Quote Mining the Bible

Although we have had people who deny the truth and authority of the Bible for a long time, it seems to be great sport these days. There are atheist sites that think they are showing that the Bible is evil, but they are actually showing their own ignorance and bigotry. In addition, they conveniently ignore the biblical admonitions in both the Old and New Testaments regarding doing good to others.

Criticizing the Bible's moral rules (and trying to find excuses to pretend that God does not exist so they don't have to follow them) is chronological snobbery and pride. We are modern people, doggone it! That book is outdated, and we're more enlightened now.

Claiming the Bible is evil has several causes:

• Prejudicial conjecture (giving uninformed negative opinions to persuade others)
• Removal from immediate context
• Removal from historical context
• Removal from ancient cultural context
• Removal from linguistic context

And so on, and so on. When there are difficult passages in the Bible, it is best to consult with people who know about such things. Yes, there are things we won't necessarily like. Some things are difficult to take, but God is the Creator and he makes the rules. We all stand condemned before him and are deserving of Hell. He did not have to give us any hope of salvation, but out of love, he did that through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross for our sins, his burial and resurrection to defeat death. When he comes back, he will be the Righteous Judge — whether some people like it or not. "Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Philippians 2.9-11, NIV).

Being "modern" and justifying our rejection of God's plan is rebellion. Quote mining the Bible will not help, but only harm.

This week we feature feedback from an individual who questions whether various regulations in the Bible are morally trustworthy. Andrey I. writes:

Hello CMI , hope i don’t annoying with my questions , but am i correctly understand Mark 12:18–27 : when husband die but in marriage they don’t have kids , wife must marriage on husband’s brother and they must have kids ?
and why God allowed polygamy to the Solomon, Gideon ?
what the awful rule in Deuteronomy 22:20–21 ?
why Bible it’s so evil, i mean it’s prohibits gays , or marriage with non christians ,but allow to kill women with rocks (Deuteronomy 22:20–21) ?
or i something don’t understand ?

CMI’s Keaton Halley responds:

Not so fast, Nelson. To finish reading, click on "'Awful' rules in the Bible — Is the Good Book really good?".

Global Warming causes massive snowfalls and disastrous floods? Only idiots believe this!!!

You are probably aware of the remarkable snowfalls and ice storms hitting not only the Northern climes used to such weather (albeit not often as extreme) but also places much closer to the equator and not used to snow, let alone snow that remains and piles up...not used to ice storms that take down power lines...not used to all the fun things associated with unseasonably cold temperatures, either.

So John Kerry appears at the United Nations (a corrupt and useless organization which I would certainly invite to leave our shores and move elsewhere) where he pronounces that no one should still be doubting the effects of climate change.  Remember when they called it global warming?  Since we have been, as a globe, cooling since around the turn of the century AND we have learned that most of the so-called evidence for man-made global warming was faked or presented with intentionally misleading stories.   So the powers-that-be decided to change it to "climate change" and continue to blame mankind for it.

Well, if you are so stupid to think that the climate changes because mankind is emitting too much of this or that, you are also stupid enough to think that there is an Easter Bunny.  Consider that the largest emitter of what the idiots call dangerous gasses into the air are the oceans...that we have records of the overall climate of the Earth has always been best described as changing rather than staying placid and predictable.   Perhaps those living near the equator have a pretty good idea of what their weather will be, but even they have no certainty.  

My fellow blogger was kind enough to send me some pictures and I think you will want to see them.

Amazing pictures up around Mackinac (pronounced "MACK-ih-naw") Island, near the top of the "mitten" of lower Michigan.

Michigan  has had the coldest winter in decades.

 

Water expands to freeze, and at Mackinac City the water in Lake Huron below the surface ice was supercooled. It expanded to breakthrough the surface ice and froze into this incredible wave.

This wave phenomena occurs in Antarctica, but in Michigan? Yes, it's been quite a winter!"                                                               

Where I live, we have four distinct seasons per year, but that does not mean mankind has learned all that much about predicting the weather here.   Our weather forecasts are pretty close to correct within about a week but beyond that the best meteorologists are incapable of telling us what will actually happen.   Ask them to predict the weather on the day exactly 30 days from now and you and I have a good chance of making a better guess than the experts. 

We used to drive across the Mackinac Bridge in the summer to get to a Northern Michigan resort where a relative had a cabin we could use.   In summers we would fish for Northern Pike (big fish with big teeth) and wander the woods and flirt with girls at the nightly campfires when we got older.  We also got the chance to go to the local dump site at night and would turn our headlights on a remarkable scene - bears and wolverines and skunks and badgers and other mammals largely ignoring each other as they pawed through the trash dumped from our resort for the tastiest of morsels we had cast aside.  As it happens, over the years people began to bring food to throw to the animals and naturally cars became associated with food for animals like bears and that is, of course, not a good thing for the people inside of cars!  We would be thought of as a giant can of food and the bears come equipped with openers on the ends of their paws.   But back then it was not so, few foolish people had the habit of throwing food to animals so we were able to sit and watch the menagerie in safety.   My dad would take us once each year and we'd watch for a half hour or so and then leave.

But winters along the coast of Southeastern Michigan in the late 50's and the 60's were a lot of fun because the lake levels were down and we had a nice big beach in our back yard.   In warm weather my brother and I would run down the path from the top of the bluff down to the beach and fling ourselves into the cold waters of Lake Michigan.  But in the winter, the lake ice would be blown across to our side of the lake and the shore would be home to an ice wonderland!   We were supposed to be banned from going out on the ice but we would go out into the icebergs and cliffs and pretend we were exploring the Antarctic or were hunting Polar Bears in Alaska.   My brother and I and often a friend or two would go out into the world of ice and snow and occasional places where the water was exposed and never had a real mishap.   Being lake shore kids, we were confident we could simply be pulled from the icy waters if we happened to fall in but we never did.   

