The Burning Bush

Movies on my Mind

2007-02-01T15:38:00.000-08:00

The Movies

     Thomas Edison invented the light bulb in 1879. Prior to that time, Americans slept 10 hours or more every night. Today, however, that number is down to 6.9 hours on weeknights and 7.5 hours on weekends. A third of the population goes to bed after midnight, and 40% are still in bed after 7 AM.

     The issue is not merely electricity. No one is staying awake to watch an electric bulb shine. The light bulb became (by design, by the way, not by mutation and gradual change by natural forces) a vacuum tube that by design became a radio, which by design and forethought became a television. Edison’s claim to fame must include his moving pictures, which today is the most sophisticated method of conveying images and ideas ever imagined.

     Buildings dedicated to selling popcorn and soft drinks, with multiple darkened auditoriums designed to present (in full-color and stereo sound) one film (one video story) every couple of hours throughout the day (every day), and people line up to get a seat. Love stories, comedy, drama, action, science fiction, fantasy, musicals, horror, you name it, we’ve got it, seven days a week.

     Movie goers also watch movies on TV. They also patronize the video rental stores and watch movies at home on demand. Movie goers are likely to have cable, which adds news channels to the many movie channels.

     I don’t plan to talk much about movies in this blog. Movies appear in the billboard ads outside the theaters without much warning, and they are displayed on the screens for various lengths of time, and then a new film takes its place. Some become well-known, but most do not. So to use any but the really big blockbusters as an illustration of anything is not wise. People will not remember the lesser known films, and the illustration will be lost of them. I find that many if not most people do not remember much even from the hugely successful films like Star Wars; and the truth of the matter is, not everyone saw even a single episode of Star Wars in the theater; and the impact is simply not there on the TV screens below 42 inches, and many have not seen an episode even in that format.

     Interesting, but so what?

     First, God spoke and had the Spirit to see that His verbal message and historical actions were recorded in writing (not in video), capable of being preserved with a high degree of reliability, something to read and re-read, something to be heard by the illiterate, something to be remembered through the ages. Video is a wonderful medium, but God chose writing at least because it is not bound to only one century in human history.

     Second, writing has the unique ability to cause your mind (the mind of the reader or the hearer) to envision the events. Each reader translates the message in a personal way. There are limits as to what a text can mean, but once a movie is made or a picture is painted, the visual imagery overwhelms the understanding, and our minds tend to follow the visual.

     Third, a presentation beyond the verbal translation will often be a misrepresentation of the events. At the nativity, for example, were Magi and Shepherds there at the same time? Most think so because of Christmas card art, not because of anything in the Bible. Did the shepherds see the star? Were the Magi riding camels? Were there three Magi? Were there only three? Our assurance on the right answers to these questions comes from Christmas pageants, popular sermons, and other presentations of the familiar story. None of these matters are specifically addressed in the biblical text (which alone is the infallible Word of God).

     Was the cross on a hill (far away), and was it rugged? The Bible does not say. Was Mary tiny or fat? Was Jesus muscular or thin? Did Jesus have a soft voice? Did he know how to swim? When did he gain full understanding of his divine nature? When performing a miracle, hid he wave his hands like a modern stage magician? Did his feet splash the water when he was walking on the lake?

     It is far better simply to read and reread the biblical stories, seeking deeper insight, than to take someone else’s mental picture of the events, the tone of voice of the presenter, the emotional intensity of the moment, and let that be your understanding of the biblical event. God has spoken clearly and sufficiently. We do not need a movie of the Bible.  The story of Noah is not funny in the Bible, but it almost always is when presented via actors and edited video.

     Fourth, God speaks through dreams, but dreams are at best interactive visions between you and God. Dreams are not constructed realities produced by writers and directors and camera people. Not all dreams are from God, but they are all personal. Movies are the same (frame by frame, scene by scene) for everyone who is paying attention every time the see the movie. In a similar way, Scripture does not change either except where there may be interpretive nuances. But the unchanging text of the Bible is not the same as the unchanging imagery of a movie. A movie can be remastered and re-edited, the scenes can be rearranged, and the stories retold. The Bible is not rightfully subject to such editing. This is what modern criticism tries to do, but modern criticism fails at every point.

     Popular culture has much to teach us if we study it generically. God is still at work in the world. The world is the home of popular culture. From the world we gain ways of understanding those to whom we speak our gospel message. We defend that message in light of the many questions that the world raises. Truth need never fear. Jesus said God’s word is truth.

L. Russ Bush
Director, Center for Faith and Culture
Box 1889
Wake Forest, NC 27588
DirectorCFC@sebts.edu

Facing the Future

2006-12-11T14:01:00.000-08:00

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Work: Blessing or Curse?

2006-11-03T10:31:00.000-08:00

Reading and Misreading the Bible

Odd things pop up in my mail. In a recent issue of a church newsletter (a prominent Baptist church, by the way), I saw a lead article on “Work and Creation.” The point was to teach the congregation that work was already there from creation, not only from the Fall. That is certainly the case, but I am regularly amazed to see good conclusions drawn from poor exegesis.

The scenario as described in the article is that the world begins formless and empty. God then forms and fills the earth. The author’s conclusion is that God brought great order out of chaos (yes, the author used that word), and thus, for this author, work is defined as bringing order out of chaos, and the claim is made that bringing order out of chaos is what human beings are called upon by God to do. That is what work is, according to the article.

It is certainly true that the Father is always working (John 5:17), and it is also true that God is the supreme Ruler, and we, in His image, rule over the earth. The conclusion again was that God is a God who brings order out of chaos, and bringing order out of chaos is what we are called to do. Bringing order from chaos, consciously for God’s glory, makes work a form of worship [an interesting Calvinistic twist there].

That in my view is a wonderful conclusion. We can honor God in all that we do, and we should worship Him through our actions. But somewhere in here I keep finding the logic to be odd. Go back with me for a moment to Genesis 1:1–2. Does formless and void sound like chaos to you? It sounds like utter simplicity to me! Is God the author of chaos out of which He later brings order, and is “order from chaos” the definition of work that results in worship?

The article notices the reference to gold and precious stones in Genesis 3:10–12 and connects that to Exodus 25–40. The woman was formed as a helper, thus enabling true worship. Acting not as a helper hinders worship. [Women take note!]

All of this is very interesting. It is a creative reading of Genesis 1–3, but is it what Genesis is teaching? As I said earlier, God did not begin with chaos. He began with nothing and made something. He made something simple (something formless and void) and brought complexity to it by adding new information and design to the most basic elements of the newly created substances.

To say that all work is worship and that work originates before the Fall has elements of truth, perhaps, but the curse upon the earth changed the nature of human work. Before the Fall, work was caring for and protecting the good and sinless environment of the Garden. After the Fall (which was quite soon, I believe), the work became burdensome (thorns and thistles, working the soil, planting and harvesting, building safe shelters, acquiring clothes, taking care of families, setting up new communities, protecting yourself and your family from violence, developing language, etc.). Fighting against thorns and weeds does not seem to me to be in and of itself worship.

I do not wish to refute the notion of the dignity of human work. I do believe that work can be dedicated to God and can thus be in some relevant sense an act of worship. But there are two kinds of work. There is preservation of the order God has brought into being (not out of chaos, the evolutionary notion, but out of original simplicity, which has now been filled with information, the creationist view). There is also the effort to restore order where chaos is increasing due to sin and due to thermodynamic processes and other results of the divine curse on the earth. Some work is mere hardship due to the Fall and the resulting curse.

Work of many kinds can be offered as worship, but there is some work that cannot. There is such a thing as sinful work.

Reading the Bible gives some people many creative insights, and they often end up with some good conclusions, but their exegetical basis is at times weak, and they mislead people about what the Bible actually says and teaches. Creation is not “organizing chaos.” Creation is bringing designed purpose out of simplicity. There was no life, but God created life (a highly organized arrangement of simple substances, not chaos, is a necessary precondition for the chemical and physical base on which life can ride).

Human work is not creation in that sense. Human work is taking the complex resources God has given us to make new things (usually simpler than the complex information in the original materials) that allow people to resist the effects of the Fall or allows us to build new things that might improve living conditions. People also sometimes work with God’s natural resources to produce sinful pleasures. People work to destroy one another, they frequently work to destroy the art and culture of another civilization, they develop weapons whose sole purpose is to destroy that which God has created. On the other hand, human work can result in building buildings, improving sanitation, increasing food production, developing medicines, raising the level of education and literacy, better communications, better transportation and many other things. Human work should be thought of as “rule” or “dominion” over the earth, but sin has made the situation much more complex.

Let’s read what the Bible actually says and not suggest that all human work is capable of being presented as worship. I am just not convinced that pornography or pagan temple building or construction of massively destructive weapons are examples of work that can be offered to God as worship.

Where all work will be worship is a description of the Kingdom, perhaps, but that is not our day yet. Clearly the ideals of the kingdom are the ideals of the Christian life. So let’s worship God in all that we do.

L. Russ Bush, Director
Center for Faith and Culture

Why do Arabs deny Israel's Right to Exist?

2006-10-04T12:57:00.000-07:00

The Holocaust

Germany still maintains some of the camps for visitors. I saw the cells and grounds myself on a recent trip to East Germany. I saw the pictures. I saw the ovens. It all seems authentic enough.

American soldiers liberated many of the camps and freed the Jews from the grip of the Nazis. Estimates were that Hitler exterminated as many as six million Jewish people in his day. For many Americans at the time, this sounded like wholesale slaughter. It must have been the Great Tribulation, and Christ was surely coming soon.

Christ’s return has seemingly been delayed, but Israel’s presence in the world is more prominent than ever. Radical Islam confronts Israel everywhere. America is disliked not for our way of life (as some claim). America is disliked because we support Israel.

Surrounded by enemies, Israel has fought for territory and its very existence. For most of Christian history, Jewish people were scattered. In our day the Jews have been given a place to live by the post-war Europeans, British, and Americans (that place given is in the Middle East where every clod of dirt is disputed territory). Mostly America and the British guarantee Israel’s right to exist in that location as a free and sovereign nation.

