Humans Archives - Page 32 of 68 - DOES GOD EXIST? TODAY

July 26, 2020July 24, 2020

Remaking God in Our Image

Someone asked me, “Why did God do it that way? My only reply was, “I don’t know. I would not have done it that way. I guess you’ll have to ask God.” Why is it that we want God to do things the way we would do them? Are we remaking God in our image?

One of the objections that people have to God’s existence is that they think a loving and omnipotent God would do things differently. Why does God allow suffering? Why did God create viruses? Why didn’t God do a better job of designing (insert anything here)? Like Job in the Old Testament, we think we are smarter than God, and we want to tell Him how to do things. God set Job straight by giving him some challenges such as: “Do you know how to make (insert item here)?” – “Where were you when I did (this thing)?” – “Do you know how (this works)?” Job suddenly realized that he didn’t know everything. He was not as smart as the thought he was.

I could list several things right now that I think God should have done differently. But, before I do that, I have to look at my own failures and weaknesses. I have to look at times when things didn’t work out the way I planned, and I am thankful they didn’t. Small changes in my life’s circumstances would have led me in a completely different direction. God knew what was going to happen. He knew what was best. I can only be thankful that God has not allowed me to remake Him in my image.

We are created in the image of God, but sometimes we become guilty of remaking God in our image. Can we fully understand God and why He does things the way He does? Absolutely not! Can we trust Him to do things right? Absolutely yes! J. I. Packer, the late Bible scholar and author of Knowing God, was interviewed at age 89 after losing sight from macular degeneration. When asked how he felt about no longer being able to read, write, and teach, he replied, “God knows what He’s doing,…this comes as a clear indication from headquarters. And I take it from Him.”

We need to stop remaking God in our image and simply trust God to be God. He knows what He’s doing.

July 24, 2020July 23, 2020

Real Men and the Tough-Guy Image

“Real men don’t play it safe” so many males, including world leaders, don’t accept wearing a mask and social distancing. That is the basic idea of an article by Peter Glick in the August issue of Scientific American. He says that many male leaders are more concerned about projecting a tough-guy image than protecting the common good. He mentions Brazilain leader Jair Bolsonaro, U.K. leader Boris Johnson, and Donald Trump and Mike Pence. When Captain Brett Cozier of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt didn’t radiate the tough-guy image, he was relieved of his command. Meanwhile, female leaders in Germany and New Zealand have had better success in the pandemic than their male counterparts.

This is one more example of how “survival of the fittest” produces competition, promotion of self, and struggles for dominance rather than compassion, empathy, and promoting the common good. It is also why women appear to tend to be more capable promoters of Christianity. As women start competing with males, they tend to demonstrate a great many of the same weaknesses.

Any weakling can turn their back on the needs of the “weak and unfit.” Our experience as the parents of a multiply-handicapped child is dominated by compassionate women who had great empathy and a servant mentality. The number of males who were able to give of themselves to promote disabled adults was pathetically small. As society has rejected the teachings of Christ and embraced a value system based on evolutionary theory, our cliches show our values: “show no weakness,” “I can fix it,” “dog eat dog,” “watch your back.”

It takes incredible strength to be a committed, active Christian. When you read Matthew 25:34-40, you see Jesus commending people not because they were the strongest or the most attractive or successful. He commended them for doing things that an evolutionist would reject, such as giving food and drink rather than using it as a control device. Christ commends them for taking in a stranger, visiting the sick, and clothing the naked. The whole notion of turning the other cheek, going the second mile, and loving your enemies (Matthew 5:38-48) opposes “survival of the fittest” mentality. Are we strong enough to be Christians, or are we trying to earn the title of “real men?”

The article “Masks and Emasculation” is on page 10 of the August 2020 issue of Scientific American or you can read it online HERE.

July 23, 2020July 22, 2020

Deforestation and Disease Pandemics

One of the interesting aspects of the story of Adam and Eve is the environment in which God placed them. Genesis 2:8 tells us that God planted a garden, and verse 9 tells us that He planted every tree that was pleasant and good for food. The Bible doesn’t say how long God took to plant the garden and what was involved in the garden’s growth. Verse 15 tells us that “God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.” After establishing the man’s environment, the Genesis account turns to man’s spiritual nature. But the planted garden with every tree is our focus here as we think about deforestation and disease.

