July 2020 - Page 2 of 4 - DOES GOD EXIST? TODAY

July 21, 2020July 20, 2020

Called to Peace

“Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.” Matthew 5:9. One of the most challenging parts of being a Christian is fulfilling the commands of Jesus Christ to be peacemakers. Colossians 3:15 talks about the attitudes Christians should have: “Let the peace of God rule in your hearts since as members of one body you were called to peace.”

Other religious systems have either assumed a passive attitude or a militant, aggressive stance. Christ called His followers to be active, non-militant, promoters of peace. One natural tendency of humans is to try to force their will on others. This has led to perversions of Christianity, as seen in the Crusades and the use of violence to oppose perceived wrongs today. It has also led to the endorsement of cultural traditions rather than Christ’s teachings as a guide to morality.

Much of the New Testament teachings have to do with being peacemakers. Consider these:

* Understand that all humans are of equal value:

1 Corinthians 12:13- We are “all given one Spirit to drink.”

Galatians 3:26-28- We are “all one in Christ Jesus.”

1 Corinthians 9:22- Paul says that he had “become all things to all men…”

Regardless of sex, race, culture, nationality, age, occupation, or even religious faith, we all have incredible worth.

* Accept Christians who have a conscientious difference of opinion:

Romans 14 is a whole chapter on peace. Verses 1-4 talk about accepting people with different opinions about food. Verses 5-6 speak about people who want to honor special days. Verse 19 tells Christians to “follow after the things which make for peace, and things by which we can edify one another.”

* Separate the physical from the spiritual:

Matthew 22:21- Finds Jesus telling his followers to separate what is Caesar’s (the physical) from what is God’s (the spiritual).

Romans 12:15-21- Repeats the teachings of Christ in Matthew 5-7, giving specific advice on how to live as people who are called to peace.

* Be ministers of reconciliation and peace:

Philippians 4:2- Paul pleads with Christians to help sisters in conflict by bringing the spiritual into focus.

Acts 10:34-36- Peter tells us to understand that God is no respecter of persons and that Christians must tell the world “the good news of peace through Christ Jesus.”

Matthew 25:32-40- The judgment scene shows Christians being acceptable to God because of their activities which promoted peace.

Romans 5:1- As Christians, we have peace with God.

Matthew 5-7- Tells us what Jesus calls us to do so we can have that peace.

“Blessed are the peacemakers.” We are called to peace so we can shine in a world of violence, hatred, and war. With God’s help, we can have an attitude that brings joy and happiness while an angry, violent world swirls around us.

July 20, 2020July 18, 2020

What Your Body Does in a Day

Own Olbricht sent us this summary of what your body does in a day. We thought it was worth considering the fantastic abilities of the bodies God has given us.

*Every day your heart pumps approximately 2,000 gallons of blood through its chambers.
*On average, your lungs take in 17,000 breaths a day with a typical lung capacity of roughly six quarts of air.
*Your brain processes over 50,000 thoughts a day – 35-48 thoughts per minute.
*Your stomach lining has cells which produce an alkaline substance every few milliseconds to neutralize stomach acid. The stomach would dissolve itself without its lining.
*Your eyes blink 28,000 times a day, with each blink lasting 1/10th of a second.
*Your body’s energy system expels enough heat to light twenty-five 100-watt light bulbs every day.
*Your skin is the largest organ of your body, and you shed a million skin cells every day.
*Your hair grows a millimeter a day. The average adult’s full head of hair consists of 100,000 strands.
*Your liver filters 1.53 quarts of blood every minute, and every day it produces a quart of bile to help digest food.
*Glands in your mouth produce more than a quart of saliva every day.
*Every minute your kidneys filter 2.2 pints of blood or 3168 pints per day. They expel 2.5 pints of urine every day.
*The average person will eat over 50 tons of food in a lifetime.

What your body does in a day is an excellent testimony to God’s wisdom, intelligence, power, and design.

July 19, 2020July 14, 2020

DNA Tests on Dead Sea Scrolls

One of the exciting clues to the Bible’s credibility is the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. They consist of thousands of scrolls and fragments found in caves near Qumran on the Dead Sea’s northwest shore. These scrolls have been useful in showing that the Old Testament books in our modern Bibles are credible. Recently scientists have conducted DNA tests on Dead Sea Scrolls.

Many people suggested that the modern Bible is a modified copy of a modified copy of a modified copy, and thus is not trustworthy because of copying errors. The Dead Sea Scrolls date back to 2000 plus years ago. The fact that they agree with the biblical texts available today is strong evidence that there have not been massive copy problems in bringing us the written word of God.

