John N. Clayton Archives

April 21, 2020April 20, 2020

Water Cycle and Life

Many passages in the Bible seem to be of little significance, yet they are incredibly important. Here is one of them about the water cycle.

“All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again.” Ecclesiastes 1:7.

It is believed that Solomon wrote those words in 977 BC. What did people understand about the hydrologic cycle, or water cycle, at that time? The answer, of course, is “very little.” Meteorologist Dr. Joseph Scott Greeson says about this passage, “Without using modern words – like ‘evaporation,’ ‘condensation,’ and ‘precipitation,’ this passage describes the results of those processes in these words… My twentieth-century scientific mind recognized that the writer of that passage must have had quite an understanding of the interaction between water on earth and water in the sky.”

There is a delicate balance of processes in the hydrologic cycle that allow us to have water even far from a lake or ocean. Many years ago, I had a friend who was involved in seeding clouds with silver iodide to stimulate them to produce rain. I knew that he was involved in this project and that he had many stories about how the seeding of clouds worked. I also knew he got out of that business, and I asked him why? His response was, “We were doing okay in getting rain started, but we were doing very poorly in knowing how to stop it.”

Global warming is bringing water to places that previously were deserts. We know that temperature controls how much water is lifted into the air by evaporation. A one-inch rainfall over a square mile of land involves the lifting of 72,483.84 tons of water. (Do the math. Water is 62.4 lbs per cubic foot. An inch is 1/12th of a foot, so the volume of water in a square mile of land would be 5280 feet/mile x 5280 x 1/12th or 2,323,200 cubic feet.) How many square miles of land receive an inch of rain in a typical spring storm? This is the start of the water cycle.

As the water flows into streams and rivers, it nourishes everything in its path, ultimately returning to the sea from which it evaporated. The system that powers the hydrologic cycle is massive, and all of life depends on it. God used the water cycle to impress upon Job that he “darkens counsel with words without knowledge” (Job 38:2). After talking about the creation, God takes the hydrologic cycle as the first evidence of His knowledge, design, and power. “Who provides a channel for the torrents of rain and a path for the storm to water a land where no man lives, a desert with no one in it to satisfy a desolate wasteland and make it sprout with grass. Does the rain have a father? Who fathers the drops of dew…” (See verses 22-30).

Be thankful for the rain that brings life to us and for the water cycle that God designed so that, if properly managed, we all have enough to drink and to grow our food.

— John N. Clayton ©

Greeson quote from Scientists Who Believe page 64, Moody Press ISBN 0-8024-7634-1.

April 20, 2020April 15, 2020

Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Ten Years Later

On April 20 of 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill began. By the time technicians could bring it under control, it had dumped 134,000,000 gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico over 87 days. Ten years after this disaster, we still see the effects in ways that no one would have expected. The entire issue of National Wildlife for February-March 2020 was devoted to new data on the long-range damage.

There is far more involved in this disaster than the removal of the obvious symptoms of the spill. Even on a commercial level, the damage is more than most people realize. Oyster production from Apalachicola to Galveston has collapsed. Louisiana has lost well over 50 million dollars in oyster harvest revenue. Scientists studying the oyster beds tell us that 8.3 billion oysters died as a result of the spill. A single oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day. When explorers came to the Gulf of Mexico between 1600 and 1800, they described the oyster beds as “the Great Barrier Reef of the Americas,” nearly 100 miles long and several miles deep. Oyster shells are used to make mortar, build roadbeds, and to supplement chicken feed. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill has changed all of that.

The massive killing of wildlife has been well-publicized with pathetic pictures still showing up on the web. Does the killing of 30,000 loggerhead turtles, 17% of the Bryde’s whales, 800,000 coastal birds, a vast number of dolphins who are still having lung problems, and 20% of all corals in the area have any significance for those of us living far from the Gulf of Mexico? Most of us eat shrimp, crabs, lobsters, and fish. Much of the fishing industry in the Gulf has gone out of business, and those still existing are hard-pressed to find enough seafood to make a living. That results in higher prices and the risk of pollution effects on what we eat.

