John N Clayton Archives

September 19, 2022September 19, 2022

Dead Sea Scroll Fragments Missing

The first Dead Sea Scrolls were accidentally discovered seventy-five years ago. Ever since that time, archeologists, biblical scholars, and politicians have struggled for control of the scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls disprove claims made by many atheists and skeptics who deny the accuracy and authenticity of the Bible. Unfortunately, however, there are a substantial number of missing Dead Sea Scroll fragments.

The fall 2022 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review reported that missing Dead Sea Scroll fragments include a large fragment from a Samuel scroll and three fragments from a Daniel scroll. There are more than 1,000 others. They have either been stolen, destroyed, misplaced, or possessed by someone who does not want them to be available to scholars and the public. Fortunately, scholars photographed some of the missing fragments before they disappeared.

Thirty years ago, Hershel Shanks, a well-known author and publisher, campaigned to get the people controlling the scrolls to make them available to scholars and the public. Tens of thousands of scroll fragments have been discovered, and most scholars have still not gained access to the ones known to be in repositories, not to mention the missing Dead Sea Scroll fragments.

This situation reflects negatively on the state of archaeology in the world today. Competition among archaeologists and biblical scholars has morphed into an attempt to control who has access to these artifacts. This conflict involves national interests, professional reputations, and grants. The religious beliefs of some archaeologists are also a factor.

Hopefully, the missing fragments will eventually be found, and all of them will be made available to everyone who should have access to them. These scrolls verify much of the biblical record and answer many of the challenges of those who oppose Christianity.

Reference: “Missing: Have You Seen These Scrolls?” by Arstein Justnes and Signe M. Haegeland in the fall 2022 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review

September 17, 2022September 15, 2022

Struck Blind – How to Keep Things in Perspective

I have learned in my long life that every experience, good or bad, can teach you a lesson if you allow it to. I think this is why Paul gave Timothy qualifications for congregational leadership that a young man simply couldn’t have had time to experience. They included having children in subjection, not being a novice, and having a good reputation in the community (1 Timothy 3:4-7). I know that the death of my two younger brothers, my wife, and my son in a short period of time taught me a lot about life. It taught me how to keep things in perspective and help those facing the death of a loved one.

Now I have been taught about another struggle that humans have–blindness. In the Bible, we see the loss of sight as a major affliction that altered the lives of biblical characters. In some cases, like Samson, enemies used blindness to retaliate and punish (Judges 16:21). In John 9, Jesus restored a blind man’s sight to teach and confound His critics. Several miracles of Christ were centered around restoring sight to someone who was blind.

I recently got a taste of what it would be like to lose my sight. I awoke on August 25th, unable to see out of my right eye and with only limited vision in my left eye. No amount of rubbing or washing affected my loss of sight. It is hard to describe the panic I felt, and you can imagine what my prayer life was focused on at that point. With what little sight I had left, I painfully struggled to grade the day’s correspondence courses and managed with great difficulty to prepare two classes and one sermon I was scheduled to give in four days. In addition, trying to read a large number of emails was difficult, and I kept asking myself, “What will I do if this gets worse?”

I now understand Paul’s reaction as he suddenly was struck blind and had to be led by the hand. I can imagine how for three days, he tried to make sense of what had happened to him. I didn’t want to eat, which Paul also experienced, as dread, anger, and confusion swallowed up my appetite. But, like Paul, I was led to a restoration of my sight. Like Paul, it has changed my view of life and my mission on Earth. Once again, it has shown me how to keep things in perspective.

My medical diagnosis is that I have a very rare kind of cataract that can grow in a matter of days. Thankfully, surgery can correct it. However, living with virtually no vision for several days has taught me a great deal. I now understand why my son Tim who was blind from congenital cataracts, mentally challenged, and rendered physically challenged by COVID, could only talk about soon being able to see. He would soon see his mother, who had passed away years before. He understood that he was about to die, but that paled in the face of regaining his sight.

I better understand why my dear friend Glynn Langston, who has been blind from birth, struggles with my very visual presentations. He tells me that my verbal descriptions don’t help much. I can understand why Samson after his enemies blinded him, had the courage to tear down their building ending his own life.

What has happened in your life that may have been a tragedy to you but can open a door of empathy and give you a unique opportunity to serve others? What has helped you learn how to keep things in perspective? God is constantly molding our character, and life’s experiences are the tools He often uses.

September 16, 2022September 12, 2022

The Cost of Raising a Child

The Brookings Institute writing in the Wall Street Journal reports that the average cost of raising a child from birth to age 17 has risen 9% over two years ago. The cost of raising a child is now $310,605 to feed, house, and provide primary care after birth. When you add to that the birthing cost, it becomes apparent that it is out of reach for many young couples and especially for young unmarried women.

