Non Christian Professor recognizes that Creation demands a Creator

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Natural God by Beth Houston

 

The author of NATURAL GOD – Deism in the Age of Intelligent Design, Beth Houston, is a professor of creative writing and literature at the University of California and several other universities. She covers a lot of material rarely reviewed in books critical of molecules to man evolution. What does she offer to the creation-evolution debate? The answer is a fresh approach, written in an engaging style, that reflects a good understanding of psychology, logic, biology and history. She stresses that science, especially Darwinism, has become a form of dogmatism the needs to be challenged.

One point documented is that Darwin’s central ambition was not to explore the world to let it reveal itself, but to become famous. Houston also carefully documents her position that evolution theory (no meaning, no purpose, no Creator) caused its developer to lose both his aesthetic sensibility and his appreciation of aesthetic beauty. Darwin openly admitted that his appreciation of aesthetics had dynamically changed.

“Up to the age of thirty ….poetry….such as the works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelley, gave me great pleasure and even as a schoolboy I took great delight in Shakespeare. I have also said that formerly art and pictures gave me considerable pleasure and music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also lost my taste for art and music.”

Darwin admitted that the ” loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probable to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of nature.”

Beth Houston concludes that what was wrong with Darwin was that “the dimension that gives life lived to the fullest its zing” was gone.

“By the time he had finished ORIGIN and certainly his later Autobiography, beauty had ceased to be beauty at all ….beauty was observed and used like a prostitute for a distant satisfaction of an immediate need, never for love of beauty for its own sake, never for the pleasure of intimate contact (with nature).

She goes on to say, “Mechanistic agnostics like Darwin…. know intellectually that nature is beautifully constructed while emotionally denying that it is. The aesthetic atrophies when the spirit does, or when the spirit lies dormant and inactivated. It is … mechanistic determinism and Darwinian natural selection.

There is never any death of God, only murder or suicide of the killer’s own God – given faculties.”

Houston speculates that: “Darwin’s insistence that natural selection is ultimately brutal is a projection of …. the brutal side of his own nature. Natural selection justifies brutality and sanctifies the guilt. The brutal cannot face a God who might not condone brutality. Therefore, religions create their gods in the image of their own brutality to justify and sanctify brutality, and science creates its god, natural selection, the shadow of civilized man, for the same purpose.

Summary: Professor Houston makes a convincing case that the natural world provides clear evidence for a creator. She also documents the adverse effects of Darwinism on society and persons using Darwin himself as a prime example.

Extract from book review by Jerry Bergman, Journal of Creation Vol 29, 2015

 

 

PHYSICS POINTS TO GOD’S GLORY

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Chad-RodekohrDr Chad Family-Grand-Canyon

Dr Chad Rodekohr                                              Chad with his family

Chad Rodekohr earned a B.S. in Aviation Management, an M.S. in Physics, and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, all from Auburn University (Alabama). He is an Associate Professor of Physics at Presbyterian College in Clinton, South Carolina, where he and his wife are raising their five children.

As a mechanical engineer and a physics professor, Dr Chad Rodekohr is passionate about the scientific method. Some might be surprised to find that he is also a biblical creationist. But he says that his career actually helps confirm the amazing design in the world.

“Physics is the study of our real physical surroundings. Since all physical things were created and are now sustained by God, it is easy to point to God’s glory while studying physics.”

Chad points out that: “Those who deal in the historical sciences desire the authority of having used the scientific method. In reality they are peddling a false worldview about history disguised as science and claimed as fact. I think that this is why the scientific method is not taught to most students anymore. Although students all act like they know the scientific method, when pinned down, most can’t actually differentiate between hypothesis, theory, law, or fact. It is no wonder they don’t distinguish between repeatable science and claims about history.”

He was asked to explain how he handled disclosing his creationist views in the classroom as a student, and how he would advise students to handle it themselves.

“What I did may or may not have been the best way to handle it, and is probably not what I would do now if I could do it all over. The primary way I handled the issue was to select carefully the classes that I took. I simply didn’t select courses which were historical in nature—knowing full well what the theme of the class would be. But even in operational science courses, the issue would occasionally come up. In those situations I would only steer into the creation discussion when it was in a personal setting with my fellow students.”

We need to bring academia back to the Lordship of Christ—gently and respectfully, being prepared at every step.