Never did we see anything as incredible as the pictures Piltdown Superman shared with me!  We'd have been delighted had we had a chance to clamber around on such frozen waves...but even our friends and relatives who live or lived in Northern Wisconsin or the "Yoopie" aka the Upper Peninsula of Michigan ever described such an awesome natural work of art as the frozen waves of Lake Huron this season.

Carbon Dioxide is actually plant food, so rather than seeking to limit emissions of that gas, we should actually be promoting it!  No emissions of gas of any sort are causing the weather to vary from year to year and season to season...it is the way of our planet and has been for all of recorded history.  We know of long terms of very cold weather and long terms of warmer weather.   If you research these periods, you will find that the years of warm weather in Northern climes bring prosperity as crops grow bigger and can be grown farther North.  Colder years caused famine and hardship.  There is a now-established relationship with solar activity and the overall warmth of the planet.   It is just that the green-nuts do not care if evidence refutes their religious zeal.   A coalition of eco-nuts, politically motivated deceivers and people seeking to make a profit on the misery of others continue to claim mankind is making the weather change with factories and vehicles when it is, in fact, primarily the Sun and the occasional volcano that make big changes to the climate.

One massive volcano can cool the entire planet to the point of disaster...look up the famed "Year Without A Summer" if you doubt me?   I always thought it was interesting that the basis for all the Frankenstein and to some extent Dracula stories and movies were birthed in that year of 1816:

"   In June 1816 "incessant rainfall" during that "wet, ungenial summer" forced Mary Shelley, John William Polidori, and their friends to stay indoors for much of their Swiss holiday. They decided to have a contest to see who could write the scariest story, leading Shelley to write Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus and Lord Byron to write "A Fragment", which Polidori later used as inspiration for The Vampyre^[27] — a precursor to Dracula. In addition, Lord Byron was inspired to write a poem, Darkness, at the same time."  Wikipedia

Volcanoes from previous years and particularly the Tamboro eruption in the Spring of 1815 combined to block the rays of the Sun from warming the Earth enough to produce a normal growing season and, consequently, a large number of people would die of starvation and/or exposure.

Of course there will be the same old coalition of liars and frauds and their brainwashed minions who will crank out stories explaining why the cold weather plaguing the North is actually a result of the same processes they credited for causing too much heat back in the 1990's.   If you do not know about Mann's fake Hockey Stick Graph, the lies discovered by leaked emails and other phony baloney "findings" by the CRU and IPCC and UN, then remember the claims of Al Gore and his now-laughable predictions in that ridiculous book that dared put the word, truth, in the title?  As Anthony Watts described in this December blog post:

Nature proves Al Gore wrong again

Posted on December 16, 2013 by Anthony Watts

 

Gore’s “ice free Arctic” prediction from five years ago, falsified by nature itself

The great bloviator has been pwned again, by the actions of nature itself. In Germany, five years ago this past Saturday, Al Gore claimed that the ““Entire north polar ice cap will be gone in 5 years” ...

Hope you go there to watch Gore bloviating in the video on that site plus the evidence Watts presented before we had the increasingly harsh winter weather post-New Year that is producing daily headlines in the USA and many other nations!  I suppose that Big Al has just gone downhill since inventing the internet?  I call him Big because of his massive hypocrisy (I mean over the top)  and we'll let a picture speak a thousand last words...twice!



Gore's Nashville compound above and his California mansion below.  

Question Evolution? Question Everything! Or would you be willing to die for the sake of Darwin?

If someone broke into my house with a gun and told me to recant my Christianity or die, I would be shot dead before I abandoned my faith.  Would you be willing to die for the sake of Darwin?

Are you a Low Information Person?  Do you just take in whatever "everyone" says is true and thoughtlessly run with it, or do you consider and ponder ideas before you accept them?  Have you taken the time to formulate your worldview thoughtfully or have you simply started with what they taught you in school without doubt or perusal and merrily rolled along thoughtlessly through? Are you busy sending text messages, posting things on Facebook, putting in your time at work and then coming home and kicking back and turning on your entertainment of choice?

Charles Darwin was not motivated by a desire to increase the knowledge of mankind, he was no scientist, he was a high priest of atheistic naturalism!  In fact, when a guy like Bill Nye pretends that evolution is "science" and creationism is "religion" he is lying through his teeth.  Does he know it or is he brainwashed?   Al Mohler did a great piece on the worldview clash of Bill Nye and Ken Ham.  You see, the Darwinist must depend upon his philosophy/religion to prop up his so-called "science."

A blogger-columnist named Steve Deace had some questions and comments for all who watched the debate or might plan on watching it online later:

     “The highly-anticipated showdown between evolutionist Bill Nye ‘the science guy’ and creationist Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis is now over. It remains to be seen in the days and weeks ahead if it changed any hearts and minds.  After watching the debate I still have a series of unanswered questions for Nye I’d love to get his answers to:
    

   “1. You admitted during the debate you don’t know where human consciousness and intelligence comes from, yet several times you also urged the audience to maintain your viewpoint’s current status quo dominance of the culture for the good of society. 

 

But if you don’t know where the consciousness and intelligence comes from that guides human affairs in the first place, how do you know that what you’re advocating for is what’s best for society? How do you know whether or not the source of your belief system is a benevolent or malevolent force? Not to mention if we don’t know where intelligence comes from, how do we even know we know what benevolent and malevolent means? If what you believe has led to some good in human society, how do you know that believing the God of the Bible is the source of consciousness and intelligence wouldn’t make for an even better society? 

