Bible Archives

July 9, 2024July 8, 2024

Negatives of Marijuana Use

We live in Buchanan, Michigan, which some have called “The Marijuana Capitol of the Midwest.” Others have dubbed the town “Bucannabis.” I have lost count of how many marijuana outlets there are between Buchanan and Niles, Michigan, but there must be at least a dozen. It has been interesting to see the proponents pushing the supposed benefits while ignoring the negatives of marijuana use.

It is true that the number of drug arrests in our area hasn’t changed much since the legalization was instituted. However, we see a high percentage of out-of-state license plates on cars at these establishments, so our local data may not be meaningful. Commercial sales of marijuana have exceeded 48 million users in the United States, while medical issues are the most disturbing aspect of the negatives of marijuana use.

Medical information is now available in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the British Medical Journal, and from studies done at Columbia University. We know that cannabis has a very negative influence on the outcomes of pregnancy. Recent studies have linked marijuana to bad health outcomes involving the lungs, hearts, brains, and gonads of users. Smoking weed increases the risk of clogged arteries and heart failure. It has also been linked to chronic bronchitis, and cannabis plants bring metal pollutants such as lead into the user’s bloodstream.

The biblical teaching that our bodies are the “temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 3:16) tells us the importance of caring for our bodies. That includes not engaging in the use of recreational drugs as we learn the harm they can cause to our bodies. As the negatives of marijuana use become apparent, we see the wisdom of God’s instructions.

Reference: Scientific American for March 2024, pages 20-21.

July 5, 2024July 2, 2024

Displaying the Ten Commandments in Schools

A strange collection of special interest groups has challenged a Louisiana law that requires displaying the Ten Commandments in schools. Atheist groups would be expected, and they include Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation. More surprising is that Jewish families have joined in the lawsuit.

The Jewish parents against the new law maintain that it is based on Christianity. The law specifies the required text of the Ten Commandments. They say that in the Jewish version, the first commandment contains a section about God bringing the Israelites out of Egypt. There is also a Jewish complaint that the law’s spelling of the word “God” should be “G-D,” leaving out the “o” to avoid taking the name in vain. Also, Protestants and Catholics number the commandments differently.

Similar laws calling for displaying the Ten Commandments in schools are proposed in Texas, Utah, and Oklahoma. The complaints raised by parents on all sides of the issue show a failure to do what Jesus told His followers to do. In Matthew 22:21, Jesus said, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” Public education aims to develop secular skills in our young people. That is the work of the state (Caesar). The religious teaching of children is the responsibility God gave to parents.

The real issue here is that people who claim to be Christians want someone else to provide their children’s religious education rather than doing what God told parents to do. The suit argues that the law violates the First Amendment, which prohibits the state from “respecting an establishment of religion” because it specifies a religious text for displaying the Ten Commandments in Schools.

Reference: JTA for June 25, 2024, by Jackie Hajdenberg.

July 1, 2024June 29, 2024

One of the Natural World’s Most Amazing Things

The hummingbird is one of the natural world’s most amazing things. Researchers have compiled new hummingbird data using modern methods, including high-speed photography. An adult hummingbird weighs roughly 4 grams, and to get a handle on that, a penny weighs about 2.5 grams. There are 21 species of hummingbirds in North America, and one species, called the bee hummingbird, weighs less than a penny.

Hummingbirds don’t beat their wings as most birds do; instead, they rotate them in a figure-eight pattern. That allows them to hover and fly backward or even upside down. The rate of wing motion is up to 80 cycles per second. That is within the range of human hearing and explains the humming sound that gives these birds their name. The metabolic rates of hummingbirds are amazing, as their heart rate is around 1,260 beats, and their breathing rate is 250 breaths per minute. These rapid rates mean hummingbirds may find a place to rest as often as every 15 minutes.

One of the natural world’s most amazing things is that hummingbirds can travel non-stop across the Gulf of Mexico in spring and autumn. Before embarking on that trip, they double their body weight with nectar and insects. When the temperature is low, they go into hypothermic torpor to survive.

The hummingbird’s eyes have a dense concentration of cones in their retinas containing pigments that act as filters to heighten color sensitivity to red while muting blue. Pollination is a major purpose of hummingbirds. Ruby-throated hummingbirds deposit ten times as much pollen as bumblebees, and their life expectancy is 3 to 6 years.

It is with great joy that I watch hummingbirds come to the feeder outside my office window. Their various characteristics speak of the wonder of God’s creation, defying chance explanation. Once again, we “can know there is a God through the things He has made” (Romans 1:20). The hummingbird is one of the natural world’s most amazing things.

