Because of the COVID pandemic, we have not been able to do our regular lectureship schedule. In place of that, we have provided an opportunity for congregations to have a lectureship electronically. We want to make that opportunity to study with John Clayton available to the readers of this column.
What we will do is mail a DVD of the first four lectures in our video series. You or your group can watch the four programs writing down questions and challenges to the material. Please send us your questions via email or postal mail, and John Clayton will respond to them. If you are satisfied with that material, return the DVD, and we mail you the next one. Your only cost is the return postage for the DVD.
If you are interested in this opportunity to study with John Clayton, please send us your name and address, and we will send the first DVD to you. Watching the Does God Exist? presentations in the comfort of your home is an excellent way to receive the information without risk from COVID or the inconvenience of driving to a lectureship site. Email your request to John Clayton at jncdge@aol.com. This is a new educational opportunity provided by the DOES GOD EXIST? ministry.
The 2020 Year End Report for the Does God Exist? ministry is available for those who request it. Email your request to John Clayton at his email address above.
With the start of 2021, we are beginning Does God Exist? Today year 5. This website features the kind of information found in the “News and Notes,” “Dandy Designs,” and, occasionally, “Book Reviews” columns in our printed quarterly publication. However, because Does God Exist? Today is published daily, the information is more up-to-date. This website continues to grow in its worldwide outreach, thanks to our loyal followers.
In addition to the daily posts on this Does God Exist? Today website, we have daily posts on our Facebook page. That page continues to get the attention of people around the world. The posts on the Facebook page deal with evidence for design in living things. We have dealt with that topic for years under “Dandy Designs” in our printed publications. In 2021, we hope to expand that topic with a new website.
Also, we want you to know about our DoesGodExist.tv website (Does God Exist? Media), where you can view our entire video series. Also, on that site, you will find access to our audio series and other materials.
It is essential that you know about our original website DoesGodExist.org.There you can read the current issue of our printed journal plus many other articles of interest.
Thank you for following our posts. We appreciate your feedback and support. You make it possible for us to tell people around the world that God exists and that He loves them. You can help us reach more people by sharing links to our posts on this website and sharing our Facebook posts.
As we begin Does God Exist? Today year 5, we pray that 2021 will bring blessings to you and your family.
Chemistry is a fascinating science. The design of atoms and molecules allows life to exist. Science fiction writers have tried to convince us that there could be life out in space that is radically different from life on Earth. The subject of this discussion is not whether there is life on other planets or moons. If God created it, then it will be there, and we will find it. But life requires polar molecules.
Skeptics have maintained that to be open-minded about life in space, we must look for life based on something other than the CHNOPS. (CHNOPS is carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur.) Why not life based on silicon, iridium, cesium, iron, and chlorine?
A basic biology principle that most of us learned in high school is that to exist, life requires polar molecules. That means there has to be an abundance of a molecule with a positive and a negative end. On our planet, the molecule that meets that requirement is water.
The oxygen molecule is designed so that when it combines with two hydrogen atoms, it forms a water molecule that has a positive and a negative end. This design enables water to do a variety of things necessary for life. Water moves things around, dissolves other compounds, conveys nutrients into cells, and carries away waste. Other polar molecules, like amino acids, proteins, or DNA, could not be manipulated and used without water. Life requires polar molecules.
Astronomers have discovered methane and ethane on planets and moons throughout space, but they cannot support life because they are not polar. The media have brought attention to the moons Titan and Europa, which both seem to have oceans and rivers of methane and ethane. Other moons such as Enceladus, Ceres, Ganymede, Callisto, Dione, and Triton are chemically active and have some water, but they are dominated by non-polar chemicals. Chemical studies of the 4000 plus exoplanets astronomers have discovered do not show any other polar molecules in abundance.
Life has to follow some basic rules. One of those rules requires polar molecules in abundance for any kind of life to exist. An oxygen atom has eight electrons, but its structure allows only four electrons in its outer orbit. That is important because the outermost orbit is the only one that allows other elements to share electrons to make a compound. The four inner-orbit electrons with their negative charge cannot be shared. That automatically means that the oxygen side of any compound, such as water, will be negative, and the other side will be positive. This principle is the starting point for biochemistry, and it is a design invented by an Intelligence that established the rules for life.
