DOES GOD EXIST? TODAY

July 24, 2018July 23, 2018

Painted Lady Butterflies Out-migrate Monarchs

Painted Lady Butterflies Out-migrate Monarchs
One of the most amazing things we see in the natural world is the ability of some living things to make incredible migrations. In the past, we have described the monarch butterfly’s migrations from wintering areas in Mexico to northern parts of the United States covering a round trip of about 10,000 kilometers. However, we see that painted lady butterflies out-migrate monarchs.

Scientists have studied how the monarchs navigate such incredible distances with formidable obstacles in their way. Biologists have proposed a variety of models as to how these fragile butterflies could acquire such an ability. However, in the case of the monarchs, the journey is not made by a single butterfly but by a succession of generations.

Science News for July 21, 2018 (page 4) told about a study of another butterfly with an amazing migration. It has the scientific name Vanessa cardui and is commonly known as the painted lady butterfly. These butterflies live in Southern Europe and migrate to Africa in the fall–a distance of 12,000 km. That’s 2000 kilometers farther than the monarchs, and the journey involves crossing the Sahara Desert. As with the monarchs, scientists had believed that the migration involved several generations. New techniques allowed researchers to put markers on the painted ladies when they were caterpillars. We now know that at least some of the butterflies make this incredible journey in one lifetime.

When you look at the barriers to this migration including changes in wind direction, mountains, desert, and storms it is difficult not to be impressed with how the painted lady butterflies out-migrate monarchs. Trying to construct a possible model based on chance processes involves so many assumptions that it is hard to accept that this ability can have an evolutionary explanation. Believing that God’s creation included building a DNA set of instructions that allows the painted ladies and monarchs to migrate is not just an assumption, but the weight of the evidence supports it.
–John N. Clayton © 2018

July 23, 2018July 18, 2018

Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

In 1960 radio astronomer Frank Drake began research to find alien civilizations in deep space by aiming an 85-foot radio telescope at some sun-like stars. He found nothing, but it was the beginning of a program known as SETI – Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

The SETI program has continued through the years with many radio telescopes aimed at every area of space. In 1971 NASA funded a study that involved Frank Drake. They issued a report proposing Project Cyclops. That project would require the construction of 1,500 radio telescopes at the cost of ten-billion dollars. That project was never completed for obvious reasons. However, the concept of the report was used to continue the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence to this day with funding from various sources. Thousands of hours and millions of dollars have been spent with a net result of zero. No radio signals containing any intelligence have been detected–only noise.

Now there is “active SETI” in which scientists are sending radio signals toward distant stars. Frank Drake admitted that in 1974 he transmitted an encoded message toward a star cluster 25,000 light-years away in the constellation Hercules. Naturally, that message will arrive at its target in 25,000 years. If any intelligent being gets the message and responds immediately, it will take 25,000 years for the return message. Drake will not be here to receive that message in 50,000 years, and neither will anyone reading this.

As the search for extraterrestrial intelligence continues, is it possible that there really is an intelligent Being out there who is listening and waiting to hear from us? Is it possible that this Being is not limited by time and space? Is it possible that this Being is our Creator who has already communicated with us by becoming one of us? Is it possible that we are not listening?
–Roland Earnst © 2018

July 22, 2018July 18, 2018

Autonomic Nervous System at Work

Autonomic Nervous System at Work
I know you have many things to think about. However, there are many more critical things that you don’t have to think about because your autonomic nervous system is at work.

Just take a moment to think about all of the things you don’t have to think about. I mean you breathe without having to think about it—even in your sleep! Humans and animals have what is called an autonomic nervous system, and we could not live without it. It’s an amazing system in the hypothalamus of our brains that allows our bodies to perform functions without our having to think about them.

The autonomic system not only keeps us breathing while we sleep, but it also causes our heart to beat, our stomach to digest food, our pupils to adjust to changing light levels, our body to sweat when overheated, and many other things we don’t have to think about. Without the autonomic nervous system, anything we tried to swallow would get stuck in our throat because the esophagus would not push it down to the stomach. The stomach would not digest our food, and the intestines and colon would not send nutrition to our bloodstream and remove waste. Your liver and pancreas will do their jobs even if you don’t give them a thought. This amazing system allows our internal organs function without our having to think about it.

