Seeking Proof Finding Grace: Recent Episodes
Ron Campbell
Every week we take a close look at God's great love for us. Along the way we will answer some of the most difficult questions like: Were we created or are we a cosmic accident? If there is a God, how can I know who He is? Does God really love me? If so, why does He allow so many bad things to happen? Come join us on the greatest journey of all!
On this weeks podcast we look at who were the guarantors of the Gospel message in the years before it was committed to writing. What do the writers of the New Testament tell us about this important time period?
“The works of our Savior were always present, for they were true: those who were healed, those who rose from the dead, those who were not only seen in the act of being healed or raised, but were also always present, not merely when the Savior was living on the earth, but also for a considerable time after his departure, so that some of them survived even to our own times.” Eusebius quoting from Quadratus, Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., p. 4.3.2
“I shall not hesitate also to put into properly ordered form for you everything I learned carefully in the past from the elders and noted down well, for the truth of which I vouch. For unlike most people I did not enjoy those who have a great deal to say, but those who teach the truth. Nor did I enjoy those who recall someone else’s commandments, but those who remember the commandments given by the Lord to the faith and proceeding from the truth itself. And if by chance anyone who had been in attendance on the elders should come my way, I inquired about the words of the elders – [that is,] what [according to the elders] Andrew or Peter said, or Phillip, or Thomas or James, or John or Matthew or any other of the Lord’s disciples, and whatever Aristion and the elder John, the Lord’s disciples, were saying. For I did not think that information from books would profit me as much as information from a living and surviving voice.” Papias quoted by Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 3.39.3-4
“We may therefore trust the most significant implication of what Papias says: that oral traditions of the words and deeds of Jesus were attributed to specific named eyewitnesses.” Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 2006 page 20
1st Cor 11, “23 For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; 24 and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” 25 In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes.” NKJV, 1982
1st Cor 15, “3 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. 6 After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. 7 After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. 8 Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time.” NKJV, 1982
Galatians 1, “18 Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and remained with him fifteen days. 19 But I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord’s brother. 20 (Now concerning the things which I write to you, indeed, before God, I do not lie.)” NKJV, 1982
Galatians 2, “Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, and also took Titus with me. 2 And I went up by revelation, and communicated to them that gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, but privately to those who were of reputation, lest by any means I might run, or had run, in vain.” NKJV, 1982
Luke 1, “Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us, 2 just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us, 3 it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, 4 that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed.” NKJV, 1982
This week we look at how oral traditions are really passed on in the area around Judea. How wrong did the form critics gets it? The answer is very, very wrong! This makes much more sense as we look at how the Gospels themselves took shape when they were committed to writing.
Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 2006
“The Gospels are unreliable sources for the history of Jesus not merely because of the fallibility of human memories but more decisively because the Christian communities had no real interest in preserving traditions about the past but formulated Jesus’ traditions for quite the different purpose of witnessing to the present, living Lord Jesus.” Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 2006 page 241
Bauckham quoting Vincent Taylor “if the Form-Critics are right, the disciples must have been translated to heaven immediately after the resurrection.” Vincent Taylor, The Formation of the Gospel Tradition, 1935
“The assumption of the comparability with folklore – freely altered and created in transmission – can be questioned at several points. The time span between Jesus and the Gospels is much shorter than the periods of time spanned by the tradition studied by folklorists. Moreover the nature of the traditions is very different. If the analogy with oral traditions in traditional societies is to carry any weight, there must be much more careful distinction between different types of traditions and the different ways in which they are treated.” “Virtually every element in this construction has been questioned and rejected by some or even most scholars. Many of these criticisms are rooted in the much better and fuller information that is now available about the way oral traditions operate in predominantly oral societies.” Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 2006 page 247
“That the Gospel traditions were transmitted purely orally for several decades was assumed by the form critics rather than demonstrated. The world of the early Christian communities was not a purely oral one, but a predominantly oral society in which written texts had a place that was closely related to orality.” Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 2006 page 248
“The fact that these informants – whether the Twelve or the other disciples – were not the only eyewitnesses but also prominent teachers in the early Christian movement shows, in coherence with what we have learned from Papias, that they did not merely start the traditions going and then withdraw from view, but remained for many years the known sources and guarantors of traditions of the deeds and words of Jesus.” Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 2006 page 30
“The traditional setting is the gathering of villagers in the evening for the telling of stories and the recitation of poetry. These gatherings have a name: they are called the haflat samar. Samar in Arabic is a cognate of the Hebrew shamar, meaning to preserve. The community is preserving its store of tradition. By informal we mean that there is no set teacher and no specifically identified student. As stories, poems and other traditional materials are told and recited through the evening, anyone can theoretically participate. In fact, the older men, the more gifted men, and the socially more prominent men tend to do the reciting. The reciters will shift depending on who is seated in the circle…I have often been seated in such circles when some piece of traditional oral literature is quoted. I might not happen to know the story and so proceed to ask what it is all about. Someone then says, “Elder so-and-so knows the story.” The ranking social/intellectual figure then proceeds to tell the story with pride.” K.E. Bailey, “Informal Controlled Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels”, Themelios 20 (1995) 363-367.
In this eight-part series we will be looking at a timeline from Jesus’ death and resurrection in 33AD up to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD and how the gospels and nearly all of the New Testament came together during this time. This week we wrap up our journey through Acts and most of the New Testament. A growing consensus recognizes that the best answer is that all four Gospels and most of the New Testament were written before the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD, just 37 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection.
John 5, “After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew, Bethesda, having five porches.” NKJV, 1982 – notice John’s language – Now there is in Jerusalem… Not there was…
In this eight-part series we will be looking at a timeline from Jesus’ death and resurrection in 33AD up to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD and how the gospels and nearly all of the New Testament came together during this time. This week in Part 7 we start at Paul’s imprisonment around 57AD and discuss how the events mentioned and not mentioned in Acts from 57AD to 62AD help us potentially date the Gospels.
Luke 1, “Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us, 2 just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us, 3 it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, 4 that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed.” NKJV, 1982
“Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the Sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others…and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law he delivered them to be stoned…” 20.9.1, Flavius, Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews
From Lexham Bible Dictionary - Josephus provides a brief account of the circumstances and details of James’ death (Antiquities 20.197–203). According to Josephus, the high priest Ananus (the younger) took action against James (circa ad 61) after Festus’ death and Albinus had arrived as the new Judaean procurator (Antiquities 20.197–99). Ananus “convened the judges of the Sanhedrin and brought before them a man named James, the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ, and certain others. He accused them of having transgressed the law and delivered them up to be stoned” (Antiquities 20.200). This action did not go over well with “the most fair-minded and were strict in observance of law,” who secretly reported Ananus’ actions to Agrippa and Albinus (Antiquities 20.201–3a). As a result of his unauthorized action, Agrippa deposed Ananus after only a three-month rule as high priest (Antiquities 20.203b). Lexham Bible Dictionary quoting from 20.9.1, Flavius, Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews
In this eight-part series we will be looking at a timeline from Jesus’ death and resurrection in 33AD up to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD and how the gospels and nearly all of the New Testament came together during this time. This week in Part 6 we finally break into the 50’s and what might be the beginning of the Gospels themselves being committed to writing.
Acts 15, “36Then after some days Paul said to Barnabas, “Let us now go back and visit our brethren in every city where we have preached the word of the Lord, and see how they are doing.” 37 Now Barnabas was determined to take with them John called Mark. 38 But Paul insisted that they should not take with them the one who had departed from them in Pamphylia, and had not gone with them to the work. 39 Then the contention became so sharp that they parted from one another. And so Barnabas took Mark and sailed to Cyprus; 40 but Paul chose Silas and departed, being commended by the brethren to the grace of God. 41 And he went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches.”
“So Matthew published a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own language, while Peter and Paul were preaching in Rome and founding the church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel preached by him. Then John, the disciple of the Lord, the one who leaned back on the Lord’s breast, himself published a Gospel while he resided in Ephesus.” quoting from Irenaeus (120-202 AD); Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., pp. 5.8.2-4
“The Elder used to say: Mark, in his capacity as Peter’s interpreter, wrote down accurately as many things as he recalled from memory – though not in an ordered form – of the things either said or done by the Lord. For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied him, but later, as I said, Peter, who used to give his teachings in the form of cheriai, but had no intention of providing an orderly arrangement of the logia of the Lord...Consequently Mark did nothing wrong when he wrote down some individual items just as he related them from memory. For he made it one concern not to omit anything he had heard or to falsify anything.”” Quoting from Papias, Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., pp. 3.39.14-16
In this eight-part series we will be looking at a timeline from Jesus’ death and resurrection in 33AD up to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD and how the gospels and nearly all of the New Testament came together during this time. This week in Part 5 we look at the very first Church Council in Jerusalem around 50AD and how their decision shaped the future of how the Church operates today. Spoiler alert!! It might be better to get your theology from someplace other than network television.
Jeremiah 31:31-33 NKJV
"[31] Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah- [32] not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the LORD. [33] But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
Matthew 26:27-29 NKJV
[27] Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you. [28] For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.
Acts 15, “6 Now the apostles and elders came together to consider this matter. 7 And when there had been much dispute, Peter rose up and said to them: “Men and brethren, you know that a good while ago God chose among us, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. 8 So God, who knows the heart, acknowledged them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He did to us, 9 and made no distinction between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith. 10 Now therefore, why do you test God by putting a yoke on the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? 11 But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved in the same manner as they…22 Then it pleased the apostles and elders, with the whole church, to send chosen men of their own company to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas, namely, Judas who was also named Barsabas, and Silas, leading men among the brethren.” NKJV
Acts 15, “23 They wrote this letter by them:
The apostles, the elders, and the brethren,
To the brethren who are of the Gentiles in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia:
Greetings. Since we have heard that some who went out from us have troubled you with words, unsettling your souls, saying, “You must be circumcised and keep the law”—to whom we gave no such commandment—25 it seemed good to us, being assembled with one accord, to send chosen men to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, 26 men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. 27 We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who will also report the same things by word of mouth. 28 For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: 29 that you abstain from things offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well.” NKJV
In this eight-part series we will be looking at a timeline from Jesus’ death and resurrection in 33AD up to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD and how the gospels and nearly all of the New Testament came together during this time. This week in Part 4 we look at how James’ death impacted our timeline and Paul’s first missionary journey. Along the way we also find the very first part of the New Testament being written around 48AD, a short 15 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection.
Acts 11, “Now about that time Herod the king stretched out his hand to harass some from the church. 2 Then he killed James the brother of John with the sword. 3 And because he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to seize Peter also. Now it was during the Days of Unleavened Bread. 4 So when he had arrested him, he put him in prison, and delivered him to four squads of soldiers to keep him, intending to bring him before the people after Passover. 5 Peter was therefore kept in prison, but constant prayer was offered to God for him by the church. 6 And when Herod was about to bring him out, that night Peter was sleeping, bound with two chains between two soldiers; and the guards before the door were keeping the prison. 7 Now behold, an angel of the Lord stood by him, and a light shone in the prison; and he struck Peter on the side and raised him up, saying, “Arise quickly!” And his chains fell off his hands. 8 Then the angel said to him, “Gird yourself and tie on your sandals”; and so he did. And he said to him, “Put on your garment and follow me.” 9 So he went out and followed him, and did not know that what was done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision. 10 When they were past the first and the second guard posts, they came to the iron gate that leads to the city, which opened to them of its own accord; and they went out and went down one street, and immediately the angel departed from him. 11 And when Peter had come to himself, he said, “Now I know for certain that the Lord has sent His angel, and has delivered me from the hand of Herod and from all the expectation of the Jewish people.12 So, when he had considered this, he came to the house of Mary, the mother of John whose surname was Mark, where many were gathered together praying… 18 Then, as soon as it was day, there was no small stir among the soldiers about what had become of Peter. 19 But when Herod had searched for him and not found him, he examined the guards and commanded that they should be put to death. And he went down from Judea to Caesarea, and stayed there.” NKJV
Acts 12-13, “25 And Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem when they had fulfilled their ministry, and they also took with them John whose surname was Mark. 13-1 Now in the church that was at Antioch there were certain prophets and teachers…2 As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, “Now separate to Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” 3 Then, having fasted and prayed, and laid hands on them, they sent them away.” NKJV
In this eight-part series we will be looking at a timeline from Jesus’ death and resurrection in 33AD up to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD and how the gospels and nearly all of the New Testament came together during this time. This week in Part 3 we look at Paul’s conversion a few years after Jesus’ death in 35AD and his trip to meet with Peter 3 years later in 38AD.
Galatians 1, “15 But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, 16 to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, (Acts 9:19-22) I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood, 17 nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went to Arabia, and (Acts 9:23-25) returned again to Damascus. (Acts 9: 26-30) 18 Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and remained with him fifteen days. 19 But I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord’s brother. 20 (Now concerning the things which I write to you, indeed, before God, I do not lie.)” NKJV
1st Cor 15, “Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, 2 by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. 3 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve…8 Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time.” NKJV
Part 2 The Post Resurrection Appearances: Podcast 111
In this eight-part series we will be looking at a timeline from Jesus’ death and resurrection in 33AD up to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD and how the gospels and nearly all of the New Testament came together during this time. This week in Part 2 we look at all of Jesus’ post resurrection appearances in the 40 days after His resurrection.
a. Appearance in the garden
Matt 28, verses 9-10
John 20, verses 14-18
b. Appearance to Peter
1st Cor 15, verses 3-8
c. Appearance on the road to Emmaus
Mark 16, verses 12-13
Luke 24, verses 13-18
d. Appearance to the 10
Luke 24, verses 36-43
John 20, verses 19-25
e. Appearance to the 11 (Thomas)
John 20, verses 26-29
f. Appearance to 500 (Galilee)
Matt 28, verses 16-20
g. Appearance at the Sea of Tiberias
John 21, verses 1-14
f. Appearance to James
1st Cor 15, verses 3-8
g. Appearance to all the Apostles (Acts 1:4)
Luke 24, verses 49-53
Acts 1, verses 4-11
h. Last of all to Paul
1st Cor 15, verses 3-8
In this eight part series we will be looking at a timeline from Jesus’ death and resurrection in 33AD up to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD and how the gospels and nearly all of the New Testament came together during this time. This week in Part 1 we start with an overview of how this 37 year timeframe changed the world!
“The fact that something is written down is persuasive to people not used to asking questions like: ‘Who wrote it, and when?’ ‘How did they know what to write?’ ‘Did they, in their time, really mean what we, in our time, understand them to be saying?’ ‘Were they unbiased observers, or did they have an agenda that colored their writing?’ Ever since the nineteenth century, scholarly theologians have made an overwhelming case that the gospels are not reliable accounts of what happened in the history of the real world. All were written long after the death of Jesus, and also after the epistles of Paul, which mention almost none of the alleged facts of Jesus’ life.” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
“Such skepticism has become endemic in Gospel studies as a result of form criticism. Many New Testament scholars seem to suppose that the more skeptical of the sources they are, the more rigorously historical is their method. But this is not how historians usually work. In good historical work it is no more an epistemic virtue to be skeptical than it is to be credulous. In everyday life, we do not systematically mistrust everything anyone tells us…When someone is who is in a position to know what they tell us does so, we normally believe them. But we keep our critical faculties alert and raise questions if there is specific reason to doubt. There is no reason why historical work should be substantially different in its dialectic of trust and critical assessment.” Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 2006
The Form Critics from over 100 years ago have had a huge impact on how we look at the Bible today. The question is, were they right. My contention is that they were wrong on most points. This week we finish looking at the mistakes they made and how it impacts their theories.
