Evolutionary "Just-so" Stories, part 1 of n...

Evolutionists will sometimes accuse Creationists of positing "just-so" stories to explain God's actions in the history of life on planet Earth. For instance they will accuse us of tailoring our explanation to fit with the data provided - in other words - however it appears in the record of nature is how God must have done it. I have argued that a properly understood Testable Creation Model does not do this. But what of the Evolutionary Model? Are they completely innocent with regards to "just-so" stories? Let's take a look at DNA. As research has continued in the field of molecular biology we have learned much about the enormous complexity of the double helix of DNA. Initially there was supposedly cause for celebration in the evolutionary camp. The reason? - Junk DNA. In decoding the structure of DNA scientists ran into a great deal of non-coding DNA - what was referred to as Junk DNA. Aha!, they exclaimed. Here is evidence for the random, chance driven mechanism behind evolution. How else do you explain such waste in the strand of DNA? It is not what one would expect from a Designer is it? In fact, as some had said, it is what you would expect if the evolutionary paradigm is correct. Score 1 for Evolution, 0 for Creation? Not quite. There's that welcome activity called additional research. As research has continued we are discovering that the so-called Junk DNA really does have function! Whether it is used to facilitate DNA folding or whether it used in complex processing of chromosome sequencing, what is now being understood is that it's not so junky after all. As the Creation Model predicts, the more research we perform on structures such as DNA, the more evidence we will acquire that these structures were designed. But don't expect the evolutionists to roll over and play dead with these new findings. In fact, expect them to now say that this is exactly what we should expect from the evolutionary scenario. After all, small mutations over great periods of time are sure to produce finely tuned structures well-adapted to their environment - the DNA genome is testament to that. It's "just-so."

Link of the Weekend...

I hesitate to even put in any more links to the Evangelical Outpost (EO). It's not because I don't think highly of it - I DO! It's just that I doubt that anyone who visits my site hasn't already been to Joe's EO site. Anyway if, by chance, you haven't been to Joe's site then do it. Joe's site has a diverse variety of topics on which he posts. In particular for this past week he has a couple of posts on the topic of Evolution; check out Macro Evolution and the Fossil Record and The Evolution of "Evolution."

Final Reflections on Lincoln...

In Lincoln's Greatest Speech, Ronald White examines the short 2nd Inaugural address given by Abraham Lincoln. While Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is probably his most remembered speech, most historians consider his 2nd Inaugural to be his greatest speech. The Civil War was coming to a bitter end and many people expected Lincoln to sound the cry of victory and coming judgment against the South. Instead Lincoln crafted a speech that spoke of a unified nation that was entirely responsible for the sin of slavery and, therefore, was entirely within the sights of God's judgment. Consider this excerpt from his speech:

"The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offences!"... If we suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences{,} which, in the providence of God... He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war... "...if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether[.]""

Yet because of Lincoln's charity he did not limit this judgment to the South alone. In looking to the future he did not announce retribution, for he believed the entire Nation was responsible for the atrocities of the last four years. Rather he looked towards reconciliation and love. The first sentence of the last paragraph exemplifies his position well:

"With malice toward none; with charity for all..."

In reading Lincoln's Greatest Speech one can't help but realize, with utter astonishment, what horrors the country went through during the Civil War. Divine judgment for the offense of slavery? If so then I wonder what may lie in our own future for I can't get away from one simple phrase... Roe v. Wade.

Wheels on the Ground...

Check for the latest on Opportunity here.

Testable Creation continues...