When the Holocaust is doubted, the rationale for a Jewish homeland evaporates, and the political will could shift away from support for Israel. Radical Islam doubts and challenges the reality of the Holocaust as we have understood it. First of all, this shows you how unaware of historical reality these people really are. Remember that Islam is yet a medieval religion. There has been no serious modern reform movement within Islam such as that within Protestantism in the days of the 16th Century Protestant Reformation.

The point is, however, that we are seeing acted out on the slate of modern history the effect of the loss of historical memory (or the effect of isolation from 20th century history). If there is no holocaust, then by what right could Israel be established on Palestinian soil against the wishes of the people living there in 1948? The United Nations knew that there was a real holocaust. It was so horrorific that they supported a special new nation in which Jews could live. The idea was that this could be a land recognized as historic for Jews, that it would be of no final consequence to major Arab nations, and that it would secure the Jewish people from another holocaust and/or from continuing persecution by Europeans and by other nations.

I would not be able to say that it has been a persecution free life for Israel. The bottom line, however, is that if one denies or doubts the holocaust, one can see no good reason for Israel to have been moved from the Jewish Diaspora in Europe to a new European style nation located in the decidedly non-European middle east. Clearly, it is the European-style nation of Israel that exists today, not the ancient middle-eastern style nation which Israel was in the ancient world.

The political values of Western secular humanism that characterize Israel today stand in stark contrast to the life-style of medieval Islam. America stands in the cultural traditions of the west. America knows the holocaust really happened. America supports the secular Israeli socialism. America seeks political updating and democratic values for Islamic nations in the region in order to protect western interests in the region (in particular oil supplies, but other things as well).

This is all mixed up with the eschatologies of some biblical thinkers who often identify
secular Israel (in place today) as being the precursor of a renewed biblical state (such as it was in the days of the prophets and priests of David’s day, perhaps). God may be moving in that direction, but I don’t see it, and most modern Israelis are not self-consciously going there.

The prophecy buffs came out in force during the recent Lebanon conflict and made fools of themselves, as they usually do, when they start predicting the end times. I guess it is a money raising thing for them, I don’t know, but I even heard one predict that Christ was returning in the next ten minutes. Hmmm!

Bottom line, did the holocaust happen? Yes, dear Muslim friends, it did. Could Jewish people legitimately seek relief from the long Diaspora years and ask for a niche of land that was essentially desolate in 1948 (virtually no one living there), and ask if they could once again be a sovereign nation under the rules of the United Nations. The answer was yes, and the UN supported this arrangement, not understanding that the Muslim world would so seriously and lastingly stand adamantly opposed and seek to ultimately eliminate all Jews from the face of the earth, ruthlessly killing many more than died in the Holocaust, all for a small bit of territory that has only third level significance to Islam, far behind Mecca and Medina (which are under no threat from Israel), and Israel’s control of Jerusalem has in no way prevented Muslims from worshiping at the dome of the rock; in fact Israel has secured that area for Muslims, and Jews do not even have access to walk on what they (and I) believe is their old temple location.

Should Islam recognize these facts and give up the foolish annihilation policies once and for all? Yes they should! Border disputes must be negotiated and settled. The land will never go back to the Arab countries, but why should they care. They really never had it; they never occupied it in the past in any significant way. The region is still quite desolate.

Should full religious freedom be guaranteed? Yes, it should. At least there must be fully guaranteed religious toleration. Do I think this is likely anytime soon? Sorry, I have to give you my first “no” here, because only Christ is able to provide what is needed to make this work, and neither Israel nor Islam seem to be willing to tie their destinies to Christ. Thus are both sides doomed.

L. Russ Bush, Director
Center for Faith and Culture
Southeastern Baptist Seminary
Wake Forest, NC 27588

The Impossible Origin of Life

2006-09-16T14:26:00.000-07:00

That Single Cell

It is obviously unlikely that a single living cell would under known conditions simply appear on a habitable earth. There has to be water and food and oxygen, or the cell dies immediately. That cell has to have proper nutrition, proper immunity from deadly attacks, a proper cell wall, a useful nucleus, and a suitable environment (protection from deadly radiation, for example, and enough light). The chemicals out of which the cells were made must have been available in sufficient quantity and in viable ratios.

We find life at the deep thermal vents and in the frozen tundra, so we know life is possible in “hostile” environments, but cells living there seem to have adapted to such environments rather than to have originated there. But ignoring that for the moment, we immediately face another problem.

What are the odds that the first mutation would have been a useful one. If it was not, that cell would die. What are the odds of many cells being formed (even through multiplication—a highly complex process). It is far more likely that the first cell (or the first small colony of cells) would die. Single cell creatures are quite vulnerable until they form large colonies. How many chances will early life get? How many cells have to spontaneously evolve in order to get one that will mutate favorably?

A favorable mutation is on all accounts rare in any case. But if it doesn’t happen early on, the original line of multiplying cells would eat up everything in the local area within which they can navigate and thus pollute their environment with waste without adapting to the environment in time, and everything would die.

The odds of multiple original cells are virtually zero because all life today works on the same chemistry, thus suggesting that all life came from a single source, not multiple sources.

So I have an extremely unlikely event producing a life form that somehow survives and successfully mutates in order to establish alternative life forms in case one form becomes extinct. The odds against this scenario are so high that the question is, why is it believed? The answer is, because we are here. Life must have started since it is here now. But could it happen without a template, a plan, without design? Richard Dawkins wants to say yes. It just happened! That is so very unlikely, that I think Dawkins should be ashamed of himself. The scientific odds against the spontaneous generation of life and its continuous development from molecule to man have reached well beyond the point of being scientifically impossible. For sure, it is not a reproducible event in the laboratory. So in the traditional understanding of science, it should be considered an unscientific notion to claim spontaneous generation and exclusively natural evolution from that point forward. In other words, the theory of naturalistic evolution (which is not the same as ideas of environmental adaptations, for example) is (shall I dare say it) a hypothesis, a speculation.

The evolutionary scenario of how life began spontaneously and survived is a theory. The fact that many assume it, never having seen it happen, is an indication of the fact that it is a faith assumption. It is a conclusion, so they think, that is “least offensive” to the scientific enterprise.

To suggest that life seems like a designed system of reality is a far better theory if we are seeking to explain how something might have actually happened. Life gives little evidence that it can be explained by unguided and undesigned processes and forces in nature. Even the chemical components necessary for life would not necessarily be everywhere all the time. The odds against chance spontaneous generation in a protective environment are so high as to be impossible. The odds that a cell thus formed would survive to reproduce successfully would seem to be astronomical. Digestion, reproductive systems, and DNA complexities simply would not happen in the real world all at the same time without a template or a plan to guide the chemical bonds. For that cell to evolve up to a complex religious being who would willingly die for others is simply beyond the pale.

Why do evolutionists believe it? They say it is the only viable “scientific” option (by which they mean “non-theistic” option). So to avoid seeing obvious plan and design, and to avoid having to explain that the scientist cannot fully understand and examine the “accepted” scientific stance on things, the accepted scientific theory simply affirms the impossible, and people buy into it because of their respect for science (which they should have), but so goes rationality. So goes meaning. So goes hope. So goes purpose. Is it worth it to believe a lie?

L. Russ Bush, Director
Center for Faith and Culture
Box 1889
Wake Forest, NC 27588

The Chronicle

2006-08-24T14:35:00.000-07:00

Design vs Randomness

Adobe computer software is virtually essential for modern computer users. Is there anyone who has not yet installed the Adobe Reader? We are now up to seven point something, and there is almost nothing more we need it to do (famous last words, I know).

Web files are often saved in the Adobe PDF format. It requires the free Adobe Reader to view the file, but the Reader will not let you modify the file. So I feel safe putting materials online for my students and others to read. They can read the material but not change it. This solves what would be a huge issue for academic types, like me. If I put up a syllabus, an essay, or a book report on the web, and somebody could download it, change some information, edit parts of it, and then reload it to its original position or some other place on the web, then, of course, I would not be uploading very many important essays or materials. With Adobe, I feel safe about my intellectual property. Anyone can see what I have posted, but they can’t change it. The Adobe Reader is a free download for any Internet user.

So why write that paragraph?

It is only background for those few who might not recognize the significance of this company. Actually I did not even mention the many other essential products for computer users that Adobe makes. Many are web related and are involved with digital photography and web design. These guys are giants in the software business. They don’t make many mistakes.

So was it a mistake?

My annual Almanac Issue (2006—2007) of the Chronicle of Higher Education came today (August 21, 2006). It was upside down in my box, so what I first saw was the back cover. It was an Adobe advertisement.

There was what looked like a chambered nautilus shell all merged with a spiral staircase (with people walking on it), a carved circular wall near the stairs, and a series of small numbers filling the edges of the three circular levels of the photo, from the chambered shell out to the spiral stairway.

It is hard to describe, but the blending possible with Adobe digital photo software is really fantastic. What grabbed me was the headline:

     What if design
          brought clarity to a mathematical
                         phenomenon?

What was that again? Certain mathematical phenomena are better explained in terms of a pattern, a design? Mathematics, fundamental to all science, best explained in terms of design? On the back cover of the prestigious Chronicle?

The advertising text explains further: “Express complex ideas simply and beautifully. Make sophisticated multimedia creations that can turn even the Fibonacci sequence into something that’s understandable at a glance.”

So does this mean that we understand design when we see it? Are some confusing mathematical ideas explained better by the concept of design rather than by randomness? Right there on the cover of the Chronicle?

All the alphabetic characters in the ad seem to be in the right place (thus rendering the advertising message understandable and meaningful). In random order, there would be no meaning, nothing would be understood. Intelligent design was essential to this Adobe ad. So what if design were to bring clarity to more than just the Fibonacci sequence?

L. Russ Bush, Director
Center for Faith and Culture

Box 1889
Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
Wake Forest, NC 27588

www.sebts.edu
www.sebts.edu/ap

The Cross has been Saved

2006-08-22T14:15:00.000-07:00

Bush Saves the Cross by Eminent Domain

That was the headline in the August 21, 2006, National Weekly Edition of the Washington Times p.10. Recently I have expressed concern about the ACLU’s effort to force San Diego to remove the Mount Soledad cross, a well known monument in the city since 1954. I said that I had heard nothing about it lately, so I did not know the outcome of the lawsuit.

