Tag: Roland Earnst

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Genetically Modified Human Embryos

Genetically Modified Human Embryos
Shoukhrat Mitalipov

Chinese scientists have conducted at least three experiments to create genetically modified human embryos. Now, MIT Technology Review reports that a team of scientists in the United States has edited the DNA of human embryos. The experiment was performed at Oregon Health and Science University, a public university in Portland, under the leadership of Shoukhrat Mitalipov. It is apparently the first time this has been done in the United States, and it involved a greater number of embryos than the Chinese experiments.

Mitalipov, who was born in the former Soviet Union and received his Ph.D. in Moscow, came to the U.S. because there was a lack of funding for genetic experimentation in his home country. Since coming to the U.S. he has cloned monkeys and human embryos. This is the first time for editing the DNA of a human embryo.

The scientists used a gene-editing tool called CRISPR, which we have reported on before. The goal of the experiment is supposed to be to find a way to correct genetic defects in humans. The sperm used to fertilize the embryos came from a man with a genetic defect. The embryos were destroyed after a few days because in the United States it is illegal to allow genetically modified human embryos to develop into full-term babies.

In February the U.S. National Academy of Sciences gave support for creating gene-edited babies if the purpose is the elimination of serious genetic diseases. Genetically modified human embryos can develop into gene-modified humans who will pass on the genetic changes to their offspring. This may offer hope for eliminating genetic defects. However, it also has implications for the nightmare scenarios of a science-fiction movie. When humans start to play God by manipulating the DNA of our children, what if they make a disastrous mistake? The United States Intelligence Agency listed CRISPR as a potential “weapon of mass destruction.”

Beyond the implications of Frankenstein-like creatures, there is the aspect of “designer children.” DNA could potentially be edited to select the sex, physical features, and even intelligence of an unborn child. So far that is illegal in the United States, but not in other countries. One of the problems the Chinese experimenters encountered is called “mosaicism,” in which the change to the DNA is not taken on by all of the cells. The implications of a person with multiple DNA codes in different cells is not fully understood. Other CRISPR errors referred to as “off target” effects could result in serious genetic defects. Mitalipov’s team claims to have those problems under control.

The report from this U.S. experiment should be published soon, and it will certainly be in the news. Christians should be concerned about where this is leading. Do humans have the right to play God with our DNA? What could be the result of “off target” mistakes? What about the ethics of creating human embryos for experimentation and then destroying them? Do the possible breakthroughs in the elimination of genetic diseases outweigh the dangers? What about the moral cost to our society as we go down this road?

One thing you can be sure of is that humans will continue to create genetically modified human embryos. If it doesn’t happen in the United States, it will happen in other countries. You can also be sure that there will be some scientists who will do so with less than pure motives. In Mary Shelley’s classic book telling about a scientist’s desire to create a new species, Victor Frankenstein said, “A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs.” The power to become a god creating new species of humans can overpower pure motives as it did with Victor Frankenstein. The outcome could be even more tragic than in the novel.

It’s time to consider the many times the Bible tells of the value of every human being and the love God has for us. Many people have become concerned about GMO’s (Genetically Modified Organisms) in food. How much more should we be concerned about Genetically Modified Humans?
–Roland Earnst © 2017

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Government and Christianity

Government and Christianity
Government and Christianity have not always been in harmony. Christianity began under the rule of the Roman government, which abused human rights and promoted immorality. Although persecuted, the Christian faith grew strong and brought many people to the realization that our real hope lies not in government, but in God. In spite of the oppression by the Roman government, the Apostle Paul instructed Christians to honor those in authority (Romans 13:1-6) and to pray for them (1 Timothy 2:1,2).

We have always pointed out that Christianity is not an American institution. When we argue for the validity of Christianity and attempt to provide scientific support for the existence of God, we do not bring American politics into the discussion. In spite of that, the Christian faith has played a vital role since the founding of this country and even before that.

God blessed the United States with a standard of living higher than the world had ever seen. We argue for the truth of Proverbs 14:34 which tells us, “Righteousness exalts a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.” We sing “God Bless America” as a hymn to ask God’s continued blessing on our nation. We place “In God We Trust” on our money. But today America seems determined to reject God and His teachings.

