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Location of Noah’s Ark

Location of Noahs ArkAs we read the Genesis account of the flood, we find that most of the claims of religious fundamentalists about Noah, the ark, and the flood are derived from denominational traditions, and not from the Bible. That doesn’t necessarily mean that all of their beliefs about Genesis 6-9 are wrong. However, when people present traditions instead of Bible facts, errors are possible. One issue where people are often wrong is the location of Noah’s ark.

The Ark Encounter attraction in Kentucky is a major promoter of many of the traditions about the flood. While it gets a lot of press and a great deal of money, it also provides atheists and skeptics with ammunition to attack the faith of believers. The recent case where the Ark Encounter managers sued their insurance company for rain damage is a classic example.

Over the years, we have published numerous articles about attempts to establish the location of Noah’s ark. You can find them with the search engine on doesgodexist.org. One of the points that we have made repeatedly is that the Bible does not say that the ark came to rest on Mount Ararat. Modern-day Ararat in Armenia is almost certainly not what was called Ararat in Noah’s day.

Genesis 8:4 tells us the ark came to rest in “the mountains of Ararat.” People who know the topography of that area tell us that a continuous belt of peaks called the Kagizman Ridge is known as “the mountains of Ararat.” That ridge is located west of the present Mount Ararat in the country of Turkey. Those who have climbed Ararat and brought back what they claim are pieces of the ark, have credibility problems. They not only have the problem of how wood could survive all that time and the effects of glaciers, but they are almost certainly on the wrong mountain.

The July 2019 issue of Acts and Facts, published by the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), carried an interesting article about the ark. It admitted that the ark did not come to rest on present-day Mount Ararat and it discussed the geology of the area. It concluded that saying the ark came to rest on “the mountains of Ararat” was the most accurate way to describe its landing spot.

The ICR is a promoter of the young earth denominationalism that is so popular today, and with which we disagree. But they are endeavoring to be accurate and factual in what they are saying concerning the location of Noah’s ark, and we applaud them for that.
— John N. Clayton © 2019

For more on Noah and the flood, see these previous posts:
Did Noah’s Flood Really Happen?
When Did Noah’s Flood Happen?
How Could All Those Animals Fit in Noah’s Ark?
Where Did the Water Go After Noah’s Flood?
How Extensive Was the Flood of Noah?
Modern Misconceptions About the Flood

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Cross on Public Land Bladensburg, Maryland

Bladensburg Cross on Public LandIn 1925 a group of people erected a cross in Bladensburg, Maryland to honor 49 local men who died in World War 1. In 1961 the state bought the land and since that time it has maintained it, including the Bladensburg cross. Recently there have been court challenges to allowing a cross on public land.

During the first week of July 2019, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the cross could stay even though it was on public land. This decision is not really a victory for those who want Christian symbols on public land. The justification for the Court allowing the Bladensburg cross to remain is that it had taken on a secular meaning as a memorial, and was no longer a Christian symbol.

It should be evident that this ruling by the Supreme Court would not apply to most situations since most crosses are not part of a secular memorial. Religious people tend to twist the descriptions of their symbols to get around the law. When the Catholic Church objected to using the King James Bible in public schools, people who were pushing for the study of the Bible changed its classification to literature rather than religion.

Jesus Christ never told His followers to worship a cross or any other physical thing. It seems to many of us that a cross on public land or otherwise can easily become an idol. Perhaps it can become a twenty-first-century golden calf rather than an intelligent response to the needs of our modern culture.
— John N. Clayton © 2019

For more details on this, click HERE.

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Cryptobenthic Fish and Coral Reefs

Cryptobenthic Fish and Coral ReefsThose of us who have spent many happy hours snorkeling in coral reefs tend to look at the big fish that we see in the reef. Groupers, sharks, rays, and parrotfish attract our attention. We can easily miss what makes the reef ecosystem work so that the larger fish can live there. Scientists are learning about cryptobenthic fish in the coral reefs.

