Miroslav Klose, Soccer and the Case for Christian Ethics

Miroslav Klose with team mate Thomas Müller in the 2014 World Cup semi-finals. Image courtesy of Agência Brasil.



Joel Kontinen

Soccer has had its share of foul play. In the 1986 world cup quarter-finals, Diego Maradona of Argentina scored a goal against England with his hand, claiming it was the "Hand of God".

Not all players in this year’s world cup have been true gentlemen. There has been no shortage of cheating. Perhaps the worst case was that of Uruguay's Luis Suarez, who bit Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini on the shoulder.

This is a striking contrast to German striker Miroslav Klose, who with his goal against Brazil became the top World Cup scorer (16 goals) of all times.

Klose is a practicing Catholic who obviously takes his religion – and Christian morals – seriously. While playing for the German Bundesliga club Werder Bremen, Klose once protested against a penalty kick the referee had given his team through error. More recently, when playing for the Italian team Lazio against Napoli, he scored with his hand and told the referee to disallow it.

One might call it honesty, which, as many would know, is a Christian virtue.

Were Mesoamericans kicking bouncy rubber balls 3000 years ago?

The pyramids of the Mayans speak of advanced culture. Image courtesy of Sergio Blázquez, Wikipedia. The Mayans could probably also make bouncy rubber balls.

Joel Kontinen

Mesoamericans are known to have played a ball game resembling soccer thousands of years ago. A new study reveals an intriguing detail of how they made their balls.

The Aztecks, Olmec, and Maya might well have kicked a bouncy rubber ball 3000 years ago, if researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have interpreted their data correctly. They believe that the Mesoamericans knew how to mix the juice they got from morning glory vines with the latex they harvested from natural rubber trees to make the rubber more durable and bouncy.

The Aztecs also made durable sandals from rubber.

Popular culture that draws inspiration from Darwinian evolution has tried to convince us that ancient men were simple and uncivilised, although for instance they knew how to build sophisticated structures such as the pyramids and were no simpletons in other areas of their lives, either.

This might be a big surprise for Darwinists who believe that humans gradually evolved from ape-like ancestors and after that lived for ages in caves.

However, the Bible tells us that humans have been intelligent and innovative from the beginning. Many discoveries support the Genesis account of the skills of our ancestors.

You can see a photo of an ancient rubber ball on the National Geographic website.


Source:

Kaufman, Rachel. 2010. Aztec, Maya Were Rubber-Making Masters? National Geographic News (28 June).

Are ETs Chelsea fans?

”I like Chelsea F.C.” Image courtesy of Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

Recently, the UK Ministry of Defence released files that were previously classified as top-secret. They include over 6,000 pages of reports that describe “hundreds of other-worldly experiences with unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and apparent aliens across Britain.”

UFOs have changed considerably in half a century. According to The Telegraph, “Many reports in this latest file describe aircraft as big, black and triangular in shape with lights along the edges, whereas the predominant form in the 1940s to 1950s was saucer or disc-shaped.”

The documents suggest that an UFO was observed hovering over Stamford Bridge, the home stadium of Chelsea F.C., during a soccer match. It seems that the ETs have been showing a bad example by their refusal to buy tickets.

Chelsea is no doubt a good football team. It has won the English Premier League three times and the FA cup five times, including last year, but there are other top teams in Great Britain also, Manchester United and Liverpool, for instance.

So why would ETs choose to watch a Chelsea game?

The origin of UFOs also raises questions. Proxima Centauri, the nearest star outside our solar system, is 4.3 light years away. In other words, at the speed of light it would take four years and four months for a one-way trip from there to see the Chelsea game in London.

Furthermore, we have no evidence that Proxima Centauri or any other star in our “neighbourhood” has planets that could harbour life.

UFOs seem to have a strong evolution connection. If one believes that life originated and evolved randomly on earth,one would probably also suppose that it could have evolved randomly elsewhere.

Source:

UFO files: MoD documents record mystery illnesses and alien residue.Telegraph.co, 18 February 2010.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/ufo/7254648/UFO-files-MoD-documents-record-mystery-illnesses-and-alien-residue.html