 

If you don’t know where consciousness or intelligence comes from, when do you know you’re right and when do you know you’re wrong? Furthermore, how do you know whether or not everything you believe is really a lie? Perhaps we don’t even exist, and you’re unconscious now like in the Matrix, and what you think is reality is not? 

 

Finally, why isn’t someone such as yourself, who claims to be so willing to pursue truth at all costs, at least a little concerned that he’s not even sure what the starting point for his entire belief system is? If you’re not sure how you started, how do you know you’re headed in the right direction? Do you really expect us to believe a brilliant man such as yourself really has no thoughts at all on where human intelligence and consciousness comes from? Surely you’ve thought about it beyond ‘I don’t know,’ and we’d love to know what you think.

     “2) You admitted it was ‘a great mystery’ what started the ‘big bang,’ which you believe is the origin of human life and the universe. 

 

If that’s what you really believe is the origin of all existence, then shouldn’t the primary investment of our scientific inquiry be devoted to solving that mystery? In fact, how can we truly judge the efficacy of scientific inquiry based on that assumption if we don’t have the answer to that question? 

 

For example, if I don’t understand why an airplane was made to fly and whether or not the engineer that made it intended it to do so, I might just settle for driving the airplane down the street on asphalt since it has an engine and tires. The airplane is capable of doing so, and I wouldn’t know any better. However, if I know why the airplane happened to exist then I know it can do so much more than that, and the airplane can now realize its full potential.

 

How would I know what the airplane is ultimately for if I don’t know why it was made? I wouldn’t look silly driving an airplane down the street like any other vehicle unless we all knew it was meant to take to the air. But to know that requires me to know why it was designed that way and for what purpose. 

 

You spent a good deal of time telling us what it is you didn’t like about Ham’s answers to those questions, but what are yours? You want us to assume your views and conclusions are what’s best for human progress, yet you won’t tell us what you think the purpose of human existence is in the first place? How do we know what’s best if we don’t know why we exist? 

 

How do we know we’re progressing if we don’t know where we’re from? Suppose I looked on a map for the destination I wanted to go, but had no starting point. How would I know how to get to my destination? How would I know I’m making progress in the right direction?

     “3) Several times you referred to yourself as ‘reasonable.’ 

 

Does that mean to imply those that disagree with you are ‘unreasonable.’ If so, that is very judgmental of you. Where do you get off imposing your definition of ‘unreasonable’ upon the rest of us? Come to think of it, since you don’t know where human intelligence and consciousness comes from, I’m not even sure if I’m to be insulted or complimented by being called ‘unreasonable.’ 

 

Where does your definition of ‘reasonable’ come from in the first place? If that definition is not fixed, then how do you know you’re always the reasonable one? Couldn’t the definition of ‘reasonable’ change? I assume you’ve changed your mind on a few things over the years, so how do you know if you were “unreasonable” then or “reasonable” now? Are only people that agree with you “reasonable?” That sounds like the sort of statement a bigot might make. 

 

Many of your scientific forefathers like Copernicus, Newton, and Kepler were Christians who were inspired by the Bible. Would you consider them to be “unreasonable?” Was Newton being “unreasonable” when he studied the Bible and ‘reasonable’ when he discovered the laws of physics? 

 

You were concerned about Ham insulting billions of non-Christians by taking the Bible literally, but why aren’t you concerned about insulting the billions of Christians that do as well? What’s so ‘reasonable’ about that? “

     ”4. You repeatedly referred to “Ham’s beliefs” and “Ham’s interpretations” throughout the debate. 

 

Is Ham the only person in the world that believes this way? Does that mean you believe everyone that agrees with Ham is essentially a lemming incapable of thinking for themselves? How do we know that what you were asserting weren’t simply “Nye’s beliefs” and “Nye’s interpretations?” Only 15% of Americans believe as you do, that human life and the origin of the universe happened strictly through natural occurrences. If you’re concerned about Ham offending billions of non-Christians, why aren’t you similarly concerned about offending the other 85% of your own countrymen?

     “5. Several times you admitted in the debate ‘I’m not a theologian.’ If that’s the case, why did you spend so much critiquing the Bible and the conclusions Ham draws from it? If you’re not a theologian, then how do you know your critiques had merit? If you’re not a theologian, how do you even know what you’re critiquing? 

 

Suppose someone admitted ‘I’m not an astrophysicist’ but then went on to criticize a very important research paper on the subject of astrophysics. Would you expect the leading scientific journals of the day to publish their critique as credible despite the fact they admitted up front they have no idea what they’re talking about?

     “6. In your heart of hearts, Bill, are you really willing to bet your eternal soul on your belief system? Are you really willing to stake what happens to you and your loved ones after you die on ‘I don’t know’ and ‘that’s a great mystery?’ Are you confident enough in your ‘I don’t knows’ to wager your forever on them? Are you sure Jesus Christ isn’t alive? Did all of those men and women that voluntarily went to their deaths without a fight in order to testify to the truth of Christ’s resurrection really die for nothing? If he’s not, then how come we changed all of human existence, including how we even tell time, based on acknowledging that he is? 

 

If you died today, are you 100% certain you have the right answers, and are you willing to face any consequences for the wrong ones? Because in the end, my friend, that’s really what we’re talking about here, isn’t it?”

