Tag: atheist

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Lessons from a Flood

Lessons from a Flood
As I write this, I am in a state of shock at what has happened to me during the past five days. Our home and main office are located on the banks of the St. Joseph River. The front door of the house is normally 20 feet above the surface of the river, and in the 20 years we have lived here, we have never had a problem with flooding. Many years ago we had water in our basement, but it was only 1 or 2 inches, and outside of wet rugs there was little damage. This time I have learned some lessons from a flood.

In early February of this year, we had some very heavy snow and the third week of February we had record rains as well as record warmth. The result of all that water was what is now being called a 500-year flood. My library, recording studio, fossil collection, and packing area are now full of water in spite of three new sump pumps operating at full capacity. It will take many months and some expense to get back to full operating capacity.

Our local television personalities have done a lot of hand-wringing, and I have heard more than one reporter say, “Why did God let this happen?” One religious writer proclaimed that the flooding of our area, which included a movie theater, was God’s retribution for the theater showing x-rated movies. Several years back there were those who explained flooding of the Mississippi River as God’s punishment for floating casinos on the river. Ridiculous as most of these claims are, there are some apologetic arguments and theological points that need to be understood.

God does not use natural disasters as disciplinary tools. There is a difference between physically afflicting someone and allowing the natural consequences of something to happen. When I was a child, my parents took me to the Indiana State Fair. I wanted a big cone of cotton candy, but my mother loudly told me I couldn’t have it. After a lot of whining and pouting, she finally said, “Ok, go get it but it will make you sick, and you’ll regret it.” I was allowed to suffer the consequences of my action, but I was not physically prevented from eating it.

In Deuteronomy 28, God does the same thing with the Israelites. In the first 14 verses, He tells Israel the blessings of living as God calls them to live. In the next 54 verses, God tells them of the consequences of rejecting His teachings. God doesn’t physically strike Israel, but He allows the natural result of human choices to happen.

There are more lessons from a flood, and I will continue my thoughts tomorrow.
–John N. Clayton © 2018

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Virtual Faith

Virtual Faith - Cat with Mirror
Atheist virtual faith reminds me of virtual images. I am an old physics teacher. One of the fun discussions that I used to have with my students was when we got into optics and began talking about virtual and real images. Real images are actually formed by light rays. When you take a convex lens or a concave mirror you can project an image of a candle onto a screen. The image is inverted, but it is there. You can block sections of it with your hand, and you can enlarge or reduce the image by changing the distance from the object to the projecting lens or mirror.

The other type of image is a virtual image, which is an illusion. When you look into a plane mirror, you see an image of yourself. The image is not real. It is not actually formed by the light rays, and it cannot be projected. Watching an animal see itself in a plane mirror is always interesting because the animal can be fooled by the realistic virtual image. We all know that magicians can fool us with virtual images as well.

When atheists want to get around questions concerning the existence of God, they frequently bring the word “virtual” into their discussion. Stephen Hawking in his book A Brief History of Time evaded the logical consequences of the second law of thermodynamics by inventing something he called “virtual time.” Lawrence Krauss in his book A Universe from Nothing claims that empty space is actually “a boiling, bubbling brew of virtual particles that are popping in and out of existence on a time scale so short that you cannot see them.” This new definition of “nothing” is based on virtual particles.

Like the virtual image in a plane mirror, all of this is unreal! It is an unscientific proposal because it cannot be falsified or scientifically tested in any way. It is invented purely to justify the rejection of God as the creator. Krauss is fond of saying that there is no need for an intelligent being to will anything into existence because the means for this was already there and available. If you want to invent a religion that believes in unreal particles popping into existence, you are certainly free to do so. That gives the atheist a virtual faith. The problem is that he or she has to believe that from the “boiling bubbling brew” everything necessary for stable matter to exist came about by chance.

