Michael Behe, John Lennox, and Steven Meyer are three leading voices in science and academia on the case for an intelligent designer of the universe and everything in it (including us). In this wide-ranging conversation, they point out the flaws in Darwin’s theory and the increasing amount of evidence uncovered by a rigorous application of the scientific method that points to an intentional design and creation of the physical world.
You will need over an hour to watch this video but I suggest you will be glad you did. In particular, I like John Lennox for his pearls of wisdom, and rating the three men as to what gems I learned, it would be 1. John Lennox, 2. Stephen Meyer and 3. Michael Behe. I need to watch the video again at least once more, to make notes, of the information I will incorporate to improve my argument for the God of the Bible’s existence.
Fifty-three years back, in 1971, 87 percent of Australians identified as religious, and overwhelmingly as Christian. Now it’s just 54 percent. It is a similar decline as in the U.S.A.
And here’s the really striking feature: only five years ago, 52 percent of us identified as Christian. Now it’s just 44 percent. That’s an almost 20 percent decline in Christian belief in just five years. Some of that will be people who don’t worship regularly anymore and feel fraudulent in ticking the religion box even though their faith is still with them. For others, it represents a clear rejection of organised religion. Five years back, only 30 percent of Australians identified as having no religion. Now it’s 39 percent. That’s a 30 percent leap in just five years, making no religion the fastest-growing “creed” in the country. Why does that matter? It may not be fashionable to say so but in reality, our culture is built on a Christian foundation. Our democracy, for instance, rests on the notion that everyone is equal in rights and dignity, something that’s come down to us through the Christian gospels. Elsewhere in our culture, our justice system rests on the notion that we should treat others as we’d be treated; again that comes from Christian teaching. Our sense of community too rests on the notion that we should “love our neighbours as we love ourselves”. It’s a commandment at the heart of our volunteerism and philanthropy. Then there’s the significant matter of what religious organisations contribute to social uplift. Beyond a values-based education, they run many health and community services. To reference the largest Christian denomination, the Catholic Church, as an example, there are 80 Catholic hospitals across the country and 25,000-plus aged-care beds in Catholic nursing homes, as well as social welfare bodies and charities with a broader Christian inspiration – from the Salvation Army to the St Vincent de Paul Society, to Anglicare, to Lifeline, and Alcoholics Anonymous – all organisations that are generally thought to be serving Australians well, however, discredited the zeitgeist might find the faith which inspires their good works.
When people believe there is no God then of course they make up their own rules. It is survival of the fittest and truth is what you make it. Your truth may not be my truth. Gay marriage, homosexuality, and transgenderism are just the start. The only true reality is built on the first sentence of the Bible: “In the beginning God created”. Our Creator has given us the truth about the origins of our Cosmos and humankind. If you want answers to the big questions: Who Am I? then there is only one place to go God’s Word. Can I also suggest Martyn Isles book Who Am I?
Evolution and billions of years is the God of this World, Satan’s, greatest strategy. He has convinced even our learned scholars, our educators that the Cosmos did not need a Creator. It is absurd as nothing comes from nothing. This highly complex universe with its laws and interconnectedness had to have an omnipotent designer but, our learned scholars cannot countenance the supernatural yet, it is the obvious, in fact, the only possible solution.
When the world’s most powerful space telescope, James Webb Space Telescope was launched in 2021, its “primary aim” was to “shed light on our cosmic origins”. Its findings have been eagerly anticipated.
The images coming back contradict secular expectations … Very early in the Big Bang, we should not see highly structured galaxies at the edge of the universe. Yet, that is what the James Webb Space Telescope is showing us.
You will be glad you watched this video with Dr. Mark Harwood as he explains the consequences of what the James Webb Space Telescope reveals.
In this video clip “Mountains After the Flood”, geologists John Whitmore and Andrew Snelling talk with Del Tackett about the importance of their research project in the Grand Canyon. They discuss creation science and why it provides answers to evidence not found in the conventional scientific paradigm. This four-minute segment shows convincing evidence that the Coconino Sandstone was laid down by a catastrophic flood. This formation spreads across the Colorado Plateau province of the United States, including northern Arizona, northwest Colorado, Nevada, and Utah. Make sure you watch the entire film to see the fascinating results of their research.
How can we build the right worldview? There is only one way and that is to start with the origins of this complex universe with its multitude of living things that require many scientific laws to make it function correctly. Those inter-related laws could not have constructed themselves. Science has discovered that DNA (complex information) controls all of the machinery in living cells instructing them what to do. Both the information and the machinery have to be complete and functional at the beginning. They cannot evolve. Moreover, information only comes from intelligence, not matter or energy, hence proof there is an Intelligent Designer. Even better still the Intelligent Designer has revealed Himself to us both by Word, and the person of Jesus Christ, God incarnate.
