Tag: God

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THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

Is there any evidence for the existence of God?

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Consider first that there are three possibilities as to how we all got here. 1, We were created; 2, We evolved; 3, We aren’t really here, we just think we are. Other evolution-related concepts such as “Pan-Spermia” (life evolved somewhere else in the universe and was then seeded on earth) are not really alternatives, since all life, wherever it came from originally, either evolved or was created .

I have no time for the third option: I’m definitely here, and so are you. That leaves only two possibilities: a Creator, or evolution from nothing.

Apologies to those who’ve read this post before under a different name. It’s a favourite topic of mine, and vitally important. This is a shorter version.

DESIGN

We see incredible design in all of nature. The evidence for God is all around us: its impossible to miss. When we look around at our world we see beauty everywhere, and things which fit and have meaning and purpose. We live, love and exist in a world of wonder, not a world of chaos. Science is not evidence against God, it’s powerful evidence that God is The master scientist.

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INFORMATION

As an example, one strand of DNA, invisible to the naked eye, contained in each of the trillions of cells in our body, is packed with more information than a huge library of books. Where did that information come from? So- called “simple” life forms are really incredibly complex: how did that first information arise out of nothing, or out of inanimate matter? Information has never been observed to come from nothing or from chaos, and so to believe it did is blind faith, not science. Researchers scan the skies for a radio message from space which, they are convinced, would confirm intelligent life out there, yet ignore the incredible message in plain view within life on earth, as seen in our DNA, in our brains, and in all of life.

ORDER

The universe operates in a very orderly, lawful way, as does our own solar system and our own planet. The laws of nature hold all things together and allow us to exist and function. Sir Isaac Newton, whose laws of motion and gravity are still employable and were used to land man on the moon, attributed that orderliness to a Creator.

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ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE

This principle, dismissed as mere “coincidence” by the evolutionist, demonstrates clearly that Earth is uniquely placed and equipped for life in our galaxy and in our solar system. We benefit from many thousands of extremely fortuitous conditions. As an example, if earth were tilted any more or less in relation to the sun, its temperature ranges would be too extreme to support life. If we didn’t have our moon, or if the moon were not at just the right distance from us and at just the right relative size with just the right orbital pattern, we would have no tides to keep the oceans alive and fresh, and there would be no life on earth. Earth’s magnetic field protects us from the harmful power of the sun’s radiation. Water is unique in many of its properties, enabling life to exist and continue.

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ORIGINS

Even famous evolutionists admit that they don’t know for sure how life evolved from non-life, and they’ve never seen it happen. Millions of people are convinced that life has been made, or almost made, in the laboratory: this is not the case. The Miller experiments made a few amino acids only. When the proverbial first living cell miraculously produced itself according to evolution theory, defying multitudes of natural obstacles, who did it mate with and what did it eat?

The “evolution” of photosynthesis has never been observed: it was a unique event in earth’s history, as even evolutionists have to concede. I can much more easily believe in an intelligent creator than in a rock producing all the complexity we see. In fact, try counting the incidences of evolution which you have observed-there will be none. Bacteria adapting is not evolution in the sense of one creature turning into another: it is still bacteria, and all of life has inbuilt potential in order to survive.

There’s plenty of scientifically supportable reason to believe in the Biblical view of origins. Try http://www.icr.org for a start, or http://www.answersingenesis.org

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HUMAN HUNGER FOR GOD

Man has an inbuilt hunger for the spiritual, which explains the existence of many religions throughout history and in every culture. Religion is not always a product of superstition: perhaps superstition is born of  a natural longing for God, and the realization that there’s something much greater than us.

ATHEISM

The condition of atheistic societies to date has not been impressive or endearing. Atheistic philosophy has been the cause of far more evil in our world than any religion has. Hitler, in his book “Mein Kampf” expressed the need to “cleanse” the human race for the sake of “Mother Nature” and healthy human evolution. Also refer to the regimes of such men as Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, who wanted to rid the world of God. Once man sees no God to answer to, and no  fixed, objective standards of right and wrong, tyranny is the likely outcome, along with the degradation of the value of human life. We can see this at work in our world now. Please note I am not saying that every atheist is a “bad” person: they are usually no more evil than anyone else. Instead I’m demonstrating  that having a God-less society is not the answer to our problems.

