Dr. Richard Paley on Evolutionist Propaganda
from the chmod-666-and-pray dept.
Awesome person Janus brought the following to my attention: Dr. Richard Paley’s essay pointing out the evil, Satanic influences in both PBS’s current “Evolution” series and the OS X operating system from Apple Computer. It’s hard for me to decide if Dr. Paley is serious, or is just out to yank our collective chain. I suspect he might himself be serious in trying to save us from godless evolutionism and Macintoshes, but is being made fun of without his realizing it by the people feeding him his information. For example: “According to one of our readers, the new MacOS X contains another Satanic holdover from the ‘BSD Unix’ OS mentioned above; to open up certain locked files one has to run a program much like the DOS prompt in Microsoft Windows and type in a secret code: ‘chmod 666’. What other horrors lurk in this thing?” What horrors indeed.
May 11th, 2003 at 10:33 pm
i just read an article by him saying because of the second law of thermodynamics evolution is false….because it states that more complex beings originated from simpler ones.
the 2nd law is the law that all things in the universe go in the direction of entropy.
well mr (not doctor) paley, does the growth of crystals or–more specifically–snowflakes, violate God’s Scientific Reality? Hmmmm?
this guy claims to be a scientist…hooo boy! what a genius.
June 19th, 2003 at 7:07 pm
It’s a joke, guys.
August 10th, 2003 at 3:06 pm
This guy is crazy. He runs a “science” fair based on creationism and the second place prize for the middle school division claimed that women were designed for homemaking by God. He proves this because women can have babies (whoo-hoo good science there boy!) and because on average, women recieve 74 cents to every dollar a man makes (not that the site had actual facts like this, I know this from my own research) and claims this is because a woman’s work is inferior, so they don’t get paid as much. He says that’s why women should be homemakers. I thought this kid was the craziest person I’d ever heard of until I read about the Macintosh. No wonder the kid’s a little off, his mentor seems like he might’ve been enjoying some of God’s gift of cocaine. Maybe this boy’s project next year will prove that Satan broke into the Dell headquarters and arranged for a small demon to be placed in each computer.
Hey wait, that sounds like a winning project. I should enter!
September 17th, 2003 at 10:01 am
I think he doesn’t really exist. It’s a joke.
October 5th, 2003 at 7:25 am
if he exists ….hes crazy….
October 5th, 2003 at 7:28 am
or maybe he has too much free time….
October 5th, 2003 at 7:32 am
This guy has a serious mental illness… how can you connect an E ,that stands for Education in eMAC, to EVOLUTION? do you think that an e-mail is some kind of propaganda too? what about Emule? do this guy really thinks that people really care about what the E really stands for? we eat chocolate because it is tasty, not because it has proteins or something like that… some guys are so blind that they can do the impossible: see more than what exists!
October 19th, 2003 at 11:39 am
Richard Dawkins has been domolishing Richard Paley’s work for thirty years… he’s real.
October 28th, 2003 at 7:06 am
this guy is a nut, the entire web site that is hosting this article claims to be some sort of ministry for christians. instead, i think it is a site dedicated to making christians look like fools…every link, every post, every ad seems to be so obsurd that there’s no way its for real. the guys reasons for creation over evolution are stupid. i’m a firm believer that there is more to this earth than evolution, but its not proven by thermodynamics, even though science can prove divine intervention. anyways, moral of the story, don’t be fooled by fools.
November 20th, 2003 at 1:03 am
I was looking up some info on Google in regards to cryptids and (probably mythical) modern-day dinosaur discoveries, specifically the fascinating Mokele-Mbembe stories when I came across some interesting information that linked back to a Dr. Paley article.
Now, the first thing I was reading seemed unbiased enough. It was a bit on the “dinosaurs might be alive right now and so is Bigfoot and the Lockness monster” side of things, but it was relatively sensible and seemed to be relying on factual sources (e.g., various sightings and explorations, while admitting to a lack of any real evidence).
So I expected the Dr. Paley link to actually be a confirmed, reliable article on modern-day dinosaur hunting.
Of course, the Paley article turned out to be hosted on a radical anti-TriCalvinist (?) and anti-Catholic Christian site, but I figured, “hey, just because this guy is a Creationist Professor at a fundamental college doesn’t mean his research is bogus.” I believe in giving all sides their due in these matters.
So I read the article, and it starts off sounding pretty factual. The entire essay is in first person — Dr. Paley actually went on this dinosaur expedition, so this may very well be the most recent Mokele-Mbembe hunt to take place in modern times. Interesting, I thought.
I tried to look past the disturbing commentary by Paley where his rationalizations seemed so ludicrous that his very statements seemed to defy logic and science (this guy is supposed to be a Professor and scientist!). Such as:
“Fossil remains of Apatosaurs have only been found in North America, so the reason for their [living Apatosaurs’] existence in Africa remains a mystery. Perhaps this dark continent was seen by the Lord as a suitable hiding place for these giant creations.”
Wait, you mean he acknowledges that there been now proof (other than “sightings” and folklore) that dinosaurs are roaming the jungles of Africa (and that, significantly) the type of dinosaur he’s looking for hasn’t even left any bones behind except in America . . . but then he comes up with this crazy idea that God is playing an elaborate game of hide-and-seek with this one particular species of dino? And I suppose hiding all the modern-day bones and carcasses as well? If he wanted to obscure the facts here, he would have been better of not mentioning that Apatosaurs not only don’t seem to exist anywhere in the world today, but that the only known bones have only been found on the other side of the world from the continent (Africa) that he’s looking for live Apatosaurs on.
Everyone one of his statements simply opens up a new can of worms for himself to chew on, but then he breezes past it into the next amazingly insane comment.
Anyway, some of his stuff seemed a little crazy (and whiny for an explorer, since he says things like “I longed for the Christian-built highway systems of home), but I continued reading, assuming that while his extraneous commentary might be a bit out-there, his factual report on the exploration might still be sound.
That is, until the end of the article, when he gets in a fist-fight with an English Hemingway/Indiana Jones stock-character parody figure named Stubbingwicke who tries to shoot the dinosaur so he can hide the remains in order to keep the world from discovering that evolution is a lie perpetrated by the likes of the National Center for Science Education and the Smithsonian.
Luckily, a stock-character from a 1940s Tarzan movie (a superstitious villager named Johnny who acts as a My Boy Friday guide and translator) is able to pop off a blurry photograph that undeniably proves that a native should never be sent to take a photograph because it will turn out so distorted that it will prove nothing and call into question whether Photoshop was used or if in fact the photographer merely decided to swing his camera around while taking a picture of a green plastic couch.
Oh, but wait! A Chinese scientist was also there and also saw the dinosaur . . . but he forgot to take a picture. Instead, he drew the most adorable little cartoon of the dino in a cave. At last, the theory of evolution has been proved false, cries Dr. Paley.
Oh, and thanks to the power of the Good Lord, the aging Dr. Paley is able to not only stop the burly Stubbingwicke from shooting the dino, but he also manages to beat him to the ground with his bare fists until the pith-helmet wearing, gun-toting Stubbingwicke has to give up in defeat (surly his evil Smithsonian masters won’t be happy about this).
It’s an incredible work of fiction, really. Quite hilarious. If any sane Christian reads this stuff, they’ll certainly either (a) go insane, or (b) become an atheist.
Personally, although I believe in the freedom of speech, I think the Dr. Paley articles either need to be clearly marked as fiction (or parody) or need to be removed from the internet, since it worries me that some unsuspecting 10-year-olds might end up basing research papers on this stuff and will then go directly into a life of crime (or politics). I don’t want to limit the guy’s speech, it just bugs me when the internet is used to spread misinformation. It clogs the search engines. Label it as “opinion” and I’m fine with it… but this is trying to disguise itself as fact, which is basely evil. At the same time, though, this is more than an article of opinion — because if all the Stubbingwicke stuff is for real, then I’ll eat my shoe.
If it’s a joke, then it’s very funny stuff — but I don’t think it is, because the website hosting it (objective.jesussave.us) seems to actually only link to other fundamentalist sites. In fact, the site’s main objective is to shut down the satiric (and often very funny) Landover Baptist website: (www.landoverbaptist.org). Unless this is just an even more elaborate hoax by the Landover people — but I don’t think it is.
NOTE: MacObserver poster “wsmiii” did make this interesting observation:
“An immediate giveaway of the hoax nature of the site was the name “Richard Paley” on this anti-evolution page. *William* Paley was the author of the most famous instance of the ‘argument from design’: the encounter with an exquisitely designed pocket watch, which demands of its admirer the conclusion that the watch had a maker. Paley’s argument in turn became the starting point for Richard Dawkins’ book “The Blind Watchmaker.”
However, if the similarities in the names does draw suspect, it does not prove anything. Although it may read like parody to the balanced mind, I don’t think it’s intended as such. The “Dr. Paley” name may be a clue that the writer of these articles is using a pseudonym, however, to lend credibility to his writing by sounding like a name similar to a name that people may feel sounds familiar, and therefore credible. I may be wrong about this, so if any else has info on Dr. Richard Paley (Comedian? Christian? Writer of bad fiction?), let me know (remember, as stated above, the guy whose work Richard Dawkins has debunked was Dr. William Paley, not Dr. Richard Paley … I’ve found no proof thus far that Dr. Richard Paley is real, although his articles seem to pop up in a variety of places online… each one more ridiculous that the next).
SEE:
Dinosaur Expedition 2002
http://objective.jesussave.us/dinoexpedition.html
May 23rd, 2004 at 1:28 am
Tano,
What I don’t understand is how you can say in your first posting that you don’t know or care if there’s a God, and then in your second posting say there is not a God when you said, “There was a time when I’ve read the Bible, Koran, Torah, some Buddhist and Hindu writings, to try and find a reason for all this faith, to try and find a God. And there is none.” Then, later in your second posting, again you say there may be one. Again I say that you cannot know that there isn’t a God, but you can know that there is. Why would someone want to try to disprove God when it can already be proven that there is one (see my first posting directed to you)?
“You talk of evolution as if it is truth, and if evolution occurred, there would then be no God.” Perhaps I did not make this clear. I meant that you talk of evolution as if it is truth. My comment to that (not what you said) is that if evolution had occurred, then the God of the Bible would not exist. Also, in hell, people are not covered in salt. They are salted with fire, not salt. That may have been another misunderstanding.
Let’s take a look at your quote: “Christianism doesn’t just encourage stupidity, it even preaches it.” What is the meaning of this statement that was pulled out of thin air? Also, what exactly do you mean when you say “mental stability” in your last sentence. Obviously, your definition of mental stability must be completely different from mine. If everything is a product of chance, then your opinion is no better than mine, because there would be no foundation for truth. Since you believe in evolution, meaning everything is a product of chance, then you cannot say that your opinion of mental stability is the right one, being that there’s no foundation for right and wrong. Since my definition of mental stability, and of right and wrong, is founded in the Bible, in God’s definition, then I can truthfully state that my (God’s) definition of mental stability is superior to all others, because it is not just a matter of opinion at that point. “Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. (Colossians 3:2)” “You (God) will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You. (Isaiah 26:3)”
You said evolutionism is the mind and represented by people that think. You implied that there are people, I expect you mean creationists, who refuse to think. You said, “It’s the easy way, I believe you, but it does you no good.” Why did you say you believe me that it’s the easy way? I never said and don’t even believe it because it might be an easy way. I believe it, because God is the One who knows everything there is to know about anything, and He has always been there; therefore, I trust that He knows how He created the universe. Creation is also the only scientific way the world could have come about. All evidence is in favor of special creation, and it is represented by people that “think” about the evidence. Evolutionists do not know how to think about the evidence, and so they make something up in their minds and report it as if it is truth. I know this, because I see them ignoring the actual evidence and trusting in their made-up beliefs, because they think they can escape from God. If you believe so strongly that evolution occurred, give me evidence from the so-called “scientists” that “think”. You cannot give evidence, because there isn’t any. Darwin wrote that if his hypothesis was true, then there should be tons of transitional forms found. What he is implying is that if none are found, his hypothesis would not be correct. Well, we find fossils of all the animals we see around us, but we don’t find anything in between. Now, why do you think we haven’t? You said in your first posting that it is because we have only been here ten thousand years, which, in itself, sounds like more than enough time to find at least one. You said that in time’s mainstream, that’s nothing. It doesn’t matter about the fraction of man’s existence in comparison to the age of the rest of the universe. The point is that ten thousand years is plenty of time to find one, but no one has. They do, however, find fossils of all other animals. Consider this statement of Darwin’s: “I was a young man with unformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time over everything; and to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion out of them!” H.S. Lipson, a Professor of Physics at the University of Manchester, UK, said, “In fact, evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to ‘bend’ their observations to fit in with it.” Science magazine reported, “Shells from living snails were carbon dated as being 27,000 years old” (vol.224, 1984), and I explain why carbon dating is not accurate in my first posting. Sir Arthur Keith, who wrote the foreword to Darwin’s 100th edition of Origin of the Species, said, “Evolution is unproved and unprovable.” We believe it only because the only alternative is special creation….” The famous British journalist and philosopher, Malcolm Muggeridge, stated, “I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution, especially the extent to which it’s been applied, will be one of the great jokes in history books of the future.” Dr. T.N. Tahmisian of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission said, “Scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life are great con-men, and the story they are telling may be the greatest hoax ever. In explaining evolution, we do not have one iota of fact.” Even Time magazine admits, “Scientists concede that their most cherished theories are based on embarrassingly few fossil fragments and that huge gaps exist in the fossil record” (November 7, 1977). You said that evolutionism is for people that need to see things for themselves, but you have yet to provide any evidence at all that evolution is true. No one needs to see things for themselves in order to believe something. Everyone has faith. You cannot live without faith. Tomorrow morning, try going to the table and eating breakfast without faith. Check the chair before you sit down to make sure that it was manufactured to be safe for sitting. Before you pour your milk, test it under a microscope to make sure all of the harmful bacteria have been removed. Don’t put your faith in the company that sells it. Then, check the microscope you’re checking it with to make sure it is made correctly. Do the same for your cereal. Then, before you pour the milk in your bowl, make sure the bowl is leak-proof. No one ever lives without faith, so you cannot say that anyone has to see things for themselves. By the way, what do they see when they look at evolution? Do they see anything? Do they see evolution for themselves? Do they see transitional forms, ape-men, rocks with tags telling their age, the geologic column, an increase in information in genes, or anything giving the slightest hint of evolution? If they do, tell me what it is. Look in the encyclopedia, for example. Under fossils, it says, “Scientists determine when fossils were formed by finding out the age of the rocks in which they lie. (World Book 1988)” Now look under paleontology. It states, “The age of rocks may be determined by the fossils in them. (World Book 1988)” This is an example of circular reasoning. If the fossils date the rocks, and the rocks date the fossils, there is a fallacy in their dating system. There is a so-called ape-man, Nebraska man, that many have believed to be authentic. All scientists found of this specimen was a tooth, and they created on paper two entire prehistoric people from this one tooth. Later, they found out that this tooth was actually that of a pig’s, and those same pigs still live in Africa today. The horse series, though many think it is almost complete, is unmistakably false. The number of ribs in the horses from beginning to end jumps from eighteen to nineteen, down to fifteen, and back up to eighteen in the “evolution” of the horse. Pieces were collected from all over the world to form what they call the “horse series”, and the “oldest” horse, Eohippus, actually resembles the rock rabbit, which is still alive in Africa today. Plus, the modern day horses are found alongside and beneath their “ancestors” that they supposedly evolved from. Those who have to “see things for themselves” see nothing in support of their conjecture of evolution.
When you say that Christianity is the way of the slave, the way of the lower life form that needs a creator to give him life, food, and punishment, you talk as if this is something that is true for me, but not true for you. There are two types of truth: subjective truth and objective truth. Subjective truth is truth that is not the same for all people. For example, if I said, “Roast beef is the greatest food on earth,” that is a true statement for me, but it may be completely different for someone else. If you said, “Chicken is the greatest food,” then that is true for you. Both statements would be true, but that type of truth, subjective truth, varies from person to person. There is another type of truth, objective truth, that is truth no matter what someone believes. For example, if I said, “The sun’s light takes about eight minutes to reach the earth,” that would be objective truth; in other words, it is the same no matter what someone believes. If you said, “No, it’s only eight minutes for you, but it’s two minutes for me,” that wouldn’t make any since, and one of them would have to be wrong. They can’t both be right at the same time. “Jesus lived on earth and died on a cross.” That is objective truth. It cannot be different depending on what someone believes. It is either right, or it’s wrong. It can’t be true for someone, and false for someone else. Take for example another objective truth: “Jesus died and rose again.” This is not truth that can vary; it either happened or it didn’t. No matter how much you want to believe that it didn’t happen, that doesn’t change the fact that it happened. Also, just to let you know, there is more historical evidence outside of the Bible that Jesus died and rose again than historical evidence that Julius Caesar ever lived or died, yet, no one questions Caesar’s existence. His resurrection is one of the most proven facts in history. What if I told you that there are magical grapes outside your house, and if you go outside and eat some, you will not have to eat for the rest of this year? Just believe, and it will happen. Would you believe me? Of course not, because no matter how much you believe that they’re there, it does not change the fact that they aren’t there. The Bible cannot be true for someone and not for another. It is objective truth; it is the same for everyone, whether they like it or not. Though, like you said, Christianity is a way of living, it is, however, based on something, the Bible, that is objective truth and cannot be changed, no matter how much you think that you can believe your way out of it.
You keep talking about eternal boredom like it’s really going to be a factor. Don’t you think that if God can create such a magnificent world that you seem to enjoy so much, that he could create an even better place (Heaven) than what you see here? He is the same God, so don’t you think He knows how to create what we like? “There are also heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one, and the glory of the earthly is another (1 Corinthians 15:40).” Now, in hell, there won’t be eternal boredom, because no one will have time to be bored in the eternal suffering. In addition, the Bible never speaks of eternal boredom, and you have only conjured that up in your mind. In Heaven, there are many mansions where people will live, there will be a table to feast at, there will be streets of gold, and it will be a perfect world. If it is a perfect world, there will be no boredom. I think the only reason that you seem to worry so much about eternal boredom is because you seem to be very familiar with being bored here on earth. You told me the only reason you posted what you did was out of boredom, so get up and do something for your own good. Being bored is a boring thing. If you’re bored, go study the Bible, go visit a church, go do something productive. =================
You questioned me on how your soul can gnash its teeth, shed tears, etc. By the way, it is the spirit that lives for eternity, not the soul. When you die, the Bible says that you will be given a new body. In 1 Corinthians 15:42b, it states, “It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body.” It continues in 15:44, “it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.” In 15:46, it says, “However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural; then the spiritual.” You will have a different body, as the Bible clearly states several times. The spirit will not be without a body. Notice it says spiritual “body”. That is how there will be gnashing of teeth, shedding of tears, and pain in hell. In Heaven, there is also a new body. You won’t be living as just a spirit by itself. You will have a body to live in.