Today I was informed that on August 14, 2006, President Bush signed a bill transferring ownership of the property from the city to the federal government. This was based on a bill voted in the House by a 349—74 majority on July 19, and unanimously approved by the Senate on August 1, 2006. This action invalidated the law suits. This was not a hostile take over. The city had voted last year by a 76% majority to allow the city to donate the cross and the property on which it sits to the Federal Government in order to preserve it as a Korean War memorial. Superior Court Justice Patricia Yim Cowett right away ruled the election invalid (can’t let a vote of the people tell the Court what to do) and her ruling was under appeal.

U.S. District Court Judge Gordon Thompson, in 1991, had ordered the city to remove the cross. The suit apparently had been filed by atheist Philip Paulson. He was claiming that the cross discriminated against non-Christian veterans.

President Bush clearly was not only within his rights to do this, but it was right to do this. Fred Edwards of the American Humanist Association called it an “end run” on the Constitution. That wasn’t surprising, but I really did not expect to see Barry Lynn (of Americans United for Separation of Church and State) jumping in here (maybe I should not be so naive). He was reported as saying that the President’s action was “an unwarranted, heavy-handed maneuver that undercuts the separation of church and state and the integrity of the judicial system.” May I paraphrase Lynn: I don’t like it that both House and Senate, with only token opposition, voted to authorize this action, and I really don’t like it that Bush signed the bill, and I think that Courts should be allowed to rule anyway they wish, even against the vast majority of informed citizens on an issue such as this, because the Courts ruled according to my peculiar way of understanding Church—State issues, and I wanted the ruling to stand so that we could show everyone who it is that is in charge around here and disabuse all the religious people of our nation of any notion that this is a government of the people and for the people that guarantees free religious expression.

It’s like Israel and Hezbolla. There does not seem to be much common ground on these Church—State issues.

For background, see my previous blog “American Christianity under Attack.”

L. Russ Bush
Wake Forest, NC

Totalitarianism

2006-08-21T14:56:00.000-07:00

American Christianity under Attack

Dennis Prager, in the May 8-14, 2006, weekly edition of the Washington Times (p. 33) reminded me that the American Civil Liberties Union succeeded in getting Los Angeles County to remove a small cross from the county seal. A similar effort has been aimed at a memorial cross in San Diego, and the clock is ticking. If the cross is not torn down, the city will be fined by the Federal Court at the rate of $5000 per day. Unfortunately the story has dropped out of sight, and I do not know the outcome (August 21, 2006).

Catholics founded the city of “the Angels.” To remove the cross is to deny the history of the city. History seems not to be as important to the ACLU as is their theory of civil liberty. They say we must be free of any religious ideas in the public square. Prager wonders if the name of the city itself will not eventually be challenged (as well as Corpus Christi, St. Louis, and how many others). My college is being told they can no longer be known as Choctaws [Mississippi College] even though the Choctaw Tribal Council in the area has supported the school’s petition to keep the name.

Prager reports that in 1999 the U.S. Postal Service released a stamp depicting Jackson Pollack. The Postal Service used a famous photo from Life Magazine but there was a deliberate edit to the photo. Pollack’s famous cigarette! I don’t smoke, but Pollack did. Apparently the Postal Service cares more about political correctness with regard to smoking than it does about truth. [By truth I mean that which represents reality, the actual facts of the matter.]

The push is on (as most of us now realize) to claim that orthodox Christianity is a hoax. Judas was supposedly a hero. Jesus was married and had at least one child. Supposedly the church has known this but covered it up in order to consolidate its power.

I do not defend the Catholic or the Protestant Church as having always acted correctly or as having always been right in their doctrinal expressions or biblical interpretations. Galileo was not completely correct, but he was more correct than the Church leadership believed in that day, and many mistakes were made. But both thought they were defending truth. Neither side was knowingly defending a hoax or a lie.

Prager is right. America is slipping toward totalitarianism. Christianity is a target, but so is tobacco, and so is creationism. According to the Dover case, teachers are not even allowed to refer students to supplementary readings on intelligent design, for to do so would somehow be a violation of the constitution (minus the first amendment, of course).

Do our civil liberties really have so much to fear from the open exchange of ideas in the public forum? Will the ACLU ever stop until every cross in the country is removed from sight and hidden? Even crosses on a church steeple can be seen from the road (or horror of horrors, from the courthouse). Will they have to go in order to protect the US Constitution?

Somewhere we have to say enough is enough. Christians Faith hardly dominates our culture any more (if it ever did), but Baptists say let every view express itself appropriately (non-coercively) and allow God to lead as He wills. Of course, that makes no sense to an atheist, but since a universal negative cannot be proven, the universal negative should not rule.

L Russ Bush, Director
Center for Faith and Culture
Box 1889
Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
Wake Forest, NC 27588

Darwin and Sagan

2006-08-11T13:36:00.000-07:00

When Evolutionists Die

Death is the judgment of God upon sin. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. The wages of sin is death. The gift of God is eternal life. Even the thief on the cross can be saved though he is at the end of his life.

Whether they are all true or not, God knows, but there are thousands of stories of “deathbed” confessions. I am confident that many of these stories are true. People begin to think more seriously about life after death when they get close to their own death.

One of the persistent rumors that continues to circulate is that Darwin himself returned to his Christian faith at the end of his life. The story is of mysterious origin. Supposedly a “Lady Hope” said she visited Darwin just before he died. She claims he spoke to her and revealed his faith. Supposedly he renounced evolution and returned to Christ.

As you might expect, evolutionists strongly deny this, and I hear that Darwin’s family also denied the story. There is nothing in his autobiography to indicate doubts about his theory.

Darwin’s wife was a Christian. She witnessed to him over and over. There was a real Lady Hope, also a Christian and a friend of Mrs. Darwin, but the story of his return to faith is unlikely to be true. (Maybe Lady Hope was trying to comfort Mrs. Darwin by this story, or there may have been something he said; we simply don’t have any verification.) In any case, upon his death, Darwin met his Maker face to face and discovered the truth about God’s creation of all things. He had heard the truth many times. Now it was explained to him more fully.

John D. Morris, President of the Institute for Creation Research, in his August 2006 “Back to Genesis” article in Acts and Facts, the free newsletter from ICR, draws a comparison between this Darwin story and the efforts made to reach Carl Sagan, the famous atheist who authored the book and video series, Cosmos. Sagan was a committed evolutionist, of course.

Morris says that Sagan also had a clear witness from many. In particular, Morris says that Larry Vardiman, ICR’s physics chairman, corresponded with Sagan over several years. Sagan was fully aware of the gospel and of Vardiman’s views on creation, but Sagan refused to believe. According to Vardiman, Sagan said he wished he could believe, but since he was convinced that evolution was true, there was therefore no God, and thus Christianity could not be true. Ten years ago (1996), after a battle with cancer, Sagan joined Darwin in eternity and was introduced to the truth in a new and compelling way.

I was fascinated to read Morris’ final comments in his article. The article is available at www.icr.org.

Morris contrasts Darwin’s wife, a faithful Christian, and Sagan’s wife, Dr. Lynn Margulis, who he says is a determined anti-Christian. Morris says she organized a vigil at Sagan’s deathbed to be sure that no Christians could come near and initiate a new “urban myth” of some final prayer or change of heart.

If that is true, and I have no reason to doubt Morris’ credibility on this point, it might show that she was afraid that he might have been open to a last minute witness. Perhaps he was nearer to the kingdom than we knew. On the other hand, for sure it is an example of the biblical principle of a heart being hardened. Sagan heard and understood the gospel. There is, as Morris also notes, no joy in reporting the death of an opponent of the cross.

There are two points I want to emphasize. First, even people as prominent as Carl Sagan can be given a witness if someone can gain their respect and be faithful to give that witness. Their response is between them and God; our task is to give a faithful witness.

Second, Carl Sagan understood that even simple organizational patterns of radio signals from outer space would lead to the logical conclusion that intelligent life was out there (cf. the movie, Contact). But the discovery of the highly complex “messages” encoded in our DNA molecules somehow does not lead him to that conclusion.

To me, this is a perfect example of what it means to suppress the truth. It is an example of what the Bible calls spiritual blindness. The light came into the world, but the world did not comprehend it. But we have known the light of the world. He became flesh and dwelt among us, and his glory was beheld by his human followers. Thank God, He gave me eyes to see and ears to hear the message of truth and grace.

L. Russ Bush, Director
Center for Faith and Culture
Box 1889
Wake Forest, NC 27588

www.sebts.edu
www.sebts.edu/ap

The Provisional Nature of Discovery

2006-08-02T15:13:00.000-07:00

Consistency Is Apparently Not Essential

     I enjoy reading Science & Theology News. Some of it I can agree with, some not, but I learn a lot.

     The July/August edition 2006 presented some interesting comments about recent books and scientific studies. Unfortunately the lack of consistency reveals exactly what creationists face when we try to contribute to the dialog between science and theology.

Monkey Business

     George Webb reviews the recent B&H book by Marvin Olasky and John Perry, Monkey Business: The True Story of the Scopes Trial. The reviewer can’t get past the title without “cringing” over the words “true story.” The book in Webb’s opinion is muddled. The book seeks to advance a specific scientific agenda, leaving the reader with an inaccurate or, at best, an incomplete picture of the subject. Horrors of all horrors, it seems, Olasky and Perry advocate “intelligent design.”

     The book, according to Webb, rehearses the “supposed” shortcomings of evolutionary theory with what he considers to be tired old arguments. The book presents the Scopes trial [the so-called “monkey trial” of 1925] as something of a fraud publicized by hostile media. Webb describes a few of the book’s claims, but as far as I could see he simply dismissed their arguments. He provided no counter arguments. Webb is concerned that the authors claim that the courts are removing God from society just as Darwin removed God from nature.

     I guess one either accepts that reasoning or one does not. Webb does not. He is critical of the book’s bibliography and use of sources. He also finds the book’s greatest weakness to be “rejection of expertise.” Watch this closely!

     Webb is concerned that the evolutionary scientists are dismissed as a group of people whose views should not be imposed on others. Olasky and Perry praise Phillip Johnson. Webb, on the other hand, points out that Johnson has no academic training in scientific studies.