Righteousness in our government seems to be eroding and several groups have been formed to fight against that trend. One of those groups is Judicial Watch (www.JudicialWatch.org). This organization seeks to expose corruption in the American government and in organizations that have government connections. It is bipartisan in its efforts exposing both Republican and Democrat corruptions.

Judicial Watch publishes a magazine, and in their July issue, they have a report of abuses in the Veteran’s Administration. Those who are interested or active in American politics may find this a useful resource. Paul wrote that “the one in authority is God’s servant for your good” (Romans 13:4). Christians can serve to remind those in authority of their sacred duty. Government and Christianity can work together to benefit all Americans as well as those in other countries.
–John N. Clayton and Roland Earnst

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Scientists and God: A Different View

Scientists and God
J. B. S. Haldane in 1914

In each issue of our printed publication, we have a feature called Scientists and God, in which we quote from a leading scientist who is also a believer in God. Today I would like to do something a little different. I want to quote the words of a leading scientist who was not a believer.

J. B. S. Haldane (1892–1964) was a British geneticist and evolutionary biologist. He was also an outspoken atheist and a Marxist. Because of the political controversy caused by his Marxist ideology, he left England in 1956 and spent the remainder of his life in India.

Haldane was a brilliant man who made contributions in the areas of genetics, evolutionary biology, and mathematics. In many ways, he was ahead of his time. He proposed the central ideas of in vitro fertilization. He was the first to suggest human cloning. In fact, he coined the use of the term “clone” for that purpose. He also helped to create the science of population genetics.

Haldane proposed correctly that sickle-cell disease gives immunity to malaria. He prepared gene maps for color-blindness and hemophilia. Nobel Prize winning biologist Peter Medawar called Haldane “the cleverest man I ever knew.”

In 1929, Haldane introduced the “Primordial Soup Theory,” which said that life began on the early Earth in a chemical soup where the elements of life came together. That theory became the leading concept of abiogenesis–the idea of life coming from non-living matter by a natural process. Haldane’s theory led to the famous Miller-Urey experiment in 1952. In that experiment, Stanley Miller created a sealed container with the chemicals thought to have been part of the early atmosphere of Earth. He subjected the chemicals to an electric spark and collected some amino acids which are the building blocks of proteins. The news media went wild over “creating life in the laboratory,” but that was an example of media exaggeration–or as it would be called today “fake news.”

Incidentally, science has since shown that the Miller-Urey experiment did not emulate the conditions or chemicals of the early Earth and therefore is not a valid demonstration of the first step in abiogenesis. However, it is still shown to students in school textbooks because science has not produced anything better, and it is easy to understand. Today’s attempts at abiogenesis are far more complex, proving that it takes great intelligence and carefully controlled lab conditions to produce even the basic building blocks of life. In other words, it takes intelligence to create life, which has been our message for many years.

Haldane wrote numerous books presenting his ideas and defending Darwinism. In 1949 he debated British ornithologist Douglas Dewar on the topic “Is Evolution a Myth?” In that debate, Haldane said that evolution would not be capable of producing “various mechanisms, such as the wheel and magnet, which would be useless till fairly perfect.” In other words, if those mechanisms could be found in living organisms it would be an indication that evolution did not create those organisms.

Since that debate, we have found magnets in anaerobic bacteria which are considered to be the most “primitive” forms of life. The sightless, single-celled magnetotactic bacteria consume iron and produce magnets which they use to guide them to anaerobic areas that are safe for them to live. The magnets they produce are better for some scientific purposes than what humans can produce in the laboratory. Turtles, birds, and other more advanced animals also use magnets for navigation. Wheels can also be found in living organisms. As Janine M. Benyus (another Darwinist) wrote in her book titled Biomimicry, “Even the wheel, which we always took to be a uniquely human creation, has been found in the tiny rotary motor that propels the flagellum of the world’s most ancient bacteria.”

