Tag: science

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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

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Earth Movers

Echidna
Echidna

They are designed to move dirt. The echidna is one of only two mammals that lay eggs. (The other is the duckbilled platypus.) Every year the short-beaked echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus), lays one leathery egg which is about the size of a grape. The egg is put into the mother’s pouch, and it hatches in about ten days. Two patches of pores in the pouch ooze milk and the baby, which is called a puggle, laps the milk from the mother’s skin. The baby hangs on to the mother for weeks as she forages. When it the starts growing spines, the mother will put the puggle into a burrow, and it is on its own.

Echidnas get their food by clawing and poking their snouts into termite hills or ant nests. They flick out their sticky tongues and draw in the insects. The echidnas’ toes point backward on their hind legs and forward on the front. Their short legs slant outward, and they move both left feet at once and then both right feet at once, so they rock as they walk. They may look awkward while walking, but they are well-designed to move dirt. Echidnas spend 12% of their day excavating so that in a single year each echidna will churn up 204 cubic meters of soil. That’s enough to bury 100 full sized refrigerators.

Turning over the soil mixes nutrients and aerates the soil to benefit the Australian ecosystem in which the echidna lives. The echidna improves the soil while removing ants and termites making this animal an important part of God’s design for this planet. Everywhere we look we see testimony to the wisdom of God.
–John N. Clayton and Roland Earnst © 2017

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Our Unique Planet

our unique planet
Earth is very different from any other planet we have discovered inside or outside of our solar system. One key factor that makes our planet habitable is our Moon. The Moon serves several important roles, including holding Earth in a stable rotation. The Moon can be a stabilizer for Earth because of its relatively large size. Other planets have moons that are much smaller in comparison to the planets they orbit. Also, other planets in our solar system have multiple moons which make conditions less stable.

Many of the planets discovered outside of our solar system are huge and located incredibly close to their stars with highly eccentric orbits. A solar system in the constellation Serpens was found with a planet seventeen times as massive as Jupiter. Someone might respond with the observation that we can only see the big planets because those systems are so far away. That observation misses the point. These huge, Jupiter-sized and larger planets are located as close to their stars as we are to our Sun or closer. If there is a small planet in the vicinity, it would be twisted and wrenched about by the influences of the large planet. The problem with highly elliptical orbits and life is that there would be too much variation in the amount of energy that the planet receives from its star. Earth’s orbit is only slightly elliptical giving us stable temperatures. If we had only one planet in our solar system with a radically elliptical orbit, there would be a danger of it crashing into our planet. Circular orbits are important for stability. The instability produced by highly eccentric orbits of large planets would make the area sterile and void as far as life is concerned. Everything we see indicates that our solar system is a cosmic oddball.

There are many properties of our planet, Sun, solar system, and the galaxy in which we live that have to be exactly as they are for any kind of life, not just intelligent life, to exist. The galaxy has to be the right type of galaxy, we must be in the right position in the galaxy, and our Sun has to be the right type of star and at the right age in its life process. Our planet must have the right size, mass, tilt, magnetic field, distribution of land masses, chemical makeup, atmosphere, distance from the Sun, and much, much more.

To calculate the overall probability, you must multiply the probability of each of the dependent variables. Every time scientists find a new variable that has to be precisely determined for a life-sustaining planet to exist, that probability is multiplied by all the other probabilities. Considering all of the required factors and the probability of each and multiplying them all together, the total probability of another planet like Earth is exceedingly small. “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth” takes on a whole new level of meaning as we continue to gain knowledge about the cosmos.
–John N. Clayton and Roland Earnst © 2017

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Global Citizens

Globe Skimmer Dragonfly
Globe Skimmer Dragonfly

One of the most interesting examples of design in living things is the ability that various forms of life have to migrate great distances for a wide variety of reasons. Sea turtles have an uncanny ability to return to the same beaches over and over to lay their eggs. Whales can travel long distances when they are ready to calve, giving their offspring a greater chance of survival. Migrations can be critical to animals or plants other than the animal making the migration. Sometimes the migration is critical to an environmental ecosystem. The salmon migration in Alaska, for example, is critical to the entire area sustaining plant life and a wide variety of animal life.

