Bible Archives - Page 37 of 115 - DOES GOD EXIST? TODAY

May 27, 2021May 26, 2021

Who Owns Your Body When You Die?

One of the medical issues of our day is the shortage of organs for transplant. Many people die while waiting for a heart, kidney, or liver, and the problem of finding organ donors is complicated. That leads to the question of who owns your body when you die?

In the United States, there are data banks for almost every organ in our bodies. If someone needs a kidney, their surgeon can go to the kidney bank and see how many people in the database have the blood type and traits to be a donor. Often kidneys are supplied by living donors, so the kidney is moved from one person to another, with both the donor and the one receiving the new organ in the same operating room. Of course, that is not possible for many organs such as hearts.

The government of Switzerland is considering a bill that would make the state the receptor of everyone when they die unless the person officially opts out. When a person dies, their organs will become a “public asset” so doctors could harvest them for transplant to alleviate the shortage. The Swiss medical establishment says that between 50 and 100 patients die in Switzerland every year because of the lack of organs for transplant.

This proposed law brings up all kinds of issues and gives a whole new dimension to the relationship between the state and the individual. Who owns your body when you die? Many times a dying person is in a coma or is pronounced brain dead. Taking their organs would certainly be a form of euthanasia. What about the person who is terminal with cancer but has organs that are unaffected by the disease?

The Bible tells us in 1 Corinthians 15:50, “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven.” That same chapter tells us that we will all be changed (verse 52). The natural body is not sacred. It is the dwelling place of God’s Spirit when we are alive (1 Corinthians 3:16), and our soul is housed in it. But Genesis tells us that our body is “dust to dust.”

The body without the spirit is dead (James 2:26). I had that vividly pointed out to me as I stood beside my wife’s bed when she died. The body was lifeless, cold, and unresponsive. My wife Phyllis was gone and what was left was the house in which her spirit had lived.

The issue here is how much control the state should have over our being. Who owns your body when you die? In Switzerland, at least, the state may be considered the master of our existence, even in death.

Reference: The Week, May 21, 2021 page 16.

May 26, 2021May 25, 2021

Unidentified Aerial Phenomena or UFOs

Apparently, the media are running out of things to talk about, so they have resurrected the claims of alien visitation to Earth. In June, U.S. intelligence agencies are supposed to release a report detailing what the government knows about Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). Former CIA director John Brennan has stated that there have been scores of credible sightings of UAPs or UFOs that “may be piloted by a different form of life.” We have repeatedly pointed out that this is not a biblical issue. The Bible does not say that Earth is the only place where God created life.

The attention this matter is getting indicates several things about the United States today. First, the media will jump to any conclusion, no matter how bizarre it is, to get attention. Secondly, people who have rejected God and the Bible have to find some other answer to the mysteries of life, and alien intelligence has always been one of them.

UFO simply means we are too ignorant to know what we are looking at. It doesn’t make any difference if you call it Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. The number of possibilities that do not involve alien spacecraft is vast. Many UFO sightings are simply reflections off of the cockpit or window of the observer’s vehicle. Also, being in an unfamiliar environment can cause people to misinterpret what they see.

Once when I was working in Canada, a group of people claimed that a ghost was haunting a woods nearby. One night, several of us camped out in that woods. At about 2 a.m., we saw a ghost, complete with an open mouth and two eyes. It glowed a greenish-yellow color and then vanished. One of the native Canadians in the group laughed because he knew what we were seeing. The aurora borealis (northern lights) were flickering wildly in a solar maximum, and the ultraviolet radiation caused bioluminescence in a dead tree. In broad daylight, we could see that, but at night, with our imaginations running wild, it looked totally different.

Atmospheric refraction or reflection off high clouds can make city lights visible many miles from the city. Earthquakes generate radiation, and some of it is in the visible spectrum. Weather balloons, flares, test aircraft, cloud reflections, satellites, planes, or drones can all become Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. With this new report, we will see a barrage of headlines from conspiracy advocates, tabloid writers, and psychics. In truth, it is more likely that the number of actual mystery objects will be very small. Jesus Christ has answers to the real struggles in life, but E.T. does not.

Reference: The Week magazine for May 28, 2021, page 17.

May 25, 2021May 24, 2021

Another Lunar Eclipse Is Coming

On the morning of May 26, 2021, the Moon will turn red in what some people refer to as a “blood moon.” Is this a fulfillment of Acts 2:20-21? Certainly not. It is merely another lunar eclipse.

