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Archive for the ‘Evolution’ Category

How a T-Rex destroyed my faith

Posted in Biblical History, Biblical Science, Discernment, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Uncategorized on February 1, 2016| Leave a Comment »

from DirtyHands

Like nearly every little boy I know; I grew up fascinated with dinosaurs. In museums, the only thing I wanted to see were the fossils and the reconstructions of life-size dinosaur skeletons. I devoured any dinosaur book I could find. I was enthralled with the Discovery Channel programs about them. The only thing that could have made my childhood fascination with dinosaurs complete was if the Lego company had come put with a line of dinosaurs. Much of their fascination came from their size and the mystery surrounding their disappearance. Was it an asteroid? Rapid climate change? Super volcano eruption? A combination of those or other unknown factors?

As I got older my fascination didn’t wane, but I became aware of a problem.The popular story surrounding dinosaurs and how long ago they lived was at odds with the account in the Bible of the world’s beginning. Even as a child I began to be aware that they couldn’t both be true and so for a time I lived with this sort of cognitive dissonance. Everything seemed to point to the fact that dinosaurs had lived millions of years ago. And yet I also believed that God created the world in six days, no where near that long ago. My struggle continued until a T-Rex came along and settled the debate.

Let me begin by saying that it was not my faith in Jesus that was destroyed by a T-Rex fossil; but my faith in science. Or, to be more precise, it was my faith in the conclusions that are drawn from solid science that were shaken. But first, some definitions.

FAITH: One of the greatest definitions of faith in the Bible comes from the book of Hebrews. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1.

Another picture of faith is given in the encounter that Jesus has with one of his disciples after his resurrection. The other ten disciples had already seen Jesus in the flesh, but Thomas wasn’t there. When they delivered the incredible news that Jesus was alive Thomas didn’t believe. He refused to believe. He said, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into his side, I will never believe.” Eight days later Jesus came and stood before Thomas. Jesus said, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” Thomas proclaimed, “My Lord and my God.” To which Jesus responded, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:19-29)

SCIENCE: Now this is how Webster defines the word “science,” and it’s a pretty basic and standard definition. “Science is knowledge about or study of the natural world based on facts learned through experiments and observation.”

The problems all began with a T-Rex bone in 1991. “In 1991, [a scientist by the name of Mary] Schweitzer was trying to study thin slices of bones from a 65-million-year-old T. rex. She was having a hard time getting the slices to stick to a glass slide, so she sought help from a molecular biologist at the university. The biologist, Gayle Callis, happened to take the slides to a veterinary conference, where she set up the ancient samples for others to look at. One of the vets went up to Callis and said, ‘Do you know you have red blood cells in that bone?’ Sure enough, under a microscope, it appeared that the bone was filled with red disks. Later, Schweitzer recalls, ‘I looked at this and I looked at this and I thought, this can’t be. Red blood cells don’t preserve.’ Schweitzer showed the slide to Horner. ‘When she first found the red-blood-cell-looking structures, I said, Yep, that’s what they look like,’ her mentor recalls. He thought it was possible they were red blood cells, but he gave her some advice: ‘Now see if you can find some evidence to show that that’s not what they are.’

Instead, Mary discovered collagen consistent with blood vessels along with red blood cells, in the thigh bone of that juvenile T. rex in Montana. ‘What we found was unusual, because it was still soft and still transparent and still flexible,’ she says. Her discovery excited much controversy in the evolutionary community, as it seems quite impossible that anything could preserve something so chemically ‘fragile’ for millions of years. Evolutionists date the first dinosaur in which Schweitzer found the soft tissue to 68 million years ago. Many insisted the material she had found must be microbial contamination because no known process could account for such long preservation of organic material in bone, the molecules of which tend to be readily broken down and particularly for the preservation of its pliability and elastic qualities. In ongoing studies, Schweitzer has discovered soft tissue and confirmed the presence of collagen in other dinosaur specimens alleged to be 145.5 to 199.6 million years old.” “Dinosaur Shocker,” Smithsonian Magazine, May 2006.

All of that left one large question; how could soft tissues survive for millions of years? “Schweitzer and her team noticed that iron particles are intimately associated with the soft tissues preserved in dinosaurs. But when they chelated – or removed the iron from – soft tissues taken from a T. rex and a Brachyolophosaurus, the chelated tissues reacted much more strongly to antibodies that detect the presence of protein, suggesting that the iron may be masking their presence in these preserved tissues. They then tested the preservation hypothesis by using blood vessels and cells taken from modern ostrich bone. They soaked some of these vessels in hemoglobin taken from red blood cells, while placing other vessels in water. Two years later, the hemoglobin-treated soft vessels remained intact, while those soaked in water degraded in less than a week.

“We know that iron is always present in large quantities when we find well-preserved fossils, and we have found original vascular tissues within the bones of these animals, which would be a very hemoglobin-rich environment after they died,” Schweitzer says. “We also know that iron hinders just about every technique we have to detect proteins. So iron looks like it may be both the mechanism for preservation and the reason why we’ve had problems finding and analyzing proteins that are preserved.” For more information click Here Since her initial findings soft tissue has also been observed, not just in well-preserved dinosaur bones, but in what some call “junk” fossils as well.

So, here is the problem. Many people were rightly disconcerted about the discovery of soft tissue in fossils. That discovery called into question the popular narrative that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago. And so, when Mary discovered the preservative effects that iron can have on soft tissue in a lab setting over a short period of time they jumped at that life-line. But in doing so, they made an incredible leap of faith. The conclusions reached by some scientists that want to extrapolate the results of a two-year experiment into millions of years isn’t science. Its faith. Remember the definition of science is “knowledge about or study of the natural world based on facts learned through experiments and observation.” Based on the tests performed indicating the possibility of iron acting as a preservative, at best an honest person could conclude that, under strictly controlled laboratory conditions iron has a preservative effect over the spans of a few years. To extrapolate that observable and repeatable finding, into millions of years isn’t science. Its faith. It’s the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.Perhaps those big old bones aren’t as old as we were led to believe…

An article on Mary Schweitzer’s find from the Smithsonian

Another article looking in more depth at this soft-tissue find

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Catholic School Ordered to Hire Practicing Homosexuals?

