaging lapse of responsibility" on Currie's part (Ibid.). The fossil was examined by Prof. Timothy Rowe of the University of Texas who stated, "[T]here was a chance that it was a fraud" (Ibid.). Currie sent a colleague, fossil technician Kevin Aulenback, to investigate; Aulenback concluded the fossil was "a composite specimen" (Ibid. 131).

Meanwhile, Czerkas and Currie submitted a paper on the fossil to the journals Nature and Science. Simons describes the original draft:

On its fifth page the paper stated that the dromaeosaur-like tail on a birdlike creature suggested a previously unknown element in the evolution of birds from landbound dinosaurs. In short, this was what Czerkas would tell National Geographic was "a missing link" (Ibid.).

Both journals rejected the article (Ibid.131-132). Nevertheless, National Geographic went ahead and published its own version. Simons called the ensuing media frenzy a "dog and pony show for reporters". (Ibid. 132).

Currie said it was "the greatest mistake of my life." ...
... they saw what they wanted to see.

Shortly thereafter Xu informed Sloan, "I am 100% sure...that Archaeoraptor is a faked specimen" (Ibid.). Once the fraud was exposed, Czerkas admitted he had made "an idiot, bone-stupid mistake." Currie said it was "the greatest mistake of my life." Sloan stated, "I was dragging in a monster" (Ibid.). National Geographic editor-in-chief William Allen asked, "How did we get into this mess?" (Ibid. 128). Simons offers an answer: "To some prominent paleontologists who saw it ... the little skeleton was a long-sought key to the mystery of evolution" (Ibid.). That is, they saw what they wanted to see.

Criticism has been harsh. In an article on the twenty greatest scientific blunders in the past twenty years, Discover magazine listed "Piltdown Chicken," its term for the fraud. The label derives from Piltdown Man, an artificial composite of a human skull and an ape jaw "discovered" in 1912 (Newman 80). Just as earlier paleontologists embraced Piltdown Man because they were dying for evidence of human evolution, contemporary scientists embraced Archaeoraptor because of their desperation to prove that birds evolved from dinosaurs.

References:

Newman, Judith. (2000). "Twenty of the Greatest Blunders in Science in the Last Twenty Years." Discover 21, no. 10.

Simons, Lewis (2000). "Archaeoraptor Fossil Trail." National Geographic 198, no. 4.

Sloan, Christopher (1999). "Feathers for T. Rex?" National Geographic 196, no. 5.

Xbox 360 Cooling Solutions !

2007-11-06T10:12:00.000+07:00

Hey I have an xbox 360 im sure a few of you all have one also thankfully I have not been hit with a RROd (Red Ring of Death ) yet ^^ Lucky me i guess for now... anyways i was reading around and it seems so many people have a huge cooling issue with the system... and I was thinking wouldn't it cool itself much more efficiently if it was in the Vertical position But upside down so that the Bottom ( largest open vent) ( which has no fans btw) would allow the heat to escape upwards ( Heat goes up cold goes down du) im surprised no one has thought of this before and was wondering if anyone could think of any negative reasons not to turn your xbox 360 upside down ( my theory is by exposing the largest opening up it would allow the most heat to naturaly rise out of the system).... I may be doing this to prolong the life of my system ( i have the elite version its so sexy and halo 3 is mad fun online) ....This weekend I am also planning to construct a throne *cough *cough "Cooling Bay" with 2 120 mm Fans powered by a 12v Adapter I was thinking of using modeling clay and then casting a mold of plastic or fiberglass making it fit like a glove to the xbox 360 and then forcing air up into the system...what do you all think?

What is an Author by Michel Foucault

2007-11-06T10:10:00.000+07:00

Michel Foucault is not a Freudian, a Marxist, a structuralist, a phenomenologist, a sociologist, or a historian, but his work draws on ideas and assumptions and methods from all of these areas or disciplines. Rather, think of Foucault, like Derrida and like Freud, as the founder of his own "school" of thought. He is a poststructuralist thinker, with affinities to most all the other theorists we've read so far, but he is enough unlike them that we should think of him in a category all his own.
Foucault starts off this essay, "What is an Author?," by discussing criticisms of a previous book, The Order of Things In this book Foucault had started an investigation into the conditions of possibility under which human beings become the objects of knowledge in certain disciplines (what we might call the "human sciences" or the "social sciences"). He was working to discover and explain the rules and laws of formation of systems of thought in the human sciences which emerge in the nineteenth century. His main method for looking at these disciplines, and how they constitute the objects of their study, was through examining "discourses," or "discursive practices."
For Foucault, a "discourse" is a body of thought and writing that is united by having a common object of study, a common methodology, and/or a set of common terms and ideas; the idea of discourse thus allows Foucault to talk about a wide variety of texts, from different countries and different historical periods and different disciplines and different genres. For example, the "discourse" on blindness would include writings by schools for the blind, writings by doctors who work with vision and blindness, novels with blind characters, and autobiographies of blind people, as well as writing about blindness from other disciplines.

