Evidence for God in the Bible Archives

August 29, 2021August 27, 2021

Christ’s Attitude Toward Evidence

Many people today, including Christians, are denying evidence. A charismatic teacher, politician, or preacher can cause them to ignore scientific or biblical evidence and accept something untrue. What was Christ’s attitude toward evidence?

Jesus had a healthy respect for evidence and used it in His teaching. In Matthew 11:1-5, John the Baptist sent his disciples to Jesus to find out if He was who John had proclaimed Him to be. What Jesus did was to give these disciples evidence. “Go and show John the things which you hear and see.” When Thomas had trouble believing, what did Jesus do? Jesus told him to examine the evidence. “Put your finger here, see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe” (John 20:27). Christ’s attitude toward evidence was to use it regularly in His dealings with people. His miracles were evidence that motivated people to faith.

In the parables of Jesus, what do we see? There was no abstract, hard-to-understand theological gymnastics but everyday evidence that people knew about and could understand. The parables of the good Samaritan, the lost coin, the weeds, the yeast, the lost sheep, the fig tree, the sower, and the mustard seed are all examples of evidence that people could understand. What was the purpose of the miracles that Jesus and the apostles performed? Was it not evidence to show that they spoke for God? Compare that to the scammers such as Simon in Acts 8 and the seven sons of Sceva in Acts 19:11-16.

The “Does God Exist?” ministry deals with evidence. We are not interested in denominational theories or human doctrines. Instead, we must build our faith on evidence. By knowing the evidence, we can “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have” (1 Peter 3:15).

August 27, 2021August 25, 2021

Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible

Most of us have had two young Mormon evangelists show up at our door. They claim that the Bible was translated inaccurately, and an angel gave Joseph Smith visions to correct the errors. In the Mormon Latter Day Saints Articles of Faith, Joseph Smith wrote, “We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the Word of God.” Joseph Smith attacked the “corrupted Bible” by producing his own version known as the Joseph Smith Translation (JST).

Smith quoted Genesis 6:52-53 as saying that Adam was baptized in the name of Jesus Christ and was given the gift of the Holy Ghost by that process. He changed John 1:1 to say that “the gospel was preached through the Son. And the gospel was the word …” Smith did not go back to the original languages and had no access to ancient manuscripts for his translation. He claimed that God gave him the revisions for the Joseph Smith Translation.

Mormon writings contain many scientific and historical errors, some of which later Mormon leaders have removed by editing Joseph Smith’s original books. Examples include God cursing Indians (native Americans) with dark skin (2 Nephi 5:21&23, Jacob 3:3-9, Mormon 5:15-17, and Alma 3:6-109). Furthermore, if they accepted Mormon teachings, they would “become a white and delightsome people” (2 Nephi 30:5-7 and 3 Nephi 2:15). Sin causes baldness, according to 2 Nephi 13:24.

Our correspondence course contains an appendix with four pages of errors in the Book of Mormon. It is available on our doesgodexist.org website in the correspondence course section. You will also find that list of errors in appendix A (pages 164 to 167) of our book The Source: Eternal Design or Infinite Accident, available from the PowerVine Store.

For more information and materials showing the errors in Mormonism, read The Salt Lake City Messenger. It is published by the Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1358 S. West Temple, Salt Lake City, Utah 84115. You will find their website HERE.

We repeatedly make our arguments about the credibility of the Bible by going back to the original languages. Our Beyond Reasonable Doubt video series goes deeply into archaeological support and historical facts to back up our claims about the Bible. We wrote about it in our second quarter Does God Exist journal, which you can read HERE. You can watch the series on our Does Does God Exist? Media website. It is available for purchase from the PowerVine Store.

The Latter-Day Saints (LDS) conversion rate has dropped, and their growth rate has slowed from 4% in the 1980s to 1.5% in 2020. Their efforts toward children have grown to overcome this decrease, and we can expect a more aggressive approach from their missionaries as well. Before listening to the Mormon missionaries, we should know the errors of the Joseph Smith Translation and the Book of Mormon, and other false Mormon teachings.