So wheels and magnets are found in the most “primitive” and “ancient” of single-celled bacteria. If that 1949 debate were taking place today, I doubt if J. B. S. Haldane would say that those mechanisms could disprove evolution. On the subject of Scientists and God, there are many views. Our view is that those mechanisms found in bacteria indicate an intelligent Creator who understood magnets and wheels long before humans did.
–Roland Earnst © 2017

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Epicurus on Death and Fear

Epicurus on Death and Fear
About 2300 years ago in ancient Greece there lived a man named Epicurus. He spent his time thinking about things and taught others about the things he was thinking. One of the things Epicurus thought about was death. That’s not unusual. There has never been a living human being who has not thought about death at one time or another. But Epicurus was a professional thinker (also known as a philosopher), so his thoughts were influential. What do we hear from Epicurus on death and fear? In his thinking, he concluded that death was the end of body and soul. When we die, we just cease to exist and therefore, he said, death should not be feared.

Epicurus died in 270 B.C. at the age of 72 in great pain because of kidney stones. However, he wrote a letter in which he said it was, “a happy day to me, which is also the last day of my life.” Since Epicurean philosophy says that death is nothing to be feared, why do people still fear death? Perhaps it’s because most people think that Epicurus was wrong.

What is the source of the greatest joy and fulfillment in life? Isn’t it love? The relationships we have with others bring us happiness and give us purpose as well as joy. Loving and being loved by family and friends is the greatest of human experiences. God never intended for us to be alone. (See Genesis 2:18.) Being rejected by those we love is the source of the greatest pain. Interestingly, Epicurus believed that a happy life is one in which friends surround us. We know that nothing makes us as sad as the loss of those we love. Death is the most permanent form of separation and loss. Death steals away those we love one-by-one if we manage to live long enough. Death gives us much to fear, and then finally death comes to take us.

If Epicurus is right, then death is the end of love. If there is no existence beyond the grave, there is no love. If you believe that death is the end of existence, seeing a loved one dying is the most fearful and terrible experience in life. But what if death is not the end? What if love goes on? Genesis tells us that death was not part of God’s original plan for humans. Death is a consequence of human sin. Jesus wept at the tomb of his friend Lazarus out of sympathy for Mary and Martha. He must also have been weeping over what sin had done to the human race. Grief and anger over the mess brought on by human disobedience touched the emotions of the human Jesus.

But Jesus was more than human. He is also God. He had the power to bring Lazarus back from the grave and restore him to the sisters who loved him. But that resurrection was only temporary. Lazarus, as well as his sisters, died at some later time. Soon after raising Lazarus, Jesus conquered the power of death once and for all. His death brought both fear and grief to those who loved him. But as Timothy Keller wrote in Making Sense of God, “…the darkness of death swallowed Jesus, he entered it, but then he blew a hole out of the back of it.” The pain of those who wept was turned to joy as Jesus was alive again. When Jesus conquered death, he brought not only joy but also hope. Death is not the end of love and relationships. Love goes on.

So what can we conclude about Epicurus on death and fear? Epicurus was right when he said that death should not be feared, but he had the wrong reason. For those who accept the gift offered by Jesus Christ, death is the entryway to eternal life and a love relationship with the One who IS love (1 John 4:8).
–Roland Earnst © 2017

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270-Degree Triangle and God

Looking for a 270-Degree Triangle
Everyone knows that if you add the three angles of a triangle, the total equals 180 degrees. So how can you have a 270-degree triangle? This question can be applied to the much tougher challenge of understanding what God is.

Many of the struggles people have in understanding God are rooted in our inability to understand how God functions and what is the nature of God. Questions we hear are like: “What race is God?” “What sex is God?” “How can God hear the prayers of many different people in many different places all at once?” “Who created God?” “Why does God allow awful things to happen?” These questions are a reflection of our inability to understand God’s nature.

The Bible gives us many pictures of God’s nature. So what does the Bible say God is like? All of the biblical descriptions portray God as a being who exists outside of time and space. Since God is not limited by the dimensions that restrict us, then the rules that are inviolable in our dimensions create no barriers for God.

To illustrate, I suggest that you take a flat sheet of paper and draw a triangle that has three right angles of 90 degrees for a 270-degree triangle. You may reply, “It is not possible. Triangles have 180 degrees. Don’t you know the rules of Euclidian geometry?” I then suggest that you visualize this. On a globe of the Earth, start at the North Pole and draw a line down the Prime Meridian to the Equator. Then to make the first 90° angle, go west along the Equator to 90° west longitude. From that point make a second 90° angle by going straight north to the North Pole. That line will be perpendicular to the first line creating a third 90° angle. By changing from the two-dimensional paper to the three-dimensional globe, the impossible becomes possible.

