The Top One Percent

This photo was taken by a soldier in Afghanistan of a helo rescue mission. The pilot is a PA Guard guy who flies EMS choppers in civilian life. Now how many people on the planet do you reckon could set the butt end of a chopper down on the roof top of a shack on a steep mountain cliff and hold it there while soldiers load wounded men in the rear??? If this does not impress you ... nothing ever will. Gives me the chills and a serious case of vertigo ... I can't even imagine having the nerve ... much less the talent and ability ... God Bless our military!!!!!

Thanks to dear friend Rose for this.

Every day we need to remember that our sons and daughters, husbands and wives in the military are putting themselves in danger to protect us at home. They are the best, the top 1 percent of Americans. They are joined in that elite group by the fire fighters and police whose heroic deeds we remembered yesterday. God bless them and America.

I took off blogging the last few days to prepare my Omnilore talk Thursday on "Criticism of the Evolutionary Origins of Religion." It is based on the so-called science of evolutionary psychology. I've come to the conclusion that evo-psycho is just another Darwinist assult on God camouflaged as real science. More on that later.

But I'm happy to report today that rumors that God is dead in America are premature, to say the least.

Americans remain a people of great faith: 95 percent believe in God and 89 percent belong to a religion, according to a survey released yesterday by Baylor University. Seven out of ten Americans approved of prayer in schools.

The survey found 33.6 percent of Americans, or roughly 100 million people, are evangelical Protestants by affiliation. Evangelical Protestants are consistently supportive of conservative political issues such as military spending, allowing school prayer and government promotion of values. Conservative Catholics share those beliefs.

Some of the most interesting answers in the poll regard how people actually view the personality of God. Researchers came up with four categories:

An authoritarian God who metes out punishment -- 31 percent answered

A benevolent God who is less willing to condemn people -- 23 percent

A critical God who does not interact with the world but deals out punishment in the afterlife -- 16 percent

A distant God who sets the laws of nature in motion but is no longer involved in events of this world -- 25 percent

The type of God someone believes in is "highly predictive of a whole range of behavior, from politics to key moral issues of the day," said Byron Johnson, an author of the survey.

"If you believe in a highly authoritative God, you're more likely to go to church.

If you believe in a distant God, you're more likely to vote Democratic."

Only 4 percent of Americans believe that God picks sides in partisan politics. Hmmm...