“Virtually every element in this construction has been questioned and rejected by some or even most scholars. Many of these criticisms are rooted in the much better and fuller information that is now available about the way oral traditions operate in predominantly oral societies.” Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 2006 page 246
“The works of our Savior were always present, for they were true: those who were healed, those who rose from the dead, those who were not only seen in the act of being healed or raised, but were also always present, not merely when the Savior was living on the earth, but also for a considerable time after his departure, so that some of them survived even to our own times.” Eusebius quoting from Quadratus, Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., p. 4.3.2
“Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the source of the first evil, but even in Rome…Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty: then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind.” Tacitus, The Annuals, 15.44
“I have asked them if they are Christians, and if they admit it, I repeat the question a second and third time, with a warning of the punishment awaiting them. If they persist, I order them to be led away for execution; for, whatever the nature of their admission, I am convinced that their stubbornness and unshakeable obstinacy ought not to go unpunished…They also declare that the sum total of their guilt or error amounted to no more than this: they had met regularly before dawn on a fixed day to chant verses alternatively amongst themselves in honor of Christ as if to a God, and also to bind themselves by oath, not for any criminal purpose, but to abstain from theft, robbery, and adultery…This made me decide it was all the more necessary to extract the truth by torture from two slave-women, whom they called deaconesses. I found nothing but a degenerate sort of cult carried to extravagant lengths.” Pliny the Younger, The Letters, 10.96
The Form Critics from over 100 years ago have had a huge impact on how we look at the Bible today. The question is, were they right. My contention is that they were wrong on most points. This week and next week we will look at the mistakes they made and how it impacts their theories.
“Virtually every element in this construction has been questioned and rejected by some or even most scholars. Many of these criticisms are rooted in the much better and fuller information that is now available about the way oral traditions operate in predominantly oral societies.” Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 2006 page 246
This week we introduce some of the basic ideas and methods of the form critics who pioneered much of the skepticism we see directed at the Bible over 100 years ago. Do their ideas still hold up today?
“The works of our Savior were always present, for they were true: those who were healed, those who rose from the dead, those who were not only seen in the act of being healed or raised, but were also always present, not merely when the Savior was living on the earth, but also for a considerable time after his departure, so that some of them survived even to our own times.” Eusebius quoting from Quadratus, Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., p. 4.3.2
“It is a curious fact that nearly all the contentions of the early form critics have by now been convincingly refuted, but the general picture of the process of oral transmission that form critics pioneered still governs the way most New Testament scholars think.” Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 2006
This week we look at the story of Hanna from 1st Samuel and look at how we should approach God when we have a desire on our hearts. God loves you so much. Your Heavenly Father is waiting for you!
1 Samuel 1:1-11,20 NKJV
“Now there was a certain man of Ramathaim Zophim, of the mountains of Ephraim, and his name was Elkanah the son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the son of Zuph, an Ephraimite. [2] And he had two wives: the name of one was Hannah, and the name of the other Peninnah. Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children. [3] This man went up from his city yearly to worship and sacrifice to the LORD of hosts in Shiloh. Also the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, the priests of the LORD, were there. [4] And whenever the time came for Elkanah to make an offering, he would give portions to Peninnah his wife and to all her sons and daughters. [5] But to Hannah he would give a double portion, for he loved Hannah, although the LORD had closed her womb. [6] And her rival also provoked her severely, to make her miserable, because the LORD had closed her womb. [7] So it was, year by year, when she went up to the house of the LORD, that she provoked her; therefore she wept and did not eat. [8] Then Elkanah her husband said to her, "Hannah, why do you weep? Why do you not eat? And why is your heart grieved? Am I not better to you than ten sons?" [9] So Hannah arose after they had finished eating and drinking in Shiloh. Now Eli the priest was sitting on the seat by the doorpost of the tabernacle of the LORD. [10] And she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed to the LORD and wept in anguish. [11] Then she made a vow and said, "O LORD of hosts, if You will indeed look on the affliction of Your maidservant and remember me, and not forget Your maidservant, but will give Your maidservant a male child, then I will give him to the LORD all the days of his life, and no razor shall come upon his head."….[20] So it came to pass in the process of time that Hannah conceived and bore a son, and called his name Samuel, saying, "Because I have asked for him from the LORD."
1 Samuel 2:18-21 NKJV
[21] And the LORD visited Hannah, so that she conceived and bore three sons and two daughters. Meanwhile the child Samuel grew before the LORD.
Matthew 7:7-11 NKJV
"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. [8] For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. [9] Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? [10] Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? [11] If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!
Hebrews 4:14—17 NKJV
14 Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15 For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
This week we look at what life was like 2000 years ago and consider what impact that had when the story of the life of Jesus was committed to writing.
This week we look at whether or not ancient cultures passing on their oral tradition really is the same thing as a bunch of junior high kids playing the phone game. Spoiler Alert!! It isn’t and I can’t believe people keep using this analogy.
When we begin our journey to find God, what do we do with the information contained within the Bible. The goal is to determine if the Bible is a reliable source and if we can do that, then we can use some of the information in the Bible to help us answer important questions. Throwing out the Bible is not the best way to approach this journey. Let’s talk about this…
1st Corinthians 15, “3 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. 6 After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. 7 After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. 8 Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time.” NKJV, 1982
In our digital age that is becoming increasingly skeptical of everything, how do we know what to trust? What makes something reliable? The answer is actually easier than we might think and will help us on our journey to find God.
“Trusting testimony is not an irrational act of faith that leaves critical rationality aside; it is on the contrary, the rationally appropriate way of responding to authentic testimony.” Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 2006
“The works of our Savior were always present, for they were true: those who were healed, those who rose from the dead, those who were not only seen in the act of being healed or raised, but were also always present, not merely when the Savior was living on the earth, but also for a considerable time after his departure, so that some of them survived even to our own times.” Eusebius quoting from Quadratus, Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., p. 4.3.2
As we celebrate Easter this week we take a look at how God made the offer to us at the perfect time, in the perfect place and in the perfect way in the person of Jesus Christ. We look at how Jesus, in the life He lived, the death He died and His resurrection changed the world. And most importantly we look at the prayer to start an eternal relationship with God.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, [4] just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, [5] having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, [6] to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. [7] In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace [8] which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, [9] having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, [10] that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth-in Him.” Ephesians 1:3-10 NKJV, Nelson, 1982
This week we take a look at God’s great love for us and His offer to us for an eternal relationship with Him as His children. How can God make that offer to us?
As we begin our second great journey to find out if Jesus was who He claimed to be (spoiler alert – it was God), when we look for a coherent worldview we find that the Bible presents our best choice. God loves you!!
“This subversive belief in Jesus’ Lordship, over against that of Caesar, was held in the teeth of the fact that Caesar had demonstrated his superior power in an obvious way, by having Jesus crucified. But the truly extraordinary thing is that this belief was held by a tiny group who, for the first two or three generations at least, could hardly have mounted a riot in a village, let alone a revolution in an empire. And yet they persisted against all the odds, attracting the unwelcome notice of authorities because of the power of the message and the worldview and lifestyle it generated and sustained. And whenever we go back to the key texts for evidence of why they persisted in such an improbable and dangerous belief they answer: it is because Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead. And this provokes us to ask once more: why did they make this claim?” N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 2003
This week we prepare to start the journey looking to answer the question: who is our Creator? But how much evidence is really enough?
This week we wrap up our journey looking at moral values and prepare to kick off our journey looking at the answer to the question: Is God the God of the Bible? What do we find when we look at the journey so far from the beginning of the universe to where we are today. The best answer of how we got here points us to a God who loves you!
“In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows, nor cares. DNA just is, and we dance to its music.” Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life, 1994
“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal; a fish would not feel wet. Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too – for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist – in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless – I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality – namely my idea of justice – was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple.” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952
“But feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that you ought to help whether you want to or not. Supposing you hear a cry for help from a man in danger. You will probably feel two desires – one a desire to give help (due to your herd instinct), the other a desire to keep out of danger (due to the instinct for self-preservation). But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away. Now this thing that judges between the two instincts, that decides which should be encouraged, cannot be either of them.” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952
“The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring both of them by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people’s ideas get nearer to that real Right than others. Or put it this way. If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something – some Real Morality – for them to be true about.” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952
“ 1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
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Objective moral values and duties do exist.
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Therefore, God exists.” William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, 1984
This week we look at how to judge between two sets of competing moral values? Is there are third thing that helps us reach the right conclusion or is a consensus enough? Thank goodness God loves us!
Definition – “To say that there are objective moral values is to say that something is good or evil independently of whether any human being believes it to be so.” William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, 1984
“Many philosophers have argued that if God does not exist, then morality is ultimately subjective and non-binding. We might act in precisely the same way that we do in fact act, but in the absence of God such actions would no longer count as good or evil, right or wrong, since in the absence of God, objective moral values and duties do not exist.” William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, 1984
“The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring both of them by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people’s ideas get nearer to that real Right than others. Or put it this way. If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something – some Real Morality – for them to be true about.” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952
“For example, to say that the Holocaust was objectively wrong is to say that it was wrong even though the Nazis who carried it out thought it was right, and it would still have been wrong even if the Nazis had won World War II and succeeded in exterminating or brainwashing everybody who disagreed with them so that it was believed that the Holocaust was right.” William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, 1984
“What was the sense in saying the enemy were in the wrong unless Right is a real thing which the Nazis at bottom knew as well as we did and ought to have practiced? If they had no notion of what we meant by right, then, though we might still have had to fight them, we could no more have blamed them for that than for the color of their hair.” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952
Genesis 9, “5 Surely for your lifeblood I will demand a reckoning; from the hand of every beast I will require it, and from the hand of man. From the hand of every man’s brother I will require the life of man. 6 “Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed; For in the image of God He made man.” The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982
Jeremiah 1, “4 Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying: 5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; Before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations.” The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982
Psalm 139, “14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well.” The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982
“The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man.” –G.K. Chesterton, What I Saw In America, 1922
“ 1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
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Objective moral values and duties do exist.
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Therefore, God exists.” William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, 1984
This week we look at a few more examples or morality building by consensus and then look at some historical examples of what has happened when you remove God from the equation. Don’t ever forget how much God loves you!
“Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things.” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
“Fortunately, however, morals do not have to be absolute.” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
“Not all absolutism is derived from religion. Nevertheless, it is pretty hard to defend absolute morals on grounds other than religious ones.” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
“How, then, do we decide what is right and what is wrong? No matter how we answer that question, there is a consensus about what we do as a matter of fact consider right and wrong: a consensus that prevails surprisingly widely.” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006 quoting from the website Patheos https://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/essays/the-new-ten-commandments/
- Do not overlook evil or shrink from administering justice, but always be ready to forgive wrongdoing freely admitted and honestly regretted.
Matt 5, “43You have heard it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,’ 44But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you.” The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006 quoting from the website Patheos https://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/essays/the-new-ten-commandments/
- Form independent opinions on the basis of your own reason and experience; do not allow yourself to be led blindly by others.
· Joseph Stalin & Other Soviet Communist Leaders – Atheist/Communist – murdered approximately 61 million of their own people. (Rummel, 1997)
· Mao Zedong – Atheist/Communist – murdered through his policies or directly killed approximately 78 million of his own people. (Rummel, 1997)
· Various North Korean Dictators – Atheist/Communist – murdered millions of their own people.
· Khmer Rouge – Atheist/Communist – murdered millions of their own people.
Rummel, R. - Death By Government, Routledge, 1997
“What matters is not whether Hitler and Stalin were atheists, but whether atheism systematically influences people to do bad things. There is not the smallest evidence that it does…Individual atheists may do evil things but they don’t do evil things in the name of atheism.” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
“The humanness of an embryo’s cells cannot confer upon it any absolute discontinuous moral status. It cannot, because of our evolutionary continuity with chimpanzees and, more distantly, with every species on the planet.” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
“In the previous chapter, when trying to explain the shifting moral Zeitgeist, I invoked a widespread consensus of liberal, enlightened, decent people.” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
This week we take a deep dive into the Golden Rule. Can it really work without God?
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006 quoting from the website Patheos https://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/essays/the-new-ten-commandments/
Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you
Matt 7, “7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. 9 Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? 11 If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him! 12 Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982
Matthew 5: 43-44, “You have heard it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you.” The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982
Matt 22, “37 Jesus said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982
This week we look at attempts to build moral values from a consensus. How do morals from a consensus compare to the teachings of Jesus Christ?
These are a few examples of a naturalistic 10 commandments that Richard Dawkins quoted from an atheist’s website Patheos on The New 10 Commandments. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/essays/the-new-ten-commandments/ in The God Delusion.
“Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you.” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006 – quoting from the website Patheos
“Treat your fellow human beings, your fellow living things, and the world in general with love, honesty, faithfulness and respect.” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006 – quoting from the website Patheos
Jesus commanded, John 13:34, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.” NKJV, Thomas Nelson, Inc, 1982
Matthew 5:43-44, “You have heard it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you.” NKJV, Thomas Nelson, Inc, 1982
“Of course, dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads are immune to argument, their resistance built up over years of childhood indoctrination using methods that took centuries to mature (whether by evolution or design).” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
This week we see Christopher Hitchens try to answer the question of where moral values come from in a Darwinian model. Don’t ever forget, God loves you!!
“There might be someone who says that’s so, but it would not be I think discernible by anyone here that I for example who do believe that we have evolved by random mutation combined with natural selection for success in certain genes, believes that someone who is born blind or deaf should simply be left by the way side. There is no such corrobory[sic]...” D'Souza, Dinesh; Hitchens, Christopher, 2008, Does God Exist, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ_WGb8X3L8, Christopher Hitchens vs Dinesh D'Souza | God on Trial Debate
“The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man.” – G.K. Chesterton, What I Saw In America, 1922
“With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated…We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man…. hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.” Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, 1871
“Early embryos that have no nervous system most certainly do not suffer. And if late-aborted embryos with nervous systems suffer – though all suffering is deplorable – it is not because they are human that they suffer. There is no general reason to suppose that human embryos at any age suffer more than cow or sheep embryos at the same developmental stage…Suffering is hard to measure, and the details might be disputed…The evolutionary point is very simple. The humanness of an embryo’s cells cannot confer upon it any absolute discontinuous moral status. It cannot, because of our evolutionary continuity with chimpanzees and, more distantly, with every species on the planet.” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
We continue our journey looking at moral values this week and examine whether or not evolution can help explain moral values. Or, does natural selection and the survival of the fittest lead us to a far darker place?
“I am suggesting that the same is true of the urge to kindness – to altruism, to generosity, to empathy, to pity. In ancestral times, we had the opportunity to be altruistic only towards close kin and potentially reciprocators. Nowadays that restriction is no longer there, but the rule of thumb persists. Why would it not? It is just like sexual desire. We can no more help ourselves feeling pity when we see a weeping unfortunate (who is unrelated and unable to reciprocate) than we can help ourselves feeling lust for a member of the opposite sex (who may be infertile or otherwise unable to reproduce). Both are misfirings, Darwinian mistakes: blessed, precious mistakes.” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
“But feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that you ought to help whether you want to or not. Supposing you hear a cry for help from a man in danger. You will probably feel two desires – one a desire to give help (due to your herd instinct), the other a desire to keep out of danger (due to the instinct for self-preservation). But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away. Now this thing that judges between the two instincts, that decides which should be encouraged, cannot be either of them…Another way of seeing that the Moral Law is not simply one of our instincts is this. If two instincts are in conflict, and there is nothing in a creature’s mind except those two instincts, obviously the stronger of the two must win. But at those moments when we are most conscious of the Moral Law, it usually seems to be telling us to side with the weaker of the two impulses. You probably want to be safe much more than you want to help the man who is drowning; but the Moral Law tells you to help him all the same. And surely it often tells us to try to make the right impulse stronger than it naturally is? I mean, we often feel it our duty to stimulate the herd instinct, by waking up our imaginations and arousing our pity and so on, so as to get up enough steam for doing the right thing. But clearly we are not acting from instinct when we set about making an instinct stronger than it is. The thing that says to you, ‘Your herd instinct is asleep. Wake it up,’ cannot itself be the heard instinct.” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952
“The aid we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil. We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely that the weaker and inferior members of society do not marry so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage, though this is more to be hoped for than expected.” Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, 1871
This week we begin our journey looking into the question of where moral values come from. In this episode we define our terms and look at the difference between moral values and objective moral values. What we will find along the way is that the best answer not only points to a creator this time, but the best answer actually points to the God of the Bible who loves you more than you can imagine.
“In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows, nor cares. DNA just is, and we dance to its music.” Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life, 1994
“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal; a fish would not feel wet. Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too – for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist – in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless – I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality – namely my idea of justice – was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple.” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952
Moral Values – The values I choose to live my life by.
