Category: Evidence for God in Physical Design

Evidence for God in the Physical World

Posted on

Earth Is Not Flat

Earth Is Not Flat
There is a myth that when Columbus set out on his famous voyage, people believed he would sail off the edge of the Earth. According to the myth, only the voyage of Columbus convinced people that the Earth was not flat. That myth is not true, and Earth is not flat.

The myth came from an early historical fiction work by Washington Irving in 1828. At the time of Columbus in 1492, educated Europeans knew that our planet is a sphere. The Greek philosopher Aristotle recognized that fact in 330 B.C. He observed that when lunar eclipses occurred, the shadow Earth cast on the Moon was always a semicircle. That could only happen every time if the Earth were a sphere. Also, it was easy to observe that when a ship came into shore over the ocean, the first part to be visible was the top of the sail. As it came closer, the lower part could be seen. That shows the curvature of the ocean surface.

In the early Church period, the view of a spherical Earth was widely accepted. The Christian theologian and philosopher Augustine (354-430) recognized that Earth was spherical. Theologian Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) acknowledged that physics, astronomy, and mathematics had proven that Earth is a sphere.

However, the Quran (609-632) says that the Earth was “laid out,” “spread out,” or “made flat” depending on how it’s translated. In the sixteenth century, a Sunni commentary stated that most Muslim scholars took those words to mean the Earth is flat. Chinese society did not let go of the concept of a flat Earth until the seventeenth century when Jesuit scholars brought their teaching to that country.

In spite of the evidence some people today insist that the Earth is flat. There is another persistent myth that science and the Bible are enemies and that they contradict each other. We believe that true science and the Bible correctly understood cannot contradict each other because they have the same Author. Earth is not flat, and science and the Bible are friends, not enemies.
–Roland Earnst © 2018

Posted on

Average Star? – No Way!

Average Star? – No Way!
In the past, astronomers thought that the Sun was just an average star. After all, there are hotter stars, and there are colder stars. There are larger stars, and there are smaller stars than the Sun. If you plot the luminosity of all visible stars, the Sun falls near the middle of the system.

However, in recent years, it has become clear that the Sun is not an average star, but an extraordinary star. Without specific properties of our “oddball” star, life on Earth would not be possible. Here are just four of the many unique features of the Sun:

1-Most of the stars in the universe are binary or trinary stars. That means they are actually two, three, or even more stars orbiting each other although they appear to be a single star. A life-supporting planet could not survive that arrangement.

2-The Sun is relatively stable while most stars have much more violent flares that send out lethal radiation.

3-The Sun produces light in the proper wavelength to sustain life. Sunlight has the right wavelengths for photosynthesis and does not have the high-energy wavelengths of other stars.

4-Our Sun also has the right temperature and size to allow a large solar habitable zone where Earth can have an elliptical orbit and still support life.

There are many more “special” features that make our Sun more than an average star. If we didn’t have an above average star, we wouldn’t be here. We see our special star as another evidence that the Sun and our solar system is the work of a Master Designer.
–Roland Earnst © 2018

Posted on

Stromatolite – Oldest Fossil or Not

Stromatolite
For many years the textbooks in paleontology classes have said the stromatolite was the first life form to appear on Earth and that its formation was the product of chance biochemical reactions. Now there are some challenges to this model.

There were several reasons for promoting the stromatolite as the oldest life-form. One reason was that it fit evolutionary models and made sense as far as the production of atmospheric oxygen is concerned. The other reason was that a primitive plant which is a form of algae leaves a conical formation of calcium carbonate in the ocean today. Those formations are similar to the stromatolite formations found in ancient rocks. Scientists found those formations in such diverse locations as the Gunflint Chert in Canada, the Isua Belt in Greenland, and the Ediacaran formation in Australia. I have seen the formations in Australia and Canada, and they are very similar and easy to recognize.

It turns out that the formations appear to be volcanic and not biologic in origin. If the conical formations organically originated they should all have the point of the cone pointing up. In at least one recent find, the top of the cone was pointing down. Dissection of the cones shows they are an elongated ridge and not really a symmetrical cone. Biological cones are almost always very symmetrical. Rocks around the structures have been metamorphosed by heat and pressure. The recent conclusion of scientists studying stromatolites is that they are the product of metamorphic activity on volcanic material and are not biologic.

Not all of the experts in paleontology are willing to buy into the idea that a stromatolite results from tectonics and not biology. One of the reasons is that this would require an overhaul of the theoretical model for the development of life on planet Earth. The Bible simply says that the first life-forms God created were plants. The biblical sequence of plant formation in Genesis 1:12-13 was:

“deshe” meaning grass
Translated “grass” in KJV and “vegetation” in some newer translations.

