In Defence of God

That God exists should be obvious to any design engineer.  Two of a multitude of examples should suffice.

Our best mechanical designs produce products that require constant maintenance.  For example, our best valves, even when used exactly as designed, still leak over time, and leak more frequently with use.  Yet, once we do not misuse our bodies, our lips do not leak water when full, and we do not leak urine or stool.  This is similar for every animal.  The ‘valves’ in every species of every animal were designed and made perfectly from the very beginning.

When design engineers, with significant research and development funds, design a car, cell phone, or any other manufactured product, then it is normally hailed as the most elegant design imaginable.  Yet, within approximately 5 years, it appears clumsy and crude when compared with the new current model.  We can be sure that today’s model will appear similarly crude 5 years hence.  Why is that?  Because their designs were not perfect, and we can normally detect an improved design.

We never seem to tire of the perfect designs of plants and animals as we do the imperfect designs of manufactured things.  Neither have we been able to improve natural designs.  We have tried to emphasize specific traits by grafting plants and selectively breeding animals.  However, these practices have not improved the pure-bred species.

Why don’t we get bored with nature?  Why do we continue to be amazed at each new discovery of natural things.  Because we appreciate perfection, and they were created perfect from the very beginning.  Actually, there is absolutely no evidence of any imperfect natural design anywhere on earth.  Put another way, there is no evidence of an imperfect natural design that evolved into a perfect or improved one.  All designs were made perfect from the beginning.  The only imperfect designs in the archaeological record  are man-made.  That is amazing!

God is perfect, and everything that He created was perfect, including us.  We had, and still have the perfect capability to choose to see His handiwork and acknowledge Him, or continue to believe the myth that life evolved across species – with no supporting evidence except the faith of blind ideologues who avoid any discussion on the issue.

Throwing in the Towel

For the past 30 years, I have heard many academics confidently assert two things about the Bible.

1.  It  conflicts with scientific evidence; and

2.  It is full of contradictions.

 Persons who challenged these assertions were rarely given an opportunity to honestly discuss their concerns with these academics, but rather, had their opinions derisively dismissed.

 Approximately 10 years ago, I felt that I had sufficient confidence in the breadth and depth of my Biblical and scientific knowledge to investigate the common assertions.  They did not stand up to rigorous scrutiny.

 Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religious leaders consider themselves to be entrusted with knowledge of God’s truth as recorded in their principal religious texts.  However, what is most appalling is that such religious leaders, with limited scientific knowledge, have simply accepted the academics’ assertions in order to avoid being ridiculed for their beliefs.  Worse still, they teach their converts to accept the conflicting academics’ opinions, despite being aware of Jesus’ commandment:

 “But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea. (Mark 9:42)

 I hereby issue an open challenge for anyone with claims of Biblical contradictions with itself and with scientific evidence to present them for discussion and scrutiny here.

 Regards,

Grenville

 

The biggest blunders in history.

In my 30 year study of history, I have read accounts of numerous blunders.  However, in my opinion, there are two historical blunders that have had particularly deep and lasting consequences.  What they both had in common was the ridiculing of a claim of truth.

Claims of truth should always be entertained and honestly examined with rigorous scrutiny.  If the claim is found to be true, then it can only enhance our body of knowledge and benefit mankind.  If the claim is found to be false, then the consequences of a blunder can be avoided.

Blunder number 1

The first blunder occurred approximately 1,400 years ago when Church leaders refused to honestly examine Mohammed’s claims of truth.   For 9 years, Mohammed preached a message that was similar to that of Jesus.  He encouraged his followers to believe in the One God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, believe the Biblical Old Testament Prophets, believe that Jesus is the Christ, believe the Gospel, and copy and distribute books of the Bible to other nations without compensation.

Mohammed did not appear to intend to start a new religion.  Rather, he seemed to want to start a Christian denomination with traditions which he considered to be more sustainable than those which he observed.  Therefore, in addition to believing and following the words of Jesus, he instructed his followers to: pray 5 times per day, fast, give to charity, and to congregate in Mecca at least once in their lifetime in order to ensure that their traditions were consistent with the truth.

Mohammed held discussions with numerous Christian religious leaders, but he was not accepted.  Therefore, Islam developed into an adversarial religion whose adherents are taught to ignore Mohammed’s explicit instructions. According to the Bible, Jesus defined eternal life as belief in One God and in Jesus as the Messiah.  The Qur’an instructs Muslims to believe in the One and only God, and identifies Jesus as the Christ.

