The Banner….of truth?

Sadly, The Banner (CRC magazine) is now publishing pro-evolutionary material. The current issue of the magazine’s ‘In My Humble Opinion’ department contains the article Evolution and the Young Adult Exodus. See link for full article. The article is quite short, so do read it.

The authors of this article, evolutionary biologists Steve and Sarah Roels, are members of the PCA. In this article they attempt to address why the young people are leaving the church in droves. Steve and Sarah are young people themselves at 27 years old, born and raised in the CRC, educated at Calvin College, and only joined the PCA because there was no Christian Reformed church in the city they moved to. In the article they express their ‘worries’. “We did not leave because of faith issues, simply geography, but now we wonder if there is a place for us in the denomination if we return to a CRC area.” Their idea of Christ’s Church is the acceptance of all beliefs: “When we read The Banner, we still find many reasons to love the CRC: caring people, compassionate missions, and a rich theological tradition. However, the body of Christ has many parts. If evolutionary biologists are a foot, why does the body say to the foot, “I do not need you?”” Apparently the Roels’ explanation of why young people are leaving is that the church is not open enough for their wide worldviews.

The CRC does not have a solid stance whatsoever when it comes to the Creation/evolution debate. The following quote can be found in the CRC’s stance on Creation and science. “Humanity is created in the image of God; all theorizing that minimizes this fact and all theories of evolution that deny the creative activity of God are rejected.” Read through this quickly and you can easily miss it. It doesn’t say “all theories of evolution are rejected” but rather “all theories of evolution that deny the creative activity of God are rejected.” This statement leaves the floodgates wide open for theistic evolution! This is the danger of not holding a strict stance on issues like this.

 

Dragons or Dinosaurs?

I am currently reading Dragons or Dinosaurs? by Darek Isaacs. This is a very well written and thought out book. His approach to this topic comes with only the highest view of Scripture. I want to share with you the first chapter of this book. It’s a fairly short chapter, so read on:

Chapter 1: The Mount of Dragons

What a remarkably expensive word dragon has proven itself to be. No small number of biblical translators has assumed a haunting debt on their conscience due to this creature’s stubborn presence in the native languages of our Scriptures. We must fully calculate the cost.

Our most ancient manuscripts actually speak of dragons as a reality. It is a fact that cannot be reconciled any other way. The Old Testament scribes wrote that they saw the creatures, prowling, swimming, hissing, and even breathing fire. The ramifications of such are substantial.

The mythological status of dragons threatens the inerrancy of Scripture. How could it not? A truly almighty, omniscient God would hardly inspire His prophets to speak of a creature that really was not a creature at all.

Modern translators simply could not allow the dragon to have an authentic seat at the biblical table in these modern sophisticated times. Therefore, in poor form, a blind eye is turned to that scaly and unwanted dinner guest. Indeed, some have exchanged their conscience to evade the seemingly unanswerable question: Does the Bible actually speak of dragons?

This kind of biblical stumble is just what the humanists have ordered – indeed, they don’t need much to mount a full-frontal attack on the Bible with such claims. These dragons, if unfounded and unreal, shall be most unforgiving. They would inevitably force Christianity, and all of its “baggage” to fade into oblivion before the next dawn.

This dragon problem would be more known today if the masses were at all skilled in their Scriptures of if the Western Church, as a whole, even cared about biblical literacy. Certainly, dullness of scholarship amongst the Church brethren is a topic for a different work at a different time.

Al this rhetoric concerning the word dragon is certainly causing a stir in the old guard. I can feel the worried fretting of those urging me to choose my battles wisely – to used caution before picking what hill is worth dying on. It certainly appears I am picking a fight that cannot be won. Nevertheless, with no retreat and with my able spade in hand, I am digging up an age-old monster that has been secretly entombed for many centuries. Therefore, here I stand on the Mount of Dragons.

From this summit, I cannot recant the truth of dragons in the Scriptures. I am not ashamed of the Bible, its words, its meanings, and its assertions. So, to the temporary hope of secularists, and to the anxiety-riddled, uninformed Church, I will shine a spotlight for all to see that the Bible speaks of dragons as real.

Yet, there is such a beautiful thing about illumination. Light chases away the darkness. Light reveals all that is visible, and nothing concealed by the dark can remain in such a state. So now, what if, when a tiny flame is sparked, we catch a pair of glimmering reptilian eyes staring back at us?

Imagine what would result if something that was thought to be wildly outrageous turned out to be tangible, touchable, and true? If that actually did happen, then what would that say for the source that claimed the unlikely truth?

The Bible, as I have shown in quick fashion in the opening verses, claims that dragons roamed the countryside once upon a time. Yet, much of our westernized world believes the creatures were merely fairy tales.

In a literal way, the mystery of the dragon holds a very peculiar and extremely surprising key. Dragons were either real, or they were not. The Bible, on that fact, is either deemed an irresponsible myth in its full breadth, or it contains a vast treasure of human knowledge – knowledge that outpaces the high ivory towers of modern academia to this day.