We have a booklet “Evidence for Design In the Universe” available on our doesgodexist.org website or from us on request. It contains a list of 47 physical design features that must be present for a planet like ours to exist. We would claim that all of this makes our faith real, and the rejection of God’s existence virtual faith.
–John N. Clayton © 2018

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Down Syndrome Abortions

Down Syndrome Abortions
In February, Ohio governor John Kasich signed into law a measure relating to Down Syndrome abortions. Under the law, unborn children cannot be aborted because of a prenatal diagnosis of Down Syndrome.

Ethics professor Peter Singer of Princeton University and other leading atheists have tried to make abortion mandatory for babies who are known to have congenital birth defects. The usual reasons for such actions are the cost factor, refusal of insurance coverage, and refusing admission to state-funded schools and care centers. All if this, in the view of some, makes financial sense for aborting.

As the parent of a child born with multiple birth defects including blindness, cerebral palsy, and mental retardation I can understand the emotional and financial stresses involved. More to the point is the fact that a Down Syndrome child is a human being with a spiritual makeup. In a time of great emphasis on the value of diversity, it seems odd that a state would need to enact such a law. Susan B. Anthony List president Marjorie Dannenfelser says, “In a time of growing acceptance of human diversity and rejection of outdated biases against people with different abilities, such extreme intolerance stands out as a great injustice.”

Recently an abortion proponent suggested to me that autism should be eliminated by abortion, using the same argument as the proposal to have mandatory Down Syndrome abortions. The obvious implication of this is the “slippery slope” issue. Where do you stop? Racial and ethnic cleansing proponents can make the same argument.

The Christian view is that all humans are of equal value because we are created in the image of God. That means we treasure every life. We applaud the leadership in Ohio for their actions.
–John N. Clayton © 2018
Data from Citizen magazine, March 2018 page 9.

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Anti-Christian Challenges to Free Speech

Anti-Christian Challenges to Free Speech
The number of seemingly ridiculous anti-Christian challenges to free speech by state schools and atheist groups just keeps growing. Here are some recent examples.

NEW YORK: The board of trustees rejected a “Students for Life” attempt to register at Queen’s College, while other groups were approved. The trustees gave no reason, but ultimately the policy was changed when the students took legal action.

MAINE: The Augusta school board threatened dismissal of special education teacher, Toni Richardson, for telling a co-worker she would pray for him. They attend the same church! Legal action stopped the dismissal, but saying that phrase when students can overhear it will still cause dismissal.

MICHIGAN: Students promoted the free market ideas of a group called “Turning Point” by dressing up as dinosaurs and passing out literature. Because the literature mentioned that the ideas were based on the Bible, they were disciplined and restricted by the administration of the Macomb Community College in Detroit. A lawsuit is pending.

NEW JERSEY: A Franciscan bishop conducted a “bless the animals service” at the Bergan County Animal Shelter in Teterboro, New Jersey. It was a huge success according to personnel at the shelter. Local atheist Candice Yaacobi picked the day of the highly publicized blessing to show up at the shelter and claims that she was “traumatized” when she was “confronted by the sight of a priest in full Franciscan vestments.” She is now suing the animal shelter. The point here is not that there is any significance in blessing animals, but that professional atheist groups want to silence any view but their own.

Citizen magazine reported these cases in the March 2018, issue (pages 9-10). Our files are full of other examples of atheists’ anti-Christian challenges to free speech. The Alliance Defending Freedom and Focus on the Family are leading the fight to stop this kind of abuse.
–John N. Clayton © 2018

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Stephen Hawking’s Death

Stephen Hawking's Death
On the morning of March 14, news media carried the news of Stephen Hawking’s death. His family announced, “We are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away today.”