The Bible describes the first humans as what anthropologists call gatherers. Agriculture was a long way off. The eating of animals isn’t even suggested until chapter 4 when Abel brings “the firstlings of his flock” as an offering to God. An article in Scientific American (June 2020, page 8) points out how modern agricultural methods have led to the three major highly infectious viruses since 2002 – SARS, EBOLA, and COVID-19.

Slashing and burning to create land for crops, such as palm oil, reduces biodiversity and puts humans in contact with wildlife that carry microbes able to kill us. Species that survive the clearing are more likely to host illnesses that can be transferred to humans. In addition to the three main viruses of our time, the Scientific American article mentions some other diseases have come from rain forest inhabitants – Zika, Nipah, malaria, cholera, and HIV.

Humans have brought on most of our major disease issues by allowing greed and “survival of the fittest” mentality to govern our decisions about how we use the environment. We waste between 30 and 40% of the food we produce. Poor agricultural techniques and mismanagement of water prevent efficient use of what God has given us. Deforestation and disease go together. Now we are contaminating our atmosphere and filling our lakes, rivers, and oceans with waste.

The title of the Scientific American article is “To Stop Pandemics, Stop Deforestation.” God gave us the “garden” and the tools to manage it. We can’t continue to mismanage it and not see more consequences such as pandemics, global warming, and diseases produced by our failure to do what God called us to do in the beginning.

July 21, 2020July 20, 2020

Called to Peace

“Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.” Matthew 5:9. One of the most challenging parts of being a Christian is fulfilling the commands of Jesus Christ to be peacemakers. Colossians 3:15 talks about the attitudes Christians should have: “Let the peace of God rule in your hearts since as members of one body you were called to peace.”

Other religious systems have either assumed a passive attitude or a militant, aggressive stance. Christ called His followers to be active, non-militant, promoters of peace. One natural tendency of humans is to try to force their will on others. This has led to perversions of Christianity, as seen in the Crusades and the use of violence to oppose perceived wrongs today. It has also led to the endorsement of cultural traditions rather than Christ’s teachings as a guide to morality.

Much of the New Testament teachings have to do with being peacemakers. Consider these:

* Understand that all humans are of equal value:

1 Corinthians 12:13- We are “all given one Spirit to drink.”

Galatians 3:26-28- We are “all one in Christ Jesus.”

1 Corinthians 9:22- Paul says that he had “become all things to all men…”

Regardless of sex, race, culture, nationality, age, occupation, or even religious faith, we all have incredible worth.

* Accept Christians who have a conscientious difference of opinion:

Romans 14 is a whole chapter on peace. Verses 1-4 talk about accepting people with different opinions about food. Verses 5-6 speak about people who want to honor special days. Verse 19 tells Christians to “follow after the things which make for peace, and things by which we can edify one another.”

* Separate the physical from the spiritual:

Matthew 22:21- Finds Jesus telling his followers to separate what is Caesar’s (the physical) from what is God’s (the spiritual).

Romans 12:15-21- Repeats the teachings of Christ in Matthew 5-7, giving specific advice on how to live as people who are called to peace.

* Be ministers of reconciliation and peace:

Philippians 4:2- Paul pleads with Christians to help sisters in conflict by bringing the spiritual into focus.

Acts 10:34-36- Peter tells us to understand that God is no respecter of persons and that Christians must tell the world “the good news of peace through Christ Jesus.”

Matthew 25:32-40- The judgment scene shows Christians being acceptable to God because of their activities which promoted peace.

Romans 5:1- As Christians, we have peace with God.

Matthew 5-7- Tells us what Jesus calls us to do so we can have that peace.

“Blessed are the peacemakers.” We are called to peace so we can shine in a world of violence, hatred, and war. With God’s help, we can have an attitude that brings joy and happiness while an angry, violent world swirls around us.