In our materialistic and selfish society, many people are unwilling to sacrifice to spend that kind of money. That means they will push for an abortion, or they will neglect the child’s basic needs if the baby is born. Even worse, some parents pay the $18,271 a year cost of raising a child but resent it and let the child know they resent it. In my 41 years of public school teaching in South Bend, Indiana, I saw the consequences of kids facing physical, mental, and spiritual neglect.

Like many things wrong with society today, the problem is with the religious convictions of many adults. What is the result if you are convinced that humans are the product of blind mechanistic chance and don’t view a child as a unique creation of God with value and importance? You will not devote the resources or energy to ensuring your child is fully equipped to deal with life’s challenges.

The biblical plan for raising children is time-tested and proven to work. Ephesians 6:4 and Colossians 3:21 warn fathers, “…provoke not your children to wrath; but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” God’s plan calls for protecting children as a product of love. The cost of raising a child is more than money. A child must be treasured and nurtured not only in secular matters but in the knowledge of their value and spiritual nature.

Kids are searching for adults who will value them as they are. Unfortunately, the gender changing and promiscuity of our young people today are a product of the failure of adults to be willing to pay the cost of raising a child, including financially, emotionally, and spiritually.

Reference: The Week for September 2, 2022, page 16.

September 15, 2022September 12, 2022

Mauna Kea Wekiu Bug

We have frequently pointed out the importance of recycling agents in the natural world. They are creatures that take waste material of any kind and process it so that our planet is not inundated with excrement and dead bodies. The microbes that process dead material and produce soil, the dung beetles that handle excrement, and the vultures that eat carrion are among those recyclers essential to our environment. From the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory comes a recent discovery of another recycling agent to handle waste most of us would not even know existed. It’s the Mauna Kea wekiu bug (Nysius wekiuicola).

In 1980, scientists on Mauna Kea in Hawaii discovered the wekiu bug that handles natural waste on the summits of mountains where it is too cold for life to exist. At these extreme elevations, the jet stream, typhoons, and other sources of high elevation winds deposit the dead bodies of insects and birds. Instead of those bodies piling up, the Mauna Kea wekiu bug processes them. It’s a beetle whose name comes from the Hawaiian word for “summit.” This bug is specially designed to process mountaintop waste.

The wekiu bug has a straw-shaped mouth that it inserts into a dead insect or bird, allowing the bug to draw out any fluids or nutrients. That leaves the hard parts, which crumble and are carried away by rain, snow, ice, and wind. Even in this very inhospitable area for life, with frequent temperatures well below freezing and no surviving plant life, these bugs process organic material. The Mauna Kea wekiu bug is another example of God’s design to provide balance in nature. He created a natural system designed to allow the constant reprocessing of organic materials so that our planet can support an abundance of all kinds of life.

Reference: The PBS series of Planet Earth for 2022 and Wikipedia.

September 14, 2022September 12, 2022

Natural Insect Control by an Insect

People struggle with many insects that give us diseases, impact our food supply, and even damage our clothing. Mosquitoes, locusts, grasshoppers, cockroaches, crickets, and the like have been a scourge prompting the use of pesticides. The pesticides, in turn, have brought cancer and attacks on our immune systems. Yet, we often overlook the fact that God has given us natural insect control by providing agents that eat insects, including birds, bats, fish, and even insects. One insect-eating insect that looks like it came from another planet is known to entomologists as “Mantis religiosa” but is commonly called the praying mantis.

The mantis has bulging eyes and a triangular-shaped head that swivels atop a long neck, giving it an odd extraterrestrial look. It is the only insect with three-dimensional vision. It holds its two front legs at an angle as if folded in prayer while actually poised to ambush prey. Those forelegs are armed with spikes so that when they capture an insect, it cannot escape.

Humans introduced the praying mantis from Europe into New York state in 1900 to control grasshopper infestations. Mantises are voracious eaters and can even be cannibalistic. Their population is partly controlled by eating each other when the food supply becomes reduced. Females sometimes eat the males and the egg capsules when there is a food shortage.

A mistake humans have made is using chemicals to control insect populations instead of using the natural controls God has given us. Spraying massive amounts of insect-killing chemicals kills everything, including insect-eating birds, fish, and insects like the praying mantis. We often hear people blaming God for the diseases and afflictions humans have caused.

The more we study the creation, the more we see natural insect control agents. They may require work and a more significant time investment than the easy process of spraying, but they cause far less collateral damage.