Hawking was a brilliant physicist and cosmologist and probably the best-known living scientist. He wrote the book A Brief History of Time which was published in 1988. That book holds the Guinness Book of World Records title for being on the Sunday Times (London) bestseller list for an amazing 237 weeks. The book has sold ten-million copies and has been translated into 40 languages. Along with Roger Penrose, Hawking devised the theory that the universe began with a singularity in what has come to be known as the “Big Bang.” In his 2010 book The Grand Design he declared that God is not needed to explain the existence of the universe. In an interview, he said, “There is no heaven or afterlife… that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”

Stephen Hawking lived a remarkable life for a person with a form of ALS, a motor neuron disease. He was diagnosed at age 21, and the doctors gave him two years to live. He survived until age 76 but spent most of those years in a wheelchair unable to move. He could only talk with the aid of a computerized voice.

We are saddened to know that Hawking was never able to accept the Christian faith of his first wife. In the announcement of Stephen Hawking’s death, his three children said, “We will miss him forever.”

We have recently published two postings about Stephen Hawking, and we encourage you to read them by clicking here and here.
–Roland Earnst © 2018

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In Reason We Trust?

In Reason We Trust?
In the March issue of Scientific American, there was an advertisement for the Freedom from Religion Foundation. They claim to be “the nation’s largest association of freethinkers, working to keep religion out of government.” Actually, they go farther than that. They strive to keep “religion,” especially Christianity, out of the public square. The headline banner of the ad is In Reason We Trust.

This particular ad features a picture of Lawrence Kraus and a quote from him. Lawrence M. Kraus is an American-Canadian theoretical physicist and cosmologist who teaches at Arizona State University. He is a leading atheist who works to reduce the influence of “superstition and religious dogma in popular culture.” You can find videos of him on YouTube debating Christians. He is the founder and director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University. Their website states that the Origins Project was “created to explore humankind’s most fundamental questions about our origins … ranging from the origin of the universe to the origins of life, modern humans, consciousness, culture, complex systems, and technology.” Dr. Kraus’s Origins Project will not consider the possibility of God in the origins discussion.

The In Reason We Trust ad quotes Kraus saying, “Lack of understanding is not evidence for God. It is evidence of lack of understanding, and a call to use reason to try and change that.” I agree that a lack of understanding is not evidence for God. In the past, humans could not understand things such as lightning or seasons or trees or insects, so they invented gods to explain those things. They saw the world as chaotic, and even their gods were chaotic and capricious. As long as their worldview was chaotic, they could not pursue science. That is why the extremely intelligent ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans did not achieve scientific understanding even though they created great works of engineering and architecture.

Science requires a worldview that sees order and laws. It was the Judeo-Christian worldview that led to modern science. The Judeo-Christian worldview sees logic and wisdom and order in nature because it was created by a wise and loving God. It is only with that understanding that you can begin to look for that order and study those laws to see how God works. Scientists like Lawrence Kraus and the writers and publishers of Scientific American are standing on the shoulders of Christians like Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and many others. Those men understood that the world was designed with order and wisdom. They looked for that wisdom, and they used not only reason, but experimentation to see how things work—to see how God did it.

Many scientists today have forgotten the very basis for the science that they practice. Yes, Kraus is right that the lack of understanding is not evidence for God. At the same, our ability to understand how God works does not show that there is no God. It shows that God has created us in His image with the ability to understand and create with reason and wisdom. Instead of In Reason We Trust, we should be thinking, “I trust my reason because it is a gift from a rational God.”
–Roland Earnst © 2018

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Circumcision Health Benefits

Circumcision Health Benefits
There have been continuing discussions concerning circumcision health benefits. Iceland’s Parliament is considering a bill that would impose a six-year jail term on anyone who “removes part or all of a child’s sexual organs for non-medical reasons.” Silja Dogg Gunnarsdottir who presented the measure said that a 2005 bill banned female genital mutilation. She felt that there was no male equivalent, so she introduced this bill.

Atheists and skeptics have attacked the Bible because they say that circumcision is an unnecessary and barbaric religious tradition, so there is atheist support for Gunnarsdottir’s proposal.