August 26, 2021August 25, 2021

Singing is Good for Your Health

A Finnish study has found that singing is good for your health. In addition, it showed better verbal fluency in elderly singers compared to non-singers. The study says that these findings make sense because singing requires regulation of attention, versatile information processing, linguistic output, learning, and memorization.

Several New Testament passages talk about singing, including Ephesians 5:19, Colossians 3:16, Romans 15:9, and 1 Corinthians 14:15. The New Testament presents singing as part of worship, and everyone should participate in worship. Merely being entertained by someone who is blessed with great musical talent is not participating in worship.

In our day of four-part harmony, it is easy for everyone to learn to sing in their comfort range. In the Old Testament, the Psalms were songs. Music for worship in Jesus’ day mainly consisted of chants that everyone could join.

A person can be tone-deaf and still participate in singing in Christian worship. Although many religions use singing as a part of their worship activities, group participation is unique to the worship system of Christians.

Singing is not what takes place in the meetings of atheists. When I was an atheist, the only songs I remember were songs that carried a pornographic or comedic message. Music was not something we all participated in, but it was a vehicle of entertainment.

“Making melody in your heart” (Ephesians 5:19) is a proven way to improve your mental health. Furthermore, like everything God tells us to do, it has a purpose and benefits our well-being. Therefore, singing is good for your health, both physical and spiritual health.

Reference: Readers Digest. September 2021, page 58.

August 24, 2021August 23, 2021

The Myth of UFOs

Anytime the media has run out of things they think will draw readers or viewers, they fall back on the myth of UFOs. For example, the May 10, 2021 issue of The New Yorker magazine carried an article by Gideon Lewis-Kraus titled “The UFO Papers: Why Did We Start Taking Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Seriously?” The article was a combination of bad science and bad journalism. The bad science was that the writer reported UFO sightings’ size, altitude, and speed based on people’s estimates, not precise scientific measurements. The bad journalism involved the people the writer chose to interview.

Mick West, a British-American science writer and skeptical investigator who debunks the myth of UFOs, has offered plausible explanations that don’t involve aliens or paranormal explanations. In addition, Scientific American magazine ran an article titled “Experts Weigh in on Pentagon UFO Report.” One featured astronomer, professor Andrew Fraknoi, commented, “…there has been a flurry of misleading publicity about UFOs (based upon military reports). A sober examination of these claims reveals there is a lot less to them than first meets the eye.”

The atheist community is interested in any evidence that might suggest alien visitation. Some atheists have implied that if aliens have visited Earth, they must be the cause of all the evidence for God. They claim that Jesus was an alien who came to Earth to try to get humanity on a more reasonable approach to reality. The miracles of Christ are simply high-tech displays by the aliens. The absurdness of this is obvious. If the aliens can do all the atheists claim, they certainly can evade any efforts by humans to see or detect them.

Despite all the books and articles UFO proponents have written to support the myth of UFOs, no tangible evidence supports alien visitation. Scams such as the Roswell, New Mexico, claims and attempts to deny archaeological evidence that Jesus was what He claimed to be will prove to be false. Robert Sheaffer, who has written extensively about UFO claims, says, “There are no aliens here on Earth. And so, the government cannot ‘disclose’ what it does not have. Some people think the government knows more about UFOs, or UAP, than the public, but it’s clear they know less on the subject than our best civilian UFO investigators, not more.”

We are not saying that there is no life anywhere in the cosmos except on Earth. What we do say is that if there is life out there, God created it. I always enjoy telling the story of an interview I did with Larry King early in my career. It was a radio talk show, and he had an atheist on with me. A caller asked my atheist friend, “What would you do if an alien landed on the Whitehouse lawn, got out of his flying saucer with a Bible in his hand, and said, ‘Has Jesus been here yet?’” All the atheist said was, “Punt.” I think that says it all.

