DOES GOD EXIST? TODAY

August 14, 2023August 13, 2023

Ronald Numbers and Creationism

Dr. Ronald Numbers died on July 23, 2023, at 81. Numbers had an interesting journey from being a Seventh-Day Adventist to an agnostic and supporter of Darwinism. He is best known for his studies and books on Adventism, Creationism, and the history of science.

In 1976, Dr. Numbers wrote an excellent expose’ of Adventism titled Prophetess of Health: A Study of Ellen G. White. His study of the topic led to his leaving the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. This book remains an excellent source for those wanting to know the weaknesses of that denomination.

In 1992, Ronald Numbers wrote The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism, a scholarly study of the history of the creationist movement. He revised it in 2006 with the subtitle changed from “Scientific Creationism” to “Intelligent Design.”

Although Ronald Numbers disagreed with the faith of the creationists he wrote about, he showed respect for them and presented factual history. Dr. Numbers was Hilldale and William Coleman Professor of the History of Science and Medicine at the University of Wisconsin from 1974 to 2013. Among other writings, he co-edited the eight-volume Cambridge History of Science.

In our exchanges with Dr. Numbers, he was always polite, interested, fair, and understanding. He had his own beliefs, some of which I disagreed with, but he strived for accuracy and fairness and set a model that the evolutionist and creationist camps should emulate.

Data from Wikipedia, the NCSE journal for August 2023, and his obituary from the Wisconsin State Journal. For more information on Creationism and Dispensationalism, click HERE, HERE, or HERE.

August 11, 2023August 10, 2023

What Jesus Looked Like

What did Jesus Christ look like? In my travels, I have seen pictures of Jesus with Asian features, caucasian features, Hispanic features, and features of people of color. We don’t know what Jesus looked like, and we really shouldn’t care. The fact that He could slip through a crowd unnoticed (Luke 4:28-30) and Judas had to use a kiss to identify him (Matthew 26:48-49) indicates that He must have looked pretty much like a typical Jewish man of His time.

The important thing about Jesus is not His appearance but His message. If you read Matthew 5, 6, and 7, you won’t see a picture of Jesus, but you will get a good look at the uniqueness and practical value of His teachings. Time magazine recently (August 24, 2023) reviewed the various cover images of Jesus they published over the years. They would have done better to publish what Jesus taught in those chapters of Matthew’s gospel. That is what our society needs today.

Read Acts 2:37-42 and notice how the people who listened to Peter’s message about Jesus responded to God’s invitation. They weren’t concerned about what Jesus looked like. They were changed by what Jesus taught and what He did. They were baptized, not as an emotional response to a speaker but to receive the gift God offered to them through Jesus.

Read Romans 6 and notice what baptism is about. It isn’t like joining a club and isn’t dependent on hearing a preacher. Baptism is a personal response to God and a change in one’s life. It is also the way to bring God’s Spirit into our feeble human existence so we can live a new life. Reading and acting on God’s Word can make an incredible difference in our lives and future.

August 10, 2023August 9, 2023

Tell the Clouds What to Do

Yesterday, we asked the puzzling question, “How can clouds float in the air?” Clouds are made of water, which is heavier than air, so how can clouds float on air? The short answer is they don’t. We have two things to learn: the clouds are falling, and only God can tell the clouds what to do.

If you didn’t read yesterday’s post, I suggest you read it for background. But, for now, let’s return to where we left off in Job 38, where God speaks of clouds as He challenges Job and his friends. These are God’s words in verses 34-38:

“Can you lift up your voice to the clouds,
That an abundance of water may cover you?
Can you send out lightnings, that they may go,
And say to you, ‘Here we are!’?
Who has put wisdom in the mind?
Or who has given understanding to the heart?
Who can number the clouds by wisdom?
Or who can pour out the bottles of heaven,
When the dust hardens in clumps,
And the clods cling together?”

God asks Job if he can tell the clouds what to do, sending rain when the ground is dry. Of course, the answer is “No.” Human wisdom and understanding can’t do that, but God can. Before God spoke to him, Job seemed to believe that sometimes God used rain as a form of punishment (Job 37:13). God did withhold rain from Israel for years because of the evil leadership of Ahab and Jezebel, but Elijah’s prayer brought it back.

So does God make a practice of withholding rain as a punishment? Not according to Jesus. He told us to love our enemies, “that you may be sons of your Father in heaven, for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:44-45).

We cannot tell the clouds what to do, whether we want it to rain or not rain. Only God can do that, but He is not a punishing old man in the sky ready to withhold rain or zap us with lightning if we misbehave. Many people have that confused idea, but the Bible does not support it. God sends sunshine and rain on the just and the unjust through the weather system He created. All weather conditions occur naturally according to God’s designed system, except in rare cases when He intervened with a timing miracle.