Hanging around the reefs are tiny fish that are less than five centimeters long and easily escape our attention. They are known as cryptobenthic fish, and they exist in various species, some of which are known as blennies and gobies. Large numbers of them live in the rocks and crevices, and many of them are nocturnal.

Science News (June 22, 2019) reported on a recent study by scientists from Simon Fraser University in Canada. The study shows that these small fish provide a base to the food chain and allow the larger fish to survive. They don’t venture far from the corals that are attached to the floor of the reef. The cryptobenthic species include 17 families of fish that scientists have identified so far. Researchers in the past have overlooked most of them. Deron Burkepile, an ecologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, says: “Their role is extremely important. We have definitely overlooked these little cryptobenthic species.”

As we look for the design features that God has built into every ecosystem on Earth, we find complexity and sophistication, allowing the system to function. New studies of the tiny cryptobenthic fish in coral reefs will tell us a great deal about the complexity of the reefs and what makes them work.
— John N. Clayton © 2019

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School Counselors Available

School Counselors AvailableI was always amazed at the magnitude of the challenges that I was asked to deal with as a public high school science teacher. Kids would come to me with problems that were not only huge but sometimes life-threatening. Several times in my 41-year career, students told me that they were going to kill themselves. I was expected to handle every situation on my own. There were no professionally-trained school counselors available, no matter how bad the situation.

People wonder why we have school shootings all over this country. With the breakdown of the family and the lack of any moral code in the lives of today’s adolescents, school shootings are not surprising. The July 2019 issue of NEA Today published a report on this dilemma. According to recent surveys, the ratio of counselors to students in the United States is 444 to 1. There are 1.7 million students with no access to counselors and six million students who cannot see a school psychologist and ten million students who have no social workers available to them.

In my years of teaching, counselors helped students make our their class schedules. The school system had professional people in the administration building, but they rarely got to the schools, and when they did, it was for special needs situations. There were no school counselors available for personal contact with most of the kids.

As we continue to force religion out the lives of young men and women, we will continue to find them adrift in a world that is full of huge and growing challenges. Local Church congregations have an excellent opportunity to help save lives as well as souls by having people available to work in the vacuum that American education presents.
— John N. Clayton © 2019

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Seeds Are Alive

Seeds Are AliveWhen you walk into the forest and look up at the trees, it’s easy to realize that all of those structures towering over your head are alive. What you may not think about is that their seeds under your feet are alive also.

Many trees produce seeds to grow new trees. There are maple seeds with their familiar “helicopter” method of blowing in the wind. There are cottonwood seeds that look like “summer snow.” Those seeds and others are carried far away by the wind.

Oak trees produce seeds we call acorns. They’re too heavy for the wind to scatter them, so that’s the job of squirrels. Squirrels gather acorns and store them to eat later. When later comes, the squirrels have often forgotten where they stored their treasure. Instead of being eaten, the acorns grow into new trees to produce more acorns. Both the trees and the squirrels benefit from that arrangement.

The seed of a coconut tree is the coconut. The wind can’t blow coconuts around, and squirrels can’t carry them. They often grow near water, such as a stream or an ocean. A coconut falling into the sea can float to an island thousands of miles away, where it can take root and grow. Cherry trees produce their fruit with a seed we often call a pit. Birds eat the cherries and drop the seeds over a wide area.

The key to a seed beginning to grow is the breaking of the shell surrounding it. Many things can cause that to happen, such as moisture, temperature, fire, mechanical abrasion, or a combination of methods. Some seeds have to travel through the digestive system of birds or animals for them to begin to grow into a new plant.

Most seeds wait a year before they start to grow. Cherry seeds can wait for hundreds of years. Scientists discovered a lotus seed (Nelumbo nucifer) in a bog in China. They cracked the shell and started it growing. When they carbon-dated the shell, they found that the seed had been waiting for 2,000 years to sprout into a lotus plant.

