Month: September 2018

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Canyonlands Tour 2018

Canyonlands Tour 2018

This week John Clayton is with a group of people on what we call the Canyonlands Tour. Many times over the years John has taken groups of people to visit the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, and Zion Canyon, as well as other locations in northern Arizona and southern Utah.

The Canyonlands Tour is not just a sightseeing trip. It’s an opportunity for Christians to learn about how God has worked to create those “natural wonders.” John uses his knowledge of geology to explain the many interesting and beautiful features of the “canyonlands” area. Some people try to explain the Grand Canyon by “flood geology.” John explains what the real science of geology actually tells us about the formation of that remarkable Canyon.

With the assistance of Alan Doty who has hiked the canyons many times, the Canyonlands Tour is always an interesting and educational experience. One of the places on the agenda is the “desert view” area overlooking the Canyon. That is the location of a watchtower which visitors can tour.

On a level of the tower, there is a wall which has a plaque attached as you can see in the picture. The plaque contains the words from Psalm 66:4. It says, “All the earth worships Thee; they sing praises to Thee, sing praises to Thy name.” That plaque has been there for years. With atheists demanding the removal of any acknowledgment of God on public property, perhaps the only reason those words are still there is that some might interpret the “Thee” and “Thy” as referring to the Grand Canyon.

However, those pronouns do not refer to the Canyon, but to the One who created it. The process of creating the Canyon was no small feat. It did not happen in one flood. The people on the Canyonlands Tour will learn something about the processes that science still does not fully understand. In the meantime, there are those who say the Grand Canyon disproves God. It does not. It only invalidates a false interpretation of the Bible which many have adopted.

It’s too bad the people who placed that plaque didn’t include verse 3 as well. It says, “Say to God, ‘How awesome are your deeds! So great is your power that your enemies cringe before you'” (NIV). I am sure that there have been some atheists who have cringed when they read the words of that plaque. I suspect that sometime an “offended” atheist will demand its removal. However, nobody can remove the Grand Canyon and the testimony it gives to the power and glory of God.
–Roland Earnst © 2018

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STD Rates Increasing

STD Rates Increasing

In August 2018, the Center for Disease Control released 2017 data showing STD rates increasing. The report showed a radical increase in the sexually transmitted diseases chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis. The CDC says that 2.29 million new cases of these three common sexually transmitted diseases were diagnosed in 2017. Gonorrhea led the way with a 19% increase in cases in that year.

The CDC suggests that the reason for the STD rates increasing is a lack of government funding on sex education. There has been no increase in federal spending in that area since 2013. We would suggest that education about the mechanics of how to avoid STDs won’t change the trend. People won’t change their behavior until they truly understand the purpose of sex and how sexual behavior functions in committed relationships.

We have pointed out before that more and more Americans say “none” when asked about their religious affiliation. That is especially true for the younger generation. Without a religious basis, how can young people understand that sex is a creation of God that binds parents together in a loving, healthy home? The answer to STD rates increasing is not more funding, but more faith.
–John N. Clayton © 2018
Data from USA TODAY, August 29, 2018, page B1.

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Psychic Tears – The Third Type

Psychic Tears – The Third Type
Yesterday we mentioned that we have three types of tears. The first type is basal tears which lubricate the eye. The second is reflex tears which help to flush irritants from the eye. Each of those types has a different chemical composition. There is also a third unique type of tears. We call them PSYCHIC TEARS.

These tears are produced by intense emotional stress which can be pleasure, anger, suffering, mourning, or pain. Again, they have a different chemical composition from basal or reflex tears. These tears contain large amounts of protein-based hormones – prolactin, adrenocorticotropic hormone, and leu-enkephalin which is a natural painkiller.

The hypothalamus in the brain has a degree of control over the autonomic nervous system. In a complex process involving neurotransmitters and receptors, the lacrimal gland is stimulated to produce tears. Studies have shown that the shedding of psychic tears is a significant part of the emotional adjustment to stress. Ongoing studies are examining whether mental illness can be affected by the shedding of psychic tears.

We would never have thought that tears could be so complicated. We also find it interesting that tears have different connotations in the Bible. In Luke 7:38 a woman washes the feet of Jesus with her tears. Mark 9:24 tells of a father crying out with tears. Acts 20:19 and 31 show tears used in a different context. Revelation 7:17 and 21:4 speak of God wiping away ALL tears indicating a realization of all the services that tears provide.

