Having just finished The Creation Answers Book, cover to cover, I strongly recommend it as a primary resource for those looking for answers to specific Creation/Evolution questions. It’s also a good read for creationist enthusiasts to build up your high level knowledge of all the most critical topics in the creation and evolution question.
Recently, I was in a brief discussion over Facebook regarding a link to notjustatheory.com. My friend, not a believer of young earth creationism, pointed out the site and I wrote a comment in reply that, indeed, the “just a theory” anti-evolution argument is really an invalid argument. And it is invalid. But it reminded me of “not even wrong,” so I playfully googled for “not even theory” and, to my surprise, came up immediately with an AIG article entitled “Evolution: Not Even a Theory“.
Here’s a taste of the article’s direction:
Although some Christians have attacked evolution as “just a theory,” that would be raising Darwin’s idea to a level it doesn’t deserve.
Update 2011-03-08: Turns out the available download of this tool is some old school windows program that won’t run on my 64bit windows 7. I sent CMI a message asking if it was open source or maybe if they had an updated package.
I was very intrigued about this tool I heard about from CMI,
In his book, The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins described a computer program and the results that he claimed demonstrated that evolution by random changes, combined with selection, was virtually inevitable.
The program described herein mimics Dawkins’ program, but also provides the user with the opportunity to explore different values for the parameters such as the mutation rate, number of offspring, the selection coefficient, and the ‘genome’ size. Varying the values for these parameters shows that Dawkins chose his values carefully to get the result he wanted. Furthermore, the user can see that, with realistic values for the parameters, the number of generations needed to achieve convergence increases to such an extent that it shows that evolution of organisms with long generation times and small numbers of offspring is not possible even with a uniformitarian time-frame. And this is with a deterministic exercise, which cannot be a simulation of real-world evolution anyway. The program also allows the user to set up a target amino acid sequence with the mutations occurring in the DNA base pair order. Since there is redundancy in the triplet codons, the dynamics of the convergence are different to a simple alphabetical letter sequence. The program also allows for the user to include deletions and additions, as well as substitutions, as well as variable length in the ‘evolving’ sequence.
You can also try the app for yourself.
So, a new article, “Ancient body clock keeps all life on time: studies,” talks about the universal human 24 hour body clock even in components of the body without DNA, like red blood cells. Reading the article made me grateful and thankful, and awed of God and his creation. I had a good chuckle when, as I was fully expecting, the line came along, “the 24-hour circadian clock…dates back millions of years to early life on earth.” There is a whole field of sciences these days on which biblical creation touches. I’ve read so much material, and am constantly finding more, that reveal just how ridiculous the prospect of evolution is. The fact is, life does not arise from non-life. Any biologist will tell you this – except when they need to explain the origins of life in the theory of evolution. It’s a “just so” story (as CMI is fond of saying) that has no real foothold in reality. We’ll either give glory to God, or, if not, our disdain for Him, our foolishness, will turn around and speak it for us.
Check this out: A brave new world of fossil fuels on demand. A US company is claiming to be producing “liquid hydrocarbons” from bacteria. Liquid hydrocarbons are what oil companies refine into synthetic crude and then gasoline and other oil-based products. One of the challenges for young earth creationism is the great amount of oil in the ground and that it supposedly takes a significant amount of time to produce the quantities we find. What we see here, however, are bacteria that can produce the stuff we find in the ground and in an economically viable and commercially scalable way. Perhaps here we can see a hint of how fast oil could be produced and this may help us better understand a young earth creation. To paraphrase my brother, keep an eye on the new with your “creation goggles” on and you’ll start to see how the puzzle fits together in agreement with God’s Word.
Goodbye, 2010, we hardly knew ye! Twenty-Ten has been a watershed year for me though I never really considered it like that before writing this. Many personally significant things have happened this year for me and I feel, perhaps, as if I am riding the crest of a wave, one which I’m both exhilarated to be on and also frightened I’ll either slip down the back side of or be let down as it fades. The one thing I will grab hold of is God and His promises and, by these, will I pray that, to face the future, I might become a Cannonball.
My mother passed on early this year. My dad’s mourning has turned to happiness and he will be getting married early 2011. My brother had his first baby, the beautiful baby Arden. My sister’s family continues to grow and each of my nephews and nieces makes me proud.
My father moved out of his house and into a new place for him and his fiance. I moved out of my apartment, of two years, into his old place and, I must say, it’s nice to live in a house again!
Most strikingly, though, for me personally, I feel like I’ve finally emerged out of a three or four year “stop.” A “stop” is what I call it: A period of time where I just “stopped,” and tried to separate myself from pretty much everything, friends, family and, in some ways, my faith. These past few years have been a hard time. Both laborious and emotional.