Seeds are alive, waiting in dormancy to grow into what God created them to be. The amazing quality of life shows design by intelligence, not chance.
— Roland Earnst © 2019

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What Is Hell?

What Is Hell?What is hell, and why does God threaten to send us there? For the past two days, we have been looking at the challenges of this email we received:
“How can you expect me to believe in a God who created me against my wishes and without my consent, and then because I don’t do things the way he thinks I should, sends me to eternal suffering in hell? That is a product of a twisted mind and is not something I can believe in or serve. I didn’t ask to be born, and I won’t spend my life worshiping an evil, abusive God who rejoices in bringing pain to everything he touches.”

The emailer’s understanding of hell is traditional, not biblical. No one can answer all the questions about hell with authority, because no one has been there and returned to tell about it. Works like Dante’s Inferno have influenced us. Preachers who have used hell as a scare tactic to control their audiences. Misconceptions abound.

So what is hell? We tend to portray hell as a place of eternal punishing rather than a place of eternal punishment. There is a difference. When Jesus talked about hell, He used clearly symbolic words. He spoke of hell as a place of flames and burning sulfur (brimstone). Another time he called it a place of darkness (see Matthew 8:12; 22:13). Sometimes we hear hell explained by the story Jesus told of the rich man and Lazarus. The description of hell is presumed to be taken as literal. However, no Christian sees it as an instruction to pray to Abraham or that Abraham is the judge. Those things are presented in the story.

What we can say about hell is that it is total separation from God. An atheist who never wanted anything to do with God in life is going to be granted that same wish in hell. God never forces himself on any person. We are always free to reject God if we so choose. The only problem is that we must also suffer the consequences of that rejection of God. God is love, light, good, compassion, justice, etc. All of those things will be a part of heaven. None of those things will exist in hell. Being lost is frequently described in the Bible as “the second death” (see Revelation 2:11; 20:6, 14; 21:8). Theologians argue endlessly over what this means, and whether the soul can die. I certainly have nothing to add to the discussion, but I know that being separated from God and all the blessings of God is not something I wish even to consider.

The emailer states everything in diametric opposition to the truth. God is good, not evil. God is love, not hate. Hell is simply the separation from God that the emailer claims to desire. God clearly says that He does not want anyone to be lost, but for all to inherit eternal life (2 Peter 3:9). However, God also allows us to reject Him and all He offers. This is like the parent who painfully releases a child to travel a road the parent wishes they would not travel, hoping they will learn from the wrong choices and return to the parent’s loving embrace. The Prodigal Son story in Luke 15 makes this so obvious that no one can miss it.

Our rejection is not what God desires, and He always is there to welcome us back. What is hell? Our wrong choices can bring us death and eternal separation from God. That is hell, and you do not want any part of it. Come to God, obey His love and blessings. Enjoy eternal life with love, peace, joy, compassion, forgiveness, and freedom from pain that we can only dimly imagine.
— John N. Clayton © 2019

-May/June 2006

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Why Does God Tell Us What to Do?

Why Does God Tell Us What to Do?Why does God tell us what to do and punish us for not doing it? Yesterday we began to consider the frustrations of the person who sent us this email:
“How can you expect me to believe in a God who created me against my wishes and without my consent, and then because I don’t do things the way he thinks I should, sends me to eternal suffering in hell? That is a product of a twisted mind and is not something I can believe in or serve. I didn’t ask to be born, and I won’t spend my life worshiping an evil, abusive God who rejoices in bringing pain to everything he touches.”

The emailer’s view of why God tells us to do things is badly misinformed. God does not tell us what to do because God is a control freak. Many people seem to feel that God’s commands are just the reflection of an ego that demands things that make Him feel better.

The first problem here is that these folks have a very poor understanding of what God is. God is not a human consumed with human passions and weaknesses. God does not have self-image problems, ego problems, moods, sexual desires, power struggles, or feelings of envy. God is not a human and is not limited to human emotions and feelings. Furthermore, God does not need us. Over and over the Bible defines God as love, light, a spirit, not flesh and blood, not a man, etc. (see John 4:24; Matthew 16:17; 1 John 1:5; 4:8,12,16; Numbers 23:19; John 1:1). Suggesting that God tells us what to do because He wants to have control over us and satisfy His own power needs is a complete misunderstanding of God’s nature.