So why are we reminding our readers of the consequences of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill? Skeptics criticize any notion of God creating the Earth by saying that if there is a God, He didn’t do a very good job. Humans are threatened with shortages of food and water. In my mail yesterday, I received 16 different requests from organizations wanting financial help in feeding and helping hungry children and starving families. (By the way, all of them were faith-based). Why are there shortages? Human greed, selfishness, ignorance, desire for power, and refusal to live as God told us to has resulted in destructive wars, mismanagement of resources, waste of incredible proportions, and foolish and irresponsible management of resources.

When God created the Earth, He provided for an abundance of food and water. God also told us how to live. Read Matthew 25:34-40 and see how Christ portrayed Christian living. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is just one human failure, but look at what it has done to innocent humans. We are just beginning to understand the biological damage and effects. We cannot blame God for what humans have done. God has given us all we need and the means of taking care of it. Christians must lead the way in the responsible use of God’s gifts.

April 18, 2020January 4, 2023

Mesozoic Era Small Animals

What most people know about the dinosaurs is what they have seen in a movie or a museum. The emphasis is always on the massive size of these ancient animals. Those of us with a background in paleontology are more interested in the ecosystem in which they lived. The Mesozoic era was a time when the Earth was very different from what it is today. It appears that the oxygen content of the atmosphere was higher, and the temperature was much warmer. The plants and animals living at that time enjoyed a balanced ecosystem that left a legacy that has allowed us to live comfortably on this planet.

The natural resources humans have depended on for our entire history were produced during the Mesozoic era. These include coal, oil, and a wide variety of soils that allow our modern plants to exist. From a biblical standpoint, this was a part of Genesis 1:1 when God prepared the Earth for what was to follow. For more on this, see “God’s Revelation in His Rocks and His Word” on our doesgodexist.org website. (You can purchase printed copies HERE.)

What many people don’t realize is that while the giant dinosaurs were an essential part of the Mesozoic era ecosystem, small creatures were of equal importance. Insects were a significant part of the system, and fossil remains of all kinds of arthropods are abundant in the fossil record. As we all know, insects can reproduce in destructive numbers. Just as there were meat-eating dinosaurs to keep the plant-eaters from destroying all the vegetation, there were insect-eaters to control the insect populations. We have insect swarms like the locusts that are causing massive problems in Africa today because humans are removing the natural controllers of insect populations.

The recent discovery of a creature named Oculudentavis khaungraae has shown us a dinosaur the size of a bee hummingbird, the smallest known modern bird. This dinosaur’s skull was half an inch from front to back, and it had a mouth full of teeth. It was ideally suited for eating insects of all kinds and sizes and was undoubtedly a vital part of the ecosystem during the Mesozoic era of the dinosaurs. God has always used one existence to prepare for another, and the preparation of the early Earth for humans was a long and highly complex process.

Our existence on Earth is also a preparation for a far better one. Continuing to study God’s creation and His Word helps us prepare for that time when we will exist outside of space-time. Read about it in Revelation 22:1–5.

Reference: Science News April 11, 2020, page 4.

April 17, 2020April 14, 2020

Understanding Dark Matter and God

One of the things that frequently happens when scientists admit they don’t understand something is that pseudoscience and pseudo-religion crackpots go wild with completely impossible claims. The UFO craze is an example. Many people attributed poorly understood natural phenomena to alien visitation. Virtually all UFO claims have been answered and shown to be natural phenomena or manufactured hoaxes. A more difficult question involves understanding dark matter.

Dark matter and dark energy pose a huge challenge to cosmologists and astronomers. Galaxies are spinning masses of billions of stars orbiting a core, which at least most of the time is a black hole. The problem is that the spin of the system is so rapid that the force of gravity is not enough to keep galaxies from flying apart. Scientists believe that there is undetectable mass in the galactic systems to hold them together. They call that missing mass “dark matter.”