Down through the ages God has spoken to and worked with individuals so we know He created us in His image to be in a relationship with Him. As a result, we have His Word (Bible) most of which is now fulfilled prophecies so that we know it is God’s Word and that the many end times prophecies will also be fulfilled.
Why is church attendance decreasing SO drastically? In this presentation, Ken Ham discusses the mass exodus that churches are experiencing in Western society and what Christians can do about it.
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.
Article in Journal of Creation Volume 37, Issue 2, 2023 by Carl R. Froede, Jr, and A. Jerry Akridge
Naturalists often confuse their worldview invoking eons of geologic time with empirical science. Many are so indoctrinated with the concept of deep time they overlook conflicting evidence. A recent article, published in the monthly open-access GSA Today, demonstrates this problem. The authors state: “Astronomy and geology require contemplation of time scales and length scales far outside those of human experience. Granitic plutons are intruded and crystallized at depths ranging from a few kilometers to tens of kilometers, over durations of 10–5 [100,000] to 10–7 [10,000,000] years, at temperatures comparable to the melting temperature of gold, from magmas at least 10,000,000 times more viscous than water. Human experience is not relevant to these conditions and can be highly misleading.“
This statement assumes the Genesis Flood never occurred and humans did not exist on Earth when granite formed in the subsurface or possibly later became exposed through the erosion of the overburden. Is this statement a matter of empirical science or the projection of a naturalistic worldview?
Flood-formed granites
The formation of granite and granite landforms has been studied by many young-earth creationists (figure 1). Creationist research indicates that water-enriched granitic melts can form, move upward through the crust, and crystallize in days to weeks. This occurred during Creation Week (most likely Day 3) and also during the Flood—two periods of Earth’s past when geologic intense activity is expected based on the outline in Genesis.
The rapid creation, mobilization, and crystallization of granite would have been enhanced by aqueous conditions associated with the breaking up of the fountains of the deep with the onset of the Flood. Entrained water within the rapidly heating rocks and sediments would have decreased the melting temperature, increasing melt mobility, and enhancing its rapid crystallization.
In some instances, remaining latent heat within subsurface granitic melts/crystallized masses generated during the Flood would have allowed them to continue as heat sources up to the present age timeframe (figure 2). Today, hot springs and other geothermal areas may indicate these features.
The biblical outline of Earth’s history allows for this conceptualization and provides a framework to test our worldview relative to the development of granite.
The naturalistic perspective
While not within a period of time compatible with the Bible, some naturalists acknowledge the rapid formation, ascension, and crystallization of granitic melts is possible over short periods of time (<100,000 years). However, with little water in the slowly forming melt, naturalists envision the entire granitic formation-to-crystallization process would extend over millions of years due to the slow-moving tectonic processes essential in melt generation, movement, and eventual crystallization. During this lengthy time interval, most of the water / hydrothermal fluids within the subsurface rocks and sediments would be driven off, thereby reducing its effectiveness in generating a more mobile granite melt at lower temperatures. The naturalistic worldview imposes limits in both the conceptualization of granitic development and the empirical methods used to test its ideas.
Interestingly, pegmatites that cross-cut granites (figure 3) are postulated by naturalists as having formed and crystallized rapidly—”in days to months, not in thousands to millions of years as previously believed.” This view is not isolated, as many other petrologists invoke days to months for the formation and development of pegmatites. There is no current naturalistic model that emplaces pegmatites in a water-depleted environment. They are always associated with water-enriched feldspars, quartz, and minor trace elements within a slowly crystallizing granitic melt. Missing is the reasoning to minimize water and other hydrothermal fluids from the original granitic melt.
Battling worldviews
Understanding the conceptual geologic history of granites demonstrates the differences in worldviews between naturalists and Bible-supporting young-earth creationists. This is not a battle over empirical science, but rather over the framework of our ideas (i.e. philosophy/theology). These foundational assumptions drive the investigation of geologic features like granites. Oftentimes these foundational assumptions impede scientific progress because they limit possibilities in designing appropriate models for further testing.
Conclusions
Ultimately, through scientific testing, a dominant theory for the origin, movement, emplacement, and crystallization of granite will emerge. The naturalistic worldview rejects everything but the physical universe and its many geologic concepts operating over millions of years. Most young earth creationists accept both the physical and the supernatural—as conveyed through Scripture—in the scientific investigation of geologic features found across Earth.
Satan (the leader of a group of fallen angelic beings) wants to ensure humans leave God out of everything concerning the world he now controls due to Adam and Eve’s original sin. This is of cause absurd, Satan only rules because God has permitted him to do so within the parameters He allows. The Book of Job, given to us in God’s Word, is to show us that this is true. God has also given us the entire story of the world He created for His purposes, the Bible. Fulfilled Biblical prophecies, is all the proof we need, to know God has preserved its integrity.