And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. (John 17:3)

If Christians followed the Bible and Muslims followed the Qur’an, then there would be no theological differences between them, only cultural.  A Muslim who believes the Qur’an is a Christian, and a Christian who believes the Qur’an is a Muslim.  However, the Qur’an does not require Christians to read the Qur’an, only the Gospel.  See BrothersKeptApart.com for further details.

For the past 1,300 years, Christians and Muslims have been kept apart because of their assumption that there are irreconcilable differences between the Bible and the Qur’an.  However, neither group appears to be willing to verify this assumption, instead preferring to declare that the other has been misled.

Blunder number 2

The second blunder was the response to Darwin’s theory of evolution.  Darwin had published ‘Origin of Species’ in 1859, where he proposed a likely explanation for the differences that he had observed within various species.  He supported his explanation with compelling evidence.  Therefore, his explanation for the differences within species can be considered a scientific theory.

From this rather solid base, Darwin applied his theory to propose an explanation for the differences between different species.  In reaching his conclusion, Darwin noted that his proposition required many generations of intermediate forms to be created before the appearance of a new species. He acknowledged that the evidence to support his views was not yet found in the fossil record, but he expected that the intermediate forms would be found following more extensive anthropological and geological excavations.

Darwin concluded that the discovery of abrupt appearances of species, without the gradual changes of modifications, would be fatal to his views.  See Evolution in the Balance for details.  During the time that Darwin published his views, scientific debate on the origin of species was dominated by the idea that God had separately created each species and that they did not vary. This idea was popular and generally accepted by his society.  Rather than honestly discuss Darwin’s ideas, he was scorned for challenging ideas that were generally accepted by his society.

Today, scientific debate on the origin of species is dominated by Darwin’s ideas, which are popular and generally accepted in western society.  Scorn is still reserved for those who challenge popular ideas.  The fossil records discovered to date show the abrupt appearances of species, without the gradual changes.  Despite the fact that Darwin’s stated fatal flaw has been realized, teachers continue to assume, and teach, that the evidence for evolution across species is as compelling as it is for evolution within species.

Conclusions

Hindsight vision is said to be 20/20.  This principle of hindsight should restrain students of history from unfairly condemning those who made blunders in the past.  However, while we can do nothing to change history, we can do something to ensure that the mistakes of the past are not perpetuated.  Therefore, Christian religious leaders should honestly examine the Qur’an before continuing their tradition of condemning it, and teachers need to honestly examine the evidence for evolution across species, before continuing the tradition of claiming that compelling supporting evidence exists.

Life in the Balance

Dear Readers:

This week, I thought that we should place life in the balance. The question that we will try to answer is: what are we supposed to be doing while we are alive?

We live, have children then die, while our children live, have children of their own and die, while their children live, have children and die and so on. We are encouraged to pursue material wealth and knowledge, and to become capable in various responsibilities while we are alive, and we encourage our children to do the same. But what is really important?

Part of the answer may lie in observing plants and animals in the natural environment. Plants grow, reproduce themselves in seeds and die. Plants do not need to intervene to protect their offspring since the seeds already contain all of the information required to germinate, grow and reproduce provided that the external environment is conducive to growth. Therefore once there are adequate amounts of nutrients, water and sunlight, the plant will grow to maturity and produce seeds with the required information to perpetuate the species.

Animals also grow, have offspring of their own and die. The offspring of insects, fish and amphibians generally contain sufficient survival instincts and abilities to seek shelter and food without their parents nurturing. They may eventually join a community of the same species where they may find a mate and have offspring of their own.

The offspring of birds and mammals generally lack sufficient survival abilities and must be protected, mainly by their mother, until they are weaned; thereafter the family joins the community or group. Some herbivores offspring like sheep, horses and cows can stand and run very soon after birth and thereby quickly join the community. Other animal offspring are helpless, even to the point of being born with their eyes closed, like the carnivorous dogs and cats.

As these offspring of birds and mammals grow, they learn to survive by copying their parent’s behaviour and by adopting the cultural standards of the community. Such standards can include migratory schedules and pace, hierarchical governance, and mate selection. Predators generally target those who do not accept or fall below the standards of the group, like the stragglers of migratory herbivores, or the young who become easily distracted, wander from the group and do not heed their parents’ calls to return.

Animals tend to have strong innate instincts that tend to govern their behaviour. The behaviour of the group is therefore not vulnerable to change under normal circumstances.

