Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

Communist China Invades South Korea's Diet

Speaking of South Korea, a lot of South Koreans are unhappy about their ultra-pungent national dish–kimchi–being subverted by their Communist neighbor to the north. No, not North Korea. The BIG one: China.

Turns out, China is making cheap kimchi and undercutting the South Korean market for the food. They’re also threatening South Korea’s main export market for kimchi, which is in Japan.

I sympathize with the South Koreans. If a highly obnoxious nation–say, France–was dumping cheap hotdogs on the American market and threatening our main hotdog export markets (if we have any) then I’d be mad, too!

(This story reminds me: I haven’t had kimchi in a while. It’s probably fairly compatible with my diet, so maybe I’ll check that out.)

Communist China Invades South Korea’s Diet

Speaking of South Korea, a lot of South Koreans are unhappy about their ultra-pungent national dish–kimchi–being subverted by their Communist neighbor to the north. No, not North Korea. The BIG one: China.

Turns out, China is making cheap kimchi and undercutting the South Korean market for the food. They’re also threatening South Korea’s main export market for kimchi, which is in Japan.

I sympathize with the South Koreans. If a highly obnoxious nation–say, France–was dumping cheap hotdogs on the American market and threatening our main hotdog export markets (if we have any) then I’d be mad, too!

(This story reminds me: I haven’t had kimchi in a while. It’s probably fairly compatible with my diet, so maybe I’ll check that out.)

I Thought This Only Happend On Soap Operas

Man meets woman.

Man sleeps with woman.

Woman gets pregnant.

Woman demands they marry.

They do.

Baby looks nothing like man.

Woman claims babies switched in hospital.

Man threatens to sue hospital.

Woman admits baby was fathered by second man.

Marriage gets annulled.

Court orders woman to pay man $42,000 for jerking him around in this fashion.

Okay, the last one is a giveaway that this didn’t happen in America. It happened in South Korea. If it had happened here, I somehow doubt the man would have been able to be successful in court.

Breaking and Entering in Self-Defense?

A politician in Greenland is pleading self-defense on a breaking and entering charge.

Her argument is that it was too cold outside (this was Greenland, after all) and so she needed to get liquor to warm up. A local hotel which contained liquor was closed, so she forced her way in to get it.

Must . . . resist . . . making . . . joke . . . about . . . boozy politicians . . . and their . . . crazy antics.

Our Universe: Flat As A Pancake

giant-structures-in-the-universeAnother way one could argue that the universe has no beginning is if it is shaped in a funny, non-Euclidian way so that the matter and energy loops back on itself due to the curvature of space. Not all non-Euclidian shapes for space would allow it to do this, but some might.

Fortunately, scientists now have evidence that the universe is not curved. It is Euclidian or “flat” in the argot of astronomy. This was shown a few years ago by examining gigantic structures in the night sky that are too faint for the human eye to see.

That’s what the picture on the left is. It’s a section of the southern sky (think: Australia, not Dixie) showing enormous structures that we could see if our eyes were sensitive to the right frequency. To give a sense of how big these structures are, the dot that is inset in the picture is the relative size of the moon. Since the structures themselves are ultra-far away, though, they’re FREAKING HUGE.

They also contain clues about the geometry of the universe, and they reveal it to be Euclidian. So all that stuff Carl Sagan told you in Cosmos about the universe maybe being a weird shape appears to be simply wrong.

This also means that you couldn’t stand up on a high hill, use a pair of superpowerful binoculars, look out across the universe, and see the back of your own head. They may have done that in a way cool Land of the Lost episode, but that was their universe, not ours.

How Big Is The Universe?

universeIt’s 156 billion light years across. That’s the current estimate. “How can that be,” you ask, “if the universe is only supposed to be about 13.7 billion years old? How could it grow to such a size in so short a time?”

The answer that is proposed is that the universe didn’t simply start flying out from the Big Bang. It did that–the theory goes–but there is supposed to be more to it. The universe also is inflating like a balloon, so the space that the energy from the Big Bang rushed into has inflated and continues to inflate, allowing the universe to grow larger than mere expansion at the speed of light would allow.