I have news for you!  They've lied to you and the worldview that the Naturalistic Materialists have presented as scientific fact is actually an unproven hypothesis that does not stand up to scrutiny.  Did you know that Darwinism aka Naturalistic Materialistic Evolution has no factual support?  Did you realize that it is all based on supposition rather than evidence?   To borrow from myself:

"Saturday, December 31, 2011

       

Logical Arguments for the Existence of God - Basics of Philosophy

"You see, science is supposed to be based on discovery. Discovery comes from questioning. Right now the scientific community has turned from scientists to musk oxen, joined together surrounding their pet hypothesis of naturalistic materialism and their horns are all turned directly at those who question. In other words, so-called scientists of the ruling paradigm have abandoned the first precept of science, which is to QUESTION what is not proven and only accept what is absolutely certain." - Radar

credit - Darwinists, like Musk Oxen, must protect their weak hypothesis from investigation

You cannot separate science and philosophy.  You cannot separate worldview from your thought life.  You begin with presuppositions when you view the world and think about it.   The wise man does not simply view the world and consider what he should both think and do, he also reviews his worldview to be sure it makes the most sense.  Before you begin a trip you do need to have both a destination and the route that will take you there.  But anyone with any common sense makes sure that the vehicle is ready for the trip..."

Here is the problem...a worldview is the set of assumptions you use to guide you through life.  Just as life is a journey through time for all of us during our life on Earth, your worldview is the starting point for that journey and it is the first premise by which you consider new ideas.   If you have not audited your own worldview you are much like a man beginning a trip without a map in hopes of reaching a destination.  I promise you that the directions to get you from the Pearl Harbor Memorial in Honolulu to the parking lot at the base of Diamondhead would not suffice to get you from the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC to Disneyland in Orlando, Florida.  If you go to the end of my street, take a left and go about three miles you will get to an intersection from which you can go towards Chicago by taking a left at the traffic light.  If you turned right and tried to go three miles then you and your car would be underwater because you would have driven into a large lake.  

 

Destinations require starting points and directions.  Worldviews need the same.   
 

Evolutionists assert all sorts of things about organisms and the sedimentary rock layers and yet when you look behind the curtain of their assertions you find nothing but hypotheses rather than anything concrete.  They ignore every bit of evidence for a God-created Universe and a short time frame for the existence of the Universe, the Solar System, the Earth and organisms.   They deny the evidence for the Noahic Flood and the Table of Nations.

Today is Darwin's birthday.  Those who promote Darwinism for religious purposes claim that his writings and hypotheses were great achievements that changed the scientific world for the better.  Yet nothing could be further from the truth!  Charles Darwin plagiarized or borrowed much of his material from men like James Hutton and Alfred Wallace and Edward Blyth.  Blyth, a Creationist, was the man who came up with the idea of natural selection, but he did while proposing the process as part of the conservation and preservation of kinds of organisms (baramin) designed by God as part of the redundancies and contingencies design features of organisms.  Hutton and Wallace had also formulated ideas that Darwin took and inserted in his first book.  Darwin was also impressed with the assertions of Charles Lyell, whose concept of Uniformitarianism was based in part on his own deliberate lies.  Darwin also drew from the writings of Thomas Malthus, who predicted that the population of man would outstrip the resources of the Earth and therefore needed to be controlled. 

At about the same time Darwin published "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life" there was a finding by scientists that there was a Law of Biogenesis, a law that Louis Pasteur's experiments had conclusively proven to the scientific world that life does not arise from non-life.  Real science will investigate an unproven hypothesis and by observation and experiments will then classify it as a theory while seeking to either disprove or prove it.  Should it be upheld by experimentation by scientists over and over again, then it is called a law.  The Law of Biogenesis was never disputed by any experimental results ever since, yet the scientific community of today calls it a "theory" now because they realize that, if Biogenesis is true then Naturalistic Evolution cannot be true. 

Evolution must get rid of God because a Creator God not only kills off evolution and all pagan Naturalist philosophies, God also gives us answers concerning why we are here and where we are supposed to be going and what we should be doing along the way. 

So the High Priests of Darwinism have arbitrarily downgraded Biogenesis to a theory, ignored the Laws of Thermodynamics and have consistently ignored all the new evidence uncovered in the last one hundred years that rip the foundations of Evolution to shreds.  The Earth is not the center of the Solar System but it may well be in the center of the Universe.  All organisms are written with the same code (DNA) and powered by the same mechanisms and have all the hallmarks of being designed.  A cell cannot exist without DNA and DNA cannot do anything without the power of the ATP Synthase system and the ATP system requires a cell in order to operate.  As the cell is examined more closely, we see that systems and mechanisms and various relationships that are irreducibly complex and vital to the existence of life are myriad but we see nothing that indicates an accidental unplanned process has built it.  We see that all sorts of genetic material is available to organisms to allow them to vary in response to changing ecosystems but this process is not random.  We see that the mother lays the framework for the child, thus forcing organisms to remain the same kind of organisms as their predecessors.

Organisms become extinct and organisms can vary in an orderly and understood manner.  We can  thank Mendel for identifying some of the processes involved in the passing on of genetic materials and we can thank Linnaeus for his attempt to classify organisms into kinds and the groups that are speciated from the main kind.  Both of these men believed God created organisms and were, like Newton and Bacon and Lord Kelvin and Maxwell and Kepler and the vast majority of the founding fathers of science, sure that investigating the world was worth doing because it was created by a Logical Mind.  That premise led such men to devote their lives to finding out what made things work and how those systems and processes and forces could be understood.

