Evidence for God to Answer Challenges Archives

October 18, 2024October 17, 2024

Modern Atheism Has Lost Its Momentum

Evolution News & Science Today published an article by Denyse O’Leary titled “How the New Atheism Fizzled.” The point is that modern atheism has lost its momentum.

A book titled The Four Horsemen (Random House Penguin 2007) presented the arguments against faith by Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins. Hitchens and Dennett are deceased, and no one has taken their place. Antony Flew and Ayaan Hirsi Ali were atheists who could pick up the slack. Ali was a Muslim turned atheist, but she became a disciple of Christ, and Flew wrote a book titled There is a God (HarperOne 2008).

Modern atheism has lost its momentum as more evidence for design has become available. The challenges include the fine-tuning of the universe and simple things like the fact that the existence of beauty is not part of survival. We now see books and articles about why there is something instead of nothing.

To add to the challenges to modern atheism, evidence shows the growth of suicide among atheists. Atheist Staks Rosch, writing in the Huffington Post (December 8, 2017), noted that depression leading to suicide is a significant problem in the atheist community. The fact that atheism offers no purpose for existence while faith does is a factor in how modern atheism has lost its momentum.

One of the leading proponents of modern atheism has been the work of the late brilliant scientist Stephen Hawking. However, believers with the academic credentials to address Hawking’s complaints against faith have responded. For example, Dr. John C. Lennox of the University of Oxford directly addressed Hawking in 2011 in the book God and Stephen Hawking – Whose Design Is It Anyway? Atheists have been unable to respond to Lennox’s material. Books by other scholars have addressed the claims of Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and Dennett.

Even though modern atheism has lost its momentum, there have always been and will always be those who reject the existence of God. The bottom line is you don’t have to put your brain in “park” to be a believer. Jesus challenged the people of His day to look at the evidence. Those of us who believe in God and the Bible should follow His example.

— John N. Clayton © 2024
Reference: “How the New Atheism Fizzled” by Denyse O’Leary in the September 30, 2024, issue of Evolution News & Science Today

October 10, 2024October 9, 2024

Should Humans Eat Meat?

One of the questions we face today is, “Should humans eat meat?” Genesis 9:1-3 tells us, “Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands. Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.’”

The atheist view is that we are just animals and nothing special. One issue of Skeptic magazine centered around animal rights and whether animals have the same rights as humans. The issue showed the impressive intelligence of ants, crows, octopuses, dolphins, goats, and turtles. Atheists typically jump from intelligence to animal rights and conclude that it is unethical for humans to eat animals and that we should consider the rights that animals have. One authority used in the atheist view is Peter Singer at Princeton University. He wrote “Animal Liberation,” often called “the bible of the animal rights movement.” Animal rights advocates argue that all human foods should be plant-based and that killing animals for food is a barbaric tradition that needs to stop.

There are major logical and factual problems with this view. Should humans eat meat? Is the intelligent behaior of animals the result of their thinking things out and acting on their thoughts, or is instinct the driving force? Is it a thought process or copying an observed behavior? Do crows, for example, take the lid off of a bottle because they figured out how to do it, or are they copying what they have seen humans do?

Another vital question is the result of restrictive diets: How will the human population survive if eating meat is no longer allowed? Getting enough protein and other crucial nutrients from plants for the world’s population is a significant challenge today. The problem would greatly increase without meat in the diet. We cannot overemphasize the importance of not causing pain to any of God’s creatures, but removing meat from everyone’s diet will cause more problems than it will solve.

“Should humans eat meat?” becomes a question because the atheist view fails to recognize that humans are unique because we are created in God’s image.

— John N. Clayton © 2024
Reference: Skeptic magazine (Volume 29 #3) “Animal Minds – What do they think?”

October 9, 2024October 8, 2024

Unhealthy Foods and God

Skeptics challenge that the Christian system allowed unhealthy foods that would not be condoned or promoted by an all-wise God. The Bible passage referred to is Acts 10:9-15 where Peter has a vision and is told to eat any meat, including animals that had been forbidden to the Jews. When Peter objects, a voice says, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”

We must take the Bible literally. We must look at who said what is in the passage, to whom it was said, why it was said, and how the people who heard it would have understood it. In this case, God’s message for Peter is clear if you read the rest of the chapter and on into chapter 11. This event was not about eating unhealthy foods but about taking the gospel of Jesus Christ to all people, not just the Jews.