Essential functions of life just happen without our thinking about them, and sometimes without our knowing about them. But that presents some big questions. Did the autonomic nervous system just happen, or was it designed? How could this system just happen to start working at the right time with the correct program to control these complex machines which are our bodies? I suggest that this system requires a Designer who is also an excellent Engineer.
–Roland Earnst © 2018

July 21, 2018July 18, 2018

Value of Pi in the Bible

It may not appear that the passage below would cause a major question of biblical infallibility. However, atheists and skeptics try to make an issue of the value of pi in the Bible.

Also he made a molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim, round in compass, and five cubits the height thereof; and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about. 2 Chronicles 4:2

In several lectureships recently, I have been challenged to explain why the passage is not in error. The point is that it gives the diameter of the top of the circular bowl and its circumference. If the bowl’s diameter is known, one can calculate the circumference by the formula we all learned in elementary school, which says that C=2πr (the circumference is equal to two times pi times the radius). If we know the circumference, we can calculate the value of π, which would be C divided by 2r. In this case that gives the value of π as 3.00000. We all know that π is twenty-two sevenths or 3.142857142. Obviously, according to the skeptics, the value of pi in the Bible is in error.

My first reaction to hearing this challenge was that it was nit-picking in the first degree. I have seen it repeated so many times by so many recently that I need to answer it again. It may also be that this passage is actually a positive proof of the integrity and accuracy of the biblical narrative.

The first point that I need to make is that one must observe significant figures when making any measurement. In my physics laboratory, the balances measure things to a tenth of a gram. If you wish to measure the mass of something to a hundredth or thousandth of a gram, you have to use another balance. Every year, I have a student who wants to record a mass accurate to a millionth of a gram. On their lab sheet, they will give me a number like 28.6581432 grams—on a balance that has no marks or calibrations beyond a tenth of a gram!

In the case of the biblical record, the unit is the cubit. A cubit is the distance from the elbow to the tip of the finger. It should be evident that the length of the cubit depends upon the size of the person whose forearm you measure. My wife’s cubit is about three inches shorter than mine. This is no factor in the kind of measurements that the cubit was used for, but it does mean that the cubit was only accurate to the nearest whole number—three. Obviously, the value of pi in the Bible is accurate to the number of significant figures to which the cubit can be measured.

It is also possible that the 30-cubit measurement was around the inside circumference of the bowl since that is what held the liquid. The 10 cubits may be the outside diameter since that would be what the bowl was forged from and the space it occupied. In that case, the outside circumference would be 31.43. If we assume the same man made both measurements and was accurate to two decimal places (which is unlikely), we can calculate the thickness of the material of which the bowl was made. Since C=2πr, then:

r(outside) – r(inside) = C(out) – C(in) =.18 cubits

That is about 3 inches which would mean the thickness of the bowl would be 1.5 inches, which is very reasonable. I made this point at a lecture recently and had an atheist respond with, “I don’t care what’s reasonable, the fact is, the Bible says pi is 3.00 and that’s wrong!” The idea she was advancing was that if there was any possible way she could interpret a biblical passage that would make it look ridiculous, that is the way she would interpret it. No amount of discussion about significant figures or possible measurement parameters would change her mind. She insisted the value of pi in the Bible is 3.000 and that is wrong!

The same person became incensed when I would not accept the dubious possibility that volcanoes produced the layers of iridium found in the dinosaur remains. This idea, which deals with evolution, has a mountain of other evidence which indicates that volcanoes did not produce these layers, but that they came from an astronomical catastrophe.