How is it that you blindly accept that the Universe and all the stars and planets and organisms, all the forces and laws and the atoms and subatomic particles all just somehow "poofed" into existence?  Would a random explosion of nothing create everything in such an orderly fashion?  Every time you drop a rock it falls to the ground.  Every time you take in a breath in you will find you need to expel that breath and take another.  Husbands, every time your wife gets pregnant there will be a human baby growing inside of her.  When dogs mate they have puppies, not something partway between a dog and a horse.  Bacteria produce more bacteria. 

Are there mutations?  Yes, and that is a problem not an answer!  The human genome is piling up mutations that keep foisting new allergies and syndromes and diseases upon us.  Mutations are planned for within our DNA and did you know that DNA has a mechanism to locate and fix errors in duplication?  However, mutations manage to pass on despite the system in place to defeat them and they build up and eventually they will kill off mankind. 

I have posted on Facilitated Variation and Genetic Redundancy and Irreducible Complexity on this blog as well as many other scientific discoveries that actually support the idea that God created organisms and the Solar System and the Universe.  Most scientists before Darwin believed that God created and it took a lot of snake oil salesmen like Francis Galton and Thomas Huxley and Ernst Haeckel to help brainwash people into believing that the Universe created itself, organisms just kind of made themselves and all the forces and systems and laws that work within or govern the Universe are the result of random purposeless chance.  I hope and pray that you are not so foolish as to believe such tripe!

Please do yourself a favor.  Question evolution and not just evolution.  Question every portion of your worldview!  Why do you believe what you believe?  Have you investigated competing philosophies of man?  Have you read great works of social relevance that cause you to think about the purpose of your life and the reason you vote as you do, the reason you live as you do, the morality by which you govern your life?

As a father, I directed my kids to understand the Bible and believe in Jesus Christ as Savior because I was a responsible father.  I urged my children to think about their faith and to go ahead and question that faith and consider other beliefs.  I had books like 1984 and Animal Farm and Brave New World and Atlas Shrugged and The Lord of the Flies available to them.  My kids read Tolkien and C.S. Lewis but I also encouraged them to investigate Socialism and Communism and Atheism.  I taught them what Darwinists believe and urged them to learn all that school taught them but at the same time to use their minds to investigate those teachings and hold fast to what they believed to be true.  My kids could get an "A" in the sciences and repeat back the nonsense about evolution back to the teachers on tests but they could also explain to you why they did not believe it. 

I raised free thinkers who were equipped to go forth into the world and hold on to what made sense and throw away ideas that were not sensible.  They could and did discuss what they believed with their teachers when asked and I am thankful we had a public school system at that time with Christians as Superintendent and Principals, a system where kids were taught to do public service as part of their education and where questioning minds were encouraged rather than shunned.  I had a daughter who was in National Honor Society beginning in junior high school every year eligible (freshmen were not allowed at that time), I had another daughter who got a full scholarship to art college, and in fact all but one of my children were offered full scholarships to colleges but one and that daughter was born with conditions that were supposed to kill her.  She didn't go to college but she has made it despite her physical challenges to be a responsible mother and person. 

One son led the school academic teams downstate to gold and silver medals his last two years of high school.  Every graduation I would see my kids walking up to receive multiple awards.  Some of them sang, some of them were thespians, some of them artists and one was a school journalist and photographer. One was an all-state singer and another won awards for his senior yearbook efforts.  One is a law clerk, one served five years in the Army with honors and I trust them completely.   My kids are succeeding at life.  They are raising their kids to do the same.  I didn't raise them to seek fame or fortune so much as to seek to be good Christians and good citizens with good sense and a heart for others.

Why brag on my kids?  I am a father and a grandfather now and my grandkids are all believers and doing great!  Of course a father who is proud of his offspring wants to brag on them!

I raised good citizens and those who have married are married to Christians who are also good citizens.  My worldview produced a family of people who work hard and succeed and you would be happy if any of them lived next door.  My worldview produced great Americans and neighbors and friends who care for other people and are productive members of society. 

People who do not believe in the Creator God are busy tearing down our society and the USA is in grave danger because of all the Low Information People who have been Low Information Voters and not understood that a society that takes from the productive to give to the unproductive will fail or fall into the hands of tyrants who will turn us all into serfs under the iron hand of a dictator.  Why do people allow the Hitlers and Stalins and Castros take power over them?  Because they believed lies and acted upon them.  Why do we still have no cures for cancer and ALS and so many other diseases?  Could it be that so many scientists are trying to find proof for evolution and ways to support that religion rather than working to help others? 

Do you believe ancient aliens came to Earth and built stone monuments?  Do you believe that a Big Bang created the Universe (nothing making everything)?  Are you more likely to think that people will learn to harness their minds to levitate mountains or that Jesus was able to walk on water?  Which of those two concepts have any historical support? 

There is a Bible that asserts that God created all things and made a way to create a relationship between Him and you, a relationship that will continue beyond the end of time.  There is a book written by Charles Darwin that asserts that organisms basically created themselves.  Jesus Christ said that He is the Door to eternal life.  Stephen Hawking declares that when you take your last breath you come to an end.  Millions of Christians have been willing to publish their faith even in the face of certain death at the hands of unbelievers.  Thousands of so-called scientists will tell you that Christianity is nonsense.  But how many of them would die rather than abandon their Atheist faith?

So again I ask, would you die for the sake of Darwin?  I tell you that you will die because of him if you keep believing in evolution and denying the Creator God.  Jesus said, "I am the way and the truth and the life."   You are an eternal person living in a temporal world.  Look into yourself and ask yourself if you are willing to go into death sure that death ends YOU?   A Just God demands that you take responsibility for your life.  Jesus Christ has taken your judgment upon Himself but you have to decide to accept His work on your behalf or to take your chances without Him.  That is what believing in Darwinism means in the end.  