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EMOTION

Most of our emotions would be superfluous and even detrimental if we were only here to contend with other life forms so as to emerge the winner (as we have, if we evolved). The God of the Bible made us in his image, and is himself a feeling, emotional being.

LOVE

Real love produces commitment, caring, empathy, loyalty, faithfulness and truthfulness. Where does love come from if not from a loving, faithful designer? How could chemical reaction and interaction alone-born of rock-produce love? When your significant other asks if you love her or him, do you reply that yes, you are currently experiencing some chemical and hormonal interactions, and as long as they occur you will stick around and refrain from killing and eating him or her? Love in today’s popular definition is a reductionist ploy with the aim of reducing our relationships to good vibes and temporary mutual use while the going is good. Godly love, as found in the Bible, is that which produces stable relationships, happy kids, and successful societies.

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JUSTICE

Our sense of justice is evidence that we were made by a just, moral God. If we “evolved” a sense of justice, why do we still have crime, war and murder, at every level of every society, no matter how many new laws and regulations are created? And why would or should we care anyway? The fact is that we recognize naturally in our hearts that there is such a thing as evil at large in our world, and that it needs to be controlled. This recognition was given to us by a God of justice.

AESTHETIC SENSE

We have an inbuilt appreciation for beauty and for all of creation, and not merely for our mate when we’re having sex, or for the food on our plate. We desire to be creative, to entertain, and to express ourselves, and we appreciate those who do so skillfully. We love art, music, literature, and all forms of recreation and creation. We imagine-often without any practical reason but the pleasure of it. We philosophize and think deeply (some of us do anyway).

SIN and EVIL

The Bible is right about human nature: just look around. You probably need look no further than the mirror, or your own family and friends.  Those who claim that people only abuse each other when they’re impoverished are often the same people who berate the ultra-rich for abusing the rest of us. If poverty were the cause of crime and terrorism, half of India and Africa would be in absolute turmoil. And if we evolved, why shouldn’t the rich abuse the rest of us, since life is all about the “survival of the fittest”?

EXPERIENCE

In the years I’ve been a Christian I’ve experienced God in many ways. This includes an acute awareness of His presence, a feeling of indescribable completeness at times, an inner peace and joy, and answered prayers. It also includes the fact that seeking God and His righteousness has helped me to live a far more meaningful and peace-filled life than I would have without Him. It’s important for me to remember those experiences and continuous states of mind, and not to let them be dismissed as mere superstition, hormonal balance or positive thinking. I’ve seen the difference made by the Spirit of God in people’s lives, in homes, and in areas of society where God has been allowed or invited in. I’ve also seen the destruction in societies and individuals who have rejected God.

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NO FUTURE FOR UTOPIA

What makes a society or a civilization strong? Surely it’s a common view of truth, a reverence for all life, and a reverence for our Creator…

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When you have a love of truth you live it out-for the most part- willingly. If some form of political correctness is pushed upon a society it can only “work” when there’s an overbearing government to enforce it. Hence the beauty of freedom when compared to the darkness of tyranny.

As much as the politically correct folk among us hate to be told this, the unifying factor for the Western world until recently has been Judeo-Christian principles. We haven’t all been Christians by any means, and those of us professing to be Christians haven’t always been without hypocrisy. But up until the last couple of decades we’ve had a culture in which commonly held views and principles bound us together as much as any bunch of imperfect humans can be held together: honesty, truthfulness, politeness, longsuffering, a fear of God and of judgment, industry, enterprisedeference, and a common understanding of history. We’ve had reasonably shared acceptance of the things that matter and that held us together.

Up to now, Western nations, still having a sizable Christian population providing salt and light to the world, have thrived in an afterglow of commonly held ideals. We stand on the shoulders of past achievements, such as scientific discovery by those seeking to know how God has constructed our reality, and the abolition of slavery. We’ve had the benefit of strength and security so that we were able to live in comparative freedom, peace and knowledge to further our civilization. Civilization and culture isn’t the product of evolution, but of development allowed by security and an orderly society with laws and commonly held ideas of right and wrong.