There is a similar problem in the motion of galaxies through space. Various experiments have shown clearly that the cosmos is being accelerated at between 72 and 76 (Km/s)/Mpc. The acceleration of the cosmos involves energy far greater than anything science has seen in any thermonuclear reaction to date. If we view the cosmos as embedded in spacetime, then some energy is accelerating spacetime, but we cannot detect what that energy is or how it is generated.

In past centuries and many cultures, this would have been explained by simply saying,” God is doing (or has done) it.” We call that “God of the Gaps.” Atheists quickly point out that when science finds an explanation, that “God of the Gaps” is dead. Our studies of quarks, hadrons, WIMPS, and relativity are offering suggestions that may eventually give an understanding to fill the gap. Understanding dark matter is not a small gap because dark matter makes up 26.8% of the universe, and dark energy makes up 68.3%. That means that the matter we can detect makes up only 4.9% of the universe’s total composition.

There are some critical lessons in this. We need to realize that creating the cosmos is not a simple matter. Just creating space, time, and the substance to make the cosmos is a highly complex process. However, the process is not God. God has used His massive intelligence and design to produce something we are just now beginning to appreciate. When science finds a way of understanding dark matter and dark energy, it will only tell us more about God’s wisdom, power, and intelligence. We are beginning to understand the meaning of Proverbs 8, where wisdom speaks.

For a current discussion of this challenging area of study, see “Is the Big Bang in Crisis” by Dan Hooper in the May issue of Astronomy magazine pages 21-29, or at astronomy.com.

April 16, 2020April 13, 2020

Chimpanzees and Humans

Books and articles have been published indicating that chimpanzees and humans share about 98.7% of the same genes. So some have suggested that chimpanzees should be considered 98.7% human and have all the rights that humans enjoy. There have been lawsuits to remove chimps from zoos or restrictive areas so they can express their “humanness.”

Objective observers who study chimp behavior in detail do not see chimps as human. The Bible makes it clear that only humans are created in the image of God. Being in God’s image leads to attributes that are unique to humans. Those include not only creative ability such as in art and music, but they also include the way we treat one another. In Galatians 3:28, Paul makes it clear that as Christians, there is no distinction between one human and another. Paul specifically includes “no male nor female” in his list of who are equals. The whole notion of marriage (Genesis 2:24) and the role of women (Proverbs 31:10-31) esteem and protects women.

Chimpanzees and humans are not alike. In his book The Human Swarm, Dr. Mark Moffett describes the real life of female chimpanzees. When female chimps reach sexual maturity, they leave their group never to return. Female chimps are beaten up or ignored by males except when they are in heat, and then sex is forced upon them. Female chimps do not befriend each other. They give birth in a private, hidden place to avoid having their babies killed by other females. Male chimps have no role in parenting or protecting the mother and baby.

There is an adage said in jest that we often hear in the break room at the graduate center, “Make sure your data conforms to your conclusions.” It is easy for us to interpret animal behavior as human-like, especially comparing chimpanzees and humans. But we must recognize human uniqueness. We have heard the horror story of a pet chimp turning on and seriously injuring a human. You can remove the chimp from its fellow animals, but you cannot remove the animal behavior from the chimp. We are the only beings created in God’s image.

Reference: Skeptic Magazine, “The Misunderstood Art of Making Comparisons” Volume 25:1 2020

April 15, 2020April 15, 2020

Amazing Spring Timing

One of the things you hear people in our part of Michigan say is, “If you don’t like our weather, hang on for a few minutes, and it will change.” We have had a strange winter season. We had brutal temperatures, wind, and snow in early December, leading all of us to think it was going to be a terrible winter. As we got near the holidays, the weather became unseasonably warm. We waited anxiously for another blizzard like the ones we usually have after a warm spell in winter. It never happened. Now we see the amazing spring timing.

It was so warm in the winter that I worried about the glad bulbs I had dug up. I put them in buckets covered with moist newspaper and stored them in the garage for spring replanting. I was afraid they would leaf-out responding to temperature, but they seemed to be okay and had not budded out at all. The weather did turn cold, but not the sub-zero stuff we usually have. Now we are in mid-April and, even though it snowed two days ago (and is snowing again today), winter is essentially over, and I used my snowblower only once.