     Here is the line to remember: Webb says of Johnson that despite his degrees and  his keen legal mind “he lacks an adequate understanding of science.” Webb, I notice, is a professor of history at Tennessee Tech. No chance he might not fully understand science, I suppose. He seems content to defer to “expertise” without critical analysis.

     What is obvious to me is that Webb does not quite grasp the philosophical issues here. Clear species-defining boundaries that characterize the world-wide fossil record is a meaningless scientific notation for the philosophical naturalist. Under a traditional correspondence view of truth, however, the factual evidence has to be there in order to claim the truthfulness of the explanation. Explanations that go beyond the facts are called speculations. Evolution simply speculates that natural variations can provide a natural explanation that is coherent and that needs no non-natural elements. This can never be shown by correspondence. One of the things that makes this method of reasoning weak in this case is that virtually all evolutionary explanations are “after the fact,” and there is not much hope of testing the theory’s ability to make a valid prediction. It is “conveniently” too slow and unpredictable. To argue that creationism also has certain philosophical assumptions is simply to make the point that creation and evolution are philosophical interpretations of the same “facts.” My position would be that both interpretations should be studied and evaluated by the hard facts. The two views both offer interpretations of the data that are more or less coherent, but it can be argued that evolution is more speculative because it lacks any significant number of transitional forms in the fossil record. Creation and intelligent design (and I do not equate the two) both predict the gaps as they are actually found in the fossil record. Evolution does not predict this fact, and any new discovery that might possibly appear to be a transitional form gets much publicity. If gradual evolution were true, the evolutionist should be able to show literally thousands of these transitional forms.

     Webb would disagree. He would say, I suppose, that “real science” must be by definition methodologically naturalistic. This is what I take him to mean when he says Phillip Johnson simply does not “understand” science. Johnson certainly knows many scientific facts, but Johnson does not “understand” the imperative of naturalistic philosophy. That’s because, in the real universe in which we live, naturalistic philosophy is not an imperative. There are other alternatives, theories, and methods that should be considered by a truth seeker.

Steady State Cosmology vs. Big Bang Cosmology

     The reason my essay has the title it does is because in another article in the same issue of Science & Theology News the author argues that where two or more theories can account for the same data, that we should keep an open mind and remember that all truth has not yet been discovered.  William Orem has an essay on Big Bang cosmology in which he reviews the work of Geoffery Burbidge at the University of California, San Diego. Burbidge does not find the Big Bang to be a necessity and in fact argues that the evidence observationally (as opposed to evidence interpreted according to a philosophical model) shows that the universe appears to be without a beginning. He discusses the redshift and the cosmic background microwave radiation (the two key elements of big bang cosmology), but he says that observationally the universe seems to be stable and eternal.

     The article is fascinating, but my goal here is not to rehearse all of his arguments as such. I am calling attention to another facet of the article. As Orem is quick to point out, the standard model today is the Big Bang model. He compares its acceptance to that of evolution by natural selection. He notes that “outside of intelligent design circles, no modern biologist doubts the theory of evolution by natural selection.” The evidence comes from many overlapping fields of study. Evolution is like the germ theory of disease. No credible doctor questions that theory today.

     Then Orem notes that one might think that the same would be true about Big Bang cosmology. Thirteen billion years ago all time, space, and matter burst upon the scene out of nowhere. The math never worked, however, until in the 1980s Alan Guth proposed an unexplainable superluminal inflationary period early in the expansion of the matter and energy coming from the Bang. Inflation seems to be an essential fudge factor that makes the physics work to produce the universe we actually have, but seemingly not many have a problem with fudge factors if it gives them the results they seek. The inflation has no known cause, but it is essential to get the universe we actually have out of a random explosion 13-14 billion years ago.

     Though Orem does not seem to notice, there are many more scientists who advocate intelligent design theories over naturalistic evolution than there are who advocate steady-state cosmology (or some variation thereof) over Big Bang cosmology. As I noted, Orem dismisses intelligent design but finds the less theistically inclined steady-state cosmology to be worth considering.

     Orem writes: “As long as the data fit multiple theories, as long as no critical prediction is disconfirmed, there can be no definitive judgment on alternative cosmologies.”

     Why can intelligent design not be given the same courtesy? At the very least, why can’t we say of intelligent design theory the same thing Orem says of these Big Bang alternatives:  “Indeed, like the timeless cosmos some posit, anti-bang theories may continue indefinitely, hovering in the background of mainstream cosmology and serving, it nothing else, as a reminder of the provisional nature of discovery.”

     Orem could only get away with this profound truth by applying it to cosmology. Apply it to natural evolution by natural, unguided processes and claim that intelligent design can stand as “a reminder of the provisional nature of discovery,” and you will be dismissed as someone, no matter what one’s degrees or intellectual level, who simply does not understand science. You see, the steady-state cosmology is as naturalistically non-theistic and non-designed as is the Big Bang theory. Therein lies the rub. Our theories must reasonably produce the world that exists today. Intelligent design theories do account for the overwhelming impression of design found in biology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, and the other sciences. Our ability to understand what we are seeing is itself an evidence of coordination and design. For the naturalist, non-rational matter precedes reason; for the theist, reason precedes organized matter.

Conclusion

     Two articles, two authors! I guess consistency between the approach to naturalistic evolution and the standard cosmological model is not required. In any case, I would argue that what applies to Big Bang cosmology should be equally applicable to the theory of the natural evolution of all things. As long as the observational data fit into the proposed alternative theories, and no valid predictions are disconfirmed, one should not refuse to consider non-Darwinian explanations of biology, and one should not suggest that those proposing alternative views are just “not understanding” science.

L. Russ Bush, Director
Center for Faith and Culture
Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
Box 1889
Wake Forest, NC   27588
August 2, 2006

Church Attendance

2006-05-12T13:47:00.000-07:00

Church Going in the South

Jennifer Harper, The Washington Times, National Weekly Edition, May 1-7, 2006, reports on a recent Gallop Poll that examined church attendance in the southern states over the past few years. In Alabama, Louisiana, and South Carolina the poll shows that 58% of the people attend church regularly (almost every week). Mississippi was close with 57%. Utah and Arkansas report 55%. North Carolina and Nebraska report 53%, and Georgia and Tennessee come in at 52%. The national average is about 42%, so southern states show significantly higher attendance than do other parts of the country.

Surprisingly, the statistics reveal some other interesting facts. Frank Newport (son of my former professor, John Newport, at Southwestern Seminary) heads the Gallop Organization. He has found, through his research, that only a small minority of Americans simply do not go to church at all. Church attendance is lowest in New England and in Nevada. Washington, D.C., reports 33% regular attendance.

The Barna Group, in April 2006, reported that their polls showed that 47% of Americans read the Bible during a typical week (in addition to any reading done in church services). Only 31% read their Bible apart from church meetings in 1995. Church attendance in 1996 was at 37% (according to the Barna data), whereas it increased to 47% in 2006. [That’s a 5% difference from the Gallop data, but the general trends reflect a significant increase in church attendance overall.] Barna says that adult Sunday School attendance reached 24% (up from 17% in 1995).

By the way, 77% of church going teens reported having read Harry Potter (which I would not forbid my own kids to do), but only 4% of those teens reported having any teaching or discussions in a church about the spiritual themes that are set forth in these stories. Only 13% said that their church ever addressed the subject of witchcraft.

Other research (based on census data) indicates that frequent church goers average 9% more income. [Perhaps “honesty pays” and crime doesn’t after all.] Church goers are also less likely to be on welfare on to be divorced. Even life expectancy is about 3 years more for church goers.

It is not automatic, of course, but the gospel does produce positive results for people. We do not believe for that reason, but God does bless His faithful people.

Debating Creation and Evolution

2006-05-02T14:17:00.000-07:00

Faith and Evolution

The Raleigh News & Observer is not on my subscription list, but I do see the newspaper when I get my oil changed and in other places like that. May 1, 2006 was my oil change day, so I sat down to read in the Jiffy Lube waiting room. There on the Editorial Page was “The People’s Forum,” the name given to the letters to the editor. Neil Stahl (noted only as being from Chapel Hill, which for those out of the area is the home of the University of North Carolina). There was no indication whether Mr. Stahl is connected with the University in any way other than being from Chapel Hill.

His concern was an April 10 headline that read “Christian Students Take Evolution Fight to Classroom.”  These evolution opponents, says Mr. Stahl, are “desperately opposing the weight of scientific evidence in astronomy, biology, geology, and other fields.” In his view, “They cannot win, but it’s tragic when they make the work of teachers even harder, and especially when they interfere with the education of the rest of the class.”

These students are definitely making the work of their teachers harder, because they are asking their teachers for valid reasons to believe that evolution is the best way to interpret the so-called scientific evidence. This is especially hard on teachers, since the evidence presented in the textbooks is often out of date and frequently simply false. Have you seen the video or read the book Icons of Evolution?  All of that “evidence” is still in the textbooks, and all of it is patently false.

I always thought that raising questions to get to the root of an issue of evidence was a way to enhance education, not interfere with it. If the evidence is so overwhelming, why is it so easy to ask probing questions about it? If the evidence is so weighty, why can’t all intelligent people see it clearly? Are we simply uninformed? That is always a possibility, of course, but Michael Denton’s Evolution: A Theory in Crisis is fairly erudite. Michael Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box is fairly well-informed. Scholars can certainly be wrong, but when they lay out their evidence, one cannot dismiss their point of view without refuting or casting serious doubt on their evidence. Neither of these books has been refuted as far as I can tell. Read them and see what you think (that is, unless you already have your mind made up apart from the evidence).

The most telling line in Mr. Stahl’s letter, however, is when he complains that the anti-evolutionists are doing a disservice to Christians. Many Christians, he says, “can easily reconcile their religion with science.” This is, of course, quite true, but what does that mean? Did that reconciliation require a compromise from science? Oh no, science rules by definition. So it must mean that these Christians found it within their hearts to compromise their beliefs about the teachings of the Bible to somehow make room for the scientific theories that they think “must” be true. For these Christians, it is the Bible that is ambiguous and flexible. Maybe Jesus was married after all. Maybe Judas was just doing what Jesus asked, but it all went wrong. Oh how sad! Maybe biblical Christianity is really a hoax, protected by the Roman Church as a means of consolidating the Church’s power base in order to influence the world. It’s all politics, right?