Let’s apply that to our understanding of God. How do we, stuck here in our limited dimensions, have the power to comprehend God who is not limited to our dimensions? The answer is, of course, that we cannot! To answer the most profound questions about God, we have to be willing to enlarge our understanding of the nature of God. We must accept the fact that God is not limited to our dimensions. When we do that, we realize that the questions we asked earlier are meaningless. They come from the fact that we cannot see all of the dimensions of God’s existence. A 270-degree triangle is possible when it is not limited to two dimensions. For a dimensionless God, all limitations are gone.

For more on this see “A Help in Understanding What God Is.”
–John N. Clayton and Roland Earnst © 2017

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Galactic Collision Is Coming!

Andromeda Galaxy on Galactic Collision Course
Andromeda Galaxy

A skeptic remarked to me, “If a wise God created the universe, it would have been designed better. Our Milky Way galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy are on a galactic collision course. They are going to smash into each other and tear each other apart. That’s the end of life on Earth. You’re God must not be very smart.” What could I say? Yes, it’s true that astronomers have determined that there will be a galactic collision of the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies resulting in the destruction of both. But there is more to the story.

Recently I read an article about scientists who are studying two black holes that appear to be orbiting each other 750 million light-years from Earth. The scientists are watching them to see what will happen when two black holes collide as they spin into each other. The reason for the scientists’ curiosity is they want to know what will happen when the black holes in the center of the Milky Way and Andromeda come together. (It seems that most galaxies have black holes in their center.) Of course, the center of the galaxies will not meet until long after the outer spirals have destroyed each other, and Earth as well. Still, the scientists want to know what will happen when black holes collide. Will they swallow each other and become a super-super-massive black hole? Will they disappear? Who knows?

The scientists have been watching those distant orbiting black holes for about 12 years now. How much longer will they have to wait to find the answer? They estimate that those black holes orbit each other every 24,000 years. How many orbits will it take for them to converge in a catastrophic explosion of energy? At this point, it’s anyone’s guess. The bottom line is that it’s going to take a lot longer than 12 years, or even 12 hundred, or 12 thousand, or maybe even 12 million. The scientists working on the project will not be around to learn the answer.

Let’s get back to the expected Milky Way-Andromeda catastrophy. When will it happen? Oh, let’s say in a billion years or so. We have many more important things to worry about than the coming galactic train-wreck. So why was the skeptic saying that there can’t be an all-wise, loving, and powerful God because our two galaxies may be destroyed in a billion years? That’s a very weak excuse for not believing in God. The point is that God never intended for this universe and our planet to last forever. He even told us so. (See 2 Peter 3:10-12.) God had a specific plan in mind to give us a chance to learn to love and serve him and to grow toward becoming the people he called us to be. There is a much better universe coming. (You can read about it in Revelation 21.) There is no need to worry about a galactic collision. In the new universe: There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation 21:4).
–Roland Earnst © 2017

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A Quiet Neighborhood is a Good Neighborhood

Beyond the Quiet Neighborhood
At a June 7 meeting of the American Astronomical Society, Benjamin Hoscheit presented information gained from studying 120,000 galaxies. The study agreed with earlier findings that our Milky Way galaxy is located in the largest cosmic void that we can observe. When scientists look one billion light-years out into the universe, they find that the cosmic density becomes much greater. The conclusion they have reached is that the Milky Way is in a relatively open area of space about two billion light-years across. We live in a quiet neighborhood.

The computer image from the Millennium Simulation Project illustrates the dense filaments of dark matter stretching through space. Galaxies are mostly clumped along the filaments. The Milky Way resides in one of the voids between those strands. What are the implications of that? Galaxies tend to be in clusters, and our cluster is called the Local Group. A typical galaxy cluster will have 10,000 galaxies close together. (Close by cosmic standards.) The Local Group has only forty galaxies, and all of them are dwarf galaxies except the Milky Way and Andromeda which are medium-sized. If there were large galaxies close to us, their gravity could distort the spiral structure of the Milky Way making advanced life on Earth impossible.

