This is what is known in judicial terms as "justification." The accused criminal seeks to justify his crimes. The grounds for his defense are two-fold: 1. God could not be seen. 2. His crime-nature was inherited from his parents. The Prosecutor steps forward and points to multiple violations of the moral Law--lying, stealing, lust, fornication, bitterness, jealousies, anger, hatred, ingratitude, self-righteousness, pride, and blasphemy. The criminal is guilty on all counts. The invisible nature of God is irrelevant to the case: "For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened" (Romans 1:20-21). Blaming the fact that a criminal was born with a bias towards crime doesn’t justify him in civil court, how much less will it justify him when he stands before the holy Law of perfect Creator: "And He said to them, 'You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God'" (Luke 16:15).
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Your Invisibleness
Monday, June 29, 2009
The Smithsonian
I finally had the privilege of visiting the amazing Natural History Museum at the Smithsonian Institute, in Washington D.C. I wanted to see the undeniable evidence for evolution that had so often been talked about by its believers.
We inquired where we could find the evolution exhibit and were told to go past the dinosaur exhibit, and there we would find the Neanderthal display.
We carefully followed the directions through the skeletons of all sorts of horses, amazing dinosaurs and all kinds of God-created creatures. Suddenly, there is was…the crowning glory of the Smithsonian Institute’s evolution display--a family of hairy dummies looking like a cheap window display of a Halloween store. It was underwhelming. 
I was reminded of my disappointing experience at Paris’s "Museum National D'Histoire Naturelle Grand Galerie De L'Evolution." The French also had exhibits of thousands of God’s creatures, and tried to justify the name of the museum by displaying one copy of Origin of Species and a stuffed monkey with a "Lucy" sign on it.
An insightful scientist once said that evolution has done nothing for humanity. Time has proven him wrong. Evolution has become a massive money-making business. The faithful flock to buy books, bones (do a search on the massive fake fossil industry), DVD’s, magazines, made-for TV documentaries, and it all evolved from nothing but the molehill of one man’s imagination. The whole-hearted embracing of the Theory of Evolution without empirical proof, is a sad testimony to the gullibility of the human mind.
P.s. A comment from "Carl":
"I had a similar experience when I took my son to the evolution exhibit at the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History last year. Other than a few pictures and diagrams and dioramas with figurines, there was nothing. Since there are literally thousands, if not millions of fossils that could be used to demonstrate the past evolution of an animal, why were they all 'in storage'? It's a huge museum with more than ample floor space but they didn't have enough space for an evolution exhibit? The fake diorama used up enough space to exhibit genuine fossils to show evolution rather than diagrams and figurines. I also had the same experience at the New York Museum of Natural History back in 2001."
"I also looked diligently through the Smithsonian when I visited there on vacation. Like you, I saw all sorts of life forms that God created, but nothing to show any of them had ever been anything other than what God made them 'in the beginning.' Oh sure, they have fabricated excellent 'what if' displays, along with all sorts of little stories and flowery dates snatched out of thin air, which unfortunately deceives many. The saddest part of this deception is that children are impressionable and may possibly be influenced by the lifelike mannequins with the body hair carefully glued on where evolutionists imagined it would be." Honeybee
Friday, June 26, 2009
A question from a skeptic
"Could anyone of you believers tell me when the end times will happen, besides soon. It seems to me that the end times have been preached by man ever since the time they created their fictional deities." Jonathan
Here are some of the "signs" of which the Bible speaks. Nation will rise against nation. Wars. Earthquakes in various places. Money-hungry preachers will deceive many and slur the name of Christianity. It predicts a forsaking of the institution of marriage, an increase in knowledge (think of the computer era) and an increase in travel (think of air flight, train, car, etc.). A belief in "fables" (Santa Claus, etc.), and a general denial of the world-wide Noahic flood. There will be an increase in dietary concern, a forsaking of the Ten Commandments, and Israel (Jerusalem in particular) will become a huge unsolvable problem for the nations of the world. Life will become fearful for many, and men will have heart failure because of concern for the things that happen on the earth. The Scriptures speak of a cold hypocritical religious system with a mere "form of godliness."
There will be skeptics of Christianity who will particularly mock the thought of the Second Coming. The Bible even perfectly predicts your philosophy and the reason why you mock the thought. It says you will say that these signs have always been around, and you will do this for two reasons: 1. because you don’t realize that God is not subject to the dimension of time (a day to Him is as a thousand years to us), and 2. because of your love of lust. However, the big "sign" to look for is the Jews re-possession of the city of Jerusalem. That happened in 1967. For the first time in 2,000 years without a homeland, they obtained Jerusalem, and they now occupy that holy city. Despite all this, Jesus said that the gospel must be preached to the ends of the earth, and we are trying to do that in the hope that people like you will come to your senses. There's a reason why we are so concerned for you. This is because the first time Jesus came, He came a harmless lamb to suffer for the sins of the world. The second time He will come in perfect Judgment, as the conquering King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The sky will part,there will be a great noise, lightning, and incredible power. The Bible warns that He will come in a holy wrath, to punish murderers, rapists, thieves, liars, fornicators, blasphemers, adulterers, and the disobedient. It will be so fearful, humanity will call for rocks to fall on them to hide them from His power. Here are some details of what will happen:
"... and to give you who are troubled rest with us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power, when He comes, in that Day, to be glorified in His saints and to be admired among all those who believe, because our testimony among you was believed" (2 Thessalonians 1:7-10).
All these signs are deliberately hidden from the proud by what you are deceived into thinking is a fictional deity, in a Book you think is nothing but mythology. Your sin against God is way more serious than a heart attack. We are talking about where you will spend eternity: Heaven or Hell. If you are not sure what to do, today go to www.needGod.com
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Michael Jackson's death
Yesterday 150,000 people died, including one very well-known celebrity. May this remind us that we all have an appointment to keep.
May it also help us to forget that which doesn't matter, and get right with God while we still have time.
P.s. I have noticed a lack of comments by the normally vocal atheist gallery. They may spout their rage against God and show contempt for those that love Him, but they have nothing to say in the face of death. May its continual torment humble them and bring them to the Savior:
"Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage" (Hebrews 2:14-15).
Mr. Comfort goes to Washington
"You are talking to the faithful while pretending to talk to us. You aren't selling books to the atheists, you are selling books to the faithful . . . So they can get their warm fuzzies on 'Oh I am doing my bit for the Lord!', all the while we are just sitting here going 'Are people really this dumb?', as they fund your next trip to some museum."
Two corrections: I am paying my own way to Washington DC this weekend, and Christians are very wise (see Matthew 7:24-25 for why).
I’m particularly excited about visiting the Smithsonian museum. Apparently it is humongous. Really big. But I am preparing myself for disappointment, thanks to an evolution believer who explained to me why I’m not going to find what I am looking for:
"Most museums don't display detailed species to species transitions because of space issues and not because they don't exist. The fossils on display are just a tiny fraction of the collections housed at these institutions."