Thanks to Ed for his charitable responses and critiques of my statements. The area of Creation / Evolution and Old Earth / Young Earth can easily generate heated debate. I will give a final response to his latest critique but I need to state that this will not be an extended debate. I’ve done those in the past and not only do they tend to get drawn out, but in order to convincingly make one’s point one must draw in voluminous amounts of data. Suffice it to say that I have read several books by those holding to the theory of Evolution and a fair number of books by those in the ID realm. If pressed I could produce the references where my claims come from… but I typically don’t have the time to do that for these blog posts. Indeed, as Ed notes in his comments, it sometimes take several hours to produce a valid post on this subject. With that I’ll address some of Ed’s comments. The Biblical Creation Model posits that the first life on Earth was complex. Why? It is a typical expected characteristic of a designer to build a fully functional, integrated and complex system. Take, for example, the Wright flyer. In putting the first airplane together the Wright brothers tinkered and experimented with various designs as they gained knowledge in aerodynamics. In their research they built models, tested gliders and experimented with a variety of materials; but the actual Wright Flyer was a complete, functional system that had integrated complexity as well as a measure of irreducible complexity. Some of the attributes of the God of the Bible are that He is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-caring. So our analogy to the Wright brothers is not a perfect one – for God, if He is all-knowing, does not have to experiment. In fact the very meaning of the word experiment would preclude us attributing it to God. Therefore, if God is all-knowing we should expect Him to produce functional life forms which, by the very nature of their required structure, will be complex. Note that this is not imposing a constraint on God – He is certainly capable of producing a simple life form but, in keeping with the Biblical record, He chooses to use the physics He has established (this will be the topic of a future post). Remember that with the Wright brothers, or with anyone else who has invented a functional system – the initial product has a measure of irreducible complexity. Also remember that I’m talking about a system’s complexity and not whether it is an advanced form of the system. A 747 is certainly more advanced (and complex) than the Wright flyer, but that does not take away from the minimal high complexity found in the Wright flyer. The point is that a designed, functional system will exhibit a high degree of minimal complexity. But what about the movement from primitive to advanced? The ORDER of appearance in the fossil record, as Ed has stated. Yes Evolution posits that this is what should appear in the fossil record. But remember that even if this were the case, and I’m not conceding that it is, it would not mandate that evolution be true. Why? Consider the movement from primitive Wright flyer to advanced 747. While this change is compatible with an evolutionary sequence, it is entirely compatible within a design scenario as well! Yet evolutionists are blind to the design implication and see such human artifacts as compatible with the evolutionary sequence. Zoologist Tim Berra referred to such a sequence in his book, Evolution and the Myth of Creationism, where he stated, "If you compare a 1953 and a 1954 Corvette, side by side, then a 1954 and a 1955 model, and so on, the descent with modification is overwhelmingly obvious. This is what [paleontologists] do with fossils, and the evidence is so solid and comprehensive that it cannot be denied by reasonable people." (emphasis in original) Of course the Corvettes were all designed. What is typically shown as evidence for common ancestry is just as applicable to common design. What is needed is a mechanism with which to produce the change and I posit that evolutionists have yet to show such a mechanism in action. Evolution posits that the primitive moves towards the advanced and that simplicity moves toward complexity so that whatever life forms first appear will be primitive, as compared to advanced, and simple, as compared to complex. Now the word simple, as used in life’s most basic forms, can be misleading. The point of fact is that even the simplest forms of life are still so complex (e.g., ~ 750 proteins) that origins of life researchers concede that their chance organization is virtually impossible. Drs. Ross and Rana have attended the last few origin of life conferences and know that of which they speak. Doubters should pre-order their upcoming book Origins of Life. Note that we are investigating the aspects we should expect to see from an omnipotent Designer. Ed thinks I made a misstep when, later in my post I state that the primate fossil record leading up to humans may just indicate that God enjoyed the act of creating. But he misunderstands my comment. The reason he misunderstands it probably has to do with the fact that he interprets the primate fossil record to be evidence for evolution and, therefore, if God was doing that type of creating then God must enjoy tinkering with His designs in an evolutionary compatible sequence. I’ll address this further towards the end of this post. Suffice it at this point to say that I am not making a non-falsifiable statement such as, “God decided to do it that way.” Part of my post outlined the fact that the late heavy bombardment ended at approximately 3.85 billion years ago. This bombardment contained impacts with enough magnitude to be sterilization events – in other words, any life that may have been around prior to 3.85 billion years ago would have been erased from the earth. Yet life appears at 3.86 billion years ago – and it’s complex life to boot. That’s the point. Not only are there no prior simpler life forms around to evolve into the first recorded life forms, if there had been they would have been eliminated before they had the chance to evolve. The data is telling us that life didn’t have billions of years to originate but rather at most only a few million years in an environment that did not have a prebiotic soup and was hostile to the chance formation of life's building blocks. This is what I mean when I say if life appears as soon as conditions permit that it is indicative of supervision. Either we're unbelievably lucky (as in zero chance) or someone was fiddling with the equipment. Ed makes some statements regarding simple life forms evolving into more complex bacterial life forms and he refers to (imaginary) evolutionary pathways from (imaginary) biochemical precursors that we’ll never find. This is not science, it is conjecture. Produce, as Michael Behe has asked for, detailed evolutionary sequences that show us how we can produce a functional irreducibly complex system from no system. Better yet, produce sequences that show how a life form can exist with, say, only 50 proteins. The early conditions of the Earth are compatible with the Bible. I claimed that the early Earth was covered with water, as stated in the Bible. Ed states that the conditions on the early Earth were molten, as I also stated. Here we just have a misunderstanding about what is being stated. “The early Earth was covered with water.” “The early Earth was in a molten state.” Both statements of course are true; the key issue being how broad the definition of “early” is. Nowhere have I stated that the Bible directly records the molten state of the Earth or the late heavy bombardment. This is not the issue. What I am addressing is that the conditions for the early Earth described in the Bible over 2,000 years ago conform to the conditions we now know to be the case. The Genesis account describes a world covered with water with the land eventually rising out of the water. Whether anyone formally classified that as a prediction over 2,000 years ago is irrelevant to the fact that it is testable. For further information on how the days of creation in Genesis 1 compare to the history of the universe, download a PDF Creation Timeline Chart at Reasons to Believe’s website. Ed refers a few times to the fact that God waited for things to happen or spent time tinkering. He reasons that this is not the work of an optimal omnipotent designer. An omnipotent designer, according to Ed’s thinking, would be able to zap animals into existence in an instant. Perhaps I was not clear when I explained that optimally timed events in the formation of the cosmos point to a designer. First off let me reiterate that we need to understand that God chooses to act in whatever manner He wants. That He does or does not take a lot of time to act is not an indication of constraint. If God is a being that exists outside of our time dimension, as the Bible indicates, the accusation that He has taken too much time is essentially meaningless. With that understood we must also be aware of the Biblical record that God does not waste His miracles and that His purposes occur at His timing. Therefore, the Biblical prediction for God’s actions in creating would posit that we should find events occurring as soon as possible or at the precise time they need to occur. What this means is that we should not expect to find that life took billions of years to originate but that it appeared on the scene as soon as necessary. We should expect that advanced life forms, such as those found in the Cambrian Explosion, appeared on the scene in a geological instant. We should expect that the event of the Cambrian Explosion occurred at the first opportunity it could. We should expect that the collision of a Mars sized body into the Earth occurred at the right time, with the right force, and containing the right elements to sustain plate tectonics, disperse our early heavy atmosphere, and provide us with a right sized Moon – all in preparation for the advent of advanced life. We predict that future data will add to this list rather than detract. For example, future research into the aspects of the Cambrian Explosion should provide additional evidence that the event was finely tuned with respect to its extent, timing, dispersion, diversity, etc. The point is that the precise timing of such events indicates planning, supervision, and design. I must admit I’m perplexed that Ed clings to the fossil record as evidence for evolution. To put it bluntly, the fossil record, in terms of supporting evolutionary claims, is a dismal failure. Darwin predicted countless transitional forms would be found – there are none. The purported transitional forms are always fully functional and are more frequently larger animals that had smaller populations – understand that the very types of animals most susceptible to extinction are the ones usually purported to be the best examples of evolution (e.g., whales and horses). The evolutionary tree, with its branches reaching upward and outward, going from the few types to the many, from the primitive to the advanced, does not exist - in its place we have an evolutionary lawn. The aforementioned Cambrian Explosion gave us scores of phyla of which many have gone extinct, with no new ones added – that’s evolution in reverse! Within 10,000 years after the K-T Extinction event we see entirely new and large animal species appear in the fossil record - suddenly, not in a gradual progression. There is the already mentioned temporal paradox with regards to theropod dinosaurs and birds - don't even get me going on how cladistics attempts to rearrange the fossil record to support preconceived notions. The fossil record shows examples of convergent evolution - while the paradigm is supposed to be historically contingent. Early primate fossils are so disjointed that single discoveries alter entire evolutionary pathways with paleontologists arguing over whether the find belongs to Australopithecus or Kenyanthropus or Paranthropus – this should be an immediate warning flag of a poor model. Evidence for modern humans dating to 100,000 years ago is disputable, and the fossil record in this area goes strangely silent between 80,000 – 40,000 years ago and then – an explosion of fossils for modern humans. This list as well could go on and on. In re-reading Ed’s post I think I see where he is coming from. He accepts the evolutionary paradigm, regardless if it can’t give him a valid mechanism for producing the change it demands and, in so doing, he views intermediate forms of, let’s say whales, as indicative of transition. Never mind the issue of internal organ structure change, much less the entire morphological changes that must occur in less than 10 million years. Yet it must have happened! Why? Well we see it in the fossil record don’t we? That’s what is happening here – the record is being interpreted in light of the assumptions being brought to the table. Fully formed species appearing in the fossil record? – of course they’re fully formed, they wouldn’t survive otherwise – but that misses the point that they not only need to be transitional for the theory to work but that we should see that transition in the fossil record. Notable paleontologists freely admit the lack of continuity in the fossil record and that is why the concept of Punctuated Equilibrium was born - it's what we'd expect to find in the fossil record if evolution is true - that's simply a convenient way to get around the data in the fossil record. The order of appearance in the fossil record? – well that matches what we’d expect to see, from an overall viewpoint – but that misses the point that the transitional forms are missing and that it does not mandate evolutionary change. Scales to feathers? – sure, a single mutation will do it – but that misses the point that a reptile that that happened to would have a dismal chance of survival. This post has become excessively long so I will not spend any more space refuting the claims that Ed makes as to the validity of my claims regarding dinosaurs to birds, early humans, bipedalism, or human expression. I stand by my claims and one can do their own research to further their understanding. Check my post regarding the list of books I’ve read related to this field. If you are a skeptic and wish to get the skinny on some of the claims I’ve made I urge you to call in to the weekly webcast that Reasons to Believe has every Tuesday, from 11 a.m. – 1 p.m. PST. They welcome calls from skeptics and if you have research reports you believe counter their claims – all the better. Thanks to Ed for a thoughtful discussion!

Kids will be kids...

Check Homeless Man Freed After False Attack Allegation. It seems an 11 year old girl had a boyfriend that her parents didn't approve of (yeah, wait 'til your 12 kid) and was late after spending time with him. Rather than take the heat for that she thought up a story of her and her friends being attacked in a local park. She convinced her friends to go along with the story and the three of them went to the park, rolled around in the grass, crawled through some bushes to get some scratches, and then went home and told their parents they had been attacked. It seems that the police picked up a homeless guy not long after that and included him in a picture lineup for the girls. The first girl picked him out and noted the location of the photo for the other two girls (unbeknownst to the cops). That was 8 months ago. The girls finally fessed up on Monday and this guy was let go.

Feeding the Self-Centered Mentality...

Al Mohler's post today is titled, The Epidemic of Permissive Parenting: The Brats are Coming. Mohler reviews a book by Berkeley psychiatrist Dr. Robert Shaw titled, The Epidemic, in which Shaw posits that permissive parenting is leading to increasingly anti-social children. Here are some excerpts, "Put most simply, Shaw wants parents to act like the grown-ups in the family relationship. Parents must set the rules, apply discipline, establish expectations, and inculcate a sense of right and wrong in their children. Shaw provides a checklist for ruining a child's life. His list includes failure of parents to make adequate provision for their personal responsibility in child-rearing, leaving children to be raised by inadequate caretakers, keeping themselves stressed and busy, giving in to a child's desires on all matters, facilitating the child's bent toward materialism, and letting the child believe that he is "the boss of the universe."" Mohler concludes with, "The Epidemic presents a powerful argument, but it is essentially a secular argument. Shaw writes as a medical specialist with an obvious concern for the health and well being of children. The Christian worldview demands that we also give attention to the reason why children need parental love and discipline and the expectations of parents as the molders of the future generation. Christians understand that children are not little innocents whose only bad habits are likely to come from outside themselves as the result of societal failure. Instead, we know that children are miniature sinners, who need parental nurture and discipline in order to emerge in adulthood as anything else other than self-centered, anti-social brats." Give the full article a read.

The Church and Culture...

One of the claims that the PoMo Emergent Church crowd makes is that the Church must adapt to the culture around it or else it will die. My answer is that theirs is not so much a culture as much as it is a disposition. They keep telling me of their likes and dislikes... not of their culture. Al Mohler at Crosswalk.com posts a nice commentary regarding the Church and Culture. It's titled The Path to Cultural Destruction--and the Way of Recovery. Give it a read.

A bit more regarding Testable Creation...