The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy—the only kind of galaxy capable of supporting advanced life. Star formation drives the spiral motion. Star formation requires the infusion of gas and dust which the small galaxies provide. Clusters of galaxies reside inside superclusters. Our Local Group cluster is on the outer fringe of the Virgo supercluster. If it were near the center of Virgo, the massive clusters there would absorb the Local Group and make life impossible.

Also, our solar system is located in the best position within our galaxy at about two-thirds of the distance from the center. In the center of the Milky Way (and most galaxies), there is a massive black hole that would swallow our solar system if we were anywhere near it. If we were farther out in the spiral, the solar system would be subject to massive instability, again making life impossible.

Of course, Earth is also located in the solar habitable zone where we are not too close or too far from the Sun. One final thing to note is that in this cosmic void and the position in our galaxy, we are at the optimum location for observing all of the things I mentioned. We have an excellent view of the universe. We are in more than a quiet neighborhood. We are in the “Goldilocks Zone” where everything is “just right.”

You could say that we got lucky and all of these things, and many others, are merely freak accidents. We believe that God had a reason for putting us where we are, and has given us a purpose for being here.
–Roland Earnst © 2017

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Skeptic Challenges Answered

Skeptic Challenges
DOES GOD EXIST? maintains a Facebook page with daily postings. We often get skeptic challenges and questions from those who are seeking for answers. We want to share the following conversation from Facebook. The article we posted was about the design of kidneys. The article ended like this:
…Science has not created a perfect kidney machine to replace the Original Equipment Manufacturer’s model in spite of years of research and the work of our brightest medical and engineering minds. We think this is a design that’s more than dandy–it’s magnificent.

SKEPTIC 1- creation of god ??? please stop kidding yourself ..

DGE?- Does the idea that there might be a Creator disturb you?

SKEPTIC 1- the idea there might be a creator doesn’t disturb me at all .. we are probably the creation of some alien form. What is disturbing me is the amount of lies religions are built on … you don’t actually think god created us do you? …and if you do, tell me your version of how it possibly happened

DGE?- You seem to believe that we were created by some “alien form.” What evidence do you have of that? What are the “lies religions are built on?” I don’t have my own personal version of how God created us. It’s in the Bible.

SKEPTIC 1- Why would i read the biggest lie ever written ??? Imo you are the one with a lot to learn if you believe all that (….)

DGE?- How can you say the Bible is “the biggest lie ever written” when you have never read it. Who told you what to believe?

SKEPTIC 1- I don’t believe we have been created by an alien species but I think that this theory is far more plausible than a man made god created to control people … He didn’t give us the ability to learn .. Evolution did … Science is proving everyday that god doesn’t exist yet we still have people who believes these lies … You’re free to believe in what ever suits you.

DGE?- Science is not proving that God doesn’t exist. It’s really difficult to prove that anything DOESN’T exist. Just because you have never empirically verified something does not mean that it doesn’t exist. We can’t see, touch, taste, smell, or hear God directly, but that does not mean that God doesn’t exist. You could say the same things about love, but you can see the evidence of love in people’s lives and in the things that it causes. So also you can see the evidence of God in people’s lives and in the things he has created.

BELIEVER 1- Really it takes more faith to believe this all just happened than to believe a Great God designed us! Nothing comes from nothing!!!

SKEPTIC 2- some supernatural sky daddy made everything is a lot more fantastic than the Big Bang and evolution which is absolute certain. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

DGE?- If your concept of the God you don’t believe in is “some supernatural sky daddy” then I have to agree with you. I don’t believe in that kind of God either. The Big Bang is evidence of a beginning. The Bible has said that there was a beginning ever since Genesis 1:1. From Aristotle to the 20th century (Over 2000 years) science said that the universe was eternal. Scientists had to reluctantly accept the fact that there was a beginning when the evidence became overwhelming in 1965 with the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation. Scientists finally had to recognize that the Bible was right–there was a beginning. By the way, “Big Bang” was a derogatory name coined by a scientist (Fred Hoyle) who was critical of the idea of a beginning of the universe. You say, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” To claim that the universe just came into being out of nothing with no Creator and that non-living matter turned into complex life without any intelligent guidance are extraordinary claims. Where is your extraordinary evidence?