A study of tears is a beautiful reminder of David’s statement of Psalms 139:14: “I will praise you, God, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are your works.” Tears show us just one more example of God’s design of our bodies to cope with life on Earth.
–John N. Clayton
Data from the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

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Types of Tears – There are Three

Types of Tears – There are Three
In April of 2016, I received a note from Charles and Brenda Beard who asked if I had ever studied the subject of tears? I put that in my list of topics to investigate thinking that types of tears could not be very complicated. There should be only one type of tears that came with different kinds of situations. Upon researching tears, I have learned that there are three types of tears, and they are different in function and different in composition.

BASAL TEARS keep the cornea of the eye continually wet and nourished. They also lubricate the eye and keep it free of dust. Tears of this type contain water, mucin, lipids, lysozyme, lactoferrin, lipocalin, lacritin. immunoglobulins, glucose, urea, sodium, and potassium. The substances such as lysozyme fight against bacterial infection by dissolving a layer in the outer coating of certain types of bacteria. This action is part of the body’s complex immune system.

Basal tears also contain antioxidants including ascorbate, urate, cysteine, glutathione, and tyrosine. For those of us that aren’t biochemists, this simply means there is a complex, designed system in the tear production of our eyes. This system keeps this vulnerable, exposed surface from being destroyed by agents in the world around us that would attack such a sensitive area.

Typically a person will secrete .03-.04 ounces (.75-1.1 grams) of this body fluid per day. If you have had a family member or even a pet that could not produce tears, you know that very quickly the eye becomes unusable. Basal tears are a carefully compounded chemical substance essential to our vision.

REFLEX TEARS attempt to wash away anything that irritates the eyes. When foreign particles or irritants contact the eye or nasal area, TRP (amino acid) channels in the ophthalmic nerve act to produce these tears. Most of us have produced tears when working with certain substances such as when cutting onions. Tear gas, pepper spray, or some fragrances cause this same reaction. Yawning, coughing, or vomiting can trigger these tears. Bright lights shining in your eyes or hot, peppery substances in your mouth also trigger reflex tears. The fluid, which is water laced with amino acids, help to wash away the irritant.

Those are two types of tears that are very important. There is also a third type which we will talk about tomorrow.
–John N. Clayton © 2018
Data from the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

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Fragile Lunar Temperature

Fragile Lunar Temperature
When astronauts landed on the Moon in the 1970s, they left several instruments behind that continued to send data to the Earth. Among those instruments was a set of temperature probes bored into the surface that measured how heat travels through the lunar soil. The data from those instruments indicate a fragile lunar temperature.

Scientists had assumed that heat flows out from the Moon’s core, just as it does on Earth. The question was how fast it was flowing and was this due to residual heat in the core of the Moon or due to radioactive decay inside the Moon. They were amazed to discover that heat was flowing into the Moon instead of out of it.

Later measurements showed that the heat flow into the Moon only happened where the astronauts had been walking and where the rover drove. Scientists now agree that the footprints of the astronauts and the tracks of the rover compressed the lunar sediment which darkened the print. Sunlight was absorbed more efficiently in the darkened areas. Thus it was the absorption of sunlight which caused the elevated temperatures in the borehole and made it appear that it was a lunar feature. A detailed treatment of this research appeared in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets in May of 2018.

We are only beginning to understand how delicate the creation process is. The fragile lunar temperature indicates that a small variation can alter the end product of the process. God’s creation of the cosmos demanded incredible knowledge of all this and continues to sustain it today.

Our increase in knowledge further emphasizes the wonder expressed by David in Psalms 8:3-6: “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have ordained, what is man, that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man, that you visit him. For you have made him a little lower than the angels, and have crowned him with glory and honor. You made him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; you have put all things under his feet.”
–John N. Clayton © 2018

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Evolution Does Not Explain Creation

Evidence from Cosmology
The notion of God as the creator has escaped our world today. We have not understood that there was a beginning, that God caused the beginning, and that His imprint is on all we see around us. We have been told that evolution explains all these things, but in reality, evolution doesn’t address the question. Evolution does not explain creation.

Evolution assumes that time has been created. Evolution assumes that space has been created and that matter/energy has been created within space/time. Evolution assumes that forces we are just beginning to understand shaped the matter/energy in space/ time so that stable physical matter came into existence. It assumes that the properties of matter/energy caused it to become organized into galaxies, and stars, and solar systems.

Evolution further assumes that within one of those solar systems a planet was created within the Goldilocks zone where water could exist as a liquid. On that planet, carbon and oxygen and heavy metals were produced to allow tangible matter to exist for long periods of time. Then evolution assumes that within a limited time these materials came into existence in an environment and with a catalyst that could produce life.