You talk about Christianity being a religion, but you don’t see your own strange religion. First, let me make it clear that Christianity is not a religion. Religion is man’s self-righteous efforts to reach God or, in the case of evolution, efforts not to reach him. In Jesus Christ, however, it was God that reached down to man. Christianity is opposite of religion. It is a relationship with Jesus Christ. You don’t get into Heaven by the good deeds you have done, which is what religion is all about. Religion is when people try to do good to reach God (except for evolution, which tries not to reach him), but Christianity is God reaching out to man. Your religion is much like that of an evolutionist’s; you believe in evolution, trying to ignore God in the best way possible. It is your belief, your religion, your efforts to escape from God. You seem to hope that religion will sometime die, which really means that Christianity will be the only thing that stands. Religions ceasing to exist will not take away Christianity, which is not a religion. What you don’t understand is that if religions “expire”, everyone would be a Christian. Everyone either has a religion, or they have Christianity, and one cannot live without one or the other. Evolution is a religion, but Christianity is a relationship (God reaching out to man instead of vice versa), so it would actually be a wonderful thing if religion someday expires. That’s one thing I agree with you about. If religion ever expired, Christianity would become the only faith..
Robin,
I do, in fact, believe in microevolution (variation within kinds). In my first posting, I actually talked about it to use against the idea of macroevolution. Microevolution is actually a creationist belief, as stated in Genesis. It’s just variation within a kind. This is observable, so I have no reason to doubt that. This is, though, like you stated, not evidence of one organism changing into another.
The fruit fly that you use as “proof” of evolution is only an example of microevolution (variation within kinds). Even though they are on the verge of becoming two different species, they are still of the same kind. The fruit fly that seems to be becoming a new species has lost information and has not gained any. All of the genes you see in that fruit fly were already there to begin with. There is no new information, which is required for macroevolution. Certain fruit flies with certain characteristics just kept reproducing, passing their characteristics on to their offspring. Eventually, the fruit flies have become different and almost a new species, because they have lost much of the original information, which is backwards of what evolutionism requires. There has been no gain in information; you can check that out for yourself. If that’s the best evidence that evolutionists can come up with, then evolutionists are not getting very deep into their studies, and they are only looking at the outward appearance of the fruit flies. You said that it’s becoming a new species, because the types of fruit flies will no longer mate. Well, neither do German Shepherds and Chihuahuas mate, but they are still dogs, they have always been dogs, and they will always be just dogs. The fruit flies are still fruit flies, they have always been fruit flies, and they will always be just fruit flies. You said that if this isn’t evolution, then you don’t know what is. It is so clear that this is not evolution, but rather evidence against evolution, because they’re losing information. The reason you don’t know of any other evolution is because there simply is none.
Last of all, you are comparing the “half eye” statements to the formation of a baby’s eyes. The information for making eyes is already there in a baby, so evolutionism of the eye really has nothing to do with how a baby’s eyes form. Now that I have shown that the “evolution” that scientists see is a decline in information, the genes for “light sensors” couldn’t even come about in the first place. The genes would have had to have already been there for the light sensors; however, let’s just pretend for a moment that these sensors somehow, out of nowhere, came into being. Next, the question is HOW the sensors became more and more sensitive when there were no genes for light sensitive cells to begin with. Why and how did they become more sensitive? If it’s because it would be easier for them to live with more sensitive sensors, then I can seriously say that since we as humans have to brush our teeth so many times in our life, then sometime, over millions of years, we will eventually have our own built in toothbrush on our hand. That’s really how ridiculous the hypothesis of evolution is. If it’s living fine without the sensors, then why on earth did it have to grow light sensors? It couldn’t have without already having the genes for it. For someone to believe in the evolution of the eye, or any macroevolution for that matter, they must believe that genes with brand new information somehow just appeared. Not only that, but that they were good genes that actually helped the organism rather than harmed it. If mutations is all that evolution takes, then there would never be increase in information, only rearranging of limited genes. The giraffe has a heart that is exactly the right size, because the Creator knew it had to be that way. If evolution were true, what size heart did the giraffe start out with. If it was a small heart, the giraffe species would have died out in the first generation. It would have had to start out with a big heart, which, even if it was scientifically possible, would have to have occurred from having the exact right genes, which came from nowhere, and the chance of that happening would have been zero. How could the “link” between fish and amphibians have crawled out on land to lay its eggs? Did it have gills, which would allow only about two minutes on land before death, or did it have lungs, which wouldn’t be able to live underwater? Why in the world would it have decided to come lay its eggs on land after so many years of laying them in the water? If he had gills, it would have been torture to come lay the eggs out on land. If it had lungs, it would not have been born of a fish; even if it had been born of a fish, it would have drowned. The point is that it wouldn’t have come out on land to lay its eggs; therefore, there would not have been any “evolutionary pressure” for it to change. If it had lungs, it would be the only one of its kind. It could not live in the water, and it would be the only one on land; therefore, once he died, his species would be gone.
The Bible says in 2 Peter 3:5-6 that in the last days, people will willfully deny that God sent a worldwide Flood. This is exactly what evolutionists are doing, and they may not know it, but they are accidentally fulfilling the Bible’s prophecies. “For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water. (2 Peter 3:5-6)”
Now I will talk to the unknown author of the carbon dating posting. You stated what carbon dating is, and I believe you about how they date it. What I have been trying to say is that there is a huge amount of guesswork, which you may not have even known of, that goes into radiometric dating. One cannot know how much of the “daughter” element the sample originally contained, how much of the “parent” element entered or escaped the sample during the decay process, or how much of the “daughter” element entered or escaped the sample during the decay process. Scientists try to make “reasonable” guesses to answer these very important questions. Reasonable guesses, to evolutionary scientists, are made with evolution in mind. That’s why they come out with evolutionary dates! Circular reasoning enters once again into “science”. The assumption of evolution is used to answer the various important questions, so how does one expect to get a young-earth age out of that? Radiometric dating is based very much on a person’s opinions; radioactive dates are largely determined by the assumptions of the person doing the dating. Like I said before, even when evolutionary assumptions are made, ninety percent of the ages aren’t even consistent with the evolutionary hypothesis. There is a huge amount of evidence for a young earth. Virtually every biological specimen shows measurable signs of carbon-14 levels, effectively limiting the age of all buried biota to less than 250,000 years, and that is a maximum date.
Certain crystals called zircons contain uranium which has partly decayed into lead. Some scientists estimate that the decay rate has been constant in zircons, so they claim that about 1.5 billion years must have passed. This is consistent with the age assigned to the granite where the zircons are found. However, when uranium decays into lead, it gives off helium. Over 1.5 billion years, which is the age assigned to the zircon’s granite in which it was found, the helium should be almost, if not completely, gone. There is, though, a significant proportion of helium still inside the zircons. Based on this fact, by measuring the rate at which helium escapes, the granite is dated at the young age of no more than 14,000 years old. This data has since been refined, updating the age to 5680 (plus or minus 2000) years.
Tano,
I have just one more question. How do you know that the T-Rex wasn’t an herbivore? The camel has ferocious-looking teeth, having the appearance of being a predator and carnivore, yet it is an herbivore. It will only eat meat, or pretty much anything, if vegetation is very scarce. The T-Rex’s teeth are also good for eating large melons, gourds, coconuts, and large hard seed pods. The T-Rex, if it ever was carnivorous, most likely would not have fought with live prey. Its gigantic teeth, ranging from six to eight inches in length, only go one inch into the gums. If T-Rex tried to fight with an animal using its teeth, its teeth would have been pulled out. If it was a carnivore, it would have probably only fed on dead animals. If they did only eat animals that they found dead, how many would they really be likely to find? They probably ate plants in addition to dead organisms.
Chris,
The fact that evolutionists don’t have all the answers means that there is a possibility that they could be wrong with the whole unsubstantiated hypothesis of evolution. When comparing creationist views and evolutionist views to the scene of a car accident, evolutionists and creationists have the exact same evidence. Creationists do not just dismiss the evidence that there is a wrecked car, they just interpret it differently than evolutionists. What many people don’t realize is that evidence doesn’t speak for itself; it has to be interpreted. They may have a different belief based on the evidence than the evolutionists do, but none of them saw it happen. Creationists don’t dismiss evidence or facts. Evolutionists claim things that are scientifically impossible, while the creationists view agrees completely with science. Why would someone claim that the car wrecked in a way that doesn’t even agree with science when there is a much more scientific way of explaining the wreck? In addition, creationists know of a witness. It is God, a perfect Witness, and that’s why we choose to listen to the Witness that we have. The evolutionists, however, willingly refuse to believe the perfect Witness and cling to their unscientific conjecture.
May 23rd, 2004 at 1:30 am
You see, here’s the deal with the innacuracy of C-14 dating. Yes it is a relatively innacurate process. The margin of error is sometimes as great as tens of thousands of years. However, when the date is question is 100 million years, 20 thousand years either way doesn’t make a whole lot of difference. You also neglect to mention that most scientists do NOT report C-14 Dating results as 100% correct. They realize that it is an imperfect process and report results with a margin of error (1.5 million yr +/- 10,000 years for example).
May 23rd, 2004 at 1:30 am
Daniel,
You are obviously a highly, intelligent young man that is well-read on the topic of creation and evolution. You do an outstanding job of conveying the truth and evidence to those who have been brain washed to blindly accept the absurd concept of evolution. The very man who thought it up, didn’t believe it himself! Too bad that scientists latched on to it as an excuse for their existence, but for them it is an escape goat as to ignore the very presence of God. The fact is, if they were to believe in God, they would then have to face themselves, take a good look in the mirror at their sinful lives, and this they are too fearful to do. If they could only know that the very God that they are ignoring loves them, is ready to forgive them, and gives them the very breath they breathe, and with it they curse and deny Him. However, we are not surprised by the false teachings that are posted here, for God already knew of this and spoke of it in His word, “For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God, or give thanks; but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four footed animals and crawling creatures. Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, that their bodies might be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.” Romans 1:21-25
No matter how many thousands of words that we all throw out here, there will come that final day when Jesus returns from the heavens, and every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. The Bible’s prophecies have come true and are coming true even in our current world-wide conflicts. It is written, “But immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken, and then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the SON OF MAN COMING ON THE CLOUDS OF THE SKY with power and great glory. And He will send forth His angels with a great trumpet and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other….But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone. For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. For as in those days which were before the flood they were eating and drinking, they were marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so shall the coming of the Son of Man be. Then there shall be two men in the field; one will be taken, and one will be left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken, and one will be left. Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming. But be sure of this, that if the head of the house had known at what time of the night the thief was coming, he would have been on the alert and would not have allowed his house to be broken into. For this reason you be ready too; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will.” Matthew 24:29-43
Just as the nonbelievers laugh and mock at the truth of creation and the fact that He is returning to gather those who love and serve Him, so was it in the days of Noah, as the nonbelievers laughed and mocked at the idea of building a giant boat and expecting a flood. Today’s scenario, there could be two men stocking Wal-mart shelves, one is taken, one is left. There could be two people typing online, one could be typing foolishness and lies, one professing God’s word, one will be taken, one will be left.
“And in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat.” Genesis 6:4.
“An expedition is being planned for this summer to the upper reaches of Turkey’s Mount Ararat where organizers hope to prove an object nestled amid the snow and ice is Noah’s Ark. A joint U.S.-Turkish team of 10 explorers plans to make the arduous trek up Turkey’s tallest mountain, at 17,820 feet, from July 15 to August 15, subject to the approval of the Turkish government, said Daniel P. McGivern, president of Shamrock- The Trinity Corporation of Honolulu, Hawaii.”
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/04/26/noah.ark.ap/ (CNN.com)
God’s word states that he created the heavens and earth. “And God created the great sea monsters, and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them saying, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” (Notice He didn’t say, ‘Be fruitful and evolve.) And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day Then God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind”; and it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good.” Genesis 1:21-24
If you want to be one of the elect that Jesus takes with Him when He returns, just confess to God that He is God, the creator of all heaven and earth, that Jesus is the son of God, confess your sins to Him, ask Him to forgive you, and ask Him to come into your heart. You don’t have to have elaborate words, for He already knows what is in your heart before you ever ask. Decide to live a life pleasing to Him by reading life’s instruction manual that He gave to us, the Bible, and apply it to your life the best that you can. He will help you. No one is perfect, and He knows that, but God is a loving and forgiving God. Life is not promised to be without struggles, but God refines us through trial, for we rely on Him during the tough times. If you take these steps of faith, your life will be changed, filled with love, peace, and joy (a richness that no one can take from you) Find a Christian church to attend and find Christian friends to help you walk in your new faith. Read your Bible and talk to the Lord (pray), and pretty soon you’ll have something refreshing to post online.
Daniel, thank you for taking the time to share with us your knowledge of the Bible and science. Your words are full of truth and the Lord is pleased when we honor Him. Keep up the good work.
Inez
May 23rd, 2004 at 9:26 am
Jay,
You said that the dates can get only about tens of thousands of years off when radiometric dating; however, the dates are much more off than that. To begin with, I just stated that all buried biota cannot be anymore than 250,000 years old at maximum, because there is still measurable amounts of C-14 in virtually all dead organisms. This alone should be enough to show that there is an extreme problem with the dating method. If that is not enough to prove this, then here are just a few examples. A volcano erupted about 900 years ago. This was dated using radiometric dating at 210,000 to 230,000 years. Another volcano erupted about three hundred years ago and was dated at 485,000 years. Vulcan’s Throne, a volcano in the Grand Canyon, erupted only within the last few thousand years; however, the mineral olivine contained within the lava was dated at 117 plus or minus three million years, thus falsifying your statements. Consider another test run on historic lava flows in Hawaii. Rocks from the Kaupelehu Flow, Hualalai Volcano, known to have erupted in 1800-1801, were dated with dates ranging from 140 million years to 2.96 billion years! The dates actually average 1.41 billion years! Mt. Kilauea on Hawaii erupted lava into the deep ocean, and scientists believe it is probably less than 200 years old. The ages drawn from radiometric dating gave an age of 21 plus or minus eight million years. At a shallower place in the ocean, the same lava was dated at twelve plus or minus two million years. The same lava in even shallower water was dated at zero years. There are so many more examples of this, but I think this is enough to show that there are very serious, major problems with this method of dating.
May 23rd, 2004 at 4:37 pm
This Daniel guy sure knows how to say it!
May 24th, 2004 at 1:49 am
I won’t even bother to continue with this sharade. That’s the last you hear from me, so don’t bother to respond, i already deleted the link anyway. I’m glad to know that, eventually, you people will die out, with your “beliefs” and all. I truly hope that i will catch the end of the human’s need to believe in something, although i doubt it. Maybe my children, or grandchildren will.
Darwin knew almost nothing. He saw some things, and reached to some conclusions. All “creationist scientists” (this is similar to “military inteligence”, or “microsoft works”) take on him and his ideas, but he was the first one. He was wrong with many of his theories. I think that the only think he was right with was the fact of evolution itself. Not the processes of it, or anything else.
Also, those great “scientists” you quoted, are almost the same ones that said that “electricity… it won’t catch”, or that “flight with objects heavier than air is impossible”. In any field of science, there is an age from whitch you cannot produce anymore results. In my field of work the age is 35 years, after whitch the former programmer cannot work efficiently anymore. New ideas cannot be learned that easy, the man tends to keep to his old technology. That is also the fact with science. Around 35 years of age, the human brain stops learning, and starts to deteriorate. The process is long, but still, the learning processes are slow or none. All old scientists are against new ideas. And all scientists that you quoted were old.
About J.C. I never said anything about him. But in any case, your side is the wrong one, even if he lived or not. If he didn’t live, you believe in a myth. If he lived your entire church is guilty of not following his precepts, and worse, killing people in his name.
Puah, you people make me sick.
May 24th, 2004 at 8:21 am
As my final comment:
C-14 dating is not accurate within the past 500 years or so. While the decay of C-14 is almost linear before the 1500’s, there were two spikes in recent history: The Industrial Revoultion and the Nuclear Age in the 1950’s. These spikes in the background levels of C-14 make it impossible to chart the half-life accurately and therefore creat the errors you have described. Also, after abour 8000 years the levels of C-14 become almost impossible to differentiate from the background radiation levels. That leaves the range of C-14 dating from 6500 BC to 1500 AD.
There are other dating processes however, using elements with longer half-lives. C-14 has a half-life of about 800 years. Elements like Strontium and Uranium have much, much longer half-lives, on the order of tens of thousands of years. These elements are the ones that are used to date materials from very long ago, not C-14. Some of these dating processes do not even require the original ammount of the element to be caculated for the date to be determined. These methods are also more accurate than C-14. So before creationists bash the dating methods, they should learn which one has been used and the limitations of each method that the scientific community themselves have identified.
May 24th, 2004 at 9:16 pm
Tano,
I do recognize, as you have said, that Darwin’s original hypothesis has been changed over the years. You said that the list of scientists that were believers in special creation that I gave were all old scientists; yet, does that mean they could not be right? It’s absolutely ridiculous to say that all old scientists (the ones that brought about modern science) were against new ideas. If they were against new ideas, they would have never been successful as scientists. They are the scientists who brought science to where it is today, so to say that they were wrong because they were old would be like saying that John Fleming (a creationist) was wrong about electronics just because he was old at one time. It’s like saying that Newton was wrong about the laws of motion and the law of gravitation, because he became old. Those were all new ideas, but the scientists weren’t against them. The scientists were young at one time, yet they were creationists. By the way you stated that, it sounds as if they might have been right about special creation when they were young, but since they grew old, and still believed in it, special creation must be false. Age has nothing to do with the fact that they were right or wrong. In fact, if scientists that grew old are wrong just because they lived to be old, then one must believe that when Darwin became old, his hypothesis would have had to be wrong, because he believed it when he was old. Darwin wrote The Origin of Species at around the age of fifty and first presented his theories on evolution to a meeting of scientists at about the age of 49. That’s over the age of thirty-five, which you said is the age when people stop learning and can’t accept new ideas; thus, according to your statements, Darwin must have been wrong, because his mind could not think up new ideas. If the scientists of the past were wrong about special creation because they believed it in their old age, then why would Darwin not be wrong, because he lived to be old, too. Your statements have no foundation and are impossible to be true, because if they were true, they would falsify both creation and evolution, which cannot be. Either evolution is true, or creation is true. They can’t both be false or true at the same time.