There is no question but that the Bible teaches that God is the Creator of all things. He tells us that animals reproduce after their kind. This does not rule out variations and adaptations as needed for survival, but it does rule out a naturalistic single origin for all life forms on the earth today. The evolutionary process is so slow that many animals become extinct before they can evolve sufficiently to survive. Apparently this all sounds reasonable to naturalistic thinkers.

According the Bible, God makes a unique woman for the first man, because the man could not find a companion among the animals. He apparently was unable to find his family-kind. He could not find his mother or a sister or any other animal of his species. Of course, for these Christians who “reconcile” their faith with science, this story of the first man and woman is myth, not literal history, anyway.  And so it goes. The compromise is always with our reading of the Bible. We cannot reconcile the actual teaching of the Bible with the standard theory of Darwinian, naturalistic evolution. So we just give up our Bible at these points in order to find ways to harmonize our religious ideas with “scientific” (naturalistic) theories. This strategy eventually will reduce Christian faith to a few moral principles at best. Why would Christ need to save a bunch of advanced primates? Who was Christ, if evolution is true? Just one of us, I guess, Himself in need of saving.

I say to these creationist students, keep up the pressure. The evidence does not confirm that evolution is true. The evidence is strong in favor of design, and creation is the most reasonable approach to the scientific evidence. Naturalism leads only to meaninglessness.

L. Russ Bush, Director
Center for Faith and Culture
Southeastern Seminary
Wake Forest, North Carolina 27588

The Lion and the Lamb

2006-03-25T07:43:00.000-08:00

Biblical Imagery Ain’t What It Used to Be

How many times do you see the picture of a male lion lying down calmly behind a small white lamb? The Lion is always male. The Lamb is always white. The scene is always peaceful. The weather is always good. The lion and the lamb are usually looking at the same thing just past the camera lens.

Most people think this is a biblical image of the peaceful kingdom to come as God brings the world to its conclusion. I have searched for this imagery in the Bible, but it doesn’t seem to be there.

Now, I did find a prophecy in Isaiah 11 about the wolf and the lamb dwelling (not merely lying down) together. The wolf is the natural enemy of sheep.

The prophecy is beautiful. The lion is said to eat straw. The leopard is described as lying down with the goat. The young lion and the calf and the fatling are all together. The cow and the bear graze, and their young are said to lie down together.

Why then is the only image we all know, the image of the lion and the lamb? Would anyone even recognize a picture of the cow and the bear or the leopard and the goat as being a biblical image of peace?

We want the Bible to say what we want it to say. We know Jesus as the Lamb of God because John the Baptist called Him that. Of course, John was thinking of the lamb as being a sacrifice on the altar, not a cute little creature resting in a field, and certainly not an immature bleating baby resting near a peaceful male lion. We also have the biblical language about the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, and we, I think, correctly identify that image with the coming Messiah, and thus with Jesus.

So our Lion and Lamb image is seen by many as being two symbols of Jesus. He is the suffering servant and the ruling king. That is who Jesus is, of course, and we are right to recognize that fact. But this is not what the Bible is teaching in Isaiah 11. It makes for good devotional allegorical preaching, but it is not what the Bible is saying. Isaiah never identifies the lion and the lamb, nor does he put them together in his prophecy.

The Isaiah 11 passage is talking about God’s coming kingdom, but the animals are literal, not symbols of the messiah. The glorious prophecy is not fulfilled when the Lion of Judah becomes the sacrificial lamb (haven’t you heard it preached this way). The lion and the lamb are not in the same sentence in Isaiah. Our Christmas cards are simply wrong. Isaiah is right. God will one day bring peace and salvation to nature as well as to mankind.

Let’s read and teach what the Bible actually says.

Cancer

2006-03-02T09:26:00.000-08:00

Cancer

Don’t let anyone tell you differently; cancer is a bad thing.

It invades you from its invisible hiding places. It tries to kill you before you are even aware of it. It resists the poisons that we inject in our efforts to kill it first while we still have a chance. It dominates. It does not let go easily. But it can be overcome.

Cancer changes relationships. Cancer changes priorities. Often, these changes are good, but it is such a difficult way to get one’s attention.

I never knew how many different kinds of cancer there are, nor how individualized the treatments have to be. Everyone has a story, but their story is not my story. I have been very fortunate. Chemo has been gentle with me compared to many who have shared their story with me. My poisons are not necessarily the same as their poisons, but none of the chemo drugs are friendly to healthy cells. There are always some side effects.

God reveals Himself in unusual ways, however. There are certain things that He wants you to know, and for some, cancer is the best way to reveal those things. There are always some, of course, who will not learn, no matter what. I am not one of those, I pray.

Prayer, by the way, is the great mystery in all of this. How do we pray, and what do we pray for? Did God send this plague as a judgment? Did He allow it to teach us something? I suppose the prayer would be different in one case than the other. But I am sure that prayer makes a difference. It is not a rational conclusion, but it is a deeply spiritual one. I know people have been praying for me, and those prayers are felt in ways hard to describe. People are praying for healing. That is the correct prayer.

Wholeness is God’s ultimate desire for each of us. We may suffer in this life, but ultimately His desire is to restore us to health and wholeness. It is never wrong to pray for healing and the reduction of suffering. We must renew our minds in accordance with the biblical emphasis on truth and righteousness. We should do that whether we are sick or not. But a life-threatening situation, e.g. cancer, should never be seen apart from its spiritual context. Our lives ultimately belong to God.

My news, so far, is good. We seem to be shrinking the cancerous nodes. This is a word of hope for me. But many do not see such hope, and my prayers go out with renewed vigor for all of those. It is not only cancer that invades us. Sin is worse than any of the diseases we have, but our diseases don’t seem to attract us like our sin does. My prayer is that through whatever means necessary, that we will turn from sin, sober up about moral compromise, and rededicate ourselves to God Himself through Christ Jesus our Lord. This is a decision that can only be accomplished through the power of the divine Holy Spirit who testifies always to Christ and His ways of truth.

L. Russ Bush

The Non-Human Chimp

2005-12-14T15:29:00.000-08:00

Chimps and Humans

A major claim we hear over and over these days is that chimpanzees are close relatives to humans based on the seeming similarity of their DNA to human DNA. The differences are more significant than is generally revealed to the general public in the effort to strengthen belief in evolutionary theory. The truth is, chimps remain animals, and they are not as human-like as they appear from the movies.

Recently Nature (October 27, 2005) published an article in which 18 chimps were studied (7 in Louisiana and 11 in Texas). They were taught to pull a rope, or whatever, to deliver food to their own tray or to the tray of another chimp. After being sure they knew how to do this, the chimps were put in pairs. They showed no regard for sharing food with the other (strange or foreign) chimp and put food on the other chimp’s tray no more often than they did when they were alone.

They had nothing to lose (they were never denied food for themselves), but they simply had no desire to help another chimp. They may (as some studies show) help a close relative or partner, but they showed no compassion at all on those they did not know.

Compare that with the overwhelming support humans (and especially Christians, and in particular Southern Baptists) have given to Tsunami victims in Southeast Asia, earthquake victims in Pakistan, and hurricane victims in Louisiana and Mississippi and other affected areas. Is it really evolution that gave humans this distinctive compassion?

Psalm 100:3 says, “It is He who has made us and not we ourselves; we are His people and the sheep of His pasture.”

Evolution and Scrupulous Scholarship

2005-11-09T15:58:00.000-08:00

Trouble for Evolution

Paul R. Gross, emeritus professor of Life Sciences at the University of Virginia, published an Op-Ed piece in Science and Theology News, October 2005, p5. He was giving a counter-point to Charles F. Austerberry of Creighton University who claims evolution can be taught with religious neutrality.

Gross rejects Austerberry’s proposal, because science, he says, is based on particular epistemic standards. He lists those standards as: evidence, peer review, open communication, repetition of observations, isolation of variables, avoidance of bias, and scrupulous scholarship. This set of standards, he claims, transcends culture.

Gross recognizes that the current conflict between creationism and evolutionary biology is not about the tone of classroom teaching but is about the content of evolutionary theory. Nevertheless, Gross maintains that under the superior epistemic standards outlined above, no one had found any evidence for supernatural intervention in the history of life. Science cannot disprove it, but there is no evidence for it, and science is all about evidence, he says.

Failing to produce positive evidence for “agency” of any kind, creationists fall back to the traditional “slander” of evolution, he says. This defames all biology since evolution is the central organizing principle of biology.

Gross feels confident that he has revealed the propaganda that is being used to attack science itself. “Intelligent Design” is simply a Trojan horse, he says. Gross has produced a book that tries to prove this point from a review of the literature.

While we should respect the life and career of Professor Gross, he loses his case before he begins. He believes (as do many others) that the organizing principle of biology is that life arose spontaneously from non-living matter and developed by gradual random changes, some of which were well suited to the environment (and thus survived) while most other changes were random and thus not significantly advantageous, leading to decline if not extinction of the species. It seems to me that a better organizing principle would be that life comes from life and develops according to the complex, effective, encoded information resident in the genetic core of the cells of all living beings. Within natural limits, life is adaptable to changing environments according to the variability afforded by those same genetic blueprints.

Science, says Gross, is about evidence. The epistemic principles that he sets forth require repetition of observations and experiments. Science must avoid bias and be scrupulous in scholarship. These are exactly the points where evolutionary theories fail. Biology would be well served if it would organize itself around my other suggested principle, one that is not so obviously lacking in evidence.

The notion of a naturalistic origin of life is little more than mere bias. There is no evidence at all that life comes from non-life. There is no single experiment, much less a repeated one, that produces life from non-life. There is no observation of life arising from non-life. If biologists were scrupulous and un-biased, they would say, “We do not know how life began. We have found no evidence for a natural origin of life from non-life. Some say God created life, others still look for a natural origin, but our best evidence says that life always comes from life.” A strictly naturalistic origin for life seems very unlikely. Why not speak the truth?