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What’s threatening the West is the determination of some among us to enforce a model of “diversity” which is in reality the rejection of much of what made the West great in the first place, and of what makes any civilization great. This diversity can only be achieved by ignoring our creator. Of course I’m not talking about whiteness: how pathetic and disingenuous are those who attempt to make that accusation. Black, white and all shades in between could live in harmony and prosperity given shared principles, along with freedom from those attempting to incite a race war.

Those people talk about unity but what they mean is that we should all unite under their extreme prescription for society. This includes the total repudiation of all-yes all those standards which have held us together and kept our way of life civil and bearable. They have a hatred for the fundamental building blocks of a sane world: families consisting of mothers and fathers and their kids; accountability for all criminals; the right to life; the natural boundaries of gender; the freedom to prosper and enjoy the fruit of our labours without being forced to give it away to pay for sex changes and abortions and people who have no intention of working.

If you dismantle marital and natural family commitments, you’re dismantling a most fundamental building block of order. If you stamp on your own origins and revise history in order to destabilize things, you are working for the destruction of what has benefited your society and your own life in the first place. If you dismantle borders you are not creating a fair society for all but ensuring that what has been built will be torn down. You are causing instability, upheaval, stress, broken lives, and damage to your economy and to law and order.

Yes our world is imperfect, but it’s a lot better than it would be if you succeeded in tearing down our order and our progress. Tearing down is not evolution, it is regression and devolution. Those who have in the past succeeded in overthrowing their governments have not ushered in a perfect world but failure, while causing misery and hardship for the millions of people they pretended to be revolting for. There is only one destination if you steer away from truth: insanity.

There’s a spirit at work in our world to destroy civility, moral reason, tradition, faith, established norms and plain common sense. This can only lead to pain and trouble-for all of us. I’m convinced that the central goal, the motivating factor in all those who work to overthrow the West as founded and to create a global society, is to attempt to rid the world of the God who made us in the first place and who sustains us. It’s really nothing new: it’s been a movement at work since the beginning of time. It’s a movement doomed to failure for those behind it, a surely as it would be for some insane soul screaming at the ocean and telling the tide not to come in.

Why do the nations rage
    and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
    and the rulers take counsel together,
    against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying,
“Let us burst their bonds apart
    and cast away their cords from us.”

He who sits in the heavens laughs;
    the Lord holds them in derision.

(Psalm 2:1-4)

The universe is held together by its creator. You can’t remove God any more than you can remove all the water from the ocean. There is no future for anyone attempting to dethrone Him, and the utopia they seek cannot and will not ever exist. The creator of the world holds all the cards and all the power, and the future-all eternity- is in His hands. Glory to God!

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GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT GOD

Thank you to my loyal readers who keep coming back and wondering where I’ve been: I’m planning on being back regularly from now on…

Two things have been on my mind lately above others. One is our current political and social climate, and the other is the widespread belittlement of God even among professing believers. These two things are inextricably linked. The loss of reverence for our Creator in society as a whole but also in the Church, was bound to result in lawlessness and degradation. The worst aspect to this is that many professing Christians have succumbed to it-often without realizing it themselves. Our testimony and witness to the world is compromised by our own lack of belief, dedication, and fear of God.

The half-hearted church was foreseen by our God, and we can know how He feels about it:

“So, because you are luke-warm-neither hot nor cold- I am about to spit you out of my mouth…” (Revelation 3:16).

The corrupt, compromising church was also foreseen by Him who knows the end from the beginning, so that He warned us to separate ourselves from the evils of fallen man:

“Come out of her my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues…” (Revelation 18:4).

Those who reject the deity of Jesus, who reject the fact that our God created all things, who reject the supremacy of Scripture, and who put their own words and the words of their favourite teachers above Scripture are all included in references to hypocrites and false teachers contained in the New Testament especially, but also in the Old. And once you cast off from the absoluteness of the truth of Scripture and invent your own, you are then metaphorically on a boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, without navigation, radio contact, charts, or even the benefit of experience.