Unfortunately, most of us in the United States will see little or none of it. In the western part of the country, the penumbral stage will begin as the Moon sets in the west. The umbral, or complete, stage will only be visible along a slice of the Pacific coast, in western Alaska, and all of Hawaii. It will also be visible across the International Dateline into parts of Asia and Australia.

There are several lessons this event can teach us. The first one is theological and has to do with how we read the Bible. To correctly understand this Bible passage, you have to look at who said it, to whom, why, and how the people it was addressed to would have understood it. Acts 2:14-40 is Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost. Peter spoke to the Jews who had come to Jerusalem to celebrate an event peculiar to the Jews, and he quoted Joel 2:28-32. The Jews understood “the last days” to refer to the Messiah’s coming as prophesied in Isaiah. Everyone understood the Moon turning to blood was a symbol of the great change that was coming.

So how do we know that the “moon will turn to blood” on May 26? God constructed the universe with such design and intelligence that we can tell when the Moon will enter the umbra of a lunar eclipse, and we can know that to the second. We also know that the Sun’s light shining through Earth’s atmosphere colors the Moon red while refracting the blue light away. What we see reflected from the Moon is that red light. This event has no spiritual significance. The last total lunar eclipse took place on January 21, 2019. Unlike the return of Christ, we can accurately predict when another lunar eclipse will be.

We see God’s wisdom and design in the precision of the creation and the remarkable position of the Moon and Earth allowing Earth’s shadow to fall on the Moon. As they have in the past, some people will try to use another lunar eclipse for religious purposes, but our plea is to count this as one more evidence that science and faith are symbiotic. The only religious significance of the things we see in the sky is to remind us of God’s power and design.

Reference: Astronomy magazine, May 2021, pages 46 -47.

May 23, 2021May 22, 2021

Space Spacing and Design

One of the arguments we make in our discussion of cosmology is that Earth’s design is unique. There are so many variables that must be “just right” for our planet to exist that suggesting it is a result of chance is statistically impossible to believe. We are not just thinking about the conditions of planet Earth, although that alone would be convincing. The more we learn about outer space by using the excellent new tools available to researchers, the more we see that our star is unique. Our Sun is a G-2 spectral star, which means its length of life, stability, radiation, and size are all critical. Now, as we examine space spacing, we know its location in space is critical as well.

The nearest star to our solar system is 4.3 light-years away. That means it takes light from that star 4.3 years to get to us. At that distance, the effect on us from whatever happens on that star is minuscule, so we are not at risk. Imagine a cube of space three light-years on each side. Now imagine putting 100 stars in that cube. A group of stars called the Great Globular Cluster in the constellation Hercules has that stellar density at its core. The total cluster is 150 light-years in diameter, and it has hundreds of thousands of stars.

We hear media presentations that say there are 100 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy. They suggest that with so many stars, and many of them having planets, our Earth must be just one of many inhabited planets in the galaxy. The reality is that most of those stars could not sustain a planet with life because they are too hot or too cold or too large or too small. We must also consider space spacing, meaning that their location relative to other stars is also a factor. No one would look for a life-bearing planet in M13, the Great Globular Cluster. If you would like to see a picture of it, just click HERE.

The Psalmist wrote in Psalms 19:1, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” The word “glory” in Hebrew is “kabod,” which the lexicon says can be translated as “heaviness,” which we can understand to mean beyond mortal reach. That was true to the ancients in biblical times who, with no light pollution, could lie awake on a clear night and see a patch of light and wonder what it was.

In 1716, Edmond Halley noted that patch in his observations. Now we clearly see what it is, and it shows God’s wisdom and power in remarkable new ways. Even space spacing shows wisdom of design. We live in an exciting time when new tools give us more and more views of what is in the heavens astounding us at God’s “heaviness.”

May 18, 2021May 17, 2021

Story of Earth’s History and Life

In the Yucatan Peninsula and the Gulf of Mexico, the Chicxulub Crater tells a story of Earth’s history and life. The fundamental assumption of neo-Darwinism is that the only processes operating on Earth in the past are processes going on today. This principle, called uniformitarianism, doesn’t work if there have been radical changes on Earth in the past. A catastrophe that wiped out all life would mean that life would have to start over again. Evolutionists have devised elaborated theories to dance around this issue, such as Stephen Jay Gould’s punctuated equilibrium.