We, therefore, know that God made us in His image, to be in a relationship with Him. We also know that God gave us free will and that Adam and Eve chose to disobey God giving us a fallen world with Satan and his minions controlling the lives of most of its inhabitants. God’s redemptive plan is amazing and it demonstrates how important we are to God. The second person of the Trinity, God’s son, Jesus, became a human to pay the price for our sin of rebellion, death on a wooden cross. We now have a way back into a renewed relationship with God the Father.
“Jesus said to him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6
Have you accepted the wonderful offer of eternal life made possible by Jesus’ sacrifice?
Jesus made it possible for our Heavenly Father to send the Holy Spirit to indwell the spirit of all those who do accept His wonderful offer. The Holy Spirit enables believers to live a life devoted to doing the will of God. He is your counsellor, teacher, and comforter. He produces the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22) in your life and provides the gifts of the Spirit for ministry (1 Corinthians 9).
“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
Foresight, by Dr. Marcos Eberlin, is about the design of life, the fine-tuning of the universe, and the inadequacy of naturalistic storytelling. It discusses the origin of life, the limits of natural selection, and the naturalistic bias that permeates the scientific community. It includes many examples of fascinating designs in living things and explanations for why evolution cannot reasonably be invoked to explain these features.
Marcos Eberlin has a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Campinas. He boasts an impressive career with many accomplishments. He founded the Thomson Mass Spectrometry Lab, was the president of the International Mass Spectrometry Foundation, and won the Thomson medal in 2016. Eberlin stands as a great example of a highly qualified scientist who does not believe in evolution and believes that the universe was created by a supernatural designer. This allows the book to stand out among Intelligent Design (ID) books, as it argues for the existence of a supernatural creator, and against the General Theory of Evolution.
The book is rather short but packed full of information. It contains nine chapters with roughly half the book focusing on the intricacies of life at the cellular and molecular level. These chapters focus on biochemistry, organelles, proteins, and DNA. The second half of the book focuses on multicellular organisms such as insects, carnivorous plants, birds, humans, and special features found in specific multicellular organisms and features shared among many multicellular organisms. The first half of the book is fairly technical. Unless you are already familiar with organic chemistry and cell biology, there is a good chance that you will need to consult a textbook or utilize an internet search engine.
Evolution has no foresight
This communicates the core argument of the book. Foresight is something not present in differential reproduction. The only things selected are physiological changes that provide an immediate and substantial increase in reproductive success. A mutation that notably increases root length could help with gathering essential nutrients from poor soil; a mutation that causes defective leaf development can produce thorns.Display footnote number:3 Both relatively simple changes provide clear costs and benefits without the need for a developing structure to be almost useless over millions of years.
This shows an issue with the ‘why’ in evolutionary storytelling. It is often easy to see how a certain feature is advantageous, and thus why it would evolve. However, this exercise in imaginative storytelling breaks down when you ask, “why would natural selection favour defective structures that would be a detriment to the species for generations?”
A good ID book, but still an ID book
The book contains many solid arguments in favour of intelligent design and does a great job of exposing the unscientific nature of evolutionary biology. While it does rise above the standard ID offering by identifying the designer as a supernatural, transcendent creator, he provides a flawed distinction between historical and operational science. The book still contains the typical shortcoming of books on ID. By ignoring the identity of the Creator, this book will have a limited impact in spreading the Gospel.
Creation Ministries International (CMI) commonly receive testimonies from folk who have come to faith in Christ but then had a wilderness experience before finding their way to a confident faith. A major reason for this wandering is the doubts generated by the pervasive evolution/ long-ages mindset that crowds in upon the new Christian’s confidence in the Bible as the Word of God. Malcolm T. shared:
I became a believer in 1989 but in all of this time [20 years], I have been plagued by doubts caused because I couldn’t prove creation or doubt evolution. This had caused me so much trouble in my daily Christian walk and a lack of assurance. Recently, I came upon creation.com and began reading the articles every day and, praise be to God! I saw that creation is the truth and evolution is a lie and all my doubts and fears have disappeared …
Simply sharing a Creation magazine has led many to a restored Christian walk. Indeed, not just restored, but, like Malcolm, a much more confident and active faith.
I shared a post recently about Martyn Isles, an Australian evangelist that was being used mightily to share the Gospel in all States of Australia under the banner of the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL). Martyn has now moved to Answers in Genesis. This move was orchestrated by God and proved to me the importance of both Answers in Genesis and CMI. God is using both of these organisations to restore faith in the Bible (God’s Word) from Genesis to Revelation. You need to get behind and support both these organisations.