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Ironically, the One who will spit the luke-warm church out of His mouth identifies himself as “…the ruler of God’s creation” (Revelation 3:14).

Just as bad as the rejection of the Bible as our ultimate guide, is the determination to use it to support false teachings and faulty or corrupted interpretation. This attitude is rampant in the Christian world now: “Let’s follow what so-and-so says and find one or two verses which appear to back him up”. In contrast, Scripture tells us:

“Cursed is the one who trusts in man…” (Jeremiah 17:5).

The Western World is now in moral free-fall, and there’s no way of stopping or slowing that fall if all we have to offer is a few jangling guitars and singers shaking their hair, a weak impersonation for spiritual gifts, an effort to bow to political correctness, and politicians who make promises in order to promote themselves. (Having said that, I say “Trump 2020!” The alternative is the destruction of America and so the West).

More than that, we have an insular Church which has largely rejected what God has to say. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” says the word of God, and, “In six days God created the heavens and the earth”. A large percentage of ministers prefer to follow what unbelievers and atheists say-that in the beginning, billions of years ago, something happened, our ancestors crawled out of slime and swung in trees, and later on God, or a few good teachers, came along and got involved, trying to get us all to be nice to each other. This is belittling God and calling Him a liar. This is putting the word of fallen, God-rejecting mankind above the Word of the Immortal, Almighty, Omni-present, omniscient Creator and sustainer of all things. This is nothing short of foolishness!

It not only calls God a liar, it calls Him weak and  incapable and irrelevant. “We know it’s all science now” is one pathetic view: pathetic because the real logic is that anyone who created all things would have to be The Master and Creator of science! Did an infinite being create all things by His infinite miraculous power, or did the universe create? That’s your choice! There’s no middle ground without putting God down beneath the feet of man.

Any true science today is only observing the handiwork of God. He is the Creator of science…not someone who just came along so that he could make us fall over backwards, or offer us new ways of being nice to each other. God is our Creator and He will be our Judge! He has the power to save us or to throw us into hell!

Its time for those of us who are serious about our faith to fall on our knees and worship the incredible being who made us, and who holds our souls in His hands.

 

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INFINITE SCIENCE: INFINITE GOD

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A couple of hundred years ago the atom was thought to be like a tiny ping-pong ball. In 1911 Rutherford’s experiments led to the realization that the atom is made of even smaller component parts. Now we know that those component parts are so small, particularly the electrons, that each atom is almost entirely space alone: it is held together only by electrical forces. If not for these forces, we would fall through our chair (which couldn’t exist anyway) and into the core of the earth (which also could not exist).

Over the past fifty years scientists found that atomic particles are in turn made of even smaller particles named “quarks”, and in modern “String” theory, it is believed that those particles are not really little lumps of solid matter-they consist of loops of energy which pose as different particles depending on how they are vibrating. However, strings haven’t yet been observed, because, it is believed, they are up to a billion billion times smaller than the atom itself. So if strings really are the basic building blocks of matter, the structure of the atom is even more empty than was thought before strings came along. The study of quantum physics-the behavior of the tiniest particles up to molecule size- has produced such seemingly illogical and fantastical results, dumbfounding the most brilliant scientists, that the nature of reality, even in the twenty-first century, presents numerous profound mysteries to boggle the mind.

One human body consists of roughly forty to a hundred trillion cells. In numbers, that’s 100,000,000,000,000. Each one of those cells, consisting of one hundred trillion atoms,  is staggeringly complex, containing and employing for its survival and maintenance more machines than all of the factories of the industrial world combined. And of course DNA is almost beyond our imagining, being the blue-print for making me and you, and present in every single cell. Yes indeed, we are fearfully and wonderfully made.

I’ve documented before, from the mouths of top secular scientists and professors, that there is no evidence we can observe of how life arose from non-life by evolution. I’ve shared that there is no fossil evidence confirming the belief that the biological cell which facilitates photosynthesis-and so plant life-evolved from the proposed marriage of a bacteria and inorganic molecule. Intelligent Design proponents are brilliantly demonstrating that information can only come from information-not randomness. The vast volume of information required to make the simplest so-called “simple” cell easily discounts the notion that life came from non-life by chance.