A study released in the journal Science Advances on February 24, 2021, involves an exhaustive study of the Chicxulub Crater. This crater is 125 miles (201 km) wide and dates back to the time of the dinosaurs. Many scientists suggested that an asteroid collision produced the crater. Evolutionists resisted that explanation because of the catastrophic effect it would have, and certainly, it is not happening today.

In 2016, researchers took drill cores at Chicxulub to a depth of 2600 feet (792 m). Analysis of the cores has now produced an iron-clad case that an asteroid collision created the Chicxulub Crater. Iridium is an element found in most asteroids, and scientists found massive amounts of it in the center of the crater, with decreasing amounts as one moves away from the center.

In addition to the drill core at Chicxulub, scientists have found iridium in geologic layers worldwide. That indicates tiny fragments of the asteroid were blown into the atmosphere in large quantities blocking the Sun’s light for several years, or even decades. Independent studies have shown that Earth’s surface temperatures dropped by as much as 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 C), meaning that any dinosaur could not have survived.

This research tells a story of Earth’s history and life that we suggest shows how God was preparing the planet for human life to exist. Suggesting that humans and dinosaurs could have lived together indicates ignorance of the nature of life in the age of the dinosaurs. Not only was Earth’s surface temperature high, allowing massive deposits of coal and other resources for later humans, but the dinosaurs were not a form of life that humans could survive alongside. Evidence shows that T. rex hunted in packs. (See The Week, May 7, 2021, page 24.) The notion that a T. rex could have been a family pet that children could ride, as some religious groups have proposed, is ludicrous.

This story of Earth’s history and life fits with Genesis 1:1, with God using natural processes to prepare planet Earth for humans. Not only is Chicxulub a problem for neo-Darwinism, but it provides more evidence for the integrity of the biblical record when it is taken literally and not twisted to support denominational teachings.

References: Science Advances and Astronomy magazine

May 16, 2021May 11, 2021

Refusing Vaccines is Not New

The current ignorance about vaccines is amazing. We see statements every day, frequently in religious publications, that are simply not true. There is nothing in a vaccine that could contain a microchip, for example. There is a fundamental distrust of the government and the scientific establishment that fuels ideas like this one. There are always hucksters who will seize upon this distrust and use it to try to make money. Refusing vaccines is not new.

In 1776 Edward Jenner noticed that milkmaids frequently had cowpox, which is a virus found in cows. The milkmaids didn’t get smallpox, which was killing 30% of the population at the time. Doctors tried various attempts to stop the epidemic, but Jenner’s treatment of giving people cowpox shots was the only one that worked. But many people were refusing vaccines for a variety of religious reasons.

In America in 1809, Massachusetts passed a mandatory vaccination law. In England in 1853, the government passed a U.K. Vaccination Act. It required parents to have infants vaccinated by three months, or the parents would be arrested. This precipitated the “Anti-Vaccination League of London,” and in 1879, the “Anti-Vaccination Society of America” was formed.

In America from 1920 through the 1970s, scientists developed vaccines for diphtheria, pertussis, polio, measles, mumps, and rubella. Some of those diseases, such as polio, were stopped in your author’s lifetime. I can remember iron lungs and classmates dying with polio and how we all celebrated when scientists produced the polio vaccine.

That all changed in 1982 when a documentary aired called “DPT: Vaccine Roulette.” It claimed that children had suffered brain damage from the diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus shot. It turned out that the cases used in the documentary were unrelated to the vaccines, but the media never reported that. Parents formed “The National Vaccine Information Center,” which is an organization to encourage refusing vaccines.

We must point out that there can be allergies or reactions to any drug. When I was a kid, doctors used sulfa-drugs to fight infections, and I had a severe reaction to one of those drugs. The drug was never removed from the market because I was a rare exception, and the drug benefited many others. My atheist parents did not attach any religious significance to my allergy but withheld further treatments. Some people are very allergic to peanuts, but I have not heard of an anti-peanut league.

In 1998, the National Vaccine Information Center secured a report from Andrew Wakefield, a gastroenterologist claiming that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine caused autism. Since I have a grandson who is autistic, I was very interested in that report. It turned out that Wakefield falsified data, and there was no connection. I took the time to check out the claim, but in 2000 Wakefield’s study reached the U.S. and was immediately seized upon by anti-vaccine groups as more evidence for refusing vaccines.