The Great Learning by Confucius

2007-11-06T10:07:00.000+07:00

WHAT THE GREAT LEARNING teaches, is to illustrate illustrious virtue; to renovate the people; and to rest in the highest excellence.
The point where to rest being known, the object of pursuit is then determined; and, that being determined, a calm unperturbedness may be attained to. To that calmness there will succeed a tranquil repose. In that repose there may be careful deliberation, and that deliberation will be followed by the attainment of the desired end.
Things have their root and their branches. Affairs have their end and their beginning. To know what is first and what is last will lead near to what is taught in the Great Learning.
The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the kingdom, first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things.
Things being investigated, knowledge became complete. Their knowledge being complete, their thoughts were sincere. Their thoughts being sincere, their hearts were then rectified. Their hearts being rectified, their persons were cultivated. Their persons being cultivated, their families were regulated. Their families being regulated, their states were rightly governed. Their states being rightly governed, the whole kingdom was made tranquil and happy.
From the Son of Heaven down to the mass of the people, all must consider the cultivation of the person the root of everything besides.
It cannot be, when the root is neglected, that what should spring from it will be well ordered. It never has been the case that what was of great importance has been slightly cared for, and, at the same time, that what was of slight importance has been greatly cared for.

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY by Erasmus

2007-11-06T10:05:00.000+07:00

At what rate soever the world talks of me (for I am not ignorant what an ill report Folly has got, even among the most foolish), yet that I am that she, that only she, whose deity recreates both gods and men, even this is a sufficient argument, that I no sooner stepped up to speak to this full assembly than all your faces put on a kind of new and unwonted pleasantness. So suddenly have you cleared your brows, and with so frolic and hearty a laughter given me your applause, that in truth as many of you as I behold on every side of me seem to me no less than Homer’s gods drunk with nectar and nepenthe; whereas before, you sat as lumpish and pensive as if you had come from consulting an oracle. And as it usually happens when the sun begins to show his beams, or when after a sharp winter the spring breathes afresh on the earth, all things immediately get a new face, new color, and recover as it were a certain kind of youth again: in like manner, by but beholding me you have in an instant gotten another kind of countenance; and so what the otherwise great rhetoricians with their tedious and long-studied orations can hardly effect, to wit, to remove the trouble of the mind, I have done it at once with my single look.
But if you ask me why I appear before you in this strange dress, be pleased to lend me your ears, and I’ll tell you; not those ears, I mean, you carry to church, but abroad with you, such as you are wont to prick up to jugglers, fools, and buffoons, and such as our friend Midas once gave to Pan. For I am disposed awhile to play the sophist with you; not of their sort who nowadays boozle young men’s heads with certain empty notions and curious trifles, yet teach them nothing but a more than womanish obstinacy of scolding: but I’ll imitate those ancients who, that they might the better avoid that infamous appellation of sophi or wise, chose rather to be called sophists. Their business was to celebrate the praises of the gods and valiant men. And the like encomium shall you hear from me, but neither of Hercules nor Solon, but my own dear self, that is to say, Folly. Nor do I esteem a rush that call it a foolish and insolent thing to praise one’s self. Be it as foolish as they would make it, so they confess it proper: and what can be more than that Folly be her own trumpet? For who can set me out better than myself, unless perhaps I could be better known to another than to myself? Though yet I think it somewhat more modest than the general practice of our nobles and wise men who, throwing away all shame, hire some flattering orator or lying poet from whose mouth they may hear their praises, that is to say, mere lies; and yet, composing themselves with a seeming modesty, spread out their peacock’s plumes and erect their crests, while this impudent flatterer equals a man of nothing to the gods and proposes him as an absolute pattern of all virtue that’s wholly a stranger to it, sets out a pitiful jay in other’s feathers, washes the blackamoor white, and lastly swells a gnat to an elephant. In short, I will follow that old proverb that says, “He may lawfully praise himself that lives far from neighbors.” Though, by the way, I cannot but wonder at the ingratitude, shall I say, or negligence of men who, notwithstanding they honor me in the first place and are willing enough to confess my bounty, yet not one of them for these so many ages has there been who in some thankful oration has set out the praises of Folly; when yet there has not wanted them whose elaborate endeavors have extolled tyrants, agues, flies, baldness, and such other pests of nature, to their own loss of both time and sleep. And now you shall hear from me a plain extemporary speech, but so much the truer. Nor would I have you think it like the rest of orators, made for the ostentation of wit; for these, as you know, when they have been beating their heads some thirty years about an oration and at last perhaps produce somewhat that was never their own, shall yet swear they composed it in three days, and that too for diversion: whereas I ever liked it best to speak whatever came first out.