Sure. I will also keep in mind that whoever I interview won’t be an expert, anything I say will be a "straw man," whoever I quote will be "quote-mined," and any empirical evidence for the theory of evolution will always be somewhere else.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
From the Prince of Preachers
"But more, there is war between you and God’s Law. The Ten Commandments are against you . . . . The First one comes forward and says, 'Let him be cursed, for he denies me. He has another god besides me; his god is his belly, he yields homage to his lust.' All the Ten Commandments, like ten great pieces of cannon, are pointed at you today, for you have broken all God’s statutes, and lived in the daily neglect of all His commands. Soul! You will find it a hard thing to go to war with the Law. When the Law came in peace, [Mount] Sinai was altogether on a smoke, and even Moses said, 'I do exceedingly fear and quake.' What will you do when the Law comes in terror, when the trumpet of the archangel shall tear you from your grave, when the eyes of God shall burn their way into your guilty soul, when the great books shall be opened, and all your sin and shame shall be published? Can you stand against an angry Law in that day?"
Charles Spurgeon was the brilliant minister of the 19th century, who was commonly known as "The Prince of Preachers." He had a vocabulary of an amazing 23,000 words. Shakespeare had 23,000 words (the average person has about 13,000). I read the above portion of one of his sermons way back in August of 1982, and it was the catalyst for my understanding of the nature and use of the moral Law, expounded in "Hell’s Best Kept Secret" (freely listen on wwwlivingwaters.com).
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Powerful new movie
Recently I watched an interview about a movie called "The Stoning of Soraya M." They aired a scene where Islamic men buried a bound woman up to waist, and then began to stone her to death. The imagery was horrific. It reminded about the adulterous woman who was brought to Jesus by male religious leaders. They told Him that she had been caught in the very act of committing adultery, and how the Law called for her death by stoning. What did Jesus have to say? It seems they had Him cornered because He had to uphold the Law, yet He taught love, mercy, and forgiveness. We pick up the story:
"This they said, testing Him, that they might have something of which to accuse Him. But Jesus stooped down and wrote on the ground with His finger, as though He did not hear. So when they continued asking Him, He raised Himself up and said to them, 'He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.' And again He stooped down and wrote on the ground. Then those who heard it, being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one, beginning with the oldest even to the last. And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had raised Himself up and saw no one but the woman, He said to her, 'Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?' She said, 'No one, Lord.' And Jesus said to her, 'Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.' Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, 'I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life'" (John 8:2-12).
There is some dispute as to what Jesus wrote in the sand. It was perhaps the moral Law--that they professed to uphold: "You shall have no other gods before Me, you shall not steal, you shall not commit adultery, lie, covet, etc." The Law convicts us and can stir the most hardened of consciences. Its function is to show us that we are all as guilty as the adulterous woman, in thought, if not in deed.
There was no doubt about the woman’s guilt and if justice was to have its way, she should have been stoned to death. But Jesus became her advocate against an accusing Law. How could He do that and yet still uphold justice? He could do it because He was on His way to the cross to take the punishment for her adultery, and her many other sins.
The Law of God also calls for our death sentence. Like the woman, we too have the offer of mercy. Have you repented of your sins and trusted in the Advocate that God provided? If not, the Law's fearful stones will fall upon you on the Day of Judgment (see Romans 2:5). You have God’s warning of that, but you also have His offer of complete forgiveness of sins:
"...And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world" (1 John 2:1-3).
Monday, June 22, 2009
How and where did Darwin formulate his theory?
A cast of a Neanderthal skull from France, left, and a recent modern human skull from Polynesia. Note the thickness of the skull under the eyebrows.
Perhaps it came to him as he looked in the mirror...
Whose business is it?
Let’s say that when you say that you don’t mind if someone lusts after you, you include homosexuals. You say that it’s their business what they do with their thoughts. Their thoughts about you are their business. If we had a consensus, some would say that that's okay, some would say that it’s not.
Also, if someone hates you and would like to see you dead, that’s okay with you because it’s their business what they do with their thoughts. Some would say that’s okay, others may say that murderous thoughts are morally wrong.
The Bible tells us that God sees all thoughts. He sees sexual fantasies and He sees the thoughts of the man whose heart is filled with murder. He says that such thoughts are morally offensive to Him, and they store up His just wrath (see Romans 2:5-6) that will be revealed on Judgment Day (see Romans 1:27). Our thoughts on whether it's right or wrong are irrelevant.
We do have precedent for this in civil law. If you conspire in your mind to murder the President of the United States (God forbid), civil law can’t touch you because (unlike God) it doesn’t know about your crime. But if you manifest your thoughts on paper, or tell another person what you plan to do and you are caught, the law will prosecute you for conspiracy, even though you didn’t commit the physical crime. Your "intent" is the crime.
In May of 2009, five men in New Jersey were convicted of plotting to kill members of the U.S. military. They got prison terms of life plus an additional consecutive 30 years, without parole, and yet they didn’t kill anyone. Their crime was that they intended to. Civil law couldn’t do anything about their crime until they talked about it.
The Bible calls the moral Law "spiritual" (see Romans 7:13-14) which means that it’s not hindered from seeing the thoughts and intents of the human mind. Every time we lust, we are committing adultery as far as God is concerned. When we hate someone, God equates it as murder, and if we are found in our sins on Judgment day, we will receive the full wrath of the Law. I trust that won’t be the case with you--that you will come to your senses, repent and trust the Savior.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
I need your help
I will be in Washington DC this coming weekend, and I would like to visit the Smithsonian Institute to take pictures of the evidence for evolution.
I am aware of "The Evolution Trail" that will tell me why they believe giraffes have long necks and why they think flowers have many colors. I am also aware of "The Evolution of Evolution" display which has "Specimens from the Museum’s diverse collections, along with documentation from our ongoing research." But I want to find empirical evidence for evolution, not a chronological account or documentation of new theories.
My time is limited, so please let me know exactly where I can find what has often been alluded to as real "evidence" by believers in the theory. I’m not interested in fossils (of which there are millions), but transitional fossils between species (the missing link between species).
The Smithsonian says, "There is no one piece of evidence, no single 'missing link,' that unlocks all the secrets of our ancestry." They are right. It isn't one single link that's missing, but the entire chain.
Please don’t send me long "cut and paste" lists of names of fossils, but an actual place within the museum to which I can go and find evidence of one species that transitioned into another. Thank you.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Toast or eggs?
Either God exists, or He doesn’t. To say that there is no Creator means that everything happened by chance, from nothing. To say that there was no initial cause means that I think it was causeless. If on the other hand I say that an intelligent Creator brought creation into existence, then I can’t limit Him, because the creation itself is a revelation of His unlimited supernatural ability.
If you think otherwise, try making an eye yourself, from nothing. Do you start with the 137,000,000 light sensitive cells, or the nerve-endings, or the retina. How do you make a retina, from nothing? We have no idea where or how to begin. The Bible asks the question, "Shall not He who formed the eye, also see?" In other words, if God has the genius (for want of a better word) to create the eye, reason tells us that He’s not blind.
If He can create the brain of a man, He can therefore see the thoughts of a man. The eye of the Lord is in every place, beholding the evil and the good. Nothing is hid from the eyes of Him with whom we have to give an account. When the Bible speaks of nothing, it means "nothing." Nothing is hidden from God. That means he sees your thought-life, every hair on your head, every atom He created, and every event in the future of time.
Now, to your toast and eggs. The fact that God sees the future has nothing to do with your choice of breakfast. He doesn’t choose your menu. You do. He simply knows the path you will take. If you find that hard to reconcile, think of it like this. If you see a live sporting event, and then go home and watch the same game on TV, you may know the outcome, but you don’t determine the result.