When insect migrations are studied, the question of how they make the migrations and why becomes even more complicated. Monarch butterflies make migrations of great lengths even though their life expectancy is too short for any single butterfly to make the entire migration. The champion of insect migrations is the globe skimmer dragonfly (Pantala flavescens). This insect has wide wings that look very delicate, but those wings can carry it for thousands of miles seeking wet seasons when it can reproduce. Migration has spread this insect’s DNA worldwide to every continent except Antarctica. Globe skimmers can fly for hours without landing and have been seen as high as 20,000 feet (6,200 m) in the Himalayas. They are sometimes called wandering gliders because they can glide on thermals in a way similar to birds. They seem to prefer moist winds, and they don’t stop for bad weather.

Migration is a fascinating part of the life of many creatures from whales to insects. Especially when we think of migrating insects like monarch butterflies and globe skimmers, it seems obvious that the ability and desire to make the migration are programmed into their DNA. We would suggest programming needs a Programmer.
–John N. Clayton © 2017

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How Many Extinct Species?

Fossils
Fossils

Atheists often challenge us with the widely quoted statistic that “95 to 99 percent of all creatures that have ever lived are now extinct.” Their argument is that if there were a wise God who created life, he would have done a better job. The skeptics are assuming that they know the purpose for which a wise God would have created those life-forms. Perhaps the extinct species had a purpose of preparing the Earth for humans, and they went extinct because they had served their purpose. But I am assuming that humans are the pinnacle and ultimate purpose of God’s creation. Atheists reject that idea. One of our skeptical followers recently posted a comment referring to “the virus called man,” as if humans are a blight on an otherwise good world.

Another possibility is that perhaps the statistic of extinct species is highly exaggerated. Since the life-forms that have gone extinct are no longer around, how do scientists determine how many species have gone extinct since life began? The number of fossils of extinct species we have actually found is estimated to be about 250,000. So we have direct evidence of a quarter of a million extinct species. According to National Geographic (May 2014), there are at least 1.9 million animal species today and at least 450,000 plant species. If it’s true that 95 percent of the animal species have gone extinct and there are 1.9 million living today, that means that over 36 million have gone extinct. If we have fossils of only 250,000 extinct species (plants and animals) how do we know that there were 36 million others for which we have no evidence? According to National Geographic (May 2014), Stuart Pimm, a conservation ecologist at Duke University, and his colleagues “reviewed data from fossil records and noted when species disappeared, then used statistical modeling to fill in holes in the record.” In other words, they are filling in the “holes” or “missing links” in the evolutionary record to determine how many other species must have existed that disappeared without a trace.

The questions we might want to ask are, “Why do we have fossils of only 250,000 species out of 36,000,000? Why are we assuming that 36,000,000 species have gone extinct based on the evidence of fossils totaling less than seven-tenths of one percent of that number?” The answer to those questions is apparently the fact that naturalistic evolution from single-celled life to humans requires us to make that assumption. Perhaps this gives us something to ponder.
–Roland Earnst © 2017

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Constants in the Universe

Physics Formulas
Physics Formulas

A major component of the cosmological evidence for the existence of God is the value of constants that govern the universe. Over the centuries scientists have determined the value of these constants, and all of our knowledge of the cosmos is based on these values. These constants are also used to define the units in which we measure things like mass, length, current flow, temperature, time, and light intensity. You either have to believe that these precise numerical values are a product of chance, or that they have been consciously chosen by a Creator. It’s the precise values of these constants that allow the cosmos to exist and to remain stable. Here are only nine of the constants and their role in science and in defining the units used by scientists.

PLANCK CONSTANT- This constant is 6.626070040 x 10^-34 kg m^2/sec.
This constant denotes the scale of quantum mechanics and is used to define the kilogram, a standard unit of mass. It is used in many equations in physics.