You said the creationist scientists were ALMOST the same ones who said, “electricity…it won’t catch” and “flight with objects heavier than air is impossible.” Do you think that creationists such as Michael Faraday (founder of electromagnetics), John A. Fleming (founder of electronics), or Benjamin Franklin (who discovered electricity in the first place) were the ones that said, “electricity…it won’t catch,”? Tell me the scientist(s) from the list that I gave that said, “flight with objects heavier than air is impossible.” Isaac Newton (a creationist) actually set forth a basic theory of air resistance. The Wright brothers, who were also special creationists, studied God’s design of living fliers to learn how to fly objects heavier than air.
Also, (not that this has anything to do with anything, except for the fact that you said it) to say that someone stops learning or cannot produce any more results at a certain age is subjective truth. In other words, it may be true for someone, but not true for someone else. It is not objective truth, but it can vary from person to person.
You are right that, unfortunately, Christians (as well as everyone in existence) are guilty of failing many times to follow Jesus Christ’s teaching. Christians, however, recognize their sin and repent. They try to turn from their wicked ways and do good. Non-Christians willingly fail to see their sin and to repent. They then have no reason to turn from evil. Though everyone is guilty of sin, there is forgiveness in Jesus. That’s the whole reason why Jesus even came, to save us from our own sins. If we completely followed Jesus’ teachings, we would be completely perfect and not even in need of a Savior. We are born into sinful bodies, because that is the curse upon us for our rebellion against God. Since we are sinful-natured, we cannot perfectly follow Jesus’ commands, but we can strive for perfection, ask for forgiveness, and turn from evil.
You mentioned more than once about Christians “killing people in (Jesus’) name”. I don’t know what you’re even talking about, but if so-called “Christians” have murdered people in Jesus’ name, they are not Christians, but merely pretenders. A true Christian would never murder someone in Jesus’ name; only a pretender would do something like that. No Christian has ever murdered someone in Jesus’ name like you say, because if someone is a true Christian, Jesus lives inside of them, and Jesus does not murder.
In the game of life, there are two choices you can make.
1. Accept God – If you win, you win everything. If you lose, you lose nothing.
2. Reject God – If you win, you win nothing. If you lose, you lose everything.
As you look at the results of winning and losing for both choices, which one looks like the best choice? Anyone in their right mind would choose number one, of course, unless they only care about the present and nothing for their future.
There are four major reasons that the Bible is completely true:
1. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of the most certain facts of history. (As I said, there is more evidence to prove that Jesus rose from the dead than there is evidence that Julius Caesar ever lived or died.)
2. The people and places of the Bible are verified by history and archaeology.
3. Miracles serve as means of authenticating divine revelation.
4. The Bible is the only holy book substantiated by supernatural prophecy (many of which are coming true to this very day).
Jay,
In my last posting, I wasn’t talking just about carbon-14 dating. Those were all examples of dates given by the potassium-argon method. The proof that these types of dating methods can’t possibly be right is what I have already stated: there is too much helium in the rocks (which disagrees with the old-earth dates given by the uranium-lead method) and too much carbon-14 in dead organisms. If some of the daughter material is present at the start of a rock’s life, then the rock would already appear old when it had actually just formed. It is impossible to know that the parent and daughter elements have not lost or gained any of the elements. As I have said before, evolutionists make evolutionary assumptions when dating rocks and ignore facts such as the great amount of helium left in the rocks, etc. The dates acquired through evolutionary assumptions (circular reasoning) don’t agree with any type of science. Oceans aren’t salty enough to be very old, the air does not have enough helium, the rocks contain too much helium, dead organisms have C-14, the earth’s magnetic field decays so fast that it could be no more than 10,000 years old (in less than half a million years, it would have been completely gone), the moon is way too close to the earth, the moon’s dirt is much too shallow, and no evidence has been found for evolution or an old earth so far. If the evolutionists were to gather all of their conjured-up “evidence” for evolution from all over the earth, it would easily fit into a coffin, and there would be room to spare. In fact, they should put the entire evolutionary unsubstantiated hypothesis into one little coffin and bury it for good. Evolution has never had evidence and still doesn’t have evidence. The conjecture of evolution exists only because people want so badly to escape from responsibility to God.
May 25th, 2004 at 8:10 pm
Wow Daniel! God is really pleased with you! You keep on telling the truth! DON’T GIVE UP!!!!!
May 25th, 2004 at 8:14 pm
GO DANIEL! GO DANIEL!! GOOOO!!!!!!!!!!
June 17th, 2004 at 11:11 am
To all, be ye Creationist/Evolutionist/or Atheist…
All the arguments are well thought out and researched, alot of background has been provided, much appreciated.
But in all truth, you weren’t there, none of us ever will be, and everything is supposition because every “detail” is merely a piece of information retrieved from someone else and not your experience.
Everything in the Bible is a blown up and handed down from too long ago, which very effectively equates itself to nothing more than a CampFire story about the “Boogey Man”.
If you disagree with my thought, just take this example…
Line 30 people in a row and whisper a story to the first one, then tell them to repeat it to the next and so on. Compare the story at the end of the line with what was originally told, see how many discrepancies there are. This is with only 30 people. Now just imagine what grandiose tales can be spun thru the re-tellings of Bible Stories by thousands of glossy-eyed zealots and fanatics over this amount of time?
Really, folks, wake up and give your collective heads a shake. “God” as you have created him in your weakened image is dead. You murdered him. And the tools you used were the lack of respect for your fellow people’s ideals, and the bile you so fervently throw at any who think unlike you.
Good Day, if you can find it in yourself to have one without “God’s” help, I love you all.
D. Evil
June 18th, 2004 at 9:24 am
As I can see, your conclusions of the Bible and its accuracy are clearly not thought out or researched at all. Let’s take a look at the Bible compared to other works of antiquities. We have ten copies of Caesar’s writings, with the earliest copy being written 1,000 years after the original writings. Plato’s writings have only seven copies, the earliest copy being written 1,200 years after the first writings of Plato. Thucydides has only eight copies, the earliest copy being written 1,300 years after the original. Aristotle has only 49 copies, the earliest one being written an entire 1,400 years after Aristotle’s originals. Now, let’s take a look at the New Testament. The earliest copy was written only twenty-five years after the eyewitnesses wrote the originals, and there are over 24,000 copies. If you can just throw out the New Testament like it’s unreliable, then I take that you must also throw out the writings of Caesar, Livy, Plato, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, Thucydides, Suetonius, Herodotus, Horace, Sophocles, Lucretius, Catullus, Euripides, Demosthenes, Aristotle, Aristophanes, and basically every other writing from the past (including the Declaration of Independence along with the Constitution of the United States), because none even begin to compare with the New Testament. The work of antiquity that comes the closest to that of the New Testament is Homer’s Iliad, which has 643 copies in existence with the earliest copy being written five hundred years after the originals. It seems that all of the other copies are made by the thirtieth person in line (compared to your example). The New Testament is in a class all by itself; the copies were made by the first person in line. The Dead Sea Scrolls recorded Isaiah 53 completely word for word except for seventeen letters, which were basically only different spellings, stylistic changes (like added conjunctions), or letters that comprised the word “light”. None of these affect the meaning greatly, if at all, and other than those very minor differences, it was completely the same as the same copy that was written 1,000 years later. The Dead Sea Scrolls helped show the accuracy of the prophecies recorded about Jesus Christ, because the prophecies recorded in the Dead Sea Scrolls in Isaiah were recorded 100 years before Christ, showing that they truly were prophecies. The Bible is the only book that is authenticated with prophecy, all of which has come true or is still to come true. The chance that anyone would have fulfilled all of the prophecies (there were 48 major prophecies) recorded about the Christ was less than one in unquinquagintillion (about 1 times 10 to the 157 power) chance, yet Jesus fulfilled them all. The people and the places of the Bible are or were real places even mentioned in other writings. Abraham’s (originally called Abram) home city of Ur was discovered, and one of the columns had the inscription “Abram”. The city built of solid rock called “Petra” was discovered. The story of the fall of Jericho was found to be historically accurate, because the city found and excavated. It was found that the walls tumbled in the exact manner described in the Bible. Hundreds of references to the Hittite civilization (mentioned in the Bible) have been found; one can even study the civilization at the University of Chicago. King Belshazaar was found to have existed; the tablets of Babylonia describe his reign. There is not one mistake found in the entirety of the Bible. It is the most accurate (perfectly accurate) recording of history in existence. The Old Testament is, along with the New Testament, an extremely reliable document. The Old Testament was copied with such exact precision that they made their copies from authenticated originals letter for letter. Each and every copy had to be made on a brand new writing surface and had to be prepared in a specific way. Each copy had to be written in a certain number of columns of thirty letters width with a certain number of lines to each column. Each copy had to be written in a certain color and quality of ink. Every copy, as I said, had to be made from an authenticated original; therefore, it is not like a whispering game, but more like the first person handing the thirtieth person a manuscript and saying, “Copy this manuscript letter for letter with absolutely no mistakes, and have it be edited so it is completely accurate. If there is one mistake, discard it, and start over.” How many mistakes do you think that thirtieth person would make? When copying books of the Old Testament, not even the tiniest letter could be written from memory. When you copy the word “to”, you might look at the word and write “to” before you look back at the original, but they looked specifically at the “t” and wrote the “t” before glancing back at the “o”. That’s what I mean when I say they copied it letter for letter; every letter was copied singly from the original. No letter could connect with or overlap another letter. The distance between each letter was measured by a single hair or thread. Every letter of every page and book was counted and compared against the original. The number of times each letter of the alphabet occurred in a book was counted and compared against the original. The middle letter of the Pentateuch ( the first five books of the Old Testament) and the middle letter of the entire Hebrew Bible were computed and indicated in the text. If one of these calculations was incorrect, the copy was discarded. With all of that in mind, how accurate do you think that the copies must be? Is there any way to copy something any more accurately? If you can say that the Old Testament and the New Testament are unreliable “campfire” stories, then either you don’t accept any history at all to be reliable, or you are making an unfair statement based upon what you want and don’t want to believe.
June 19th, 2004 at 3:03 pm
Dear Creationists, especially Daniel:
You are not scientists and most of the “scientific” evidence you put forth is patently false. It does your argument no credit when you support it with false and unresearched information. However, when the bible (or books about the bible) is your only reference, you get nowhere because very few scientists base their science on the bible, particularly if they believe in evolution – as evolutionists tend to do, as do nearly all respected scientists.
So, the argument stops there. You ask scientists to accept a document that they absolutely do not accept as substantiated truth. You, on the other hand, accept it as your only truth. Thus, a critical impasse is reached and the potential argument becomes a flame war.
At this point one of two things have to happen. Either you have to open your mind to other ideas that possibly contradict the bible (not likely), or the scientist has to accept God and the bible as the creator and the divine word (also not likely).
I side with the evolutionists. Their evidence is compelling and tangible, and it is evidence that both creationists and evolutionists can see. They also do not talk about the bible and mangle its information the way creationists lie about science.
This subject, in my opinion, is not worth arguing about. A rational man’s time is wasted trying to convince mystics.
Ed
June 20th, 2004 at 7:33 pm
If the subject is “not worth arguing about”, then why are you arguing? Are you a scientist? Have you ever looked at the evidence that you say to be “patently false”? What false evidence are you talking about? Point it out to me. If you have looked at the evidence at all, then tell me what is false about the creationist belief and why. The interpretations of the evidence that evolutionists use are extremely unscientific; it surprises me how many people refuse to take a look for themselves. Any educated person should be able to see the fallacy of evolution; the problem is that they don’t look for themselves at the facts. They just take for granted that what they hear from the world must be true; yet if the world would just take a look, they would understand. What evidence are you talking about that shows goo-to-you evolution? Not yet has even one person given me ANY reason to even begin to consider evolution to be truth, and this is just what I expected, being that there is no truth in evolution. What is the reason that the evolutionists (specifically you) do not accept the Bible as truth? Why would you not accept it, being that there have been no mistakes found in the Bible? What to you is truth? Is it the ideas of men who make mistakes, weren’t there, and whose theories change through the years? If that’s your idea of truth, then I think you need to reconsider.
June 21st, 2004 at 12:51 am
First of all, I was not arguing for or against creationism or evolutionism. I was arguing the point that arguing about creationism or evolutionism is not worth arguing about. That said, I am going to be a hypocrite and respond to your other contentions because, well, I don’t really know why. Maybe I feel the need to impose my beliefs on others . . .
Yes, I am a “scientist”, but not a biologist. I am interested in analytical chemistry, but I’ve been through enough biology to argue the case.
The mechanism of evolution is the mutation. This is where the new material originates. Mutations are random variations in an organism’s genetic material resulting from mistakes in DNA replication, particularly in the production of gametes (sex cells: sperm and egg). An offspring born of the mutated sperm or egg will show the mutation provided it isn’t masked in some way (recessive). Most mutations are disadvantages to the organism; however, occasionally a mutation does occur that gives the organism some advantage over his peers. Mutation introduces new genetic material. Considering that this process takes eons to occur, it is not hard to imagine how speciation or macroevolution may occur with the accumulation of new genetic material and separation of the changed organisms.
Evolution does not say that species evolve in a continuous fashion. It takes a combination of environmental stress, separation, and new/changing genetic material. Evolution is a response to these factors. If a splinter of a population becomes separated from the main population and encounters a new environment to which it isn’t adapted, it has to evolve or die. If a mutation allows it to survive, then the mutation will be passed on to future generations. If this happens enough, then eventually the species will be so different that it will not be able to reproduce with the original population to produce viable offspring and thus speciation has occured. It doesn’t always happen. 99% of the time, the splinter probably dies. However, we’re talking about a process that happens on an awesome timescale.
There is evidence to support speciation. What I just described is a mechanism by which speciation occurs. It is generally accepted among the scientific community. It may be wrong, but the evidence suggesting its validity is compelling.
The history of the earth is a thoroughly researched field. Various data, including elemental dating, the fossil record, and other geological observations, form the pieces of a breathtakingly elegant and consistent history of the earth. For example, dating of the ocean floor reveals that the youngest earth is found along the mid oceanic ridges, getting older towards the continents. This means that new ocean floor is being created, and that the continents are moving: the atlantic ocean is gettin wider and the pacific is getting smaller. The pacific ocean is being overrun by the continents, its crust being dragged back into the mantle at the border of the continents. This explains the abundance of volcanos around the pacific coastline – the “ring of fire” – and the fact that the atlantic coast has a shelf, but i digress. This dating evidence is in agreement with dating of prehistoric fossils found on all continents. A definite evolutionary trend is seen in this record as species occupy different epochs, thriving in some, only to become extinct in another. These are facts, and scientists look at them.
What is false about the creationist belief is that humans were created. Some statements that you made are also false. You wrote,
“Oceans aren’t salty enough to be very old, the air does not have enough helium, the rocks contain too much helium, dead organisms have C-14, the earth’s magnetic field decays so fast that it could be no more than 10,000 years old (in less than half a million years, it would have been completely gone), the moon is way too close to the earth, the moon’s dirt is much too shallow, and no evidence has been found for evolution or an old earth so far.”
Water does not become salty when it gets old. Air does not gain helium as it ages because helium is lost to space. Helium is alpha radiation, so rocks will always have helium content. The rate at which helium leaves rocks is not constant. It is affected by myriad variables, including temperature. I don’t see how dead organisms having C-14 precludes evolutionary theory. C-14 lasts thousands of years. Of course dead organisms have C-14. Do you even know what C-14 is? What does the dirt on the moon have to do with evolution? And how exactly does one measure the depth of dirt on the moon, and does the depth of dirt somehow increase as the moon ages? All of your statements in the preceding paragraph are “patently false.”
I do not take the bible as absolute truth because I have seen the evidence for evolutionary theory, which the Bible rejects. Moreover, there are plenty of mistakes found in the Bible; you just refuse to believe them. My idea of truth is that it never to be attained completely and unequivocally, but always sought. I would sooner put my faith in the work of men seeking the truth than in an ancient book that claims to be infallible. I take comfort in man’s imperfection. Man’s theories change through the years because he is willing to admit when he is wrong, and this is okay. That is why theories are called theories and not facts.
One last thing: you say that the efforts of evolutionary scientists are self-serving because they believe in evolutionary theory from the outset. This is simply not true, and it is insulting to the scientific community which prides itself in impartiality and ethical, fair inquiry. It is fair to ask how christians can conduct fair science when they take their faith as absolute truth. They can’t, because they cannot accept the validity of any evidence they might find that contradicts their notions of how the world works obtained from the bible. Their investigation is biased from the outset. This is what I find most appalling about fundamentalist religious groups. In this way, Daniel, you are no better than the Islamic fundamentalists to condone torture, terrorism, and oppression to further their causes. You refuse to consider any other points of view.
For the record, I have listened and tried to understand christian points of view, but ultimately, my desire to know and not be led blindly would not allow me to pursue that path.
June 21st, 2004 at 8:50 pm
Edward,
Being the scientist that you are, even if you’re not a biologist, I would expect you to already know that science is the study of that which is repeatable. The World Book Encyclopedia says under “Science” that “for any knowledge to be truly scientific, it must be repeatedly tested experimentally and found to be true.” Even now, with all of the technology, not one iota of evidence as been discovered supporting evolution, not one repeatable fact; still no scientific evidence has been presented. Having studied biology, I would also have expected that you would know that no new information is produced through mutations. It is rather the rearranging of already existing and limited information. Scientific American talked about insects such as fruit flies having mutations where legs grew where antennas were supposed to grow and said this: “These abnormal limbs are not functional, but their existence demonstrates that genetic mistakes can produce complex structures, which natural selection can then test for possible uses.” In other words, the abnormal limbs are not functional (useless) and natural selection will test them for possible uses (and it won’t find any uses if its useless). That type of mutation would be a hindrance. However, I do know that there are mutations that, through loss of information, can produce good traits (such as resistance to pestilence). When you talk about new species arising, I agree with that. However, the new species does not have as much genetic information as the species it arose from. Evolution can’t occur when its losing information. Every type of “evidence” that evolutionists try to use for their theory is backwards of what it should be, and if they would just open their eyes, they would see it. What they don’t realize is that their “evidence” is only making their hypothesis of evolution look worse (especially to those who actually use science), and it is actually evidence for creationism. Thank you for encouraging me in my Creation belief.
