The Holiday Season

[The following was written back in late November, but I forgot about it. Enjoy it, mid-January. -scikidus]

It's finally here.

The sun sets early over New Jersey, the trees are stuck in post-peak, so the yellow sunlight illuminates the yellow leaves.

Today's Thanksgiving, and it certainly feels like it.

For the first time in years we're making a large chunk of the feast, so the house is filled with the aromas of pumpkin, nutmeg, ginger, and cinnamon.

I'm sitting on my windowsill, and the cool crisp air of fall, air of the season, is lightly blowing in.

It's hardly 2:30, but already the afternoon shadows are long. Trace leaves litter the streets as pedestrians slowly amble down the West Side's characteristic wide sidewalks. The sky is a pure, lightened blue, with one or two faint, wispy clouds added in as an afterthought. The air also carries the faint scent of pine, wafting from the Christmas tree vendors from Canada setting up shop down the block.

Unlike most days in the City, quiet is noticeably more common today, instead of the norm of din. Relatives of strangers arrive, bearing flowers, bags of food, and the occasional headache. For a brief moment in a hectic city, NY license plates are less common.

People are walking slowly, cars are driving slowly.

I'm glad I'm not the only one absorbing the magic of the day.

YouTube PM Trolling Fails

This is here to record a conversation between a creationist troll and 24 other YouTubers (the troll spammed us all).

Sent November 21, 2009 by Eye2EyeIIIV:

Think about it...
WHERE DO CARING AND MERCY COME FROM?

While many evolutionists cry out that a loving God is inconsistent with this world of cruelty we inhabit, they conveniently overlook other things. For example, how does evolution explain charity, and caring? If evolution is true, the driving force of nature is "survival of the fittest". Those less able to compete are destined to die. Any attempt to rescue these "less competitive" people would be to work AGAINST the most fundamental force of nature. The existence of doctors, hospitals, charitable organizations, and even police force is contrary to raw evolutionary forces.
The evolutionist has no basis for moral judgments. If man is just the result of millions of years of evolution, our behavior is based on random chemical reactions. There is no ultimate moral code. All morality is relative. So if a person needs money, why is it wrong to rob someone or a bank? According to evolution, the stronger person should succeed. Might makes right. So in the evolutionary view, such violence is a natural, and necessary, part of the world.
Those who have a worldview based on the Bible have a consistent basis for acts of kindness, charity, or caring. We are commanded in Scripture to love our neighbors as ourselves, to perform acts of mercy, and to care for the widows and orphans. If we take evolution to its logical conclusion, we will conclude that these widows and orphans should die because they are a drain on the resources of nature.
Only true Christians ultimately offer the world a basis to make moral judgments. Those who reject the Bible have no basis for morality.

Hit the jump for the responses.