During this time, I stopped reading my bible, started mixing secular music with my Christian collection, questioned a lot of things in the bible, and experimented somewhat with the world. None of it satisfied, of course, but count yourself lucky if you don’t go, in spite of all wisdom to the contrary, and try to see for yourself what all the non-hoopla is about.
Many years ago, being passionate in my faith, I started collecting Christian music. My friend, Jamie, and I found some amazing stuff. I even got some tunes I remember my brother and sister playing as kids and found out they were still pretty cool. You probably won’t understand it but I actually set out to “find the good music” and prove the Christian music scene had acts just as good as the mainstream. What I found was beyond any of the mainstream. It made the mainstream pale in comparison. I know and remember well it brought joy, delight and happiness cruising around with Jamie, in particular, cranking the “good music.”
You’ll better understand the next part now that I’ve told you about the music I used to love so much. Over time I started mixing Christian muic with secular. I love some of the mainstream stuff. Still do. I listen to music a lot, though, at work, in the car to and from work, to and from hockey and visits with friends up north. The problem with mainstream music is it’s about you and I, all the time, no breaks, ever. It became bitter to me. Very naturally, and without much fanfare, one day I just split up my collection into two folders, “christian” and “secular”, and my playlist has been “christian” ever since. That was a few months ago.
For some reason, that started a change. It made me want to get back into my faith. I can’t remember when but, I got a smart phone around August, and, suddenly, I saw a new and intriguing way to read the bible. I started reading.
I moved into my dad’s old place a few months ago which means I now have a 40 minute drive to/from work. Lots of people think that’s a drag. Turns out it’s brilliant for me. I listen to James MacDonald’s Walk in the Word on my way into work and Ravi Zacharias on the way home. Being under the Word each and every day is an amazing thing.
I need to recognize Creation.com, my passion for creation a gift from my late mother, I suppose. I have had an interest in Creation for a long time even before this year and I think I owe it to Creation Ministries International (Creation.com) to recognize their contribution in effecting my life over the years. You see, Creation isn’t just about creation vs evolution: It’s about the very foundation of Christianity. God’s Word speaks to all the issues relevant in any given age and it is its first book that gives it the authority it needs to speak on those issues. The “young earth creationism” movement is about so much more than just saying the earth was created by God in six days. It’s the seabed foundation of the Christian faith and, without which, the entire faith breaks down into pointlessness. It is because of my reading of young earth creationism that I have an incredible trust in the reliability, authority and historicity of my bible. Do not dismiss creationism. Equip yourself and your friends and family with all that you need to know to be certain of your faith. Confidence in your God, His Word and your faith is there, you just need to go and get it.
I will also mention The Light, a Galaxie radio channel on my Rogers cable tv. They actually do tend to play a number of decent Christian artists and not just fluffy pop. Since moving into my dad’s old house The Light is usually on in the background and is always on when I go for a run on my treadmill.
As I write this, dc Talk’s My Will just started playing on The Light as I finished the last paragraph. Told ya they also play good stuff.
Twenty-Ten is fast closing and I can only thank God for his grace and mercy to me, a sinner, and His sacrifice of His Son on the cross for me. I thank Him for this year and for literally changing me. I pray continually that He will keep changing me still.
Thank you, God, for changing me. Thank you for this year. You already know my hope for next year. Please, may my hope be within your will.
In the beginning, God created on six different days. On the sixth day, it is written: “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31) I’m sure I’m not the only one who has noted that “very good” isn’t “perfect.” Why didn’t He just say it was perfect? If it wasn’t perfect, it sounds like it needed some work. Seems like it needed some changing. A little more time. Sounds like a job for…evolution. As it turns out, though, He did say it was perfect, you just have to connect the dots. Don’t worry, there are only two dots and we’ve just discussed one of them.
The Gospels are probably more read than any other part of the bible and, surprise, surprise, it is here that Jesus, Himself, reveals the answer. In Luke 18:19, Jesus replies to a man, “(18) And a ruler asked him, ‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ (19) And Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.’” (emphasis added) Considered in modern times, our first question is, “God is merely ‘good’?” Think about it a moment. Can we really consider ourselves “good” next to God? Compared to the next human being, maybe, but to the God of the universe who is Perfection personified? If Jesus says no one is “good” except God, then that must mean something beyond what we consider merely good. And that is our answer to the Genesis dilemma.
If only God can be called good, as Jesus said, and God called His creation “good”, then a good creation must be perfect. A “very good” creation? We can only speculate what that means in the light of Jesus’ words.
Selah.