I’ve heard from the mouths of secular scientists that they are mystified as to why so many of the constants of nature are the way they are-for example, the strength of electromagnetic force, and the mass of the electron in relation to protons and neutrons. If any one of dozens of these constants were just a little bit different, they say, stars could not exist, planets could not exist, and we could not exist.

Move the moon away from the earth just a little, and our oceans would die and so would we. Move it a little closer, and the tides would overflow the continents. Take it away and there would be no tides to preserve life on earth. Remove the electro-magnetic field around the earth and all our water would be blasted away by the fierce solar wind.

I have personally seen nothing evolve-have you? In answer to this question the uninformed go to the observance of supposed bacterial evolution, not considering that what they are left with is bacteria: just what they started with. It simply adapted to its environment. The potential for such adaptation was built into life, so that the potential variety of each kind of life is enormous. But bacteria remains bacteria, horses remain horses, pigs remain pigs and roses remain roses. That’s the way it’s meant to be.

There are so many impossible, incredible facts about the make-up of life and the universe that were scientists to have another thousand years of freedom to study it, we probably could not come to the bottom of it all.

So I for one am not being swayed by any atheist or agnostic away from my faith in an amazing Creator. Science and God are not antonyms: they are synonymous. God is The Scientist and Mathematician. But more than that, I see from my own limited understanding of the universe around me that God must indeed be infinite. His power is limitless, as is His intelligence, His beauty, His glory, His character, and His imagination. He has to be eternal. He has to transcend all of the physical universe and the unseen world also. He has to be greater than the universe itself. He must possess information even beyond what we observe in nature, along with the ability to process it.

If, or since, God is so great, He is also able to pass to us a simple but profound message, though we already have one written within nature itself, and within our own being. That message is called the Bible, and the first verse of the Bible says this:

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”.

Glory to God for ever and ever!

 

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ROCK ‘N SOUL

It’s amazing how many things evolutionists and creationists agree on, without realizing it. A well-known creationist* when debating evolutionists, loves to point out that they believe humans came from a rock. The Bible says something similar…

When the evolutionists protest that they believe no such thing, he explains. According to the evolutionary history of the universe, space, time and matter came from nothing, or virtually nothing, when it expanded into all the universe we see today. A part of that matter, a large lump of rock, became the earth. Rain appeared on it magically, and created a soup in which life with all its incredible intricacies popped into existence (none of this was ever observed). That life developed itself over enormous amounts of time, until, well, here we all are communicating, pro-creating, and writing blog-posts. Voila: life from a rock.

Not only does this very wry creationist have a point, but actually, so do the evolutionists, because Scripture says something similar. Early in the book of Genesis we read that God created man out of the dust of the ground:

“Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7).

Here is one example of agreement between evolutionists and creationists: humans originate from the earth itself. The most obvious difference is that we believers acknowledge that intelligence is required to make information: DNA and life, even in the simplest of cells, is mind-bogglingly rich in information.

Another difference between the two accounts of man’s origins is that according to Scripture, we (mankind) have a spirit within us, also created by God. Believers (and everyone else) get an incalculably valuable bonus which most evolutionists don’t seem to want: an immaterial, immortal soul. We are more than rock plus information.

However, we believers, along with our unbelieving brothers and sisters-in-flesh-if-not-in-spirit, sometimes get inflated ideas of ourselves and of our value. We think that our Creator owes us all kinds of goodies and service. We think we can act our way and not His way without consequences. We’re like a painting which attempts to assert rights and privilege over the artist and the owner. We think that we are the important ones and the artist is irrelevant.  With this principle in mind, John the Baptist drew the attention of those he was preaching to where they had come from-that is, the ground:

“And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham” (Matthew 3:9).

God made us from the dirt of the ground, adding information and life. So then let’s not insult our Creator by compromising with the evolutionists about our origins: a painting does not paint itself, and information does not come from nothing or from chaos. Let’s instead give God the honor and reverence He deserves, for creating us with a certain amount of dignity, with a spirit, with a little free-will and intelligence, and the promise of much more even than that:

“Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12).

Thanks for reading.

*Kent Hovind