References: The Spokesman-Review for 8/30/22 page A01 by Linda Welford and Wikipedia

September 13, 2022September 12, 2022

Neurotheology or Spiritual Neuroscience

Ancient societies considered epilepsy “the sacred disease” because they thought of epileptic seizures as religious experiences. In modern times some have argued that epileptic seizures stimulate a region of the brain’s temporal lobe that may explain the “religiosity” of some individuals. Neurotheology or spiritual neuroscience is a modern field of science that tries to understand religion by studying how the brain works.

In 2005 Dean Hamer published a book titled The God Gene, in which he claimed to have found a gene in Human DNA that would predict whether a person would believe in God. Experts criticized Hamer for his misuse of statistics and lack of understanding of genetics. James Clark wrote a book in 2019 titled God and the Brain (Eerdmans Publishing), in which he maintained that the brain has an area tied to religious experience. He called this the “agency detecting device” and asserted that the Creator put it there to cause us to look beyond the mechanics of science and seek the Agent behind creation. Dr. Malcolm Jeeves heads the Psychology and Neuroscience Department of the University of St. Andrews. He encourages a healthy discussion between religion and science while suggesting that there are realms beyond the reach of science.

Neurotheology or spiritual neuroscience is a very “soft science.” That means no scientist has conducted an experiment that answers the question of why some people are more religious than others. It would seem that attempting to find a cause for religiosity is futile because of the nature of our creation in the image of God. One theme throughout the Bible is that people must voluntarily choose whether to embrace faith in God. That belief can be affected by experience and evidence, but it is still up to each person to accept or reject God.

Atheists would like to find a physical cause for faith. If they could, they would deny the human spiritual nature and write it off as a mutation in our distant ancestors that we should eliminate. Agnostic Stephen Jay Gould maintained that science and religion were “non-overlapping magisteria,” meaning they each represent entirely different areas of inquiry. Perhaps that should apply to neurotheology or spiritual neuroscience.

In the August issue of the Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation, Toby Engelking wrote, “No matter how much we describe the way that minds work, we cannot say much about the way that they ought to work or why they are working at all. These are realms of philosophy and theology, realms which science is not equipped to venture into.”

Reference: God and Nature the Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation

September 12, 2022September 11, 2022

David and Goliath – Fact or Myth

Skeptics frequently take a historical biblical story and attempt to show that it is impossible. Some religious folks have answered these challenges by saying the event is a miracle of God and thus is not open for discussion. The Bible certainly describes miracles of God that can’t be explained by natural causes and are therefore not available for investigation. For example, we can’t prove that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead by scientific evidence because we were not there and can’t go back in time. If a person doesn’t believe in God, then a biblical record will certainly not convince them and may encourage them to reject the Bible as a bunch of fairy tales. In the case of David and Goliath, however, the evidence is strong that the account is credible.

Several years ago, I had an American Field Service student from South America in my physics class at Riley High School. When our class was studying centrifugal force and circular motion, he offered to show us what he called a “shepherd sling.” This was a pouch with a long cord attached at each end made from some non-stretchable material. One of the cords had a loop at the end of it, and the other cord was straight.

My student put a golf ball in the pouch and swirled the pouch and ball around his head, holding the two cords in his hand, the one with the loop wrapped around his finger. He got the ball/pouch going at a very high speed and then released the straight end of the cord, sending the golf ball flying at an incredible speed. Taking this outside, he could knock a tin can off a post at 100 feet. The force of the strike was so strong that the can flew a considerable distance. From 100 feet, this student could put a rock through a thick board.

Biblical Archaeology Review published an article examining the statistics for the encounter of David and Goliath. Archaeologists have discovered reliefs in the mortuary temple of Ramesses III showing Egyptian slingers defending a ship. An Assyrian relief from Nineveh celebrating Sennacherib’s military victories shows Assyrian slingers in 701 B.C. whirling stones toward Judahite defenders atop the walls at Lachish. Archaeologists have found the remains of slings and the stones used in them.

These ancient slings had military uses up to 400 yards, and Roman slingers used them at distances of 200 yards. Arabian slingers hunt game at 30 to 50 yards today, and a moderately skilled slinger can achieve up to 113 miles per hour. Goliath had a javelin that he could throw 20 to 30 yards, meaning that David’s sling was vastly superior with about twice the range.

God certainly facilitated the actions of David, but the story of David and Goliath has historical validity, indicating that it was not miraculous and not a myth.

Reference: “Taking a Sling” by Boyd Seevers and Victoria Parrott in Biblical Archaeology Review fall 2022, pages 50 -54

September 10, 2022September 7, 2022

Foods Derived from Flowers Need Auxin

What seems like a simple question may have a very complex and essential answer. The question is this: How does a flowering plant develop fruits and seeds? This is a crucial question to answer for the production of common food crops such as peanuts, corn, rice, strawberries, and all other foods derived from flowers.