But let us carry that note and add the orchestra. Dragons would only be the beginning – for if the Bible was right about dragons, what about the chorus of the elaborate biblical song? What about concepts like sin and righteousness, stories of the blind who see, the lame who walk, and life after death?

And even more so, the Bible is unmistakable that there will be accountability at the hands of a just and powerful God. There is the ultimate eternal destination of either Heaven or hell for every member of humanity. That is a destination that none can escape. Moreover, on that last chord, what about the most sublime of all graces? I am speaking, of course, of the forgiveness and shelter offered through Jesus Christ alone.

The stakes have escalated. I am so eagerly tempted to believe that the mystery of dragons has been saved in a cave for such a time as this. Because what is harder to believe: that dragons were actually real, or that Jesus Christ is the Author of life and the Savior of all humanity? The Bible claims the reality of both. Do you not want to know if dragons were real, now?

Dragons or Dinosaurs? Darek Isaacs. pp1-3

The entire book is also available to read on Google Books at the link below:

http://books.google.com/books?id=bg-C4RsT3-cC&pg=PA24&lpg=PA24&dq=dragons+or+dinosaurs+darek+isaacs&source=bl&ots=f1En5kDM4P&sig=7pVVY33ij5i1XXIVPM5T_9ZfS7o&hl=en&ei=RT_DTqa4EsqBgAer-bTtDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CEoQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

An Unavoidable Miracle

Atheists deny the existence of God. Atheists deny Creation. Atheists deny miracles? If organisms evolved into what they are today, trace that back on the evolutionary timescale and they still had to come from somewhere. Atheists have to try to describe their existence without God (His miracle of Creation), but conclusively their life had to come from ‘non-life’ somewhere along the line. Below is an article posted on CMI’s website regarding this concept.

A miracle by any other name would be … called science?

Atheists believe in miracles

By Calvin Smith

Published: 10 November 2011(GMT+10)

“The blind men approached Him, and Jesus said to them, ‘Do you believe that I am able to do this?’ They said to Him, ‘Yes, Lord.’ Then He touched their eyes, saying, ‘According to your faith, let it be unto you.’ And their eyes were opened.” Mathew 9:28–30.

This is one of the many miracles witnessed and recorded as history in the Bible. Christians are often mocked by atheists for believing in such miracles as being ‘un-scientific’. Why? Because such things are ‘just impossible’ or ‘un-provable’ they might say. “We don’t see those things happening today!” is a common response. But are miracles truly beyond a rational person’s ability to believe?

What is a miracle?

The World English Dictionary describes a miracle as: “an event that is contrary to the established laws of nature and attributed to a supernatural cause” (as pointed out in Miracles and Science, we believe it is more accurate to say that a miracle is an addition to natural laws).

The word supernatural is described as—“of or relating to things that cannot be explained according to natural laws”. Using these definitions we can start to unravel the supposed irrationality of a belief in miracles within an atheists own framework.

WDJD? (What did Jesus do?)

The Bible says Jesus restored the blind men’s eyes. Although there are many different causes for blindness (glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, retinitis pigmentosa, macular degeneration, cataracts, Leber’s congenital amaurosis, etc.) any restoration of sight would require the arranging/rearranging of tissues made up of millions of cells, the production of thousands of amino acids all folded into specific shapes (proteins) and the tending of such tissues by biological nano machines regulated by programming akin toultra sophisticated computer software in the brain and integrated through the person’s central nervous system.

Such an arrangement in a similar mechanical construct would require brilliant engineering beyond anything mankind has yet accomplished. ‘Vision’ needs an incredible amount of organization and synchronized processes, and unlike ‘order’ seen to come about naturally in objects like snowflakes or crystals, requires massive amounts of biological information.

As in any code system, biological information is not the result of random or repeating processes (the onus is on anyone who disagrees with that statement to prove that matter without an intelligent mind can produce a code system) so must have required an intelligent agent to create it.

Seeing as how the information in DNA is the most sophisticated multi-code system ever seen we can then assume it came from the most sophisticated mind we can conceive; God. The Bible reveals Jesus as the one true creator God, so it makes sense that God, the Creator of sight, could restore men’s sight if He so chose.

What about the skeptic? They still have to contend with the same challenge of how such biological processes could possibly have arranged themselves, except instead of an intelligent mind providing creative ability they swap in ‘deep time’, chance and ‘natural processes’ as inventive agents instead.

But time and chance are not the best allies as far as creative processes go, as time simply aids the entropic process, the chance formation of a hypothetical functional ‘simple’ cell for example, given all the ingredients (even with a whole raft of assumptions grossly in favour of it happening) is acknowledged to be worse than 1 in 10⁵⁰⁰⁰ (like guessing a 5,000-digit PIN), and matter’s natural properties have never been seen to create code systems, as evolutionists have admitted;

“How did stupid atoms spontaneously write their own software …? Nobody knows … there is no known law of physics able to create information from nothing … ”¹

I believe in miracles!

