NUCLEAR ENGINEER STAUNCHLY DEFENDS BIBLICAL CREATION

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Dr Jonathan Corrado (B.S., M.S., M.S. (hons.), M.Div., Th.M., Ph.D.) has degrees in science, engineering, and theology. His highest is a Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from Colorado State University and his Master of Theology is from Liberty University. He has extensive experience in systems engineering and nuclear science, including research, development, and management. Dr Corrado has authored both secular and creationist scientific papers, theological papers, and a book in his field and one on spiritual deception.

Dr Corrado currently works in both the defence and nuclear industries as a manager and engineer and is a senior officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve. He is married to Erin, who is a Christian singer-songwriter. They have four children.

Dr Corrado’s science beginnings

Dr C. says he has been interested since childhood: Even in preschool, I said that when I grew up, I wanted to be a scientist, because they looked impressive in a white lab coat! I enjoyed science classes because I enjoyed learning how things worked. I gained an appreciation from an early age of how integrated, complex, and well-designed the natural world is.

From his observations, he realized there must be an intelligent Creator. However, as Romans 1:18 says, such general revelation is enough to deny atheists any excuses but is insufficient for salvation. For salvation, we need special revelation: “When I was saved, the identity of this intelligent designer was made clear.”

Bible: true and self-consistent.

The Bible reveals the beginning of the Cosmos and its end. Man’s purpose and destiny is given. We are given answers to all of life’s pressing questions: why is there death and suffering and what God has done to redeem mankind. Fulfilled prophecy proves the Bible is the inspired Word of God. I have discovered that the Bible is a unified whole, the product of engineered design by a perfect Creator. The Bible, down to the smallest letter and part of a letter (Matthew 5:18), is there for our learning, discovery, and amazement. Truly, our God is an awesome God!

He found that many Bible difficulties disappear “if one simply recognizes the unity and integrity of the 66 books, composed by 40 authors over thousands of years (Proverbs 25:2).”

This deep study brought me to Christ and an understanding of salvation and its implications. Since I’ve been saved, I can’t stop studying the Bible and discovering the complexity and integrity of this perfect book. God never gave up on me through my years of disobedience, and now, I will not give up on Him.

Scientific support for the Bible

As a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), one of his heroes is Matthew Fontaine Maury (1806–1873), a past VMI faculty member. Many plaques are dedicated to Maury as ‘Pathfinder of the Seas’, which arose from his devout Christianity and in reference to Psalm 8:8 (creation.com/maury).

“As a naval officer who has sailed the seas, Psalm 8:8 is undoubtedly true and gives credibility to the Bible’s scientific claims.” He also listed many other arguments for God’s existence (cf. creation.com/arguments-for-god.)

Long ages vs the Bible?

The Bible teaches that the world is a little over 6,000 years old (creation.com/6000-years). This is often called a ‘young’ earth creation model, but it’s young only in relation to the dogma of billions of years. In reality, 6,000 years is very old (creation.com/earth-how-old).

Dr C. agrees with CMI that one doesn’t need to believe in a ‘young’ earth to be saved (see creation.com/can-christians-believe-evolution.) However, there are still huge problems with trying to mix long ages with Scripture.

Dr Corrado points out that long-age views don’t come from the biblical text, but must be imposed from outside. This includes the day-age theory, theistic evolution, progressive creationism, and gap theory. However, this affects how one interprets the early chapters of Genesis and spills over into the rest of Scripture.

“If these obviously historical chapters are interpreted as symbolic and/or poetic, then the question becomes: when should Genesis (and really the Bible at large) no longer be interpreted this way? This becomes a subjective determination.”

Instead, he explains that the grammatical-historical method is the right way to understand Scripture. This method considers all figures of speech and literary forms in the text as the writer expressed it and how its original readers would have understood it.

When reading any work of literature, particularly the Bible, we must determine the author’s message, context, and intent, not our interpretation. God intended such exegesis, which is why He instructs us to handle the word of truth correctly (2 Tim 2:15). When the Lord Jesus quoted the Old Testament, He clearly held to a grammatical- historical interpretation [creation.com/nt].