I have had the same kind of experience with religious people when their pet religious tradition was called into question by the available evidence. Certainly, this discussion points out some questions about approaches. Perhaps we have to get to the realization that putting pearls before swine is an exercise in futility. (See Matthew 7:6.)
–John N. Clayton © 2018

July 20, 2018February 17, 2020

Ham-Nye Walking Debate

Ham-Nye Walking Debate
You are probably aware of Bill Nye and Ken Ham and their debate which took place in 2014. As if that debate wasn’t embarrassing enough (for both sides), Ham and Nye followed it in 2016 with a walking debate at Ken Ham’s Ark Encounter in Kentucky. The Ham-Nye walking debate was more of the two men talking past each other.

Bill Nye, you will recall, calls himself “the science guy.” Ken Ham, the producer of the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter, is the CEO of Answers in Genesis. Nye takes a naturalist position on everything. While he avoids admitting to being an atheist, atheists hold him in high esteem, and he is heavily backed by atheist publications such as Skeptic, Skeptical Inquirer, and American Atheist. Ham takes an extreme young-earth position and promotes the ideas that dinosaurs lived with humans, that the flood explains all of geology, and that dispensationalism is the proper understanding of biblical history.

What happens in the “walking debate” is that Nye walks through the Ark Encounter exhibits challenging what Ham and AIG have put together as bad science. At the same time, Ham attempts to denigrate Nye’s scientific material with religious views of young-earth creationism. The Ham-Nye walking debate doesn’t resolve anything and only serves to bring the two sides farther apart.

The “Does God Exist? program maintains that science and faith are compatible and that science supports belief in God and the Bible as His word. Over the years we have pointed out that what the Bible actually says is not what either of these gentlemen is presenting. Nye is correct in showing some very bad science in Ham’s exhibits. Ham correctly points out Nye’s tendency to use unproven scientific guesses and assumptions to attack those who believe in God. It is evident that Ham knows little about science and Nye knows even less about the Bible.

Our courses, books, booklets, DVDs, and websites go into a more in-depth discussion of science and faith. If you want to hear two extremes that both oppose our position, you can watch the first debate or the second debate on YouTube.
–John N. Clayton and Roland Earnst © 2018

July 19, 2018August 25, 2018

Future of Faith in America

If you read any survey of what Americans believe, you have to understand that faith in God and the validity of New Testament Christianity is in decline. We have pointed out before, that when pollsters ask people about their religious faith, almost one-fourth of all Americans respond with “none.” When we separate those numbers by age group, the picture is even more dismal with young adults largely rejecting Jesus as the son of God. We should be concerned about the future of faith in America.

The two primary sources of the decline in church membership are pluralism and the complete rejection of the Bible as God’s one authoritative guide. Most churches have not taught the evidence for God and the validity of the Bible. Most young people have not seen an example of Christian living in the lives of their parents or religious leaders. We can either sit back and watch congregations die with the older people of faith, or we can roll up our sleeves and do something.

This situation is not new. When the people of Jesus day saw that following Jesus required some commitment, most of them left. In John 6:35-69 people rejected Jesus as having come down from heaven. Later in the Temple, they wondered at the wisdom of Christ’s teaching. In John 7:16-18 Jesus told the people, “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me.” He then referred to the evidence seen in what people do: “If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.” We must find some method of answering people’s doubts about God and showing them that Jesus is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6). That is what the future of faith in America must be about.

We can no longer rely on inherited faith to build faith-filled adults. Young people being dragged to church three times a week is not going to do the job. There has been too much hypocrisy, bickering, and inconsistency in churches for young people to blindly accept what their parents and grandparents believed. We can no longer rely on talented speakers and youth leaders to emotionally stampede young people into becoming active, dynamic Christians. There are too many speakers with conflicting views for modern adults to respond to emotional pleas at worship services, youth rallies, camps, or lectureships.

The war for the minds of 21st-century adults is going to be won or lost on the battlefield of evidence. That was true in the days of Jesus and the church in the first century. We have a tremendous advantage over those who lived in the first century. Quantum mechanics has opened the door for us to understand how gravity, electric charge, and matter/energy were created. The complexity, wisdom, and design of the formation of electric charge and the wave nature of gravity show that the cause of these things must be outside the realm of the physical world. Quantum mechanics leads us to dimensions beyond our own, which is the concept the Bible has always given us about God.