Why does God tell us what to do? Even with our limited ability to understand, we can see that everything God tells us to do is for our own good. God’s rules for sexual expression are the right formula to give us the best and most fulfilling aspect of sex. Sexual clinicians agree that a single committed relationship is the best formula for completeness and fulfillment. Nobody questions the fact that STDs will not spread in a monogamous, committed relationship. Even the most radical proponents of alternative lifestyles cannot argue that their proposals for gay marriage, polygamy, or whatever are superior to God’s plan of one man one woman committed to serving each other for life. They argue theirs is as good, and that is an argument that the data does not support. No one questions the wisdom of the biblical instructions that oppose violence, murder, or abuse.

Even those things that God tells us to do in worship are for our own well being. God does not ask us to pray because He needs information from us, or because He needs praise. Prayer is an act which helps us to learn to look to a higher power and reach beyond ourselves. That is something recognized by every 12-step program to overcoming addictions. Interestingly, some groups opposed to the existence of God are now promoting Transcendental Meditation and other similar acts as a substitute for prayer.

Giving is not something God tells us to do because He needs our money. If we believe that God is the creator of all things, then we surely understand that. Giving is something humans need to learn to do for our own well being. The biblical injunction, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35) is really a discussion of what benefits the giver, not what benefits the receiver. The person who never learns to give will be unsuccessful in his marriage, in his sexual relationships, in his family, and his friendships. Every act God instructs us to do is for our well-being, not for control purposes.

Why does God tell us what to do? Because He loves us! Tomorrow, we will deal with the emailer’s question about hell.
— John N. Clayton © 2019

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I Didn’t Ask to be Born

I Didn't Ask to be BornWe received the following email: “How can you expect me to believe in a God who created me against my wishes and without my consent, and then because I don’t do things the way he thinks I should, sends me to eternal suffering in hell? That is a product of a twisted mind and is not something I can believe in or serve. I didn’t ask to be born, and I won’t spend my life worshiping an evil, abusive God who rejoices in bringing pain to everything he touches.”

Obviously, this email was sent by a person in pain – a person who is angry, frustrated, confused, misinformed, misled, and disconnected from reality. Many of this person’s problems are due to the traditions of human creeds and theories. Much of the frustration is due to assumptions that are not valid or biblical.

There are some questions and challenges in the message that I, too, struggle with, and I make no pretense of having all the answers. What we would like to do is to dissect this email in the hope that it will help some of our readers who may have some of the same concerns and struggles. I am sure there are others with the same complaints but are not willing to be quite as honest in expressing them.

“I didn’t ask to be born.” Have you ever gotten so frustrated with life, and especially with people in your life, that you wished you had never been born? I think that most of us have gone through that. Job certainly radiated that feeling when he said: “May the day of my birth perish, and the night that said ‘A boy is conceived’ “(Job 3:3). As an atheist, I said almost those very words in a modernized form and got so far down the road of despair that I attempted in a crude way to end my life. From an atheist perspective, there are times when we feel that life is a worthless, meaningless, painful experience that we would rather not endure.

However, at the end of every night, there is another day, and things do get better. For the Christian, the meaningfulness of life is more easily seen because of the purpose that a Christian has in living. If your only goal in living is seeking selfish desires and pleasures, it is easy to run out of reasons to live. If your life has a bigger purpose, then you have a reason to live, a purpose, and a goal.

Job finally came to understand his purpose in life. He looked at what had happened and what he had endured, and he had a new perspective. He told the Lord that before all these things had happened to him: “My ears have heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you” (Job 42:5). He then goes on joyously praising God because he sees a purpose in his life.

