Tennessee Eagle Forum Newsletter

January 19, 2015

• Alice Cooper, Christian: 'The World Belongs to Satan'
• Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God

Alice Cooper, Christian: 'The World Belongs to Satan'

We are faced with so much 'bad' news on a daily basis, I thought you all deserved a 'break today'!!
What occurred to me when I read this is that no one is beyond the love and grace of Jesus and I thought you might enjoy reading this too!!

December 31, 2014 - 11:58 AM
Alice Cooper, the shock-rock megastar who makes Marilyn Manson look like a choir boy, stopped his hard-partying ways and returned to his Bible Christian roots in the late 1980s and today, still hugely popular and touring, says he isn't shy about discussing his faith, says his early songs always warned against choosing evil, and contends that the world we live in "doesn't belong to us, it belongs to Satan."

"The world doesn't belong to us, it belongs to Satan," said Alice Cooper. "We're living with that. We're bombarded with that every day."

"[A]lmost everything I wrote was good and evil," he said. "Don't pick evil. Even when I wasn't Christian, I was saying that. God and the Devil. Don't pick the Devil. It's a bad idea."

Alice Cooper (born Vincent Damon Furnier) shot to mega-stardom in the 1970s and early 1980s with hits such as "I'm 18," 'Schools' Out" and the 1973 album, Billion Dollar Babies. He also was notorious for his demonic makeup and costumes and macabre theatrics on stage, which included simulated suicide and the decapitation of baby-dolls, among other dark antics.

Alice Cooper was nominated for two Grammy Awards and he and his band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011. He has played roles in several movies, including Wayne's World with Mike Myers and Dana Carvey and, perhaps most ironically given his shock-rock music career, Cooper is an avid and skilled golfer.

Cooper scored a two-over par 74 on The Champion Course in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., a world-class course; he played in the All Star Cup in Newport, South Wales; he has appeared in commercials for Callaway Golf equipment; and he is the author of Alice Cooper, Golf Monster.

In an interview posted on YouTube about his Christian roots, his Prodigal-son waywardness in the 1970s and early 1980s, and his reversion to Bible-based Christianity and his life today, Cooper explained that despite all the wealth and fame he attained early on, there was a huge emptiness in his life.

"I grew up in a Christian house," said Cooper. "My dad was a pastor, he was an evangelist for 25 years, and I used to go up and do missionary work with him with the Apaches in Arizona. My grandfather was a pastor for 75 years. I grew up in a Christian home. And my wife's father is a Baptist pastor. So, I was like, we were PK's - preacher's kids - so we married each other."

"So I always refer to myself as the real Prodigal Son, because I went out and the Lord let me do everything," said Cooper. "Maybe didn't let me but allowed it, and then just started reeling me back in. You know, you've seen enough. Let's bring you back to where you belong."

"When you get out there and realize you've had every car, every house, and all that, you realize that that's not the answer," he said. "There's a big nothing out there at the end of that. So, materialism doesn't mean anything. A lot of people say that there's a big God-sized hole in your heart. And when that's filled, you're really satisfied, and that's where I am right now."

Cooper then explained that his return to Christianity occurred when he tried and eventually quit drinking alcohol in the mid-1980s. (He also had a dangerous addiction to cocaine, which he discussed in the 2014 movie, Super Duper Alice Cooper.)

"I stopped drinking and I started going back to church," he said. "I was throwing up blood every morning; I was really a bad alcoholic. I wasn't a cruel or mean alcoholic but I was certainly self-destructive."

He continued, "And when I stopped drinking, I started going back to church with my wife, and there was this pastor in Phoenix who was just Hell-fire. I mean, there were 6,000 people there and he was talking to me every Sunday. Of course, he wasn't, but he was - just nailing me. Every weekend I'd get out exhausted. I'd come out of there and be, 'I don't want to go back.' It was like torture and I always came back."

"I finally realized, I had to go one side or the other," said Cooper. "I had to make a decision for one side or the other, because I was so convicted. The Lord really convicted me, saying, look, it's time to make a decision here. I said okay, and I joined a church called Camelback Bible over there, and that's where I go now. It's a really good teaching church, good strong Bible-teaching church."