Another method of understanding the meaning of a passage is to compare it to the rest of the Bible. You don’t have to be a scholar to know that the Bible cannot contradict itself. The New Testament has many statements that show it is not a book about eating. For example, in Matthew 15:17-20, Jesus says that what you eat doesn’t defile you, but rather what you think. In 1 Corinthians 10:27-32, Paul tells the Christians not to worry about what foods they can eat but rather be concerned about offending others and driving them away from Christ. In Romans 14, Paul tells Christians that the Church is “not about meat and drink” and then talks about not offending others.

This does not mean the Bible doesn’t care about unhealthy foods and practices. In Acts 15:19-20 the Church was told to avoid drinking blood or meat secured by strangling. However, even in that passage, the message was not about food. In Jesus’ time, having meat to eat was rare, and grains, fruit, and fish were the primary food sources. Also, life expectancy was short due to a lack of hygiene, the spreading of disease by immoral choices, and the lack of modern medicine.

God is not the cause of the often unhealthy foods we place in our diets today. Christian morality and attention to our health and the needs of others testify to the validity of the Christian system as taught in the New Testament.

October 7, 2024October 6, 2024

Hostility Toward Christianity

We recently received a very hostile phone call from a person who went so far as to threaten us. This has happened many times in the past, and the hostility toward Christianity is excellent evidence for its validity. “So you think you are the only people going to heaven?” is a misguided challenge we get in response to the messages we post on this site.

Skeptics frequently refer to the Crusades and the horrible violence that people who called themselves Christians have done against those who were not Christians. Their actions violate what Jesus taught and contradict what those who follow the Bible do in relationship to others. Please do not confuse the misguided teachings of the past with what the Bible tells Christians to do. The Crusades violated everything Jesus taught, as did the inquisitions.

Jesus told His followers in Matthew 7:1, “Judge not, that you be not judged.” This concept is repeated over and over in the New Testament. Judging is up to God, and the New Testament commands Christians to be peacemakers. Acts 2:47 tells us that the first-century Christians “had favor with ALL the people.” At the same time, it is essential to understand that Jesus told His followers they could recognize false religions and their teachings by their results. (See Matthew 7:16-20 and John 15:2-16).

It’s a fact of life that we have to make judgments every day. As we look at world religions, we see the results of their teaching. We must ask, “What are the results of following the teachings of those religious systems?” We can read the historical results and see them in the news today. The hostility toward Christianity and the very fact that our ministry is attacked is an indication of the violence and destructive nature of most world religions. Over the history of humanity, religion has caused a considerable number of wars, and it continues to do so today. Biblical Christianity (not human creeds) teaches the opposite of all this, but other religions and religious leaders reject the Bible’s teachings.

As we analyze each religious system, we must question the hostility toward Christianity. How many hospitals, nursing homes, orphanages, educational institutions, etc., have resulted from the beliefs of each religious system? You can kill me, but you cannot destroy the good that Christianity has brought to the world. If men and women study the evidence, they will see that religious systems are not all the same. This ministry is dedicated to providing evidence, but if someone rejects it, that is their prerogative. They will have to answer, as will we, to the perfect judge who created the cosmos and us.

October 4, 2024October 1, 2024

To Understand the Godhead

Both believers and skeptics ask the question, “What is the godhead?” While I don’t pretend to understand the Godhead, I have spent years trying to explain it.

Passages like John 14:26 bother a lot of folks. That passage has Jesus saying, “But the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, who the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.” The word “godhead” is found three times in the King James version of the New Testament, each time translating a different Greek word. In Acts 17:29 (theios), Paul was talking to the philosophers in Athens. Romans 1:20 (theiotes) deals with evidence for God’s existence. Colossians 2:9 (theotes) was dealing with philosophy and human deceit.

An analogy that may help us understand the Godhead is that humans have three parts that makeup one individual. We all have intellect, which allows us to be creative and have ideas of a spiritual nature. God’s intellect is seen in the creation and design we see all around us.

We all have a personality that allows us to express our spiritual nature and to love in a way that is not just survival. Jesus taught His followers to be known by their love (See John 13:34-35) and demonstrated it in His life. He used the Greek word “agape” and referred to caring about all of humanity – even our enemies.

We all have spirit, which is the action that we do, and the Bible consistently uses that word with a verb. (“The Spirit MOVED upon the face of the waters.” “He will TEACH you.” My spirit will not always “STRIVE” with man.) We are all just one individual, but we all have intellect, personality, and spirit.

When the disciples questioned how they could see God, Jesus gave an answer that involved one part of the Godhead while referencing the other parts. (See John 14:9-10.) John 1:1 and 1:14 and 1 Timothy 3:16 show that Jesus was God in the flesh. It is impossible for us to understand the Godhead. St. Augustine wrote, “If you understand God, what you understand isn’t God.” J.B. Phillips wrote a book titled “Your God is Too Small,” in which he pointed out how the human mind limits God.