The fossil record is one of the reasons that I truly do not understand why evolutionists cannot see the truth. First of all, the geologic column is found absolutely nowhere on earth. It is a hypothetical time scale devised by uniformitarians. It is completely made up out of the heads of evolutionists. Second, I find no reason why to even continue to believe in evolution (if it was even possible, which it isn’t) if there is no evidence of transitional forms. How do you explain the Cambrian explosion. The modern day horse is found alongside and beneath its ancestors, humans footprints have been found with dinosaurs, and all of the animals we see today look identical to the ones we find in fossils. I really see no reason at all to believe that everything evolved when you look at the fossils. It would seem to me that evolutionists would be afraid to look at the fossils, seeing that the fossils (including everything else) goes against their beliefs. Even Darwin himself said that if his theory was true, they would find many transitional fossils throughout the fossil record, but not one has ever been found.
The oceans are getting saltier all of the time. The rivers carry salt to the oceans, the waves leave it on the sand. If you take the very minimum input of salt into the oceans and the maximum output, the earth’s age ends up being far too young for evolution. That’s even with the minimum input and maximum output. When you talked about the earth being dated younger at the mid-oceanic ridges and older towards the continents, the question that forms in my mind is this: “By what method did they date them with, what types of guesswork was involved, and what were their guesses.” Most likely, they were evolutionary guesses dated with extremely unreliable methods. Also, and I have said this before, but ninety percent of the dates given using the dating methods aren’t even what the evolutionists are looking for. My other question would be, “What were the other dates given that were not presented to the public.” Why would the salt in the oceans indicate one age, and dating methods give a much different age. One of them has to be wrong, and it would have to be the dating methods by the evolutionists that were wrong, being that it doesn’t agree with the evidence of a young earth in the rest of the world that is so blatantly obvious.
You said, “What is false about the creationist belief is that humans were created.” I don’t see anything wrong with the fact that humans were created, and if you can point something out to me that’s wrong with that, then I’d like to see it. I already knew helium is lost to space, also. I was talking about when they take the rate at which helium is lost to space and the rate at which it enters the atmosphere, it shows an age extremely young within thousands of years. Even if the rate of helium’s entrance and loss from the atmosphere varies from time to time, the date of only thousands of years gives absolutely no possibility that the earth can be very old at all. C-14 is a huge evidence against evolution, because virtually every dead organism (and fossil) has some left. The point is that it can ONLY last for a few thousand years, but then it’s gone. Why then don’t we find animals without C-14 if they are supposed to be millions of years old? Why were there still red blood cells on the dinosaur fossil that was found. Why is C-14 still contained in the fossils of supposed “65 million year old” dinosaurs? It absolutely makes no sense at all in evolutionists’ eyes, but perfect sense in the eyes of creationists. The dirt on the moon helps to show that evolution has helped science in no way whatsoever, but rather hindered it. Evolutionist “scientists” decided to build their lunar lander that landed on the moon by calculating the rate that space dust accumulates on the moon’s surface, and they decided that if the universe was really so extremely old that there should be over a mile of dust accumulated on the moon’s surface. Therefore, they built the lunar lander to withstand the mile of dust and not sink. When they landed it, however, they were in for an embarrassing surprise, and they finally realized that the moon only had a few inches of dust on its surface. You stated, “All of your statements in the preceding paragraph are ‘patently false.’” I doubt it. I really doubt that you did any research at all on those subjects, only relying upon you biased presuppositions.
You also stated, “Moreover, there are plenty of mistakes found in the Bible; you just refuse to believe them.” Point out one to me and show me that you have done your research. The Bible rejects evolution, because evolution is SO unmistakably false. My mind cannot comprehend why in the world anyone would believe such a fairy tale called “evolution” without one piece of evidence or scientific accuracy.
Your concluding irrelevant statements included this: “In this way, Daniel, you are no better than the Islamic fundamentalists to condone torture, terrorism, and oppression to further their causes. You refuse to consider any other points of view.” Since you could not find any evidence or science in favor of the evolutionary conjecture, it appears that you have turned to ad hominem arguments. Islamic fundamentalists have nothing to do with the point in our conversation, so why are you saying it? I have looked at the so-called “evidence” that evolution occurred, and I now realize all of the evidence is for creation and none support evolution at all. If you want to look at science, a belief in evolution would require that you say life came from non-life, which breaks the scientifically proven law (not theory) of biogenesis, which states that life can only come from life. You must also believe that things can move from disorder to order, breaking yet another scientifically proven law (not theory), the second law of thermodynamics.
I thank everyone on this website for their responses. It has helped me grow and learn more evidence for creation. It has helped me to see that it is rather easy to show the evolutionary hypothesis to have no evidence or scientific accuracy. You have helped me to see that even “scientists” along with ordinary evolutionists don’t have all the facts and many can’t even argue intelligent points. It has helped me see how many times they turn to using ad-homonym arguments (attacking the person instead of the subject). Not one person has even still given me any scientific evidence, and I am extremely thankful to have seen such lack of preparation in the arguments on the part of evolutionists for the hypothesis they claim to believe. I see now that the only reason that the evolutionary hypothesis is even still in existence is that people refuse to believe what they see; instead, they would rather cling to the belief that best suites them, even if it is clearly unscientific and without evidence.
There is a question I want to ask you, and I would appreciate a response from anyone. I expect that you believe that something had to come first in the universe. What do you think came first, and where did it come from?
June 22nd, 2004 at 2:15 pm
C-14 decays exponentially, which is why we talk about half lives. After hundreds of half-lives, there is still some C-14 left. No matter how old the organism is, there will be C-14 left.
I don’t have time to get into all your other BS. Suffice it to say that your misconceptions about C-14 betrays a huge degree of idiocy and blindness.
I don’t know what came first in the universe. I don’t have the arrogance to pretend that I know. That seems to be the fundamental difference between scientists and creationists. Scientists are willing to admit that they don’t know, whereas creationists think that they know everything already.
Ed
June 22nd, 2004 at 3:33 pm
“Rocks from several localities have been dated at more than 3 billion years.” This comes from a geology textbook called “Earth, and introduction to physical geology” by Tarbuck and Lutgens, 7th edition. It is basic text that I assign all my first year students.
Radiometric dating is not infallible. Scientists realize this. They know the sources of error, and they do all in their power to make sure their data are accurate. For example, data are usually cross checked with other techniques to make sure they agree. This is called cross-dating. The main source of error in the Potassium-Argon method, however, in which Potassium-40 decays by electron capture to Argon-40 does not support your contention that the age of the earth is being exaggerated. In this method, the main source of error is the fact argon is a gas, and may slowly escape the rock. This would make the rock look younger than it actually is. Not older. Incidentally, potassium has a half-life of 1.3 billion years, but its reliability only extends to about 100,000 years. Other techniques, such as Uranium-235 decay, allow dating of far older rocks. That the earth is as young as you contend is simply not possible.
Daniel, your information about the fossil record is incorrect. The world has many sites that demonstrate the clear continuity of the fossil record. The Colorado Plateau is an excellent example. Grand canyon national park, zion national park, and bryce canyon national park are all part of the plateau and contain between them (each showing a different part of the geologic timescale) rock and corresponding fossils from the precambrian era to the tertiary. I suggest you look at some literature before you make statements such as “the geologic column is found absolutely nowhere on earth.” My only guess is that you got this information from someone as brainwashed as you are.
-Jeremy
June 23rd, 2004 at 8:35 pm
Daniel:
Space dust, Daniel? You’re old fashioned. From caltech:
Accumulation of Dust on the Moon [DB 1507 (38); OAB pp.17-18] This was formerly a widely-used young-Earth claim, but it has now been discredited. Nonetheless, it is still sometimes repeated in young-Earth circles. One of the first estimates of dust expected on the Moon was made in 1960 by Hans Pettersson. Pettersson estimated the influx of space dust by standing on top of a mountain with a device used to measure smog levels. By assuming (incorrectly) that all of the nickel dust he detected came directly from outer space, Pettersson arrived at a very large estimate of the amount of space dust falling on the Earth (and the Moon). When the Apollo landers found that the amount of dust on the Moon was much less than suggested by Pettersson’s measurements, some young-Earth advocates claimed this proved that the Moon was young. Not long after Pettersson, however, the influx of space dust was measured by satellites. It has been measured several different ways now, and is known to be almost 1,000 times smaller than Pettersson thought. In fact, there is no discrepency whatsoever between the influx of space dust and the amount of dust found on the Moon’s surface. Nowadays, most of the more responsible young-Earth advocates have ceased to use this claim. For example, Snelling and Rush (Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal, v.7, pp.2-42 (1993)) not only explain why the moon-dust argument is untenable, they also refute the commonly-repeated myth that Apollo scientists were afraid that their landers would sink into a deep dust layer.
Here’s something funny, Daniel, maybe you’ll get a kick out of it:
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/2437/apprage.htm
Transitional forms? How about animals with feathers and teeth? Their fossils have been found. Read this too, daniel:
http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear/bibliolatry_revisited_elders.htm
Your magnetic field argument falls flat on its face, too. The magnetic field fluctuates, both in strength and direction – this is evidenced by polarity of recrystallized rock, most usefully igneous rock (igneous rock is recrystalized magma, since you probably didn’t know.) The evidence used by creation “scientists” is recent measurement of the magnetic field – the trend of which is currently and temporarily downward. The exponential decay of which you speak is an erroneous extrapolation. More from caltech:
http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~tisco/yeclaimsbeta.html#magfield
Daniel, this still gets me. Your comment on C-14 is unbelievable. Here is the comment, in case anyone missed it:
“C-14 is a huge evidence against evolution, because virtually every dead organism (and fossil) has some left. The point is that it can ONLY last for a few thousand years, but then it’s gone. Why then don’t we find animals without C-14 if they are supposed to be millions of years old?”
I’ve already posted how C-14 decays exponentially. Every half life, which is thousands of years long, multiply the principal amount of C-14 by 1/2. So after 2 half lives you’d have 1/4 the original C-14, after 3, 1/8 and so on. My, my, my. Then you go on to accuse me of not having my facts straight and manipulating information to serve my purposes. I believe you accused me of relying on my “biased presuppositions.” You are not serving the will of God by proving yourself an ass, Daniel.
Almost forgot about your salt argument. Here’s the link http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~tisco/yeclaimsbeta.html#salt . Better yet, just read the whole article. The author believes in God, Daniel. He says that God will be glorified by the truth, regardless of its theological implications. There’s something to think about. His name is Matt Tiscareno, and he works at the University of Arizona. Here is his homepage: http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~matthewt/home.html . He strikes me as a pretty smart guy, much better read in this subject than I am.
If you try to respond to me without addressing the referenced articles, I will consider you truly ignorant and not worthy of further discourse. In my mind I will have won, because such a reply would indicate resignation.
yours,
ed
June 26th, 2004 at 4:04 pm
wow. daniel, i think ed is kicking your ass on this one.
July 20th, 2004 at 11:58 am
Ed,
You are trying to attack the creationist view in your last posting, but I see no defense for your own. George Wald, who is a professor of biology at Harvard University and who won the Nobel Prize, said that when it comes to the origin of the earth, there are only two possible choices. One is spontaneous generation, and one is special creation of God. He admitted publicly that spontaneous generation was disproved many years ago by Louis Pasteur. He admitted that even though spontaneous generation was scientifically impossible, he himself chose to believe in evolution, because he did not want to believe in God. Though creation is obviously the only possible explanation for all of the evidence, I will respond to your arguments nonetheless.
As for the first argument about things being created with an age I do not disagree with. Obviously to create something from nothing, the something will always appear that it has some sort of age. I do, however, disagree with the last few statements in the website that I was directed to that implied that God could have created the world yesterday, and we may only have memory of a life that we never lived. I disagree with this, because if that was the case, then God would have created a world already containing sin, and he would then be a deciever, and that is not the God I know.
Your comment about transitional forms was very brief, but I expect that you are mainly speaking of the bird Archaeopteryx. If you took enough time to study it, you would realize that it is completely bird. The teeth that you talked about it having should be no surprise. Other fossils of birds contain teeth, so it is not alone in that area. The claws on its wings are no surprise, because the ostrich is the same way, yet no one questions whether the ostrich is transitional.
When I speak of the oceans and the amount of salt it contains, as I have said before, they measured the minimum input of salt and the maximum output. They were using their knowledge of the oceans that they had, being very generous by choosing the minimum input and maximum output, and still, they came up with a very young age. The age was nothing close to that assigned by evolutionists, so even though they do not know of every single fact about the salt in the oceans, they used the knowledge of this day and age and made sense of what they observed. Evolutionists try to attack the way the creationists are measuring this salt by saying that they don’t know all of the ways that salt enters and leaves the oceans, yet when it comes to radiometric dating, they present it as fact (though they make several evolutionary assumptions).
The reversals in the earth’s magnetosphere most likely all occurred during the Flood. This was stated by an evolutionist: “‘Looking back in the geological record it is clear that on average such events occur about every 250,000 years. However, it has been 750,000 years since the last reversal—so we are certainly overdue.” During the Flood, however, the tectonic plates probably plunged down far enough to cool the outer core rapidly. The change in the convection patterns would cause rapid field reversals, and cause the field energy to decay even faster. A man named Humphreys, who actually proposed this theory, predicted that such rapid reversals would be recorded in lava flows that cooled from outside to inside over only a few days. His prediction was dramatically confirmed only three years later. If all the reversals occurred during the Flood year, then there is good reason why we have not had any reversals since then. What is found in the igneous rocks indicates rapid field reversals, not field reversals over hundreds of thousands of years. Besides, we could not be 750,000 years overdue for a reversal, because the magnetic field could not possibly be more than 10,000 years old at the rate and direction it’s decaying.
C-14 does decay exponentially, but since we find measurable amounts in virtually every dead organism, then they obviously can’t be very old at all. If they were really millions of years old, we should not find any measurable amounts in them at all. The amount would be immeasurable, but what we find is that it’s not. This limits their age to no more than 250,000 years (a maximum date), far too short a time for evolutionists.
I have a question, and I would appreciate a response. Can anyone tell me just one thing that they know to be scientifically true about evolution?
July 21st, 2004 at 12:46 am
Forget it, Daniel. I’m done wasting my time with you. As I originally stated, you can’t argue rationally with people who are irrational – who believe that A is non-A. This is especially true if the person’s irrational beliefs are intimately related to the subject being argued.
The creationist/evolutionist debate is tired and boring.
July 22nd, 2004 at 8:14 pm
John,
You can’t argue rationally with people who are irrational. It’s strange that you seem to not understand how irrational it is to believe that you can break two proven scientific laws and call that “science”, saying that if only enough time was permitted, molecules can turn into men. That sounds a whole lot less intelligent than to just admit that a Creator is needed for such an orderly universe. If only you accepted science, you would accept the Bible. Since you don’t accept the truth of the scientific facts, you, along with all of the other evolutionists, twist the facts and change them (sometimes ignoring them completely) to make them fit the theory. This is completely the opposite of what science is supposed to be. The theory is supposed to change to fit the facts, not vice versa. However, since your irrational beliefs are intimately related to the subject being argued, you choose to cling to your unsubstantiated hypothesis and blind faith of evolution.
July 23rd, 2004 at 11:58 am
John,
You have issues, same with all the other evolutionists! Also you can’t believe that evolution is true because it is just a bunch of unintelligent conjectures of hypothetical hypotheses. It also has been disproven so there is only one other choice, GOD! So stop being stubborn and start believing in something that is true. I also would like to say God has forgiven you for rebuking him. So therefore go, and live life for something worth standing up for, creation.
September 3rd, 2004 at 2:06 pm
The creationalist debate is tired and boring because it is not a debate. a debate is the the discussion of two viewpoints. not two truths. the creationalist believes that all existence is based on a higher power. therefore it is only logical to believe that a higher power is responsible for the components of that existence.
For someone that does not believe in that higher power, there is no reason to believe a nonexistent entity could do anything.
So what a scientist discoveres as evidence of evolution, a theist takes as a lie or a trick. There can be no bridge between the two ideas. So its that simple. those that believe in science will continue to learn more of evolution, while those that believe in a god/higher power/creater being will continue to distort, falsify and argue with science.
P.S. The reason Bush is so opposed to evolution? he’s afraid people will discover the truth… that he is infact the missing link!
September 8th, 2004 at 2:33 pm
The problem with the evolutionists’ belief is that, in fact, evolution has absolutely nothing to do with science. It makes me angry at Satan that he can blind so many people from reality. You cannot name even one scientific fact about evolution, but there are several in favor of special creation (variation within kind, fossils all appearing fully formed, death and suffering, loss, not gain, of the total information in genes, etc.). I suggest that you read the book Refuting Evolution 2 by Jonathan Sarfati, Ph.D. It really opens your eyes to what evolution is really all about. I have come to realize that you are not interested in the truth, only in defending your side of the argument. I really do want you to see the truth, because I don’t want you to be lost. There is a Heaven, there is a Hell, and they are just as real as this universe, but they are for eternity. Evolution, a very anti-christian belief, is a strong tool that Satan has found he can use under the disguise of “science” to deceive people. This is an eternal decision, and I sincerely hope that you will find the Truth before it is too late. I promise you that it will be eternally worth it.
September 26th, 2004 at 6:57 pm
Yes folks, the scientific approach points to… SATAN!!!
yeesh
October 4th, 2004 at 9:02 pm
Daniel-
Just a few questions I’m wondering about.
You say creation is based on science and fits perfectly well with science, as do all of the words of the bible. If this is true, then where is Heaven located? If it is in some plane of existence separate from Earth and this universe, then how do humans get there? I’m afraid an explanation simply using God’s Will and some sort of spiritual magic is inadequate because it relies on the very same circular logic that you try and constantly point out in the arguments of evolutionists.
In fact, all your arguments rely on this circular logic that you yourself say is inadequate. For example:
“Since my definition of mental stability, and of right and wrong, is founded in the Bible, in God\’s definition, then I can truthfully state that my (God\’s) definition of mental stability is superior to all others, because it is not just a matter of opinion at that point.”
Look at that, though. Your definition of the absolute truth of your opinions is based on the underlying assumption that your opinions are absolute and true. God exists because people who believe he does says he does. Hardly a convincing argument.
Furthermore your argument that everyone lives based on faith is fallacious in the way that you presented it. You stated that people have to have faith in the chair they sit in when they wake up and go to breakfast, faith in the milk they drink, etc. This is not the case. It is not faith that allows me to sit down in a chair without checking it first for structural integrity. It is past experience. Simply conditioning. After sitting in chairs all my life I find chairs that don’t work to be the exception. I sit in them and if they fail, only then do I analyze my assumptions. This sort of principle is based on assumption and experience, not faith.
