“For Allah loves not those who do wrong, For Allah loves not any ungrateful sinner, For Allah loves not the arrogant, the vainglorious” (Sura 3:57; 2:276; 4:36)
“I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers, smite them above their necks and smite all their fingertips of them, it is not you who slew them; it was Allah. (Sura 8:13-17)
“For the unbelievers are open enemies to you” (Sura 4:101)
“Seize them and slay them wherever you find them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem of war” (Sura 9:5)
How different this seemed to me from God of the Bible, who is undoubtedly both righteous and holy -yet still compassionate for the sinful and full of love for the unbeliever.
Too often we tend to focus on a handful of Old Testament stories where God is justifiably affronted or rightfully demanding for an important purpose.
We forget that Jesus was often just as aggravated, stern, and commanding of men as the Old Testament accounts of Yahweh. But throughout the entire bible, God always reveals his great love for even the worst of us. Especially for the worst of us.
Though I try to be careful not to use any verse or story out of context -Muhammad was, in fact, brilliant and ruthless in war- and I have read prose in the Qur’an that is both sweet and loving, yet there are deeply troubling facts about Muhammad that even he had no qualms revealing.
Muhammad was a prophet of war. It is ingrained in the very fiber of his being. He united Arabia but he did so by so by amassing so much blood –men, women, and children- on the blade of his sword that I wonder if he had nightmares.
Muhammad may have been deeply troubled. He would abusively discipline himself with “devout” prayer that caused him to stand and cry endlessly, praying feverishly with blistered feet in punished devotion. Some are proud to call it religious devotion but there seems to be a darker history here.
Muhammad had 11 wives and wrote of his great sexual appetites. Alarmingly Muhammad displayed the characteristics of a pedophiliac. His youngest wife “Aishah” was only 9 years old when he laid on top of her in sexual subdual. Of woman he wrote:
“Isn’t the witness of a woman equal to half of that of a man?” The woman answered “Yes” “This is because of the deficiency of the woman’s mind”. (Hadith 3.826)
“I have not seen anyone more deficient in intelligence and religion than you (women)”. (Hadith 2.541)
“What rights does a woman have with a man?” “He should feed her if he eats, clothe her if he dresses, avoid disfiguring her or beating her excessively or abandoning her, except at home. (Hadith 7.62.77)
Often the rebuttal to such teachings are shallow attacks on Old Testament scriptures. Yet these are far different than what we see in Leviticus and with far less historical explanation.
Again I would be dishonest if I said that the Qur’an doesn’t have its share of pleasant verses about women, about love, about patience, and forgiveness.
Yet there are two very stark sides of Mohammad that clash and contradict time and time again in the Qur’an.
There is a good side that cherishes his clan, his family, and his Muslim people. And there is a darker, bloodier side that expresses every conceivable evil I can think of. The God of the Qur’an is far worse than even the most blatant of lies regurgitated by Old Testament critics who assert Yahweh is a vengeful demanding Lord.
The God of the Qur’an does not care whether you perish or live. There are no tears shed by men that are carefully noticed by Allah. If you are not a Muslim there is no chance for any recognition whatsoever. If you are a Muslim then there is still very little hope for you as Allah could very well cast you into hell for any reason Allah wishes.
Allah wants work, Allah wants submission, and while there are glimpses of Allah’s love and mercy, you’d be lucky to enjoy it.
The truth is it makes far more sense when you delve deeper into the history of Islam, which isn’t that old, that evidence mounts which shows that Muhammad changed scripture as he saw fit, subjugated a people, and built an empire. He displayed a brilliant mind and conceived a religion that fit the needs of his conquest.
Yet there are many many fine Muslims who focus on the beauty and philosophy of the Qur’an. Being a Muslim does not mean you need to emulate Muhammad to the letter. Most are good loving people full of strength and hope.
But there is still an overwhelmingly strong argument that Muhammad was not a prophet of God and had no connection to Judeo-Christian deity.
And so it was that not that long ago I found myself in this particular position. I appreciate the beauty evident throughout the world's religions. And of course, I respect the God-given right of every human to worship as they please. Or not worship at all....
But with an honest critique it's relatively simple to dismiss most religions as easily identified man-made creations.
And it made perfect sense that if there were at all any true word of our Lord existing among men then there would have to be “one body, and one Spirit –just as I was called to the one hope that belongs to my call- one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all”. (Ephesians 4:4-5)
It is in the Bible that I see that undeniable truth.
Tested by time, scrutiny and examination from every great mind in history, the bible today is celebrated by believers and atheists admirers among the highest levels of academia. It is still intellectually studied and pondered the world over.
In the Bible I find an unprecedented level of prophecy. Words that shook the history of the world from the ancient Jewish prophecies of King Nebuchadnezzar, the conquest of magnificent Tyre, the desolation of Edom, and Daniel 11:2-4’s prophecy of Alexander the Great nearly 200 years before his birth!
Not to mention the collection of over 100 prophecies outlining the birth, life, and death of the Jewish Messiah who Daniel prophesied (Daniel 9:24-27) would live 490 years after his inspired scripture promised the rebuilding of the (then) demolished Temple. Nehemiah 2:1-8 fulfilled that Temple prophecy exactly 490 years from the date of the crucifixion. The study of biblical prophecies is a rich garden of knowledge.
In the Bible I find an explanation for every important question a man would have for God.
The reasons for His hidden presence, our suffering, good and evil, and why we exist at all. I found a superb case to make for the divine authority of Jesus Christ and the reliability of scripture’s account. Furthermore, I found an experiential claim to my Lord’s ascendency.