Posted in abominations, Apostasy, Catholicism, creationism, Discernment, Evolution, False Christians, Homosexuality, Humanism, Post-Modernism, prophetic, Religious Babylon, Signs of The Times on January 8, 2016| Leave a Comment »

I have to say that I am very dismayed that Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis did not clarify what his stance is on the Roman Catholic Church in the article below. Especially seeing how the official position of the Roman Catholic Church on creation is that God performed creation through evolution and natural selection! Which is diametrically opposed to what Ken Ham, Answers in Genesis, and the Creation Museum state as one of their foundational beliefs: A literal 6 day creation. And they contend that to accept evolution is a doorway to further apostasy!

Not to mention that the current Pope of the Roman Catholic church is leaning very heavily in the direction of giving a nod of approval to Homosexuality!

There is no doubt that this court ruling sets a very bad precedent for “Religious” organizations. However Christian organizations have to be very careful with articles such as this, as it can appear by their silence in regards to the Roman Catholic Church that they are in fact giving their approval of the Roman Catholic Organization as a valid expression of the Christian Faith!

So I post this article for two reasons:

  1. To bring attention to the dangerous precedent that this court case sets
  2. To show how Christians should NOT inadvertently be seeming to give a silent approval of an apostate and despicable man made organization!

From Answers in Genesis:

There was a time when religious groups and ministries could hire without fear only those who supported their mission and core beliefs, but that day is quickly disappearing. Recently in Massachusetts a landmark decision—the first of its kind—has just been made adding an even greater threat to religious liberty: a Roman Catholic school is effectively being forced to hire practicing homosexuals despite the school’s sincerely held religious beliefs.

Man in a Same-Sex Marriage Applied for Position at Catholic School

According to a Massachusetts court, a Catholic preparatory school for girls, whose mission is “the education of young women rooted in gospel values and the teachings of the Catholic church,” was looking to hire a food services director in 2013. School policies have always required that employees must be Catholic and are considered “ministers of the mission.”

A man named Matthew Barrett applied for the position. During one of his interviews he was told that all employees are expected to model Catholic teachings and values and he “responded affirmatively” to being able to do that. The school then offered him employment and he accepted.

Later, however, Barrett filled out a new employee form and listed his “husband” as an emergency contact. The school scheduled another meeting where they told Barrett that they could not hire someone in a same-sex marriage because that’s inconsistent with the teachings of the Catholic Church—teachings he was expected to uphold as an employee.

Court Ruled Against the School

Barrett filed a lawsuit to challenge the school policy, and last month a judge ruled in his favor stating that the school had acted contrary to Massachusetts law by discriminating against Barrett based on his sexual orientation. The judge stated that Barrett had “suffered denial of employment, that the reason for denial was his sexual orientation, and that he suffered harm as a result.”

Apparently, because the school accepts students of all faiths and because a food services director does not accord with the state’s definition of a minister of the gospel, the school does not get a religious exemption from the non-discrimination law.

It doesn’t matter that the Catholic church has always opposed same-sex “marriage” and that the school’s employees are expected to support Catholic teachings. A court has now ruled that the school must hire someone who blatantly disagrees with its core beliefs.

Religious Liberty Is Quickly Disappearing in the US

This is ridiculous! How is a religious ministry supposed to present a cohesive message if it can’t reject applicants who don’t agree with its sincerely held religious beliefs? Would an atheist group be treated the same way and be forced to hire a Bible believing Christian for its organization?

We have warned many times that such rulings as this would be forthcoming—this is one of the first. This nation in many ways (including through the court system) has determined that persons engaged in homosexual behavior should be elevated to a protected legal class and everyone must be forced to agree and comply, regardless of any religious conviction to the contrary. Religious convictions, particularly those of Christians, are increasingly being forced out of the public square. Yes, Christian discrimination and persecution is here—and it will continue to increase in the present spiritual climate.

Religious liberty is quickly disappearing in the US. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that since the Supreme Court of the United States decision to legalize same-sex “marriage” in 2015, those who oppose this redefinition of marriage are coming under attack. As our culture continues to drift further from biblical values, we can only expect battles like this to increasingly be fought. As Christians, we need to be bold in standing for God’s Word and biblical morality in a culture that is growing more and more hostile to moral absolutes drawn from God’s Word. We are a shining light in this dark world. We must continue to share the good news of Jesus Christ to people even as our religious liberty continues to fade.

Please pray for AiG and Ark Encounter as we fight our own religious freedom battle here in Kentucky. Wake up America—the First Amendment of the Constitution, and the “first freedom” listed therein, is under unprecedented attack:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. (Emphasis added)

Sadly, the Massachusetts court did not even pay lip service to the Constitution!

This essential prohibition against government infringement upon religious exercise applies equally to the state by virtue of the 14th Amendment, which reads in relevant part:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. (Emphasis added)

Moreover, the Massachusetts court totally ignored the specific exception under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which allows religious organizations to exercise religious preferences in hiring. Federal law recognizes that such preferences are necessary in order for a ministry or other religious organization to follow its core religious beliefs and effectively maintain its religious identity. To hold otherwise amounts to unlawful discrimination against the religious entity and its religious beliefs, and ignores the application of the Constitution and federal statutory law, which are expressly designed to protect these precious religious freedoms.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken

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God’s Wonderful Word: Mocked, Hated, Twisted and Banned

Posted in Atheism, Biblical Teaching, creationism, Discernment, Evolution, Humanism, Intelligent Design, Panentheism, Religious Babylon, Synchretism on January 18, 2014| Leave a Comment »

from Crossroads:

“…by Him [Jesus] all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. “ Colossians 1:16-17

“…since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made . . . although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts… Professing to be wise, they became fools…” Romans 1:20-2

There was a time in America, when people flocked to Bible-based churches to hear God’s encouraging Word and follow His Way. Back then, God’s timeless Truth brought peace, hope, faith and amazing wonder. But times have changed! Today it’s hard to find a church that doesn’t compromise the Bible and bend it to fit human inclinations and unbiblical fads.