Also, please give specific examples of how your creationism is based on real science and evolution is not. The facts that evolutionists’ beliefs about genetics and the origin of species allows for correct prediction of genetic and hereditary concerns and mastery over the complexities of animal processes doesn’t seem to be science for you. So please, explain then, what sort of tangible evidence actually is science.
October 11th, 2004 at 7:45 pm
Dr. X,
Thank you very much for talking intelligently with me.
Science does fit with creation. However, I do not believe by any means that the spiritual realm is bound by science. God created science. He created the laws of science that rule the universe today. God is outside of science and time. Heaven is also outside of the physical universe and is not bound by the same laws as we are. There is order in Heaven just like there is order here, except it is perfect. Science does not control God, because science is God’s creation. Therefore, the spiritual realm is outside of what science can study, because science is the study of that which is repeatable. If a one time event occurs, such as a flood, we can’t go back and repeat it. We can look at its effects, but we can’t observe the actual flood after it’s already happened. Creation was a one time event and is now over. We can’t study the creation by observing it happening, but we can study its effects.
A rather interesting thing that points to instant creation is radio halos in granite. Scientists have long known that when each particular radioactive atom decays, it gives off energy at a characteristic level. This energy burst damages the mineral matrix where the atom is located, and the size of the damaged zone reflects the level of energy released. Over time, the decay of unstable atoms produces a sphere of damage around the radio-centers. Let’s use uranium atoms as an example. As uranium decays into lead, it goes through several steps. All of these isotopes that uranium decays into have their own characteristic halo that they create as they decay. By observing the particular array of halos in the granite, one can learn the make-up of the original type of parent element present when the mineral formed. Here’s the thing, though. Several of these intermediate decay steps have extremely short half-lives. Radon-222 (half-life of 3.82 days) decays into polonium-218 (half-life of 3.05 minutes), it rapidly changes once again into lead-214. Likewise, when bismuth-214 (half-life of 29.7 minutes) changes into polonium-214 (half-life of 0.00016 seconds), it rapidly changes once again into lead-210. Obviously, the atom does not linger very long in either polonium state before it decays into the next isotope in the decay chain. Amazingly, the set of halos characteristic of polonium isotopes is sometimes found without the more slowly forming uranium halos, showing no evidence of a parent cluster of uranium-just polonium. Apparently, what this shows, is that there was never a uranium cluster present at this location, and the original cluster must have been only polonium. Granite, however, is thought to require many years to cool from an original melted condition in order for its several types of mineral crystals to form. Polonium occlusions by themselves could not occur in a slowly cooling granite, nor could they migrate to a central location all the while decaying rapidly. The granite would have to be in a fluid state so the polonium could concentrate in one location in the first place, then must be solid when the polonium decayed, in order for the zone of damage to be preserved. Apparently, the granite cools too slowly, and polonium decays too rapidly to accomplish this in any scenario other than instantaneous creation. Evolutionists have come to call this a “tiny mystery”.
When I talk about truth and its definition, I want to get across to others that the world’s way of defining truth is meaningless. The world says that truth is relative. It’s the “your truth is different than my truth” belief. The world defines truth as a matter of opinion. If you believe it’s right, it’s right for you. If you believe it’s wrong, it’s wrong for you. By this definition, Hitler was right in what he did. By this definition, Osama bin Laden was right in what he did to America on 9/11. By this definition, anything is right and anything is wrong, whatever you want it to be. Now, of course, you and I both agree that what Hitler and Osama bin Laden did was wrong. But why were they wrong? Were they wrong because the general opinion is that they were wrong, or were they wrong because they were disobeying God? Who makes the laws? The world’s definition of truth is absurd and cannot stand. Without God, there is no definition of right and wrong. The world has nothing to base truth on except for opinion. Those that know God exist and know that all Scripture is God-breathed know the definition of truth. They have a basis in which to base truth. Truth is “something that has fidelity to the original”. Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” By saying that He was the Truth, He was claiming that He had fidelity to the Original, which was God. He was God’s Son. If someone, like Hitler or Osama bin Laden, goes around murdering innocent people, they do not have fidelity to the original, because God is love. Murder and hate are the opposites of love. They don’t have fidelity to the original, and therefore they are wrong in what they do.
You do have faith in just about everything you do, whether it be sitting down, drinking something, eating food, etc. It is, however, not blind faith, of course. The past experience is what gives you the intelligent faith that the chair will hold you up. You even have faith in yourself that your memory is not deceiving you. Virtually everything anyone does is based on faith, though most of it is not blind faith.
You said that evolutionists’ beliefs about genetics and the origin of the species allows for correct prediction of genetic and hereditary concerns and mastery over the complexities of animal processes. I don’t doubt this, as long as you are referring to microevolution. Of course, I believe in microevolution, which is just the variation within kinds, and I believe that, yes, with the knowledge of microevolution and natural selection that we have, we can predict pretty accurately what is going to take place in the genetic structure of living things. However, we must not confuse changes within kinds with the change from one kind of animal into another. I realize that microevolution can produce major changes in organisms; this change is, however, limited to the genes already present within the organism. Mutations can do two things. Mutations can rearrange genes within an organism, which can cause legs to grow where antennas might otherwise grow, etc. It can also account for a loss of information content. Genes can be cloned, also, which causes defects like cats with four ears, fruit flies with two sets of wings, etc. No mutations, though, have ever been observed to be helpful. The fruit flies that grow extra pairs of wings have no muscles attached to the wings, so it is a hindrance to their flight. The fruit flies that are experimented on could not survive outside the laboratories. The cat that was born with four ears only had the genes for ears cloned; there was nothing connected with them to allow them to hear. Cloning of genes results in a greater amount of information, but not new information content. It’s just a copy of the already existing information. Mutations very obviously cannot account for new information content, which is vital to the theory of evolution, but scientists don’t want you to know these problems. If evolution were possible, we should be seeing innumerable examples of increases in information content, but we have yet to find one. This fits perfectly with the Bible when it says, “So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.” Genesis 1:21. “Then God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according to its kind’; and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good,” Genesis 1:24-25. Then, in 2 Peter 3:3-7, the Bible says, “knowing this first: that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, and saying, ‘Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation (uniformitarianism). For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old (denial of creation), and the earth standing out of water and in the water, by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water (denial of the Flood). But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.” This is an exact prophecy of the beliefs that we’re seeing today. Uniformitarianism is the whole idea behind evolution and is the idea that “all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation”. There will be a willful denial of the Flood and of Creation. God warns us in the Bible about the fallacy in such a belief by telling us about it almost 2,000 years ago! “Because, when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:21,22). “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God” (Psalm 14:1), for “the god of this world (Satan) hath blinded the minds of them which believe not” (II Corinthians 4:4). They walk “in the vanity of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart” (Ephesians 4:18). “Guard what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge” 1 Timothy 6:3.
Recently, a molecular biologist working on identifying genetic controls for diseases was interviewed by George Caylor. I will refer to “J” as the molecular biologist and “G” as the interviewer. Here is part of the interview:
J: I’m a bit like an editor, trying to find a spelling mistake inside a document larger than four complete sets of Encyclopedia Britannica.
G: Do you believe that the information evolved?
J: George, nobody I know in my profession believes it evolved. It was engineered by “genius beyond genius,” and such information could not have been written any other way. The paper and ink did not write the book! Knowing what we know, it is ridiculous to think otherwise.
G: Have you ever stated that in a public lecture, or in any public writings?
J: No. I just say it evolved. To be a molecular biologist requires one to hold on to two insanities at all times. One, it would be insane to believe in evolution when you can see the truth for yourself. Two, it would be insane to say you don’t believe in evolution. All government work, research grants, papers, big college lectures…everything would stop. I’d be out of a job, or relegated to the outer fringes where I couldn’t earn a decent living.
G: I hate to say it, but that sounds intellectually dishonest.
J: The work I do in genetic research is honorable. We will find the cures to many of mankind’s worst diseases. But in the meantime, we have to live with the “elephant in the living room.”
G: What elephant?
J: Creation design. It’s like an elephant in the living room. It moves around, takes up an enormous amount of space, loudly trumpets, bumps into us, knocks things over, eats a ton of hay, and smells like an elephant. And yet we have to swear it isn’t there!
Even evolutionists don’t know why they believe what they believe. Some think they know, but they are the ones that are confused. A few statements are given below which show the true thoughts of some of the evolutionists.
“An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.” -Francis Crick, winner of the Nobel Prize in biology
“The improbability involved in generating even one bacterium is so large that it reduces all considerations of time and space to nothingness. Given such odds, the time until the black holes evaporate, and the space to the ends of the universe would make no difference at all. If we were to wait, we would truly be waiting for a miracle.” -Robert Shapiro
George Wald, Harvard University biochemist and Nobel Prize winner, sums it up better than anyone else could say it: “When it comes to the origin of life, there are only two possibilities: Creation or spontaneous generation. There is no third way. Spontaneous generation was disproved one hundred years ago, but that leads us to only one other conclusion, that of supernatural creation. We cannot accept that on philosophical grounds; therefore, we choose to believe in the impossible: that life arose spontaneously by chance!” He goes on to say, “One has to only contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet we are here as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation.”
December 18th, 2004 at 9:30 am
Okay, I have a few things I would like to say to all of you: evolutionists and creationists alike.
To start off, I am agnostic. I do not try to prove or disprove the existance of a god. There are some events in my life that tempt me to believe in a higher power, and others that tempt me not to believe.
You are all correct in the sense that you believe firmly in your own opinions – all of you gave very strong arguments supporting your beliefs, however…
…you (this is not directed at anyone in particular, even though I side with evolutionism) cannot force your opinions on others. If you wish to express your beliefs, then go ahead, that’s fine. That’s good. That’s what makes life more worth-while.
In my opinion, there is no ultimate truth because there are factors both for and against each belief out there. Maybe there will be an ultimate truth one day, maybe there won’t be. Maybe humans–creationists and evolutionists alike–will find the answers, maybe the won’t. There’s no way to tell right now.
In the end, whether or not a higher power such as a god exists all boils down to your own personal beliefs. As you said, Daniel, this is a matter of subjective truth – what is true for you, might not be true for others. That’s what it comes down to.
It is wrong for either side to accuse the other of being ignorant, or brainwashed, because really… Who are we to say what is and what’s not? What power, either metaphysical or physical, gives us this ability?
I am not for or against religion. I am not for or against Jesus Christ or God or any other divine figure.
But I think we all need to just accept the fact that sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. If people believe in God, that’s great, I’m happy they found something to believe in. If people don’t believe in God, that’s great too.
We believe what we believe, we follow what is important to us, we will stand by the things that give us truth – what else is there to say? It’s all a matter of personal opinion.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
-Joey
January 2nd, 2005 at 4:42 am
You are invited to check some relevant pages about…
January 12th, 2005 at 10:52 pm
I may not be a scientist, but even someone such as myself can see that these comments are more name-calling and distraction than anything else. Dr. Paley seems perfectly capable of presenting his own ideas with a professional attitude, yet he seems to support his comments more with a closed mind and phrases such as “this is crazy” than his own scientific evidence. It appears to me that only the Creationist ideas and explainations most easily distorted by his presentation of them were included in his commentary. Is it politically or scientifically acceptable to dismiss a theory without testing and considering it first? Would it be too much to ask to request that Dr. Paley, as well as any good scientist or expert, evaluate evidence without interpreting it to fit into the framework of the theory of evolution?
January 13th, 2005 at 3:01 pm
Joey,
This is how I interpreted the statement of your belief: that whatever one believes in is truth even if it contradicts what another believes. Would you say that it is absolute truth that you posted what you did out on this site, or is that only true for those who believe that you did? Is it absolute truth that you are reading these words? If you don’t believe it is, then why? If it is, where do you draw the line. Do you think that you can believe something into being true? If so, why? If you don’t, then why is it any different with God? I’m a Christian, so does believing that Jesus rose from the dead make it true, but only for me? That sounds like everyone is living in their own reality. What makes you want to believe that? Is it just blind faith? Whether or not God exists has nothing to do with beliefs. Do you ever question whether or not the earth exists? If you don’t believe in the earth, does it not exist? You’re living on something, and it’s the earth whether anyone likes it or not. Belief does not have causational power, and whether or not God exists has nothing to do with what anyone believes. The idea that God exists only for those who believe in Him might be a temporary relief to the nonbeliever by escaping reality, but it will only last a few decades. Once death hits, reality sets in. If you don’t know who to side with, why side with the ones that risk everything? The evolutionists put at risk their eternal lives for a short life of doing whatever feels good. The Christian creationists put nothing at risk, and I can assure you that they will be much better off in eternity. Don’t just put Christianity aside and think, “It’s all a matter of personal opinion,” because it is most certainly not. Once someone dies, they are dead for a long time. We all need to invest in the eternal life ahead of us instead of being selfish, trying to enjoy about eighty years of pleasure until our judgment comes upon us. Jesus Christ is our substitute, the only man who lived right, and He is our only way into Heaven, whether you believe it or not. God gave us the power to make our own decisions. Whether we continue to ignore God or whether we turn to Jesus as our Savior is our choice. The one thing about the theory of evolution is that it looks good from the outside. Once you realize the reality behind what is being presented in the textbooks or anywhere, the whole theory falls apart right in front of your eyes. The thing is that many don’t dig deep into science or the theory. There are huge, non-repairable holes in the theory. Evolution does not go very deep scientifically. It is a huge idea purely made up in someone’s imagination with a little bit of science mixed in to validate the theory in the average person’s mind. It’s like rat poison. The rat poison make look really good to the rat, but once he bites into it, he realizes his mistake. Once he realizes what it really is, he no longer wants it anymore. True science does not even begin to point in the direction of evolution, and the best evidence for evolution (the evidence presented in textbooks, etc.) is evidence long outdated and known by even scientists to be incorrect (for example, Ernst Haeckel’s embryos, peppered moths, evolution of the horse, spontaneous generation, etc.) It is only left in the textbooks because there is no better evidence. The only reason evolution is as popular today is because of all its publicity, not the evidence. Several surveys were taken, and they show that about 91% of Americans are some form of creationist. A survey from 1995 showed that only about 31% of Americans were theistic evolutionists, 4% were atheistic, and 6% didn’t respond. About 65% held a biblical worldview when it came to origins, at least 50,000 of them being scientists. When I saw these numbers, I realized that the evolutionists are the ones in the minority. Even though majority vote is not the way to determine truth, I admire the fact that so many people can think for themselves. You can see the survey results here: http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4178.asp. Don’t accept every interpretation of evidence; go check out for yourself what was actually discovered (not what was interpreted).
February 11th, 2005 at 3:54 am
“If you don’t know who to side with, why side with the ones that risk everything? The evolutionists put at risk their eternal lives for a short life of doing whatever feels good.”
Believing in what scientific evidence shows us puts our eternal lives at risk ? Why ? You are making the assumption that everyone that does this denies God, which is not the case. But even if they should be atheists, why assume that they conduct theri lives doing “whatever feels good” ? To me that is presumptuous and rather arrogant. It is sometimes called a “holier than thos attitude”
“The Christian creationists put nothing at risk, and I can assure you that they will be much better off in eternity.”
This equates believing in a so-called “creation science” with religion, that believeing in this “saves” you ?
“Once someone dies, they are dead for a long time. We all need to invest in the eternal life ahead of us instead of being selfish, trying to enjoy about eighty years of pleasure until our judgment comes upon us.”
There are some righteous men that believe in evolution, and some murderers that believe in “creation science”….I find your point rather meaningless.
“There are huge, non-repairable holes in the theory. Evolution does not go very deep scientifically. It is a huge idea purely made up in someone’s imagination with a little bit of science mixed in to validate the theory in the average person’s mind.”
This statement sounds much more like a description of “creation science, than real scientific study that has vast amounts of evidence pointing to evolution being something that has happened. The ideas about evolution are not one concept born in one person’s imagination, but the sum of the study of thousands of real scientists.
“True science does not even begin to point in the direction of evolution, and the best evidence for evolution (the evidence presented in textbooks, etc.) is evidence long outdated and known by even scientists to be incorrect (for example, Ernst Haeckel’s embryos, peppered moths, evolution of the horse, spontaneous generation, etc.) It is only left in the textbooks because there is no better evidence.”
This is simply not true unless you re-define everything as creationists have to do to make any of their ideas work at all. Creationists think that some of those examples you give from textbooks are outdated and incorrect, but true scientists think otherwise. They fit evolutionary theory, so they are attacked. Sometimes initial assumptions have been incorrect, the evolutionary linage of horses is more complex than originallt thought…but can still be demonstarated. Unlike “creation science” true science does not have to bend facts to make their ideas work. That is because their ideas lead from the evidence, not from a conclusion as the creationists have to do.
February 13th, 2005 at 2:26 pm
Brian,
In order to help me understand where you’re coming from, it would help me to know exactly what you believe and why.
March 7th, 2006 at 1:26 am
Daniel,
What does it matter what his stance is on religion? Why can’t you just argue what he has presented rather than wait and see if he is religious or not?
June 14th, 2006 at 6:52 am
Hi Andy,
I’m not sure if Brian is even still on here. It’s not necessary that I know what he believes, but I was curious since he said that not all evolutionists deny the existence of God. I was wondering if he was an atheist.
To be an atheist brings up very difficult problems that are, by nature, impossible to get around. First of all, to be an atheist, meaning, I expect, that Nature is “all there is”, forces one to believe that the law of cause and effect is the ruling agent of the universe. By that I mean it leaves no room for miracles, and therefore everything that happens is an effect of a former cause. If there was an effect without a cause, I would say that is quite miraculous, and a kind of miracle that would disturb me if it had no cause. If this is the case, then an atheist is forced to admit that even the movements of every atom in his brain is an effect of a cause. So if reasoning is only atoms moving randomly because of random causes, that makes one wonder how reasoning is to be trusted at all. I don’t see why a few random movements of atoms can give an account to explain all the rest. This is the result of a belief in Naturalism.
C.S. Lewis explains this in Miracles: “If there is nothing but Nature, therefore, reason must have come into existence by a historical process. And of course, for the Naturalist, this process was not designed to produce mental behavior that can find truth. There was no Designer; and indeed, until there were thinkers, there was no truth or falsehood. The type of mental behavior we now call rational thinking or inference must therefore have been ‘evolved’ by natural selection, by the gradual weeding out of types less fitted to survive.”