Human babies are completely helpless with very little apparent survival information or ability. They therefore require protection and nurturing. They contain very little innate information and must therefore be trained to adopt the cultural values of the community. This training must be done in such a way that the child will be equipped to pass on these values to their own offspring and thus perpetuate the community’s standards. Since children will tend to copy their parents behaviour, parents must behave in the same way that they want their children to behave.

This process of transmitting cultural values to successive generations is not vulnerable to the occasional mistakes that parents may make, since humans have a conscience to provide them with some additional guidance on what is right. However, history has shown that the process is vulnerable to small but influential groups in the community who persistently try to compel the community to adopt different cultural values.

If the popular culture of the community has become unhealthy, irresponsible or immoral, then those who do not agree with such standards seek to promote different cultural values. There is therefore a continual struggle for supremacy of cultural values within all communities, the healthy vs. the unhealthy, the responsible vs. the irresponsible, the moral vs. the immoral, the positive vs. the negative, the right vs. the wrong, the good vs. the bad.

Sometimes the popular culture of a community is dominated by good values, and at other times by bad ones. Regardless of the cultural state of a community, the struggle for cultural supremacy is relentless. We are therefore responsible for teaching and promoting, through our behaviour, good cultural values to the successive generations. We are also responsible for warning successive generations about the consequences of adopting bad cultural values.

Evolution in the Balance

Dear Readers:

Last week I made the observation that we were teaching our children as “fact”, three different and opposing views on the origin of man, namely: that God created life on earth in 6 days, that we evolved from simpler life forms over millions of years, and that God used the evolutionary process to evolve us from simpler life forms. This week, we will place Charles Darwin’s proposition as published in “The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection” in the balance.

Origin of Species was written in 1859, approximately 23 years after Darwin returned from a 5-year exploratory journey around the world. During the expedition he observed how perfectly suited each plant and animal was to its environment, and how interdependent they were.

In his publication, Darwin hypothesized that desired traits can become dominant through selective breeding over many generations. Desired traits can be things like longer or shorter beaks in birds, or larger or smaller sized petals in flowers.

This hypothesis was tested through experiments carried out by Darwin and others where selective breeding of animals and cultivation of plants yielded predictable results. He found that after many generations of breeding, the desired trait became the dominant one. This evidence became the basis of his next hypothesis.

Darwin observed that every organism reproduced at a rate that is unsustainable therefore some of the offspring do not survive. Climate, epidemics, lack of food, and predators are factors that restrict organic populations, however Darwin hypothesised that a process of natural selection mainly determined which offspring survived to reproduce.

Darwin tested this hypothesis through direct observation. He observed that nature did not use the same selection criteria that man used. Man selected offspring for breeding to achieve a physically attractive characteristic over many generations. Nature selected variations or traits that were beneficial to an organisms’ specific environment. Darwin observed that organisms within a species that had beneficial characteristics for that specific environment were dominant in that environment.

In interim summary therefore, Darwin proposed a hypothesis, tested it and found that field observations and experimental test results supported his argument. His argument can therefore be considered a scientific theory. From this rather solid base, Darwin proposed another argument.

Darwin proposed that if man through domestication of animals and plants could achieve such variety over hundreds of years, then nature could achieve greater variety, even to the evolution of new species, over millions of years.

Darwin extrapolated that if variations were still occurring, then the animal and plant forms that we currently see may be transitional forms and may eventually become new species. He then looked back and postulated that all of the life-forms that currently exist have ascended from previous transitional forms. Darwin then carried this extrapolation to its ultimate conclusion by suggesting that we have evolved over millions of generations from very simple life-forms.

In reaching this conclusion, Darwin noted that his proposition required many generations of intermediate forms to be created before the appearance of a new species. He acknowledged that the evidence to support his views was not yet found in the fossil record, but expected that the intermediate forms would be found following more extensive anthropological and geological excavations. He also noted that the discovery of abrupt appearances of species, without the gradual changes of modifications, would be fatal to his views.

It should be noted that the fossil records discovered to date appear to show many species that are the same as they are today, and the fossilized species seem to have appeared abruptly without gradual changes.

During the time that Darwin published his views, scientific debate on the origin of species was dominated by the idea that God separately created each species and that they did not vary. This idea was popular and generally accepted by his society. Darwin proposed an alternative idea that species developed over time due mainly to a process of evolution through natural selection. In accordance with sociological behaviour, he was predictably scorned for challenging ideas generally accepted by his society.

Today, scientific debate on the origin of species is dominated by Darwin’s ideas, which are popular and generally accepted in western society.  Scorn is still reserved for those who challenge popular ideas.