“How would I handle it now? What if I didn’t have the luxury of simply not taking historical science courses? Peter gives us clear teaching on this—1) Honour Christ as Lord by bringing such conversations back to Him—the Creator and Redeemer, 2) Be prepared—understand the scientific issues so you can ‘give an answer’, and 3) be gentle and respectful (1 Peter 3:15). If you are treading into unfamiliar waters, it is easiest to accomplish this with a series of questions leading back to the faulty foundational assumptions on which evolutionary teaching is always based. From there it can be contrasted with the solid biblical witness of our holy Creator, Christ the Lord.”

To students who are considering pursuing a scientific career, Chad says: “Please continue! Please persevere! Please investigate fully! Please teach truth!”

Extract from interview with Lita Cosner on http://www.creation.com

 

Galaxies, Black Holes, and Creation

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galaxie picDr Markus-and-Sandra Blietz

Dr Markus and Sandra Blietz

 

Dr Markus Blietz was born in Germany in 1962, and studied physics at the Technical University in München (Munich). In 1994 he earned his Ph.D. in astrophysics at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching (near Munich). He now works in the semiconductor industry as a patent manager, helping researchers to develop and patent new ideas. In spring 2008, he was born again, and since then has been a keen supporter of Creation Ministries. Dr Blietz and his wife Alexandra have two children and reside in a small town in Bavaria (Germany), not far away from Salzburg (Austria).

The educational and media system often contrast ‘creationists’ and ‘scientists’. But in every issue of Creation magazine they prove them wrong with an interview with a highly qualified scientist who is also a creationist. Not too many of them have been astronomers or astrophysicists like Dr Blietz.

“My Ph.D. work was about a special class of galaxy called Seyfert galaxies. These contain active galactic nuclei—very bright, star-like centres. The most common explanation is a gigantic black hole in the centre of these galaxies.”

Unusually, Dr Blietz became a Christian quite late in life. He lost his father to cancer, and had a mental ‘burnout’, “so extreme that I could not even read one single word any more! Even the smallest decisions were too much for me. Basically my brain, the instrument which I trained all my life and which I was proud of, all of a sudden went out of operation.”

Secular science could not explain the clear reality of good vs bad. But this difference makes sense if there is indeed a Creator. Then he read the Bible owned by his wife, who was not yet a ‘born again’ Christian:

“I read the Gospel according to Matthew. Almost immediately I understood that Jesus was a real, historical person; that He came to fulfil a mission; and that I needed him urgently.”

Then a Christian friend lent him a small booklet that “explained the full plan of God, from the beginning of the creation, to the coming of Jesus on this earth, His crucifixion and resurrection, His second coming, the final judgment and the creation of a new heaven and earth. I knew this was the truth. In the booklet there was also a prayer, where one could confess his sins and give his life to Jesus. I did not hesitate a minute; I fell on my knees and delivered my life to Jesus.”

“If the Bible is not reliable in its historical statements, how can it be true in other statements? If Jesus didn’t speak the truth about Genesis, how could we trust what He was saying about sin, the cross, resurrection and everlasting life? Jesus Christ is the truth; and if He affirmed the literal creation of the world in six normal-length days, we Christians should do the same. If however we compromise and try to marry millions and billions of years with the creation account of the Bible, we may easily pull folk away from the truth of the Bible and the Gospel.”

“Science is a human endeavour to find the truth about the world of matter. It is not fully reliable, because theories and models change over time. Also, science cannot say anything about the big questions of ‘where do we come from, why are we here, and where do we go?’ Science is limited in its abilities and should not step over the clear limits which have been set by God.”

“Only belief in Jesus Christ can open our eyes and give us the correct view of our world. Before I was a Christian, I never felt really content with the evolutionary world view, which I had adopted. It produced too many contradictions and left open too many questions. Only the truth in the Word of God is able to give a full, comprehensive answer to our basic questions of death and life.”

Article Galaxies, Black Holes & Creation from http://www.creation.com

Another Insurmountable Problem for Evolution

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Dr Ken Funk

Dr Ken Funk attended Moody Bible Institute and graduated from Houghton College (New York State) as a chemistry major, zoology minor and then from Case-Western Reserve University, Ohio with both masters and doctorate degrees in organic chemistry. He is the owner of three patents and has been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Ken says, “Evolutionists argue that given sufficient time proteins could form by chance. But, for a protein of just the minimum 100 amino acids (many are tens of thousands long), for all to be left-handed, and assuming that it did not matter which order they appeared in, it’s like flipping a coin 100 times and resulting in all heads. The number is astronomical.”