For example, in Luke 4, when Satan tempted Jesus, He responded by quoting from the Old Testament. If God’s commands in Deut 8:3, 6:13, and 6:16 had not been literal, Jesus would not have used them, and they would not have had the power to stop Satan’s mouth, which they did. Additionally, the disciples followed Christ’s (Bible-based) directives.

The Bible, taken in the grammatical- historical sense, clearly indicates a young Earth. I also believe that unbiased scientific inquiry supports this claim.

Dr C. also pointed out a key problem with trying to mix long ages with the Bible:

God created everything ‘very good’ (Genesis 1:31), and there was initially no death. Death does not occur until Genesis 3 when Adam sinned. But evolution requires the death of countless creatures for today’s living world to have arisen. And even non-evolutionary long-age views must have death before sin because fossils of both humans and animals are ‘dated’ long before Adam.

Evidence for a ‘young’ earth

Dr C. thinks the best scientific evidence for a ‘young’ earth is its decaying magnetic field:

Historical measurements indicate that Earth’s magnetic field experiences a loss of approximately 50% of its energy every 1,400 years. Even if past reversals of the field are disregarded, which would have further depleted its energy, the maximum age of the Earth’s magnetic field is about 20,000 years. Any older, the electrical current needed for such a strong field would have been large enough to melt the whole earth.

But a decaying field is consistent with God creating the earth about 6,000 years ago, with an electrical current that generates magnetism. And this current decays exponentially as per standard electrical theory (see creation.com/magfield).

Evolutionary geophysicists must claim that Earth has maintained a magnetic field for billions of years. However, they lack a comprehensive understanding of how this could happen.

To sustain such a current, an electrical generator—a dynamo—operating within the interior of the Earth would be necessary. But how could such a generator spontaneously form? Despite a century of investigation, conventional scientists continue to be unable to develop a functional dynamo theory.1

Quantum mechanics and Christianity

Some Christians mistakenly think quantum mechanics (QM) is problematic for Christianity. I disagree (see creation.com/qm), but wanted Dr C.’s take on the issue as a nuclear scientist.

In reply, he quoted one of the world’s leading experts, physicist (and atheist) Richard Feynman (1918–1988). Feynman shared the 1965 Nobel Prize for physics for his discoveries in quantum electrodynamics. But he admitted, “I think I can safely say that nobody really understands quantum mechanics,” and Dr C. agrees that this still holds. He says:

QM’s inf luence on one’s perception of God is primarily determined by personal motivations—and one’s worldview— rather than physics. The scientific method has proven to be a highly effective approach for uncovering the mechanisms by which God achieved specific aspects of His creative endeavours. Acquiring knowledge about the universe’s physical systems does not alter the undeniable existence of the designer and creator who established them. In my opinion, quantum physics, similar to other scientific fields, is entirely consistent with God’s biblical teachings.

However, he points out that atheists have abused QM for their own ends. E.g., Lawrence Krauss (b. 1954), a theoretical physicist and cosmologist, as well as a vociferous antitheist, wrote the book A Universe from Nothing (2012—see creation.com/krauss). Here and elsewhere, Krauss asserts that the universe could come into existence out of nothing (without God).

However, his ‘nothing’ was not really nothing—but something. In particular, it was the quantum vacuum with properties, including energies and quantum fields. Even if our universe had come out of a quantum vacuum, one would still have to explain where the quantum vacuum came from.

Advice for Christians wanting a scientific career?

Science was founded on a biblical worldview, and most of its founders were biblical creationists (creation.com/name-game). So there is excellent precedent for young Christians wanting to become scientists (or engineers or doctors). Dr C. says to such people:

If you have an interest in science or engineering, pursue it! The scientific community needs more Christians in its ranks to counter secular theories (e.g., naturalism and evolution) with biblical truth, uplift God as the intelligent Designer and brilliant Creator that He is, and inject unbiased science back into the evolution/creation debate. The biblical worldview is sound, accurate, reasonable, and grounded in truth, and we need more scientists to defend this position.