Friday, June 19, 2009
The age of the universe
"Dear Ray I have a question for you, considering God made the world and the universe in six days and considering He created Adam in about 4004 BC why is it that scientists say that the most distant planets are over 20,000 light years away. This means that the light from these planets has been traveling in space for 20,000 years, far longer than the universe has existed even if you count a day of creation as a 1000 years?"
I have no idea of the exact date in which God created the universe or when He created man. However, I believe that Adam was made as a mature male, with fully developed and working eyes, strong muscles, a full-size heart, robust lungs, and eight pints of life-giving blood. In other words the first man was created in a state of adulthood with an appearance of age. To the casual observer, the ten-minute old Adam may have looked like a 30 year-old man.
Another thought is that when God created the Garden of Eden, He made it with beautiful trees. Ten minutes after He created it, a casual observer may have looked at the tall trees and understandably estimated that they were 30 or 40 years old, when in truth they had only existed for ten minutes. It would be the same case with a rock a geologist may have picked up minutes after creation. Scientifically speaking he may understandably have estimated that it is thousands or even millions of years of age, when in truth it had just been created by God.
If God had the ability to speak the sun into existence, He also had the ability to cause its light to instantly shine upon the earth. The Bible doesn’t say, "And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was four minutes of darkness as the light from the sun traveled 93,000,000 miles to the earth . . . and there was light." It would seem that the very instant God spoke light into existence, it was manifest. So it’s very easy for me to reconcile the Scriptures with the findings of science.
When Atheists argue about the existence of God, they forget that someone who has been born again knows God. So there is no argument about His existence for those that know Him. You may as well write to me day after day telling me that my wife doesn’t exist. I could give you her background history, but because I know and love her, every argument you raise about her non-existence is senseless and meaningless.
The fact of Sue’s reality has no bearing at all on you or the way you live your life. But if you deny God’s existence, the fruit of that willful ignorance is that you will live your life without reference to His requirements. That will be to your eternal detriment, and that horrifies me beyond words.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
The coverup
The above reaction was typical of many, when I spoke of once covering up pornography on a billboard in my neighborhood with a large orange blanket. I was accused of wanting to cover up women with "burkas."
On the contrary, there’s nothing at all wrong with looking at attractive women. God made the female form to be attractive to men. However, He did say that looking at a woman with lust, is to commit adultery in the heart (see Matthew 5:27-28). Looking and lusting are two different things.
Covering a woman with a veil doesn’t deal with lust because it’s an issue of the human imagination, and the sinful imagination of man isn’t stopped by a mere veil. It is the heart of man that is evil, not the naked body of a woman. Lust made its entry when Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden. Until that time they were naked, and they had the approving smile of God. When He commanded them to "multiply," He wasn’t talking about math.
I have a question for those of you who would gladly put a national ban on any form of censorship. If a clothing manufacturer embarked on a billboard campaign showing naked men in sexually explicit positions with little boys, would you object, or would you be an advocate their freedom of sexual expression?
If you are an advocate of child pornography, I would appreciate you giving me your name and address. I think that there are people in your neighborhood that should be warned that you live in their area.
I would hope that you would strongly object to a billboard campaign that uses child porn. If that’s the case, then you do believe in some form of censorship, and you do have a moral divide. You believe that certain things are morally wrong. It’s just that your moral divide is very low. God’s is very high.
I was also encouraged to move to places like Amsterdam, where there is sexual freedom, hardly any crime, and where Atheists are rampant. However, back in 2008, Newsweek reported:
"Amsterdam plans to close down its most famous district, citing sleaze, criminal activity and human trafficking . . . [because] too many brothels and sex bars are linked to criminality, the authorities plan to all but erase the Red Light District."1.
The clean-up plan was approved by an overwhelming 43-2 majority.
Still, it takes more than censorship of a Red Light District to deal with lust in the hearts of sinful men. It takes the power of God through the message of the gospel. He can forgive each one of us, and change us so that we want to do that which is pleasing in His sight.
All it takes to be forgiven and cleansed is a little honesty. One atheist reminded me of that fact when he said, "I have never lusted over a woman…I have never lusted," and then added, "I’ll make no bones about my use of pornography."
1. http://www.newsweek.com/id/109373
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Willful damage
Sex not only sells jeans, it gets massive free publicity on CBS primetime. CBS "The Early Show" (June 15th) more than willingly scrolled over and zoomed into the lusty billboard an amazing sixteen times, as the show’s host interviewed an expert on why she thought it was wrong to show such images in public. The usual reasons were given: it wasn’t good for children to see such pictures, etc.
There’s another reason why Calvin Klein should rethink the tone of its advertising. Presently there are a massive 673,989 registered sex offenders in the United States, and hardly a day goes by when some child isn’t abducted, raped, and murdered.
Modern America is a tinderbox of sexual perverts and we don’t need anyone lighting fires with their lusty billboards.
Back in April 1999, ABC TV put a racy billboard of a naked woman lying on her stomach in my neighborhood in Southern California. The image had a small towel draped across her backside, to keep it legal. When I saw that, I purchased an 18-foot ladder, climbed up the billboard and stapled a huge orange blanket over that naked woman’s body. I don’t want some sexually depraved pervert getting off on ABC’s dirt, and raping and murdering my wife or daughter.
I then took a picture of the blanketed billboard and released it to the media, in the hope that ABC would take me to court for willful damage of their property. They didn’t.
I would gladly have countersued for their reckless attempts at willful damage of my precious family. If such a court case did happen, I would quote the Sermon on the Mount’s "Whoever looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart" as the basis for my convictions. Calvin Klein’s campaign not only reveals that they couldn’t care less about the abuse of our women and children, it also shows that they have no regard for what God says is right and wrong.
So Mr. Klein, don’t even think of bringing your dirt and dumping it in my neighborhood, because I will be up my ladder with a staple gun in hand before the glue on your smutty image is dry.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
BOOK DIVISION:
"[Ray wrote] 'If you think that's bad, try this: there are crazies out there that truly believe that women are related to primates, and those primates came from nothing.'
"All women, and all men, are primates by biological definition. Acceptance of this biological definition is not evidence of mental instability, thus your accusation that such individuals are 'crazy' is wholly unfounded. Who, specifically, holds a belief that primates emerged from 'nothing'? Please identify specific individuals, and cite statements from these individuals." Dimensio
He asked:
1. "It is now becoming clear that everything can -- and probably did -- come from nothing." Robert A. J. Matthews, physicist, Ashton University, England
2. "Space and time both started at the Big Bang and therefore there was nothing before it." Cornell University "Ask an Astronomer."