They might also truthfully say, “We do not know how the species arose or came to be. The fossil evidence shows that populations of animals and plants have changed over time, but there is little evidence that indicates that one kind of animal changed into another kind of animal. The fossils show that distinct populations existed in the past, just as they do today. The genetic code seems to be a system of information for building the bodies and life patterns of each kind of life. This information is complex even in its smallest and oldest forms. Some believe that information arose from non-information, but we have no evidence to confirm that. We know of no way adequately to explain how personality could arise from the non-personal. We cannot explain how reason could arise from the non-rational. Science cannot prove whether or not there is an existing biblical God, but all of the evidence shows that reason comes from reason, that personality comes from personality, and that life comes from life.”

Such a statement would show lack of bias. This would show scrupulous scholarship. This would allow biology to be studied in its most productive format.

Unfortunately, the biology Professor Gross wants to promote does not admit that there might be environmental and ecological explanations for fossil collections. It does not admit that there are natural limits to biological change. It does not admit that there is any such thing as irreducible complexity in biological systems. Modern biology has much evidence for reproduction according to kinds. It has much evidence for the intricacies of biological systems and the inter-connectedness of life across the whole earth (a creationist tenant).

Biology is a wonderful study for young and old alike. It reveals the special nature of human life while at the same time showing how we survive in the same environment as the rest of the living creatures on earth. It seems that the evidence points to a unique pattern for life. That is what the evidence really shows, if it is looked at without bias and with scrupulous scholarship.

lrb

What Really Matters?

2005-10-17T15:34:00.000-07:00

After visiting earth for a few months, the visitor from the United Federation of Planets had some interesting observations. In his report (if it was a him, we were never sure) he tried to summarize life on earth (Western Hemisphere focus).

For men, he said, the most important things seem to be money, sex, sports, music, sex, power, entertainment, sex, cars, and computers… and, of course, sex. Some would add animals and other hobbies, but the research, he/she/it said, was overwhelming.

Women, on the other hand, vary slightly. Generally speaking, they are not nearly as focused on sports, and they have a very different attitude toward computers. Women often suffer at the hands of men. They have to endure endless remarks intended to make them blush or intended to see what kind of reaction they will have. Sexual innuendo seems to be the source of a significant amount of what is perceived by the men to be humor. Women spend relatively little time looking at Internet pornography (soft or hard), whereas men spend enormous amounts of time and money doing so. Women generally do not like going into Internet chat rooms where they are barraged by men who want to show themselves to them or who want to talk to them about sex. On the other hand, women who take advantage of this known male characteristic can use verbal and body language to manipulate many men mercilessly. Men pretend to be very strong but actually are very weak in this area.

Women are as interested in sex as are men, but typically women want it to mean something. They want romance and focused attention. Generally speaking, they are far more interested in having a single loving partner, whereas men seem to be more focused on looking at numerous women. When offered the opportunity to have sex with a stranger, women generally are uncomfortable with that notion, but not many men turn down the opportunity, no matter who the woman is. Of course men can’t look at or turn down things that are not available, so there obviously are women who either enjoy or readily tolerate multiple partners, but it seems that there are fewer of them. The sex trade is very lucrative, however. The research seems to find sex between non-married partners to be such a poor substitute for meaning and significance, but the results of the research, in this case, are overwhelming. Sex is where the money is because men are so focused on satisfying their supposed sexual needs, and yet sexual needs seem rarely to be satisfied through the sex trade. It is all an illusion, and it leads to nothingness.

Men and women will both gamble for money. They will spend themselves into debt. They will evaluate most things in terms of how much it costs. This restaurant is said to be nicer because it costs more to eat there. Nobody seems to have any money, and yet everyone seems to have as much money as they need to buy whatever they want. That does not, however, include nice houses or cars. People can’t always buy the car or the house they want, but they do buy most everything else they want. The research on this point was quite confusing, however. The ability to buy things based on showing a little plastic card to the vendor was never explained very well to the researcher from the Federation.

Most conversations among men seem to include references to sports. Even in church, the minister seems compelled to make references to the ball game recently played. Many humans seem to have much of their identity tied up in the success of their favorite football team. Other sports have their followings as well, and most of the guys seem to follow more than one team. Sports and sex are clearly linked men’s minds virtually all the time. Many sports teams have sexy cheerleaders to entertain the fans. In fact entertainment (such as movies and TV) seems to depend on powerful visual effects, graphic sex, and fast action to keep the crowds coming.

Very few humans seem to realize how significant their lives are, the report concludes. They have many notions about God, not all of which are correct, even though God gave them the Bible as a standard of truth by which to test their own thoughts, and by which they could (if they would) learn the truth about God, and about the World, and about life.

The visitor’s report seems to have been cut short at this point. Apparently the
germs got him! We would have loved to learn his opinion about human music.

Finding A Way

2005-10-15T13:28:00.000-07:00

Does your chewing-gum lose its flavor on the bedpost overnight?

Newlyweds are often surprised that the emotions of their dating life fade so quickly when jobs and bills and family responsibilities begin to take shape. They like being married, but it is just different, and they didn’t think it would be. They saw it in others, but, they thought, it won’t happen to us!

Not being a marriage counselor (who is?), I am not much on giving advice, but there are some things experience does teach you (in spite of one’s belief that he or she already knows everything).

One of those things is that love is worth working for. When you hit 30 or 40 years of age, you may not think so, but when you reach 60, almost anything you had to go through to get there seems worth more than you thought at the time.

My kids will do fine. They don’t need me. This is one of Satan’s most deceptive lies, and yet people still believe it (or at least they let themselves believe it when it allows them to consider divorce).

I just can’t stand it any more! Another deception! No, you can’t stand it, if you are unwilling to give in at any point.

Why am I always the one giving? He (she) needs to give in to some of my needs! That is probably true, but if no one gives in, then no solutions are ever found. Unfortunately, some have decided that they do not want solutions to be found. They just want to leave and go try to start over. At least that is what they think they want at the time. When things don’t work out like they had hoped, they can always blame the other person in the former relationship. They are the ones making me not be happy.

It is not fair! Yes, that is probably correct, but it is not fair for you to pack up and leave either. The big picture is being missed in here somewhere.

I just can’t stand it anymore! You know that’s a lie. It is the most selfish statement one can make. But, somebody has to look out for me! Yes, you have to do that, but you don’t really succeed in that when you blame the other person for all the problems. The Lord is looking out for you even when you don’t think so. Of course you can stand it. You know you can. You have stood it up to this point, you can do it another day. You just don’t want to, but since when do we get everything we want.

But he (she) is being physically abusive to me. Then get help immediately. Tell your pastor, tell a close and trusted friend, and depending on the severity, you may need to get out of there until reason can prevail. If it a dangerous situation, you may even need to have someone contact the police. But don’t give up on the situation until all remedies have been exhausted. I don’t believe it is necessary to submit to severe physical abuse, but be sure not to exaggerate the truth. One has no right to claim that the abuse is severe when it is not.

I am desperate! Yes, we can see that. And we don’t know what to tell you. We are frustrated at our inability to help you solve this problem. But we do know that Christ is the Prince of Peace.

Clearly I am no marriage counselor (who is?), but I can see that selfishness is at the root of so many problems. The Bible says, “wives, submit to your husbands” and selfish wives don’t want to do that, and selfish husbands get the idea that this biblical mandate clearly makes them the ruler over their wife. Jesus said, however, that the greatest among you is the one who serves. But husbands often refuse to serve their wives for “fear” that they will, in so doing, fail to be the proper spiritual leader in the home. These women, you know, need our ruling spirit to dominate them if our home is to be biblical. Again this is a subtle deception.

The alternative to “wives, submit to your own husbands” may be “wives, rule over your husbands,” but more likely the biblical idea is that the alternative would be “wives, submit to other men who are not your husband.” That is what would destroy the home. The wife’s ideal submission is compared to our submission to Christ. The alternative it seems would be the submission to idols or false gods. Christ rules over us, yes, but His rule is always as a servant leading us to that which is best.

Christ leads us away from idolatry and away from apostasy. Christ is forgiving when we are repentant over sin. Husbands seem to have a different notion about leadership. They like to emphasize discipline and authority and the rod of iron. But this is not how Christ rules in this life and in this era. A husband should not let his wife lead him into sin. Adam learned that lesson the hard way. But setting aside the “woman as an influence for evil” issue for a moment, husbands are certainly capable of acting sinfully on their own. Just because it is the husband’s idea does not make it right.

Spiritual cooperation, a wife who looks to and supports her husband, who builds their home, who makes love to and has children with her own husband, and who tells him when she realizes that he is making a mistake: this is the focused submission that I think the Bible is talking about. The alternative is to be an unfaithful wife, to weaken the personal bonds, to undercut her husband in favor of some other men, to abandon her home, and to live in submission to something outside of her family.

I am sure there is more to it than this, and I am no marriage counselor (who is?). But I believe that the mutual respect so clearly demonstrated in the Bible between husbands and wives is the key to sound marriages today as well.

Eve really blew it didn’t she? Adam took her advice (actually the Bible does not say she gave him any advice, only that she gave the fruit to him, but men like to use this story anyway to tell themselves that they should never listen to any advice from their wives or from women in general), and look at the terrible fix in which Adam got himself along with all subsequent mankind. So after the judgment, I would have expected him to name her “Deceived One” or “Foolish Woman” or “Causer of all my Trouble.”

But no! He listened to what God said, he heard God’s judgment as it related to pain in childbirth, but he also heard God’s promise of a messiah to be born of her, and Adam named her “Mother.” He called her “Eve” because she was to be the mother of all humanity, the mother of all the living.

To this day, no greater name exists except for the name of Jesus. She was Eve, the originator, the mother of all the men and women who would ever live, the one through whom Messiah would come. And God eventually brought Christ into the world with no man’s sperm involved at all.

Stupid, rebellious, naïve, deceived woman! Stand here under my heel!

No!

Lovely, precious bone and flesh of my bone and flesh, I was there. Why did I not act to strengthen your resistance to the Serpent’s lies? Why was I so weak as to allow what I knew to be wrong? But you, though bearing your own guilt and consequences, will be first in my heart among all the living ones on the earth. You are the honored mother of all people to come. Our hope for salvation is through the seed you will bear. Through you will Messiah come.

And so today! Is there no solution to the widespread marital conflict that faces us everywhere? There is! For this too, Christ is the answer.