Ed over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars took issue with my plug for Hugh Ross and Fazale Rana’s upcoming book The Origins of Life: Biblical and Evolutionary Models Face Off and the short response I gave. He was wondering how such an animal (a Scientifically Testable Creation Model) could exist. He’s written two posts so far critiquing my post and Reasons to Believe’s (RTB) model. Before I respond I’d just like to say that one of the advantages of blogging is that it allows quick, short commentaries to be posted to the world. One of the disadvantages of blogging is that it allows quick, short commentaries to be posted to the world. First off there should be no contradiction in what I wrote with what is presented by the RTB model. I did state that life forms appear quickly in the fossil record, while Hugh Ross' refers to the “many “transitional” forms seen in the fossil record.” Yet note that the word transitional was italicized by Ross. He was comparing the many life forms, purported to be transitional life forms by evolutionists, as not being transitional at all, but being the handiwork of the Creator. Ed says, “it appears that both he and Ross use what I regard as a rather anachronistic definition of "testable". The primary focus of the article by Ross that Rusty cites as the "testable creation model" was on how to read modern scientific theories IN to the Genesis account, and the technique used to do it was to take vague statements from Genesis and read an infinite amount of detail into it so that it appears that the bible predicted what we have now found to be true.” Ed brings up a good point in that we need to understand how RTB is using the word “testable.” Perhaps a bit of clarification is needed here. RTB is stating that if we take the Biblical record on Creation – not just the account in Genesis – but all of the Bible’s references to God’s activity of Creation, we can then compare what the data of nature is telling us to that record and we can make predictions as to what we should expect to find in various areas of future scientific research. As to reading in “an infinite amount of detail” into the Scriptures I would disagree. For instance, the text of Genesis states that “the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters,” to which Ross responds with, “At its beginning, Earth is empty of life and unfit for life; interplanetary debris and Earth's primordial atmosphere prevent the light of the sun, moon, and stars from reaching the planet's surface.” This is not a translation of the text in Genesis but simply an analysis to see if the text corresponds to what we understand to be the case. In other words, the text clearly states that the early Earth was without life, covered with water, and in darkness. This corresponds to our best understanding of the conditions on early Earth. The claim that this only shows compatibility with our understanding of the facts misses the point that these words have been around for over 2,000 years. In his second post Ed states, “…What they are doing is testing whether or not a particular creation story can be reconciled with a scientific model. That may be valuable in a theological context, but means little in a scientific one. Big bang cosmology, or evolutionary theory, is either true or it is not true, and whether it agrees or disagrees with one's interpretation of Genesis has no bearing on whether it is true or not. Those are models that can be tested against the data and from which inferential predictions logically flow and they are tested solely on the basis of whether they have explanatory power, not on whether they agree with one's religious views.” I would posit that whether a Creation story corresponds with scientific understanding is immensely important. Native American creation myths that propose the earth was formed from the dirt under the fingernails of a turtle are interesting but hardly inspire one to consider anything else they say as true. Contrast that with the consistency of the Biblical record on Creation in accounting for the structure of the natural realm. Ed states, “Nowhere in Genesis 1 does it mention a space-time continuum, nor is there any evidence that the ancient Hebrews had any such conception whatsoever. It says that he created "the heavens and the earth", but it says nothing about "time itself". Nor, I might add, does big bang cosmology say anything about a "transcendent event". I will agree that one can interpret Genesis in a manner that makes it "consistent" with big bang cosmology, but that is not at all the same as saying that it "predicts" big bang cosmology. There is a bait and switch at work here.” In my short post I edited down perhaps a bit too much. Although Genesis does not state that God created time, that data is found in other parts of the Bible. I would disagree that Big Bang cosmology does not posit a transcendent creation event. Ross likes to state that “exhaustive testing affirms general relativity as the best proven principle in physics, and the spacetime theorems derived from general relativity establish a “singular” simultaneous beginning for all the matter, energy, space, and time in the universe. The universe came into existence from a source, or causal Agent, beyond matter, energy, space, and time.” Two major components of the Big Bang model are, according to Ross: 1) the cosmos is traceable in finite time to a transcendent (from beyond the cosmos, i.e. from beyond matter, energy, and even the space-time dimensions associated with matter and energy) creation event and hence to a transcendent Cause, and 2) the universe is expanding (thus, cooling) with respect to time. The Bible describes the cosmos in term compatible with these characteristics. It describes a beginning, it describes a cosmos that has been stretched and continues to be stretched. These are concepts that would be foreign to anyone prior to the recent past. That no one predicted the aspects of Big Bang cosmology prior to Big Bang cosmology does not negate the fact that its attributes have always been in the Bible. This is not a bait and switch. I have not read Quentin Smith so I cannot comment on his argument that Big Bang cosmology leads one to atheism. Suffice it to say that the response of Big Bang opponents in the 20th century to the concept of the Big Bang was primarily due to their understanding that the theory ran counter to atheism. Until I acquaint myself with his work I will consider Smith an anomaly. Yet the model does have more contemporary predictive power. In my post I write, “an omnipotent designer is not constrained to build systems from the simpler to the more complex, as is posited by Evolution,” to which Ed responds: “…that leaves one with some difficulty explaining why the natural history of life on earth DID go from simpler to more complex systems. …The earth is ~4.55 billion years old. The first life appears on earth in strata ~3.9 billion years ago, and those life forms are anaerobic bacteria. Over the course of the next 3 billion years, while the forms of bacteria become more diverse and relatively simple multicellular organisms begin to appear, nothing more complex than algal stromatolites is found on the earth. If, as Rusty claims, "an omnipotent designer is not constrained to build systems from the simpler to the more complex", then why would he propose that an omnipotent and unconstrained designer DID create life from simple to complex? I'm sure the response will be that even bacteria are highly complex organisms, and relative to non-organic entities, that may be true. But relative to the vast increase in diversity and complexity that took place in the last 800 million years, why did this unconstrained designer only work with the relatively simple bacteria and stromatolites for 3.1 billion years prior to that? Surely an omnipotent and unconstrained designer doesn't need to create starting with the relatively simple and working his way up to the relatively complex, but that is in fact how life appeared on the earth. Clearly 3 billion years of nothing but relatively simple bacteria is not a prediction that flows from it having been designed by an omnipotent and unconstrained designer.” The prediction made by RTB’s model is that life, in its earliest and simplest form, will be complex. Here we are considering life in its earliest and simplest form as contrasted with life in its latest and advanced form. For example, contrast the first bacteria with modern humans – simple to advanced. Yet, and here is the catch, the structure of the bacteria is highly complex (as Ed ponders). It is this complexity that is predicted by RTB’s model. Got that? The model is not addressing, here, the issue of life going from simple to advanced; it is addressing the issue that simple life is complex. Ed brings up another good point in pointing out that the first evidence of life appears approximately 3.86 billion years ago. It interesting to note that the late heavy bombardment – that time in our solar system’s history when the inner planets underwent asteroidal bombardment – concluded at approximately 3.8 billion years ago. Up to that point the surface of the Earth is either in a molten state or is subject to sterilization events during the late heavy bombardment. In other words life appears as soon as conditions permit. At 3.86 billion years ago the Earth rotated on its axis in about 8 hours. That means that at the surface of the Earth the wind velocity was 0 mph but at about 6 feet in elevation it was several hundreds of miles per hour! Advanced life forms would not survive – yet. But Bacteria would. Additionally the ratio of heavy metals in the Earth’s surface was too high to allow advanced life forms to survive. Certain forms of bacteria play a role in the removal of these high concentrations of metals. Further the Earth’s surface was not optimally ready for advanced life forms in that it was still susceptible to “snowball” events, did not yet have the right land to water ratio, nor the best atmosphere. One of the hallmarks of a good design is optimal timing. Research continues to show that events orchestrating the appearance of advanced life on planet Earth are optimally timed. Now keep in mind that a reading of the Bible will not cause one to predict that the Cambrian Explosion should have occurred approximately 540 million years ago. If one is looking for that type of testable prediction then they are out of luck. But a reading of the Bible will cause one to predict that life will appear quickly. Here is what Ed responds with, “…A life form either appears or does not appear, "quickly" has nothing to do with it. Fossils freeze a specific moment in time, and the fossil record as a whole (the order of appearance of the various species) can only show trends. That order of appearance, I would argue, is a very powerful prediction made by evolution... this order: fish ---> amphibian ---> reptile ---> mammals and birds…. Evolution says that they appeared in that order because they evolved in that order… If evolution is true, and each of these major animal groups split off from the previous one, then what would we expect?... the order of appearance within those groups should be as conspicuous as the order of appearance in general… if birds evolved from reptiles, then the first birds must have been very similar to reptiles... And what does the fossil record show? Precisely that… The first birds to appear are so reptile-like that they would be classified as theropod dinosaurs if not for the feathers. We now have multiple feathered theropod species to bridge the gap, and they all appear very early and share most of their traits with reptiles, not with modern birds. Over time, they diversified and became less reptile-like... If modern birds appeared all at once in the fossil record, with entirely avian skeletal structure and feathers and fully adapted for powered flight, there would be no way to link them to reptiles… But they don't appear that way, and the order in which they do appear is precisely what evolution predicts.” I disagree with Ed on most of these points. The fossil record although considered not complete is considered adequate. It reveals periods of stasis and then sudden appearance (or extinction). Indeed, Punctuated Equilibrium was posited to address this very issue. The Cambrian Explosion remains an enigma to the evolutionary community for in a period of just a few million years – a short time for evolutionary sequences – we have the appearance of tens of phyla, not just species. That is evidence of appearing quickly. Simply because animal forms appeared on Earth in a certain sequence does not mandate that they are related or transitioned from one to another. Another completely valid explanation is that they were designed that way. What we need to accept the evolutionary proposition is a valid method by which the organisms can change. People need to understand that an animal that appears intermediate in form is not the same as it being transitional in nature. Consider the sequence of automobiles from the early 1900s up until the present. They are intermediate in form but in no way are they transitional (in the evolutionary sense). Design is a valid option. The fossil record does not show us transitional forms with regards to the dinosaur to bird sequence. Dinosaurs with feathers do not qualify. They are dinosaurs. They have fully formed feathers. Where are the dino-birds with scales forming into feathers? The evolutionary model predicts they will be found; the Creation model predicts they won’t. Besides, feathers are not the only requirement for a dinosaur to become a bird. The avian lung is a complete reworking of the reptilian lung. Where are the transitional forms? Better yet, what would a transitional lung look like? Flight needs to be addressed and there is no consensus on how flight is acquired. There is also the issue of the temporal paradox in the fossils claimed to be transitional to birds. The earliest bird fossils date to around 150 million years ago – note they had complete and modern feathers. Yet the earliest dinosaur fossils that best fit into the dino to bird scenario are contemporary with the earliest bird fossils. Where are the transitional sequences? The evolutionary model predicts they will be found; the Creation model predicts they won’t. The fossil record shows species appearing fully formed and functional with long periods of stasis - as the Creation model would predict. Ed states, “True Homo sapiens remains have been dated as far back as 120,000 years, or 2 1/2 times older than Rusty says the bible allows even at its most generous point. And of course all of humanity came from a small group of individuals, that is true of any species whether it was created ex nihilo or whether they split off from an ancestral group... As far as the "Mind's big bang" goes, the fossil evidence shows that there was no "big bang" at all. Upright bipedal primates with big brains didn't just suddenly appear at some point. The hominid fossil record shows a very clear progression in all of the key human traits - brain size relative to body size, bipedality, dentition, the use of tools, and cultural sophistication... Again one must ask why it would logically follow that an omnipotent and unconstrained designer would spend the last few million years tinkering with animals, making a series of species with each one having a slightly larger brain and better adaptation to walking upright than the last one... Was he making rough drafts? That would imply constraint. Was he trying to fool us into thinking that evolution as true? I'm sure that's theologically unacceptable to my correspondent. Lastly, it is simply false to claim that "virtually all genetic links to Neandertals and other primates have been eliminated"... The mtDNA studies on Neandertals show that they are an evolutionary cousin and not an ancestor, but that is a far cry from "all genetic links have been eliminated".” This may just be a definition issue but there is no evidence for homo sapiens (i.e., modern humans) any further back than 50,000 years ago. The point of my stating that humanity came from a small group (e.g., two) of individuals is to point out the fact that such an event in the evolutionary sequence is highly problematic. The chances of extinction rise dramatically with the lower the number of starting individuals. It is a prediction in that the evolutionary sequence posits that groups evolve and not individuals. In reference to the Mind’s Big Bang I again will disagree with Ed. Evidence of the advent of creative expression, ritual burial practice, spirit worship, etc., is recent and can in no way be attributed to any of the primates once thought to have evolved into the human race. The evidence shows that early primate skull size was tiny and limited in its growth over time. The human skull shows a jump in size that is not consistent with the evolutionary sequence. Bipedalism too is shown to appear suddenly and then remain constant. In stating that the genetic links to all early primates have been eliminated I was describing the fact that all early primates, including Neandertals, can now be shown to be unrelated in the evolutionary sense to humans. We did not evolve from Neandertals. Finally I would like to address the issue raised by Ed as to why the Designer would create primates or tinker with animals for millions of years. Unfortunately this type of question is asking for the motives of the Designer. We may have an indication of His motives by what He reveals to us, such as His loving and caring attributes, but we may also be left in the dark with regards to why he created Neandertals or Tyrannosaurus rexes. Conjecture as to why remains that… conjecture. Was He trying to fool us, as Ed thinks, or was He just enjoying the process of creating?