3. "Some physicists believe our universe was created by colliding with another, but Kaku [a theoretical physicist at City University of New York] says it also may have sprung from nothing . . . " Scienceline.org
4. "Even if we don't have a precise idea of exactly what took place at the beginning, we can at least see that the origin of the universe from nothing need not be unlawful or unnatural or unscientific." Paul Davies, physicist, Arizona State University
5. "Assuming the universe came from nothing, it is empty to begin with . . . Only by the constant action of an agent outside the universe, such as God, could a state of nothingness be maintained. The fact that we have something is just what we would expect if there is no God." Victor J. Stenger, atheist, Prof. Physics, University of Hawaii. Author of, God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist
6. "Few people are aware of the fact that many modern physicists claim that things --perhaps even the entire universe -- can indeed arise from nothing via natural processes. Creation ex nihilo -- Without God (1997), Atheist, Mark I. Vuletic
7. "To understand these facts we have to turn to science. Where did they all come from, and how did they get so darned outrageous? Well, it all started with nothing." --"Fifty Outrageous Animal Facts," Animal Planet
8. To the average person it might seem obvious that nothing can happen in nothing. But to a quantum physicist, nothing is, in fact, something." Discover Magazine "Physics & Math/Cosmology"
9. "It is rather fantastic to realize that the laws of physics can describe how everything was created in a random quantum fluctuation out of nothing, and how over the course of 15 billion years, matter could organize in such complex ways that we have human beings sitting here, talking, doing things intentionally." (Alan Harvey Guth theoretical physicist and cosmologist). Discover Magazine, April 1, 2002
R. C. Sproul said:
"Some modern theorists believe that the world was created by nothing. Note the difference between saying that the world was created from nothing and saying that the universe was created by nothing. In this modern view the rabbit comes out of the hat with no rabbit, a hat, or even a magician. The modern view is far more miraculous that the biblical world view. It suggests that nothing created something. More than that, it holds that nothing created everything--quite a feat indeed!
"Now surely there aren’t serious people who are running around in this scientific age claiming that the universe was created by nothing, are there? Yes, scores of them. To be sure, they don’t say it quite the way I have said it, and they would probably be annoyed with me for stating their views in such a manner. They’d undoubtedly protest that I have given a distorted caricature of their sophisticated position. OK. True--they don’t say that the universe was created by nothing; they say that the universe was created by chance. But chance is no thing. It has no weight, no measurements, no power. It is merely a word we use to describe mathematical possibilities. It can do nothing. It can do nothing because it is nothing. To say that the universe was created by chance is to say that it came from nothing. That is intellectual madness."
It seems that most Atheists have no idea what they profess to believe (see Psalm 14:1).
Monday, June 15, 2009
From Aristotle to Adam
Maybe they are evolutionary leftovers from some sort of strange camouflage, like the spots on a giraffe. Maybe man and the giraffe have a common ancestor. Who knows? Anything is possible with evolution theorists.
I have heard that men have nipples because that’s where God grasped him as He placed him on the earth, and then with His finger, poked him in the belly and said, "There you go." Hence the belly button. Of course, that was like a joke, for those who tend to take issues like this too seriously.
It’s my guess that God gave men nipples for aesthetic purposes. Without them, an obvious "something" would be missing. They give balance to the male body.
Men have nipples for the same reason God gave us one nose and not two, and two eyes and not one. That’s unless you think that a one-eyed two-nosed man would be attractive to women. I’m sure such a man would have some sort of a career in Hollywood, but probably not as a leading lady’s-man. So I think it’s fair to say that the male nipple is purely cosmetic.
The male moustache falls into the same category. I can’t think of why it exists other than for decorative purposes. Then again, it may have another function. Someone once looked at mine and said, "What makes your nose so important that it has to be underlined?"
Sunday, June 14, 2009
The Atheist's opinion
Steven J. loosely quotes Jesus, when he says, "On the other hand, there is outright fraud: passing off stones and serpents when we're looking to you for bread and fish. If you pose as a teacher, we should expect from you education, not miseducation, at least an attempt to communicate the facts, not deliberate indifference to whether what you're saying is true or false."
Let’s just stop and consider what is being said. This issue of why an Atheist thinks lying is wrong arose because it was my opinion that Richard Dawkins believed that there is a possibility we were seeded by aliens. It’s also my opinion that his explanation as to why he said that was a bad cover-up. This is because he is forever making wild speculations about the theory of evolution, continually using the words "probably," "maybe" and "perhaps." With evolution, everything is possible, given time. Again, that’s my opinion. You may have a different opinion. I don’t accuse you of lying just because you believe his explanation.
We also have differing opinions on the theory of evolution. You may believe it; I don’t. I don’t call any of you liars because we have differing opinions. However, I’m continually called a liar by many Atheists because I believe we were created by God. I am called a liar because I don’t think evolution is scientific, and because I don’t believe Professor Dawkin’s explanation.
Yet, the irony is that the Atheist has no grounds to say that lying is morally wrong. He only has his opinion. He has no moral compass from which he can make that judgment, as does the Christian.
Of all the cake-takers in this discourse, "Ryk" gets the biggest slice. Look at what he says:
"The greater frequency in which the person lies the greater the future assumption of dishonesty. This is why I never lie. My honor and reputation are like a shield against doubt. Since I have never been known to lie, my words are widely trusted. Since what I say is supported by fact, people know I speak fact. Since whenever I have been mistaken I admit error and correct myself people know that I will correct my errors and that any misinformation I may have given is inadvertent."
It’s my opinion that self-righteousness will take more people to Hell than murder. How true are the words "All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes..." (Proverbs 16:2). Listen to him: "I never lie . . . I have been never known to lie." He’s never lied even once, in his whole life? How many of you believe that? I don’t.
However, we will find out the truth on Judgment Day. That’s unless Ryk stops his self-righteous boasting, confesses and forsakes his sins and places his trust in Jesus Christ. If that’s the case, no one will know about any of his sins because God will not only forgive them, He will "blot" them out, according to His immutable promise.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Your opinion
I think I might be coming down with a case of swine flu. Sue took a picture of me last night. What do you think?
A question for Atheists
In reference to my lost post, Atheists responded by saying:
"Ray, you're just lying. There is no way you could be stupid enough to believe what you wrote. You're a liar, and the lies you are telling should be transparently obvious even to your flock."
"Bearing false witness is a full time job for you. How do you get anything else done?"
"Liar."
"You know that you're lying when you say that Dr. Dawkins believes in aliens."
"Stop lying."
"You are lying, Mr. Comfort."
"Sorry Ray but there is no way what so ever that this latest post of yours can be taken as anything but outright lying on your part."
"He either knows nothing about the topic he's preaching on, or he's lying."
"As you are known to be a serial liar, it is likely that you are aware of that fact, but that you are lying regardless."
Could someone explain to me why an Atheist thinks it’s wrong to lie? It’s not against the law, so what’s the problem? Is there another Law I should know about?
If you think lying is wrong, who says so? You? What if I say that lying is right? If you don’t think it’s morally wrong to lie, why then do you accuse me of lying, as though I had done something wrong?
Friday, June 12, 2009
Bending over backwards for creationists
When Professor Richard Dawkins revealed that he believed that it is possible that we were created by aliens, he embarrassed atheists across the world. The king fell off his golden throne. Big time. This is what he said:
"It could come about in the following way: it could be that, at some earlier time somewhere in the universe a civilization evolved by probably by some kind of Darwinian means to a very very high level of technology and designed a form of life that they seeded onto perhaps this planet . . . and that designer could well be a higher intelligence from elsewhere in the universe." ("Expelled." italics added).