“eseb” meaning naked seed or gymnosperm
Translated “herb” in the KJV and “plants bearing seed” in some newer translations.

“ets” meaning flowering tree or angiosperm
Translated “fruit tree” in KJV and “trees bearing fruit” in newer translations.

It will be interesting to see where the newest scientific controversy leads. But the lesson of history is that when science makes new discoveries and verifies them, they always support the biblical record if we take it literally. This appears to be one more example of that.
–John N. Clayton © 2018
Sources: Science News November 10, 2018, page 12 or online HERE
Nature for October 17, 2018 online HERE

Posted on

Moon Mass and Life on Earth

Moon Mass and Life on Earth
Our Moon is different from any other moon in our solar system. And as far as we know, it’s different from any other moon orbiting any other planet in our galaxy. The difference has to do with the Moon mass.

No other planet has a moon with a mass that is so large compared to the mass of the planet. While other planets have multiple moons, our single Moon is large enough in relation to our planet that it stabilizes Earth’s rotational tilt at 23.5 degrees in relation to our orbit around the Sun. No other planet in our solar system has such a stable rotation axis tilt. The stable axis allows us to have stable and reliable seasons.

Seasonal changes distribute the Sun’s energy over Earth’s surface allowing plants to grow and food to be produced over a large area. Without the seasons, much of the Earth would be too cold, and some areas would be too hot for advanced life. The Moon has enough mass at the right distance from Earth to make advanced life possible on this planet.

In fact, the Moon has almost too much mass. If the Moon had two percent more mass, it would destabilize the Earth’s tilt. Is there a reason for the Moon to be more massive that it needs to be to stabilize the tilt? Yes, there is. The mass of the Moon creates a pull on the Earth known as tidal friction. That force creates the ocean’s tides which refresh the coastlines.

There is another reason for the large Moon mass. It also slows the Earth’s rotation. In the early Earth, days were shorter. The Moon has put the brakes on our planet’s rotation slowing it to a 24-hour day. Slowing the rotation has affected Earth’s weather, reducing temperature extremes and distributing rainfall more evenly around the Earth.

These are some of the many reasons we need the Moon at its exact size and location. Is it merely another coincidence that the Moon has just the right mass and distance from Earth? No, we believe God planned it that way.
–Roland Earnst © 2018

Posted on

Modern Misconceptions About the Flood

Modern Misconceptions about the Flood
Perhaps the most argued event in the Old Testament is the flood of Noah described in Genesis. For the past several days we have been examining some of the questions people have. Today we will look at two modern misconceptions about the flood.

Did the Ark come to rest on Mount Ararat? The answer to that question is “no!” Genesis 8:4 says that the Ark came to rest “upon the mountains of Ararat” which is not modern day Mount Ararat. This is of little interest except that the claims of some people that they found the Ark on modern-day Mount Ararat are clearly erroneous.

Was the Grand Canyon caused by the flood laying down strata and then carving the canyon by erosion? The answer to that question is also “no.” The rocks in the canyon are not of one deposition and are not flood strata. Floods leave a tangled mess of debris. The majority of rocks in the Grand Canyon are limestone which is a chemically precipitated rock. The limestone is interspersed with conglomerate, shale, desert deposits of sandstone, and some volcanic deposits. A flood would produce none of those except shale.

Do fossils in the Grand Canyon verify the flood? No, a flood produces a tangled mess of all kinds of remains of plants and animals. The rock layers in the Canyon have different animals at different layers. Each animal or plant grouping is a function of the environment in which they lived. That is not what a flood would do.

The question is not whether the flood happened, but rather what a flood would do and what remains from the flood. There are dozens of flood layers in the stratigraphy all over the American southwest, but which one might be related to Noah’s flood cannot be determined.

There are many modern misconceptions about the flood of Noah. The flood did not create the Grand Canyon. The rocks and fossils prove that. No one has found Noah’s Ark. The claims of someone finding the Ark have always turned out to be erroneous. We need to test every Spirit and not be sold a bill of goods by religious groups trying to back up their beliefs by claiming to have found the fossils of giants, an ark, or some other claimed artifact of the flood of Noah.
–John N. Clayton © 2018
We have a discussion of the flood in our video series program # 27 available on our doesgodexist.TV website. You can also look up information on the flood by doing a word search on our doesgodexist.org website search engine.

Posted on

How Extensive Was the Flood of Noah?

How Extensive Was the Flood of Noah?
Perhaps the most argued event in the Old Testament is the flood of Noah described in Genesis. This week we have been examining some of the questions people ask. Today we will look at the question, “How extensive was the flood of Noah?”