The problem in the whole discussion of circumcision is that legislators are ignoring the scientific evidence and making a judgment based on emotions rather than facts. Here are some statements of evidence:

1-According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, uncircumcised boys are more likely to get urinary tract infections than circumcised boys, and penile cancer is more prevalent in uncircumcised males.

2-Studies in multiple African countries showed that male circumcision reduced the chances of getting HIV by over 50% and the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported that “the protective efficacy of male circumcision increases with time from surgery.”

3-The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases reported that circumcision reduces the rate of HIV, HPV, and genital herpes.

Jewish and Islamic leaders are claiming that outlawing circumcision is an attack on their faith. We would suggest there is a medical, hygienic reason related to infection, cancer in their wives later in life, and prevention of disease that must be considered in approaching this subject. Female genital mutilation is a completely different issue, with no beneficial side effects at all.

The bottom line is that scientific studies indicate that there are circumcision health benefits in today’s world.
–John N. Clayton © 2018

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Anatomical Bible Words (Part 1)

Anatomical Bible Words
One of the most ambiguous words used by believers and atheists alike is when they say they are taking the Bible “literally.” It is ambiguous because of the underlying assumptions people make about the biblical translations. Word meanings can change over centuries and sometimes over decades. We can think of words, such as “gay,” which have changed in meaning in our lifetimes. Sometimes believers get confused by the meaning of Bible words in the King James Version. Skeptics especially like to criticize anatomical Bible words for being inaccurate.

At one extreme, some Bible fundamentalists insist that the King James Version was given by direct revelation from God to the translators in 1611, and that it is 100% correct. There are massive difficulties with that view. There are both translation mistakes and antiquated vocabulary in the KJV. Many words used in the KJV have gone out of use or have different meanings today.

A translation error we have mentioned before is in Genesis 6 where nephilim is translated “giant.” That mistranslation was a carryover from the earlier Latin Vulgate translation. In the Vulgate, the Latin scholars translated nephilim as gigantus which means “giant.” The KJV translators didn’t go back to the true meaning of the word nephilim which is “fallen ones.” The Hebrew word nephilim is derived from naphal which means to fall, fall away, or be cast down.

At the other extreme, atheists, skeptics, and biblical minimalists have claimed that the Bible is full of errors. They say that anatomical Bible words show a lack of understanding of basic science. The Hebrew word for kidneys is kelayot and it was used by the ancients in the sense of “mind” or “interior self.” We find it used eleven times in the Old Testament in reference to humans. In the KJV it is usually translated “reins.” We all know that the kidneys filter our blood and remove wastes, but the Bible never identifies the kidneys with that function. In Job 19:27 kelayot is translated “heart” or “mind” in most translations. In Proverbs 23:16 most translations read “innermost being.”

So does this mean that the Bible is not the word of God because our creator should have understood that kidneys are not the seat of our inner self? We believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God. We have stated before that we must understand the Bible literally. To take it literally means to look at who wrote the passage, to whom it was written, why it was written, and how the people of the day in which it was written would have understood it.

The biblical passages we have referred to were written to common people in an ancient time in words that they could understand. If they could not understand it, they would never have passed it on to us. Our knowledge of human anatomy is far beyond that of the ancients. We can understand what the Bible is saying and so could those who lived in ancient times. The Bible is God’s word for all time, not just today. We will continue with more on anatomical Bible words tomorrow.
–John N. Clayton and Roland Earnst © 2018

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Evolution Weekend and Darwin Day 2018

Evolution Weekend and Darwin Day 2018
February 12 has been designated as Darwin Day by the U.S. government with Senate Resolution 374 and House Resolution 699 both being pushed by the American Humanist Association. The stated goal is “..support of designating February 12, 2018, as Darwin Day and recognition of Charles Darwin as a worthy symbol of scientific advancement on which to focus and around which to build a global celebration of science and humanity intended to promote a common bond among all of Earth’s people.” With Darwin Day comes the return of Evolution Weekend in which various churches use the weekend of February 9-11 to promote their view that “evolution is sound science and poses no problems for their faith.” The Clergy Letter which Michael Zimmerman circulates among denominational congregations states that “Evolution Weekend makes it clear that those claiming that people must choose between religion and science are creating a false dichotomy.”