So why are we reporting on this in DoesGodExist.today? First, Christians are to serve others and do the best we can to promote well-being in all of those created in God’s image. That means we need to check out the stories and make sure the data supports what people are saying. We can not trust the news media, and TV programs promote hoaxes of all kinds, from Bigfoot to UFOs to miracle health substances.

Secondly, Christians should embrace anything that relieves suffering and avoids the pain of disease. Jesus had naysayers in His day. He would cure someone by a miracle, and His opponents would try to explain it away rather than admit He was God’s Son. Don’t blindly embrace the claims of anyone, but check out the facts. Vaccines are not made from aborted babies, and they do not contain fetal cells. Vaccines save thousands of lives, even though occasionally someone will have an adverse reaction to them.

Science and the Bible are friends, not enemies. The only reason vaccines work is because of God’s design of our bodies. “I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are your works, and that my soul knows completely” (Psalms 139:14).

Data from Science News, May 8, 2021, pages 32-34.

May 15, 2021May 11, 2021

People Believing Fake News

One of the most frequently quoted excuses for someone rejecting factual information is to claim it is fake news. Not everything called fake news actually is. On the other hand, there are plenty of examples of people believing fake news. In January, protestors following a fake news story disrupted a mass COVID vaccination site in Los Angeles, preventing hundreds of people from getting the vaccine. A fake news story started by QAnon got a lot of attention, claiming that Satan worshippers controlled politics and the media.

People spreading fake news often use social media to present their deliberate or ignorant lies. Health information is the most dangerous area of concern. Frequently a claim is based on a single case which may be one in millions of other cases. The problem with any health scare is that you never know what other health problems the person may have had. The number of deaths of people in nursing homes in COVID was massively greater than the deaths of school-age children. By cherry-picking data, one can make convincing statements about the danger of health issues when the actual risk is very low.

We suggest that all of us need to understand a few basic points about news reporting. News outlets in today’s world are heavily biased and don’t report the news–they interpret it. Getting unbiased information in today’s world is very difficult. Even government organizations frequently state their findings in a way designed to promote political positions. Listen critically to any news program.

Christians must avoid becoming some of the people believing fake news. Even scientific material is affected by vested interests in whatever the scientist is promoting. Even some Nobel Laureates have supported some very bad science, and sometimes they take on destructive causes both socially and politically.

We have frequently mentioned that Jesus Christ repeatedly steered his followers away from getting overly entwined in politics, government, or secular causes. He paid taxes but made it clear that we should render to Caesar the things that are Caesar and to God the things that are God’s. Don’t get entangled in the affairs of this world to the exclusion of your labors for Christ. It is your service to God and the things Jesus discusses in Matthew 25:34-40 that really count.

Reference: Science News, May 8, 2021.

May 11, 2021May 10, 2021

Skin Color of Ancient Humans

“Systemic racism” is making the news in a wide variety of subject areas. Science News magazine carried an interesting discussion of how media presentations and museums have contributed to racial bias. When you look at a series of pictures dealing with apes and ancient humans, they are artist depictions with many details that could not possibly be determined from a few bones. Anthropologists cannot determine soft tissue like ears, noses, and lips or skin color of ancient humans by looking at some bones.

When I taught a class on anthropology, I found the portrayal of Neandertals interesting. The earliest images showed hunched-over creatures with matted hair walking with the gait of a very old man. The fact is that grooming is part of any primate’s behavior. Some scientists believe that the first fossil specimens had arthritic problems that contributed to how they appeared.

The Time-Life series that was popular several decades back contained numerous errors. One interesting fact was that early specimens were shown with dark skin and negroid soft tissue, while recent models had lighter skin and caucasian features. The article in Science News points out that the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History has a similar portrayal in which the skin color of ancient humans gives the impression that people with lighter skin are more evolved.

Many years ago, in a college lectureship, I confronted a professor who said that black people evolved from gorillas and white people were true humans who had not changed. I asked the audience to compare the properties of a gorilla with those of the races today. Here are some examples:
Gorillas have straight hair, not curled hair. Which race has straight hair?
Gorillas have white skin under their hair. Which race has white skin?
Gorillas have thin linear lips. Which race has thin lips as opposed to thicker lips?