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	Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God
	The odds of life existing on aother planet grow ever longer Intelligent design, anyone? Friday, January 16, 2015 By Eric Metaxas 1966 Time magazine ran a cover story asking: Is God Dead? Many have accepted the cultural narrative that he's obsolete-that as science progresses, there is less need for a "God" to explain the universe. Yet it turns out that the rumors of God's death were premature. More amazing is that the relatively recent case for his existence comes from a surprising place-science itself. Here's the story: The same year Time featured the now-famous headline, the astronomer Carl Sagan announced that there were two important criteria for a planet to support life: The right kind of star, and a planet the right distance from that star. Given the roughly octillion-1 followed by 24 zeros-planets in the universe, there should have been about septillion-1 followed by 21 zeros-planets capable of supporting life. With such spectacular odds, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, a large, expensive collection of private and publicly funded projects launched in the 1960s, was sure to turn up something soon. Scientists listened with a vast radio telescopic network for signals that resembled coded intelligence and were not merely random. But as years passed, the silence from the rest of the universe was deafening. Congress defunded SETI in 1993, but the search continues with private funds. As of 2014, researches have discovered precisely bubkis-0 followed by nothing. What happened? As our knowledge of the universe increased, it became clear that there were far more factors necessary for life than Sagan supposed. His two parameters grew to 10 and then 20 and then 50, and so the number of potentially life-supporting planets decreased accordingly. The number dropped to a few thousand planets and kept on plummeting. Even SETI proponents acknowledged the problem. Peter Schenkel wrote in a 2006 piece for Skeptical Inquirer magazine: "In light of new findings and insights, it seems appropriate to put excessive euphoria to rest . . . . We should quietly admit that the early estimates . . . may no longer be tenable." As factors continued to be discovered, the number of possible planets hit zero, and kept going. In other words, the odds turned against any planet in the universe supporting life, including this one. Probability said that even we shouldn't be here. Today there are more than 200 known parameters necessary for a planet to support life-every single one of which must be perfectly met, or the whole thing falls apart. Without a massive planet like Jupiter nearby, whose gravity will draw away asteroids, a thousand times as many would hit Earth's surface. The odds against life in the universe are simply astonishing. Yet here we are, not only existing, but talking about existing. What can account for it? Can every one of those many parameters have been perfect by accident? At what point is it fair to admit that science suggests that we cannot be the result of random forces? Doesn't assuming that an intelligence created these perfect conditions require far less faith than believing that a life-sustaining Earth just happened to beat the inconceivable odds to come into being?
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Harwell shakes up House committees

House Speaker Beth Harwell announced Saturday a major overhaul of House committee alignment and leadership.

NOTE: Harwell's list of committee assignments, as provided to media, is available by clicking on this link: HouseCommittees

For starters, the House Education Committee is split into two separate panels, each with a sub. Rep. Harry Brooks of Knoxville, chair of the former Education Committee, is now chair of the Education Administration and Planning Committee. Rep. John Forgety of Athens chairs the new Education Instruction and Programs Committee. Forgety is sponsor of a pre-filed bill on Common Core that, in some respects, follows Gov. Bill Haslam's Common Core plan.

Other changes:

-The Criminal Justice Committee, chaired last session by Rep. Eric Watson of Cleveland, who did not seek reelection, will now be led by Rep. William Lamberth of Cottontown.

-The Government Operations Committee, chaired last session by Rep. Judd Matheny of Tullahoma, will now be chaired by Rep. Jeremy Faison of Cosby. Matheny is generally regarded as one of the more staunchly conservative/tea party members of the House.

-The Health Committee, chaired last session by Rep. Bob Ramsey of Maryville, will be chaired by Rep. Cameron Sexton of Crossville. Ramsey becomes chairman of the State Government Committee - a position he previously held in the 107th General Assembly.

Ramsey goes status quo on committee chairs; Tate & Harper favored Democrats

Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey made no changes in committee chairmanships from last session in announcing committee alignment Saturday.

On first blush, the most notable move is leaving the Democratic Senate leadership - Minority Leader Lee Harris of Memphis and Democratic Caucus Chairman Jeff Yarbro - in relatively low-level committees while giving veteran Democratic Sens. Regional Tate of Memphis and Thelma Harper of Nashville more prestigious posts. He'd broadly hinted that was the plan. (Previous post HERE.)

Tate and Harper will sit as the only Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee, as the most notable example. Tate will also sit on the Education Committee and the Commerce Committee - runnerups to Finance in the influence arena for the coming session. Harris, who defeated Tate in voting for minority leader, will sit on the Government Operations and Judiciary Committees.

Note: The list of Senate committee assignments provided by Ramsey's office is HERE.

Ramsey's news release on the committee appointments is below.

News release from Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey:
(NASHVILLE, TN), January 17, 2015 - Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey (R-Blountville) today announced state Senate committee assignments for the 109th General Assembly. Lt. Governor Ramsey was elected to his fifth term as Speaker of the Senate on Tuesday.

"The most important job I have as Speaker of the Senate is appointing the committees that hear and deliberate the legislation before us as representatives of the people of Tennessee," said Lt. Governor Ramsey. "Making sure the right people are on the right committees ensures not only that good legislation gets passed but that all legislation receives a fair hearing and a thorough vetting."