HOW DISTANT STARLIGHT CAN REACH EARTH IN 6000 YEARS

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by Mark Harwood

Recent developments in creationist cosmology offer an elegant explanation of the distant starlight question which is consistent with the Genesis account of creation and is based on recent astronomical observations and Einstein’s General Relativity equations. Whilst a detailed explanation of this new cosmology is beyond the scope of this Feedback article, it is explained more fully in Harnett’s article “Has dark matter really been proven?” http://www.creation.com

This article provides a framework for understanding the answer to the distant starlight question. The key elements are time dilation, the recent observations showing that we live in a galactocentric universe, and the Scriptural references to God ‘stretching out the heavens’ on Day 4 of the Creation Week.

An experimentally verified prediction of Einstein’s General Relativity Theory is a phenomenon called gravitational time dilation. It has long been established that gravity affects the rate at which time flows in any particular location in the universe.

Another mechanism for time dilation is a rapid acceleration of the fabric of space in an expanding universe. This is explained more fully in Hartnett’s article referenced above.

We live in a galactocentric universe: Standard Big Bang theory has it that the universe has neither a centre nor an edge which is an assumption, called the Cosmological Principle, designed to avoid the earth being a special place. If the Earth was special in any way, it would imply design and thus a Designer which flies in the face of atheistic evolutionary belief. When Edwin Hubble discovered the redshift in the spectra of stars and galaxies and interpreted them as distance (known as the Hubble Law), he was horrified at the implication that the Earth could be in a special place. He wrote: ‘Such a condition [red shifts] would imply that we occupy a unique position in the universe … But the unwelcome supposition of a favoured location must be avoided at all costs … [and] is intolerable … moreover, it represents a discrepancy with the theory because the theory postulates homogeneity.’1

Recent surveys3,4 have measured the galactic redshift for around 250,000 galaxies and have revealed an over abundance of galaxies at certain redshifts in which the data departs from the expected theoretical distribution in a series of large spikes. A straightforward interpretation of this data is that the galaxies are distributed with a spherical shell-like symmetry with the Milky Way galaxy at or near the centre! Such a result is entirely consistent with the biblical picture but is at odds with standard big bang beliefs and is not consistent with the Cosmological Principle.

In at least 11 places, the Scriptures speak of God ‘stretching out the heavens’ (e.g. Job 9:8, Isaiah 40:22 and 42:5, Jeremiah 10:12, Zechariah 12:1) and in Genesis 1:15 the words ‘And it was so.’ are recorded in connection with the events of Day 4 of Creation Week, implying the completion of the events described on that Day. It is a reasonable conclusion to draw that God stretched out the heavens to the vast extent of the observable universe in just one 24 hour day and then ceased the action of ‘stretching out’. This is more rational than the inflation fudge of big bangers discussed above. That is, where the universe just happened to expand much faster than light, although there is no known physical cause for starting or stopping this superluminal expansion.

We should also note that God created the Earth first before the sun, moon and stars (and by inference the planets etc) so it would seem reasonable to assume the universe was stretched out with the Earth at or very near its centre. Furthermore, Psalm 147:4 and Isaiah 40:26 imply that there is a finite number of stars in the universe. So, the Bible seems to teach that we live in a finite universe that has, at the very least, our Milky Way galaxy at its centre.

We now have the keys to understanding how starlight can reach us from such vast distances in just a few thousand years of Earth time. The days of the Creation Week were recorded from the point of view of an observer on the earth so the time reference in Genesis is Earth time. On Day 4, as God commenced stretching out the heavens, the mass of the universe (presumably including the ‘waters above’ which were separated out on Day 2) would have been confined to a much smaller volume of space than is the case today. Assuming the Hartnett–Carmeli theory is correct, the Universe rapidly expanded with massive time dilation as a result of very rapid acceleration of the fabric of space on Day 4. By the end of Day 4, when God completed his work of creating the sun, moon and stars, and had stretched out the heavens to their vast extent, billions of years of cosmic time could have elapsed at the outer edges of the cosmos in just one 24 hour earth day. There would have been more than enough time for the light from distant stars to have reached the earth so that when Adam gazed at the night sky on that sixth night he would have seen much the same as what we see today.

6,000 years have passed since the Creation Week. If the models outlined above are correct, the light we see today from any star that is greater than 6,000 light years away from the earth will have originated on Day 4 itself. This would include most of the visible stars, all of which are part of the Milky Way galaxy. We are effectively looking at God’s creative activity on Day 4 as we gaze into the universe!