I’m the kind of person who doesn’t officially donate to charities. I often do one-time, anonymous donations. My primary donations are my offerings to my church. I, also, regularly put spare change in the Tim Horton’s Children’s Foundation boxes, and I’ll always do the annual Remembrance Day poppy thing, but I don’t really officially donate outside of the church and outside of those small things. It’s something I’ve wanted to change and now I think I know how.
My own problem with donating has been (1) which charities should I support that I’ll feel personally satisfied donating to, and (2) how do I donate in a satisfying and sustainable way.
The first issue, of which charities to support, has been answered this year by my own choices in what I’ve been reading and listening to. I’ve gotten seriously into creation and so have been reading things from Creation Ministries International. I’ve always been interested in very cerebral topics and so I’ve been listening quite a bit to Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. Intelligent, listenable, bible-believing preachers are hard to come by and so I’ve been listening a lot to James MacDonald’s Walk in the Word. It became clear to me what I should be supporting.
The second issue, how to donate in a satisfying and sustainable way, has always bugged me. I always felt that if I won a million dollars I’d donate a large amount of it and it would have a significant impact – something I couldn’t achieve on an average salary. I’m not going to sit around waiting to win the lottery, though, so all that did was eat away at me. This year, once I realized I had three organizations I actually wanted to support, I began to understand that, since I can’t make a huge impact, I will, instead, plan to donate in a sustainable way that most could also do and, if we all did that together, we’d make a bigger difference, at scale, than if I donated a million dollars at once. I decided I would consider my donation as a relatively small, monthly amount, namely $10 per month per organization.
I picked the organizations that meant the most to me and I picked an amount that suited me and that would also add up over time and would mean much more if everybody did the same.
When all was said and done, I donated $360 to three organizations. Actually, I couldn’t easily donate to Ravi Zacharias International Ministries so I donated $120 to Blue Letter Bible, instead. I now have an annual Google Calendar reminder about these December donations and I hope I can keep it up.
The only thing I think I might do differently is to mix up my organizations. I really do believe in the value of organizations like the Salvation Army, youth shelters, international aid organizations, and others. What I am confident in, however, is that when everyone gives to the organizations that mean the most to them, just due to the number of people involved, we’ll be able to cover all of the organizations sufficiently.
I hope somebody finds this plan of value and I hope that ever more and more we’ll find more people donating sustainable amounts to the ever growing benefit of those around us who need our help.
Congrats to Creation Ministries Intl. on the construction of their new HD TV Studio! Check out the behind-the-scenes video! We’re all looking forward to some great video content to complement the amazing warehouse of biblical creation content on Creation.com. You can find more details here.
When people talk about science, they infer and imply many things. They may be referring to scientists, the scientific method, the popularly accepted ideas of the day, or any number of perceptions about what constitutes “science” these days. Many times, I talk about science in the context of the act of scientific inquiry, that is, the act of applying our five natural senses, taste, touch, smell, sight and sound, or technological extensions of those senses, in order to inquire about world around us. These are the only tools acceptable to science and there are inherent limits in their application which prohibit them from tackling some very important questions.
The tools, our senses, were granted us and operate according to the laws of the environment in which they exist. That is, your eyes see the visible light of energy. You can touch matter. You can smell the product of chemical reactions. Tying all these things together is the environment in which they exist. For God to have created our reality, he must have existed outside of it. Or, you might think of it as one bubble, the universe, existing inside another, bigger bubble, God’s universe. Either way, it still holds that the tools of science can not be assumed to apply to observing or experimenting on that which is outside of our bubble.
This is what I often allude to in discussions about origins. This is, also, what should cause you to reconsider what you are told by popular science. There is no empirical way to prove the non-existence of God, though, it seems, people like Hawking and Dawkins try hard to do so.
The next step in this argument is to debate whether it is more or less illogical to believe in an omni-present God or an omni-present material reality (universe; multi-verse; big bang repeating cycle; etc). I say “illogical” because, according to the laws of this existence, all effects have a cause, and an ever-existing God and an ever-existing reality have no initial cause hence they appear illogical.
Notice, also, that you are now no longer debating in the realm of logic but in the realm of the illogical: Whose premise is less illogical than whose? This should prompt you to pause and think a little bit. What you will discover is that the former must cease to reason according to the laws of his reality and begin to reason under a new set of conditions. The latter, however, still reasons according to the laws of his reality.
There comes a point in all of this when one needs to reconsider starting assumptions. The one who finds the limit of his own tools and reaches beyond discovers new insights while the one who refuses to acknowledge these limits spins around and around in his own concentric series of smaller and smaller circles of reasoning.