“Once, then our thoughts were not rational. That is, all our thoughts once were, as many of our thoughts still are, merely subjective events, not apprehensions of objective truth. Those which had a cause external to ourselves at all were (like our pains) responses to stimuli. Now natural selection could operate only by eliminating responses that were biologically hurtful and multiplying those which tended to survival. But it is not conceivable that any improvement of responses could ever turn them into acts of insight, or even remotely tend to do so. The relation between response and stimulus is utterly different from that between knowledge and the truth known.”
One might say, “Well, the results of our reasoning prove useful. Therefore, they must be true.” However, to do this is to question Inference itself. What we thought to be Inferences is now being questioned, which suggests it may not be real insight at all. We want to be reassured. And the reassurance turns out to be one more inference (if useful, then true), as if this inference were not, once we accept his evolutionary picture, under the same suspicion as all the rest. If the value of our reasoning is in doubt, you cannot try to establish it by reasoning!
Still, one might say, “Well, our way of thinking is useful,” without even adding “and therefore true”. One may give up on truth. No more theology, no more ontology, no more metaphysics…and equally, no more Naturalism.
If, however, we admit a God who works miracles, we can then say that our reason is a supernatural gift, and with our ability to reason comes a free will (the belief in free will is necessarily absent in the mind of an atheist). If our ability to reason is a gift from beyond Nature from God, then we therefore have grounds by which to trust our own reasoning.
And as an atheist, when one tries to argue using evidence, we run into another problem. First, we may need to define what Probability is. Probability is supposed to give an estimate, basically, of how probable something is to happen, and this probability is based on the belief that Nature is uniform; it is constant. If Nature was not uniform, and the laws of Nature constantly changed, then how could we figure out any kind of probability. If Nature was not uniform, the fact that a pen falls to the floor one day would not mean that it couldn’t fall to the ceiling the next.
So to have probability, Nature must be uniform, never changing, and orderly. And this is what we have seen. But who’s to say that it has been uniform in the past? To say that it has been uniform in the past would be a declaration based on probability, which assumes Uniformity of Nature. We cannot assume Uniformity of Nature in order to prove Uniformity of Nature, which one would have to do to come to a conclusion like that. So how can an atheist say, “Look at the evidence! There is all this evidence for evolution.” First of all, he can’t even trust his own reasoning. Secondly, who’s to say that Nature did not act radically different in the past? What if Nature, in the past, had no law, no order? How, then, can we, based on science (which assumes order), conclude anything about the past?
We as humans don’t like to think about a world without order. I think it would drive us insane. This feeling is, I believe, not just a coincidence, but, being made in the image of God, we see that an orderly and uniform Nature just “fits”. It settles well with us, and it is a reflection of God’s mind. God is a God of order, and therefore, it only “fits” that the Nature He created should be orderly. And if Nature is uniform, probability is a true and real thing, and we can trust science. Otherwise, science is meaningless and results in an endless abyss that can gain no real knowledge.
February 29th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
http://objectiveministries.org/creation/pterosaurs.html
Doing some research on pterosaurs, and can u believe it, this garbage came up. This needs not to be included in results for any search engine.
This crap is what makes all our children STUPID!
Ohh, and if this guy is real, i hope he makes love to a Greyhound bus at 70mph.
Here is some reading off his site….copy and paste.
“They were created by the Lord on the fifth day of His Creation Week (Genesis 1:20-22) and were a constant presence in the skies over Eden, where they peacefully ate fruit and plants. After the Fall, many of their descendants degenerated to a carnivorous diet and became feared by man, although non-wicked specimens preserved on the Ark helped to temper this degenerative tendency after the Flood. Various Pterosaur kinds were common throughout Eurasia and Northern Africa up until the early Middle Ages and interacted extensively with Man. Today, although Evolutionists falsely insist that they are extinct, pterosaurs can still be found, hidden away in the unexplored wilds of our world.”
He even has a doctored photo of a dead pterosaur under the feet of some civil war soldiers….this site has to be fake. No one is this stupid…are they?
April 21st, 2008 at 5:06 pm
I believe everyone has a right to their beliefs, but the part that bugs me is this: my experience with many Christians, like Paley, is that no matter how many facts you present to them, they will reject them if they do not fit in with their Christian beliefs. If most scientists, doctors, and other professional people that the world depends on did this, where would we be right now? Many Christians (and other religious groups) take pieces of scientific facts and twist them into some kind of ‘proof’ that defends the beliefs of certain aspects of their religion. Isn’t it better to seek the truth of what has existed in this world in the past millions of years, even if everything we learn doesn’t neatly fit into what you now believe? Those of us who want to learn and know are not being influenced by ‘satan’. It’s not a rejection of God. We just want the truth.
May 1st, 2008 at 11:58 pm
My name is Shaurice Irons. I’m not a scientist, biologist or scholar but this is a subject that I feel very strongly about, as evolution is taught in schools to our children as fact, whether you agree with this THEORY or not. YES, for all of you, no matter what you believe, evolution is still only a THEORY. It is an idea based on supportive facts. Yet, those facts that suggest and support the theory of evolution DO NOT and HAVE NOT PROVEN EVOLUTION as a fact itself. Mutations occur in many different living things, bacteria, viruses, plants etc… but you and I, Theist or Atheist, Creationist or Evolutionist have yet to see any scientific proof of any living thing changing or evolving into an entirely new species. Out of the billions of living creatures on this planet or of all of the remains found of things that have lived, there has not been one scientifically undisputable example of one species of living thing naturally evolving into another NEW species. That, for me, seems to be too far-fetched. I choose to be believe what feels right to me based on the facts that support my theory just as those that oppose my beliefs choose to believe in their theories. Many of the people that I know personally and share the creationist view with, will contend that we do not have all of the answers and will also agree that there are some facts that seem to support the evolutionist theory, but in the end, like it or not, it does not make evolution itself a fact. A THEORY by definition is an approximation based on supporting evidence. The beauty in true Christianity is that we believe that there is ONE that has those answers. He is the ultimate authority on all things. We seek the truth through the knowledge of God that has created all things. There have been many scientific theories that were accepted as FACT only to be disproved after further studies many years later. I have no doubt that in time this subject will be put to rest as well. I will however, advise any person of wisdom and humanity to be very cautious of whom you choose to dub as foolish, as wisdom is not only in what you know or understand, it is also in understanding and accepting that which you do not. Evolutionists tout their facts and supporting evidence but when the question arises as to the existence of undeniable proof they resort to name calling and the debasement of Creationism and Christianity. Its been my experience that verbal bullying and assault implies a lack of full commitment or confidence in whatever it is that you are defending. To lash out in such an undignified manor discredits your insinuations of intellectual superiority over creationists and it amplifies your insecurities in your beliefs. Everyone is entitled to their beliefs, that is the god given gift of free will but for someone to tell another that their opinion is wrong based on another opinion is ludicrous.
June 18th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
I shall begin by assuming that the issue of God’s existence is settled. We all believe that there is a God. As those who desire to know the truth, we must go one step further to find out what kind of God He is. God is the greatest Unknown. We must spend some time to find out about this unknown One. The next step now is to know what kind of a God He is. In the past few thousand years man has been inquiring about the nature of God. Is He kind or is He righteous? Is He indifferent towards us, or is He extremely interested in human affairs? These types of questions are the direct cause of all human religions. What is religion? Religion is man’s inquiry about God and his explanation of Him. Through these explanations, different men have arrived at different concepts about God. What kind of God is He? This is a big question. It is also a very serious question. We have all given our thought to this subject at one time or another. The question might even have occurred to our little mind when we were five years old. All men, educated or ignorant, have been intrigued by this question. It comes naturally after some contemplation and observation. But a person trying to speculate about God is like an ant attempting to understand a human being. It is extremely difficult for the little creature to try to realize our life, nature, and mind. In the same way it is impossible for us to try to comprehend God. For this reason, in the past few thousand years, all kinds of people, theologians and philosophers alike, have done much thinking about Him. What has God been doing all this time? Has He been indifferent to us or has He tried to reveal Himself to us? What is God’s attitude? Do you think He would say, “I am God and have nothing to do with human beings. I do not care what you think about me. I shall stay in heaven as God. Let the mortals be ignorant!” Or do you think He has a desire to reveal Himself to man and visit him? When I was in India, I saw some people lying naked on beds studded with nails. Some walked with bare feet on burning coals. These people devoted a great deal of energy to seeking after God. What has God done to them? Did He hide Himself and take no notice of them at all? Has He not kept Himself as a perpetual mystery? This is a great question. We have to consider it scientifically and objectively in order to find out what God is like. A few years ago I spoke on a similar subject to some medical students in an auditorium in Cheloo University. I said that man is an organism with a life. God also is a life. Man’s life is higher than that of the lower animals, and God’s life is even higher than that of man. I asked the students, “Since we realize that all living organisms have some common laws and express some common traits, can you name them?” Different ones then started to bring up different points. At the end we summed up the discussion in this way: all living organisms contain two common characteristics. You can call these characteristics their common expressions or their common laws. First, every life wants to preserve itself. It tends to reproduce itself. There is the ability to produce posterity, to continue its own life. Second, every life wants to have fellowship with other lives. It cannot stand being by itself. When a man cannot find fellowship with another human being, he goes to dogs, cats, fish, or birds and makes friends with animals. All living creatures desire fellowship. Based on these two characteristics of life, namely, the preservation of itself and fellowship with others, laws of human government are instituted. For example, the death penalty reflects a convict’s desire to preserve his own life; punishment comes in the form of taking away and terminating such a life. This is the way to inflict suffering on a life. Imprisonment, as a less serious punishment, cuts him off from having fellowship with others. This reversal of the life principle becomes then a suffering for him. From this we see that punishment is applied according to the principles of life. With these two chief characteristics in mind, let us turn to the life of God. God is an organism of a higher order than human beings. He is naturally governed by this law of life. We can know God by the characteristics and distinctive features of His life. From this we can deduce whether or not God wants to have fellowship with man. There are two kinds of religion: religion based on natural concepts and religion based on revelation. Natural religion starts with man as the center. He is the one that is seeking after God and studying about Him. What then is revelational religion? Revelational religion comes directly from God. He is the One who comes to reveal things to us. Man’s thoughts are often useless fancies. God’s revelation alone is trustworthy. Christianity is different from all other natural religions in that it is a religion that comes from revelation. Christianity begins from God. It is God who comes to seek out man, rather than man who seeks after God. I will not try to persuade you to believe in Christianity or to read the Bible. I will only make a few suppositions. We will treat the subject in the same way as if we were solving a problem in geometry. We will start from the suppositions and then deduce our arguments step by step. We will examine our reasoning’s to see if they are sound and if our conclusions are logical. As in mathematics, with some problems we work forwards, while with others we work backwards. At any rate, in the end we should be able to tell whether or not a supposition is justified. We have to make a few suppositions. The first one is that God exists. This in fact has been covered by us already. We have agreed that there is a God. He is a Being who has a purpose. Second, we assume that God has a desire to reveal Himself to man. If God wants to reveal Himself to man and if He wants us to know Him, how does He do it? In what manner can He be made known to us? If He speaks to us through thunder or writes to us through lightning, we will not be able to comprehend His message. How then does God make Himself known to us? If He is to reveal Himself and if He wants us to know Him, He necessarily must do it through human means. What then are the common ways that men communicate with one another? First, they do it through speaking and second through writing. All means of communication, whether telegraph, telephone, sign, or symbols, are all included in these two categories. If God is to manifest Himself, these are the only two means for Him to do so. For the present we set aside the aspect of speaking; we will see how God communicates with us through writing. If God reveals Himself through writing, of all the volumes written by different people throughout the centuries, there must be one book which is divinely inspired. This is a very crucial test. If such a book exists, it proves not only the existence of God, but it contains His written revelation to us as well. Is there then such a divinely written book? In the search for such a book, let us first mention a few basic principles. Suppose I want to order a book from a publisher. If I can tell him the name and author of the book, there will be no trouble getting it. If, however, I forget the name and author of the book, I can describe the characteristics of it to the publisher, such as the contents, size, color, binding, etc. The publisher will then search through all his books and locates the volume I want. God has one book in this universe. How do we find it? We have to know its characteristics first. If there is any book that has been written by God, it must meet certain conditions or have certain qualifications before one can say that it is from God. Let me put forth a few propositions. If there is a book written by God, it must first of all mention God. It must tell you that it is from God and that its author is God. This is the first qualification. Second, it must carry a moral tone that is higher than what we commonly know. If it is a fabrication, it can at the most be on the same level as man. Third, if there is such a divine book, it must tell us about the past and the future of this world. Only God knows clearly what occurred in the past and what will happen in the future. Only by telling us these matters will we know Him as God. Fourth, this book must be simple and available so that all may be able to secure and understand it. If there were only one such book in the world, then only a very few people would be able to see it. It would not pass the test unless it is a book accessible to everyone. In the United States there is a group of people who claim to have a book from God. It is engraved in gold and contains only twelve pages. Such a book then would not be accessible to the Chinese. God would never write to us a book at which we could not look. Now the matter is simplified. Let us repeat these four conditions once more.
(1) If such a book exists, it must tell us explicitly that its author is God.
(2) It must carry a high tone of morality.
(3) It must give a detailed description of the past and the future of the universe.
(4) It must be available.
Let us pick out some of the more important writings throughout human civilization and check them against these qualifications to see if any meets our requirements. We will start from books that are generally considered to be good. Let us take the Chinese classics of Confucius. They are immediately disqualified under the first requirement, for none of them claims to be written by God. They do have a high tone of morality, but they fail to give the origin and destiny of the world, the universe, and man. This does not mean that they are worthless books; it means that they do not contain the qualifications we want. They are not what we are looking for. Let us go to the classics of other cultures. There are numerous volumes of famous writings, but none of them passes the first test. They are all clearly written by man. They may be masterpieces in philosophy or morality, but they are not written by God, nor are they divinely inspired. We have to set them aside. There is a book in India called the Rig-Veda. It once dominated Hinduism. However, it does not claim to be written by God. Another book called the Avesta, written by a Persian named Zoroaster, is also extremely influential in the Middle East. It does not claim to be from God either. Moreover, its moral tone is not especially commendable. Let us come to the Koran of Mohammedanism. This is the closest one we can find. It tells us that it comes from God; it meets the first requirement. However, it does not fulfill the second requirement, for its moral tone is too low. The heaven it describes is full of lusts and flesh. God could never write a book with such licentiousness and immorality. Hence, this book does not pass the test of morality. After searching through all the books, you have to come finally to the Bible. If God desires to communicate with man, and if He does so through writing, then this is the only book that can pass the four tests. Hence, this must be the book God has for man. What does this book say? In the books of the law in the Old Testament, it says, “Thus saith the Lord,” at least five hundred times. Other books in the Old Testament repeat the phrase about seven hundred times. In addition to the references in the New Testament to the speaking of God, the Bible has more than two thousand claims of divine origin. If God has no intention of communicating with man, we can forget about this book. But if He does communicate with man through writing, then this book has to be of immense value. Can you find another book where God is claimed as its author that many times? We have to see if the Bible meets the second qualification. Let us take a look at its moral tone. Everyone who has studied this book confesses that it carries the highest moral standard. Even the sins of the noblest persons are recorded and condemned without mercy. Once a strong opposer of the Bible was asked by his son, “Why are you so strong against the Bible?” He answered, “If I do not condemn it, it will condemn me.” This book does not let us get by easily. The human concept is that all sexual acts outside marriage are considered as fornication. The Bible, however, says that even an evil thought is fornication. Human morality condemns an act of killing as murder, but the Bible condemns a slight hatred in the heart as murder. We consider a man who lets his enemy get by without paying vengeance as forgiving. But the Bible charges man to love his enemy. How high is its moral tone and how low we are before its standards! You cannot help but admit that it presents the best ethical code for humanity. Furthermore, this book describes in detail the past and future of the universe. Once a friend told me that he could believe in everything the Bible says except the parts in Genesis and Revelation where it talks about the origin and destiny of the heavens and earth. I told him that if this is indeed a book from God, it must, of necessity, contain these matters. If the Bible did not contain Genesis and Revelation, it would be the same as any other book, and we would have to look for another book; it would not be the one we want. But the past condition of the world and its future destiny are recorded here. Hence, the third qualification is also met. What is the circulation of such a book? Last year (1935), more than two hundred million copies were sold. Can you name another book that has such a high circulation rate? This statistic, moreover, is not limited to just last year; every year the number has remained approximately the same. In one sense this book is very popular. In another sense it is like a thorn in your hand; it pierces you. This book gives you a headache. It creates an unspeakable uneasiness within man. It even causes man to oppose it. In spite of this, its annual sales are still over two hundred million. Furthermore, this book is translated into more than seven hundred twenty languages. In every country and among every race, there is a translation of this unique book. It is extremely easy for anyone to obtain a Bible anywhere in the world. If the Rig-Veda were God’s book, then more than half of the world would perish due to a failure in obtaining it. Even if you put the Rig-Veda in my hand, I would still be unable to understand it. If only the educated ones can contact God, then I am destined to go to hell. If only the Indians have the opportunity, we Chinese, as well as other races, are out of hope. If God speaks through the Rig-Veda, then where can we find that book? Maybe we can only find the original copy in the London Museum. And even that may not contain the original meaning of God’s revelation to man. This is not all. The Bible contains sixty-six books and it is divided into the Old and New Testaments. It was written by no less than thirty people. The span from the time the first book was written to the time when the last book was finished is more than sixteen hundred years. The places where they were written are also different. Some were written in Babylon, some in Italy, some at one end of Asia Minor, others at the other end of the Mediterranean. Furthermore, the writers themselves differed in their backgrounds. Some were lawyers; some were fishermen. There were princes, and there were shepherds. All these writings by men of different backgrounds, languages, environments, and periods are put together. The amazing thing is that it is still a complete book. All those who have had some experience of editing know that in order to put together a few articles written by different authors, it is necessary for the authors to be of comparable level of academic achievements and viewpoints. Even when the academic standard and viewpoints are similar, there will still be conflicts and contradictions when you put five or six articles together. But the Bible, though complex in contents, contains history, poetry, laws, prophecies, biographies, and doctrines and was written by so many different ones at different times and under different circumstances, yet when you put them together, they surprisingly run as one continuous volume. There is no conflict or contradiction. They are written in one breath. If you read this book carefully, you have to admit that God’s hand is behind all the writings. More than thirty people of varied backgrounds and ideas in different times and places wrote these sixty-six books. When you group them up, they link together as if they were written by one individual. Genesis was written about fifteen hundred years before Christ, and Revelation was written ninety-five years after Christ. There is a time span of sixteen hundred years. One talks about the beginning while the other projects the end of the world. Yet whatever begins in Genesis is concluded in Revelation. This amazing feature cannot be explained in human terms. Every word of it has to be written by God through man. God is the motivating One behind the whole composition. There is another remarkable thing about this book. In itself it is a book that gives life. Yet countless numbers of people have lost their lives for its sake. There was a time when anyone who held this book in his hand would immediately be put to death. The most powerful empire in history was the Roman Empire. There was a time when this empire summoned all its forces to destroy this book. Everyone who possessed it would be inhumanly persecuted and later killed or burned. They wiped out thousands of people and burned countless copies of the Bible. They even set up a monument at a place where they killed Christians. On it was the inscription: “Christianity is buried here.” They thought that when they had burned all the Bibles and removed all the Christians, they would see Christianity lying there beneath their feet. But it was not long after that when the Bible came back again. Even in a country like England, which has already accepted Christianity as its state religion, you can still find tombs of martyrs for Christ if you visit different places there. Here and there you can find places where the Bible was once burned. Or you may come across a tombstone that tells you that such and such a person tried so hard and wrote so many books in his life to oppose the Bible. One place may tell you that the Bible was once burned there, and another place may tell you that Christians were once killed there. One signpost may point you to a statue of martyrdom, and another may point to a site of Bible burning. Why is it that so many people have tried so hard to oppose this book? Why is it that men would pass by other books, but would either oppose this book with every fiber of their being or would put their whole life to the stake for it? There must be something extraordinary here. Even if you do not believe that this is God’s word, you have to admit that there is something unusual about this book. This book seems to be very simple and easy. If you consider it from the historical point of view, it tells the origin of the universe, the earth, the plants, human beings, how they established their kingdoms, and how they will eventually end. This is all. There is nothing special about it. Yet it has been handed from generation to generation for centuries. Today it is still with us. Moreover, if you do not confess that it is truth, you have to conclude that it is false. You can disregard many books, but you cannot ignore this book. Nor will it ignore you. It will not let you go. It demands a verdict from you. It will not pass you by. Another remarkable thing about this book is that almost half of it is prophecy. Among the prophecies, almost half of them are fulfilled. The other half is for the future and await fulfillment. For example, it predicted the fate of the nations of Moab and Ammon and of the cities of Tyre and Sidon. Today when people talk about big cities, they mention London and Shanghai. Then it was Tyre and Sidon. They were two chief cities of the ancient world. The prophecies concerning these two cities were all fulfilled. Once I was in the Middle East. For some reason I did not visit those two places. However, I bought two pictures of those cities. It amazed me when I looked at those pictures. I could not help but believe in the Bible. It was prophesied that if these two metropolitan cities did not repent, they would be destroyed and devastated. Their land would become hills of rocks and pebbles where fishermen would come to dry their nets. In the pictures that I bought, there was nothing but fishing boats and open nets on the shore. This is only one small fact that proves the reliability of biblical prophecy. If you compare past events with the prophecies in the Bible, you will find that they all correspond one with another. For another example, take the birth of Christ. Isaiah prophesied concerning a virgin with child a few hundred years before Christ actually came. Later, He was born indeed of the Virgin Mary. The prophecy was accurately fulfilled. As the prophecies concerning the past have been fulfilled, so the prophecies concerning the future must also be fulfilled. If God desires to communicate with man, He must do so through common human channels of communication. He must use the human language or human writings. In other words, there must be a book in the world that is a direct revelation from God. If such a book does exist, it must contain the four criteria we mentioned. Now we can say that such a book is found. This book tells us that God desires to have fellowship with us. He speaks to us through this book. Through it God is no longer an unknown Being. We can now know Him. This book is the Bible. I hope all of you will read it.