So now I just got the glad bulbs out of the bucket in the garage. They have been in an insulated, dark garage, covered with a foot of newspapers since I dug them up in October. Every single bulb has a green shoot coming out. They are ready to be planted. How did they know it was time? The temperature in the garage didn’t change. No sunlight got into the bucket.

I have always assumed that my daffodils, which are blooming like crazy, used the presence of direct sunlight and perhaps temperature to know when to come up and prepare to boom. The glads had none of those indicators available to them. I am not suggesting that the amazing spring timing is some kind of mystic intelligence that tells the glads it is time to go. Whether it is ultraviolet light or infrared that signals the glads, it is a highly well-designed system.

Amazing spring timing is fascinating. The hummingbirds seem to know when to come north. The sandhill cranes are circling overhead as they fly ahead of the weather systems that might otherwise threaten them. The baby deer are around in such numbers that no amount of predation threatens to wipe out the deer population. That is thanks to the synchronized births that seem to take place in almost all wild ungulates.

When God decided to challenge Job, He used the things that show design wisdom in His creation to convict Job of his ignorance. Job 38:39- 41:34 finds God challenging Job to look around and see God’s wisdom and power at work. There is no better time to see that than in the amazing spring timing. Let us all step away from the ills of humanity and look at what God has done.

April 14, 2020April 13, 2020

Pandemic Refugees in 2020

What are you doing during this time of being forced to stay in your dwelling alone, maintaining social distancing? Do you feel like we are pandemic refugees?

Thanks to technology, there are many options available. We all have time to talk on the phone to family and friends. There are books to read, puzzles to do, clean up projects to take care of, and time to check on people we can help. Checking on folks by phone is easy and available to all of us. We can even send needed items using our credit card and the shipping that most suppliers provide. As the weather gets warmer, we can do outside projects that we have long neglected.

The volume of emails we receive has gone up, and our various websites such as doesgodexist.today, doesgodexist.tv, and facebook.com/evidence4god have seen an increase in usage. Our children’s website grandpajohn.club, has been used by some to provide some teaching to their children.

It is disturbing that a large percentage of our population has used this time to immerse themselves in various kinds of drugs. According to The Week (April 17, 2020, page 16) alcohol sales are up 55% with online sales up 243%. Cannabis stores report their sales are up 130%. Our culture has moved away from faith and belief in God and turned to “Survival of the fittest.” From that perspective, this whole experience is a disaster and the only answer is to use drugs to numb your mind to what you can’t control. For those with faith in God and a belief in the teachings of Jesus Christ, this is a time full of unique opportunities to serve others. It is an opportunity to become part of a solution to a global problem.

For Christians, instead of feeling like pandemic refugees, we have the assurance of God’s word. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth be moved and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea … the Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge.” (Psalms 46:1-2, 7).

April 13, 2020April 12, 2020

Elephant Wakes and Anthropomorphism

One of the main sticking points for those who say that we are just highly evolved animals is the capacity of humans to display spiritual characteristics. Humans show creativity in our ability to create art and music, to feel guilt, to be sympathetic, to have a concept of self, and to worship. Those who suggest we are just animals with big brains and no unique qualities have tried for over 100 years to find examples of “human behavior” in the animal kingdom. Some of those attempts have been front-page stories such as the reports of Koko, the gorilla. The trainer claimed that Koko created works of art and adopted a cat as a pet, but the bias of Koko’s trainer turned out to be the cause of the behavior. Most researchers admit that there was a great deal of anthropomorphism involved in the stories about Koko, and the same goes for elephant wakes.

Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human characteristics or behavior to an animal. Recently the Washington Post and The Week have published articles about elephants grieving and holding wakes or “religious services” when one of their kind dies. As you read the reports, you see strong suggestions that the reporters are engaging in anthropomorphism to support their claims of elephant wakes.

