The following poem was in the Niles, Michigan, bulletin. The author was not identified, but it has a lesson about judging for us all to think about. Read, enjoy, laugh, and think.
I was shocked, confused, bewildered As I entered Heaven’s door, Not by the beauty of it all, Nor the lights of its décor. But it was the folks in Heaven Who made me sputter and gasp – The thieves, the liars, the sinners The druggies and other trash. There stood the kid from 7th grade, Who swiped my lunch money! Twice! Next to him was my old neighbor Who never said anything nice. Herb, who I always thought Was rotting away in hell, Was sitting pretty on cloud nine, Looking incredibly well. I nudged Jesus, “What’s the deal?” Would love to hear Your take. How’d all these sinners get up here? God must’ve made a mistake.” And why’s everyone so quiet, So somber – give me a clue.” “Hush, child,” He said, “they’re all in shock. No one thought they’d be seeing you.”
Where we will end up does not depend on our good works, but on Christ’s saving grace. This poem may not be theologically correct, but it has a lesson about judging for us to think about.
Some have attempted to use the Bible’s teachings to justify denigrating women. This ignorance was an issue in the time of Jesus, and it continues today, not just in undeveloped countries but even in America.
The problem of not carefully studying the biblical concept of women’s role goes back to Genesis 2:18-24. God created Adam as a living being with a spiritual dimension. Adam observes and names the animals, but he is still unable to live as God intended. Verse 20 says, “There was not a helper fit for him.” The Hebrew word for helper is “ezer,” which is “one who provides strength in the area where the helped one is lacking” (New World Bible Dictionary). Eve is not inferior to Adam. Adam joyfully proclaims, “This, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.”
In Matthew 19:8, Jesus refers back to Genesis 2 as He denies men the right to treat their wives as objects saying, “Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning, it was not so.” The passage in Genesis 2 refers to wife (singular), not wives plural. It is in Genesis 4:19 that man first violates God’s plan with Lamech having two wives. Lamech’s actions and denigrating women eventually led to the immorality that produced the flood of chapter 6.
The rejection of God’s plan has caused terrible treatment of women through the ages. Jesus included women in his ministry, and Luke 8:1-3 reveals they played a major role. In John 4, Jesus deals with the Samaritan woman at the well, and in verse 27, even His disciples were amazed at his treatment of this woman. Ephesians 5:25-33 tells Christian men to love their wives as their own bodies (verse 28). Galatians 3:28 tells us that in the Church, there is no male nor female, for we are all one. That was the message of Genesis 2, which is repeated in Christianity today.
Today’s world has turned away from God’s teachings, denigrating women and using them as sex objects. Men have used survival of the fittest to persecute women and keep them under economic control. Men and women each have specific roles. Only women can give birth to babies, but today many choose to abort. Men have the role of spiritual leadership, but most of them fail at that. Christ’s teachings and the Apostles’ instructions uniquely elevate women and challenge men to be what God calls them to be. As society rejects God’s teachings, women suffer the most.
The recent tragedy with the Titan vessel imploding brings to mind the science of piezophysiology, the study of living organisms under high pressure. The connection between the Titan vessel and piezophysiology is that deep sea fish must survive under massive hydrostatic pressures such as the Titan was subjected to. How do they survive?
Building deep-sea vehicles has been an enormous challenge for engineers. The standard has been to build vessels of titanium in a spherical shape to equalize the water pressure all around. The Titan hull was made of carbon fiber five inches thick, and it was 22 feet long. The elongated shape increased the pressure load on the midsection. The vessel had been subjected to stress during about two-dozen previous dives. Each of those dives might have created small unnoticed cracks in the carbon fibers, like splitting wood along the grain. Those tiny cracks could lead to rapid and catastrophic failure.
Let’s do a little math to get some idea of the amount of water pressure. Water has a density of 62.4 pounds per cubic foot. One mile of water would be 5,280 feet. Each foot of water would put 62.4 pounds on any object one mile down. That would be 329,472 pounds on each square foot of a submarine or a fish. That is 164.7 tons in fresh water and even more in salt water, and the Titanic is about 2.4 miles down.