August 23, 2021August 21, 2021

Bible Horror Stories

We sometimes get mail from skeptics referring to “Bible horror stories.” That indicates the writer does not understand the biblical message. For example, a recent letter referred to the “horror story of a guy cutting up a woman and mailing her body parts to people all over the world.” This is a classic example of an atheist lashing out at the Bible without thinking or understanding the biblical account.

We need to remember that the Bible reports history as well as giving God’s instructions. The fact that your local newspaper reports a murder does not mean that the newspaper did the killing or endorsed it.

The passage that the skeptic referred to is Judges 19-20. This is a horrible story of a woman companion of an unnamed Levite who is raped and murdered by a group of men. The Levite cuts up her corpse and sends it to the 12 tribes of Israel to motivate them to retaliate against the murderers. This mutilation was not something the Levite did as a command of God.

At the time of this Bible horror story, there was no justice system in place. The book of Judges ends with the statement, “In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25). There was a code of conduct but no legal system to enforce it.

Colossians 2:12-23 tells us that Jesus Christ did away with the legalistic rules that no one could follow completely. The teachings of Christ in Matthew 5–7 are in stark contrast to the violence and power struggles in the Old Testament. The Bible horror stories are accurate records of evil actions. We learn from history, so we don’t repeat the mistakes. The New Testament is NEW!! There is no horror in the gospels except what evil men did to Christ.

August 22, 2021August 21, 2021

What Happens When We Die?

Life has a way of forcing all of us to consider what happens when we die. In the past two months, two of my closest friends, my brother. and my son died. When death strikes that close to you, a logical set of questions arise. Where are they now? Will I ever see them again? Do they know what is going on here on Earth? Are they in heaven or hell?

“Every person has a soul that will live forever, either in God’s presence or absence.” According to recent polling, 79% of all Americans agree with that statement. If you don’t believe that humans have a soul, you need to look at the evidence. Dr. Timothy Gordon has written a book titled “A Traveler’s Guide to the Afterlife” that makes a thorough study of what the Bible says about eight subject areas:

1) The death and the mortality of humans.
2) The immortality of the soul
3) The intermediate state of the dead
4) The second coming of Christ
5) The resurrection of the body
6) The day of judgment and rewards
7) Hell and eternal destruction
8) Heaven and eternal life

Tim Gordon is a retired Navy Commander with a doctorate in Christian apologetics. He knows Hebrew and Greek and is very familiar with millennial views. He serves as an adjunct instructor for the Biblical Studies Center in Boise, Idaho.

There has been very little teaching on what happens when we die, and this book is biblically accurate. There is a 77 page listing of scriptures dealing with the afterlife, and the scriptures are written out–not just listed. In addition, there are crossword puzzles, word search puzzles, and extensive documentation of what people have said about this subject.

This book fills a huge gap in the preaching and teaching about life after death over the years. We highly recommend it to Christians, and especially to preachers and teachers.

This book is available on Amazon for $9.99 in paperback and $3.99 for the Kindle edition (ISBN 9781082882593).

August 19, 2021August 18, 2021

The Design of Death

It may sound strange to talk about death in a positive way. The truth is that the design of death is part of the creation. The second law of thermodynamics, in simple terms, says that in a closed system, things move toward a condition of disorder. That principle is built into the fabric of the physical universe. It allows the diffusion of resources, the circulation of air, the transfer of energy from one form to another, and multiple other physical processes. It also means that our human bodies are in a constant movement toward decay.

The Bible contains a statement of this law in Isaiah 51:6: “Lift up your eyes to the heavens and look upon the earth beneath: for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell in the earth shall die in a like manner.” Thus, the design of death applies to the universe and everything in it.