After the Ken Ham - Bill Nye Debate, Bad News in the Bunker

Although atheists are screaming, "Victory!", reality is unpleasant for them. The debate had mixed reviews, and even some atheists said it was bad. 

Not because of evidence, since Nye brought up material that had been dealt with long ago by creationists and he would have known that if he had bothered to do his homework. Not because of logic, because Ken Ham was straightforward about his worldview and reasoned properly, and Bill Nye used numerous logical fallacies. Not because of demeanor, Ham was gracious throughout and Nye was basically civil (although demeaning and contemptuous). But the main problem was the format for the debate, and the fact that the title of it was putting Ham on the defensive: "Is creation a viable model of origins in today's modern scientific era?" How about, "Defending evolution despite modern science" for Nye?

This has been a hot time for creation science. At the end of 2013, a Pew poll showed that atheistic evolution had not gained as much ground as the atheists would like. There is a movie in the works about the real Noah, not the Hollyweird version. Creation Sunday is countering Zimmerman's call to apostasy with his misleading "Clergy Letter Project". Question Evolution Day is February 12. So people are really checking out the truth of creation science, and not just what they've been told to think by atheopath sites and evolutionist propaganda mills.

After this video, there is a song I'm dedicating to Bill Nye, by the 77s.

He's the high priest of the future

Controlled experiments are his specialty

Sewing up questions with mental sutures

Trying to make some sense out of reality

A renaissance man

Tearing himself from The Rock

Renaissance man

Tearing himself from The Rock

It's from "star stuff" that he's made

It's the cosmos that gave him life

How does that help him feed the poor

How does that help him love his wife

Tell me, renaissance man

Tearing himself from The Rock

Renaissance man

Tearing himself from The Rock

He's cast away all thoughts of heaven

His science is full of preconceptions

His answers make me ask more questions

How many can wait on evolution?

Tell me, renaissance man!

Tearing himself from The Rock

Renaissance man

Tearing himself from The Rock

He needs to live

On the sides of the north

In the city of reformation

That's where he'll find his life

Renaissance man

Tearing himself from The Rock

Renaissance man

Tearing himself from The Rock

Another Reason To Question Evolution - It is an unscientific and unnecessary mythology used to fool the common man!

 

 

The Godevidence.com site is a tremendous online resource!  If you happened to listen to the podcast that Piltdown Superman put up on this blog yesterday, you are fully prepared to read the argument made by Scott Youngren in the article below. 

I also love the quote Scott referenced from C.S. Lewis:

“If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.”

Now think about what you know and why you know it.   No doubt in grade school you were taught how to count with visual aids.   Two blocks added to two blocks (or apples or whatever) were shown to be four blocks.   Very simple, easy to see and understand.  What we understand as being proven scientifically is often just a marker left on the marathon that is the advancement of human knowledge. 

Darwinist evolution is nothing like this at all.   While science DID prove using the scientific method that nothing is created or destroyed in the natural world, that all of the natural world is running downhill and that life does not come from non-life, the so-called "science" of evolution breaks these laws without shame in order to advance a religion-based philosophy of Naturalism.   To pretend that Darwinism is scientific at all is a sham, a fraud and a crime against the human mind! I can assert that with good conscience because the Laws of Thermodynamics and the Law of Biogenesis remain intact and Darwinism must be at odds with these laws.   Darwinism is not scientific at all, it is an hypothesis that is used to prop up anti-God morality and for the pleasure of atheopaths.  Evil men who wish to do things God forbids have always sought to pretend that there is no God so they can entice others to join them in their evil practices.   

The God of the Gaps: Why God and science are not competing explanations.

By: Scott Youngren

---

“The common belief that… the actual relations between religion and science over the last few centuries have been marked by deep and enduring hostility… is not only historically inaccurate, but actually a caricature so grotesque that what needs to be explained is how it could possibly have achieved any degree of respectability.”

–Cambridge University historian of science Colin Russell

“Just because science hasn’t explained something yet doesn’t mean that we should just give up and say, ‘God did it.’”

-A comment made, in various versions, by multiple atheist commenters to this website.

——————————-

The cartoon above provides a good depiction of how many (perhaps most) atheists perceive God. They perceive him as an explanation for natural phenomena that competes with scientific explanations, and that serves to fill gaps in scientific understanding. But this perception is completely flawed and misguided.

Atheist Dan Barker (Public Relations Director for the Freedom From Religion Foundation) and Christian (philosophy professor) Richard Howe publicly debated God’s existence at the University of Florida in 1997. Barker comments:

“All through human history, we’ve had…questions [such as these:]. What causes thunder? What causes the lightning? I don’t know, there must be a big Thor [Norse God] up there that does it. [audience laughter] But now, now we’ve learned about electricity. Now we don’t need that Thor anymore. We’ve erased that God, right? And as the line moves up, answering more and more questions, the gods disappear. We still have a lot more questions up here and we no longer put a God down here… He’s living in gaps, and the gaps are getting smaller…”

And, among atheists, Barker is certainly not alone. A review of comments made by atheists at this website (or virtually any other website where God’s existence is debated) will quickly reveal that many (perhaps most) atheists consider God and science to be competing explanations for natural phenomena, such as thunder and lightning, or the phenomenon of life. God, according to this atheist view, is only necessary to fill gaps in current scientific understanding….”the God of the gaps.” Eventually science will fill the last of these gaps and then there will be no longer be any need for God whatsoever.