January 27, 1967...

Martian Landmarks Dedicated to Apollo 1 Crew "The crew of Apollo 1 [Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee] perished in flash fire during a launch pad test of their Apollo spacecraft at Kennedy Space Center, Fla., 37 years ago" yesterday.

Forgiveness...

I was reading the book of Matthew recently and was struck by the context of chapter 18. Beginning in verse 15 we see a teaching on church discipline. It begins, "If your brother sins..." Brother in this context is taken to mean a familial relationship within the family of God - a "fellow believer" or "fellow Christian." Interestingly enough verse 20 is frequently used out of context. "For where two or three are assembled in my name, I am there among them," is typically used as an affirmation of belief on an upcoming prayer in a church service. Actually in the context of the paragraph, it is referring to disciplinary action within the body of believers. But that's not what struck me in this chapter. It was the term "brother." For in verses 21-22 we see Peter asking Jesus how often he should forgive a "brother." Jesus replies seventy times seven. Immediately following this account is the Parable of the Unforgiving Slave (verses 23-35). Jesus finishes off in verse 35 by saying, "So also my heavenly Father will do to you, if each of you does not forgive your brother from your heart." How many time do we hear, rightfully so, about the power of forgiveness. Yet we usually hear about it in the context of forgiving non-Christians who have done us wrong. The context of Matthew 18 is clearly within the body of believers. How should we be addressing the issue of forgiving - as expressed in this section of Scripture? I think I've got a topic for a personal Bible study over the next few weeks...

A Scientifically Testable Creation Model...

How is this possible? Are we saying that science can prove creation? No. Reasons to Believe is saying that we can test the predicitions made by competing scientific models. Per Hugh Ross, "...the scientific method comes from the Bible and from biblical theology. The core of this method is an appeal to the interpreter to delay drawing conclusions until both the frame of reference and the initial conditions have been established. If we approach Genesis in this way, we discover that we can, indeed, discern there a scientifically plausible, objectively defensible account of creation." I won't try to explain their Scientifically Testable Creation Model in detail; you can read for yourself at their site. But here is a short synopsis of their methodology: The Biblical model posits that God exists outside of the created order and that He not only created the universe and all that it contains at a finite point in the past, but that He created Time as well. The prediction made from this would be that space-time began at a finite point in time in the past through a transcendent event. Through data such as the WMAP results, confirmation of the validity of the Big Bang continue to pour in. Such a model is consistent with the statements found in the Bible. If in fact, God is the Designer of all life, then we should expect life, in its most simplest form and in its earliest form, to be complex. Why? Because an omnipotent designer is not constrained to build systems from the simpler to the more complex, as is posited by Evolution. Furthermore the Bible paints a picture of a caring and loving Creator... not one who is removed from his work. As more and more data is acquired it is becoming evident that life, even in its most basic form, is highly complex. We should expect life forms to appear quickly in the fossil record. Once again, the Bible paints a picture of a God who is intimately involved with His creative work. The Hebrew words used in describing His creative work show Him to be the force at work... not nature. We see this reflected in the fossil record in events such as the Cambrian Explosion as well as the speed of introduction of new species after extinction events. Finally, the Bible describes the human race as coming from two individuals, specially created in the recent past - anywhere from 6,000 to 50,000 years ago. The scientific evidence is mounting that humanity came from a small group of individuals in the recent past. Anthropologists refer to the "Mind's Big Bang" when describing how the attributes of humanity exploded onto the scene. Virtually all genetic links to Neandertal and other primates have been eliminated. Again this list is by no means comprehensive. If one is interested in further analysis or discussion, Reasons to Believe has a weekly webcast in which they discuss the latest discoveries supporting their model. Questions are appreciated from believers and non-believers alike (by phone or e-mail... although phone-in questions get priority). The moderators are cordial and more than willing to listen to views contrary to their own.

Worshipping the Creation...

Breakpoint has a post that dovetails in with my comments on our tendency to worship the creation rather than the Creator. In Fatal Visions, Chuck tells of the mountain biker killed and partially eaten by a mountain lion here in so. Cal. earlier this month. He then ties that in to a similar incident in Boulder a few years back in which a teenager was killed by a mountain lion. Yet the difference was that the radical environmentalist bias in Boulder didn't view the repeated spottings of mountain lions in the area as a threat - even when pets were being eaten at night. In fact, after the killing, one teacher of the teenager suggested that his body be left in the wilderness so the animals could finish what they do. Last year there was a woman killed by a shark near a pier in Avila Beach, California. She had on a wet suit and flippers and was swimming with a group of seals. It was said she liked to commune with Nature while swimming in the harbor. In Alaska a bear photographer was mauled and killed after getting a bit too close to a grizzly. This "oneness" with Nature mentality is not only non-Biblical... it is dangerous.