Another great article in Creation Magazine 2023, Vol 45, Issue 2, this time by Peter HoweDip. Th., B.Th., M.A.A trained primary school teacher, Peter pastored several churches as an ordained minister in the Wesleyan Methodist Church of Australia.
Evidence of design
Flicking through a magazine one day as a child, I came across a photograph of Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, with the unmistakable likenesses of four American presidents carved into the rocks. Knowing nothing of how these came to be there, I remember thinking, “How strange! These can’t have happened by accident.”
Precisely! No one could seriously suggest that these shapes resulted from wind or rain or glacial erosion. These carved faces are clearly the result of creative design and effort.
Though not professing a commitment to anything like the God of the Bible, Paul Davies, former professor of theoretical physics at The University of Adelaide, writes in his book The Mind of God:
“Through my scientific work, I have come to believe more and more strongly that the physical universe is put together with an ingenuity so astonishing that I cannot accept it merely as a brute fact … I cannot believe that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate, an accident of history, an incidental blip in the great cosmic drama.“
The humblest believer in God as Creator must exercise far less credulity, and has far less explaining to do, than the most ardent evolutionist materialist.
Of course, fallen humanity has devised many increasingly sophisticated speculations of how nature could nonetheless have made itself. Ministries like CMI provide people with specific answers to such challenges. Even so, it pays to step back and contemplate the ‘big picture’ of what is claimed, and its affront to common sense itself.
The evidence within
Another signpost is human nature. We have been made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). Thus, we have spiritual capacities that cannot be explained apart from God. Language, reason, ambition, creativity, humour, wonder, worship—all these have no counterpart in the natural world. These qualities mark us out as different from the rest of God’s handiwork. This is another way of saying that our Creator has endowed us with the capacity to relate to Him at a personal level.
Within human nature, conscience is another sign pointing to God. Proverbs 20:27 says of the human spirit that it is “the lamp of the Lord, searching all [man’s] innermost parts.”. Our conscience is responsible for our intuitive knowledge of right and wrong, good and evil. The Apostle Paul states that even those who don’t have God’s law in written form still have a conscience that commends them when they instinctively do what it commands and accuses them when they don’t (Romans 2:14–15).
Even without a ‘book of rules,’ we know it’s wrong to lie, steal, covet, and murder. Conscience ‘puts a pebble in our shoe’ whenever we violate it. The standard it sets and the guilt it inflicts point us to God—the Source of all good and the Judge of all evil.
Eternity in our hearts
Our longing for eternity is another pointer to God. Somehow, we know and feel that this life is not all that there is. Archaeologists have discovered how carefully and elaborately the ancient Egyptians prepared for the afterlife, and they had no Bible to tell them about a life to come. Where does this longing for eternity come from? Everything on Earth is subject to change and decay:
“Of old you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away, but you are the same, and your years have no end.” Psalm 102:25–27
These ‘immortality longings’ we all feel at various moments are pointers to the God who created us in His own image.
Hunger of the soul
Another signpost to God is our longing for meaning and purpose. We always knew when our cat Simba was hungry and wanted to be fed. (Any cat owner knows that dogs have masters, but cats have staff!) He would eat his prescription dry food and go away content; his next meal seemed to be the limit of his horizon. But we can’t live at that bare, subsistence level—at least, not for long. We crave meaning and purpose in our lives; we long to enjoy significant and satisfying relationships.
This sense of longing is often called ‘the homesickness of the soul’—and rightly so, for that’s precisely what it is. The true object of our longing is God. The words of the psalmist reflect this truth:
“As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?” Psalm 42:1–2
Of all the signposts pointing to God, the Bible is by far the clearest. When a British monarch is crowned, he or she is given a copy of the Bible, and told, “This Book is the most valuable thing that this world affords. This is the royal law; these are the lively oracles of God.” When we read the Bible with a humble and teachable attitude, we find it to be a source of supernatural wisdom and power. The psalmist prayed: “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law” (Psalm 119:18). Paul reminded his young associate Timothy that Scripture provides the wisdom and instruction that leads to “salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:15).Scripture’s major theme is Jesus Christ, God’s only Son. As “image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15), Jesus is the clearest and most compelling witness to the existence and greatness of God the Father. Jesus Himself said: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). He is the perfect transcript of what God is like.
But the supreme demonstration of God’s love and care is the sending of His Son into the world to suffer death on the cross, to save us from our sins, and to reclaim us for Himself. The Cross is more than enough to convince us that God loves and cares for lost people (Romans 5:8). Jesus Himself said that He came “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10).
To help us find our way to God, there are signposts everywhere, but the most vital one is Jesus. He said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).
LIVING ETERNAL NOW 