Water doesn’t freeze at that depth because pressure lowers the freezing point. Those who study piezophysiology tell us that fish living at those depths have flexible bones and cartilage, do not have swim bladders, have special blood adapted to deep-sea conditions, and have bioluminescence to compensate for the darkness of deep ocean environments.
We learn from the Titan vessel and piezophysiology that surviving deep under the ocean requires wise engineering. Humans have much to learn about the creatures of the deep, but the difficulty of visiting deep sea environments limits our knowledge. However, every discovery of piezophysiology and related fields speaks to God’s wisdom and design of life that allows those creatures to exist in a world that is forbidding for humans.
The British Medical Journal and the World Health Organization (WHO) are promoting a method of caring for small and preterm babies. It calls for holding the baby close to a parent’s naked chest. The WHO advises “immediate skin-to-skin care for the survival of small and preterm babies.” This method is called “kangaroo care” because it copies what kangaroo mothers do with the baby in their pouch.
In 1978, Dr. Edgar Ray Sanabria and Hector Martinez-Gomez started the technique in the maternity ward of San Juan de Dios Hospital in Bogota, Columbia. The country’s death rate for premature infants was 70% before this technique. In some locations, kangaroo care has reduced the death rate to 10%.
Babies put into incubators may be exposed to bright lights and loud noises, and there are not enough incubators to go around in many countries. Researchers say that when the babies are held against the bare chest of their mother or father, they pick up their parent’s heartbeat and breathing rhythms. They also feel the warmth. The doctors published the results of kangaroo care in the journal Curso de MedicinaFetal in 1983.UNICEF began distributing information about the technique worldwide.
Interestingly, both the mother and the father can provide this benefit to a premature baby. Hospitals provide wards where a parent can stay with the child. A premature newborn may take two to three weeks of kangaroo care to be strong enough to leave the hospital. Even then, parents can continue kangaroo care at home.
People who claim that a preborn baby is not a human at 32 weeks or less have no evidence to support that claim. The bond between a mother and father and a child is necessary for the baby to survive, and no mechanical device can substitute for the care of a loving parent.
In every environment on Earth, frogs, fish, and various insects depend onbeetles for food. We see beetles in deserts worldwide, and many desert animals rely on them as a food source. A mystery that has vexed scientists is the design of beetles that allows them to survive in arid climates.
Recent research shows that beetles have a unique system to recycle water. They have an organ near the end of their digestive system called the “rectal complex,” lined with blister-like cells that draw moisture out of fecal material. Instead of being excreted, the water passes through the wall of the rectal complex and back into the beetle’s body by osmosis. This process allows beetles to be very abundant in desert ecosystems, providing food for various desert creatures.
Insects annually damage up to 20% of the world’s food supply. Because of the design of the rectal complex, red flour beetles (Tribolium castaneum) can survive in dry food storage such as wheat and flour. While this design benefits desert creatures, it is a real problem for humans. Researchers studying these beetles have found a gene that appears to be the key to their ability to recycle water.
The design of beetles serves them well in their natural habitat, but it creates problems when they get into stored human food. God has given living creatures the ability to survive and humans the intelligence to understand the design to benefit our survival.
People living in the southern United States may not be familiar with glacial erratics such as the one in the picture. Glacial erratics are rocks deposited by glaciers that are different from the native rocks in the area. Where we live in southwestern Michigan has many boulders like this. Many of us have at least one of them in our yard. They weigh hundreds or even thousands of pounds. Many years ago, when workers were digging the foundation for a wing of our local hospital, they hit a glacial erratic that was so large no equipment could lift it. They had to break it into smaller pieces to get it out of the way.
What is especially interesting about glacial erratics is that no two of them look alike, and they each have their own mineralogy. Some are a form of granite, some are metamorphic rocks like gneiss or schist, and some are sedimentary rocks like limestone or sandstone. As a public high school science teacher, I used to take my classes to the local gravel pit and have my students see how many different rocks they could find. Once, a girl found what she called “a pretty red rock.” I looked at it and recognized it immediately. It was a piece of jasper conglomerate, a rock only known to exist in an outcrop near Bruce Mines, Ontario – a place where I spent many summers as a teenager.