SPEED OF LIGHT IN A VACUUM- The value is 299,792,458 m/sec. This is the maximum speed of any object in the universe and is used to define the meter. It is equal to the energy of a mass divided by the speed of light squared and is used in many equations in physics.

ELEMENTARY CHARGE- The value is 1.6021766208 x 10^-19 ampere seconds and is the value of the electrical charge on an electron or proton. It is used to define the ampere, the basic unit of electrical current.

BOLTZMANN CONSTANT- The value is 1.38064852 x 10^-23 kg m^2/(s^2 kelvin). This constant is used to convert from energy to temperature and is used to define the Kelvin.

AVOGADRO CONSTANT- This chemical constant is 6.022140857 x 10^23/mole and indicates the number of particles in one mole of a substance. The mole is used with the Rydberg constant in defining the kilogram and is the basis of mass calculations in chemical reactions.

RYDBERG CONSTANT- The value is 10,973,731.568508/m and determines the wavelengths of light emitted from a hydrogen atom. In addition to its use with Avogadro in determining the kilogram, it is used in spectroscopy.

HYPERFINE SPLITTING OF CESIUM- The value is 9,192,631,770/sec and is the frequency of a cesium atomic clock used to accurately define the second.

LUMINOUS EFFICACY- The value is 683 candela steradian s^3/kg m^2 and is used in converting brightness to energy per unit of time. It is used by astronomers and physicists working with light intensities.

FINE-STRUCTURE CONSTANT- The value is 1/137.035999139 and is used to determine the strength of electromagnetic interactions between charged particles.

As you look at these constants and notice their precision, you can get a sense of the precision that was needed just to establish the basic components of our universe. This list is not exhaustive, and science students know that they as well as others are essential to understanding the basics of chemistry and physics.

Proverbs 8:22-23 takes on a whole new meaning if we understand that wisdom is speaking and says, “The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was.” The frontiers of science today in quantum mechanics and cosmology are just beginning to understand the essential nature of the constants and the complex science needed to create time, space, and the beginnings of matter/energy. We can see even more clearly the statement of Romans 1:20 telling us that “we can know there is a God through the things he has made.”
Constant data from Science News, November 12, 2016, page 26.
–John N. Clayton © 2017

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Picking and Choosing Einstein

Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein

As an old physics teacher, I find it interesting to watch people on both sides of the argument about the existence of God pick and choose various parts of Einstein’s work to support their positions. Picking and choosing Einstein to prove your point is not an option.

Recently I had an atheist and a Christian dispensationalist both use Einstein’s time dilation equation to support their position. That equation says that your time in motion is determined by your time at rest divided by the square root of one minus your velocity (v) squared divided by the speed of light (c) squared.

This formula indicates that the higher the velocity of motion, the smaller the value of the denominator of that equation becomes. Therefore, time expands. This is a fact. Neutrons in nuclear accelerators might live 18 minutes at rest before decaying into protons and electrons. When accelerated to 80% of the speed of light, they last much longer before decaying.

My atheist friend maintains that since the cosmos is accelerating in its expansion, it will eventually reach the speed of light and time will stop. He then proposes that time will reverse since the value of the denominator in Einstein’s equation would become negative. He then suggests that this process will be repeated in an eternal universe. Therefore, no beginning and no God.

My dispensationalist friend is one of several authors who propose that the universe started out expanding at a much higher velocity with time passing at a different rate than we experience today. This would mean that the evidence for the cosmos being very old is an illusion. In the beginning, time passed more slowly because of the much higher velocity of expansion. Since we move more slowly today, time is passing faster. Therefore, the universe is much younger than it would appear.

Both of these people were picking and choosing Einstein to support a personal religious opinion. Both of them are ignoring much of Einstein’s work. When the neutron referred to earlier is accelerated to 80% of the speed of light, not only does its time frame change but its relativistic mass changes too. Another one of Einstein’s equations looks just like the time equation but deals with mass. The change in the relativistic mass of a particle is equal to its mass at rest divided by the square root of one minus its velocity squared divided by the speed of light squared.