But let none of you expect from me that after the manner of rhetoricians I should go about to define what I am, much less use any division; for I hold it equally unlucky to circumscribe her whose deity is universal, or make the least division in that worship about which everything is so generally agreed. Or to what purpose, think you, should I describe myself when I am here present before you, and you behold me speaking? For I am, as you see, that true and only giver of wealth whom the Greeks call Moria, the Latins Stultitia, and our plain English Folly. Or what need was there to have said so much, as if my very looks were not sufficient to inform you who I am? Or as if any man, mistaking me for wisdom, could not at first sight convince himself by my face the true index of my mind? I am no counterfeit, nor do I carry one thing in my looks and another in my breast. No, I am in every respect so like myself that neither can they dissemble me who arrogate to themselves the appearance and title of wise men and walk like asses in scarlet hoods, though after all their hypocrisy Midas’ ears will discover their master. A most ungrateful generation of men that, when they are wholly given up to my party, are yet publicly ashamed of the name, as taking it for a reproach; for which cause, since in truth they are morotatoi, fools, and yet would appear to the world to be wise men and Thales, we’ll even call them morosophous, wise fools.
Nor will it be amiss also to imitate the rhetoricians of our times, who think themselves in a manner gods if like horse leeches they can but appear to be double-tongued, and believe they have done a mighty act if in their Latin orations they can but shuffle in some ends of Greek like mosaic work, though altogether by head and shoulders and less to the purpose. And if they want hard words, they run over some worm-eaten manuscript and pick out half a dozen of the most old and obsolete to confound their reader, believing, no doubt, that they that understand their meaning will like it the better, and they that do not will admire it the more by how much the less they understand it. Nor is this way of ours of admiring what seems most foreign without its particular grace; for if there happen to be any more ambitious than others, they may give their applause with a smile, and, like the ass, shake their ears, that they may be thought to understand more than the rest of their neighbors.
But to come to the purpose: I have given you my name, but what epithet shall I add? What but that of the most foolish? For by what more proper name can so great a goddess as Folly be known to her disciples? And because it is not alike known to all from what stock I am sprung, with the Muses’ good leave I’ll do my endeavor to satisfy you. But yet neither the first Chaos, Orcus, Saturn, or Japhet, nor any of those threadbare, musty gods were my father, but Plutus, Riches; that only he, that is, in spite of Hesiod, Homer, nay and Jupiter himself, divum pater atque hominum rex, the father of gods and men, at whose single beck, as heretofore, so at present, all things sacred and profane are turned topsy-turvy. According to whose pleasure war, peace, empire, counsels, judgments, assemblies, wedlocks, bargains, leagues, laws, arts, all things light or serious—I want breath—in short, all the public and private business of mankind is governed; without whose help all that herd of gods of the poets’ making, and those few of the better sort of the rest, either would not be at all, or if they were, they would be but such as live at home and keep a poor house to themselves. And to whomsoever he’s an enemy, ’tis not Pallas herself that can befriend him; as on the contrary he whom he favors may lead Jupiter and his thunder in a string. This is my father and in him I glory. Nor did he produce me from his brain, as Jupiter that sour and ill-looked Pallas; but of that lovely nymph called Youth, the most beautiful and galliard of all the rest. Nor was I, like that limping blacksmith, begot in the sad and irksome bonds of matrimony. Yet, mistake me not, ’twas not that blind and decrepit Plutus in Aristophanes that got me, but such as he was in his full strength and pride of youth; and not that only, but at such a time when he had been well heated with nectar, of which he had, at one of the banquets of the gods, taken a dose extraordinary.
And as to the place of my birth, forasmuch as nowadays that is looked upon as a main point of nobility, it was neither, like Apollo’s, in the floating Delos, nor Venus-like on the rolling sea, nor in any of blind Homer’s as blind caves: but in the Fortunate Islands, where all things grew without plowing or sowing; where neither labor, nor old age, nor disease was ever heard of; and in whose fields neither daffodil, mallows, onions, beans, and such contemptible things would ever grow, but, on the contrary, rue, angelica, bugloss, marjoram, trefoils, roses, violets, lilies, and all the gardens of Adonis invite both your sight and your smelling. And being thus born, I did not begin the world, as other children are wont, with crying; but straight perched up and smiled on my mother. Nor do I envy to the great Jupiter the goat, his nurse, forasmuch as I was suckled by two jolly nymphs, to wit, Drunkenness, the daughter of Bacchus, and Ignorance, of Pan. And as for such my companions and followers as you perceive about me, if you have a mind to know who they are, you are not like to be the wiser for me, unless it be in Greek: this here, which