But when atheists make such arguments, they commit what is known in philosophy as a “category mistake” or a “category error.” Oxford University mathematician John Lennox provides excellent commentary on this logical fallacy as it relates to the above described atheist reasoning in God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?:

“…In some quarters the very success of science has also led to the idea that, because we can understand the mechanisms of the universe without bringing in God, we can safely conclude that there was no God who designed and created the universe in the first place. However, such reasoning involves a common logical fallacy, which we can illustrate as follows. Take a Ford motor car. It is conceivable that someone from a remote part of the world, who was seeing one for the first time and who knew nothing about modern engineering, might imagine that there is a god (Mr. Ford) inside the engine, making it go. He might further imagine that when the engine ran sweetly it was because Mr. Ford inside the engine liked him, and when it refused to go it was because Mr. Ford did not like him. Of course, if he were subsequently to study engineering and take the engine to pieces, he would discover that there is no Mr. Ford inside it. Neither would it take much intelligence for him to see that he did not need to introduce Mr. Ford as an explanation for its working. His grasp of the impersonal principles of internal combustion would be altogether enough to explain how the engine works.”

“So far, so good. But if he then decided that his understanding of the principles of how the engine works made it impossible to believe in the existence of a Mr. Ford who designed the engine in the first place, this would be patently false – in philosophical terminology he would be committing a category mistake. Had there never been a Mr. Ford to design the mechanisms, none would exist for him to understand. It is likewise a category mistake to suppose that our understanding of the impersonal principles according to which the universe works makes it either unnecessary or impossible to believe in the existence of a personal Creator who designed, made, and upholds the universe. In other words, we should not confuse the mechanisms by which the universe works either with its cause or its upholder.”

“The basic issue here is that those of a scientistic [not to be confused with “scientific”] turn of mind like [prominent atheists] Atkins and Dawkins fail to distinguish between mechanism and agency. In philosophical terms they make a very elementary category mistake when they argue that, because we understand a mechanism that accounts for a particular phenomenon, there is no agent that designed the mechanism. When Sir Isaac Newton discovered the universal law of gravitation he did not say, ‘I have discovered a mechanism that accounts for planetary motion, therefore there is no agent God who designed it.’ Quite the opposite: precisely because he understood how it worked, he was moved to increased admiration for the God who had designed it that way.”

Lennox’s above comments call attention to a grave oversight that is pervasive in atheist reasoning: Citing a natural mechanism behind a natural phenomenon is NOT equivalent to explaining the ultimate source for that phenomenon. In Lennox’s words, “We should not confuse the mechanisms by which the universe works either with its cause or its upholder.” Put more simply, it is impossible to cite a natural mechanism as the source of the natural world because natural mechanisms are an aspect of the natural world. An aspect of something cannot be cited as the cause for that something.

Citing a natural mechanism behind a natural phenomenon is NOT equivalent to explaining the ultimate source for that phenomenon.

Moreover, Lennox’s above critique calls attention to an even more basic problem prevalent in atheist thought: The persistent confusion of scientific and ontological questions. God is an answer to ontological questions, NOT scientific questions. A little review of terminology is in order. The Oxford Dictionary defines science as “The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.”

Ontology is the branch of philosophy which discusses the nature of being, existence, or reality. And the Oxford Dictionary defines philosophy as “The study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline.”

Any time a natural mechanism is cited as the cause of a natural phenomenon, a scientific explanation has been proposed….but an ontological explanation for the source of this mechanism has NOT been proposed. These are two separate questions. In simpler terms, science discusses questions of intermediate (or natural) causes, and ontology discusses questions of fundamental (or ultimate) causes.

Science cannot study the premises upon which science is based. Questions that are of a fundamental nature cannot be answered by science.  As an illustration, consider the question of why 2 + 2 = 4. Such a question cannot even be subjected to scientific study because it discusses a FUNDAMENTAL mathematical premise. Will a scientific experiment conducted sometime in the future finally reveal to the world why 2 + 2 = 4? Of course not, because such a fundamental mathematical premise is something which underlies science and is therefore meta-scientific. Scientific inquiry can contribute to ontological reasoning, but it cannot replace ontological reasoning.

For further illustration, consider the following breakdown of the topic of evolution:

Scientific question: What accounts for the diversity of life on Earth?

Proposed scientific answer to the above question: A mechanism known as the random mutation of genes and the natural selection of reproductive offspring is responsible for the diversification of life (Darwinism).

Ontological question: What is the source of this above mentioned mechanism? (Please read Why Evolution Cannot Be Used To Rationalize Atheism and Riddles for Atheists for a more thorough exploration of this topic).

Atheist answer to the above ontological question: ??????????????? (Atheist commenters to this website are encouraged to furnish any answers they wish).

Theist answer to the above ontological question: A conscious and intelligent being, God, is the fundamental ground of reality, and the mechanisms we experience in nature are the product of this being.

As I discuss in my essays titled God Is Real…Why Modern Physics Has Discredited Atheism and The Ultimate Cart Before the Horse (Why Atheism is Illogical), theism holds God to be the fundamental ground of reality, whereas atheism is rooted in the materialist worldview, which holds that inanimate matter is the fundamental ground of reality. Citing inanimate matter as the fundamental ground of reality leaves some very significant unanswered questions. Regarding this point, Albert Einstein wrote (also cited in Riddles for Atheists):

“You find it strange that I consider the comprehensibility of the world (to the extent that we are authorized to speak of such a comprehensibility) as a miracle or as an eternal mystery. Well, a priori, one should expect a chaotic world, which cannot be grasped by the mind in any way… the kind of order created by Newton’s theory of gravitation, for example, is wholly different. Even if man proposes the axioms of the theory, the success of such a project presupposes a high degree of ordering of the objective world, and this could not be expected a priori. That is the ‘miracle’ which is constantly reinforced as our knowledge expands.”