All of this is a strange mix of good ideas and bad ideas along with fact and opinion. It is also replete with attacks on the Bible and denigration of those who claim that bad science is involved. The stated goals are wonderful. The failure to define what is meant by evolution and accurately present what Charles Darwin actually discovered dilutes the value of the weekend and of Darwin Day itself.

It would be wonderful if Darwin Day not only commemorated the birth of Charles Darwin but presented his primary discovery. What Darwin discovered was that living things are designed so that they can change and adapt to environmental conditions and changes humans make to improve crops and animal husbandry. Unfortunately, atheists attempt to add the writings of those who oppose the idea that humans are special. Instead, they suggest that all of life has equal value because they deny the spiritual dimension of humans.

It would also be wonderful if, on evolution weekend, religious bodies would present to their constituents the evidence that claimed conflicts between science and the Bible do not exist. The conflicts are caused by bad science or bad theology–not because of what the Bible actually says or what science has factually proven to be true.

Unfortunately many members of the clergy, such as the “Jesus Seminar,” join the atheists in denigrating the Bible by suggesting that it is full of errors. The National Center for Science Education reports that 182 congregations in 42 states are participating in Evolution Weekend. That is a very small percentage of American churches.
–John N. Clayton © 2018

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Cake Baking

Cake Baking
At a meeting last summer, my dear friend Paul Methvin told this story about cake baking. It is so good I would like to share it with you.

“When I was a child I was watching my mother make a cake. She measured out some bitter chocolate. I liked chocolate, so I asked her for a bite, which she let me have. It was bitter, and I spat it out. She took some vanilla and added it to the chocolate. I licked the spoon because I like vanilla, but it too was bitter. She took some lemon juice, which I knew better than to taste, some baking powder which I also didn’t like, and a bunch of lard which she offered me on a spoon. It was disgusting, and I wasn’t about to taste it. She mixed all of these unpleasant things together and put it in the oven. When she took it out of the oven, there was this wonderful smell and later a wonderful taste. The cake was a huge success, but it was made up of a bunch of things that individually were not good at all.”

Don’t you see that life is very much like cake baking? The apostle Paul had a life made up of a bunch of unpleasant things. His father was a Pharisee (Acts 23:6) which was a group of legalistic, cynical Jews who fought against Jesus. He persecuted the Church (Galatians 1:13) and killed and imprisoned Christians (Acts 7:58) making havoc of the Church (Acts 8:3). He was educated in the graduate school of Gamaliel but became so unpopular that in Damascus the Jewish leaders tried to kill him. He had to be let down the walls of the city at night in a basket to escape (Acts 9:23-25). He spent three years in Arabia (Galatians 1:17) and began a ministry (Acts 13) that involved a long road of beatings, floggings, stonings, and imprisonments. It is from all of these negative things that Paul was able at the end of his life to express a satisfaction and a joy for all he has been able to do (2 Timothy 4:6-8).

My cake baking life has also been made up of a lot of bitter things. I was raised by an atheist family, involved in organized atheism, educated in a very liberal and immoral university, and driven nearly to suicide by consequences of an immoral life. I had a son born with numerous birth defects, and the love of my life died. On top of that, I was rejected and condemned by people who should have been supporting brothers and sisters. Those are the ingredients that went into my “cake.”

How about your cake–your life’s experiences? Each event may be bitter and hard to bear. The oven of life bakes us and at the judgment what God will see is a cake that the Spirit has produced from all our hardships and pain. We just need to add the right ingredients from God’s Word to make it sweet and palatable to God.
–John N. Clayton © 2018