When my students saw this in basic chemistry, there was always someone who would say, “Wow! Who thought that up?” As a public high school teacher, I was not allowed to say “God,” but the message is clear without being said.
For more on this, see the article titled “Looking for Life in the Universe” by Dr. Morgan Cable in the January 2021 issue of Astronomy magazine (page 46-48). Dr. Cable is the supervisor of the Astrobiology and Ocean Worlds Group at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Her research is about looking for life and habitability in space
The persecution of Christians inChina continues to be severe. It is estimated that there are 60 million Christians in China, but half of them are in unregistered churches. Our Chinese materials are mostly in the hands of unregistered Christians, and a vast percentage of those are in university settings. A new tactic against the gospel is a Bible revision by the Communist Chinese Government.
American missionaries were able to take large numbers of Chinese Bibles into the country before the government’s crackdown. The Chinese government has answered that by producing a state version of the Bible. A high school textbook published by the Chinese government quotes their version of John 8:3-11. This passage is the account of a woman taken in adultery and brought before Jesus by the religious leaders. The leaders cite the Old Testament law saying that she should be stoned. In verse 7, Jesus says, “He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone at her.” The Chinese government quote of this passage is quite different. In the Communist version, Jesus says that the law has to be enforced, and he stones the woman to death.
This has been called “the Communist Christ,” and it is a very different Christ from the one we read about in the Bible. It is also a vivid demonstration of what happens when Christianity gets mixed up with politics. The atheistic Communist government twists the biblical teaching to fit their agenda.
We emphasize Christ’s teaching in Matthew 5-7 (the Sermon on the Mount) and Matthew 22:21 (about rendering to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s). We do that keep biblical teaching pure and not tainted by the political agenda of the day. Bible revision by the Communist Chinese Government is nothing new. People who claimed to be Christians distorted Christ’s teaching to justify slavery in America. Others today use the Bible to justify abortion and immorality.
In the Dark Ages, nuns of the Roman Catholic Church would put a “baby box” near the door of the convent where they lived. They did this because people were leaving babies on the doorstep, frequently in unsanitary conditions. The baby boxes contained swaddling clothes and were kept clean. In America today, an organization called Safe Haven Baby Boxes has revived the baby box idea with some 21st-century technology.
The Safe Haven Baby Box is installed in an exterior wall of a fire station or hospital. It has an exterior door that automatically locks upon the placement of a newborn inside. There is an interior door that allows a worker to reach the baby from the inside. When someone places a baby in the box, it triggers an alarm, so workers know to pick up the baby. The boxes are temperature controlled to prevent risk to the baby, although the average wait time to pick up the infant is three minutes.
The baby box idea has had strong support from Willie Robertson of Duck Dynasty fame. It’s an obvious response to the abortion problem in America. It allows a woman who has a baby a “red tape free” way of making sure the child has a legal adoption while keeping the birth mother anonymous. Since the program began in April of 2016, there have been 52 baby boxes installed in Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio. Eight babies have been surrendered in Safe Haven Baby Boxes, and three were surrendered to firefighters at baby box locations. Also, Safe Haven has referred over 500 women to crisis pregnancy centers.
This year, one issue not getting media attention is whether college officials can censor public speeches that promote religious issues on campus. In many cases, students promoting Christian values or Christianity as a life choice have been punished or expelled for doing so. Most of the cases have been settled out of court, but the U.S. Supreme Court will hear Chike Uzuegbunam’s case.
Uzuegbunam is a young man who was talking about his faith in Christ at Gwinnett College in Georgia. College officials stopped him and disciplined him for his words. The college maintains that the constitution does not protect speech sharing religious beliefs, and Chike Uzuegbunam filed a lawsuit against the school.