Each year, fewer pastors are prepared to base their teaching on the victorious Word of our Lord — the true Creator of the world. Instead, they simply dismiss the less popular parts of the Bible such as the first chapters of Genesis. After all, a “short earth” makes little sense to those who replace God with human scripts for a universe stretching millions of years into the past.

Many, like the famous evolutionist Richard Dawkins, simply hope one day to discover a higher intelligence that can solve the puzzles that continue to perplex even the most renowned atheistic evolutionists.

Ben Stein Exposes British Evolutionist, Richard Dawkins

Back in 2008, Jewish author Ben Stein interviewed the prominent British atheist and author, Richard Dawkins. Please watch this short excerpt from the much longer DVD titled Expelled: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trUUv_ZDoMo (You can order the full-length video from Amazon and/or watch the short YouTube here)

As you will see, Dawkins simply could not make sense of the evolutionary speculations on which he had built his worldwide fame and fortune. Notice his grandiose claims and flawed explanations. He was totally unable to validate his own assertion that evolution is a proven reality. After all, an atheist — especially a world famous atheist author — cannot accept a creationist’s faith in God’s mighty work without losing credibility!

After watching the full length video back in 2008, Dinesh D’Souza wrote an article exposing Dawkins ignorant and irrational speculations. Here are some excerpts:

“So Stein puts to Dawkins a simple question, ‘How did life begin?’ One would think that this is a question that could easily be answered. Dawkins, however, frankly admits that he has no idea. One might expect Dawkins to invoke evolution as the all-purpose explanation. Evolution, however, only explains transitions from one life form to another. Evolution has no explanation for how life got started in the first place. Darwin was very clear about this.

“In order for evolution to take place, there had to be a living cell. The difficulty for atheists is that even this original cell is a work of labyrinthine complexity. Franklin Harold writes in The Way of the Cell that even the simplest cells are more ingeniously complicated than man’s most elaborate inventions….

“[This] absurdity was recognized more than a decade ago by Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the DNA double helix. Yet Crick is a committed atheist. Unwilling to consider the possibility of divine or supernatural creation, Crick suggested that maybe aliens brought life to earth from another planet. And this is precisely the suggestion that Richard Dawkins makes in his response to Ben Stein. Perhaps, he notes, life was delivered to our planet by highly-evolved aliens. Let’s call this the “ET” explanation.

“Stein brilliantly responds that he had no idea Richard Dawkins believes in intelligent design! And indeed Dawkins does seem to be saying that alien intelligence is responsible for life arriving on earth….

“Basically Dawkins is surrendering on the claim that evolution can account for the origins of life. It can’t. The issue now is simply whether a natural intelligence (ET) or a supernatural intelligence (God) created life. Dawkins can’t bear the supernatural explanation and so he opts for ET. But doesn’t it take as much, or more, faith to believe in extraterrestrial biology majors depositing life on earth than it does to believe in a transcendent creator?

“All he can do is hope there is another ‘god’ or ‘intelligence’ somewhere who might have set evolution in motion.”[1]

Did you catch that message? Both Dawkins and Crick agree that life must have begun with some kind of living cell. But they can’t explain how that essential and foundational living cell came about! And so, in desperate search for an answer, they turn to a vague hope of extraterrestrial life still to be discovered. Since both are determined atheists, they refuse to believe in our God — the actual Creator of all life!

“Ben Stein Vs. Sputtering Atheists”

On April 18, 2008, Brent Bozell — founder and president of the Media Research Center, the Conservative Communications Center, and the Cybercast News Service — presented his review of Expelled. He began by exposing the standard bias and hostility of evolutionists toward those who reject evolution.

“It is a reality of PC liberalism: There is only one credible side to an issue, and any dissent is not only rejected, it is scorned. Global warming. Gay ‘rights.’ Abortion ‘rights.’…

PC liberalism’s power centers are the news media, the entertainment industry and academia, and all are in the clutches of an unmistakable hypocrisy: Theirs is an ideology that preaches the freedom of thought and expression at every opportunity, yet practices absolute intolerance toward dissension. Evolution is another one of those one-sided debates….

“Ben Stein’s extraordinary presentation documents how the worlds of science and academia not only crush debate on the origins of life, but also crush the careers of professors who dare to question the Darwinian hypothesis of evolution and natural selection.

“Stein asks a simple question: What if the universe began with an intelligent designer, a designer named God? He assembles a stable of academics — experts all — who dared to question Darwinist assumptions and found themselves “expelled” from intellectual discourse as a result. They include evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg (sandbagged at the Smithsonian), biology professor Caroline Crocker (drummed out of George Mason University), and astrophysicist Guillermo Gonzalez (blackballed at Iowa State University).

“That’s disturbing enough, but what Stein does next is truly shocking. He allows the principal advocates of Darwinism to speak their minds. These are experts with national reputations, regular welcomed guests on network television and the like. But the public knows them only by their careful seven-second soundbites. Stein engages them in conversation. They speak their minds. They become sputtering ranters, openly championing their sheer hatred of religion.