Once all those assumptions have been made, evolution attempts to explain how that first life changed to eventually become us. In other words, evolution tries to explain how once the creation happened, things got to be as they are today. Evolution does not explain creation.
–John N. Clayton © 2018

This post was adapted from “First-Century Athens and the 21st-Century World” by John N. Clayton. We encourage you to read the complete article which appears in the third quarter 2018 DOES GOD EXIST? Journal. If you subscribe to the printed version, you should have received it in the mail. Otherwise, you can read it online at THIS LINK.

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God’s Elevator — The Vortex

God's Elevator — The Vortex
One of my favorite demonstrations as a physics teacher was to put a student on a frictionless stool and spin them around with their legs extended out in front of them. I would then tell them to pull in their legs. When they did that, their angular velocity increased dramatically—they spun faster. We see this when a spinning figure skater pulls in their arms and legs causing a dramatic increase in their rotational speed. This is an excellent demonstration of the conservation of energy and angular momentum. It is also a design feature that enables a wide variety of living things to fly without prohibitive losses of metabolic energy. We call it God’s elevator.

Instead of solids, what happens if the material that is spinning is a fluid – water or air for example. When water goes down the drain in your sink, it picks up speed as it gets near the center. In the very center, there won’t be any motion at all. In a hurricane, warm air is rising in the center, and as air rushes in to replace the rising air, it increases in speed. The center with no air rushing in is the eye of the hurricane, and the maximum velocity is in the wall near the eye.

A less dramatic example of the vortex is the convection cell on a hot summer day. The Sun heats the ground which then heats the air near the ground. The heated air rises, and as it does, the edges of the air are cooled by contact with the colder air around it. This creates a doughnut-shaped thermal vortex that rises to make an invisible, energy-saving elevator for any organism that can get into the doughnut. What this means is that an animal like a hawk does not have to beat its wings and spend enormous energy to soar to a high elevation. This is a huge saving in metabolic energy. An amazing number of living organisms use God’s elevator to get high into the sky and travel very long distances.

Charles Darwin, while sailing on the Beagle, noticed a mass of spiderlings 60 miles off the South American coast. These organisms are terrestrial creatures, but they were able to travel enormous distances by using vortices. Moths use vortices to make journeys from where they are to new areas.

Recent studies of birds have shown that the wings of a bird create a vortex system which is like a ladder. There is almost no lift produced by the bird’s wings on their upstroke, but the downstroke creates a vortex. That vortex combines with vortices on the wing tips making a ring. The combination of these ring vortices makes a zigzagging ladder-like system which lifts the bird. This allows the bird to use a smaller amount of energy than if it merely powered itself through the air. That is why the birds in your backyard fly in a zigzag pattern rather than a smooth path.

Blackfly larvae that live on the bottom of a stream position themselves so that water flowing over the bottom of the tube-shaped larva goes faster creating a low pressure rising along their bodies. The resulting vortex brings up food particles along the floor of the stream to the filters that extend out the top of the larva. The number of examples of living things that use vortices to feed or to conserve energy as they travel seems to be endless.

How do these animals know to use the vortex effect? The way they position themselves and how they use the vortices in their environment works to their advantage. God’s elevator is a great testimony to His wisdom of design in the creation. We can know there is a God through the things He has made and how they use things like vortices to survive (Romans 1:20).
–John N. Clayton © 2018

Data from Discover, August 1993 page 81-87.

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Ancient Artifacts Caution

Ancient Artifacts at the Clayton Museum
The Clayton Museum of Ancient History in York, Nebraska, has a problem that all of us need to be aware of. That museum houses Foster Standback’s collections of ancient artifacts from Palestine and the Roman world from the time of Jesus.

The problem is that there is a huge market for ancient things that can bring massive profits to those who sell them. This has resulted in looting, black market selling, the making of fakes, and damage to archaeological sites. UNESCO is the United National Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. In 1970 UNESCO established a Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export, and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. In 1972 the nations of the world agreed not to trade in illicit cultural heritage objects.

The reason for this agreement is not only to stop criminal acts but also to keep ancient artifacts in their context. Once the archaeological context of an object is lost, it is worth far less academically, as it can no longer tell us anything about the people who made it. The goal is to allow scholars to gain as much information as they can about the objects in their context. The archaeological evidence can contribute to our understanding of the past.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to enforce an agreement between the nations of the world to anything. There are organizations such as The Museum of the Bible that buy artifacts from black-market dealers claiming to be trying to preserve the objects. A good general rule is that if you see an ad for ancient artifacts from the time of Christ, especially things of religious significance, do not purchase them. It is not only illegal, but it is highly likely you are paying a lot of money for something that is fraudulent.
–John N. Clayton © 2018

Reference: Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October 2018, page 6.