you observe with that proud cast of her eye, is Philantia, Self-love; she with the smiling countenance, that is ever and anon clapping her hands, is Kolakia, Flattery; she that looks as if she were half asleep is Lethe, Oblivion; she that sits leaning on both elbows with her hands clutched together is Misoponia, Laziness; she with the garland on her head, and that smells so strong of perfumes, is Hedone, Pleasure; she with those staring eyes, moving here and there, is Anoia, Madness; she with the smooth skin and full pampered body is Tryphe, Wantonness; and, as to the two gods that you see with them, the one is Komos, Intemperance, the other Eegretos hypnos, Dead Sleep. These, I say, are my household servants, and by their faithful counsels I have subjected all things to my dominion and erected an empire over emperors themselves. Thus have you had my lineage, education, and companions.
And now, lest I may seem to have taken upon me the name of goddess without cause, you shall in the next place understand how far my deity extends, and what advantage by it I have brought both to gods and men. For, if it was not unwisely said by somebody, that this only is to be a god, to help men; and if they are deservedly enrolled among the gods that first brought in corn and wine and such other things as are for the common good of mankind, why am not I of right the alpha, or first, of all the gods? who being but one, yet bestow all things on all men. For first, what is more sweet or more precious than life? And yet from whom can it more properly be said to come than from me? For neither the crab-favoured Pallas’ spear nor the cloud-gathering Jupiter’s shield either beget or propagate mankind; but even he himself, the father of gods and king of men at whose very beck the heavens shake, must lay by his forked thunder and those looks wherewith he conquered the giants and with which at pleasure he frightens the rest of the gods, and like a common stage player put on a disguise as often as he goes about that, which now and then he does, that is to say the getting of children: And the Stoics too, that conceive themselves next to the gods, yet show me one of them, nay the veriest bigot of the sect, and if he do not put off his beard, the badge of wisdom, though yet it be no more than what is common with him and goats; yet at least he must lay by his supercilious gravity, smooth his forehead, shake off his rigid principles, and for some time commit an act of folly and dotage. In fine, that wise man whoever he be, if he intends to have children, must have recourse to me. But tell me, I beseech you, what man is that would submit his neck to the noose of wedlock, if, as wise men should, he did but first truly weigh the inconvenience of the thing? Or what woman is there would ever go to it did she seriously consider either the peril of child-bearing or the trouble of bringing them up? So then, if you owe your beings to wedlock, you owe that wedlock to this my follower, Madness; and what you owe to me I have already told you. Again, she that has but once tried what it is, would she, do you think, make a second venture if it were not for my other companion, Oblivion? Nay, even Venus herself, notwithstanding whatever Lucretius has said, would not deny but that all her virtue were lame and fruitless without the help of my deity. For out of that little, odd, ridiculous May-game came the supercilious philosophers, in whose room have succeeded a kind of people the world calls monks, cardinals, priests, and the most holy popes. And lastly, all that rabble of the poets’ gods, with which heaven is so thwacked and thronged, that though it be of so vast an extent, they are hardly able to crowd one by another.
But I think it is a small matter that you thus owe your beginning of life to me, unless I also show you that whatever benefit you receive in the progress of it is of my gift likewise. For what other is this? Can that be called life where you take away pleasure? Oh! Do you like what I say? I knew none of you could have so little wit, or so much folly, or wisdom rather, as to be of any other opinion. For even the Stoics themselves that so severely cried down pleasure did but handsomely dissemble, and railed against it to the common people to no other end but that having discouraged them from it, they might the more plentifully enjoy it themselves. But tell me, by Jupiter, what part of man’s life is that that is not sad, crabbed, unpleasant, insipid, troublesome, unless it be seasoned with pleasure, that is to say, folly? For the proof of which the never sufficiently praised Sophocles in that his happy elegy of us, “To know nothing is the only happiness,” might be authority enough, but that I intend to take every particular by itself.
And first, who knows not but a man’s infancy is the merriest part of life to himself, and most acceptable to others? For what is that in them which we kiss, embrace, cherish, nay enemies succor, but this witchcraft of folly, which wise Nature did of purpose give them into the world with them that they might the more pleasantly pass over the toil of education, and as it were flatter the care and diligence of their nurses? And then for youth, which is in such reputation everywhere, how do all men favor it, study to advance it, and lend it their helping hand? And whence, I pray, all this grace? Whence but from me? by whose kindness, as it understands as little as may be, it is also for that reason the higher privileged from exceptions; and I am mistaken if, when it is grown up and by experience and discipline brought to savor something like man, if in the same instant that beauty does not fade, its liveliness decay, its pleasantness grow