“PC liberalism has showered accolades on atheist author Richard Dawkins’ best-selling book “The God Delusion.” But when Stein suggests to Dawkins that he’s been critical of the Old Testament God, Dawkins protests — not that Stein is wrong, but that he’s being too mild. He then reads from this jaw-dropping paragraph of his book:

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

“It’s understood that God had nothing to do with the origins of life on Earth. What, then, is the alternate explanation? Stein asks these experts… One theorizes that life began somehow on the backs of crystals. Another states electric sparks from a lightning storm created organic matter (out of nothing). Another declares that life was brought to Earth by aliens. Anything but God.

“The most controversial part of the film follows Stein to the Dachau concentration camp, underlining how Darwin’s theories of natural selection led to the eugenics movement, embraced by Adolf Hitler.” . . . . .

read the full article here.

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BioLogos and a Shocking Perversion of Scripture

Posted in abominations, Another christ, Apostasy, Biblical Science, Discernment, Evolution, False Christians, Humanism, Perplexity, Post-Modernism, prophetic, Religious Babylon, Signs of The Times on January 3, 2013| Leave a Comment »

The belief that God used evolution for creation has so many pitfalls it is hard to know where to begin!

First off if God used evolution for the creation of man, how then could God hold man accountable for acting in a depraved manner?

Secondly it would make a mockery of Jesus sacrifice at the cross! Why would God send his son to die on the cross for mankinds sins, when sinful depravity would have been a natural and intended result of God’s creation?

And it goes on!

from Worldview Weekend:

As we start the new year and consider what the ministry of AiG can do (as God blesses) to reclaim biblical authority in America (and other nations), I think of the biblical compromise that still runs rampant in the church. Here is another example:

BioLogos (an organization set up to try to get the church to adopt evolution and millions of years) recently published what I would argue is one of their most disturbing articles yet. Thomas Burnett, the BioLogos Associate Editor, wrote an article titled, “Surveying George Murphy’s Theology of the Cross.” George Murphy is a theistic evolutionist, a former science professor, and a retired minister. He wrote a book titled The Cosmos in the Light of the Cross, from which Burnett draws some of his claims.

Now, Burnett is very quick to dismiss biblical creationists along with atheists, writing, “The trouble with both of these views is that they tend to invoke a completely abstract, philosophical god, not the living God of the Bible.” Wow! So if I take God at His word in Genesis chapters 1–11, that means I’m not looking to the God of the Bible? That clearly doesn’t make sense-but it fits with Burnett’s compromised view of Genesis.

Burnett’s thesis is that God works in unexpected ways-so why couldn’t God have used evolution? And while that is a tired argument, his analogy is really rather shocking. Burnett writes, “If God Himself is willing to die, particularly in such a gruesome way, then perhaps we should at least consider the possibility of God allowing the death of other creatures, too.”

You see, aside from a brief mention at the beginning of the article, Burnett seems to ignore the reality of sin. And yet, Genesis 3 tells us that it was because of Adam’s sin that death, disease, and suffering entered the world. What’s more, sin is why Christ came to die. Where is sin in Burnett’s worldview? He certainly doesn’t place the weight on it that Scripture does when it comes to the origin of death.

What Burnett has done here is drawn a false analogy to make his claim. The death of Christ is unrelated to the supposed millions of years of animal death and suffering that evolutionists propose. He didn’t die on the Cross to fix His own mistake (creating a world full of death and suffering). Such a thing would be absurd because God cannot make mistakes. No, Christ died to correct the problems we brought into this world at the Fall.

While “the whole creation groans” because of Adam’s sin (Romans 8:22), it’s not logical to equate the death of Christ, which rescues those who believe from the eternal consequences of their sin, with an evolutionary viewpoint that implies God called death, disease, and suffering “very good.” It is completely inconsistent to believe in theistic evolution and the Cross of Christ (though, of course, we at AiG affirm that a belief in a young earth is not necessary for salvation-but it is an important authority issue). Since Christ came to die for our sins, and man’s sin is the origin of death, you cannot use the Cross as an analogy for evolution where animals die and have diseases and eat each other before Adam’s sin. This comparison is not only illogical-it is shocking.

In his final attempt to make a case for evolution and millions of years, Burnett claims, “In all honesty, creation through evolution is not what we would expect from God, but Scripture is full of examples in which God acts in unexpected ways. After all, God’s choosing to undergo an agonizing death on a cross is not what we would expect from the all-powerful Creator of the universe, either. In both cases, new life comes about through pain, suffering, and death” (emphasis mine).

Burnett’s claim minimizes a crucial attribute of the Creator-His justice. While we may not have anticipated Christ’s death, burial, and Resurrection as God’s solution to man’s sin problem, it is absolutely “rational,” even though Burnett says otherwise. Since man sinned against the infinitely holy God, man’s action was infinitely evil, and the punishment must fit the crime-eternal separation from God. The Bible consistently shows that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23), and without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin (Hebrews 9:22). The blood of bulls and goats could not take away sins (Hebrews 10:4); only the blood of a blameless man, who is the infinite God, could remove sin once and for all. This plan of God flawlessly fulfilled the requirements of His perfect justice.

You see, Burnett’s entire argument is based on the idea that God uses suffering to bring new life. But Burnett completely ignores Genesis chapters 1–3 in his article. He doesn’t deal with the Fall or with how death and suffering entered the world. He assumes that they’ve always been here, that nature has always been “red in tooth and claw.” He doesn’t deal with the Fall because he believes in evolution and rejects the Genesis history as true.

Really, to use Christ’s death on the Cross as justification for evolution is a perversion of the real message of the gospel. Romans 5:12–21 makes it clear-Adam’s sin brought death, suffering, and the Curse into the world, including animal suffering (Romans 8:22; Genesis 3). As descendants of Adam, all mankind has been in rebellion against the Creator-we’ve all sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). And that’s why Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose again the third day to provide the free gift of eternal life for all who believe on His name. This is the real message of the Cross, and it goes completely against the evolutionary concept of millions of years of death and suffering before Adam’s sin.