So what do we make of supernova 1987A? At 170,000 light years away we are looking at an event that occurred on Day 4 but whose light did not reach us until 1987.

Is an exploding star consistent with a perfect creation? God said that the stars were created to be for signs and seasons (Genesis 1:14) and God foreknew all that would happen right from the very beginning. What to us seems to be destruction is actually just a physical process which does not necessarily denote any lack of perfection in the original creation. Importantly, there is no loss of biblical life involved (the creatures affected by death brought about by the Fall were those the Bible calls נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה (nephesh chayyāh)).6

Another excellent resource on the light travel dilemma is previewed in the video below.

BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS ARE INCOMPREHENSIBLE WITHOUT TAKING GOD INTO ACCOUNT

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Hundreds of different programs are used by cells to function efficiently. Who designed and created these programs? And what about all the manufacturing units and distribution machinery in every cell the programs control?

Mass media, YouTube, and the modern form of (mis)education

Much of the indoctrination in evolution, defined as litter → LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor) → Laureates, is currently being conducted through mass media and YouTubers. Very few read or are qualified to understand, the primary evolutionary literature. Middlemen produce interpretations, having a veneer of vague, conceptual plausibility, with a generous sprinkle of technical terms thrown in.

One YouTuber who has engaged in many online video debates with creation scientists and Intelligent Design supporters reviewed Maury’s paper and educated his followers with the missing details for how amyloids supposedly led to the modern genetic system. Disturbingly, more people see videos like these than are critically evaluating the primary literature.

With supreme confidence, the YouTuber explained:

“And ATP is another naturally occurring energy source near hydrothermal vents. So, we know that amyloids have ATPase activity they can utilize the energy of ATP to do work. And once you develop this interaction between amyloids and ATP, it’s only a matter of time until you start having refinements into the information storing system. The stringing of ATP and different triphosphate nucleotides together into DNA and RNA, the incorporation of lipids which are again found naturally at hydrothermal vents and which spontaneously formed bilayer membranes; as well as the creation of protein enzymes to do specific function.” 

Addressing all the errors in this one paragraph alone required a full paper (Truman, R., Amyloids and ATP fictitious chemistry)

Our concern is that careless wording by evolutionary scientists and those embellishing and passing on errors are seriously misguiding many.

Evolution theory and the influence of science fiction

Norbert Wiener, the founder of Control Theory, showed that information is a real entity and that reality can only be understood by considering the effects of matter, energy, and information. Downgrading the meaning of information instead of using well-understood concepts to describe matter leads to serious mistakes. Not only is what philosophers call a category mistake created, but a tendency is increasing in the origin of life community to replace hard scientific work with vague imagery.

If design is so readily detectable outside science, and if its detectability is one of the key factors keeping scientists honest, why should design be barred from the content of science? Why do Dawkins and Crick feel compelled to constantly remind us that biology studies things that only appear to be designed, but insist they are not designed? Why couldn’t biology study things that are designed?

The biological community’s response to these questions has been to resist design absolutely, which is absurd.

Dr. Scott Todd, an immunologist at Kansas State University, said: “Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic.” Ref: Todd, Scott C., correspondence to Nature 401, num. 6752 (September 30, 1999):423

“For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.”For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” Romans 1:19-23

AN IRONIC QUESTION: WHO CREATED GOD?

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The author of this article is Marlon De Blasio. He is a cultural apologist, Christian writer, and the author of Discerning Culture: Knowing the Depths of Scriptural Christianity in a Culture of Scriptural Indifference.

The Christian faith claims “The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth … his understanding is unsearchable” (Isaiah 40:28). How can this be verified to the satisfaction of an inquiring mind? Even committed Christian thinkers know that the cliches, “by faith,” “by experience” or “by biblical analyses,” do not necessarily satisfy questioners. Nevertheless, I believe the Eternal God can be known personally and intellectually to satisfy rational thought.