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Bigfoot Legend and Human Evolution

Bigfoot Legend
Sixty years ago a headline in the Humboldt (California) Times read “Giant Footprints Puzzle Residents.” The paper reported that a road construction crew had found footprints 16 inches long and the paper gave the creature the name “Bigfoot” which has stuck to this day. Today’s media and film-makers have kept the Bigfoot legend going.

Animal Planet has run a series titled Finding Bigfoot for 11 seasons now, without actually ever finding it. There is a Bigfoot Field Researcher’s Organization that keeps a file of bigfoot reports and has at least one from every state in the United States except Hawaii. This year there are two children’s films: The Son of Bigfoot and Smallfoot.

It isn’t just in America that the Bigfoot legend exists. The Australians have a specimen called Yowie, and there is a Himalayan specimen called Yeti. Social media has made the problem worse where, for example, drone footage of a supposed bigfoot in a clearing in Idaho racked up millions of views.

In 1968 Frank Hansen exhibited “Minnesota Iceman” which was a bigfoot-like creature encased in ice. He claimed that it was found in waters off Siberia. In December of that year, Ivan Sanderson of the Smithsonian and Bernard Heuvelman of the Institute of Natural Science in Belgium examined the specimen in a trailer in Minnesota and declared it to be real. Heuvelman wrote in scientific journals that he had discovered a new species of human he named Homo pongoides. In 1969 the Smithsonian learned from a Hollywood prop house that they had created the Iceman in 1967. It was a carnival exhibit made of latex rubber and hair. If you are interested, you can see the specimen at the Museum of the Weird in Austin, Texas.

The Bigfoot legend is not just a scam perpetuated by those devoted to proving that humans evolved from an ape-like creature. We personally visited Glen Rose, Texas, several times to examine “evidence” that humans and dinosaurs lived together in the same time period. In this case, Jake McFall was the primary figure in a film titled Footprints in Stone which was made on his farm and released as proof that science was wrong and that humans and dinosaurs did coexist. It later turned out that the human footprints in the film were painted into the rock and the film was pulled from circulation.

There is no such thing as a ”missing link.” No one specimen can prove or disprove human evolution. Those who try to use footprints or frozen specimens to prove or disprove human evolution do not understand the biblical definition of humans. The biblical idea of humans has to do with our spiritual makeup, not our physical bodies. Humans come in all kinds of sizes, shapes, and colors. What we look like is not what defines us. Our spiritual makeup is what sets us apart. Evidence of that unique spiritual makeup is all around us – in art, in music, in worship, and in our capacity to feel guilt and sympathy.

If you are interested in this point, we encourage you to watch video # 10 in our video series available free on doesgodexist.tv.
–John N. Clayton © 2018

Data from Smithsonian magazine, September 2018, page 13

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Archaeological Discoveries at Masada

Archaeological Discoveries at Masada
More than 2000 years ago, King Herod built a fortress in the Judean Desert that could house 10,000 soldiers. He equipped it with five palaces and water installations which included three bathhouses and a swimming pool. Masada is a butte with incredibly steep sides making it an easy place to defend. When Rome set out to defeat the Jewish zealots, the rebels sought refuge at Masada where they held out from A.D. 66 to 73. In recent years there have been new archaeological discoveries at Masada.

Archeologists have been exploring the remains of Masada for a very long time. In the past ten years, new technology has revealed a great deal of information about the history of Rome, Palestine, the Jewish community, and the Christian community. Biblical Archaeology Review for September/October 2018 carries an excellent article about what they have learned. The discoveries have strong implications for the credibility of the Bible and help us understand the conditions that existed at the time of Jesus and during the early years of the Church. Here are some of the recent finds:

Masada had an advanced water system, enough to produce extensive agriculture including a winery with 50 fermentation tanks.

Herod had huge gardens with trees and flowers as well as agricultural products.

There was an Essene community at Masada. The Essenes are the Jewish group that left us the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Jews had animals of burden during the siege by the Romans.

A Christian community had a chapel on Masada by A.D. 400 and a Church which included a monastery on Masada from the fifth to seventh centuries.

Archaeological discoveries at Masada give us new insights into biblical events and beliefs. The interactions of the apostles and Jesus with the Jews and the Romans give us a better understanding of what happened in New Testament times, during the life of Jesus, and for the first 500 years of the Church.
–John N. Clayton © 2018