Definition – “To say that there are objective moral values is to say that something is good or evil independently of whether any human being believes it to be so.” William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, 1984
William Lane Craig states the moral argument this way in Reasonable Faith:
“
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If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
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Objective moral values and duties do exist.
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Therefore, God exists.” William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, 1984
“Many philosophers have argued that if God does not exist, then morality is ultimately subjective and non-binding. We might act in precisely the same way that we do in fact act, but in the absence of God such actions would no longer count as good or evil, right or wrong, since in the absence of God, objective moral values and duties do not exist.” William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, 1984
This week we conclude part four of our series looking at how the best explanation of our consciousness is an intelligent Creator.
References:
Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator, 2004 – Interview with J.P Moreland
Michael Egnor and Denyse O’Leary, The Immortal Mind, 2025, **Ref1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1YWy5SQPhg
“Suppose everybody who lacked a certain part of the brain was disabled in a very specific way. The brain would be like a machine. Take out a part and it just doesn’t work or work right. Then the idea that the mind is merely the physical functions of the brain – the materialist view – would be hard to argue with. But that’s not at all what we see.” **Ref1
“Of course, if a brain is seriously damaged, intellect and will can be impaired. But that is because the brain damage impairs memory or perception areas that are needed for the mind to understand what has happened or is happening.” **Ref1
“Here’s the conundrum that these cases pose: On the one hand, a neurosurgeon must be very careful about removing brain tissue that is doing something important. On the other hand, people with very dramatic natural brain losses or absences can have normally functioning minds. If the mind were merely the activities of the brain, that would not be happening.” **Ref1
“If the mind is completely a product of the material functions of the brain, then:
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There will be no mental phenomena without brain functions.
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As brain function is altered, the mind will be altered.
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If the brain is damaged, then mental function will be damaged.
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Brain development will correlate with mental development.
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We will be able to correlate brain activity with mental activity – no matter how we choose to look at it.” **Ref1
“As Steve Taylor has pointed out in Psychology Today, “NDE’s have never been satisfactorily explained in neurobiological terms…All of these theories have been found to be problematic.” One weakness of such explanations is that they try to account specifically for selected aspects of the near-death experiences. But they fail to account for the complete experience. The ways they account for the narrow aspect of the NDEs that they focus on invariably conflict with all the other evidence. That is why no skeptical explanation provides a credible account of NDEs.” **Ref1
“That includes a subjective sense of being dead, a feeling of peace, painlessness, pleasantness, and so on, a sense of bodily separation, perhaps a sense of entering a dark region or tunnel, encountering a presence or hearing a voice. That may include taking stock of one’s life (a life review), seeing a bright and often beautiful light or being enveloped in it, seeing beautiful colors, entering the light, and encountering visible spirits. Near-death experiencers frequently report mental conversations with a Being in the light or with deceased persons, especially relatives. Those who report undergoing a life review may also report a sense of forgiveness as well as profound understanding in a world of beauty beyond nature.” **Ref1
“As Steve Taylor has pointed out in Psychology Today, “NDE’s have never been satisfactorily explained in neurobiological terms…All of these theories have been found to be problematic.” One weakness of such explanations is that they try to account specifically for selected aspects of the near-death experiences. But they fail to account for the complete experience. The ways they account for the narrow aspect of the NDEs that they focus on invariably conflict with all the other evidence. That is why no skeptical explanation provides a credible account of NDEs.” **Ref1
Consciousness Points to a Creator Part 3: Podcast 87
This week we continue with part three of a four part series looking at how the best explanation of our consciousness is an intelligent Creator.
Resources:
Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator, 2004 – Interview with J.P Moreland
Michael Egnor and Denyse O’Leary, The Immortal Mind, 2025, **Ref1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1YWy5SQPhg
“Thus he concluded that abstract thought is a function of something other than or beyond the physical brain. He came to define the mind as the element in an individual “that feels, perceives, thinks, wills, and especially reasons.” **Ref1
“Well, a simple definition is that consciousness is what you’re aware of when you introspect. When you pay attention to what’s going on inside of you, that’s consciousness.” Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator, 2004
Webster's Online Def:
1 a: the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself
b : the state or fact of being conscious of an external object, state, or fact
2 : the state of being characterized by sensation, emotion, volition, and thought
“This surgery led to truly remarkable neuroscience research in the twentieth century. Here’s the most radical thing it tells us: Even when the brain is split in half, many important aspects of the mind remain unified. Thus, the mind is something that the brain isn’t. **Ref1
“Thirty years later, in 2017, neuroscientist Yair Pinto and his colleagues concluded, after reviewing decades of brain-splitting research, that the most accurate summary of the research is this: Split-brain patients have split perception but unified consciousness.” **Ref1
“Reflecting on questions like these, he shed light on the overall mind-brain relationship. That is, Penfield observed that the mind has an existence independent of the brain, and that the mind uses the brain to interact with the world, in a way analogous to the way a computer programmer uses a computer to accomplish tasks.” **Ref1
“Again and again, Penfield found a duality in consciousness – some thoughts (such as experiences from childhood) could be evoked by stimulation of the brain itself, while others (awareness of one’s current circumstances and the capacity for reflection and reason) could not.” **Ref1
“But there was a key exception to what Penfield could stimulate in the brain. He was never able to stimulate abstract thought – that is, the sense of self, the capacity to reason, and the exercise of free will.” **Ref1
“He could evoke movements, sensations, memories, and emotions. But he could not evoke what he called the “mind,” which corresponds to the capacity for abstract thought and free will (or, in philosophical terms, the immaterial spiritual powers of the soul”. Penfield thought this exclusion of a whole class of thoughts – abstract conceptual thought and free will – was remarkable, and it is.” **Ref1
“For example, when I write a mathematical equation on a piece of paper, the area of my brain that generates the movement of my right hand can be localized to millimeter accuracy on the precentral gyrus of my left frontal lobe. But my understanding of the equation cannot be localized at all.” **Ref1
Despite what you may hear on line, there are no “serious contradictions” in the Christmas story. This is one of the weakest arguments against Christianity that you see on line and this week we finish looking at the Christmas story in detail.
References: New King James Bible, 1982
Luke 2: 1-24; 39-40
Matthew 2: 1-23
A Charlie Brown Christmas, Charles Shultz, Bill Melendez, 1965
Despite what you may hear on-line, there are no "serious contradictions" in the Christmas story. This is one of the weakest arguments against Christianity that you see on-line and this week and next week we will look at the Christmas story in detail.
References: New King James Bible, 1982
Luke 1: 26-38
Matthew 1: 18-25
Isaiah 7: 10-14
Starting with Mom…
Luke 1, “26 Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, 27 to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 And having come in, the angel said to her, “Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!” 29 But when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and considered what manner of greeting this was. 30 Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name Jesus. 32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. 33 And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end.”
34 Then Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I do not know a man?” 35 And the angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God. 36 Now indeed, Elizabeth your relative has also conceived a son in her old age; and this is now the sixth month for her who was called barren. 37 For with God nothing will be impossible.” 38 Then Mary said, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.
What does Joseph think of all this?
Matthew 1: 18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: After His mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit. 19 Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly. 20 But while he thought about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. 21 And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.”
22 So all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying: 23 “Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which is translated, “God with us.” 24 Then Joseph, being aroused from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord commanded him and took to him his wife, 25 and did not know her till she had brought forth her firstborn Son. And he called His name Jesus.
Isaiah 7, 10 Moreover the Lord spoke again to Ahaz, saying, 11 “Ask a sign for yourself from the Lord your God; ask it either in the depth or in the height above.” 12 But Ahaz said, “I will not ask, nor will I test the Lord!” 13 Then he said, “Hear now, O house of David! Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will you weary my God also? 14 Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.
This week we look at Christmas, when God laid down His place in heaven and gave everything to offer you the chance to become His child for all eternity. He loves you that much!!
“Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up.” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952
Eph 1, “3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, 5 having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. 7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace 8 which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, 9 having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, 10 that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth—in Him. 11 In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will…” New King James, 1982
This week we tackle part two, in our four part series looking at how the best explanation of our consciousness is an intelligent Creator.
Resources:
Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator, 2004 -*Ref1
Michael Egnor and Denyse O’Leary, The Immortal Mind, 2025 -*Ref2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1YWy5SQPhg
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity,1952
G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man,1925
I'm afraid the quotations are too long to fit this week in the space allowed. Please look for a quotations page on our website: prooftograce.com
This week we start what will likely be a four part series looking at how the best explanation of our consciousness is an intelligent Creator.
Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator, 2004–Interview with J.P Moreland**Ref 1
Michael Egnor and Denyse O’Leary, The Immortal Mind, 2025**Ref 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1YWy5SQPhg
“Nevertheless, it may be that the origin of life is not the only major gap in the evolutionary story that is bridged by sheer luck, anthropically justified. For example, my colleague, Mark Ridley in Mendel’s Demon…has suggested that the origin of the eukaryotic cell…was an even more momentous, difficult and statistically improbable step than the origin of life. The origin of consciousness might be another major gap whose bridging was of the same order of improbability.Richard Dawkins,The God Delusion,2006
“I think therefore I am.” Renea Descartes,Discourse on the Method,1637
“We often hear that chimpanzee and human DNA differ by a mere 1 percent. But humans are radically different from chimpanzees–intellectually, morally, and culturally. Well then, we can be sure that some very important things about us are not found in our DNA. Human exceptionalism is the difference between a clever ape’s mind and Einstein’s mind.”**Ref 2
“We humans are the only living creatures on the planet who think about mathematics, science, literature, philosophy, religion, and the whole range of abstract ideas.”**Ref 2
“Thus he concluded that abstract thought is a function of something other than or beyond the physical brain. He came to define the mind as the element in an individual “that feels, perceives, thinks, wills, and especially reasons.”**Ref 2
Referencing artiicle by Sarah Tippit,“Science Says Mind Continues After the Brain Dies” of a study by Sam Parnia and Peter Fenwick,“He speculated that the brain might serve as a mechanism to manifest the mind, much in the same way a television set manifests pictures and sounds from waves in the air.”**Ref 1
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/consciousness
1 a:the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself
b :the state or fact of being conscious of an external object,state,or fact
2 :the state of being characterized by sensation,emotion,volition,and thought
“Well, a simple definition is that consciousness is what you’re aware of when you introspect. When you pay attention to what’s going on inside of you, that’s consciousness.”**Ref 1
“Self-consciousness implies not only awareness, but also awareness that one is aware–an awareness of self.”**Ref 2
“The point is this, Lee: I am a soul, and I have a body. We don’t learn about people by studying their bodies. We learn about people by finding out how they feel, what they think, what they’re passionate about, what their worldview is, and so forth.”**Ref 1
“That is, Penfield observed that the mind has an existence independent of the brain, and that the mind uses the brain to interact with the world, in a way analogous to the way a computer programmer uses a computer to accomplish tasks.”**Ref 2
“The failure to find a “material center of consciousness” in the brain should be taken seriously–it’s not a failure of science; it’s a success of science. It’s strong scientific evidence that points to the truth about the human soul. We haven’t found the material center of consciousness in the brain because the human soul isn’t in the brain. Consciousness has no location. The human soul is spiritual. But now another question arises. The human soul has an immaterial and immortal element that cannot just be explained away, so how could it have evolved from an animal mind?”**Ref 2
This week we celebrate Thanksgiving. Thank you for joining us and don’t ever forget the most important truth in the entire universe, God loves you!!
Lyrics from The Truth, Megan Woods, 2025:
I know who I am
'Cause I know who You are
And I hold Your truth inside of my heart…
The truth is I am my Father's child
I make Him proud and I make Him smile
I was made in the image of a perfect King
He looks at me and wouldn't change a thing
The truth is I am truly loved
By a God who's good when I'm not good enough
I don't belong to the lies, I belong to You
And that's the truth
“As long as a man is thinking of God as an examiner who has set him a sort of paper to do, or as the opposite party in a sort of bargain – as long as he is thinking of claims and counter-claims between himself and God – he is not yet in the right relation to Him. He is misunderstanding what he is and what God is. And he cannot get into the right relation until he has discovered that fact of our bankruptcy.” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952
“But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not. It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and, therefore, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him.” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952
This week we look at another naturalistic theory on how life might have originated. And no, panspermia is not a better answer for how life got here. Don’t run from the idea of a Creator who loved you so much He gave everything for you!
“Nevertheless, it may be that the origin of life is not the only major gap in the evolutionary story that is bridged by sheer luck, anthropically justified. For example, my colleague, Mark Ridley in Mendel’s Demon…has suggested that the origin of the eukaryotic cell (our kind of cell, with a nucleus and various other complicated features such as mitochondria, which are not present in bacteria) was an even more momentous, difficult and statistically improbable step than the origin of life. The origin of consciousness might be another major gap whose bridging was of the same order of improbability. One-off events like this might be explained by the anthropic principle, along the following lines. There are billions of planets that have developed life at the level of bacteria…” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
This week we finish our journey from nothing to how we reached where we find ourselves today. In this episode we look at how a Creator is the best explanation of how we went from lifelessness to the abundant, diverse life that we see all around us. How do we recognize the hand of intelligence verses the natural processes of time, matter and chance?
“Once the initial stroke of luck has been granted – and the anthropic principle most decisively grants it to us – natural selection takes over: and natural selection is emphatically not a matter of luck… Nevertheless, it may be that the origin of life is not the only major gap in the evolutionary story that is bridged by sheer luck, anthropically justified. For example, my colleague, Mark Ridley in Mendel’s Demon…has suggested that the origin of the eukaryotic cell (our kind of cell, with a nucleus and various other complicated features such as mitochondria, which are not present in bacteria) was an even more momentous, difficult and statistically improbable step than the origin of life. The origin of consciousness might be another major gap whose bridging was of the same order of improbability. One-off events like this might be explained by the anthropic principle, along the following lines…” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006, pp. 168-169
Stephen Meyer - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/@DrStephenMeyer
The Fatal Flaw in Origin-of-Life Experiments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVygGzykHHg
Our DNA Proves We Were Designed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5gKoyDtI9Q
Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries That Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe: Meyer, Stephen C.: 9780062071507: Amazon.com: Books
Improbable Planet: How Earth Became Humanity's Home: Hugh Ross: 9780801075438: Amazon.com: Books
Amazon.com: A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos: 9781107156616: Lewis, Geraint F., Barnes, Luke A.: Books
This week we take our second step of wrapping up our journey from nothing to how we reached where we find ourselves today. In this episode we look at how a Creator is the best explanation of how we went from nothing to our little blue planet Earth floating in space. How do we recognize the hand of intelligence verses the natural processes of time, matter and chance?
This week we begin Part 1 of wrapping up our journey from nothing to how we reached where we find ourselves today. On this episode we will talk about making one of the most important judgements you will ever make. How do we recognize the hand of intelligence verses the natural processes of time, matter and chance?
To the listener: I made a terrible Casablanca error while recording. I said Rick told the man to put his chips on 42, when it should have been 22. Sorry about that. Yikes!
Neo-Darwinian evolution hits a catch 22 when trying explain which came first: the unlikely evolution of complex traits, functions and systems that most life seems to share verses the evolution of all the diverse species that share these traits, functions and systems. Or is an intelligent Creator (that loves you) that created them both the answer with the best explanatory power?
This week we look at the “Infinite Monkey Theorem” and whether naturalism’s overreliance on luck can actually explain how we got here. Don’t ever forget as we see the fingerprint of a Creator how much He loves you!
“The [anthropic-design argument] and what it points to is of such an order of certainty that in any other sphere of science, it would be regarded as settled. To insist otherwise is like insisting that Shakespeare was not written by Shakespeare because it might have been written by a billion monkeys sitting at a billion keyboards typing for a billion years. So it might. But the sight of scientific atheists clutching at such desperate straws has put new spring in the step of theists.” Longley, C. (1989). Focusing on Theism. London Times, 10.