I am sure Job always had some sobering thoughts and memories of what he had lost. But he was glad to be alive, and God enabled him to see purpose and meaning in his life. Saying “I didn’t ask to be born and I wish I had never been” is a knee-jerk reaction to a crisis. Before we seek a permanent solution to a temporary problem, we should allow God to remind us that we are love, and we have a purpose.

Tomorrow, we will look at a second challenge in that email – “Why does God have the right to tell me what to do?”
— John N. Clayton © 2019

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Vibrant Christian Households

Vibrant Christian HouseholdsWhat are vibrant Christian households? The Barna Group is a research and polling organization which specializes in research related to faith and Christianity. They recently surveyed “spiritual vibrancy” within Christian households. The results are interesting.

The factors Barna looked for in Christian households were spiritual practices, spiritual conversations, and hospitality. Spiritual practices included praying and reading the Bible together. Spiritual conversations involved talking about God and faith among the household members. Hospitality refers to hosting non-family guests on a regular basis. They wanted to see how thoughtful, transformative faith can grow in families and be passed down through generations. The Barna Group defined households that practice these three areas as spiritually vibrant. That required spiritual practices every day or two, spiritual conversations every week, and hospitality several times a month.

Barna surveyed more than 2,300 households of practicing Christians “who say their faith is very important in their lives and have attended a worship service within the past month.” Of the active Christian households studied, only 25% were classified as Vibrant. The 33% of the households that exhibited spiritual practices and conversations, but not hospitality, were classified as Devotional. The 14% of households that practiced hospitality only were classified as Hospitable. That leaves 28% of the Christian households classified as Dormant.

This causes us to ask the question, “Which category would my household fit into?” Maybe more important is, “Which category do I want my household to fit into?” That leads to, “What can I do to make my Christian home more Vibrant?” It’s something to think about, and pray about, and talk to your family about. According to the Barna report, “spiritual vibrancy is not determined by unchangeable characteristics, but by things any Christian can improve.”

You can read more details about this survey and get some ideas for developing Vibrant Christian households on Barna’s website. Click HERE for more information.
— Roland Earnst © 2019

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Importance of Religion and Family Life

Importance of Religion and Family LifeThe Pew Research Center wanted to learn about global views on the importance of religion and family life, so they surveyed over 30,000 people in 27 countries. One set of questions presented was, “Does religion play a more or less important role today than it did 20 years ago, and is that good or bad?” A second query set was, “Are family ties stronger or weaker than they were 20 years ago, and is that good or bad?”

A large majority in most countries agreed on the two questions involving family ties. There is strong agreement that family ties are weakening and that it is a bad thing. Across the 27 countries, 58 percent said that family ties had weakened while 22% said there was no change and only 15% said they had strengthened.

There was less agreement concerning religion. A median 37% said that religion plays a less important role in their countries today, while 27% said it is more important. Interestingly, most of the people surveyed were NOT OPPOSED to religion playing a more important role in their countries. The most significant opposition to religion’s role seems to be in Europe with Sweden (51%), France (47%), and the Netherlands (45%). In the United States, only 18% are opposed to a more important role for religion in the nation. In Canada, the opposition is 29%.

The countries where the largest percentage of people said that family ties are strengthening are Indonesia and the Philippines. The countries where more people said that religion plays a more important role now than 20 years ago include the Philippines, Kenya, Nigeria, and Indonesia. By far, the people of Indonesia said that religion plays a more important role now (83%). Indonesia is 87% Muslim, and Nigeria is evenly split between Christians and Muslims. Kenya is 83% Christian and the Philippines 90% Christian in the broadest sense.

Not surprisingly, in the United States, people who consider themselves to be somewhat or very conservative (to the right end of the political spectrum) are 42% more likely to favor more religious influence in the country than those who are liberal or left-leaning. That attitude is reflected in the positions taken in the current U.S. Political campaign.

For more details on this study of the importance of religion and family life, visit the Pew Research website HERE.
— Roland Earnst © 2019