Enough prodding reveals skeptics believe in miracles just as much as Christians do. For example, because atheists have to explain their existence without God they ultimately have to believe in life coming from non-life sometime in the past. This disagrees with the Law of Biogenesis (life comes only from life, discovered by the creationist scientist Louis Pasteur) and is therefore unscientific (disagreeing with a scientific law is by definition ‘unscientific’).

Skeptics believe in miracles just as much as Christians. Atheists have to explain their existence without God … have to believe in life coming from non-life sometime in the past.

Atheistic evolutionists have to believe that this scientific law was once ‘broken’ in the distant past and that life did come from non-living matter, but that would mean that this law of science isn’t actually a ‘law’ (after all a single exception to any scientific law would render it falsified). In effect, by breaking a natural law it would have been a miracle!

Stepping back to the big picture of existence, atheists also need to explain the origin of the universe we live in, and the most popular theory is the big bang model. Yet a number of secular scientists have criticized the big bang:

“The big bang today relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities, things that we have never observed—inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent examples. Without them, there would be a fatal contradiction between the observations made by astronomers and the predictions of the big bang theory.”²

Because of the infinitesimal chance of a big bang (itself ‘supernatural’ [relating to things that cannot be explained according to natural laws] because it would have had to take place before the established laws of time, space etc existed) producing the miracle of such a finely tuned universe, some evolutionary cosmologists have responded by speculating a “multi-verse” theory to improve the odds of our ideal universe existing by chance.

“Short of invoking a benevolent creator, many physicists see only one possible explanation: Our universe may be but one of perhaps infinitely many universes in an inconceivably vast multiverse. Most of those universes are barren, but some, like ours, have conditions suitable for life.”³

However, invoking ‘other universes’ to explain why the universe appears designed to bolster belief that the universe wasn’t designed seems like a stretch—see Multiverse theory—unknown science or illogical raison d’être?

Christians and atheists both believe that miracles have occurred. Both believe their own version of ‘creation’ by faith and point to the same evidence to support their beliefs.

Agree to disagree

So Christians and atheists can agree to some degree regarding miracles as both believe that miracles have occurred in the past. Both believe their own version of ‘creation’ by faith and point to the same evidence to support their beliefs.

Atheists have tried to stump believers by asking “If God created everything then who created God?”, although the answer has long been known (that is, only things which have a beginningneed a creator, while God is the Creator of time—see Who created God? It’s an illogical question). But the alleged problem of infinite regress doesn’t just apply to one philosophical viewpoint, it applies to every thinking person. The Christian can ask the same question; “If matter has the innate ability to ‘create everything’, where did matter come from?”

An eternally existent being/substance may appear miraculous in the limited minds of fallible men, but the question of origins ultimately becomes a matter of which makes more sense? Did existence start from an eternal God or from eternal matter? (By the way, to believe in eternal matter defies the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which means the atheist has to believe in another miracle: eternal matter.) Whatever your answer, remember, Christians and atheists both agree in miracles.

It must be confusing…

It must be confusing to be a theistic evolutionist. Trying to mix the theory of evolution with God’s infallible Word is a recipe for a disastrous spiritual life. John Bloom, professor of physics at Biola University, wrote an article posted on The Aquilla Report entitled, Theistic Evolution Isn’t Fit for Survival. The following quote, from the aforementioned article, addresses the sheer folly of accepting theistic evolution as even remotely ‘theologically sensible’.

A second issue is whether this new, radical theistic evolution view makes theological sense. If God did not even guide the evolutionary process, how is God sovereign over his creation? Did God intentionally make us in his image? If humans gradually evolved, and our sinfulness is merely the inherent selfishness resulting from a Darwinian process, then human history is progress, not corruption, so shouldn’t humans ultimately be good enough not to need a savior? Given Psalm 19:1–3 and Romans 1:20, why must we assume that God’s actions and attributes are absolutely undetectable by science?

And if we think that Adam and Eve are mythical, who else is? Noah? Abraham? Moses? Samuel? David? Such skepticism towards the historical accounts in early Genesis (and elsewhere by extension of the same methods) is typical of liberal theology, which historically evangelicals opposed. In fact, many of these same issues began poisoning mainline seminaries a century ago, and led to Biola’s founding.

This is not the time to be deciding what beliefs we should give up in order to help prop up a failing vision in science. In fact, I find it striking that just when the biochemical evidence for Creation is becoming dramatically clearer, some Christians who accept Darwinism as true feel that they must attack Creationists and mythologize important Scriptures. A sober look at what Darwin cannot explain should give them pause and perhaps more respect for their brothers and sisters who have solid scientific and biblical reasons for questioning this prevailing naturalistic paradigm.

“The hills melted like wax…”

Check out this picture of ‘volcanic lightening’. This occurs when rolling ash clouds rub against each other and they become electrically charged. How Great is our God!

Here is a link to another picture of this and a few more pics of other volcanoes.

http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/photos/volcano-general/#/volcano05-smoke-lightning-iceland_22332_600x450.jpg