This denial of free speech is becoming increasingly common across the United States and many countries in Europe. The position of many colleges is, “If I don’t like what you are saying, I have the right to shut you down.” At Georgetown University, a club called Love Saxa, which promotes Christian views of sexual conduct, was eventually driven off the campus. In Finland, a lady who opposed Church participation in a Gay Pride event is being threatened with two years in prison for promoting what the government sees as “ethnic agitation.”
Uzuegbunam’s case will bring before the Supreme Court the question of whether universities can ignore the First Amendment and shut down religious speech on campus. This subject has enormous implications for the whole country. Does the government or universities have the power to stop religious proclamations in public?
In her 1903 book The Friends of Voltaire, Evelyn Beatrice Hall described Voltaire’s attitude toward a book he disliked in this way: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” That has become a mantra of freedom of speech, but that viewpoint is being challenged today. For Christians trying to follow the example and command to preach the gospel, this discussion is critical.
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear Chike Uzuegbunam’s case, and you can learn more about it HERE.
In the past two days, we have looked at a basic understanding of what faith is and how faith works in our lives. We saw that the Bible defines faith as the foundation on which we build our lives. We pointed out that faith is involved in science. I have been very personal in discussing my family and the destructive faith that has destructively influenced all of us. My faith is very different, and it came about differently.
One facet of faith is that we frequently share it within families. When a family member rejects the faith of the rest of the family, that creates conflict. My parents strongly emphasized education as the foundation on which to build your life. They viewed religion as irrational nonsense that enslaved and restricted humans. At every opportunity, my parents ridiculed religious faith. Hypocrisy, racism, violence, war, and waste provided a constant barrage of good reasons for them to reject faith in God. By the time I was eight years old, I regurgitated my parent’s faith and took a lead role in atheism. That is how faith works in our lives.
In junior high, I had a science teacher named Wayne Gross, who made it clear that he believed that there was academic evidence that God exists, and the Bible is true. In high school, I had a great interest and some aptitude in science. In addition to that, I became infatuated with an attractive young lady who was one of the top students in my high school class.
I did not have any moral values because my parents taught me that educated people realize that life is “survival of the fittest.” The moral guidance I received was to make sure you come out number one. I found that this attractive young lady was morally uncompromising, and she based her morality on the Bible. To get her to compromise her morality, I wanted to show her that faith in God and the Bible was educationally absurd.
I set out to prove to this girl, and to Mr. Gross, that educated people who read the Bible would not believe anything in it. Mr. Gross encouraged me to start with Genesis 1. I had stolen a Bible from a motel (there were no Bibles in my parent’s library), and I started reading it and researching the words in the original manuscripts to prove it wrong.
As I read the Bible and understood its message, looking at the scientific evidence, I started rejecting everything my parents, my peers, and the religious experts of the day told me. In doing that, I began to understand that everything I had ever been told about God and the Bible was wrong. Education was leading me to a new faith, and my parents did not handle my efforts well. They denigrated the faith of Mr. Gross, my girlfriend, and myself.
How faith works in our lives determines the direction we take. Several years later, I was faced with what to do with a child who was born blind, mentally challenged, and with both cerebral palsy and muscular dystrophy. This polarized my faith and my parent’s faith. My father used a parallel example of buying a car and finding it was defective. “What do you do?” he asked. “You take it back and demand a refund.”
How we handle evidence, and what we do with it becomes the foundation that impacts our lives. Tomorrow we’ll look at that a little deeper.
It’s an avoidable “pandemic.” I put the word “pandemic” in quotes because using a drug is not a virus or bacteria. It is also not self-replicating and does not afflict innocent people. The pandemic we are talking about is cannabis hyperemesis syndrome.
As I write this article, eleven states have legalized the recreational use of marijuana, and 30 states have decriminalized it. One rarely publicized consequence of repeated marijuana use is recurring attacks of painful and protracted vomiting. It can continue until the esophagus rips, and the person bleeds to death. Since medical experts first identified this condition in 2004, the number of U. S. cases of hyperemesis has grown to over two million per year.