Let’s get back to our original question about clouds. They are water and sometimes ice, so how can they float in the air? The answer is that they don’t float. They are falling very gradually. Any unsupported object will fall to the ground because of Earth’s gravity. As it falls faster, the friction of the air molecules increases.

Any falling object will eventually reach terminal velocity when the friction force equals the pull of gravity. We can ignore the air friction for a bowling ball because it is minuscule compared to the ball’s weight. However, the weight of a water droplet in a cloud with a diameter measured in microns is minuscule, so the terminal velocity may be less than a hundred feet per hour. When you consider that clouds are thousands of feet in the air, that “falling” is too slow for us to notice. The water droplets may “dissolve” into the air before they fall very far. When they converge into larger droplets, they fall more quickly as rain.

The bottom line is, yes, the clouds are falling, but you will only notice it when they fall as rain. The more important point is that only God can tell the clouds what to do. The most important thing to remember is that God’s love sends sunshine and rain for everyone, even for those who refuse to recognize His existence.

August 9, 2023August 8, 2023

How Can Clouds Float in the Air?

The sky is falling! Well, not exactly. Actually, the clouds are falling, or are they? Clouds are made of water, and everyone knows water is heavier than air, so how can clouds float in the air? Have you ever wondered about that? Are clouds floating, or is it an optical illusion? I’m baffled. How about you?

Before we answer those questions, here is another one. What does the Bible say about clouds? Clouds are mentioned many times in the Bible. God gives us a creation story in the Book of Job that expands on the Genesis account. These are some of the words God used to challenge Job and his friends in Job 38:8-9:

“Or who shut in the sea with doors,
When it burst forth and issued from the womb;
When I made the clouds its garment,
And thick darkness its swaddling band;
When I fixed My limit for it,
And set bars and doors;
When I said,
‘This far you may come, but no farther,
And here your proud waves must stop!”

In this poetic account, when the early Earth was a water world, God shut up the ocean “with doors” and told it, “Here your proud waves must stop!” I love that word picture of the creation process! God speaks, and the seas listen! But we are talking about clouds, and how can clouds float in the air?

In this Job passage, God explains something we wonder about in Genesis 1:1, where it says, “darkness was on the face of the deep.” The garment of clouds explains the darkness covering the oceans. Otherwise, we have to wonder why the first part of Genesis 1:1 tells us, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” The heavens would have to include the Sun, Moon, and stars, as well as all of the galaxies and everything in them. Why, then, was there darkness on the water-covered Earth? God answers that question by saying: “I made the clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band.”

Genesis tells us that God divided the water covering the land from the water in the sky, meaning the clouds. (See Genesis 1:9-10.) We read further in Genesis 1:14-18 that God caused the clouds to clear up enough to allow the Sun and Moon to be fully visible “for signs and seasons, and for days and years” and to “give light on the earth.”

We see that God’s description of the creation process in Job clarifies some questions that the Genesis creation account leaves unanswered. But that isn’t all God said about clouds in Job 38. He challenges Job with this question in verse 34:

“Can you lift up your voice to the clouds,
That an abundance of water may cover you?”

God verifies that clouds are made of water, and as Genesis tells us, God divided the water on the surface from the water in the air. So how did God make the water float in the air? Are the clouds defying gravity, or is this an optical illusion? Is God breaking His own laws of physics, or is He fooling us? The answer is – we are out of time for today. But tomorrow, we will answer the puzzling question, “How can clouds float in the air?”

August 8, 2023August 7, 2023

If Pain Did Not Exist

Atheists and skeptics maintain that pain and suffering are the most significant proof that there is no God and the Bible is not true. They claim that a good and loving God would not allow pain and suffering. Is there an inconsistency between the descriptions of God in passages like 1 John 4:7-8 and the history of Israel? Unfortunately, skeptics and atheists fail to consider the alternative if pain did not exist.

The ability to exist in a physical world requires being able to feel pain. How could we survive if we could not know that a stove is hot when we put our hand on it? The ability to feel pain lets us know if something is sharp, or dangerously hot or cold.

Pain occurs on more than a physical level. What kind of a person would it be who could not feel guilt, compassion, empathy, and sympathy? These characteristics are unique to humans. We may condition an animal to display a response we interpret as one of those emotions, but humans uniquely can experience mental anguish over the circumstance of another human. People who bury this capacity, such as Hitler, Mao, and Putin, have created enormous problems for the whole human race.