Perhaps some expect me to provide a concrete reference that explains God’s origin. I must genuinely submit that this expectation is not reasonable. Even if I were to prove indisputably that “A” brought God into existence, the skeptic would then ask who/what created “A”? These demands could continue ad infinitum into absurdity. They lead to a fallacious line of thinking.

Knowledge does not require an explanation for its explanations to be true. For example, aviators know how much fuel is required to reach a destination and this workable knowledge is true without an explanation of where the computational values originated. We could attempt to investigate the origins, but only after we have acknowledged the computational values.

Likewise, a questioner must acknowledge God’s existence before asking where He came from. If God does not exist, the question is senseless. “Where did God come from?” is a question that is committed to His existence. In other words, a sincere questioner seeks an answer that informs about God and not about whether or not He exists. The question does have a correct answer, and even if one were to reject it that would not negate the actual existence of God.

Further, the Design Argument is often challenged by the question, who designed the Designer? Note that this question does not refute the argument. The argument is compelling and so the question is an attempt to avoid the conclusion by conflating the issue into confusion. The explanation that something is designed can be true regardless of what we know about the designer. I can understand why such an irrelevant question is asked because the questioner doesn’t like where the conversation is going.

Knowledge of the Christian faith is always rigorously challenged. Unlike other knowledge, concessions to a tenet of Christianity could entail moral accountability. Christian thinkers offer explanations that are often compelling, and so a skeptic who wishes to escape accountability often spins the content. Confusion is then deemed as a warrant for unbelief.

In Christian theology, God is eternal. He is without beginning and without end. He is the ultimate ground of reality. That is why we refer to Him as God. The question of “Where did God come” from is purposeless unless it’s asked with theological curiosity. As a young Christian, I remember asking a pastor what God was doing before He created us and the universe. The pastor explained that we don’t know, and although it was a fair question it had no bearing on our relationship with Him as He has decided to reveal Himself to us. Since then, I have grown to understand that in a human lifetime, there is no way we could understand everything about God.

Limited knowledge of God does not equate to His non-existence. On the contrary, it means that our knowledge of God is finite as we are finite beings grappling with the One whose “understanding is unsearchable.” Theologically and philosophically, it’s reasonable to believe and conclude that reality has an ultimate ground. For a Christian, there is a consciousness of God’s presence within (Holy Spirit) that is also informed intellectually. We experience and understand God exactly as the biblical writers revealed: “Your throne is established from of old; you are from everlasting” (Psalms 93:2). What was understood and experienced of God thousands of years ago has been real to subsequent generations of believers, as well as to us today. We comprehend meaningfully that, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).

A questioner is sincere only if committed to exploring the attributes of God, and then making up one’s own mind about personal salvation in Christ. Isn’t it reasonable to consider that God is the ultimate ground of reality? It makes philosophical sense; otherwise, we regress into absurdity. All the evil, selfishness and ill will we encounter have a remedy in Jesus Christ. It’s a fact that throughout history the Gospel has transformed countless lives, and continues to do so today. Isn’t it intellectually honest to read and investigate this Good News for oneself? Questions are meaningful only when we are genuinely open to considering the answers.

I have a question for the skeptic who asks, who created God? That is, if you somehow discovered that the Christian faith is true would you become a Christian? If you were to answer, no, then you should shift focus on why you would answer, no. It will reveal a great deal about your own questions.

You can follow Marlon De Blasio at MarlonDeBlasio@Twitter

“WOKE” CULTURE IS AN ATTACK ON THE WAY GOD ORDERED AND DESIGNED CREATION

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The new CEO at ANSWERS IN GENESIS (AIG), Martyn Isles explains how AIG will address the issue of woke ideologies.

To be “woke” simply means to be awake. Awake to what? Awake to all the kinds of oppression in society that used to go unnoticed because they are hidden in the “system” we’re living in.

But what is the “system” which is so oppressive? Well, woke ideologies say that things like marriage are part of this system of oppression, or the gender binary, “heteronormativity,” the ethnicities of people, and so on.

They actually think that we can destroy these realities and be less oppressed as a result! But these realities are not “systemic oppressions.” These realities are just, well, reality! They are God’s creation design and order.

Thus, woke culture is an attack on creation. Hence, the answers are in Genesis, because Genesis 1–11 is about God’s design and order in creation. It specifically addresses the things that wokeness attacks.