“In its most popular form, the Infinite Monkeys Theorem states that if you had an infinite number of monkeys and/or an infinitely long-time period, then a monkey pressing keys at random on a typewriter would eventually be certain to reproduce the works of William Shakespeare…” A numerical evaluation of the Finite Monkeys Theorem, Stephen Woodcock, Jay Falletta, University of Technology Sydney in Australia, 2025
“We take a chimpanzee's working lifespan to be 109 s (just over 30 years) and the heat death of the universe to occur 10100 years after the experiment begins. Assuming that the current population of around 200,000 chimpanzees remains constant until the end of the universe...” A numerical evaluation of the Finite Monkeys Theorem, Stephen Woodcock, Jay Falletta, University of Technology Sydney in Australia, 2025
“It is not plausible that, even with possible improved typing speeds or an increase in chimpanzee populations, these orders of magnitude can be spanned to the point that monkey labor will ever be a viable tool for developing written works of anything beyond the trivial. As such, we reject the conclusions from the Infinite Monkeys Theorem as potentially misleading within our finite universe.” A numerical evaluation of the Finite Monkeys Theorem, Stephen Woodcock, Jay Falletta, University of Technology Sydney in Australia, 2025
“Once the initial stroke of luck has been granted – and the anthropic principle most decisively grants it to us – natural selection takes over: and natural selection is emphatically not a matter of luck. Nevertheless, it may be that the origin of life is not the only major gap in the evolutionary story that is bridged by sheer luck, anthropically justified. For example, my colleague, Mark Ridley in Mendel’s Demon…has suggested that the origin of the eukaryotic cell (our kind of cell, with a nucleus and various other complicated features such as mitochondria, which are not present in bacteria) was an even more momentous, difficult and statistically improbable step than the origin of life. The origin of consciousness might be another major gap whose bridging was of the same order of improbability.” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
“Life is one of the strangest phenomena known. In my opinion it shows that the universe is capable of almost anything. Yet it amazes me that we know so much about how the universe began many billions of years ago, but we have yet to discover how life itself began. The most likely explanation is probably that we are an accident. Just by chance, some molecules bumped into each other at random, until finally one formed that could copy itself. Then began the slow process of evolution that led to all the extraordinary diversity of life on earth. Life seems to be simply what matter does given the right conditions and enough time.” Stephen Hawking, Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking: The Story of Everything, 2011
This week we take a look at another deal breaker for evolution: the reproductive system. Is natural selection or an Intelligent Designer the best explanation for the complex process that creates us? God loves you!!
This week we look at the problem of irreducible complexity and the complex systems that make up our bodies that natural selection has no answer for. What is the best explanation for the existence of these systems? Could it be an intelligent designer who loves you?
In his book, Darwin’s Black Box, he really opens up problems with Darwin’s theory at the cellular level. Dr. Behe puts it this way, “You see, a system or device is irreducibly complex if it has a number of different components that all work together to accomplish the task of the system, and if you were to remove one of the components, the system would no longer function. An irreducibly complex system is highly unlikely to be built piece-by-piece through Darwinian processes, because the system has to be fully present in order for it to function.” Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator, 2004
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case.” Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859
“Searching for particular examples of irreducible complexity is a fundamentally unscientific way to proceed: a special case of arguing from present ignorance…gaps shrink as science advances…” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
Schoolhouse Rock – The Central Nervous System
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivk_irrH1WY&list=RDivk_irrH1WY&start_radio=1
Can random mutation and natural selection best explain the assembly of complex working parts into a machine designed to accomplish a specific function, or is an intelligent Creator the best explanation for the irreducibly complex parts that make up so much of us?
“The simplest organ which can be called an eye consists of an optic nerve, surrounded by pigment-cells and covered by translucent skin, but without any lens or other refractive body.” Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859
“…How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself originated…” Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859
“You see, a system or device is irreducibly complex if it has a number of different components that all work together to accomplish the task of the system, and if you were to remove one of the components, the system would no longer function. An irreducibly complex system is highly unlikely to be built piece-by-piece through Darwinian processes, because the system has to be fully present in order for it to function.” Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator, 2004, quoting Michael Behe
“Searching for particular examples of irreducible complexity is a fundamentally unscientific way to proceed: a special case of arguing from present ignorance…gaps shrink as science advances…” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
“To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree…” Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859
“It has been objected that in order to modify the eye and still preserve it as a perfect instrument, many changes would have to be effected simultaneously, which, it is assumed, could not be done through natural selection; but as I have attempted to show in my work on the variation of domestic animals, it is not necessary to suppose that the modifications were all simultaneous, if they were extremely slight and gradual.” Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859
Can natural selection explain a complex machine like the semicircular canals that control our balance or in our experience is an intelligent designer a much more likely explanation. God loves you and designed you with the care and attention of a loving Heavenly Father!
“The balance is controlled by something called the semicircular canals in your ear, and these are 3 different tubes basically pointed in X, Y and Z axis. And each of these tubes is filled with a fluid, a very thick fluid. When the fluid moves within the tube it actually pushes the different hair-like nerve cells in the tube in different directions. And that sends signals to your brain telling you that you are moving in a certain direction. And so, when you get off the carousel those nerve cells are all still pointed in the direction they were pointed before. They tell you, you are still going around in a circle, but your eyes see that you are not moving so there is a conflict there, and that is what causes dizziness.” Adam Ruben, Outrageous Acts of Science, Moped Merry-Go-Round
Picture credit to https://www.aboutkidshealth.ca/middle-ear-effusion
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case.” Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859
This week we see whether or not random mutation can save the theory of natural selection, or is an intelligent Creator (who loves you) a far better answer?
“The simplest organ which can be called an eye consists of an optic nerve, surrounded by pigment-cells and covered by translucent skin, but without any lens or other refractive body.” Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859
Darwin’s Eye Problem: Podcast 70
This week we look at some problematic conclusions Darwin reaches when looking at his theory. Can his unguided process start the journey up Mount Improbable, or do we need the guiding hand of intelligence?
“The abrupt manner in which whole groups of species suddenly appear in certain formations, has been urged by several paleontologists…as a fatal objection to the belief in the transmutation of the species. If numerous species, belonging to the same genera or families, have really started into life at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of evolution through natural selection. For the development by this means of a group of forms, all of which are descended from some one progenitor, must have been an extremely slow process, and the progenitors must have lived long before their modified descendants. But we continually overrate the perfection of the geological record, and falsely infer, because of certain genera or families have not been found beneath a certain stage, that they did not exist before that stage. In all cases, positive paleontological evidence may be implicitly trusted; negative evidence is worthless, as experience has so often shown. Charles Darwin,The Origin of Species,1859
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case.” Charles Darwin,The Origin of Species,1859
“To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. Reason tells me, that if numerous graduations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case: and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though inseparable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself originated; but I may remark that, as some of the lowest organisms, in which nerves cannot be detected, are capable of perceiving light, it does not seem impossible that certain sensitive elements in their sarcode should become aggregated and developed into nerves, endowed with this special sensibility.” Charles Darwin,The Origin of Species,1859
“The simplest organ which can be called an eye consists of an optic nerve, surrounded by pigment-cells and covered by translucent skin, but without any lens or other refractive body.” Charles Darwin,The Origin of Species,1859
“…the difficulty ceases to be very great in believing that natural selection may have converted the simple apparatus of an optic nerve, coated with a pigment and invested by transparent membrane, into an optical instrument as perfect as possessed by a member of the Articulate Class.” Charles Darwin,The Origin of Species,1859
“It has been objected that in order to modify the eye and still preserve it as a perfect instrument, many changes would have to be effected simultaneously, which, it is assumed, could not be done through natural selection; but as I have attempted to show in my work on the variation of domestic animals, it is not necessary to suppose that the modifications were all simultaneous, if they were extremely slight and gradual.” Charles Darwin,The Origin of Species,1859
This week we look at the spark that would have been needed to animate some miraculously preassembled building blocks into a living cell. What is the best explanation for an event like that? Don’t forget, God loves you so much He gave everything for you!
This week we take a look at how the complex traits that life displays could have begun their development. Was it evolution, or was it a Creator that loves us? Which is the most likely answer?
“In Climbing Mount Improbable, I expressed the point in a parable. One side of a mountain is a sheer cliff, impossible to climb, but on the other side is a gentile slope to the summit. On the summit sits a complex device such as an eye or a bacterial flagellar motor. The absurd notion that such complexity could spontaneously self-assemble is symbolized by leaping from the foot of the cliff to the top in one bound. Evolution, by contrast, goes around the back of the mountain and creeps up the gentle slope to the summit: easy!” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
Matthew 6, “27 Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?” The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc
“It has been said that I speak of natural selection as an active power or Deity; but who objects to an author speaking of the attraction of gravity as ruling the movements of the planets?” Charles Darwin, The Origin of the Species, 1859
We find ourselves with life suddenly, and very unlikely, having arrived on the scene. But now we have to ask ourselves where things are going? This week we start to lay out the very complex journey that lies ahead. Can natural selection do it without the guiding hand of a Creator (a Creator who loves you)…
“Nevertheless, it may be that the origin of life is not the only major gap in the evolutionary story that is bridged by sheer luck, anthropically justified. For example, my colleague, Mark Ridley in Mendel’s Demon, has suggested that the origin of the eukaryotic cell (our kind of cell, with a nucleus and various other complicated features such as mitochondria, which are not present in bacteria) was an even more momentous, difficult and statistically improbable step than the origin of life. The origin of consciousness might be another major gap whose bridging was of the same order of improbability. One-off events like this might be explained by the anthropic principle, along the following lines. There are billions of planets that have developed life at the level of bacteria… Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
Firstly, life – even a single, ‘simple’ cell – is a miracle of complexity. Every cell in your body, for example, has molecular machines for moving itself, tagging and transporting molecules, processing food, defending against invaders, DNA duplication and repair, producing proteins and receiving and processing outside signals. On top of all that, this entire machine can tear itself in half and produce a complete working copy in about 20 minutes. Lewis and Barnes, A Fortunate Universe, 2016
“Owing to this struggle, variations, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if they be in any degree profitable to the individuals of a species, in their infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to their physical conditions of life, will tend to the preservation of such individuals, and will generally be inherited by the offspring.” Charles Darwin, The Origin of the Species, 1859
“I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to, man’s power of selection.” Charles Darwin, The Origin of the Species, 1859
“On the other hand, we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed. This preservation of favorable individual differences and variations, and the destruction of those which are injurious, I have called Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest.” Charles Darwin, The Origin of the Species, 1859
“In Climbing Mount Improbable, I expressed the point in a parable. One side of a mountain is a sheer cliff, impossible to climb, but on the other side is a gentile slope to the summit. On the summit sits a complex device such as an eye or a bacterial flagellar motor. The absurd notion that such complexity could spontaneously self-assemble is symbolized by leaping from the foot of the cliff to the top in one bound. Evolution, by contrast, goes around the back of the mountain and creeps up the gentle slope to the summit: easy!” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
“Religion is so wasteful, so extravagant; and Darwinian selection habitually targets and eliminates waste. Nature is a miserly accountant, grudging the pennies, watching the clock, punishing the smallest extravagance.” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
This week I address a long comment submitted by a viewer in Episode 63: The Lies of Evolution.
“First, why, if species have descended from other species by fine graduations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion, instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined?” Charles Darwin, The Origin of the Species,1859
“I believe that species come to be tolerably well-defined objects and do not at any one period present an inextricable chaos of and intermediate links.” Charles Darwin, The Origin of the Species,1859
“Origin-of-life researchers now know that Miller’s simulation experiment has little, if any, relevance to explaining how amino acids–let alone their precise sequencing, necessary to produce proteins–could have arisen in the actual atmosphere of the early earth.” The Return of the God Hypothesis, Stephen Meyer,2021
“Life cannot have had a random beginning…The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in 10^40,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup.” Fred Hoyle and N. Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space (London: J.M. Dent & Sons,1981)
“What happens if you replay the experiment using an accurate atmosphere?”…“I’ll tell you this: you do not get amino acids, that’s for sure,” he replied “Some textbooks fudge by saying, well, even if you use a realistic atmosphere, you still get organic molecules, as if that solves the problem. ”He goes on later to identify the molecules: Formaldehyde and cyanide. “The idea that using a realistic atmosphere gets you the first step in the origin of life is just laughable. ”The Case for a Creator, Lee Strobel, 2004
“I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution, especially to the extent to which it has been applied, will be one of the greatest jokes in the history books of the future. Posterity will marvel that so very flimsy and dubious an hypothesis could be accepted with the incredible credulity it has.” Malcolm Muggeridge, Pascal Lectures, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
This week I address a long comment submitted by a viewer in Episode 63: The Lies of Evolution. My contention is that evolution, as a theory, is taught to us on several pillars, nearly all of which, are full of holes if not completely disproven. I think by answering the viewers comment we might expand on this important issue and perhaps convince all of us to dig a litter deeper and not just accept what we are told is settled science. God loves you!!
excuse any curtness, I lost the original comment when I accidentally clicked off your video. 4:05 please read what Darwin said before and after these quotes. you go off as if he says nothing. but he does address these questions, because he was bringing them up rhetorically. and if he's wrong, then I'm wrong, and nothing you said has convinced me that I should look into it further. @cediviannareeda4305
I think it would absolutely blow your mind to see what atheists have to say about these things. textbooks aren't written to tackle every tiny nitpick from every rapidly shrinking community with a vested interest in not believing in Evolution…@cediviannareeda4305
Arthur Eddington, who famously proved Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity once said, “philosophically, the notion of a beginning to the present order of Nature is repugnant.” Arthur Eddington, The End of the World: From the Standpoint of Mathematical Physics, Nature 127 (1931) pg 447
“Of course, dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads are immune to argument, their resistance built up over years of childhood indoctrination using methods that took centuries to mature (whether by evolution or design).” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
“Atheists do not have faith; and reason alone could not propel one to total conviction that anything definitely does not exist.” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
“If all the evidence in the universe turned in favor of creationism, I would be the first to admit it, and I would immediately change my mind. As things stand, however, all available evidence (and there is a vast amount of it) favors evolution. It is for this reason and this reason alone that I argue for evolution with a passion that matches the passion of those who argue against it. My passion is based on evidence. Theirs, flying in the face of evidence as it does, is truly fundamentalist.” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
The physical constants, things like the speed of light, the gravitational constant, the strong and weak force things, physicists agree, most physicists agree, that if you change any of those constants by even a very, very small amount, than we don’t come into existence. The universe doesn’t come into existence. They have to be like that in order for galaxies to form, for stars to form, for chemistry to form actually. And then for the prerequisite for life to evolve, need that as well. So that is the nearest approach to a good argument.” Richard Dawkins, Fine-tuning is a good argument for God - Richard Dawkins - YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apWOkC7krfQ
This week we continue to look at the scientifically disproven examples that supposedly support Darwin’s theory that continue to be sold to us in textbooks and in popular culture today. Could it be that an intelligent creator who loves us is a far better explanation?
Resources:
Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator, 2004
Stephen Meyer, The Return of the God Hypothesis, 2021
Hugh Ross, Improbable Planet, 2016
Jay Richards and Guillermo Gonzales, The Privileged Planet, 2004
I realized while preparing the last two episodes that they are in many ways a summary of the interview Lee Strobel conducts in the Case for a Creator. I want to give full credit to Lee Strobel for doing an amazing job introducing this topic into my awareness and helping encourage me to dig deeper with some of the other resources listed.
“First, why, if species have descended from other species by fine graduations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion, instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined?” Charles Darwin, The Origin of the Species, 1859
“Experimental evidence of such an evolution being impossible, the professor is not content to say (as most of us would be ready to say) that such an evolution is likely enough anyhow. He produces his little bone, or little collection of bones, and deduces the most marvelous things from it. He found in Java a piece of a skull, seeming by its contour to be smaller than the human. Somewhere near it he found an upright thighbone and in the same scattered fashion some teeth that were not human…If they all form part of one creature, which is doubtful, our conception of the creature would be almost equally doubtful. But the effect on popular science was to produce a complete and even complex figure, finished down to the last details of hair and habits. He was given a name as if he were an ordinary historical character…Popular histories published portraits of him like the portraits of Charles the First or George the Fourth…A detailed drawing was reproduced, carefully shaded, to show that the very hairs of his head were all numbered. No uninformed person looking at its carefully lined face and wistful eyes would imagine for a moment that this was the portrait of a thighbone, or of a few teeth and a fragment of a cranium.” G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man, 1925
This week we ask the question, why is it that we can recognize the hand of intelligence when we look at an assembly line of complex machines that make potato chips, but we just take for granted that the microscopic machines, the cells, that make up us somehow came into being by random chance? Once again the fingerprint of a Creator who loves us keeps coming into greater clarity as we look at the purpose and complexity of the cell.