July 20, 2020July 18, 2020

What Your Body Does in a Day

Own Olbricht sent us this summary of what your body does in a day. We thought it was worth considering the fantastic abilities of the bodies God has given us.

*Every day your heart pumps approximately 2,000 gallons of blood through its chambers.
*On average, your lungs take in 17,000 breaths a day with a typical lung capacity of roughly six quarts of air.
*Your brain processes over 50,000 thoughts a day – 35-48 thoughts per minute.
*Your stomach lining has cells which produce an alkaline substance every few milliseconds to neutralize stomach acid. The stomach would dissolve itself without its lining.
*Your eyes blink 28,000 times a day, with each blink lasting 1/10th of a second.
*Your body’s energy system expels enough heat to light twenty-five 100-watt light bulbs every day.
*Your skin is the largest organ of your body, and you shed a million skin cells every day.
*Your hair grows a millimeter a day. The average adult’s full head of hair consists of 100,000 strands.
*Your liver filters 1.53 quarts of blood every minute, and every day it produces a quart of bile to help digest food.
*Glands in your mouth produce more than a quart of saliva every day.
*Every minute your kidneys filter 2.2 pints of blood or 3168 pints per day. They expel 2.5 pints of urine every day.
*The average person will eat over 50 tons of food in a lifetime.

What your body does in a day is an excellent testimony to God’s wisdom, intelligence, power, and design.

July 18, 2020July 18, 2020

Animal Viruses and Human Illness

The COVID-19 virus has been too lethal to ignore. This pandemic makes us realize that there are many viruses out there, and the current one is just the tip of the iceberg of what is possible. As early as AD 165 to 180, pandemics killed massive numbers of people. Smallpox killed 5 million, and bubonic plague killed 25 million on four different occasions starting in 541. Researchers today are attempting to catalog links between animal viruses and human illness. They estimate that there are probably 1.6 million animal viruses yet to be discovered in mammal and bird populations and that 827,000 of them could cause disease in humans.

Viruses are part of the natural world in which we live. They serve useful purposes in aiding animal digestion, reproduction, and elimination of wastes. The problem is that each animal has its own set of viruses suited for that animal’s diet and living conditions. If an animal’s virus jumps into another species with a different diet and living conditions, the results can be destructive. That is the connection between animal viruses and human illness. Most of the viruses we know about came into the human population from rodents, including rats, bats, birds, chimps, and mosquitos. Some have jumped through several animals such as bats giving the virus to cattle and camels, which gave it to humans.

The Old Testament laws had health restrictions, which made virus transmission less of a problem. People were also not in such proximity to one another or to animals that had destructive viruses. Living in very arid conditions reduced disease transmission, and the dietary laws worked against most virus transmission. When you read through Deuteronomy and Leviticus, you see elaborate precautions that we now understand had hygienic benefits to minimize viral transmission.

In the New Testament, many of these rules were continued. There was a prohibition against drinking blood, and the increased use of baking and boiling foods contributed to a low virus transmission rate. Moral rules that reduced the spread of disease included the elimination of polygamy and polyandry and the strong condemnation of prostitution. In time, the keeping of exotic pets and the acceptance of foods previously forbidden to Israel tended to thwart human attempts to fight disease.

God has given us the capacity to understand viruses and the connection between animal viruses and human illness. God has also given us the tools to control these virus issues. He has also given us hope for something better. Will we use the tools and techniques God gave us to stop the pandemics, or will we open our culture to more viral events in the future? Time will tell.

Data from “The Virus Hunters,” Smithsonian magazine, July/August 2020, and THIS STORY on virus hunters from 2018.

July 17, 2020July 14, 2020

Difference Between Communication and Language

Sue Savage-Rumbaugh has made a career of studying bonobo apes. She would have us believe that there is no barrier between bonobos and humans. Her research raises the question of who we are as humans, and she would respond that we are just another animal. There are so many difficulties with this viewpoint that it is hard to know where to start. The most fundamental scientific problem is that there is a difference between communication and language.