Here, in his own words, is his attempt to regain what dignity he had in the eyes of his followers:
"Toward the end of his interview with me, Stein asked whether I could think of any circumstances whatsoever under which intelligent design might have occurred. It's the kind of challenge I relish, and I set myself the task of imagining the most plausible scenario I could. I wanted to give ID its best shot, however poor that best shot might be. I must have been feeling magnanimous that day, because I was aware that the leading advocates of Intelligent Design are very fond of protesting that they are not talking about God as the designer, but about some unnamed and unspecified intelligence, which might even be an alien from another planet. Indeed, this is the only way they differentiate themselves from fundamentalist creationists, and they do it only when they need to, in order to weasel their way around church/state separation laws. So, bending over backwards to accommodate the IDiots ("oh NOOOOO, of course we aren't talking about God, this is SCIENCE") and bending over backwards to make the best case I could for intelligent design, I constructed a science fiction scenario."
However, his backtrack is just as embarrassing. Why did he say that there as a possibility we were created by aliens? It was because he wanted "to give ID its best shot." What? He did it for us! He spoke up on our behalf. This was an act of sudden benevolence from the one who normally holds creationists in contempt. Truly magnanimous. But if it was a creationism scenario he was lovingly imagining for us, why then did he say that it took place "by probably by some kind of Darwinian means..."? Nah. This was just another one of his own evolutionary imaginations.
Twice in his confessional backtrack he said that he bent "over backwards" for us. Sure. Come on professor, fess up. You really blew it. It was your "banana illustration," and I feel your pain.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
George and Jesus
"Ray said 'The truth is that no one knows the identity of the first President.' There's an idea for a billboard: 'Ray Comfort: Faith in Jesus; Skeptical of George Washington.'" Chris B.
This reveals the misunderstanding that atheists have about the word "faith" (as in an intellectual belief), and the word "trust" (as in a reliance on a person).
My faith in Jesus has nothing to do with an intellectual belief, because it’s not in His historical existence. It’s rather a trust that I have in Him for my eternal salvation. Faith in the fact that Jesus lived historically will do nothing for you. Trust in Him as Lord and Savior will give you everlasting life.
Kellan Stec added her reasons for believing that George Washington existed:
"I don't just believe what history books tell me for no reason. I have very good reasons. One of them being that most of the evidence for George Washington . . . We know where he is buried and we could go dig up his remains if we wanted to and were able to. Jesus has none of this evidence. Not even close."
And that’s the point. You can dig up the remains of the person who was believed to be George Washington, but you will never dig up the remains of Jesus of Nazareth. He didn’t have any remains. Death had no hold over Him because He was without sin.
But how can you move out of the realm of intellectual belief that He existed, and into the experiential trust that comes from knowing Him? I will let Jesus answer that one Himself:
"He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him" (John 14:21).
Who was the first President?
An Atheist named Clamflats wrote:
"You state that the Bible is 'the only TRUE word of God.' You state this as if it is a fact. I contend that this is a statement of faith which you believe but cannot be a fact in the same sense that 'George Washington was the first President of the United States’ is a fact."
When I asked "Can you please offer evidence that George Washington was the first President of the United States?" she answered:
"I didn't give much thought to my fact example except to quickly pick out a statement of what I believe is an indisputable claim. But it is a pretty good example now that I think about it. I have no direct personal knowledge that this is true. I was not alive in the 1780's. So why do I believe it? And what about it justifies my belief? In order to continue you will have to agree that there is a country called the United States that has had a succession of Presidents and therefore someone had to be first and that George Washington was an actual person. Agreed? (I guess you could disagree with all of that or ask me to prove it but it would be essentially the same type of argument.) My evidence that this is a fact is that I have seen or heard literally hundreds of times that George Washington was the first President and not once heard the opposite. I have no reason to suspect that this is not true."
In other words, Clamflats heard it from people who believed it, and she believed their testimony, even though she had "no direct personal knowledge that this is true." She so believed that she referred to it as an "indisputable claim."
Another Atheist, Steven J., gave his evidence on why he believed that George Washington was the first President:
"The George Washington Papers collection at the Library of Congress includes a number of papers from his presidency, including his first inaugural address in his own handwriting. There are surviving copies of newspapers from his alleged administration covering his actions as President."
Steven believes that the Library of Congress have genuine papers from the presidency of George Washington. He has unwavering faith in the workers at the Library of Congress when they tell him that what they have is his personal handwriting. He also has great faith in old newspapers, and asks:
"...why should we doubt that it was George Washington, when there are no rival claimants to the title (nine Presidents of Congress under the Articles of Confederation didn't hold the same office as the modern Presidency)?"
He whole-heartedly believes (with no doubt at all) that there were no rivals claimants. Why? Because the history books say so. He is a man of great faith in the testimony of men.
When skeptics say something like "The Counsel of Nicaea met in AD 325!" I ask "How do you know that?" The confident skeptic suddenly looks confused as he realizes that he doesn’t know. He just believes what history books tell him. He accepts as gospel, the testimony of men.
The truth is that no one knows the identity of the first President. We simply have people who believe the testimony of history books written by men.
Steven is one who has unquestioning faith in short-term history books. But like most atheistic evolutionists (who say that they don’t have any faith), he has unquestioning faith in what fallible men say about what they believe happened, in what they believe was in the (unbelievably) long-term past.
Do you remember signs in stores that said "In God we trust. Others pay cash"? It's a wise person who trusts God and doesn't totally trust in man. The Bible says to make sure you do that (see Psalm 118:8). So, where is your faith?
"If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater; for this is the witness of God which He has testified of His Son. He who believes in the Son of God has the witness in himself; he who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed the testimony that God has given of His Son" (1 John 5:9-10).
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Science, DNA, Adam and Eve
"In new genetic studies of modern human origins, scientists think they have found strong evidence that there was an ancestral 'Adam' about 188,000 years ago to go with the previously discovered 'Eve.'
"The scientists used certain male-specific segments of the Y chromosome, the chromosome passed from father to son, to trace the common ancestor of every man now on earth to that period. They are reporting the findings today in the journal Nature, which also includes a separate study placing Adam in a more recent time.
"Earlier analysis of the DNA of the mitochondria, the tiny structures within each cell that generate its energy and that are transmitted only by the mother, indicated that all humans have as a common ancestor one woman who lived in Africa some 200,000 years ago -- and inevitably has been stuck with the name Eve. All human mitochondrial DNA now extant, it seemed, derived from a single ancestral mitochondrial molecule from that place and time."
http://archive.southcoasttoday.com/daily/11-95/11-23-95/oldman.htm
Justin Long
Over the years a number of people who have watch our "Open Air Preaching" video have told me that the young man who heckled me back in 2002, was Justin Long. Back then Justin was already a budding actor.
In 2009 he starred in the hit movie "Drag Me to Hell."
Here’s the gripping 2.23 second trailer that you may have already seen on TV.
As you watch this, say to yourself "It’s all just a Hollywood joke. It’s only entertainment." Tell yourself "There’s no devil, there’s no Hell, and no such thing as sin and evil."
(NOTE: this trailer is not for kids):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-REviL75zg
Keep telling yourself that the Bible is wrong when it warns that the god of this world blinds the minds of the "unsaved"--that if you serve sin, you are actually serving the devil.
Tell yourself that the Scriptures are lying when they say that Satan came to "kill, steal and destroy." Ignore your God-given conscience and keep saying that there’s nothing morally wrong with lust, sex out of marriage, greed, pride, hated, blasphemy, lying and stealing.