“Nevertheless, it may be that the origin of life is not the only major gap in the evolutionary story that is bridged by sheer luck, anthropically justified. For example, my colleague, Mark Ridley in Mendel’s Demon has suggested that the origin of the eukaryotic cell (our kind of cell, with a nucleus and various other complicated features such as mitochondria, which are not present in bacteria) was an even more momentous, difficult and statistically improbable step than the origin of life…Natural selection works because it is a cumulative one-way street to improvement. It needs some luck to get it started, and the ‘billions of planets’ anthropic principle grants it that luck. Maybe a few later gaps in the evolutionary story also need major infusions of luck, with anthropic justification. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2008
“Firstly, life – even a single, ‘simple’ cell – is a miracle of complexity. Every cell in your body, for example, has molecular machines for moving itself, tagging and transporting molecules, processing food, defending against invaders, DNA duplication and repair, producing proteins and receiving and processing outside signals. On top of all that, this entire machine can tear itself in half and produce a complete working copy in about 20 minutes. Lewis and Barnes, A Fortunate Universe, 2016
“The cell can be thought of as a colossal factory, a city even, a Rube Goldberg contraption of interconnected assembly lines, machines, highways, transporters, blueprints, and more. It would be extremely surprising if life on Earth went to all that bother if life is easy to make.” Lewis and Barnes, A Fortunate Universe, 2016
“The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.” Fred Hoyle, Hoyle on evolution, Nature, Vol. 294, No. 5837 (November 12, 1981), p. 105
“…Tompa and Rose have demonstrated mathematically that even having all the requisite parts for a cell will not ensure that those ingredients will self-organize into a living system. Instead, the cell, like the individual genes or proteins, faces an extreme combinational problem. Tompa and Rose calculate, building on the work of protein scientist Cyrus Levinthal, that there are a whopping 10^79,000,000,000 different ways of combining just the proteins in a relatively simple unicellular yeast. That number only grows exponentially larger when biologists attempt to calculate the number of possible ways of combining all the proteins and all the other large molecular components necessary for that one-celled organism, including DNA and RNA molecules, ribosomes, lipids and glycolipid molecules, and others. The number of possible combinations of these cellular components vastly exceeds the number of elementary particles in the universe (10^80) and even the number of events since the big bang (10^139).” Stephen Meyer, The Return of the God Hypothesis, 2021
This week we look at Charles Darwin’s tree of life and shockingly find out that what it purports to show of what the fossil record should look like is not remotely what the fossil record actually looks like. It turns out that the Cambrian Explosion pretty much wiped out Darwin’s tree. From here you can see the fingerprint of life and God’s love for us.
Resources:
Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator, 2004
Stephen Meyer, The Return of the God Hypothesis, 2021
Hugh Ross, Improbable Planet, 2016
Jay Richards and Guillermo Gonzales, The Privileged Planet, 2004
I realized while preparing the next two episodes that they are in many ways a summary of the interview Lee Strobel conducts in the Case for a Creator. I want to give full credit to Lee Strobel for doing an amazing job introducing this topic into my awareness and helping encourage me to dig deeper with some of the other resources listed.
“The abrupt manner in which whole groups of species suddenly appear in certain formations, has been urged by several paleontologists…as a fatal objection to the belief in the transmutation of the species. If numerous species, belonging to the same genera or families, have really started into life at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of evolution through natural selection...But we continually overrate the perfection of the geological record, and falsely infer, because of certain genera or families have not been found beneath a certain stage, that they did not exist before that stage. In all cases, positive paleontological evidence may be implicitly trusted; negative evidence is worthless, as experience has so often shown. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859
“To the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to those assumed earliest periods prior to the Cambrian system, I can give no satisfactory answer.” Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859
“The Cambrian strata of rocks, vintage about 600 million years, are the oldest ones in which we find most of the major invertebrate groups. And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history.” Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design, 1987
“Although the Cambrian explosion of animals is especially striking, it is far from the only “explosion” of new living forms. The first winged insects, birds, flowering plants, mammals, and many other groups also appear abruptly in the fossil record, with no apparent connection to putative ancestors in the lower, older layers of fossil-bearing sedimentary rock." Stephen Meyer, Return of the God Hypothesis, 2021
“These first skeletal animals arrived not in just one or two phyla (basic body plans). Fossils unearthed in southern China and in the Canadian Rockies reveal that 50-80 percent of the animal phyla known to exist at any time in Earth’s history appeared within no more than a few million years of one another, as the Cambrian geological period began, 542-543 million years ago…A team of geologists at Franklin and Marshall College showed that of the 182 animal skeletal designs theoretically permitted by the laws of physics, 146 appear in the Burgess Shale (Canadian Rockies) fossils.” Hugh Ross, Improbable Planet, 2016
“..mutation and natural selection can account for “the survival of the fittest, but not the arrival of the fittest.” Stephen Meyer, Return of the God Hypothesis, 2021
This week we take one of the most difficult parts of our journey; the leap from lifelessness to life. Could there really be that much luck in the universe or is this the hand of intelligence at work?
“Life is one of the strangest phenomena known. In my opinion it shows that the universe is capable of almost anything. Yet it amazes me that we know so much about how the universe began many billions of years ago, but we have yet to discover how life itself began. The most likely explanation is probably that we are an accident. Just by chance, some molecules bumped into each other at random, until finally one formed that could copy itself. Then began the slow process of evolution that led to all the extraordinary diversity of life on earth. Life seems to be simply what matter does given the right conditions and enough time.” Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking: The Story of Everything, Discovery Channel
“Life cannot have had a random beginning … The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in 10^40,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup.” Fred Hoyle and N. Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1981)
In my book Signature in the Cell, I perform updated calculations of the probability of the origin of even a single functional protein or corresponding functional gene (the section of a DNA molecule that directs the synthesis of a particular protein) by chance alone…I show that the probability of producing even a single functional protein of modest length (150 amino acids) by chance alone in a prebiotic environment stands at no better than a “vanishingly small” 1 chance in 10^164, and inconceivably small probability. Return of the God Hypothesis, Stephen Meyer, 2021 Page 175
“…Tompa and Rose have demonstrated mathematically that even having all the requisite parts for a cell will not ensure that those ingredients will self-organize into a living system. Instead, the cell, like the individual genes or proteins, faces an extreme combinational problem. Tompa and Rose calculate, building on the work of protein scientist Cyrus Levinthal, that there are a whopping 10^79,000,000,000 different ways of combining just the proteins in a relatively simple unicellular yeast. That number only grows exponentially larger when biologists attempt to calculate the number of possible ways of combining all the proteins and all the other large molecular components necessary for that one-celled organism, including DNA and RNA molecules, ribosomes, lipids and glycolipid molecules, and others.” Return of the God Hypothesis, Stephen Meyer, 2021 Page 291
“Nevertheless, it may be that the origin of life is not the only major gap in the evolutionary story that is bridged by sheer luck, anthropically justified. For example, my colleague, Mark Ridley in Mendel’s Demon…has suggested that the origin of the eukaryotic cell (our kind of cell, with a nucleus and various other complicated features such as mitochondria, which are not present in bacteria) was an even more momentous, difficult and statistically improbable step than the origin of life. The origin of consciousness might be another major gap whose bridging was of the same order of improbability. One-off events like this might be explained by the anthropic principle, along the following lines. There are billions of planets that have developed life at the level of bacteria…Natural selection works because it is a cumulative one-way street to improvement. It needs some luck to get it started, and the ‘billions of planets’ anthropic principle grants it that
So let’s talk about what is next…
God loves you. Enjoy and grow the relationship with your Heavenly Father. You have been adopted into His family. You are a child of the One True King!! Welcome to the family!!!!!
You don't have to earn God's love. He can't love you more than He already does and He will never love you less!
- Forgiven is forever – let’s talk about the finished work of Christ on the cross:
a. Are we clean?
· Acts 10:15, Acts 11:9, 1st John 1:7
b. Are we spotless?
· Eph. 5:27, Heb 9:13-15, Heb 9:24-28, 1st Peter 1:22-23
c. Are we redeemed?
· Eph 1:7, Eph 4:30, Romans 3:23-24
d. Are we justified?
· Romans 3:23-24, Romans 4:1-5, Romans 5:1-2
e. Are we reconciled?
· Romans 5:9-10
f. Are we saved?
· Romans 1:16-17, Romans 6:14, Romans 10:9-11
- Get a good Bible – you want a literal translation, not someone else’s opinion and then get a good study guide to dig deeper
a. New King James Version
b. Christian Standard Bible (CSB)
c. English Standard Version (ESV)
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Get into your Bible. This is one of the most important parts. Start with Matthew and move forward into the New Testament. Romans is an amazing walk through of Christian theology. Ephesians is my favorite book in the entire Bible (God’s plan and God’s love). DON’T listen to what the internet says about God’s word. Get into God’s word yourself.
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Then get a good Study Guide to let a study guide help answer questions with the guidance of someone with a bit more background. There are two types: verse by verse and major topics. Both have their benefits. Verse by verse is a great companion as you read through the Bible, while it really helps to cover major topics that may appear over larger sections of the Bible (topics like eternal security or the Trinity). I would recommend the following:
a. Vernon McGee’s Through the Bible is a seven book set that goes verse by verse through the entire Old and New Testaments. It is Old King James translation, but Dr. McGee does a great job walking through what various scriptures mean.
b. Grounded in Truth by Adrian Rodgers two book series is a great discipleship tool that looks at important topics rather than individual verses.
c. Journey Discipleship by John Honeycutt is also a great discipleship tool that looks at important topics rather than individual verses.
- Find a good church – what to look for
a. Christian church
b. Do they use a standard Bible translation, or something really out there? God’s word is not negotiable
- It’s okay if the Bible challenges you sometimes
c. Look for God’s peace
- The tomb is forever empty – Jesus is on the throne!! Rejoice in the hope that is yours!!
This week we celebrate the resurrection!! This week we look at proof of the resurrection, the ultimate proof of how much God loves you!!!
1st Cor 15, “Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, 2 by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. 3 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. 6 After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. 7 After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. 8 Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time.” NKJV - 1982 Thomas Nelson
How much does God love you? This week we talk about God’ plan to bring us back to Him. Spoiler Alert: He loves you so much He gave everything for you!!
“I have described atonement, the central doctrine of Christianity, as vicious, sado-masochistic and repellent. We should also dismiss it as barking mad, but for its ubiquitous familiarity which has dulled our objectivity. If God wanted to forgive our sins, why not just forgive them, without having himself tortured and executed in payment…” The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, 2006, pg 287
Eph 1, “3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, 5 having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. 7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace 8 which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, 9 having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, 10 that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth—in Him. 11 In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, 12 that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory.” NKJV - 1982 Thomas Nelson
“But supposing God became a man – suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God’s nature in one person – then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God. You and I can go through this process only if God does it in us; but God can do it only if He becomes man.” Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis, 1953 - Pg 58
“There is such a thing as the momentary power to remember that we forget. And the most ignorant of humanity know by the very look of earth that they have forgotten heaven.” G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man, 1925 Page 85
This week getting ready for Easter, we look at Pascal’s Wager and the growing weight of scientific evidence pointing to the existence of a Creator as the best explanation for how we got here. Consider for a moment the possibility that you are the most valuable thing in the entire universe and God created all of this for you!
This week we see the clear fingerprint of design when we look at the most complex programming ever discovered; you! God loves us so much, he wrote the code!
“DNA is like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software we’ve ever created.” Bill Gates, The Road Ahead, 1996, Boulder
“What is it about these two patterns that indicates the activity of an intelligence, whereas other patterns…do not? The key concept is that of “independence”. I define a specification as a match between an event and an independently given pattern. Events that are both highly complex and specified (that is, that match an independently given pattern) indicate design.” Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe – page 29 – William Dembski
“When Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA, they made a shocking discovery. DNA could store information in the form of a four-character digital code. Their structural model of DNA showed that strings of precisely sequenced chemical subunits called “nucleotide bases” – affixed along the interior of the DNA double-helix backbone – could store and transmit information.” The Return of the God Hypothesis, Stephen Meyer, Pg 165
“The [anthropic-design argument] and what it points to is of such an order of certainty that in any other sphere of science, it would be regarded as settled. To insist otherwise is like insisting that Shakespeare was not written by Shakespeare because it might have been written by a billion monkeys sitting at a billion keyboards typing for a billion years. So it might. But the sight of scientific athesists clutching at such desperate straws has put new spring in the step of theists.” Clifford Longley, Focusing pg 10
“The standard neo-Darwinian evolutionary mechanism comprises (1) natural selection and/or (2) genetic drift acting on (3) adaptively random genetic variations and mutations. As conceived from Darwin to the present, natural selection “selects,” or acts to preserve, those random variations that confer a fitness or functional advantage upon the organisms that possess them. But it “selects” only after such advantageous variations or mutations have arisen. Thus, selection does not cause novel variations; rather it sifts what is delivered to it by the random changes (i.e. mutations) that do cause variations…All this means that natural selection does nothing to help generate functional DNA base (or amino-acid) sequences, that is, new genetic information. It can only preserve such sequences (if they confer a functional advantage) once they have originated.” Return of the God Hypothesis, Stephen Meyer, Page 323
“The origin of life was the chemical event, or series of events, whereby the vital conditions for natural selection first came about. The major ingredient was heredity, either DNA or (more probably) something that copies like DNA but less accurately, perhaps the related molecule RNA. Once the vital ingredient – some kind of genetic molecule – is in place, true Darwinian natural selection can follow, and complex life emerges as the eventual consequence. But the spontaneous arising by chance of the first hereditary molecule strikes many as improbable. Maybe it is – very very improbable…” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
This week we see whether or not Richard Dawkins successfully makes the case in Climbing Mount Improbable for how complex biological life could have formed. Spoiler alert…not really. You are God’s greatest creation!!
“In Climbing Mount Improbable, I expressed the point in a parable. One side of a mountain is a sheer cliff, impossible to climb, but on the other side is a gentile slope to the summit. On the summit sits a complex device such as an eye or a bacterial flagellar motor. The absurd notion that such complexity could spontaneously self-assemble is symbolized by leaping from the foot of the cliff to the top in one bound. Evolution, by contrast, goes around the back of the mountain and creeps up the gentle slope to the summit: easy!” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006 pg 147
“Religion is so wasteful, so extravagant; and Darwinian selection habitually targets and eliminates waste. Nature is a miserly accountant, grudging the pennies, watching the clock, punishing the smallest extravagance.” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006 pg 190
“On the other hand, we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed. This preservation of favorable individual differences and variations, and the destruction of those which are injurious, I have called Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest.” Charles Darwin, The Origin of the Species, 1859, Page 77
This week we look at how evolution is sold to us using a narrative that doesn't always match reality as we get ready to start the journey from lifelessness to life.
“So far as I can understand, his chief occupation in life was knocking his wife about…I have never happened to come upon the evidence for the idea; and I do not know on what primitive diaries or prehistoric divorce reports it is founded.” G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man, 1925 Page 21
“He produces his little bone, or little collection of bones, and deduces the most marvelous things from it. He found in Java a piece of a skull, seeming by its contour to be smaller than the human. Somewhere near it he found an upright thighbone and in the same scattered fashion some teeth that were not human…If they all form part of one creature, which is doubtful, our conception of the creature would be almost equally doubtful. But the effect on popular science was to produce a complete and even complex figure, finished down to the last details of hair and habits. He was given a name as if he were an ordinary historical character. People talked of Pithecanthropus as of Pitt or Fox or Napoleon. Popular histories published portraits of him like the portraits of Charles the First or George the Fourth…A detailed drawing was reproduced, carefully shaded, to show that the very hairs of his head were all numbered. No uninformed person looking at its carefully lined face and wistful eyes would imagine for a moment that this was the portrait of a thighbone, or of a few teeth and a fragment of a cranium.” G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man, 1925 Page 36
This week we take a look at what the term evolution really means. What is the difference between micro and macro evolution. Don’t forget that God loves you!