Molecular biologists at Tel Aviv University have conduced DNA tests on Dead Sea Scrolls. They are using the DNA evidence to tell us more about the origin of the Dead Sea Scroll fragments. They have isolated animal DNA in 26 fragments. Two of the fragments came from cowskin, and 24 came from sheepskin. The DNA evidence supports the idea that the sheepskin scrolls came from scribes at Qumran, although the cowskin scraps came from elsewhere. A few fragments came from Masada some 55 kilometers south of Qumran.

With more and more evidence, we see more credibility for the manuscripts from which our Bibles came. We can trust the Bible and its message. Whatever differences we find in manuscripts are easy to overcome and to understand.

Reference: Science News, July 4 & 18 page 10.

July 18, 2020July 18, 2020

Animal Viruses and Human Illness

The COVID-19 virus has been too lethal to ignore. This pandemic makes us realize that there are many viruses out there, and the current one is just the tip of the iceberg of what is possible. As early as AD 165 to 180, pandemics killed massive numbers of people. Smallpox killed 5 million, and bubonic plague killed 25 million on four different occasions starting in 541. Researchers today are attempting to catalog links between animal viruses and human illness. They estimate that there are probably 1.6 million animal viruses yet to be discovered in mammal and bird populations and that 827,000 of them could cause disease in humans.

Viruses are part of the natural world in which we live. They serve useful purposes in aiding animal digestion, reproduction, and elimination of wastes. The problem is that each animal has its own set of viruses suited for that animal’s diet and living conditions. If an animal’s virus jumps into another species with a different diet and living conditions, the results can be destructive. That is the connection between animal viruses and human illness. Most of the viruses we know about came into the human population from rodents, including rats, bats, birds, chimps, and mosquitos. Some have jumped through several animals such as bats giving the virus to cattle and camels, which gave it to humans.

The Old Testament laws had health restrictions, which made virus transmission less of a problem. People were also not in such proximity to one another or to animals that had destructive viruses. Living in very arid conditions reduced disease transmission, and the dietary laws worked against most virus transmission. When you read through Deuteronomy and Leviticus, you see elaborate precautions that we now understand had hygienic benefits to minimize viral transmission.

In the New Testament, many of these rules were continued. There was a prohibition against drinking blood, and the increased use of baking and boiling foods contributed to a low virus transmission rate. Moral rules that reduced the spread of disease included the elimination of polygamy and polyandry and the strong condemnation of prostitution. In time, the keeping of exotic pets and the acceptance of foods previously forbidden to Israel tended to thwart human attempts to fight disease.

God has given us the capacity to understand viruses and the connection between animal viruses and human illness. God has also given us the tools to control these virus issues. He has also given us hope for something better. Will we use the tools and techniques God gave us to stop the pandemics, or will we open our culture to more viral events in the future? Time will tell.

Data from “The Virus Hunters,” Smithsonian magazine, July/August 2020, and THIS STORY on virus hunters from 2018.

July 17, 2020July 14, 2020

Difference Between Communication and Language

Sue Savage-Rumbaugh has made a career of studying bonobo apes. She would have us believe that there is no barrier between bonobos and humans. Her research raises the question of who we are as humans, and she would respond that we are just another animal. There are so many difficulties with this viewpoint that it is hard to know where to start. The most fundamental scientific problem is that there is a difference between communication and language.

Savage-Rumbaugh’s research is the main story in the July/August 2020 issue of Smithsonian magazine. She assumes that environment is not a factor in what distinguishes apes from humans, and she has lived with the bonobos in her research. A tool she uses in studying the bonobos is a “lexigram keyboard” with pictorial symbols corresponding to English words. One particular bonobo named Kanzi has used it to communicate with her. This ape could use some 660 English sentences functioning at a level higher than a two-and-a-half-year-old human child.

The difference between communication and language is an old issue. Aristotle wrote that animals could exchange information, but only humans could articulate what was just and unjust. The famous philosopher Rene’ Descartes in the 1600s, wrote that God had gifted human beings with souls, and, along with souls, language and consciousness. On this website and in our printed materials, we have talked about God’s design in animals that allows elaborate communication. Bees communicate by dancing information to other bees. Birds make sounds that carry meanings and warnings to other birds. The ultrasonic emissions of whales are elaborate communication tools.

Savage-Rumbaugh has shown that bonobos have a flexible capacity to communicate. However, she falls into the old trap of anthropomorphizing animal behavior – reading human interpretations into something an animal does. Statements such as, “She would look at me with a pleading expression on her face” is ascribing human interpretations to the ape’s facial expressions. The symbols on the keyboard are human symbols, and pigeons can learn to peck a particular symbol to get a desired result.

