Department of Natural Resources

Purchase hunting/fishing license, environmental plates, watercraft registration and learn about conservation.

Flora and Fauna of Illinois

State government information resources.

ILCF - Illinois Conservation Foundation

Preserves and enhances precious natural resources by supporting and fostering ecological, educational, and recreational programs. Includes program overviews, special events, donation forms, links, and contacts.

Illinois Clean Coal Institute (ICCI)

State of Illinois (U.S.) coal research and development program with emphasis on continued utilization, environmentally clean burning, and new markets for Illinois Basin coals. Located at the Illinois Coal Development Park in Carterville, Illinois.

Illinois Clean Coal Institute (ICCI)

Research and development program with emphasis on continued utilization, environmentally clean burning, and new markets for Illinois Basin coals. News and events, research, and staff listing.

Illinois Clean Coal Institute (ICCI)

Research and development program with emphasis on continued utilization, environmentally clean burning, and new markets for Illinois Basin coals. News and events, research, and staff listing.

Illinois Department of Natural Resources

Find out what's new at the Department, learn its history, follow legislation, download applications for licenses or permits, purchase conservation merchandise, or just learn more about the world. Publications, museums, kids and education featured.

Illinois Drycleaner Environmental Response Trust Fund

Established in response to requests by operators of retail drycleaning facilities to have financial resources available to pay for the cleanup of spills and/or leaks from their drycleaning machines and solvent storage units. Features details on its licensing, insurance, and remedial programs.

Illinois EcoWatch Network

Encourages adult volunteers, high school science teachers, and students to become a "citizen scientists" by getting involved in monitoring rivers, forests, prairies, wetlands, or urban parkland habitats.

Illinois Environmental Compliance

Periodical providing an independent source of environmental regulation, policy and enforcement data.

As a Christian, I used to see truth as being independent of experience.
My argument would go like this:

God reveals truth to us through the Holy scriptures. If my experience
contradicts that revelation, my experience is wrong.

If one were to base their belief of truth on experience, one could be a
relativist because all of our experiences are different. One person
could, hallucinate and imagine aliens landing on their roof, while
another could see nothing. In such a world, *both* people would be
right (relativism).

While I'm not a relativist, I have come to a somewhat different view
now. The above assumes that all individual experiences will be
different.

I now believe that when it comes to seeking spiritual truths,
experiences are universal.

The thinking goes like this. There is a God-shaped hole in our hearts.
As a Christian, I believe that it is an emptiness that can only be
fulfilled through a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

Because this emptiness or longing is universal, then one can gauge
spiritual truth according to contentment, joy, and fulfillment....
specifically the filling of this God-shaped hole.

If all people were to be able to fill this hole, they would all be
Christians.

Therefore, God has given us a litmus test for His truth. That litmus
test is the fulfillment of our hearts.

Jesus says in John 10:10:
"...I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more
abundantly."

In John 4, He says:

V10 - "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you,
'Give Me a drink,' you would have asked Him, and He would have
given you living water."

V13 - "Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, 14 but whoever
drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the
water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water
springing up into everlasting life."

So I am postulating that contentment and fulfillment is a litmus test
for Spiritual truth that is found in our hearts.

Of course there is a caveat to this litmus test in that our contentment
and fulfillment are illusory. In other words, I think that we can fool
ourselves into thinking that we are contented, or other things can
temporarily satisfy us (like physical water).

I found a quote from a secular thinker that seems to confirm the other:

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.
What is essential is invisible to the eye."
---Antoine De Saint Exupery

C.S. Lewis writes:
"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can
satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another
world." - C.S. Lewis