I’m sure you get the point. The physical features of white people are more like gorillas than those of black people. I suggested to the professor that white people evolved from gorillas, and Adam was a black person. The reality is that no one evolved from gorillas, and no evolutionist would suggest that. We can’t determine the skin color of ancient humans.

Adam named his wife “Eve” because she would be the “mother of all the living” (Genesis 3:20). All of us carry the same genetic information indicating the truth of that statement. Like it or not, we are all related. The imaginative artwork that is so popular in the media and museums is almost always inconsistent with scientific evidence.

The biblical concept of humans is spiritual and has nothing to do with a person’s race or ethnic background. We are all in God’s image, and that reference has to do with our soul, not how we look (Genesis 1:27).

Reference: Science News magazine for April 24, 2021 (page 32)

May 10, 2021May 9, 2021

Unique and Bizarre Planet Earth

“Planet Earth – Unique And Bizarre.” Those are the words used by Astronomy magazine (June 2021, page 21) to describe the results of studies of the planets within and beyond our solar system. Why is Earth a unique and bizarre planet?

We have four terrestrial planets in our solar system. In addition to Earth, they are Mercury, Venus, and Mars. Those planets have smaller masses than Earth, ranging from Mercury with 5.5% of Earth’s mass to Venus with 81.5%. They also have radically different atmospheres. Venus, which is closest to Earth’s size, has an atmosphere that is 96% carbon dioxide. Mars, roughly half of Earth’s size, is 95% carbon dioxide and 2.7% nitrogen. By contrast, Earth’s atmosphere has 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and less than .1% carbon dioxide.

NASA stationed an observation satellite at the Lagrange point between Earth and the Sun. That is the location where Earth’s gravity balances the Sun’s gravity. The satellite will remain stationary at roughly a million miles from Earth, gather data, and compare Earth data with information from other solar systems. It shows that Earth is the only planet we know of with abundant liquid water driving an active water cycle.

Scientists believe life itself is responsible for much of the design of planet Earth. Earth’s vegetation has taken whatever carbon dioxide was in our atmosphere and turned it into oxygen. It is no coincidence that the Genesis account portrays plants as the first thing to appear after God created the dry land and seas.

Another factor making Earth a unique and bizarre planet is the abundance of minerals. Earth has massive minerals of all kinds. Meteorites contain a very small number of minerals, and the Moon has more than the meteorites, but far less than Earth. The media tends to suggest that everything in space is like what we see on Earth, but the data that scientists are gathering shows that our planet is radically different.

At the end of each day of the Genesis account, God said, “it is good” (Genesis 1:10,12, 18, 21, 25). The first chapter ends with God saying, “it is VERY good.” Over and over, the Psalms call our attention to how unique our planet is. “When I consider the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have ordained; what is man, that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you visit him” (Psalms 8:3-4). Psalms 19:1 adds, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky shows his handiwork.”

Our unique and bizarre planet was created by an Intelligence that shaped it into the one place that can support human life, not only in our solar system but perhaps in the entire creation.

Reference: Astronomy magazine

May 8, 2021May 7, 2021

Data on Neanderthals and DNA

News reports of the data on Neanderthals have often contained misinformation. Neanderthals (or Neandertals) were not apes, and they were not primitive subhumans. They engaged in activities similar to modern humans. Our suggestion for many years has been that we should think of the Neanderthals as a race of humans. When one looks at the different races of humans in today’s world, we see huge variations. A pygmy is much different from a Scandinavian, and yet from a scientific standpoint, they are one species. They can mate and produce fertile offspring, which was has been the usual way of defining a species.

The newest data on Neanderthals (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) is that they interbred with those we call Homo sapiens, and their genes are being discovered in populations in Europe and western Asia. Science News carried an article titled “Neanderthals and Humans Mated Often.” It reported on the DNA evidence linking Neanderthals to modern humans.

If scientists found the remains of Adam and Eve, what would their DNA look like? The Bible gives us no indication of what Adam and Eve were like regarding their race or physical characteristics. The sons of Noah were Ham, Shem, and Japheth. In the original Hebrew, Ham means dark-colored and Japheth means fair. The term Neanderthal comes from where scientists found their first bones in the Neander Valley of Germany. The name has nothing to do with skin color. If we found the fossil remains of Adam and Eve, what name would we give them?

The only thing we know is that Eve was the mother of all living (Genesis 3:20). How long ago she lived and how we would classify her today is pure speculation.

Reference: Science News for May 8 and May 22, 2021 (page 7)