I testify to you with every fiber of my being that I can declare Jesus is Lord.
I’m far from perfect and I have many flaws, but I don’t need to work my way into God’s good graces.
I put aside my rebellion and embraced the truth of the cross. I don’t know entirely what happens those who rebel against God their entire lives only to die in sin and separation. But I would bet my life that God is faithful.
What about the person who would believe?
There are still many challenges to faith. Science seems to suggest a seperate truth apart from God. Many believe they are at odds. Are they right?
What if I told someone that they could indeed find God under the microscope? Would that person dare to look?
Would you?
Sunday, May 23, 2010
The Cloud Gazer
Imagine you are looking deep into the random sky on a hill of lush green lawn. Up in the air you see a white billowy cloud that reacts to the winds above and begins to transform into an A shaped cumulus. You might smirk to yourself as you make out the well known letter. Perhaps you’ll use your imagination just a bit to get that angle right but there it is, right in front of you.
A
Through completely random means information has appeared in the sky. You’ve interpreted it and recognized the shape and the means by which it came together. Now imagine if someone came up to you and said that given enough time not only will every letter in the alphabet eventually arise but with even more time they will arise in the precise order specifically needed to write out the lyrics of the Star Spangled Banner.
O….H…..S……A……Y……C…..A……N…….Y…….O……U…….S…….E…….E…..
This is exactly what science is telling us, and here’s the reason why. Everything in the universe, from the farthest super nova to the smallest cell in your body is amazingly connected, correlated, and controlled by the unfathomable minutia of force, control, and (magic word) design. Physics, astronomy, chemistry, biochemistry and anthropology all represent those clouds in the air with the one unmistakable common discovery amongst themselves. Every realm of science continues to look into the sky and finds.
….B…Y….T….H….E….D…A….W….N….S…E….A...R….L….Y…L…I…G…H….T…!
Evolution! We see it every day. Bacteria become resistant to antibiotics. Plants become resistant to bacteria. One day that goo under the microscope looks like a floating P. After some dosing and exposure, we’ll observe future generations and that P will look like a floating F! And that floating F is resistant to whatever we kept hitting it with. Evolution! We tinker with dogs and plants and new breeds arise, we observe birds that have beaks that grow or shrink over the years to fit surroundings. Evolution?
A
Now someone may notice these bacteria letters floating around and say to themselves “step by step, over enough time this bacteria could become something far greater! In fact I see now that all life was at one time like this simple floating F here and given enough time…
.W..H..A..T..S..O..P..R..O..U..D..L..Y..W..E…H..A..I..L..E..D…!
Which is universally a wonderful idea. Microevolution is a fact, and should be used to justify Macroevolution which might as well be a fact. This would explain why, biologically, everything relates to each other with an impressive precision. To give you an idea of just how precise everything in our universe lines up let us go beyond biology. Let’s go to the beginning!
The Big Bang. An explosion of light and raw unbridled power. Uncontained and unleashed on an unsuspecting cosmos of complete nothingness, from nothingness, by nothing, for us. But what existed before the Big Bang? God? Nothing? Only one thing is for sure. What existed before the Big Bang, was order.
(Takes a deep breath)
Before the Big Bang reached the size of an atom, the entire event was contained by a strong Nuclear constant in resonance with a precise weak nuclear constant held by an exact gravitational constant and electromagnetic constant by the precise ratio of electron to proton mass (and number) within the absolute set expansion of the universe governed by the definite speed of light which is moving along the entropy level of the universe held by the fixed density of the universe sustained by the exact age of universe finely structured by a (relatively) narrow distance between stars ensuring that everything in the universe works.
And what I mean by “works” is this. Astrophysicists have rigorously concluded that if any of these laws were even slightly (and I’m talking 1 in 100 Trillion) reduced or increased nothing would exist. And I mean nothing. Bonds couldn’t hold, atoms couldn’t form, molecules would melt away and galaxies would never form because the Big Bang would have never gotten bigger than half an atom or oppositely it would have spread out instantly like marbles on a floor, aimless and unable to cling and coalesce as it disintegrated into nothingness.
But lucky for us the Big Bang was a controlled explosion of sorts. Everything was in place so stars could form and explode releasing carbon (and so much more) into the universe so it could stockpile everything it needed to create the jewel of the cosmos we ever so humbly call Earth. So now us humans have these beautiful clouds to gaze and connect with, but was an insanely precise universe all we had to contend with before looking up at floating A’s?
Not really, in fact the axis of the earth is methodically placed to support the only temperatures we could survive in. Within a space of a couple degrees winters would freeze the continent and summers would scorch the sky. Our distance from the sun is exactly where it needs to be to prevent an ice planet with no liquid water or a boiled hot gas planet. We have a moon which is crucial, but even more crucial is that our moon is exactly the size it is and where it’s correctly located to regulate our Earth’s tides, rotation, and atmosphere, all of which require these precise levels to allow even the most basic of life to exist. The Earth’s crust is correctly measured to allow just the right amount of tectonic activity to ensure our atmosphere doesn’t give up its oxygen to an overly thick crusted planet, which is lucky for us because our planet’s gravity holds atmospheric water perfectly but also is weak enough to prevent larger ammonia and methane retention in the atmosphere which would kill anything that breathes. Even our days are perfectly aligned because any longer would force obscene temperature changes, any shorter and atmospheric wind velocities would sand blast our entire planet.
Astrophysicist Hugh Ross has discovered 32 of these minutely distinct parameters for Earth alone.