L. Russ Bush
Academic Dean
Southeastern Seminary
Wake Forest, NC 27587

College: Who Goes There

2005-10-05T12:16:00.000-07:00

The 30% Rule

The November 2005 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, p 125, reports on a study done by the National Center for Education Statistics. Starting in 1988, the researchers followed 12,000 eighth-graders to see what happened to them with regard to further schooling.

It is gratifying but somewhat disturbing to find that 78 out of every hundred eighth-graders were able to complete high school (mostly on-time). Then the numbers really begin to drop.

Of the 78 high school graduates, only 60 went to college. Two-year community colleges or trade schools got 25 of the 60, and traditional four-year schools got 35 of them. The report does not speculate on why, but anecdotal evidence suggests that cost is a big factor here.

Of the 60, only 47 remained in any of these post-secondary schools beyond the first year.

The bottom line is, 12 years after the eighth-grade, only 29% had achieved a bachelor’s degree, another 5% had earned an associate’s degree, and another 3% had achieved a certificate.

Clearly, one factor is cost. Surveys indicate that food, entertainment, books, supplies, and other miscellaneous costs will average over $1,000 per semester. Almost 90% of the students have cell phones, and almost that many have personal computers (that their parents bought for them). Almost 85% have televisions, and half have stereo systems. Almost a third travel internationally during an academic year, and trips to vacation spots are common during the breaks.

It is difficult to calculate how much the students typically spend in addition to tuition and school fees and housing. Student jobs are available for many, but statistics show that the average senior carries a credit card debt of over $2,800 (spread out over 5 cards).

Student scholarships are relatively easy to put before donors, and the money, of course, is effectively annual income to the school. Most scholarships are only available for paying school bills, so the tuition rises in proportion to the amount of scholarship money available. Pell grants and similar government funding sources also go straight to pay student tuition bills.

Things are never quite what they seem. Schools must pay for buildings, books, brains, and staff. It takes a lot of money to run a good school. Students want a lavish school with a nice library and a student center. And they want winning sports teams.

Student newspapers are often dominated by left-wing politics (the idealism of the educated elite), and increasingly college newspapers are adding sex advice columns (often “written” by buxom blondes). [See The Atlantic Monthly, November 2005, pp 144, 146, 147.] Students never hear the weaknesses of naturalistic science. They never hear the reasonableness of the Christian worldview. They rarely hear a good word about the Bible. And parents pay thousands and thousands of dollars in support of that counter-cultural environment, believing that college is a good experience for the kids [which in many ways it is], and of course, it gives the Dad a team to root for [this is highly important for most dads].

College is probably the worst place to learn about sex, and I doubt we can be too confident of the advice that will be given in a student newspaper when the purpose of the advice column in the paper is blatantly titillation and innuendo. The college sports teams are fun and games, and they help release a lot of energy in a relatively safe way, but for the school, it is all about money. [Notice how anxious New Orleans was to get its teams back on the playing fields after Katrina.] Some employees do need what college provides, but most need some kind of specialized vocational training, and professionals most often need a post-graduate professional school to really train them for their life’s work.

College ought to be a place to learn about the Christian worldview and the heritage of western culture. That is what Southeastern College at Wake Forest is all about. But regardless of the special features of this school or that one, how can we get those eighth-graders to want to finish, and how can they afford to get their B.A. degree?

If you give it away, the value decreases in many minds. If you keep it secular, there is no reason to value it. College education is a theory in crises!

Jesus was not called Rabbi [or Teacher] for nothing. His Great Commission exhorted the disciples to teach all the things He had commanded them. Paul urges us to focus our attention and show ourselves approved as God’s workmen. Jesus alone is the Logos of God, the truth and the life.

Blue Gene and the Neocortex

2005-10-03T15:22:00.000-07:00

Life’s Complexities

Computers are often thought of as an extension of the human mind. That is, our brains are thought of as being nothing other than very sophisticated computers.

So it is no surprise to learn that IBM, in cooperation with the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, is trying to build a complete computer-based model of the human brain.

PC Magazine, August 9, 2005, page 19, reports that IBM is using its supercomputer “Blue Gene” to build a computer program that will attempt to replicate a column of the human neocortex. This is the part of the brain that processes many human cognitive activities. Henry Markram, the project manager, is quoted as calling this effort “one of the most ambitious research initiatives ever undertaken in neuroscience.”

Keep this in perspective! Blind evolution is the “official” explanation of the origin and development of this neocortex. It supposedly came about by chance plus time. Markram is cited in the article as acknowledging the difficulty of writing a computer program that will successfully simulate the typical functions of this part of the human brain. There are literally hundreds of thousands of parameters that must be carefully included in the computer’s program.

It will take numerous very disciplined and skilled human minds to design and write a supercomputer program that can even have the possibility of accurately simulating the complexity of this one portion of the human brain. But the evolutionary assumption is that it took no such intelligence to make the human brain in the first place. This is simply not an effective scientific assumption.

The extreme complexity of the brain is not an evidence for a random natural origin of the brain. Even the fastest and most sophisticated supercomputer in the world is going to struggle to simulate the neocortex of the human brain. Does this fact not actually argue that a sophisticated intelligence must have been involved in the origin of this brain in the first place? And the neocortex is not the whole brain. It is an important part but only a part of the human brain.

Natural evolution simply has no way of producing, by random chance, the systems that are in place in the human body. The existence of an intelligent designer seems essential.

The DNA of Chimps and Humans

2005-09-27T15:24:00.000-07:00

Virtually every teacher of biology in the universities of the world explain how life began from non-life and how genetic mistakes in replication were naturally preserved or eliminated due to the benefit or hindrance such changes made to that ever-changing life-form. Natural selection, as they call it, is a process that eliminates weakness and supports strengths in each ecological environment. Slowly but surely, small changes in each organism are maintained in separate streams, thus leading to the differentiation of all the species, and eventually resulting in human life.

One of the interesting scientific developments in recent years has been the rise of a technology that allows us to map the genetic patterns found in cellular DNA. A common belief is that chimpanzees are the closest relatives to humans in this evolutionary scenario, and the mapping of the genome has shown that the genetic pattern found in chimps and humans is 96% alike. Surely this is a strong proof of our evolutionary ancestry (chimps and humans arising from a common ancestor). Such similar DNA confirms for many that evolution is a satisfactory explanation of the origin of human beings, and the biblical story seems to sound more and more like mythology.

But wait! Things are not so simple as this account seems to make them. Yes, it is the case that a large part of the genetic sequence is the same. But let’s not overlook that 4% difference. What does that really mean? Four percent of the chemical pairs in the human DNA would be about 3 million base pairs that reside within protein-encoding and other functional areas of the human DNA. No, that is not a misprint! If DNA were the only effective measurement (and it is not), we still have to account for random genetic changes making over 3 million favorable DNA changes that were preserved. The rate of favorable vs. unfavorable changes is very low. The genetic system is very complex, and random changes would be unfavorable most of the time. So to gain 3 million positive base-pair changes that are in section of DNA that make a difference and are sufficiently favorable to be naturally selected, there must have been an enormous number of useless changes that were naturally eliminated.

How fast do these changes occur? Not very fast! We do not notice this evolutionary process in our lifetimes. We have historical records that go back several thousands of years, and genetic changes in human beings do not seem to be great. So even thousands of years do not show much change. But we have to account for 3 million functional and preserved changes since humans supposedly split off from the chimpanzees. Is any reasonable amount of time available within which these 3 million favorable changes could have been made? Remember, the changes according to evolutionary theory, cannot be guided or directed in any way by intelligence. Science, evolutionists say, cannot accommodate intelligent design, and yet intelligent control and planned changes are essential to make this scientific theory reasonable. It is simply unreasonable and lacking in supportive evidence to argue that all of those favorable changes could be made so effectively and efficiently over so short a time. Even a million year period would require the recognition of three favorable changes per year, and in light of the three recently discovered 500,000 year old chimpanzee teeth from Kenya that show virtually no changes at all in chimpanzees in that time period, there simply is little if any evidence that such a pattern of rapid genetic change would likely be sustained over that amount of time. Remember, even a good change randomly produced could be randomly undone in the next generation if it did not link strongly to an established gene. Especially would that be the case if changes are mostly taking place only in a limited number of segments (those making up the 4% of active portions of the DNA sequence).

Science News, September 3, 2005, page 147, reports that the geneticist Robert Waterson of the University of Washington Medical School in Seattle let the team that analyzed the genetic sequence of a male chimp and compared it to that of humans. Is natural evolution really the best explanation of the origin of the differences between these species?

In that same study, Evan E. Eichler and his co-workers discovered that the differences between chimps and humans are found mot in simple base-pair variations but in complete or partial genes. Single base pair variations make up 1.2 percent of the differences between chimps and humans, whereas 2.7 percent of the variations are entire genes. This further complicates theories of unguided change.

Moreover, Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, reports that his research reveals that it is the genes active in the brain that have accumulated more changes in people than in chimps.

Perhaps that is why it is mostly people and not chimps that will be reading this article. An all knowing Creator remains the most reasonable explanation for the facts of genetics as they are known today.

Intelligent Design

2005-09-16T14:32:00.000-07:00

A Way of Looking

My issue here is not that all science must be done according to a specific model. I know some scientists are not happy with religious people telling them how to interpret scientific data. They see efforts to affirm design as the end of good science. They believe that science should not be used in the service of religion.

All of these comments are understandable, but I believe they are fundamentally flawed. The fact that people are or are not religious in their attitudes or actions has nothing to do with their expertise in some given discipline. Intelligent design theorists do affirm that the orderliness of the world is due to intelligence rather than to chance, that it is a result of conscious planning and implementation rather than being a result of random changes and subsequent natural selection. They might believe, for example, that natural selection cannot select anything in the way a person does, and further that natural selection, even if it were true, could not originate new biological organisms.

Mutation or some other random and non-purposive process has to originate a change in the genetic code in order for nature to select it. So at heart, the evolutionary process depends upon many changes being favorable, and yet there is no mechanism to guarantee that any changes will be favorable, and there really is no assurance that random changes would not be lethal. It is far more likely that random changes would be harmful to a complex system than to assume that a random change might actually be favorable.