We cannot pick and choose which parts of Scripture to include or ignore, as Burnett seems to have done in this BioLogos article. Genesis 1–3 explains clearly how death, suffering, and disease came about-and evolution is not a part of that picture. These things make sense when taken in light of all of God’s Word-because we can trust the Bible, from the very first verse.

And here is something that is very sad. So many Christian academics applaud BioLogos and then teach such compromise to their students in Christian colleges and seminaries. Be so very careful where you send you kids to college. I urge you to look at the Christian colleges listed at www.creationcolleges.com.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken

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Can evolution determine right and wrong?

Posted in abominations, Babylon, Evolution, Humanism, Post-Modernism, prophetic, Signs of The Times on February 4, 2011| Leave a Comment »

from The Watchman Blog:

A critique of an article entitled “The Science of Right and Wrong” in the January 2011 edition of Scientific American.

The science of right and wrong

Scientific American has recently published an article on the science of moral issues, written by the atheist publisher and author, Michael Shermer. The purpose of the article—which quotes favorably from Sam Harris’s book, The Moral Landscape—is to claim that morality is something which human beings have acquired by a process of evolution.  As one would expect in an article by an atheist, Shermer’s writings contain a number of presuppositions and logical fallacies.

For example, Shermer begins his article by declaring: “Ever since the rise of modern science, an almost impregnable wall separating it from religion, morality and human values has been raised to the heights.” In fact, the majority of scientists of the modern era were men who believed the Bible to be true—men such as Newton, Lister, Hooke, Boyle, Kelvin, Faraday, etc. All of these subscribed to a morality based not on naturalistic principles, but on God’s law.

The foundations for Shermer’s ideas of morality are deeply flawed. On the origins of morality, he states:

As a species of social primates, we have evolved a deep sense of right and wrong to accentuate and reward reciprocity and cooperation and to attenuate and punish excessive selfishness and free riding.

The first thing we should notice is that the statement relies on evolution, but assumes evolution to be true. This is the circular argument fallacy—or “begging the question.” The sentence does not seem to explain how this “sense of right and wrong” evolved, or why. If we assume that the first subordinate clause is the explanation, then it is not clear why being a species of social primates should cause a sense of right and wrong to develop.

No moral yard stick

This point becomes clearer when Shermer reports on some of his own moral convictions:

These examples are the low-hanging fruit on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, so it is easy for both science and religion to pluck the ripe ones and declare with confidence that such acts as, say, lying, adultery and stealing are wrong because they destroy trust in human relationships that depend on truth telling, fidelity and respect for property.

Leaving aside the clear allusion to Genesis, we see that Shermer has catalogued some behaviors that he considers to be wrong. But on what basis can they be declared wrong? Why is adultery wrong, for example? In evolutionary terms, surely multiple partners would spread genetic information more widely than monogamy.2 If there is no external yardstick of morality, then there is no logical reason why any behavior should be considered wrong.

If human beings really were “a species of social primates,” then you would expect similar “morality” among supposedly related species. According to evolutionists, our closest relatives are chimpanzees—and especially the rarer, smaller chimpanzee known as the bonobo. Bonobos are noted for behavior that would, if it were found among humans, be described as promiscuity.3 So it makes little sense for an advocate of evolutionary theory to claim that adultery is wrong, when it has served bonobos pretty well in the wild.

Made in the image of God

A more objective analysis of the origin of right and wrong is found in the Bible, specifically in Genesis. Humans have not evolved from a common ancestor with bonobos, so the behavior of bonobos is not to be classed on the same moral grounds as human beings. Unlike bonobos, humans were made in the image of God, and the very first humans were given a law from God to obey, which they were capable of obeying or disobeying—not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Genesis 3 is a clear and objective account of the origin of sin. If we start with the presupposition of Genesis being true, it is much easier to understand why we live in a society comprised of people capable of noble acts (because of common grace), but frequent purveyors of dreadful sin (because of original sin). The moral yardstick is God’s law, as presented to us in His word. The failure of writers such as Shermer and Harris to take such a viewpoint into account shows that their view of morality is not only flawed, it is empirically erroneous. The obviousness of our sin, and its cause—the cause being disobedience of God’s law—points up the reason why we need a Saviour, and why the only possible Saviour is the “seed of the woman” promised in Genesis 3:15.

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Evolutionary Christianity has “freed me”, says Brian McLaren

Posted in abominations, Anti-Christ, Apostasy, Emerging Church, Evolution, False Christians, Humanism, Moonbats, prophetic, Religious Babylon, Signs of The Times, Wolves on February 1, 2011| Leave a Comment »

That “christianity” Today would give this false teacher a platform to speak says a great deal about this publication!

Men such as Brian McLaren are not followers of Christ, they are liars and humanists. Anyone who thinks that Christianity needs to be overhauled, let alone think that men descended from apes does not know God at all!

from “christianity” Today:

Christians are in “deep denial” over the continuous evolution of the Christian faith which allows the work of Charles Darwin to be celebrated and not feared, emerging church leader Brian McLaren has said.

McLaren, who argued for an overhaul of the Christian faith in his 2010 book A New Kind of Christianity, joined a recent panel discussion that addressed the evolution of the church and the Christian identity in postmodern or “post-postmodern” times.

The telecast discussion is part of “The Advent of Evolutionary Christianity,” a project that seeks to bring together a diverse panel of “evolution-celebrating” Christians who don’t believe one has to settle on either Jesus or Darwin. Michael Dowd, author of Thank God for Evolution, is host and moderator of the series.