And when the demons you willingly serve drag you to Hell, tell yourself that you should have obeyed the gospel.
NeedGod.com
Monday, June 8, 2009
The Evolution Illusion
Back in November of 2008 I took a small camera crew to visit the "Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle Grand Galerie de L'Evolution" in Paris, France. I had a sense of excitement because we were going to be able to film actual "evidence" of evolution.
The museum was magnificent. There were thousands of stuffed animals--from pairs of giant giraffes, massive elephants, zebras, lions, tigers--you name it and you could find it. It was awe-inspiring. But there was a problem. There didn’t seem to be anything within the museum to do with evolution, yet it was called the "Grand Gallery of Evolution."
After an hour of searching all we could find was a copy of Origin of Species in a glass case. So we asked an attendant, who kindly took us up some stairs and showed us an ugly-looking stuffed monkey with "Lucy" written on a small piece of card. That was it. There was no "evidence" of evolution. The museum was filled with God’s creation, but all who entered had the wool of evolution pulled over their gullible eyes.
In my home city of Christchurch, New Zealand, the local museum has written in stone across the main entrance: "Lo, these are parts of His ways; but how little a portion is heard of Him." You can be sure that they only remain because they are written in stone.
Neil Geoffrey Turok holds the Chair of Mathematical Physics (1967) at Cambridge University. In speaking of the beginning of the universe, he said:
"It is our job as theorists to push those problems to the limit to see whether they can be cured, or whether they will instead prove fatal for the models. Equally, if not more important, is the attempt to test the models observationally, because science is nothing without observational test."
The theory of evolution is only scientific if it can be observably tested. In response to the objection "Evolution is not science because it is not observable or testable," Berkley University reply:
"Evolution is observable and testable. The misconception here is that science is limited to controlled experiments that are conducted in laboratories by people in white lab coats. Actually, much of science is accomplished by gathering evidence from the real world and inferring how things work. Astronomers cannot hold stars in their hands and geologists cannot go back in time, but in both cases scientists can learn a great deal by using multiple lines of evidence to make valid and useful inferences about their objects of study. The same is true of the study of the evolutionary history of life on Earth, and as a matter of fact, many mechanisms of evolution are studied through direct experimentation as in more familiar sciences."
They say that testable proof is that "Fossils such as Archaeopteryx give us snapshots of organisms as they adapt and change over time." They believe that cold-blooded reptilian dinosaurs evolved into warmed blooded birds. But it is very clear that Archaeopteryx is not a dinosaur, it’s a bird:
"For many years Archaeopteryx has been touted in biology textbooks and museums as the perfect transitional fossil, presumably being precisely intermediate between reptiles and birds. Much has been made over the fact that Archaeopteryx had teeth, fingers on its wings, and a long tail—all supposedly proving its reptilian ancestry. While there are no living birds with teeth, other fossilized birds such as Hesperornis also had teeth. Some modern birds, such as the ostrich, have fingers on their wings, and the juvenile hoatzin (a South American bird) has well-developed fingers and toes with which it can climb trees."
Another reason they maintain that evolution is observable and testable is because "Studying modern organisms such as elephant seals can reveal specific examples of evolutionary history and bolster concepts of evolution." One important key in magic is distraction. Here’s an example of distraction through an overload of irrelevant information:
"Northern elephant seals have reduced genetic variation probably because of a population bottleneck humans inflicted on them in the 1890s. Hunting reduced their population size to as few as 20 individuals at the end of the 19th century. Their population has since rebounded to over 30,000 — but their genes still carry the marks of this bottleneck: they have much less genetic variation than a population of southern elephant seals that was not so intensely hunted.
"A founder effect occurs when a new colony is started by a few members of the original population. This small population size means that the colony may have: 1, reduced genetic variation from the original population. 2, a non-random sample of the genes in the original population. For example, the Afrikaner population of Dutch settlers in South Africa is descended mainly from a few colonists. Today, the Afrikaner population has an unusually high frequency of the gene that causes Huntington's disease, because those original Dutch colonists just happened to carry that gene with unusually high frequency. This effect is easy to recognize in genetic diseases, but of course, the frequencies of all sorts of genes are affected by founder events."
Darwinian ape-to-man evolution is therefore observable and testable because they have observed that northern elephant seals carry less genetic variation than a population of southern elephant seals, and the Afrikaner population are susceptible to genetic diseases.
The Eye
The illusion continues on Berkley’s "one-stop source for information on evolution":
"Eyes are clearly incredibly useful, but where did the eye come from? How did so many animals evolve eyes and why do they look so different? This case study answers these questions.
"Here you will investigate how eyes evolved and why the eyes of different organisms are similar in some ways but not others. Specifically, you will see how the concept of homology — similarities inherited from a common ancestor — can crop up in surprising places, and how homologies illustrate both the diversity and unity of life."
After showing graphics of the eyes of various animals, they ask:
"How are these eyes related? Though the eyes we've seen so far differ in many ways, they all share the ability to sense light. They all have light-sensing cells (called photoreceptor cells) that relay information to the brain or nerve mass — and some of the eyes are laid out in similar ways. But why are they similar?"
They say it’s because they came from a common ancestor:
"Homologies are similar characteristics shared by two different organisms because they were inherited from a common ancestor."
A single engine plane has wings. So does a massive 400 seat passenger plane. The only relation between the two is that the makers used similar blueprints. Wings have the ability to lift planes, and eyes have the ability to sense light. That’s how they work.
The following thoughts about the eye are from a Christian who once believed in the theory of evolution:
"We need to revisit (again and again) what Darwin said about eye evolution:
'Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound.'
"If we like, we can continue to quote the next (and the next) paragraph but his case for evolution just gets weaker.
"Darwin is using the simplistic method of picking and choosing various eyes from various animals and 'demonstrating' gradations of eye development, all the while not showing the fossil evidence which actually and scientifically demonstrates this actually happened. 'How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us...' '...facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light.'
"What? Glossing over something like that is ridiculous. We have light-sensitive nerves (both rods and cones), a lens, focusing muscles, another nerve network to pick up that info, send it to the brain and invert the image, and Darwin explains the general principles of how it all came into being in one (excuse me, two) paragraphs? And that's supposed to be convincing to us? Wow.
"Let's be honest -- all this really takes faith. A blind leap. I know because I used to believe it myself. Until I started to ask some REAL questions to my biology professor and he shut me down. Romans 1:25: 'They exchanged the truth of God for a lie...'"
Let’s Make an Eye
If you lost your sight in one eye, the very best medical science could do is replace it with a fake eye. It may look as good as your other eye, but it certainly won’t look as good. You would be blind in that eye. This is because we don’t know how to create its interrelated system of about forty individual subsystems, including the retina, pupil, iris, cornea, lens, and optic nerve. Nor do we know how to make the retina’s 137 million light-sensitive cells that send messages to the brain. The eye is a nightmare of complexity beyond words for those who hope to imitate it.
A special section of the brain called the visual cortex interprets the pulses as color, contrast, depth, etc., which then allows us to see “pictures” of our world. Incredibly, the eye, the optic nerve and visual cortex are completely separate and distinct subsystems. Yet together they capture, deliver, and interpret up to 1.5 million pulse messages a millisecond!