THIS IS SERIOUS: WAS JESUS CRAZY? WAS HE A LUNATIC? OR THE BIGGEST LIAR?
God desires to reveal Himself to us. He does so through means that are comprehensible to man. These are namely written and spoken language. We have seen how God reveals Himself through writing. Now we want to take a look at His revelation through speaking. Suppose that you have had correspondence with a person for many years; however, you have never seen him. Naturally, you would want to know him more by having some direct acquaintance with him. Full understanding of someone cannot be achieved merely through writing. Direct contact gives a better chance. It seems as if communication through speech is of a more intimate and thorough nature than writing. When spoken language is added to written language, communication becomes enhanced. If you take away either of the two, you have a gap. Of course, if you take away both, communication is completely voided. Effective communication is always carried out by these two means. If God’s intention is to reveal Himself to us, He must of necessity do so through speaking. But how does God speak? Does He trumpet from the heavens? If so, we would all be frightened to death. We would all run away. No one would dare to listen. There is a chasm between Him and us. He, being so high and great, would drive us away from His holiness. How then does He speak?
THE WINTER ON THE MOUNTAIN
Let me relate to you a story. One winter I was staying on the mountain Lu-shan, recovering from an illness. It was immediately after the war, and there was practically no one living on the mountain. In the vicinity of my dwelling, one could hardly see anyone all day long. I am a quiet person by nature. This kind of environment was very appealing to me. Not only was it quiet there, but the weather was cold as well. From morning till dusk, all I saw was a boy who came three times to deliver my meals. At the beginning I was quite at ease. But after a while, even a person like me began to feel lonely. One day after lunch I went to take a nap. There was a balcony outside my bedroom window. When I woke up I saw some little creatures gathering around the balcony. Bits of my meal had been dropped there, and the birds were busily chirping around them. As they hopped around, they chirped and made many cheerful noises. I said to myself, “All right. Since I cannot find any human beings, I will try to make friends with these little birds.”I rose up and went out to greet them. But in an instant they all flew away. An idea came to me. I took some of the leftover rice and began to arrange it in rows, with only a few grains in the first row and gradually increased them towards the entrance of the doorway. I hid behind the door and watched them coming. Soon they gathered around again. I said to me, “This is my chance.” I walked out and began to make friends with them. But the minute they saw me, they all scattered. Some perched on the branches of the tree across the balcony and stared at me, as if trying to determine what my intention was. Every time I approached them, they flew away, and every time I walked away, they came back. This went on a number of times. I wanted to preach to the birds. I wanted to tell them, “Little birds, I have no special intention in doing this. This is winter on the mountain, and food is scarce. I have enough food with me, and I just want to share it with you. Please be at peace and come down. I only ask that as you eat, I can sit among you. I want to listen to your songs and watch you playing. Come. Let us be friends…” But the birds would not come. They did not understand me. I had to give up. Later I had a certain realization within. I began to preach to myself. I said, “This body of mine is too big. If I could shrink from five feet eleven inches to the size of a bird, and even change myself into a bird, they would not be alarmed by my presence. I could then tell them my heart’s intention, and we could spend the winter on the mountain Lu-shan together.”We have a similar problem today. If God remained God, we could never understand Him. If He talked to us in His language, we would be altogether lost. If God wants to reveal Himself through speaking and have fellowship with man, He must shrink Himself to such a degree that He and we are the same. Only then would He be able to speak to us and tell us of Himself and of the mysteries of the universe. Only then would we be able to understand Him. Has God become a man to reveal Himself through His speaking? Let us again use the method of supposition. What if God revealed Himself through the human language? What if He became a man and fellowshipped with man? The implication is tremendous here! It would mean that in this world, among all the human beings throughout history, one person was not merely a man, but God as well! If it is granted that God became a man, there must be a mortal who was also divine. We need to find out about this One. This is a thorny task. But we will employ the effective method we have adopted—namely, setting down a few principles. Then we will search according to these qualifications and directions. We want to base our evaluation on what manner of life a person should possess and what qualifications he must have if he is God.
The first condition that this person must fulfill is that he must claim to be God while he is on earth. He cannot be apologetic about it. He must declare boldly that he is God. Only then can we know who he is. Without this declaration, we have no way to guess his identity. Hence, a declaration is our first qualification.
Second, the way this person came into the world must be different from ours. If I said that I am God and yet was born in the same manner as every other mortal, my words would carry no force. If on the other hand, I dropped down from heaven; my assertion would be taken seriously. The way this person comes into being must be extraordinary. He must come in an absolutely different fashion; otherwise, his words will not carry the necessary weight. Third, this man must bear a moral standard that is far above that of all other human beings. He must have God’s holiness, and his life must bear the mark of God’s righteousness. For example, if I became a bird and lived in exactly the same way as other birds, without showing them anything extraordinary, I could not convince them that I was actually a man. If God is to become a man, His moral behavior must be of the highest quality. This is the only way that we could identify Him as God. Furthermore, if a person is God, he must necessarily be able to perform things which no mortal can do. If he can achieve what we cannot achieve and know what we do not know, we can say that he is truly God. Lastly, this person must be able to tell us the divine purpose concerning man. What was God’s purpose in creating the universe and man? How does He take care of human pains and sorrows? What is the origin and ultimate solution of everything in the universe? What should our attitude towards God be? All these he must reveal to us. Unless this one shows us what we do not see, we cannot say that he has shown us any revelation. We will set down these five conditions and put the whole of humanity to the test. Let us find out if someone meets the five requirements. Such a person would surely be qualified to be God. The first person to put to the test should be yourself. Of course, you are not God, because you have never claimed to be God. Nor have I ever claimed to be. So that rules out you and me. Very well, now we will introduce Confucius. If you read his books, you will find that he did conduct a very moral and proper life. But he never claimed to be God either. Hence, he fails in the first step. What about Sakya Muni, the founder of Buddhism? Not only was there an absence of the claim of divinity, but his philosophy itself is void of deity. He did not believe in the existence of God. Since he had no God, he cannot be God either. Next, go to Mohammed. He believed in God. But he never claimed to be God. He called God Allah and himself the prophet of Allah. If you go through every person in history, you will discover that no one ever claimed to be God except One. That One was Jesus of Nazareth. He claimed to be the living God. No other person put forward such a claim. How can Jesus of Nazareth claim to be God? Before going on, we have to pause for a moment to seriously consider the matter. It is not a light thing to claim to be God. A person who makes such a claim falls into one of three categories. He must belong to one of these three categories; he cannot belong to all three. First, if he claims to be God and yet in fact is not, he has to be a madman or a lunatic. Second, if he is neither God nor a lunatic, he has to be a liar, deceiving others by his lie. Third, if he is neither of these, he must be God. You can only choose one of the three possibilities. If you do not believe that he is God, you have to consider him a madman. If you cannot take him for either of the two, you have to take him for a liar. There is no need for us to prove if Jesus of Nazareth is God or not. All we have to do is find out if He is a lunatic or a liar. If He is neither, He must be the Son of God. These are our three choices. There is no fourth. What did Jesus of Nazareth say about Himself? In John 10:30 He said, “I and the Father are one.” We need some explanation here. In the Bible the invisible God is called the Father. The Son manifests and expresses the Father. What is hidden is the Father, and what is expressed is the Son. The Son is the One who can be seen and touched. Behind, you have the Father. In front, you have the Son. The two are actually one. They are the two sides of the same reality. When we talk about two, we refer to the fact that one is hidden while the other is revealed. When we talk about one, we say that the revealed One is just the hidden One in manifestation. This is the biblical interpretation of the Father and the Son. Therefore, when Jesus of Nazareth one day said, “I and the Father are one,” it was a statement that no one else could make. This man was saying in reality that He and the invisible God are one entity. He is God and God is He. God is the invisible Father, and He is the manifested Son. The Father and the Son are one! Who can this One be that made such a claim? Is He a madman? Is He out to deceive us? After Jesus spoke such a word, what reaction do we see? “The Jews again took up stones that they might stone Him. Jesus answered them, I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of these works are you stoning me? The Jews answered Him, We are not stoning You for a good work, but for blasphemy, and because you, being a man, are making Yourself God” (vv. 31-33). The Jews understood very well that Jesus’ words meant that He claimed to be God. After hearing these words they wanted to stone Him to death. A claim was made by Jesus, and an accusation was charged by the Jews, both of which concerned His divinity. Was Jesus insane? Did He speak pure nonsense just to cause people to kill Him? Or was He a swindler setting up some kind of a scheme? If so, what was He trying to gain? Was He trying to gain death? Perhaps we will go back a little bit to the earlier parts in the Gospel of John and see what it says there. John 1:18 says, “No one has ever seen God; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.” Why has no one seen God? It is because God is invisible. Jesus said that He was the only Begotten of the Father; He expressed the invisible Father. When you see the only Begotten, you see the Father. Again He spoke concerning Himself, “And no one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended out of heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven” (3:13). Have you ever heard anyone say such words? I cannot say, “No one has been to Shanghai, but he who comes from Shanghai to Tientsin, even I, Watchman Nee, who is in Shanghai.” If I say so, I would be gibbering nonsense. But Jesus was speaking a heavenly language. He said that He came out of heaven and is still in heaven. What can a person be if he can be in two places simultaneously? Either he is God or he is a lunatic or he is a liar. If you have not yet believed in Christ, please give a verdict to this issue. Who is this man? Let us read John 3:31-32: “He who comes from above is above all; he who is from the earth is of the earth and speaks out of the earth. He who comes from heaven is above all. What He has seen and heard, of this He testifies, and no one receives His testimony.” He said that He came out of heaven and was above all. After a while He said the same thing again. Let us see what the purpose behind these words is. He came to preach the things of heaven, but no one received His words. He mentioned words like “heaven,” “above all,” “out of heaven,” etc. What kind of man was He? Confucius never said this. Neither did Sakya Muni or Mohammed. Was Jesus of Nazareth a madman, a liar, or the Son of God? John 5:17 says, “But Jesus answered them, My Father is working until now, and I also am working.” He always put Himself in the same place as the Father. Verse 18 says, “Because of this therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill Him, because He not only broke the Sabbath but also called God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.” When we read His words now, we may consider them to be ordinary remarks. But the Jews knew what He was saying. They knew that He was making Himself equal with God. The words in fact meant that God is His Father and He came to express God. The invisible One is God, and the visible One is He. Therefore, the Jews sought to kill Him. What should we do about such an unusual person? John 6:46 says, “Not that anyone has seen the Father, except Him who is from God, He has seen the Father.” Here the word is clearer. He said that no one other than Himself has ever seen God. Only He knew what the Father is like. I can only say with soberness and reverence that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God. Read John 8:18. What did He say? “I am one who testifies concerning me, and the Father who sent me testifies concerning me.” The question in verse 19 is most interesting: “They said then to Him, Where is Your Father? Jesus answered, You know neither Me nor My Father; if you knew Me, you would know My Father also.” Have you seen what He was saying? They had seen Him, yet did not know Him. Of course they would not know the Father either, whom they had not seen. If men knew Him, they knew God. Who is He then? If knowing Him equals knowing God, is that not the same as saying that He is God and God is He? Read John 8:23: “And He said to them, You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world.” The preposition “from” in this verse is ek in Greek. It means “out of.” That is how it should be translated. He said, “You are out of this world, but I am not out of this world.” This man claimed to be from above; He did not come out of this world. Who can He be? The Jews were confused. They were totally bewildered. Who was this man? The ancestor of the Jews is Abraham. They boasted of being the descendants of Abraham in the same way the Chinese boast of being the offspring of Hwang-ti. The name Abraham was highly venerated among the Jews. Now they brought out Abraham. Please read John 8:53: “Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? The prophets died too. Who are you making yourself? How did Jesus answer them? Was He greater or smaller than Abraham? In verse 56 Jesus said, “Your father Abraham exulted that he would see my day, and he saw it and rejoiced.” What is this? Even Abraham had to look forward to Jesus! Hence, verse 57: “The Jews then said to Him, You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” Now please pay your attention to Jesus’ answer in verse 58: “Truly, truly, I say to you, Before Abraham came into being, I am.” Tell me who this man is. If I told you that before Hwang-ti was, I, Watchman Nee am there, you would immediately write me off as a lunatic. Some of you would say that I am a liar. The words Jesus spoke made Him a madman, a liar, or God. There can be no fourth alternative. We have to read on. In John 10:37-38 Jesus said, “If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; but if I do them, even if you do not believe Me, believe the works so that you may come to know and continue to know…” Know what? The clause following is very crucial. It is a big statement: “…that the Father is in Me and I am in the Father.” Who then is this man? He said that He was in God and God was in Him. Passages like the above are numerous in the Bible. I shall mention one more. Read carefully John 14:6-7: “Jesus said to him, I am the way and the reality and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me. If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and henceforth you know Him and have seen Him.” It says clearly that if you know Jesus of Nazareth, you have known the invisible God. Why is this so? It is because He is God. One of the disciples was confused. John 14:8 says, “Philip said to Him, Lord, show us the Father and it is sufficient for us.” Philip was asking to be shown the Father who had been mentioned again and again by Jesus. Verse 9 says, “Jesus said to him, have I been so long a time with you, and you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father; how is it that you say, Show us the Father?” Here Jesus made it very plain that to see Him is to see God. He made no apology about it. He is God. There is no need to see the Father anymore. If you see Him, you see God! Who is Jesus of Nazareth? What would you say? Is He merely the founder of the Christian religion? Is He merely an example of self-sacrifice and humanitarianism? Is He a social reformer? Is He an advocate for universal love, peace, and freedom? Listen to what He said about Himself. He said that He is God. What is your conclusion? Is He a lunatic or a liar? Is He a hoax, or is He God? This is a vital question. Can He be a madman? If you read His biographies in the Gospels and observe His life and manner, you will realize that not only was He sane and sound, He was very sober and firm. If there is a perfectly sound person in this world, He has to be the One. His mind was clear, and His mentality was alert. If you study His deeds and words carefully, you have to confess that His thoughts are very logical and consistent, and His manners are most comely and appropriate. To opposing ones He only needed to reply a few sentences, and their arguments against Him were defeated. He did not have a trace of madness in Him. A madman could never have done what He did. Then is He a liar? A liar always lies for a profit. If there is no profit to be gained, what is the purpose of lying? Why was Jesus crucified? For no other reason than that He claimed to be God. At the last judgment, the hour when His release or crucifixion was to be deliberated, He was examined as to who He was. What was His answer? He said that the Son of Man would be seen sitting on the right hand of the Majesty on high, descending on the clouds in glory (Matt. 26:64). Even then He claimed to be God. As a result, He was crucified on the cross. Is there a liar who would sacrifice his life for his lie? Once I met a person who wanted to talk with me about our faith. He read some books about Jesus and admitted that Jesus had a high standard of morality. He could consider Jesus as a perfect man, a model for humanity. But he could not believe that Jesus is God. I said, “If you admit that He has a high standard of morality, then He at least is not a liar. If you agree that He is not a liar, then you have to accept His claim of divinity as truth. He repeatedly asserted that He is God. If you admire His morality, you have to recognize His divinity as well. Jesus of Nazareth is God!”Please read John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Verse 14 says, “And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us (and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only Begotten from the Father), full of grace and reality.” What is the “Word” mentioned in verses 1 and 14? Verse 1 speaks of the relationship the Word has with God.