But in fact, the order is crucial at most positions in the chain, and for each position chance has to choose from 20 amino acids, which makes the problem stupendously greater. In all proteins, the order is crucial, some more than others. E.g. calmodulin, the ubiquitous calcium-binding protein, has almost all of its 140–150 amino acids ‘conserved’ (the same in all organisms). So if we generously (to the evolutionists) assume we have a pool of 20 left-handed amino acids, the chances of all 140 amino acids to be right is about one chance in 10182—like guessing a 182-digit PIN.8 And all one would have, even then, is a lonely protein, useless without all sorts of other proteins and other machinery of life.

 Chirality insurmountable problem for Evolution

Life requires what is known as an ‘optically pure’ supply of solely left-handed amino acids, whereas chemistry by itself, following the laws of chance, will always produce a racemic mixture. Moreover, all sugars in DNA and RNA must be ‘right-handed’, otherwise the vital informational double helix could not form.  

The problem of chirality remains to this day an unsolved problem to both chemists and biologists that undermines evolutionary biology’s path to any functional first protein, much less the appearance of a first cell.

Ken on the age of the earth.

Ken is frustrated that so many church leaders sit on the fence with regard to the age of the earth. He notes, “They don’t realize that the concept of millions of years totally undermines the credibility of Genesis, and thus the rest of Scripture and the Gospel, by putting eons of death and destruction before Adam and his Fall. It is especially sad that scientists who support biblical authority get so little support from today’s theologians.”

Extract of article on Dr Ken Funk in http://www.creation.com

 

 

Biblical Genealogies are Trustworthy Historical Records

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genealogy

 

1 Chronicles 1 and Luke 3 take these genealogies to be completely historical. So theistic evolutionists who would relegate these genealogies to mythical status have to reckon not only with the plain teaching of the chronogenealogies, but how the rest of Scripture treats them as well.

Adam to Noah

The first genealogies we find in Genesis (in chapters 5 and 11) are called ‘chronogenealogies’ because the age of the father at the birth of the son are given. This allows us to know with a very high degree of accuracy (within a year) how much time passed during each generation. It also lets us know there is no gap between the names.

Shem to Abram

The most noticeable element of the genealogy is the steady decrease in lifespans. The antediluvians all seemed to live very long lives. But after the Flood, each generation lives shorter and shorter lives, until many children die before their longer-lived parents, and even before grandparents and beyond. By the time of Abraham, lifespans were only about twice what we experience in the modern-day world.

These genealogies are actually indications that Genesis intends to be taken as history, and not myth, because the chronology claims to set each person in a specific place in history. Many of the people in the genealogies are not mentioned elsewhere in Scripture, so their only purpose seems to be to link one important character with another (linking Noah back to Adam, for example). By the time Moses wrote Genesis, most of these names would not be otherwise significant to the Hebrews.

Matthew’s genealogy

The purpose of Matthew’s genealogy was to trace the legal line of rightful heirs to the throne of David. This of course included biological descent, but also some ‘adoptive’ relationships where a man had no descendant, or whose descendants were disqualified. Matthew’s genealogy used obvious ‘telescoping’ where less important people were omitted.

Matthew claims that his choice of names is significant because of the number of generations listed “So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to Christ fourteen generations” (Matthew 1:17). The most plausible significance for this is because the numerical value of the letters in David’s name added up to 14. God is in total control of history. After all it is HIS story.

Luke’s genealogy

When we interpret the genealogies correctly, we see that they are trustworthy historical records.

Luke’s genealogy looks a lot more complete, and was probably the biological genealogy of Mary, so we see Jesus’ biological ancestry from David, and from Adam. We would expect that Luke would want to give us a complete chain to link Jesus biologically with David. But from Adam to David, he uses the Old Testament sources which indicates his confidence in them as Jesus had total confidence in them – Mt 5:18.

Luke’s genealogy is unusual in that it starts with Jesus and goes back to Adam—all the other genealogies go from father to son. This allows it to end with, “the son of Adam, the son of God.” This means that the genealogy starts and ends with a “son of God”, and nicely makes the theological point that Jesus is linked to all of humanity via common descent from Adam.

Trustworthy historical records

When we look at the biblical genealogies, we have to appreciate the purpose behind each of them, and that helps us to interpret them correctly. And when we interpret them correctly, we see that they are trustworthy historical records.