Russell D. Fernald, Professor of Biology at Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences, said:
"At present, we do not know whether eyes arose once or many times, and, in fact, many features of eye evolution are still puzzling. How did eyes evolve? Darwin, the great English naturalist who first brought the systematic explanatory power of evolution to bear on the bewildering biological complexity of our planet, felt that eyes offered a special challenge to evolutionary thinking because they are such '...organs of extreme perfection and complication...' (1859). He was quite explicit on this point, saying '...that the eye....could have been formed by natural selection seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree'. More than a century later, with new insights that reach from molecular to macroscopic levels of analysis, new mysteries reinforce Darwin's prescient writing. We still have much to learn from the evolution of eyes, both about the existing eyes as well as the processes of evolution that produced them."
He then explained the supposed evolution of the eye:
"First was the production of simple eye spots which are found in nearly all the major animal groups and contain a small number of receptors in an open cup of screening pigment. Such detectors cannot play a role in recognizing patterns but are useful for distinguishing light from dark. The second stage in eye evolution is the addition of an optical system that can produce an image."
Kenneth R. Miller, Professor of Biology at Brown University, adds:
"Critics might ask what good that first tiny step, perhaps only five percent of an eye, might be. As the saying goes, in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king. Likewise, in a population with limited ability to sense light, every improvement in vision, no matter how slight, would be favored -- and favored dramatically -- by natural selection."
How could any sane person believe that the eye simply evolved? Easily. The necessary ingredient to believe, is "time." Scientific America explains:
"Time is in fact the hero of the plot. The time with which we have to deal is of the order of two billion years. What we regard as impossible on the basis of human experience is meaningless here. Given so much time, the 'impossible' becomes possible, the possible probable, and the probable virtually certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs the miracles."
Richard Dawkins said, "Given sufficient time, the non-random survival of hereditary entities (which occasionally miscopy) will generate complexity, diversity, beauty, and an illusion of design so persuasive that it is almost impossible to distinguish from deliberate intelligent design." Time performs miracles. Look at how his child-like faith in time causes Professor Kenneth R. Miller to abandon all sense of reason:
"Intelligent-Design advocates content that evolution could not have produced such complex structures and processes because its instrument, natural selection, simply isn't up to the task. Such advocates agree that natural selection does a splendid job of working on the variation that exists within a species. Given a range of sizes, shapes, and colors, those individuals whose characteristics give them the best chance to reproduce will pass on traits that will increase in frequency in the next generation. The real issue, therefore, is whether or not the 'input' into genetic variation, which is often said to be the result of random mutation, can provide the beneficial novelty that would be required to produce new structures, new systems, and even new species. Could the marvelous structures of the eye have been produced 'just by chance?'
"The simple answer to that question is 'no.' The extraordinary number of physiological and structural changes that would have to appear at once to make a working, functioning eye is simply too much to leave to chance. The eye could not have evolved in a single event. That, however, is not the end of the story. The real test is whether or not the long-term combination of genetic variation and natural selection could indeed produce a structure as complex and well-adapted as the eye, and the answer to that question is a resounding 'yes.'"
"Long term" (time) performs the impossible miracle for the wide-eyed professor. When Richard Dawkins was asked how an eye could possibly have evolved, he simply said, "Audiences nevertheless appreciate an answer, and I have usually fallen back on the sheer magnitude of geological time." No one was back in time to see the unseen do its impossible work, but those who believe don’t need to see. They simply believe.
Richard Dawkins, in A Devil's Chaplain says:
"The evolution of the vertebrate eye must have been progressive. Ancient ancestors had a very simple eye, containing only a few features good for seeing. We don’t need evidence for this (although it is nice that it is there). It has to be true because the alternative—an initially complex eye, well-endowed with features good for seeing—pitches us right back to Hoyle country and the sheer cliff of improbability. There must be a ramp of step-by-step progress towards the modern, multifeatured descendant of that optical prototype.
"Of course, in this case, modern analogs of every step up the ramp can be found, working serviceably in dozens of eyes dotted independently around the animal kingdom. But even without these examples, we could be confident that there must have been a gradual, progressive increase in the number of features which an engineer would recognize as contributing towards optical quality. Without stirring from our armchair, we can see that it must be so."
Yet we now know that mutations can only modify or eliminate existing structures, not create new ones. In our genetic blueprint, the DNA letters that define these features can occasionally be rearranged or lost through mutations, but will not explain the additions needed by evolution. Scientists have yet to find even a single mutation that increases genetic information. The fact is that there is no evidence showing that mutations have ever created any new features:
S. G. Scott doesn’t speculate. He says, "There are no examples of natural inorganic (non-living) materials ever forming themselves into living (organic) material, let alone organizing themselves to the level of being able to duplicate themselves; not to mention developing a system that could store and retrieve the information on how to do it so that their offspring could also duplicate themselves, and could also pass the information on to their offspring, and so on, and so on, and so on..."
"...mutations do not lead to an increase in information. Indeed, reducing the number of legs may alter the body plan, but it does not explain the origin of legs in the first place. Nor does it explain where the genetic information to produce wings came from."
"Successful macro-evolution requires the addition of new information and new genes that produce new organs and systems."
Scientific American, March 2003 issue:
"Although evolutionary theory provides a robust explanation for the appearance of minor variations in the size and shape of creatures and their component parts, it does not yet give as much guidance for understanding the emergence of entirely new structures, including digits, limbs, eyes and feathers."
Still, it’s up to you. If you want to continue to believe, you will. Such is human nature.
Notes:
Job 26:14.
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/turok07/turok07_index.html
A collaborative project of the University of California Museum of Paleontology and the National Center for Science Education.
http://understandingevolution.com/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php#a1
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/did-dinosaurs-turn-into-birds
Ibid
http://understandingevolution.com/evolibrary/home.php
Ibid
http://raycomfortfood.blogspot.com/
http://www.karger.com/gazette/64/fernald/index.htm
Ibid
http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/lgd/index.html
George Wald, Scientific American (1954), http://www.yukoncofc.org/creationvsevolution.pdf
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/feb/09/darwin.dawkins1
Ibid
River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life, Richard Dawkins, 1995, page 78.
NY: First Mariner Books, 2004, p. 212, italics added.
A testimony from an ex-Atheist
"Imagine a scenario where you are suddenly presented with absolute proof that God exists. Not proof that you can reproduce in a lab or record in a scientific journal, but experiential proof that is clear and undeniable...but only to you. I can’t tell you what that proof looks like, because it’s different for just about everybody. I can tell you what it looked like for me, and I’ll do so shortly.
"The mind of the Natural man (atheist) will buck against imagining such a thing, and resist even considering the scenario, but I’m asking you to try anyway. Take yourself, with all of your vast scientific knowledge of the universe, and imagine that the Christian God revealed himself to you in an undeniable way.
"How would such a thing change your life? What would happen to all the knowledge that seemed to so clearly disprove God just a minute ago? I can tell you exactly what would happen, because it happened to me (minus the vast scientific knowledge part).
"All that stuff stops mattering.
"You begin to realize that what we don’t know outweighs what we do know by an astronomical amount. You realize that What We Know is only an insignificant grain of sand on an unimaginable desert of 'Things to Know.' You begin to realize that in spite of the fact that we can’t agree on what happened throughout eternity, eternity still happened, and something happened inside of it. Lots of somethings.
