McCain shies away from religion talk - Jonathan Martin - Politico.com:

Raised Episcopalian, McCain now attends a Baptist megachurch in Phoenix. But he has not been baptized and rarely talks of his faith in anything but the broadest terms or as it relates to how it enabled him to survive 5 ½ years in captivity as a POW.

Notice how the reporter takes the Baptist view of baptism as being definitive. I’m pretty sure McCain, if he was “raised episcopalian,” WAS baptized as a baby. Baptists, of course, don’t recognize that. They only baptize for church membership. Saying McCain hasn’t been baptized in the Baptist megachurch simply means that he has not joined the Baptist church. That the Baptist view of baptism is the only one secular reporters even know is evident again in the story about the Pope baptizing that Muslim journalist, saying that he was “baptized a Catholic.” As M. Z. Hemingway pointed out, you are baptized into Christ, not into the particular denomination that baptized you, at least according to non-Baptist theologies. Baptism makes you a Christian, not a member of a particular denomination.

But what do you think about the way John McCain keeps his faith private? He does write about it in his book recounting his five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp. A lot of people, actually, are reticent about talking about such things in public. Is that a sign of a lack of faith?

UPDATE: Some commenters are saying I don’t have the Baptist view of baptism right, that baptism is not for church membership. If that’s so, thanks for the correction, but I’d like to learn more. Growing up in a heavily Baptist community, I heard this teaching about baptism that I have described.

Isn’t it true that a person who joins a Baptist church, if he was baptized in another denomination has to be baptized again? I thought that held true even if he had been immersed. Or is the mode of baptism the key, not accepting sprinkling but accepting immersion? I have heard that re-baptism is done sometimes even when going from one Baptist congregation to another. Help me out, here. Are there any Baptist pastors reading this who could elucidate the Baptist teaching and practice?

Cow-human cross embryo lives three days:

HUMAN-cow embryos have been created in a world first at Newcastle University in England, hailed by the scientific community, but labelled “monstrous” by opponents.

A team has grown hybrid embryos after injecting human DNA into eggs taken from cows’ ovaries, which had most of their genetic material removed.

The embryos survived for three days and are intended to provide a limitless supply of stem cells to develop therapies for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and spinal cord injuries, overcoming a worldwide shortfall in human embryos.

Notice how this story IMMEDIATELY goes to the sob-story justification that generating such unnatural creatures and then killing them will have such great benefits by and by. The reporter, though, admits later in the story that this experiment, in fact, did NOT produce any stem cell lines.

Such cruel and unnatural experimentation, I believe, is the true Tower of Babel of our times. Instead of the spiral ramps of the Babylonian ziggurats, we are building spirals of DNA molecules.

Thanks to Ned for giving the definitive answer to the great prophet Corky who is suing to erect a monument giving the principles of the religion he invented, that being only fair since a Utah town has a monument of the Ten Commandments. (See the post below). Ned’s handles it by taking the religion seriously, which is a great way of refuting bad ideas. His comment:

Well, if Summum is mind and the universe is a mental creation, why not enshrine that in a mental monument?

Plus if everything according to the Summum worldview is in motion, where would we put such a monument and where would we later go to find it?

Also, everything has its opposites. Sounds to me like this monument would be the opposite of the Ten Commandments monument. But wait, opposites are identical in nature, so why have two monuments of the same nature just differing in degrees?!?!?

If these thoughts don’t make sense at the moment, just wait. All paradoxes may be reconciled!

Can you think of other beliefs that can be exposed by taking them seriously?