In today’s world, we see the results of following systems other than the biblical pattern. When people follow other guidelines as to how to live their lives, the result is inevitably disastrous. When people who call themselves Christians fail to follow what Jesus taught, the result is also disastrous. If we study the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7 and compare it to all other ways of life, we see the truthfulness of Jesus statement, “By their fruit ye shall know them” (Matthew 7:16). The future of America depends on the future of faith in America.

Scientific knowledge of the world around us continues to amaze us. Rather than presenting God as a magician who zaps things into existence by tricks and illusions beyond our understanding, we must show people that what God does make sense and many of God’s methods are within our ability to understand. People have had enough of mystic explanations and magic tricks. If they are going to commit themselves to discipleship, it must be clear and logical both in purpose and in methodology.

The church has the capacity to present this message. Young people respond to evidence that doesn’t depend on tradition or blind, mystic faith. When 1 Peter 3:15 tells us to “be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks for the reason of the faith that is within you” it includes not just the ancient shepherd in the hills of Judea, but also the educated engineer living in 2018. Today, the fields are ripe unto harvest (John 4:35), but our outreach must change with changing needs. The future of faith in America depends on it.
–John N. Clayton © 2018

July 18, 2018July 17, 2018

Ancient Science of Moving Huge Rocks

One of the long-term arguments among those who study ancient history is how people thousands of years ago moved huge stones from place to place and set them up as idols or monuments. As examples, they point to the huge rocks in the Egyptian pyramids, Stonehenge in England, and Rapa Nui or Easter Island. On that island, ancient people moved or set up nearly 1000 human statues made of rocks weighing up to 784 metric tons. The quest is for the ancient science of moving huge rocks.

Those who promote ancient alien visitation to the Earth argue that these huge rocks provide proof that aliens have been here and have done some fantastic high tech things. Some suggest that those aliens also created us for some great event in the distant future. Sometimes those tabloid writers even misrepresent the Bible to “prove” their false theories.

Science News magazine (July 7, 2018, page 15) published an interesting report by archaeologists. Fifteen people were able to move rocks weighing 12 metric tons 45 meters down a dirt road. Then with a ramp, they lifted they lifted the stones 8 meters to the tops of human statues where they placed them as hats crowning the figures. Other archaeologists have given similar explanations involving a small number of workers.

Those who assume that ancient humans lacked intelligence and had no knowledge of science grossly underestimate the abilities of our ancestors. The Egyptian creations can easily be explained by simple engineering principles and the labor pool that was available to them. There is no need to suppose that huge populations were needed or that some outside force such as ancient astronauts were players in constructing those ancient monuments. The ancient science of moving huge rocks should not be a mystery.
–John N. Clayton © 2018

July 17, 2018July 16, 2018

Sex Addiction – Medical or Moral?

The World Health Organization has just released its new International Classification of Diseases. The new classification of sex addiction presents a question. Is it a medical issue or a moral issue?

The WHO identifies compulsive sexual health disorder as “a persistent pattern of failure to control intense, repetitive sexual impulses or urges resulting in repetitive sexual behavior.” The lead “expert” on this change is Robert Weiss who says that classifying sexual addiction as a medical issue and not a moral issue “takes it out of religion.”

Weiss and his supporters make comparisons between sexual addiction and gambling, drug, and alcohol addictions. They hope that therapy sessions will solve sexual addiction. Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey are undergoing treatment at a facility for the sexually addicted. It would seem that this change in classification will create a whole new industry.

We would suggest that these comparisons are invalid and that this new system will be used to excuse the sexual abuse that we see on the front page of our newspapers. Sexual abuse involves how we view members of the opposite sex. It has been known for a long time that rape has very little to do with sexual satisfaction. We do not find the most satisfying sexual relationships in abusive sex, premarital sex, or any other sexual conduct outside of marriage to one committed partner. The media and the “experts” are missing the purpose of sex and the beautiful relationship it nurtures between two individuals.