The question is, how did a piece of rock get from southern Ontario to northern Indiana? I have had students find pieces of pure copper in the gravel pit. There is a copper outcrop in the upper peninsula of Michigan that has the same color and texture as the ones my students found. In fact, almost every rock my students found came from a place far to the north of us where those rocks can be seen in outcrops. It is quite evident to thinking students that running water or wind did not carry those rocks. However, a moving sheet of ice can do it. Today you can go to an active glacier and watch that process taking place.
How long does it take for a sheet of ice to flow from Ontario to Indiana? There are places near Martinsville in southern Indiana where you can find similar glacial erratics. Glaciers bring not only minerals but water to our area. There are hundreds of lakes and ponds in the area where we live. Glaciers are a great tool of God to mold and shape the planet, and we are blessed by what glaciers have given us. The glacial till we found contained no human remains or tools. The glaciers were there long before humans lived in Indiana. The process of shaping and molding the land took an enormous amount of time, but God created time, and it means nothing to Him. Only human theories and religions demand specific time elements. Truly “with the Lord, one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8).
We have always had, and probably always will have, doom-sayers who predict the human race will be wiped out in the near future. From nuclear war to disease to hostile aliens, there have been countless books, movies, TV shows, and media reports of something that will soon destroy us all. The latest prediction is human destruction by Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI doom-sayers are now predicting the odds of AI wiping out humanity are one in ten and that this could happen within five years.
AI-powered ChatGPT and Google’s Bard can already pass the bar and medical licensing exams. On IQ tests, they score in the 99th percentile – genius level. Some say that AI, without human control or input, could create bioweapons, shut down financial systems, and eventually wipe out humans. One example of human destruction by Artificial Intelligence is that if AI were allowed to solve the climate crisis, its first step would be eliminating humanity. An atheist could claim that AI could wipe out any belief in God by showing that it can act as a god.
There are many kinds of intelligence, and they are all measured in different ways. My mentally-challenged son would score average intelligence on a verbal English language IQ test. However, on a test that involved shapes and simple mathematical logic, he would score a 25. The two tests measured different things. The biblical concept of God as the creator is that God created time, space, and matter/energy. AI is fabricated by humans and takes what is already created, reshaping it to a human frame of reference.
Could AI create chaos? Yes! Can AI take a human-created test structured by a computer and provide an answer another computer or human would accept? Of course! Is there a risk in letting any computer control human activity? Yes! Human destruction by Artificial Intelligence can only happen if we allow it.
All of us know by experience that computers are limited. They depend on electricity and proper data input and ignore human needs. Look at how many times airlines have been forced to shut down flights in recent years due to computer failures. Most fundamental is the fact that humans are not driven by data alone. We respond to psychological and spiritual needs, complex emotions, social needs, and environmental issues. Our relationship with God can make life a positive experience, but AI cannot address the uniqueness of humans.
God’s design in the natural world provides protection for animals that would appear to be unable to defend themselves. Some animals can’t bite or run, and camouflage is not an option because their environment changes too quickly. Toads and frogs are classic examples of this, but they have an effective chemical defense against predators.
The Sonoran Desert toad (Incilius alvarius) in the desert southwest (also known as the Colorado River toad) defends itself with a chemical mix secreted through its skin. This toad is very large, and its desert environment makes hiding difficult. All toads secrete toxins through their skin, but the Sonoran Desert toad secretes a substance known as 5-MeO-DMT from glands behind each eye and on its legs. This chemical is a powerful hallucinogen secreted by no other toad or frog, and predators quickly learn to avoid it.
The giant leaf frog (Phyllomedusa bicolor) in South America (also known as the giant monkey frog) secretes a chemical known as kambo, which causes violent regurgitation and seizures and even affects the heart function of predators. The chemicals differ with each species, and researchers are trying to determine how the defenses work. Sonoran Desert toads and giant leaf frogs are geographically isolated, yet they share a common problem of vulnerability. They both use a chemical defense against predators but with different chemicals.
Interest in the Sonoran Desert Toad has increased because people have found that licking the toad produces a high. The psychedelic effect has caused people to catch the frogs, threatening their survival. Although predators are smart enough to leave them alone, apparently, humans are not. Abusers call the 5-MeO-DMT toxin “the God molecule,” but researchers warn that it can cause cardiac arrest.