But let’s say for the sake of argument and fancy that there are multiple universes all over the place. Trillions and Trillions and Trillions of universes and we got the one that can sustain cellular life and here we are on this perfect oasis of interstellar pandemonium. For about a billion years the earth was a molten ball of rock and then it cooled right where it needed to. An asteroid hit our planet destroying everything but luckily forming a perfectly sized moon from the massive impact. So give or take several hundred million years and we begin with the life lottery. Let’s play!
As the waters part and land forms the primordial stew that is our early ocean presumably had some basic make-up of amino acids floating around. Then one day these amino acids bumped together in just the right way to form a simple protein that could replicate…and evolution! Really?
Not really. Cytochrome-C enzyme (A basic tiny protein) takes about 100 amino acids in a very precise specific order (seeing a trend?) to form. Now there are special enzymes that assist in the bonding of these acids that come exclusively from actual cells –which are nowhere to be found. But never mind the chicken or egg scenario there because mathematicians have surmised that the odds of a set of even the simplest proteins forming by random collisions and attractions are 1 in 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000.
I had to count all those zeroes!
Now once upon a time scientists could simply do what they always did when confronted with the improbability of evolution. They could throw time at it. “Oh over billions of years you reduce the chances”. Or they could attempt to reduce the overwhelming odds by inventing clever scenarios where simple structures form and hold and wait for more and more complex structures to add on.
The problem is now we know the universe is around 14 billion years old, and we know the earth is around 4.5 billion years old. This really burns the candle on both ends. Furthermore we see evolution is absolutely racing towards a fixed position. From the moment life started evolution takes off! As if hurriedly rushing towards complex systems like bodily symmetry, and my favorite…eyeballs. (But we’ll get to that later)
For instance the Trilobite is one of the most common fossils found. And we find lots of fossils. But our most abundant fossils are from the explosion of life scientist call the “Cambrian explosion”. In this strata life explodes from single cell life into multi-cellular complex life. But there’s a problem. Evolution is not supposed to work this way. Trilobites are supposed to be as simple as imaginatively possible, but they are surprisingly more complex than modern Horseshoe crabs. They have complex imaging capabilities in their eyes and highly sophisticated axial symmetry in their bodies. These things were around 600 million years ago! But what do you think was around at the beginning? Say 3.4 billion years ago?
At this age you’d expect any fossil that was found to be a molecule sized simple celled goo. But what we have are Stromatolites. And Stromatolites are no simple goo. They are sophisticated cyanobacteria that still exist today. Not only that but they have bewilderingly complex protections for their DNA like cell walls that malign the idea that these things evolved at all.
The overarching problem for evolutionists are the constant pitfalls, dead ends, and plain errors that exist all over the macroevolution minefield and evolutionists know it. They say Intelligent Design is simply inserting God into the gaps of scientific knowledge but if the gaps hint at a divine fingerprint, then it is the foundations of scientific thought that forcefully cry out for an intelligent mind.
…A..T..T..H..E..T..W..I..G..H..L..I..G..H..T..S..L..A..S..T..G..L..E..A..M..I..N..G…
Remember Lucy? Irda? Ida? Each had an enormous following of fanfare on TIME, CNN, Newsweek, and FOX as the next great link in mankind’s evolutionary history. But about a month later, on the back of a dusty peer reviewed paper the claims were scaled back. Waaay back.
http://www.icr.org/article/scientists-back-off-ardi-claims/
Never heard about that on PBS.
And we never will because like the Piltdown man, evolutionists make extravagant promises only to be disappointed over and over again when more scientific information pulls us farther away from the wishes of neo-Darwinists. And you’ll never hear about it.
Have you heard that Chimps are 99% identical to us?
Of course you have, but did you know the test compared human genetics against the back drop of the far smaller chimp code. Does it surprise you that the similarities are simple things like hair, skin, teeth, eardrums, tongues, nails. 99%? When it comes to things that matter, evolution publication “Nature” as recent as last month found more information that chips away at this long held belief.
http://www.icr.org/article/new-chromosome-research-undermines/
When you think about it evolutionists hold on to several dozen fossils they believe to be transitional fossils from a species to a next, but even their best evidence fails to make sense in the light of their own evolutionary presuppositions. If you’re going to tell me elephants, squirrels, and sharks are all related then I should see millions of transitional fossils everywhere.
Our extensive fossil record has distinct and extinct showcases of life but what it doesn’t have is convincing evidence for evolution. The evidence should be so overwhelming that it would be inconceivable to question it…like the Big Bang when scientists hated that idea.
And evolutionists are so aware of these facts that they suppose any explanation is better than God. So eminent scientists start playing Mother Goose. Sophisticated stories of alien seeding, asteroid life, and transcendent life on some other plane of imaginary existence..anything! Anything they can think of, to never have to admit that God may exist, because to the evolutionist, that is greatest nonsense of all.
Ironically many Christians could care less if evolution were true. Why should they? There’s no reason why God isn’t the force rushing biology towards the goal of DNA –which is so sophisticated it boggles the mind- or the spectacular machine that is the eye.
All across life evolution tries to prove it did the impossible over and over again. The eyes of the octopus, the eyes of the eagle, and the eyes of a human all as far as possible on an evolutionary tree yet performing the miracle of random natural selection again and again. You would think neo-Darwinists like Dawkins would embrace the mind numbing complexity of life.
But he doesn’t.
In fact he dumbs it down.
A
Through completely random means information has appeared in the sky. You’ve interpreted it and recognized the shape and the means by which it came together. Now imagine if someone came up to you and said that given enough time not only will every letter in the alphabet eventually arise but with even more time they will arise in the precise order specifically needed to write out the lyrics of the Star Spangled Banner.