Extracted from article by Lita Costner “Are There Gaps in the Biblical Genealogies” http://www.creation.com

Darwin’s destructive influence on the world.

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Apostate - The men

The fact that Christianity has lost an enormous amount of cultural influence in Europe, America and even Australia is without dispute. A recent book, Apostate – The Men who Destroyed the Christian West documents how and why the decline and fall of Western Christian civilization occurred.

Charles Darwin is of course the dominant person on the list of men who destroyed the Christian west.

Darwinian Evolution theories now dominate at least 99% of higher education in America, only 1% of all public and private universities maintain a God centered epistemology and metaphysics in the matter of origins. In 1850 (before Darwin and the Theory of Evolution) virtually all leading scientists and philosophers were Christian men. The world they inhabited was created by God. He had created wise laws that brought about the adaption of all organisms to one another and to their environment. The basic principles proposed by Darwin stand in total conflict with this worldview.

Eliminating God from science enabled Godlessness to prevail everywhere, in classrooms, media, entertainment and politics. Charles Darwin’s naturalistic materialism has so changed the Western metaphysics that the average person hardly senses God’s providential interaction with the world, let alone His existence. The Southern Baptist denomination reports 88% of children raised in Christian families leave the church as soon as they leave home (p. 254)

Swanson concludes: “the impact that Charles Darwin has had on the lives of hundreds of millions of Christian families is overwhelming. It is an undeniable fact that the Christian faith was far stronger 150 years ago in Europe and America. Now their 21st century grandchildren are pagans, atheists, homosexuals, witches and atheist scientists. The sheer number that will be in hell because of Charles Darwin’s commitment to ‘murder God’ is too much – and too tortuous to fathom.” (p. 142).

The other men Swanson says played a role in the decline of Christianity, Hitler, Karl Marx, John Dewey, Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, , Friedrich Nietzsche were all powerfully influenced by Charles Darwin.

As stated in my last post, sadly leaders of the largest Church denominations have unwittingly accepted Evolution as fact and distorted Scripture to fit, with disastrous consequences. Fortunately, God has raised up organisations such as Creation Ministries to equip His Church with powerful resources such as the recent “Evolution’s Achilles’Heels” to counter this threat. Check out this valuable resource on http://www.creation.com.

 

Pope Francis leading Catholics astray on evolution.

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Pope-Francis

Sadly Pope Francis on October 27th, 2015 in the Pontifical Academy of Sciences address in Italian clearly indicated he accepts evolution and the billions-of-years timescale. This is not surprising, since the Catholic church has accepted evolution for about fifty years now.

The Vatican quotes Pope Francis:

“When we read in Genesis the account of Creation, we risk imagining God as a magus, with a magic wand able to make everything. But that is not so. (Pope Francis is saying here that God is not able to create ex nihilo as He so clearly claims). He created beings and allowed them to develop according to the internal laws that He gave to each one, so that they were able to develop and arrive at their fullness of being. …(through natural selection, survival of the fittest, pain and death). And so creation continued for centuries, millenia and millenia until it became which we know today, precisely because God is not a demiurge or conjurer but the Creator who gives being to all things……..”

The Bible clearly states that the world was perfect when God created it with Adam and Eve present at the beginning of creation. There was no death in the world until Adam and Eve sinned. Pope Francis however contradicts the clear reading of scripture by accepting evolution’s death and suffering before Adam and Eve.

Unfortunately for Catholics, their sole authority isn’t Scripture, but the Church, which is the only ‘infallible interpreter’ of Scripture according to their theology.

And yet when we look to Peter who they consider their ‘first pope’, we see that his attitude toward the biblical account of origins is very different to that of Pope Francis his supposed successor.

“…scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation’. For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and that the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and then perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly” 2 Peter 3:3-7.

In Peter’s proclamation we see first of all a complete acceptance of the biblical history of the world. And Scripture is his starting point, not other ideas in the culture. Peter points us to Genesis which states that the world was created from water by the Word of God. The world was destroyed by God with a world-wide flood. We know from creation geology models that a catastrophe of this scale would account for the geological layers containing all sorts of fossils with evidence of carnivory, cancer and thorns – because it’s a record of the post – Fall world. And if a year-long global catastrophe explains the majority of the fossil record, there is no room for millions of years of earth history.