The Smithsonian article quotes one researcher as saying, “Work with Kanzi has always lived somewhere between rigorous science and social closeness and family life.” The difference between communication and language is a topic of hot debate. If you look up the word “language” you will see a significant variation in how different people define it. Humans have language that involves the meaning of symbols, the standards by which we measure behavior, and the values accepted by one’s peers.

The Bible deals with language, and God’s Spirit is involved with our language. When researchers have tried to humanize a chimpanzee by bringing it into their home, they do so with communication, but language is never a part of the process. Trying to turn an animal into a human being has disastrous results. We are created in the image of God, and language is a part of that image.

July 16, 2020July 13, 2020

Chemical Warfare in the Plant World

We mentioned yesterday that plants use scents to attract friendly and helpful insects and animals. They also use fragrances to protect against unfriendly visitors. Seemingly passive plants have secret weapons against insect invasions. We call it chemical warfare in the plant world.

A good example is the lima bean. Spider mites attack lima bean plants, but other predatory mites eat spider mites. When spider mites attack a lima bean plant, it floods the area with a chemical signal that attracts the predatory mites. This chemical odor also causes other lima bean plants to emit the same chemical. When the spider mites are gone, the plants stop secreting the chemical.

Some plants, such as tobacco and corn, protect themselves from destructive caterpillars by sending off a signal to attract wasps. Research has shown that plants customize the signal to attract a particular species of wasp. The wasps can tell the difference between the chemical signal of plants attacked by tobacco budworms and corn earworms, and different chemicals attract a different wasp species. So far, cotton, corn, and beets have been shown to have different emissions as they call for protection.

We previously mentioned wasps that kill and eat the caterpillars of certain butterflies. In that instance, ants have a symbiotic relationship with the caterpillars to protect them from the wasps in exchange for food. The U. S. Department of Agriculture is looking to find ways to cause one insect to combat another. This research is necessary because it can help us find ways to protect crops.

Chemical warfare in the plant world shows that God has equipped plants to protect themselves against different insect scourges. Because of that, we can survive on a planet where insects hopelessly outnumber us. The design that the Creator put into living systems is truly amazing.

July 15, 2020July 13, 2020

Plant Chemistry for Survival

Plants have a unique problem that animals don’t have. That problem is a lack of mobility. Since plants are unable to move, they manufacture chemical toxins to kill bacteria, alkaloids to ward off herbivores, and sweetness or color to draw in pollinators and animals that will disperse their seeds. They use plant chemistry for survival.

Crocus and gardenia flowers produce a chemical compound known as crocin. It gives the color to the gardenia’s red-orange fruit. Crocin is also the chemical that gives the stigmas of saffron flowers, commonly called “threads,” their bright hue. Researchers at the University of Buffalo have sequenced the genome of the gardenia and examined how it makes crocin. By duplicating those processes, they have produced crocin in the lab and made it available for use in medical and nutritional applications. Crocin has antioxidant properties and may help in the suppression of cancer cells. The plants use crocin to attract pollinators, and we use it for medical purposes.

Research shows that plants get the power to produce a whole arsenal of genetic tools to help them survive by a process called tandem gene duplication. Dr. Victor Albert, a co-author of a study published on BMC Biology, says that plants can duplicate some parts of their genetic toolkit and tinker with the functions.

Many of the processes and tools we have came from studying the design built into the living things around us. That is why the writer of Romans 1:20 says, “..the invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made…” The chemistry seen in the botanical world is an excellent demonstration of the wisdom of their design.

There is much more to God’s amazing design in the plant world. Tomorrow, we will bring you more on plant chemistry for survival.

July 14, 2020July 13, 2020

Planetary Atmosphere Variations

The dominant theory for the origin of the planets in our solar system assumes that they all evolved from a single mass or nebula. Several factors support that idea. Those factors include the fact that the planets lie roughly in one plane, that they all revolve around the Sun in the same direction, and that there is mathematical predictability to their location. Most of the irregularities that might indicate against a common source, such as variations in planetary tilt, have reasonable explanations. However, new planetary atmosphere variations are difficult to explain.

Recent studies of the atmospheres of the terrestrial planets have shown wide variations. Our atmosphere contains 78% nitrogen, but nitrogen on Venus is 4%, and on Mars, it is 2.7%. Both Mars and Venus have atmospheres that are 95% carbon dioxide, while Earth is 0.1%, and Mercury has none. Earth and Mercury have oxygen in their atmospheres, 21% and 42% respectively, but Venus and Mars have less than 1%.