Taking the Bible literally does not mean a superficial reading of the King James translation of the Bible. You have to look at who wrote it, to whom it was written, why it was written, and how the people to whom it was written would have understood it. The language of Genesis 6-8 certainly seems to indicate that the waters of the flood covered the whole globe.

Many times biblical passages sound like the event was global when it clearly was not. Luke 2:1-3 says “There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed…” Was that the whole globe or the Roman world? Did Rome collect taxes from the Incas, the Hopi, or the Denali? The people of the time would have understood that to mean the entire Roman world. In Colossians 1:23 Paul says that the gospel of Christ “was preached to every creature which is under heaven.” I have visited with the native people at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and they have no record of the gospel ever having been preached to their ancestors there. Clearly, Paul was talking about the world that he knew.

The message of Genesis 6-8 is that humans discarded God and became corrupt to the point that God destroyed them by a flood. The one person who stayed faithful to God was a man named Noah who was warned that the event was coming. God gave him time to construct a way to save his family and the animals of his area. There is evidence to verify this that we have considered in this series of posts and which is available on our website.

How extensive was the flood of Noah? It ended the lives of all but the few people on the boat. The Bible tells us that a flood like that will not happen again. However, it also says that the Earth will be destroyed by a fire that melts the very elements of which we are all made ( 2 Peter 3:8-13).

We must listen to the lesson of Noah and not try to deny the historical event on which it is based. I would suggest the flood covered the whole inhabited Earth of Noah’s day. It probably did not cover uninhabited lands thousands of miles away from where Noah lived. If you have a different opinion, that is fine, but don’t miss the message of the story.
–John N. Clayton © 2018
We have a discussion of the flood in our video series program # 27 available on our doesgodexist.TV website. You can also look up information on the flood by doing a word search on our doesgodexist.org website search engine.

Posted on

Springs of the Sea

Springs of the Sea
On the floor of the oceans of the world, hydrothermal vents are spewing superheated water. We could call them springs of the sea.

These ocean vents send out water at temperatures that are much higher than the temperature at which water boils under normal atmospheric pressure. The sea vents are usually called “black smokers” or “white smokers” depending on the minerals that are contained in the water they release. Those minerals nourish various sea life in the area. The white smoker in the picture is in the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument in the Pacific Ocean. It is emitting barium, calcium, and silicon as well as carbon dioxide.

The hydrothermal vents are primarily along the mid-ocean ridges which are formed by tectonic plates that are moving apart (diverging). Tectonic plates are massive sections of the Earth’s crust which move relative to each other diverging, converging, or transforming in various ways. It’s along the boundaries of those plates that most earthquakes and volcanic activities occur. As the plates diverge along the ocean ridge, they move outward and subduct (move under) other plates. This subduction forms trenches which are the lowest areas of the ocean floor.

It was only in 1977 that scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography discovered sea vents by using a submersible owned by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. It’s interesting to note that the Bible in Job 38:16, written 4,000 years ago, records God saying to Job, “Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep?” We now know that there are “springs of the sea” (hydrothermal vents) and “recesses of the deep” (trenches) in the ocean. Of course, since God created them, He knew it long before we did.
–Roland Earnst © 2018

Posted on

Are We a Hologram?

Are We a Hologram?
This ministry has been functioning for 50 years, and one of the things we have seen is that atheist and skeptic arguments are cyclical. In the 1960s there was a push by skeptics to say that the physical world doesn’t exist at all and the universe is an illusion. So are we a hologram? Some scientists today seem to think so.

In the New York Times for May 10, 2018, science columnist Dennis Overbye wrote, “The news from some physicists like the late Stephen Hawking is that the universe might be a hologram, an illusion like the three-dimensional images on a bank card. Some cosmologists have argued that it is not inconsistent – at least mathematically – to imagine that the entire universe as we know it could just be a computer simulation as in The Matrix.”

Just because something is mathematically possible does not mean that it is true. You can prove that 1 = 2 if you make the right assumptions (in that case dividing something by zero). On a more practical level, there are certain things that holograms or illusions cannot do. For example, you can’t force an illusion to be taught to think. The whole notion of free will does not fit an illusion hypothesis. Our brains are not a simulation, and the things we do at a spiritual level are not within the reach of aliens.