In reference to when, the Word was there from the beginning.
In reference to where, the Word was with God. In reference to what, the Word was God. Today the Word has become flesh; He has taken on a human body and dwelt among men. As to how He dwells, it says that He is “full of grace and reality,” and “we beheld His glory, glory as of the only Begotten from the Father.” Who is this One? He is Jesus of Nazareth. Here we have only seen one of the five qualifications mentioned earlier. Only Jesus of Nazareth meets this first condition. This proves that He is God. We shall go on to see the four other conditions or qualifications. Jesus of Nazareth must meet all the other four qualifications before we can conclude that He is God.
EXAMINE THE CLAIMS
If God is to be a man, He must come into the world in a way that is very different from all other mortals. We come into the world through our parents and are conceived by our mothers. To ascertain whether Jesus of Nazareth is an ordinary person or the incarnated God, we need to examine His birth. If His birth was no different from ours, we have to conclude that He is nothing but a man. Not only does He have to pass the first qualification, but He needs to pass the second one. Do not hastily believe in a person simply because he claims to be God; we have to test him by our second criterion. If he is indeed God, he must be born in an extraordinary manner. If we study the birth of Jesus, we will find that it was very different from ours. He was born of a virgin. Both the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke in the New Testament tell us this fact. Jesus was born of a virgin, Mary. Before we go on, we have to realize that there are two ways to know God: by natural speculation or by revelation. According to natural speculation, one meditates and conjectures about God. In revelation, God speaks to man. We want to look at the revelation of God. We want to know what God says. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke show us that Jesus was born of a virgin, Mary. This important fact enables us to conclude that He is no ordinary person, and it justifies our being a Christian. The natural mentality cannot readily accept this fact. Some years ago, a big debate was conducted in England. On one side were prominent leaders of modernistic schools of theology. On the other side was a famous Presbyterian pastor-theologian. Four major topics were raised. Twice a day, for four consecutive days, each side took turns delivering a long speech for a total of eight messages. One of the topics was related to our subject—the virgin birth. The modernistic theologians asserted that one reason alone was enough to disprove the virgin birth—the event was biologically impossible. According to the law of biology, it is impossible to have the virgin birth. On the same day, their opponent gave the rebuttal. Let me briefly mention a few of his arguments. He said, “Our friends have denied the possibility of such an event on the ground of biological law. I am here to ask whether such an event happened. They asked, ‘Can this happen?’ They referred you to academic principles. I am asking, ‘Has this happened?’ I point to a historical occurrence. It is one thing to be academically justified. It is another thing to be historically recorded.”As he was speaking, he drew out a newspaper from his pocket. In the paper was an article about an accident that had happened a few days earlier. A man was driving on a winding mountain road. Due to carelessness, the car slid and tumbled down a deep gorge. The car was totally wrecked. Not even a square foot of the vehicle was left untouched. It was thoroughly damaged. But the man on the ground was absolutely unhurt. Later, he rose up and walked away. The theologian read the passage aloud and said, “This car tumbled down a thousand feet into ruin. You cannot even find a square foot of whole metal, and yet the man was unharmed. My friends would ask, ‘Could this man live?’ But my question is, ‘Is this man alive?’ He is alive! If you consider the possibility, there is none. But if you consider the fact, there it is!”What we have is a historical fact. If we try to study the virgin birth from a scientific point of view, we may conclude that this is an impossible event. But my question is whether or not such an event occurred. The Gospel of Matthew says that Jesus was born of a virgin. So does the Gospel of Luke. At least you have to say that these records have said such a thing and that such an event was recorded in history. At least you have to believe that there is a historical event. I am not asserting that Matthew and Luke were inspired by the Holy Spirit when they wrote their books. Whether these books were divinely inspired or not, we will set aside for a moment. We are saying that there were a few people who followed Jesus. They wrote His biography. Both Matthew and Luke were contemporaries of Jesus. Matthew followed Him for more than three years. Luke was not as close, but he “carefully investigated all things” (Luke 1:3). I believe that when he wrote his gospel, the mother of Jesus was still alive. What did they say about the birth of Jesus? They all testified that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary. His birth was absolutely different from ours. Today, after almost two thousand years, some who never saw Jesus, never talked to Mary His mother, and never met Joseph His father; conclude that He was not born of a virgin. How can you say that He was not born in this manner? Are you ruling out the possibility of such an event and concluding that it did not happen because of some arguments you proposed in your study room or some theories you fashioned in the laboratory? Perhaps we should read the genealogy of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew. There are forty-two generations in the genealogy. Beginning from the first generation, it repeatedly says, “So-and-so begot So-and-so.” This phrase is used through verse 15, which says, “And Eliud begot Eleazar, and Eleazar begot Matthan, and Matthan begot Jacob.” Verse 16 continues, “And Jacob begot Joseph.” The surprising thing is that the next part of the sentence does not continue with “Joseph begot Jesus.” Rather, it says, “Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.” When the line reaches Joseph, the pattern is dropped. This is because Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary. His way of birth was very different from ours. We have seen that His method of coming into the world was an unusual one. Now we want to look at His way of departing from the world. As we shall see, this was also contrary to our ordinary deaths. No one can ever predict the place, time, and manner he or she is going to die. A hundred years from now, all of us here will be dead. But no one knows how we are going to die. Jesus of Nazareth, however, foresaw His own death. He knew exactly when, where, and how it was to happen. Once when someone told Him that He was going to be killed, He answered that it was not acceptable for a prophet to perish outside of Jerusalem (Luke 13:33). He knew that He was going to die in Jerusalem. One day, He told His disciples that the hour had come. Not only did He sense the imminence of His death; He told others that His death hour had come. He knew also how He would die. A number of times He mentioned that He would be crucified. This was recorded at least three times in Matthew. Not only was this man different in His way of entering into the world, but His manner of departure was no less extraordinary. Both His birth and His death were very unusual. Is this the Son of God? Let us consider the third qualification. What kind of morality did Jesus of Nazareth have? Was He the same as we are? Did He ever sin? I like the sentence Jesus spoke in John 8. Many were opposing Him at that time. They surrounded and cross-examined Him. In return He asked, “Which of you convicts Me of sin?” (v. 46). This was a tremendous challenge! Which one of us would dare to stand before everyone and challenge to be convicted of sin? Whoever dared do such a thing would be put to shame the minute his wife stood up to testify against him. Perhaps, in less than five minutes, seven or eight people would immediately rise up to expose his lies and unfaithfulness. But when Jesus made such a statement, no one was able to convict Him of sin. There has been a countless number of saints and sages throughout the ages, but none was bold enough to claim to be perfect and sinless. Why is it that Jesus alone dared to make such a claim? All I can say is that this man is either arrogant to the extreme or holy to the uttermost. A proud person may talk in an outlandish manner because he does not know himself; he has no realization of what kind of person he is. But when Jesus challenged, “Which of you convicts Me,” there was no way He could be humble or polite about it. He is without sin, and He is holy to the uttermost. Jesus of Nazareth is not like Confucius, who said that given some more time, he would be rid of big, moral flaws. Jesus is sinless. When He made such a statement, He made it before His enemies. If there had been a slight misconduct on His part, the Jews would have caught it right away. The Jews are not prolific writers; they have not produced many books other than the Holy Scripture. But after Jesus, many books were written by the Jews to contradict Him. All these books deny His divinity, but none touch His morality. Of all the opposing writings, none can prove that Jesus ever sinned. Every philosopher or founder of religion, at one time or another, has said, “I repent,” or “I regret such and such a matter. I will do better from now on.” But Jesus of Nazareth never repented. A sinner must of necessity repent. But what does a sinless man have to repent of? Jesus never apologized to anyone; He never did anyone any wrong. When I was in England, some British friends asked for my opinion concerning their people. I said, “Among you, once ever so often, I hear, ‘Excuse me’ and ‘I beg your pardon.'” To the English, anyone who does not know how to make these two remarks has to be an extremely base person, for he knows not his own mistakes. Anyone can make a mistake, but when one refuses to admit his mistakes, he makes himself vulgar. For this reason we have to say, “Excuse me” and “I beg your pardon” all the time. The amazing thing is that Jesus of Nazareth never said “sorry” to anyone. He never apologized. Could He be so evil as to ignore His conscience completely? Was He oblivious to His own errors? Or is He really sinless? If so, He cannot say, “sorry.” It is not a matter of humility or politeness to Him, but a matter of maintaining His standing. I love the story about Jesus once walking down a road. Many people were gathered around Him, hoping to see the resurrection of a dead person. It was so crowded that the people pressed upon each other. One woman, who suffered from an issue of blood for years, thought that Jesus would surely be able to heal her since He had performed all kinds of miracles. She did not come to the Lord directly. All that she did was touch the fringe of His garment, and the sickness was immediately healed (Mark 5:25-29).Jesus felt something, turned around, and asked, “Who touched Me?” How did the disciples respond? They said, “You see the crowd pressing upon You and You say, Who touched Me?” (v. 31). He should have asked, “Who pressed Me?” instead of “Who touched Me?” If I were Jesus, I would have said in a gentlemanly fashion, “Excuse me.” But Jesus did not need to say that. When He said that it was a touch, He meant that it was a touch and not a pressing against. The disciples only knew that many thronged around Him. But He knew that someone “touched” Him. He knew what He was doing. There was no need for apology. He knows no sin because He is without sin. Let me mention another story about Jesus. One day He came to the synagogue in His hometown. Someone handed Him the Scripture, and He started to read from a passage about Himself. The people there, however, despised Him. He remarked that a prophet is always despised in His own place. For this reason, God would not choose them but would rather go to someone else. After they heard this, they were very indignant. They carried Him outside and tried to throw Him down a cliff. I like very much what Jesus did then. He passed through their midst (Luke 4:16-30). If someone tried to push us over a cliff, we would struggle to escape. But He was no ordinary person. He simply passed through the persecutors’ midst. They could do nothing except let Him pass by! He is without sin. Again, you see the same Jesus preaching to a ruler at midnight in a house (John 3:2), while choosing to converse with a woman beside a well at midday (4:5-7). Everything He did was very proper. No one can say anything against Him. You cannot find fault in Him. Another time some opposers came to tempt Him. They asked whether or not it was lawful to pay tax to Caesar. The Jewish nation, as you know, no longer existed then, and Caesar of Rome was their king. If Jesus said “no” to the question, He would have been involved in a political issue, and the opposers would have had an excuse to condemn Him. If He said “yes,” all the Jews would have counted Him as siding with the Romans and hated Him. The result, of course, would have favored the opposers. This was a question that could not be answered “yes” or “no.”How did Jesus reply? He said, “Show Me the coin for the tribute” (Matt. 22:19). He was wise. He even had the opposing ones draw out the money from their own pockets. Then He asked, “Whose is this image and inscription?” (v. 20). They had to admit that it was Caesar’s. Jesus gave an excellent reply: “Render then the things that are Caesar’s to Caesar and the things that are God’s to God” (v. 21). With that He dismissed the whole case. This is where His majesty lies. He never made a mistake. You cannot get a case out of Him. I cannot enumerate all His deeds. Everything He did bears such a mark of nobility that there is absolutely no flaw in His behavior. I will briefly mention His betrayal as a final example. It was very late in the night, and men armed with torches, spears, and swords came to arrest this empty-handed Jesus. He asked them, “Whom do you seek?” They said, “Jesus the Nazarene” (John 18:7). He replied, “I told you that I am” (v. 8). At that very word, the band of rogues whose minds were set on capturing Him fell back to the ground. If Jesus had not voluntarily given Himself over to them, they would never have been able to seize Him. Such calmness and majesty can only be seen in Him! As to the traitor, Jesus knew from the first day of his intention. Yet He allowed the same to follow Him and even let him be the keeper of the money. All the time Jesus knew that money was being stolen by him. Who can demonstrate such forbearance and uprightness? Here is a man who is absolutely different from all others. In every respect, He has been proven to be the Son of God. The fourth qualification we mentioned is that one who claims to be God incarnated must be able to perform what an ordinary person cannot. Has Jesus of Nazareth performed any supernatural acts? We are not His contemporaries; it was almost two thousand years ago that He walked on earth. Naturally, we cannot be His witnesses. But one thing is sure: the apostles who followed Jesus recorded, preached, and testified the things concerning Him. The four Gospels were all completed within thirty years after His departure. Most of the Jews who were then alive had seen Jesus. If the apostles’ records were false, they would have been repudiated long ago. However, the Jews only argued that Jesus is not the Son of God. They never denied His deeds, for the deeds were all facts. Today, when we read the four Gospels, we have no apprehension about their authenticity. If there had been a slight error when they were written, there would have been grave problems because many of the contemporaries had actually seen and heard Jesus. There was no chance for any fabrication. Hence, these books cannot be a hoax. If the Jews could not attack these books, there is even less of a basis for an attack today. Let us examine some of the deeds of Jesus of Nazareth. Matthew 11:2 and 3 say, “Now when John heard in the prison of the works of the Christ, he sent word through his disciples and said to Him, Are You the Coming One, or should we expect another?” John wanted to make sure that Jesus was the Christ sent from God. If He was not, John would wait for another. Verses 4 and 5 say, “And Jesus answered and said to them, Go, report to John the things that you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; and the dead are raised and the poor have the gospel announced to them.” Jesus answered neither “yes” nor “no.” He only asked the messenger to tell John of the things heard and seen. He wanted John to think about them and decide for himself if Jesus was the Christ. Jesus proved His divinity by the miracles He performed. Here is a man who accomplished things that are impossible for human beings. You cannot help but confess that He is God. John 7:31 says, “But many out of the crowd believed into Him and said, Will the Christ, when He comes, do more signs than this man has done?” Many people testified that He performed all kinds of miracles which no man could do. John 10:24 says, “The Jews therefore surrounded Him and said to Him, How long will you hold our soul in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” On the one hand, the Jews hardened their hearts and refused to acknowledge His divinity, and on the other hand, they were puzzled by the many supernatural miracles that He performed. They gathered around Him and pressed for an answer. There is one thing in which Jesus never gave in: His claim to divinity. He performed what mortals could not. These acts testify to His divinity. He told the people clearly, “The works which I do in My Father’s name, these testify concerning Me” (v. 25). On the one hand, He made His claim, and on the other hand, He performed miracles to justify His claim. In John 14:11 He said to His disciples, “Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” This is the same as saying that He is the invisible Father. “But if not, believe because of the works themselves.” If He had not done anything impossible, this word would have had no value at all. If He had not performed any extraordinary acts, they would have asked back, “What works have you done? We do not know what you are talking about.” But the disciples knew of the acts He did. All these acts prove that He is the Son of God. We have to check Jesus of Nazareth against a fifth qualification. If He is God, He has to show us what He is. Is He kind, or is He severe? Is He gentle, or is He fierce? What kind of a God do we have? As a matter of fact, Jesus did show us what God is. This is a most wonderful thing. The eternal, invisible God is now seen by us. There is no need to conjure up an untouchable and far transcendent God or imagine what He is like; He has revealed Himself to us. He has dwelt in our midst and walked among us. Jesus of Nazareth is the very God dwelling among and with man. He has manifested God’s nature and attributes to us. There is no need to search for God anymore because He has revealed Himself. Our mentality is too limited. Our hands are too short, and our viewpoint too narrow. If we were left to ourselves to study and search for God, we could only conclude that He is the unknown One. Now we know that God desires to reveal Himself. In fact, He has revealed Himself to us already. We have said that the two means whereby God communicates with us are the written and spoken language. For this reason, the Bible and Jesus of Nazareth are the two indispensable factors in our faith. When you take away either one, God becomes the gravest problem in the world. Hebrews 1:1 says, “God, having spoken of old in many portions and in many ways to the fathers in the prophets.” These speaking constitute the Bible. “Has at the last of these days spoken to us in the Son” (v. 2). This is Jesus of Nazareth. Whoever is in Christ now may know Him. To have heard the words of Jesus of Nazareth is to have heard the words of God. Dear reader, what is your attitude towards Jesus of Nazareth? Thomas confessed, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28). Peter proclaimed, “You are…the Son of the living God!” (Matt. 16:16). Martha said, “I have believed that You are the Christ, the Son of God” (John 11:27). Even a Roman centurion exclaimed at the sight of Jesus hanging on the cross, “Truly this was the Son of God” (Matt. 27:54b). I hope you will make the same confession
WHO IS HE?
Our Christian faith is based upon the revelation
of God. It is different from all other religions which are attained through meditation, conjecture, and searching. We believe that the Bible is God’s revelation to us. In other words, it is His spoken word to us. We also believe that God has become a man, who is the very Jesus of Nazareth. God, the Bible, and Jesus Christ constitute the basis of our faith. Let us begin by looking at the position that Christ occupies in our faith, or we may say, in Christianity. However, Christianity has been altered and is not what it ought to be. At the present we will not mention what Christianity ought to be. Rather, we will only draw a comparison between Christianity and other religions in order to see the distinctiveness of our faith. We will not try purposely to exalt Christianity and debase other religions. We will only draw an objective comparison between them. First, let us consider Confucianism. Actually, followers of Confucius never formally assert that theirs is a religion. Confucianism merely exercises great influence on Chinese culture, education, ethics, and philosophy. One thing, however, is certain: the teachings and doctrines of Confucius are of foremost importance, while the person Confucius is not as crucial. I do not mean that Confucianism has no concern for Confucius. The man indeed was an extraordinary person. However, in order to be a part of Confucianism, one only need to understand the doctrines of Confucius, abide by his teachings, and be thoroughly acquainted with his books. It does not matter whether one understands the man Confucius or not. The principles, doctrines, and teachings of Confucius are the essence of the religion. Next let us consider Buddhism. The founder of Buddhism was Sakya Muni. Once he preached to his disciples about evil persons being reincarnated through the Wheel of Rebirth after death. This is something that attracts man’s attention. But in all of Buddhism, the point of emphasis is doctrines and theories. Concerning the man Sakya Muni, although he has a history and biography, they are something parenthetical. They do not form the crux of Buddhism. The center of the religion is not the man Sakya Muni. Whether there was such a person is unimportant to today’s Buddhism. All that is needed are the doctrines and teachings. Other religions such as Taoism and Mohammedanism are all of the same principle. After each founder set up a relig