Is our death just a piece of collateral damage to the second law? For those who are Christians, death is not the ultimate tragedy. My son Tim lived his whole life with multiple handicaps, including muscular dystrophy, blindness, cerebral palsy, and schizophrenia. Despite those handicaps, his life was full. When COVID-19 took away his ability to swallow, talk, sit up, stand or walk, he could still hear and communicate with me. For him to be unable to die would have been insanely cruel. Isaiah 57:1-2 describes this well: “For the righteous man is taken away from calamity; he enters peace; they rest in their beds who walk in their uprightness.”

For a Christian, death removes us from evil and brings us into peace. I look forward to freedom from politics, pollution, illness, global warming, and pain. In 2 Peter 1:15, Peter talks about his death using the Greek term “exodos,” which means to depart. It is the word from which we get the name of the book of Exodus that describes Israel’s departure from Egyptian bondage.

So far in 2021, I have lost my son, my brother, and three of my close friends to death. They were all Christians, so I am happy for them. I take to heart 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14, which tells me not to grieve “as others do who have no hope.” Psalms 116:15 tells us, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.” The word “saint” here refers to “one set apart” as members of God’s family of believers–Christians.

When I was an atheist, death offered me no future. As a Christian, I see death as an entrance into a far better existence than I have now. We have an instinctive desire to live, and any change we make can be scary. That is especially true of departing this life. Paul said in Philippians 1:21-23, “To live is Christ and to die is gain,” Death can be beautiful, and the design of death is a reality for the world in which we live.

August 15, 2021August 12, 2021

Tolstoy and Stupefacients

One of the most famous authors on the world literary scene was Leo Tolstoy. He is probably best known for War and Peace but is well respected for his other novels. In 1890 Tolstoy wrote an essay titled, “Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves?” For Tolstoy, “stupefacients” were anything that interfered with the rigorous application of a person’s conscience, and he believed they caused most human problems. Tolstoy’s list of stupefacients included wine, beer, spirits, narcotics, and tobacco.

The Bible agrees with Tolstoy. Numerous Old Testament passages tell of trouble coming from the use of alcohol. (For example, see Genesis 9:20-24, Leviticus 10:9, Deuteronomy 29:6, and Judges 13:4-7.) The condemnation of alcohol use in passages like Proverbs 20:1 and 23:21 make it clear this is not God’s will for us to stupefy ourselves with alcohol. There is no product of humanity that has caused more misery, ill health, disruption, and violence than alcohol.

So here we are in 2021, legalizing another stupefacient. We already see the ill effects of the use of marijuana, and yet 70% of all Americans support the legalization of recreational pot. Nearly 80% of people in the 18-29 age category support it. Celebrities like Willie Nelson, Cheech and Chong, Woody Harrelson, and Bill Maher have promoted marijuana as a way to find peace in a confusing world.

People made similar claims about alcohol when prohibition was the law. The promoters of alcohol won, and the result of the legalization of alcohol brought in tax dollars. At the same time, it has cost far more in alcohol-related accidents, broken homes, and broken lives. The legalization of marijuana is also riding on the claim of increased tax dollars.

Tolstoy was a Russian writing in the late 19th century, and he was unsuccessful in turning Russia away from the use of stupefacients. The Russian Republic was destroyed and replaced with Communism with dictators like Lenin and Stalin. The question is, “Will America survive our 21st-century involvement with stupefacients?”

Data for this came from an article by John M. Crisp titled “We’ll Survive Legal Weed.”

August 14, 2021August 12, 2021

Experimenting on Human Subjects

One of the challenges of medical science is how to test a new drug or procedure on humans. If people are nothing more than animals, science can justify experimenting on human subjects for the common good. For example, German and Japanese scientists conducted experiments on World War II prisoners against their will. After the war, international courts prosecuted German doctors and scientists for war crimes related to human experimentation. Japanese researchers did not face trial because the U.S. agreed not to prosecute in exchange for access to their data.