Savage-Rumbaugh’s research is the main story in the July/August 2020 issue of Smithsonian magazine. She assumes that environment is not a factor in what distinguishes apes from humans, and she has lived with the bonobos in her research. A tool she uses in studying the bonobos is a “lexigram keyboard” with pictorial symbols corresponding to English words. One particular bonobo named Kanzi has used it to communicate with her. This ape could use some 660 English sentences functioning at a level higher than a two-and-a-half-year-old human child.

The difference between communication and language is an old issue. Aristotle wrote that animals could exchange information, but only humans could articulate what was just and unjust. The famous philosopher Rene’ Descartes in the 1600s, wrote that God had gifted human beings with souls, and, along with souls, language and consciousness. On this website and in our printed materials, we have talked about God’s design in animals that allows elaborate communication. Bees communicate by dancing information to other bees. Birds make sounds that carry meanings and warnings to other birds. The ultrasonic emissions of whales are elaborate communication tools.

Savage-Rumbaugh has shown that bonobos have a flexible capacity to communicate. However, she falls into the old trap of anthropomorphizing animal behavior – reading human interpretations into something an animal does. Statements such as, “She would look at me with a pleading expression on her face” is ascribing human interpretations to the ape’s facial expressions. The symbols on the keyboard are human symbols, and pigeons can learn to peck a particular symbol to get a desired result.

The Smithsonian article quotes one researcher as saying, “Work with Kanzi has always lived somewhere between rigorous science and social closeness and family life.” The difference between communication and language is a topic of hot debate. If you look up the word “language” you will see a significant variation in how different people define it. Humans have language that involves the meaning of symbols, the standards by which we measure behavior, and the values accepted by one’s peers.

The Bible deals with language, and God’s Spirit is involved with our language. When researchers have tried to humanize a chimpanzee by bringing it into their home, they do so with communication, but language is never a part of the process. Trying to turn an animal into a human being has disastrous results. We are created in the image of God, and language is a part of that image.

July 13, 2020July 12, 2020

Nuclear Destruction Potential

We are appalled at the devastation caused by the CORONA virus. We do not wish to minimize the horror of this pandemic, but we hope that some good can come from it. You would think that world leaders would realize the tenuous nature of life on Earth. You would think they should realize that getting along with one another and joining forces to combat all the evils in our world must be a high priority. There is another way in which humans should be motivated to get along. That is the massive nuclear destruction potential in the weapons around the world.

Since the first nuclear explosion in July of 1945, nine nations have detonated 2056 atomic devices. No one fully understood what would result from all of this testing and weaponry. America’ s 15-megaton Castle Bravo test in the Pacific Ocean produced a fine, chalky material that rained down on ships and their crews in the area for three hours, sticking to human skin and piling up on the decks. Later known as shi no hai (ashes of death), they later learned that the dust was highly radioactive coral debris. It caused the entire crew of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru fishing boat to fall ill with radiation sickness.

Today some 15,000 nuclear weapons exist. They are held by the United Kingdom, China, France, Israel, Pakistan, India, North Korea, Russia, The United States, and possibly Iran. If a nuclear war broke out, 270 million people would die in the first hours of the conflict. Remember that 70,000 people died instantly in Hiroshima, and 35,000 died in Nagasaki. That was from eleven pounds of plutonium. Imagine the destruction potential of what nations have now.

Is it possible that all of this nuclear destruction potential can be disposed of without war? Can the message of peace, tolerance, love, and respect possibly come out of the horror of COVID-19 and the “black lives matter” movement? The world needs the Christian message of love now more than ever. It is not just a matter of political correctness and common sense. It is a matter of survival for us all.

July 12, 2020July 11, 2020

Designed for a Purpose

On this website, we often talk about design in living things. Everyone sees design in the world around us. It’s impossible not to see design. Even the leading atheist biologist Richard Dawkins said that biology is the study of things that appear to be designed for a purpose. However, he believes they only appear to be designed because he knows that design requires a designer. The trick is to pretend that it is not design but merely a pattern produced by natural selection acting on random chance mutations.