“Life is one of the strangest phenomena known. In my opinion it shows that the universe is capable of almost anything. Yet it amazes me that we know so much about how the universe began many billions of years ago, but we have yet to discover how life itself began. The most likely explanation is probably that we are an accident. Just by chance, some molecules bumped into each other at random, until finally one formed that could copy itself. Then began the slow process of evolution that led to all the extraordinary diversity of life on earth. Life seems to be simply what matter does given the right conditions and enough time.” (Hawking, Into the Universe with Sephen Hawking:The Story of Everything, 2011)
“As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.” Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859, Page 6
“Owing to this struggle, variations, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if they be in any degree profitable to the individuals of a species, in their infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to their physical conditions of life, will tend to the preservation of such individuals, and will generally be inherited by the offspring…I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to, man’s power of selection.” Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859, Page 61
“It has been said that I speak of natural selection as an active power or Deity; but who objects to an author speaking of the attraction of gravity as ruling the movements of the planets?” Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859, p. 77
“In living bodies, variation will cause the slight alterations, generation will multiply them almost infinitely, and natural selection will pick out with unerring skill each improvement.” (Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859, p. 176)
Before we start the journey from lifelessness to us, it warrants asking the question: Does your worldview work with all that we've seen? Rather than leaning on luck, perhaps the time has come to give God a chance to win your heart!
This week we look at the true meaning of Christmas. Here’s a hint…God’s great love for you!!
John 3:16 NKJV “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
Ephesians 1:3-4,7,10 NKJV “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, [4] just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love…[7] In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace… [10] that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth-in Him.”
“But supposing God became a man – suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God’s nature in one person – then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God. You and I can go through this process only if God does it in us; but God can do it only if He becomes man.” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952
Matthew 20:28 NKJV, “just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”
Luke 2:1-20 NKJV, “And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. [2] This census first took place while Quirinius was governing Syria. [3] So all went to be registered, everyone to his own city. [4] Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, [5] to be registered with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was with child. [6] So it was, that while they were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered. [7] And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. [8] Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. [9] And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. [10] Then the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. [11] For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord [12] And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger." [13] And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying: [14] "Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!" [15] So it was, when the angels had gone away from them into heaven, that the shepherds said to one another, "Let us now go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has come to pass, which the Lord has made known to us." [16] And they came with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the Babe lying in a manger. [17] Now when they had seen Him, they made widely known the saying which was told them concerning this Child. [18] And all those who heard it marveled at those things which were told them by the shepherds. [19] But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. [20] Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told them.”
On today’s podcast we wrap up the journey of so many months going from the beginning point of the universe to our little blue planet. The fingerprint of intelligence come into view clearly as we look at all 44 of these factors that have stacked one on top of another to help make our little planet so friendly to life.
The major parts of our journey and the deal breakers:
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The initial conditions of the early universe from the first to second generation of stars (3 items)
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Our very special Milky Way Galaxy (6 items)
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Our Solar System’s formation and configuration (Newton’s Delima - 7 items)
· Solar System’s move from interior to exterior
· All the steps needed to get the final orbit of the planets
- Our special Moon (7 items)
· Lunar impact for both planets
· The perfect exchange of materials
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Our Sun (5 items)
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Earth’s perfect zones (7 items)
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Earth’s special conditions (9 items)
“Though these bodies may, indeed, persevere in their orbits by the mere laws of gravity, yet they could by no means have at first derived the regular position of the orbits themselves from those laws…[Thus] this most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.” Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 1687
This week we finally reach Earth to see if there are any special things about Earth that make it well suited for life that seem to be more than just “lucky”. Perhaps we are starting to see more clearly the fingerprint of God coming into view.
“The near-ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared spectra – the light most useful to life and sight – are a razor-thin sliver of the universe’s natural, electromagnetic emissions: about one part in 1025. That is much smaller than one star out of all the stars in the entire visible universe: about 1022. As it happens, our atmosphere strikes a nearly perfect balance, transmitting most of the radiation that is useful for life while blocking most of the lethal energy.” The Privileged Planet, Gonzales & Richards, 2004
“Suppose a prolonged period of large volcanic eruptions rapidly increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Through the greenhouse effect, the upsurge in carbon dioxide would raise the global temperature. The higher temperature and carbon dioxide level, would in turn, speed up chemical weathering, and thus the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Eventually, the carbon dioxide and temperature would return to their pre-eruption levels.” The Privileged Planet, Gonzales & Richards, 2004
“Many elements besides carbon also exist in highly atypical abundances on Earth. These unusual quantities result from the solar system’s unique birth and the extraordinary transformations during its youth. The 32 elements that are essential for the existence of advanced life and for sustaining advanced civilization are present on Earth in especially atypical abundances.” Improbable Planet, Huge Ross, 2016
Our search this week takes us to the many overlapping zones that come into play when we look at all of the competing Habitable Zones for life to exist on Earth. It sure looks like the fingerprint of intelligent design taking hold showing us the care and attention of a loving Creator.
Here are the zones:
1.The Liquid Water Zone
2.The Tidal Locking Zone
3.Ultraviolet Zone
4.Photosynthesis Zone
5.Ozone Layer Zone
6.Rotation Rate Zone
7.Obliquity Zone
Special thanks to Dr. Hugh Ross’ book Improbable Planet (2016) who discusses so many of these issues at length and does a far better job than I ever could.
This week we take a look at yet another amazing cooincidence in how friendly to life our sun happens to be. Is it possible that our life friendly sun could instead be the product of an intelligent designer? God loves you!!
Recommended Reading:
Strobel, Lee (2004) The Case for a Creator. Zondervan
Lewis, G. F., & Barnes, L. A. (2016) A Fortunate Universe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Ross, Hugh (2016). Improbable Planet. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books
Meyer, Stephen (2021) The Return of the God Hypothesis. HarperOne
Gonzales, G., & Richards, J. W. (2004). The Privileged Planet. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing
“Lucky for us, the sun is 865,000 miles in diameter, just the right size to burn consistently for a very long time, 8 billion years, long enough to allow the next development to take place. Life!” (Hawking, Into the Universe with Sephen Hawking:The Story of Everything, 2011)
“The amount of time a star spends in the main sequence hinges on its mass. Stars with twice the Sun’s mass only spend about a billion years in it, while those with half its mass last about 100 million years.” Gonzales and Richards, The Privileged Planet, 2004 pg 132
“Life can’t use just any type of light from any type of star. Our sun, as it turns out, is near the optimum for any plausible kind of chemical life.” Gonzales and Richards, The Privileged Planet, 2004 pg 68
This week we celebrate Moms and the incredible sacrifices they make for their children and their families. As we do so we are reminded of God's great love for us and the sacrifice he made for us all!
Thank you Moms!!
As we continue to keep score of how our little blue planet came to be, we look at one of the most unlikely events to ever happen. Did the crash of two planets create the life friendly planet we have today and the moon that helps us in so many ways? A crash? Really? Or could it be the hand of a loving Creator? Lets get to it!
This week we continue the journey from the formation of the universe to this little blue planet of ours as we look at the formation of the solar system and face Isaac Newton’s dilemma. Here again we see God’s hand.
“Though these bodies may, indeed, persevere in their orbits by the mere laws of gravity, yet they could by no means have at first derived the regular position of the orbits themselves from those laws…[Thus] this most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.” Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 1687
“These gas giant planets – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – with their respective masses, distances from the Sun, and orbital configurations, not only served as the inner planet’s protective “fence” but also influenced Earth’s mass, distance from the Sun, and orbital features, all of which turned out to be just right to allow for the possibility and survivability of (later) advanced life.” Ross, Improbable Planet, 2016
God loves you! That is the single most important truth in the Universe. This week we look at God's purpose, God's plan, the atonement and the resurrection. God's love for you changed the world forever in the miracle of the resurrection!
This week we move from the big bang to the Milky Way Galaxy as we continue our journey to Earth. Spoiler alert: the fingerprint of intelligence is starting to become visible again! God’s love for us shows through.
“Size, age, type, and metallicity all conspire to drastically reduce the number of galaxies capable of harboring not only life but even terrestrial planets. Our Milky Way is among the 2 percent most luminous and, hence, most metal-rich galaxies in the local universe, putting it way ahead on the scale of habitability.” Gonzales and Richards, The Privileged Planet, 2004 pg 289-290
“Only in a spiral galaxy is a long history of life possible. A spiral galaxy of the just-right size and the just-right structure can yield adequate heavy elements for life as well as a possible location where a planetary system can reside for billions of years without being exposed to deadly radiation and without gravitational disruptions from adjacent stars and molecular clouds.” Ross, Improbable Planet, 2016 pg 31
“For a long history of life to be possible, life’s host galaxy must reside within a grouping of galaxies that includes no supergiant galaxies and remains distant from any dense cluster. The group must contain a sufficiently high availability of dwarf galaxies to ensure that this one special spiral galaxy can accrete enough gas (from the dwarf galaxies) to sustain it’s spiral structure for many billions of years. The number and density of dwarf galaxies must not be so high, however, as to generate any significant disturbance or warping of the host galaxy’s spiral arms. Also the group must be sufficiently dispersed that large and medium-sized galaxies cause no disruption to the symmetry, size, or shape of the host galaxy.” Improbable Planet, 2016, pg 30
This week we start moving forward looking at the number of steps it will take to get us from the Big Bang to our little blue planet. Along the way we may see God’s third miracle in our journey from nothing to us. God’s fingerprint shows helps point us to His great love for us!
“Even with so much still to discover and learn about the way the world is and how it came to be this way, an abundance of evidence suggests an answer to the why question: we are here to seek and to find God and then to use all the resources he has so painstakingly and generously provided, within the amazingly stable and optimal climate epoch he established, to encourage people from every ethnic and cultural group in the world to receive God’s redemptive offer. God’s desire to bring redemption to a vast and variegated population explains why the history of the Milky Way Galaxy, the solar system, Earth, and life looks as it does.” Hugh Ross, Improbable Planet, 2016
“A common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put the conclusion almost beyond question.” Hoyle, The Universe: Past and Present Reflections, 1982
“All galaxies in the early history of the universe, and low-mass galaxies forming right now, are metal-poor, making them unlikely habitats for life. Similar problems attach to globular clusters and irregular galaxies. We now have reason to suppose that large spiral galaxies like the Milky Way that formed at about the same time are substantially more habitable than galaxies of different ages and types. The metal content of a galaxy is highly dependent not just upon its age but also on its mass. Without enough metals, there aren’t enough materials for building terrestrial planets. And without terrestrial planets, there are no environments suitable for life. Our very massive, spiral galaxy, then, is an especially suitable home for a habitable planet and solar system, while providing an optimal position for viewing and discovering both our own galaxy and the wider universe.” Gonzales and Richards, The Privileged Planet, 2004
This week we get a bit closer to the answer in our journey of the question of whether or not we were created or if the universe is just the product of chance as we look at a few of those next steps after the Big Bang with the creation of stars and galaxies. Don’t forget how much God loves you!
Discovery Channel, Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking: The Story of Everything, 2011
“In the first few minutes of the Universe, gravity’s cooling effect doesn’t much care whether nuclear reactions are taking place. The Universe will expand and cool regardless. Thus, the nuclear reactions have one and only one chance: there is one short period of time when the Universe has the right temperature to power a certain reaction, and if the right ingredients aren’t ready, then too bad. The temperature isn’t going back up.” Lewis and Barnes, A Fortunate Universe, 2016, Cambridge University Press
“A common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put the conclusion almost beyond question.” Hoyle, The Universe: Past and Present Reflections, 1982
On this week’s episode we prepare to pick back up after the creation of the universe and the fine tuning of the universe with a look at whether or not the Copernican Principle holds water. Spoiler alert! God’s love is stronger and a better explanation of how we got here.
“In its modest form, the Copernican Principle states that we should assume that there’s nothing special or exceptional about the time or place of Earth in the cosmos. This assertion has a certain plausibility, since without any other information, it’s reasonable to suppose that our location is a random sample of the universe as a whole.” The Privileged Planet, Gonzales and Richards, 2004, Regnery Publishing, pg 248
“What, for instance would count against the Copernican Principle…If human beings, Earth, or our immediate environment were highly unusual or unique in some important ways, then we would have reason to doubt it. If the cosmos seemed specifically fitted for our existence, or the existence of life, then that would also count against it. Conversely, evidence that confirmed the mediocrity of our surroundings, or the cosmos itself, would count in its favor.” The Privileged Planet, Gonzales and Richards, 2004, Regnery Publishing, pg 249
We wrap up our Christmas story study for the month of December this week looking at a last few objections and conspiracy theories related to the Christmas story. Please don’t let any of this stand in the way of finding God’s great love for you!!
Luke 2, “And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2 This census first took place while Quirinius was governing Syria. 3 So all went to be registered, everyone to his own city. 4 Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, 5 to be registered with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was with child.” NKJV 1982 Thomas Nelson
Harold W. Hoehner, Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1977), 15
Matt 1, “20 But while he thought about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. 21 And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins. 22 So all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying: 23 “Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which is translated, “God with us.” NKJV 1982 Thomas Nelson
Isaiah 7, “[10] Moreover the LORD spoke again to Ahaz, saying, [11] "Ask a sign for yourself from the LORD your God; ask it either in the depth or in the height above." [12] But Ahaz said, "I will not ask, nor will I test the LORD!" [13] Then he said, "Hear now, O house of David! Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will you weary my God also? [14] Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.” NKJV 1982 Thomas Nelson
You are the most valuable thing in the entire universe. Because God loves you so much He gave the greatest Christmas gift of all 2,000 years ago, His Son Jesus.
New King James translation of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1982
Ephesians 1 and Luke chapter 2
“But supposing God became a man – suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God’s nature in one person – then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God. You and I can go through this process only if God does it in us; but God can do it only if He becomes man.” Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis, 1942, Pg 58
A Charlie Brown Christmas, 1965, Bill Melendez, Charles M Schultz
This week we look at the two different narratives of the Christmas story and find out that they compliment each other quite well. In the end, the Christmas story is all about how much God loves you!
Bauckham, R. (2017). Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
New King James translation of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1982
Luke chapters 1-2 and Matthew chapters 1-2
This week we take a look at some of the more outlandish Christmas conspiracy theories that have gained followers on the internet. Once we get through all the noise, we can get that much closer to the truth: God loves you!
“The works of our Savior were always present, for they were true: those who were healed, those who rose from the dead, those who were not only seen in the act of being healed or raised, but were also always present, not merely when the Savior was living on the earth, but also for a considerable time after his departure, so that some of them survived even to our own times.” (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., p. 4.3.2)
Bauckham, R. (2017). Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
1st Corinthians 15, “Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, 2 by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. 3 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. 6 After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. 7 After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. 8 Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time.” (The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982)
“Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the Sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others…and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law he delivered them to be stoned…” 20.9.1 (Flavius, Antiquities of the Jews, 2010)
Is Christmas PAGAN? In defense of Christmas - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugxJBb0lPXQ&list=PLZ3iRMLYFlHtenB8U2zaFeNvAFPbb5-LO
Come Let Us Reason, Editors Paul Copan and William Lane Craig, 2012:
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Mary Jo Sharp (Does the Story of Jesus Mimic Pagan Mystery Stories)
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Mark Foreman (Challenging the Zeitgeist Movie)
“The bishops at Nicaea were more accustomed to persecution rather than pampering. Many of them had lived through the injustices of Emperors Diocletian (ruling c. 284-305) and Maximin (ruling c. 286-305). Diocletian was eager to confiscate Christian writings, burn Christian buildings, and arrest Christian clergy. Maximin didn’t hesitate to execute, disable, or exile those who refused to renounce Christ. At least one of the bishops at Nicaea had personally experienced Maximin’s cruelty. Paphnutius lost his right eye and gained a limp in his left leg – before being banished to the mines – as a result of confessing his faith. There were more victims of persecution at the hands of others. Some lost use of their fingers because their nerves had been seared with hot pokers. Still others lost limbs altogether. The marks of persecution were so prevalent that one ancient writer said, “The council looked like an assembled army of martyrs”! Of course, men who suffered such physical injuries for the sake of spiritual integrity were not about to be told what they should believe about Christ – imperial pressure or not.” Reinventing Jesus, Komoszewski, Sawyer, & Wallace, 2006
In a slight change of plans for the month of December, we are going to spend the next month looking at God’s great love for us through the Christmas story. This week we will look at what makes the Christmas story and Christianity so different from anything else.