Feelings, Nothing More Than...

From the Washington Post, School Honor Rolls Under Privacy Scrutiny, NASHVILLE, Tenn. - The school honor roll, a time-honored system for rewarding A-students, has become an apparent source of embarrassment for some underachievers... After a few parents complained their children might be ridiculed for not making the list, Nashville school system lawyers warned that state privacy laws forbid releasing any academic information, good or bad, without permission. So if I understand this correctly, we can't honor those who have worked hard for their achievments for fear of hurting the feelings of those who haven't? I guess I shouldn't really be so surprised at all the flak I took back on my PoMo posts for hurting someone else's feelings...

A Positive Report on Homeschooling...

Thanks to World Magazine's Blog for a link to an AP story on homeschooling. In Colleges Noticing Home Schooled Students we see a report on how the misunderstood students of homeschools are now being admitted to mainstream universities. Regarding homeschooled students the article states, "Such young people have grown up academically with a greater emphasis on learning - rather than testing - compared with conventionally educated students." Examples of homeschooled students in a college environment dispel the myth that they have poor social skills. Holly Porter, homeschooled from K-12 and now at the University of Denver, argues that it was the conventionally educated students that had a difficult time adjusting to the new environment of the university. She states, "It was kind of a shock, I had been given a lot of independence and a lot of freedom inside my parent's home. And I kind of got the feeling that there were all these girls that had never been away from their families before and they just went hog wild." What is interesting are the comments generated on World Magazine's Blog site. There was a question from a prospective homeschool parent on the pros and cons involved with such a venture. Here is one response from a homeschooled student: "Mr. Steve H, as a homeschool senior looking back and looking around me, I encourage you to homeschool your children. Mr. Perry’s advice is right on. Being read to by both Dad and Mom, well, really ever since I can remember, has led me to a joy of reading that enables me to learn from a book. Partly because of this I can concur with the idea that homeschoolers, "have grown up academically with a greater emphasis on learning - rather than testing - compared with conventionally educated students." The other reason that I can concur with this is because around 7th or 8th grade I began literally to teach my self (though with more sufficiency in some subjects than others). Mom became more of a goal setter than a teacher. I don’t think that that can happen, at least to that degree, in public school. To Mr. Perry’s advice to “love your wife and your kids” may I add love God. I never really thought about it until now, but I always saw homeschooling as something that God wanted my family to do. It was an extension of my parents commitment to God. As I look back, I’m very thankful for that. Some bring up the question, “Well what about a social life?” Being around your family so much teaches the things that are necessary to have a “good” social life - forgiveness, self-control, tact, wisdom, patients. Besides that, you can be involved in sports, church, homeschool groups etc. It’s not like you live in a monastery! If I could have chosen whether or not to homeschool I would have chosen the possibility of being socially deficient to having to face what kids in public school face every day now. At times I wonder how they can learn at all having to deal with what they do. Speaking about what public school children face, probably the best advantage of homeschooling is the spiritual one. These years at home provide a wonderful time to instill in your children a biblical, godly wordview. You get to shape their minds Christward instead of state filling their minds with garbage and the world squeezing it into it’s mold. It’s a wonderful opportunity that should not be missed. In brief, homeschooling is a great idea because you have no need of worrying about a social life, and have the benefits of great academic possibilities and a wonderful spiritual advantage. Only one word of caution Mr. Steve H - it’ll be an adventure with downs and better ups that you’ll never forget!" Let the gist of that comment be encouragement for all homeschool parents out there.

Origin of Life: by Chance or by Command?...

Coming in April. A testable creation model approach to the issue of the origin of life. Pre-order your copy today.

Reflections on God's Will...

In reading Lincoln's Greatest Speech, by Ron White, I've come to the point in Lincoln's Second Inaugural address in which he begins to describe why he believes the Civil War was so utterly devastating. White clues us in to a personal memo that Lincoln had written in 1862, just after the second defeat of Bull Run. In it we see Lincoln meditating on God's Divine Will. Regarding God's Will, Lincoln states, "The will of God prevails." On the issue of both sides claiming that God is on their side he writes, "Both may be, and one must be wrong. God can not [sic] be for, and against the same thing at the same time." And on the topic of the war itself, "I am almost ready to say this is probably true - that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end." In his inaugural address Lincoln was setting up the crowd for the reason he felt our country was being ravage by war. While the Northerners in the crowd were hoping for a judgment against the Confederates, Lincoln, understanding the justness of God and the sin of slavery, posited that both North and South had brought this upon themselves. God's Sovereign Will. He will work out His plans through our choices and, sometimes, in spite of our desires.

The Lord Told Me (last part)...

God has two wills. God's Sovereign Will (what He decrees) and God's Moral Will (what He desires). In this last post reviewing Greg Koukl's Decision Making and the Will of God I'll summarize what Greg says regarding God's Will and quickly roll-up the Biblical view on decision making. I highly recommend that you pick up the CD / Outline packet (through Stand to Reason). It'll only set you back about $20 or so. The Sovereign Will of God is what God decrees. It is His total control over the Universe. He created the natural realm and is Sovereign over it. It is His plan. Scriptural references for it are: Ephesians 1:11; Romans 9:19; Daniel 4:35; Acts 2:23; Acts 4:27-28; Job 12:9. One note regarding this aspect of God's Will is that we usually know about it only in hindsight. Unless God reveals it, through His Word or through supernatural means, it remains a mystery to us. A conclusion here would be that we, then, do not have access to it for decision making purposes. The Moral Will of God is what He desires for mankind in how we ought to live. Scriptural references are: 2 Peter 3:9; 1 Thessalonians 4:3; Ephesians 5:16-18; 1 Peter 2:13-15; 1 Thessalonians 5:15-18. God's Moral Will is completely revealed. It is not revealed as an individual plan but is applicable to all Christians. Rather than give us specific instructions on who to marry, for example, it tells us how to be a good spouse. As Greg Koukl states, "It’s not about what I do, but about who I am." So taking these concepts as outlined in the Bible we have an area of our life that is guided by God's Moral Will. It is what we find written in Scripture regarding God's commands and prohibitions. We are tasked with diligently studying and learning His Word in which we will find how He desires we should live. Intersecting with God's Moral Will is the aspect of Wisdom. The Bible states we should seek Wisdom by either searching God's Word, praying for it, or seeking guidance from wise counsel. Personal factors are then applied as well. In 1 Corinthians 7:40 we read, “In my opinion she is happier if she remains as she is.” Or in 2 Corinthians 9:7, “Let each one do just as he has purposed in his heart; not grudgingly or under compulsion; for God loves a cheerful giver.” Note that we are working this pattern in sequence: 1) Moral Will, 2) Wisdom then, 3) Personal Desires. Too often we work it the other way around. Therefore we have been given the resources with which we can make decisions, our decisions, in this life. Finally we must be cognizant of the fact that God's Sovereign Will encompasses the factors I've just described. This is certainly a great mystery, namely, how can God use our Free Will within His Sovereign Plan. Yet God can, and will, intervene in our lives to work out the purposes of His Plan.

It ain't much...

But this pic lets the NASA engineers know that Opportunity is safely on the ground on Mars. Here's to happy and successful exploring by both Spirit and Opportunity over the next 3 months.

If it's the Truth, then...

Totem to Temple has a link to a Razormouth post titled Hi, I’m 21, have we met? In it Trenton Starnes offers an open letter to the relevant and hip mega-churches. There is a lot I like in this post. Starnes addresses the idea of seeker-sensitive mega churches watering down the Gospel with lines like, "I basically know what I can expect: a rockin’ praise and worship band, Academy-nominated skits, and a non-boring, non-threatening, non-lengthy sermon with movie clips interspersed for good measure," and, "I wanted something different. I wanted something to stand out. I wanted something confrontational. I want to be offended. I picked up the Bible and read it; it offended me. It also grabbed my attention, and I wanted more of it. It’s relevant to me; you aren’t." Yet I'm struck at, once again, with the me, me, me, me, me, me mentality inherent in the character (albeit fictional). For instance, "And the power point? I learned that in fourth grade. It’s so nineties… but then again, it seems like most of your church is still stuck there, which isn’t surprising, since your average age in here is 40, twice my age." or "I know, you have a rockin’ praise band. But if you look really close, you’ll notice that it a bunch of thirty or forty something’s trying to be my age." or "The problem is, you just don’t know my generation. That’s why you’re losing us. Awesome job of being relevant. You lost me, and you’re losing us. I just thought you’d like to know." "You lost me, and you're losing us." I think what I'll be doing over the next several weeks is studying the Bible to see what it outlines as normative behavior for the Church. In particular I will be looking to see if the Church should: 1) alter the delivery of its message based on the likes / dislikes of the group in question, 2) alter the average age of its congregation to satisfy the likes / dislikes of the group in question, 3) alter the fact of the Gospel Truth to satisfy the cultural worldview of the group in question.