We humans will never understand everything there is to know about God, creation, or God’s purpose in creating us, but we can understand enough to make our lives meaningful and productive.

September 20, 2024September 17, 2024

Understanding the Relationship Between Science and Faith

Many people have bought into the belief that science has the answer to every question humans can ask. The idea promoted by the media and various organizations is that science is the only answer to all human problems. Some of humanity’s major problems today are caused by not understanding the relationship between science and faith.

Science can’t show us how to cope with personal challenges caused by Alzheimer’s, dementia, paralysis, brain damage, or mental illness. Theology and faith can provide essential answers when facing life’s challenges. The dictionary defines theology as the study of the nature of God and religious belief.

In the September 2024 issue of the Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation, James C. Peterson made the following comment that we believe is essential for understanding the relationship between science and faith:

“Theology serves science well when it reminds science that science is very good at what it does but only at what it does. There is no scientific basis for claiming that science is the sole way to apprehend reality. Such is the ideology of scientism, not science. Science seeks to recognize causal connections between material entities. It does not have the tools or expertise to do else, even to pronounce that it is a good thing to study science! Much that is real is not accessible to scientific verification.”

Peterson goes on to say that apparent contradictions and anomalies are important opportunities to better understand what is true.

We recently received a letter from a man who stated that prayer was useless and something he would no longer do. This is a classic example of not understanding what prayer is for, what it does, and how it helps us. He said he did not want to pray because when he prayed for there to be no rain, it didn’t do any good. It rained anyway. I asked him what he would expect God to do when one person prayed for no rain while a farmer prayed for rain.

Understanding the relationship between science and faith and what theology really means is essential for atheists and religious people. Peterson explains this relationship well.

— John N. Clayton © 2024
Reference: Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith September 2024

September 9, 2024September 8, 2024

False Stories Travel Faster than the Truth

A study of 126,000 stories spread on Twitter by around three million people from 2006 to 2017 showed that false stories travel faster and reach more people than the truth. That is not new, and it’s true in every aspect of our lives. In 1710, Jonathan Swift wrote, “Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it …”

During my 41 years of teaching science in public schools, I always told my students, “Don’t believe something just because I say it. If I can’t show you solid evidence, then just regard it as one person’s opinion.” That didn’t endear me to the other faculty members in my school, but it led to much discussion and activity in my classes.

False stories travel faster than the truth, and it is easier for people to latch on to misinformation. Why is that? Here are some reasons psychologists give:

(1) Our default setting is to believe what others say. Psychologists refer to this as “truth bias.”
(2) Repetition breeds belief. When people hear something repeatedly, they remember it and begin to believe it, even if it is implausible.
(3) Vivid stories and images remain in our memories and influence our thinking.
4) People buy into things that confirm their beliefs, whether true or not.
5) We tend to be around like-minded people who reinforce our thinking, while we mistrust those with whom we disagree.

All of these factors are true in today’s world. False stories travel faster, and when trying to debunk false information that someone believes, begin with kindness and respect for the person’s view. Peter wrote that we must always be “prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect…” Did Jesus Christ confront misinformation, and did He have a way to overcome it? The answer to both of these questions is “yes.” He confronted doubt with proof. The entire “Sermon on the Mount” in Matthew 5-7 is saturated with instructions to His followers on how to live out the truth of their faith.

Rather than arguing with unbelievers, we need to show them the truth of Christianity by how we live and what we do. The Church needs to use the same techniques I used in teaching science. Show people what is true, not because “I say so,” but with kindness and respect show the evidence. Then, live out your faith so others can see Jesus in you.

— John N. Clayton © 2024
References: “Lies spread faster than the truth” in the journal Science vol. 359, no. 6380, pages 1146-1151, and the textbook Exploring Psychology, 13th edition.

September 5, 2024September 4, 2024

“Aliens Are Controlling Earth’s History”

When this ministry began in 1968, one of the first things we ran into was a host of claims that aliens are controlling Earth’s history and its people. Science fiction writers claimed the Tunguska event of 1908, in which a meteorite exploded in the atmosphere above Earth’s surface, was the crash of an alien spaceship. In 1968, a Danish bartender named Erich von Daniken published a book titled Chariots of the Gods, claiming that aliens precipitated the advance of some civilizations and that accomplished human genetic advancement. Writer Charles Berlitz claimed that the Bermuda Triangle was an alien spaceport and the underwater city of Atlantis where aliens destroyed any trespassers.