The Bible clearly tells us that God can perform miracles. However, a careful study of the biblical miracles shows there was a reason beyond just curing a disease or infirmity. If people could escape life’s problems by becoming Christians, many would come to Christ to escape even minor physical problems. The Apostle Paul struggled with suffering, which he called his “thorn in the flesh.” He would not have learned an important lesson if pain did not exist. He wrote, “Three times I prayed to the Lord to relieve me of it.” God responded, “My grace is all you need; power comes to full strength in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:7 -9).

None of us like to have any kind of pain, but this life is only temporary. If pain did not exist here, there would be negative consequences. Christians have peace in knowing that the future holds an existence that will be free of pain. My suffering has given me a purpose in living and the strength not to fear dying. Denying God’s existence adds another level of denial and uncertainty to life.

August 4, 2023July 31, 2023

Famous Non-Scientists Who Expressed Faith in God

A popular belief says that famous men of history were atheists or agnostics who broke from the religious conventions of their day and achieved greatness because of their independence from God. We have often quoted words of faith from famous scientists, but likewise, there are famous non-scientists who expressed faith in God and the Bible.

Allen Webster, in his periodical “House to House/Heart to Heart,” collected these quotes:

Charles Dickens – “I commit my soul to the mercy of God, through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and exhort my dear children humbly to try to guide themselves by the teachings of the New Testament.”

William Shakespeare – “I commend my soul into the hands of God, my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through the only merits of Jesus Christ my Savior, to be made partaker of life everlasting.”

George Washington – “The hand of providence has been so conspicuous in all this, that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked, that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations.”

Benjamin Franklin – “Young man, my advice to you is that you cultivate an acquaintance with and firm belief in the Holy Scriptures, for this is your certain interest. I think Christ’s system of morals and religion, as He left them with us, is the best the world ever saw or is likely to see.”

John Quincy Adams – “My custom is to read four or five chapters of the Bible every morning immediately after rising … which seems to me to be the most suitable manner of beginning the day. It is an invaluable and inexhaustible mine of knowledge and virtue.”

Abraham Lincoln – “I am profitably engaged in reading the Bible. Take all of this Book that you can by reason and the balance by faith, and you will live and die a better man.”

William Penn – “We believe the Scriptures to contain a declaration of the mind and will of God. They ought also to be read, believed, and fulfilled in our day. We accept them as the words of God himself.”

William Gladstone – “I have known 95 great men of the world in my time, and of these, 87 were all followers of the Bible.”

This is just a sample of the famous non-scientists who expressed faith in God and the Bible.

References: Allen Webster in his periodical “House to House/Heart to Heart” (Volume 28 #8) – You can see examples of scientist quote in our quarterly publication HERE, HERE, and HERE.

August 3, 2023August 3, 2023

Hunger and Malnutrition in the World

It is hard to believe that in 2023 hunger and malnutrition are still major issues causing pain and suffering worldwide. As the world population grows, this situation is going to get worse. Those of us who have donated some money to organizations addressing hunger find ourselves on mailing lists that fill our mailboxes with requests for more money with pathetic pictures of starving children. Strangely enough, the primary issue isn’t food shortage but food waste.

Scientific American magazine published a study showing food loss and waste by country. Nigeria had the most significant waste in 2017, with over 3500 million tons of food lost. Nigeria is the source of many of the pictures of starving children and impoverished families, yet it leads the world in the waste and loss of food.

The United States in 2017 had about half as much food wasted or lost as Nigeria did. However, seeing what American restaurants, airlines, and food banks discard is appalling. India is the second-highest country in wasted or lost food, with just under 2500 million tons.

Hunger and malnutrition should not exist because God has given us all the resources we need to feed every man, woman, and child on the planet. Humans have allowed war, greed, selfishness, and mismanagement to cause the suffering we see.

Reference: “Waste Not” in the July/August 2023 issue of Scientific American (page 14)

August 2, 2023July 31, 2023

Diversity in Jesus Christ’s Apostles

In today’s world, a common requirement for businesses is diversity in the workforce. The idea is that you can’t serve all the people if you don’t have those who can relate to their needs. The evil of segregation is not just isolation. It is also the failure to have a variety of approaches to the issues of the day. We see diversity in Jesus Christ’s apostles. Consider the diversity of the apostles He chose and others who helped spread the gospel:

PETER – An impetuous fisherman and his brother ANDREW – Fishing was the lowest of all occupations, and Matthew 4:18-20 indicates Peter and Andrew may not have had a boat but cast their nets from the shore.

JAMES and JOHN – Fishermen brothers who had a boat. They were control freaks who didn’t understand the mission of Jesus. (See Luke 9:52-56 and Mark 3:17.)

PHILIP – The naysayer who was always asking questions. (See John 6:5-7.)