Experimentally this calculation works and can be verified. Perhaps the most well-known equation of Issac Newton is F = MA. This tells us that the force (F) needed to accelerate a mass (M) is equal to its mass multiplied by the acceleration (A). We all know from experience that the greater the mass of an object, the harder it is to speed it up when we push it, and the faster we want it to go the harder we have to push. If the relativistic mass increases as you get near the speed of light, what happens to the force you have to exert? Obviously, It increases too. At the speed of light, you would have infinite mass, and it would take an infinite force to move it.

Another fascinating equation from Einstein is that the length of an object changes as it approaches the speed of light. In the reverse of the change in time and mass, the length contracts in the direction of motion as the object gets closer the speed of light. At the speed of light, the length would be zero, and the object would cease to exist.

These are simplifications of Einstein’s work, but the point is that picking and choosing Einstein to prove your point is not honest. Relativistic effects cannot be picked and chosen while ignoring other effects. God created the cosmos with certain constants and relationships. These choices allow us to exist, but they also put a limit on what is possible. We struggle to comprehend all that is involved in the simple phrase, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”


–John N. Clayton © 2017

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Design Discovered in Insect Migration

Insects
Insects

It is easy for humans to minimize the design that is needed for life to exist on Earth. How do you feed massive numbers of birds, especially in the spring when winter has taken away most of their food sources, and their food needs are maximized as they lay eggs and feed baby birds? In the past scientists have shrugged their shoulders and imagined that there are food sources we don’t recognize that fill this gap until the summer season generates sufficient seeds and insects to sustain the growing populations. Similar problems exist for many other animals like bats that depend on insects for their nutritional needs.

In the April 2017 issue of Scientific American (page 84), there is an interesting report about previously unknown migrations of insects. We have known about monarch butterflies for some time, but this study by British researchers shows that migrations of insects are massive. Over southern Britain alone there are 3.3 trillion insects migrating. That is an average of 3200 tons of bugs moving through the skies over Britain every year. The study also reports that similar patterns have been observed in Texas, India, and China.

The complexity of this migration is astounding. Insects don’t live long enough for one bug to complete the migration. Researchers found that in some cases six generations were involved to complete a migration. The insects do not just get randomly blown about. They travel in a well-programmed pattern taking advantage of wind direction and speed. The elevation at which they fly to get the strongest support for their journey is carefully chosen. For a number of reasons, spring migrations are different from fall migrations.

We have much to learn from insects. Solomon made reference to ants as an example for us to learn from in Proverbs 6:6-11 and 30:24, 25. In our modern times, we see an amazing design that allows for the feeding of birds, bats, and other forms of life that need insects to survive. Constructing a chance model for all of this takes a huge amount of imagination. Recognizing God as the intelligence that gave this migration pattern to insects makes what we see just another example of knowing there is a God through the things he has made (Romans 1:20).
–John N. Clayton © 2017

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WIMPS and God’s Design

Spiral Galaxy M74
Spiral Galaxy M74

One of the most interesting areas of scientific research today is the study of dark matter. We have known for more than half a century that galaxies are groups of billions of stars revolving around a core. Science had assumed that the glue holding galaxies together was the gravitational force produced by the mass of the stars in the galaxy. The problem with this explanation was that the stars were spiraling too fast for the gravity produced by their mass to hold the galaxy together.

If you stand in the center of a circle and spin a bucket of water on a rope, you have to spin it at a certain speed to keep the water in the bucket. If you go too slow, the bucket will hit the ground, and if you go too fast, it will break the rope. In the case of galaxies, the stars were going so fast for the gravity of the stars to hold the system together. Some other gravitational force must be the glue doing the job. The discovery of black holes in the center of galaxies was thought to be a possible answer, but the speed was much too fast for even that source. The amount of mass it would take to hold some of the galaxies together is as much as 85% higher than what we can observe.