Right now, there is a wave of compromise sweeping the Western world, including America, on all these woke issues. A generation is being taken out of the church, believing Christianity is bigoted, hateful, and oppressive because it believes in God’s creation order and design.

This woke critique is causing pastors to compromise and the world around us to reject the Christian faith.

But Genesis shows us the connection between how things are made and how we must therefore live. It answers this woke critique by describing realities—like males and females, the fact of only one “race,” marriage, family, and so forth—and then showing that these realities hold the key to understanding our world and living wisely.

Genesis shows that the very things wokeness attacks are for our good!

For the past five years, I have been teaching Australian young people about the connection between Genesis and the woke ideas they are being confronted with. This teaching always had a major impact on them and fortified them in their faith.

Seventy of these young folks have just visited the Ark Encounter to participate in our brand-new, 10-day Catalyst program. They came all the way from Australia just to be there.

Young people are hungry for answers. We’d like to build more housing so that we can run these programs year-round—the demand from around the world is huge.

But Catalyst is only the beginning.

Answers in Genesis is going to focus on equipping this generation with the answers they need to confront the woke era in many ways.

Consider the issue of identity, which is a huge concern these days. People are asking “Who am I?” with no reference to objective truth—whether that be the gospel, the Word of God, or the scientific facts about how we are made. They are left to be governed by their feelings, looking to their sinful hearts for meaning.

This identity question not only leads people into a false view of themselves and of life but is also the basis for identity politics and so much woke activism.

We are addressing this at Answers in Genesis. Right now, our exhibit designers are planning out an identity exhibit at the Creation Museum. It will be near the world-class Fearfully and Wonderfully Made pro-life exhibit.

Martyn and Ken Ham are in Australia for the “Living in Babylon” meetings in Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne, and Brisbane. If you can get along to one of thses meetins. I will be at the Adelaide Meeting next week.

When Martyn was with ACL, with many loyal supporters, they distributed one million John New Testaments to Australian households. Martyn would like for AIG to pick up the mantle and get another six million John New Testaments out. AIG will need volunteers to help with this task. If you feel called to help contact http://www.answersingenesis.org.

FOUNDATION FOR RATIONAL THINKING

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People are searching for solid foundations. They are dealing with a lot of information and a lot of data, and they just don’t know how it all holds together. Genesis has a blueprint for this very thing, and it is in the opening phrase, “In the beginning, God . . .” All things originated with Him. He made them, ordered them, and gave them purpose and meaning.

Without acknowledging our Creator God and His commandments for how we are to live our lives we make up our own rules. We can see how that is working when we now do not even acknowledge that God made us male and female with established roles. Also, we have no understanding of why the world is like it is with death and suffering if we do not acknowledge God and His Word. God has revealed to us not only that He created the world and humans made in His image to be in a relationship with Him but He has also told us that man’s disobedience to His commandment not to eat of the tree of good and evil is the reason for death and suffering in the world and the severing of our relationship with God.

Martyn Isles of Answers in Genesis does a great job of showing us how important Gensis 1 to 11 is to understanding all the big questions of life, giving us meaning and purpose and answers to the Why, How, Where,and When of it all.

DNA DESTROYS EVOLUTION

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DNA must have been created. It is impossible it evolved. It is the instruction code for all living things.

Science continues to reveal more complexity at the smallest levels of life. As a result, the evolutionary account of life’s origins is rapidly trending toward mythology. May God receive the glory for His incredible creation!

Moreover, Jesus Christ changed history from BC to AD. No other person in history has impacted the world as this God/man did. Jesus confirmed the Torah as God’s Word revealed to man by His prophets.

“Jesus said to him, if they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’” Luke 16:31

The Bible gives us an accurate history of this world. Creation by God in six days was a real event. The Fall of man was a real event that brought death into this world. The worldwide flood of Noah’s day that killed all mankind except eight people (God’s judgement on a world in rebellion against Him) was a real event. It buried millions of dead things all over the world, fossils and produced all the fossil fuels not billions of years. The world is just 6000 years old. God created the nations when He confused the languages at the Tower of Babel. Jesus entered history to provide a way back into a right relationship with our Heavenly Father. He paid the price for our rebellion, He died that we might live. The Bible also tells us that Jesus is returning soon to rule and reign for the last 1000 years before God destroys this Earth and creates a new Earth where only the righteous dwell.