The Lord told me (part 3.5)...

I'm inserting a partial post before my last post on this topic due to a comment by Mac Swift. He references asking for guidance by asking God to close the door if it isn't in His will. Greg Koukl provides the following New Testament examples of open and closed doors. In 1 Corinthians 16:8-9 we see Paul go through an open door, “But I shall remain in Ephesus until Pentecost, for a wide door for effective service has opened to me, and there are many adversaries” But we see in 2 Corinthians 2:12-13 that he chooses not to go through an open door, “Now when I came to Troas for the gospel of Christ and when a door was opened for me in the Lord, I had no rest for my spirit, not finding Titus my brother, but taking my leave of them, I went on to Macedonia.” Curious isn't it? If in fact the open door was God's direction He was telling Paul to take, why did Paul choose not to go through it? How about a literal open door? In Acts 16:26-28 Paul is presented with a golden opportunity to walk through an open door. Being chain-bound and in jail, he suddenly found the chains supernaturally unfastened and the jail doors wide open. Yet he chooses not to go through the door. “And suddenly there came a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison house were shaken, and immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s chains were unfastened. And when the jailer had been roused out of sleep and had seen the prison doors opened, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Do yourself no harm, for we are all here!’” Could it be that opportunities that we refer to as open or closed doors are, in fact, simply opportunities in which we have the power and responsibility to make a decision for ourselves? end of part 3.5, go to last part

The Plain Reading of the Text (last part)...

So hopefully we have come to understand that we have a responsibility to put forth some effort to understand the author's intentions of the text we are reading. In so doing we will have to take into account the literary genre, the cultural settings, the author, the intended audience, etc. By taking a quick look at the creation account in Genesis 1 we see that it's genre is a narrative (not necessarily an historical narrative), the author is accepted to be Moses, he was writing to the Israelites of his time, they had just left 400 years of domination by an Egyptian culture, and so on. Therefore, the conclusion we come to is that the creation account was intended to set a foundation for the Israelites on just who God is and how He relates to the created order. Is this important? I think it is. Being an Old-Earth Creationist I am well aware of the debate that exists among Christians regarding the age of the Universe and / or the time span of the creation account. Yet I still can't get away from the fact that we may be missing the BIG IDEA of the account - namely that God is the Creator. Is this important? YES! Few people realize how unique the Genesis account of creation truly is. Virtually all other explanations of how the universe, the earth, and life were created rely on a closed system; that is, they typically explain the events in terms of pre-existing ideas. For example, think of any variety of Native American accounts of creation. Krista Bontrager at Reasons to Believe gave a presentation titled, The Gods of Other Religions, at their Who is the Designer? conference last June. In it she touched on the aspect of other creation stories. For the Maidu Indians we have the Water-Diver Myth: "In the beginning, all was dark. There was water everywhere. Then a raft came from the north, floating on the water. There were just two in the raft. They were Turtle and Pehe-ipe." The account goes on to describe how dry land was formed by the bit of dirt underneath the fingernails of the turtle. Bontrager comments on the common aspects found in these types of creation myths: 1) they rely on what we already know about the natural realm to account for the origin of the natural realm, 2) they cannot account for a transcendent beginning of the universe. Yet the Genesis creation account stands alone in its description of where we came from. From the first verse we are told who did the creating and that He exists outside the created realm. Genesis 1:1 (all NET) In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Those few words tell us: 1) that God created the heavens and the earth (or "the entire universe" as the Hebrew phrase in this context is understood) and, 2) that there was a beginning to the created order. A "therefore" from the first verse would be that God must exist outside the created order we exist in since He created it and it had a beginning. That is just a glimpse of the true importance of the creation account in Genesis for, as history has shown us, humans tend towards worshipping the natural realm. Indeed what are the words of Paul in Romans? Romans 1:18-25 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people who suppress the truth by their unrighteousness, because what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world his invisible attributes—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, because they are understood through what has been made. So people are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give him thanks, but they became futile in their thoughts and their senseless hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for an image resembling mortal human beings or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity, to dishonor their bodies among themselves. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creation rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. (emphasis added) This is not a point that should be lost on us 21st century believers. Whether one gravitates towards New Age spirituality or is a confirmed believer in Naturalism we see a worship of the creation rather than the Creator. Would a plain reading of the text in Genesis have given us this insight?

The Lord told me (part 3)...

In this continuing series highlighting Greg Koukl's Decision Making and the Will of God CD / study guide, I would like to address the aspects of teaching that the Bible gives regarding "Reading the Signs." After researching the text of Scripture regarding decision making and the will of God, Greg Koukl states that the Bible "does not teach that we get guidance from feeling “led by the Spirit,” having a “peace” about it, open doors, fleeces, or confirmations." I will not address Greg's entire outline here (you can buy it and the CDs on your own) but only hit the issues of being "led by the Spirit" and setting out fleeces. Where does the idea that we get guidance by feeling led come from? Sometimes we hear about the still small voice of God and attribute that to a mystical urging of the Spirit. In 1 Kings 19:13 we read: When Elijah heard it, he covered his face with his robe and went out and stood at the entrance to the cave. All of a sudden a voice asked him, “Why are you here, Elijah?” (all references NET) A clear reading of the text reveals that the still small voice was a... voice. It was not a feeling. How about being "led by the Spirit"? Sure, we understand that all Scripture is God-breathed and that we understand the meaning of Scripture through the help of the Spirit; but being "led by the Spirit" in the context of decision making implies He is giving us direction. If we read Romans 8:14 we see: For all who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God. Is this instructing us on guidance? Let's read the paragraph it is contained in as well as the paragraph previous (Romans 8:5-17): For those who live according to the flesh have their outlook shaped by the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit have their outlook shaped by the things of the Spirit. For the outlook of the flesh is death, but the outlook of the Spirit is life and peace, because the outlook of the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to the law of God, nor is it able to do so. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, this person does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is your life because of righteousness. Moreover if the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will also make your mortal bodies alive through his Spirit who lives in you. So then, brothers and sisters, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh (for if you live according to the flesh, you will die), but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery leading again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself bears witness to our spirit that we are God’s children. And if children, then heirs (namely, heirs of God and also fellow heirs with Christ)—if indeed we suffer with him so we may also be glorified with him. Is this passage about divine guidance and decision making? What are the contrasts Paul is making? "For those who live according to the flesh have their outlook shaped by the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit have their outlook shaped by the things of the Spirit." As Koukl states, "Being led by the Spirit in this passage is not referring to individual guidance, but rather empowerment to live holy lives." Okay how about setting out fleeces? What about Gideon? What about asking God for a providential sign? Good questions. Let's take a look at the text. Gideon setting out the fleece occurs in Judges 6:36, yet he had already been given direction and a supernatural sign earlier in the chapter - note Judges 6:11-22 The Lord’s angelic messenger came and sat down under the oak tree in Ophrah owned by Joash the Abiezrite. He arrived while Joash’s son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress so he could hide it from the Midianites. The Lord’s messenger appeared and said to him, “The Lord is with you, courageous warrior!” Gideon said to him, “Pardon me, but if the Lord is with us, why has such disaster overtaken us? Where are all his miraculous deeds our ancestors told us about? They said, ‘Did the Lord not bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and handed us over to Midian.” Then the Lord himself turned to him and said, “You have the strength. Deliver Israel from the power of the Midianites! Have I not sent you?” Gideon said to him, “But Lord, how can I deliver Israel? Just look! My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the youngest in my family.” The Lord said to him, “Ah, but I will be with you! You will strike down the whole Midianite army.” Gideon said to him, “If you really are pleased with me, then give me a sign as proof that it is really you speaking with me. Do not leave this place until I come back with a gift and present it to you.” The Lord said, “I will stay here until you come back.” Gideon went and prepared a young goat, along with unleavened bread made from an ephah of flour. He put the meat in a basket and the broth in a pot. He brought the food to him under the oak tree and presented it to him. God’s messenger said to him, “Put the meat and unleavened bread on this rock, and pour out the broth.” Gideon did as instructed. The Lord’s messenger touched the meat and the unleavened bread with the tip of his staff. Fire flared up from the rock and consumed the meat and unleavened bread. The Lord’s messenger then disappeared. When Gideon realized that it was the Lord’s messenger, he said, “Oh no! Master, Lord! I have seen the Lord’s messenger face to face!” In studying the account of Gideon we find out that he was, in fact, scared of the Midianites, and his setting out of the fleece demonstrated his lack of faith. Yet even in this example there is an important point to note: Gideon's request for confirmation was a supernatural request. How often, when we ask for confirmation, do we ask for supernatural answers? Koukl says that, if we want to truly follow Gideon's example, then we should ask God for a supernatural answer to our question. Well what about the instances of specialized guidance we do find in the Bible such as those in the book of Acts? This is another good question that Koukl addresses in depth. Suffice it to say that those instances in the Bible have the following qualities: they are "rare, intrusive (unsought), supernatural in character, and clear." In other words, those who received special guidance from God in the Bible didn't feel they were being led - they knew it. And this makes sense doesn't it? If God is intervening to direct you to do something - He will make sure you know about it. One big note of clarification here: Koukl is not stating that God cannot supernaturally intervene or give us direction in our daily lives here on earth; he's just saying that it is not the normative behavior displayed in the Bible. Recently I heard him put it something like this: "Can God let you know what you should buy every time you go to the grocery store? Sure! Should we expect it? No." In the last part of this series I'll highlight Koukl's analysis of the "Biblical Model for Decision Making." end of part 3, go to part 3.5