Please note that Einstein says this “miracle” is “constantly reinforced,” rather than diminished, “as our knowledge expands.” If inanimate matter is the fundamental ground of reality, why is the universe comprehensible rather than chaotic, and why is it so ordered, rather than disordered? Citing a natural mechanism or a physical law does NOTHING to answer such questions because three fundamental, ontological questions remain unanswered: 1) Where do natural mechanisms and physical laws come from? 2) If matter is the fundamental ground of reality, how can matter be compelled to do anything, much less follow a physical law (or “regularity” if you prefer)? 3) Why these laws and not laws that allow for chaos and disorder?

The theistic model places consciousness (God’s consciousness) as the fundamental ground of reality, which is much in line with modern physics (as demonstrated in God Is Real…Why Modern Physics Has Discredited Atheism). And if God’s consciousness is the fundamental ground of reality, and our world is a manifestation of this consciousness, it is immediately clear why there is such a “high degree of ordering of the objective world.” But if matter is the fundamental ground of reality (as with atheism) the question of where this ordering comes from is completely unanswered.

Further, NO AMOUNT of “the study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world” will ever by itself answer such fundamental questions as why there even exists a physical and natural world, for us to study, in the first place. In his book The Limits of Science, Peter Medwar (an Oxford University immunologist who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine) writes:

“That there is indeed a limit upon science is made very likely by the existence of questions that science cannot answer, and that no conceivable advance of science would empower it to answer…I have in mind such questions as:

How did everything begin?

What are we all here for?”

And David Bentley Hart incisively lays down the distinction between scientific and ontological explanations, as they relate to God, in his book Atheist Delusions:

“Even if theoretical physics should one day discover the most basic laws upon which the fabric of space and time is woven, or evolutionary biology the most elementary phylogenic forms of terrestrial life, or palaeontology an utterly seamless genealogy of every species, still we shall not have thereby drawn one inch nearer to a solution to the mystery of existence.”

“Even the simplest of things, and even the most basic principles, must first of all be, and nothing within the universe of contingent things (nor even the universe itself, even if it were somehow ‘eternal’) can be intelligibly conceived of as the source or explanation of its own being.”

In summary, atheists who argue that scientific explanations are an alternative to God either confuse, or deliberately conflate, science and ontology. We are not dealing with a “God of the Gaps,” but rather, as Lennox puts it, we are dealing with a “God of the whole show.” Atheists frequently try to frame the debate as God vs. science so as to distract attention from the inadequacy, or rather bankruptcy, of their ontological reasoning.

Scientific questions demand scientific answers, and ontological questions demand ontological answers. Therefore, answering such ontological questions as why there is such a “high degree of ordering of the objective world,” and why the world is comprehensible rather than chaotic (as Einstein marvelled at), by saying, “I don’t know, but science may someday figure it out,” simply has no value. Scientific and ontological explanations can and must interact, but science cannot by itself produce an ontological explanation because the scientific method cannot examine fundamental presuppositions that underlie science. Extra-scientific, and therefore philosophical/religious reasoning is a necessary part of the explanatory equation*.

*Please read I Believe in Science! Why Do I Need Religion?! for a further exploration of the necessity for extra-scientific, and therefore philosophical/religious reasoning.

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Philosophical Arguments For God - , Philosophy - Philosophical Arguments For God ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  

In the US, organized prayer in schools was banned in 1963 because of an activist Supreme Court which did not care to follow the Constitution.   In 1973 came legalized baby-murdering,  Now the spread of same-sex so-called marriage has led to widespread moral chaos!  Just look at what happened in Massachusetts!

Do you know who I am?  It doesn't matter who I am or what schools I attended.   It is all about the information and about truth.   I have a few health issues but I do have my "assault keyboard" and I am still able to fire a few virtual bullets.  Evolution is a threat to both the social and scientific health of our world.   Those who proclaim it tend to be as ruthless to their opposition as were the Spanish Inquisitors in the name of a government that was unholy and greedy for power and money.   Here in the USA we have not yet put non-Darwinists on a rack or burned them at the stake, but the career of a scientist who does not toe the evolution line?   Darwinists gladly burn their careers instead.

We do not need God to be removed from society,  we need Darwinism to be cast from our minds instead.   Science was begun by Christians and Theists in the first place as a belief in a God with a Logical Mind gave them impetus to investigate the means and methodology by which the entire Universe worked.  It was a belief in God that was the basis for the foundation of the sciences we are familiar with today...God does not need gaps!  But we need to get rid of the holes in our heads and get back to honoring God and doing the best you can...

Why Is "Question Evolution Day" Important?

Radar is an avid supporter of Question Evolution Day, so I thought I would help out.

There is a great deal happening in the realm of creation science these days.

• We had the excellent video by Ray Comfort, Evolution vs God last year.
• There was a Pew survey released in December 2013 that shows how atheistic evolutionism is not gaining nearly as much ground as atheistic evolutionists want.
• The Ken Ham - Bill Nye debate is scheduled for February 4, 2014 at 7 PM Eastern Time.
• This year's Creation Sunday is on February 9.
• A secular fiction of Noah will be released, as well as a biblical video about Noah.
• On February 12 (Darwin's birthday), is the third annual Question Evolution Day.

QED is a Web event that does not cost people a cent. It is a chance for us to speak out about freedoms: Freedom of speech, intellectual, academic, professional and other freedoms. On a deeper level, we can post links to creation science sites, make comments on social media, write letters to the editors of newspapers, write articles and so on. Here is a short (thirteen minute) video explaining why it all matters.