In our various publications, we have shown that scientific evidence easily explains these things without alien involvement. Despite the evidence and scientific facts, we continue to see a flood of material suggesting that aliens are controlling Earth’s history. An “Ancient Alien” television series offers alien explanations of many things, including Albert Einstein’s work. Chariots of the Gods was made into a movie. Hollywood has not missed the opportunity to exploit the alien nonsense and draw an audience from people unaware of the evidence.

As you might expect, skeptics of Christianity have used the alien hypothesis to explain biblical stories. Some even claim that Jesus Christ was an alien who came to change the direction of human culture. Biblical stories of everything from Adam and Eve to Noah have been attributed to alien involvement in human affairs. People who say that aliens are controlling Earth’s history have criticized our archaeological material, such as the “Beyond Reasonable Doubt” video series.

The fact is that Jesus Christ lived, the Bible is the Word of God, and aliens are not involved in human history. If there are other civilizations on other planets in other galaxies, we will probably never know about them because they are so f ar away. Science fiction can create fantasies, but Christ is real and can help you with your struggles in life.

August 16, 2024August 14, 2024

Inconsistency of Well-Educated Skeptics

It has become fashionable in the media to bash the Bible, but the inconsistency of well-educated skeptics who denigrate the Bible as a fictitious writing does not stand up. This essay is not about bashing skeptics but about encouraging them to reconsider their views on the credibility of the Bible.

Most skeptics do not question the credibility of Plato’s writings, but how many ancient copies do we have of Plato’s work? The answer is seven. No educated scholar would question the works of Pliny even though, once again, only seven copies exist. Herodotus and Suetonius are required reading in most universities, but we have only eight manuscripts for each. Even Socrates and Aristotle exist in less than 50 ancient copies. It is easy to understand why this is the case because these manuscripts were hand-written and produced hundreds of years after the author lived. We agree that these copies are valid and that their message is clear.

In comparison, roughly 5600 early New Testament copies and fragments are in museums worldwide. Well-known ancient scholars also quoted from the New Testament. Justin Martyr quotes 268 times from the gospels and 43 times from the letters of Paul. Origen quotes 9231 times from the gospels, 349 times from Acts, and over 8,000 times from the letters. If you add up all the Bible quotes known to scholars, there are 19,369 quotes from the gospels, 1,352 from the book of Acts, 14,905 from the letters, and 664 from the book of Revelation. This adds up to 36,289 quotes by ancient writers.

We see the amazing inconsistency of well-educated skeptics accepting writings with only seven or eight ancient copies while rejecting biblical manuscripts of similar ages with over 35,000 quotes. Because of the huge number of manuscripts and quotes available, we can check on the integrity of biblic a l translations. Attempting to justify rejecting Christ because you don’t want to live as He says is one thing, but being dishonest and inconsistent with evidence is something else.

We warmly invite you to take our free correspondence course “Beyond Reasonable Doubt.” Simply send us your USPS address, and we will send you lesson # 1. This is an opportunity for you to delve deeper into the evidence supporting the Bible’s credibility and reconsider any doubts you may have. – John N. Clayton
jncdge@aol.com
Does God Exist?
1555 Echo Valley Drive
Niles MI 49120

August 15, 2024August 14, 2024

UAP Sightings

The scientific community has rejected UFOs, but in their place, we have “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena” or UAPs. From 2001 to 2020, people reported almost 99,000 UAP sightings. A huge percentage of these reports are easily explained. They include drones, satellites, balloons, the planet Venus, vapor from unspent fuel released from a SpaceX rocket, airborne trash, military aircraft, and even flocks of migrating birds.

Nearly every day, we get a letter or email from someone who claims that aliens control Earth’s history. Suggesting that Jesus Christ was an alien is just a way of discounting the Bible and the whole concept of the spiritual world. However, some skeptics claim the UAP sightings prove this rather foolish viewpoint.

It is essential to understand that the Bible does not say Earth is the only place where God created life, and life’s complexity makes it extremely difficult to attribute it to chance. Some have gone to extremes to claim other forms of life could exist on other worlds, but life is typically defined as carbon-based life with oxygen and water. UAP sightings have not given evidence of any alien life.

The Bible gives Christians a purpose in life, and all other views offer no real purpose for existing. Atheists attempt to bypass this problem by denying that evil exists, but reality shows that to be false. We urge everyone to look at the evidence and form their life around the same truth that Thomas finally came to when Jesus said to him, “Reach your finger here and behold my hands, and reach your hand here and thrust it into my side and be not faithless but believing.” (John 20:27).

For more data and scientific discussions of UAPs, see Science News for August 10, 2024, and science.nasa.gov/uap.