In contrast to Pope Francis, Peter stands on the firm foundation of Scripture. I hope you and your church do so as well.

Extract from article by :Lita Cosner on The Pope on Evolution 1st Nov 2014, http://www.creation.com

GOD’S WISDOM versus SATAN’S/MAN’S WISDOM

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images[1] (2)

The problem with worldly wisdom is found back in the very first words of the Bible: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

God conceived, created, defined, rules, and judges the entire universe. God alone is ultimate. Therefore, creation and all creatures (including us!) are derived and dependent.

That is why Genesis 1:1 is the most offensive verse in the Bible. If this verse is true, then every premise and postulate of the world’s wisdom is a lie. This is why men respond in such fury against even the obvious – the universe demonstrates Intelligent Design. If there’s a Designer, then I am not ultimate—and if that is the case, everything collapses.

If we turn to the last pages of the Bible, we see this:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. (Revelation 21:1)

And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” (Revelation 21:5)

God is Lord, on His throne. He designed and created the original universe, which was ruined by sin. God will design and create the new heavens and new earth. So we see here: God’s words (not Satan’s, not ours) that are faithful and true, and God’s deeds (not Satan’s, not ours) that are final and determinative. Worldly wisdom is false, temporary, and doomed.

Our only hope lies in the wisdom of God, which centres in the cross of Jesus Christ. We must turn from the pipe-dream of our own ultimacy, bow before the ultimacy of the Lord God. It is only when we start from God’s ultimacy, and the sufficiency of His Word, that we have any hope of true wisdom and knowledge (Proverbs 1:7; 9:10).

see complete article Competing Wisdom’s by Dan Phillips on http://www.creation.com

A GOOD GOD & A WORLD OF DEATH & SUFFERING?

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lambs

One of the most common questions asked of Christians is some version of: “If God is so loving, why are there bad things in the world?” The implication being that if God created this world in the state it is in, He can’t be ‘very good’ Himself. This is sometimes used as a reason to reject belief in God.

If God created everything in 6 days when exactly were ‘bad things’ created?

The first thing we need to understand is that God wasn’t surprised by the Fall of Adam. God is all knowing and so knew that a punishment would have to be meted out following Adam’s (and his offspring’s) rebellion.

According to Scripture, at the time of the Fall the environment changed and there were changes in the physical construction of some things as well. For example thorns appeared where there were none before. Some might ask ‘Doesn’t that mean God must have created new genetic information for these things at that time where there was none before?’ Not necessarily, because ‘hidden’ genetic information can lie dormant within living things and be activated under certain environmental conditions.

For example up to the 1920’s, scientists used to classify grasshoppers as a separate species to locusts. However, researchers have since determined that they are actually the same creature. Under certain (laboratory reproducible) circumstances they exhibit a sort of Jekyll/Hyde transformation that is truly startling!

Behavioural differences happen immediately at the transformation, with physical changes appearing in subsequent generations. The difference in behaviour (grasshoppers are solitary, locusts swarm), and morphology (locusts have smaller legs, wings and bodies but have a 30% larger brain than grasshoppers) is significant and changes neural, muscular and exo-skeletal expression. And the transformation from grasshopper to locust can also be reversed back again. Yet the DNA of the two creatures is identical.7

This ability for DNA to express different programming from the same source code under different environmental conditions is actually fairly common. The epigenetic code, a set of switches that turn genes on and off (e.g. in response to environmental stimuli) is a main contributor to this ability of the ‘finished product’ to vary despite the same DNA ‘instructions. This is known as ‘phenotypic plasticity’.

Not only is the discovery of latent genetic information an incredible challenge for evolution to account for, and a tremendous evidence of design (because it exhibits all of the characteristics of foresight and pre-planning in the genomes of creatures around the world), but it also helps answer the supposedly unanswerable question of how ‘bad things’ appeared after the Fall if God’s creation was completely finished by the end of the sixth day of creation.

God’s word is true

Foreknowing the Fall of man,9 God created the features of a post-Fall world in latent form within His very good world. They only became activated when God cursed the creation as punishment for Adam’s transgression. And the entire creation groans because of that Curse and is evidence that something is desperately wrong with this world. If God had not caused our physical environment to change at the time of the Fall, we would be lost without Him, bound for Hell but still in a virtual paradise. How would we know there was anything wrong and that we were in need of our Saviour

extract from article “The good, the bad and the ugly ….” by Calvin Smith on http://www.creation.com