“Evolutionary Christianity is a fact of history about which a lot of Christians are in deep denial,” said McLaren during a session entitled “Evolving Church.” “The fact is the church has constantly been evolving. So many Roman Catholics are shocked to learn that priestly celibacy wasn’t required for quite a while. It was several centuries ago that it became a universal requirement.”

“I think of lot of Protestants assume that when the Apostle Paul was establishing house churches they had Sunday School, bulletins and hymnals,” he continued. “So many of things, even doctrines that are very precious to a lot of people, particularly doctrines of atonement, for example, have evolved greatly over history.”

The emergent church pastor, who views the Bible more as an “inspired library” rather than a legal constitution, also praised “Evolutionary Christianity” as a faith perspective that allows for the discussion of Darwin and evolutionary theory as opposed to orthodox views that raise arguments to the theory.

“[I]t enables us to do theological reflection on the theory of evolution and on evolution as a beautiful ark of history and ark of creation,” explained McLaren. “Personally, that has freed me in so many ways. It’s raised my vision of who and what God would be. It has certainly raised my excitement on what it means to be a Christian.”

Though McLaren was recognized as one of Time magazine’s “25 Most Influential Evangelicals” in 2005, many conservative evangelicals are happy to distance themselves from him, calling him “unbiblical” for rejecting the Bible’s narrative of Eden, the fall, condemnation, salvation, and heaven or hell/damnation. Most conservative evangelicals also don’t believe in Darwinian evolution but instead believe that God created Adam as a man.

And the feeling is mutual. Despite having grown up in a conservative evangelical home, McLaren constantly raises issues with evangelicalism, from the inerrancy of Scripture to orthodox ecclesiology. He often criticizes evangelicals for holding onto what he perceives as obsolete doctrines instead of making faith relevant to the 21st century. . . .

read the full article here.

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Double kill shot dealt to the religion of scientific materialism

Posted in abominations, Atheism, Biblical History, Biblical Science, creationism, Current Events, Evolution, Humanism on November 18, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Carbon 14 dating is used by Evolutionists to defend their theories for the age of the Earth, Universe and for the age of Dinosaur bones.

The philosophy of Scientific Materialism precludes there being any possiblity of a non-physical spiritual reality, non-physical spiritual beings or phenomena.

from Technofascism:

Since the technocracy needs to reduce everyone to a controllable, predictable material entity, it obviously favors a worldview that considers human beings to be nothing but trousered apes.  To be properly denigrated, humans must be reduced to nothing more intrinsically important than a temporary, biological cog in the giant mega-machine’s creeking march toward greater progress and control over nature.

Unfortunately, to the dismay of the apostles of technocratic nihilism, this summer two findings, largely ignored by the mainstram media, were published that dealt devastating blows to the materialist philosophies that justify the technocracy’s agenda:  1) the conclusive evidence that Carbon-14 and other radiometric dating methods are invalid; and 2) strong evidence that the once universal and finely-tuned physical constants now actually vary throughout the universe.

The implications of one of these findings alone is enough to rewrite history and our place in the universe.  But taken together, they seem to be almost a beacon from a lighthouse outside of time and space cautioning us not to venture further into the rocky crags of materialist philosophy.

Some readers who think that evidence for varying isotope decay and physical non-constants might not be a big deal would do well to remember that ALL scientific knowledge we have about the origin of the universe and life on earth is based on the assumption that radioactive decay is constant and that the physical laws are not different in different places in the universe.  When these assumptions are shattered, we should be very skeptical about the versions of history that are currently being taught in schools as though they were the final truths of reality. . . .

read the full article here.

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Blind ideology is dancing on the grave of reason

Posted in abominations, Another christ, Atheism, Babylon, Current Events, Days of Noah, Discerning the Times, Evolution, Gaia, Homosexuality, Humanism, Islam, Moonbats, New World Order, One World Government, Perplexity, Post-Modernism, prophetic, Signs of The Times, Socialism on May 16, 2010| Leave a Comment »

from The Australian:

IN Britain, the benefits of diversity are apparently boundless. Now that the Pagan Police Association has received government recognition, police officers can take a string of pagan festivals as official holidays.

These include celebrating the festival of lactating sheep, and drinking mead and dancing naked to celebrate the harvest. In court, pagan officers will be allowed to pledge to tell the truth not before God but by what “they hold sacred”, including, presumably, the Sun God or Kriss Kringle, the Germanic god of yule.

In Australia, as historian Keith Windschuttle has chronicled in his new book The Stolen Generations – volume three of his tireless evisceration of The Fabrication of Aboriginal History – the allegedly monstrous theft of 100,000 Aboriginal children by Australian officials just because they were Aboriginal never actually happened.

In the US, when a car bomb was planted recently in New York’s Times Square by a man later revealed to be a Muslim trained in bomb-making in Pakistan’s Waziristan region, there was an initial stampede to declare the attempted atrocity was unconnected to Islamic terrorism.

It was said to be most likely the work of a Tea Party member, right-wing militiaman or lone nut. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg even suggested the bomb could have been placed by “somebody with a political agenda who doesn’t like the healthcare bill or something”.

What has Britain come to when its police officers are given leave to dance about naked? How can generations of Australians have been taught the egregious falsehood of the Stolen Generations as fact? And how many times have Tea Party members or people opposed to a piece of legislation tried to commit mass murder against their fellow Americans, compared with the number of recent attempts by Muslim terrorists?

Such intellectual perversity can be understood only in the context of a far wider and profound retreat from reason throughout the West.

Across a broad range of issues, the progressive intelligentsia appears to have junked the rules of evidence, objectivity and rationality in favour of fantasy, irrationality and upside-down thinking.

Take man-made global warming, for example.

The belief that the planet is on course for carbon Armageddon is now embedded in Western politics. Yet the evidence that the climate is warming to an unprecedented and catastrophic degree just isn’t there. The seas are not rising, the ice is not shrinking, the polar bears are not vanishing, and there has been no significant climate warming since 1995.