O….H…..S……A……Y……C…..A……N…….Y…….O……U…….S…….E…….E…..
This is exactly what science is telling us, and here’s the reason why. Everything in the universe, from the farthest super nova to the smallest cell in your body is amazingly connected, correlated, and controlled by the unfathomable minutia of force, control, and (magic word) design. Physics, astronomy, chemistry, biochemistry and anthropology all represent those clouds in the air with the one unmistakable common discovery amongst themselves. Every realm of science continues to look into the sky and finds.
….B…Y….T….H….E….D…A….W….N….S…E….A...R….L….Y…L…I…G…H….T…!
Evolution! We see it every day. Bacteria become resistant to antibiotics. Plants become resistant to bacteria. One day that goo under the microscope looks like a floating P. After some dosing and exposure, we’ll observe future generations and that P will look like a floating F! And that floating F is resistant to whatever we kept hitting it with. Evolution! We tinker with dogs and plants and new breeds arise, we observe birds that have beaks that grow or shrink over the years to fit surroundings. Evolution?
A
Now someone may notice these bacteria letters floating around and say to themselves “step by step, over enough time this bacteria could become something far greater! In fact I see now that all life was at one time like this simple floating F here and given enough time…
.W..H..A..T..S..O..P..R..O..U..D..L..Y..W..E…H..A..I..L..E..D…!
Which is universally a wonderful idea. Microevolution is a fact, and should be used to justify Macroevolution which might as well be a fact. This would explain why, biologically, everything relates to each other with an impressive precision. To give you an idea of just how precise everything in our universe lines up let us go beyond biology. Let’s go to the beginning!
The Big Bang. An explosion of light and raw unbridled power. Uncontained and unleashed on an unsuspecting cosmos of complete nothingness, from nothingness, by nothing, for us. But what existed before the Big Bang? God? Nothing? Only one thing is for sure. What existed before the Big Bang, was order.
(Takes a deep breath)
Before the Big Bang reached the size of an atom, the entire event was contained by a strong Nuclear constant in resonance with a precise weak nuclear constant held by an exact gravitational constant and electromagnetic constant by the precise ratio of electron to proton mass (and number) within the absolute set expansion of the universe governed by the definite speed of light which is moving along the entropy level of the universe held by the fixed density of the universe sustained by the exact age of universe finely structured by a (relatively) narrow distance between stars ensuring that everything in the universe works.
And what I mean by “works” is this. Astrophysicists have rigorously concluded that if any of these laws were even slightly (and I’m talking 1 in 100 Trillion) reduced or increased nothing would exist. And I mean nothing. Bonds couldn’t hold, atoms couldn’t form, molecules would melt away and galaxies would never form because the Big Bang would have never gotten bigger than half an atom or oppositely it would have spread out instantly like marbles on a floor, aimless and unable to cling and coalesce as it disintegrated into nothingness.
But lucky for us the Big Bang was a controlled explosion of sorts. Everything was in place so stars could form and explode releasing carbon (and so much more) into the universe so it could stockpile everything it needed to create the jewel of the cosmos we ever so humbly call Earth. So now us humans have these beautiful clouds to gaze and connect with, but was an insanely precise universe all we had to contend with before looking up at floating A’s?
Not really, in fact the axis of the earth is methodically placed to support the only temperatures we could survive in. Within a space of a couple degrees winters would freeze the continent and summers would scorch the sky. Our distance from the sun is exactly where it needs to be to prevent an ice planet with no liquid water or a boiled hot gas planet. We have a moon which is crucial, but even more crucial is that our moon is exactly the size it is and where it’s correctly located to regulate our Earth’s tides, rotation, and atmosphere, all of which require these precise levels to allow even the most basic of life to exist. The Earth’s crust is correctly measured to allow just the right amount of tectonic activity to ensure our atmosphere doesn’t give up its oxygen to an overly thick crusted planet, which is lucky for us because our planet’s gravity holds atmospheric water perfectly but also is weak enough to prevent larger ammonia and methane retention in the atmosphere which would kill anything that breathes. Even our days are perfectly aligned because any longer would force obscene temperature changes, any shorter and atmospheric wind velocities would sand blast our entire planet.
Astrophysicist Hugh Ross has discovered 32 of these minutely distinct parameters for Earth alone.
But let’s say for the sake of argument and fancy that there are multiple universes all over the place. Trillions and Trillions and Trillions of universes and we got the one that can sustain cellular life and here we are on this perfect oasis of interstellar pandemonium. For about a billion years the earth was a molten ball of rock and then it cooled right where it needed to. An asteroid hit our planet destroying everything but luckily forming a perfectly sized moon from the massive impact. So give or take several hundred million years and we begin with the life lottery. Let’s play!
As the waters part and land forms the primordial stew that is our early ocean presumably had some basic make-up of amino acids floating around. Then one day these amino acids bumped together in just the right way to form a simple protein that could replicate…and evolution! Really?
Not really. Cytochrome-C enzyme (A basic tiny protein) takes about 100 amino acids in a very precise specific order (seeing a trend?) to form. Now there are special enzymes that assist in the bonding of these acids that come exclusively from actual cells –which are nowhere to be found. But never mind the chicken or egg scenario there because mathematicians have surmised that the odds of a set of even the simplest proteins forming by random collisions and attractions are 1 in 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000.
I had to count all those zeroes!
Now once upon a time scientists could simply do what they always did when confronted with the improbability of evolution. They could throw time at it. “Oh over billions of years you reduce the chances”. Or they could attempt to reduce the overwhelming odds by inventing clever scenarios where simple structures form and hold and wait for more and more complex structures to add on.