“It might be suggested, in a somewhat violent image, that nothing had happened in that fold or crack in the great grey hills except that the whole universe had been turned inside out. I mean that all the eyes of wonder and worship which had been turned outwards to the largest thing were now turned inward to the smallest…It would be vain to attempt to say anything adequate, or anything new, about the change which this conception of a deity born like an outcast or even an outlaw had upon the whole conception of law and its duties to the poor and outcast. It is profoundly true to say that after that moment there could be no slaves…Individuals became important, in a sense in which no instruments can be important.” Everlasting Man, G.K. Chesterton, 1925, Page 162-163
“But supposing God became a man – suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God’s nature in one person – then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God. You and I can go through this process only if God does it in us; but God can do it only if He becomes man.” Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis, 1942, Pg 58
God loves you so much. This podcast we just pause the journey for a moment for all of us to say thanks!
Psalm 136, “1 Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever…4 To Him who alone does great wonders, for His mercy endures forever; 5 To Him who by wisdom made the heavens, for His mercy endures forever…”
Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be-- That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks--for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country...
https://www.mountvernon.org/education/primary-source-collections/primary-source-collections/article/thanksgiving-proclamation-of-1789/
On this episode we wrap up our journey and determine the best answer for how the universe could be so finely tuned for life. God’s intimate plan for you is on display. He loves you!
“The [anthropic-design argument] and what it points to is of such an order of certainty that in any other sphere of science, it would be regarded as settled. To insist otherwise is like insisting that Shakespeare was not written by Shakespeare because it might have been written by a billion monkeys sitting at a billion keyboards typing for a billion years. So it might. But the sight of scientific atheists clutching at such desperate straws has put new spring in the step of theists.” Longley, C. (1989). Focusing on Theism. London Times, 10.
“A common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put the conclusion almost beyond question.” Hoyle, The Universe: Past and Present Reflections, 1982
“If all the evidence in the universe turned in favor of creationism, I would be the first to admit it, and I would immediately change my mind. As things stand, however, all available evidence (and there is a vast amount of it) favors evolution. It is for this reason and this reason alone that I argue for evolution with a passion that matches the passion of those who argue against it. My passion is based on evidence. Theirs, flying in the face of evidence as it does, is truly fundamentalist.” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
This week we look at a practical example of a finely tuned event from a Discover Channel show featuring Stephen Hawking, and perhaps expand on it just a bit. Don't ever forget God's great love for you!
Discovery Channel, Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking:
The Story of Everything, 2011
This week we take a look to see if the multiverse can save naturalism from the impossible mathematical problem posed by fine tuning in the universe. Fine tuning is another fingerprint of a Creator who loves you!
Problems with the multiverse:
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Where did the universal generator come from
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Fine tuning of the universal generator to get around fine tuning?
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Energy to feed the universal generator
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The universal generator can’t be past eternal
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The lottery problem of actually getting an infinite number of different universes rather than an infinite number of universes where the same characteristics are repeated
“The physical constants, things like the speed of light, the gravitational constant, the strong and weak force things, physicists agree, most physicists agree, that if you change any of those constants by even a very, very small amount, than we don’t come into existence. The universe doesn’t come into existence. They have to be like that in order for galaxies to form, for stars to form, for chemistry to form actually. And then for the prerequisite for life to evolve, need that as well. So that is the nearest approach to a good argument.” Richard Dawkins, Fine-tuning is a good argument for God - Richard Dawkins - YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apWOkC7krfQ
“The [anthropic-design argument] and what it points to is of such an order of certainty that in any other sphere of science, it would be regarded as settled. To insist otherwise is like insisting that Shakespeare was not written by Shakespeare because it might have been written by a billion monkeys sitting at a billion keyboards typing for a billion years. So it might. But the sight of scientific atheists clutching at such desperate straws has put new spring in the step of theists.” Longley, C. (1989). Focusing on Theism. London Times, 10.
On this episode we look at the scope of the problem that Fine Tuning poses to naturalistic theory. Do we see the Creator’s fingerprint clearly showing? Don’t forget God loves you!
Gonzales, G., & Richards, J. W. (2004). The Privileged Planet. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing
“Beginning in the 1960’s, physicists unveiled a universe apparently fine- tuned for the possibility of human life. They discovered that the existence of life in the universe depends upon a highly improbable but precise balance of physical factors. The constants of physics, the initial conditions of the universe, and many other of its features appear delicately balanced to allow for the possibility of life. Even very slight alterations in the values of many factors, such as the expansion rate of the universe, the strength of gravitational or electromagnetic attraction, or the value of Planck’s constant, would render life impossible. Physicists now refer to these factors as “anthropic coincidences” (because they make life possible for man) and to the fortunate convergence of all these coincidences as the “fine tuning of the universe”. Given the improbability of the precise ensemble of values represented by these constants, and their specificity relative to the requirements of a life-sustaining universe, many physicists have noted that the fine tuning strongly suggests design by a preexistent intelligence.” Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe – Behe, Dembski & Meyer
"Why did the universe start out with so nearly the critical rate of expansion that separates models that recollapse from those that go on expanding forever, that even now, 10 thousand million years later, it is still expanding at nearly the critical rate? If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in 100 thousand million, million, the universe would have collapsed before it ever reached its present size." (Hawking, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes, 1988)
Partial Fine Tuning List:
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Hoyle’s discovery of carbon production
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Initial phase-space volume of the universe – 10,000,000,000^123
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Expansion rate of the universe – 10^16
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Mass of quarks – 10^21
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Gravity 10^35
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Cosmological constant 10^90
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Universal density
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Mass of neutrinos
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Electromagnetic force
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Strong nuclear force – 200^38
“If we modify the value of one of the fundamental constants, something invariably goes wrong, leading to a universe that is inhospitable to life as we know it. When we adjust a second constant in an attempt to fix the problem(s), the result, generally, is to create three new problems for every one that we “solve”. The conditions in our universe really do seem to be uniquely suitable for life forms like ourselves, and perhaps even for any life form of organic chemistry.” J Gribbon and M. Rees, Cosmic Coincidences (New York: Bantam Books, 1989)
Psalm 136:4-5 NKJV
[4] To Him who alone does great wonders, For His mercy endures forever; [5] To Him who by wisdom made the heavens, For His mercy endures forever;
This week we pause for a moment and ask the question, when does the evidence become so great that we take a step back and decide whether or not we need to change directions? Along the way we look at Roger Penrose's discovery of the original phase-space volume that required fine tuning to the level of one part in 10,000,000,000^123. That's ten billion to the 123 power. Should something that big be enough to perhaps give us pause that more than chance is at work here?
Is God’s love for us starting to come into view.
This week we move on from the Cosmological Argument to the Teleological Argument, or the Fine Tuning Argument. In the first part of this episode we take a look at how this argument originated with Fred Hoyle’s discovery of where the carbon came from in the universe. By the way, God loves you!
Strobel, L. (2004). The Case for a Creator. Zondervan
Craig, W. L. (2008). Reasonable Faith. Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway.
Meyer, S. (2021), The Return of the God Hypothesis. HarperCollins
Lewis, G. F., & Barnes, L. A. (2016). A Fortunate Universe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
“The anthropic answer, in its most general form, is that we could only be discussing the question in the kind of universe that was capable producing us.” Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2008
“In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows, nor cares. DNA just is, and we dance to its music.” (Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life, 1994)
“The fine-tuning of the Universe for life is the realization that if the laws of physics were different, even just by a little bit, life would not exist.” Lewis and Barnes, A Fortunate Universe, 2016
“What if? What if the laws of physics were different? What if the building blocks, atoms and molecules, had different masses…What if we messed with the stage, playing around with the very space and time underlying the cosmos? What would change in the Universe? And what would it mean for life?” Lewis and Barnes, A Fortunate Universe, 2016
“A common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put the conclusion almost beyond question.” Hoyle, The Universe: Past and Present Reflections, 1982
On this week’s episode we look at what the Anthropic Principle does and does not tell us. Can it really explain how we got here, or just that we are here? Don’t ever forget how much God loves you!
“The anthropic answer, in its most general form, is that we could only be discussing the question in the kind of universe that was capable producing us. Our existence therefore determines that the fundamental constants of physics had to be in their respective Goldilocks zones.” Richard Dawkins, 2006, The God Delusion, Bantam Press
“Nevertheless, it may be that the origin of life is not the only major gap in the evolutionary story that is bridged by sheer luck, anthropically justified. For example, my collegue, Mark Ridley in Mendel’s Demon has suggested that the origin of the eukaryotic cell (our kind of cell, with a nucleus and various other complicated features such as mitochondria, which are not present in bacteria) was an even more momentous, difficult and statistically improbable step than the origin of life. The origin of consciousness might be another major gap whose bridging was of the same order of improbability.” Richard Dawkins, 2006, The God Delusion, Bantam Press
“One-off events like this might be explained by the anthropic principle, along the following lines. There are billions of planets that have developed life at the level of bacteria, but only a fraction of these life forms ever made it across the gap to something like a eukaryotic cell. And of these, a yet smaller fraction managed to cross the later Rubicon to consciousness. If both of these are one-off events, we are not dealing with a ubiquitous and all-pervading process, as we are with ordinary, run-of-the-mill biological adaptation. The anthropic principle states that, since we are alive, eucaryotic and conscious, our planet has to be one of the intensely rare planets that has bridged all three gaps.” Richard Dawkins, 2006, The God Delusion, Bantam Press
“Once the initial stroke of luck has been granted – and the anthropic principle most decisively grants it to us – natural selection takes over: and natural selection is emphatically not a matter of luck.” Richard Dawkins, 2006, The God Delusion, Bantam Press
“As ever, the thiest’s answer is deeply unsatisfying, because it leaves the existence of God unexplained…A God capable of calculating the Goldilocks values for the six numbers would have to be at least as improbable as the finely tuned combination of numbers itself, and that’s the very improbable indeed. This is exactly the premise of the whole discussion we are having. It follows that the theist’s answer has utterly failed to make any headway towards solving the problem at hand. I see no alternative but to dismiss it, while at the same time marveling at the number of people who can’t see the problem and seem genuinely satisfied by the Divine Knob-Twiddler argument.” Richard Dawkins, 2006, The God Delusion, Bantam Press
“…many people have not had their consciousness raised, as biologists have, by natural selection and its power to tame improbability…Biologists, with their raised consciousness of the power of natural selection to explain the rise of improbable things, are unlikely to be satisfied with any theory that evades the problem of improbability altogether…Let’s turn, then, to the anthropic alternative.” Richard Dawkins, 2006, The God Delusion, Bantam Press
This week we move on from the Cosmological Argument to the Teleological Argument, or the Fine Tuning Argument. In the first part of this episode we take a look at how this argument originated with Fred Hoyle’s discovery of where the carbon came from in the universe.
Strobel, L. (2004). The Case for a Creator. Zondervan
Craig, W. L. (2008). Reasonable Faith. Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway.
Meyer, S. (2021), The Return of the God Hypothesis. HarperCollins
Lewis, G. F., & Barnes, L. A. (2016). A Fortunate Universe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
“The anthropic answer, in its most general form, is that we could only be discussing the question in the kind of universe that was capable producing us.” Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2008
“In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows, nor cares. DNA just is, and we dance to its music.” Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life, 1994
“The fine-tuning of the Universe for life is the realization that if the laws of physics were different, even just by a little bit, life would not exist.” Lewis and Barnes, A Fortunate Universe, 2016
“What if? What if the laws of physics were different? What if the building blocks, atoms and molecules, had different masses…What if we messed with the stage, playing around with the very space and time underlying the cosmos? What would change in the Universe? And what would it mean for life?” Lewis and Barnes, A Fortunate Universe, 2016
“A common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put the conclusion almost beyond question.” Hoyle, The Universe: Past and Present Reflections, 1982
On this week’s episode we look at what the Anthropic Principle does and does not tell us. Can it really explain how we got here, or just that we are here? Don’t ever forget how much God loves you!
“The anthropic answer, in its most general form, is that we could only be discussing the question in the kind of universe that was capable producing us. Our existence therefore determines that the fundamental constants of physics had to be in their respective Goldilocks zones.” Richard Dawkins, 2006, The God Delusion, Bantam Press
“One-off events like this might be explained by the anthropic principle, along the following lines. There are billions of planets that have developed life at the level of bacteria, but only a fraction of these life forms ever made it across the gap to something like a eukaryotic cell. And of these, a yet smaller fraction managed to cross the later Rubicon to consciousness. If both of these are one-off events, we are not dealing with a ubiquitous and all-pervading process, as we are with ordinary, run-of-the-mill biological adaptation. The anthropic principle states that, since we are alive, eucaryotic and conscious, our planet has to be one of the intensely rare planets that has bridged all three gaps.” Richard Dawkins, 2006, The God Delusion, Bantam Press
“Once the initial stroke of luck has been granted – and the anthropic principle most decisively grants it to us – natural selection takes over: and natural selection is emphatically not a matter of luck.” Richard Dawkins, 2006, The God Delusion, Bantam Press
“Nevertheless, it may be that the origin of life is not the only major gap in the evolutionary story that is bridged by sheer luck, anthropically justified. For example, my collegue, Mark Ridley in Mendel’s Demon (gratuitously and confusingly retitled The Cooperative Gene by his American publishers) has suggested that the origin of the eukaryotic cell (our kind of cell, with a nucleus and various other complicated features such as mitochondria, which are not present in bacteria) was an even more momentous, difficult and statistically improbable step than the origin of life.” Richard Dawkins, 2006, The God Delusion, Bantam Press
“As ever, the thiest’s answer is deeply unsatisfying, because it leaves the existence of God unexplained…A God capable of calculating the Goldilocks values for the six numbers would have to be at least as improbable as the finely tuned combination of numbers itself, and that’s the very improbable indeed. This is exactly the premise of the whole discussion we are having. It follows that the theist’s answer has utterly failed to make any headway towards solving the problem at hand. I see no alternative but to dismiss it, while at the same time marveling at the number of people who can’t see the problem and seem genuinely satisfied by the Divine Knob-Twiddler argument.” Richard Dawkins, 2006, The God Delusion, Bantam Press
“…many people have not had their consciousness raised, as biologists have, by natural selection and its power to tame improbability…Biologists, with their raised consciousness of the power of natural selection to explain the rise of improbable things, are unlikely to be satisfied with any theory that evades the problem of improbability altogether…Let’s turn, then, to the anthropic alternative.” Richard Dawkins, 2006, The God Delusion, Bantam Press
After wrapping up our discussion on how the universe came into existence, this week we take a step back and pause before the next leg of our journey; to examine the universe around us.
This week we wrap up the first step of our journey by answering the question, what is the most likely cause for the existence of the universe. Spoiler Alert! As we start to see God’s fingerprint come more into view, I hope you will remember how much God loves you!
“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.” Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers, 1978
Answers.Yahoo.com. (2011). Retrieved September 21, 2017, from Answers.Yahoo.com: https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110815103452AA0EWb6
This week we look at the available evidence to determine if the universe can be past eternal. Five factors will drive our analysis:
- Is an actual infinite possible?
- Einstein's General Theory of Relativity leading us back to the singularity
- The discovery of the background radiation from the Big Bang
- 2nd Law of Thermodynamics
- Borde, Guth, Vilenkin Theorem
Will this lead us back to the conclusion that a Creator was responsible for the existence of our universe or that the universe could have existed forever?
Don't ever forget how much God loves you!
This week we make a brief stop on our journey to look at the question of infinites. What do we know about infinity and can actual infinites exist in the real world outside of mathematics? BTW, God's love for you is the only actual infinite in the universe.
This week we look to see if Stephen Hawking’s philosophical ideas rise to the same level as his scientific work. Do the philosophical conclusions of a scientist speak on behalf of science? Can Stephen Hawking come up with a way to rule God out of bounds and produce everything from nothing? Um…no. By the way, God loves you!