THADDAEUS – His name indicates a warmth of character.

SIMON THE ZEALOT – He was from the Zealots, a politically incorrect group at risk with the Roman government.

THOMAS – A doubter who was paralyzed by peer pressure and science. (See John 20:24-28.)

MATTHEW – A hated tax collector ( publican) despised by the general population.

BARTHOLOMEW and JAMES THE SON OF ALPHAEUS – The invisible apostles who apparently worked behind the scenes to do the will of Christ.

JUDAS – A thief. (John 12:4-8.)

PAUL – A highly educated Jewish scholar.

LUKE – A medical doctor.

Today we understand the importance of diversity. In Jesus’ day, people didn’t understand His message or the choice of His followers. Luke 8:3 tells us of how the ministry of Jesus was carried on, with a wealthy woman and one who had come out of bad situations providing financial support. In addition to the diversity in Jesus Christ’s apostles, there are many lessons for us to learn as we look at Jesus’s teachings and what He did to spread HIs message to the people of His day.

August 1, 2023July 31, 2023

Following the Rules of Debate

Recently media debates have occurred in discussions about climate change, global warming, fracking, abortion, evolution, vaccinations, immigration, and the existence of God. The problem with debates in the media generally is that they are not following the rules of debate.

Not too long ago, I had a radio debate with a talk show host in Pittsburg. I presented scientific evidence from cosmology showing that time and space came from God. From scientific data and probability, I then showed that design as the causal agent of creation in the natural world is more reasonable than chance theories. The talk show host admitted that he had not studied the evidence I presented and had no answer for it, nor did his listeners. With 30 seconds left in the program, he said, “I still don’t believe that the Bible’s teaching on morality makes any sense, and that proves that there is no God.” He then said he was an atheist, and I had not changed his mind. He signed off by claiming that, once again, he had won a debate with a Christian.

This is an example of not following the rules of debate, which is not confined to atheists and skeptics. The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) coined the term “Gish Gallop” to describe the techniques of the Institute for Creation Research, a creationist ministry using dispensational theology to promote their denominational beliefs.

Eugenie Scott of the NCSE describes Gish Gallop as: “dishing out a ton of information, accurate or not, that your opponent has no way to answer in the time available. It is an effective if ultimately shallow debate trick.” Scott goes on to say, “Debate is a sport. It is not a way of convincing an audience or the public of the accuracy of an opinion. It is played by rules that are different from those of logic and empirical evidence.”

A formal debate can be helpful when it has restrictions on what topics will be discussed and held between people with integrity who are following the rules of debate. We have quit doing debates because, in our experience, both atheists and creationist organizations cannot be trusted to allow reasonable discussion on the evidence. Be careful what you read in the media about viruses, climate change, the age of the Earth, etc., and make sure that statements and claims are well documented with reliable sources.

July 31, 2023July 30, 2023

The Thinking of Hitler and Dawkins

We sometimes get nasty letters and even threats when we point out the logical consequences of atheism and naturalism. A 1953 translation of Adolph Hitler’s “Table Talk” document clearly shows the thinking of Hitler and his justification for killing millions of Jews. It sounds very much like the modern writings of celebrated atheist Richard Dawkins. Hitler’s statement is:

“Today, war is nothing but a struggle for the riches of nature. By virtue of an inherent law, these riches belong to him who conquers them… That’s in accordance with the laws of nature. By means of the struggle, the elites are continually renewed. The law of (natural) selection justifies this incessant struggle by allowing the survival of the fittest. Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure.”

We can further see the thinking of Hitler in a film that was shown in all German movie theaters at the time. The narration of the film says:

“Wherever fate outs us, whatever station we must occupy, only the strong will prevail in the end. Everything in the natural world that is weak for life will ineluctably be destroyed. In the last few decades, mankind has sinned terribly against the law of natural selection. We haven’t just maintained life unworthy of life, we have even allowed it to multiply! The descendants of these sick people look like this.”

Shortly after this film was released, German mental institutions began gassing to death thousands of innocent patients. In America today, we have “experts” like Peter Singer at Princeton University suggesting that we should euthanize those who are mentally ill or in prison. Richard Dawkins has written, “This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous – indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.” These leaders are repeating the thinking of Hitler.

The Christian belief is that the body is the dwelling place of God’s Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16), and all humans are of infinite value (Galatians 3:26-29) because we are created in God’s image (James 3:9). Leaders in our culture today challenge that idea. If we don’t learn from past human mistakes, we are doomed to repeat them. Looking at the world today, it seems we are well on our way to repeating what happened in Germany.

Quotes from Reflections on the Existence of God by Richard Simmons pp 24-25.