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. John 14:6

What a loving God (but also Holy God) that we have that He would send His ony Son to redeem us. And how good is Jesus, God’s Son that He would come to die in our place. God requires us to repent of our rebellion against Him and His commandments and accept Jesus as our Lord and Saviour to come back into His family. It’s an offer of eternal life. It is beyond me why people do not want to get back into a right relationship with their Creator and experience this new eternal life in Christ. What about you?

Related articles: The four-dimensional human genome defies naturalistic explanations (https://creation.com/four-dimensional…) Splicing and dicing the human genome (https://creation.com/splicing-and-dic…) Life’s irreducible structure—Part 1: autopoiesis (https://creation.com/lifes-irreducibl…) Related resources: The High-Tech Cell (https://creation.com/s/35-6-624)

WHO CREATED GOD?

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‘Who created God?’ is an age-old question. Children sometimes ask it because they’re curious. But atheists more commonly ask it because they think it is a ‘gotcha’ question for Christians. So, is it really a ‘gotcha’ question? Does God—like everything else in the universe—need a cause? Or have atheists made an error in logic in assuming this? As Dr. Don Batten explains, ‘Who created God?’ has a simple, logical answer—so Christians have no need to be intimidated! On the other hand, atheists have some explaining of their own to do when it comes to first causes!

The cause of the universe cannot be material. It had to be an eternal cause and the Bible tells us that God is a spiritual, eternal being and that He made us in His image to be in relationship with Him. In fact, the Bible tells us that we are Spirit, Soul, and Body and that our Spirit is the lamp of the Lord and it needs to contain oil (Holy Spirit) to function as God intended. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God (SIN) the Holy Spirit departed their spirits and they died spiritually immediately and died bodily 900+ years later.

“The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all his innermost parts.” Proverbs 20:27

This is a great video. One that you can use in evangelism.

EVIDENCE FOR INTELLIGENT DESIGN: AN INFORMATION-BASED UNIVERSE

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A team of scientists has recently uncovered new evidence of how geckos can deftly scuttle around vertical surfaces without falling off. The animals studied to reveal this ‘new trick to their stick’ were tokay geckos (Gekko gecko).

The research article states that gecko feet, “possess the most hierarchically integrated natural structures that span seven orders of magnitude in size…” The images opposite demonstrate what that means. The ‘hierarchical’ structure of a gecko’s foot (fig. 2) is shown photographed by an electron microscope (fig. 3). Many rows of extremely fine hairs (setae) can be seen, about 1/10 of a millimetre long and densely packed, with 5,000 per square mm (three million per square inch). The end of each seta has up to 1,000 branches, ending in spoonlike structures (spatulae), approximately 0.2–0.5 μm (micrometres—less than 1/50,000 inch) long. All of this is constructed at the molecular level from proteins by molecular machinery, encoded on the DNA—an astounding biological fact!

When these microscopic structures come into contact with a surface, van der Waals (vdW) forces come into play. These are weak electrostatic forces that operate at very small distances. vdW forces are very short-range, decreasing with the sixth power of distance. This is why gecko feet, and gecko-inspired biomimetic sticky tape, need extremely fine hairs so the surfaces can be close enough for vdW forces to operate.

The fact that geckos’ spatulae are so numerous means that a huge surface area is available, producing an overall large attracting force. Tokays demonstrate this in that their entire weight can be suspended from a single, upwardly pointing toe, in contact with a smooth, vertical surface.

Terrific tokay technology

Previously, it was discovered that tokay feet and skin have superhero-like abilities to repel liquids, leading to new gecko-inspired materials. Gecko toe structures have inspired new materials (‘nano-tape’) that take advantage of vdW forces. Under normal conditions, the tape is completely non-sticky, but under shear force, the material’s engineered coating induces vdW forces, enabling the tape to stick strongly to any surface. This allows objects to be lifted or pulled, or surfaces to be climbed by robots (or people) using the tape. As soon as the shear force is reduced, the tape simply falls away from the surface in a similar fashion to how geckos ‘unstick’ their feet. 