Or take the Middle East. Israel is the victim of six decades of exterminatory aggression from the Arab and Muslim world. Yet it is Israel that is expected to make concessions to its attackers, who are said by the West to deserve a state of their own. Meanwhile, the US extends its hand of friendship to Iran, which is building a nuclear bomb to commit another Jewish genocide.

Closer to home, “minority rights” mean activities previously marginalised or considered transgressive are now privileged through “family lifestyle choice” or multiculturalism.

Dissenters from these creeds are socially and professionally ostracised. Academics are hounded as racists for upholding the true historic origins of Western civilisation. Scientists sceptical of man-made global warming find funding is withheld. And those sounding the alarm about the true scope of the Islamic jihad are demonised as warmongering neo-cons or part of a Jewish conspiracy.

Such irrationality, intolerance and, indeed, bigotry run counter to the cardinal tenets of a free society based on reason and the toleration of dissent.

This is because these dominant ideas are all rooted in ideologies: environmentalism, anti-racism, anti-Americanism, anti-imperialism, anti-Zionism, egalitarianism or scientism, the belief that scientific materialism alone explains everything.

Rather than going where the evidence leads, ideology wrenches the evidence to fit a prior idea. Not only is ideology inimical to reason, it sacrifices truth to power as it attacks those who try to uphold reality in the face of dogma.

This is because the progressive mindset believes it is synonymous with virtue itself. All opposition is therefore not just wrong but evil. Since progressives also believe anyone who opposes them is a right-winger, it follows that all dissent is right-wing and evil, and so must be shut down.

In other words, these are not propositions to be debated in a rational way but are seen as self-evident truths with the infallibility of religious dogma.

They also smack of the political totalitarianism of communism and fascism, as well as resembling, ironically, the fanatical doctrines of militant Islam. Curiously, they also display religious motifs of sin, guilt and salvation. Odder still, they all exhibit features of millenarianism: the religious belief in the perfectibility of life through the collective redemption of sin. Contemporary secular ideologies identify the sins committed by humanity – oppression of the people of developing nations, despoliation of nature, bigotry, poverty, war – and offer salvation by a return to righteousness.

Thus the greens believe they will save the planet. The leftists believe they will create the brotherhood of man. The anti-Zionists believe they will turn suicide bomb-belts into cucumber frames. The atheists believe they will create the Garden of Reason. And the Islamists believe they

will create the kingdom of God

on earth.

Dissenters are dismissed because they deny the unchallengeable truths of anti-imperialism, environmentalism and scientific materialism. The explanation for the frustration of Utopia must therefore lie in conspiracies by the neo-cons or the Jews, Big Oil or the creationists.

The result is not merely that the West has become irrational. By turning truth and lies, victim and aggressor, justice and injustice upside down, it cannot even recognise, let alone deal with, the threats being mounted to its own values and civilisation.

With ideology eroding the principles of rationality and freedom, truth and justice on which it rests, the West is failing to understand what it is that it cannot understand, and so cannot grasp the mortal danger in which it stands.

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DARWIN DEBUNKED BY SHOCKING DISCOVERY

Posted in Atheism, Biblical Science, creationism, Evolution, Humanism, Intelligent Design, Post-Modernism, prophetic on July 14, 2009| 1 Comment »

from The Last Crusade:

Last January, Scientific American declared 2009 as “the year of Darwin” in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of the revolutionary evolutionist who turned man into a monkey.

The celebration is understandable.

No thinker has accomplished more to create a cleft between science and religion.

No writer has done more to undermine the claim of scripture that man was made in the image and likeness of God.

No scholar has forged greater support for moral relativity and modern materialism.

His theories are treated as laws; his notions as knowledge; his speculation as science.

But a recent finding in Kenya has sent evolutionists into a tail-spin.

And freshly unearthed discoveries of Darwin’s life have caused the academic community to reconsider his greatness and his contribution to advancement of modern science.

The first debunking of Darwin came with the discovery this year of a 1.5 million-year-old footprint in northern Kenya – – the oldest relic of primitive man since Mary Leaky discovered 3.75 million-year-old tracks in the volcanic ash of northern Tanzania.

Darwinist scientists who discovered the footprint in Kenya reluctantly came to the conclusion that it was made by Homo Erectus who had no business appearing in the lower Paleolithic period of world history.

By scanning the footprints with lasers and measuring sediment compression, the scientists determined that the individual who left this print had a modern foot and stride: a mid-foot arch, straight big toe and heel-to-toe weight transfer. 

footprintsml

David Braun, a professor at the South Africa Cape Town University and one of the scientists who came upon the fossil, states the following in Science magazine:

    “It was kind of creepy excavating these things to see all of a sudden something that looks so dramatically like something that you yourself could have made 20 minutes earlier in some kind of wet sediment just next to the site. These could quite easily have been made on the beach today.”

“The prints match a men’s shoe size of about 9, which gives you a height of about 5 feet 9 inches,” says Brian Richmond of George Washington University, who was part of the excavation team. “Here, we have really compelling evidence that they were walking with a long stride, they had an arch in the foot the way we have, and the arch puts a spring in our step, which makes walking more efficient,” he says.

Compounding the problem was the discovery in the same area of a second set of human footprints that had been left about 1,000 years after the first set.

“It’s incredible. I’ve never excavated anything like this before,” says team director John Harris of Rutgers University.

The discoveries are not only incredible but devastating for Darwinists who have held that Homo Erectus did not appear on the scene until 200,000 years ago. This assumption is contained in almost every world history and social studies text in the United States.

Since Christians are compelled by the U.S. Department of Education to present Creationism as a fanciful theory, the same ruling should now be applied to the questionable theories of Darwin and his contemporaries.