Our study of design is not the ancient god-of-the-gaps concept where we say, “I don’t know how this happened, so there must be a god who did it.” Instead, we consider the evidence for the possibility of these “designs” happening by pure chance. Is chance or intelligence a better explanation for what we see in living things? Can the features we observe be explained more effectively by natural selection acting on random mutations; or by intelligent design? Which alternative has greater explanatory power and is, therefore, more plausible? Can you say with confidence that living things were not designed for a purpose?

Every day, we see machines and devices created by human intelligence. We marvel at the complexity of such things as computers, automobiles, or vehicles for space travel. The intricate design of living things, including humans, is far greater than any of those human-designed devices. Do we ever question whether the human inventions came together by accident? But some would say, “Those things are not alive, and therefore they can’t design themselves. Living things can change on their own through natural selection.”

That brings up the question of where did the first living thing come from? It came from non-living matter. How did that lifeless material assemble itself into something as complex as a living cell that could take in nourishment and reproduce? Where did the information in the DNA come from? Random text can’t assemble itself into intelligent language, and the DNA contains a language so complex that it took modern computers to decipher it. What intelligence wrote the code within the DNA of each plant and animal, giving them the ability to change and adapt to stay alive?

We see random patterns in clouds, or sand, or waves blown by the wind. We see patterns of sunlight on the forest floor as it shines through the tree leaves. Those things are random. Though they may be beautiful, they are not examples of design. When we see the biological systems working within a living animal or plant or study biomes and ecosystems working in harmony to make life possible, we observe more than a chance pattern. We are beholding something that was designed for a purpose by an intelligent Designer.

Bringing it closer to home—that means an intelligent Designer designed YOU for a purpose.

July 5, 2020July 1, 2020

God’s Will and Our Free Will

One of the struggles that we all have with our relationship to God is understanding why negative things happen to us. Some say “this is God’s will” in response to COVID-19, but when your loved one dies from it, that isn’t much help. Some of us have been taught a determinist view of God. God’s decretive or determining will is seen as sovereign, universal, and all-inclusive. What can we understand about God’s will and our free will?

One writer has said, “God has a predetermined plan for every life. It is that which will happen. It is inevitable, unconditional, immutable, irresistible, comprehensive, and purposeful. It includes everything–even sin and suffering. So your career, marriage, friends, sicknesses, accidents, income, etc. are all part of God’s determined will but are not revealed to you ahead of time.”

Why does God allow someone to have one tragedy after another that they didn’t cause? Why should a young mother have a severe illness and die? Why do babies die? Anyone who says they have all the answers is a liar because none of us do, and being an atheist doesn’t help either. There are some scriptural clues in the use of four Greek words:

“Prothesis” usually translated purpose. See Romans 8:28; 9:11; 2 Timothy 1:9.

“Boule” which means counsel. See Acts 2:23; 4:28; Ephesians 1:11.

“Eudokia” meaning desire, good pleasure. See Ephesians 1:5;9; Philippians 2:13.

“Epitrepo” means to permit. See 1 Corinthians 16:7; Hebrews 6:3.

I hope you will take some time to read through those passages and think about how they are different, and how they may overlap. It seems that God’s will has three primary connotations: purpose, desire, and permission. Jack Cottrell has an excellent treatment of this in his book What the Bible Says About God the Ruler, College Press, ©1984, pp. 299-329.

Cottrell goes into this subject deeply, but here is a simplified explanation. The determinist view has one glaring weakness. It ignores the purpose for which God created humans. We are not robots programmed to a specific end. In revealing God’s will through His purpose, His desire, and His permission, the Bible shows us that we are precious to Him. He allows our free will to love, serve, and obey Him–or rejecting Him. God tells us what is best for us, and He makes it clear what His desire is for us. But He permits us to choose to reject Him and live in destructive ways.

Our free will is the key here, but we need to know we have a purpose in existence and that free will is a part of that purpose. God allows us to have problems and permits us to seek evil solutions to those problems. If our love for God and our desire to have a relationship with Him is strong enough, the problems will not destroy our relationship with Him. God promises us limits (see 1 Corinthians 10:13) and takes the problems and makes good come out of them (see Romans 8:28). These challenges can boost our relationship with God or destroy it. That is our choice.