"You begin to realize that sometimes both sides of an argument can claim the same piece of evidence. It’s all about perspective.
"So there you stand. Everything that you once KNEW laying shattered and broken at your feet, and the searchlight of your curiosity that drove you to become so knowledgeable about science and stuff is now focused on the Bible, the one and only source of knowledge about the magnificent creator of the universe. Can you imagine how it feels to suddenly know that such an awesome being actually exists?
"Have you ever stood in front of a powerful fan and tried to breath? Every breath you take in fills you up to bursting, and you feel wide open and a little afraid. That’s kind of how it feels on the day you start to believe God exists.
"It is an awesome day, let me tell you. I’ve got chills remembering when it happened to me. I was an atheist in an atheist chat room. One day someone came into the room and typed, 'imagine a scenario where you are suddenly presented with absolute proof . . .'
"As I imagined, I began to realize that God was POSSIBLE. Afterward, my natural curiosity took the wheel and it was all over for me. God had his revenge, and I became an anti-intellectual (or whatever it is you guys call us these days).
"The thing is, I read the posts in this blog, from all of your great minds that have such a clear love for learning, and I get excited because you guys are going to be strong soldiers in God’s army when you finally discover the one truth that can change your life.
"I’ll gladly call you my brothers and sisters on that day." Jim
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Atheists confuse God with the Bible
When I said to a believer in the theory of evolution, "Your trust is in fallible man. My trust is in infallible God," other atheistic believers in evolution replied:
"You trust the Bible, which was written, edited, compiled, interpreted, and preached by fallible man. That is all."
"No. Your trust is also in something you believe happened long ago that was written by fallible men: The Bible. Then you throw in the subjective feelings that you interpret as a personal relationship with an infallible God."
"You have trust in a book, written by men, assembled and edited and copied by men, none of them even claiming to be infallible."
These atheists are mixing apples and oranges. God is the Creator. The Bible is a compilation of 66 books. They are two distinct entities. It's like thinking that President of the United States is the Constitution. One is a written document, the other is the political leader of our country.
Christians of the first few centuries didn’t have a "Bible" as we know it. Most people of that time couldn’t read. The New Testament hadn’t been compiled, and there was no such things as the printing press. Those who were Christians were converted to Christ through the spoken message of the Gospel. They heard that they had violated God’s Law and that because of their crimes against a holy God, they were justly headed for Hell. But they also heard that God was rich in mercy to all that call upon Him, in that He provided a Savior. Jesus of Nazareth had paid the fine so that guilty sinners could have their case dismissed. Those who repented and put their trust in Him alone for their salvation received everlasting life as the gift of God.
They were saved by the power of God not by reading and believing the New Testament. Their trust was in Him, not in the Bible (again, which didn’t exist as we know it nowadays).
The contemporary Christian has the same experience. But we have the added blessing of having an Instruction Book that tells us what we experienced through our conversion, and how to live now that we have come to know God.
Consequentially, you can take the Bible away from me and burn it, or "disprove" it, or ban it, and it won’t change a thing for me because my salvation doesn’t come from believing the Bible, but through trusting in the person of Jesus Christ as my Lord and my Savior. Not even death will separate me from Him (see Romans 8:38-39).
An atheist further wrote, "But of course, as I've pointed out, you are not infallible; your trust might be in error." That would be true, if we were simply dealing with another human being. If you said to me that my trust in my wife is misplaced, I would be upset that you are insulting her integrity. I have a wife who is incredibly faithful, very loving, and extremely honest. Yet, she is still a human being and is therefore subject to human weakness. Not so with God. He is without sin. It is impossible for Him to lie. He keeps every promise He makes. You and I can trust Him like an immovable and solid rock.
So, if you are a professing atheist, you are without excuse. God has covered every base. You are dealing with the One who created the genome, the atom, the unspeakable complexities of DNA and this entire infinite universe. You cannot win. Give up. Humble yourself and surrender to His will today and you will come to know Him "whom to know is life eternal."
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Childish notion
The winner of a sandcastle competition was praised for his excellence this week. As the state representative for tourism honored the winner for what the crowd acknowledged were amazing and creative skills, a spokesperson from a group who had named themselves "The Committee for Intelligent Sciences" interrupted the proceedings. He said that the winner was a fraud, and that the sandcastle created itself.
When the crowd roared with laughter, he said that it was his theory and he was there to persuade everyone to believe as he did, and to drop what he called "the childish notion that someone had made the sandcastle."
As two men in white coats escorted the man from the scene, he mumbled something about it taking millions of years for the castle to get to its present state.
Friday, June 5, 2009
An oxymoron
Let me deal with your questions one by one. First, I strongly contest your 99.99%. You are saying that only .01% who study evolution don't believe it. I think you greatly exaggerate your figures. Still, never forget that there was a time when 100 % of the scientific community thought that the earth was flat. The majority must be right is a fallacy. Only God is right all the time.
Second, no Bible "believing" Christian accepts evolution. Such a thought is an oxymoron. To believe evolution means that the "Christian" doesn't believe the words of Jesus, when He said, "In the beginning God made them male and female" (see Matthew 19:4). To believe that God made mankind through the process of evolution means that you don’t believe Bible.
Here’s a question for you: Why do Darwinian believers insist on hiding behind the cloak of "science," when their theory isn’t scientific in the slightest? It’s nothing more than a pseudo science--a fairy tale for grownups, believed by the gullible, and created by the imaginations of secular speculators.
Here's the bottom line: When anyone comes to know God through the new birth (see John 3:3-5), the issue is dead in the water. I can never convince you that Genesis is the truth, but you can know the truth yourself through repentance and trust in Jesus Christ.
If you are interested, read John 8:31-32.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
The time bomb
I saw Disney’s "Up" recently. I went because a close friend said that it was so good and so funny, he saw it twice (he rarely goes to the movies). The skillful animators were able to show the joy of true love in marriage. In a matter of minutes, a cute kid and his girlfriend grew to adulthood, got married, and loved each other with a deep passion as they grew old together. Then she died.
Suddenly, every joy filled memory became unbearably painful for the elderly man, and they captured that deep pain in caricature. I cried my eyes out. I wanted to call my friend and say, "I thought you said this was a comedy!" Up took me down. I cried that night at home also, because I was graphically reminded me of something I carry daily. Every loving husband and wife will be torn apart by death. It’s just a matter of time. Each of us is strapped to a ticking time bomb. But that’s not the tragedy that drove me to my knees. It’s that God offers eternal life to every dying person, and most refuse His "unspeakable gift." That’s the real human tragedy.
I know that many of you think that I’m ignorant, because I make a mess of what you believe about evolution. But it’s not deliberate. I'm not slightly persuaded, but I'm slowly learning. I know many of you also think I’m a calculated liar and that I’m just out to make a fast buck. Believe that if you wish, but don’t use it as an excuse to reject God’s offer of eternal salvation. Please think about your sins, then think about the Savior and what He did for guilty sinners such as us. God knows that my motive is that I want to do is see you in Heaven. Up is where I want you to go. Don’t ask God for "proof." You don’t need it. You already have the necessary proof through your conscience and because of creation. Ask instead for salvation, while you still have time. Every beat of your heart is another tick...