To be sure, previous problems with the theory of evolution have been found. To support natural selection, Darwin argued that giraffes gradually grew long necks in order to reach into high trees for the leaves, which the Great Scientist believed, were their sole source of sustenance. He remained blissfully unaware that giraffes eat grass and bushes, and he failed to account for the fact that female giraffes are two or three feet shorter than the males.

In their efforts to materialize empirical proof for evolution, Darwin’s followers turned to scientific hoaxes, such as “Nebraska Man” — an anthropoid ape ancestor to man, whose tooth turned out to belong to a wild pig, and Piltdown Man, who was reported to represent the missing link between monkey and man.

Discovered in England in 1912, Piltdown Man created a sensation until the artifact was exposed in the 1950s as the skull of a Medieval Englishman which had been attached by jaded scientists to the jaw of an Asian ape, whose teeth had been filed down to look human and whose bones had been stained by shellac to look old.

Yet three English scientists were knighted for Piltdown Man.

Other Darwinian claims have been uncovered as asinine assertions. Bird feathers, for example, do not come from the scales of reptiles, human embryos contain no gills.

Thus far, not one fossil has been found to validate Darwin.

“The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontologists,” admitted Stephen J. Gould in 1977. But that fossil record now contains even more species that appear fully developed, with no traceable ancestors.

In addition to the discoveries in Kenya, newly uncovered data about Darwin the man present him as an opportunist and charlatan.

Darwin, noted scientist Eugene Winchy demonstrates in his book The End of Darwinism, stole his theory from Alfred Wallace, who had sent him a “completed formal paper on evolution by natural selection.”

“All my originality … will be smashed,” a distraught Darwin cried when he got Wallace’s manuscript.

Darwin also lied in “The Origin of Species” about believing in a Creator. By 1859, he was a confirmed agnostic and so admitted in his posthumous autobiography, which was censored by his family.

In his book, Windchy devotes a chapter to the Scopes trial which formed the basis for Inherit the Wind, a Bible-mocking movie with Spencer Tracy as Clarence Darrow and Frederick March as William Jennings Bryan.

The trial, as it turns out, was a carefully orchestrated scam to garner publicity for Dayton, Tennessee.

Scopes never taught evolution and never took the stand. His students were tutored to commit perjury.

And the devout Christian Bryan more than held his own against the atheist Darrow as evidenced by the actual transcript of the trial.

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The Vatican claims Darwin’s theory of evolution is compatible with Christianity

Posted in abominations, Anti-Christ, Apostasy, Atheism, Babylon, Catholicism, creationism, Current Events, Discernment, Evolution, False Christians, Humanism, Intelligent Design, Post-Modernism, prophetic, Religious Babylon, Signs of The Times, Synchretism on February 13, 2009| 1 Comment »

“the Vatican is also set to play down the idea of Intelligent Design, which argues a “higher power” must be responsible for the complexities of life.”

Now does anyone need ANY further proof that Roman Catholicism is a false belief system? For a so called “christian church” not to believe that God is responsible for the complexities of life is just ludicrous!

If a belief system does not hold that the God of the Bible is the ultimate creator and origin of ALL creation then it cannot claim to be a Biblical belief system!

Genesis 1:1:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

John 1:1-3:

“In the beginning was the Word, [logos] and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; [i.e., before creation] all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.”

Colossians 1:15-17

[Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the first-born [prototokos] of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

One of the key words in the Colossians passage above (“…and in Christ all things hold together”) is the Greek word sunistemi which means “to stand-together,” “to be compacted together,” “to cohere,” “to be constituted with.”

This passage can be applied to the structure of the atom, for example. The nucleus of every atom is held together by what physicists call “weak” and “strong” forces.

Among secular scientists today there are many who acknowledge that God exists. But He is usually considered as only a First Cause-the One who brought the universe into existence and set it into motion. But most of these same scientists assume God was not involved after the initial act of creation.

This is contrary to clear statements in the Bible that God is very much involved in every event that takes place in the ongoing history of the entire universe. Causality links everything together, because God “works (Gr: energizes) all things according to the counsel of His will.” (Ephesians 1:11.)

 

from The Daily Telegraph:

Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said while the Church had been hostile to Darwin’s theory in the past, the idea of evolution could be traced to St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas.

Father Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti, Professor of Theology at the Pontifical Santa Croce University in Rome, added that 4th century theologian St Augustine had “never heard the term evolution, but knew that big fish eat smaller fish” and forms of life had been transformed “slowly over time”. Aquinas made similar observations in the Middle Ages.

Ahead of a papal-backed conference next month marking the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, the Vatican is also set to play down the idea of Intelligent Design, which argues a “higher power” must be responsible for the complexities of life.

The conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University will discuss Intelligent Design to an extent, but only as a “cultural phenomenon” rather than a scientific or theological issue.

Monsignor Ravasi said Darwin’s theories had never been formally condemned by the Roman Catholic Church, pointing to comments more than 50 years ago, when Pope Pius XII described evolution as a valid scientific approach to the development of humans.

Marc Leclerc, who teaches natural philosophy at the Gregorian University, said the “time has come for a rigorous and objective valuation” of Darwin by the Church as the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth approaches.

Professor Leclerc argues that too many of Darwin’s opponents, primarily Creationists, mistakenly claim his theories are “totally incompatible with a religious vision of reality”.

Earlier this week, prominent scientists and leading religious figures wrote to The Daily Telegraph to call for an end to the fighting over Darwin’s legacy.

They argued that militant atheists are turning people away from evolution by using it to attack religion while they also urge believers in creationism to acknowledge the overwhelming body of evidence that now exists to support Darwin’s theory.

The Church of England is seeking to bring Darwin back into the fold with a page on its website paying tribute to his “forgotten” work in his local parish, showing science and religion need not be at odds.

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