“Naturalism, in contrast, is not agnostic. Rather, it is the claim that there is nothing that explains the ultimate laws of nature…Theism’s rival is naturalism, not science, and theism offers and explanation where naturalism offers none. If naturalism turns out to be more likely than theism, it will be because theism unwisely tried to explain the unexplainable, not because naturalism offered a better, or indeed any, explanation of the ultimate laws of nature. And certainly not because of any scientific theory.” Lewis and Barnes, A Fortunate Universe, 2016
“The role played by time at the beginning of the Universe is, I believe, the final key to removing the need for a grand designer and revealing how the Universe created itself.” Stephen Hawking’s Grand Design: Did God Create the Universe?, Discovery Channel, 2011
“They tell us that here too, time itself must come to a stop. You can’t get to a time before the Big Bang because there was no before the Big Bang. We have finally found something that doesn’t have a cause, because there was no time for a cause to exist in. For me this means there is no possibility of a creator because there is no time for a creator to have existed. Since time itself began at the moment of the Big Bang, it was an event that couldn’t have been caused or created by anyone or anything. So science has given us the answer that we set out to discover.” Stephen Hawking’s Grand Design: Did God Create the Universe?, Discovery Channel, 2011
This week is a special message for all the dads out there as we celebrate Father’s Day and look at our Heavenly Father’s relationship with us. God loves you!
Eph 1 - 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, 5 having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. 7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace 8 which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, 9 having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, 10 that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth—in Him. (The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982)
John 3 - 16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. (The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982)
On this week’s episode we look at the question whether everything could have just popped into existence from nothing. Is this really possible or is there some bending of the rules going on? How far will we go to avoid God’s great love?
“The intended subtext, of course, is that one will be scientific only to the extent that one is nonreligious. To be “religious,” in the narrow sense intended here, is to believe that there is something unique, special, or intentional about our existence and the existence of the cosmos. “Science” here has a special definition as well. Rather than a search for the truth (scientia means knowledge) about nature – based on the evidence, systematic study, and the like – science becomes applied naturalism: the conviction that the material world is all there is, and that chance and impersonal natural law alone explain, indeed must explain, its existence.” Gonzales and Richards, The Privileged Planet, 2004
“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.” Hawking, The Grand Design, 2010
This week we look at the first option of how the universe came into existence by examining the Kalam Cosmological Argument and the evidence that we have on the table. Is it possible that God's great love for us led Him to create everything we see around us?
Isaiah 42:5 NKJV
[5] Thus says God the LORD, Who created the heavens and stretched them out, Who spread forth the earth and that which comes from it, Who gives breath to the people on it, And spirit to those who walk on it:
Colossians 1:16 NKJV
[16] For by Him 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.
Kalam Cosmological Argument:
1. Whatever begins to exist as a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore the universe as a cause.
“A designer God cannot be used to explain organized complexity because any God capable of designing anything would have to be complex enough to demand the same kind of explanation in his own right.” Pg 136, Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
“And the higher the improbability, the more implausible intelligent design becomes. Seen clearly, intelligent design will turn out to be a redoubling of the problem. Once again, this is because the designer himself (/herself/itself) immediately raises the bigger problem of his own origin. Any entity capable of intelligently designing something as improbable as a Dutchman’s Pipe (or a universe) would have to be even more improbable than a Dutchman’s Pipe.” Pg 146, Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
John 3:16 NKJV
[16] For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
As we look back at the beginning of the universe we need to address the question, "What is the singularity?" Wouldn't it be amazing if at the beginning of the universe we found a God who loved us so very much He created everything we see around us just for the chance to have a relationship with us? This is where that journey begins!
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/metaphysics
On this week’s episode, we talk about how Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity helped to launch us back to a beginning point of the universe in 1915 when many thought the universe had existed for all eternity. Even when we rewind the universe back to the beginning we find God’s great love for us.
“philosophically, the notion of a beginning to the present order of Nature is repugnant.” Arthur Eddington, The End of the World: From the Standpoint of Mathematical Physics, Nature 127 (1931) pg 447 Edington is the one who proved Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity in 1919.
Recommended Reading:
Lewis, G. F., & Barnes, L. A. (2016). A Fortunate Universe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Meyer, Stephen (2021), Return of the God Hypothesis, New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers
Craig, W. L. (2008). Reasonable Faith. Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway
This week we look at the question of the question of the age of the Universe and the Earth? Does the Bible really say the Earth and the Universe are only 6,000 years old? What is the important issue to really focus on here (other than how much God loves you)?
John 10:9 NKJV
[9] I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.
Revelation 12:3-6 NKJV
[3] And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great, fiery red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads. [4] His tail drew a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her Child as soon as it was born. [5] She bore a male Child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. And her Child was caught up to God and His throne. [6] Then the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, that they should feed her there one thousand two hundred and sixty days.
Job 38:6-7 [6] To what were its foundations fastened? Or who laid its cornerstone, [7] When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
Genesis 1: [1] In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. [2] The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. [3] Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. [4] And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. [5] God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.
Genesis 1:2 The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
On this week’s episode we look at the question of, “what is the god of the gaps problem?”, and how that problems cuts both ways in our journey. God, the one with the capital “G”, loves you!
“What justifies the elimination of chance is not just the occurrence of a highly improbable event, but the occurrence of a very improbable event that also conforms to an independently given or discernible pattern.” Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe, Behe, Dembski & Meyer, 1999, pg 77
“What is it about these two patterns that indicates the activity of an intelligence, whereas other patterns…do not? The key concept is that of “independence”. I define a specification as a match between an event and an independently given pattern. Events that are both highly complex and specified (that is, that match an independently given pattern) indicate design.” Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe, Behe, Dembski & Meyer, 1999, pg 29
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case.” Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859, pg 176
“It has been said that I speak of natural selection as an active power or Deity; but who objects to an author speaking of the attraction of gravity as ruling the movements of the planets?” Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859, pg 77
“In living bodies, variation will cause the slight alterations, generation will multiply them almost infinitely, and natural selection will pick out with unerring skill each improvement.” Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859, pg 176
“Natural selection not only explains the whole of life, it also raises our consciousness to the power of science to explain how organized complexity can emerge from simple beginnings without any deliberate guidance.” Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2008, pg 141
Dr. William Lane Craig vs Dr. Peter Atkins (April 3, 1998 - HQ) – 50 minute mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEoznzPSguI&t=40s
This Sunday we celebrate God's great love for us and the resurrection of His only begotten Son. God loves you, and I am inviting you to church!
On this week’s podcast we begin the journey to determine if we were created, or if we are the product of matter, time and luck. We also introduce everyone to the Creator God (big G) and the god of science (little g). The truth will be found in the journey. Don’t ever forget how much God loves you!
“It has been said that I speak of natural selection as an active power or Deity; but who objects to an author speaking of the attraction of gravity as ruling the movements of the planets?” (Darwin, The Origin of the Species, 1859, p. 77)
“Naturalism, in contrast, is not agnostic. Rather, it is the claim that there is nothing that explains the ultimate laws of nature…Theism’s rival is naturalism, not science, and theism offers and explanation where naturalism offers none. If naturalism turns out to be more likely than theism, it will be because theism unwisely tried to explain the unexplainable, not because naturalism offered a better, or indeed any, explanation of the ultimate laws of nature. And certainly not because of any scientific theory.” Lewis and Barnes, A Fortunate Universe, 2016 page 335-336
This week we wrap up our foundation series in our journey to find God as we look at the prayer to enter into relationship with God and what the details are around that prayer. God loves you!
Romans 3, "23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…” (The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982)
Romans 6, "23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord…” (The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982)
Romans 10, "9 that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation…” (The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982)
John 14, "6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me." (The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982)
On this week’s episode we address the question of why there has to be a component of faith in our journey. Why can’t God just show up? The answer is compelling. As God shows His love for us, He has come up with the best formula you can imagine!
If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.” (Lewis, 1952, p. 48)
Exodus 19, “[17] And Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. [18] Now Mount Sinai was completely in smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire. Its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked greatly. [19] And when the blast of the trumpet sounded long and became louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him by voice. [20] Then the LORD came down upon Mount Sinai, on the top of the mountain. And the LORD called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up…” (The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982)
Exodus 20:18-19 NKJV [18] Now all the people witnessed the thunderings, the lightning flashes, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they trembled and stood afar off. [19] Then they said to Moses, "You speak with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die." (The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982)
Judges 2:8,10-12, “[8] Now Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the LORD, died when he was one hundred and ten years old. [10] When all that generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation arose after them who did not know the LORD nor the work which He had done for Israel. [11] Then the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and served the Baals; [12] and they forsook the LORD God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt; and they followed other gods from among the gods of the people who were all around them, and they bowed down to them; and they provoked the LORD to anger.” (The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982)
Phil 2, “5 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, 7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. 9 Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, 11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982)
This week we wrap up our look at proof of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead looking at the last 2 of our 5 historical facts of the events that occurred around the event in question (the resurrection). When we look at all 5 events together, we have to ask ourselves, “What is the most likely explanation of the cause of these events?” As we prepare to examine whether we were created or if we evolved, this will be an excellent exercise is letting the evidence lead us to the best conclusion. Don’t forget how much God loves you!
What are the events in question?
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Jesus was a real person who was crucified and killed by the Romans.
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Jesus' tomb was found empty by His female followers 3 days after His burial.
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Jesus' disciples went from cowards, hiding from the religious leadership to being ready to take on the whole Roman empire. What changed? They claimed to have seen the physically risen, completed healed Jesus 3 days after His death.
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Saul, the persecutor of the Church, conversion to Paul the greatest missionary in history.
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Jesus’ skeptic step brother James’ conversion to James the Just, leader in the early Church after Jesus’ crucifixion, death and burial.
1st Cor, 15 Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, 2 by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. 3 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. 6 After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. 7 After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. 8 Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time. 9 For I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. 11 Therefore, whether it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed. (The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982)
On this week’s episode we begin looking at proof of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. When you examine the 5 historical facts of the events that occurred around the event in question (the resurrection), we have to ask ourselves, “What is the most likely explanation of the cause of these events?” As we prepare to examine whether we were created or if we evolved, this will be an excellent exercise is letting the evidence lead us to the best conclusion. Don’t forget how much God loves you!
Events we cover this week:
1. Jesus was a real person who was crucified and killed by the Romans.
2. Jesus' tomb was found empty by His female followers 3 days after His burial.
3. Jesus' disciples went from cowards, hiding from the religious leadership to being ready to take on the whole Roman empire. What changed? They claimed to have seen the physically risen, completed healed Jesus 3 days after His death.
- Next week we tackle the last 2
“This subversive belief in Jesus’ Lordship, over against that of Caesar, was held in the teeth of the fact that Caesar had demonstrated his superior power in an obvious way, by having Jesus crucified. But the truly extraordinary thing is that this belief was held by a tiny group who, for the first two or three generations at least, could hardly have mounted a riot in a village, let alone a revolution in an empire. And yet they persisted against all the odds, attracting the unwelcome notice of authorities because of the power of the message and the worldview and lifestyle it generated and sustained. And whenever we go back to the key texts for evidence of why they persisted in such an improbable and dangerous belief they answer: it is because Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead. And this provokes us to ask once more: why did they make this claim?” The Resurrection of the Son of God; N.T. Wright, 2003, page 570
Thomas A Miller's book, Did Jesus Really Raise from the Dead: A Surgeon-Scientist Examines the Evidence, 2013 – This book is an excellent read from a medical perspective of what happened to Jesus in His final hours.
Matthew 28, “11 Now while they were going, behold, some of the guard came into the city and reported to the chief priests all the things that had happened. 12 When they had assembled with the elders and consulted together, they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers, 13 saying, “Tell them, ‘His disciples came at night and stole Him away while we slept.’ 14 And if this comes to the governor’s ears, we will appease him and make you secure.” 15 So they took the money and did as they were instructed; and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day.” (The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982)
Acts 1 “The former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, 2 until the day in which He was taken up, after He through the Holy Spirit had given commandments to the apostles whom He had chosen, 3 to whom He also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.” (The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982)
John 21, “24 Now Thomas, called the Twin, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 The other disciples therefore said to him, “We have seen the Lord.” So he said to them, “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.”26 And after eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, “Peace to you!” 27 Then He said to Thoma
On this week's podcast we begin looking at the question of whether we were created or if we evolved by addressing the religion of David Hume and the event of the Resurrection. How do you analyze an event that is unlikely to have occurred, but has happened none the less? The Resurrection is the turning point in history where God's love for us opened up the door into eternity.
“When the early Christians spoke of Jesus being raised from the dead, the natural meaning of that statement, throughout the ancient world, was the claim that something had happened to Jesus which had happened to nobody else. A great many things supposedly happened to the dead, but resurrection did not. The pagan world assumed it was impossible; the Jewish world believed it would happen eventually, but knew perfectly well that it had not done so yet.” The Resurrection of the Son of God, N.T. Wright, 2003, page 83
1st Cor, 15 "Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, 2 by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. 3 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. 6 After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. 7 After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. 8 Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time. 9 For I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. 11 Therefore, whether it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed." (The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982)
Acts 1 “The former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, 2 until the day in which He was taken up, after He through the Holy Spirit had given commandments to the apostles whom He had chosen, 3 to whom He also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.” (The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982)
This week we finish looking at God’s reconciliation of us back to Himself with the atoning death of Jesus Christ and address head on some of the concerns expressed by Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins about the atonement. Until you understand what happened at the cross, you cannot truly understand how much God loves you!
Here is a link to the Hitchen’s – D’Souza debate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ_WGb8X3L8, quote at the 34 minute mark
Hitchen’s issues:
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God threw the sins of all of mankind on someone else, Jesus.
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After God threw the sins of mankind on Jesus, He had Jesus tortured to death, somehow against Jesus’ will, to pay for them (that is the implication after all).
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God cannot relieve you and I of the responsibility for the debt that the sins we have committed have generated.
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God is attempting to deny that we have committed the sins that generated the sin debt in question.
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God is attempting to say that we are not guilty of the sin we have committed.
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God cannot take all of this from us, the promise to do so is immoral.
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This is an evil and bloodthirsty act committed against a victim’s will.
Psalm 103, “2 Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: 3Who forgives all your iniquities…6 The Lord executes righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed…10 He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor punished us according to our iniquities. 11For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward those who fear Him; 12 As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us.” (The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982)
Hebrews 10, “14 For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. 15 But the Holy Spirit also witnesses to us; for after He had said before, 16 “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds I will write them,” 17 then He adds, “Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.” (The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982)
“I have described atonement, the central doctrine of Christianity, as vicious, sado-masochistic and repellent. We should also dismiss it as barking mad, but for its ubiquitous familiarity which has dulled our objectivity. If God wanted to forgive our sins, why not just forgive them, without having himself tortured and executed in payment…” (Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2008, p. 287)
This week we take a look at what the Atonement accomplishes beyond the payment of the sin-debt of all of mankind. Until you understand what happened at the cross, you cannot truly understand how much God loves you!
Phil 2, “5 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, 7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.” (The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982)
"You want me
Somehow You want me
The King of Heaven wants me
So this world has lost its grip on me"
(Control, Tenth Avenue North, 2016)
John 4, “5 Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?” 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” (The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982)
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either the man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” (Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis, 1952, p. 52)
Isaiah 55: “8For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD. 9 “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.” (The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982)
On this week's episode we look at God's 4 part plan to help achieve His purpose to bring us into eternal relationship with Him. How does God help us get through all the messy consequences of our free will as we navigate this journey? Find out with us on this week's episode, and don't forget, God loves you!
This week we wrap up looking at the impact our free will has on God's purpose to get us into an eternal relationship with Him while finishing up the story of the Prodigal Son. Always remember God loves you so much He gave everything for you!
This week we start by taking a high level look at what God's purpose is for everything we see around us and how far our free will has gotten in the way. Don't ever forget, God loves you!
Before we jump into the discussion of whether or not we were created or if we are just the product of time, matter and luck, we need to put some things in context. In this episode we look at God's description of who He is. To place this journey in context, we need to be introduced to the Creator. Always remember God loves you!
How do you answer the most important questions in the world? In this week's episode we begin our journey with some helpful suggestions to make the journey the best that it can be while we address what is the gospel message of Jesus Christ. Welcome to Seeking Proof Finding Grace and don't ever forget, God loves you!