One report tells of seeing elephants touching corpses with their trunks and trying to lift them. It said they were “performing dominance behaviors typically used to protect sought after resources such as plentiful fruit trees or shady groves.” The reports also tell of members of five different elephant families interacting with a corpse for three weeks. There is also mention of a ten-year-old elephant walking away from her mother’s body with liquid streaming from her temporal glands indicating “great stress.” To suggest that these behaviors are religious ceremonies or elephant wakes seems to be the least likely explanation.

Elephants are herd animals. The matriarch is the leader of the herd, and when that leader dies, a power struggle takes place among the other females. This competition involves great stress, but it is a long way from a religious service. There is no evidence of elephants comprehending death. Some try to lift the corpse to its feet, demonstrating a lack of understanding of death. No elephant has attempted a burial, memorial, or preservation.

Humans are created in the image of God. We not only grieve, but we engage in behavior that indicates a belief that the departed is in a better existence. We honor our dead, and we continue to honor their memory. This is a spiritual awareness that is unique to humans. The value of human life cannot be denigrated by trying to find animal behavior with the same cause and effect.

Reference: The Week, March 13, 2020, page 19.

April 11, 2020April 10, 2020

Doormaker Ants and Sealed Doorways

Ant behavior is a remarkable teacher. It teaches us God’s wisdom shown in all of His creatures, even down to the smallest and weakest. We see that wisdom in doormaker ants and sealed doorways.

The Bible refers to ants as models that humans would do well to imitate. In Proverbs 6:6-8 and 30:25, we read, “Go to the ant, consider its ways and be wise. It has no commander. No overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest… Ants are creatures of little strength, yet they store up their food in the summer.”

We have mentioned before that various kinds of ants are programmed genetically to do things that they don’t think out but which show thinking and care. The species Stenamma alas is another example of a behavior that speaks of God’s design. These doormaker ants and sealed doorways show wisdom of design.

These ants build their colony so that the entrance is surrounded by hard material. The entrance is circular, and one ant is posted there with a nearby pebble that has been carefully chosen to fit the entrance exactly. The pebble is the same color and texture as the surroundings. When an enemy approaches, the guard ant rolls the pebble into the opening. The fit is so tight that enemies cannot dislodge it even if they find the opening. You can see why the scientists who study these ants call them doormaker ants.

This reminds us of the tombs of the Egyptian kings and people of Jesus day who made or selected large stones to carefully fit the entrance to their places of burial. Jesus was buried in such a tomb. Rolling away the stone from the entrance to the tomb of Jesus was not a simple task. (See Matthew 28:2.) It involved a violent earthquake and an angel. Most importantly, it involved the power of God over death. Unlike doormaker ants and sealed doorways, the stone was not moved to let Jesus out but to let others in to see that his body was gone.

Information about doormaker ants in Skeptic Magazine, Volume 25 # 1 2020 page 8.

April 9, 2020April 8, 2020

God’s Seasons of Hope

We have mentioned before that God did not create the coronavirus that is causing so much pain to people worldwide. In this devastating epidemic, many of us have lost someone close to us. No one is minimizing the damage of COVID-19, but human greed and mismanagement have been the primary cause of it, not God. However, God’s seasons of hope can bring us through times like this.

One blessing that we should all be thankful for is the time of year when this pandemic has struck. It is now April. Geese are flying overhead. My daffodils are ready to bloom. A baby deer crossed my driveway this morning. The yard is greening up, and I will be outside rotor-tilling the garden and spreading fertilizer later this week. Experts say that viruses don’t like the ultraviolet light and high temperatures of the Sun, and the forecast is for clear skies and rising temperatures.

When Paul was teaching in Iconium (Acts 14), he encouraged his listeners: “Turn from these vanities to the living God who made heaven, and earth, and the sea and all the things that are in them. In the past God allowed all nations to walk in their town ways, but he did not leave himself without a witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.” (Verses 15-18).

The rain has come and melted the last of the snow. There is plenty of food, and congregations who operate food banks are meeting the needs of people in their areas. Before long, there will be strawberries, asparagus, greens, and mushrooms available outside our doors. We can once again fill our hearts with food and gladness.

Let us find encouragement in Paul’s words as we enjoy God’s seasons of hope and look forward to a future free from this virus threat.