Astronomers theorize that they can explain these planetary atmosphere variations. They suggest that the atmospheres are not original to the planets, but were produced by processes that took place after the formation of the planets. The best guess now is that impacts and outgassing formed the atmospheres. This is not a trivial matter because life is not possible without the proper combination of atmospheric gases.

The Genesis account describes the production of Earth’s structure in a sequence. Genesis 1:6-9 indicates separate creations of the hydrosphere, atmosphere, and lithosphere. The new data support the idea that once Earth was created, continued activity prepared it for life. Once again, we find the scientific evidence in support of the Bible’s description.

Data from Astronomy magazine, August 2020, page 12.

July 13, 2020July 12, 2020

Nuclear Destruction Potential

We are appalled at the devastation caused by the CORONA virus. We do not wish to minimize the horror of this pandemic, but we hope that some good can come from it. You would think that world leaders would realize the tenuous nature of life on Earth. You would think they should realize that getting along with one another and joining forces to combat all the evils in our world must be a high priority. There is another way in which humans should be motivated to get along. That is the massive nuclear destruction potential in the weapons around the world.

Since the first nuclear explosion in July of 1945, nine nations have detonated 2056 atomic devices. No one fully understood what would result from all of this testing and weaponry. America’ s 15-megaton Castle Bravo test in the Pacific Ocean produced a fine, chalky material that rained down on ships and their crews in the area for three hours, sticking to human skin and piling up on the decks. Later known as shi no hai (ashes of death), they later learned that the dust was highly radioactive coral debris. It caused the entire crew of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru fishing boat to fall ill with radiation sickness.

Today some 15,000 nuclear weapons exist. They are held by the United Kingdom, China, France, Israel, Pakistan, India, North Korea, Russia, The United States, and possibly Iran. If a nuclear war broke out, 270 million people would die in the first hours of the conflict. Remember that 70,000 people died instantly in Hiroshima, and 35,000 died in Nagasaki. That was from eleven pounds of plutonium. Imagine the destruction potential of what nations have now.

Is it possible that all of this nuclear destruction potential can be disposed of without war? Can the message of peace, tolerance, love, and respect possibly come out of the horror of COVID-19 and the “black lives matter” movement? The world needs the Christian message of love now more than ever. It is not just a matter of political correctness and common sense. It is a matter of survival for us all.

July 12, 2020July 11, 2020

Designed for a Purpose

On this website, we often talk about design in living things. Everyone sees design in the world around us. It’s impossible not to see design. Even the leading atheist biologist Richard Dawkins said that biology is the study of things that appear to be designed for a purpose. However, he believes they only appear to be designed because he knows that design requires a designer. The trick is to pretend that it is not design but merely a pattern produced by natural selection acting on random chance mutations.

Our study of design is not the ancient god-of-the-gaps concept where we say, “I don’t know how this happened, so there must be a god who did it.” Instead, we consider the evidence for the possibility of these “designs” happening by pure chance. Is chance or intelligence a better explanation for what we see in living things? Can the features we observe be explained more effectively by natural selection acting on random mutations; or by intelligent design? Which alternative has greater explanatory power and is, therefore, more plausible? Can you say with confidence that living things were not designed for a purpose?

Every day, we see machines and devices created by human intelligence. We marvel at the complexity of such things as computers, automobiles, or vehicles for space travel. The intricate design of living things, including humans, is far greater than any of those human-designed devices. Do we ever question whether the human inventions came together by accident? But some would say, “Those things are not alive, and therefore they can’t design themselves. Living things can change on their own through natural selection.”

That brings up the question of where did the first living thing come from? It came from non-living matter. How did that lifeless material assemble itself into something as complex as a living cell that could take in nourishment and reproduce? Where did the information in the DNA come from? Random text can’t assemble itself into intelligent language, and the DNA contains a language so complex that it took modern computers to decipher it. What intelligence wrote the code within the DNA of each plant and animal, giving them the ability to change and adapt to stay alive?

We see random patterns in clouds, or sand, or waves blown by the wind. We see patterns of sunlight on the forest floor as it shines through the tree leaves. Those things are random. Though they may be beautiful, they are not examples of design. When we see the biological systems working within a living animal or plant or study biomes and ecosystems working in harmony to make life possible, we observe more than a chance pattern. We are beholding something that was designed for a purpose by an intelligent Designer.

Bringing it closer to home—that means an intelligent Designer designed YOU for a purpose.