The time when flowers turn some of their parts into seeds or fruit determines when the fruit will be ready to harvest, how big it will be, and what nutrients and water must be applied at what time.

Zhongchi Liu at the University of Maryland has identified a gene called AGL62 that stimulates plant production of a growth hormone called “auxin.” Once the gene activates, the plant synthesizes auxin, causing the creation of a seedcoat. The seedcoat is the outer layer protecting the endosperm, the part of a seed that provides food for a developing plant embryo and fruit. More auxin can boost grain size and stimulate fruit enlargement. If there is insufficient auxin, the crop produced will be smaller, and the fruit will not be commercially viable.

Liu has been working with strawberries because they are easier to study, but it applies to virtually all foods derived from flowers. This is another example of the design God built into the creation of life. When humans finally understand the design, it opens up a way to produce more food for a hungry world.

Reference: Research News from the National Science Foundation

September 9, 2022September 7, 2022

Invasive Species and Environmental Problems

It is interesting to hear skeptics blaming God for the existence of invasive plants and animals. There is no question that non-native species thrive in the United States. However, some species brought to this country have no natural predators to keep them in check. As a result, they cause crop damage, human health problems, and environmental damage. There are nearly 6,500 invasive species in America, and they cause more damage every year than all natural disasters combined. The stories of how they got here are interesting. Here are some examples:

NUTRIA – Also known as coypu or “swamp rats,” these South American rodents were brought to America by fur farmers in the 20th century.
BROWN GARDEN SNAIL – These mollusks were brought to California as food by French immigrants in the 1850s.
KUDZU – This Asian vine was brought to the U.S. as an ornamental plant in 1876, and farmers used it to feed livestock and reduce soil erosion. To make kudzu widely available to farmers, government agencies provided 85 million seedlings.
WILD BOAR – These animals were native to Eurasia and brought to the U.S. in the early 1900s for hunting. Early settlers in the 1500s introduced domestic pigs as a food source. Unfortunately, some escaped pigs mated with the boars resulting in the invasive species we have today.
LIONFISH – These beautiful fish with venomous spines are natives of the South Pacific and Indian oceans. Aquarium enthusiasts brought them to the U.S. between 1985 and 1992, but when released, they wipe out native fish populations.
DANDELION – Early European settlers brought these “weeds” to the U.S. for food and medicinal purposes.

These invasive species and others cause billions of dollars in economic damage annually. However, we should understand that not all non-native species are considered invasive. For example, corn and wheat are not native to the United States but were brought here as successful food crops.

In Genesis 9:3, God told Noah, “Everything that moves shall be food for you, just as I have given you green plants.” God has given us a wide variety of food sources designed to thrive in various ecological environments, but we must be good stewards of how we use and spread them.

Problems arise when people purposely or accidentally transport plants or animals to new locations where they become out of control. Without predators to control populations, they can throw an entire environment out of balance. Most of our environmental problems are human-caused, and invasive species of plants and animals are good examples.

Reference: Discover magazine for September/October 2022 (pages 34 – 41)

September 8, 2022September 7, 2022

Structural Color in Plants

When you see a peacock with brilliant green in its feathers, realize that it has no green feathers. Its feathers are actually brown, but God has used a clever optical trick to make them look green to us. We call it structural color. Likewise, many butterflies have bright blue spots on their wings, but there are no blue pigments in a butterfly’s wings.

Some plants produce fruits that look blue to us without having any blue pigment in the fruits. The only plants known to produce blue fruits in this way are Viburnum tinus and Lantana strigocamara. You will not get a blue stain if you crush their berries in your fingers. On the other hand, if you crush a common blueberry, its blue pigments will stain your fingers.

When you see a blue pigment, it is blue because it absorbs all other colors while reflecting blue. Structural color uses microscopic pyramid-like structures that manipulate the light. Since blue light has higher energy than other colors, it escapes the structure. Structural color requires no pigments, and you might call it an optical illusion.

Color is essential in the natural world. For example, animals with color vision use colors to camouflage, attract others, or discern whether something is good to eat. The problem with using pigments to produce color is that the chemistry to get a particular color is quite complex, but structural color does not involve any chemistry.

People have used chemicals to produce the colors we see in our fabrics, but some colors can be costly and time-consuming to produce. God has created a chemical-free method to produce much of the beauty we see in the world around us. Beauty in structural color gives evidence of a wise Creator.

Reference: National Science Foundation Research News