In 1998, Michael Crichton, author of the best-seller Jurassic Park, wrote a book entitled State of Fear, a fictional look at a global disaster caused by eco-terrorists. To prepare for the writing of the book, Crichton researched global disasters. He was particularly intrigued with what happened in Chernobyl, one of the worst man-made disasters in history. He was surprised to find, though, that Chernobyl ...

In The Story of Christian Theology, theologian Roger Olsen writes:

A popular misconception—perhaps a Christian urban legend—is that the United States Secret Service never shows bank tellers counterfeit money when teaching them to identify it. The agents who do the training, so the legend goes, show bank tellers only examples of genuine money so that when the phony money appears before them ...

Seatbelts can be a hassle. Some people just don't want to be bothered even when the law requires them to buckle up. According to the Associated Press, a New Zealander named Ivan Segedin took it to an extreme. The police ticketed him 32 times over five years for failing to use his seat belt. Even though this was costing him big money, Segedin refused to buckle up. Finally, instead of obeying the law, ...

A new, highly efficient system is being used by San Francisco and New York City to detect the presence of toxins in a city's water supply, a possible sign of a terrorist attack. They have found that the best tool for monitoring such threats are bluegills, those little fish so many catch on a lazy summer afternoon.

According to an article by the Associated Press, a small number of bluegills are kept ...

Radical Islamic clerics are undermining the World Health Organization's efforts to vaccinate children in Pakistan. Whenever vaccines are handed out to aid the country in its fight against disease, clerics spread rumors that the medicine is actually an effort to sterilize children. They call the medicine "infidel vaccines." The idea fashioned in the minds of whoever will listen is simple: "The health ...

Scotland Yard recently conducted a private exhibition of forged paintings for art dealers. The objective was to send a warning to their select audience about the sale of forgeries, which some experts estimate make up 40 percent of the art market. The sale of these fakes can undermine the value of the genuine articles.

The forgeries at the exhibit were created with remarkable proficiency. Reliance on ...

Camp Quest West, just north of Sacramento, California, is no church camp. Designed for children of agnostics, atheists, freethinkers, and humanists, the mission of the camp is to "promote respect for others with different viewpoints, values, and beliefs." It goes one step further to say, "we deplore efforts … to seek to explain the world in supernatural terms and to look outside nature for ...

The January 29, 2007, issue of TIME magazine was all about the brain. The lead article, "The Mystery of Consciousness," was by Dr. Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard. While marveling at the workings of the brain, Pinker clearly thinks we have only the brain—no eternal soul. At the end of the article he writes:

And when you think about it, the doctrine of a life-to-come ...

Losing PlayStation privileges or being confined to a room would be hard enough for most children, but at the tender age of ten, Sajani Shakya almost lost her status as a living goddess. In the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal, living goddesses—called Kumari—are chosen from the same Hindu caste as Buddha and worshiped as deity. As Sajani soon learned, with the elevated status came elevated expectations. ...

Pastor Mike Breaux tells the following story of when his daughter Jodie answered God's call to go into missions work:

During her junior year of high school, Jodie struggled to find a faith of her own. She wanted to know in her heart that all of what she'd been taught to believe was true and that Jesus Christ was real. Honestly, she was headed down a dark road. But God pursued her down that road. She ...