More evidence for intelligent design. How could this evolve by random chance. It is ludicrous to think that our schools and universities are teaching evolution as the means by which our complex information-based universe with such diverse living creatures came into being without having any possible plausible mechanism and explanation for how it could have happened.

MIRACLES AND SCIENCE

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Origins science uses the principles of causality (everything that has a beginning has a cause) and analogy (e.g. we observe that intelligence is needed to generate complex coded information in the present, so we can reasonably assume the same for the past). And because there was no material intelligent designer for life, it is legitimate to invoke a non-material designer for life. Creationists invoke the miraculous only for origins science, and as shown, this does not mean they will invoke it for operational science.

Miracles are an addition to natural laws rather than a loophole within them. This is because natural laws are formulated in isolated systems. For example, Newton’s 1st Law of Motion states that objects will continue in a straight line at a constant speed — if no unbalanced force is acting. But there is nothing in the law to prohibit unbalanced forces acting—otherwise, nothing could ever change direction!

If God exists, there is no truly isolated system. Thus there is no basis for disallowing miracles unless you could prove that God doesn’t exist, but you can’t prove a universal negative. And if Jesus really were God Incarnate as I believe (see documentation), He could certainly bring other forces into play without violating science.

C.S. Lewis applied these concepts to the virginal conception of Christ: that is the zygote was made by the Holy Spirit’s action on Mary’s ovum, i.e. an addition to the system. But after that, the embryo developed in a normal manner.

Second, this comment treats natural laws as real entities. In reality, scientific laws are descriptive of what we observe happening regularly, just as the outline of a map describes the shape of a coastline. Treating scientific laws as prescriptive, i.e. the cause of the observed regularities, is like claiming that the drawing of the map is the cause of the shape of the coastline.

The Bible explains that: we are made in the image of a rational God (Genesis 1:26–27), God is a God of order not of confusion (1 Corinthians 14:33), God gave man dominion over creation (Genesis 1:28), and He commanded honesty (Exodus 20:16). Applying this, as well as a correct understanding of the nature of scientific laws as description, leads to a worldview that historically led to science without jettisoning miracles, as previously stated:

These [founders of modern science], like modern creationists, regarded ‘natural laws’ as descriptions of the way God upholds His creation in a regular and repeatable way (Col. 1:15–17), while miracles are God’s way of upholding His creation in a special way for special reasons. Because creation finished at the end of day 6 (Gen. 2:1–3), creationists following the Bible would expect that God has since mostly worked through ‘natural laws’ except where He has revealed in the Bible that He used a miracle. And since ‘natural laws’ are descriptive, they cannot prescribe what cannot happen, so they cannot rule out miracles. Scientific laws do not cause or forbid anything, any more than the outline of a map causes the shape of the coastline.

C.S. Lewis pointed out that arguing against miracles based on the alleged total uniformity of nature is actually circular reasoning (from Miracles):

No, of course we must agree with the empiricist, David Hume that if there is absolutely ‘uniform experience’ against miracles, in other words, they have never happened, why then they never have. Unfortunately, we know the experience against them to be uniform only if we know that all the reports of them are false. And we know all the reports are false only if we know already that miracles have never occurred. In fact, we are arguing in a circle.

Without a belief that the universe was made by a God of order and that we are made in the image of this God, the Logos, we have no basis for either an orderly universe or that our thoughts can be trusted. Atheists can treat these premises as axioms, i.e. accepted as true without proof, but they are theorems for Christians since they follow from the propositions of Scripture. Indeed, atheists can’t prove that the universe is orderly, because the proofs would have to suppose the order they are trying to prove. Similarly, they can’t prove that their thoughts are rational because the proofs would have to assume this very rationality. Yet evolution would select only for survival advantage, not rationality.

You cannot derive an orderly universe from the proposition ‘God does not exist’. Indeed, you need to accept an orderly universe as a ‘brute fact’, which ironically was actually plagiarized from the Christian world view.

This article has been adapted from an article by Jonathan Sarfati Miracles and Science on the website http://www.creation.com. First published 2/09/2006