The problem is now we know the universe is around 14 billion years old, and we know the earth is around 4.5 billion years old. This really burns the candle on both ends. Furthermore we see evolution is absolutely racing towards a fixed position. From the moment life started evolution takes off! As if hurriedly rushing towards complex systems like bodily symmetry, and my favorite…eyeballs. (But we’ll get to that later)
For instance the Trilobite is one of the most common fossils found. And we find lots of fossils. But our most abundant fossils are from the explosion of life scientist call the “Cambrian explosion”. In this strata life explodes from single cell life into multi-cellular complex life. But there’s a problem. Evolution is not supposed to work this way. Trilobites are supposed to be as simple as imaginatively possible, but they are surprisingly more complex than modern Horseshoe crabs. They have complex imaging capabilities in their eyes and highly sophisticated axial symmetry in their bodies. These things were around 600 million years ago! But what do you think was around at the beginning? Say 3.4 billion years ago?
At this age you’d expect any fossil that was found to be a molecule sized simple celled goo. But what we have are Stromatolites. And Stromatolites are no simple goo. They are sophisticated cyanobacteria that still exist today. Not only that but they have bewilderingly complex protections for their DNA like cell walls that malign the idea that these things evolved at all.
The overarching problem for evolutionists are the constant pitfalls, dead ends, and plain errors that exist all over the macroevolution minefield and evolutionists know it. They say Intelligent Design is simply inserting God into the gaps of scientific knowledge but if the gaps hint at a divine fingerprint, then it is the foundations of scientific thought that forcefully cry out for an intelligent mind.
…A..T..T..H..E..T..W..I..G..H..L..I..G..H..T..S..L..A..S..T..G..L..E..A..M..I..N..G…
Remember Lucy? Irda? Ida? Each had an enormous following of fanfare on TIME, CNN, Newsweek, and FOX as the next great link in mankind’s evolutionary history. But about a month later, on the back of a dusty peer reviewed paper the claims were scaled back. Waaay back.
http://www.icr.org/article/scientists-back-off-ardi-claims/
Never heard about that on PBS.
And we never will because like the Piltdown man, evolutionists make extravagant promises only to be disappointed over and over again when more scientific information pulls us farther away from the wishes of neo-Darwinists. And you’ll never hear about it.
Have you heard that Chimps are 99% identical to us?
Of course you have, but did you know the test compared human genetics against the back drop of the far smaller chimp code. Does it surprise you that the similarities are simple things like hair, skin, teeth, eardrums, tongues, nails. 99%? When it comes to things that matter, evolution publication “Nature” as recent as last month found more information that chips away at this long held belief.
http://www.icr.org/article/new-chromosome-research-undermines/
When you think about it evolutionists hold on to several dozen fossils they believe to be transitional fossils from a species to a next, but even their best evidence fails to make sense in the light of their own evolutionary presuppositions. If you’re going to tell me elephants, squirrels, and sharks are all related then I should see millions of transitional fossils everywhere.
Our extensive fossil record has distinct and extinct showcases of life but what it doesn’t have is convincing evidence for evolution. The evidence should be so overwhelming that it would be inconceivable to question it…like the Big Bang when scientists hated that idea.
And evolutionists are so aware of these facts that they suppose any explanation is better than God. So eminent scientists start playing Mother Goose. Sophisticated stories of alien seeding, asteroid life, and transcendent life on some other plane of imaginary existence..anything! Anything they can think of, to never have to admit that God may exist, because to the evolutionist, that is greatest nonsense of all.
Ironically many Christians could care less if evolution were true. Why should they? There’s no reason why God isn’t the force rushing biology towards the goal of DNA –which is so sophisticated it boggles the mind- or the spectacular machine that is the eye.
All across life evolution tries to prove it did the impossible over and over again. The eyes of the octopus, the eyes of the eagle, and the eyes of a human all as far as possible on an evolutionary tree yet performing the miracle of random natural selection again and again. You would think neo-Darwinists like Dawkins would embrace the mind numbing complexity of life.
But he doesn’t.
In fact he dumbs it down.
The Incredible Irreducible Eye
Dr. Michael Behe is the biochemist who coined the term irreducible complexity. The idea is simple. If evolution asserts small gradual changes over time then what would explain the incredibly complex systems of interdependent mechanisms that cannot exist without a dozen other incredibly complex systems. If you can’t build it piece by piece then how did blind chance build it?
This argument sparked off a fury of rebuttals. And rebuttals to the rebuttals. And..well more rebuttals. But I’ll give a single example best exemplified by the eye. Behe insisted that the eye was a perfectly designed machine with thousands of interdependent working parts. Dawkins immediately asserted that the eye was not only flawed (blind spot) but teamed with PBS to make a documentary on just how it evolved. (See YouTube). I.D.ists shot back that the eye’s flaws are not flaws at all and benefit the eye.
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-blind-leading-the-blind/
This is where it gets interesting. PBS’s video became gospel. Wikipedia, TV, and radio embraced the simple and easy to understand explanation for the long debated “eye problem”. Darwin starts off with some light sensitive cells, and adds a dimple with a little concave giving some directional capability. Soon we’re lucky to evolve some gel and a simple lens to protect the fortuitous gel and viola! It’s all so simple. I could draw it for you on a sheet of paper. The problem is it’s a lie for people like you and me to gobble up and regurgitate when one of those pesky Intelligent Designers starts talking about the “amazing eye”.
It’s a lie and Dawkins knows it’s a lie. Here’s why.
(Takes a deep breath)
Let’s start with those handy light sensitive cells in the beginning. You could imagine those on the earliest and simplest of life forms. Simple light and darkness recognition to regulate biorhythms. Probably evolved over the weekend. Here’s how it works.