Your body stores cannabinoids in fat tissue, so weight loss, fasting, or alcohol consumption can trigger their release, resulting in hyperemesis. Colorado legalized the recreational use of marijuana in 2009. Since then, visits to emergency rooms for hyperemesis have doubled. The cannabis plant contains 100 different cannabinoids, but selective breeding has contributed to the hyperemesis surge. The THC content in marijuana tripled from 1995 to 2014, but the CBD content has been cut in half. CBD is supposed to decrease pain and anxiety.
Our society has turned away from God and the joy, fulfillment, love, and security He gives us. We will not find spiritual contentment in any chemical or alternative lifestyle. The acceptance of marijuana in our culture is one more tool of Satan to bring pain and destruction. As Christians, we must oppose it and this avoidable pandemic.
November started with a debate about religion, LGBTQ rights, children, and the courts. It began with Pope Francis saying that “gay people are children of God and have the right to be in a family.” In the past, the Pope has said that a “family” is a man, a woman, and their children. In 2016, the Pope said, “There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.” The issue becomes critical for Catholic social service organizations that refuse to place foster children with same-sex couples.
The Archdiocese of Philadelphia has been serving abused, neglected, and orphaned children for more than 200 years. Because of a court ruling that the Archdiocese was discriminating against gays by refusing to place children with them, they no longer are allowed to care for children in need. The Archdiocese is suing on the grounds that the government should not force them to violate their sincerely held beliefs. The suit has gone to the U.S. Supreme Court.
This issue will impact all religious groups that are involved in caring for children. Like many court cases, the decision is going to be based on secular research information. Do children need a mother and father image to have a stable and productive life? Those of us who work with children have seen the struggles that single-parent children have. Some do very well, but they struggle. Many secular psychologists and sociologists maintain that it makes no difference, and the courts have listened to their testimony. Those of us in the “trenches” would disagree.
There are no easy solutions to this dilemma. The constitution tells us that everyone has rights that are protected by the government. The problem comes when those rights collide with someone else’s rights, such as in the conflict between LGBTQ rights, children, and the courts. The real solution to this issue is to eliminate the need for agencies to provide child-care and protection. While that is not possible, every step to educate people and lead them to God’s plan will reduce the pain for all concerned.
The 2020 voting is finally over, and we can learn many lessons from the elections, the candidates, the party platforms, and the conduct of politicians in general. It would be nice to have someone running for president that a Christian could vote for instead of having to choose between the lesser of evils.
We have seen false statements to such an extent that there are “fact finders” who do nothing but point out lies, misrepresentations, and exaggerations of the candidates. “Survival of the fittest” seems to be the moral code of our time, or more accurately, the non-moral platform. Someone asked one political speaker who supported abortion, “When does a baby become a human, at conception, at birth, or at what stage of the pregnancy?” The response was, “I don’t know. I haven’t considered that issue.” The question that should be clear is, “How do you take a position on that issue if you’ haven’t considered that issue’?”
Lessons from the elections show us the difference between Christ’s spiritual teachings and the political speeches and party platforms based on the physical beliefs of today’s culture. When Jesus said, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s,” He was speaking of a political system very similar to America today. The Roman government provided some physical stability, which Paul refers to in Romans 13. Paul took advantage of his Roman citizenship on numerous occasions, but he certainly did not endorse the morality of the Roman rulers. They allowed prostitution and allowed unwanted babies to be thrown into the streets to die.
The message for Christians in the 21st century is that we can enjoy the blessings of American citizenship but not endorse our culture’s morality, which is sanctioned by the politicians. The use of recreational drugs, the endorsement of prostitution and abortion, and the destruction of the environment are all at odds with what the Bible teaches. When Jesus and the apostles talked about rejecting the world, they were referring to similar destructive practices.
The one bright spot in the lessons from the elections is that we can be shining lights in a world that is getting darker and darker. We remember Jesus’ statement in Matthew 5:14-16: “It is you who are the light of the world. A town cannot be hidden if it is built on a hilltop. Neither do men light a lamp and put it under a bowl but rather on a lampstand so it gives light to everyone who is in the house. In a like manner, let your light shine before the eyes of your fellow-men that they may see the good that you do and praise your Father who is in heaven.”