The New Testament trumpets the heart as the central player in relationships, personal conduct, and values. “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” Matthew 6:21. “..those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart: and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts… fornications..” Matthew 15:18-19. Sexual conduct IS a moral choice. We are not robots or puppets. Alcohol and drugs can alter the mind and have a very negative impact on the making of right decisions, but how we use our money and our bodies is a different issue.

People who sexually abuse children and members of the opposite sex will be delighted to blame their sex addiction on psychological baggage that others forced upon them. How we conduct our lives and the choices we make are under our control, and while people may excuse aberrant sexual behavior on medical issues, God will not.
–John N. Clayton © 2018
Reference: USA Today, July 13, 2018, page A-1.

July 16, 2018July 11, 2018

Tools and Intelligence

We tend to equate the use of tools and intelligence, but do they necessarily go together? Many kinds of animals use twigs, stones, or other objects as tools to gather food, to groom or defend themselves, or sometimes just to play. We are very familiar with how dogs can be taught to play with a ball or stick. Intelligent animals such as primates, mammals, and birds use or even create tools from materials around them.

Sometimes animals learn tool-use by watching other animals or humans. At other times tool-use seems to be instinctive. An internet search for “animals using tools” brings up many interesting videos. Ever since animal researcher Jane Goodall discovered chimpanzees using leaves and twigs as tools to obtain food in 1960, some people have suggested that tool-use is proof that humans are not unique from other animals—we have just evolved greater intelligence.

But the question is, “Does it take intelligence to use tools?” The short answer is “No.” Decorator crabs camouflage themselves with objects and plants, and they may pick up a sea anemone and use it to sweep across the sea floor picking up food. The assassin bug takes material from a termite’s nest to camouflage itself while waiting to grab a termite emerging from the nest. It then kills the termite and uses it as bait to coax other termites out of the nest. The larva of the green lacewing camouflages itself with objects such as sand grains to hide from and capture aphids.

Crabs, assassin bugs, and insect larvae have no “thinking” brain. They are not capable of being taught or learning by observation. How can they use objects as tools? In some cases, if the first of their kind could not use these tools, the species would have become extinct. We suggest that the Creator has “programmed” these unintelligent animals with the instincts they need to survive.

So as we consider tools and intelligence, we see unintelligent creatures using tools by instinct, and more intelligent creatures learning to use tools. Obviously, no animals can create and use the highly sophisticated tools that humans have, including computers, robots, and cars. But it’s the spiritual nature of humans that makes us different, and not our tools. Only humans worship God because He created us in His image.
–Roland Earnst © 2018

July 15, 2018July 11, 2018

Retiring Early – Good Idea or Not

Retiring Early – Good Idea or Not
Some people dream of retiring early and spending the rest of their lives in pleasure-filled relaxation. That may not be a good idea.

Relaxing for a few days is a good thing, but studies show that when we stop doing anything constructive and challenging, both our mental and physical health decline. The Washington Post reported that studies “have shown a strong correlation between early retirement age and diminished cognitive function.”

Not only can too much leisure be bad for our physical and mental health, it even has an adverse effect on our happiness. Humans were designed to be productive and creative. Without physical stimulation, our bones and muscles become weak. Without mental stimulation, our brains lose their sharpness. The saying, “If you don’t use it, you’ll lose it,” contains a lot of truth.

All this doesn’t mean that we have to keep working at an occupation for our entire lives. Retiring early can open the door to new opportunities of service. For those who retire from a paying job, volunteering for some service which is mentally, and even physically challenging can be rewarding in many ways. It can keep us physically stronger and more mentally alert. It can give us enjoyment and even help us to live longer. It can also be rewarding for those we are able to serve.

God created us to work. Even in the paradise of the Garden of Eden, God gave Adam and Eve work to do. (See Genesis 2:15.) If you want to live a long, healthy, and happy life, find a way to be productively stimulated while serving others. It’s what God designed us to do.
–Roland Earnst © 2018