Reference: “Fascinating Hummingbird Facts” by Tom Warren on Almanac.com

June 28, 2024June 25, 2024

Entropy and Disorder in the Universe

The second law of thermodynamics can be stated in many ways. The usual physics statement is that heat cannot move from a lower-temperature reservoir to a higher-temperature reservoir. With any action involving matter, there is always a loss of energy to a state from which it can not be recovered. Actions involve a loss of energy, and we call that entropy.

Heat will move from a warmer area to an area with less heat until the two areas have equal temperatures. Molecules pass from a region of high concentration to a low concentration area until they are equal. A simple illustration is if you spray perfume from a bottle into the air, you will eventually smell it everywhere, but you can’t get it back into the bottle because it will have diffused into the atmosphere.

So, what is the big deal about the second law? Energy drives the cosmos. Stars, galaxies, planets, and objects in space all use energy and are thus subject to the second law of thermodynamics. The first law of thermodynamics says that energy cannot be created or destroyed. The second law tells us that energy is becoming disordered. That means the total amount of energy available for work in the cosmos is decreasing and will end up at zero. The cosmos will eventually experience complete entropy, which scientists call heat death.

The Bible makes it clear that there was a beginning to the creation. (See Genesis 1:1.) Atheists tried to maintain that the cosmos has always existed and oscillates throughout time. There is no evidence to support that. We now know that the expansion of the cosmos is accelerating, so oscillation is impossible. The second law implies that there had to be a beginning to the cosmos when there was perfect order, and no entropy existed. Skeptics continue to try to find a weakness in the biblical account of creation, but all the evidence indicates that there was a beginning.

Even the profound discoveries of quantum mechanics, a branch of physics that deals with the behavior of particles at the smallest scales, have not disproven the second law. In fact, they have revealed that time itself had a beginning, a concept that aligns with biblical passages like Proverbs 8, which refer to God’s wisdom and power. The creation, as it is, speaks of the fact that “we can know there is a God through the things He has made (Romans 1:20).

Reference: “Disorder Reigns” by Tom Siegfried in the June 15, 2024, issue of Science News. The article gives the history of the second law of thermodynamics” citing the work of great past scientists like Lord Kelvin, Rudolf Clausius, and Sadi Carnot.

June 27, 2024June 24, 2024

Brown Bats and Tiger Beetles

One of the challenges in the natural world is keeping a balance between predators and victims. If predators have a foolproof method of locating their prey, they will eventually wipe out their food population, and the predators will die. That means victims must have some method of avoiding predation. Harlan Gough, a conservation entomologist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, has done some amazing experiments with brown bats and tiger beetles.

When Gough placed brown bats and tiger beetles into a cage together, the bats ate all of the tiger beetles. In the wild, this doesn’t happen because tiger beetles have a way of mimicking an insect known as a tiger moth. Tiger moths live in the same areas as tiger beetles, but bats don’t eat them because they have a foul taste. Dr. Gough found that tiger beetles can emit the same clicks as tiger moths when they sense predatory bats. They pull their forewings into the path of their beating hind wings, creating a high-pitched click similar to the tiger moth’s sound.

In the natural world, all living things have one or more methods to avoid predators. It may be smell or sight, but this may be the first case of using sound to deter predation. Realize that all of this happens at night when ultrasonics are more useful than sight and smell. No prey survival methods are 100% sure, so predators can still survive, especially when the food source is injured or sick.

We suggest that this case of brown bats and tiger beetles is another instance where there are too many variables to assign to chance. Having tiger moths with bad taste living in the same Arizona desert with tiger beetles seems more likely to be a planned and designed system than a series of accidents. The statement in Romans 1:20 that “we can know there is a God through the things He has made” seems to be supported again as we learn more about the functioning of the natural world.

Reference: Science News, June 15, 2024, page 11.

June 26, 2024June 24, 2024

Astrolabe Shows Human Cooperation

The astrolabe, an astronomical instrument of ancient times, is a testament to human ingenuity and cooperation. It is a two-dimensional map of the universe, typically crafted from plates. Astrolabes, with their star charts and analog calculation capabilities, were not just tools but gateways to understanding the cosmos. In mosques, they were used to calculate the time of sunset or sunrise, thus the time of prayer. People also used them to calculate distances, the position of stars, and the location of latitudes and longitudes. With its intricate design and multifaceted functionality, the astrolabe shows human cooperation.