If it helps, think of an ant walking on the surface of a balloon. The ant himself can only go so fast, but if the balloon he’s standing on is expanding, he can cover much more distance than he could under his own power. The same way, a light particle can only fly through space so fast (186,000 miles per second), but if the space it is travelling through is itself is expanding, the light particle (or wave–whatever) will cover more distance.

At least that’s the theory.

If it’s true, it’s one more reason why the universe is moving apart too rapidly for its gravity to overcome its outward momentum and pull it back in on itself. That means that the universe can’t be an eternally oscillating thing with no beginning that undergoes an endless cycle of expansions and collapses.

In other words, the new finding is supportive of the idea that the universe had a beginning and thus was created.

Judge's Ruling Out Of Touch With Reality

A Boston judge recently ruled that calling someone a homosexual when he is not does not violate slander or libel laws.

In her ruling she stated:

“In fact, a finding that such a statement is defamatory requires this court to legitimize the prejudice and bigotry that for too long have plagued the homosexual community.”

That’s nuts.

In the interest of furthering the homosexual agenda the judge has relied upon an idiotic theory of jurisprudence that would place judges in the position of philosophers. For her argument to work one would have to assume that judges should decide whether saying something about a person is objectively good or bad. This is not the job of a judge. In a slander or libel case it does not matter what the objective status of an accusation is as long as it is false and would hurt the person it is made against.

Suppose I live in a community that believes being a Martian is a bad thing. Someone then accuses me of being a Martian, when I am not. People in the community then begin to react negatively toward me, refuse me service, deny me jobs, reject doing business with my firm, etc., all because I have been falsely accused of being a Martian. In such circumstances, I should be able to sue the person who falsely accused me of being a Martian in order to get compensation for the harm that the false accusation has done to me and my reputation. It does not matter whether being a Martian is a good, neutral, or bad. The point is that someone falsely accused me of something that has negative effects on me and my reputation due to the way people react to it.

The fact is that in our society people frequently react negatively to calling someone a homosexual. Whether one approves of that or not, it happens, and judges should not prevent people from seeking legal redress of the wrong when they are falsely accused of being homosexual.

This idiot judge’s ruling would put judges in the position of adjudicating cases not based on whether a person suffers due to the making of a false charge but on whether the false charge refers to a thing that is objectively bad.

I’m sorry, but determining the objective moral status of something is a job for philosophers and theologians, not Massachusetts judges, regardless of the divine prerogatives they seem to believe they possess.

Judge’s Ruling Out Of Touch With Reality

A Boston judge recently ruled that calling someone a homosexual when he is not does not violate slander or libel laws.

In her ruling she stated:

“In fact, a finding that such a statement is defamatory requires this court to legitimize the prejudice and bigotry that for too long have plagued the homosexual community.”

That’s nuts.

In the interest of furthering the homosexual agenda the judge has relied upon an idiotic theory of jurisprudence that would place judges in the position of philosophers. For her argument to work one would have to assume that judges should decide whether saying something about a person is objectively good or bad. This is not the job of a judge. In a slander or libel case it does not matter what the objective status of an accusation is as long as it is false and would hurt the person it is made against.

Suppose I live in a community that believes being a Martian is a bad thing. Someone then accuses me of being a Martian, when I am not. People in the community then begin to react negatively toward me, refuse me service, deny me jobs, reject doing business with my firm, etc., all because I have been falsely accused of being a Martian. In such circumstances, I should be able to sue the person who falsely accused me of being a Martian in order to get compensation for the harm that the false accusation has done to me and my reputation. It does not matter whether being a Martian is a good, neutral, or bad. The point is that someone falsely accused me of something that has negative effects on me and my reputation due to the way people react to it.

The fact is that in our society people frequently react negatively to calling someone a homosexual. Whether one approves of that or not, it happens, and judges should not prevent people from seeking legal redress of the wrong when they are falsely accused of being homosexual.

This idiot judge’s ruling would put judges in the position of adjudicating cases not based on whether a person suffers due to the making of a false charge but on whether the false charge refers to a thing that is objectively bad.

I’m sorry, but determining the objective moral status of something is a job for philosophers and theologians, not Massachusetts judges, regardless of the divine prerogatives they seem to believe they possess.