SKEPTIC 2- 1) The universe *as we know it* had a beginning. It could have existed in another state. We just don’t know. 2) I simply don’t believe the claim that the universe is a “creation” by a “creator.” If a creator is claimed, that creator must be proven. That last bit is shifting the burden of proof. It equates to “prove there is no god.” It is intellectually dishonest to shift the burden of proof to the negative. The positive claim bears it.

DGE?- You say that 1) the universe could have existed in another state before the Big Bang. Where do you suppose that imaginary universe would have come from? Don’t try to suggest that the universe is cyclical. The present universe is not going to collapse on itself and start over with another Big Bang because science shows that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. It will never collapse and re-bang. Secondly, you say that 2) there is no creator because you don’t believe in a creator. I could say that there is a Creator because I do believe in a Creator. That doesn’t prove anything.

SKEPTIC 2- Also, -12 + 12 = 0. The total net energy of the universe is 0. Therefore, no creator is necessary.

DGE?- You have been reading too much of Lawrence Krauss and A Universe from Nothing. If you define nothing as an equal amount of positive and negative energy, you are not talking about nothing. You are talking about something. How about this equation, 0 + 0 = 0.

SKEPTIC 2- Evolution is a cornerstone of modern science. It is not a controversial subject, the evidence is overwhelming and from many different fields. To deny evolution is like saying the sky is orange or the earth is flat. People will just think your retarded.

DGE?- Evidence for limited evolution, especially within species, is obvious. Evidence for one kind of animal evolving into a completely different animal is sketchy to non-existent. New kinds of animals appear in the geologic record suddenly, by geologic times. There is no gradual unfolding as Darwin predicted. Consider the Cambrian Explosion.

BELIEVER 2- Only a Master Engineer such as God could have designed this handiwork. The Bible says, “I’m fearful and wonderfully made”! Modern Science can’t come up with a machine like the kidneys!

SKEPTIC 2- Science has and does… It’s called a kidney dialysis machine

DGE?- I know people who are on dialysis machines. Those machines are nothing like real kidneys. The don’t work on their own, and they are very large. Humans have never invented a device to do what the kidney does without attention, and that fits within the human body.

BELIEVER 3- The fact that you people are smart enough to have this discussion proves to me that there is a creator.

(This conversation was edited to correct grammatical and spelling errors, to clarify, and for brevity. You will find our daily Facebook postings at www.facebook.com/evidence4god.)
–Roland Earnst © 2017

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Skeptic Challenges Answered

Skeptic Challenges

DOES GOD EXIST? maintains a Facebook page with daily postings. We often get challenges and questions from atheists and skeptics or those who are seeking for answers. We want to share the following conversation from Facebook. The article we posted was about the way the tendons in the legs of various animals and birds are designed in a way that allows them to sleep while standing, hanging upside down, or perched on a branch. The article ended like this:

DGE?-…If a human falls asleep while standing up, it can be dangerous. It’s also very uncomfortable when we have to stand while we are sleepy. For some animals sleeping while standing comes naturally. It’s all a matter of design. Such a simple thing as the position in which we sleep is a reflection of the incredible design that is built into all living creatures.

SKEPTIC- Are you so willfully ignorant that you refuse to do any research?

DGE?- Please explain what you mean.

SKEPTIC- You talk about stuff like this like it’s some kind of universal mystery, but there’s already a scientific explanation

DGE?- If you read this again, you will not find any place where we said it’s a mystery. There are explanations for this and most of the other things that we have presented on this page. The few times when we present things which cannot be explained, it’s usually because science has not yet discovered the answer. What science does is to try to discover how God did it. I think that’s why God gave humans curiosity. Solving the “mysteries” makes life fun and challenging. The point we are making on this page is not that these things are mysterious. The point is that they show design and engineering–not merely random chance.

SKEPTIC- Science is not just a way to discover how your god did it. It’s a way to find out how, if, and why things work. Before you look for how Yahweh did it, the intellectually honest thing to do is to find out IF he did it.

DGE?- That’s a good point. Science does look for how things work–and why. The “why” leads us to the question, “Do the facts of how this works indicate that it could have happened by chance?” That leads to the question of, “Is it rational to think that this could have happened as a result of random accidents without any intelligent design or planning?” The more we see apparent design in the world around us, the more we realize that it takes more faith to believe all those “designs” happened by accident than to believe they had a Designer.