Federica Gigante, a historian at the University of Cambridge, found the plates of an eleventh-century astrolabe in the vaults of the Museum of the Miniscalchi-Erizzo Foundation in Verona, Italy. The astrolabe she discovered was made of brass and had Arabic engravings. It had a second plate, which meant it had been taken to a different latitude than its Spanish place of origin.

What is interesting about this astrolabe is that it also has Hebrew letters engraved on the plates, indicating their use by Jewish owners, and it was in the archives of a Christian museum. This astrolabe shows human cooperation. It means there was an era in which Muslims, Jews, and Christians built upon one another’s intellectual achievements. All cultures had people with incredible minds who contributed to human knowledge of what the cosmos is about and how we can observe it.

In our day of religious wars between these same groups, it is incredible that humans don’t have the sense to realize the importance of understanding each other and working together to discover Truth. Jesus gave a great answer to this conflict in John 14 when He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me… If you love me, keep my commandments… even the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it has not seen Him and does not know Him, for He dwells in you and shall be in you.” Think of the progress the world could make if we could work together and follow the commandments of Jesus given so clearly in Matthew 5:21-25 and 38-48.

Reference: Verona astrolabe on wikipedia.org

June 24, 2024June 23, 2024

Solomon and Gezer

Those who wish to reject the Bible as historically inaccurate are challenged by the growing amount of supporting evidence from the sciences, including archaeology. Some of the archeological discoveries involve Solomon and Gezer.

In 1 Kings 9:15-19, we read about the Egyptian pharaoh attacking and capturing Gezer and setting it on fire. The pharaoh then gave Gezer as a wedding gift to his daughter, Solomon’s wife, and the Bible says that Solomon rebuilt Gezer. In the last ten years, an excavation project at Gezer revealed that it was a well-fortified city with a massive six-chambered gate, a casemate wall, and a large administrative building.

The summer 2024 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review (Volume 50 #2) has an interesting article titled “Solomon’s Powerplay.” The article confirms the story of Solomon and Gezer as we see it in the Bible. It includes numerous pictures and a discussion of Gezer’s history.

Biblical minimalists try to discard these findings, but we deal with evidence in the “Does God Exist?” program. The rate at which discoveries are being made in all scientific disciplines makes it increasingly difficult to be a skeptic of the Bible. Taking the Bible literally means looking at who wrote the section you are reading, why they wrote it, who they wrote it to, and how the people it was written to would have understood it. When you do that, it is easy to see that the Bible is not just a bunch of human myths and fairy tales but is, in fact, the Word of God.

Our newest video series, “Beyond Reasonable Doubt,” explores the archaeological support for the integrity of the Bible. You can view it free online at this LINK. We are in the process of adding four more sessions to that series, but new archaeological discoveries will already need to be added to this wealth of material.

June 20, 2024June 18, 2024

Media Hype About Exoplanets

The media continue to make scientifically inaccurate claims to an unsuspecting public. Media hype about exoplanets suggests that life on Earth is not unique, and many habitable planets exist throughout the cosmos. A USA Today article on May 31, 2024, refers to exoplanet Gliese 12 b as a “super-Earth.” It quotes Dr. Masayuki Kuzuhara, assistant professor at the Astrobiology Center in Tokyo, saying, “Although we don’t know whether it possesses an atmosphere, we’ve been thinking of it as an exo-Venus with similar size and energy received from its star as our planetary neighbor in the solar system.” So, what are the facts about Gliese 12 b?

Gliese 12 b is very close to the star Gliese – just 7% of the distance between the Earth and the Sun. That means the radiation from the parent star is sweeping across the planet, and because it orbits once every 12.8 days, any activity on the star will dramatically affect the planet. Gliese is a red dwarf star, not a star like our Sun. It is only 27% of the size of our Sun, with about 60% of the Sun’s surface temperature. Red dwarf stars do not emit wavelengths of light needed for life forms like us. Understand that life cannot exist when the only light reaching the planet is Xrays, UV, Infrared, and radio waves.

Considering all these factors, it is highly improbable that Gliese 12 b has an atmosphere, and the presence of water, oxygen, hydrogen, or ammonia has not been detected and is unlikely to be found. Despite the media hype about exoplanets, there is no scientific evidence to support the existence of life without these elements.

Critics will say, “Maybe the life forms out there are not like us and can survive under different kinds of radiation.” Life is defined as that which can move, breathe, respond to outside stimuli, and reproduce. If you want to speculate that life can be fire people or stone people, you can do so, but scientifically, such hypothetical forms do not qualify as “life.” There is no evidence anywhere that such forms exist.

When you know the facts of what life requires, you cannot logically believe that life forms different from ours can exist in the physical creation. Media hype about exoplanets suggests alternatives that have no scientific support. Science supports Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning, God created the heaven (space) and the Earth.”