First, a photon enters the light sensitive cell and interacts with the necessary rhodopsin protein (which luckily is nice and neat right there for us). You see this protein is special it contains organic dyes that absorb energy from the photon causing the protein to change shape.
The reconfigured protein rhodospin is now able to bind to another protein called transducin. However this leads to an remarkable instability that forces a part to drop to make room for a GTP molecule which stabilizes the structure. This megamolecule is now able to bind to a molecule of photodiesterase which is fixed on the wall of the cell’s outer membrane.
The cell wall has a series of ports which open and close to allow charged ions such as sodium and calcium to cross in and out of the cell. These ports are controlled by a membrane molecule called cGMP. More cGMP keeps the ports closed, less allows the ports to open. When the megamolecule (officially called GTP-Transducin-metarhodopsin II) binds to the photodiesterase on the cell wall, so now some of the cGMP is displaced, thus lowering the cGMP concentration.
This allows some of the ion ports to open up, which in turn allows positively charged sodium ions to enter the cell. Since the ions carry an electrical charge, this induces a charge imbalance across the cell wall, which results in a voltage being established across the membrane. The voltage naturally seeks equilibrium by propagating along the cell membrane, until it gets to the neighbor cell and jumps the gap to begin the propagation of an electrical signal, from one cell to the next.
And that is the process required to explain the simplest part of the very first step in Dawkin’s evolution of the eye scheme.
I think I liked Youtube’s version better. (Exhales)
And this is the problem with the debate today. It’s too easy to lie because no one understands anything. A website gives a version of its “facts” and we lap it up because we’re too ignorant to say “well are you sure that the GTP molecule effectively stabilizes the Rhodospin/Transducin combination?”
So the common debate becomes “What are you an idiot? Eyes evolved easy! Read Wikipedia moron”
Even though I have a simple 2 year college level of Biology (though I got a B and an A :) I do know is there are far more politics involved in the evolution debate than facts.
And if you get to view an actual debate like last week’s http://www.apologeticsreview.com/?p=335
Facing the critics panel, you’d see that 80% of what gets put out on the web doesn’t fly in a real debate because everyone is too smart to cite Youtube.
This argument sparked off a fury of rebuttals. And rebuttals to the rebuttals. And..well more rebuttals. But I’ll give a single example best exemplified by the eye. Behe insisted that the eye was a perfectly designed machine with thousands of interdependent working parts. Dawkins immediately asserted that the eye was not only flawed (blind spot) but teamed with PBS to make a documentary on just how it evolved. (See YouTube). I.D.ists shot back that the eye’s flaws are not flaws at all and benefit the eye.
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-blind-leading-the-blind/
This is where it gets interesting. PBS’s video became gospel. Wikipedia, TV, and radio embraced the simple and easy to understand explanation for the long debated “eye problem”. Darwin starts off with some light sensitive cells, and adds a dimple with a little concave giving some directional capability. Soon we’re lucky to evolve some gel and a simple lens to protect the fortuitous gel and viola! It’s all so simple. I could draw it for you on a sheet of paper. The problem is it’s a lie for people like you and me to gobble up and regurgitate when one of those pesky Intelligent Designers starts talking about the “amazing eye”.
It’s a lie and Dawkins knows it’s a lie. Here’s why.
(Takes a deep breath)
Let’s start with those handy light sensitive cells in the beginning. You could imagine those on the earliest and simplest of life forms. Simple light and darkness recognition to regulate biorhythms. Probably evolved over the weekend. Here’s how it works.
First, a photon enters the light sensitive cell and interacts with the necessary rhodopsin protein (which luckily is nice and neat right there for us). You see this protein is special it contains organic dyes that absorb energy from the photon causing the protein to change shape.
The reconfigured protein rhodospin is now able to bind to another protein called transducin. However this leads to an remarkable instability that forces a part to drop to make room for a GTP molecule which stabilizes the structure. This megamolecule is now able to bind to a molecule of photodiesterase which is fixed on the wall of the cell’s outer membrane.
The cell wall has a series of ports which open and close to allow charged ions such as sodium and calcium to cross in and out of the cell. These ports are controlled by a membrane molecule called cGMP. More cGMP keeps the ports closed, less allows the ports to open. When the megamolecule (officially called GTP-Transducin-metarhodopsin II) binds to the photodiesterase on the cell wall, so now some of the cGMP is displaced, thus lowering the cGMP concentration.
This allows some of the ion ports to open up, which in turn allows positively charged sodium ions to enter the cell. Since the ions carry an electrical charge, this induces a charge imbalance across the cell wall, which results in a voltage being established across the membrane. The voltage naturally seeks equilibrium by propagating along the cell membrane, until it gets to the neighbor cell and jumps the gap to begin the propagation of an electrical signal, from one cell to the next.
And that is the process required to explain the simplest part of the very first step in Dawkin’s evolution of the eye scheme.
I think I liked Youtube’s version better. (Exhales)
And this is the problem with the debate today. It’s too easy to lie because no one understands anything. A website gives a version of its “facts” and we lap it up because we’re too ignorant to say “well are you sure that the GTP molecule effectively stabilizes the Rhodospin/Transducin combination?”
So the common debate becomes “What are you an idiot? Eyes evolved easy! Read Wikipedia moron”
Even though I have a simple 2 year college level of Biology (though I got a B and an A :) I do know is there are far more politics involved in the evolution debate than facts.
And if you get to view an actual debate like last week’s http://www.apologeticsreview.com/?p=335
Facing the critics panel, you’d see that 80% of what gets put out on the web doesn’t fly in a real debate because everyone is too smart to cite Youtube.