If your view of the creation is that we are mindless pawns who have no purpose, then the hologram hypothesis may seem reasonable. Are we are a hologram controlled by aliens? For those of us who believe that we are spiritual beings with a purpose for our existence, this is just another silly, desperate attempt to get around being responsible for what we do.
–John N. Clayton

Posted on

Sun Stand Still

Sun Stand Still
Many times when a skeptic attacks a biblical story, the problem is caused by misunderstanding a word. In Joshua 10 there is an account of a battle between the Amorites and the Israelites. In verses 12 and 13 of the King James translation, Joshua said, “Sun stand still” and the Sun and Moon stood still for a whole day.

There is no question that God can make the Sun stand still. He can do anything He wants to do, but the physical consequences of stopping the Earth from rotating on its axis are enormous. The inertia of the water in the oceans, the effect on the atmosphere, and even the impact on the land masses challenge the imagination. A careful study of the words used in the biblical account resolves what appears to be an impossible statement in the scriptures.

The New Testament uses the Greek word “helios” which means Sun, but there is no Hebrew word for Sun in the Old Testament. In Genesis 1:16, the word for lights is “maor,” and the Sun is identified as “gadol maor” usually translated “greater light.” In Job 31:26, the Hebrew word is the shorter version “or” and Job 30:28 it is “chammah” referring to the heat of the Sun. In Judges 8:13 and 14:18 the word used is “cheres” again referring to the Sun’s burning heat.

In Joshua 10, the Hebrew word used is “shemesh” which refers to a ministrant, a device to minister to a need. It usually refers to the Sun but could be any ministrant. The word for Moon is “yareach” which refers to a wondering object. There is another interesting point about the words in the last part of Joshua 10:12. The pronouncement of God’s provision for the battle to continue says in the King James, “Sun stand thou still upon Gibeon (El-Jib today); and thou Moon in the valley of Ajalon.” Ajalon is in Dan and Gibeon is 4 miles from Bethel. These two locations are less than 30 miles apart. That fact should suggest that these are not the celestial Sun and Moon.

The question is not whether God caused a “great light” to allow the battle to continue at Joshua’s request, but what was the method by which God did it. There are many ways God could provide a great light or series of lights as a ministrant. Verse 11 speaks of “great stones from heaven” cast down on Azekah which was a town in Judah near Gibeon. Many astronomical possibilities to provide light are worth considering such as an asteroid or meteor shower or an aurora.

If you read the rest of the chapter, the main message is that God fought for Israel. Verse 14 indicates “there was no day like it before or after.” If you are satisfied with assuming that “Sun stand still” was simply a miracle of God and no explanation should be attempted, that is your prerogative. But to the skeptic, there needs to be an answer, and the evidence gives several possible answers that enable the believer “to be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks of the hope that is within us” (1 Peter 3:15).
–John N. Clayton © 2018

Posted on

Crop Circles and Design

Crop Circles and Design
“It’s hard for me to believe that we are alone in this vast collection of stars in our universe. This could be the expression of consciousness itself or perhaps a communication from intelligent life letting us know we are not alone.” That was a statement made by someone concerning crop circles as reported by National Geographic.

Crop circles are patterns, generally circles, that appear mysteriously overnight in farmer’s fields. The photograph shows one in Switzerland. They are made by pressing down the crops, usually wheat or another grain, to form a geometric design that can be seen from the air. Some people believe that aliens from some other planet must have made them. They do seem to defy the ability of someone on the ground to create the intricate patterns without being able to see the whole thing.

Other people believe that mystical forces beyond our understanding created them. “The expression of consciousness itself” as the person quoted above expressed. Still, others know how they were made because they made them. The same National Geographic article showed a picture of a team of self-confessed crop circle artists in Dorchester, England.

Crop circle artists accomplish their work with surveyor’s measuring tape, ropes, and sometimes lasers. They smash the crops flat with boards. Many times the artists want to keep their work secret because they are trespassing on private property and injuring a farmer’s crop.

In some areas such as Wiltshire, England, crop circles have become a tourist attraction. Wiltshire is the home of Stonehenge and the Avebury Stone Circles, and you can buy crop circle postcards in the Henge Shop in Avebury. It isn’t just the stone circles that attract tourists, and money, to Wiltshire. Thousands come to see the crop circles. Farmers are not always happy to have people wandering in their fields, but others are making money, including documentary filmmakers and travel agencies.

The point is that everyone recognizes that an intelligence of some kind has created the crop circles. They may think that it was intelligent space aliens or some mystic consciousness, or they may know the human artists who actually made them. When we see obvious design, we know that it could not have happened by accident. Crop circles give evidence of design and therefore intelligence.

How much more is that true of the universe and our planet and the life on it. Can we believe that everything around us, which is much more complex than crop circles, shows no evidence of design? Or is a better explanation that the universe was designed by an Intellect far beyond what it takes to create crop circles?
–Roland Earnst © 2018