Reference: sci.news and iopscience.iop.org

June 19, 2024June 18, 2024

Earth Is a Very Special Place

As of May 9, 2024, astronomers have discovered 5,616 planets orbiting other stars. Of that number, 1794 are “gas giants” like Jupiter, 1,920 are Neptune-like planets, and 1,695 are “Super-Earths,” solid planets like Earth, but much larger. That means they will have denser atmospheres of gases that are inhospitable to life. That leaves 207 terrestrial planets, of which seven have unknown features. As the James Webb telescope gathers data, these numbers will change, but the message is already clear. Earth is a very special place, and most of the exoplanets we see are unsuitable for life of any kind. By life, we mean the usual biological definition – that which can move, breathe, respond to outside stimuli, and reproduce.

Hollywood, TV, and books have given us some creative fantasies about space travel, but there are specific limitations on where humans can go. The closest star to Earth is 4.3 light years away, meaning that if you could travel at the speed of light, which is impossible, it would take 4.3 years to reach that star. The closest major galaxy to our Milky Way is Andromeda, 2,480,000 light years from Earth. That means the light coming to us from Andromeda left there 2,480,000 years ago. Humans traveling to Andromeda at the speed of light would need that long to get there. The return to Earth would take just as long, and the Earth would have aged 4,960,000 years while they were gone, even though time would have slowed for the travelers.

All of this is to say that traveling to another galaxy and back is pure fantasy and not an option for any of us. It also says that alien visits to the Earth are another fantasy that may make good movies but are not supported by evidence or common sense. Some people suggest that we are not alone and that aliens are affecting human activities, but that is a fantasy we cannot seriously consider.

The ancient psalmist wrote, “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained, what is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him?” (Psalms 8:3-4). Another Psalm says, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands” (Psalms 19:1). The ancients wrote about what they could see, but now we can see so much more. We are blessed with a whole different picture of the size, power, and wisdom of God’s creation as we realize that Earth is a very special place.

Reference: Science News June 1, 2024, page 21.

June 17, 2024June 16, 2024

Why Would God Do That?

A Christian friend was looking for help to answer his sons’ questions. One son is in high school, and the other is in college, and they questioned why God would tell the Israelites to “attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys” (1 Samuel 15: 2-3). Why would God do that – requiring total destruction of the Amalekite society?

I shared my thoughts on this question, but first, I suggested he go to our website, doesgodexist.tv, using this LINK. Then scroll down to video #7 in the series titled “Anticipating Some Objections.” Between 11:50 and 15:40 in that video, you will find a very brief answer to the objection of why God would command the killing of all of the Amalekites, including women, children, and livestock.

It seems that in addition to other sins, such as attacking the Israelites in Exodus 17, the Amalekites were sexually corrupt, even including bestiality. That resulted in diseases, even affecting the animals, for which there was no cure at that primitive time. If the Amalekites and their animals were allowed to live in the land God had promised to His people, they would morally corrupt the Israelites and even spread diseases.

God was preparing a people through which He would bring salvation to all people. Why would God do that? Because of His love. Allowing the Israelites to be corrupted by their neighbors could destroy God’s plan to redeem all humanity through Jesus Christ. The gospel came into the world because God had prepared a people who believed in the one true God who created all things. Any other religious system would not work to prepare people to accept Christ’s message.

The Israelites failed to follow God’s instructions to the letter, and that failure returned to haunt them. (See 1 Samuel 30.) Paganism corrupted even Israel’s kings. However, God allowed His chosen people to suffer captivity and punishment. Why would God do that? Allowing His people to suffer eventually led to the Jewish people at the time of Jesus being completely cured of paganism. They had other faults, but they refused to worship any pagan gods. They had the prophecies of the Old Testament and the miracles and message of Jesus to cause many of them to believe and be baptized into Christ’s body, the Church. Although many rejected Christ, those who accepted the gospel became powerful witnesses to the pagans of their day to the point where they “turned the world upside down” (Acts 17:6). (Actually, they turned it right side up.)

The Church today would not exist if God had not taken harsh steps that may seem immoral to our modern Christian sensitivities. I believe that without the influence of Christianity in the past two millennia, people would have destroyed civilization and the planet before now. As people reject God today, we are on the verge of doing that. Today, God does not command us to save the world by destroying our enemies but by bringing them into God’s family through His Church. Why would God do that? Because He loves all people. When you consider the entire history from God’s perspective and realize His ultimate purpose, you realize it was because of His love that He commanded the destruction of the Amalekites.