Researchers are studying the ability of toads and frogs to secrete a chemical defense against predators. The difference in the chemicals depending on the species is still a mystery, but it’s a testimony to the design built into the natural world, allowing diversity in living things. The statement of God’s design of humans in Psalms 139:14 is also true of every creature in God’s creation.
It’s “one of the Universe’s best-kept secrets” and a mystery that physicists are working to resolve. Every subatomic particle in the universe has an antimatter equivalent. Each atom consists of electrons, protons, and neutrons. The negative electrons have alternative positrons with a positive charge. If you could combine an electron and a positron, they would cancel each other. Protons and neutrons, which compose the nucleus of atoms, are made of smaller particles called quarks. There are also anti-quarks, and if you combined a quark and an anti-quark, they would explode and destroy each other. Our universe, and us, can only exist because matter greatly exceeds antimatter.
If matter and antimatter were in a state of symmetry with equal amounts, they would have destroyed each other, and nothing would exist. Scientists theorize that the creation event, or Big Bang, should have created an equal amount of matter and antimatter, so they wonder why the lack of symmetry. In other words, why does anything exist in the universe, our planet, and our bodies? The universe is made of matter, while antimatter is almost non-existent except in radioactive particle decay and particle colliders such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland and France.
According to the Standard Model of particle physics, physicists theorize that a “charge-conjugation parity violation” (CP) caused the lack of symmetry – but how and why? Physicists working with the LHC say particles and antiparticles can spontaneously transform from one to the other. LHC spokesperson Chris Parkes said, “Through more precise measurement, large improvements have been made in our knowledge. These are key parameters that aid our search for unknown effects from beyond our current theory.”
We can be thankful that in today’s universe, the amount of matter greatly exceeds antimatter. Since physicists are looking for an explanation, they may eventually solve the mystery. It will be interesting to see the scientific explanation for the lack of symmetry. Whatever process scientists discover, we suggest that this is another example where intelligence and wisdom provide a more reasonable ultimate explanation than accidental chance offers.
Cosmology provides strong evidence for God’s existence. The basic cosmological argument for God involves three simple questions:
1) Was there a beginning to time, space, and matter/energy? The evidence says there was.
2) Was the beginning caused or uncaused? Taking the position it was uncaused violates scientific conservation laws.
3) If it was caused, what or who was the causer? The evidence is that the cause can not be blind, mechanistic chance. Logic suggests that the cause was an intelligence, in other words, God.
As more data becomes available to support intelligence as the cause of planet Earth, the cosmological argument for God becomes stronger. If we define life as that which can breathe, move, respond to outside stimuli, and reproduce, what is necessary for life to exist? Astronomers now talk about the habitable zone (HZ) of stars. This is the zone around stars where the temperature on a planet would allow water to exist in the liquid state on the surface.
Recent discoveries have shown that M-class dwarf stars are the most common and longest-lived stars. The problem with these stars is that their HZ is very close to the star, so tidal forces would lock the rotation of any planet so its same side would always face the parent star. One side of the planet would be constantly hot while the other would be cold. Also, M-class stars would bombard these planets with stellar flares causing massive radiation levels that would eliminate any possibility of life. Other star types create various problems for a life-supporting planet.
Astronomers have determined there is a galactic habitable zone (GHZ) in addition to the star’s habitable zone. A star must be far from the galactic center to have a planet with life on it. The high star density near the core of a galaxy exposes the star system to deadly supernovae and gamma-ray bursts. Mass distribution within a galaxy is also an issue because, near the galaxy’s core, mass concentrations cause gravitational instability.
The basic cosmological argument for God is now supported by a vast number of parameters that must be within precise limits to allow life to exist in a planetary system. Having a large moon is essential to the survival of life on a planet. Likewise, having a shield against incoming cosmic bodies is critical. A body the size of Comet Hale Bopp hitting planet Earth would have sterilized it, killing even microbes that might be present. The Earth’s shield is the arrangement of the Jovian planets. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune preventing objects like Hale Bopp from reaching Earth.
The more we look at the cosmos, the unique qualities of our planet reinforce the cosmological argument for God. Proverbs 8 personifies Wisdom speaking of God’s creative power and design. As we learn more about the cosmos, the stronger the evidence becomes that “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).