The Plain Reading of the Text (part 2)...

In the first part of this post I posited that, in our sloppiness or in our arrogance, we sometimes tend to think that our plain reading of Scripture to be sufficient enough to gather the meaning of the text. So as part of my argument I used the account of the 10 Plagues brought upon Pharoh and Egypt to illustrate that the story was intended to show God as Sovereign over the natural realm by showing His control over specific Egyptian deities. The conclusion of this approach is that we are tasked with the responsibility to research into the aspects of the text that will give us an indication of the author's intent. Author's intent. There's a concept we need to make sure we understand... that authors have intentions whenever they write something. It may seem obvious, but in our "post modern" age how many times have you heard the phrase: "What does this verse mean to you?" Or if you read up at all on issues before the Supreme Court you have surely run into the term "Living Constitution." This tendency to ignore author's intentions permeates our culture. Hence it is no surprise that many people are unaware of the proper way to study a book such as the Bible. And although it is not surprising, it is disheartening to see many people write off the proper study methods as ultimately unimportant. Anyway let's take a look at another event described in the book of Genesis and apply this methodology. The account of Creation in Genesis 1. If you mention it to a group of Christians you'll probably get comments about whether we should take it literally or figuratively; does it support a young-earth or an old-earth? Think though - is that our 21st century Western culture talking or not? After hearing about the meaning behind the 10 Plagues I started thinking about the Creation account. Put it into perspective. Moses is writing to the Israelites - after they've been living in Egypt for how long?, 400 years? What would their exposure have been with regards to Egyptian religious ideas regarding Creation? Yeah, you know, all those gods that God desecrated with the 10 Plagues. From that perspective, would the issue of the time it took to do the creating be as important - or important at all - when compared to the issue of who was doing the creating? Read it with that perspective and you will see the clear intent of the author to establish for the Israelites that nothing in the created order was responsible for creating the world around them. Rather it was Yahweh, who exists outside of and is in control of the created order, who did the Creating. In other words - don't worship Ra the Sun god, worship Yahweh who created the Sun. end of part 2

Focus on the Family January 2004...

Do you know who this little boy is? James Dobson's January 2004 letter from Focus on the Family is in honor of Sanctity of Human Life Month and brings us up to date on the outcome of the person whose tiny hand we see here His name is Samuel Armas... the little boy in the picture at the top of the post.

The Chosen...

Thanks to Breakpoint for the link to this malarkey. From the NARAL website: Generation Pro-Choice It’s not just your mother’s pro-choice movement… If you support access to birth control, sex education and abortion, and you've never lived in a time when abortion was illegal -- then congratulations, you are Generation Pro-Choice. And we need your help getting other young people involved in the fight to protect the right to privacy and a woman's right to choose -- or else quite frankly, we're gonna lose it. "It's not just your mother's pro-choice movement..." One hopes that our young people are intelligent enough to understand that their mother's pro-choice movement has produced millions of dead choices. Would that they be intelligent enough to realize that their existence could easily have ended up as one of those dead, legal choices. Finally, let's hope they can see through the flimsy rhetoric of the NARAL, which only sees fit to grant them the right to call the woman who bore them the title of mother based soley on that woman's choice.

The Lord told me (part 2)...

In this series I am touching on the highlights of Greg Koukl's Decision Making and the Will of God CD / study guide. The question I posed earlier was: How do you make decisions in your life? Greg expounds on that with the qualifier, "How is God involved in the process of making decisions?" We tend to think that God has an individual Plan for our lives and that it is our duty or obligation to find out what that plan is. How many times have you heard the phrase, "God loves you, and has a plan for your life"? When I reviewed Walt Russell's book Playing With Fire I spoke of how Russell agrees with the first half of that statement (i.e., God loves you), but he has some hesitation believing the second half. The reason for Russell's reluctance has to do with how we understand the Biblical Worldview. According to Russell, and others, the Israelites and the New Covenant believers of the first century did not have an individualistic view of their relationship with God, as we do. Rather, there's was a worldview rooted in history - knowing where they came from was a foundation for knowing who they were, and where they were going. This worldview dovetails into what Russell outlines as the Biblical view of God's Plan: 1) God, has a Plan 2) He is working out through history 3) First through Israel, and now through the New Covenant believers 4) To establish His kingdom on earth and bless all peoples of the world through faith 5) This maximally glorifies - God Note that we only fit into that view inasmuch as we are a part of God's plan. The earlier statement should then be re-phrased to, "God loves you, and wants you to be a part of His Plan." Russell contrasts the Biblical Worldview with the prevailing "existentialist" worldview in which things such as work, home, family, church, God, hobbies, country, etc., all exist in an attempt to bring fulfillment to the individual. Now, getting back to Greg Koukl, if we are under the impression that God has an individual plan for our lives, then it isn't too surprising for us to attempt to find out just what that plan is - after all - that would ensure we would make the right choices in the important decisions we face. But in searching for what we consider to be God's Will we end up relying on some sixth sense in order to know just what that will is. Thus we tend to hear phrases like, "I feel led...," "I feel God is calling me...," etc. As Greg says, this is "All based on a very important assumption: the blueprint; the road map—God made the decision that we must discover in order to make our decision." (emphasis added) Can you relate? Do you remember going through issues like these or, perhaps, having a friend go through them? What usually happened? I remember one friend who was having relational problems with her boyfriend and was at a crossroads on what to do. In seeking advice from her friends she got conflicting messages. One friend told her the problems she was facing must mean that the devil was trying block a wonderful relationship from happening - forge ahead! Another friend told her that maybe it was God closing the door - pull back! She began to wonder if she was just not mature enough spiritually to discern God's Will. Well... how do we find out God's Will? Greg decided to check with one source - God's Word. end of part 2, go to part 3

Lincoln's Greatest Speech, part 1...

"At this second appearing, to take the oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first." The Civil War had been dragging on for four years. In Lincoln's Greatest Speech, Ronald White tells us that an estimated 623,000 men died in the Civil War. He compares that number with those of World War I at 117,000, World War II at 405,000, the Korean War at 54,000, and the Vietnam War at 58,000. Add the major wars of the 20th century and you have 634,000... just barely over the number killed in the Civil War. If the same ratio of casualties to population occurred in World War II over 2,500,000 men would have been killed. White believes that it was these four years of bloodshed that set the stage for Lincoln's short, and direct, address. Was it all about slavery?, cotton?, the Constitution?, secession? Who was responsible? Lincoln was about to surprise the audience with his belief. The days leading up to the inaugural had been stormy. The day of the address is was still cloudy. As Lincoln got ready to speak, White tells us, quoting a reporter on the scene, what transpired: ""Just at that moment the sun, which had been obscured all day, burst forth in its unclouded meridian splendor, and flooded the spectacle with glory and light." Lincoln prepared to speak."

The Revenge of Conscience, last part...