To argue that the only way to think about biology is to assume that only undirected changes can occur, and that among those, only favorable ones will be selected, is virtually to leave biology without a reasonable explanation of itself. There are many kinds of changes that might not actually be favorable and yet might easily be selected in a given environment by a natural unthinking process. Moreover, things do not systematically organize themselves and luckily develop enhanced features at a pace anything like that necessary to get from a simple original cell (which already would have to be excessively complex) to all the living varieties and stable forms that we find in the world today.

It is not good science to ignore the beauty of an organism simply because beauty is a philosophical category rather than a strictly empirical one. It is not good science to de-emphasize the complexity of an organism for fear that someone might perceive that complexity as an evidence of design. The affirmation of design is in no way a hindrance to the examination of the data. No one knows (from the Bible or any religious book) what must be the features of some biological organism prior to actually looking at the organism. Religious believers are motivated to speak the truth, to take care in their work, and to be honest about their discoveries. Nothing about intelligent design theory should lead anyone to give up good scientific observation and practice.

Science should not be the maidservant to religion. Science should be the servant of truth. If religion is true, as I believe Christian Faith is (but not necessarily other religious claims, and I am somewhat selective even within Christianity), then science by serving truth will serve Christian Faith. If my faith needs to be revised, then science might show the way, but Science should be just as open minded. Truth should rule in science and in faith.

Wind and Flood

2005-09-12T15:36:00.000-07:00

Acts of God

Hurricanes and floods are by insurance companies called acts of God. Any natural disaster is referred to in this way because there is no one else on which to lay the blame. One cannot sue God, so we cannot get the money to restore our losses from Him directly. In fact, the huge disasters on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and to a lesser extent (though a more publicized one) the disaster in New Orleans, is going to cost each of us a great deal of money as we pay off the damages caused by God’s acts.

If God is good, as we say He is, then why does he allow so much human suffering and so much property loss and so much hardship? Were all the victims great sinners? Was this because God is not good? Clearly He is powerful. Why then, the suffering?

Note well that the suffering is not directed only on the criminal element in society. Many churches and religious sites were destroyed. Theological schools were severely damaged. Hospitals were as much in harms way as were the houses of prostitution on Bourbon Street.

The question is ill placed. The old traditional issue of why a good God would allow bad things to happen is not the place to begin. First of all, the question only leads to atheism as an answer, since clearly bad things do happen, even to good people. So if the theist has to somehow show that bad things happen only to bad people, he either will have to argue that all people are bad (which is true in a sense, but not all people face the disaster of a category 5 hurricane), or he will have to show that God punishes the bad but bring good out of such disasters for the good people. All of these answers are set up by the particular way the question is phrased. Ask a different question and the answers begin to sound different. For example, if there is not God, then why did so many people respond with help and support for the sufferers? Why were churches immediately used as feeding stations and as shelters? Why did people pray for their own safety? If there is no God, then there is no one to hear those prayers.

The evidence for the reality of God’s existence is not overthrown simply because we do not understand why God allowed a certain thing to happen. Maybe we are overly confident in our ability to know what is best in the overall scheme of things. Maybe something really big is coming, and God is getting us ready for it. Maybe God is warning us of final judgment. Maybe there are reasons we cannot at the moment comprehend. Must we understand everything immediately or else we threaten God with our disbelief? How ludicrous!

God is known to exist for the same reasons He was known to have existed before the Gulf States’ disasters. Yes, these are hard times. Yes, the suffering is great. Yes, we don’t understand. But whether or not we understand the why question, the reality of God’s grace and love is everywhere being shown in this disaster. Many who were physically unaffected are learning to care, to give, and to share the consequences by paying higher prices and by supporting relief efforts.

Can anything justify this act of God that destroyed so much along the Gulf Coast? Oh yes, for sure. God’s love is manifested in ways impossible to comprehend apart from the tragedy. God’s grace is manifested beyond what we could have otherwise known. There is likely an element of God’s judgment on the wickedness of the city and the coastal areas, but there is also a strong pull toward faithfulness that is welling up in the hearts of the responders and relief workers and in many of the victims. There is a spiritual discipline that may more clearly be manifested through these events than could ever be achieved otherwise.

Suffering is often hard to watch. Property loss is especially hard on materialists. Some have and will die needlessly, but many others will live with a renewed sense of purpose. While some will become depressed and rebellious, others will turn to faith in God Himself as their salvation. Even in the end of all things, there will be a heaven and also a hell. God is not simply a Grandpa who always tells us we are doing everything very well. The real God is a real God. Not everything is sugar and spice. This God is righteous, and He has moral standards and He expects our lives to conform to that of His Son Jesus Christ. But He is a loving God. Prove that by turning to Him in faith now. Only then can you fully see that what Christians are saying is actually true, both on earth and throughout the universe.

Jesus is Lord!

2005-08-29T15:15:00.000-07:00

Jesus is Lord! The phrase is simple, but the concept is profound.

     Jesus was a Jewish man of first century Palestine. He was a teacher, renowned in his time and place. He was a religious man who was known for his dedication and moral purity. No one ever successfully accused him of sin. No one successfully refutes his teaching even today. We are to love God with all our hearts and minds, and we are to love our neighbors and care for them as much as we love and care for ourselves. We are not to judge others unfairly, and we should always take care to clear up our own weaknesses before we condemn the weaknesses of others.

     His parables are timeless. His understanding of God was profound. His followers had only good to say of him. Sincerity and compassion marked his ministry.

     His death on the cross was a public display of his unwillingness to blame others for the accusations falsely brought up against him. His words from the cross included the famous line: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” His love even for his accusers is unparalleled. It is most clearly understood that he was dying not for sins of his own, but it was a death that became like a blood sacrifice offered for others. His final words were: “It is finished!” A triumphant cry of a completed work! What work? His whole life, perhaps, but certainly of his suffering! This work was finished.

     But surprise of surprises… the story did not end there. All other stories end with the death of the main character, but not this one. To everyone’s surprise, yet in keeping with ancient prophecy, this man Jesus was made alive again, and he arose bodily from the dead, leaving his tomb empty. He thereafter met with his closest companions and many others, giving them many infallible proofs that he was in fact alive. No other story has such an ending, and the historical credibility of this story has been tested for centuries and has proven itself to be true.

     Risen from the dead, Jesus is Lord. Ascended into heaven in plain sight, Jesus is Lord. Coming again as promised by the angels and by Jesus himself, Jesus is Lord. These distinctive truths and more make a strong foundation for the truth of the claim that Jesus is Lord.

The World Exists

2005-08-26T13:52:00.000-07:00

     Most people are willing to admit that the world exists, because they exist in perpetual interaction with it.

     It is irrational to claim that we ourselves do not exist. It is in fact undeniable that we exist, because if we did not exist, we could not affirm or deny anything. So if we can do anything, then we must exist. But we do not exist in isolation. One may claim that he or she is the only existing reality, but no one would believe them, because if the person making that claim were right, there would be no one else in existence who could believe them.

It makes no sense to deny one’s own existence. Equally difficult would be a justification of the claim that we are the only one in existence, and if we admit the existence of others, then the existence of the world is so overwhelmingly presented to us through experience and reason, we would be considered foolish to deny the existence of the world. This is not to say that we have perfect understanding of the world, but most of us are happy to agree that we exist within the world (i.e., this earth and the universe within which it exists).

     The issue then is what kind of world exists. The world is an entity that follows regular patterns (sometimes called natural laws). Gravity is an example. So the world needs an explanation of its orderly patterns. Why does gravity work the way it does? Why does electromagnetic radiation work like it does?

     Many think that naturalism (the view that nature is self-explanatory) is sufficient as an explanation of the patterns in the entire universe. Some would even say that a purely natural explanation will account not only for the patterns but also for the intricate inter-relationships found everywhere in the world. It seems, however, that naturalism really is no explanation at all.

First of all, naturalism does not account for the existence of anything. Once something exists, we may be able to describe the patterns by which it operates, but why is there something rather than nothing? If the answer is that something came from nothing, then we want to know how and why. We know of no such process of origination from nothing anywhere in nature today. If the answer is that something has always existed, then we want to know what that eternal something is. It certainly is not our sun or our earth or any other object we know about, all of which are filled with processes that must have original causes.

     The problem of naturalistic explanations is nowhere more acute than with the issue of the origin of life. We know that life exists. We are alive. But we also know how utterly complex a living cell is. More than that, we realize that life is not simply a feature of organization. A living cell is composed of chemicals that in and of themselves are not alive. The origin and continued existence of life (and especially conscious life) within the natural order is certainly not an expected outcome of naturalistic explanations.

     The world exists, but it is the kind of world that is best explained as a designed system, an intelligently planned system, not a merely natural outcome of a natural process. Life comes from life, and this earth in this universe is suited for life. The “natural” conclusion is that a conscious personal living being designed and formed this world for life and then acted to originate life within this world. That intelligent conscious personal living being, we call God.

God Exists

2005-08-25T19:35:00.000-07:00

     Is it true that God exists? Surely one cannot simply assume so basic a fact. What evidence do we have for this claim?

     Over the years, many have undertaken the task of setting forth reasons for belief in God. It is interesting to study all of those rational arguments. At a more basic level, however, the existence of God is a reality that is not primarily known as the conclusion of a rational argument. He is known to exist, but it is not an exclusively rational knowledge.

Jesus is a historical figure that would be almost impossible to understand if there were no God. Was Jesus simply a deluded fanatic? He clearly claimed to have a special relationship with God. If there is no God, Jesus makes no sense.

     The world exists and we constantly experience this directly. It is possible to construct a non-theistic explanation of the complex and ordered arrangements that are everywhere seen in this universe. But a theistic explanation is at least as reasonable, and a case can be made that God is a better explanation for the existence of the world that actually exists.

     Jesus and the world both testify to the existence of God.

The Christian Worldview

2005-08-24T16:33:00.000-07:00

God exists. The World exists. Jesus is Lord.

These are the three essential aspects of a truly Christian worldview.

It is the purpose of this blog to consider these ideas. Do these ideas make sense? Do they stand the test of rigorous scrutiny? Do they harmonize with reality? Do they provide a viable explanation of life and experience? Do they have any practical value? What is a worldview anyway, and why would such a thing be of any interest to anyone else?

Good questions! Let’s see where they lead.