As used in ancient Babylon...

Take them away from home

(Dan 1:3) Separate them from supportive family, friends, church and anyone who know them well. Don't let them remember to phone, email or write back for prayer support. Make them think they're by themselves.

Change their reading habits

(Dan 1:4) Give them required reading of textbooks bursting with humanistic philosophy and all things anti-God. Keep them away from their Bible and helpful books using: lie-ins; late assignments; the internet; friendly flatmates; tiredness; nights out; and whatever else it takes.

Change their speaking habits

(Dan 1:4) Surround them with blasphemy, crude talk, dirty jokes, disrespectful comments and unloving conversation. Fill their discussions with agnosticism, atheism, pluralism and legitimate-sounding ideas. Keep them out of churches and prayer meetings where they will hear the language of their true homeland.

Change their food and drink habits

(Dan 1:5) Stuff them with take-aways, eat-ins, mass produced mush and microwave meals. Tell them their body doesn't matter if their soul is healthy. Play down the dangers of alcohol. Tell them they're strong and above temptation.

Change their identity

(Dan 1:7) Hide their connection to the living God. Steer them away from radical living by exaggerating the damage that being labelled as a stereotype causes. Keep their wonderful, life-changing, essential, unmatchable faith a secret and an embarrassment.

Threaten defeat

(Dan 1:19-21) Convince them that living differently is impossible, they'll never keep it up and it can only damage their chances of success in life. Make less important issues into big issues: their reputation; making friends; studying hard; fitting in; relating to people; being influential; and feeling comfortable.

Day 1 The cell with the genetic instructions from the Mum and the Dad divides into two then four then eight, and on and on.

18 Days A minature heart is forming. Soon, eyes will begin to appear.

24 Days The heart begins to beat.

30 Days The child has grown 10,000 times its original size to 1/4" long. Blood is flowing in the baby's veins but stays separate from the mother's blood.

42 Days The skeleton is formed. The brain coordinates the movement of muscles and organs and reflex responses have begun.

43 Days Brain waves can be recorded.

7 Weeks Lips are sensitive to touch and ears may resemble family patterns.

9 Weeks Fingerprints are engraved and thumb-sucking occours.

10 Weeks The whole body is sensitive to touch. The child squints, swallows, puckers up their brow and frowns.

12 Weeks The baby can kick, turn feet, open the mouth, make a fist, and more.

4 Months The child can grasp with hands, swim and turn somersaults

6 Months Hair starts to grow. Weight is about 22oz. babies botn at the age have survived.

7 Months Eyelids open and close, eyes look around. Hands grip strongly. Mother's voice can be heard and recognized.

8 Months Weight is over 2lbs and it's getting a bit tight.

9 Months Born! 255 - 275 days after conception. Around 41 out of the 45 generations of cell divisions that will happen throughout the child's entire life have already take place.

Most abortion occours between 7 and 12 weeks and is completly legally. Some people claim that a 12 week old child is not a human being, it's only a "foetus", which means that abortion is not murder. That is a cruel lie which costs hundreds of thousands defenceless lives every year. A baby is a human whether it is on the outside or the inside. How can you claim otherwise? God talks about knowing us before he formed us in the womb (Jeremiah 1:5). He didn't 'know us before we popped out'. God sees us as human even whilst we're in Mum's tum. Birth is sometimes called the 'miracle of life'. Miracles should be considered with awe. Let's remind ourself how incredible new life is.

Imagine hearing some Jesus' teachings with your own ears. How amazing would that be? Imagine meeting him face to face and talking with him! How amazing would that be? Now think of Mary and Joseph. Imagine being the parent of Jesus, the much awaited Messiah, eagerly anticipated by the entrie Jewish nation and the one who was to set the world free. How amazing would that be? No wonder Mary was called 'highly favoured' by the angel. I doubt parents have ever learnt so much from their child. Think how concious Joseph felt as Jesus was standing next to him as he did his carpentry. Jesus would never have gotten angry when a chair leg didn't fit in the hole, or when he hit his thumb with the chisel. Or think how Mary felt when Jesus never complained about doing the washing or sweeping his room. It must have been such an incredible experience, having a child who always obeyed them without ever complaining or arguing.

It must have been quite a shock when James came along!

I'm reading a book called 7 Men who Rule the World from the Grave and it contatins a good summary of science. At heart, science is observation - more careful and patient than our ususal, casual observations ("Hmmm... nice tree") but nevertheless, it's still observation. Here are some of the things it observes:

1. Entities: things that exist, ranging from simple ("this is a rock") to more analytical ("this is granite").
2. Combinations of entities: what things usually go together ("this moss with this rock", or "thunder and lightning with these air conditions").
3. Phenomena: things that happen when the entities interact ("water + sodium = fire!").

Science does most of its observing by performing experiments. It brings certain entities together and watches closely for the phenomena that happen; carefully controlling the environment to gain an accurate understanding of the phenomena. Science is all about finding out the facts.

It also goes a step further. After discovering all these nice things about enti-majiggies and phenoma-wotsits it then suggests practical uses of what it has observed. 'Hey!' a big lightbulb appears over somebody's head one day, "by adding sodium to water it causes fire, we could use that to start a rocket engine". So many of the observations that are made by science become practical and useful to everyday life. That is how science gains respects: it produces wonders. It certainly deserves that respect but sometimes we can give it a little too much credit...

Science has its limitations. Here are some useful ones to think about:

1. It cannot know the ultimate nature of things. Science deals with electricty but doesn't tell us what electricity is, what its purpose is, why it is here. Science can tell us what things do but not what they are.
2. It cannot know 'Why'. Imagine a little kid: "Why does the sun come up?", "Because the earth rotates". "Why does the earth rotate?", "Because of the gravity caused by its mass". "Why does mass cause gravity?"... etc. This may seem silly but even for grown-ups, when you reach the end of the line science does not answer the question "why?".
3. It cannot control the forces. In an experiment, a scientist may control the temperature, not allowing the ice to melt in one flask (at 50 degrees) and causing the ice to melt in the other (at 100 degrees). But at the end of the day, he wasn't the one who decided that ice melts at 100 degrees, he is just observing the fact.
4. It cannot say what ought to be. Again, it's just observing what happens and can't make judgments on what is right to happen and what is wrong to happen.
5. It cannot prove the past. Science relies on observation. We observe the present and try to predict what has happened in the past but we simply cannot say for certain. We can't prove the past because the past cannot be observed.
6. It cannot predict the future with certainty. Yes, we know that putting sodium in a bucket of water will produce fire but what if there is an undiscovered element called Glurdge present at the same time? Think about this: would you get on a plane that worked in theory but hadn't been tested?

Quite a list! Science has more limitations than we often imagine. Think about it in practice: science observes that "this is a knife" and "it is made of metal". It can also observe the phenomena "knife + rock = rock chipped away" or "knife + heart = heart stops beating". Science observes that the knife is a knife if it is used to carve a statue or kill a friend. Morals are not a scientific thing.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against science - I'm just against trusting science. Science is a brilliant tool for discovering God's universe, a God that most certainly is worth trusting.