This problem led to the proposal that there is a missing mass. Scientists suggested particles called WIMPS, which is an acronym for “weakly interacting massive particles.” For some time now, experiments have been conducted to find evidence for WIMPS. The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland, has been smashing protons together in hopes of detecting the particle. The Large Underground Xenon experiment in South Dakota has been looking for traces of them as well. So far neither attempt has been successful. In an article in Scientific American (October 2016, page 16) Edward Kolb, who was involved in proposing the existence of WIMPS, said: “We are more in the dark about dark matter than we were five years ago.” David Spergel who is an astrophysicist at Princeton says, “…we now need more hints from nature about where to go next.”

It seems that God has already taught us quite a bit about the complexity of creation. Thanks to Isaac Newton we know that mass has a connection to gravity. Thanks to Albert Einstein we know that the shape of space has something to do with it as well. Making a galaxy is not a simple task. Just like the making of electric charge, the process involves understandings that science is just beginning to comprehend. Quantum mechanics has taught us that a whole new set of laws governs what happens in forming these building blocks of what we see.

In Proverbs 8:1,22-23 Wisdom speaks and says, “Does not wisdom call, and understanding lift up her voice?…The Lord possessed me at the beginning of His way, Before His works of old. From everlasting I was established, from the beginning, from the earliest times of the earth.” It is a wonderful challenge to modern science to understand how the Lord made the building blocks that led to what we can see in space. When we finally understand, we need to step back and say, “The heavens are telling of the glory of God; And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands” (Psalms 19:1, NAS).
–John N. Clayton © 2017

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Caring for the Environment

Admiring the Beauty of Earth
Admiring the Beauty of Earth

We live at a time where there is great concern about the environment. We have seen the effect of human carelessness in dumping wastes into the atmosphere, rivers, and lakes. As an earth science teacher in the public schools, I always was disturbed by the complacency of students and administrators toward this critical issue. In my lectureships, I have sometimes had skeptics suggest that the problems of ecology are due to Christianity. In Genesis 1:28 God told the first humans, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Someone has commented that this is the only command God ever gave that man completely obeyed, and there might be some truth to that. Atheists have maintained that this is the cause of human abuse of the natural world in which we live.

From a biblical standpoint, this is a misuse of the message of the Scriptures. Any statement in the Bible can only be properly understood if you look at who write it, to whom, why, and how the people it was written to would have understood it. Genesis 1:28 was written to let us know that God expects us to control the Earth and its resources, but it gives no indication of how to do that. In Genesis 2:15, God told the man to, “take care of the Garden, to dress it and to keep it.” In Genesis 3:23 we are told that after the man had left the garden, he was to “work the ground from which he was taken.”

Throughout the Old and New Testaments, a great emphasis is placed on the beauty of the creation and the great wisdom and power that created it. Proverbs 8:22-31 puts an emphasis on the wisdom involved in all that was done to prepare the Earth for human life. The Psalms are full of references to God’s creation, and Jesus in Matthew 6:26-30 calls his followers to consider the beauty of the creation. Even more important, throughout the Bible humans are viewed as caretakers and guardians of what God has given us. Nowhere is there an instruction or suggestion that the creation is to be exploited or abused.

We are bringing enormous pain upon ourselves and on our children by the way we have mismanaged what God has given us. A great amount of disease, including cancer, is caused by man-made poisons and carcinogens dumped into the environment. The medical effects of mercury, lead, and asbestos cannot be denied. Most of the entry of these materials into our oceans, lakes, and rivers has come from human greed and irresponsibility. God does not cause these things, and a failure to live as God has called us to live is a major part of why these problems exist. Christians are called to take care of the environment, and Christian teachings are not the cause of our ecological issues. We are, however, even more concerned about mental, emotional, and spiritual pollution. If we could bring men and women into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, their change in attitude would resolve most of our social and environmental issues.
–John N. Clayton © 2017