Out of the prosecution of German researchers came what is called “The Nuremberg Code.” It involves ten statements describing the ethical standards for experimenting on human subjects in research. In simple terms, the ten statements are:

Participants must give consent without stress or force.
The research must be able to show benefits for the good of society.
Findings should justify the experiment.
Research should avoid mental suffering and physical harm.
No one should be killed or injured.
Risks should not outweigh the benefits.
The research should protect participants from injury or death.
The researcher must be qualified to do the research.
Participants should be able to stop participating at any time.
The researcher must be prepared to stop the study at any time.

A classic example of how far things can go in today’s world, even in the United States, is the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Male Negro.” That study continued from 1932 to 1972. The United States Public Health Service recruited 600 African American men with syphilis offering them free meals and burial stipends for the right to their bodies after they died. Unfortunately, no medical treatment was made available to those men, and they were subjected to painful spinal taps. You can imagine what they went through with 40 years of untreated syphilis raging in their bodies.

Looking at what happened in this terrible event brings to mind the struggles in America today. In the past, society considered blacks to be less human than whites. For that reason, causing them pain and premature death to benefit the scientific establishment was deemed to be acceptable. The “black lives matter” movement of today is rooted in this kind of history.

More to the point is that science ignored the teachings of the Bible. The Bible tells us that humans are created in God’s image (Genesis 1:27), and the body is the temple of God’s Spirit, and defiling the temple invites God’s wrath (1 Corinthians 3:16-17). That means not caring for every person is a rebellion against God. Experimenting on human subjects in the Tuskegee experiment can only be justified if you view blacks as less than human. It also requires embracing the notion that survival of the fittest means it is acceptable to sacrifice the less fit to benefit the fit. Many people today do not accept the Christian view that all humans are special because we are created in the image of God. We can see the result of that in the chaos tearing at the fabric of society.

For more on the history of the Tuskegee study see “Who Dares to Speak Up” in the July/August 2021 issue of American Scientist, pages 238 -242.

August 12, 2021August 12, 2021

The Transgender Craze

The transgender craze is a dangerous movement sweeping much of the western world. It shows up especially in a sudden spike among teenage girls identifying as transgender. According to journalist and author Abagail Shrier, there are top girl’s schools where up to 30% of the girls in the 7th grade identify themselves as “trans.” This transgender craze is social contagion in action. Consider the following facts:

1) America in 2007 had one pediatric gender clinic. Today there are hundreds.
2) Testosterone is readily available to adolescents from Planned Parenthood and Kaiser without a therapist’s note.
3) In Washington state, a 13-year-old can begin “gender affirming therapy” without her parents’ consent.
4) In Oregon, a 15-year-old can undergo an elective double mastectomy without her parents’ permission.
5) Gender dysphoria (the feeling of severe discomfort in a person’s biological gender) is rare, afflicting .01% of the population, most of whom are male.
6) 70% of gender dysphoria victims naturally outgrow their affliction when left alone.
7) Doctors use puberty blockers to shut down part of the pituitary gland stopping the release of hormones that lead to sexual maturity. Lupron, used initially to chemically castrate sex offenders, is the most commonly used drug. However, the FDA has never approved it for halting healthy puberty.
8) Puberty blockers negatively affect bone density as well as sexual maturation and should not be used for more than two years.
9) The number of girls seeking treatment at the United Kingdom’s National Gender Clinic has increased by 4,400% in the past decade.
10) The Equality Act before the U.S. Congress would make it illegal to distinguish between biological men and women, creating problems for schools, sports, employers, prisons, churches and non-profits, and the security of women.

The media tries to hide the above facts considering this a conservative political issue rather than a medical one. Referring to Genesis 1:27, Jesus said, “Haven’t you read that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female.” That is a biological fact. The transgender craze sweeping our culture today is causing massive pain and future disaster for many young men and women.

Data from Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters by Abigail Shrier, and “Gender Ideology Run Amok” in the June/July issue of Imprimis magazine from Hillsdale College.