The Great War
By now you should have realized that there is a war going on.
The stakes are high and the combatants are bloody vicious to each other. On one end we have Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Victor Stenger. (And many more) and on the other end we have Stephen C. Meyer, William Dembski, and Michael Behe. (And many more) Ben Stein made a movie last year about this war called “Expelled!”.
This fight is a nasty one, but the real casualties are regular people like you and I who don’t hold multiple PHD’s from Ivy League universities. Information trickles down from the talking points of each camp and most of the time these talking points are pure oversimplified nonsense. Darwinists brutally slam biochemists like Dr. Charles Garner who note that “The threshold of evidence for evolution is set far lower than any of the other sciences”.
Richard Dawkins vehemently declares “Intelligent Design is not science!” Despite the peer reviewed papers of Stephen C. Meyer (Proceedings of Biological Society of Washington DC), William Dembski and Stephen Behe’s science of protein structures and synthesis.
Online people are called IDiots, retards, uninformed, ignorant, and worse despite the real scientists having serious debates when the cameras aren’t rolling and the press is far far away. Just last week Biola University hosted a debate with evolutionists versus a panel of ID scientists. It was complex, cordial, and well informed.
No one was called uniformed because the fact is Intelligent Design doesn’t need the gaps of science to prove its point. It doesn’t want the gaps. It wants the lab, the method, and the results of serious scientific evaluation. A couple of years ago Richard Dawkins debated John Lennox and though I thought it was an even debate, Dawkins apparently thought he would steam roll over the Christian and he didn’t even come close.
In fact beyond the name calling and cursing Christopher Hitchens and Victor Stenger have both met their match at the hands of William Lane Craig. Dawkins outright refuses to debate him. Atheist professor Dr. Bradley Monton recently wrote “Evolutionists have attempted to stifle the science of Intelligent Design as ridiculous for over 30 years by calling it names and forcing the perception that it is a religion, however, ID continues to grow and become stronger in every field of legitimate research.”
Websites like ARN.Org, ID the future.com, Biologic Institute.Org, Uncommon Descent.com, Reasonable Faith.Org and many more have amazing peer reviewed scientific arguments for intelligent design for those who aren’t afraid to read the opposition of the norm.
The stakes are high and the combatants are bloody vicious to each other. On one end we have Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Victor Stenger. (And many more) and on the other end we have Stephen C. Meyer, William Dembski, and Michael Behe. (And many more) Ben Stein made a movie last year about this war called “Expelled!”.
This fight is a nasty one, but the real casualties are regular people like you and I who don’t hold multiple PHD’s from Ivy League universities. Information trickles down from the talking points of each camp and most of the time these talking points are pure oversimplified nonsense. Darwinists brutally slam biochemists like Dr. Charles Garner who note that “The threshold of evidence for evolution is set far lower than any of the other sciences”.
Richard Dawkins vehemently declares “Intelligent Design is not science!” Despite the peer reviewed papers of Stephen C. Meyer (Proceedings of Biological Society of Washington DC), William Dembski and Stephen Behe’s science of protein structures and synthesis.
Online people are called IDiots, retards, uninformed, ignorant, and worse despite the real scientists having serious debates when the cameras aren’t rolling and the press is far far away. Just last week Biola University hosted a debate with evolutionists versus a panel of ID scientists. It was complex, cordial, and well informed.
No one was called uniformed because the fact is Intelligent Design doesn’t need the gaps of science to prove its point. It doesn’t want the gaps. It wants the lab, the method, and the results of serious scientific evaluation. A couple of years ago Richard Dawkins debated John Lennox and though I thought it was an even debate, Dawkins apparently thought he would steam roll over the Christian and he didn’t even come close.
In fact beyond the name calling and cursing Christopher Hitchens and Victor Stenger have both met their match at the hands of William Lane Craig. Dawkins outright refuses to debate him. Atheist professor Dr. Bradley Monton recently wrote “Evolutionists have attempted to stifle the science of Intelligent Design as ridiculous for over 30 years by calling it names and forcing the perception that it is a religion, however, ID continues to grow and become stronger in every field of legitimate research.”
Websites like ARN.Org, ID the future.com, Biologic Institute.Org, Uncommon Descent.com, Reasonable Faith.Org and many more have amazing peer reviewed scientific arguments for intelligent design for those who aren’t afraid to read the opposition of the norm.
How Far We've Come
“The truth of our faith becomes a matter of ridicule among the unbelievers if any believer not gifted with the necessary scientific learning, presents as dogma what scientific scrutiny shows to be false.” Thomas Aquinas 1250 A.D.
I’ve known so many good Christians who have had no answer for atheists who attack their religion for being intolerant, ignorant, and aggressive. Some say Christianity is a crutch, and for many it is. So is atheism, or naturalism, or just plain indifference. We all simply believe what we want to believe (for our own psychological reasons) despite the facts, despite the evidence. Who wants to change?
There’s no single argument that can be given to convince you that there is a God. There’s no persuasion I can give to make someone pray to Jesus Christ and ask for wisdom. In the end if you want to be an atheist you’ll find enough literature to make you feel that your ”absence of theism” is a valid world view.
I suppose that a natural world is affected by far greater things than natural reasoning. I believe in people to always try their best to better themselves, to seek out perfection and maturity. I trust in the power of brotherhood and family to make manifest the promises of life’s sanctification. I understand that there are bad people in the world, that there are bad Christians in the world, but we don’t have to be those people. I am not one of those Christians.