SKEPTIC- Prove it was designed. Provide evidence to back up your assertions

DGE?- You say I should prove my assertions. You might want to look back to see what my “assertion” was. It was that there is apparent design in the world around us. Someone you may have heard of wrote, “Biology is the study of complicated things that have the appearance of having been designed with a purpose.” Even biologist Richard Dawkins sees apparent design in living things. So you can say, like Dawkins, that the apparent design is only in your imagination and is totally the work of natural selection acting on random mutations. Or you can say there really is a Designer. I would suggest that design shows intelligence. I can’t prove that God exists, and you can’t prove that He doesn’t exist. All that we can do is look at the evidence and reach our own conclusions.

SKEPTIC- When someone like Dawkins says there’s a “design” they don’t mean some guy sitting in the clouds with blueprints of every species, they mean that different animals have special means of doing things to survive (stuff like horses having hooves and fish having gills). This is not proof of Yahweh or any deity.

DGE?- If your concept of the God you don’t believe in is “some guy sitting in the clouds”, then you have a very juvenile concept of God. I don’t believe in that kind of god either.

(This conversation was edited to correct grammatical and spelling errors, to clarify, and for brevity. You will find our daily Facebook postings at www.facebook.com/evidence4god.)
–Roland Earnst © 2017

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God of Creation

Father-Daughter Bible Reading
When we hear the word “creation,” we think of the Genesis account of God’s creation of “the heavens and the Earth.” But God did much more than just position things in space and on the surface of this planet. Quantum mechanics has enlarged our understanding of how the creation of the physical world takes place. For many years atoms were thought to be the smallest particles of matter, but now particle physics takes us into much smaller and more amazing realms. As we learn more about such basic things as charge, mass, and gravity, a whole new set of laws and principles comes to light. As we learn about fermions and bosons and principles of “simultaneity” and “parity,” we grow in our understanding of all that is involved in the physical creation presented in those few words in Genesis 1:1. We begin to appreciate the wisdom involved in the process as described in Proverbs 8:12, 22-30 and Isaiah 40.

The biblical concept of creation also refers to the creation of human consciousness, our appreciation of beauty, our awareness of self, and our spiritual makeup. These things are not accidents or commonplace occurrences. The Hebrew word bara meaning to create is used to describe the process of creation of man and woman in the image of God. Bara is a word that never refers to something a human can do. The Bible does not use bara for the making of the physical human body. The word used there means “formed” (yatshir Genesis 2:7), which describes the molding or shaping of something from materials already in existence. The most important part of human creation is the spiritual image of God, and that is where bara is used. (Genesis 1:27) To show the effect of God’s image displayed in humans Genesis 4:21 tells us that a man named Jubal was the first to handle musical instruments. In the next verse, we are told that a man named Tubalcain was the first to be an “artificer of brass and iron.” These and other passages refer to human creativity which results from our being created in the image of God.

Creation also involves the food that would sustain life. This process is described in Genesis 1:29-30 and referred to again after the Flood in Genesis 9:1-3. In 1 Timothy 4:3 it is described as a conscious creation of God, and that all of God’s created things were made for our use. Creation is also involved in God’s plan for marriage. In Genesis 2:24 the oneness of man and woman is introduced, and it is detailed in 1 Corinthians 7 and 11 with the sexual and emotional needs of both men and women being detailed.

The most important aspect of God’s creation for us is the creation of the Church and of the opportunity for us to be restored to God in the same relationship Adam and Eve had in the beginning. Our purpose for existing is spelled out in Ephesians 3:10 and 6:12. Isaiah 65:17 begins us on the road to understanding that God will create a new heaven and new earth for us. The fulfillment of that promise is described in Revelation 21. Ephesians 4:24 lets us know God can change us, if we were willing, into new people for the purpose of good works (Ephesians 2:10). In Psalms 51:10 the writer asks God to “create” a clean heart and renew a right spirit in him. The Hebrew word bara is used here again because that can only be done by a creative act of God. That new creation is what the promise of Acts 2:38 is all about. Christianity is a system for removing the sin and guilt that result from our bad choices. The renewal that comes through Christ is an act of re-creation by the God who created us and who is indeed a God of creation.
–John N. Clayton and Roland Earnst © 2017