I recently finished J. Budziszewski's book, The Revenge of Conscience: Politics and the Fall of Man. I heartily recommend it. It is his second book in a "trilogy" of sorts... Written on the Heart, The Revenge of Conscience, and What We Can't Not Know (that's next for me). J.B. has the ability to take complex topics, such as philosophy and ethics, and unpack them to the level of the layman. His writing is clear and concise and he weaves in examples that are understandable as well as informative. He truly has the gift of teaching. Joe at EO commented that the chapters in The Revenge of Conscience read more like a collection of essays than a single book, and he's right. But there is still a coherence within the topics discussed and a point to the book as a whole. J. Budziszewski tells us, in the Preface, of his trip into nihilism and then, ultimately, to God. He then explains why he wrote this book, "What I write about now is those very moral principles I used to deny - the ones we can't not know because they are imprinted on our minds, inscribed upon our consciences, written on our hearts... One might say that I specialize in understanding the ways that we pretend we don't know what we really do - the ways we suppress our knowledge, the ways we hold it down, the ways we deceive ourselves and others. I... try to show that in order to get anywhere at all, the philosophies of denial must always at some point assume the very first principles they deny." (emphasis in original) His prose is especially gripping in the first paragraph of Chapter 8 - Why We Kill the Weak: "If we may kill, we may do anything - and historians will write that by the last decade of the twentieth century, great numbers of men and women in the most pampered society on the earth had come to think it normal and desirable that their sick, their weak, and their helpless should be killed. When they were a poor country, they had not so thought; now in the day of their power and prosperity, they changed their minds. Babies asleep in the dim of the womb were awakened by knife-edged cannulas that sucked and tore at their soft young limbs; white-haloed grandmothers with wandering minds were herded by white-smocked shepherds into the cold dark waters of death. Many physicians came to think of suicide as though it were medicine." (emphasis added) Do yourself a favor and get this book.

New Current Read...

I've finished The Revenge of Conscience and will post my final remarks on it tonight. The next book on my list is Lincoln's Greatest Speech by Ronald White. It's not about the Gettysburg Address... his greatest speech is considered to be his Second Inaugural address. From the publisher, "In 703 words, delivered slowly, Lincoln transformed the meaning of the suffering brought about by the Civil War. He offered reunification, not revenge. Among those present were black soldiers and confederate deserters, ordinary citizens from all over, the black leader Frederick Douglass, the Cabinet, and other notables. John Wilkes Booth is visible in the crowd behind the president as he addresses posterity."

The Plain Reading of the Text (part 1)...

We tend to think of ourselves here in the 21st century West as being pretty cognizant of the reality of things due, in part, to a secular Worldview born, so we believe, in Christianity. For instance, we don't believe that there's any deity physically pushing the Sun across the sky. Non-Christians believe that for scientific reasons alone. Christians believe it because it contradicts the Biblical account and because of our understanding of the natural realm (i.e., science). But how does that logically and technologically based perception affect our reading of Biblical text? Does it help or hinder us? Consider the account of the 10 Plagues brought onto Egypt by God through Moses. What is it about? Deliverance? My own sins making me into a "Pharoh" of sorts? God's Power? It might surprise many of you to learn that each of the 10 Plagues corresponded to an Egyptian deity. Moses told Pharoh that God (I AM) demanded he let His people go. Pharoh resisted and Yahweh responded by showing that He superceded any other animistic god the Egyptians had. God desecrated everything that the Egyptians worshipped to provide rational reasons for understanding that He alone was the Creator of the natural realm. I told someone about this meaning of the text once and they responded by saying, "Well... you only understand that if you dig into the text." I guess that was supposed to mean that: 1) The meaning you present is not readily apparent, 2) The meaning you present can only be found by extensive research, 3) Therefore, the meaning you present is secondary. In general I would probably agree with #2 and #3. But #1 is the tricky one. I propose that the intended meaning of the 10 Plagues is readily apparent. Keep in mind that the original text what written by someone to an intended audience. To whom was the account of the 10 Plagues written? The Israelites at or around the time of when Moses wrote the account (although the event itself would have prompted talk throughout the region before it was actually written down). For an Israelite or Egyptian at the time of the event, the meaning of the 10 Plagues would have been clear - there would have been no mistaking the intent of God in choosing the types of plagues in which He did. For example, in plunging the land into darkness God was demonstrating His power over Ra, their Sun god. That we consider it to be hidden in the text is indicative of our being separated by a few thousand years and completely removed from the culture of the intended audience. Does this separation, of sorts, actually place on us the responsibility to do diligent research with regards to the meaning of the Biblical text? end of part 1

The Lord told me (part 1)...

When we hear someone say that God is speaking to them we usually place them into one of two categories: 1) He is a deranged but charismatic cult leader, probably just about to order his followers to commit mass suicide or, 2) He is a solid Christian getting direction to specific issues in his life. That's a pretty wide range between # 1 and 2 isn't it? I'll postpone any comments on #1 for another time and will just focus in on #2. How do you make important decisions in your life, whether it be the choice of a career, a school to attend, or a potential spouse? Do you pray and intently wait on some supernatural guidance from God? Do any of these phrases sound familiar?: "God told me to...," "I have a peace about...," "The Lord opened a door for me...," "The Lord closed a door for me...," "I feel led by the Spirit to...," or "I received confirmation on..." Is any of that Biblical? I just purchased a study by Greg Koukl, from Stand to Reason, titled Decision Making and the Will of God. As I go through it I will be posting some highlights or salient points about his treatment of the subject. Suffice it to say here at the start that his argument is that, as a mode of normative behavior, the Bible does not teach that we are to receive special guidance from God on issues that pertain to our day to day lives here on Earth. If that doesn't sit well with you then all I ask is that you be patient and allow me to post further points on this topic. end of part 1, go to part 2

The Day after King Day...

For an interesting take on MLK's sexual virility as well as his drive to champion Civil Rights, read Remembering Martin Luther King Jr., by Richard John Neuhaus in the October 2002 issue of First Things. Despite the "pelvic issues" discussed, it is not a slam on MLK. Neuhaus knew him personally and the article surprisingly, for me, praises King's overall efforts. Neuhaus closes with, "Marshall Frady and others are right: if everything was known then that is known now, Dr. King would early have been brought to public ruin, and there would almost certainly be no national holiday in his honor. But God writes straight with crooked lines, and he used his most unworthy servant Martin to create in our public life a luminous moment of moral truth about what Gunnar Myrdal rightly called “the America dilemma,” racial justice. It seems a long time ago now, but there is no decline in the frequency of my thanking God for his witness and for having been touched, however briefly, by his friendship, praying that he may rest in peace, and that his cause may yet be vindicated."

Baby Steps...

10 feet away from the lander's platform is a football-sized rock now named Adirondack. It appears less dusty than another rock nearby, so it was chosen as the first rock to perform analysis on. Also, the engineers needed to get the feel of the land as they guided Spirit onto the surface.

Yet even more on The Purpose Driven Life...

In his December 28, 2003 radio show, Greg Koukl, from Stand to Reason, describes the first video in Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life series. The tape series is designed to be shown in homes in which, presumably, non-Christians have been invited as part of the outreach of 40 Days of Purpose. Greg's issue with the tape is that it appears to water-down the Gospel. There is no offense, no presentation of the reason why we need the atonement of Christ, namely - that we SIN. Greg reads, verbatim, the prayer that Pastor Warren leads the listeners through. It's a good prayer, as Greg says, but its geared for believers - kind of along the lines of "lead me onward towards my God given purpose." The problem is that, after the prayer is finished, Warren welcomes those who prayed it into the kingdom of God. Yet there was no mention of sin, no mention of repentance, indeed, no Gospel message presented whatsoever. Listen for yourself at this link. It's a 2 hour show, but Greg hits this issue in the first 15 minutes. Is this important? I think so. It is indicative, to me, of a growing trend in the Church to tone down Christianity's message so as not to offend any non-Christians to the point of their turning away from the message. But where is the logic in that? Change the message so they'll accept the message? What message? That we have Purpose or that we need a Savior? This thinking seems to permeate our Western mentality in Church Growth movements such as "Seeker-Sensitive," or "Emergent Church." Granted, the motives are sincere - the desire to reach the unsaved; but at what point have we altered the Gospel to the point where it is no longer The Gospel?

Cross-Calibration...

That would have saved one of the Mars missions back in 1999. Remember the one that crashed into the surface because there was a mix-up between English and Metric units? It seems that the navigational coordinates were incorrectly entered and the poor, multi-million dollar piece of machinery went by-by. Recently, while listening to the January 6th webcast from Reasons to Believe, I heard a former JPL scientist describe how a backup system could have saved that 1999 mission. His name is Dave Rogstad and he worked on the Galileo mission to Jupiter. He described a navigational system that is, evidently, very complex and tedious to manage. Nevertheless, if it had been employed on that 1999 mission it would have provided a calibration check to the fatally erroneous numbers that ended up being used. Such a cross calibration would have sent up a red flag, alerting the scientists that something wasn't quite kosher. Backup systems, redundancy, cross calibration via multiple independent checks... these are all hallmarks of design. In the realm of molecular biology we are just beginning to discover the myriad of complex, interdependent systems that display the handiwork of the Creator. Look for continued discoveries in 2004 that will provide further evidence of planning and forethought in this exciting field.