When I became a Christian I was afraid I’d change. I knew beginning a prayer relationship in Jesus’ name would begin to change me from the inside out.
But I was wrong.
It was the sin that changed me. It was the world that changed me. It was my life of human experiences and lessons, social wisdoms and norms that changed the person I am to the person I was. It was God who brought me back. Jesus who made me, created me and led me to build this relationship that makes me reacquaint myself with myself. Don’t be afraid that church is going to change you, be afraid that life has.
God bless you and all and thank you for reading my blog.
I’ve known so many good Christians who have had no answer for atheists who attack their religion for being intolerant, ignorant, and aggressive. Some say Christianity is a crutch, and for many it is. So is atheism, or naturalism, or just plain indifference. We all simply believe what we want to believe (for our own psychological reasons) despite the facts, despite the evidence. Who wants to change?
There’s no single argument that can be given to convince you that there is a God. There’s no persuasion I can give to make someone pray to Jesus Christ and ask for wisdom. In the end if you want to be an atheist you’ll find enough literature to make you feel that your ”absence of theism” is a valid world view.
I suppose that a natural world is affected by far greater things than natural reasoning. I believe in people to always try their best to better themselves, to seek out perfection and maturity. I trust in the power of brotherhood and family to make manifest the promises of life’s sanctification. I understand that there are bad people in the world, that there are bad Christians in the world, but we don’t have to be those people. I am not one of those Christians.
When I became a Christian I was afraid I’d change. I knew beginning a prayer relationship in Jesus’ name would begin to change me from the inside out.
But I was wrong.
It was the sin that changed me. It was the world that changed me. It was my life of human experiences and lessons, social wisdoms and norms that changed the person I am to the person I was. It was God who brought me back. Jesus who made me, created me and led me to build this relationship that makes me reacquaint myself with myself. Don’t be afraid that church is going to change you, be afraid that life has.
God bless you and all and thank you for reading my blog.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Storming The Check Books Of Normandy
France is such an easy place to ridicule.
For starters many don't really care for us. Which is enough to deride them whenever possible. Furthermore they opposed us going into Iraq (gasp!). And have nationalized healthcare (gulp!) And what isn't there to hate about a country that runs so heartily on tax revenue (gah!).
So it's no surprise that whenever Republicans need a punching bag or insult, France is always on the tip of the toungue.
Big spending, tax increases, healthcare reform just about sum up what President Obama is authoring for this country and already conservatives are digging in for a fight.
Not to mention that Republicans throw the word "Socialist" out like panties at a Tom Jones concert. The party of opposition have become the party of "No" "No" "No". And any ideas of bank and economy recovery coming out of the right are as old and bankrupt as, well the banks and economy.
It's hard to believe that if Obama's strategies succeed, conservatives will ever give credit. If this time next year we've come out of this misunderstood and great recession it'll be the talking heads on Fox news or radio trying their best to explain away the progress on anything and everything that doesn't begin and end with Barack Obama.
Surely if the economy falters in 8 months it'll be the President's head on the Republican mantle.
I find it hilarious how quickly conservatives are trying to blame Obama for our current situation and make us forget about the ridiculousness of the past 8 years of Republican policies.
When Clinton early on employed policies for economic prosperity (which the right also tried their best to vote down) Republicans tried their best to implant the idea that Reagan's policies were finally coming to maturation.
"It takes years after a presidency to witness its true results!"
So it was during Dubya's 8 year presidency that we were assured that history would judge him favorably. That we were experiencing economic growth and that Bush's tax plan, Bush's budget, and Bush's economic policy was sound.
But not 60 days into Obama's presidency conservatives are already calling it "Obama's recession". True he owns it, but let's never forget who gave life to this beast and lets not dumb down further and forget who got us out if we indeed ever do break free of this economic disaster.
Worse comes to worse we could all just move to France.
For starters many don't really care for us. Which is enough to deride them whenever possible. Furthermore they opposed us going into Iraq (gasp!). And have nationalized healthcare (gulp!) And what isn't there to hate about a country that runs so heartily on tax revenue (gah!).
So it's no surprise that whenever Republicans need a punching bag or insult, France is always on the tip of the toungue.
Big spending, tax increases, healthcare reform just about sum up what President Obama is authoring for this country and already conservatives are digging in for a fight.
Not to mention that Republicans throw the word "Socialist" out like panties at a Tom Jones concert. The party of opposition have become the party of "No" "No" "No". And any ideas of bank and economy recovery coming out of the right are as old and bankrupt as, well the banks and economy.
It's hard to believe that if Obama's strategies succeed, conservatives will ever give credit. If this time next year we've come out of this misunderstood and great recession it'll be the talking heads on Fox news or radio trying their best to explain away the progress on anything and everything that doesn't begin and end with Barack Obama.
Surely if the economy falters in 8 months it'll be the President's head on the Republican mantle.
I find it hilarious how quickly conservatives are trying to blame Obama for our current situation and make us forget about the ridiculousness of the past 8 years of Republican policies.
When Clinton early on employed policies for economic prosperity (which the right also tried their best to vote down) Republicans tried their best to implant the idea that Reagan's policies were finally coming to maturation.
"It takes years after a presidency to witness its true results!"
So it was during Dubya's 8 year presidency that we were assured that history would judge him favorably. That we were experiencing economic growth and that Bush's tax plan, Bush's budget, and Bush's economic policy was sound.
But not 60 days into Obama's presidency conservatives are already calling it "Obama's recession". True he owns it, but let's never forget who gave life to this beast and lets not dumb down further and forget who got us out if we indeed ever do break free of this economic disaster.
Worse comes to worse we could all just move to France.
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